Open Writing

Holly came back to herself, and smiled inside her
helmet as she drifted over the massive hull of the Asimov.
If Maynard Glendenning could see me now! I bet he
never thought I’d actually go, that I’d really do it. I’d love
to see his face now. Then she sobered as she realized that
her former employer had probably been dead for more
than a hundred and fifty years. And Rathbone as well, she
reflected wryly. The Senator had declined the opportunity
to accompany them; he was, it seemed, happy to act as
recruiting sergeant for the mission, but drew the line at
actually joining them at the front. Like most politicians,
he preferred to lead from the rear.

Well, to hell with them, thought Holly,
uncharacteristically. It was enough for her that she had
outlived them both, and would see a world and a future
that they would never know. In a way, she supposed she
ought to be grateful; if not for them, she never would have
joined the mission in the first place.

She continued to drift along the mile-long length of the
ship, and let her mind wander back to the day, six months
and one hundred and ninety-three years ago, when she
had finally plucked up the courage to call the senator’s
office and make an appointment.

* * *

Washington, D.C.

June 4th, 2124

Holly waited nervously in the brightly-lit outer office
of Senator Eugene Rathbone’s suite of rooms in the
Capitol Building. Occasionally, the outer door would
slide silently open, and an aide would hurry through,
intent on some errand or another. In the raised reception
area, a secretary was working quietly at a terminal,
transmitting data to various government departments, and
to other parts of the world via the global Net.

Holly glanced at the far wall; there were several digital
time faces set into its surface, showing the time in most of
the major cities of the world. Local time was 2:27 p.m.;
she had been waiting exactly thirty-two minutes, having
arrived five minutes early for her two o’clock meeting.
Outside, through the windows at the far end of the foyer,
the Washington weather had turned squally, and a brisk
wind whipped a few leaves along the street in an early
summer shower. A few ground cars glided along
Pennsylvania Avenue, and in the distance she could see
the anachronistic yet still imposing façade of the White
House.

The home of the nation’s President had been almost
completely reconstructed after the ‘quake of ’07, and the
builders had stuck religiously to the original
specifications, which made it look somewhat out of place
among the more modern buildings of the capital. The city
seemed almost deserted, empty, devoid of life, and Holly
smiled to herself as she recalled the cynical view she had
heard expressed that Washington appeared that way
whether there were people in evidence or not.

While she awaited the senator’s pleasure, Holly
reflected on the circumstances that had brought her to this
place, the administrative center of the country, and to this
office. After her sudden and unceremonious departure
from Maynard Glendenning’s employ, she had returned to
Baton Rouge and rented a small apartment in a large
block of several hundred. Her plan was to take her time
and sort out, in her mind, what her options were, and what
she wanted to do.

Glendenning’s parting settlement to her had been
extremely generous, possibly born of a guilty conscience,
but Holly considered it no more than her due. While not
exactly what the cattleman’s former wives had received, it
was enough so that she could, if she wished, live for
several years without having to work at all.

However, idleness was not her way; she needed to be
active, to be doing something, so she applied for the few
positions that were advertised. Unfortunately, in the
almost two years she had been in the cattleman’s employ,
the country had entered one of its periodic recessions.
Only a mild one, perhaps, but enough to make the
government tighten up on its spending. Naturally,
Education was one of the areas that was most affected, the
others being Health and Welfare. It was a pattern that had
not changed in more than a hundred and fifty years; those
who could least afford it were always the first ones to be
economically disadvantaged.

The result of this, at least as far as Holly was
concerned, was that teaching positions were thin on the
ground. Consequently, she found herself, for the first
time in her life, with time on her hands and nothing to do.
She watched the sixty-channel Net, something she had
seldom done when she was teaching, since she simply
hadn’t had the time. She saw, for the first time, the way
the vast majority of the people lived who had little else to
fill their days.

She saw, for just about the first time in her life, the
daytime “soaps” -the origins of the word escaped her on
the entertainment channels of the Net, the incredibly
mundane and trivial events and issues that so many
people found important and interesting. She saw, as
would a newcomer to the planet, an alien from another
world, how the people of this world spent their time, and
how those in power encouraged them to keep doing it.

And sometime during this sojourn, this self-imposed
exile, she decided that she wanted more than the world
could offer her. Or, more accurately, that what she wanted
did not appear to be available here. At that realization, her
thoughts turned again to the strange offer made to her by
Senator Rathbone.

She had never thought of herself as having the
pioneering spirit, despite the senator’s talk of hardy
schoolmarms, but the more she thought about it, the more
attractive the proposal began to look. To move to another
world, the ultimate in starting over. She was not yet thirty;
she would have the opportunity to do anything, be
anything she wanted to be. She had no friends, no family
on earth, no one to miss her, no one for her to miss. All
she had ever loved, apart from her mother, was the joy of
teaching, and her poetry and literature; those, along with
her memories, she could take with her wherever she went.

So she thought about it some more, and somewhere in
the early hours of a wet Friday morning, three weeks after
she had left the cattleman’s ranch, she made her decision.
She immediately got out of bed and switched on her
vidphone, inserting the card the senator had left with her.
A minute or so later, his bleary features filled the screen,
angrily demanding to know who was disturbing him, but
he calmed when he saw her face. He drew his robe around
himself, and turned the vid’s terminal around, but not
before Holly caught a glimpse of a naked, large-breasted
torso sprawled in the bed beside him. She blushed, and
the senator fumbled on his bedside table for a cigar.
“Goddammit, girl,” he rumbled, lighting the cigar and
drawing on it until it glowed, “don’t you sleep?”

Holly stammered an apology, but Rathbone waved it
aside, puffing on his cigar. Holly hesitated, then said, “I
need to know a few things about the mission, senator.”

Rathbone nodded, blowing smoke. “I’m sure y’do, and
I’ll be happy to answer your questions. Tomorrow,” he
added, over her interjection. “Call my office and make an
appointment. I’ll make myself available in the afternoon.
Number’s on the card.”

He switched off, leaving Holly staring at a blank
screen. She contemplated calling him back, then decided
tomorrow would do.

She didn’t get any more sleep that night. The next day
she called the senator’s office to find that an appointment
had been made and a seat booked on the morning shuttle
to Washington. She was met by an aide at the airport, who
escorted her to a waiting government car that took her to
the Capitol building. And now, here she was.

Holly came out of her reverie to find the secretary
leaning over her. The senator was ready for her now, and
would she please just go right on in. Holly stood up,
thanked the woman and, mentally squaring her shoulders,
marched straight towards the double doors that led to the
politician’s office. She hesitated a moment, then reached
out and touched the entrypad. The door swung open;
taking a deep breath, she entered the room.

As the door eased soundlessly shut behind her, Holly
looked around the room. The first impression was one of
power, an undercurrent, a very real and tangible thing that
could be felt in the air of the oblong office. At the end
farthest from her, behind a huge desk flanked by the Lone
Star flag and Old Glory, sat Senator Eugene Rathbone, his
head down over the terminal set into the surface of the
desk. Without looking up, he gestured to a comfortable
looking overstuffed in front of and to one side of the
massive worktable.

“Sit down, sit down, young lady. I’ll be with you in a
moment.”

Holly obeyed, her hands resting primly in her lap and
her knees pressed tightly together as an innate stirring
produced a natural reaction, protection against the animal
sexuality emanating from the man opposite her. Her
rational mind told her that it was merely the proximity of
power that caused the response, that it was a perfectly
natural thing, but that didn’t stop her feminine instincts
from reacting. It didn’t quite frighten her, but it did make
her wary, and she resolved to be on her guard.

Rathbone made a final entry into the PC before him,
then cleared the screen. He sat back in his genuine leather
executive chair, steepled his hands prayer-like before him
for a moment and looked at the young woman. Finally, he
spoke.

“So, Miss Insomniac.” Holly reddened and looked
down, then back up at him as he went on.

“The last time we met, I asked you what you knew
about space travel, Miss Parmentier. As I recall, your
answer at that time was ‘not much.’ Correct?”

Holly nodded.

“Well then, do you know any more now than you did
on that occasion? I’m particularly interested in your
knowledge, if any, of the colonizing mission I spoke of
then.” He sat forward, focusing his entire attention on her;
Holly felt the intensity of his personality, and she
answered as best she could, starting nervously and
gaining in confidence as she went on.

“Well, I – I’ve done some re – research on the mission;
at least, that is, as much as I could discover, given that
most of the details are pretty secret, and not easily
available.” The senator lit a cigar and nodded, gesturing
for her to continue. Holly paused to gather her thoughts,
then began.

Ten minutes later, Holly paused in her recital, trying to
recall any fact that she had omitted, while the senator
drew on his cigar. She had told the senator all she knew
about the mission, and he had briefly answered the
handful of questions she had asked; now, he looked at her
keenly across the desk.

“You seem to have covered the salient facts connected
with the mission reasonably well, Miss Parmentier,” he
said, puffing and blowing no-smoke into the air of the
office, which was kept clean and scrubbed by filters built
into the walls and ceiling. “The question I now need to
put to you, and to which I need an answer is: Do you want
to be a part of it?”

Holly looked down at her hands for a moment, then
back up and forced herself to look directly at him. Until
that moment, she had not really known what her answer
to that question would be. Now, as she stared across the
desk at the man opposite, she realized she was in no
doubt. She tried to speak, moistened her lips and tried
again.

“Y – yes,” she said. Then, in a stronger voice, “Yes, I
do.”

And there it was. It was so easy, she thought. So easy
to say goodbye to the world of her birth, to all that she
had ever known. With just that simple word, she realized
she was taking her leave of planet earth.

Later, thinking about it in more depth, she realized that
the earth probably didn’t have a monopoly on trees and
flowers and grass and waterfalls and other things in which
she saw beauty, but she was surprised to discover that she
was going to miss things she normally thought little of, if
at all. Drive-in movies, back in vogue again; Kentucky
Fried, MacDonald’s, Coca-Cola, department stores, traffic
(air and ground), the Net. A host of things that were
uniquely earth. Human.

She hoped the new world had a nice sunset.

* * *

The next four months were a whirlwind of activity for
Holly. The first thing she did was transfer all of her
personal belongings from her apartment in Baton Rouge
to a special ‘barracks’ at Kennedy Space Center in
Florida.

After settling into her room at the center, far more
luxurious than any barracks she had ever heard of, she
barely had time to unpack before her training began in
earnest.

There were long hours spent in simulators and the
centrifuge, and in the water tanks where their ability to
maneuver in an environment suit was assessed. Surprising
herself, Holly showed a special aptitude at this, and was
given extra training, culminating in an actual shuttle ride
into orbit (the most terrifyingly exhilarating experience of
her life) where she was required to repair a simulated fault
outside the ship. She passed the test with flying colors,
loving every minute of it, and gained her EVA flashes,
which she wore proudly.

She was becoming very much a part of the mission.