Left Behind

“My home can’t be found on any longitude or latitude. I am a Streamer, my home is 10000 meters above the earth.”

— Captain Abraham II of The Greater Good (the first Jet Stream Ship built by the UNN)

Sarah walked away after saying goodbye to Quentin not knowing what to think of him or how she felt about the fact that they would spend the rest of their lives together. Or to be exact, in 4 months she would travel up to the Ship and they would spend the rest of their lives together. The Chooser had decided that they would be the perfect couple. It was based on their psychology profiles, their behavior during the Academy, their genetics, political implications, family ties, how well they would fulfill the greater good and hundreds of years of experience. I wonder if everyone feels this way when they first meet their chosen? She had read his psych-profile before the day and had planned how she would act and respond to him in a way that would give them a good and deep enough connection. But he had seemed distant the entire day like he rather wanted to be somewhere else, almost like he was afraid of her. But that would be preposterous, he soon to be Captain could not have been afraid of her. Or was that what I had missed when developing my strategy?

Walking back toward the building that had been her home for the last 10 years, the Tower. Standing outside the small building, barely 5 stories high she smiled a bit about it. There were 6 of these towers spread around New York. Three of them were above ground, visible from miles away, The Academy where Quentin and the other Captains and pilots were trained. The Barracks where the Marines were trained and The Question where the Inquisitors were trained were the other two. The three other Towers were hidden away, in plain sight. They were the mirrors to the towers rising high above ground, these other three towers stretched into the ground. Hidden from view like their opposites were made to be visible. They were the yin to their yang. The Circle that was visible on the ship was the Captain, the Commander of the Marines and the Inquisitor. The other circle was the invisible one, consisting of the spouses to those three people. The other three towers held no names and were just called the Towers, even though they were more like underground caves than towers. She only knew of the location of one of them, her own.

Tomorrow I will meet them. The people I will work with for the next couple of years, working for the greater good. Always there, but out of sight. The thought made her smile as she walked into the nondescript building where she had lived and trained for the last ten years. This was her final night here, tomorrow she would move to the Wardens mansion where she would meet and get to know Quentin’s grandparents, his mother and the other two people of her Circle. This thought removed the smile from her face and she started to feel nervous again. The instructors had told her that the tests she would face during the next four months would be the hardest of her life. She would now finally prove that she was ready to serve on one of the Ships. How could the test be any worse than the ones I have already been through?

Walking into the lobby walked up to the security officer sitting at the front desk and showed her ID. He looked carefully at it and let her past. There were both homes and offices in the building, it was the best way to explain the flow of people that flowed in and out of the building at all hours. He was really not the security for where she was going, that came later. She walked into the elevator, held her security card over the sensor, the elevator doors closed and started to descend down. The elevator descended quickly and stopped smoothly. The doors opened and she was greeted with another lobby. This lobby held the real security checkpoint. Hidden and not so hidden cameras and armaments tracked her every move as she walked into the room and up to the security booth. The room was colored in a light green color that was supposed to make people calm. The lights were turned up at a high level, so that high quality pictures could be taken of anyone who entered. Her identification would be verified both by a human and by a computer interface. Both could be fooled in different ways, but it was more than twice as hard to fool them both than to fool just one of them. The security guard relaxed when he recognized her, and did not look that closely at her ID. I will have to report that. Sloppiness was never tolerated here. She remembered the amount of times she had not finished her tasks to perfection. The punishments, never physical ones, but having to do the same meaningless task over and over again so that they were up to the standard of the instructor had ingrained that simple message into her brain. Sloppiness was never tolerated! After passing the computer’s security check, she walked through the now open security doors and entered the large lobby on the other side. It held 8 elevator doors and while walking into a random one she took out her small datapad and sent her report about the guard’s sloppy behavior. He would be reprimanded, but not fired unless it had happened before.

She stepped out into the floor where the trainees lived. Where she had lived for the last ten years. This was her last night. She walked to the canteen to get a late dinner before going to bed. When she entered the canteen she was startled by the roar that flew out of the mouths of what must be over a hundred people inside.

“CONGRATULATIONS, SARAH!!!!!!!!!”

She had not noticed anything being prepared, they had managed to fool her completely, and she had in her heart given up on getting a going-away party. But they had done it. All her friends were here. The people she had grown up with. She could not stop herself, tears came to her eyes and she threw out her arms to hug the people rushing towards her. Her plan to go to bed early so that she would feel fresh and have a lot of energy when she met the Circle the next day failed completely.