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much of the ground population as we can get up here.”
    “Sir,” the staffer interjected, his hand flashing over the touchscreen of his tablet, “the U.N. has remained firm on the sovereign status of the satellites and their quotas during the past four challenges, and all of the satellites have documentation that proves they are either at, or slightly above, sustainable capacity right now.”
    “
Optimal
capacity, obviously,” Lambert said to the staffer. “But optimal is a best-case scenario, Harley. They can accommodate more people if they have to.” The staffer, who knew better than to contradict the President, nodded silently.
    At that moment, the tram exited the sublevel railways, and they could see the open area of the satellite through the tram’s thick transparent roof. The three of them glanced quickly upward to take it in, and only the staffer, Harley, brought his glance back down to the President after only a few seconds.
    Verdant was a massive cylindrical superstructure, enclosing a collection of cylinders within cylinders, twenty in all, each one a level, known as a “floor,” housing apartments, offices, greenspaces, gardens and public areas. Most floors rotated independently at a high-enough rate to generate the equivalent of a standard Earth gravity: Notable exceptions were Floor 3, dedicated to hospital functions, which rotated at a slower pace to create an approximation of lunar gravity to aid physical recuperation; and portions of the science and research floors, which either rotated at various rates, or not at all, to provide different levels of gravity as required by the researchers. Only the outer floor, Floor 20, and the central column, Floor Zero, extended the length of the satellite—from the “north” to the “south” poles—the rest of the floors extending from each pole, or from only one of the poles, and ending in terraces that overlooked or underhung other floors in a staggered but attractive pattern. This allowed the outer floor, and certain areas of the inner floors, to enjoy an open “sky” that extended, in some places, all the way to that floor’s opposite wall, and included the added visual sight of balconies rotating at various rates, each one above slightly faster than the one below. Many of the floors had high-enough “skies” to allow the formation of hills and pastures, mainly on the south end of the satellite, encompassing wooded areas, parks, even lakes and streams. Others provided park areas in the living spaces, where the lowest ceiling of any one floor was still a respectable four meters in height.
    All of the satellites had essentially been built this way, even Qing, the Chinese satellite, with minor variations between them. The satellites had been commissioned by the U.N. when concerns about the consequences of global warming, and mankind’s inability to reverse the process, originally forced the world to consider the radical idea of moving humanity off of the planet almost altogether. It was proposed that small numbers of humans, taking advantage of automation, could continue to live on the ground and provide needed raw materials to the satellites, allowing the bulk of the population to live in relative safety in multiple orbital oases… basically, removing humans from the environment they were so good at ruining, and which threatened someday to retaliate and overwhelm them.
    However, budgetary limitations scaled back the project severely, leaving only three satellites built by the charter, the third co-funded by the remaining oil barons of the Mid-East, and a fourth by China exclusively. Most of the human population still lived on the ground, and the overriding proportion of them wished fervently that they could live on the satellites instead.
    “Look at that,” Lambert said, prompting Harley to look upward again. “Look at all the open, relatively unused space in here. They made every effort to create these fancy greenspaces and luxurious high