I’ve seen a lot of worlds in my life. Core Worlds. Colony Worlds. Inner and Outer. National or international colonization missions. Small group settlements. Even survey outposts. Russian. Chinese. Alliance. Other. I’ve seen a bit of everything since The War. I generally stick to Alliance space of course, but sometimes I need to go outside it for sometimes very important reasons. I’m careful out there. We’re not always welcome after all.
Many of those who live on tide-locked Xin Shi never see natural darkness. Others never see natural light. They live in the slums, on the edges of the habitable zone, where perpetual freezing night or the blast furnace winds of the sunny side wash over their homes. It takes a rich person to travel into the prosperous inner zones where day and night meet. Or a tourist from another world, who is by definition extremely rich on Xin Shi.
Our return to civilization was an interesting time. Like the Chinese proverb. The War was over. Peace reigned. Or so everybody knew. The affair was too far under the radar to make news. Everybody saw the fire of course. That was on every channel. But the reasons for it never did make the air. And so the whole affair was brushed under the rug, forgotten by all but those who lived it. But that fire was history in the making.
The Hundred Years War brought us together as a people. Saxon and Norman. My family as well, both those that came to England and who stayed in Normandy. It forged us all into a single people. The English. We even stopped speaking French in the end. And though we lost Normandy, we became stronger. We became England, and forged ourselves an identity that few Continental peoples could ever understand. And that made all the difference in the world.
Because of the Chinese policy of giving their version of the treatments only to the rich or to colonists, their Outer Colonies can be pretty fun to visit. Lots of smart and motivated people that would have been trapped in the lower castes back in the Core Worlds go out there, get themselves a few centuries of health and vitality to use it all, and go to town. It’s the wild west out there, Chinese style. And they’ve got some real funky styles.
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