Tag - A Technothriller (10 page)

I retraced my steps out of the market and back to the Lev that had brought me here. Twenty minutes after I’d left the PSE1 walky I was back on it. Mission done, my thoughts turned to the travel that was ahead of me, and especially the fact that within a couple of hours at most I’d be by the sea on a white sandy beach.

Reaching Changi ten minutes later I headed for the Lev port that would take me to Phuket. The massive domed concourse of the Changi Lev and airship port was as busy as any place that operates on a continuous time cycle with zero downtime. In the cool muted echoes of the concourse I checked the times for the Levs to Phuket and saw that I had at least twenty minutes to spare before a Lev with an empty seat was available.

I was hungry. I hadn’t had anything to eat that day and I’d been awake for over four hours. I headed down a short walky to the lower level of the concourse where travelers of all Geographics were taking a time out. Just off the walky there was a small café set by a fountain with a violinist entertaining the people while they ate.

I took a table near the fountain and studied the Devscreen set into its surface, selecting a croque monsieur and a latte as I confirmed the deduction from my cred. Three servbots were serving food and taking orders, their squat white bodies shining and bearing the blue Panasonic logo. One of them dispatched itself from the serving hub and propelled itself towards me around the edge of all the tables. With a polite 'thank you for your custom' it deposited the toasted sandwich and latte carefully on my table and left. The violinist was playing a jaunty tune with her eyes shut and swaying to the music. She looked young and was probably a student picking up extra cred doing a double.

I had left the Dev on and the screen was scrolling through suggestions. This perfume, that timepiece, toys for kids… Suddenly my eye caught a suggestion that sent a thrill through me. I hit pause on the Devscreen and the feed stopped scrolling. The suggestion was for travel to the Moon, but what had caught my eye was the particular resort which was being suggested. ‘Buy two, get three free nights at the Nineveh Hot Springs Resort.’ The word ‘Nineveh’ seemed to get larger and more focused the more I looked at it. I quickly glanced around me, but no one was paying any attention. Gabriel had said that Jonah was vomited out onto the shores of Nineveh.

Was this it? Was this the sign? Gabriel had said that a sign would come and when I saw it I would know it and do the right thing. A quick find on the Devscreen mapped out the route to the Moon travel port which was situated in the right of the Changi concourse. Did he mean literally do the right thing, meaning go to the right?

I was in a dilemma. I’d spent all morning thinking about being normal and now I was confronted with doing something very abnormal. I had never been to the Moon. Never even thought about going to the Moon. Not only that but my actions in the morning would look doubly suspicious. Shit! OK, think. I checked the Dev again for the departure times for the Moon. My message inbox light was flashing red on my Devstick. I had ten mins before the next flight took off for the Moon and after that an hour’s wait. I opened my inbox and saw that there was a reply from Sir Thomas. I opened it.

Dear Jonah,

Have a good trip. I like that Mekong whiskey, a bottle of that would be wonderful, thank you.

TBO

I hit reply, my mind made up.

Dear Sir Thomas,

Change of plans. I’ve decided to travel to the Moon. Never been in space. Want to see what it’s like. I’ll bring you back some moonshine instead of the Mekhong.

Best wishes,

Your nephew,

Jonah.

Jonah James Oliver

Arbitrator at Law

Coughington and Scuttle

I was decided. If they were watching me, then they’d stop me at the security zone, but I wasn’t hiding anything, I’d already told the Director of UNPOL where I was headed. There was just enough time to catch a ship to the Orbiter, travel to the Moon and be back again before my self-time was up on Thursday. After a quick gulp of my latte I rose and, with croque monsieur and ‘Life’s a Beach’ bag in hand, hurried my way over to the Lev.

Exiting the Lev corridor I walked into the Moon travel port and found myself a seat. Other Moon travelers were sitting around, reading, talking, and in some cases standing, waiting patiently for the Lev that would take us to the ship. I had been just in time as the door opened and we all filed in an orderly manner into the Lev.

“Four and a half minutes to Virgin Galactic Moon Port,” said the Lev once we were all seated.

I looked at my Devstick. No urgent messages, no recalls and I hadn’t been stopped as I’d passed through the security zone. I had never been in space before and I was excited. Most of my fellow travelers looked as if they contributed to Ents or Corps and my outers marked me as a tourist.

The Lev docked with the ship and I followed my arrows to my designated seat on the right side of the ship just aft of the wings. I sat down and a screen set in the headrest of the seat in front of me took me through the safety procedures. I glanced over to my left and watched what the guy in the seat next to me was doing. He looked like he’d done this before and he was wearing coveralls with the Broken Hills Mining Ents logo over the breast pocket. Removing all detachable objects on my person and changing my footwear for the pair in the locker by my feet was about all there was. The door closed and we taxied out. I could see over our wing to the cockpit of the mother ship. A warning sign in the headrest screen told me to sit back and have my arms at my side as the seat restraint emerged from the modified Siteazy I was in. The inflatable cushion pressured me lightly into my seat.

With a powerful thrust we were quickly using up the spaceport runway at Changi and then we were airborne, banking left over the open sea. The autopilot kicked in the thrusters and we hurtled through the sky at just over mach one. As we reached the apogee of flight for the mother ship, there was a loud clunk, which made me start and then smile sheepishly to myself. The last crash of a space ship had been more than twenty years ago. Space travel was statistically far safer than cars. With the release, I watched as our capsule dropped and the mother ship peeled away heading back to Changi, and then I was punched back in my seat as we went from mach one to mach three. Mach three is not a pleasant experience but it was over within ninety secs. I felt the inflatable cushion release me, and then my body floated to the confines of the seat restraint. I was in space.

Chapter 11

A Trip to the Moon

Seat 29B, Flight VG108, Earth’s Orbit, Space

Thursday 12 December 2109, 11:25am

You have never seen a night sky until you have been to space. I was awed and thrilled. I had looked at the stars through some very powerful lenses and as images on a Devscreen but nothing compares to being in space. The travelers around me relaxed, and reaching into the hole set into the locker by my Siteazy, I pulled out my Devstick. While looking through the port, I brought the Devstick up to my lips and said, “Find route from here to Moon spaceport to Nineveh Hot Springs Resort.” My Devstick started the timer countdown for my estimated time of arrival at the resort.

We were coming up to the second phase of the journey where we would dock with the orbital spaceport and then transfer to the actual Moon landing craft for the trip and descent to the Moon. Compared to the aerodynamic beauty of the craft we were in, the image of the Moon landing craft on my Devstick looked more like a shipping container with portholes set into its side. It had a blunt black nose and massive propulsion unit in the rear end. Well, as long as it’s quick and safe, I thought, and put my Devstick back into the locker.

As we powered into the Orbiter’s arrivals bay and docked on, the screen in the headrest warned me to turn on my gravity boots. A smiling Virgin Galactic staffer demonstrated how to turn on the gravity field by pressing on a button set into the top of the boot. As I copied his actions I felt my feet attach themselves firmly to the floor beneath them. I had wondered about that and smiled to myself as I imagined us all suddenly floating about the cabin.

The traveler in the seat next to me asked, “First time in space?”

“Yes, it is,” I replied with a smile. “Is it that obvious?”

“Frankly yes,” and giving me a wai and a smile, the traveler said, “My name’s David – my friends call me Dave.”

In the wake of the massive flu epidemics that swept the world in the twenties, the wai had become the standard form of greeting. The only person I knew who still shook hands was Sir Thomas. An image of his sweaty hand grasping mine came to mind. I waied him back and smiled as our fingertips missed each other’s. This weightlessness would take a little bit of getting used to, I thought.

“You’ve been here often, Dave?”

“I live here. I’ve just been visiting relatives on Earth, but my purpose is here. I contribute to the mining Ent at Broken Hills. If you’re interested, I have some self-time left over and I’d be delighted to show you around. I’m without a sexual partner at the moment and I find you very attractive. I’ve got a three hundred square metre cozy on Polar Edge.”

“Actually, Dave, I was looking to get some serious self-time in. But thanks for the offer.”

“Well,” he smiled, and lifting his Devstick offered a transfer from his Devstick to mine. “If you change your mind here are my contact details.”

I pressed accept and smiled back.

“Are you by any chance, homo?” he asked, which strictly speaking was on the outer edges of socially acceptable public communication, but I put that down to him being in the colonies where social comms are a bit more unusual and sometimes much more direct than those of Earth’s.

“No, up to now I’ve only explored hetro,” I said, still smiling. “But thanks for the contact and if I find myself at a loose end I’ll get in touch.” The screen told me that I should use the carry on provided in my locker to pack my personal belongings in and to make sure that I sealed it properly, which would be indicated by a flashing green light on the lock.

The door of our craft opened, and with my personal belongings recaptured in the carry on with a huge Virgin Galactic logo emblazoned across it, I walked out of the craft and through a corridor into the Orbiter.

As we entered the spaceport, some of the travelers reached down and switched off the gravity in their boots and pushed off. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to do that yet, and instead walked following the lights called up by my Devstick to the nearest port where a ship would take me to the Moon. Another glance at my Devstick told me I had a fifty minute wait before I could pick up a connecting flight. Because I was grounded by the artificial gravity of the boots, I wasn’t disoriented – something that the Dev in the headrest had warned me about. In fact, I was hungry and headed over to a food stand.

Near the food dispenser was a measuring stand where, for a cred, you could see how much taller you were in space. A couple of kids with gravity boots on were laughing and having their image taken. I consulted my Devstick again and checked my data stream. Still nothing. I might be extremely lucky and no one in the UNPOL unit charged with tracking down Gabriel would pick up on the Nineveh reference, but somehow I doubted it. It was too unusual and when taken with my decision to travel to the Moon would definitely cause a flag. I reasoned that when interviewed I would simply say that the idea struck me to go to the Moon and on a whim I went. Without any other evidence, they would have to believe me. That is, if they restricted themselves to a simple debrief. If I was subjected to Truth Treatment then the discussion with Gabriel that had taken place in our minds would be revealed.

The man who was tethered to the food dispenser just above me let out a loud fart. Another of the effects of weightlessness as gas in the body tends to go out through the bottom rather than the top half of our bodies. He smiled apologetically at me and I just waved a hand about to indicate it was normal. I credded a few units and bought a ProCarboVite bar that promised to give me all the protein, carbohydrates and vitamins my eighty kilog body mass would need for the next twenty-four hours, and also a space sickness pill as I had felt a slight headache and nasal stuffiness come over me. This was normal, according to the FAQ in my Devstick, and the Aspamo pill from Pfizer that I had just taken would provide ‘Instant, long-lasting relief from headache and nasal congestion caused by space sickness’.

A bunch of little kids were floating around in something called the ‘Ball Cage’. Filled with hundreds of hand-sized foam balls of all different colors, a huge net enclosed the kids, with their parents tethered to railings around the exterior of the net. Their shrieks and laughter echoed in the huge cylindrical port and somehow lent an air of a family outing to the moment. About three hundred meters away, off to my left and up from where I was tethered, I saw the entrance to a relax lounge. Its large circular structure was painted a dark grey and padded as the rest of the interior of the port. Well, I thought, if I am to look like I’m trying out space travel then it would be very natural for me to have a go at flying.

There’s a kid in all of us, and I’m no exception. In fact there are those who say I still have way too much kid in me and not enough adult. I strapped my carry on to my outers and clicking off the button on my grav boots, pushed off from the food stall, just missing the legs of the guy who had just again farted. Flying unaided by anything other than the propulsion of your push off is awesome. I loved it and flipped a somersault as I approached the entrance. Unfortunately my somersault led to me getting totally lost and I struggled to get some sense of where I was. A tether from a fixed newsfeed screen was just within reach. I grabbed it, stopping my tumble. It took a moment but I reoriented myself with the relax lounge and pushed off again, this time restricting my enthusiasm to stretching out my arms and pretending I was a plane. As I neared the entrance a tether was floated out to me by the woman on the door and I grabbed it.