Launch (13 page)

On Thursday, July 4, 2553, the Sun rose above
the Sierra Nevada mountain range on a gorgeous day in California.

Just before 10:00 a.m., David precisely
balanced
Origin
on edge as it descended over the Pacific Ocean toward
the starship’s landing pad at Vandenberg. Even with only two engines, the noise
outside the ship was deafening, and no one was in sight. He rotated the starship
to hover from engine E-2 and landed exactly 503 Earth years after launch.

Cougar Flight took off their spacesuits and put
on their freshly laundered NASA jumpsuits. After the shut-down checklist had
been completed, David lifted the safety cover over the master power switch and
looked at Claire. She nodded and smiled, and he flipped the switch to the
ground power mode.

They made their way through airlocks and
passageways to an exit and stepped out of the ship. Under a gigantic canopy
that had been draped over
Origin
, a six foot tall robot greeted them. “Good
morning, Cougar Flight. Please accompany this robot to the decontamination and
examination facility.”

Claire was surprised. She and David had been in
radio contact with Earth and had been told there would be decontamination and a
medical examination immediately after arrival. But they had not been told about
the canopy or the robot.

It had four arms: one on each side, one in
front, and one in back. Front and back arms were folded flush into recesses. Legs,
ankles, and feet were jointed and shaped so it could walk or run equally well
forward or backward. A clear dome, about the size of a head and shaped like an
egg, was centered on the shoulders, narrow end down. Sensors in the dome allowed
the robot to simultaneously see all forms of light, including ultraviolet and
infrared, in almost all directions. At the base of the dome, a collar contained
sensors that gave the robot acute senses of smell and hearing. Built into each
hand, lights and sensors allowed the robot to feel, smell, and see very small things.
Retractable tools were built into the fingers, hands, and forearms.

Claire and David followed the robot to a
building built into the canopy edge. It stopped beside a door that opened
automatically and said, “Please step into the airlock.”

They stepped into a room just big enough for
them to stand side by side. The door behind them closed, and after a whoosh of
air blew past them from top to bottom, the door in front of them opened.

Two robots were waiting inside. One said, “Good
morning Dr. Archer, General Archer. Please remove all of your clothes for an
examination and a decontamination shower. Would you prefer separate
facilities?”

Simultaneously they said, “No,” and began
taking their clothes off.

Claire and David were given a through medical
examination and were scanned by a diagnostic machine. Then they were given a
choice of soap, shampoo, and wash cloths and escorted to a shower. The door automatically
closed behind them, leaving them sealed in a room with two shower heads
extending from a wall, but there were no controls.

The sealed room and lack of controls began to
alarm Claire as she recalled the history of Aushwitz during World War II: people
were sealed into “showers” there and gassed to death. Then David asked, “How do
you turn these things on?”

A disembodied voice answered, “You say what
water temperature and what kind of pattern you want, sir.”

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Warm,
regular.” Immediately, warm water in a normal shower pattern came from his
shower head. The other shower stayed off until Claire said, “Warm, regular.”

When they finished their showers, another door
opened, and waiting robots gave them large, warm towels.

Claire was shown pictures of different styles
of hair and makeup. She chose a “mild” daytime face and her usual short hairstyle
that kept her natural wave. Her hair was dried and styled by one robot while a
second robot applied makeup.

David declined everything except a mirror and a
hairbrush.

After Claire’s makeup and hair were done, they
were escorted to a dressing room. New jumpsuits that were replicas of their 21
^st
-century
NASA jumpsuits were laid out with new undergarments, socks, and shoes. A choice
of deodorants and antiperspirants were beside the clothes.

The clothing and shoes were of superior quality
and more comfortable than what NASA had provided, and everything fit perfectly.

Impressive
, Claire thought as she zipped up her jumpsuit and checked herself in
the mirror.
But how long is this quarantine going to last? When will we see
real people?

Just then, another door opened. She and David passed
through another airlock and stepped out onto a gold carpet. Blue sky was
overhead, and a gentle onshore breeze brought the smell of fresh sea air.

Eight foot tall robots with “POLICE” on the
front and back were standing about eight feet apart beside each side of carpet.
Behind them, dozens of people burst into enthusiastic cheers and applause.

An attractive woman more than six feet tall
with wide-set, soft brown eyes, black hair, and smooth, coffee-with-cream skin,
walked on the carpet toward Claire and David. A small group followed her.

She smiled and said, “I am Amira Saleh,
President of the United States. Welcome back to Earth.” They shook hands, and she
introduced the small group with her that included the vice president, several
senators and congressmen, and her husband, Omar.

The President escorted Claire and David to her waiting
aircraft. It resembled a streamlined minivan with a skirt at the bottom. A
narrow, rounded front tapered back to a wider middle. Four small turbines that
resembled jet engines were mounted in two pairs on the top at the back between three
fins.

Claire and David stepped through a wide,
sliding door to a limousine seating arrangement and politely took the two rear
facing seats in the middle. The President and her husband sat in two of the
three seats facing them. The doors closed, a seat belt and shoulder harness automatically
locked around them, and almost inaudibly the aircraft took off vertically. When
it was above nearby obstacles, it accelerated and small wings folded down into
place.

David looked over his shoulder at the empty
seat in the front center of the aircraft. “Excuse me, Madam President, where’s
the pilot?”

She smiled. “Elf is flying General Archer. It’s
built in.”

“Does that have something to do with Elf
Corporation?”

“Yes, General. I plan to talk to you about Elf
at lunch.”

“Did I get a promotion while we were gone?”

“You were retired as a four star General when
the Air Force was disbanded. Doctor Archer was retired as a three-star
Lieutenant General.”

With a surprised expression, Claire said,
“Disbanded? There’s no more Air Force?”

“Or any other military services. The world has
been at peace for more than a hundred and seventy years. You are the only
living people who have served in the military.”

Claire and David looked at each other and
smiled. He said, “It looks like we’re unemployed.”

She nodded. “Isn’t that wonderful!”

As they flew along the coastline en route to a
welcome ceremony at Los Angeles Stadium, Claire looked down longingly. “Madam
President, we’ve been cooped up inside small spaces for a long time. Would it
be possible for us to stop for a walk on the beach?”

The President smiled sympathetically. “We can
do that. Land on the beach now, Elf.”

The same disembodied voice Claire and David had
heard in the shower said, “Yes, ma’am.”

While the aircraft banked and descended in a
large circle, the President removed her shoes. “I’ve always enjoyed walking
barefoot in the sand.” Claire and David took their shoes and socks off and
rolled up the legs of their jumpsuits.

They strolled in the sand near the water. Claire’s
eyes filled with tears of joy as she listened to the ocean and felt the warmth
of the sunlight, the breeze, and the sand on her bare feet. She looked up at
the sky and spread her arms wide. “I never knew just walking on the beach could
feel so good!”

After a few minutes of silence, David said, “Madam
President, I’ve never heard anything like your accent. Would you mind telling
me where you’re from?”

She laughed. “That’s funny. Can you imagine how
your twenty-first century accent sounds to me? How did the language of
Shakespeare sound to you?”

He grinned. “I was never able to get into
Shakespeare, mostly because of the language barrier. I imagine we’re going to
have to learn to speak English all over again.”

“Omar and I were born and raised in Yemen. . .
. I would like for you and Claire to call me Amira.”

David asked, “Doesn’t the Constitution require
that the president be born in America?”

“The seventeen eighty-nine Constitution
required that the president be a natural born citizen of the United States of
America. But that requirement was dropped from the twenty-four seventy-six
Constitution because it was irrelevant. Everybody in the world now is a natural
born citizen of the United States with equal rights and elected
representation.”

“You were elected by the whole world?”

“A majority of the voters, yes,” she said and
turned back to her aircraft. Claire, David, and Omar followed.

David said, “It was generally accepted that the
President of the United States was the most powerful person in the world when
we left. I guess that’s really true for you.”

“Depending on the events of the day, I may be
the most politically powerful person in the world. But you and Claire are the
most famous and admired people in the world. Everybody has grown up learning
about you since we were old enough to have memories. I feel truly privileged to
meet you.”

“Thank you, Madam . . . Amira.”

Claire said, “A world at peace is more than we
dared hope for.”

Amira smiled. “I think you’ll find the world is
much kinder and gentler now.”

“An event like this would have been covered by
mobs of reporters in the twenty-first century,” David said. “I haven’t seen
any.”

“The law now requires the media to respect the
rights and needs of all people, including those who may be newsworthy. They
were using part of the video transmissions from robots beside the carpet where
we met. If you look up you’ll see two taxis with cameras covering our walk. The
pictures are being sent to the networks and to the giant screens in the, Los
Angeles Stadium.”

David looked up. “They’re called taxis? We
would have called them vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, VTOLs.”

“The technical name is still VTOL,” Amira said,
“but the common name now is taxi.”

The four of them took their seats. The
presidential taxi then took off and accelerated to its legal speed limit, just
below the speed of sound, eastbound over the Pacific.

“The audience has been waiting,” Amira said.
“We won’t have time to clean our feet and put on our shoes. We can do that
after we leave the Stadium.”

“You mean we’ll be introduced barefooted?”
David asked.

Amira smiled. “With sandy feet, yes. It will
give people something else to talk about. Besides, one of the movies I saw
about you and Claire said you like to go barefoot.”

Claire raised an eyebrow.
One of the movies?

They continued at top speed into a dense swarm
of other taxis flying at high speed in all different directions and altitudes
over Santa Monica and Los Angeles. The President’s taxi seemed to be trying to
make up the time they had spent walking on the beach. It didn’t slow down or
change course, and the swarm seemed to magically part before them.

“It’s amazing how Elf moves these . . . taxis
out of our way just in nick of time,” Claire said.

Amira shook her head. “That’s just an illusion.
Elf knows the precise position, speed, direction, and destination of every
aircraft in the world at each instant. That data is used to control all
aircraft, including ours, and to get them to their destination at maximum speed.”

“That’s even more amazing,” Claire said.

“Elf is doing this while performing countless
other complex tasks, a routine example of its computing power,” Amira said.
“People take it for granted.”

Claire expected Los Angeles to be different,
but the only man-made landmark she recognized was the Getty Center in the Santa
Monica Mountains. She looked in vain for the campus of UCLA. She thought it should
have been visible from the Getty.

The air was crystal clear, and the city resembled
a giant park. No streets or freeways were visible. Many different designs of
tall buildings surrounded by trees, grass, gardens, and parks were widely
scattered across the Los Angeles basin.

The reason why the buildings were so widely
separated became obvious to Claire as she saw taxis fly around and between the
buildings. She saw one fly up to a building and perch on the side, like a fly.
As she looked around, she saw taxis on the sides of other buildings.