Caught Somewhere In Time

Start reading from the beginning…

Val opened the door to her new apartment and turned on the light. It was sparsely furnished and set up like a studio apartment. Straight in from the door at the near end of the apartment was a small kitchenette. It looked like there was a small bathroom behind that. A large fabric tapestry that hung from the ceiling all the way to the floor covered the far end of the unit. The tapestry depicted an evening lake scene on Earth with the moon glowing low over the water. She shut the door behind her and said to herself, “Here I am on the moon, and my accommodations include a picture of the moon. Real original.”

She laughed to herself and moved deeper into the unit. There was a couch and table in the center of the room, and a home-workstation across from that. She approached the bed and saw her luggage piled at the foot of it with a note. She read aloud, “Welcome home Val! Your friend and neighbor, Audrey.” She smiled. Maybe they would become friends. “P.S. Open the blinds,” she read. At the sound of her voice making the command, the tapestry began to roll up toward the ceiling, uncovering the window behind it. Beyond the window, she saw the barren landscape of the moon stretch out in front of her, and slightly above the horizon where the moon had been in the tapestry, was the Earth half-full and shining in her window.

This was not the first time Val had been to LunaBase. As a pilot, she’d been here many times and was familiar with the orbit that Luna had around the Earth. A lunar day lasted about 28 Earth days, with the sun gliding very slowly overhead for two weeks, and then leaving you in darkness for two weeks. From Earth, these appear as the phases of the moon in the sky. Of course, from here, the Earth was always in the opposite phase. If the Earth was full, then Luna was in darkness. It was not the long daylight and darkness periods that made Val excited about her window however; she was excited about being in a synchronous orbit. Luna always has the same face pointed toward the Earth in its orbit, so the Earth hangs stationary in the lunar sky. Val could always look out her window, anytime she wanted, and the Earth would be right there looking back at her. It might be shrouded in darkness occasionally, but it would always be right there.

Suddenly she liked her new apartment a lot more. She took a few minutes to unpack her bathroom essentials, noting that Audrey had gotten everything she might need. Once done with that she decided to try out a quick shower before meeting Cole at the café. As the water was running through her hair, she realized that she was living off-planet now, at least for a little while. She had moved around on Earth a lot, and had been all through the system during her life, but always had called Earth home. She smiled to herself that she had finally moved beyond the planet had always drawn her back. Not far beyond maybe, but she had moved on.

She dried and decided to dress in something more casual than the pantsuit she had worn all day due to Chan’s speaking engagement. Chan and Audrey had been in uniform, but Cole hadn’t been worried about his appearance at all. She pulled a few things out of her luggage and started to put them into the closet, when she noticed there were already a handful of clothes in there. At first she thought they belonged to the apartment’s previous tenant, but on closer inspection the clothes were all in her size. She chose a simple red tunic and some pants, noting that both had hidden elastic that would keep them from floating away in areas without gravity. That was important, since there were several areas without artificial gravity on LunaBase. Once dressed, she ran her fingers through her still wet hair, and then headed out the door.

The lobby was not difficult to find, nor was it very exciting. There was a mechanical receptionist waiting to greet whoever walked through the room, and when Val was halfway through the room, it recognized her.

“Hello Valentina. Do you need assistance?” said a monotone female voice.

Val hated talking to machines, usually only cursing at them when they are not doing what they should. This one was obviously equipped with a scanner that read her chip implant when she was in the vicinity, since it knew who was in the room. “No, thank you.” She said politely. A former colleague of hers had been afraid of an eventual robotic takeover, and told her she should always be nice to robots, because they would remember who was friendly to them. Despite the flawed perspective, she thought it had some truth to it. Robots had electronic memory and only “forgot” things when they experienced a major malfunction or sustained severe damage. She decided it was probably best to be polite to robots since they would remember her later, even in passing. She was grateful for their service, doing all the jobs that people didn’t want to do, for example sitting at a desk for days at a time waiting to offer assistance or greetings to people.

She opened the door and exited the lab complex into the immense LunaBase main hall. The base was designed as a giant circle, effectively filling a crater. There was a main concourse that ran all the way around the complex, which she was now in, and a few intersecting walkways. The complex itself was no more than a couple of miles across, and in an effort to keep the people here in shape, there were no vehicles allowed inside the base. There were shortcuts and moving walkways all over the place if you took the time to learn where. Right across the main concourse was a sidewalk café, like Cole had said, and he sat there at a table looking down into a cup of coffee. She walked over and asked, “Is this seat taken?”

He looked up at her, gave her a strange look, and replied, “I guess it is now.” He looked down into his coffee again and Val looked at his scruffy face again, deciding that it hadn’t grown since she had first met him. It must have been a trick of the light, because his beard wasn’t very thick now. Without looking up, Cole furrowed his brow and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

In response to his previous snide remark, she returned the favor and told him, “I guess you just did.” With a sheepish smile on her face, she corrected, “I mean, sure. Ask away.”

He looked up at her, and with a confused look on his face, he asked, “When did you find out?”

She thought a moment about the question, going over in her mind the two times she had talked to him previously. There didn’t seem to be any connection to those conversations here, so she thought maybe he meant something different. When did she know she wanted to be a pilot? Not likely. When did she find out she was going to be part of this program? Maybe. Before she could answer, he suddenly seemed to realize that she didn’t have a clue about what he had asked.

“Did you know I was just fired from the program? From MY program? How could they fire ME? Did they tell you about it? Did you know when we met in the lab a little while ago, or did you find out after I walked away?”

“You got released from the project? I had no idea! That’s horrible!” Val felt badly for him. Cole had pioneered this project, had looked into time travel when nobody else cared that it was happening all around them. “I hope I wasn’t brought in as your replacement. If I was…”

Cole cut her off. “No, Chan had been looking for a pilot for a long time. You don’t know anything about Novikov’s Effect. I could tell by looking at your record. I am the authority on that. I don’t know how he expects you to figure it all out without me; I’m not replaceable.” He stopped suddenly, apparently switching away from one thought and focusing on another. “What were you going to say? If you were brought in as my replacement, you’d do what?”

Still a little shy, Val choked up the courage to speak her mind honestly. “I’d quit. This is your work, not mine. I’m just a fly-girl. I can work anywhere, fly anything.”

“You think you can fly anything, huh?” Cole shot at her, “Have you seen the ship?”

“What there is to see of it, yes. I spotted it the second Chan walked me into the bay.”

“Must be a pilot thing. I don’t notice stuff in plain sight sometimes.” He looked like he might chuckle, but them he sighed and looked back into his coffee. “Do you want something? You have a credit account through the program. Everything is paid for.”

Val was quick on the draw, “Did you get that coffee on the program credit after they fired you? You did, didn’t you?” She laughed a little, and she eyed a little smile in the corners of his mouth. “Don’t worry. I’m not afraid to break a rule occasionally.”

“Oh yeah? I didn’t see any rule-breaking in your file. I looked over the pilot candidates pretty closely, and some of them did have disciplinary issues which we disqualified immediately.”

She could tell he was trying to bait her. She felt comfortable with him though, so she took the bait on purpose. “I just never got caught.” She paused a moment for him to realize that she had confessed only a little, and then she changed the subject. “Is that what got you fired? Breaking the rules?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, you don’t want to talk about it then.” She was pushing the point gently, but still pushing him to talk about it.

”I hoped you would know. He didn’t tell me. The Admiral just came to my apartment door and then told me that I was no longer part of the program, relieved of all involvement. He asked me to leave quietly and immediately, so he wouldn’t have to call security to escort me. I tried to talk to him, but I was mad. I don’t talk so well when I’m mad though, so I came here to try and sort it out while I calmed down.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. There must have been something you’ve done that would provoke that.” Val sensed that he was pretty upset.

“I have been trying to retrace my steps in my mind. Going over what might have caused the Admiral to fire me that way. The only thing I can think of is that something on the Martian message helped make up his mind. I wish I had listened to it while I had the opportunity.”

“When did the message arrive?”

“While Chan was down on Earth picking you up and doing his speech thing. I hate giving speeches. That was one of the reasons I accepted his offer to run my program, so I wouldn’t have to give any more speeches. Well, the funding too. There wouldn’t be a ship without…”

There was no actual light bulb bursting to life over his head, but Val could see its light in his eyes anyway when he left his sentence unfinished. She wanted to know what he had thought of, so she asked, “What?”

“Do you feel like breaking some rules?”

“Does it involve getting you back in the program?” Val felt excited.

“Maybe, maybe not. It would at least give me a chance to find out why I got fired though.”

She started following his train of thought and got a fire in her eyes that matched his. “I’m in.”

“This could get us both in some serious trouble. You can say no at any time, and just walk away from this, no harm done.”

Val started feeling warm. “I’m not afraid.”

“That ship in the bay, were you briefed on its primary function?”

Her heart started pounding. “Yes.”

“I am sure my access has been turned off by now. Are you willing to get me into the bay, to the ship?”

She griped the edge of the table with her fingers. “Yes.”

“Do you think you can fly it?”

Her muscles started tightening. “Yes.”

“Do you want to help me steal it?”

She looked into his eyes, and felt like she had known him much longer than just this short time. All her fears fell away. “Yes.”

Continued on January 16, 2010