Chapter 18: Intermission
Start reading from the beginning…
“A passenger?” Cole interrupted as Val was about to protest. “That ship was designed for a single person. We have fit two in there before, but it’s a pretty tight squeeze. I don’t see how a minor modification is going to magically create room for a second person on a full mission.” He looked over at Val to see a look in her eye that told him to continue, so he did. “And aside from all of that, why is Daniel putting in the mods? He’s our science and software person, not the man who designs and constructs everything. That’s your field of expertise! How come you are up here and he’s…” Cole had a realization so startling that he stopped talking mid-rant.
“Have you met Doctor Smith?” Arthur asked.
Val was confused. “Who’s Dr. Smith? And what does this mean?”
“Doctor Elias Smith was an old friend of the Admiral’s. Chan’s mentor really. He died years ago,” Arthur explained.
“Hold on, so I’m taking human remains to the past with me? That doesn’t even make sense.” Val looked from Arthur to Cole and then back again. Cole was running through the matter in his head however.
On the one hand, the Doctor would ensure that Val was not alone during the mission. He would provide moral support and keep her motivated, and most likely counsel her if she was having a hard time fighting off the Effect. On the other hand though, he was basically a disembodied soul, unable to affect anything physically. An intelligence without a body to move, he would essentially be helpless if Val suffered any traumatic situation, was injured or incapacitated. Chan’s decision for including the Doctor Smith in the mission must mean that he wants someone who can report back on the real happenings. Did Chan not trust Val to comply with the mission once she was out on her own?
“They are not remains in the normal sense, Val.” Arthur answered her. “The Doctor is an artificial intelligence of a sort.”
Before she could respond, Cole added, “But don’t call him artificial anything. He has feelings and thoughts like anyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dreams when he is offline. The only thing he lacks is a body, which was the part of him that died.”
Val, as usual seemed to take the turn of events into stride, because next she asked, “So how long will we need to wait for him to be loaded into the ship?”
“A few hours at least. Ten or twelve hours at most. I was told that you packed for the mission before you left for Mars, so it looks like you’ve got a bit of downtime right now.” Arthur smiled at them both. “I’ll come and find you when he’s done making the transfer and everything is fully functional with the addition.” With that, Arthur headed down into the bay to see if he could lend his partner a hand.
“So, it looks like I’ve got some time. Are you hungry?” asked Val.
Cole was thinking the same thing, so he offered to take her to a restaurant that he knew about around the corner. As they walked out of the lab and into the street, Val took his hand into hers, holding it the way Cole usually only sees other people do. He didn’t mind at all though. The more time he spent with Valentina, the more he liked to spend his time with her. Walking down the street, holding her hand, he looked up through the ceiling at the stars overhead. The shadows up there indicated that the sun was setting outside. It had been daylight here since she had first arrived at LunaBase and into his life, and the sun was setting on that first week. That wonderful first week where he had spent nearly every waking moment with her. A day here on base, then several days on Mars, and now back here again as the sun slowly sets. He guessed it wouldn’t be fully set for a couple of hours, and he decided that since she was leaving for her mission soon that he would spend every moment with her that he could.
At the restaurant, the couple laughed at stories they each shared about reckless things they did when they were younger. It seemed to Cole that Val had certainly been the more reckless of the two. She was the pilot though, so it stood to reason that her adventures would include more travel and interesting locations. As it turned out however, they had been to many of the same places, just at different times.
“We probably could have run into each other a hundred times,” Val was saying. “I wonder if I would have been this attracted to you if I had met you then.”
“Probably. I am pretty handsome,” Cole joked, more to cover up the fact that he was turning a little red at hearing Val blurt out her feelings, than to actually make her laugh.
She did laugh however, and then pushed the compliment a bit further, “That‘s true. You are very handsome.”
Cole sat in stunned silence. He was sure his face was approaching the red color in Val’s hair. Luckily, the waiter approached right then, asking if they were interested in any dessert. Val decided that she was too full, so Cole passed on having a treat as well. He looked across the table at her, feeling like he was the luckiest man on the moon right now. When they got up to leave, Cole asked her if she felt like going for a walk.
“Sure. I may need a bit of exercise after that meal if I plan to squeeze into the ship later on,” she joked. He had never met anyway as consistently happy as Val before. Like before, she grabbed his hand and walked beside him as he led her to an elevator bank he had taken her to once before. She must have recognized where in the base they were, because she asked, “Are you taking me to the roof?”
“Maybe,” was all he replied. He pushed the lit button on the nearest elevator. The door opened immediately, and they stepped into the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, Val turned on her heel to face Cole. She stood tall, and put her hands on each of his shoulders. Pulling herself up higher, or maybe pulling him down lower, she began kissing him.
Her mouth was warm on his, and her scent filled his nose. Letting the moment take him, Cole reached forward and touched her hips lightly with his fingertips. He let his hands follow the curve of her waist around and up into the small of her back, until his fingers met one another. Cole held her tightly to him, almost as if he was afraid that if he let her go she wouldn’t come back. As their lips played on one another’s, Cole felt Val’s hands slide from his shoulders up around the back of his neck. They were so intertwined in one another, physically and emotionally, that when the elevator chimed to announce the doors were about to open, it was like an alarm calling them back to reality.
Cole pulled his lips only inches from hers and moaned softly, “Ladies first.” She let go of his neck and twisted in his grasp so that he was left holding her waist from behind, like a two-person conga line. As the doors glided open, they emerged from the elevator into a long curved, wedge-shaped hallway. There was a flat floor, and a wall that curved back behind the elevator slightly. The wall opposite the elevator was a window that slanted up to join the other wall over their heads, more of a ceiling that touches the floor in an attic than an actual wall. Through the window, the gray expanse of the Lunar surface was far below them, extending out all the way to the horizon.
“Does this go all the way around Luna Base?” Val asked, probably knowing already that at this height in the dome, it wouldn’t be a very big circle, maybe a hundred yards to walk all the way around.
“Yes, it does. And I will just have to assume that you are not afraid of heights, given your profession, because I have heard of people getting frightened up here.”
Val looked at Cole confused. “Frightened of what?”
As an answer, Cole took Val by the hand and they walked down the hall in the direction of the setting sun. After a few steps, the opaque wall on their left became a window like the exterior of the dome, as did the floor. They were in a windowed, triangular tube of sorts, walking far above the expanse of LunaBase below them. He looked over at Val, not sure what to expect her expression to be. It seemed she was thrilled to be so high up, surrounded on all sides by windows, looking down on everything. “I always thought that this was a little like flying, only without moving. Not very many people are allowed up here. Chan pulled some strings to get me access when someone else told me about it once…” Cole trailed off, leaving the rest of what he was going to say hang in the air.
Something occurred to him just then. When he and Val had been in the elevator bank before, when they were on their way to steal the ship, he had assumed that Chan had given Val access to this space. It seemed odd to him at the time, but it was obvious now that it might have been Cole who had retained the access all along. He had been fired, and so he assumed that all of his special clearances had been taken away. But there was another Cole, from his future, walking around with the exact same ID chip, who still would have required access to various parts of the base and lab. Cole’s access had never been revoked, but he hadn’t ever guessed that. He chuckled a little at the thought of how much of an idiot he had been throughout that whole process.
“What’s so funny?” Val asked, smiling back at him.
“Nothing really. I’m just happy to be here with you.” The sun on the horizon was sinking into the lunar landscape. Sunsets were not as breathtaking here as they are on Earth, with no curved atmosphere to refract the light and misshape the sun. No reds or oranges or purples, just a yellow orb dropping behind the distant craters.
“I’m happy to be here with you too,” she said, and her eyes became softer. As she faced him, half of her face was bathed in bright yellow light, while the other was in shadow. He leaned down and kissed her again, still smiling at her. She pulled him into a hug then, wrapping her arms around him, under his arms, and pressing her cheek into his shoulder to watch the sunset. Cole turned his head the other way, to look at the shadows cast by the sun playing on the interior of the base.
“Look over there,” he said.
Val turned to look away from the sun and giggled when she saw immediately what he was pointing to: a giant silhouette of the two of them cast on a white interior wall. “Well, if anyone below can see that,” she said, “let’s give them something worth looking at.” As he saw her shadow lift one leg back behind her, he turned back to her and placed his lips on hers once more.
