Microstory 2719: Previously...on Gatewood

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About six light years from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, there is a small red dwarf named Barnard’s Star. Four planets orbit the host, and since they are all so close to it, they are affectionately known as hot rockies. Due to its local inhospitability and its proximity to Earth, it was assigned a very special job. Earth is the seed and heart of life and civilization. Everything in the Sol system belongs to those who live there. Until Castlebourne came along, it was assumed that Sol would remain the central hub of the galaxy. It only makes sense. In order to preserve their resources, early colonial coordinators decided that Barnard’s Star would be a giant celestial junkyard.

For centuries, the Core Worlds have enjoyed a post-scarcity economy, where every basic need is met, along with many not-so-basic needs. It is entirely plausible and easy to live quiet comfortably without spending a proverbial dime. But it is still an economy, and it is based on a currency of energy credits. Every day, each citizen accumulates a baseline amount of credits, just by existing. Many leave these credits in their private accounts, and don’t do anything with them. Others donate to those in need—not those who need it to survive, but those who want something more.

If you find someone to donate their credits to you, or if you contribute positively to society, you can earn extra credits. Citizens elect the legislators who determine how much a contribution is worth, but it doesn’t really have to have all that much technical value. You could be, hypothetically speaking, the worst painter in the world, but if you paint a piece of art, and provide it to the public, you have made a positive contribution. Even if no one likes it, it is something that you created and provided, so it counts, and you will receive credits for that. It probably won’t be much, but it will at least blip above the baseline. Bigger contributions lead to bigger payouts, and importantly, combining credits with others results in a total that is more than the sum of its parts. Because sharing and cooperation are, on their own, considered positive contributions.

Since most amenities are provided by the state for free, what do energy credits give you? They can pay for two major things: building something at significant scale, or traveling somewhere of significant distance. That is precisely why Barnard’s Star was chosen as the junkyard. It is relatively close, so getting there is fairly easy, and once you’re there, you can go just about anywhere else. There is always an interstellar cycler on its way there, so you won’t have to wait long. You spend your credits on a ticket to the junkyard, and then you’re free to apply for your own transportation. Upon approval, rather than using up Sol’s resources, you take what raw materials you need from Barnard’s Star. The celestial bodies which orbit it are called the Gatewood Collective.

Very few entities live in the Gatewood Collective on a permanent basis. Most are waiting for their applications to go through, or are actively engineering their vessels. These parties may range from an individual to entire fleets of colonists. Only the staff stick around. It’s there job to decide who gets what, and to make sure colonists are doing what they’re meant to be doing. They are the coordinators and the police. All of this stuff is mostly free, so there is no reason to be greedy, and more to the point, there is no reason to stay for any longer than you have to. Build what you need, then bug out.

Not everyone follows these terms, even if they agreed to them before they left their prior homes. That is where the police contingency comes in. So far, it’s been mostly okay; just a few conflicts. Definitely nothing major. There are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect one of them to be limited to this one use. As previously stated, the planets are far too difficult to colonize. It’s not entirely impossible, but it’s fundamentally ludicrous. And yet, some are trying.

Another six light years from Barnard’s Star is another red dwarf called Ross 154. There is nothing special about it either, so there wasn’t any interest in colonizing it. In the middle of the 25th century, construction began on a stellar shotgun around Ross 154. This was no weapon, though. It was designed to harvest the violent forces of the flare star, feeding into a massive capacitor. It took about half a century to build, and about another half to charge. Once the energy was at its peak, they fired the weapon, not towards Barnard’s Star, but those four hot rockies. The pulse is traveling at the speed of light, which means it will take years for them to arrive. In preparation for this, all other shipbuilding has been relegated to safer regions of Gatewood.

Once the pulses hit their marks, each target will break apart in a matter of only a few days. Anything attempting to live on it will be utterly destroyed. The whole reason it took so long for them to build the stellar shotgun in the first place is so they could run extremely extensive tests on the possibility of life on the hot rockies. They found none. Even extremophiles don’t want to live here. But some humans do. A group of refugees from Proxima Doma made their way to the Gatewood Collective after their own planet suffered a world ending cataclysm. They came to find a new home, and they didn’t want to go far. They were told that Barnard’s Star was the perfect destination, but they failed to recognize or respect the rules. They want to stay here, which would already set a dangerous precedent, but not only that; they want to live on a planet, as they had before.

It’s not everyone. Plenty of migrants from Doma have come, and started work on their ships. Many didn’t bother coming this direction at all. Gatewood is more for people who want to leave the stellar neighborhood. The majority of the refugees wanted to stay close by, and since the destruction of their homeworld was not their fault, the government agreed to ferry them anywhere within 25 light years.

This one small group of rebels, however, don’t like that Barnard’s Star is only meant to be a pitstop. They think that the legislators should treat it like any other Core star. But if they had, there would be no conflict. If they had given it the same colonial designation, no one would have wanted to live here; not if they were so gung-ho on planets. They are all uninhabitable, and the star itself is nothing special. They only want it because they can’t have it. And that is no good reason at all.

The pulses have been sent, and there is no stopping them. The reason it’s taking so long is because of how powerful they are. They’re designed to obliterate planets. Even if the government wanted to back out of this mission, they would be physically incapable of it. The process has already begun. They’re just waiting for the results to come in, and it will not be long now. Chief Asset Manager, Pribadium Delgado should not be entertaining these people’s complaints. If they don’t leave Barnard’s Star e in the next few weeks, they are going to die. That is a certainty. Now, she could remove them forcibly, but that would be a PR disaster. Squatter’s rights were a thing back on Earth when there was such a thing as homelessness, and they still exist today, just on greater scales. Simply landing on their tiny little settlement is incredibly taxing thanks to the heat and terrain. But here she is, trying to negotiate a peaceful solution. The former Domanians are not having it. And now, they’re trying to take her hostage. Hilarious.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 21, 2534

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They were abandoned and stranded in the middle of interplanetary space in the Gatewood Collective. Their communication systems were advanced, but a signal could only be so powerful in such a small form factor. Ramses hadn’t given them quantum messengers to store in their pocket dimensions, but even if he had, those were mostly gone. When Spiral Station was thrown into the quintessence bubble, all of their pockets exploded. He built a new one for each of them while they were trying to escape, but these were only a stop-gap measure until he could fabricate a new lab for himself. Their supplies would be enough for them to survive here for a few days, but if they didn’t find somewhere to land soon, they could be in trouble.

When they reappeared in the timestream on August 21, 2534, another ship was waiting for them. It didn’t even reach out first. Whoever was on it was expecting them to arrive, and at that very second, for it transported them inside of it instantly. It looked like the average starship bridge, with the horseshoe-shaped console that allowed everyone to see everyone, as well as the viewscreen. The difference here was that the room wasn’t rotating. It didn’t need to. It was equipped with dimensional gravity, which was one of the few technologies that The Shortlist granted the vonearthans use of following The Edge meeting. That wasn’t why it was here, though. One of the people on the list was evidently in command as she was sitting at the head. It was Pribadium Delgado. “Hey, guys. Perfect timing. I could set my clock by your appearances...for now.”

That was a weird thing to say, but Leona chose not to address it. She stepped forward. “Miss Delgado, it’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you again too, but if you want to get technical, I’m not a miss. I was selected to be Gatewood’s Chief Asset Manager.”

“Which means...?” Mateo asked vaguely.

“We don’t have presidents or prime ministers here,” Pribadium began to explain. “This is nothing more than a materials depot. Travelers only come for what they need to get out of the stellar neighborhood. Not many of us live here permanently, but we are necessary to manage the resources. I’m not in charge of the people so much as I’m in charge of the stuff. I decide who gets what, how much, and from where. Well, I don’t do it alone. There’s also the Chief Distribution Manager, the Chief Allocation Manager, the Chief Fabrication Manager, and the Chief Personnel Manager. We’re all chiefs, but I’m at the tippy top. I’m the Chief Chief.”

“Fitting for you,” Mateo said to her. “Congratulations.”

“They wanted someone from the Shortlist,” Pribadium went on, “and we agreed that one of us ought to be here since they’re getting so much time tech. They might have asked you, but your condition makes that impossible.”

“I’m not jealous or mad, Pribadium,” Leona said. “I think they made the right call. The question is, what call are you making now? Is this a rescue, or something else?”

“It is a rescue, of course,” Pribadium agreed, “but it’s true, I need to make sure that you don’t cause any trouble. I’m not saying you need to leave, but you won’t be going anywhere—or doing anything—without an escort.” She glanced over at the rest of the crew.

“I was hoping to build a new lab,” Ramses said. “We can’t leave until I do, and it’s going to take some time because I lost a very valuable piece of technology. It’s quite sensitive, even in light of the Edge, I would rather be able to work alone.”

Pribadium nodded. “Gatewood is a well-oiled machine. I don’t have to micromanage anyone. If you need to build a lab, we will find you a pre-excavated asteroid, and I will personally monitor you there.” She pointed at one of the crewmembers on the starboard side, who started tapping on his console, and then looked back at Ramses. “I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

“No, I’m not mad about that,” Ramses insisted. “I trust you to be there. I just didn’t want someone who, uhh...”

“Doesn’t really understand the nature of the time tech?” Pribadium guessed. “We still hold secrets. The Edge meeting didn’t result in the promise of one hundred percent transparency. These guys know not to ask questions.”

The crew had been silent this whole time, but one of them tensed up. “Yes, sir, no questions, sir!”

“He’s joking,” Pribadium said with a smile. “I mean, what he’s saying is true, but his tone isn’t genuine. They’re not my minions, or however it looks from that side of the console.”

“From this side, it looks like you’re judging us,” Romana blurted out.

Pribadium laughed. “Yeah, that’s one purpose of the horseshoe layout. It’s quite standard. The main purpose is so no one has to crane their neck to look at anyone else, but there’s a reason why there’s all that open space in the center, and why it’s two steps down. It’s nice to meet you, by the way. Pribadium Delgado.” She reached her hand out towards the center.

“Romana Nieman.” She stepped up to a little platform at the top of the horseshoe, which was designed specifically so the captain could shake hands from this vantage point. “I’ve heard of you, but not much.”

“We’ll get to know each other better as Mister Abdulrashid focuses on his lab.” Pribadium looked over at the crewmember who she pointed to earlier. “Have you found us a good candidate?”

“I assumed you wanted something at the extreme,” he replied. “I found one in the CDS that is pretty remote.”

“Perfect,” Pribadium decided. She looked over to someone on the port side. “Plot a jump.”

“CDS?” Mateo asked Leona in a whisper.

“Circumstellar debris shell,” Leona answered, loud enough for the whole team to hear, in case they also didn’t know. “Like the Oort cloud, but a generic term. Almost every star system should have one.” She looked back up at Pribadium. “What is your teleportation range? It’s gonna be a year for us if it’s only one AU per second.”

Pribadium smirked. It’s not the AU-range. It can jump a light-month in one second.” She looked over at her pilot again. “Cycle us out.”

After a minute of burst mode, they were at their destination, on approach to an icy planetesimal which the viewscreen said was about three kilometers long at the major axis and two at the minor. One of the crewmembers suddenly stood up. Her section of the console rose up with her. “Sir. I’m picking up a distinct power signature. Someone is living out here.”

“Mauve alert!” Pribadium ordered. “Registrar?”

“It’s empty!” the registrar insisted. “This body should be empty! It’s barely excavated, just enough for a standard hopper dock and a pressure seal!”

“It’s not that one,” the woman who alerted them to the problem clarified. “But it’s nearby. Computer, highlight the signal.”

The view zoomed out, panned over slightly, then zoomed in to a different object that was reportedly roughly only 11 million kilometers away from the first one.

“Get me over there right now,” Pribadium ordered.

They jumped.

Someone who hadn’t spoken yet stood up. “Should I prep an away team?”

Pribadium thought it over, her eyes quickly drifting over to Team Matic.

Leona sighed, not upset or annoyed, more just to focus her breath. “We better earn our keep.”

Angela rematerialized her helmet, and let the visor slam shut. The rest did the same at varying speeds. They started to teleport individually to the celestial body. Before he left, Ramses flicked a comms disc up to Pribadium. “If you can’t figure out how to integrate this into your comms array, just hold it against your mastoid.”

The first thing that Ramses and Mateo saw once they caught up was Romana falling on her face, right at their feet. “Careful,” Mateo told her as he was lifting her back up. “Ice is slippery.”

“It’s not slippery, though,” Marie contended. She lifted her boot, and it looked difficult.

Mateo did the same. Yeah, it was tacky, like they were on the surface of a solidifying tarpit. “What the hell?”

“Ice out here works differently than it does under an atmosphere,” Leona explained as she started to walk. “Keep moving. Our suits might actually be welding themselves into it.”

“Why did she fall then?” Mateo questioned.

“Because she tried to slide,” Angela said.

“I’m a little scamp,” Romana said cutely.

“Testing, testing. One, two, three. Testing, testing. You and me. Testing, testing. Catch a movie?”

“Comms work,” Mateo responded to Pribadium.

“Our scans are detecting a modular habitat; family-sized. One rotating coin, one dormant hammer, three shuttles. An in situ harvester, and a fusion torch drive. This thing is a laser bore, which isn’t technically a weapon, but we’re gonna move away. We’ll keep an eye on signal integrity, though, and stay in teleporter range. We’re not picking up any lifesigns, but it could be sufficiently shielded. We’re not exactly equipped with the best sensors as they are typically not needed.”

“Aye, Captain,” Leona acknowledged.

“Aye, Captain,” Pribadium said back.

Leona generated a hologram of a coin-shaped object. Everyone adjusted their positions to get a better look at it. She tapped on the image demonstratively. “I want us in teams of two, back to back. Romana and Angela, jump right here to twelve o’clock. Ramses and Olimpia, over at three o’clock. Marie and Mateo, nine o’clock.”

“There are seven of us,” Angela reminded her.

“I’ll be alone at six o’clock, I’ll be fine,” Leona assured them. “We’ll only be three hundred and fifty meters from each other. Now, get into position, and go on my mark. We don’t have weapons, but prepare for resistance. Before you go, lower your center of gravity. Not all of us have teleported to a spin habitat before. It can be jarring. It’s not the same as regular mass gravity.”

They all got into position, Leona gave the signal, and they jumped. They immediately heard weapons fire. Mateo looked over to see bullets ricochet off of his daughter’s suit. Nothing was getting through, and it didn’t look like it was hurting her, or Angela, but the shooting needed to stop anyway. He used his HUD to calculate the source, finding one gunman hiding in a thicket of bamboo trees between the ladies and Ramses and Olimpia. Mateo jumped over there, and shoulder checked him.

The shooter was barely fazed. He pulled out a handgun, and started shooting Mateo instead, point blank. They were more powerful than the firearms of yesteryear, to be sure, but they weren’t even making a dent. Mateo stood there for a moment, taking it. Finally, he knelt down and snapped his fingers at a pile of dead bamboo leaves. They caught fire, which began to spread. The man stopped shooting, not because he was scared of the fire, or even of losing his bamboo. He was just profoundly confused. As the fire suppression system was putting it out, Mateo had enough time to disarm the man, confiscating the rifle from the ground as well.

Leona and the rest of the gang were here by then. She helped the stranger up, and set him down sideways in a hammock. “Hello,” Leona began in a friendly voice after receding her nanites until she was wearing normal clothes, maybe showing a little too much cleavage. “My name is Leona Matic. That’s my husband, Mateo, and our wife, Olimpia. Ramses, Angela, Marie, and Romana,” she said, pointing. “Report.”

“I’m nobody. Just tryna live my life.” He adjusted awkwardly. “Could we go somewhere else? I feel quite vulnerable lying back like this.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Leona replied with a smile. “I understand that you were trying to protect your home. And if you weren’t—if you’re just a sadistic murderer—then I’ll go ahead and write self-defense on the report, okay? But you’re going to answer my questions, because you are currently violating Gatewood law, as well as Core World law and Earthan law. Just all the laws. So my first question is, were you aware of that?”

“I was,” the squatter admitted.

“Okay. Did you think you just wouldn’t get caught, or was it an active act of defiance against the establishment?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a bit of both.”

“All right, I can work with that. Are you alone?”

“I have...a staff. Varying degrees of intelligence.” They heard a rustling in the leaves several meters away, and looked over to see a beautiful woman on approach. Now, she—she was showing too much cleavage. She just stood there with a mousey look on her face once she spotted them. The squatter looked at her over his shoulder. “That’s my companion model. She won’t hurt you.”

“Do you have a guard model?” Leona pressed.

The squatter sighed, annoyed. “He’s in maintenance at the moment. You couldn’t have come at a worse time. Unless...you planned it that way.”

“We didn’t know you were here,” Leona promised. “We might end up neighbors if the CAM lets you stay.”

“She would do that?”

“I doubt it, but it’s not impossible. You’re supposed to leave. Why didn’t you just leave?” Leona looked around in general. “At low subfractional speeds, this shell’s raw materials would last you hundreds of years, or thousands if you shut off internal systems, and go on ice.”

“It’ll last me a million if I stay put,” the squatter reasoned.

“But you would be in danger for those million years, since you are here illegally,” Leona volleyed.

“It’s illegal anyway,” he argued. “I didn’t have the resource credits. I stole this comet. I was trying to stay quiet.”

“Where are you from, partner?” Leona asked, seemingly shifting topics.

“Earth,” he answered.

“You don’t need resource credits if you’re in Sol. You could have taken something from the Oort cloud.”

He shook his head. “No one would take me there. It costs fuel to decelerate. Ironically, even though Barnard’s Star is farther away, it was easier to get here, because the cyclers run constantly. After deceleration, I snagged myself an escape pod, and drifted all the way out here until I found a suitable shell.”

“Hm,” Leona said. “That’s probably true, isn’t it?” Silence for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry, but the boss has already seen you. If we had encountered you on our own, we would have kept our mouths shut, but there’s no going back now. You are at her mercy.” She looked at her clock. “And we’re scheduled for a new assignment at the end of the Earthan day, so we won’t be able to advocate for you unless you come with us right now, and face the music.”

They returned to Pribadium’s ship, where they did attempt to advocate for this man, to the best of their ability. Pribadium said that she would take their recommendation under advisement, but when they returned to the timestream a year later, he had been in hock the whole time, and his hermit habitat had been completely dismantled. She claimed to have no choice, that if she didn’t enforce the laws, others would seek to be exceptions, and the entire system would collapse. Her proposal was that they take him out of there, somewhere very far away, since he had no resource credits, and wasn’t allowed to stay. They would take her request under advisement.

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