The Chance Encounter of Two High Speed Transports

Colenzo Majuba was heading back from work. He sat at the front of a high speed bus as it shot from the outer mining district back toward the colony. The bus was seventeen decks tall with three rows of seats per deck. The seats were arranged like those of a stadium allowing everyone a view. The view was breathtaking: to the right thousands of large asteroids dominated a horizon, flickering with the light of the settler inhabitation; to the left, the deep blackness of space. The sun shone from somewhere behind the bus, lighting the outer asteroids and casting long shadows onto those behind them. At this point the asteroid belt was fairly thin but further away to the right the belt thickened, rising like a wave of tiny lights.
The bus was cruising a connecting highway that ran from the “undigested” asteroids to those now digested and inhabited by settlers. It whizzed pasted the asteroids at a few thousand kilometres per hour. Most of the people on board were returning from a shift at the mining district. They were all in the low quality high quantity asset class; the high quality asset class would be travelling in their own vehicles. The majority of the buses’ passengers were paying no attention to the view. Rather, most of them were watching multisensory TV on whatever display they possessed. Some, like Colenzo, had bought into the idea of head-ups on their glasses; others used the busses displays - paying a nominal fee for the service rendered; few were rich enough to afford a neural head up display.
Colenzo was sitting with a friend he had worked with his entire mining career. The man’s name was Niall. They were both speed express low skill heavy loaders: men who donned suits during they day to allow them to float in free space, moving micro-asteroids so they could be converted from mindless space junk into low value resources. Sometimes Colenzo and Niall would pair up and move larger asteroids, moving pieces as large as three hundred meters in the weightless environment. Most of the time though, they floated around watching multisensory TV or listening to music, whilst nanomachines did most of the work. Occasionally the nanomachines would encounter a problem that their simple programming could not handle and Niall or Colenzo would be forced to intervene. That made for an exciting day.
Colenzo flicked through the hundreds of channels quite quickly passing new shows he had never seen before as well as many long-standing series. He skipped the reruns and eventually decided to open a catalogue and peruse the options. He filtered first by genre, settling for drama. Then he filtered out the various annoying actors and films that he had already entered into a sixty eight thousand item, filter-excluding list. Whilst he did this a playlist of his favourite tunes hummed away in the background. It had followed the prompting “question and answer” form he had filled in three days before: How do you feel when you come home from work? Dissatisfied.
To his right his friend laughed, absorbed in his own world of comedy series. Colenzo envied the man; Niall seemed to be able to escape work and completely forget about life. He also seldom seemed bothered by life. Colenzo on the other hand was perpetually bothered. Since a young age he had vacillated between periods of anti-depressant addiction and periods of what he termed “real life.” This was because something, in the drug-induced contentment, would eventually begin to annoy him. The psychiatrist explained that it was simply a hormonal homeostatic response but Colenzo believed that it was actually a genuine intellectual dissatisfaction that no drug could truly solve. His neo-integrationist psychoanalyst agreed. At times Colenzo got fed-up with trying to solve life and resorted to the drugs. Everyone was quite happy when he did this; his wife found him less taxing, his lover found him more exciting, his kids could talk to him and the human resource sector moved him up a class to medium-low quality high quantity asset class.
For a while Colenzo had even had gene-therapy to address one of the underlying causes, but much to his wife’s annoyance he had eventually paid to have his genes returned to their original state. He had tried explaining to her the intellectual principle behind it but she would not listen. His therapist had convinced him that this was indeed what life was about and using an advanced theory of constraints had solved the problem by redefining its boundaries.
“You want to be happy?” The therapist asked.
“Yes.” Colenzo would reply.
“But happiness comes from the ups and downs of life.” The therapist would then explain, “You cannot experience pleasure without pain. Thus you cannot be really happy unless you are sometimes unhappy.”
Problem solved. Well not really, Colenzo thought, but he could also see the point. To be happy you also need to accept that at times you’ll be unhappy – then you’ll be happy. He flicked to the news.

Murders, death and destruction.

Depending on the channel some of the perpetrators were defined as terrorists, revolutionaries, disgruntled employees or Satanists. Psychology had failed. The answer had never really been found. Although many claimed it had, most took the position that the answer was really a matter of the question. You could be perpetually happy, but why would you do that? Colenzo tried to refocus upon the news.
The bus turned without slowing at all, it cut through the traffic, taking a gap that left a five hundred meter margin of error on each side as ordained by the local traffic company. The bus now shot through the asteroid field passing deeper and deeper into the chaos. The closeness of the asteroids heightened the sensation of speed for anyone watching, although nobody was watching.

On the news was a report detailing a multiple murder that had happened five minutes earlier. The murders had occurred on a bus similar to the one Colenzo was on. Live from the bus, still heading to its destination, the report interviewed some of those involved.
“He had been muttering to himself for quite some time. At one point I had to raised a shield to keep the noise out…” The man was cut off and another brought on, “He just pulled out his weapon and opened fire,” whilst he said this the bus companies medic worked on a laser burn under the man’s eye.
Colenzo nudged Niall and told him to turn to the report. His friend willingly obliged and then gave Colenzo a questioning look.
“Tell me,” Colenzo began, his friend tilted his head (carry on), “The bus will pay for the funeral expenses and the medical expenses, won’t it?”
“Of course.” Niall replied.
“But it is Metero.”
“Is it?” The other man responded. They both quickly flicked their eyes to the displays. The heading at the bottom stated, Multiple Metero Murders. “Well then I don’t suppose they will.” Whilst they continued to watch another vehicle pulled up next to the Metero bus and connected with it; the bus had not slowed down at all. The dead were offloaded and the vehicle pulled away. They both noticed the logo on the side, which the editor of the report enhanced – Hades Mortuary Services.
The news agency and Hades had a mutually beneficial contract. Hades got advertising, the news agency, Mineorite, got to use their onboard cameras as well as those at the mortuary itself. Mineorite’s CEO had once explained, “The public like nothing more than the sight of unhappy people and where better to find them than at a mortuary or the scene of a death.” Neither Niall nor Colenzo had ever heard that titbit of useless information. They probably never would either.

Colenzo logged on to the CoPut site to check the status of their indemnity and medical cover schemes. CoPut was the transport company that owned the bus Niall and Colenzo were both on. As far as Colenzo could remember CoPut offered various cover options for its clientele, including medical cover in the case of an accident. Colenzo opened the page that detailed the CoPut transport services that ran from the mines to the colony. He scanned the pages of information that detailed their service agreement with anyone using the bus service. The bus offered: security services; the latest traffic controller systems; high speed change-overs; and many other features - but did not offer medical cover for its users.
Colenzo forwarded the article to Niall and drew his attention to that fact. Niall nodded and then explained, “I thought you knew. They dropped medical cover to lower prices. Apparently they were loosing out as many miners wanted to save the credit and were hence using Metero.”
Colenzo felt a wave of panic, he had always feared accidents and even given advanced composites, force fields and traffic controllers he felt that high-speed transport was intrinsically unsafe.
In a rush he logged on and searched the general web for “medical aid.” Thousands of offers flashed up on his display. Three-dimensional adverts exploded into his face. Voices blurted into his ears. In response he put on a filter, which deducted a nominal fee from his bank account. The world quickly became more manageable. There were however still thousands of options. As always, at the top of the list, was the latest offering from the Corporation. Colenzo logged onto their site and hurriedly scanned the options. An assistant appeared upon the page and asked if he needed help. Colenzo accepted it (and again a nominal amount was withdrawn from his account to pay for the financial service rendered).
In a hurry Colenzo explained, “I want just a basic medical aid scheme, right now. Cover just… just the whatever. Well not basic, I have that. I mean big stuff - accidents, death, surgery…”
“How about this one sir? We’ll loan you the money to buy this scheme, then you can pay us back, as you see fit, over your life. Once you’ve paid it off you own it… like a house. From then on it is just maintenance costs really. You can even use it as leverage. From your data the Corporation feels that it would happily loan you the required credits and let you pay them back at standard loan rates.”
As Colenzo stopped to ponder the option the hairs raised on the back of his neck. Something felt very wrong. “I’ll take it,” he almost shouted.
“Please place your index finger on the gene scanner on the seat and provide voice authorization.” the assistant said. Colenzo did this as quickly as he could. “Please read the terms and conditions.” Colenzo attempted to scroll straight through the terms and conditions but found he could not. The assistant on the screen spoke to him, “Mr. Majube” it said tutting, “You cannot read that quickly, it would be in your file if you could. So please, take your time, we don’t want you signing anything you don’t fully understand.”
The bus pulled over to pass a heavy-mover and then pulled back again. Normally Colenzo would not have even noticed but for some reason he looked out through the semi-transparent head-up display and noticed a dot, expanding to something. Then he realised they were on the wrong side of the highway. He looked around in panic and reached out for Niall’s arm. The something was now a major feature of the window. He grabbed his friend’s hand as the Hades Mortuary Service vehicle pounded head on into the bus. He didn’t have time to scream.