Adrastae

Leucosia

George Stone sat in his chair, bored. He fiddled with a pencil at his desk. A sheet of paper sat in front of him, with an unfinished drawing on it. Various rulers and compasses sat around it. He pushed back from his desk, with the chair rolling across the room. He got up, walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out. At once, gravity ceased to exist. He used a nearby handhold to fling himself across the crowded corridor, into a flow. Gravity returned, this time, where he was facing. He fell forward, suppressing his limbic node with difficulty. As he fell, he nodded to a fellow resident he often worked out at the nearest gym with, who was going in the opposite direction. However, the woman, named Aeren, did not notice. She appeared to be listening to music, or perhaps a podcast. He wondered whether it was popular galactically, or if it was simply one of the local talk shows. He passed down the ceramic corridor. Eventually, he came to where he wanted to be. He maneuvered out of the flow, and floated towards the door labeled; "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY." He grabbed onto the door handle, and opened it. He stepped through nonchalantly, as if he belonged in there, past that dirty white door. It was made of ceramic, as almost every structure in here was. When he moved through the passage, he fell into another gravity flow, this one stronger than the last, public one. This flow was meant to make someone go where they were meant to be, and fast. George flew at an astonishing pace. Instead of falling, he felt as if he was being thrown in a direction, like a rag doll. Nevertheless, he kept his cool. He always kept his cool. George sighed, and checked his implant's display. 5 GMs until he was there. Even at the speed he was going, it would be a long ride. He settled back into a comfortable position, hands beside his head. He should be thankful he wasn't being sent to the farthest gravity array, about 40 GMs away. His mind boggled at the large distance.

Some time later, he arrived at his destination. He flew into the doorstop, a wall of compressed liquid water, and bounced off into his feet. He shook his head clear, and peered around. Just behind the doorstop, there was a large sphere of neutral gravity, marked by a holographic tinge of purple. In the very center, a model of a ship hung. It was about his size. The scale impressed onto the floor stated that one decimal length equaled one galactic measurement. George Stone was about 50 decimals in height. He was a rather tall man. As he gazed at the model, a hulking creature stepped up to him. The monstrous hulk appeared to be 80 decimals tall, and was a burnished yellow-brown. A humanoid, it reached out one of its muscular, hyper-jointed arms in greeting. Stone reached out his own arm, and the two hands touched. The Hydrean (for that is what the creature was) opened its mouth. It was strangely beautiful, unfolding like a flower's petals. The tongues moved, and clicked together in the galactic standard language. Stone responded in kind, snicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The Hydrean stepped back, and gestured towards the sphere lacking gravity. "(here is the model.)" The Hydrean then guided Stone towards the main console. It gently placed Stone's hands into the two gel cubes inset into the ceramic piece. At once, Stone was not alone inside his head. He felt his mind sort of shift over, as if it was losing ground in its own home. There was a visitor. <Welcome back, George Stone. Did you miss me?> George smiled, and thought, Yeah, sure. Hello Edward. How's the galaxy going? <No time for chit-chat. There is a pressing issue in your world-of-origin. Adrastae. It appears as if the gate there is malfunctioning. Seeing as how you are the commander of this cityship, albeit in secret, and you being one of the most important people to have been born on the planet, and actually voluntarily having left it, it is arguable that you should be the one to go there.> George's smile had long since fell, and fallen into a frown, at that. He murmured out loud, "why can't you do it? You're the all-powerful computer overlord of the Galaxy." One of the Hydreans overheard this, and the brown-ness of its skin coalesced into spots. Stone forgot whether that signified anger, or embarrassment. No, the scales turning into place meant anger. He remembered now. Oh well, most Hydreans were an enigma anyways. <Pay attention. This is important.> George thought to himself, The question still stands. <I cannot because I am doing far more important things. Managing the economic outputs and inputs of an entire galactic society takes extreme processing power. Plus there's the relations with the few independents that still refuse to give up their autonomy. Droonsaften.> Stone could not keep himself from grinning at Edward's minor curse. "Fine. I'll do it. You have to explain to the residents and other people aboard this ship." He chuckled, and pulled his hands out of the gel before Edward could respond. He immediately barked out orders to the rest of the crew: "Fire up the gravity drives, but not all at once. Don't want the residents to become one with the walls! Let out the ship wide alert for Gdrive spin-up. Head for Adrastae. The lonely planet."

Adrastae was the geographic and economic center of the Edwardian Coalition, a society ruled by an absolute monarch, the massive computing system known to most everyone only as Edward. Being a compressed brown dwarf star(albeit referred to as a planet by most everyone), artificially made to be solid and habitable, it was about the size of a large gas giant. Caught in the pull of it's gravity are three gates, and one small planet caught in a loose ellipse. Due to there being no natural light source on or near the planet, there is a small plasma globe in a forced orbit. The surface of the "planet" is covered in one massive, urban cityscape. At the moment, the plasma globe was on the Leftern side of the planet, so named because it is the left side of the planet as you come out of the central gate. The reason such a lonely, isolated, and seemingly useless object was of such importance was simple. It was protected by the black hole that sat around it. No one knew exactly how it had happened, as it quite obviously went against most of the laws of physics, but the planet and associated objects are always kept just inside the event horizon, barely beyond any danger. It has been like this for millennia, as long as anyone can remember. It is for this reason it is so sought out: the small safe zone kept around the planet, and the various benefits of being inside a relativistic zone. Time passes slower there, and somehow everything seems ideal. Adrastae is a strange place, made even stranger by the attention Edward has paid to the dwarf star.

Aeren wiped the sweat off her forehead. She was exercising in one of the ship's gyms, waiting for planet leave. The cityship Leucosia was currently parked in orbit around the planet Adrastae. The ship had been diverted from its original course for no good reason, and it pissed her off. It would only make her family even more furious when she inevitably returned. She had called her mother and apologized, but they still didn't care. All she got was screams and the vague sound of objects being thrown. She didn't deserve their grief, but they were still her legal guardians and would be until she was legally required to become an official adult, which was age 25 for her specific variation of humanity. She was 22. Aeren flipped her blonde ponytail behind her head, and continued to jog along on the treadmill. She saw a hill coming up, and successfully changed pace before the treadmill abruptly changed shape to simulate a steep change in the ground. A smile formed on her face. No matter how pigheaded and difficult her parents were, she just couldn't let them get to her. Her innate, reckless optimism could not fail. She began to giggle to herself. Other people in the gym gave her strange looks, and she quickly stopped. But her mind, as it usually did, turned to Stone. He was a mysterious enigma, usually silent. She had no idea where he came from, or what his business was on the massive, nomadic ship. All she knew was that he had excellent endurance, and was a good sparring partner. And that he interested her. She wanted to know more about him, but knew that was not likely to happen. He appeared to be busy almost constantly, whatever he was busy with, Edward only knew. All of a sudden, she got a notification. "planet leave authorized" She silently fist pumped the air, and ran out of the gym without signing out. Little did she know, she would not enter the gym, or rather, the ship itself, again.