Launch: Chapter 20

  Markus awoke the next morning to a repeating tone coming from the screen beside his bed.  It was only half an hour before his alarm would have woken him up anyways, but he was disorientated by the unexpected form of rousing.  He sat up and steadied himself before thinking ‘answer’ and opening the call.   It was his brother again.

  “Good morning, Brak…” He offered groggily, “what’s… what’s up, what do you need?  …what time is it there?  Wait, what time is it here?”  He muttered confused as he looked over at the screen.

   “It’s… it’s early.  Look Markus, I… I have really bad news.  There was an accident at the lab.”

  Markus’ own heart sank as he watched his brother gradually betray ever greater concern, appearing more and more emotional.  He had obviously put on a brave face before making the call for his brother’s sake, but the facade was gradually cracking as their conversation continued.

  “What is it?” Markus asked his brother softly.

  “It’s Mom.  She’s… they were testing the prototype for the new generation class fusion reactor early this morning, and… and I don’t know how but there was a breach in the containment vessel.  Everyone in that section got bathed in neutron radiation.  Markus… a lot of radiation.”  Brakus was speaking slowly and deliberately, using whatever effort it took not to let his distress occlude his speech.

  “Oh no Brak… not Mom, not again!” Markus pleaded desperately.  Then a few moments later his curiosity got the better of him.  “How bad is it?  How many did she take?” he asked.

  “Based on where she was standing, our best guess is between sixty or seventy grays of whole body exposure.”   Markus put his hand up to cover his open mouth.  That was bad, a matter of only a couple months if lucky kind of bad.

  “I need you, to get back down here, now.  They say they don’t know how much longer she has.”  Brakus’ voice was even and thin, almost as though he was speaking through gritted teeth, though he wasn’t.

  “How many others were in that section?” Markus asked.

  “Thirty-two,” his brother replied grimly.  “Four dead already, the ones in the core room when it happened… they didn’t last the hour.” Brakus was clearly lost in his experiences of the past few hours, “will you come?” he asked, snapping back to focus again and speaking more forcefully at his brother now, more demandingly and expectantly.  He was successfully giving the impression that he would not take no for an answer.

  “Yes, Brakus.  I believe there is still enough time… I’ll come back,” Markus conceded.  He sat there blinking in the dark, thinking about how hard it had been for him to leave Earth forever the last time.  He knew that if he returned now, it would be even harder to leave again, maybe even impossible to go through with a second time.  But he had reassured his mother that his leaving wouldn’t be as bad as she imagined since they could remain in laser contact for years and years.  As such they never had to say goodbye with any degree of finality.  This time he would have to say goodbye to her forever, and she apparently had very little time left.

  Going back now though, he knew that the same people would pressure him to stay behind again, and that they would apply that pressure especially harder this time.   ‘How could you leave your mother now, in this condition?’ they will ask.  ‘What about Brakus and his family?’  His mother, Amber, probably even Brakus too, he figured they’d probably do just about anything to ‘help him’ miss the launch if he came back down again now.  Maybe he was giving them too little credit… he was upset and it was hard for him to tell.  

  “I will come home to say goodbye to Mom, Brakus.  But you must understand, I will be returning to orbit.  I’m sorry, but I will not stay any longer than I can to make that deadline.”

  Brakus winced, but then nodded and cut the transmission without another word.   Markus sat up in his bed, now in near total darkness, and still light blinded for a moment after thinking the screen off.  As he sat in the dark, gradually his eyes adjusted to it and he could see the outline of his window on the floor, then his desk and the doorway to the rest of his suite.  He was stunned.  He could only begin to process the fact that his mother was going to die soon.  He hadn’t foreseen anything like this happening, and now he would be in a far tighter spot trying to leave than he had been before.  There would be a lot more pressure on him to stay this time.

  His father had died so suddenly, he hadn’t had any chance to prepare for it.  It was something that he just had to start getting over from scratch.   But what happened with his mother was a very different situation…  She had been exposed to a lethal dose of high energy radiation.  Her remaining time was so variable… and yet so invariably short.   As best he could remember from his safety training while working at that facility, that amount of radiation exposure spelt a maximum prognosis of only a few short months.  There would be time to say goodbye this time, time to put affairs in order and to be in some way ready, but one can never be truly ready for death…

  His father had died instantaneously; literally in a puff of smoke, but his mother… his mother would suffer one of the most unpleasant deaths he could imagine.  It would be very painful, and agonizingly drawn out…  This would be particularly burdensome on Brakus.  Their mother was his partner in the company, and he would probably have to hire several people to pick up her responsibilities where she would now be abruptly dropping them…  It would be a significant loss to both of the two brothers, as well as to the company.

  

  It was hard to tell how long he sat up in the early morning dark lost in his thoughts with his mind reeling and swarming with points, counter points, and realizations about his loss.   He was the type to think things through when pressured, too often at the expense of actually making any decision.   He knew that at some point the emotionality of his experiences would strike him suddenly, but for now it was all theory.

  By thought he requested his bedside terminal make a call to Hugh.  If he was looking for someone who’s PAN profile he didn’t already have in his contact list, the same system served as a directory, and there were a variety of vectors from which somebody could be tracked down and identified in order to communicate with them in one form or another.

  The screen indicated the computer to be obediently searching, and then on the screen some text popped up identifying ‘Hugh Nye, Professor of History at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver.  As the screen made obviously artificial and stylized ringing sounds, it sent a communication invite to Hugh’s PAN which consisted of the wireless network between all the devices and terminals he might be using at any given time.  This could be a roadpod he was riding in, his PANEs if he was wearing any, whatever assortment of scrolls he had on him, as well as the terminals in his home and office all linked together.  A person’s PAN always knows where their subject is, based on what devices their Brainchip is linked to at any given time, and any welcome communication requests are routed to them wherever they are via their PAN.   As it turned out, Hugh was still in bed on Orbital One as Markus could see after the call went through.

  “Markus??   What’s… what’s wrong?”  He appeared groggy.  It was still very early in the morning.

  “There’s been an accident at one my family’s labs…  My mother’s been hurt.  She took a lethal amount of radiation while they were running tests on a new prototype.”

  “Oh fuck… Markus I’m, I’m so sorry to hear that…”  He was very obviously concerned.

  “I think I have just enough time before the launch to come back down to Earth for a few days,” he continued.   Hugh appeared concerned at this.   “Don’t worry, I have every intention of making it back to orbit in time.”

  Hugh nodded, “I understand.   I assume you’ll be making your travel arrangements with the New Horizon people?”

  "Um, that’s right,” he answered.  “I guess, I mean I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet, but it makes sense now that you mention it.”

  “Alright, then I’ll make my own private arrangements to come down.”

  “But Hugh! What if you can’t make it back for the launch?  I mean, I should the resources of the whole mission behind me, you could too easily just miss a flight or something!”

  “I’ll make it back.  Even if I don’t though… I think it’ll be worth going back.  I can’t leave you to go through all of this on your own…  I have a feeling you might need a reminder at some point about why you thought it was a good idea to leave Earth in the first place.”  He paused and then added: “besides, it’s not about seeing the ship off anymore Markus… at this point it’s become about seeing you launch.”

  “Goodbye Hugh.”

  “Bye.”