For some, approaching re-entry was a time of fear. The transition from orbit to atmosphere, the passage from abyss to living world through a realm of fire, harkened back to a time of myth, stirring a primordial thing lurking deep in their brains to sudden life where Its fearful quivering and shuffling would subtly infect them. For Anora, it had become a soporific signal, numbing her to the sensations her body knew by rote, having repeatedly repeated them over the past ten years spent making the same round-trip every four months. After each contracted period in high orbit, after hundreds of hours unloading and restocking freighters on the edge of human existence, Anora would drag herself back from the precipice where gravity offered to let her fall forever. Or at least until her air supply was exhausted. She would board the company shuttle with the other subcees and drop back to Earth. The first few journeys had been exciting. On the way up, the creeping weightlessness had left her feeling free, the relaxing of gravity’s hold left her imagining continuing the journey beyond where she could float free and on into the depths where she could ultimately drift apart. On the journey back, gravity would take hold of her once more, squeezing her back together until she appeared whole. She had discovered the process of kintsugi after her third return.
The virtual windows showed the exterior and Anora saw fields of cloud spread out below them, glimpsed the ocean through occasional breaks. The scene brought a sense of peace, and she took a last couple of minutes to appreciate it, confident that she was doing the right thing. Slipping her YuVu over her eyes, she opened her comms. Nothing interesting had come in since her last check at boarding. Most of the flotsam and jetsam had been filtered out of her stash and only two important items remained. She opened the last message from her father once more, even though she had known its contents before opening it the first time. Now it was just another indicator of the repeated pattern she felt she was living. There was the offer of a command, a ship of her own with a promise of no interference. Even with that, she knew she would still been trapped under the weight of the Family name and reputation, and the inevitable restrictions and controls that came with them. Chaining herself to the family would mean security, financial if nothing else, but thinking that way was dangerous. Freedom did not come cheap and a wage, even one from the Family, was not going let her afford it anytime soon. Take the offer, work, save, and eventually you could buy your way to freedom; that was the illusion most people fell for. Anora knew that she could only be free if she lost everything.
For the hundredth time, she checked the anonymous mail drop she had created weeks before. Unconnected to her digital self, it would survive her and in twenty-four hours a preprepared selection of messages would be delivered to family and friends. Anora hoped the words would bring some closure and comfort to those who needed it. Satisfied that everything was in place, she returned to her own mailbox and opened a message that promised the saving of her soul in exchange for a competitively priced monthly fee or an even more reasonably priced annual subscription. The hidden contents of the message, however, had cost her lifesavings. Around her, the lighting was cycling to orange and red tones as the shuttle began re-entry. She detonated the comms bomb hidden in that apparently innocuous message and an electronic shockwave radiated out from her. Over the next few hours, it would spread across every profile, account, and official record it could find that contained information about her. Servers both private and public would be wiped clean of the information held or it would be reduced to nonsense as she was scoured from the world’s electronic memory. Anora knew it would not be perfect, but it would be enough to make it seem as if she had never existed. All that would be left of her were the memories people carried with them and those would decay over time.
The shuttle fell into a world being forged from fire and in this new world she would be free.