Callisto Deception

by John Read

  “You know that mole on your backside?” the tech asked in a nasally voice. A smile crept across Amelia’s face. “It has two hairs on it.”

  “Jesus,” Avro said, shaking his head.

  We then entered a room lined with dressing room-like stalls. A sign read “Catheter Station”.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  I entered the nearest stall and was met by a woman perhaps ten years older than myself wearing scrubs.

  “Take off your clothes and lie down,” she directed, extracting a table from the wall. I took off my closes. The woman held out her hand and I passed her each item.

  “I’ll get these back, right?” I said as the female technician checked my pant pockets, which were empty. She then rolled my clothes into a ball.

  “Nope,” she replied. My face turned red as I handed over my underwear. The technician opened a hatch in the wall marked “Recycolizer” and dunked the clothes inside. The machine hummed as it chewed on the polyester fabric, morphing it into filament for the printers.

  I lay down and the woman affixed a catheter and probe to my lower orifices. I grunted as she completed her work.

  “Goddammit, man!” Kevin yelled from the adjacent stall.

  We gathered outside the stalls wearing only our new high-tech underwear. Amelia and Serene wore hospital gowns. Kevin and I stood embarrassed, awkwardly trying to look cool by not to hold our hands over half exposed groins. Avro and the commander looked as though nothing had happened, while Singer and Nash wore an oorah-expression as if they’d just returned from battle.

  The technicians led us into another room where eight crèches glowed in soft ultra violet light. The crèches inclined at forty-five degrees and inside each one rested a starfish-like entity, resembling a mysterious black sea flower clinging to a coral reef.

  Kevin’s embarrassment faded and he glowed when he realized what it was. “Military grade feedback suits,” he marveled.

  “A step-up from anything I’ve seen before,” I said. “Those things look like they can pack a punch, literally.”

  “That is their purpose,” Kevin said. “Literally.”

  Monitors on each crèche blinked technical statistics. Our names glowed in bold font, superimposed among the data. I walked toward the crèche marked “Orville”.

  Technicians guided us down into the suits like infants forced into onesie pajamas. The nerdy tech from the scanner, and assigned to me, adjusted the suit around my new techno underwear. My body winced as he placed IVs in my wrists and shivered as he secured biometric sensors to my chest.

  Two zippers running up my legs connected at the neck, sealing my body snugly inside. It was a surprisingly comfortable contraption, albeit heavy, even in lunar gravity. After minor adjustments, the tech helped me to my feet. I took a few steps forward with cables dangling behind me like dreadlocks.

  We were led to the hangar and lined up against the wall like prisoners facing a firing squad. The techs stood beside us, holding our suit cables off the floor. Commander Tayler stepped forward and faced us. He wore the same heavy suit, and looked like a scuba diver on Trimix, ready to descend deep into a mysterious wreck. Behind him, curious NASA engineers gathered in anticipation.

  “Good morning,” the commander said, his voice echoing off distant hangar walls, silencing the growing crowd. “Today we’re about to embark on a journey, longer and more dangerous than any mission in NASA’s history. We’ll face uncertainty and do things no astronaut has ever done before.”

  Tracking down a fugitive trillionaire? I thought. Yeah, I’m pretty sure no astronaut has ever done that before.

  “That said,” the commander continued, “I can’t think of any other people in the solar system I’d rather see in those suits. We’ve assembled a hell of a team. We’ve got the best and most advanced equipment. And, with NASA’s patches back on our shoulders, I’m confident nothing will stop us. We’ll find H3, and bring him to justice.” He paused while the engineers clapped. “Good luck, and God speed, ladies and gentlemen. You may proceed to your spacecraft.”

  The engineers cheered, parting to let us pass as we lumbered toward the Jupiter Jump Ships. Men and women patted me on the back as I walked by, saying, “Good luck,” and giving artificial smiles as if we might never come back.

  “This is it,” my technician said, halting at a JJ. The spaceship loomed overhead. Thermal regulating wings folded upward with rail guns hanging ominously from their roots. Steps descended from the spherical cockpit like the tongue of a cat lapping milk, but pausing to check for danger.

  “After you,” said the tech.

  “Thanks, ah, Hutch,” I said, reading his nametag. The name was probably a call sign.

  I climbed the four steps leading into the cockpit, feeling the bulk of the suit pressing against my thighs. Inside it was a perfect white sphere, seven feet in diameter with no windows. The rear of the sphere held several cargo compartments, which popped open when touched. I stashed my personal effects bag and turned to lend a hand to my tech.

  Hutch was right behind me, holding the cables. He pressed his hand on the side of the sphere marked “SPAR INTERFACE” and a metallic beam extended into the cockpit from the rear. A digital interface appeared on the wall and the engineer began entering commands.

  “Place your back against the spar, please,” Hutch said. I set my back against the beam as instructed. He tapped more commands and the floor began to rise, creating a stool beneath my feet.

  Hutch pushed on my midsection, forcing my lower back deeper into the spar. My suit click-locked into place with an electromagnetic seal.

  “I’m going to lower the stool now,” he said.

  I nodded as the stool sank into the floor, leaving me hanging in the air. The technician connected the cables, verbalizing each cable’s function as he plugged it in. “Power, check … Data, check … Fluid, check … IV, check … Waste management, check.” He paused, and then said, “Okay, you’re all set. When you arrive on Callisto, you’ll find the release switch in the main menu.”

  I continued to hang, waiting, while the technician retrieved one more thing. The hood. It was black like the resistor suit, and covered my entire face. He pulled it down over my head. A cold metallic mesh contacted my skin, touching my cheeks, forehead, nose, and lips. My eyes alone were left uncovered. With the hood in place, the tech sealed a panoramic visor over my eyes, plunging me into darkness.

  He made several final adjustments to my suit and asked, “How’s that, everything snug?”

  “Yup,” I answered. “It’s snug alright. But kind of dark in here.”

  “Hang tight while I activate the system.”

  There was a pulse of electromagnetism, the sound of capacitors filling with charge. My suit went rigid, my legs pressed into a seated position by some invisible force. The visor flickered on and I could see the hangar. I could see my hands, my arms, but not the suit, or even Hutch. My arms were bare. I could see veins and tiny hairs on the back of my hand. The wedding band wrapped around my finger, permanently etched in the Avatar’s micro-polygon structure. It was the one thing I never took off. I thought it fitting that even the computer considered it a part of my body.

  My avatar wore a blue NASA jump suit, with black boots laced up in military style. I could feel the warmth of wool socks underneath.

  Semitransparent displays flickered in augmented reality: navigation, communication and flight controls. Glass rudder pedals shimmered into existence below my feet. I reached forward with my right hand, grabbing the control stick, which I could feel in my palm.

  Technicians descended from the cockpits of the other JJ’s.

  “I’m going to leave you now,” Hutch said. “Good luck.”

  I could hear him, but not see him, jog down the steps to the hangar deck. The hatch hissed shut behind him. The tech shimmered into existence as he walked further from the spacecraft, into range of the ship’s external cameras. The engineers funneled out of the hanger, into the complex, like schoo
l children leaving the playground.

  A message flashed in my field of view: “Comm System Active”. The words were accompanied by two bursts of simulated radio static.

  “Commander Tayler here. Comm check, over.”

  “Johnson here, I read you five by five,” Serene said. Her voice emanated from the left side of my cockpit, her spacecraft illuminating as she talked. According to a giant number hovering above her ship in augmented reality, her spacecraft was designated “2”. Tayler’s spacecraft was number “1”. My spacecraft was designated number “6”.

  “Singer, five by five.” Singer’s voice emanated from the number “3” ship.

  “Nash, five by five,” said number “4”.

  “Shephard, five by five,” Amelia said, sounding confident as usual.

  “Orville, five by five,” I said.

  “Patel, five by five.” Kevin sounded scared. I didn’t blame him.

  “Avro, five by five.”

  Tayler’s ship illuminated. “The NASA folks have control. They’ll activate your reactor and load our training programs for the trip. After the ion engines have been activated, they’ll transfer control back to us. Any questions?” A momentary silence lingered over the channel. “Excellent. I’ll meet you in the metaverse. Enjoy the launch. Tayler out.”

  The spacecraft taxied from their berths, turning down the length of the hangar. The launch bay door opened wide, swallowing the first JJ before closing like a giant’s mouth. Thirty seconds later, the mouth opened, empty, ready to swallow its next meal.

  I watched Amelia’s spacecraft disappear behind the giant’s metallic jaw. Less than a minute later the door opened and my JJ lumbered inside. The barrier closed behind me and the air drained from the room.

  A forward hatch opened and my spacecraft lurched forward. The deck beneath my craft pitched upward, and I faced down a tube, feeling like a spitball in a straw. LEDs blinked inside the tube-like runway lights. Stars twinkled at the end, their perfect light polluted by cryogenic outgassing in the chamber.

  “Liftoff in five, four, three, two, one,” said my ship’s female computer, a voice identical to the Sam Turing computer found in most holovisions.

  Hydrogen thrusters fired, throttling up to full. Here we go again, I thought, and flexed my stomach muscles in anticipation of the massive g-load. Mag-brakes released and my JJ shot forward like a bullet. The craft rumbled and my vision blurred with the vibration. The acceleration pressed me into my virtual seat, the resistors fighting back, preventing me from being skewered by the spar stemming from my back.

  Within seconds, I was thousands of meters above the lunar landscape, then kilometers. The mountains and craters blurred behind me.

  My heart pounded, as my lungs fought the acceleration. With the sun behind me, the blackness of space filled my peripherals, the VR helmet forming the image from dozens of cameras on the spacecraft’s exterior.

  A display pegged my relative lunar velocity at a relatively paltry 10,000 kilometers per hour, a speed just north of lunar escape velocity. A moment later, the acceleration stopped and weightlessness caressed my body once more.

  “Ion engines activating,” said the ship. I felt a slender push as the nuclear reactor came online, the VASMR engines creating an electromagnetic field in the spacecraft’s rear. Xenon from the spacecraft’s tanks trickled into the engines. Even with nuclear powered ion engines, it would take our ships over a week to reach our cruising speed of 300,000 kilometers per hour.

  The eight ships met in formation as we screamed away from the Earth-Moon system. The Jupiter Jump Ships were stealthy, absorbing 99.9% of all light in the visible, infrared, and radio spectrum. With boosters switched off, the ships were effectively invisible against the blackness of space.

  “Spacecraft control transferred to internal flight computers,” Tayler said. I could tell there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “It’s time we settle in and get to know each other. You might want to close your eyes for a moment, it’s about to get very bright.”

  The dark view of outer space disappeared, and suddenly, my eyes were awash with light. Kevin raised a hand to cover his.

  “There are sunglasses in your pockets,” Tayler said. The day was warm, but a cool breeze blew against my skin. The suit uses temperature and pressure differential to create wind, I reasoned, reaching into my left breast pocket to pull out the aviators and thinking about how silly it must look in reality, a gloved hand reaching at my chest, grabbing at the air.

  We took it all in. Palm trees bent towards the shore, providing shade over a half dozen white plastic reclining beach chairs.

  We stood on the porch of a bamboo house with a thatched roof. The structure lacked window panes, and we could see inside. The door frame, which was in serious need of paint, lacked a door.

  The eight of us stood on the deck in a circle. The men wore Hawaiian T-shirts and trunks, and the women wore short-shorts and floral blouses.

  “What is this, 1950?” Serene said.

  “There are plenty of other clothes in your closets if you don’t like what you’re wearing,” Tayler said.

  We followed him through the front door and stood in the living room. Assorted chairs, that appeared to have been purchased from a thrift shop, faced a coffee table made from two electrical spools, obviously dragged from the sea, their wooden planks turned grey like driftwood. The walls were decorated with surf boards and guitars. Single incandescent light bulbs hung from black wires.

  “What about sleeping arrangements?” Amelia asked, looking at Avro.

  “Everyone has their own room, but if anyone wants to bunk together, that’s fine with me,” the commander said, going to the kitchen and pouring himself a drink.

  Avro touched the small of Amelia’s back. She smiled, pleased with the sensation.

  I looked at each of the bedroom doors that surrounded the living area. Our names were painted in pastels on driftwood hanging from frayed rope. Near the back of the common area, a pool table, ping pong table, and a foosball table beckoned to be played.

  “Oh, I’m totally killing y’all at foosball,” Amelia said, going over to the table and twisting a couple of the knobs. Kevin followed, retrieving a ball from a gumball machine located by the back door.

  Luke Singer and Jamaal Nash sat together on the couch. A holovision in the corner turned on and began playing a basketball game, Cleveland vs Miami.

  I walked over to the commander. “Is that a beer?” I asked.

  The commander smiled, and tossed me a cold one. “Nonalcoholic,” he said.

  I twisted off the lid and put the bottle to my lips. I could feel liquid emerging from the seam in the hood where the resistors met my lips. The liquid was chilled, and flavored. “How many flavors-sims are there?”

  “There are enough,” the commander replied, his tone indicating that he’d spent more than his fair share of time in deep-sim.

  Serene gave the commander a nod, and he tossed her a Heineken. She took it over to a hammock and sat down, feet on the floor, and stared into space. I wondered what her story was, if she’d lost people in the Bradbury disaster, too.

  I paced around the room, stopping at a bookshelf resting above a cabinet filled with volleyballs and tennis rackets. The titles were arranged in alphabetical order, starting with Asimov’s foundation series, and ending with several titles by Jules Vern and H.G. Wells. I pulled down a collection of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, and opened the anthology at the center. The images were of cartoon shaped rockets, and women in metal bathing suits brandishing oversized ray guns. I sat down with the book, turning the pages between sips.

  By the time I finished the beer, I’d almost completely forgotten I was zooming through space, alone in a seven-foot sphere.

  When everyone was settled into one activity or another, the commander held up his hands, pausing the game on the holovision.

  “Enjoy it while you can, folks; training starts tomorrow morning at zero-six-hundred. Wear shoes, not sanda
ls, because once we begin, you won’t have time to change.”

  A watch on my left wrist indicated the time; I looked at it, and did a double take. We left the quad at 0600, were in space by no later than 1100.

  That was less than an hour ago. I looked out the window. The sun hung low in the sky, and it was almost evening.

  We were now on ship’s time now, but 0600 would come far too soon.

  13

  Another five months passed and the convoy reached the halfway point in its journey. Marie and Lise jogged through the Park of Nations near the Center for Genetic Diversity. Flags of the world fluttered in the breeze and birds soared overhead.

  A bird-cycle race passed over. The bicycle hang-glider hybrids granted far greater maneuverability than the hang-gliders. Their pilots peddled like madmen, as a simple gear drove the canvas corkscrew, a system inspired by Leonardo daVinci; a machine that would only fly in this gravity.

  Lise was usually quiet on their runs, using the exercise as a form of meditation. But this morning, she said, “I met someone.”

  They jogged an additional five paces before Marie responded. She was caught off-guard by the sudden change in character. Lise didn’t seem like the type of woman to get excited about a man. “Let me guess, you were testing that compatibility application you designed?” Marie said, slightly out of breath from the run.

  “Okay, I admit, it was a selfish endeavor,” Lise said with a smile, and not a hint of exertion.

  “Does he know he’s part of an experiment?”

  Lise made a face, as if shrugging, but with her eyes, and Marie laughed.

  “There’s something else,” Lise said. “He’s on my ship, the Klondike. We’ve been sharing meals together, and spent time outside of Calli in the Klondike’s private rec room.”

  Marie stopped running and Lise hauled to a stop a few steps ahead, turning around.

  “You …” Marie said, leaning over to rest her hands on her knees, a natural reaction to stopping after a long run.