As the elevator ascended, Matthew expected his thoughts to be filled with all the wild ideas he had imagined this place to be in the past few weeks. A military bunker deep beneath hundreds of yards of earth, or some government research facility hidden in the middle of the desert, or even a secret corporate project in the middle of an unsuspecting skyscraper. But his mind was devoid of them all. Instead, he only concentrated on his beating heart while he clung to Maia’s thumb, prepared for just about anything.

    Still, he could have never prepared himself for it.

    It was confusing at first as they ascended to some sort of rooftop, the darkness in the distance, dotted with small, white points moving sideways in unison. He turned his head to his right, following the metallic surface of the rooftop stretching along as it gradually arched up. He craned his head, expecting it to end somewhere, but it didn’t. Instead it simply curved all the way to the other side and joined the surface to his left, like a gigantic ring.

    “Impossible.” He said as his mind hurried to make sense of the scene. The dots were stars of course, suspended on the dark vastness of space, and Matthew found himself on a rotating space station.

    Maia said nothing, just watched his awe-filled expression with a slight smile on her lips. Her hand moved to a console nearby, fingers tapping on it before a hissing sound and the upward movement announced the platform they stood on ascending again, high into the void above.

    “This is just impossible!” He said again, shaking his head. “A secret space station the world didn’t know about, ok. I could have somehow believed that. But this thing is… it’s easily a mile from end to end! Impossible!”

    Maia let out a soft laugh. “Your world didn’t build it though.”

    Matthew turned at her, frowning. “My world?”

    “Yes. Your world.” Maia shifted her gaze towards the stars in the distance, the platform still rising steadily upwards. “It’s just one amongst thousands of human worlds in this little corner of the universe.”

    Matthew looked at her for a few moments, then burst out in a genuine laugh, but stopped when he saw her expression hadn’t changed. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

    “Look around you Matthew. Why do you think have I brought you here?”

    He did just that, swinging his head around to take in the station in more detail. The size of it was still overwhelming, though it wasn’t very broad, maybe two hundred and fifty yards. But if it was a mile in diameter as he judged, then it was more than three miles in circumference. And a third of its section was completely transparent, revealing the lush forest beneath.

    As turned his head around more, he spotted a giant purple-ish orb behind Maia’s frame. It took a few seconds before his mind made sense of it to be a giant gas planet, the one they were probably orbiting. He followed the opposite of the arc that illuminated two thirds of its surface until he spotted a bright source of light. The sun was much smaller than the usual sun he saw every morning back home.

    “I don’t understand. How is this even possible?”

    “It’s normal.” She said. “It takes a little bit of time to completely suspend your disbelief.”

    “But… thousands of human worlds?” He looked at her, his expression pleading for understanding.

    “Yes. All seeded thousands of years ago.”

    It was too much for Matthew to take in for a moment. He closed his eyes, unable to believe all he ever knew about the word and the universe to be a cover up of epic proportions. But as he did, he noticed something strange happening to his body, but couldn’t quite place what.

    “What’s going on?” He asked her.

    She smiled. “Where do you think we’re going?”

    He looked around again, and it all clicked in one moment. The station was rotating, thus generating artificial gravity. If they were ascending towards the hollow space in the middle, that meant…

    A sudden rush of nostalgic childhood memories and emotions flooded Matthew. He was in space. He was getting lighter with every second and he would be able to feel weightlessness! He couldn't help but grin like a small child.

    “Unbelievable…” he said, still struggling to comprehend his situation. “And I’m sorry to be repeating myself, “ he said, turning towards Maia again, “but how is all this even possible? How can there be thousands of other worlds without us knowing about it?”

    Her expression darkened a bit. “It is because of… “ she trailed a bit, trying to find the right word perhaps. “Because of a cycle.”

    Matthew frowned. “A cycle?”

    “It doesn’t matter right now.” She said, and then her fingers curled around him.

    “Wait! I-” But he was too late and he found himself being hurled upwards. She released her grip on him and he flew up on a slight angle. The sensation of falling then spread around his body and he flailed his limbs instinctively, but he didn’t fall. He just floated away from Maia who after some time caught up with him. They were in center.

    He watched as Maia lifted her huge body from the platform and let herself float gently while the platform retreated a little distance back, but leaving a little hook-like handle behind which Maia grabbed to maneuver around. And Matthew found out that the falling sensation wasn’t something he appreciated and dampened his enthusiasm a bit.

    “It takes a little while to get use to.” Maia said as she approached him slowly.

    “Well, I admit I was one of those kids who, if all dreams came true, would have collectively rendered space full of unemployed Astronauts, but I didn’t expect it to be this scary and uncomfortable.”

    “Just relax. Let it happen.”

    He did. He breathed in deeply and let his muscles grow slack. Indeed, the falling sensation wore off a bit as he concentrated on the stars in the distance and his mind made the station rotate around him rather than him against it.

    Then, he finally freed his mind to his surroundings and truly appreciated the situation he found himself in. He really was in space, the giant planet on the distance unrecognizable to any he knew in his solar system. He thought he must be light years away from his home.

    “How come we can breathe?” He wondered out loud. “Shouldn’t we suffocate and freeze to death?”

    “There’s a force field around the station.” She said, her huge body looming behind him. ”It keeps a rather large amount of warm air inside the bubble and keeps those pesky micro asteroids away.”

    “Ah.” Force fields. He fancied anything was possible now. “And what do you usually do up here?”

    “Oh, fun like this.” A finger suddenly swooped Matthews legs from under him and he found himself rolling around in empty space, unable to fight against the rotating motion.

    “Ma..ia..ple...ase...this...is..arhg!” Her crashed on a finger, latching his hands on it instinctively.

    She laughed. “Ah, the size difference, or rather the mass difference, is so much more pronounced in zero-g than on the ground. So easy to play around with you.”

    Matthew gasped for air, the surroundings swirling about in his vision. He had to close his eyes to force himself not to throw up. He didn’t want to know how throwing up in space felt like. But just as he regained his bearings, her finger flicked and unlatched him. He only had a few brief moments to gaze at his destination before he smacked against her right breast, and bounced back from it. She was like a planet and he was like her moon, unable to do anything about it.

    She reached out with her hand at him and held out her index finger where he could relatch himself, absorbing his momentum before she retreated her hand and he was floating steadily. Until that moment he had thought of her being to his side, but with his feet facing her now, his mind saw her as if being below him, like a giant sea monster beneath the crystal clear surface of a vast ocean, the threads of her floating red hair like tentacles spread all around. It reminded him of that first time in the tub. Damn, she was beautiful.

    “Why have you brought me here, Maia?”

    She looked at him through the shifting strands of hair with her green eyes for a few moments before she moved her head to gaze at the gas planet. “You want to know my story, don’t you?”

    His heart paced a little faster. “I do.”

    “Then you have a understand a few things first.”

    “That certainly seems to be true.” He took a brief glance at the rotating station around them. “What did you mean by seeded?”

    She breathed in a little deeper before she spoke. “It means humans did not originate on the planet you come from, or any one of the other thousands of planets they inhabit. Humanity has a planet of origin, but it’s long… dead.”

    “Dead?”

    “Yes. Dead, abandoned, uninhabitable.” She said, looking back at him and crossed her arms and legs, like lying on a bed. “The story of humanity’s origin is long, and one for another time. Right now, all you need to know is this: the planets humans inhabit are not all at the same stage of advancement. Some like yours are in the middle of the information age, others are still learning how to shape bronze. Some planets have globe-spanning empires ruled by the might of gunpowder, others are fractured into a thousand small states.

    “A select few planets are so advanced that their cities consist of miles-tall skyscrapers, and only they know about each other. Others have to ascend to earn the privilege of joining them.”

    She paused, letting Matthew take all the new information in and process it. It was as if she was pitching a sci-fi script for a movie or an idea for a book. It was ridiculous, but he knew that it was true, she saw it in her face, there was no twisting on her words, no deceit. She didn’t need to.

    She reached at Matthew with her hand, pinched him gently on his leg and made a small pull, slow enough to cause him to fall and land on her abdomen, like landing on an asteroid. He looked around, appreciating every detail of her body, her curves, the way her breasts floated and formed this perfect, seductive shape no bra could achieve, and behind him, the way the pillars of her thighs stretched high above, not needing to worry about gravity. Why did this harbinger of death have to be so beautiful?

    “And those advanced planets, “ He said, distracting himself from his thoughts, “they decide when one of the others can join them?”

    She let out a small chuckle, the tensing of her muscles slowly launching him upward again. “Not quite, but that’s for another time too. The reason I’m telling you all this is because when I do tell you my story, I don’t want to deal with your inevitable questions that would follow unless you understood all this. And what better way to convince you than… “ she spread her arms.

    He understood. “Fine then. All good stories begin with a small hook.” He spread his arms too, looking at the rotating station. “Tell me, what is this place?”

    She smiled, a gentle, beautiful smile, but one that betrayed a hint of sadness. “This place has a simple purpose, Matthew. It’s my prison.”

    And he was hooked immediately.