It should be understood that Verna did not care who saw what
when. She’d spent a lot of time in
space and that meant a lot of time in locker-rooms and she didn’t give a rat’s
petard what state of undress she was in when her colleagues happened to show
up.
Lyle was visibly upset the minute they walked into the fitting
facility because Verna was sitting around in her birthday suit displaying
everything God gave her and none of it had been shaved in a long time.
Mickey and Donny, however, had spent so much time in various pheely
boudoirs in their past that they didn’t actually notice.
The new spacesuits (extravehicular mobility units) had to be tailor
fitted to the individual astronauts.
For the next hour and a half, various technicians from various
departments measured everything about their bodies, and that means everything.
Lyle was very unhappy about getting undressed – and being
measured – especially about being measured. Especially about being measured and then
having the dimensions called out to a computer.
Mickey, on the other hand, was more than happy to have the whole thing
blurted out loud, until he realized he was being measured for a catheter.
By this time, having gone first, Donny couldn’t hear a thing, having
been outfitted with his headphones and helmet. His chest pack heart rate and breathing
monitor indicated that he was calm and collected. The weight of the oxygen supply and the
water for the cooling system in the back pack was unbalanced in Earth gravity,
so he sat in a specially designed chair in the shape of the maneuvering unit
that the backpack would fit into during extra-vehicular activity. He just sat, waiting for someone to come
back and help him get up. Sometimes
he would scream at the top of his lungs for someone to get him out, but since
his microphone wasn’t turned on, no one heard a thing.
Portia was pulling on socks behind a barrier, shyly making sure that
none of her crew-mates could see her exceptionally white, pale, skinny,
stick-woman body glaring under the fluorescent lights. Her little alcove was by the entrance,
which afforded Mr. Edgley a view of the full moon as he walked in to check on
the progress of the EMU suit fittings.
“Well,” flushed Mr. Edgley.
“I see everything is tickadeeboo down here.”
He started to leave, but Portia beckoned him back. “Oh, sir,” said Portia.
“Yes,” said Mr. Edgley.
“Do you remember Verna Johnson?”
Verna was pulling on the pants of the liquid cooled undergarment that
went under the outer suit pants.
“Yes,” said Mr. Edgley, trying to avert his eyes, with limited success. “It’s good to have you back, Verna.”
“Shut up, you pusswad,” said Verna.
“Yes, well,” he said, once again flushing. A technician who was fitting a life
support backpack on Lyle’s back, along with a chest pack with computer controls
on his front, started to snicker but tried to make it look like Lyle had said
something funny.
Edgley turned to Portia.
“So, I guess you decided to take this flight after all.”
“Yes,” said Portia, who was pulling on her undergarment while a
technician threaded in the cooling water tube. “But I have conditions for my inclusion
on this mission.”
“Name them,” smiled Mr. Edgley.
“I want complete manual control available on the Waste-REL at all
times,” she said. “STC Flight
Control can not have an override on the navigation or any other onboard
system.”
“Not even the entertainment center?”
“Not even that.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why should you care?
Verna is a trained pilot and we will have to learn how to do our jobs in
space, on the fly as they say. The
sooner we start the better.”
“Okay, whatever,” he said.
“So what else do you want?”
“I want to meet privately, in person, with the primary design engineer
of the Waste-REL. Me and my team.”
“That’s not possible,” said Edgley, visibly shaken. “He… he lives in India. He couldn’t get here before your
scheduled liftoff.”
“Then delay the liftoff. I
don’t care what it takes or how much you have to spend, we must meet with this
engineer.”
“You don’t care how much I have to spend,” he said. “Ms. Summers,
that’s insubordination.”
“Get her what she wants right now, you penny-pinching prick or we’ll
all walk and leave you high and dry,” said Verna.
Now, as much as Edgley felt he’d scraped the bottom of the barrel
approving this team, at least there was a team and he had more important
things to think about.
Both Verna and Portia assumed that there was a lot of pressure coming
down from the Fifth International Space Station construction committee because
a section of space had to be cleaned up or construction would be delayed.
Verna and Portia's assumptions were totally wrong regarding Edgley's
motivation. Nevertheless, Edgley
felt compelled to give Portia what she wanted despite the fact that it was
impossible to do as she asked.
On the other hand, Edgley was no fool. No, that’s not true – he was
pretty much a fool. Nevertheless,
although he did not know about Portia’s break-up with Henry, [because his IT
manager did not have last night’s summary of employee emails (known as the “breach
briefs”) posted to Edgley’s personal intranet yet], he did know why Portia was
prepared to go on this mission.
Portia was of a certain age, and in 2044, just having a job, any job, if
you were younger than fifty-something, was a dream come true.
This was commonly called “The Prince William Effect”: the phenomenon that led the children and the grandchildren of the “Boomers” to hate them.
The telltale story was repeated over and over again in online newsletters and press announcements. Articles had headlines that read “Broadcaster Murphy Not Retiring” and there was always a picture of a smiling Boomer with a caption underneath that read something like: “Louis Murphy, 89, well known broadcaster sees no reason to retire”. Of course, the name, the age and the vocation was ever-changing, sometimes it was Smith the CEO, 102; or LeRoi the Senior Accountant, 85; or Singh, the autoworker, 91; but whatever the area of expertise or the length of the tooth, the Boomers would not quit.This phenomenon was named after Prince William because it was unlikely that he would become King Willy – ever. This was because no one in his family was every likely to pass away from natural causes, due to Dr. Wakahisa’s amazing discovery.
Dr. Wakahisa spent his life on a Japanese Island studying the genome of jellyfish, supported only by a small inheritance and his wife’s salary. Dr. Wakahisa uncovered the secrets of cellular transdifferentiation in certain species of Jellyfish; a process in which adult jellyfish revert back to childhood and begin all over again.
In 2033, 86 year-old Dr. Wakahisa boarded his first transcontinental flight. Landing in San Francisco, he walked into the headquarters of Ergenta Laboratories and asked to see Dr. Quincy Hill, the Director of Research. Dr. Wakahisa did not have an appointment; however the two scientists had met at a conference in 2021 and Dr. Hill did not want to be rude. Dr. Hill entered the foyer, expecting to meet an old man – but instead met a man who appeared to be Dr. Wakahisa’s adult son.
2 years later, Dr. Hill and Dr. Wakahisa received FDA approval for the little red miracle pill, and nothing would ever be the same.
However, every new discovery comes with unexpected consequences. In this case, a consequence that Dr. Wakahisa could not have predicted.
This may sound ridiculous, but many Westerners ate beef from cows that ate other cows due to unscrupulous livestock feeding practices during the late twentieth century. Harmful proteins called prions invaded the bodies of people who ate cows who ate cows, and the prions immediately commenced eating away at their brain tissue. Before the little red miracle pill, most people died before the adverse effects of these prions became evident. Those that lived long enough to show symptoms were usually diagnosed as suffering from dementia.
But once meat-eating Boomers started taking the little red miracle pill, the DNA in each affected brain cell was forced to fold in on itself, replicate and transdifferentiate into something that was, to put it simply, both prion and human.
And prions like to eat brains.
Consequently, the history of the Boomers was destined to become quite ghoulish. However, in 2044 this side effect had not yet become the society-wide problem it was destined to be.
Nevertheless, everyone who could count knew that the planet could not sustain a population that refused to die.
The International Space Station V was a joint effort of most of the nations of the world. The little red miracle pills were not distributed worldwide. They were very expensive, and nations that could not afford to give their elderly citizens a bottle of pills every month were very anxious about a world populated and controlled by rich immortals in foreign countries.
However, if the human race was about to colonize other planets, then there would be more than enough space for everyone.
That is why the Waste-REL was so important. Even though it was a dull job, getting the near Earth orbit cleared up for the International Space Station V was more than just extraterrestrial custodialism. It was a floating entente. Edgley needed Portia on board and on side because they had to at least try to send up the Waste-REL, despite all its problems, faults and missing parts. The political environment was getting more and more heated and they needed a positive step forward to cool off the rhetoric.
Even if the Waste-REL didn’t work; even if it malfunctioned; even if it disintegrated and fell to Earth, and exploded, and rained radioactive debris all over Paris, Edgley would still get paid. And if they fired Edgley, he automatically received a severance package that was so outrageous that it actually incentivized him to self-destruct.
“Portia,” said Mr. Edgley
after thinking about the importance of the mission and how he didn’t have to
kill her with his bare hands because she’d be dead in a couple of days
anyway. “You got it. I’ll get the lead engineer on the next
plane from Bangalore. But you get
your team ready. You’re launching
the day after tomorrow.”
“Unless I say otherwise,” muttered Verna, not even looking up as she
hoisted on her backpack.
“Yes, well, of course,” said Edgley, thinking to himself that this was
one astro-pain he’d be glad to watch burst into a vacuum packed
people-sicle. “You’re the pilot,”
he said, squeezing out a smile.
Edgley turned on his heel and left.
“That man is a slime-ball,” said Verna as she lifted her helmet in the
air. “Don’t trust him any farther
than you can throw your backpack.”
Portia bent down to lift her backpack by the straps, but it was far
too heavy for her to pull off the ground by herself.
Verna smiled and lowered her helmet onto her head. “Don’t worry, in space it doesn’t weigh
a thing.”
Next: Jules
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