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Chapter 4: Accidents

Accidents

George Simmons had a lot on his mind as he commuted to work this morning. His eldest son, Jeff, had not scored well on his college MEAT exam. When pressed about it, Jeff admitted he hadn’t studied as hard as he should have. Said he was having doubts about becoming an engineer. What he really wanted was to be a musician. A musician! George huffed to himself. What kind of a life would that provide? Jeff was extremely bright in math and science. He was meant to be an engineer – just like he was, and his father before him, and his grandfather before that. Music was fine for a hobby, but as a career? George shook his head in bewilderment. Jeff had always been the dreamy one. At least his middle child was well-grounded. Only in middle-school, Jack had taken first prize in the Texas state science fair with his project on artificial intelligence in applied robotics.

And then there was his youngest, his daughter, Kate. At ten years old, she had her heart set on being a space pilot. George groaned at the thought of his little girl cavorting with a bunch of immature flyboys out past the stratosphere. He knew their type well enough. There’d been a number of them in his aerospace courses back in college – always trying to peek, sneaking in opti-cards, trying to cheat – always looking for the easy way rather than actually working at it. But he’d deal with Kate’s desires later, when she was older.

For now, George thought about the inevitable confrontation he was going to have with his wife over Jeff’s future. In the end, she would ultimately see things his way – after all, she was a reasonable woman, but she had her care-free, girlish fantasy side, too. She wouldn’t want to crush her son’s dreams the way her parents had crushed hers. He’d heard her lament often enough to the point that his eyes glazed over the minute she began, "When I was his age, what I always wanted to be was..."

George’s thoughts were interrupted as the CAS alarm wailed loudly. The auto-guidance took over and swerved the vehicle suddenly around a pedestrian in the road. The elderly woman jumped back as he just barely missed colliding into her with his new Chevy Strider-XL. In his side mirror he saw her shaking her fist at him. What was she mad at him for? She was the one who should have been more careful. What’s so hard about looking both ways before crossing the street? And what was she doing walking anyway? "Tree-hugger naturalists" his father used to call them. Careless. Careless people were a constant source of aggravation to him. After all, where would the world be if everyone were so laissez-faire?

Certainly, he couldn’t afford to be. His job required a level of precision and carefully managed organization that, in his opinion, most people couldn’t master. As the chief telecommunications engineer at Houston’s Space Command Center, it was his responsibility to properly rout and orient the tens of thousands of orbiting satellites to receive (or be capable of receiving) radio transmissions from all incoming and outgoing spacecraft, and the moon colonies. No one ever lost radio communications while he was on the job. He was a perfectionist to the extreme. Whether it was brushing his teeth or decoding encrypted messages from military space probes light years away, he gave it the same level of attention and detail. George’s biggest pet peeve was wasted time, whether by incompetent or lazy people who didn’t take the same pride in their work that he did in his, or unnecessary, redundant processes.

It brought to mind the inconveniences created by the new regulations recently implemented at the Center. Because of current global tensions between the U.S. and other nations, George grudgingly admitted such heightened security was necessary. Some of the measures were transparent to his daily routines, but the additional electromagnetic scans and embedded electronics "sniffers" he was forced to submit to, coming and going, were a burden he was finding increasingly difficult to endure. Why, they cost him at least an additional twelve minutes each and every day!

George parked his car in his secure, pre-paid space and took the electrolift down to the main floor of the commuter teleportation hub. It was even more crowded than usual. He groaned and stepped off the lift, resigned to yet another unavoidable delay.

As he walked up to one of the lines, a man jumped in front of him. Normally, George would have muttered something under his breath about rude behavior, but not loud enough so the offender could hear, of course. He was not the type who favored direct confrontation. And after the incident with the pedestrian, George felt surprisingly tolerant, almost magnanimous. The stranger’s attire marked him as a foreigner. "Must be late for a tour group," he mused.

When it was his turn to enter the hub, he did so without hesitation, mindful of the people waiting behind him. Milliseconds later, George was responsible for the longest commuter delay in over three years as the wave field collapsed and his molecules were irretrievably scattered across hundreds of molecular sequencers. The news media had a field day; George’s name was splashed all over the world as teleportation hubs were shut down until maintenance engineers in Houston could reset the compilers and figure out what had caused the fatal accident.

*****

Tim Hudson admitted he was an oddity – he routinely walked home from work. It was one of the benefits, to him, of living close to his job. Normally he’d have been home already, eating a pre-processed, pre-packaged dinner while watching the news. But tonight was Wednesday, and on Wednesdays he liked to stop by his favorite bar, have a few drinks, and shoot a little pool before walking the final three blocks to his apartment. It helped him get through the workweek. After five beers and an incalculable number of stale pretzels, he decided he’d had enough. Outside he found it to be a beautiful night – there was almost no humidity and a cool breeze swept away the musty smell of the city and its trash. On the street, headlights flashed about him as peopled bustled to get from wherever they had been to wherever they were going.

Feeling somewhat melancholy, he thought about his wife, Carol. Ex-wife, he corrected. Though it had been nearly two years, Tim found it hard to believe she had left. He still loved her, even if the feeling hadn’t been mutual. Their five years of marriage had been anything but the wedded bliss they both expected. Fortunately, they didn’t have any children so the divorce was quick, efficient, and relatively painless. It was a classic example of not appreciating what he had when he had it, and now that he lost her, the majority of his nights were spent lonely and alone.

With considerable difficulty, he turned his thoughts to the only other love of his life – his job. His was the senior signature authority for accepting and inspecting foreign military equipment to the U.S. Because of the classification of the M51 mission, that included the new StarCruiser VX-90. It was a gorgeous spaceship. Even as a boy, Tim was fascinated by military craft and weaponry, whether it was a new shoulder-mounted, laser-guided plasma missile or an SF-109 Quasar engine upgrade. He loved to immerse himself in the details, the improved capabilities. How much could it carry? How fast could it go? The fact that the VX-90 was designed to be a private-use vehicle did not in any way diminish his enthusiasm.

The StarCruiser had just arrived in the receiving hangar this week, and he mulled over some nagging questions that hadn’t been answered to his satisfaction. With a mission of such enormous visibility, it wouldn’t be long before the higher-ups looked to see who was causing the delay in the expedited schedule. And when they did, they’d point the finger at him, and not his Chinese counterparts across the aisle. How dare he hold up acceptance of a brand new StarCruiser? What difference did it make if he didn’t know what every piece of equipment mounted to the superstructure was for? What did it matter if the programming code was a little late? The Chinese were donating this ship as a token of goodwill. If he continued to hold things up it would be viewed as bad taste and would reflect poorly on U.S.-Chinese relations, such as they were.

Deep in thought, Tim accidentally bumped into someone standing on the sidewalk, though for a second it crossed his mind that the stranger had intentionally moved into his path.

"Sorry. My fault," he said, his speech slurred.

Tim didn’t understand what was happening as the man he knocked into, and another man he hadn’t noticed, suddenly grabbed him and pushed him into a darkened side alley. Only when a gloved hand clamped over his mouth and he felt an intense burning sensation in his ribs did he realize the gravity of his situation. As he began choking on the blood filling the ragged tear in his lungs, it was already too late.

That night, the police had no luck solving the case and concluded it was just a random murder. Naturally, there had been no witnesses despite the nearly constant stream of vehicles whizzing past, and surveillance cameras that for some reason were improperly positioned to record the event. The only unusual aspect of the crime was that the victim’s ID chip had been sliced out of his palm and his eyes had been gouged. As a consequence, more archaic means were required to identify him. The authorities assumed the killer stole the ID chip to hack into the victim’s financial accounts, but so far the lead was a dead end.

Because the incident occurred so far from George Simmons’ teleportal mishap, no one ever linked the two together. In fact, other than a tagline on the local news, Tim Hudson’s fate didn’t make headlines.

Meanwhile, the very next day, Tim’s replacement neatly checked the final boxes accepting delivery of the new long-range Chinese spacecraft without a second thought. His only concern was how he was going to spend the four hundred and fifty thousand credits that his mysterious benefactors had electronically added to his bank account.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: The VX-90