The flight wasn’t a short one. It lasted for over a day, and figuring out how to take Loki to the bathroom was a feat in itself. He got more than a few odd looks from the other passengers, but did everything he could to avoid talking with them. It helped that several of his fellow passengers were suffering from motion sickness. The stewardesses spent a lot of their time handing out anti-nausea augs and changing sick-bags. More than ever, Sam was glad for his upgrade removing that possibility.

  They had more than enough time to watch the entire series of clown-capers. Even with a lot of the fun taken out of it after putting the actor against the ‘real’ monster, it was still a comedy series.

  Loki seemed to truly enjoy it. It was only a day’s flight to the L-5 Lagrange point where their destination awaited, but that translated into nearly a month of simulated time - something Sam was determined to make the most of.

  It hadn’t felt like it during the Festival. The time between things he needed to do then was so fast that he rarely had more than a few milliseconds to react, if that. That translated to hours in the sim, but unlike the first time he went in, it didn’t feel like it. Consciously, he was only aware of the milliseconds that passed. It was only after, when he recalled it, that he truly felt like he’d spent nearly a month practicing between moves. He could recall every single instant with crystal clarity, remember every word, and even the smell of gunpowder mixed with the scent of elephant bread and fast food in the stadium.

  “Loki,” He asked. “What was the color of the twenty second person we saw in the fair?”

  “Are you talking about the old fat guy or the lady with him?”

  “Old guy.”

  “Red. Why?”

  “Before you got the augment, could you have remembered something like that?”

  “Probably not. It’s neat!”

  “I mean I guess it’s kinda eerie to me. I’m just thinking of all the years I spent struggling to memorize things in school. If I had this I wouldn’t have had to work that hard.”

  “Less work is good. I don’t like thinking as much as you do. I just wanna nap, eat, and pounce on things.”

  “Do you remember the people that walked past the alley the first time I fed you?”

  “No. Why do you keep asking dumb questions?”

  “Huh. My old memory is fuzzy too. I guess I’m still human after all.”

  “Well I’m not, so quit messing up my nap!”

  “Fine, I’ll let you sleep-” Sam started, but was then interrupted by the loudspeaker.

  “THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING. WE ARE NOW APPROACHING THE LOST STAR. PLEASE LOCK YOURSELVES IN, THERE WILL BE GRAVITY SHIFTS AS WE COME INTO DOCK.”

  “Well nevermind, looks like it’s time to be awake now, buddy.”

  Maneuvering thrusters began to fire on the front of the space plane, slowing their approach and easing the spin. Sam felt gravity shift and lighten before he felt all of it stop. Soon he felt himself floating against the straps.

  Inside his carrier, Loki was shouting. “I’m flying! I’m flying! Wheee!”

  Even with time slowed he realized just how fast they were going as they looked out the window. The Lost Star station suddenly appeared in his view and the entire ship rocked as the station’s own spacehook caught them.

  Gravity reasserted itself then as the hook began to slow them and match their spin to the giant station. Now he could finally take a look.

  It was enormous and truly majestic. Two titanic cylinders spinning in the sky, side-by-side. Both were covered by a thick layer of rock, so they both looked like giant spinning tootsie rolls in a way. It was the incomplete ends that truly showed just how large they were - all of wilder could have fit in the titanic maw of jutting steel and rebar. He saw tiny, flickering lights he thought were people at first, but as they got closer he could see that they were minivan sized construction vehicles. Lights glimmered through the entire construction area, looking like stars in a cave.

  Loki didn’t care much about the majesty of it and instead just swiped his paw at the air from inside the carrier.

  “You know you can’t hit something that far away, and it’s actually much bigger than you, right?”

  “I don’t care. I want to slap it!”

  “You should at least enjoy the majesty of this. California’s station is the biggest one up here. There’s a hundred thousand people living on it! It’s a miracle of modern science.”

  “I don’t care! I just want to go outside already!”

  “You are aware that outside up here means the cold dark vacuum of space, right?”

  “I meant the station! I saw the movies! They have trees and stuff in them!”

  “I have to admit, I’m really looking forward to seeing in there. But you remember that TSA guy right? Don’t take chances and run off on your own.”

  “Ugh. Whatever. You’re not my mom!”

  “I’ll let you run around the hotel room, so just relax until then, alright?”

  “Fiiiiiiine.”

  The spaceplane finished its slow descent, being attached to yet another tether that pulled it inside of a massive hangar.

  Leaving the plane was no different than leaving a regular aircraft, and entering the station was much like entering a regular airport. The number of scans, checks, and other processes they had to go through more than doubled what happened on the ground, and Sam felt like his insides had to be half cancer after all the x-rays. The officials did scan his card, however, and directed him to a shuttle that would take him to his hotel.

  He pulled out his cell to fire off a quick message to his grandfather that he’d arrived, only to find it had no signal. He asked a yawning woman at an information kiosk and she had this to say, “The colonies are giant faraday cages, and we don’t just set up cell networks like on Earth. Phones and neural-links won’t run on our system, you have to buy a local connector aug for local calls or go to the communications center for outward bound calls. Information lockdown is tight to prevent infiltrators from sneaking in and leaking data.”

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  “I can’t take other augs.”

  “Then you’ll have to use the landline phones. There should be one in your hotel room.”

  “What the hell is a landline phone?”

  “You know, connected with a wire? Like the old days?”

  “Those were before my time.”

  “Whatever, suit yourself.”

  Sam shook his head and decided to step out into the greater colony.

  “Whoa. This… it’s amazing.”

  The entire colony was inside of a giant tube, with towering skyscrapers reaching towards the center from every direction. Both ends of the city were capped off with gigantic steel plates, and thin strips of green ran in regular intervals down the tube. The movies made it seem like it was mostly green, or even natural landscape. Here it looked like a gigantic metropolis wrapped around itself with a few parks.

  “It’s not what I expected. It’s still incredible.”

  “It’s just a big boring city! I don’t care! Let’s go to the hotel already.” Loki said.

  “You know most communications are cut off in here. You make me wish I could shut yours off sometimes.”

  “If I didn’t talk you’d never hear anything smart.”

  “Yeah yeah, sure Loki.”

  Sam looked for his shuttle, slightly disoriented by the fact that he had to figure it out for himself now. His cell wouldn’t even give him location data. Having to find the shuttle location from memory was odd. Not hard, especially with his new augment, but odd.

  He stepped inside the vehicle, surprised to find an actual driver behind the wheel in the front seat.

  “Surprised, huh?” Said the well trimmed man with

  greying hair at his temples. “Didn’t anyone tell you we only have real humans driving here? No remote work.”

  “Uh… no.”

  “Yeah, well not only is this place a giant Faraday cage that doesn’t let signals out, they’ve also got jammers up so nobody can send signals here.”

  “What? Why?” Sam asked, setting the carrier on the seat. Loki promptly decided the entire conversation was boring and curled up to fall asleep.

  “Two reasons. First, everyone up here has to work,” the man said, starting the shuttle and pulling into the street. “Second, it’s so the robot can’t do shit here. It has a great big network back on Earth. That’s what makes it so strong.”

  “Ah,” Sam thought, “So that’s why the infiltrators collapsed when the warframe did.”

  “Just like this place, if you can’t talk the talk, you can’t walk the walk. Look at me,” He gestured to the twisted cityscape. “I spent most of a century doing investment banking on Earth. I liquidated all of it and came up here. Once I got here, what could I do? That’s right. Drive this shuttle around. I’m grateful for it, I really am. I don’t know which of your parents is a movie star, or a celebrity or something, but whoever got you up here is probably gonna be a lot less powerful up here than they were on Earth.”

  The sensation of driving in the colony was disorienting, and once again Sam was glad he no longer needed to experience motion sickness. Every single road was curved, and it felt like they were always driving down.

  “My grandfather runs a cybernetics company.” Sam said.

  “An antique guy, eh? Not too much call for that kinda thing up here. Now if he were an aug maker, he’d live in the fancy side of the colony.”

  “The fancy side?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, ya see, this is the city-side. Most of the residential space is here. The really, really rich people - politicians, trillionaires, even a few multi-billionaires live in the other tube. The one you see in the movies.”

  “Yeah, it looks way different than I thought it would.”

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “The address I’ve got isn’t the local hotel. It’s on the fancy side.”

  “Is that gonna be a problem?”

  “Nah, it’s a longer drive. Expensive as hell though. Is your grandpa famous or something?”

  “I dunno. I mean, I’d never heard of him just a few months ago, but he was on the news.”

  “Oh, so you didn’t grow up a rich kid, huh? You sound kinda country.”

  They drove past one of the parks, which struck Sam as kinda sad. A long, thin strip of dirt covered with fruit trees. None of them seemed to be particularly big or healthy.

  “Yeah nah, Idaho.”

  “Wait, your grandpa isn’t that guy that was on the news the other day, was he?”

  Sam considered. He wasn’t exactly told not to say anything, and this place seemed pretty safe. All the jamming and scans meant this was supposed to be the one place infiltrators couldn’t break into.

  “He was, yeah.” Sam said.

  “Holy shit, you should have said he was a colony builder! I’m talking to a future fucking king!”

  “Last I checked we still live in a Republic.”

  “Yeah fucking right. Take a look out that window. What do you see?”

  Sam looked, seeing a line of buildings covered in neon red lights. Thinly clad women and men walked along the sidewalks, talking to people in parked cars.

  “Wait, are those-?”

  “Hookers? Yep. That’s the red light district. Those people were actors, actresses, CEO’s and the ultrawealthy before they moved up here. They ended up there because everyone here has to work, and people this rich don’t give a fuck about the law. You come up here, you get stripped of everything you own to buy an apartment, and then you end up selling your ass on the streets so they don’t send you back to Earth. Rent up here will fucking ruin you. Permanently buying a house will ruin billionaires.”

  “Wait - I saw people building more of the colony! I thought that’s where most people here worked! Why the hell would anyone choose to do that when they could do something else?”

  “You see what happened last week? Nah, they don’t put that in the news, do they? One of those construction vehicles had a malfunctioning thruster. Got flung off into space so fast nobody could catch them. They died out there slowly suffocating and starving. By the time we get a spacecraft out to them all they’re gonna find are mummies, and that’s even if they’ve got the best augs. Life support in those only lasts a few hours, a day tops. There’s a reason I drive a shuttle, kid. Not everyone is cut out for that risk.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Yeah, and that’s if you get a choice. People in the red light district? They don’t get a choice. The people that run this colony have a racket. You piss ‘em off, you end up in that alley or in a bodybag. People that own colonies aren’t millionaires or billionaires, they’re fucking trillionares. Nobody tells them what to do. Not even the government. So congrats, prince. You’re gonna be a fucking king when you grow up. You’ll be the one putting people in those buildings.”

  He couldn’t get motion sick, but Sam felt violently ill. “No. I won’t. My grandfather wouldn’t either.”

  “Hey, I’m not here to insult you. That’s just what power does to you after a while, you know? Absolute power corrupts everyone absolutely. Besides, driving people is only half the job. Telling people the hazards up here is a public fucking service. You gotta watch your back or they’ll be shooting your coffin into space.”

  They stopped behind a long line of cars leading to a tunnel. Occasionally the tunnel would close, a few minutes would pass, and then the tunnel would open again. Next to it he saw another tunnel. A few cars would come out, the tunnel would close, and then a few more would come again.

  “Don’t get me wrong. Back on Earth I had the power to do that kinda thing. Run a line of coke off a hooker’s tits, get a Euphoria aug for a great time, all that shit. I started off just like you, all sweet and innocent. Of course that’s all in the past. Now? Now I drive a shuttle.”

  “Was it really worth it to come up here? This isn’t what I imagined at all.” Sam asked.

  “Is it worth not being a brainwashed puppet to the robot? You bet your fucking ass it is. Being stuck down there is the same as being dead. You’d know that better than me though, right? I saw a video of that attack. You look a lot like one of the figures they blurred out that was fighting those robots. You must have impressive augs. I got a memory aug myself, you see.”

  Sam stopped and thought about Ian’s last words before he passed out.

  “Don’t let it catch you...”

  They drove into the tunnel, and there was a booming click. Then the tunnel opened again and they drove out into the other side of the colony.

  Another tunnel, this time full of greenery. An artificial river ran past hills and Hollywood style villas. There were a few spots where he could see fish jumping. Atop one of the hills he could even see the famous Hollywood sign, stolen from California’s hills. It was gorgeous, but Sam couldn’t savor any of it.

  As he looked out, he could only see rot.

  —

  After the shuttle dropped Sam off, it didn’t drive straight back to the airport. Instead the driver made a detour to a fast food place. The driver bought the hundred dollar hamburger and as he reached the window, he gave the man working it a knowing look. As he took his burger, he handed off a small black chip.

  The cashier smiled back, carefully pocketed the chip, and then passed it onto a customer that came in a few minutes later.

  The hulking, heavily augmented man wore a black, well tailored suit. As he made it back to his own car, he slotted the chip into the side of his head. He smiled.

  “We’ve got a big fish this time.”