Chapter 20

During the last seven weeks, we didn’t spend a lot of time with most of the people from our original group.

We had been putting in long days during the week so that we had our weekends free. We did still exercise with the Army people, but we tended to eat just as often with the people who also lived in the residences and were in our department.

We went to Brisbane most weekends to do some sightseeing and just for a break and some quality time together. After the first couple of weeks, I put my foot down and told James that we had to do something that he really wanted to do.

He frowned at me and finally said that he would like to go to the Zero-G Dome.

I grinned, “Awesome, I haven’t been there since I was nine. My cousins from Mars came to visit and went to it.”

I had to laugh when his shoulders relaxed, and he grinned at me sheepishly. “I should have guessed you’d love the place.”

We did have a lovely time too. They had this spiral of twenty large rooms, and as you moved through them, the gravity changed by 0.05G. Each room had been dedicated to one of the Off-world settlements and space achievements.

The space stations, Morpheus that orbited Earth and the Armstrong that orbited Luna, also had rooms dedicated to them. They had one special room that was set at Moon normal, 0.16G. They played videos of the first men to walk on Luna. It was truly inspiring.

We saw pictures of the thirty-six domes currently on Luna and of people building them. We were told which countries or companies had contributed to them being built. We were both surprised to learn that over five hundred thousand people called Luna home, and as many as twenty thousand visitors went there each week.

We learnt of UNSEC’s involvement and the women who had decided it was time to head to the stars. They also had a room set at Mars gravity of 0.38G. Here we learnt about how the first dome was built in 2072. They had over sixteen domes now, and they were expanding.

Mars even had a new space station called James SS that they had just finished building two years before. The Armstrong SS had been blown up back in 2090 when Mars has declared that they were an independent nation and planet from Earth and had the right to govern itself.

The SSG or Sol Space Government that is housed on Luna and part of UNSEC had tried to stop them and paid the price. UNSEC were not happy with the SSG and eventually had to support Mars in their bid for independence. They didn’t want a costly space war with Mars.

We also learnt about the smaller settlements on Jupiter’s moons, Io, and Ganymede. The next chambers were dedicated to Titania, which orbits Uranus. Ceres, a dwarf planet located in the Asteroid Belt, was the most recent settlement. Space Stations also orbited Venus and Saturn.

We now understood why the government needed to expand the Oak Beach Space Port.

James and I had settled into an easy routine in our little apartment.

We had little trouble living together. I guess the fact was that this side of our relationship was still new to us, and it hadn’t lost its excitement yet. In many ways, it was scary just how compatible we were.

James was just as happy to get me into bed at any time as he was the first time. It really turned him on if I instigated the sex. He liked taking me to restaurants and even came shopping with me.

He took me to any place I expressed an interest in and was just as delighted when I happily went where he wanted to go. We both had a lot of fun together in and out of bed.

He had eased off a lot on the possessiveness now that everyone had accepted that we were a couple. Oddly, the women found him more desirable, and he had complained to me on several occasions that a couple of the girls were bailing him up when I wasn’t around to protect him.

I’d kiss him and say, “You know what will happen if you stray?”

He’d answer that he was very attached to his family jewels and was perfectly happy with how I treated them at present. Plus, he had no intention of giving up the good thing that he had with me. It was easy for me to believe him as I was sure he was with me because he wanted to be.

I soon learnt that if I occasionally came and sat on James’s lap when one of the girls had him cornered in his cubicle, I got the message across that I didn’t share well. He never encouraged them either, as far as I saw.

One time, James had chuckled and told me that I could be quite intimidating after I had scared them off. He seemed to like it that I was laying claim to him, as he was always reluctant to let me go. I’d not thought that I’d be the jealous type, but I did consider him mine.

I think the way his eyes would light up when he saw me coming and the way he hugged me eased any fears I had. Modern dating was very bewildering. I was never quite sure whether I should be the aggressive one or not, so I just went with what felt right, to lay my claim of James in a public manner.

Now that I had a man of my own, I wasn’t just going to give him up to the first floozy that batted her eyelashes at him. I know many men think they should still do the pursuing, and polygamous marriages were very common these days.

However, a lot of women felt more in charge of finding their own mate. I guess it had to do with basic human needs and the fact our two sexes were so lopsided in favour of the men.

Some women could be very aggressive, and I was getting a taste of them. I found that it didn’t sit well in my mouth. Carly’s little attack was an example. She had been pretty pissed that James had moved into a room with me, and he avoided being alone with her. He also didn’t respond to her flirting the way she wanted him to.

Considering that he wasn’t even from Brisbane, I found her attitude rather senseless. Did she expect him to marry her and cart her back home with him after the course finished?

The two women in the Forensic Office who gave him a hard time, also confused me. I’ve not had many female friends growing up, so maybe I just don’t understand my own gender.