Space.

It’s black for one reason.

Its size.

Even the unimaginable light from a nova only creates a prick of light at a distance. Space is a void, yes, but it’s not completely empty everywhere. The stars are one example. Planets are another good use of space. Dust clouds with more brilliance than mother of pearl. Nebulas and black holes are also thrown in for a bit of liveliness. It’s all an echo system, evolving towards its end. So where does sentient life figure into all of this. Truth is that there is no answer, much like you asking why mold needs to grow on an old bit of vegetable.

However, being an insignificant part of the universe had never stopped these creatures building spacecraft. They travel from one corner of the universe to the other, and still ask the same silly question. Why not just enjoy the view.

Not far away, on such spaceship glinted in the light from a distant star. This carft is painted Kaki green with its duco scratched here and there. It’s maintained as well a can be afforded but still a little worse for wear. So it’s fortunate for the occupants that today’s space ships are built for the mass market... and for idiots.

This space craft is a small delivery ship designed to ferry medium sized amounts of cargo quickly and cheaply from one port to another. It can’t compare with the size of a full blown cargo ship, but it was cheep.

Inside it’s more like a share house with every ounce of space taken up with one persons junk or another. Even segments of the cargo hold were turning into personal space. There were a few posters here and there along with some sometimes-useful item or a half-eaten meal. The whole thing got cleaned and serviced every so often with a hose.

Star ships were once only for the corporations, governments and anybody with more than enough to blow on a super expensive item to evade the taxman. Now it’s every man and his or her dog. Space travel only takes a matter of minuets from one corner of the galaxy to the corner of the next.

Inside the ship a man sits in the pilots chair looking out the cockpit window. He wore an expression similar to those who look out a house window feeling depressed because it was raining outside. The man went by the name of Malcolm, another grubby face in the crowd. Malcolm was in his mid thirties, which in modern years would be the equivalent of a teenager, physical age anyway. Psychologicaly however, Malcolm was at about the same maturity level as a drunken teen at a party. He had beard stubbles on his face that never got any longer and never got shaved in case they got any longer next time. He would have had a young-ish face if it wasn’t for all the rough skin and ragged hair.

Fortunately for Malcolm his poor dress sense wasn’t uncommon in most of the ports he had dealings with. Unfortunately he couldn’t get into any nightclubs unless it was grubby plumbers night.

Behind Malcolm the cockpit door opened with a hiss and a creature stepped through. He was about 2.2 meters tall, had fur all over and had the impression of a jackal with his sharp mussel and long main of yellow brown and black hair. The alien looked at Malcolm who paid it no attention in return.

[ Get out’a the seat, I’m taking over ] Malcolm heard it, but nobody else would have. The mental voice had gone into Malcolm’s head as clear as if he heard it, yet it was more of a knowing rather than an understanding. You could never put you finger on how a word was said, or exactly how a sentence was put together, but you just understood what was needed and made a sentence up yourself.

‘K’ay Talzit.’ Malcolm mumbled as he wearily got out the seat. Malcolm wasn’t a social creature and did a lot of his thinking in his head rather than share it with anybody. The ship that had been Malcolm’s home for five years now was also the home to three others.

The creature named Talzit shifted is bulk into the pilots seat and picked up a head set. The headset read his thought patterns that controlled mental speech and wrote them out in a readable language. Talzit was currently making docking request to a traffic control computer. The best computing power in the galaxy could be found in traffic control as they tried to keep people from colliding with things.

Looking out the cockpit glass a large space station loomed into view. It was a collections of huge rings connected by equally large shafts and was lit up like a glow worm cave by the multitude of different lights. Malcolm looked unimpressed with the display before him while Talzit just concentrated on the job at hand.

‘So why did we come here? I thought we were going somewhere else to pick up the goods’ Malcolm spoke aloud.

[Are you deaf, I’ve been arguing with Thompson about this for two days now. He convinced me we should come here so go ask him.] came a soundless reply.

‘K’ Mumbled Malcolm.

The ship was taken under control by the traffic computer and guided into a docking position as several magnetic clamps extended from the station and connected with the ship. These give the ship support while a docking terminal extended like an elephant’s trunk and joined with the ships main air lock.

Malcolm and Talzit left the cockpit and climbed out and into the ships large cargo bay where the other two crew members waited: A white man of bean pole proportions and a little girl. The man had short hair kept under a backward peak cap with a faded and somewhat unreadable logo on the front (which was now at the back). The girl was about nine and had long uncut and unkempt mousy brown hair. She wore a faded old puff jacket several sizes too big. Despite their looks nun of the crew were actually that dirty because life on a ship needed to have some kind of hygiene. Getting sick a long way from a hospital was no fun. Fitness was also a must. Malcolm was the only one that did regular exercise while the others just took muscle tone and adrenalins supplements. Malcolm always reckoned the supplements were a waste of money and tasted like crap anyway, Talzit always thought he was just being a baby.

‘I was told this port was your idea Thompson.’ Malcolm said looking down at his feet. The Beanpole, who’s real name was Thompson, spoke up

‘Yeah, and it’s because this way we make more money. I’m surprise any of you made money before I joined.’ He finished. Malcolm found this a somewhat amusing statement because Thompson never recognized little Jess. After all, she never made any money anyway.

Thompson had joined the crew six months ago and always wore a scowl. Malcolm reckoned it was just Thompson’s way of thinking that made him always so irritated. He had a fuse about as short as a match and normally didn’t get along with Malcome. Thompson was a thinker, a real shrewd individual that even a banker would be scared of. And like a banker, he was good when it came to cred. Any loophole in any credit union or company, in any universe, and Thompson was your man.

Talzit however took the lead when it came to dealing with their various associates.

[Now you’ve all gotta be here when we talk to Dan about the goods, so you all have about 3 hours to waste. I don’t want a repeat of last time when you all pissed off and I had to come look for you all.] Talzit addressed the group but not the little girl. She sat on one of ship structure rungs and watched the others with mild interest. There had been women around the others once or twice, but they were always fleeting relationships at best. So, Jess had no feminine input apart from the other street girls she had known before she got involved with the group.

‘I talked to Ozzie’ Thompson began ‘and he say we don’t need to worry about the cops here. They ain’t gun’na bother us if we keep our heads down. So Malcolm… no getting put away for drunken disorderly. I’ll be at the main food courts if anybody wants me before the deal. I’m takin a mobile as well, Malcolm you take one too in case you get lost.’ Ordered the beanpole.

Geeze only a few months and he was even ordering Talzit around. It didn’t bother Malcolm that he had treated like a retard child, that was water under the bridge for him. He was use to Tom’s snide remarks. Through all the mess and accumulated junk of Malcolm’s life, Malcolm was aware that he had what could be best described as a school locker. It was kicked, beaten, misused, but not empty, crammed with crap and rubbish. Even though Malcolm had been through it all, and been past the suicidal stage, he still deep down felt pain when someone treated him like a burden. More often than not all Malcolm wanted was to be liked and feel useful. That’s how he got involved with the group… trying to be liked. Talzit thought he was useful, and sometimes felt good to have him around, but it was rare Talzit ever admitted to liking Malcolm. Malcolm was like a dorky friend you don’t want your other friend to know about, and even sometimes put them down just to get a laugh from others.

‘I’ll be right here, if anybody wants me.’ Mumbled Jess. Not so much as an unhappy mumble, but more like a lack of self-confidence. Talzit had actually found her in a particularly bad part of a city. But it was Malcolm who had convinced the group to take the little girl off the streets. Jess, like so many other street children in that city that had taken to sniffing solvents stolen from hardware shops or bought with money stolen from passers by. Jess, however, had one thing may kids on the street didn’t have, and that was a state of the art Comp-Pad. A full cyberlinked computer about the size of a 20th century CD discman. Nobody knows where she got it from, and Jess never said a word about it.

She always kept the beaten up pad in a carry case kept under a large coat or jacket and guarded it viciously sometimes. Malcolm thought it was because it represented her escape from real life and Jess’s extensive track record meant she was more experienced and capable than any adult member of the crew at handling the net, even at the age of nine. Malcolm had used this experience as a reason why she should become part of the crew, the others could hardly refuse.

Without any other words or light conversation the crew left from the main airlock and dispersed through the large space station. Jess stayed behind. As she watched the others disembark she reached into her coat and pulled out a small thin black cord with a small clear plastic hexagonally shaped plug on the end. She reached up and plugged the end into a socket imbedded in the flesh behind her left ear. She sat back on the middle of the floor and let the virtual experience flood over her. To an outsider it would seem strange if not immoral for a little girl to have had cybernetic implants at such an early stage, given that they would have to be properly maintained and all, but the crew had never given this any thought.

It would be easy to get the impression that the crew were a little sick of each other. Even thought space travel is fast, it still wasn’t instant. This of cause which laughs in the face of some scientific principals, but who cares. It was the coming of the 22nd Century when mankind made contact with aliens and scientific trading was opened up. The once impossible “faster than light barrier” seemed unshakeable, until retro-space-drives where introduced. Now you can travel to another star system fifty thousand light years away in a matter of minuets. Now it was the common same old same old to jump to totally different planets and even galaxies.

By this time Malcolm had already passed through customs, an automated checkpoint and a high powered scanner. He still tingled from the quarantine sterilizer field at the gate. Microbes were always a menace in space stations and regular visits through a quarantine field was always a good, and cheep, why of dry cleaning his jacket of bad smells. His registration card was also checked. After the corporate cold wars with the government, everybody had been issued with a registration card. Aliens and fringe livers were not given them as a way of keeping them outside the system.

After the checks he plodded through the main market corridor and paid fleeting interest to the varying holographic displays that advertised the shops. But despite his absent minded plodding, Malcolm had a goal in mind, and that was to visit the local alcohol outlet, and it wasn’t long before he found it.

It was a small shop crammed full of a vast assortment of liquor and exotic drinks for humans and aliens alike. It was the kind of place where it would take you an hour to inspect one square meter of the shop floor to ceiling. Malcolm, however, was experienced enough in places like this and quickly found what he was after.

Outside the station, the kaki green ship known as the Jag slowly rotated along with the rest of the station. Light from a distant sun shone over the Jags beaten exterior and the stations outer hull. As the light crept over the station, the words ‘Welcome to Central Gate space station’ became visible.

Positioned in the outermost orbit around an alien sun, Central Gate space station was a busy hub of traders and travelers from the Terran Domain inner worlds and Alien travelers past the boarders. It had begun as only a small outpost but demand for trade soon developed it (without any help from the government) into a self contained city. It has its own farms, barracks, residential blocks and commercial blocks, a home away from home, a world created completely by man. It also had its own police force. The Police station had a front door, two offices, a mess, it even had a dart board and a coffee machine. It also had a chief. A humble man, with humble wishes, and he was currently performing one of those wishes. Sleeping till twelve in the afternoon.

Standing inside the Chief’s tiny living quarters was like standing inside a second hand shop. Every available space had been filled with something and every ledge was used as a shelf. Even the floor was choked with old books, computer cards and cloths. The quarters had a separate bedroom and bathroom but Laurence only used them as more storage. Besides, why did he need a bed when the couch would do? The couch, in Laurence’s opinion, was more comfy than his bead, and everything was at hand. Breakfast in instant form, a few spare unopened cans of soda, the holovid remote and a few good holomag disks and, of course, his Laptop computer unit that sat resting on top of a pile of open holovid dinner trays.

The only noise that could be heard was Laurence's heavy breathing.

Laurence, or as official documents called him David Laurence, never saw the use of his first name. He had been a police officer most of his life, and the constant use of his last name first had brain washed him.

Laurence was of above average height, and some people who were not his friend may have called him a black man. He was a pale brown that appeared somewhat unhealthy and his hair was always cut as short as possible. His face is round and fleshy despite his frame being a little on the lean side. To everyone who knew him (which consisted of almost anybody who worked or lived at central gate) he was unmistakable; his casual stride and easy manner were registered trademarks.

Laurence always shaved when he had the time, but the black stubbles were had to see on his pale black face. He had a look in his eyes that could stare down any opponent. Every opponent except, of cause, his alarm clock.

His book sized mini-desk computer emitted a harsh series of beeps. He could have opted for it to wake him up with soft chiming, but that never worked. Laurence always woke up instantly, stretched, and swung himself into a sitting position on the couch. In response, his mini-desk stopped its wall of noise. He scratched himself, and considered going to work.

After a shower, Laurence got dressed in black trousers and a light blue button up top. Then, throwing on a dark blue puff jacket, he left his apartment opening his small apartment door. Outside his door was a small circular courtyard that had a see-through roof that looked out to the stars. Closer to the station, Laurence could see all the early morning space traffic fly around in some kind of pattern (although it normally just look like a haphazard rush).

Leaving the courtyard he strolled lazily through the neighborhood. Despite it now being close to lunch, the place still felt very calm and un-crowded. There were just a few kids playing in the metal streets on bikes or bouncing a ball. The air felt strangely fresh for a space station. Laurence took in a deep breath and exhaled a sigh. He could smell that the air had come from the gardens and hydroponics farms further down. He believed the gardens did a better job of keeping the air clean than the troublesome air conditioners at the heart of the station.

His steady walking soon took him to the food docks at the back end of the neighborhood. At the food docks all kinds of humans and aliens labored with boxes full of fruit and vegetables. Most of them gave Laurence a knowing glance (or equivalent for those aliens without eyes) as he passed into the docks. Inside the docks there were small loading cars that took the food down to the market place close to the main market hall. It was dim inside and smelled strongly of fresh vegetables, not so fresh and the occasional vegetable that had been dropped on the floor. Behind the docks Laurence walked into the hydroponics farm. The farms were made up of banks and banks of soil less growth channels that sprouted all kinds of planets. At one end the plants were new and just starting to grow, while further down many had large bulbs of fruit and vegetables. Most of the plants were strange and oversized taking up their entire channel with a single large red and white speckled bulb.

Overhead, artificial lights kept the plants under a steady glow and a warm temperature. As Laurence walked a man called out a welcome from on top of one of the banks as he walked by. Laurence casually waved back over his shoulder.

Leaving the farms, he walked down a small side street and then emerged onto a wide corridor. Almost directly in front of him stood the police station, right where he left it. To Laurence, this was everything he needed.

Walking up the stairs to the small double doors, Laurence pushed down the handle and casually walked inside, a smile on his face.

Laurence had a small office inside the small police station. It was only big enough for two people to sit down and the door to be opened inwards to the office. It would have been a much larger room if Laurence had filled it to capacity with all kinds of junk.

Part of being a police chief was to know everything around him, and that meant reading the daily news.

As he sat down at his desk, his preprogrammed routine booted up his workstation computer and it turned on several floating holograms. The routine also began making coffee in the small shiny steel coffee machine and the air conditioner took the early morning chill out the room. His workstation’s mail program also searched through his electronic mail box. It Turfed any garbage messages that it found, eventually popping up another window displaying today’s worthwhile messages.

By the time Laurence had sat down, his coffee was made, his mail was ready, and as he leaned back in his chair, the daily news report was getting ready to begin.

Sipping his exact temperature coffee, Laurence went into his usual trance as he sifted though the piles of ‘to-do’ notes and reports from the nightwatch officers. It wasn’t like Laurence wasn’t paying any attention to what he was reading. It was just after so many years of doing the same thing, six days a week, fourty eight weeks a year, he had come to his own little autopilot routine that made things easy. There was a lot of garbage to wade through and in this quiet station, not a lot of stuff demanded all his attention.

The daily news went through it’s introductory messages to the tune of: “Today’s news reports brought to you by the Terran central broadcast centre. Bringing you up to date info as it happens.” Laurence paid it no attention.

Leaning forward, Laurence began to type a reply text message to a mail entry he had found. He typed onto his scuffed plastic desk while the tiny workstation projected a holographic keyboard onto the blank desk surface.

It was as he pressed the key to send that the first days report came on.

“A terrible computer virus has been devastating the commercial sector” it said.

This caught some of Laurence’s attention, but only enough so that he could still concentrate on his mail.

“The as yet unknown virus dubbed the typhoid virus has crashed several commercial banking systems. The deadly virus has been found to be highly contagious and so, special restrictions have been placed on all inter planet Net communications.” This really caught Laurence’s attention. There had been computer viruses and things like them in the past, some were very destructive. But to close down and restrict NET access between planets was unheard of.

Laurence took a sip of his coffee. Today was shaping up to be very interesting.