Solaris Rising 2 by Ian Whates

Just as though it was any other morning, in no way a special or different day.
    Special or different meant nothing to Martin.
    “Time to go,” I said.
    “Yeah.” He didn’t look round; didn’t move.
    “Now.”
    “Okay. Coming.”
    “Really now. Not ‘soon’ now.”
    “I said okay.”
    Ten minutes later he deigned to descend. The limo driver had already put his suitcase in the boot. Martin had met the 20kg luggage allowance exactly, down to the gramme. He’d made an eclectic choice of belongings to take with him. A few of his favourite books, cherished physical copies. T-shirts with videogame characters on. A penny jar that accounted for nearly a fifth of the suitcase’s laden weight. A nightlight that he probably wouldn’t be able to plug in anywhere. A handful of Lego models and Warhammer figurines.
    He had needed some persuading to include a framed photo of us, his family, and the Good Luck card his classmates at school had signed.
    Outside, he started quizzing the limo driver about the car. Maximum speed. Fuel consumption. Brake horse power. Stopping distances. All the Top Trumps stats.
    “How should I know, son?” the driver said, despairing. “I just drive the thing.”
     
     
    T HEY’RE NOT EVEN proper astronauts. What’s up with that? NASA didn’t send civilian nobodies on the Apollo missions. Armstrong and Aldrin and the others, they were test pilots, air force guys, elite. Best of the best. Trained within an inch of their lives. Now it’s a bunch of randoms? That’s what we’re manning a trillion-dollar spaceship with? Don’t make me laugh .
     
     
    A YEAR EARLIER , someone from the government had come round to interview us. We weren’t sure why at the time. Claire and I thought maybe it was a benefit-fraud investigation. We’d done something wrong, claimed money we weren’t entitled to, ticked an incorrect box on the disability living allowance form, something of that sort.
    Why an infraction like that should have seemed important to anyone, given what else was going on in the world, I didn’t know. But it was the government. Rules were still rules, even as civilisation inched inexorably towards the precipice.
    The woman conducting the interview, Maggie, tried to put us at our ease. “It’s just a formality,” she insisted, “an assessment, nothing more. You don’t have anything to be anxious about.”
    “Don’t have anything to –?” I exclaimed. I may have sounded a little hysterical. It wouldn’t surprise me if I had. “Have you been reading the headlines?”
    “I mean this,” Maggie said patiently, giving the edge of her electronic clipboard a tap with the stylus. “I was talking about this. Not the Incident.”
    A true professional. Everyone else was calling it Armageddon. Apocalypse. The End Of Days. The Slow Extinction. The Terminal Fuck-up. Only a public sector employee could calmly refer to it by its official designation, the Incident, and not add an eye roll or an ironic grimace.
    “Martin, you see,” she went on, “is a very interesting young man. He has certain... qualities. I need to know as much as I can about him. Whatever you can tell me, anything at all, will be very helpful.”
    What was there to say? What, that she couldn’t already have known? Asperger’s syndrome. High-functioning autism. Near the upper end of the spectrum. Incredibly smart. Incredibly unemotional. Like a robot in many ways. His brain working at unimaginable speeds. His heart aloof, unknowable. Impenetrable.
    That was Martin.
     
     
    I N OTHER WORDS , they’ve selected the geeks. The nerds. The boffins. Not the prime physical specimens. The trolls who live in their parents’ basements. The screen jockeys with the spaghetti limbs and cathode tans. The boys who could never get the girls, the girls who repel the boys. Total space cadets. The future of the human race is in their baby-soft hands. Pardon me while I puke. Why not football players? Farmers? Construction workers?