Launch: Chapter 16

  Captain Wiremu Tynes was a forty-five year veteran of the Trade Corps and had experience on a wide variety of New Commonwealth ships operating throughout the Solar System.  Yesterday evening in the dining hall was the first time Markus had actually met the man, and he’d reviewed his file again ahead of today’s meeting.  Tynes was from New Zealand and his father was a Maori who’d given him his first name, while his mother was a New Zealand woman of European extraction who had given the captain his last name.  He had the clear remnant of a kiwi accent, but it was subdued after decades away from his homeland unlike Kirsten Jackson, whose South African accent was still quite pronounced.

  Markus had been rather intimidated by him; Tynes was a man of action while he was one of thought.   Throughout his life, Markus had found this dichotomy with other people trying.  He was always trying to get them to think, they were always trying to get him to act.  Last night though, the captain hadn’t particularly struck him as the type he was likely to have this problem with.  Yes Tynes was an action oriented man, but he was sixty five at this point, and as often happens with warriors who are unfortunate enough to suffer retirement, he was probably more relaxed in his middle age than he had been in his brash youth.  So, when Markus came to the captain’s office door, his apprehension rose to an appreciable but manageable level as he activated the door chime with a thought.

  The door opened and Captain Tynes looked up at him from behind his desk.  “Ah Bowland, welcome.  Come in and have a have a seat.”  Markus obeyed.  He was interested to find that the captain had the same kind of small windowless office Kirsten had, as opposed to a larger one like Markus’ brother had as the CEO of a large company.  “I heard you met Wingus and Dingus, what did you think of the lab?

  “Well, I…” he couldn’t resist.  He wanted so badly to resist, he knew that he should just let it go, but he simply could not help himself.  “I, I’m sorry… Wingus and Dingus?”

  “What?  Oh, I call everyone Wingus and Dingus.  It’s kind of an inside joke, don’t worry about it...   You were saying?”  Tynes clearly didn’t want to dwell on it so Markus begrudgingly resolved to oblige.  It sure did sound like an interesting story though…

  No, no actually he just couldn’t quite let it go yet.  Markus cocked his head slightly to the side and asked, “an inside joke… for one?”  He immediately regretted it.

  Tynes, now far less genial, put on a very serious expression.  He locked eyes with Markus and flatly stated: “Yes.”

  Although his body was still, Markus was squirming on the inside in response to the stare, but he was somehow able to maintain his composure.  ‘Best move on,’ he thought.

  “So um, yes.   Yes sir I, I did visit the lab today.   News sure travels fast around here!”   Speaking got easier again as he continued.  “But I do think you’re right, it seems like a good fit for me so long as” (he almost said Wings and Dings but manages to stop himself) “Herm and Jetal are doing most of the body work.”

  The captain smiled, broadly enough to indicate that he was pleased, but not so broadly as to appear very surprised.  “However, if I am to be charged with stewarding the entire project’s future genetic health, then I have a request I must insist upon if I am to assume that responsibility in good conscience.”

  “The transcriber?” Tynes asked.

  “Yes,” Markus nodded, “the transcriber.”

  “I’ve discussed it with the other senior personnel.  They agree with me that it is unlikely to be necessary, but at the same time we do of course try to take as much of a ‘better safe than sorry’ policy on this ship as possible, after all we only get one chance to get everything right here.   So, if you think we may need it at some point for legitimate reasons, then we will make sure to have one just in case.”

  “Excellent,” Markus smiled, “in that case then I would be quite happy to accept the position.  After all the equipment in that room is truly marvelous!”

  “Wonderful!  One more piece in place then, eh?”  An even broader and clearly genuine grin extended across his face, which was stubbled with a few days’ growth of multi coloured hair.  It was mostly white, but generously interspersed with colours ranging from light blond to completely black.  Under his short cut hair which overall was black but was also greying at the temples, the man had a broad and worn face which revealed a lifetime spent in physically trying environments.  When looking closely at his face (or at the face of his sim for that matter), one could see a variety of small scars and discoloured areas, but they were all secondary to the one long scar running along his left cheek.   He had asked Herm and Jetal about the scar in the sim-bay, but they could only tell him that it was something of a mystery.  They only knew that it had something to do with a sim that had gone on the fritz long ago, on one of the Trade Corps ships Tynes had captained.

  Markus himself had grown tired of regularly shaving long ago, and had decided to have his beard follicles permanently deactivated.  It was a common enough procedure these days and as a result, facial hair of any kind hadn’t been much in fashion for quite some time.  Tynes stood up and walked around his desk toward Markus to escort him out the door, a polite way of getting rid of him with their business at hand now concluded.  Markus stood still as Tynes approached, becoming lost in a train of thought and staring blankly towards where the captain had been sitting, until he turned around to ask:

  “Captain, may I ask you a personal question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why did you choose to be a part of the New Horizon mission?   I don’t mean commanding it, I mean… committing to it.  Most people down there,” Markus gestured in the general direction of Earth, “never seemed to understand why I was interested… but it seems like everyone here has a reason all their own.”

  Tynes himself paused and stood still as the door opened in front of him.  He seemed to be pondering his answer.  He then turned around, leaned on the door frame, crossed his arms, and looked squarely at Markus.  “Well, it’s pretty simple really, of all the things I like to do, I’d already done it all ‘round these parts.  I’m not a researcher or a scholar… and to be perfectly straight with you, I’ve never been a man interested in having his own family… though that may change once we’re safely out there cruising…” he reflected for a moment.  “What I love is exploring, I love seeing things I’ve never seen before… things that nobody has ever seen before…” he continued, his eyes betraying him to have become a little lost in his own thoughts.  A woman in red operations coveralls walked past the open door and said hello to the captain and he nodded back at her, breaking his focus.

  “As a kid my parents couldn’t keep me on the property,” he chuckled.  “I was always jumping the fence to explore the forest out behind our house, like a restless dog you know?”  Markus nodded, he had some understanding of this kind of restlessness but for him it had always been more existential than physical or spatial as the captain seemed to be describing it.  “As soon as I was old enough to get my pilot’s license I signed up for a tour with the Peacekeepers, then I worked in the Trade Corps for a couple decades after that… until Neil and In-Su first approached me about their idea for a new generational starship mission.  I been all around this Solar System and I seen as much of it as I care to...  I welcomed the idea of a new challenge, a new kind of discovery and exploration, a new…” he slowly shook his head, grasping to find just the right word.

  “Purpose.”  Markus uttered despite himself, completing his thought for him.

  “Yes… purpose.  I guess that’s as good a word for it as any,” Tynes replied in the most somber tone Markus had heard from him so far.

  “I think I understand Captain.   In our own ways I am getting the impression that that is why all of us are here.  Good day Sir.”

  “To you too.”

  

  Thirteen years ago…

   

  It was a warm summer’s day in Manhattan’s Central Park.  It was not yet an uncomfortable heat though since it was still quite early in the summer.   Many of the coastal regions of the world’s continents had been surrendered to the water after the rise of the oceans, and subsequently new beachfront areas had been created.  Some regions which should have otherwise been inundated and resigned to the sea though, were too precious, or their inhabitants too wealthy, to simply allow the area to be lost.  Manhattan Island was one such area.  There was too much history to be preserved, and too many wealthy people willing to finance its preservation, for it to allowed to be lost.

  All the way around Manhattan and around other key parts of the area, and more extensively than for any other city in the world, six meter dykes had been erected to hold back the ocean.  At first, though the need for them was understood, many complained over what an eyesore these giant walls were.  They obscured the view of the water though many enjoyed the park space on top of the dyke where they could picnic or exercise on the continuous trail now running all around the perimeter of the island on top of the sea wall.

  Over time, a ring of two story residential and commercial development occurred around the base of the dyke wall.  In an ambitious mayor’s push to beautify the city nearly a hundred years ago, all around the island the space between the top of the dyke and the nearest towers was covered over to create a sheltered space below, and a much larger park and recreation surface on top.

  Between the conventional skyscrapers which occupied a single city block, and the much larger buildings which consolidated two or even four entire city blocks into one massive building, additional coverings began to appear between the buildings, furthering the extent of the sub-terranean world, and ever expanding the continuous public gardens and green spaces above.

  Beneath the surface there were extensive residential areas, but there were amenities as well, including an underground sports arena and extensive shopping malls.  In the underground one was never very far away from an elevator which could take them up to the surface, down to the subway, or to any other level of the underground, making passage between worlds quick and easy.  The process was fully finished only recently, now resulting in what from a bird’s eye view of Manhattan, appeared to be continuous green space from the outer dykes to the spaces between the towers and the roofs of the towers themselves, and all converging on the interior central park.

  It was believed that these measures would be sufficient to protect the island until the waters stopped rising and eventually began to recede a hundred or so years into the future.  Many believed that it was a change in political will that led to action as weather events became increasingly severe and costly in lives and treasure over the twenty-first century.  But in reality it was just one technological innovation which made a great deal of change possible.

  It was an international consortium of engineers and scientists who finally brought about the fusion revolution.  In 2028, with global impacts of climate change becoming ever more severe, and in the absence of any meaningful technical or political solutions on the horizon, engineers and scientists the world over founded the International Fusion Consortium in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  The association had one singular goal: to make fusion power a practical reality and render fossil fuels obsolete overnight.

  Although they went on to branch out into different areas like next generation liquid battery systems for grid level storage and transportation, as well as remediation strategies such as the algae bags which were still continually sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, their paramount focus was always the practical development of fusion power.   They did a lot of research themselves, but their primary role was the soliciting of funds from governments and concerned wealthy individuals, and then dispersing those funds throughout a close network of researchers who in exchange all agreed to freely share data from their own different approaches with the rest of the network.

  From the stripped down and budget conscious General Fusion research facility in Burnaby, British Columbia, to the multi-billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor mega research program in southern France, each approach and each successive experimental reactor created more data for the next generation of experiments in a positive feedback cycle until several different facilities simultaneously stumbled on the secrets which made fusion a practical possibility.

  Before long an energy generation revolution changed the worlds as new approaches were pioneered, and existing methods were refined, perfected, and miniaturized.  Large power stations were constructed to supplant and replace all carbon emitting power plants immediately, and within only a few more decades of research, fusion cores as small as beer kegs were being mass produced.  This, combined with ever increasing sophistication in batteries of all sorts, and synthetic bio-fuels for the first stage of orb-ups and the powering of vintage automobiles, is what finally ended human civilization’s dependence on and vulnerability to fossil fuels.  The rest stayed in the ground.

  Vancouver based Bowland Power Systems had been founded not long after this energy revolution, and they specialized in commercial production of these smaller fusion power cells.  Once the preeminent manufacturer, it merged with General Fusion which became their applied research division.  Together they continued to work on both miniaturizing the technology and perfecting different approaches of safely achieving fusion.   General Fusion’s original stripped down piston pressure approach provided data instrumental to making fusion possible in the first place, but after merging with Bowland, they began working on compact super powerful second generation magnetic confinement reactors, such as the one which would later be used to power the New Horizon; a ship for which the idea was about to be stumbled upon.

   “That Hundred Meter Telescope on the far side of the moon is really something,” Neil Sagan remarked to his friend In-Su as he looked at some of its images on the large scroll he had propped up on his lap.   “In fact that whole Armstrong Array has been continually amazing me since they put it up there… I’d dare say it’s probably one of the best and most significant things that humans have ever done,” he mused.

  “For now,” In-Su agreed.   Neil frowned.  In-Su was right, as impressive as it was, he could only hope that the best was yet to come.

  Neil Sagan was a large African-American man; he towered at just over two meters and had the kind of broad shouldered thick build that made him appear rather like a brick wall.  The physical contrast with In-Su was often found comical since he was a slender reed by comparison at just barely a hundred and sixty five centimeters tall.  The two often made a point of finding the time to relax together in Central Park and do some work in each other’s company.

  They had been friends since they first met at a Munich conference when they were both in their late teens.   The topic of the conference had been deceptively succinct: ‘the future.’  Neil had attended because he was science minded, and having worked hard to get into the Bronx High School of Science, he had come to the conference with a small delegation representing his school.  As an artist with a variety of interests, In-Su had attended out of both an interest in the subject matter, as well as an interest in new topics to write about.  Upon meeting they quickly became the best of friends, and kept in close communication afterwards.

  A few years ago In-Su had moved to New York after being invited to collaborate with a think-tank dealing with the preservation of dying languages and the translation of obscure texts.   This suited him just fine since it allowed him to be close to his friend Neil who for several years had been serving as director of the Hayden planetarium.  Living in the same city allowed them to have occasions such as these to work together in the park on a warm sunny day.

  There was an obvious dichotomy in their work and in their styles.  While Neil was working on his large half meter scroll with his Brainchip, In-Su was working with an eraser tipped pencil on a paper notebook.   Occasionally In-Su would chew on his pencil when he was especially deep in thought.  To In-Su’s knowledge however, Neil had never chewed on his scroll.   “It’s fifteen years ago today,” Neil remarked without looking up from his work, “fifteen years ago today that the Mormon G.S.S launched.”

  “Does that bother you?” In-Su asked.

  “Oh In-Su, I so want to say no.   I want to just feel good about any humans being on their way out to the stars, and for it being just that much harder to harder wipe humans out altogether… you know, like how it would be if we were still entirely stuck on Earth and in this Solar System…” he remarked, his bushy black eyebrows raising slightly as he thought about it.

  “But…” his friend prodded.

  “But they’re the wrong humans dammit,” he exclaimed, defeated.   “They were humans who used science to escape science.  It just doesn’t feel right.  I so hope that they’ll learn, that they’ll mature… that they’ll find a way to… Oh I don’t know.  I guess I just wish that with two religious ships heading out into the stars, that there was at least one going out which represented the best of what we have here, our best thinkers, our best scientists and doers, heading out into the stars out of a passion for discovery, for… for new horizons to explore, for a whole new ‘age of exploration.’   There’s just so much to see out there, so much to learn…”

  “So do that,” In-Su stated matter of factly, as though it was nothing, as though it was the easiest thing in the world.

  “Do what?”

  “That thing you just said.   Put together a new generational starship mission with Earth’s best and brightest.  Instead of hollowing out an asteroid to fit a huge population into though, you could instead have a much smaller crew of maybe a hundred or two, and purpose-build a much smaller and faster spacecraft.”  In-Su was again speaking as though what he was proposing was a simple task, something to be done in an afternoon maybe.  “What would you need?”

  “Well, money… lots of money… and somebody who knows everything you could possibly know about putting together a long duration space flight mission.   Somebody with more money than they know what to do with and a passion for pulling off the extraordinary, and somebody who has seen and done all there is to see and do in space… someone who’s seen it all.”

  In-Su retrieved his small wrist scroll out of his pocket and pulled it apart.  He infrequently used scrolls, but there were inevitably some things that his notebook and pencil simply couldn’t accomplish for him.  After some taps and swipes he held up a picture of Sadhika Sengupta, who Neil recognized immediately.  “This woman,” In-Su remarked, “I recently heard her in an interview talk about how she was looking for the next truly bold and daring endeavor to really make her mark in history with.  From what I hear she is positively loaded with wealth as well.

  “Now that you mention it…” Neil remarked, directing his friend’s attention to the screen of his own large scroll, and after a few taps and swipes of his own pointed out, “I heard similar statements from this man,” he showed In-Su the image of Wiremu Tynes on his pad.  “He doesn’t have the money, but… he’s basically the most decorated and experienced space ship captain in the whole Solar System,” he remarked.  “If we could draw these two into a secular generational starship project… we just might be able to pull off something…”

  “…extraordinary,” In-Su finished.