“Like you would know,” Lisa said.
And, against my better judgment, I said, “Are you guys a couple?”
Now you blew it, I thought. You just made it awkward.
“Us?” Lisa broke out in laughter. “Thomas and I?”
“Geez, as if that’s so impossible,” Thomas said, clearly offended by Lisa’s reaction.
“It is that impossible.”
I had my answer and it was comforting even if I didn’t understand why.
“Way to make me feel like chopped liver,” Thomas said. “You could at least pretend it’s within the realm of possibility.”
Lisa shook her head. “It’s important for friends to be honest with each other. Don’t you think so, Jake?”
Thomas feigned a scowl.
“If I had friends, I’d more than likely agree with you.”
Thomas brushed his hair out of his eyes and said, “I’m beginning to think having friends is overrated.”
Then, from afar, I heard my name called over a loudspeaker. “Jacob Lansing, please report to cubicle seven.”
“Guess that’s me.”
“It was nice meeting you Jake,” Lisa said. “Maybe we’ll meet again?”
“Sure. I hope so.”
“Good luck.”
“Same to you guys.”
As I made my way over to the maze of cubicles, I realized I meant it…the part about seeing them again.
I was less than a dozen steps away from having my life changed forever.
I sat down across from an older man. He had a head of thinning white hair with a matching beard that was trimmed short. The top of his forehead was liver-spotted. Without knowing the man, my first impression was that he was wise. I’m not sure you can know that about someone before ever having spoken a word to them, but that was the feeling that I got from him. This was a man that had spent a great deal of time reading books. Not just digital books, but paper books. In fact, he probably preferred them. I could imagine him hunched over, nose inches from the paper, eyes squinted as he read late into the night. Maybe I was a million miles off in my assessment, but over the years I had discovered that I was a decent hand at reading people. I got it right more than fifty percent of the time anyway.
The cubicle was cramped. Its high walls protected us from the hustle and bustle occurring just outside of it. The old man shuffled some papers. I saw the pages on top were my test question answers.
He extended his hand and said, “My name is Dr. Eugene Lutz.” He had a deep voice, soothing in a way. “I’m the mission counselor. I’m here to determine whether you would make a good candidate for the mission and help place you in the right job.” Lutz shuffled through the papers again, glancing over them. “I see here that you attended Lincoln High School. Up until your junior year, when you obtained your GED. I basically function in the same capacity as your high school guidance counselor. If you permit me a moment of narcissism, I like to think of it as having a hand in helping to guide your future.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “Pretty lame, huh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I appreciate you humoring me. How much do you know about the mission?”
“Not much really. Only what I read in the brochure.”
Lutz nodded. “They like to play it close to the vest.”
“What is the mission exactly?”
“It seems silly to keep it a secret, but I’m bound by nondisclosure agreements, which is basically just a fancy way of saying I’m not allowed to elaborate on the details. It won’t be until you’re hired on that you’ll find out the specifics. Frustrating, I know. Personally, I think it’s something of a waste. It’s human nature to want to know what you’re signing up for. What I can tell you is that it does involve interstellar travel and it will be a long trip.”
“How long?”
“In terms of time, we’re talking about years. Do you have family?”
I shook my head.
“That might make things easier.”
I wasn’t able to pry any other information about the mission out of Lutz.
We spent another five minutes on small talk before he got down to business. He asked me to explain some of my test answers, went over my background history in more detail, and then he told me about the different jobs available. Everything from pilots to physicists to janitors and cooks. When he asked if I was looking for anything in particular, I said, “I know I’m not as qualified as some people. I’m willing to take what I can get. If that means mopping floors…then that’s what I’ll do.”
Lutz’s eyes went to my application. His brow furrowed. He seemed to consider it for a long time.
Finally, he waved his finger and said, “The qualifications for janitorial staff are minimal. It’s safe to say you qualify barring any health or psychological issues…but I think we can do better than that.”
He swiveled his chair toward the desk and sifted through several stacks of papers, skimming over them. “Here we go. Security Officer. Rank One.”
Lutz handed me a sheet of paper. Security Officer. Rank One. Project Diamond. It listed a number of qualifications that needed to be met. One of them caught my attention.
Associates degree or higher preferred.
“I don’t have an Associate’s degree,” I said, handing the paper back to him. I didn’t try to mask my disappointment.
“Associate’s degree preferred. Not required. It also says, ‘or comparable job-related work experience.’ I would think two years of hands on experience as an assistant combat trainer at Hancock would fit that bill. If you ask me, actual work experience in a given field trumps academic knowledge nine times out of ten. I had the pleasure of touring the Hancock campus several years ago. It’s one of the better ones. I also happen to know that as non-faculty, they still allow you to audit classes. Did you?”
I felt like I was on a rollercoaster (I hadn’t ever been on the real thing, but I imagined this was its metaphorical equivalent), my hopes being dragged up and down, up and down, from one minute to the next. “All of them.”
“Well, there you go. I think we might have a place for you. The pay isn’t anything to write home about. Only slightly higher than janitorial.”
“I don’t care about the money,” I said. And it was true. I didn’t care one iota what the pay was or if they even paid me at all.
“That’s the spirit.”
He spent a few minutes going over my psych test answers, took some notes, and then stapled everything together. He handed them over to me and pointed behind him. “See those booths back there. You want the third one from the end. You’ll want to speak with Captain Hayes.”
Lutz stood up. We shook hands again. “It’s a little premature to say welcome aboard, but my intuitions are usually spot on with these kinds of things. Good luck.”
As I exited the cubicle, I had the good sense to thank the man, but not much else. My mind was already headed to the stratosphere. I thought maybe I was dreaming, but knew I couldn’t be because I never had good dreams, only nightmares, and this was some of the best news I had ever gotten.
I spent the short walk to the category booths dragging myself back to reality. Lutz had delivered good news, but I reminded myself that he who gets his hopes too high is exposing himself to the sharp blade of disappointment.
Still…
I was hopeful. It was one of those moments where you can almost believe in such things as fate and destiny. When small moments, past choices, and a little luck seem to all come together in such a way that the future appears preordained. As though there’s a purpose to everything, and the greater plan is so large you don’t see it until much later. It isn’t until later that it smacks you in the face.
Reality.
I reminded myself to stay firmly planted there.
As serendipitous as Lutz’s news had seeme
d, no one had officially offered me a job yet. I’ve always believed that you get what you want by not wanting it too much. When you thought that way, it wasn’t uncommon to be labeled a pessimist. It seemed to me that whatever higher power was out there, whatever puppeteer was pulling the cosmic strings, well, they had a twisted sense of humor. And a knack for irony. The moment you figured you had something in the bag was the moment that omnipresent creator figure took the opportunity to pull the rug out from under you.
Much like the cubicles, the booths were cordoned off by high walls that made it impossible to see what was going on behind them. I could hear talking on the other side, but the voices were too muffled to understand.
By this point, the crowd had thinned out, and the lines were much shorter than they had been in the beginning.
Each booth had a sign above it. Reading them in order from left to right: AVIATION, PHYSICS, GEOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MEDICAL, SECURITY, CRAFT SERVICES, and JANITORIAL. To the right of this was a separate booth with a sign above it that said CONTRACT SERVICES – MINING, EQUIPMENT HANDLING & MECHANICAL.
There was only one person ahead of me in line for the security booth. A female. She was wearing a heavy olive parka with a fur-lined hood that made it tough to judge her figure. She was white, paler skin than mine, brown hair cut short so that it gave her a boyish appearance. She glanced over her shoulder, made eye contact with me, but didn’t try to strike up a conversation. I considered saying something to her, but then the door to the security booth opened and a kid, maybe my age or a couple of years older, stepped out, cursing under his breath. I didn’t catch what he was saying, but I clearly heard the word asshole buried somewhere in the conversation he was having with himself.
Bad news, I thought. Which reinforced the fact that I couldn’t afford to get too smug in thinking I had the job. I imagined the kid had been in a similar mood to mine after his conversation with Lutz. Had probably come away from that with a smile on his face and confidence that he had scored himself a ticket on a flight bound for somewhere far outside our solar system.
Then his hopes had been crushed. Just like that. In the blink of an eye. His dream had lasted a whole ten minutes.
The girl in front of me disappeared into the booth.
I waited. Minutes…hours…days…it didn’t matter. Time slowed down to a crawl. It gave me time to think, and both time and thought could be the worst kind of enemies. The stress of it made each passing minute feel like a year. I had to keep telling myself to be patient, don’t get your hopes up, be prepared for utter devastation. Get used to flipping burgers. The only interstellar travel you were going to see was the kind they showed on a big screen while you cradled a bucket of popcorn with extra butter in your lap. And, even then, how many people really went to movie theaters these days?
Fifteen minutes later, the girl exited. We glanced at each other. She wasn’t smiling, but she looked like she wanted to. She got it. I’ll bet the twenty dollars on my digi-chip she did. But she’s got the good sense not to flaunt it.
A man motioned me into the booth. He was at least 6’1”, hair shaved close to his skull. Thin-lipped with dark blue eyes that seemed to tunnel into me. He was wearing a tight-fitting gray polo shirt and black cargo pants. He looked mean. Maybe mean was the wrong word. Hard. Carved out of ice.
“Captain Arnold Hayes.”
“Jacob Lansing.”
We shook, and I made my grip strong. This didn’t look like a man that was easily impressed. It was hard to meet his eyes. He had the kind of gaze that made you feel like you were lying even if you were telling the truth. I handed him the papers Lutz had given me. Hayes sat and motioned for me to do the same as he looked through my paperwork. He had an authoritative quality about him, and my initial impression was that he wasn’t the type of man you disobey.
“Worked with Burnell for a few years?” he asked without glancing up from the papers.
“Yeah, two years at Hancock. Combat training. I was his assist –”
“You were his punching bag.”
“I’d say that’s accurate.”
He nodded. “I know Burnell. Went to school with him. Good guy. One tough hombre. Think he’d vouch for you?”
“He said he would.”
“No small feat. You must be made of the right stuff. Otherwise Burnell wouldn’t waste his time.”
I didn’t respond. I had only just met Hayes, but my assumption was that bragging wouldn’t hold much sway with the man. I spent a long while in silence as he combed through my paperwork. I wondered if the good word from Burnell would be enough.
After he finished with my papers, he picked up a tablet, punched something into it, and looked up at me. “You’re in.” He handed the papers back to me. “Go back to the front and talk to Dolores. She’ll make sure everything’s kosher and schedule you for processing. Training starts on Monday at oh-nine hundred hours.”
“I’ve got the job?”
“Need me to spell it out for you?”
“No.” I shut my mouth, grabbed the papers from him, and went to see Dolores.
CHAPTER 3
I had a few days to kill.
A day had passed and I still couldn’t believe it. I kept waiting for the phone to ring and for the person on the other end to tell me it had all been a joke, that I wasn’t going anywhere, followed by a roomful of laughter until the line went dead. You get to be that way after a while. You start to get suspicious of good news.
The day Hayes had told me I had the job, I had gone home feeling like my feet hadn’t touched the ground.
It had taken twenty-four hours for the news to really settle in, for the doubt to slither its way into my brain. That’s when I started to question things. Had they made a mistake? Had I heard them wrong? Would they do a more extensive background check and decide I wasn’t the man for the job? And what if I did have the job? Would I make it through training? Would I flunk out? I wasn’t a brain like a lot of them. I could hold my own, but I wasn’t packing a degree from a fancy school.
Eventually, I decided to squash my doubts and started to pack. I thought it would pass the time, keep my mind busy. It didn’t take long. I didn’t have much. A few clothes, some hygiene items, a picture of my dad and I (the only actual photograph I had). The process took all of twenty minutes. It hadn’t ever crossed my mind that I could clean out my apartment in less than an hour. Even after several years I could pack up my life at a moment’s notice. I was a nomad that had only been pretending that he had a home.
I spent the weekend going through the training packet they had given me. It was a three hundred page manual that somehow neglected to mention any specifics of the mission. It provided pointers on how to function in cramped living quarters, prolonged exposure to an artificial gravity environment, and the effects of cryostasis on the human body.
It was mostly a survival guide to interstellar travel. While it was educational and even borderline entertaining at times, it didn’t reveal any details of the mission. I wondered what all the secrecy was about. Was this routine procedure? Didn’t a guy have a right to know what they were getting into? I hated mysteries the way I hated Brussels sprouts.
The words on the manual’s pages grew blurry and I got to thinking about all the possibilities. Maybe we were being sent to scout out another Earth-like planet. A planet with breathable air and deep blue water. Wasn’t that the purpose of any interstellar mission? Earth was great and all, but they had been talking about how its resources were being tapped out for at least a hundred years now, how the population was sitting at over eleven billion, and it was safe to say that we weren’t changing our ways. It didn’t matter what you heard on the news, the threat had always been treated as a myth. Mankind was an egotistical animal, but when it came to the notion of us being planet wreckers, we were collectively modest.
It was easier to stress over the little things,
I guess.
I woke up tired and anxious on Sunday morning. I took inventory of all the things I had packed, surprised out how fast a person’s thoughts could do a complete one-eighty.
Just the day before I had been worried that it was all a joke, that the punchline was yet to come. By Sunday, I felt exactly the opposite. I wondered if I was making the right decision. Wondered if I was ready to leave the only home I had ever known. There weren’t a lot of fond memories. If I allowed my mind to drift back, I could remember the days when things had been good, when my mom and dad had been more than ghosts.
It felt like forever ago. The mind likes to label things. Hot or cold, good or bad, black or white. It doesn’t like gray areas. That’s why all those childhood memories had faded away, leaving only the bad times behind.
Which made me question this sudden onset of homesickness. I didn’t have any close ties to Earth, not anymore, but there was a part of me that hesitated to leave it. After a while, I decided to take a walk around the city.
The sky was dark gray, looking as though it were trying to decide whether to be cruel or not. It was in the low twenties; the streets were mostly empty. Intelligent people were smart enough to stay out of the cold. The cold didn’t bother me. Neither did the lack of foot traffic. It was nice to be able to navigate the streets with my mind on auto pilot, not having to weave around other people.
It being Sunday, a lot of the shops were closed, but I stopped into a bistro long enough to buy a coffee, getting it to go, the hot liquid warming my insides as I continued on my way. Little moments like these, they seemed few and far between. Those times when I could let my mind wander and forget about everything else. I could sit alone in my apartment all I wanted (and God alone could count the number of hours I had spent doing just that), but that was a different kind of thinking. It was usually depressing. The kind of alone that made you long for companionship.
I wasn’t sure of what I was trying to work out exactly. Maybe I was working through ghosts from the past, maybe it was a lack of self confidence, or maybe it was combination of things. My brain had enough questions to keep me going for hours. As soon as I had one answered, another would present itself.
Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1) Page 3