The ship slowly floated from Hermes towards the space station that orbited Euporie. For the last four days Gordan and Candice had traveled towards the planet. There were several other crew on board, and three more passengers, a married couple and their sixteen year old son. The man, Tyrell Nirupama had been middle management in a video game company and had barely managed to gather enough funds to get over the investor threshold of one hundred thousand credits. Gordan and Candice ended up spending a lot of time together as well. They both spent time in the gym, as did the teenager, but when he started flirting with Candice only to be rejected, he stopped going.
After the exercise in which Gordan struggled to keep up with her, they got protein shakes from the galley, a room with large amounts of food and beverage powders as well as some equipment. One of the crew was there on break and they started talking about what life was like on the planets. “I’ve only been to the planet’s once before.” said Candice. “Three years ago two of my friends and I went on vacation to the three habitable ones.” On Demeter they visited two parks, a fantasy themed amusement park and a water park. On Euporie they visited the Amphitheater, where they watched an opera and one of Shakespeare’s plays. A man from Sydney Australia that had worked at the opera house built it five years ago, she explained, and it quickly became the symbol for culture on the planet. On Freyja they visited the aquarium and went diving. The area beneath the elevator had been enclosed to hold Earth plant and animal life, which served as both an aquarium and a source of food. Near the coast of the island they had seeded several plants and smaller fish. Some of the natives thought that this might disrupt the local ecosystem and lead to the earth life becoming an invasive species, but the fact that they needed to heat the area continuously to keep the ecosystem alive meant that the life couldn’t survive outside of coastal areas humans placed them in.
You would normally assume that the technician on a ship from Euporie lived on Euporie, but in actuality he lived on Demeter. While housing on Demeter was a bit more expensive based on the size of the house and the land area, the housing on Euporie was meant for single families or people. The housing on Demeter, on the other hand, was split into much smaller housing units, so a single person apartment cost far less. The cost on Euporie to buy a house was just too much for him, even if he could find a roommate. He would have to rent, which would make the cost even higher, so instead he got an apartment on Demeter. The housing there had domed shaped apartments that were divided into sub-units, so the cost of housing was much smaller than on Euporie. His schedule called for him to work for a few weeks, then take a month or so off, roughly twice what he worked. During that time he would return home, with the flight taking only a day or two each way.
Demeter, he explained, was a farming and manufacturing planet. The population of Beelzebub and Cerberus weren’t large enough to run their own factories, so they only manufactured what they needed and sent all of the extra material they mined to Demeter. There the minerals were turned into a large number of products that were needed all across the star system, though some of the rarer materials were shipped to other worlds when Demeter didn’t need them.
Demeter also had huge numbers of farms. The air would have most of the argon removed from it and be burned, producing water and carbon dioxide from the oxygen and methane. This would then be pumped into the domes around the planet. Extra carbon dioxide could always be produced by extracting all of the methane from the air and burning it in the smelters and foundries, where the water and carbon dioxide would be bottled and sent to the farms. As the air only contained trace amounts of CO2, plants couldn’t grow on the surface, but around some of the smelters there was enough CO2 being leaked into the air that people had managed to get a few plants to grow. While some people were concerned about the air being flammable in the beginning of the planet’s colonization, they soon learned that the level of methane was less than one twentieth what it would need to be to burn. If you extract most of the nitrogen or argon, however, it can ignite, thus making it a readily available fuel source for the planet.
The conversation soon ended when the technician had to return to work, and Candice and Gordan were left alone. Gordan had several ideas about how to earn money now, and now had the opportunity to discuss them with Candice. The first method was to get into farming on Demeter. He had identified a shortage in the economy for certain plant based materials, namely cotton and wood, and expected that he could turn a profit if he could grow those products and manufacture things from them. Demeter would be a much better location for that than Euporie due to the lower cost of carbon dioxide in the long term, though the dome might cost him a bit more in the short term. He would have to do the math to see how long it would take him to turn a profit.
The second idea was to get into housing. From the way the technician spoke, there was little luxury housing on Demeter and little affordable housing on Euporie. The lack of the first meant that even the richest people on the planet had to live in bunkers with only a few plants and open areas. The lack of the second meant that people were living on one planet while working on the other, living in company housing while at work and a place they actually liked while not at work. This ultimately meant that a lot of money and resources were being wasted moving people around and having multiple sets of houses. While this wasn’t bad in the technician’s case, as he was living on a space ship, for thousands of others it was the equivalent of living in an extended stay motel.
As they talked the captain’s voice came in over the speakers. “We will arrive at the Euporie Gateway Station in one hour. All passengers, please gather your things and prepare to disembark.”
Gordan and Candice went back to their rooms and gathered all of the belongings they brought with them, then met in the galley to wait the last half an hour or so. They played a variety of poker which used flat magnetic cards which stuck to the stainless steel table. The other three passengers joined them ten minutes later. The teenager suggested that they play for credits, but Candice turned him down and the others didn’t push the matter. That was a good decision, as well, as he went on to win over eighty percent of the hands they played.
Eventually they all felt the ship’s gravity start to increase slightly as the nose of the ship was brought up and everything began to drift towards the floor. A few minutes later they felt the ship land and everyone stood up. The gravity was only around 20% of Earth Normal, but it would be enough. Rotating space stations often had landing areas near the center of them where ships could land without having to make high gravity maneuvers, thus saving on fuel. This station apparently followed that pattern.
The two of them said goodbye to the family, exchanged contact numbers with the three, and left the ship through an umbilical that was attached to the side of the ship. There wasn’t a customs office, as there were no truly restricted items. Guns were quite rare in the society, as they weren’t needed aboard the ships which brought the people to this system and therefore grew out of style, and other weapons were even rarer, and therefore not searched for. Any lifeforms that caused problems could simply be killed by exchanging the air around it for the native air, so they didn’t have to worry about invasive species. And there were enough cameras and security scanners in the area that any criminal that might want to try and hide, if such a criminal existed, would be caught immediately by the station’s AI, which would then notify security. That meant that the only purpose for the terminal was to give them information that the passengers needed and to deal with luggage and any issues that arose, like the occasional complaint about poor service.
The two asked for directions to the space elevator and were told how to get there. They boarded the next car that would leave in about thirty minutes to head for the surface, a trip which will take a little over two hours. As they would need privacy for such a discussion, Gordan called Candice’s MindPhone and they continued their conversation about his possible real estate deals on the planet. She suggested that this wouldn’t be the correct planet for the farming part of his plan, as that would require not just large quantities of carbon dioxide, but large numbers of workers. While he could probably use gardener robots to grow the plants, once the cotton was grown in a few months he would need to start a factory to process it into thread, then cloth, then maybe even clothing if the other clothing companies weren’t interested in purchasing the cloth for their own factories. This would require human overseers for the robots, if not human workers, as well as human maintenance workers, as robots were only able to restore devices to preset states, not improvise new states when something needed to be changed.
The wood production would also require humans, though more robots would be used due to how dangerous the harvesting and processing of wood is. Still, humans would need to oversee their activity and keep them in repair. Automated logging companies on Earth were notorious for malfunctioning as sawdust and pieces of bark got into the equipment and wore it down.
The housing, on the other hand, would need to happen wherever the housing needed to be. While it wasn’t the most economic to ship logs or bails of cotton, it was impossible to ship a dome in an assembled state. This meant either purchasing or claiming land and either hiring a construction company to make the domes or starting your own construction company. The later would be much more difficult, as you would have to build an organization from the ground up, including building supply lines.
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Several other people had boarded the elevator car before it set off, and the Nirupama family even made it on about a minute before the doors closed. Unlike Gordan, they had brought things with them from Earth and wanted to make sure that the items would be sent to their rental home on the planet once they found one. The father was certain that he would quickly find a job, after all, and they had enough to rent an estate for several years if he didn’t.
The teenager, Farooq, had purchased a set of magnetic cards while his parents waited, so once the car started moving he pulled out the deck and asked if anyone else wanted to play poker. He had the few hundred credits his father had given him as spending money in his account, and soon had convinced several of the other people onboard, all non-investors, to play for credits. Gordan and Candice turned down the game.
The car moved sideways along the track and connected to the cables. Once everything had connected properly and all of the safety checks were run once again, just in case, the ship started accelerating downward. It was actually upside down at this point, with the top of the car towards the surface and the bottom towards the station, but that orientation meant that it could accelerate at a comfortable one standard Earth gravity towards the surface, flip halfway, and decelerate at that same rate until they got towards the bottom. That would technically mean that they would be accelerating at almost twice the force of gravity for some of the end of the trip, but humans can easily handle that for short periods of time.
About thirty minutes before the trip completed itself, Farooq had won almost two hundred credits from the others but was forced to end the game as the force of gravity became uncomfortably high for the people there. He had spent enough time in the gym that he was able to put up his cards and walk to his deceleration couch while the others struggled to get there. Most of the passengers put on the VR helmets installed in their seats and played VR games for the last thirty minutes of the journey so that they wouldn’t have to experience the discomfort, knowing that the couch would keep them safe.
When the car eventually came to a stop, the people in VR were notified and everyone got up and left the car. As the last of the people left a cleaning crew came onboard to make sure that it was clean before it was sent back up the line. There was often vomit onboard, sometimes trash, and rarely blood as people failed to balance in the increased gravity. Luckily, this time, there was none of that.
Gordan and Candice entered the terminal room. Candice had already called for a car to take them to the real estate branch office, then the estate. The garage was pressurized with normal planetary air, but they purchased breather masks just in case. If they needed them, the masks would take oxygen from an attached tank, heat it to a normal temperature from its liquid state, and inject it into the air they were breathing. It would also scrub any CO2 that was in the air they exhaled, using the liquid oxygen to help cool it for storage. This would let them breath on the surface, though only for a few hours, even if the depressurization from a full atmosphere of pressure would be painful. After hanging their masks around their necks and strapping the tanks to their chests they entered the car and it set out for the office.
The office was two kilometers away, and the estate was another three beyond that, two down the highway and one more down a side street. The automatic driving function of the car could easily handle it, though. Once at the small domed office building which housed the agency, they entered and the car parked itself in a nearby garage.
“Hello, I’m Candice Khalid.” Candice said once they had entered the office and walked to the front desk. I’m an agent of First Home Real Estate on Hermes. I’m here to do a final showing of an estate for a client. Can I have all of the information for property 1793 so that I can do the transfer?” She showed her employee ID to the woman.
“The boss’s daughter?” The woman asked. “Yes, right away.” She quickly started typing on a holographic keyboard only she could see.
“Boss’s daughter?” Gordan asked.
“Yes, my father started the company. Did I forget to mention that?” she asked.
Gordan nodded, but before he could say anything the frightened employee butted in. “Here you are, misses Khalid.” she said, motioning for a data transfer. Candice nodded and with a few hand motions verified that it was all there. “Thank you.” she said. “I’ll send you the finished documents once they are signed.”
The woman nodded and stood up, bowing. Candice bowed in return, then looked at Gordan. “So, shall we go see your new estate?”
The car went down the ten meter wide glass domed tunnel which served as a main road for the settlement. It had two three meter wide lanes down the middle and sidewalks on the side, in case anyone wanted to walk. Branching off of the road were the driveways of many domes of various sizes, presumably estates for the various people that lived here. All of them had plants growing inside. The thing that struck Gordan, however, was that the domes were the only place that there were plants. The surface contained none. This was probably because there was neither oxygen nor significant CO2 in the air to support other life. The gray and brown rock was a sharp contrast to the greens of the domes.
Five minutes later the car pulled into a small garage attached to the estate. It required a code to enter, but Candice had received the code at the office. They got out and stepped into the airlock at the back. She entered the code and they were let inside. For the most part it looked just like the simulation. Many identical ones had been made in the area, so the simulation was a representation of the type of dome, not a perfect representation of the dome itself.
They smelled real grass this time, though it hadn’t been freshly mowed like in the simulation. The lawn was properly cared for, however. They followed the walkway to the front door. Candice opened the front door and Gordan entered, carrying his bags. Technically, Candice had brought hers as well, but left them in the car. She probably should have left them at the office, but had forgotten to take them out.
Gordan set his bags down just inside the door to the living room and was greeted by a female robot. It was obvious that someone had attempted to make it woman-shaped, and not just generic human-shaped, but they had given it white silicon plastic skin and one could see the synthetic muscle fibers underneath if they looked hard enough. “Hello.” said the robot. “I am Domestic Automated Realistic Servant number thirty seven. You may call me Darsy, if that would be easier, or make up any name that you wish.” It grabbed the edges of its maid outfit’s skirt and curtsied.
“I was expecting a more metallic robot.” said Gordan, a bit surprised.
“I can be replaced if you wish, perspective master, but the construction company purchased twenty five of my model and decided to use them instead of the older model when they built this estate.”
“Ah, that’s fine, Darsy. My name is Gordan McDowell. I’m hoping to buy this estate. This is Candice Khalid, the real estate agent.”
Darsy looked at her for a few seconds. “Oh, yes. You are from the Hermes branch of the company. I apologize. I did not have your file already downloaded, as I was expecting agents from the local branch.”
“That’s fine.” she said. “I’m going to show Mr. McDowell around now, if that is alright.”
“Certainly, ma’am. If you need anything, call me. I will be in my charging port.” She curtsied once more, then walked over to a seat in the corner of the living room and set down, closing her eyes.
“I guess they decided to give the humanoid ones a human-like charging port. It would be a bit creepy to see them standing in one place. Now she just looks like she’s asleep in a recliner.”
“Yes,” said Candice. “Interesting design choice. I don’t really know much about robots, however. So, shall we tour the house?”
They double checked that everything was as the simulation had shown it to be. Other than a bit of paint color difference on the walls and a few different patterns on the various bits of cloth, everything seemed to be identical. They even checked the life support and power equipment, just in case.
After the tour was over, Gordan signed the papers with his biometrics and the estate was transferred to him as one million credits were transferred to the local branch of the real estate company. With that the codes to the locks were changed and he became the official owner of the house. “Congratulations, Mr. McDowell.” said Candice. “You are now the owner of a new estate.”
“Thank you.” he said. “Would you like to celebrate the deal with me? The house did come with a fully stocked liquor cabinet. I doubt the whiskey has been aged more than a few years, but there might be something else that you’ll like.”
“You know, I did see a few bottles of wine.” she responded. “Would you like to taste the Merlot with me?” Gordan nodded and they went to pour themselves a glass.
Several hours passed as they chatted, telling each other various stories. Gordan talked about the things he had seen on Earth, as she had never been there, and she talked about the various things on the three main planets. An hour after they began Darsy notified them that she had prepared supper for both of them and they went to eat.
Three hours later Candice stood up. “Well, it has been fun,” she said, “but I need to get going. I still have to find a place to stay for the next few days.” Normally you would expect a person to be drunk after sharing two bottles of wine, but Darsy had provided them both with over the counter Sober pills several times at Gordan’s request, so the vast majority of the alcohol had been filtered out of their blood. It was also several hours into the planet’s standard night cycle.
“You know, you can just stay here.” Gordan said. “I have six bedrooms, and your stuff is outside. I can have Darsy bring it in.”
Candice smiled. “Well, it would be a lot easier and I am really tired. I kind of want to just lie down.”
“You know, that’s the one thing I didn’t check during the inspection. I don’t know what the beds are like. I might need to buy new mattresses.”
“Well, they should be able to adjust their firmness based on your preferences, but I’ll certainly go with you to check.”
They walked upstairs to the master bedroom and Gordan collapsed on the bed. “Ah,” he sighed, the tension leaving his body. “That feels great. You should see for yourself.”
“If you insist.” said Candice, then laid down beside him. “You’re right.” she said. “That feels amazing.” They laid there for the next few minutes until Candice forced herself to sit up. “I should probably go to my room. Darsy has probably brought my things in by now and assigned me one.”
Gordan sat up as well. “If that’s what you want to do. There is one more thing you can help me with, though, if you are willing.”
“And what would that be?” she asked playfully.
“There is another way we could test the mattress.” he responded, smiling.
“Mr. McDowell,” she said in mock shock, “You are over two hundred years older than me. That makes you an old man, and therefore that statement is inappropriate.”
“Closer to three hundred.” he said, “But I assure you, wine isn’t the only thing that gets better with age.”
She smiled and a few seconds later started laughing before taking off her shoes. “Well, I hope you can make good on that statement.”
He took over an hour to show her how important experience was in certain performance arts.