Project Aspire

Chapter 17 - Cole (Written by Stephen Landry)

Today is my last day on Earth. For the next few hours I have nothing to do but sit. The Launchpad overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. I remember the first time I looked out over the sea. I had seen lakes and ponds and small creeks before but the first time I really saw a wide body of water it was the Mediterranean. My mother had just died a few weeks before and I was still in shock. My father and the group of rebels I was with had fled the inner cities and set up inside a group of caves to regroup and rebuild. The sea was beautiful. Where the water was shallow it was a bright blue, crystal and clear. The sky reflected downward as if the water held some kind of portal to another world.

 The Launchpad stretches for miles. Nearly every major nation has one now. There are at least six in America, two in Canada, A half dozen in South America and Europe, Australia has four, and Russia has three. This doesn’t include the entire secret ones or the hidden ones run by D.A.R.C. or other governments and private companies. Each Launchpad varies in how they are run. Some launch straight into the air using a mixture of fossil fuels and flammable materials. Others the newer ones launch upward on a ramp using the magnetic fields of the Earth and momentum to gain enough speed to break the atmosphere; from there they orbit the Earth two or three times before matching speed with an orbital space station or breaking away and gliding towards a LaGrange point. Some of the newer launch pads rely on ion engines from the start.

 This particular one was built on the ruins of one of the original ones that use to launch archaic shuttles and satellites into the sky. There was even a museum people could visit housing some of the first shuttles and space suits. We had come a long way and now I was going to be making history. A hundred years from now they would have my picture and a picture of the rest of my crew hanging in that museum; we would be relics. We are nothing but mere mortals but people will worship us as heroes and gods; children will have posters pinned on their walls, high schools and colleges will be named after us. We will be the poster boys and poster girls for charities and the corporations will reach out to us and praise us for our adventures. I myself am never coming back to this shithole.

The moment you leave Earth you can feel gravity do its best to pull you back. The Earth begs, “Why are you leaving?” and pulls at you. The Earth would rather you fall and die or burn and explode then flee into the stars. It’s that feeling before a car crash. 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G you can no longer move you are as helpless as a child. You have to rely on the machines, the hundreds of software programs that are running guiding you through the atmosphere as you become surrounded by fire. One glitch or bug in the system and you are dead. Your heart begins to beat faster then you can imagine. So many have died in the name of science will you be next on the reapers list? One little problem and everything could go wrong.

In the museum there is a wall covered in names. Each one was once an individual with an entire life; each was the name of a lost soul an angel that fell down towards the Earth and burned.

They are nothing but names on a wall now.

Nothing fails and you begin to float. You feel your body become weightless. Some say it’s like flying. It’s not like flying. It’s emptiness. It’s like floating. Imagine falling into the sea or the ocean and being swept away by the tide. You fall into the undertow and begin to sink. The only difference is now you are breathing. The ocean wasn’t the portal - It was the sky.

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 No one will ever know or see what I do here.

 I can still remember my first meeting with D.A.R.C. I was nobody, a refugee who barely made it out of an isolated war alive.  They asked me several questions, only a few of which stand out now. “What would you do if you knew this was a one way ticket?” My answer was short and simple; even then I knew I didn’t want to come back to Earth. My destiny was hidden out there somewhere among the stars it always had been. There were so many things that could have gone wrong, so many cards had to fall into place to get me to where I am. One wrong answer and I would still be on Earth. I could see myself now drinking at a bar, sleeping with a girl I have never met; I could even have had a family by now with a loving wife and child. Imagine a smaller version of myself running around playing cowboys in the sand, playing on a beach, I could have had myself a nice little family.