“Gottlieb, where are you going?” asks the uniformed woman standing across from him in the rounded, metal corridor. Normally, her voice would bounce off of the sleek surfaces, resounding down the entire length of the hallway. But now, it is filled to the brim with people who are all making their way down in one direction; towards the observatory, atop the station. “You’re gonna miss it!”

An arm nudges the man as someone brushes past him. With an annoyed, tired frown, he nudges them back more forcefully, even though he knows that the collision was an accident. The low-ranking man stumbles a few steps forward, catching himself on one of his friends. Gottlieb shakes his head as the soldier looks around in confusion, trying to figure out who pushed him. “I’m going to sleep, I don’t really care,” says Gottlieb, waving her off. “I just had a double and in three more I have another double,” he explains, looking at the crowd of soldiers all hurrying down the corridor. Though, calling them ‘soldiers’ is perhaps a stretch. All of them are just uniformed computer-jockeys at the end of the day. These people had more experience holding staplers than rifles, though… hmm…

Gottlieb blinks, realizing that his metaphor doesn’t really work. They didn’t have staplers up here in orbit. Too risky. Plus there isn’t much paper to staple to begin with.

“Anyways, I’m heading to cryo, Richter. Have fun,” he says to her, turning around and waving the woman off, ignoring her disappointed face, as he is the only one to go down the other way.

“But it’s a once in a lifetime chance!” she calls after him. “We’ll never see cosmic activity like this again in a million years!” shouts the woman, trying to overpower the many voices around them.

Gottlieb shrugs, walking away. “I’ll never get another chance to sleep in that long either. See you in three, we have that double together.” He lifts his hand behind himself as he walks around the corner, heading into a more quiet, off-branching hallway. As soon as he is out of the swarm, the man lets out a long, exhausted sigh.

The worst part about space?

The crowds.

You’d think with an endless expanse surrounding them, they’d have enough room to make a bigger station. But here they are, crammed into a tiny hunk of metal, like a bunch of fish in a can. Despite having literally all the room in the universe, the orbital-weapons-platform holds exactly forty-seven people, plus a few bots and a core machine intelligence, which he has nothing to do with. Forty-six of those people are exactly the same amount more than he would like to be present up here with himself. Well… maybe forty-five. Richter is alright. It’s not like they’re dating or anything, but… it’s not like they’re not-not dating?

Space life is complicated and he doesn’t know what to make of it either. So for now, the best thing to do is to just go to sleep and to look forward to his next shift manning the gun with her.

Not that there has been anything to shoot at for a good year now, since the end of the war. But that’s fine. They’ll be doing a different kind of blasting together down in the maintenance shafts. Gottlieb looks up at a blue light that dots the ceiling and winks at it.

He walks down the hallway, past the shaft to hydroponics, as he makes his way towards the cryo-pods. It’s not exactly sleep. But, it’s good enough. He hasn’t gotten used to sleeping without the tube yet. He’s been up here for a while now, but it’s still all a little too floaty for his liking. For some reason, the artificial gravity is only on in the hallways and the labs and one or two other rooms, everything else? Floating like Atlantis itself.

“Wait…” He stops, thinking about his latest unsuccessful metaphor, but then relents with a shake of his head and a rub of his tired eyes. He really does need some sleep. Double shifts are the worst. The man looks up at the large metal door that he’s arrived at, staring through the little window atop it for a second. His eyes wander upwards, up towards a small camera that hangs above it. Apparently, the station’s AI scans every face to identify it, before opening any of the doors, though he doesn’t really think it makes any sense.

Who’s going to get up here, over four-hundred kilometers up in the air, this far above the planet? Anyone on-board clearly belongs here and honestly, if a spy somehow managed to secretly find their way up this far and then board the station, all without getting noticed, they probably deserved to get inside, in his opinion. Typical military bloat. Probably some pencil pusher who was looking for an excuse to spend some more black-budget money, before it got shoved into some other program.

The blue dot on the camera blinks and the door hisses, sliding open vertically. “Thanks Kai,” says Gottlieb sarcastically as he waves, very listlessly, at the camera. The AI doesn’t have a name, officially. It doesn’t ever talk or respond or anything like that. It just kind of exists in the background, keeping watch over everything, as its data flows through the entire station, like a ghost in the machine. He just opted to call it Kai to amuse himself. Mostly because it had the letters ‘A’ and ‘I’ in it, but with a ‘K’. The ‘K’ doesn’t stand for anything, he just thought it was a fun idea at the time, for no particular reason at all and has stuck with it since.

Space can get really boring.

Everyone is all hyped up about this wave of cosmic radiation that’s supposed to come past them. Something about some distant black-hole imploding or eating another black-hole or whatever. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t really care. All he cares about is this.

The man yawns loudly, as he stares at the several rows of metal tubes which line the entire room. Twenty-five in total. Technically, it’s a free-for-all and everyone could use whichever tube that they wanted to use.

He walks away from the door, heading towards the second row and then to the capsule on the third from the right.

But everyone ended up developing a favorite and soon enough, everyone had their ‘own’ tube. Even he has one that he likes the most. It’s not like there’s a difference between any of them, but this one is his.

Well, sort of.

The guy from the other shift uses this one too. He forgets his name. Something like Johan or Jakob. It doesn’t really matter. They never really saw each other and the tube is always cold by the time he gets to it.

His eyes wander around the room. Every tube seems to be open and empty as far as he can tell. But he can’t see the back row from here. He’s willing to bet though, that literally everyone is up on the observatory. “Once in a lifetime, huh?” he mutters to himself.

Gottlieb shakes his head, somehow unable to believe that people would rather look at space-lights than get a good night’s sleep. What could be worse than having to sit at work tired? Let alone because you decided to stay at work longer than you had to on the day before? He raises his hand, hitting the giant red button on the capsule with a dramatic flair to his movement. Again, there’s no particular reason. He just likes the way it feels. The red, hard-plastic button sinks down with a satisfyingly heavy ‘clack’ that vibrates up his arm as his hand presses the spring-loaded mechanism inwards. Almost instantly, the front of the tube slides open with a loud hiss, releasing a thick cloud of frozen vapor.

He yawns loudly again a second time and climbs inside of the metal chamber, looking at the little blue light that hangs just above where his head rests. Its cool glow is hardly distinguishable from the frozen vapors that cascade down over himself, but he knows that he is being watched. “Wake me up in time for the morning shift.” The man winces as he leans back against the metal plate, letting out a sharp exhalation.

It’s cold. Obviously.

That’s always the worst part. That first second. It’s like taking a cold shower. But after a moment, he adjusts to the temperature, pressing himself firmly back against the slanted bed, watching as the tube slides back down shut in front of his face. “See you in the A.M., Kai,” he blows a kiss to the little blue light above himself. Another one of his traditions. Just another way to keep busy. Sometimes it’s a wink. Sometimes it’s a kiss. Once he even stuck his tongue against it.

But it got frozen in place and he got put on scrubbing duty for a week, to make up for the effort of having to disable the tube to free him.

Oh, he remembers seeing Johan then. Awkward.

The last thing Gottlieb hears is a loud hissing in his ear and a tingling in his body, as the chamber is flash-frozen in an instant. His eyes go dark just as quickly.

----------------------------------------

Gottlieb hears a loud hissing whispering into his ears. The sound of depressurization. Is it that time of the day already? He feels like he just went to bed only a second ago.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The man doesn’t open his eyes yet, knowing better than to do so, until the thawing process has finished entirely. Eye-lid skin is particularly thin and it has a tendency to rip, if you’re a little too hasty.

Unclenching his jaw, the man chews a little with his empty mouth to work the muscles in his face, before finally opening his lips and eyes a minute later. “Good morning, Kai,” says Gottlieb, covering his mouth to hide his morning breath from his bed-fellow.

The front of the tube slides open and a draft of filtered air rushes to meet him. Though, ‘filtered’ is also a generous term. The thing about being on a station in space with nearly fifty other people, is that the whole place smells like ass. No amount of filters could fix that. By recycling the air, you were just purifying the assiness of it, condensing it through old filters that had processed so much fine, well-aged ass over the years, that they only painted the recycled air with the odor. People smell. This many people crammed into a box in space?

Ass. Sweaty, refiltered, office-chair swamp-ass.

The man groans, grabbing on to the icy cold railing and hoisting himself out of the tube, out onto his wobbly legs. Looking around, he stares at the other tubes, expecting to see at least two or three of them open together with his. But today, nobody else emerges.

“Huh…” mutters Gottlieb, but then he just shrugs. This isn’t the first time that this has happened. Sometimes, he has the feeling that he’s the only one who tries to keep a healthy sleep rhythm up here. Everybody else, away from the natural cycles of day and night, has degenerated, as far as he sees it. They have all turned back into their teenage selves, staying up all night, partying, watching random garbage every night and god knows what else. He can’t understand it, though. He would rather sleep. What could there be in space that was exciting enough to stay awake for?

Gottlieb wobbles his way past the tubes, his hand grazing along the many metal cylinders as he heads towards the connected bathroom, to shower and get ready for his shift. Standing in-between the doors, the man lifts his arm and sniffs beneath it. Gottlieb recoils with a wince and quickly paces through the door, heading straight towards the showers.

Ass.

Everything in space smells like ass and that includes himself and especially beneath his arm.

Throwing his sweaty clothes into the laundry chute, he walks buck-naked across the metal floors, into one of the small shower cabins. Thankfully, for obvious reasons, there’s gravity in here as well, in the toilets.

As the man presses his fist against the metal button on the wall, he turns around, waiting for the luke-warm dribble of water to come out of the nozzle, so that he can shower. ‘Shower’ of course, once again, as always, being a generous description for what amounts to a ten second long, weak splutter of heavily re-filtered ass-water that is mixed in with some run off from the hydro-culture section.

It smells of course, exactly as expected.

Gottlieb turns around, rubbing his hair and body under the weak trickle, raising his eyes as he stands there with legs spread wide, staring into the blue camera looking down at him.

Today’s the day. He’s going to do it.

The man feels his heart beat faster. Five seconds left. His eyes narrow, his muscles stiffening, despite his best efforts to play it cool, so that Kai doesn’t catch on. This is it. Today’s the day. He counts down in his head.

Three. Two. One -

The water runs out, his allotment for today having been used up. Gottlieb spins around as fast as he can, slamming his fist into the metal button a second time. Time slows for just a moment and as he sees the water running down his arms, he is unsure if it is new moisture from above or simply sweat from his own nervousness, wicking on his ‘clean’ skin.

He looks up at the nozzle. His short burst of adrenaline comes to an end, not even a second after crashing into his bloodstream.

Nothing comes out.

“Ah, fuck!” The man turns back around, having lost the battle, but not ready to give up the war just yet. He points at the camera. “I’ll get you tomorrow, Kai!”

Kai doesn’t respond. Kai has never responded.

Grumbling, Gottlieb marches back out to use the latrines and to brush his teeth, lifting his arm to take a new smell.

Still assy.

He looks around, surprised that the showers and bathrooms are empty too. This, in particular, has never happened to him before. Did Kai wake him up at a weird time? Hmm… he looks up at the digital clock above the door to the bathroom. No. Everything seems normal, this looks like the right time. Maybe there’s a party? Maybe that cosmic event really was a hell of a sight? Whatever. He feels confident that he made the right choice.

Half an hour later, Gottlieb returns and heads out to get dressed. His plan for today? Go work that double with Richter and tease her about her exhaustion continually during it, to smugly imply that she should have gone to sleep like he did. He nods to himself, that sounds like a good plan.

God, space is so boring.

The door to cryo hisses open and Gottlieb steps outside, ready to mix in with the flow of people that walk past the door every day at this time, just before the shift changes.

Nobody is there.

Somewhat wary now, Gottlieb makes his way towards the canteen.

Are they fucking with him? They had done something like this before, with one of the new guys half a year ago. Well, most of them did. Except fucking Aldrik, who ruined the whole gag. “Uptight dickwad,” mutters Gottlieb. Just about all of them had hidden in security, cramming themselves inside to watch the newcomer, whose name he forgets, wander around the halls, calling out with increasing worry in his voice. Even the captain, who is usually a hardliner, joined in, which is just a testament in his eyes to how absolutely, fucking boring space is.

Anyways, forty-five people crammed into one room? It smelled like ass. But it was the most fun he had in a long time, watching the lone man stumbling around the hallways, lost and confused.

At least until the new guy ran into Aldrik, who explained to him what the deal was.

Everyone hated Aldrik after that. Rightfully so, in Gottlieb’s eyes. They were in the military, a little hazing is to be expected, as far as he sees it. But that they’d try to pull the same stunt on him? He was in the room with them, surely they knew he wouldn’t fall for it?

He peeks into the canteen, seeing nobody inside but the blue-dotted camera hanging from the ceiling. He could get breakfast while he’s here. But, honestly, he might kill himself before his shift starts, if he has to, that is if the ‘food’ didn’t kill him first. Gottlieb shakes his head.

The military had money for every fucking thing imaginable, but food? The production of that got sold straight to the cheapest bidder and by the time it was made and shipped into space, it looked, tasted and smelled exactly like ass.

The man lets out a tired sigh and turns to go towards security, shaking his head as he looks at the camera above himself in the hallway. Kai is everywhere.

Rounding the corner, he stands in-front of the door to security, looking up at the blue dot.

The door doesn’t open. But he had expected this. He doesn’t have clearance, after all. Raising a fist, he knocks loudly on the metal obstruction, the sounds of his strikes echoing down the hallway, carrying surprisingly far off into the distance.

The door doesn’t open.

“Very funny guys,” says Gottlieb, shaking his head, as he waves the door off and heads down towards the firing bay. If they’re fucking with him, then the best thing to do is just not to play along. He’s just going to go sit down and eventually, Richter will come along and sit in the other chair and he’ll add their failed attempt at messing with him to his list of things to tease her about.

He looks up at a digital clock above his head in the hallway as he walks. It should be right about…

“Nnnnnnnnn-” The man clenches his teeth for a moment, watching the clock carefully. “-now!” he says. The clock jumps a minute, to exactly fifteen past the hour. Time for the shift change to start.

A loud tone rings out, the digital ringing of a bell over the intercom system to let everyone know that it’s that time of the day again. Gottlieb looks around, waiting for a door to open and for someone to come out of one of the labs, but nobody does. Frowning, he shakes his head and keeps on walking towards the open shaft at the end of the hallway.

Technically speaking, the hole is only for emergencies. But also, technically speaking, he gets paid. Practically speaking, neither of those things are really true. So, sparing a glance to make sure that the hallway is really clear, Gottlieb reaches out to grab hold of the pole and steps out into the LED-light lined hole.

He doesn’t fall, however. His body simply floats there. There isn’t any gravity in the shaft. Sure, he could take the stairs. But this is more fun. Grabbing hold of the pole, he pulls his bodyweight down and flies towards the bottom of the shaft, sparing a second of his time to nod at the small blue light on the wall of the tube. It’s not particularly long and it only takes a good eight seconds before he reaches the bottom. The man catches himself, pulling himself out of the hole and floating into the room beyond it. The firing bay.

His standard issue boots thud against the ground as he makes his entrance.

The firing bay is perhaps, next to hydroponics, the largest room in the station. Though, that description does include head-space. Gottlieb raises his eyes, looking at the giant, rectangular strut that is set at a downward angle above himself. Cables and wiring run out of it in all directions, feeding out to a series of high-efficiency solar arrays facing the sun. Apparently, those solar panels are an incredibly secret, hush-hush design. But honestly, he doesn’t care what they are, as long as they worked to feed the gun, his pride and joy.

He looks up at the platforms to his sides, elevated as they sit on a mountain of electrical components which he can’t even begin to name. They aren’t relevant for his job. Dozens of screens line the top platforms, creating half-circular desk enclosures on both of them for logistics and geo-spatial work. But on both of them, the office-chairs are all empty, turned, as if scooted out and their occupants had simply left and never came back.

The lengths people would go to when they’re bored. Oh well. He gets it. He’s just not thrilled about being the target of the joke.

Lowering his eyes, he walks towards the end of the room, listening to the sound of the humming coming from the whining coils all around himself. The gun hasn’t been fired anywhere but the desert for about a year now. She’s probably bored too.

Gottlieb pats a metal strut lovingly, as he heads towards the divided console just at the end of the room. “You’ll get your chance one day, baby-girl,” he tells the gun, which just continues to hum in response. But he likes to think that it sounds a little more chipper.

Richter had told him not to call it that, saying that it was a weird thing to do and that he sounded like a creep. But he thinks that she was just being insecure and honestly, she was right to be. How could she hope to compare to the heavy-particle-cannon? She can’t. It has at least a solid ton on her in weight, a figure that can’t be beat, plus it will look just as good in twenty years as it does now.

Is that crass? Yes. Is it a fact of nature? Yes. Did he get jabbed by her elbow for saying that to her face?

Yes.

The firing station is a two seater console, separated in the middle by a small divider with the gigantic cannon hanging just overhead. A rail is built into the floors in a horse-shoe shape around the console and attached to it are two chairs, one on each side with the ability to meet in the middle.

“First come, first serve,” says Gottlieb, as he picks his favorite chair. The right one. It smells slightly less like ass.

Looking around to see if the coast is clear, the man kicks up his feet and leans back with his hands behind his head, deciding to take it easy, until everyone shows up. He spares a moment to wave his hand lazily at the blue light before himself, integrated into one of the console’s many features. “Kai, be a doll and open the bay doors for me, would you?”

Kai obliges.

Gottlieb smiles, watching the live-feed that takes up the entire wall before himself come to life with vibrant color, as he sees two, large, metal bay-doors opening wide on either side and in the very center is his favorite planet.

Hom-

He blinks, before quickly jumping to his feet and looking at the thing before himself on the monitor. The chair spins as it slides backwards down the rail from the force of his jump. Taking a minute to stare at the live-view carefully, his eyes transfixed on the colorful sphere beyond it, he realizes that something is wrong.

Something seems to be very wrong with the planet he sees before himself. But the thing is, that problem doesn’t last for long, because everything apart from the shining LEDs around himself and the vague streams of distant starlight slowly vanishes, as a major source of light begins to fade.

Gottlieb turns his head, looking at the second monitor.

And then the sun goes out and everything goes dark, except for one screen that doesn't belong there.

[Welcome {USER}]

Error: Unexpected geo location. Reprocessing user.

Please wait...

Reprocessing: Success!

Creating custom class.

Please wait...

Success! GOTTLIEB

Level: 1 Experience: 0/10 Class: Orbital Gunner Sub-class: None Race: Human Home: The orbital-weapons platform [Currently above continent {4}]