🌘

“Sure, why not?”

[Zeta liked that]

Before you can even finish your sentence, Zeta pulls up on the handle and turns it, causing a sudden hiss of depressurization. It pulls the hatch in.

You’re near the “top” of the tower, where an enormous steel cable is fastened. Following it out to the far wall, you see the firmament of glass and water directly above, with the crescent moon directly ahead. Off to the side you see the other end of the habitable strip, the residential block, in bright sunlight.

Zeta climbs through the hatch and stands up on the side of the metal shell of the module.

“Keep your magnets on Aydan,” it says. “If you lose your grip it’ll be a real gentle fall but you’ll hit the surface laterally at a speed that will shred you alive, it’s rotating way faster than we are.”

It offers it hand to you. You take it and climb up out of the room. Standing on the outside of the training room you can see the whole world sprawled out around you in a circle. The garden is vibrant green as the sunlight sweeps over it. You turn away from a bright glint of light as the sun reflects off of the pond at the world’s edge. Seeing it all at a distance, the colony never looked so big. But beyond the glass is far bigger.

“Wow, I’m glad I keep agreeing to your crazy ideas,” you say.

“I thought it would be pretty,” Zeta says. “My colony’s way bigger, you couldn’t build a stable structure like this. But there are cables like that,” it points. “And you can take a gondola to the other sections.”

“I’d love to see a big colony like that,” you say.

“Well someday you should come and see my homeworld! I could come and see the Moon too.”

“Yeah, I’d like that. Korolev kinda sucks though. We could go to Hayabusa, you can rent a mech and drive it around outside there.”

“Wherever you want to go,” Zeta says.

You feel lightheaded in the lower pressure and take deeper breaths trying to compensate. Even with your uniform’s thermal-regulated fabric, it’s cold here. You can’t see the Moon anymore, but in the distance you catch sight of two bright stars you recognize as Venus and Jupiter. The rotational plane of the colony is currently in line with the ecliptic, it seems. Unfathomable amounts of knowledge and labor went into building this little world, the pinnacle achievement of humanity some would say, all for kids like you to be molded into the ultimate weapons and sent out to places as far as your eyes can see. You wonder what the future will hold.