Origin & Earth (The Orris Project Book 1), page 13
“We have no plans to communicate from Osa. All Osan communications will be directed through Orris for as long as it continues to orbit Osa, and also once the solar burn is complete and it’s orbiting Sochee.” She looked up at the group for any uncertainty on their faces and found none. “The communication stream from Orris will start once the command center is online, which is currently estimated at four months from now.”
One envoy laughed. It was Tom Holly. “If they send signals in four months, there will be no one to hear them,” Tom said. He smiled and looked around.
“Tom, every one of you has a reception planet, right?” Olive said. Tom realized his mistake. Osa had already communicated to every reception planet, and they would expect each envoy.
“Yes, I feel dumb, and I apologize for interrupting. Please continue.”
She winked at him. “No problem, Tom,” she smiled, and with the smile lent further credence to the rumors that she and Tom Holly had “secretly” been seeing each other.
“The communication will start on only one channel and will be a simple statement of mission status. Over the course of the following eighteen months, fifty-three channels will exist. Each envoy will have an exclusive channel, and communication on that channel will be looped continuously. If you miss a part of anything, you will only have to wait a short time until that communication is rebroadcast,” Olive said.
“What if we’re in another galaxy?” It was Eric Thomas. “We’ll never get the communications.”
Dr. Francis nodded. “Yeah, they’ll only go so far. They plan to ramp up the power on the comms over time, but they will only be so strong,” she shrugged.
“So, we’ll just be out of luck?” Eric frowned.
“Eric, I’m not an astrophysicist, but like all of you, I am a space junkie. If you go that far, there would be no way for Orris to recover your marks before they make the jump, so chances are, this will not be a problem for you.” Dr. Francis was trying not to sound condescending, with little success. Eric nodded. “Stay in the sector guys, five galaxies, ours and the four that surround it. All of your work will be for nothing if you go outside of it.” She was talking about the small sector of the universe where it was possible for crafts from other planets to travel to Orris.
“Is there a time limit on any parts of the sector?” Ken Chase asked.
“Yes, although I’m not qualified to answer that, but yeah. The universe is expanding, everything is getting farther away from everything else. You will lose the edges of the sector in less than four. Really, more like three and a half.” Billion years. She did not say the words, but that is what she meant. “Dr. Estes will go over all of that with you. He is qualified to talk to you about it. I am not. I want to make sure you all know that.” She glanced around at the group and seemed satisfied. “By the time your training is over, you’ll know way more than I do about this stuff. I love learning about it, though, it’s fascinating!”
“You said there will be fifty-three channels. How will we know which is which and what to listen for?” Stan Richman asked.
“Good question; twenty-seven of the channels will be dedicated to the envoys individually, the other twenty-six we will go over throughout the course of our meetings. Once the others start broadcasting, the Mission Status channel will also list the frequencies and details of each channel.”
2
They attended the acquisitions class in a more traditional classroom setting. There were simple chairs with a writing board attached to each, and they all faced the same direction.
The class was scheduled for 15:00, at which time each envoy was in their seat, but Dr. Lauren Astor was not yet present. At 15:07, Randy Vila asked, “How long are we going to wait?” Before anyone could offer an answer, a thin-framed young woman with large curls of red hair dropping to her shoulders walked into the room, apologizing.
“I’m so sorry, gentlemen,” she said, and strode across the room to a steel desk pushed against the far wall. “It’s been a hell of a day,” she offered, saying the words in a manner that sounded rehearsed. She put down the armload of files and a small box she had been holding, presumably writing utensils, and walked front and center to address the group.
“Again, I’m deeply sorry that I was not punctual.” She stopped and looked back at the wall behind her students. “And Jonroe… horrible,” she said in a way that was this time clunky and unrehearsed.
Garrett remembered meeting her, along with the rest of the board, six months prior, but he did not remember finding anything particularly attractive about her then. He could not put his finger on what it was, but he felt differently in that moment. Her hair was down, and he could not remember if she had worn glasses at the earlier meeting, but she wore none now, and he found her pale blue eyes to be exceptionally beautiful. He thought it hard to believe that only these two slight differences had such an impact, but the more she talked, the more he realized a part of it was also her awkwardness in the role of instructor.
She leveled her gaze. “Acquisitions,” she said, and looked from man to man. Garrett was anticipating the moment her eyes would fall on his. “It cannot be as simple as looking for volunteers. There will probably be a lot of volunteers, as long as you can communicate the mission and fully convince the public that what we are doing is real and important.” Randy, Jim, Ken, Eric… never Garrett. He thought it was a mistake, so he maintained a lock on her eyes. “Each Lance can hold up to eighteen-hundred people, and that leaves room for expansion over the course of the journey for families, but you have to start with at least four hundred.” Jim, Eric, Tom, Terence… still not once had she looked at Garrett.
“What is the maximum number we should start with?” Kyle Gellar asked.
“Good question, Kyle, but like everything else on these missions, it depends,” she said. She was looking at Kyle and not shifting her eyes. “You’ll have access to a beacon from Orris, so you’ll know before they leave about how long it will take to travel there. If it’s less than two generations, you can start with up to six hundred. If it’s more, I would recommend you stay right at the minimal four hundred, to give them the best chance.” She looked around again. “There is nowhere to expand on that ship. Controlling their numbers from the beginning is the only thing we can do to give them the best chance of surviving without having to resort to,” she gave a small look of discomfort, “unpleasant resolutions to overpopulation.”
Tom Holly chuckled under his breath and said at half volume, “They’ll have to kill the dumb ones.” It became apparent that Dr. Astor had exceptionally good hearing.
“Do you think that’s funny?” she asked, glaring at him.
Deep red flushed through Tom’s face. “No. I apologize.” Tom said.
Dr. Astor neither winked nor smiled at his apology. “Over the next two weeks, we will go through the details that you all must know for acquisitions, and…” she continued, but never during the two hours did she look at Garrett.
3
Each floor of the OPM building had an elevator bay, and each bay had two steel-framed benches to sit on. During the busier periods of the day, it could sometimes be a substantial wait before an elevator could retrieve a caller. Garrett sat on one of them and, for the first time in a long time, was not thinking about his future missions. He was thinking about Dr. Lauren Astor. In his mind, he was arguing with himself about how stupid and futile it would be to ask her out. I’m leaving Osa forever in ten months, he thought. Why start a relationship with a woman when I know I will have to end it? He wanted to, and that was the only answer, no matter how stupid or futile. Moments before the elevator bell chimed, he decided he would ask her out to dinner. If she said no, then that would be the end of it. After the chime, he thought through the different ways he could approach the question. He recycled the thoughts and methods during his descent in the elevator, going through them when the doors opened and during his first few steps toward the OPM building’s front doors. After those first steps, he looked up and was staring at the back of his subject, just before she reached the doors herself. He knew if he waited, she would disappear into the turbulent foot traffic of the city outside, so he yelled, “Lauren!” She froze in place and then turned slowly toward him as he caught up with her.
“Yes, Mr. Rhodes?”
All the ways that Garrett had been thinking of asking her to dinner left his mind at her unexpected formal reception. The envoys and the instructors in kind had always been on a first name basis.
“It’s Garrett, and I want to take you out to dinner.” A remarkable thing happened at that moment: as he felt the hot flush of blood fill his face, he witnessed the same thing happen at the same time on hers.
“Um,” she said, “Don’t you think that would be…” she trailed off and looked down at her hands, “Pointless?” Garrett risked touching her elbow, and although she shivered at first, she did not pull away.
“Maybe, but I still want to. If you would, that is.”
She looked up at him. “When?”
“Now, tomorrow, next week, as soon as possible,” he said. For the first time, she smiled, and it was a big smile. He found it hard to believe he had not noticed her appeal at their first meeting.
“I can’t tonight,” she said. “I have to go to my sister’s place. I promised I would sit for her.” The look of regret on her face pleased Garrett. “Tomorrow?”
Garrett offered his own big smile. “It’s a date,” he said. She returned the smile and escaped out the door. Something she had said triggered an alarm in his head that he had to think about for a moment to see clearly. Sister. His own sister was in the hospital, having just given birth to her and Rodney’s first child. Garrett told Brenia he would visit and saw the good fortune of having his dinner request pushed by a day.
4
The hospital was huge, and it took some searching before Garrett found the maternity ward. Once there, an exhausted-looking but sweet receptionist gave him the room number. When he arrived, it confused him to see his father sitting in a chair turned so its back was to the hospital bed. As he approached the door and his father looked up and started speaking, he realized why and stopped before reaching the doorway. “Hey Gar, if you don’t want to see your sister’s boobs, you might want to wait a minute before coming in.”
He heard his sister react loudly. “Dad! I told you I’m all covered up!” Garrett’s mother walked up to him, rolled her eyes, and hugged him.
“Come on in, honey, your dad is being ridiculous.” The cramped room had little standing room, but there were several chairs tucked into corners and along the one wall with a window. Brenia was lying on the hospital bed and had multiple blankets in a twisted mess upon her chest. A small yellow blanket that she was paying special attention to suddenly revealed a tiny foot. Garrett could not help but smile. He took two more steps into the room and stared at the little foot with the toes so tiny they were almost hard to see. Rodney stuck out a hand and Garrett took it; he shook twice, wincing at how hard his brother-in-law shook hands. He was a large man with short, dark brown hair and an enormous beard.
“Thanks for coming, Gar, Breni was missing you.”
“Rod, I think he’s done. Can you take him so I can get buttoned up?” Brenia said. Garrett’s brother-in-law picked up his son and draped him over his chest and onto the folded towel on his shoulder. The contrast between the tiny baby and the enormous man was comical. “Gar, can you give me one sec?” Garret spun one hundred and eighty degrees, but it was only a few seconds before she said, “Okay, I’m all set.”
Garrett turned back around to see both of his sister’s arms extended toward him and walked over to hug her. She hugged him weakly and kissed his cheek twice. She leaned back into her pillows and closed her eyes. “You have to meet little Rodney,” she said. Big Rodney smiled while he patted his son’s back.
“Maybe after he burps,” Rodney said. “I’m sure Gar doesn’t want any messy surprises.” But Brenia was already asleep. “So, how is space-man camp going, Gar?” Garrett took no offence to Rodney dumbing down what he was doing. He and Rodney had always gotten along well, despite coming from different backgrounds.
“It’s intense, but it’s going really well.” Garrett did not want to expand into any detail, and he expected Rodney would not be interested anyway. “How are things going at your shop? Did you get the specs yet for the drive systems?”
Rodney rolled his eyes and spoke softly, glancing at his wife. “Yeah, we got them, and we’ve already started building one. These things are insane. The windings in just one blade will use more copper, gold, and silver than I thought existed on Osa. When you get on board that machine, man, you could start a country with the amount of money going into these things.”
“Eighty percent the speed of light without losing time doesn’t come cheap, Rod,” Garrett said, smiling.
“I guess,” Rodney said. “You should hold the baby. Breni will ask when she wakes up.” Rodney passed the tiny person to Garrett, who took him with more than a little anxiety. So small, so delicate, and Garrett thought, I have no idea how to do this. His mother spoke before he got too anxious.
“Don’t worry, Gar, you won’t break him. Just be gentle and bounce a little.” Before Garrett had bounced three times, he heard his sister.
“Aww! Little boy is with his uncle!” Brenia was smiling, but she already had tears welling in her eyes. A moment later, she was crying. She had her arms out to Garrett again. “Mom, take the baby,” she said between sobs. Garrett carefully handed the baby to his mother and went to his sister again, holding her as she cried in his ear. “I’m so mad at you,” she whispered.
“I know, Breni,” Garrett whispered back. “But you’re going to have your hands full with that little guy. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”
She let go of him and spoke in a normal volume, “I’ll always worry about you, idiot.” Garrett retrieved a tissue from the nightstand beside the bed and handed it to his sister.
“Breni, did you tell Garrett the baby’s name?” Their mother asked, knowing that she had not. Brenia blew her nose and tossed the tissue into the wastebasket in front of the nightstand.
She took a deep breath. “His name is…” her eyes filled, and she started sobbing again. Rodney took over.
“Rodney Garrett Kane,” he said. Garrett’s heart sank. “It kills the ‘junior’ thing. My middle name is David, but I think I’m going to call him ‘junior,’ anyway.”
5
The acquisitions class the following day went much like it had the day prior. Dr. Lauren Astor did not once look at or acknowledge Garrett, and he made no effort to be acknowledged.
“Qualifications. This will probably be the uncomfortable part when you first solicit volunteers,” she said as she paced in front of the class. “I’ll start with the children first. Children younger than ten years will not be accepted, as their aptitude cannot be accurately measured. The places you go may have their own intelligence tests, but they will not be accepted as a substitute for ours. This is important for both consistency and predictability.” She glanced at a few of the faces before her but saw no misunderstanding. “Children between ten and fifteen will be accompanied by one or both parents, who must also qualify. Anyone sixteen and older can go unaccompanied.”
Tom Holly spoke up, but for once he was not making a joke. “Each planet we visit will have different annual cycles. The aging on the planets won’t match ours here on Osa,” he said.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, Tom. But I’m fairly sure that each of you is good enough at math to get around that problem.” Tom blushed again, and Garrett smiled. He had a feeling that Tom would be quieter in the future.
“They will also need to pass fertility tests, all of them. The success of the journey will rely heavily on the marks reproducing, as none of them will make it to Orris themselves. Any sterile person would be a wasted seat,” she paused as if expecting a comment or question, but there were none.
“Keep families to a minimum. We need diverse gene pools. That also means it will be important to accept marks from distinct races, as evenly as you can. It will give them a good chance at maintaining the diversity in their pools.” She paused again, but still nothing.
“No women over thirty years old, no men over thirty-five. The women need to have healthy child-bearing years left, and we can’t have the men dropping dead from cardiac arrest two years after they leave,” she said. Finally, someone made a comment. It was Terence Stone, more somber and focused as the newest member of Group 1.
