KSGU:Volume 1 Prologue
Prologue
0001
“It’s past 20:00 GMT. How is everyone going to spend this memorable New Year’s night? For tonight marks the end of an old age, and the beginning of another. The era named after the most famous person in history, the Age of Christ, shall end in four hours.
Ever since humans stumbled from out of the dark ages and stood on their own two feet, they have learned how to cross vast oceans, fly in in the limitless sky, and have obtained the technology to explore the final frontier: outer space. Now, humans shall enter an age where we leave mother Earth, as the door to the new world is opened in front of us all!
Just as our ancestors ventured to new continents in search of opportunity and freedom and lit the fire of civilization across the Earth, we too bear the responsibility of kindling the flame of civilization in our new continents: space. From now on, those flying into space are not just astronauts and technicians, they are trailblazers who will remain in space, settle in space, and light the fire of civilization in space. They are called Spacenoids, chosen residents of outer space.
This new age needs a new calendar. Four hours from now, at 00:00 GMT, the Earth Federation government will start the ceremony of an age change. The stage of the momentous ceremony that will be forever marked in history is at the Prime Minister’s residence, ‘Laplace.’ A place that shall act as the bridge to outer space that is set on an orbiting plane around the Earth, no location is more appropriate for the declaration of the space age.
Under the eager and watchful eyes of the media, the United Nations representatives have gathered at ‘Laplace.’ Everyone in the world is waiting for midnight to arrive, on New Year’s Eve, the eve to a new age. Everyone has different thoughts, from those anxious and full of expectations, to those still clinging to the old age that has lasted more than two thousand years.Regardless, everyone is a witness of this historic moment. In the long and tumultuous history of humanity, only we, who are alive right now, shall be privileged with witnessing the beginning of the new age. So why don’t we enjoy this moment, and be thankful as we say goodbye to the old age? Let us smile and accept the arrival of the new age!
Goodbye, Anno Domini.
Hello, Universal Century--!”
The Earth was right below them. The reddish-brown surface accompanied the sea surface that looked like blue skies covered with clouds.
Looking down 200km from above, it was more like a landscape than a planet. It didn’t feel like there was an atmosphere, but more like a plane in the high skies looking down on the earth. As one would continue to look, there may be the false impression that they may land.
Even so, the look of the ever-changing landscape caused me to understand that I’m moving about in the atmosphere at an unimaginable speed—1 rotation every 90 minutes. Once I look forward, I can see the profile of the planet covering the atmosphere, forming a gradual gradient. Looking over, I saw that there’s only a strong and overpowering light of the Earth taking away the shine of the stars around, and everything around was a vacuum. It’s not enough to call it pitch-darkness, but rather, an endless darkness that sucked away all the light.
It seemed that I’m in outer space. Suddenly realizing this, Syam felt a chill riding on his back. Even though he was already tired of looking through the little window in the worker ship, it was a little completely different to be wearing only a spacesuit, working outside the ship and looking through the helmet visor. As there wasn’t anything to block his sight, he could comprehend all the more that his body was floating outside the earth.
Being separated from the gravity of the earth and the sensation of floating continuously outside the earth…it was extremely terrifying. He could feel the blood, bones, cells becoming hot because of this abnormal change that had never happened before. The sweat that formed became icy-cold chills, and the throat that was exposed in zero gravity state let out a terrified sound.
Syam looked at the emptiness in front of him, and amidst the darkness that erased all the stars, there was a lump of star letting out a sharp glow. It was the sun letting out white light like it was about to explode—no, its core was actually exploding continuously, and the radiation heat in the air reaches 120 degrees Celsius that was scorching the surface of his spacesuit. It was completely different from looking at the sun from under the atmosphere. Over here, the sun would only be an energy source that gives off white light, an object that will send fears into humans. Even when the visor and the light filter reduced the luminosity, that sharp and powerful light didn’t look like it would be reduced.
I’ll go crazy if I stay in such a place. This isn’t a place humans should come to. Syam thought. In the distant past, those eager astronauts, who can be said to be reckless now in hindsight, flew out of the atmosphere and were each moved by the blue color of the Earth, and a precious experience that override their values. However, they were the elites, specially chosen, given the highest level of education and the forwards in human society, different from those who had problems reading and writing. Even if someone like him entered outer space, there wouldn’t be any benefits for him. Basically, for a 17 year old person who didn’t know the names of the continents and the locations, and where his hometown was, the Earth below his feet was merely a large slab that was ridiculously big.
Frontiers? What kind of joke is that? This is a garbage field. A place to dump humans who are multiplying rapidly, a rubbish dump without borders—
“What kind of world will this outer space that’s going to be a place where humans live be like? As the Universal Century is about to being, let’s review this through for everyone again. Today, our special guest is the top scholar in astronomy, Alexis Gretsky…”
The voice of the audio broadcaster continued to echo emptily as they mixed with his breathing, moving through this thick spacesuit with no way out. Syam used the soles of his feet to touch the materials of the structure.
As he checked the safety tension of the chain, he moved the soles of his feet to flip the material to the other side. Though he spun 180 degrees around upside down, it was nothing under this outer space that didn’t have any concept of up and down. Syam used the hand that’s wearing the thick glove and grab the material of the lattice-shaped structure and saw its front side. There was a mirror right in front of him, about 3m wide in a rectangular concave shape, forming a dazzling mirror surface.
The thousands of concave mirror formed a flat circular disk that’s 500m in diameter that had orbited in a low position around the Earth for quite a few years. The round core had a hole that’s about 100m wide, and what’s behind the hole was an empty darkness, making the disk look like those optical recording discs used in the past. Syam used the magnetism of his soles and let his feet land on the edge of the disk as he looked up. The donut-shaped structure that appeared in his eyes was about the size of this mirror field, and through the center of the hole, he could see a round-shaped body with the same shape as this mirror, with the Earth floating in the background.
The two large disks used the concave surface to reflect the sunlight and were shining brightly had a donut ring in the middle, 300m away from them. That’s the Low Earth Orbital Station ‘Laplace’. The two layers, one on top and one below, reflected the sunlight, providing light and energy from what’s accurately called a Stanford. The residential area continued to rotate once every 75 seconds, creating gravity inside the centrifugal force. Though this would only create gravity that’s 1/6 of Earth, about the equivalent to that of the moon, it would be much better than zero gravity. It’s said that for a 500m in diameter ring, a rotation in less than 30 seconds would be required to create the same amount of gravity as the Earth, and it would cause the people inside to feel nauseous.
Those high-ranking government officials were either too curious or idiots to use such a place as the Prime Minister’s Residence, and I’m even more of an idiot to sneak around beside the station and climb around and getting sick. Syam tightened his face and grimaced. At this moment, his partner’s voice came from the wireless communicator (Oi, ‘Shepherd’, don’t move away from your position too much!)
“My job’s done.”
“Then get back onto the ship. Your vitals are messed up!”
His partner, a man who was viewed as the captain because of his seniority in age and whose authority was just second to the ‘worker head’, said. There wouldn’t be any sense of distance caused by air in vacuum, so he could see the shape of the object. The double layered ring structure that was divided into the outside and inside structure, the central spoke elevator that extend out from the central rotary axis, the joints of the structure and the texture; everything was so detailed that it was like a miniature model right in front of him.
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