The Project Manager

by Terry Connolly

  “I thought you might be like this,” said Alex, “don’t worry, the offer is informal, at the very least know that a place in the colonists training programme will be open to her, only one in ten will make it through that.”

  John crossed his fingers for luck and looked down at his feet, “well, there are ten years to think about it I suppose. I don’t know, I should be angry, but maybe Abby will thank me. Thank you Alex.”

  “Right, let’s get out of these strait-jackets.”

  John felt dazed and a little confused as he placed his spacesuit back into its locker. So confused he almost didn’t notice a small piece of paper stuck on the inside of the door. Before Alex could notice he put it into the lining of his under-suit insulation and continued asking questions to the engineer when he returned. Once back in his office he locked the door and took out the note. It read: “10 p.m. meet me back here, Bin message.”

  Chapter 13: 2043

  John ate early in his office, making an excuse that he had paperwork to catch up on. Actually, he wanted to write a short report on his inspections that day, but one paragraph into it he had given up on fighting with his imagination for attention. He didn’t know which to dwell on first, the offer for Abby or the mysterious note. The clock embedded in his desk seemed to be permanently stuck at 7:30 pm. He didn’t know why it surprised him that the Chinese government had spies on board the ship, in hindsight it was only logical. What did surprise him was how Bin had gotten a message up here to give to him? All communication was monitored to an extent. Messages between family and friends were supposed to be kept private but everyone suspected someone was listening in all the time. The only conclusion he could reach was that one of the resupply vessels had brought it aboard. It would be easy enough to put a small data device inside a potato he supposed. The resupply vessels brought food and fresh water up to the ship and took excess rubble and spent scrubbers etc. away. Ironically, because of the need for nutritious filler for future plants in the central cavern, their sewage waste had become precious and remained in storage for now, where bacteria was busily breaking it down to use as fertilizer.

  He ran his fingers through his thinning hair in frustration, the hands on the clock had barely moved. He stood up, a little too quickly as he had to grab his chair to stop floating too high. Moving in near zero gravity was like swimming, except there was no water so John had to select his destination and then propel himself from the nearest floor, wall, or ceiling towards it. First destination was the door. At home or in his office he would just go for walk to calm his thoughts, here he had to find out what the next best thing was. There were about fourteen kilometres of tunnel snaking beneath the surface of the Zhen He, less than half the corridor length of the Pentagon in the United States. This included storage rooms, accommodation and access corridors. Once spin was established the force at the floor of the cavern in the centre would be equivalent to about 70% of the Earth’s gravity. Between the cavern and the surface lay most of the coiling kilometres of tunnel, on three levels, each separated from the next by several meters of rock and steel reinforcement. The outermost level, where the force from spin would be equal to Earth’s gravity, would contain the accommodation sections where most of the colonists would spend most of their time. It was though these tunnels that John now floated.

  Work was still being done in shifts. The day shift had just ended. They were probably already gathered together in the mess hall and common areas. The night shift would be focused on the main areas of current work: the rear of the ship for the engines, the cavern where work was underway for the artificial sun strip at its centre, and here where some more apartments and offices were being fitted out so the crew didn’t have to keep sharing the areas already finished. John stopped briefly to chat to the stone masons who were chiselling the larger bumps from walls, squaring the doorways and drilling holes to provide access for electrical cabling and ventilation systems. All their tools were inside special dust shields, basically transparent plastic bags, to stop debris flying around the place. A lot of things would be a lot easier once spin was established. As he floated onwards there were less and less workers to talk to until he finally found himself alone heading towards the darkness and the silence of the areas yet to be made habitable.

  He found the plug for the next set of lights and turned them on. The tunnel lit up sodium orange before him, the row of lamps curving away with the contour of the ship. He found that he was traveling along one of the walls with the lights running beside him rather than overhead. The solitude was perfect for thinking. As he floated along a thrill of excitement went through him. Like everyone since the dawn of man, he occasionally had dreams where we could fly in great leaps, the reality was even better, and solicited a sense of freedom that almost made him cry out. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, stretched his muscles one by one, and then relaxed them, and just lay there floating, trying to calm his thoughts. He decided to ignore the note, he would discover what it meant in a couple of hours anyway. The offer for Abby complicated things though. Before this, he had just been out for revenge, getting closer to Alex and by extension to his father Leon and to Harry Smith, but he hadn’t learned anything useful yet and now they had leverage over him. “They don’t know I know about their involvement in Sophie’s death,” he thought. Bin had warned him that if there was any indication that they did suspect him then they would remove him from the project for his own safety as quickly as possible. "The offer for Abby shouldn’t feel like leverage then, yet it does. It is a future offer; a carrot dangling on a ten year long stick, so what else does Ephrem want from me that they needed to secure my cooperation like this? Is it enough to buy my cooperation for another ten years?” He now would have to wait to ask Abby what she wanted, but if she wanted to travel to Amrita he couldn’t take that option away from her, to be a colonist was the dream of millions of people. Then again, what about himself? “Do I want her to go? She is all the family I will have in a few years, my parents aren’t going to live forever. She is all I have left of Sophie, her eyes, her smile, I can see them in little Abby.” A knot began to develop his stomach, a knot usually reserved for big decisions costing billions. “No” he thought, “Sophie kept information from me when she was alive, I loved her, I still love her, but no more lies, not in my family. She can go if she wants.” One decision taken, many more to go. What about Bin and his people though, do I tell them?”

  He slowly opened his eyes. It was such a relaxing way to be, floating. Instantly he realised that he must look silly just floating there as though he was asleep. He quickly lifted his head and looked around him like a startled animal. There was no one there. He felt silly, but then again, if you’re supposed to be one of the most senior decision makers then it hardly helps for the people who take orders from you to catch you acting like a lunatic. John decided to explore just a hundred meters more and so he pushed off the floor to give himself momentum and drifted onwards. The corridor widened suddenly. There were rows and rows of doors leading into quite large rooms which had further rooms carved into the rock behind them. These must be the empty shells of future shops, schools, offices and libraries. The streets, or rather the tunnels, had no formal names yet but the workers aboard had taken to giving them random descriptive names. This, John guessed, was the one they called the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” after that song from the 20th century. It was an apt name for now, the hollow unfinished shells had a ghostly forgotten feeling to them. He tried to imagine how it would eventually look. The architectural graphics in the virtual walk-through showed green areas in the centre of the boulevard with artificial sunlight coming from a strip of lights overhead and fountains spaced at twenty meter intervals. Of course all the people in these graphics were smiling and happy. John wondered if they would be. He rarely questioned the mission, perhaps the day’s events had shaken him, but the thought crept in at the back of his mind; was this an intergenerational home or an accidental intergenerational prison? He shook himself fro
m his reveries and decided to head back. This would be no prison, they were providing everything the colonists and their children and their grandchildren would need for full and happy lives.

  As he bounded and swam back towards the noise of the construction workers he realised he still had an hour to go before the mysterious 10 p.m. meeting. He had some emails to answer from the PR people back in the communications department in Houston, so now that his head was a little clearer he went back to his office and replied to them. Mainly they were about educational videos they were making for schools and universities; they needed John to read over the scripts. For the University videos he himself would have to present sections. There was one on project management which he took particular pleasure in rehearsing. It was nice to give something back to the next generation entering his profession. Finally the appointed time approached so he made his way to the airlock. As he entered the locker room he heard the airlock depressurise, someone was going out to the surface, probably part of the engine crew. A voice, a female voice with a definite Chinese accent spoke behind him.

  “I thought they would not leave on time, but they did.”

  John turned around and saw a woman, in perhaps her early thirties, about his height, with dark hair and brown eyes. She was very pretty and a little muscular.

  “So, I guess you work for…”

  “Stop.” She didn’t look stern but there was a commanding atmosphere about her. She went over and closed the main door and sealed it.

  “I chose this place as the doors, both of them, are airtight and take a few seconds to open. Not an ideal place to speak but more secure than anywhere else on board,” she said.

  “You’re with the Chinese government then?” asked John.

  “Yes, one of the departments overseeing our engineering works. I was due to work here on the Zheng He anyway but while I was in astronaut training someone from the Senior Controller’s office came to see me.”

  “Bin?”

  “Yes. I have never head of a ‘Senior Controller’ before, though you probably know more about it all than I do.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” said John, “though yes, Bin said that was who he worked for. You have a message for me?”

  “Yes. I only arrived last week, they told me I’d have to meet you at some point with messages, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  John nodded, “it seems to be a day when things are moving faster than we would like. Let’s see it before someone comes.”

  “It’s verbal” she said, “satellite phones don’t just work on Earth, and the Peoples Republic has a lot of satellites.”

  She sat down on the very bench John had been on a few hours earlier, and began to explain. “My contact said that by now you would know that Ephrem had won the contract from the UN to source the colonists to Amrita.”

  “Too right I do,” said John, “go on.”

  “He also said that this is part of the plan. They are working on a corporate take-over of Ephrem so expect stories to come out about them over the next few months. This however will not stop them in their mission to make sure only their beliefs and culture will dominate among the colonists.”

  “How so?” he asked

  “I don’t have all the information, I am sorry, but from what I have been told they will plant some of their own agents as colonists, in key positions, who will act once the ship is five years out from Earth.”

  John was a little irritated, “What does he want me to do? So far I haven’t seen much of the revenge I was promised.”

  “He wants a list of the names of their members.”

  “How am I supposed to get that? If you take over Ephrem then surely they will have access to this type of information?”

  Her eyes fixed on John, “Once the take-over begins Ephrem will purge all their files. If we have a list of members we can cross-reference it. It’s needed now.”

  Those clear eyes made him feel a little strange, not quite unsettled, but put off track definitely. “Does such a list even exist? It seems like a stupid thing to keep on a list?” he asked.

  “Yes, from phone conversations amongst their inner circle it does. Someone called Alex has been given charge of running intense background checks to find the most suitable devotees. Bin says it’s up to you to get it.”

  John always suspected something like this was coming, but he had hoped it wouldn’t be Alex he would have to act on. John sat down too, “He’s my assistant.” There was a moment of silence between them.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, “but I have been asked to help you in any way I can. There was another message about an hour ago, in English.”

  She took a phone from her pocket, pressed the screen a couple times and handed it to him. The text on the screen read: “Know of offer for A. we will honour it. B.”

  John gave a grunt of a laugh. He wasn’t surprised, Ephrem must be the only people who didn’t know their offices were bugged.

  “Ok. Before we go any further, my name is John. You are?”

  “Hong” she smiled and held out her hand. “Hong Alverez. Pleased to meet you John Peeters.”

  “So when you’re not a spy here, what do you do?”

  “I’m one of the people who will spend their time hovering at the centre of that massive cavern trying to install the sun so the plants can grow. I don’t need to ask what you do John, when you’re not a spy.”

  The airlock made a clunking noise. Someone was coming back in from outside.

  “Let’s go, this is a conversation we can continue in public,” said John as he made his way to the other door and unsealed it. Once outside John saw a slight problem. “What is your job title Hong?”

  “I’m a general lighting engineer.”

  “That doesn’t help” he said. “What part of China do you come from?”

  “Fuzhou, but I lived in Venezuela with my father’s family for the past five years.”

  “That works,” said John, “I spoke at a meeting in Caracas last year, we can say we met there.”

  Hong seemed to like that idea, “It’s a small world John Peeters, good to meet you again!”

  “Good to see you again too Hong! We can fill in the details tomorrow evening. Maybe around 8 p.m?”

  John and Hong did meet the next evening, and while floating within the central cavern, well out of earshot, they came up with their brief, and simple, back story. They met in the airport in Caracas in early February a year earlier and struck up a conversation about Hong’s work. John saw her upon arrival on the Zheng He and remembered her face, and so they agreed to be friends. It sounded plausible and the chances were that no one would ask for it, but it was good to have just in case. As they floated there, not too far from the entrance to the central cavern yet still high above the floor, John found he had to maintain eye contact with Hong just to prevent the feeling of vertigo. While he found the vertigo unsettling, overall he quite enjoyed himself. Hong explained that the crew had come up with various games to play here. It had started with simple races, seeing who could bounce off the walls the furthest, until one morning two members of the crew coming off their night shift had the bright idea of propelling themselves using fire extinguishers. Apparently it took them twelve hours of literally vacuuming the air with standard household vacuum cleaners to remove the foam they put everywhere. Needless to say that activity was banned, but a crew of highly intelligent engineers had managed to find many other ways to keep themselves amused in zero gravity.

  #

  Months went by, routine set in, and delays, inevitable delays occurred. Many more than John had anticipated. An unusually intense hurricane season had delayed launches of components three times. Once was bad enough, but the delays became cumulative. It wasn’t the end of the world, but there could be minor problems later down the line and the crew, including John, were a little on edge. Each delay meant they were further away from being able to walk normally, eat normally, and go to the toilet in comfort. Hurricane se
ason seemed to be becoming a major reoccurring problem, with a record breaking season happening every three years or so. Mission control bit the bullet and ordered all launches be moved south to French Guiana. Even NASA agreed to it, on condition that they were given some non-Zheng He related launches, mainly European or Asian commercial satellites. Eventually the last sections of the engines arrived and, assuming no more delays, they could reach first plasma in about two weeks’ time.

  John went to the central cavern to meet Hong. He saw her silhouetted against the entrance, bathed in daylight, glowing in her own sun. They had gotten closer over the past five months. For the first time in years, since Sophie, he was starting to remember what it was like to have a crush. He was still hopeless at flirting, and besides, he couldn’t remember how, but for now at least it was nice have those feeling again. Whether or not Hong had them in return he didn’t know. He should just ask, he was a gown man in his late forties, not a teenager who needed to pass notes in class. Maybe it was true that men never mature.

  Hong was proud of her work, and right to be too. The nearly eight hundred meter length of the cylindrical cavern had a continuous cylindrical lamp which mimicked sunlight. It wasn’t as delicate as it looked, it had a guaranteed lifespan of at least two hundred years and contained a plasma of elements up to iron that when heated gave out a warm yellow light with most of the UV rays filtered out, but not all. It had been assembled in zero gravity for both practical and safety reasons, and it was tethered to the floor of the cavern by thick steel cables radiating out like spokes on a bicycle wheel. Once rotation began it should be secure enough, but Hong still worried about it. He liked that about her, she saw her project as her child too. She didn’t seem to notice him approaching so he said her name softly so as not to startle her “Hong, hey, ready for a break? It’s Christmas eve after all.”