by Purple Hazel
But B.J., exhaling her smoke and laying back on the couch to lift her head up toward the ceiling, chuckled sarcastically. “Fuck. Guys—we’ll all be old and gray by the time the little shit comes back. Don’t you get it? If he’s travelling to fuckin’ Kapteyn B…that’ll be fuckin’…twenty-five years from now ’fore he comes back. Why bother?” Kelvin ran the numbers in his head and figured that’d make him about fifty-one when the so-called little shit returned.
Then an even bolder thought occurred to him. A thought that started in the periphery of his gray matter and bubbled up inside of him like steam hissing from a kettle on a stovetop. Only with Kelvin, ideas were more like sneezes: he’d be suddenly overcome with an attack of them just like a human body expelling allergens. He suddenly asked B.J. just how old he’d be if he actually went on the mission.
“Okay, then what about this. Let’s say…hypothetically…I was one of those selected for the voyage. Land on the alien planet, live there a year or so building a colony—whatever—then return to Earth.” He popped open his dice”—what teenagers liked to call digital communication devices—and came up with a number of forty. “I’d still be forty fuckin’ years old wouldn’t I, B.J….when I got back I mean, right?”
Günther by now was fully engaged once more and had interrupted his own brief daydream of what it would feel like seeing the look of beaming pride on his father’s face when presenting his son’s idea to his superiors back at Space Programme. But Kelvin’s question regarding how he’d age on the mission if he was a member of the crew snapped Günther out of his malaise and he sat up slowly while calmly interjecting, “Not exactly. You see, zay vill likely freeze zee crew during flight. Cryonics, it’s called. You’ll age only after you’ve been revived.”
Robin scoffed, “Yeah, bitch, if they can revive you, right? I mean, they ain’t never really done it b’fore.”
To this Günther again shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in the general direction of his flamboyant friend. As far as he knew, it’d never been performed successfully on live humans.
Yet Kelvin wouldn’t hear of it. He now had his fantasy already formed up solidly in his mind: achieving fame and immortality as one of the pioneering explorers who would soon colonize an alien planet, then return to Earth only having aged a few years or so. He didn’t need a calculation done for this. He just knew he’d return to Earth a hero, having aged into maybe his early thirties—give or take a year—while the Earth would have advanced several decades. The images it conjured lit up his senses and inspired him deeply. Made him look at his life in general as well.
He could spend thirty years at Magellan and retire, sure. But he’d seen those old zombies walking around the building already. Lifers. Folks in their fifties just drifting through the day. Always tired, always aching, constantly bitching…and complaining to him about things going on at the company, only to turn right around and shamelessly suck up to management at every staff meeting like boot-licking lackeys. Chained to their desks for the prime years of their lives, desperate to hang on to the security of stable income and free government health insurance—after all, you had to be employed to get health benefits. No, he quickly determined. No way did he want something like that. Not now, anyway!
This mission to Kapteyn B…if he somehow could use this Twin Paradox experiment in some clever way to leverage himself a spot on the crew…it might very well be the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance for adventure. A chance for glory! He’d be in history books some day: the once great high school Megaball star from Virginia who graduated from MIT only to become one of the Earth’s first galactic pioneers. Conqueror, actually, he thought, “I like how that sounds—Kelvin the Conqueror.” But there were even more reasons to consider.
There’d be several hundred crewmen and women after all. The ship would be well equipped for any reasonable human need, wouldn’t it? It’d have to be. There wouldn’t be much to do during the voyage would there? Kelvin scratched his chin and thought about it some more. Imagined bedding down thirteen or fourteen female crew members during the voyage to “B”; then being frozen for the journey home after establishing the colony there.
He then looked at Günther one more time and glared at him with a mischievous grin. “Whuddya say, Gunny? Think we can message yer old man tonight?” He asked this as music from the show Worldweek faded in on the Ultravision screen in the common room. In a rare moment of bewilderment, a usually stoic Günther sighed deeply and looked away from Kelvin toward the screen.
Others from the building who’d also been working projects around campus on this Sunday evening soon started ambling into the room to watch the show as well. B.J. hastily tucked the bong between some couch cushions and covered it up with a pillow. But Kelvin was riveted now, focused on his rather ambitious idea. He knew he’d need his friends’ help in getting this pulled off. He’d need B.J. there with him especially, always quick to cover for him when he couldn’t figure something out or simply didn’t feel like doing it himself.
He’d need Günther to get the idea in front of his father back in Germany, too; and through him, lobby for a spot onboard. And Robin? Robin would have to teach him the science behind the theory to help him sell it to those stiffs at Space Programme. He then looked up at the screen to see the artist’s image of a humongous spacecraft now on screen, accompanied by the familiar voice of Cory Redmann in the background describing the craft and its crew accommodations. The show was now back on and the room was filling up with excited new viewers.
While Cory Redmann spoke huskily onscreen about the design of the Santa Maria, Kelvin occasionally looked over at Günther, and then over at both B.J. and Robin as well to see how they were feeling. He wondered if he’d sold any of them on the concept. Wondered if any of them were on board with it. Twin Paradox, he mouthed at Robin, nodding encouragingly while Robin swiped a hand at him dismissively. “Nah bitch, I ain’t goin’ up in that mutha fucka,” said Robin in an almost girlish, sassy voice. Kelvin chuckled.
Then he looked at B.J. and grabbed her sandaled foot peeking out over the edge of the couch. He said in a raised whisper, “Two hundred crewmen baby…maybe more…only half of ‘em women? Half for you and half for me, huh?”
B.J. retracted her foot and giggled, putting an index finger to her lips cautioning him to keep his voice down. “Ssssh!” she hissed, then mouthed, Yer fuckin’ crazy. Meanwhile, Cory Redman was appearing on a split-screen interview with some field reporter posted out front of the Space Programme Operations Centre in Darmstadt.
“This is exciting news indeed, Cory…caught practically everyone by surprise. Some are speculating a launch date within six months,” the overwhelmed young Irish reporter was saying, speaking into the camera in a raised voice due to crowds of reporters swarming about the location and chattering away in many different languages. “Other more conservative estimates say nine, but that’s still amazing news. Only nine short months ’til mankind embarks on its maiden voyage for the conquest of the galaxy.”
Chapter 7
Three Adorable Pairs
May 2086: It had now been months since the official announcement and the unveiling of the new Santa Maria galactic exploration vessel. The media covered the event almost daily thereafter, thrilling the public with imagery of the ship’s designs, details of crew functions and accommodations, as well as descriptions of the ship’s anticipated mission protocol. Meanwhile, the ongoing search for just the right set of identical twins was finally coming to a conclusion. Sure enough…Günther’s father had accepted the bold idea proposed by his son and his companions back at Magellan Aerospace.
Conducted in secret, upon direct orders from Space Programme Administration, this worldwide investigation of orphanage, work house, and foster home records was a very daunting challenge staffers came to loathe. Their searches took them far and wide, all those eager youngsters assigned to the experiment by Space Programme. Administrators hired twenty to come work for them at their Research and Technology
Centre in Noordwijk, just a few miles southwest of…Amsterdam.
Yes. Amsterdam! Kelvin and B.J. jumped at the chance to go; imagining occasional road trips up to the city to buy hashish. Unfortunately, no such offers ever came. Neither stood much of a chance passing the drug screening required for agency employment, anyway. Thus, they had to settle for slaving away several more months at Magellan while those diligent staffers combed through millions of childbirth records identifying “eligible” twins.
In the meantime, Günther’s father had done some broken-field running with this idea, that was for sure. Originally taking his son’s idea of ONE set of identical twins to use in the experiment; he subsequently expanded it into THREE: “three adorable pairs,” as he put it. He also took Kelvin’s advice within his and Günther’s original message to simply try and focus their search on city kids—as most people had come to call street urchins abandoned by poor families or seized from irresponsible parents by authorities. It was now a derogatory term that some, especially older folks, had come to use when referring to these unfortunate children. Yet it was the easiest and most obvious choice to provide a wide selection. Besides, the government had a massive database.
It was busy work really, not the type of thing B.J. and Kelvin would have enjoyed. But Günther was certainly wired for it. He didn’t have the communications skills with young children like others did; and his Vater knew better than assigning him to it. No, Günther was not selected either and of course Robin wasn’t about to apply. She loved her comfortable little job at Magellan and didn’t mind the occasional late hours required to finish projects. She was more than happy to remain in the shadows when Kelvin and Günther wrote that Email.
At Magellan, there was one staff meeting a day, but that was usually “virtual”, and a girl like Robin could simply log onto it from her Digital Communication Device—or DICE as folks called them—if she wished. It all came down to getting her projects completed. If she finished a section of code and it was still only 14:00 hours, she could simply knock off for the afternoon and go up to Centennial Park—maybe hang out up at the observatory and smoke a joint while she looked out over the city.
However, handsome Kelvin was still determined to get himself a spot on the crew; and he knew full well that would be a tall order however he tried going about it. It would require having some powerful connection somewhere in the GU for one thing. Plus, it might involve passing a rigorous examination, physical fitness test, or maybe enduring a litany of psychological batteries to determine mental stability for such a long grueling mission.
Could he really go through all that? Could he get straight for a full month, get in shape, and get healthy? Well, Kelvin was one of those guys who knew his path in life at nearly every given moment. Once he’d set his sights on something, he never doubted what he wanted or exactly how to get it. He knew what it would entail whenever he got the urge to exert himself. That’s why he quickly began lobbying Günther’s father back in Darmstadt to let him and B.J. pay the fellow a visit in person at the Space Programme Operations Center later that year.
Kelvin could tell that having B.J. along might come in handy somehow. He wasn’t sure just how—but he figured it couldn’t hurt. And she was certainly a good wingman, always had been in the past; that was for sure. B.J., by way of comparison, just figured it’d be fun meeting up with German dudes for a change. Americans and Canadians were “starting to get too predictable,” as she put it waggishly. “Fuck yeah; I’ll go!” she replied when he asked her to join him for the trip…if the man agreed to meet with him, that is. Kelvin, as always, had no doubt he would and booked them two flights to Frankfurt. From there it would only be a short drive south to Darmstadt.
Meanwhile, the search for these three adorable pairs of twins was truly a massive undertaking. The twenty staffers assigned to it pored over medical records from orphanages and researched live birth certificates to identify the top one hundred prospects, based on acceptable demographics. From there, they eventually narrowed their search until they had selected three finalists, thus leaving only one remaining challenge. That was to decide which of the sibling pairs to bring along on the mission.
First off, they wanted healthy children with no birth defects or maladies. Next, they wanted an assortment of cultural backgrounds. After that it was merely a matter of tracking down the children at the work house, farm, or orphanage where they lived. The target age for the mission was ten, give or take a year, just so that the twins would have developed together and taken on common traits of twins such as matching mannerisms and style of dress. Thus, another essential criterion for the selection was twins who’d never been separate since birth, yet were somehow available to be used in this bizarre experiment. That’s what made the search so difficult to narrow down. Luckily, the first of the finalists to be inspected were located a mere train ride from their offices in Noordwijk…
* * * *
Starting off, the staffers traveled by train through the Chunnel over to England and investigated a ten-year-old pair of twins currently living at the Brixton work house for girls in London. These were facilities that offered primary education to city kids in exchange for a six-hour work day, usually involving light assembly or domestic duties at various locations within the city. Nearby companies could contract with workhouses to distribute workers to them; and after their morning studies were completed, the children would be sent to their daily work assignments. “Donations” from the companies often insured priority in having access to the healthiest kids, but otherwise any legitimate business could apply for this cheap supply of labor.
The twins selected from London were actually of African descent, both of them were beautiful girls, straight from the Dark Continent where their parents had fled recent famine in Zimbabwe. Their father had been killed in a street altercation shortly after arriving in London when their mother was pregnant with them. Therefore, when born, the mother was deemed unable to raise them properly. They’d been taken into the child welfare system and were now living in rather drab conditions at one of London’s more notorious facilities for orphaned girls.
Their names were Shamiso, meaning great wonder in their native language Shona, and Rudo meaning love. One look at Shamiso and Rudo Kachote, plus, of course, watching them playing together, and the staffers immediately knew these two children were special.
At first blush, it almost seemed the two were inseparable and this might be the wrong thing to do to them. Shamiso seemed to follow Rudo around constantly, like she was some dangling appendage. Rudo was loud, had a deep voice which would raise several octaves if she was excited or angry. The section supervisor in their wing of the work house pointed this out early on. However, the supervisor also emphasized, when interviewed in person, that Rudo was clearly the instigator among the two. She was the leader in getting the two of them into trouble, on occasion committing mild infractions like smuggling food to their beds at night and other small acts of rebellion.
What’s more, Rudo was the scrapper among the two, the supervisor informed them, and would, “beat seven bells out of” any girl—or boy—on the streets who bothered her and Shamiso. The Space Programme staffers appreciated this bit of information greatly. Rudo was already starting to look like the better prospect between the two. A brave girl who had a sense of responsibility for her more reserved sibling. That said, it was Shamiso who possessed the amazing brain for science, they soon came to discover. Administering aptitude tests to the girls ultimately revealed this fact and soon changed their opinions on which twin they’d like to take into space.
Aptitude tests were done on portable digital devices—nicknamed Peedees by English kids years ago, and it soon caught on. These thin, flip-open computers were perfect for recording test scores and displaying questions or problems for a child or pre-teen to answer and solve. But to further replicate a normal testing situation, the staffers from Space Programme had the supervisor set up a regular classroom scenario with the entire group of girls in he
r section—a little over a thousand of them—to sit for this supposed exam.
This aptitude test being administered to the girls by way of the Peedees performed all the work of eliminating children of lesser intelligence quite smoothly and efficiently. At the conclusion of each section—some taking as little as twenty minutes and others much longer—the Peedees would send messages to the student informing them either that they had performed adequately, or—if the child’s scores were unacceptable—it merely thanked them for participating and directed them to return their device to the proctor.
Because of this, the room slowly but surely dwindled from a thousand down to six young girls ages nine to eleven. Al together, the classes dwindled down to about twenty-five choices within just a few days of these daily testing sessions. Those eliminated were simply sent back to their employers or given the rest of the morning to play outside in Brixton’s massive fenced-in schoolyard until transports arrived to whisk them away to their assigned worksites.
Meanwhile, those who continued to pass and advance to the next more difficult levels were kept indoors day after day, kept together and separated from their friends playing outside. Eventually they were moved downtown to a more private facility for more intense examination. Shamiso, to the surprise and delight of the staffers, was one of those final twenty-five children who were still testing at a level of American high school seniors or English Sixth Formers. What’s more, some of them—Shamiso included—were soon tackling university level scientific and mathematical problems! Sure enough, Shamiso was just what they’d been looking for.