My alarm goes off at 0630 and despite how much I drank last night, I feel surprisingly rested. It might have something to do with the mess of curls laying on my chubby arm. I smile at the compassion she showed last night, and wonder if she planned to distract me with science and sex. If that was her plan, she read me like an open book.
I lean over to kiss her cheek, “I need this back, Katie.” As I start to gently move my arm, she grumbles and then starts to push me away instead of holding me. Her arms are long enough to push me off the bed, causing me to squeal before my butt hits the floor. The situation is so strange to me I can’t help but chuckle as I search for my phone. Katie’s hand searches for a pillow, and once found she tucks it over her head. I laugh harder.
I turn off my alarm and set up the tiny hotel coffee maker to brew me a pot while I’m in the shower. The white noise of the water is soothing and is normally the time where I mentally structure my day, but today my brain is wondering whether sleeping with Katie is going to make things awkward this week. Then I realize that she probably never made a decision without overthinking it a little. I resolve to bring it up when I get home if it still feels like an issue.
I put on cammo pants with my last name embroidered over my left butt pocket and a light-brown undershirt before heading for a hot cup of energy. The coffee maker is off and the pot is empty when I walk out. Surprise and anger crawls up from my feet but then I notice the cups are missing too. I look over and see that Curls is slouched at the table wearing her oversized t-shirt and scrolling her phone. There’s an open cup of coffee in front of her and one with a travel lid next to my info packet.
Aww, that was vary considerate and adorable of her. I walk up to her and squeeze her shoulder, “This is sweet of you, thanks.” She nods and then offers her phone to me.
The screen displays a new contact screen with “Penelope Mercer” under the name. I beam a smile at her, realizing she’s acknowledging my request for sharing my story. As if sex wasn’t thanks enough. I change the name to Penny, put in my digits and then text myself “Hey Sexy” before handing the phone back. Katie snorts as my phone dings with the message.
“You going in today?” I ask as I pull on my boots and blouse my pants over them. She nods. “Okay, text me if you want to grab lunch together.”
“Mm,” she grunts into her cup.
Well, that’s probably as much as I’ll get out of her before I leave. With all the non-verbal communication, it makes me wonder if she’s been ridiculed for the way she talks or the topics she talks about. Most behavior is learned and the cause of this behavior has me curious. A problem for another time though. I have to finish getting ready and discover the best way to get to the ‘Gon from here.
I reluctantly put on some makeup, because it’s expected, and make sure my hair isn’t doing anything stupid or “trendy”. Not that female haircuts are monitored all that much. LS2 O’Connell’s head is shaved on the sides with a curly mop top and I bet no one has said anything to her about. It. My ears aren’t pierced so I don’t have to remember that bullshit, so I double check everything else to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.
“See you later Katie,” I say, opening the door to start my sad adventure into cramming for an exam.
“Thanks for the coffee, Penny.”
I want to look back and stare and the cordial statement, but instead I let a grin spread across my face and a feeling of warmth to contaminate my heart. And the grinch’s heart grew three sizes. Pah, mine isn’t black, just chilly at times.
The concierge-slash-office worker informs me that this is a popular hotel due to its proximity to a subway station that goes directly into DC. Well, it’s cheaper than a cab and it probably takes less time during rush hour and maybe always.
Commuting is what it is, but public transit is solid in its ability to allow us to focus on other things while we travel. So I naturally pulled out my phone and Googled my roommate. Miss O’Connell won every science fair she ever entered and was on nationally competitive Science Bowl teams throughout her high school years. After that? Who knows. She had to have joined the Navy soon after that if she’s an LS2, but since she’s clearly a prodigy the timelines aren’t super clear. I wonder why she didn’t pursue college. Not that I’m going to ask her right away, it seems pretty rude.
With the schedule and a train change it takes me 40 minutes to get to the security station on this side of the Pentagon. I am no stranger to the waiting involved in official processes, and getting a temp badge so I can report to whatever office or meeting room the letter and numbers signify. They swipe and x-ray my bag hand me a clip-on pass that I’ve been instructed to return when I leave.
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I find the office with 15 minutes to spare and a secretary tells me to take a seat and wait. I look around the office and see a framed concept drawing of the Copernicus and a couple of photos of the orbital build in process. I’d read about the process, of course, and setting up an orbital shipyard was the hardest, but the part that surprises me is the flexibility of the program, as the drive I built was barely a research idea when they started building the rest of the ship. Apparently they were going to strap liquid rocket propulsors to the frame while they developed an inversion engine.
I never tried to learn about those engines as they only worked near a large gravity well like a planet or a star. For interplanetary travel, that would work fine, but inter-system travel it would leave the travelers super vulnerable.
“So there was a Doctor on the plane.” I look up to see MM3 Martin walking in the office.
“Funny as ever, Martin. Is Baker behind you?”
“Nah, he stayed in Charleston. Reconsidered the sure thing versus the first thing.” I nod at that. It was honestly the smartest path if you weren’t in a hurry to get off planet. Which apparently Martin was. I raise and eyebrow at that and he shrugs.
The secretary picks up her phone and a minute of waiting later she tells us the Director will see us now. Director what now? We’re getting a briefing from the program director?
“Mercer, Martin, glad you could make it. Take a seat.” He gestures toward the seats before his desk. “Due to the politics of space and the 50 trillion cost of the two vessels, we’ve had to partner with China and Japan to set our plans into action. China has co-opted Russia into a position of priority to counter-act our long-standing alliance with Japan. That being said, the Chinese managed to slip in some qualification changes for their turn to host the school. Which means a western presence to crew the ship is being endangered. We’ve accelerated you two and some members of your previous class in order to meet our own quota’s, with a couple of other Sailors that are eligible to serve their parent’s countries during the length of the tour.
“So that’s why we’re disrupting our proven process to get you into the next Copernicus training period. What’s in it for you? You go to space almost a year early, but more than that, your space service pay starts as soon as you pass the eligibility exams instead of when you start space service. Also, you will be guaranteed to get the duty station of your choice, even if it’s not available. As long as it’s a billet in your rating, you can choose anything and we’ll work with DoN to make it work.”
Martin and I both whistle at that. Any duty, no matter if it’s occupied. That is a desperate play if I’ve ever seen one. More Space service please. I grin at the idea of two consecutive tours amongst the stars.
“As much as I trust, I’m going to need that offer in writing.”
“That’s not how this goes, Mercer.”
“What if I want a second tour in space?”
He shakes his head on that, “There are multinational rules against that.”
“It’s a billet in the system right?”
Poor Director. He sighs, “I’ll socialize the idea and we’ll talk again. If. You. Pass.” I grin but don’t say a word. He looks between Martin and I, seeing nothing but acceptance, he dismisses us. Yeoman 1st Class Tucker greets us outside the office and informs us he will be our tour guide for the rest of the morning.
“Hello! I’m YN1 Tucker and we’re headed to get you your own tablet and fitted for a few medical operating items. We also want to fit you both for HUD glass. You will find an NDA for the glass as it is both a training aid and a behavior learning apparatus to help the DoD learn if such technologies will enhance information saturation.”
“Wow, were you an MC in a former life?” Martin asks
Tucker laughs, “most servicemembers in the Pentagon are required to attend Public Relations training, and it’s easier for me to be that way all the time while I’m at work.”
I try to engage him with more questions about what gear we’ll get, but his silence tells me that I’ll see it when I get there. I has impatience.
Our first stop is medical, they take the nurse data, then ask if anything has changed since our last checkup. We both say no before we’re separated and hooked up to an EKG. They take 5 minutes of baseline data and then connect a waist-belt recording device to the EKG leads and tell us that it has a ten-day battery life and that we need to log in a journal any significant events that would influence the data collected. I chuckle at that. I am totally telling Katie about this.
Next, we do the optometrist diopter thing. This has to be for the HUD Glass. They ask me if I want corrective lenses or transparent lenses. I say, corrected if I need them and they proceed to ask one or two, A or B for ten minutes before they hand me some dark glasses and we go pick frames. Apparently my right eye is a little degraded, but not enough to need glasses if I don’t. I opt in for the pair of regular glasses and the corrective HUD pair. The HUD glasses are a multi-layer LED embedded safety glass that is apparently combat rated. The visor-style wrap around frames are tacky AF but tac-tical. Heh.
I really want to play with the HUD system, but they tell me I have to wait until Monday. It was then that I realized that they were moving mountains to rush this program. I was getting prescription, high-tech laminate glasses in two days. Combined with the hotel and the acceleration of the prototype program, it has got to be close to a million per person to make this happen. I mean, I’m worth it, and I deserve this chance, but it’s still a lot of money.