…[ JACY ]…

Jacy was a little bit anxious. Kacy had expressed doubts about her capabilities as crew for a spaceship. During her last message, she said in no uncertain terms that she was thinking of dropping out of the crew training program. She wouldn’t be the first one. Of the tens of thousands that had joined, more than half had already dropped out.

First it had been the hours. A lot of people had complained about the unflexibility of the training program. Its hours were fixed. No matter what your life was like, the training program didn’t care. You either were there or you weren’t. That was all that mattered. It had seen a mass dropout within the first month. Some had tried to protest, but they had either met dead walls or aggressive force. Depending on what manner of protests they contacted. Mativo didn’t entertain anything that affected the normal operations of his companies. And the trainees had fast learnt that. Jacy understood the reasoning behind the unflexibility, but she also knew that it was not something easy to grasp for new comers.

Then came the physical demands the training program made. It was common knowledge that anyone going to space had to have a certain degree of physical fitness. But Mativo’s criteria was a tad bit higher than normal. Way higher. No explanation was ever given, but during their expedition, Jacy had come to appreciate it. And given where they will be going, even more will be needed.

Then the mental requirements. Through all that, the training program required one to maintain their mental acuity. Gain knowledge and properly utilize that knowledge if when your own body was feeling like falling apart.

There were others too, but those were the ones Kacy had talked about. Jacy didn’t doubt Kacy’s mental capabilities, but given her personality, she knew that Kacy would have to work extra hard on the other two. Jacy knew she could do it, she had already survived for months. But in the end, only Kacy would determine whether she had what it took or not.

..[]..

Deciding to acquire power and coming up with ways to acquire that power were too entire differently things. It had been months since she decided that she needed to be more powerful. More than she had ever thought before. Being an Earth bound species, power meant one thing, but being a galactic species it would mean a whole different thing. Someone from a 1G planet getting in a physical fight against another from a 2G planet would be akin to a suicidal attack. And then there was what they were working on. It was guaranteed, without a doubt, that other people other than Mativo would sooner or later start using that technology to empower themselves. And as it was, they still hadn’t come up with ways to fight against someone like that. Mativo had asked them to research on the subject but there was so little data that they had come up with nothing much. Until recently most of Mativo’s attacks could easily be fended off with the proper training and equipment. But the diamond was starting to tip the scale somewhat. Her brainstorming sessions had yielded little in the way of answers.

That was why she had been putting so much effort into her bioaugmentics project. She believed that it could in future become an equal contender for the best personal body empowerment program.

She had made huge progress while on the expedition, achieving a bioaugmentic index of 0.74 during her last tests. Up from a mere 0.42 when the expedition started. She had thought that there wasn’t going to be enough time to work through her projects but she still somehow found herself working on them. Of course, she had also forgot all about sleeping habits. She couldn’t tell with complete certainty how many hours she slept in a single twenty-four-hour window. But she knew that sometimes, she stayed awake for more than twenty-four hours straight. She had been telling Frea and Kacy some of those times, maybe they had contributed to Kacy’s doubts. Making her aware that things might even be worse than they were during training.

But the bioaugmentic index could be lower or higher. Her test subjects were still lab mouse. Creatures incapable of following the simplest of instructions. She needed test subjects that could listen, be told what to do and actually do it; to test in fine detail just how high that index was.

…[ MATIVO ]…

There was a time when I used to believe that the reason for Venus’ rotation was a collision with another large celestial body during the early days of the Solar System. With that reasoning in mind, I had hypothesized that the Moon was a product of that collision, making proto-Earth the culprit. Proto-Earth had been way bigger than proto-Venus and more massive. When the two collided, Venus had been forced to rotate backwards by their differences in momentum. Or something like that. Earth had taken most of the debris with it which later accredited to the Moon. But as I got older and read more about what other people thought why Venus was as it was, that view was slowly but surely washed away. Their hypothesis made more sense. And as more data was gathered, they soon became facts. While all of mine were left in the realm of fantasies. I sometimes still wished that I had been right. That Earth was to blame for all of Venus’ woes.

So, here we were, at the object of some of my weirdest fantasies if I do say so myself. Our stay at Venus was scheduled to last ten days. With most of the missions to be carried out being mine own. I wanted to one day land on a Venus much like Earth and also different. And that meant that my terraforming program would have to be the one carried out here.

The data we gathered would help my team of terraformers to finalize the program they had been working on for terraforming Venus. I was hoping the proposed time would drop; but I also knew that it could increase, or even the whole plan rendered unexecutable. That meant we needed to gather as much data as we could. And the data needed to be as factual as we could get it. No mistakes were allowed. I had even gone so far as to be on more than half of the Exploratory Teams. Which was clearly against what my book of management advised. But I knew that the only way to have things done the way you want is to do them yourself. If they hated me for it, I didn’t care. Venus meant more to me than nearly everything else. Of course it would lose its meaning once I successfully terraformed it, but there was no need to tell Venus that.

Terraforming Venus meant overcoming two huge obstacles where I was concerned. Atmosphere and speed of rotation. Everything else was secondary to those two. Maybe after enough research was conducted on whether the direction of rotation would have effects on the existence of life on Venus on the long run, it might become a strong contender.

Dealing with the atmosphere was easy-peasy with our current technology. More precisely, with my current technology. My team had built a prototype that if scaled up to service a whole planet like Venus, could have it with a human-friendly atmosphere in less than hundred years.

Cost was the limiting factor here. I couldn’t afford it, my whole family couldn’t afford it. Maybe if we joined together with another family. But that was a strong maybe. But if the soon to be opened Solar Tours proved successful, I might be able to afford it. But just barely.

Of course, a lot of it depended on the conditions of the preexisting atmosphere and whether the planet itself had the capability to hold on to that atmosphere on its own. That was one of the reasons I didn’t like Mars that much. It was too weak in everything.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The insurmountable was the speed of rotation. No matter how you looked at it, the most cost effective and stable way of keeping Venus human-friendly was to increase its rotation considerably. The proposals that had simulated days and night were just suggesting solutions that would always be hanging in the balance. If anything happened to those simulators, the sun facing side of Venus could be roasted before they were able to put up a solution. It was the universe after all, everything was always trying to extinguish life. Only a self-stabilizing system could hope to stand a chance at long term success.

Our first exploration of Venus was an all-in kind a scenario. Instead of starting at the upper atmosphere and slowly making our way down, we had just send a shuttle all the way down. With another set of maniacs, I included. That one had been to test whether the shuttles where capable of functioning to their full potential under Venusian conditions. Safe to say, it had been a smooth ride. There had been no venturing out of the shuttle though. The shuttle might have been capable of surviving the Venusian conditions at the surface, but I was more than sure our skinsuits would offer no protection there.

The rest of the Exploration Team had had mission goals entailing collection of samples of the atmosphere at different altitudes. Taking measurements of the conditions at those altitudes and many more. We had also been required to try and get a sample of the crust. Yes, the crust of Venus, our scientists had asked for. And I was thankful for the existence of robots, them unfeeling machines. We relied on a self-piloted shuttle with no crew onboard to accomplish that task.

By the end of the Venusian Exploration Missions, some of the crew looked as tired as they had been by the fourth day of the Ganymede rescue attempt. That event had turned into the mark of the expedition’s worst thing; while the stay at Titan had been arguably considered the best by most of the crew.

..[]..

“I’ve been meaning to ask about the selection program.”

“What?” I asked Andrew, turning slightly to face him.

“The selection program for the crew.”

“No. I heard you. I was asking what are you asking about the selection program. What do you want to know?”

“The selection?”

“Everything?” Couldn’t he at least have tried to narrow it down.

“As much as you can say.” Apparently, Jacy too was interested in the crew selection. The others looked to be paying attention too. At least I didn’t have to worry about any of them deciding not to come.

“There isn’t much to say really.”

“What? Why?” Park asked.

“Because I still don’t know the crew requirements for the ship.”

“How can you not know? It will be your ship.” Dominic pointed out.

“Yes. But it is still in development, remember?” I amended after thinking about it. “Actually, I think it is design. Not yet development.”

“Design? How soon do you expect us to be leaving?” Park asked.

“Two years. At most three?”

“Will that be enough time for the ship to become fully operational?”

“The development of this ship took fourteen months.” Jacy reminded him. But he didn’t seem to understand what she had meant,

“You haven’t even started testing the prototypes.”

“The fourteen months was when the first prototype began construction.”

“I hadn’t known that.” He was taken back by her elaboration. “That was quick. How sure were you that they were safe?”

“Are you saying that you wouldn’t have agreed to come if you had known the ships were so young?”

“No. I mean yes.” He said hurriedly, before composing himself. “I would have still come.”

“You still haven’t answered how you knew they were safe.” Mbithe brought us back to one of Park’s issues.

“All the tests showed the ship working perfectly fine. Besides, our AI design simulator is top notch. Arguably the best in the known universe.”

“Except the one explosion.” Andrew needed to learn when not to remind people things.

“That had not been an issue with the ship. Only the Gravity Device.”

“The Gravity Device is part of the ship.” Jacy said to me. She sounded haughty for moment.

“And it worked fine in the following prototypes. The issue was fixed.”

“What exploding ship?” But Park had become entirely confused now.

“The first prototype exploded on its third test flight.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Really? Where have you been for the last few years?” Dominic asked him.

“Busy on a project to bring magic to the world.”

“It is not magic!”

“What do you call it then?”

“Science.” Those two began their own mini-argument.

“What are you waiting for?” Mbithe asked. She seemed to keep track of the more important topics.

“The engines and engine core.”

“Can’t you just have the ship built and install them when they are ready?”

“No. A spaceship is built around two things: what it is carrying and its engines.” Jacy answered for me. It was times like this that I was reminded she was as knowledgeable as I was in most things. That, and she had friends in the Space Engineering Department.

“You are waiting to see what design will work with the engines?”

“No. Size.”

“Size?”

“Yes. The engines will determine the size of the ship.”

“What about the design?”

“It will look more or less like this one.”

“Oh. I see…”

“What? Did you want something fancy looking?”

“No! I thought it might look different.”

“The ship’s design is mostly affected by the Gravity Device we use. The current design fully utilizes the effective Gravity Field provided by the Gravity Device.”

“You still haven’t said anything about the crew selection.” Andrew said. It seemed we had deviated from the original question a lot.

“I have. The size of the ship directly affects the size of crew required to efficiently run it. And the number of personnel it can comfortably carry. This in effect decides what kind of crew is needed for the ship and expedition.”

“So, you have no idea what kind of crew you will have on the ship?”

“I have the basics down.”

“Which are?”

“You know its tiring to keep talking like this all the time,” I said, swallowing a bit of saliva. Wishing I had taken a cup of water before starting this conversation.

“Humor us.” Jacy said.

“Fine. The basics. Instead of a general crew like we have on this expedition, the crew for the next exploratory expedition will be divided into five grades.

“Grade One: the lowest. This will include all stranglers we pick up on our way. It could include people here in the Solar System or out there if we meet intelligent enough lifeforms that can hold a conversation and there is need for them to be here. It will also include captives. But I’m thinking of including Grade Zero for those.”

“Where would captives come from?” Mbithe asked surprised.

“You never know. We could meet people we might need to keep secured.” Dominic answered. Apparently they were done with their argument.

“But do we have to keep them captive?”

“You want us to execute them outright?” Park asked, before starting to smile, “Nice.”

“No! That’s not what I want at all.”

“You two are derailing the explanation. Let him finish, then we can ask questions.” Andrew acted the chaperone.

“Grade Two: Civilians. This will be the family and friends of crew who join to accompany them on the expedition. They will be the least trained of the crew. To be part of Grade Two, one will have to have passed the basic crew training program. Otherwise, they will belong to Grade One.

“Grade Three: Staff. Or the working crew. Everyone in this Grade will have passed the General Crew Training Program. They will also be needed to be capable of fully functioning in at least three positions. They will be responsible for maintaining and carrying out the normal operations of the crew.

“Grade Four: Junior Officers. They will have to take and pass both the General Crew and Officers Training Programs. They will include all officers under the Senior Officers. Some of them might have to take the Command Training Program, just in case something happens to the Senior Officers.

“Grade Five: Senior Officers. And the Command Structure. This will be the cream of the ship. Seriously though, the Chiefs will belong here, and all the members of the Bridge. They will have to take and convincingly pass all three main Training Programs. The General Crew, the Officers and the Command.”

“Where do you think we fall in the Grades?” Park asked.

“I don’t know. It will depend on what training programs you choose to take and how you fare in them.”

“Wait, you mean there will be training programs for that expedition too?” Dominic asked.

“Of course. As much as this expedition has prepared you for the harshness of space, it has done nothing in the field of habitable planets and moons. And how to conduct yourselves in the event of contact with extraterrestrials.”

“So, you don’t have to take the current ongoing crew training program?”

“If you are on this ship, no. Otherwise, it is highly recommended if you wish for Grade Three or higher. There is no way anyone who hasn’t taken a previous training program will be able to pass. The chances of passing then will be below one percent.”

“Wow! You have really thought about it, haven’t you?” Mbithe said.

“What are you talking about? I said that was the basics. There are still divisions within each Grade and where different personnel fall under in those divisions. I will need a whole team to help me finish up on the planning. I was hoping some of you might help.”