Fantastic Journeys Through the Stars

It was a normal Wednesday morning in February. But to Arthur Tullett, it felt more like a Monday. In fact, this whole year had felt like one giant Monday.

He had just finished university earlier that year. And his first course of action was to find a good job. He graduated at the top of his class in Hotel Management and Hospitality, a quite prestigious institution, located in the former Swiss region.

Everything had seemed so perfect. And he was itching to finally become a respectable member of society.

Arthur started sending out his résumé everywhere he could the moment he got back home from Earth. He felt like he had won the lottery when he landed a job at the Armando Group Hotel Line. His workplace was not just any Armando Group hotel, but the Mars Prime Armando Hotel and Resort. The only hotel that had a resort attached to it in the entire Mars Capital.

Then he got fired. He was fired five more times after that. Today being the latest.

He didn't even know why. And this was what frustrated him the most. His former bosses didn't even try to come up with proper excuses for it.

His first time was by an Armando Group executive. The man had called him to his office, given him an electronic envelope with 6 months' salary, and dismissed him with these parting words: "Stop flirting with my wife."

Arthur Tullett, 24, virgin, had never flirted with anyone's wife.

He thought he had somehow offended the executive. And the executive just used a random excuse to have him fired.

Most companies wouldn't condone the random firing of employees like that. The Worker's Union on Mars was always watching from the fringes, like bloodhounds. But this particular executive was a great-grandson of one of the founders of the Armando Group.

Arthur heard rumors that they bribed their way out of the lawsuit. He had no proof though.

Abuse of power was frustrating when one was on the receiving end of it. But Arthur could only accept it and move on. Science may have advanced rapidly in the last century. Mankind was now able to make giant habitable domed cities on Mars and the moon. But society was still full of the problems that had plagued it for centuries.

It only got weirder from there. His second dismissal was soon after. The reason? He had supposedly monopolized the Director's 'Personal Cycle Parking Space', when in actuality he parked his rovercycle on the public rack the city provided next to the company building.

The Director drove the latest model of rovercar made by Audi. His 'Parking Space' was located on the top floor of the building, accessible only by a private car lift.

Arthur was dumbfounded. Who had he offended this time?

With black marks piling onto his work record, he'd had to start looking for lesser paying jobs. In the end, he was deported back to Whitewood, the 31st Moontown, after his work permit on Mars expired. Even the almighty Mars Workers' Union wouldn't defend a jobless bachelor. Especially since he no longer lived or worked in their jurisdiction.

Arthur left Whitewood almost immediately, eschewing his hometown for the Lunar Capital. A few days of searching turned up a full-time job in a hotel/restaurant as an assistant for the kitchen manager. If he did well, he would be promoted.

The last assistant manager had drunk an unhealthy amount of lunar soy sauce, mistaking it for Chinese red wine. He'd had to be hospitalized. Arthur wanted to meet that man one day.

The job itself had very low prospects. He was definitely overqualified. Nevertheless, it was paid work, and technically in his field of expertise. One didn't turn up their nose at an honest living.

Arthur performed his duties to the letter. He was as polite as they could wish, and worked to the best of his considerable abilities. His co-workers assumed he had a case of 5th degree paranoia. Some even called him a boot-licker when they thought he couldn't hear.

For a while, he was doing fine. Yes, he had to do some grunt work for the first month, Dishwashing for example, but that was part of any new job. Though why a restaurant needed a human dishwasher in the 23rd century was anyone's guess. However, Arthur didn't complain. He was confident he could take the extra workload. And then...

"Hey, did you just put the liquid dish cleaner on the scrub BEFORE you soaked it in water?"

The restaurant owner stormed into the kitchen and dragged Arthur to his office. Predictably, he was tossed out of the establishment, pink slip in hand, in short order.

***

Arthur finished packing the last sock in his luggage. His rented apartment was looking rather empty, as most dwellings do when their occupants have decided to leave. Losing his job today made him decide to return to Whitewood. There was no point in staying in Lunar Capital anymore.

After making a short post on social media, he'd received a few job offers from friends here and there. But the jobs were either too low paying, or not in his field, or he just didn't like the prospects. He was definitely grateful to them for trying to help in times of trouble. He just didn't want to waste his talents in a job that had no room for growth.

But that wasn't the real reason why he was leaving.

Arthur tried to convince himself it was. But deep down, he was forced to admit that he was simply burnt out.

Thus far, his work life had been a tragedy. Some cruel god must've taken a disliking to his face. Said deity was now hell bent on making his professional life nothing but misery.

Arthur sighed with dejection.

His face morphed into a scowl while putting a few magazines into his bag. On top of the stack was a cover bearing the name Inter Solar System Job Hunting Magazine for People with Particularly Bad Luck. It was hailed as the last beacon of hope for all those unemployed in the solar system. Yet even this publication could not guarantee him a stable job.

After his ruminations had started treading the same ground for the third time, Arthur shoved it aside and reaffirmed his decision to go back home. Self-employment, he declared to himself, was the next big thing in his life.

Not having a boss meant no one to fire him. He was aware his 'bad luck' might haunt him in his entrepreneurship too. But he still wanted to give it a try. Besides, till now, his terrible luck had only affected his jobs. The other aspects of his life weren't touched by the negative. Yet.

Arthur confirmed with the landlady that he was indeed ending his lease. Retrieving his possessions, he left the apartment complex without a backwards glance.

He didn't have too much in the way of luggage. So, foregoing the option of hailing an auto-shuttle, he chose to walk the short distance to the train station.

He started to whistle subconsciously. His fellow pedestrians pointedly covered their ears while giving him the stink eye. But Arthur was too absorbed with his inner monologue to notice.

'At least I got my deposit back. Mrs. Audrey even gave me a jar of cookies as a farewell gift.'

It seemed not everyone was a radioactive equine's bottom like that Armando 3rd gen. Receiving his deposit back had been unexpected. The rental contract clearly stated he wouldn't if the room was rented for less than 3 months. Somehow, Mrs. Audrey knew of his recent streak of horrible luck and apparently felt sorry for him.

This was his first instance of good luck he'd encountered in months. It was also the first gift he'd gotten from a girl since new years. Didn't matter that Mrs. Audrey was old enough to be his grandmother… It still made him feel warm and fuzzy inside.

He should treat himself to some milk to accompany those cookies for not breaking down in tears when she'd pressed the jar into his hands.

Buzz...

Arthur felt his cellphone vibrate. He pulled it out his pocket to see who sent him the message, and stopped dead in his tracks.

It was a job offer sent directly to his email. Not a work email, but his private one.

Ms. Vileplume

requests the honour of your presence,

for an interview at her modest agency.

You are expected at half after four o'clock,

Friday, February-dd-23XX

at World's End, 5th Central, Whitewood, Luna.

The email was composed in a rather archaic format. Other than the address, date, and time of the interview, there were a few related links listed below.

'Weird... I don't remember sending my CV anywhere recently.'

Arthur became skeptical after reading the address. World's End? Did Whitewood have a place like that?' He quickly checked the attached links, which verified that there was in fact a street named World's End in Whitewood. However, that wasn't the only weird point.

'Who names their daughter after a Pokémon?!'

Who, indeed…. The popular video game franchise which should have ended over two centuries ago was still pumping out titles to this very day, and now boasted over twelve thousand Pokémon.

Arthur could proudly claim he knew them all.

He wrenched his attention back to the email.

He was already dissatisfied with the HR department of this agency. Did they not see those 'fired' entries on his employment record?

What a severe oversight. Even he himself would not hire someone with his own track record. He figured this was a small-time agency looking to hire him for cheap.

Arthur scoffed. He was done with jobs and employment. They were nothing but overrated concepts anyways.

He had made the decision to be self-employed. His great-grandparents were one of the earliest settlers on the moon colonization project. They weren't really considered 'rich', but they had left behind a sizable piece of land in Whitewood. His family home had enough rooms to act as a motel or an inn. It was also built in an exotic Japanese style, harkening back to his great-grandmother's ethnic heritage.

People always seemed confused by this. The Tullett residence was built like a Japanese ryokan, creating a stark contrast to their British family name.

Arthur quickly did a search for TCS Observatory, the name of the agency.

'Their HR department must really suck. How could they not know I studied Hotel Management, not Astronomy?'

"Move it, will you! Stop standing in the middle of the walk!" A passerby finally got angry and yelled at him for spacing out in the middle of the road.

"Ah! Sorry. My bad..." Arthur gave a sheepish apology. He quickly put the phone back into his pocket and hurried towards the train station.

His search had yielded surprising results.

TCS Observatory was an investment firm, not an observatory like the name implied. Its market cap was a whopping 4 times larger than even the Armando Group's. They had stakes in almost every venture on Mars and Luna, no matter the niche. The number of subsidiaries they had on Earth was nothing to sneeze at either.

Why had he never heard of them before?

Why did they make a second headquarters in a small town on Luna?

And most importantly, why did the current majority shareholder of the firm (at a whopping 95% stakes) send him a message from her personal email to his for a simple job interview?

'Their HR staff must be really bad,' Arthur concluded. 'I should fire whoever's in charge after I get the job.'

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