Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) by Joe Vasicek

Author:Joe Vasicek [Vasicek, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, colonization, galactic empire, short story, space exploration, pirates, romantic, novella, science fiction romance, accidental marriage, polyamory, space opera, space adventure
Published: 2014-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

—and then he was on some sort of space station, walking along a wide, empty corridor.

He stopped and looked around. The clear glass ceiling revealed a black, starless sky, washed out by proximity to the system sun. The station circled around far above him, so that if he looked extra hard, he could see another corridor with skylights much the same, except upside down. The walls and ceiling were slightly off-white, yellowing with age, while grooves had been worn in the floor tiles from decades of foot traffic. The giant blue orb of Delta Oriana III, combined with the images on the door lintels and the faint smell of smoke, told him he was in a simulation of Megiddo Station.

He ran his hands along the aging wall tiles, admiring the level of detail in their grainy feel. Noemi must have put a lot of time and effort into crafting the dreamscape. He had never seen this part of the station before, yet it gave him a bittersweet longing much like homesickness. No doubt that was a residue of Noemi’s own emotional projections.

When creating a new simulation, the dream monitor stimulated the cortex to elicit feelings and impressions from deep within the subconscious. Most of the time, it was faster simply to let the monitor do the work, projecting the subconscious mind onto the artificial world. As a result, the simulations were full of subjective, emotional elements. That was why the station felt so familiar, even though he had only been there once before.

But Jeremiah didn’t want to explore Noemi’s world; he wanted to return to his own. He touched his thumb and middle finger twice in rapid succession to bring up the option screen, then swept his hand across his vision to wipe out the simulation and store it for her later use.

Using his other hand to scroll down a light blue menu, he carefully considered his options. Should he return to one of the methane ocean worlds he’d encountered on the other side of the Edenian dust lane? Or perhaps the casinos and resorts of Beta Oriana’s main planet?

As he skimmed the list, the last option on the menu stood out to him. It was a simulation of his own creation: the botanical gardens at Edenia II. He knew it was a bad idea—it was only the second day of the voyage, after all, with nearly three more months to go—but now that the dreams had begun, he couldn’t resist.

He took a deep breath and selected the last option. Moments later, he walked barefoot over the mulchy ground, running his fingers across the deep furrows in the mossy bark. The giant redwood trunks loomed around him like a wall of familiarity shielding him from the lonely void. As he took a deep breath of the warm, moist air, he imagined he could hear his sister’s laughter through the trees.

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