Free New Title 1 by Steven Lyle Jordan

could picture the scene at home: Maria “breaking the news gently” to Erin; Erin either pitching a fit, or just openly sulking about the situation; Maria eventually managing to say something insensitive, about the parks essentially not being anything to miss; and… the fireworks. Ever since Maria had essentially gone incurably romantic on Earth’s rapidly-vanishing natural resources, and subsequently turned on the satellites’ idea of nature, she had become almost a pain to take on the camping trips. She spent so much time comparing
this
to something on Earth, or
that
to some famous, now-probably-vanished Terran landmark, and everything on Verdant was found wanting.
    They had been forced to leave their home in eastern Maryland on the Delaware Penninsula, when the levees began failing more and more often, and the rising waters made it all but impossible to travel in the region without a pilot’s license… or a raft. Already, so much had been lost on the ground, so much of civilization that had been crowded up against the coastal areas had been flooded and irrevocably lost to sea level rise. He had not wanted his wife and daughter to have to endure the rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground, and considered the opportunity to move to Verdant a godsend. Calvin counted themselves lucky they had been able to emigrate at all, in large part thanks to his position in the media at the time; so many other families had not been able to make the trip, and were forced to get used to living on permanently-flooded land.
    But at times like this, he almost wished they had stayed on Earth and moved into a houseboat.
    Eventually, he pulled himself up and started for the main science floor. It was actually the same floor that CnC was on, floor 1, but it required a short tram ride, as the cylinder for that floor did not extend all the way from the north to the south ends of Verdant. Like most of the cylindrical floors of Verdant, there were one or two gaps in its length, which provided for a more open layout in the satellite, a largely psychological feature that made life in the huge enclosed space bearable. The part of Floor 1 that included CnC and other administrative offices was connected to the north end of the satellite. The main science sections were in a cylinder that spanned the center of the length of the satellite. Then another gap separated that from the main manufacturing floors, connected to the south end of Verdant.
    Calvin caught a tram at a nearby terminal, and settled in for the ride. The trams that ran across the cylinder breaks did so in sealed tubes, the top half of which was open, so passengers could see the view above the trams. Calvin glanced upward, but at Floor 1, there was not much to see: The central shaft, Floor 0, was almost immediately above them, and quite effectively eclipsed the rest of the satellite’s interior by taking up about two-thirds of the view. Only a few floors down, and the view from the trams became spectacular: You could see up through the open cylinder floors, all the way to Floor 20, on the opposite side of the satellite’s outer cylinder; and there was no more impressive sight in a satellite than looking “up there at the ground,” as the songwriter Toni Clear had famously described it.
    A few people were on the tram, maybe fewer than usual for that time of day… despite the ability of most satellite residents to do their work in their homes or other preferred locations, people still found themselves out and about during the day, running errands, meeting colleagues, and making plans. Calvin noticed a young girl in a group of girls who was staring at him, and when he looked up, she smiled, stood up and approached him. “Dr. Rios?”
    “That’s me,” Calvin smiled amiably, trying not to look as distracted as he was. The girl turned out to be a fan of his science program,
Universe 3
, and as her friends watched from across the tram, she began to gush, not too embarrassingly,