Crusaders Of Star League

July 2041.

Maida Vale, West London.

It was moving day, and Gemma had forgotten to set her alarm.

She woke up in an uncomfortable heap on the floor, having sold all her furniture bit by bit over the past month. She’d read online that the hardest thing to do in your first couple years as a “connie,” aka conscript, was to get into a financial rhythm where you were saving enough to afford “luxes,” aka luxury goods, aka liquor.

Her new friend Bartender Kevin at The Fox had been helping her get a grip on her new situation, which involved a crash course in where the modern discourse was happening. In her day she’d been as active as one must be on stuff like Instagram, or Reddit, or TikTok. But in their new era of digital safety, digital sovereignty, whatever the fuck it was called, it was just way too much of a hassle to access foreign apps. And by the time that had happened, she had a staff who was keeping up with all of it for her. A staff she was sorely missing now.

But over a few beverages, Kevin had talked her through the basics. Some Brits still used those big American and Chinese apps, but the only people who went to the trouble of doing the identity checks, requesting the licence, getting them unblocked, etc. were mostly older people (like herself) and mostly to look at older stuff that was on them already (like Queen music videos). All the new stuff had necessarily moved “on island,” to home-grown British apps like Understairs, Popround and Telly. As an American, but one not eager to offend Gemma, he explained he felt these apps were “um, fine,” but they were succeeding in his view mostly due to legislation and the massive government subsidies they’d gotten.

(The two she did know already were Linkup, a dating app, and Shag. “That one’s for sex,” he’d helpfully pointed out when he spotted it on her home screen. She’d nodded politely.)

Gemma tried to sit up but her back cried out, her legs stiff, everything generally feeling not-great. “Right, a lie-in then.” She opted for laying flat on her back on the knotty wooden floor, the rugs having gone along with the bed yesterday afternoon. It all hurt, but it was less painful than getting up. Kevin had offered to let her sleep at his, but she was pretty sure he lived in student accommodation. Things hadn’t gotten that dire yet, had they? She’d never seen him outside the pub. She wasn’t convinced he even existed outside the pub.

She reached for her phone, knocking over several empty beer bottles, and quickly dismissed all her notifications before she could even read them. Instead she popped back into Understairs, which was a sort-of hip, altish discussion app that reminded her of Reddit. She’d joined a few of the recommend spaces when she signed up – Oldies (for music from the 2000s), AcousticGuitar (for covers of music from the 2000s), NormalIsland (UK news), BloodyBloody (British-themed horror stories) – but the one she fixated on was BunkLife. This was people talking about their lives in the worker housing at various work sites around the country, including hers out in Wales. As moving day approached she’d become increasingly anxious and desperate. She’d hoped reading the daily goings-on would help calm her nerves, show her that it was just like any other job, in any other small, middle-of-nowhere Welsh town.

What she got was anything but. Every time she opened it, she was met with an onslaught of grim post titles.

“[Telly] [Howto] How to get rid of bed bugs in your bunk – easy way (free!)”

“[Question] Rations cut for excess tardiness what are my rights?”

“[Sheffield] [Footie] Weekly 5-a-side looking for new player! (our GK died)”

“[Rant] Denied housing upgrade for third f-ing time”

“[Help] Converting my credits to pounds, how?”

“[AITA] Stole bunkmate’s lux voucher for revenge but now they’ve filed a grievance”

She doom-scrolled every last one of them, absorbing all the knowledge as best she could, which wasn’t easy. Rations? Credits? 5-a-side? What the fuck? These people seemed deeply unhappy, and they seemed to be living quite desperately in some sort of fake nonsense world. But at least they had each other. Or so claimed user mancmonk, in his post:

“[Motivation] At least we have each other”

It had 6 upvotes and 439 downvotes. She gave it one more upvote, then decided to quite literally pick herself up off the floor. It was nearly 11a.m., and her train was at 1p.m.

She’d promised Kevin she’d say goodbye, but now she was having second thoughts. Human connection, not really her forte. He was just a kid. It was a good lesson to teach him, not to trust the promises of strange unemployed women who day-drink. If it wasn’t her it’d just be someone else. So that was a heart she’d break.

There were all her former colleagues, whom she’d mostly lost touch with the moment they took away her work phone. She didn’t know whether it was odd that she’d never taken their personal numbers, or connected with them on any other service. It was a healthy distance. Work life balance. That’s what she’d told herself, anyway. But now she had no way to reach them. Probably for the best, though. A few of them were still at the office no doubt, helping close it down, or helping run the “streamlined operation” on behalf of the new owners. Not somewhere she’d like to see again, if they’d even let her up the lifts. Pass.

She walked toward the tube station dragging her rolling bag behind her, duffel bag over her shoulder, and the thoughts of dread gave way to a sudden, intense loneliness. She was leaving the city she’d known her entire life. Aside from a few overseas dalliances, she’d never lived anywhere else. Birth, childhood, primary school, university, street rat failed indie musician, young gun session producer, all the way up to industry executive. And now she struggled, at her age, to think of a single person to go visit before she moved away.

“Fuck,” she muttered to herself. “I need a drink.”

There was certainly time for one, maybe two. But she wasn’t paying train station pint prices, then loitering near the goddamn vending machine sipping it. So sad, those people. Worse that there wasn’t a single actual pub left in or around King’s Cross.

Kevin perked up as she burst through the door to The Fox.

“Kevin, it’s your lucky day. I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Honestly I assumed you’d flake.”

“And miss seeing The Fox one last time? Who knows how long this place will survive without my patronage.”

He’d already started pulling her usual. Better make it two, she’d said, as there’s not much time. She had to be at the train station. They only provide one free ticket, she explained. If you missed it, well, you paid your own way.

Two pints became three, with a couple rounds of shots, and maybe a fourth. But she really had to go, she’d say, before she’d order one more. She had an envelope full of cash with her, the money she’d been putting aside, the money she’d made selling her furniture. Much more efficient than faffing around with her phone to pay every time.

She regaled Kevin with tales of life before all this, before her company’s untimely demise, before she’d found herself sleeping on the floor of an empty flat. There was the time at the GRAMMYs where she’d misplaced her wallet and nearly gotten arrested trying to get back in. That time she threw up over the side of a helicopter getting across Manhattan. That time she let a stranger do blow off the back of the toilet while she threw up in the bowl. That time she’d spent an entire 90 minute meeting referring to some indie acoustic act as Nate Mathanson instead of Matt Nathanson. “Everyone was fucking hammered and coked up at the office back then,” she’d pointed out. “It was just what we did.”

A celebratory round of shots, she said, and Kevin dutifully poured them a couple tequilas. “These are on me,” he said as she went fishing for another tenner from her stash. “That money was supposed to be your emergency fund.”

He’s a good kid this Kevin, she thought as she made her way to the toilet. Maybe she’d be nice to him after all, take him back to hers. Show him a thing or two on the hardwood floor. It was so uncomfortably warm in the toilet at The Fox though, and just generally unclean, and her leather skirt was a huge fucking pain in the ass to deal with. As she tried to get it off to use the toilet, she was hit with a wave of nausea. She hurled the last few pints back out onto the floor, pure liquid, not a trace of food. Her stomach heaved and tightened, her throat burned. More vomit came as her legs went, her knees landing in the pool on the floor. She grabbed the metal bar on the wall and tried to pull herself up as she dry heaved. Her eyes watered and she heaved uncontrollably, coughing and wheezing. Tears started to run down her face.

“Everything okay in there?” Kevin shouted through the door to the disabled toilet.

“No,” she bellowed in response through tears and searing pain. Her nose and throat burned like hell. She started sobbing and sat on the floor, letting go of the bar. She stared at the back of the door and played with the graphite bands that hung on a chain around her neck, clutching them tightly in her hand. Kevin banged on it from the outside.

“Gemma? Open up please?”

She shook her head but said nothing. He knocked a few more times.

“Gemma, are you hurt? Do you need help?”

Snot and tears ran down her face, her eyes a smeary black. She sniffled hard.

“Kevin, I’m scared. I can’t do this.” Her voice was shaky, her words slurred and slow. She struggled to get them out through the tears. “I don’t have any friends here, I don’t have anyone, my parents are gone, nobody even cares that I’m leaving, nobody’s going to care about me at this new place they’re all so young, and it sounds like a fucking nightmare.” She couldn’t stop sobbing. “I have nothing. I have nothing. God, I’m so old. I miss my parents.” She tried to wipe off some of the tears with the back of her palm. Her throat gurgled as she breathed. “I miss⁠—”

“Gemma? I’m opening the door, okay?”

“What?”

The handle lowered slowly and the door started to creak open. He peeked in just a bit. “Are you decent?”

“It’s locked!” She croaked out in confusion.

“Gemma, it’s a bar. You think we can’t open a locked toilet door? Someone barricades themselves in the handicapped stall at least once a night. Can I come in?”

“Go on then. Come see what you see.”

He pushed it open a bit more and looked inside, seeing her sat on the floor in her own sick. “Oh no, miss. You’ve done a number here, and all before 1 o’clock.” He reached down and picked her up from the floor, supporting himself on the metal bar with one hand, his other arm around her waist. She was drenched.

“I’m so tired.” She closed her eyes, still being held up by Kevin’s arm.

She jolted awake suddenly, feeling like she was falling but catching herself on the bed. She was in a room she didn’t recognise, barely lit by sunlight streaming in through a gap in the blackout curtains. Plain white walls all around her, with a cheap little desk across from the bed, a plain blue task chair tucked under it. She had no idea where she was, or what was happening. Her back chafed against what seemed to be a couple of beach towels.

“Uh. Hello?!”

The door opened almost immediately, blinding her. “Fuck!” She covered her eyes with her arm.

“How are you feeling?”

“Kevin? Are we at the pub?”

“You passed out. I didn’t know who to call or where you lived, and I couldn’t exactly put you in a cab to the train station like that… so I brought you here.” She kept her arm on her face and let out a groan.

“Student accommodation.” She sat up. He gingerly offered her a glass of water, but she shook her head and gestured for it to go on the desk. “My fucking train. Kevin, I’m so fucked. What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “It’s just now 6 p.m.”

“FUCK!” She shook her head a few times in disbelief. She’d missed the goddamn free train. And it wasn’t exactly like she was going to Cardiff, or some other place in Wales that people wanted to go. (Surely there must be at least one other.) There was one train, twice a week, from London out to the nuclear plant. It went out Monday, then it came back that night, and that was it ’til Friday. “FUUUUUUCK!” She screamed. Kevin jumped and grabbed the door frame reflexively.

“Do you… need anything? I have some food, well, some snacks. I can make you something? A sandwich?” She laughed and looked down at herself. She was in a state.

“Kevin, I’m disgusting.” He grimaced and looked down at his feet, nodding. “Can I maybe use your shower?”

She came walking out of the bathroom a short time later as he watched TV on the sofa. Kevin had apologised profusely that her bags were locked up at the pub, because he couldn’t really carry them and prop her up all the way here. So with an exaggerated flourish she swept her arms across herself, showing off her borrowed outfit – a baggy white t-shirt under a blue University of West London hoodie, extremely loose-fitting, too-long jeans cinched up with a belt and rolled up cuffs, and bright white tube socks. Her dark hair was soggy wet, hanging down behind her. Her makeup gone, the bags under her eyes quite pronounced. “Could you have given me a more stereotypical set of clothes to wear? I look like we just fucked in a romantic comedy.”

He shrugged. “You look fine?” He picked her chain of rings up off the coffee table, and she quickly snatched them from his hand and tossed them back around her neck, tucking them away under the hoodie.

“Oh you would say that. Christ, thanks mate. I feel gorgeous.” She flopped onto the sofa next to him and resumed her pre-shower groaning. “I missed my fucking train, Kevin.”

“You did.” He was staring straight ahead at the TV, watching some animated thing Gemma didn’t recognise.

“The next one’s not til the end of the week. And I can’t bloody afford it.”

“How much is it?”

“It doesn’t matter! Unless it’s, I don’t know, ten pounds. That was it, Kevin. The emergency fund? That was the whole Gemma fund. That was it. I have to fucking figure this out.”

“Why would you spend so much on drinks if you…” He glanced over at her and saw the fury in her eyes, then let his sentence trail off. “Listen. I’ll drive you. I looked, it’s like 5 hours each way. Not close, but it’s doable. We can go tomorrow morning.”

“Are you…” She sounded incredulous, like she assumed he must be screwing with her. He shook his head.

“Totally fine.”

“Christ.”

She looked down at the table and saw the glass of water had been relocated, sat neatly on a coaster in front of her. She picked it up and took a sip, then guzzled it all down. Kevin watched out of the corner of his eye and nodded. She let out a huge sigh and crossed her arms over the gigantic hoodie, nestling down into it.

“So the rings,” Kevin asked. “You’ve always got them on. Are you secretly married?”

“Don’t pry.” Kevin pursed his lips as Gemma kept facing straight ahead. “What’s this then on the telly?”

“So, this is Crusaders of Star League,” he said stoically, recovering from the knock back. “I don’t know if you had it here. It’s made to look really serious like a science fiction drama, but it’s really funny. I watched it when I was a kid but I get the jokes a lot more now.”

“I’m almost fifty years old,” she deadpanned.

“Oh, there’s no maximum age.” His mouth curled into a smirk. He ticked the volume up a few notches.

The glow of the TV lit the room as they watched, Kevin letting out his loud American guffaws near-constantly and Gemma letting out a small chuckle occasionally (though mostly rolling her eyes). Kevin disappeared to the kitchen at one point, returning with some extremely basic cheese sandwiches and packets of crisps for them to eat. Gemma would interject every so often with a question about the plot, or something she’d misheard, or that she needed him to pause it while she ran to the bathroom.

They eventually fell asleep, laying across opposite arms of the sofa, just before the credits rolled on the second season finale.