Orbit

by John J. Nance

  Maybe I’ll earn a Ph.D. Maybe two. Perhaps a Nobel Prize for some discovery in one of the hard sciences, after a short but stellar career as an Air Force ace. No, not the Air Force. The Navy. I’ll become a Navy carrier pilot. Top Gun.

  He lets the thoughts swirl, thinking about all he’s ever heard about someone creating his own reality by doing little more than what he’s contemplating. Just…creating it.

  If it’s all in my mind, then what’s the difference?

  Suddenly he’s paging back through what has become a massive document, looking for the place where he first began to regret the way things were going.

  That would be age fourteen.

  No, he decides. Earlier. Age nine, before he noticed girls.

  No, he corrects himself, I was noticing girls by age eight, I just didn’t have a clue what to do with them.

  He finds the spot he was looking for around page forty and begins highlighting everything afterward, page after page of his life the way it was.

  He opens the main hard drive and locates the file and deletes it, leaving the hundred twenty page document on the screen as the only remaining record.

  It is as I make it. And maybe it all was a dream, both good and bad.

  His finger is over the delete button now as he thinks about all he’s written, two days of electronic scribbling for forty plus years of an unfinished, imperfect life. How many fellow humans have wished for a rewrite, he wonders. How many have wished for a chance to go back and do it all over again?

  His index finger touches the delete key lightly, hovering there, waiting, knowing that if he presses it, all he’s highlighted will disappear. As if it never was. As if he’d never lived it, never married Lucy, let alone lost her, never been devastated by his son’s rejection because there will have been no son. One keystroke to do away with the lost years of obeying someone else’s flight plan of what life should be like, and suddenly the bile of resentment is rising in his throat, the recollection flooding back of the lifelong, aching feeling that something was missing from an equation that, by his dad’s book, was complete.

  Two days to rewrite it all. Why not?

  He pushes firmly, hearing the click, as over a hundred pages disappear into cyberspace.

  Time to start over.

  Chapter 31

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, MAY 20,

  3:10 A.M. PACIFIC/6:10 A.M. EASTERN

  The limo headed for ABC’s local studios and the West Coast Good Morning America set will be ready in ten minutes, but Diana Ross is having trouble tearing herself away from her laptop. She knows she should have been sleeping, but it wasn’t possible. Deciding to shower and get put together by midnight, she’s worked the laptop ever since.

  There is, she thinks , no other subject being discussed! It’s turned into an All Kip, All the Time Internet.

  In New York, through Web connections, John Gambling and Don Imus and every other major radio host are shifting from backgrounders and interviews with Kip’s friends aired the day before, to open debates about sex and wifely duties and professional obligations versus time with your kids. Religious debates are raging on some of the national talk shows excoriating Dawson for accusing both Lutherans and Baptists of fostering guilt, some callers crying on the air, and a growing list of experts showing up to debate the deeper philosophical implications of a man turning away from organized religion, yet clearly embracing his Maker. Newspapers across the nation from Diana Ross’s own Washington Post and The New York Times through a galaxy of small-town papers fed by syndicates and wire services have special columns on Matt Coleman’s comments from last evening, the President’s order for NASA to launch a rescue mission, and details about an FBI raid in Tucson that netted a Vectra regional executive trying to steal the very evidence Kip Dawson revealed from space. Every electronic newspaper carrying the front pages above the fold deal with Dawson’s words and his ideas and impressions, and The New York Times has an entire transcript as a special section, as does The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Instant books have been announced by a host of publishers in hopes of advance orders, and religious leaders from across the spectrum of faith are queuing up to enter their spin or engage in perceived damage control, the cleverest among them seeming to co-opt Kip’s views as their own, the message they’ve preached all their careers. Pastors and priests and rabbis across North America are working on special sermons and homilies and scheduling special services for Saturday, some of the more progressive dangling big-screen coverage of the NASA launch as an incentive.

  Diana looks down at her coffee cup suddenly as if it’s betrayed her. She’s drained the contents without realizing it.

  Look at this! The bloggers have gone mad as well!

  A quick search of the advanced Google service turns up no fewer than forty-six thousand blog sites engaged in some discussion of, or use of, Kip Dawson’s name. And the number is growing by the minute.

  Incredible!

  She finds an unofficial estimate posted from some obscure department at the UN claiming that of the world’s six point five billion humans, fully one billion of whom have access to TV and many more to radio, that at least two billion people are following the story.

  And in the United States, ABC is reporting, nearly eighty percent of the population are fully engaged, meaning an incredible number of children as well as adults.

  It’s an advertiser’s wet dream! she thinks, wondering how fast the ad agencies are scrambling to figure out a way to leverage the coverage, and what the networks are charging.

  On a whim, Diana types her name and that of Sharon Dawson in the search engine, startled that several hundred hits pop up instantly—as does an Instant Message from Richard DiFazio.

  “You up?”

  “Yes. You wanted me to do the morning shows, and they’re at seven a.m. Eastern.”

  “Sorry. I was just looking at the international coverage on TV. From the BBC through Al-Jazeera to NHK in Tokyo it’s all the same thing. All Kip.”

  “I’ve been seeing that.”

  “Did you see the latest, Diana? About his divorce?”

  “His what?”

  “I just caught it on TV. He’s writing up his divorce filing. It just started.”

  ABOARD INTREPID, 3:12 A.M. Pacific

  Kip pauses, wondering why lawyers have to use such convoluted words to say the simplest of things. Drafting his own divorce filing has been relatively easy so far, though he’s sure that it would disgust any lawyer. But there are no lawyers around Intrepid, and the process of creating a brand-new life simply has to begin with the gift of a conjugal pardon.

  Once more he rereads the words, wondering if Sharon will even be alive by the time anyone actually sees what he’s composed.

  To the Pima County Superior Court, Arizona:

  Comes now Kip Dawson in the matter of the request for dissolution of the marriage of Kip Dawson and Sharon Summers Dawson. Due to irreconcilable differences, Kip Dawson hereby requests the court to dissolve the marriage between the petitioner and the respondent. All Petitioner’s personal property and all of Petitioner’s share of the marital community property are hereby transferred to Respondent with Petitioner’s blessing, inclusive of bank accounts, savings accounts, and all real or personal property of whatever kind wherever situated. Petitioner shall retain only his automobile, his father’s wicker chair, his filing cabinet and the contents thereof, and one half of his retirement account. Petitioner requests the immediate grant of this petition. Signed electronically and certified correct in the physical absence of any living notary at this location, I hereto affix my signature, Kip Dawson.

  He adds the date and sits back, wondering if he should finalize the divorce before going out with anyone on a fantasy date in his new, re-created life.

  Yeah. It would be unseemly otherwise without a final decree.

  Pima County Superior Court, Arizona. In the matter of Dawson versus Dawson, Petitioner’s petition is granted in full as petitioned. By order of th
e court.

  There! Now I’m truly free to start over.

  Okay, now for the real story of my life.

  I was born to a branch of the Rockefeller family and filthy rich from the get-go.

  He stops, appalled by the flippant nature of the words against the truly serious intent. He backspaces to erase the sentence. This may be fun, but it’s deadly serious fun, if there is such a thing.

  So, how do I want to have it start? How do I want to begin my ideal life?

  Strange, he thinks. It should be so easy to figure out.

  Chapter 32

  PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO,

  MAY 20, 4:40 P.M. PACIFIC/5:40 P.M. MOUNTAIN

  Air Force wives learn early that family dinners are uncertain events. Especially when the husband is a four-star general. Such men are married to the Air Force first, leaving the wives to feel at times like little more than mistresses with commissary privileges.

  Bitsy Risen checks her watch, aware she’s been glued to the television all day—though her slight rebellion against complete submersion has been the piano sonatas playing gently in the background as closed captions march across the top of the silenced flat screen TV. Kip Dawson’s amazing saga continues to scroll haltingly across the bottom.

  “It’s like the ultimate reality show and soap opera rolled into one,” she’s telling friends—including the equally solitary wife of the NORAD vice commander who also expects to see nothing of her own husband until very, very late. They both know that a series of space launches are about to start “…popping off the planet like fleas off a dying dog,” as Chris Risen said at five in the morning when he rolled out to find the shower. Bitsy knows the routine. When things start happening in space, NORAD wives open wine, turn on stereos, call their girlfriends, and mostly chill.

  But the experience of reading the Book of Kip, as one of her friends refers to it, has been disturbing, and she thinks any wife would feel about the same. She sees Kip’s words about wifely support and intimacy and sex, and she’s surprised that it’s prompting her to suddenly reassess her own, well, performance. It’s the only word she can use within the context of Kip Dawson’s laments—not that such worries really apply to her. She and Chris are still in love with each other, and when it comes to libido, they’ve always chased each other into the bedroom at the drop of a suggestive comment. Still do. So no problem there, right? At least none that she can sense.

  Bitsy hopes there’s nothing she’s missing—no blind, unwarranted, dangerous assumptions she might be making.

  Chris is satisfied, isn’t he? As satisfied as I am?

  She’s kept herself trim and feminine and completely supportive of him in what they, as a team, both chose. But the whole subject is unsettling, as if she might suddenly discover that this marital bliss isn’t real life, but a play in which she’s become too immersed—an illusion that can evaporate as rapidly as a play reaches its finale.

  Men like Chris can be seduced by illusions, too, she thinks. Like any pilot who bruises himself hauling on the controls trying to “save” a flight simulator that’s actually bolted to a concrete floor.

  But, she hopes what they have is anything but an illusion.

  This has got to be deeply rattling a lot of women out there, she thinks, especially those who’ve become lazy and forgotten to be lovers. At the same time, she knows that the male mid-life explosion often has nothing to do with intimacy or frequency.

  Sometimes it just happens.

  Thank God, Chris and I escaped, she muses, already aware how rare it is to grow together instead of apart over the years. So many of their friends have long since split, leaving kids shuttling endlessly between cities and houses and sets of parents and stepparents. Not to mention the anger and divided retirement funds and the names of former spouses who can no longer be mentioned without pain.

  The words begin scrolling across the bottom of the screen again after a pause. He’s been working on the rewrite of his life and the thoughts and ideas and dreams are fascinating. In some ways it’s been like getting a private, completely unauthorized look at the top-secret workings of the male mind.

  And some of the things he’s related—some of the things he’s been through and felt—have brought her to tears.

  The phone rings with Suzie, the vice commander’s wife, on the other end. They’ve been talking on and off all afternoon. Bitsy takes the portable back to the couch.

  “Did you see that montage Fox News did?” Suzie is asking, still amazed at the depth of the reactions through dozens of interviews.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I didn’t know they had that many correspondents. They’re flipping all around the country. For instance, there was this little beauty shop somewhere in Iowa, crammed with women who’re holding kind of a vigil with the TV and hanging on to every word he writes. I swear some of those gals were sounding like rock groupies. It was strange.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Bitsy replies. “Some of what he’s said…you just want to hold the poor guy and tell him it’s okay, you know?”

  “Mother him, in other words?”

  “Right. Don’t you?”

  “Okay, I’ll admit it. But some of the women they’ve been talking to are thinking less of giving comfort than of getting him under one. But I don’t know, I think it’s what he’s saying that’s sexy. The guy is intelligent, and remember, there’s nothing as sexy as a well-hung mind.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did. Seriously, I’ll have to Google it.”

  “Well, sexy or not, the reactions of everyone out there are just amazing,” Bitsy adds, still reading the evolving words. “What he’s saying now is really thought provoking. I’m sitting here wondering about a lot of the subjects he’s raised, not just how I would feel up there in his place.”

  “The most touching thing to me are all those people who’re crowding airports and bus stations right now to race across the country and see parents or kids they haven’t talked to in years, and every one they’ve interviewed says the same thing: I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for reading what that poor guy wrote, and realizing how little time there is in this life.”

  “Do they say which part, exactly, touched them the most?”

  “Just the whole thing, and the anguish when he wrote about his son, I think.”

  “He’s broken some sort of mass psychological dam, that’s for sure,” Bitsy says.

  “You know, he wrote earlier about a dangerous intersection near his home in Tucson. For six years, he said, he couldn’t get anyone in city government to pay attention to the need for a traffic light there, and three people died. Now, suddenly, because he wrote it up there and half the world read it, the Tucson City Council is debating the issue as we speak.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. But yesterday he wrote about how much he loved Banff and Lake Louise in Canada, and almost instantly they sold out for the summer.”

  “You reading him right now?”

  “About how he’s become a well-known artist, with four kids and a beautiful, Brazilian wife?”

  “Yes. His rewritten life. He wants four kids and he already has four kids.”

  “And the house in Tucson? He’s put himself right back there, only this time it’s a vacation residence. And the father he was going to fire and recreate? Still works for mining interests in Arizona, only now he always tells Kip he loves him.”

  “You know what impressed me? The guy thinks he’s not brave. You probably read that part where he said he was far too timid to do anything bold. But he is brave. Look how much courage it took to delete everything he’d written for two days. He was really deleting his old life and moving on. How many of us could do that, even in writing?”

  The sound of the front door opening catches her attention and Bitsy turns to find her husband pulling the door closed and waving. She waves back and ends the call, coming to him quickly, ignoring the prickle of the metallic buttons on his uniform as she en
folds him and holds on tight, aware he’s slightly puzzled, though hugging her back enthusiastically. The hug progresses to a deep kiss and a loosened tie and shirt, and his hands begin an appreciative tour of her body as she tilts her head toward the bedroom.

  “How ’bout it, sailor? Wanna get lucky?”

  “Does the sun rise in the east?” he answers, grinning as he stops her momentarily. “But…not that I’m complaining, because I’m sure not…but to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Let’s just say there’s a poor guy flashing past overhead every ninety minutes who’s reminding me how very, very lucky we are.”

  ASA MISSION CONTROL, MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA, 4:55 P.M. PACIFIC

  Arleigh Kerr replaces the receiver as Richard DiFazio comes back into the nearly deserted control room.

  “Any news?” Arleigh asks, aware that the final urgent meeting between their director of maintenance and the chairman was scheduled for an hour before.

  “It’s final. We can’t fly. I saw all the reasons up close and personal and he’s right. We’d probably lose our second ship. How about you?”

  “The Japanese have scrubbed their launch, pulled the plug.”

  “And Beijing?”

  “Still scheduled for a liftoff tomorrow morning, three hours before the Russians, and four before the shuttle.”

  “Two down, three to go.”

  “He’s got a fighting chance. Three launches are good odds.”

  “You’re sure the scrubbers will hold?”

  Arleigh looks at him long and hard before answering.

  “No. I’m not sure. But death by CO2 isn’t instant. Not like suddenly cutting off his air. If someone can get him out of that airlock before he’s too far gone, he could make it. We’ve briefed all of them.”