Noriama: Chapter 6
Victoria accepted the offer. They all did. By unspoken agreement, none of them ever asked the others why.
Victoria tried not to think about it very hard. First-Responders knew that introspection rarely made any job easier, and being part of a select team chosen to fly off into space to save a missing Earth colony was a job worth doing.
As time passed, the veneer of romance was steadily buffed away from that narrative.
Training for the mission took half a year, though it felt more like torture. First-Responders were not unfamiliar with rapid and intensive emergency training, but Victoria was positive the purpose of any training was to learn something. The only thing she was learning was exactly how uncomfortable she could feel.
Medical professionals injected her with chemicals that made her sick. She was placed in a centrifuge that accelerated her to five g’s of pressure. She was spun in a gyro-harness until she couldn’t tell which way was up. “This is what you’re going to experience in space,” she was told repeatedly. “You need to learn how to overcome the discomfort. These tests are all designed to push your body to its limits, to teach it to survive the remarkable stresses it will be put under.”
The only other aspect of her training was the on-board systems of their space-craft. She learned the basic function of the computers, familiarized herself with her medical equipment, and learned why it was vital she not touch anything that wasn’t directly related to her own duties.
Victoria’s teammates seemed to handle the testing better than she did. All had previous experience in space, being either astronauts or specialists who had performed high-orbit missions before. “This is nothing,” Sughouri laughed when Victoria commented. “It takes most astronauts more than two years of general training to even be considered for space. Then they get another several years of special training for whatever mission they’re going on. You’ve got it easy!”
Then, before Victoria knew it, the day of the launch had arrived.
Time is difficult for humans to experience properly. Perceptions of time altered along with mental states, meaning quick catastrophes can feel like ages, while drawn out pleasures can be over so fast.
Their spacecraft was the first of its kind, built in space and currently floating in low Earth orbit. Victoria didn’t recognize the name; the Croatoan. Victoria thought Hail Mary would have been a more appropriate name.
It took a half-hour drive to reach the launch pad, an hour wait strapped into her launch seat, followed by a two minute nightmare of over 3 gs of pressure on her chest from the constant explosion beneath her feet, followed by weightlessness.
It felt to Victoria like minutes.
Her stomach shifted unpleasantly, but the pills they had taken before launch did their work, and no one vomited.
Once docked at the ISS, they were ushered through the station by a tall Latine who gave Victoria a wink as they floated through the pristine white plastic.
It had been odd to see Sughouri without her prostheses, but now in zero-g Victoria was astounded at how graceful and powerful Sughouri looked, propelling herself through the station with only her hands, twisting through the air like a dancer.
The other astronauts studied the team a look in their eyes of pity, approaching awe. How much did they know about the Croatoan’s mission? Did they know they were shaking hands with the only four women from earth who would likely ever set foot on Proxima b and return, even if forty-two years later?
At the other end of the ISS was the umbilical to the Croatoan; their home for the next twenty years. They floated to the unfortunately named Crash-room. Here were four chairs (after seeing the similarities, Victoria couldn’t stop herself from thinking of them as dentist chairs) that they strapped themselves into. Two flexible arms attached to the chairs gave each of them access to their computer terminals and a joystick-like device that was their individual keyers.
It had been difficult for Victoria at first; a keyer was simply a chorded keyboard, with five toggle switches that could be pushed or pulled in different combinations to send different commands to the ship’s computer. Zuri had taken to the device like a fish to water, as she had long used something similar to type out her side of a conversation when she was speaking with someone who didn’t know sign-language.
When Victoria was strapped in, she swung the thick monitor around in front of her, gripped her keyer, and pulled the switch under her middle finger towards her palm.
The computer monitor in front of her turned on, displaying a series of words and numbers that meant very little to her. After a few moments, the familiar screen that she had been training with popped into view.
She looked down again at her keyer. By the end of the mission, she knew it would be second nature to her. She might even have trouble adapting to using both her hands. At the moment, however, she felt like a clumsy bear pawing at a thick doorknob.
The command they had drilled into her first was the ‘help’ command. Easy enough to remember, as it was simply squeezing all the switches at once, while pushing forward with her thumb.
After taking a moment to flip through the help section to find the proper commands, Victoria pulled the switches under her first and middle finger, while pushing the four-directional switch under her thumb to the right.
Her monitor switched to a pre-set display, providing Victoria with real-time information regarding her fellow astronauts vital signs. She chorded a few more commands, switching from Kristiana, to Sughouri, to Zuri. Recording the important data and filing it away in the ship’s computer, she worked through her pre-launch checklist while the Croatoan slowly shifted into position, its sails unfurling.
Finally, the radio squawked: “Croatoan, this is EU Ground Central, do you copy?”
Kristiana input a chord into her keyer, and cleared her throat. “We hear you, Central. Current status green.”
Victoria tried to breathe slowly as the tinny voice spoke in a strange language she only barely understood. Readings were checked, mechanical procedures were tested, concerns were addressed. She answered when Central asked her for medical information, and otherwise remained silent.
She had expected a speech, some profound statement of gratitude. Something to mark the moment when they would slip the orbit of earth and sail onward toward Proxima b.
There wasn’t even a countdown. Technical jargon floated through and out her ears, and then — with the gentlest of tugs — Victoria felt herself start to sink into her chair.
They remained in their chairs while the small rockets guided the Croatoan out of Earth’s gravity, pushing it towards the first orbital communication relay. More jargon accompanied the rockets’ detachment from the side of the Croatoan. Victoria caught words here and there; “booster ring.” “Relay laser.” “Refraction angle.”
And that was it. They were on their way.
Victoria looked at the team.
The team looked back.
They had worked and trained together for almost a year. They had shared laughter and frustration, and no one else on earth would ever experience the things they were about to. And yet, Victoria felt like she barely knew any of them.
Their whole lives had been training, and it had been intense, comprehensive, and important. Nevertheless, an entire aspect of their mission preparation had been neglected: social cohesion. They were teammates, allies, coworkers…but strangers.
Sughouri was the first out of her chair, unclasping her belt and launching herself out of her seat with her thighs. She bounded through the sub-g gravity like an expert, catching onto the ladder and dropping through the hole in seconds.
Kristiana and Zuri were next, each taking their time as they moved to where their schedules dictated. Released of her own straps, Victoria took her first steps on the Croatoan.
She had expected to feel awe, perhaps giddiness at the sensation of walking on the Croatoan. She had logged days worth of time in the simulations on earth, she was familiar with how it felt to walk in sub-g gravity; less walking and more an awkward combination of hopping and gliding. After everything it had taken to get the four of them into space and on their way to Noriama, she had expected an extensive acclimation period, as the unfamiliar became familiar over the course of forty years.
Forty years. Four decades. It hadn’t sunk in properly, Victoria was sure. If it had, she would feel depressed, scared, or excited. If she really believed that she would never set foot on the earth for forty years, she would feel…*anything*.
It had to be the pills. They had relaxants in them, and mild anti-depressants to moderate any strong emotional reactions to their situation. She’d feel more when they wore off.
Only slightly concerned, she moved to the ladder and climbed down towards the medical station, her office for the mission, to begin her official training.
It had thrown Victoria, how little actual guidance she had been given before being strapped into a rocket and shot off into space. She had her assumptions, but Mission Central had told her virtually nothing about her daily duties and responsibilities aboard the Croatoan.
As it turned out, she had guessed correctly as to why.
Firstly, Victoria’s duties would never extend beyond the ship, and she would never be involved in any of its mechanical functions. Her duties were primarily medical and psychological, subjects she was already quite familiar with. When it came to her function on-ship, her training was mostly learning the mission parameters and familiarizing herself with specific equipment and procedures.
The second, and perhaps more significant factor, was that the journey to Proxima b would take so long. The only training the team needed on Earth was just enough to get into space safely. The rest they could, and would, learn on the way.
Victoria’s duties were, to her, self-evident. As a trauma specialist and former surgeon, it would be her job to keep the other three alive, healthy, and sane during the twenty year round trip.
Gallows-humor was common enough in Brazil that the thought came quickly to Victoria’s mind: Alive, healthy, and sane was difficult enough on Earth; on their ship, it would be nearly impossible.
Physically, the stresses of a low-g environment on the human body were substantial. Almost a third of the crew’s waking life was going to be spent on keeping their bodies healthy and functional. Without regularly resisting Earth’s gravity, their bone-density would erode and their muscle-mass would drop considerably. Even their hearts would not need to work as heard, eventually atrophying. Without a steady supply of supplement injections, consistent exercise, and equipment specially designed to provide intense physical stress on their bodies, they wouldn’t be able to survive earth-gravity again, much less Proxima b.
And that was only the physical stresses. Much as the human body needed nutrients and regular exertion, the human psyche had its own necessities for proper function.
The psychological impact of forty-two years in cramped conditions with limited variety of social interaction was well documented. Without enough space, The four of them would soon devolve into depression, paranoia, hallucinations, and other erratic unpredictable behaviors.
This caused a conflict: As far as the engineering was concerned, a spacecraft needed to be as small as possible to reduce the cost of propulsion, just large enough that the astronauts were unable to perform their duties. When it came to short time-spans, people could be locked in coffin-sized chambers and perform perfectly well.
But humans could only tolerate such confinement and isolation for short periods of time. This forced spacecraft to be built larger. For a thirty-month mission, the minimum acceptable space for each crew-member was set at 25 cubic meters.
For a forty-two-year mission, more space was needed. Their ship was constructed with a staggering one-hundred cubic meters for each of them, including equipment, personal supplies, and living quarters; and even this wasn’t enough to ensure the team would maintain a healthy psyche.
So, the team had been chosen carefully. It took a specific mindset to be willing, much less able, to spend several years of your life in cramped conditions with three other people, and this had been a part of their psychological profiles. Even accounting for their proclivities, an extensive process of psychological conditioning had ensured they would see their restricted conditions as cozy, rather than cramped and confining.
Victoria had known about these techniques; she had used them on patients before. She knew how every session was adjusting her brain-chemistry until any of the four of them would be diagnosed as agoraphobic in an average Earth environment, but knowing how blood clotted didn’t stop you from bleeding.
Medication would handle the rest: a special cocktail of endorphins, dopamine, and regulatory chemicals left scientists satisfied that the four astronauts were properly conditioned to, if not enjoy each other’s company for so long, at least be able to survive it.
These methods, however, did nothing to solve the greatest, and perhaps most insidious danger to the crew’s mental health during any long-term mission: boredom.
The human brain craved stimulation, and, like muscles, would atrophy without exercise; so a strict regime of therapeutic activities, mission duties, and educational studies had been designed especially for the team.
This was another reason why their full training was completed on-board, but even the most detailed training wouldn’t last a full twenty-one years. And what about the journey back? A large chunk of their proscribed schedules was nothing more than busywork; reading and recording sensor data that could have been automated, but was just as easily made into a routine that would keep the crew from going stir-crazy.
In addition, hours every day were scheduled for taking automated courses on complex topics such as advanced mathematics, quantum physics, and physical sciences. Each of the team had been allowed to select from a collection of pre-approved languages to learn. Victoria already knew several, thanks to her globe-trotting job, but she had never learned Mandarin, so at least an hour every day for her would be devoted to the struggle. Regular tests to measure their progress would both provide suitable incentive, and a metric to measure the team’s mental faculties.
Relaxation was important for mental health as well, so the ship’s databanks would be filled to bursting with videos, music, art, games, culture of all kinds from the entirety of Earth’s history. The mission even provided a collection of drugs specially designed to induce specific mental states. They could induce mild euphoria, relaxed calm, amusing hallucinations, or other altered perceptions for a short period of time. Victoria had been surprised at the idea until she realized the pills were safer, lighter, less toxic, less addictive, and more manageable in space than alcohol.
Even sex had been considered, and so it was with a strange and sterile matter-of-factness that their training included an entire section devoted to their collective carnal exploits, clearly and specifically laying out the expectations of the URC regarding intimacy, experimentation, and the consequences — physical, social, mental, and practical — of sex in space. Victoria, as the medical officer, was given the authority to administer libido-suppressants or hormones if the mission was put in jeopardy, or at least to ensure that any indulgences would be a purely rational and intellectual pursuit.
Even accounting for all of this, it still wasn’t enough to ensure the team would arrive on the other side of the forty-two year mission mentally intact. It was simply too long.
Physics prevented them from reducing the length of the journey, so they had decided they would reduce the length of time the crew perceived.
It was old technology, based on the method used to keep the KAP colonists alive during their trip, but vastly improved. It wasn’t true suspended animation; the best modern science could manage was to drastically reduce the human body’s metabolism, and allow the human body to remain asleep for longer periods without sustaining significant and irreversible damage.
Their diets was a major portion of this plan: The health benefits of periodic fasting were still controversial, but nutritional science had come around to the idea that human bodies were simply not evolved to deal with dietary abundance. With carefully measured caloric intake, the human metabolism could be controlled, increasing lifespans, and improving cardiovascular health without causing malnutrition. It was a carefully monitored process, and far from reliable, but when every gram mattered, the benefits were too great to ignore.
Their diets, their supplements, their routines, all were specially designed to slow the crew’s metabolic processes, allowing the team to sleep for almost six earth-days straight, and be awake for the seventh. Of the twenty-one years it would take to reach Proxima b, the crew would only be aware of three of them. This, according to the accepted science of the time, was manageable.
Perhaps most importantly, the crew needed to maintain proper social cohesion. For all their care and planning, human interaction was still more art than science. No matter how carefully they had chosen the team, no amount of education or edicts could force anyone to befriend another.
Victoria smirked as she read between the lines regarding her duties on this point. In the end, Mission Central had done all they could do: select their team while paying attention to their psychological factors, and hope for the best.
Ivan peered through the glass door. The room on the other side looked cold. Everything was black and smooth. The room was circular, and filled with rows of thick computer servers, covered with blinking lights, green, blue, red, gold…
Cold in every sense of the word. Impartial, unassuming, and heartless. As unfeeling as a bullet, a complicated series of logic junctions designed to simulate a thousand possibilities within the span of an hour. Processing every piece of data they were fed. In return, they regurgitated information at an alarming rate, which was then processed once more into probabilities, predictions, and advice.
Our own Delphi oracle, Ivan thought.
“Sir?”
Ivan turned, a cocked eyebrow his only acknowledgment as General Simone Coli handed him a folder. Paperwork was the life-blood of this mission, the muscle and sinew too. The number of computer computations, sociological scientists, ethicists, and diplomats whose fingers had dipped into the soup they were cooking…without paperwork covering every crack, there was no telling what mistakes might slip through.
Even with the paperwork, there still was no telling. That was what kept Ivan up at night.
He flipped through the five pieces of paper in the folder, reflexively checking to see how long the drafter of this report expected him to pay attention. He stopped when he reached the last page and stared for a moment before going back to the first, and reading carefully.
When he had finished, he closed the folder and handed it back. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Was General Coli surprised at all, he wondered? Did she even know who Antje Seidel was? The General wouldn’t even have been born when the KAP launched. She might have heard the name, but did she remember why?
“Can we keep her out?” Ivan was sure he knew the answer, but he trusted General Coli’s assessments.
“If you want to.”
Ivan crossed his arms. He recognized the tone. “You don’t think we should?”
“That’s up to you, sir. This is your show.”
Ivan snorted at the idea; he hated that it was his show. He knew the General hated it too. Over the past twenty years, the EU had become one of the cleanest and most efficient bureaucracies in the world. They had a reputation for professionalism that had made them respected even among their adversaries. If there was anyone who could take this mission and turn it into a success, it was the EU. If Ivan had his way, he would have been delighted to hand over control of the entire operation to her, to do with as she pleased.
He couldn’t, of course. Politics had ruined everything. If there was anything that deserved to be a global military expedition, it was a Search & Rescue of the first human colony in space, and so the URC had been very clear; if Ivan Fyodorov as URC liaison was not heading the mission, the mission would never happen. Their only concession to the effectiveness of the EU was to place mission control in the Guiana Space Centre, what was once the EUSAA offices on the English Island. He had accepted this, and the General had too, because they both knew that this was one of the few situations when the mission happening at all was far more important than it being done properly. The whole dog-and-pony show was just that: a show. Politics given a heaving wheezing life as a multi-trillion euro project. It reminded Ivan of when he was young, and his older brother and he kept daring each other into bigger and bigger stakes, neither of them willing to back down.
“Fine, let her in. I’ll meet her in my office.”
General Coli nodded and walked away into the dark room, issuing commands into her radio. Ivan left her there, and began the long walk across the Guiana Space Centre to his office.
How had she found out? The mission was top secret, and Frau Seidel had long since retired from the government. She shouldn’t have even known Ivan’s name, but here she was, asking to speak with — he glanced at the final page of the report again — ‘Mister Fyodorov, in regards to this purported rescue mission.’
No, he was being naive. It was possible, likely even, that someone in the upper echelons had tipped her the nod. When Frau Seidel had been involved with the government, she had made a great deal of personal friends, and with something as large as Noriama…well, it didn’t matter, she was here.
By the time he sat down in his comfy leather chair — the only silver lining to the whole project he’d found — he had worked out a dozen different reasons why Frau Seidel had come out to meet him, and none of them promised to make his life any easier. Thankfully, he didn’t have long to stew in his uncertainties before there was a knock on his office door.
“Come in,” he said, standing up as an armed guard opened the door, and ushered the frail old woman inside.
Ivan had seen pictures of Antje from years ago, back when KAP had been launched. She had aged well. She looked quite fit for a one-hundred-and-forty-year-old woman. She could have been only eighty. While she had a cane to help keep balance, she didn’t hobble or shuffle her way to her chair. She threw herself into it with such force, in fact, that Ivan’s first concern was that she had hurt herself.
“Why wasn’t I told?” she asked, setting her cane to the side.
“Thank you,” Ivan nodded to the guard, who closed the door behind her. “Can I get you anything?” he asked, sitting down in his chair again.
“An answer,” Antje snapped, her eyes glittering with unnerving focus. “Do you know whose chair you’re sitting in?”
Ivan glanced down at the worn fabric. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Michael Donnahill sat in that chair, when he was head of the EUSAA. The KAP was his child. His and mine. Why wasn’t I informed about the problems?”
“A few points, Frau Seidel,” Ivan shifted in the chair, now suddenly uncomfortable. “First of all, you are retired, and your security clearance was revoked. You really shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Forced retirement,” Antje smirked, “Term limits were shorter back then. And there’s something to be said for over seventy years of service; you get to know a few back-doors.”
“Secondly,” Ivan continued, “the KAP was officially a URC project, and the URC has no obligation to share information with the citizenry of its member regions. That’s the prerogative of each regional government. You were never a serving member of the URC, so even if you were not retired, there was no obligation for you to be informed of the situation.”
“Quatsch,” Antje spat, crossing her arms.
“Thirdly, and I hate to put it this way, we are not having problems. The problems are all on Noriama’s end. This is a mission of mercy. A gift, in fact, to our colonial kin.”
“Bullshit,” Antje sneered. “This is a multi-trillion euro project, performed at great expense. The URC isn’t doing it out of the goodness of our hearts. This is a last ditch attempt to salvage the most expensive and catastrophic failure of all human history.”
“It may be a bit premature to call it a —”
“You need me,” Antje leaned forward. “You need someone who knows the project inside and out. I was there for the first meetings where we ironed out exactly how this whole project was going to work. I was there for the hearings. I was there for the arguments. I was there when the engineers petitioned us for a redundant layer of graphine along the support struts because they didn’t know that another layer of molecules would have added more mass to the ships than the engines could handle. You need someone who knows what they’re talking about.”
We have computers for that. And scientists, and engineers, and historians, and all the recorded data from long before the KAP was even a dream in Mr. Donnahill’s eye. We know all these things, and our computers can collate the data faster than the time it would take for me to call you up and ask you a question. Faster than you could even remember the answer. We don’t, in fact, need you, Frau Seidel. We are perfectly capable on our own.
But Ivan didn’t say that. Instead, he looked at the hundred-and-forty year old woman sitting across from him, her mouth pursed in derisive scorn, and her eyes rimmed with a mixture of hope and despair. He thought about her use of the word ‘child,’ calling the KAP hers and Michael’s.
“You do know it will be twenty more years before the team reaches Proxima b, yes? I mean…” he paused.
“I’ll be a hundred and sixty-three,” Antje nodded. “If you don’t think I can make it that long, you’ll be in for a surprise, I think.”
Something about her bearing made him believe it. He heaved a theatrical sigh. “I’ll start the security paperwork rolling, but I’m afraid you’ll have to maintain unofficial status. Bureaucracy is as bureaucracy does, as you know. Their answer would be no.”
“Don’t I know it,” Anjte rolled her eyes, barely disguising her relief and gratitude. “Fine. Es ist mir egal. If I have to be off the clock, then so be it; just promise me you won’t withhold anything from me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I can’t make that promise; there are a lot of URC secrets around these days, but I can promise that if I do withhold anything, I will explain to you exactly why.”
“Fine.” Antje nodded, standing up and grabbing her cane. “I would like to take a look at your equipment, if I may, and get a copy of the mission-plan. I know its too late to make any changes, but I’d still like to know what to be ready for.”
“I’ll get someone to escort you around,” Ivan scratched his nose, “and I’ll get someone to whip up a redacted plan for you.”
“Redacted,” Antje huffed. “Well. Thank you for your time, Mr. Fyodorov.”
“It was a pleasure, Frau Seidel.”
She paused at the door. “Fyodorov. Old Slavic?”
“My ancestors moved from Russia before the food riots struck the EU.”
“Huh. Just in time. That’s irony for you.”