The asteroid spins. The floor tilts. A man falls into gravity, and into something he can’t yet name.
For the full vibe, listen to The Golden Age by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour; this story was freely inspired by its sound and spirit.
A Personal Time Trip
A brassy, swaggering hook rises in his head, some old promise of a “golden age”, more like a wish to claim back the better years.
The old song plays in his mind, not from speakers, not from the shuttle’s system, just a thread from memory. Uninvited, maybe, but somehow perfectly fitting. A whisper from another life. He doesn’t even know why it came now, perhaps because it promised something better. Brighter. Even new.
The shuttle whirs gently around him, its mechanical sounds softened by vacuum insulation, accompanied by the occasional twitch of a thruster, a click from the hydraulics, and the soft whir of a drone in the aisle beside him.
A helmet-sized trip companion sphere, technically named HSA3, hovers with calm precision. Twin arms folded, a ring of soft blue lights blinking in a steady rhythm. Not much of a talker, but reliable. Floating with the poise of something that’s done this a thousand times. He hasn’t, not once, not this far.
His body floats in the seat, latched mid-cabin inside the narrow shuttle. His harness holds him loosely, enough to keep him from drifting, but not so tight that he can ignore the weightlessness. Or rather, the almost-weightlessness. Microgravity doesn’t feel like flying. It feels like forgetting how to fall. Even your heart forgets how to sit still.
Outside the window, stars. Just stars. Endless. Cold. Distant. Honest.
He reaches across and retrieves his tablet. It flickers on, floating as he lets go.
Hermes Spaceways – Transit Assignment Confirmation
Welcome, Dr. Kouros
You have accepted to join the crew of Hestia Asterobase as Medical Officer and Chief Scientist for the Hermes Spaceways scientific program.
Primary duties include:
– Physical and mental health assurance of crew and human passengers
– Oversight of onboard research on asteroid 11-Amor and celestial survey
– Reporting to Hermes, Commander of Hestia Asterobase and CEO of Hermes Spaceways
– Collaboration with Montgomery Rey, Chief Technical Officer
He’s read these lines too many times. Studied them. Recited them. They’ve become a mantra, and now, out here, suspended between Earth and wherever this all leads, they feel strangely final.
Below the assignment: his name, photo, and credentials.
Alethon Kouros – Hermes Spaceways
Hestia Asterobase
Medical Officer | Chief Scientist
He reaches into the side pouch of his flight suit and pulls out the actual badge, with the same photo and the same lines etched in raised print. It’s real now. He spins it between his fingers, watching it drift, unweighted by gravity or the past.
Forty. That age where you either dig deeper into the life you built and settle into your old roles… or you leap. Somewhere between redemption and reinvention, there’s a crack in the known world wide enough to fall through. Or climb out of.
Behind his eyes, Earth has already shrunken. He didn’t say goodbye. Not properly. No dramatic airport farewells. No tearful glances backward. What would have been the point? He wasn’t running away. Not exactly. But he wasn’t staying either.
Already making plans, the kind you’d draw on a napkin and never expect to keep. But a chance to step back into another time? A reset? That part, yeah, that’s exactly what he needs. A personal “trip back in time”. Away from headlines, old responsibilities, the static weight of memory.
The impudent refrain loops again. He smiles faintly.
HSA3 gives a soft ping. It drifts overhead and adjusts something unseen in the overhead panel. Its lights flicker once in acknowledgment.
Alethon smirks. “You think it’s all going to work?”
“Yes, sir.”
The voice is gentle. Filtered. More presence than personality. Still, it’s the only voice he’s heard in days. Not a friend, exactly, but constant. Assigned to him for the flight and the stay at the base. A company endowment with a floating conscience.
Suddenly, a drift. The stars outside curve, subtly at first, then more deliberately.
The screen at the front of the shuttle blinks to life, displaying a live feed from the nosecam, a wide-angle lens showing space ahead. And there it is:
11-Amor.
The asteroid.
Small by cosmic standards. Just over 1.4 kilometers in diameter. But looming now like a sleeping giant, dominating the screen like a forgotten moon. A celestial fossil. Its surface is battered, pockmarked, and ancient. And along its equator, a line, flat, metallic, and traced with pinpoints of light, a faint constellation marking humanity’s claim: the landing plate.
That’s where the base is.
Hestia Asterobase.
Not on it. Not beside it. Inside. Beneath. Waiting.
A gentle thump. The shuttle’s thrusters pulse. Alethon feels the shift in his stomach before he sees it. The stars outside start to curve. They’re rotating, matching spin with the asteroid’s axial rotation.
The drone reorients. The lights dim slightly.
Then a chime, calm and clinical:
“Centrifugal force threshold reached.
Gravity active.
Secure loose items.
Floor now overhead.”
Alethon looks up. Or… is it down now?
A metal sphere, no bigger than a marble, floats in a transparent guidance tube across the cabin ceiling. It’s the G indicator. It begins to roll. Slowly. Then faster. Right toward the center curve of the shuttle semi-cylindrical former roof.
Gravity.
But not from mass. Not from a planet or a moon. This is different. This is movement. Motion translated into force. Not gravity, but its cousin: centrifugal pull, generated through rotation, inertia, and contact with the spinning frame. Without contact, there’s nothing to push against; objects would still float. Simple. Elegant. And slightly terrifying.
Alethon watches the sphere settle, gently, in the center. The first artificial gravity he’s ever seen. Not felt, not yet, but soon. He knows the theory. He’s read the papers. Nevertheless, he feels uncomfortable.
His breath catches slightly.
The asteroid spins beneath them. The shuttle synchronizes, matching its rotational momentum, a ballet of rock and thrust and mathematics. From the nosecam, the landing plate no longer seems to rotate; it just rises into view, like a platform being raised to stage level.
The same wish for a time trip circles back, stubborn as a heartbeat. Alethon lets the lyrics play again in his mind, accompanying the visuals.
It’s foreshadowing. Beautiful. Terrifying.
A final thruster correction.
Contact imminent.
The shuttle touches down, the magnetic latch engages, the thrusters turn off, and the docking arms connect.
The forward light changes: amber… then green.
“Docking complete.”
He unclasps his harness. Drifts gently forward, hand over hand along the padded grip rails on top of the seats. The drone hovers back, watching, then, following, without a sound.
The door releases with a gentle hiss. Air equalizes.
Alethon places his feet against the former floor, now just a bulkhead.
Pushes off.
Floats toward the hatch, open now, quiet and waiting.
The drone holds back, watching.
The old world stays behind.
He drifts through.
Into Hestia.
Into its new physical rules.
Into the unknown.
Into his own, possibly Golden Age.
Flying away from the known world
The light changes first.
Gone is the soft, utilitarian glow of the shuttle cabin. In the docking arm, the illumination shifts to a muted yellow, diffused and directional, pulling focus toward the far end. It casts the guide rail into sharper relief, a ridged metallic lane that runs along the floor, humming faintly. Not just a structural feature. A path.
Alethon notices the shift the moment he crosses the hatch. The soft white of the shuttle gives way to a dimmer yellow glow that lines the docking arm, warmer, narrower, almost intimate.
He floats forward, hands reaching for the extended supporting rod that rises from the guide rail like a spine. It’s padded, ribbed for grip, and motionless, until his fingers close around it. Then, with a soft vibration beneath his palms, the rail hums to life.
Microgravity still governs everything, but the rod now moves, guiding him, giving direction. Not weight, not yet, but intent. Purpose.
Alethon grips tighter and lets himself be pulled slowly forward. Behind him, the shuttle door seals. The hiss of his old world goes silent.
The corridor narrows slightly. The docking arm ends smoothly into the base airlock, still bathed in weightlessness but already permeated with base lighting. Ahead, amber light pulses in intervals, outlining the curve of the floor’s surface. It’s the entrance to the vertical connecting tunnel, a ten-meter-long cylinder dug into the rock layers of the asteroid, reaching the buried toroidal asterobase.
A new shape glides past, HSA3. The assistant drone emits a polite chime and speaks in a filtered, calm tone.
“Crew pod prepared. Please secure yourself for descent.”
Alethon blinks. The pod? Already?
It sits just inside the asteroid’s entry, mounted at the head of a magnetic monorail — like the first car of a mine train, or a lone seat at the edge of a carnival ride. Except this one doesn’t climb. It dives. Inward, down into spin, into gravity.
The restraints hang open. Welcoming. Or indifferent.
The rail rod brings Alethon right beside it. He hesitates a second longer than he’d admit.
“Rollercoaster,” he thinks. First time. Twelve years old. White-knuckled on the bar, pretending to laugh.
He grips the side handles and slips in. The harness folds shut with a quiet click. Magnetic contact points buzz beneath his thighs and lower back, not forceful, but precise. HSA3 lingers above and tilts slightly, scanning.
“Initiating descent. Remain seated until contact with floor pressure matches 0.165g.”
Alethon nods once. The pod unlocks with a soft jolt. A small numeric indicator lights up: “0.00 g”. Soon it will read 0.165 g, equivalent to the gravitational force on the Moon. A sixth of Earth’s pull, light enough to move with ease, yet steady enough to keep bones and muscles strong with the right exercise and diet. Off-Earth veterans know the feel; the Moon made it familiar generations ago.
Then, motion.
He holds his breath, like he did on that first crazy ride down, waiting to feel the scary fall.
The pod begins to slide forward and down, curving along a circular track that traces the asteroid’s hollow equator. The tunnel walls pulse gently with amber rings, like descending through the throat of some sleeping machine. The 90-degree rotation comes gradually, yet his stomach registers it, the change in axis, the subtle lurch of blood that doesn’t quite know where to settle.
But still: no weight, no fall, no bated breath. The flip ends; he’s moving straightforward, but there’s no down. Just direction. Just velocity.
It’s like “Flying away” from the known world, from the reality he used to feel. Gravity doesn’t show up, and that odd chorus surfaces unbidden. It loops with a new meaning.
He smiles, breath short. The childish fear is over. The absurdity of it all is perfect.
The tunnel is narrower than he imagined, a cylindrical passage carved directly inside the asteroid, its interior lined with segmented panels of matte composite, broken only by structural ribs and subtle lighting rings. No windows, no handholds. Just the rail, the dark, and the deepening hue of amber light pulsing softly along the walls. Only ten meters, but under this light and silence, it feels endless.
It seems less a corridor than an esophagus, meant not for transit but for absorption. A one-way passage, even though it is not. The pod’s quiet hum is the only anchor to reality, and even that fades as the amber tones bleed deeper, almost red. Alethon exhales slowly. He isn’t falling. He’s being invited, down, in, under.
Somewhere in the rock around him, the base is spinning. He doesn’t feel it. Not yet.
“Approaching base gravity threshold,” HSA3 announced quietly, like a voice already fading into the machinery.
Then something shifts.
Not a sound, not a light, a sensation.
A whisper in his feet. A dull pressure through the soles of his boots. Not force, not yet. But bias. Orientation.
Alethon exhales. Focuses.
This is it. The edge. The threshold.
The pod begins to curve again 90 degrees, this time not vertically, but outward, parallel to the asteroid’s center, following the torus ring. The indicator starts to move while curving: 0.02g… 0.05g… 0.10g… The artificial gravity, born of rotation, not mass, begins to assert itself. The pull strengthens.
His weight returns.
Gradually, insistently, from spine to shoulders to thighs. The harness feels heavier; the air denser.
At 0.165g, the pod glides to a stop.
HSA3 slides smoothly beside the track, still floating. Its voice lowers in pitch, now more grounded.
“Nominal station artificial gravity at 0.165 g active. Proceed slowly. Maintain orientation. Items dropped will settle on the floor.”
The magnetic clamps release. The harness folds open with a quiet hiss, the inverse of its earlier embrace.
Alethon doesn’t move at first. He just listens to the subtle creak of the pod’s frame, to the faint breath of the spinning base beyond the wall. Then he shifts, letting gravity take the lead. His boots press against the floor, no bounce, no drift. The soles grip with finality.
For the first time in weeks, his body speaks in full sentences again. Knees stabilize. Spine aligns. His organs adjust their delicate choreography. Blood drops where it’s supposed to. His center of balance, long unanchored, rediscovers meaning. He stands. Not because he’s told to. But because there’s down again.
The weirdness of it, that standing could feel so strange, pulls a faint laugh from his chest. The floor beneath him holds steady, warm and solid, like the frame of something vast and mechanical.
He straightens slowly. Breathes in.
He’s here.
What “happened to gravity” during the first tunnel flip didn’t show again.
Now, he knows. And this time gravity agrees.
“Please advance toward the door,” says HSA3. “Opening in two meters.”
Before him: a short corridor, softly lit, ending in a door marked in clean, universal font.
WELCOME TO HESTIA ASTEROBASE
Alethon walks forward. The weight is strange. Earned. Real. He takes a step, almost testing.
Light glows above the doorframe. It was amber.
Now it turns green.
A soft chime sounds.
The door begins to open.
A Welcoming Firestarter
The door slides open with a hush, not the hiss of hydraulics but a sound softened by insulation, designed not to startle.
Alethon takes a step forward. The floor responds with a subtle thud, now concrete; familiar, yet still strange. The air shifts. Cooler, denser, touched by ionization. The light here is different. Dim blue, diffuse, as if filtered through deep water or memory. A glow that doesn’t come from a single source but from every surface at once. Ambient. Quiet.
Gravity holds him, yes, but it doesn’t quite command him yet.
He raises one foot; it comes down a beat late.
Not floating, not falling, just lingering in the awkward pause between up and down, as if the air itself is thinking. No usual fall. He has to press it down, pushing through the unfamiliar. The other foot anchors him. A push–pull choreography that’s never been taught but suddenly feels essential.
He advances. Slowly.
The room reveals itself in gradients. A wide chamber. High ceiling. Smooth walls curved with the torus. No sharp corners, no Earth-like geometry. It’s more like the inside of a belly than a room.
In the middle of the ambient, a massive black rectangle, recessed into the left wall like a sleeping monolith. A screen, though currently off, is waiting to be activated by the right light.
The blue aura keeps diffused, like evening light through a window on a rainy day, giving the screen an almost metallic reflection.
A shape moves in the gloom.
“Please stay there. Don’t move. Just a second.”
The voice is female. Clear. Practical. Slightly winded.
From the far side of the room, she walks into view, Monty. Backlit by the soft blue and the pale glow of the energy core, she cradles it in both hands. It emits a dull greenish light, intermittent like a male firefly trying to get a mate’s attention. Enough to outline her features, short-cut hair, utilitarian suit, scuffed boots. Not ceremonial. Functional. Resonant. Tuned to the place already.
She crosses the room in long, practiced strides, bootsteps quiet but grounded. She doesn’t look at Ale. Her eyes are on the screen.
He watches, caught somewhere between awe and silence. He opens his mouth to speak.
Nothing comes out.
Monty continues to walk firmly but relaxed, feeling at home, as if strolling down a shadowed boulevard, with a verdant “fire burning” through the slats of a wooden crate.
The line flickers across his mind like a sudden blaze. The same old song remains. No reason it should fit. And yet, it does.
Monty kneels; slots the energy core into a port beneath the screen, like a welcoming firestarter.
Click.
A subtle vibration spreads through the floor.
Then: light.
The screen flares to life, flooding the room in a wash of amber and pale white.
Alethon flinches, not at the brightness, but at the immediacy. He steps back instinctively. The screen displays:
HESTIA ASTEROBASE
WELCOME TRAINING INITIATING
Still no music. Just presence. Just scale.
He turns to speak again.
Monty cuts him off with a motion, not rude, just occupied. She walks toward him, wiping her right hand on her pant leg, leaving a faint smear of engine dust.
Then, she extends it.
“Nice to meet you in person, Doc.”
Alethon clasps her hand, warm, firm.
“Finally, nice to m…”
BOOM.
The screen erupts in sound and motion. Animations, schematics, voiceover. The base internal systems, centrifugal gradient warnings, slow-motion clips of people adjusting in partial gravity.
Respect the floor: 0.165 g (Moon‑g).
The ceiling exerts no natural hold (micro‑g unless anchored).
Anything will drift off and meet the floor in seconds.
Secure all loose items before vertical transition.
One shot shows a burrito wrapper floating toward a ceiling vent before a tiny spider-bot grabs it and magnetically anchors it to the wall.
Alethon blinks.
Monty rolls her eyes. Mutters:
“Hestia, stop this damn’d circus act.”
The screen freezes. Silence returns.
Then, a new voice, gentle but edged with mischief:
“Welcome Training paused, as requested. Be kinder to our host, Monty.”
It comes from the room itself, everywhere and nowhere at once. Ale’s spine straightens.
Monty exhales.
“Don’t worry, Hestia. I remember my manners. Even if it’s been a while since I used them.”
She glances back at Alethon.
“Doc, what were you saying?”
Ale breathes deeply, everything in him swirling, reorganizing.
“I was just saying… It’s nice to meet you too, Montgomery.”
Monty raises an eyebrow.
“Monty, remember? Only Hermes calls me Montgomery when upset. Right, Hestia?”
The voice answers instantly.
“Correct, Monty. It hasn’t happened frequently. Last time: six days, fourteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes ago.”
Monty smirks.
“Precisely, Hestia.”
Alethon steps back slightly, letting their rhythm run its course. It’s… efficient. Playful. Alive.
He watches the screen, now frozen mid-frame on a 3D render of the asterobase’s rotating ring, its sections labeled in glowing cyan. His eyes trace the layout, labs, habitat units, agricultural modules, and vertical shafts.
His body is adapting too. The gravity feels less foreign now. Still artificial. Still Lunar. But owned. Chosen.
Hestia speaks again:
“Here it comes.”
A soft chime.
The sealed door opposite the one Alethon entered lights up green.
It doesn’t open yet.
But it will.
Next chapter: Bring Us Together – Coming soon…
Back to Collection 1 – Hestia Asterobase
Becoming Spacepolitans 