What do you do when your life’s dream is out of reach because of the choices of others? Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed, and that includes obeying the fact that people make choices outside of your control. How easy it is to forget that although there is no grand cosmic consciousness out there trying to do you in, it also means the universe is indifferent to your desires. I’ve always said to myself: You can usually achieve anything you set your mind to. But, my despondence over this setback tended to show that I forget the adverb and emotionally commit to the more popular version of this aphorism.
I had been waxing philosophical like this since yesterday evening -when I found out I hadn’t been picked to be on the science team of the Venkatesan.
Despite a restless night, I had willed myself out of bed this morning, determined to carry out my daily routine. I had arrived at the lab only 5 minutes late, and I had begun the day’s tasks. A steady trickle of people came into my office to offer their condolences. I would thank them with a tight smile, then change the subject to some aspect of their lives or the lives of other people at the lab. I asked about who was sleeping with whom, and how people’s new babies, girlfriends, or domestic partners were doing. I think I even managed to feign sufficient interest, until they would politely excuse themselves. That morning, I participated in more gossip than I had for the prior 2 years I had been at the University.
After lunch, it became pretty clear I wasn’t going to get any work done, but I refused to let myself leave. Leaving would mean going home to stare at all the reminders of what could have been. There was the scale model of the Venkatesan, I had built when I was 16, which now sat behind a glass display on my bookshelf. There was the painting on my living room wall of the view as seen from inside the starship’s main rotating habitat section. Those things, and many others, were waiting at my apartment as a reminder of what I gave my all for, and the fact that it wasn’t enough.
Instead of continuing to feel sorry for myself, I contacted the recruiter from Athanatos Laboratories and asked if my interview date could be moved up. I had hoped I wouldn’t need to find a job in this solar system. Now that I wouldn’t be manning the only interstellar ship to be launched for the next 90 years, I needed a job here on Earth. I needed a backup plan, and Athanatos Laboratories was where I wanted to be when I finished my PhD in cell and molecular biology in a few months.
After I finished speaking with the recruiter, a reporter, Roger Frank, finally got ahold of me. I had done an interview in the past with him about the program, back when I had made it to the second to last elimination round.
Hi Alexis. I would like to talk with you for about half an hour tomorrow about the crew pick and your thoughts, now that you are out of the running, he messaged to me when I forgot to change my avatar status online to “unavailable” after disconnecting with the recruiter.
Even though I hadn’t been picked, I still believed in the cause. In addition to its for-profit activities, a portion of WIEC’s budget came from fundraising, so I knew that it was important to maintain public interest in interstellar exploration. But, my emotional state on the subject was still too fragile. I would need a few days to be able to speak about it without a quiver in my voice, so I demurred.
I knew Roger wouldn’t be happy with my response, since this particular news cycle would be over in a day or two, so I switched my online status to unavailable before he could respond to being put off, and disconnected.
After that, I spent an hour gaming with a couple of my online chums, until I remembered the ticket to the concert I had bought last month. I checked my calendar between virtual mortar explosions, to confirm that it was this evening, then I said farewell to my friends and logged off.
I cursed the fact that I had forgotten to set an alarm to remind me of the concert. I quickly shut down the lab, and headed out the door into the sunshine.
It was only May, but daily highs were already in the 90’s. They had domed most of Dallas and Houston, but Austin was still exposed to the sun. I summoned the bus schedule into my field of vision to see which route would get me to my destination the quickest, and then ran to the nearest bus stop. I got there just as an old autobus arrived and opened its doors to let a few people off. Most of the seats were empty. It was late enough in the day that most people had already finished any work they needed to do in person downtown hours ago. I sat down in a spot away from other people, and watched the scenery as the bus sped down the road.
The original capitol building, and half of downtown, had been destroyed by an asteroid the Chinese Prosperity Alliance had intended to drop on a military target several hundred miles away on the first day of World War III –or so their leaders had claimed when they were later put on trial for war crimes. Afterward, the capitol building had been rebuilt with a contemporary aesthetic that used composite materials, electrochromic glass, and self-healing concrete. Outdated 18th Century architecture, based on even more outdated ancient Roman architecture, was no longer popular, so the classic “dome” was no more. A series of multi-colored modern towers stood in its place. Most legislators used telepresence to attend sessions anyway, so the whole thing was really for the tourists.
Read the rest at Smashwords.com or Amazon.com:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1120616
https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Scope-Other-Stories-Speculative-Fiction/dp/1549874942/