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Chapter 4

 Chapter Four

March 19th 2157

            

            “Mom, I just wanted to record a quick message before I started working today.  I guess, I don’t know, well I have been here for a week.  I’m feeling less homesick, and the crew is helping in that regard.  Jafta, the Neo, continues to be a wealth of knowledge.  Sam, one of collectors, keeps challenging me to play his strategy game.  I think he is bored of playing by himself, I think tonight I will give in and play.  Mathews, my crew boss is very direct, but fairly easy to talk to.”

            “Mel, another collector, doesn’t talk much, she is always reading.  Salim is our core driller.  He spends almost all the time that he isn’t working, in the grav ring.”  Jacob shakes his head and laughs, “he likes to spin the ring at two g’s or more and tries to beat his fastest time running a five k.  I can’t run more than a couple hundred meters in two g’s.  He will be sixty seven in two weeks.”

            “And then there is Luka, he is another collector.  I don’t know way, but I don’t think he likes me.  He speaks to me as little as possible.”  Jacob pauses for a moment; “well I guess that is my update.  I am writing a letter that will be sent off when we receive our shipment this evening.  I hope everything is going well for you…  I love you.”

            Jake pressed the button on his DNAC, and stopped the recording.  Beyond his clothes, the DNAC was the only personal item that he owned.  When he turned sixteen, he had the procedure to have the DNA Computer’s receiver and hard drive seed grafted to his Radius bone close to the wrist.  It was a simple and fairly cheep procedure.  The seed was less than the width of a human hair, and only about half a centimeter long.

Once grafted into the bone, the seed would interact and rewrite the RNA of the surrounding bone tissue, converting it into usable storage space.  His forearm now housed a petabyte of storage space.

            A wristband that covered about a third of Jakes forearm contained a halo screen, video recorder, and several other features.  His wristband was old and wasn’t a high-end model even when he bought it.  He planned on upgrading his wristband when he got a little leave time to visit the Mars Station.  The next leave time was scheduled about three months away.

            Before leaving earth, he had loaded his DNAC with as much music and books that he could get his hands on.  He was able to fill half the storage space.   He also managed to upload his family history and as many pictures as he could in the limited time.

            Jake sighed and began to float down the living quarters and into the lab area.  Mathews and Jafta were hard at work focused on their workstations.  Salim floated into the room behind him.  Salim glided up to Mathews, “Today I will be core testing in sector seventeen, where I left off yesterday.”

            Mathews nodded his acknowledgement, and Salim then floated towards Jake who was now at his workstation.  He had begun to warm up the processor.  “Jake, I was wondering if you processed yesterdays samples.”

            Jake turned to the computer and began to enter commands, “Yeah, give me a moment and I will bring up the test results.”  He entered a few more commands and in less than a second the results of the test were on the screen.  “Alright, lets see, core samples from sector seventeen.  It looks like most of the samples were nominal.  Mostly carbon with traces of nickel and iron, but get a load of this.”

            Jake punched a quick few commands onto the keyboard and brought up a few specific test results.  “Check it out.  High levels of titanium, platinum and gold.”