AURA SIMULATION

Chapter 12: The First Day

“You’re not dead. That’s already better than most people’s first day back.”

Alex turned to find a man leaning against the doorway of the medical bay, early thirties maybe, tool belt slung low on his hips, a grin that looked like it got used often. “Sorry?”

“Kai Bellows. Maintenance, same crew you’re assigned to.” He stuck out a hand. “Dr. Reyes radioed ahead, said you were up and asking questions. Figured I’d come walk you through your first shift back before you wandered off and electrocuted yourself trying to remember which wire goes where.”

Alex shook his hand, and something about the gesture ordinary, easy, a stranger’s hand in his felt like the first solid thing he’d touched since waking up. “I don’t remember much of anything, if I’m honest.”

“Nobody does, first week out of transit. I didn’t remember my own last name for two days.” Kai said it like a joke, but something in his eyes suggested it wasn’t entirely one. “It comes back. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Some stuff just doesn’t. My sister says I used to hate cilantro. I like it fine now. Guess that part of me didn’t survive the trip.” Kai shrugged, easy, unbothered. “Small price for a planet, if you ask me.”

They walked together through a corridor that opened, a few turns later, onto what Alex could only describe as daylight , soft, warm, angled just slightly wrong in a way he couldn’t place.

“First time seeing it up close?” Kai asked, watching his face.

“I saw it through a window yesterday. This is different.”

“Everybody says that.” Kai led him down a wide street lined with actual trees, actual storefronts, a woman selling something warm and fragrant from a cart on the corner who waved at Kai like she knew him. “Population’s just over five thousand. Feels like a small town because it basically is one. You’ll know half these faces inside a month.”

“And the other half?”

“You’ll know their names because everybody knows everybody’s name eventually. Ship’s not that big.” Kai stopped in front of a maintenance access hatch. “This is us. Life support relay for Sector Twelve. You used to be good at this, apparently, file says you had it running better than anyone else on the crew before transit.”

“I don’t remember any of it.”

“Muscle memory’s a strange thing. Watch.” Kai popped the hatch and gestured him down.

Alex knelt in front of the exposed relay, and something in his hands simply knew what to do, fingers finding a panel release without thought, eyes tracing a circuit path like he’d traced it a hundred times before. He pulled a coupling free, inspected it, reseated it with a small, satisfying click.

“See?” Kai said, grinning. “Still in there somewhere.”

“That’s actually unsettling.”

“Get used to unsettling. First month’s full of it.” Kai crouched beside him, lowering his voice slightly, though there was no one nearby to hear. “For what it’s worth, if you start feeling like something’s off. Wrong, in a way you can’t explain. You’re not the only one.”

Alex looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Just, dreams. Little gaps. Things that don’t quite add up if you look at them too long.” Kai’s grin had faded into something more careful. “I’m not saying it’s anything. Dr. Reyes says it’s normal, and she’s probably right. I just noticed you had that look. The one people get, right before they start asking questions nobody upstairs likes.”

“What questions?”

Kai glanced down the street, at the storefronts and the trees and the soft, angled light, and for a moment something passed over his face that looked almost like fear, quickly folded away.

“Forget I said anything,” he said. “Genuinely. Just do your shift, eat your dinner, sleep well. That’s the whole trick to being happy here. Don’t look too close at the good parts. Nobody who’s looked too close has ever liked what they found.”

“Kai—”

“Forget it, Alex.” His voice was lighter again, deliberately so. “Come on. I’ll show you the mess hall. Best thing about Eden-1, hands down , nobody’s ever cooked a bad meal in five years, and I’ve been keeping count.”

He turned and walked on ahead, and Alex stood there a moment longer, staring at the reseated coupling in his hands, at the words don’t look too close settling into him like a splinter he already knew he wouldn’t be able to leave alone.

Behind him, faint and distant, a woman’s voice carried down the street, not words he could make out, just a tone, urgent, quickly hushed.

Alex turned to look, and found the street exactly as it had been. Warm. Peaceful. Ordinary. Nobody there at all.

Alex caught up with Kai two doors down, the smell of something roasted and buttery pulling him forward before his feet had fully decided to follow. The mess hall was louder than the street had been, full of easy, ordinary noise, cutlery, laughter, someone arguing cheerfully about a card game at a corner table. It felt, disorientingly, like walking into a life that had already been lived by someone else, one he was only now being handed the keys to.

Kai grabbed two trays without asking what Alex wanted, and slid one across the table to him a minute later, loaded with something that smelled better than anything Alex could remember eating, though he supposed that wasn’t saying much, given how little he could remember at all.

“You’ll get your appetite back by tomorrow,” Kai said, already halfway through his own plate. “Everybody’s a little off their food the first day. Comes with the fog.”

Alex picked at the food without much interest, watching the room instead , a woman laughing too loud at her own joke two tables over, a father cutting a child’s meal into smaller pieces, an old man eating alone near the window with the same careful, distant look Alex had seen on the man in the bed beside him that morning, photograph propped against his water cup.

“Everyone looks happy,” Alex said quietly.

“Everyone is happy.” Kai didn’t look up from his plate. “That’s the whole point of this place, Alex. That’s what we’re all here for.”

Alex nodded, and told himself that was true, and ate a little more of his food, and tried very hard not to notice how carefully Kai had said it , like a man repeating something he needed to be true, rather than something he simply believed.