=Arcadia= 
Let me guess, you’ve never heard of Arcadia, right? That’s all right, nobody has.
Arcadia is not an exoplanet you will see discussed in the mesh. Even in the gatecrashing community, its existence is nothing more than a rumor. The gate address and star system designation for Arcadia remain unlisted in public databases. This is because the group that has chosen to establish a private hideout here has gone to great lengths to conceal its existence, including the fact that there is activity between the [[Martian Gate]] and this system.
While [[Pathﬁnder]] is, of course, aware of Arcadia, as they are cognizant of most activity involving the Martian Gate, even in upper ranks of the [[Planetary Consortium]] there is little hint of Arcadia’s existence.
The particular group of gerontocrats who have initiated and bankrolled the construction of an aerostat habitat in this cloudy planet’s atmosphere have also worked hard to convince Pathﬁnder to remain closemouthed about it. If it weren’t for an information leak that has passed minor details on the project to certain privileged circles in the Consortium, even Firewall would have no inkling of its existence.
Who is behind this project? What are their intentions? Why do they desire secrecy? These questions remain unresolved, despite some efforts by Firewall vectors to dig deep into the mesh. The answer could be as mundane as a private resort for an exclusive club of the undying rich. It could be something more intriguing, such as a base to research dangerous technologies. It could be something unexpected, like a secret arrangement for a particular organization to meet remotely with the Factors, far from prying eyes.
Until we have some indication of a potential x-risk, this data rates low interest from Firewall. We will of course continue to monitor for mentions or signs of the project, however, just to keep on the safe side.
||>   ||= **Arcadia** ||= **Overlook** ||
||> **Type** ||= Terrestrial (Venusian) ||= Tidally-Locked Rocky Moon ||
||> **Primary Star/Satelite of** ||= M3V (Red Dwarf) ||= Arcadia ||
||> **Gravity** ||= 0.94g ||= 0.01g ||
||> **Diameter** ||= 10,300 km ||= 630 km ||
||> **Atmospheric Pressure** ||= 96 atm ||= Negligible ||
||> **Atmospheric Composition** ||= Carbon Dioxide (92%), Nitrogen (5%) ||= Trace Argon and Nitrogen ||
||> **Surface Temperature (Mean)** ||= 480 C ||= 160 C ||
||> **Day Length** ||= 95 days ||= 15 days ||
||> **Orbital Period** ||= 193 days ||= 15 days ||
||> **Satellites** ||= 1 (Overlook) ||= None ||
||> **Gate Access** ||= None (accessed via Martian Gate to Overlook) ||= Martian Gate ||

==Floating Above It All== 
**[Begin Personal Log Transcript, Source Unknown]**
Stepping through a gate is a disconcerting affair, even if you’re fully prepared for the different environment.
There’s always that sudden moment of change, when you ﬁnd yourself in new gravity, under a new sky, seeing by new light, and something in the back of your mind goes hey, you’ve just shifted X million light years, so stop feeling like you’re in control of anything. If you’re unlucky, the direction of the gravity ﬁeld is skewed or you ﬁnd yourself looking down the barrel of some paranoid security goon’s gun. If you’re really unlucky, well, you’re dead.
Or worse.
Stepping through from [[Mars]] to Arcadia, the change is simply that there’s suddenly not much gravity at all. That, and you’re likely to ﬁnd a whole planet hanging over your head—a ball of whirling clouds, luminous in local sunlight or glowing gently back lit. The local gate is parked on a rocky moonlet, Overlook. The workers haven’t bothered to roof it over yet; that’s part of a later stage in the construction process. They’ve been too busy mining the moonlet for materials for their development project. Rather than push whole spacecraft through a piece at a time, they set up a string of autofactories and loaded them with the minds of engineers who were happy to work totally virtual for a few months in exchange for fat bonuses.
The engineers haven’t been told that they’re actually forks that will be deleted after their terms. The people behind this project are quite serious about no one knowing their secrets.
So now the moonlet is measurably lighter and there’s a working spaceport a couple of hundred meters from the gate. On my visit, after I’d gotten over the philosophical twitch in my hindbrain and stopped gawking at the planet (even though I’ve seen [[Venus]] and other planets from orbit, I’m still a sucker for space porn), I picked up my kit and kicked off, ﬂoating over to the port and the next stage of my work trip.
Five hours later, I ﬁnally ﬁnished arguing with the minds and systems running the port, and they arranged for me to be on the next suitable shuttle down to Cloudtop, the oh-so-misleading working name for the aerostat project here in Arcadia’s upper atmosphere. They were confused why anyone would want to haul a meat body down into the gravity well at this point in the project. I didn’t explain, but I insisted. Of course, I could’ve pointed out that their masterpiece will be no damned good to anybody if it can’t be reached by the people who want to use it when it’s ﬁnished. But, okay, fair enough, it’s not ﬁnished yet.
Which is why the luxury shuttles haven’t been constructed yet. Those will be two-stage affairs, with fusion-powered orbiters circling between Arcadia and its moonlet and a vectored-thrust aircraft to carry the passengers that will detach from the orbiter at high speeds, deploy wings, and s-l-o-w right down to dock with the aerostat. (Hmm. Maybe egocasting from the moonlet and resleeving on the aerostat will feel safer as well as cheaper after all. Oh well, not my worry.) Instead, I had to go in with a consignment of materials that were delicate and valuable enough to get a relatively smooth trip down. I got a nice well-padded pod, and they even gave me a real-time display of the ﬂight procedure —presumably to remind me that I was taking a stupid risk should I be in danger of getting bored.
First, the streamlined cargo container was ﬁtted with a detachable fusion thruster/scramjet/variable-geometry aerodynamic array, then it kicked off the moonlet and spent a few minutes killing some of its orbital velocity. That dropped it into the upper atmosphere, where it could take advantage of the wonders of aerobraking for a couple of decaying orbits—in other words, a couple of hours of tedium for me. Once it had decided that it was now an aircraft, the wings deployed and the pilot systems shed most of the remaining velocity with no more than a few bone-jarring bumps. Finally, the ﬂight system unceremoniously dumped the cargo container, ﬁred up its scramjet, and returned to orbit, with a near-audible electronic sigh of relief from its controlling AI.
At which point, if either of the two consecutive braking chute systems had failed … well, I’d be resleeved back on Mars, without even a tale to tell. Fortunately, they didn’t, and they even put me in about the right place, gently drifting down at subsonic speeds. The container shed the second chute, pushed out a buckytube-mesh balloon, ﬁred up a fusion burner to ﬁll it, and quietly transformed itself into a Zeppelin, ﬂoating gently through the Arcadian clouds. Half an hour after that, the radar display I’d been keeping half an eye on between reviewing work schedule reports from the aerostat went beep, telling me that it’d found our destination. A few directed fusion pulses carried me over until the tug-copters could scurry out, latch on, and tow the cargo container in.
As I emerged from the passenger pod, the supervisor that was fussing over the ofﬂoading of the consignment did a very deﬁnite double-take. (This was evidently my day for confusing or annoying synthmorphs.) It turned out that the moonlet port systems had neglected to tell it, at any time, that some inconvenient meatbag had insisted on coming down this way. I guess that this may actually have been deliberate comedy, and to be fair, the joke worked.
So I spent ten more minutes explaining myself to the local construction management systems, and then I ﬁnally walked out of the cargo bay. Which is how I got to be the ﬁrst real, protein-bodied, human-minded transhuman being to gaze upon the artiﬁcial world of Cloudtop.
(That name //has// to change.)
I began to unlatch my helmet, and the synthmorph who had hastily been assigned to me jumped forward. “That may not be advisable, Mr. Hussain,” it said.
I paused and stared hard at it. “And why not?” I asked. “All the reports assured me that the interior now contains a fully breathable atmosphere.”
“Well, yes …” The ego controlling the morph was human—an engineer named Haliassos—and I could hear the nervous squirming in its voice. “The atmospheric mix is completely breathable, and the pressure is ﬁne, of course …” (Of course; it was slightly below external pressure, which at this altitude on Arcadia is one-Earth-normal.) “But there’s a lot of construction work still going on … some exotic solvents are in use … the soil mixes in the landscaped sections are being sprayed …”
I gave him my best I’m-not-laughing smile. “Nonetheless, you reported the atmosphere as //breathable//. If it proves otherwise, responsibility //will// be assigned as appropriate.” I finished the manual unlatching, told the suit to release the helmet, and lifted it away, watching Haliassos stand there in paralyzed confusion all the while. Then I took a deep breath and smiled a little wider. “There,” I said, “that all seems ﬁne. You people just need a little more conﬁdence in your work.”
Haliassos turned to lead the way, the robotic shell displaying complicated human body language cues. I’ve no doubt he was still expecting me to drop any second.
Actually, my suit had been telling me for several minutes that the air was ﬁne for my morph, especially given its enhancements. However, it never hurts to keep people off balance.
Another ﬁve paces took us out from the entrance chamber where this little exchange had occurred and into the main dome-space of the aerostat. Then I did stop to look around and take things in, and I did honestly feel quite impressed.
Calling this structure an “aerostat” makes it sound like a zeppelin—a glorified, stretched-out balloon, like the ﬁnal shape of the shuttle system which had brought me here. (Well, it does to me, anyway, but I’m old enough to be old-fashioned.) That’s not how Venusian-style float-colonization works, of course. These balloons are dome-shaped, weighted and constructed to ﬂoat with the ﬂat base downwards, and the inhabitants simply live within the balloon. Perhaps you’ve seen images from the interiors of Venusian cloud cities, and this aerostat wasn’t actually any bigger than a lot of those—but it was uninhabited as yet, which meant that most of the space was wide open, with dim levels of local sunlight ﬁltering in and mixing with the glow of the internal artiﬁcial lights.
I looked over to Haliassos. “I see that the other reports are also accurate,” I said, “so presumably the problems with the timetable are exactly as bad as I understand.”
He looked back at me. It looked like he was getting his confusion under control and deciding to start prevaricating. “We are having some routine ups and downs,” he said. “Can I just clarify what your position is, exactly, and what the purpose of your visit is?”
“You can,” I said. “I report directly to the Beni Qasim Directorate. Unlike the construction staff, I am not a contracted temp worker or indenture, nor have I signed a set of non-disclosure agreements so restrictive they can make your robotic eyes water.” (Nor am I an edited fork contracted for a limited term of work followed by deletion, I most diplomatically did not add.) “Unlike the compartmentalized work groups here, I am privy to the entire project plan. I am the Directorate’s representative on Arcadia, Andreas Haliassos, and I need to sort out this little problem. So shall we proceed?”
Haliassos nodded and trailed along behind me as I made my way towards the main control deck. I hoped that my reading of his proﬁle had been correct, in which case that hammy little speech would have thrown him off balance just enough to keep him worrying about his job—and maybe even his personal safety—without giving him time to think about whether I’d told him the truth about my real mission. Unless, of course, he was the source of the problem I’d actually come to ﬁx, in which case he most likely had me pegged as a threat from the start.
Chances were, somebody on the aerostat was already wondering if I’d come to track them down. The information leak identiﬁed by the Beni Qasim’s intel team was subtle, but deﬁnitely indicated that someone—some outside agency—had at least one informant in place somewhere on the construction team. And this was a leak that I was going to stop, as quickly as possible.
I had not lied to Haliassos, but I told him only part of the truth. I do in fact report to the Beni Qasim Directorate—because I am one of the Beni Qasim. Not all of us are spoiled sybarites and old-money heirs; some of us earned our places and like to keep our skills honed. Likewise, the Beni Qasim have their objectives and priorities, and we don’t like to waste our money, even if we did inherit it; so when we spend rather a lot of it building a private hideout beyond a secret gate setting, we look to keep our secrets.
This was going to be fun.

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