Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

“Come on,” Oscar called out as he beckoned with his hand. “Over here.”

Oscar Nehru was a five-foot-six-inch tall, fifteen-year-old. Thin, with dark hair and a tan complexion, he was, by all appearance, an average teenage boy. Most that knew him personally thought him more than a little hyperactive. However, most perceived this to be an acceptable quirk of his personality. This was a perception that Oscar gave no thought to. It was not a part of his nature to slow down long enough to give consequence to casual observations about him.

In Oscar’s eagerness to show his new friend the most popular place on the Starship for adolescents, he hurried the pace into the Amaterasu Fun and Games Center. The building was a two-story high, structure situated on the promenade of the starship by the same name. Teenagers aboard the Amaterasu flocked to this location for the games and entertainment during after school hours. A video game arcade, a theater, a roller rink and a food court could be found beneath the roof of the center. Adjacent to it were sports and outdoor amusement facilities. These were another reason for the adolescent community to be attracted to this vicinity. For Oscar, the video game arcade, with its large number of virtual world game pods, was his favorite place to be when he was not at home. This was an affinity that all his friends shared. He anticipated that Sawyer would be a new addition to the group.

The virtual world game pods were video games that the participant climbed into. Through the use of full body exoskeleton motion capture suit and a helmet mounted display, the gamer enjoyed a perception of actually being in the game. Because of the size and expense of the spheres, these games were rarely found anywhere outside of an arcade.

“This is great,” Sawyer announced as he followed Oscar through the maze of virtual world game pods. “How many pods do they have in here?”

“Fifty-seven,” Oscar reported as he continued to lead at a hurried pace.

At fifteen years of age, Sawyer was older than Oscar by five months. This proximity in age was the reason why they shared a World History class. This course was the instrument that was responsible for their meeting. Sawyer first met Oscar two days earlier. This was the day after his arrival aboard the Starship Amaterasu. On this day, they exchanged greetings and names but no more than that. It was not until Sawyer’s second day of school aboard the Amaterasu that his association with him turned into a friendship. The first public indication of this friendship was their arrival together at the arcade.

Over the past four years, Sawyer had grown five inches to his new height of five-foot-eleven. Over this same time, his enthusiasm for sports grew. There was no sport aboard a starship that he had not played on more than one occasion. Slender, with a moderately muscular build, broad-shouldered, light brown in complexion and decidedly handsome, Sawyer had maturated into a pleasant sight to the eyes of the ladies. This was a distinction that he had just begun to notice. However, his physical appearance had no effect on his adeptness with girls. Sawyer was not a lady’s man. In fact, he had no romantic experiences to speak of.

“You’re going to like this game,” Oscar encouraged as he continued to blaze a trail across the arcade room.

This was a regular outing for Oscar and his clique of friends. They spent nearly all their off days at the arcade. It was not uncommon for most of the adolescents aboard the Amaterasu to be somewhere within this vicinity on their day off from school. Sawyer had planned to explore this site on his own. Oscar’s invite was a convenient opportunity to do just that. Making new friends was not something that Sawyer did with ease. Oscar’s gregarious nature saved him from the trouble of having to initiate the effort. He knew that Oscar had a small group of friends and that all of them would be in attendance at the arcade at this time. In Sawyer’s mind, this was a chance to become part of a group once again.

“Hey,” Oscar called out to three teenagers, two boys and a girl.

All three of the teenagers were standing outside of a virtual world game pod. In appearance, the pod was a ten-foot high sphere with external supports. A large monitor next to the hatch of the pod displayed an avatar of the gamer along with the digital world that he or she was interacting in. The three teenagers were watching this monitor when Oscar walked up to them.

“Hey Oscar,” Martin greeted as he turned in his direction.

“Hi,” Rebecca greeted with a smile an instant after Martin.

Martin Fitch was a fairly-attractive sixteen-year-old boy. He stood five-foot-eight-inches tall and looked to be ideally proportioned in every way. Rebecca Sullivan was a pretty, fifteen-year-old girl. She measured little higher than five-foot-six and was clearly at the height of her bloom. Sawyer surmised from the way that she shouldered up next to Martin that the relationship between them was close.

Sixteen-year-old Anthony Skolnick was the third teenager waiting outside the game pod. Six-foot-one in height and thin, he had a gangly appearance. His facial features were less than handsome and his disposition was overtly cheerful.

“It’s about time,” Anthony declared with a large grin. “Who’s this,” he questioned with a look to Sawyer.

Oscar had anticipated the need to introduce Sawyer to the others, and he promptly did just that. They were all pleased to meet him, and the feeling was mutual. The trio of new faces in front of Sawyer immediately began to make inquiries about him, his family, the starcorp that he came from and his time aboard the Amaterasu. Eager to please, Sawyer answered each question without reservation. During the whole of this time, he noted that he had only a portion of their attentions. Martin, Rebecca, Anthony, and Oscar would intermittently look away to keep tabs on the points being tallied on the monitor closest to them. Sawyer gave it a fleeting glance on two occasions; however, the bulk of his attention was devoted to supplying answers to their questions.

“Uh oh, CC is going to pass you, Oscar,” Rebecca announced with a grin.

No one had questions for Sawyer after this. Their attentions became fixated on the game pod monitor. The steadily climbing score that was being tabulated in the top right corner of the screen was the primary focal point of all that were looking. Sawyer’s attention was drawn to this as well. His interest in the monitor was provoked by the intrigue the others had for it.

The arcade room was effectively a separate building that was linked to the theater and roller rink by a common food court situated at the center. The sound of more than two-hundred people talking and moving about filled every corner of the arcade. The play of music, piped in through speakers, could barely be heard over the din of the crowd. In addition to the crowd of people, the arcade games emitted a significant amount of noise exterior to the pod. The game pod was a sphere within a sphere. When the game was running, it was possible to hear the interior sphere rotating about inside the pod. Small speakers connected to the monitors allowed nearby onlookers to hear what the gamer was hearing within the virtual world they were participating in.

Through the use of the head-mounted monitor and the exoskeleton motion capture suit, the virtual world game pods gave the player a near full immersion experience. Smell and taste were the only two senses that were not affected. Inside, the exoskeleton was connected, at the lower back, to a manipulator arm that extended down from the center of the sphere. The arm had joints at both ends and one in the middle. Small actuator motors within the joints enabled the arm to bend and swivel in all directions. The interior sphere rotated in all directions as well. This configuration gave the gamer freedom of motion. When secured within the exoskeleton, the occupant maintained a fixed position in the center of the sphere, above, below and away from the interior walls. The exoskeleton was under the control of the pod’s computer, which reacted to the wearer’s commands and the limitations of the digital world it was processing at the time. Programming within the computer manipulated the exoskeleton, and the sphere, to simulate the sensation of walking, running, flying, falling and swimming. With the game running, a virtual world would normally be projected inside the head-mounted monitor. This configuration provided the gamer with the simulated experience of being in the game.

Christine Chandler, CC, was playing a game that went by the name of “Knights of Fortune.” Within the pod, she was battling ghoulish guards, ogres, fiendish knights, devil hounds, evil wizards, witches, and dragons. She did this while navigating her way to the treasure room of a castle. The interior of the castle was a maze of halls, chambers, and stairs. Hidden dangers and resources hid behind every door. With each successful transit through to the treasure room, the gamer won a fortune that he or she used to purchase weapons, spells, and charms to be used in the next castle. CC was closing in on Oscar’s highest score. Shortly after losing her last charm, CC’s avatar was killed. Without a charm to return her avatar to a previous time in its life, the game was over. The computer tallied the final score and displayed it on the monitor. She was slightly ahead of Oscar. He had been, up until then, the highest ranked player in their group.

“Ha, ha,” Anthony laughed with a look at Oscar. “She beat your score.”

“It won’t last long,” Oscar insisted with a smile and a shake of his head.

Several seconds after the end of the game, the hatch to the pod swung open automatically. As this happened, a plank extended out from beneath the platform outside of the hatch and two feet into the sphere. The manipulator arm promptly positioned the gamer onto the plank. CC began detaching herself from the exoskeleton and head mounted display the instant she was settled onto the plank. After thirty seconds of unlatching, she stepped out of the pedals beneath her feet and through the hatchway. Even as she did this, CC was celebrating her success.

“Hey! Who is number one now?”

Rebecca acknowledged her inquiry with a gleefully spoken answer.

“You are, CC.”

CC stood in front of the hatch, at the top of a three-step staircase, and did a brief celebratory dance. Shortly into this, she noticed Sawyer and stopped to address him.

“Hey, I know you,” CC called out with a cheerful expression. “You’re in my Algebra class.”

Sawyer had recognized CC as someone in one of his classes. However, the name CC was unfamiliar to him. He suspected that her actual name was something else, but what that name was eluded him at this moment. She was little more than just a face among the dozens that he had etched into his memory since his arrival aboard the Amaterasu. Its only distinction was that it was cuter than most.

CC was thought, by most, to be very cute. This perception was supported by more than just her face, her short carefree hairstyle, her olive-brown complexion and her lithe five-foot-four frame. Her perky disposition did much to shape this opinion of her in others.

“Yeah, hi,” Sawyer responded with a slight wave of his hand.

“What’s your name?” CC quickly countered with a smile.

CC began bounding down the stairs, ahead of Sawyer’s reply, with her arms triumphantly stretched out. As she did this Sawyer gave his name in a soft tone of voice. He then froze in response to CC’s apparent inattention to him. She had, within that instant, turned her thoughts to her friends and the new high score that she just posted. She spent the next two minutes crowing about this accomplishment to Oscar and fending off his attempts to minimize her new high score. Sawyer watched this display of exaltation and playful derision from off to the side. He did this with a passive demeanor. He was startled from this idle observation when CC made a sudden turn to him and asked a question.

“Do you play?”

Sawyer answered this in the affirmative and was promptly asked by the group to do just that. He offered no resistance to this and climbed into the game. He was not familiar with Knights of Fortune, but he had some experience in similar games. After, close to, fifteen minutes of play he climbed out of the pod with a respectable score, but it was not high enough to make him a threat to Oscar and CC.

Dungeon and Dragon games were not popular with Sawyer. He could not recall playing in more than half a dozen of this ilk. Like most starcorp adolescents, he enjoyed playing virtual world video games and he had his favorites. However, this was not a preoccupation with him. They were entertaining diversions and something to do with friends, but tennis was his favorite pastime. He devoted most of his spare time trying to perfect his game. Much of his attention to virtual world video games was brought on by the encouragement of others that were friendly to him, and by his desire to be their friend. Because of this dynamic, Sawyer spent the next two hours going in and out of various virtual world video pods, testing his skills against his new-found friends.

Sawyer blended in with this new group of acquaintances with relative ease. Oscar continued to be excessively friendly with everyone. It was outside of his nature to be any other way with anyone, or so it seemed to Sawyer. Anthony tended to feed off Oscar’s energy and vice versa. At times, it was almost a competition between them to see which could be the most entertaining to the group. Rebecca, Martin, and CC were little more than an audience to their antics. From Sawyer’s perspective, all of them seemed to be accepting of him, to a greater or lesser degree. He perceived Oscar as the champion for his membership into their clique. Anthony and Martin looked to be happy with his addition. He interpreted Rebecca’s demeanor as pleasantly accepting, and CC seemed overly indifferent to his membership. These were dispositions that Sawyer was agreeable with.

At the end of their tour of the various arcade games, the six of them turned their attentions to eating and wandered into the food court. After a brief scrutiny of the available delicacies, they each acquired their chosen fare and began to make their way to a table in the wide expanse of choices. It was at this time that Sawyer saw her, Sharon Stewart. He recognized her immediately. He had learned her name two days before. He noted her coming towards the cafeteria counter. He gave no notice to the company she was with. At this moment, Sawyer had eyes only for her and to his surprise, she returned his gaze.

“Hi Sharon,” Oscar loudly greeted.

Suddenly, at the sound of Oscar speaking her name, Sharon stopped before them, much to Oscar and company’s surprise. Sharon’s company followed her lead and stopped.

“Hi,” Sharon softly greeted back to Oscar with a glance his way followed by a look back to Sawyer.

“Are you ready to ditch tall, dark and clueless and fall in love with me?” Oscar toyed with a wide smile.

Anthony and Martin grinned in response to this inquiry. Rebecca displayed some amusement for it and Sharon gave it a hint of a grin. Two of Sharon’s company, Andrew, and Georgette, were entertained enough to give it a snicker as well. Sawyer was noncommittal to the remark and CC appeared to be preoccupied with other feelings toward Sharon. Joseph was the only person there that was clearly offended by the Oscar’s inquiry. He was standing possessively close to Sharon.

Fifteen-year-old Sharon Stewart was arguably the prettiest adolescent female aboard the Amaterasu. She stood five-feet-nine-inches tall and appeared to be perfectly proportioned along every inch of her length. Her manner was cool and fashionably pleasant. She gave out smiles as though they were gifts for others to cherish. Adolescent males favored her with their unspoken adorations, and she greedily collected them as though they were medals to be worn. Among the adolescent female population, it appeared to them as if she could have any boy of her choice. So far, Joseph Hussmann was the only male peer she deemed to be worthy of that station.

“Oscar,” Joseph called out in a derisive tone. “Why don’t you do everyone a favor and keep your wet dreams in your pants.”

Joseph Hussmann was seventeen years of age. Tall and dark as Oscar described, Joseph was also quite handsome. He stood six-foot-one-inch in height. His build was slender and he had the look of a well-sculpted athlete.

“He speaks,” Oscar bellowed mockingly. “Who knew?”

Joseph gave Oscar an angry stare and a point of his finger before responding to Oscar’s slight.

“You’re about to get yourself into trouble.”

There was a low tolerance of violence in space. As a consequence of this, Oscar had little fear of Joseph. In response, he gave Joseph a smug smile and elected not to push it any further than that. Sharon took advantage of this silence to push the talk into another direction.

“Hi, Rebecca, CC, Martin, Anthony,” Sharon greeted pleasantly and with a glance to each.

Rebecca and Martin pleasantly returned her greeting. Anthony happily did so. CC was the last to acknowledge her salutation and responded to it with a grudging, “hi.” It was at the end of this exchange when Sharon acted on her true reason for speaking with them.

“And what’s your name?” Sharon asked with a look and a smile in Sawyer’s direction.

Everyone thought this was an innocent inquiry with exceptions for Joseph and CC. They both had their suspicions that Sharon was entertaining designs on him, and in this they both were correct. Joseph took an immediate disliking for the newcomer standing before him. CC’s contempt for Sharon was not a new condition, but its intensity did increase and by more than just a notch.

Sawyer was discombobulated by the attention he was getting from Sharon Stewart. He had seen her on three occasions over the past two days, but he had never dared to entertain that she might be interested in him. The sight of her staring back at him flirtatiously had him considering romantic scenarios involving her and him. For a moment, he lost himself in these thoughts. It was the sudden appearance of an amused grin on Sharon’s face that awakened Sawyer from his musing.

“Sawyer—Beck,” he replied hesitantly.

Sharon gave Sawyer a mischievous smile and quick look down and up before responding to his report verbally.

“Nice to meet you, Sawyer—Beck.”

Behind this, Sharon offered up another large smile, and then she and her company walked away. Sawyer visually followed her departure for a couple of seconds. At the end of this, he and his new-found friends turned their attentions to the task of picking a place to sit down with their meals. Nearly a minute into this Sawyer shook off his romantic notions of him and Sharon. He convinced himself that this chance meeting was innocent flirtation, and that a girl as pretty as Sharon could not have any romantic designs on him. What Sawyer did not know about this chance encounter was that Sharon already knew his name, but she did not want him to know that. He was also unaware that CC’s inquiry about his moniker was equally superfluous.

After eating his lunch and playing several more virtual world video games, Sawyer was summoned home by his father, via his com-link. He returned to the family residence six hours from the time that he left it. When he walked through the front door, he found Daniel, Wendy, Daphne and Adam waiting in the living room. He took particular-note of the look of agitation on his mother’s face. The rest of the family looked relatively normal, but all seemed to be waiting for him. Daphne appeared to be more impatient than what was normal for her.

“Have a seat, Sawyer,” Daniel directed with a motion towards the sofa.

Sawyer moved towards the sofa with a look of confusion. He expressed this with a question as he sat down.

“What’s going on?”

“There is something happening that your mother and I have to talk to all of you about,” Daniel explained calmly.

“Are we in some kind of trouble?” Daphne asked with a hint of irritation in her tone.

Wendy was quick to respond to this in a definitive voice.

“No, we’re fine! But there are things going on with this move that we didn’t expect.”

“What things?” Sawyer queried quizzical look.

After a brief look at his wife for permission to speak, Daniel answered this inquiry in a solemn tone of speech.

“RG01 is not a starcorp, at least not in a conventional way.”

Daniel and Wendy spent most of the past three days working their way through the human resources division of RG01. Much of this time was spent waiting in a queue. The act of hiring and processing new people was in high gear within this counterfeit starcorp. Dozens of recent hires were coming in daily. The business of incorporating them into RG01 was a non-stop activity. The orientation for more than two-hundred new arrivals came to an end a few hours earlier. Daniel and Wendy were in attendance. The information relayed over the course of this three-hour induction took them both by surprise. All what Daniel and Wendy wanted to say to their children was derived from this meeting.

“Then what is it?” Daphne asked with a look of curiosity.

“RG01 is an installation for the manufacture of weapons,” Daniel explained with a look at his daughter.” The ticker symbol is the joint property of all BX01 member starcorps.”

“It’s a military installation,” Wendy added in a succinct declarative.

Adam became visibly excited by the term military installation and he voiced this feeling with equal enthusiasm.

“Does that mean we’re going to get uniforms?”

“This is not a game, Adam,” Wendy admonished sternly. “The starcorps are making preparations for war with Earth. This is serious. They’re planning to go to war with everyone that we left behind.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Daniel countered in a calming tone.

“Yes, it is. It’s just that simple,” Wendy bellowed back defiantly.

Over the past four years, the Becks had adapted to their lives in space, for the most part. For Wendy, this occurred more quickly than anyone expected. Her love for the science of Botany overruled all her insecurities. DCT01 quickly became her favorite place to be. Her fascination with the scientific boundaries that they were expanding drowned out her prejudice towards the Spacers that abandoned the Earth at the tail end of the war. Her fear that she was breaking some moral commandment by joining them faded with the passage of time. This distance from these old feelings had remained in effect up until this moment. The thought that the starcorps might be preparing for a war with Earth brought them back with a vengeance.

“We don’t know how they plan to use these weapons that they’re making here or why,” Daniel corrected in a mildly asserted speech.

Wendy was not dissuaded from her position by this and exuded this disposition with a brazenly spoken question.

“What difference does that make?”

Wendy’s strident opposition to what the starcorps were doing here was becoming increasingly worrisome to Daniel. He feared that her bombastic assertions would unduly alarm their children and convince them to follow her lead.

“This is our home. When we immigrated to DCT, we made a commitment to the starcorps,” Daniel almost pleaded. “We chose to become Spacers.”

Daphne, Sawyer, and Adam had no position on either side of this debate that their parents were having. Their only interest in it was for the outcome. They understood that their parents were in the act of deciding all their futures. They had little regard for the politics of the situation. Their intrigue was limited to the end result of this dispute.

“We didn’t commit to this,” Wendy argued back. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Is there going to be a war?” Daphne suddenly questioned with a look of concern.

Daniel took note of the anxiety on his daughter’s face and measured his response to her question to lessen it.

“Right now, we don’t know anything. There have been some angry words, coming from both sides, about forcing the starcorps back under Earth control. But this argument has been going on for more than a decade. Honey, I don’t see us on the precipice of war.”

“Then why the secrecy, Daniel,” Wendy questioned with flamboyant exasperation. “Why are they going to such lengths to keep this a secret from Earth?”

It was beyond Wendy’s control to rationalize this move by the starcorps as precautionary. The concept of this privileged society, as she saw them, taking an opposing stance to Mother Earth was difficult for her to justify.

“I don’t know,” Daniel responded softly and with a shake of his head. “But it’s not going to do us any good worrying about it.”

“So, are we going to leave?” Adam questioned his mother with a look of confusion on his face.

“Yes, and I think we must,” Wendy confirmed promptly.

“No, we just got here,” Daphne countered with a look of panic.

“Baby, we have to leave,” Wendy implored to her daughter.

Daphne had no response to her mother’s plaintive assertion. The distress in Wendy’s speech made her reluctant to speak otherwise. Sawyer was quick to fill in this silence.

“Leave to go where?” Sawyer questioned abruptly. “We’re Spacers now.”

Sawyer, more so than anyone of them, identified with their new home. For Adam, the starcorps had yet to evolve beyond being a toy to play with. For Daphne, this was her new reality. For Daniel, the starcorps represented a safe home for his family. But for Sawyer, the starcorps were the springboard for his aspirations. All his dreams for himself were entwined within his perception of the future of the starcorps. For him, the thought of leaving it for Earth was a move in the wrong direction.

“We go home,” Wendy replied as though she was speaking the obvious. “We go back to Earth.”

Daphne noted this answer with a gasp and a look of shock.

“No! I like it here,” Adam expressed in the same instant with a look of dismay.

“There’s no going back to Earth,” Daniel declared in a corrective tone of voice. “They won’t let us do that.”

Daphne’s shocked expression visibly relaxed after hearing her father’s assertion. It then turned to confusion in response to her mother’s contradiction.

“Yes, we can. All we have to do is submit our resignations and we’re out.”

“When we accepted this transfer, we signed an agreement,” Daniel gently explained. “A portion of that agreement said that we could not be repatriated back to Earth until the end of this project.”

Wendy understood they would be forfeiting their financial portfolio by failing to fulfill their contractual obligation. She also understood that the family would have to remain in Titan space until this project was completed or exposed to the public. However, this had no effect on her decision. Her only concern was for moving her family out of harm’s way as soon as she could.

“Fine, so let’s do that,” Wendy annunciated with a shrug of her shoulders.

“If we do that, Wendy, we lose everything.” Daniel returned with a look of astonishment. “We lose it all. Our entire stock portfolio will be seized.”

“I don’t care about the portfolio,” Wendy railed back at him. “I don’t want my family in the middle of a war in space. I say we leave.”

Daniel understood and appreciated Wendy’s concern. He even shared them to a smaller extent. His reluctance to support it was due to his thinking that this military buildup was not a prelude to war. Nonetheless, he chose to avoid a dictatorial position by endorsing the general thinking of the whole family.

“This has to be a family decision,” Daniel spoke with reluctance.

“No!” Wendy countered vehemently. “We’re not voting on this. I say we…”

Before Wendy could finish her declaration, Daphne inserted herself into the debate with a softly worded declarative.

“I’m not leaving. You can do what you want, but I’m staying.”

The family went silent with shock at the hearing of this. None of them expected this from Daphne, nor could any of them account for what was behind it. After several seconds of silence, Daniel looked to his eldest son.

“Sawyer?”

Sawyer had a conflict between his desire to be a Spacer and the obligation he felt toward his mother and her fears. Shortly he looked to her for some expression to weigh his vote in her favor. A few seconds later he softly announced the result of that effort.

“I think I want to stay, Mom.”

At that moment, Wendy knew that all was lost. She anticipated that Adam’s vote would fall in line with his brother and sister. She took three seconds to display her disappointment by staring down at the floor. At the end of this time, she turned and went to her room.

A few minutes after this vote, Daphne slipped away from the apartment. Within fifteen minutes’ time from this, she was in the apartment of Benjamin Romano and in his arms. Their bussing began from the moment they met with barely a greeting between them. Ten minutes into this rendezvous, Daphne pushed back to ask her lover a question.

“Is there going to be a war?”

Benjamin gave the question a dozen seconds of thought before answering it with the best explanation he could contrive.

“The Alberta Alliance is calling for a unified posture among the Earth States with regards to us. It’s kind of a one-for-all, all-for-one, thing. More than a two-dozen states are supporting it. There is talk that if it’s ratified by half that number of states then there could be a war.”

“Will it get ratified by half that many?” Daphne questioned with a hint of worry in her tone.

“If Eckhart gets re-elected—yeah.”