Chapter 13: Preparations

The journey begins. Mira gets used spaceflight while at the same time, developing a deeper friendship with Justin.

“You seem kind of down Justin,”  Mira put her feet up on the console as she kicked back in her chair, “what are you not telling me?”  Mira gazed out the window into the darkness, “you know I have complete faith in you guys.  If I wasn’t here, I’d be dead by now I think.”  Mira rubbed her lips with her fingers in a thoughtful way, “you know, although I am still very sad about everything that has happened but, I am very thankful for a few things that I have gained that I would not have known otherwise and that is yours and Kate’s friendship.  I don’t normally get close to people because they always seem to disappoint me somehow.   I’m not saying you won’t ever disappoint me, but I’ve come to this place where I’m willing to get to know you better whether or not I get hurt in the process.”

 

Justin said, “put your hand on the console, I just want to get a little closer.”  Justin then moved onto Mira’s finger and attached.  “Ok, I’m sitting on your finger.” 

 

Mira picked her hand up and looked at it.  “I can’t see you at all, or feel you.”

 

“Exactly,” Justin said, “Listen, I want to get to know you better as well but I have some worries too.”  Justin paused for an awkward second, “the thing is, your time is limited to maybe 100 years if you are lucky so, like you, I have a voice inside me saying, don’t get too close.”

 

“I know…I’ve thought about that concerning you guys too.  I really like everyone to a degree but….” Mira trailed off, “well, rather than never having a close friend, I think it is better to take the risk and make the best of things as they are.  Perhaps expect that things won’t ever be perfect, but instead, a continuous project to work on.  I think I want to just move like that, open to new possibilities and enjoying each new day and friend as kind of a gift to enjoy in hopefully the best possible way….and hopefully, they will look at me with all my flaws and scars in the same way, accepting me as I am.  I think that’s what I am willing to try; so, are you still willing to take the risk of being my friend?”

 

“Mira…” Justin took another moment of pause while thinking.  Mira never minded pauses in conversation and was at ease thinking about all the words for a second too.  I was actually feeling a little uncomfortable at this point listening in to their conversation as they seemed to be drawing closer.  I looked for ways to change the topic but Justin continued, “yes, I do want to be your friend and take that risk too in a meaningful way but coming up here, you will be going through possibly a physical hardship, great frustration and maybe pain.  Octo has a good plan for you but there will be decisions to make about exactly how you will forge ahead in these next two years.”

 

“I know, and if it is possible, I want you right next to me throughout the process.  This apparatus that I will be in during acceleration will probably be very claustrophobia inducing, I won’t have control over my body and I worry I will not emerge from the whole thing as the same person.”

 

“Well, you won’t be the same person because of all these things going on, it will add to your life experience and change your perspective on things.  Like going through a long tunnel, you won’t really know what it will look like on the other side but, using your chosen philosophy, you really shouldn’t worry but instead, embrace that change as it comes.  In the meantime, yes, I will stick close to you and consciously be right there with you so you will not feel alone. “

 

“Thank you,” Mira looked down, “that is very comforting, I hope you live up to your word!”

 

“I will, and you know what?  I will tell you now that throughout the process, if you call out to me, I will answer up no matter what and take care of you in every way possible.  You are not just a piece of living flesh to keep alive; I want you to know I see you as much more than that, you are my friend.”

 

“OK, where do we start?” Mira had a new resolve it seemed.

 

Finally, I thought…  I spoke up, “well, there is not much to do in these first few days for us.  The engineering and design are already in work and what plans we do have are being worked on.  According to the plan, we will be focused on your life support system with the idea of getting you stabilized 12 hours before main engine light off. “

 

“What about my pool?” Mira asked.

 

“We won’t need that for 6 months and can’t do it until we have artificial gravity anyhow.  I will be helping out with that and designing your curriculum.  I think you will enjoy and need an engineering degree to use when we build our new colony.  Aerospace seems like the smart thing but since you will be probably leading the new colony, you’ll need management knowledge and oh yes, I’ll make sure you get your helicopter knowledge too…right now I have to spend a lot of time working on the humans.  We hope that their growth pods will work but we can also implant them with basic knowledge so organizing that effort is a high priority.  We also need to inventory all the pods and see for sure what we will get, CC tells me there are some anomalies that need to be looked at with them.  I will need time to work on that effort in the cargo bay….”

 

Justin cut me off….”OK Kate, we can talk details later.  For now, the next few days, if it is ok with you Mira, I would like to stick together and get your help with some of the heavy lifting.  Our building crews have the ability to turn energy into matter and that is good but, we will also have to use items that we have on hand and move that stuff around so your help will be appreciated with that.”

 

“No problem!  I would be happy to help where possible.  I would be happy to carry you around and help you see how progress is going too.  If you want, I don’t mind if you tap into my visual feed as you call it.”

 

“OK!” Justin perked up, “that would be nice for me too.”

 

Over the next few days, Justin literally became attached to Mira in a close way.  I was a little jealous as I watched their friendship grow.  They not only had a symbiotic type of relationship as they helped each other but they seemed to be growing together, especially on those days where Justin actually saw things through her eyes. 

 

They both enjoyed helping out with the main engine work that CC and Tata were occupied with.  The ship had some really helpful tools that only someone Mira’s size could operate and Justin kept a close eye on things too making sure no details were overlooked.

 

The most fun they had was building Mira’s life support pod.  It was basically a very large enclosed  and clear Jacuzzi.  Mira insisted that the tank be clear so she could see out.  We also fitted it with an emergency escape which would shatter the resin in case she needed to get out quickly.  Mira would be attached to a communications link for uploads but also, she would be wearing a special harness and medical connections to be able to monitor all her functions as well as keep her clean, fed and medicated if necessary.  Octo took some time to make sure the connections in her brain were ready too. 

One afternoon Mira got the feeling Justin was acting a little sluggish.  “What’s wrong?”  Mira asked Justin, “Why are you so down?”

 

“It’s Taran, I keep thinking that once we disconnect his power supply, that will be the end of him and I am concerned about that.  He does so much for us and I already anticipate missing his company too.  I am worried about these engine modifications and how the ship will hold up under that stress.  Finally, I am worried about you.  If anything happens to you….”

 

Mira would not stand for negative thinking.  “We can’t worry about things we can’t change.  We have worried about everything we can possibly foresee.  You have to think positive and be optimistic not only for yourself or me, but for the whole group.  You are the leader and if you allow doubt to settle in, it will spread to the whole group and guess what, failure will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.   I won’t allow you to start thinking of that and instead, order you to start to visualize what it will eventually look like once we get back to Earth.  OK?”

 

“So, you are ordering me?” 

 

“I am.  And if I am to be truthful, I am scared too…so many questions to be answered.  So many challenges ahead…but you know what, I know you’ll be with me all the way and that gives me a lot of strength.   I will be there with you too you know so, hopefully you will not get tired of my company.  Let me tell you this, over the last week, my faith in you has only grown and if it is my choice, I want to continue to be attached to you, especially through the acceleration period.”

 

“OK Mira, thanks.  I promise, I won’t leave your side.”

 

Preparations continued on schedule with only minor adjustments to the plan.  Taran realized some weak points in the structure of the ship and had to have some additional strength members added at key locations but other than that, all went well.

 

On the day before main engine start, Mira got settled into her life support pod.  She looked like she was in a goldfish bowl, floating with her tether and supports in a saline solution.  Her food was supplied by IV and her waste was eradicated by scrubbers so her bowl would remain spotless, especially in comparison to the standard goldfish.   Total control of her body could be taken artificially and the whole bowl could be rotated so that she was never left in a position where “bed sores” had a chance to develop while at the same time, perfecting the efficiency of her body to withstand the high gravity loading for 6 months.  There was also a need to build her strength and endurance and Brando took an interest in this. 

 

Mira had specific work out routines programmed into her daily schedule and remotely, her muscles would be contracted for a full body work out.  When that was going on, Brando would make sure the proper music was being played.  These workouts would take place whether or not Mira was conscious and Brando and Liz agreed to be in charge of Mira’s fitness regime.  It doesn’t seem like it to me, but those two saw the opportunity to sculpt Mira’s body as if they were creating a Greek statue or something….to them, this was art. 

 

I spoke to Justin about where he would be and his responsibilities to the ship too but he was adamant, he would remain with Mira and most of the time, be positioned on her optic nerve.  I reminded Mira that he might see everything that I saw and she now seemed ok with that prospect.  I think they came to an agreement of sorts about confidentiality or preventing embarrassment. 

 

Justin had the ability to leave the support pod by traveling along Mira’s control cord if needed but also, was able to maintain constant communication with everyone anyway so if he wanted, he could stay as long as he wanted without a loss in effectiveness.

 

Finally, Mira made her preparations, putting on her harness and attaching her control cord, special goggles.  She climbed into the clear tank and slid into the harness.  The fit was amazingly perfect thanks to Tata’s handiwork. Tata considered it a lot of fun to break away from her work on the engines and work on something completely different.  Her respirator was bulky but it too, fit just right.  She started to look more robotic.  In the final stage of preparation, Octo, Justin and I, took position on Mira’s optical nerve and took her offline.  We kept her autonomic nervous system online mostly, but took control of her respiration.  Slowly, we went through her systems to make sure she was still functional.  She was.  Finally, when Octo felt confident, the tank was filled with the saline solution.

 

From outside, Brando and Liz ran the first workout program, driving Mira’s body with specially targeted electrical impulses.  Not only were they working out and building her muscles, they did aerobic work too so, Mira was moving.  It was interesting to me to see her body still move in a coordinated way and over time, Liz became quite the puppet master, causing Mira to appear to be dancing or doing yoga while all this was going on.   

 

Everything seemed to be working properly so Octo then brought Mira’s consciousness back online.

“Hello Mira” Justin said as he saw the visual feed from Mira’s eyes brighten up as she opened her eyes. 

 

“Hi,” Mira said, in a garbled way through her respirator.  “I feel tired.”

 

“You should, you just completed a full body workout!  By all indication, everything is working very well.  The respirator is the only thing I worry about for the long term.  I worry that we may have to keep you unconscious more than what we thought.”

 

“No big deal, I know you are with me no matter what so I’ll be sleeping good.  I’ll be fine, no worries ok.”

 

“OK, we are ready for final countdown now we need to bring everyone online for communication.”  Octo confirmed everyone was up and listening….”OK Justin”

 

“Thanks, I just wanted to mark this moment as a huge historical event.  As you all know, getting to this point has taken a lot of hard work, sacrifice and risk.  I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your work and raise up Taran and recognize his sacrifice so that Mira specifically could survive with the possibility of going home to Earth again.” 

 

“At this moment in our preparation, we will be taking Taran offline and using his power supply.  I know everyone has had a chance to wish him farewell andTaran, I want you to know, we will not forget you or your sacrifice.  Many of us do not fully know what it is to love but from what I can tell, and feel, you love us and I am overwhelmed.  Thank you.”

 

Mira spoke in kind of a whisper from her respirator between breaths… “Thank you.”

 

And then, Taran was gone.  His power supply, we knew was very powerful and we knew how to control the energy to mass conversion but we still didn’t know for sure how long it would last.  Once connected into the engine, Tata was able to measure the potential energy stores of the matter-antimatter coupling and it was confirmed, we had enough fuel to go far beyond our planned flight path.

 

The countdown continued and the engines came online in a smooth application of power accelerating  the ship as planned.  Once up to 10g’s of acceleration, the ship rolled and stabilized.  The g loading caused a few loose items to move aft on the ship but nothing was damaged.  A pencil from Mira’s chair flew through the cabin like a dart and stuck into some sound absorbing wall covering but that was the extent of damage.  The goal was to come very close to the speed of light…or ‘maximum impulse power’ as you sometimes hear the term in science fiction movies and books.

 

The engineering and design team huddled in the command module and made final calculations to make sure the trajectory was safe from impact with foreign objects as well as small adjustments to the acceleration to make sure the intended time dilation relative to Earth was achieved.

 

Mira’s body was under stress but holding up and Justin stayed with her the whole time.  Mira would be woken at the end of each day to give her an update and generally talk about things she had learned. 

 

Justin really enjoyed these moments with her and they often talked about flying and the progress that was being made on her helicopter.  Every once in a while, Justin would show her a visual of progress and she would have her own inputs into the design.  If nothing else, it kept them busy and occupied.  Mira’s helicopter was going to be a real hot rod it sounded like.  Her model was mostly for utility and speed but the other two were also for instrument flight.  We figured there would be no navigational aids on the surface operational so we counted on most of the flying being of the visual flight rules (VFR) type but we also thought of the possibility of poor weather conditions so the other helicopters had full glass cockpits but were a little heavier weight too so not as fast or capable of heavy lifting.  Our big question was the GPS network of satellites, were they still there?  Did they work?  Could we fix them if we needed?  We just didn’t know but, in the helicopter design, we counted on this network to be operational for safe flight at night or poor weather conditions.  Taran’s design was beautiful too and fashioned off the helicopters that he thought to be the best for what we needed and that was the French designed A-star 350B series.  We didn’t question his judgement and Mira smiled as she saw the rigid rotor head design.  Lots of advantages to that, but mostly for her, it meant she would not have to worry about treating this air-frame with kid gloves.  She imagined what it would be like to fly it.

 

As time went by, Mira’s body grew stronger, muscles, bones and mind.  The ship held together and the day in and out routine became the norm over the next few months.

 

Finally, the time for acceleration was over, almost six months to the day.  As the main engines throttled back, thrusters were used to rotate the ship 90 degrees at which time the main engines were brought back online to provide the ship a constant acceleration of 1.5 g’s.  This served to start a turn back towards Earth but also, provide artificial gravity within the ship.  Once stable, Mira was cleared to roam free of her pod.  This was the configuration for the next year of travel.

 

We thought the process of getting her out would take some time but she was excited to be free.  Her new daily routine also included swimming in her newly designed lap pool.  At 1.5 times Earth’s gravity, it was strange and took some getting used to but, her body had increased its muscle mass, strength and endurance so she took to it like a duck to water they say.

 

We started preparation of incubation of the first 10 embryos.  Our plan was to have the new humans emerge from their pods in the days before re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.  It was unexpected but among the pods, there were still warrior embryos and their growth and size were significantly different than the standard.  We confirmed that because of this rapid growth in the clone body, it would probably not last a full lifetime but we didn’t know details on how that would take place.  It had something to do with rapid cell growth, aging and cancer.  Not unusual stuff for humans to deal with in their lifetimes but not newborns.  We just didn’t know what we would get but it was up to me to implant as much knowledge as possible.  The normal embryos would emerge in the form of 5 year old humans but they too, would be implanted with full educations.  We decided to not be overwhelming their brains with data but instead, to give each a basic education through a normal college undergraduate core curriculum.  We looked at all the higher institutions of learning in our databases and searched for the most rounded education in terms of general knowledge, specialties and diversity of opinion.  Pleasantly surprising to me as a warrior of sorts, we put all the schools into our decision matrix and decided on uploading the curriculum of the United States Naval Academy.  We avoided schools that tended to be one-sided or overly specialized.  After a few years, each embryo, now a human clone, would then be uploaded with a follow on specialty depending on their own unique talents, the needs of our colony and of course, their desires.  That was the plan anyway.

 

Mira and Justin remained together most of the time and we all often speculated at what the Earth would be like after 10,000 years.  We knew things would be different but nothing could have prepared us for what we saw as we took up an orbit around the moon.  I’m getting ahead of myself though, at this point, we didn’t know what we would have to deal with so we enjoyed speculating and coming up with contingency ideas. If nothing else, we expected a big change in the Earth’s climate so we thought being prepared for hot as well as cold and in the event the atmosphere was not breathable, we planned out what life under the acrylic dome would look like and what would be needed.   Justin would sometimes poke at Mira and give her a hard time about being a mother to all these kid clones and she didn’t like the idea too much I could tell.  Mira is not a person who normally likes small children so this aspect of our mission would be a stretch for her.

 

Other than that, the next year went very well and we made all kinds of preparations to keep busy, it was exciting for all of us.

 

 

Author's Note

I hope you enjoy this...it is fun to write. I try to avoid too much verbiage and avoid a lot of detail but, if something needs more explaining, please don't hold back!

Reviews

[Meeks]

The first scene, where Justin and Mira talk, is a bit melodramatic. Or maybe just that both characters open up too readily to each other?

Tata is polish for 'daddy'. Not dad, daddy. The name feels wierd to me because of that, but then again. Not many people know polish.

The pictures feel like they're overlapping on the text because there is no space between them. If it's not tko much work I would try to fix that.

You overuse 'We' in some types of sentences. I have a lesson for this, not directly at 'we' but at 'I"s, but it basically works the same. Go take a look, it can't hurt.

Overall, not much happening this chapter, but you did a good job building interest. I would still try to include some problems, complications, to keep the plot going. The flow is almost perfect, which is one of the hardest things to do. Great job, thanks for sharing. And remember, the more you write the better it gets!

You gotta read request me these things, I can't be expected to keep up! XD

[Scriber]

Thanks! I will take another look at that first scene. I actually am trying to portray them growing together as time goes on...but yes, not too fast.

Funny, Polish for daddy, I actually know that. ha. Kind of an inside scoop on the character's names which is why they came to be: I worked for about a year with a group of special needs kids in various states of ability and awarness, some ambulatory, other in chairs. Some capable of walking and eating on their own, others, not so much. Anyhow, just so you know, Tata is short for Tatianna, Justin was Justin, Taran was Tariq, Brando was Brendan and it goes on... So, they kind of have special meaning to me in another way...not intending to be distracting though...ha.

I don't know how to manipulate the pictures to adjust size or borders but if I did, I'd be happy to make it look better.

I will look at my 'we's' and your tutorial, sounds instructive! I need it!

Yeah, I am thinking the next chapter would wrap up this book, create a bunch of problems and at the same time, leave the door open to the next book when they return to Earth.

Thanks for you feedback...it's very helpful and I appreciate it!

[Meeks]

Anytime. Good luck with the write!