Carpathian Forty-Three

Carpathian Forty-Three - Part 18

Acosta was one of the smaller craters to get a dome, just thirteen kilometers across. The locals call it cozy. Still, its proximity to the Lunar equator makes it a travel destination, if only as a stop-over point for the Trans-Lunar bullet train. People pass through Acosta, not many stay.

Students stay. Acosta Polytechnic has a vibrant liberal arts program, where the children of the rich come from the Earth-Luna system to be away from Earth or the more industrial parts of Luna. It also has a computer engineering program that's respected, if not the revered. Acosta, perched atop the Trans-Lunar bullet train route is also a hub for Trans-Lunar fiber optic networking. LunaCom's headquartered there and draws from Acosta Poly for their workforce.

The student population, networking location, and LunaCom's datacenters make Acosta a center for Quantum Sentience study. Significant parts of The Sentience made a home in the data centers. Acosta is a hive of activity in The Lunar Chorus, it is a hub of thought and research. The low-latency networking Acosta enjoys from its central location on LunaCom's network make Acosta prime real estate for the low latency networking that The Chorus needs to link the minds of the Enhanced Humans and The Quantum Sentience that lives on the Moon. All this affluence made the adoption of a dome almost preordained.

Acosta is a technology college town, not unlike Mariner Park or Palo Alto. The dome maintains an open-air atmosphere, one of thirty-one on Luna. Twenty percent of the available land in Acosta is dedicated to parks, Redwoods and Sequoias grow particularly tall in the low Lunar gravity, giving Acosta a lush greenspace only rivaled by the atrium of Collins Landing, the anchor point for the Lunar space elevator.

This is all to say, Acosta is a bourgeoise paradise. I hated it. I loved it.

"Stephen?" the thought isn't really a word. The Chorus doesn't often deal in words. There's a shape of a thought that is the mental concept of me, of Stephen Francis. It's a pale blue, vaguely sandalwood smelling concept. I suppose I've always been a hippie.

I respond with a questioning thought. The inquiry comes from a teal thought, a rumble of cello, Genevieve.

"We're going to lunch at Alfonso's. We'd like you to join us." Again, it's not words. It's images of Alfonso's, smells of the pasta, the feel of the old, cracked booth seats, a dream of seven of us around a long booth table, laughing, eating, communing.

I'm close to Genevieve, we've studied in the same classes at Acosta Poly, though Genevieve is focused on ethical use of Quantum Sentience while I'm focused on network engineering. Genevieve is headed for a doctorate. I'm headed for a cubical at LunaCom.

"I'll catch up, I'm in the middle of a lab," I share the image of my screen with Genevieve and the tiny part of The Chorus that is beckoning me to lunch.

They feel my anxiety with the problem I'm presented and sent feelings of affirmation and support. I smile, happy to have support. The Quantum Sentience scolds us, amused. I need to work on my lab by myself, I need to learn on my own, form the memory structures on my own rather than relying on the network of other minds from the Chorus. Genevieve and the sliver of Chorus retreat from my mind, laughing at The Quantum Sentience and sending me feelings of encouragement.

I cut myself off from most of The Chorus, just the buzz of processing and inter-brain communications murmur in the back of my mind. I concentrate on the networking scenario presented to me, an outage of a fiber optic re-transmitter.

I felt the explosion more than heard it. It wasn't a physical sensation. The buildings in Acosta are vacuum safe, they're well insulated from sound and the environment. It was a wave of panic and dread that overcame the blocks I had in place, the isolation from The Chorus. I dropped them at the first indication of panic. The Chorus assaulted my brain.