Still, it took Jer the better part of two weeks to get all the way in. Every time he’d get past one lock, he’d hit another. “This is more fun than a game,” he muttered as I watched bread rise and two pizzas bake. It was just a job. The third week was when it got interesting.
I got my paycheck and Jer cracked into the rovers. To keep Mom happy, I put half my check into the college fund. The other half went for two monster hard drives. While I cooked, Jer downloaded for all he was worth. By the second shift, we started dual operating. Jer set up some simple alarms on the oven and cook-bot and I watched them on one monitor screen. On the other three monitors, we started touring more of the Moon than we’d ever seen before. Not all the rovers are available to rent. Usually the newer ones are still knee deep in science where they were landed and not yet really roving. We got that feed. I got to where I could take an order and get the bot going on it without taking my eyes off of the real Moon feed. It was great.
Then we hit a problem.
It really wasn’t our problem. I mean, my job was going great. But it was sunny down in California, and the surf was up according to the weather report Jer called up. Anyway, my delivery driver must have headed for the beach, cause he sure wasn’t on the job. It’s Friday night on the Moon, and all these folks just want to kick back. I’m cooking like mad, and the delivery bot is sitting out there–totally parked.
So I loaded it up and took it for a spin around Diana Base. And discovered why you had to be checked out on that dang thing before they’d let you drive it. Knocking on doors and delivering the stuff was no problem. Getting there was not fun.
Like everything about Artemis, Diana base was being built on the cheap. To get as much air and dead space between the people and radiation from space, they were digging the base down as far as they could; I learned that in school. Driving around the base showed me what that meant. On the surface, under the bubble domes, things look spacious. Once you get underground, it’s cramped. If you don’t watch your bot every second, it can run into things. The map is a help, but they’re changing things all the time, and a pile of crates or a parked construction rig may be blocking what looked like the fastest way from here to there.
I had to really think about where to drive that bot. And you better not run into anything. I almost did a couple of times when I misjudged how wide the space was. Scraping against a wall would be just a matter of paint. Knocking over a couple of boxes, even in Moon gravity, made a mess and might break something. I was careful.
An hour into my shift, my supervisor showed up apologizing about her beeper batteries being dead and I guess ready to take the delivery bot out. I heard a surprised little “Oh,” when she saw where it was.
“Who’s doing the cooking?”
“I am,” I assured her. “I’ve got alarms set, and when the delivery bot’s in a safe stretch, I do a quick look around the kitchen. Everything’s fine.”
Her “We’ll see,” sounded like one of Mom’s more dubious ones, but after five minutes, she was back. “You have gotten things under control. I like your alarm routines. Do them yourself?”
“My friend, Jer, did them for me. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“So long as you’re doing your job, I have no problems. Neither does Artemis. I think we have a vacancy for a driver. Let me brief you on how it’s done.” So, for the rest of the shift, I learned her tricks. She kept her own map of Diana base, updating it constantly with a little routine that showed which passageways were temporarily blocked, which had been permanently changed, but not yet entered into the main map, and where you might be able to slip by. She even had a shortcut that took her through one of the labs. “Be real careful if you do that one. Sometimes they work late. Until they’ve ordered something, don’t go in there. But once you’ve delivered to them, they’ll usually let you cut through. Gary, the supervisor there, loves flat bread, so if you’ve got any spare ends, and he’s working late, drop him off the ends and you’ll have a friend for life, or at least the rest of your shift.
The things you have to remember!
I got a promotion, and a bonus for my double shift. Jer and I spent the bonus on one of those new seats. You’re riding around the Moon, going up, down, riding over a little crater, you can see the camera jarring, but the seat under your pants is still acting like a chair in your bedroom. This new seat changed that. You go up, it leans back. You go down, it leans forward. It bumps when the rover bumps. It was almost perfect.
But not quite.
“Mom, I really need a helmet. One that’ll let me see all around.”
“Well, dear, save up for it.”
“I’ve almost got enough. If I didn’t have to pay into the college fund this month, I’d have it.”
That brought Mom out of the project completion schedule she was updating for an insurance company. “Honey, we agreed that half your check went into savings.”
“I know, Mom, but if I put all of next month’s check into savings, I could be using the helmet this month. Some of the scraps I’ve been in ’cause I didn’t quite have as much clearance as I thought won’t happen when I have a helmet.” Mom and Dad should understand that. They were all the time upgrading their systems to stay competitive. Rarely did any of the people they contracted with pay for an upgrade; still, they were always happy to make use of ours.
I could tell from Mom’s look I’d won. I gave her a hug and headed back up stairs. Jer had been comparing helmets, searching the net for the best one for me. When I’d left he’d narrowed it down to three.
“I think you ought to buy this one,” he said as I came back in. He’d never doubted I could talk Mom around. “Both these come from the same factory in Burma, but this one has Indian software. It’s a lot cleaner.”
I ordered it. When it arrived, Jer had a ball improving it. The seat also wasn’t nearly sensitive enough for him. He improved it, too. He swore now that if I drove over a dime, I could tell if it was heads or tails. I could sure feel the bumps in Diana Station where they’d added this on or dug that new space. I bet the people up there were all the time stumbling over things.
Of course, the newest wing, where they’d put in the honeymoon suites and the space camp for rich kids was all first class. Wide, uncluttered corridors were painted anything but dull gray. It would have been a fun place to drive if the kids weren’t so chintzy on their tips. The newly married couples almost made up for that. They were a lot of fun to deliver to. Which got me thinking of Jer in ways I’m sure Dad wouldn’t approve. It would be fun, honeymooning on the Moon. But we could never afford it.
I concentrated on missing a new pile of crates.
Between the helmet, the seat and Jer’s refinements to both, I had an emulator that Kopy Kat would eat their hearts out for. I was in heaven. All the delivery bots and the new rovers have fixed cameras covering 360 degrees around them. With all three monitors in front of me slaved to the forward camera, I didn’t know what was behind me. And it really took the fun out of the ride if I switched one for a rear view. I wasn’t driving a bot, I was just some security guard, looking at three different pictures.
Not with the helmet. You glance over your shoulder, and the view switches from front to back like it should. At least it did after Jer did a few enhancements. You look up, you see up. Ace, so ace. I got to where I could move that delivery bot around the base like it was me on blades. In the new corridors, I could take the corners so fast, the bot was on two wheels and the seat let me feel it. One of the guys in the lab put a decal on my bot. “Rocket Girl.” It had a cute blond astride a rocket with the cratered Moon in the background. I just said thanks a lot and didn’t tell him I was a redhead.