Trans Solar, Book 2

Manic Us

Baddie did not appreciate dealing with politics or half truths and deceit. She pointedly did not like being thwarted from access to her business rentals.

There were radio telescopes, satellite telescopes, x-ray telescopes, and even a gamma ray telescope and a spectral radiometer. Some of the leased equipment was far afield by the hundred and twenty-odd moons in the local solar system, justifying at least a visit from the Manic Us personnel. 

The purposes of the rentals was partly to create a mystique for Manic Us. People would always wonder what the business knew and whatever it might discover. The concept of being in the know encouraged peoples of all kinds to disclose things that they would never admit to others. 

A recent discovery by MU, a truth that had been hidden behind misinformation, was a perfect example of the value or true facts. Titan had a solid surface beneath an atmosphere of water and hydrocarbon ice. The old story about Titan being uninhabitable to genetically modified inhumans had been a misinformation campaign.

Laura felt humiliated inwardly by having believed and acted upon falsehoods about Titan for many years. Her business now leased or rented several types of satellites in order to clarify or discover the truth about every planet, moon, colony, resourcing destination and other critical information. 

The war continued, albeit without war stones falling upon civilization. Manic Us had been hastily conceived in order to gain power and representation among humanity and the inhuman species. Now, with the benefits of that power and riches under her hand, Laura discovered that even the communion meeting with Lunar City, Mars, and the former Titan collaborators had been deceitful by withholding the truth.

On the outward facing wall of Manic Us office, below Lunar City within the warrens of Lunar Central, Laura was posting a brief historical timeline of the inhumans. The history began at the start of Trans Solar, in Earth orbit, prior to its transition and rebirth as the primary transporter in space. The timeline presently consumed two chalkboards, and was at right angles to two other boards on the next wall to the left. The other boards held maps and charts and chapters of surveyor data from Lunar and beyond. 

That was the back office, or lower office, of Manic Us. The front office, three steps higher in the subterranean complex, was a hub featuring halls to living quarters for the resourcing personnel, adventurers, explorers, and technical support. Behind that office hub, higher and above the back office, was a backup office being prepared as a primary information center to access everyone and everything belonging to Manic Us.

Laura was getting comfortable with her staff, the 3rd generation of lunar colonials that had returned from backing a losing side in the Titan war. These were experienced people, well acquainted with Lunar development and also with resourcing and transport and colonies within part of the asteroid belt. Laura called these people a business investment, and she referred to them as specialists and technicians. They were inhuman colonials, descended from generations of Lunar parents yet distinct from the inhumans bred for colonizing the rest of the solar system. 

Manic Us expanded to off-site space by contracting its human refugees to volunteer as Lunar resourcing students. MU, Manic Us, paid for and supplied sustenance and supplies for its people in all quarters. Lunar’s vast expansion waves tunneling into the lunar mass were always behind schedule. The MU volunteers were a welcome source of help to the excavators and survivor crews. 

Lunar, as the moon itself, was just a cold hard mass orbiting a much larger mass, if the propaganda of Earth were believed. Earth was over eighty times the mass of Lunar, as if that mattered in the context of livable space. The misinformation lay in the inference that the two planets had equal proportions of inhabitable terrain. The true facts were quite a lot at odds with the perception of inhabitable terrain.