Lisboa

Josh had been anticipating this day for his entire life.  He stood there, hardly believing he was actually in the station, only minutes from stepping on the train and less than 72 hours from walking off a plane and into Lisboa. 

Grand Central Station had ten different trains with the ultimate destination of Lisboa on the day Josh Bernard was scheduled to leave for his freshman year at LEO Engineering, the only engineering school with its campus actually located on Karman.  The train had to first travel across North America and then the passengers destined for Lisboa would finish their journey either by sea or air. It was usually a three day trip, if you first started by rail and finished by air.

He’d known many people who’d been to Lisboa and a number of those had come back unimpressed.  A cross between Vegas and New Orleans, with all the style of Los Angeles, as Bill’s mom liked to say. 

Josh didn’t care what people said.  Ultimately, it was Karman that mattered, anyway.  Lisboa was just the first stop.  The way Josh saw it, it was all a new frontier, with new challenges and opportunities. Besides, what did Josh know? He was only seventeen, and anything would be a great adventure to him. 

Before today, he had spent his life in Williamsburg and the only place he’d been outside of his hometown was D.C., and that was for a school field trip.

“The 317 is ready to board on the D platform,” blared the intercom twice. 

Josh took a long, deep breath.

“That’s your train, Josh.  Let’s go.” said Josh’s mother.  She grabbed one of his suitcases and squeezed his hand hard.  They stood and started walking towards the part of the station where platform D was.

“Please call me for any reason and you can always come back if you want to.”

“Yeah, Mom, I will.  Don’t worry.”

“I will worry, that’s what moms do.  You have no choice in the matter.” She smiled at Josh, tears running down her cheeks. “I expect to hear from you, daily for at least a little while. Please call me when you get to Lift City.”

Lift City was a common nickname for Lisboa.

“Don’t worry, Mom, I’m gonna be fine. I’ve got it under control.” Josh held the space elevator tickets up for his mother to see. “I’ll be on it only twelve hours after arriving at Lift City. I’ll let you know every step of the way.”

Josh’s mother sighed. “I know, I know. I just can’t help but worry about you.” She hugged him hard as more tears came down her cheeks.

“Now, go… before I fall apart.”

Josh started walking backwards, his backpack over his shoulder. He gave one final wave and turned. His mother watched, her curly brown hair blowing in the wind created as he stepped through the door. Within seconds, the doors shut. Josh caught his mother through one of the windows and waved. She didn’t see him, she’d already turned away.

###

The train was surprisingly empty, and Josh found his seat easily. The conductor commented that it was sometimes like that on this particular route. Josh didn’t think anything of it. He had a window seat on the left side of the train. There was no one else seated in his row of six seats. In the row in front of him sat a girl wearing a brown leather cap over straight brown hair. She turned and flashed him a wicked smile. Josh looked away. She grabbed her bag, got up and quickly slid into the aisle seat next to Josh. She tossed the bag in the seat between them.

“I can’t believe how empty this train is, can you?”

She was cute, with dimples and a small gap between her teeth. “The conductor said, sometimes it’s like this on this route.”

“Oh, really? Wonder how come? I guess I shouldn’t complain. I could stretch out and take a nap, right?”

“Guess so…”

“So, heading for Karman? Or, just Los Angeles? By the way, name’s Lily.”

She held out her hand for Josh. She smelled like roses and sunshine, exactly like a girl should smell.

He grasped her hand lightly and gave it a cursory shake. He wasn’t sure how old she was. She dressed like she’d been in college, although he couldn’t exactly say why he felt that way. She wore a brown leather jacket over a light blue shirt. Her tight blue jeans cut off at mid-calf.

“Ultimately I’m going to LEO Tech. My first year,” said Josh.

“Me too, sort of. I start working for KarmanLEO in their product development laboratory in a week.”

Josh hesitated for a second, then said, “So, you make stuff. I never heard of KarmanLEO? What do you make?”

“Medical products.”

“Ooh, real science, eh?”

“You could say that.” She chuckled. “And what kind of engineering?”

“LEO. You know, Low Earth Orbit. Near as I can tell, it’s mostly about keeping Karman up in orbit.”

“That’s an important job. Wouldn’t want Karman to fall out of orbit. That would be bad.”

“That’s what I figured.”

After some shifting and clanking, the train moved slowly forward.

Staring at Lily, he said, “By the way, my name’s Josh…”

Lily clutched her small black leather bag. “I’m going back to my seat. Wanna have lunch? Around noon?”

Josh quickly said yes and Lily went back to her seat.

He leaned back and thought about how lucky he was. He welcomed the distraction of this attractive woman. According to his phone, there was another stop in an hour. He figured some more of the seats would fill up by then. He glanced at Lily, who was back in her seat. She was on her phone.

He decided to take advantage of the empty seats and flipped up the one armrest in his row and, after piling two pillows from the seatback, he lay down and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw the train had stopped. More people had now filled the seats, including his row. He sat up, just in case some passenger might need one of the seats he’d been sleeping on, though he hoped it wouldn’t happen as he’d been enjoying his temporary bedding.

At this point, he felt fairly well rested and pulled out his Kindle. He had it loaded up with all the Karman and Lisboa fiction and non-fiction he could find. He was in the middle of reading a non-fiction book called Karman: A Brief History of the First City in Space, but since he’d been obsessed with Karman since he was a child, there wasn’t much in this particular book that he didn’t already know.

Officially, as of today, Karman had around 26,000 permanent residents, mostly retirees and employees of different businesses who had ongoing operations in Karman. Oh, and the approximately 500 students at LEO, but they weren’t counted as permanent residents.

Josh found himself feeling a bit envious of Lily who’d landed herself a job at KarmanLEO. He didn’t know why. He sure wasn’t ready to be an employee for anyone, and yet hers seemed to be his ideal job that he hoped to have one day. He figured that was probably the source of his jealousy.

He glanced up and caught Lily looking back at him. She smiled liked she’d been caught. The train had left the station. Several more seats had filled. Lily got up and quickly sat back down in the seat next to the aisle, two seats over from Josh. “What you reading?”

“A book called Karman: A Brief History of the First City in Space. It’s not bad, have you read it?” Josh held up his Kindle.

“No, I haven’t.” She answered with a sarcastic tone, as if the very idea of this book couldn’t be more boring.

“Don’t you want to know more about the place where you’re going to live?”

“I suspect I’ll soon know more than I want to know. They are paying me good money and that’s all I actually care about.”

“You’re not excited about being in space? I mean, soon we’ll be looking down on Earth.”

“Blah blah blah. The final frontier and all that. Doesn’t really do anything for me. Of course, maybe I’m wrong and when I get there, my mind will be blown. Anything’s possible.”

“Wow. I’m so excited to go there.”

“Most people are. The thing is, this job at KarmanLEO is not a popular one. They have to offer twice as much to get anyone to accept the position. You might ask why?”

Josh nodded and Lily continued, “I’ll tell you why. To take this job, you have to commit to three years, with a two week vacation each year, of which 6 days will be taken up just getting to my family and back. I’m single with no kids, so it’s just my parents and siblings. You might think, not so bad, but who knows, since I’ve never actually been there. But, I’m young and I’ll make decent scratch for three years. Plus, my CV will have the job credit of having worked on Karman.”

“Wow. Where do I sign up?”

“Maybe you won’t be so excited in six months.”

Josh found himself momentarily distracted by Lily’s perfume which had a subtle rose fragrance. He stumbled over his next words. “Maybe, but right now, it sounds pretty great.”

“The advantage to being a college student is you’ve already committed to leaving home and going to school, something you would do whether it was at Harvard or Karman. So, I imagine for you, it’ll probably be okay.”

“You don’t know how long I’ve been looking forward to this whole thing.”

“Well, you know what they say?”

Josh reacted with a blank look.

“Be careful what you wish for.”

“They are just jealous,” Josh said with a laugh.

Lily smiled knowingly. “Listen, far be it for me to spoil your fun… You can let me know how it’s going over time.”

Everybody was always throwing cold water on Karman. He wasn’t sure why. He knew that as the first and largest city in space, the city had its drawbacks. He’d been obsessed with the topic for a long time, so his knowledge was extensive. Undoubtedly, he would come to a more mature acceptance of reality once he’d become a resident. He knew that. However, you’re only a virgin once and he might as well enjoy it while it lasted. He was in no hurry to become a cynic. Lily couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and was already a full-blown cynic.