Excerpt: Broken Cogs on Phoenix Station

Early the next morning, Joan took the finished applications to the office and dropped them on her desk, then headed for the archives. It was March first, almost time for Spring. It was, of course, an artificial season. The moon had no seasons of its own. The station seasons were modified. Winters not too cold, summers not too hot. No snow. No rain. Water was too precious for those. Changing seasons are important to human sanity somehow. So the corporation provided them. Today was cool and Joan was wearing her coat against the chill. She drove her hover chair onto the tram platform and positioned it in the corner to make room for other riders. She loved tram rides, watching the city go past the window, ever changing, presenting different views, moving mixes of light and shadow.

Alexander got on at the next stop. Seeing Joan, he took six hopping bounces instead of the twenty-four toggling steps that would have been required on Earth (oh, how he loved low gravity!). “May I sit with you?” he asked Joan. It was a rhetorical question to be sure. Alexander had become like part of Joan’s family since coming to the station in December. He liked it that way especially. Alexander left no family behind.

“Sure, pull down a seat.”

Alexander unfolded the seat from the tram wall, hopped up, and settled himself. It wasn’t easy being just forty inches tall, even on the Moon. But it was certainly more fun here. “So, where are you off to today?”

“Going to the archives for some research. I need to find something to write about in November.”

“That requires two questions,” he said. “What are you writing and what is so special about doing it in November?”

“Well, it’s a little silly, but a lot of fun. November is National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo for short. NaNo for shorter.” Joan was smiling. That’s what Alexander liked most about the Darcys—they were always smiling, enjoying the moment. “Someone in my family has been participating in it since it began. It’s a family tradition spanning over 400 years. My grandmother got me started when I was thirteen. Rennie started when she was twenty.”

Alexander turned forty-five degrees on his seat to face Joan. He leaned forward excitedly and clapped his hand together in brief applause. “No way! You must have, um, let me see…..um, thirty novels?” He was trying to be polite, but was grinning too big to hide that he knew better.

“Forty-two, to be exact.” Joan admitted proudly.

“You must be famous!.”

“Well, I might be if anyone ever read them. Mostly, it’s just Phil, Rennie, and Barbara. Sometimes Harlow, too. But I’ve never published.”

“Too bad. I’d like to read them.” Alexander looked truly disappointed. “What genre do you write?”

“Well, romance mostly. Actually, always, until now. This year I want to write something more serious, something that matters.”

Alexander lowered his eyes to a distant point on the floor, crossed his ankles and held his hands on his lap. “Romance matters,” Alexander said with a wistfulness betraying his loneliness.

Just then, the tram stopped again. “Got to go. See you later.” Joan hovered off the tram and headed for the Archives. She hated to leave Alexander like that. She’d wanted to cheer him up, but the tram wouldn’t wait.