LJIdol: 3 Strikes - Week 3 - Morgenmuffel
Karl bit into his protein bar and chewed slowly, trying to keep any sound to a minimum. Behind him, his bunkmates snored softly at different speeds, like the wipers on a school bus. In front of him, a small monitor flickered to life, its dark blue background partially illuminating his face. Below him, the moonlit Earth slowly turned on its axis. Or maybe it was above him. Direction took on a different meaning in zero G. For a moment, his perception shifted and he was hanging upside down with the Earth above his feet. He had to close his eyes and clamp down his jaws to keep the protein bar from coming back up.
“Thirty-three days, and I’m still not used to it either.” One of his bunkmates had woken up and was in the midst of unstrapping himself from the bed. His head was clean-shaven, but his beard resembled a mass of tentacles due to the effects of prolonged sleep in the gravity void. It reminded Karl of a character from an old American pirate film. As soon as he was free, the man began trying to tame the scraggly mess with an ornate ebony comb he pulled from his pocket. The motion caused him to float across the compartment towards Karl.
“Morning, Heinrich.”
It wasn’t really morning per se, here inside Rendezvous VI. In fact, at the speed they were travelling in orbit, it never was. In an attempt to increase the effect of its stealth technology, the joint German and Polish waystation was parked in sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) such that it was always in the dark, and the time below was always between midnight and 1:00 am. Like an analog clock with a broken hour hand. Karl had heard that, as part of an additional funding endeavor, the station had been co-opted into an ultra-rich Polish academic’s psychological experiment where researchers could measure the effect of a lack of sun on astronauts, specifically to determine the potential of future long-distance space travel. After this long without sunlight, it was hard to tell if that was part of a joke or not.
How will we land on the Sun? Simple. We’re going at night.
Looking back, maybe it should have been obvious from the original questionnaire. “Are you a morning person?” Just one of a thousand odd questions in the process, but like all but two of them, a question he had answered truthfully. “Absolutely not.” And he was not exaggerating. Growing up, his college roommates had taken to calling him a Nacht Mensch due to his frequent late nights. And when he was really being obnoxious and refusing to go to morning classes: Morgenmuffel. It should have bothered him, but instead he took it as a compliment that he was worthy of their notice. Besides, the night was always more interesting than the morning. It provided intrigue and mystery and opportunity. The morning sun did nothing but shine new light on the ruins of his once great country.
“Who’s that?” Heinrich was staring out one of the reinforced portholes towards the dark sliver of a horizon to the West, his comb now resting motionless in his beard. Whatever was out there was too far away to be seen by human eyes, but the resident scientist had long since had his sight augmented with biotech. Unfortunately, he had not extended that upgrade to his brain.
“How would I know, kolega?” Colleague. An aspirational hope at best in this case.
“Well, go check the logs for today.”
Karl muttered under his breath. Three hours of blissful alone time, and now five minutes into having waking company and he was already relegated back to being a glorified assistant. Just because he was still 97% human. He had timed his alarm just so that he could have a good amount of time to become coherent before the others awoke. He could never have handled them in his early waking state. As it was, three hours barely bought him enough time to reach a minimum level of interaction capacity.
Karl tapped the keypad at least an extra fifteen times before he finally properly selected the correct data. By then, Heinrich was staring through him, literally.
“Well, it’s not on the menu.” More staring. Three more taps. “Its name is the Gwiazda Autostrady. ‘Highway Star’. Pleasure craft, looks like. It probably doesn’t even know we are here. Not our concern.”
“It’s going to be pretty quickly if it doesn’t change course.” Heinrich returned his gaze to the ship that now even Karl was able to just make out in the distance. It was on a very rapid approach, and headed straight for the station.
Karl shook his head and tapped a few more keys, bringing up a set of numbers on the screen that surely meant something to someone. Then he waited an additional ten seconds until there was a short beep and the screen changed over to four bullet points. Much better.
Nope. Much worse.
“Oh, great. It’s Jeanne.” He turned away from the screen and back to the depths of space.
“Jeanne? Here? Why? Are you sure?”
“Read for yourself.” Karl shoved the last of the protein bar in his mouth, taking half the foil wrapper with it and swallowing it without noticing. This was already looking like it was going to be a long day. Long night. Awake period. Rotation. That one made him smirk. The lack of any sunlight might be getting to his vocabulary, but it hadn’t removed his sense of humor, at least not yet.
· GWIAZDA AUTOSTRADY
· original owner - GEORG SCHMIDT (incarcerated)
· current owner - JEANNE ZIELINSKI (policja kosmiczna)
· authorization - UNRESTRICTED
“That just means it’s part of the fleet now. Her name’s on all the impounded spacecraft in the last decade. Doesn’t mean she’s on there.”
Karl smiled grimly. “You think Jeanne would ever let anyone else take that ship out after what Georg put her through catching him?” The story was legend. It had cost Jeanne and the department a lot more than just a significant amount of time and money. Heinrich had clearly heard the story as well, but he was hanging on to any sliver of hope.
“Maybe… It’s her son?”
“He’s only 10.”
“He could be joyriding.”
Karl laughed sharply at that, bringing a tinge of aluminum flavor into the back of his mouth. Yep, still had his sense of humor. Then he started choking, which made him laugh again, and he was unable to respond further. He wandered off to freshen up and find more simulated coffee, leaving Heinrich alone with the flickering screen.
Only the single repeated word “Verdammt” came through clearly from the muttering behind him.
--
Three midnights (hours) later, Karl was watching the back of the Gwiazda Autostrady, weighed down with both fuel and supplies (and one extra astronaut in restraints), as it shrank down to near imperceptibility approaching the Eastern curve, heading off into its own personal sunrise.
“Habe einen schönen Morgen!” Have a good morning!
Given the situation, Jeanne’s joke was in poor taste. But Karl grinned a little as he flipped off the communicator with his left hand.
“Dir auch.” Same to you.
Then he reached out and actually turned the communicator off, before finishing his thought.
“Tschüss, Boche.” Bye, cabbage head.
He turned the smooth black comb in his hand thoughtfully, smiling a little wider, then dropped it back in his pocket.
Nearly midnight again. Time to get back to work.