Venus Ascending

Chapter 1

With the alarms blaring in his ears, John bounded past the portal on the docking bay door. The stunning picture of earth far below made him stumble as he strained for a better look. The sun was coming up over Central Africa, and he could see the sun's terminator passing somewhere over Kenya. The air was clear with only white, fluffy, cotton ball clouds marring his view, but their shadows on the earth provided their own portrait. However, the jarring alarm drove him past the incredible view and into the chaos.

It had been a long week with lots of little water and sewage problems that somehow built into larger ones. He had been enjoying one of his few moments of solitude while eating his oatmeal and fruit breakfast. He was sucking on his tepid coffee while taking pleasure in quiet beauty floating beneath him, before the sewage alarms shattered his isolation.

They were not the "We are losing air we are all going to die kind of alarm" (they have a different tone and are much more shrill). Instead they were the "Something needs attending immediately" kind of alarm. So John stashed all his camera, dishes, etc., into a locker he had in the receiving bay, then bounded through the low gravity corridors to find out what was going on.

Managing the water and liquid waste systems on a casino in space was expected to be a 24-hour 7 days a week job and at times like this it was more than anyone expected. Everyone down on Earth was scraping by, trying to keep a shelter over their heads and food in their bellies. Here, however, on the floating casino city dubbed 'Venus Ascending,' everything was beautiful, wonderful, and delivering the promise every day. At least that's the way it looked to the outside world.

John finally reached the main waste-water treatment bay and found Wes already there. Wes, his technical principal and chief assistant, had already shut off the alarm. Wes was trying to discover the reason for the alarms. Together they found there was a large biomass blocking the filter grate at the inlet to the sewage processing area. They beat everyone else to the waste treatment area and temporarily diverted the pressurized waste flow allowing them to open the filter box. The grate was surprisingly devoid of waste except for what looked like a human thigh blocking the inlet. The thigh was slim, lightly muscled, and shapely, with a decidedly feminine look. The firm muscle tone told him the previous owner had not been in space for long.

They both donned arm length gloves and lifted the "thigh" out of the waste filter box and into the trash bin they usually left by the inlet grate. They both looked at each other, trying to figure out what's next. They did have a protocol for what happens when they find a biomass in the sewage, but a thigh, this was a new one. As the manager, John, was the one to make a decision.

"Wes, my guess would be to follow protocol and bring in the inspection team, but I think we should call someone on the medical staff as well."

Wes ran off to handle notifications, while John picked up the trash bin containing the thigh and moved it to a more secure, locking cooler. Then they waited for all the suits to show up.

At times like this, John wondered if some of the other waste solutions would have been better. During the early stages of Venus, waste was carried first with an anaerobic bacteria mixture that would break down the waste as it moved through the pipes. This had a side benefit of generating Methane that could be used as fuel. The complications of having guests use the complicated equipment, along with the smell, forced the abandonment of this method. After that, they tried a hydrocarbon mixture, and it failed miserably before they converted to a delicately balanced pressure and vacuum water system.

However, even water presented its own share of problems. With the systems pressurized, they required special toilets and showers. Despite their complicated usage, the guests seemed to like the water better. They also found that the lower gravity kept the waste in suspension longer, with fewer blockages. Still, the pipes seemed to get fingers and other body parts in the mix along with large amounts of condoms. Hazardous material.

About an hour later the inspection team showed up decked out in suits as if there were a major nuclear incident. The whole team wandered around like an old

Keystone Cops

movie with everyone going in different directions and no coordination. Wes and John looked at each other, snickered, rolled their eyes at the buffoons, and then went over to help.

They spent the better part of an hour going over the same thing repeatedly. They found a thigh on the large waste grate leading into the waste treatment plant ... period. Their sensors only detected it just before it caught on the grate, so no one knew about it until the sensors went off and they found it in the grate.

For the next several hours, John had each of his groups come in to be interviewed by the inspection team. The first group was the group they affectionately call the "Sewer Rats." These guys have arguably the worst job in Venus. They are the people who keep all the waste and sewage moving through the system. The "Sewer Rats" deal with any plugs, clogs, or breaks. The inspection team wanted to know if these guys had found anything pertaining to the thigh showing up on the inlet grates. Of course they hadn't, otherwise, they would've already reported to their manager ... John.

The next group to be interviewed was the Treatment Operations Group. They're the ones that treat all the sewage, disposal of waste, and reuse of the waste water. Once again, they didn't have anything to add to the discussion. The thigh was caught on the inlet grate, so it never made it into any of the treatment areas. The only thing these people could report on was that the alarms went off when the waste flow diminished. The low pressure was the result of reduced sewage flow due to the thigh blocking the inlet to the treatment facility.

The final group interviewed was the Water Distribution Group; and of course, they had nothing to speak of since the thigh was all on the sewage side. Wes and John had already given their testimony previously, so after completely wasting the entire morning and some of the afternoon, the inspection team came to no conclusions and left with thigh in tow.

Chapter 2

John's morning routine usually involved having his breakfast sitting in the supply docking bay. He would watch the world move underneath him as he ate his breakfast of oatmeal and fruit. His coffee was warm, weak, and tasteless, but it was chock-full of caffeine and he needed that to push the sleep from his head. The normalcy of his day up in the heavens was something people down on earth struggled for and strived to attain. When offered a shot at this position, he jumped at the chance. Who wouldn't, considering it was double your normal pay, plus the chance to go to space? To go to the casino in the sky, which was where all the rich and beautiful people went, well, it was the chance of a lifetime.

Then reality sets in. Space removes you from your entire support network of friends and family. All the beautiful people are indeed here, but they all know they're beautiful and rich, and they all have their noses in the air. People like John are just the hired help and make their life easy for them. He is beneath them, completely and utterly out of their league. They know it. They treat him like the invisible, hired help that he is.

At times like this, he longed for someone in his life to share this incredible view. However, his heart wasn't fully healed from the betrayal of his ex-wife. For now, the solitude was helping him heal, but still there were times he longed for that idyllic movie and book romance. He knew that was something everyone longed for, someone to make the daily grind bearable or even just better, someone who makes home something fun and wonderful.

For John, loneliness is not an option. He gets instead the chaos of managing 30 people in a non-stop environment, and it keeps him hopping. This solitude in the morning was his quiet time for reflection. He had his e-reader with him in case he felt like reading and his camera setup on a tripod should some awe-inspiring scene pop up below him. Mostly, he was just soaking up the ambiance and enjoying scenery that very few people get to see. Even all the rich snobs up in the casino only get a small portal and simulated stars on the walls of the casinos.

Venus Ascending had been built over the course of 12 years; it was the size of a domed stadium with six levels. Only three of the levels are there for the entertainment and comfort of the guests. One is berthing for the staff, containing very small and Spartan rooms for most of the entertainment and engineering staff. As management, John got one of the smaller guest quarters. The other two levels involve behind the scenes activities that all the culinary and engineering groups do to keep the place functioning. Docked around the main body of Venus Ascending were multiple water and waste storage containers. In addition, there were agricultural domes outside the casino dome used for a modicum of self-sufficiency.

The main consumables, water and food, were heavily recycled. However, they always needed more water and food, with waste always generated. The consumables would come up through regular container rockets. The containers were recycled to earth carrying waste or specialty, low gravity products. Water is stored in the form of ice in containers outside the dome, and generally they tried to keep at least a six months' supply.

Venus was in a stationary orbit high above the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the reason was simple ... politics. From the minute Venus Ascending was proposed, every country started extending their territorial borders 500 miles into space. Typical, they all wanted a piece of the action, taxes, jurisdiction, laws, and of course, all the elite and ruling classes wanted junkets to areas they controlled.

However, all of those things defied the whole purpose of Venus Ascending, with the purpose being a sanctuary away from the laws of Earth. You see, Venus Ascending has no real laws, only rules with vague punishments subject to interpretation. So in other words, pretty much everything is legal: gambling, prostitution, drugs, bondage... If you want it, and if you can pay enough for it, you can get or do anything. The only thing truly frowned upon is anything that causes the death of another human being. In other words, you can do things that will cause your own death, just not the death of anyone else. Once again, even these rules are subject to interpretation.

Nudity and blatant sexuality are not only tolerated on Venus, they are encouraged. For all the guests and tourists, sex is just as much in demand as drugs and gambling. All the entertainment staff has strict physical requirements. Whether man or woman, they must all be stunningly beautiful. They are expected to dress, or in many cases undress, to accentuate their beauty. For all the geek engineers and maintenance staff, having stunningly beautiful, scantily clad women and men walking around is very distracting. Having mostly or sometimes fully naked "beautiful people" around was very exciting and titillating, especially to maintenance personnel that were not used to it.

Sex, drugs, gambling, and a hedonistic lifestyle are distracting and also very disruptive to all the workers on Venus. This resulted in a large turnover of personnel in almost every area. John's area was no exception. When people first came to Venus, they were like kids in a candy store. Everything that had been denied them back on earth was readily available. Without a good moral center and work ethic, many workers succumbed to the enticements that Venus offered.

Venus Ascending is managed by a council, created by a joint venture of most of the casinos back on Earth. They included some of the Indian reservations, as well as, other shady organizations that, according to rumor, were the mob (or whatever they want to be called this year). In the years it took to build Venus, the council was shopping around for a country which, for a certain fee, would allow Venus the autonomy that it needed to be able to survive.

The tabloids, the press, and regular rumor mills contained many reports of behind-the-scenes negotiations for the control of Venus Ascending. These rumors involved everything from buyouts, to kidnappings and murders. Once John met people involved in Venus he felt like, if anything, the rumors were too subtle. The people doing the hiring down on Earth came across as corporate and professional. However, the people on Venus were pretty much gangsters in suits.

Venus also allowed many of the owning consortiums to get into legitimate businesses. A permanent platform in space allowed for production of thousands of products that could not be produced on Earth. Most of these factories were very small and were contained in satellite domes attached to Venus. Drug manufacturing and electronic chip manufacturing were among the easiest and most profitable.

However, there were some surprises. One was agriculture. Low gravity plants were rich in nutrients but were soft and leafy. The plant structure wasn't nearly as dense as it was back on earth. They had a delicate configuration and were widely prized on earth. Low gravity beef had replaced Kobe beef as the gourmet's choice. It was soft, extremely tender, full of flavor, and was prized the world over.

All those were just side benefits and something that would increase the profit margins of the Council. The real reason for Venus to exist was sin. It was there for every type of human hedonism and none of the staff was immune to the temptations. Many of the personnel issues John dealt with had to do with his staff being caught up in drugs, sex or other debauchery's.

John himself indulged in his BDSM fantasies. Back on earth he had studied under a BDSM master, but never found anyone to practice with. Here on Venus the Medieval club allowed him to watch Masters at work. Occasionally, they even allowed John to be a guest dominant and participate on stage.

It was an incredible learning experience for him, but there was never the trust and emotional connection that he expected with his own Sub. Despite the mechanical nature of the sessions, he learned a lot and knew if he ever found a partner he would be ready.

That was the point of Venus Ascending, to live out your fantasies. No matter what they were, Venus had a place that would indulge your deepest or darkest fantasies. Nothing was off-limits and while that was one of the main purposes of Venus, it was also one of its biggest problems.

Throughout Venus' history, there were rumors of the consortium's involvement in the white slave trade, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, murders, and kidnappings. In fact, John had been informed by Ken, the manager for Flight (the group responsible for keeping Venus in orbit) that he has radar images tracking 56 objects he claims to be people flushed into space. He has some pretty compelling evidence too.

You see one thing the gangsters don't know is, every time they shoot somebody out in space Newton's law takes effect. In other words, the outguessing involved in shooting somebody out into space has a small but opposite reaction on the space casino. The result is the Flight group has to fire retros to counteract the outguessing. They are usually small corrections; but nonetheless, corrections. Ken also uses the radar to track the objects he has to compensate for, hence the 56 objects.

The area John managed is the liquid engineering or anything that has to do with water or liquid waste. Likewise, in his area, he always finds fingers, toes, ears, and other appendages in the sewage traps. They turn them into the authorities, who are supposed to use the DNA to track back to the owners, but that somehow never happens.

Everyone in the engineering departments recognizes that they are working for a bunch of gangsters, and they accept that as a matter of course. Fortunately, they are a skeleton staff, and they are dependent upon the engineers to keep them alive in space. None of the engineering staff has ever been compromised ... that they know of. The same can't be said for the entertainment staff and the guests. There are always rumors about somebody in the entertainment area getting crossways with the council, and suddenly they're gone. When anyone presses, wanting information about the missing, they are told that they were shipped back to earth.

Since there is no police force on Venus, all investigations are conducted by corporate security. Pretty convenient since they are probably the ones that are doing the dirty deeds. It's amazing how much graft and corruption people will put up with for large amounts of cash. Everyone recognizes that they've been bought. If they were down on earth, they would be fighting this corruption and try to make better lives for all.

So normally John's sabbatical was his mornings, enjoying his breakfast, ignoring all the corruption around him and concentrating on his job. His mornings were always the same scenery, but depending on the time of day, he could see the movement of the day and night terminator cross over Africa, or you could see complete darkness or light.

The solitude of this morning was destroyed before it even had a chance to begin.

Chapter 3

In all the chaos of the morning, John never had a chance to get lunch, so around 2:30 he finally broke free and went to the employee café fondly nicknamed "The Slut Hut". His walk to the café took him through New Amsterdam, past all the drug and coffeehouses and past the red-light district.

John loved to people watch as all the newcomers gawked at everything Venus had to offer. Then there were all the pratfalls. Depending on their balance everyone had different degrees of adjusting to the low gravity on Venus. Some kept tripping and falling, while others bounced off the floor and hit the ceiling. It was a constant source of amusement for those that worked here. Of course they had all been through the same thing, but it was funny watching someone else.

Coffeehouses always seem to be full of tourists becoming stoned on their drug of choice. The red-light district was patterned after the real Amsterdam red-light district. There were gorgeously beautiful men and women naked or scantily clad on display behind glass windows. Each was trying their best to entice someone into their bed prominently displayed behind them. Some were teasing the clients with toys, while others used the bondage apparatus to present their succulent bodies.

One beautiful, young blonde was using a squeegee to remove the water from her window. John grinned to himself because he knew this was all part of the illusion. The image was that the gorgeous, young prostitute had just finished a round of hot, steamy sex. The hot, steamy sex would fog up the windows, and now she was cleaning up the results. At least that was the illusion.

The reality is, there was not enough humidity in the air to fog up the windows. The double pane windows had an image projected on the material between the panes of glass, and the prostitute's squeegee would dissolve or reset the image. The illusion however, remained. She had just had hot, steamy, nasty sex with someone and was ready to do the same with her next customer.

Normally, John ate much earlier than this. He was surprised at the number of people eating in the "The Slut Hut" at this time of day. The place was packed with mostly entertainment staff and performers. Many were still in their tiny or nonexistent costumes, and this created a titillating view of sensual flesh.