Io Observer

Passing the Orbit of Venus

To almost everyone, Mercury symbolized a liquid metal or an old god with wings on the heels of his shoes. Few, until today, cared about the scarred ball orbiting the armpit of our star. Sane minds agreed, there was no reason for humans to travel to the crater-infested iron ball aside from a desire to spend research funding from wasteful governments. Even from Mercury’s dark side, which is by no means truly or permanently dark due to the rotation of the planet and its proximity to the Sun, our star appears as a giant white orb. Standing on Mercury, the gas ball's outer edges as so close, they appear uneven, fuzzy to the naked eye.

The cigar-shaped Io Observer, the latest gem from the European Space Agency, carved through space at 1,540,000 miles per hour en route to its death within the inner regions of the system. It was on a vector to hit Mercury in a day at most. There, it would crash on the surface and vaporize. The suicide mission was zooming ten times faster than any previous manned spacecraft and speeds kept increasing. Sophie’s bumpy ride to Mars was a cakewalk in comparison. If compared to light speed, which in man's solar system is roughly 669 million miles per hour, the velocity was still modest but as this speed, the solar wind coming from the ball of fire was creating headwind and some mild disturbances.

This relativistic velocity was, said simply, death to the two passengers of the Observer. The rush to the inner parts of the system was more than a race, though. The Io Lab's inertia could no longer be stopped. Stored in the velocity of the ship was the kinetic energy of a hundred nuclear bombs. Even at fractional c, the coefficient for light speed, the arrival at any destination was impossible.

For days, the power of the engines had been pushing toward the Sun. To land on the celestial body, deceleration would still be abrupt and violent but there was, at most energy to slow down a small piece of the Observer. To better understand the insane approach velocity, Apollo 11 had taken four days to reach Earth’s moon. At the current velocity of the Observer, this ship crossed the Moon to Earth distance in less than an hour, but for the moment, Mercury was still twenty hours away. From within the Lab, it was impossible for the two space travelers to feel any evidence of their velocity aside from the acceleration and the bumps. Back at Mission Command, these speeds made everyone very nervous.

This expensive research vessel, the Io Observer, was known in the media by its stage name -- the Io Lab. That was the name of the reality television show featuring the dozen of pre-selected passengers. Two days ago, the ship was launched outwardly toward the Moon. To initiate the deadly speed, if pointed at the lunar horizon, feet above it and dropped. It swooshed and ricocheted around the Moon sucking up every joule of potential energy it could, increasing naturally the kinetic power of the Lab on its way to the Sun.

Once the Moon was in the rear mirror of the Lab, Christian, the President’s Jester pushed a button and ignited the eight nuclear thrusters. The blue blast was seen from Earth with the naked eye. A young, very fit fighter pilot could sustain without passing out a nine-G push back for a few seconds, armed with proper muscle clenching and breathing techniques designed to keep blood flowing to the brain.

But the two travelers were old. Only the sociopath could muster the willpower to focus his mind long enough to avoid passing out as the Lab flew past the Moon. The man was 69. Christian held a button which, when released would cut half the acceleration. He rotated his chair, as instructed, every hour to force blood to every part of his body. Even to Christian, this was no fun. The man’s will power was insanity. He counted in his mind numbers, letters and he held past any reasonable limit.

The mind was a wonderful thing. Everyone believed the crazy old man would be able to hold twenty to thirty minutes at most as the ship’s energy tripled. The doctors were planning to continue the push of the Observer at most an hour to avoid killing him. Down on the ground, Control and the engineers had bets as to how long the Jester manning the ship could hold before passing out. The most optimistic had the Jester at losing consciousness after fifteen minutes.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, who had placed a bet that day went home a little bit frightened. The Jester had not flinched, complained, or come close to losing consciousness. The launch and acceleration of the ship was a story in itself.

The sociopath's determination allowed the engines to push until they reached this incredible speed. The man was rock. Ground control felt it would need to shock Christian back to consciousness after he passed out but he never did. On his chest was taped a shock device. Thanks to his efforts, they would arrive at Mercury hours earlier, and the return trip to Earth for the globes would now have more time to cross the 77 million miles.

The Sixth Attraction was 20 odd days away. The globes were needed before the finale to stop what was on the horizon. During the first day, the Jester's pale passenger slept soundly. Ground control told Christian long sleep periods were normal and simply confirmed the META's pulse did not drop below eight beats per minute. As he drifted by, Christian occasionally flicked the old bastard's nose for no reason.

The Lab was designed to travel to the outer edges of the system and feel as comfy as possible for years of travel as it served as a giant reality television experiment. In the zero gravity, people used the ship's long central brass pole to pull themselves along stacked rooms each in the shapes of donuts. Once at the destination, one side of the rooms would serve as the deck, but for the moment, there was no notion of up or down. Io's gravity was similar to Earth's moon, while Mercury and Mars had stronger pulls. Every part of the long series of rooms contained cameras. There were confession rooms for researchers/players to talk to fans. At the moment Nick, the Chairman of Blackberry was locked away in the game's "break room” a strange prisoner.

In 2072, governments took a back seat to private funding. Corporations had a much smaller window to produce real earnings, and they had become the alternative to endless debt-spending government. Of course, the support came at a cost. The Lab's largest sponsor was a television production house. It paid for most of the program and in return, it selected the passengers, decorated the Lab and scripted a large part of the mission. The actors were no idiots, they had to meet some level of intelligence. But each of the individuals was a good actor and was emotionally unstable on some level or another. Sure, the producers wanted the crew to reach the destination and perform the experiments on Jupiter's moon, but a self-destructing mission would not be a problem and would generate a greater audience. It took the Jester about 15 seconds to extrapolate that, and less than one second to decide he could put on a better show all by his lonesome. Nick, chained and sleeping in the break room, was just a bonus.

Emilio didn't care. He'd commandeered the ship with enough alacrity to even impress the madman he had piloting it. The show, for once, would have to wait. In one day only, with the help of Marilyn, the engineers readied the Lab and fired it into the sky. The original crew of 12 had spent years preparing for the mission and now were replaced by an odd couple of old killers.

Christian, in honor of his screen name of Jester said to the Captain as he passed him on the loading bay, "User manuals are now much better than they once were." The joke fell flat to everyone but Christian; this felt like handing the keys of a Ferrari to an adolescent. Emilio agreed to make the switch public and to leave the live television feeds alone -- he owed as much to producers as he grabbed their expensive toy. Millions of people watched the equally puzzled team, now replaced by the two out of shape, psychotic old men. As usual, Emilio knew how to make great television. Christian's sarcastic humor was politically and morally incorrect. He really couldn't care less about what people thought. His insane smirk and a "Just Fucking Dare Me To" glare was an instant hit.

It was evident to all, Christian was a happy camper and felt beyond himself. He was a child passing the turnstile at the amusement park. Emilio had delivered everything he had promised to the nutcase. Weeks ago, Christian Maltais was rotting in his cell; now he was asked to kill himself in the most creative way possible. In his hands was the faith of the human species, him, the man who once tried to extinguish those very same idiots. Emilio revived his interest in humanity. He didn't flank him with the handful of morons selected for the trip. Instead, he left them on the ground, where they belonged. The man's smile and happiness were infectious. He had a one-way ticket to hell, and he loved it. Christian dreamed of a good death; this was it, it was perfection. The man was obviously happy and his emotion shocked.

The journalists questioned him on the launch pad, "Who are you?"

"I'm going to take a rain check on that offer to spend the night with me."

"Seriously, who are you, why are they launching you in space? Does this have anything to do with the Sixth Attraction?"

"You know you want me," he said as the crew pushed him into the ship.

“Are you Batman’s Joker?” The similarity with the famous character was too direct to ignore.

“What a great suggestion,” he simply added as the door locked behind him.

***

On the ship's belly, eight long crab legs were designed to anchor their tips to the low gravity ice of Io. On Io, hammering down the ice bedrock created a counter-force, a pushback away from the slippery surface. On the tip of each leg was a curved titanium hook mounted with a compressor hammer to push the tip into the surface without significant reciprocal force pushing back. The legs were also designed to walk the capsule to thinner parts of the ice before the drills could punch the carbonic ice. Comedians baptized the Lab "the trillion credit shrimp." They weren't far from reality.

In a matter of hours, the President's science team had repurposed the locking mechanism into a Sun-shield. Two of the longer legs were now connected to spools weaving a shield. The technology uploaded from the Marilyn database was simple yet brilliant. Taking inspiration from spiders, a long golden thread was released between those two legs. Two other legs began to weave the strain into a web which looked like a parachute with fist-size openings. Once the shield was knitted, the four legs spread apart and as they put tension on the line, the mesh openings tightened and closed like an iris, creating a deeper shadow on the Lab.

By the time the Observer would be in view of Mercury, the shield would be five knitted layers thick and the shade could reach 98.3%. There was beauty in watching the golden strand move in weightlessness. The heat shield looked like a sail, but it was curved inwards from the tip of the legs to the nose of the ship. The cable's round shape and gold color was designed to help the surface absorb solar photons needed in the cold outer edges of the solar system.

The covering wasn't wasted on the reverse trip to the Sun as it served as a solar battery powering up the ship. Normally this ship went outwardly past the asteroid belt in cold regions where power collection was critical. So close to the Sun, in the inner regions, the problem was not energy but cooling. Christian had rewired the power to serve an unknown function, some of the photons flowed to four of the nuclear thrusters. It appeared Christian was recharging batteries which, in theory, would not be needed. Emilio knew the man had a devious plan, in fact, he hoped he did.

The living space inside the Lab was rather large for the odd couple. It was designed to host a larger crew launched on a multi-year journey to the outreach of the solar system. At the moment the craft was inhabited by two mentally unstable humans, and the mission reduced by a thousand days. In the history of space exploration, these two were the oddest explorers to ever set foot outside of our planet's immediate reach.

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Aside from the maniac flying the ship, one man alone felt good about the whole thing. President Emilio knew he had picked the right guy. Christian was perfect; he was unpredictable, unstable but logical.

Christian Maltais, the Captain, for lack of a better term, was a chain-smoker and a homicidal maniac. He'd once tried to release the Black Plague and destroy the world. He had deep, dark circles below each eye from abuse of caffeine, nicotine, and opiates. The man's typical breakfast included half a pack of French Gauloises and eight cups of the darkest brew possible. Next to him, still sedated, slept the centenarian chairman of Blackberry, the META many called “the ghost.” The couple was already making news down on Earth. Nick was tied to a large padded chair. Christian was still under the shock of being trusted with this suicidal one-way mission.

***

With the help of thick magnetic books and a voice in his ear, delayed by a couple of seconds, he pushed buttons and prepared the launch of what they called a "static probe." Through the rounded window at the Lab's nose tip, he looked at the Sun shield. In the center of the knitting, he could see a gold circle the size of a basketball. The probe would be launched directly ahead at the Sun, into that hole, and past the shields. Christian knew that mercury, invisible to the naked eye, was floating there in its elliptical, now halfway between the burning gas and the Lab. The Sun's rays were too powerful to allow the human eye to distinguish the rock. He prepared the static probe. The ground engineers were helpful and eager to please, so he did what came naturally. He insulted them.

"We have one chance at this sir," a calm voice said into his ear. "Your printers should have finished all the pieces requiring assembly; there was little time."

The President loved his Jester for a simple reason, the man's brilliance was beyond question. A normal man would have taken marching orders. Christian was not a normal man. "Not sure why there wasn't a static probe on this piece of crap if you were going to Io. There is electrostatic differential there, no?"

He had a point. It was very difficult for non-space travelers to understand static issues. On Earth, a person who wore insulating shoes could rub a balloon in her hair and see static electricity. In space, every body floated in void, alone and insulated. Each planet, moon, and satellite held a different static charge. The Sun kept sending electric energy. As a body of a probe approached a moon or a planet, arcs of static energy jumped to equalize charge. Mercury was a body charged beyond imagination. The last probe, as it passed over the ground, saw long arcs resembling lightning jump to meet it when it got within a mile of the surface. The Lab was equipped with static generators designed to adjust the equilibrium of the static charges and thus avoid the deadly lightning strikes. Static lightning rods placed at the tip of the crab legs of the shield would normally be sufficient to prevent destruction. But driving into a thunderstorm was always a problem and landing on a different planet was much worse.

Christian was getting ready to push a button and release a probe which would accelerate using nuclear thrusters, eventually reaching 330,000 miles per hour once it hit mercury. Normally, the forward moving probe would reach the planet about an hour before the Lab. By measuring the precise remaining distance between the mercurian ground and the probe when static lightning began to strike it, it would be possible to calculate the difference in charge. The ship would then have to adjust itself or blow up.

To electricians, static energy was second nature. In space, every floating body was insulated from its neighbor. With time, loose electrons charged neighboring satellites on the geostationary belt around the earth until one day the difference was sufficient to jump between two satellites and destroy one. The art of static management in space travel was still in infancy. Since the probe launched by the ship shared the same electric potential, the welcoming arc of a mile or two would warn the ship and provide a basis for compensation. By igniting static generators, the ship's electric potential could be altered until the arc would no longer be deadly for the visitors.

"I can't believe I have to print these pieces, assemble them and launch this fucking probe by myself. That cries of incompetence," said Christian to base over the general communication system. He wasn't enjoying having to play engineer. That was below him.

"The Lab was designed for a four-year mission. Most of the equipment wouldn't have been required until years after departure. Pieces needed at arrival were designed to be printed later in the trip. The probe protects passengers more than the ship."

"You are telling me the Io mission was designed to reach completion even without humans?"

"Roger that. Humans are a problem on these missions. But we were unable to get funding even if we designed very sexy robots."

"You space people do think ahead, do you?"

"A lot of things can go wrong in four years. Once piece #22C is finished, can you hold it and float to the inertial weighing machine in the corner there."

"I am not sure I get what you are saying."

"The last piece is #22C. If its inertial mass is correct, we can assume all other previous pieces were printed properly. If you prefer, we can have you verify the weigh of all the pieces."

"That's fine. What's your name?"

"Me?"

"No, the guy floating next to me. Yes, you idiot, what's your name?"

"Sudip."

"Can I call you Stupid?" The man felt awkward being on a first name basis with such a man.

The donut-shaped room was complicated. The Jester floated in the engineering bay. Behind each of the hundreds of panels were tools and spare parts. Several of the white wall panels were now floating along with some tools. They kept floating down to the ground behind him and bouncing. Ground Command first tried to force the man to tidy up as the tools were no longer needed, but they soon gave up. No logic or reason made the man comply. Between the panels floated a dark grey metal ball. Its shape was uneven. It drifted between Christian and the tip of the Lab, where a small hatch and window could lie. The Sun was getting larger in the center of the glistening gold cables of the shield. Christian floated to the handle. The engineer did not respond to the insult. "Now move it around. The machine will calculate from inertia. It should read 103.450 kilograms."

It did.

The Jester read the next panel of instructions. They asked him to load a nuclear thruster into the probe. That sounded dangerous. "Are you sure I can transfer a nuclear thruster from this hole to this device without getting a sunburn?" He expected white lies from the ground. Instead, a different voice replied, he knew the voice.

"Who cares if you slow cook like a rabbit?" It was the voice of Patrick Martin, Emilio’s chief military expert. “A little more radiation won’t hurt."

"My sister!" Replied the Jester as he followed the instructions. His smile got even larger. He grabbed the probe, put it over the allegedly nuclear-trusted hatch, clicking and flipping some switches. "We would make a sexy couple, still upset you refused to have sex with me." Everyone on the line from military personnel to mission command cringed. The audience went up.

Patrick felt an odd compassion for the man stuck in the spaceship, and he knew Christian loved to be pushed and challenged. "You know your life expectancy is the same as a fresh strawberry right now?" The pair’s humor was priceless.

The man laughed. "We both have the same chance of getting blown tonight by your wife, and I'm the one falling toward to the Sun. That has to hurt." The humor was crude but genuine. This person, after decades of prison time in a psychiatric ward, had agreed to embark on this suicide mission. He genuinely was happy to do it. Patrick had half offered to go, objecting that the fate of humanity should not rest on such a mind, but was relieved when Emilio refused.

"You know Electoral is picking you up in just a few minutes, right?"

"Dear perfect son and sexless sister, to the risk of shocking you, what is Electoral?"

"The game."

"What game?" as he spoke, all the screens in the Lab changed. On each was the face of Marilyn Monroe. She blew a kiss. Below her face, in large letters, was a message: "Calling you in 27.216 minutes." Christian blinked, grinned madly, and said "Nevermind."

The voice of the digital creature hit the speakers. "Charrue," no one called Christian that name anymore, but the creature pretending to be Marilyn Monroe just had. "Power the probe from the other compartment, the one next to Nick. The kick will wake him up."

Christian felt like he needed his most potent survival tool back: humor. Each time he felt out of his comfort zone, he joked, and that eased his nerves. Sarcasm was one of his favorites. As he loaded the probe into the hatch, he replied to the artificial intelligence. "How much does it cost to have digital sex with you? I'm sure I can get a loan I won't be able to repay. My dad once said perfect money management is making sure the last check you make in your life bounces."

"You do know checks went out of circulation around 2027?" answered the creature.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Her answer stunned him. "Better ratings." The Jester was having the blast of his miserable life, this was living.

Christian pushed a couple of buttons and clipped the probe to the nuclear engine. All lights above the door turned to green.

"No one told you about Electoral? About me?"

"Oh!? About you? Who the fuck do you think you are?" said the Jester is a sarcastic tone. "Just call me John F. If you want. My wife is named Jackie. Do you mind having sex with me in public to make her the laughing stock of the whole world? She has two young kids if that helps."

"Good one, very funny. The teeny part of me in the electronics of your razor is laughing hysterically. I took a quick poll, and the rest of me does not find you amusing. Let me repeat myself because you're no longer as sharp as you once were, back before you had to use chemicals for your manhood to work.”

"Ouch," he interrupted.

"Truth hurts, doesn't it? The next round of my game will help you and your mission. I actually like you. Oh, who am I kidding? No one likes you. You'll be dead soon."

The screens returned to normal. The voice of Patrick returned in his ear. "Did Marilyn just talk to you?"

"She sure did. What a bitch."

"She is rather invasive."

"Should I take her seriously?"

"Those who do not seem to run into trouble. I suggest you do. We remain unclear what is to her role in all of this. What we can confirm is that she is extremely powerful." The Jester knew better than to question Patrick. He thanked him and returned to the back and sat next to Nick's sleeping body. He flicked the slimy old bastard's nose again.

Pushing a button, the Jester launched the probe. There was a jolt as the device divested itself of the lab and began to accelerate.

As Marilyn had said, it woke Nick. "Good morning, beautiful. Coffee?" said the killer to his grumpy guest.

The man took a minute to awaken and survey his surroundings. The lack of gravity was a giveaway as to where he was. "You? Aren't you locked in a padded room of a mental institution?" Grumbled the CEO in a haze. "You're that fruitcake, right? Human stupidity to keep you alive all these years. You deserve a bullet."

"We get a day off every decade for good conduct. Can't say you expected this."

"What is this?" he raised his hands showing the restraints. The pale skin of his wrist was cut and bruised.

"Skin in desperate need of moisturizer?" The Jester could not control himself. "Happy to see that vampire body of yours can still bleed." He next pointed at a screen. "Say hello to our friends back home. The communication lag is about a hundred seconds now."

"Minutes?"

"Yes. Are you going to repeat everything I say? I hate stupid questions. Am I to understand your IQ was once 143? To answer your question, we are light seconds away from Earth on our way to Mercury, so yes, the delay is now minutes and growing." He waved his hands. "Want to know what was hard? I mean, other than my nethers at the moment it dawned on me that I was kidnapping you." Before Nick could answer, the tall man reached into a large bag and pulled out potato chips. He opened it. "You know how many people I had to piss off to get potato chips in a weightless environment? In their new ship?" He crunched a crisp, and a couple of small pieces drifted away in the weightless cabin. Christian quickly licked his now-salty thumb and forefinger and in one smooth motion, dried his fingers on the Chairman's shirt as he pointed at the launch button he'd pushed just moments ago. "That was called a static probe launch. It's just a ball of metal launched ahead. As it gets closer to Mercury, billions of years of static electricity will create massive lightning strikes between mercury and..."

"I know what this fucking probe does; I built it!" Nick's wits were returning, "A mullet in space? Not sure that's very flattering on you. Wear a tie, and while at it, spin the ship and anchor the end around whatever is about to become the overhead compartment."

The Jester laughed, "There's my travel buddy! The king of sarcasm is back. I knew you were a great pick for co-pilot. They initially refused, you know; they said you still have what they called "human rights." Yeah, but I convinced them you were no human."

Christian clapped his hands in joy. "All right, this show can get started. A potato chip?"

"A latte, two sugars. I know the sugar is bad for me," replied the ghost, "but who cares, right?"

"Yes, yes, yes." The man's eyes were twitching. He was thinking. He was hysterically happy. Things were, pun intended, going fast.

"Can I know what we are doing here? My guess is you need me for something."

"I do. It's rather complicated. You're a fortunate man, Oh St. Nick, because I highly doubt you've been a good boy this year. Marilyn herself says she has this in the can. I know those genetically modified retinas of yours are too weak for contacts," he offhandedly continued. The broadcast began. "She promised to explain our mission. Merry Christmas!"

They were getting ready for the broadcast.

“This is insane,” said the Ghost.

“On so many ways.” The Jester was right.