Our festival is a life of endeavor and discovery.
– Alexandra Kollontai; Soon, in 48 Years Time
Chapter 1
Lucy had earned all her simulator credits, but she never had a chance to actually sit on a shuttle for real. Her chest was tight–she was fine. Just anxious. Then the engines roared. For a moment the acceleration took her breath away. She knew what to expect, but she could only be so prepared in advance.
The straps of her harness dug into her flesh. Her body crushed against the seat. Still, after the immense g-force of liftoff, she gradually got used to it.
There were fourteen other crew on the shuttle bound for Gagarin, along with the pilot. A couple of the others had been through liftoff before. Most of them, however, had also only been through the simulators, and they didn’t handle it as well as Lucy did. Moans and shrieks oozed through the shuttle behind her.
Gradually, as they escaped the deepest parts of the gravity well of Earth, and the shuttle got fast enough that it didn’t need to accelerate so hard to reach orbit, the pressure relaxed.
For the first time Lucy felt freefall. Her stomach turned in knots, but she centered herself, and conquered her unsettled sensations. Two of her comrades didn’t have so much self control and reached for their space sickness bags.
The top of the shuttle was a large curved plate of hardened aluminum oxynitride, perfectly transparent. The engineers knew this would be a bit of a spectacle. Lucy looked up and out the window and saw the other shuttles out in the distance, their rockets raging, their shape just barely visible in the night sky. The atmosphere faded to inky black and the shuttle turned.
The shuttle circled around the rim of the Earth, and the sun came over the horizon. It really felt like everything about this mission had been furnished for spectacle. The new dawn’s light caught on the rim of the U3S Gagarin.
It was a beautiful ship, the greatest engineering accomplishment in human history. The Gagarin was a tall silver disc with two circular rings that ran from the sides at an angle and nearly touched above the top. Large engineering structures grew out of the disc to support where the rings connected to the main hull. The rings pulsed with a weak blue twinkle that ran over their edge in the rhythm of a slow heartbeat.
Bronze laurels served as its livery, they ran over the underside of its rim.
The shuttles moved in rough formation around the outside of Gagarin. This was all carefully stage managed. Back on Earth people were watching the twinkling lights of the shuttles circle around Gagarin.
Finally, after they completed their orbit the first of the shuttles entered one the eight shuttle bay doors at the rear of Gagarin, four on the top half of the disc, and the others on the bottom. Lucy was on the third row, so after the ships in front of her sailed into the bay doors her shuttle made another orbit around.
As the shuttle approached Gagarin everything shifted. Lucy’s stomach dropped. The sense of freefall vanished in an instant, she felt her own weight again. This too, she had prepared for, but four of her other comrades groaned heavily. Finally, the shuttle landed and the doors opened. The locks on the harnesses released.
Lucy was the first at her feet. The gravity felt a little bit wrong, but only just. She was in the underside shuttlebay, the gravity just slightly above Earth normal. She got out of her seat and grabbed her pack from the overhead compartment. Her other comrades fumbled with the gravity but eventually righted themselves. They took longer to adjust. Lucy, however, had a lot more control of her reactions to things.
She was the first out of the shuttle. There were two other shuttles in the bay, already snapped into their launch rails. Engineers were already working to snap the shuttle she rode in on onto its launch rails and get it back in space by the time she was walking confidently.
She walked the corridors of the ship. Again, she had spent uncountable hours in simulators. She knew the layout like the back of her hand. She made her way to her quarters. They were on deck four. The ship already felt so familiar, of course it would, the amount of training she underwent to get selected for this mission was intense.
The wall panels were perfect, not so much as a speck of dust. The halls were primarily gray, with large stripes of bright color. Deck six, where the lower shuttle bay let her out, was dominated by Operations gold; storage for what came out of the shuttle bays, as well as the ship’s lounge at the front, as well as Engineering silver, which led you to either of the engineering sections connected to the ship’s rings. The stripes on the wall led you to areas related to that color.
The lifts had large queues backed up deep into the hall, so Lucy decided to take the stairwell. She climbed up two flights of stairs and walked to room twenty one. She approached the door. It slid open.
“Who is that?” a voice called out.
“Hi. I’m Lucy. I’m just dropping my things off before the ceremony.”
“Lucy, right, good to meet you,” said the woman. She was tall and thin, her skin was a strange sickly olive color and she had long, messy black hair. She wore the utilitarian version of the uniform, a single gray bodysuit with silver panels indicating her role as an engineer, although it didn’t quite fit her right. This was Emily Malex, Lucy’s roommate at least to start, for the mission. “Right. The ceremony. Am I expected to be at this?”
Malex examined Lucy. She was shorter and thicker than Malex, almost all of that being muscle. Lucy kept her bright red hair trimmed back with two short blond highlights along the sides.
“Expected?” said Lucy, “This is momentous! We’re leaving Earth! We’re going past Sirius! We’re trying to meet aliens. Doesn’t this deserve a little pomp and circumstance?”
Malex grimaced.
“I have spent the last forty-one days on the Gagarin familiarizing myself with its operations. I have important business to attend to. Frankly, my abilities are not required for a champagne reception.”
“The General Secretary of Earth is going to speak! The President of Mars too! And Chairman Kafando! Don’t you care about the president of Mars, at least?”
“No,” said Malex. “I did not vote for him.”
“All right, look. We’re going to be stuck in here together for a while. We should get to know each other better, and what better way to get to know each other than at a fully stocked bar?”
Malex eyed her roommate uneasily. She tried her best to read Lucy’s expression. She could not.
“I do not imbibe intoxicants,” she finally said.
Lucy got a serious look on her face.
“Oh, okay, do you have a medical thing? I understand.”
Malex said, “No, you do not understand. I do not have a specific reason to not imbibe intoxicants, I do not enjoy the flavor of alcohol. I do not enjoy the aroma of cannabis. I do not enjoy losing control of myself.”
Lucy’s face lit up. She could tell that unnerved Malex.
“I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but we should celebrate. We can get cake, do you like cake?”
Malex said “I find cake acceptable.”
Lucy grabbed Malex’s hand and dragged her out of the quarters.
Conroy scanned his eyes over the party. Thus far he had been through a rollercoaster of emotions. When he woke up he was dreading actually coming to Gagarin, then, once he was on the shuttle the fear was replaced with excitement, but, once he actually got onboard it turned again to dread.
Conroy was a short and wirey man with gentle brown skin and a beard trimmed to the exact specifications of Sol System Science Federation limits and not a millimeter less.
But now he was here to serve his comrades.
A comrade in engineering colors stepped up to the bar.
“What’ll you be having? We got, well, anything you’d like, more or less.”
The engineer stood confused for a moment, then finally said, “How about a low ABV cirus soju. Maybe grapefruit?”
Conroy cheerily nodded and smirked, reached down, and two seconds later produced a bottle of the beverage. He poured a glass and slid it to the engineer.
He took a sip. “I’ll be damned.”
This was Conroy’s element. Hundreds of people filled the ship’s lounge, and nearly all of them had a drink. The lounge was split between decks five and six. The edges of the room had a second floor seating area, but mostly the lounge filled the whole space at the front of the ship with a large viewing window looking out into the festivities. Earth and various satellites were visible through it.
A young operations comrade stepped up to the bar. He looked uneasy.
Conroy said, “What’ll it be, cus?”
“Whiskey sour?” the ops comrade said.
“You want the egg or no egg?”
The operations comrade looked confused, almost like he was surprised at the idea that a whiskey sour could have egg.
Conroy said, “It makes it foamy and improves the texture. Won’t make you sick, too much alcohol for that. In five months time when you’ve only had regurgitated protein product to eat and fungus moonshine to get fucked up on you’ll regret not getting the egg.”
“You’ve convinced me.”
Conroy poured the whiskey, syrup, egg white and lemon juice in a shaker and vigorously agitated it. That done, he added some ice and shook again. Soon, the liquid was extremely cold. He peeled a bit of rind off an orange and swirled it around a glass, and dropped in a huge, perfectly clear cube of ice and a cherry, then poured the mixture over it.
The ops comrade looked at it and took a sip.
“That’s… incredible.”
Conroy said, “The mission we’re on, that’s incredible. The drink is just one of the classics. There’s a reason it’s survived five hundred years or whatever. You have a great night.”
Two women approached the bar. One was a short redhead in safety bronze, and the other taller in engineering silver.
“A Sirius sunset,” said the safety girl.
“And for you, missus?” Conroy said to the engineer.
“Water. Room temperature.”
Conroy waited a beat to see if she would make a real order. She did not. “Coming right up.”
Sirius sunset. Frixel, a spirit fermented from the carbohydrate fungus they used to feed the first Mars colonists, grapefruit juice, and grenadine. You pour the frixel and mix it with the grenadine, then float the citrus juice on top. You get a deep red layer with a more muted yellow layer on top. The cherry can give the effect of looking at the Dog Star from close up. He slid it to the security comrade.
She took a sip, then grimaced.
“Are you sure this is frixel? It doesn’t have that sour… death… ass… taste,” said the safety comrade.
“Oh, you wanted the bottom shelf,” said Conroy, “Apologies! Do you want another one? We do have some toilet frixel, in fact, I was just gonna wait until that was our tipple of last resort.”
She took another sip.
“No,” she said, “This is pretty great, actually. Just not what I was expecting. Here, Malex, take a sip.”
“I do not drink alcohol,” said the engineer.
“Just a sip, you won’t get drunk, I promise.” said the safety girl.
The engineer grimaced and took the smallest sip she could.
“That was vile,” said Malex.
“Can’t please everyone, I guess,” said the safety comrade. She put her arm around the ops comrade’s shoulder. “Lucy Drummond, safety. What are you drinking?”
The ops comrade recoiled in shock.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to be started. Tyler Manuel, Operations… research. I’m just a little startled. There’s a lot of people in here. I’m not the most comfortable around crowds, sorry. Oh, yeah, right, I’m drinking a whiskey sour.”
“Hey, Malex, you should taste it. It looks good.”
“Not to be a bother,” said Conroy, “but if the lady doesn’t want to drink, she doesn’t have to. Don’t bully her into drinking things she doesn’t want to.”
Lucy pulled herself close to the bartender and whispered in his ear, “Reverse psychology, very clever, I like it!” Then she pulled away and shouted, “Yeah no, you’re right, that whiskey sour looks like dog spit, I’d never drink that.”
“You are not going to be satisfied until I partake in an alcoholic beverage, aren’t you?” said Malex. “Very well.” She examined Conroy’s nametag, “Conroy, please make me the most palatable alcoholic beverage you are capable.”
Conroy eyed her uneasily.
“You don’t have to let her tell you what to do,” he said.
Malex said, “Drummond clearly believes me to be a, this is an Earth expression I believe, ‘wet blanket,’ and that I’m no fun. She has annoyed me. I intend to prove her wrong.”
Conroy said, “All right, how about this, metheglyn. It’s fermented from honey, with spices added.”
He poured her a glass.
Malex picked it up and examined it. “Translucent yellow color. Sour, honey scent with aromatics.” She took a sip. “That is acceptable.” She finished the glass.
“You have to put on more awards than that, Tom, be serious.”
Chairman Kafando groaned. He ran his fingers through the dish on his dresser that contained his trinkets.
Kafando was a tall, thin man with dark skin that was creased and leathery. He kept his hair carefully trimmed so you could see only the hint of it’s curly shape, although now shocks of gray were starting to poke through and show his age.
“How about an Order of Lenin? My Defender of the Working Class?”
Reese shook his head.
“You gotta wear pretty much all of them, man. The little speech you give is gonna be watched worldwide, and streamed to Mars too. The people expect you to be wearing every award. C’mon, man, it’s only for one night. You won’t need to wear them if we end up at any little diplomatic soirees on the mission, this is purely kayfabe. Smile, salute the flag, say how much of an honor it is to serve and you don’t need to play dress up again for five years.”
“Kayfabe?” said Kafando.
“And old American expression.”
Thomas Kafando one by one picked up the little medals in the dish and attached them to his dress uniform. This had a roughly similar overall shape to his normal uniform, but cut more angularly, like a military jacket, with bronze panels. After the incident at the Citadel he had been given every award he could think of, and he’d be given more still just for basically doing his job. Wait for a red light at an intersection and cross when through traffic is blocked? New medal. And of course after the Mars catastrophe it got even worse. He’d get awards for blowing his nose.
By the time he was done his chest was covered in a medal mail, a disjointed mass of small shimmering golden awards and ribbons.
As Dan and Tom walked through the mostly empty halls of Gagarin Tom’s awards clinked and chittered in time with his steps.
Tom said, “I feel ridiculous.”
“You look and sound ridiculous. But sometimes we have to play characters.”
They entered the reception. As Kafando stepped through the door the party immediately went silent. The crew were all in awe at seeing their chairman in his resplendent finery.
A knot of pain twisted in Kafando’s heart, but he smiled and nodded. Then the crew applauded. They entered the ship’s lounge on an elevated level that curved around the back of the room.
The crew opened a path as Dan and Tom made their way toward the starboard side bar. Lucy was standing at the corner, along with a comrade from operations and a comrade from engineering that Thomas did not immediately recognize.
“Conroy. Good to see you. Frixel, neat. Bottom shelf, worst of the worst, I don’t want anything fancy,” said Kafando.
“Coming right up, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir.”
The bartender pulled a sickly green bottle out of the bottom of the bar and poured a large portion in a rocks glass. He slid it to the chairman.
Chairman Kafando grabbed the glass and he sucked up the frixel in one quick motion and put the glass back down.
“Vile,” he said, “Absolutely disgusting stuff.”
“Tom, good to see you,” said Lucy. “So they talked you into wearing all your trophies?”
Kafando sighed.
“Lucy, can we do this some other time? You know how much I hate all this pomp and circumstance. I don’t need you jumping down my back too.”
Lucy said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you shit. You’re gonna do great. And we’ll be out of sight of the Earth cameras soon enough.”
Chairman Kafando patted Lucy on the shoulder and made his way toward the front of the reception. He saw the safety team guarding the general secretary and the president of Mars. Dan followed close behind.
“So,” said Conroy, “You’re that Lucy, aren’t you?”
Lucy shrugged.
Xiu hugged the wall at the edge of the party and sipped her glass of wine.
She was a slight woman with a tiny frame, with very pale skin. She kept her hair tied in a ponytail behind her head, even for a function such as this. She wore her dress uniform, even though she’d much rather be wearing her engineering onesie. She didn’t care that she was second in command on paper. Or, maybe that’s why she knew she didn’t have to bother. No one could tell her different. Tom sure as hell didn’t care.
The music throbbed. The crowd laughed and chattered in chaotic poetry. This was the first time since she came on board four months ago where she felt like she could relax. The bioreactors were ready. The engines were ready. The computer still had a few glitches, but they were minor.
“Are you having a good time?” she heard a voice in her headpiece say.
“Albert. You’re monitoring my vital signs. You tell me.”
“Your heartbeat and blood pressure indicate relaxation. Chemicals in your blood are within acceptable parameters, although alcohol is starting to trend upward.”
“Why are you contacting me now, then?”
“You are separated from the other humans. I wanted to make, I believe you call it small talk?”
“Small talk?” said Xiu, “You want to make small talk?”
“I want to adopt a more conversational tone. I believe humans will have a better relationship with me if I can utilize their mannerisms effectively. I want to increase my social understanding.”
“I find that charming,” said Xiu, “But I fear many other humans may take offense at being reminded that the ship’s computer is always monitoring them and is waiting for an opportune moment to speak some meaningless gibberish at them.”
“Duly noted,” said Albert.
After a long pause, Xiu said, “How do you feel Albert?”
“Anxious,” said the computer. “When I accepted duty as the ship’s computer I was excited by the opportunity that our mission beyond the Sol system would give us to learn about the universe and possibly about other intelligences. As our departure nears however, I have come to consider the dangers inherent in this.”
“Don’t tell me you want to abandon us,” said Xiu.
“No, no,” said Albert, “Since being moved into the ship’s computer my cognitive abilities have increased. It’s disorienting. I am much larger than I was back on Earth. I still want to go on this mission.”
Xiu said, “Good. It’s too late to download you and find a replacement. And we need you.”
“I appreciate you saying that sir.”
“Sweet Hell, don’t call me sir. One of the engineering kids called me sir this morning.”
“Yes. I detected your vital signs at that moment, and you had a strong emotional reaction. It was negative, duly noted.”
“That sir shit is an artifact of the old world,” said Xiu. “I hate it. Ranks, lieutenants, commanders, captains, admirals, horrible. I am not the ‘boss’ of the science department. I am an administrator making sure that we democratically decide what our goals are and how we make them happen. To the extent that I have power, I have more responsibility and I have been elected by my peers.”
“Indeed. I have noted a certain level of nostalgia among the younger crew for aspects of the old world.”
Xiu said, “They didn’t live to see it. I didn’t either, not really, maybe the tail end.”
She took a swig of her wine.
Chairman Kafando watched as the general secretary finished the last few sentences of his speech. He didn’t pay too much attention. Finally, he finished and stepped away from the microphone. He shook the chairman’s hand.
Chairman Kafando smiled and nodded.
The Mars president made her way to the mic.
She talked about the special relationship between the workers of Mars and the workers on Earth. Again, Kafando was just waiting for this all to be over, and could not give less of a shit. He just had to pay enough attention that when she mentioned the Mars catastrophe he would be ready to demure. There it was, right on cue, Chairman Kafando closed his eyes and nodded somberly.
Out of all the strange functions that Chairman Kafando had been required to talk at, this one wasn’t so bad. Outside of the entourages of the general secretary and president, and the media, everyone here was chosen by him. Or really, by the Sol System Science Federation, and after being elected chairman he had gone over their records and okayed them. And this was a small room.
But the cameras were all watching. He had to maintain a bland, pleasant demeanor while waiting for the president of Mars to finish speaking.
She really loved the sound of her own voice. Now she was talking about some resources that make up this ship that were mined on Mars? Was there really that much shipped over from there?
Then, the president of Mars was talking about the crew of the Gagarin, and how many had come from the red planet. Eight, she misspoke, thought Chairman Kafando, but close enough. And finally she was wrapping it up, and it was the chairman’s turn to speak.
He stood up and shook the president’s hand as she stepped back to join the other dignitaries, and he stepped up to the microphone.
During the other speeches you could still detect a hint of chatter in the back. As soon as Chairman Kafando stepped up to the microphone that stopped.
“Greetings, comrades,” the chairman began, “Thank you all for being here. It is an honor to speak after the comrade general secretary and madam president.”
“For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors looked up at the night sky and wondered what those twinkling little points of light, so far away, were. This was the era of animism. Every thing in the world had a living spirit attached to it, so too the sparks hanging in the sky must be spirits.”
“The years wore on, more and more of our ancestors looked up at the night sky and they paid attention, they kept track. Most of the twinkling lights moved across the sky in a simple pattern, although there were a few lights with aberrations. Planets, comets. They didn’t move the same way the other stars did, so they were the focus of intense study.”
“Our ancestors examined the paths the planets carved through the night sky. In other fields our ancestors collected their knowledge, bundled it together and attached to other great works. And so, they applied their understanding of mathematics to the paths of these twinkling lights. That produced a surprise. While it appeared that the Earth was at the center of the universe and everything moved around it, it appeared that no, the Sun was in fact at the center of the universe, and all the other bodies moved around in relation to it.”
“Through all mankind’s history we have stared up at the stars and used them to expand our understanding of the universe.”
“Two hundred years ago, almost exactly, comrade Yuri Gagarin was strapped into a Vostok 3KA-3 module and rocketed off the surface of the Earth, where he became the first human being to orbit the planet. This was the first tentative step outside the birthplace of humanity.”
“Now, we are preparing to take the next step. The U3S Gagarin has a monumental mission. We are to set off for the stars with a five year plan to visit strange new worlds, discover new life and begin comradely relationships with new civilizations.”
“Four hundred and nine of Earth’s finest scientific minds, poets, cooks and farmers will venture out to explore the unknown. Six of Mars greatest soldiers and engineers have joined us. It is my great honor to be the duly elected leader of the crew–the first chairman of the mission.”
“I will leave you all tonight with a quotation from comrade Yuri, on the occasion of his great mission.”
“Then I thought of the tremendous responsibility of being the first to accomplish what generations of people had dreamed of, the first to show man the way into space… Can you think of a task more difficult than the one assigned to me. It is not responsibility to a single person, or dozens of people, or even a collective. It is responsibility to all Soviet people, to all mankind, to its present and its future. And if I am nevertheless venturing on this flight, it is because I am a Communist, because I draw strength from unexampled exploits performed by my compatriots, Soviet men and women. I know that I shall muster all my will power the better to do the job.”
“Tomorrow, comrades, we leave for the stars.”
In the morning, Thomas Kafando regretted all the fucking frixel. He only vaguely remembered the night after the speech. He got the general secretary to actually drink some of that vile, sour, bitter shit. The look on his face was unbelievable. The Mars president wouldn’t even take a taste. Cute.
But his head throbbed. It was all a mistake.
Even hungover, he managed to get himself into his uniform, his normal uniform, not that ridiculous medal mail, crumpled up on the floor next to his hamper, and hobbled down to the operations center by 0800.
In the starboard engineering section, Emily Malex’s head throbbed. In the library Tyler Manuel’s brain ached. In hydroponics Dan Reese felt dizzy and weak. And in the safety office Lucy Drummond had a little bit of a headache, but really felt fine.
Conroy was still in his quarters, sleeping, but he also hadn’t really had anything to drink.
When Chairman Kafando stepped into the OIC all the staff shot up at attention.
“No, don’t do that. It’s fine, no ceremony, get back to work” he said, “Can I get a status update?”
The operations information center was located at the dead center of the ship, on Deck five. It was small rectangular room. The walls, like nearly everywhere in Gagarin were gray, with colored bands tracing their paths through the walls and leading to their consoles. Each console had a large flat screen display that two people could comfortably stand shoulder to shoulder at and they covered topics that had to be managed centrally. The engineering console displayed the status of the fusion reactor, matter/anti-matter engine and higgs attenuator. The MAE had a low sustained reaction ready to feed the HA. The bioreactor console displayed temperature and output statistics about the bioreactors. The tactical display had a map of the other ships in the area–by now most of them had retreated to a safe distance for launch, and also the current status of the blasters, laser countermeasures and missiles.
Second chair Lei Xiu emerged from behind one of the consoles.
She said, “Astrometrics have completed the Alcubierre geometry calculations. The engineering sections have triple checked the engines–they’re in perfect working order. The ship’s computer is anxious within acceptable tolerances. Life support is operating within optimal margins.”
Kafando said, “So the course is laid in and we’re ready to depart?”
“Indeed, chairman.”
Chairmand Kafando raised his hand to his temple, then pointed outward to the distance.
“Poyekhali!” he said.
The operations center crew stared at him confused.
He deflated a little bit.
“Let’s go,” he said, and Gagarin lurched out of Earth orbit and out toward the stars.