CHAPTER 1 “The Selection Committee”
Friday 15 July 2811
Forty-two and a bit overweight, Gary Esteban, Ph.D., carefully sprinkled just a smidgen of salt onto his dry oatmeal mix, added a handful of raisins, and gave the contents of his breakfast bowl several stirs with his spoon before pouring in near-boiling water from the shiny blue kettle. He set the kettle back down on its powered base and continued stirring.
Except for his suitcoat, Gary was already dressed for work at the office in his collarless burnt sienna cotton shirt and deep dark green slacks.
As he stirred, he glanced up at his teenage daughter, Arielle, as she talked with someone over her paper-thin e-pad that lay next to her plate of scrambled eggs. He worried she spent more time talking with friends than studying, but her grades seemed to indicate she was keeping up ok. Typical for her age, her hair and makeup seemed to be crafted to elicit maximum disgust from parents, but he and his wife, Claire, chose to ignore it and both hoped Arielle would eventually “grow out of it.”
Claire did not need to be at work at the clinic for another couple of hours. She remained asleep in their bed in the upscale apartment 183 stories above street level.
Dr. Esteban stirred until satisfied that his gluey oatmeal was of the proper temperature and consistency. As he ate, Gary pulled out his own e-pad from his shirt pocket, partially unfolded it, and set it next to his oatmeal. “Today’s schedule,” he intoned, although he already knew there was only one task for him today at the Federal Space Administration headquarters: to continue meeting with the major stakeholders and try to finally reach a consensus. The phrase, “herding cats,” crossed his mind. “Meeting notes,” he commanded. He then reviewed the various objections from Bridgewater and Komiyama that kept them from accepting the leading candidate.
Isabelle Bridgewater kept fussing about each candidate’s qualifications for becoming the sixth and final crewmember for the first attempt to colonize another star system. Bridgewater stressed that the “fate of the human race rests on her young shoulders.” Pure bilgewater. The only thing needed, Gary silently grumped, was a reasonably healthy teenager who wouldn’t go berserk so quickly that she would become destructive before her biomodulator could turn her mood.
The older members of the crew were top-notch and already in training. The starship itself was nearing completion; the product of millions of hours of engineering, testing, and refinement, not to mention triply redundant. In a very real sense, this sixth and last crewmember was likewise a redundant component.
Not that these candidates were mediocre, Gary reflected, not in the least. Each was the result of four generations of selecting sperm and eggs from the world’s brightest and healthiest donors – physically, mentally, and socially fit for living out their lives in a generational starship. Similarly for the hundred and eighty thousand frozen zygotes that would be on the starship, except those were selected to be wide-ranging in attributes that were hoped appropriate for actually colonizing New Earth when the starship arrives there about three centuries from now.
Asako Komiyama represented Asian sectors of the World Federation and was hung-up on making certain that the teenager at least had an Asian surname, as if surnames meant much today in identifying a person’s ancient lineage.
As he considered their viewpoints and how they could be mollified, Gary discovered that his breakfast bowl was empty. He couldn’t remember tasting the oatmeal and raisins.
He checked the time and interrupted Arielle’s conversation. “Time to go, sweetie. Brush your teeth and I’ll ride the elevator down with you.”
Arielle glanced up with a slight sneer on her face. “Got to go, Karen. See you in math.” With that, Arielle grabbed up her e-pad, gave it a toss, and caught it deftly just as it finished folding itself back up. She was through the bathroom door before Gary managed to get to his feet. He wanted to remember being that young and perky, but at this particular moment, no such memory came to him.
Grudgingly, Gary picked up Arielle’s dishes with his own and put them in the kitchen sink where he gave them a quick rinse before retreating to the master bathroom. After relieving himself, brushing his teeth, and retrieving his dark green FSA suitcoat from the hall closet, he joined Arielle at the door to their apartment where she was fussing with her too-tight and too-revealing black and floral leggings. Together they walked out into the long and mostly unadorned corridor. Only two framed prints remained hanging on the putty-grey walls, and both of those sported graffiti.
They waited only a few moments at the down-elevator door before a car arrived. It was empty since they lived just two floors below the highest occupied level. The trip down included countless stops, but that was normal. By the time they reached street level, the down-elevator car was crowded and reeked with a potpourri of colognes. Gary gave Arielle a kiss on top of her head, squeezed out of the elevator, and walked past a sexually ambiguous couple waiting for an up-elevator. Behind him, the doors slid closed and the down-elevator continued to the subway station below.
Gary walked through the lobby with its smoked-glass walls decorated with sconces brandishing fresh flowers, and out into the bright early morning sun and crystal-blue clear skies. His eyes scanned the curb looking for an empty street pod to ride to work.
Dr. Esteban didn’t see the crow swooping toward him from behind. It was a drone. The explosion pulverized Gary’s head. Bits of skull were found 20 meters distant.