The Oasis

Chapter 3

Ch 3 

“You have now arrived at your destination.” The ambient voice chimed. Though Jake certainly didn’t want to leave his place beside his attractive neighbor, he was more than willing to finally get out of the lift on account of how bumpy the ride had been.

                  “Please use the exit lit with your designated color. White is for Control Personnel, red for Medical, yellow for Development, blue for Research, green for Production, and grey for Maintenance. Please proceed with caution.”

                  The seat belt light clicked off and everyone unstrapped like they had ants crawling all over them. Apparently Jake was not the only one eager to get out of the lift car. The shift in gravity and hard g-forces of re-entry were never pleasant.

                  As Jake rose from his seat, he immediately collapsed back down. His legs were shaky and felt like they tried to lift a train. The lift gates opened up and Control personnel ushered people through.

                  “Please proceed with caution.” One of them said, helping steady those passing through her gate.

                  “I thought Mars gravity was supposed to be weaker.” Jake said, rising to his unstable feet.

                  “You’ve been in space for over two years. You’re not like to remember what any gravity feels like.” The woman said.

                  “Touché.” Jake replied. He looked back to Lauren, but she was already passing through the yellow gate. Jake sighed with a shrug. Being in a different corps, he figured he wasn’t really going to see much more of her. To be honest, he hadn’t expected much else. As he passed through his own grey gate, his COM pinged and the Control officer registered his arrival.

                  “Take the grey line down, and you’ll receive more instructions at your stop.” She said. Jake nodded and looked around. Though not all that big, the center was certainly busy. Jake stood near the center station, which looked vaguely familiar. Fork lifts and other transport machinery scurried back and forth, hauling in supplies from the cargo sections of the lift car. There were so many people headed for the grey line, Jake could hardly believe they would all fit. It felt as crowded as a New York subway station. In fact, it looked just like one, too. The lights were a little ruddy, the walls were a mixture of different colors, and there was more trash than Jake expected. For being as new as the station was, it wasn’t as pristine as he was hoping.

                  Then again, he couldn’t be all that surprised. Lots of people went back and forth here, and since they were a very long way from normal civilization, it would be pretty naïve to expect even the hallways to be five stars. Grey lights continued to strobe, indicating the direction for the Maintenance Corps personnel. Not that it was all that necessary. Besides the area for receiving the space lift, there wasn’t much room to wander or get lost. Much like a wheel and spokes, six lines of people came from the space lift landing zone, heading out in multiple directions, down hallways lit with their respective color. Jake wasn’t sure why they designed it that way. All the other lines of people went to the same place anyway. Wherever the other hallways lead, they would eventually end at a tram station which would take them all to the only destination worth going to in a couple million square miles. But hey, he was a hydraulics engineer. What did he know?

                  It felt strange to walk down such a familiar hallway with no advertisements. Jake kept expecting to see a scrolling image of some smiling person holding toothpaste, but the walls were strikingly bare. The patches of mismatched shades of grey still dotted the Spartan hallway here and there. Almost like someone had hastily attempted to paint over graffiti. Though Jake knew that couldn’t have been what was really going on. There were no delinquents here on Mars. Who among the scientists, doctors, and engineers would want to spray paint, “Bob was here” on the side of the walls? It was more likely that some instructions had been placed upon the walls and then quickly changed. After all, on a fly by the pants mission like this, in the first colony humanity has produced on a desolate world, things were bound to change quickly. Jake knew he had to expect a state of constant flux for a while. Though to be honest, there was much more structure than he was expecting. Ares of course was not a military venture, but from what Jake could tell so far, it functioned like one.