Test Planet 01

by Jen Cole

Test Planet 01

  By Jen Cole

  Copyright 2012 Jen Cole

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I’m the only kid in the world, which is my own fault. My parents let me decide, and I decided to be woken with them. I figured it was the only way to be sure when I opened my eyes, that they’d be there. I knew my grandparents wouldn’t. I knew my aunts and uncles and cousins and school friends and everyone else on Earth wouldn’t. So you can hardly blame me for at least wanting my parents to be there, and they were. We hugged and kissed and welcomed each other to the planet we hoped would become our new home – five hundred light years from Earth.

  We arrived on a colony ship filled with families – lots of kids. The trouble is, they’re all asleep. Cold sleep it’s called, where you’re almost dead but not quite. Your body lies in its pod, preserved and never aging. You can stay that way for a long time and we needed to. Our trip took a thousand years.

  In the compound at night I can look up and see a bright speck moving across the sky, regular as clockwork. It’s our ship orbiting the planet with its sleeping cargo. If everything works out, the sleepers will eventually be woken, and when they come down, I won’t be the only kid on this world anymore. I just wish I didn’t have to wait so long.

  Unless you’re insane, you don’t just drop a whole colony onto a brand new planet. What you do is wake up a small advance party – in this case a dozen scientists plus me, who take a flyer down and live on the surface for a year, collecting samples, doing tests and basically being human guinea pigs.

  Why a whole year? Because, like Earth, this planet is tilted and travels around its sun, which means it has seasons. Different plants and animals flourish in different seasons and they all need a chance to attack us.

  If we can survive a planetary year without catching any incurable diseases, or being overrun by swarms of insectoids, or dying of thirst when all the water dries up over a hot summer, then it will be safe to wake the colony. But if volcanoes start belching up weird gasses that make us insanely turn on each other, or a mold spore converts us into rotting oranges, then Harvey will relay our log to the ship, with a ‘planet unsuitable’ signal. The auto systems will start up and the ship will leave and go looking for another planet. Our group below will be left to die, but colony will be safe.

  Just before our ship left Earth, I had my fifteenth birthday and my parents declared me old enough to decide for myself if I wanted to stay sleeping with the colony or be woken with them when a new planet was found. You can understand, can’t you, why I chose to stick with my parents? Bad enough to wake with the knowledge nearly everyone you know and love died hundreds of years ago. I couldn’t have handled being told that my parents in the first guinea pig group had been abandoned on an unsafe test planet. We would sink or swim together.

  I thought I was so brave deciding to join the pioneers on Test Planet 01 (it will only get a real name if proven safe for settlement). I saw myself battling the elements and making amazing discoveries. Don’t get me wrong. My parents hadn’t lied about how things would be down here. They’d been completely honest in fact, but even so, I just hadn’t understood how bored and lonely I’d get.

  We’ve been on Test 01 for three long months now – long because the months on this planet last forty days. The dozen scientists are completely wrapped up in their own sciency things and with no kids around there’s nothing for me to do except schoolwork and helping out in the compound. Yes the compound. Did you think we’d all be running around exploring? I guess I did, but it’s more like we’re stuck in a prison we built for ourselves.

  When we came down in the lander, we fire-blasted five hectares to kill all the native plants and bacteria. Then we erected an instawall around the whole area. It’s a three-meter high barrier of plasti-cement strong enough to stop a herd of elephants – not that I’ve seen animals anywhere near the size of an elephant, yet.

  The compound inside the barrier is filled with domes of all sizes that we use for our living quarters, storage and laboratories, and our meeting/dining hall. Any ground left over is planted with crops – experiments to find out what grows best in the native soil. There’s no room for playgrounds or sports fields, but they’re not needed anyway with all the adults too busy to play sports, and only one kid. Course, if you’re the kid, it doesn’t feel so fair.

  My best friend in this world is Harvey. When someone leaves the compound to observe, measure or collect samples, they have to take at least one other person and Harvey with them. Harvey’s a hoverbot. The ship has several in storage, and our group brought one with us. Harvey’s pretty smart – the nearest thing we have to an AI. He’s not an actual Artificial Intelligence, but close to it. His databases already hold information about our colony, and over the last three months he’s been adding everything we’ve learnt about this planet.

  Usually one of the scientists has Harvey busy with something or other, but during the rare times he isn’t needed, Harvey comes looking for me. He’s programmed to do that. It’s about the only concession they’ve made to my presence among them. They figured Harvey might as well keep me amused when he has nothing ‘better’ to do.

  The first time Harvey came around, I handed him my math exercises and tried to get him to do my schoolwork, but that backfired.

  “Master Nicholas,” he said. He has this funny way of speaking, like an old fashioned English butler. “If you do not attempt the problems yourself, your learning will not progress. I can, if you wish, take you through the underlying principles.”

  “First off,” I told him, “the name’s Nick. No master at the front and no alas at the end. Got that?”

  “Indeed, Nick, I have.”

  “Secondly, I know how to do the math. I just thought you could save me some time. Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  “I am here to help everyone advance their knowledge, but knowledge is useless without understanding. Unfortunately understanding cannot be given. It is something all humans must acquire for themselves. The more complex the understandings, the more study and effort are needed to acquire them.”

  “But I just told you, I know how to do these exercises. I already understand them.”

  “Nick, your personality information stored in my databanks suggests you may be trying to trick me. Consequently I ask for proof. Successfully solve two problems I pick out from this section and I will be satisfied. I will then complete the rest for you, to speed your advance to the next section.”

  You see? It’s hard to win with Harvey. Even if I’d managed to get his two problems right, I’d then have been stuck with a set of even more difficult equations. But as I said before, Harvey’s not a true AI, and I’ve discovered I can sometimes use logic to trick him. That’s what I plan to do this Thursday.

  The first Thursday of every month is Meeting Day. Everyone gathers in the meeting dome at 7:00 a.m. for a gigantic show-and-tell fest. All the scientists have different specialties. Mum’s a botanist and Dad’s a geologist. The others specialize in things like weather, microbiology, zoology and so forth. Each of them gets an hour to explain what they’ve been doing over the last month and what great discoveries they’ve made. They all prepare slideshows and bring a
long experiments and samples to show the others. No one ever takes less than their full hour. Build in time for lunch and a couple of tea breaks, and the whole shebang rarely finishes before 7:00 p.m.

  I stopped attending after the first meeting – I was snoring by morning tea break. No one expects me to turn up anymore, and now I really look forward to the first Thursday of each month. Not only do I get a full day without adults, I also get Harvey. Last month Harvey and I perfected a saddle.

  The scientists on Test 01 are supposed to be pretty smart. I guess they are, but they sure don’t have much imagination. They all just see Harvey for what he appears to be – a large silver basketball about twice the size of a regular one. Empty, Harvey can hover up to three and a half meters above the ground, but load him up with rock samples and it’s more like one and a half. His ‘brain’ or memory drive, only takes up a small amount of his interior. The rest is compartmentalized for storing samples the scientists collect. When dangerous items need to be picked up, Harvey can extend four grasping appendages. Most of the time those ‘arms’ are coiled inside him and you don’t see them, but they’re what gave me the saddle idea.

  You can’t get a plastic chair to stay on a ball just by taking its legs off, although that’s how I started. You need to soften the plastic so you can mold the chair base around the ball. Harvey helped with that job by raising his surface temperature for a few minutes. But even clinging snugly, the base will still slip. That’s where Harvey’s appendages come in. By extending them a short way, he creates four anchor points.

  I made a hole in each corner of the chair base, and now saddling up is quick and easy. Harvey hovers at knee height and I drop the chair on. Then I pass a rope through each hole in the base and tie it to the nearest arm. Because I mount up reversed, I’ve cut a couple of curves into the chair back, so I can sit with my legs forward, while holding the top of the chair. Harvey rises a couple of meters and we go zipping around the compound. He’s really good at turning when I lean to the right or left, and when I push forward he speeds up. To slow or stop, I just pull back and he responds immediately – all completely smooth. Harvey is the perfect mount.

  Today’s the first Thursday of April, so I’ll have Harvey to myself for twelve hours. You’ll notice we’ve kept Earth names for our calendar. We’re lucky. Though the planet’s revolution is 480 days, its rotation is close to twenty-four hours. That means we can wait to see if Test 01 is habitable before having to work out a whole new time system. Until then we’re using regular hours, minutes and seconds and just adding an extra three minutes before midnight to balance the difference.

  It’s 7.00 a.m. Harvey should be arriving any minute. He doesn’t know it yet, but today he and I are going outside to explore. Of course I’ll have to convince him to co-operate, which is why I’m glad he’s not a true AI. Hopefully the logic tricks I have up my sleeve will work. Ah, here he is. More when I return.