New-Hope – City of a thousand domes
Prima-Prime!
There it was, the end of our honeymoon trip and the beginning of our journey. Looking out of the giant observation window on board of the Neu-Hindenburg, it looked very little spectacular — not like the origin of so much.
It did feel like an answer waiting for the question that hadn’t been asked yet.
But from orbit the domes were barely visible — faint reflections under a quiet sky. I think this was also an allegory to our journey — only faint hints were visible under the fabric of our lives, but oh the bustle and adventures that lured promisingly beyond.
First world beyond Sol,” Vladimir said. Typical him! Sounds like he’s reading a line from one of his beloved manuals.
But even he stayed at the window longer than strictly necessary.
We left the Neu-Hindenburg and headed straight to UEO headquarters in New Hope.
What a difference! From the elegant and quiet aether-driven luxury straight into the city of a thousand domes. There was so much to see!
But as freshly baked Junior Lieutenants we had to report to our new unit first thing. The initial stretch we used the amazing moving walkways that took us to the tram station. There we boarded an aether tram straight to headquarters.
I expected a lot from UEO headquarters, but honestly I was terribly disappointed by the blunt, brute architecture. The building, representing the very organisation that drove the expansion of mankind, that drove science and exploration across the universe, and represented United Earth and mankind, should’ve resided in a beautiful,
bright and lofty building with lots of glass and light — just like the domes it was built under.
But the actual building seemed to have fallen straight out of a 1960’s
Soviet propaganda magazine!
Pure concrete, straight and massive.
In one word: Ugly!
Though Vladimir’s step faltered at his first glance at the building, he just shrugged it off and said:
“Brutally effective and probably the fastest possible way to build.”
I snorted at this — of course.
When we reported in, the HR officer frowned at our files and the arrangement we made at the academy — that we were promised joint assignments upon our marriage.
Apparently he wasn’t aware of this arrangement before, and made it perfectly clear that this was a lot of hassle for him and it would take a while to sort out.
The first dark clouds on the horizon?
But it was a Friday afternoon, and we had a whole weekend to explore the city before we were to report in.
And the city had so much to see!
Of course the Voyager Statue in the Robert A Lee museum was our first stop.
When visiting New Hope on Prima-Prime — the first world ever claimed by humankind beyond Sol — a visit to the Robert A. Lee Museum is not optional. It is, quite simply, where everything begins.
At the heart of the main hall stands the statue known as The Voyager.
Cast in radiant gold and positioned before an oval aperture framing the painted vastness of the cosmos, the figure commemorates the first human to set foot upon this world. With that single step, the age of terrestrial civilisation ended and the era of interstellar colonisation began.
The statue’s proportions deliberately echo classical Renaissance ideals — a quiet homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of human symmetry — though here the explorer’s face remains hidden behind a sealed visor. It is not the man who is immortalised, it is the act.
Around the pedestal, visitors gather daily. Schoolchildren, cadets, tourists fresh from orbital transfer. They photograph. They whisper. They look upward.
Outside the museum stretch the thousand domes of New Hope — shimmering shields against Prima-Prime’s hostile atmosphere. Within these transparent sanctuaries lies the beating heart of human expansion.
It is here that the United Earth Organisation (UEO) established its headquarters.
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