The Simulacrum (First Contact), page 25
Spacewalks require endurance. Ryan could have used his navigating jets to soar down to the storage bay on the Service Module, but Houston recommended preserving fuel. The irony of spacewalks is that there’s little to no walking at all, as the largest muscle group in the body is entirely redundant. His thighs and calf muscles are excess baggage. Spacewalks are closer to circus acrobats walking along on their hands, but even that’s misleading as it’s not the chest and shoulder muscles that come into play so much as the forearms and the various muscles and tendons in the hand. Instead of using the largest muscle group in his body, he’s using the smallest. And his gloves are designed to flex back to a neutral position, meaning each time Ryan closes his hand on a rail or a handhold, he has to fight not only the pressure in his suit but the thick rubber padding inside his palm. Maneuvering jets are fun. This is work.
Ryan’s wearing an EMU to conduct an EVA. To his mind, acronyms are pointless if they don’t add any real value. He’s wearing a spacesuit to conduct a spacewalk. In addition to his spacesuit, he is strapped into a maneuvering unit that looks like the classic science fiction jet pack. It’s a bulky pack wrapping around his life-support pack and reaching down to below his butt. Spherical tanks contain his fuel, forming humps on the back of his pack. The actual maneuvering jets are tiny, with two being positioned directly behind the small of his back to propel him forward, and then smaller jets that point left and right, up and down, from the various side panels of the unit. They resemble a plus symbol, allowing bursts of gas to propel him in one of four directions with ease. Far from roaring like rocket engines, they’re frugal. They need only impart a slight nudge to set him slowly spinning. And one jet offsets the other. Using his controls, Ryan can either fly freehand or use set angles. If he turns the controls to thirty degrees to the left, the system will fire one set of jets to start him turning and then another to automatically arrest his motion after he’s turned by thirty degrees. Ryan likes that mode as it’s precise and flawless. For now, though, he’s reserving his fuel for use on the asteroid.
“Okay, I’m approaching the storage bay.”
“I have good visuals,” Jemma says. She’s already sealed the hatch on the Dragon and pressurized the cabin. She’s watching him from various cameras mounted on the vessel's hull and his helmet cam.
The storage bay is a recessed area near the fuel tanks. The artificial-intelligence-enabled AIRMAIL bot has been folded up and crammed into an area the size of a large suitcase.
“Releasing the locking clip.”
Ryan pulls on a handle, and the robot slides out on two rails. Once fully extended, they lock in place.
“Okay, unpacking.”
The beauty of spacewalking is that all ways are up. Up is a matter of convenience rather than convention. Up is wherever he needs it to be. Ryan takes a firm grip on the rails holding the robot and swings his body around, inverting himself. His head and legs trade places. And, like magic, down becomes up.
A series of cotter pins have been used to hold the limbs of the robot in place during the launch and outbound flight to prevent any shaking or rattling from damaging the hydraulics. Each pin is numbered and has a bright red ribbon attached with the wording “Remove before deployment” written in bold yellow letters. There are eleven in all. Ryan could reach them blindfolded if needed. The muscle memory he’s developed from training for this moment in the neutral buoyancy lab kicks in. Even though his gloves are cumbersome and his fingers are bulky, he reaches in between the struts and pulls out the pins in order. As they’re released, springs reveal other more obscure pins. It’s important to follow them sequentially. Each cotter pin has a small tag of velcro attached to the ribbon, allowing him to stick each one to his forearm so they don’t float away.
Several of them moved during the flight. Whereas the ribbons should be easy to grab, they’ve become tangled in the frame and wiring loom. Ryan uses his index finger and middle finger like a pair of tweezers, catching the edge of one of the ribbons and easing it toward him before getting a good grip and pulling the pin out.
“How are you doing, Cassandra?” he asks. Originally, the AI was limited and was going to be operated with voice commands from the astronauts, but NASA has opted for a fully functional artificial intelligence. Having a personality behind the AMPLE/AIRMAIL configuration is something Ryan thought would be a little strange, but over the past few hours, he’s become accustomed to talking to Cassandra as though she were just another member of the crew.
“Ready when you are, commander,” is the reply over the earpiece in his Snoopy cap. “I’ve uploaded the latest patch, and I’m ready to control the bot from AMPLE.”
This is another change Ryan wasn’t expecting. Originally, the AI software was to be run on the AIRMAIL robot itself, but Cassandra needs the computing power of the entire AMPLE stack so she will manage mining activity from the spacecraft. Communication with Earth is limited. They get sound bites from Houston, but detailed comms come through in text form, as it’s far more efficient and easier to review. He’s gone through the revised procedures. It seems this decision was a pragmatic solution rather than an ideal one.
As AMPLE is in orbit around the asteroid Psyche, there will be times when the stack is out of radio communication with him on the surface. It’s the asteroid itself that’s the problem. It’s a big lump of iron. Getting signals through it is impossible.
As each orbit takes ninety minutes, he’ll have about seventy minutes of activity on each pass and then twenty minutes while the spacecraft is in the shadow of the asteroid. It’s a compromise he doesn’t like. He’d rather have continuous operations, but he understands the interest Houston has in using a fully autonomous AI system rather than a reduced version for mining. Future missions will use upgraded hardware, but according to the documentation, Houston wants to test the ability of Cassandra to adapt to a wide variety of complex environments on the surface. Ryan gets it. They’re here. They should run as many tests as they can and gather as much operational data as possible, as that will shape AMPLE II and III.
As he releases the last pin, Cassandra says, “Oh, and happy birthday, commander.”
“Huh?”
“It’s your birthday.”
“It is?” a surprised Jemma says.
Ryan laughs. “I don’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone the date.”
“We should have cake,” Jemma says with a burst of enthusiasm from inside the capsule.
“We should,” Ryan agrees, knowing that’s absurd and impossible but liking the sentiment anyway. In the back of his mind, though, he’s confused. Time is an illusion in space, especially when dropping in and out of hibernation. Entire months have passed like days. He’s reasonably sure, though, that he doesn’t turn thirty-five until after they splash down in the Gulf of Mexico. He seems to recall joking about that with one of the techs back at Cape Canaveral, as there was some suggestion that he might land on his birthday if there were delays.
Cassandra sounds upbeat as she says, “Your sister sent you a birthday message.”
Hearing an artificial intelligence express positive, uplifting emotions is unnerving, but Ryan goes with it.
“Can you play the message?” he asks, holding on to the AIRMAIL bot with one hand as he drifts in the darkness beside the AMPLE Service Module.
“Sure,” Cassandra replies.
The tyranny of space communication is such that video requires roughly a thousand times more data than the equivalent audio message, while audio is a thousand times larger than the equivalent text. Because of this, the crew gets very few video clips, only a handful of audio messages, and absolutely everything else is squeezed into text files. And the text files are raw. There’s only one font and one size. Nothing is bold or in italics as the format has been streamlined for efficiency. If the mission controllers in Houston want to emphasize a point, they add asterisks on either side of the text. If anything, his sister would have had to plead for audio time.
But it’s not his birthday.
“Hey, big brother. They tell me I’ve only got a minute to talk to you, so I’m not sure why I’m explaining that to you, as you already know that, but I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. It was soooo good to see you before the launch. I just wanted to remind you that you’re not alone up there. All is—well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. And me? I’m still not well, but we can talk more about that when you get back. Happy Birthday!”
The last two words are delivered with gusto.
Ryan floats there for a moment, cocooned in his spacesuit, lost in thought, looking at the AIRMAIL bot folded up on its rack but not seeing it. In his mind, he’s back in Houston, sitting at dinner, chatting with his kid sister. He remembers the blurred images she showed him and her questions about the mission to Psyche. He dismissed her concerns. Even though he didn’t agree with them, he felt they were understandable. Her brother was about to soar into the unknown. A little anxiety is to be expected, but this message? Why is she lying about his birthday? And why lie to everyone but him? Dawn must know he knows his birthday is in October. And she must realize Jemma and Cassandra don’t. On Earth, either of them could look up his date of birth quite easily, but not out here in deep space. What is Dawn playing at?
“Is everything okay?” Jemma asks.
“Yeah, fine. Let’s do this.”
“Okay,” Jemma says. “Cassandra, you are go for the deployment of AIRMAIL.”
With the pins removed, the robot unfolds, unpacking itself. The head was buried in the middle of the clunky device. It pivots upward. Cameras appear. Spotlights turn on. Metal arms flex as the shakeout routine is run to check the core systems.
Cassandra says, “I’m detecting air in the line from the primary fuel tank.”
“I’ll flush it out,” Ryan says, swinging his body around behind the robot. This time, up is toward the Service Module. His legs dangle in the void of space. Ryan reaches in, squeezing his gloved hand around the spherical fuel tanks to grab the valve.
Jemma says, “It’s worth flushing both the primary and secondary.”
“Copy that.”
A burst of gas escapes from the machined aluminum junction as he clears the line. He shifts around and repeats the procedure with the auxiliary tank.
“Pressure is nominal,” Cassandra says. The AIRMAIL bot rises with a light puff from its reaction control and maneuvering jets. “We are good to go.”
“Let’s go and explore an asteroid,” Ryan says, sounding upbeat. His mind, though, is still processing the bizarre comments made by his sister, trying to make sense of them. She was speaking to him and him alone. She sounded a little ditsy, but that was a performance. Dawn is anything but an airhead. She was speaking in a way only he’d understand, which is confusing, as what does she have to hide? And to hide from whom?
With the bot drifting out of the service bay, Ryan can retrieve his surface exploration kit. He pulls out a tray with an emergency oxygen cylinder on one side. There are a variety of mountaineering tools he’s been tasked with testing in the microgravity of the asteroid, along with sample collection kits.
“How are we for timing?”
“Looking good,” Jemma says. “You’ve got a ten-minute window for deployment during this orbit. That’s coming up in about eight minutes. That will have you descend over the highlands of Bravo to the prime landing zone on the western edge of India.”
“Copy that,” Ryan says. “Drifting out to 100 meters and prepping for descent.”
Cassandra repeats his command back to him, taking control of the AIRMAIL robot. “Drifting out to 100 meters and prepping for descent.”
Ryan attaches a tether to the surface kit and winds it in so the leading edge is snug against his waist. The kit will cause his center of gravity to shift, but his flight controls have already been set to compensate for the additional offset mass. By having it hard up against him, it won’t jerk around as he maneuvers.
The AIRMAIL bot comes up next to him, drifting roughly twenty feet away from him in the black of space. Mechanical arms flex. The bot looks like an old diesel generator surrounded by a tubular frame with robotic arms, and yet it’s anything but old. Pincers twist and snap shut as Cassandra continues her shakeout tests. In the darkness, it’s intimidating.
Roughly fifty kilometers ahead of them, the asteroid Psyche looms large. It’s two hundred and eighty kilometers in width, dominating their view. As their orbit takes them onto the night side, long shadows stretch down the length of the asteroid, catching the jagged cliffs and mountaintops. The valleys disappear into the darkness.
They’ll begin their descent on the dark side. Rather than coming straight down, they need to lose their sideways velocity as they’re pulled in by the gravity of the asteroid. Back in training, Ryan was drilled in the concept of zero-zero-zero. It’s their sideways velocity that keeps them in orbit. That has to be reduced to zero, but at the same time as both their altitude and overall rate of descent also reach zero. In theory, touchdown should be as gentle as stepping off a boat floating beside a dock. The guidance computer in his suit’s maneuvering unit will manage his descent rate and fuel expenditure. It will select the final landing zone, but Ryan has the ability to override it if necessary.
As he’s floating there in the dark void of space waiting to descend, he runs through his sister’s message again. What sounded casual was deliberate. There was something she wanted to tell him without anyone else realizing it, not even Jemma, which he finds peculiar.
The whole I’ve-only-got-a-minute schtick was intended to sound overtly naive and clumsy, which tells him everything that came after that was deliberate. “Happy birthday” was a lie. It must have been how she managed to convince mission control to let her send a message, but more than that, she wanted him to know she was lying to everyone but him. She had to be nervous that someone would check his date of birth and call her bluff. What could make her that desperate to get a coded message to him? And why lie? He wonders if she’s using a lie to expose a lie.
Her comment that, “It was soooo good to see you before the launch,” sounded chirpy and upbeat, but they both know what they discussed over dinner. Dawn spoke about her research into Przybylski’s Star and the crazy idea that old astronomical records were being altered to hide the approach of an extrasolar object that equates to ʻOumuamua. The hype around that particular elongated sliver of asteroid being an alien spacecraft was insane at the time it was discovered, but there was no justification for it. There was a little outgassing from ‘Oumuamua that suggested it might even be a comet fragment, but it most certainly wasn’t a UFO. Ryan can’t seriously consider that the asteroid Dawn spotted is a UFO either. His mind has been scientifically trained. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as the late Carl Sagan once said. And there’s no evidence that what she saw was anything other than an asteroid.
Dawn, however, couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d spotted something other than an asteroid in her historical data. Ryan isn’t convinced. He wasn’t convinced then, and he’s not convinced now. She must know that. His pride and professionalism won’t allow him to indulge in fantasies.
During her fake birthday message, she said, “I wanted to remind you that you’re not alone up there.” Of course, he’s not alone. Jemma was sitting next to them at dinner. Dawn knows she’s the pilot.
Ryan would be disappointed if Dawn’s comment was meant to perpetuate her insistence on some extraterrestrial interloper lurking nearby, as she must know he’d never consider such a possibility without hard evidence. He gives her the benefit of the doubt. She’s his sister. She cares about him. She’s gone to considerable lengths to tell him something, so he’s not going to ignore her, but what is she trying to say?
Back when they were kids, they’d torment their parents with coded messages. It was fun being able to toy with adults. They’d often spell out ideas using the first letter of each word and turn nonsense into a clever message. Their mom would smile, while dad would get angry at the way they’d laugh at the escalating tension. It was all innocent enough, and it helped pass the time on a boring car ride to visit relatives. Now, though, he can see she’s trying to do the same thing again.
It’s the next phrase that really grabs his attention as it is in conflict with the rest of the supposed birthday greeting. Up until this point, although her message was flakey, it was positive. “All is—well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. And me, I’m still not well.” Why is Dawn playing the ditzy blonde? And the repetition of well in two different senses seems casual, but he knows her well enough to realize it’s deliberate. They’re bookends.
And there’s something in the way she said, “All is…” with a sense of gusto, as though some pearl of wisdom were to follow, only to collapse on, “well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Figure what out? What conclusion is she trying to lead him toward? She knows he’s smart. He’s intelligent. She’s relying on him to unravel her code.
“All is—well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” What is there to figure out in a fragmented sentence? “All is…” what? “All is… not well.” Is that what she was trying to say?
Under his breath, he mutters, “Fuck!”
“Say again,” Jemma says from the distant AMPLE spacecraft.
“Ah, nothing,” Ryan replies. He lies, trying to cover his reaction. “Just watching our time run down. Getting ready for the insertion burn. It’s all becoming real.”
“It is,” Jemma replies. “I make sixty seconds till your first burn.”
“Mark on sixty seconds,” he says, wanting to sound relaxed and detached.
In his mind, he runs together the end of Dawn’s message. “All is… not well.” She’s spelling out the answer to him. “All is.” A and I. What she means is, “AI is not well.” That’s why she lied. That’s what she’s trying to get through to him without anyone else realizing. Ryan’s mind casts back to the communication they received with the upgrade and the lack of any other personal communication from Houston. They’ve had plenty of text-based instructions, but Ryan was expecting at least a “godspeed” audio clip from mission control.
