Sky leaned against the park bench. Her spine cracked. The sunlight was inducing a sneeze just as she was relishing the satisfaction of the last vertebrate popping. Achoo.
“Bless you” said Jack, handing her a water bottle. She slumped into his arm and let her jaw hang open, fat breathing for a moment.
Birds chirped. Owen made a sudden face of disgust then sank back into sleep in the stroller. Ben was talking loudly to himself and laughing about something behind a big rock. The sky was blue. The trees were changing colors. Igaluk was beautiful today, though even beautiful can be intense when you’ve had one too many cups of coffee. Maybe, just maybe, today was going to be an uncomplicated, good day.
“It’s a good day. We’re having a good day” Jack told Sky. Sky nodded. “We are. It’s a good day. I like good days.” Ben surprised them both, exploding from behind “it’s a GOOD day! Mommy and daddy and little baby Owen and also Ben are having a good day!” Sky and Jack winced at the outburst, laughing. Jack tussled Ben’s hair, “sssshhhh that’s exactly right buddy, it’s a good day, we’re having a good day today!” “No yelling!” shouted Ben with a big grin. Sky shot Jack a heart broken pout. No yelling today. It always hurts when your kids characterize your best efforts so… honestly.
Ben bolted with a banshee squeal of joy as quickly as he had appeared. “No yelling! No yelling!” he laughed. Other parents took notice. Sky hid her face in Jack’s arm. “Oh my god.”
The care crisis on Earth had long been addressed, through so many cultural, technological, incremental improvements. But out here on the high frontier, Igaluk was one of the few places that offered some measure of support to parents. The parks were nice, the daycares were good. Of the five primary commercial orbital hubs encircling the moon, Igaluk was the first to really take the idea that “people need to raise families out here” seriously in nearly 150 years of space fairing. It still left much to be desired. If nothing else, it was the most Earth-like setting. Great efforts had been taken to make the station feel as natural as an unnaturally curving toroid could feel. Incredible environmental management that permitted changing seasons and weather, a stunningly realistic sky and projection parallax system that miraculously gave every individual aboard the station a perspective-unique depiction of clouds near and far. Nanotechnology wizardry involving compliant mechanisms and fresnel lenses directed sunlight. It was a marvel. Jack was very proud of Igaluk, and as its mayor, he worked hard to keep it ship-shape for all the children of space and their beleaguered moms and dads. Today was his minute to just enjoy it.
“Hogan sent us a postcard.” Sky shuffled around for it, gave up immediately. “I’ll read it later. Good for Hogan.” Hogan was Jack’s friend and rival, mayor of the other nice place to live, New Kyiv at L5. It was a larger, more expensive space settlement. Jack began muttering. “You’re muttering, Jack.”
They both heard it. Hearts sank simultaneously. The whirring noise that always preceded bad times.
A softball sized stone began to lift up and out of the ground atop a white bollard with orange chevrons. It came to a stop. They stared at it with blank resignation, as one stares at a rattlesnake that’s definitely going to bite you in the face. Even before the blue light started flashing, Sky was already shoving the diaper bag back under the stroller. Jack just slumped.
“Alert. Alert. A debris shelter order is being issued for… All districts… A debris shelter order is being issued for… All districts. Please follow the advisory signals and shelter coordinators instructions to find the nearest suitable shelter. Alert. Alert. A debris shelter order…”
Ben was standing in the field, frozen, horror. “It’s gonna be a GOOD day!”
—
The captain of the Luru Mumbai put two neuro stabilizers in his mouth as he politely covered a yawn. The company man assured him that the cables would hold everything together, and that the best thing he could do was address any uncertainties in his implant vector space. He took a quick accounting of the condition his shipmates were in. Skeleton crew, but everyone was alert and focused. He looked out across the kilometer of hull stretching before him. It amused him that 3000 tonnes of aluminosilicate ingots headed for processing at L4 could be so easily diverted by political theatrics. But he had gotten used to the world being weird these days.
Ships leaving the moon typically loaded up at one of 3 space elevators. Goods headed for L4 industrial facilities would be put aboard long torch ships. Space based solar platforms would aim lasers at the ships, providing them with additional power for their torch drives, and they would make the uneventful and comfortable journey to L4 over several hours.
That’s not how it had been going for the last year. The space lasers were being perpetually taken offline. Some had been disconnected for months. People that belonged to “hives” - collectives of linked brains that behaved as a single conscious entity - were politically opposed to the lasers. They saw them as symbolic of a kind of regressive, linear thinking that governed growth models 100 years ago. They hacked them. They sued the companies that ran them. They parked ships in the way. They damaged the optics. They did NOT like the lasers. No one really understood the reasoning, the connection to the follies of yesteryear was symbolic at best, and frustrated the sensibilities of the average spacer. One of the strangest, least predictable outcomes of hive behavior, was that they could become simultaneously superhuman in intelligence, and somehow arrive at nonsensical, irrational, pseudo-religious ideas that were difficult to inoculate against, and would reverberate around a hive mind for years. Humanity was both blessed and cursed by the creation of the hive mind. Some argued that in fact the hive was hyper-rational, that singleton human brains just couldn’t comprehend the wisdom. But it sure didn’t SEEM that way when a dozen people walking in the street would suddenly collapse to the ground in synchronized fetal sobbing, all because someone posted a poor taste joke about hive fragility to a social media account somewhere on Mars. Moms and dads stayed up at night hoping their kid wasn’t going to join a hive.
What this meant to the captain was that you needed to get your delta v somewhere else. So you would use the moon, fall towards it and get as close as possible. Maybe illegally close. Count on the legal departments of your superiors to cover your ass, and get that bloody shipment to L4. Run additional cabling to handle the stress of your kilometer long vessel approaching its Roche limit. Hope that the company man gave you enough cable.
The captain was idly thumbing through user testimonials of that particular brand of cable when the bridge clock announced they were passing through the last critical wicket before their dive. He glanced up at the curve hugging the moon, at the periapsis indicator, and listened for the thruster fire. Low muffled impacts like hammering on a metal trash can lid echoed through the hull. Satisfied they were indeed firing, and satisfied the periapsis indicator was dipping closer to the lunar surface, he returned to his phone. He had the odd instinct to open a picture of his son, grinning in graduation cap and gown.
Somewhere on the moon, a boy and his father sat in a rover atop a hill. This was a favorite place. Pops dug around in the back for a can of peanuts. The boy clutched binoculars eagerly. Pops tapped him on the shoulder. A tablet running an app framing their patch of space indicated that a vessel, L. MUMBAI 09070CLSV was approaching. The boy scanned the sky.
A star flashed, cresting over the horizon. It grew and grew, becoming long like a white shishkebab of skewered spheres and cylinders. It traced a low, fast arc before them, casting a flickering black kilometer long shadow on the mountains.
And then it bloomed like a milkweed pod, scattering its seeds to the wind
Sky pulled down her helmet visor and clamped it shut.
“High Mass Roche Violation”
OSR speak for when the biggest goddamn thing you can think of with the most parts gets too close to a planetary body and tidal forces pulverize it into a cloud of death headed for everything and everyone you love.
First thing you did was get everyone. EVERYONE. As many personnel as you could, aboard Alligators, headed to match orbit with the rapidly expanding cloud. You ordered as many kits and bottles as you could divert. You then surface launched all your “smart debris” - swarms of robots with lasers, nets, electromagnetic field emitters, immediately. Time was of the essence. These expendable robots did 90% of the clean up and could be in the cloud, eliminating everything smaller than a softball within 2 minutes. Watching from the ground was spectacular.
Sky was aboard wave 2. Which meant dramamine, artificial vestibular control to max, and implant turning you into a sensory bush baby, all eyes and ears.
AR display called out “MATCHING VELOCITY”. Alligator began to burn hard. Sky’s exoskeleton sank into it. In spite of the maelstrom of data… she managed some motherly guilt that she wasn’t, in this most insane of all moments, thinking about Ben. So she quickly forced a Ben thought. And then just as guiltily an Owen thought. And thought of their sweet faces, and then thought about Jake. And made a smile out of nothing, just for them.
And in the next breath, she was thinking about optical flow vectors and sweep patterns. The Alligator was rocking steadily as its tentacles were snatching debris out of the space in front of the vehicle, thrusters firing to stabilize the hustle. Sunlight flooded the staging bay as it made another hard maneuver. The bay door was wide open. Tumbling chaos, pure hollywood blockbuster shimmering, flaring, self colliding catastrophe was silently evolving before her eyes. Nothing she hadn’t seen before. Sky was glad she had smoked some weed that morning. And in spite of initial impressions, it was getting managed. Pieces of various sizes were flashing white hot and vaporizing everywhere as invisible lasers cleaned them in waves of bubbling patterns. A “Lint Roller” drifted overhead, a modified kit bottle with a long electromagnetic boom. Particles of various sorts were joining into a frozen cloud around it.
Ahead, their target: the crew section. The Alligator closed the remaining hundred meters quickly and aligned itself with the emergency hatch, maintaining a perfect offset orientation, thrusters firing so fast they took on a strobe like slowness, ebbing and flowing in intensity. Eulaers and Topia were out first, straddling the distance between the two platforms with their legs and arms, clipping on carabiners. The emergency door was cracked open, and Sky entered holding two hug boxes in each arm. The red chamber had a window on the other end, and another door. Tapia passed Sky another two hug boxes, and Eulaers neatly flipped inside. External hatch closed… then just silent red and a flashing green light. Eulaers was at Sky’s elbow, hand on her shoulder. Sky was priming the hug boxes, when Eulars patted her. She looked up at the little window. A face stared back. A young Indian man covered in sweat, wearing a gas mask and shining a flashlight inside. Sky gave him a thumbs up, then pointed at his flashlight and gestured “turn it off” at her neck. He complied, and the second door was promptly opened.
—
Jack was bouncing Owen, who was doing everything in his power to push a bottle out of his face. Sky’s vigilance meant that the closest shelter to the park was their own. Every residence in Igaluk had a living room or bedroom that was double-plated with anti-hypersonics, could self-seal, and had an independent air supply. The dozen or so conference call participants that Jack had floating in the living room were all in various interrupted conditions. His parks and rec officer was patiently instructing her daughter to wait until mommy was done with her phone call. The waste management officer was handing a baby boy off to mom who apologized profusely and hurried him out of the room. Someone was sharing the defensive laser management screen while begging their grandmother to turn the programming down.
Ben was curled up in a blanket on the couch, laying on his side faced away from everyone. I’m so sorry buddy.
“I don’t think we’re getting any breakaways, the lasers are doing good work, uh… and as I said we don’t… we didn’t have to spool up another fusion cell, reserve batteries are keeping the big field up. Just a sec… Mom PLEASE. Please. Yeah. For the next… probably 20 minutes. Yes. YES. Thank you.”
Own grabbed and held Jack's face. He looked deeply into his eyes. To Owen, daddy’s eyes were the most captivating and mission critical thing right now. Jack indulged him with a big smile, letting him claw his cheeks open and shut, slowly.
Jack didn’t break eye contact with Owen, who was straining like a fish to consume Jack’s face. “I’m going to request that everyone please notify Gus at OSR if you or anyone you know is stuck in the transit areas, I’m not saying water is an issue, but I just don’t want anyone you know… we don’t need anyone else having a bad day… any more than they need to.” Wet chomp. Owen wasn’t having a bad day.
—
Eight hundred commercial orbits raised or adjusted. 3 million individual pieces of debris vaporized, shepharded into a debris mitigation orbit, or brought down on the moon in a controlled spot. All inside of 15 minutes. Three thousand tons of ceramic ball bearings, aluminosilicate ingot, breast pumps, rubber dog shit, desk calendars and impossible meat were neutralized.
8 of the 9 crew of the Luru Mumbai were alive.
Sky had been carrying the captain in a hug box back through the corridors of the bridge. Intracerebral hemorrhage from being flung across the bridge into a chair bracket. She had intubated him, stabilized his neck, fluids, quick shave and ultrasound stickers. She watched his brain the entire ride back to the hospital, his life signs transmitted as intuitions into her implant. She was modulating every atom of coagulation factor with her mind. The Alligator was burning as hard as it could with such fragile cargo.
45 more seconds and he would have been inserted into a brain trauma pod and stabilized. Instead, she witnessed his soul switch off in high resolution.
Eulars noticed Sky sitting on the floor of the ER hallway and sat down next to her an arms-length away.
“Hey so, your son likes elephants, ya?”
She didn’t immediately respond. “Um…. yes. Yes he does.” Eulars didn’t hesitate, reached into his duffle bag and then over to Sky, holding out a board game box.
“They were spilling out of a shipping crate that nearly missed my head and I dunno I just grabbed it.”
Sky took the box, looked at it. It was some kind of stacking/balancing game involving cube shaped elephants. Elepandamonium, ages 5+...
“Thank you, Eulars. He’ll appreciate this, I’m sure of it.”
—
Jack was asleep on the couch in the shelter, snoring gently with Owen passed out on his chest. Ben was in bed, talking quietly to himself. The door cracked and Sky tiptoed in. She took a quick glance around, then turned to pour herself some water. Ben stood by her knee.
“Ben! You’re awake buddy” He didn’t say anything, just stood there rubbing his eyes. She knelt down to him, pulled him close and rubbed his back.
“Mommy missed you so much today, I got you something, I think you’re really going to like it!”
She pulled the game out of her duffel and presented it to him. He held it, sullen at first, then a big smile. “It’s elephants…” he said quietly. “That’s right, it’s elephants!”