No Place Like Home

Jane wasn't quite sure what it was she'd hit, but she knew for a fact that hitting anything at relativistic speeds was probably going to put something of a dampener on her day. However, she was currently struggling to focus on this: her whole world was spinning.

Her whole world at the moment encompassed the Pegasus, an attempt at a manned mission to Titan that, needless to say, hadn't exactly gone as planned.
'Pegasus,' Jane said, 'what happened?'
After a few moments, the ship's computer replied, 'we've hit something. Calculating new trajectory... ah. Jane, I've some bad news.'
'We're not going to make it back to Earth.' Her voice was flat; empty. She'd never see her wife again, never find out who won the superbowl--
'No, no, we will,' Pegasus replied. 'We can slingshot around a couple moons, get back there with enough fuel to slow down and everything, although we won't really be able to land. Trouble is that collision knocked out all our antennae, so we won't be able to let anyone know we're out here. Until we're close enough to be properly recognised, we'll be dead to the world. But NASA should be able to send someone to pick us up by then. If it's still around.'

Jane tried to glare at the ship's main console, but it was spinning too quickly and she was forced to abandon her efforts. 'Still around? When are we due to get back?'
'I-- um, ah. Well, the thing to remember here is that time is relative, and you'll almost definitely still have relatives when we get back.'
'Pegasus.'
'Okay, okay, maybe not-- but I'm sure you'll be hailed as a hero!'
'Pegasus!' She snapped.
'Okay, fine,' the ship grunted. 'We'll be back in... three, four hundred years. Five hundred at the most! And if I shut down everything unimportant, you can totally survive that long if I freeze you. Probably. The technology is experimental, but it should totally work! Almost definitely!'

This was a difficult choice, Jane realised. She could, in theory, spend the rest of her days up here-- another year or two at most, with her supplies. Although if she froze herself, she'd survive. She'd see Earth again with her own two eyes, even if it wasn't quite the Earth she'd left. But she'd never see Samantha again-- and she'd never know what happened, either.

In the end, Jane came to a compromise. For three months, she recorded a series of messages to everyone she knew, to be stored in the ship's data banks and passed on to any of their surviving relatives by NASA if-- when, definitely when-- she made it back home. After recording one final message to her wife, she allowed Pegasus to freeze her.

--

'Good morning, Jane!' The ship chirped at her, some time later. 'The USS Hillary Rodham Clinton is currently docking with us. It would've happened sooner, only they had to build a sort of adaptor thing. Anyway, that'll take us back to some station or other and we'll be able to hitch a lift down to the spaceport from there. Well, you will. Once you're aboard the Clinton, we'll be parting ways: I've already got three book deals in Japan, so I'll be heading down inside the Soul of Miyazaki. They're actually bringing back large-scale print just for me.'
'So-- we're back?' Jane asked, rubbing her eyes out of habit: she'd expected to feel like she'd slept, but instead she felt more like she'd just gotten home from a long walk in the middle of the Alaskan winter.
'We're back,' Pegasus replied. 'Back to the good old US of A. Sort of. Look, Carlos will tell you more-- I think he's related to you, but honestly I've no idea. Could be some other long-lost astronaut-- I guess your surname is just plain cursed.'
'Well, I came back,' Jane said. 'That puts me one up on Amelia. Anyway-- where's Carlos?'

'Here,' a voice called from behind her. Carlos was a man of indeterminate everything: his spacesuit was so strange to her that for all she knew Carlos was a robot.
'I-- I'm home,' she said, already cursing herself. 'I should've come up with something better than that.'
'There'll be time for speeches when we're back on Earth,' Carlos replied. 'You'll have to excuse the suit-- odds are you're carrying a whole bunch of viruses and stuff nobody is immune to any more. We'll have to do something about that.
'But hey, look on the bright side-- that'll give you plenty of time to catch up on current events. You're from Alaska, right?'
'It's still there, I take it?' Jane asked, half-joking.
'Sort of. It's complicated, but Alaska has-- sort of moved. Some tectonic experiment gone wrong a couple centuries back. It's right in the middle of the Arctic ocean now-- a real tropical paradise.'
'Heh.' Jane followed Carlos through the elaborate series of airlocks that connected the Pegasus to the Clinton, wondering just how different the world was. 'Good one-- Sammie and I used to joke about the weather like that all the time, back in the old days.'
'No, it's--' Carlos started, and sighed. 'You'll see. I made sure to have a map installed in your suite on the Clinton. I'll talk you through it when we get there. Just-- one thing you'll have to jog my memory on; I was never too good at US history. How many states were there when you left?'
'Fifty?'
'Ah,' Carlos said slowly. 'Yeah. Yeah, no-- this might take a little getting used to for you, is all. Look, I'll give you a couple hours to freshen up, then we can go through what's what these days.'
Wait,' Jane said. 'One thing first… Pegasus said you're my descendant.'
'Not exactly,' Carlos said. 'I mentioned there were a couple lost astronauts in my family, and your ship connected a couple dots that weren't there. They were coming back from vacation and got turned around somewhere near Betelgeuse. I hear Earhart colony is a pretty nice place these days-- a little backwater, but they've hot and cold running water. No plumbing, though; they just expanded to a couple rivers near some wonky plate tectonics.'

Jane nodded slowly. She'd hoped Carlos was related to her, for reasons she couldn't quite pin down. 'Wait,' she realised. 'It's possible to go that far for a holiday, but nobody found me until now?'
'You were really out in the middle of nowhere,' Carlos said, giving an apologetic shrug. 'Space is pretty big, and with no way of getting in touch with you… plus from what I've read, after your signal vanished most people assumed you were dead.'

Not sure how to respond to this, Jane merely allowed Carlos to lead her through the Clinton's clean, empty corridors. There was gravity, she noticed, even though the ship didn't seem to be spinning or anything-- although somehow this didn't surprise her. She'd seen too much science fiction, she figured.

--

Jane Earhart's suite aboard the Clinton was full of furniture so abstract she wasn't sure what half of it was, along with several appliances she couldn't even guess at the function of. She'd tried to take a shower before meeting with Carlos, but had failed miserably: the showerhead in what she'd assumed to be the bathroom had gently dripped scalding hot but surprisingly good coffee, and she wasn't sure what anything else was. In the end, she improvised a hairbrush from something that could have perhaps been a TV remote and drunk several cups of coffee to try and wake herself up a little. If nothing more, it was nice to have something hot to drink after centuries in deep freeze.

Eventually, she decided it was high time she found out what had happened to her homeland in her absence.

The first thing she noticed about the world map was that most of Europe was missing. The second thing was that Alaska really had moved to the middle of the ocean: it took her a moment to realise it wasn't covered in ice, however, and that the poles were much smaller. She had a few moments to notice most of the state boundaries were completely different before there was a shrill buzz behind her.
'Carlos?' She called. 'That you?'
'Yeah,' he replied. 'There's a button by the door.'

Jane looked at the six or seven identical panels that made up the back wall of her suite. 'I-- hold on. Which one of these is...?'
'Middle one,' Carlos replied.
'And the button...?'
'Should be right in front of you.'
'I don't see it.'
'Oh, yeah, no ocular implants-- just sort of poke around a bit until it opens.'
'Can't you just-- hotwire it from your side, or something?'
'I can try,' Carlos said uneasily. Several moments later, there was a loud beep from the other side of the wall, followed by a thud.
'Yeah, no,' Carlos said. 'That's not gonna work any time soon. Just-- keep trying?'

In the end, it took Jane a full five minutes to find the button for the door: it split into four and slid into the walls, floor and ceiling to allow Carlos into the room. He was still wearing the suit that covered his entire body.
'So,' he said. 'You find everything okay?'
'Yeah,' Jane lied. 'So, the map?'
'Oh, yeah, sure. Any questions?'
'Yes. Very yes.' She paced quickly over to it, glad of the Clinton's artificial gravity. 'What happened to-- well, what happened?'

'Hoo boy,' Carlos said, leaning against the wall. 'That's a tough one. Let's see... first things first, President Petoskey gave Texas back to Mexico a couple years into his first term, and it changed its name to Old Texas. Half the population were up in arms at suddenly being part of another country and having to move somewhere else; there's a very famous news video of Petoskey being interviewed on the subject and just laughing at them.
'Then he followed that up in his second term by giving New Mexico back, too-- which kept its name, so Mexico now consists of Old Mexico, New Mexico, and Old Texas-- which is colloquially known as The Other Mexico. That clear things up any?'

'No,' Jane said, staring at the map in confusion. 'That-- doesn't even begin to. What... I mean, why did...?'
'First native president,' Carlos said, with a shrug. 'Two thirds of the supreme court kicked the bucket half way into his first term and the senate was on his side, so he really shook things up. Anyway, you're probably wondering about the Midwest.'
'I-- actually, I wasn't, but I kind of am now.'
'For tax reasons, most of it merged into the state of Illindiokansichisotouriskaio,' Carlos said, flawlessly pronouncing it. 'Most people just call it the Big West, though. Illindiokansichisotouriskaio is a little bit of a mouthful. Many a junior spelling bee has been won or lost based on mastery of the spelling of Illindiokansichisotouriskaio.'

Jane remained silent, not sure what to say to any of this.
'So... any questions so far?'
Yes, she thought. Lots. 'Was Petoskey popular?'
'Very,' Carlos said. 'He was that rare combination of charming, politically viable, and superhumanly good at finding loopholes. Sometime during his first term-- I forget exactly when-- he had long-deceased former president Andrew Jackson's name legally changed to Andrew Jackass. He once banned sugar for precisely three hours just to prove that he could. He's still the legal owner of all of America's ravens, and nobody knows how or why.'
'You make it sound like he's still alive.'
'Oh, he is,' Carlos said casually. 'Very hard man to kill. Survived twenty-three assassination attempts, one of them by his own hand. Bravely wrestled the gun from it himself. Won him a lot of good press, that did.'

'Moving on,' Jane decided, after a few moments of confusion beyond anything she had experienced before. 'The Midwest. What happened to the rest of it?'
'Well...' Carlos started, and sighed. 'The Dakotas decided to secede, merged into Dakota Prime as a show of solidarity, left the union, and then promptly fell to infighting. They're now West Dakota and East Dakota. Wisconsin... Wisconsin I'll get to. See, a couple presidents after Petoskey, there was another reshuffle of sorts-- Hawaii declared independence right on the back of Dakota Prime, and with all the stuff Petoskey gave back to Mexico we were running low on states. So Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico were in. And as a show of apology, they gave all of them freedom to enact one amendment to the constitution apiece.
'Anyway, that's why Puerto Rico now encompasses the former state of Wisconsin.'
'Oh.' Jane frowned at the map, examining it closely to ensure Carlos wasn't trying to mess with her. 'Yeah, that's... somehow true. What happened to Washington?'
'Oh, President Williams lost it in a game of strip poker with the Canadian Prime Minister. It's theirs now. Apart from that, the west coast really isn't all that different. California is slightly more of a desert than in your time, although I hear there are actually trees there now.'
'There were trees there in my time.'
'You're sure?'
'Definitely. Samantha and I went to Redwood National Park a whole bunch of times. Even made it down to LA once-- palm trees all over the place.'
'Huh. Guess my history is worse than I thought. Anyway, Oregon is pretty much unchanged-- oh, but Portland is gone.'

Stepping back from the map in alarm, Jane almost tripped over what she assumed was a table before steadying herself on something decidedly chair-like. 'Gone?'
'Yeah, they moved it to geostationary orbit... fifty, a hundred years back? Mostly because they could, I guess. Trouble is that resulted in some... geological instabilities; there were a bunch of sinkhole incidents not far from Salem, and just to be on the safe side they moved the state capital to... I don't know. T-something. Somewhere near the border with Canada.'
'Oh,' Jane murmured. 'Wait, hold on-- what happened to Mount Rushmore, if South Dakota isn't part of the US any more?'
'Oh, they got to keep that. Although right now it's on loan to Cairo.'
Jane hesitated for a long moment.
'You heard me correctly. I know, it's absurd-- I mean, West Dakota managed to get the great pyramids in exchange, which nobody can really believe. Anyway, I think that's about it-- oh yeah, Kansas is now pronounced "kansaw". You mess that one up, five hundred year astronaut or no, people are gonna laugh. And Wall Street is bigger now, too.'
'It was pretty big back when I left Earth,' Jane said.
'No, no-- bigger physically. They lengthened it a few times-- both ends are still in New York, but the middle cuts through Pennsylvania. Has its own underground line and everything.
'Anyway. I think that's it for the states. Oh, apart from Alaska, but I already told you about that. Once Prudhoe Bay ran dry, they sort of... moved it to the Arctic. All the infrastructure was already in place, so they're using it as a sort of mobile oil rig.
'Give it about ten minutes and we'll be docked with Petoskey Station. I should be able to point out the other big differences from the observation lounge there.
'Oh, and I think they just opened an In-n-out there, too. Not the first one in space, but now that they can get the meat well past Petoskey Station before it starts to go strange. Modern technology, huh?'
'Yeah,' Jane sighed. 'I guess some things haven't changed, at least.'

After she had gone from air force pilot to astronaut but before she moved to Florida, Jane had taken one last road trip west to In-n-Out with her wife, knowing she probably wouldn't have a chance to eat there again for a few years. She'd never considered the possibility that Samantha, her wife, had remembered it as vividly as she had: what they had ordered, the drunk kids at the next table, Samantha refilling Jane's drink with everything they had as a joke-- which quickly backfired when Jane drank it all and proceeded to do the exact same thing for herself a few minutes later. Even the drive there and back had stuck in both their minds, right down to the detour they took right around the border with California to see a few roadside attractions, all of them the kind of tacky, cheesy tourist traps Sam couldn't get enough of.

'So,' Carlos said, dragging her kicking and screaming back into the present. 'Petoskey Station. They've the facilities there to properly decontaminate you, plus the government has given us use of the executive observation lounge. That way, you can see what's different down there with your own eyes.'

--

Petoskey Station was, for reasons Jane couldn't be entirely certain of, largely covered in wood panelling, giving the entire place the feeling of a log cabin. Jane had expected the decontamination process to involve standing around in chemical showers at best and a series of painful and invasive medical procedures at worst, and as such was surprised when Carlos led her to a room that looked an awful lot like a sauna.
'You're probably thinking this room looks an awful lot like a sauna right about now,' Carlos said. 'That's because it more or less is one-- only the steam is full of nanomachines that augment your body's immune system. See, the heat opens your pores, and the nanites get into your bloodstream from there via-- anyway, keep on topic, Carlos, keep on topic. We just need to have them eliminate anything that happens to be lurking in your system, and I'll be able to get this damn suit off without dying of... I don't know, smallpox or something.'
'Oh, we'd dealt with that in my time,' Jane said.
'Ebola?'
'Sam worked with viruses for a living-- nothing as hot as Ebola for the most part, but there was that outbreak in Toledo a few years back... well, more than a few, by this point, I guess. At any rate, she was called in to work on containing that, along with pretty much everyone else they could get. Believe me, if I had Ebola, you'd know about it by now.
'Wait, actually you might not. There aren't any symptoms for the first few days. But I didn't have it when I went up a few centuries back, so I feel like it's a safe bet I don't have it now.'
'You could still start an epidemic that wipes out the human race, is what I'm saying,' Carlos said.

Jane hesitated. 'Wait. What about the Clinton's crew? And everyone else on this station?'
'The Clinton's crew evacuated once we got the order to pick you up,' Carlos explained. 'Except for me-- I took a year of US history in high school, so I was the closest thing we had on hand to an expert. Then this module of Petoskey Station was sealed off for the time being.'
'You know what?' Jane said, changing the subject and leaning back. 'I could get used to getting my inoculations like this. So much easier than the old-fashioned way.
'Although I can't say I've ever been in a sauna with someone wearing a spacesuit before. You must be pretty hot in that thing.'
'It's climate-controlled,' Carlos chuckled, tapping his helmet. 'Nice and cool in here. I should be able to take it off in another half hour or so.'

--

Half an hour of comfortable heat later, Carlos nudged her to get her attention and popped the seals on his helmet. Jane hadn't known what he would look like, but none of the possibilities she'd gone through since meeting him had involved his face being silver.
'Oh, yeah,' he said. 'I probably should've explained that earlier. I'm a Xylem-derived artificial intelligence built into a synthetic body. Fully and legally human, but the Republican party doesn't always act like it. Sorry if this is a bit of a shock. I know you weren't much past punch cards in your time.'
'We were-- a long way past that,' Jane said. 'A very long way.'
'Yeah, you guys tended to think you were. Although in fairness, everyone did. The way I see it, the only ones who were really right were the guy who decided to start hitting things with an antelope's leg bone and whoever it was who invented coffee.
'Anyway-- you should be more or less inoculated by now. We may as well head to the observation lounge-- via the In-n-Out, of course.'
'Okay, sure,' Jane shrugged. 'Oh, actually, this probably isn't the smartest of questions, but... what's with the gravity?'
'Oh, yeah, it's a little lower than Earth normal. All of the weight with a little extra bounce.'
'No, I mean-- why is there gravity at all? Ships when I left didn't have it. Are we spinning, or...?'
'No,' Carlos shrugged. 'Let's just say that there's definitely gravity and leave it at that.'
'You don't know, do you?'
'No,' he admitted. 'Not at all. Anyway, burgers?'
'I haven't eaten in five centuries,' Jane smiled. 'I'd kill for a burger right now.'

Carlos froze, his silver face rapidly turning grim. 'I wouldn't joke about that. I mean, I know you've no way of knowing, but-- hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the Burger War.
'Anyway. Lunch.'

--

It wasn't until they neared the observation lounge, an hour later, that Jane decided to ask the question that had been on her mind since the sauna. 'You're a machine,' she said. 'What did you get out of a burger?'
'Same thing you did,' he replied. 'Enjoyment and energy. You think I'm battery-powered? Let me guess. You're wondering why I went to high school if I'm a machine.'
'Actually...'

'Okay,' he admitted, after a moment. 'That one kinda does make sense. They definitely should be able to download all that into my brain by now. Still, that's kind of an insensitive thing to comment on, so... maybe don't.'
'One more question before we go in there,' Jane said. 'The server at the burger place--'
'Yes, it was a machine, no, it wasn't on par with me-- purely mechanical, no wetware components like me.'
'So it was like my old ship's AI, then?'
'Sort of. Only both more and less advanced. Doesn't need to know rocket science, but it's quite literally centuries ahead of your old friend. Anyway-- wanna see what the Earth looks like these days?'

Jane realised she honestly wasn't sure. Everything already felt strange and slightly uncomfortable to her, like her brief trip to Oregon with Sam-- it was familiar in some ways, although for reasons utterly beyond her they weren't allowed to pump their own gas. Although they'd had an In-n-Out there, at least-- much like they did here. The menu hadn't even changed.

'I guess,' she said. Stepping through into the observation room, Jane found herself gazing down at the Earth, although it took her a moment to recognise it, given that most of Europe seemed to be missing.
'What happened to...?'
'Oh, yeah, Madagascar moved a little to the east. Same sort of thing as Alaska, except minus the oil.'
'No, I mean--'
'The poles? Yeah, we lost those a long time ago. Really mucked up the coast for a while, until we exported all the excess to Mars. Helped jump-start things there.'
'Europe!' Jane snapped. 'Where-- I mean, how could...?'
'Oh, there was a botched space launch. They installed some experimental engine upside down. Everything's recovering a little, at least-- although England is still a mess. All of the Englands.'
'All of them? How many are there?'

'I think four?' Carlos asked. 'Maybe five. See, when the south of England was wiped off the map, that included parliament and most of the royal family. All of a sudden a bunch of people claimed they were the next in line to the throne, so they all started their own Englands and declared the others to be pretenders to the throne.
'New Old England is where old England was-- they'd call themselves New England, but someone else beat them to it. England Two is... I think the Falklands? I don't know. Then there's also South Scotland, New New England, Whales--'
'Wales?'
'Whales,' Carlos said. 'With an H. They're probably the most removed from the original England, though. Oh, and then there are Englend, Enngland, and Anglend, but nobody counts those. They're just copycats.
'New England tried to capitalise on the whole thing, but their plan backfired. They just attracted former members of parliament like flies, got taken over briefly, and tried to secede before the original government came back with the national guard and sort of drove them all back into the sea. They called it Tea Party Two: Party Harder.'
'That happened during one of Petoskey's terms, didn't it?'
'He was in for the first half of that whole mess, but missed the ending. Although he did start calling it that, yeah. How could you tell?'
'It just seems like the sort of thing he'd do,' Jane shrugged. Part of her almost wished she'd been around during the Petoskey years.

'Anyway, that's most of Europe covered... Madagascar I've already mentioned, same goes for the poles... Oh, yeah. There was the Great American Divorce-- a concerted effort by the governments of South America to muck about with continental plates to get further away from the States. Didn't work-- although it did cause several major earthquakes across the globe.
'The pope is still in the Vatican-- but the Vatican is on Mars now. Long story.'
'I've time,' Jane said.
'There was a new Roman Empire for a while-- it was a weird time. Anyway, it started falling apart again, which everyone absolutely saw coming, and to ensure nothing untoward happened to the Vatican they relocated it to somewhere sort of near Olympus Mons.'

Jane took a few moments to digest all this once more, staring blank-faced down at the planet as she did. It was growing less and less familiar: part of her almost wondered she'd been picked up by aliens or something and taken to some distant corner of the galaxy rather than being returned to Earth.
'Hold on,' she said. 'That country down there-- I think it's Denmark? I don't know, I'm not so good with that part of Europe. Anyway, why does it look like that?'
'Like what?' Carlos asked, puzzled. 'Oh, wait, yeah-- Denmark. A few hundred years back some toy company decided to go into real estate there: the ultimate in modular homes, they called it. Basically upscaled versions of their construction toys made from cheap, durable modern materials. They sold plots of land rather than actual homes, with the parts to build one bundled in. If you wanted another room or a little more space, you could just... buy more walls, hire an architect to make the whole thing look good, and then hire a building company to add to your home.
'Oh, and a century or two ago there was a protest against the prime minister where hundreds of thousands of people donated a brick or two from their homes and a bunch of people banded together to rebuild his house into a giant phallus.'
'Five centuries,' Jane smiled, 'and humans are still humans. Anything else noteworthy around there?'
'Well-- there was the Finland Purchase.'
'Oh?'
Carlos chuckled. 'You ever heard of Sealand? Back in your day, it would've been a tiny little country on an old oil rig. Anyway, a couple centuries back they decided it was high time to expand, bought themselves a little island from Finland-- except there was a rather crucial spelling error in the contract. They accidentally bought the entirety of Finland for the price of a small island.'
Jane let out a snort. 'What happened to Finland?'
'Sealand felt sorry for them-- gave them an oil rig and a small island.'
'Anything else noteworthy before we head down there?' Jane asked, glancing across at Carlos' silver face.

'You can't really see much of Japan from here, but the whole country is in a bubble dome-- China tried to do it, too, but it kept fogging up, so they sort of gave up. Although the big metal base they were building it up from was just fine, so they wound up keeping it-- the Greater Wall of China, it's known as. Honestly that's about it for most of Asia-- India finally got that big diamond England stole back. Lucky thing they did, too-- most of the fancy stuff England stole when they had an empire was destroyed during the Great Failure to Launch. Oh, and Tibet has a spaceport. I think Sri Lanka does, too, but I'm honestly not sure. I don't really know where it is-- I think it's an island?'
'I think Sam's cousin went scuba diving there once,' Jane said. 'So it may well be. Anything else noteworthy? What about Africa?'
'Well, the sahara desert is still there... some borders were redrawn, some countries were renamed, and honestly I don't know enough to say. They've two or three space programmes going strong, and a few dozen commercial spaceports. They've really been making the most of that equatorial land, I guess.'
Jane nodded. 'If that's about it, then we should probably--'

She froze in her tracks, all thoughts of heading down to Earth vanishing from her mind. A ship was drifting past unlike any she had seen-- although the same could be said for everything she had seen since returning to Earth. This one, however, was designed along utterly inhuman lines.
'Aliens,' she murmured.
'Oh, yeah, we met a bunch of aliens,' Carlos said. 'I think that one is... Felian? No, no, they have the saucers... I don't know. Tauraxian, maybe? Or do theirs look more like ours?'
'You're really asking the wrong person here,' Jane said, gazing in awe at the ship. 'Why didn't you mention all the aliens?'
'I thought-- did you not have those?'
'No! Very no! I was an astronaut-- I'd definitely know about that sort of thing!'
'That's not really all that unusual these days,' Carlos shrugged. 'I didn't even go to college, and I'm an astronaut. Anyway-- we met the Felians before we met anyone else. First contact was a bit of a muddle, but eventually we figured everything out and started on the usual space stuff: colonies, stations, zooming about doing science, that sort of thing. We met a bunch of other races, did the whole diplomacy thing... I don't know, I never paid a whole lot of attention to it all. Not really my thing, y'know?'
'I-- I don't,' Jane said. 'I really don't. I'd kill to meet one.'
'You wouldn't have to go that far-- just hop on a flight to... somewhere. I don't know. Taurax, maybe? Wait, no, their homeworld has a sort of... it's complicated. They did some stuff to their system, and... yeah.'
Jane rolled her eyes. 'You don't know, do you?'
'No,' he shrugged. 'Like I said-- not really my thing.
'Anyway-- the shuttle down to Illindiokansichisotouriskaio should be here any moment. Actually, we should be able to see it from here-- that big sort of blocky thing. Probably military surplus.'
'Military surplus?' Jane asked, crestfallen. 'We've a military up here? I... I don't know. I always sort of hoped we'd carry on as we started. peaceful exploration, science, five-year missions-- that sort of thing.'
'We had a military,' Carlos shrugged, gesturing towards the door. 'Then we realised nobody wanted to conquer us or anything, so... we flogged it all at bargain basement prices.
'Anyway-- the Roosevelt is headed for airlock... thirteen. Or fourteen. Maybe fifteen? See, that's just bad scheduling, right there.'
Jane frowned. 'Right where? How can you not know?'
'Well... looks like the Theodore Roosevelt, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the Katarina Roosevelt-- she was after your time, too-- are all docked here. I've no idea what the others are.
'Eh,' he shrugged, 'we'll figure it out when we get there, I guess.'

--

Five hours later, Jane found herself standing outside of a spaceport in Nairobi: they'd boarded the wrong Roosevelt.
'Yeah,' Carlos said. 'My bad on that one. But hey, this place is nice, right?'
'Yeah,' Jane said, taking in the view. 'Reminds me of airports back home, only much warmer.'
'Okay, yeah, admittedly there isn't much to see here.'
'Customs hasn't changed one bit, either. I mean-- what could I possibly be smuggling in after five hundred years up there? Do they think some NASA crime lord from my day was playing the long game for his descendants and my spacesuit was stuffed full of contraband?'
'They gotta be sure,' Carlos shrugged. 'And actually I think the European Space Agency did try that one once. Didn't work, though; once they got into orbit--'

Their conversation was interrupted by a small flying object buzzing repeatedly into Jane's face. She swatted it away and it spun backwards angrily, emitting a loud beep as it did.
'Hey, don't slap the messenger drone,' Carlos said. 'It's dangerous. They've got a bloody good union and if you damage that one then they'll have your head on a plate.
'Sorry about her,' he said, turning to the drone. It resembled the ones from Jane's day in the same way a bald eagle resembles a prehistoric terror bird: they were cut from the same cloth, but by very different tailors. It was sleek and compact, with four things sticking out of it that might have been engines of some sort and were definitely glowing blue. Nothing else seemed to be keeping it afloat as it buzzed angrily at Jane, juddering back and forth in the air without getting any closer to her.
'Okay, okay, I'm sorry,' she said. 'I-- can we help you at all?'

One of the blue things telescoped out on a shining metal bar: a strip of something was wrapped around it, like a message around the leg of an old-fashioned carrier pigeon. Frowning, Jane reached for it: when the drone made no attempt to stop her, she removed it and unrolled it.

She wasn't surprised to find that it was a message for her. What surprised her was that it was from Sam.
'Tried to meet you in Illindiokansichisotouriskaio, but apparently you got on the wrong shuttle. They say astronauts were required to be of a higher calibre in our day, but after this I'm honestly not so sure of it. I've no idea where you actually are, but how about we split the difference and meet in The Other Mexico?
'See you soon; we need to work out what wedding anniversary we're up to. Last I knew they sort of ran out of fancy names at around a hundred or so. Your Sam.'
'Carlos,' Jane said, 'when's the next shuttle to the-- to the other Mexico?'
'No idea,' Carlos said. 'But I guess we'll be on it. Who's waiting for you there?'
'My-- my wife,' Jane murmured, hardly able to believe it. 'I guess… I don't know. I guess she's somehow still around. I guess my old ship delivered my messages.' She stumbled back towards the spaceport, but the messenger drone blocked her path.
'I-- what am I supposed to do now?' She asked, turning to Carlos.
'It's just flown all the way here from Illindiokansichisotouriskaio to deliver that message,' Carlos said. 'It's waiting for its tip.'
'I--' Jane said, patting down her pockets. 'I didn't bring any money with me to space. I mean, it wouldn't really be all that useful. Unless I docked with the Russians or the Indians on my way back to Earth and bought some souvenirs-- y'know I hear the Indians actually get good coffee up there? Or at least they used to get it. Probably still do; if they can get In-n-Out up there now they can get anything. Anyway, getting off-topic here-- spare some change?'
Carlos rolled his eyes as he began searching his pockets. 'Presidential Freight is getting the bill for all this, mark my words. They offered to pick you up, sure, but if they expect muggins here to foot the bill for their grand gesture then they've another thing coming...'

--

One flight later, Jane found herself standing in the arrivals lounge at Lone Star Spaceport in the state formerly known as Texas: Carlos, visibly exhausted, his silver skin glistening with sweat, followed a few feet behind with their luggage (which was to say his luggage; Jane hadn't brought anything up with her to begin with).
'Any idea where Sam is?' Carlos asked. 'What does she look like?'
'Like a warm day in spring,' Jane smiled. 'Or a fireside and a hot cup of coffee in winter.'
'Yeah, that's not helping. Similes are a little too subjective here-- oh, I think I see her.'
Jane frowned at the crowd: it was mostly humans, but there were a handful of robots, some like Carlos, some a little more retro-looking.
'There,' Carlos said. 'Over by the wall.'
Jane looked again: there were a handful of women there, but none of them were Samantha. 'I don't see her.'
'There!' Carlos exclaimed, pointing. Jane followed his finger, but still didn't see her wife.

And then she saw a sign: Jane, written in the style of the NASA logo, held up on a wafer-thin screen of some description. She looked around for Sam, but still didn't see her. That said, she wasn't exactly the tallest-- odds were she was lost among the crowd.

Jane hurried forwards, Carlos in tow, and the huddle of unfamiliar faces parted to reveal--

A brain in a jar, attached to a robot that looked like it had come from the kind of future filmmakers from the 1950s had envisioned.
'Welcome home,' a tinny but familiar voice said. 'Once I'd heard what happened, I had myself frozen as soon as the technology became available to the public.
'Maybe I should've waited for them to work out all the kinks first. But hey, I've sent a few carrier drones to NASA-- looks like they'll be willing to give you your back pay. After five hundred years, you're due... twelve, maybe thirteen million, they say.'

It took Jane a moment to register this. 'I-- whoa,' she murmured, fighting to keep her jaw from physically dropping. 'I'm a millionaire. I-- Sam, what can five million buy these days? May as well keep the rest aside for a rainy day.'
'Well...' Sam said hesitantly. 'After adjusting for inflation? Lunch, if we don't order a starter. If you want to really splash out and spend six million, we could probably even get one of their cheapest wines.'

Disappointment washed over Jane far quicker than awe and elation had. 'I-- you're kidding. What about my savings?'
'Oh, you're a multi-millionaire from compound interest,' Sam said. 'Or you will be by now, at any rate. Trouble is that puts you slap-bang in the middle of poverty right about now. And I ended up cashing in most of what I had for this body.'
'At least we've each other,' Jane shrugged.

'Okay,' Carlos said slowly. 'I'm beginning to feel a little like a third wheel here-- that's the saying from your day, right? These days wheels are mostly a thing of the past. They were reinvented years and years and years ago. Anyway-- I'll... I'll be off, shall I? Leave you two to your starter-less dinner and cheap wine.'
'I... Okay,' Jane said. 'Thanks, though. For everything.'
'The company is gonna reimburse me for it,' Carlos shrugged.
'Not just that-- for recapping what happened while I was away. Thanks.'
'Hey, you're welcome,' Carlos said, smiling. 'Anyway, I'd best be on the next shuttle up to Petoskey Station. Be seeing you.'

And just like that, he was gone, lost in the crowd: despite the throng of people around them, Jane felt as though she were utterly alone with her wife.
'So,' Sam said, starting to rumble through the crowd on a pair of caterpillar tracks attached to her blocky, chromed chassis. 'I'm parked outside-- and we'd already paid the mortgage on our home, so it's still there and it's still ours. Although we owe a fair bit of back tax, and all of the utilities have been shut off. I've been making a bit of cash using it as a roadside attraction. Come see the house of five hundred years ago! Witness how people lived in the days before the Compendium and first contact! It's really not as exciting as it sounds, but nobody realises that until after they've paid the entrance fee.'
'You turned our home into a museum?' Jane asked, alarmed.
'It was the only way to pay for my suspension until you got back. Honestly I just wish the good stuff was commercially available back then. Maybe then I'd be more than just a brain. But hey-- at least I still have my sense of style.' Lights around her brain inside the bubble dome winked on and off as she said this in a way that reminded Jane of the way Sam's eyes would always light up whenever she told a joke. She was a brain in a jar, but she was still definitely Sam.

Jane stepped outside and onto Earth soil for the first time in a little over five hundred years. She took in a lungful of familiar air and tilted her head back to stare at the sky.

It looked five minutes away from a thunderstorm. Typical, she thought; her first day back on earth and it was going to heave it down.
'Hey, so... you doing okay?' Sam asked. A cold metal clamp attached to a tube-like arm reached up and pressed itself lightly around Jane's fingers. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Heated hands and proper fingers were extra.'
'Your hands were always freezing,' Jane recalled fondly. 'You wouldn't be you if you couldn't chill drinks just by holding them.'

Across from Jane, traffic roared past: not cars exactly, but some distant descendant of them. They were hovering, at least; maybe the future wasn't so different from how everyone had envisioned it after all. The row of buildings across the street were in an utterly unfamiliar architectural style and looked like they'd been designed by a Victorian architect after three weeks trapped in a small wooden box with a high fever. Overhead, a ship took off: blocky and squat, like the one that had taken her down to Earth (and the other one that had taken her from Nairobi to The Other Mexico). She wondered whether Carlos was on it. All at once, it vanished from view among the dense, dark clouds, and a flock of carrier drones buzzed overhead, barely more than pinpricks of blue light at this distance.

'You okay?' Sam repeated, worry tinting her metallic voice.
'I guess,' Jane said, not sure what else to say.
'How does it feel to be home?'

Jane took another look at the unfamiliar world around her, shielding her eyes as a cloud of grey-brown dust blew down the broad street. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I'll let you know if I ever find it.'