I woke up with the sounds of birds, unlike most days in which I would wake up with an alarm clock. It was a saturday.
I slowly got up, with intentions to prepare breakfast. I was feeling very hungry, and I could barely make my way inside the house. I knew it was a mistake staying up for that long last night... As I approached the kitchen, I started to hear some faint hissing sound.
"Who is that?" I asked. "Identify yourself!"
There was no answer.
"Did a water pipe blow?" I murmured as I opened the door.
"Good morning!"
"Ah, what?"
In the kitchen was a beautiful lady, trying her best to get a food dispenser to work.
"Who are you?" I repeated. "What are you doing in my house?"
"Stop playing games!" she chuckled. "I'm making breakfast. I mean I'm trying to."
"Step out of my house."
"Wait, you are serious!" her tone and facial expression suddenly changed. "Kagan, look at me. Tell me you remember me."
"We met before?"
"What is wrong with you? What do you mean 'we met before'?!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... I-I-I can not..."
"Oh, dear." she said, pitying me. "Are you ill?"
I looked straight at her, not saying anything in return. That lasted for a while before I collapsed on the floor.
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I woke up with the sounds of an alarm clock - no, something different. This was not my alarm clock.
I opened my eyes, to see myself surrounded by a set of white medical equipment and a pair of curious eyes. The beeps were coming from a heart-rate monitor.
"Bless you, you are awake." she said. "But I told you it would come to this."
"Shut up, admiral." I replied.
"You dare not tell that to me." a doctor came into my view. "You have neglected the needs of your body, and that brought you here. Now, we doctors are busy people, and we don't like seeing more people like you coming to the hospital. To make sure you do not come back once we send you back home, I would like to first educate you on how to take care of your nutrition needs."
"Bloody hell." I said. "I know how to eat."
"Well, good." said the doctor, before walking towards the door to leave. "But if I see you here again due to the same reason, you are getting a full day lecture on personal health."
"I get it, for god's sake."
"He is right, you know." said Mei. "I will feed your corpse to cats next time instead of carrying you all the way here."
"You have zero compassion for your husband, huh?"
"And call me 'admiral' once again in front of other people, and I'm throwing you out of the window."
"Damn it, it is like the whole universe is my enemy!" I said, as I got up from the hospital bed. "Let's go home."
"Not even a thank you?"
"Thank you. Now, please, let's go."
"Ah, and also..." Mei interrupted me. "That weird desk you ordered from Sydney arrived when you were having your sweet dreams."
"Weird desk? It is called a Moog. It's a synthesizer. It is a true classic in old-school electronic-"
"I couldn't care less." she said. "Once we get home, you will move it out of the corridor or I will put it out as trash in the evening."
"Give me a break! Sure, I will, but you can't throw that out! Do you know how few of these exist in operational state?"
"I. Could. Not. Care. Any. Less."
We got out of the hospital, to the parking lot. Mei got into the electric car, and I was about to do the same. But I stopped for a moment and looked straight up into the sky.
"They are not making any clouds today." I said. "They haven't been making clouds for a while now."
"They are experimenting on implementing seasons." Mei said. "Or that's what the rumors are all about nowadays."
"I wouldn't be surprised. They have been making good progress so far with the environment."
"If they could just stop the lake from flooding its immediate neighborhood at every turn, I would call that progress." Mei said. "Now get in. We've got to go home."
I didn't make Mei wait any longer, and got inside the car. She instructed the autopilot to take us home, after which the car backed out of the parking spot and got underway.
"I'm thinking we should move to Sydney." Mei said.
"Where did that idea come from all of a sudden?" I asked.
"Look at this place." she said. "It's the one worst celestials anyone could pick to live in."
"Hey." I said. "This is exactly the reason. Sydney is way too crowded. It is calm and quiet here."
"I don't know." said Mei. "It just got old. I want something new."
"How about Shenzhen?"
"Shenzhen?" Mei said in disgust. "No way I'm moving to Shenzhen! It's got this weird acceleration thing every week or so. It would make both of us sick."
"But it's got luxury residences." I argued.
"The cons still overweight the pros." said Mei. "Nope."
"Well, what kind of a celestial do you have in mind?"
"Let's talk about this later, once I do some research." said Mei. "Actually... computer! List all celestials in human space."
The car's computer screen changed. It connected to the wireless network of the Anchorage, and fetched us a list of all operational and under-construction celestials.
Celestials were gigantic cylindrical space habitats, belonging to a family of space structures known as "O'Neill Cylinders". They were, as the name suggested, cylindrical in shape; and they would rotate along their longitudinal axis in order to provide artificial gravity to the residents inside. Most would pick to provide about 1G of gravity, but a few were designed for something closer to the surface gravity of Mars. If required, by adjusting the rotational speed, the artificial gravity could be adjusted by the celestial's command crew.
After the humanity had lost their settlements on the Inner Solar System such as Earth and Mars to an hostile AI, and the Outer Solar System bodies such as Makemake were no longer sufficient to support the re-growing human population, the construction of space habitats had become necessary. The first celestials were converted from the three "space fortesses" of mankind; giant, cylindrical, armored and heavily armed spaceships that would -on paper- protect mankind from an attack by the hostile AI fleets. But it had been many years, and even though some human and AI-led ships have had close encounters, the AI appeared to have entered a rather more pacifist state. And, of course, human commanders were more than intelligent enough to not provoke the AI by making any aggressive moves. After some time, the space fortresses were thought to serve no purpose anymore, so they were converted into civilian habitats to lift people off of the surface of minor planetoids around the Outer Solar System.
Later celestials were purpose-built space habitats, even larger than the space fortresses, most of which had living areas comparable to that of 21st century metropolises. Thus, also as a small gesture to the history of mankind, most celestials were named after culturally, historically, economically important cities on Earth. The design of their internal living space would also resemble Earth cities, with Earthly architecture, grass, trees, animals, lakes... Some celestials even had the ability to adjust their internal atmosphere to mimick natural water circulation, the environment control crews could choose to make clouds, rain, winds and so on. Of course, those would be kept at a rate which wouldn't interfere with the daily lives of residents.
Anchorage was one of the three space fortresses. It was named as such because this particular fortress would usually be used as a staging ground for navy vessels. The two other space fortresses were named Fort Unity and Fort Promise.
By now, quite most of the human population had moved to live in celestials rather than planetoids. Each celestial had it's own command crew, led by a civilian administration chosen by celestial-wide elections. Mankind -and in extension all celestials- was united under the name of "Solar Republic", but rarely would any celestial influence the leadership or internal affairs of another celestial. The leadership of the Solar Republic would loop in a certain order among the five large celestials which had a registered population of more than 3 million people each. Troubles among celestials (usually over mining resources) would almost always be resolved by a peaceful partition of resources proportional to the parties' populations.
As for me... When I had fulfilled my time as a president, the fight against the AI war machines were already in a dormant state. For whatever reason, the once-aggressive AI had ceased hostilites and communication with humans altogether. It still had the control of most of the Solar System resources though, and we humans were in no position to oppose a military power of that size.
And, as for Mei... She had left her duty as a navy officer, in order to live a simpler life with me.
"There." Mei said, putting an end to my flashbacks of humanity's journey so far.
The car's computer screen had a list of celestials, just like she requested.
- - - - - - LIST OF CELESTIALS - - - - - -
Former Space-Fortresses:
Fort Unity - Population 150k
Fort Promise - Population 172k
Anchorage - Population 52k
City-Celestials:
Sydney Celestial - Population 9.2M
Phoenix Celestial - Population 7.1M (Current Solar Republic Leader)
Istanbul Celestial - Population 5.5M
Shenzhen Celestial - Population 4.9M
Khartoum Celestial - Population 4.3M
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List more...