Bobby followed the preparations taking place on Earth.
The CME event had a name: The Great Unplug. People were advised to stay indoors, power down, and unplug all electronics from toasters to trucks. Stay off the roads. Keep a single phlex active per family unit. Emergency services only. Schools and government would be closed along with all non-essential businesses. Meanwhile, armies of computer technicians were scrambling to move servers and delicate equipment underground or cover them with lead-lined blankets.
There had never been a CME anywhere near this powerful in the modern age, and the ramifications were impossible to predict. The techno-sphere was an amalgam of trillions of interacting parts cobbled together over many decades. Not only wires, servers, relays, generators, and cell towers, but all the small, seemingly insignificant parts that only went by inventory numbers. From deep sea cables to satellites, each component had its own operating parameters and tolerances. What would fail and in what order? Would it cause a runaway chain reaction that took down national and even global systems?
The simulations were all over the place, but one thing they all agreed on: the best precaution was to turn off everything with a power source. Cutting off electric current and isolating components would reduce the surge potential and limit downstream propagation. Even a small charge when multiplied over thousands of wires could overload a major trunk line. But there was no off-switch for the world. Powering down the global conglomeration of networks was a feat of coordination that had never been attempted before.
Europe would be the first to feel the heat. The CME would scorch its way across the Atlantic, then sweep across the Americas before heading on to Asia and the Middle East. Might a rogue state seize the opportunity to launch a surprise attack? The president made a point of saying that America would be ready to protect itself and its allies with the full force of its strategic armament. It wasn't an empty boast. Ironically, its most hardened systems were its Cold-War era nukes.
But the greatest threat was fear and confusion. With less than a day's warning, most families did not have time to stock up their pantries or fuel up their generators, if they had them. Services and supply chains were quickly overwhelmed. If outages stretched into days or even weeks, desperation might cause people to act irrationally. Governments had learned from past catastrophes that keeping open lines of communication was key to avoiding mass panic—so long as the information was properly moderated. While much of the world was already offline, select media channels were kept open. Misleading or incendiary posts were intercepted by AI before they had a chance to propagate.
Bobby watched from his god's-eye view with a strange sense of detachment. He felt lightheaded and dreamy but not in a pleasant way. The terrible itching had stopped, but he continued to pick at his scabs, littering the air with dark crumbles. He felt the same combination of fatigue and restlessness he used to experience after the stem cell treatments that were supposed to stimulate his bone growth. His coping mechanism for bodily discomfort had always been to throw himself into a d-realm, but with communications limited to essential services, that wasn't an option. Before Project Liftoff, he had never been cut off from the Vorld for more than a day. That day had seemed like the longest of his life. As he neurotically checked for a connection every few seconds, he was reminded of a chicken compulsively pecking at a lever for food pellets. He desperately needed a distraction.
He flipped over to the space bands where the sentiment was, Steady on, this is what we trained for. He tuned into Paranor station. Eighty tourists had been evacuated in reentry pods, but a handful still remained along with thirty full-time crew. And Jake. It would be a tight fit. Located in the central hub, there was only room in the main bunker for forty-five people.
"Latest estimates are in," someone was saying. "Max duration is sixteen hours with five to seven high intensity peaks."
"Jesus. That's twice what they were saying a few hours ago."
The memory of Vivian's harrowing spacewalk came flooding back. Sometimes, after a close fight to the death, Bobby would start to shake and weep from relief. During the heat of battle, he had conditioned himself to remain cool and focused. In Archipelia, perfect control over his emotions had been his biggest asset. But the pent-up emotions always caught up to him eventually. The longer he held them at bay, the more violently they came roaring back later.
He started to shake uncontrollably. What if they hadn't adjusted course?
* * *
When Milo checked in on the lab, he found it in perfect order. It felt abandoned without Tayen. The experiments had been packed away in preparation for the CME. Except for the space-weeds. Their glass cubes took up an entire rack. The way they twitched at random was unnerving, creepy even. He would be looking somewhere else and catch a small movement out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to look, they would be perfectly still again. I know it was one of you.
A brown leaf drifted past, floating on an invisible breeze. A ring of the crew garden was starting to wilt. Maybe a problem with the water line? Following the leaf's path, he found a patch of them covering a vent. He scraped them off and stuffed them into a pocket of his jumpsuit.
He went into the octang to check on the auto-labs but stopped short at the sight of the moon. So large! And surprisingly bright given that only a sliver was exposed to direct sunlight. When he blocked it out with his hand, there was enough secondary glow from earth to see the features of the dark side, a landscape of intersecting craters and ejecta trails. Moonbase 1, or New Camelot, was just visible as a tiny prick of light. Magnified, it looked like a spiderling with legs sticking off the main dome cluster. He was reminded of their real mission, the one he wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about except Jake. Personnel issues were delicate.
At first, Milo hadn't been able to fathom what could cause a close-knit team bound together by a shared mission to suddenly turn on each other. But that was before having experienced firsthand the strain of working in an enclosed environment with the same small group of individuals, each with their all-too-familiar quirks and flaws. He could barely hold his crew together for a two-week roundtrip. What must it be like for the moon-crews working in eighteen-month shifts? Was it any wonder that some people cracked under the strain? When that happened, could they ever be restored, or was the only option to quarantine them and send them home on the first shuttle?
Milo floated out through the lab and retraced his path to the crew quarters. He paused at the open portal of the mess where he heard the sound of voices. Vivian and Jess.
"Remember to face the phlex when you're talking," Vivian instructed. "I'll ask you some questions, and you just say the first thing that comes to mind."
"What questions?" Jess replied.
"I'm not going to tell you yet. The whole point of a stream is to be spontaneous. So just act natural and be yourself."
"Who else would I be?" Jess asked.
"Exactly." Vivian laughed. "Whatever you do, don't try to act all macho and cool like Milo." Her voice dropped an octave as she slipped into parody. "'I'm the captain of this ship now, and you will do whatever I command.'"
Milo poked his head inside the portal. "Hey Vee."
"Oh, hey, Milo," Vivian feigned surprise. "I didn't see you there. Jess is my guest of honor today. You should see all the tweeks we're getting from Earthside. People are really worried about us."
Milo was about to make light of it but then said, "That's good to hear. Let them know we're ok, will you."
Tayen wasn't in the women's triad either. Where could she have gone? He checked the private rooms. The second one showed occupied. The rooms were soundproof so knocking wouldn't help. He pulled up his phlex and overrode the lock. Captain's privilege. Tayen was sitting with her back to the door facing the wall-screen, which acted as a dark mirror. The artificial glass set off her false skin, allowing him to trace the uneven line of the scar. Both sides of her face were equally blank and inscrutable.
The private room was closet-sized. Milo had to squeeze in behind Tayen's chair so the door could close behind him. His head hovered just above hers. "You spoke to Jake?" Everyone knew how much she worshipped their former captain. "How is he?"
Tayen raised her gaze to lock eyes with his in the reflection. "Did you know?" she asked.
"Know what? That his condition was that serious? Not until he got whisked off the ship. I found out just like everyone else."
"Did you know this was all just a freakshow after all? Cripples in space. Wholesome entertainment for the entire family."
"Jake told you that?"
"He thinks he's going to die," Tayen said. "I guess he wanted to clear his conscience."
"Some part of me always suspected," Milo said. "It seemed too good to be true, didn't it? Free roundtrip ticket to the moon, all expenses paid. Talk about a free lunch."
Tayen cracked a bitter smile. "No such thing."
Milo wasn't sure how to proceed. He had sought out Tayen based on a gut feeling, but he hadn't worked out what he was going to say to her. This was new territory. As a basketball captain, he never had to worry about the players that got cut from the team. But then he had found himself on the outside, struggling to find his place. "My sophomore year at Kentucky, there was this one game in the conference pre-lims," he began. "We were down by fifteen points going into the second half..."
"I'm really not in the mood for a pick-me-upper," Tayen said.
Milo continued anyway. "It was a game we should have won easily, but I don't know, we were just off that day. We were rimming everything, and the rebounds were all going the other way. The other team was sinking threes like they had homing devices. The referees were calling us for everything. I was playing with five fouls."
"And let me guess, you came from behind to win?"
"Hell no. We lost by twenty-three. Worst thrashing we ever had. We were tournament favorites going in, and we didn't even make the quarterfinal cut. We had our hotel rooms booked for the entire weekend, but we packed our gear that Thursday night and loaded onto the bus back to Lexington. It sucked. But looking back, that's not what I remember most about it. In the last seconds of the game, I stripped the ball from the other team's star player and got a fast break. I raced the length of the court and slammed the fuck out of that hoop. The score didn't count. The clock had already run out. Not like it mattered anyway. Two points weren't going to make a difference. The stands were already half empty, and everyone was heading for the exits. People thought I was just showing off, but it wasn't about that. My pride was on the line. I had to prove to myself that I belonged to be on that court. After that, a strange thing happened. From then on, whenever we fell behind in a tough game, the team would look at me and know that I wasn't going to quit no matter what the score. It carried us through some pretty tough times."
"Well good for you." Tayen still wouldn't meet his gaze. "You can put that on a wall poster and hang it in the mess. But I won't be around to look at it. I'm getting off at Paranor Station and never looking back. I'm through with this bullshit."
Milo chuckled humorlessly. "I think all of our space careers are pretty much over at this point. When we re-dock, I expect it's the end of the line. This is one game we never had a chance of winning. But so what if we are just a bunch of cripples making laps around the moon? There's still time left on the clock. I don't know about you, but I intend to go all the way to the buzzer."
"You don't get it," Tayen said. "I blew it big time. How would you say it in basketball? I fouled out. Disqualified. Game over."
"As ship engineer maybe," Milo said. "But what this ship could really use is a science officer. Behind each of those experiments in the lab is a scientist or student desperately counting on us. One high school science club saved up for five years to find out if golden rice could be grown in space. Even if the rest of the mission is a joke, those experiments are legit." He reached inside his pocket and took out the withered leaves. He placed them in Tayen's palm and folded her fingers around them. "Think about it."