[Excerpt: Personal Diary of 'Darla Richardson']
Diary Entry May 1, 2130 --
Hello? Is this on? Oh.
Um....
I guess I should start at the beginning. That's what Doctor Harding said.
A month ago, I was born for the second time.
And I'm still not sure if I like it.
[Excerpt: Medical Journal, Doctor Everett Smith]
The nanites that we had designed to help counteract the tissue damage inflicted by early-era cryogenic storage technology have returned from the assemblers. Tests of tissue flash-frozen in the same method as late 20th century cryogenics have proved positive, but my superiors are apprehensive about using them on frozen shareholders without first testing on a guinea pig, where we can actively test neural retention.
And so, searching through the back storage, we have come across an anomoly: a cryogenic subject with a legacy rich enough to keep the subject in stasis, but not quite enough to allow her to be unfrozen without outside financial help. I have drawn up a contract with her current executor: in exchange for all of the funds in the legacy, the use of her as a guinea pig, and around 10,000 credits, we will decant her as successfully as we can.
The subject's name is Darla Robinson. We don't have too much data on her... apparently the legacy was a gift from a rich admirer, when she died young.
We start tomorrow. I cannot wait.
[Continuing exerpt: Diary]
Consiousness was a fleeting thing at first. I vaguely remember colors, sensations, chills and fevers. I'm told these are normal sense and nerve tests when a subject is 'decanted' from 'cryosleep'... whatever that means. Apparently I died very young... 25.
But does that mean I'm 25? Or am I 157? Or am I 23, since I cannot remember what people tell me are the last two years of my life?
Am I Darla Richardson? Or just someone who thinks she is?
I'm told these doubts are very normal... especially for someone who was frozen for so long, which such severe cryo-trauma. But it doesn't stop them from keeping me up late at night.
Physical Therapy is often jokenly referred to as Pain and Torture. There's a reason for it.
Darla leaned against the wall, panting her breath in and out, as her teacher watched her. Darla stood five feet five inches in height, and had a slim build over a thin frame. Her mousy brown hair was currently twisted into a long braid down her back, and blue eyes sparkled under her eyelids. She was wearing a strange excercise outfit which covered all of her skin, and was a little thicker than she'd usually like, hiding her body under ornamental layers of cloth. Luckily the cloth was specially designed to breathe, or she'd have been overheating more than she was already.
She looked up and sighed as her therapist approached. She was beginning to severely dislike Dr. Katrisha Adams.
"Up up, " said Dr. Adams, clapping her hands in time with the syllables. "It's time to get back to work. If we don't work you hard now, we might never get you back into shape." She pointed to a pair of staffs with heavy padding on the ends. "And for fun, Ms. Martial Artist, we'll be sparring for a bit."
Darla smiled, and limped slightly over to the bop sticks, picking one up and twirling it. She had gotten pretty good with martial arts before, well, before she couldn't remember any more, and had apparently been practicing up until her death. So this was indeed her favorite kind of workout. She slid one foot slightly back, and held the bop stick in two hands, right hand providing control, and left hand holding it still. Dr. Adams settled across from her, and they set for a quick match.
It was very quick. Darla picked herself up from the mat, where she had fallen when Dr. Adams had tripped her. The doctor smiled at her. "The least you could do is give me a workout."
Darla frowned, and set herself again, feeling a flicker of frustration. And again, with a series of quick moves, Dr. Adams dropped her to the mat. She rubbed her neck, hoping that it would stimulate her nerves somehow. She had died falling out of a tree: her neck had broken, severing her spinal cord. Nanotech editors had knitted her spine back together for her, but the match wasn't perfect enough for some physical reactions, slowing her reflexes. It was galling, being a martial artist and not being able to move like she could remember.
She sighed. Getting mad wouldn't help her fight better, it would just help her get knocked down some more. She needed calm, not fury.
Darla stood up, her bop stick by her side, as she remembered a simple meditation from the two years she had lost, and a long forgotten meditation habit dropped her into a sea of calm. Looking at her opponent, she lifted her bop stick into the usual position, and gave a simple smile to the doctor.
"Ready."
Dr Adams smiled back, got into position, and said, "Start."
Dr. Adams feinted for Darla's head, her real blow trying to come under where Darla should be blocking to hit her in the ribs. Darla's bop stick suddenly blurred, first knocking the doctor's back, and then dipping down to between her legs, levering them apart to knock her down. Darla almost didn't realize it had happened until after her opponent hit the mat.
Dr. Adams smiled. "Good job!"
Kimberly looked at her bop stick in amazement. For once, for a moment, her body and mind had once again moved as one, unlike the odd patch job they were. For once, she had had the fluidity that she had lost with her death.
'How did I do that?' She wondered.
[Diary]
May 21, 2130
Today, the doctors decided it was time to start hitting me with the real shocks. Not just that I'm in the 22nd century, but that I'm also in space.
I'd never seen the earth, or the stars, from space before. Oh, there had been pictures, movies, and the like, but I'd never _been_. Standing with Dr. Smith, I felt like I was on cloud nine.
Of course, part of that was from being so far towards the axis. Hoffson Orbital is a tube, rotating on the axis. It's big enough that it seems like you're walking on Earth - until you leave a building and see the ground wrapping up way above your head.
Then, seeing how well I took the fact that we weren't on Earth, they then told me why.
Darla jumped up into the air again, enjoying the slow fall back to the deck. She was glad she'd never had motion-sickness in her life. Dr. Smith had been afraid the light gravity would make her sick, but she was revelling in how light her body was.
She took a moment to stare out the window. She'd never been interested in any of that astrology crap, but up this high, she could see why everyone liked it so much.
She frowned. She could see half of North America had passed into night, but something was bothering her. The continent looked about the same - that wasn't it. She rubbed her forehead. 'Think! What's wrong? There's North America, I guess that's California, and that B-something California hanging down.'
Nothing came.
'Why's it so dark?' Her subconcious offered meekly.
"Doctor Smith?"
"Hmmm?"
"Where's all the lights?"
The doctor was quiet. "No one lives on Earth anymore."
Darla just looked out the window, silent. "No one?" A moment, and then the obvious question arose. "Why?"
"We don't know. Seventy-seven years ago, the planet Earth went dead. No more radio signals, no more shipments, nothing. Some people went down to see what happened - and never returned."
Darla just gaped.
[Diary Continued]
It's crazy, the idea that the entire population of earth could just stop like that. Are they all dead? If not, why haven't they tried something to contact us? Are they crazy? And what caused it?
Everyone up here is used to it, they don't worry about it and just concentrate on scratching a living on several dozen orbital habitats and the Moon. Some of them are apparently near-death-traps, only inhabited because nothing better was available. The Hoffman, Green, and Vatican orbitals are apparently the best of the lot.
But that's not important. The important thing is that I've got to find out what happened. I can't just float up here and pretend this is normal. Doctor Smith says that I'm welcome to throw my life away like that if I want to, but first I've got to work off my debt.
So I will. And I'm going to find out everything that anyone knows about Earth and what happened while I do it.
[Excerpt: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2128 edition]
Green Orbital
The Green Orbital was, oddly enough, the work of several ecological and conservasionist organizations that were worried about Earth's continual lack of biodiversity during the 21st century. With the opening of space that followed the development of newFusion technology, they began working on a plan to create an orbital dedicated to growing plants and animals that were endangered, and the study of them.
At that, they may well have failed. An orbital as large as they would need was prohibitively expensive, and although fundraising was going well for any other enterprise, they were still staggeringly short of the funds needed. At least until Nathan Ridgecroft, one of the more evangelical fundraisers, hit the jackpot.
One day, while working his way through a large used bookstore, he ran into another man looking for the same book. They started talking, and ended up going to lunch together. He and Nathan continued talking and Nathan brought up the orbital and described why it was needed. As it happens, his new friend was Dr. Jeffrey Whitcomb, one of the two developers of the newFusion process. And at the time, newFusion was generating a lot of royalties.
With Dr. Whitcomb on their side, funding came in torrents, both from himself and from various people and corporations who were more willing to put serious money towards the project now that someone they trusted was involved. The orbital was designed, constructed, and populated with every species of plant and animal that could be found. Not all species could be held live, but fertilized ova were frozen for many of the animals that no one thought would ever be extinct.
Nowadays, after the loss of Earth, the Green orbital is the foundation of agriculture in the 22nd century. Although carniculture meat and hydroponic plants can be grown anywhere with the appropriate supplies and the initiative to grow wheat and other crops on the moon is showing promising results, a sizeable majority of the food eaten today in some way originated from the Green oribital.
Darla hung from the colony, despirately not paying attention to the universe as it spun around her and the colony. Her job was to apply a sealant to the outside of the colony that helped protect against micro-meteors, radiation, and leaks. The sealant would have boiled away in liquid form, so instead it came in great big flexible sheets that had to be pressed down to the previous layer, and then heated to bond with it. The layers weren't heavy (after all in space nothing is heavy) but their large size made them difficult to maneouver.
She finished bonding the current sheet, and decided to take a break. It was too much trouble to go through an airlock, unsuit, take a break, resuit, and then come back up, but she did wish that some genius would come up with a system that would let her wipe the sweat off of her face. She shut her eyes and took a sip of room-temperature coffee.
Except for her quiet breathing, it was dead silent. She wondered at that - back in the 20th century, it had been nearly impossible to find such a quiet place. Between the traffic, airplanes, ventilation systems, and fellow workers, it was noisy. But here, she was perfectly isolated.
She took a deep breath, and got back to work, rapelling along a line that led from where she was working to the container of sheets.
[Diary April 1, 2130]
Well, finally a day of rest for Yours Truely. Not, Dear Diary, that the 22nd century has abolished the two-day weekend, but I still owe quite a lot to the Hoffson Corp. Sure, I'm working for them, but as I work I have to pay for living space (which they call cubic), air, water, and food! They deduct those from my wages, but that doesn't leave much for reducing my debt. And I've got to keep some money onhand, to buy... well, whatever's necessary. Or fun.
Three days a week I'm out on the hull, either applying more sheets or doing minor repairs. Last Wednesday, for instance, you'll remember that I got some overtime helping to repair the secondary antenna array after that frat launch crashed through it. The rest of the time is split between menial work that robots aren't quite sophisticated enough to do and reciting my memories to a historian and his recorder. That's the only work I do that isn't for Hoffson, and it's pretty fun - he pays me to simply rattle on about my life in the 20th century. Doesn't pay as well as the rest, but it's almost like a day off.
So, it's a free Sunday, we've got a little extra money (they call it
'cred'), and it's time to go enjoy myself for a change.
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