We’re gathering at Breathe Easy’s headquarters today, to
ship off to the moon for training. We’re supposed to stay in the facility
overnight, and we’re all in one large, dormitory-style room. I just finished
packing my apartment, which has been more of a jail cell since I entered my plea
deal. I’ve been dreaming of this expedition for weeks, and I haven’t been able
to go anywhere! It’s nice to finally be out of that place, looking at different
scenery.
I was the first one here, which they requested so I could work on another entry. The main building is huge – 4 kilometers tall by itself, an impressive accomplishment in any city, but since we’re in the middle of the Dust Bowl Desert, it gets direct glare from the sun that is almost blinding when exiting the train. As you approach the building, you can also see their launch center, the StarTram, which uses magnets in some way I don’t fully understand to launch carriers into space. The center seems very close by, but by the time you’re up the front steps of the skyscraper, you realize that it’s actually several kilometers away, and it’s just mind-bogglingly massive! It’s 2,000 kilometers in length, and you can only see the most populous end, where all the engineers and crew live and work. Beyond that, it’s 200-meter-wide black tube that stretches in the most southern, uninhabitable regions of our continent.
Aside from the skyscraper and living complex, and a smattering of smaller, sparkling gems of buildings, it’s desolate out here. No one’s lived in the area for generations, because reservoirs dried up a long time ago. Fortunately, Breathe Easy’s whole business is to provide clean water and air to the world, so when they decided to launch space mining operations, they started shipping in water for their workers, and they got the land for cheap.
Breathe Easy elected to add to the national food system, rather than deal with expensive shipping to a remote desert location. I am not sure, but I suspect they have a deal with food processing businesses to ship fresh fruits and vegetables to towns unlucky enough to live around the edge of the desert.
There’s an absolute horde of ruddy-skinned Ikin working the gardens here. Lots of fruit trees – I saw nectarines and pomegranates, mostly, but also a few plums and figs. I also saw the classic nut tree trio: pistachio, almond, and pecan. I’ve never had enough space to grow my own fruit trees, but I’ve dreamed of having an apple and pear orchard, with grape vines twining their way throughout.
There’s also thousands of my former Gadhavi family on campus, but they’re mostly engineers and scientists with their thick, dark hair hanging in their faces and deep brown eyes lost in notes or the ground. It looks like there must be a call center, because a small army of too-blond Senfte just left the premises for what I assume is their lunch break. And of course, there’s a few jumpsuited Bakalov technicians, who I assume are here to test and maintain the StarTram. The Bakalov do love to scowl and look serious.
The main building is an impressive 4 kilometers tall, as I said, with a 6 kilometer wide base, with grand curves up to a point, like the very tip of a needle. Reportedly, it can hold 500,000 inhabitants, but there’s only 30,000 workers on the project, who work inside the building at any one time. The Ikin probably live off-campus, or in underground housing. The first ten floors appear to be mostly restaurants and shopping, which probably provide employment for spouses of the Senfte in the call center, and convenient access to goods and services for everyone else.
There’s a few smaller skyscrapers – just a kilometer tall, each – dotting a ring around the outside of the main building. There might be additional housing for the Gadhavi out there, and I suspect the Hou CEOs probably own a building each. There’s only 5 of them total who run the company, but I bet their families are with them. I hope so, because it could get pretty lonely in this expanse of burnt yellow and tarnished blue land.
Someone once told me that in any Hou family, only one spouse needs to work. I don’t believe that, though. If you had good work before you got married, why wouldn’t you want to continue that?
There’s enough buildings that I bet there’s also a few dozen Arany on retainer, as well, to make television shows for the workers, and advertisements for the company. I can’t see any of those delicate, golden-skinned creatures wanting to live in such a remote place, however. They exist for the spotlight, after all.
As at home, all of the buildings here are huge carbon and clear acrylic hives of activity. However, the sunlight is so direct here that each building glitters during all of the hours of daylight each day. It is late afternoon, and we’re at the northern edge of the continent, and the sun is setting in a pink and orange haze in a cloudless sky, and the glass is glowing a hot orange-yellow. It’s so beautiful that I almost don’t want to go. I want to stay here more than just two days. But, I do get to go on an incredible voyage to a new life, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much.
It looks like the other women are starting to arrive. We’re all being housed in one large dormitory-style room, so I’ve been told, because they want us to get used to being in a confined space. Rabbah is, currently, only 500 meters by 400 meters, so it can tightly house all twelve of us. We’ll need to take our space craft, which will be about 200 meters wide and 600 meters long, and add that material in a constructive way to the settlement. Once the second group arrives, we’ll be able to build more habitation with that material, as well. And, as our population begins to grow, we should have a solid shipment schedule back and forth with Earth – we send them raw water, they send us things we need like carbon fiber and silk and crystals.
Anyway, they’re cramming us into one room so we’ll get to know one another. I’m very excited to meet the group, actually, because I’ve never had many women friends, and if the criteria for application was similar to what I filled out, then there should be many like minds on this mission. I’m going to take a break and go meet them!
*
Well, I met all of the women a few hours ago, and they are not as like-minded as I’d hoped. I guess I thought, since I’m a fallen Gadhavi, there would be more, but there’s only one other Gadhavi in the group – Chloe, who was also recently de-casted through an employer’s lawsuit. Everyone else is Bakalov or Ikin, with a couple of Senfte, and, yes, a couple of Araboa!
Until yesterday, I had never seen a member of the Araboa caste in person before. I’ve seen pictures of them on the news, under arrest for terrorism, or that one man who became a member of the Ikin after suing for asylum. Their hair is dark, like us Gadhavi, but their skin is eerily pale, almost pearlescent white, and their hair tends to be curly. The ones I’ve seen before often have thick wrinkles and tangled hair, but these women were composed, clean. I didn’t speak to them much, but I wonder if Breathe Easy cleaned them up before they came onto campus. They’re de facto citizens now, instead of outcasts from far away on the Bainbridge Island Colony, so they should present themselves as citizens I suppose.
There’s also a fascinating-looking woman, named Ihsan. She’s Ikin, but unlike most Ikin I’ve seen – she has thin blond-ish hair hanging down narrow shoulders, framing a thin body. But she’s not thin as though she’s careful what she eats, but like a person who has spent most of her life not eating properly. It’s hard to see. I’ve never seen that kind of blonde hair before, either. She didn’t speak much, but her slight accent makes me think she might be from Gartrikki or thereabouts. Warlords shift the borders so often in the Wild East that it’s hard to keep up with who is calling what chunk of land by what name.
A Bakalov woman named Haven is our mission leader, apparently. She’s worked in Breathe Easy’s West Coast factory for years, managing the techs and seasonal Ikin crew. She says she was good at her job, too, so that means she will know a bit about water purification and air filtration, which will be useful in a non-Earth environment!
She did say some odd things, though. She said that she’d been in contact with the CEOs of Breathe Easy for years, telling them about mining operations and how profitable they are, so in a way, this entire expedition to Europa is her idea. The Jovian moon is the only other source of water in our solar system, and since sending crews into space is so cheap now, it makes sense to harvest from there while we wait for the oceans on Earth to completely settle down. She said that the Hou leaders appreciated her input so much that they promoted her to the lead manager of Rabbah. Well, at least she knows what she’s doing.
I admit, despite being stripped of my caste, I find it hard to take orders from a Bakalov. We aren’t exactly members of our castes, though, if we’re not on Earth, so I should get used to it. Haven is very well-intentioned, anyway. She overdid her mousy hair in an updo just to impress us, and wore far too much blue eye shadow for the occasion – and if I notice these things, they can’t be acceptable! But, it’s a sign of her enthusiasm, and I think that will make life on Rabbah that much more enjoyable.
I told her that I was working as the media liaison for everyone, to help promote the mission to the public, and she thought that was a great idea. I made sure she knew that I would be writing at a terminal for a few hours before going to sleep, since I had to finish this entry. Haven has a very tight schedule planned, and I’m sure she’ll come in here any minute to check on me and make sure I’m going to bed. That’s the Bakalov, though! Efficient to the T, and demanding. I know efficiency – what personal assistant doesn’t? – but the demanding part will take some getting used-to! I suppose that comes from years of keeping Ikin in line. Laborers are always stubborn.
We’ll be getting fitted for suits tomorrow. I don’t know too many details, but I do know that we’re getting special full-body suits that can help us handle the three-week trip through zero gravity. Bone loss was a serious problem for early astronauts. Thankfully, businesses have solved that problem for us. I hope we can customize them a little bit, as well.
I was the first one here, which they requested so I could work on another entry. The main building is huge – 4 kilometers tall by itself, an impressive accomplishment in any city, but since we’re in the middle of the Dust Bowl Desert, it gets direct glare from the sun that is almost blinding when exiting the train. As you approach the building, you can also see their launch center, the StarTram, which uses magnets in some way I don’t fully understand to launch carriers into space. The center seems very close by, but by the time you’re up the front steps of the skyscraper, you realize that it’s actually several kilometers away, and it’s just mind-bogglingly massive! It’s 2,000 kilometers in length, and you can only see the most populous end, where all the engineers and crew live and work. Beyond that, it’s 200-meter-wide black tube that stretches in the most southern, uninhabitable regions of our continent.
Aside from the skyscraper and living complex, and a smattering of smaller, sparkling gems of buildings, it’s desolate out here. No one’s lived in the area for generations, because reservoirs dried up a long time ago. Fortunately, Breathe Easy’s whole business is to provide clean water and air to the world, so when they decided to launch space mining operations, they started shipping in water for their workers, and they got the land for cheap.
Breathe Easy elected to add to the national food system, rather than deal with expensive shipping to a remote desert location. I am not sure, but I suspect they have a deal with food processing businesses to ship fresh fruits and vegetables to towns unlucky enough to live around the edge of the desert.
There’s an absolute horde of ruddy-skinned Ikin working the gardens here. Lots of fruit trees – I saw nectarines and pomegranates, mostly, but also a few plums and figs. I also saw the classic nut tree trio: pistachio, almond, and pecan. I’ve never had enough space to grow my own fruit trees, but I’ve dreamed of having an apple and pear orchard, with grape vines twining their way throughout.
There’s also thousands of my former Gadhavi family on campus, but they’re mostly engineers and scientists with their thick, dark hair hanging in their faces and deep brown eyes lost in notes or the ground. It looks like there must be a call center, because a small army of too-blond Senfte just left the premises for what I assume is their lunch break. And of course, there’s a few jumpsuited Bakalov technicians, who I assume are here to test and maintain the StarTram. The Bakalov do love to scowl and look serious.
The main building is an impressive 4 kilometers tall, as I said, with a 6 kilometer wide base, with grand curves up to a point, like the very tip of a needle. Reportedly, it can hold 500,000 inhabitants, but there’s only 30,000 workers on the project, who work inside the building at any one time. The Ikin probably live off-campus, or in underground housing. The first ten floors appear to be mostly restaurants and shopping, which probably provide employment for spouses of the Senfte in the call center, and convenient access to goods and services for everyone else.
There’s a few smaller skyscrapers – just a kilometer tall, each – dotting a ring around the outside of the main building. There might be additional housing for the Gadhavi out there, and I suspect the Hou CEOs probably own a building each. There’s only 5 of them total who run the company, but I bet their families are with them. I hope so, because it could get pretty lonely in this expanse of burnt yellow and tarnished blue land.
Someone once told me that in any Hou family, only one spouse needs to work. I don’t believe that, though. If you had good work before you got married, why wouldn’t you want to continue that?
There’s enough buildings that I bet there’s also a few dozen Arany on retainer, as well, to make television shows for the workers, and advertisements for the company. I can’t see any of those delicate, golden-skinned creatures wanting to live in such a remote place, however. They exist for the spotlight, after all.
As at home, all of the buildings here are huge carbon and clear acrylic hives of activity. However, the sunlight is so direct here that each building glitters during all of the hours of daylight each day. It is late afternoon, and we’re at the northern edge of the continent, and the sun is setting in a pink and orange haze in a cloudless sky, and the glass is glowing a hot orange-yellow. It’s so beautiful that I almost don’t want to go. I want to stay here more than just two days. But, I do get to go on an incredible voyage to a new life, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much.
It looks like the other women are starting to arrive. We’re all being housed in one large dormitory-style room, so I’ve been told, because they want us to get used to being in a confined space. Rabbah is, currently, only 500 meters by 400 meters, so it can tightly house all twelve of us. We’ll need to take our space craft, which will be about 200 meters wide and 600 meters long, and add that material in a constructive way to the settlement. Once the second group arrives, we’ll be able to build more habitation with that material, as well. And, as our population begins to grow, we should have a solid shipment schedule back and forth with Earth – we send them raw water, they send us things we need like carbon fiber and silk and crystals.
Anyway, they’re cramming us into one room so we’ll get to know one another. I’m very excited to meet the group, actually, because I’ve never had many women friends, and if the criteria for application was similar to what I filled out, then there should be many like minds on this mission. I’m going to take a break and go meet them!
*
Well, I met all of the women a few hours ago, and they are not as like-minded as I’d hoped. I guess I thought, since I’m a fallen Gadhavi, there would be more, but there’s only one other Gadhavi in the group – Chloe, who was also recently de-casted through an employer’s lawsuit. Everyone else is Bakalov or Ikin, with a couple of Senfte, and, yes, a couple of Araboa!
Until yesterday, I had never seen a member of the Araboa caste in person before. I’ve seen pictures of them on the news, under arrest for terrorism, or that one man who became a member of the Ikin after suing for asylum. Their hair is dark, like us Gadhavi, but their skin is eerily pale, almost pearlescent white, and their hair tends to be curly. The ones I’ve seen before often have thick wrinkles and tangled hair, but these women were composed, clean. I didn’t speak to them much, but I wonder if Breathe Easy cleaned them up before they came onto campus. They’re de facto citizens now, instead of outcasts from far away on the Bainbridge Island Colony, so they should present themselves as citizens I suppose.
There’s also a fascinating-looking woman, named Ihsan. She’s Ikin, but unlike most Ikin I’ve seen – she has thin blond-ish hair hanging down narrow shoulders, framing a thin body. But she’s not thin as though she’s careful what she eats, but like a person who has spent most of her life not eating properly. It’s hard to see. I’ve never seen that kind of blonde hair before, either. She didn’t speak much, but her slight accent makes me think she might be from Gartrikki or thereabouts. Warlords shift the borders so often in the Wild East that it’s hard to keep up with who is calling what chunk of land by what name.
A Bakalov woman named Haven is our mission leader, apparently. She’s worked in Breathe Easy’s West Coast factory for years, managing the techs and seasonal Ikin crew. She says she was good at her job, too, so that means she will know a bit about water purification and air filtration, which will be useful in a non-Earth environment!
She did say some odd things, though. She said that she’d been in contact with the CEOs of Breathe Easy for years, telling them about mining operations and how profitable they are, so in a way, this entire expedition to Europa is her idea. The Jovian moon is the only other source of water in our solar system, and since sending crews into space is so cheap now, it makes sense to harvest from there while we wait for the oceans on Earth to completely settle down. She said that the Hou leaders appreciated her input so much that they promoted her to the lead manager of Rabbah. Well, at least she knows what she’s doing.
I admit, despite being stripped of my caste, I find it hard to take orders from a Bakalov. We aren’t exactly members of our castes, though, if we’re not on Earth, so I should get used to it. Haven is very well-intentioned, anyway. She overdid her mousy hair in an updo just to impress us, and wore far too much blue eye shadow for the occasion – and if I notice these things, they can’t be acceptable! But, it’s a sign of her enthusiasm, and I think that will make life on Rabbah that much more enjoyable.
I told her that I was working as the media liaison for everyone, to help promote the mission to the public, and she thought that was a great idea. I made sure she knew that I would be writing at a terminal for a few hours before going to sleep, since I had to finish this entry. Haven has a very tight schedule planned, and I’m sure she’ll come in here any minute to check on me and make sure I’m going to bed. That’s the Bakalov, though! Efficient to the T, and demanding. I know efficiency – what personal assistant doesn’t? – but the demanding part will take some getting used-to! I suppose that comes from years of keeping Ikin in line. Laborers are always stubborn.
We’ll be getting fitted for suits tomorrow. I don’t know too many details, but I do know that we’re getting special full-body suits that can help us handle the three-week trip through zero gravity. Bone loss was a serious problem for early astronauts. Thankfully, businesses have solved that problem for us. I hope we can customize them a little bit, as well.
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