[He shrugged.] That theory's been floated a few times. Prison? Experiment? Someone's sick idea of an ant farm? It's all been brought up. We jokingly call this place the reverse fish bowl or reverse snow globe.
Five of them, actually. There's about three to five colonies at each, but more have been under construction at L3. We've been as far as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, mostly to grab asteroids and bring them back into Earth's orbit to use as mining satellites. We're also working on terraforming Mars, but no one's left the solar system, yet. In fact, I don't think anyone's been past the belt, yet. It takes a long time to get out there, still.