Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

Day 12 of 30

day 12 of 30 2006 jedc

Cockroaches are experts in the activity of escaping and surviving in unappreciated co-habitation with people, was unfortunately re-discovered. Although as a source of nutrient proteins that supplied some missing ones from their interrupted supply of agricultural species, the little cockroaches also were experts at colonizing little nooks and crannies, of which the station had an abundance. Occasionally that would result in jams and failures of machines and electrical systems, so that they had to re-design and modify those areas that had been, or might become, handicapped by the busy presence of the little critters. On the whole, however, people grew fond of them to some extent, as they were a bit of increased life in the otherwise heartless behomoth machine in which they lived.

At breakfast one morning, Catalie was watching what appeared to be the same little brown German Cockroach that appeared every other day in front of them at the table, apparently attracted by the aroma of the food. It was a lone male, as indicated by the two appendages at its tail end. She and the little animal had taught each other that if she would place a small speck of her warm moist rice breakfast cereal in front of the critter, it would come over, tap it with its antennae, grasp it and pull it a few inches away from them, then munch it while Catalie and Improy finished their meal. It seemed to appreciate a drop of their beverage too, even coffee. Soon they would notice that the speck of food was gone, evidently dragged off to be finished the next day somewhere. A day or so later, their tiny visitor would re-appear in front of them at mealtime, not unlike people showing up at mealtime in a cafeteria. Its presence was a little like a pet, something that both of them missed in their high technology living environment.

"I hope their population does not expand so much that we have to use insecticides on them", Improy commented. "All insecticides are neurotoxins to people too, and the buildup of such substances in our sealed environment is likely to deteriorate our mental functionality to the point of not being able to cope with the rigors of life up here. Then we would make some fatal goof, the end of all of us." Catalie replied that people had successfully struck a compromise balance with insects throughout civilization's history; neither had to exterminate each other. Where synergistic rationality prevailed, both kinds of species prospered better by the presence of the other. For example, think about our problem here with no honeybees available. The busy hundreds of perfect little pollinators that bees are, have to be replaced by people doing it by hand. And, we have no honey to sweeten things, either. I don't complain about the lack of mosquitos or ticks up here, however.

"You know," Improy mused out loud, "me in the protective shell of my spacesuit reminds me a lot of that little cockroach in its exoskeleton. I wonder if the designers of our space worksuits got the idea of putting the augmentation muscles attached to the outer shell of the spacesuit, from the insects' use of the outer shell as the rigid structure from which the muscles pull, that increases our strength when in the worksuit." She replied that it would not surprise her if that were so, since people often have gotten inspiration from nature's wonderful variety of mechanisms. Improy began calculating how many of those adult cockroaches would it take to get enough exoskeleton material for the plastic casting and weaving machine to use to make an experimental torso shell for a space worksuit. A lot of them.

It had been half a year they had been on their own, following the epidemic down on the surface, when internet communication was suddenly restored to them. It was through one of the Asian links, apparently activated when equipment in general was brought back into operation. But the internet had its feelers into the whole world, even into the employee base of Ownma Corporation, which otherwise was in a zone of silence, including transmissions to the orbiting wheel station.

They eagerly looked for news of what had been happening down there, while they had struggled to cope up here. They found that in the epidemic, the megacorporations, like Ownma, had found a secret healing technique but were not sharing it with the rest of the world. The parts of the world where rice was the staple instead of wheat in pasta form, did not fail from sickness so rapidly as did the major part of the Ownma corporate employee base did, for example. Word of the electronic signal frequency set and way of applying it through handholds, eventually got out and so the Asian countries recovered first, and all the people recovered, not just the wealthy management types. And so, the internet link they were receiving was a lucky byproduct of that. The tremendous loss of life and general capability of non-management people in the Western world, had put the megacorporation Elitists in absolute control of the Western nations, a situation they greatly relished. The political situation was quite unlike anything the station personnel could even imagine. The plight of their families and friends down there was tragic, and there was nothing that could be done about it from up here.

Yet, corporate business depended on the servitude of the employees, so production capability was being brought back online, bit by bit. A mere 8 months after the epidemic, suddenly the wheel station got a command from Ownma Management, to ready themselves for arrival of the spokes for the secondary wheel. And in fact, as soon as two spokes were in place, the part of the wheel rim habitat modules would be arriving. As soon as that was in place, Improy was directed to pull the bulkheads and vent the area, then seal it , bringing it into a pressurized and habitable area immediately, and prepare for arrival of new one-way space busses of people for that area.

At first only one a day arriving, Catalie watched on the exterior viewscreens the teleoperated docking of module after module, first the ones for the first two spokes, then habitat modules which spanned those two spokes. Then the other spokes modules began to be sent up.

"That is really strange, they would build it up that way," Catalie remarked over dinner. "They seem totally focused on getting some space for people over there in the secondary wheel, while we only have 145 of our intended 1,000 people over here." Improy replied that it did not make sense at all, as they needed people desperately over in this wheel to have the space station functioned optimally.

They did as requested, pulling the bulkheads out so as to make the most rapid habitable area prepared in the secondary wheel station, including hub accesses. A space bus type module finally arrived, the first in a year and a half by then. eager to greet their new friends, Improy was surprised to find armed men exit the space buss, followed by a bunch of people bound as their prisoners. The armed men commanded that they be led to the new wheel segment, and instructed on how to live there.

When it was done, Improy was again having diner with his wife, who was all ears about what was going on, so mysterious. With the appearance of someone who had been in shocked dismay too long, he related to her that the added wheel was being built as a prison for people given life sentences. This was a one-way trip for everybody here, not just for those prisoners, but their guards, and all the staff of the first wheel. No one was ever to come back. The megacorporations had determined it was far cheaper and secure to send prisoners up here to provide for their own survival on their own agriculture and industry, than to feed and house them in prisons down on the surface. And they would not need to worry about prisoner's escape. It was not unlike the ancient use of Australia, and of Alcatraz Island.

What bothered him the most, was that the majority of these prisoners given life sentences, were not actually bad people, but were only political prisoners, people who had led the rebellion of the employees against the megacorporate holdings, attempting to gain access to the mysterious healing technique during the epidemic's ravages of the non-management corporate personnel. The management Elitists had wanted the epidemic to so pound down the huge non-elitist population so severely that the remainder would never object to servitude again. But there had been an insurrection, easily put down by the well armed and healthy management elitists, and they wanted the leaders permanently put out of the way. Thus, the prison wheel in space.

Occasionally one of the two-way fully reusable cargo delivery vehicles would be sent up to dock with the original wheel, resuming its supply. Then more of their station personnel arrived on one-way space busses as before. More skills were being added, so less improvising was needed to fill in for the missing work functions.

A few of these new people were auditors, whose functions were to document all the workings of the first wheel, and transmit it down to the Ownma Corporate staff. From there it was modified a bit then sent to the new wheel's prison staff, assigning prisoners to carry out specific equivalent job functions over on the added wheel. "We are being copied," Catalied exclaimed to Improy one day, "copied, but as life imprisoned people!" "Are you sure we too are not imprisoned people over here?" was his reply. "There are no return busses from here, even for us."

It took half a year to finish building the second wheel and to bring up its full population of prisoners and prison staff. Then, vehicles ceased to arrive. Ownma Corporation severed communication with the station, but the links to the internet through the Asian countries still remained. What they learned in the news thereby was that Ownma announced that regrettably the space wheel station, including all its staff and prisoner population, had suffered disaster and was lost.

posted by Unknown @ 9:45 AM