JUSTIN
“Alright.” He said, and grumpily got up from the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable, and didn’t seem to want to let go of him. He was still young, however, and definitely would not succumb to the comfort of the plush piece of furniture. Thirty this year. A fucking old man, should he listen to what his younger self thought about this age.
The screen was still showing a live feed from the inside of the lunar crew module. “Come on, time to work. The Apollo will not touch the lunar surface for another four hours.” The Machine said.
“So little time?” He asked, a bit surprised.
“You did the math yourself, bonehead. At 1g of acceleration, and with time to flip midway, it’s 1.75 hours each segment.”
“Right…” He felt a bit stupid, but it was to be expected. His brain couldn’t work at full capacity all the time, right? For a moment, he wondered just how much did Nicholas’s brain work every day. He didn’t feel like he knew the man at all. All that mystery and speculation around him did not become clearer as he became closer to the man. If anything, it all became even messier. He could ask the AI, yes, and he was even sure she would not tell him anything if he asked her not to. But he never did.
He ordered a glass of whatever the AI would bring him, and tried to decide what to do with the time he had.
“Suggestions?” He asked. Somehow, she always knew the best answer to even stupid questions such as this. Actually, he knew very well why she was able to, but it did not subtract anything from the feeling of wonder and awe each time she told him exactly what he needed to hear.
“You got Nicholas’s designs.” The voice said. The inflexion, tone, and diction felt just right to his ears.
“Yeah, right!”
He pulled up the holograms, and began fiddling with a multitude of designs. It was like being Tony Stark in person, or so Nicholas liked to say. He had watched the movie out of curiosity, or perhaps in a futile attempt to understand the man better. To be honest, he found that the movie had aged pretty badly. Not up to standard with modern day, AI-assisted computer graphics. If it wasn’t for the Machine refusing to do it, its CGI could have replaced the need for actors ages ago.
It had been a fool’s errand. Trying to understand a person by watching the movies he quoted, stupid idea. If he wanted to grow closer to him, he needed to get the fuck closer to him. Period.
He forced his mind back to the designs. His current project was a slightly bigger version of the New Apollo rocket. One that could support a living module, rather than a core city module like the Apollo did. One where the crew could live for a few months in space. Like the duration of a trip to Mars and back.
The other current project was a design Nicholas sent him. It was a set of robotic workers designed to mine asteroids and build a fully automated mining operation there. There were two of those asteroids the Chief (as they all liked to call Nicholas, against his wishes of course) had set his eyes upon, and the little robotic workers were supposed to bring back all the materials and haul them to a specific spot in Earth’s orbit, where the construction of a space station would begin in earnest.
His job? Figure out a way to take those little mining bots where they were supposed to go, then figure out how to set up their base of operations. From there it was just a matter of deciding how they would manage to charge their solar cells, how they would send the material back, and how to intercept it when it arrived in orbit. Piece of cake.
He had to admit the mining bots’ design was gorgeous. And somehow perfectly fit for any adaptation that came to his mind. With the Machine’s aid, he hoped he would be able to draft a doable project within the end of the week. The notes in Nicholas’s designs suggested for huge solar arrays to be built in the vicinity of the asteroid in order to capture enough energy to sustain the operation.
The arrays were basically small compact satellites full of folded up solar cells. Once in place, they would expand their super thin, super long cells like a sail and begin storing power. That power would then be transmitted via laser back onto the surface of the asteroid.
The design was supposed to be a proof of concept for another, future project. One so ambitious it put all the others to shame. A Dyson swarm around the Sun.
NICHOLAS – 2023, GRADUATION DAY
“You know what a Dyson Sphere is?” He asked. He was sitting at a bar, right next to the faculty. The dissertation of his thesis was due in a few hours, but he couldn’t bring himself to think about it right now.
“A sphere around a star, to capture it’s energy. Come on, you gotta try harder. We’re not the chimps you used to surround yourself with, back in Bumblefuck or wherever you used to live.”
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There were three people with him at the table. The one who just spoke was Mitchell and, despite not wanting to acknowledge so himself, he too was from a non-relevant city like Nicholas was.
“Yeah, you’re right. But there’s a little issue with the design that gets mostly ignored in fiction.” Nicholas said. He was wearing a slight grin on his face, and seeing his friend try to come up with a smartass answer and fail made his grin grow a bit wider.
“I heard of it. They say there’s no known material strong enough to envelop the star and not break apart like tissue paper. Not even carbon nanotubes.” Said Emily. She was a cute little blonde girl, but Nicholas had been reminded several times that looks can be deceiving.
“Fuck, you’re right.” Replied Mitchell. Hugh, the other person at the table, just frowned. “So, what’s your ingenious solution to the problem?”
“It’s not my solution, and it’s easier than you think.” He said. He saw that he was dragging it out too much as Hugh just took and left. “Hey, dude, come on… I just wanted to mess with you a bit!”
MACHINE
The young man left the field of view of the bar’s cameras.
>Attempting to track target… Data unavailable in archive. Internet search inconclusive.
If she could, she would have sighed. Data from before her age was always spotty at best, and there was no way of knowing what that Hugh was even thinking at the moment. If she had been there, she would have used his phone to track him and listen in on him, but that data (presuming it once existed somewhere deep inside Google’s servers) was long since gone.
>Speculations: EXPAND
The view readjusted onto Nicholas, and she resumed the video.
NICHOLAS
“Let him leave. He thinks you’re bragging your superior intellect. We know it’s just you compensating for your shortcomings…” He smirked, trying to put as much emphasis on ‘short’ as he could. “But he doesn’t know you so well. You can be rough around the edges.”
“If I were rich, you would call me extravagant, or exotic, or fascinatingly mysterious.” Nicholas replied. His smile was still bitter. It was not the first time someone had distanced himself from him because of his character.
“Ha! As if!”
“Yadda yadda. Alright, the answer is a Dyson Swarm!” He finally said, and the conversation went back to discussing the technical details of enveloping a star.
ERIC – JUNE 5TH 2050 – EN ROUTE TO THE MOON
Eric woke up from the implant-induced micro coma, feeling slightly disoriented. The sensation washed over him and vanished quicker than he could blink, however, as the Machine manually set his brain biochemistry to top efficiency.
The others were waking as well, some cursing under their breath, some very excited about the whole endeavor. They had roughly an hour of normal gravity now, as the steady burn of the fusion engines provided the necessary acceleration.
After that, they would strap in to their chairs again, and the Apollo would flip backwards. After the flip the engines would come back to life again and begin another full hour of deceleration before arriving at destination. Then all that was left would be the landing.
He looked around, searching for the one face he wanted to see. Annette was already awake, her curly brown hair moving like a liquid despite the full gravity they were in. She was undoing her straps, in cutely clumsy motions that were getting her nowhere. A smile crept on his face as he approached her.
“Here, let me help.” He said, and his hands skillfully removed the straps from her lower back. He paid extra attention to not touch any private parts.
“Thank you.” She turned around and beamed him a smile. His heart seemed to melt, and he could feel his cheeks grow hot.
But, before he could speak any further, Bertrand voice boomed inside the module. It was not a small space by any means, as it would be later converted into the main living area for the temporary base, but still his voice seemed to make it feel claustrophobic.
“Come on! Don’t get distracted. Check all systems for damage, and see if we need to correct course.” He roared. The checks weren’t strictly necessary perhaps, but it was nice to double check everything.
“Yessir.”
“Don’t think that just because we have an AI aiding us, nothing will happen. What if a system malfunctions in a way the AI cannot see? We need to be thorough.” He added.
The system check lasted for the majority of the hour, and sooner than Eric would have liked, he had to sit back in his chair again and be secured with the straps.
The engines shut down. Immediately, a feeling of vertigo assaulted his brain as he found himself in free fall. No longer supported by the comforting presence of the artificially induced gravity. His inner ear was still confused when he felt the rotation. The cigar shaped spaceship flipped on its axis and pointed its tip towards Earth. The engines came back to life.
The sweet sound of hydrogen being compressed, fused and ejected at tremendous speed and temperature towards the Moon brought back the sensation of weight. He unstrapped himself and went back to Annette again.
“Hey, everything alright?” He asked her.
“Yep. All fine. I’m pretty excited about all this, you?” She asked, her moment of disorientation vanishing as excitement took over.
“Oh, me too. I’ve never thought I’d be the one, honestly.” He replied, unconsciously looking towards Bertrand and David.
“Same here! I thought it would all be just a childhood dream! I’m so happy right now!” She was practically beaming. Eric found it hard not to smile at her, and eventually let his defenses crumble. He could feel the woman worming her way through the walls he had built around his heart.
“After almost a century… we will be the first men to step foot on the moon again.” He said solemnly. In truth, he really didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. His mind was refusing to work properly. He could feel the heat in his face, and hoped he was not beet red in front of the woman.
“You know what? When we touch down, we should celebrate.” She leaned in closer. “I’ll wait for you in my quarters tonight.” She whispered. She was about to turn away and go back to her station, when she suddenly turned back and pulled his ear close to her face. “I wonder how it feels like, doing it at one sixth gravity.” She said. Her hot breath tickled his ear, and he was left immobile and speechless for a few seconds even after she went back to her seat.