DES-Bound For Caledonia (1)

Today was a pretty awesome day.
The sun was shining.
The air was warm with summer promise.
The song birds tittered in the tree’s merrily.
And in about thirty second the two joggers in the oh so scandalous fitness attire were going to run right past him.
And that would make the hour of hell it took to get there all worth it.

Sure company policy mandated a strict fitness regime, just like every other company in the business really. There was the cited health and safety benefits, the increased oxygenation of the blood, and the documented increased levels of dopamine in the brain given off by a successful work out. Most companies got away with the international employment laws by using free weights and stationary aerobic equipment. Heck the jogger had once heard that one company operating out of the People’s Republic of Heavenly Bodies, had hooked the exercise bikes in the gymnasia into the primary BUS to power an emergency flywheel battery.

A joule of energy created by man was one saved by the laws of physics.

But he didn’t work for some Neo Communist combine, oh no. The name on his tighty whities, right after his own, was Paxton Heavy Lift Industries. His career sector was stressful enough without adding more stress to it, either by applying direct pressure, or by small degree’s with a daily grind of work out. So PHLI did all it could to make sure it employees were happy little hamsters, running about in their hamster wheels with just enough company allotted glee.

He counted down the last four seconds and, as if by magic, two gorgeous women ran past him from behind. One blonde, one brunette, both of an ethnic background that was appealing to 90% of the male eye. And hell, this was the twenty second century after all, 90% of the female eyes as well. The exercise attire was a mix of Adidas and Nike, their sports trainers by Puma, and they both bore enough product placement to guarantee them entry to advertisement Valhalla when Reeboknarok came around. Neither jogger turned around to look at him, as was their want, not that he minded. Sure a pretty face was a pretty face, but sometimes a man just likes to watch a woman walk away.

Heck of an incentive to run a few miles every day, contract or no.

And then something ruined his day.

She appeared right in front of him, snapping into existence at a midway point between him and the objects of his affections. To his credit he didn’t stumble or trip, as the fall would be both painful and embarrassing. He was use to the invocation doing her little parlour trick from time to time, and like oh so many things in his life he had grown a blind spot for them.

Unlike the joggers whose attire could at best be described as ‘painted on’, the woman standing before him was dressed primly and properly, in a PHLI standard issue jump suit. There were pockets, clips, company crest on one breast pocket, and a Flexi screen woven into one sleeve providing a constant stream of information. She was many twenty five, maybe less, the supposed age where innocence gave way to experience and her opinion would be heard as something other than white noise. A face two round to be cute, but angular enough to be pretty, framed two dark brown eyes that shone with far too much cleverness for their own good. A few strands of red hair trailed down from the company crested ball cap she wore. This gave the woman a look of professional pride in her appearance and a sloppiness of knowing the best way to get it all done.

But after you drank that in, and noticed she was wearing the same sports trainers as the gym bunnies racing away into the distance, you’d also notice was she hovering an inch above the ground. Hovering, and floating backwards at the same speed the man was running.

“Luci.” he said with a well-meaning snarl to his words, his pace never slowing as the floating feminine figure flew before him “This is my gym time: my ‘me’ time. Don’t you have a rule somewhere that says breaking my bubble like this is a breach of my ill-defined human right to self-delusion?”

“There is such a rule,” the figure named Luci responded with a cock of her head to one side, as though listening to one of the tittering birds that infested the park “But in certain situations that rule is suspended. This, obviously, is one of those times.”

The jogger began to slow down, and allowed a colourful section of words to issues from his mouth. As he did so the world around him smeared slightly, before snapping back into perfect focus. It did this twice, as the computer simulation had not been able to buffer enough of the scenery yet to allow for the slowdown. Tree’s fragmented into hexels, and the two spandex clad goddess’s ahead stretched and shrank as a machine fought to right dimensional wrongs. With a sigh he decided to put the simulation out of its misery and slapped at the cut-off switch on his belt.

Instantly walls blanked, the Earth side jogging path vanished as though it had never existed, and was replaced by boring flat reality. The slight curved walls of the immersion chamber appeared as matt grey slabs of plastic: very appealing. At about the size of small bedroom, the bulk of the room’s dimensions were taken up with an omnidirectional traction pad. In truth the pad was like the old track ball mice of pre-immersion computing. You walk in a particular direction, the pad moves under you in that direction, granting you the illusion of movement without forward progress. Throw in some high end immersion screens and software by the finest glitch wrangles this side of the L5 Colonies, and you had a reality simulator that was just good enough to confuse the brain into thinking it was the real deal.

Shockingly the Immersion Chamber had been thought up, designed, and built as a gentle interrogation technique by Paxton Heavy Lift Industries parent company: Paxton Automated Defence Systems. The jogger had always thought the adage of turning swords into plough shears was a little old hat, but hey if it meant he could run after woman who were a literal third dimension out of his league, he was all in favour.

Only the slightly hovering figure of the woman remained, her head still cocked to one side.

“Do you mind if I shower first?” he asked, running a hand through short hair that dripped with perspiration. Without waiting for an answer he made a gesture at one wall, and the well hidden hatch yawned open, and he departed. His exit into reality deposited him into an actual gymnasium, which admittedly had been shoe horned into the space left by the Imm-Chamber. A static bike, some free weights, and an exercise machine that looked to be a cast off from some S&M kink dungeon were present in tasteful tones of pastel white.

The woman reappeared within the far wall, the smart material on its surface allowing the Auto simulation to appear in ‘its’ preferred form. Hell the computer generated nymph was designed to appear as the ideal company to its awake human operator, so assigning it a gender when half the crew was female to begin with was a little awkward. You didn’t want to be one of the crazy ones that fell in love with their ‘cyber companions’, artificial emancipation or no.

“As always, I will defer to your judgement.” The image spoke, her voice a neutral mix of accents that rendered her sounding ever so slightly British. And by that term of phrase it is meant to mean the island of Britain, not the Britannic Conclaves buried beneath the burning skin of Mercury. Mad dogs and English men under the heat of the noon day sun and all.

“Aww don’t sound so testy.” He admonished, grabbing up his towel in the same movement as his purposeful stride towards the exit to the gym. He waggled a finger at her: “You know as well as I that if an emergency can wait for a shower, it’s not all that important. Heck I might take in some breakfast. How are the protein waffles today?”

“Dehydrated and immortal.” The figure said, winking out and appearing within the wall of the small corridor between gym and shower “But I hasten to stress the importance of my interruption. I-”

“It can wait until I’ve showered.” He waved a hand dismissively “Now buzz off and give me a few minutes privacy. Once I’m all clean and spiffy you can bore me with details afterwards okay?”

With a sigh the red head in company trappings vanished, leaving him be. Technically she, or it, had never left: it had just removed a very complicated personal interaction tool from his immediate vicinity. The only true way to be free of her would be to step outside for a spell, and just drift away for a little.

Besides, apart from the view, what did the utter vastness of space have to entice the mind when compared to three kilometres of fusion powered space ship built by the lowest bidder?
Besides, inside there were waffles.

+++

It was all about flavour.

A man can live on bread and water, as long as he has a little protein sludge to spread on it every now and then. Of course that man would go crazy, and probably get scurvy from the vitamin deficiency, but that was drifting away from the point. Much like the exercise regime imposed by inter planetary law, some companies in the business of shipping freight between the worlds of mankind tended to abide by the exact letter of the law. Protein, in every colour of the rainbow, and a dash of carbohydrates (complex and otherwise), could look like a riot and taste like cardboard.

But for a healthy body, and a healthy mind, you needed to sprinkle a little ‘somethin-somethin’ onto’em to make them sing.

The honey oozed from the little squeeze bottle with deliberate slowness, stretching out the breakfast time ritual as it did so. In the end he just doodled the bottles tip back and forth over the surface of the protein waffle, glazing the heated meal time biscuit with sugar-like goodness. The little kitchenette that opened up onto a larger ten man galley area was designed to allow the smells of cooking to fill the space. The space farers of the chemical rocket era had been the first to learn that orbit is a lot more bearable when you can smell the scents of home and taste them too. Meal times on long term space projects turned into a sort of support meeting for astronauts.

Hello, I’m a spaceman: and I miss meat.

“Are you quite done?” Luci remarked from where she appeared to be seated across from him, again a clever wall mounted project of augmented reality. He looked at her, and gave a little shrug as he put the bottle of honey away. He lifted the waffle up, took a hearty bite from it, and rolled his free hand in a ‘proceed’ gesture.

If a computer generated image could have shattered teeth, the way she grown her pixelated set might have done it for her.

“Last night, at 23.34 Universal Time, medical sensing equipment detected a type C infection arising within the metabolic stasis medium of one of the sleeper tanks.” Luci reported with all due seriousness, her hands knitting together in front of her.

He let out a whistle: type C, as in C for Catastrophe. Usually that meant an algae or fungal infection in the fluid medium that slowed the human metabolism down to near zero. And seeing as that medium suffused every pore and cell of the body held within it, a type C infection could consume a sleeping ‘almost corpse’ if not treated rapidly. Fortunately most medical sensors were refined enough to detect minute amounts of alien material in the sterile environments of the stasis tanks. Which was why, as the company approved medical technician on board the PHLI’s torch ship ‘Trade Winds’, he was the only member of the crew fully awake throughout the entire outbound trip. Well that was apart from the shift worker, the other awake crewman who would trade off with one of his sleeping compatriots every two weeks, as the Trade Wind burned towards its destination in the asteroid belt.

Who was awake now? Sergei? Anatolia? Sonja? One of those was a girl’s name, but when working with Grey Russian indentured workers it wasn't all that important to remember their faces, let alone genders.

“Which tank?” he asked, taking another bite of his protein waffle before chasing it down with a bulb of coffee “We talking about one of the backup crewmen, or something in one of the command crews bath tubs? Cause if it’s the latter I think letting those ex-Military spacers dock a few IQ points with neural brain death might be an added side bonus.”

“Neither.” Luci said delicately, toying with delicate childlike hands “The infection was detected aft of the crew habitat section.”

The jogger turned waffle eater frowned for a second, before the Auto’s words rang home loud and clear in his mind. The only thing aft of the crew habitat was the two and a half kilometre long wagon train of modules and prefab equipment manufactories. Which meant the infection had been detected within one of the three pressurised, and human safe rated transhipment containers that made up part of the Trade Winds trailing mass.

The infection had been found in the stasis tank designed for live cargo.
It had been found in a Genies Bottle.