Once she was a packer: when the Lights came in, she worked the spectral refractors, prismatic accelerators, containment wallfieldbarriers, squeezepressbruising something clearbrightcut and loosefree into something burnable. It wasn’t roughhardnasty work – buttons and levers, mostly – she just needed care and the skilledwisemagicalcautious sensecompetence of timing. But she and her friends were always going to lose the unavoidable race with automation. Higgie was luckyblessedhappy: she’d stayed at school to know the maths to take the course to qualify for maintenance, so she was the personbody looking after machines looking after Lights, and then the personbody looking after machines looking after machines.

They’re older now, and only Higgie waitstaylived to be an elder. Dagmar made a family on Wolf; Kari took a Martian job in foodmeat; Torsten died, and none of them ever speak about it; Higgie, back bendcramptwisting more with every year, delved with code and solder into machines, missing the noisegossip, thinking in codeprogramscripture and circuit. She monitors: here at the plant, by screen, and after, in the back pew of the kirk. She makes little adjustments: who sits where, what words are needed, when to apply comfort and when to chide or speak a truth. She is not alone. She knows she does not sing in tune, but at the plant and with her screens she sings.

Astrid sketches Orcadia

Sheu trails a finger ower her slaet i’the curve

o her planet, than wi a canny swirl bleums

hids swaalls o yallo an corkalit. Wi shairp

stroks, the airms o Central Staetion skoot

atwart the screen, an peedie tigs an picks

mairk oot the eydent piers o Meginwick

i’the corner o her careful composietion.

An lukkan oot the peedie vizzie-bell,

doon the taing o Hellay, airm o the kirk,

the dammer o the Deep Wheel surroondan her,

Astrid feels hersel faa, an lift, an faa.

Liv oot, sheu dights the natralism fae

her slaet, an stairts ower again, abstrack,

wi only the nirt o the thowt o coman haem

an odd gittan seean that peedie odds:

black lines fer the starns, blue dubs

fer the tides, green aircs fer the grand skail

o wheels an airms an bolas gaithered roond Central.

Mindan her lessons fae college, sheu follows sense

intae shape, an shape intae color, an noo sheu’s closser

tae the grace ootbye, but closser maks more o a ranyie.

Again her dightan liv. Again a blenk.

Astrid steeks her een an haads the device

tae her chest, sam as her braethan wir liftan Orcadia

tae the surface. But the screen bides skarpy,

an the view bides stamagastan, an Astrid

settles back tae waatch an braethe an mynd,

her fingers restan jeust abeun the slaet.

Astrid sketches Orcadia