Cyber Dreams 3.1 - Luna (Patreon)

Chapter 1! Let me know what you think. :)

-Plum

“If you look out the port, or left-hand, windows, you’ll see the domes of Luna City glittering in the sunlight. Right now, it’s just about noon SLT or Standard Luna Time. Even though the city’s in a period of sunlight, you can rest assured—the domes will darken when it’s time for a bit of shuteye.” The first officer’s voice was smooth and relaxed, and Juliet almost wondered if this was a recorded speech, but then he started to mention current events, like a port-side bar crawl happening in two nights.

She stared out the window, her wonder tuning out the rest of the spiel. Juliet had been jittery with excitement, high on endorphins ever since the shuttle had taken off. It had been better than she’d ever imagined, feeling the helium-3 drive smoothly push them off the planet’s surface and into space at a steady 1.1 standard Earth gravities. Juliet knew some ships rocketed into space a lot more violently, and she still wanted to try something like that, but for her first flight into space, she couldn’t complain about the luxury shuttle.

The flight had been great, and the service even better, but this slow approach to Luna City was the icing on the cake. A massive dome surrounded by dozens of smaller ones glittered in the sunlight, and beneath that miracle of engineering, she could see towers, parks, manufactured streams, and tramlines. She knew some motor vehicles existed on Luna, but most of the people who lived in the main city domes had access to near-ubiquitous public transit. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed softly, watching the glass fog slightly in front of her mouth.

“I’m thrilled to be seeing Luna through your eyes, Juliet. While the visuals don’t compare to some of the footage I’ve found online, I find the shared experience far more wonderful than watching a stranger’s experience alone.” Angel’s voice was hushed, mimicking Juliet’s own awe.

“I’m glad you’re here to see this with me, too.” Juliet smiled and shifted back into the cushions of her seat; the shuttle was maneuvering to place the drive cones toward Luna so it could decelerate for landing.

“Time for one more drink?” her seat companion asked a passing attendant, and the pleasant, very thin, uniformed man with close-cropped, curly black hair smiled and nodded.

“Another Cattaneo and cola?”

“Yes, thank you.” He glanced at Juliet and said, “Can I get you one?”

“No, thank you.” Juliet shook her head, her lips twisting into a small half-smile. The man, Dillon Carter, had grown gregarious and friendly after a few drinks. He’d been pleasant enough and became quiet when Juliet closed her eyes for some introspection so she didn’t hold any ill will toward him. Still, she didn’t feel like letting him buy her a drink. No, Luna was a new start for her, and she didn’t want to start off with any baggage, even something as benign as a drink from a stranger.

“Folks, we’ll start decelerating fairly soon, and you can let your friends and family know you’ll be arriving right on time at 12:27 SLT,” First Officer Nguyen said through the PA system.

Juliet shifted, wondering what it would be like to walk around on the moon, outside the influence of the gravity generator beneath the main dome. The shuttle had maintained something close to a G of gravity with its thrusters and, once free of the atmosphere, had rotated the passenger cabin so that the engines were always beneath their feet. Apparently, the cabin was on a sort of gyroscopic set of arms that maneuvered it outside the open outer hull. Of course, that wouldn’t work in the atmosphere, but the shuttle didn’t need to be aerodynamic in space.

“Will they reseat the passenger cabin?” Juliet asked Carter as he began to sip his latest beverage.

He sighed in satisfaction, draining half the dark liquid in one gulp. Then, as he clinked the ice around, he said, “Probably not. The shuttle will dock outside the dome, so there’s no atmosphere and only light gravity to worry about.”

“We’ll be outside the dome?”

“Only in the shuttle. The docks have airlocks—we’ll walk right through into the dome.”

“Oh, right.” Juliet shook her head, looking down a little in embarrassment.

“You’re doing great! My first trip up here, I was like a school kid getting a visit from the reptile man.”

“Reptile man?” Juliet frowned, puzzled.

“Ah, my age and my roots are showing, I guess. I grew up in Florida Territory. My folks worked for Gomatsu Corp. At the corpo-school, at least once a year, we’d get a visit from a guy who showed us his trained gators and snakes—the reptile man.”

“Were they genned?” Juliet couldn’t imagine a school allowing alligators on the premises.

“Oh, I imagine. They were pretty docile. He even let us pet the gators, and one of them was big enough to swallow a kid.” He shrugged and downed the rest of his drink.

Juliet wanted to know more, suddenly fascinated by the idea of a man bringing alligators to visit school children, but she was interrupted by the first officer speaking again, “You’ll feel a bit more pressure from the drive in the next few minutes, folks. That said, I’d appreciate you all taking your seats and putting away anything that might get messy. Your attendants will be along to collect drinks and recycling.”

“Such a friendly-sounding fellow, that first officer,” Carter said, chuckling softly.

Juliet nodded, closing her eyes and waiting to feel the extra thrust in her gut as the shuttle slowed. “Are you connected to the Luna net yet?” she subvocalized.

“Yes. There were handoff satellites between Earth and Luna. I never lost the wider sat-net.”

“Nuclear. No replies from Temo?”

“No. I’ll peruse the news and public records from hospitals in Phoenix if you’d like.”

“Might as well. I’m really worried about Honey.”

“As am I!”

Juliet kept her eyes closed and thought about Honey’s last message again. She’d been excited, and who wouldn’t be? An opportunity to work in a wealthy estate on Luna, teaching a prodigy how to defend herself? Juliet was filling in the details with her imagination—she didn’t know the girl Honey had been hired to train was a prodigy, but it sounded right to her. Honey was gifted in martial arts, especially with the sword. She’d impressed someone important—someone willing to pay for her to travel to Luna. And now Temo had gone dark.

“Angel, I feel like a bad friend, but I replied right away, didn’t I? I told her to be careful! Should I have dropped everything and gone to her, forced her to skip the job? I couldn’t do that! It wouldn’t have been right. Would I let someone tell me not to follow a dream?”

“You were embroiled in your own troubles at the time, too.”

“I was. I think that’s why I feel guilty; I wasn’t there for her. If we’d spoken, I could have felt the job out more. I could have gotten contact info for her employer. Damn it, where’s Temo?”

“I may have some news on that front . . .” Angel’s voice was hesitant, and she trailed off, something she rarely did.

“Are you debating whether to share what you found with me?”

“There’s a news article, Juliet. ‘Local Fixer Found Dead.’”

“They actually called him a fixer?” Juliet shook her head; why was she focused on that? “What’s the story, Angel?”

“‘Timothy, Temo, Watkins was found dead in his East-Phoenix abode, a victim of driveby gunfire thought to be gang-related. His home was struck with no less than two-hundred bullets late Sunday night. His neighbors reported the incident. No one else was in the home at the time of the attack.’ Shall I continue? There are no suspects and nothing to indicate it had anything to do with Honey. I’m sorry, Juliet.”

“Jeez. Poor Temo. Well, this doesn’t feel random to me.” Juliet frowned, wondering at her lack of emotion; the only thing she could muster was some increased concern for Honey. She’d never met Temo in person and had hardly spoken to him in the last couple of months. Was it normal that she didn’t feel sad?

“Is that a gut feeling?”

“Are you asking if I had a vision or something? No. It’s just good old-fashioned intuition.” The shuttle’s drive had grown steadily louder throughout her conversation with Angel, though it was still nothing more than a background hum—Juliet had the feeling the shuttle was capable of much faster maneuvers and that the pilot kept things smooth and slow for the comfort of the passengers.

As quickly as it had begun, the drive noise faded away, and the shuttle rocked ever so slightly as it set down on Luna. “That’s touchdown, folks! Welcome to Luna! We’ll be securing the docking collar, and then we’ll begin disembarking. Our flight crew will bring your luggage up as soon as you’ve all exited the shuttle. There are restaurants and sitting areas near our terminal, so you’re welcome to take a load off while you wait, but with only forty passengers, it won’t take us long.”

“No automated luggage claim?” Juliet looked at Carter with the question.

“Not for a shuttle like this. We’ll be in one of the private terminals—one of the perks of paying through the nose.” He winked at her and then began fiddling with his seat belt. Juliet followed suit and unbuckled, peering out her window, but all she saw was a gray expanse of plasteel—the side of the spaceport terminal.

“Dang it,” she breathed softly. “I should have been watching out the window when we landed—I didn’t see any of the lunar surface.”

“You can see it from lots of places in Luna City. There’s a great club near the main dome called Dark Side. You can see a long way out from its rooftop deck. Don’t let the name fool you; you can also see the Earth.”

“Oh really?” Juliet’s eyes went a little distant at the idea, imagining the view. “I’ll check it out, thanks.”

“You bet. Glad to have met you, Lucky.” He held out his hand, and Juliet gave it a squeeze with her red plasteel fingers, careful not to smash his bones.

“You too, Carter.”

“Folks,” First Officer Nguyen said, “We’ll begin disembarking now. I’d like to remind you that Luna has its own laws and governance; be sure to refresh your knowledge. We’re pinging your PAIs with the relevant details. Also, please be careful as you stand up—we’re in much lighter gravity than you’re probably used to. Once you pass through the airlock, you’ll be under the influence of the gravity field of the main dome. Take slow, steady steps to the airlock, please.”

Carter and most of the people in the aisle seats stood up, but Juliet sat back, waiting for them to grab their belongings and begin shuffling out of the shuttle. When there was ample space, she stood, stretching and brushing at her dark jeans—she’d dropped a lot of crumbs from her in-flight meal. Her stomach rumbled, and she chuckled; the turkey-flavored protein pie had been delicious but too small to fill her up.

“We really did it, Angel. We’re on Luna, and WBD has no clue,” she was careful to subvocalize; she’d grown a healthy respect for WBD’s ability to snoop her out, and she wasn’t going to leave them any breadcrumbs. Additionally, she rapped her knuckles against her forehead and muttered, “Knock on wood.”

“Juliet, your skull is not made of wood.”

“It’s the closest thing around here.” Juliet hurried down the aisle but had to slow herself and grab one of the nearby headrests for support—she’d veritably flown forward. “I see what he meant by taking it slow and steady.” As she waited for the woman in front of her to start moving, Juliet asked Angel, “How does the dome generate gravity, anyway?”

“It’s a very complicated quantum solution, Juliet, and the details are not public knowledge. It involves using a pair of H3 fusion reactors to generate a tremendous amount of energy that’s put through a Byre-Garnet inverter to create a mass of negative energy, which is carefully tuned to alter the curvature of nearby spacetime. This, when properly calibrated, can manipulate the local gravity to a desired . . .”

“Okay, Angel. You’re right—it sounds complicated.”

“Rumors abound that the tech was developed by one of the early true AIs, Athena. People speculate that the consortium regulating the current generators and the installation of new ones does not, in fact, understand exactly how it works, either. You’ll only find them in major settlements upon relatively slow-moving astral bodies due to the difficulty of tuning the effect of the spacetime curvature . . .”

“Angel, I said I’m good.” Juliet chuckled. She’d heard about the gravity generators and had to study how they’d revolutionized the long-term settlement of moons and big asteroids. Those lessons were just a blur in the back of her mind, filed away with lots of other factoids that she’d thought would never be relevant to her. Despite protesting about hearing more, she said, “It sounds like it’s kind of dangerous, though. I mean, if they’re just copying the tech from something developed by an AI. Like, what if they ‘tuned’ something wrong?”

“Hence the heavy regulation and immense security around the generation facilities.” Angel had a certain tone to her voice that Juliet knew meant to say something like, “I intended to explain things like that if you’d only let me continue speaking.”

“Thanks for the explanation,” she said, knowing some gratitude would go a long way to appeasing her.

“I hope you enjoyed your flight!” the pretty attendant who’d first greeted Juliet said. It was weird seeing her up close, a woman quite literally out of her dreams. Still, Juliet smiled at her, noted her starburst nametag said “Celia,” and quickly waved as she stepped through the round doorway into the docking tunnel. Passing through the circular hallway, she felt her steps gradually grow heavier and knew she was moving into the gravity field of Luna City.

When Juliet emerged from the other end of the tunnel through a thick airlock door, she found herself in a wide-open space that made her think of an airport but bigger, more expansive. Kiosks were set up in clusters where people gathered to access the local network, and a huge board stood a few dozen paces away, ship and flight information displayed in neat rows on its surface. A helpful message scrolled along its top border: "Your PAI can access this information by connecting to the local net and using the following registration code: 7a#44Ft9.”

The curved plasteel wall rose up behind her for twenty meters or so, and then it merged with the tremendous, jaw-dropping curve of Luna City’s central dome. Juliet stood there like an idiot for several seconds, forcing people behind her to walk around as she let her gaze travel the expanse of the dome—it disappeared in a haze of foggy clouds as she tried to follow it with her eyes toward its apex.

When Juliet spun and tried to see the top of the dome, her eyes fell on the distant structures of the city, and her heart sped up; Luna City was like Phoenix if you took all the older square, concrete towers and replaced them each with glorious spires, slender and beautiful, made of glass and plasteel, shining and reflecting the light coming through the dome.

As she pulled her gaze in, she saw smaller buildings and, beyond them, a high, gray plasteel wall in the more immediate vicinity. From reading travel guides, Juliet knew that the wall was meant to keep transient ship crews and passengers from leaving the spaceport and wandering into the city unchecked.

Shaking her head in wonder, Juliet finally got moving, stepping away from the docking tunnel doorway toward a row of comfortable cushioned chairs that faced the terminal. Like most of the passengers lingering nearby, she had to wait for the crew to bring out her bag. Taking luggage to the moon wasn’t cheap; nearly a thousand bits of her fare were to pay for the single rolling suitcase she’d checked. With that in mind, she figured most of the other passengers only had a bag or two, or none at all—it seemed Mr. Carter hadn’t checked a bag, or if he had, he wasn’t worried about being the first to pick it up.

Juliet sat and shifted in her seat to see the tops of the towers in the distance and daydreamed while she waited. She’d only been sitting for five minutes or so before a crew member wheeled out a motorized cart with a couple of dozen bags of various sizes, shapes, and values, from a cheap old duffel that a teenage boy snatched up to a motorized, pseudo-AI equipped, self-propelling trunk that followed a woman wearing a shimmering, gauzy, see-through jumper as she strolled toward customs.

Juliet’s bag, a hard-shelled, scan-shielded dark blue case with wheels and a telescoping handle was on the second load of bags delivered by an attendant. She took it up and started wheeling it beside her, following bold, yellow signs in the shapes of arrows that directed her toward “Luna Gateway and Customs.”

“Are they going to let me take my guns and knife into Luna City?”

“According to the local laws and regulations, as an operator with a valid license, you can request a Luna City weapons license. The city FAQ indicates that you’ll likely experience a three to seven-day wait.”

“What do I do in the meantime?” Juliet frowned, her stomach grumbling again as she passed another port-side restaurant. She saw a man eating a pile of steaming fries, and she couldn’t help licking her lips.

“There are lockers at Luna Gateway Station.”

“Great. So I’m going into a new city unarmed.” Juliet flexed her cybernetic fist and shrugged, “Well, not exactly unarmed.” She followed the light foot traffic, carefully moving to the side as people in carts zoomed past. When she’d gained some distance from the port wall of the dome, Juliet turned back to see that here and there, the plasteel portion of the dome was regularly broken up by enormous, round portholes that gave views of the port exterior—white-gray lunar plains fell away into a black horizon and closer, ships of all sizes and shapes were visible.

Juliet caught her breath and, again, stood in wonder for a while, watching as an enormous vessel floated by, hanging a thousand meters above the lunar surface. The ship was probably too large to land and was in a close orbit to allow shuttles and supply ships quick access. It was a great dark gray, black, and red-painted juggernaut that looked like a cross between a sideways skyscraper and a cuttlefish. “Angel, what’s that ship?”

“That’s Grendel, a Kroger Corp dreadnaught—it’s based out of New Galveston on Mars and is used as an escort for Helium-3 cargo vessels.”

“God, it looks like it could destroy a city.”

“Certainly it could, using orbital bombardment, but there are too many treaties and penalties in place for that to happen; there haven’t been orbit-to-surface kinetic attacks since the Takamoto-Cybergen War.”

“Nope,” Juliet said, turning and continuing her trek. “That doesn’t stop corps from killing their citizens a thousand other ways. Doesn’t stop us from shooting and stabbing each other.” She frowned, upset that her dark thoughts were intruding on an occasion that should be joyful. “Come on, Angel. Let’s see what Luna City is like.”