Almost immediately after the meeting with Edgley, Portia had packed
her pheely-nauts into a cab and sent them to their hotel on the beach. She then took the rental car and raced over
to the Kennedy shuttle landing terminal.
Portia had only one thought going through her head over and over again –
find somebody else to go! Verna
had been on Portia’s mind for some time now.
Well, actually, Verna hadn’t been on her mind. It would be more accurate to say that the
idea of re-upping Verna was lurking behind Portia’s conscious thoughts in the
same way that suicide lurks just under the conscious thoughts of a calculus
student the night before a final exam.
“Who is it?” asked Verna, pulling up her goggles.
“It’s me, Portia Summers,” smiled Portia.
“Well, thanks,” said Verna, trying to pull away. At only 4 feet, seven inches tall, Verna had
been easy to catch.
“No, wait! I’ve actually come
looking for you.”
“Well, you found me, just where I was destined to be: debarking the
last stop on the ‘It’s a Small World’ Tour.”
Verna looked like a thoroughly depressed hedgehog.
“Ah, well, that’s just what I’ve come to see you about. I have a job offer for you,” said Portia,
trying very hard to sound excited about the job.
“You work for?” Verna
recognized Portia but didn’t know why.
“STC,” said Portia.
“Those back-stabbers!” said Verna, trying to storm off, despite her
difficulty dealing with walking up the incline.
“Wait, please hear me out,” called Portia, as she nearly tripped over
the flight bag rolling behind the diminutive pilot. “It’s a chance to get back into space,
full-time. A real mission.”
Verna stopped, twisted around and stared at Portia. Which meant that, with the goggles on her
forehead, she could actually make out which pores in Portia’s skin were most
likely to break- out due to black heads.
She could also have instructed Portia to do a better job of blending her
makeup, and she really hated the way Portia had applied lipstick to the area
outside her upper lip to make her lips look more full. “Why would those back-stabbers want me after
they destroyed my career?” Verna could
see the little red veins on the outside of the white of Portia’s eyes. Portia’s whole face betrayed her stressed-out
state. “What’s the mission?” demanded
Verna.
“The Waste-R…” Portia didn’t even get a chance to finish.
“The junk ship? I knew it! Kiss my aft bulkhead.” Verna started to storm off again.
“No, please,” begged Portia, scurrying after Verna. “Please, you’ve
got to save me.”
Verna stopped again but didn’t give Portia eye contact. “Save you?”
“Yes, they’re going to make me go if I don’t find a replacement.”
“You fly space shuttles do you?” asked Verna.
“No, no, but they need a crew and I… I found them a crew, but they
need more seasoned astronauts.”
“Like, astronauts that have seen time in space?”
“Well, yes,” said Portia.
“Or do you mean astronauts that aren’t just warm bodies that can press
the green button when it lights up.”
“Well, that too,” admitted Portia.
“Uh huh,” said Verna, and kept on walking, this time as quickly as her
unstable little frame could carry her.
Portia watched Verna pass through a door marked “Authorized Personnel
Only” which was guarded by a soldier with a sub-machine gun. Verna passed through the security gate by
placing her left buttock on a pad and swiping the wallet that was in her back
pocket across its surface. The door
opened automatically and Verna trounced into the glass enclosure.
The soldier just smiled at Portia.
Portia could see that there was no way out of the glass offices other
than the door Verna entered, so she decided to wait. Portia watched in silence as Verna spoke to
and then shouted at a very heavy, well-dressed Asian man. He yelled back at her. She yelled at him. The woman who was behind the counter with him
started to stare at him as if he was on fire or about to explode. Then he did explode into a tirade of what
must have been profanity.
Profanity had fallen out of style by 2044 for a number of reasons. The cultural catalysts for this sea-change included a famous musician, his anti-profanity song, and an impromptu comment of support from a popular President of the United States – taken out of context.
At the same time, there was general cultural agreement that swearing, which, up to that point was considered to be a hallmark of passion, was actually just an admittance of creative poverty, which was the one thing of which young people in the ’20s did not want to be accused.The new culture required originality. The most popular new declarative swear of winter 2023 was from a commercial for a new product: “Great Thunderin’ Potatoes™”. Of course, this new product came about as a result of genetic engineering – a strain of potato being part frog – which was just about the only frog left anywhere. When “Great Thunderin’ Potatoes” were prepared in a microwave, the potato would come alive and bounce around while it cooked, making a lot of noise – which was portrayed as fun for the whole family. In point of fact, the potato was just trying to get out of the microwave – until its skin split and all the soft white potatoness gooshed out. As the ad said: “It’s fun food that quivers on the plate and wiggles going down.”
A famous artist, Miles Delano, had been killed by an angry mob of previously unemployed Great Thunderin’ Potatoes greenhouse workers when his painting of a potato entitled “ce n'est pas une grenouille” (which translates “this is not a frog”) became the cover of a Time Magazine Issue that criticized the biotech industry for their negligence.“Great Thunderin’ Potatoes” was another successful product invented by InSanto®, a division of Ergenta Corporation, the same folks who in 2031 brought out a strain of corn crossed with cactus that couldn’t be killed by anything – making it the first man-made weed.
By 2044, weeding the backyard usually meant wrenching stalks of new grown corn out of the kid’s sandbox, the garden, the lawn, the window boxes and sometimes the eaves troughs. Of course, the price of corn on the commodity market took a pretty severe dive when it became the single most successful plant genus on the planet. It was estimated that by 2055 the great Amazon Rain Forest would be 30% corn.
For the first time in recorded history, plants were growing in the Sahara desert, which during the worst heat of the year resulted in what came to be called “popcorn storms,” which could often be deadly. One of the most dramatic views of Earth that Verna had ever seen from the tourist shuttle was a popcorn storm, which looked a lot like a nuclear blast, except that it was made entirely of popcorn.
Verna stomped out of the management office, red faced and fuming. She looked up, squinted, and recognized
Portia’s eyes.
“That man is an idiot!” said Verna. “And his boss is a prick!”
“What’s wrong?” asked Portia.
“I just want one day off and he’s trying to make me fly extra hours to
pay for it – right now, when I’m exhausted and could make a mistake.”
“Well, why not try to be less aggressive with him,” asked Portia,
who’d observed Verna’s lack of diplomacy moments before. As a trained clinical psychologist, Portia
was becoming accustomed to smoothing employee relationships. “ A little honey goes a long way to placate a
bear.”
“You want me to suck up to a guy who has no brain who works for a guy
who has no heart?” yelled Verna, throwing up her hands. “I’m Dorothy in Hell!”
Verna stormed off again, this time in the general direction of the
parking lot exit.
“Wait,” said Portia, suddenly remembering what she was doing
there. “Tell them to take this job and
stuff it where the stars don’t shine!
You don’t have to take this. You
are a trained astro-pilot. One of the best and the brightest. You’ve got the right stuff! Don’t let them push you around! It’s a matter
of integrity and honor. You’ve got to
quit!”
“That’s what I ought to do!” said Verna, hearing exactly what she
wanted to hear.
“Then you should do it!” said Portia.
“All right, I will,” said Verna, who turned around, stomped up to the
soldier, butt-cheeked the security pad, kicked open the glass door, pulled out
her wallet and threw a plastic card at the big Asian guy while yelling
something and then marched back out again to where Portia was standing with the
flight bag.
“You did that so I’d be out of a job and have to go to work for you,
didn’t you?” asked Verna, breathing heavily.
“Yuh huh,” said Portia.
“You’re good,” said Verna as they started to walk toward the parking
area.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” said Portia as they strolled off,
Portia pulling Verna’s flight bag. Now
Portia only needed one more astronaut and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t have
to quit her job.
Next: The Pheely Cube
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