# Chapter Two

Author: Jaffea
Tags: Plot Development, Sci-Fi, Story Series

Chapter
Two
3/17/2160-
In orbit of planet Fitzgerald
Space is big.

Those
were Joel's thoughts upon awaking in his annoyingly cramped seat. The fabric of
spacetime began to dissolve into a spherical distortion as he could see from
the cramped, circular window. A distant pattern of stars and what appeared to
be a cerulean gas giant emerged from the rupture in space. Joel, along with the
two hundred or so passengers in the spacecraft alongside him, was thrown back
in his seat upon entering real-space and accelerating using conventional
Newtonian reaction engines. Cheap and inferior to modern gravitophoton-based
engines, but they got the job of short-range transportation done relatively
smoothly. 
The
engines which allowed faster-than-light travel, of course, operated via a
completely different manner. They used a field of dark energy to massively reduce
a vehicle's inertial mass by several orders of magnitude consequently shunting
it into an alternate spacetime where the speed of light was increased,
colloquially termed 'Subspace'. The superconducting coils required to produce such
a field, however, could also be used at a lower power setting to easily create
powerful gravitational fields at the press of a button. They were prohibitively
expensive to manufacture and utilise, which thus led many cheap transportation
companies, like the one transporting Joel, to use them exclusively for
faster-than-light travel only. Miniaturised coils could also be placed in the
floors of spacecraft to create artificial gravity, though Interstellar
Expeditions had a propensity to spend the least sum of money on its liners as
possible. Joel was strapped in to his seat without any gravity. 
The
transport liner had passed through the Subspace rupture fully, creating a brief
flash of Cherenkov radiation which momentarily fizzled out as the rupture collapsed
into itself and ceased to exist. The bubbly sensations of the mass-reducing
quintessence field had passed from his stomach and the cerulean gas giant was
now fully in view, rapidly approaching the shaking spacecraft. The target
destination was now easily visible: A slowly rotating torus interlaced with
eight major support struts, glowing metallically with the reflection of the
yellow star Amscom. A scarlet light on the end of each of the support struts
blinked brightly against the relative blackness of space. The thing was quite
large for a station, perhaps eight kilometres in diameter. 
The
transport closed the distance to the station within ten minutes. The reaction
control system activated with an audible whoosh
and decelerated the spacecraft, now throwing Joel into the seat ahead of him. He cursed quietly,
returning a brief, "I'm sorry," to the elderly man ahead of him who had turned
about face and given him an accusatory glare. Apparently his curse was louder
than he initially thought. 
The
spacecraft docked with the station with a sudden jolt of deceleration. After
thirty seconds the atmosphere pressure of the craft was equalised
barometrically with the pressure of the station's atmosphere and the airlock
slowly became ajar. The stale atmosphere of the spacecraft leaked out and was
supplanted by blissfully fresh air. The captain's voice came over the speakers
and gave the passengers permission to exit the craft. Joel unbuckled his
seatbelt and hurriedly waddled through the curved surface and into the hallway
of the station. 
"Gravity,"
he sighed in a thankful tone. "What a lovely sensation." 
He
stood proudly, letting his muscles and 185 centimetre frame become accustomed
to the lost sensations of the gravitational interaction. He had been in that
damned cigar tube for over three days- evidently Interstellar Expeditions
couldn't afford fast Subspace drives either. Joel's black suit blended nicely
with his ebony skin. He had a professional cut of straight black hair- a trait
inherited from his combined African American and Swedish heritage- which he
kept neatly combed. A black suitcase lay at his side while he stretched his
arms. 
"Lishenshe
pleashe." That drawled, slobbery request interrupted his train of thought. He
turned to face the voice. It was a heavy Paxir man dressed in a blue attendant
uniform, at least half a metre taller than he was. "Pardon me?" Joel asked the
man.
"Lishen-
Lish-," the alien groaned in combined embarrassment and frustration with the
complexities of the human lingua franca. He was massively tall, at least 230
centimetres, with grey reptilian skin and four muscular mandibles that
supplanted where a pair of lips would normally be expected on a humanoid. A
thick otter-like tail, lacking in fur of course and resembling that of a lizard,
extended from the back of his flight uniform. Thick, dreadlock-like tentacles
of cartilage extended from the alien's scalp, the Paxir equivalent of hair. The
mandibles were essentially the equivalent of the reptilian species' lips and
could communicate English sounds, if crudely; sibilant sounds in particular
were difficult to pronounce due to the lack of a tongue. 
The
alien stumbled a few more times before it finally clicked to Joel as to what
the man wanted. He produced a plastic card from his pocket- his traveller's
license, which gave him clearance to be aboard the station. He handed it to the
man, who accepted it with his massive tetradactyl hands. "Joel Olofsson?" he
asked upon placing it in the laser scanner. 
"That's
me," he replied with a slight Swedish accent. 
"Here
you are, Mr. Olofsson. Welcome to Fitzgerald Station." He handed Joel his
license, curving his mandibles upwards in an attempt to imitate a human smile.
He smiled in return and left the spaceport, travelling via the station-wide
conveyor belt. 
The
station was crowded with people hustling this way and that. He recognised that
the station was an entertainment facility based on the various exhibits and
tourist destinations visible along his conveyor travel. Posters of government
endorsements were plastered along the walls crookedly. Most of them were copies
of a popular military recruitment advertisement featuring an armoured Jaffean
woman holding a rifle heroically with alien letters scrawled atop her. Joel
mentally translated the letters as best he could. "We can beat the Colonial
Revolution," he read to himself. "The UAS is staying right here." 
He
pondered that thought for a time and let out a sarcastic snicker. The United
Ascendancy of Stars was the coalition of three interstellar governments which
formed the overarching legislative body of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way:
Jaffean, Paxir, and human. The first, a feline species of humanoids; the
second, a massive reptilian species of humanoids; the latter, a simian species
riddled by war since its inception tens thousands of years ago. Humanity, after
briefly warring with the former two species over a territorial dispute (and
losing miserably), begrudgingly accepted a peace treaty on the condition that
they become a member species of the Ascendancy. Not desiring to be driven to
extinction at the hands of a significantly more advanced alien empire, the
United Nations had little choice but to accept. 
The
real joke, however, wasn't in how the Ascendancy handled other species, but
instead how it handled its own colonies. The empire was legislatively divided
into two regions: The Core and the Periphery. The Core consisted of a sixty
light year region (roughly a day's travel using Subspace propulsion) radiating
from Jaffea and encompassing Pax'ilstal- the Jaffean and Paxir homeworlds,
respectively- and exhibited economic decadence and an egotistical bourgeoisie
populace. The Periphery was everywhere else- mining colonies, agricultural
worlds- places where people busted their proverbial asses just to sustain a
decent living. The population in the Periphery, as of the 2160 interstellar
census, constituted seventy nine percent of the "United" Ascendancy of Stars. In
spite of this, their political power and socioeconomic representation was
comparable to the power of a worker bee relative to that of the hive queen. 
Thus
the Colonial Revolution. The UAS-UN war was the first war the UAS had fought in
nearly a century, and it wasn't cheap. For the past twenty years after the war
had ended, the colonies were furious of the rampant increase of quotas and
demands due to the costs of the war. A small number of the colonies violently
protested, resulting in their deaths. That had the exact opposite effect of
quelling the rebellion, however, instead sparking a number of colonial
rebellions and violent uprisings. The cancer of rebellion quickly spread across
the Periphery, creating a general feeling of angst in the Ascendancy. The
military became much more powerful, quickly annihilating any colony daring to
rebel. Any mention of political dissent was essentially a free ticket to either
prison or execution. 
That
was why Joel popped a snicker. More than three quarters of the empire, of which
he was a citizen, was living day-to-day busting their proverbial asses to make
a living, while the corpulent bourgeoisie of the Core was gorging themselves on
overflows of money and exquisite Jaffean alcohol. Fitzgerald Station was what
the UAS termed a "recreation resort," which was a method for the government to
entertain its Periphery citizens and quell feelings of dissent. Families who
could save up enough duzzels- the standard Ascendancy currency- could usually
afford to stay at such a facility for three days of the Earth-standard year.
Then it was back to mining and farming for the remaining year. That cold fact
reduced his spirits somewhat. Seeing all of the families scuttle about the
station, eager to have fun, eager to live, made him slightly depressed
knowing that their fun would be dashed by decadence and indifference soon
enough to make it all fade from memory. 
He
had forgotten his turn. The thought snapped back to him that he had a destination in mind and he hurriedly
held up his arm, tapping his smart watch and projecting a small holographic
display of the government pamphlet he received three days prior on Earth.
"Gravito-Metrik Office, suite 24E," he read aloud. He looked up hurriedly. The
red sign post reading 24E whizzed by
as he rode by on the conveyor belt. "Ah, shit," he soliloquised, hurriedly
grabbing his suitcase and exiting the belt at an adjacent divergence in the rubber
belt. It took him a few minutes to arrive back at 24E, but soon enough he
stepped within a metre of the white doors and they parted with a sibilant hiss.

The
human saw an office lobby with white walls, indicative of the laboratory
setting he was expecting. There was a puzzling lack of people in the open
lobby- there was a skylight above the door he had just entered displaying the
blackness of space; a coffee machine with no attendees; no people walking the
hallways. But there was a calico Jaffean sitting behind the desk in the centre
of the room. 
"Pardon,
monsieur?" the alien asked in a definitively male voice. "Are you lost?" 
"No,"
Joel returned, walking up to the receptionist. "I accepted a research position.
I wasn't told anything other than that, I'm afraid." 
"Ah!"
the alien said with a flash of remembrance. "You must be monsieur Olofsson, non?" 
He
nodded. 
"Good!"
he almost shouted. Joel was taken aback by his twitchy mannerisms. The man's
jaw twitched at regular intervals and his feline ears made subtle vibratory
stirs every once in a while. Joel recognised these as nervous ticks, but simply
dismissed the man as being stressed in an office job. The calico leapt out of
his seat and slammed open the desk side door and then stared into the skylight
for a moment, as if awaiting approval. 
Joel
backed up; this guy was odd, to say
the least. "Is everything alright?" he probed nervously. He briefly rotated around to observe the skylight, seeing if
anything unusual or interesting was there in space. 
Nothing.
Just a fourteen billion light year wide splatter of white dots of light against
a black background. 
Stars
and utter silence. 
"Terrific!" was the alien's reply. "Let's
go to-" he stared into outer space
again, awaiting a go-ahead from the heavens above- "Your office!" 
The
human simply shot him a cautious, mildly threatened gaze. A slight blue glow
seemed to emanate from the feline's whiskers, emitting some sort of sparkling
ephemeral ectoplasm during his last shout. He had seen the effect before in
some of the more poverty-stricken regions of the Periphery: Stardust. The
artificial blue powder was a metamaterial capable of entrapping gravitophotons
within its crystal lattice, giving its users not only a terrific high (brought
on by the actual dust) but also a limited ability to project small gusts of gravitomagnetism
from their appendages as though they exhibited telekinesis. 
The
Jaffean sniffed heavily and coughed, his breath expelling a crackle of blue
electricity. His straight cerulean hair stood on end. "Come on!" he almost
shouted, pointing in the direction of a white-painted corridor on the right
side of the large room. "Right this way!"
So
Joel followed him, albeit reluctantly. There were a few other scientists
meandering through the hall, reminiscing about their flow charts and Feynman
diagrams and gravitophoton momentum yields. Most of them were either human or
Jaffean, he noticed, but there were a few Paxir lumbering about who, at nearly
two point five metres tall, had a difficult time squeezing into the short
hallway. 
The
Jaffean druggie and Joel arrived at a white door with a black stripe of paint
running along the midsection. The name tag on the right side of the door read: J. Olofsson- PhD Theoretical and Applied
Physics. He was proud to have a sign displaying his achievements. At twenty
seven solar years of age, possessing a PhD was a sign of either kissing the
professor's ass to get ahead or busting one's own to yield the same effect.
Joel performed the latter extensively, and it propelled him farther and faster
than anything he imagined. 
"Hey,"
Joel asked, turning about to look towards the Jaffean on his left, "So, is
this-" he interrupted himself. 
The
man was gone. 
He
looked about the long and narrow hallway, seeing where he could have
disappeared to. There was no door behind him where he could have run off. And
the hallway was fairly lengthy, so the alien man being able to run that
distance in such a short time, even being intoxicated with Stardust, was
unlikely. The aliens were digitigrade, however, meaning that they could be
fast, stealthy and sneaky. Their tetradactyl paws made nearly zero noise even
when sprinting.
"Ah,
fuck it," he cursed under his breath, quickly losing interest in the druggie's
activities. "I've had a long enough day." He angrily punched the red button
under his name tag and the door split apart along the black division with a
pneumatic whish. The human did a
quick look around and stepped through the threshold of the metal doorway. 
The
room was mostly white, with a singular black stripe running through the cubic
walls horizontally. There was a desk opposite the door on the upper left of the
room, equipped with a surprisingly fancy-looking computer and office tools, as
well as a printer and fax machine resting just under the slick black computer
monitor. On the right of the room was a wooden bookshelf laden with tomes of
all sorts. An orange holographic clock was placed on the wall a metre above and
to the right of the desk; it read 7:12
p.m. in civilian time. Overall, the office looked exquisitely crafted, and
must have been the size of a large master bedroom. He noticed a rectangular
doorway a few metres away from the desk with a hinged door on the side; it led
to an equally well-equipped restroom. 
Joel
was interrupted in his aweing with a rustling sound coming from around the
bookshelf, which had a right angle and consequently partially obstructed the
view. The first things that came to his mind were schol'ieores. The damn
animals were from the Paxir homeworld, Pax'ilstal, and had run amok across the
galaxy ever since the species' debut into the galactic arena nearly a
millennium ago. They resembled hairless, reptilian gerbils with blood red scaly
skin. They very often didn't carry disease, but regardless, the little bastards
loved to hide in starships and buildings- and seemed to have a certain affinity
for eating electrical wires and paper, making them quite a nuisance. 
Joel
swore and readied his suitcase, prepared to smash the alien rodent's skull in.
The rustling ceased almost on cue, as if the little bastard knew he was coming.
He rounded the right angle of the bookshelf and looked down. 
But
there wasn't a rodent. 
A
Jaffean stood up, a book still in her hands and a confused look prominent on
her muzzle. The alien feline was quite short, standing at a full height of
maybe a metre and a half, and resembled a melange between a tabby and leopard
cat. Her fur had a base of fawn striated with spotty rosettes of obsidian and
smears of light fawn striating her fur. The light fawn of her base coat
sparkled beautifully between the rosettes of black striating her fur in
discontinued spotty stripes. Her eyes were light green with a vertical slit
forming her pupil, and a metre-something long furry tail, splotched with black stripy
rosettes and a fawn base, extended from her sacrum. Her hair was an indubitably
distinctive component to her appearance, resembling a mid-20th
century, shoulder-length pixie cut of wavy zebra-coloured hair, most of it
black but striated with vertical white stripes. 
The
realisation and ecstatic surprise registered simultaneously with both of them,
but only one of them had the courage to speak. 
"Floriil?"
weakly escaped Joel's lips.

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/980591