“Ahead of you are rows and rows of servers, correct? Over.”
“Yes, I see them. Over.” I actually wasn’t sure if I was seeing servers, but I saw rows and rows of something computer-y. I assumed they were servers. They’d better be servers.
“Perfect. Go to the row labeled 1-A and use my badge to log in using the card scanner,” Victor instructed.
As I was doing so, Cecelia’s worried voice came over the radio, “Zoey, you need to hurry. The countdown is at one minute and counting.”
My fingers trembled as I logged in and Victor continued to instruct me how to reboot the servers. His instructions were clear and direct, but I was barely hanging onto my sanity, even though the weird sense of calm was still thronging through me. I made a number of mistakes and we had to go through the instructions and menus several times. Distantly, I noticed that the room I was in was extremely cold.
“Alright, Zoey,” Victor finally said, “This is the last step. In the top navigation bar, click ‘servers’, and then click the gear icon next to server 1A. Select ‘reboot’, and then when the popup comes up click ‘reboot server’. Then click ‘confirm’.”
I punched in the final command and then my heart leaped in my throat when all around me the thrumming in the cool room suddenly stopped. I hadn’t even noticed the sound over my own panting and beating heart, but it’s absence was immediately palpable.
“Thirty seconds. Over,” Cecelia reported.
“What now?” I asked Victor, my breathy voice and pained lungs beginning to feel the sudden burst of cardio I’d just done. “What do I do?”
“Nothing,” Victor said, “the system will reboot on its own. Just be patient for a moment.”
Patience had never been my strong suit. One second, two seconds. A moment later the thrumming began again just like Victor said. I exhaled.
“It’s making noise again now,” I reported, “is that good?”
“Yes,” Victor answered, “That’s good. I’m logging in now to my terminal to make sure everything is fixed. I should be able to stop the launch now.”
“Ten seconds,” Cecelia said, “Victor did it work? Did you abort the launch?”
“I can’t tell yet,” Victor said replied, “just a few more seconds and I can check the code...”
“Victor, abort the launch!” Cecelia screamed.
“I’m trying Cecelia,” Victor screeched back. “Fuck. It’s too late. T-minus five.”
Five…
I took a deep breath and thought of Nathan’s blue-green eyes, easy smile, and strong hands. I thought about the feeling of his arms around me, and what it was like to wake up next to his sleeping body.
Four...
In my heart, I knew that I would never feel like this for anyone again. I’d thought I had been in love before, but it was nothing like this. This was a once in a lifetime love. The sort of love not everyone gets to experience. I couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not ever.
Three…
I needed him far too much.
Two…
I loved him.
One…
41
Nathan
The main engines ignited six minutes before liftoff, shaking beneath me like a monstrous earthquake. The force shook through my bones to vibrate in my sternum like the bass of a rock concert, and the deep rumble increased bit-by-bit as the engines came up to full-thrust. When the countdown clock finally leveled out to T-minus-zero, the solid rocket boosters ignited like a kick beneath my back to lift the Starflier 1 off the launch pad.
The first lurching movement off the launch pad was one of the most dangerous moments in the entire journey, but it was over almost instantly. The pounding output of exhaust from the two boosters shook me continually in little bursts as the ship accelerated, going from stationary to 2.5 G’s. Starflier tore violently through the lower atmosphere under thousands of pounds of thrust, busting through clouds and patches of unstable air.
After approximately forty-five seconds, the engines throttled down to reduce stress on the structure of the Starflier’s body while experiencing “maximum dynamic pressure” which sounds like something one would aim for during sex, but is actually the point at which aerodynamic stress on a vehicle in atmospheric flight is maximized. The dynamic pressure acting against the craft decreases as the air density decreases while the vehicle climbs, ultimately reaching zero when the air density becomes zero.
When passing that milestone, the engines throttled back to full thrust, creating a spine-tingling scream of the slipstream outside the walls of the cabin. Two minutes after launch, the boosters went silent. The three main engines continued pushing Starflier 1 upward, pushing up with a million pounds of thrust in what was then an almost silent, vibration-less force.
Now almost outside of the thick atmosphere of our planet, the slipstream noise was silent. In fact, the entire ship was almost entirely, eerily silent, even though I was still traveling at 1G. As the ship escaped the gravity of the earth and the ship grew ever lighter, that 1G began to increase. Soon I was traveling at 3G, and my body felt every second of it. The force of that acceleration made it hard to draw breath, it felt like a hippopotamus was standing on my chest. Each second at that speed created an exponentially more painful experience.
All I could do was pray the structure would hold together for the final push as the mach numbers increased- 22, 23, 24, and finally, 25. The main engine cut off, dropping the thrust to zero in half a dizzy second. The pressure of my suit on my body and the straps holding me to my seat vanished. All pressure vanished. I was weightless, alive and unharmed in low orbit.
It takes just under eight minutes to get to space, accelerating from zero to over eighteen thousand miles per hour. That’s twenty-three times the speed of sound.
I gazed out my window breathlessly, knowing the moments I had up here today were precious and short.
Zoey should see this, I thought to myself. Someday I’ll show it to her.
But not today. Today I still needed to get back home and prove to the world that it was possible. I’d promised myself that I’d figure out a way to share this all with the world one day, and I would. This was just the first step out of many.
“Capcom to Starflier,” my radio tweeted, “come in Starflier. How’s the weather up there? Are you ready to come back home?”
“Starflier to Capcom,” I replied, “Give me a second to get my bearings first, will you?”
“Copy that.”
Around me, the air in the control module felt thin, artificial, and bizarre. I’d forgotten how strange the lack of gravity was on the body. It affects every single bodily system and senses all at once. My stomach, in particular, did not appreciate what I’d just put it through.
But just as I remembered, the physical discomfort was meaningless in comparison to the view out the window. Outside the window to my right, the Earth rotated slowly beneath me. I was still moving incredibly quickly, but outside of any atmosphere to create drag, it felt like I was standing still. Weather patterns swirled beneath me on the lit sight of the earth, while the line that separated day from night drew a stark contrast over the surface. To my left, there was nothing but blackness. Without an atmosphere to magnify and refract the light of distant stars, there was nothing but inky darkness out there.
Pictures could never do this view justice, no matter how many high definition versions I brought down. From up here, all the problems of earth seem so small and inconsequential. Even my own fears about Zoey seemed surmountable. If I could make it to space, surely, I could win Zoey.
Perspective. That’s what space travel really gives to humanity. Perspective about how small and pointless our problems are in the great scheme of things. You might think that this sort of perspective would breed insecurity or feelings of inferiority. Maybe even an existential dread about the futility of life.
But that isn’t what this unearthly perspective gave to me. Instead, it made me incredibly grateful for my life, for my relation
ships with the people I care about, and the incredible planet I had the great good fortune to be born on. From way up here, human problems look small because they are small. We’re small. Not unimportant, just small. Yet, look what small people like us can create. We can transcend our own planet, reaching outward with the things we make from our own imaginations to the stars and planets above us. Even small things can be important. Sometimes the smallest things are the most important.
Somewhere down beneath me, Zoey was waiting for me. Now more than ever, I had something to look forward to each day when I opened up my eyes. Before, I had the dream of spaceflight to motivate me. I still have that, obviously, but now I have someone to share that dream with. Maybe she would never feel as passionately about it as I do, maybe she would even think it was silly. But unless humanity stopped wrecking our planet—which was unlikely from what I could tell—our grandchildren would need somewhere to live. I’d do my part to make that happen for them. Zoey could take care of the Earth through her reporting on important issues, and I’d take care of the cosmos. Together we could change the world.
Socialite Angelica Hunt Arrested
Phillip Paderewski, The Philadelphia Monitor
Angelica Hunt, the thirty-year-old socialite, media figure, petroleum heiress, and daughter of Pennsylvania Senator Thomas Ellis, was arrested for trespassing today at Durant Astronautics.
The heiress was found accessing a computer terminal in a restricted area of the commercial spaceflight firm at about 1:30 p.m., after staff was alerted to the unauthorized entry, Lt. Sandy Saad told the Philadelphia Monitor. Hunt’s actions were caught on camera. However, a temporary server failure around the same time erased the footage as well as any evidence of alleged tampering to the Durant Astronautics systems.
A second individual, whom police identified as Tara Waits, 24, was arrested for trespassing and assaulting a member of the Durant Astronautics security staff, he said. Waits is the personal assistant of Hunt.
Hunt and Waits were taken to the County jail. Both women were released after authorities determined they were not flight risks. Hunt was asked to surrender her passport, to which she agreed.
“This matter will be dealt with in the courts, not in the media, and I encourage people not to rush to judgement until all of the facts have been dealt with in a court of law,” Hunt’s attorney, Elijah Jeffries of the firm Clark and Jeffries, said in a statement.
“Angelica Hunt and Tara Waits are innocent of all allegations against them,” Hunt’s publicist added in a separate statement to the news media. “We have every expectation that the charges against Ms. Hunt will be promptly dropped.”
This is not Hunt’s first brush with the law. Several years ago, Hunt was briefly detained for allegedly smoking marijuana at the Cannes film festival. Her publicist called the incident “a complete misunderstanding,” and the case was later dropped.
In another incident, Hunt was briefly identified as a person of interest in the FBI’s investigation of a car bomb and hostage situation related to a Colombian drug cartel. The cartel had targeted Alexander Durant III and his now-wife Madison Clark during their attempt to close an important petrochemical deal in South America. It was later determined that Hunt was not involved.
Finally, after the death of Hunt’s eight-nine-year-old husband Albert Hunt, several of his adult children from previous marriages alleged foul play. According to his son Charles, his father was in reasonably good health for his age and his death came as a shock. Angelica, who produced documents which granted her full power of attorney in addition to a will that bequeathed to her one hundred percent of his assets, refused an autopsy and has since maintained that Albert Hunt died peacefully in his sleep from what was likely an aneurism. He was cremated less than forty-eight hours after death. A probate court later ruled that Angelica was legally within her rights to dispose of her husband’s remains as she saw fit.
42
Zoey
The server room was actually freezing, I realized, when I got out of there and back to where Victor and Cecelia were sorting out the aftermath of the launch. Or perhaps I was in shock. Maybe both. Anyway, I was shaking like a leaf and drenched in sweat when I emerged. I felt like I’d just run a marathon. Given that I couldn’t even run a quarter mile, that translated into real discomfort.
When I got back to the security room Victor and Cecelia were smiling, thank god, so I hoped that the launch had been aborted. I hadn’t been able to see anything at all in the seclusion of the server room.
“Did it work?” I asked, still trembling and terrified.
“It worked!” Cecelia cried, throwing her arms unexpectedly around my neck and hugging me tightly. I returned her embrace with more feeling than I expected, despite the fact that we were both sweaty and gross. She wasn’t so bad when she was on my side. The way she’d decked Tara was pretty impressive, and I can only imagine she’d scared the ever-living shit out of Angelica. That alone would be enough to make me like her.
“Was the launch aborted?” I asked, and Cecelia shook her head.
“No, but the original code was restored. Nathan’s safe up in space right now.”
‘Safe up in space’ sounded like an oxymoron to me, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Where’s my hug?” Groused Victor good naturedly. I handed him back his ID badge and gave him a brief peck on the cheek that seemed to pacify him. Cecelia merely rolled her eyes when he looked expectantly at her as well.
“Where’s Angelica?” I asked next, and Cecelia pointed at the wall of videos to one that showed Angelica in handcuffs against a wall. She looked utterly miserable. Two stern faced policemen stood next to her. A short distance away, Tara was in tears and handcuffed, slumped down to the floor. I was fresh out of sympathy for Tara. I’m sure she was only doing what Angelica told her to, but she’d put Nathan at risk and now I hoped she rotted in jail.
“Hunt is claiming that she was being threatened,” Cecelia said to me, frowning, “Who knows? I don’t trust her.”
“I don’t trust her either. I don’t know, and I don’t care right now why she did it, I’m just glad you caught her,” I said, and she nodded in agreement, “That was badass by the way. Now, I want to get Nathan back on the ground. He’s up there now?”
“For another four entire minutes,” Victor chimed in, pointing to the livestream on his laptop that showed Nathan floating weightlessly in the Starflier 1. He looked unbelievably happy in the video feed from inside the Starflier. I wanted to be happy for him, but I was still too anxious. I needed him back in my arms. And for that, he needed to land safely back on Earth.
“The landing is different than the unmanned test, right?” I asked, although I already knew the answer. I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time this morning re-reading the coverage of the launch.
“Yes,” Victor confirmed, “since Nathan can pilot it now, he’s going to land right back on the launch platform. We’ve never attempted this before except in simulations, but if anyone can do it, it’s him.”
I put my shoes back on and the three of us made our way back out of the labyrinthine inner sanctum of Durant Astronautics and out to the viewing area. Above us, Nathan was doing god knows what in space. The thought of him up there, floating beyond the clouds, made me feel weak in the knees. Why did I have to fall in love with someone who did this for a living?
I collapsed into a seat amidst the media and the other VIPs and watched the sky, waiting for the reappearance of the module. The one saving grace of this being a manned flight was that Nathan was going to come back here and not land on the platform in the middle of Lake Michigan. I’m not sure my nerves would have survived the wait to get back to him.
Eventually a light appeared above us. It was a tiny pinpoint at first, just a dot against the blue sky. Starflier 1 descended from the cloudless blue above, quickly growing in size.
The white, angular ship rotated in midair, hovering like a helicopter until it set down- sitting backward with the nose f
acing upward, like it was the easiest thing in the world. The crowd erupted into thunderous applause and raucous cheers. Although there were far fewer people here for this launch than the unmanned one on Monday, the noise of the crowd was even more forceful since there was a man inside the module. I clapped too, until my palms hurt. I cheered until my throat was hoarse. I was so happy I thought I might explode into a cloud of confetti and glitter.
Everything about this launch probably went flawlessly from Nathan’s perspective, which made me glad. I wouldn’t want him to be worried. He had made it all look so stunningly easy, but I was learning just how crazy this spaceflight business was. Still, we’d won. Somewhere, Elon Musk and Richard Branson must be furious; I was just relieved.
43
Nathan
“I can’t even put into words how exciting it is to announce that we’ve created a working, manned spacecraft in under three years,” I said to the assembled members of the press, “but it’s really attributable to the incredible team of people we’ve got here at Durant Astronautics. Drs. Matthews and Gonçalves are here to explain all the technical details. As for me, I’ve been dreaming about this day and am so unbelievably happy that I didn’t blow up.”
The reporters provided obligatory laughs in response to my obligatory stupid joke. I’m sure they were banking on a much longer press conference, but I didn’t have it in me. I’m sure I’d have ample opportunity to talk to them later.
“Again,” I concluded, “I appreciate each and every one of you for coming today. I’m overwhelmed by the outpouring of global support that we’ve received, and I’m looking forward to bringing Durant Astronautics into this next phase of our history. Thank you.”
Kiss and Tell (Scions of Sin Book 2) Page 18