The first chapter from The Ghost in the Heart of Tarven. Enjoy! If you like it, you can read the rest!

1

Birik Lev waits for his offboarding interview in the cavernous shared office space that Dian Corporation employees call “the Pen”. According to the human resources department, the origin of the name is a mystery. According to every other department, the name notes the similarity between the roles of the junior scientists who work there and livestock.

The room looks like a cafeteria that swapped lunch trays for computers. Long wooden tables stretch across the room's width, one after the other, like horizontal blinds. Cigarette smoke clouds the air.

Birik hears the clacking of heels on the high gloss wood floor. He knows without looking who they belong to. He tries to look busy and skims a few messages discussing the logistics of his transfer.

Tamira sits down next to him. The junior scientists don’t have assigned seats, but she always finds his. “You doing alright, Bir?” Her voice is high and lilting. She puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Peachy,” he says. He almost means it.

His current situation does have its negatives. The performance review that led to Birik’s demotion gave a less-than-ringing endorsement of his capability. His manager wrote, “Each year, the shores of Lake Larat erode by a hundredth of an inch, and yet when we visit them for the first time each Spring, we hardly notice the difference from the prior year. Similarly, I am certain that Birik has made some contributions over the past two years. However, his impact is immaterial to a first approximation and measurable only by the most advanced technology.”

On the other hand, he never should have had this job in the first place, so he’s not surprised he lost it. His father’s connections got him the gig straight out of graduate school. Dian would’ve dropped his application in the trash if he weren’t a Lev. Now, the experiment in nepotism has failed, but Dian can’t fire him. It’s bad business to upset the Czars.

Birik doubts his father would do anything if the company fired him. More than anyone, Czar Lev would understand his son failing to meet expectations. But Dian doesn’t want to risk it, so they are reassigning him off-world to a regional office on Tarven, far from any important project.

“I hear the weather in Lebben is nice,” Tamira says. “Bright and sunny.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard,” Birik says.

“I’ll miss you, though. They’re too hard on you.” She lights a cigarette and offers him one, but he waves her off.

“Well, I have kind of done shit these last two years.”

“That’s not true!” she says, more defensive of Birik than he is of himself. “What about the activation mechanism of the new neuroscanners?”

“Yes, I made a glorified light switch. It’s okay, Tami. Tarven will be a nice change.”

Birik knows what she’s doing and has done since the day he got here. She’s good-looking. An all-Shilloan girl: clear, pale skin and long, straight black hair that falls halfway down her back. She is fit and has a frankly delightful ass. She wears a white blouse and a tight charcoal pencil skirt to ensure the whole office knows her advantages. A girl like that has options. There’s only one reason he would be her first choice.

It’s not that he’s entirely unattractive. He is taller than average with fine features, the result of centuries of selective, upper-class breeding, but he has a thin, gangly build. A lifetime of using his last name as a dating strategy has not exactly driven him to spend much time in the gym.

“You’ll message, won’t you?”

“Probably not,” Birik admits. He tightens his tie and smooths out the wrinkles in his loose-fitting, single-breasted navy suit.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because I won’t.”

“Never mind what I said. You’re an ass.” Tamira storms off, leaving him blissfully alone to await what is sure to be an uncomfortable interview.

The move to Tarven is a demotion, but he can’t help but be excited about the chance to start over. On Shillo, people see him as an underachieving child of privilege, and of course, they are right. But he wants to change. Ever since his manager told him about the demotion, he’s been rethinking his life. In the past couple of years, he has accomplished nothing. He realizes how much of his life has slipped away and how little he has to show for it. Tarven is a chance for a fresh start. No one there has any preconceptions about him. He has an opportunity to remake himself into more than a last name.

A notification dings on his computer. The meeting is about to start. He shuts his laptop and leaves it behind.

—

Birik hears Culib, his manager until tomorrow, talking loudly on the phone through the glass wall of his office. A woman from human resources sits across from him, wearing a double-breasted dark blue suit and a frown. Culib doesn’t seem to mind if she or, for that matter, the entire office overhears his conversation, but Birik plays it safe and decides to wait outside until his boss’s call finishes.

“Fuck Ludeng and their Heart. We’ll get something. It’s just one product. They can’t take the market with one implant,” Culib says. He is a short man with a square, squished face. Despite the thrashing he expects to receive, Birik respects him. Culib is only three years older, but he has his shit together.

A few months ago, Birik suggested cutting a corner on the activator project to make a deadline. The activator would have a slightly higher failure rate than initially planned, but it would still be competitive with and even superior to alternative solutions on the market. In response, Culib said, “People’s lives are at stake. We do not take shortcuts.” It took Birik a moment before he realized his boss was serious.

Dian’s corporate motto is: “Patient health is our highest priority and deepest value.” Birik has heard many company men repeat the slogan, but he never believes them. His father rarely took Birik’s education into his own hands, but he did teach him this lesson. “Don’t trust men who use adjectives. Men who make ‘sincere promises’ are liars. Men with ‘deep values’ have no principles.”

Culib did not use adjectives. He meant what he said, so there was no need to add emphasis. He is half a foot shorter than Birik, but the man looked ten feet tall when he refused to risk patient health to deliver the project on time.

“I know… Yes, we all agree that living longer is good, and people want to live longer. We are both fucking geniuses. Demand is going to crater for the Lung. People were getting it around fifty. If Ludeng’s stuff works out—okay, maybe it has worked out—they aren’t getting it until one hundred and fifty. That’s our cash cow, and in the short run, sure, there will be a squeeze, but the money will come, and don’t forget what all this means for interest rates once the Heart becomes ubiquitous… No, I’m with you: no putting that back in the bottle. The idiots in policy think they can get the Emperor to put some kind of religious ban on it. Won’t happen. In any case, we can securitize future Lung revenue, get loans—no shit, it’s a bad solution, but it’s a solution. Alright, alright, I’ll let you go.”

Culib hangs up the phone. Birik takes that as his cue and opens the office door.

“Here for the interview.”

“Great, take a seat. Olmi, you got anything to start with?” Culib says. Birik sits in the well-upholstered mustard-colored chair opposite his boss. The moss-green carpet is a welcome change from the hard wood floors.

“Yes,” the woman from human resources says, flipping through a white-backed tablet for the right form statement to read. “As you know, Birik, we’re here to conduct a transfer interview today. As per company policy, a transfer interview is required whenever a re-assignment is involuntary. You understand that the company will not offer any relocation assistance and that your continued employment with Dian Corporation is contingent on you accepting the transfer. Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Lovely. Then, please sign here.” She turns the tablet towards him, and Birik writes his signature with his finger on the touchscreen.

“Okay, great,” Culib says. “Now, for the less formal part of the interview. I’m going to give you some feedback that I hope you’ll use to turn things around on Tarven.” He cracks his knuckles and leans forward, resting his elbows on the ornate, mahogany desk between them.

“Look, you fucked up on a few projects we put you on and delivered bad product behind schedule, but we expect all new scientists fresh out of grad school to fuck up. You probably think that’s the problem. It’s not.”

Birik does, in fact, think that is the problem. The glorified light switch he worked on was three months overdue, slowing down the whole project. They had to send a senior scientist to work with him on the thing to make sure it got done.

“People only notice you fucking up when you do something. Your problem is that you created no new projects. You offered no new ideas. You simply took the tasks others gave you and did a bad-to-mediocre job on them. You got to get a drive, man. You should be beating down my door, telling me about some idea you had last night that we need to ship. So, I’ll just ask you: why not? You went to that fancy school. I’m sure you know a thing or two. Why aren’t you trying to take over any part of a project and make it your own? What drives you, Birik?”

No one talks to him like this. He is the son of Czar Lev. His teachers and professors tiptoed around outright critique. Sure, they would tell him when he got an answer wrong on a test, but they never questioned his character. What drives you is not a question he has heard before. He doesn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Culib slaps his desk. The thud on the hardwood is surprisingly loud, startling Birik. “That’s it. You’ve got to have an answer. I hope you find it on Tarven, but you’ll only find it if you look. It is a demotion. You know that. I know that. Olmi here will pretend not to know that for legal reasons, but she knows it too. But you should think of it as an opportunity. Hell, Ludeng’s headquartered there, and they are kicking our ass, so there must be inspiration in the water.”

Culib stands and looks out at the black steel towers of downtown Yabol through his office window. It’s overcast. The lights are on even though it’s only the early afternoon. The storms aren’t supposed to come in until tomorrow, when Birik will already be lightyears away.

“Do you believe in the Gods? Do you believe They’ll come back to us?” Culib says. Birik has no idea what prompted the question, but he answers anyway.

“I don’t know, but if They are real, They’ve been gone a long time. I imagine when the Gods make up Their mind, it’s kind of a done deal.”

Culib’s eyes scan the skyline as if he expects to find the Gods there.

“See, that's it. You said it again. I don’t know. Of course, you don’t know. No one knows, man. I asked what you believe. You’ve got to have a point of view to make it in this or any other business. Get one. Take a stand. Have a theory of what your small sliver of Dian should do next and advocate for it like that street preacher in front of the office. You think he doesn’t know? No man, he believes. Ask him. He’ll tell you exactly what we need to do to get the Gods to return. He takes a stand.”

“Okay, Culib, cool it on the religious topics. That is not the purpose of this conversation,” Olmi says. “Birik, do you understand the reasons behind your transfer and the performance improvements we expect you to make on Tarven?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

—

Culib violated several company policies on discussing religion in the workplace, but what he said echoes in Birik’s mind like a scream in a valley. He can’t think of anything he would change about the design of any product he has worked on. He never tried to find improvements. What if I had hit on an idea that mattered? Billions of people use Dian’s products. If I had played a part in their design, I would have had a real impact on the Empire. I took this gig for granted. I won’t make the same mistake on Tarven.

Right now, Tarven is a world of endless possibilities. He hasn’t fucked it up yet. He daydreams about the place while answering a few messages from his soon-to-be coworkers about the logistics of his orientation. The day passes. He takes the elevator down and drops off his company computer at the IT desk on the way out. He looks up at the two mammoth towers of black steel and glass for the last time. The small hit of nostalgia surprises him, but it was his first job, and he’ll miss parts of it.

Birik sold his car last week. He won’t need it in Lebben—the city's cab system is reportedly solid—and after he drunkenly drove his previous vehicle into an Imperial Air Force base last year, his father cut him off, making the cost of shipping the car light years away prohibitive. So he walks the two miles back to his apartment.

It’s the end of the week, and Yabolians fresh off work crowd the dense, narrow streets of the Empire’s capital. The crowd is a mixture of people from every world in the Empire and even a few Earthers. Yabol is the destination for all who want to make a credit, a holy site worthy of pilgrimage for the striver class. Old and new money mix in its streets. It is both the site of the Imperial throne that has stood for over three thousand years and home to an agglomeration of high-tech firms making the products of tomorrow.

Birik stops in front of the Cathedral to take one last look at it. Long ago, this building was as much a center of power as the Imperial Throne itself. Nowadays, it serves a dwindling population of parishioners. The Empire keeps it up and still employs Fathers to preach there, but it is more a tradition than a true faith.

The Cathedral of the Lost Gods is beautiful, though. It is an architectural marvel, proof that Shilloans have the capacity for art despite the stereotype. A hundred thin metal pillars packed tightly together hold up the church. A steel sculpture of a dragon, teeth bared, perches atop the roof. Allegedly, the dragon is an icon of one of the Lost Gods, though which God exactly is lost to history.

His mother is religious, the last remnant of a dying species. She tried to get him to go to church with her, but he never understood the point. Even taking the Church’s teachings as given, the Lost Gods left Man. If They wanted prayers and offerings, They wouldn’t have left. Birik suspects the idea of the Gods being Lost was inserted into the religion at some point as a cheap answer to an ancient question. He imagines the first occurrence of the myth was in conversation:

“Why didn’t the Gods intervene to stop a Bad Thing from happening?”

“Oh, They exist and are very real, but They’ve left us, you see, because of how bad we are. That’s why They didn’t intervene.”

Chrome-trimmed cars slowly roll down the street beside him, fighting through the evening traffic. Culib shook me. Now, I’m thinking about religion. I don’t know the last time I did that.

He walks another mile to his apartment and takes the elevator up. The apartment is empty. He will take nothing with him to Tarven except his tablet and a change of clothes. He sits on the carpeted floor and flips around on the tablet, checking out what there is to do in Lebben. Birik falls asleep on the floor as the sun sets over Yabol.

—

The bus is noisy. Two hundred strangers cram together. There are a few families, but the only thing most of Birik’s fellow passengers have in common is that they are heading off-world: first to Bythal and then to a myriad of final destinations.

A large man sits down next to him and tries to make conversation. “Where’re you heading?”

“Tarven,” Birik says.

“Ah, is the connection far for that Door?”

“Only about ten miles.”

“Hey, lucky you. I’m heading to Istol. The Door’s clear on the other side of the moon. Got to take a flight.”

“Ah,” Birik says.

His family has a retreat on Bythal, a massive moon of a gas giant an unimaginable distance from Shillo. When he was younger, he asked his parents how the Doors worked every time they made the trip. They never had a good answer, but no one does. Other than the fact that the Doors enable travel across the universe, not much is known about them. The Shilloans did not create them. They bear little resemblance to a device that anyone might have created. They are, for one thing, not visible to the naked eye. A professor in college called them “useful errors” in the fabric of the universe. How the errors, if that is what they are, came to be is unknown. The fact that they are so useful has convinced many they must have been designed—by the Lost Gods, perhaps.

Birik doesn’t get lost on the question of who. He finds how they operate far more interesting. Doors are prevalent across the galaxy—borderline common. However, Doors are inert until they are unlocked, and the key to activating them is Thria, a black mineral found in small quantities only on Shillo’s surface. The Earthers’ efforts to make a synthetic version have all failed. While there is no definitive proof of where human life began, the presence of Thria on Shillo suggests Birik’s home is humanity’s and that the rest of the worlds were seeded by accident when unwitting Shilloans carrying stone tools activated the planet’s many Doors in the distant past. Only the Earthers deny this theory, but they are an eccentric lot.

Birik imagines his ancient ancestors walking along, banging rocks together (or whatever the ancient Shilloans did), and suddenly vanishing into an entirely different world. That’s what I’m doing now—well, with indoor plumbing waiting for me on the other side. In modern times, the Emperor hoards the rock in a well-defended quarry, and it is nearly impossible for an individual to get their hands on the stuff without a license.

It is thirty minutes until the Door unlocks, and the Thria-lined bus makes the jump to Bythal. Birik sits in the back of the bus and flicks through photos on his tablet of an advertisement for the new apartment. The place looks nice, much more spacious than he can afford on Shillo.

The copy of the apartment’s advertisement catches his eye: “Home No Matter Where You’re From!”

The bus’s engine roars to life, and the vehicle lurches toward the Door.