by M. M. Perry
Brian nodded.
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
Most of the kids chatted happily and raised their own tables. Only a couple sat with the adults. Two said hello to Brian and Jamil, but moved along. After everyone was seated, an administrator came into the room and commanded their attention.
“Hello! As we have a couple of new faces here, I’ll introduce myself. My name is Administrator Sara Brazelton. I’m the administrator for the Lions.”
Jeremy and Naomi tried not to giggle when they heard the group name. They both remembered choosing the most fearsome animals they could find in the ship’s databases to call themselves in their Childhood Learning groups.
“I encourage you,” Administrator Brazelton went on, “to introduce yourselves to our two new faces when you get a chance. For now, let me introduce them. Naomi Tesla and Jeremy Earhart. Welcome to the Lions!”
The room applauded.
“There are no other announcements today. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Trays came out of the service door and levitated around the room, pausing at each table so the diners could take a breakfast. Naomi noticed there wasn’t any choice. Each tray was labeled with a name. Both hers and Jeremy’s had an uninspired breakfast of eggs, toast and a wedge of fruit.
“You’ll get to pick your breakfast in the future. You missed the choices for this week. This common room isn’t as large as the cafeteria, so they only bring what we ask for,” Jamil said, noticing Jeremy’s disgruntled face.
“You can have my eggs. I’ll take your fruit,” Naomi said, offering her plate to Jeremy.
“Thanks, love.”
He handed her his wedge of apple and eagerly took her eggs.
“Pilot work. He usually has a bigger breakfast,” Naomi said as she watched Brian’s amused face.
They’d hardly had time to eat before a young girl with freckles came up to their table.
“I know we’re not supposed to talk about it,” she glanced at Brian and gave him a furtive look, “but our test results are coming back soon. I know I was tagged an engineer. I just wanted to say, when we get our last names in three months, I hope I get Tesla. I’ve read all about him.”
Naomi smiled at the girl.
“That would give us something in common.”
Brian opened his mouth to voice his concern.
“Yes. Okay, okay, Brian, I won’t push my luck. It’s nice to meet you, Naomi. And you Jeremy. I hope to see you at dinner.”
The girl scampered off.
“I mentioned they’d press you,” Brian said. “At this age, it’s like they’re daring the administrators to come down on them.”
“I had a chief tell me Tesla’s are uppity yesterday,” Naomi joked unthinkingly.
She instantly regretted the confidence. Jeremy stopped eating and his wrist monitor began glowing.
“Who said that to you?” Jeremy spat egg as he spoke.
Jamil placed his hand gently on Jeremy’s shoulder.
“It’s alright, friend,” he said quietly. “We don’t need to bring a counselor over here for that. She’ll ask why you got upset. You’ll have to say. They’ll ask why Naomi didn’t report it. It will be a lot of trouble. Be a dear and cough on some egg now, yes, now would be a good time.”
Jamil began patting Jeremy on the back roughly. Jeremy took the cue and coughed up egg. Jamil slowed his slapping when a counselor showed up at the table.
Jeremy, taking a deep drink of water, gave a thumbs up to the counselor as his monitor slowly returned to normal.
“You should be more careful,” the counselor said.
“He’s very hungry. He isn’t used to the smaller breakfast,” Naomi said, patting Jeremy’s arm.
The counselor looked down at the paltry amount of food on Jeremy’s plate.
“Oh, yes. I forgot you were used to the way things worked in General Leisure. I think I can arrange for larger portions to be brought until you have a chance to fill out the order form. You have a good day now,” the counselor said as he whisked off, an alert flashing on his wrist.
After he was gone, Naomi looked at her plate.
“I’m so sorry Jeremy,” she said in an even tone. “I didn’t mean to catch you off guard.”
“No one will notice,” Jamil whispered. “You covered well. The kids are almost thirteen. The counselors in this group are already overworked, what with all the drama. And that’s rubbish about the names anyway. Foolish thing for a chief to say. You aren’t given your name based on anything but a ship location. It’s based on which family unit you were born in. This might be a Tesla group. I don’t know. Hopefully Harriet will be one if she likes the name, but it means nothing. I’ve seen the program myself. Anyway, I can see from the way Jeremy’s looking at you, Naomi, you two should run along and have a moment to yourselves before you head off to work. Take comfort. Dwelling on that will build up. There’s an energy bar in my cubby you can grab, Jeremy, since I cost you half your breakfast.”
Jeremy nodded his thanks and stood, Naomi following. She moved to clear her tray but Jamil waved her away.
“Get along, you two. We’ll clean up.”
When they left the common room, Jeremy took Naomi’s hand and walked with her back to their unit. She could see his monitor was starting to pink up.
“I’m going to take a shower before work. You’ve got egg all over you. Join me?” she hinted.
Jeremy glanced at his arm and nodded as he stripped off his jumpsuit. Naomi pulled hers off as well and stepped onto the circular floor of the shower. Jeremy jumped in after her. She saw two names pop up on the wall with different times next to them. She chose her own and the screen went dark except for a time being counted down. The water turned on, instantly warm.
“I’m sorry. I forgot about it until just then,” she began.
“No,” Jeremy said, placing his hands on either side of her face. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my cool. I just… a chief. He should know better. But these days it seems the higher up they are, the more dickish they are. It’s been getting worse the closer we get to Mission’s End.”
Water dripped down Jeremy’s long, slender nose onto Naomi’s cheek.
“It’s alright. No harm done, right? Enjoy this moment. Take comfort,” Naomi said.
Jeremy smiled and closed his eyes as he wrapped his arms around Naomi and let the warm water run over them.
Naomi brushed through her damp hair, working the kinks out while Jeremy sat close by, enjoying the warmth of her body and the scent of her fresh, clean skin.
“Thanks for sharing your shower,” he said as she finished. “Two in twenty-four hours. That is a treat. I’ll have to return the favor.”
“I’d like that,” Naomi said.
As they left the unit, Jeremy kissed Naomi quickly.
“We’re in different directions today. Good luck with the gennie. I’ll see you tonight. Don’t forget the drop party.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t.”
Naomi smiled after him and started toward the center of the ship. As soon as she took a few steps toward her destination, she began her counting. She kept watch on her wrist, keeping her nerves in check. She picked up her pace so she wouldn’t be late. When she got to Experimental Engineering, she found Alphea standing outside.
“I’m so sorry,” she began.
“You aren’t late, Naomi. I just wanted to catch you before we go in. Marcus has learned you’re going to be leading the expedition to the Tereshkova. He isn’t particularly happy about it. I’m just here with a friendly warning.”
“Oh,” Naomi said.
“It’s alright, there’s good news as well. I think between Basilia and me, we’ve solved our issue with the shielding.”
Naomi stared dumbstruck at Alphea.
“In one day?”
“Well,” Alphea began, “it wasn’t one day. The Tereshkova has been quiet for eight days now. We’ve been working on this particular issue the whole time.”
“I thought you were doing the calculations for getting the shuttle to fly at the proper speeds to dock.”
“That’s the kind of work that can be done by the regular engineers,” Alphea said.
The words were condescending, but her tone certainly wasn’t.
“Alphea, do you ever get lonely?”
Alphea continued to walk toward the simulation table that was set up with her model. Marcus was standing nearby, attending to something on his screen while coldly eyeing Naomi.
“Lonely? There are one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three people on this ship, Naomi. It isn’t big enough for me to be lonely.”
“I mean intellectually. I don’t see many gennies.”
“No, there are only seven gennies I could currently converse with. Two are too young. They only incubate a gennie every ten years. But you’re assuming I only derive pleasure from speaking to my intellectual equals. That simply isn’t so. In fact, they’re much harder to talk to than most.”
“Really?”
Alphea turned toward Naomi and smiled.
“Have you ever heard anyone say what fun they had speaking with a gennie?”
Naomi laughed and blushed, embarrassed that she’d started this topic of conversation.
“No. But you aren’t so bad. I feel a little out of my depth when you talk about specifics of your ideas, and one step behind when I think I have my own ideas, but that isn’t so terrible either. You make me feel like what we’re doing will work.”
“And that’s why we exist. We’re here to help you through the tougher parts of the mission. But we’re useless without the civilians on our team. Now, watch. I think this time we’ll see it work.”
Naomi heard Marcus snort from his station, but he continued to watch the simulation out of the corner of his eye.
“He’s upset,” Alphea said under her breath so only Naomi could hear, “because his idea didn’t work.”
Naomi tried not to smile too much at this, knowing Marcus was watching. Alphea started the simulation. Naomi watched as the shuttle moved toward the gap where the shielding ended. This time the ship made it. Naomi clapped her hands once in excitement.
“It worked.”
“In simulation,” Marcus said gruffly as he approached. “You won’t get me on that shuttle.”
“I never expected you would go, Marcus. You’ve got no spine.”
“I will be sending my man, however. First Engineer David Henry,” he said, emphasizing the word first as he looked down his nose at Naomi. “He’ll make sure your bad decisions don’t make things any worse.”
He turned and walked off to yell at a group of engineers chatting near their station.
“He’s angry. Because I’m a Tesla?”
“No. It’s because he’s an asshole,” Alphea said.
Once again Naomi was shocked at Alphea’s forthrightness.
“My good friend thinks the higher ups are getting worse as we get closer to Mission’s End,” Naomi said.
“He’s very perceptive, your friend. I would agree with that assessment.”
“Why, do you think? I’ve never had this kind of trouble before where I’ve worked.”
“They’re seeing the end of their time. They’re tiny tyrants here on this ship where they’re essential. They control everything we do. The conformity, Naomi. Without it, we’re not bound to do what they ask. We’ve all been told what it means to maintain it. Guaranteed success. Access to the fourteenth ship when we land. They’ve seen evidence of what happens when the conformity means nothing. They heard the reports from the other ships, before they stopped communicating with us. They know, once we’re down there instead of up here, we can get angry, sad, elated, without fear of counselors or punishment. We can take comfort, only instead of as an imperative to solve our issues, we can do it as we please, with as much passion as we desire. It’s a wild frontier we approach, Naomi. And they have no control over it. And it frightens them.”
Naomi looked across at Marcus who was angrily pointing out something on an engineer’s screen. She noticed despite his emotion, his wrist didn’t turn red. She thought about Alphea’s words as she followed her to a nearby workstation.
“What do you mean we’ve all been ‘told’ what it means to maintain conformity?”
“You’re also perceptive, Naomi Tesla.”
Naomi blushed.
“I just… the builders. In all the books, they don’t come across as people who would set up some do or die contest for all the ships. They wanted us all to succeed. Not just one.”
Alphea smiled at Naomi.
“Is this not what you would call ‘pod talk,’ Naomi?”
“Oh, do you need comfort, Alphea?” Naomi stuttered. “I c-can if you like. It’s not my preference, but I’d be alright with it. I should have declared. I usually do with people I work with. I just was…”
Alphea held up her hand to stop the stream of words coming from Naomi.
“Isn’t the saying, ‘comfort goes both ways?’ You shouldn’t offer, Naomi, if you aren’t comfortable with it. I thank you nonetheless. But it isn’t what I meant. Appropriately using slang isn’t one of my strong points. I’m merely suggesting we go somewhere our First Engineer will have a harder time eavesdropping. But first, we need to go to the shuttle bay.”
Alphea walked smoothly through the corridors in front of Naomi. The orange floors stretched out the width of the ship in a gentle curve. They climbed past Port Engineering and were heading closer to Rear Engineering, where Naomi had worked before she had been transferred to Port. Naomi hurried along, trying to keep up. Alphea was impossibly tall and graceful, making it hard for Naomi to match her pace. When they finally got to their lift, Naomi was able to catch her breath. She glanced at her wrist. Despite her vitals being elevated, the monitor knew the difference between anxiety and exertion so it remained a soft white.
“I sometimes wish I timed these cross-ship jaunts for days the turn was happening,” Alphea said.
“Hmm?” Naomi asked, trying to look dignified as she panted.
“The turn. We could float the whole way there, bouncing off the halls.”
“Oh,” Naomi said, understanding. “Yes. We did that when we were in Childhood Learning a lot. Got in trouble for it too. And the occasional sprain, or worse broken bone if you were up too high when thrust kicked back in.”
The lift door slid open and Alphea stepped out onto another stretch of orange floor. Naomi followed, gazing up into the large hangar filled with shuttles. Jeremy had given her an informal tour of the shuttle bay once, but that had been long ago. She was still awestruck by the largeness of the place. It ran almost the entire width of the ship.
“Yes,” Alphea said, continuing to glide along, “I suppose that would be a risk. Still, I should put that on my to do list. Pretty amazing they figured out the turn with just simulations.”
Naomi smiled. She could tell Alphea was trying to put her mind at ease about flying over to the Tereshkova with only a simulation as proof the deed could be done.
“They did have like a hundred gennies on Earth working out the problems. That probably helped.”
“Indeed.”
“I remember them saying they woke up the builder for the turn that happened exactly halfway through the trip. A ceremony celebrating the epic feat of all humankind. Or something like that,” Naomi said, recalling the lecture.
“They told you that?” Alphea asked, surprised.
“Uh, well, it was engineering training. We talked more about the turns there than in Childhood Learning,” Naomi began, remembering more clearly. “It’s been a while, you know. Training finished more than ten years ago for me. But yes, I have this vague recollection they said that. Or someone told me that.”
“Your teachers, did they tell you much about the builder on board?”
“No, not really. Only that we have one and that they’re meant to help ships that stray from conformity remember their missions. But that becau
se of our conformity, we’ve never had to wake ours. Or something along those lines. If I’m remembering right, anyway.”
“Hmmm,” Alphea said enigmatically.
They were approaching a whole team of engineers, pilots and ship constructors. Naomi didn’t see any truly familiar faces, only the vague familiarity that comes from passing the same two thousand people your whole life. Alphea stopped to speak to one and Naomi looked around the flight deck. She didn’t expect to see Jeremy, but he surprised her and caught her eye. He was trying to act casual. He was looking at a diagnostic readout for a shuttle nearby.
He wasn’t the only one who just happened to need to check a shuttle near the commotion. Naomi could see at least a half dozen other pilots who were checking gear or readouts nearby, glancing up furtively at the group. Jeremy smiled over at Naomi and waved his hand surreptitiously at his waist. Naomi returned the gesture. She wasn’t used to seeing Jeremy in his gear. He had weights strapped to his arms, legs and mid-section to keep him fit for the rigors of his job. She knew he wore them at work but she’d only ever seen it a couple times. He moved sluggishly with them on. She was used to seeing him look much lighter of foot.
“Is that your friend?” Alphea asked from behind Naomi, causing her to jump a little.
“Oh, uh, yeah. My pilot friend. Jeremy.”
“He seems very sweet. You are being careful, yes?” Alphea asked quietly.
Naomi thought she understood what Alphea meant. It could be hard sometimes to parse her cryptic words, but this time she thought they were on the same page as she looked over at Jeremy, who was pretending to be busy with something. She nodded and counted in her head with each breath.
“Good. Losing friendship like that to counseling, it would be a waste if you ask me. Now,” Alphea said, changing the subject and speaking louder, “let’s meet the team, shall we?”
Alphea led Naomi to the center of the group. Everyone there looked deadly serious. Naomi silently counted again, this time for different reasons.
“This is second engineer Naomi Tesla. She’ll be leading the group at my behest. First Pilot Alicia Wright and First Co-Pilot Corey Aldrin will be piloting the shuttle. Chief Pilot Chen Lindbergh assures me, when he retires, one of these two will be taking his place. Those flying are in good hands. First Engineer David Henry will be going, as well.”