I really can't think of too much to say about this one, except that it's my first in a while that doesn't involve weird stuff. I did virtually no fact checking for it, so feel free to point out all the flaws.

I'm not sure what's up for next week. I'm getting a little scatter-brained about writing because I'm already thinking about NaNoWriMo :P

---

The Pizza Delivery

The command crew bantered around with Captain Armin Bronksy while the software systems and the technicians ran through the final pre-flight checks. Captain Bronksy joked about food, mostly. His cargo included half a ton of grey-white powder that would be rehydrated into a wholesome, nutritious, and virtually tasteless white mush.

"I just hope they didn't leave the orbiter a mess," he said into the intercom. A little wave of laughter rippled through mission control. "I'm not flying seventy million kilometres to pick up their dirty underwear."

The launch was being broadcast, but resupply missions never got terribly good ratings, particularly because the first few resupplies all went off without a hitch. The big show was eighteen months away, when the Aegis would launch and embark on its mission to bring the Mars explorers home. Captain Bronsky would catch a glimpse of it half-assembled in orbit, a brief twinkle as the last stage of booster rockets broke away and his own craft blasted towards the red planet.

A reporter asked a question over the intercom, "How do you plan to deal with nine months of isolation on the way there?"

"I plan on napping a lot and taking a correspondence course on how to fly spaceships. And I brought along a portable Nintendo."

He hadn't really; the engineers wouldn't risk it interfering with the ship's instruments. He'd had enough trouble sneaking on the contraband he'd promised the gang at Elysium Base. Two chocolate bars each, a couple issues of Penthouse for one of the guys and four large, frozen pizzas. Two vegetarian, one pepperoni and mushroom and one Hawaiian, hidden discreetly in the cargo hold. Armin was glad he couldn't access the hold from inside his cabin. He'd be craving real food soon enough.

He paid his way through college in part with a pizza delivery job, and smiled to think that maybe not so much had changed from those days.

---

Lise plugged in the power cord for her ham radio in the extension cord. After leaning over the edge of the her apartment building's roof and calling out "It's coming down", she began to lower the other end of the extension cord.

Two floors down, her friend Eric caught it and plugged the cord into a socket in Lise's apartment. By the time he got up to the roof, she nearly had her makeshift antenna set up.

"You have a key to that padlock?" he asked her.

"Picked it," she responded, frowning, screwdriver in hand, "They don't like tenants coming up here. Some of the kids would drink beer and toss the bottles off the side."

Eric zipped up his jacket.

"It's going below freezing tonight. Your antenna would have worked fine from your window."

She looked up at him.

"It's better up here with nothing between me and the sky. I feel more like I'm a part of it. Eric, he's going to Mars."

"You can hardly see any stars in the city. And anyway, can't you just listen to all this on the news, or NASA's website? It's better than trying to catch a snippet of their radio communications out here."

"You don't have to wait. There's only a window of about three hours where I might catch a signal anyhow. My brother's Playstation is in the living room."

"Maybe I'll go make us some hot chocolate."

He brought up a sleeping bag he found in Lise's room along with two mugs of hot chocolate and they sat underneath it, close enough to accidentally brush against each other sometimes. Lise fiddled with her antennae now and again, and they chatted for an hour until Eric feel asleep.

She nudged him awake with the flashlight she was using to read. It was a little before three in the morning.

"I think I'm getting something."

At first there was nothing but radio static; Eric was trying to think of a subtle way to put his arm around her when they heard, "The computer says everything is A-okay, Command. I think I'm going to fix myself a bowl of mush and take a nap."

"I can't believe they're making him fly out himself," Eric said. "Nine months in a cabin not much bigger than my bathroom."

"Another person doubles the amount of air, food and everything. Millions more dollars."

"I wonder if they let him watch porn? He'd be sick of boobs by the time he go to Mars."

"I'm sure he's got better things to do, even if it just a resupply mission."

---

He was well past the cloud of satellites that surounded the Earth before communications were reestablished. There wasn't much to say; the important data was relayed by the onboard computers to computers back home. A conversation between machines, with human involvement little more than a courtesy.

Captain Bronsky of course still chatted with the folks back home; NASA staff, reporters, his friends and his parents. The lags in the conversations necessarily grew along with the distance between the his craft and Earth. A few weeks into the journey, Armin felt as though every conversation was with an old person who kept forgetting about you and waited seconds, then minutes, before answering. Eventually it devolved into a somewhat structured game of phone tag.

He dozed for days at a time, thanks to a combination of mild sedatives and the meditation exercises they'd begun teaching to long-haul astronauts. He read a lot, played video games on the ship's computer, did the prescribed exercises to prevent muscle atrophy. While there were other pilots in the space program smarter than Armin, better pilots, where he excelled was an unmatched tolerance for boredom and capacity to amuse himself. The team psychologists described him as remarkable.

---

Eric sat on the floor in Lise's bedroom and marking up his textbook with a highlighter. Lise was lying on her side on her bed, reading on her laptop.

"Today is the half way point," she said.

"Hmmm?"

"He's half way to Mars. Think about it. Captain Bronsky is all alone, exactly thirty-five million kilometres from the nearest humans on either end of his trip."

"You're really into all this space stuff, aren't you?"

There was a model of one of the space shuttles on her desk and on her bedside table she kept a plush Marvin the Martian.

"Ever since I was a little kid."

"I don't get it at all. I'd go nuts on that ship by myself." He shuddered. "You wouldn't catch me dead."

Lise shrugged. "It's like trying to explain a joke. You get it or you don't."

---

"What's the first thing I'm going to do when I dock with the orbiter?" He asked aloud in his tiny capsule.

He was far enough into his journey that reporters would just email questions; he'd record his answers and then transmit them back to home.

He'd actually been giving this a lot of thought now that he was just a couple of weeks away from Mars.

"I'm really looking forward to using a real toilet. Catheters lose their luster pretty quickly."

His answers would be carefully vetted by NASA PR people and wondered if that one would make it through. Of course, the transmission wasn't encrypted so the ham radio geeks would pick it up and it would make it onto the Internet either way.

He answered the rest of the questions and then just floated in the capsule, half in a doze, until his bare bum touched one of the cold plastic panels, waking him up a bit. He never expected to end up a nudist as a result the mission, but after a few months he couldn't stand the feel of his suit on his skin. He'd only pull it on when mission control wanted him to record a video. He hadn't shaved in weeks.

Armin kicked off the wall, propelled himself over to his seat and snapped on the seatbelt and shoulder straps to hold himself in place. He tapped on the keyboard and brought up his mission log. He hadn't eaten in twenty-seven hours.

He prodded his exposed belly. He didn't feel hungry, but he never felt hungry anymore. He'd maybe make some mush after a nap.

---

"The explosion occurred shortly before Captain Bronsky's final approach to Mars," the reporter on the television was saying in a grim voice.

Lise and Eric had been hanging out between classes in the lounge in the student union building. They were packing up to go when the afternoon talk show had been interrupted with the emergency news report.

"The ship's computers immediately detected the detonation and used the thruster rockets to correct the ship's course. NASA has issued a statement saying the ship was able to enter a wide orbit around Mars but there's been no word yet regarding communication with Captain Bronsky. Mission control will be holding a press conference shortly. This computer graphic shows what had been the intended approach path to docking with the orbiter..."

Lise dropped her backpack and without a word dropped back onto the grimy futon. She stared at the television, mouth open slightly; if Eric had just walked in then, he might have thought she was waiting for a kiss.

He couldn't think of anything to say so he said, "Oh shit. That totally sucks."

Lise balled her hands into fists and sat with them on her thighs, back perfectly straight. She always had good posture in a crisis.

"Um," Eric said, unsure if she needed an arm around her, or just to be left alone, "I guess we can skip class. We're supposed to be talking about aggregate supply more today. I don't think it will be anything major and we can just get the notes from Jack tomorrow. We won't miss anything important."

Lise just stared at the television, not moving at all. They cut to commercials and when they returned began a retrospective of past space flight accidents from Apollos 1 and 13 to the shuttle disasters and all the others.

A few minutes later the press conference began. The spokeswoman for NASA explained that, as best as they had been able to determine, the explosion had occurred in one of the storage compartments, which depressurized, momentarily knocking the craft off course. The most serious concern was apparent damage to the docking gear, which they feared would jeopardize the craft's ability to dock with the Mars orbiter.

"Captain Bronsky will remain in high orbit around Mars while we evaluate our options. We remain in contact with Captain Bronsky, who was not injured in the accident. He wishes to thank everyone who has already called and emailed NASA to express their support."

---

In the end there was nothing they could do. With two astronauts onboard the orbiter and four on the surface of Mars, NASA wouldn't risk their lives by attempting to dock the damaged craft.

The mission planners calculated that, which careful rationing, the Mars team would survive without resupply until the Aegis arrived; NASA would push its launch ahead as far as was possible.

After two days of debate, Captain Bronsky was given permission to fire his booster rockets and degrade his orbit. His ship wasn't designed for atmospheric entry and would burn up, but the alternative was starving while his craft circled Mars over and over.

---

Lise was on the roof of her apartment building. Her ham radio was set up, antennae pointed into the sky. She sat hugging her knees, her head resting against the low brick wall around the perimeter.

She'd been there for hours, listening for messages from the spacecraft, and bolted upright when she heard:

"Well, Earth, the guys as back home tell me this is likely the last orbital pass that I'll still have communications on, so I guess I best say goodbye. What do you say at a time like this? I'm eating my last meal at the moment and you know what? This white mush tastes pretty good after all and —"

The radio went to static. Lise remembered the distance from her to Mars, seventy million kilometres. He'd have already entered the atmosphere before the signal reached her. She looked up at the sky, a tear began tracing a path down her cheek. She was able to pick out Mars in the sky without any trouble at all; she'd done an astronomy class in her first year.

5 responses to "Week #31 - The Pizza Delivery "

hellebelle wrote: Saturday, 23 Aug 2008 22:11 hey dana, this is the first FFF of yours that i've read (i know i know, i'm just very lazy and you know i'm not a fan of short stories), but it was awesome!

Sheeple wrote: Saturday, 23 Aug 2008 23:04 I really liked this one, definitely one of my favourites. I like that you didn't tell us what happened in the end as well!

Karen wrote: Sunday, 24 Aug 2008 21:36 I liked this one! A lot, actually, and I don't like sci-fi, but this wasn't, really, in my books. I loved it.

Dwayne Phillips wrote: Tuesday, 26 Aug 2008 15:23 http://dwaynephillips.net I liked the story. There was a startling surprise, then good news, then bad news again. I was going up and down with it. Good technique.

Debs wrote: Thursday, 04 Sep 2008 22:08 Neat!

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