The day Seeker took the steps outside the slum, the floodgates well and truly opened. Within just a few weeks, he started to look forward to these walks on the Outside. He felt like he had discovered some new found freedom as if some shackles that had bound him to the slum had somehow been broken. The act of crossing that barrier between the inside and outside started to feel less and less eventful every time he did it. However, he always felt like a visitor or really an interloper. There was always this nagging sensation that he never truly fit in, no matter what he did. 

The first time he had returned from the Outside, he had made it a point to go straight to the bazaar within the slum to buy the kind of clothes he had seen Outsiders wear. He realized that what he found within the slum was still a bit different from what he’d seen people wear, but since buying anything on the Outside was likely to cost way more, he knew he had to make do with what was available. He bought himself a few pairs of grey slacks and long sleeved shirts, all made with the same thin material, which looked snug but felt comfortable. He got himself a haircut so his hair was really short, just like all the men he saw on the Outside. As he looked at himself in the mirror, he felt pretty happy with what he saw, but a distinct sense of unease remained. It reminded him a lot of a story he had heard when he was younger. 

In this story, a rat named Julio ate some magical cheese, which changed him into a man, rich and handsome. Over time, Julio learnt the ways of men and made many friends. He was hospitable and generous and threw many parties. He almost started to believe that he was actually one of the humans, but there were almost doubts that lingered. Every time he spoke, it sounded like a squeak to him on the inside. Every time he ate in his own house, he felt like he would be accused of stealing food. Every time he slept on his bed, he felt scared about being entirely in the open. No matter how much he scrubbed himself clean in the shower, he thought he may never be able to get rid of this stench that he could still smell. And so, even though he remained a human until the end of his life, Julio could never be truly happy. He sneaked to the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat. He slept in his closet. He tried to stay away from people, thinking they would catch on eventually, at which point they would surely push him away. Had the magical cheese been a blessing or a curse?  

Seeker identified with Julio. At least the rat could have been forgiven for stumbling upon the magical cheese, but here Seeker was trying to transform himself out of his own free will. Would he ever truly feel like an Outsider, or would he always remain a slum rat on the inside? Every time these questions bubbled up to the top of his mind, he would push them away. He would truly make it one day, he told himself. 

He soaked up the latest movies and other sources of entertainment from the Outside to understand how people spoke. While everyone generally spoke the Universal Language, the peculiar dialect of the slum was something he wanted to shake off. He tried to mimic the speech of Outsiders. Although he felt like he sounded like one, he wasn’t sure if the Outsiders would accept him as one of their own. A few things happened over the course of those weeks that gave him the validation he so badly needed at the time. 

The first incident occurred when he was on one of his routine walks on the Outside. He had just stepped off an escalator and was about to walk a few paces to step on to another one, when he heard a sound directed towards him. “Sir”, someone said. 

Sir. It was the first time someone had referred to him as that. He turned around, almost sure that it wasn’t directed towards him, but it was. He found himself facing a thin young man, clearly not from the District. He was with a girl a little older than him, presumably his sister. The boy did all the talking while the girl stood clutching on to his shirtsleeves. They both wore loose, bright colored clothes and had large backpacks on their backs. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but we were looking to go downtown and weren’t sure where to get the train from.” 

Seeker felt sorry for them. He had been in their situation merely days ago. “Don’t worry”, he said with a smile, “I know which way it is. Follow me”, he said. He led them to the underground rail terminal two stories below. “Take this escalator down and take the train on the right side of the track.” The boy and girl thanked him profusely as they left. 

The second time, he was on a train himself. He had taken the train a few times aimlessly by now, but this time he had a purpose and a destination. He had started to scope construction projects that may be in need of someone like him and was taking the high speed underground train to a large construction site downtown. As he held onto the overhead metal bars while the train was accelerating out of a station, he made eye contact with another man, a bit older than himself. The man was dressed in a similar grey top as him and as he looked at Seeker, the corners of his mouth lifted ever so slightly into a smile and he nodded his head in greeting before looking away. Seeker tilted his head that slight bit in acknowledgement and looked into the distance. As he looked outside the window at dark walls as the train hurtled through underground tunnels, Seeker smiled a smile on the inside. That one glance was a victory to him because it signified that he had managed to fool someone into believing that he was one of them. At least he had started to look the part, even if he didn’t quite feel it. 

The construction site looked similar to the many such sites he’d been to with his mother, but even at first glance, it was obvious to him that it was an upgrade. There were more machines at work, eliminating the kind of jobs that people like his mother did. They still needed a few unskilled laborers to move objects around, but Seeker looked at the person in charge of the hiring and told him he wanted to try for the job of a technician, which was at least a rung higher. 

There were two kinds of technicians - Heavy and Light. The Heavy Techs operated heavy machinery, and then the Light ones operated the drones, pulleys, conveyors and other equipment remotely. A lot of this technology was relatively new, and the most important skill needed were steady hands, especially since a lot of the work often involved moving pieces of wood or sheets of metal up and down vertical or horizontal distances and then laying them down on a spot gently, or stacking them together. Although he didn’t have a lot of experience doing so, he had always had steady hands.

“These hands”, his mother often used to say, “are special, Sekar. One day, they will take you far.” His mother had suffered from tremors in her hands and she used to ask him to thread a needle for her while she was sowing. As Seeker walked up to get a remote from the supervisor, he thought of those times. 

His task was to use a drone to move a pile of wooden piles all the way to the fifteenth floor and lay them all in a pattern so that another machine could collect them and erect laths. There were sensors and cameras mounted on the drone (called the “eyes”) which projected images onto a screen attached to the remote. He steadied himself and got to work. At first, he struggled with picking the wooden slats up at the center and struggled to calibrate the speed of the drone, nearly crashing it into the building, but then as he relaxed his grip, he was able to do it a lot more gracefully. By the time he was done, it almost seemed entirely automatic. The lifts were clean, the speed was constant and the drop offs were precise. When he walked over to return the remote back, the supervisor was clearly impressed. There was a slight hint of a smile on his face. 

“You done this before?”

“I have flown drones before, just not for construction projects.” 

“I can use a few Light Techs like you. When can you start?” 

“Now, if you’d like”, Seeker said. 

The supervisor smiled again. “Not so fast, boy. I need you to finish off some paperwork”, and handed him a Slate. “You can start tomorrow.” 

After he filled out the paperwork, Seeker was shocked to find how much he’d be getting paid. He remembered the times his mother did all that back breaking work only to get paid a fraction of what he’d be paid for essentially twiddling his thumbs. He was elated to be earning those kinds of credits, but also silently apologized to his mother for the unfairness of it all. He wouldn’t even need to work at the bar anymore, which would preclude the need to stay out too late. 

As he walked back toward the train station, he passed a wall with several posters on it, one of which caught his eye. It had a picture of a man with a long flowing beard which was jet black but dotted with specks of grey. Atop the head was a black cloth turban that struggled to contain the silvery locks that flowed from the sides. But the part that drew Seeker in and held him in rapture were the eyes. They were an intense steel grey color and even through the picture, they seemed to piece his skin, and look directly into his soul. When Seeker realized that this person was about to start speaking only a few feet away, he felt his feet almost drawing him towards some magnetic force through a will of their own. 

Seeker was about to see Yara for the very first time. 

Next Chapter: 1.9 Exoplanet