Jupiter Three

For those of you keeping track, gravity aboard the Jupiter Three is at 106% that of Mars, and acceleration is at 14% of full. These big monsters just don’t kick into high gear that fast, not like a shuttle. It has to do with the output of an Ion engine. Eventually this heap will be faster than anything a shuttle can do, but it’s a slow starter.

The last few days have been very interesting. Julia Natsuko is a provacative woman. She likes to push limits, and has taken to dragging me along for the ride. She’s met me at the door to my quarters every morning when I got off work. She is just getting up and I am ready to crash. I’ve managed to slog through her little adventures and still get enough rest for work that night. Barely. Carl thinks it’s hilarious.

Meanwhile life is back to where it was before, sans 1000 credits of course. Tonight’s special at the Messa Mesa is Rabbit stew. It’s actually quite good.

“I want to tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone else.”

I had just about fallen asleep. Julie was getting dressed to go to work, where ever that was. There was still a lot we didn’t know about each other, and she wanted to share a secret? I put on my best smile.

“Your a sex addict?” I replied.

“I’m serious,” she responded, sitting on the foot of the bed. She had her hands in her lap, looking quite vulnerable. This was the first time I had seen that look.

“Julia, we have only known each other a few days, is it really time to be sharing secrets? Hell, I don’t even know where you work.”

“But I trust you Derick, and this is eating at me. It’s been eating at me since before the trip started.” she gave me a fake pout. I hate fake pouts. OK, its more accurate to say I have a hard time resisting fake pouts. Except from girls who pout for real – I hate it when they fake pout – relationships are hard enough.

I thought about it for a moment. Do we have a relationship, or is this just a thing? If I didn’t answer carefully, I would definitely force an answer to that question. Hell, if I answer at all, or don’t answer…

I flopped back onto my pillow. “Okay, what’s your deep dark secret?”

“I’m not supposed to be here.”

I was puzzled. “What here, you mean here in my quarters? Do you have another boyfriend? Here on level four? I’m not supposed to be here on level four either, but they gave my spot on level three to some guy who behaved himself in flight school.”

“I mean here on this ship; the Jupiter Three; I’m not supposed to be taking this trip.”

“What do you mean,” I said as I sat back up, “you won the lottery like I did. You don’t have to justify being here.”

“That’s just it,” she said quietly, staring at the hands in her lap, “I didn’t win the lottery. I hacked into the system and switched out my name for a woman who did win.”

“Your name’s not Julia Natsuko?”

“Yes, I am Julia Natsuko, you idiot. But the woman who won this slot in the lottery was Grace Barker- a shuttle mechanic I think. I REALLY wanted to get away from Mar’s. This was my chance, but when I didn’t get selected I hacked the system to push my way in. This trip was so important to me, Derick. Can you understand that?”

I didn’t respond right away. Her hacking skills had to be top notch for her to break into the lottery system. This was a big deal. Still, I had never been one to throw stones. I certainly understood the motivation. Mar’s had become mundane for some of us, and this was a chance for a real adventure. From what I had seen of Julia, she was a bigger adventure junkie than I was.

I fell back onto my bed again. “Well, that explains it I guess.”

“Explains what?” she asked with reluctance.

“How someone like you could have passed the psych screening.”

A shoe whizzed past my head. Then she jumped on me and started to kiss me on the lips. Soon all her effort to dress for work proved wasted.

I have a hard time resisting fake pouts. Especially from sexy women.

I’ve been thinking a lot the last couple of days about Julia’s secret. We all have our reasons for wanting to leave Mars. No one, on level four at least, had to be talked into this trip. We entered the lottery of our own free will.

“Mars is getting crowded,” Manuel said when I asked him why he was going to Jupiter. “There is still plenty of open space, but the colony is not expanding fast enough.”

Lisa’s response was about opportunity. “I have always wanted to start my own restaurant. The cities are saturated with them on Mars, and the next expansion wasn’t scheduled for at least three years. Even then, the waiting list for business permits is huge.”

In a colony like Mars, you can’t just buy up real estate and start building. Everything is planned. So many of us see the creation of a new colony in the Jovian system as an opportunity to jump the line, so to speak.

Carl said he felt like a small rock in a big crater on Mars, and had always seen himself more as a big rock in a small crater. For him it was about getting in on the ground floor of something new.

Julia was vague about her reasons, but I assumed it was about adventure. It did get me thinking about my own reasons, though. After my mother died a few years back, my family kind of drifted apart. My dad and I had never been real close, and in spite of my sister’s attempts to keep us together as a family, my mother had been the glue. When sis married a year later, that was pretty much it.

I didn’t even tell my dad I made the cut. Shuttle pilot was bad enough in his eyes, but a short order cook? I always felt like I was under his shadow, and damned if I ‘ll make it look like I’m seeking his approval.

By now, my sister has probably told him where I’ve gone. I’m sure he had something to say about it. I could care less. This really is MY life now. It will be years before anyone from the Jupiter colony will be able to make the trip back, and most of the people I know aren’t planning to. What we do, what we build, it will be ours. Others will come, but we will have been the first.