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Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1)

Page 2

by J. W. Bouchard


  If you don’t, then it ain’t much of a dream.

  I didn’t consider myself a starving artist. When I left Hancock, I had fully expected to find another job. I wasn’t going to dick around trying to find myself. Dream or no dream, I still needed to keep a roof over my head.

  But Burnell had given me the brochure. That brochure, that flimsy piece of folded paper, was like a bright light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I’m a hope-for-the-best-plan-for-the-worst kind of guy. Only Burnell had given me hope. Not a lot of it, but even in small doses, hope could shine a bright light. A beacon in the darkness.

  I knew I didn’t have formal education, at least not the kind that came with a piece of decorative paper attached to it, but what I did have was experience. I thought maybe, just maybe, if they took a moment to listen, I could talk my way in. I thought to myself, Is it about knowledge? You want proof? Give me a test, I’ll bet digicredits to donuts I can score as high as any other bastard that wants to float among the stars.

  I didn’t know if they’d listen, but I was damn well going to give it a shot.

  I’ve always been fond of this one quote by Theodore Roosevelt. It’s a long one, all about daring greatly and experiencing failure, but how that failure is better than being one of those pussies who are too scared to try.

  I was prepared to fail. I was prepared to have the door slammed in my face. The last thing I was going to be was afraid of trying. I’m not overly sensitive, or at least I don’t perceive myself to be, so I could handle being told no.

  The application process started in February. Initial interviews were held in the gymnasium of one of the local high schools. When I arrived in the early morning, there was already a line out the door. Maybe I wasn’t the cream of the crop, but scanning the faces ahead of and behind me, I thought I stood a better chance than a lot of them. More than a few of the applicants appeared to be fresh out of Hancock or one of the other academies. I could tell because a lot of them were wearing the navy polo shirts with the image of a space shuttle embroidered on the left breast. It was an obvious gimmick; like finding a way to bring up the fact you went to an Ivy League school regardless of where the conversation was headed. I considered it bad form.

  The brochure Burnell had given me hadn’t shed much light on exactly what qualifications the mission was looking for. My guess was that it was the usual stuff: engineers, pilots, mechanics, physicists, biologists, medical, down to the entry level stuff like cooks and janitors.

  The people waiting in line ranged the gambit. Anything from jeans and t-shirts to expensive suits and ties.

  I waited outside in the cold for an hour, blowing on my hands in a futile effort to keep them warm. Finally, I made it through the door, into the heated gymnasium.

  Inside, there were rows of long plastic tables lined up from one side of the building to the other, forming the first stop in the application process. There were four staff members posted at each table, handing out digital tablets, or paper applications for those that wanted to apply the old school way.

  Beyond the tables, I could see that the rest of the gymnasium had been cordoned off into separate sections. After you filled out the application, you waited a bit and moved onto a bank of computer stations where you took some tests and answered some questions. From there, depending on what the results of your tests were, you were herded over to a maze of cubicles where you would participate in face-to-face interviews.

  I couldn’t see what was after that. In the back of my mind, I was thinking if I made it that far I would be lucky. Some of the people that had been toward the front of the line when I had first arrived, were already walking out. Some of them were shaking their heads, complaining out loud, while others exited with their heads down and kept their thoughts to themselves.

  All of the staff seemed exceptionally happy as they went about their mundane tasks. I figured all of them working the frontlines were hired help, employees of a third party agency. I didn’t expect to run into anybody knowledgeable about the mission until I made it to the cubicles. If I made it. And that was a big if.

  The tablets were in higher demand than their paper equivalent. When I reached the head of the line and was standing in front of one of the tables, I asked the amiable blonde for a paper application. I wasn’t as used to writing with pen and paper as I was with swiping a glass screen, and my handwriting wasn’t going to win any penmanship contests, but paper seemed faster.

  The application asked the standard questions. Name, contact info, employment and criminal histories, references. It took some thought coming up with three references. I wondered if they’d do their due diligence. As far as I knew, this wasn’t government-funded as much as it was government-regulated, but my gut told me they’d probably do their homework. I listed my landlord as one of the references. He didn’t know a lot about me, but I’d never stiffed him for rent, so I assumed if he told the truth I’d be okay there. I also put down Burnell. He’d said he would put in a good word for me, so I figured he wouldn’t mind me putting down his name. I was stumped for a minute as to who I should list as the third. I ended up putting my boss from the grocery store. That had been years ago, and I doubted very much that he’d remember who the hell I was, but there wasn’t anybody else. One is the loneliest number and all that, I guess.

  It took all of ten minutes to complete the application. When I was finished, I handed it back to the blonde. She took it, smile on her face, and gave it the once over. She took a moment to input some data into a tablet and then told me I could get into the queue for the computer terminals.

  I had time on my hands, so I watched people take their places at the terminals (really they were only screens with portable keyboards, a bit outdated in my opinion), and then I’d time them. After three rotations, I averaged the time spent on the terminals to be around fifteen minutes. There were three dozen terminals, give or take. I counted my place in the line and decided I had about a thirty minute wait ahead of me. I took out my phone to check the time. It was half past nine. I’d be lucky if I finished the entire process before noon. Again, that was if I made it past the testing section.

  Waiting in line made me anxious, and I wondered why they hadn’t chosen a less archaic application process. Nine times out of ten, you could apply online, and unless you hadn’t updated your resume, you could do that in about five seconds flat.

  But the prospect of landing a job on an interstellar mission overrode any minor annoyance I had about waiting in line. Being excited was almost a foreign feeling to me, but that’s how I felt. I felt like maybe the world was within my grasp. I knew that if I didn’t make it there would be disappointment.

  Even though I’d mentally prepared myself for bad news (hell, I expected it to be bad news), I knew there wasn’t any getting around it. Defeat is defeat. If I didn’t make it, well, I guessed that chances were good I’d find out what rock bottom felt like.

  When my turn came around I sat down at one of the workstations and followed the instructions on the screen. The test questions started out pretty basic.

  Input your reference number.

  The blonde had handed me a tiny square of paper with a number on it earlier. I typed the number in using the onscreen keyboard.

  Questions started popping up on the screen:

  What is your greatest quality?

  Your weakest?

  Followed by:

  How do you handle adversity?

  What is your stance on international relations?

  They kept coming, one after the other. I answered these essay questions as succinctly as I could. There were about twenty of them, and then the test moved on to yes/no questions.

  Do you work well with others?

  Are you a problem-solver?

  Can you maintain your senses after a prolonged duration without sleep?

  These were easy. I never unde
rstood the point of them. You didn’t have to be a genius to know what the best answers were. I had taken a similar test when I had applied for the job at Hancock. They seemed simple enough, but these were baseline questions. They would come up later, only worded differently, and it was basically gauging whether or not you answered in a consistent manner. That was how they could tell if you were being truthful or not.

  After that, the questions became more technical.

  What would you do if a fire broke out on your ship?

  If you saw two crewmembers arguing, how would you handle it?

  You see a crewmember violating procedure, what do you do?

  On and on and on like that. At least a hundred of them.

  Finally, the screen flashed: Thank you. Your test results are being sent to the appropriate parties. Please proceed to the waiting area.

  Ten-thirty.

  People milled around, talking to each other, comparing notes. There wasn’t much of a line at this point. They were calling out peoples’ names one-by-one and leading them over to the cubicles, where they would disappear behind the fabricated walls. There wasn’t a way to gauge how long the wait would be. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with myself. I wasn’t big on starting conversations with total strangers. I knew there had to be applicants there that had attended Hancock, but as I scanned the crowd I didn’t spot any familiar faces.

  So I stood by myself. I folded my arms across my chest, but then I got worried it might make me look confrontational, standoffish, so I stuffed my hands in my pockets and tried to look approachable.

  In truth, I hoped no one would approach me. I could kick a guy’s ass six ways to Sunday, but carrying on a normal conversation was a slippery slope. Everybody had a story, but most of them didn’t have my story. Made it hard to identify with people. Most of the time, me and other people didn’t see eye to eye.

  A small group of people was clustered around a middle-aged man showing off his new phone. I wasn’t an expert on phones, but it looked like one of the new Samsung models. The Stellar or something I think it was called.

  He was showing off the holographic projection feature. The group fanned out, making room for a circle of empty space around the man with the phone. He held his finger to the screen and an image appeared out of thin air, hovering at about eye level. A news anchor was diligently delivering the day’s top stories. A younger kid, probably not much older than me, walked up to the image, peeked his head around it, then shoved his arm straight through the middle of it. The news anchor kept on talking despite the kid’s arm skewering his mouth. I had to admit, it was a nifty piece of technology. They had been talking about holograms for the last two hundred years, but it hadn’t become a reality until recently. Apparently, the demand hadn’t been high enough for anyone to throw any real funding at such a technology. But they had been making small leaps over the last decade, and it was only in the last year or two that the technology had reached the consumer level. Even so, it was a far cry from what I could afford.

  “Seems like a waste,” a female voice said from behind me. I turned, doing my best to not look startled. “What do you think?”

  She was 5’2 , 5’3 maybe, around my age, give or take a year either way, with a slender build and straight black hair that stopped a few inches below her neck. Asian, but still fair-skinned, and I guessed one of her parents must have been white.

  She was beautiful. I wasn’t used to seeing beautiful girls. Not up close anyway.

  “Say that again,” I said, already cursing myself for getting tongue-tied at the most inopportune of moments.

  “The new hologram feature,” she said. “It seems like a big waste of money.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you. My phone’s a dinosaur.”

  “A dinosaur? That’s better than a hologram any day. Can I see it?”

  “I was joking.”

  “Really? You got my hopes up.”

  “You’re funny.”

  “Actually, I’m Lisa. Lisa Chen.” She extended her hand. I shook it, expecting it to be delicate, but was surprised to find she had a firm grip.

  “Jacob Lansing,” I said. “But I go by Jake.”

  She nodded. “Original. Most people just call me Lisa.”

  “Then maybe I’ll call you Chen.”

  Small talk. It was the bane of my existence. Believe it or not, this was after a bit of practice.

  “So…what are you going for?”

  “Going for?”

  “Yes,” Lisa said. “I assume you’re here for the same reason as the rest of us. To get a job. So…what job are you applying for?”

  “Right. Well, at this point? Anything I can get. I’ll mop the floors if I have to.”

  “I see. Ambitious as well as original.”

  “And your English is spotty. The correct word for it would be realistic. I’m an under-educated grunt with zero friends and a resume that wouldn’t fill the blank side of a postage stamp. I figure it’s easier if I don’t get my hopes up.”

  “At least you’re honest with yourself. That’s more than most.”

  “What about you? What are you going for?”

  By this point, I felt like I was holding my own in the conversation. She was easy on the eyes and she was sarcastic. I couldn’t tell you what character traits I look for in a girl, I hadn’t ever stopped to give it much thought, but this girl had me intrigued. It goes without saying that I’d lived a sheltered life.

  “Geologist. I graduated from Yale last May. A year early even.”

  “So you’re a brain?”

  She shrugged.

  “I meant that as a compliment,” I said.

  “And I took it as such. It’ll be remarkable don’t you think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Visiting another planet. Exploring new terrain.” Lisa’s eyes lit up as she talked about it. “We’ll be the first people to step foot on it. I can only imagine what it’ll be like.”

  I saw the passion in her eyes, and for a moment I thought she might be like me. Maybe the same circumstances hadn’t brought us to this point, but we obviously shared a similar dream.

  “Is that what the mission is? Going to another planet?” The brochure that Burnell had given me had been vague regarding the specifics of the mission.

  “I don’t know. But I’m hoping so. I mean, what else could it be? An interstellar space mission costs trillions of dollars, and it’s jointly funded by the Americans and the Chinese, which means it must be of some importance for them to work together. I’m not a business whiz or anything, but no one spends that much money unless there’s a sizable payoff at the end.”

  “Seems logical.”

  “I really hope I get it,” she said.

  “I hope so too.”

  When I glanced up I noticed the man with the fancy cell phone was ending his impromptu demonstration. As the group clustered around the man dispersed, one of them sauntered over to where Lisa and I were chatting. He was my height, with shaggy black hair and big glasses (which was a little odd seeing as how a person normally ordered one of the home ocular correction kits to bring their vision back to twenty-twenty). He was also Chinese.

  “I’m not impressed,” he said, speaking to Lisa.

  They obviously knew each other.

  “Hi Thomas. Look, I’ve made a new friend. His name is Jacob.”

  “Jake,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Thomas Ma.”

  “Thomas is a physicist,” Lisa said.

  “Correction, Thomas wants to be a physicist,” Thomas said.

  “We went to Yale together.”

  “I have the degree, but next to no hands-on experience. Deeming myself a physicist at this point might be slightly disingenuous.”

  Two things immediately went through my mind.

  The fir
st was whether Lisa and Thomas were an item. They didn’t act like it, but I had only known them for a couple of minutes. They were still strangers to me. Whether they were or not, I wasn’t going to let curiosity get the better of me. I thought asking something like that at this stage of the game might make things awkward.

  The other thing running through my brain was that I was severely outclassed. Both of them had degrees from an ivy league school. I wondered if everyone had degrees. That was a helluva lot more than I had, and I felt my chances shrink in an instant. The fact that I had worked at a space training school for two years (and not even as faculty) didn’t seem to hold much weight all of a sudden.

  Lisa said, “Jake and I were speculating on what the mission might entail. I told him wouldn’t it be amazing to walk on another planet.”

  “You make it sound like it hasn’t been done before,” Thomas said. “We’ve had a colony on Mars for the past three decades. Plenty of people have been there.”

  “True. But I was talking about outside our solar system.”

  “It’s been done.”

  “Only once before.”

  “Okay, so maybe it would be kind of cool.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Lisa said. “He’s as anxious as I am. He just thinks it makes him look cool to act like nothing excites him.”

  “Whatever,” Thomas said. “So, Jake, what are you going in for?”

  “Jake’s dream is to be a janitor,” Lisa answered for me.

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I guess you could say I’m keeping my options open.”

  “Holding out for the good jobs?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s the way to do it.”

 

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