Launch: Chapter 23

  Two days later, with Hugh in tow, Markus found himself in the departure bay of Orbital One.   Good to her word, Kirsten had arranged transport down for the both of them on a regular commuter service.  For their return she had found them a spot on one of the last cargo transports coming back to supply the New Horizon, only eighteen hours before the launch.  That would be his last chance to re-embark.

  The cargo transport which would be bringing them back to orbit was going directly to the New Horizon without stopping at Orbital One.  This meant that Hugh would have the chance to see the ship for a few short hours before having to board the last empty supply shuttle leaving the New Horizon for the station, from which Hugh could keep his original travel plans back to the surface after the launch.

  “I hope I’ll get to meet this Kirsten when we get to the New Horizon, I want to thank her in person for making these arrangements for us, especially for including me!  I’m so excited to have those few hours onboard and to get a chance to see the ship before you launch!  I know it’s just out of necessity and that it’s a special exception but still… that just makes it that much better!”

  Hugh was grinning.  He had never imagined that he would get the chance to see the ship in person before it left.  He appeared to be attempting to contain his glee out of consideration but he was failing miserably.  Markus tried not to hold the cause of his good fortune against him.  It was after all a grim affair which called him back to Earth… and back to his life.

  The departure bay was divided into three terminals, one for de-orbs, and the other two for going elsewhere into the Solar System.  It was divided into local traffic within the asteroid belt, and deep space which consisted of any destination beyond it.

  Markus was looking up some figures on his medium scroll while waiting nervously in his seat for their shuttle number to be called.  Herm and Jetal had sent him a list of possible models for his sequencer and asked him to pick one for the ship to procure.  Most of them were compact and efficient enough and there were only a few features he considered absolutely essential.  He narrowed the list down to three candidates he was comfortable with and then sent it back to them, asking them to use their best judgment in the final selection between the three.  Any one of the three would have been adequate, but Markus found that he liked one model in particular, for no particular reason.  This meant that really it just came down to a question of aesthetic taste in the design.  It was a bit of a test to see which they would pick among the three options he’d given them.

  Hugh poked him in his shoulder to interrupt him.  “Hey, relax.   You can do this.”

  Apparently prophetic, Hugh’s words were punctuated by their de-orb number being called out, at which point they each grabbed their respective travel bag and headed to the gate together.  In a deliberately symbolic gesture to himself, Markus had left most of his belongings back on the New Horizon.  Everything he’d wished to take with him on the trip, his most valuable possessions, everything of sentimental value, he had left behind on the New Horizon.

  It was an added insurance of his return, and hopefully it would serve as a reminder to himself of how important the launch was to him if at some point he should need it.  The bag he carried now only contained his large scroll and a few days’ change of clothes.  This was all he should need.  Hugh on the other hand had his proper travel luggage which he had brought up and had checked into the station hotel with.  He had checked out of his hotel early, and would bring up what he needed for his return trip again when the time came.

  As they approached the gate, apprehension seized Markus.  He had de-orbed many times before but to this day it still made him anxious due to the circumstances of his father’s death.  He had thought when he orbed-up this last time that he would never have to suffer another de-orb.  It was just so profoundly unsettling to be so acutely, and so overtly reminded of how easily one could be blinked out of existence in, well… less time than it takes to think the thought ‘blinked out of existence.’  Markus tried not to dwell on the feeling, but it always crept back when the time came for him to actually board a shuttle bound for terra firma.

  When his place in line reached the gate, he thought his name at the panel beside the door, to which the red light switched to green and he moved on.  Hugh then did the same behind him and followed him on.  The central core was a lightly restricted area, and this was the extent of the orb-port and station security identification.  The Brainchips which most people had, operated on encrypted frequencies which people could be identified by and granted access to security systems and secure areas.  The system was fast, secure, and effortless, and almost impossible to compromise.

  Through the gate was one of the same lifts which had taken them to the outer section of the station, which would now return them to the station’s central hub.  As opposed to the trip up to the outer section which reversed the gravity half way up, the trip down in contrast simply matched the acceleration to maintain a steady one gee until late in the descent.  At this point it would ease off the acceleration and bring the lift to a smooth stop at the central hub with the perceived gravity gradually falling off towards the end of the trip.  It was at this point that those in the lift with them would slowly lose faith in the idea of ‘ground’ or ‘up.’

  There were ten other passengers in the lift with Markus and Hugh, which constituted its maximum seating capacity.  The lift would go back and forth as much as needed to ferry all the passengers, but there were departure bays at the top of each of the station’s six spokes between the central hub and habitat ring.  As Markus looked around this time, he could be pretty well certain that no one on this trip with him would be New Horizon crew.  They had all arrived already and it was far too near the launch for anyone to risk missing it by returning to Earth this late in the countdown, with the exception of extraordinary circumstances such as Markus’.

  Looking at the people in the lift with him, there seemed to be something… missing about them.  In the last few days he had already gotten used to getting a certain kind of vibe, or… attitude, from the people aboard the New Horizon, something he thought he could now sense the absence of in these people.   But he shook it off, finding it too easy for him to be imagining it.

  “What?” Hugh asked in response to Markus shaking his head.

  “Nothing,” he answered dismissively with another shake of his head.

  When the artificial gravity came to a complete absence, all that could be felt was an ever so gentle lateral pull as the spoke they were in slowly moved around the hub.   It was barely noticeable, but definitely noticeable.  When the lift doors opened onto the appropriate corridor, the twelve of them extricated themselves from their seat’s straps, and clumsily made their way towards the proper shuttle, using the handrails to guide them while flying down the corridor.

  The micro gravity central hub of the ship, beyond serving as the station’s orb-port and orbital construction platform, also served as a zero gravity playground of sorts.   There was a food court for example, where people from all over the ship could come to enjoy the novelty of eating one’s food in weightlessness, which could be explored to both delight and occasionally horrific messes.  Many of the construction and shuttle crews took their lunches here, though with their experience, they hardly ever made any kind of mess.

  Finally they came to their lander’s airlock and upon entering it, the only passengers already onboard were those who had for some reason required assistance in the microgravity.  Making their way down the central passageway of the shuttle, Markus and Hugh found their seats and strapped themselves in.   Markus set himself to work at simply remaining calm.  He had been through this many times before, but it had never quite gotten to be routine.   It was hard for him to ignore that he may be disintegrated within the hour, entirely and utterly obliterated.

  Ill-fated or not, once the passengers were all seated and secured in their straps (and double checked by the drone flight attendants), the clamps on the shuttle disengaged, and a soft reversing jet nudged the shuttle backwards and away from the central hub of Orbital One.  A complicated set of soft jet bursts turned the shuttle around, and maneuvered it into position for descent, lining up the correct angle of reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.  Markus could gradually begin to feel the steadily increasing acceleration as the primary engines lit up, and the shuttle slowed in its orbit enough to begin hurtling back down towards the Earth.

  As they penetrated ever deeper into thicker and thicker layers of atmosphere, the air outside of Markus’ window began to glow.  Steadily increasing now, the air just outside the window became a glowing orange fireball as the ceramic tiles beneath their feet were slowly ablated off of the underside of the lander.  Friction between the tiles and the atmosphere bled the energy of their orbital velocity into heat energy as they descended into the ever thickening atmosphere.   This was the part he really hated, the part he would never quite get used to… the part where his father had died.  The slight vibration of the vessel (which despite a couple centuries of valiant engineering efforts had never been completely eliminated), caused Markus to grab his seat’s armrest tighter and tighter, until his knuckles showed the white of the bone beneath.

  And then suddenly, it was all over.  The ride smoothed out completely, and the view out the window returned after the last few licks of flame had lashed out from the shuttle’s belly.  Through the window he could see land which from experience he could recognize as the northwest coast of North America.  From their current altitude he could see all of Vancouver Island and just barely make out the Haifa Gwaii islands off on the horizon.   It was always so beautiful from this altitude, about eighty kilometers at this point he’d imagine.

  In exactly the same way as the original NASA shuttles had returned from orbit, this contemporary descendant of the original shuttle would now glide down unpowered the rest of the way towards its destination in Vancouver, making long and lazy banks from side to side to bleed off the speed and altitude which had originally kept them in orbit in the first place.  Unlike the original shuttles, this one carried reserve fuel, and if necessary it had the ability to fire its engines and boost itself back up to a higher altitude again to delay their ultimate glide down to a landing.  Fortunately for Markus and Hugh though, today there was no delay in their landing at the major orb-port on Sea Island, in the Vancouver borough city of Richmond which was situated in the delta of the mighty Fraser River.

  The flight down would take another forty minutes or so.  Now Markus could fully relax.  He reclined his chair as much as it would go, and then laid back and closed his eyes in a vain attempt to prepare himself for the conflict he was dropping in on.

  

  As he closed his eyes, his thoughts were consumed with his mother.  Their relationship had always been… well it had never come easily for either of them.  Markus certainly ‘loved’ his mother, but in that way in which one is obligated to love close family members, whether or not you ‘like’ them.  He never felt as though his mother had ever done wrong by him per se, or by his brother for that matter.  In fact he happily acknowledged and appreciated that as far as he could tell she had always done everything she could to help them, especially after the death of their father.  He readily admitted that she had made every effort to be a good mother, and that it was hard to criticize her for her best not being ideal in the kinds of circumstances she was faced with.

  Markus had always wondered what was different about him, why for example his mother and brother always seemed to be closer, but he never seemed to connect that deeply with either of them.  When a baby comes into the world, they are for all intents and purposes the very centre of the universe, according to all of their perceptions.  There is always an amorphous ‘me’ from the very beginning which people process everything they encounter in relation to.  They commonly have the impressions that they are a little person inside their heads, listening with their ears, watching through their eyes, and pulling the appropriate levers to respond to what they are seeing and hearing.  Through childhood this illusion is complete and absolute; they think that they are that little person imagined to be in their heads.  Everyone in the world comes into existence as the centre of the universe, the very locus of all existence.

  Gradually though, step by step, that illusion is weakened, new barriers to perspective are lifted, and cognitive evolution can occur.  Toddlers develop a theory of mind; they learn that there is a difference between their own minds and the minds of others.  They learn that others have minds like their own.  This allows them to learn that other beings have feelings and desires just like they do, that they have a similar internal state of being.  They realize that they are only one mind amongst many and that they need to learn to negotiate social relationships in order to get what they need, and thus complex human socializing is made possible and necessary. One big difference between him and his immediate family was that he found such things fascinating, while the eyes of his mother and brother tended to glaze over when he tried to discuss such things with them.

  

  There was a jarring jolt as the shuttle touched down on the tarmac.  Markus had been so lost in his thoughts that he had blanked out the entire glide down, and hadn’t realized that they were about to land.  He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath and then slowly let it out.  He then did it again.

  “You can do this,” he whispered to himself.