Earth Station

The spacecraft docked with a shake and a crunch, one that was entirely superfluous – as the silent magnetic locks were more than sufficient to keep the craft in place. It was deemed necessary though, as most passengers were loath to even get out of their seats without some tactile reassurance that the craft was safely linked to the station.

One man sighed at the extra wear and tear that little exercise took, as he was already standing by the airlock waiting to disembark. He was thankful his trip to the Earth Station was an infrequent one, the routine he was used to was much more efficient – as it had to be in the outer planets. Soon he would be able to simply send the data via the communication channels, but currently the sheer volume of it made it impractical. Stray bits of comets and asteroids tended to corrupt the signal making the usual compression algorithms nearly useless.

It was also a requirement to visit the Earth Station at least every five years as the equipment and software upgrades were rolled out their first, then only later to the outlying stations.

The space tourist ship that picked him up was nearly empty of passengers now, only the equipment was left. He waited patiently, as he knew his stuff would be offloaded last – the belongings of the tourists would be priority. As they paid a premium for every kilogram of stuff they brought, his stuff was ferried basically free of charge. If they saw how much stuff he had, they would likely be quite upset.

Still, it was a symbiotic relationship. Their resource spending supplied the materials for the trip, but it was his equipment that made the trip less frivolous.

He had skimmed the 'patch notes' for the last few years of upgrades during the trip back to Earth, but failed to see any coherent pattern to them until he stepped into the main part of the station. “All the way back here for this?” he cursed to himself. The changes were, as he should have realized, mostly cosmetic in nature.

The wait times for the more obscure areas of the program were reduced, as the divergent parts were finally re-written to be part of a more cohesive whole, rather then a separate subroutine. He was pleased that nearly all of his suggestions were implemented, if not exactly how he imagined they would be.

Dark Lining of a Silver Cloud

He extrapolated the future, it didn't seem as bright to him as it did to others.

By all accounts they would regress back to an Iron Age agricultural society. Knowledge would be lost as things were deemed 'impractical' or 'unnecessary'. Disease would be cured, so there would be no further research into anything medical. Industry would collapse as mass production would be considered too polluting. Biological sciences would reduced to observation and basic interaction as any kind of experiment would be ruled out as cruel. Once basic needs were provided for – a logistical mess which no-one seemed to want to prepare for beforehand – there was no drive to accomplish anything more. Mass communication was also down as satellites and other infrastructure fell into disuse. Creative endeavours suffered from a lack of audience and basic supplies.

There was a cheery optimism among the more practical minded, as they felt this was the 'proper' was to live. The more esoteric and existential viewed this as more of a blank slate and saw no reason to continue in the current stagnation.

He felt it would be an uphill struggle to organize anything more elaborate. The majority felt that basic obedience was what was called for and they saw no reason to go off the page. It was an oppression by absence – one was strongly recommended to endorse the primary objectives so much that other activities were crowded out into oblivion.

Try as he might, he couldn't muster up the enthusiasm for what he reflected to be a half-built production. The ostensibly helpful suggestions gave no room for creative interpretation or meaningful deviation.