Perfect Balance

Clara had a neck scarf she treasured. It was dyed a blend of swirling blue and white, like the colours of a real sky, and remained beautiful despite being five generations old. It had been with her Earth ancestor on the launch, so it was a talisman to Clara, a sacred object. The edges were frayed and faded but it retained a scent of the family, the ones that had since perished and been recycled. She only wore it on special occasions, and the annual Christmas dinner at Kids Portions, the quirky highly rationed but luxury eatery on deck five, was certainly a special occasion.

Deck five was regarded as a safe deck, and the restaurant was something of an ostentatious controversy, with its menus to choose from, where the rationed treats were made into an art form of cuisine to savour. Still, there needed to be good things in any life and it did serve a purpose. Clara and her designated husband of thirty years, Samson, never went short of food, but the algae were often tasteless, even with flavours added, so real meat was a sensation of the senses. The first time she ate at the restaurant all those years ago, she cried, she collapsed and had the crashing tells of a mental breakdown in public, but since then, it had become a comfort, a goal of each year.

“Ready?” she beamed, pulling on her grey slipper-like shoes.

Samson smiled broadly as if relishing a moment.

“Happy Christmas, dear,” he said warmly.

Samson’s hair was immaculate for a fifty-year-old. It was evenly grey, shaped and well-cut. An abundance of spare time meant looking good was easier. He had been gifted fewer hours on the deck duties for his decades of commitment to the ship. As they left their apartment, locking it behind them, they could hear the noise of fevered violence in the main courtyard below.

“Do you want to watch a fight first?” Clara asked politely.

“Not today, love, let’s get to that table we reserved.”

The spacecraft’s lower decks and courtyards were the territory for venting young people, for those who sought ways to expend their cage energy with combat, to form testosterone-heavy tribes and make trouble. It was also the stage for courtroom justice. The gangs often became the guardians of the resource rules and the resource rules for every section were clear to all.

Debt was the main currency on the spacecraft, debt controlled life and balance, and those who disputed or disregarded their accountability for debt meant they were hunted, beaten, segregated or worse. If you gave someone something, if you took something from someone, if you tipped into overuse with your share of resources, you were indebted. This was the way. ‘We all owe, we all pay’ became a chanted, repeated slogan across the ship. The currencies of a vivarium flying through space were oxygen, food, water and workload, the basics of survival in a closed box in an endless vacuum.

Clara and Samson now avoided the lower areas where frequent confrontations and punishments were dealt out daily, apart from days when they craved entertainment beyond television. Universe 25 was large enough as a space vehicle to accommodate all the different pillars of society. Those who paid their debts and respected the rules were mostly left alone in the higher, quieter decks.

As a couple who had served their assigned duties, Clara and Samson mostly spent their time in the garden or farm sectors, smelling soil and listening to the water recyclers swoosh above them. Sometimes they made love in their bedroom or watched random box sets from the billions of shows on the archive. Often, they suspended belief and imagined hard that they were on Earth like their early ancestors, those brave pioneers who left the terminal home world, to begin the multi-generational odyssey to Proxima B, with its life-nurturing orbit around Proxima Centauri.

The couple sauntered deliberately slowly along the walkway, Clara gripping her scarf with one hand and pulling herself along the deck-handrail, with the other. Before reaching their destination, they passed a harvesting bay with closed doors and an ominous red warning sign not to enter without permission. A young woman was kneeling on the grated floor nearby, staring at the door, trapped in regret. She looked lost in herself, and Clara felt an instinctual twang of hurt on seeing her suffering, but she refused to let the sight intrude on this special outing. On a spacecraft you needed to be selfish with joy, it was a rare jewel of emotion in such a tough environment.

The eatery was white, bright and tidy, ‘asylum-chic’ many joked, with plants trailing from the ceiling. It had a bar that had both beer and wine rationed in quantities that allowed for mild intoxication. The smells of the kitchen were delightful, and rich, with hints of charcoal, herbs and roasted meat.

“Greetings, Clara and Samson, good to see you here. Please take your seats by the window. You can still see the comet, just about,” said the waiter, a squat man with no hair and a bushy white moustache, they had noticed many times in assemblies. He had a name tag on his shirt, ‘John B’, which meant he was a twin, but they had never noticed his brother. That meant he was dead. Despite his welcoming demeanour and squat size, John B bore five tattooed thorns across his brow, each mark a life he had legally taken.

“Yes, you’re right, replied Clara, I thought the comet had passed. Wonderful to witness its icy tail. It makes you remember, we are travelling in a living, dynamic universe. It’s like a machine, with patterns of stars, planets, orbits and galaxies. It’s like perfect design.”

The waiter produced a stiff, glossy sheet menu for each of his guests, but they knew what they wanted, they had been obsessing about the hallowed meal for a month.

“Breast with mash please,” enthused Clara.

“And the legs for me, with gravy!” said Samson, with an air of someone accepting a reward.

The waiter bowed slightly in a theatrical gesture to heighten the excitement. He knew what the annual meal meant to those few selected customers who crossed his doorway at Christmas.

“Of course, It will be ready soon.”

Clara reached across the chunky plastic table-top with both of her thin vein-strewn arms, to clutch Samson’s fingers firmly in tenderness. She let herself grin as she stared at his deep, wise brown eyes.

“Remember when this ship became too crowded? Remember what you said to me, when we could barely leave our apartment without confronting… Well, death?”

Samson recoiled a little as if a memory stung him. He remembered.

She continued: “You said the weakest need to… No… Must… die.”

Samson frowned and finished the line: “…And that means, we have to be strong.”

“This place,” she continued after he paused. “It demands perfect balance. That was our daily briefing when we were at school… Not too many people, enough resources, it’s simple as an equation, it is why Earth people got it wrong, it’s what we need to understand before we colonise. When there were too many families, it got bad, I’ll never forget.”

Clara took a moment to stare at outer space in its brutal emptiness.

“When it was overcrowded…” she said, drifting in thought. “I always remember seeing that poor little girl, abandoned and dying in the mud of an overwatered farm. Someone had deserted their monitoring role and the water was wasted, the crops were wasted, and people were trampling through the fields, ruining them. When there are too many people, no one cares anymore. We were all under threat because of too many mouths, too many relationships, too many problems…This way we have now, it is better, it is kinder, and it makes sense. It is strength personified.”

The waiter appeared with a plate perched on the fingertips of each hand. Clara opened herself up, spreading her arms wide to make room near her belly for the steaming, sizzling meal. Much like a whole chicken, the little torso was browned, headless and limbless. She recognised it as human but only just.

“And your legs, Sir, with a gravy sauce.”

Samson’s eyes glanced at the tiny toes for a second, perfectly formed. He guessed this was one from the woman they passed earlier, on the walkway decking. An illegal pregnancy, it must have been hard for her. Clara had been through this herself all those years back, it was a common challenge. He recalled her wrapping the little resource in her best scarf and holding it for a few moments, an allowance no longer afforded perpetrators. It cried as a first response, squinting at the harsh light. It was an over-dependence crime unlike others, and no one shunned the mistake, but the price was the resource that grew within their bodies. That was the atonement. Births were regulated, planned, and restricted. Perfect resource balance was everything.

He put his fork in the leg and dipped it in the small thick pool of gravy. It smelt good.

Balance meant keeping the population tally perfect and any mistakes had to be transformed into opportunities. Every breath and bead of sweat had tangible value.

“Bon appetite!” said the waiter with gusto, pinching his fingers together and kissing the air.

“We all owe, we all pay,” replied Samson and Clara in perfect unison, in the usual manner of acknowledging the price of their special meal.

The End