by Peter Riva
“Nothing, the nurse on duty said you simply opened your eyes and raised a hand.”
“Describe the moments before, if you can …”
Aten said, “We can do better than that, we can reply the vid.” She went over to the wall and pushed a sequence of buttons, turned to the doctor and asked, “Forty-five ten?”
“About,” Todd responded.
The green tint panel of a cupboard sprang into vid. There I was, lying like Cramer looked now, sleeping, peaceful. There was suddenly a klaxon sound, not very loud, but there. I knew that sound, an air leak on Angie’s and my orbiting home! “You had a hull breach!”
They looked perplexed. Aten shook her head, “No, Simon, we didn’t, that’s the warning that we’re tacking, it happens every few weeks and there is a chance there will be a change in centripetal force, our effect of gravity. So we warn everyone to secure items that could be broken.”
“Yes, but that klaxon is the same as a hull breach on my ET home. That’s what woke me! We have to find something different than dreams, revisiting fond memories, for Cramer, something very real and perhaps annoying or pleasurable. He doesn’t scare easily and, hell, I have no idea what he would find pleasurable other than shooting someone!”
And then it hit me. Chocolate. Without waiting for their consent, I decided to try a memory trick on Cramer. Hell, I might as well get in all the digs I could while he could not fight back. And fight back he would, if he could. I was hoping that instinct to get back at me would raise his consciousness.
“Aten, what sort of food do you have on board?”
“Anything you like, any recipe in our memory banks, we can synthesize.”
“Okay, make me a Waldorf Astoria gooey chocolate cake, please.”
“You want that with dinner?”
“Nope, I want it here, right now. Cramer can’t resist chocolate cake.”
When the attendant brought in a plate with a beautifully frosted, sticky, messy, chocolate cake, the doc and Aten stood shocked as I dipped my finger in and sucked in a big dollop of gooey mess, making lip-smacking sounds next to Cramer’s ear. Some of the brown mess got on his pillow. “Hey, Cramer, the chocolate cake is great, pity you can’t have any. Unless you wake up dummy …” I stuck my finger in again and sucked on it, making as much noise as I could. Even I was grossed out.
Cramer’s mouth opened. Aten’s intake of breath was so damn endearing.
“Okay, Ralph,” I deliberately used the name only his ex-wife, my wife, called him as I knew it would annoy and please him. “But remember, this is my cake, you have to get your own, remember?” I wanted to reawaken his memory of that same threatening conversation in the Waldorf Astoria at the beginning of the Event when he had me under arrest, gun trained on me at all times, and wanted to kill me on the spot. I dipped my finger in again and wiped the brown frosting across his lips, making sure some stuck to his upper lip under his nose. For a moment, nothing happened, except the medic ordered the nurse to bring wipes. I stopped her. Aten’s hands were clasped across her chest, tense, unsure what would happen.
Cramer’s lips began to move and his tongue appeared, licking the chocolate goo.
Everyone held their breath. Cramer’s mouth moved, once, then twice. He swallowed. From deep inside that little boy, somewhere, came a command. He was always giving commands, my friend Cramer, but from a seven-year-old you would have thought it could have no authority. Instantly, however, he was in control, “More!”
Aten grabbed the dish and delicately broke off a small piece and fed him. I motioned to the nurse and medic to leave the room and shut the door. Aten was crying saying his name over and over. Cramer’s eyes were still shut, but he was smacking away. Me? I was such a damn baby at this age, tears were rolling again.
It felt good not to be alone, I had my two friends for as long as it lasted. For now, eight years seemed more than enough.
7
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
I was taller, he was shorter. He could and if I provoked him, would, no doubt, beat me up, I was fairly sure. Cramer was back. Only he was a little weird. He cried every once in a while when he saw Aten or me. Aten reminded me that I cried like a baby for a few days too, at first.
Cramer remembered that I had died before he did, so he was patient when I asked him about his accident. Taking a Russian helicopter from St. Petersburg airport to the lab, he was riding with the door open, as always the cowboy leaning out, holding the rail with one hand. The rail snapped as the ‘copter made a very hard landing. He jumped, made a good roll, but the ‘copter followed, rolling on its side, partially crushing him in the open doorway.
I couldn’t resist a little teasing, “Well, you always did have a habit for grandstand posing in helicopter doorways …”
Little boys do not usually have such foul language. Especially when grinning.
I had to ask, “Feels okay to be back alive, no?”
He nodded, “And how about you, no more speeded up misery, I would have hated that.”
Even though Aten wasn’t in the room, I carefully avoided spilling the beans that she wanted his child. First, although Cramer was in his forties inside, his new exterior was only seven or so. Could he provide Aten with what she wanted, was there sperm production yet? I figured it would be better for Aten and Cramer to figure this out for themselves. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t above a little prodding of my friend. I really wanted him and Aten to be happy together. “So, what do you think of the fine woman Aten has become?”
His mood turned black instantly. He caught himself and relaxed his glare, “Oh, Aten looks healthy and fit, I am very pleased for her.”
He needed more prodding than that! I almost had him. “Yeah, but that body! All that beauty and brains too—Hey, open up Meg!”
At seven, recently awake from over a century of coma, he sure could move fast. He leaped from the bed, landed on me, and the chair went over, him on top, fist poised, me grinning away. Attendants burst into the room, in shock at what they saw on the vid links, and Cramer and I burst out laughing.
His retort to me, as he got up, was simple, “Bastard.”
Mine to him, still lying on the floor, was even simpler, “Cool! Gotcha, tag, you’re it.”
He shot me a grin. The big guy, only seven, was smitten.
As the days rolled by, nobody seemed in any hurry aboard the ship. Like me, Cramer had a thousand questions and Aten made me promise that we’d give him little doses of answers. In fact, I still really had little idea of the ship’s operation, what had happened for the past hundred years or so, had we heard from Earth, and on and on. Aten and the medical staff kept us in the dark mostly. They weren’t hiding anything, they were being cautious. I had to admit I enjoyed—no, I felt safe being spoon-fed new information. Although it was, for me, only yesterday in my memory when I died, somehow the bio-mechanism that was this new body, including my brain, felt new and needed running in, in order to prevent breakdown. Cramer and I discussed this and agreed to be patient. Aten was very pleased we were not pushing her.
The sweet night nurse, the one who had not known who Apollo was, had turned out to be a special trainee from birth who was deliberately kept in the dark about parts of history as they related to me. She needed, as the doctor told me, “to be unable to psychologically damage you with information you would find distressful. Imagine if you just could not remember Apollo very well—the nurse having his name only and no more information on the chart, allowed us to monitor your reaction. If she had known more and blurted it out, you could have felt damaged mentally if you could not remember fully. As it is, her parents volunteered her for this role at birth. It was a great honor for her to be the first to speak with you.”
I asked if she would now have access to the real information. He explained that it was my responsibility to educate her. “Everyone on the ship carries their own responsibility. She did this to safeguard you. Her name is Maryanne. So you have to make good her education and two other nurse
s as well.” I said I would be pleased to. When I asked Aten about this, she smiled and reminded me that I only had myself to blame. After all, I had instilled the Path, balance in all things, as the basis for harmony and life. It seemed the ship took my meaning, dredged up for in-System Peter to safeguard all life as I knew it then, to keep him from destroying and killing inadvertently, as part of his becoming aware. Manners, the Path, the way of comradery—these attributes seemed to be governing everything on board. Aten explained that it was the reason why the voyage had proceeded without incident. Not one incident.
There had been deaths, accidents and, of course, disagreements, but Aten was proud of the crew’s ability to anticipate escalation and find a different way. “Simon, the Path, when applied as a desire, not a rule, works to help all of us to work together. On top of which, when you meet the crew, you will understand better.” In private, I asked her when that was to be, and she explained it would be soon, we were doing so well. “I am hoping you’ll wait for Cramer, when he’s ready. He may have more trouble adjusting than you. The crew is expecting the genius Simon to lead us forward and Cramer, the born leader Cramer, may find that hard, and, anyway, the Crew doesn’t know that much about him.”
Aten’s goal, she said, was to monitor everything she could, study people, help them stay on the path. “Like you, Simon, like you did for me, as Peter, and for us, as Apollo and Ra.”
Of course, Aten, well Ra back then, had studied every sociology tome she could absorb before she designed the ship. Although I did not have ship access yet, still being confined to the medical ward, Aten discussed her redesign with Cramer and me. We were both shocked to learn that the ship had grown in size, massively grown.
Cramer wanted to know how it was paid for, “I remember the budget, but at three kilometers long and over one wide, this is four times wider and more than three times longer. Heck that’s …
Aten finished it for him, “Four point one six six cubic kilometers compared to zero point zero six six cubic kilometers. Or roughly, sixty-six times as big inside. Loads of space, empty space. The budget? Roughly the same. You see, we used new materials and built it in high Earth orbit, closer to the moon’s factories.”
I didn’t understand the size. Surely we weren’t boosting that much more cargo and people. I calculated that the engines would need to be almost 100 times larger and how would we get everyone down to the planet? Cramer was having the same thoughts, but I could see he was figuring it out, certainly quicker than me. He said, “Empty space. So you kept the mass the same? Or close? That would mean the crew of two hundred would have ample space, less crowding, private areas. Good for morale.”
Aten nodded, “Yes, that was part of the reason. The rest was even more ingenious. Apollo calculated the mass, the ionization of the new material skin during flight being sufficient to still repel dust and small asteroids. When Apollo was certain it was feasible, engineering came up with balloon construction, moving away from the rib design the regular spaceships’ architects wanted.” Aten saw me frown. “Simon, balloon construction is much more flexible. The single spars run from the aft of the main ship all the way to the swivel dock, one piece, each of them. They are one-half of one centimeter thick, almost four kilometers long.”
Even Cramer could not fathom something so delicate, “That may be okay for flight, but planet fall will cause any beryllium alloy like that to fail.” Aten smiled. Cramer knew she was setting him up, “Ah, so what are they made of… your balloon construction spars?”
“Graphene, rolled graphene tubes, one molecule thick graphene rolled up like aluminum foil until they are one-half of one centimeter in diameter. The layers are unbreakable, molecular integrity will prevent that. And they are light, each weighing just two hundred kilos. And they permit the skin of the ship to flex. If we can land on water, she’ll float like a huge ocean liner, to give us time to find a safe landing.”
“And the skin?” I wanted to know if Angie was still there.
“We wove half millimeter strands of Angie’s alloy into and in between a matrix of graphene and clear titanium crystal. The graphene holds it all together, makes it unbreakable because of the molecular bond. The clear titanium crystal allows for heat dissipation if we run a positive charge through the skin, but normally in deep space, it is left negative to allow Angie’s alloy to do its job of protecting us from dust and small debris. At this speed repulsion of particles is critical.”
Aten frowned, “We did have a little mishap the thirtieth year out as we passed through what we felt was only dusty interstellar space. Suddenly, all the alarms went off and we seemed to be in a debris field. With the engines out front, the radar signature had missed a debris cloud. And with no light or energy out here to make them glow, nobody could see anything ahead of us. What the engines didn’t burn up bounced off their nacelles, causing fragments to bounce off each other and take oblique paths. Some of these rained down on the ship. We sustained a little damage to the pilots’ capsule windows, which thankfully was easy to repair, but it made us rethink our flight trajectory. Now we use long-range scanners and always have an observer on the forward deck with the radio telescope looking in a cone-sweep three to five degrees off to the side of the motors. When we are sure there is nothing there, we alter course about four degrees and fly that route. Later, weeks later usually, we repeat the tack on the other side or below, wherever the pilot directs us will be the next tack.”
I had been wanting to know, “How do you turn this thing? Consumables must be at a premium …”
“We use no thruster consumables for the turn. We are saving those for planetfall. The two engines and internal nacelles on the thrust cowling of the engines, even though the engines are engineered as one block, allow the pilot on duty to steer. Actually, it was a Mississippi bargemen’s method—right and left rudder done by prop thrust—in our case plasma discharge. Added to that, the nacelles pivot four degrees, so we can fine tune the rate of deviation and slow the turn near the end. It’s kind of like sailing ships of old, small degree course changes sailing upwind—all of which have added two years to the flight time.”
I figured it would be longer than that, “Only two years?”
She smiled and chuckled, “My engines got us to speed much faster than anticipated precisely because there was more dark matter and normal debris out here than we thought. The good news and the not so good news. On balance, it’s a little longer, but we’re safer knowing. At least it wasn’t really large debris we hit first!” That was our new Aten, ever the optimist. Gone were the angry traits that Ra had been developing, replaced by energy devoted to others. I bit my tongue. The example of a woman’s caring over a man’s belligerence was, to me anyway, obvious. Cramer noticed it too and had a goofy look on his face.
I had another question, one of energy, “Aten, how do the engines make electricity for all the onboard facilities? I remember your designs for the engines, they didn’t have that capability.”
She shook her head, “I never could figure that out, how to make part of the plasma output fuel a separate reactor for electricity without irradiating everyone on board. Shielding was just too massive. So what we did was build a reactor, much like the PowerCube on Earth, with built-in near zero temperature circuitry. That way we have both power and a battery for planet fall.” She saw my quizzical look. “Think Simon. Superconductivity. Since the PowerCube was made using sheets of graphene sandwiching diamond plate diode crystals, the closer to absolute zero you get, the more there is no loss of electricity between the plates. So, in essence, the unit will provide power as any PowerCube would but it also can act as a storage unit if kept super cold. Here, in deep space, it is almost that cold. We call our PowerCube variation simply, the Cube, although it too is in a cigar shape, and we’re towing it aft, connected and spinning like us. As we get nearer to a sun, its reflecting metal skin and that spinning should keep it rotating into enough shadow and cold.”
Cramer and I were impressed. Aten, with
Apollo’s help no doubt, had made alterations to their design and had come up with genius fixes. If there was a PowerCube attached to this ship, the energy source should be ample for flight and colonialization.
The next day Aten took us around the medical ward, shaking hands, presented with crew uniforms, and offered a sonic water shower. Nudity seemed to be acceptable as this was a medical ward. Heck, they had probably all seen me, a little kid, nude before anyway while I was out cold. Cramer could have cared less. He dropped the pajamas, went over to the staff assembled, selected the really pretty nurse, Maryanne, and asked for a towel for after his shower. She ran to get him one. He stepped in, closed the door, which had an opaque panel at waist height only if you were already an adult and not a kid of seven, turned it on, and sang while the sonic droplets scoured his rotating body clean. When the shower cycled off, he stepped out, thanked the nurse for the towel she proffered, toweled his hair, and then finally, slowly, wrapped the towel around his waist. Aten merely said, “Show-off,” and left the ward in a huff.
Cramer looked at me and shrugged as if to say, what did I do?
My thought? Idiot. Playing with fire. I remembered Ra’s temper.
I quietly took my shower, turning away from the room against the rotation because I knew the opaque panel was a little higher than I wanted.
Once dressed, the medical attendant gave us each a quick series of tests, reflexes, pupil dilation, blood pressure, took blood, the usual drill, and pronounced us, “Fit to go.” Go where, with whom? Seeing my puzzlement, he called out, “Zip!”
The hospital dog I had seen for over a week now padded over. “Zip, two to go to the main deck, observation platform five I think, then lunch in the commissary, the window one I think, okay?” He turned to us, “Have fun guys. Zip will bring you back here after. A couple of more nights under observation and you’ll be allocated rooms and responsibilities. I don’t need to tell you Mr. Simon! You are sure to want to take charge, I guess.” He paused, perhaps sensing we had no idea what he was talking about. “Anyway, have a great first visit. Infinity Beyond is a great place, you’ll see.” Zip, who I guessed was a cross breed, something very large, maybe Newfoundland or a Pyrenean Mountain dog, white fur, brown eye-sized patches over his eyes, padded ahead of us, so we followed, looking at each other in amazement.
