STAR OF EPIPHANY

by OMAR FINK

  Tony resumed his pacing around the office, “Zorba, you will be in Johannesburg in a few weeks, yes? Okay, so I will set up the meetings with the companies, and tell Marco he has to meet you there. We get Marco in the same room with them, and show him the presentation that ties it all together, and it’s all done. Yes, Zorba. I’m sure you can handle this.”

  Tony stopped walking and put his hands down on his desk, “Go over the paper work. Look at the presentation. It sells itself because it will offer them huge efficiencies in time and effort in the construction process. All the designs have been optimized for zero gravity. All you have to do is show it off.”

  Tony turned back toward the window again, and waved one hand in the air, “Of course, Zorba. Everybody who has been involved up to this point has signed legally binding non-disclosure affidavits, and stand to lose a lot if they violate them. Yes. Yes. Okay, call me back later. Bye Zorba.”

  +1 year 6 months, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Marco Lagorio leaned across the table toward Zorba Omega, “The only reason I’m here is because Tony Azaria said I should come. I hope you can make this trip worth my while. I’m very busy.”

  Zorba smiled at Marco, “We have been working for months to assemble the right players to create this new company. Gauteng Aluminium has a supply contract for bauxite ore from New Zealand. They refine the ore, and extrude it into many forms. S.A. Lasers manufactures state-of-the-art laser cutting and welding tools. Ceramic Matrix Composites Inc. specializes in aluminum nanoparticle composites. Put all of these together with some large scale production and assembly machines, and you will see how beneficial this new company will be to your space habitat effort.”

  Marco said, “I think I can see where you’re going with this, but why did you need me here in person?”

  Zorba replied, “The presentation you’re about to see will convince you that the new techniques being refined here will save you a tremendous amount of time and effort constructing large structures in space. All the processes and machines involved have been redesigned and optimized for zero gravity and vacuum operations. The benefits that will be gained from this are huge. And everybody involved with this project is covered under strenuous non-disclosure agreements.”

  Marco said, “Well, Tony wouldn’t have told me to come if this wasn’t important. I suppose you want me to report back to HU that we should buy this company from you. And of course, you will make a fabulous profit from the sale.”

  Zorba replied, “Of course we are making some modest profit for our efforts, but you should consider that we are in fact helping you do your job. While you are flying back to Geneva tomorrow, a contract to sell this company will be offered to HU, and I fully expect them to agree to our terms immediately. Assuming that is that we get your approval.”

  Marco clapped his hands together and smiling said, “Show me! I love it when a plan comes together.”

  +1 year 6 months, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Zorba Omega was leaving the hotel where the business presentation had been given. He walked out a side entrance, and looked around for his limousine. Two tall dark skinned youths who had been leaning against the hotel wall stepped over to him, and one said, “Hey old man, are you lost?”

  The second youth circled around to the other side, and said, “Do you have any money for us?”

  The first youth reached out, and grabbed Zorba’s arm and said, “You know you want to give us the money.” He curled back his lips baring his teeth in a sneer.

  Zorba reached for a pocket but the second youth grabbed his wrist, and stopped him.

  Delize Naidu stepped out of the same entrance on the side of the hotel and took in the scene in front of her. She stepped toward the three figures, and said, “Hey, leave him alone.”

  The first youth spun to face Delize. and snarled, “This not your business, bitch!”

  Delize stepped closer, and said, “Leave him alone.”

  The first youth took a wild swing at Delize, which she ducked under. She reached up under his arm, and grabbed a handful of his shirt armpit, and pushed him in the same direction as his swing. He tumbled off balance, then stumbled, and fell down.

  Delize turned to face the second youth who let go of Zorba, and stepped toward Delize. She put a hand on Zorba’s shoulder, and pushed him backward gently compelling him to take several quick steps away in order to retain his balance. Then she stepped inside the punching range of the second youth, and when he instinctively reached out to stop her, she ducked again, and closed to make contact with him while she turned, and continued dropping. He stumbled over her shoulder, and she began rising and directed his fall with a hand and arm that pointed toward the sidewalk. He followed that direction, and also ended up on the ground.

  The first youth was getting back to his feet when two large men wearing suits ran around the corner of the hotel and yelling, chased the two youths away. They both attended to Zorba, and apologized, explaining they were waiting out front for him.

  Zorba assured them he was okay, and began walking with them to the front of the hotel. Then he turned back to Delize, “Hey, thank you. You may have saved me some serious damage.”

  Delize shrugged and said, “They were just young thugs. It doesn’t take much to scare somebody who expects easy pickings.”

  Zorba said, “Well, you did make it look easy. Was that some special skill you were using. It was very graceful.”

  Delize said, “I’ve been studying Aikido for a few years. They teach us to become aware of the energy around us and harmonize our own energy with what is there. I just used their own bad balance against them.”

  Zorba paused for a moment, then asked, “How did you happen to be there just at the right time?”

  Delize shrugged again and answered, “I was just leaving a job interview. I need another job to take care of my kids.”

  Zorba asked, “Did you get the job?”

  Delize smiled, “They said they’ll call me. That usually means no.”

  Zorba fished in his pocket, and came up with a business card, and offered it to Delize, “Call this number. Arty is my assistant. I’ll tell him to set you up with an aptitude test. I can’t promise that will end up getting you a job, but it might. If we find something you’re good at, Arty can probably place you in a position better than that hotel can offer.”

  Delize took the card, “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “It’s worth a try. I feel like I owe you a chance. Call Arty.”

  Delize said, “Okay.”

  Zorba and the two men walked around the corner.

  +1 year 7 months, GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBIT OVER SINGAPORE

  Keel O’Donnell leaned his long lean frame back, and the modular chair shifted under him to a new position. He reached up, and pulled the flat video monitor a few inches closer to his face, “Okay. So how will working on the elevators be different from the payloads going to the Moon?”

  The face on the screen said, “There won’t be a big difference. For the Moon base project, you were intercepting rocket payloads, and attaching a landing module, then kicking them off into a new trajectory toward the Moonbase construction site.”

  The face continued, “For the elevator project, you’ll be helping to build the space platforms that become the top end of the elevators. You’ll be dealing with a wider range of types of payloads, and that means more manual adjustments until the programs are tweaked to adjust to them. And the handling will be more complex. There is likely to be some assembly. The parameters are going to be changing frequently because we’re still designing this process on the fly. Once you’re through with the payloads, you might be kicking them to another orbital location or if you’re already onsite, you’ll just be attaching them to the platform. Your work may be different every shift as requirements change. The first payloads will come up by rocket just like the Moon payloads, but then as the elevators become functional, the passenger payloads will come up the elevators. Eventually, as the elevators become fully
functional, and the habitats are under construction, you’ll probably move over to the habitats.”

  The face frowned and added, “Oh, and some of you will also be working on the job of destroying old satellites.”

  Keel frowned back, “What?”

  The face on the screen explained, “Many of the old satellites have orbits that are constantly moving, criss-crossing the planet in different paths each orbit. As the orbital paths cross the equator, they become potential hazards to the elevator ribbons. There are tens of thousands of objects that fit this description, and instead of trying to move them or move the ribbons to avoid collisions, it’s been determined that the easiest and quickest solution is to destroy them. To that end, the simplest way to destroy them is to simply give them a little push downward into a trajectory that will take them to atmospheric re-entry and burn up. We’re still working on this project, but at this point it looks like you guys will be assembling some tractor-like bots that will apply the killing push to a satellite then move on to do the same thing to others before eventually falling into re-entry and destruction themselves when their fuel is exhausted. Your position at the geo-synchronous altitude is going to be the high ground, and you’ll just be pushing the tractor bots down on top of the satellites.”

  Keel replied, “Sounds simple enough.”

  The face said, “Well, the most complicated part is likely to be getting final approval for destruction on each satellite that is considered important before we actually pull the trigger. Some folks seem to still have emotional attachments to their previous national security interests. For most communications and other general purpose satellites, their functions will be replaced by instruments on the elevator platforms that will actually out perform the old satellite. It’s only the old military devices we think there may be some resistance on. But this will be resolved. It’s just a question of how long each one takes.”

  Keel said, “That all sounds good to me. I take it we’ll be getting some more crew up here soon.”

  The face said, “We’re pumping them through the training routines as fast as we can. You and the few others with you were the exceptions who were ready to go when we needed you. By the way, have you felt any nausea there in the crew wheel yet?”

  Keel shrugged, “No. No problems.”

  The face said, “Good. We need you to stay on your resting schedule in the wheel and let us know at the first signs of nausea or dizziness or anything else unusual. The small size and fast rotation of that wheel are right at the edge of what we think you can handle and still get enough G force to keep you up there long term without health related problems. It’s important, at least until we have enough crew to rotate you back to Earth periodically.”

  Keel said, “I’m good to go. Everything’s cool.”

  The face said, “Oh, by the way, you had some complaints about the space-suit, right? Can you give me some specifics? The engineers want your feedback to make changes.”

  Keel smirked, “Sure. First, lose the window in the pods. Replace it with more cameras. I mean, we already have cameras and viewscreens, right, for the rear and side views? So get rid of the window and just have the screens which work fine, and we use them more anyway. The window is just a hole in the hull. Not good. No windows in space. Get rid of it. With the better hull integrity that provides, get rid of the space-suit completely.”

  The face interrupted, “What? Get rid of the space-suit? That’s not going to fly.”

  Keel grimaced, “Sure it will. Get the engineers to think this through. Start with better hull integrity cause of no window. Then make us a thin, flexible suit that offers some level of protection without being so damn bulky and cumbersome. Use the new fabrics and composites. Call it a ‘skin’ instead of a suit. Make it give us some level of protection against loss of pressure and atmosphere, then augment it with a bigger, better suit that we sit in but don’t wear. That way we can do our job better, but still have a full space-suit to get into case of dire emergency. The lighter skin can be designed to keep us alive long enough to get into the full suit. Best of both worlds.”

  The face looked interested, “Okay. I can see you’ve given this some thought. I’ll pass your ideas along as requested.”

  Keel smiled, “No windows in space.”

  +1 year 8 months, JAIPUR, INDIA

  Mrs. Mehra frowned, “Say that again Nabith.”

  Nabith squinted his eyes, “Let me make it simple. When a climber car first starts up the space elevator ribbon, it’s at full weight. When it’s half-way up the ribbon, it weighs much less and when it’s arriving at the geo-synchronous platform, it weighs nothing. The limit to how much we can lift on the elevator ribbon is determined by the strength of the ribbon and the weight of the climber car. Are you with me so far?”

  Mrs. Mehra patiently said, “Yes, I understand that.”

  Nabith continued, “So, if we start out with a climber car that weighs the full limit our ribbon can handle, then we have to wait until it reaches the platform before we can start another climber up the ribbon. But if we start with less than the full limit, at some point when the weight of the car has decreased as it climbs away from Earth, we can add another car to the cable and have two cars climbing the cable at the same time.”

  Mrs. Mehra nodded, “I see.”

  Nabith continued, “As we decrease the weight of the climber car even farther, we can increase the number of climbers on the ribbon at the same time. By doing some analysis, we can determine the optimum arrangement of payload weight and number of cars on the ribbon in order to maximize the efficiency of the space elevator.” He smiled as though he’d solved an important problem.

  Mrs. Mehra sighed, “I’m sure you have it all figured out Nabith.” She smiled at him.

  Nabith responded, “Not all, but I think I can write a fairly simply program that will calculate the best way to do things for various elevator and ribbon configurations.”

  Mrs. Mehra just smiled.

  +1 year 9 months, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Delize Naidu was sitting in her car, looking up a route on her GPS when her phone buzzed. She touched her ear and spoke, “This is Delize.”

  On the other end of the call, Artemis said, “Hello Delize, I have some good news for you.”

  Delize said, “Yes?”

  Arty said, “Your aptitude testing results are back in, and we’re ready to offer you a job.”

  Delize said, “Really?” and sucked in some breath.

  Arty replied, “Yes, Delize. Let me back up a little and explain. I know your aptitude testing took some time. In fact, it took longer than normal because your results were not normal, and some extra testing was done to confirm the early results. Remember how we called you back in several times?”

  Delize answered, “Yes, I do.”

  Arty continued, “Well, that was needed to get more detail. Frankly, the people who evaluate the results were surprised that you showed an amazing level of aptitude for being able to maintain your concentration on handling many items at one time without getting flustered. And also you seem to adapt very quickly to new circumstances. Maybe more importantly, your lack of higher education and limited job experience made them doubt what they were seeing in the test results. They made a mistake. I hope you won’t take that personally.”

  Delize murmured, “No. Not at all.”

  Arty resumed, “The follow up tests we did confirmed everything. And you are now one of our top recruits for some new ground dispatching jobs we have opening up in Singapore.”

  Delize exclaimed, “Singapore?”

  Arty said, “Yes. Will that be a problem?”

  Delize replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Singapore. I can’t afford to move there. I have two kids in school here. I just don’t know if I can do this.” She had a tone of panic in her voice.

  Arty offered, “Delize, calm down. This is going to be a simple decision for you. If you want to take the job, and you are willing to relocate
to Singapore, the company will take care of everything. All of your moving expenses will be paid. Any outstanding bills you have can be paid off. Your kids will be transferred to a private school in Singapore that has excellent credentials. Any other problems will be handled. All you have to do is say you accept the job.”

  Delize objected, “I can’t afford a private school. How will I pay back all this stuff? I don’t know.”

  Arty interrupted her with a chuckle, “Delize, all of this will be paid for. Oh, and I forgot to mention the salary. You’ll be making about five to six times what all of your other jobs combined were bringing in. All of your living expenses will be paid, including health insurance for you and the kids. The only shortcoming at all in this offer is you probably won’t have much free time or vacation time for the next few years. But you will accumulate compensation for extra time worked, and it’s a terrific deal. If you can just tell me that you’ll accept this offer, I can have a contract delivered to you within an hour for you to consider. All I need right now is for you to decide to look this over, and see if it works. Will you do that for me?”