Breaking the Walk
“The walk is not easy.”
The story never starts where the story starts. There are always complexities leading up to the beginning of every beginning—the baggage we all carry with us. My baggage at the start of this chapter in my life, I thought, was finally, unusually light. Two years divorced and now happily single, some modest professional success and recognition, a broad circle of fun and interesting friends, and even a thought or two about one of those friendships maybe taking a further step. I had no reason to even contemplate leaving Alpha-Bassur. Then something totally unexpected happened: Saffie and Sage.
When I arrived on Athos, I was expecting the Saffie and Sage show. Even as curated as I knew their material to be, I wasn’t remotely prepared for the divergence. Instead of the two bubbly, lovable young women who’d become famous for their cheerful, entertaining walks through the cities and parklands of the great ring world, I met Sage, crying in an apple orchard in the Arbor Vista region, staring off into the reeds surrounding the River Flats outside the city of Arbor Glen. The sight of this girl, Sage—alone, crying—was so surprising I nearly didn’t recognize her. I looked around the orchard for her partner, half expecting that it was some sort of prank, that Saffie might leap out of a tree, revealing the joke with a flourish of laughter.
Instead, Sage turned and caught my eye, recoiled a little, and nervously began wiping her eyes, embarrassed, I think, to be caught out like that.
“I’m sorry,” were the first words she said to me, “Mr. Engraham, right?”
She extended a hand and sighed as she did.
“This is ominous,” I joked. “Usually women need to get to know me a bit before the thought of my arrival drives them to weeping their eyes out.”
“I’m sorry. So unprofessional, I know. All the way from the Alphas to be greeted like this.”
“Your partner?” I asked, glancing around the orchard.
She shook her head, and I got the sense that I was hitting a sore spot, though it was tough to tell the nature of it.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I suppose most of what we get to see of you two are the good moments. It can’t be an easy endeavor.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “Just … everything’s complicated right now. But I don’t really care to discuss it. I’d rather we talk about tomorrow. I’m honored you agreed to come all this way. I love your work so much, Mr. Engraham.”
“Could you just call me Lotte? Mister Engraham makes me feel like I’m your professor or a mentor or something. I quite admire your work as well.”
“Really?” she asked me, shaking her head. “An artist like you? Don’t tell me you watch our little show.”
“I didn’t know about it till the P-Board sent me your missive. I watched a few episodes to see what you two were about, and I don’t know, I guess I’m probably not your typical viewer, but I have to say, you and Saffie won me over.”
Sage smiled for the first time. “Well, anyway, Lotte. It’s your first time to Athos?”
“Yeah, it’s impressive so far. So much like a planet it’s really hard to comprehend.”
“We’re so grateful you came. Saffie too. It’s really, I can’t tell you. I’m so looking forward to the walk.”
When their show took off, Sage and Saffie didn’t have any idea they’d gotten famous for almost three months. It was a strange confluence of circumstances. Their premise when they started was simple—to recreate “The Walk,” which, as any Athosian child could tell you, was the life’s work of the most famous pedestrian in the history of the galaxy, Oswin Rudinelsa. At the time when he completed the historic feat of walking around the ring encircling the greater gas giant of Dreeson’s System, Rudinelsa’s accomplishment was celebrated throughout the Battery Systems. It was a testament to dedication, persistence, and a spirit that sought after the next horizon. Sage and Saffie didn’t intend to spend fifty years of their life walking in Oswin’s footsteps, but leading up to the 200th anniversary of the start of his walk, they aimed to recreate the most notable sections, plotting out a four-year circumnavigation walking some of the way, taking only the local trams the remainder of the great distance, and interviewing people who connected in a special way with Oswin Rudinelsa’s monumental journey. Apparently, somehow I was one of those special guests. I suppose bringing in other people kept the show fresh, new ideas and conversations for the two bubbly hosts to bounce around as “The Walk” progressed.
The premise was a fine idea. A decent hook. But that wasn’t the reason people fell for their show so fervently. It was Saffie and Sage. I think that was what struck me about that first meeting. Sage seemed so different from the person I was expecting I didn’t quite know how to place her.
The following day we met for the first day of our walk. Eight hours, just as Oswin Rudinelsa did every day for nearly a half century.
That morning was the first time I met Saffie. We sat for coffee and talked logistics. They had gear, of course. They told me about how it all worked, that I’d get used to the ball drones hovering about. They had a Sam who walked with them, carrying gear and recording establishing footage as well as ambient sound. Sam’s existence was a running joke on the show, because their editing protocol removed any shots with Sam, so when Saffie and Sage referenced Sam, over and over across their episodes, their audience began to joke that he didn’t exist. He did, though. He was Saffie’s mother’s housebot, and taking him was one of the conditions of their parents giving their blessing for what they’d called “this silly adventure.”
After coffee and show prep, we started walking—out of the city of Arbor Glen and down the River Flats toward Teinan.
Breakfast was subdued, but I didn’t notice any obviously bad energy between the two girls. As soon as we started walking, though, the two of them lit up. They started singing, laughing, joking, and it was clear to me that it wasn’t an act. Those moments that got broadcast to the outer systems in the Battery weren’t staged or fake in any way—they were just curated, consolidated for time.
“Sage tells me you’re a worldbuilder, Lotte? Storyscapes?” Saffie asked about an hour into the walk. “She loves your work. Goes right to the headset as often as she can.”
“I figured at some point we’d talk about why you invited me.”
“We’re always surprised when people agree to come,” Sage added.
“You two do know you’re famous now, right?”
“Oh, God,” Saffie laughed. “Not here on Athos! Nobody knows who we are.”
“Why do you reckon that is?” I asked them.
“There’s a few trillion people here, Lotte. I think you need to do something a bit more interesting than walking around for people to notice you,” Sage said. “Plus, we all get taught about Oswin’s walk at school, over and over. It’s so drilled into our culture I think it takes a lot of the impact out of it. Until you come out here and try to walk a leg of his trek and realize that it’s not that easy to walk all day for one day, let alone stringing thirty of them together, it can be easy to overlook.”
“I can say, your show is a way for people from outside Dreeson’s System to … how would you put it? Maybe to get a feel for Athos without visiting.”
“That’s what a lot of our audience says,” Saffie agreed. “But you came to actually see it with us.”
“A once in a lifetime opportunity,” I said. “A chance to finally see Athos and walk the walk with Saffie and Sage. What could be better?”
“What do you think so far, Lotte?”
“About you two or the ring?”
“The ring? The walk?” Sage asked. “Everything?”
“Actually, right now I’m struggling to wrap my mind around how planet-like this environment is. I mean, my mind knows that the mountains on either side of us are artificial sidewalls that keep the atmosphere inside, that the sky is really a nanosheet filtering the glare of the atmosphere of Athos below us, that this edifice that we’re on is ring-shaped and spinning around a gas giant, but if I didn’t know that, every single sense I had in my body would tell me that I’m on a planet. I mean, they are telling me that.”
“That’s interesting,” Saffie said. “Most of our guests are Athosian or maybe Iophan, so it’s hard for us to gauge that.”
“You’ve never been off the ring,” Sage said. “I’ve been to the cylinders to visit cousins, and that’s weird, I can say, watching the land curving up like that.”
“Exactly,” I added. “I’ve been to enough cylinders. I guess I expected that there’d be some cues, visually or with the feel of the place. There’s even a little breeze in the reeds here. It’s pretty.”
We didn’t get into the topic for the walk that morning. Saffie and Sage were somewhere between one third and halfway around the ring. We talked about where Oswin was in his life as he passed through the River Flats. These years were the greatest struggle of his journey. Unlike Saffie and Sage, he wasn’t broadcasting his trip. Oswin Rudinelsa was reaching inward more than reaching out. Saffie and Sage started mostly the same way they continued to run their show, spontaneously, throwing out ideas for walkers to invite for an interview, playing topics and themes off each other, taking audience suggestions, making fun of each other, laughing at themselves, and sharing all of it with their viewers as they progressed. They were bemused by the sudden popularity, which made it seem genuine when they joked about their newfound fame, because it was genuine.
Like Oswin, we didn’t stop for lunch. He took one fifteen-minute water break a day, usually in a shady spot, snacking on nuts, apples, and sometimes protein bars. The girls were used to it. I wasn’t used to walking for an hour at a time, let along eight. I’d prepped myself well enough that my body didn’t start to bark back at me until around the first hour of the afternoon. I could tell, though, that I’d certainly feel it the following day.
It didn’t feel like an interview. I felt like I was talking to two new friends, one of whom surprised me with the depth of her incisive interpretations of my three most recent storyscapes. Neither Sage nor Saffie ever came off as unintelligent, but it was quickly pretty clear to me that Sage was actually quite brilliant. And even Saffie, who had very little interest in building storyscapes, was peppering our very esoteric conversation with playful little barbs that barely pricked, because she did so with a smile and a sense the teasing came from someone who understood exactly what she was poking. She respected it too. Storyscapes just weren’t her preferred art form.
“I saw a lot of Rudy in your two most recent threads,” Sage told me as we entered the final hour of the walk, as the light was finally starting to yellow into early evening. “They both had that element of, you know, just keep going, just keep going. Eventually, you’ll get somewhere.”
“Plucky,” I added. “That’s how I was thinking of them.”
“So, there’s not a lot of talk about it in the stories we tell ourselves about Rudy,” Sage said. “But he thought seriously about quitting at three points in his life.”
“Really?” I asked. “I researched a lot about the walk before coming, and I never came across that.”
“Athosians don’t like to talk about that,” Saffie said. “But I think it adds to the big story, right? If it were easy each day, it wouldn’t be a marvel. And if he didn’t ever have doubts about what he was doing, he was either insane or not a human.”
“I was thinking about quitting two hours ago,” I joked.
“The first time was early in the walk,” Sage explained. “He hadn’t figured out how to walk yet, which sounds funny. But the ring is about eighty kilometers from wall to wall. He did his calculations on how long the walk would take based on a straight line. It’s actually pretty hard to carve a straight line down the ring for too long.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said, gesturing toward the river, which wound snake-like along the base of the River Flats, cutting round promontories of reeds that made the landscape seem deceptively natural.
“It’s all by design, of course,” Saffie added.
“Rudy kept redoing the calculations and realized that if he kept zig-zagging along the way, he’d be walking till he was a hundred and ten,” Sage explained. “It took him a few months to figure out how to chart a reasonable course a few days in advance, which was difficult. He didn’t want the walk to be so rigidly planned that it didn’t feel spontaneous either. The whole purpose of walking about on your own two feet is to feel that you could let them take you anywhere.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Right now I’m banking on them taking me to a beer.”
Saffie laughed. “He may be a programming nerd, Sage, but I like this one.”
“I told you you’d like Lotte.”
“Anyway,” I continued, “when was the second time he almost quit?”
“Now, actually,” Sage answered. “Well, not now exactly, the River Flats, but pretty close. He must have been thinking about it. He celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday in Zair totally alone, and by that point, nearly everyone who had been following his progress had forgotten about him, with the exception of a few close friends and family. And he was realizing, too, that he was likely never going to have a family of his own if he kept walking.”
“Hard choice,” I remarked.
“What about you, Lotte?” Sage asked. “Do you have a family?”
I shrugged. “I was married—divorced. Two years now. Took a while to get over.”
“No kids, I take it?” Sage asked.
I shook my head.
“The third time, he was in his late forties,” Saffie picked up the story, sensing a little reluctance on my part to say more. “Along the Waterlands—Luthien, Playa, Merchants, and Eiffel. All along that blue coast he was having some sort of trouble with his knee. He almost stopped walking his knee would swell up so bad at night.”
“What was the problem?”
“Afterward, doctors speculated that it was a partially torn meniscus,” Sage said. “But he never went to a doctor at the time, and eventually it worked itself out.”
“I’m in awe,” I declared. “I’m going to collapse into a heap when we’re done today. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in my life.”
“Don’t collapse before you get your beer, Lotte!” Saffie said. “I could see you salivating over it all afternoon.”
I had been. I also never had a better beer in my life than that first one in Dean Town by the River Flats—an amber lager with just the perfect balance of bitterness and drinkability. I also had an unusually satisfying stew that filled the gigantic hole that had been growing in my stomach all afternoon. And shortly after the food disappeared and we ordered a third beer, Saffie disappeared as well.
It would be hard to overstate the change in Sage when Saffie left the table. Saffie didn’t say anything to her either, just told me how much fun the walk had been and that she was looking forward to tomorrow. No explanation, and no words from Sage to her partner, which I took as an indication that she knew exactly what Saffie was up to. Sage transformed instantaneously from the warm, cheerful, open person I’d recognized from the show to back that girl I’d met in the orchard.
And that absence, that sudden absence of Saffie, totally underscored for me, in a split second, what had captured me about their show. It wasn’t Saffie or Sage or the topic or all three, it was Saffie and Sage—together. The two of them lit each other up in a way that lit up the people around them. There was a chemistry there whose absence loomed over the table in that moment like a void, and it was immediately apparent that Sage felt it too.
“I’d completely understand if you didn’t want to talk about it with me,” I told her, “but I see far more than you might guess. It’s part of my job, even though I’m an introvert, to be interested in people and how they relate to each other, so I may not know everything, but I see a lot.”
“What do you see?”
“I’m guessing it’s a boyfriend you don’t approve of. It’s been going on for long enough that you two don’t need to talk about it anymore to know where each of you stand on the issue. It hasn’t quite gotten to the point that it’s interfering with the actual show part of the show, but it’s starting to come between you.”
She looked back at me wide-eyed. “Did you two talk about it at some point, Lotte?”
“No. Just little cues. I see personal dynamics. It’s pretty amazing that you’ve been able to hide it completely from the show.”
“Well, like you said, Lotte, it doesn’t affect us at all when we’re working. When we’re together, we’re pretty in the moment, and, for the record, I don’t disapprove of the guy. He’s a great guy, and he’s perfect for Saffie.”
“Oh!” I said. “That’s great. What’s the problem then?”
“This is the problem. The walk is the problem.”
“So you think this guy is the guy?”
“We’ve both had boyfriends before, but this was some kind of instant biochemical reaction or something. I was there with her the moment they shook hands, and I could see it happen the second they looked at each other, like magnetic—these two people, click!”
And she clapped her hands together and picked up her beer, sipping it with a forlorn look.
“Who is he?”
She sighed and shrugged. “He’s the deputy mayor of Sabre City, which, I don’t know if you know Athos that well, but it’s the second largest city in the Desh Quarter, and he’s only thirty. He’s tall, gorgeous, and super impressive, Lotte. Everything I would ever wish for her, and he’s crazy for her.”
“I get it. And his job? He kinda has to be there all the time?”
“He can get a day off every couple months, and that’s what we’ve been doing is scheduling a break in the walk for those times, but, I don’t know … It’s not really working.”
“How long does the hypermag take to get out here?”
“It’s only about three hours, but it’s not that. It’s like … It’s hard to explain. Have you ever met two people so in love that when they’re apart it diminishes them somehow? Kind of like their light dims a little.”
I smiled and nodded. “Oddly enough, I do know what you’re talking about.”
“And this, the walk, the show, whatever this is, as tough as it is for Saffie to be pulled in these two crazy different directions, I don’t want to stand in the way of that. I mean, what kind of friend would I be if this amazing thing came along in her life and I made that decision any harder on her? But it’s also this situation where this ridiculous adventure has been the most incredible opportunity of our lives. I’m sitting here talking about this with my favorite worldbuilder, who, a year ago, probably wouldn’t have taken the time to respond to a fan note from me, and you came all the way from Alpha-Bassur to walk eight hours with us for three days.”
“It’s an opportunity for me too,” I confessed. “Exposure to your audience in the West Battery is no small thing. Don’t get me wrong, Sage. I do enjoy your show.”
“No, I know. It’s not just you. Every week we’re meeting the most amazing people—people we’d never have the opportunity to meet ever again. I mean, three weeks ago—”
She shook her head and stopped talking. I sat back quietly. I could see there was some internal conflict there.
“I shouldn’t say.”
“It can be confidential, Sage. I don’t betray anybody’s trust.”
“This is super secret, and there are contracts involved and all that.”
“I understand,” I said, thinking that she wasn’t going to reveal anything further.
“You swear on your life, Lotte?”
“Of course.”
“We had Jahindra Slane come for four hours about three weeks ago. Did a four-hour interview just outside Gantz.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Jahindra Slane? Hellenian pop star?”
I shook my head.
“She has Billions of fans, Lotte. Billions. Here on Athos, too. We haven’t released it yet. The episode is still … I guess her agents and her team and all that need to approve the cut. But when that comes out, Saffie and I aren’t going to be able to sit in a restaurant like this again anonymously. Not the same way.”
“No, I’ve been surprised. Almost no one along the path today, yesterday, in the city here—has anyone even recognized you?”
“Every now and again it happens. But, I mean, Jahindra Slane, you Lotte, we’ve got Tramel Rudinelsa coming right after you for Oswin’s thirty-sixth birthday, at that marker where Rudy almost quit. Every day for us is this amazing adventure, and that’s not lost on Saffie.”
“And she probably doesn’t want to pull you away from that opportunity either.”
“It’s killing her. And it’s …” Sage shook her head. “I’m going to start crying again, Lotte. I don’t want to break down in a pub.”
“I get it. That’s fair. I wish there was something useful I could say to make things easier.”
“Just listening. Being able to talk to someone who cares, that’s helpful, Lotte.”
“All of this is safe with me, Sage.”
As much as I wanted to stay and help Sage talk through her situation further, my eyelids were getting heavy, and she could see it too. She and Saffie were doubtless used to visitors getting their first taste of a trek on that scale. As she walked me to my room that evening, I grew tired in a way I probably hadn’t been since I was a very young child, nearly out on my feet. I hardly remembered getting into bed that night.
The following morning, I ate a proper breakfast. I was sore from my lower back down to my aching feet, and I found I couldn’t quite feel full no matter how many pieces of fruit I tried to top off my morning meal with. The girls were so accustomed to the walk, they each had a muffin and a bowl of fruit and coffee and were good to go.
Saffie took one look at Sage and I when we were all together, and somehow, she knew that I knew. Instantly. And Sage knew that she knew. Yet we all walked quietly for about an hour, until we were outside Dean Town proper and the walkway was all but vacant. There were small, grassy hills outside the city as we stepped into the parkland walk that cut down the center of the ring between Dean Town and Yameru. The path was dotted with fruit trees and flowers. It seemed more actively manicured than the River Flats.
“Do you want to get right into the worldbuilding again?” Saffie asked Sage. “We had deeper questions.”
I sensed the tension there, and I figured it would help to get right into the interview topic, rather than letting the conversation go where I thought it might be heading.
“I’m always willing to talk about the craft,” I offered. “There’s nothing I love more.”
“What? Talking about it or doing it?” Sage asked.
“Doing it. Talking about it, less so. I’ll talk about it for you two, but mostly when I’m talking about it, I usually just end up thinking that I’d rather be doing the work than talking about it.”
“Tough to build a universe out here,” Saffie said.
“I imagine this ring and every little town, park, river, hilltop—all of it began in a worldbuilder’s sim-drive back on Charris. The specs must be in a museum in Ithaca, no?”
“Isn’t that more architecture, though,” Saffie asked. “Don’t you do more fictional settings and scenarios, Lotte?”
I nodded. “It’s a little different, because I end up being guided more by the narrative than the physics and the material world for instance. But here, you look at the ring, and I see a lot of similarities to an architect. They just have a different story—what does a thriving community look like, what sorts of buildings and aesthetics will be a happy environment for individuals, for families. I start more with the arc of the narrative that people will enjoy plugging themselves into and find meaningful the longer they stay.”
“We like to ask people what they fear about what they do and how they overcome it,” Sage said. “That was one thing that stuck with us early in our walk, and it was something Oswin struggled with.”
“I’ve heard you ask that a lot,” I replied. “I was thinking about that on the flight from Alpha-Bassur. And I have to say, there isn’t any fear about the art anymore. There was when I started, but I didn’t really understand what making art was.”
“No fear?” Saffie said. “Wouldn’t that be nice. I mean, not even how people will react if you make a terrible thread or people don’t like the environment?”
“The worst thing I can get accused of is trying to create something I hope people will enjoy. That’s the start of fearlessness. So you don’t please everyone? Fine. You began with something noble in mind. Good. But the thing I really learned was that it’s not really me. I don’t create anything.”
“That’s some answer, Lotte. Engraham the Worldbuilder—that’s the name on all your storyscapes. So if you don’t make them, who does?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I feel like when I begin, I have an idea of a direction and mostly I just tune into some sort of frequency outside myself that guides me. I’ve learned to simply follow where it leads me, to relinquish control and have faith that the work will be complete and end up in the right place.”
“You’re more like Oswin than I bet you think,” Saffie said. “Every step forward is an act of faith.”
“Did he say that?” I asked. “That’s quite nice.”
“That was his most, what … quoted phrase I guess,” Sage said. “It’s on almost every plaque along the route. I doubt he’s the first human to say it or think it, though.”
“It sounds very axiomatic,” I agreed. “It’s also very true, I think. Especially for an artist.”
“No fear?” Saffie repeated. “Really, Lotte?”
“No,” I answered, and I meant it, genuinely. “I think I’m doing what I was meant to do. So no matter what the result, if I begin from a place where I sincerely feel I’m serving my highest purpose, then what’s to fear?”
“How about rejection? Humiliation? Embarrassment?” Saffie stated, and then she suddenly recoiled when I looked over at her with a quizzical look on my face. “Oh, God! Not what I meant. No, Lotte. I didn’t mean you. I can’t see how anyone would take your worlds that way.”
“I understand, Saffie. You’re fine. Those are normal feelings for anyone taking a chance, and I suppose any act of creation is a chance—like Oswin puts it, a step forward.”
“I don’t think sometimes,” Saffie said, still shaking her head.
“What about you two?” I asked. “What do you fear?”
And as soon as the words had slipped out, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. I suppose I’d hoped to diffuse Saffie’s feeling that she’d mis-stepped with her question. Instead, I just opened the wound the two of them had been doing a great job of ignoring through the first part of that morning’s walk.
Two long sighs answered my question. Gazes to the horizon.
“It’s pretty out here,” I declared. “Very different from the reeds of the River Flats. Greener, steadier.”
“It’s a bit longer to Yameru,” Saffie said. “We should pick up the pace.”
She started walking faster, quickly creating a gap between herself and Sage, who walked behind with me.
For the rest of the day, that tension didn’t necessarily hang in the air, so to say, but it followed along with us, waiting to come back into focus the second the wrong word was uttered. Sage, knowing her friend so well, turned our conversation back to Rudinelsa. She gave me a recap of his walk to that point along the Athosian ring.
I had done a fair amount of research before coming, even diving into one of the VR threads that followed his life. Of course, Sage knew that documentary. I’d thought it was his definitive account.
“No,” she told me. “The one that he endorsed was made late in his life, nearly twenty years after the walk.”
The title of that thread was “Breaking Down the Walk,” which was mostly a nostalgic recap—one long interview with some interspersed footage from Oswin’s eyewear, as well as stock images of places on Athos from city archives along the way, even a few times when Oswin was caught on city cameras as he passed through anonymously.
“He had no idea what his walk would become,” she explained, “but by the time he sat for that interview, he’d seen it grow. He knew what it meant for every Athosian—so much more than he ever envisioned.”
Sage’s tone turned bittersweet at that statement. Saffie was far enough out of earshot, well in front of us, so it was safe for us to exchange a look of understanding. Things are almost never what you expect.
That night as we sat and ate, I could see Saffie’s eyes wandering. She seemed to be dining perfunctorily, biding her time until she could politely leave us to tell her deputy mayor how her day had gone and ask him about his.
I exchanged a brief look with Sage as Saffie was looking away, enquiring as to whether the matter should be addressed. Whether that would happen was not a question. It was a matter of when. But it was certainly not my place to force the issue. Their walk, as they’d planned it, had another two years to go. And they could never make it the whole distance like this.
Almost immediately after she’d finished eating, Saffie excused herself.
“I don’t think we should linger,” Sage announced shortly after.
“She could tell right away this morning, couldn’t she?”
“I’m closer to Saffie than either of my sisters, Lotte. Yeah, we just know each other.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then you know best. I could use the extra sleep.”
“You held up well today. The second day is usually the hardest.”
Day three was our final day together. The girls would package the footage they had with each guest into a digestible episode, usually between two and three hours, depending on the suggestions of the AI editor and the choices the girls made on what to include. Based on the episodes I’d seen, I was curious how they were going to cut our time together, especially if that third day turned out to be as quietly contentious as the second.
It began that way. We were along another beautiful, narrow trail in a manicured grass parkland that cut all the way through the suburbs of Yameru center. The contrast struck me as this golden, beautiful morning began. Yet these two normally sunny girls were sullen, doused by an unspoken tension that was pulling them apart in a way that made me suddenly and viscerally sad. I could sense the same tension between them that KC and I had let linger over our marriage, the feeling we’d bathed our relationship in for so long that eventually we forgot how good it had been before.
They were walking with enough distance between them that they didn’t have to pretend to be a part of the conversation if one of them began talking to me. Sage was lagging behind. I took her by the hand and picked up the pace until we were beside Saffie.
“Normally, my instinct would be to butt out of other people’s problems,” I told them, looking at both of them as they actively avoided eye contact with each other, “but this is going to destroy your friendship. Believe me, I know this. I can feel it. It’s breaking my heart, and I don’t even know you two that well, but a friendship like yours is rare.”
They still didn’t seem all that inclined to talk and weren’t even looking at each other.
“I was thinking about this last night,” I said. “I could see all the signs, because it was the same with me and my wife, you know, ignore the hard thing because it’s hard. And then the next day it’s a little harder and a little harder till it seems impossible. So I was thinking I would ask both of you: What do you fear? What are you afraid of here?”
“Easy for you to ask,” Saffie answered. “Mister Fearless.”
“I never said I had no fears about life. Hell, when my marriage fell apart, it was like someone ripped half of my heart out. I know a thing or two about why people keep their guard up. Trusting somebody like that again? Sometimes I wonder if I ever will. I’m also a little bit petrified of FTL travel, if I’m being honest, like somehow the ship might get caught in some weird kind of timeless limbo, part of me materialized and part in subspace.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Sage said. “Is that even possible?”
“I saw an interview with a physicist who worked on Starcraft engines,” I replied. “She theorized that it could be. I don’t think it ever has. But that’s beside the point.”
Saffie looked over at Sage. They both sighed almost simultaneously.
“I don’t know that there’s anything we can say to resolve this, Lotte,” Saffie declared. “We both know the situation.”
“Who said you were going to resolve it? At least you might break the tension so we can walk with each other without having to pretend this isn’t hanging over you two. You’re always asking everyone else: What do you fear?”
“I am afraid,” Sage began, pausing to look over again at Saffie. “I am afraid that I will break our friendship. I don’t want to resent you, Saff. The worst think I could possibly envision is having all these wonderful opportunities and doors open to me that never would have happened without you, and I wake up one day, have it all, and I don’t have you to share it with anymore. But I can’t lie. Part of me wants all this—the money, the recognition, pop stars, worldbuilders, city leaders. It’s just starting to become, I don’t know, like a dream come true, and I don’t want it to end.”
“I know,” Saffie answered. “I know.”
I looked over at her, encouraging her to take that next step, to tell us what was self-evidently eating away at her.
“It’s not so easy to say,” she said to me. “It’s going to sound vain and foolish.”
“I am well acquainted with those two,” I joked. “Vanity and foolishness? Hello, my old friends.”
They both smiled a little.
“Okay, it’s like this,” Saffie said. “I am afraid I can’t do right. Because if I go back to be with Ben, which every fiber of my being is telling me to do, then I miss out on the best opportunity of not only my life, but I’m breaking it for my best friend, Lotte.”
“I get it.”
“Yeah, but this thing with Ben is so … it’s like fire, like I’m on fire inside. I’ve never felt anything like it. So what if it flames out? You know, ten weeks from now we’ve burned ourselves out. My heart tells me that’ll never happen, that we’re meant to be together. But my head is saying, ‘Saphire, the stars that burn hottest burn out fast.’ Then I’ve got no Ben, I’m heartbroken, and I’ve destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me and Sage.”
“You know I wouldn’t hold that against you,” Sage said.
“No. I know you don’t want to hold that against me, Sage, but you’re human. And I’m not angry about that. I just. I don’t know.”
“We could get through that, Saff. I know we could.”
“What if you both kept walking?” I asked Saffie. “What if you tried to have a long-distance relationship on the walk, like you are now?”
She shook her head. “If we’re saying what we fear, Lotte. I’d tell you that it’s not going well. He’s not happy. I’m not happy. Half the time, all we can talk about is how we wish we could be together in person, see each other now, kiss each other, go to bed together, hold hands. It’s like water on the fire. And I’m afraid it’s going to burn out. No. I’m almost certain it’s going to burn out. It can’t last another two years. It won’t.”
“Perfect,” I said, and they both looked at me funny. “Now it’s all out there. Whatever happens happens. It was going to happen anyway. Now at least you two can look at each other.”
They both smiled, albeit muted, sullen smiles.
I spent the rest of the morning talking with them about KC and our marriage. How it all fell apart. My part, how I worked too much, paid too little attention, took her for granted. How she lashed out at me to get my attention. How we stopped talking. They were conversations I wouldn’t have been able to have months before, advice to the young from the more experienced at life.
When we stopped around midday for water, I felt strong, like this walk was actually pretty good for the soul. I think it was the realest conversation I’d had in years.
The whole afternoon, walking into Teinan, Saffie and Sage seemed like their usual selves again, laughing, joking, singing, telling me stories about each other from before the walk, when they were students, when they were kids. Saffie still had her conundrum, but she was able to set it aside for that last leg of my journey with them.
That evening, we had a final dinner together before Saffie and Sage hopped on the local tram to take them up toward Basten, where they were meeting Tramel Rudinelsa, who would be walking with them till the post in Zair where his direct ancestor Oswin celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday alone.
Though we had a very nice dinner together, I couldn’t help but feel it was bittersweet. There was a sadness I couldn’t fully put my finger on. Part of it was surely the weight of the choices that lay ahead of them. My parting two pieces of wisdom, for both of them, were that all their choices seemed like good ones—new adventures they could share with each other, even if they shared them in new ways; and, the second bit of parting advice was that they weren’t the first two people to have to make tough choices like that. That was life. This way or that. No wrong path. Every step forward an act of faith.
And so we parted. I had another two weeks on my visa, which I planned to spend seeing New Corinth, Ithaca, and Soren Greens—the artificial rainforest in Yuhl’s Quarter. I was told half the birds there were actual biological birds, flying around, laying eggs, living lives like real birds.
I was a day into my second week, staying in the Sondomme district in Ithaca, not far from the Grand Museum, enjoying a late breakfast in my room when the door buzzed. I was shocked when it opened to a Sam, which I quickly was able to discern was Saffie’s Mother’s bot Sam, who announced that the girls had sent him down to deliver the two cuts of our episode. They hoped I’d watch and let them know which of the two I preferred.
“They sent you all the way down here, Sam? They could have encrypted the episodes, no?”
“Mr. Engraham, Ms. Sage wanted to be certain you had high resolution copies in hand that were compatible with your eyewear. She wanted to know whether you could get back to her within the next two days with your preference.”
“Well, I am touring the sights, but I suppose I could set aside some time in the evening. Please tell Sage I’ll ping her with my thoughts as soon as I’ve watched. Thank you for coming all this way, Sam.”
“They did not ask me to say as much, Mr. Engraham, but I found it notable that they discussed your visit three hundred percent more than their average guest walker, almost exclusively in tones that were positive.”
“Wow. That’s great to know.”
“Yes. I do hope you enjoy the show. It was a great pleasure working with you.”
I watched the first cut that evening, and it was consistent with all the other episodes I’d seen. It was good—bright, upbeat, fun, and though it didn’t reveal anything of what had been going on behind the scenes, I didn’t think it deviated so far from reality that I disliked it or found it deceptive. Even some of the deeper conversations we had about art and fear were interwoven creatively into the texture of the episode quite well.
I didn’t have time to watch the second cut until I boarded the hypermag to visit the rain forest. I was expecting a similar cut to the first, a slightly different version, still in the mold of the Saffie and Sage show. I was unprepared. I found myself at various points in my journey biting my lip to keep from losing control of my emotions. I found the sight of my two young friends and their emotional struggles so artistically presented that it challenged my own emotions. The sight of Sage crying hit me much harder now that I knew her, was a friend, and understood the genuine pain undergirding those emotions.
The second cut was a deviation from their brand. That was certain. I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, it would definitely surprise their audience. Maybe it would even upset many of them, who doubtless watched the girls specifically for their gift at lifting others’ spirits. This episode wouldn’t. On the other hand, it was undeniably a more powerful work of documentary art than the first. I couldn’t choose between the two, so I resolved to ping them from Soren Greens to convey my thoughts on the two cuts. Then I suppose I trusted them to make the call.
Sage picked up right away when I pinged, excusing herself from a late dinner with Saffie and Tramel Rudinelsa.
“I hope you liked the edits,” she said. “I have to say, putting our show in front of an artist of your caliber, Lotte, I was intimidated.”
“No need for all that,” I answered. “I loved them both.”
I described in the best detail I could how I felt about each cut, emphasizing that I’d be happy with either one and support their decision regardless of which version they released.
“There’s something else I have to say, Lotte. I want you to know that your presence really had an impact on us both. Opening up. Being honest with each other no matter how difficult. It’s really helped.”
“That’s great, Sage. Have you two made any progress—Saffie, I mean?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
There was a long pause. And she looked like she was struggling to decide what to say next.
“Lotte?”
“Yeah, Sage?”
“I’m not sure how to say this right, but we’ve taken to heart that idea that we should be honest with each other. And we were honest with Tramel when he came too, told him everything. It’s amazing. He’s cut from the same cloth as Oswin.”
“What, like two-century-old cloth?”
“Something like that,” she said, smiling. “Anyway, I also want to tell you that something else happened that hasn’t really happened before with any of our other guests.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“I’m not sure what to make of it, but I guess … I kinda missed you when you left, for a couple days there.”
“Oh?”
“Is that okay?”
“I’m not sure what I could do about it if it wasn’t,” I joked. “In all seriousness, though, I have to say Ithaca, for all the however many million or billion people there, I did feel pretty lonely myself.”
“I have one more thing to ask,” Sage continued.
“Sure.”
“Like I said, we’ve been talking with Tramel. We have two more days on the walk with him. He suggested I invite you too.”
“He suggested it?”
“Well, I think he could tell I wanted to. It’s okay if you can’t. I know you wanted to see the rainforest before you left.”
“I still have a few more days on the back end of my visa. I’d have to move my flight back, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“I mean, only if you want to, Lotte.”
“I do, Sage. I’d like that. I’ll make sure I can rearrange my flight and get back to you as soon as I know.”
“Tramel would like to meet you too.”
“That’s great. Tell him I’m looking forward to meeting him as well.”
“Okay, Lotte. Okay. Bye, Lotte. Thanks.”
I had to say it was unexpected. I jumped right back on the hypermag, but I couldn’t get a seat out past Ithaca that night. I pinged Sage to let her know I wouldn’t be able to make it until the following evening.
“You’re coming, though?” she messaged me after she got my ping.
“I am,” I wrote back. “See you tomorrow.”
I thought maybe I was being foolish. How could I have missed the signals before and be feeling what I felt now. A mix of excitement clouded in self-doubt—what a beautiful, brilliant, joyous young woman like Sage could see in a sad divorcee almost ten years her elder? Or was I missing the signals now? Was this friendship and nothing more? My head told me no, but my heart told me that she was still young, impulsive, unserious, nowhere near mature enough to appreciate where I was in my life.
I watched the second cut of our episode again, looking for signs, and I just wasn’t sure.
One thing I did see, for certain, was the sincerity of all the emotions. Saffie, Sage, even me as I discussed my divorce with them. I found myself thinking about this next step—all the ways a train ride can be far more terrifying than an FTL flight.
I met them for dinner in a quiet restaurant twenty kilometers outside Zair. It was already dark, and inside, the diners were lit by the dim yellow bulbs hovering over the tables. The ceiling was one of those starlit backdrops that were so convincing, you’d swear you were staring at the Milky Way with your naked eyes.
Both the girls were laughing when I entered. I could hear them before I saw them. They were sitting with a man about my age wearing a broad smile I presumed to be Tramel. He recognized me first and got up.
“Lotte Engraham!” he said. “Even if I didn’t know your work, I feel like I would know you well. You’ve made two fans here.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I said, shaking Tramel’s hand. “And you as well. I’ve heard nothing but good things.”
“All lies,” he joked. “Come and sit. I heard you like beer. They have a nice selection.”
It was a good dinner, but not a long one. Sage and Tramel, about a half hour after I got my dinner, started fading. I could see those heavy eyes I remembered from that first night of my walk—the child’s eyes.
I sat with Saffie, the two of us finishing our beers after the others retired to their rooms.
“She hasn’t been sleeping well,” Saffie said. “We’ve been talking, though.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m seriously considering breaking the walk. Or breaking it up? Breaking up with it?”
“I’m not sure of the right wording,” I replied. “Is it a relationship? Do you break up with the walk?”
“It’s definitely a relationship, Lotte. It’s been a great one.”
“You’d go live with Ben?”
She nodded. “We’ve been talking a lot, too. He wants me to move there. I want to as well.”
“How is Sage doing?”
Saffie shrugged. “There’s a lot to figure out. How do we tell our fans? When? Is it over? Maybe we still do some walks but less frequently? Or maybe Sage keeps walking by herself? We’re still talking. But at least we’re talking.”
“Whatever happens, it won’t diminish what you’ve done.”
“See!” Saffie said with a wide smile. “That’s what Sage likes about you, Lotte, because you say things like that. I like you too.”
“Just not as much as Ben,” I joked.
“I don’t like anything as much as I like Ben,” she replied, her smile and her eyes revealing the truth of that statement.
“I hope the best for you two.”
“It’d be ironic if I quit at Oswin’s thirty-sixth birthday post. For the same reason as well, right?”
“The walk is not easy.”
Saffie looked back at me with her jaw nearly hanging open.
“You know, Lotte, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone put it better. The walk is not easy. Amen to that.”
“And every step forward an act of faith.”
“Truth,” she said. “Let’s drink to that.”
We clinked glasses and finished our beers.
“I have to ping Ben,” she told me. “But I’ll see you in the morning. It’s good to have you back, Lotte. I might need your support tomorrow.”
In the morning, it was as though words weren’t necessary between those two. Saffie brought coffee out to everyone. And we began to walk. Sage and Saffie and their unspoken energy did far more talking than all four of us did in words. I had this feeling that in exchanged looks, they had the most significant conversation of their lives. And then, Saffie, looking to the horizon suddenly declared, “What a blessing each day is.” Not goodbye; not good luck, friend; not I’m sorry I can’t go on with you. We have been blessed. With each day. With each other’s company. With the beauty of the people around us. We have been blessed.
They walked together most of the morning. Tramel and I had a great time getting to know one another. He was working to start a tea plantation along the mountains of the sidewall outside Petros. It was something no one had ever attempted before, growing tea on the Athosian boundary mountains.
“All that space,” he said. “Too steep to use for anything else.”
He had hurdles, of course. Figurative mountains of regulations, that close to Ithaca. The highest hurdle, he explained would be with the aesthetics board. He insisted, though, that the simulations he’d rendered, based on files in the archives of tea plantations in Asia on Earth, had scored well with every test group. “Tea plants are beautiful,” he declared. “Beautiful symmetry.”
I couldn’t help but think his spirit was familial and would make his famous ancestor proud.
That afternoon, with six kilometers to Oswin’s post, Sage and I began walking beside each other. We exchanged looks and walked together in silence. Before long, without a word, she took my hand in hers. We walked the final hours like that, neither of us inclined to let go.
“I have a suggestion for you, Lotte,” Tramel declared.
He and Saffie both turned around and smiled at us.
“You two should do the walk together,” he continued. “I think Oswin would like that, an Athosian and an outsider from the Letters coming together in the same spirit. I think it would be fitting.”
I smiled at the prospect. “I wish I could. I’m afraid my visa expires in less than a week, Tramel.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, nodding. “A real shame. It’s too bad none of us has a friend in the government who could help with such a problem.”
When he turned back around toward us again, he and Saffie, they were both smiling. They’d been talking.
“Every step, Lotte,” Saffie said. “What do you say?”
“I’m terrified,” I joked. “Terrified.”
“Me too,” Sage said.
“What do you think your loyal audience will say?” I asked her.
Sage looked up at me in such a way I knew I wasn’t missing any signals. “I think they’re going to love you, Lotte. I really do.”
“That would make me a lucky, lucky man,” I declared. “But I’d need to get better shoes. I have blisters.”
“Four days and you’re already complaining!” Saffie laughed.
As the light dimmed on those final kilometers, Saffie and Sage talked about it, commuting from Sabre City every couple weeks to make sure she was still a part of the show, pinging in for the episodes she couldn’t make. Convincing her mother to let Sage keep Sam for another two years.
Then, suddenly, we were at the post, and there were the words again: “Every step forward is an act of faith.”
“Happy birthday, Ozzy!” Saffie shouted so loud half the city of Zair could hear her. Before long we were all shouting, unafraid.
“Let them all stare,” Tramel stated, an exuberant smile dominating his joyous face. “Let them all think we’re crazy. Soon the whole of the Battery will know us for who we are.”
We were four anonymous people in that great city shouting for joy, for each other’s company, and for the pleasure of being alive.
That was the night Saphire Draymon-Koll broke the walk, and with her and Sage’s blessing, I, Lotte Engraham, happily took up the cause.