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Month: February 2020

“What do you remember about the accident out there, anything you can give us…

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Could help us piece it all together more coherently.” Says the mousey looking woman from the internal affairs office. If she didn’t have such a short bob of a hair cut, and refrained from looking so sincere or earnest you’d think she was a real hard nosed bitch. But such as it was, she came across as mild and genuinely compassionate. Both traits, I would imagine, she’d need to work extra hard at hiding if she ever wanted to make a fully fledged investigator or a detective, or be more than some hard nosed bastards go’fer. “Not much really. I don’t even remember going in to work that day. I’m still foggy on how long ago this all went down.” Sitting in the white plastic chair, chained to a soft cream coloured formica table with a reinforced plate steel under structure, I’m over come by the itching of my wounds. “Can I get a… you know a hand, my face itches and I don’t have arms anymore. Is it really neccessary to restrain me, bodily. I can’t even walk unassisted yet.” The blast at the dock yards had done a real number to The Company. Not to mention, stolen my arms, killed a very promising career in robotics, and left me with ruptured tendons in both my legs. Those would heal, but my fine motor skills in welding robotic arms in zero g had all but evaporated in one loud, concussive boom. “Am I a suspect. I mean jesus, that blast took both of my fucking arms man. That’s my livelihood. Seven years at the university, four more years as an apprentice, and then having to get my level three certs before doing anything even remotely close to the cusp of cutting edge. No, man. No, fuck. That. Bullshit. I ain’t no suspect, I was fucking robbed. Someone took my life from me, took everything in one fell swoop. So you cut the shit. Cut these restraints off me, and tell me how long I’ve been in this hospital. I know I’m still aboard the station, as everything here is fucking blue!” God damn am I agitated. This line of questioning has been going on for what feels like twelve hours now. Maybe more than that. I don’t know. My blue room, with blue lights and blue sheets, and blue curtains has no windows or media displays. The blue hallway I get frog marched down, on ruptured tendons no less, has no visible details telling me the date, nor time of day, or even what shift we’re in. “Ok, mr. Gendry, you’re right. We don’t need to put you in leg chains, that’s me being a bit over zealous. This is my first real case as a lead investigator.” There she goes, showing contrition, helping me out. I could learn to like this woman, if she weren’t the first face I saw after losing my limbs and any future I had in robotics fabrication. “According to our records the blast happened eleven days ago, around oh three hundred hours. You were on the last shift, or first shift of the day. Not sure how you would describe that. Why don’t you tell us again what you do, erm… did. If not that day, just on the regular. What your job was, is…” the formica table is empty, save for a few sheets of paper and a manilla folder with my work history and medical reports printed inside. Leaning back in my chair, oddly off balance with no arms to cross over my chest, I start into my tale. “Listen, I’m kind of an animated talker. I’m going to need arms, robotics, prosthetics, or regenerative. Whatever they’ve got me insured for that I can try to recapture some of the old glory of my work/life balance. Just as an aside. You know. Robotic appendages are my passion. Wrote a thesis on them, did a practical application on them too. Got great Mark’s. Top of my class. Even got a recommendation from the dean of the university, old Big D “the minotaur” Bradley.” I am positively beaming, I’m so damn smug.

“So as a typical dock worker, I bunk down in standard crew quarters, you know the ones out on the torus, like less than five hundred meters from where I work sixteen hours a day. The glory of rotating continental shifts. Pays well though, eh? Yeah, buddy. Big bucks for those with a class three cert. Not many folks round here get that far along. Especially in robotics, and those outboard drill rig appendages.” I can feel the juices flowing, getting into my story now. Who boy! “Yeah, so lately I was tasked with building a real robust system that can switch seamlessly between ice hauling, towing and full on drilling. Those three elements all have very different tolerances and needs for stress loads, torque, and the ability to swap in/out bits on the fly. A real pig of a job. Designing one is difficult enough, but three, in tandem. Christ! The calculations on the timing alone was enough to write a years worth of papers on. Chip load, bit speeds, stressors out the ying yang. Anyway, I got it designed on paper and then had to fabricate a proof of concept on an old mark twelve The Company had lying around, something called The Jolene Roger.” A sudden jolt, as the investigator sits up straight, comes to life. “Wait, you built a test rig on a mark twelve that had just be laying around? Those were only put in use around Pluto. How is it one ended up here?” Writing furiously on her note pad, looking to the folder to see if she’d over looked this interesting detail. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t ask where the resources come from, I just build what they ask me too. May I?” Looking up from her notes, the investigator motions for me to continue. “As I was saying, I had to fabricate my proof of concept. So I spent a huge number of hours gathering plate steel, titanium blocks and pistons and shielded hydraulics components and got about eighty hours in before, Boom! Do you know if the rig survived the blast? Some of my welds were exquisite. Like liquid pearl on glass.” A tap on the window of the door brings our discussion to a sudden halt. From behind the door, I can see an older gentleman from the investigative team motion for the woman to step out into the hallway. Quickly, and quietly I watch her slip out of the room. My back is to the wall, and I’m sat facing the door with just the formica table and an empty chair in front of me. The older man is talking into her ear directly, she nods almost imperceptibly. They both look back through the window of the door at me. A flurry of activity ensues as the investigators leave, and a junior officer comes in to take me back to my hospital room. I never even learned her name. No idea what caused them to run off after all those hours of examination and questioning. Must have bigger fish to fry.

“Sorry for the wait Mr. Gendry, or Jack, is it? We had to wait for your official discharge to come through from both the police force and The Company investigators before we could release your new arms to you. They’ve been especially formulated to you based on your biometrics, and the last psych evaluation you had only a couple months ago. We realize the trauma might have pushed you outside your baseline, but we think you’ll find that you can get back to work with only a minor period of adjustment. Seems that recco’ you had from the dean ofvthe university meant you got pushed to the top of the pile for these experimental limbs.” The technician takes me through a laundry list of specifications regarding my new bionic arms, and how to best care for them. Three hours later and I’m heading down the lift to my crew quarters. Life is finally back on track for Jack!

Waiting patiently out on the gangway in the dry docks are a group of unruly out of system technicians. Desperate to harvest the secrets contained in the black boxes buried deep inside the mark twelve capsule The Jolene Roger. The explosive mining charges have been set all over the mobile gantries, the separatists are waiting for the right time to pounce. In the shadows of the torus, an insurgency is building.

 

PART VII

“Yo, Daryl, you’ve been summoned.”

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Says the giant of a Martian born man who works on smaller single pilot vessels in our dry dock section of the torus. “Don’t gimme that look man, they sent word down from above, the HR director herself wants a meet and greet with the illustrious Daryl “the minotaur” Bradley. She asked for you, by name, so go upstairs, and see what the fuck is going on.” The Martian is a seven foot tall Hulk of a man, by the name of Barry Ludens, curt but a great shop foreman with a dry wit. A joke like this wouldn’t even occur to him. People in the lounge wince when they hear Daryl’s nickname said aloud, and to his face. People learn early on not to mention the moded red mechanics coveralls he wears with the ultra wide neck. Daryl is nestled into a crash couch winding down after a couple of shifts off, coping with the tragic death of his and his brother’s last great apprentice Andy. His brother Doug is seated beside him, dinner plate in his lap, mouth full of diced steak. “Dougie, we been here, what… like twenty seven years now right? You ever, even once heard about a meet and greet with one of the fucking board of directors?” He is slowly climbing out of the industrial crash couch, groaning under the strain of his considerable bulk, and the pressure on his not so young knees. Even in low gravity, age, and stress catch up with the best of us. “No D, I ain’t never heard of that before. You think we missed something on The Last Great Venture and some one else, or a whole crew died due to negligence? Maybe I should come too, you know, moral support or show our work order documentation. We certified that shit three times over, I know it!” Doug looks agitated, word from upstairs never comes down here to our cramped crew quarters without passing through ten miles of interconnected HR flunkies asses and mouths. A human centipede of middle management tweaks to sop directives. Daryl standing half in, half out of the door to the crew lounge, staring intently at the martian foreman Barry. “How the fuck do I even get up there to see the big wig any how?” A look of sincere consternation upon his cracked and worn face. The last forty hours of mourning Andy’s passing has hit the whole sector hard, and our crew quarters the hardest. The room is littered with empty beer bulbs and smells like salty tears and sweat. “Not a problem D, if you head over to HR cubicle seven beside the bay doors, there will be a flunkie there to take you up. Let us know what it looks like from up there in their ivory tower eh?”. And with that last rejoinder, both men head out the door, down the gang plank and off to their separate duties.

Pling, pling chimes the door to the board room. With a soft woosh the double doors open, and I step passed the threshold and into an immaculately clean office space, full of crystal, real leather and an actual wooden table. Standing in front of the gigantic bay windows is the HR director, last name Taylor. That’s as much as they were willing to tell me on my trip up here. Over her shoulders the large expanse of our particular dry dock operation can be seen. From this vantage point, we look like ants in a tilt shifted photograph, the scale of the dock yards, the full enclosure, and all of those people busy at work is dizzying. Even our massive moving gantries where we park our mobile tool benches and chests look like children’s toys from up here. HR director Taylor is fitted out in a tasteful burgundy pant suit. It isn’t baggy, but nor is it too tightly fitted. Turning away from the view, she finally registers my presence. “Daryl Bradley, so glad you could make it. I’m so glad you could find the time to come and see me. I know you’ve recently been struct by tragedy.” Motioning towards the board room table and a couple of waiting seats, equipped with a view screen set to stand by and some bulbs of either pristine un recycled water or the purest vodka I’ve ever seen. “I didn’t realize I had the option to decline, Ms. Taylor.” Taking my seat opposite her, I marvel at how form fitting yet comfortable the chair is. Damn, this shit makes you want to fall asleep in it. However do these people stay awake during meetings. “Ah, yes… sorry. I do realize this is rather…undocumented. To say the least. Certainly. Listen, you are an intelligent man, so I’ll cut the shit. We here at The Company are terribly sad that your latest apprentice was murdered. You know, I oversee all three hundred of the dry docks on this station, and by far. By. Far. You have the best record on safety, and on people making their certs, and on satisfaction with your teams repairs. That mark eight was never supposed to be anywhere near here. But the crew asked for you by name. Specifically. Do you know how rare it is that a flight crew out of Neptune knew who you were, or even bothered to bypass the appropriate channels to get that experimental craft in to your work shop, under your watchful eye. The logistics and insider knowledge is astounding! no, no. Don’t worry I’m not accusing you of subterfuge. I’m paying you a compliment, that in the eighteen years I’ve been here, I have never once encountered. Now I know you’re a god damn fantastic mechanic, and you stay on deadlines, and keep your budget within reasonable margins. The best people working anywhere on this vessel came out from under your tutelage.” Ms. Taylor is now up on her feet, gesticulating wildly, as she walks the length of the room. All I can do is sit quietly, astounded by what I’m hearing. Though I sense a terrible and foreboding but, coming. “Daryl, do you mind if I call you that? Daryl, I have zero technical skills here. I understand very little of what you lot do here. I’m a people person. I get you the people and resources you need, then I get the fuck out of the way. You know, one of my fondest memories here was during the boom period of sixty three. I spend forty hours helping your crews find some compound w, and a much needed tube of preparation h. Now, I never did find those items, but you guys made me feel like I was a part of the team. Hell, the reason I got promoted so quickly onto the board of directors was because the two other junior directors I worked with got maimed or killed during their rotations on crews in other sections of the torus.” She has a wistful look upon her face at the fleeting memories. “We’ve got a serious problem here Daryl. That jag off that killed your brother’s apprentice, was moon lighting as a moon separatist. If word gets out, this whole station will erupt and blow out at the seams. For morales sake no one can know. The fewer the number of people who can recall that greasy fucks face, the better. That’s why, for your exemplary ability to teach, I’m promoting you off the shop floor and into a tenured teaching position within the machine shop. New personalized quarters, full meal plan, and no more death defying shifts crawling over ships. No need to thank me, the paperwork has gone through. It cleared the moment you came up the lift. Biometric scans for the win!” She looks genuinely pleased with herself. And with a flourish, I find myself back out in the hall, being lead down to the elevator banks. Wondering, what the fuck just happened here any how?

“Hey, there’s the big man. Back from the land of the lost I see. What’s up D, you look stunned? Oh shit, you getting a stint in rehab or something?” The question is left hanging in the air. Silence floats up to meet it. With a dull thud, Daryl flops onto an open couch. Running his hands over the well worn cracks and creases. Admiring the brilliant green light shining on the instrument panel. He turns around as though to talk to the whole room at once. “Doug has been promoted to lead all training in this sector of the docks. All dockets and work orders, change orders etc, now run through him. He’ll set the schedule from here on out. All foremen report directly to Doug. Notices have gone out all ready. I made a few notes, and some other long overdue promotions are going through, and a couple of raises. Those are my last acts before I leave for my new, university, full tenure position.” An audible gasp, as though each pair of lungs has drawn in all available oxygen in the cramped room. A heart beat passes, then two, then four.

Out on the gangway a loud commotion can be heard, emanating from the central crew quarters where the dock section leader bunks down. The sound of raucous cheers and corks popping can be heard. Music begins to blare over the loud speakers. All thoughts of misery evaporates in the tidal wave of cheers and shouts of good will. Notifications of raises and promotions begin to chime in on personal communicators.

 

 

PART VI

“Hey, Dougie, wake up!, Somebody’s called in sick and I need another able bodied mechanic for the…

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Last Great Venture capsule repair job on the docket today. Yo! Wakey wakey, we’ve only got forty minutes until shift change. You in, right? This comes at triple time for you if I have my math right.” The half sized door to my bunk compartment is closing even as he continues to speak. Through the clamor behind my brother Daryl, I can see the other mechanics in the cramped company lounge getting ready for bed, or gearing up for another big day on the job. The dry dock is a massive hub of activity seventy miles off the dark side of the moon. A huge spinning torus with berths for all manner of vessels commissioned by The Company. A massive multi planetary conglomerate that footed a huge portion of the bill for manned space flight privately, and thus once it gained a foot hold in the business of exploration and mining, turned it into a choke hold that shows no sign of wavering in any capacity. Except for the ever increasing need for skilled labour and experienced flight crews, The Company looks to have a near endless trajectory towards growth and colonial expansion. The number of zeroes in their bank accounts boggles the mind. One reason why working for them is so lucrative, They put resources back into themselves, and make no bones about rebuilding, retro fitting, or recycling parts and designs that are proven to work, no matter how costly. They pay well, if you know what you are doing. They care for the flight crews and mechanics just the same. Mind you, we eat better, but have very challenging continental shifts. Three eight hour stints every twenty four hours. Keeping a schedule is paramount to success around here.

Stepping out of my tiny bunk, and zipping myself into my safety coveralls in one smooth motion, I give some serious thought to grabbing a long steam shower and forgoing food, but as I amble through the door I can see a monster of a hot breakfast spread, set out for the last night shift, and fix myself a plateful before the clock ticks down diving into the nearest open couch. The lounge is cramped, with low ceilings, and walls covered in video screens and view ports of the vast expanse of dry dock. It has emergency seating available for a full crew compliment of about thirty burly mechanics with no elbow room to spare. Should the base suddenly lurch to life there would be a mad scramble for everyone to find safe harbor in a crash couch, or their private travel pod that line the exterior walls making the lounge a sort of bull pen in the middle. The crash couches are beaten to hell and well worn, but each one has a crisp glowing green light to signify they are in prime working condition. The room, just like the whole base is colour coded. Mechanics rooms and work station areas are a dark rich red, food prep and entertainment levels are green, health care is blue and managerial posts are yellow. Our clothes match, except we all have separate load outs for pockets and our everyday carry. The horn to signify the shift change is going to blare any second now, I can see my brother Daryl through the thick yellowing glass of a view port, as he’s coming back to usher me into the dry dock space. Parked beside our living quarters are all of our tool chests, equipped with mag lev bases. Those are our livelihood, and we protect our tools with biometric locks and a swift hammer to the skull for those dumb enough to have proclivities towards theft. Poking his head in through the door to the crew lounge Daryl chimes in. “Dougie, The Last Great Venture is a mark eight, so we’ve got her parked down the far end by the exhaust vents. She’s not in too bad of shape internally, but we’ve got to check the entire hull for environmental damages. Boring, time consuming, but I need a trusted set of eyes leading up the team. You up for it?” He’s not as tall as me, but with the neck of a bull and a short temper he leads his team with gusto, and is imposing all the same. His red safety coveralls have been moded to suit his specific safety concerns and needs, namely a neck as thick as a child’s torso. Out in the dry dock there is slim margin to survive should you fuck something up. Hence the gruff attitude. In his position you watch a lot of good people grow cocky, inattentive, then die horrible, gruesome deaths. A needless waste, so he has become hyper alert, and it wears on him around the edges very quickly. I’m up out of my seat, dropping my garbage in the recyclers and incinerators, hopping to the door in a single bound due to our low gravity. Daryl turns on his heels and I follow him down the gangway, passed the laundry dispenser, collecting my tool bench as we head to the berth at the far end where The Last Great Venture is docked. Along the gangway several other tool chests are parked and in various states of disrepair, as additional teams are working all over the massive ship.

“Wheew…” I whistle. “Jesus, she’s beaten the fuck up. This is environmental damage? From where? the ice rings around Saturn mixed with a metric fuck tonne of shrapnel grenades, and a blown up parts depot?… my god, the whole hull is going to have to come off. Tell me you have extra crews crawling between the inner and outer hulls looking for micro punctures and penetration damage.” The ship is huge, mark eights are the largest capsules made by The Company. Compared to the original bad boy, the Non Sequitur, this thing is twenty times the size, and just as durable. Unless you drive it at mach five through a parts counter consisting of nothing but industrial sized nuts and bolts and titanium tipped shrapnel. “What sort of moron do you take me for Dougie? Have some faith little brother. I had three rotating crews put on it the second I laid eyes on her. What a shit show eh? Oh look, here comes Andy, our beloved, and beleaguered apprentice. Shall I have him search for the… what was it again, the capacitor or the capacitator?” It’s a tried and true make work prank we pull on all our apprentices, like searching for blinker fluid, or in our case finding a gasket for the flux capacitor. Hilarious, when done out of love. These behemoths have a parts count near nine million pieces, so the likelihood that a green mechanics apprentice will get the joke right off the bat are slim to none. Plus, apprentices are typically shit on in the ship yards until they earn their full level one certification. We don’t take on apprentices very often. Our non specific set of skills intimidates lots of people. Specificity is great, if you are a neurologist, but if you have the aptitude for it, a generalist mechanic is a very lucrative and exciting profession. Never a dull day when you’re certified to do a bit of everything on all classifications of vessel.

A short young man, of about twenty is racing along the gangway beside The Last Great Venture, pushing his equally spotless tool chest, his apprentice grade pink coveralls are sparklingly clean. His hands aren’t permanently stained grease black yet. He’s been our trusted side kick for nearly eighteen months by now. He’s beaming from ear to ear in the sight of the mark eight. She is a glorious piece of machinery. Her massive bulk dwarfing every other ship in our section of the dry dock. Would have been a real sight to witness the pilots maneuver this beast into its berth. Our section of dry dock repair bay is just one of about three hundred on the outer ring of the torus. A truly magnificent sight. The torus itself is ugly in its utilitarian design, but awesome in scale. Part of why we’re on the dark side of the moon, so as not to ruin the lunar view from the earth’s surface. Andrew is rocking back and forth, eager to hear what he’s going to work on today. Any other day and we’d fuck him over without even thinking about it, but this is a mark eight, and she needs millions of dollars worth of work done, and I don’t think we can push our deadlines any more than what The Company has allotted us. “Andy, you bring your mag boots and mag lev harness connectors with you today?” Looking over Andy’s shoulder at the hull of the ship before us. “If so, saddle up, we’re on ship in fifteen minutes. Be at the aft articulated vent shielding, ready to climb up. Bring visine, as this bitch will kill your eyes today.” I can see his grin growing larger than his face can bear. To actually go up and walk the length and breadth of a mark eight, and see the berth from all angles is a once in a year opportunity. Very rare for a green mechanics apprentice. Andrew is very lucky indeed. “Andy?…” turning from the ship to look directly at me. “Yeah Dougie?… erm,… Doug. Sorry.” I chuckle, as I glower at him. “Put on your knee pads, otherwise your pristine coveralls will be charcoal black by the time you’re done. Change out the inserts on your respirator too, that environmental shielding comes apart in your fingers and turns to super fine dust that will clog your lungs up real fuckin’ quick.” Packing up our gear, we head aft to climb aboard the hull of The Last Great Venture. The clock is ticking, credits are rolling and we’ve got several hundred thousand punctures to analyze and repair. The noise is cacophonous, and the air is tangy from sparks and spent ozone. Pneumatic drills and die grinders are throwing up clouds of orange microscopic dust. The light is dim and has an amber glow from all the spent environmental hull plating. Water vapor is hanging over the ship like a woolly sweater. In among the sparks a chill settles over us as we trace every millimeter of the mark eight’s external surface. Testing doors, vents and air locks. Checking welds, and rivets alike, all with an eye towards certain death if even the smallest wounds to the hull shielding aren’t found and mended. Hours crawl by, as we sweat, swear, bleed, bow and scrape over every facet of The Last Great Venture.

Shift change klaxons sound off, and we climb down, gingerly off the vessel exterior. Andy is so excited he practically jumps from the capsule to the gangway, a solid fourteen foot gap. Us worn and weary guys use the hand rails and antenna arrays as make shift ladders and work platforms. Pulling up beside our tool chests we unlatch the mag lev  locks and push our gear back to our crew quarter storage spaces. Up ahead, there is a commotion at the main junction between the dry dock berths and our section of crew quarters. People are jostling each other, and a scuffle is breaking out. Before it really registers, Daryl is off like a shot, ready to take control and make sure cooler heads prevail. “Daryl!” I shout over the din, trying to get in through the tightly packed bodies, close to the scrum. I desperately want to stop anyone who might try to swing a wrench at the back of my brothers head in a fit of rage, or as an act of retaliation. “Daryl!, what’s going on man?” I’m within arms reach of him, when the crowd around us starts to part. A slim, wiry fella is wrapped up in a full nelson, blood on his knuckles, his pink coveralls bunched up around his face. “Dougie!” Daryl says through gritted teeth. “Just the guy I was looking for… check his Id, I don’t recognize this guy from our section.” Daryl has the skinny, greasy man locked up tight in his grasp. “No id tags on him, what’s the deal here bro, you trying to get into a tool chest that’s not yours or somethin’?” The skinny man grins at me, a good selection of his teeth are missing, or have turned black. His lank hair is thinning and he smells like shit, and decay. “Yeah nah man, yeah nah. You’se know, just doin’ mah thang…” he’s twitching and jerking with each word. A junkie of some sort. Probably found a jumpsuit in the laundry and thought he’d steal and sell off someone’s hard earned tools. The gathered crowd wants to flush him out an air lock, but instead Daryl drags him over to a yellow cubicle stationed at the edge of the gangway, a good two hundred meters from any section of crew quarters. Standard hr protocol. We’ll live where we work, but management can’t get within one hundred meters of our recreational crew quarters. We have supervisors that are part of our crews for personnel matters outside of work hours. “No, we can’t wease him, we’re not murderers. He can go sit with HR, for a protocol rehabilitation session or ten to set him straight… ” pushing the greasy looking man into a chair, his slightly dusty pink apprentice uniform looking drastically out of place among all the men in filthy red coveralls after a full shift. “Dougie, you see Andy around, I want to discuss his progress on The Last Great Venture shielding before he retires to bed.” Daryl, is looking at me, concern etched across his face. The dirty guys coveralls are awful pristine to have come out of this side of the laundry facility. “Eh no, I haven’t seen him. He was so excited from work today he raced on ahead of me.” Andrew’s grinning face is no where to be seen in the crowd, or through the dirty view port that looks into our crew lounge.

“Sorry man” the HR flunkie says, “They just found his stripped body buried in among the tool chests. Looks like our greasy friend here came upon Andy unawares, while he was locking down his unit, hit him over the back of the head with a fire extinguisher. Direct hit to the base of the skull. It was quick. From the grin still on his face, he never felt a thing… ” the words fade out to nothingness. A slight buzz fills my head. Another dead kid. This one, now he had potential. He’s going to be difficult to replace. Somewhere external to us the shift change klaxon is going off. I have eight hours before I have to be back on. Daryl is going to be ornery for a while to come. Fucking junkie scum. Should have put him out on the float like the crowd wanted. I feel a stiff drink or ten are on my immediate horizon. Outside the bleak emptiness of space continues to float around us, undisturbed.

 

PART V

Well holy shit, I managed

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To write thirty one times in the month of January. I was not expecting that to happen, at all. I had high hopes for perhaps, seven to ten written pieces, but thirty one!?! No, no chance.

Work is starting to gather at the edges, so I won’t be going all out this month, but if some creative thoughts come to me, I do hope I’ll put pen to paper, as it were.

Thanks to those who read my micro short stories. My favourite three are intertwined and tell the same continued story. Big fan of space, isolation, revenge, and loneliness. In case my writing doesn’t tell you that, I’m telling you that now.

Hope to see you around here over the rest of 2020, and beyond. The flu was generally awful, I don’t reccomend it to anyone, if they can help it.

It’s strange, the things you come to miss while out here…

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The slow methodic drip of a faucet, or being bathed in the orange glow of the late afternoon sun, the singing of birds, or the sound of the wind rustling leaves across an old growth park. Echoes of children’s laughter bouncing off of brick and concrete. There is none of that here. At first, that made me very happy, I could finally knuckle down and focus on the laundry list of experiments I was tasked with performing by the very savvy tech guys at The Company. But now, up here, alone and isolated in the cool blue glow of phosphorescent lighting, beige cloth walls with all that sound proofing and accident protection, it’s driving me crazy. What I wouldn’t give to turn back towards earth, and hear my little girls squabble endlessly over dolls, crayons or whose turn it is to pick the next television show. The observation deck, a small bubble of a room, comprised mostly of a glass like dome where all of my technical equipment is housed. Can be quite chill, although sometimes tiny rivulets of condensation from my breath will gather on its concave surface, and gather in small pools along the outermost edges where it meets the soft padding of the bulkhead. I keep tiny polaroids of my girls taped up in there. Reminding me, constantly why I do what I do. All alone, adrift in space.

I’m currently the lowest ranking member of The Company to captain his own ship. It wasn’t always this way. When I started out this mission I had three other senior members of this crew. Three very brilliant, but problematic men. Part of an old school fraternity, a brotherhood of sociopaths and sexual deviants. I can almost imagine a large crowded meeting room down on earth at The Company HQ, where the last long amber rays of the afternoon sun would filter through some rustling leaves, and cast long deep shadows across some corporate types face. Slat shaped shadows from the tall Venetian blinds, creating a regular pattern of amber and darkness hiding portions of their faces. Phones ringing haphazardly, reams of papers all over the room, binders full of details and full ash trays and lit cigarettes with whirling eddies of smoke littering the rooms, and through it all, partial globs of conversations. “They came very highly recommended…best in their fields… brilliant minds… oh no, not too many people choose to work with them a second time… troubling attitudes, but gifted. Yes the three men achieve great results… no, no, no one would step forward… yes, suicide, found by the wife. Yeah, twins on the way… do not envy the fourth man on that next mission. Hope he knows how to comport himself during periods of high stress… can he take a joke?” There would be chuckles, and giggles or guffaw, but in the end those three bastards would get cleared to fly with me. Nine hundred million miles between us and earth. There would be no second chances to make a first impression.

Now yes, it’s true. I killed all three of my crew. I did not set out to do so. But I did it none the less. No, I will not go into it, suffice it to say that few things will test your resolve like suturing a tear to your own anus via a mirror and a needle and thread. I am not a weak man. I did not cow to them. But I exacted my revenge over the course of twenty four hours after they made their final play on my person. I’ve known military life. I can take an awful, awful lot of shit from my superiors, but not someone’s misplaced sense of desire to dominate a subordinate. No, to the man who held me down, he lost an arm at the elbow to the pneumatic press I was operating. Turns out I’m not as fast on a tourniquet as I tested on earth during med protocols. Whoops. To the gentleman who tricked me into the tightest spot on the ship, a technical corridor that houses all of the larger caliber electrical cabling, he got a sprinkle of fines from the Oort cloud in the rim of his helmet and gloves. Brilliant scientists, all of them. But bro’s don’t clean and inspect their gear to the same degree a lowly generalist grunt like me does. Failure to secure a one hundred percent connection during a space walk left him dead instantaneously at the opening of the air lock. The same airlock I fired the acting commander out of by purposefully failing to reach equilibrium with the vacuum outside our vessel when he had to go out for some last minute repairs. Launched him off the craft at nearly two hundred kilometers per second per second, from a cold stand still. Didn’t even damage the doors as his body was sucked through before it had opened more than a few millimeters. Like I said, I didn’t start this, but I fucking well ended it on my terms.

Truth is, we were way too far out for The Company to do anything about it. You don’t send out the cops for triple homicide when the guy who did it confesses, but can still produce the same money making results, and will likely never return to earth, or come into contact with another living soul. I guess space madness runs in the family. My uncle was the engineer that built the now famous capsule the Non Sequitur. This vessel is a variation of that design.

“Computer put a dozen new washers on the to build list, for when I’m in the machine shop next ok…” I’m currently shirtless in the dry, cool air of the Give More capsule. Also known more affectionately by the design staff as a mark five, or Mk.V . “Bzzrt… sorry inquiry invalid… please write down on the control pad, items to add to the official parts build list… verbal dictation function not supported… dictation function not supported… dictation function not supported…” a red blinking light is flashing rapidly in case I missed the memo. “Useless, you know that Roger, you’re absolutely useless… ableist too. What if I lose a hand or both arms huh, how you expect me to write this shit out then?” Crawling over some cabling, I find a wrist pad and write out the reminder. “Bzzrt… inquiry invalid. Roger is not my identifier. Also, crew shortage klaxon will sound off in twelve hours. We are understaffed for this mission. Crew levels are mission critical.” The beaten up yellow box is present on every surface of the ship. Wired up nodes that criss-cross all systems and manned spaces, initially designed as part of the medical monitoring system, but evolved to speak and communicate with the ships hardware and software for ease of experimental program integration. Like the ships brain, but less exciting. I’m a pretty great science generalist, and a damn great machinist, but a programmer I am not. Fuck. Why’d Danny have to go and do me like that, before he could upgrade Roger to be able to take verbal commands, or at least hold a conversation that didn’t pertain to ships diagnostics. Been a real dull thirty seven hundred days of this mission so far. Fuck him, fuck those goofs. Bastards, the lot of them. “How many times do I have to turn off that crew levels alarm… must you remind me twice a day, every god damn day, what I’ve done. You, sir. Are a terrible, terrible friend. Fuck face.”

Returning from the observation deck to the crew quarters I think, better go attune the sensor and radio antenna array some time soon. Gotta tight beam all this data back to earth. God I miss my wife and kids. What I’d give to hear a faucet drip. Nothing here, but the cool empty chill of space, adrift in the void. Would be very easy to go insane up here. Gotta find Roger a suitable communications package, or patch, or something. Maybe medical systems has a psychiatrist plug in I could tap into to get some rousing conversation going. “Hey Roger, make a note that I should check and see if you’ve got a psychiatrist plug in for conversation!”. The yellow box in the crew pod chimes in. “Bzzrt… dictation function not supported for official programming inquiries. Incorrect inquiry format, message not recognized. Roger is not my identifier…” rolling to my side, as I zip myself into my bed chamber. “Thanks Roger. Fuck you too.” A heartbeat later a chime in reply can be heard. The lights grow dim as my resting heart rate shows me drifting off to sleep. It is currently two am ship time aboard the Give More capsule. Outside the vessel it is black and empty. Breakfast will be at oh nine hundred, same as the thirty seven hundred other days gone by.

 

PART IV