“Now you’re really being ridiculous.”
She turns to me. “Fuck them, David. After all you did, they let you go.” I can see the hurt I her eyes.
“They didn’t have a choice.” I didn’t tell anyone why I left. I just let the official statement that I had completed my purpose there stand.
“You sat in a room with two billionaires and they kicked you to the curb, after you risked your life to protect everything they had.”
“I did it more for selfish reasons.”
She grabs my arm and puts her head on my shoulder. “Is this okay?”
“It’s terrible.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m weighing my options.”
“And those are?”
“What are you, my mother?”
“Just your concerned kid sister.”
“Good way to friend zone me.”
She lifts her head up and looks me in the eyes for a moment. “You’re not datable material right now.”
“The whole unemployed thing. I get it.”
“No. I mean the whole, you don’t know what to do with your life thing.”
“I thought that was being an astronaut pilot. Now that’s been taken away from me.”
“I thought you said you had options?”
“Uh, well. I sent out some inquiries.”
“How’d that go?” she asks.
“People thought it was a joke. Although SpaceTech expressed interest.”
“The vocational school in Orlando? I thought that was a scam for aimless kids with rich parents?”
“Well, at least I’m an expert on aimless. They have plenty of former NASA astronauts on their staff. And space vocational training is becoming a big thing. Hey, didn’t Markov mention offering you a job?”
“Yeah. I’m just not sure if I want to work with a master spy. It’s difficult enough to keep my mouth shut about what we did.”
The only public statement about Laney was that she consulted with the intelligence team about certain space-related background information.
There’s a howler for you. If anyone deserves credit for this succeeding, it’s her. She’s the only reason I’m alive.
I lean over and kiss her on the forehead.
“What was that for?” she says.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to violate your boundaries. I was just remembering that time I was stuck in space with a nuclear weapon strapped to my chest and I thought I was going to die — until you figured out how to remotely operate the DarkStar.”
“Oh, that. I’ll excuse this transgression as long as it’s of a platonic nature.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t try to get to first base until I’m a little less aimless.”
“Let’s hope that doesn’t take too long.”
I see a smile form in the corner of her mouth.
This girl. This woman. This amazing woman. One little variation in her genes and she has to go through life worried that every guy sees her with pity and not for who she is.
She’s cute, real cute. The kind of cute I’d flirt with if I met her randomly. But she’s had to deal with guys saying things about her condition like, “I’d still hit that,” as if it was a compliment. Hell, I’ve thought that several times.
What I suspect Laney really wants is the same thing we all want; to be accepted as the whole package. Not to be used just for the appealing factors.
“Want to stay and watch the first stage come back down?” she asks as I put an arm around her shoulders.
“I’ve go no place to go,” pulling her close. “I can wait for the second one too…”
Nine
Truth
The classroom resembles something JJ Abrams had his production designer come up with. There’s a full video wall behind me, screens all around the classroom and a state of the art projection system on the ceiling. The whole school is designed to make parents feel good about writing large checks so their kids can be part of “the big future in space.” It’s a far cry from the blackboard and sparse warehouse where Halston Bennet explained the fundamentals of astronautics to me in the early days of iCosmos.
Looking around the classroom of college-aged kids in their SpaceTech polos, I see a few that might actually make it into some space-related career. But the majority of them were aimless students in high school and couldn’t get into any of the more serious academic programs. They’re going to come out of here thinking that their diploma is going to mean something to iCosmos, SpaceX or Blue Origin.
Hell, I went through one of the best aviation programs in the country and still got looked down on because I never flew for the military or NASA.
They brought me in as a special lecturer — really just a trial run to see if I worked out. So far, not so much. I knew things were off to a bad start when the students kept asking about warp drives and teleporters the first day.
Only three out of forty knew who Yuri Gagarin was. None of them had a clue who Alexei Leonov was or the importance of Apollo 8.
I’m in the middle of explaining the significance of that mission — the first time humans left Earth orbit and orbited another body — when a hand shoots up.
I used to love questions in classroom visits. Here, I’ve begun to dread them.
I point to the young man with dark curly hair and hipster glasses. “Yes, Gabe?”
“You were shot in space, right?”
“We were talking about orbital insertion.”
“Right. Right. Yeah. So, uh, I saw some video on the Internet that poked all kinds of holes in the Reynolds Report.”
Great. The Reynolds Report was the name of the Congressional inquiry into the K1 affair and became the government’s official position. Admittedly, it’s filled with a lot of half-truths, it’s become a ripe target for conspiracy theorists; so called K1 Truthers. Now it looks like Gabe is among them.
“I can’t really talk about the incident. Let’s get back to talking about velocity and insertion windows.”
“Well, this video said that you couldn’t have got the bullet wound outside the station because bullets need air.”
I can see the other students have woken out of their stupor to listen to the discussion. “I wasn’t shot by a musket, Gabe. How do rockets work in space?”
“Uh, rocket fuel?” he replies, as if it’s the dumbest question in the world.
“Just fuel? So if I light it up it’ll explode?”
“Um, no. You need oxygen.”
“Correct. An oxidizer. Bullets have their oxidizer inside the ammo.”
I think this is about to shut him down, but realize I fell into some kind of argumentative trap he thinks he’s set for me as he turns a page in his notebook.
“Okay. Then how come Newton’s First law of Thermodynamics didn’t apply here?”
“Well…Gabe, there is no such thing as Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics. He did have laws of motion, which were adapted by Celsius and others to describe different kinds of systems. I think you mean Newton’s Third Law about every reaction causing an equal and opposite reaction.”
“Yes. That’s it. So you know it?” he asks, oblivious to my response.
“Yes. I’m a pilot and an astronaut. It’s sort of the most important thing for me to know. May we move on?”
“Wait, wait, so if they shot at you with enough force to poke a hole in you, why didn’t they fly off into space?”
“For one, we already were in space. Second, the rifles and handguns they used had special recoil chambers designed to minimize the backwards pressure. Third, when they fired, or I did, we braced ourselves against something. This is all in the Reynolds Report. Have you actually read it?”
“Mostly…”
“So, no.”
I watch his hand go under his notebook. “But you stand by everything in it?”