Viola Ospanov, Head of the Childhood Development division at the tender age of 23 thanks both to her four years of experience in caring for the Venus station’s children and also the high esteem in which she was held by everyone with a say in the colony’s creation, insisted upon staying behind to allow the rest of her staff to go home.
As well as being one of the original ‘seven saviours’ who first discovered the once-cloaked romosphere and being one of the Harrington trio which many spoke of as ‘the first family of Terradox’, Viola had recently married her longtime partner Peter Ospanov, the colony’s no-nonsense Head of Security.
In terms of social status, particularly in the eyes of the hundreds of young colonists who spent their days in the educational facility they all knew as ‘the CDD’ rather than ‘school’, no one else came close.
Offering to work late rather than asking someone else to do so was the kind of thing Viola did without much thought and this grounded selflessness contributed greatly to her popularity among her division’s extensive workforce, many of whom could otherwise have resented answering to someone so much younger than themselves. A similar factor was her passionate preference for daily hands-on engagement with the children over barking detached orders from an ivory tower, as she could have done if she so desired.
This workforce, like every other on Terradox, was composed of extremely qualified individuals with extensive records of exceptional work in their respective fields on Earth. Viola’s success in maintaining productive harmony despite her own relative inexperience had not gone unnoticed by the likes of Rusev and Holly, both of whom felt vindicated for the faith they had put in her.
Unlike her quiet but effective father and her increasingly work-obsessed brother, Viola was very much a people person; but just like theirs, her results spoke for themselves.
The last two hours had passed quickly and easily while she really got to know a six-year-old boy who she had agreed to place on an individually-designed focused development program several weeks earlier at the suggestion of his year group’s teachers and supervisors. She was told that the boy, Vijay Kohli, tended to shy away from any discussions or cooperative play with his classmates despite close monitoring having confirmed that they were never anything but kind to him.
Vijay had also recently picked up a nervous stutter and had begun telling his parents that he wanted to go home to Earth. This latter point was of particular concern, with any signs of resentment towards the colony being something that all staff and parents were firmly encouraged to report immediately. The recent news on that front was good, with Vijay having become more comfortable both in classes and at play once he was told that it was okay to keep to himself and that his friends would be ready anytime he felt like joining them.
The boy’s father was a senior figure within the colony’s esoteric Primosphere division and Viola knew that his mother also played an important role, doing some kind of high-level analysis relating to the efficient operation of the colony’s long-distance transport system.
A recruiting preference for couples and families composed of highly competent individuals with strong academic backgrounds and relevant professional experience meant that this kind of setup wasn’t unusual on Terradox, with all kinds of highly skilled research-based and administrative roles filled by several members of the same households. As well as the inherent efficiency of having one home provide two or more productive colonists, the social planners who worked with the recruitment team in the early days believed that the presence of stable families and couples would benefit the colony as a whole in additional intangible ways.
One member of the Kohli family was far better known than the others, however, thanks entirely to her ongoing participation in a high-profile isolation test deep within Terradox’s inhospitable Little Venus zone. Nisha Kohli, the outstanding young physicist on Earth prior to her move to Terradox, had been the recruiters’ real focus; her parents, as skilled and as welcome as they were, had merely been the icing on the cake.
When Viola took Vijay to the age-appropriate section of the facility’s enormous play-park, she gently and unobtrusively asked some occasional questions while he was relaxed enough to answer without holding anything back. He told Viola exactly what he’d told her close friend Jillian Jackson, the colony’s chief child psychologist, a few days earlier: he missed his sister more and more each day and couldn’t wait for the isolation test to be over.
Viola considered this feeling to be the most understandable thing in the world, particularly given that almost everyone on Terradox spoke about Nisha and her colleagues every day by virtue of the keen attention they paid to the test via Terradox Live, a TV show which was produced on-site for Earth’s entertainment market but which found countless dedicated viewers closer to home.
Jillian Jackson, beyond her professional psychologist’s ability to empathise, was in a unique position of being able to understand Vijay’s feelings on this matter even more precisely given that her own 22-year-old son Chase was involved in the very same high-profile isolation test. Viola took the same approach to soothing Vijay’s mind as Jillian had during his regular talking sessions, reminding him that only eight days remained until the test was over and the astronauts-in-training would emerge from Little Venus having passed with flying colours.
Vijay played happily until his father, Romesh, eventually arrived at almost 8pm. Romesh was full of apologies and thanked Viola profusely for staying late, promising he would do everything he could to ensure that he never again had to stay so late at his workplace.
“Don’t worry about it,” Viola said, knowing it must have been important. “You’re pretty high up in the team who are playing around with new life-forms in the Primosphere, right?”
“I wouldn’t call it playing around,” Romesh said with a slight grin.
“You know what I mean,” Viola laughed. “So was the delay anything to do with that big project you’re all working on? What’s the codename, again… ‘Nancy’ or something like that?”
Romesh’s expression suddenly turned to one of genuine shock, clearly reacting instinctively to hearing Viola mention a codename she wasn’t supposed to know. “Mrs Ospanov, I’m truly sorry to have to keep anything from you of all people, but I could get into a lot of trouble if I say any more than I’m supposed to.”
Viola shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s good to respect the chain of command.” She then turned towards the park, where Vijay was somewhere around a quarter of the way up a high climbing frame. “Vijay, your dad is here!”
Romesh gently took hold of Viola’s wrist and encouraged her to turn back around to face him. “Forgive me for being so firm,” he said, maintaining nervous eye contact, “but whether you learned some information on our project directly from Holly or from someone else, it’s critically important that you don’t disseminate that information any further. I’m sure you’ll understand that while we’re not doing anything questionable, there are good reasons why certain things are confidential. This is one of those things.”
It took no little effort for Viola to pretend that she wasn’t tremendously intrigued by Romesh’s level of unease regarding her limited knowledge of the ‘Nancy’ project, but she succeeded in convincing him that she would forget she’d ever heard the name. “Vijay has had a really good day, anyway,” she said as the boy began to climb back down towards the ground. “We don’t want to push him too quickly but all throughout this week he’s not been isolating himself in the way he once did, and today he was actively initiating cooperative play in a way we haven’t seen. I think he’s turned a major corner since we made sure he knows that he has the freedom to be on his own when he needs to be.”
“He was certainly keen to get here this morning,” Romesh replied. “That didn’t used to be the case, so whatever you’ve been doing has made a huge difference. I have to admit, we were getting worried. At his age, Nisha had none of these problems. By this age, she was—”
“If he hea
rs you talking about ‘problems’, that doesn’t help,” Viola said. “Children have different personalities and they all develop differently. And even though we do all we can to get the most out of every child here, we can’t expect any of them to be as academically gifted as Nisha, just like I’m not as academically gifted as Bo. But no one would ever accuse Bo of being the most socially adept guy around, just like Nisha almost didn’t make it into the final test crew because some of her cooperative and social awareness scores were borderline. I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your son, Mr Kohli, but I am telling you that your daughter is not a fair measuring stick for anyone.”
Romesh nodded slowly, taking Viola’s words in the intended spirit while Vijay ran towards them as quickly as his legs would allow. “He talks about you a lot, you know. He says you know everyone’s name and all of their favourite things to do. Thanks for helping him out with this focused development program.”
“No problem, but Jillian deserves credit for putting the program together,” Viola said. “I know things have been difficult for Vijay with so much attention on Nisha and Chase and everything else going on inside Little Venus, and I know it must be difficult for you and your wife, too.”
“Only eight more days,” Romesh smiled as Vijay arrived.
“Seven-and-a-half days,” the boy corrected, panting to catch his breath and taking his father’s hand. “Bye, Viola, see you tomorrow!”
three
As always, Holly’s presentation of her department’s progress during the previous quarter received far more attention than any other. The reason for this was simple: the vast majority of Rusentra board members lived on the station and discussed business every day, and even the few who made the trip from Earth were in far more frequent contact with their counterparts than Holly.
Updates from behind the scenes on Terradox were always the main event of these board meetings, both for those on Holly’s side and for those who wanted to see her fail, and today was no different.
She made it through the initial presentation with no difficulties, standing beside the room’s information board and referring to several digital slides to support or emphasise certain points. Rusev was particularly interested in the progress Holly referred to within the colony’s Robotics division, where new research breakthroughs in the field of Artificial Intelligence were being made with increasing frequency.
At the end of Holly’s presentation, the large zonal map of Terradox prompted one unfriendly board member to ask her whether the enormous tract of land devoted to the so-called Primosphere had yet led to anything worthwhile. The questioner, a financial executive by the name of Bill Norman, did little to disguise his pre-judgement.
“If you mean anything interesting to you, then almost certainly not,” Holly replied bluntly.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Bill said. “I’m looking at a zone which is almost one-third as large as Little Venus — including the Buffers! — and one which gets almost as much funding as your entire Childhood Development division. And when I ask what it’s producing, you tell—”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t act like giving the Childhood Development team whatever they need isn’t our number one priority.”
Bill made a show of shrugging his shoulders in an exaggerated manner. “So what are you telling me, Ivy? That the numbers are lying?”
Although Ivy Wood was her birth name and had never been officially changed by any legal process, no one who wasn’t deliberately trying to get under Holly’s skin had called her that for decades, let alone years. Bill’s transparent attempt to rile her drew eye-rolls and sighs even from others who resented her position.
The ‘Hollywood’ nickname, quickly shortened to Holly, was originally applied just as resentfully by her training companions in the latter days of the now-defunct public space program. Not dissimilarly to her current situation, many around Holly at that time had felt that her presence in their ranks was unmerited; in the first case, that it owed less to her abilities than to the photogenic presentability which had landed her the role as the program’s spokesperson and de facto poster-child, as part of a media campaign designed to drum up interest in space research and exploration as a means of reversing an ultimately fatal decline in investment.
But Holly’s peerless work ethic, allied to her consistently high performances in physical training and particularly in flight-related tasks, soon showed her sceptical colleagues that her place was at least as merited as anyone else’s. And so it went that the initially disparaging nickname stuck like glue as an ironic term of endearment she came to wear as a badge of honour.
She ignored Bill’s attempt at childish provocation, loath to give him the satisfaction of an acknowledgement, and instead replied to the content of his point: “Bill, water reclamation is a higher priority for this station than medical research. But which do you think we spend more money on? Do you really need me to explain that priorities don’t necessarily correlate to spending levels?”
Once again, Bill gave a highly performative shrug.
“So you are unironically comparing the budgets of those divisions: Childhood Development and the Primosphere? Bill, as hard as this might be for you to believe, procuring and maintaining textbooks and playground equipment tends to cost less than creating and maintaining a self-contained ecosystem which replicates as accurately as scientifically possible the atmospheric conditions in which life first emerged.”
A few other board members tittered at Holly’s word-perfect put-down; even among those who weren’t her biggest fans, Bill Norman wasn’t exactly Mr Popularity.
“So your answer is that the Primosphere is producing nothing,” Bill said. It wasn’t a question.
“My answer is that it’s producing voluminous primary research among humanity’s foremost experts in several fields.”
This time Bill didn’t shrug, choosing instead to shake his head several times. “To be frank, Ivy… I just don’t see the potential for a tangible return. Particularly when compared to other possible uses of the space and funding, it looks to me like an enormous waste of resources.”
“To be equally frank,” Holly shot back, losing only a small degree of composure, “and with the greatest of respect here, Bill… that’s why people like you don’t make decisions like this. The Terradox colony is not a business park and it’s not an investment opportunity. On Terradox, we do things despite the cost; not in anticipation of the return.”
Rusev, quietly angered by Bill’s insolence, thanked Holly for the thorough presentation and asked if she had any updates on the promising botanical research which had been discussed in the last meeting.
“I can report that progress has continued at a steady pace, but nothing more tangible than that right now,” Holly replied. “For those of you who weren’t here last time: work in our Botanical Gardens may not be at the top of everyone’s interest list, but our Head of Botany is very excited about the potential of what they’re doing there. As most of you will remember, Robert Harrington and his Habitat Management team at New Eden have been working alongside Bo Harrington to test sub-zonal divisions in the Gardens, and those divisions have already enabled major atmospheric variations within the Gardens’ single zone. That, combined with the Botany team’s ongoing work on genetic manipulation and their aims of expediting evolutionary mutations through artificially shortened day- and life-cycles… well, all of that has already led to some very encouraging breakthroughs which could have enormous near-future implications in the field of regenerative medicine.”
Bill Norman’s eyes perked up; this sounded like something which could produce the kind of tangible return that he and his bean-counting colleagues lived for.
“That strikes me as something we should be focusing on a lot more than we are,” a previously silent man interjected. He sat to Holly’s far left and she recognised him as a man known as Slick — a media executive responsible for maximising revenues from Terradox Live, the daily show produced on the c
olony and broadcast to hundreds of millions of loyal viewers on Earth.
Holly’s disdain for this man paled into comparison to that which she felt for the show’s on-site producer, Monica Pierce, but she knew that having to deal with him for only a few hours every quarter rather than every single day might well have had something to do with that.
Slick, a thirty-something redhead whose appearance and general aura didn’t fit his nickname all that well, continued his point: “Who is the Head of Botany? If he — or she! — is going to deliver a breakthrough like the kind you’re talking about, we should make sure to get regular interview footage and progress updates at every stage.”
“Christian Jackson,” Grav answered. “A great man, but a private one.”
Slick’s eyes lit up like he was a cartoon dog eyeing a pie on a windowsill. “Christian Jackson?” he asked, his voice full of glee. “Chase Jackson’s father? Holly, if you’re telling me that Chase’s dad is on the verge of a breakthrough, we need to get Monica and a camera crew over to his little garden right now and—”
Rusev sighed and interjected: “For the last time, Holly is not here to talk about Terradox Live and she’s not here to talk about Chase. Holly, I apologise… I know you can speak for yourself, but I couldn’t have been more explicit before you arrived that this wasn’t what we were all gathering here to talk about.”
“It’s okay, I’m not hiding my views,” Holly said. “I don’t like Terradox Live, I don’t like Monica Pierce, and my life was a lot simpler before I first saw either of them. But I’m also not too blind to see the positive effect the show has had in terms of public engagement on Earth, especially among young people. Teenagers think Terradox is cool; and outside of the ones who are naturally interested in science, that just wasn’t the case eighteen months ago. If anyone doesn’t know why that matters, you need to understand that the Terradox colony needs continued support from every demographic group we can reach. This is a controversial project — not just because of what almost happened with Netherdox, but because of what we could do on Earth with the resources and brainpower we’re expending on Terradox. For every Bill Norman who thinks we should be doing one kind of research on Terradox instead of another, there are a thousand more on Earth who think we should be doing none at all. We need to be eternally vigilant of populist politicians on Earth who could see the Terradox colony as an easy focus of us-versus-them grievances, and things like Terradox Live are important in that fight for hearts and minds.”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 65
