Launch: Chapter 4

  “Attention Passengers:  Please remain in your seats while final checks are made before transferring to Orbital One.”

  Markus looked around at his fellow travelers and wondered what their stories were.  He found himself wondering if any of them were New Horizon crew like him.  He saw the usual tourist types as well as some less excited looking professionals on a regular commute, figuring the latter were probably engineers and EVA (extra-vehicular activity) technicians returning from vacation, or service people working for one of the station’s onboard destination resorts.  He wondered if there would be anything which would tip him off that somebody was New Horizon bound, if there could be any dead giveaway.  He similarly wondered if there was anything about himself which would likewise give him away.  No one stood out and nothing came to mind, except perhaps for him probably looking somewhat contemplative; quite serious looking.

   “Attention Passengers:  Welcome aboard Orbital One.  Please be advised that until you are in a lift and begin moving towards the habitat ring, you will continue to experience microgravity.   If you require any assistance, or if this is your first time in microgravity, please feel free to stay in your seat and a droid will promptly be along to assist you.  Otherwise, please make your way to the airlock at the front of the cabin, and into one of the lifts waiting to take you up to the main habitat ring.  Once again, thank you for orbing with New Commonwealth Orbital and Interplanetary, and please enjoy your stay aboard Orbital One."

  “You know it’s funny,” Markus remarked to Hugh as they both removed their shoulder harnesses, “it takes so much energy to escape the hold of gravity, and then we put so much effort into recreating it again.”  Hugh chuckled.

  The two waited as the passengers ahead of them slowly made their way down the central pathway of the ship and towards the airlock.  The two watched amused as a couple who were very obviously either total microgravity virgins or very near to it, clumsily and indignantly bumped their way down the aisle.  They occasionally attempted to swim through the air as novices often do; for some reason it was always one’s first instinct in microgravity.  Perhaps it was because the feeling of buoyancy was the closest analogue on Earth to the sensation of weightlessness.

  When it was their turn, Markus and Hugh expertly made their way down the aisle with their experienced technique, almost showing off to the rest of the passengers.  Once across the threshold of the forward airlock, there were the usual series of moving handrails leading to the area where one entered the six awaiting lifts.  The two friends each grabbed a handrail, and allowed it to take them to the second lift on their left, and used the hand hold on the ceiling to make their way through the door.  Each lift ran back and forth along one of the six spokes which ran between the station’s central module and the habitat ring.  Using handholds inside the lift, they made their way to their intended seats, and once again strapped themselves in.

  This lift was the one which would take them closest to the New Horizon’s Orbital One office, where Markus had been instructed to check in once he’d arrived on the station.  After strapping themselves into their seats, they waited as some more people from the shuttle joined them in the lift, and after a few more minutes the door slid closed, and the lift began its eight hindred meter trip up to the habitat ring.   The lift accelerated at a rate of nine point eight meters per second squared for a little while, pushing Markus up into his seat harness and making him feel like he was hanging upside down on Earth.  After a few minutes this acceleration eased off gradually until it was altogether gone, and then began to return on him in the opposite direction as the lift slowed down on the second half of its trip.  Now he was feeling himself pushed down into his seat, with a force which would increase until it felt like normal Earth gravity, and they arrived at the habitat ring.  Seamlessly the effective gravity shifted from being a product of the lift decelerating, to being entirely the result of the station’s rotation.

  The lift doors slid open again onto the station’s two-level central main floor.  If the station was a city, this two story section running all the way around the centre of the habitat ring would constitute its downtown core.  Like a shopping mall, there was an open central area with access to the first level businesses on the main floor, and second level balcony providing access to the upper level and a look out over the main concourse below.  In this place there was no way for the senses to betray that they were hurtling through orbit around the planet, instead of safely indoors somewhere on the planet below.  Being in the very centre of the station’s habitat ring, there were no windows to betray where they really were, and the gravity closely matched that of Earth to such a degree that a person’s senses were unable to discriminate.

  The outer sections of the station which were able to have windows, were very much prime real estate on the station.  They had a view which slowly but constantly cycled between the Earth, open space, the New Horizon, a variety of other ships in the area, and when the orbits were right, Luna and its continually shifting phases.  On both levels of this central area there was a rather wide array of businesses, including gift shops, food markets, restaurants, and other services.   Markus and Hugh, both having been onboard Orbital One many times before, walked confidently out of the lift and turned left towards the New Horizon office.

  “I’ll walk you to the office for check in, and then we can spend the evening together, alright?  In the morning you can board your shuttle to the ship, how’s that sound,” Hugh asked, “one last night out on the station?”  Markus nodded his head in agreement.

  Ordinarily they would have went directly to the hotel district to check into their rooms, but this time they instead headed straight for the New Horizon office, where Markus would register and check in for his shuttle over to the ship in the morning.  There was no rush to get there though; more than a week ago he’d sent ahead to the ship most of the things he’d be taking with him.   Everything he’d need in the interim was carried with him in his pockets or in his travel bag.  Now that he was in orbit, he only had to check in with the New Horizon office once, and then he could come and go as he pleased until the launch.

  Markus had seen many pictures of the New Horizon, but he was still very eager to see it in person, to actually walk its corridors, to see his suite for the first time, and to tour all the interesting areas of the ship.  It was after all, the place where he would be spending the rest of his life.  The office was only a few hundred meters away, and after their fellow passengers disembarked, Markus and Hugh walked off and the lift doors closed behind them, no doubt back to retrieve the next batch of new arrivals.

  There was a bustle in the main corridor today, and not just with people.  There were any number of real and simulated pets both common and exotic accompanying their owners, as well as personal assistant and security drones of a wide variety of sizes and designs also zooming about over their heads, the former on individual missions from their owners, and the latter keeping a watchful eye.   The security drone’s primary function was station security, but they also served as station ambassadors and help desks for anyone who needed directions, dining recommendations, or language translations, really just about anything.  Other flightless drones moved about on the ground, autonomous maintenance and service drones working at tasks bequeathed to them by the station’s computers.  Some of the smaller ones could get irritatingly underfoot while others lumbered about, matching their scale and pace with that of the human traffic.

  It was midday for Markus, but that didn’t matter much on the station.  Officially, the station ran on Greenwich Mean Time but this was arbitrary; any time zone could have been chosen to be the station’s official time.   Since the station was constantly flying in and out of the sun, people on the station had to artificially maintain their own circadian rhythm by darkening their rooms during their night, and brightening them during their day.  The common areas of Orbital One were lit at all hours of the day to facilitate everyone’s schedule and for the most part, people just operated on whatever schedule their lives obliged them to.  If just visiting the station for example, people tended to stay on whatever sleep cycle they had come to orbit with.

  The main corridor was a large and diverse market place, but truth be told it was probably the ultimate tourist trap in the entire Solar System.  It was a great place for avid observers of human nature like Markus and Hugh to do some thorough people watching though.  They came from all over the Solar System and interacted here in a way which they couldn’t anywhere else.  From the hated smell of curry that blasted Markus’ face as he walked past a traditional Indian restaurant (which ruefully always caught him by surprise), to the Irish jeweler next door to it and the Northwest American Art studio across from it, the place was a true global bazaar in orbit.

  They passed by one of their favourite places onboard, the “Space Outback” bar and casino run by a couple of Australians.  They then moved on into a section that consisted of more traditional office spaces with the usual amenities.  They passed gift shops, a dentist, and a travel agency with a sign advertising tours of the Martian and the Jovian Systems.

  Neither Markus nor Hugh had ever been married nor had any children, so over the years they’d both had the opportunity to travel a great deal.  They had done most of the tours that were offered across the Solar System, and in the process Markus had learned a lot about their local neighborhood.   He’d climbed Mount Olympus on Mars (the highest peak in the Solar System), and the ice cliffs of Europa, and done atmospheric surfing on Venus.  As a hobbyist, Hugh was a fully certified shuttle pilot, and this allowed them the extra adventure and latitude of renting private shuttles in many of the places they’d visited, doing some pretty extensive independent exploring of their own.  It was on these excursions that Hugh could really push the limits, and usually found them in Markus’ stress level.

  At forty-eight years old, both of them had found that there wasn’t much new left in the Solar System for them to do or discover.  While Hugh always had more to discover about the past in his academic research, Markus had lately been lamenting the field of research he worked in, and that his specialty had by necessity become ever more narrow and granular over his career.   It was a common complaint of researchers such as himself, that the more was known about a subject, the narrower and more specific any further investigations into the area had to be to expand our understanding any further.

  Lately he had become nostalgic over his undergraduate years.  He remembered having very big questions after being exposed to very big ideas, and that feeling of exponential growth in intellect and perspective.  Now in order to break new ground scientifically, he had to ask very small and finite questions which were certainly important, but were far less exciting than the broader research areas which could yield equally broad results.  He had learned a lot already in other subjects he was curious about, and while there was always more to learn, always more to question, his really big questions had ultimately been answered a long time ago already.  At least that is, the big questions which had answers which could be discovered scientifically.

  He sometimes lamented how similar it was to the way in which the older someone got, the less they could fundamentally change the kind of person they were.  He sometimes daydreamed about how different a person he might have become if long ago his life had taken him down any given zig instead of the particular zag which it had.  Before being confronted with the possibility of joining the New Horizon mission, at his age it had felt as though all of his choices took him down nearly identical roads.   Good or bad, it was undeniable that leaving on the ship forever was a definitive zig amongst all of the zags previously available to him.

  Most of Markus’ friends and relatives, with the obvious exception of Hugh, had had a hard time understanding Markus’ decision to go on this mission.  It had after all, taken some effort for Hugh to convince Markus to apply in the first place.  Originally he’d only applied for one of the New Horizon ‘wildcard’ positions because Hugh did, and it was an impossibly wonderful idea to think about them both being chosen.  The odds were clearly in favour of neither of them being chosen though; it was after all a lottery.  It instead turned out that Markus had won a spot but Hugh had not, and it had taken some work for Hugh to convince Markus to go on the mission without him.

  It was a frightening proposition for Markus to go alone and without Hugh.  Markus was after all in a very real way going over the horizon forever, and never to return.  Although he would lead a rich, full life as far as any physiological metrics were concerned, people in his life saw his decision and what it would mean for them as tantamount to him committing suicide.  For them, he would simply be gone forever, and before long forever beyond any practical communication as well.  For him, he was simply going along with what his life had put in front of him.