R.T.M - Return To Mother

3 - Oseser

The tram ride to the Operations Center was mind-numbingly boring and disgustingly long. Music and their one and only radio host, Cleo, who operated out of a salvage barge that went to and from several of the colonies, rattled on about recent solar flares that could be affecting them daily with strange headaches and fevers. He almost had a headache now, but it was brought on by the sound of Cleo's voice. Ever since Cleo had been almost put out of a job by the recent colonies shutting down and moving back into more patrolled Syndicate space, he had taken up the more annoying job of reporting news if there was any of that in a backwater station. While most of the stations received their news directly from an interlink with the Syndicate, Cleo's station had been picked up by the younger generation and they had practically had a revolt on their hands when they had blocked it. Eventually, it wormed its way back in and replaced the elevator music.

Though he had never personally met the man; Oseser found it rather pathetic for a grown man to live by himself on a barge in the middle of space and complain about the galaxy around him. Cleo droned about the recent United Syndicate operations in the area, how there was news of agents slipping into the station unannounced and watching them, that there was a giant infestation of bugs known as the Rustera coming to kill them all. Anything else a deranged mind could think up. Nothing had ever bothered them this far out and nothing more than likely ever would. The station had simply been there too long.

This was an entire segment on how the station was handling their involvement in the Syndicate's new dictatorship, but Oseser had stopped listening. His eyes were drawn outside; the tram he was in was one of the few that had an almost complete view of the temporarily uninhabited desert planet the station orbited. If all continued to go as planned, Mother would be changing their entire view of the planet below them. Zulu-83 had once been the head of modern engineering, being the furthest station ever built and nearly entirely self-sustaining. Oseser found it ironic that the theory of self-reliance had never been truly tested before Zulu had made the decision to break away from the Syndicate for the first time. It hadn't been bad, but horrific.

He had never been for the rebellion, not even when he was still a child with his parents. Only a vague memory remained of his mother. She always talked excitedly, but she was near shrill at his father in his wish to separate from the Syndicate. Oseser jumped at the voice saying that he had arrived, ripping his eyes away from the beautiful scenery on the other side of thickened glass. A noise came as soon as the doors slid open to the Operations Center. It was an extremely large room, ultimately shaped like a doughnut, but instead of a hollow center, it had a desk. On every wall, that wasn't covered in ads or graffiti, there were trams going to every branch, petals of the station. There were a good hundred people talking, laughing or running to their respective elevators for work or school. Several people filled the one he vacated as he headed toward the massive desk in the center of the room. Though this seemed like a lot of people in one place- for a station of this size... it was a fraction of the people who had once been there. As the pedals of the station shut down, they fled to the center or the remainder of the pedals.

His shoes clicked on the floor; which despite its many years of foot traffic was as clear as the day they had assembled the station and completely transparent besides supports. Below the floor was a view into the funnel-shaped interior of the station. Starships, transports and salvage barges of all sorts of sizes floated through the funnel back out into space while others hooked up to the sides for maintenance or more supplies. This station was one of the few that were strictly human-inhabited only- and traffickers and explorers were forced to stop there because of its location, even if there wasn't enough staff to meet the numbers who needed it. That alone had made people go elsewhere.

Escalators lead up from Intake & Processing to Operations. The station was broken into seven sectors that circled all around the funnel-like pinwheel. Reflective surfaces on the front of the station's petals were all specialized light-gathering panels that accounted for more than two-thirds of the energy on the station. The other half was generated from one of the sectors that all connected to the Operations Center. It was hoped that people would come back to the station to trade, and so their staff would slowly increase again with or without the Syndicate's involvement.