Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1)

by T. J. Sedgwick

  Marcela said, “So I’m trying to get Mia out more now we’ve got a babysitter we trust.”

  The drinks arrived and Mia didn’t hold back, drinking her wine faster than Blanco drank his beer—quite a feat for someone as slight as she. Luker sipped his beer as usual, listening politely to Mia talk about herself and her trading adventures and her shopping addiction. All the while, she tried to maintain eye contact with Luker as though she’d never seen a single man before. Luker considered it a distinct possibility given most of her time was spent alone, in her soulless pursuit of money and clothes she’d never wear. By her third glass of wine, he had to excuse himself to the bathroom just for some brief respite.

  As the double date went on, Luker could see why Mia remained single, despite the past boyfriends she took the time to tell them all about. She was physically attractive for sure, but that was about as far as it went for Luker.

  He nearly choked on his beer when she asked him, “So what are your life goals, Dan? Do you see yourself settling down, having kids or what?”

  He cleared his throat, and said, “Yeah, maybe one day. Once I meet the right person I guess.”

  She smiled at him as if this was her moment, as if she was the right person, despite his obvious lack of interest. He didn’t return her gaze and for the first time she seemed aware.

  The waiter brought over the desert menu, but Mia placed hers down and got up checking her smartwatch.

  She said, “Sorry, guys I’m gonna have to bail. Some volatility on oil futures that the algorithm’s not handling.”

  Marcela stood, slightly taken aback at first, but giving Mia a knowing smile in understanding of her friend’s shortcomings. “O-kay lovely lady. Well, I hope you had fun.”

  She kissed her friend’s cheeks and Blanco did the same.

  Mia said, “Yeah, of course. Nice to meet you, Dan.”

  Luker got up to see her off but was met with a tight smile and a brief wave before Mia sped off while retrieving her smart glasses from her bag.

  “Nice to meet you too, Mia.”

  The three sat back down. Marcela exhaled, running her fingers through her long dark hair. Blanco chuckled and was met with a playful nudge by his wife.

  He said, “Well that went well, mi amor.”

  “Don’t...” replied his wife, semi-seriously.

  Luker said, “She sure is an interesting character.”

  Blanco laughed and said, “Interesting? She’s a nut job, man!”

  Marcela said, “She is not! She’s a nice person, successful, good looking, just a little... different.”

  He said, “Yeah, for different read money-obsessed, shopaholic with no friends.”

  “Well, I’m her friend. She just needs more socialization, that’s all. I guess she wasn’t your type Dan.”

  He said, “Afraid not, Marcela. But hey, you can’t win ‘em all and it was nice of you to set this up. And I got to see you guys. Say, want some dessert?”

  ***

  It was nearly ten and Blanco and his wife needed to be home for the babysitter. Luker said his goodbyes at the lobby and his friends got into a driverless cab home. He turned toward the concierge desk to order his own cab and saw a familiar face emerge from the brass-door elevator. It was Juliet, the beautiful blonde friend of his sisters that he’d met nearly eighteen months before at the party. She wore a smart black pantsuit and had her hair tied back. She looked businesslike but in a relaxed, assured sort of way.

  Perhaps it was due to his height but she set eyes upon him straight away and broke into a warm smile. Truth be told, he’d thought about her on and off ever since their brief introduction. There was something about her. He stopped and returned the smile and she changed direction and walked toward him. She stopped opposite him and he was unsure whether to shake hands or kiss her cheek like he wanted to, but she made the decision for him and leaned forward and pecked his cheek. Her lips felt soft, her fragrance delicate and modern.

  “Hi, Dan. Great to see you. What brings you here?”

  Her large blue eyes sparkled with warmth and interest in him.

  “Oh, just dinner with some friends. They just left and—”

  “Wanna go get a drink? My treat.”

  He loved the way her voluptuous lips moved when she spoke. He could watch her mouth speak all day long.

  “Sure, that’d be real nice, Juliet.”

  She said, “Come on, I’ll lead the way—it’s on the top floor.”

  They got back into the empty elevator and the doors closed. Even though she was reasonably tall, in the enclosed space she needed to incline her head to talk to him.

  “So what brings you here, Juliet?”

  “Just finished dinner in the fifth-floor restaurant with some venture capitalists. The next phase of our flagship project needs more funding than we thought.”

  “Nikki said you run some hi-tech startup firm. What is it you do exactly?”

  “I guess it was a startup not so long ago. I’m founder and CEO of Silicon Life Works. I suppose it’s a software company at heart, specializing in virtual world building technology. Yeah ... so that’s been my work since college. Got a good team around me now, so I can enjoy life a bit more these days and not talk about work all the time.”

  Luker chuckled as the elevator reached the top floor.

  “I take the hint—no more talking shop.”

  “I like you already,” she said, smiling.

  They reached the top floor bar, ordered their drinks, and found a table for two next to the modern gas fire, preferring coziness to views of the rain soaked downtown on the cold February night. It was nothing like Idaho, but cold for the West Coast city.

  They hit it off that night, talking until later than either had intended. An introduction from Nikki, followed by mutual physical attraction had opened the door. But as the night went on, Luker grew to like Juliet more than he’d thought possible. Everything he saw told him she felt the same. They shared a similar sense of humor, outlook and loved living in L.A, despite what outsiders said about the place. He counted himself lucky not only to have bumped into her in the lobby but to have met her at a time when she was reprioritizing her work-life balance. Silicon Life Works would always be a major dimension in her life, but she made it clear it wasn’t going to be the only one.

  ***

  It was time to go and they returned to the lobby in which they’d met over two hours earlier. In an age when people commonly slept together after first dates, Luker felt the time wasn’t right regardless of whether he could get her in bed or not. This was a long-term thing with promising beginnings—no way was he going to let the urges of his loins ruin it. If it was meant to be there’d be plenty of time for the bedroom.

  As they stood at the front of the lobby, taxi waiting outside, she said, “I really enjoyed tonight.”

  He said, “Me too. When—”

  “I’m free next Friday ...”

  “Great, I’ll give you a call in the week sometime. Perhaps the show we talked about?”

  “Fantastic ... Yeah, that’d be nice. Okay, better get going. Early start and it’s past midnight.”

  He leaned forward and went to kiss her cheek before she turned her lips to meet his. He felt her soft lips linger as they parted slightly, her arms wrapping around him.

  She whispered, “When I said I enjoyed it, I meant it, Dan. Was really good seeing you tonight.”

  “You too, Juliet.”

  He lightly kissed her lips once more and they broke their embrace.

  Having walked her to the cab, its door opened automatically when its side camera recognized its passenger’s face. She smiled tenderly and waved goodbye before the door whirred shut.

  For the second time that night, he watched a cab drive away, but this time he felt exhilaration and joy.

  Two minutes later, he got in his own ride. On a night he’d thought would end up as a lost cause, he went home happy, his mind full of possibilities at where things might lead with J
uliet.

  Sunday, 3 August 2064, Nikki Luker’s Apartment, Los Angeles

  Six months later, Luker walked through the front door of his sister’s and mom’s apartment at nine a.m. that Sunday morning. Nikki was at the kitchen island making breakfast and looked up grinning at her brother

  She said, “No need to guess where you were last night, Danny boy. Did she kick you out early today?”

  “What sort of greeting is that, huh?” he said, jovially.

  “Well, you spend so much time at Juliet’s nowadays, you may as well live there!”

  “I’ve just come from the airport. She flew out on the first flight to Hawaii on business—”

  “Now Juliet’s going on business to Hawaii! Wow, I need to get a job like her.”

  He sat down at the breakfast bar and poured some black coffee from the cafetière.

  “You’re doing okay. And anyway, when are we celebrating your successful Webflix audition?”

  “The audition was for The Colony—Webflix is the company. Celebrations? Yeah, we probably should do something, once I get the time, that is. It’s a full time job acting, you know.”

  “Sure it is. Must be real hard coping with all the parties and cool friends,” he teased. “Where’s Mom, anyway?”

  Nikki ignored his baiting and said, “Gone swimming with her friends. Then for brunch, she told me.”

  “Saw the real sleeper ship on the way here—come take a look, it should still be visible.”

  “Give me a minute to finish off these pancakes. You want some?”

  “No thanks—already ate.”

  He went outside on the balcony with his coffee mug and looked into the clear morning sky. He’d seen a documentary the other night about L.A. in the late-twentieth/early-twenty-first century. As he took a breath of clean morning air, he found it hard to believe the city was once a bowl of semi-permanent smog in the days before electric vehicles. Overhead, high in the sky, the faded white outline of the skeletal Juno Ark was taking shape by the orbital shipyard. Nikki came out with her mug and joined his gaze.

  “Is that the ship?”

  “Sure is.”

  “When’s it gonna be leaving?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to know this for your TV show?” he asked with mock-intensity.

  “Oh, so you don’t know either smarty pants?”

  “2070 is the departure date, everything going to schedule.”

  “Well, that’s a long time. Have they chosen the people that’ll travel there yet?”

  “You mean the colonists?”

  “Yeah, the colonists.”

  “I’m not sure. I guess they’ll be a whole drawn out selection process and a whole bunch of training.”

  “You wanna apply, Dan?”

  He laughed dismissively, shaking his head.

  “You gotta be kidding! I can’t see any good reason why anyone’d wanna be put in stasis for a century and wake up to go live on a deserted planet. One-way trip, never see your friends or family again... No way, not for me, little sis.”

  “Okay, maybe you wouldn’t sign up. You’ve got family, your job and, of course, the lovely Juliet,” she said, “But what about people with no ties or the explorer spirit? They might wanna go.”

  Luker had to concede that the Juno Ark was expected to be massively oversubscribed.

  She said, “Do they actually know what’s waiting on the planet when they arrive? I read the probes that left years ago won’t report in ‘til they’re part-way there.”

  “The space-based telescope array’s damned powerful. They know it’s an Earthlike planet. They just don’t know the precise landing sites and geography—hence the fast probes they sent ... when was it? Maybe a decade back, I think ... maybe more.”

  “Crazy world we live in,” she said, turning to go back inside. “Come on; let’s eat before the pancakes get cold.”

  He followed her to the breakfast bar, taking a seat as Nikki organized the plates of pancakes and toppings.

  She said, “So how are things going with Juliet? She doesn’t have so much time for me now that you’ve stolen her away.”

  He chuckled a little and said, “I thought you were gonna accuse her of stealing me away! But yeah, we’re going good.”

  “We’re going good,” she said, shaking her head. “Can’t you be a little more ... specific? You guys see a future together or what?”

  “Hey, don’t hold back, now! But in answer to your questions, yeah. Yeah, I think we have a future.”

  She giggled excitedly. “I knew it when you guys met at the party when you first came here. I knew it!” Turning more serious, she continued, “But seriously, I am really happy for you two.” Then she smiled mischievously and said, “And you’ll have lots of beautiful, smart babies, too!”

  “Not so fast. We’ve only been together for six months. But yeah, I was gonna tell you guys soon. I’m going to move in with Juliet—should be out of your hair by next week.”

  “Hey, that’s fantastic, Danny! We’ll miss you, but you’re still in the same city. So here’s my plan for you: go move in, get married, have babies and then stay home and be daddy daycare while Juliet goes out and earns the big bucks. Voila, happy life.”

  He just smiled, not reacting.

  Still beaming, she said, “Hey, you have to admit it’s nice having a rich woman to take care of you. You can give up your job and—”

  He laughed calmly and said, “I know you’re just kidding, but seriously, I’ll never give up. I don’t do it for the pay, that’s for sure. No, it’s my life’s work, Nikki. I’ll always be a cop ... and yeah, maybe a dad one day too. That’d be real nice once the time’s right.”

  14

  Present Day, The Juno Ark

  Aided by the suit thruster pack, I tracked around the sunlit side of the ship toward Astronomy & Astrophysics. The observatory—situated at the bottom of Module 3 took up level one through four as one great, cavernous space. With any luck, it had escaped the damage I’d seen in the stairwell below Level 9 earlier. The staircase had been missing below that level, evidently destroyed by a blast. And there also remained the security droid hazard at the top on Level 20. It all meant one thing—I needed to find an airlock as close to Astronomy as possible. The observatory was easy to find for a spacewalker like me—three fifteen-foot cupolas marked the location—one on the port and starboard sides and another at the very bottom of the module. Supplementing the lack of full-sky view, they’d stowed the space telescope in the shuttle bay, ready for deployment on arrival in the Aura system. I didn’t know if it remained on board, or if it had been launched. It was probably academic, as few of the computer systems I’d seen had worked.

  A minute later, the large viewing dome—the port cupola—slid into view. I passed over it and slowed down to look. Although dirty, I could see that emergency lighting lit the inside of the high-ceilinged observatory. Concentrating on the blurred shapes inside didn’t reveal any floating objects or ones at strange orientations, so I concluded gravity was still in effect. I accelerated and reached the lower cupola and the airlock hatch thirty feet away at the very bottom of the module. Further along marked the large round outline of the emergency lifepod—a potential means of escape, which hadn’t been used. Note to self: check how many of the lifepods and shuttles were missing from other modules. This may yield some clue about the number of survivors on Aura-c.

  After checking that life support was on, I removed the spacesuit, untied the boots tethered to it and then put them on. I opened the door to a short corridor and climbed the metal stairwell from Level 0 to Level 1, emerging into the cavernous observatory. It measured around sixty feet and one-fifty from fore to aft, taking up the entire width of the module. The large, white cover dome of the central telescope occupied the middle of the floor. This was the downward-pointing telescope above the lower cupola. To my left and right were the port and starboard dome installations built into the sides of the observatory. The three giant scopes had two modes o
f operation—remote and manual. Remote operation sealed the internal dome, allowing the cupola to open to space, giving a clearer view outside. Manual operation allowed observers to enter the internal dome and use the telescope directly with the cupola closed. Other than the three domes, I could see a row of offices or labs built into the far wall. The open area in front of them hosted clusters of workstations and the near wall on my right had what looked like a glass-walled conference room. Just Beyond it, if I recalled correctly, were the large, white desks where the old professor had out his star charts and planetary maps.

  I went right, past the darkened conference room and toward the three large desktops. Although the dusty surfaces were devoid of paper maps, there sat a gray metal cabinet by the wall of the kind I’d seen before—wide metal drawers, each a few inches high—perfect for storing large plots. Of the eight drawers, only the top four bore labels. I opened the second drawer down reading, Aura-c and pulled out two A0-sized maps marked Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere. I laid each on a separate table—western on the left, eastern on the right—and leaned over the western map studying its detail. It showed the seas, continents, and extent of the polar ice caps of Aura-c. Color-mapped grid squares corresponding to a legend covered the entire map, save for a few areas reading No Data. I could also see contour lines of elevation, which were approximate, according to the small print. The legend explained the Earth-equivalent terrain types from tundra to forest to desert. There must’ve been a deal of interpretation, given the resolution was only to ten square miles. Impressively, this was all from near-Earth observations. Some more prominent markings caught my eye—the yellow circles marking potential colony locations. I read Octavia-A, Felix-A, Felix-B on the large island, which dominated the northern part of the western hemisphere. There were others too: Aubyn-A and Carrington-A and C and a handful more. But no Hyland-A—supposedly the primary location. I shifted to the other table and the eastern hemisphere map. Scanning the dozen or so location markers, I found Hyland-A, nestled on the southern coast of a large island in the northern hemisphere about ten degrees above the equator. According to the map, forest surrounded the would-be colony site on a large river by the coast. The forested grid squares along the coast gave way to mountains perhaps a sixty miles north. I tried to imagine what this pristine wilderness would be like.