There is No Such Agency of course
There were seven colors of jelly suits. The jelly suit was a totally un-intuitive type of space wear contrived some time in 2034 by some free thinkers in Israel. It was way more complicated than it looked. Appearance-wise, it appears to be an inch thick layer of some kind of tough colored gel covering the astronauts whole body with adjustments over the face and bottom. Hidden in the gel were a kind of nanobots based on Gibson's disassemblers. There was also a lot of spooky flexible electronics and a moving display ability. If a guy wanted to show off he could make the suit display moving patterns of any kind...such as a sea creature might show. You've seen them..octopii with drifting colored designs on their rubbery skin. Like that. Or he could display print..or family photos, whatever.
The professor was never sure how they got his number. Someone had suggested him, of course. He was not the most lithe of men. What he didn't know was this...it had been discovered that astronauts with a waist measurement of more than 43 inches just endured the rigors of space travel much much better than thinner men. It was frustrating, no one could figure out why. It was just a fact. The famous Van Allen Belt held no danger for the slightly rotund!
Professor F, as his students, all merry wags, used to call him, for his rigorous grading practices, sat waiting for his jelly suit at Skinner's along with a couple of other agreeable looking guys. They all had to wear their jelly suits on earth for a couple of weeks to work out the kinks and get used to moving in the thick layer of complicated gel. His color was purple, he would be doing IT on the ship, though he wasn't sure what that would consist of. Commanders wore sky blue, Responders wore brilliant orange. Food managers wore green. Maintenance wore tan. Communications wore white. Security/Defense wore red. Everybody used to kid them about this something awful.
The suits came in a general too big size. It was a big floppy thing that adjusted itself to the size of the man it adorned. A man fully suited up and walking around town came to be called a Gummi Bear, remember, GMInc,for BR.
The special thing about the Prof was his uncanny ability to communicate with Avians of types. In fact, his jelly suit had to be customized to maintain a small bird that would travel with him. There was a small transparent environment built into the chest area of the jelly. Once readied for space travel a pack of about the size of a domestic toaster sat on the man's upper back and it had a very specialized purpose. The nanos in the suit handled the man's biological processes so that he never excreted! The molecules were saved and either re-used or in some cases encapsulated for later disposal in this pack. This was not necessary on land of course.
There were good reasons for the shape of the ship. It appeared to be an egg, smooth and featureless. Resting in its "nest", it reached a couple hundred feet in length and a hundred in diameter. The technology for operating it was partially based on alien salvage and the teachings of one surviving crash victim who had learned to speak English. To initialize flight the Commander's and the Responder's suits had to achieve a "handshake". This was accomplished by a literal handshake. They did not have to stay in contact, thankfully. A brief hand hold was all it took. There were jokes about female Responders. Men will make jokes.
Flight was managed by a manner of thought. It had to be taught to Commanders. Not everyone could do it. It took a mind that was able to picture the shape of space with great clarity. (He was just passing through time and he knew it.) Hands clasped behind his back, in his sky blue jelly suit, he had to picture their route through the reaches of heaven.
A dome the size of a small village had been discovered on the back of the moon. On previous moon trips, observations were made of course. It was inhabited by living creatures, not manlike creatures. They seemed to have built a lot of structures inside their dome that looked like huge old fashioned jungle gyms. On closer inspection, the inhabitants of the city seemed to spend part of every day just perching on these structures and occasionally hopping about and fluttering here and there. The truth of the matter was that the people seemed to be the product of another kind of creation. They were birdlike.
A type of patois or trade language was established with the RSTRS, called Twittering. Their main head bird came to be called Pretty Bird by Earth, and the head of the security dept. as such, was called Little Man.
Pretty Bird had a tale of woe to tell the inhabitants of Earth. Their electronics were old fashioned and had broken down partially making it impossible for them to twitter to their home roosts. None of them were adept at IT it seems. They had the idea that some human might be able to help, as we still used mostly physical equipment, like their old systems on the moon, in the dome.
In return for any assistance garnered, they offered some really spiffy medical skills. It turned out that the RSTRS had largely beaten old age. They had no heart disease, no cancer, no diabetes and no liver disease. Didn't seem like they had anything else either, except some arthritis when a bird got very very elderly and had to walk around on the ground.
It also turned out that men and birds were not that dissimilar under the feathers or skin. What healed a bird also healed a man.
Enter our hero, Professor F, a man who speaks to birds in their hearts, and has a bit of trouble in his cardiac plumbing, and is a past wiz at coaxing the best out of old wires and whatnot. We think maybe GMIncfor BR twigged onto him when he got that write up in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
The flight to the moon was everything he had hoped for. It was beautiful and serene. The egg lifted off silently and slowly. No crushing G forces at all. The Prof didn't have much to do on shipboard, so he mostly contemplated the stars and what he could see of Earth and the moon. There was a way to do this that did not involve portholes. This type of spaceflight was relatively slow and gentle. It took longer than rockets do. It was relaxed. They had meals, snacks and drinks. The Responder played his nickleharp to general acclaim. Mr. Gigi did a bit of singing from his little cubicle.
They arrived at the port next to the Bird's dome at about night time for the Birds. (They had artificial lights for daytime.)
It was not every IT man's nightmare. Nothing was unplugged. Not quite. But it was easy. Ebullient Birds called home at last. Much relief all around.
There was an episode in an odd building. A period of sleep and recovery. Avian nurses injected this and that right through the purple jelly of his suit. Prof woke feeling well and strong. His heart beat sturdily and regularly, no flutters.
After a delightful slow trip home in the egg, with the crew, Professor F went back to his work teaching the wags and putting up with juvenile jokes. He took off his purple jelly suit and was no more a Gummi Bear. It kind of shriveled, for it missed him, as they always do when removed.
Please forgive your correspondent. She has never written a space opera before, and perhaps she has not now either!
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment