Chapter 1

We are what we have breathed,
We breathe what we have worked for,
We’ll be what we deserve.
(extract from the Civics textbook of the Domus Alkemista)
“Jako, are you there? –” he was too shaken to wait for the answer “– We found it. We did. It’s an active reserve!”

“What? Mion if you... –” Jako felt a rush of excitement spreading through his body “– I’m coming, don’t touch the ray, don’t move. Stay there!”

Nax Mion performed the same routine twice a day in the past twenty days:

Darken the holo-glasses, inject the hummus, secure the vial between the forceps. Stir.

Place it on the rack. Activate the protonic ray. Wait.

Shake. Wait. Hope.

And finally, on that day, the ninetieth of the year 2133, the vial turned blue. The protonic ray had excited the humus solution and coerced all its organic components to engage each other into a brutal battle for survival on a microscopic scale.

Eventually, the spores won.

After two years of research, two ships, sixteen people deployed on the field, and an estimated investment of thirty-five million ZIDs, an amount that would easily sustain fifty families for life, the Domus Extractor had collected its twelfth spore mine. Or, as they are called within the business, active reserves.

This discovery would have given the Domus Extractor, already among the richest of the eight Zidon clans, even greater political influence. Therefore, power.

Power.

That was also what was rambling inside Nax’s brain, while his wide-open eyes were glued to the blue, almost fluorescent vial.

There was no doubt that he belonged to the young potentials of the Domus. He knew that. Tutoring officers were always ‘you’re a grower’, ‘work hard, you’ll go a long way’.

But this was different: now, he was in the limelight. He could, or even better, should, actually climb the leaderboard.

Age twenty-seven, a degree in Organic Engineering and bags of research recognitions. Four years after his enlistment he was still a Standard, barely one grade above the bottom of the Extractor’s food chain.

Jako, age thirty-nine, a late degree in People Leadership and no recognitions, if not that to be exceptionally dull and unpleasant. So much so that his wife left him alone with a newborn child, nineteen years earlier, without a single explanation. Still, Jako was a Legàtes, two ranks above Standards.

And he was his boss.

Beep. “Show me the vial, Mion!” The hatchway was just starting to open, while Jako’s nervous voice was already inside the laboratory, way before his clumsy, unnaturally thin and somehow knotty figure could cross the doorway.

Here he was, out of breath, pointing at the blue gold as if he had to teach it a thing or two.

Nax placed the vial back on the stand.

“Here you go, boss” he handed him the holo-glasses.

The boss rubbed his eyes in preparation: “Where’s the humus from? –” glasses on “– The reserve by the cave? A3?”

“A1, –” Nax knew this would have knocked him over “– the forest”. And he loved saying it.

“What? Damn! Let me –” he tapped the lenses. Nax could see the mirrored data popping up before Jako’s eyes, “– Holy crap! Two-hundred-eighty. Damn! She was right.” He hastily took out the holos – they must have been lying – “That’s four times the begetting capacity of the spores from the Nahifax reserve!”

Jako kept spinning his chain of complaints, “wrong environment, no signals from the harvester: how did she know it? Ah?” He asked Nax. Rhetorically, of course.

That gibberish maze of spoken thoughts could have dragged on forever.

Nax let the solo continue, politely yielding like a proficient butler, amused at how Jako couldn’t come to terms with her being right about this.

Galia Pulcher, Jako’s boss’ boss. She, the most influential among the four Prima of the Domus Extractor. One of the most powerful executives that could be found in all the seven planets and seven ferries of the Zidon federation.

In less than fifteen years, since her election to Prima, she had brought to the Domus no fewer than four active reserves of spores, making the Extractor the third richest Domus of all, right after the Zechan and, of course, the Alkemista.

The first reserve she harvested was the legendary one in Nahifax, where the extracted spores scored a whopping seventy-five bcap, or begetting capacity.

The Nahifax spores were well-known to be the most efficient organic energy source available, about three times as much as good-quality spores harvested elsewhere.

Just as Nax learned at the Academia, the amount of Nahifax spores held by a fine zechanian teaspoon could have supplied the entire capital of planet Extractor for twenty days.

The economic impact of that reserve discovery was immense: transport, communication, bio-breeding, construction, and above all, Ether.

Ever since the Great Blackout of 2040, the first known year in the history of Zidon, humans have been working tirelessly to perfect the Ether.

In the beginning, breathing Ether was simply a necessity: it kept people alive and nourished.

Once reserves of higher quality spores were discovered, the Domus Alkemista could synthesize much more refined Ethers, offering a whole new range of benefits.

The new Ethers would improve the muscle tone, smooth the skin, sculpt the body, improve concentration, protect against diseases, treat wounds. Whatever the organic engineering technology was able to squeeze out that amount of energy at the time.

Each Domus would commission the Alkemista to develop precisely the right Ether for its requirements. Did the Platos need better coordination skills and leaner bodies to improve their athletic shows in the Circus? Fine. Allow six months of research to a major pharmacy of the Domus Alkemista and – there you go – they got their custom Ether.

After four or five years of breathing that, athletes and artists of the Domus Platos would have amazed the audience in the Circus with performances never before seen or thought possible.

Of course, this would come at a price. That of the most precious element of all: the spores.

Everyone in Zidon had the right to live, so everyone had the right to breathe Ether.

However, only by joining a Domus, especially in the higher ranks, a zidonian would gain access to the finest ones.

Even then, the Gloria, the Ether made from the Nahifax spores, would simply remain inaccessible to most.

That’s how Galia earned the epithet of ‘Mistress of the Ether’. One of Zidon’s most envied, admired, feared, spectacular creatures.

Rumors told that when she travelled outside her territory, she always wore an Ether-emitter pierced on her nose, at the manner of the Extractors. So that she would not breathe anything else than Gloria.

“I must call her, Nax.” Jako’s voice sounded grave and dejected. “Arrange the samples for the audit. We only have a couple of days before she gets here.”

“Jako, two days ... to prepare a full set of stable vials...” Nax looked at his boss with pleading eyes; gone unnoticed. “Can I at least get Kalissa to help?”

He sighed at its own request. A day in the lab with his boss’ spoiled daughter, who was there as a laboratory assistant, but behaved like a Prima and treated him like the last of the Agnostics. ‘Great idea’, he praised himself.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” He wasn’t even listening, “Damn, Galia’s going to take all the credits for this!”

Jako lost his composure and stretched his fist towards Nax’s guiltless face. “She’s going to seize the keys of the Domus!” His brain puffed rage like one of those geysers in Tiriad.

He knew he couldn’t escape it. She won, and he had to give up.

The Legàtes began to approach the hatchway at a humble pace.

“Ah, Mion,” he turned to Nax, “by the way, good job. You did well.”

“These come directly from Mount Nouh.” Kalissa spoke with a grape in her mouth and theatrically held the rest of the bunch in her palm.

She bit the grape and let the juices flood her mouth, while some of it dripped on her lips and chin.

“Sweet, ah?” She wiped it with the back of the wrist. “It’s not common for someone in your class to have access to such delicacies. I’m glad I could give you this chance.”

There were only four people in the entire cosmo-driller, including himself, but Nax could swear Kalissa may have been one of the most narcissistic and self-centered people in the whole Zidon.

After all spores were set and arranged in the lab, ready for Galia’s audit that night, Kalissa and Nax were spending their daily integration in the bath chambers.

Even though the Ether breathed in the driller was Extractor grade — more than enough to keep them fed —, the Domus policy was to keep the daily integration as mandatory <to stimulate sociality, trust and stress-relief>.

Made sense. It was a twenty-seven days long mission, secluded in the limited spaces of the driller with little to do, apart from lab tests and some rare outside strolls covered in a heavy radiation-proof suit.

On day twenty of the mission, Nax began to feel homesick.

Besides, he loved the integration. For him, it was not about showing off rare cheeses and wines, but rather about the unexplored tastes, about the curiosity to observe how his body would have reacted to those unfamiliar stimuli.

It was about discovery. He didn’t feel it in the mind; he felt it under his skin.

All in all, he could bear a distraction, even if it meant sharing it with an irritating brat like Kalissa. In any case, it was better than doing it with Jako.

The bath chambers were built as a scaled replica of those found all over planet Extractor.

A long, narrow pool occupied most of the main chamber. The walls were tiled with azure blue ceramic mosaics. Back home they may have hosted illustrations of some sort, according to the wealth of the institution. In the cosmo-driller, the complexity was kept to the minimum: azure.

On one end of the main chamber an artificial waterfall poured from the top of the barrel-shaped sealing. Concealed behind the jet, a nook, the so-called wooden lodge, where Nax and Kalissa were having their first integration together in twenty days.

One in front of the other, the two were laying on warm wooden slats on white marble blocks, which served as seats. In between them: a low alabaster table where Kalissa’s precious delicacies were arranged, and a chilling plant, emitting cool puffs, used to keep the food at an adequate temperature.

In the main chamber, two tanks of incandescent metal cubes were positioned next to the waterfall. A significant amount of water drops was falling on the cubes, immediately turning into steam and sounds. Roaring, sprays, hiss and gurgling.

Kalissa was lying on the side. She held her head with her hand, while one leg was raised to shape a triangle with the other. Nax was stealing glances at her.

In his mind, she resembled the subjects of paintings from the old world. Those he liked to stare at back home at the Academia.

He was enticed by her magnetic beauty. By her insolent, mesmerizing elegance.

Kalissa’s body was softly wrapped into fine clothes of the highest origins. Something a Standard could never afford.

The pale white fabric fell off her shoulders, down to gently cover her breasts. It folded into a thick, yet soft, rope that circumnavigated the uncovered lean belly, only to reconnect and unfold again at the height of the hips, just below the navel. Then it flowed down, split into three white stripes: two caressed the legs, and the middle beat the void.

The steam moistened her skin, with tiny drops of water hanging on the long, dense eyelashes. Eventually, some of them would slip away to fall down onto her wet, dusty green eyes. Like a reconciliation between a river and the sea.

Short brown hair tied up into large, elaborate braids. Smooth white skin, with a hint of tan. Pulpy young lips of vivid red, framing radiant white teeth. Thin long neck and breasts the shape of drops. Perfection.

For the first time, Nax had realized, first-hand, how far that class and those lives were from him. From his bath clothes too heavy, not-breathable, rough and sticky. From his not-sculpted belly, his unsurprising height, or his unsurprising anything.

The Ether emitter was pierced to his left ear lobe, as was Kalissa’s, but what came out of it made all the difference.

Not that he looked bad, not at all. Actually, he had pleasant features, an active body, fine skin. Still, nothing even remotely close to that kind of perfection.

And he knew he could not get there, as a Standard. He would need to jump the ranks to get better Ether, or at least he would need more ZIDs, to buy some.

Kalissa could sense all he was thinking. She was amused and thrilled.

“So,” she picked a cheese cube from the alabaster table, “is it the first time you meet Galia?”

Nax nodded. She was teased, and tried to conceal it by outlining a moderately pleased smile.

The steam had already soaked the clothes, revealing her body where the fabric had become sticky. She freed her upper leg from the humid discomfort, subtly shifting the hems away from her thigh. She then caressed its inner part, down from the knee, to absorb the moisture.

“Why don’t you pour us a chalice?”

Nax picked the carafe from the neck, took out the crystal cap, and filled the two Zechanian chalices with dark red wine. He was more of a cider guy, but if he didn’t go for stuff so premium, he probably should have stopped drinking for good.

Kalissa went back to sitting: one foot on the ground, the other one tucked in pressed against her pubis. She leaned toward the Standard, who handed her the fermented grape juice.

She was thirsty, staring at the glass with longing and desire.

Since she had raised back from lying, all her clothes were sticking to her shoulders and her breasts. As she leaned, she exposed the areola of her nipples, awoken by the warmth and humidity of the room.

Kalissa grabbed the glass with her fingers. The nails were tinted with vibrant vermilion.

Nax noticed her toes carrying the same red. All thoroughly glazed in vanity.

‘Why would she do her nails on a drilling mission on Earth?’ This nineteen years old woman’s vainness was bewildering.

She twirled her left foot. Busted.

“So,” her voice burst with satisfaction, “you like feet, pervert?” She took a sip from the chalice and gazed at Nax with an inquiring look.

“Actually,” the professor climbed on the pulpit, “it would be Sexual, not pervert.”

He knew he was going the know-it-all way, but her accusation embarrassed him, and he needed a good, phlegmatic fact-checking approach to shift the conversation.

“Perversions are deviations of the mind. To feel feral attraction for feet is a vice of the body. It was customary among Sexuals. Anyway, it’s a matter of the old world, when people were enslaved by their animal instincts and desires, victims of the evolutionary need to preserve the human species. Since decent quality Ether has been made available to Agnostics and lower ranks, Sexuals no longer exist. You see? I can’t be one of them.” He enjoyed that, “But, yeah, nice feet.”

Kalissa took another sip of wine, “Alright, pervert.” She was not impressed.

“Anyway,” She changed the subject of the conversation, “I never had the chance to congratulate you on the discovery. What will you do with the ZIDs?”

“I don’t know; I was thinking of moving out of the Academia.”

Kalissa flaunted the most disdainful expression she kept in her repertoire, “Why are you staying at the Academia in the first place?”

“I’ve been living there since I was 4 years old. I lost my family then, and between the studies before and the job now, I never had the chance to change. But now would probably be the right time.”

He tried his best not to sound pathetic, but it seemed Kalissa’s cords were already touched. “I’m sorry to hear that, it must have been painful growing alone.” Her voice turned into a gentle, protective tone.

“I did not, the Domus has taken good care of me.”

“Can I ask you, –” she paused for an instant, just enough to glue her doe eyes to his “– how did your parents die?”

Nax sighed. He knew that was coming: “During an extraction mission here on Earth; specifically, in the northern part of the Asian continent. At the time they were using gas tanks as fuel reserves. During the drilling, something went wrong and the tank exploded. I lost my whole family there. My parents and my older brother.”

Kalissa was enraptured, “where were you when this happened?”

Nax pulled back. Then, reluctantly, he reached for his right hip and pulled up the cloth: a wide, severe burn scar was engraved on most of his lower belly.

“The carer was quick enough to put me in the self-driving capsule and ship me back to the Domus. She died too.”

Kalissa’s eyes were devouring that scar with fascination and curiosity. “Can I ... touch it?” She hesitated, surprised at her own request.

She took Nax off guard. He felt already much of a freak by just showing his flawed body to a creature accustomed to no less than perfection. Touching felt quite an impossible boundary to trespass.

Nonetheless, he decided to go through with it.

He nodded, held up the clothes with the exposed abdomen and stared at Kalissa with a concerned expression.

Kalissa reached the flawed body. She gently caressed the scar, experiencing all its roughness. She closed her eyes and focused on the sensations that came from her fingertips.

It was pain. A sorrow that not even the Ether could mask and restore.

Nax’s body was different from the ones she used to celebrate, envy and compare. It spoke about a truth. It had a history. A story, a sad one, to tell.

She wanted to know more. She pushed her hand toward the abs, sensing each inch of it. Hills and valleys. Smooth and rough.

It was the first time Nax had allowed anybody to touch his body this way.

“How come it didn’t heal?” Kalissa asked out of curiosity, truly with no hints of pity.

“It did. It just doesn’t get any better with the air I breathe.” He drowned in self-consciousness, “I know, it’s revolting.”

She glanced at him with reprimanding eyes.

“No, –” she melted “– actually, it’s beautiful.”

“How can you say that? Just look at yourself!” He pointed at her body, leaving a trace of involuntary resentment, “Perfection. Legàtes perfection.”

Kalissa smiled at him, with the expression of a mother who was to tell a child that fairy tales were not reality.

“You know, –” she pulled the straps of her clothes off her shoulders “– my body, has flaws too”. She held the fabric at the height of her breasts, until they were freed, and let it drop to her waist.

Then she stood up and pushed the wet clothes down her hips.

She stood naked, exposing her body in all its grace and debated perfection.

Kalissa grabbed her right breast and pulled it. She pointed her fingers, “I have dark spots”.

She let the breast fall and passed her hands through the belly, “my skin lacks tone, and my hips are too small for breeding.”

She went down, gliding on the silky skin across the mound, and carefully pulled her labia “These are uneven, and I’ve never even had a child yet.”

“This looks perfect to you, Nax. But it’s not.” She realized the mood was darkening; she tried to lighten it up, “Maybe thanks to your new spores it will become so.” She let out a sincere smile.

They glanced at each other for a few moments of complicity.

Buzz buzz. Nax’s emitter vibrated on his ear lobe.

“Yes. Okay. I’m going.” He exhaled.

“You need to go?” A vein of disappointment colored her voice.

“Yes, there has been some sort of failure at the outside post and your father wants everything to be perfect for tonight’s visit. I need to go fix it.”

“Do you want me to come?” ‘Say yes.’

“No, you finish your integration. I’ll see you later”

Nax removed the wet bathing clothes, he folded and methodically placed them inside the highest compartment of his personal locker.

The changing room was located next to the integration baths. He could see the steam entering from the air duct. His ears were already re-accustomed to silence.

No more pounding of the waterfall, nor hiss of the drops falling onto the scorching cubes. No more cocky words pouring out of Kalissa’s sculpted mouth.

Yes, he was missing that already.

He carefully mopped his humid skin with a towel. As he moved over the scar, his body couldn’t help but remember Kalissa’s touch. He let his mind linger there for a few moments.

‘Come on Nax, enough with this bullshit. You’ve got a job to do.’ He pulled himself out of the daydream and grabbed the earth-suit from the locker.

He enjoyed missions on the Old World. Suits were light and comfortable and he didn’t sweat as he would in space-suits for satellites or outer space.

He tapped the emitter on his ear. “Raden, I need the location of the failure.”

“Oooh, I’m happy to hear you too Mion. I’m fine thanks. I had a ball of lyophilized carrots for my not-naked integration with Jako. I detest cheese and wine anyway. Thanks for asking though.”

“Come on man, I need to fix this shit before Galia’s here.” He pulled the zip of the suit and grabbed the gloves.

“Are you planning a steamy integration with her too?”

Nax smirked, “I may,” he closed the locker, “Location, please.”

“Main region, district nine. The capsule post is offline and the radar is screwed. Sounds like a freaking bear had lunch with a cable on the outside of it.”

“Better than lyophilized carrots, isn’t it?” He took some time to appreciate his own jibe. He was ready to go, “Send me a cube with the proper tools, would you? Platform three.”

“On its way, smartass.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Don’t worry. And, Nax –” His voice turned staid “– Be careful out there, I’m blind here. I got no eyes on you.”

Nax closed the door of the changing room. He did it slowly, still hoping to casually bump into Kalissa on her way back from the integration baths.

No signs of her.

Instead, he came across her father, who was rushing somewhere through the hall carrying a pale, sweaty face with a panicked expression on it.

“Hey, boss!” He dared.

No way. Jako didn’t even seem to notice.

‘That’s unusual,’ Nax thought. Normally Jako wouldn’t be the man of the party, but he would try hard to be. Yes, Galia’s arrival was just a few hours away, but they were ready. Everything was ready, and Nax was going to solve the last missing detail in a matter of minutes. ‘Why would he be panicking?’

That worked as a spur on Nax, who sped up like an excited horse. He left the hall, with its impressive crystal dome, which enabled the light of the sun to fill the white void of the room, and entered the prefabricated corridor.

He never had the chance to cross it before. In all likelihood, no one did. It had recently been assembled by modular automation, in less than two days, to facilitate access to the newly discovered active reserve. It was a long corridor, at least five minutes of fast walking along the spore field, which could be admired through the endless glass walls on the sides.

That was Jako’s ace to impress Galia. He saw it as a spectacular runway, with Galia being the top model. He knew it would have pumped her ego.

So far, it seemed to work on Nax.

Step by step, the ambiance turned to a purplish hue, due to the concentration of spores in the outer field. The shift in the atmosphere increased rapidly as Nax approached the core of the reserve.

At the end: platform three.

He entered the safe chamber. The clang he left behind signaled that the last hold door in front of him was the only thing between his zidonian lungs and the unbreathable air of the Old World. It was not his first walk outside on Earth, but every time it felt like it was.

Nax breathed in one last big chunk of treated air. Then, he slowly exhaled.

He put on the helmet, activated the air filter, and stared at the metal door in front of him for a few seconds, as if he was already projecting himself out of it.

He placed his hand on the side panel.

Beep the door unlocked, and opened.

The cube was waiting for him there, a magnetically suspended platform for high-precision outdoor work, testament to the unrivalled engineering mastery of the Domus Sabrath.

Nax stepped on it, “to the capsule post. Cruise speed.”

The cube put its wheels in motion. The machine consisted of a platform that was suspended over the base thanks to a perfectly controlled magnetic field. This allowed the amphibious base to cross uneven and steep terrains without compromising the balance.

You could keep a chalice of wine filled to the top and turn it to full speed without spilling one drop of it. In fact, Nax remembered that was exactly how they advertised it.

Of course, this rare piece of Sabrathian engineering was extremely expensive and not many would have the chance to use it on the field. Not a big deal for the Domus Extractor though.

The ninth district was at the heart of the active reserve, with the highest concentration of spores in the whole field.

Normally, Nax could breathe terrestrial air for about twelve minutes. He was pretty satisfied with it, since most zidonians began to ache after eight to ten minutes.

Although tiring and destabilizing, he usually took a few breaths of that air. Not just for the danger of it, but because it made him fantasize about the Old World and all the subjects he had studied at the Academia.

On the other hand, breathing spores would be suicidal. With this concentration he would get seriously harmed in just dozens of seconds.

Nax was amazed at the density of the spores. He expected that ‒ the becap was incredible ‒ but seeing it with his own eyes left him startled. He felt like assisting to a miracle, something so powerful that he couldn’t even have imagined it.

The whole atmosphere was dense, active, with billions of microscopic particles raising from the brown-purplish ground and floating in the air, like an excited fog.

The cube was slowly cruising above the ground and Nax was standing still, seeking to identify the location of the capsule post.

But he could not avoid resting his mind on the scenario he had his eyes filled with.

Giant baobabs rising above spots of sycamore forests; a vibrant blue sky shining above the purple mist, wet by the blinding light of the Sun; high mountains with white snow-capped ridges on the horizon. Moreover, even if filtered by the helmet, Nax could smell an intense scent of ripe fruit, so sweet he felt his body almost poisoned by it.

Although dangerous and inhospitable, Nax always fancied the outside, alone with his thoughts, drifting through that hieratic silence, surrounded by a mute feast of life.

That scenario resonated in him, he felt like witnessing ancient times. Something that once was, and then it was nothing but a myth.

He felt closeness to those landscapes, that vegetation so different from the one back home on planet Extractor. A forgotten realm, that mutated and evolved without witnesses there to watch, or judge. It was Nax’s own secret.

The cube stopped. The capsule post was just a few steps away from him, on the border of the spore field. The cosmo-driller had placed its entrance door right on its edge.

‘Damn automation’ he ruminated. He understood, though, that the alternatives were limited: immediately adjacent to the back of the post, a modest, yet densely populated forest, was claiming its own space. Hence, that was the best the driller could have settled.

Nax stepped off the cube and immediately noticed that the Ether-supply cable had been sheared through with a clear cut.

The post had been there for, what, twenty hours? Perhaps it was the animals and creatures that lived in the forest. And yet, the radar had not highlighted any presence since the landing, twenty days before.

In any case, Nax took the gears off the cube’s platform and patched the cable.

It didn’t have to be the most meticulous job; only good enough to hold for five days. Just in time to get the actual harvesting crew to arrive and build the extracting settlement.

Then, animals would not stand a chance, no matter how hungry or angry they might have been.

“I patched the cable; it seems like the bear you were talking about was indeed pretty starving. I’m entering the post now.”

Nax laid his hand on the door panel.

Beep the door opened.

The capsule post was spacious enough only to host the control panels and two people.

Nax activated the console.

“Cube, connect to the post, authorize and run a diagnostic.”

After a few moments, the results appeared above the console: