“In medias… Reserved it for—What? The plural of what? What did I say… Oh, is it just ‘media.’ Fine, pedant… Anyway, I locked us in for… yeah, for the blitz. Yeah. With the me-dee-uh. All the medias,” she said, putting a wink in her voice. “I’m messing with you. Anyway, get back to work… yeah, later.”

She hung up, slipping her phone into her jacket pocket as she walked toward the reception desk. “Hi, I’m Jessica Dran. I have conference room 2C reserved for one o’clock.”

The receptionist looked at his computer, the spring-loaded metal of his keyboard another sign to outsiders that District Seven was high-end flex space. “Ah, yes. Have you worked out of our offices before?”

“I have.”

“Very well. Here is your room key and your badge. My name is Santangelo. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do for you.”

“Did the display units get brought to the room?”

Here he made a downward wave gesture to scroll his screen until, “Yes. I show that our setup team placed three V-760s just outside the room for you. They’re mobile and quite light, so you should have no trouble arranging them as makes sense to your presentation, but if you so wish, I can send Brianna up to handle it for you.”

“No need.”

Jessica took the elevator up to the second floor, feeling a bit silly not taking the stairs up one flight, but nerves triggered her sweat glands enough as it was. She placed the display units around the medium-sized conference room, then again, then once more, trying to find just the right angle for the half-dozen visitors she was going to try to impress.

Relax, she told herself. You have to be chill. She tried to ignore the voices, the ones in the back of her mind telling her that her idea was stupid. That it was basically 2048’s version of what used to be called a Time Share. That she was nothing more than a, what did her grandfather used to say, ‘snack-oil salesman?’ No, that can’t be right. But was she, though? That was the question she feared the most. Having to really get people to understand it. ‘What is it you’re actually proposing?’ ‘Well, let me tell you…’ she said to the air.

It all made sense to her, on paper. The Martian settlements were two decades behind. That was just a fact. Everyone knew the reasons were myriad and the blame malleable, depending on the audience, but it was true nonetheless. That was the beauty of it, though. She didn’t care about Mars. She wasn’t selling Mars at all.

She was selling Mercury.

“You’re nuts!” She’d heard it a million times. Everyone at Stanford said it. Maybe not in those exact words—sometimes it was an even more insulting “Interesting take on how to start and end your career at the same time” or the condescending “Hmm, novel approach”—but they all meant the same thing. Through all of the jokes and side-glances and whispered conversations she remained steadfast in her calculations, in her theory. They were right, it was a novel approach. It was also the right one.

She took out her phone-top computer and connected to the display units. Another benefit of paying the extra for District Seven was the BT-4.2 seamless connectivity. Her presentation popped up on all three units, complete with the pleasant hum of her lo-fi hip hop ‘waiting room’ music.

She checked her watch implant. A little under forty minutes left. She had time to dry-run one more time.

After pantomiming some small talk-infused intros, she waved her hand at the front-facing camera on her mobile and the first slide appeared on the monitors.

“Mercury Rising isn’t just a figurative revolution, but a literal one. And it is the secret not only to getting back on track colonizing Mars, but any planet we desire as Mercury revolves around the sun.”

She waited a practiced amount of time, anticipating some amount of verbalized dismissal from the jump. No problem, she’d bring them right back into the fold. “I can sense some doubt,” she said, adding a real-as-I-can-make-it laugh. “Well, let me ask you this: What is the closest planet to earth?”

She would wait. Let them get it wrong with their Venus and Mars answers before waving her hand again to bring up the next slide. This one showed the earth until she gestured with her hands to pull back to a solar scale. The screen came alive with the various planets flying around the sun in their respective orbits. (She was proud of her subtle use of whooshing sounds to give the years-long journeys a sense of urgency.)

“What do you notice?” She waited. Waited.

“Look… here.” She gestured and the slide focused on one orbital pathway: Mercury. “Now… what do you see?” With that, all of the planet’s flew along different colored elliptical paths that cross-crossed each other at various points.

Here she would watch each of them as the realization took over: Mercury’s orbit did in fact not only take it closer to earth than any other planet, but closer to every planet! She smiled, anticipating the reactions, the jaws dropping, the follow-up questions. She answered them out loud for practice, trying to make it seem as though the question had never occurred to her, but still she had the answer.

“That’s just it, we have to rethink everything.”

“Great question. This is over ten solar cycles.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m getting at. We create a sort of galactic Bullet Train that can carry us toward each planet in the solar system, pulling the station right along with it. It’s free to us; Gravity does the energy-heavy lifting. We simply have to invest in creating a quasi-sustainable, in-orbit station that we refuel and replenish each pass. Other than that, we let it ride. Think about it. We create a super-station that has manufacturing capabilities, that can mine the surface for the Mercuronium-3–providing enough energy for millions of years of space travel. Funded by tourism. And that’s what you’re investing in. Who wouldn’t want to work, to raise their families, to write their great novels or complete their astrophysics PhD work while getting a guided tour of our solar system?”

Here, she paused. She’d dropped a lot of information in a small amount of time. She’d need to let them process it.

She allowed herself a smile. She was prepared. Ten minutes left until the investors showed up.

It was no time share. No ‘space real estate scheme.’ While it was true that investors would have to pay astronomical fees, and while it was true that none of them would own the station but would own rights to sell stays at the station for a time, it was science, not charlatanry. She had a noble purpose. They’d see that. They’d believe.

She put out the complimentary snacks and gave herself a once over using her mobile camera.

She forced her failures out of her mind: Moon Rafting Unlimited; Hilton Orbital; StarCruise. Things just didn’t work out with each of those, but no worries. They were good ideas, she said to herself in a hushed voice, nervously adjusting her glasses, smoothing down her hair.

She heard the elevator ding in the distance. Maltine was bringing the clients down the hall toward the conference room, doing his best to chat them up, get them in a good mood.

She forced a smile.

“Show time.”