1Earth Station.
It was a space station, which was on the outer edge of the Earth's gravitational reach, around 750 Mm (Megameters) from the Earth's surface, or 3 times the distance of the moon. Its primary function was to act as a relay between Earth and the Relay Stations, the stations that stayed in locations near where the midpoint between Earth and Mars, or Earth and Venus would be.
Allen looked out the viewing window, at the blue orb that he could see in the distance. Earth, he thought. So far away. He could see the moon, also, which appeared to be a waning crescent from here. It was a full moon on Earth, he recalled.
Allen adjusted his black jacket, lining it up with his tie-less button-up shirt. He moved his medium-length brown hair so that it stopped short of his forehead's center. He started walking to the larger part of the station, where a three dimensional holographic projection of the Earth Station was being shown.
It looked like a cigar got stuck in a fat old banged-up CD. It had a gear-shaped circular base, where the Earth ships would unload Mars or Venus-bound passengers and take up Earth-bound passengers, and Interplanetary Transports would pick up Venus or Mars-bound passengers and unload Earth-bound passengers. On the top side of this circular base, there were 2 towers near the center. These towers were where the navigators, coordinators, and managers took residence and worked.
That left the smaller, second disk that was fused to the first one on the opposite side of the disk from the towers. This is where the passengers stayed. There was a large hotel, an even larger lobby, a casino, and a huge recreational center in the complex made up of the second disk and the center of the first.
Allen was currently in the recreational area. He passed up the arcades, the bars, and the sports area, uninterested. He had been on Earth Station for a week now, waiting for his transport to Venus. He was going there to celebrate his graduation from college, and his acceptance into the International Institute of High Sciences, or the IIHS.
Allen finally spotted his destination- the Net Bar. It was based off of the old Internet Cafés, but there were three differences- Libations, a waiting staff, and free laptop loans. Allen sat down at the first open table, a free laptop already waiting. He said to a waiter, "A coffee, please." He pulled a Broadband Card out of his pocket and plugged it in. That's where they got you, he thought. You could use the laptops in-store for free, but you had to pay for a way to connect to Cyberspace, the modern iteration of the internet. And not many people carried around Broadband Cards these days.
The computer started up quickly, showing the Skylar logo. Skylar? Since when did companies like this use Operating Systems that were only in their third iteration?
Allen was on the web right as the computer was useable. The Earth Station had a pretty good connection to the Earth Net, he thought. Must be using lasers.
He saw the look on the waiter's face as he saw the Broadband Card when he brought the coffee. He ignored it.
He opened the home page for Universal Live News, a major Internet News Provider. The first headline read "Pentagon Firewalls disabled 52 times in 3 hours, Leak says all attacks sourced from one IP address."
He clicked the link and started to read.
Allen walked out of the bar, tossing his empty coffee cup into the trash. All the news sounded either uninteresting or like bullshit. Downing the Pentagon's Invisible Gate Firewalls once in 3 hours was difficult. A single connection, let alone a single person, wasn't capable of much more than that.
Allen checked the wall. His sense of time was dead on, as usual. 3:30- his long-delayed transport to Venus was coming.
Allen watched the IPTV Venusian II- a relatively small transport- making precise movements to align its doors to one of the Earth Station's super-secure airtight doors.
There were about ten people waiting with him. Early summer wasn't a popular IP Travel season, he thought. There was a loud, resonating 'hfum' as the doorways of Earth Station and the Venusian were secured, and the doors locked together with their counterparts and opened.
The boarding line was quick to gather. Allen had been quick, though, and was at the front. He showed his ID, he showed his luggage certification. He walked down the corridor that linked the Earth Station and the IPTV Venusian II, leaving the range of the artificial gravity.
Allen floated through the doorway, taking in the radical change. The Earth Station and the IPTV Venusian II looked similar on the outside, but on the inside, they were completely different. The Earth Station's interior was covered in tile and digital display walking, while the antiquated Venusian II air bucket was covered in old tile, stained carpet, and other various things one would expect to find in, say, a 30 or 40 year old house.
The Venusian II was probably reliable. Some would say the fact that it still runs perfectly shows that it's reliable. Others would say that a 40-year-old design from the infancy of IPTV, especially one that was about to be admitted to a museum of all places, was an air bucket death trap.
It wasn't very reassuring, the second argument, Allen thought as he floated around in the packet. But he'd have to live with it. Two weeks on this air bucket, and there were no refunds at this point.
He watched the second, wider corridor that was extending from the Earth Station link up with the Cargo Bay of the ship. Allen started to walk down to the cargo bay of the Packet, where passengers were allowed to access their luggage and other materials. He knew the ship's design, having studied projections of the air bucket during his weeklong stay at the Earth Station.
The layout was simple enough- The entire front third was control, with a small section set aside for crew's quarters, the middle half being cargo on the lower 3 floors and passenger living quarters on the upper 3, and the remaining area at the rear being propulsion, navigation systems, and life support.
Allen floated over to and down the tube- there were no stairs in air buckets, they just ate up space- and floated quickly to the lowest level, the Cargo Bay. He attempted to stop him self gently, but being inexperienced in zero gravity, he collided with the ground as hard as a bowling ball would on Earth.
The shock to his knees caught him off guard, but he managed to grab onto the ladder in the tube before he could bounce back up too far, and slipped into the cargo bay. There were a few workers pushing in luggage on dollies, though none of the luggage was his. The workers and the dollies seemed to have magnets in their shoes to keep them from floating around wildly when constantly moving in and out of the cargo bay.
After waiting a few minutes, Allen spotted his luggage on a dolly with some iron crates. He let the worker that had been moving the luggage go back into the Earth Station before guiding himself over to the secured luggage. He ignored the boxes, instead opening the luggage and exposing a mass of electronics. Among the electronics was one particularly attractive device- a flat, white, button-and-screen media player, with the word Skylar engraved between the buttons and the screen.
Skylar was a relatively recently established electronics company. It held the rights to the Skylar OS, the Skylar Medium, and the Skylar Tower Console. The OS was a fairly awkward piece of software to use if you were a native Windows, OSX, or Google user, so it didn't tend to fare well in the markets. The Tower Console and Medium were selling like crazy, though. They were compatible with all the major OSs, ran silently, and ran with efficiency and regularity.
He plugged in a pair of wireless headphones before zipping his luggage closed. He thought he heard the hull of the ship groan, and fear shot through him like a burning arrow. But when he turned around, the doors to the connecting corridor had appeared to have just been shut, behind the workers. Must've been that, Allen thought. It's going to be a long two weeks.
He watched a few of the other passengers come in. There was a blonde mother with a heavily padded baby in a carrier on her chest, who pulled a few bottles and a book out of her bag. There were three men with
Because of the Earth Station's position at this time of the month, the Venusian II had to get closer to Earth, inside the orbit of the Moon, in order to get to Mars as fast as possible.
Allen looked out the window of the outer hallway that he spent his time traversing, while listening to his music player. He could see the Earth in great detail, even through a foot of glass. It had been about two hours since the Venusian II had left the Earth Station.
He barely heard the pilot's order over the music.
"Passengers, brace for impact!"
The ship jerked back, and the lights started to flicker. Allen kicked off the wall in the hallway instinctively, and attempted to move towards the central hallway in the ship, to get as far away from the windows as possible. What the hell is going on? He thought.
There wasn't a second announcement, but there was a second, stronger jerk, followed this time by a horrid noise, and the sound of wind.
Wind.
That only meant one thing.
The hull was breached, and the automatic internal airlock system- the kind to be used in a situation where the normal airlocks failed- wasn't activating.
That, in turn, meant only one ultimate result.
Death. And the worst kind of death, too. Explosion. Due to the lack of pressure in space, the fluids in your body would vaporize, causing your body to essentially explode.
Allen could feel the air thinning. There were screams, but they were getting quieter. Were they just moving farther away, or was it because of the loss of air?
He then realized that his body was trying to move with the air, toward the break that he couldn't see. He tried to grab hold of the wall.
Why was this happening? What did we hit? He thought. He was becoming lightheaded and dizzy. Why?
He was going to die, there was no way around it. Not even a miracle, say a good piece of thermally guarded metal, would save him. He recalled that he was 130,000 km away from the surface. There was absolutely no conceivable way, aside from a shielded emergency pod, that he could get down to the surface without dying. And the surface was the only place to go.
His fingers released the wall, and he went drifting towards where the puncture was. He never saw it, though. His vision was already fading, and he could feel his skin tightening, if only slightly. He was going to explode.
He couldn't move any more. His skin was freezing cold now. He was going to die, his body's fluids vaporizing and exploding out of his frozen skin. And he would be awake for it to happen.
His eyes were locked on the Earth, through the window. The last thing he remembered was wishing he was down there.