Rebels of Jupiter

by Russell Beideman

  His Shift Room itself was Spartan in design. All that it contained for himself was empty walls and a desk with a built in computer and virtual reality syncer. The syncer itself was a model designed just for Senate use to prevent hackers from participating. He could be anywhere in his house or office and be connected to it, but for some reason Williams always felt like the room set his mood appropriate for his debates in the Senate. After all, all the syncer did was connecting his Expanded Biocomp and Exovision to the virtual reality room of the Senate.

  Out of the countless servants he employed throughout his home and conjoined office, he relied on the one which was not even organic. It was the RI that his father gave him when he was only thirteen. The RI remodeled itself based on William’s perceptions and behavior patterns. William’s social life was lacking, himself preferring the sensation of the Virtual Reality Sphere in the little spare time he had to the wasteland of the desert that now surrounded the Sydney Arcology, even though his own compound was separate from the Arcology. It was when William’s first thought came through his mind that his RI Beht appeared in front of him as a small figure using the holoprojector built into the desk. “That was a rough debate wasn’t it?”

  “I think I held up my case well enough. His emotional outburst will betray him for a while to come. It’s too bad; he was always usually on the same side of politics as myself.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s just interesting. The Islamic Theocracy doesn’t bother us much considering it still refuses to join the Commonwealth based on its religious beliefs. But it is not just that. It’s just, why give an hour wait for the vote? It is always nearly instantaneous.”

  “Something behind the scenes happening?”

  “I am on so many committees there is rarely anything I miss.”

  “Well I see an update heading to your Exovision right now. Q Priority,” Beht said. Williams leaned forward to consider the implications of what Beht said when he saw the icon come up in the upper left part of his Exovision. Using his Mindcursor to bring up the information on it he saw it was indeed a Q Priority message for an emergency meeting of a certain committee that he hoped he would never have to attend. He clicked on the icon as the syncer connected him to the Senate Server for the meeting, noticing as Beht was put into Lockdown mode to prevent the RI from overseeing the conversation about to take place. William’s Exovision filled with a closed off room that had twelve members sitting at a round table.

  “I bring this session of the emergency council to discuss a series of events that might be interconnected. Please download the files I am sending to all of you now. I will give you ten minutes to review the files before our discussion,” Chancellor Burreta said. Williams clicked on the files in his download queue for them to download. The attachments contained all of the reports with the bombing of the Vacuum Train System to the incidents at the Jupiter Ring System. The last file was a report from an intelligence agent based over there, detailing some very disturbing news with an equally disturbing conclusion.

  Senator Williams first thoughts went to the advocators for the current isolationist policy in the Senate. They would use this to fuel the flames. Almost racist, Williams thought. He feared the other Senators might generalize certain events with certain people. There had to be other ways to control and find peace in the world.

  “I see that everyone has finished reviewing the files. What we now must discuss is what to do with this information. We seem to have three parties at work here,” Chancellor Burreta said. “The floor is open.”

  Nobody spoke for a solid minute, everyone still collecting themselves and preparing what they thought their next actions should be. Senator James of the Ural Territory decided to speak up first. “Are you sure this is three parties? Could it be two?”

  “Admiral Umut, would you like to comment on the Fleet Intelligence report?” Chancellor Burreta said.

  “Certainly. Our intelligence units over on Jupiter have identified two major movements over there that seem to have an idea of one another along with several smaller minor movements trying to pick out spots among the chaos. Just remember that any information we get from Jupiter is at the moment forty minutes late,” the Admiral said.

  “Just how are the events on Jupiter solidly connected to the events on Earth?” Senator Williams said.

  “We do not have anything as solid yet. A terroristic event taking place on the home front to distract us from what is truly happening over there is what we think is happening. Currently it is too early to say anything concrete. We still need some more time to confirm a few things.”

  “Such as?” Senator Adams of the Earth Ring asked.

  “Such as how they activated a sleeper cell in the Arcologies past our filters. Or even how far back these cells go in time. We also do not know who else is a part of it.”

  “So we are blind?”

  “To future events at the moment, yes.”

  “I’m turning on the active sensors in the Stalks.”

  “Don’t you think that is taking it too far?” Charles Bodd of the Bodd Research and Development Corporation asked, one of the two civilians in the room.

  “Stick to your own area Charles. You are only here because we need to ask you some questions later,” Senator Adams retorted.

  “Tread carefully with me Senator. I own enough of the far side of the moon that my application for the Senate is almost completed.” Charles Bodd said slowly and calmly. Senators were not elected to the Senate. Senators were the ones who owned the Arcologies and the various manufacturing and business centers of the world. The populace did vote on several things each month, but the day to day activities of politics were in the hands of who owned the land. Only a few Arcologies had democratically elected Senators. The rest were privately owned corporations in their own right.

  “Then tell us now.”

  “The research has been with us since the early 1920’s. We have finally tested out the power plant for the project and conducted a test run of the device. It did work. Fusion generators for the mobile sections are currently not enough but I assume they will be in the next twenty years based on our research models. Antimatter generators will have to do for now.”

  “Stationary tests as well?”

  “Yes. And yes, Senator Adams, I will be locating the hubs into your Ring.”

  Senator Williams watched the exchange with interest. He himself owned four Arcologies and the manufacturing centers inside of them. He owned the land but he did not own the businesses operating inside. He watched the famed Mr. Bodd, knowing that a hub would be placed around his Arcologies as well under their contract between each other.

  “Let’s get back on track. Mr. Evens, have you implemented the weapons systems into the superstructure yet?” Senator Williams asked.

  “We took the Angel’s Fire system and the THEL system and implemented those as well as the standard Metal Storm system,” Steven Evens of the Minotaur and Company stated as if he was dryly reading the news. “The structure is only two hundred meters long, fifty meters wide, and we could only fit one of the new Collar Project unit in the available space left over in each of the ships. We have two ready for deployment if it is needed, they just need to be tweaked and given the weapons payload. The shipyards at Section 146 of the Ring have been retooled to complete more. We will be making one every two weeks at the current rate.”

  “Admiral Jevins, will that be enough?” Senator Adams asked, cutting Williams off before he himself was able to ask.

  “I will be commanding one of them myself,” Admiral Jevins replied.

  “You never answered my question Admiral.”

  “In war nothing is certain. I will link up with the fighters later.”

  “Spare me your Sun Tzu warfare jargon.”

  “We will see. Intelligence shows we will be meeting something but we do not know what it is.”

  “Fine. What are you going to call the new ships?”

  “In reference to the fleets of the
waters from long ago and the roles they employed, they shall be officially named as the first ships under the destroyer class.”

  ***

  The soft sounds of his alarm clock woke up Matthew Cole from a sleep he was finding quite enjoyable. He got up from his bed and walked over to the compact room that was his bathroom. He lived in a standard three room apartment that he owned himself instead of rented. At the ripe age of thirty, he was still young. Yet, he could count the number of times he has seen the sun on one hand. He lived over a kilometer underground in dome twenty four of the Sydney Arcology. It was in the fourth sublevel.

  Matthew looked at himself in the mirror, bringing up a hand to his face to feel the beard that was starting to grow. He did not have an implanted Biocomp to control his hair growth, nor did he have Exovision. Those were things too expensive for him to afford. Those were things for the people living on the surface. He brought his hand down and grabbed his toothbrush, deciding he didn’t want to shave that morning. No one at work would care otherwise.

  As he stepped into the Mistor a hot spray of misty soapy water shot down from the ceiling. After thirty seconds the spray turned to pure water, washing away the soap. The shower was a total of two minutes, the maximum allowed by law. Water was free in the Sydney Arcology, but there was still a water conservation law in effect to prevent a disastrous shortage. A warm gust of air followed the water and blasted away all of the water that clung to his body. All the water went down into the drain by his feet.

  He threw on his work clothes and walked into the room that served as his dining room and kitchen. This room was not as decorated or furnished as his bedroom. Matthew simply just did not have the money. Taxes were recently increased to pay for the new ventilation system that was being built into the dome. It wasn’t like he didn’t pay enough with his income taxes already. The people here received very little in the way of healthcare, yet they had to pay the same percentage as those living closer to the surface that had better access to it.

  Walking over to the Food Dispenser Unit, Matthew punched in the number sequence for the breakfast he wanted. He looked into the cavity of the machine where the food was being formed. Twin barrels of lasers wove an intricate pattern as they sprayed out a mixture of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms. Spraying millions upon millions of atoms per millisecond, the synthetic bacon and eggs breakfast was built layer by layer. He always wondered what real bacon and eggs would taste like, but only those in the surface dome could afford real meat. Instead Matthew resigned himself to eating a breakfast that tasted as bland as the walls in this room, being as alone as every other day when he left his parents.

  Leaving his apartment about an hour before his shift at the assemblies would start, he headed down the stairs. The stairs were made of synthetic wood, from an age probably twice as old as he was and looking moldy in the corners. It was as dark and dreary as Matthew felt about his life. Every day he was getting older, and not going up. He was still young, but he felt like he was a hundred years older. Work in the assemblies will do that to a human.

  Walking down eighteen flights of stairs, Matthew grumbled about the elevator being under maintenance again. Breathing heavily from traveling down so many stairs, he stopped at the entrance of his building to catch his breath before moving on to the Intratrain terminal. The Intratrains ran in several mostly circular tracks underneath the buildings of the dome, connecting everything in the ten kilometer diameter dome to the central spire of the Arcology. The Intertrain ran between domes on the same sublevel. However, due to transportation issues and to prevent gridlock issues from mass use of private transportation, sublevels were not connected to each other directly for those vehicles. Instead, the central spire of the Arcology connected all of its levels together and provided a centralized transportation for material, people, and other things. This provided a quick and efficient way of transportation that was also easily taxed by the Arcology owner depending on how the person or goods were traveling. Travel from below surface to above surface faced a heavy tax, and was the reason why Matthew and many others living here have seen the sun only a few times.

  A quick ten minute travel took him from his stop to the central spire. He got on the mass shuttle, an elevator dedicated to moving hundreds of people at a time and quickly. There were dozens upon dozens of these connected to each dome from the central spire. Traveling one sublevel down, he came to his stop. Walking in to clock in with his thumbprint on the reader, he noticed it was twenty minutes before his shift began. Cursing slightly under his breath, he walked over to the side of the huge entrance room that connected the factory dome to the central spire. It was here where the majority of the people living in the lower domes worked. The first sublevel was mainly housing and a lot of businesses. More businesses than residential areas, Matthew thought. Every level below that got poorer and poorer. And then you hit the fourth sublevel where Matthew lived, where corruption and gangs ruled. It was the reason why he took the trains to the central spire instead of walking, which he preferred. But if he did that there was a good chance he would run into one of the several gangs as he traveled through their territories. It was just not worth the risk.

  Waiting five minutes until it was just four minutes before his shift he clocked in. Workers here were not allowed to clock in more than five minutes early or would automatically be written up by the small RI monitoring the time schedules. Ten write ups in a year and you are fired. Many of those in the gangs have suffered from that. While there are several companies that operate in the factory domes, when one company fires a person the other companies will see it on their record. Matthew liked to clock in early anyways, he was paid by the hour and it made him about an extra half hour per week of pay.

  Five days of work straight for two days off. It made Matthew sick to his stomach over the amount of time he spent in this dome. Sixty hours a week, twelve on and twelve off, was the typical week for him and the millions of others that worked here. In total the factories, be it nanofactories or manufactories, employed a little over six million people per factory dome daily over two daily shifts.

  Matthew worked for the Bodd R&D Corporation as an assembly line manager. He had a few people working under him, but his job was a dead end. There was no promotion in line for someone like him who lived in sublevel four. Only those living closer to the surface were able to be promoted above the basic supervisor level called assembly line manager. Still, he was lucky enough to have a boss who didn’t pay much attention to him. Whenever she did, though, it was usually because one of his people screwed up one of the lines and halted work. They all faced a group fine when that happened.

  Taking the company’s Intratrain, he traveled over to the corporation’s side of the dome. All along the sides of the dome were air scrubbers and carbon dioxide scrubbers. This helped ensure that pollution and oxygen levels were where they were supposed to be when they were working a kilometer and a half underground. Ventilation systems could only carry so much air this far underground.

  Matthew arrived at his company’s compound, a series of buildings that built everything the company needed for its high technological projects. Other domes produced the basic food stuffs and other goods. In here, Bodd was one of the few corporations that exported its manufactured and nanofactured goods. It was also here that he managed the assembly line that mass produced some type of processor board that was commonly used up in the Earth Ring. He cared little about what was actually made. He only cared about the paycheck he received every two weeks. He couldn’t really save up any Energens that he made. There were just too many bills and taxes now. If it wasn’t for his extra hour of pay by showing up early he wouldn’t have enough to pay for all the food he needed, never mind the food he wanted.

  “Hey Pat, Simmy,” Matthew said as he walked in to his assembly line area. They were only in charge of a small section of the over line. Even so, someone needed to make sure the electrolytic capacitors were correctly aligned or otherwise they were mini bom
bs for the processors next to them if they were wired in backwards.

  “Hey boss,” Pat said, the only woman who worked with them. “Yuj hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Again?” Matthew asked sarcastically. Yuj was the youngest of the three workers he had. He was idealistic and a bit too religious for Matthew’s taste.

  “Yes. Again,” Simmy replied. Both Pat and Simmy were older than Matthew by more than ten years, but the intelligence rankings they showed during the pretest for the hiring process did not allow them to advance much beyond where they were now. They had accepted that and were happy that Matthew was their boss. But that was only because he wasn’t a jerk to them.

  “Alright, you guys get to the line. I’ll be at the monitor. Let me know when Yuj shows up.”

  “Will do, boss,” Pat said. They both walked off to their stations on the line. They would switch between each other every hour to avoid mental fatigue from doing the same thing over and over.

  Matthew walked over to his own station just off of the line. From here he could see the input and output rates of his part of the line. He had to make sure that there was not a buildup of parts at the input section and to make sure output was also following on schedule. Besides that, he still had all the other manager duties he had to do such as reports to the higher ups and also switch in with Pat, Simmy, or Yuj when they each took their hour long breaks. He also made sure the small mouse sized cleaner bot was keeping the floors clean. Dust and dirt brought in from their boots could screw up electronics, especially the ones that were being printed out in the other assembly lines.

  Five minutes after their shift was supposed to start, Yuj showed up. Pat and Simmy paid no attention to him as he strolled in like nothing was wrong. “Yuj, over here please,” Matthew said, trying to keep any inflection out of his voice that would show his growing annoyance with the younger man.

  “Hey, boss,” Yuj said calmly as he strolled up.