“Checkmate!” my little brother squealed with the satisfaction of beating me.
“Good job!” I clapped sarcastically, knowing that I’d let him win so that the game would be over quickly. “Can I go to sleep now?”
“Best 2 out of 3?” he proposed.
“I think that it would be best if you went to sleep now,” mom interjected. “I said that you could play one game before bed.”
“But mom-”
“No butts.” She gave him a stern look.
“Fine!” Matt huffed. He crouched down, and jumped onto the top bunk, which he’d insisted on claiming the second we’d gotten our room. When we’d initially found out that our beds would all be stacked on top of one another onboard the ship, he was scared about falling. Once he realized how low the gravity was onboard, he was no longer scared, and wanted to be as high up as possible.
I silently thanked our mom, and crawled into my spot on the bottom bunk. The room was small and square. The bunk beds were like shelves carved into the gray metal wall. Four massive, padded shelves. The wall opposite the bunk beds was covered in a programmable screen displaying whatever whoever got to the programmer could set it to. Currently, it was set to a desert sunset. There were no windows in the room, so I guess the screen was there to make the place seem more open and less claustrophobic.
The other two walls were embedded with shelves and appliances. Depending on the button or latch, you could be accessing a toaster, a shower, or maybe even that little shelf where Matt hid all his toys. Our whole life was packed into a single room.
I pulled down the cover for the entrance of my shelf bed, creating a small box for myself within this small box. Once I was enclosed in darkness, and the cover was a solid wall, I enabled the screen on the inside of the cover so that I could keep myself entertained before I slept.
Being in deep space, the only relevant social media I had access to was the one made up of the ship’s crew and passengers. Everyone onboard had access to it, however your feed was highly customizable so that you could control who you found and who could find you. To create a profile, you had to input your basic information, and using that information, you could filter out who could interact with you and who you could interact with.
The only aspect I really cared about was age. Being 18, I kept my default setting of see and be seen by 18-21 enabled. That meant that I could post what I wanted without being seen by my family, and I wouldn’t be sought out by old creeps.
There were quite a few people I could interact with, but after being on board for the past few years, I knew them all by name. Some of them, I could only know by name, seeing as how we’d blocked each other. Sometimes mutually, sometimes not.
I had made some acquaintances, but it was a bit lonely not really having any of what I might like to call real friends. One thing that sometimes brought me closer to others was the drama. While there was definitely some real drama to be had onboard, most that ended up on the feed was manufactured. Two people would hit each other up, and come up with a story to spend the next few days to enact in the most elaborate way possible.
On the one hand, we all had access to an extensive library of stories in the form of comics and books and shows and movies. On the other hand, nothing could beat in-person drama to follow intently. That was one thing none of us were ready to let go of from Earth entertainment.