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A Marriage Made in Heaven
from the book: Life Will Get You in the End:
Short stories by David Satterlee
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| Life Will Get You in the End: Short Stories by David Satterlee |
A Marriage Made in Heaven
The colony ship “Akasha” was in serious trouble. Of course,
it was continuing on its trajectory, but it was only a few shift rotations from
becoming colder than the two dozen pairs of cryogenic stasis chambers it
carried. Something terrible, and terribly unexpected, had happened. Akasha was
too far into the ether to be helped… and too far out to even signal her status.
Everybody and everything on board was instantaneously at
risk. The impossible had happened; all power generators, and all systems, had
gone offline together when the power distribution buss failed. Twenty-four
mated pairs of colonists might never know what had happened. But the captain,
the officers, and every member of the crew sure did. Dave had happened. And, it
fell to Dave to save them all… if he could.
I’m so sorry that I dropped that wrench into your power
trunk distribution venue. You’ve been a very good ship. I’ve tried to serve you
well. Your internal systems reactor never deserved the kind of power surge that
I caused by my carelessness. I’ve repaired and reset everything I can find. I
know that I’ve taken for granted your excellent environmentals; they were over
spec’d and I appreciate that, but we’re starting to have trouble rebreathing
our own air. This whole systems reboot really needs to work. I trust you. I
love you. I’ll hold my mind with you the whole way. Let’s do it.
Dave, the ship’s senior engineer sat alone; he had asked the
rest of the department crew to leave so that he could concentrate, without
distraction, on what he now had to do. Dave closed his eyes, drew a deep
breath, centered his mind, opened his eyes again, and reconnected local battery
backup power to the Engineering Department’s OmniSoft 2040(c) central command
console. Dedicated indicator lights flashed in a series as the xBIOS pre-boot
self-test routine executed. The GUI surface flashed, went dark again, and
presented the words: “Execute authorization pass-gesture to begin.” The
engineer, realizing he had forgotten to do so, began breathing again.
Thank you. Dave made his level-ZED pass-gesture and
leaned back slightly to watch the boot-log scroll across his supplemental debug
display. It was necessary to watch the process with a certain intense
detachment. It was okay to blink and it was even okay to glance away, but it
tempted fate to be indifferent. There is something about major systems that
expect and respond positively to your undivided attention during start-up. On
the other hand, you can’t presumptuously let yourself indulge definite
expectations. Major systems are also especially sensitive to
