Peter smiled as he saw Katie and her best friend Patch looking back under the table at the rest of her presents. This Ospanov family home in the sedate environs of New London was a far cry from the one Peter had grown up in during the turbulent days of the Global Union’s much-resisted reign, and he was only too happy to see his daughter grow up having all the things he hadn’t.
He had however raised a concern to Viola a year or so earlier that things could be in danger of being too comfortable for everyone, and he felt that this might be more of a concern in the future and particularly if they were to have a son, quoting the age-old mantra that luxury and comfort could breed weakness and complacency. He made it clear that he wasn’t suggesting a preference for raising a child Spartan style — leaving it on a mountaintop to see if it would make it home alive — but instead that he worried that insulating children from any challenges or even temporary moments of lack was something to be wary of. Having grown up seeing things he would never wish on anyone, Peter said these concerns weren’t just about character building for its own sake, but rather regarded readiness; because however safe and friendly a place might seem, he knew only too well that trouble could be closer than anyone thought.
Viola understood these and other related fears, but she considered them more broadly in terms of the Kosmosphere’s future society. The free availability of food, shelter and other essential resources — for adults as well as children — would create a post-scarcity society of a kind untested for any great length of time. The Terradox colony was the closest analogue, but researchers and their families moved there knowing that they would be sent home if they didn’t contribute productively. On the Kosmosphere, moving further and further from Earth on its one-way course, such an incentive wouldn’t be present.
“Five seconds,” Peter said, quite loudly.
“Until what?” Viola asked. She counted down in her head.
“There’s one more,” her father Robert called from the projection area in front of the viewing wall.
Viola turned to Peter and mocked an angry expression. “You weren’t supposed to watch this before the rest of us.”
Peter shrugged. “I like to make sure things are working as they should.”
“Katie,” Robert said, his voice firmer. “I have one more present.” He then held his right hand forward, moving it from behind his back, and held out a small box wrapped in green paper.
Katie looked on, confused.
“Look under the table for a green box,” Viola said. “Grandad means that he wrapped another one in that kind of paper. It must be in there with the others.”
“Hmm, I’m not so sure…” Peter said, looking away from Viola as he delivered a signal in the form of a wink.
Over in the projection area, Robert reached backwards and touched the viewing wall. In an instant, the backdrop of Terradox vanished and the projected figures disappeared.
At least, three of them did.
As Viola’s jaw hit the floor and Katie’s confusion doubled, Robert Harrington stepped forward. “Happy birthday, darling,” he said to Katie, echoing his initial greeting.
Peter looked around the room at the shocked faces — Vic and Kayla Hawthorne were almost as stunned as Viola — then tapped Katie on the shoulder. “Go and say hello,” he encouraged her.
Katie still didn’t quite get it, but at this point Viola leapt from her chair and ran towards her father. Almost frightened to believe it was real, she then tightly hugged him for the first time in more than four years.
“How are you here?” she asked through tears of joy, parting only to let Katie in as the little girl finally realised that Robert wasn’t a projection after all.
“I came in on a cargo ship last night,” he explained. When Katie reached him, he crouched to her level. He kissed her on the forehead and handed her the small gift in his hands, resisting the strong urge to tell her she had her late grandmother’s eyes. As true as that was — and it was the truest thing he had ever known — saying it out loud would likely have unnecessarily upset Viola on what was already an emotionally charged day for everyone.
Little Katie was lost for words, too surprised to be as talkative to Robert as she had been minutes earlier — back when at least part of her mind had ‘known’ that he wasn’t really there.
“I can’t believe you pulled it off,” Peter said to Robert. “I was struggling to keep a straight face!”
Vic and Kayla Hawthorne rose to their feet beside Peter, waiting their turns to greet Robert having known him during their own time on Terradox.
Viola shot a look of faux rage at Peter for being in on the trick, then turned back to her father. “So how long are you here?” she asked. “When are you going back to Terradox?”
At that point, Robert Harrington surprised everyone one more time:
“I’m not.”
two
After four years of intensive flight training, Chase Jackson could dodge the countless obstacles in the sky over Terradox without batting an eyelid. His hands and eyes were one, like a pianist delivering a note-perfect concerto.
The narrowing pathways and pop-up obstacles were randomised during each test flight, with all of them digitally projected rather than actually present. Their convincingness was total, however, and the consequences of any physically harmless ’crash’ could be grave for Chase’s career progression.
Speed was of the essence today more so than usual, with only a few minutes remaining until a much-anticipated ceremony began at Terradox’s revamped Romotech Production Zone. This ceremony at the RPZ would conclude with the launch into orbit of the embryonic romosphere which had been painstakingly designed over the last few years and which would ultimately expand to a colossal size. The Kosmosphere, as it would remain known only until Holly revealed its name at the ceremony, would become Chase’s home in just three years’ time.
Chase didn’t know if it would be his home forever — like many others, he held deep hopes that the Kosmosphere would become a launching point for greater and grander exploration of the solar system and beyond — but he knew there would be no coming back. He would miss Terradox and those who stayed behind, just as he already missed Earth and the overwhelming majority of humanity who remained there, but Chase Jackson was not a man to shy away from adventure.
His punctual presence at the launch ceremony was crucial given that he had been advertised as the guest of honour. Holly was going to be the one to initiate the launch, as Ekaterina Rusev had explicitly insisted, but Chase’s position as the best known public figure who was currently on Terradox but set to depart for the Kosmosphere made it symbolically important for him to be at Holly’s side. Viola, Peter and now Robert Harrington were all on Earth, leaving only a few well known faces who had remained on Terradox to date but would depart in three years. Everyone knew by now that Holly herself was far too attached to the Terradox colony to quite literally jump ship, but she had nothing but support for the Kosmosphere project.
All eyes were on the launch ceremony — on Earth and the Venus station as well as on Terradox — and symbolic continuity was important.
That was what Chase had been told, anyway, but even without such an invitation he wouldn’t have missed the launch for the world.
His aircraft, a small two-person plane known as a Wasp, had a considerable distance to cover in the next few minutes. Timekeeping had never been Chase’s strongest suit, and a stubborn determination to score a flawless run in a training flight through Terradox’s most challenging conditions was in danger of making him late.
Wasps like this were often used on Earth for flying low over population centres where regulations — archaic regulations, in the eyes of many — prohibited autonomous flights. Human-piloted planes and spacecraft were now few and far between in any other non-training scenarios, but everyone understood that the endless possibilities of what the Kosmosphere’s pioneers might one day face in terms of missions or technology-related challenges meant that retaining the abil
ity to manually perform complex flight-related functions was crucial.
There was extra oomph in the movement of Chase’s Wasp today due to its race against the clock. Even through the joyous rush of acing his Hell Run, he now wished he’d put it off until after the ceremony.
The hardest part of a flight through the so-called Hell Run was always the almost-impossibly strong winds which had been created to push trainee pilots to the limit. Despite their intensity, however, Holly never hesitated to tell Chase that these winds weren’t a patch on what her karrier had faced during its unplanned manual descent on the out-of-control Netherdox romosphere. Going by what he had heard from others who were with Holly during that mission, he didn’t doubt this statement for a second.
Regardless, Chase had today achieved his target of his first flawless Hell Run and wore an appropriately wide smile as he dodged the final few comparatively unchallenging obstacles that littered the sky in his present position.
He was currently passing over the Primosphere, one of the colony’s largest research zones and one which was now covered by an enormous dome. Few had much of an idea of what went on inside, but Chase’s position in the colony’s hierarchy — not to mention his ongoing relationship with Nisha Kohli, whose father Romesh now ran the whole Primosphere division — meant that he knew a lot more than most. He knew that Romesh had overseen serious breakthroughs which were rewriting humanity’s understanding of some core biological and evolutionary truths, and he knew that at the core of it all lay a mysterious organism known only as Nancy.
With a name originating from the fact that the third variation of a ninth experiment was the first to bear fruit — experiment ‘9-C’ was quickly corrupted into the near-homonymous ‘Nancy’ — Nancy was a point of sometimes contentious interest among those with a say in the colony’s administration.
Romesh dodged direct questions even from his immediate family, but Chase knew enough to feel one part intrigued and one part troubled every time he flew over the domed Primosphere. For within that artificial atmosphere designed to mimic primordial Earth, Nancy had supposedly come into being via abiogenesis and had since proceeded to develop into an increasingly complex and unfamiliar life-form. Chase wasn’t quite sure if ‘develop’ was the best word, or if something like ‘evolve’ or ‘mutate’ may have been more appropriate; and nor did he know how much of Nancy’s development had occurred autonomously and how much had been prompted by Romesh’s deliberate manipulation of its surroundings.
‘Its’ surroundings?… Chase pondered as he watched the Primosphere pass underneath his feet. Or should that be ‘her’ surroundings?
All Chase knew was that Nancy was by now a mature organism having been closely monitored since his own days as the subject of an experiment, way back during the ill-fated isolation test conducted in the Little Venus training zone he was about to fly over.
Though much had changed in and around Little Venus, the site of a near-disaster four years earlier, the zone was still used for its initial purpose of training astronauts. Although currently empty while everyone attended the launch ceremony, the entire area was typically teeming with both trainers and trainees.
Of late, Chase had worn both hats; and although he still had a lot to learn from Holly before any trainee would look at him the same way they looked at her, for the last year he had been assisting in passing on his own knowledge of what was needed in an astronaut. While he had never participated in a real exploratory mission — a point some raised, albeit quietly — Chase had logged far more training and simulation hours than anyone else in a position to offer such assistance.
It also wasn’t as though anyone else was more qualified; due to decades of non-investment into space exploration from Earth’s governments, to say nothing of the dystopian Global Union which had reigned for too long until fairly recently, there quite simply were no other experienced astronauts to assist in this way.
There were two missing generations rather than just one, and this meant that the astronauts of the future weren’t being trained by the astronauts of the past like Holly had been by Yury ‘Spaceman’ Gardev. Because of the incredible immersiveness of modern simulation technology, however, it didn’t mean that their trainers lacked what it took to mould them into formidable candidates for whatever future missions might lie ahead.
One such candidate, surprisingly to some, was Bo Harrington. This development was entirely of Chase’s doing, as he had relentlessly badgered Bo to enrol in basic training for one very specific purpose.
In the past, Bo’s knowledge and experience of transport rovers had proven crucial. Chase made the case to Bo that if a dangerous mission ever presented itself and needed a micro-sized crew of just two or three, a rover specialist might well be among them. Chase also made it clear that he would be on the frontline of any such mission just as his mentor Holly always had been in the past, and that he would always want to have Bo by his side over anyone else. What ultimately pushed Bo into enrolling was the news that unlike in the past, he wouldn’t be allowed to so much as set foot in any small spacecraft until he had successfully completed basic flight and fitness training.
Bo’s flight training was of course far less extensive than that of Chase, who was after all aiming to position himself as the best young pilot on Terradox and the obvious choice to lead future exploratory missions. Chase would have felt sure of being chosen for future missions if Holly had been travelling to the Kosmosphere, but the as-yet unagreed specifics of the Kosmosphere’s governance structure strengthened his resolve to grow into so outstanding a candidate that no one could ever overlook him.
Not altogether unexpectedly, given the time, an incoming call notification filled Chase’s ears via the Wasp’s speakers. “I know I’m late,” he said, preempting Holly’s understandable frustration.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“On the way.”
“That’s not what I asked. How far away?”
Chase glanced down. “I’ve just passed Little Venus. But listen, Holly: I aced the Hell Run!”
She sighed. “Well done, but we’ll talk about that later. You do realise that literally everyone is waiting for you to get here, right?”
“I’ll only be another minute, but you can start without me if you want.”
Holly was quiet for a second. If Chase had a weakness besides his timekeeping, it was surely this kind of innocent naivety in not understanding how important his own presence was.
“There’s no way we can start without you, so just get here quickly, okay?” she eventually said. “Alive, but quickly.”
“On it,” Chase replied. “See you soon.”
He would have sped up if there had been any further power to call upon, and in the absence of that option he continued flying straight and true.
three
After several delightful hours spent with her father, the most welcome of all surprise guests, Viola left her home with more than a hint of reluctance as the time came for her annual public address outside New London’s City Hall.
On what was known worldwide as the annual Day of Gratitude, designated as a day for remembering and commemorating everyone who had played a part in resisting the evil plots of Roger Morrison and David Boyce, Viola’s speech was always the most-watched single event.
Until Robert’s recent arrival, Viola had been the only one of Terradox’s original ‘seven saviours’ present on Earth. This made her the focal point for the entire English-speaking world’s adulation and necessitated frequent travel to far-flung locales for some ceremony or another. She didn’t mind this, but the understandable scheduling of the Day of Gratitude on the anniversary of Rusev’s death frustratingly meant that Viola was always busy on the one day she wanted to spend with her young family more than any other.
Peter, meanwhile, having been born and raised in Kazakhstan, was responsible for conducting all primary media duties from Eastern Europe to the Far East. Viola didn’t envy his travelling schedule and wished it wasn
’t necessary, but both were glad that this year he had at least been able to remain at home for the first few waking hours of their daughter’s birthday.
As well as this welcome change, Robert Harrington’s revelation that he was staying on Earth for good — or at least until they all left together for their new life on the Kosmosphere in three years’ time — had sent Viola off in a happier mood than would otherwise have been the case. Robert’s position as the Terradox colony’s Head of Habitat Management had been voluntarily passed on to the highly capable Marcel Platt, a well-liked veteran of the isolation test which had ended without a significant loss of life thanks only to a risky last-minute intervention from Viola, Peter and Holly.
Viola now ventured outside alone, leaving Katie with Robert as well as the Hawthornes who had been set to look after her before any of them knew Robert was coming. Peter was by now already well on the way to St Petersburg for his own annual speech, which unlike Viola’s would come after Holly launched the nascent Kosmosphere from Terradox rather than before.
“Did it work?” a voice called as Viola walked towards the gate at the edge of her property. “Did he get you good?”
She recognised the voice as belonging to Pavel Mak, one of several security guards who took turns to diligently watch over her family’s home. There were four guards in total, all of whom came personally recommended by Grav having worked alongside him in years and in some cases decades gone by. They were well paid but also honoured to do the work of guarding the Ospanovs, and all were on the list of names set to travel to the Kosmosphere when the time came.
“I’m going to get you all back for that,” she said in jovial reply, knowing that Pavel and the other guards had obviously been in on it. “You’ll see.”
Terradox Beyond Page 2