Miner One: Virtually Yours

By Eli Michael Dragomer

Captain Johnny Johnson is about to change the way the world perceives itself. With the help of Minnie, a ship built around a self-aware living computer, he will pilot the first manned exploration mission to the asteroid belt. Since the mission is slated to be a solo for Johnny, it will be a lonely and dangerous undertaking. Thankfully though, Minnie will be along, performing duties as both ship and crew. The trip to the belt is full of surprises, some of which threaten to end the mission before it really gets moving. Occurrences during the journey out to the belt, and their discoveries at the belt are beyond their wildest dreams. In fact, they dare not tell anyone what they’ve discovered for fear of causing major upheavals back on earth. As the mission at the belt winds down, tensions rise. Minnie abandons Johnny to his own wiles. Subsequently, events occur which serve to unveil the true hidden purpose of their journey, and result in Johnny’s return to Base without his ship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483475394

Book preview

11/15/2017

PROLOGUE

Following my rescue, conversations with Doctor Rock and the other project heads clearly indicated that we were not to discuss the mission, nor to send or release any information in any way regarding mission content or our discoveries at the belt. Comm was not secure, and the nature of our discoveries was such that careful consideration must be given to the when’s and how’s of breaking the news to the public.

Additionally, Doctor Rock showed a great deal of insightful thinking when he asked me a few pointed questions about our continued lack of comm after we entered the belt. He was satisfied that we had acted in the best interests of the mission and humanity in general. He also speculated about the nature of Dain and Mechanikheim now that he understood their interest in being on the rescue mission with Chuck.

Doctor Rock spoke to the mission coordinating committee on my behalf. They discussed my preliminary report and the findings at length. Due to the expense involved, they had initially reached no conclusion regarding the recovery of the Miner One mission craft. It seemed that a lot depended on the value of the items we brought back on the Keuteepie, and what remained in storage on the mission craft.

The committee made several demands of me at the onset, including that I write a fully detailed chronological report from the moment of launch to my arrival back at base. They also insisted that I sign documents promising to not discuss in any way what happened on the mission and on what we discovered out there, outside of my report. Violation of this accord would result in forfeiture of all my earnings and benefits.

I surrendered in principle almost immediately, and agreed to write everything down, as requested, in chronological detail. I submitted to continual observation until the report was filed, and all comms were carefully monitored to ensure my compliance with their conditions.

After hearing and submitting to the committee’s demands, I made two polite requests of my own. First, I wanted a double stack crystal chip memory array for the purpose of storing Minnie’s chosen digital memory remains. Secondly, I wanted the committee to assure me that there would actually be a recovery mission to pick up the Miner One.

My first request involved a change in the contract that I had signed prior to leaving on the mission, primarily due to the expense involved in fulfilling it. However, I was confident that this request would be granted based on the simple fact that Doctor Rock wanted to see if Minnie could, in fact, be resurrected from what memories she had chosen to store before her death. While my request was expensive and not necessarily easy for the committee to swallow, the end result should justify this expense.

My second request was for a recovery mission. I didn’t particularly care about the artifacts we had stored for posterity. I wanted Minnie back and had high hopes that such was possible if we recovered the original mission craft.

Also, in private sidebar conversations with Doctor Rock, I requested to at least be on, if not head up, the mission craft recovery effort. I was prepared to do so at no cost to the company, though I never told them that. They agreed to wait until they could review the artifacts we brought with us on the Keuteepie, and my data and vids first hand. Then, if the proofs were good enough, we would talk about the details.

In private, Doc Rock assured me that they would agree to the mission. He felt that with the shakedown of the Quickly Pleased going so well, she would undoubtedly be used as the recovery vehicle.

Since she was so fast and did in fact belong to the company, there wasn’t any real rush to get started. We could take our time and still get to the Miner One long before she was lost to the sun.

This manuscript will bring you up to date regarding the circumstances of my return to Hunter Base without the original mission craft, and without the original mission crewmember, Minnie. After reading it, you will be privy to all mission details, and any and all speculation which I am able to provide.

I do hereby certify that the attached document contains the facts to the best of my ability to recall them, both through hypnosis and through the reading of confidential mission records. These records were kept as a running log throughout the trip both by the mission living computer crewmember known as Miner One, also known as Minnie, and by myself, Captain Johnathan J. Johnson, Captain of the mission craft Miner One.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

CHAPTER 1

LAUNCH

Looking out the front view port, I could see a beautiful view of the milky way. Due to planetary alignment, this view included much of our outer system, including many of the nearby planets. This view was, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful panoramas possible.

Then, everything went dark.

In that darkness I heard someone calling my name.

Suddenly, I was overcome by a wave of dizziness and disorientation. Then, just as suddenly, the wave was gone, passing like a huge ocean ground swell on a calm day.

Looking around, I realized that in place of the beautiful galactic view, I was now surrounded by a huge dark room of sorts.

Music slowly worked its way into my awareness. The music was very familiar. It’s haunting melody sounded a lot like an old waltz played slightly slower than normal on an old calliope.

With a barely audible ‘POP’ a shaft of light appeared. In that shaft of light I saw a lone woman. She was dancing, waltzing to that haunting melody as with an invisible partner. She was wearing a white dress with long translucent flowing trains of some barely visible cloth. These trains followed along behind her as she moved gracefully around me.

Beautiful!

With the surreal skill of a fan dancer, she moved close to me without ever letting me see her face. Even though I couldn’t see her face, there was much about her that was very familiar. Her build, the shape and firmness of her breasts, the shimmering silkiness of her long and shapely legs.

I had seen her before.

I had been here in this place before.

Recognition hovered at the edge of consciousness, teasing me terribly. However, the identity of the woman escaped me, and the name of the waltz, like the identity of the woman, was beyond me.

Then I heard that voice calling my name yet again, in a louder and more agitated tone. The waltzing woman, the music and the dark room suddenly disappeared like a fragile soap bubble, with a sharp ‘POP’.

With a start and an adrenaline rush accompanied by a brief bout of that same dizziness as before, I focused on where I was and what I was doing.

I found myself once more staring into galactic oblivion and realized that I was paying absolutely no attention to the control boards in front of me. Someone was asking me a question, and not for the first time either. The vocal tone I heard was concern and accusation at the same time.

It was most embarrassing to be caught mentally drifting and not paying complete attention to launch protocols and ships boards … again.

Recovering somewhat, I decided on the direct approach. Uh, say again please. I was adjusting the contrast on my aft screens and lost what you were saying. Please repeat.

Seriously, Johnny? You had better turn the aft screens on before you adjust them, don’t you think? Had your head up your ass daydreaming again, didn’t you Buddy? Bios say you were most probably sleeping. Oh well … what I said was ‘did you read the message from Maggie on the bitch board before you suited up this morning?’

The voice belonged to my best friend Chuck.

Oh. Negative, Chuck. I did not. Didn’t take the time. I thought she was totally pissed at me and wasn’t having anything to do with me ever again. Anyway, it’s not like it really matters what she said. She’ll have forgotten me by the time I get back. After all, I’m not due back from this run for nearly one standard year.

Actually, I thought the world of Margaret Pembroke Black, otherwise known as Maggie. Our falling out last night really had hurt me worse than I cared to admit, even though the whole thing was my very bad idea.

I had tried to drive her away so I could do my ‘history making’ solo run to the asteroids with a clear conscience about the ‘absolutely no ties, familial or otherwise’ clause of my contract.

While curiosity was getting the best of me about what she could have said, I waited a few seconds for effect. Then I asked the obvious …

Uh, okay Chuck, what did she have to say?

Well, Johnny, I was waiting for you to run down so I could tell you what she said, you lucky slug. She said that you were a worthless, good for nothing bum. She also said that if you didn’t take care of Minnie, she was going to find you and kill you slowly in some unprintable fashion or other. And she said something I don’t understand about ‘what you started last night.’ Endit. Do you copy that?

Chuck sounded both hopeful and curious about Maggie’s statements, especially about what she had started last night. However, I knew Chuck well. I knew he was too proud to ask about it any further.

Copy Hunter Base. Thank you, Chuck. Please relay this coded entry to Maggie for me, would you pal? Please? It’s coming through on Auxcomm now.

With that, I hit the send key on Miner One’s auxiliary communication board.

This coded entry had two purposes. First was a message to my former cohab partner, Maggie. Only she could decode it. It left her the bank code for our mutual savings, and the account number for the joint spending account we used.

I had removed my own personal authorization from the accounts and they belonged solely to her now, legally and otherwise. There was no logical reason for me to need money where I was going. Besides, the salary I was being paid after this trip would make me independently wealthy through three lifetimes.

The second purpose of the communication was as a test message from the auxiliary communications board, called Auxcomm. This system was separated from the Miner One computer in nearly all ways. Power was even from a source independent from that normally provided and controlled by ship’s systems.

Copy Miner One. Message verified received, and in code. Hey Johnnie, I’ll relay it, but only if you tell me what Maggie meant by ‘what she started last night.’ I noticed this morning that you had put all your stuff in cold storage. What gives? Come on, Best Buddy Mine. Cough up.

Good old Chuck. Knew him like a book. A book I never quite got around to reading, that is.

We decided to call it a life. We’ve ended it. And hey, Chuck, you planning on moving in on me while I go kicking around the solar system looking for untold wealth? Because if you are, you go ask Maggie what she started for yourself. I won’t tell you.

Aside from the fact that I actually had absolutely no idea what she meant by that statement, I found myself getting slightly jealous. This was an absurd feeling. Chuck was my closest male friend on station.

Maggie on the other hand, WAS my cohab partner. Was that is, until I insisted that we break it off so that she could stay sane and enjoy life while I was gone. There was no way I was going to do anything in that year anyway, except maybe self-abuse, as my assignment was a solo.

However, Maggie would be on Hunter Base for that time unless she opted for assignment Earthside. There was no reason I could think of for her to tie herself to a mere memory for quite possibly forever. She was a healthy, extremely beautiful woman, and it wasn’t like cohab was forever or anything. It wasn’t the big ‘M.’ Just plain cohab. Living together with no contract or anything like that.

You mean to tell me that you guys broke it off? Histrionic relationship? The big ‘E’? Done? No more yousums? Like, Maggie’s a free agent?

Good old Chuck. What a pal!

Yeah, and if you go near her I’ll rip your lips off and sew them to the top of your head to give you some cover while I remove largish chunks of your backside for dog food, Best Buddy Mine.

Hey, dude, calm down. Maggie is really neat and all that, but she’s not my type. She is a great friend and all, but not for what you are implying here! So calm down!

The wave of emotion passed.

Yeah. Sorry. She likes you too, but you aren’t her type either. Something about you being ‘too eager.’ Not sure what that means. So I would appreciate it if you’d kinda keep an eye on her while I’m gone. You know, make sure so no one hurts her?

Done, Buddy. But with her background, it’s more likely I’ll be making sure she doesn’t hurt them!

I chuckled. Yeah!

With that all said and done, I settled in to wait for the launch sequence, only a few minutes away.

Thoughts of ‘launch sequence’ took me back to dream land and another time …

CHAPTER 2

MEMORIES

It happened a long, long time ago.

Mars was still an experiment in terra-forming and had a long, long time to go before it could be considered as a truly safe base for in system operations.

Mars base had been abandoned due to numerous attempts at sabotage by fundamentalist groups who claimed that Earth was the only place God intended mankind to exist.

It all seems like a different lifetime to me; more like a dream.

What, you ask?

Recall the Unity Disaster?

Remember the name of the pilot credited with saving many of the crew of that unfortunate event?

Yes. I’m that Johnny J. Johnson.

There is a lot to that disaster that most people never heard or read about.

That first Base Station, sponsored by the Unified World Government, was called Unity Base. The first long range manned mission to the asteroids was the Unity Seeker.

What is known about the disaster is sketchy at best.

Unity Seeker was in final preparations for launch when her Shiplocks, the name given to the patented mechanism which held ships in positive lock to the mother ship, were released by persons or entities unknown.

Standard operating procedure (SOP) of the day required that only the berthing space door be shut at all times. None of the other doors and hatches had to be closed when not in use. This was because nothing short of a launch was considered hazardous enough to require this precaution. So the hatches, including those connecting ship and station, were wide open. The ship wasn’t ready for launch at that time.

Subsequently, when the Shiplocks were released with nearly all station internal doors open, the force of decompression launched the mission craft towards the sun and propelled the station back towards the moon.

All personnel on the mission craft were killed in seconds and ejected during the explosive force of decompression.

One bulkhead on the station held against the forces created by the explosive decompression through the six foot diameter hole in the hull left when the Shiplocks pulled back. This bulkhead was in the crews quarters.

Twenty station operators were in berthing when Doctor Death and The Destroyer came knocking. Due to some very fast thinking by one of the more experienced crew members, all twenty were in suits and had begun depressurizing the room to get out before anyone really realized what had happened.

This quick action allowed the surviving crew members to get to a cluster of open space construction materials left in storage in a stable orbit near the station. It wasn’t much, but it was the only stable thing around.

These survivors were rescued from open space purely by chance by a supply shuttle that had just left the station and was on its way back to Earth.

I was the pilot of that shuttle.

The above notes are the facts assembled during the post event inquiry.

I was interviewed extensively since I was the last human known to leave the station before it became a part of history. The ‘review’ board did not, quite, insist on waterboarding me, largely due to the efforts of one man who was able to move the focus from me to the Russian craft and its last minute arrival at station just as I was leaving.

As I was preparing to drop into my reentry path, I noticed that my comm board showed lots of activity on the suit radio frequency. When I turned up the volume, I heard lots of panic, screaming, hollering, and swearing.

This in itself told me that something was terribly wrong. Listening to the confused and frightened chatter slowly told me the barest of details on what had happened.

I made a quick assessment of my current flight parameters. Not a lot I could do with the flight computer. How do you enter a need to stop reentry and turn around in only a few seconds when you don’t have all the information on the tip of your tongue?

I looked around at what was at hand.

Fuel? Low.

Air? Low.

Motivation? Very high. No thoughts of heroism or any other altruistic motive crossed my mind. Only the plight of those hapless humans trapped in open space. I was prepared to help or die trying.

Oh well, too bad. Time to act. Analysis could come later.

Using the attitude jets I reversed vector and applied a brief thrust with the main engines to stop my reentry and start back toward the station. I was later told that this was impossible.

Really? And the old bumble bee can’t fly either, and nothing can live in the hot water surrounding underwater volcanoes. Go tell the wind.

Using ‘seat of the pants navigation,’ I moved the ship towards where I believed the station should be. Nothing more than an occasional glimmer of light was visible to the eye. The radars were confused by a large debris field expanding at amazing speed. All I initially had to go on was the view of the cosmos I knew so well. So, in my mind’s eye I visually put things where they should be and went for the gold.

Since I was tuned to the suit communications frequency, I couldn’t hear all the inquiries coming from home. Oh, the activity indicator was moving frantically, but I chose to ignore that. And if I had been tuned to the home frequency, I’d have shut it off since my attention was totally on flying the ship and not on useless and distracting chatter.

During the inquisition I was asked how I managed to maneuver the shuttle to rendezvous with the survivors. I told them the truth. I didn’t give any conscious thought to how I was doing what I was doing. My only thought was for the poor bastards floating free in space with no way to get home alive but me. I was alone - story of my life - and might die too, trying to help these guys. However, there was nothing else I could logically do.

Fortunately, there was at least one guy floating out there and still thinking. When he heard me calling, he got everyone to shut up long enough to confirm that I was still within reach and on my way back. This fact seemed to settle everyone down, somewhat.

When the noise settled down, this guy asked me some questions I didn’t want to answer. No need to start another panic. These people were already stressed enough.

Fuel was the big question. I didn’t know if I had enough for a pickup or not. However, I was fairly sure that I did not have enough to get into the proper orbit to allow us to get safely back dirtside. The blast to reverse my direction used up most of my normal supply, and I was left mostly with reserves. In other words, nothing.

One thing was certain, though. There were people out here who would die without my help really soon. And I knew that the world governments were running shuttles with regularity to the station. Fuel could be shuttled up in short order. I would worry about the fuel after I had the survivors on board.

First things first.

Where were they? I would be using ships radar and the communications frequency tracking system to find them. The task of finding them was made easier given the equipment they had around them.

The voice of reason among them, the real hero of the hour, had them use the construction equipment to keep from crashing into the moon with the base station. The thrusters stored there were industrial sized and easy to use. The equipment also made a wonderful radar target when placed together.

While I pondered the ‘how’ of finding the survivors, I thought about home. Okay, Johnny, things are now pretty much said and done. Time I dropped a line to Earth to let them know what I knew about what was going on. My call must have awakened someone down there, because I heard swearing, and then I wound up answering a string of questions about the situation.

‘Yes, the station was gone. I could only assume that it had accelerated in towards the moon.’

‘No, I didn’t know what had happened to the mission craft. No one was answering radio calls there.’

‘Yes, there were survivors. There were personnel floating free in space.’

‘No, I was no longer in my reentry approach. I had vectored back towards the survivors.’

‘Yes, I was currently attempting recovery of these personnel.’

‘No, I didn’t need any trajectory assistance at the moment.’

‘What I really needed was fuel and plenty of air, food and water. Please launch an assistance shuttle ASAP!’

Then they told me of the fate of the Unity Base. ‘Thank you for the information. I understand that the station actually impacted on the moon about a minute ago.’

With Earth momentarily placated, I returned my attention to the survivors. It took quite a bit of doing, but they finally became visible to my unaided eyeballs.

Once we had each other in sight, rendezvous was fairly straight forward. They matched trajectory with me using the jets they had used to avoid visiting the moon at the onset.

Getting them all onboard was also simple. We decided to bring the construction equipment in too. This close in we didn’t need another space junk meteor shower caused by our trash.

Fortunately, one of the storage balls they had with them contained oxygen cylinders. Praise God for oxygen. Breathing in would be no problem for twenty one people for the few days we would need.

However, getting rid of the carbon dioxide was going to be a problem. Assuming we had to stay out unassisted for any length of time, we might have to resort to the suit emergency recycle scrubbers. These things were notoriously short lived and had a whole pack of issues accompanying them. This fact caused the manufacturer to go bankrupt shortly after the law suits that followed scrubber implementation.

If we couldn’t come up with something else, we could always breathe in oxygen enriched air from the suit tanks while we exhausted the suits to space to get rid of unwanted byproducts.

Speaking of the suits …

The suits were standard Baronage Free Fall Construction Duty Suits. These contained all the niceties to make a six hour non-stop shift as comfortable as possible. This included double capacity septic/storage systems and an onboard water tank. While only intended to be worn for between four and six hours at a time, the suits were good for at least sixteen hours of continuous use.

The manufacturer bragged about an optional waste recycle feature being available, but this feature was not desirable if not absolutely required. Besides, the larger shipboard systems were much more efficient, took up a heck of a lot less space, and didn’t cost any additional cash.

Looked like the survivors would be spending much more than sixteen hours in the suits, just for the amenities. While my shuttle had an onboard septic/storage system and a recycler, the recycler was not presently working. Some vital part was broken and the replacement was ‘NOT AVAILABLE.’ Some bulging forehead figured I wouldn’t need it since I was going out alone on a final parts run for the mission. Besides, the room remaining in the storage system would last little old me several days since I was by myself.

The guy that kept his head and helped me the most with the others was Charles Theodore Ground. I called him Chuck. We all called him Chuck and the space family nickname of Ground Chuck stuck. Poor guy.

Chuck knew that after several days in suits, the survivors would start going nuts. He worked out a schedule that everyone found agreeable. The schedule allowed the survivors, in shifts of five at a time, to come into the shuttle command area and remove their suits for a couple of hours.

As pilot, I stayed in the command compartment full time. By popular demand, Chuck did too. We were the heroes of the year for the others. As it turns out Chuck was the one who got everyone dressed out and the space depressurized so quickly.

Chuck was obviously a potential saboteur since he was there and especially since he acted so quickly to stay alive. He was the one guy isolated and questioned regarding the event. The inquisition eventually became satisfied that he was not involved in the sabotage.

While no one understood how Chuck figured out what was going on so quickly, everyone was damned happy he did.

Chuck said that he had been having nightmares about explosive decompression for weeks before it happened. In his dreams, his survival always depended on getting out of the station before it hit the moon. Guess the boy was psychic and didn’t know it.

The unified governments promised us a rescue shuttle in less than three days. I sincerely hoped so as my food would only last that long with rationing. Oh well, I had a few extra pounds of ugly fat I wanted to unload.

Oh, yeah. Speaking about unloading, the suit septic’s were only good for about half a day. Fortunately, we had a genius in back who figured out how to get the waste from the suits – pressurized - into one of the storage ball shells - vacuum - without opening the ball up. This made our together time a whole lot less stressful since we weren’t dumping the stuff into our suits or into the cargo bay environs.

So all we had to do was wait for our rescuers.

During that wait time, no one talked directly about the fate of the eighty-five persons still up and about when the station explosively decompressed. We didn’t know that they were all dead, but I’m sure that we all assumed the worst.

While we didn’t discuss the people, the topic of the event itself and its cause was the sole subject of discussion. Since the survivors had all seen the station hit the moon, there was a lot of speculation about what exactly had happened to cause the incident, ranging from bombs, to asteroids, to activists, and on to fundamentalists.

One engineer told us of a modification to the Shiplock Latch Bars, which he said had been tapered to prevent a lockup if stresses between ship and station got too high for whatever reason. The net effect of this was that the only positive lock for the Shiplocks was the force of the fluid hydraulic system holding the lock bars down over the ship’s tabs.

If the hydraulic system failed for any reason, the Shiplocks unlatched regardless of the status of doors. This modification may have been good engineering sense, but it was a common sense oversight. In simpler terms, it wasn’t fail safe, it was fail stupid!

Anyway, after we made it home we discovered that the Unified Governments had launched two shuttles. One came for us with the fuel we needed so desperately, and one went to recover the mission craft.

She was found by following a relatively straight line from where the station had hit the moon through the former location of the stations orbit around the moon, and on out to an assumed point based on time from release and a calculated velocity resulting from the event.

Once recovered, the mission craft was placed in orbit around earth at Trojan Base. Here, a thorough investigation revealed no probable cause other than the obvious fact that the Shiplocks opened with the hatches open. The shipboard living computer was no longer counted among the living and could not provide any useful information.

Subsequent checks of the station wreckage on the moon revealed no evidence of the use of explosives. In fact, no useful information at all was ever recovered at the wreckage site.

No information regarding the Shiplocks or hydraulic systems was ever released to the general public. However, it is ‘common knowledge’ that the Shiplocks for that station were controlled by computer activated hydraulic servos. Also common knowledge was the fact that the station computer operated the servos via radio signals.

Again, this was a design that looked great on paper, but which did not pass the common sense test. Literally anyone could have sabotaged the project with a hand held smart phone modified to use the right frequency.

There were numerous splinter groups around the world protesting the use of resources on the asteroid project that they felt could be better used feeding the world’s poor.

Nineteen splinter groups proudly claimed responsibility for the incident, though none of them even came close to any of the facts about the cause of the disaster.

No one said anything about the fact that most of the world’s starving masses had been starving most of their lives, and had learned to starve from their parents, and their grandparents, and …

No one said anything about the fact that the starving masses wouldn’t do anything for their own self-preservation except take handouts from wealthy countries and continue to reproduce themselves at alarming rates.

No one said anything about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that had been created to support the project.

No one said anything about the potential boon to humanity if the asteroid mining project fulfilled all hopes and expectations.

No one said anything about the loss of project related