Solar Umbrella (Book 1)

Chapter 23: I Voted

THE DAY HAD arrived. The space elevator was complete and ready for the first crawler to make its way up the cable. Earlier in the week, media crews had filmed the cable finishing its descent from the tether station nearly 100,000 kilometres away. The crews had been working hard ever since making sure everything was aligned, tested repeatedly and ready to finally connect. The actual connection, finally linking the station here on Earth to the tether station in space, had been a very smooth affair. Everyone felt a little jolt when the connection was made, like when a train jumps to a higher speed. Parker hadn't been sure what to expect—a major groaning as the cable tried to pull the base into space perhaps? It had been a fairly quiet event really, attended by the construction workers, engineers and administrative teams who had spent days and months on the station preparing. Everyone was excited to move to the next step, but also exhausted. It had been a long journey and the celebration that followed was a mix of relief and elation that nothing had gone wrong. Parker preferred that relatively quiet night to today's bedlam. Today was for the big wigs. All the landing pads were full with helicopters from CEOs and CFOs and other combinations of C and O from the various companies, administrators from the national space orgs and other VIPs—whatever that meant. Probably social media darlings and politicians.

A quick competition had been launched by the blue sky project to determine what to call the elevator. Members of the elevator construction and governance teams had submitted the options via short videos, and the public had voted. The winning option had been submitted by a man on the custodial team named Manny Silveria. He had argued that humans had started civilization by walking on pathways, moving on to waterways and roadways and highways. It seemed the next evolution in travel should be the spaceway. It had been a simple, but convincing argument.

Crawler 001 was going to make the first trip up the cable, and a skeleton crew was ready at the other end. The cable could actually support several crawlers at once, each capable of carrying up to around twenty tons each, with plans for more in the future. For today, they had decided to limit the crawler to a small group of key contributors, a news crew and a small addition Parker and his blue sky crew had sneaked in—a civilian. A world-wide lottery had been issued. To enter, you just needed to be over eighteen and in good health—legal had added that—and contribute something stating what excited you about the space elevator. People had contributed moving poetry, stories, art pieces, songs, even clothing! The winner was a woman named Charlotte Ardem from New Zealand who had painted a piece of the elevator in the style of van Gogh's The Starry Night. Billions of people had entered the competition, and interest in the elevator had sky-rocketed. The governors and administrators at the various national space organizations were stunned and delighted with the results. Parker, Alex and the team had to turn to an artificial intelligence to help parse the entries and had randomly selected the victor live on the news.

The Bear himself, John Bernard, had reluctantly done the draw in person. He had used the opportunity to announce the elevator would officially be named "the Earth to SpaceWay" and not named after some bullshit corporate sponsor after all. People had dumped most of the official name and generally called it the SpaceWay as Manny had intended. The SpaceWay was on the tongue of just about everyone everywhere you went. Even Jähn had reluctantly admitted she was impressed with the engagement they had gained with the public.

The next few months vanished in a blur for Parker and his team. The use of the crawlers to move material, cable time, as it had been dubbed, was filled primarily with moving material to continue to build up the base at the other end. The design was modular, with each major contributor wanting to have their own wing of sorts in the station. For now, both ends were acting primarily as warehouses. The Earth station had materials to build the station in space, and the station in space was slowly filling with material from asteroid miners looking to come back down. It was a gruelling process that took up most of their days, but the reward came in watching the station in space slowly be constructed.

The major issue for the governors to deal with, besides the egos of the corporate types, was that there was only one cable. A second was already being worked on, but it would be months before it was ready. For now, the crawlers had a special design feature where they were able to extend away from the cable while remaining attached. This allowed another to pass on the other side and maintain the tension on the cable without issue. The problem was that it took time to balance the weights without causing a major accident. Parker didn't fully understand the physics of it all, but he knew it was causing some traffic jams on the cable. It would continue to be an issue until the second cable was complete and they could use one for up and one for down. The governors were getting pressure from every side to fix the issue. They had decided to put together a team from all over to help fix the issue—many being lent to them from some of the companies looking to help. Parker, Alex and a few others from the administrative teams had been sent to greet them.

Parker started making his way to a room below decks that had been built for exactly this purpose—holding large groups of newcomers until they could be told the ins and outs of the Earth base. Like most places in the base, it was a utilitarian room with plastic chairs, small windows and not much else going on. The focus of the base was the cable itself and its utility. Design was influenced as much by that fact as budget. It could be dreary at times, but Parker liked to think it reminded him of why he was here, why anyone was here. This was a place of work, of benefit to humanity. He thought back to his time on LunaOne. It was the exact opposite—a place of leisure and luxury kept afloat by the work of others, behind the scenes. He appreciated this structure much more, even if the view didn't quite match. As always, thoughts of LunaOne brought thoughts of Kate and the usual ache of what he had done and lost. Parker had a few relationships in college, but they were surface level flings. He had enjoyed his time, but never had anywhere near the connection he had felt with Kate. He kept telling himself that it was just a matter of time until he found someone to really click with, or that growing up with someone built a special relationship that you could only get once, but he knew in the back of his mind he was lying to himself. Whatever, it didn't matter. The work.

"More meat for the grinder!" Alex told him as they made their way to the meeting room.

He had made the same comment every time they had been tasked with meeting a new group to the station, but Parker didn't mind. He tossed his friend a forced laugh as they walked. "I wonder what they've sent us this time?" he asked Alex. "Notes said coders to help with the crawler issue. Should be here for two or three weeks. I wonder where they'll be housed?"

"Who knows? Base is filling up fast, maybe they'll make us double up!" Alex joked.

Parker hoped he was joking at least. His room was just a place he slept, really, but it was cramped enough already. They kept being told that more space would open up once the space station was fleshed out a bit more. "Oh well, we'll see what happens. Okay buddy, time to break in a new group, let's see..." he trailed off as they turned the final corner. He had been prepared to go through the usual routine about safety and rules that he had done tens of times before. He had done it so often, he was sure he could do it in his sleep. But not this time.

Sitting there in the front row was Kate.

--------

I hope you enjoyed the first 23 chapters of Solar Umbrella. There are 43 more chapters in the completed novel.

You can check out more or buy a copy on amazon or author.mrjohnston.ca

I also have a sequel called The Travelers which is completed (free preview here or on my website)