Terradox Reborn

by Craig A. Falconer

  “I’m fifty-four minutes early, genius; not six minutes late,” Chase shot back. Marcel, a Habitat Management expert responsible for testing and maintaining the integrity of several key systems, had become Chase’s closest friend over the past year despite being fourteen years his senior. The two’s frequent practical jokes and mock arguments made their time in the Kompound fun rather than merely bearable, even if the friendly nature of their casual put-downs and ribbing was lost on some viewers who mistook it for genuine friction.

  Marcel had an easy-going way about him that stood him apart from the others, some of whom deliberately avoided engaging in any leisure-time bonding or even small talk. While none were abrasive or uncooperative, Chase’s quiet view that two or three of them lacked the level of sociability required for a real mission — particularly one where something could go majorly wrong — was a view shared by many on the outside.

  Nisha Kohli, who at 21 was the only test subject younger than Chase, sat at the other side of the kitchen table. Nisha was also the only prospective astronaut who’d had to be talked into applying for the test, having previously been satisfied with her focus on theoretical physics. Other academics on Terradox had quickly reported to Holly that Nisha’s prowess in her chosen field was even more remarkable than they’d expected, and this combined with her youth and popularity among other colonists of all ilks was more than enough to plant a seed in Holly’s mind that she would make an excellent candidate. Holly knew from bitter personal experience that certain intangible factors came into play in such situations, but Nisha seemed to have it all.

  After full assurances about both the safety of the test site and her ability to continue her current work — the latter of which concerned her more than the former — Nisha eventually agreed to undergo six months of intensive physical training. By the end of that training period, she had caught astronaut fever and required no further convincing to participate in the isolation test.

  Holly’s hunch about Nisha proved well-founded when the youngster immediately proceeded to exhibit tremendously well-developed problem-solving skills as well as familiarity and competence on matters far outside her prior academic focus.

  Marcel, sitting now between Chase and Nisha, was ironically one of only four people who knew their names without knowing that they shared feelings extending far beyond the platonic. The other three oblivious individuals were their fellow test subjects, none of whom had been privy to the footage seen by so many millions so far away.

  On the day the group first entered their enclosed Kompound, Viola and Holly placed a friendly no-stakes bet. Viola’s reaction to seeing the official group photo just minutes before the test began had been simple: “Those two are getting together.”

  In Viola’s eyes, their similar ages and their conventionally attractive appearances made it all but certain that a year of close proximity could only end one way. Holly had insisted that both Chase and Nisha had been thoroughly versed in what was expected of them and knew better than to break the cardinal rule, understanding that doing so would preclude them from consideration for future projects — no excuses and no exceptions.

  As it went, time had proven both Viola and Holly right; for while it was as clear as day that the two youngest astronauts-in-training had indeed caught feelings and would ‘get together’ as soon as the test was over, they had done Holly proud by resisting powerful urges to act on those feelings in the meantime.

  As well as the frequent subtle glances, subtextual conversations, and occasionally lingering physical contact when work tasks required their hands to touch, both Chase and Nisha had made straightforward comments to the privacy room’s camera which left no doubt as to their shared affection.

  Unsurprisingly, Monica Pierce and the rest of the Terradox Live production team had seized upon the first hint of romance, making the most of every moment and doing everything possible to present their non-physical relationship as something akin to a Shakespearian tale of star-crossed lovers thwarted by the system and its unbending rules.

  Equally unsurprisingly, Monica had taken it upon herself to push the boundaries of certain production-related rules to breaking point. One bone of particular contention had been her decision to include privacy room comments from Chase and Nisha in a montage about their budding romance. This had earned Monica’s firmest rebuke from Holly to date, since it broke the promise made to the test subjects that nothing they said in the privacy room would ever be aired.

  And while the subjects had known from the beginning that the rest of their words and actions inside their modular Kompound might be featured in Terradox Live’s daily round-ups, none could have believed how popular their stories would become or just how much of the nightly show those daily round-ups would fill.

  Care would be needed in helping the subjects adjust to their new fame once they left Little Venus and returned to their homes elsewhere on Terradox, and Holly had already rubber-stamped proposals for a one-week cool-down period during which the subjects would be briefed on recent external developments and reunited with their loved ones before being gradually re-acclimatised to the colony as a whole.

  But as Chase, Nisha and Marcel chatted casually at the kitchen table, not even Holly knew how hard Monica Pierce was currently working to make sure that the isolation test which provided almost all of Terradox Live’s most popular content would provide one last big moment. The network bigwigs would be tracking viewership data like never before as the test drew to a close, and this was Monica’s last real chance to impress.

  Although it looked for all of the world like the isolation test was set to fizzle out to a gentle conclusion, nothing was quite so certain. In fact, vested interests were already working towards the opposite result.

  One way or another, it was going out with a bang.

  Monica Pierce would see to that.

  six

  A short while after the conclusion of Rusentra’s latest quarterly board meeting, Holly and Dimitar made their way to the Venus station’s main bar area, which doubled as a casual diner. Holly arrived in suitably casual attire having changed out of her business suit at the earliest opportunity, and now felt both more comfortable and more like herself.

  The only constant across Holly’s two outfits was a small silver pin she had been given by Yury ‘Spaceman’ Gardev shortly before his death. The pin bore the emblem of the long-defunct public space program which had once employed them both, with a single word underneath: COMMANDER.

  Yury had been wearing this very pin when Holly first met him during her introductory training, but almost two full decades had passed until she ever saw it again, long after the program’s demise. That moment finally came when the old man, knowing his end was near, presented it to Holly and watched on in delight as her expression revealed that she remembered it just as vividly as he’d hoped.

  Holly wore the pin with pride everywhere she went, indifferent to the unspoken but evident disapproval of some senior Rusentra figures who considered it gauche by virtue of their lack of understanding of how close she and Spaceman had been.

  The diner appeared to be free of such cynics at first glance, and was characteristically busy without being packed; although the station’s inhabitants typically ate at home, some enjoyed the ambiance of the diner’s communal setting and visited frequently. Celebratory group gatherings were also common and this evening was no different, with a large section of the bar closed off for a pre-arranged function to celebrate the promotion of a worker to their new role as Head of the station’s Craft Management division.

  Holly and Dimitar entered as inconspicuously as they could, not concerned about being seen but with little desire to draw too much attention. They took a booth near the door and made their own drinks using their table’s in-built cocktail machine. It wasn’t as technically impressive as the algae-based dining machine Rusev had personally designed decades earlier — there were no complex shaping and consistency considerations at work — but the perfect mixing and the convi
ncingness of the artificial flavours were admirable nonetheless. In keeping with a blanket policy enacted on both the Venus station and Terradox, none of the machine’s options contained alcohol.

  Inevitably, Holly’s half-hearted cover lasted all of two minutes until the first patron noticed her and passed the news on to his companions. A crowd of well-meaning people was soon gathered around her booth, introducing themselves and stressing how great it was to meet her.

  Holly didn’t recognise many of the faces let alone know many of their names; her quarterly visits included little free time to enjoy the station and even less to mingle.

  One face Holly did recognise was that of the worker identified by her oversized novelty sash as the individual whose promotion many of the others had gathered to celebrate. She was at the edge of the small crowd, waiting her turn to speak to Holly for the second time in her life.

  “Rachel,” Holly smiled. “How have you been? And congratulations!”

  With no need for words, Rachel’s expression made it clear that she was amazed Holly had remembered her from their single meeting two years earlier.

  For her part, Holly could scarcely believe that Rachel had been promoted so highly in such a short time. She knew that she’d blossomed under Robert Harrington’s wing when he headed the station’s Habitat Management division prior to moving to Terradox, and that he had seen enough potential in her to put her name forward for a mid-level opening in the more desirable division of Craft Management. Rachel’s rapid ascent through that division’s ranks in the interim was clearly a result of her hard work and high competence, but it also cemented Robert’s position in Holly’s mind as an excellent judge of character.

  The crowd dispersed fairly quickly, partially due to Dimitar’s barely concealed impatience, and Holly made a mental note to keep Rachel in mind for when Terradox’s space port was constructed and a Craft Management division was established on the romosphere as part of the ambitious program of space exploration she intended to initiate sooner rather than later.

  Since their presence was now anything but low-key, Dimitar asked if Holly would prefer to go upstairs to the bar’s balcony-like seating area. Vividly recalling the extraordinary views offered from this vantage point, she agreed without hesitation. Her eyes then widened all over again — just like the first time — when she reached the viewing point and gazed through the enormous and carefully filtered window towards the unbeatable sight of Venus itself.

  Her new seat had quite possibly the best view in the solar system, but none of the handful of other patrons milling around the area seemed particularly interested. Holly didn’t think she could ever become so blasé about such a view, but she recognised that there was no doubt a laundry list of things she took for granted about life on Terradox which everyone on the station would have considered incredible.

  “I struggle to understand why anyone would ever want to leave this place,” Dimitar mused semi-seriously as he gazed down at the magnificence of Venus. “I say the same thing to Grav every time you guys come here, and he never has an answer, either. I love Terradox, but how can you want to leave this?”

  “I’m not in charge of this,” Holly replied, deadpan. “Terradox is my responsibility, and it’s a big responsibility. There’s a lot to oversee.”

  “Like these security changes you’re going to introduce when you get back? These new intra-zonal restrictions on colonists’ movement? Are you truly confident that this is going to be well received when they understand what it actually entails?”

  Holly sighed, frustrated to be talking about this again. “My job is to keep Terradox safe, Dimitar, and that’s all I’m going to say on this. It’s not a popularity contest.”

  “But surely at some point, a heightened level of frustration and dissatisfaction can become a security issue in and of itself,” Dimitar said. “I just think this could be worth some further discussion and that it might be worth putting some more trust in—”

  “I trusted Dante,” Holly interrupted, spitting out a name Dimitar hadn’t heard in several years. The suddenness and unintended loudness of her utterance also caught the attention of the others in the balcony area, while the name itself made them even more uneasy than it made Dimitar.

  Holly didn’t seem concerned by their uncomfortable reactions.

  “I trusted Dante,” she repeated, albeit far more quietly, “and he nearly killed us. All of us. He was supposed to be on our side, Dimitar, chaperoning people to the station, but he was with Roger fucking Morrison. You weren’t there when he manipulated our Karrier off-course and forced our crash-landing on Terradox. I was. You weren’t there when we didn’t know where the hell we were or what the hell Terradox even was. I was. People talk about the seven saviours; you know, the seven of us who ‘found’ Terradox. But there were eight of us, Dimitar. Eight. For some reason, everyone always likes to forget about the traitor. He was a mole, using our journey from Earth to the station as his way of getting to Terradox to confirm it was safe and ready for Morrison, but no one ever talks about that. It’s the same when they like to forget that we didn’t ‘find’ anything — he brought us there, and we had to fight to escape. No one likes to remember the dirty parts. But if Viola hadn’t followed Dante outside that night when she did, he would have sent the signal back to Earth. He would have sent the signal that Terradox was ready, and Morrison would have begun his Great Reset to wipe out the billions of people he saw as leeches just as soon as him and his few thousand chosen buddies had set off to hide out on Terradox. That’s what trust almost got us, Dimitar: killed.”

  Dimitar said nothing, following a hunch that Holly wasn’t finished. He was right.

  “And that’s without even mentioning David Boyce and his botched coup two years ago. That’s without even mentioning the dozens of honest security officers who died for nothing that day because the systems in place weren’t sufficient — because the idiots higher up the chain hadn’t given them what they needed to keep Terradox safe. But now? For as long as I’m in charge? Whatever it takes to make sure nothing like that can ever happen again, it’s going to be done. I’m on the same page as Grav when it comes to security: we would rather have a gallon too much than an ounce too little. And if you’re asking me if I’d prefer the people I’m responsible for to be ‘restricted’ and safe, rather than ‘free’ and rotting in the sun like those guards Boyce’s men killed when our focus was on Netherdox… well, take a wild guess which one I’m leaning towards.”

  No one spoke for several seconds, allowing the background noise of a nearby TV set to be heard. Holly glanced over at the screen and saw that Terradox Live was airing, currently focusing on Chase Jackson and Nisha Kohli as it so often did.

  “It’s pretty incredible,” Dimitar said, his tone far lighter than it had been moments earlier. He was clearly keen to move on from the fractious discussion about the imminent security changes on Terradox — which all seemed pretty set in stone, in any regard — and shifting to the more upbeat subject of Terradox Live was a good way to do so. “We know how they both feel and each of them clearly knows how the other feels, but none of the other four subjects have picked up on it.”

  “They’re smart kids,” Holly replied. She had personally ensured that the entire test crew were trained to a high standard and clear about how important it was to stick to the rules, but her relative lack of surprise over how well they had pulled it off did nothing to reduce her pride in them for doing so. The level of restraint that Chase and Nisha had shown during their year under the microscope in Little Venus was, to Holly’s mind, nothing short of exemplary.

  No such restraints were placed on civilian colonists, of course, with none of them expected or asked to abstain from anything. The only semi-related rule related to every colonists’ requirement to take sufficient care to avoid unauthorised pregnancies. The sufficiency of this care could be objectively measured, and to date it was clear that all married or declared couples on Terradox understood the situation and were act
ing accordingly.

  When the reasons for certain rules and restrictions were explained clearly, Holly had always found that intelligent people were receptive to reason. And whatever the doubters told her, she saw no reason to expect anything different in regards to the introduction of intra-zonal restrictions.

  Dimitar said nothing else on the subject of Terradox Live, misreading Holly’s lack of focus as a desire to avoid this subject, too. Three months earlier, she had spent most of her quarterly presentation bemoaning the inconveniences caused by the show’s executive producer, Monica Pierce, who she described as “the most dangerous kind of idiot: the kind who wants the wrong things and knows how to get them.”

  “Well,” he said, his tone changing again, this time from upbeat to businesslike, “I think we both know that we’re not here to talk about security or TV shows.”

  Holly grinned in reaction to Dimitar’s trademark straightforwardness. “We aren’t?”

  “Nope,” he laughed. “Don’t you remember this talk from every other time you’ve come here for a board meeting? This is the talk where I push for more novel romotech applications and you say no. At least, that’s what usually happens…”

  “I can save you some time and say it now,” Holly suggested, still grinning.

  Her general opposition to unnecessary applications of romotechnology, the now-mature scientific field which explored and enabled the manipulation of matter on a level too small for almost anyone to truly comprehend, was very well known. Some observers criticised what they saw as hypocrisy in her stance, given that both Terradox itself and the entire infrastructure of the colony she now managed on its surface were products of romotech-based construction.

  Holly, however, saw her own position as perfectly consistent and had argued that case more than once. Roger Morrison’s creation of Terradox had been as irresponsible and as reckless as his reasons had been demonic and demented, she acknowledged, but the romosphere had long since been tamed. The buildings and infrastructure of the colony, meanwhile, had been constructed using still remarkable but well-established romotech construction methods which had been demonstrated on Earth long before anyone outside of Morrison’s inner circle had ever even heard the word Terradox.