All characters are fictitious. All characters involved in any sex act are over the age of 18. If stories involving incestuous acts are objectionable to you, please do not read.
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"Are we there yet?"
"Lisa, please stop. I'm begging you. Why are you acting like a six-year-old?" I gritted my teeth half-jokingly.
Lisa had stolen the line from a movie that the girls and I had watched a few days ago and she's been using it ever since. Over and over. It's wearing thin.
Refocusing on the datpad, I went back to perusing the electronic personnel files that I had accessed.
Krystal Gabrial was apparently 38 years old, though I would put her at 28 by her looks. Her primary OP on the ship was that of General MedTech Level 2, which put her on par with a doctor back at home. She really knew her shit, too. I once saw her single-handedly cauterize an arterial bleed in an adult female and breath life back into the neighbor's Persian in the span of 30 minutes. The lady was eternally grateful. The cat, not so much. There's a report of the incident somewhere in this file, but at the moment I'm content to just soak in her picture. She has flawless skin of Asian Indian decent, with a stunningly beautiful face. At 1.6 meters tall and weighing around 50 kg, I would call her petite. Solid C sized breasts, firm, heavy. One of my favorite things to do is to gently press two conjoined fingers into them while we were making love or showering together... I love seeing them softly give way, creating an indentation in their perfect teardrop shape. The file's image layer contains several similes of her. The one I was fixated on shows her with long, black, wavy hair. 'That was taken, what, almost a year ago?' I asked myself. She had cut it a couple weeks before she had been reassigned to the Genesis, a science ship, after two of their three medical staff had died in unrelated incidents. That was a long eight months ago, and I miss my wife. We all do.
Katherine Gabrial. 19 years old. Primary OP: Teacher. She holds classes with half of the 6 to 8-year-old children in our neighborhood. She loves her job. She loves the kids. You can see it in the way she interacts with them, both in and out of the school environment. Kat gets her exotic beauty from her mother. She's petite, with long, black hair and a strikingly beautiful face. She's not as out-going as her mom, but with looks like hers, the boys have been sniffing around since she was 14. Krys and I didn't let her date until she was 17, and even then I had a hard time with it. 'HA!' She's grown into quite the young woman since then. Kat is the responsible one of the lot. All the kids are trustworthy, but Kat is the most dependable.
Thomas Gabrial. Also 19. Younger twin of Katherine. Primary OP: Botanist. My handsome son, as smart as his mother and sisters, is assigned to one of the AgMods, but in reality helps out in other areas of the ship as well. He's tall and thin like me, around 1.8 meters, but has his mother's smooth brown skin and dark hair. With his broad shoulders, killer smile, and outgoing personality, I often see him hanging with the ladies - 'That's my boy!' Thomas is off with a few friends 'camping' for two weeks, though I challenge the use of the term when campfires aren't allowed.
Lisa Gabrial. 17 years old. Primary OP: Undecided. My baby Lisa. It says in the file that she has above average intelligence and a "non-standard work ethic". I'd be upset at reading that if it weren't so true. She's not lazy, she's just... well, she's a free spirit and very existentially-oriented. Most of her days are spent hanging out with a friend or two working with the animals in AgMods. Lisa got most of her looks from me and my side of the family, and yet somehow she's also extremely beautiful. She has reddish-blonde hair and pale skin with light freckles across her cheeks and nose. She has moderate freckling all over her body as well. Like me, she's tall and thin.
"Are we there yet?"
Michael Gabrial. 43 years old. Primary OP: Navigation. I steer the ship. Well, myself and thirteen other officers and 34 subordinates. We are currently traveling at 0.5% of the speed of light - crazy fast. Our ship, the Trinity, is a Pederson class Large Scale Shuttle which left Mars orbit 2 years, 3 months and 3 days ago bound for the Juarez Space Station. We are on course and, if all continues as planned, we will arrive at our planned destination in 3 years and 4 months, give or take. However, there are always unseen variations in the flight plan. For example, we slowed to .016SOL and altered our course briefly to better launch the shuttle that brought Krys to the Gabrial. This two week long maneuver retarded our planned arrival at the Juarez by 87 days.
Anywho... as you can tell, I like to do navigational math in my head when I'm bored.
And I'm bored a lot.
Changing focus, I stared blankly at the brass, 30 cm miniature sextant that adorned the desk. "Michael Gabrial - FIRST MATE" was engraved on a metallic plate that was seemingly tied to the base. Then "Maine Maritime Academy - 2265". The plate had been formed with the edges made to look like rope had woven it to the base. Knots of a similar look decorated the four corners of the plate. I had earned it at a volunteer course where the class had done two 4 months stints at sea in a replicant 18 century sailing ship. What a time we had.
"Are we there yet?"
"That's it! I can't take anymore!" I cried, jumping up from my console in the home office in a mock rage. Lisa was sitting cross-legged in one of the spare office chairs. As I passed her on the way to the door our eyes met. I stuck my tongue out at her and contorted my face.
She reciprocated in kind.
When she least expected it, I suddenly lunged and surprise-tickled her sides. "STOP DAD STOP!!" she screamed as she tried to turtle. I could hear the little girl in her laugh, making me think of birthdays past. I walked away grinning and triumphantly flexing, making sure she knew who was boss around here. "I'm going to go run some laps, then maybe take a swim," I announced, not even looking back.
Our "house" had two levels, sorry... floors. Each has a similar layout, with two hallways connecting in something like a "T". The office was at one end of the horizontal of the "T" on the lower floor. 'Two years and I'm still trying to use these stupid names they want us to use... house, floor, neighborhood'. Also on the first floor is the kitchen, dining room, living room, a family room and a half bathroom. The front door was also on this floor located at the very base of the "T". This exterior door was actually an airtight hatch, one of the many redundant safety features on board. The upper floor had the master bedroom and a bedroom for each of the kids, as well as a laundry room, and a bathroom.
I went up the stairs, making my way into the master bedroom. There I changed into some workout shorts and a t-shirt, threw some things into a sports bag, then left our house and headed out into the streets of Haven. Originally (and coldly) called Zone 3, one of the first orders of business our neighborhood conducted after departure was to vote for a new name for this place that was going to be our new home for the next 5-plus years. Haven won. The name makes us feel like we're back on Earth just a bit. Or maybe more accurately, it simply wasn't a reminder of being trapped in a fragile bubble of atmosphere out in the cold blackness of the void.
I like our neighborhood, Haven. Next door to our house are the Ngyens on one side and the Aansons on the other. Directly across the "street" from us are the Dokars. In all, 64 houses in our neighborhood organized into four perfect quadrants, or blocks - four streets making up the perimeter of the neighborhood in the shape of a large square where all the residences are, and two streets bisecting this square, one horizontally and one vertically, creating four smaller squares. These bisecting streets are where all our neighborhood's service and businesses are located.
The true hierarchical residence schema of the Trinity was: 1 family per house; 16 houses per block; 4 blocks per neighborhood; 64 neighborhoods per module; and 256 residential modules, each adhered to the spiny, elongated main structure of the ship. This put over a million homes on the Trinity. There are around 128 more modules that are non-residential as well. Most of those are agricultural, but there were also science and storage modules. Two modules were fully devoted to dirt. We live in Habitat Module 8, or hab8.
"Hello, Mr. Gabrial," a small voice said. Looking down I saw tiny Ichiro riding his little tricycle.
"Hello Ichiro. How are you today?" I futilely queried as the little boy had already moved on and either didn't hear me or couldn't be bothered to answer.
Returning to my leisurely stroll to the rec center, my mind continued to review my life as I now knew it.
The streets I'm walking on, indeed we all are walking on, are made of Gravex and are artificially lit from the ceiling three stories up. Gravex is a superconducting material that generates gravity when electricity is passed through it. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basics of it. The entire floor of the module is made of Gravex, as is the ceiling. As long as the gravity wells are operational and producing electricity, and the Gravex is connected to those wells we experience just about the same gravity as those on Earth. Wonderful, huh? If only they could find a way to pipe in fresh air.
Every 8 neighborhoods shared a recreation house which contained a gym, track, pool and the various sporting equipment needed to keep the population physically fit. This sharing system promotes inter-neighborhood mingling. Religious houses, markets, hospitals, and schools were also similarly dispersed across clusters of 8 neighborhoods.
"Dad!"
