Chapter 3: 3

3. Amuro Ray

Born on the Earth, Amuro was brought to space by his father. There were multiple generations of mechanical engineers in Amuro’s family, and because his father was employed by the military he was exempted from obligatory space migration. Conversely, because his father Tem Ray was an engineer in the Earth Federation Forces, he qualified to go to space. The difference between forced emigration and qualification for space was night and day. Traveling expenses to the space colonies were waived for those who qualified, while migrants were saddled with loans that took three generations to repay. It was harsh and unreasonable.

Amuro moved to a Lagrange point (understand that these are regions where the gravitational pull of the Sun, Earth and Moon are neutralized) containing Side 7, the newest cluster of space colonies being built. There was only a solitary standard-size colony located there, two-thirds finished, and its construction had been halted due to the current war. There was no established proper name for a single space colony, so when people said “Side 7” they were referring to that unfinished colony.    

Despite the fact that it hadn’t been completed according to spec, the cylindrical colony, three kilometers in diameter and over twenty kilometers long, was a mid-sized city free of inconvenience, even though the influx of war refugees had made things chaotic. 

As for the current war, it was being fought between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation.

Side 3 was located in the Lagrange point on the opposite side of the Moon. Because it was the third of the colony groups built, and because it was the farthest away from the Earth, anyone sent there was required to be self-reliant. Rather, it was only natural that a sense of isolation from the Earth took root in the people forced to move there. Despite that, once they saw repayment of the loans to the Earth Federation as overtaxation, they turned their attentions inward. It was a breeding ground for rebellion. When rulers start to think about plundering from the masses, their position of authority is taken from them. It’s a fundamental rule of history, and one that boiled over in Side 3 during the era of space immigration.      

In the beginning the Earth Federation believed that Zeon Deikun, the man who had started advocating for Side 3’s independence, was the founder of a new religious sect, even mistaking him for an occultist. Actually, that was all part of Zeon’s strategy. While maintaining that appearance, he laid a foundation to establish political power within Side 3, forming a government based on a doctrine of guiding new immigrants to space. The goal was the establishment of an independent nation, one free from the exploitation of the Earth Federation. To achieve this, Zeon Deikun used an extremely archaic system: a monarchical republic called a principality.   

There was no spiritual foothold for the immigrants, in space or anywhere else. In fact, after taking the week-long voyage from the Earth to Side 3 via the Moon’s orbit and seeing the enormous artificial masses known as space colonies, there was no way anyone could believe that they had arrived at their new lands. There was no source of emotional repose. Only the feeling of weightlessness. What was more, they couldn’t even see the Earth any longer. After nearly a century, a generation was born who had only ever known Side 3. However, they had also grown up raised with the awareness that their ancestors had come from Earth. 

And that Earth? A place of plenty, of greenery and oceans. The children of Side 3 grew up learning that plants and animals originated from the Earth. However, the government that controlled the planet was stealing from them. It forced them to live in poverty, unable to afford to return. Because when you try to maintain the space colonies in perpetuity, that alone exploits the time people have to live. 

Work in the lunar mines, in order to maintain the colonies. Work to produce the materials needed to maintain the colonies. Compulsory labor, in order to provide yearly maintenance to the colonies. These things by themselves robbed people of their time. Additionally, over half of the income made from this labor would go toward paying back the loans for travel expenses and residency permissions. 

All recreational activities had to take place inside the colony. There was no time to do things on the level of fostering the local cultures they would have known on Earth. When the only thing people had to do for fun was sex, it couldn’t be called recreation. Rather, the outlawing of homosexuality and control of sexual practices in order to maintain the population, following the outbreak of diseases that occurred from life in space, felt like nothing more than a return to the Dark Ages.  

In order to rescue people from their mental and physical confinement, Zeon Deikun declared the implementation of his bygone system. He brought water to the people’s hearts, and showed that there was richness to be found. The people of Side 3 responded with wild enthusiasm.

As a result, the Principality of Zeon was able to achieve its independence, but that political action was not to be enacted by Zeon Deikun, but his successor Sodo Zabi. That it was Sodo Zabi who had Deikun assassinated would remain a secret. Also, the reason the Zabi family became lords of the Principality of Zeon was because the name carried so much weight that they were left with no choice but to use it. At any rate, the Zabi family was rapidly transforming Side 3 into a military state, and the people gave them their full support. 

If the other groups of space colonies followed Zeon’s example and became independent, it would be the end of the current capitalist order. That would mean the collapse of the Federation’s vested interests, not to mention its very function. 

Furthermore, the Earth Federation government sympathized with Zeon’s fight for independence. That was why the space war, mankind’s first, ended up becoming protracted. 

Side 7 was the newest colony and the one farthest away from Zeon, so it was still under the control of the Federation. That was where Amuro Ray had gone. 

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Amuro had no recollection of the fun days spent on the Earth during his junior high years, most likely because the image of being separated from his mother was so painful. The memory of holding his father’s hand as they left…

“I’m sorry, Amuro…I just can’t handle outer space.”

Remembering his mother saying something along those lines hardened Amuro’s heart like a ball of ice. It was after he arrived at Side 7 that he would learn her words weren’t the actual reason. Mother is with a man, a man who isn’t Father. Her face in his memory had given it away even then, he told himself. He had stayed silent and departed their house, clutching his father’s hand, but it was likely he thought, My father is a pathetic man. 

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However, Amuro needed to go with one of them to survive, and he had simply chosen his father. He looked forward to going to space because he thought it might feel nice…but that wasn’t the case.  

Although the ground back home was whitish and slightly powdery, he still loved the soil, which would grow abundant plant life when provided with enough water. In early springtime, even the clouds of yellow dust carried in from the mainland added to the feeling of the seasons, and from that feeling a realization of how huge the Earth was etched into his body.

If that was the climate his mother had been born into, he would have liked to stay forever embraced by her warmth. However, Amuro felt that his father would fall apart if he wasn’t there, and he accompanied him into space. And so, as Amuro grew older he was able to say that he had put the matter of his mother’s adultery behind him.   

Of course, he had never spoken about these feelings since coming to Side 7. He had enough sense to know that nothing good would come from putting those sorts of things into words. If he mentioned it to the relentlessly cheerful Fraw Bow, she would probably just say something like, “That must have been so hard for you!”

Reality never stops moving, and Amuro’s life on Side 7 was about coming to terms with that fact. 

“It sounds like it’s only a matter of time before they close in on the RX project.” Fraw Bow’s father brought up the rumors swirling around Tem Ray’s job. The Bow’s house faced directly across from the Ray’s, and ever since moving to Side 7 Amuro had eaten the majority of his meals here. Fraw was basically a sister to him.   

“Everyone knows that the Zeons are going to attack here too, if the mobile suit development team doesn’t hurry up and get out.”

Responding to her mother’s statement, Fraw looked at Amuro. “…Your father hasn’t said anything?”

“Mm, I think he was home again last night, but I don’t have a clue.”

From listening to the evaluations of his engineering obsessed father taking place around Fraw Bow’s dinner table, it also became clear to him that the marriage with his mother would never have worked out. In which case, even Amuro would have to leave his father at some point and consider living on his own. He couldn’t keep shamelessly burdening the Bow family forever. He had started to learn how to cook for himself, but Fraw, a meticulous busybody of a girl, still continued to brazenly show up at his house, even after Amuro had discovered the adolescent knowledge of masturbation.   

“I’m not joking. Give me back the key.”

What made Fraw so formidable was, even when she was made to return his keycard she was sure to have a spare. It was always the same result, even if he changed the key code. Well, the reason for this was that Amuro was always leaving his keycard somewhere, usually at Fraw’s house, and it was a simple enough matter to steal a PIN.

…Self-sufficiency? …Independence? He had an interest in machines, but he didn’t think he had it in him to patiently develop tools. At Amuro’s young age, a boy’s dreams don’t convert into reality, and he hadn’t matured to the point where he was setting goals for his life. 

I must have a grudge against women in general…since I was the child of a mother like that… Amuro was able to acquire such an audacious understanding of himself after learning terms like “mother complex,” and as he masturbated he started to find that he was aroused by not only normal pornography but BDSM as well. I want to reject female genitalia…even though I like looking at them so much. He was even able to come up with the theory that his desire to enjoy the erotic, when combined with the urge to forget such impulses, resulted in a new desire to destroy female reproductive organs. 

However, he was also concerned it might be a dangerous sign that a regular naked woman wasn’t enough to sexually arouse him. This was why he absolutely did not want Fraw Bow, a healthy and wholesome girl, to catch wind of his fetishes. So, he remained very aware that he needed to keep presenting himself as a normal boy to her. However, he hadn’t figured out the important question of how exactly he was supposed to do that, which only made him more frustrated.      

Still, as he grappled with sex, it seemed that he stayed at least somewhat smart about it, plus he lacked the courage to do anything that would cause him to stray too far. It was probably thanks to the support he had. Because his engineer father was with him, regardless of whether Amuro saw him as a man or not, he really was a more ordinary boy than he believed himself to be, stuck in the constricted space of Side 7, in the middle of an adolescence that was neither rich nor poor.   

He was able to visualize his father developing the new model of mobile suit to combat Zeon’s Zaku, and that was enough to help fill some of the holes in his self-esteem. If that kind of work had caused his father to become impotent, he could accept that. As fellow men there were difficulties that they had to face… 

However, the reality was a little harsher. The war refugees said that the Zeons would order a raid if the Federation conducted their mobile suit work on Side 7, and they wanted the development moved somewhere else. It was a depressing situation for Amuro. All the while, the reality of war was quickly approaching him, with as much force as Char rescuing Lalah Sune. 

That raid took place roughly six months before Lalah arrived in space, and the person leading it was Char himself. 

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