by Jeff Pollard
“How do you remember all that?” Caroline asks. “But can't remember Jane Austen's name?”
“How do you remember Prince Rainier's mom's name and all that stuff about class and 19th century laundresses and forbidden marriage and stuff.”
“It's a story, it's easy to remember a story about people who lived and loved and struggled and died. That's what stories are for, to put faces and names to ideas. Humans love narratives.”
“To me, the names and faces and desires aren't important. What's important are the ideas. I see the story of humanity arising from lower forms and slowly piecing together the nature of reality as a single grand narrative that we stand at the end of. Standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“So you use all that knowledge to put Justin Bieber into space,” Caroline says.
“Gotta make money somehow,” K says. “They don't pay you to sit around reading and learning. You don't get a paycheck for understanding things.”
“Just make sure you're doing things for the right reasons,” Caroline says before walking out, taking the paint can with her. Kingsley sits on the step-ladder and looks up at the name on the wall.
Four Days Later
A group of astronauts, dressed in pressure suits, helmets open, walk from an electric van toward an elevator in the launch tower. Kingsley as flight engineer and first-timer, Commander Angela Walter, a former pilot in the Luftwaffe, are dressed in orange, while the passengers, Justin Bieber, George Clooney, a porn actress named Jaynen, and a Capuchin named Miley walk behind the flight crew, dressed in blue pressure suits. Even Miley has a pressure suit, something she has trained in for weeks now, and has no anxiety about. The media attention on Justin and Miley had been intense in preparation for their joint mission. So much so that Clooney had barely registered on the radar.
Josh Yerino walks and talks with K toward the launch tower.
“You know that thing we talked about,” K says to Josh cryptically.
“Yeah?”
“Do it,” K says.
“You sure?”
“I'm sure.”
“You know, if this doesn't work-”
“I know, I know.”
“Just forget about it. You don't know about it. This is all my idea.”
“I wouldn't ask you to take the fall for me,” K says. “Here goes nothing,” K says as he boards the elevator with his fellow astronauts. Josh heads back to the LCF.
Caroline told herself she wouldn't watch the launch, but found herself anxiously watching the livestream on her tablet anyway.
“The monkey has an ejection seat right?” Commander Angela Walter asks Kingsley quietly as they endure a four hour countdown.
“I could toss a banana out the window,” K offers. “Besides, I'm more worried about the Biebs. That kid is a mess.”
“Is there gonna be coke up there?” Bieber asks Clooney.
“No carbonated anything. You can't really burp in space. Not cleanly anyway,” Clooney replies, getting sick of this kid next to him.
“Oh, okay,” Bieber says quietly.
“He didn't mean Coca-Cola,” K whispers to Clooney.
“No shit,” Clooney replies.
“Okay, I need helmets closed and locked,” Commander Walter says for a fifth time. “That means you Bieber.”
“I can't breathe in this thing,” Bieber says simply, leaving his helmet open.
“Just wait until we have cabin depressurization, then tell me about not being able to breathe.”
“But we're on the ground,” Bieber replies. “I'll close it when we go, but for now, get off my nuts bitch.”
“So how's your first space mission going?” K asks Angela Walter sarcastically.
Josh watches the countdown drop below five minutes while sitting at a console in the back of the LCF. He looks over his shoulders, then back to his console. He pulls up a menu and starts clicking away rapidly before closing the menu and trying to look as if he has nothing at all to do. He's sweating.
A hairy palm slaps a boot. “Did I just get monkey slapped?” Commander Walter asks.
“Good Miley,” Bieber says as Miley returns to her seat. “Those krauts are the ones that stole your big sister.”
“The Germans took his first monkey,” K whispers to Angela.
“I'm sure they're raising it better than he is.” The hairy palm of the Capuchin Miley slaps the tops of everyone's boots as she hops back and forth across the base of the capsule.
“Justin, put your monkey away, that's an order!” Angela Walter shouts.
Caroline tries to breathe calmly as she stares at the long, sleek, white Eagle 9 sitting in the Florida Sun, streaming away white vapors of pure oxygen escaping from the tanks atop the first and second stages.
“We're going to take an inside look into the spacecraft now,” an announcer says. They cut to a view inside the capsule, keeping a feed of the exterior of the rocket in the bottom corner. Caroline finds herself looking at a close-up of Justin Bieber.
“She spanked my monkey! The Germans spanked my monkey!” Bieber shouts into the camera, so angry he's crying.
“Justin, do you have anything to say to your millions of fans?” The announcer tries to keep to the generic chit-chat that passes as an 'interview' these days.
“I don't believe in spanking! Spanking is wrong! It's abuse. I've got to comfort my monkey now, look at what the krauts did!”
The feed from inside the capsule freezes and in the corner, frozen, is George Clooney, looking dead into the camera with a “please kill me,” look on his face.
“It seems we've had some technical difficulties,” the announcer lies obviously as they switch to just an external view of the rocket.
Caroline holds her breath as the rocket takes to the sky. On a screen and thousands of miles away, it seems rather effortless and smooth. But Caroline knows better. She wonders about the monkey in that capsule, imagining it losing its god damn mind as the acceleration presses them into their seats and the vibrations threaten to make their brains leak out of their skulls.
The rocket gets smaller as it accelerates up and away. At stage separation, the first stage flips around, small bursts from the control jets are visible.
“First stage separation, this first stage will not attempt to return to launch site, but will rather splashdown harmlessly,” the announcer says as the first stage quite clearly disobeys his narration.
Kingsley has one of his many screens tuned to the telemetry from the first stage. He keeps an eye on the second stage engine and tanks as per his duty as flight engineer, but keeps a close eye on the first stage. He sees the velocity drop rapidly, and he knows the return burn has begun, he smiles.
“Flight, RSO,” the Range Safety Officer calls anxiously on his headset. Josh listens intently from his console.
“Go ahead,” the mission controller says.
“We're not attempting FSR on this flight, correct?”
“That's correct,” the controller calls back.
“I'm showing the first stage coming down on land, permission to terminate?”
“Negative, do not blow the first stage,” Josh says.
“Who said that?” The mission controller asks.
“Yerino.”
“I thought we weren't attempting a return?”
“We weren't,” Josh says, “but somebody didn't inform the flight computer, it thinks it's returning.”
“So I should blow it,” the RSO says.
“Negative,” Josh says.
“It's not following orders, you've got an out of control rocket on your hands, I'm blowing it.”
“It's not out of control, look at the telemetry, it's in perfect control, it's headed right for the landing pad, we're coming up on final descent engine ignition,” Josh says. “There's no danger.”
“If it's not following orders, then it's not in control,” RSO says. “I have a job to do, the mission rules are clear.”
“It's just in a different mode, it's not like it's disobeying orders, it's not achieved consciousness and trying to save its own life, Jesus Matt, just take your finger off the damn button.”
“Did you switch FSR on?” the mission controller asks Josh.
“That's a negative,” Josh replies. “It was turned off when I checked at T-Minus-Five. I don't know if the switch got flipped somehow, I don't know, but it's definitely in FSR mode now.”
“Should I blow it?” RSO asks.
“Negative, let's see if she can land,” control replies.
“Correction,” the announcer says on the feed, “they are indeed attempting first stage return on this mission, I was reading off of an out-of-date script. We have this tracking view of the first stage, and you can see the number nine center engine has re-started and the landing legs have deployed.”
“They what!?” ULA president Anthony Parks shouts at his secretary.
“The first stage is landing right now look,” she says as she puts a laptop in front of her boss.
“Are you sure this is live? This isn't an old video on YouTube?”
“I know the difference between a stream and a YouTube, I'm not an idiot,” the secretary replies.
“Well this doesn't make any fucking sense,” Parks says, slamming the laptop closed. “Bob personally assured me that they were done with this reusability non-sense, that the last launch was their last chance. Was Bob lying or are you lying?”
Kingsley watches the telemetry from the first stage, it's far more interesting than anything to do with the second stage which he happens to be riding.
“God, are we there yet?” Bieber whines.
K keeps his eyes on the nav-ball, which shows which direction the stage is pointing, not just heading, but pitch as well. If the autopilot induces an oscillation again, it will start to manifest as very small oscillations in the pitch which then magnify out of control. The rocket pitches up as it kills the down-range velocity and should eventually end up perfectly vertical. The reticle moves toward the zenith, but every minute change makes Kingsley paranoid that this is the first sign of an oscillation that will destroy the rocket. He watches the altitude, the velocity, but most of all, the nav-ball. When it gets below one hundred meters, and the rocket is perfectly vertical, he feels fairly sure that PIO will not be a problem, but won't let himself relax, she hasn't landed yet. His data stream does not tell him the status of the fuel supply or rate of consumption. He watches the velocity. A sudden uptick in the velocity would indicate the center engine had run out of fuel.
The rocket goes below twenty-five meters, at a velocity of only eight meters per second. At twelve meters, the velocity is just two-point-five meters per second. The rocket is perfectly upright. The velocity suddenly drops from one-point-five to zero, the altitude stops at four-point-three meters, the nav-ball is steady.
The first stage has come to a soft touchdown, with a speed just before touchdown of only about three mph. Kingsley looks through the data for anything, something, surely there was some other failure. But he finds none.
It worked.
“Yes!” Kingsley shouts, finally allowing himself to believe that it had indeed worked. “Yes!” he pumps his fists, alarming all those around him who were busy hoping nothing loud or exciting would happen for just another few minutes as they reached orbital velocity.
“What?!” Angela Walter asks.
“First stage landed safely,” K says, beaming.
“I thought we weren't doing FSR,” Angela says. K puts a gloved finger to his helmet, telling her to keep it a secret.
“What does that mean?” Clooney asks.
“Nothing, it's nothing,” K lies.
“What the fuck is happening! Are we dying!?” Bieber shouts. “Get me out of here!”
“See, he's reckless!” Bob Koke shouts over the phone to Peter Wilke.
“Oh shut up Bill, he pulled it off, he landed it, I'm not going to oust him now,” Peter replies.
“But you told him not to try a stunt like this and look what he did!”
“And he's also the rocket genius and I'm not, get a grip Bill, he made the thing work,” Peter ends the call and the screen on his phone returns to the livestream. He listens to the announcers try to pretend like this was an expected occurrence.
“How did I get stuck with this job?” Kingsley wonders aloud as he helps a naked Capuchin maneuver her butt into a suctioned toilet seat. They had to bring a special lid to fit Miley's rear contours. Once there's a good seal, Kingsley hears the tell-tale whine of the suction on her skin. Then he instructs her to go with the command, “Go potty Miley, go potty.” She had been well trained before Bieber purchased her, and for all his bad parenting he couldn't unteach these well in-grained lessons. Miley has a dozen hand gestures she can use for communication. She has one that means she needs to go to the bathroom, as well as one that means “finished.” When she makes that sign, Kingsley puts a fresh diaper on her and they exit the bathroom.
Miley signs “daddy” which means she wants to go to Justin. Kingsley motions for her to follow then he flies through the tunnel of this BA330 and finds the zipper-flap that serves as a door to Justin's room. K knocks on the panel, but Miley doesn't wait, instead yanking the flap open, sticking her arms through and pulling herself into the sparsely furnished room. K gets a quick glimpse of Bieber, naked, chasing after the porn actress while holding a camera. She's running away from him, fully clothed, and Kingsley just hears her say, “Let me know when you figure out how to keep that limp thing up.”
“Nope,” K says and launches himself down the tunnel, away from that scene.
Chapter 20
“No word yet,” Caroline says quietly via Skype. Kingsley floats in his room in the second BA330. Caroline appears on screen, sitting in bed at home. Her face is slack, she speaks quietly, seemingly depressed. “They've only called about twenty states so far. All they are talking about is how momentous it is that Texas might go blue, like we haven't seen that coming for the last four years.”
“Nate Silver put it at 55-45 against,” K replies.
“How's your movie going?”
“Over. Done. Bieber can't remember his lines and he gets frustrated and takes it out on everyone else. The studio already gave up on the project. The limited liability thing they set up to produce this one film has already declared bankruptcy and they're salvaging assets and doing tax write-off stuff I don't fully understand.”
“What about the space porn, can he film that at least?”
“Can't keep it up and I'm not going to show him how to use a cock-ring. Clooney's been banging the porn star, and I think they've been filming it. So look for a zero-g Clooney porn. I told him he owes me 10% of the gross.”
“How's Miley doing?” Caroline asks.
“Surprisingly well. Better than Justin. She doesn't even need help in the bathroom anymore. Her room is kind of a mess, but not too bad. She's been helping Sergei in the greenhouse. She likes it in there, it's really warm and humid. We keep finding her floating in front of the mirror array, she likes the Sun, but we have to keep taking her away cause that's more dangerous sunlight than you get on Earth.”
There's a long pause. Caroline is looking down on the screen. “Did the doctor say anything today?” K asks.
“Just that I shouldn't be too discouraged. Women my age,” she trails off.
“It's pretty common that it would take a few tries...”
“Yeah,” her eyes stay down.
“Did he say when we can try again?” K asks.
“He said not to rush it.”
“But no specific timeline?” K asks.
“I don't remember.”
“Maybe in six months or so?” K asks.
“Maybe. I painted the room black,” Caroline says.
“Why black? Why were you spending any time in there? Why not just leave the door shut and forget about it.”
“That's the Kingsley way of dealing with things, ignoring them. I embrace emotions, even bad ones,” Caroline says, her eyes finally coming back up to her tablet, looking at K briefly, then looking up past the tablet to the TV on the wall. Kingsley wonders why she wouldn't merely paint the room white and start over...why black?
“Any word on the election?”
“They just called North Dakota,” Caroline says quietly.
“I thought they called North Dakota six months ago,” K tries to lighten the mood.
“They could have,” Caroline sighs.
“They could have called Alabama forty years ago,” K adds. “Clooney and I have been trying to write a new script, see if we can come up with something we can shoot while we're up here. Leaving Bieber out of it.”
“Yeah,” Caroline says, sounding totally uninterested.
