Axy Stormforge and her Journey to the Edge of Reality

Chapter 1: Introduction

Ch 1 - Introduction

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Once a day, she gets to see the stars outside the orbiting habitat she reluctantly calls "home".

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Illumount Gardens 117 is a rotating cylinder habitat in the 27.5 orbital band of the star system Stoic, one star of a binary pair with Nuric, deep within the larger interstellar nation of Plaric. Miles long and a mile in diameter, it rotates in space to provide centrifugal gravity to the overpopulated city inside.

Most habitats come in counter-rotating pairs or are arranged into polyhedrons, but some markets demand a little more independence. Some "tugboat" contractors, legislative effort, and a few bribes to Orbit Command can put a habitat closer or farther from it's sun, increasing power input or leaving hostile ideologies behind. It's just as hard to transfer to a habitat next door as it is to transfer to one halfway across the solar system, so there isn't much motivation for residents to have a neighboring city they can't leave. Except budget.

Illumount Gardens 117 was one of a few hundred low-budget housing habitats targeting the lower-middle class residents of the star system. Of the 4.7 quadrillion people in the system, 4 million lived and worked and laughed and wondered and cried and drank their sorrows and found their meaning in Illumount Gardens 117.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Between strands of her mid-length silver hair, her eyes reflected every single one of these emotions, all at once, as the Permislat window nestled in the city above her painted the entire universe across her corneas. Such a thin piece of transparent human tissue, yet representing an impassible chasm keeping apart those wonders and experiences from her unsilencable desire to chase them.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Amongst the countless millions of cylinders orbiting Stoic, the Illumount Garden series were of the affordable options 27.5 times the distance of what would be a habitable zone for a planet around that star, if there were any planets left. The reduced sunlight at this distance made skylights a rarity in habitat cylinders, as light was usually produced by nuclear fusion generators and the real estate was more valuable as housing this far out in the star system. But the Illumount Garden series was one of the few that still had them. This was a nice marketing touch, giving residents a little whiff of nature in an otherwise bleak industrial housing habitat. It comes at the cost of better external shielding and living space, but most folks today paid it no mind, like the communal park squeezed between buildings in a dense apartment neighborhood.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

A gray-haired, cleanly and modestly dressed man quietly steps into the elevator, paying only a glancing notice to Axy as she stared above.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Over the millennia, the housing complexes had been built so high around the two skylights that you couldn't actually see them anymore at all unless you were right beneath it. In the side of the cylinder Axy lived in, the residents called their window the "Permislat", because it was like an opening in their world that could never be shut. The Industrialists won the name battle for that one. Conservationists battled the Industrialists over keeping its original purpose functional as opposed to bridging over it with new buildings to expand precious living space. A compromise was reached that side views would be sacrificed with sky scrapers rising ever higher toward the center of the cylinder, but the top view preserved forever. The diffusers were also removed to allow a clear view of stars when that side was facing away from the sun.