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Post by Skyfire on May 5, 2010 14:42:17 GMT -5
Once again, Erin was leading Liz through Star Command, and this time, they were headed for the locker rooms. “I just want to change into my civvies,” she explained, “and pick up my spacesuit, and then we can head down to the planet.” It took her… well, three minutes, which wasn’t bad considering that this is Erin we’re talking about. In an emergency, she could switch from civvies to uniform in less than 180 seconds – but this wasn’t urgent.
She emerged from the locker room with a duffel bag slung over her right shoulder. She was now dressed in a black turtleneck, dark khaki slacks, and a dark grey jacket with the Star Command insignia in pale green on the shoulder. She actually looked slightly older – the stylish civvies seemed to wear better on her than the dress uniform. “Okay,” she smiled, “let’s jet!”
Through the hallways, they passed dozens of Rangers, some human but many alien. Erin greeted some of them by name, and they returned her hellos. There were Isis, a silvery saurian girl almost elfin in form; Indy, a human boy; Rin, a girl who looked mostly Japanese barring her long, pointed ears and rose-colored hair; Eddie, a man with a completely human form but scales in place of skin (and he called Erin “Er-In-Frame”); Carter, another saurian girl, but green and much bulkier than Isis; Togusa, a Japanese man in his early thirties; Petra and Plaz, a green-skinned girl with antennae and a red, plasmatic boy with blond hair; Clutch, a yellow-skinned boy with four arms, five eyes, and four short head tentacles; Kidney, a golden-skinned girl with four arms and pointed ears; and Cody, a Hispanic boy.
“They’re my classmates,” Erin explained. “We graduated from Star Command Academy eight months ago, May 3010. There are over a hundred of us rookies, lots of different species and ethnic groups and even career backgrounds. Like… Isis, the silver saurian girl? She’s a KXR – her species is called that because their native language is all clicks and trills and whistles, and most races just fail at trying to speak it, so their true name is shortened to KXR.” She flashed a grin at Liz. “If we have a chance sometime, I’ll have to get Isis to speak some of the language for you – it’s really beautiful.”
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Post by Blacksteel on Jun 14, 2010 16:16:04 GMT -5
It was as if an entirely new world had opened up to Liz—which, truth be told, was exactly what had happened. She’d never seen so many different people all in the same place—and people who were typically normal and not threats to be neutralised. There were a lot of humans of different ethnicities milling about too, and aliens! So many aliens! She felt like she was on a Men in Black set or something. Having dealt with the occult for most of her life, it was kind of unnerving yet exciting at the same time to discover that more sentient races existed. She’d always thought aliens existed, of course... but having to fight magic on a daily basis had managed to make her forget about the more abstract side to science.
“I’d really like that,” Liz said in earnest, walking in step beside Erin, still trying to get used to it all. “So what’s our first stop?”
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Post by Skyfire on Jun 15, 2010 6:01:27 GMT -5
((*facepalm* I forgot to describe her civvies, and I’d wanted to! Argh! Edited now.))
“First stop is a surprise here on the station,” Erin replied, flashing Liz a grin. “After we leave the station, though, we’re going to head down to Capitol Square. I figure we tour Capital City for the morning, drop by a restaurant for lunch, then…” She shrugged.
“I figure that, by then, you’ll know a little bit more about the galaxy, and you can pick a planet you’d like to see – we go there, have fun, come back, and crash in the lounge and gorge ourselves on popcorn while we watch a movie.” She winked at Liz to assure the older woman that she wasn’t entirely serious about that last bit. “Whaddaya say?”
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Post by Blacksteel on Jul 19, 2010 7:03:15 GMT -5
“Sounds like a nice way to spend the day and get to know some things.” She half-shrugged, rubbing an arm. “Not really one for surprises, but call me curious. But... we can really travel to a planet and come back in one day?”
The thought seemed preposterous, but then again it was a thousand years in the future so she shouldn’t be surprised.
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Post by Skyfire on Jul 19, 2010 7:33:00 GMT -5
Erin smirked. “Oh, I know, it’s weird. But yeah, we can.” She tilted her head, letting her hair swish to one side. “So… surprise.” She smiled, her brown eyes dancing with a secret. “You’re gonna love it, trust me.”
She took Liz’s hand and pulled her to a room off the corridor. “Okay, close your eyes.” She led Liz through the door… They took a few steps that echoed, then she announced, “All right, you can look now.”
A viewport spanned the opposite wall for a wide view. Below the station lay a beautiful blue-green planet, laced with white and grey clouds. Above the planet spread a vast ebony field, spangled with brilliant stars.
Outer Space.
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Post by Blacksteel on Jul 22, 2010 6:59:12 GMT -5
“Wow...” she marvelled, stepping closer to the large glass windows. Pressing her hands against the cool material, she looked down at the planet below, awash in greens and blues and whites—it was just like the Earth she knew and remembered, and she felt a pang of homesickness.
Looking up, however, made her insides cartwheel in excitement. Sleek space vessels and astronauts—but they were probably the well-known space rangers in uniform—whizzed past her, and the stars all around shone brighter than ever as they orbited the planet from overhead.
It was an exhilarating sight to behold, and it filled Liz with an excitement similar to her first mission—the excitement of one who was just on the verge of discovering an entirely new world.
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Post by Skyfire on Jul 23, 2010 5:28:03 GMT -5
Erin glanced at the older woman’s face—that was the same look Erin and her classmates had worn that first day in the Academy. It was the same look Erin had sported often during her first few months here in the future.
Seeing it on Liz’s face, Erin smiled softly. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?” She gestured at the enormous viewport, her eyes burning with a wonder that never grew old or jaded. “This was my first view of Outer Space, and it totally blew me away.”
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Post by Blacksteel on Jul 31, 2010 3:44:51 GMT -5
“I know it’s blowing me away,” Liz said, still staring at it in awe. It took her several more moments to tear her gaze away, and with difficulty.
“So.. Capital Planet’s our Earth...” Just imagining their world united for once brought her some hope. “What city is the capital?” Assuming the capital was based on one of their old cities, that was.
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Post by Skyfire on Aug 1, 2010 5:53:39 GMT -5
Erin smirked and folded her arms. “Cities is the better word. Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta…” She leaned forward and pointed at the Eastern Seaboard, tracing the broad silver line that ran along the coast. “From Maine to Florida, it’s all urban, and that’s Capital City. When the Confederacy of Sovereign Planets chose Earth as its capital, most of our major cities were pretty well ruined—except for parts of Manhattan and D.C. Construction started in New York and spread down the coastline. In another fifty years, Manhattan and D.C. were connected, and the city just kept growing.”
She leaned her back against the transparisteel, then twisted around to continue to look down. “But after two centuries of extraterrestrial control of our planet, humans were justly worried that the continual growth of the capital would eventually eat up the old continental U.S.A. and spread throughout the rest of North America. So the CSP—the Confederacy—drew up boundaries for the city and the suburbs, and nobody could add to the city beyond that.”
Erin smiled faintly. “But we’re talking about the most important planet in the galaxy. Her biggest city was bound to keep growing. So when they needed new suburbs, other major cities became suburbs for Capital City, like London, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong-Kong.” She laughed. “To this day, Capital City is the only city in the galaxy with suburbs all over her planet.”
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Post by Blacksteel on Aug 3, 2010 5:28:22 GMT -5
“d--n... it spans all of those cities!?” And other major cities in other countries, as well? She shook her head in amazement. It seemed like things were vastly different in the future. “How big is the planet's population? And what about global warming and the environment everyone back home was so worried about?”
She thought about it for a second and felt that she was already asking too many questions, but she was curious to know more. “What about racism? Xenophobes? Clashes with religion?” Liz asked. Certainly a millennium would have eradicated most of those aspects of society that she’d detested, but one never knew with human nature...
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Post by Skyfire on Aug 3, 2010 6:00:29 GMT -5
“Eeep, one at a time, one at a time!” Erin protested, throwing up her hands. “Population is… umm… oh shoot, I can’t remember. Population numbers aren’t my thing. Umm… was it somewhere around two hundred billion? I think it might be… ‘Course, most of that population is in the cities, and about a third of it is non-human.
“Anyway, environment… well, environmental battles still go on today. Not with as much luck, though, as they did back in our time, thank goodness. I mean, I’m all for nature, okay—just not at the expense of people who need land or water or lack of wolves.” Erin shook her head, then barked a short laugh. “Global warming, on the other hand… now that was found out to be nothing more than one big money-making scam, actually back in our own time, although it happened after I left. A few years later, alien technology confirmed it. Earth was actually leaning closer towards a cooling stage rather than a warming stage.” Amused, Erin shook her head again.
“Racism… y’know, I don’t actually know,” Erin frowned. “It probably does exist—you just don’t hear about it, anymore. Although, actually, national identities are still quite strong. In fact, exposure to the rest of the galaxy actually strengthened such ethnic minorities as Irish, Scots, Welsh, and even Israelis. Now that’s pretty cool.”
She folded her arms, a speculative look on her face. “Xenophobia, as far as I know, is pretty weak nowadays. I mean, the human race has had an entire millennia of living side-by-side with non-human people. And clashes with religion still exist—they’re just not publicized because they’re not as strong anymore. All the major world religions from our time still exist in varying degrees,” Erin smirked, “but the media finds juicer stuff in what goes on beyond our planet.”
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Post by Blacksteel on Aug 3, 2010 6:30:07 GMT -5
“Two hundred billion?” Liz repeated, aghast. “Earth was strained with just 6.5 billion back in our time! There was world hunger, a lack of resources, waste. What about all the waste?!” She wondered if some of the nearby planets, like Mercury, had been turned into landfills.
“I thought for sure that people would’ve been all for the environment now. Guess we were just wasting our breath back then,” Liz mused, lips twisting wryly. “And tell that to Leach who kept complaining about the heat waves in summer.” Not that Erin would know Sidney Leach, but he’d been the type who kept tabs on such issues, and Liz herself was always hot so she couldn’t really tell.
“Surprising that people still remember the difference between Scots and Jews.” She’d expected people to just be carted off as humans now that they were in contact with aliens. And just imagine all the different ethnicities within alien cultures! Liz wondered whether she’d be able to learn everything in time.
“So what happens beyond Capital Planet?” she asked, seeing that xenophobia and religion weren’t major issues in the future. “Are we so eager to find out everybody else’s dirt?” she grinned.
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Post by Skyfire on Aug 3, 2010 7:00:43 GMT -5
Erin arched an eyebrow. “Earth was actually not strained. Certain areas were, yes, but only because people in high places mishandled the space they had. You can actually fit 6.5 billion people onto Rhode Island by giving them one square foot of space. Shift that so that you have multi-floor buildings, and you can give 6.5 billion people a lot more than one square foot and still fit them all onto Rhode Island. Overpopulation was never a true global problem.
“World hunger, again, because of governmental problems. Good laws and private enterprise always abolish world hunger, and that’s exactly what happened, eventually.” Erin pushed herself away from the viewport and took Liz’s hand. “C’mon, let’s head down to the parking deck and I’ll keep answering your questions.” She let go of Liz’s hand and led her out of the room and back into Star Command’s maze of corridors.
“Earth continues to meet her own food demands outside of her cities, and inside the cities, that’s a split between Earth production and off-planet from agricultural worlds like Jo-Ad. Our other natural resources have actually been tapped into very little since 2020—more than 99% is off-planet sourcing. And waste… waste is definitely not an issue. One of Jupiter’s moons—I don’t remember which one—has a huge waste-incinerating facility. Garbage gets shipped out there to be burned.”
“People decided that they weren’t going to let their heritages be erased,” Erin said simply, but with a note of satisfaction in her tone.
Erin laughed. “Guess so. Me, I’m not so eager, but hey, I’m the one who has to clean up the dirt, so…” She giggled again. “I don’t know, to be honest—I’ve spent the past two years learning all the background of this time and doing paramilitary training and using that training in real life, so…” She shrugged. “I get a little busy to pay attention to the news.” She winked.
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Post by Blacksteel on Aug 11, 2010 4:21:19 GMT -5
“That would be uncomfortable, apartments and flats and alls...” Liz mused, thinking that this description was a better fit for the slums.
She knew that the male agents back at headquarters used to argue in the showers over who’d get to use the soap bar and they’d had a modest amount of space. Come to think of it, they squabbled like hens over who’d get into the cafeteria line first or who’d watch what on television. In essence, dump a lot of people into the same space and you get people who’ll be pretty cranky.
But everything else sounded pretty logical, so the older woman let Erin lead her through the vast hallways of the space station. And soon enough, they had reached the parking pad, and Liz’s eyes roamed over all the star cruisers, tall, sleek and majestic on their landing pads.
“So... since I’m here, am I going to have to find a job?” To be honest, Liz had never known any other job besides being a BPRD agent, having been with the organisation since she was twelve years old. “I don’t know anything else besides fighting against the supernatural.”
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Post by Skyfire on Aug 11, 2010 6:02:39 GMT -5
“A job would be nice,” Erin admitted, “since we’re not quite made out of money—and Buzz and Mira have enough to pay for with Cora around…” She gave a little giggle again, then shook her head, winding her way through the ships and cars.
“But you could probably get something here at Star Command,” she added, “anything from a desk job to working out on the field. If you wanted to go that far, we’d give you some quick training—you know, just enough so that you know what you’re doing and you can learn the rest on-the-spot.”
She halted in front of a black vehicle that was recognizably a Corvette but even sleeker and oh so ready to cruise the heavens. Even the signs of use weren’t at all bad, and didn’t detract from its beauty. “This is my baby,” Erin told Liz, pride and fondness in her voice as she patted the pilot door. “3009 Cayona Corvette with a V-36—one of the fastest speedsters out there.”
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