Chapter 1: Out for a drink
How the end of the world began or Three Idiots walk into a bar
The grandly named City of Jade Towers hovers in the equatorial Helmholtz currents of the water cloud layers of Saturn, some 300 kilometers above crush depth. Like nearly all its brethren, it is a Server City, thousands upon thousands of kilometers of optical computer racks, running the perverse simulacrums that the machine cultists of the outer system call uploads and hardly a living soul to see. It's primary exports are metallic hydrogen, metastable helium-III ice, complex carbon hydrogens and water (…) For travelers willing to brave the dangers of the outer system (please consult with both your security contract provider and your life insurance before making any travel plans) it still holds a measure of interest as a center of skydiving, wingsuiting, air sailing, aerial paintballing and half a hundred different extreme sports connected to the enormous spaces of the Saturnian Atmosphere.
Most of the "locals" prefer to simply upload into cyborgs designed to facilitate these sports. Several of the more extreme ones are simply impossible to Humans, who retain their natural body plane. We strongly advice against it, but we offer our premium subscribers (Link: Subscribe now! 25% off the first year.) a list of vetted bodyshops and clinics. Please be advised that independent of subscriber status this service is only available if you hold the copyright to your body or alternatively a level 4 license, according to the Martian Commercial Code. (…)
TravelWiki, Baedeker Galactica, 5th Edition, ©Mercury Media Holding Ltd; Waterfront 67; 13147 New Shanghai, Mars
"I can't get a connection."
"Oh, yayyyy. Taniguchi?"
"Nope."
"There are enough optical quantum computers on this oversized shoebox to run like half a million alphas but we can't get a wireless signal. Have you tried the wire?"
Kunikida shrugs and gestures to the corridor wall, where instead of maps and the Instellar Trip advisor LAI logo, the smart paint only provides a 404 message error.
Kyon is, one by one, carefully lowering the filters and firewalls protecting his neural interfaces, but no howling horde of dancing avatars clamoring for his attention, no snow-storm of advertisement pop-ups obscure his field of vison, no sudden unexplainable urges for food or sex or a new customized cleaning bot, only 49.99 ecu, 2 replacement fuel cells complementary.
"Unbelievable, even the commercials are down. Almighty Buddha, I implore you, bring down your horse cock of wrath and smite the unwashed barbarians."
"… finding religion there, Kyon?"
"Well I was hoping for drink but in Bumfuck, Saturn, without Noosphere access, I guess I will have to make do. I don't suppose anyone remembered to download an imprint, that actually included the travel wiki?"
"Well …"
"Doesn't count if you saved it to the cloud, Kunikida."
"… never mind then."
"I still got the station map in my cache, so we at least we will find the way." Taniguchi volunteers.
Kyon bites his lip.
On the one hand that's truthfully more than he can say for himself, so he is not actually in a position to criticize his friend.
On the other hand Taniguchi suggested this bar and he has been known to display a taste for watering holes that oscillate between odd and downright dangerous. He calls it "appreciation of the local culture", Kyon tends to consider it, a particularly strange spin on masochism.
On the third tentacle, Kyon has no real idea about the local geography, neglected to download even the usual map and tourist package into his neuro-interface and finds the idea of stumbling around the labyrinthine loading docks less than appealing.
In comparison to the sky cities on Venus or Lapis-Lazuli, Saturnian settlements tend to be primarily resource extraction stations and/or mainly be populated by uploads in their servers, for which they provide near ideal conditions: An endless supply of extremely cheap energy, using wind turbines, plenty of atmospherical carbon for the circuit printers and a bottomless heat sink for their computer cores.
Accordingly the interior design philosophy tends to the spartan, long on function and short on aesthetics; no spider-silk tents in all colors of the rainbows like the windblown sails of the world's largest treasure galleon masquerading as the flying Dutchman, suspended from vacuum spheres of hyperdiamond, no bridges of spun glass, no hanging gardens and no artificial waterfalls.
Inside the virs, where the uploads and the dreamers with high-bandwidth neural connections frolic, a server city will contain enough wonders, dreamscapes, personal paradises and hells to keep a legion of explorers busy for a dozen meat-space life-times. Outside the picture is much more utilitarian.
A gently curving corridor of foamed bioplastic, stained by condense water, over a carbon-fiber skeleton, grey on grey, lit by the harsh white lights of LED lamps, stretches before them, left and right dozen of arteries branch of the main high way, leading deeper into the warren of the loading docks.
"Whatever took out the net connection is very likely also fucking with public transport." Kunikada is pointing to a frozen entoptic traffic sign.
"Cargo drones seem fine." Taniguchi observes, as half a dozen heavy haulers whoosh by them.
"The port runs of a different network." Kunikada answers. "We might as well go to the damn bar. It might be some time before the repair drones get to it. I don't think it will be very high in their priority stack."
"Leaving the population of the station without net access, is low priority now?" Kyon asks, grumpily.
"It's probably only a few nodes on the topside. Anyway as the cargo is still running the network backbone is unaffected, so the uploads are ok. So at most the embodied bio population, that's what 4000 people? Less than one percent of total population."
"It's a server city, dude. Meatsacks are second priority."
"The emergency system still pings. Only in text mode, no LAIs, no interfaces, but … ah, here we are 3rd item from the top on the bulletin." A pulsing icon at the bottom of his field of view informs Kyon that a text message had loaded into the cache of his neural interface. "Three noosphere nodes of the net in the topside spaceport district due to macrophage infection, yadayadaya, areas affected, blabla, ETA reboot: 3 hours."
"Welp, might as well get a drink while we wait." Taniguchi opinions.
Haruhi leans against the corridor wall, twirling a strain of her around her finger. It's auburn today and her cat like smile tells Kyon, he will not win this battle.
Above them the far thunder of nuclear rocket motors lights the Saturnian night as a heavy freight shuttle lifts of from its landing pad.
Kyon sighs heavily. "Fiiine. But if I get blood on my new thermal jacket, again, the refabbing comes out of your comp time budget, Taniguchi."
The bar, "The Jungle Gym" is located on the rim of the city, just of the outer concourse, whose great panorama windows show an endless sea of Kelvin- Helmholtz instability cloud layers, achingly beautiful white silk ribbons, surrounding towering cloud castles, palaces and minarets, tapering down to the finest lace patterns of water ice, faintly lit by the pale ghost light of Saturn's rings and the positon lights of the city.
It takes his breath away every time he sees it. Kyon pauses, while his friends continue to the bar to get a table. Saturn's icy cold seeps through the triple isolation layers into the insufficiently heated concourse, making his breath mist, but the hardly feels it. A flick of his eye mouse adjusts the frequency range of his eyes, making the intricate magnetic fields of Saturn visible and filtering the positions lights from his view.
Origami-figures of transparent gossamer fold into each other as the magnetic fields sinuously twirl over the cloudscape.
50 kilometer high Raleigh-Taylor Instability Cloud Towers mushroom upwards, where fountains of liquid hydrogen rise from the depths of Saturn penetrating deep into the atmosphere, silver trees sheeting vortexes and ice crystals like cherry blossoms.
"Isn't it beautiful? All these mushroom clouds and stratocumuli, a bit like a silver and ice replica of Tokyo when you last saw it. Fewer fires, though."
Haruhi has stepped up next to him, leaning against the transparent keramit of the windows. Kyon touches a gloved hand against the window pane and pulls back with a hiss. Even triple glassed keramit with high vacuum isolation layers is no match against the bone deep chill of the saturnian atmosphere.
"Near extinction events are not my kind of aesthetics." He clamps his jaw shut. He answered by pure reflex and regrets his lack of control instantly.
"The birth pangs of something new. Living, dying. Forward, back. The intertwined double-helix of creation and destruction. Two sides of the same coin. Can't you hear it? Ever spinning. Thus we return to the void."
He turns his face away to the window, will not give her the satisfaction of a reaction.
The reflections Haruhi's eyes are dark and fathomless, when she smiles, small pin-pricks of light swimming in the blackness like far stars. Or something else entirely.
"You always were so stubborn, Kyon."
Her fingers brush his cheek, sending shivers down his spine. He draws his thermal jacket tighter around his form against the sudden cold creeping into his bones and quickens his step towards the warm lights of the bar.