CASE [GL]

It must be because all the stress fell off my shoulders after leaving the space station, that I had regained my hunger. I was terribly happy to have had that delicious hamburger. But as I watched the now empty napkin in my hand, I now felt sad that that great hamburger had departed for another world. 

I heard some chuckling and looked up. Lauren was looking at me with a big smile on her face, chewing on some burger. She still had half of her burger left. 

“Want another one?” She asked with a friendly smile. “You can get food on the hyper train too, but if you want to you can definitely eat one more before we go to the station.” 

I shook my head. “I’m fine. It was just a very nice burger.” 

“Luna is going with you, Commander?” Gunny asked. 

“I am.” I replied instead, so Lauren could keep eating her burger. “Otherwise, I’d just get a bit lonely in my apartment.” 

“I see.” Gunny grinned. “She does make for good company, doesn’t she?” Gunny winked. 

Lauren jabbed him in the chest with her elbow. “Don’t tease her too much, okay?” 

“Just a little.” He laughed. “Then I suppose I’ll be seeing the both of you later? Don’t let me hold you up.” 

“What are you going to do?” Lauren asked. 

“Me? Might get a beach holiday in the Caribbean sector. Maybe get some good old classic cigars there too.” 

“Well, try not to blow your entire paycheck on smokes this time.” Lauren replied. 

“I’ll try.” Gunny gave me a two-finger salute. “Have fun in Antarctica.” 

“Bye Gunny!” I waved him off as he left. Lauren did the same. 

“Did he really spend his entire paycheck on smoking articles?” I asked when Gunny was out of earshot. 

“It would be a heck of a lot harder to do so with the paycheck he has now. But back in the day it definitely happened once or twice. Doesn’t help that he likes the real vintage stuff. That’s terribly expensive.”

“Smoking is still one of those human habits I really don't understand.”  

“It’s better that you don’t.” Lauren finished off her burger with one last bite. “It’s terribly expensive and terribly unhealthy too. There’s a big movement to ban it entirely, but the Federation just doesn’t want to… or better said, can’t. It brings in way too much tax money. Now we have healthcare that fixes most of the issues caused by smoking, but still…” She looked at me and smiled. “So I guess you could say I don’t entirely understand the habit either. But then again, before you, I used to be a very heavy drinker too.” Lauren tossed her napkin into the garbage bin from where we were standing. “So, thanks for that.” 

I blushed. “No problem.” 

 

Lauren offered her hand to me, swinging her bag over her shoulder with her other. “Should we hail a cab now and head towards the station?” 

“That’s probably not a bad idea.” I took her hand in mine and rolled my luggage along behind me. 

Lauren started waving down a cab that was hovering in place a couple of meters above us. It landed soon afterwards. It was a four-seater with a robot-driver sat on the console in the middle of the car. The interior looked more luxurious than what I was expecting from the outside and it was pretty clean too. 

The robot opened the trunk for us so that we could put in our luggage for the trip to the Hyper rail terminal. Lauren put mine in for me. 

As she got in the car, she was greeted by the robot. “Greetings, cherished customers, where can I take you on this fine day?” 

“To the hyper train terminal, please.” Lauren answered the bot’s question and then helped me a hand to get in the car. Once my seatbelt was on, the door closed and the cab started flying. 

“We will reach the hyper train terminal in five minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Enjoy your ride.” 

I got pressed into the seat just a little as the cab accelerated to its top speed while joining the special public transport lane above. 

“I’ll already order us some tickets while we are on route.” Lauren said as she opened up her holostick. Reading off the time and the ETA that the bot had provided us, I saw that she selected the hyper train that would leave in 30 minutes. “I ordered first class premium.” Lauren said contently as she put her holostick back away. 

“Isn’t that expensive?” 

She shrugged. “Not really. 20 000 Federals for two tickets. Barely more expensive than those hamburgers we ate earlier. I do get a serious discount though because we are military officers.” 

“Oh, that’s useful. So I could get the discount too if I want to travel by myself?” 

“Yeah, you just need to fill in some forms, it’s a bit of an administrative mess, but I can help you figure it out.  They probably made it so annoying to get it because it's such a big discount.” Lauren continued. “If you want to drive second or third class, you don’t even need to pay, and that discount is automatically applied. It’s just for the first class that you need to go through some extra steps.” 

“Ah. Just a bit of a deterrent by effort?” 

“Yep.” Lauren chuckled. “There’s a couple more of those kinds of discounts that you can manage to get. I’ll deliver you a list of the most useful ones.” 

“Any food related ones?” 

“Several.” Lauren winked. 

 

A bit later, the cab slowed down and started to descend. “We have arrived at your destination, please do not forget your luggage. The doors will unlock after payment has been received.” 

Lauren quickly tapped her holostick against the console. 

“Thank you for your payment. Have a nice day.” 

Lauren waited for me to get out, after which she got out herself. The cab waited for us to collect our luggage before it took off again and hovered off in the distance, where some other cabs were hovering in place too. 

“Okay. Our train should be leaving from platform 39. That should be at level -2.” Lauren beckoned me along. “We can still get some snacks in the station but we might as well buy them on the train itself, the price difference shouldn’t be that big. It’s all up to you.” 

The sliding doors opened up into a big hall, it looked even bigger than the terminal of the spaceport. That might be because right in front of us they had opened up the center of the hall so you could look down upon the subterranean track levels. There were at least five subterranean levels, with one track level on the ground floor. 

From the look of it, I couldn’t see any train tracks on the floors above, but those made way for several big chain stores, a food court and even some offices. 

“Impressive isn’t it?” 

“It definitely is.” I nodded. “But I think I’m fine to buy something on the train itself… This space is a bit overwhelming.” 

“Especially if you are used to the confines of our ship.” Lauren agreed and then pointed at one of the upper floors that looked like office spaces. “And I got to say I am also happy with my office. If I had one of those… well…” 

“You say you wouldn’t rather look at all the people down below living their busy lives?” 

“Nah, rather not.” She shook her head.  

“It would be funny to see, though.”

“What exactly?” Lauren looked at me questioningly. 

“Office lady Lauren Davis.” 

Lauren physically shivered. “Please no. That’s really not something I would ever want. The thought alone of having to do paperwork all day long…. yuck.” She stuck out her tongue, less because of a physical reaction and more to make me chuckle. 

It worked as chuckle I did. 

 

In the meantime, however, I noticed a couple of people that were walking around the main hall had stopped to take a look at us. Some of the couples and groups were clearly starting to whisper. 

“Let’s head over to the train. I think it should be on the platform already.” Lauren smiled. She was pretending she’d not seen the people around us, but I knew she most definitely had. 

“Mhmm, let’s go.” 

We started moving towards the escalator which made most of the people who were staring at us, continue with their day. There were a couple of people however who’d decided to follow us from a distance, looking at us from the balcony above as we descended down to where we needed to be. 

“If you want to believe it, this used to be way worse some time ago.” 

“The stares?” 

“Yeah.” Lauren just kept staring ahead of her, towards our destination. “It’s most uncomfortable in the big cities. Back home, it's not nearly this bad.” 

“You don’t get attention there?” 

“I do, but it’s different.” She shook her head. “In cities it’s mostly staring, staring and whispering… That creeps me the fuck out… But back home… people generally come up to thank me, or have a little chat, occasionally with a picture. While that’s more intrusive in a way… it feels way more friendly. More personal. I guess I just enjoy that a lot more. Funnily enough, that’s kinda how I met Yuki back on the moon.” 

“Yeah, she told me about it.” I smiled. “But back to your point. Do you think it’s because you share a homeland? Maybe they feel more connected to you.” 

“Oh yeah, probably.” Lauren nodded. “There’s also just a lot less people who live there. The population is but a fraction of the amount that lives in cities like this. So I suppose there’s definitely more of a connection that way. The Antarctican spirit bond as you would.” Her smile grew wide as she talked about her home. She must really love the place. 

-I kinda wish I could say the same about my home now…-