Chapter written by Bob Frank
Adam was having an exceptionally terrible day. Early in the morning his phone had started screaming bloody murder. He naturally checked it to find a summon to the United Nations. Upon responding, he was informed that his expected time of arrival at the closest embassy was within the next two hours, at Ottawa. His map estimated a one and a half hour drive, leaving him thirty minutes to show, get dressed, have breakfast, and in general make himself ready for a meeting with the rulers of Earth. Halfway through his coffee, and long before his breakfast he was alerted to an incident on his intended route, adding twenty-five minutes to his journey. He emitted a noise that was probably a foul word in one of his many mastered languages, before grabbing his coat and running for the door. Before reaching the door, however, he kicked the corner of a coffee table with enough force to send it flying in his general direction of travel. He collided with his front door, clutching his foot, before yanking his bundle of keys from a hook, causing an explosion of house keys, garage keys, random keys he swore he had returned to their owners, and pieces of metal he was sure belonged on the hook, but couldn’t place. Jamming his shoes on his feet, and shoving a handful of keys in his pocket, he ran out of the door, slamming it so hard that the No Trespassing sign in the window fell down. This was not too concerning, as any would-be trespasser probably wouldn’t notice, or care about said sign. After boosting his dead battery, he jumped into his vehicle, and backed out of his driveway. With the only casualty of a dead mailbox, he managed to hit the interstate, and floored it for Ottawa. Partway through his trip, a desperate need for the facilities arose within him.
What are you?
Once he arrived at the embassy, he attempted to sneak into the bathrooms, before being informed that the prime minister was waiting for him. With what can only be considered panic, he was ushered into the office of the prime minister of Canada.
“Hello Mr. Smith, we have been waiting for you for the past 24 minutes.”
While the statement was pointed, the glare that accompanied it held barely any malice. Even the customary cockiness of a career politician was lacking.
“We received a message from our friends in the US. The Deep Extraterrestrial Reconnaissance Program with SETI received a massive bundle of data. This data had the further inexplicable property of being easily comprehensible to their analysts. The received information will take well over a year to sort though. The summary, however, is simple, even for a linguist such as yourself. There is a ruling body for the universe. They wish to have an ambassador for humanity. The dump was triggered by our colonisation of Mars, and we have selected you as the ambassador due to your basic comprehension of politics, and your gift in linguistics.”
Adam felt his throat tighten. Basic! Basic! He spent literal blood, sweat and tears to obtain his masters in politics and international integration, and this smarmy career politician had called his knowledge basic!
“If my political knowledge is so basic, then why me?”
"You have no close family at the moment, so there is no one to miss you.”
“You kill millions before lunch, for the sake of ‘peace’, you don’t care about a family's grief.”
“If you must know, your gift in linguistics is a once in a generation ability, and you would be the most useful to us as an ambassador to the aliens.”
Adam swallowed his anger. As useful as he appeared to be, his gifts were almost certainly not enough to save him from sufficient political wrath, and it was true that he had no family or friends to miss him. Death had taken his family, and studies had prevented the formation of any lasting bond to others. Adam longed to look the prime minister of Canada in the eye and reject this proposal, to reject a lifetime of the worst culture shock imaginable, to reject the unavoidable loneliness that being just one among millions would bring.
But he couldn’t, not just because he would be the one saying no to the most powerful rulers on the planet, but also because if he did not go, another person would have to, another person with a family. He sighed.
“When would I leave?”
The politician's face did not move a millimetre, yet the impression of a smirk was hard to miss.
“Three minutes.”
“May I use the bat-”
“No time for anything else, we need to send you off now, before the next solar flare.”
“Next sola-”
“And another thing, try not to die, linguists are expensive”
Why do the humans interest you?
In fact, it was not three minutes, it was three months, as while linguists know very little about space, politicians know less. To build a craft of the GA’s specifications is arduous, even with the dramatically reduced material resources the minimum design indicated. The linguist was unfortunately not a rocket scientist, and would have probably died within two minutes of his entrance into space, without professional training. Luckily for both Adam, and the human race as a whole, the general consensus was that preparing an ambassador for all of humanity was worth the resources that were soon to be expended.
When the set date made an appearance, Adam could have passed for a competent astronaut, if one did not quiz him too heavily on the mechanics or operating procedure of his intended craft. Conveniently, the required time to charge the exotic engine was also nearly three months.
Adam walked through the depths of the Backup Orbiter Binary facility. He was having a relatively good day for, what is for all intents and purposes, the prisoner of a government blacksite. He had finally completed the months of grueling training, and was free to wander the camera infested halls. He was scheduled to meet the lead engineer at NASA in several minutes, and after that his three months of grueling training would be over.
As he walked through the facility he reflected on his purpose. He would be an ambassador for humanity, perhaps one of the most important roles of all time. The melancholy of never seeing a human again nagged at him, but for the most part he had come to terms with his fate. Adam whistled a nearly perfect tune. It was probably the only time the cold concrete walls would ever hear “Mary had a Little Lamb”.
As he stepped into the office he was suddenly filled with trepidation. While having never been one for mood swings, he also had never been one to be trapped and trained in a blacksite for months.
“Please sit down”
Adam complied.
“We have completed the experimental craft that is to bring you to the aliens’ governing location. Our communications assure us that the target location has a breathable atmosphere, and a method of sustaining you. The craft requires a vacuum to operate, and causes severe structural damage to any object within approximately 3 cubic kilometres. For this reason we have been forced to construct your transportation in orbit. Do you have any questions?”
Adam shook his head. Very little of this information was new, in fact the past three months had been dedicated to making sure that none of this information WAS new.
“We shall be sending you up in several hours. Due to the mechanics of your transportation, it would be best if you did not eat until you arrived. You have been allowed an hour to prepare a will for your possessions, in the event that you never return. Please present yourself to the technicians in room D-51 two hours from now to begin preparations for ascent”
After writing his will, which he found to invoke an indescribable feeling, he slowly made his way to the eastern side of the building, before being ushered into room D-51. He was promptly swarmed by technicians, and clad in a bulky pressurized suit. He was then led outside of the facility. As soon as the doors opened the rush of arid air caused him to start sweating profusely. The group marched towards a massive structure stretching into the sky. Adam had never had a fear of heights, but simply observing the domineering structure made him feel slightly sick.
The little party began to strap themselves into the small compartment suckered to the mega structure.
Let's see... English, a human language...
Five minutes later Adam was pulling three g’s in the second most impressive structure humanity had ever made. Rocket fuel was difficult to make, and expensive, and humanity does not like wasting resources. Four centuries earlier, in 1895 the Russian scientist Dr. Tsiolkovsky had proposed a superstructure to carry goods from the surface to orbit. While the technology had advanced the idea had changed relatively little. Instead of supporting its own weight, the structure would utilise centrifugal force to pull a tether taught. With constant acceleration of twice earth's gravity both up and down, the trip to space takes almost exactly 45 minutes.
Very interesting.
It is a unique sensation, the loss of gravity. One goes from crushing force to a delightful sense of weightlessness. The limbs, originally burdened, float free. The joints relax into the perfect angle. The breath comes easy, and the body floats in place, seemingly unbothered by such petty a thing as weight. The entire experience would be delightful, if it weren’t for the general tendency of the internal organs to pull from tendons. The sudden lightness can occasionally trick the brain into believing that one is missing said internal organs. This sensation replaces wonder with vicious and visceral vomiting, which tends to detract from the levity of the situation. He was guided through a tight corridor, until finally coming upon a capsule with a small, oblong object floating in it.
One of the technicians, at his shoulder, winced.
“Looks like a coffin”
Adam felt a sudden, potent urge to vomit. The constricting suit, the fear of never seeing earth again, and a literal omen of death now floating metres away from his face. He felt a thick, gloved hand on his shoulder, guiding him to his doom. He tasted bile. The benefit of not eating was that his stomach had little to throw up. The downside was the little that did make its way up was concentrated to a horrible degree.
With dreadful precision he was guided into the device. With quick and practiced ease the straps were fitted to his suit. With a dreadful snick the hatch was locked into place. With a hiss the capsule was emptied. Without a noise the end was opened. With the gentlest of force the craft accelerated away from the tethered counterweight. With a slight hum and whir his little haven from the terrible vacuum stirred to life. With a horrible roar of power the drive fired. With a nauseating distending of reality, blackness blotted out his consciousness.