The Next Step

Man's giant step, for all man, left a treaded print on the Moon's dusty earth, and the celebration lasted until the end of the century. Beyond the rise and fall of the computer revolution and the advent of the Information Super-gridlock, neither computer hardware or software, or an engineering genious, was needed to take the second step. A small child, Claudia Peck, walked the world through the second step with careful precision. She didn't entangle the world in a delerious scheme of propoganda, intrigue, or corruption. She posed the simple solution to the AID's epidemic that had evaded everyone, a cure for mental retardation and physical abnormalities, an end to childhood stress and suicide. All in all, the solution itself was not complex, and Claudia Peck's period of gestation gave the world nine months to conclude that if thirty two percent of the world's children were not born in a state of zero gravity, they would suffer from the common, though until then inexplicable, hardships of deformation and disease. And when she was born, the worlds fourteen trillion dollar effort to save her life climaxed when she died two days later. It had not been anticipated that a child born in zero gravity would need time to become physically adjusted to not only gravity, but the turbulance a re-entry.

Doctor Sylvia Olsen, Dr. Silver to her closer friends, wasn't the second child born in space. She wasn't in the first one hundred, she wasn't the smartest or the strongest, or even the one child who would eventually return to the Earth's surface. Her doctorate was in creative writing from Washington State University, where she received mediocre grades and little support from her teachers or the administration. In a short story entitled The Next Step, she theorized that space travel did not depend upon the faster ship or the stronger engine, but the single, evasive point that no one was willing to invest time, and subsequently, money, in space, if individual safety was not assured. The Next Step, including several grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors in its first draft, would never have caught attention if Sylvia hadn't emailed it to her Earthbound friend, Kerry. Kerry didn't care for the story, and let her brother, Roland, read it. Roland became fascinated with the idea of personal safety in space and made the first model of the EOT, Environment Outerspace Trainer, based on Sylvia's story. Kerry and Roland's father, an almost bankrupt plastics engineer, saw the model and was filled with a vision. The EOT hit production lines under several different contracts within three months.

The moon colony, Epsilon, held more than fourteen thousand children of space and a host of scientists, as well as the surviving parents. Space travel between Earth and Epsilon was severely impacted by a lack of an abundant, safe and cheap fuel, not to mention the tedious requirements of preventing all forms of disease from being transmitted through visitors. Dr. Sylvia Olsen's EOT promised renewed life to the weak, often imobile offspring of space, who were physically underdeveloped. Earth recognized the sudden independence of Epsilon the EOT's provided, and withdrew many of the contracts that had catapulted Roland and his father into the top one half percent of the wealthy. With the permission and applaud of Epsilon's ruling council, Roland moved the manufacturing facilities to a new orbiting colony. He introduced a new, far superior version of the EOT, now called the EOS, External Operating Skeleton. The super composite plastics were impregnable against debris in space travelling at high speeds. A single, cold fusion battery, provided not only a lifetime of environmental support including a microbiosphere that manufactured nutrient strains for life support, but also a host of accessories used for practically all forms of labor, from mining, to production and farming. With the compact design, the EOS was practical for office environments, and could safely move people from space to Earth.

Dr. Sylvia Olsen was happy with the outcome of Roland's success with her dreams, especially with the comfortable royalty she had been given. But she was plagued by the truth of her original story, and the direction the EOS's were taking.

Roland dabbed the paint brush at the model on his desk and then let go. A fleck of glossy white paint lifted from the brush and began an orgasmic climb upwards, slow and precise. Roland eventually saw the paint fleck and touched it with his finger, bringing its flight to an end. His office was small, though comparatively immense compared with most of the other accomadations on the Kerry. The walls were light blue with a single white stripe two feet from the floor. His eyes followed the room around though stopped at the doorway.

"I didn't know you were coming, Silver." He stood and smiled.

Sylvia looked past the blinking lights, meters and clocks whirring busily on the HUD of her mask, meeting Roland's eyes. "The Kerry is looking very nice, Roland." She thought it somewhat impractical to name the orbiter after Kerry, who had died from toxic inhalation of the paint fumes used on the first versions of the EOT. It only reminded her that the world was far from perfect, and that where she once had friends, only cold memories remained.

Roland pushed himself away from his desk, floating towards Sylvia. "Gravity will be working soon. Do you like the new EOS?"

Sylvia smiled from behind the facemask. Roland had sent her a prototype of the new style, considerably more adjustable than the last ones, reflecting that mobility did not make up for a lack of humanity. "A few complaints as usual."

Roland stopped himself. "Jesus, Sylvia, last time it was using the cold fusion batteries over the solar arrays. What is it now?" He smiled, though could not hide the stress that had been growing.

Sylvia looked behind her and sealed the door. "It's the laizer, Roland."

Roland smiled. "Marvelous, isn't it? It will cut through almost anything, except another EOS. We made sure the paint included a reflective material."

Sylvia shook her head. "What would I need with a laizer though? Especially one powerful enough to burn through a boulder in less than a second?"

Roland nodded his head. "Exactly. You never know what you would need it for."

"Look, Roland, it isn't just the laizer, its a lot of things, but not all separately."

Roland pushed himself from the ceiling back to his desk. He watched the way Sylvia moved around in the suit, imagining what she was like beneath it. He had never actually seen a space born human outside of their suit, though from what he had heard, he wasn't sure he wanted to. "I don't have a lot of time to talk about these things, Silver. We've gone over this philosophy hundreds of times."

Sylvia shook her head. "No, we haven't. This isn't a game or a fantasy anymore, Roland. Everyone is getting worried about the direction you are going with the EOS's."

Roland shrugged. "Everyone on Earth is. But that is normal, they always have been jealous of our success in space."

"I was looking at the survey of the original EOT chassis," she began, though was stopped.

"Ancient history. We've made vast improvements over the original model."

"Let me finish. The original EOT was never really tested in space, or for space. The chassis was not meant to deflect space debris, and the environment was not intended to support a human in a place of no atmosphere."

Roland frowned. "We didn't have much time, Sylvia. Need I remind you, the mortality rate in space was very high due to a lack of a suitable environment suit."

Sylvia shook her head. "The simulations the suit was tested under didn't specify that it needed to provide protection against ultraviolet or solar radiation, or protect the wearer from a high velocity impact. In fact, in the sealed documents, it was tested for nuclear fallout, various munitions, biological weapons, and was field tested as a replacement for almost all forms of infantry."

Roland swallowed then shrugged. "Practical applications, Silver. If two people get in a fist fight up here, they could do considerably damange to each other if not adequately protected."

"And they would do considerably more damage down there to everyone else. A cold fusion battery is more apt to fail than a solar array, or even just a flywheel storage cell. The only reason to use a cold fusion battery would be to power additional arms, such as a very powerful laizing weapon."

Roland shut his eyes. "Are you accusing me of making these for military purposes on Earth, or even up here?"

Sylvia shook her head. "No. In fact, I'm sorry to say, it was my idea in the first place, along with the suit."

"I know, I read the story."

"If you read it all, then you would have, or should have, remembered the end, where I speculated that a space suit designed for individual survival would become a military advantage over terran forces because of the requirements to survive up here." Sylvia walked towards Roland. She felt old and knew that soon, her time would be over.

"Alright, Sylvia, what do you want?" Roland crossed his legs.

Sylvia looked at him crossly. "I know that the information from Earth has been doctored."

Roland acted surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean trying to tell everyone out here that things on the surface are alright. If anyone tried to tune their microwave radio antennas to the surface rather than this orbiter, all they'd get is static. The only way that would happen is if some global block was in place, like large scale nuclear fallout."

"Silver, I'm surprised at you!" Roland gaped. "How can you accuse me of something so diabolical?"

Sylvia looked directly at Roland, the laizer charging meter creeping from zero to one hundred. "It isn't an accusation, Roland. I knew it would happen from the first time I figured out what happened to those government contracts that forced you into space. They weren't cancelled, they were increased. Everyone wanted these suits down there for their wars, and you kept making them. And then you moved all production up here when you figured it was getting to dangerous down there." She paused, watching Roland's face turn white. "The most amazing thing about us is we are backwards compatible. If our next step isn't the right one, we simply have to go back to the last, even if it means going all the way back to the first."

"What's that suppose to mean?" Roland stuttered.

Sylvia sighed. "It means we have to cut off the bad foot and do whatever we can." She pointed her arm at Roland and fired the laizer.

"And keeping anyone from taking anymore steps until we understand the first one."