This chapter is an incomplete draft. Please don't read yet if that will bother you.

"What the hell was that?!" Nikki shouted out as she scrambled to get dressed and out of her quarters. The sudden jerk of a sharp turn and a hard burn had thrown her and probably everyone else off. Her chest felt like a ghost had knocked the wind out of her in her sleep, and her ankle felt like she'd kicked something hard and heavy with the top of her foot. It was difficult to walk, but she'd manage.

"Fred!" She shouted with her head out of the hatch. Nere hadn't responded yet and that was extremely concerning. No response came from Fred and she couldn't see him on this deck.

"Nere, what was that, drop what you're doing and report," Nikki ordered.

"I'm sorry ma'am. I'd noticed something off on our approach, and by the time I'd processed what was happening, it was too close to ask for approval on the manuevers," the ship responded with an apologetic voice over the intercomm. As Nikki lowered the privacy setting on her neural net, the audio from the ship mixed smoothly with the direct input from the implant. 

"Do you want the full story or just the important parts?" Nere asked telepathically, with no accompanying speakers. Nikki replied in kind, and Nere put the scene in her head. "I'll wait till you sit down to start the playback, but this object was approaching us, or appeared to be, and was doing so at a counter orbit to the station."

"Damn, that's something like..." Nikki tried to do the math, but Nere went ahead and told her, "60kps effective velocity. We can't take a hit like that." The absurdity of the idea forced a laugh out of Nikki before she asked, "How big was the object? Was it a rock or a ship?"

"It looks like a ship. There was a radio transmission being sent, but it has distortion typical of a fusion torch burn without the proper shielding," Nere speculated. "If it's manned, the crew will likely boil to death if they don't hit anything first."

"Where is it now?" Nikki asked.

"Just passed us, missed us by a full kilometer," she replied. Given the speeds involved, a full thousand meters was still a narrow miss. Nere had saved the ship and the lives of everyone on it. "Thank you, Nere. Keep tracking it, but there's no way that it'll turn around going at that speed. More important is to watch where it came from and make sure there's nothing else."

"Anytime, Ma'am. I'm fairly certain that was just the one. No other LiDAR contacts like that within range, but I'll keep scanning," Nere said, letting her avatar smile and wave at Nikki in her head as she raised the privacy again. Nikki got her pressure coat and hood on to check on the payload. Passing through the crew airlock into the vacuum in the cargo section of the ship, she made a point of noting that she hadn't seen either Fred, nor Jerry.

Walking across the gantryway into the port passenger module, she did a quick visual check on the dorsal side. If there was damage, she had enough reserves to pressurize the cargo hold, but the increased fire risk and the unneccesary expense of refilling the tanks, and the pain of stablizing the pod when the bay doors opened all served as incintives to make sure the modules were in good repair. Aside from all of this, there was the concern that the station wouldn't buy back the pod if it had holes in it, and she couldn't shove off with passengers in a damaged module, even if the cargo bay was pressurized, temperture controlled, and scented.

Satisfied with the brief look, Nikki went into the module, doffing her gear to check on the passengers, who were all anxious, irritated, or confused. Venusians handled turbulance better than Terrans and Martians for sure, but their curiosity and insistence were almost as annoying as the others' complete mental breakdowns. Sure enough, one of the passengers ran up to the captain and began offering his technical expertise at ridiculous prices.

"You need my help, captain," he said with confidence.

"You need to get to your seat," Nikki repeated. "Is anyone here hurt?"

"Not on this level, captain," another, more helpful passenger answered her shout.

"Thank you," Nikki said gratefully. Only three or four passengers offered their services as she checked the other four decks. One of them even did so without outright insulting the crew. Unfortunately, none of them had the competence they boasted, seeing as how the airships of Venus had next to nothing in common with Transfer ships like the Nereidia, which routinely dealt with orbital mechanics and microadjustments, though not so regularly dealt with events like this.

Nikki let the Nereidia know that she could manage the passengers herself now if she wanted, but Nere had something to tell the captain that needed her on the Operations deck. Nikki acknowleged this and continued on to the starboard passenger module.

"Captain, I've got the starboard module, I need you in Operations now," Nere said in the suits radio. "I know that you prefer to do preliminaries yourself, but this needs your immediate attention away from the passengers."

"Ok, Ok, I got it. I'll head up to Ops," Nikki relented. "Brief me on the way?"

When the captain finally emerged from the stairwell into the main Operations room, her face was slightly more pale than usual, and her expression hard and humorless. The crew members seemed anxious and scared. Nikki asked if Nere had explained the situation. Eventually she confirmed that she hadn't, but the silence suggested that they knew it had something to do with the object they'd dodged.

"Ok, so that jerking around earlier was Nere saving our collective butts. The thing that was careening towards us hit Sinema Station first. We don't know how badly they were hit, but given the intranet outage and the general radio silence from the station itself, it's safe to assume their communications array was knocked out at least. Hopefully that's all that got hit." As Nikki spoke, Fred tightened his lips as Jimmy's jaw dropped open. She continued on to giving orders without interupption.

"We're set to arrive in just under an hour anyway, so we'll be picking some extra people up to take them to Mars in addition to our cargo, assuming it's still there. Fred, I want you to check the status of our external hitches. Hands on as much as you can without EVA, and let Nere handle the rest." Fred immediately got up to do as he was told.

Nikki turned to the co-pilot, "Jack," the boy interrupted, or at least attempted to, but she pushed on, "I want you to get your bags packed so that when we get to the station that you can get off quickly."

John mumbled to himself something about his actual name, but Nikki had already moved on to the screen to talk to Nereidia, "Nere, I need you to keep pinging Sinema and see if we can't get more information about what's going on. When Jared's done packing, have him lend you his bandwith to see if you can't clean up that transmission."

You lean back against the tree in the open field, feeling it's rough bark and the soft grass under the warmth of the sun through it's branches. The look of the Mars of the future is captivating to be sure, but the best part of this simulation is the tactile and aromatic sensation of it all. Immobile Full-Dive is like a dream, where you feel like the experiance is real right up until it's over, and even then the line is hard to draw.

That said, Haylee's avatar, with its somehow natural looking green hair and flawless features, would absolutely break the illusion if everything else wasn't already fantastically beautiful. Arcadia's Terraformist Society maintains the cafe you're diving from, so obviously they want to make sure to sell the dream as much as they possibly can. Perhaps the craziest part of the whole experiance is the feeling that your friend may be able to sit still for more than a moment without talking.

"I still don't get it Tae," she says, and just like that the moment is over. You lay your head back and groan a little.

"Don't get what, Haylee?" you ask with a sarcastically enthused tone.

"Why don't you get neurals if you're going to hang out here? I mean, at the end of the day, the only difference between you and me is that I can chill here at home. Is it a moral thing?" She asks for what must be the hundredth time.

"It's not a moral thing. I just don't want the surgery," you respond without facing her.

"What, are you scared?" she teases, lightly punching your shoulder as she sits next to you. "It's really not that bad, you don't even feel it. It's like getting your ears pierced. You have your ears done, don't you?"

"I have my ears done. Look, it's not about the pain, or even really the surgery. I just don't want that in me. It feels like it would be just asking for someone to mess with my head," you answer her with a glance.

"But they can mess with you at that IFD Cafe, can't they?" she argues. "I mean, you're in a public place right now, chillin' in a tube. Why not just stay at home and link up there."

"Yeah, but I can leave here and not have the connection anymore. I'm in a public place, sure, but I'm not walking aroung linked up all the time," you say, yet again, knowing what was going to come next. "Besides, I live out in the boonies. I've got maybe five or six sattelites to connect to, tops. It gets worse during dust season."

"Have you thought about moving to Chryse with me?" she asks again. She's getting more insistent about it. When they first became friends, it seemed like she was joking, but in the last month or so, she's asked at least four times. "I don't mean to badger you about it, I just wish you would go back with me. You know, when we're all done with school."

You get up and sigh. She is actually somewhat sincere now, when she asks. Before, it just seemed like the city girl trying to remind everyone that she was important, but now she's making arguments when she tries. She's not great at remembering which ones she's tried before, which is funny considering she's got a literal memory expansion in her brain, but she's serious.

"I like my little house in the valley," you answer with a hug as she gets up with you. "It's my favorite place in the world, and I always miss it when I'm out here."

She groans, "I get that, but-"

You interupt, "Come on, let's go visit. Let me show you what I mean." You pull up a small menu and put in the coordinates near your place, setting the TF level to present, and swipe the menu over to your friend.

"Why do people here still do the hand motions? You look silly waving your hands in the air," she jests.

"Shut up and accept the invite," you insist.

"TF's at zero, why do you want to show me desert?" she asks, surprised.

"Becuase. Just accept it, and let's go," you repeat impatiently.

The feeling of watching a clock count down from five begins in your mind. and as it hits zero, you feel compelled to close your eyes for a moment. When you open them, you see the small collection of mud-huts that consitiute the Green Valley town town center. Exposed glass from subterranian hydroponic farms give the illusion of surface water, and your avatars, which are visible to those using the augmented reality function on their headgear or neurals, really sell the idea that you're just walking on the surface of the planet.

"Why did you have to make it so cold, Tae?" Haylee complains again.

"That's how it would feel if you were wearing your normal gear. Just turn up the heat."

"There's nothing here." She says without looking. "You just brought me to another polar desert for no... Wait... Is that a lake?"

"No, but it's pretty, isn't it?" "The Nakagawa family maintains that farm. We still get our O2 from them when someone moves in."

"What do you mean, when someone moves in?"

"Well, homesteading was way more popular before the big cities took off, but we still get folk that want to try it out. Lots of venusians and terrans still. At least four or five a month, just here."

"Why would you need O2 for that? Can't they bring their own?"

"Newbies always underestimate how much they need, and a lot of the older, bigger farmsteads like to build tunnels and piping to the closer immigrants. Makes for good business while they get on their feet, and sets up the relationship for when they're buying the new strains or live soil later on. We never got that big, but we still like to bring stuff to market."

"Huh. Wait... so this is Green Valley?" She asks. "Looks like a blast from the past."

"Yep." you confirm. "Feels that way too, I'd bet."

"I thought it'd be underground or domed or something. It seems so spread out," she wonders.

"We like it that way," you laugh.

"Where's the green, though?" she teases.

"I thought you'd never ask! Let me take you to my place." you say with a broad smile.

You jump a little in the air and keep your feet pointed down to let the system know you want to fly. Leaning forward and pushing your legs down starts you at a good pace, and all of a sudden, you're going about three times as fast as you would if you were driving. Inside of twenty minutes, you can see your home.

"Do you see that bump with the big shiney smudge next to it?" you ask, pointing generally. "That's where we're going."

When the two of you get there, you land and show her to the greenhouse your third great grandfather built. coming around the eastern side, you point out a few dozen rows of pods that look like small clear balloons. As she looks inside at the saplings growing in the supposedly infertile red dirt of Mars, you smile in anticipation.

"You got them to grow in the red without transplants?" she asks, not really fully aware of the significance of that feat.

"Yep. That's a hundred and eighty year old project right there," you explain. "Most private individuals don't bother with trees because they take too long to breed, but we've been at it since Archangel."

"But why spend all that time on it? Won't it just grow to be radioactive like the shrubs in Hellas?" she says with genuine confusion. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but this seems odd to me."

"So, this particular strain of Oak, and I'm using the term Oak super loosely, is specifically designed to filter the harmful radiation out with its highest branches and produce clean oxegen with its lower ones."

"Ok, but why? If you're going to have to keep it in a pressure chamber anyway, why go through the trouble of having the plant block out the radiation?" Haylee asks, still not seeing the biggest achievement in the garden. "The pressure here is next to nothing. Are you guys trying to sell something to FSH?"

"Look over here," you lead her to the forty third row and toward the northern side of the formation, and point at a particular pod that seems somewhat deflated. "By this point, my dogdrones are out, so this should be a live view. You can touch it if you want."

"Wait..." she pokes at the plastic and realizes what had happened. "This one's depressurized, isn't it going to die?" She looks inside to see a green twig sticking out of the dirt with purplish-black leaves over smaller dark teal leaves. "What the hell?"

"It wasn't an accident. We chose to do this with trees because they were already almost able to survive the low pressure as adults, even the old terran breeds. These saplings are perhaps the first generation of trees that may be able to survive on Mars without human assistance." "I want to watch this tree grow, and spread it across the valley. Make it true to it's name. I've got other things I want to do, for sure, but this is my family's legacy, and I want to live up to it."

She considers this as she looks around at the various saplings in their little containers. "Ok, well if you would've said that instead of 'I don't like the city, civilization is icky' I would've been a bit more receptive, Tae." Haylee looks up and, with her hand pulling at her neck, asks, "Can I come over next holiday? I'll bring Steven."

"Yeah, of course. I'll

"Everyone with broken bones or heavy bruising, I need you to get on the left side of line of chairs, everyone else on the right," Steven shouted