When Welga tried to dig deeper into what biogenetic adaptations worked on Eko-Yi, she hit a wall. Many of the residents opted for permanent gene alterations to help their bodies cope with life in orbit. Eko-Yi’s designs aligned with the work from the other ten space stations, but they’d kept confidential their designs for pills, microbiota, and macro-scale alterations like bone implants. She couldn’t find any recorded streams of medical procedures that weren’t curated.

Unlike the camera swarms on Earth, the feeds from space were always buffered and controlled to help regulate their power consumption. She had no live view of the people and their habits. From what she could see, the permanent residents on Eko-Yi were adults, with a smaller number of teenagers and seniors. Children could only visit, to avoid the impact of microgravity on their growth. They preferred applicants who didn’t want kids or who had teens.

Maybe my synaptic tremor will disqualify me from living there. She didn’t relish the idea of moving to Eko-Yi—one of the stations more closely aligned to US culture would have been her first choice—but considering how few people lived up there, Eko-Yi was better than nothing. She wouldn’t have to scrounge for work on a station. No more worrying about tips. She might even put her love of food to good use, though she’d need a new set of cooking skills, and she’d miss interacting with her small but loyal following on Earth. If only their seats for moving off-world had come at a better time.

But as she cleared her visual of Eko-Yi, headlines and alerts popped up with images of destruction wreaked on processing plants around the globe. The Machinehood had struck again, this time with help from copycats and sympathizers, like that prote setting the bomb at the refinery. The chance of stopping them before the launch dwindled as the scale of the attacks expanded. If she had to choose between space and this fight, she would go with the latter.