46 Goodbye, rock
Evolver Alex.
That would be Alex''s official title in the future.
With nost name, he would probably hear people call him this quite often from now on.
He was now an awakened, an elite of society.
Alex would have normally been ecstatic at the recent developments in his life. N?v(el)B\\jnn
But a bad taste was left in his mouth when it was revealed that he would have basically remained a ve for the rest of his life had he not entered the Primordial Expanse.
However, he was powerless to change anything.
Right now, any random Distinguished awakened or higher would justugh at him calling society unjust and swat him away like a fly.
Manager Han led Alex to the only spaceport on the asteroid, not bothering to give any departing words when he left. He knew Alex wasn''t interested in anything he had to say anymore.
Parked in arge, open area of reinforced concrete there was a spaceship. Quite unlike the ancient spaceships of 21st century Earth, this one was very advanced and didn''t need to use anything like chemical or even fusion propulsion.
Humanity had long reached the realms of hyperspace, folding space in on itself to drastically reduce the distances between two points. And with the advent of the awakened age a century ago even more advances came to be that Alex was clueless of.
This irregr, asymmetric ship had a rough coat of paint on its exterior and had the appearance of an uneven, square bullet with wings.
Clearly the designer of this ship cared a lot more about its functions than its looks.
In front of the ship stood a man smoking some sort of cigar wearing clothes that had ARC printed on the shoulders.
Another person who worked for ARC.
The scraggly middle aged man stood straight when he saw Alex and approached him with the cigar still in his mouth. "I am Evolver Avery. You can call me Avery, Mr pilot or whatever. Just don''t bother me when I''m piloting the ship."
With that Avery didn''t give Alex another nce and entered through the only opening in the ship.
''Avery the Aviator.''
Alex chuckled at the ironic name as he eyed up the other ships on the dock.
"We''re leaving in 60 seconds, get in. You can pay for your own ticket out of here if you get left behind." ''Goddam corporate making me work overtime again.''
Avery wasn''t amused with Alex and started up the ship, ignoring whether he was on board or not.
"I have a question, where are we going?" Alex wasn''t bothered by Avery''s bad mood and asked his most concerning question.
"Didn''t I tell you to not bother me?"
''What''s up with him?''
Seeing that Avery was being uncooperative, Alex released a little bit of his menacing aura on him, causing his face to pale.
Doing this may make him seem like a hypocrite, after all didn''t he just go about preaching about changing society for the better and not liking the strong preying on the weak.
But towards people who purposely went out of their way to inconvenience him, he wouldn''t be so kind.
Avery was also an E- rank like Alex, but the difference in strength between the two was apparent.
With the pressure weighing down on him, Avery wasn''t in the mood to annoy his new guest anymore.
"I was instructed to take you to any in this star system." With bated breaths, Avery answered.
It was obvious that if Alex hadn''tpressured Avery, that he would have just taken him to the nearest and be done with him.
But Alex was much more interested in making his own choices.
"Take me to the with the most nts, preferably a blue sky with varied weather. Oh and with an ocean too." Alex listed off his demands one by one, causing Avery''s face to plummet even more into depression.
''There''s only one like that in this star system… and it''s the furthest away from here.''
Avery''s face grimaced when he realised his overtime had just increased by 5 times.
"The fitting your requirements is on the other side of the system, are you sure you don''t want to go to one that''s a bit… closer?" Avery put on his best smile as he practically pleaded not to be given such a longer mission.
"Nah I''m good, take me to the one I asked for. By the way, what''s the name of the?"
Alex sat down on the co-pilot''s seat, put his feet up on the dash in front of him and waited for Avery''s answer.
A couple seconds passed in silence, and an answer finally came when Alex turned towards Avery and released his pressure again.
"Ahem, officially it''s called X-142 in the federation''s database. But the people in this system call it Hortus."
***
Over 10 hourster, a small ship with only 2 upants decelerated in their approach to the beautiful, blue and green beneath them.
Some might ask why the trip took so long when humans had the technology capable of reducing the travel time to a few minutes.
Well? It''s simply too dangerous to enter hyperspace when there were hundreds of millions of other ships going about in the same star system as you.
Hence the federation simply prohibited the use of hyperspace inside any star system in its territories.
"We''re here. Nobody but the military is allowed to directlynd ships ons, so we''ll have to dock at the space port and you can take a shuttle down to the surface." Avery spoke up and informed Alex of the relevant procedures.
But Alex was just too transfixed on the stunning blue dot outside the window to answer him.
He had asked toe to this because it''s environment was simr to that of the Primordial Expanse, which had quickly be his favourite type of environment over thest month and a half.
17 years of living on a deste rock with a constant ck sky left a lot to be desired.
After a few more minutes, Avery docked the ship at the port and ''politely'' asked Alex to exit.
Alex joined a queue and showed the documents Manager Han had created for him to the security check when he reached the front.
Some eyebrows were raised when they realised he was an unawakened, an unregistered one at that but nothing more came out of the interaction.
They just sent him on his way to a shuttle before moving to the next person in the queue.
After all the checks were done, Alex was finally going to step foot on a.
''I''ve waited too long for this day toe!''