Float

The people who stayed took it harder than the people who left. Those going could always return: if things didn’t work out in Float, they could have a fresh start on Earth. Wait half a year, and it would be a whole new planet—about a decade passed for every month gone. For those who stayed, the departure was just another death.

Minnie was a rare case: traveling alone. Few boarded the shuttle to Float without someone acting as a witness to who they’d been before. She savored the relative solitude of the trip, knowing on arrival she’d be installed in one of the living-housing communities. She’d chosen the Single Moms Clan, thinking some extra help would be welcomed, even if she didn’t quite match the Ideal Candidate description.

Her first look at Float was disappointing. The town mimicked Earth exactly, and Minnie felt like her Earth self exactly. Still, she smiled at Frida, her Clan Representative, who hugged her over the baby strapped to her chest. The sight made Minnie worry about dribbling milk, even though she’d dried up long before during the weeks on the shuttle. Frida acquainted Minnie with her Float responsibilities, only one of which caused Minnie chagrin: Dating-Pool Party Attendance. It was mandatory for unpartnered Floaters, but Frida assured her they were almost fun.

The DPP Organization Committee, ostensibly to increase the chance of population growth, threw themed parties, retrofitting the storage unit assigned to them into a new sort of date night each month. A seedy bar, complete with a sticky floor. A movie theater, minus the movie, popcorn inexplicably pressed into the recliner cushions. A downtown rave, with lights clipping every which way and too-loud music meant to draw people closer, into pheromone-range, if they wanted to be heard.

There, she met Nick, who had a mustache, who could somehow make a black t-shirt and jeans look pretentious. They would get drinks together. They developed a teasing sort of rapport, and their hours together would slip by, as quickly as Earth-time.

One day, they were laughing and joking and singing song lyrics at each other as a discotheque mirror ball orbited above them. Other single Floaters tried out the supplied rollerblades as pinks and blues strobed across Nick’s face. He belted out an old Earth song from their youth. “Hey-ey-ey baby, won’t you have my bay-ay-ay-ayby.” A strange sense of de ja vu: She’d somehow swirled back to the very moment that always undid her, where she would forget high risk had anything to do with her, where she’d misbelieve one more try would be enough to get it right—just one more try, and she’d show the little stone there was more to this world than sinking. Except this time, even the hope had turned rancid. Her old fashion tasted only of its bitters. The party was over.

Minnie boarded the next shuttle for Earth without telling a single soul.