by Taiyo Fujii
She shook the sensation off and listened closely to the cheerful voices from within the room. There was no question about it: The space tethers had been eliminated. It was time to leave.
Chance was just turning away when the door opened slightly.
She drew her pistol and tried to spin back toward the hotel room, but her wounded calf shrieked. Losing her balance again, she fell forward and hit the door with her right hand, still holding her weapon.
Hanging her head, she realized that a man down on one knee was looking through the crack at her with a Walther PPS aimed directly between her eyes.
“Freeze,” he said.
Bruce surveyed the unnatural bulges under the woman’s hotel uniform and tutted to himself. No doubt she’d rigged herself to blow if he shot her.
“Slowly put your weapon on the floor,” he said. “Never forgetting that, personally, I’d rather just shoot you right now.”
He watched her slowly sink into a crouch, favoring one leg. Yes, this was the woman who’d killed Shiraishi and Nash.
Bruce kept his gun trained between her eyes as she moved, noticing also the unusual outline of her pistol. It appeared to be a SIG, but it had been remodeled almost beyond recognition.
“Open your hands and put them above your head,” Bruce said. “Step back slowly.”
The woman complied, moving backwards until she was standing before the elevator doors.
“Fingers filed off, I see,” Bruce said. “Was it the Syrian secret police?”
The woman shook her head with the minimum necessary movement. It didn’t look like a denial, though, or a confirmation. Bruce recalled the gruesome torture that one of the CIA’s agents had endured in Syria. This woman had been another victim.
“So you’re a contractor,” Bruce said. “Let me guess. You’ve come here to salvage the situation by offering information. Pressure from China, perhaps?”
“If you let me go,” the woman said, “I’ll give you the full logs of Shiraishi’s communications from Seattle. Everything you need to know to make your own space tethers.”
“Usually,” Bruce said, “I’d point out that I could kill you and take them for myself if I wanted them, but I’d rather avoid an explosion today. So, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The woman asked for permission to reach inside her jacket, and Bruce granted it. She produced a large smartphone and placed it on the floor. Bruce heard a new round of cheers in the room behind him.
He approached the woman and, very carefully, reached out with one hand to call the elevator.
“Sounds like a party in there,” the woman said.
“We had some surprise good news,” Bruce said. “Make sure you watch the skies tonight.”
The woman listened closely to the sounds of celebration, closing her eyes with a sigh.
“What is it?” Bruce asked.
“He didn’t have anyone to celebrate with like that,” the woman said.
“ ‘He’ … ? Ah, Shiraishi. I’m not surprised to hear that. But his legacy will live on. Akari recovered some materials about some Great Leap or something. Kazumi and the others are going to carry on his work.”
“Really?”
The elevator doors opened with a ding. Bruce gestured with his gun, urging the woman inside. She slowly stepped backwards through the doors.
“Any messages?” Bruce asked. “Kazumi, Akari—I can pass something on to either of them.”
“Just one, then,” the woman replied. “Tell Akari I was starting to fall for Shiraishi.”
Bruce’s gun quivered.
“Idiot,” he said. “You think Akari needs to hear that?” he said.
The elevator doors quietly closed.
Wed, 16 Dec 2020, 19:58 -0800 (2020-12-11T03:58 GMT)
Pike Street, Seattle
At his back, Kazumi felt the chill from the aluminum chair he had just wiped the snow from. Not even the down jacket Sekiguchi had bought him in Tokyo could keep this cold out completely. Huddled in a blanket beside him was Akari, holding Shiraishi’s blueprint case close to her chest.
“Two lattes, right?” asked Bruce, appearing before them tightly wrapped in a supple leather coat holding two enormous cups. They were a seasonal red and green and looked like they held at least half a quart each.
“Surprised?” Bruce said. “Everything’s big in America. Be careful you don’t put on a few pounds yourself.”
“Watch yourself, Bruce,” said Chris, who was sitting on Akari’s other side. “If Kazumi and Akari turn anti-American, I’ll cite you for aiding and abetting the enemy.” Under her letterman jacket, she wore a blue flower-print dress, and under that were tracksuit pants and sneakers—a casual look that Kazumi had not expected after all those suits she had worn running meetings for Team Seattle.
“Oh, come on,” Bruce said. “I’m only telling them the truth.”
“He’s right, though,” said Daryl, who was sitting beside Kazumi. He clapped his hands. “Even us soldiers put on weight if we aren’t careful. Just look at Colonel Lintz.”
“A toast,” Bruce said, standing before the table with a cup in one hand and his arms spread wide. “To our first gathering at Starbucks store number one!”
Kazumi and Akari turned in their seats to look at the sign outside. It was the same green as any other Starbucks, but the logo was completely different: the starbucks was in slightly awkward-looking block letters, and there was a picture of a mermaid that looked like a faded stamp. The history was palpable.
“It’s quite a small place,” Akari said, turning up the collar of her down jacket.
“Every business has to start somewhere,” came Ozzy’s voice through the tablet on Daryl’s table. They’d told him there was no way he’d be able to see the show through the tablet’s camera, but he’d insisted on joining the viewing party anyway. “Could someone stand this thing up?” he said. “I can’t see any of your faces.”
With a rueful grin, Daryl opened the tablet’s stand and set up the tablet in landscape orientation on the table. Morning light came through the tiny screen. Ozzy was still in his tank top, but he now had a corked bottle in each hand and was shaking both.
“That you, Daryl?” asked Ozzy. “A little to the right. Yeah, that’s it.”
“For heaven’s sake!” they heard Johansson say off camera. “It is nighttime in Seattle. Try to keep your voice down.”
“Ah, cram it,” Ozzy said. “Hey, Kazumi, did you read Judy’s blog?”
“Huh?” Kazumi said. “Has a new entry been posted?”
Akari handed him a phone with the blog already on-screen. Chris picked up her tablet too.
Bruce walked around the table to look over Chris’s shoulder as she read. He whistled. “This is big,” he said. “What kind of readership does this blog have?”
“The pageview count is probably a secret,” Daryl said.
“Based on the advertising,” Akari said, “I would estimate twenty million views per entry. It’s been increasing since she left Earth.”
Bruce grabbed Chris’s tablet and jabbed at the lower half of the article with his finger. “Look at this,” he said. “Right there in plain type. Kazumi, are the Meteor News servers ready for this? Millions of people are going to drop by. It’ll be your very own miniature DOS attack.”
“Do not underestimate Meteor News,” Kazumi said, recalling the round-robin server system Akari had put in place before they had left Japan. “Our engineer is the best in the business.”
Akari produced her lens display from her pocket and hit the switch. Text began to scroll across the orange glass. “Currently at four million visitors or so,” she said. “No problem. Meteor News can handle pageviews in the billions.”
“Very impressive,” said Chris. “Bruce, give that back.” She reached out to grab the tablet back from Bruce, revealing the Mariners
logo embroidered on her sleeve. “It’s almost time, everyone,” she said. “Are you ready?” She folded her arms and looked up at the sky.
“Which direction will they come from, Kazumi?” asked Bruce.
“From behind … Let me check.”
Kazumi half-closed his eyes and imagined the terminal apparatuses falling into the atmosphere. They wouldn’t be bright enough at this stage to be visible to the naked eye. Moving at three kilometers per second, they would skip across the surface of the atmosphere like flat stones on a pond, slowing as they cleared the Rocky Mountains.
They would start to give off light just over the western seaboard: Seattle. NORAD had done an elegant job.
Kazumi held his index finger above his head and let it fall slightly to the right. “This way,” he said.
“This is the life,” said Bruce. “Watching a once-in-a-century cosmic light show with the world’s leading expert on the topic. I’ll treasure this memory till I die. Secretly, of course.”
“No need for secrecy,” Chris said, putting her reading glasses away. “Team Seattle’s about to become public knowledge.”
“What do you mean?”
“The whole world’s going to know what Kazumi and the others did,” Chris said. She counted the details off on her fingers. “An announcement from the CIA, dinner with the president, press conferences, television appearances … Kazumi and Akari won’t be able to go back to Japan for at least a month.”
Shiraishi’s and Jamshed’s personal information and Sekiguchi’s illegal activities would be kept quiet, she explained, but the member of the coast guard whose involvement in the affair had ended in tragedy would receive the honor he deserved for his contribution.
“And all because of Ronnie,” she concluded. “No—thanks to Ronnie. You should hear the things he was saying. ‘We cannot start tether-based space development on a fair footing unless we acknowledge those who faced terrorism and orbital sabotage head-on.’ He and Judy started lobbying for it yesterday, apparently.”
“Yesterday? You mean before that videoconference?”
Kazumi finally realized just how serious Ronnie and Judy were about this. They had performed the space tether dance for him half-expecting to die in orbit anyway. But rather than despair, they had already begun their new investment in the future.
“I hear the two of them are going to found a space tether–related company,” Chris said. “Fully funded by Ronnie personally.”
“Wait, wait, wait, that’s not right,” Ozzy said. “I’m in for 50 percent myself. I can tell you one thing—Judy’s obsessed with the idea. Won’t shut up about it. I’ve been tasked with handling company registration and the rest, and she wants it all up and running by the end of the year.”
“But that’s less than two weeks away,” Chris said. “Won’t that be impossible?”
“Don’t underestimate a free entrepreneur, you government bureaucrat,” Ozzy said. “Hey, it went dark! Daryl! Check the camera, would you?”
“It’s just the lights going off, Mr. Cunningham,” said Daryl. He was right: the lights were going off all over town. Everyone who read Judy’s blog was switching theirs off. Even the Starbucks baristas dimmed the lights and came outside too.
“Daryl,” Ozzy said. “Or Kazumi. Whoever. Turn me to the right a bit. Yeah, that’s it. Now hold that angle.”
“Mr. Cunningham, I want to watch too,” said Kazumi. “I am going to put you d—”
A flash of light streaked by in the corner of his eye.
He looked up.
The air was clean and crisp after the blizzard, and the sky was cloudless. Smeared across the stars, Kazumi saw a smoky meteor train: the lingering afterglow of a shooting star.
“I can’t see!” Ozzy complained.
Kazumi turned the tablet’s volume down.
The second shooting star cut through the starry night. The angle was just as Kazumi had predicted.
The terminal apparatuses were finally falling into the atmosphere, leaving long trails of plasma behind them. Perhaps because of the rare metals in their electronics, the shooting stars had a slight green tinge to them.
Three. Four. Ten. Within moments there were too many to count. Shooting stars filled the night sky.
“—mi. Kazumi! You don’t have to answer now, but listen to me.”
Ozzy’s muffled voice cut into Kazumi’s awareness.
“Will you come join the space tether company Ronnie and I are going to start? We want Akari and Daryl too. A new company needs a world-class team. We’ll launch our own space tethers by this time next year. What do you say? You wanna come fly with us?”
Kazumi looked down at the tablet. At that moment a particularly large shooting star lit up the table, making the phrase written in marker on Shiraishi’s case glow:
great leap for the rest of the world
“Okay, Ozzy,” Kazumi said. “Count me in.”
“All right! There’s one more thing we have to decide: the name of the company. We need to pick something right away.”
“Call it ‘Great Leap,’ ” said Kazumi. “Let’s talk again later.” He turned the tablet facedown.
There was no turning back now. The plans Shiraishi had left behind would become a reality.
“Good,” Akari whispered in Japanese.
“What is?” Kazumi said.
“Just before he died, Uncle Ageha said something to me,” Akari said, looking down. “I couldn’t hear him properly, so I’m not quite sure …”
She took Kazumi’s hand in her own. Her fingernails were orange once more, reflecting the shooting stars above in their silky sheen.
“But I think he said, ‘Tell Kazumi I leave the future of the space tether drive in his hands,’ ” she finished.
Daryl clapped Kazumi on the back. “What are you doing, Kazumi?” he asked. “The meteor shower’s almost over. Look at the sky!”
Kazumi raised his head and proudly watched the shooting stars fly by. There were more than anyone could keep track of now.
Shouts of joy echoed around the town. Every meteor that sliced through the sky was bright enough to cast shadows on the snow-covered streets of Seattle.
2020-12-17T04:30 GMT
Project Wyvern
Sorry to keep you waiting, everybody. Project Wyvern has received a report from NASA that all the problems faced by the orbital hotel during tour number zero have been resolved. We can finally make our way to the International Space Station.
Yesterday, we learned the truth about the Rod from God that had the whole world on edge. An overactive imagination and a few early missteps snowballed into a much bigger problem. It pains me to report that in the course of resolving it all, two people’s lives were lost, while a third has gone into hiding—although not before providing some crucial information, for which they have our thanks.
Once I’m able to go into more detail about the incident, I assure you that I will. There were people Earthside who gave their all for our sake, and I feel a responsibility to introduce them to the world. It’ll be my top priority once I’m back on solid ground—which sounds very appealing right now …
Ugh, formal writing is so lifeless, isn’t it? I’m going to switch back to my normal mode.
So—surprise announcement!
People on the west coast of the US: please look up at the sky at 8:08 p.m. tonight. Turn off all your lights first, if you can. And spread the word. Just go ahead and switch off your neighbors’ lights—I promise they’ll thank you when 8:08 rolls around!
What you’ll see is a meteor shower.
But not just any meteor shower. Tens of thousands of shooting stars filling the night sky for ten whole minutes. The sort of celestial show that comes once in a century.
You can find the details on Meteor News, a shooting star forecast site run by Mr. Kazumi Kimura from Japan�
�the man who saved our lives. The site’s a bit technical, but just click on the link on the home page that reads “18/12/2020: Meteor shower” and you’ll find what you need.
We’ll be making a slight detour from our rendezvous orbit with the ISS to watch the meteor shower too. So when you’re looking up at those shooting stars, make sure you wave to us! We’ll be in the sky with them, looking down from 360 kilometers away.
Judy Smark, Shooting Star
December 25, 2022
Western Days Hotel, Seattle
The reception for the unveiling of the Great Leap project was being held in the main hall of the Western Days Hotel. The hubbub had settled for a moment. The unbridled flashing of cameras directed at the two life-size models of the exploration satellites headed for Jupiter and the sun that hung from the ceiling had ceased, the organizers had stopped milling about schmoozing, and everyone was watching the stage.
Judy Smark, wearing a maternity dress over her seven-month-pregnant belly, announced the appearance of Ronnie Smark to the stage. In response, Ronnie stepped up to the podium from front and center holding a champagne glass.
Backstage in the wings, Kazumi stared at Ronnie in his white tuxedo as Akari and Daryl whispered to each other about how poorly it suited him. Kazumi couldn’t help but agree. Ronnie’s facial hair, from his sideburns to his beard, was unkempt; an unruly bunch of hair sprung up at the back of his head.
Kazumi couldn’t blame him for his less-than-sterling appearance. Until just yesterday, Ronnie had been with Kazumi and their team heading up the final adjustments to the probe that would be launched from the site at Cape Canaveral. The preparations and launch had taken three whole days, depriving all those involved of the time and focus required for personal grooming. Without thinking, Kazumi touched his own head.
“Thank you, everyone,” said Ronnie. The flash of cameras diminished as quiet fell over the hall. “Allow me to introduce our latest spacecraft, launched from Loki 10 just yesterday.”