World Setting.

It is the year 3056 SE (space exploration) , in an alternate timeline for the human civilization. Humans have colonized Mars, Jupiter and many of the natural moons around our neighbors. Mars quickly became the business hub and place for the rich and luxurious due to the discovery of many underground oceans but Jupiter's harsh conditions only allowed the massive planet to be an industrial and mining zone. While the two young settlements advanced rapidly, Earth slowly became the backwaters, only used for reservation of nature and as an old age home. It is somewhat understandable, after all most retired people will much rather enjoy the open life back in Earth than be cramped inside powersuits till death.

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Our protagonist Roza is one of the unfortunate ones, whose ancestors were so poor that they couldn't pay the shuttle fee for migration when it was under government subsidies. Now migration is a life goal spanning generations for most middle class families back on Earth.

Even for Roza who is an excellent academic, only a life of hard work awaits. His father is a fire lookout, responsible for Manning the extinguishers and sprinklers in case of emergency. His work is a lot easier with different AI (artificial intelligence) helping him with keeping watch, locating problems, running maintenance and coordinating the heavy duty machines. Hence his pay is also a lot less, getting only 100 credits per month. Roza's expenses in the State Juvenile Care and Education centre is already 50c (credits) per month, a balanced diet pack for a full day of meal is priced around 0.5c - 0.75c. Spending around 20c a month and to get satisfactory meals is only possible inside the state run schools. 100c is just enough for a family of three to get by, hence it's the declared minimum wage by the government. Actually it's the most widespread payment for people working in government services. Since Roza's is only a family of two, his father has been able to save up some credits over the years.

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Leaving the mundane aside for a second, let's see how the age of space exploration came to be.

It was year 15 BSE (before the age of space exploration), Thomas Mao and Siffany Potter published the discovery of J particles. It was something that was considered impossible then, a particle that was the product of high speed rotation of large masses against the fabric of space itself. The most important takeaway from the discovery was the structure of the particles and the effect it produced. The structure of J particles was found to be the inverse of that of a neutron, unlike matter and antimatter neutrons and J particles do not attract and annihilate each other but repel with much force. The result of such properties was the much sought after anti-gravity. This property was to be blamed for the delay in its discovery through the era of Christ, the era of synthesis, the era of Destruction and the era BSE. Subsequent tests also brought to light that the presence of atmosphere greatly hampers it's production by reducing the friction between Earth and space. That was not a problem however, the Moon soon became Humanities space fuel pump. Many thought with the discovery of J particles, the costly fuel expenditure will drop, facilitating space travel and making intergalactic traveling easy and warp speeds possible. They were correct in some sense, since fuel expenditure did drop by 90%.

Later experiments by the Mao-Potter duo were a huge success, with the first super-fast J shuttles reaching The Mars Ground Exploration Camp in 10 days, travelling the shortest possible path, which was 10 times faster. That day was marked as 1st January, 0001 SE, a holiday throughout the solar system. That was also the day both the researchers were declared as founders of our civilization.