Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

Day 22 of 30 2006

Day 22 of 30 Building Up - JEDCline

One of the recreation rooms had snacks, beverages and displays of earth internet news items. It was receive-only, since they could not risk it being known that they still existed up here. It was one of those times when someone was idly watching the news from below, while munching a quail & cockroach burger, that the news was announced. The mega-corporations had finalized their ownership of all that remained of civilization, and that henceforth the delineated territories of each of the mega-corporations were not to be crossed by Employees. And there was now an over-arching mega-corporation which also had the American territory formerly called Ownma Corporation, but now the new super-corporation was named TANFL, acronym for an old motto "There Ain't No Free Lunch" which was to be the guiding motto of the new organization. Everybody had to pay, or more correctly, every employee had to pay for everything they wanted, but the TANFL people did not, as they were all floating in the unimaginable riches of the corporation, and there was no need to do accounting of the little fraction they spent on their personal needs or adventures. Every Employee had to pay, and that meant they had to work for the Corporation, and accept the pay rate set by TANFL. There was to be no charity among the Employees, so there was no respite in case of simply inadequate pay rate or intolerable job assignment. No work, no pay, no food or shelter. The Employees must also pay for the disposal of those who starved to death in the street as a result, or froze to death without shelter, so as to keep the streets clean of those bodies.

Soon the news spread in the space wheel station about the turn of events down below. It was shocking to most of them, even those who had seen that kind of thing as a trend from long ago, the separation of the rich from the workers, a disappearing middle class. Now there was no middle class at all. And there was no social vote mechanism for reversing the class-based system.

Up here they had proven that people could work together to provide a safe home for all, retaining each person's individuality, and inviting the best from each person. They had created their own Corporation, one that was guided by product instead of profit. They each also being a consumer, the products filled their needs as best possible in the balance of all things. Everybody worked, none were the idle rich because there was no wealth to accumulate. Instant education to every person for any task, via their own version of the internet, along with the pooling of each person's knowledge and daily data gathering re the task being performed, built up the knowledge database. It was working for them. Why wasn't it done down below? Everybody up here lived much better than the Employees down there, and the resources up here were so very limited, in the dual space wheel that was originally outfitted to be part experimental station, part prison, a very difficult starting base. Surely despite the deteriorating world ecosystem down there, their Emplos kind of Corporation would provide a better life for everybody. Surely even the Rich Elite Owner-Managment class could find adequate pleasure without having to brandish their vast accumulated holdings as status symbols, they thought.

But then the people began to remember that the Rich-Elite had been long in a super-race eugenics program, and no longer considered themselves of the same species as the Employees, and that really altered their thinking patterns. It was comparable to the way the agricultural workers saw themselves different from the fish and goats they tended. The Owner-Managers were like the agricultural workers who tended the fish and goats, like the Owner-Managers tended the Employees. Not of the same species; and effectively had the power of life and death over them, without need to answer to anyone.

They all had loved ones down there. Catalie and Improy thought of their daughter Idealiana being crushed into some mold in that system. Surely there was some way they could help their loved ones?

A month later, a vote was called. The result was that they would initiate their Exodus, down to where they had a chance of helping out. They did not know how to help, but they knew it could not be done from up here, so vulnerable from even one warhead sent up in irritation by the TANFL Corporation, if they got to be considered a nuisance.

The accumulated musings on the subject were called up from the database. There were several places that had been abandoned by the corporate holdings as the environment had died; and the Corporations owned all the land that was habitable profitably.

More serious thinking was done on how they would survive down there, on their own as much as they were up here; and without the resources of endless solar energy and zero-g hard vacuum for materials processing, so essential for their survival up here. Much of the space station had been long in computer assisted mode, and it seemed possible to further modify the station to be a self-operating system for some time after abandonment by people. They decided to build microwave power beam generators to beam down the surplus solar-derived electical energy, no longer needed with the people gone; and they would remotely control the directing of that energy beam to lock on their sending antenna location, which would be in the middle of a rectenna they would build, so they would get a burst of electrical power everytime the station was within beam range, day or night or stormy, they would get these dumps of electrical power, that they would have to store somehow, and use on the spot in some processes.

They also rigged a link to direct the station's telescope at some location on the ground, and relay the digital images down to them. Meanwhile they continued to use the telescope up here to determine what was happening down on the surface. Where had Ownma gone, now TANFL Corporation? Repeated examinations of their launch site, Ownma White Sands, showed no sign of activity. It appeared to be abandoned a long time, and the desert was beginning to reclaim it. Sandstorms had drifted sand across the highways in places, and no vehicle tracks had left marks of passage across the sand drifts. All the cities in the area had been abandoned even before they were launched up here, as water became uneconomical to bring in there anymore, the water table fallen beyond recovery for even drinking water. In fact, if they ever hoped to be able to return to the wheel space station, it would have to be from White Sands, as the only boosters in existence were there. The landing strip that had once been used for the returning boosters that had lifted them up here, looked like a reasonable landing place for their return spacecraft gliders. Holloman airfield was not far from there and could serve as a secondary landing runway. Even the abandoned highways could be used in a pinch. They really did not know what difficulties would be encountered when making an unpowered landing down there.

The entire fleet of return spacecraft was inspected for inclusion of the latest modifications, and their basic provisions were refreshed. Their wheel population was divided up and assigned a spacecraft; as much as possible, whole family groups were sent in the same return vehicle, as they had already worked out their own internal team spirit among themselves long ago. Volunteering rosters were established to show who preferred to go among the first, among the last and in the middle to go. Improy and Catalie decided they probably were better able to guide the exodus from up here, at least until it was certain things were working reliably and smoothly, so they resisted their adventurous urge to go first to deal with the unknowns of landing. They chose randomly among those who had wanted to be among the first to go, based on their recorded skill in the landing training simulations, and their observations of them on the job up here, especially in highly stressed situations.

All the people in the station gathered around the larger network computer displays to watch the embarkation. The family crew members wore some of the few "cockroach" spacesuits that had been manufactured, as better protection during the re-entry stresses, although eventually most of them would enter their own vehicle in ordinary clothing, it was hoped. The spacecraft's nose hatchway was sealed, then the Embarcadero's airlock was sealed, and it was on camera for awhile as the spacecraft coasted away far enough for the nose cone to swing around and latch. The initial electrically driven thrust was delivered to the vehicle along an acceleration ramp backward along the stations's trajectory, slowing the vehicle in the orbit, and the tether ribbon's slack was soon taken up. The slight gravity on the spacecraft, going slower than the required angular velocity to be in orbit up here, reeled out the ribbon at first slowly then faster until an optimum decent velocity was reached, then they used dynamic braking to maintain the decent velocity. Their "human gyroscopes" were practicing pointing the spacecraft around into various attitudes, gaining a little more skill at this once sport activity.

The next day the tether had reeled out sufficiently to start slowing the decent rate on the spacecraft, and the human gyros were getting some practice at adjusting the spacecraft's attitude while also experiencing some weight, almost 1-g. Then the tether was allowed to unreel to the point where there was significant drag backwards on the tether, as indicated by the drag airscoops propellor rate instrument which was mounted a little above the spacecraft attachment to the tether.They practiced more at their gyro attitude adjustment, and measured the small amount of airfoil control surface effect on the spacecraft's attitude while being towed by the tether ribbon cable.

It was a tense moment for all. The spacecraft sent a radio signal up indicating they were going to commit to launch. They tilted up until it showed their lift supported their weight, and they activated the release latch. From there they had nowhere to go but down. Suddenly no longer towed forward, there was a sudden small jerk but continued with the same attitude; they went into almost free-fall again, building up velocity. A noticeable sense of slowing and direction of gravity built up as they maintained what they had guessed was the optimum angle of attack as they went deeper into the thin upper atmosphere. They experienced a little over one gee as the gliding spacecraft bounced back up on their first skip. They continued to skip up and down the upper atmosphere , slowing down some with each bounce. Having gone entirely around the planet, as judged by terrain below them at time of release from the tether, they sent a brief radio signal upward to the space station that they had gotten this far, looked promising. The cabin temperature was quite tolerable, as the craft's large airfoil glided them down so slowly.

Then the next critical phase began, as they made the last circle around the planet and swung into a large circle, remaining above the area where there were no people, staying away from the California coastal area where Ownma/TANFL Corporation had retreated to, gliding around and around, breaking the sound barrier as slowly as possible, keeping the heating down as much as possible by coasting, circling White Sands. Their pilot used the reflexes trained in the simulator, although the simulator never had produced the forces pushing one's body around during the moves, quite this way. Expecting that distraction, the balance between losing altitude, holding above stall speed, and orienting to be lined up with the landing strip's end when it all went to zero, and they were down, skidding along the runway.

They had no landing gear so there was no steering wheel for the ground guidance; the pilot called out "Everybody lean left! Everybody lean right! Front half lean left! to slightly influence the attitude of the vehicle as it skidded on its belly along the runway, slowing much too slowly without either brakes nor drogue chute. Off the end of the runway into the sand, they slowed much faster, then with a twist, they were stopped. They sat there, only popping open their seat belts, while their heart rates slowed down. The pilot pulled the spring release that threw the nose cone around its hinge, then cranked on the airlock dogs, and opened the hatch to the bright New Mexico sun. Filing out through the nose hatch, they went over to the shade of the nearest building, and proceeded to have their snack prepared for this event, which included a bit of ethyl alcohol with which they gave a toast to their safe arrival.

Their first duty was to split up into twos, and go search to verify there were no other people around there, and no security cameras announcing their presence. They had shed their spacesuits in the landing craft, so they looked reasonably normal, they hoped, in case they were on somebody's camera. The place seemed long abandoned, probably since the last load of prisoners was launched on a one-way space bus up toward the space station, several years ago. They followed the security cameras' cables to the security control room, which was found open, its door swinging back and forth in the wind gusts. All power was dead in there, but they methodically disconnected every connector they could find, then closed the door as they left. The electronics in that room would be valuable to them later, no doubt, for other uses.

Checking the time the space station would again be in line of sight while also not in the direction of any known habitation, they set up their dish antenna; and when the station was expected above, they transmitted the safe landing coded message up. And immediately received a coded acknowledgment beamed down to their location. It was done.

posted by Unknown @ 5:06 PM