Opposite Reaction

By Mark Holbrook

Can any human stand on a dark gray asteroid likened to Purgatory and remain the same for long? The year is 2057. Ryan Hersh is only a lowly accountant for his grandfather’s company that mines the region of space known as the Cluster. Errant technology created his self-serving persona but it also gave him extraordinary mental abilities and ambition. Ryan retreats from an imminent threat to his life on Earth by traveling to the Cluster but the sinister plot to kill him is unrelenting. At the mining colony where everyone's motives are in question, Ryan and his new comrades must race to survive the onslaught. During the escalating and terrifying dangers, Ryan discovers that not only he might die but millions or even all of humanity may perish. He is forced to face his own shortcomings. He also learns that, in accordance with Isaac Newton’s third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Just like asteroids, people have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes they dance as a pair, as if joined at the hip. And sometimes they seem destined to collide with one another. Can Ryan remain the same?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Holbrook
• Release date: Aug 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311103475

Book preview

Prologue

Date: August 2057

Location: Hersh-1 Mining Colony in the Cluster

Charles Jamison sensed fuzzy, colorful lights within a dim space, reminding him of holiday decorations. His cold, numb fingers felt encumbered as if buried in snow. A whistling surge of air repeated over and over while a chill penetrated deep into his bones. A winter wind? Odd. The wind whistled with his breathing. Momentarily he held his breath; the wind stopped. He breathed; it continued. Apparently, his own breath made the sound but a constant high pitched tone added to it. Soon he felt the slow, rhythmic rush of chilled air whistle into one nostril and exhale across his parched lips. His senses expanded. After he sniffed, a familiar stale odor lingered. Behind him the unmistakable hum of stabilization gyroscopes droned and blended with the ringing in his ears. Where the hell am I? A sense of urgency tugged like a pit bull and pulled him from his mysterious stupor.

Ahead, blurred letters and dancing graphics shone brightly in pastel colors against the blackest black. Still dazed, he strained his dry, sore eyes until their focus returned. Something hindered his arm and leg movements. But nothing pulled down; there was no down. His pressurized suit and the seat harness digging painfully into his shoulders jarred his memory.

With a stretch of his stiff neck, pain spread across his face and triggered a flashback of the struggle before everything went black. The traumatic events flooded back in. After being beaten, a massive assailant had paralyzed him, restored his helmet, and cinched him into this tiny spacecraft. At the fringe of his vision, a walnut sized lump of coagulated blood clung to his nose. He winced at its slightest twitch and the agony compounded. At the very least his nose was broken. He must have passed out. But for how long? Now the craft’s panoramic window filled his view. Its large, bold text flowed before him against the eternal darkness of space. His eyes opened wide as he forced himself into full consciousness. He loosened the seat restraints and reached behind his back. A tooth rattling shiver slowed his struggle as his gloved fingers found the knob and turned up his EV suit’s heater.

A thought exploded in his head: he was alone and space bound. Sheer panic flooded his mind. His heart rate jumped. While shaking his head, he said to himself through gritted teeth, Come on! Don’t lose it. He waited, concentrating on that singular thought. The stark windstorm of his rapid breathing gradually slowed. After one more deep breath, he turned his head to search the unknown. Why not Christmas, damn it?

Charles recognized the features of this two-person craft, but parts were missing. The right passenger seat was gone. The craft’s designation was whaler, but only clipped wires hung in place of its harpoon and net controls. The navigation system appeared functional, indicating the whaler had achieved its selected destination.

Brightly glowing blue brackets displayed on the window’s left side steered his attention. They framed the distant mining colony on Hersh-1, a long and narrow asteroid that rested at the center of two other asteroids’ rotation. These revolving tethered asteroids, David and Goliath, were designated a Momentum Exchange Bolo System, or MEBS, a contraption which had made the dream of mining asteroids a reality—and which had delivered him into this hellish vista.

Ryan Hersh, that worthless, mutant sociopath, should be here, he thought. Not me.

These three asteroids were part of the Cluster, a godforsaken region between Earth and Mars. It held a group of asteroids that had arrived four decades ago from who knew where.

Charles remembered inventorying equipment hours earlier on Hersh-1 as an accountant for Hersh Industries, the creator and proprietor of this MEBS and another one near Earth. Why was he here now, miles away from Hersh-1? His eyes focused on the window. The blue brackets’ range icon displayed forty kilometers to the colony, the exact radius of David’s orbit around Hersh-1.

What might happen next was unthinkable. The craft’s location could not be a coincidence. His pounding pulse penetrated both suit and glove and he shut his eyes to mask this nightmare. The suit grew warmer. The ringing in his ears fell silent, replaced by a soft hiss—an alarm that jumpstarted his mind.

His eyes jerked to the helmet’s visor display where the oxygen level flashed only 15 percent remaining.

Charles frantically searched the white suit’s exterior, his gloved fingers pulling and prodding its wrinkled surface. Finally, near the top of his chest, barely visible jets escaped from two tiny holes.

No! No! Not this, too. His distress escalated until desperation replaced it. He tried shouting, but his severely dry mouth muffled any utterance.

He flailed his arms about wildly to search small recesses for suit tape to seal the leak. The tape remained hidden. Where’s the goddamn tape! After groping the last cavity, he found only a whaler operations manual—plastic-coated pages in a ringed binder with an underlining pen.

Heralded by a two-beep alarm, orange brackets appeared on the window’s right side, commanding his gaze, suspending his search. They framed the movement of a dark gray asteroid that was certainly Goliath.

Charles pulled the pen from the manual. He had to know the truth, immediately. Over the next two minutes, Goliath towed the orange brackets across the window from right to left. During that time, it grew no bigger in his view than a thumb held at arm’s length. Transfixed, he studied Goliath as it eclipsed of the mining colony. With the pen, he marked points across the window on the moving asteroid’s center. When Goliath shrank in the distance, he hurriedly pressed the opened manual against the window and aligned its top edge to the two end points marked. He drew a line. If Goliath’s path deviated off the line, he was safe. But it did not, confirming his worst fears.

His craft rested on Goliath’s orbital plane and its tethered companion, David.

The knowledge electrified his spine more than the stunning voltage that had knocked him unconscious hours earlier.

Beads of sweat had pooled on his forehead. He switched off the suit’s heater.

He ignored the suit leak while dreading the appearance of new markers on the window’s right side. In moments, the foreboding brackets materialized to announce David’s arrival, bleeding their red light across the window and washing all hope away.

The new, constantly droning alarm numbed his ears as the coming events crystallized in horrific clarity. He must move this whaler at least a hundred meters in ninety seconds or die from David’s monstrous impact.

A search of propulsion controls offered a last chance. Charles picked the GROUND MODE button and then turned, twisted, and pulled on the throttle with no result. He selected the FLIGHT MODE button, and the directional thruster’s names brightened against a dark maroon panel. Pressing the AFT THRUSTER PODS button and jerking on the throttle did absolutely nothing. He tried the FORWARD PODS, PORT PODS, and STARBOARD PODS buttons, but the whaler remained immobile as a tomb.

He dropped his head in despair with a lost gaze centered low on the console. There, the FUEL button’s red light mocked all his efforts. This craft was dead in space. He would be dead in thirty seconds.

David’s approaching surface wrenched his eyes from the console. They locked in place to peer at the growing doom.

The expanding red brackets migrated left. The alarm switched to a piercing, high-pitched warble. All will to live plummeted as his universe reduced to this swelling brown specter. He loathed the son of a bitch who had orchestrated this oblivion delivered by a 200-meter rock traveling thousands of meters per second.

The sun’s gleam on David’s connecting tether, passed like a knife as it sliced the black void. Charles watched until the expanding brackets halted at the window’s boundaries. Then all light faded into darkness as his eyes and bladder relaxed together in acceptance of his fate.

Involuntarily, his gloved hands rushed up to shield a contorted face. In a tormented rage, he shouted, Kill—

Chapter 1

Where’s Charlie?

Date: September 2057

Location: New York, New York

Ryan Hersh sat nervously at his table for two while gazing at the zombielike figures strolling through Central Park. Their blank stares and frantic hand spasms professed an all-consuming preoccupation with their personal technology. They appeared to wander, blind and mindless with no set destination, until their random paths abruptly converged. A distant flicker of lightning or a personal weather alert, more likely, had awakened them enough to evacuate the park along street barricades that herded the walking dead away from passing traffic.

Ryan felt safe enough for the moment, but an upcoming trip would certainly put his life in peril. He watched dusk and a storm front creep into the park as he climbed out of a deep well of thoughts and memories formed over the past fourteen years. There was nothing much before those years that he cared to or could remember. As the day darkened, he could make out his reflection in the window a couple of feet away. He knew his slender six-foot form and thirty-two-year-old face, with blue eyes and square jaw, masked his actual life experience. While others had reminisced about presents under the Christmas tree, he could only recall the poo de jour pressed neatly between his cheeks. At least it was warm and forgiving of space by finding a new home wherever it could fit. The less obliging childhood memories of others fit nowhere in his past.

The spectacle in the park left Ryan intrigued. Tossing arguments for personal electronics taxes at his girlfriend’s parents, both politicians, could mean more government funded research at Hersh Industries. He mused on the idea, envisioning a presentation from behind the political podium: Dear countrymen. Millennia ago we carried no tech except fire and stone tools. We drooled over the sparks and the resounding thud of an axe on a bison skull. Our only distractions were sex and the fear of being eaten. Centuries ago, we proudly built small dwellings, hunted, and prepared meals together. We admired our achievements while huddling by a warm hearth and spoke stories with a familiar voice caressing ears of every loved one known. But ever since the printed word, tech has both united and spread us apart. Now it’s compartmentalizing body and thought while we attempt to control the foundations of our very existence by experimenting with wormholes. We’re a different species altogether. And yet, with all that knowledge and technology, we don’t see the ultimate peril without distance. It’s a peril from within . . . It’s the danger of getting whatever we want . . ."Naah, Ryan said aloud. We can no longer obfuscate our daily lives . . . better, but peeper displays would be on again after the axe hit the bison, and before the sex."

Dinner hour chatter filled the upscale Manhattan restaurant and it filtered back into Ryan’s preoccupied mind. He slowly turned the stem of his half empty wine glass resting on the red table cloth. The wrinkled gray suit he had donned at six that morning had grown heavy. According to his uncle, who knew about the important things that made one’s way in the cooperate world, that suit revealed him as a fit and neat businessman. Four other suits just like it remained at the cleaners with their immediate future and Ryan’s teetering on a decision.

He tapped a finger lightly to ambient music and counted every note as he waited for Phyllis Del Vecchio’s return from powdering her nose. Reflecting on all the nose powder used by women for centuries, he made a mental note— Invest in nose powder —but not that white stuff that had made him paranoid while counting sevens in Phyllis’s antique New York area phone book. Why can’t women just say pee? Much simpler than powder my nose. Simpler than urinate, miction, emiction, micturition, or even uresis. Certainly not say evacuate my bladder. And definitely not the Swahili term. That would be painful waiting to finish saying it. Excuse me, I have to kwenda hja ndogo, Ryan said aloud. Why not void? "One syllable. Totally unoffensive."

A waiter had walked by as Ryan spoke and now cocked an ear his way. Ryan wondered if the waiter spoke Swahili but Ryan had read only part of that language so he didn’t ask.

Other waiters scurried about, serving their world-renowned cuisine concocted by the most famous and secreted chef software of the decade. For his last meal, Ryan had wanted a steak, but Phyllis had insisted on this culinary bastion. Ryan took a whiff. Lavish aromas abounded, enticing ostentatious clientele who paid a premium for every molecule of scent. Please! The servings covered one-tenth of the plate, resembled tiny landscape models, and cost enough to fill an entire balcony with foliage. You couldn’t even get a beer here. But you could uresis one.

Bright music vibrated from string instruments displayed on gaudy pedestals. The melodies lightly danced through every corner of the large, extravagantly decorated room. Four of the best musicians of the seven continents performed remotely from their respective countries with an oversized, live hologram of each musician’s face floating above their instrument. The over-the-top extravagance left Ryan amused since the dull stares from half of the room’s seats revealed tech-shrouded imposters who faked their attention while oblivious to their surroundings. Why bother?

He spied a waiter aloofly erect at the room’s far end, chin held high, seemingly counting patrons and minutes on the elegant wall clock. His upper body appeared oddly husky. If even waiters look like that, I need a personal trainer. The waiter turned his way, carrying a tray with someone’s check. Ryan looked down at his own plate as the waiter’s robust form approached.

Old habits died hard. Without Phyllis nearby for comfort, he decided to purge his worries by counting: 38 fringes on each plate, 13 waiters, 17 bus boys, 87 customers, 97 crystals on chandelier, 421 squares on paneled walls, 689 pedestrians on sidewalks, 111 vehicles on streets, 309 buildings, 2,525 windows, 5,941 individual lights. Damn, all odd numbers. The waiter passed by and completed his trip to the next table.

Ryan raised a hand, signaled the waiter to bring his check, and shook his head knowing the amount would be absurd. He guided his lowered hand into empty space under the table. All five fingers touched together repeatedly like the electronics addicts did in the park. The action activated his contact lens peeper display. A virtual keyboard spanned his lower vision as a tiny phone stick in his jacket pocket filled the lenses. The combination served all his electronics needs and turned him into a zombie, almost.

The pain from implanted microfiber wires had finally faded from his fingertips. Phyllis had said that he complained too much and that women have a higher pain threshold due to childbirth. I’d like to see a woman give birth through her finger tip, he thought.

The wires reported his stylized set of finger movements that operated the virtual keyboard. He touched space to select a news broadcast. A widescreen 2D image filled the lenses and he joined the room’s zombie wannabes. Transducers plugged into his upper jaw conducted the broadcast’s audio into bones around his ears. These maxillary plugins also collected surrounding audio, including his voice for a phone call. Ryan had not used human interfaced phone sticks until two months ago. He considered if this form of conversing was still mouth-to-ear, something not mastered by him until he was eighteen. Instead, should it be called tooth-to-tooth, jaw-to-ear, ear-to-ear, or tooth-to-jaw-to-ear? Whatever the terminology, this intimacy was especially odd to him, given the isolation of his youth.

The local news broadcast on his peepers featured a terrorist threat with the menacing image of a masked figure grasping a gun in one hand and a flag in the other, all portrayed before a glorious red background. Ryan zoomed in on the hand holding the flag. On the backhand, he counted twenty-two freckles and four moles in a diamond shape. That’s better. Even numbers. With a gleam in her eye, the news anchor delivered the tantalizing details of an imminent bomb threat to the city.

A procession of death in its myriad possibilities and probabilities coursed through Ryan’s mind. Unlike him in his impending future, this room’s zombies had it pretty good. The probability of death from suffocation was near zero; a blood embolism from exposure to a vacuum, near zero; a collision at thousands of miles per hour, near zero; by starvation, absolutely zero. But that evening, the probability of death from an explosion had elevated to a significant fraction of 1 percent.

The table shook and Ryan felt his arms nervously jump an inch. He touched space again to remove the broadcast. Touching all fingertips together cleared his peepers. Across the table sat the woman he was considering marrying, but only with the appropriate prenup, of course, and using the newer short term marriage license with an optional extension. She had long brown hair, brown eyes, a model’s face and body—except for augmented breasts—and a fainter smile than when they had first met. She gave him company, sympathy, sex, attention, more sex, and patience. He never felt impatient with her. What more did he need? Besides, he and Phyllis shared the same mind. They both possessed unbridled ambition for wealth, power, and prestige and avoided complications like the kind children brought. And most importantly, her mother served on the government’s appropriations committee for space transportation research. Everyone said they were a perfect pair. However, marriage remained impractical given the lengthy voyage that lay ahead of him.

With a scolding expression, Phyllis said, Oh, stop acting like it’s your last meal, Ryan. This trip’s a career maker.

Ryan felt more than skeptical. The trip was a roadblock—a barrier as formidable as the affliction of which he had been cured fourteen years earlier. Before that time memories remained vague. People were like ghosts. Mostly he recalled being maintained but feeling unwanted. Now his memory retained every detail of his company’s mining equipment: the inventory of all items, their use, the cost of depreciation, and their replacement schedules. But going there in person just to track them down? That was insanity.

He looked across at Phyllis and curved his mouth into a pout. I may not make it back. He let his eyes droop with sadness to close the deal.

Phyllis’s eyes, framed by thick mascara, rolled as her head followed in protest. You’ll have a bodyguard, for Pete’s sake. What could go wrong?

Things you don’t know. The unyielding intent in Phyllis’s eyes forced him to look away. All kinds of things. The mysterious disappearance at the colony of his coworker Charles Jamison had hijacked his future, left his plans on Earth in stasis, and would fling him millions of miles into space as Charles’s replacement. He was certainly better than a replacement. Where the hell is Charlie?

Phyllis lifted his chin with her slender fingers. It puts you on a fast track. Your grandfather built that business, and you’re every bit as smart as he was. It should be yours.

Ryan studied Phyllis’s eyes, weighing her sincerity. My birthright’s a threat to those goons in charge. They’re getting rid of me out there. Higher-ups in the company might never rely on someone like him; his special abilities created a climate of mistrust. If they were aware of his true intentions, they’d cut him out for sure.

Phyllis waved off his concerns and sat back. If you want your grandfather’s power, if you want his control, this is your chance. Take it! She froze and glared at him—her ice queen posture.

But I can’t take it if I’m dead. Come on, Phyllis. Get on my side. He may have been the grandson of Hersh Industries’ founder, but despite his name, Ryan was only an accountant—not head of the company and certainly not some space-traveling explorer. He had absolutely zero desire to abandon his office chair to boldly go anywhere, much less a mining colony on an asteroid orbiting between Earth and Mars.

Your problem’s you know too much, Phyllis said. Ignorance is bliss. She sipped her coffee. It apparently thawed her eyes, because they moved again. Try being ignorant for once.

Ryan stared back, dumbfounded. "But I can’t be ignorant and do my job."

Phyllis smiled suddenly. Well, I got you a gift. Something to use on your trip.

Oh no, a gift. She’s set her mind. Phyllis only gave gifts when she wanted something. Obviously, the pout had failed.

From the purse in her lap, Phyllis removed an unwrapped, thumb-sized package containing a new Personal Universal Computer and Communications Interface, known by its Italian manufacturer’s marketing name as the Pucci.

See, it’s the latest model, she said. Has all the features you’re dying for. It’s now stick of gum sized in a designer red case, packaged with the newest high-res 3D surround contact lenses replacing those old 2D peepers. It even has Hi-Bass plugins that fit your new dental sockets. Phyllis folded her hands with interlocked fingers as she bubbled with excitement. And the best feature of all is . . . I had that deluxe five-bedroom apartment we saw next to the park scanned in 3D. That building’s full of important people. You can virtually walk through it on your trip while thinking about us.

I’d rather walk the apartment and take the trip virtually. Just shoot me now!

Her face flushed, holding a pout of her own. After this trip we can afford that apartment and have separate bedrooms for Itsy and Bitsy. You want to be with me, don’t you?

Yes, of course I do. I’ll be so lonely up there without you. Ryan bowed his head, and peeked up from beneath his brow with sad eyes. Are there pictures of you on the Pucci?

I loaded some of me and my two beauties. I know how you love them.

Ryan perked up. Well, I’ll be thinking of your breasts every—

With a smile, Phyllis raised her hand and tipped it forward, as if commanding her dogs to sit. No, silly. I meant my two Yorkies. She preempted Ryan’s goodbye. I know how you’ll miss us, but you’ll be back before you know it. You deserve a big raise and a higher notch in that company. And you’ll get both soon. I’m so very happy for us. Now I’m off to fetch Itsy and Bitsy at the vet. They get so upset without me. So I’ll be thinking of you, too. She stood and briefly kissed Ryan. Now you be safe and don’t take risks for anyone. You’re just too important. Giving him her biggest smile, she turned and walked briskly toward the elevator in the restaurant’s foyer like a model parading down a runway.

Ryan breathed in deeply and reflected on Phyllis’s big smile and her comment about his importance. He assumed she meant important to her, but that would get him nothing where he was going.

He gathered his thoughts while downing the remaining wine—his last hit of alcohol for months. He knew what he wanted, or at least he had before this trip interrupted. Now it was time to steel his resolve for the trek ahead. If he could just look past the endless darkness and the airless void, it wouldn’t be all bad . . . maybe. He certainly wouldn’t take risks for anyone. He was no hero. He owed himself the top position at Hersh Industries and owed nothing to anyone else.

The waiter returned, placed the bill tray near Ryan, and pushed it under his nose using his fingertips. For a split second when Ryan looked down, the waiter’s hand hung above the backdrop of the red tablecloth. He counted twenty-two freckles and four moles in a diamond shape on the waiter’s backhand. His suspicious eyes jumped to the waiter’s jacket. A series of odd bulges protruded from around the man’s chest, giving him his hefty appearance.

The waiter turned and stood by another table while continuing his nervous, wide-eyed stare around the room. Ryan observed how he kept the other hand close to his side, as if he clutched something important. Then Ryan saw the defining proof; what looked like a small wire disappeared up the waiter’s sleeve above his fist.

A switch! It had to be a switch.

The waiter’s ominous intentions were now obvious. He watched the clock, waiting on victims for the suicide bomb stuffed inside the jacket. He sought to maximize the bomb’s carnage at the peak of dinner hour.

Overcome by panic, Ryan felt his body’s astonishing weight holding him in his chair—a monstrous impediment slowing his flight toward the elevator. Ryan hesitated while counting a few breaths and making certain the waiter looked away. Finally he heaved his mass from the seat and turned to the all too distant elevators in the foyer. But he walked slowly to avoid betraying the calm scene studied by the waiter. Each step seemed an eternity. As he reached for the button, the elevator doors parted immediately.

Ryan exhaled and breathed in the good fortune of a quick departure. He rushed in behind the elevator’s exiting passengers and hit the ground floor button several times. Before the doors closed, a family of four—two parents with two children—walked into view. The father called out for Ryan to please hold the door, but Ryan, petrified by fear for his life, didn’t move. His eyes locked onto the HOLD button. The thought of pressing it hung before him, filling the space, demanding action. Instead, he was overcome by dizzying panic, and his eyes uncontrollably retreated to count the buttons for the building’s 140 floors repeatedly. The doors closed, leaving the family behind. Ryan heard the sound of the adjacent elevator reach its stop in the foyer.

~~~

Ryan stepped off the elevator into the crowded lobby and the mumble of guarded conversations echoing off marble walls. Ahead, he eyed the street exit and took two steps, only to be stopped by a policewoman. A man in a SWAT vest herded Ryan into a group. You can leave in a couple of minutes, the man said with authority.

Ryan realized the bomber upstairs was being cornered. He eagerly listened to another man nearby announcing the SWAT team’s progress. They’ve got eyes on . . . target’s in kill zone . . . all marksmen have lock . . . threat neutralized, repeat, threat neutralized.

The man in the SWAT vest announced that everyone could leave now. Cheers rang out from the crowd as the elevator doors opened again. A police officer proudly escorted the family of four through the crowded lobby. The father glared at Ryan as they passed. An unusual reflex forced Ryan to turn his head away from the father’s gaze. He felt odd relief that the family had survived after his failure to act—odd, since it would have had no effect on his future. The feeling confused him.

Ryan leaned against the outside door and exited onto the street into the moist night air. A flash of lightning reflected off the city, brightening the already bright New York night sky. Another policeman standing on the sidewalk laughed in front of a group while talking in a thick New York accent. Yeah, no casualties, except the bomma and a whole lotta appetites.

A rush of euphoria enveloped Ryan as he heard the distant boom of thunder echo off the tall buildings and race through the metal and glass canyons. He was safe, regardless of the family or anyone else in the restaurant, for that matter. He decided to look upon it as a positive experience, since he had received an expensive meal for free. He wouldn’t even file a lawsuit against the restaurant’s owner, but only because he was leaving town the next day.

Chapter 2

Meet Mr. Future

After dinner, Ryan returned to the wonted security of his office to tie up loose ends before the trip. He sat snugly in his comfortable, nanobot-fiber office chair with its self-adjusting lumbar support and its button-activated micro-articulated and heated massage. With fingertips, he lightly brushed a supple leather arm rest and reminded himself his uncle had the same chair. He swiveled to face Manhattan’s impressive, brightly lit skyline with its billion-dollar buildings, accompanied by the billion-dollar electric bill just to light them all. In high resolution, the surface of every building changed color and apparent shape from different perspectives, even in daylight. The style of the artist of the month favored Monet, and the closely spaced towers periodically transformed into a wash of flowing nudes in vibrant colors. He sat for minutes, waiting for the vast performance to take hold and relax his tensed muscles. Instantly, the buildings returned to their static display, showing nothing but elaborate corporate logos. Disappointed, he gave up and swiveled back.

In front of his desk, the full wall screen filled his view, displaying its familiar graphs, inventory listings, schedules, and planning estimates. Centered prominently on the wall to his left were the diplomas for his bachelor’s degree in physics, received at age twenty-two; a master’s degree in mathematics received a year later; and an MBA degree received after that, all enshrined in expensive frames. The series of degrees marked his brief passage into the adult world. It had been a trip unto itself, a voyage filled with discoveries of his abilities and aspirations.

On the wall below the diplomas, a small nail hole marked where his GED Equivalency Certificate had hung. He still felt pride for that achievement, received at age twenty, but few others comprehended its significance. Explaining it had grown tiresome.

He still couldn’t help but lament where his ambitions had led him. The next day’s business hung over his head like a meteor ready to fall. It marked the beginning of a career-ordained trek to the Hersh mining colony, which sat on an asteroid in orbit between Earth and Mars, within the asteroid group that had mysteriously appeared forty years ago. It was these asteroids in the Cluster that had set his grandfather’s dreams