REAP 23

by J J Perry

  Once inside, Chen, who was incessantly paranoid without reason, quickly assessed the crowd for people looking at him, spying, suspicious. He angled toward the street where crew quarters were housed. He saw Suresh Parambi, PhD and other initials that meant nothing to Chen, walking purposefully, his head above the crowd. Chen, in his visceral disdain for the man, decided to follow the “master” of the woman he loved. Suresh passed the retail shops and took a turn down a small alley marked by a red flag drooping motionless from a second-story level. Chen followed. When he could see his target again, Suresh was looking over a half a dozen women in salacious, bright clothing. The clerk of the brothel, a large young sumo wrestler–type joked with him as if they were old friends. Suresh was all business, however, and selected a hefty one with olive skin and black hair, much like himself in appearance. Except that she had four arms. He paid the vendor and slipped inside the building with his rented humanoid robot designed for erotic pleasure. Above the door was the sign:

  Waxing Gibbous Bordello

  Copumatic Prostibots

  Programmed with all techniques

  exotic, ancient and modern

  Chen had a fleeting moment of schadenfreude over that Suresh had to resort to purchased pleasures. It also intensified his burning hatred for the man in spite of the guiltless pleasure this business provided. He spun around and jogged back to prepare for the reaming by the general.

  1.2

  LAUNCH DAY -1

  One day later, it was the same stinking room, different scenario, same people, different result. “Nice job, everyone,” Chen said. “Nice recoveries from small glitches, good backup and communication.”

  Savanna, Cyrus, and Chen stood and stretched, not nearly as exhausted as the afternoon before. Leila entered from her separate station. In the mock-up, she was not the seven sections away she would be in the ship but in an adjoining cubicle. The other four crew members were almost always remote, working in a different section of the expansive building on their own projects in preparation for the mission. They wore headsets that connected them with the simulation, although, in most sessions, their responses were not required. The computer simulated landings on deserts, dry lake beds, and a variety of water features. It had heuristic programming and learned from the crew’s actions in the many hellacious predicaments they had to face. It was possible for one skilled person to fly the craft with considerable computer assistance. Each of the eight had to pass a basic competency for that eventuality.

  “Nice job,” said God. “No debrief. Take a long lunch. Come back at 1400 for the final simulation. I need not remind you of your farewell dinner tonight at 1800.”

  In a couple of minutes, Chen and Leila were alone again in the mock-up. Chen Wong had been appointed commander well after the crew had formed. The ergonomic psychosocial managerialists had determined that a nonthreatening, non-alpha male with a tendency to get along instead of bossing around would be the optimal leader for a group in extreme close quarters. Most serious challenges requiring decision-making had been worked out in advance based on previous experience and scenario projections and were codified in the manual. Chen was an engineer with a PhD from Cal Tech who had been a Frisbee champion years earlier. He was a third-generation Chinese American in his late twenties, the second oldest person in the crew. He was average in height, about 175 centimeters with coal-black hair from which he plucked errant grays from his temples every week. High cheekbones, generous lips, and high arched brows gave him a look of constant surprise; until he scowled, an expression he had far more often than he liked recently. He had been married to Lucinda for over five years, a childless relationship at his insistence. This mission would change that. At least, that was the intent.

  Next week a different crew would be sweating out satanic scenarios as had twenty two crews before them. He pointed to the exit into the long low corridor without cameras. They left together in silence. At an intersection, he stopped.

  “Let’s go to the ship, Leila.”

  “You don’t want to take advantage of the long break?” She rubbed both hands over his chest, looking wanton for passion.

  “I do. Maybe we can when I finish at the ship.”

  “What do you need to do?”

  “Make some adjustments.”

  “Temperature? God, Chen!” Her amorous ardor cooled. Her arms retracted; her feet stepped back.

  Chen’s eyes narrowed, his jaw hardened in the pause. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I despise Suresh, I truly do. He’s made my life an utter hell. You’re the one good thing I can enjoy outside of work. Don’t do this, please.”

  “If that’s really what you want.”

  “I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.”

  “OK, I won’t diddle with the pods. You know, if I wait until we take off, the mainframe will notice. It’s today or never.”

  “If you raise the temperature of the hibernation pods, they will—” She couldn’t finish.

  “Die in their sleep. We all might die the same way. Like I said, I won’t touch a thing. Come with and you’ll see for yourself.”

  Leila was silent and reluctant as they took a shuttle through tunnels and airlocks. Forty minutes later they entered the vessel. Chen stopped on the fourth floor and exited the lift as Leila went to the fifth, confident in his assurances.

  “Lucinda? Are you here?” Chen called out.

  A hand stuck out of a doorway. “In here, honey.” He approached.

  “Surprise!” Chen gave her his best boyish grin, dimples, and big teeth. “I came to visit my lovely wife.”

  “It looks like we all survived today,” Lucinda answered. Her long face was framed by medium-brown hair, a pragmatic length that hung just above her shoulders, tousled soon after starting her day. Her close set and deep blue eyes nestled under brows that were too big and straight, giving her an intense appearance even when asleep. She seldom wore makeup. Her medical degree was from USC two years earlier. She was seated with three other women. Chen noticed once again that she, at twenty-six, was the oldest and the least attractive woman. “Are you finished, or do you have one more gauntlet to run?”

  “One more, babe. Hi, everyone.”

  “We are basically done for today. We just need to dock the med-bots and give Medical a double check to make sure that everything is ready for liftoff.”

  “I’m going to the top floor to do the same.”

  “I thought you did that last night.”

  The other women were quiet, waiting for the husband-wife exchange to end. Maricia, her coworker, waved a hello. The two other ladies, medical robots, sat inhumanly still, pictures of model beauty.

  “I guess this is a triple check.” He squeezed her shoulder. “See you in quarters. We need to look good for the ceremony tonight.”

  “OK. See you then.” Chen bounded up the stairs two at a time to Command and Control. For takeoff and all travel until landing, the entire ship had a vertical configuration with seven floors instead of seven adjacent horizontal sections. The mock-up, where they had spent so much time recently, had almost always been in the landing, horizontal mode. It always took him a few seconds to reorient himself when he entered the room where the floor of the simulation suite was now a wall in the ship. He went to the commander’s console and started tapping and typing. He was alone. He brought up a personnel locator and put it in the corner of the screen. It showed two humans in Medical and two med-bots, just as he left it. Two humans were in Science, the fifth level. If anyone approached Command and Control, he would see it. The chips that appeared on the locator were implanted under the skin of each crew member. In addition to location, it provided physiological data monitored constantly by the system software.

  Leila, on floor five, spotted her husband immediately after leaving the elevator. “Suresh, how is it going?”

  “Everything is stowed. I’
m just working on some chemistry to kill time. How was the simulation today?” Suresh was a large man, almost two meters tall with muscles bulging through his long-sleeve maroon shirt, Swarthy Indian complexion, dark-ringed eyes, and a perpetual frown unless he was manipulating someone, which was a frequent occurrence. He used his broad smile and a transformed happy face frequently, as a tool, as a weapon, as a distraction. He grew up in wealth and privilege, his father earning enormous profits at the end of the great plague. He was a genius, a product of brilliant parents and individual tutelage, with an IQ around 165.

  “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Yes, but not paying attention.”

  “We survived, for a change.”

  “How reassuring.”

  “We have one more sim.”

  “I know that, Leila.”

  She pouted.

  “The general will want to boost confidence, so it won’t be hard.” He dismissed the thought with a flick of his hand.

  “I’m sure you’re right, dear. What’re you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going to work out this afternoon when I finish here.” As usual, he did not give his full attention to Leila, still working at his computer.

  “After you left this morning, I got a call. Your mother is flying in for the ceremony.”

  “Flying?”

  “You know what I mean. Her shuttle lands about a half an hour before dinner.”

  He stopped now and looked with irritation at his wife. “It takes two and a half days to get here from Mumbai.”

  “And she’s never been in space before, weightless for most of the trip. It’s a huge sacrifice for her to make without even considering the cost.”

  “How is she getting to the base?”

  “How do you want her to get there?”

  “You should arrange for a car. We’ll see her at the dinner.” He waved his hand dismissively and put his eyes back to the screen.

  “Why don’t you pick her up?”

  “She decided to come without warning. I think I’m being nice by providing a ride. Would you like to pick her up?”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be done in the training center. I don’t have a lot of time, and there are a couple of things I need to check here before I get back. I’ll see you in our room before dinner, Suresh.” He did not reply. He refocused, finished with meaningless distraction of a visit from his wife.

  Leila stomped up two flights of stairs, muttering, “Arrogant, narcissistic Hindu Brahmin bastard.” Chen alarmed at the approach of an icon on the locator until he realized it was Leila. He refocused on lines of code as they trickled down the large screen and cast a glance in her direction as she entered.

  “What are you doing there, Chen?”

  “The computer does a reset tonight. Just making sure I have backed up everything I want so it’s not erased.”

  Their eyes locked for a long moment. “I’m not messing with the pods, Leila. Honest!”

  “Leila, can you can back to Medical? Forgot to ask you something.” It was Maricia’s voce coming through her communicator, a pin on her tunic. She touched it.

  “Be there in a nano.” She winked and left.

  Soon Chen froze the screen. He edited two entries. Before he closed the program, he took a couple of steps to ensure that the main computer and anyone looking back would think the edits were original programming and not subject to question. In this mission with his level of security clearance, murder could be easy, undetectable, and free of punishment.

  He finished by bringing up the crew manifest of REAP 23. Theirs was the twenty-third mission of the twenty-third century to find habitable planets within a technically feasible distance. Feasible was always the term used instead of possible. None of this massive, expensive world-wide effort was proven by success.

  Chen Wong

  Commander

  Lucinda Fischer

  Medic

  Suresh Parambi

  Scientist

  LeilaNguyen

  Engineer

  Cyrus Paria

  Pilot

  Savanna De Clercq

  Copilot

  Raul Trujillo

  Communications

  Maricia Paulson

  Medic

  Men on the left; wives on the right.

  For a moment, guilt made him consider undoing what he had just done. If he didn’t, names would slide up undisturbed, some relationships intact, all functions covered, since science was superfluous, and there was abundant knowledge in the crew and the main computer to handle any circumstances foreseen or not. He didn’t want to struggle through the next eight months or so, lying, sneaking around, and trying to find privacy in a fishbowl. He tried to come up with another plan to eliminate Suresh sooner but had failed. So, worst-case scenario, he thought, Leila would be all his without conflict or complications after the long sleep. So he thought.

  1.2

  “I can’t remember the last time there was a crash landing here,” Savanna said.

  “This doesn’t look like a landing, just a crash,” responded Cyrus in his Lebanese accent. “It has probably been decades.” From the warmth and security of the large lunar base station, the couple was alone, looking out at long shadows on lifeless landscape outside a thick, curved window. Rescue vehicles with large, knobby wheels churned dust as they rushed to a heap of smoldering wreckage on the horizon. On the blue-and-white planet that hung in the sky just above the horizon, there would be a lot of fire and smoke. Not here. “I hope this is not a sign of bad luck.”

  “It was for them.” Savanna squeezed the arm of her husband, looking for a moment at his face that still peered into the moonscape. “What do you think happened?”

  “I didn’t see it. I felt the tremor.”

  “It hit hard then.” She averted her gaze to Cyrus’s curly glistening black hair, fingering it gently.

  He was Persian, at least as he put it. Iranian was an epithet with areas of the country uninhabitable for the next ten thousand years, glowing with radiation from nuclear war almost two hundred years in the past. Both of his parents were dead. He was raised by relatives with remnants of oil money replenished with black market trade. He escaped his Mideastern existence at seventeen for an education first on Crete then in London. He had pale olive skin, widely spaced eyes, a nose broken and poorly repaired, and a bulge in the middle followed by a slight angulation to the sharp tip. He shaved twice a week if he was in a good mood, which was usual since volunteering for the mission. He had been a jet pilot with NATO until recently. He wore a necklace of dark-colored beads on hemp that hung like a clerical collar around his suprasternal notch. “Some luck you make, some you don’t.”

  “I don’t think you make luck,” he opined. “You increase or decrease probabilities.”

  She massaged his shoulders, digging her strong short thumbs into his trapezius muscles with enough pressure to hurt just below the pain threshold. She was black with mixed genetics, about two-thirds African. Her ancestors for the last three or four hundred years had lived in Europe. She grew up on a hardscrabble farm on the north coast of France near the Belgian border. She liked her hair no more than seven centimeters long; finger length and curly, not kinky. She was the smallest and, at twenty, the youngest of the bunch. In her union/wedding photographs, her head was about half the size of Cyrus’s. She was bright, smart, but short of the genius level. She had a protean background, a degree in astronomy, and work as a pilot in small, experimental aircraft. She loved literature, especially poetry. Aside from her assignment as copilot, she could navigate or work in scien
ce. “The first of five determinants of success, according to feng shui, is good luck,” she replied.

  “I would rather prepare like hell than depend on fortune. And we have. But all that work and deprivation can be ruined by some random, low probability event.”

  “Which most of us call bad luck.” She continued working on relieving his tension as they watched the vehicles bounce high off the lunar surface in the surreal reduced gravity and grow smaller in the distance. “I have a feeling we are going to be the one crew that makes it.”

  “Just one?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “That’s a lot of dead people.”

  “It’s sad but nobody gets out of this life alive.”

  After watching the rescue mission without survivors turn into a recovery operation for half an hour, taciturn Cyrus left the window without a word to Savanna and made his way toward the mess hall. He was an inch less than six feet tall when he wore flight boots, which was almost all the time. He had black hair and dark eyes under low brows, giving him a perpetual angry look. His manner, however, was usually mild—or depressive, Savanna had decided after the first year of living with him. He had two prominent moles on his face, one above his right eye and the other below his left that, coupled with his angled nose, gave his face an off-kilter appearance. He approached the hall cursing the cheese. Green Gruyere was a stupid tradition, so he thought. Prior to launch, all the crews in the past had enjoyed or at least eaten it with dinner. It was done, in part, because of the rigid low simple carbohydrate dietary regimen long established for deep space travel. The coloration was added because some goofball in the first mission thought it would be humorous. It probably was for the arrogant Americans but not for the rest of the world. The cacophony of the crowd repelled him. While he preferred to eat this final prelaunch meal in quietude, he had no choice but to enter the hall and join the rest of his crew. The commander would never tolerate missing the send-off.