Isaac's Dream, Chapter 1

In Chapter 0, we were introduced to the main characters of the novel at earlier points in their lives.

Verdan DeVang:  Young man adjusting to Neurogenic implants who dreams of joining the Senkan Mekkido Corps.
Johnny Kitara:  Verdan's friend and sidekick.
Lyshta LaVigne: A Genoman girl traumatized by the genetic zealotry of her father.

The goals of Chapter 1:  Introduce the reader to Verdan and Johnny at the adult stage and plant the seeds of their personalities.  Provide background to the universe through the eyes of the characters.  Set the stage for their coming adventures.

Known problems:  There are minor bits of narration and author interruptions left over from the original copy.  There is some dialogue that is enternal that should be external, but I'll be darned if I can type it.  I need to build a rivalry between the four Corporate factions that becomes apparent in later chapters.

Isaac’s Dream
Chapter 1

There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation;
why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise
the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?. 
-- Isaac Asimov

Here men from planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D.  We came in peace for all mankind.  While Verdan busied himself with homework, Johnny stared at the plaque attached to agold-trimmed landing strut of the ancient spacecraft just a few meters from the park bench they sat on and contemplated its meaning from a historical perspective. 

Sunlight filtered through the Dynaglass dome that housed the base of the Apollo 11 lunar module, warming them as it cast an eerie glow upon man’s first step onto alien soil.  Johnny suggested studying here because the setting tied in with history class, a lecture on early space flight and the failures of government to capitalize on its early successes. 

Johnny understood the lesson clearly.  The professor said the purpose of the course wasn’t to memorize the pivotal points in space travel history, but to gain a deeper understanding of the overall meaning to current society as a whole.  Sitting before one of humanity’s earliest accomplishments, watching Verdan waste his time pouring over mission logs, electronic books and briefing materials was boring and unnecessary.

Johnny stared at the lunar module intently, his head leaned back against the rail as his thoughts drifted, in search of the deeper meaning the professor had asked for.  He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to imagine what the Eagle really meant for all mankind.

Thoughts and emotions swirled around before gelling into something concrete.  This is nothing but a shrine to the  shortsightedness of man, Johnny thought as he took in the scene.  That means it's time for a sermon…  Without a second thought, he hopped up on the bench and spread his arms wide, inviting Verdan, a white-haired janitor and two passersby to listen as he rambled… 

“Friends, Moonlings, Senkans, lend me your ears!  I come to bury the age of governmentalism, not to praise it.”  While Shakespeare was a favorite of his, the students that came walking through the square on their way to afternoon classes seemed only mildly interested at first.  Verdan barely noticed as Johnny continued his rant.

“The evils that governments do to civilizations live on in our textbooks and exams.  The only good they ever did lies here, on the urbanized Sea of Tranquility.  I say to you that this pathetic spacecraft represents the bones of Caesar and Brutus.  It was the pinnacle of governmental achievement, the culmination of two thousand years of political wisdom; a monument to the best intentions of Free Men and self governance.” 

A group of students stopped to listen as Johnny was about to turn his rhetoric up a notch.  He noted with glee that Sheryl Miller was among them, the love of his life that didn’t even know he existed.  But there she stood, looking at him with a glowing, angelic smile, her brunette hair bracketing the face of his dreams…  He saw the crowd, but he spoke to her….

“And yet, look at it.  Look at the legacy of government,” he boomed.  “It is puny and pathetic…  A massive project involving hundreds and thousands of people, vast sums of blood and treasure pumped through government agencies that took more than a decade to achieve!  One giant leap?  Oh no, my friends.  Oh no,” he said, jumping from the bench to center himself between Sheryl and the object of his mirth. 

“This pitiful little footprint enshrined here for all of eternity represents the beginning of the end of the age of governmentalism, not something to be admired…”  Sheryl applauded and cheered for him and the crowd joined in.

“Look around you!  Look at what the Free Market has wrought!  Massive structures that tower above this feeble excuse for greatness.”  Johnny ran and pointed to each one, for effect. 

“The Einstein Institute!”  Applause.

“Soichiro Honda Hall!”  More people arrived to see the spectacle unfold.

“The Palisades of Glass surrounding the brilliance of New Tokyo, just over there in the distance!  This university alone should be enough to convince us all that the four Corporates were wise to throw off the shackles of government and embrace capitalism! We’ve brought a billion Senkans here, and an entire civilization full of hope and promise.”

“And what did they bring?” he asked the eyes of the woman he adored, completely out of character for himself.  “The ego of the ‘honorable’ bureaucrats popped like a monstrous pimple and ejected 3 men in a propellant driven dinghy.  Two of them landed here, took a few pictures and went home to live out their lives wondering why they never came back to claim their birthright.  The difference is simple!  Government lives off people, while people live off capitalism.  LONG LIVE CAPITALISM!” 

The crowd went wild with cheers and whistles as Johnny felt a pain in his side.

He awoke to Verdan poking him in the ribs and the scene evaporated in an instant. 

“You were snoring,” Verdan said, motioning an augmented finger to indicate something on Johnny’s face.  “You should get more sleep, just not here,” he added.

“Aww, I should have known I was asleep.  People were actually listening to me,” he said, using a sleeve to wipe drool from the side of his mouth as he sat up and stretched.  “I had a dream.  You were in it, which makes it a scary dream.”

“Not as scary as it was to Sheryl,” Verdan said.  “She walked by while you were laying there with your mouth wide open.”

Johnny’s face instantly turned red.  “That’s great.  Just super.  I can never do anything right around that woman.  Did she say anything, or just laugh at me?”

“Umm, oh yeah,” he said without looking up.  “She said that it was nice to know what your mouth looked like when your foot wasn’t in it.”

Johnny wanted to crawl under the bench and die, but thought better of it.  He shut down his datapad and stowed it in a backpack, finished with studies for the next few days.  Verdan still had most of his current assignments left to do, from the looks of it.  Twiddling his thumbs to stay awake didn’t last long and boredom overcame him again after just a few minutes, so he looked for something else to occupy his mind.

The signpost planted next to the Eagle caught his eye and he read the names of places listed there for the umpteenth time, remembering why he hated coming here: Old Tokyo – 384,404 kilometers, Mars – 54.6 million kilometers, Alpha Centauri – .4 HL days, Terra Nova – 2.5 HL days… The HyperLight measurements always made him cringe.  Man, this is a college, he thought.  They need to get that right, or at least sync them with their own study guides.  It only takes 2.2 HL days to get to Terra Nova now…

He looked back at Verdan, engrossed in a bunch of stuff he didn’t think was that difficult or necessary, thinking of a hundred things he’d rather be doing than hanging out in Eagle Square on a Tuesday night.  “Yo, Verd, you’re kidding me.  Are you trying to memorize that stuff for real, or just keeping me out here for show and tell?”

Without looking up from his datapad, he said “Johnny, I don’t have a memory Aug like you, although I should.  Only the top three or four people in our class are going to get any recognition at all, and I intend to be one of them, so either sit down and help me get through this or be quiet so I can finish.”

A lifetime of friendship told Johnny that Verdan was focusing on the words but missing the bigger picture.  “Look, Tinsley wants an overview, not a memristor dump from an aughead like me.”  Verdan’s gaze stayed focused on the datapad, so Johnny tried it another way.

“Do you think they had any idea what they started,” he asked, poking Verdan on the shoulder and pointing his other hand at the Eagle.  “When they landed here, did Neil Armstrong have a clue that someday, people would come here to Eagle Square to do their homework, stick gum under this bench and wonder if they had any idea what they started?”

Verdan looked up from his textbook, slightly confused by the odd question.  “What?”

Good, I’ve got your attention, Johnny thought.  Now I just have to find a way to make you engage the subject and the next few years will be a breeze.  Taking a few bounding steps in the low-G environment to peer through the protective glass at the remnants of the Eagle, Johnny readjusted his focus and found that someone had carved ‘Billy loves Kate - 3265’ in the barrier. 

“Let’s try it this way:  Do you think they knew we’d eventually come up here and encase this thing in a tower of glass, so that one day we’d have a place to scratch enduring forget-me-nots to women we probably didn’t have a second date with?”

Recognition washed over Verdan’s face as he seemed to realize it was a restatement of the question asked by Professor Tinsley in history class for the following day’s lecture, regurgitated in Johnny-speak. 

Come on, Verdan, take the bait… He could see the gears turning, the engine pumping…  Verdan was trying to come up with an answer that would get Johnny off his back.  “We learned all this stuff in third grade, tough guy.  What’s the problem?”

“You know what, Johnny?  That’s about the nuttiest question I’ve ever heard.  No, I take that back.  That is the single nuttiest question you have ever uttered.  Did you forget to feed the squirrels today?”

“I’m trying to feed them right now.  Humor me.”  Johnny laughed, looking back at the rat’s nest of datapads and the remnants of their lunch to see a handsome, athletic young man all grown up, his black goatee and spiked hair conspiring with furrowed brows to tell Johnny an answer was near. 

“All right, you win.”  Verdan put aside the datapad that contained thousands of years of human history, got up from the bench walked to stand beside his friend.  They both looked down at Armstrong’s legacy, a boot print embedded in moon dust more than a thousand years ago. 

“I don’t think they had a clue.  They came here a few times at the peak of the industrial revolution and then abandoned this primitive hunk of junk at the first signs of societal apathy, when people seemed to lose interest in the program.  They spent a decade reaching their goal and forgot to define what came next, then misinterpreted public reaction and lost focus on the importance of what getting here really meant.” 

So far, so good.  “Keep going.”

“Alright.  In their minds, that footstep was the end of their journey, rather than the beginning of a new one.  In reality, they traded the Apollo legacy for a hundred years of mutually assured dysfunction.  The ensuing growth of the government, combined with resources needed by a growing military-industrial complex consumed all the creativity and capital necessary to make the voyage again.  As a society, they let science fiction be a surrogate for real scientific advancement and spent a few hundred years more trying to change the weather before they finally realized that government was a rock around their necks and not a slingshot to the stars.”

Johnny was impressed.  “Wow, that was deep.  Does it hurt when you do that, or is your brain finally starting to wrap itself around this whole college thing?” 

“I just figured you were asking a serious question for a change,” Verdan patted him on the back and returned to his studies, “if that’s even possible for you.” 

“Nah, everything’s a game at this point.  It’s a good question, though.  If the Americans and Russians had any idea what was in the palm of their hands, maybe they wouldn’t have thrown it all away like that.  Their future could have been so much better than it was.”

Verdan shrugged.  “Maybe they didn’t have a choice?”

Now there’s a peculiar suggestion, Johnny thought.  “Why wouldn’t they have had a choice?”

***
“Six years of college, second in my class, and I end up on this garbage scow.” 

Verdan looked at the residue of years of neglect on the exploration Mech’s transaxle and shook his head.  Rusted and cracked, devoid of any lubricants that weren’t rolled into smelly globs of goo pasted to the inside of the housing, he saw it as a symbol of his future.

This ship is the place where dreams go to die a slow, painful death, and I am its newest captain.

“Johnny,” he hollered from the gearbox room, putting down the sonocutter and wiping the sweat from his forehead.  “Explain to me again why a career in xeno-archaeology made so much sense.”

Johnny worked a few decks above Verdan, cleaning the cobwebs out of the transaxle’s drive motor.  He peered down the empty axle tube and said, “Because we hate studying ancient Japanese pottery fragments?”

Verdan smiled and looked up, seeing Johnny’s face silhouetted at the other end of the tube.  The sight comforted him just a little, knowing he didn’t have to endure this hell alone.  “Yeah, that wasn’t much of an alternative, was it?”

“That’s what you get for going behind your dad’s back to get us into the Mech leagues, man.”

“Well, I knew we weren’t going to get in with his blessing, but I guess I should have known the Senior VP of Senka Exploration would have spies watching me.”  Verdan’s mood soured as the conversation returned to the reason for his forced captivity.

“Especially after you..”

“LET’S not go there, Johnny.  I’m not in the mood.”

The longer I’m here, the more I hate this ship.  But why?  It’s a great ship…  As they both returned to work, Verdan’s frustration began to take its toll.

Okay, it’s a decent ship that smells like a dead fish buried in shallow dirt, but Johnny’s here with me and our future couldn’t be brighter.  We have a mentor for our residency, a job half the people in Senka would kill to have, and the entire galaxy is at our fingertips.  All we need is our first assignment and we’ll start the journey of a lifetime… Maybe I shouldn’t feel so empty inside?

His inner thoughts betrayed the moment of optimism:  It’s not Mekkido…  Verdan sighed in defeat, realizing the trap he was in would only get tighter if he squirmed.

All my life, I’ve had my sights set on getting into the Corps after college with Johnny on my team, but dad insists that I follow in the family footsteps.  For six years of college, it was archaeology, biology, chemistry, and astronomy.  The best grades, the highest level of achievement, all to prove myself worthy of responsibility and trust, and this is what I get for my efforts?  It’s not fair.

Through the hatch, he could see two more Mechs shackled to the wall for storage.  Johnny said they were in worse shape than Explorer, towed here after they suffered system failure by the previous occupants who obviously ran them to death and never maintained them. Maybe it’s not about life being fair?  Maybe it’s about doing what I have to do and making myself so valuable that someone takes care of my needs before I end up just like them, collecting dust in a musty old ship…

“It’s awful quiet down there,” Johnny said, attempting to stir up some more conversation.

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time letting go of my own dreams to make Dad’s dreams come true,” Verdan remarked.  “He’s all about his legacy, and keeping a DeVang in the VP slot at Senka.”

“Yeah, I know that’s tough on you but I don’t mind it so much.  For me, this assignment is a dream come true, just a different dream than what I started w…”

“Well, for me,” Verdan jumped in, “it feels like when I broke up with Penny Brooks in our freshman year.  You remember her?”

“Oh, hell yeah.  Good old Penny Brooks, big on charm and long on looks, with pants so tight she didn’t need books…  She was way too good for you, and you were heartsick for months.  I've never seen you fall that hard for someone.”

“Well, I don’t know about her being too good for me, but the heartsick part was right.  You want to know the only difference between her and this?  At least I had her before I lost her, ya know what I mean?  There were no regrets, and nothing left to discover.”

“Mark Ramirez thought there was something left to discover…”

I wish you’d forget that part, Verdan thought to himself.  He was so absorbed by comparing the past to their present he missed seeing his sonocutter rise into the air and disappear up the axle shaft.  Johnny never could let Verdan beat himself up in peace.

I want to feel better about being on this ship, but what if I don’t put my heart into this and we fail?  I know dad pulled some strings to get us here, but can he keep us here against our will?  I’m my own man now!  I should be able to do anything I want to do, not just what he allows me to do.

Those thoughts simmered for a while without boiling over.  He didn’t want Johnny to realize how conflicted he was.  No, I have to stop thinking like this or I’ll go crazy.  This assignment would be a dream for anyone, and having Johnny along will make it a lot easier to stomach until something better comes along.  I just need to get over it and move on, just like I did with Penny. 

Resolving to make the best of it, Verdan reached for the sonocutter to free a bearing from the housing but it wasn’t where he’d left it.  There was only one possible explanation.

“Johnny, quit screwing around and give me back my cutter!  We’re on a deadline!”

From a darkened corner far above him in the voluminous Mech bay, Verdan heard a faint chuckle.  His augmented hearing analyzed the sound and pinpointed its source almost instantly.  “Johnny, I have no idea how you got up there without me hearing you, but if that’s the way you want to play it, game on!”

Verdan took advantage of the low G environment and launched himself up through the open hatch toward his erstwhile companion and crew chief at near hostile velocity.  Johnny tried to avoid the impact but his magboots wouldn’t let him move fast enough to avoid the impact, and the wrestling match Johnny never could win was over in a heartbeat. 

Verdan gave his friend a playful thump after recovering his tool.

“OW!  My ego!  You hurt my ego!” Johnny teased.  “Wait, you’re the one with the ego…” 

Laughing, Verdan shoved himself back towards Explorer with ease.  “That’s what I love about you, Johnny.  The only time you aren’t making me laugh is when you’re sleeping.”

“Lucky you that I only sleep a few hours a day.  I mean, we only have 300 years to live.  Just think of all that Sim humor you’d have to endure if I was a sleepaholic.”

“I think you’re a dorkaholic,” Verdan said, crawling back into the gearbox.  “Next time, try hiding the cutter in your ear so it fills up some of that empty space you got in there.” 

“Oh, that’d be good,” came the expected retort as he followed Verdan back down to finish his work, still rubbing his head.  “That might actually help me get a date with Miller!  I hear she likes guys with sharp minds...”

“Sheryl Miller, the ‘only girl in the galaxy’ for you…”  Verdan laughed and shook his head.  “Dude, you were in the same class with her for four years and never said more than a handful of words while in her presence because you couldn’t stop stuttering.  What makes you think you’ll have any better luck now that she’s our mission planner?”

Verdan never understood why, but simply being in the same room with her brought unending amounts of terror to Johnny, reducing the otherwise confident young man to a muttering pile of mush that she found neither attractive nor interesting. 

“Just call it therapy, big guy,” Johnny said.  “I may not have muscles, and my foot might get stuck in my mouth once in a while, but at least my ego would never push her out of bed in the morning…”

“Keep dreaming, Johnny.  She hates guys like you.  She’s a gearhead!  A sports freak!  She’s athletic, talented...  She likes guys who...  And you… don’t even have facial hair.  You’re….”  Verdan’s voice trailed off when he couldn’t think of anything more to say. 

“Come on, Super Jock, spit it out, I ain’t got all day…”  Johnny ate this kind of conversation up, and Verdan knew it.  The kid had always had the upper hand in a battle of puns and witty remarks because Verdan fought with a spoon.  “Ya know what, Verd?  You’re the typical Mech jock type, born oozing intelligence and charisma, but you can’t finish a joke to save your life.”

“It’s just one more piece of the puzzle that makes up you and me, Johnny.  We complement each other.  Whatever you suck at, and that’s a lot of things, I make up for.  See, I do the heavy lifting and attract the babes and you make them laugh.  What’s not to love?”

“The part where I don’t go home with the babes, bonehead.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I can’t help you there."  Verdan knew he had wounded Johnny's pride, though he didn't mean to.  "The rest of it works out though.  We’ve never lost a prize we went for back in school, or even when we were kids.  That’s because we’re the perfect team, buddy!  You and me against the world!” 

“You and me, bro,” Johnny replied.  “So, you need help with that punchline, or are you gonna leave me hanging?”

Verdan poked his head into the axle tube, tossed a grin up to his friend and said, “If the whole human race died out, and all that was left were you and Miller, you still wouldn’t have a pickup line that’d work if you had a cutter in both ears.”

Johnny smiled back, his feelings miraculously healed.  “Yeah, yeah, rub it in, superjock.  I had to wait long enough to get it.  You’re getting slow, ya know that?  That’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.”

Verdan knew Johnny wouldn’t stop until he had the last word, but it was time to get back to business.  “Okay, okay, I give up, funny guy.  Why don’t you give the new captain an engineer’s rundown on the Bloodsucker instead of making me look dumb, huh?”

Just like switching gears, Johnny went from comedian to engineer in two seconds flat.  Almost.

“Finally!  Show and tell!”  He dropped what he was working on and closed his eyes, calling up the requested data from his memory Aug.  “Okay, this thing’s a 300 meter long archaeological vessel, outfitted for deep space excursions.  That’s awfully big for the crew of five or six we’ll have, plus Sims.  Hell, we had more people in our dorm room on more than one occasion, and it was a broom closet.”

“You still never got laid….”

“You, shut up.  I’m trying to work here.  The ship is mostly cargo bay and Mech hold, about 560,000 cubic meters of cargo space and this Mech facility, which makes it resemble a flying tick.  That’ll come in handy if we ever get out of space dock and into the field to dig something up.”  He slapped his head, “Oh, now I get it..  Bloodsucker.  Good one there.”

“Anyways, it was built in 3326, a little more than 50 years ago.  That should explain the smell, and the fact that this Mech is a -13 config instead of a -21.  Great, now I have to order different parts.  Oh well, the rest of the ship is standard issue: pasty white hallways, detachable captain’s yacht that you’re gonna love, and these three beautiful non-combat Mechs that don’t run.”

The Blahs of Doom and Despair were returning to Verdan as Johnny described the perfect coffin.  It might as well be solitary confinement on a prison ship.  The Straggler was a cage that held his body, but he knew his soul belonged in the Arena.  “Thanks, John.  Sounds great.”

The silence that followed spoke volumes.  A minute went by, then two, and then five.  Verdan uttered nothing but the occasional curse. 

“Hey Verdan,” Johnny asked.

“Yeah, John?”  Verdan was irritated, but it wasn’t because of Johnny’s antics.  It will be a long time before I’ll accept being stuck doing something I loathe, even if I am well trained for it.

Johnny probably knew he was on thin ice because Verdan rarely shortened his name to just ‘John.’  “This is a pretty good ship, ya know?  It may not be a spot on the crew of an Arena class Mech like we dreamed about in college, but we have our own Mechs, and, you know, I think we’ll do ok, and maybe…” 

Verdan bashed a wrench off a support strut, signaling Johnny that it was time to change the subject. 

Johnny cringed for a moment, but didn’t give up.  “We’ll work our way to the top, buddy.  We always do.”

“But we’re not starting at the bottom of the Arena leagues,” Verdan almost screamed.  “That last thing I want to do is work my way to the top of the archaeological division, only to look back at my life and regret that I never got to do what I wanted to do in the first place, which was pilot a Mech and kick Genoman ass in the Arena!” 

“Yo, Verd, chill out man.  Taking this assignment right out of college wasn’t’ what either of us wanted, but it’s what we’ve got to get us from here to there.” 

“John, just be quiet for a while, okay?”

The quiet lasted for about two seconds as the CommLink chirped and irritated them both.  Verdan popped out of the hatch again, angrily waving his hand at the console.  A muscle twitch sent a signal to the neurogenic implant in his finger, which activated the C’Link emitters. 

Miller’s gorgeous form, displayed as a holodynamic projection appeared on the deck below them.  Verdan's augmented eyes widened a bit, but not as much as Johnny’s.

Although she was light years away from them, the avatar projected by the CommLink system was a breathtaking, full color recreation, from the individual follicles of hair right down to the panty line ridges across the back of her cute little bubble butt that drove Johnny crazy. 

Verdan was grateful for the death of the old holographic technology that was never this hot.

“Hi Verdan!  Are you ready for your first assignment?”  Even as a projection, her smile was so bright it could light a small planet.

Verdan grimaced as Johnny chimed in.  “Oh sure, talk t-to the guy with the big muscles and ig... ignore the guy who does all the work…”  The best intentions of his affections were lost in the moment and Miller only managed to raise an eyebrow at his awkwardness.

“Hello, Sheryl,” Verdan chuckled, grimacing at the sight of his friend crashing and burning again.  “We’re almost ready, but the Mechs we were given are going to need more work, and I’m short a few in the crew department.  It’s just me and numb nuts so far,” he said, tilting his head towards Johnny.

“That’s okay,” she said. “This is just a shakedown cruise for you two.  You’ll be picking up some cargo from a deep space crew and delivering it here, to the Bethesda outpost on Greely 3, so you’ll have the time you need to make whatever repairs are necessary.  When you get here, I’ll have a dig set up for you so you can put that thing to work, and a recruit or three for you to pick from. The coordinates for the pickup have been uploaded to your command console.”

He couldn’t resist getting Johnny’s goat, especially after his antics today.  “Bethesda, huh?  I guess dinner’s on you then?”  He didn’t have to look at Johnny to know he was snarling, but it was all in fun.

“Sounds like a plan to me, Captain,” she said with a wink.  Johnny swore at Verdan when her avatar disappeared.

As he listened to Johnny squirm, Verdan figured this might be a fun way of life after all.