The Corporate Atmosphere

Chapter 1: The Terminal

It's strange, the way one parasitic thought thrives on all the other worries we have. By all rights, it should go away, perhaps drowned out by the confusion of so many other thoughts, but instead our worries feed it. So, all I can think of is my choice; I have decided to flee. It's the only way to get what I want. I can imagine that if I had turned back to look at my family when I left, I would perhaps have seen haunting expressions, faces that would have made me stay. So instead, I turned coldly away without a word the first day I could.

It almost seems like a poor decision now. I am frozen by my choice in a strange terminal. The walls are made of continuous cold white metal which reflects the light making it unbearably bright. The walls lead a dense crowd down a small hall that forces passengers towards their future, at least for me. When each person reaches the front of the line an official pushes them towards the door of a transport. The officials keep squeezing people in until the doors seem ready to shoot open like corks, but just as I expect that to happen the shuttle whooshes away, leaving an abandoned stream of air behind.

They repeat the process, pushing the human mass onto crowded shuttles that are impossible to escape...I have the same fate. I am thrust forward by an unbelievable amount of people. Strangers are forcing me forward—then it hits me—I am alone. No parents anymore, no family. When I made the choice it had felt so right, it fit into place like a key into a perfect slot, but it soon betrayed me. It started hurting and it didn't fit anymore. Of course it all happened after I had already left. Somehow I ponder it all, while I am blinded by bodies, being pushed from side to side. I end up at the opening of the transport and I get pushed inside, or rather thrown.

My fall is cushioned by someone's arm. I try to apologize, but I am already surrounded by fresh faces. I would be embarrassed if I could find the energy, but I don't even have enough to make sense of the blurring compartment around me. The crowd doesn't stop shifting, I am still being pushed and it won't stop, I would scream if I was brave enough, but no one would hear me over the drone of other peoples voices anyway. I collapse into a seat that is somehow available. No one looking for a seat could find one in the chaos, but they can be found by accident...apparently. I found I seat just in time, because without warning I am tossed sideways as the shuttle starts to move. The droning of voices and thicket of bodies, obscures any instruction that might have been announced, which could have been helpful to a new rider like me.

The transport speeds over what I assume is desert. Judging by the flashes of orange-brown peeking through the crowd. I am on a transfer planet, covered in dry swathes of dry dirt and dotted by small pinpricks of dilapidated forest like structures. At least that's what I think, but I have never heard enough about this strange planet to be sure. No-one really knows anything about it, but the construction robots and the human controllers hired by a company benefiting from the necessary long distance traveling needs of an interstellar human race. All travelers stick to the most important structures on the planet, climate controlled buildings and transports.

Within another minute we reach the launch site of space-transports. The small launching center is much emptier than the main terminal, as there are many of these launch sites spread across the planet, but in exchange for crowds, rust spreads across the walls. It is practically abandoned compared to where I had come from. The launching center's condition also reflects my ticket cost, I had opted for the cheapest transport I could find.

The little money my parents had left after leaving Earth was dedicated to nothing, it sat in a drawer, untouched. Money was never used in the colony they settled in. It was a community uninterested in the corporate atmosphere that ruined Earth. So when I stole all of it, I knew they would only notice it was gone when they questioned how I had disappeared. The last month there, I has spent as much time in isolation as possible, separating myself from the life I was leaving behind. I wonder how long it would take until they notice I am gone?