dream of the 20 watt sleepwalker

The dream of the 20 watt sleepwalker…

That my working title for a short story I’m working on for “Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine”. I have a few ideas I want to get in there, but I may need to break it up into a few different stories. I would like to set it a few hundred years in the future, lunar and Martian colonies, the Earth suffering from Kessler Syndrome, and manned missions for exploration and mining around the solar system.

One problem I’m having trouble with is the technology.

Part of the backstory is that people want to live in space, not on Earth or the colonies. If they do ever end up on Earth or the colonies, it is unlikely they will ever be able to return to space. They are the sleepwalkers.

There is distrust amongst the government, the corporations, the colonies, and the sleepwalkers. All of them have their own agendas, and all of them are trying to manipulate the others. Any communication between them is filtered through layers of bureaucracy, propaganda, and misinformation. Anyone of them could be the enemy, or all of them.

…The government wants to control the colonies, the corporations want to control the government, the colonies want to control the sleepwalkers, and the sleepwalkers want to be left alone.

The sleepwalkers are the ones who are most likely to be sacrificed in the name of progress. The sleepwalkers are the ones who are most likely to be left behind when the dust settles. They are the ones who are most likely to be forgotten.

Earth - Academic Research - History, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, and Ethics
Moon - Seleno Industrial Mine -
Hohmann Station - Earth/Mars -
- skip Mars - LIP Mining Colony X -
Phobos Station - orbiting Mars -
Terrapin Station - areostationary orbit
Europa Outpost - potential for life ?

Kirkwood Gaps, Hecuba Gap, Alinda Asteroid, Cybele asteroids

Claim jumpers, nothing militarized, no weapons, no military presence. Generations of digital currencies.

No Assurances

Meet the sleepwalkers, forgotten, drifting through the vacuum.

They choose space. Away from the life, noise and chaos of Earth and the colonies.