Chapter 26

When the group arrived at the station they easily found a way to the convention thanks to Thomas using his WW as a guide. It was not far, but it was already late afternoon when they arrived.

The convention was being held in several large buildings and even in the parks outside of them. Without the modern convenience of WW interactive guide, they would easily get lost.

After they bought their tickets they found an empty bench and looked around.

"So we just missed the Virtual reality of Molo cruise ship, bummer," Ember said artistically from her WW. Everybody was now watching their wrists to find out the best place to go. They talked about it on the train of course, but there were a lot of possibilities and they were unsure how hard is going to be to orient at the convention to plan more than that.

"There is an alien presentation from planet Gaia…could be interesting," Norr suggested.

"Gaia? That sounds like school," Thomas whined, since Gaia was the first planet with life, it was well researched.

"What specifically?"

"The rare polar biome of Gaia Xenofauna," Ember said, but nobody really cared.

"What about the presentation of Low regulation - More profit sponsored by Balan company?"

"Weird name…show me the description," Mat asks Thomas.

"It is about how they have less regulation for their supply drone ships and other stuff, which makes it more efficient,"

"Sounds boring, pass," Suzy stopped them.

"There is a discussion panel about the Earth's military presence in the neutral systems,"

"That sounds very political," Ember said to Swen.

"But the speakers are pretty interesting. There is an actual general from Earth's military, there is a Mars general and two independent private security chiefs,"

"Interesting," Suzy said.

"Let's go there, it starts in ten minutes," Mat decided and the rest followed him. The discussion panel was being held in a hall that was already mostly full. The audience was seated on simple folding but comfortable chairs, while the speakers were on a podium. Soon the discussion started.

"This is pretty tame…" Suzy said when it ended.

"Agh, I barely understood half of it," Thomas said annoyed.

"Where to next?" Mat asked.

"Give me a second, I want to ask a question to one of the speakers, gotta get there quick," Swen quickly run away.

"I would stay here… there is actually a student discussion about the best way to get to space,"

"Buy a fucking ticket?" asked Mat annoyed, but Ember shook her head.

"It's not about tourism,"

"Well, might as well…" Thomas said and they remained seated.

***

Swen always wanted to stay for the discussion so he happily sat down with them. In the meantime most of the people left and apart from their group only about ten other teenagers stayed.

"Hello everybody!" a man in his late twenties said loudly after entering the hall. Everybody looked at him while he closed the door and then went confidently on the stage, where his colleague was already waiting. While they both were wearing a suit and a tie, the smiling confident man had a cleanly shaved face and short dark blue hair, while the other had long dark curly hair, dark brown skin, and an artificial eye. Normally artificial eyes were created in a way, to not be obviously distinguished from biological eyes, but he was made to be the exact opposite. It had a metal plating around the ridges and moved much faster and was not in synch with his other eye.

"I am glad that so many people came to our little discussion! After it, we will write a small report for your school so they know you were so proactive! But first please turn off your WW, we want to have a fair talk and so no cheating!" said the man with short hair and waited for them to do so.

"Don't be rude Rostja, introduce yourself first! I am Merik and a special security adviser of Ox shipping company," said the other man with a soft voice.

"Right, right. I am Rostja and I am an independent contractor with Ox company. I can see your WW is turned off, so great. Before we start coming closer, there are not that many of you so come together," Rostja said and they shuffled closer to the front.

"We will start with a free discussion on the topic of how to get to space as soon as possible and stay there," Rostja said gesturing for the teenagers to speak.

"By space, you mean anything but Earth?" one tall bold teenager asked.

"Yes,"

"Then wouldn't it be easy to simply find a job in one of the Earth's cooperatives who work there?" asked Tom, but Ember shook her head.

"They do not accept high-schoolers or even graduates. You need at least three years of experience working on Earth,"

"Then you could find a scholarship to study elsewhere," one girl said and the rest fell into silence.

"That could work, but be more specific," Rostja pushed them.

"I don't know about how to get that…" the girl said slowly.

"To get the scholarship you need to be scouted by some institution generally either scientific or cultural. The culture is mostly based on Earth, so you should focus on science," Suzy explained.

"When it comes to the scientific institutions there are few dozens of them but they pick people for scholarship from the whole Earth so it is not easy to get it," Ember added.

"So it is not that realistic, is it?" Merik asked and Ember nodded.

"So what else?"

"Well…this might sound stupid but if it is about getting there as fast as possible, you could simply take a touristic ship to a random planet near the edge of the Earth zone. Then you could look for a job there," Mat suggested.

"You would have to look carefully for that job and probably not get it. Don't forget we are barely adults. However, you could more easily join a none-Earth company there, or even get to a ship outside Earth," Swen added and the silence returned.

"Ha! Are you saying the answer was to actually fully leave Earth space? How surprising!" Suzy laughed while looking at the two adults on stage.

"Are you now going to try to sell us your company?" she added.

"Is this the reason why you told us to turn our WW?" Mat asked quickly.

"Don't be so defensive, it was you who figure out this kind of answer," Merik said.

"We are not that stupid! Be honest!" Norr said.

"It is not like we are not interested…" Swen said and Rostja laughed.

"They figured out us faster than I thought!"

"Well fine, but I don't want to push you or anything. So If you want to talk about the offer in a more private setting, I will be in this restaurant tomorrow at 18:00 until midnight," Merik said and pulled out a stack of cards and gave them to everybody. When he came to Mat he stopped for a second. Mat looked at the card and made a very annoyed face. Next to the restaurant address was hastily written: planet owner.