A Dream From The Past

Beyond Mars lies the asteroid belt, the planet that would never be formed because of the influences of the big brother in the neighborhood—Jupiter. However, in the times when Earth was overcrowded and Mars property prices were getting astronomical (no pun intended), this belt became prime real estate for outgoing spacefarers, especially wonderful for those families looking for a little solitude away from the hustle and bustle of urban life on the planets. By 2054, real estate contractors were eyeing the asteroid belt for new ways to develop it into a gold mine of opportunities. The asteroid belt was perfect for real estate development, already having the framework in place from the mining operations that would strip the asteroids of their precious minerals. Brilliant entrepreneurs decided to reconstruct those now hollow rocks into hotels, apartment complexes, homes, schools, churches and manufacturing plants. It was a daunting task, at first, to take a couple of boulders of roughly equal mass and move them into orbit around each other and then make their orbits fast enough, or slow enough, so that inside the rock along the outer wall, one could feel an artificial gravity equal to that of Earth or Mars—depending on their preference. Smaller asteroids would also have to be tethered, so they wouldn’t fly apart at the necessary orbital speeds for Earth and Mars gravity. Of course with time that process got easier, the prices of this kind of real estate came down, and people began to see the value of solitude. That combined with the now very popular way to get around—the teleporter—the population of the asteroid belt went from a little over a few hundred miners to more than 1.5 million families and vacationers in just ten years.

Rapid growth and prosperity seemed to be had by all, but then disaster struck. Asteroids began to collapse in on themselves killing families. Whether it was shoddy workmanship by poor subcontractors or simply lack of knowledge, no one thing seemed to be to blame. Then there were natural disasters as asteroids tend to collide, and one such event took out a hotel and apartment complex killing hundreds. Now facing lawsuits and heavy fines, two of the largest contractors were forced out of the home manufacturing business and back to mining the asteroids. Still some of the smaller contractors survived, for they had been able to keep a good safety record, by picking safer areas within the belt to work and avoided using subcontractors altogether. Then along came many new advances in materials and technology, such as polymorphic glass, carbon-carbon nano-beams, and nanoscopic proximity-motion (NPM) detectors. The glass and nano-beams gave the asteroids incredible resilience and strength against collapsing, even under the force of an impact. The NPM detectors were placed on all the surrounding asteroids, so that all their movements could be tracked and impending collisions could be predicted and certain precautions were taken to avoid loss of life. After the initial scare of the disasters wore off, the romance of the stones returned to the asteroid belt, and the population started to grow again. Albeit slower this time, the population grew to about 12.5 million or roughly 2.5 to 3 million families over the next twenty years or so.

The Zimm family was actually just the Zimm couple—Charles and Xena—when Xena’s family helped the couple buy their first home, a Martian Hobble. Martian hobbles closely resembled ancient Inuit igloos built out of ice from the Arctic snow, but these hobbles built on the red planet were naturally made of Martian clay. Charles and Xena’s hobble was of course just three blocks south of mom and dad’s. Zimm worked for Mars Venture Construction Company building hobbles, while Xena kept working for her father’s brick manufacturing company as his bookkeeper. Charles was a bright young man and rapidly worked his way up the ranks to site supervisor. His genius was well recognized and soon Orbital Venture Mining Company—a sister company to Venture Construction—decided to offer Charles Zimm a lucrative position as regional mining colony supervisor in the asteroid belt.

With the new position Charles and Xena decided to sell their hobble and move into a condo in the asteroid belt. The move was tough to adjust to at first, for the asteroid belt didn’t really have days, nights or seasons like the planets do. Savvy owners of the companies from Earth dealt with this by making a section of the asteroid belt that they colonized exist on Earth Universal Time, which included an Earth 24-hour day and a 7-day week, so Mars Companies followed suit and made the section that they colonized work on Mars Universal Time, which included a Mars 24-hour sol and a 7-sol week. The entire belt kept the same calendar year which was roughly the length of time it took for the average group of asteroids to orbit the sun. Rather than having months, the year was originally divided into seasons based on each asteroid’s position in orbit around the sun. These seasons then became provinces that divided the asteroid belt like state and country lines divided the planet’s different governments. Had the couple moved to a Mars colony the adjustment might have been easier for Charles and Xena to make; however, the company—and so naturally the colony that they were to move to—was originally Earth-based.

Shortly after taking on his new position, Charles saw a new potential income source. Taking the example of other asteroid construction companies and with the resources of the mining company he was able to create a new business for the company refurbishing old mined asteroids into new homes. This business venture turned out to be so profitable and grew so fast that the company created a new branch, Orbital Venture Construction, and Charles was made president of operations over the new company. It seemed life couldn’t get any better for the Zimms, but then the disasters came. Before long Charles found himself wrapped up in the company’s lawsuits and inquiries for general practices within the company that may have caused asteroids to collapse. How did things get so bad, he wondered? Orbital Venture Construction claimed bankruptcy and sold off all their equipment to pay off all the legal fees and fines. Charles—reading the signs—created a new start up company with a small crew, bought up all the equipment from Orbital at a fraction of their value, and set to work correcting and perfecting the art of asteroid home construction. Zimm Astro Construction was created and life began to look up again for the Zimms. Charles also got to create his lifelong dream, a business of his own. Just like his father and father-in-law had always told him, “It’s always better to be in business for yourself, than to work for someone else.”

Many years later the couple realized that they were missing something in their lives and decided to bring a new addition to the family, and they named her Zanier after her grandmother. It wasn’t long after that that Charles and Xena realized a condo was no place to raise a child, and the hunt began to find the perfect home. What they found was a beautiful asteroid pair, and of course Xena wanted to name them Charles and Xena but unfortunately those names were taken. They checked the asteroid archives to find two unused names. Xenos and Zany were so named (Xenos being the masculine for Xena and Zany being their daughter’s nickname) and construction began on the new home for the Zimms. Xenos was the obvious choice to turn into a home since it was half again more massive than Zany and would be equaled in mass to Zany once all the minerals were mined and the inside hollowed out. The new home couldn’t have been completed at a better time, for the Zimm family was about to get a lot bigger. By this time, the paternal twins Robbie and Celesta were on their way, and mom and dad were excited to be able to bring them into their new home. Charles turned Xenos into a spacious five-bedroom home with an office, a living room, a game room (the den) and even a dining room and kitchen for those very special occasions when they could actually prepare a meal to eat for the holidays.

The only drawback to living in Xenos for Xena was that she could no longer step out of her condo and talk to her neighbors. Once the kids were all in school and feeling somewhat isolated now in her new asteroid home, Xena decided to take a job as an accountant for the NPM manufacturing plant right next to Charles’ office. This worked out great for them because they were able to take a noon break together and have drinks at the cafeteria in the NPM plant. This is a tradition they carry on to this day.

Now, one would think that to sit in a cafeteria inside an asteroid would be rather drab. Just sitting there staring at cold gray stone walls, that surround you, enclose you, close in on you, choke out the air that you breathe, and finally suck the very life out of you. Well that’s exactly what the architects and engineers of NPM thought too, and so—by using the wonderful features of polymorphic glass—they created a room that takes on all the characteristics of a landscape of the patron’s choice. Today the faux landscape was that of an ocean side restaurant set right on the pier, complete with the sounds and visuals of waves lapping up against a sandy beach. You could taste the warm salty breeze and feel light bits of sand and salt brush against your face as it blew through your hair, played across your body and then drifted on by to the next paying customer. The faux setting sun shot radiant colors of pink, orange, and gold across the bluish gray sky, bounced off the purple clouds and glinted off the blue-green water, causing a dazzling array of multicolored lights to dance playfully along the tables and walls. The really fun part is that you could actually interact with the ‘wildlife’ in this landscape. If you were to throw bread crumbs on the ground, real looking pigeons, seagulls, ducks and other sea birds would swoop down and hungrily scoop up the morsels as if their lives depended on that food. You could throw fish to the playful dolphins and watch them do tricks and splash around in the water. All this was done using holographics and the projection screens within the polymorphic glass; therefore, you really couldn’t touch the birds or dolphins. To complete the illusion the walls absorbed the table scraps and recycled them back into the power stations that would resupply new table scraps and fish. This landscape was—understandably—a very popular choice of all the patrons.

“I think I will be taking off a couple extra days this weekend,” Charles said, as he took a sip from his iced tea.

Xena was in the middle of flagging down the waitress when she stopped, turned and glared at Charles with a quizzical look, “Oh really! What are you going to do this time, sound proof Zanier’s room so we don’t have to listen to her loud music or add more space to the living room again?”

Charles tried to feign a look of being hurt, “Hey! If you don’t want to hear about how we can save on our power bill, I can keep all the rewards to myself.”

“Ok, I’ll bite. What do you have for me?”

Charles grinned big and started to say something, but then was forced to hold that thought as the robotic waitress appeared over Xena’s shoulder and asked,

“May I help you, miss?” in her soft robotic female voice.

This robotic waitress had an unrealistically slender body like most android type robots did; however, she had been modified to show some feminine features and her face was purposely enhanced to allow her to express some humanlike emotions. At the moment, she appeared to be smiling. These features and her unwavering courtesy did not go unnoticed by the patrons of the cafeteria, and they had all grown to appreciate her service over the years.

“Yes Francis, could I please have a refill of my cappuccino?”

“Certainly dear. French vanilla right? …and would you like a refill on your tea, sir?” Francis asked glancing over to Charles.

Charles scanned his half full glass and smiled back at Francis, “I think I’m good for now.”

With that, she gave a nod, scooped up Xena’s cup and zipped off.

Xena rounded back on Charles and said, “You were saying dear?” perhaps with an extra hint of curiosity, “Something about ’rewards.’”

Without missing a beat, Charles grinned his cheeky little grin and began, “I offered to test out this prototype equipment for your plant over the weekend. It looks really promising. All I have to do is run it over the surface of our asteroid and it will convert the entire surface into a solar power array. It will also create an array of collectors that will collect any ambient energy that flows our way. This could reduce our power bill by five percent.”

Charles leaned a little closer and went on, “Then I got to thinking, if I did the same thing to Zany and about a dozen of our surrounding asteroids then linked them with power transmitters, we could say good bye to our power bill altogether.”

Then Charles sat back, crossed arms and smugly gave Xena a look that said, what do you think of that.

At first Xena did not seem impressed, “You’re not going to mess with the NPM’s again are you? It took me weeks with a technician to recalibrate them the last time you messed with the surface.” Xena stated, the frustration in her voice clearly pronounced.

Charles was about to get defensive but then he realized just how hard it had been for her to fix his little blunder, so he decided to offer her some reassurance, “Your plant engineers created this solar moleculizer device, and they assured me that there shouldn’t be any problems. Besides it’ll be their baby if it does mess up the NPM’s.”

This didn’t seem to do the trick, for Xena was glancing out at the birds flitting in and out of the ocean scene and fiddling with her cup as she let out an audible sigh and a quiet, “Ugh!”

“Hey! You don’t seem to get it. Remember how you were always saying how you wished you could visit your parents and friends more than just once a year? How would you like to be able to visit them once a week? Wouldn’t that be a surprise if we dropped in on mom and dad next weekend? And do you remember how you used to cook dinner every night when we lived in our hobble at Meridiani? How would you like to start doing that again?”

Now he had her attention, “Are you serious? I could actually use my kitchen for more than just holidays. Can we bring my folks over too?”

“Uh-huh, and mine too. It’s always been so costly and power consuming, but when we can produce our own power we can do whatever we want. Not to mention the extra cash flow we can make when I can offer this service to all my new and old customers.”

Xena could barely contain her excitement, “What are we waiting f…”

Just then Francis appeared over her shoulder again,

“Sorry to interrupt, but I have your cappuccino.” She placed it down beside Xena and turned to Charles,

“Would there be anything else?”

Charles nodded and said, “I think I’m ready for that refill, thank you Francis.”

Francis took Charles’ tea glass and turned to leave as Xena called back to her.

“Yes, thank you Francis,” and then turned her attention back to Charles and leaned in so close he could almost kiss her, “So…what are we waiting for? When do we get started?”

Charles leaned in and gave her a kiss and said, “Friday. I just have to port down to Mars—first—after work today to pick up some additional equipment and have my spacesuit serviced. It’s needed servicing for so long that I’ve been using my backup suit for inspections, and my safety inspector would have a coronary if I brought my back up suit home.”

Francis came back with Charles’ ice-cold glass of tea, and the two of them sat at the cafeteria for the rest of their break, throwing fish to the dolphins, chatting excitedly about the future possibilities and making plans for their next several vacations—including one to Earth to play with real dolphins. Once their time was up they said their goodbyes, kissed, and headed out to get back to work. Charles reminded Xena that he would be getting home late tonight from his trip to Mars, and they went their separate ways.

Later that evening Zanier, being the typical teenager, was chatting online with a friend from school and listening to her “music”, which very closely resembled the sounds of a train wreck with someone running a violin’s bow over an ancient handsaw while something that remotely resembled a human’s voice screeched like a barn owl to the tune—and there may have actually been words to the song. Robbie and Celesta were playing a hologame in the den. In this room the walls, ceiling and floors were all designed to be part of the projection and sound, so that the children could actually feel like they were in a virtual world and the whole room was lit up with explosions and phaser fire. Xena was in the living room watching the news—and the telepod in the corner. Charles said he was going to be home late, but she didn’t think it would be this late. It was tradition that the whole family would meet in the living room and watch a movie together before they would all go to bed for the night, but Charles was turning this night into a “30-minute quick comedy clip” night. She didn’t want to call him just in case he might just be on his way; calls to Mars were very expensive. She decided not to wait any longer and called the kids over the com-plants (communication implants in the ear) into the living room.

Robbie and Celesta were quick to jump up and raced into the room, “Is dad home?” they both asked in unison.

“No, not yet,” Xena answered, trying not to sound frustrated, “I thought we would just get started and he could join us later.”

“Is anything wrong, mom?” Celesta asked.

“No, it just looks like your dad is going to be really late, so I tho…”

…but before she could finish her statement, a blue flash of light started shining from the telepod. For a brief moment Xena could see the figure of her husband materializing in the pod, but then the blue light filled the whole room and the three of them vanished.

Zanier had just finished chatting with her friend and signed off; so she went see what mom had paged her about. Perhaps dad was home and they were about to start the whole family movie thing, so she figured she would go take her spot on the couch, but the place was eerily silent as she left her room for the living room.

“Mom, Dad, what’s going on?” she called out, but there was no response.

She made it to the living room only to find it empty. There were no signs of anyone being home at all.

“Robbie, Celesta! What is this, some kind of joke? Where is everyone?” she hollered, but there was still no response.

However, her answer came soon enough as the telepod once again lit up and filled the room with a blue flash of light. Zanier screamed but her voice faded instantly and she too vanished without a trace.