GC A Journey

A Journey

This is a story where nothing really exciting happens, there are no galaxy shattering events and none of the Immortals will make a direct appearance. This is a story of Alex Cunningham, freelance writer and producer for Union Galactographic Magazine.

While working almost forty years for Galactographic Magazine, I have travelled to the furthest regions of the Union and reported and told you all about the most unusual places and people. Yet I have never really written or talked about the Sol System. Now I was born on a floating city of Jupiter. I work for UGM and have an office at their headquarters here on Mercury. My wife  was born on Sedna, a large Asteroid in the Oort Cloud, about as far as you can be from our Star which is officially named Sol, but most of us still call it simply “The Sun”. My boss, a Saresii lives on Earth and my colleague Nine-Zero-Seven, a Non Corp lives on Venus. My wife and I decided to buy a small Living- Asteroid in the Kuiper Belt. Just a small dirt ball, really but the previous owners had renovated and it is just as we always wanted a home inside. Now my editor and boss Miscyri Laydnee,, the lovley Saresii usually smiling at you from her column image inside the cover had an idea for a new Feature series. She wanted me to take a Journey from Sol Castle to Distant Shores Station, the furthest outpost of the Union accessible to Civilians in the Andromeda Galaxy and write not only about the destination but the Journey itself and the stops in between. I will use all possible traffic options : Transmatter Tunnels, Space Tram, train and bus. Space ships and whatever else is there.

So for my first stop on this long journey I need to go to Sol Castle.

SOL CASTLE

So I begin my journey out of my Office that is on the 200th floor of the United Publishers building. It reaches exactly 1000 meters into the sky and pierces the dome above Heliocaminus City at 300 meters. This floor and seven floors beneath me, belonged to UGM. Other magazines are edited, produced and published here, and all belong to the Apollonia Media Group. The corridor outside my office is leads me to a bank of Inter Building Transport Columns and I take one. The IBT carries me on the outside of the building downwards. The vista was not very special as we were in the Mercury night period took almost 88 earth days and it was completely dark outside the domed city. To the east was the original SII Needle, SII had its first HQ right here on Mercury and while they had moved their HQ to Omni Planet, SII maintained its payroll office here and it is by far the largest single employer in the Inner Solar System.