Another morning at an interplanetary truck stop orbiting Enceladus
1. Madge…
“Hey Hon, y’wanna fresh cuppa coffee to start?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Breakfast specials r’up ona board. Jess yell when y’ready to order.”
Tinny country music is playing from the cheap acoustic windows covering three sides of the dining area. It makes the truck stop feel like a fish bowl. Enceladus rotates white and heavy out them windows like just another luminescent truck stop sign advertising food, fuel, and floozies.
Behind the music there’s a constant roar of SpaceX Condor heavy ion engines. Freighters shuttling water, ore, and mining supplies settle into the truck stop’s parking lot, tethering to the asteroid like a line of weightless piglets, attached to momma. Other freighters are taking off, blue shock diamonds pulsing from the engine nozzles. I watch a few truckers get into the gravity lock and transfer from the weightlessness of the parking lot to the centrifugal gravity of the spinning asteroid. That’s why the view of Enceladus rotates outside the window.
I look up at the board and don’t find anything I want. I look down at the grease-smeared display-glass of the tabletop and swipe through the menu. The Trucker. Three eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast and more coffee. Perfect. I torque my fingers on the glass so the menu’s image spins like a blackjack-roulette wheel and watch as it slowly settles in some random orientation. The pages even flutter in the holo-image. I spin it again. It’s all synthetic of course, the breakfast. I’d love to visit Earth just for some real bacon and eggs.
“They’ll cost’ya big down there too. Most folks on Earth only have syn-food jess like us.”
“Git off my channel, Dom.”
“Heck no duuude, you’re inna public space so’s I kin channel surf all I please. Interplanetary regs.”
“Screw your regs. I’m gonna get a private channel for my Neuralink if I have to work with you.”
The waitress comes bearing a pot of coffee.
“Hey Hon, y’wanna fresh cuppa coffee, too?”
“Yeah babe.”
“Breakfast specials r’up ona board…”
“We’re both gittin’ The Trucker. Hey Madge. Kin ya slip in some extra hash browns for me daaalin’?”
“I’ll see what I kin do, Hon.”
Dom watches her walk away. I don’t need to channel surf to know what’s going on in that head.
2. Dom…
“You really gonna do the Oort run, duuude?”
“Pro’ly.”
“What’s wichyou? You know you’re gonna have to cryo-sleep and that always makes you grumpy. Royally messes you up.”
“No, it don’t. Besides, what the heck, you got me the freakin’ job.”
“Look, you pro’ly got defective transgenes from a mutant tardigrade and just can’t handle the radiation and cryo. That’s why you were always a short-haul trucker. Leave the long-haul jobs to the real men.”
“Yeah, like you? Shiiit. You gonna help me out or not?”
“C’mon, duuude, you know the CRISPR shot is pro’ly squirrely. And even if it’s good, yer takin’ a big a risk shootin’ up without a backup doc.”
Dom was talking about if the CRISPR gene insertion goes wrong, a backup doc can inject me with a viral DNA, which pumps out an enzyme, which reverses whatever the CRISPR did to eff up my genes. All the newer CRISPR shots these days epigenetically mark the insertion site so the backup enzyme can recognize the mod and know where to reverse it.
But there are so many problems. Who knows what Dom’s supply chain was like. I might end up with expired CRISPR that doesn’t mark the gene, so there’s no way to erase a mistake and I’m toast. Or the backup enzyme could be off and think my normal epigenetic marks are CRISPR marks and delete my good genes randomly and I’m toast. Even if the backup enzyme worked perfectly, I wouldn’t be able to get any CRISPR mods for at least a year because the enzyme lingers, like a real bad hangover. And on rare occasions the backup enzyme could become permanently added to my genome. It’s like a real virus — some come and go, but ever’ once in a while one of ’em buggers decides to make itself at home in your DNA. And then there’d be no way I can get any gene updates, ever.
“Dom, my marriage is down the tubes, the kids won’t talk to me, even my dog looks away. I’m the duuude they sing about in these damn country songs. And now that I lost my trucking job this freight run you got me is the only work I can get. And even though the job sucks, it gets me away from this damn place. Just help me out and hand over the CRISPR, alright?”
3. Me…
I head to the bathroom with Dom’s ziplock bag in my pocket. A junkie at the door tries to sell me some shit but I push past him. I close the door to the stall and sit down and open the bag. There’s an old-fashioned glass ampule with about a CC of liquid. Already not a good sign — this is probably not the latest version of CRISPR. But I don’t have a backup doc anyways. There’s an antique syringe for the glass ampule to slide into. The syringe has two metal rings on the barrel for your fingers and a ring on the plunger for your thumb to inject by. That’s odd. A 23rd century duuude injecting a 21st century drug using a 19th century medical implement.
But no freakin’ needle! Dom! What the hell!
I run out to the dining area, but Dom’s gone.
I turn back and walk up to the bathroom guy. He’s as old as the syringe, all tendons and sinew, stringy hair and missing teeth. His tattoos are so faded they don’t animate anymore.
“Hey, can you gimme a needle?”
“Duuude, you’re not gonna buy anything and you want me to give you a needle? Screw you.”
“C’mon man, I need it bad.”
“Yeah, don’t we all. It’ll cost you, asshole.”
I swipe some blockchain credits to his Neuralink. He fishes around in the pockets of his greasy greatcoat and pulls out a rusty needle. I roll my eyes.
“You’re a real gem.”
I head into the stall again, assemble the crusty old needle to the antique syringe, and slide in the glass ampule containing my ticket to the Oort belt: the CRISPR system which will insert the tardigrade’s radiation and cold resistance genes directly into my genome.
The only good thing about my former trucking job is that the company gave all their drivers top-of-the-line hyper-immune boosters. So, the rusty used needle ain’t anywhere near a practical health concern for me. The needle ripping its way through my skin and flesh and venous wall while shedding rust and dried junkie’s blood into my veins along with the CRISPR system, was merely an aesthetic problem.
Me — I was leaving this shithole and my shit life and heading to the Oort frontier.
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