Chapter 16: 4 Vesta

Our touch-down point had been near the smoother ‘north’ pole of the asteroid. We could not land on the pole itself as that spot had been converted into a large hatch. When I say ‘large’ I really mean gigantic. It was probably one of the largest hatches ever made with a span of approximately five hundred meters across. Inside the pressurized pressure hatch (not a typo, as the hatch was an inflated oblate spheroid to save mass) was the shipyard cavity where Gambado, humanity’s next interstellar escape craft, was being constructed.

Instead, we were now located a kilometer and a half outward from the center of that hatch. Aside from our landing terminal, there were dozens of other surface structures located at this same radius forming a ring around the central hatch. The reason for their placement being that they matched the diameter of the circular gravity train tunnel buried a few kilometers below. The gravity train habitat being the primary living spaces for almost the asteroid’s entire human population.

Our airlock linked with that of the landing terminal and there was a noticeable hiss as the pod’s pressure dropped to match the current atmosphere of the terminal. Ohmu said that we would be breathing an increased concentration of oxygen to compensate for the lower pressure. Our shells were more tolerant of the reduced pressure with less chances of edema or other medical issues arising.

The airlock opened and Sova and I pulled ourselves out of the shuttle pod. The very light local gravity was nowhere near strong enough for us to walk, or bunny hop like on the moon. Here on Vesta, if you fell from a one-meter height, it would take almost three seconds to hit the floor. So, our movements were mostly made by pulling ourselves from handhold to handhold.

There were only two people waiting for us in the arrival and departure terminal. My iris’s chrono display showed that the local time was 3:40, which was the middle of the asteroid’s late-night period. One of the two waiting was Uxe in her shorter, older shell. The other was a male who embraced Sova.

I pulled myself to Uxe who wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long hug. We eventually broke apart and stood there sizing each other up. Something about her shell bothered me slightly. Something about its proportions. I brushed those thoughts aside when I saw her grinning at me.

“Oh, John, how I have missed you! You look great in your new shell by the way,” she said.

Ohmu must have warned her that I’d taken a new shell. “I’ve missed you also, Uxe. I like your shorter shell, but I have to admit that I am surprised you went back to a smaller one after how you had been brought up.”

I was referring to her childhood almost two hundred years ago when the master AI had custom-made her to have the adult body of a pre-teen.

“Well, I spend so much time in micro-G that having a short compact body helps me move more freely,” She explained. She then broke away from me and gave Ohmu a hug. When they broke apart, I had to laugh when Uxe ogled a bit at the android’s new larger breasts. I just shrugged when she looked at me questioningly.

Next, Sova introduced me to Bale, her roommate and maybe partner. He was a first-timer who specialized in metallurgy and welding. Sova had told me back on Prancer that they had been off and on partners for almost a decade, and that her vacation to Earth had been their first real long-term separation in that time. This meant that she was unsure of what their status would be upon her return.

She had not expected any issues, but you never knew how spending a year or two apart would change things. She might return to find they were simply roommates again and not the lovers as she hoped. Uxe already knew Sova and Bale, so she mostly stood aside while I was both introduced to Bale and then made my goodbyes to Sova.

I was brief with both as I could tell they were both eager to talk privately and begin their reacquaintance. I could tell by the twinkle in her eye that things were looking promising so far, at least from her perspective. She had admitted that if they decided to stay together there might be children in the near future.

Uxe, Ohmu, and I took a nearby mag-lift down to the gravity train level leaving Sova and Bale to their discussion. While we were descending in the lift, Uxe and I began to update each other on our separate lives. The first and most important item was news on how our mutual children, the twins Alek and Kela, were doing.

I learned that my son Alek was on the Earth and was back teaching self-reliance and self-defense. He had rediscovered and mastered most of the lost martial arts over the past century and had even created a new one based upon the best of them all. This new one included forms for low and zero G and had to be taught in one of the orbital stations.

We were interrupted by the lift arriving at the gravity train level. Uxe led while Ohmu assisted moving me out into the corridor in the faint gravity. We continued our discussion as we proceeded down the corridor. I learned that my daughter Kela was more of a concern to Uxe than Alek. She had been one of the original creators of the artificial reality which we had built in order to contain, and hopefully fool, any arriving Assemblage digital presences.

After a century-long sabbatical to become a mother and travel the real world, Kela had returned to the simulated reality project. Worse, she had set her digital clock to experience that world at a snail’s pace. Or, to explain it more simply, she was living slow while the years of the real world passed her by.

Uxe was not sure if Kela was doing so to stay fresh for when the artificial reality was needed for the expected enemy agents or just because she was bored with living. Uxe dumped the problem of Kela into my lap. I was instructed to spend time in that virtual world when I returned to Earth and try to talk some sense into our daughter. If anything, I was to at least find out her state of mind.

After we finished discussing our kids, Uxe skimmed what she had been doing over the past century. Mostly this involved her work in various advanced sciences. I was not surprised to learn that she had not had any additional children since our twins. She had always been focused on her work and I had been the primary parent involved with our kids when we had been together.

I don’t mean that she had been a bad parent. She had done a better job than I had when I had had my first career and daughter. She just got distracted at times. I made sure the kids knew how important their mom’s work was. Our ages at the time had reinforced this. I was the age of a grandpa and had already seen what a career did to a parent, but Uxe was fresh and in her prime.

Next, we moved onto my recent life. I just covered the basics and Uxe knew me well enough to know that she could not push me for more until I was ready to share. Finally, we reached a natural pause in our conversation. After studying me for a moment she said, “You look like hell, John. The torch trip must have been wearing. Do you want to rest for a while?”

I was tired. Despite only being awake for the past six hours the high G trip had exhausted me. I told her I could use a nap. She asked me if I was up for a nap in the full gravity of her quarters or if we should instead find a low gravity apartment nearby.

“Let’s continue on to your place,” I said after thinking about it briefly. As much as the low gravity would allow my body to heal faster, I slept better in gravity. Ohmu guided me to a stop as we arrived at the subway terminal. I shook my head at the phrase. We were hundreds of millions of kilometers out in space and we still needed to use the subway to get to Uxe’s home.

The terminal we arrived in was occupied by about a dozen other tired-looking humans who were waiting zombie-like for the next subway train. That train had gone shooting by at nearly three hundred kilometers per hour just as we entered. In a couple minutes it would be back around and stopping at our terminal. The others here had not even looked up or come out of virtuality when the cars had shot past.

Finally, it was back and slowing to a stop next to our waiting area. The train tunnel was in full vacuum which meant there was an airlock to pass through to go aboard. We lined up in single file to pass through the narrow opening hatch. When it was my turn, Ohmu pulled me through and helped me to the aft end of the subway car where Uxe was already settling herself into a very basic gravity couch.

The couches were mounted one above the other and I took the lower while she pulled herself into the upper. Ohmu simply stood ahead of us and gripped an overhead handhold. Soon, the airlock had sealed and the car began moving. It was a maglev so all I heard was a gentle steady hum as the acceleration grew, pressing me back into the padded seat.

The track we were on was a perfect circle and had a diameter of three kilometers. As we continued accelerating I saw a second subway train pass by in a blur. That train was on its own set of tracks and was decelerating to stop at another terminal. As our speed increased and the G forces built up, our couches swiveled around their long axis, so the previous outward side of the car became our new ‘down’.

As the sense of gravity grew, our car’s curving course became a never-ending hill which needed to be climbed. I felt heavier and heavier as the car neared its full speed of six hundred kilometers per hour. Now, in this orientation, my rotated couch appeared to be beside Uxe’s instead of below it. The previous inner wall of the subway car was now the new ‘up’. The windows on that side now looked like skylights and through them I could see the constantly circling mass of the gravity train directly overhead.

The gravity train was the main living habitat on the asteroid. It was a series of train car modules which filled the round twenty-meter diameter tunnel. The tunnel itself was a continuous loop that curved around forming a perfect three-kilometer diameter track. The magnetic track on the tunnel’s outer wall was over nine kilometers long. The gravity train filled all of the tunnel with its tail meeting its head.

Each ‘car’ of the train was circular in cross-section with five levels filling nearly the full diameter of the tunnel. The middle two levels were the largest with an upper, curved roof level being mostly corridors for transport and the lower two levels for utilities and additional transport corridors. Still, just the middle two levels each represented over one hundred and fifty thousand square meters of living space.

Some of the train was not yet fully constructed with about two thirds still just a shell and open to the vacuum of the torus. Still, there were over two hundred thousand square meters of living space in the three-kilometer-long segment currently finished and habitable. With the train’s constant six hundred kilometers per hour rotation, the entire area had a perceived gravity of nearly one full Earth G.

The large diameter of the train’s course virtually eliminated any noticeable Coriolis effects. The exceptions to this were the two-small train-within-a-train transport shuttles which ran on narrow interior tube ways on the top and bottom decks of the overall gravity train.

The top shuttle would take you ‘ahead’ in the direction of the gravity train’s rotation. This would make you feel heavier as its motion added to the train’s motion. This was the ‘heavy’ shuttle. The other, lower deck shuttle went in the opposite direction. That shuttle was known as the ‘light’ shuttle due to its localized lessening of the overall gravity train’s speed and resulting felt centrifugal force.

Our subway car finally matched the speed of the gravity train and was lifted upwards and docked inside a well in the larger train. After the seal integrity was confirmed and the airlock doors opened, we climbed out of our couches and walked off. Thanks to the AI-controlled magnetic levitation, the gravity felt Earth normal and the ride was perfectly smooth with no noise or vibration.

Outside the subway docking area was a narrow corridor leading fore and aft. Uxe said her quarters were just a half kilometer away in the aft direction. Thankfully, instead of walking or taking the ‘light’ pod, there were also small automated wheeled carts for us to ride. The carts resembled the Segways from the old era but were fully automated and more stable.

The ride was exciting and I was glad the cart was automated, as the corridor was very narrow. We also had to slow and wait at the periodic wider sections for oncoming traffic more than once. We even passed through a ‘park’ which was a hundred-meter-long green space filled with trees and plants. The outer train walls of the park were full projections which made the small bit of nature seem boundless.

It was currently night time in the park and my irises switched to enhancement mode. We also slowed to a crawl as there was an assortment of small animals living in the park which we did not want to injure. Despite the pauses, the ride to where Uxe lived only took a few minutes. Once there, we climbed a stairwell up to the third level and found the entry to Uxe’s suite of rooms.

“Here we are, John. I hope you like it,” Uxe said as the main entry slid open.

I followed her inside and found a fully furnished and spacious apartment. The far wall immediately caught my eye, as it was displaying a three-meter-high by twelve-meter-long high-resolution image of a tropical beach very like Heels in the Sand. Off over the ocean, I could see the glow of dawn approaching. The simulation went beyond the visual, as I could smell the salt air and hear the distant roaring of the surf. Hidden fans were also causing breezes, which were synchronized to the waving palms in the image.

To the right of the living space was a standard auto-kitchen and eating area. Uxe had never been one to spend a lot of time cooking so I imagined the auto-chef being the main food preparer. To the left of the living room was a comfortable-looking seating area. Beyond was a hallway likely leading to the apartment’s sleeping areas. There was a man in the seating area. He was awake and seated but currently off in virtual.

His shell must have noted my attention and ended his session and when he stood I went to greet him. I noted that he appeared dressed for the day. Since it had only been a few hours since I had arrived on the asteroid, he was clearly an early riser.

“This is my partner Rami Rahaat,” Uxe said, introducing the man to Ohmu and me.

I shook hands with the man. His shell was probably in its early fifties and near the same age as Uxe’s but I got the sense that the personality inside was much older.

“It is nice to meet you, John. Uxe speaks often of you and of your early years together,” Rami said. “I should thank you for agreeing to rescue her from her jungle upbringing all those years ago,” he added.

I laughed. It had been a long, long time since those days. “You’re welcome, but I don’t think you really need to thank me. Uxe would have surely escaped from that life on her own just as soon as she realized that she was free. I only accelerated the process slightly.”

“Still, much of her personality is due to your actions and the decades you two spent together,” he said.

I could tell that Uxe was slightly embarrassed by the conversation and steered our discussion back to Rami. I learned that he and I had actually met at a training class over eighty years ago. We were both in different shells at the time but I was able to remember speaking with him occasionally during the week-long session. He had been an expert in power generation and apparently that was still his specialty as he was a team leader in the power generation systems on the asteroid.

Finally, Uxe broke up our chat and explained that I needed to rest. Rami apologized for keeping me and said that he would be going. He and Uxe shared a hug and a kiss and I saw that he had a small travel bag with him as he left the apartment.

“Is he traveling somewhere?”

“Yes and no. He will be gone for a few days touring the fusion reactor field located on the asteroid’s south polar area. After that, he is going to be staying with an old lover of his while you remain here. I figured that you might be more comfortable with just me and Ohmu as companions,” Uxe explained.

I was too tired to fully comprehend the full implications of her statement. That confusion quickly disappeared as she led me to her bedroom suite’s attached bathing area and began undressing. I noted that her petite older shell was still in great condition with no wrinkles or solar radiation damage. She must still follow the rigorous exercise and stretching routines which she had in the past. She finished and began to help me remove my clothing.

Soon, after being gently scrubbed in the hot water of the shower, we hugged more deeply and shared a long kiss. My young shell responded to her ministrations, and we were soon caressing each other more intimately throughout the air-dry cycle. She then led me to her large bed where we further reacquainted ourselves ... twice.

After our passions were sated, I lay spooned to her backside with my arms wrapped around her much smaller shell. She fit perfectly and it was a great way to recover from the high-G trip. Despite the half-century that had passed since our last get-together, I felt as close to her now as I always had.

That her current partner was off somewhere while I lay here in their shared bed did not concern me greatly. Uxe would never have done something deceitful and she had reassured me beforehand that it was perfectly fine with the two of them. I also learned that the old lover who Rami would be staying with had also been recently re-shelled. I suspected that he was enjoying the novelty of a younger lover as much as Uxe was.

Yes, it felt comfortable to be lying here beside my old partner. In the darkness of her bedroom, something about the back of her head caught my eye. I triggered the smart-iris’s enhancements and saw that Uxe’s shell had rows of data transfer contacts lining the backside of her skull. She had an enhanced cranial interface.