Exterior view of Ringbolt Station

Stopping at Ringbolt Station

So, everywhere I have travelled (and I have travelled alot) I have enjoyed looking at space stations, all different sorts of them. From agristations to orbital foundaries and solar farms, to the megahabitats packed with  millions of people, they are fascinate me by their endless varying layouts and uses. However, here in the Collapse Zone as the technology levels have crashed across many sectors, space stations suddenly became few and far between. Their advanced technology requires constant maintenance, and there are very few orbital technicians now; the Collapse has killed or driven off most space-specialists in the Kobra Worlds region.

Ringbolt itself is located in the Calafat Sector, which we have just crossed into. This entire area is chaotic, filled with raiders and pirates, and all sorts of nefarious characters. However, it seems that crime at Ringbolt Station is severely punished and so those rough-and-ready type criminals avoid the place. You can also buy alot of advanced technology here, and we are also dropping off several passengers, unloading some cargo, and reloading additional supplies for our long journey.

I spent nearly ten hours on the station, shopping and taking in the view, which is stunning. Ringbolt is in excellent condition, its people sturdy and competent, and its leaders have great wisdom and skill to keep away pirate raiders and other such riff-raff. (Stats for Ringbolt Station are A072616-C  Space Station).

Travelling Through Jumpspace

As we move through Jumpspace I am reminded how boring it can be. Interstellar travel can be so very slow. Luckily, not many travellers on the Uncanny are hibernating in low-berth but have their own cabins. I believe the captain said their were twenty-four suites and extended-stay cabins aboard this ship. My own hideyhole is equipped with whatever I need, but it can be lonely; especially for someone that had been living on a city-wide planet with billions upon billions of "neighbors". I appreciate my cabin and am grateful to not be travelling as a frozen corpsicle, unaware of my surroundings and unable to do any work at all.

My robots need some maintenance that I have been putting off for sometime now. Instead, I've just been relaxing, catching up on my vid-romances, and enjoying the quite of a ship in space.

The next portion of our journey takes us to Ringbolt Station, where I hope to buy some fresh-grown fruit. Foodies can make all sorts of foods, but they just don't have that newly picked taste that organic grown veggies and fruits do.

On a planet inhabited by a trillion people "real food" can also be hard to come by, I've actually seen a jar of strawberry preserves sold at auction for thousands of credits! Most people on Kobra World eat from the standard "foodies" that the government provides to each household. Can you imagine the effort it takes to run and manage a planet with hundreds of billions of people on it?! The waste disposal alone was a major problem for Kobra citizens until the annihilation pits were opened about 20 years ago. Also, every person on the planet must grow at least one "oxygen plant" to help sustain the breathability of the atmosphere.

What impressed me most about Kobra World wasn't its stupendous population, but the amount of anti-gravity technology that is heavily used by such an advanced planet. Whole buildings and palaces are constructed in the air, never to touch the ground, and of course if you are rich you just have to have a floating palace, right? The entire civilization on this planet revolves around its anti-gravity (AG) technology; all cars, buses, and public transport are AG, and so are all military and defense craft within the atmosphere of the planet. In this region, very few planets use this advanced technology but I always found it fascinating to watch the hundreds of thousands of aircars and buses flit about in the air like so many interesting-looking bugs.

The Dolphins of Fronomios

After eating, I went down to the medical bay and found one of the Dolphins of Fronomios. His name is Grzk'kat'grat and he is a forensic scientist. We spent some time talking about his society, and mine. The long-term friendship between cetaceans and humans has always amazed me; only the canine/human relationship is closer. I know of a dozen dolphin worlds within the Orion Arm, but none is as influential as the ultra-tech world Fronomios, which resides in the same sector as my homeworld. Uplifted dolphins are honest, open, and friendly—sometimes to a fault. They are quick to recover from their transgressions and can be humble to excess. Some people consider dolphins to be pacifists, but they have, on occasion, been involved in wars. The most notable of these was their series of conflicts against the Bushi people, during the horrendous Starflyer War.

Dolphin marriages on Fronomios are polygamous, with a husband having three wives, and each wife having three husbands. The marriages are also open, with spouses free to pursue casual encounters with other people as they please. While many non-dolphins find this arrangement difficult to grasp, it’s the social norm on Fronomios. Most dolphins are equally astonished by the exclusive and monogamous mating rituals of other species. Also, dolphins do not sleep nightly, as most other species do.

The typical dolphin is exceptionally friendly, even to strangers, and possesses a keen curiosity about the world around them. They cherish new experiences and find their lives, and those of life forms around them, exceptionally interesting. They are excellent listeners.

Onto Wynter

Having travelled for a week in Jumpspace we finally arrived at the planet Wynter. Whilst on our journey, I have been able to meet a few more of the passengers and many are quite interesting. I have also studied up on the planet we will be arriving at. Apparently no women are ever allowed to land on the all-male world of Wynter, so I must send a factor to purchase a few luxury goods and spare parts for my bots. A massive glacier world, Wynter (B776899-9) has a population of less than a billion homosexual men. Apparently they use artificial wombs or cloning to maintain their civilization. It would be fascinating to study such a closed society.

Two of our fellow travellers are leaving us at Wynter, including the noted poet Kojo Dhlomo, a renowned novelist, poet, and storyteller who made his fame across the Kobra Sector. The retiring Relof Musk, a ex-constitutional court judge from Kobra World is also leaving us here at Wynter. Several tons of cargo are also being sent down to the planet, forcing us to orbit this world and refuel from a nearby tanker spacecraft instead of the local gas giant. The landing port on Wynter has to be seen to be believed; its massive and embedded in a huge ice formation near the equator.

Apparently throughout Wynter's long history it has maintained its glacial albedo, therefor the majority of resources for the planet are mined in the extensive asteroid belt. When the Collapse overtook this iceworld very little changed, except the cloning process which now has to be supported by offworld technology at Kobra World. Also, from what I have read, a significant number of the inhabitants of this planet are touch telepaths, giving this society an odd inward-looking viewpoint. In the past, Wynterian Marines used to be the most feared combat soldiers in the sector but the technology collapse has forced their cloning process to radically fall, from creating a brand new ready-for-combat clone in just 10 days to now taking at least 6 months. Nowadays, these "tanked" marines are rarely fielded off-world unless hired by high-priced contracts from other nearby planets.
 

More Cybernetics

On ultra-high tech worlds the general public are hardwired with internal gadgetry and high-tech enhancements that give them a much higher quality of life. However, in interstellar space, the odds are that cosmic rays, x-ray emissions, meson sources, and even random high level EMPs from stars could cause my augs to go offline or damage them, including my personal Aide. Thus, I dont enjoy space travel. Added at birth, these technological gadgets chelate into our brains and constructs nanocircuitry throughout our neural pathways as we grow. Losing this would be devastating for any high tech citizen:

No EM telepathy, so no way to talk to those around you unless you were actually in their presence or you happened to have a portable comm unit with you. No translator software; if your friend didn't happen to speak your language, you were out of luck. No e-conferencing in noumenal or virtual space. No datasphere linking you with every other person and every electronic service across the local networks. No way to access news, or weather—assuming you were on a planet which actually had weather—or med access, or e-pedia information feeds, or travel directions, or life journals, or any of the hundreds of other data downloads necessary in today's fast-paced life. No Sims. No download entertainment. No way to interact with either the stored or broadcast simvids that let you take the role of hero or villain or both. No way to buy the most basic necessities. Or to find them, since most shops now were on-line. No driving ground cars, piloting mag skimmers, or accessing public transit. No books, unless you could find the old-fashioned printed variety and that was assuming you could read them. No more educational feeds and no access to personal e-memory.

And then there was Aide. For someone like myself, it would feel like losing access to the AI mentor, secretary, and personal electronic assistant I'd had since I was a kid. Without this online cyberware, the world would suddenly be a much smaller, much more difficult, much narrower place. My hope is that this journey will be mostly uneventful.

Foodies and Fabbers

I headed back to the common area to grab some food. The most advanced planets use food processors called "foodies" and at higher tech levels all the various types of foodies are combined into one and use molecular construction. However, the Uncanny seems to be a moted dated vessel since it has these older specialized food printing machines:

B-Foodie or the "Bakery". It can also sub-specialize: pizzaria, cookies and cakes, etc.

D-Foodie or "Drinks" (hot and cold, no alcohol)

M-Foodies or the "Meat" machine: specializing in fish products, smoked meats of all types, fried/broil/poach/roast, and BBQ meats.

and finally the P-Foodie or "Produce" printer: taste fresh fruit and veggies from over 450,000 plant based items.

Anything "printed" or prepared by a foodie generally takes less than a minute, unless its a baked item, then it take a few more minutes to appear, hot and fresh tasting.

Foodies enable merships like the Uncanny to carry almost no foodstuffs on board, allowing for greater cargo capacity and on high-tech planets like Kobra World they are installed in every home and apartment. People used to handle and prepare raw meat?! Can you imagine that?! And it could take almost an hour to prepare a full meal whereas the foodie can make items in seconds. Thank God for printed food!

*Authors note: Foodies can rapidly convert nearly any organic substance into edible food, removing harmful toxins and viruses and adding any necessary vitamins and nutrients. As long as there is a source of compatible organics, food can be created indefinitely although its store of vitamin supplements will eventually run out. Foodies can synthesize additives and coloring to anything it makes. The processor can also distill simple organic compounds, like alcohol.