Launch Pad

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Eclipse I,” Benny said over the radio. “We show pressurization sequence complete. Switch over and prepare for ignition.”

  The vibration intensified as the primaries readied themselves for the test firing. There was much to do yet, many switches needing to be thrown. But Schaeffer did nothing, felt nothing, even thought nothing.

  “Eclipse I, switch over for final sequence.” Benny’s voice had grown strident.

  “Control,” Mel said, “we may have a problem here.”

  “What is it? All my indicators show green.”

  “Not with the ship. With Mike.”

  A prolonged silence greeted this. Finally, Benny said, “Can you be more specific, Mel?”

  “Ah … stand by, Control.”

  Benny’s voice cracked. “Stand by? We are less than one minute from ignition!”

  Mel turned her attention back to Schaeffer. “Mike? Can you do it?”

  The vibrating deck. The q-thrusters beneath his feet. And cold space pressing all around them. It was too much for him; he could do nothing.

  Mel came visibly to a decision. Moving quickly, she punched in the override command. Warning bells suddenly came to life all over the ship. “Control, this is Eclipse I, requesting emergency countdown abort. Repeat, abort countdown. Emergency.”

  Requests like that were not questioned. Benny’s voice immediately adopted a brisk, mechanical tone. “Roger, Eclipse I, countdown aborted. Are you able to shut down?” In the event of computer failure on board, Benny would be able to shut everything down from the control room.

  “Roger, Control,” Mel said, reaching over to cut the switches to the generators. “Shutting down.”

  The vibration subsided. Schaeffer began to feel control coming back to his body. The first sensation he became conscious of was a deep anger, a feeling of having been betrayed.

  Benny spoke again. “Eclipse I, do you require medical assistance?”

  Mel glanced at Schaeffer. He could feel her eyes, and the puzzled concern in them. “Negative, Control,” she said. “I think … we just need to get out of here.” She tentatively reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Mike?”

  He buried his face in his hands. “Oh Christ,” he said.

  O O O

  I blinked, and was back in the examining room. At least, that’s what it felt like.

  Without a word, Dr. Wells removed the headset and shut down his device. I looked up at him, stricken. “I—”

  “Easy,” he said. “Just relax. Give yourself a moment to adjust. The disorientation will pass.”

  I nodded and started taking deep breaths to calm myself. At that moment, I understood why mnemonology was so unpopular. These doctors earned their bread by making patients relive all the neurotic and psychotic moments of their lifetimes, yanking them out of their present reality, shoving them into the past, then yanking them back again. A wave of hot hatred for Dr. Wells washed over me.

  I continued with the deep breathing until I was in control of myself again.

  Dr. Wells pulled up a chair across from mine and sat. “How do you feel?”

  “Drained.”

  He nodded. “That’s normal. Are you ready to talk about it?”

  Long moments passed. “I suppose.”

  “Go through the memory calmly, one step at a time. Is there anything new that you noticed?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Think. Concentrate. What were you feeling?”

  I rubbed my forehead absently, trying to remember. There was a dull embarrassment, as though I’d been caught posing nude before a mirror. “I was … distracted.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Distracted by what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something in the cockpit? Something somebody said during the procedure?”

  “No, nothing like that. It was something … inside me. Something was going on inside my head.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know!” I pounded the arm of the chair. “How many times do I have to say it?”

  I instantly regretted the reaction. He held his hands up in front of him. “All right. Calm down. We don’t have to go any further today, if you don’t want. It’s usually best to talk about it while it’s still fresh in your mind, but sometimes a little time for reflection—”

  “No.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said no. I don’t want reflection. I want answers.”

  “Mr. Schaeffer, you’re becoming tense. Angry. That’s not the best frame of mind for therapy. Tomorrow, we can—”

  “What about the other memory?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you found another memory in my printout. One that was similar to what happened on board Eclipse I.”

  “Yes …” he said hesitantly. “But I don’t think you—”

  “Cue it up.” I nodded toward the mnemonograph.

  “That’s not a good idea, Mr. Schaeffer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look at yourself. Look at the state of agitation the treatment has put you into. I just don’t think it would do any good at this point, psychologically speaking.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Mr. Schaeffer, I—”

  “Do it.”

  He stood and crossed his arms. “We’ll take a break, at least,” he said. “Half an hour. If you still want to try the other memory then, we will. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  O O O

  He sat in some kind of lecture hall, as though he were in class. He had sat in many, God knew, but this one was special, even if he couldn’t place it right away. Once again, he felt the unnerving sense of presence, of being two selves, but this time he handled it better, ignoring the feeling and concentrating on getting his bearings. He had a job to do here. The watcher-self that was him groped for purchase, for anything recognizable.

  The seats were contoured plastic, not terribly comfortable, formed row upon row into an amphitheater that looked capable of holding a few hundred people. He looked around. The other students in the class appeared to be in their early twenties, so he could assume he was among their age group. The instructor, speaking from an onstage podium, was a round man with a wiry beard.…

  Recognition came to him. The Academy. First year physics, with Dr. Kennedy. He was talking about Einstein.

  “Einstein’s genius was in his acceptance of the facts,” he said. “He simply accepted what observation and experimentation told him was so—the speed of light is a constant, regardless of the velocity of the observer.”

  Dr. Kennedy’s eyes gleamed. “But in order for this to be true, Einstein realized, our concept of velocity must be wrong. And what is velocity? It’s a measure of distance and time, so those concepts had to be incorrect, too. The result, the conclusion other scientists were afraid to reach, was that Newtonian physics had to be wrong. So forget everything you’ve been taught. There is no such thing as a master reference frame. It’s all relative, people.”

  Puzzled looks abounded throughout the classroom, but Schaeffer understood. And with that understanding came a feeling, one which was at once alien and familiar, a feeling he recognized.

  It was vague, stirring somewhere in the darkened corners of his mind. A faint echo, something like a train whistle, rang out of the darkness. Schaeffer strained, but it would not come in clearer. Time was slipping; his memory-self was passing on to some new thought. Schaeffer-who-watched was powerless to stop it, but stared even harder into his mind shadows anyway, trying to prod that hidden shape into the light.

  It would not come. And time was slipping, time was gone.

  Wait—

  O O O

  The examining room again. The bright lights hurt my eyes.

  Dr. Wells powered down his machine once more. I was more than drained this time; I was exhausted. I could have fallen asleep, then and there.

  “Do you need help standing?”

&nbs
p; I started at the sound of his voice.

  He looked down at me, his mouth set in a line. “I think you’d be more comfortable in my office. Do you need help?”

  Wearily, I shook my head, forcing myself to my feet.

  O O O

  “So what happened?”

  I told him. “What does it mean?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “How should I know? It’s your memory.”

  I hung my head. “It was over too soon,” I said in a low voice. “Whatever it was, I didn’t get it.”

  “Don’t punish yourself. Many patients go through this. And you’ve pushed yourself harder than most. You need time to sort it out.”

  “I know what it was. But I couldn’t … get it.”

  “Don’t try so hard. Sometimes that makes it worse.”

  I drew in a few breaths and closed my eyes, concentrating. I looked into the dark space inside me, waiting for some hint of movement, some glint of reflected light, anything that would show me the shape. Again I heard an echo like a train whistle, miles away. The office grew quiet, watchful.

  After a few minutes I gave up. “Nothing,” I said.

  I expected to see disappointment on his face, but instead he smiled. “All right. Let’s try to look at it in context. The missing piece is defined by the rest of the puzzle. You were in class, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Learning about relativity.”

  “Right. So?”

  “Do you see the connection?”

  I didn’t want to, but it was obvious. “Eclipse I. The first manned space flight at relativistic speeds.”

  “It’s only natural for that memory to come back to you at this time. But what does it mean?”

  “Ah … I’m afraid of relativity?”

  “Are you?”

  “That’s ridiculous! This is just like any other flight, only faster. Hell, the whole thing is nothing more than a glorified speed run. We’re not going anywhere, just out and back again. And the ship’s clock will be two minutes behind Mission Control’s when we get back. Two minutes. Are you trying to tell me I’m afraid of that?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not telling you anything. But don’t downplay the importance of this flight. It’s more than a speed run, and you know it. Mankind is finally coming up against the limits of the physical world. Everyone from Earth to Mars is on edge over it, me included. So why shouldn’t you be?”

  “Because I’m the captain, damn it! I have to be above all this if I’m to perform my job.”

  “Yet, by your own admission, you’d have to be a fool not to be afraid in a situation like this.” The calm in his voice cut through my anger, quelling it. “I happen to agree with you,” he said. “The question is, did this fear cause you to freeze? If it did—”

  “If it did, I’m finished.”

  I sat with downcast eyes, striving to restore calm to a raging inner sea. Through it all, he sat there, watching me, waiting.

  At last I looked up. “What can I do?”

  “Sleep on it tonight. I don’t think we’ll be able to accomplish any more here today. And when I say sleep, I mean it. I don’t want you awake all night, torturing yourself. You’ll never find it that way.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Is there anything you can do? Can’t your mnemonograph tell you something? Anything?”

  “I’ll look at your memory print again. Maybe I missed something the first time.”

  I got up to leave. “Wish me luck with my soul-searching.”

  He smiled, perhaps a little too widely. “You don’t need luck. You’ll get it.”

  Somehow, I wasn’t convinced.

  O O O

  Don’t downplay the importance of this flight.

  His words came back to me as I lay on a formfoam bed in the station’s itinerant housing section and thought about the memory.

  Mel had left me a message on my personal unit. I had played it back as soon as I’d returned from Dr. Wells’s office.

  “Hey, partner,” she said as her imaged coalesced before me. “Just checking in to see how those sessions are going. I really hope you’re making some progress. You have to get back to the launch cradle as soon as you can. Whether the ISC believes it or not, we need you on that ship.”

  Her mouth drew tight; lines creased her forehead.

  “I’m worried about you, Mike. Don’t let that damned zapper fry your brain, okay?” Her image faded and disappeared.

  The importance of this flight.

  Mankind is finally coming up against the limits of the physical world.

  Pretty heady, maybe, but it was true. But there was more to it than that. Dr. Wells probably wasn’t aware of it, but anyone who worked for the ISC knew it all too well.

  The Titan flight, for all the publicity it had received, had been a failure, as had been all the Jupiter flights. All the money and effort put into those projects could only show us what we already knew: the outer planets were too cold and too impossibly remote to serve as viable bases for human colonies. Shortly after I had returned from Titan, the whispers began. The Space Age, they said, was drawing to close. The only thing that stood between us and that inevitable end was the Eclipse project.

  The importance of this flight.

  I was suddenly angry with the whole thing. What right did they have to make me into a hero? What did I owe them, anyway?

  And then another voice inside me spoke up, saying, Are you doing this for them or for yourself, Schaeffer?

  My flash of anger subsided, leaving me merely morose. None of this was getting me any closer to figuring out what had paralyzed me during the test firing. I had to know, damn it, but that dark place remained dark, stubbornly defying the light I kept trying to shine into it, sucking it up worse than any black hole.

  It was there. I could feel it inside me, lying dormant and undisturbed, despite all my attempts at nudging it awake. Somehow I knew it had been there for a long, long time, and I had been blissfully unaware of it. But now that I had discovered it, nothing would progress until I had dragged it into daylight, where I could look on its face and know its purpose.

  I cursed silently, knowing that despite what Dr. Wells had said, sleep would not come soon.

  O O O

  “It’s no use. I can’t get it.”

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was good at keeping a neutral expression on his face—I would hate to play poker with him—but I was getting to know him. He was disappointed.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Positive. What about you? Did you have any luck?”

  He remained silent, and that was answer enough for me. “Can you plug me back into the original memory?” I asked.

  “I can. Do you think it would help?”

  I considered, then shook my head. “I guess not. I’ve seen enough.”

  Silence fell again.

  “What’s the next step?”

  His gaze seemed riveted on one of the landscape stills hanging on the wall. He blinked and shook himself. “Pardon me?”

  “I said, what’s next? What do we do now?”

  “Back to the sessions, I suppose.”

  “We don’t have time for that. Isn’t there anything else?”

  He shifted in his chair. His fingers repeatedly tapped his knee.

  I peered at him. “What’s going on here? What’s the matter with you?”

  After several moments of studying his face, I said, “You found something, didn’t you? Something in my memory print.”

  He stilled his tapping fingers and nodded.

  “And you weren’t going to tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure if I should.”

  “Damn it, doc, I don’t have time to play around here. You talk to me.”

  He cleared his throat. “There is a complex pattern stored in your memory. An old pattern. Portions of it match almost exactly with yo
ur Eclipse experience, as well as your Academy memory. Parts of it show up repeatedly in almost every memory you have.”

  “How in the hell did you miss it the first time?”

  He winced. “I didn’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “I could be wrong, but judging from the context, I believe … I think it’s a core memory.”

  “What’s that?”

  He stood and walked over to his desk. With his back to me, he said, “Neither of us has the time to go through eight years’ worth of medical training. I’ll try to give you the basics.

  “Even with all of our new technology, there’s a lot we’ve yet to learn about the brain. New hypotheses spring up weekly, it seems.” He faced me. “The existence of core memories was first postulated by the founders of mnemonology. Until recently, though, there has been no evidence to support it. We didn’t know what to look for, really. And the technology is still being refined. There is a considerable amount of debate on the topic.

  “The term core memory refers not to a memory’s location, but to its significance. You see, certain events shape our perceptions of the world, our outlook. The memory of such an event, the argument goes, imprints our minds with an indelible stamp, and becomes a natural part of our thought processes.”

  He paused, fixing me with a serious stare. “All of our thought processes, no matter how trivial. Do you see now? Core memories frame our drives, our desires. Even our dreams. Amnesia victims retain their core memories, the research suggests. It’s what enables most of them to recover.

  “As I said, it’s still controversial, but the research I’ve seen seems pretty solid.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me about it? What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that core memories are probably traumatic—the death of a loved one, for example. At the very least, it can be argued that core memories impact the brain in a special way. The person may not even be aware of it at the time. The research suggests that the conscious mind shuts it out as a reflex action. Core memories may even be the source of the subconscious.”

  “And what happens when you plug into them?”

  “No one knows. It’s never been done.”

  “Why not?”

  He glared. “Haven’t you been listening? The brain shields us from our core memories for a reason! Are you really so anxious to find out what that reason is?”