As the shuttle docked, some of the occupants disembarked and made their ways to the living quarters, which overlooked the mining operation off the nearest meteor, Unlaowr V. This particular meteor was almost half as massive as Earth’s moon, making the mining operation the largest gold-extraction operation in the quadrant. Although gold no longer served as a hedge against inflation, and although no one traded gold any longer as an investment, the mine had become something of a tourist’s destination.

As the station rotated, it did so against the backdrop of a plume of gold dust rising high above the churning teeth of the excavator, and this golden mist shone alternatively against the sunlight or the distant star belt or the lighting array constructed on the station. The manner in which the station was built ensured that every four hours and twenty-eight minutes, watchers were treated to a cascade of gold-infused light. So, although gold, in and of itself, had acquiesced in value to so many e-currencies that had developed throughout the last few decades, many people were still enamoured with it enough to sit and eat in any number of restaurants and relish such an opulent spectacle.

For many, it was the memory of a lifetime. For others, it was the welcoming scenery to the future, the gateway for humanity into space. For the people who made their way to the living quarters, this was a fun and amazing welcome, and the walkway became a stage for selfies, smiles, and open mouths of people being photographed as if they were gobbling up the flying gold.

For a small subset of the shuttle’s occupants, however, the mining operation was largely ignored. Luana’s eyes, for instance, drifted to the meteor, and she noted the shadows that would both be good places to hide or to harbor immigrants. She noted the air traffic around the meteor, and she quickly decided the ratio between workers and their shifts as compared to the number of presumably parked ships versus the ones coming and going was heavy on the coming-and-going side of things. Of course, these might be tourists, but she wondered what resided beneath the meteor’s surface. What side operations were in play? What covert military purposes might be served by this mine?

Levi Gluck ignored the operation entirely while Josephine noticed that the spray of gold happened to shine blue in certain light, matching the wisps of hair dangling down from her forehead into her line of sight. Marcus Umbra found himself amused by the western-style architecture that surrounded the mines, an architectural style selected solely for the sake of the tourists and their cowboy-styled space gear. He also noted if all that gold were mined back in 1865, it would be worth approximately forty-six trillion dollars per day, assuming six-thousand or so per ounce and two-hundred thousand or so tons of gold mined per day. However, since gold was largely used for industrial purposes, much of this gold spraying into the air was probably recycled back into the sprayers. He wondered if anyone suspected it was just a tourist’s sham? Hell, he wondered if it was even gold.

Damini Pai saw the spray, paused, and realized she needed to find a restroom.

Eventually, everyone not caught up in taking selfies made their ways to a nondescript door in an otherwise nondescript concrete wall. Inside, just a simple briefing room.
Briefing rooms represented another reason such technology as holodecks did not exist for the common Joe. Well, briefing rooms, in particular, had nothing to do with it at all. But the technology behind briefing rooms had everything to do with it. In 2036, briefing rooms were no longer brick rooms with conference tables and chairs. There were no podiums. There were no information dumps. There were no donuts or fidget toys to give people diabetes or stimulate tactile learning, respectively.

In 2036, briefing rooms were whatever an attendee wanted them to be because by 2024, the Navy had achieved the upload-style learning introduced to pilots in 2012. In the initial phases of this technology, a novice brain could receive mastery patterns from a source brain, and these mastery patterns that could cover any conceivable subject one might want to learn would help decrease learning times by fifteen to thirty percent. By 2026, this technology decreased the learning time another forty percent. By 2028, this type of pattern-transfer learning was coupled with full-immersion chips that were implanted into the brains of draftees. These immersion chips, of course, created a full-room virtual environment in which a trainee could experience a series of training sessions, and these sessions amplified the authenticity and effectiveness of patterns uploaded from master-level brains.

What the immersion chips also did was slow perceived time. As a result, a novice could undergo tens of thousands of hours of real-brain-time training within a matter of minutes. Consequently, what happened to Luana, Josephine, Marcus, Damini, and Levi as they walked through the doorway was that the entire briefing was downloaded into their brains. By the time they might have made it to the seats in a traditional conference room, the briefing was over because by 2033, this technology was nearly perfect.

It could have been instantaneous, researchers found, but instantaneous learning created a shock to the system that inhibited execution of learned material. Because of this inverted-U performance pattern, a neural segue was implemented, and by 2036, the sweet spot was determined to be approximately twenty seconds. Not instantaneous. But practically so.

Consequently, briefing rooms actually served as recovery rooms or relaxation hubs. For Damini, the room became in her mind’s eye a full-blown intra-space simulator in which she piloted a tri-wing Penetrator 2LT. A tri-wing was a sub-lightspeed vessel designed for extracting high-level targets from what the military called exacerbated situations, and as she entered the room, her pace slowed for approximately 20 seconds. The briefing over, she then took position near a wall, hands out as if gripping a set of controls, as she began rescuing researchers, tourists, and families just as the volcano Vesuvius erupted across the skyline.

For Marcus Umbra, the briefing room shimmered red before being blocked from record-keeping software, so this record contains no information regarding his personal experiences.

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For Luana and Josephine, the briefing room was as inconsequential as the mines, and as soon as they had their information, they departed, each in her own direction, Luana, having determined that the bouquet of passion fruit that surrounded Josephine like an olfactory aura was the result of some type of tech implant. The different ways people chose to spend their money. What of it? As far as she was concerned, the mystery was solved, and she skipped the mining show and headed toward the iron docks. She planned on getting a jump on the clock. In the briefing, she had been given seventy-two hours to arrive at Telusi III, and she did not want to waste a single hour.

For her part, Josephine was glad to be rid of Luana, and she was going to use her seventy-two hours on a spa before transporting to Elios’s third moon.

Levi Gluck, however, was old-school. At least when it came to briefings. For him, time slowed until it matched precisely the amount of time it would take for a briefing to begin. He sipped a coffee as The General entered the room. He sat up straight as The General took the stand. No one of lower rank was fit for such a briefing, and a virtual assistant ushered someone out of the front row then walked back to where Levi was sitting.

“Mr. Gluck, there has been some mistake. The General would like you in the front row.”

“Thank you, Ms.—”

“Darlene. Please, Mr. Gluck. To you, I’m Darlene.”

Darlene led Levi to the front row, and as he sat down, she surreptitiously slid a card into his jacket pocket.

“Gentlemen and ladies, if you will note the maps on the walls,” said The General, “each plaque shows in detail your destination. Mr. Gluck, for instance, will be stationed at Factor Six. It is the foremost planet on the borders of the Cilion System, which is home to nearly six-million creatures called Kulze--or the Kulze--depending on how necessary you find it to objectify them. From a military standpoint, I would refer to them as the Kulze because that is similar to how they will refer to you. The humans. The humanoids. The invaders. The dinner. The inconsequential.”

The General glanced around, giving everyone time to review their briefing agenda. “On page three,” he continued, “you will note the Kulze are a race of rather large creatures. Physically, they stand two-stories in height, and they are fitted with four arms. Most have the intelligence of an average human, and all of them hate other species as much as you hate these briefings.”

There was a uniform chuckling throughout the room, but Levi did not share this attitude, and he looked on with a serious manner that The General noted. Although The General did not visibly chide anyone else in the room for their taking so lightly such serious matters that were being shared in this briefing, he did nod in a tip-of-the-hat style to Levi, who nodded in return.

Levi did not share his fellow attendees' attitude for two reasons.

First, he knew a serious matter when he heard it, and he did not need the bandage of laughter to help keep him together when faced with such a serious matter as the Kulze. Second, he suspected that at least a certain percentage of these creatures could be reasoned with. After all, a species does not reach the level of technology required for space travel by being entirely brutal. Although he carried a sidearm, he preferred to use words and reason to accomplish his goals, so it was his habit to heed every word the General saw fit to impart. As such, he and The General waited patiently until the light-hearted murmurings subsided.

Finally, having the floor once again, The General continued. “And all of you who enjoy living should take seriously the Kulze’s habit of killing just about everything they hate.”

No more tittering with that one, Levi noted.

“If you will, please, turn to Appendix IV in your briefings. Here, you will find the outpost to which you have been assigned, and here you will find what might be the simplest set of instructions ever printed, which, specifically, are to use every means at your disposal, natural or contrived, to achieve your objective.”

“Which is what, exactly?” This voice came from somewhere in the back.

In response to the voice, The General looked over to Levi. “Which is what, Mr. Gluck?”
As The General said this, he motioned for Levi to stand.

Standing, Levi turned to address those in the room. “Which is to colonize that planet, moon, or outpost and secure it against any and all threats. As you colonize the planet, you are to look for any indications of an artifact. There are several throughout these systems, and they can help our primary objective.”

“Again, which is what, exactly?”

Gluck was getting annoyed with this guy. Did he not read the briefings? “The reason for your presence in this briefing--as well as mine--is simple: to secure humanity’s safety in space prior to our specie's expansion.”

Levi waited, but everyone seemed to understand that. “Like myself,” he continued, “many of you will be replacing personnel dispatched last year about this time. These people represented phase one in an ongoing struggle to settle select planets, moons, and outposts. For better or worse, phase one is over. What’s more, not one artifact has been recovered. For better or worse, phase two is beginning. As with myself, your job is to assess the degree to which your forbearers have completed their tasks and bridge that incompleteness until you have successfully deescalated all confrontations and created an environment that settlers can be gradually introduced to.”

“Assess the degree of completion? Why not just ask the people from phase one? They’re like everyone else, aren’t they? They file reports, don't they?”

Not wanting to overstep, Levi checked The General, but The General respected Levi’s reputation and level of thoroughness, and he nodded permission for him to continue.
“All reports,” said Levi, turning back to the assembled collection of suits and suit-dresses, “have ceased as of early morning two weeks ago. Because all communications have ceased across all domains throughout the target sector, we suspect Kulze military has launched a successful sector-wide assault. Our jobs are to go in, assess the damage, and pick up the pieces all while cataloguing all information about any known artifacts.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re kidding.”

All tittering turned to aghast murmurs.

“What sort of support will we have? We’re not in this alone, are we?”

“Everyone in this phase has been selected based on skills he or she possesses, and the goal will be to operate within the natural environment of the planet, moon, or outpost. Your task is to use the resources on site. There will likely be no ability to supply, re-supply, or provide you with any outside information. You will be the eyes and ears of the front line’s colonization efforts; you will be your own recognizant team; you will be the judiciary committee; you will be the executive panel. You get the point? You will be whatever you need to be to get your job done. Many of you will rely on your expertise in the military. In contrast, I will work with local personnel and help organize their efforts, educate the populace, and provide them the support they require to achieve their goals, which, by the way, happen to be our goals.”

More mumbling.

Levi turned back to The General.

“Thank you, Mr. Gluck. For anyone else, are there any other questions?”

There were, but Levi had no time for this part of the immersion training. In fact, he was not quite sure where these aspects of the experience came from because he knew they were virtual. They did not actually exist. There existed within him no level of uncertainty, however minuscule. He knew his mission. He looked forward to it. As far as where this filler troupe came from, this human flotsam, he wasn’t sure. Did the immersion implants project them from his sub-conscious? Did he actually have misgivings? Was he afraid? The General would say absolutely not, and Levi would agree with this assessment. Still, the thought troubled him. To combat this, he withdrew Darlene’s card from his pocket: [room 4423-A. I get off at 4pm.]

He liked the way she underlined “get off.” He checked the near-invisible clock thread that ran across the outer perimeter of his periphery. 3:52 pm. Just in time to meet her. Within the briefing room, he took a few steps, and a red privacy wall enveloped him. Hello Darlene.

*

Of the seventy-two allotted hours that each of them had, Levi, Marcus, and Damini remained in the briefing room for seventy of those hours. It was this natural seclusion within these types of rooms that prevented full-scale, holodeck immersion from being made available to the general population because even when low-fi renderings had once been made available, people refused to leave their immersion rooms. Of course, Josephine and Luana had gone their own ways according to their own purposes. However, even as Levi finished his own private briefing, Marcus was still sealed off in his private room. Josephine was on again off again at the mind spa. Damini was still saving natives from volcanoes.

Combined, Marcus, Damini, Levi, and Josephine represented a full eighty percent of the briefing-room’s attendees, and this level of immersion addiction remained approximately constant throughout the general population. When it was discovered that immersion technology resulted in addiction levels hovering nearly eighty-seven percent, it was quickly pay-walled in a way that made it available to only the super-rich. For others, it was made available if they required necessary access. Even vacation use of this technology among the ultra-rich was highly regulated as people emerging from immersive vacations required an equal amount of time to resettle into lives that--as rich and opulent as they were--could never really compare.

In short, unless you were a high-level diplomat with a background in mixed-environment fighting tactics, such as Levi, or unless you were high-ranking, tri-lingual, natural-born, lion-grade fighter like Luana, whose background involved working with career military professionals as well as mercenaries, or unless you had somehow amassed a net worth hovering somewhere in the trillions, you had no real hope to ever step inside a briefing room, vacation room, or mind spa. In short, if you were a member of the masses, you hugged close your cable television subscription.

*

Seventy-one hours later, Luana was approaching the docking station to Telusi III. Josephine exited her mind spa and in a strange coincidence of timing stood in line between Marcus and Levi as Damini dematerialized within the teleportation bed. Two minutes later, the three of them had also reached their destinations. Across the rest of the orbiting station, people went about their tours. The gold shot ever-outward across the skyscape of Unlaowr V, and a full shuttle arrived every thirty-six hours.

Within the station’s upper offices, the actual General Hector Persi who oversaw the station checked for the latest report from the outermost perimeter where phase one was well underway. There was none. He nodded for a lieutenant who manned the comm to issue a hail. There was no response. He checked the travel logs. All of today’s five second-wave combatants had arrived at their destinations. Even though those arrivals only took place a few minutes prior, some type of log should have been entered by now.

“Have any of the relay stations received any word?” he asked.

Lieutenant Myers tapped out a hail to outposts Charlie, Digos, and Ontario. Several seconds passed. Several more. “No, sir” said Lieutenant Myers, his voice sort of trailing off.

“Get me Levi Gluck at the Cilion System.” Due to his clearance level, General Persi was well aware of the contents of Levi’s non-private immersion sessions. Levi was a serious man with serious negotiation skills, and his predilection for being the most important person in any room might smack of vanity, but he was a detail-oriented individual who compared with the other five specialists would be the one most certain to send a response as quick as humanly possible.

Lieutenant Myers tapped out a code to the Cilion System. He waited. The General waited. The response? Nothing but air.

General Persi composed himself and sat at his desk. “Lieutenant Myers, where are we with the docking reports?” Outwardly, General Persi would maintain a steady demeanour, which meant overseeing the station’s traffic and revenue logs. Privately, however, his thoughts took on an entirely different tone. As Lieutenant Myers attempted to raise a response, General Persi's eyes went to the darkness of space outside the window. What the hell was going on out there?