Scott's Planet

By: Bob Brown, Jared Kavanagh, Paula Hammond, Irene Radford, Stephanie Weippert, Andrew Roberts, Cliff Winnig, Lou Berger, Gordon Linzner, Melinda LaFevers

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

LUNA RULES
If you are deep in the gravity well that is Earth, it leaves a bitter taste to look at the sky, as the Greeks had once looked at Mount Olympus, and know that Gods lived there, and know your fate is at their whim.
If you live in one of the Ven Domes that fill the Aristarchus Crater with over 300 square miles of habitat, you know both the social mobility and longevity that defines the Union.
The world is your proverbial oyster.
The Union?
If Luna Rules, the Union rules Luna and, except for bits of Mars and a few of the older Asteroid Mining Habitats.
Some call it a Gerontocracy.
Extreme Life expectancy drew the powerful, the leaders of government and industry, even the criminal, though the lines are blurred. They make it their own and, in once-sacred words, have secured the blessings of prosperity for themselves and their descendants.
All was well it seemed, but not really. Below them, Earth functioned, but the strain showed.
When FTL became reality, a cheap reality, it had been the Union that funded the Great Diaspora, the spread of humanity to the thousands of habitable worlds in the galaxy.
Visions of greater riches filled the eyes of the already rich.
But there were expenses.
Planetary surveys.
Colony ships,
Resupply.
The endless need for resupply.
The successes, the quiet failures, and more than a few disasters. But the most important factor was cost, and the costs rose.
Trim the fat.
Consolidate the labor pool on planets where they were needed.
Where profits could be had.
Exit strategies for unprofitable worlds.
Abandonment, a word not used outside of the boardroom, was cheaper for the hundreds of worlds where there was no longer a promise of profit, only gravity wells that gave no return on the resources lavished.
But there were the people.
These were not people to abandon their carved-out homes. So, with great fanfare, they were released from Union obligations, deeded their worlds, and then abandoned.
Scott's planet was one such world, with many such people.
These are their stories.