Robert McAdams

September 17, 2350

"Welcome to the Callisto Lifestyles Hotel," a friendly voice said as Jason Cole stepped up to the false wood counter. The smiling woman, he thought, could be no older than nineteen. Her hairstyle was one of the latest fashions-curled up on the left side, with a streak of light blue through the blond. Her clothes revealed her athletic form. He imagined her as an undergraduate, perhaps, at the Callisto Institute of Techno-logy, working her way through college.

The lobby of the Callisto Lifestyles Hotel could have been found in a much more prestigious, if not more expensive, establishment. The decorator had followed the French Geometrical Movement of the late 2200's, scattering angles and curves along the walls in bold colors. Living plants grew from black pots in the corners. Gold-plated trim lined the counter, the doorposts, and the various handles and knobs that operated the old-fashioned elevators, which had been designed to evoke thoughts of the mid-1900's.

"Will you be staying with us tonight?"

"I was thinking about it, yes," he replied. He rested his bare arms on the fake wood of the countertop.

"Could you hold your right finger up for a scan please?" she requested. He held his finger up and she pressed a small black box against it. The scan took only a second. "Okay, it says this is your first visit, so I'll need a few permissions."

"All right."

"First of all, I need you to consent to waive rights as defined in section 34 of the Callisto Sensual Services Act of 2341. Are you familiar with the act?"

"No."

"Section 34 deals with your permissions concerning possible offspring resulting from defective contraceptive devices. We need you to waive paternal rights."

"Okay." To make the permission legally binding, he pressed his right index finger against the box again.

"Now, I need proof that you are licensed to breed. Wait...it says here you're in the External Marines, so proof is not required. Okay...are you married?"

Jason was somewhat startled by the question, and before he could answer, he thought about the answer and how his life had changed in the last few months.

He had been married. Eighteen years before, he had said vows with the woman who had been everything he really wanted. Jason still had pictures and holograms taken from the wedding, but they were unnecessary. He could close his eyes and think of her, and he would see the white lace and the fresh violets as though she were standing in front of him. He could see her shoulder-length black hair, the way her upper lip curled up a little more on the left than on the right, and her cheekbones softly defined beneath her brown eyes.

The marriage had not been perfect, as marriages never are, but it had been wonderful. Their first son, Jason, had been born a year after the wedding. Five years later, they had a daughter named Emily. Thomas Andrew was born six years after Emily. He would have been six years old in April.

Before the Machine Wars, Jason had lived with Sarah and the younger Jason on board the Lincoln, where Sarah had served on the medical staff. In earlier days, it would have been considered foolish to have a family on board a military starship, but the threat of war seemed remote, since the galaxy's most advanced automated defense system protected the Alliance from attack. It would be this system, however, that would attack the Alliance and begin the worst war in the history of humanity.

Although Jason's wife and children had survived the war-Emily still an infant-others in his family had not. He had lost his mother and his sister, and his father had been left a blind, deaf quadriplegic. To protect his family in the future, Jason had moved them to the starbase Coyote Alpha 47, orbiting Mars. Invasion of the outer territories was the greatest fear in the Alliance, as the Machine Wars had left many other races upset with the builders of the Computer, but Jason believed no invasion could reach as far inward as the Solar system.

Eleven years had passed before one of those races had finally attacked.

On November 17, 2349, less than a month after the beginning of the Olandarian War, the Olandarians reached the Solar system. At the Battle of Mars and the Solar Asteroids, the Olandarians destroyed nearly half of Home Fleet and three star bases: Tiger Alpha 3, Badger Mars 327, and Coyote Alpha 47.

Emily, who had been visiting some friends on Earth, was the only surviving member of Jason's family.

"Sir?" The friendly voice was a bit more urgent now, but as Jason looked back up at the girl behind the counter, she smiled and the urgency left. "Sorry, sir, you seemed a bit distracted."

"No," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"The answer to the question. I'm not married."

"Okay, then, we'll continue." His attention turned back to the computer display from which she was reading the questions. "Are you offended by explicit sexual material, including holograms, motion images, still images, or sensual aids?"

He paused for a moment. He had never thought about such things, but supposed they did not offend him. "No."

"Have you ever been...oh wait, never mind. Skip to nine. Do you profess a religion?"

"No."

"Are you a member of a conservative organization, or have you associated with members of a conservative organization?"

Jason failed to follow the relevance of the question, but he could see no harm in it. "No. They screen for that in the military, you know," he added, as many other questions had been skipped due to his service.

"I don't make the questions. What is your sexual preference?"

"Heterosexual," he answered.

"Last, I need a form of payment. To stay, you first have to pay the lifetime membership fee of 35K."

"I have a TriVisa account."

"Okay...yes, I have it here. I need your authorization for the charge."

Jason hesitated. He had not decided whether he would really stay the night, or even an hour or two, at the Callisto Lifestyles Hotel. Spending 35K on a membership would be a hefty price to pay for something he would never use.

Jason had never seriously considered visiting an establishment like Callisto Lifestyles before. Now, however, Jason found himself without the woman he had loved for nineteen years. He had been thrown into a war to see his friends slaughtered by the Olandarians. Though he served with the best pilots in the Alliance, death remained a frequent visitor. Often, it did not matter how good a pilot was, or how tough he was, or how smart he was. Death was just a matter of being in the wrong place when an enemy fired his ion/polarity disrupters. The only chance a person had was to kill the enemy first.

Jason knew this was not always the case. Some pilots seemed to have the ability to avoid the "wrong places." He thought of his commander, Arthur Werty. He thought of Amanda Michaels, the orphan of the Dromedian Wars and sole survivor of her unit in the Machine wars. He thought of Keubra Moncka, the best of them all. These pilots had beaten the odds and avoided death, but Jason knew that death would not wait forever.

For one night, Jason wanted to forget all about the war and all about death. He had one night of shore leave, and he could think of only one way to spend it.

"Okay," he said, "I'll sign up." His finger was still on the black scanner box, so only a moment passed before the transaction was authorized and 35K-thirty-five thousand yen-was transferred to the Callisto Lifestyles Hotel from his TriVisa account. He added, "Go ahead and put one night on there." Another transaction was authorized.

"Thank you," the young woman said. She pressed a place on the counter that appeared not to be a key or button, and a drawer appeared on Jason's side. In the drawer was an old-fashioned door key. "You will find a computer pad by the bed. The Lifestyles Database lists all of our providers, and it's based on Atlas DCS Four, so you should have no trouble with it, being a military man. Just select a provider who is available, send a message to the front desk with the built-in function, and you'll have service within five minutes, or it's free.

"Should you desire any other service, or one of our special services, you can authorize account transactions from the computer pad in your room.

"Enjoy your stay."

Jason held the door key in his hand as he walked across to the old-fashioned elevator. Every click of his military boots on the hard floor seemed to echo through his mind, and though he could not tell why, the sound disturbed him. As the elevator doors opened, a young soldier of the infantry stepped out. Jason stepped into the lift and the doors closed behind him. He found himself thinking of the infantryman who had just stepped off, and again was unable to control the memories that came to him.

The worst of Jason's experience with the Olandarians was not his own experience at all. He had never seen an Ollie face to face. Every Olandarian who had fired at him, and every one he had killed, had been separated from him by hundreds or thousands of kilometers in the vacuum of space. The enemy had never appeared to Jason as a living, aggressive creature, but only as a set of coordinates on a tactical display. Even thus removed, however, Jason felt a slight pain every time he pulled the trigger and a target exploded somewhere in distant space. He was a skilled warrior, but he hated the war.

While Jason had always remained away from his enemy in person, he had seen the point of shock. The point of shock--the moment when two opposing forces of infantry, armed with deadly weapons, literally crashed into one another--had killed fifty times as many soldiers as space combat had. So that they would know the true nature of the war, every soldier who was not in the infantry was forced to watch video of the point of shock and the resulting chaos. Both sides of the war preferred to avoid this kind of combat, as it was equally destructive to all participants. Yet it seemed at times unavoidable, when the Olandarians resolved to seize a planet or a colony that the Alliance was unwilling to yield at nearly any cost.

Jason had seen bodies disintegrated by hadron weapons. He had seen rail guns fire through dozens of soldiers with a single shot before their ammunition escaped into outer space. He had seen fire, gas, and explosives used as standard tactics. These he had never seen himself, but had seen on the video screen after the External Marines or the External Army had fought another battle.

The closest Jason had come to this kind of war was the mission on Tannis IV. Delta Wing flew close support for the 2nd External Army Mobile Armor Division, affectionately known as the MADmen. The 2nd MAD reached its target, an Olandarian stronghold, and Delta Wing initiated the battle by hammering the base with air-to-surface rockets and energy blasts. Jason knew that, underneath, the point of shock would come, but he never saw it. As soon as Delta Wing had expended its air-to-surface armament, the fighters had climbed to ten thousand meters to watch for enemy interceptors or tactical bombers.

The elevator's tone at reaching the selected floor brought Jason back into the present, and quietly he stepped out and walked down the hall to the room that he had rented; or, rather, the room that came along with the services he had purchased.

The room was as clean and luxurious as the lobby had been, though the color choices made by the decorator had betrayed the room's intentions. Black and red dominated the features of the small bedroom. The only furniture was the bed, covered with crimson satin sheets. Jason found the computer pad and began browsing the entries in the database. About sixty young women were listed as providers, ranging from seventeen to thirty years old. None were as old as his wife had been, but this did not bother him. One of the young women, however, bore a resemblance to a pilot Jason had known from Centurion Wing. He paused momentarily over her file, then decided against her. He feared that, in his imagination, she might become the Centurion Wing pilot.

The youngest woman in the database had received her license only three days earlier, being only a week over seventeen years old, which was the legal minimum age. Jason thought her picture looked attractive. Unable to decide on anyone else, he pressed a section on the computer pad that sent a message to the front desk, telling the manager there to send her to his room.

After he had made his selection, Jason continued to look through the profiles and found himself again looking at the girl who reminded him of Tania Aleksandr.

Tania Aleksandr's test scores had been in the highest bracket. She had flown seven missions in the first month of the war, all of them successful, before being transferred to Centurion Wing. In December of '49, after Jason had lost his family, she had shown him the support of a true friend. Jason had rarely known many people outside of his own unit, but Tania Aleksandr was his favorite exception. That month, when Jason could not deal with the happenings of his life, he had found comfort a few times in Tania's arms.

At 24, Tania had been the youngest pilot on board the Lincoln. She had graduated from an accelerated program at Liberty Academy. She was marked as command material. Her intelligence scores were comparable to the Jabanicans', and she had proven great physical ability as well. She had won two medals in regional athletic competitions and made it to the fifth round of Olympic trials in 2348. Jason had often marveled that such a promising and talented person could be his friend-that the chances of life had added up in just such a way.

On her twenty-ninth mission, Lieutenant Tania Aleksandr had been flying close support for Gator Flight's deep space bombers. Delta Win had been flying the same mission, as support for the DSB's from Thunder Flight. The target had been an Epsilon class pocket battleship, but when they had reached the strike zone, a Koloden class carrier had been waiting. Tania, in spite of being a skilled pilot, ended up in the wrong place like so many others.

It was one of a thousand memories Jason wanted to forget for just one night.

A buzzer brought Jason out of his daze, and he realized someone was at the door. When he opened it, a girl with long blond hair and brown eyes smiled at him. He thought she looked even younger in person than she had on the video screen. Her round face and small form, he imagined, could be those of a fourteen-year-old. He thought of his own daughter, but did not allow the image to remain in his mind. "Come in," he said as he walked to the only piece of furniture in the room. "Sit down," he offered, though he remained standing.

"I'm Natalie," the girl said as she sat down on the bed. She was trembling, but through considerable effort she continued. "Can I know your name?"

"Jason," he answered. He sat down on the bed and touched her hand. "You're frightened," he said.

"Just nervous. I'm new at this."

"Every man's fantasy, so they say," he answered, though he was not sure. Something about spending the night with this young, nervous girl, under the conditions that he had selected, disturbed him. At the same time, he wanted to be with the girl and share a night of thoughtless pleasure away from his life.

"Is it your fantasy?" she asked. She had probably been trained. Perhaps the whole thing was an act, and she was in fact quite experienced. Jason remembered that he had known many such girls at seventeen-girls who would act inexperienced, because they knew how to manipulate their older partners.

"I haven't really had a fantasy in a long time," he answered. "I've been in the war. I'm a fighter pilot."

"I wish this war were over," she said, resting her hands in her lap. "People all over are saying terrible things, and it makes me really nervous. With men like you protecting us, though, I think we should be okay. Though I guess maybe you aren't all thinking of people like me as the ones you're protecting."

"What do you mean?"

She looked away. "Oh, you know...you're probably all thinking of your families and whatever. Not pro--not people like me." She looked back at him and smiled. "But I bet you're not like that. I think you're a born protector. I think you'd protect me just like anybody else, just because that's the kind of man you are."

"Well, if you need a protector, I need someone to protect." After saying this, Jason regretted his choice of words, coming so soon after her remark about soldiers protecting their families. She seemed not to pick up on the connection.

"Oh, my own knight in shining armor," she said.

"Well, there's armor, but it doesn't shine," he answered. She giggled.

"You know," she said, smiling, "I have a fantasy about a soldier coming to protect me. A tall, handsome soldier, with dark tan skin."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes," she answered. "Since the first time I saw a man in uniform, when my brother went into..."

She stopped abruptly and looked away. Jason felt as if the spell had lifted, and they were no longer two new lovers having a rendezvous at a luxurious hotel, but were instead living in the real universe. "I'm sorry," Natalie said. Her voice had become slightly deeper, her lips a bit tighter, and now Jason saw how far she was from fourteen. "I just fucked it up. I'm sorry. I really am new at this. I'm sorry." She was trembling, but Jason did not suspect this was an act. "Do you want someone else?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "Just take a moment. Use the restroom if you want to. I wouldn't want any trouble for you." He knew that he could report the incident to the management, and would receive a refund as well as another provider. He also knew how severely the girl would be punished.

She accepted the offer to use the restroom, and was gone for a few minutes. When she returned, she was happy and youthful, and the spell had returned. She was again innocent, as he had once been.

The young woman showed just enough aggressive behavior to be sexually desirable without being in control. Jason now suspected that she had been trained in the technique before she was old enough to do it legally, though certainly she had no criminal record-the providers were carefully screened. He also understood that he was in control of the situation.

He did not want much conversation. Conversation would allow him to build connections between this girl and women he had known-connections that would remind him of his life, instead of making him forget. He wanted a night of innocence. She seemed to be somewhat innocent, though he suspected it might be an act. Many men Jason's age often fantasized about virgins, and surely Natalie was there to give him what he had paid for, including the virgin fantasy. Strangely, though he thought he should have been disturbed by it, the idea that Natalie might be a virgin actually excited him. As he felt this reaction beginning, he decided to indulge himself in the fantasy.

"You said you're new at this," he said. "So, this is your first time?" She could only answer one way.

"Yes."

He promised to take her slowly.

To conserve energy, the Callisto Power Commission lowered the atmospheric temperature during the "night," when the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. Most people would be in bed asleep, while those who wandered around at night would know to be dressed warmly. As Jason stood in his robe on the balcony outside his room, however, the chill did not bother him. Smoking a cigar from South America, he watched as transport ships passed in and out of the energy barrier that kept Callisto's atmosphere trapped. Beneath him, drug addicts and unlicensed prostitutes, as well as a few licensed ones who preferred "freelancing" to the hotel environment, wandered among the merchants and thieves who populated the streets. Every imaginable breed of alien-even Olandarians-walked or otherwise moved through the streets of Callisto, from the Centre down to the Jovian Park, north to Little Delpac. Thirty meters above the streets, shuttle cars followed invisible routes defined by their on-board navigational computers. Another thirty meters above these, the high-powered machines owned by the wealthy followed similar invisible paths. Jason's room was just above this second tier of shuttle cars.

The buildings throughout the Callisto colony were lit brightly with advertisements, many of them for establishments similar to the Callisto Lifestyles Hotel. The sensual desires of nearly any species could be met for a price, and it seemed that nearly every species had some sort of sensual desires.

"Do you want to come back in?" Natalie asked. Jason wondered if she had enjoyed their first hour of love-making, and if her question was rooted as much in personal desire as wanting to give him what he had paid for. Then again, he thought that perhaps she merely wanted him to think that she desired him, since otherwise the fantasy would lose its effect.

"In a moment," he answered.

Standing above the streets of Callisto, Jason closed his eyes. Images of dead and dying soldiers, Tania Aleksandr, Olandarian warriors, and his wife came to him, and he realized that he had forgotten nothing.

Turning back to the room, he saw Natalie on the bed, naked again. He knew going into the room and lying down with her again would not make him forget. Yet his body ached for it, and he walked back in from the balcony.