Beach Day

“I think it’s the same three girls.”

“Can’t be.”

“I think it is.  Red hair, brown hair, blonde – tall, thin, chubby all three in jean shorts and bikini tops.”

“And they all just sit there year in and year out?”

“Maybe the city pays them?  Like inviting people to come here.  I’ve heard of bars hiring girls to hang around so men will be attracted.”

“I think it’s just a nice place to sit and watch the world go by.  I guess it could be the same girls if they live around here but I doubt it.  You gonna stop for coffee?”

“Sure,” I pull the car around the next corner and slow to about ten miles an hour on the narrow asphalt path allowed between horizontal parked cars.  Watching for an empty space or someone about to pull out of a space.  “This place has been in too many movies.  People come here from all over the world now.  It doesn’t matter if it’s foggy or raining, it’s always crowded.”

“When you plan for a year and fly across an ocean you’re going to go home with a tan even if you have to paint it on.  See that red and white mini up there?  I think it’s about to leave.  Wait here and see.”

“I hate it when people do that.”

“If you start doing it you’ll have to re-think that won’t you?”  

I slow to a stop in the middle of the narrow road.  The guy behind me honks but the Cooper starts to back out.  We slip in as soon as he clears the space.

“There’s even an hour on the meter.”

“It’s like a sign.”

My life (part 9)

The door swishes and the quiet hum of engines on standby is all I hear.  It’s still dark in my container but enough light comes through my breathing holes so that I can see my fingers in front of my face.  If I put my feet into the far upper corner of my box and my head bumps the opposite lower corner I can almost stretch out full length.   I’m still full of adrenaline but I can do nothing but lay here and breath.  I listen to my heart beat for a few minutes.  I reach for a bottle of water but think better of it.  I end up just laying with my feet resting on my supplies and my head on the bottom of my new home.  The air is better near the air holes.  I try to relax into my new life.  The only way I can see for the first part of my plan to fail is for me to get all claustrophobic and start yelling for help.  I eat a little, sleep a little, I use up a water bottle, I refill a water bottle and use one of the resealable plastic bags – sorry for mentioning this but it’s about all I have to do in here.  I realize that keeping track of the installation of new fuel cells may be the best way I have of keeping track of passing time so I make a note of each fuel cell used.  

The door swishes and I wake up.

“Smells funny in here.”

“Smells fine.  You get that fuel cell unplugged and I’ll grab a new one.”

“You can’t smell that?  Smells like something died.”

I hear the sound of a fuel container being opened. The two crewmen make short work of their task and the door swishes closed.  This time they remember the light and I return to complete darkness.  I check to see if I can see my hand, I cannot.  The trip to Jasper’s World takes a space barge six days.  I counted about fifty fuel cells.  That’s about eight fuel cells per day, one every three hours.  If I remember correctly that was fuel cell number twelve, one half of the way through my second day. I open the latches inside my plastic container and make sure I’m locked in tight by other containers.  The top of the compartment opens half an inch before it hits the container next to it.  Just as it should be.  As long as my container was not one of the first to be opened I should be alright.  I check the seal on my used plastic bag.  It did not seal completely.  I reseal it and make double sure it’s sealed this time.

Time passes slowly.  Sometimes the light is left on and I can see the shadow of my hand in front of my eyes.  Sometime the light is turned off and I exist in total, complete. darkness.  The same four crewmen change out the fuel cells almost every time, a day shift and a night shift?  As there is no day or night in space I decide Mary and Jake come during the day and Jimmy and Sal come at night.  I have no reason for this decision but it helps me keep track of the passage of time.  When a crew of two leaves I always check to see if my  container is still blocked in.  When the light is left on I can look up through the crack in the top and see if any containers are stacked on top of mine.  I’ve counted thirty-two installations of fuel cells, 

Randy 5 part 6

“Space, everywhere space, so much space.”

“Try not to think about it.”

“Tell me about your day Mac,” I sit on the red sofa dressed in plaid boxers and a white tee shirt.  My bare feet rest on a two foot by four foot strip of shag carpet.  I’m drinking my second Americano for this morning, assuming there is something called morning here.  I’m using earth time, west coast, USA.

“Well I’ve been spending most of my time adjusting Grav Disks, always something to do there.  I could adjust them less often but our speed would be less than optimum.”

“Don’t let that happen Mac!”  I sit up straight and give him a good firm look.

“Relax Randy, I’d never let that happen.  Sit back, enjoy your coffee.”

I take Mac’s advice, he has a very calming voice sometimes, “you’re a very nice computer interface Mac.  I don’t know what I would do without you.  Tell me a story Mac.”

“I thought you wanted to hear about my day Randy.”

“I thought you were done.”

“I told you about one thing.  I do a million things a second Randy.”

“Well I guess we have the time.  What’s the second thing you did today Mac?”

“I did a quick check of the environmental systems.  That was fun.  First I checked for any harmful gases.”

“Have I been breathing harmful gases Mac!  Tell me the truth, I can take it.”

“Everything is fine Randy.  You are very excitable this morning.  Maybe hearing about my morning is not the best idea.  How about some music Randy?”

“Sure Mac, you know best.”

“Guitar or violin?”

“Those are my choices?”

“I was thinking of the calming effect.”

“Okay violin.”

A pretty young lady appears sitting in a wooden chair in the center of the ship’s deck.  She smiles at me, raises her violin and pulls the bow across the strings.

Randy 5 part 3

I’ve turned out every light but one.  A small red light next to the door is just barely seeable even in the almost complete darkness.  I don’t know what the small red light is for but it doesn’t seem to signify a problem.  I’m in my bedroom on my new ship.   It’s considered quite a step up to have a sleeping room on a ship; it’s just the first step but it’s a step.  I’m lying in a real bed, not holo at all.  If the computer should fail completely I would still be lying in a bed.  I listen for a sound.  I can here myself breathing and the sound my toes make in contact with the sheets.  Traveling in a gravimetric ship is very quiet.  The grav disks in the hull move but cannot be heard.  There is no engine anywhere.  Our energy comes from light and our movement comes from gravity.  Everything I use is re-used.  Every molecule of air I breath and every drop of water I drink will be gathered up and used in some way.  I imagine I am floating through space in my self contained world but I’m hurtling at a speed light could never think of achieving.  

A ding disturbs my wondering mind.

“Come in Mac.”

The door swishes open but Mac continues to stand outside looking in; unsure if he should be disturbing me.

“You have a communications packet from your sister Sally, Randolph,” Mac is being very formal until he finds out if bringing me this information was the right thing to do.

“Thank you Mac.”

I sit up on the edge of the bed and let my bare feet touch the carpet.  I reach for my white tee shirt and pull it on over my head.  In boxers and tee shirt I head for the bridge.  The red sofa is in place waiting for me.  As I sit Mac starts the communications packet from Sally.

My sister Sally sits at her desk on the deck of my ship.  Behind her and on each side of her the holo emitters project her office on Earth.

“I wish I had more news; I know you’re bored to death by now.  As far at the business goes not much at all has changed.”  She fills me in on everything including the smallest details.   On Earth sitting in her office I would have gone out to Jolly Cone for a burger after the first three minutes but here on the ship in the middle of nowhere I lap in up like a hungry dog with a dish of chicken gravy.  I listen to every word and take note of questions I will ask in my return communications packet.   

With business taken care of Sally moves to family.  I lean forward eager for news of my two nephews.  Five year old Tommy and Randy, who is almost eight run into my ship as the office becomes the park near their home.  They have planned their entrance to slide across the damp grass and stop right in front of Sally’s camera. Tommy stops first and Randy doesn’t stop until he is on top of Tommy.  Randy slaps at Tommy until he gets off of him and then they both say together, “Hi uncle Randy!”   They both start talking at once telling me about every second of their lives since the last communications packet; pushing each other out of the way when it is determined that a brother has had enough talking time.  The packet ends with a demonstration of all they have learned in kick boxing class.

The walls of the ship become ship walls and the ship returns to quiet.  I sit on the sofa and stare at the spot where the two boys stood.  Mac is sitting beside me on the sofa I do not know if he just appeared of if he’s been there the whole time.

“Play it again Mac.”

My sister Sally sits at her desk.

Randy (4) part 12

My sister Sally’s head and shoulders sit on top of the small disk holo pad over my little ship’s console.   A message packet still takes three and a half hours to reach from earth to our current location leaving seven hours between a question and an answer, plus the time to compose the answer or question.

“The Quantum company has been a bit frantic I’m afraid.  They can’t stop saying how sorry they are for your trouble.  There have been three company representatives in our office so far.  The rep that came by this morning is based in New York City, she was a little more talkative than the other two.  I took her out for some coffee and scones.  I took her to that Dagny’s place you like.  She loved it, said it reminded her of how things must have been a hundred years ago.  By our second cup we were old friends.  The Quantum Company has been plagued with corporate spies from the time news got out of their advances into a practical way to fold space.  They don’t call it folding space but I couldn’t spell the word they have for it and it sounds like gobbledegook anyway.  She used folding space herself once she had schooled me in the real name.   One of the spies has been traced back to Aspire Movement which is of course A. J. ’s company.   She seemed to think, and I agree, that it’s just a little convenient that the system failed within a light year of Spire’s hidden planet.   They have requested that you land at their plant in New Jersey.  They would like permission to take your little ship’s computer apart piece by piece.   They also would like to put parts of the hull through some tests.  I get the impression that there will not be much left of your little ship by the time they get though.   You will get an upgrade to a new ship out of the deal, so that’s not so bad.  Make sure you have your friend Mac walled off  from the rest of the computer.  They want to look him over too but promised to be very careful and they will install his program into the new ship.   The new ship will not have the Quantum Point B15 System installed, of course.  It looks like no one is going to travel using the Quantum System for awhile.  All of the prototype programs have been recalled.  Oh, yes, that reminds me, they would like to run you through a few tests and scans too, just to make sure you have not been damaged in any way as you folded through space.  After the problems with living matter transfer they want to make sure their system isn’t harmful.”

Sally continued with stories and videos of her two boys.  She had a few questions concerning decisions our company needs to make and personal placement on some cases we’re handling but she always takes care of those things even when I’m on earth.  She just likes to keep me in the loop.  The message packet closes with a family wave, all four of them waving and grinning.

“Well that was a nice fifteen minutes Mac.”

“What does she mean they want to look me over?” Mac has his unhappy face on.

“They’re going to look me over too.”

“Right.  You’re a human.   You have rights.  To them I’m just a bunch of bits.  I’ll be lucky if I can do simple math when they are done with me.

“I’ll copy a current version of you to my pad just before we land.”

“Like I’m going to fit into your pad.”

“I’ll clean everything else out, give you every scrap of space you can find in there.”

“Might work.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“And you’ll tell them to be careful?  

“Of course they’ll be careful Mac.  They might even find out what’s wrong with you.”

Mac just rolls his eyes behind his bottle cap glasses.  He sets up the flat screen and starts scrolling movie names waiting for me to pick one.  I sit in the captain’s chair until I smell kettle corn and then I move to the space beside Mac.

I nudge his shoulder, “don’t worry Mac, you’ll be fine.” 

Randy (4) part 10

With a good meal finished I decide it is past time to send a message to my sister Sally.  Spire offers the use of his communications office but I think it might be good to check on my little ship. “We really should be going soon.  We were expected back two days ago and now we’re two weeks away.”

Spire offers to put us up in his sprawling ranch style home but a nights sleep on board my ship will get us that much closer to earth.  He looks almost sad as we walk up the ramp and through my ship’s entry portal.

“Poor little rich boy,” I say to Mac’s ten inch holo figure sitting on top of the ship’s console in the small holo disk provided there.  Mac is going to miss being in Spires’ home where there were holo emitters everywhere.  “Take us home Mac.”  I have felt movement in my ship a few times but under Mac’s leadership I would have to look out a window to see if we have moved.  I assume Mac has us on our way home and pull out the cot built into the hull of the ship and sit.  “A whole planet.  I don’t think he had any guests or human servants, at least I never saw any.”

Mac moves his image to the nine foot round holo deck and presents himself full sized sitting at a small table with a cup of coffee.  “I did a few scanner sweeps to check the systems.  He’s the only human on this side of the planet Randy.  Just  a second let me check,”  Mac goes blank for a tenth of a second, “Not only is he the only human on the whole planet but his home is the only structure.  We are now traveling at Interplanetary speed Randy.  In forty-four minutes I’ll give the HVGD the ole smoke test.”

“Smoke test?”

“I’ll slip your little ship into High Velocity Gravity Drive, if we don’t see any smoke the repairs were successful.”

Mac looks pretty proud of his little joke so I give him a courtesy grin.

“So…it’s you and me for two weeks.”  I swing my feet as I sit on the cot.  First I swing two feet together and then I shift to first one foot forward and then the other.  I stop both feet and look at the brown shoes Mac replicated for my hike.  They were both cleaned while I took my shower at Spire’s house on the planet Solitude.  They look brand new.  I start to swing just my left foot.

“Want to watch a movie?” Mac asks.  As he speaks a flat screen monitor appears on the ship’s back wall and a sofa wide enough for the two of us sits facing the screen with Mac already sitting on one side of the sofa.

Mac has a library of thousands of old black and white flat screen movies in his memory.

“Sure.”

“Cowboys, space or funny?”

“Funny.”  I move to the sofa and sit beside my holo friend.

“Pop corn ?”

“Kettle corn.”

Space3 (part one)

Space the final frontier.  Space a continuous expanse that is unoccupied, available or free. 

I feel I can hear the engine chugging along.  I feel I can but I can’t.  The engines are nothing more than millions of tiny transmitter receivers that repel and attach to gravity, nothing moves or makes sound.  Millions of humans are out here with me, in space, but none of those humans are within a million miles.  One of those is within a trillion miles, well it was for a second, it’s gone now.  My speed in miles per hour is just under four quadrillion miles an hour which, according to all known science is totally impossible even though my ship is considered old and slow by most of the younger planet hoppers out here.  Space travel is a lot about faith. I believe I am here so I am.  Other than that there is not much to do.  I’ve been on this heading for a week and have a week to go.  The point of no return.  I had a holo buddy for a while.  The problem with holo buddies is after a few days you realize you’re just talking to the ship’s computer.  I still talk to the ship’s computer but I got rid of the holo buddy.  Did I mention it’s impossible to travel over five or six trillion miles per hour?  It’s been explained as space folding, or jumping and sometimes passing through other dimensions and then sliding back into ours but it’s just different ways of saying, “huh, did I do that?”.  Communication transmissions travel just slightly faster than spaceships which makes navigation possible with a lot of help from my trusty computer, and it makes a letter from home possible.  Transmissions to Earth from where ever it is I am are taking twelve hours.  Twelve hours to earth and then another twelve hours plus some to get back to me.  My sister Sally on Earth is the only one sending me personal messages but I do get a study stream of news and entertainment from Earth and several other settlement planets.  Space travel can have some purpose other than just getting from one place to another.  It’s a great time to gain weight.  The ship can even decrease internal gravity so there is less of the bloated heaviness.  It can also be the perfect time to get into better shape.  After the first two days of doing nothing I have started running on the holo deck and I’ve had the ship increase internal gravity so that even just walking around the ship I’m getting exercise. So far I’ve lost two pounds.  That’s two Earth pounds and the computer takes into account water weight and other concerns so it’s a true two pounds.

“Computer, could you replicate me a nice, huge piece of lemon pie please?”

“That would not fit into the diet you have selected Randolph.  Would you like to make changes to that program?” 

“Could you make something that looks like lemon pie?”

“Something that looks like lemon pie can be created Randolph but it would not taste like lemon pie.”

“Okay, make me one of those.”

“You won’t like it.” 

And life on board my little ship continues.

Travel

“Start it up, let’s get out of here.”

“I did.”

“I did start it up and we did get out of there.”

“But it looks exactly the same.”

“A lot of the newer ports do.  Our pod just beamed over twelve light years.”

“Twelve light years!  What all did we pass?”

“Nothing.  Space dust?  This is the next stop on the map.”

“Anything to do here?”

“Let me look.”  I punch a few screens and watch for the results.  “Same ole.  Look here, the same Mom and Pop’s coffee shop next to the same juice place across from the same dress store.”

“Are you sure we traveled twelve light years?”

“Says we did.  All these ports are designed by the same people and attract the same tenants.”

“We might as well go home.”

“You said you wanted to go somewhere.  You said you had house fever.”

“Just take me home, I’ll pet the cat for awhile.”

“Hey wait, I’ve got an idea.”  I punch in some coordinates and we jump to another port.

“Hey, great idea, it looks exactly like the last port.  Take me home friend.”

“It is home.  We’re within fifty miles of our house.  This is a new port that just opened.  I’ve been meaning to get a look at it.”

“It has the same Mom and Pop’s coffee shop.”

“I think Mom and Pop must be doing okay.”

“Need anything before we go home?”

“No…We’ll since we are here, let’s take a look in that dress shop.  If I buy a dress I can say we picked it up on our trip, I’m sure nothing in there was made on Earth.”

You Know The Drill, part eight.

“It’s unnerving to travel this fast,” he searched once more for something to hold onto but found nothing. The manufacturers had realized that the inertial dampers would never allow the movements of the ship to be felt by its passengers and had provided no handholds.

“You are, in all probability, traveling slower than you ever have in your entire life,” I rested my hands on the edge of the control panel and waited for him to express his lack of knowledge.

“The earth is moving toward Leo at 390 kilometers per second. And we are traveling away from Leo,” he said, spoiling my fun. “And we are traveling right at 400 kilometers per second,” he added, looking at the dash display. “So, in relation to Leo we are almost standing still.”

“Yes,” I replied, trying not to show my disappointment in his lack of ignorance.

“Still seems fast,” he said.

Set the drilling bucket on the ground. Start the drilling table turning. Nudge the wench up a little to lower the bucket an inch. Nudge it again and again. Watch the bucket fill. Push down on the wench lever until the bucket clears the top of the drilling table. One person pulls on top of the drilling bucket and climbs onto the drilling table in one movement. One person pushes the bucket as he hooks the hole in the bucket’s side and prepares to pull. One pulls, one pushes until the person on the drilling table is almost parallel with the ground pushing on the side of the drilling table with his toes. The person pushing releases the trap door at the bottom of the bucket and the dirt dumps. The person with the rope sets the empty bucket next to the drilling table. The wench lever is pulled gently and the bucket sits on the drilling table closing the trap door, which is the bottom of the drilling bucket. Reach up and latch the hinged bottom into place. Raise the bucket, center it in the drilling table, and lower it into the hole. Start the bucket turning. Repeat, over and over and over until the thirty-three inch hole is about ten to fourteen feet deep. Now, when the empty bucket is lowered into the hole stop the top of the bucket just below the drilling table and slide the reamer blade into its slot and drop the hitch pin into place. Lower the bucket until the reamer blade rests lightly on the earth around the thirty-three inch hole and start it turning.   The dirt will fill the bucket quickly as a five-foot across hole is created but some dirt will fall through into the already drilled thirty-three inch hole. Repeat the total process, including adding and taking off the reamer blade, until the center hole is filled. When the center hole is filled stop putting on the reamer blade and drill out the center thirty-three inch hole ten feet or so to provide room for the dirt that falls outside the bucket while reaming. Do this over and over and over until the five foot part of the hole is fourteen feet deep. Throw the reamer blade into a tool box so no one has to look at it any more, we are done with it. Drill your little heart out. When the thirty-three inch wide hole is about twenty feet from the top of the drilling table the eight by eight inch plate at the top of the six by six shaft will rest on the top of the yoke and allow the five-inch by five-inch shaft to telescope out of the bottom of the six-inch by six-inch shaft. We are drilling for sand. Sand in this area is usually about twenty-five or thirty feet down and it would be nice, for drainage, to end up at least eight feet into good coarse sand.   Set up as we are we can drill down to about thirty-seven feet. When we finish drilling the thirty-three inch wide hole will be filled with rocks, the five foot wide hole will receive ten feet of perforated three foot wide concrete pipe with a concrete lid and more rocks will be added filling the outside gap between the pipe and our hole, leaving the inside of the concrete pipe empty. One drywell is finished.