Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Welcome to Arcadia

We welcome you to Arcadia, please take a moment to read the info packet that will be dropped to all personal devices as you pass through the spaceport barrier, and follow all written, and verbal instructions for your safety and the safety of others. A summarized list of laws will be included in your info packet, please take a moment to review them as you will be held accountable for any law you may break during your stay.

The martial took a step through the information barrier and onto the spaceport floor. As he stepped through, his implant pinged, and just like the cool female voice had promised, he found an info packet in his inbox waiting patiently to be read. Behind him, there was a soft sort of humming noise as Nemo, his accompanying AI passed through the barrier.

He turned to look at her, and the little aperture at the center of her one black lens seemed to blink at him.

She had come a long way since their stop off at New-Laconia. As a learning AI she had come to develop more of a personality over the past few months, and had, out of the blue, announced to him that she was female and her name was NEMO, and had subsequently stuck to that decision, though she was having trouble deciding between her stored programs for different female voices. She had thrown out a few the female child, which she considered creepy, the voice that made her sound like an AI, and the one that made her sound like an old lady.

Right now she was trying to decide between the deeper woman's voice, the one that made her sound like she could have been a rockstar, or a cute bubbly little voice that was more suited to a kindergarten teacher than it was to an AI. He saw no reason why it was these two voices she might want to pick as they had nothing in common, but he kept his mouth shut interested to see what she would chose.

"Anything I should know/" He wondered

There was no point in reading the welcome packet when he had an Ai to do it for him. She could read ten times faster than he could, and sort through all relevant or novel information.

She blinked at him again.

"Nothing new that I can tell." She was using the cute voice, "It all seems relatively standard for a non-satellite exo-planet being used as a cargo waypoint."

He frowned, "Are there many of those."

"I was being sarcastic. This is the only place of it's kind in system, so all the laws here are novel."

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Okay...." He took a few steps into the spaceport as others began to file around him stepping off the shuttle and passing around him like water passes around a rock in a river.

"Give me the general rundown, I want to know as much as I can about this planet, or moon or whatever the hell it is."

"Not big enough to be a planet, so it is an exo-planet, it was purchased a few years ago by some sort of.... Third party real estate firm. I looked into it and it IS legal, but it does mean that the real owner of the planet is not going to be listed on anything but official documents, which are intentionally held back from public record."

"that doesn't sound legal."

"No, but it is. The laws on intergalactic real estate are so new that companies like to use loopholes."

He nodded absently and began walking down the long hallway.

She kept going, floating close over his right shoulder, "The dead to the exo planet was purchased almost six years ago, and was immediately contracted out to a storage and shipping company who was using the rout to transport goods, however I the intervening year, the trade rout suddenly got bigger and it became a lucrative waypoint. Whoever owned the planet allowed the company to begin terraforming operations as well as build a small settlement here for those living and working o the station. As little as a few years ago, someone began funneling money into corporations that started in with bigger terraforming projects which included the gravity grid and the acquisition of atmosphere."