HOME | DD

Description
The intense heat crawled through the gaps in the space suit's insulation with voracious speed, creating a surreal haze of panic yet utter exhaustion. Such a deluge of contradictory impulses flooded over Claudio as he struggled to gather himself to move, despite the present danger. Still he stirred himself to stumble forward. His willpower gathered and soon he surged forth with a fierce determination, through a corridor consumed entirely with flame. Ira followed close behind with equal fervor, for this was their only chance to escape.

They were ten feet from the door to the escape pod. Claudio felt sweat drip down the back of his neck. "Hold on just a second... just one second..." Claudio whispered under his breath as he prayed that the structural integrity of the corridor would hold against the intensity of the flames, at least long enough for the both of them to make it. Five feet now. The heat was getting far too agonizing to bear. Every moment was a hour long, or so it seemed. They kept rushing forward. Four feet... three... Claudio begged that his fortune would continue, but he cringed as he heard a blast behind him. Well, shit. Ira was directly on his tail. He probably felt the blast first.

The explosion rocked the entire area around them. It was most probably located at the other end of the space elevator due to the fact there was no immediate rush of air that would be the product of close proximity to rapid decompression. Ira and Claudio stumbled as the floor shook. Claudio managed to grasp the handle of the lock to the escape pod. They were finally going to make it out of this death trap, or so it seemed. He turned it, but it wouldn't budge. "Fuck! What do we do?" Claudio continued cursing as Ira, wide eyed, fumbled to find some interface to allow the door to open. Another blast rocked the cabin. Claudio wound up to charge at the door in a last ditch effort of futility to enter the pod. Ira was clearly lacking in logical cognitive function as he stood frozen, and then nearly fell as a third blast sounded throughout the entire room. Claudio charged towards the door screaming wildly in panic and misplaced determination. His shoulder landed with a thud and a sharp pain ripped his arm.

Claudio and Ira, soon realizing the pointlessness of any attempts to enter the pod, began to sprint back the central cylinder of the elevator to search for another, hopefully unlocked, escape pod. Everything was writhing in an inferno, and the other passengers were seeking refuge in other escape pods and finding they were locked as well. There was no doubt the AI had locked all the pods, thus their search was pointless; they still charged on, amidst anguished cries of the dozen or so other passengers. Then finally another blast roared in the corridor, but this time directly to their right.The flames flung themselves in every possible direction, consuming Claudio and Ira. Nearly immediately after the first few split seconds of the blast the fireball vanished instantly as the rush of air out of the room depleted it of all of its oxygen. Claudio flung his arm at an outcrop of metal as air pushed him further and further into the vacuum of space.

He could see Mars, the stars, the sun, everything. It was vastly empty and black. He held onto the wall of the corridor which had a truck-sized hole in its side. His body was completely out of the elevator, in empty space, and he was gripping the only solid and habitable domain for thousands of bleak miles with one meek hand. With the only hand free, he had grasped Ira's arm before he would have been launched into the vacuum of space. Unfortunately, their combined surface area gave too much resistance to the rush of air. Thus was the cruel nature of rapid depressurization. Claudio only held on for a brief moment before he plunged with great momentum in to the great black nothingness about him, utterly and completely floating in space.

What an climactic but abrupt ending to this life, Claudio thought to himself as he closed his eyes and felt himself spiral out along with Ira. His suit had carbon scrubbers which could recycle the oxygen in it, as did Ira's, but they could only function for two days, then he would slowly suffocate as he finally got the adventure he dreamed of. Claudio began to replay how exactly he got himself into this situation...

The sun crested the peaks of the Himalayas, shooting its last cluster of photons at a pleasing variance of wavelength for any observer, however the purplish golden array plastered on the evening sky was never seen by any organism other than the human life form named Claudio. He had no desire to give the once in a lifetime sun set any recognition. He was too preoccupied by the pressing matters of more dire importance, or rather. But the trivialities of his life were unbeknownst to him at the present time.

Mount Everest, the crux of the entire carbon nanotube based space elevator, was where Claudio had already set his mind. The promises of the mesmerizing romanticism in the post-cyberpunk styled space stations, and the elegant refinements of the myriad of space colonies had captivated his impressionable young mind as a child. Now at the age of twenty-three and a half earth years he had proven to be a favorable candidate for colonization (this he had assured through his indomitable will to experience the life popularized the propaganda-esque movies of his upbringing).

Slinging his spartan belongings over his back, he prepared for the multiple-hour ascent to the most recent space port, The Geosynchronous Space Port Ring: 4. His destiny was the crystal lattice-enclosed dome cities of Mars. From there the solar system was in the palm of his hand. He could go anywhere. He could wander as a vagabond, pursue bounty hunting as a space cowboy, or rather pursue the contrasting career as a pirate that would prey off the merchant vessels that roamed the various colonies in Claudio's local solar system. Perhaps he would do as he pledged to his family and pursue a career in physics. The idea of the freedom through the escape from the suffocating Earth atmosphere was core desire that drove him to leave this antiquated planet. At least antiquated is what Claudio referred to it as, despite the fact Mars was practically as old as Earth.

●

The AI's avatar, a scintillating cluster of iridescent bubbles that roiled, popping and reforming in the not-air of the simulation space, reared up and twittered agitatedly. "This proposal is what our Turing-compliant analytical constructs have labeled 'spurious', to use your abstract grammar." It began to calm itself and stopped the vibrant patterns cascading across its surface once Ira began to speak, marshaling his cloud of memes about him in a nebulous concentration that obscured his weightless form. "Most of these concepts are nearly one-of-a-kind. Go ahead and do a deep net search and see if you find anything tagged even remotely similarly." The AI did so, and parts of its image grew artifacts and imperfections as it diverted system resources to plumb the depths of Sol system's interplanetary network for other packages containing this particular brand of objective moral tenets. After a second its image returned to normal, and it spoke, synthetic voice ringing throughout the volume of the room. "It is indeed a true statement that you have posited. We will take your offer at its original value." The mist of ideas that shrouded Ira began to consolidate into softly glowing spheres floating into the tenuous envelope of the bubbles' surfaces, where they burned brighter than ever before slowly winking into invisibility as the entity internalized the memes. "The appropriate amount of credit has been transferred to your account, independent human entity Ira." The AI disappeared into wherever synthetic intelligences reside when they aren't attempting to swindle poor, ignorant humans that hadn't the prescience to leave their humanity behind and transcend.

●

Despite the rather inhospitable outer terrain and subsequent lack of life outside, the space elevator's main foyer was an epicenter of commotion. Claudio adapted rapidly as the spaceport was similar to the bustling environment of the enclosed and close quartered domes he would spend some great deal of, or little time in, depending on how fondly he responded to them.

Claudio handed his registration note certified by the Interplanetary Space Travel Regulation Board through the minuscule opening in the glass window, behind which a disgruntled worker had to process every pass to the elevator. The worker was one of the last of his kind as most registrars had already been replaced by AI's assimilated into security system mainframes that checked every newcomer. However, in this case, such a vital task was entrusted to a human, who must of course be of high proficiency to regulate the traffic of such a great marvel such as a space elevator. The man's frowning expression made this fact all the more deceptive and as he slammed the federal stamp on the elevator ticket and promptly grumbled, "next."

●

Ira lingered in the featureless white room for a moment before withdrawing his consciousness from the virtual labyrinth that now comprised most of the solar system's habitable space. As this fork of his being merged with his primary instance, which was inside his actual, physical head, the memories of his meeting with the hardball-playing AI integrated to his aggregate stream of consciousness. His corporeal body was currently sitting in the luxuriously reclined armchair of a first-class stateroom aboard the interplanetary liner Aeschylus. He jumped minutely as an icon in the corner of his eye chimed, then dilated into a window that superimposed over his visual field. The AI had indeed paid up; the princely sum of 15,000 euros had been sent to his account, as well as a large bump in his social credit for a significant contribution to the philosophical thoughtspace.

He blinked the window closed. According to the custom countdowns he'd made overlays of, the ship would be docking at the Mars spaceport in less than ten minutes. He frowned at this, slightly alarmed. He'd lost track of time, controlling two instances of himself, of which one had been running at much slower than real time. So he told his suitcase to round up his myriad belongings strewn across the gold-trimmed room and meet him at the airlock before disembarkation. Seeing that his luggage had committed itself to the task and not petulantly refused, he smoothed out his simple yet elegant suit jacket before throwing it on and walking out the door into the corridor.

●

The elevator ride was all but amusing to say the least. Despite the speed of the passenger car, which was really not even a car but a moderately sized room filled with a small bar and luncheon, the ride was painfully long it seemed. Perhaps it was the potential apprehensions Claudio had felt, dwelling on the foreboding, or rather the opposite in the prospectively bright future. Maybe he was going mad, which he certainly considered from time to time. Regardless, Claudio could not bear it within himself to wait any longer. Unfortunately, the elevator could. It launched itself at supersonic speeds up into the deep recesses of the abyssal plain of space.  Soon this would be his home, or sound his death knell.

Claudio felt an absence of vertical G's as the elevator slowed it's ascent. The black and illusive enigma that is the seemingly infinite emptiness of space was visible through the tiny window next to Claudio's seat. He felt a sudden sense of vertigo as he realized the traditionally warped space time around earth was in no way similar to the gravity up so many miles off its surface. The contents of Claudio's stomach seemed to throw a riot as he struggled to calm the urge to expel his breakfast. "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten this morning," he murmured as he hunched over a nearby trash can to puke. It was an unpleasant first experience to the low gravity, but Claudio already felt he was getting used to it.
After a few minutes of extreme discomfort he felt bold enough to float back to the window to look at the planet he was just on. There wasn't much to see. It was like looking at a rather large a blue star in the night sky. Somewhat anticlimactic. After he dismissed that thought, he began to practice moving about in zero G force space. Claudio felt like he was really getting a hang of the whole floating around thing, he launched himself to the exit door of the elevator. He took note that surprisingly nothing on the elevator seemed to be floating besides the passengers. Everything was bolted down or stowed away. He was hoping that perhaps he'd be able to snag a rogue floating sandwich somewhere -- another disappointment. Still Claudio was ecstatic  about the low gravity. The weightless feeling he got from flying around the small room was more exhilarating than he could have ever dreamed. Giving gravity the finger was strangely quite a rewarding experience.
He departed from the elevator to step into a vast and bustling room and gravity seemed to snap back on at once. The sudden sense of weight was dizzying when coupled with the wall of sound from the port's population. The room was cavernous, appearing to be at least a mile in diameter. Strangely for such a large area, it was not at all dark. It was white and bright. The port itself was a large ring spinning itself to create a false sense of gravity by pulling its contents down with centrifugal force. This was apparent in the port as the horizon, or the lack of one, bent upward in the distance. The walls of the ring were lined with various levels of shops so distant it seemed the were just tiny lights plastered onto the great cylinder of the space ring. The realization that he was standing in such a large area floating at countless miles an hour in a great vast ocean of nothingness temporarily took Claudio's breath away. His knees felt wobbly, but he regained composure and took a few tentative breaths.

As he took his first step onto the tile floor that portrayed a distinct sheen, he noticed a floating monitor above him projecting a hologram of a blue translucent woman saying, "welcome to Geosynchronous Space Ring Port 4, the newest space ring to date. You are in the main foyer.  To the left you may buy concessions and various items of nutritional nourishment after your long ride. To the right are information desks where our friendly servicemen are here to help you with whatever your need. You may also take not of the various shopping centers on all the levels of the ring. Here we aim to serve. Press F2 on the hologram for a map of the port..." And on the hologram went. The hologram woman was tantalizing as was it's complementary sexy voice, but Claudio was never really into the whole cyber-girl thing. It was rather entertaining to see, but Claudio would rather explore more than just the hologram interface.

He spent the next few hours touring the station, but it was too large to be fully explored, even if given a week, maybe even with a few months. Claudio decided, to register his ticket for the shuttle to Mars as he was soon to depart anyways.
The ticket registering was rather unexciting, as was the the walk to the dock where he was to enter the interplanetary shuttle. However, upon making it to the dock and looking out the large space windows to glimpse of the shuttle, there was no more boredom left in Claudio's large list of emotions he felt. It was rather a overwhelming lack of comfort that flooded him now.

The ramshackle puddlejumper of a ship was slipshod at best. A great taste of unease grasped the fear receptors of Claudio's cortex. However coming this far had caused all logical fear based response to be ignored.  He jumped onto the jumper, laughing at the thought, however that was the only light-hearted one that he could muster at that moment. Still he soon felt a frisson of amusement at the sheer idea that flying such a vessel could even be legal. The prospect of adventure overpowered this and soon Claudio found himself grinning rather optimistically as the four other passengers could not share the same facial expression. Those poor bastards.

So there, at the liftoff pad for his ride from the orbital base to the corresponding one above Mars, Claudio sat in his seat as the thrusters pressed his body back into his hardly padded chair, which he noted had a rather disconcerting amount of tears and holes along with trace amounts of gum smeared into the fabric. The launch went smoothly which was rather surprising for the haphazardly constructed appearance of the space-faring craft. There was the occasional vibration, a faint bump, and the groan of the engine, but nothing more.

Despite how boring this ride seemed to the other passengers, who were relieved that the craft made it out of the port and were starting to breathe easy, Claudio was exuberant. Every moment of his life that he could possibly recall were all in preparation for this. There was no greater experience than the absolute fulfillment of what one has dreamed of every second of every day of their life. A rush of euphoria, indescribable, flooded his consciousness, caressing his dopamine receptors. This moment was the moment Claudio started a new life. No matter what, the poverty, the desperation, the dreaming but never believing achievement was possible, was gone.  Perhaps the replacement life would be inextricably worse. Regardless, the thought of something new, something potentially invigorating, it was all he wanted. The only thing left to do was sip the small accommodations of water provided as compliments of the small but agile craft's crew.

●

Ira elected to take the stairs down to the airlock; his luggage could save him a seat while the docking procedures finalized, a process that tended to take a while. Safety was foremost in a vacuum, when the smallest error could result in depressurization and death. He was rounding a corner festooned in lavish gilt molding when he found himself the target of a timing channel attack that looked to be threateningly close to cracking his encryption array. One of his security processes started screaming bloody murder as he isolated his personal area network from the Sol cellular net and set his security agencies to completely re-randomize their keys. It was only then that he realized that his physical form was currently in a trembling heap on the floor; he usually bound his motor control to a kinematics module optimized for elegance and poise, but with his PAN restarting he'd tripped and fallen as his confused muscles tried to pick him up off of the decadently sewn crimson pile carpet. So he waited the requisite twelve or so seconds as his external brains rebooted fully to stand up. Leaning shakily against the wall behind him, he tried to marshal his multi-threaded thought processes into something resembling organization. Alright, virulent informational attacks. Yup. He diverted some cognitive power to ruminating on this issue as he continued down the corridor to another flight of stairs that led into second-class territory. The decor was slightly less extravagant and flamboyant, but every bit as tasteful; simple muted flourishes here and there that gave the titanium-and-calcite interior an air of restrained class. Evidently they'd hired Apple|MiG to construct this deck, he reflected as he passed a monolithic macintosh with the signature crescent removed, the surface of which was teeming with the rainbow spoor of a hundred newsfeeds. This deck was still somewhat populated by those that would not be maing the trip down to Mars; a few were still slouched at the bar over at one wall while others chattered excitedly at tables strewn about the open space, each ringed by white-and-silver armchairs that looked like they contained about a cubic kilometer of stuffing each. His alpha stream of consciousness began to hum with the input from his external threads: it was probably a Turing oracle bred by some meme-scrounging consortium out in the Oort cloud I bet that's true me too. He'd run a couple of network traceries and found a string of cracked network connections that led to a proxy router somewhere on Titan.

No one would be caught dead using a proxy unless they were exceedingly skilled with cryptography. That was not especially hard to do;  NP-complete oracle machines were a dime(or dime-equivalent memetic system) a dozen. And the most secure place to be was the most remote area in the solar system, naturally, so that was where most of the delinquents and rogue intelligences skulked, cloistered in battered spacecraft and hollowed-out Kuiper objects or simply gestating in supercomputing clusters spread out over thousands of cubic kilometers. A lot of the crazies out there were infovores, always ravening for the next juicy bit of source code or abstract memetic ruleset to remix and pawn off as their own. Posthumans zonked out on too much info tended to stick out like a sore thumb in normal society, so much of their business was done through middlemen or over the cellular net.

He walked briskly across the softly shining floor to the elegantly sculpted crystal staircase that descended through a hole in the center of the room, and pinged his luggage with an order to be ready to meet him at the bottom. The stairs ended in a rather utilitarian room that featured simple rows of chairs like those seen on the archaic suborbital airliners of yore, along with a small herd of roaming semisentient waiters. No fancy staterooms here; third class was for the frugal traveller. In addition to being the passenger space for third class, this deck also held the docking equipment and airlock; so it was his destination. Docking would be finished in three minutes, a period which passed quickly when it was filled by Ira's rendezvous with his pair of suitcases, then giving the docking officer his biometrics and standing about for a bit, until the great airlock hissed open and the slow filtering-out of passengers began into the great ring around Mars. A tourist liaison superimposed itself over Ira's visual field just as soon as he'd set foot inside the port, chattering about where he could find food and accommodations; he opened a process manager and killed the babbling sprite, a bit testily. He knew exactly where he was going, and the elevator wouldn't stay there forever. He had eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds until the space elevator left for the surface, a trip that took multiple hours. He did not want to be late. Sensing this, his suitcases began to roll more quickly beside him, as he was able to travel much farther in the microgravity up here with a single bound. A few minutes of running thusly brought him to the queue of men and women and everything in between waiting to go through the gate. After the shiny, nearly-liquid cyborg standing guard at the front had determined that Ira was not carrying any sort of illegal or dangerous items or concepts, he was permitted to enter the elevator, which more resembled a cocktail lounge with an absolutely spectacular view of Mars and the space around it. So he took a seat in one of the art-deco styled chairs facing the great picture window and began to finalize a couple of deals to be made on the surface.

Description
The intense heat crawled through the gaps in the space suit's insulation with voracious speed, creating a surreal haze of panic yet utter exhaustion. Such a deluge of contradictory impulses flooded over Claudio as he struggled to gather himself to move, despite the present danger. Still he stirred himself to stumble forward. His willpower gathered and soon he surged forth with a fierce determination, through a corridor consumed entirely with flame. Ira followed close behind with equal fervor, for this was their only chance to escape.

They were ten feet from the door to the escape pod. Claudio felt sweat drip down the back of his neck. "Hold on just a second... just one second..." Claudio whispered under his breath as he prayed that the structural integrity of the corridor would hold against the intensity of the flames, at least long enough for the both of them to make it. Five feet now. The heat was getting far too agonizing to bear. Every moment was a hour long, or so it seemed. They kept rushing forward. Four feet... three... Claudio begged that his fortune would continue, but he cringed as he heard a blast behind him. Well, shit. Ira was directly on his tail. He probably felt the blast first.

The explosion rocked the entire area around them. It was most probably located at the other end of the space elevator due to the fact there was no immediate rush of air that would be the product of close proximity to rapid decompression. Ira and Claudio stumbled as the floor shook. Claudio managed to grasp the handle of the lock to the escape pod. They were finally going to make it out of this death trap, or so it seemed. He turned it, but it wouldn't budge. "Fuck! What do we do?" Claudio continued cursing as Ira, wide eyed, fumbled to find some interface to allow the door to open. Another blast rocked the cabin. Claudio wound up to charge at the door in a last ditch effort of futility to enter the pod. Ira was clearly lacking in logical cognitive function as he stood frozen, and then nearly fell as a third blast sounded throughout the entire room. Claudio charged towards the door screaming wildly in panic and misplaced determination. His shoulder landed with a thud and a sharp pain ripped his arm.

Claudio and Ira, soon realizing the pointlessness of any attempts to enter the pod, began to sprint back the central cylinder of the elevator to search for another, hopefully unlocked, escape pod. Everything was writhing in an inferno, and the other passengers were seeking refuge in other escape pods and finding they were locked as well. There was no doubt the AI had locked all the pods, thus their search was pointless; they still charged on, amidst anguished cries of the dozen or so other passengers. Then finally another blast roared in the corridor, but this time directly to their right.The flames flung themselves in every possible direction, consuming Claudio and Ira. Nearly immediately after the first few split seconds of the blast the fireball vanished instantly as the rush of air out of the room depleted it of all of its oxygen. Claudio flung his arm at an outcrop of metal as air pushed him further and further into the vacuum of space.

He could see Mars, the stars, the sun, everything. It was vastly empty and black. He held onto the wall of the corridor which had a truck-sized hole in its side. His body was completely out of the elevator, in empty space, and he was gripping the only solid and habitable domain for thousands of bleak miles with one meek hand. With the only hand free, he had grasped Ira's arm before he would have been launched into the vacuum of space. Unfortunately, their combined surface area gave too much resistance to the rush of air. Thus was the cruel nature of rapid depressurization. Claudio only held on for a brief moment before he plunged with great momentum in to the great black nothingness about him, utterly and completely floating in space.

What an climactic but abrupt ending to this life, Claudio thought to himself as he closed his eyes and felt himself spiral out along with Ira. His suit had carbon scrubbers which could recycle the oxygen in it, as did Ira's, but they could only function for two days, then he would slowly suffocate as he finally got the adventure he dreamed of. Claudio began to replay how exactly he got himself into this situation...

The sun crested the peaks of the Himalayas, shooting its last cluster of photons at a pleasing variance of wavelength for any observer, however the purplish golden array plastered on the evening sky was never seen by any organism other than the human life form named Claudio. He had no desire to give the once in a lifetime sun set any recognition. He was too preoccupied by the pressing matters of more dire importance, or rather. But the trivialities of his life were unbeknownst to him at the present time.

Mount Everest, the crux of the entire carbon nanotube based space elevator, was where Claudio had already set his mind. The promises of the mesmerizing romanticism in the post-cyberpunk styled space stations, and the elegant refinements of the myriad of space colonies had captivated his impressionable young mind as a child. Now at the age of twenty-three and a half earth years he had proven to be a favorable candidate for colonization (this he had assured through his indomitable will to experience the life popularized the propaganda-esque movies of his upbringing).

Slinging his spartan belongings over his back, he prepared for the multiple-hour ascent to the most recent space port, The Geosynchronous Space Port Ring: 4. His destiny was the crystal lattice-enclosed dome cities of Mars. From there the solar system was in the palm of his hand. He could go anywhere. He could wander as a vagabond, pursue bounty hunting as a space cowboy, or rather pursue the contrasting career as a pirate that would prey off the merchant vessels that roamed the various colonies in Claudio's local solar system. Perhaps he would do as he pledged to his family and pursue a career in physics. The idea of the freedom through the escape from the suffocating Earth atmosphere was core desire that drove him to leave this antiquated planet. At least antiquated is what Claudio referred to it as, despite the fact Mars was practically as old as Earth.

●

The AI's avatar, a scintillating cluster of iridescent bubbles that roiled, popping and reforming in the not-air of the simulation space, reared up and twittered agitatedly. "This proposal is what our Turing-compliant analytical constructs have labeled 'spurious', to use your abstract grammar." It began to calm itself and stopped the vibrant patterns cascading across its surface once Ira began to speak, marshaling his cloud of memes about him in a nebulous concentration that obscured his weightless form. "Most of these concepts are nearly one-of-a-kind. Go ahead and do a deep net search and see if you find anything tagged even remotely similarly." The AI did so, and parts of its image grew artifacts and imperfections as it diverted system resources to plumb the depths of Sol system's interplanetary network for other packages containing this particular brand of objective moral tenets. After a second its image returned to normal, and it spoke, synthetic voice ringing throughout the volume of the room. "It is indeed a true statement that you have posited. We will take your offer at its original value." The mist of ideas that shrouded Ira began to consolidate into softly glowing spheres floating into the tenuous envelope of the bubbles' surfaces, where they burned brighter than ever before slowly winking into invisibility as the entity internalized the memes. "The appropriate amount of credit has been transferred to your account, independent human entity Ira." The AI disappeared into wherever synthetic intelligences reside when they aren't attempting to swindle poor, ignorant humans that hadn't the prescience to leave their humanity behind and transcend.

●

Despite the rather inhospitable outer terrain and subsequent lack of life outside, the space elevator's main foyer was an epicenter of commotion. Claudio adapted rapidly as the spaceport was similar to the bustling environment of the enclosed and close quartered domes he would spend some great deal of, or little time in, depending on how fondly he responded to them.

Claudio handed his registration note certified by the Interplanetary Space Travel Regulation Board through the minuscule opening in the glass window, behind which a disgruntled worker had to process every pass to the elevator. The worker was one of the last of his kind as most registrars had already been replaced by AI's assimilated into security system mainframes that checked every newcomer. However, in this case, such a vital task was entrusted to a human, who must of course be of high proficiency to regulate the traffic of such a great marvel such as a space elevator. The man's frowning expression made this fact all the more deceptive and as he slammed the federal stamp on the elevator ticket and promptly grumbled, "next."

●

Ira lingered in the featureless white room for a moment before withdrawing his consciousness from the virtual labyrinth that now comprised most of the solar system's habitable space. As this fork of his being merged with his primary instance, which was inside his actual, physical head, the memories of his meeting with the hardball-playing AI integrated to his aggregate stream of consciousness. His corporeal body was currently sitting in the luxuriously reclined armchair of a first-class stateroom aboard the interplanetary liner Aeschylus. He jumped minutely as an icon in the corner of his eye chimed, then dilated into a window that superimposed over his visual field. The AI had indeed paid up; the princely sum of 15,000 euros had been sent to his account, as well as a large bump in his social credit for a significant contribution to the philosophical thoughtspace.

He blinked the window closed. According to the custom countdowns he'd made overlays of, the ship would be docking at the Mars spaceport in less than ten minutes. He frowned at this, slightly alarmed. He'd lost track of time, controlling two instances of himself, of which one had been running at much slower than real time. So he told his suitcase to round up his myriad belongings strewn across the gold-trimmed room and meet him at the airlock before disembarkation. Seeing that his luggage had committed itself to the task and not petulantly refused, he smoothed out his simple yet elegant suit jacket before throwing it on and walking out the door into the corridor.

●

The elevator ride was all but amusing to say the least. Despite the speed of the passenger car, which was really not even a car but a moderately sized room filled with a small bar and luncheon, the ride was painfully long it seemed. Perhaps it was the potential apprehensions Claudio had felt, dwelling on the foreboding, or rather the opposite in the prospectively bright future. Maybe he was going mad, which he certainly considered from time to time. Regardless, Claudio could not bear it within himself to wait any longer. Unfortunately, the elevator could. It launched itself at supersonic speeds up into the deep recesses of the abyssal plain of space.  Soon this would be his home, or sound his death knell.

Claudio felt an absence of vertical G's as the elevator slowed it's ascent. The black and illusive enigma that is the seemingly infinite emptiness of space was visible through the tiny window next to Claudio's seat. He felt a sudden sense of vertigo as he realized the traditionally warped space time around earth was in no way similar to the gravity up so many miles off its surface. The contents of Claudio's stomach seemed to throw a riot as he struggled to calm the urge to expel his breakfast. "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten this morning," he murmured as he hunched over a nearby trash can to puke. It was an unpleasant first experience to the low gravity, but Claudio already felt he was getting used to it.
After a few minutes of extreme discomfort he felt bold enough to float back to the window to look at the planet he was just on. There wasn't much to see. It was like looking at a rather large a blue star in the night sky. Somewhat anticlimactic. After he dismissed that thought, he began to practice moving about in zero G force space. Claudio felt like he was really getting a hang of the whole floating around thing, he launched himself to the exit door of the elevator. He took note that surprisingly nothing on the elevator seemed to be floating besides the passengers. Everything was bolted down or stowed away. He was hoping that perhaps he'd be able to snag a rogue floating sandwich somewhere -- another disappointment. Still Claudio was ecstatic  about the low gravity. The weightless feeling he got from flying around the small room was more exhilarating than he could have ever dreamed. Giving gravity the finger was strangely quite a rewarding experience.
He departed from the elevator to step into a vast and bustling room and gravity seemed to snap back on at once. The sudden sense of weight was dizzying when coupled with the wall of sound from the port's population. The room was cavernous, appearing to be at least a mile in diameter. Strangely for such a large area, it was not at all dark. It was white and bright. The port itself was a large ring spinning itself to create a false sense of gravity by pulling its contents down with centrifugal force. This was apparent in the port as the horizon, or the lack of one, bent upward in the distance. The walls of the ring were lined with various levels of shops so distant it seemed the were just tiny lights plastered onto the great cylinder of the space ring. The realization that he was standing in such a large area floating at countless miles an hour in a great vast ocean of nothingness temporarily took Claudio's breath away. His knees felt wobbly, but he regained composure and took a few tentative breaths.

As he took his first step onto the tile floor that portrayed a distinct sheen, he noticed a floating monitor above him projecting a hologram of a blue translucent woman saying, "welcome to Geosynchronous Space Ring Port 4, the newest space ring to date. You are in the main foyer.  To the left you may buy concessions and various items of nutritional nourishment after your long ride. To the right are information desks where our friendly servicemen are here to help you with whatever your need. You may also take not of the various shopping centers on all the levels of the ring. Here we aim to serve. Press F2 on the hologram for a map of the port..." And on the hologram went. The hologram woman was tantalizing as was it's complementary sexy voice, but Claudio was never really into the whole cyber-girl thing. It was rather entertaining to see, but Claudio would rather explore more than just the hologram interface.

He spent the next few hours touring the station, but it was too large to be fully explored, even if given a week, maybe even with a few months. Claudio decided, to register his ticket for the shuttle to Mars as he was soon to depart anyways.
The ticket registering was rather unexciting, as was the the walk to the dock where he was to enter the interplanetary shuttle. However, upon making it to the dock and looking out the large space windows to glimpse of the shuttle, there was no more boredom left in Claudio's large list of emotions he felt. It was rather a overwhelming lack of comfort that flooded him now.

The ramshackle puddlejumper of a ship was slipshod at best. A great taste of unease grasped the fear receptors of Claudio's cortex. However coming this far had caused all logical fear based response to be ignored.  He jumped onto the jumper, laughing at the thought, however that was the only light-hearted one that he could muster at that moment. Still he soon felt a frisson of amusement at the sheer idea that flying such a vessel could even be legal. The prospect of adventure overpowered this and soon Claudio found himself grinning rather optimistically as the four other passengers could not share the same facial expression. Those poor bastards.

So there, at the liftoff pad for his ride from the orbital base to the corresponding one above Mars, Claudio sat in his seat as the thrusters pressed his body back into his hardly padded chair, which he noted had a rather disconcerting amount of tears and holes along with trace amounts of gum smeared into the fabric. The launch went smoothly which was rather surprising for the haphazardly constructed appearance of the space-faring craft. There was the occasional vibration, a faint bump, and the groan of the engine, but nothing more.

Despite how boring this ride seemed to the other passengers, who were relieved that the craft made it out of the port and were starting to breathe easy, Claudio was exuberant. Every moment of his life that he could possibly recall were all in preparation for this. There was no greater experience than the absolute fulfillment of what one has dreamed of every second of every day of their life. A rush of euphoria, indescribable, flooded his consciousness, caressing his dopamine receptors. This moment was the moment Claudio started a new life. No matter what, the poverty, the desperation, the dreaming but never believing achievement was possible, was gone.  Perhaps the replacement life would be inextricably worse. Regardless, the thought of something new, something potentially invigorating, it was all he wanted. The only thing left to do was sip the small accommodations of water provided as compliments of the small but agile craft's crew.

●

Ira elected to take the stairs down to the airlock; his luggage could save him a seat while the docking procedures finalized, a process that tended to take a while. Safety was foremost in a vacuum, when the smallest error could result in depressurization and death. He was rounding a corner festooned in lavish gilt molding when he found himself the target of a timing channel attack that looked to be threateningly close to cracking his encryption array. One of his security processes started screaming bloody murder as he isolated his personal area network from the Sol cellular net and set his security agencies to completely re-randomize their keys. It was only then that he realized that his physical form was currently in a trembling heap on the floor; he usually bound his motor control to a kinematics module optimized for elegance and poise, but with his PAN restarting he'd tripped and fallen as his confused muscles tried to pick him up off of the decadently sewn crimson pile carpet. So he waited the requisite twelve or so seconds as his external brains rebooted fully to stand up. Leaning shakily against the wall behind him, he tried to marshal his multi-threaded thought processes into something resembling organization. Alright, virulent informational attacks. Yup. He diverted some cognitive power to ruminating on this issue as he continued down the corridor to another flight of stairs that led into second-class territory. The decor was slightly less extravagant and flamboyant, but every bit as tasteful; simple muted flourishes here and there that gave the titanium-and-calcite interior an air of restrained class. Evidently they'd hired Apple|MiG to construct this deck, he reflected as he passed a monolithic macintosh with the signature crescent removed, the surface of which was teeming with the rainbow spoor of a hundred newsfeeds. This deck was still somewhat populated by those that would not be maing the trip down to Mars; a few were still slouched at the bar over at one wall while others chattered excitedly at tables strewn about the open space, each ringed by white-and-silver armchairs that looked like they contained about a cubic kilometer of stuffing each. His alpha stream of consciousness began to hum with the input from his external threads: it was probably a Turing oracle bred by some meme-scrounging consortium out in the Oort cloud I bet that's true me too. He'd run a couple of network traceries and found a string of cracked network connections that led to a proxy router somewhere on Titan.

No one would be caught dead using a proxy unless they were exceedingly skilled with cryptography. That was not especially hard to do;  NP-complete oracle machines were a dime(or dime-equivalent memetic system) a dozen. And the most secure place to be was the most remote area in the solar system, naturally, so that was where most of the delinquents and rogue intelligences skulked, cloistered in battered spacecraft and hollowed-out Kuiper objects or simply gestating in supercomputing clusters spread out over thousands of cubic kilometers. A lot of the crazies out there were infovores, always ravening for the next juicy bit of source code or abstract memetic ruleset to remix and pawn off as their own. Posthumans zonked out on too much info tended to stick out like a sore thumb in normal society, so much of their business was done through middlemen or over the cellular net.

He walked briskly across the softly shining floor to the elegantly sculpted crystal staircase that descended through a hole in the center of the room, and pinged his luggage with an order to be ready to meet him at the bottom. The stairs ended in a rather utilitarian room that featured simple rows of chairs like those seen on the archaic suborbital airliners of yore, along with a small herd of roaming semisentient waiters. No fancy staterooms here; third class was for the frugal traveller. In addition to being the passenger space for third class, this deck also held the docking equipment and airlock; so it was his destination. Docking would be finished in three minutes, a period which passed quickly when it was filled by Ira's rendezvous with his pair of suitcases, then giving the docking officer his biometrics and standing about for a bit, until the great airlock hissed open and the slow filtering-out of passengers began into the great ring around Mars. A tourist liaison superimposed itself over Ira's visual field just as soon as he'd set foot inside the port, chattering about where he could find food and accommodations; he opened a process manager and killed the babbling sprite, a bit testily. He knew exactly where he was going, and the elevator wouldn't stay there forever. He had eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds until the space elevator left for the surface, a trip that took multiple hours. He did not want to be late. Sensing this, his suitcases began to roll more quickly beside him, as he was able to travel much farther in the microgravity up here with a single bound. A few minutes of running thusly brought him to the queue of men and women and everything in between waiting to go through the gate. After the shiny, nearly-liquid cyborg standing guard at the front had determined that Ira was not carrying any sort of illegal or dangerous items or concepts, he was permitted to enter the elevator, which more resembled a cocktail lounge with an absolutely spectacular view of Mars and the space around it. So he took a seat in one of the art-deco styled chairs facing the great picture window and began to finalize a couple of deals to be made on the surface.