Bernard's Dream: A Hayden's World Novel (Hayden's World Origins Book 8)

by S. D. Falchetti

  “Dude, you totally turned the Canteen into Ten Forward.”

  Hitoshi gives himself a self-congratulating nod. “Yeah. That was pretty awesome.”

  Lin smiles. “Hold that thought.” She looks a bit mischievous as she gracefully tucks her knees up towards her chest while pressing her arms down onto the air like oars, producing a slow-motion backward rotation that points her toes up towards the roof. Upside-down, she extends her right leg until the ball of her foot just makes contact with the ceiling. When she pushes off, the rebound takes her to the floor, where she already has a hand in motion to bounce her towards the bed. She continues her backward somersault, extending both legs over her head pointed at Hitoshi. The whole movement is like watching a diver or a gymnast perform. Hitoshi loves watching her in motion, but in zero-gee, she’s an athlete.

  “You are ready for Cirque du Soleil,” Hitoshi says.

  It looks like she intended to flatten herself out and land with her feet on the wall next to Hitoshi, but her trajectory is off, and her rotation is a bit faster than expected. Hitoshi realizes she’s on a collision course at the exact moment that she crunches up and starts flapping her arms. She over-rotates and ends up folded in half with her bottom leading the way.

  Hitoshi releases his tether and braces his arms towards her. “Whoa, wait wait wait….ooof!” Lin’s bottom collides with his stomach, spinning him off the wall. The sole of a bare female foot slaps him under the chin for good measure, and then the room is a tumbling jumble for a few seconds until he catches a handhold. Lin has snagged a death grip on the sleep sack and reels herself back into control.

  “Are you okay?” Hitoshi asks.

  Lin has her lips pressed together, looking very serious, but she snorts as air escapes the sides of her mouth, bursting into laugher.

  Hitoshi smiles, chuckling. “So, we have to work on your signature move.”

  She’s still laughing. “I am so sorry.” She pulls herself along the bed and slowly coasts up to him. “I think I kicked you in the head.” She cups his face gently with her hand.

  “I think you kicked my butt with your actual butt.”

  She snorts again and shakes her head. “That, uh, went a lot smoother in my mind. When I said to hold that thought, I was coming over to tell you that I think you’re awesome. It was going to be graceful and a little seductive, and you were going to be wowed by my sexiness.”

  Hitoshi pauses. “Seductive, huh?”

  She pushes slightly off the wall, and her body slides across the front of his. She tilts her head and kisses him on the nape of the neck, speaking quietly into his left ear. “Seductive.”

  Hitoshi slides his hand down her back, his fingers brushing over the bumps of her spine. Lin lifts her head out of his shoulder and looks up at him, her hair swirling in a weightless fan around her. She gives him the eyes, her intent plain.

  “Oh,” he says. “The eyes.” He raises his eyebrows. “Um, uh…you know, speaking as an engineer—“ Her chest presses against his as she drifts into him, breaking his train of thought. “—from a pure physics point of view, I, uh, I’m not sure that’s going to work out in zero-gee. I mean, every sci-fi movie ever has had a scene like that, and I would be totally down for it, trust me.” He blinks a few times, gathering a plan. “We could always log in and go virtual—“

  She holds up an index finger to his lips, stopping him mid-sentence. “We’re here together, almost two light-years from Earth, in a starship we made. I think if we put our two engineer heads together, we can figure this one out.” She hooks her foot in the strap of the sleep sack.

  When Hitoshi glances at the sleep sack, he realizes that sometimes the solution to a problem is so evident that you can’t see it when it’s right in front of you. He pushes off from the roof to follow her down. The next thirty seconds is a shuffle of velcro straps, limbs, and padded sleep sack walls, and then he is side-by-side with Lin with the snug pressure of the sleep sack wrapping them together.

  Lin laughs lightly, and it’s a strange release of tension for him. She was so confident a moment ago, but now she’s a bit nervous, just like him. Her fingers tickle his stomach as she finds the bottom of his shirt, then she lifts it over his head, and he helps whisk it off. She follows suit and pulls off her tank top, giving Hitoshi the briefest flash of her body before she settles her chest onto his, the warmth of her flesh hot in the confines of the sleep sack. When he looks up, their two shirts orbit like moons over them, drifting silently in the din of the media screen.

  14:35 - OCT 15 2094 LOCAL / NOV 27 2099 SOL / Mission Day 12

  On the bridge screen, the tactical display shows three multi-spectrum probes flying in a triangular formation along a one hundred kilometer perimeter from Promise. Blue telemetry lines pulse from each probe to the ship. Beckman is narrating the drone status while Willow gives comms updates, but Hitoshi is distracted watching Science Station Two. Ananke sits there with her chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail. She taps open a window on her console, enters some numbers, and submits them. She’s holding onto the corner of the console with her left hand, much like the other crew members do, and her posture is casual, as if she’s done this a million times. She wears slate-colored pants with a dark navy Hayden-Pratt tee shirt tucked into her waistline.

  Ananke catches him watching her and smiles. “Hi, Hitoshi.”

  Hitoshi shifts a bit. “Hi, Ananke.”

  “If this is disturbing you, I can go back into my screen.”

  “Uh, no…it’s…it’s, uh, just a little weird for me. Are you manually entering data into your workstation?”

  “Yes, for anything that isn’t time-critical.”

  He leans in a bit. “How are you doing that? I mean, your fingers are holographic.”

  She pulls back a little, amused. “I live in the ship’s computer.” She leans towards him playfully. “Watch this.” She raises her hands and wiggles her fingers in the air, so they’re not touching anything.

  A notification pings from Hitoshi’s console, and a text window bubbles up. Hi, Hitoshi!

  “Ah, right,” Hitoshi says.

  “It’s just meant to look normal and not call attention to myself. I don’t want people to feel that I’m acting. I really am doing all of the things that I’m typing on my console, but there are some things I need to emulate. For example, neither gravity nor zero-gee affect me, but I need to move as if they do.”

  Hitoshi presses his lips together. “Sorry, Ananke. I didn’t mean to make you feel weird. I guess I’m just used to you being blue.”

  “It’s okay. It’s a bit weird for me, too. I’m still figuring it out. But it is nice feeling like I’m sitting with the crew.” She pauses, a bit excited. “I’ve even selected an outfit for tonight’s party, and I’m going to change my hairstyle. Willow helped me with the selection. I hope everyone likes it.”

  “Oh, wow…I hadn’t thought of partying holograms when I installed the emitters. That’s kinda cool, actually.”

  “It’s my first New Year’s Eve party as a participant. I’m quite looking forward to it.”

  “We are going to party like it’s 2099. Because it is. Somewhere.”

  From Hitoshi’s left, Beckman says, “Probes aligned.”

  The navigation map on the bridge screen zooms on a three-quarter view of space spanning five astronomical units. Gridlines tick off every ten million kilometers. A blue dot at the center is labeled HPT-E17 Bernard’s Promise. One AU ahead of Promise, a yellow line cuts through space like a bullet’s trajectory. A dot on the line reads ISP2054 Wayfarer I (projected). At this scale, both beads look frozen, but Wayfarer is traveling at ten percent of light speed and adding another twenty-five thousand kilometers between itself and Promise every second. That’s assuming it’s actually there. It’s been traveling for forty-four years. This is just where the math says it should be.

  During last year’s Hayden-Pratt mission planning sessions back on Earth, there had been a lively discussion on this topic. The
first talk point was whether Promise should skip Luhman 16 and go directly to Tau Ceti because there was already an interstellar probe headed to Luhman. Aside from the fact that it would take another twenty years before the probe got there, Hitoshi had summed up that option with, “Hi guys! I’m an interstellar probe from Earth launched sixty-four years ago! It’s so cool to be here. I’m going ten percent of light speed and have no brakes. Okay, bye! Swoosh!” Then, the next question was whether they wanted to visit the probe while they were en route.

  “Yeah, it’s not really along the way,” Hitoshi had said as they huddled around the mission planning display. Bernard’s Promise connected directly with Luhman 16, but Wayfarer I traveled in a parabolic arc that bent around Alpha Centauri. Promise and Wayfarer looked like they could be near each other on the screen at some point, but the screen’s scale was in light-years.

  “Point four six light-years apart,” Isaac said. “It’ll add another mission day and six month time shift if we want to intercept.”

  James had considered it. “One more mission day isn’t bad. What do we get for it besides a photo op?”

  Hitoshi swiped over a diagram of Wayfarer to the main screen. Annotations called out probe system components and interfaces. “Wayfarer has three transmitters. One is the giant dish it unfolds when it wants to say hi to Earth. That one’s all packed up when she’s between stars. The second is a low-bandwidth intra-system relay. It’s always listening and will ping back its coordinates with a hazard warning if it picks up RF or radar emissions. That one was for anyone who wasn’t paying attention back in 2054 because, you know, it would suck to get rear-ended by something traveling ten percent of light speed. The last one is the ground interface that has a low-power wireless access point.” He raised his eyebrows. “So, in theory, if we got in range of the ground interface, we could chat with the flight computer and download everything Wayfarer has recorded since leaving Alpha Centauri. If we were really gung ho, and, uh, Planet Earth was okay with it, we could tell Wayfarer to change its course and head someplace else.”

  “Where would we send it?” James asked.

  Hitoshi had an animation ready to go for this question. In it, Wayfarer’s flight path bent away from Luhman and continued to a red star. “YZ Ceti, red dwarf, three light-years past Luhman. Confirmed exoplanets.” Everyone seemed intrigued by the idea, but Hitoshi added, “Before we get too excited, there’s a problem. Wayfarer’s going ten-percent light speed in normal space, so we’re going to need something creative if we want to match speed for an intercept.”

  Lin cracked her fingers and stretched. “Okay, this is going to be so cool and just a bit dangerous. Here’s the plan.”

  So, fast-forward back to the present and here they are now, Hitoshi sitting on Promise’s bridge, getting ready for the somewhat dangerous part.

  “Active radar pulse now,” Beckman says.

  An expanding sphere emanates from Promise on the tactical displays. Minutes tick by as it approaches Wayfarer. At the eight-minute mark, it washes over the probe’s anticipated position. Willow has superimposed a timer on the screen, ticking down from eight minutes. When it hits zero, a notification dings from her console, and she says, “Comms contact, alpha-numeric. On screen.”

  Caution: High-velocity space probe Wayfarer I. 29,972 kilometers per second. 1.26 terra joule energy equivalent. Refer to attached flight vectors for current location and trajectory.

  It worked, just as planned. Wayfarer heard their radar pulse and sent out its warning.

  “Triangulating,” Beckman says. “Numbers are up.”

  Wayfarer’s reported coordinates display side-by-side with Promise’s multi-spectrum probes’ triangulated coordinates. The numbers match to eight decimal places. If they were going to get up close and personal with a 1.26 terra joule object, they didn’t want to rely solely on the accuracy of said object’s forty-four-year-old flight computer. But, it turns out that those old NASA engineers really knew their stuff.

  “Didn’t get a radar reflection,” Beckman adds. “But didn’t think we’d pick it up at this distance.”

  “Recall drones,” James says.

  Beckman enters the command, and the three dots on the tactical display converge on Promise. They wait until they are back in the drone bay.

  “Parallel course plotted,” Isaac says.

  Ananke quickly enters a stream of numbers into her console. “Fractional jump configured. On your mark, James.”

  “Here we go,” James says. “Positions.”

  Everyone leans forward and grabs the edges of his console. After enough Riggs jumps, you could make do with just a bit of body scrunching.

  James says, “Initiate.”

  The stars shift from yellow to blue, sliding towards the screen’s center to agglomerate into a fuzzy violet patch. Hitoshi’s stomach does its usual somersault as Ananke says, “Ninety-nine cee. Wave geometry change in three, two, one…reconfigure.”

  Hitoshi makes the mistake of looking at the main bridge screen as it bows out, stretching away from him, the distance between his console and the front wall doubling. The stars push back out towards their home positions, brightening, but they settle just a little bit short, still tinged with yellow-green. There’s a slight ripple and distortion, like lights through a rainy windshield.

  “Ten percent cee,” Ananke says. “Riggs wave stable.”

  “Target,” Beckman says. “Ten kilometers starboard. Locked.”

  The faint blue glow of the Riggs boundary shimmers in lateral streaks. Stretched out slightly, as if distorted in a fun-house mirror, Wayfarer I is a gunmetal mushroom with a wreath of gold beads around its core. The armor of the forward shielding is cratered like the moon, with carbon-black scorch marks spilling back across the craft. Radiation and cosmic rays have marred all surfaces. It indeed looks like it’s been out here for decades, but its four anti-collision strobes blink their steady heartbeat.

  It’s a little weird looking out through the Riggs boundary and seeing something keeping pace with them. They’ve never matched speed with something else while in warp before because nothing else could come close to their speed. Usually, radio waves don’t have enough energy to penetrate the Riggs boundary. Still, their math has predicted a ten-cee boundary will be weak enough to let Wayfarer’s flight computer through. They’ll find out shortly.

  “Sending handshake request,” Willow says. A blue communications line extends from Promise to Wayfarer. It pulses for a moment before dinging and changing green.

  “Woo hoo!” Lin says, clapping. “Yeah!”

  “Nice work,” Hitoshi says.

  Lin taps on her console. “Running emulator.”

  The NASA logo appears on the screen with a copyright notice dated 2052. The graphics and interface are comically old, but there is something very cool and retro about it. Lin leafs through the menu options and selects a full data download of the probe’s memory. As the download progresses, Lin accesses the navigation controls and uploads the new flight plan.

  The entire crew is transfixed, watching Wayfarer silently glide off their port bow. When they were planning this, Hitoshi weighed the risks and benefits, but he hadn’t really thought about the emotional aspect. Wayfarer is a piece of history, displaced out of time, out here, like them, braving the unknown. He feels a bit lonely for it. They have their crew, but Wayfarer was by itself for decades. It evokes a sense of kinship.

  “We got it all,” Lin says. “New flight plan is set, and I can fire it up anytime. It’ll vector away and down versus our current heading. Old ion drive, so acceleration will be gradual.”

  James smiles. “Awesome work, everyone. Wayfarer, you were the first among us to reach for the stars. You lead the way, and we wanted to walk in your footsteps. We’ll build upon what you’ve learned and complete your original mission as you head on to new worlds. Fly safe and godspeed from the crew of Bernard’s Promise.” He looks over at Lin and gives her the nod to proceed.

  From the tail c
one of Wayfarer, a dozen nozzles fade up to a soft blue exhaust. At first, they seem to have no effect, but, like a massive ship turning, Wayfarer gently drifts away and down from Promise. Hitoshi watches it depart, feeling like he’s saying goodbye to an old friend.

  15

  Mythologies

  03:54 - OCT 21 2094 LOCAL / NOV 15 2102 SOL / Mission Day 18

  James lies in bed upon his back, his left arm tucked behind his head. To his right, Ava sleeps curled up with her back to him, the blankets rising and falling with each breath. Like him, she wears a pajama shirt and bottom. For the first time in eighteen days, the ship is decelerating in slowtime during their sleep cycle, giving them standard gravity to sleep next to one another in a real bed complete with pillows and sheets. Sure, they could have rigged up dual sleep sacks before, but this entailed either one of them moving in their clothes and toiletries or else tiptoeing back to their cabin before the crew awoke, as if they were doing the walk-of-shame in a college dorm. It’s all about appearances, James realizes, although he’s never been a fan of doing things just for appearance’s sake. Everyone knows they’re dating, but there’s an unspoken agreement not to talk about it as long as he doesn’t make a point of it. There’s more to it than that, though. It’s not like anyone can see them in his cabin, but here they are, the PG-rated pajama-clad versions of themselves that talked with each other and read in bed last night before turning off the lights and going to sleep. They’ve certainly been intimate before. Just not in the past eighteen days, and James is pretty sure that’s because of him. The mission is like slowtime for their relationship — not quite a pause button but not quite moving forward.

  Ava stirs, takes a deep breath, and rolls over, opening her eyes. “Hey,” she says warmly. She cups her hand on his right shoulder.

  James sets his left hand on top of hers, stroking the back of her hand. “Morning. Almost. Another hour or two, but close enough.”