Eschaton - Season One

by Kieran Marcus

  It hardly fazed Cosmo that his supervisors hated him. He knew that they knew that he knew too much already, and that if they didn’t listen to his frequent complaints, UNSPAG—or even worse: the media—would. ArkCorp may not have cared too much about the success of the Exodus mission or the quality of the work they delivered, but they did care about their fifteen trillion dollar contract.

  The problem they way Cosmo saw it was as obvious as its solution was simple: first you had to employ only people who were actually entering the Exodus lottery, and then you had to greatly increase the probability of workers falling victim to their own sloppy work by giving them a chance to earn additional lottery tickets for themselves and their families. That way, Cosmo reckoned, you would increase worker motivation and decrease the amount of substandard work. Of course when he had taken it up with one of his ArkCorp superiors during his last shore leave, a square-jawed buffoon named Muad’dib Randhawa, the man wouldn’t have any of it.

  “Mr. Morgan,” he had said, “we have quality controls in place to ensure that we maintain six sigma standards across all our operations. Do you know what that means?”

  “I do know what that means, sir,” Cosmo said. “Six sigma has been an industry standard for more than a century. It means 3.4 defects per million opportunities.”

  “Correct,” Randhawa said. “Although we prefer to express it as a percentage.”

  “Of course you do, because to the average person .00034 percent sounds a lot less than 3.4 per million even though it’s exactly the same.”

  Randhawa shrugged. “Puff is part of the trade.”

  “With all due respect to your trade, sir, your puffing might fool the mathematically challenged, but not those with more than half a functioning brain. Six sigma may sound great, but is it really good enough for an undertaking of this magnitude? An ark-ship is made of twenty-five million parts. At 3.4 defects per million we’re talking about eighty-five defects on every ark-ship. Eighty-five! Now if it’s a faulty light switch, it certainly won’t put the mission in jeopardy, but what if one of those eighty-five is a fried plasma core semiconductor relay? By the time they discover it somewhere past Jupiter, it’ll be way too late to turn back. Winning the Exodus Lottery, on the other hand, is a seven sigma event. The probability is .0000019 percent. I’m asking you, sir, would you feel comfortable taking that trip if you knew that a potentially catastrophic flaw was a hundred and eighty times more likely than the chance of you winning your ticket?”

  Randhawa stared at him without a reply.

  “I thought so,” Cosmo said and nodded. “So here’s the thing: if we raise the manufacturing standard to seven sigma, we’ll end up with less than .5 defects on a ship of twenty-five million parts, or 5.7 defects across all twelve ark-ships which is still more than plenty. Better yet, raise it to eight sigma, and the probability of a single defect on any of the ark-ships is down to .09 percent. And the way to do it, the only way to do it, is to have only people work up there who are actually participating in the lottery. Heck, I have dozens of coworkers who don’t give a damn about Exodus and who couldn’t care less if the mission succeeds or not. They’re just up there to make money so they can stack up on canned beans and bottled water for the time after the impact. I say replace them with people whose lives actually depend on the quality of their work, and give them extra lottery tickets as an incentive. They deserve it, and humankind deserves it too.”

  “Are you finished?” Randhawa asked from behind his desk.

  “Actually, sir, I’ve only just got started.”

  Randhawa sighed. “Look, Mr. Morgan,” he said leaning forward. “I appreciate your passion and your enthusiasm. I really do. But all this is way above your pay grade. In fact, it’s way above mine. We have a contract with UNSPAG. We do the work they ask us to do. Even if we wanted to do more, we couldn’t, because these are not our decisions to make. If you call in a plumber to fix a leak in your bathroom, you wouldn’t want him to tell you how to redecorate your house.”

  “No,” Cosmo said, “but I’d want him to tell me if there’s something fundamentally wrong with my plumbing that will cost me dearly a few months or years down the line if I don’t have it properly fixed now.”

  Randhawa shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Morgan. There is nothing I can do for you.”

  “All right then,” Cosmo said and rose to leave. Before he walked out the door, he turned to Randhawa and asked, “Are you participating in the lottery, sir?”

  The long silence before Randhawa’s reply indicated that he was considering a lie. “No,” he finally said.

  That had been six months ago, on the very same day Cosmo’s wife had withdrawn their lottery application without his knowledge or consent. After a very brief burst of fury during which he kicked a toilet paper dispenser off the wall in a public restroom and scoffed at a woman for slowing down the traffic at a supermarket checkout because she was paying cash, Cosmo pulled himself together. He took a few deep breaths, counted to twenty-three, and forced himself to put his emotions on hold and discard his initial impulses to exert brutal, possibly deadly violence on everyone he knew including himself. Instead, he decided to play along with everyone’s spiel.

  In the following weeks and months, his coworkers and superiors on Nephilim 2 encountered a new and ostensibly improved Cosmo. He would do everything strictly by the book without any protests or complaints. If he saw one of his coworkers do a less than satisfactory job, he would go back after his shift and fix it himself without charging ArkCorp for the extra hours he put in and, indeed, without filing a complaint. Meanwhile, down on Earth when he was on shore leave, he became a model husband and father. He applied the same high quality standards he adhered to in his job to the time he spent with his wife Shiva and their daughter Lyra, and under his aegis the family drew up comprehensive plans for the future, a future they expected to spend under potentially dire conditions in a post-apocalyptic world after the impact. Only very rarely Cosmo confronted his wife and daughter with a ‘What if we win the Exodus lottery’ scenario, simply to gauge their reaction. Whenever he did that, Shiva and Lyra would exchange very subtle conspiring looks that Cosmo never would have noticed, had he not known what to look for. Apart from those looks they would maintain their deceitful façade and continue to play Cosmo without ever realizing that they were the ones being played.

  * * *

  “So what’s your story?” Aldiss Okvist asked as he and Cosmo were making their way back to the habitat modules on the port side of the ship after lunch. They were floating down a ten-meter wide aisle known as the Port Side Boulevard that connected the port side habitat modules with the central food court. Its counterpart on the opposite side of the ship was the Starboard Boulevard. Once the ark-ship was on its way, exodants would be able to stroll along the boulevards on either side of the ship—and on every deck—passing a long line of shop and office storefronts that were designed to remind them of their local main street or shopping mall back home. Those shops and offices had yet to be fitted and decorated, so what were supposed to become inviting, sparkling boulevards were still long, cold aluminum tunnels for now.

  Cosmo looked at his wristwatch. “What story?”

  “Come on,” Okvist said. “I’m not blind. You’re not just a space drone like all the others, are you?”

  “I’m not here for the money, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So what is it then?”

  Cosmo turned around to look at Okvist. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ever since I was seven I wanted to become an astronaut. I know, a lot of kids say that when they’re seven, but I still said it when I was twenty-two. So I applied for the astronaut program straight out of college.”

  “And?”

  “And I got rejected.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows?” Cosmo said. “They don’t tell you. They never do. All they ever do is give you some phony, meaningless explanation like, ‘It’s not that you weren’t good enough, it’s jus
t that some of the other applicants were better’. Like you’re some kind of stupid Pre-K toddler and they don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “Well,” Okvist said, “if they think you can’t handle the true reason why they reject you, then that’s probably why they reject you, don’t you think?”

  Cosmo frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, I’ve heard of other astronaut rejects who were told quite explicitly why they didn’t make it. ‘You have a heart condition,’ or ‘You’re legally blind.’ If they didn’t want to hurt your feelings like you said, then perhaps they thought you couldn’t handle the mental strain of being an astronaut.”

  “Gee, thanks for being so blunt,” Cosmo said, trying not to sound offended, because he wasn’t. Blunt honesty had become a rare commodity, and there was nothing that Cosmo loathed more than the kind of flowery hypocrisy that seemed to be at the core of all human discourse these days.

  “I’m just saying,” Okvist said.

  Cosmo waved his hand dismissively. “Anyway,” he said, “then life happened. Got married, became a father, and before I even knew it, a lifelong goal was downgraded to a dream.”

  They turned a corner into a smaller tunnel, the equivalent of a residential area down on Earth, with hundreds of aluminum front doors, the entrances to individual habitat modules.

  “With the green-lighting of Exodus,” Cosmo continued, “UNSPAG suddenly found itself in dire need of space construction workers and engineers, so I applied for the job and here I am.”

  “So I guess this must be a dream come true for you then.”

  Cosmo snickered. “Please. A worker bee in space is as much of an astronaut as a seventeenth-century shipbuilder was an explorer.” He looked at his watch. It was time to change the topic. It’s not that Cosmo didn’t like talking about himself; about his life, his hopes and dreams and aspirations; his fears, his discontent, and his anger. The problem was that he liked talking about it too much for his own good. Everybody needed a friend, a confidant, a person they could share their innermost thoughts with. Usually that person was your spouse or your best friend, but if your spouse betrayed you like Shiva had betrayed him, and your best friend was your brother-in-law, then you suddenly found yourself incommunicado, bereft of a much needed release valve, and you felt like the loneliest person in the world. Cosmo knew that in his situation he was prone to spilling the beans to the next best person who happened to push the right buttons, and Okvist was pushing them all. He was a good kid, Okvist; young, sharp, eager to learn and seemingly immune to all kinds of manipulative bullshit and manufactured consent. If Cosmo had met him under different circumstances, at a different time in a different place, they might very well have become the best and closest of friends. But the circumstances were what they were, and Cosmo knew he couldn’t allow himself to be too upfront with anyone now, no matter how much best-friend potential they held. Too much was at stake at this point, and not talking about his plan to anyone, alas, was a crucial part of said plan.

  “What are we looking for?” Cosmo asked.

  Okvist looked at his tablet computer. “We’re looking for … habitat modules D0750 through D0799.”

  “All right,” Cosmo said, floating past module D0735, “we’re almost there.”

  When they reached D0750, they stopped. Cosmo touched his key card against the wall sensor and the door sprang a crack open.

  “Remember all those twentieth-century sci-fi movies?” he asked as he pushed the door open with his hand.

  “Magic sliding doors,” Okvist said.

  “Yep. Deemed too expensive for the greatest expedition in the history of the world. That’s why we have sensors and a keypad on the outside and good old-fashioned door handles and latches on the inside.”

  Inside the habitat module, Cosmo threw the light switch. Bright LED light instantly flooded the empty room, gleamingly reflected in the shiny aluminum surfaces of the walls and ceiling. A lonely table was mounted to the floor in the right hand corner, and appliances had yet to be fitted into the kitchenette on the opposite side of the room. In the left hand corner a small hatch led to an escape pod that could be deployed in an emergency, although it wasn’t quite clear under what circumstances drifting in deep space in a seven-cubic-meter tin can without a proper propulsion system would be preferable to staying on the mother ship.

  For now, it looks like a generously sized prison cell, Cosmo thought, but boy would I love to be imprisoned here instead of …

  “All right,” he said, looking at his wristwatch. “Let’s get this baby up.”

  They grabbed the large flat-pack the logistics team had left strapped to the floor and unwrapped the e-window unit. After Okvist had disposed of the packaging in the vacuum garbage chute—apart from the lights and ventilation the only thing that was already working in the habitat modules—he helped Cosmo fit the four-square-meter e-window into its designated frame above the still bedless sleeping area.

  “I don’t get it,” Okvist said, connecting the wires. “Why do they call it a window?”

  “What else would they call it?”

  “It’s just a monitor, isn’t it? It’s basically just a fancy 3D-TV, so why not call it that?”

  “Well,” Cosmo said, “It can—and most likely will—be used for communication and entertainment purposes, but its default function, the one that people will see when they first set foot into their new abode, is that of a window. Since they can’t have real windows because of cosmic radiation and everything, UNSPAG is using it as a selling point. ‘A comfortable room with a panoramic window providing a spectacular 3D view of the cosmos’ sounds much more enticing than ‘a cold, windowless aluminum cell with a TV.”

  “Right,” Okvist said, tightening a screw. “Do they really need selling points, though? I wasn’t under the impression that there’s a shortage of applicants.”

  “There isn’t. But you see, psychology is an important factor in this mission. If you’re used to open skies, as most people are, it’s very easy to feel rather claustrophobic when you’re suddenly locked into a place like …” He looked around the room. “… this. They want people to feel comfortable and not run amok after two weeks in space. A nice big window, even a fake one, can go a long way towards achieving that, and I’m being told there really will be some spectacular views of Jupiter and Saturn a couple of months into the journey.”

  Cosmo looked at his watch.

  “Do you have to be somewhere?” Okvist asked.

  “What?”

  “You keep checking your watch. You’ve been doing it all day. Do you have a dentist appointment or something?”

  “Oh, that,” Cosmo said and shook his head. “Nah, just wanna know what time it is, that’s all.” Pull yourself together, man, he thought. Don’t blow this now.

  They finished wiring the e-window.

  “Are you ready?” Cosmo asked.

  “Ready.”

  “Here we go,” Cosmo said and pressed the little red button on the e-window frame. The screen flickered to life, and after a few seconds of static, the earth came into view a thousand miles below them, a grayish-blue marble against the black velvet background of space.

  “Okay,” Okvist said, “that is spectacular.”

  For a few moments, the men paused to take in the magnificent view. They could see India and the snowless tops of the Himalayas as their Nephilim traveled east at twenty-six thousand kilometers per hour.

  “A crazy thought, that,” Okvist said. “Leaving it all behind.”

  “Are you?”

  “Hm?”

  “Are you leaving it all behind?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m in the lottery, if that’s what you’re asking. But I won’t find out for another three months. You?”

  Cosmo shook his head—at himself for bringing up the topic rather than in response to the question. “Entered on a family ticket with my wife and daughter. We didn’t make it.”

  “I see.”

&n
bsp; “Well anyway, we still have another forty-eight of these babies to install, so we better get on with it. Let’s see how quickly you tire of the view.”

  A crackle in their earpieces announced an incoming communication from ArkCorp control.

  “Cosmo Morgan, this is Nephilim 2 ArkCorp control, do you copy?”

  “This is Cosmo Morgan at work and at your service, ma’am,” Cosmo said and winked at Okvist.

  “Hi, Cosmo, this is Halley Winter.”

  “Hi, Halley, how ya doin’?”

  “Cosmo, I’m getting a report from maintenance about a strange hissing noise in habitat module B0722. According to my records, you put the wiring in the escape pod of that module two days ago, is that correct?”

  Cosmo rolled his eyes at Okvist. “What was the number of that module you say?”

  “B0722.”

  “Yeah,” Cosmo said. “Two days ago sounds about right.”

  “Right. Well listen, Cosmo, I normally wouldn’t do this, but I’m a bit tight for personnel at the moment, and since you’re in the same area only two decks below, I was wondering if you could have a quick look?”

  Cosmo sighed. “Really, Halley? I still have forty-eight e-window units to install, and you guys teamed me up with a rookie to make sure it takes extra long.”