Launch: Chapter 24

  He couldn’t do this.  He instead found himself sitting with Hugh at the orb-port bar drinking a beer and ignoring the news program being displayed on the screens around them.  ‘What value does the news have for me anymore?’ he silently asked of his beer as he looked deeply into the bubbling amber liquid.  ‘This isn’t even my world anymore…’

  Problematic use of alcohol and other drugs was as unusual as ever in contemporary society, but it persisted nonetheless to a limited degree, as it probably would for as long as there were human beings.  Efforts were made to minimize whatever harm did occur by social and biological scientists who studied the effects of drugs like alcohol.  They worked on developing ever more effective models of preventing substance abuse, and treating it when it did occur.

  Between the institution of the Global Baseline Benefit, the ending of drug prohibition, shifting of public policy on substance use from a criminal model to a health model, and a public commitment to adequately fund mental health prevention, treatment, and long term care when necessary, a number of social problems dissipated throughout the New Commonwealth, gradually being reduced to very low levels.

  Homelessness and street addiction disappeared from cities.  A successful Baseline housing industry sprang up, catering to people previously living on the streets of major cities.  Families tended to stay together more and domestic violence rates dropped; violent crime and low level theft became virtually unheard of.  Murders still occurred from time to time, but the most frequent crimes were instances of what was once called white collar crime, perhaps an enduring commentary on some deep and undeniable reality of human nature.

  Many people spent their whole lives merely existing on the Baseline just as it was feared they would.   Importantly though, the percentage of the population who did, did not increase over time as some also predicted.   In the end, it took less public funds to provide the Baseline than it did to not provide it and then have to pay to mitigate all of the harms resulting from widespread poverty.   Markus himself could never understand why anyone would ever choose to just waste their lives that way and to just… exist.  It always seemed so sad to him, such an unnecessary waste of the rare, precious, and wildly improbable gift that was life.  He couldn’t understand the appeal of a sloth’s lifestyle… neither could anybody he was close to.

  For every person who wasted their lives on the Baseline though, there was another person who because of it had the opportunity to pursue their passion and develop some art or craft, develop some ingenious invention, or discover a wonderful scientific truth, instead of devoting that time and energy towards earning the ability to merely continue to exist for another day.  And for every dozen or two people who have the chance to pursue their passion and curiosity instead of wasting their energies on subsistence, at least one tends to achieve something truly amazing which would have otherwise been lost to the ether.

  Markus looked deeply into the pale amber of his beer, as though he was trying to see its molecular structure, or maybe looking past the beer into a memory from long ago.  His mind was blank, but active; he held no specific conceptions in his head.  No words were spoken in his mind, and the machinery of his less conscious intellect was left hard at work, considering paradoxes and mapping out points of influence which he might exploit.

  He was lost in reflection, and his thoughts were on seeing his mother in the hospital.  It was all so unfair he ruminated, he had already gone through the process of saying goodbye to everybody already.  Returning to Earth now, somehow felt like such a defeat for him.   Yes he was back on Earth, but he was not yet ready to face his terrestrial existence again.  Nobody knew that he had arrived except for Kirsten and Hugh; he had deliberately kept the specifics of his travel plans a secret.   He simply felt the need to compose himself after the de-orb, and before confronting his next challenges.

  He finished his beer and considered ordering another, but when he looked at Hugh, something in his expression let Markus know that this was not the place his friend wanted or needed to be.   When the android bartender asked him if the two would like another round, he declined and instead Hugh settled the tab by thinking authorization of payment towards the till.

  Markus had given Hugh a sizable sum of his money before he’d originally left for the New Horizon.  Most of his money had gone to the mission coffers, but he’d left most of the rest for Hugh since he wouldn’t need money where he was going.  Given this, Hugh had agreed to cover Markus’ remaining expenses until he left.  Hugh’s payment was acknowledged by a soft tone and a discrete green flash of light, and after the two men exchanged mutual gratitude and good-byes with the droid bartender, the two friends headed for the exit.

  As the sliding doors opened to the outside world, Markus breathed in fresh air for the first time since he’d left Earth.  It was cool and salty sea air, heavy with moisture.  Many found the humidity and frequent rain of the Fraser Valley to be off putting, but Markus couldn’t think of it as anything other than home.

  After savoring the unquantifiable imperfection of the unidentifiable scents just beyond the edge of his perceptions which unmistakingly characterized natural air (as opposed to the sterility of the air in the artificial environments in orbit high above them), they headed down to where the waiting roadpods were parked.

  “Hugh I have some things I want to do before we get to anything else…”  Markus declared after the roadpod door opened in response to his thought commands, and he threw his bag inside.  “I’ll meet you at your place in a few hours alright?”  Hugh nodded his understanding and got into the roadpod waiting behind the one Markus had commissioned.  It immediately drove off and disappeared.

  Markus got into his own roadpod and it too immediately took off without any commands and with seamless acceleration.  It drove autonomously and without delay to a waiting area, surrendering its space just outside the orb-port exits to the next awaiting roadpod.  It would wait here in this holding area for a command indicating its destination.  There were no front seats nor driver, and the modestly sized vehicle’s interior only housed two three seat benches facing each other.  After some thought, Markus issued to the roadpod the address he wished to go, and it obediently took off from the waiting area.

  

  A half hour later, Markus was standing alone over his father’s grave.  There had been nothing of his father to bury, which made this site more of a memorial than a grave.  Standing here and looking at it though, there was no way to tell the difference.  It was raining, but very softly.  The late afternoon overcast sky appeared as though it were wax paper dimly lit from behind, horizon to horizon.  Markus stood there, somberly looking down at the ground.   He, his mother, and his brother, had each chosen something of their father’s to bury at his memorial so that there was something of him here to mark the spot.

  Each of them had chosen a memento that particularly exemplified their own bond with the man.  Markus had chosen one of a pair of figurines which his father had made by hand long before he’d met his mother and started a family with her.  They were the only things he had really wanted of his father’s when he died, and it had taken a great deal of contemplation to be okay with leaving one of them behind to his memorial.  The figurines were from even before his father had gone into business, back in his youth when he had mused that he might have liked to have become a professional artist.  This part of his father, the artistic and existentially contemplative side, the side that Markus had most strongly identified with, was also the connection that within the family only the two of them had shared.  Alternatively, Brakus shared with their father an industriousness and a strong sense for business.

  The figurines Markus had chosen were two cats which fit together to form a roughly circular shape.  One was black with a big white spot and the other white with a big black spot.  The artifact had successful conveyed the effect of representing a yin and yang symbol stylized into the form of two cats.  Markus had lain the black cat down in place of his father, and carried the white one with him.  It was currently prominently displayed back on the New Horizon; it was the first thing he’d unpacked to decorate his suite with before hearing from Brakus about the accident.   He’d left it there just to serve as one more reason that he could never forgive himself if he stayed on Earth.

  Before coming to the graveyard he had stopped at a book store, and had picked up one more final gift to leave at his father’s grave as an offering to his father’s memory.  It was a bound copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s complete Space Odyssey tetralogy.  When he was twelve, his father had found that young Markus was interested in science and space travel, and gave him a similar bound copy for his birthday.  Markus poured through those books lovingly and decided that he wanted to be an aeronautical engineer and join the Trade Corps or the Peacekeepers when he was older.  This suited his father just fine since it was also an avenue into his ever growing power cell business, an engineer in the family would certainly have come in handy.  Markus discovered this interest long before he discovered that he had difficulty staying with one specific intellectual discipline though.

  Sadly, as Markus got older he found that he wasn’t particularly talented in high level mathematics, nor did he have much in the way of mechanical talents with his hands.   Disappointed at first, he ultimately decided that it was probably for the best.  That experience had led him to a more scholarly study, and into the worlds of neuro/genetic psychology and existential philosophy which he had come to live in and love so much today.  He had discovered and grown deeply curious about notions of personhood and identity, about what made one person think and act one way, and others act and think in such different ways.

  Markus stood silently, somberly, and motionless.  He was lost in saudade, and trying desperately to reinforce the cruelly fading memories of his father.  It was so hard at this point to be sure of what was still a genuine memory, and what had been fabricated over the years to replace missing elements of the memory.   It could all too easily be imagined, or filled in, or altered in some way in the intervening years, so unreliable one’s memory ultimately was.  He understood the bitter reality that there was no such thing as a genuine and discretely packaged memory, there were only ever reconstructions of events, and reconstructions of reconstructions…

  Kneeling on the wet grass, he opened the book to the last page of the first book and quoted:

  

“Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers.”

“For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next.”

“But he would think of something.”

  

  At that, he carefully and gingerly laid the book down onto the headstone, and left.