Chapter 2

There were only about fifty children and unmated teens in Armstrong. Thus most of them knew each other and played together after School and work chores. Nearly all were “interns”, working with their parents or others on the multitude of projects that were always going on.

Atarah had met her best friend Abra at School when she was only 3. Abra was the same age as Atarah and had actually come up to the Moon on the same shuttle flight as a baby. The two played together quite often and grew up together.

When Abra was just 13, her mother had died in a very unusual accident; she had been working long hours in a lab and, while waiting on an experiment to complete, had lain down on the floor to rest. A CO2 scrubber for the sealed lab had malfunctioned, and, in a seemingly perfectly innocent mistake of installation, the CO2 monitor had been mounted high on the wall instead of close to the floor. Carbon dioxide built up at floor level with nothing stirring it, and she just fell asleep and never woke up.

It was a sorrowful time for the entire city, and everyone turned out for the funeral, all crammed into the central hall dome. Atarah held Abra close to her the whole time as Abra’s father, an engineer on the far side radio telescope, gave a eulogy along with many of their friends.

Several months had gone by since then. Atarah and her mom “adopted” Abra while Abra’s father finished his work. The two girls would share secrets together, Atarah telling about Jabin and some of the things they did. Abra hadn’t been paired with anyone yet, and without her father there, likely would be nearly a year before she would be. As with most teens, she worried that she might never be mated with someone.

Since their little apartment only had two bedrooms, Atarah and Abra shared together. One night, Atarah told Abra that Jabin had full access to the BCI network, this included being able to access Compat reports from Armstrong’s AI. The School regularly updated reports on the children, including running compatibility studies.

That night, Jabin ran the report, after he promised not to look at the results else risk Atarah’s wrath. He did as promised, and the unopened results were sent to Abra. Abra was too scared to open it, so had Atarah do it.

Atarah starting giggling.

Abra looked at her, “What is it? Who?”

Atarah blushed, “The report gives several matches, in descending order of compatibility.”

“Well? Who?!”

Atarah looks at her friend, “Well, I’m an 85% match...”

Abra looked at her, thinking she was lying, “Let me see that!” and she grabbed the holo screen.

As Abra read the report, her demeanor changed. Privately, she had felt closer to girls than boys for some time now, but she never really thought about it. Looking back, she realized that she hadn’t been very interested in boys, at least in that way. She had male friends, but not attracted to them physically.

Abra laughed at seeing Atarah’s name. The two looked at each other, realizing that they did have an intimacy together. They just never expressed it outright.

Abra looked at the top entry. The name “Camber Alician” had a 94% match. The two girls knew her well. She was friends with both them of them. Abra blushed, feeling a flush rise over her.

Atarah looked at Abra, “You two? ... You did! Oh wow! You already knew this?”

Abra, shy now, “I didn’t know this report. But just a few months ago, we snuck out at night. There’s a place. We kinda just clicked.”

Atarah leaned over and hugged Abra. Then she kissed her. And again.

Finally, “So what happened? I haven’t seen Camber around.”

“She’s with her mom working on the ULT telescope project on the far side. Not far from my dad.”

Atarah kissed her again, “Oh, wow. So ... tell me what happened between you two?”

The launch day had arrived and gone by almost as an afterthought. Atarah and Jabin had said goodbye to their moms and their friends, and the two had hugged Jabin’s dad as he said bye to his boy and his daughter-in-law.

“You two take good care of my ship!” he had laughed as they hugged and kissed.

“And Pilot, you take care of my kids!” he added.

At the required time, Pilot completed all checklists and initiated the Drive to 50% acceleration, 1/6 gee, just like the Moon’s gravity. The vehicle slowly increased its orbit as the velocity built. Within a day, they have already headed away from the Earth-Moon system. They would have to even leave the ecliptic to match the highly inclined orbit of 2 Pallas, something that would have been almost impossibly energy-intensive prior to their fusion-powered plasma drives.

The two settled into routines of eating, sleeping ... and lovemaking.

They both refused to play chess with Pilot.

Their Mating Party was over. They were snuggled on their mating bed, their first night together. The tearing of her once beautiful costume had continued until reaching the middle slit that already rose from her ankle-length dress all the way up her thighs. Her white pantied hips now exposed. He came back up, opening her dress like a flower, exposing the breasts he had seen veiled earlier during her dance, now in front of him. He sat admiring his mate. She was beautiful. She smiled at him with her anime-like eyes staring back, her eyelids colored in bright purple that shimmered like butterfly wings. No lashes or brows, but instead sparkles and colors of intricate henna-like patterns drawn with care by a beauty bot. More designs were on wrists, ankles, and above one breast. She remembered being shy as the robot carefully drew the temporary Polynesian patterns onto her bare breast.

Her eyelids closed, drooping in softness to his murmurs and touches. He opened her dress down her waist and hips. Only her virginal white panties kept her modesty. He looked for and found their tear points.

Just after Jabin’s 14^th birthday, months before Atarah’s and months before their official Mating day, they had been communicating via their brain-computer interface, BCI. Still being young, there were safeguards in place that controlled what could be sent between two people. The interface was supposed to be only used for School, at least until they were old enough and mated. But Jabin had discovered a flaw in its security and like any teen hacker, exploited the connection.

Atarah was lying in her bed, almost asleep when she felt a tickling in the back of her mind. She heard a thought, or more like a feeling, like a touch. She felt it strengthen. It was like a School interconnect request but wasn’t. She accepted the request, just like she would at School.

It was Jabin. Her Jabin. She felt him smile. She hadn’t felt such an unusual feeling before. She was intrigued. A thought came into her head, kind of like the School messages did. It told her how to return the connection to him. She did. He felt her giggle at the newfound access. She felt him thinking of her. They shared feelings and thoughts. The access was still low level, like whispers and the touch of a single fingertip. She closed her eyes and focused on her beloved.

On her very first day of School, little Atarah was shown to a small couch by her caregiver. She was told to relax and breath slowly with her eyes closed. Her father had already used a Teacher to give her that language class months ago, so she knew most of what to expect. She felt the first stirrings in her thoughts and emotions, like a tickle or a whisper in an ear. She had been told how to accept the connection request, and she did. She felt a soft breeze of emotions and thoughts flow over her, like walking from an empty room into a quiet outdoor party. She took a breath, kept her eyes closed and listened to the thoughts as they formed in her head. Her first lessons would be just for orientation and to test the intensity levels she could handle. The Teacher AI basically ran diagnostics on Atarah’s young brain.

The Teacher found Atarah a competent learner, and Atarah hurried her lessons as much as she could, even when they resulted in migraines afterward. She loved learning new things. She didn’t know it yet, but her future Jabin was also advancing his learning at a pace equal to hers. Both accelerated above their fellow classmates.

Armstrong City, being on the near side of the Moon, always had direct communications with Earth, though the two second round trip delay made for somewhat choppy two-way conversations. People not used to the delay constantly stepped on each other, interrupting the conversation. So most people settled for messaging, either video, voice or text. Messaging also made it handy due to time zones. All of Luna used Universal Time Zone (UTZ), basically, the old Greenwich, England time zone. But of course, the Earth had 24 time zones, so if you forgot, you could end up waking people in the middle of their night. Since the Moon’s “day” is just under 30 days long, Armstrong had set their day/night schedule to normal 24 hours. Of course, work still ran around the clock with robots and engineering maintenance running all the time. Just fewer people worked during the “night shift”.

During the city nighttime, though, insomniacs and teenagers roamed the quiet hallways and hidden spots. For recreation, there were gyms, an old-time movie theater, a multi-purpose arena/music/stage venue, gardens and of course, a few cafes, restaurants and even a couple bars that usually served rather weak spirits along with a number of recreational synthetics that were guarantee to wear off within a couple hours, without headache. At any of these, anyone could offer their talents at cooking, drink making, dancing, singing, or any other interesting abilities as they saw fit, including a few that weren’t on the ‘menu’.

Most things that the citizens of Armstrong wanted were ordered and constructed by replication printers located in the “shopping” area of the city. You would put in your order, and usually within an hour or two, you could walk down and pick it up. If you need it, a droid will deliver it. This included every type of good imaginable from meals to clothes to electronics to jewelry to your morning coffee. Custom designed products could be constructed. The science team was always coming up with new science instruments, even as the kids were coming up with the latest fashion statement.

There were a couple of “security team” members that kept the peace and a “social committee” that came up with ways to entertain everyone. Of course, there was a nearly endless supply of BCI-based entertainment from the savory travelogues to the not-so-savory horror and sex mem recordings. People could tune out the world and lie back and do a virtual visit to ... well, virtually anything and anywhere.

A steady stream of new BCI, video and text material was transmitted from Earth over the laser links. Terabytes a day to help keep the doctor away, they say.

But it was the teens that always found the most ingenious, if not entirely safe or approved, ways of entertaining themselves.

Abra sat hand-in-hand with Atarah in Atarah’s room. Abra started talking about her and Camber.

“There’s a place that we hang out at times. It’s a large storage area that was emptied when the telescope projects began.”

Atarah knew the place. She and Jabin and some friends had been there.

“Well, there were several of us sitting around and talking. One of the boys had brought thick insulation blankets there on the floor.”

Atarah smiled knowingly about those, too. She and Jabin had lain on them, making out. Now she wondered how many other teens had as well.

“Well, one of the boys, you know him, had brought some alcohol. Nasty tasting stuff, but we drank it anyway.”

Atarah laughed, she knew precisely, it had to be Mies. He worked with his father in the organic chemistry labs. He was always synthesizing something. All of it against the rules, particularly for the teens.

“We passed it around. I think he said it was about 150 proof grain alcohol. It burned my throat, I know. It wasn’t long until we were laughing and singing songs and the boys doing acrobatic tricks. For one, they hoisted Camber up on top of a pyramid of boys. She stood on the very top of them, standing on just one foot, balancing herself and touching the ceiling. Someone wobbled, and they all fell in a slow-motion crash ... She ended up on top of me.”

Atarah’s eyes lit, and she smiled.

“Camber laughed, then we looked at each other, and she just kissed me. Right on the lips. She was completely on top of me. Her arms went around mine, and we kissed.”

Abra had Atarah’s attention now, “French?”

Abra giggled, “Well, the others seemed busy too. And a few started to wander away. It was pretty late. But Camber and I...”

“Oh, wow! Hot! See, you guys hit it off without even knowing.”

Abra thought about Camber and then about her mom.

She began to cry, tears flowing down her cheeks, “I miss her. I miss my mom. So badly!”

Atarah wrapped herself around Abra and held her, slowly rocking. They kissed and held tight to each other as Abra cried herself to sleep.

Atarah remembers the day she thought she had lost Jabin forever. Jabin was up at the orbital construction site of the Cecilia Payne with his dad. The site located at the L4 Lagrange point was called simply “Station”, though the real name was Valya Station or Valentina Tereshkova Station after the first woman to go into space.

Jabin had just sent a message to Atarah saying that their work was nearing completion, and they were testing the plasma engines one-by-one. 14-year-old Atarah had gone with her mom to the NearSide telescope to assist with re-instrumentation. They were in a lunar rover just pulling up at the station when a bright blue-white light lit the sky. The light faded slowly into an expanding red ball.

“Mom, look!” she cried out, “What’s that?”

“Oh, God!” her mother replied.

Naarah knew right away what it was, but so did Atarah.

“An atomic!” she was getting frantic.

Her mom finished docking to the telescope station airlock, with Atarah hurrying through the lock into the station as quickly as she could. She was headed straight for the control room where the communications equipment was. She bounded through the tunnel using her hands to push off the ceiling and walls as she leaped too hard in the lunar gravity.

When Naarah had finished with the rover and reached the underground control room, the radio was alive with traffic. Atarah had pulled up the data holo displays and was trying to open a video channel to Valya Station and Jabin. She switched to just text messaging after several failed attempts at getting a video channel.

Naarah was looking at the other communications happening as Atarah kept frantically sending messages to Jabin with no reply. Tears ran down Atarah’s face as Naarah held her daughter.

“Mom ... I can’t raise him...” her voice cracked with stress.

“Hold on, Atarah. The data news shows that a Blue Ion test site was involved, not the Station.”

Atarah held her breath as she looked at the reports her mother was showing her. Naarah looked at one of the newest reports; Blue Ion had been testing an antimatter engine that obviously did not go as planned. She found that the test site wasn’t at the Station, but wasn’t terribly far away either.

Atarah saw the report, “The gamma...” her voice cracked.

She knew that a matter-antimatter explosion generated considerable radiation, including hard gamma rays. Too much could be quite lethal. Naarah immediately began swinging the smaller asteroid search telescope towards the L4 location.

Atarah’s eyes were flitting back and forth between the telescopic display and the data feeds. Voice and video traffic had saturated the available bandwidth, so she hoped for a text-only message. Atarah saw a report that at least two Blue Ion engineers were killed. The reports were still focused on the engine test site and barely mentioned the Station.

The telescope finished slewing and focusing onto Valya Station. The Cecilia Payne was there, quietly floating in space. No activity could be seen, but image resolution down to a human or droid size object was not possible at this distance. But at least this confirmed that the ship was intact and not involved.

Atarah’s eyes were too full of tears to see the text message arrive. Naarah saw it first.

“They’re safe!”

Atarah wiped her eyes yet again as she read the message. It wasn’t heavy on details other than that by luck Jabin and his father had been in the shielded Drive pod, and the ship had happened to have been facing Shield first toward the blast.

Eventually, it was discovered that the antimatter engine had a completely unexpected containment breach, causing the explosion, two were killed, and several more had to be sent back to Earth for radiation treatments. A dozen droids were destroyed, and electronics modules on the construction bays surrounding the Cecilia were damaged. The ship had survived; Pilot had isolated the damaged devices, mainly imagers and external electronics. Jabin said there were several debris impacts on the Shield, but nothing significant. Their radiation exposure was high but not serious. Space Track was able to determine that the matter-antimatter annihilation of just one gram had vaporized nearly the entire test platform, leaving only a small amount of debris hurtling away as dangerous ‘space junk’. The lunar geophysical station noted that there were three detectable impacts onto the Moon, none causing damage.

But none of this was of interest to Atarah. Her focus was entirely on waiting at Armstrong City’s landing station for her Jabin to return. And of course, she completely embarrassed him in front of their parents and all the others waiting nearby by leaping into his arms, wrapping her arms and legs around him, nearly knocking him over. Her kisses didn’t stop until he had carried her from the terminal into the tunnel connecting to the City proper.

She wouldn’t even leave him that night, staying over with Jabin at his parent’s apartment, though they required Jabin to sleep out in the main room while she took his room. They knew Atarah was too emotional to allow the two of them to sleep together before their mating day. Lovemaking would come soon enough. As it was, Jabin had to sit on the floor beside her bed until her eyes became too heavy with sleep and closed.

He watched her face soften, and breathing deepened. He knew they would soon be mated.

Repairs to the Cecilia Payne were of little consequence, though the impact of the antimatter engine test failure would affect Blue Ion for years to come. They moved their entire operation to an L5 Lagrange location at great expense and some consternation to a few long-duration scientific satellites located near that region, quelled only slightly as Blue Ion had to pay significant insurance payouts for any impacts to those missions.

Memorials were held at the Blue Ion headquarters on both the Moon and Earth for the two that perished in the fireball. Extra testing was performed on the Cecilia, but the technology used on it was not the same, being standard fusion/plasma instead of pure antimatter/matter propulsion.

The scientists and engineers working on the antimatter engine eventually discovered the complex set of circumstances that led to the failure and began the long process of rebuilding and retesting again.

But Atarah was glad that Jabin had to finish School work here at Armstrong and not go back to the Cecilia until they both were to leave in a year and a half’s time. And more importantly, their mating day was rapidly approaching, only weeks away now.

At their Mating night, Jabin pulled on the left tear point of Atarah’s thin remaining mating clothing covering her hip at her pelvic bone. It separated, again like tissue paper. The left side represented purity. Her purity of love for him. He pulled the right tear point, representing her desire for him. Then with both hands, he pulled away her thin panty, the gusset sticking to her for a moment, representing giving her sex to him. Other teens had snickered when told about this part, while he felt it an honor that a girl would give herself to him this way.