Saturday, January 10, 2015

Astronauts

One of my goals this semester was to write a Future Problem Solvers (FPS) Scenario. It is a short story that presents a problem related to one of the five FPS topics for the year and then gives a solution to the problem. It must be no longer than 1500 words long and set at least 25 years in the future. This is the scenario I wrote this year. The topic is Space.


Astronauts


Nicole was dozing on the table. Next to her, her brother Ardent, reading.
A soft chime sounded through the lounge and in unison, both looked towards the screen embedded in the wall of the lounge.
“Good morning, Doctor Kirin,” Ardent said as the image of a woman appeared.
“Morning, ISS Angel. I can’t say I’m having a good one. We’ve had fifty new cases of the Cold and four deaths since last night in Houston alone. Three of the new cases were participants in the immunization trials last week. It doesn’t work: we have to start over.”
“What about you?” Ardent asked. “Will you be safe?”
“We’ve taken every precaution, of course, but we still don’t know how the pathogen spreads.” Kirin closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I’m sorry to be so brief, I should get back to work. Without a treatment, I don’t think I can say that anyone’s safe.”
The screen blinked off.
“We’re safe,” Nicole mumbled. “It can’t reach the space station. Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Ardent shook his head. “You’re an astrophysicist, and I’m a pilot. There’s nothing.”
Kirin’s reports grew worse. Seventy-eight new cases, 15 dead, then 104 new cases and 26 dead. The symptoms were hard to spot. A headache for a few days, a sniffly nose. Then after a week, the fever appeared and with temperatures of 41C or above, the sick didn’t last very long, no matter what the doctors did.
The chiming alert woke Nicole from a dream.
“I’ll get it,” Ardent grumbled from the next bunk. He shuffled into the lounge to receive the call from Earth.
Nicole waited, but Ardent didn’t return. Eventually, she got up and went into the lounge.
Ardent was making himself coffee.
“What happened?”
“They’ve made a breakthrough.” He didn’t smile.
“What?”
“They found the cause of the epidemic, but it isn’t a pathogen. It’s radiation.”
“Radiation? From where?” Nicole frowned.
“The sun, she said. The virus they found was just a regular cold. It’s highly contagious and probably made the symptoms worse, but it’s not what kills people.”
“Why did they wake us up to tell us?”
“In a few hours, we’ll be meeting the Japanese station, Amateratsu, and transferring over.”
“Why?”
Amateratsu is capable of deep space flight.” Ardent paused apprehensively.
Nicole was silent.
“Together, we have more than enough supplies, and Amateratsu has plenty of space. It’s a much newer craft with cryo and hyperdrive–”
“How long?”
Ardent sat silently
“Ardent, tell me.”
“We’re not coming back. They’re sending us to scout a Goldilocks planet. We go now, and they’ll follow us in a couple of years.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Ardent was shocked. “You’re not going to fight? You hate space. You’re only here because you wouldn’t let me go without you.”
She shrugged. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
Ardent put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, well then we’d better pack.”
Amateratsu came into sight just over an hour later. She was three times larger than Angel and covered in reflective solar panels.
Ardent piloted Angel into docking position, and Nicole waited by the airlock. She knew they had docked successfully when the doors slid open and Amateratsu’s pilot stepped through.
She extended a hand. “I’m Cora Nogitsune. Nicole Faeleigh?”
Nicole shook her hand. “Ardent is upstairs. Our gear’s all packed.”
“I’ll help you stow it.”
Ardent met the women by the bunks. Each collected a bin to transfer over. Cora lead them to storage unit on Amateratsu, where they stowed everything they could salvage from Angel.
As Cora and Ardent programmed and refitted the ship for deep space, Nicole said goodbye to Angel, who would never fly again now that Ardent had taken her batteries and core processors.
Then Ardent called her back to Amateratsu. They had just disengaged when a call came from Earth.
The NASA director apologized for the rush and stressed the importance of their haste in the mission to scout the new planet.
Nicole bit her lip to keep from saying something rude. The director made it sound as if they were on an honorable quest to rescue humanity, but it felt like they were being given a hopeless task so that the government couldn’t be blamed for not trying.
Nicole’s attention drifted as the director discussed details with the pilots, but she interrupted before he signed out.
“Wait, sir. Can I talk to Kirin? Please.”
The director frowned. “I’m afraid you can’t. She has begun to show symptoms. She’s been placed in intensive care.”
“What! But—” She began to protest, but he signed off, and the screen turned black.
Ardent and Nicole stared at each other in shock.
“Is Kirin a friend?” Cora asked.
“Yeah,” Ardent said.
“I’m sorry,” Cora said. She stood and quietly left the room. She began to prepare the cryo stations. She was nearly done when Ardent and Nicole rejoined her.
She showed them how the cryo stations worked, and they all changed into their cryo suits.
Nicole went first, then Ardent. Cora checked everything again, sent a final report to Earth, and then followed them.
Amateratsu dropped out of hyperdrive into the Goldilocks System one year and 254 days later for them, four years for Earth. Using focused electromagnetic radiation, the hyperdrive created a shortcut, like a wormhole, for the ship to travel through space, but Amateratsu couldn’t escape the effects of relativity.
Cora woke to alarms. The sound brought her gasping to consciousness. She stood and stumbled towards the cockpit. The sensors complained loudly of unusual readings.
Ardent followed Cora in. He tripped and caught himself on the doorway and looked around. “What’s wrong?”
“Gravity.” Cora pointed to the computer readout. “It’s way too high!”
“So that’s why I feel so heavy.”
Cora slumped into a chair. “I don’t know what’s happening. This planet’s only a little bigger than Earth.” She frowned at the numbers on the screen. “According to Amateratsu, it’s hundreds of times denser, and there’s no reason it should be!”
“What do we do? If we feel the gravity all the way up here, going to the surface will kill us!”
“I’ll try to contact Earth. Check the other sensors.”
Ardent leaned against the dashboard and fiddled with controls, trying to make sense of the readings.
A loud thump startled him. He staggered into the hallway to find Nicole lying on the floor.
“Why do I weigh a thousand kilos?” she groaned.
“Gravity.”
“Right.”
Ardent left her there and returned to the cockpit. “Anything?
“I can’t contact Earth. We can’t go down; the planet’s uninhabitable. We have to go back,” Cora said.
“But…”
“Earth has to know not to come. We can’t live here.”
“We just got here,” Ardent protested.
“Is staying going to do anyone any good? What do you propose we do?”
Ardent sighed. “Okay. But give us time to stretch our legs.”
Over the next two days, they studied the planet and exercised and relaxed. By the 48 hour mark, they had all begun to get restless, so Cora programmed a course back to Earth. and one-by-one, they each went back into cryo.
“How many years has it been?” Nicole asked as she looked down at Earth.
“Eight. It’s May 2329 now.”
“Are you sure?”
Ardent glanced at her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Cora joined them. “A shuttle will be here in a couple of hours.”
The three of them waited by the window. They didn’t need to pack. It seemed to Nicole just a few days since they’d boarded Amateratsu.
The shuttle arrived and docked. The door opened, and a young man bounded out. He stared open-mouthed at the three astronauts.
An older woman followed him. “Welcome back,” she said. “I’m Linda Areva, director of NASA.  You’ve been gone a while.” She smiled encouragingly, but none of the three replied, so she continued,” Why don’t we get you back to Earth? Follow me.”
They followed her to the shuttle.
Nicole gaped at the interior. It resembled a private jet.
Linda turned to face them. “Mr. Faeleigh, Ms. Faeleigh, Ms. Nogitsune, you left in 2321 to scout a new home for the human race. Do you know what year it is now?”
“2329,” Nicole said.
“Not quite. Today is August 9th, 2592.”
“Oh!” Nicole sounded like the breath had been knocked from her. “Gravity-time dilation! I’m so stupid!” She buried her face in her palms.
“What about the radiation!” Cora protested.
“We survived,” Linda smiled. “They developed treatments and protection. They struggled, but they lived. It’s thanks to you.”
“How?” Ardent asked.
“You gave them hope. They knew they only had to survive until they heard from you.
“But we didn’t do anything,” he said.
“It didn’t matter. By the time you got to the planet, we’d developed protection. In the end, hope made the difference. We all learned your names in history.”
“Wait,” Nicole said. “You thought we died?”
“Yes.”
“We’re actually famous?”
Linda’s smile widened, and then she laughed. “Yes,” she said.
~Jill P.

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