Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  “Oh my goodness,” she finally squeaked. “It’s real. And it’s here. We’re actually going to land there?”

  “Not on Arion,” he grinned.

  Alexis gave him a playful slap on his shoulder. “I know that, you dork. I meant the planet.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Alexis drew her hands to her mouth, almost as if she was praying. Her eyes locked on the planet millions of miles away. Cal had seen it several times before; instead he kept his attention on the girl by his side.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I… I don’t know,” she admitted. “Excited. Scared.”

  “Why scared?”

  Her gaze broke from the window as she me his. “Oh, come on now. A strange place that no one here has been to, full of who knows what, and all we’ve got to survive is what’s on this ship. We’re explorers and pioneers now. But we’ve got no backup if something goes wrong. Yeah, we could build a brand new home on this planet, but we could die just as easily.”

  “I should have died years ago. In the War, I mean.”

  “You never fought in the War.”

  “Thanks to Dad. If it wasn’t for him somehow getting me on this ship, I’m sure I would have been drafted. Then someone would have slapped a stripe on my shoulder, given me a gun, and sent me off to be slaughtered with all the other kids.”

  “You say that like it means nothing,” she said in a cold voice, turning away.

  “It would have meant nothing. We were losing, Alexis. More than half of the people on Earth were dead, our military was almost broken, and we had lost the West Coast. You think that me and my friends fighting on the front line would have made a damn bit of difference?”

  “Shut up.”

  Cal bit his lip and closed his eyes, his head bowing slightly. Her brother, he remembered, too late. Damn the meds. Damn… no, it’s my fault.

  “Look, I…”

  “Just shut up.”

  Cal put his foot on the console and brought his thumb to his lips. Nervously, he chewed at the nail on his finger as he looked out of the canopy at the blazing star in the distance. He silently debated with himself as to what he would say, or whether he would even say anything at all. Then he would flex and inspect his hand, which he had not yet become accustomed to using after the splint had been removed from his mended finger two days prior. At times he would be on the verge of speaking, but thought better of it, and the process would start all over again. After a few minutes, he could no longer hold back.

  He brought his hand to the bridge of his nose and pinched. “I don’t know how many times I can say sorry for it, Alexis.”

  She swung her head around and glared up at him, her mouth tightened until he thought it would simply disappear. “For what?”

  “Being completely unable to express myself to you.”

  “You talk a lot. I don’t think that’s your problem,” she retorted.

  “It’s exactly my problem. When I’m around you, I need to either shut up or think harder before I speak. And being on the meds makes it even worse.”

  “Oh, so now you’re putting this on me?”

  “What? No! There, it just happened again.”

  “What did?”

  “Somehow I made what I wanted to say to you sound horrible. It’s not about you. I just… God, I shouldn’t say it.”

  “Oh, but you’re on such a roll,” she retorted.

  “Please don’t.”

  “I insist.”

  Cal grinned nervously and shook his head. “Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Oh, I’m all ears.”

  He swallowed hard and forced his pride aside, knowing that it wouldn’t serve him while she was upset. “I can have normal conversations all day long with Doctor Taylor or Cameron or Hunter. Hell, even Colonel Dayton doesn’t even make me blink any more. But when I talk to you, I get all tongue tied and goofy. Care to guess why?”

  “No. Enlighten me.”

  “It’s because every time I see you, I get butterflies.” He waited for her to react, and saw the expression on her face soften. Her brows arched and her eyes widened, but she seemed at a loss for words. “That’s right. I like you. After all the stupid things I’ve done, and all the things you’ve said to push me away, I like you. It might be simpler for both of us if I didn’t. If I could just let you push me away. Don’t get me wrong, some of the things you’ve said hurt like hell. But when you’re not mad at me, the way you smile, the way you give everything your best…”

  “Don’t do this, Cal,” she interrupted. He could hear a slight crack in her voice as she spoke.

  “The way you act when you’re around my friends, too. They love hanging out with you, Alexis.”

  “I told you already, I’m a big flirt.”

  “No you’re not,” he responded. “I’ve seen you with the boys on this ship. You don’t flirt with them. Hell, you barely treat Cameron different than Doctor Taylor. So unless you’re saying that sixty one year old women do it for you, I’m not buying it.”

  “Please, stop it,” she begged.

  “So what is it? What exactly are you afraid of? Is it that I’m a ‘monster’?”

  Alexis’s mouth dropped wide open, and sorrow flashed in her eyes. “How did… what… where did you hear that?”

  He ignored her and pressed on. “I know I screwed up, and I admitted it. What was it that I did that makes you think that way about me?”

  “It… it wasn’t you.”

  Cal felt a sudden shock at the revelation. He just stared at her, slack jawed, with his arms dangling weightlessly at his side; he lacked the presence of mind to keep them under control.

  Alexis bowed her head and folded her hands in her lap. “It was about me. I hate myself for how I’ve been treating you basically since when you put me back to sleep. I was pissed at you for that, but after a couple days I understood why you had to do it. But when I realized that you still wanted to spend time with me, I freaked out. I mean, I’ve kind of had a thing for you since before we left Earth, and you did this really romantic thing for me, but then I spat in your face, and you kept coming after me anyway. I was afraid, and that’s why I pushed you away.”

  Cal reached for her hands and took them in his own. A surge of emotions hit him at once; relief, regret, nervousness, and love overwhelmed him, and he had to force himself to breathe. Then panic set in as he remembered the symptoms of the psychosis that Dr. Taylor had been treating him for.

  Damn it. Don’t lose your shit right now, Cal. He took a deep breath and concentrated on the moment, and when he came back, he was keenly aware of Alexis’s stare on him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Are you sure? You look a little pale.”

  “I’ll be fine. Just an old thing I need to talk to the doctor about.”

  “You gave me a scare for a second there.”

  “I guess I’ve been doing that lately. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  Alexis wrinkled her nose. “It’s not the same. This was a ‘hey, I hope he’s not dying’ scare, not a ‘hey, I hope he’s not stalking me’ scare.”

  “I wasn’t, you know. Stalking you, that is. Or dying.”

  “I know. It took me a while to figure out. And to be honest, I did a little asking around about you.”

  “Oh?” he asked. The butterflies in his stomach began to flutter again.

  “Just the doctor. I wanted her opinion as a woman.”

  “About?”

  “You,” she replied, squeezing her fingers gently around the palms of his hands. “She told me all she could about you as a friend, and then told me a story about one of her old co-workers and how he was too shy and almost lost the girl.”

  “Doctor Taylor has quite a few stories. What was the moral of this one?”

  Alexis smiled and leaned in toward his ear. “Don’t let him lose the girl,” she whispered.

  Cal’s he
art skipped a beat. Does she mean what I think?

  “Is that so? Was it the right story?”

  “It was.”

  He leaned slightly toward her. “I won’t lose the girl. I promise.”

  Their lips were just about to meet when someone cleared their throat, and Cal startled.

  “Get a room, you two,” Drisko said as he gagged mockingly.

  “Damn it, Cameron. Go away,” Cal growled.

  Drisko moved swiftly to his ops station and buckled in. “Would if I could, but it’s time to get back to duty. You should clear out; Dayton’s on his way to the bridge right now.”

  Cal sighed and looked at Alexis. “Rain check?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be cashing it in, trust me.”

  1st Lt Darius Owens

  27 May 2058, 15:15

  Gabriel

  “Are you ready to present your calculations, Lieutenant?” Eriksen asked with a booming voice.

  Darius glanced over his shoulder and watched as the eyes of all nine other crew members on the bridge peered over the command platform at him. He nodded at the commanding officer and turned to his console.

  No pressure, right? He thought. You’re just dictating how time is going to be measured, that’s all.

  “Lieutenant Miller, begin ship wide broadcast. Tie the feed into the extracom and broadcast it to Michael as well,” Eriksen added.

  Roger Miller – sitting next to Darius at another ops station – immediately complied with Colonel Eriksen’s order. He nodded to Darius, indicating that everything was ready. Darius took a deep breath, held it, and pushed it out, along with much of his nervousness.

  “Good afternoon to both crews. I am Lieutenant Darius Owens. At the request of both Colonel Dayton and Colonel Eriksen, I have taken the data about the planet Demeter as well as the planetary system, and calculated how long the days are on the planet, as well as how many such days are in a year down there. From this information I have created a calendar and clocking system that should easily be understandable both to crew and civilians. It will take some getting used to, but I believe it is very workable.

  “First, the basic calculations. The planet has a diurnal period of almost exactly twenty Earth hours. The variance from this mark is so negligible that we’re only going to need to adjust our clocks about two seconds every year. Demeter makes a full orbit around the star Alpha Centauri B, or ‘Bravo’, every three hundred forty seven Demeter days.

  “Second, the adjustments we will need to make. With the Demeter day being twenty hours long, this is pretty simple. We just reprogram our clocks so that ten is the top of the clock, not twelve. That is to say, that 10:00 is noon, and 19:59 rolls into zero-hundred hour. The calendar of days may take a little adjustment, but keeping the existing twelve month system, with their original names, should help. Each month has twenty nine days, with the exception of February, which will retain its original number of twenty eight. From my calculations, it doesn’t appear that a leap day will be needed.”

  Darius tapped at the screen a few times and attached a pair of files to the broadcast, sending them to all terminals on the ship. After his conversations with Sergeant Drisko, he was sure that Michael would be able to retrieve and compile the files for their own viewing.

  “I’m sending a picture of an adjusted analog clock,” he continued. “Digital clocks will be easy to refit and display time correctly, but removing two hour marks from an analog clock, it’s going to look a bit strange. You’ll notice that every hour mark is now at an interval of six minutes instead of five. I’ve added a double hash mark at every old five minute mark as a visual cue to help with time estimation. This should do until we figure out a better way to make them. The second picture is a quick draw up of the new calendar. It’s pretty straight forward.

  “At this time I’d like to open up the channel of discussion. Because this broadcast will be delayed for Michael, I would ask that you com flash my terminal on the bridge if you have any questions. I will capture them and send responses in a list for later viewing. Thank you for your attention.”

  It took only a few seconds for the first flash to reach his screen; he was barely ready to capture the questions.

  XCS-02 ENG GARZA: What if someone’s birthday falls on the 30th or 31st of a month? How do we know when it actually falls on the new calendar?

  Good question, Doug.

  RESPONSE: The individual would choose either the 29th of their birth month or the 1st of the following month as their official birthday on Demeter.

  XCS-02 NAV SCHNEIDER: With twenty hours in the day, are we going to have enough time to get a good night’s rest?

  RESPONSE: Please direct your question to the medical staff. I cannot answer that for you.

  XCS-02 CO ERIKSEN: You mention 20 hours per day, and 347 Demeter days per year. Doesn’t that make the year short by Earth standards? How will that affect our life expectancy?

  Darius stopped for a moment. “Roger, can you run some math through your calculator real quick?”

  “Yeah,” his partner nodded.

  “Can you figure out how long a Demeter year is compared to an Earth year?”

  “Yeah, give me a second.”

  Darius split his attention between his screen and his partner’s. Roger’s fingers danced across the touchscreen of the terminal as he ran the calculations.

  “Seventy nine point two two percent.”

  “Thanks.”

  RESPONSE: You are correct, the year is a little over seventy nine percent as long as an Earth year. If we assume that our life expectancy doesn’t change based on any factors of the planet, our life expectancy in Demeter years will be much longer. The average might be somewhere around ninety five years. A little shorter for those of us who were born on Earth and have already lived a number of years.

  XCS-01 MISC MCLAUGHLIN: That’s a pretty short year. Can we grow anything from Earth in that amount of time?

  Miscellaneous code? What the hell? Who is this guy?

  “Captain Quinn,” Darius belted. “Can you find out who this McLaughlin guy on Michael is and what he does?”

  RESPONSE: There are crops that grow on Earth that are able to grow to maturity and harvest well within a normal season.

  Darius felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. He turned back to find Eriksen and Quinn staring at him.

  “Did you say McLaughlin?” asked Eriksen slowly.

  “Yes sir. Is there something wrong?”

  “Maybe. Quinn, get on it.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Carry on in the meantime, Mr. Owens.”

  “Yes sir,” Darius replied and turned back to his screen.

  What the hell is that all about?

  XCS-01 CO DAYTON: Have you calculated what the date and time will be when we arrive, given our current trajectories and deceleration?

  RESPONSE: Yes, Colonel. We may want to get our agricultural passengers ready as soon as we land. It’s going to be the calendar equivalent of March 24th. They’re going to need to break ground quickly to plant crops for harvest this year. It’s hard to pin down the exact time we’re going to land, but I’d estimate about 14:00 Demeter time.

  Darius waited for more questions to come through, but Dayton’s was the last he saw after several minutes of waiting. He closed the file and sent it off to all recipients. He stretched, unbuckled, and made his way across the command platform to the engineering stations. Colonel Eriksen clutched the railing just over Quinn’s shoulder, looking over it with burning intensity.

  “I have the profile of that McLaughlin guy, Lieutenant,” Quinn chirped.

  “I want to hear this too,” added Eriksen.

  “You’re never going to believe this, sir.”

  “Just tell us, Captain.”

  “Calvin McLaughlin. Born in 1997 in Dallas, Texas. His father is…”

  “General Andrew McLaughlin,” Eriksen finished. “I’ll be damned. What’s he doing on that ship? And awake?”

 
Quinn tapped at his screen, scrolling through pages of data on a young blonde-haired boy. “I don’t know for sure, but they’ve given him access to parts of the ship. It doesn’t look like a hack, either. He was in stasis at the start of the trip, but somewhere along the way he was woken up, and Dayton has given him a login.”

  “Has that chowderhead lost his mind?” Eriksen fumed. “You don’t just wake up a civilian and set them loose on the ship. Everyone has a place, and that boy’s place is in stasis.”

  “Should I send a request to Dayton?” Darius asked.

  “Requesting what, Lieutenant? If he’s let McLaughlin go this far, he’s not going to stick him back in a berth for three days.” The commander sighed and scratched his whitening beard. “He’s not my problem. As you were, gentlemen. Let’s just concentrate on our final approach.”

  “Yes sir,” came the synchronized reply.

  Capt Haruka Kimura

  Planetfall +70 days, dawn

  Camp Eight

  Haruka lay on the top of the abandoned sleeper pod, casting her gaze at the puffed white clouds above as she picked at a rusted scar in the dull steel. The air smelled of the sea and damp earth; there had been a rainstorm the night before. She could not sleep with the rest of the colonists in the few ramshackle huts, the medical clinic, and single longhouse that had been constructed on the shoulder of the hill. Anxiety gnawed at her, so she had taken a walk in the darkness and rain. Solitude from the masses was what she had craved, and she found it in the listing ruin of pod eleven. The droning of the torrent on the craft’s skin had finally soothed her nerves to where she could rest through the night.

  It was certain that her absence had been noticed by now, but she didn’t care. The muttering voices of fishermen from below drifted up to her ears, yet she ignored the words that she could understand. It was perfectly clear what they were talking about. Everyone in the colony was sure to broach the same subject at some point, and it was the source of her restlessness.

  Lon Carney.