With the world in such a state, we all need an occasional escape. Mine is genre fiction. You know, the Aubrey/Maturin books. Alan Furst’s spy novels. PD James. And now the Expanse books. They’re really good classic science fiction. And as in any fully realized fictional world, we get a look at the dialects, cuisines, media, and even legal culture that the characters encounter along the way. The third book, Abaddon’s Gate, has a terrific comic scene I’d like to share. The four main characters, Jim Holden, Amos Burton, Naomi Nagata, and Alex Kamal, are on their ship, the Rocinante. They came to have the ship, a Martian warship, in murky circumstances, and the Martians want it back. They’re docked on Ceres, an asteroid in the Belt, the part of the solar system including the asteroid belt, the outer planets, and all the areas not controlled by the Earth or Mars, inhabited by the plucky, frontiersman-like “Belters.” Suddenly, they get a warning that trouble is on the way. Maybe it’s the Martians, come to take back their ship. Holden, the captain, and Burton, the mechanic and tough guy, go down armed to the entrance to the ship to fight off whoever is coming as Naomi gets their ship ready to blast off.

In a conversational tone, Amos said, “Any idea what we’re expecting here?”

“Nope,” Holden said. He clicked the rifle to auto fire and felt a faint nausea rising in his throat.

“All right, then,” Amos said cheerfully.

“Eight minutes,” Naomi said from his hand terminal. Not a long time, but if they were trying to hold the bay under hostile fire, it would seem like an eternity.

The entry warning light at the cargo bay entrance flashed yellow three times, and the hatch slid open.

“Don’t shoot unless I do,” Holden said quietly. Amos grunted back at him.

A tall blond woman walked into the bay. She had an Earther’s build, a video star’s face, and couldn’t have been more than twenty. When she saw the two guns pointed at her, she raised her hands and wiggled her fingers. “Not armed,” she said. Her cheeks dimpled into a grin. Holden tried to imagine why a supermodel would be looking for him.

“Hi,” Amos said. He was grinning back at her.

“Who are you?” Holden said, keeping his gun trained on her.

“My name’s Adri. Are you James Holden?”

“I can be,” Amos said, “if you want.” She smiled. Amos smiled back, but his weapon was still in a carefully neutral position.

“What’ve we got down there?” Naomi asked, her voice tense in his ear. “Do we have a threat?”

“I don’t know yet,” Holden said.

“You are though, right? You’re James Holden,” Adri said, walking towards him. The assault rifle in his hands didn’t seem to bother her at all. Up close, she smelled like strawberries and vanilla. “Captain James Holden, of the Rocinante?”

“Yes,” he said.

She held out a slim, throwaway hand terminal. He took it automatically. The terminal displayed a picture of him, along with his name and his UN citizen and UN naval ID numbers.

“You’ve been served,” she said. “Sorry. It was nice meeting you, though.”

She turned through the door and walked away.

“What the fuck?” Amos said to no one, dropping the muzzle of his gun to the floor and rubbing his scalp again.

I love this scene. It’s funny, but it also tells us something about what matters in service of process. The scene takes place centuries from now, where everyone has a futuristic computer in their pocket that they use for all their important business. Subject to light-delay,¹One of the great things about the books is that they take physics seriously. It can take months to get somewhere distant on a ship, and heavy acceleration can kill you. People can use their devices to contact anyone in the solar system, but it can take hours to get a message from one distant corner of solar system to another. There are, or at least were, aliens, though. people can send messages or documents to anyone, anywhere. I assume that the documents being served could, in the future, be securely and verifiably delivered digitally. So why does the twenty-fourth century need a process server?

I don’t think it’s because in the twenty-fourth century only an officer of the state can serve process on the state’s territory. For one thing, the scene takes place on Tycho Station, a space station in the Belt, which is a bit like a futuristic wild west, run by a corporation that isn’t ruled by either of the “nations” in the story, the Earth or Mars. For another, some of the corporations in the story—Tycho, the evil Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile, the Pur ‘n Kleen company that the four heroes worked for before finding themselves on the Rocinante—seem to take the place of states, at least in space. So I don’t think that the process server was there because only a futuristic huissier is allowed to serve process on a space station.

Instead, I think it’s an enduring example of the importance of the ceremonial and cautionary function of service of process. I suspect that in the twenty-eighth century, there will still be human beings handing summonses to defendants in lawsuits, just as there will still be trials in courtrooms with people dressed in fancy clothes.

Image credit: NASA, NASA-JPL, University of Arizona

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  One of the great things about the books is that they take physics seriously. It can take months to get somewhere distant on a ship, and heavy acceleration can kill you. People can use their devices to contact anyone in the solar system, but it can take hours to get a message from one distant corner of solar system to another. There are, or at least were, aliens, though.