Reverie

"Wake up! Wake up, Beto! You're going to be late again, you idiot!"

Beto drifted into wakefulness as he heard Rin at the door, rebuking him awake. It had become a part of their routine over the years. Beto had cultivated the not-so-rare talent of sleeping through alarm clocks as if they weren't there. But somehow, Rin screaming at the door did the trick.

Perhaps it was thanks to her generally belligerent disposition, thanks to which she seemed to bellow more than speak. Or maybe it was that Beto had come to associate her voice with the impending drudgery of the workday to come. Beto wasn't sure, but he was all too happy to have her as a companion on his daily commute.

"I'm up! Just give me 5 minutes. I'll be out."

"5 minutes? It better be just 5 minutes or I'm going to burst in and drag you out myself."

Beto jumped out of bed and rushed into the bathroom. He knew he had to make it out in 5 minutes. Otherwise, she would barge in and see what a mess his room was, and that always ended in a barrage of insults hurled his way.

A bath? No, there was no time for a bath. Not even enough time to empty his bowels. That had to be managed at work. He threw his head under running water while brushing his teeth simultaneously, put on his usual work clothes, rushed out of the bathroom, and headed for the main door, visibly satisfied with his multitasking skills.

As he reached for the door handle to head out, he looked back through his pod's window one last time before leaving for the day. He had spent most of last night gazing out the window wondering what lay out there, as he did almost every night since he was a kid.

                                                                              ===

You see, Beto was born within the bounds of the Ursa ecosphere on planet Arcadia, as were most people on Arcadia. Like most Arcadians, he had spent all his life confined within the massive ecosphere.

No one was allowed to venture out, except those who absolutely needed to for government-sanctioned duties. Even for them, excursions were tightly controlled and were restricted to pre-determined zones.

His father, Ari Bon, was a high school history teacher who had a lifelong interest in the pre-Arcadian history of earthlings and how humanity had managed to successfully settle on Arcadia.

"You know Beto, you'll often feel like you have nowhere to belong. That you are always away from home somehow. But know that it's only in the stories of the past that we Arcadians can find meaning" Ari used to say to Beto hoping to ready him for adulthood.

But little did he know, that Beto was already beginning to feel like something was amiss as a teenager and would spend a lot of time looking out the window, into the red barren expanse of Arcadia that surrounded their ecosphere.

Beto would ask a lot of questions about how they ended up on Arcadia and would rummage through his father's extensive library of books on pre-Arcadian Earth and early Arcadian settlement history. Over the years, he'd got the basics down.

                                                                          ===

Earthlings used to live out in the open on Earth, exploring and settling in many different ecosystems. Earth had millions of different types of animals and plants and all kinds of different places and 'nations' that earthlings could see. What a wonderful life it must have been!

Then over 300 years ago, everything went downhill. In the year 2136, Earth's global temperature rise crossed 3°C above pre-industrial levels causing extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and drinking water shortages in many parts of the Earth.

To their credit, the earthlings had anticipated many of these adverse effects and had been dealing with them relatively peacefully in the preceding decades. However, 2136 also set off a devastating and irreversible chain reaction leading to what was dubbed 'The Great Tragedy' by chroniclers of the time.

The rising temperatures dried out one of their largest rainforests called The Amazon. Over time, wildfires began to erupt as they often did. But this time they didn't stop, and soon enough, the entire rainforest was ablaze.

The wildfire raged on for many years, pausing during the wet season for some temporary relief, but resuming again soon after. The entire continent was engulfed by a plume of toxic ash, blocking out their starlight. The cloud of smoke and ash could be seen hanging over the continent from space.

What was particularly catastrophic was that The Great Tragedy released more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in three years than all of Earth's nations had done in a decade, exacerbating Earth's warming and pushing the global rise beyond 5°C.

Entire nations were rendered inhabitable, billions died and surviving earthlings had to live in primitive ecospheres, not very different from the Ursa ecosphere on Arcadia, within which conditions could be made suitable for living and growing food.

Those who didn't find shelter in any ecosphere or wanted to continue to live out in the open had to herd towards the poles, which had become warmer and had somewhat suitable living conditions.

Decades of diplomacy and cooperation were thrown out the window and a free-for-all ensued for the control of fresh water, ecospheres, and habitable lands. It was dubbed the 'Fourth World War' by Earth's chroniclers and was triggered by the desertification of many countries in what was called the Mediterranean region.

As a teenager, Beto was most interested in what Earth was like rather than in what it became. He would spend hours looking at pictures of different kinds of animals on Earth.

"I'd definitely become a biologist if I lived on Earth", he'd often think to himself.

It was only in the past few years, in his mid-twenties after his father passed away that he started to learn more about how humans ended up on Arcadia.

After the great tragedy, one of the first primitive ecospheres was pioneered by Duncorp - an aerospace company that had made it big by supplying governments with spacecraft and ecospheres for interplanetary exploration.

It was a great ecosphere, far ahead of its time, with the ability to regulate oxygen levels, humidity, temperature, and even circadian rhythms over its spread of 150 sq. km.

However, it was archaic compared to Duncorp's magnum opus - Ursa, which is spread out over a massive 24,000 sq. km. and took over 100 years to build.

Beto remembered reading about how humans can survive within Ursa thanks to MOXIE - an oxygen-generating system that was first conceptualized in the 21st century to explore Mars. Using MOXIE-generated oxygen, Ursa maintains the composition of its artificial atmosphere, as well as the atmospheric pressure, while accounting for Arcadia's atmosphere.

The history books said that Arcadia was first discovered by earthlings in the late 21st century in a neighboring star system. Earth's scientists had reason to believe that Arcadia had water and maybe even free oxygen in the air.

Even back then, they were half-right! Ursa utilizes the water in Arcadia's canyons, as well as the water vapor in its atmosphere to sustain Arcadia's human population. Arcadians weren't as lucky with free oxygen, however, as it seems Arcadia's atmosphere doesn't have enough for humans to breathe, which makes Ursa's achievement all the more impressive.

What's interesting is that the same person was the reason behind earthlings moving into ecospheres and humans settling on Arcadia after the great tragedy- Toya Dun, the CEO and owner of DunCorp. at the time.

According to what Beto had read in his father's books, she was an ambitious and idealistic woman who wielded a lot of power as the owner of the only company on Earth at the time with technology capable of interstellar travel.

Witnessing the consequences of the rampant abuse of Earth's environment by past generations and the complete breakdown of cooperation after the great tragedy, she was greatly disillusioned by earthlings.

She decided that she was going to create a new society based on a different planet that would stand as an example of coexistence, sustainability, and equality for future generations.

Fighting tooth and nail against governments and corporations alike to protect Duncorp.'s technology, she started gathering a small group of elites in different fields to form a group of people who would be the founders of this new society - The Argonauts.

In 2168, DunCorp.'s biggest space shuttle, The Argo, took flight to cover the 14-year journey to Arcadia. Today, 300 years later, the trip is much faster taking an average of 5-6 years, wherein only 2-3 years pass for the passengers on board thanks to time dilation.

The Argonauts, along with Toya and her team spent the first few years laying the groundwork for Ursa. Multiple excursions of engineers, mechanics, scientists, and construction experts followed and soon, the early and much smaller version of Ursa became habitable for the early Arcadians.

It was only decades later that thousands of new settlers began to arrive, including Beto and Rin's ancestors. Somewhere along the way, however, migration from Earth became much more controlled and the newly formed Arcadian government gave out very few permits each year. There were even instances of earthlings trying to smuggle in people, plants, or animals. But since the government controls Arcadia's orbit, they are never allowed entry.

Beto had looked hard for books on the earliest days of Arcadian settlement and the Argonauts among his father's collection of both Arcadian and Earthling books, but he couldn't find much. Most accounts only mentioned that they arrived in 2182 and began work on Ursa and skipped to decades later with the first few migrations.

                                                                            ===

Still holding onto the door handle, gazing outside his window, Beto was lost in a reverie. He looked at the rocky red dunes in the distance, which accentuate every drop whenever it rains. The mouth of a massive canyon at the edge of his view on the west and finally the horizon in the distance. The horizon which represented the firmament of his curiosity, the limit to his knowledge of Arcadia.

It's as if his world ended at the horizon, beyond which lay only imaginations and stories of the past on Earth and Arcadia.

"What must the Argonauts have found beyond that horizon when they first arrived? What's out there?" he thought to himself, as the realization dawned on him that he would probably never receive permission to go on an excursion outside.

Suddenly, he saw the forests he had seen in books about Earth appearing on the lifeless dunes in front of him, streams coursing through them, with all kinds of birds flying across the landscape. They transposed themselves onto the arid Arcadia landscape as if a mirage.

"How could earthlings have messed up that badly? They didn't know what they had", he chuckled to himself.

He remembered what his father had said to him all those years ago. It made more sense now more than ever. How could he belong in a place he knew nothing about?

"I will find out. I will find out what's out -"

*Thud!*

The door smashed into his face, knocking him out of his reverie. He was sure he hadn't pulled the door handle down yet, then how-?

"What in the world is taking you so long? You said 5 minutes, didn't you?", bellowed Rin as she charged through the door.

"Oh god! You were up all night pouring through these earthling books again, weren't you?" she said, pointing to the menagerie of books strewn all around the floor and the bed.

"You know you could get in trouble if someone found them. Come now, we need to leave"

"Yeah, let's...umm, yeah, let's go", muttered Beto, still reeling from the after-effects of having the door smashed in his face.

"Someday, someday", Beto thought to himself, as he pushed Rin out and closed the door behind them.