Slipstreaming Away

By Richard L. Cohen

For every action there is a consequence. Sometimes it is predictable; other times it is unintended. Sometimes the unintended consequence is a minor inconvenience. Occasionally it can be catastrophic. Slipstreaming Away is an exploration of the unintended consequences that put two planets in peril after the Earth’s invention of slipstream technology allowed travel to faraway planets in less than an hour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663222282

Book preview

PART 1

Chapter 1

Jay Pollard got out of bed. At least he tried to, but fell back dizzy. That is the worst impact of working on another planet and coming home to Earth every night. And he hated it. Every morning is just like this – wake up woozy, fall back down into bed and lie there for the next half hour with the world spinning around him. By the time Pollard struggled out of bed to the kitchen table Sarah had already digested two newspapers and was reviewing notes for her 10 a.m. meeting.

Mornin’, Jay muttered.

Mornin’, Sarah muttered back.

Sarah had not yet eaten breakfast. She preferred to wait for Jay. That’s how it’s been for the last three years, ever since the last of their four children had finished high school and moved on to college. Now it was just the two of them and breakfast time would be the only time they’d talk until dinner, or sometimes later.

Can I make you something? Sarah said. You look like you need something hot to eat and I don’t trust you around the stove in the morning.

Sarah was still in her pajamas, but soon she would start to get dressed in her business attire. She had a 15 minute commute to her office at the law firm in downtown Atlanta. Jay, well, his commute was something else. Out of this world is an expression that years ago used to mean something on the edge, something extraordinary. Today it had a much different meaning, something much more literal.

The first time he had heard the word slipstreaming was two years earlier. He was on the 10th floor of a high rise office complex on Peachtree Road in the office of the executive recruitment firm, Find Your Perfect Job Here! Jay was a senior management consultant specializing in marketing strategy. He had done a great job over the last decade, and gotten himself quite a reputation as someone who could come in and dramatically rework marketing strategies, transforming financial statements from red to black in record time.

Jay had worked wonders in the packaged goods marketplace, the restaurant industry and in healthcare. The latter, however, had become especially challenging in the United States. The healthcare landscape of 2318 was especially competitive because there were so many players in a market that seemed to be shrinking year after year.

Once cancer was finally cured in 2150 followed by the elimination of heart disease in 2290, the healthcare industry was squeezed as never before. Because of these developments, Jay’s consulting mix shifted toward healthcare as more and more organizations needed to rethink how they could remain financially viable moving forward. He felt that with each new job the solutions were the same. He was getting bored by it. In fact, he was getting bored by the lifestyle mandated by this career. Pitch a prospective client and add a new client whether it was packaged goods, restaurant or healthcare, and the process was the same. Analyze their operations, travel to the site for in-person consultations, write reports, deliver them to top management and repeat the process for the next client. That’s why he was quite responsive when the executive recruitment firm contacted him.

He would listen to what they had to say. It would soon change everything.

Senior Executive Recruiter Susan Stayman was perfectly dressed in conservative business attire. It was something she paid a lot of attention to since she knew that first impressions were last impressions. And it was that first positive impression that she needed for her specialized line of work as an executive recruiter solely focused on finding talent to serve on distant planets. That’s all she did, having risen through the ranks from recruiting for management positions in the United States to global recruiting and now this.

I found out about you from the grapevine, she said. You are respected everywhere. And I’ve read your treatise on marketing that came out last year. Impressive.

Jay looked around the office. There were a few plaques on the wall, some pictures of her family; nothing that unusual.

I asked you to come in because I have an opportunity available for a unique situation. Would you like to hear more?

Sure, no harm in listening, he replied.

It might seem outrageous, but be patient with me, she said. How much do you know about slipstreaming?

Jay confessed that he knew little about it as travel to outer space was not something he had the luxury to think about. Rather, his focus had been on working hard at his career and raising a family.

One hour later, Jay emerged from Susan’s office with a much better understanding and an interesting proposition to consider. Back in the early 21st century the term slipstream meant an area of reduced air pressure and forward suction immediately behind a rapidly moving vehicle. The idea was that a vehicle could reduce fuel consumption by entering into this slipstream.

It was not uncommon for a word that meant one thing in a particular period of time could change meanings considerably moving forward. By 2200, the terminology had changed to redefine slipstream as the stream itself – the energy that could propel a vehicle to move faster than the speed of light. In 2200, slipstream velocity was the stuff of science fiction. By 2318, it was the stuff of hard scientific fact.

Slipstreaming was fast emerging on Earth as a way to interact with other humanoid races on nearby planets. Five hundred light years from Earth was the current limit of slipstream technology.

Susan explained that he might be a great fit for a consulting job on Abraxas, a planet about 300 light years from Earth. The commute time in the slipstream vehicle would only be 15 minutes. He would work in their capital city of Jaidsen at Central Hospital Number One to help them with their administrative and strategic planning activities.

She told him that their health system was about on par with the American health system of the early 21st Century. Cancer and heart disease were still ravaging the planet and accounted for an important part of their health spending. Because these humanoids had a different internal structure than the humans on Earth, the solutions that worked on Earth for these medical problems would not work here.

Susan could see that Jay was intrigued so she asked if she could show him a brief travelogue to get him acquainted with what life could be on the planet. Jay agreed because, after all, he knew next to nothing about Abraxas except that consultants from Earth had been assisting organizations on the planet to optimize their operations. Susan told him that he would be there five days a week and might want to explore some on his lunch hour or even after work. And, he could always choose to stay overnight or for the weekend, or even bring his wife in for a visit.

The 15 minute video showed the planet well. The narrator said that the planet had a 24 hour day, just like Earth. However, its distance from its sun made temperatures somewhat cooler than on Earth. The top and bottom quartiles of the planet were too cold for humanoid habitation. That meant that population centers were focused in the middle two quadrants around the equator. Fifty million people lived in these quadrants, most of them in a handful of large cities. The people on the planet looked like the humans on Earth. The details were uncanny, down to the number of toes and fingers and facial characteristics. They even had similar height differences between men and women as is found on Earth. However, one of the biggest differences was that the people of Abraxas did not have any body hair except on their heads.

The average lifespan for people on the planet was 100 years, about 20 years longer than the Earth average. One of the biggest points of difference on the cultural front was the approach to marriage. On this planet, marriage was a social contract. All two people had to say was that they were married, and, they were. No parties, no fuss. If they wanted to divorce, they just went their separate ways.

As he watched video of the verdant green hills and valleys it reminded him of Ireland, his favorite place to vacation. Farms that were shown reminded him of the Central Valley of California with their fields spreading out for acres in every direction. This was certainly a planet he could really enjoy.

Jaidsen, where Jay would work, was unlike any of the other cities on the planet. As the capital, the city featured numerous low rise buildings scattered among 400 square miles. It had been established three hundred years earlier as a result of the ending of a series of wars on the planet. A world government was proposed with its central goal to keep the peace. A planet weary of the toll that wars had taken had readily supported this proposal and a new governing structure was born. A new city would be established and as the capital it would be architecturally different from anything else on the planet to make the point that there is no turning back. There would be peace from this point forward. And there has been peace.

Central Hospital Number One was located in the center of the city and was considered by many to be the city’s premier healthcare provider. Its research and patient care was second to none, but there were challenges in creating administrative efficiencies and optimum allocation of resources. This would be a dream job for a management consultant, Susan told him. His biggest challenge would be to integrate well with the staff at the hospital. He would be the first consultant from Earth to work at this hospital so top management had not yet had an incentive to learn English. Rather than force this on them, it would be so much better if Jay would learn their language. Susan told him that her organization could put him in touch with an Abraxas language tutor and that he should quickly pick it up.

He said to himself that everyone has to take a big leap at least one time in their life so he agreed on the spot to do it. He didn’t think of consulting his wife; he knew that she would be supportive. If she wasn’t he still had plenty of time to reverse course and turn down the job.

You are going to do what? Sarah exclaimed. Jay took her through the entire presentation that was given to him about slipstreaming. Life would be no different for the two of them. He would leave in the morning just like he always did. But this time, he would drive 10 minutes to the slipstream station where he would get strapped in. The trip in the vehicle would only last 15 minutes. And, it was safe. There had never been an accident since the beginning of slipstream travel. Total time from leaving the house to his desk at the office was less than an hour. No sweat, he told her.

That was two years ago. They didn’t tell him about the debilitating effects of commuting by slipstream day in and day out, week in and week out. The exhaustion he felt each morning when he woke up. It turned out that only a minority of those commuting via the slipstream had this exhaustion. Doctors he had visited said the phenomenon might be genetic or it could be random. For some reason traveling via slipstream was harder on some than others.

On this day he was particularly exhausted. Fridays were like that as the effects of the slipstream seemed cumulative in his body. By the time he got to the slipstream station he felt like turning around and calling in sick. But, no, he had commitments that day and had to go.

Hey Jay, how are you today? said the slipstream operator.

As the cliché goes, TGIF, Thank God it’s Friday, Jay replied. Wish it was Saturday.

Me too. I am so done, she said as she strapped him into the slipstream transport. The cylinder-shaped device resembled a bobsled that was hermetically sealed as after all, the slipstream transport would be moving through space. There was only room for one person. Scientists had tried for years to create a transport that could send multiple people through the slipstream, but just couldn’t get the precision down enough for the trip. After all, slipstream travel required exact calibration to descend through the contours of the atmosphere of each planet.

Having the ability to construct a transport vehicle that could hold multiple people would have certainly helped bring this technology into the mainstream. Regular slipstream travel was still a niche activity primarily limited to consultants working on other planets. There were many who desperately wanted to travel to other planets as tourists, but that demand had to be suppressed until another day.

The Slipstream Authority was working hard to open more stations to accommodate some of this budding interest. Altogether, there were only a dozen slipstream stations in the Atlanta region and another 1,200 elsewhere. Jay was lucky in that he only lived a short distance from one of the stations.

Abraxas wasn’t the only destination for slipstream trips. There were half a dozen other planets that had been recently discovered to have intelligent humanoid life existing in an atmosphere that was breathable for the people of Earth. The discovery of life on all these other planets had taken the Earth by storm. It was a fascinating, yet troubling time for many. For some, the discoveries had occasioned an intellectual and emotional ferment as their horizons had suddenly been broadened. For others, their entire foundation was shaken, particularly those individuals who had once believed fervently that people on Earth comprised the only intelligent life in the universe.

Chapter 2

Jay was having lunch at the sidewalk café next to Central Hospital Number One in Jaidsen. Joining him was Ro Jo, the director for strategic planning at the hospital. Ro had just completed an English intensive course and was eager to use it. Jay, who was just getting proficient in the planet’s language, was happy to converse in English.

So tell me about SETI, Ro said.

We are explorers, Jay said. We explored our planet and then we looked for life on other planets. SETI, or what we formally called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, was started to do that. A lot of time, money and effort went into it. When the slipstream was discovered, SETI really took off. Now that we could travel to other planets, then it made sense to us to find other planets with life like ours.

Jay was simply repeating what he had learned as a child in school. He didn’t know much beyond the raw facts:

• In 2225 SETI discovered microscopic life on a planet 12 light years from Earth.

• In 2230 SETI discovered three planets that appeared to have intelligent life.

• In 2250, SETI discovered Abraxas.

• In 2251, two way communications with Abraxas was established and linguists from both planets worked to understand each other’s language.

• In 2255, the slipstream vehicle was refined.

• In 2260, an astronaut got into the slipstream transport and in a telecast beamed to every part of Earth, took off and landed on Abraxas.

• In 2262, travelers from Abraxas visited Earth.

• By 2270, the trip had been shortened from one hour to 15 minutes.

• By 2300, a robust intellectual exchange between the planets had begun.

• By 2318, when Jay came to Abraxas for his job, it was not that unusual for people from Earth to work on Abraxas as consultants; however, the reverse was not true. Citizens on Abraxas were not interested in working or even visiting Earth. They were quite content to stay on their home planet.

I get that, Ro said. There isn’t anyone I know who is now interested in going to Earth. It’s just part of our make-up. Sure, we want the information exchange and we love all of you who are making our organizations more effective. It’s great that you all found us. The folks who went to Earth enjoyed their visits, but really, we’re pretty happy in our own little corner of the universe.

Ro was 35 years old, married to Lo and had two sons. They lived in an apartment on the second floor of a building, two miles from the hospital. He walked to work every morning, a perk in this very spread out city.

The dominant forms of transportation were trains, buses and individual transport vehicles, all solar powered. Indeed, all power on this planet was generated by the sun, captured through phenomenally powerful solar arrays stationed on the roofs of every single building on the planet and on the tops of all transportation vehicles. The solar-powered trains sped quietly through the city grids and connected all the cities on the planet.

Ro loved fresh air; not just loved it, but needed it. He wouldn’t be able to function at work if he couldn’t do his morning walk. That’s why this job at Central Hospital Number One was perfect. Ro and Lo had chosen their apartment location 10 years earlier when they both finished school. Their number one consideration was to be in a residential neighborhood within walking distance of numerous employers so that neither would have to take transit.

Indeed, one of the reasons why Ro and Lo fell in love was their mutual love of taking walks through the city and hiking on nature trails. It was great exercise and took the edge off of the intensity they brought to their academic work. Ro’s specialty was strategic planning while Lo’s was in elder studies.

How we treat our elders is the bar at which we can be judged as a civilization, she often told him. If we treat them disrespectfully then what does it say about us? And, right now I say that we get really poor grades. Lo’s career goal was to improve how the elder population is being treated on the planet and to set the tone for this improvement moving forward.

Ro saw the link between their two career paths. The strategic planning process starts with a deep respect for everyone who is taking part and for the people that it will affect, he would tell her. Politeness, understanding of different points of view, kindness and logic is what will make my work a success.

And, mine too, she would reply.

Ro’s fundamental decency impressed Jay from the moment he met him during the interview process a few months earlier. Ro was one of several internal employees who had applied for the position. Ro had been working as the director of community affairs but had been itching for a change. The hospital’s strategic planning process was in tatters and one of Jay’s charges as a consultant was to fix this and Ro could be the catalyst to do it.

So far, just six weeks in and not much was happening. Jay had been in favor of a complete housecleaning in that department while Ro’s position was that he ought to get to know all the players and processes before making incremental change.

Jay was growing inpatient, so that was why he arranged this lunch. As they moved on from their opening chit-chat, Jay bore in. What are you learning? Who should be fired? And, who should be kept?

Ro shocked Jay with his response. I was assaulted this morning and my life has been threatened, he said. You’re the first person I’ve told this to.

Crime on Abraxas wasn’t much different than on Earth – stealing, robbery, assaults and murders all did happen. Jails contained people from all walks of life who had run afoul of the law. However, on this planet, there was one taboo: crime in a healthcare setting was virtually unknown. There was great respect for healers. Crime stopped at the hospital door.

Where did it happen? Jay asked.

I was walking up the stairs and someone grabbed me from behind. He had a knife and put it across my neck and said this: You’re going to die if it doesn’t stop."

Stop what?

I don’t have a clue. I couldn’t see his face. He turned and ran downstairs and was gone. Just like that.

Jay was surprised that Ro seemed so calm. After all, he had just been assaulted. He could have been killed. Jay asked Ro if he had contacted the authorities. Ro said he was too shaken at the time to do anything about it. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t think of any enemies he had at work or at home. Jay suggested Ro take it immediately to the authorities. Ro didn’t want to do that. True, he was still a bit shaken, but perhaps it was just some nut or mistaken identity.

Jay suggested that one step that would be helpful is if Ro could list each of the projects he was working on at the hospital and also add the projects he worked on during his prior job. Once he saw it all down on paper, perhaps there would be some clarity about why this assault occurred. He could then contact the authorities and ask them to investigate further.

It’s going to take some time to list everything because I really had a lot going on in my last position, he said.

That’s one reason why we hired you, Jay said. We got great recommendations from them about you.

Ro had spent nine years working for the Federal Bank, the central bank of Abraxas. This was the banker’s bank with wide ranging influence on monetary and economic policy throughout the planet. As a strategic planning expert, he was assigned to the agriculture desk. He had worked on crop forecasts, examining yields by acreage and climate for each of 200 categories of fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains.

The forecasts he made were used by the government to instruct farmers on what to plant and how much to plant. There was a lot at stake here. For example, a farmer who had done well with the planet’s version of a tomato in one year could be told that they needed to curtail production and accept a lower financial return, or, alternatively, to stop cultivating the tomato altogether and shift to another crop that might provide them more or less money.

Jay told Ro that he should continue his work at the hospital as if nothing was wrong.

I’m not afraid, he said. I’m surrounded by people all day.

Ro could easily make a list of his hospital work; it would be more challenging to reconstruct what he did at the bank. He no longer had the level of access he enjoyed while employed there. Perhaps Sehn, a former colleague, could be of help. Sehn had worked in the agriculture department for the past 20 years and was the one person in the department who remembered everything. Perhaps he could help Ro recall the details of each and every project he worked on while at the bank.

Sehn was only too eager to get together with Ro. Can you come to over to the house after work tomorrow? Ro asked. It’s important. There’s something we really need to discuss.

Of course, he replied. Always great to see you.

Sehn sat there in stunned silence. Who would want you dead?

I have no idea. That’s why I called you. My boss at work wants me to provide him with details of projects I’m working on in the hospital and also what I did at the bank.

I’m working from my memory so it would be helpful for you to hear what I come up with, Ro said. Surely we must have talked about stuff during our lunches.

The two of them talked late into the night. He had a lot to think about. Could one of the farmers have gone bankrupt because of something he did? Was it apples? Peaches? Wheat? Soybeans? Or was it something at the hospital? He had been advocating for decreasing funding for the hospital’s cancer research effort and instead putting more resources toward heart disease research. He took this stance because, in his analysis, the hospital’s effort to fight heart disease was severely underfunded and, in this part of the city, heart disease was rampant.

Thinking about his projects at the bank, he thought back to his work on soybeans. He recalled that there was quite a stink by soybean farmers four years earlier when the bank issued its report to the government. Farmers were livid about the production reduction ordered by the government as a result of the contents of this report. He had done the crop yield analysis and concluded that the planet had too much acreage planted in soy. After all, meat consumption on the planet was declining precipitously so there was less need for soy meal to feed the poultry and cows.

Certainly people’s diets included soy, but it was not near enough to make up for the lost animal feed. Less acreage was needed and that would be a blow to those farmers whose most lucrative crop was soy. Ro was one step removed from all this but he remembers there were individual farmers who wanted to know in no uncertain terms the identity of the analyst who provided this data.

In his mind he went back over his work. Could he have made a mistake? Gotten a number wrong? Nope. He had a really good memory that told him that all was in order. Too much soy was being cultivated; that was a fact.

If not soy, then could it be wheat? His analysis showed that demand for wheat would be exploding in the near future. Wheat products, particularly bread, pasta and pastries, were becoming more and more popular. Abraxas did not cultivate wheat until the food consultants from Earth showed up in 2290. They felt wheat was one of the missing ingredients in the Abraxas diet and suggested that farmers start, on a limited basis, planting wheat fields. The government agreed and mandated that a certain amount of wheat be cultivated. Up until recently there was still only a modest demand. But then, some restaurants in the Eastern sector added bread and pasta to their menus, the central sector came aboard and then the western sector. More and more people became rabid consumers of these products. It was hard for farmers to keep up with government production numbers but they were adequately doing so at the time when Ro did his analysis. The steep upward growth curve that he projected was concerning. There would need to be a wholesale reordering of agricultural priorities to meet the demand.

The problem was that wheat was not a particularly lucrative crop. The prices they could get from the milling companies for their wheat were barely above break even. They could make a lot more money, year in and year out, with other crops.

Even though the government could dictate what crops each farmer could cultivate year to year, they could not dictate price. There had