Звезда Пандоры

The star was a blue dwarf formally named Alpha Leonis, more commonly referred to as Regulus by intrigued astronomers on Earth, back in the days when there was such a thing as astronomy on the old world. They also found its companion star, Little Leo, an orange dwarf, which itself had a companion, Micro Leo, a red dwarf. This cozy threesome was situated seventy-seven light-years from Sol, an unusual system that attracted quite a degree of interest and observation time.

Then in 2097, CST discovered an H-congruous planet orbiting a long way out from the primary, and christened it Augusta. For Nigel Sheldon it was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. At that time the Human Intersolar Commonwealth was being formed, and the UFN on Earth was enacting the first wave of its global environmental laws. With Regulus in a strategically important position to expand the CST network into the already envisaged phase two space, Nigel claimed it for the company. He transported every single CST manufacturing facility out there, and went on to welcome any other factory that was suffering from Earth’s difficult new regulations. It became the first of what eventually were known as the Big15.

There was no culture to speak of on Augusta, no nationalist identity. It was devoted solely to commerce, the manufacture of products, large or small, which were shipped out across the Commonwealth. New Costa sprang up along the subtropical coast of the Sineba continent, the only city on the planet. In 2380 it was home to just over a billion people, a centerless urban sprawl of factories and residential districts stretching for more than six hundred kilometers along the shore and up to three hundred inland.

For all its crass existence, the megacity had a sense of purpose upon which all its inhabitants thrived. They were here for one thing: to work. There were no native citizens, everyone was technically a transient, earning money as they passed through. A lot of money. Some stayed for life after life, workaholics sweating their way up through the company that employed them, subtly remodeling themselves with every rejuvenation to give themselves the edge over their office rivals. A few stayed for only one life, entrepreneurs working their asses into an early rejuvenation but making a fortune in the process. However, the vast bulk of people lived there for sixty to ninety years, earning enough to buy into a good life on a more normal planet by the time they finally left. They were the ones who tended to have families. Children were the only people who didn’t work on Augusta, but they did grow up with a faintly screwed-up view of the rest of the Commonwealth, believing it to be made up of romantic planets where everyone lived in small cozy villages at the center of grand countryside vistas.

Mark Vernon was one such child, growing up in the Orangewood district at the south end of New Costa. As districts went, it was no better or worse than any other in the megacity. Most days the harsh sunlight was diffused by a brown haze of smog, and the Augusta Engineering Corp, which owned and ran the megacity, wasn’t going to waste valuable real estate with parks. So along with his ’hood buddies he powerscooted along the maze of hot asphalt between strip malls, and hung out anywhere guaranteed to annoy adults and authority. His parents got him audio and retinal inserts and i-spot OCtattoos at twelve so that he was fully virtual, because that was the age for Augusta kids to start direct-loading education. By sixteen he was wetwired for Total Sensorium Interface, and receiving his first college-year curriculum in hour-long artificial memory bursts every day. He graduated at eighteen, with a mediocre degree in electromechanics and software.

Ten years later, he had a reasonable job at Colyn Electromation, a wife, two kids of his own, a three-bedroom house with a tiny pool in the yard, and a healthy R&R pension fund. Statistically, he was a perfect Augusta inhabitant.