Letters from the Spiral Arms

Run, Rani, Run

The half-finished space elevator hung in the sky like a needle trying to pierce Mount Kinangop.

As Mosiya regained consciousness the first thing they saw was the multispectral camera of their biodrone. The eight-legged, vaguely spider like machine was perched on their chest and waved their pincers around like a human welcoming someone back to the world of the living. How long? asked Mosiya with a gesture of their hand — the biodrone could make sense of voice commands but it was vastly better at picking up sign language.

"Twenty-two minutes," replied the spider in its annoyingly high-pitched tone. Mosiya winced, reaching for the back of their neck. Their monad felt warm to the touch and was slightly swollen; it was probably in overdrive, flooding their veins with antibodies to counter the toxins Mosiya had been unwillingly injected with. They had barely felt anything, just a sting somewhere near their ankle and then the world had become black.The biodrone moved towards Mosiya, holding a small object in their pincers.

"I have found this."

Mosiya took the object and examined it. It was a simple unguided dart, probably fired from a tranquilizer gun, or maybe a blowpipe. Simple but effective; though they had no idea what compound had been used, without the monad they would have been knocked out for several hours at least. Mosiya cautiously stood up, watching for any signs of dizziness or narcolepsy, but the only abnormal feeling was the heat from their monad. Mosiya gestured towards the spider. Climb up. The biodrone obliged and quickly ran up their leg, then their back before nesting themselves on their shoulder. Mosiya took a deep breath. They felt as if their mind had been enshrouded in a dark, cold fog, and their heart rate was noticeably slower than normal, but they could still force their thoughts to gather and create coherent decisions. Twenty minutes was more than enough to vanish in a metropolis such as the Nairobi conglomerate and Mosiya had no doubt their aggressor had been quick to disappear. While Mosiya was presently working for Nairobi itself and not for the USRE or the Kenyan Socialist Republic, they were still a registered investigator, and had several tricks up their sleeve.

Mosiya quickly opened their backpack, reaching for the identification panel they always carried with them. They made the spider draw a drop of blood on one of their finger then injected it inside the small biological computer. There was a very faint chance they could identify what kind of compound had been contained in the dart by comparing its biosignature to the identifier's library. It couldn't hurt to try.

Then, Mosiya climbed down the stairs of the abandoned apartment where they had been confronted by their mysterious aggressor and disappeared in the bustling streets. The Nairobi conglomerate was one of the world's only true metropolises and the only one that wasn't perched atop the ruins of the industrial era. Much like the Earth was a self-contained universe, Nairobi was a self-contained civilization entirely turned towards outer space. The most striking evidence of the symbiotic relationship the city had with space was, of course, the space elevator under construction over Mount Kinangop, a few kilometers away from the heart of the metropolis, but there was a myriad of other elements to account for. Nairobi was a city of the Low Age, both dense and decentralized, where natural elements and buildings were intertwined to form a breathing, living metropolis. The only large constructions were the vast aerospace hangars filling the plains running down towards the sea, their white wooden roofs rippling in the sunlight like the moving backs of land whales.

For a long time, these factories had been solely adorned with the colorful emblems of the Pan-African communes that had pioneered the second advent of space travel, but now they all bore the ten stars of the United Socialist Republics of Earth alongside their old heraldry. In the busy streets, Mosiya could see unusual numbers of off-worlders, from tall, pale-skinned Selenites to orange-eyed deep system dwellers, with colorful q-augs moving under their clothes in the image of fish from the coral seas. Far away to the east launchers could be seen taking off from their offshore platforms every four hours, every day, carrying thousands of tons to low earth orbit. Soon they would be superseded by the space elevator, but for now they acted as Nairobi's cosmic clock, punctuating the day with their flames piercing the clouds. Mosiya felt at home in the sprawling maze of Nairobi's vegetal architecture and moved at speed towards their destination, hopping from tramway to on-demand bicycles in the direction of the Embakasi district. Whoever had been confronting them in the ruined apartment now had a twenty-five minute head start on them but Mosiya was not one to stop. They were somewhat renowned in the aerospace world for their propensity to never let go of their investigations. Their obstination would sometimes encroach on foolishness, especially when dealing with matters pertaining to off-world diplomacy. Mosiya wasn't loved by neither the USRE nor the Moon Communes and for good reason. The nascent superpowers did not exactly like investigators rummaging through the various skeletons they had hidden in their closets — some of them dating back to the industrial era.