Blue Peril

            A marble blue sun shone brightly through the small porthole of the Helios station as the large orbiter drifted to the day side of Neptune. The blue clouds swirled and clashed into super cells, spiraling across the surface some the size of the Earth. It was once a jaw dropping sight for Richard eight years ago when he first arrived to the station, now the cataclysm far below was like living next to the ocean, just a part o daily life.

            Richard navigated the freefall environment using guide wires, pulling his body across the center spire of the station. His face was tired and rugged; his hair was short but disheveled. For days he had been up, away from the rest of his team, and neglected to see his family up on the outer ring. For generations his project, The Escape Plan, had been in the works, May 8^th 2346, and in two days time the proposal would be called to an end. If they even had a proposal by then!

So far it had been dead end after dead end, like a maze with no exit, the laws of physics would never permit it. He had spent days floating around between his tablet and the intelligence core for the extra intelligence boost. His team had already admitted defeat, ready to be chewed out by the IPS and be sent back to Earth. It was over, if the Mercury Brain was right, and it evidence proved it was, in fifty years humanity will exhaust all its vital resources across the solar system and die a slow death, like an animal starving in the wilderness. Like the animal the best solution is to move from one location to another, humanity must jump from one star system to another colonizing it and thriving. Yet there was one issue problem, the same dead end the engineers and scientist of the Helios station kept on encountering, that the means to get to the other systems, a FTL drive, was in fact impossible. 

“Richard?” A voice emitted through his radio said, “Richard, where are you?”

He didn’t want to answer it, he was almost tempted to take off the ear piece and throw it across the spire, but he spent enough time ignoring Karen.

“I’m in the spire,” he said, voice absent and dry.

“Oh thank god,” Karen said, “I heard rumors you threw yourself out of an airlock. I haven’t slept at all for the past two days worried about you.”

“Sorry to keep you up love. I’ve been working for the past few days.”

“I thought so, so any good news?”

“No,” he said.

There was silence on the other end. He pictured what she was doing, staring blankly at Taylor playing with his toys, as if she could see his future, a future of famine and isolation between each colony. She eventually responded: “Are you coming up? I miss you.”

“I’ll be up,” he said floating over to the ladder, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

And so he began his long climb.