Chapter 1: Background, Anzu James

Hello, all you people in the dim and distant past. First off, I'd like to say how freaking WONDERFUL time travel is! Didn't know it even existed, did you? Well, neither did I, but how else could you read this? I'd sure like to thank those scientists (that nobody's ever heard of) for inventing time travel (which nobody's heard of either) and giving me the opportunity to not only run around stark staring buck-ass naked all week, but to tell my flipping ancestors all about it. Lucky me!

OK, I've had a couple of hours to calm down. That first paragraph isn't exactly what Mr. Scott and Ms. Galton wanted, but it does capture my feelings about this whole thing, so maybe I'll keep it. Maybe I'll delete it; I don't know. If I delete it, I'll delete this too, and nobody will ever know.

So how did it happen? How did I wind up sitting in my room, writing a journal about going to school naked? And why am I addressing it to you, who live in the last year of the last century? Well, there is a story to that...

My name is Anzu Patra James. I was born in 2092, and now it's 2109, so I am sixteen, but turn seventeen this week. I get to celebrate my birthday in my birthday suit! Lucky me. I am a junior at Gerard O'Neill High School in Mendocino Island. Mendocino's serial number is I2 B112. I2 B112 means "Island Two, Bernal One Hundred Twelve." That won't mean anything to you, but I'll get to it in a bit.

I mass fifty-one Kg. That's mass, not weight. My mass stays the same no matter gravity or acceleration, but my weight changes depending on such things. That's academic for you, but it matters where I live. I am a little over a metre and a half tall. Hold on.

OK, I checked, and most of the world was using the metric system by your time. For anybody who wasn't, that makes me about five feet and one inch tall. It also means that I weigh 114 pounds or so in full gravity. And this is probably the last time I'm going to convert for you. You have primitive spreadsheets and even the ancestor of Solnet; you can convert for yourself. It'll be good for you.

I have black curly hair that I wear not quite to my shoulders, sometimes in brads. I've been told that I'm pretty, and not just by guys wanting to get into my pants. I think I look kind of ordinary, but maybe I am pretty. I hope I am, since I'm going to be showing so much of myself off this week.

Let's see ... My figure is good, but that's because my mom is a knock-out and I'm an athlete. My tummy is flat, my tits are on the good side of medium, and my butt is just what you'd expect a high school athlete to have. I have dark brown eyes and skin. That skin is usually clear, only getting pimply around my period. I am an Afrin. In your day I would have been black or African-American; a few decades earlier I would have been a Negro, and before that I would've been coloured. "Coloured" made a bit of a comeback in the 2030's, but that didn't last long. I'd feel funny calling myself black, since I'm more brown edging towards black. Also, I'm about 30% other stuff. There's a good bit of Kazoid (white, in your day), and a pinch or so of Chinese. As far as I know, I don't have any Japanese ancestors, but that didn't stop my parents from naming me Anzu, which is Japanese and which can mean either "apricot" or "feminine love." No, I don't know how the same word can mean both.

My skin isn't the only part of me that's brown edging towards black. I have my brown belt in veegeewushu, and my sensei tells me I should go black in another year. Wait, there wasn't veegeewushu in your day. There wasn't a lot of stuff in your day. OK. Veegeewushu is variable-gravity martial arts. The "veegee" part was originally "VG" and "wushu" of course comes from the Chinese fighting arts.

Twice a week I take a work-study course in Space Manufacturing Applications, and am just up to sapphire fabrication. I'm learning to play the frame drum in Music. I can't be in Band, because I can't play AT the game if I'm playing IN the game, and I am on the spoccer team.

Spoccer is Space soccer. It was the first large team sport to be adapted to weightlessness. "Space soccer" gradually became "spaesoccer" and then "sp'soccer" and finally "spoccer," which is what everybody calls it now. I'll explain the game in detail later.

Looking back, I see that I've made several references to "weightlessness" and "variable gravity" and even "where I live," so maybe it's time to go into that. I live in Space. Yep, out in HEO, or High Earth Orbit. That's why my high school is named after Gerard O'Neill. It seems like half the high schools in Space are named after him, with Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert H. Goddard sharing most of the rest. O'Neill gets the lion's share because he was the first to describe in detail a plan for inhabiting Space on a large scale. You can look him up. He was already dead by your time. Actually, it's cool to think that some of you could have met him. I've had kind of a crush. So that's where I live, where less than a thousand of you have ever been. But there are more than a thousand out here now! At last count, a few hundred million people lived away from Earth.

We don't live out in the vacuum, of course. And we don't live in anything you would have called "space stations." No, we live in enormous rotating tori, spheres, or cylinders. The one I live in is designated I2 B112 because it is of Island Two size and Bernal Sphere type, and was the 112^th habitat of that size and type built. It's called a "Bernal Sphere," but it's actually not quite spherical. The main body is two thousand metres in diameter but two thousand one hundred metres long. The extra hundred metres is right at the equator, and there we have our beach. Our rotation is one RPM, or rotation per minute. This means that we're actually a little bit over one G right at the equator, but as it's in the water, you don't notice it.

The water is a single ring-shaped pool, circling the circumference and one hundred fifty metres wide, covering the entire one hundred metre wide equator and an extra twenty-five to either side. Sandy beaches rise from the sides of the pool and extend another seventy-five metres to either side. Thus, the whole water-and-sand thing encircles the equator and is three hundred metres wide. The rise here is so gentle you don't notice it. If you jog along the beach, you can jog forever, or at least until you wear out. Waves are generated in the middle of the sea (we call it that, and it is salt water, with tropical fish), every fifteen seconds, and every fifth wave is just big enough for surfing. I'm a passable surfer, but would never win any contests or anything like that.

Along both sides of the beach is the village which makes up the greater community. This is where most of the housing is for the thirty-six thousand people who live here, as well as local markets, schools, and a few local businesses.

Strictly speaking, only the village is named Mendocino, with the habitat itself carrying the serial number, but we all call it Mendocino Island, or just Mendocino. A few people call it Mendo, but any outsider calling it that gets an earful. We run on Pacific Standard Time, the same as Mendocino, California, USA. A nearby habitat is known as Monrovia (I2 B109) and they run eight hours ahead of us (the same as Greenwich, England), and then there is Shunyi (I2 B122), which runs eight hours ahead of that (and thus eight hours behind me). Now you might wonder why in the world or beyond it we would do such a thing, but the reason is because the manufacturing, scientific, and other facilities of the modern Space Age run around the clock, and this way there can be three separate shifts without anybody having to work early morning or graveyard shifts. When the powersat crew from Mendocino calls it a day, the crew from Monrovia is just showing up, and the crew from Shunyi is ready to go when it's time for the Monrovia crew to head for home. It also allows me to get out of school at 4:40 PM, cross over to another habitat, and be in another time zone, enjoying the past-midnight nightlife in Dublin or perhaps watch the kids in Perth start their school day. Actually, I have too many after-school activities for the one, and the other seems somehow cruel.

The rest of the sphere is mostly parkland, and is shared by everybody, sort of like a county on Earth, perhaps. This is a pretty standard set-up.

When you leave the equator you find yourself climbing a hill, where your weight decreases (but not your mass! Remember I said that was important here?) the closer you get to the center. Right at the center, you weigh nothing at all and can float like a cloud. I can't imagine living on a planet, with the same gravity value all the time all the time all the time. I'd go nuts if I couldn't cycle between full-G, low-G, and zero-G every day.

Outside the main not-quite-a-sphere, there are the twelve ag-rings. Six of them are on the "north" side, and six on the "south," not far from the equator. These are tubes, fifty metres in diameter, bent into rings with the same two thousand metre diameter as the main sphere.[1] These are, or rather were, used for growing food. With so many of the old I1's being converted to dedicated food production, we only use half of our ag-rings for food production and import the rest. The others have been turned into parks, with one even holding a small zoo.

One of these parks went clothing-optional two years ago, and late last year another started having "Nude Friday" the second Friday of each month. I actually visited the clothing-optional park last year. I left after a while. Gawking I felt was rude, and I wasn't about to take my own clothes off. I've never been to Nude Friday, because that isn't optional; you trip naked or you stay out. I stay out.

The first I2 B models didn't have a central sea. All of that area was part of the village, or at that size I guess it would be a town, or even a small city, of a hundred thousand. Population density was higher, and there were so few habitats that every square metre had to be used in a more efficient, cost-per-person way. But now there are so many that, starting with I2 B100 (Perth) the newer style was adopted, with fewer than half the people and a more open, recreational landscape.

Mendocino is one of eighty-seven Bernal Spheres grouped together within a few hundred Km of each other. There are over five million people living in this grouping. Each Sphere has its own government and its own laws. So we're not exactly a unified nation, but are mostly independent from each other. We are bound together by treaties, by mutual business interests, and by the fact that we were founded by English-speakers, but we aren't states or anything like that. We're more like a collection of city-states, after the ancient Greek of medieval Swahili model.

Finally, there are many habitats which are not associated with our group in any way. Some are colonies of Earth nations, some are states of Earth nations, and some are nations themselves. There are other collections of "city-states" out there, and even a few communities which claim to have moved on to the next step in social evolution beyond nations ... whatever that's supposed to mean.

I realize that my home will seem huge to you, but Island 2 sized habitats are considered pretty moderate these days, and in another couple of years will probably be considered small. The first of the fifteen Km wide, seventy-five Km long, built in pairs Island 4 sets is under construction as I write this, and quite a few of the seven Km wide, thirty-five Km long, built in pairs Island 3 models are scattered around the Inner Solar System. But I like my little ball of a home. I can always visit the nearby I3's if I need a taste of the big city, and Earth is a place I'll probably visit before I'm thirty. But I suspect that I'll always come home to Mendocino.

Well, if I can get over the fact that they're all going to see me naked. Here's how that happened.

It was Sunday, March 17^th, and I was at the beach, lying around in my new bikini. I'm usually too shy to wear anything that skimpy, but I wanted to get over that, and I wanted Kevin to notice me. That's the whole reason I was sunning: to get Kevin to notice me. It was working, too. I'd noticed him checking me out when he thought I wasn't looking. Damn is he hot. Tall, broad shoulders, skin a bit lighter than mine and deep, deep dark eyes. He had a way of carrying himself that was confident, even a bit arrogant. But somehow I liked that.

Then my cell rang. Now, in your day cell phones were these bulky things that you had to carry with you. These days, they're just jewelry. The speaker was in my earring, and the controls were on a bracelet. This little gadget, together with the eyetap, replaces not only a phone, but a personal computer, television, music player, and bookreader. This means that my bedroom isn't clogged up with a phone, TV, radio, or computer, and the living room isn't clogged with any of that stuff either. Also, I don't have to lug fifteen Kg of books around school with me.

I answered, not recognizing the ringtone, but the ID said it was school. This was just a recording, but it was Principal Takahashi's voice.

"Anzu James, please report to my office first thing Monday morning. You have been selected for the Program. Congratulations, and good luck."

My skin started to tingle like I was exposed to the vacuum, and the nine hundred watts per square metre of sunshine wasn't enough to keep me from feeling cold. Suddenly, the bikini felt way too small, and I felt like I was naked already. I wrapped the big beach towel around myself and, when I felt like I could handle more information, put my eyetap on. An eyetap looks just like the sunglasses you probably wear yourself, but they can project images into your eyes. I used it with my cell to check my mail.

Sure enough, there was mail from the school telling me all about the wonderful Program and how lucky I was to be chosen. The more I read the worse I felt. Not only did I have to attend school in the nude, I had to go EVERYWHERE naked! I could only wear my cell, and use protective gear, like my shin guards in veegeewushu or my vac-suit if I went into the vacuum, and I couldn't go into the vacuum unless it was something I was already committed to. Furthermore, I had to participate in all normal activities, which meant I couldn't get out of spoccer or veegeewushu practice. Just wait until I describe spoccer, and you'll see why I started trembling when I read that.

Oh, and the Reasonable Requests. No touching allowed tomorrow, but from Tuesday on, I would be expected to not only let everybody look (no covering up allowed), but TOUCH. Touch me. Anybody who wanted to.

I went home. I just didn't feel like the beach anymore. As soon as I got in I told my mother, and she hugged me and told me that it would be tough but she knew I could get through it, and how proud she was of me. I thanked her, but suggested she hold off on "proud" until she saw how I did.

I suddenly had a thought, and started taking the bikini off right there. Mom startled, but then grinned.

"You think you can get used to it by tomorrow morning?"

"No," I answered, "but maybe I can get used to part of it. Maybe if I can get the not feeling anything on my skin thing down I'll be better able to deal with the rest of it."

"OK, but you can only do this if you stay starkers for everything. No tossing something on when Dad gets home, no wrapping up in a blanket when Steve comes by."

Steve! I'd forgotten about him. Steve is a twelve year old boy from down the street. I was tutoring him in Western Civ, and he was supposed to come over every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. He had a little crush on me, and would compliment me and flirt a little. I'd flirt right back. Not seductive, get him into bed flirting, and not teasing, give him blue balls flirting, just a little to let him know that I'd noticed, and that I took it as a compliment. The thought of flashing skin at him never occurred to me. Well, if I didn't put something right back on, I'd be flashing more than skin this evening. I couldn't do that! It would be too embarrassing, and what would he think?