Kessa Dahlstrom
Hi everyone! This is KEssa. Marta asked me to tell your about our wonfderl experience ascending New Gaia’s space elevator. Ooh, it was so beautiful an amazing!
We started in Zero West at the SPACE ELEVATOR EMBARKATION AREA, where maybe a dozen other travellers were already waiting. EVeryone smiled and said hello, as New Gaians always do with those we meet, strangers or not. There was a sense of excitement among us that only grew as more people arrived, bringing the total to a couple-dozen. We were headed for space! It was not something most people did more than a few times in their lives, and for most people, Marta and me included, this was our first time.
Prettyty soon a gate opened and we were ushered forward, past a host, sorry I didn’t catch his name, who asked each person their name and compared it to his list. There were no tickets or ID checks; after all, it’s New Gaia, not Earth, right? The host gave a short speech with instructions and warnings, and then we all traipsed out along a long dock that stretched into the sea.. You should have seen the fishswimming around the dock! I didn’t know their names, though. From there we boarded a hydrofoil that whisked us out to the space elevator platform. Everybody looked upward as we skimmed in toward the evelvator. It was a white line that disappeared into the sky at a point that grew higher and higher until you had to start craning your neck upward to find it.
At the platform, we passed through a series of tunnels and corridors that led to a round, glass-walled room that was our elevator car. There were chairs arranged facing outward and equipped with safety straps. A smiling, gray-haired man who looked official stepped up and made a kind of announcement, which something like, “Friends and Travelers, welcome to the New Gaia Space Elevator. My name is Thorsten and I will be your host today. You are on the upward car, and our next stop will be in outer space!” He tried to give enryone an injection for space sickness, but I wouldn’t take it. Marta hjad hers, of course.
The views! Oh my gosh. First it was like being in an air pod, looking down on Zero WEst from the air. But then really fast we got higher and higher, and you could start seeing the outlines of our continent, Sylvania. It was mostly green, though some brown, too. And the light glinting off the ocean! It was unbelivable. But that didn’t last very long. You started looking clouds, and then you realized you were looking at the atmosphere! It was pale blue.. That lasted a long, long time, and then even the atmosphere started to thin noticeably, and behind it was the black of space. And then the stars came out! First just a few, but then more, and more, and more, until the view was glittering all around with millions of tiny, perfect circles of light on an infinitely black background. Thorsten said, “Friends and Travelrs, we are now passing the Kármán line, 100km above the surface. Welcome to outer space!”
We werestill an hour from the top, but I didn’t mind at all. It was so beautiful up there, surrounded by stars. I let the little noises and conversations of the elevator car fade out of my consciousness and just gazed out the windows, allowing my self to become lost in the infinite spangled emptiness.
DOUG WALKER WRITES 