Waypoint Magellan

by L S Roebuck

  “Remember, always put the good of the community ahead of yourself. Never let anyone determine who you become. Use every resource you have to make your ambitions come true,” Kimberly said with intense conviction. “Good-bye, Amberly Macready. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

  Kimberly punched a control panel and the apartment’s exterior door slid open.

  “Mom!”

  “Yes, my daughter?” Kimberly turned back to her daughter.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Kimberly walked out the door, and it slid closed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Waypoint Magellan, Sept. 24, 2602

  The gentle tapping on the hull sounded like rain dancing on street pavement during a light summer storm, but Amberly, now 19, wouldn’t have known that. Born and raised in space, she had never heard actual rain or even stood on a street. Still, something calmed her in the random soft pattering of sound and vibration that came as a cloud of dust and various gasses moved over and then past Waypoint Magellan.

  The exterior view of the cloud colliding with Magellan was hypnotic art. Magellan’s saucer-like cylinder form rolled on its z-axis. The spinning station would twirl the cloud, already a cacophony of yellows and purples in color from the light of nearby stars, into a spectrum of odd colors – bright orange, deep red and even some blue-green.

  Dust clouds were infrequent, but not unheard of, as the Magellan intersected with the galaxy in a way that kept the station in a raw sync with the position of Earth. Magellan was always in a state of motion to remain spatially fixed relative to the human home planet. Often Magellan’s path of movement required the intersection with nebula-like interstellar bodies — great clouds in space.

  From inside the waypoint, the dust cloud wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing. Mostly it blocked stellar light. Still, “weather” was rare enough for Amberly to pause for a moment and look out the small viewport from her family quarters before stepping into the shower. She lived in the two-room apartment with her older sister, Kora. The quarters were not the most spacious on Magellan, but they were relative palaces compared to the visiting quarters, where spacefarers on their way to Arara or heading back towards Earth would stay during their layover.

  Amberly stepped out of the shower, one of the most remarkable luxuries of Magellan, the most advanced waypoint ever built. The state-of-the-art waterworks system almost instantly recaptured, purified and reused wastewater. If one took a long shower on Magellan, the same water would run through three or four times, almost eliminating the need for water rationing that made life insufferable on older waypoints.

  She toweled off her petite frame and short, reddish hair and quickly dressed. She looked in the mirror at her round face, and noted how much it looked like her sister’s. Although they shared a facial structure, no one would have mistaken one for the other. Kora had long, raven-dark hair and was nearly 15 centimeters taller than her younger sister. Amberly didn’t know this, but on Earth, tall was stylish and desired. Not so much on a waypoint, where tall people often had to avoid bumping into a bulkhead in the more cramped areas near the extremities of the station.

  Today, Amberly wore her Science Corps dress uniform. She liked how she looked in the pressed, white pantsuit with green trim. The uniform reminded Amberly of her mother, who also served in the Science Corps. Amberly favored her mother in stature, though she inherited her red locks from her father. Six years had passed since her parents were lost in space, but she still thought often of her mother, the woman who inspired her to pursue a career of community service through scientific research.

  The Science Corps dress uniform was reserved for special occasions, and today most certainly was a special occasion.

  Whenever a deep space transport came into dock, the whole waypoint bustled with excitement. In fact, since Amberly Macready was born on Magellan 19 years ago, only 12 deep space transports had docked — eight heading for Arara, and four in the direction for Earth. This one, American Spirit, had been to Magellan six years ago. Then, the vessel was 16 years out from Earth, and only three years from Arara. Now American Spirit had delivered to Arara her payload of colonists, technology, supplies and military orders from the home world — and was on her way home to earth. Loaded with nearly 1,000 passengers, about half the ship’s capacity, American Spirit would spend the next six weeks docked at the Magellan spaceport, before continuing the remaining eight light-year journey to Earth.

  Children born on the day American Spirit left earth would be 38 years old when the craft would complete its round-trip and moor at the massive space dock orbiting Earth.

  The American Spirit was one of the fastest ships ever built, and could travel at a cruising speed of nearly half light speed. Because of the effects of relativity, when the ship was traveling at maximum velocity, for every one year that transpired from the perspective of those on the ship, 1.1 years would pass on Earth. This extra tenth of a year meant that a child born on the American Spirit that traveled with the American Spirit for its full voyage would be around 3.8 years younger than her counterpart born on Earth at the same time, not counting for layover times.

  Amberly checked herself once more in the mirror, then activated the door into the residential corridor that lead to the Beltway Transport. The lights on the door blinked red, yellow, green as the sensors in the door verified the safe air pressure on the other side before opening.

  In the 102 years since the launch of Magellan, only one person had died from exposure to a vacuum — a careless engineer who miss-guessed the cause when the door to an exterior storage unit would not change from red to green. He assumed the problem was an instrument error, not an actual lack of atmosphere on the other side. The hapless engineer forced the door, and quickly all the air in the adjoining chamber, the one he was in, escaped out into space as well.

  Amberly’s infopad spoke: “Ms. Macready, you have a new message from North, and if I may say, you look so much like your mother when you are wearing your dress uniform.”

  Being like mom is good, thought Amberly. Too bad just looking like someone doesn’t give you what made her great.

  “Thanks Verne,” Amberly replied to the infopad. Technically, Verne was a sophisticated virtual personality — a VP — that could live on several different hardware platforms, but to Amberly, Verne and her infopad were one and the same — a gift from her father on her 13th birthday. She picked up Verne as she stepped into the hall. “Play the message from North.”

  Amberly wasn’t looking at the infopad’s screen, but she didn’t need to look to know what North looked like. The tall, clean-cut Marine had a square jaw and a perfect smile. A slight scar decorated his chin. His dark brown hair was thick and matched his dark brown eyes. At nearly two meters, he was one of the taller Marines assigned to Magellan. He had a solid, fit build, compliments of the required exercise regimen for waypoint Marines. Amberly listened to the message as she strode away from her quarters into the common areas.

  “Hey Red. Happy Ship Day. My unit drew the short straw, and we get to be honor guard for the debarkation. I just wanted you to know so you can check me out from your office,” North teased in his message. Amberly blushed. She wasn’t a shy person, even around the opposite sex, but North’s bravado-infused flirting made her uncomfortable – mostly because she didn’t know what it meant. True, North was attractive, and he had been a good friend to Amberly and Kora since he was assigned to Magellan nearly a decade ago.

  Amberly didn’t care much that he seemed to be friendly with all the girls. Of all North’s girlfriends, she and Kora were clearly his best girlfriends. But Kora had warned Amberly of his game years ago. “Steer clear of a guy who doesn’t know how to focus his affections,” Kora had told Amberly. Amberly remembered the day well. It was her 14th birthday, and she had just admitted to Kora that she had quite the crush on North, who was 24 at the time. Five years ago, Amberly pretended to dismiss her older sister’s advice, but the seed was planted, and now
the admonition was at the forefront of her thoughts.

  Amberly listened to the rest of North’s message. “Anyway, seeing as it’s Friday, Skip and I are going to Rick’s tonight to see if any of the American Spirit transients are young, single and looking for the hottest guys on Magellan. Why don’t you and Kora come down to make the other women jealous?”

  Typical, thought Amberly, as the flush in her otherwise pale face became even redder as her slight embarrassment turned to a slight anger. Still, Amberly knew that while his words were reckless, his actions had always been gentlemanly and marked by generosity and kindness.

  Skip was a scrawny, annoying friend of North’s who worked in Magellan’s communication center as a news aggregator and general message operator.

  Of the dozen or so clubs and cafés on Magellan, Amberly preferred Rick’s. The name was a literary allusion to a popular early 20th century movie, Casablanca.

  The hard heels of Amberly’s dress boots clicked loudly on the cold steel floor of the access hall. “You better pick up the pace or you are going to be late to work,” Verne chirped. Amberly clicked the device into silent mode, annoyed, but nonetheless picked up her pace.

  Every 10 meters or so, a portal was cut into the hall. Each portal led into living quarters, supply manufacturing, station maintenance or central dining areas. Amberly passed a group of second grade students outside of the education quarters, just a few dozen meters from the waypoint’s public transit system, which was known simply as the Tube.

  Although the antimatter reactors provided more than enough energy for Magellan’sneeds, thepneumatic tubes didn’t tap the main power grid. Instead, a clever use of the waypoint’s internal atmospheric pressure pushed the cars silently along the tube, which looped along the Beltway, the largest and main corridor that ran in a circle with a radius of about 900 meters. The Beltway divided the waypoint into two rings. Everything inside the Beltway was known as the “core” and everything outside was known as the “rim.”

  The system housed about 25 four-person cars and had four “tubestops” that serviced the exterior ring of the Magellan’s four quadrants: State, President, Science and Church. A queue of people had already lined up at this station. One had to be quick to board a tube car at the station. The doors would open, and a disembodied voice would chime out, “Next stop, Science Quadrant.”

  Although the line was lengthy, it flowed quickly. Amberly was surprised that she didn’t see anyone she knew personally. Usually she ran into at least a few friends or acquaintances on the way to work. Because the waypoint’s population only had infrequent immigration or emigration, one could, over the course of a lifetime — if not a few decades — get to know a large sample of the waypoint’s 10,000 inhabitants.

  The tubecar zipped around the Beltway. The car had no windows, leaving nothing to look at except a news feed monitor on the forward wall. News didn’t interest Amberly much; Verne knew what she cared about and alerted her with items of interest.

  Traveling to the next station took two minutes. The tubecar was sucked from the Arkansas Station in the State Quarter to Lincoln Station in the President Quarter. The car was full for the quarter-circle ride — the three other passengers chatted about preparations for the arrival of the deep space ship, American Spirit, expected by 10:00 Magellan Standard Time that morning. They were part-time hospitality workers for Magellan’s guest quarters, officially called the Herbert Hoover Temporary Housing Center, but known to the locals simply as the Hotel.

  No one got into the tubecar at Lincoln Station, so the two-minute ride over to the Science quarter was quiet. Kepler Station in the Science Quarter opened into the manufacturing district, where scores of microfactories made hundreds of items — some luxuries, some necessities, either from recycled materials or mineral resources provided by the mining guild. Some items were made for export, but because communications with potential markets were delayed by years, only the few traders who traveled indefinitely on the deep space ships would buy the goods. Inter-waypoint trading was a high risk/reward business that required decades of planning and execution. Those who did trading well — or who were lucky — usually could make a fortune in 30 or 40 years and retire. However, most deep space traders ended up broke.

  The main hallways through the manufacturing district twisted through rooms that were hidden from view. Amberly made her way towards the exterior of the waypoint rim, where her lab was located.

  As a researcher, Amberly didn’t have any official duties in conjunction with arrival of a deep space vessel, but the laboratory where she worked as a junior researcher overlooked Magellan’s spaceport and had a panoramic viewport in the lobby. The spaceport itself featured a gangway for the deep space ships and modest hangar for the smaller ships that made their berth in Magellan.

  Amberly arrived at her office a few minutes late for her work, but none of the other scientists and researchers noticed, because they were all congregated in the staff lounge, looking out the broad viewport. Most, like Amberly, were dressed in the formal Science Corp garb. Amberly dropped Verne off at her desk and quietly joined her colleagues in the lounge.

  “Wow,” she said aloud, reflexively. “That ship is enormous.”

  American Spirit was docking.

  “It’s so beautiful,” whispered Lydia, another junior researcher, breaking the silence. “I heard it runs faster than half-light.”

  Metallic silver streaks glistened on the warmly curved hull of American Spirit. Amberly could see the long vessel’s tubular form silhouetted by the stellar light radiating from far away star clusters. From bow to stern, American Spirit was nearly a kilometer in length, with a diameter of nearly 300 meters. The ship was slowing to a dead halt now (relative to Magellan), and Amberly could clearly make out the large windowed viewport of the ship’s gardens. The window aligned with her laboratory’s lounge viewport, with only five meters of space separating the portals. She could see the faces of the American Spirit’s crew and passengers, peering back at the Magellan. Amberly thought she could see raw emotion in those faces, the excitement of arrival, the hope of leaving behind the loneliness of deep space travel, months and months confined to the narrow halls, isolated from humanity in inky-dark space.

  Although the Magellan was a finite structure, compared to existence on a deep space transport like American Spirit, the waypoint was a spacious oasis of life in light years of stellar desert.

  Amberly spotted the ship’s antimatter reactor in a fin-like superstructure that emanated near the stern. The reactor was designed outside of the main hull so it could be ejected in case of catastrophic failures. Such failures were rare, but could easily kill everyone on board a ship like American Spirit by radiation exposure or explosive force. If a deep space vessel was forced to eject its antimatter core when it was far away from a waypoint or planet, death may be the ultimate outcome, anyway. Massive amounts of energy were required for the ships atmosphere conditioning, waterworks, food synthesis, and other life support functions. Suffocation, starvation, freezing or burning to death, were likely ends. Also, the deep space ships needed the antimatter cores for the energy required to decelerate, so collision at some fraction of light speed was also a lethal outcome of a damaged core.

  Floodlights from the Magellan suddenly snapped on, fully illuminating the hull of the visiting vessel. Painted near the bow was an enormous American flag, with the familiar pattern reflecting the powerful light beams casting a scattered red and blue hue back on Magellan. Beneath the flag in a lettering style that mimicked the calligraphy of the original Declaration of Independence, was the ship’s name.

  “U.S.S. American Spirit,” Amberly read aloud to no one.

  The red, white and blue flag was a symbol of nationalistic pride, something to which Amberly did not relate. The concept of nationalism was something she had studied at a young age as part of her civics education, but being born on and living her whole life on the waypoint, essentially an isolated city-state, belonging to a nation was mor
e of an abstract thought than an emotional idea.

  The people huddled in the American Spirit were now smiling and waving to the people peering through the various viewports that faced out from the docking side of Magellan. Those on Magellan did so in kind.

  Amberly looked over and saw Lydia stifle a tear, laugh at herself and then say, “I always get emotional when these ships come in. I don’t know how they can survive that long.”

  “You were born on Waypoint Marquette,” Amberly said. “That’s like more than a light year away. You survived deep space.”

  “Sure. But I don’t remember Marquette, besides the vids and pics my parents gave me. I was three when we left, and five when we arrived here,” Lydia said. She leaned her tall, broad frame against the window. She was fit, just “not exactly petite,” as the not so subtle Skip once said. Lydia was minimalist and practical, well regarded characteristics for those who lived on waypoints. She kept her blonde hair cut short and often wore the sort of utility garb that was more popular among engineers than researchers. “I do remember arriving at the Magellan. I didn’t know any place could be so big and open. It was the most incredible feeling.”

  “I bet that’s what it would be like to go planetside,” Amberly pondered.

  Lydia squeezed Amberly’s hand. “I bet somewhere on the American Spirit right now, a five-year-old-girl is about to have her first memories off a deep space ship.”

  Amberly turned from Lydia back toward the American Spirit, where the gangway was being extended and pressurized. The 40-meter gangway was attached further down the curvature of the American Spirit.

  A young man on the American Spirit caught her eye.

  Physically, he was unremarkable: not even close to two meters in height, a middling build, sandy brown hair, wearing nondescript khaki clothes. What was remarkable to Amberly was his solemn face. Everyone else on the American Spirit seemed to be celebrating joyfully, smiling, hugging, crying. But he was pensive, almost sad.