"I'm biiiiiiiiiiiiiig!" declared Jules. "I'm so freaking big!" The face of the Jules in the Waste-REL's metaquantum computer was beaming a wide smile from the main 3D view-screen on the reflective shuttle windshield display.
"What's with him," asked Lyle.
"I think it's like he's finally made it safely home," said Portia. "Just ignore him."
"Ignore him?!" interrupted Jules. "You can't ignore a being that exists in all probable variations of space-time at once! I mean, consider this!!!" chirped Jules enthusiastically to Lyle. "Did you ever play chess with a computer?"
"Sure," said Lyle. "But you can never win, it's a bore..."
"You know why you can't win?" asked Jules.
Lyle just shrugged, but Donny pitched an answer at the view-screen. "Because the computer can think 100 moves ahead."
"That human being is right!" laughed Jules. "Do you know what makes me different from that computer?"
Donny shrugged. " I'll bite."
"I'm thinking ten billion possible moves ahead every second and most of those thoughts are happening in multidimensional alternative universes. Yowsa yowsa yowsa!"
"Settle down, will you," said Portia. "Aren't you supposed to keep a low profile?"
"Oh, yeah, well, you should see the risk equations I'm dealing with here. Oh, yeah, oh this one is great, I've got 2.99974560175273092-to-1 odds of survival."
"How is that great?" asked Lyle. "Don't you want to survive?"
"You're right, 97.54601874 percent of the time I want to survive. I'll go." And with that Jules returned to hiding incommunicado in the Waste-REL.
"What function does that guy perform again?" asked Lyle.
Portia looked over sheepishly. "He tells me we need him."
"Upper management in action," mumbled Verna, pressing buttons all over the board until Ayame slapped her hand away.
"Don't touch," said Ayame.
"What? You don't want any help?" asked Verna.
"It's all automatic," said Ayame. "I'm just here in case of emergency.
"Like what?"
"Like complete system failure," said Ayame.
"There's no manual controls on this thing. It's fly-by-wire. In a complete system failure you die with the rest of us."
Now, although Ayame was young, she was not stupid, and it had occurred to her that her function was largely for show and political. Ayame was actually present to watch over the interests of STC's Japanese investors. However, the shuttle she was piloting was a marvelous combination of engineering art and fiscal irresponsibility, manufactured with redundant levels of total quality management that were impossible in the private sector. Edgley had been careful not to let Ayame anywhere near the Waste-REL and so her reports back to her masters had, so far, been glowing.
While Verna spoke, Ayame's attention became distracted by something. She started to flick at it with her finger. "What's that?" she asked Verna.
"What's that?" repeated Lyle, strapped-in directly behind Ayame. Lyle was starting to panic.
Ayame flicked at a wire assembly that had swung loose from the control console and it swirled back and forth like a pendulous mobile.
Lyle was getting cold feet. "I don't want to go up in a space shuttle with a dangling, flippy, knobby thing with black tape on it!" Lyle flailed at Mickey with one arm and jabbed his pointing finger towards the console with the other. "That can't be right. Maybe this isn't such a good idea."
Lyle tried to get out of his chair, but the sheer weight of his helmet kept him pinned in place, not to mention the intertwined network of waist, chest and shoulder belts.
"How can you know if it's on or off if it's just dangling there? How can something that costs this much to build have a piece of black tape on it? We're doomed to explode on the launch pad because the dangling flippy thing is set to self-destruct! We gotta get outta here!!"
Mickey reached out and smacked Lyle's helmet face-shield with his gloved hand. "Googie, get it together. It's not real, it's just a pheely game you bonehead!"
"It is? Of course it is. What was I …" Lyle relaxed. "What a dope. I'm sorry Mickey. Geez, I do this every time don't I?" Lyle looked over to Donny, laughing. "Don't I Donny?"
Donny was frozen in his chair, staring at the console, catatonic with fear.
"Look, Mick," smirked Lyle. "He thinks it's real."
"It is real you sop," said Verna.
"I knew it! Aaaaagh, we're all going to die!"
"Stop it," said Mickey. "I always know, don't I? I always know if it's real, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, Mickey always knows," repeated Lyle. "Yeah, it's going to be okay. Somebody just turned off the awareness protocol, that's all."
"What's he blabbering on about?" asked Verna.
"Verna, can I ask you," said Mickey. "Why would you want to freak Lyle out of his gourd? He likes you."
"He what?" blurted Verna.
"He what?" blurted Lyle.
"He's got a big crush on you," smiled Mickey.
"Oh I do n…" started Lyle but then Mickey punched him in the thigh and winked. "OW!" yelled Lyle in everybody's helmet.
"Be nice to Lyle," whispered Mickey to Verna as if everybody else couldn't hear every word through the helmet speakers. "He's a gentle soul and easily upset."
"Okay, all right," acknowledged Verna, frantically cleaning the control console with a facial tissue and thoroughly irritating Ayame by doing it.
Portia watched Mickey sit back and smile, checking on Lyle, patting Lyle's arm. Mickey scanned the room, beaming a big smile. He seemed at peace. Portia caught his eye and he winked at her. She smiled back with a blush and then for a very long time they couldn't take their eyes off each other because there was nothing better to look at.
"Two minutes to lift-off," said Mission Control. "Give or take, you know, whatever."
"I really hate this company," said Verna, continuing to clean.
-----
The last of the launch technicians evacuated the launch pad by leaping out of the elevator and onto a waiting golf cart that sped off toward the Control Center. The speaker system was rhyming off the last minute of the countdown: " fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine."
The protesters had cut a second layer of fencing with a set of pruning sheers they stole from the landscaping company's shed. Though most of the crowd was being arrested by police armed with paralysis wands, some suicidally stupid young people were scrambling through the fence opening and making haste towards the launch pad.
"forty-one, forty, thirty-nine," said the speaker system.
-----
Strapped in their chairs, Lyle reached out and wrapped his gloved fingers around Mickey's fingers on one side and Donny's on the other. Mickey and Portia were holding hands. They all squeezed gently. They were all scared and something felt right about touching another human being, even through gloved hands. Sitting at the controls, Verna tried to adjust a knob and Ayame smacked her mitt away again.
-----
"If you get any closer to the vehicle," said the loudspeaker. "You will be cooked to death in thirty-nine, thirty-eight…" Nearly a hundred protesters stopped in their tracks. Orson, still smoldering a little from the electric fence incident, turned to the crowd.
"Listen, you people," he yelled. "If we don't stop this thing, millions could die."
Every SPECTACL in the region went "Beep!"
Orson and the other protesters reflexively blinked to answer their SPECTACLs.
"Take it easy," smiled the Jules in their SPECTACL displays. "Get clear. It turns out everything's going to be fine."
As it was, this turned out to be the swan song of the Jules in Orson's SPECTACL. Saving the protesters alerted the 'Net to his presence and he was erased by one of millions of roving anti-viral war-bots three seconds later. In fact, the war-bots had finally decoded a telltale marker in Jules' artificial intelligence-pattern and three minutes and forty-seven seconds later the only remaining Jules in existence was ensconced in the main computer on the Waste-REL.
-----
Despite being an incredible collection of fantastic technology that represented the pinnacle of cooperation between the sciences and commerce, the FullSenz was flawed. Unlike most people, Mickey Humboldt was able to intuit the flaw, but that still did not prepare him for the actual experience of a shuttle launch any more than it did his companions.
Escape from Earth's gravity is essentially the same as escaping from the womb. It applies an extraordinary amount of pressure to your entire body, especially your cranium, and at the end you bawl your eyes out. The launch experience in the pheely-box had been one of vibration and pressure combined with an exhilarating, roller coaster-type lurching. In the real thing it was a lot like being crushed into a paint-can and then violently shaken for twenty minutes. Portia was the only team member who actually required her adult diaper, but in later years a large part of her subconscious would be employed in the act of not-remembering just how much she'd needed it. In effect, Portia would be the first astronaut who really, really, really wished there was a dry cleaner in space. Enough said.
During the ascent, Lyle shouted out in slurred words that would only be intelligible to someone who could guess at what he was saying. He said, "Hayew, the dawy, fwiwy fin sah imafeshn! Yewsah bpah imfeshun rahklew bahsrear! Yewlia! Bisisrearabhin! " but what Mickey heard was "Hey, the dangling, flippy thing is an imperfection! You said that imperfections are a clue that it's real. You liar. This is really happening!"
Mickey blurted, "Shuddagagah," and left it at that. Lyle thought Mickey said to "shut the helix up" or something like that but, in fact, Mickey was just gagging on his own saliva.
Next: Impact in Space
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