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[Callisto is a small moon.]
Callisto is a small moon with resources enough for only a couple billion people. It has a real small-town, everyone-knows-everyone feel. Three of Meteor's five parents had practically grown up together, here the other two had each settled here after inheriting housing-space rights that their parents had left them. That's how it is-- No one ever immigrates here on purpose if they have a half-decent reason to live anywhere else this side of Sol. Callisto is a place you're born into. A bloodline as much as it is a city.
No one ever left, either. Meteor's parents, the five of them, seemed perfectly content to rot in place, all shacked up together. They'd hitched up their five cubes and claimed a spot near enough to downtown, and had no plans of ever mobilizing again. "This is prime space, son!" His father Charles had constantly asserted, "It's only going to rise in value, and you'll be glad when it's yours!"
But his father had been wrong. Sometimes a small town spits a guy out when he can't fit in, or when luck's against him. Meteor would have to go.
In fact, Meteor was at this moment going very very fast.
He'd stolen a smallish Atmocraft that he didn't know how to fly. ("push the 'Go up' and 'go forward' levers all the way and leave them there" was more-or-less working thus far.) It had seemed like a good idea at the time, what with the whole escaping his kidnappers and ongoing chase. (Those thugs were hot on his heels already, he could see them in the rear screen.) Then again, murdering Mz. Baldash, the leader of their little operation, had also seemed like a good idea at the time, and Meteor was already weeping with regret over that.
Turns out, weeping is incredibly dangerous while attempting to fly an unfamiliar Atmocraft, especially if you're being chased by a dozen Cosmic Co. hitmen. Though the blur of his tears, he registered the outline of a garage door. In the 8 milliseconds before impact, his brain had just enough time to think "Fuck!" before everything was a fractal of steel, neon, and glass.
...And then everything was quiet.
