Community, Part 1: Exploration

Posted on Fri Oct 2nd, 2020 @ 4:07pm by Lieutenant Jane Sinclair MD, DVM

Mission: Interpersonal Drama
Location: New Shanghai, Western Continent, Quadra Sigma III

It had only been a few days since Jane Sinclair moved into her new home in the civilian settlement on the Western Continent of Quadra Sigma III.

Named "New Shanghai" by its settlers, the settlement began as a central meeting hall and a handful of prefabricated buildings in close proximity to many of the non-agricultural residences. Over the next ten years, the town grew to a population of over 12,000 and would include dozens of unique and aesthetically pleasing structures.

The original meeting hall was expanded into an open-air amphitheatre which could accommodate the entire population of the planet and then some. A central administrative building housed the local government, including security and rescue services. A replicator shop could manufacture industrial and consumer goods of almost any size. Artisans and craftspeople had set up shops. Though most homes had a food replicator, there were still multiple restaurants and cafés, offering citizens cooked, fresh food, most of which came from farms, greenhouses, and gardens across the colony.

The townspeople had also established a medium-sized medical clinic, a school, a church, a bar (that brewed its own beer and also served local wine, as well as synthehol), a florist, a tailor, a hotel, and a spa, among others. Three maglev train lines brought people into town from stations in the different rural areas. A fourth connected the downtown with a seaside port, and a fifth went to Anser Station, five hundred kilometers away.

The centre of town also included a public Transporter station, which generally served to Transport people between New Shanghai and the mines on the Eastern continent.

Jane learned quickly that people tended to use their bicycles when traveling within their neighbourhood or within downtown, at least on those days where the weather control system gave them sun and warmth. People going downtown ride to one of the maglev high speed train stations, just five kilometers from Jane's house, and it carries them the remaining fifty kilometers into town (where they then ride their bikes again). They only used the Transporter if going to the mines, if it was a scheduled rain day, or in case of emergencies.

Jane was not a fan of exercise, but biking around her neighbourhood and in town seemed like a fun way to stay fit. When her next door neighbour gave her a pretty blue bicycle (her teen daughter had just gotten a new one), Jane committed to using it whenever possible.

In a smart looking short-sleeved shirt and leggings, both black, against which her blue hair practically glowed, Jane rode her new bicycle along the country road that connected her house to the rest of the world. The farmland she rode past was diverse, and included orchards with various fruit trees; fields containing variations on wheat and corn; vegetables of all types. On some grasslands, herds of animals native to Earth and similar worlds grazed. Solar panels and windmills dotted the landscape, as did weather control devices and atmospheric purifiers.

It reminded her of home on Vega IX. Though most families had a food replicator in their home, people everywhere generally preferred the real thing. Starship life usually required replicating one's meals, but on a world with arable land and hardworking citizens, replicators only supplemented their diets, and ensured people wouldn't starve in case of a disaster.

As Jane cycled, she stopped whenever she found a person working the fields to introduce herself. In doing so, she met several of her new neighbours. The residents of most of the nearby homesteads had agreements among themselves to work in each other's fields, and to coordinate so large harvests happened at different times. Mr. Rykov's apple trees and Ms. Salimullah's tomatoes were being worked on now, and the first of Ms. T'Pan's four batches of coffee beans were being harvested too. Next week, the community would move on to different crops. Jane made plans to join in with harvest whenever her duties permitted it, and made a handshake agreement with some of the ranchers for use of her land for grazing (to be ratified by the Colonial Administration downtown this afternoon).

The train station was empty (it was mid morning, and everyone was at work or school). The train provided a smooth ride into town, taking only fifteen minutes to traverse the distance.

Her first stop in town was the church. The building itself was non-denominational, and inside there was art and scripture pertaining to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Vulcan spiritual beliefs, Bajoran faith, and the most common religions of Andoria and Rigel IV. A handful of trained chaplains offered services, and brought in specialists from offworld on a monthly or quarterly basis for those religions for which they were unqualified to practise.

Jane expected that her duties would prevent her from being able to attend a church service every week, but she planned to make an effort. Places of worship were often the central aspect of a community, and a cross-denominational one such as this prevented that community from becoming exclusive. After years of finding insufficient outlets for her Faith on starships, she was ready and eager to attend a service again.

After a short meeting with the Reverend who oversaw the Christian service, where she was invited to return on Sunday at 1100, Jane explored the shopping district. She introduced herself to the florist, the tailor, and one of the butchers, before making her way to the medical clinic.

The New Shanghai Medical Centre fit somewhere between a doctor's office and a hospital. It had all the necessary equipment for treating almost any injury or illness that could befall Quadra Sigma III, but its capacity was only 100 or so patients. Starfleet and the Federation Department of Health were expected to provide relief assistance if a disease or disaster affected more than 100 at once.

The Medical Centre Administrator was a Coridanite doctor named Verek. He had been a junior doctor in the original Quadra Sigma III colony on the Eastern continent decades earlier, which had to be evacuated. He returned when the planet was reopened for settlement and had just two years ago been promoted to seniormost doctor on the planet.

Verek had a staff of three doctors plus himself (all specialists of some kind) and twenty-five nurses of different qualifications. He was exceedingly happy to learn another MD had moved onto the planet. He took her to lunch at The Spring Oyster, one of the best restaurants in the town, which served seafood harvested fresh from the ocean, less than 100 kilometres away. They got to know each other and discussed her future among the colonists.

She left the lunch with an idea firmly in her head, and promptly made her way to the Colonial Administration building, to sign the agreement she had made with her neighbours and to see how her new plan might best be accomplished.

TO BE CONTINUED