by Jason Bourn
When Calaes finally was able to get into the elevator to go “up,” he felt relieved. There were 250 floors on the ship and they were getting off at the 225th floor. This was most of the way to the outside of the sphere, so the gravity would be near Earth-normal. As the elevator moved higher and higher, Calaes’ stomach felt more and more normal. As the elevator pulled to a stop, Calaes felt almost human again.
As the doors opened, Calaes looked up in surprise. He had spent so much time in the Martian Survival Challenge simulation that the ship’s interior almost felt like home. It had the same interior design, the same color patterns, the same, well, everything. He smiled as he sat down in his favorite type chair – but this time he could feel the chair as if it were real. Sadly, he realized that the chair in “real life” was not as comfortable as it had appeared to be with the Mark IV simulation. “Oh well,” he thought, “I guess everything is not better with the virtual suit.”
The detail, though thoroughly familiar, was at once different because he now experienced it with all his senses. He had never experienced the faintly sterile odor before – kind of a mix between a hospital Chlorine-like smell and the light-oil smell from an automated production line he had once visited. In short, this was what a real space ship must smell like. Amazing how detailed this simulation really was. It must have cost a fortune to generate this level of detail. And based upon his Martian Survival Challenge experiences, Calaes was willing to bet that all 250 floors of the space ship were equally as detailed. It was just incredible. This simulation was much, much better than he could ever imagine.
The room Calaes entered was a large conference room, with seating for all the members of the shuttle. A video on a large screen in the front started playing and everyone quickly quieted down. The captain, an older man in his late fifties with balding hair, wasted no time with the preliminaries. “Hello, my name is Captain Strauss. I want to welcome you to the Starfire, the best and fastest starship in the fleet.” He added, “I have to confess to you that it is also the only starship in the fleet,” which produced polite laughter. “I received reports that some shuttle passengers were not feeling well. I hope everyone is now feeling better. I can assure you that weightlessness is not something that is experienced every day on the ship. There are times when it is critical that we be able to operate in weightlessness,” he continued, “but those times are few and far between. I want to welcome you as the final shuttle for Starfire’s mission, which is a voyage to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Your assignments will now be provided and you will proceed to your assigned duty station. We will be leaving orbit in approximately two hours and will undergo an initial acceleration test. As this is the first flight for the Starfire, everyone is required to be strapped in when initial acceleration occurs. With that I wish you a pleasant voyage.” The captain logged off and the screen went blank.
Calaes was given his assignment: Engineer First Class in the Sensor Department. The Sensor Department was on the very highest level – level 250. This made sense as most of the sensors were mounted on or near the exterior of the ship. Taking another elevator “up” to the top level, Calaes found the Sensor Department meeting room. About thirty people made up the department and everyone was seated when he opened the doors. Finding an empty seat, Calaes looked around.
To Calaes’ left was a pretty, redheaded young woman that he recognized from his earlier shuttle trip, whose name tag said “Irene.” She looked a bit uncomfortable and he thought she had not fared well in the weightless conditions. When he glanced her way, she looked down and muttered, “I’m not really feeling too well right now.”
“I understand,” responded Calaes, “it has been a bit tough so far.” Irene was content to leave it at that.
Across the table was a young woman in her early twenties, with medium length auburn hair, a pleasant figure and gave a somewhat forced smile to Calaes, “Hi, my name is Rhonda. I’ve been up on this ship about the longest in our department so I’ve gotten to know everyone. Who are you?”
Calaes responded, “My name is Calaes and I just got off the shuttle.”
“So, you’re pretty green – how are you taking the weightlessness and are you ready for the high acceleration?” she asked.
Calaes responded, “I’m young, strong and willing, so I don’t suspect that either of those extremes will bother me too much.”
“Well, we’ll see,” she said and turned and started speaking to a young man next to her.
To Calaes’ right was a tall, thin, young-looking man with a long, thin nose to match whose name tag said “Maziar.” He looked to be in his late twenties. Maziar glanced over at Calaes and said “I can’t believe how detailed everything is. I’ve been in the Martian Survival Challenge simulation for the better part of two years and what I see here is just fantastic. I was really pleased that I was invited to participate in that simulation, and I really want to get invited to the next level in this simulation as well. I heard that less than one percent of the people who were invited to the next level of the Mars simulation were also invited back to the next level in this simulation. It is very hush, hush. I’m told that anyone who shares information on what is going on within the simulations will be banned from all of the company’s simulations. And since these are far and away the best simulations out there, that is a huge disincentive to spill the beans.”
“Yeah, I heard the same thing,” Calaes responded. He liked Maziar’s direct approach.
Maziar went on: “Please, call me Mazi,” he said and he shook Calaes’ hand.
Calaes noted that Mazi looked quite excited and Mazi finally burst out, “My mom just let me go virtual, I’ve been waited for what feels like forever.”
Calaes looked at him quizzically and said, “How old are you? You look like you’re at least twenty-five if not older.”
Mazi smiled and said, “Isn’t that cool, with VR I can look however I want to look. I’m really just seventeen and a half. My mom has been really uptight about this – but she finally gave in.”
Calaes wondered again if he had made a strategic mistake when he had used his actual, unaltered appearance. Well, it was too late now – he was committed.
Calaes smiled and said that he was in the same boat as Mazi. He went on to explain the situation with his mother and Mazi laughed.
Calaes went on saying, “The only intelligence I’ve heard at all is that if you die in this simulation, then that’s it – you can’t go to the next level.” Mazi responded, “That sucks, since you only get one chance. Well I never died in the other simulation so here’s hoping that my luck, and yours, holds out. Good luck.”
The large conference room screen came to life again, cutting off any further conversation. Captain Strauss announced that minor acceleration would commence in five minutes. All personnel were required to be seated and strapped in. Also, all seats would automatically fold out into a flat, reclining position – there was no need to use the suspended animation chambers, which were only needed for higher acceleration combined with longer duration flights. “The chairs will automatically adjust to the proper angle of acceleration to minimize any negative effects. Please follow these instructions carefully – getting out of the chair will almost certainly lead to injuries. This is a test run, so we will keep the engines on for one hour. Then we will assess ship performance.”
With that the chair Calaes was on reclined so he was fully on his back. This isn’t so bad, thought Calaes. He looked around at all the others and saw mixed emotions, from excitement to fear.
Suddenly the entire ship shuttered as the fusion drive kicked in. Immediately “down” was replaced by a sideways pull on Calaes’ body, quickly surpassing the effects of the nearly one G centripetal force. The chair neatly swiveled around so the rapidly building force drove Calaes down deeply in his seat. He was glad he had heeded the order to strap in, since it felt like at least three or four gravities’ pull on him. His persa volunteered the actual acceleration of 3.5 gravities – he was right on trac
k.
There was muted conversation during the hour-long acceleration period, with most people really taking it hard. Calaes thought of the fastest roller coaster he had been on as it did a vertical loop – coming down he was sure it had come close to this acceleration. His persa automatically volunteered their current acceleration as well as references to other accelerations, including a few roller coasters that exceeded this number, but for only very short time durations. An hour at 3.5 G’s was really hard to take. He didn’t blame those that looked really miserable. Fortunately, he was young and in good shape, so he didn’t feel that it was too much.
At the end of the hour-long acceleration the chairs automatically swiveled back to a sitting position. The department head, an older woman with graying hair and a frail-looking body, stood up and introduced herself as Lieutenant Merks. She indicated she had served aboard this ship since it was “just a few struts and girders,” as she put it. This would be her last tour of duty, but she was very interested in seeing Europa, and in order to do that she needed to train all of the new personnel. “This is the Sensor Department,” she said. “Our main responsibility is to monitor and maintain external sensors and communications equipment. The job starts now, people! Some of you are responsible for low level equipment checks and others are responsible for top level systems checks. Your specific assignments have been provided to your persas, so please get to work.”
Calaes saw that he, Rhonda and Mazi were responsible for ensuring the system integrity of several sensor types. Calaes’ system check took over an hour, with both he and Mazi getting done at the same time. Rhonda, he noted with irritation, finished in less than half the time, even though she had had to go outside the ship for manual sensor validation and verification. She then commenced nit-picking several others’ work, including Calaes’. Both Calaes and Mazi raised their eyebrows at this, but they figured that if she could complete her work twice as fast as them that she knew what she was talking about.
After all systems checked out, Lieutenant Merks congratulated everyone on a job well done – specifically praising Rhonda who “not only completed her work early, but who also was instrumental in helping out some of the newer members of the department.”
Calaes and Mazi both looked at each other in chagrin – this was not going as well as they had hoped.
Lieutenant Merks, seeing their looks of dismay, told everyone that it was still early and everyone would have their chance to shine in the future. Shortly after this the conference room screen showed a beaming Captain Strauss. He proudly announced that the ship and crew had checked out flawlessly and they were ready to begin their major acceleration to Europa. This would consist of forty-two hours of 3.5 G’s, wherein the ship would be half-way there. The ship would rotate and start the deceleration phase of the trip – essentially a reverse of the process. Again, Captain Strauss stressed that everyone needed to be strapped in their seats to avoid injury.
With that, everyone’s chairs swiveled to the reclined position and the acceleration started for what was sure to be an exciting trip to Europa.
CHAPTER 5
Hayden had refined the AI algorithms in his persa, allowing him unprecedented insight into the minds of the most power people in the world. With this knowledge, he had acquired more and more power himself.
He used it to solidify himself first as an up-and-coming leader, having unique insights into an astounding variety of problems across the entire globe. He became generally known as the next wunderkind, climbing the power ladder quickly and smoothly. This natural progression culminated in his avalanche selection as the next United Nations Secretary-General – the head of the largest global governmental agency in the world.
Hayden considered his next step only briefly. He was confident that it was time to launch the last phase of his plan – to proactively stamp out any possible dissent from any of the world’s key leaders. His vision of the future was a world where he could say or do anything, without fear of any push-back. And he was confident he knew just the way.
– – –
It felt like Calaes had been laying there strapped into his safety harness forever. The trip to Europa was just short enough that suspended animation didn’t make sense, but long enough that it got downright boring to just lie there. The hours-long acceleration had gone smoothly so far, but the low, steady rumbling of the huge engines threatened to put Calaes to sleep. The engines were just one aspect of the ship that had impressive technology. Everything was state-of-the-art, from the environmental control systems to the navigation systems to the radiation/cosmic ray protection systems.
Calaes’ head jerked up – he hadn’t realized that he had dozed off. The klaxon warning bell had awakened Calaes out of a sound sleep. His persa informed him they had been in constant acceleration for slightly more than forty hours – but less than the forty-one hours that they were supposed to be. So, either it was a warning, which didn’t make any sense to Calaes, or something had gone seriously wrong.
A harried Captain Strauss appeared on the video screen saying, “This is an emergency, it is not a drill! Short range sensors indicate we are quickly approaching a field of asteroids. The long-range sensors, which are supposed to track anything larger than a dust mote, have malfunctioned. The ship will stop acceleration immediately. Sensor Department, get those long-range sensors fixed now! And when I say now, I mean yesterday! Captain out.”
Immediately the acceleration stopped, but their velocity was huge and wouldn’t change until they accelerated or decelerated. The ship was hurtling towards a group of asteroids in the unenviable position of purely reacting to these ship-killer-sized rocks, instead of seeing them well ahead of time and leisurely avoiding them.
As the acceleration ceased and the chairs swiveled back to their normal one G configuration, Lieutenant Merks started shouting assignments. All data taken during the previous test run needed to be triple checked. As he, Rhonda and Mazi reviewed the data from their sensors in more detail it became apparent that it was a cascade of factors that caused the problem. The long-range sensors had been checked in isolation and they checked out just fine. The sensor communications back to the command center had also checked out fine. The simulated test data was even able to be sent back to the command center correctly. However, when live data was supposed to be sent, the simulated data was still being sent. No one had noticed this since the simulated data looked, intentionally, exactly like one would expect the real data to look.
Calaes secretly thought that Rhonda had rushed through the sensor testing, which was why she finished so fast, but he could not prove it. The root cause of the problem was a manual switch setting on the sensor itself – essentially a manual override forcing the simulated data to be sent. This was for “Test Purposes Only,” according to the literature. But that did not help anyone now. The only way to fix the problem was to manually go out and disable the manual override switch.
This would not be a major problem if the ship were stationary or even moving slowly. The problem was that they were moving quite rapidly and they were being hit by many small, and sometimes not so small, asteroids. If one of these hit a person in a space suit, it would spell disaster. While the space suit could seal itself from a small hit, the humans inside the suit tended to not fare so well. Thinking morosely to himself, Calaes knew that bleeding tended to be detrimental to both the human body and it clogged up the space suit’s air recycling mechanism as well.
The odds of getting hit by an asteroid came back at 94.3%, according to his persa. However, there was no other way out. Either fix the sensors, and quickly, or the ship would run into a large asteroid and be destroyed. It was an easy decision for Lieutenant Merks. “Rhonda, Calaes and Maziar, we need you out on the sensor arrays yesterday,” she shouted. “Those are your babies. Move it! I want you outside within ten minutes.”
Calaes and Mazi leapt forward and ran to the airlock. Rhonda came as well, but at a much slower pace. The two men were already in their suits and c
hecking their systems by the time Rhonda showed up.
“Hurry,” shouted Calaes. “We’ve got to get out there as fast as we can.”
Rhonda responded, “You two cycle through the airlock. When I’m suited up, I will follow.”
Calaes didn’t want to waste time arguing, so both he and Mazi rushed into the airlock. There were four different locations for the long-range sensors. Any one of them could perform an adequate job, but all four were needed for the best resolution and for redundancy purposes. With the chance of asteroid hits extremely high now, having all four available was critical.
Calaes used the magnetic shoes to keep himself adhered to the skin of the ship. The only sound was a slight “thump” that could be heard through his shoes and into his suit. No one was saying anything over the radio so as not to distract them.
His persa told Calaes where the first long range sensor could be found. He had to walk slowly and carefully for about ten minutes until he found it. Reaching into his tool bag, he secured the tools needed to open up the access panel. There, as expected, he saw that the manual override was in the “TEST” position. He switched it to the “NORMAL” position and radioed to Rhonda and Mazi. “I have the first one operational,” he said. “What is your status?”
Mazi responded, “Mine will be operational in three, two, one, …, Now!”
Calaes waited for Rhonda to chime in with her status, but did not hear anything. “Rhonda, how is it coming?” he asked. After a few moments she radioed back: “I’m doing fine, I’m almost out of the airlock.”
