FUTURES RESEARCH

9044 - THE SPACE TRAVELLER'S TALE (part 1) - 1998

[Based on the research results from the Futures Observatory, I tried to popularise the information in the form of eighteen Science Fiction stories. Regrettably only one of these - Internet Jockey/Investigator – was accepted for publication; and even then only on a website! On the other hand, these short stories still have some value in that they contain a more detailed picture of possible future events, and also further indications of my own psyche. In fact, these stories were written as a book, and the stories were linked by the narratives in the last two contributions here.]

"So much for the romance of space..."

That was the version of the truth that eventually appeared in my formal diary. It only appeared, though, after much soul searching; for I knew half the universe could ultimately access that diary. Yet, it still contained some truth about my own aspirations. From the earliest days of childhood I had watched entranced when the astronauts, suited in space-armour as evocative of adventures to come as any in the legends of old, faced the television cameras - before entering their exotic space vehicles, which then became their own special chariots of fire.

"Shit, Shit, Shit..."

was what I had actually said! It was perhaps a rather more appropriate reaction, where I had lost count of the number of enemas that had recently abused my body. Thus, the etiquette of commercial space travel was far more brutal than those televisual memories might have suggested. Where every item of freight sent to the outer edges of the solar system, human freight such as myself just as much as necessities, really did cost more than its weight in gold. So, every gram of unnecessary mass - even that which defined humanity itself - was ruthlessly stripped away from each and every nameless piece of cargo.

The inevitable result, it had emerged, was that 'passengers' received much the same treatment as pork carcasses. Carefully sedated, so that their metabolism was slowed to the barest whisper needed to maintain some life, but consuming the least possible energy inputs, they were crammed into just another form of freight container. They became no more than one of a hundred of lifeless bodies, each a few centimetres away from its unknown companions, for the months needed to cross the cold vacuum of space. Their few bodily needs, oxygen and nutrients in and wastes out, were provide by a web of catheters; overseen, as was so much of life these days, by the ever-present computer controls.

I had, of course known this. As a legal requirement, it had been brought to my attention when I had purchased the ticket. Yet I had pushed it to the back of my mind; perhaps because it contradicted the romance for which I was sub-consciously searching. It had been something of a shock, therefore, when 'passenger' reception had turned out not to be one of the monolithic structures at Cape Canaveral, nor even the self-consciously impressive facilities now obligatory in even the lowliest of airport departure lounges, but had been an anonymous warehouse on an industrial estate!

Once inside, I had been processed with the ruthless efficiency demanded by the best hospital practice. Featureless white tiled room had succeeded featureless white tiled room, as I moved from diagnostics to preparation - including all those enemas - to embalming - where the newly created voids inside me were filled with fluids chosen by the medical staff rather than those of my own desires - to the final indignity of rape by a hundred catheters. Indeed, despite that fact that the last had taken place after I was sedated, the whole process had seemed far worse than rape. I had in fact been raped a number of times in my life, it was a hazard of my job, but at least the assailant then had been human. Here the attack was mercilessly inhuman, but just as intent on dehumanising me; the helpless victim of a technology gone mad.

"Shit, Shit, Shit..."

The realisation hit me that, in any case, it had all been for nothing. Far from travelling the length of the solar system I was still in that obscene factory. I was slowly regaining consciousness in that same white tiled room I was supposed to have left hundreds of thousands of kilometres behind. The same white garbed nurse was holding my wrist, taking my pulse, surely an anachronism - albeit a universal one - when computerised diagnostics now did almost every such job far more efficiently. Perhaps it was a gesture of defiance in the face of progress. Perhaps it was just a ritual required of members of the guild of nurses.

"All that pain and humiliation. For nothing!" I groaned, as I struggled to re-focus my disoriented thoughts; the price of failure was high.

"They all say that DiMee..." The nurse's voice, full of well-practised cheeriness, seemed to come from so far away that it must surely originate in the depths of space itself. Yet, as I - the DiMee she was addressing - gradually regained the use of my faculties, the message the voice conveyed was welcome. "You're on Puck, travelling to the stars..." The theatrical nature of the speech indicated that the nurse had made it many times before, and enjoyed both making it and taking part in the drama of the event. Even so, it was no less welcome to me. On closer inspection, it proved to be a different nurse, a different white-tiled room, despite the fact that both were almost indistinguishable, garbed in anonymous medical uniformity, from those I had just left behind. I was, after all, on my way. Indeed it had not been just a few moments, I must already be more than two months into my journey; and I had no recollection of that part of my life, lost forever.

Even so, I was glad that the Agency had paid for me to travel on the more expensive route; even if it added several months to the overall journey, as compared with that by direct cargo freighter. This way, aboard one of the peripatetic space colonies, I would be able to use most of the two years or more of overall travelling time positively, for my own research; even after solving the little problem the Agency had given me to do on route. The information facilities, which were all I needed, would be just as good as anywhere else in the solar system. Access to the data networks was now universal. The methane miners in the frozen clouds of Jupiter were no less able to tap into them than the members of the Federation Council basking on sun-warmed beaches in the South Pacific region on Earth. Even better, the space colonies were said to possess the best living environments anywhere in the solar system; veritable gardens of Eden. The beaches of even the most remote Pacific island, on the other hand, were always at the mercy of one of the floating cities - depositing its thirty thousand inhabitants to fatally overload the local infra-structure, with their frantic search for the very 'native' culture they were destroying.

There were, of course, many space colonies now spread through the solar system; from one even hiding in the shadow of Mercury to those supporting miners in the various parts of the Jupiter system - and, the engine of the new economy of the outer planets, those mining the asteroids. It was to the latter that my own path was directed. My own 'liner', often actually referred to as such by its passengers, was one of just a handful of colonies deliberately injected into eccentric orbits which took them from the inner planets out beyond the asteroid belt to Jupiter; and some even beyond to Neptune. You simply took a body slot on an express freighter, to the nearest one, and then lived in luxury until it came close to your chosen destination - when another freighter took your body on the final leg. I shuddered at the thought of that experience yet to come - a repeat of the torture I had just come through.

Maybe it would not be necessary. As I have said, the first work the Agency had given me was on the colony itself; amongst my fellows travelling to the mining settlements amongst the asteroids. If I was successful in completing that work on route I might never even have to disembark.

Urged by the nurse, I finally sat up, perched on the edge of the narrow examination couch. Looking down, I was reassured that my body did not show any irreparable damage resulting from all those invading catheters. Its lines were just as firm as they had been after my last rejuvenation. Yet it still felt dirty, and as I was led by the nurse to the shower room I realised this was almost as much physical as psychological; I was accompanied by a dust-cloud of dead skin cells which had steadily accumulated over the two months of hibernation. If I needed any further reminder of my eventual mortality, in the shower the handfuls of hair which fell on the floor were an equally potent indicator that the progress to death - even though that was still more than a century away - could not be stayed for ever, even by hibernation.

These morbid thoughts had accompanied me to the recovery room where, lying on a comfortable bed with a vidwall at my command, I slowly began to recover my more normal optimistic outlook. That was until panic overtook me. I suddenly realised that it was then more than twenty minutes from the time of my resuscitation. That was almost time enough for my 'mouse' to have re-established contact with Central. Even now there would be a flood, of literally terabits of data, on its way to drown me. All I had previously been used to was the constant drip of data, as I slept as much as part of my daytime life. Now, two months of accumulated drips would be arriving in as many hours. I had never experienced this before, but I had been dutifully warned by my handlers that it was a potentially terrifying experience. For the next two hours I would have no control over my mind, as it was assaulted by every kind of image and experience. Now, though, this effect - a form of suicidally rich data overload - was to be out of my control. It was said to be much the same as a bad acid trip had been, before drugs had been refined to their present stage of efficiency. My own mouse could, for instance, dispense exactly what I needed for any situation; delivering just what was needed for better memory at work, or sexual stimulation at play.

I was almost rigid with fright even before the first control messages arrived. As predicted, they were followed by the flood. Picture after picture flashed before my eyes; news of cataclysmic events - a volcano in Japan, a meteorite impact on part of one of the Mars colonies; news of political events - of the endless negotiations, which had already been on-going for several decades, for the United States to join the Federation; intelligence gathered by other members of the agency - a potential coup d'état foiled on Venus; and, most important of all, data on my own mission - additions to the profiles of my fellow voyagers.

My near cataleptic state threw the nurse into a panic, and worried even the doctor who was called; even when he had accessed my medical records which, suitably modified by the Agency to cover the eventuality, prescribed nothing more than observation. At the end of the hour or more of this paralysis, interrupted by involuntary movements as I fought to cope with the input, the doctor and nurse were as relieved as I was when the process ended and I fell into a deep sleep.

In my sleep I dreamed of mice, white ones with pretty pink eyes. They watched me, thousands of them, as I ran through an alien landscape. But their presence was reassuring rather than threatening, as was that of my own private mouse. The nickname had been given by one of the earliest participants in the programme. The scientists then in charge of the experiments had readily adopted it; after all, for decades people had used a mechanical mouse as their interface with the computer and thence the networks.

The difference was only of scale. My mouse, and those of the few hundred other members of the Agency who had been enhanced in this way, was a computer chip which had been implanted directly in my brain. It was, in its own right, a super-computer capable of operations at a speed which were comparable with those in my own brain, but under much more direct control; so that synergy emerging from the combination was incredibly powerful - human intuition coupled with computer accuracy. Superman, it had turned out, was not to be the one with the enhanced muscles - any machine could match that - but the one with the enhanced brain - which nobody and nothing could match. Even more powerful still was the communications ability of the mouse. It had no need for a computer to interface with the networks; its own transmitter/ receiver was constantly connected to the nearest of the lines which, backed up by dedicated communication satellites, now spanned the solar system. You were never alone with a mouse.

Eventually, the same enhancement would be made available to all humankind. But, as the system wasnecessarily being subjected to decades long trials - for one simple bug in the software could, in its final use, incapacitate half of humanity - it was an ideal device to meet the espionage needs of the Agency. It was, of course secret. The merest hint of its existence would have generated an unstoppable demand for it - a demand likely to be met by pirate copies, with even more disastrous bugs. Furthermore, it was undetectable. The chips implanted in the brain and body were biocompatible; not least because biological computing had proven to be the best way of achieving the incredible levels of miniaturisation demanded. The result was that the mouse enhanced individual looked no different to any other. Indeed, their rejuvenations were used to make them potentially even more inconspicuous; and, where necessary, able to adopt, almost at a cellular level, any disguise necessary. They became masters of the skills needed to blend into the background. Fortunately, people did not judge you by your thoughts but by your face - and that was much easier to control.

I had, in my time, been an ugly serf in an illegal slave colony and a society beauty amongst the indolent rich in America. The mouse could download the information to support any of these lifestyles. I had, indeed, once used it to undertake an emergency operation on one of my colleagues when they had been trapped in one of the few remaining pieces of impenetrable Amazonian jungle. I had even, in one fight, used it to give me the ability to deliver kung-fu blows expertly; though the resulting stresses on my unaccustomed body had put me into hospital for more than a month - but even that was preferable to the inevitable death I had otherwise faced.

I - DiMee - was, thus, a super woman. Yet it was a gift which had demanded a very high price. As much as I penetrated any society I was involved with, I was excluded from it. Even without the demands imposed by the Agency, which wanted a typically rapacious return from the many millions of creds it had invested in my body, I was all too aware that I was a member of another species. The scientists had described the mouse-enhanced individual as homo-integrans; integrated by the communications links with everyone else. That might be true one day, when everyone had them, but at present I was just one of a handful of freaks; whose main characteristic, from a personal point of view, was that they were unlike the Homo Sapiens around them.

I had known this when I volunteered for the project. I had been prompted, though, by the experiences as a child - growing up surrounded by the horrors generated by the race wars that had ravaged the West Coast of America for two generations. Along with tens of thousands of others, my own parents - together with all my brothers and sisters - had perished in the LA nuclear incident. Only I, the favoured child away at university, had survived; left with a crushing guilt that still would not go away. It was then that I had escaped to Europe and earned my way, by my efficiency and dedication to the cause, into the more trusted echelons of the Agency. I was still, I knew, paying the price for the extinction of the rest of my family. The exclusion by mouse added nothing to my inherent loneliness.erHerHer

"It's heaven..."

I murmured to the waitress guiding me to an empty seat. It was indeed a spectacular experience. After wandering for what seemed like hours through claustrophobic passages I had finally climbed up the stairs leading to the inner surface of the gigantic rotating cylinder which was the space colony. Dazzled by the bright sunlight that hit me as I emerged from the stone arch, I narrowed my eyes against it. But I was even more dazzled by what I then saw. In front of me, and around me, was a lovingly recreated fishing port from the South of France; looking much as it might have done in the middle of the Twentieth Century - which was now the period so many nostalgically yearned for. It was a very theatrical experience, and must have been designed to be so. It was much more impressive any other airport lounge could ever be; I thought - with an involuntary note of cynicism that probably owed more to the mouse than myself. The houses and shops which surrounded the harbour were, of course, fake. Nobody on this colony would buy their staples from such establishments, and no individual could afford the luxury of bedroom windows opening onto such a scene - they would inevitably be the offices of the service providers. Yet it all looked authentic, and the water lapping the walls of the harbour added just the right touch.

What were clearly genuine were the restaurants and bars, with tables set along the quayside, under umbrellas which protected the drinkers from the harsh 'Mediterranean' sun. There; I myself was already beginning to accept the unbelievable. But the shock I received when I looked up into that sun really was genuine. The light itself seemed to come from all directions. No doubt that was the result of the actual sunlight, entering the vast windows far above, being supplemented - for this theatrical effect - by a myriad of sun lamps. The shock, though, came from the glimpses of the far side of the cylinder; seen between these lights. The scenery defied all logic. It did not fall away into the distance, but climbed into the sky - arching far over my head. Suspended high above me were woods and fields, rivers and lakes, farms and villages; like some idealised toy from a nineteenth century nursery. I knew, of course, that it was not a perverse gravity that kept them in place but the centrifugal force as the colony rotated. I even realised that resulting 'gravity' was only a quarter of what I had been used to on Earth, more like that on the moon, and the pressure was a third that of 'normal', though the three times higher proportion of oxygen made breathing no problem. All this I knew, it was designed to reduce the strains on the structure; and the mouse willingly supplied detailed calculations of the engineering wonders involved. Yet I was still overawed by it. Such colonies were the modern wonder of the universe.

"A champagne reception..."

"how delightful", I politely responded to the urgings of the waitress who was leading me to what was clearly my group of travelling companions, at the far end of the quay. Interplan tours, from whom I had bought the ticket, were doing their traditional duty in bringing their 'guests' together. It was, though, ironic that even now - so long after the French vineyards had been superseded as the arbiters of quality wine, and especially on this shared adventure the essence of which must be the future rather than the past - such traditional customs still retained their place.

Yet, underneath the forced jollity, there was a serious purpose to the event; even for the travel organisers of this trip. I would be spending almost two years of my life, not just two weeks of holiday, in the closest possible proximity to all the members of this group. It would be a disaster if we did not get along with each other. Of course, a range of psychographic tests had been used to choose the members of the group, but this did not guarantee success - and any help the operators could give at this critical stage was indeed given! In any case, the breakdown of the traditional groups, even of the family itself at the end of the twentieth century, had demanded the creation of a range of new social structures that enabled people to meet each other. The champagne reception, at beginning of the holiday, might have a long tradition behind it, but it was now typical of many other similar social events which allowed the excuse for strangers to meet - and to seek out the few who might share interests in common with themselves. The resulting relationship usually was brief. The essence of the new age was the ephemeral nature of such contacts - as demands of the job moved the participants on or time changed their interests - but they were that much more intense while they lasted. Ours, of course, would be bound to last at least two years. My god, what if I didn't like them, it was longer than most prison sentences!

For some decades now, the resulting effect on individual lives had been chaotic. Men and women alike lurched from periods of intense, often passionate, friendship to times of utter loneliness. The counselling services, swamped by the demands on them, simply couldn't cope; and the net 'contact' services were about as soothing as the end-of-the-pier fortune-telling machines had been in earlier times. It had only been in the past few years that something like stability had started to return; as individuals developed the new skills necessary to weave these intense friendships together, and to extend them over much longer periods - though usually, in the later stages, through the net rather than face-to-face. My appreciation of these trends was, however, intellectual rather than emotional; my own distance from the human race was inevitably as complete as ever.

But I did still enjoy shorter-term social contacts; I wouldn't have been able to carry out my job if I hadn't. Even so, I was nervous that the two years of this assignment would impose impossible demands. Hiding my real identity for such a long time, maybe in quite intimate circumstances, posed great challenges. On the other hand, it almost certainly posed even greater challenges for the 'agent' whose identity I supposed I had to uncover. With that reminder of my real mission, I at last reached the 'tour' group. Delayed by my 'catalepsy', I was obviously the last to arrive.

Despite the changes to the social structures, despite the recognition that meeting strangers was a fraught experience and despite the invention of a plethora of techniques for reducing the stress of the occasion, it was still an awkward moment - even for me. Partly from personal choice, and partly because I knew that it would be expected of me, I sat down at a table with a group of women of a similar age and a similar multi-racial background. This was not difficult, where multi-racials - now more delicately called world-citizens - formed the largest group in most populations, and - thanks to the miracles worked by rejuvenation - most women, at least, seemed to share the same age. I was immediately inundated by messages of concern for my health. "How do you feel?" "What was the problem?" "Would you like something from my ample stock of pharmaceuticals and drugs?" Everyone starting out on this trip, which took them to the other side of the known universe, seemed to think that their own special needs would never be met in the strange places they would be voyaging to. Everyone also worried about what might happen to them, what catastrophes would they encounter, so the messages were heartfelt. To be so unwell on your first day boded ill for you, and possibly for them.

In any case, it proved to be the ideal icebreaker. It also provided a good cover; to be known as 'that frail girl' would do me no harm. That, coupled with the excellent champagne - too good to be genuine, got the trip off to a flying start. My own nervousness disappeared in a matter of moments; and I found myself immersed, once more, in my accustomed role as spy.

"Meet the group...."

One of the older men had already taken it upon himself to be their leader. I wondered how long his reign would last. The mouse would, of course know who he was, but I had deliberately instructed it to lock out such information for the time being. To be natural I would have to stumble, for the present, over names and personal details in the same way as the rest of the party. The 'leader' droned on, getting the embarrassed participants to identify themselves. I, expert in such matters, even managed a blush and a slight stammer when my turn came. "I'm a data analyst working for one of the eurobanks. I have previously lived in Zurich." That should give me a dull enough past! "I am excited about working in our new branch on Caledonia." That was all I had said, but it was enough. Anyone who was excited by working in branch of a bank could be safely left to the end of any list of new friendships - which left me in control of my own contacts in the near future.

Without my mouse to prompt me, the rest of the meeting was a blur. The dozen or so members of the group circulated, as was demanded by convention, and exchanged pleasantries which none would remember later.

"Another room with a million views..."

When I eventually reached it, the room - which was quaintly called a 'cabin', as a nostalgic reminder of the ocean-liners of olden times and which was to be my home for the next two years - I found it was almost identical to those in every other hotel where I had spent most of my adult life. There is just so much that can be achieved in such a small space. The 'bathroom' was inevitably a shower-room; where water was an even more precious resource on colonies than physical space itself. A pity, I loved to luxuriate in a hot bath - morning and evening - it provided the ideal environment where I could collect my thoughts together. The communal Jacuzzi was not quite the same. Where the main room functioned now more as a workspace rather than a bedroom, the bed was inevitably hidden out of sight. I had encountered beds which descended from the ceiling, and rose up from the floor, but here it more prosaically hinged down from the wall. But I was glad to see that it boasted a substantial mattress, the gimmicks to which some hotels resorted in order to save space rarely guaranteed a sound night's sleep.

The two easy chairs could be moved out of the way, and the bed then fitted neatly between the obligatory desk - with its banks of computer screens - and the vidwall that dominated the room. With the move away from physical possessions, in part occasioned by the limitations on space - which affected private accommodation as much as hotel rooms - but also in response to the new lifestyles which had emerged from the post-modernist revolution, the individual defined their own space, and to a degree made a statement about his or her chosen personality, by what was shown on such vidwalls.

I was glad to see that the wall already displayed a view of a Swiss alp in the springtime. In the distance the cattle slowly browsed their way over the verdant pasture, and a waterfall provide the background music. It meant not merely that the support staff on the colony were efficient, a not inconsiderable consideration where I would depend upon them for many months to come, but that they had accepted my cover story at face-value. In any case, I had now come to love the scene, for its restful nature - its cosy familiarity restored my tranquillity in a matter of moments.

I collapsed on the bed. To outside observers, and - until I had completed a discreet sweep of the nooks and crannies - I had to assume that the whole cabin was bugged for vision as well as sound, I seemed to be resting, eyes closed, recovering from the stresses of the day. In reality, my work was only just beginning. So far the mouse had taken the load off me. Now I had to work my way through all the various messages that it had neatly filed away for me.

The vast majority of the material, in practice more than ninety nine percent, was background information; and I trusted the mouse's judgement as to what of this should be put in its local files, rather than just indexed. The remaining on percent were my ongoing instructions for the mission. Even here the mouse had grouped the various memos together; and in this form it was obvious just how many had been overtaken by events. One of the Agency's mottoes was 'do nothing'. This was not an encapsulation of bureaucratic incompetence, it simply required that you did nothing until you knew exactly what to do. Reacting to problems before they were fully understood caused too many problems, especially in government. The mail of the past two months graphically illustrated the wisdom of the motto. The Agency rarely followed its own advice on such matters, and there were crises after crises recorded in the files, each occasioning memos and counter-memos of mounting urgency; until the correspondence finally died down. On the other hand, in this format it was obvious that the problem usually abated of its own volition. The intense debate too frequently generated little positive action.

The net outcome, for my own mission, was that matters had scarcely progressed. The desk officers - after dozens of memos - were now more confident. Another source had indirectly confirmed their original informant's data. There definitely was something, something very important, due to happen during the voyage. To my surprise, though, the data was still so vague that it did not even indicate whether I would be expected to apprehend a villain, or defuse a threat to global security, or shadow another agent, or foil an assassination attempt, or what? My first mission was, seemingly, to answer that question myself. It was the first time I had been forced to write my own brief!

Starting with nothing, and based on the pattern of my previous work, the most likely explanation was that I was hunting a CIA agent, who was to be found amongst my new companions. The CIA was a very different organisation from that which had so crudely subverted many nations in the twentieth century, even though it was still using the same initials. Some cynics claimed that they now stood for Corrupt International Agreements, where the US was the only major nation - on Earth or in space - still standing outside of the Federation; and many would claim that it, and especially the CIA, had even greater reason for subverting other nations. The difference was that it now not merely denied that this was its mission, but its activities were much subtler; so that it had become almost impossible to prove that it was still engaged in such practices. Thus, along with my colleagues, I grudgingly respected the sophistication of the CIA; recognising the very real threat it posed to the stability of the Federation, and to us agents ourselves. The only saving grace was that, as far as we were aware, the CIA agents had no mouse - but the Agency even felt uneasy about that assumption.

Anyway, I had to start somewhere, and a definite possibility was that an agent was on the move from Earth to the asteroids. If so, it could be assumed that the intent was to destabilise some of the colonies there; since such disruption would undermine the economic benefits the Federation was able to obtain from them. The US had only a small presence in the outer planets; its resources had mainly gone towards the development of Mars, so destabilisation of the asteroid belt would pose few risks for it - and many for the Federation. The extent of the potential danger was highlighted by the fact that - from the few hints the Agency had passed to me - the agent, if there was one, was likely to be from the upper echelons of the CIA, where the Agency had its own double-agents providing such information. Since the CIA rarely risked an officer of such calibre on active service, it had to be assumed that the rewards were thought to be worth this deviation from normal policy.

Even assuming that this was the case, the problem was that, apart from his - or her - existence, the only extra fact that had been hinted at was that he or she was travelling in the group to which I had myself been attached. It was a credit to the Agency administrators that my cover story had been created in less than a week. Even my flight booking had miraculously been backdated by six months. The Agency was just as sophisticated as the CIA in such matters. Even so, despite all its vast resources, it clearly did not know which of the dozen or so members of my 'tour' group was likely to be the agent; if, I must reiterate, there was one! It was my job to find him or her or it; before they found me!

It was rather depressing to find that, in the further two months since my departure, all the resources of the Agency had failed to add any extra information. I was still in an information black hole. So, reluctantly, I instructed the mouse not to give me any of the voluminous data from its files on my fellow group members; and redoubled my review of my own cover story. I must not merely respond correctly to questions, but I must live the part. This was second nature to me, but the start of the chase was always the most dangerous part. The target was certain to be wary of his or her companions - the assumption must always be that there were other agents on your tail - so any mistake on my own part, no matter how small, would immediately jeopardise my mission. Besides which, the likelihood was that this was a very experienced fox; far more experienced than myself. The space colony was a veritable Eden, but there were too many opportunities for accidents to be engineered. Not least, the cold vacuum of space was always waiting if I put a foot wrong.

Settling in…

The next few days were a whirl of activity. I had to accustom myself to the patterns of activity on the colony. It would be, I kept reminding myself, two years before I would be in complete control of my life again. In reality, though it had its obvious limitations, life was pleasant - not too different from that on Earth. I could work in my cabin whenever I wanted; and, when I did, I had everything to hand that I needed or wanted. Or I could relax with my newfound friends in one of the bars or restaurants, or playing some sport with them. With the exception of the Alpine sports, a snow zone could scarcely be an economical proposition for a space colony of this size, almost every other sport was on offer. Indeed, I was glad that Alpine sports were barred, for the greatest danger of exposure - where my story was that I was Swiss in origin - was my feeble performance on the ski-slopes!

Most of all, though, I just liked to go out into the 'country' with my friends, and sit - taking in the sun or admiring the view. I had now become accustomed to the landscape arching above me and, in a strange way, had come to accept its beauty. It was definitely not natural, it was art - or at least artifice - but the artists who had created it had done their work well. It was so restful just lying on the grass looking up at it.

Like every other tourist, I also took the almost obligatory tours 'behind the scenes' of the colony. I would have done so anyway, for such colonies were justifiably called the greatest wonders of the modern world. But I also needed to understand all the 'territory' that surrounded me. So, on these tours, I persuaded the guides to take me into all the nooks and crannies - reacting with obvious enthusiasm to everything I was shown, and using my feminine wiles to persuade them to take me into places I should not have seen. The result showed me that there were far too many hidden spaces to ever monitor use of these - a nightmare for an operative such as myself, who liked to keepmyeye on everything which happened! The colony was, under the skin, a massive piece of engineering with maintenance tunnels and chambers - just as much as our cabins and living quarters - hiding everywhere in the many-metre thick walls of the gigantic cylinder. It would have provided an ideal habitat for an old-time agent; they could have lived their whole lives there, out of sight. Even though it was an impossible task, I - and especially my mouse - had to map all these secret places.

Best of all, of these tours, was the one that took me to the observation deck. There, all of a sudden, you emerged into space itself - or very close to it, for just a single pane of glass lay between you and the harsh vacuum. Once the lights were out, it seemed as if you hung in the pitch black of space, with millions of brilliant stars piercing through it. Unlike on Earth, you could start to see the whole spiral of the Milky Way, or at least you could easily imagine it, and begin to come to terms with the infinite smallness of our place in the outer reaches of the galaxy. In the far distance from time to time you could also still see, as the cylinder rotated, the crescent of the Earth itself, shining radiant blue as only it did.

The search…

Eventually, I had to start my search for whosoever, or whatsoever, my mission was. Of course, I had already taken the opportunity of the meetings with my new friends to start to probe their life stories - for this was where I would find the discrepancies which would alert me to the agent. Like myself, the agent would have to have a cover story, and this was where I had to find the cracks, the inconsistencies, and prise them open. There is, though, a strict limit to the amount of probing you can undertake in this way. Eventually, even quite ordinary people get worried about your motives in asking so many personal questions. I quickly reached that point, without finding any signs of inconsistency.

It was then that I developed one of my most ingenious schemes. It was one that could never have worked in a normal environment; but it fitted the circumstances of our extended voyage like a glove. Like Chaucer's pilgrims, we would have our own set of travellers' tales. To entertain the others, to keep away the inevitable boredom, once a week one of us would be required to tell a story about the most important event he or she had experienced. From my point of view, these stories would also offer the best possible insight into their lives, and inner thoughts. They would also offer the opportunity for in-depth follow-up; for what person is not flattered by such attention - if there is good reason for it.

It would have been too obvious - to the enemy agent at least - if I had introduced the idea myself. So, I worked on a suitable subject, a rather doddery old university professor who was a darling and - I suspected - already halfway in love with me. Even so, it took me almost two weeks of increasingly delicate work before he had the idea all by himself! As I expected, the group loved the idea; and the stories you are now about to read took shape. There was, though, no way that I could control their content, or even the order in which they were delivered - nobody had to see that I was managing them in any way. In any case, if you try to control such things they have a habit of blowing up in your face - or, at the very least, you lose sight of the key details. So, take them at face value - as I had to.

Thus it was that the first story was told by the one truly black-skinned member of our troop. I suspected that he was chosen as much for political correctness as for his story-telling skills, but we had to start somewhere, and - as you will see later - his story has its more interesting aspects.

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