2084 The End of Days (9 page)

“I’ll do my best, Jill. Speak later.”

*

Earthdate: 12:35 Friday February 7, 2081 IST

Rebecca Menachim answered the ringing phone on the Nimrod SH2 2082 Project Team monitor. Yosep Goldenheim’s shaven-headed face appeared on the screen. He barked through his goatee beard in his usual Billy Goat Gruff manner.

“Rebecca! Is Ari there or has he gone out to lunch?”

Rebecca, a feisty Kibbutzim-raised single Sabra, who had already done two years National Service in the Israeli Army before studying for her astrophysics degree, had no fear of Goldenheim’s bullying techniques.

“Lunch, Mr Goldenheim! We’re too busy for lunches down here. Ari is right here - working hard as we speak with Jerzy and Noam on those budget saving options.”

Goldenheim softened his harsh tone with Rebecca. Goldenheim’s attitude at work had not been helped by his recent long-running and bitter divorce after 19 years marriage. Yosep had a secret admiration for Rebecca, but she was 14 years younger than him and as yet he had not plucked up the courage to reveal his attraction to her.

“That’s, eh, great to hear you’re all hard at it, Rebecca. Could I have a quick word with Ari, please?”

Ari was already standing at the monitor and Rebecca moved back out of range of the web cam to let Ari speak. Making sure Goldenheim could not see her, she signalled to Ari by sticking her tongue out and pretending to make herself sick by thrusting two fingers towards her open mouth. She knew Goldenheim fancied her and secretly Rebecca had hidden reciprocal feelings for her boss. Ari waved at her to cut out her playacting in case Goldenheim spotted it.

“Yes, Yosep - is everything okay?”

“Ari, how’s the NASA presentation going?”

Ari replied with an air of confidence.

“I think we are making good progress. We’re just about there on the 5% savings option and we have brainstormed some ideas to work up to the preferred six. It’ll be tight but I’ve a great team and I am sure that we can pull it off, Yosep.”

“Great, Ari, that’s really good news. Look, tell you what – I’ve worked you up a bit of breathing space on this thing. The NASA team have put back the meeting until the 17
th
. Is that good for you?”

Ari flashed a quick glance at the calendar.

“Yosep - that really would be a life-saver. I think we could kick this one into touch with an extra week. Thanks for fixing it up for us.”

“No problem. Tell the truth, Ari, it was the NASA boys who asked for the postponement. Apparently, something more important has come up at their end.”

“Well, Yosep, they’re doing us a big favour.”

“Okay, leave me to reschedule the meeting room, etcetera. Oh, and Ari? Get your team the hell down to the Yoezer Wine Bar right now and have a good long lunch. In fact, it’s Friday afternoon. Don’t bother coming back until Monday. Oh, and Ari – you can tell my PA, Golda - the bill goes on
my
expense account. Okay?”

Ari was surprised and delighted by Goldenheim’s unexpected gesture.

“Thanks. Much appreciated, boss.”

Ari ended the call on the monitor and turned around to face Jerzy, Noam and Rebecca, all smiling broadly back at him. The four of them simultaneously raised their arms triumphantly and cheered so loudly that Ari would not have been surprised if Goldenheim could hear them in his office two floors above them.

*

Earthdate: 15:28 Friday February 7, 2081 CST

Lex Kosloff slowly opened his matted and bleary eyes. At first he was unsure exactly where he was. He slowly realised that he was in his own semi-darkened living room at Robindale Drive. The blinds were half shut and sitting wildly askew. Lex slowly looked around through his stinging bloodshot eyes as he lay prostrate on his crumpled sofa. The living room was like a disaster zone. It looked to him as though he must have trashed the place in a drunken tantrum. He tried to work out what day it was and what had happened recently, but nothing was registering. Lex took a deep breath and pushed his creaking body painfully up and stumbled off the sofa. His head spinning nauseously, Lex crashed awkwardly against the drink-stained coffee table, knocking a half empty coffee cup and an almost finished cheap bottle of rye on to the wooden floor. He grimaced at the cold coffee spilling across the already messed up floor, but he took some gratification from the fact that the rye still had the metal cap screwed on. He caressed his pounding head and told himself that there was still a shot or two left for later. Lex weaved gingerly through the messed up room and powered up his monitor and used the touch screen to turn on his 50” Total Surround 3DTV. A live game of American football blasted out at him and he groaned painfully as the sound pounded his mashed-up brain like the gloves of a heavyweight boxer. He quickly dragged the volume down and turned over to CNN 24/7 news channel and squinted at the date and time on the bottom right of the TV.

15:33 Feb 7, CST

Kosloff shook his befuddled head and looked again as he sunk back onto his favourite black leather recliner in front of the huge 3D screen. He spoke aloud to himself.

“Nah - that can’t be right? February 7?”

As he put his head in his hands to think, the TV seemed to want to talk back to him, although Lex was not paying the slightest bit of attention.

“In breaking news – recently inaugurated President Josh Trueman gave a speech in the last hour in Chicago stating that he would be fighting tooth and nail to get his highly controversial Defense of the Nation Bill through Congress next week. This is despite an expected resolute battle from the minority Republican opposition. The key thrust of the Bill will be to divert $500 billion dollars over the next 5 years from the NASA space program and plow most but not all of the money into strengthening the US Defense Budget. It is expected that financial savings of some $30 billion dollars will also be made in the proposals. In his speech, President Trueman argued that recent tensions in the Middle East and the worrying military and nuclear build-up by the LOIN meant extra funding needed to be sourced to resolutely defend the interests and security of the US and its UN allies. Stating that he regretted having to drastically cut the space program. This included areas, such as, expansion of the US colonisation of Mars, modernisation of the E2MSN satellite network and joint funding in terrestrial planet-hunting programs, mainly on the Nimrod SH2 project. To provide an immediate reaction to the President Trueman’s speech we have waiting in our Washington studio Democratic Senator for Connecticut - Pip Rapland. Good afternoon Senator Rapland…”

The CNN 24/7 anchorman droned on in the background but Lex remained oblivious to what would normally have been disconcerting news of genuine interest to the NASA Controller. However, Lex was in no fit state to worry about President Trueman’s speech or the implications that it might have on his future. He was too busy raking around in his alcohol-befuddled brain to remember where the last three days had disappeared to. He forced his memory banks to rewind back those three lost days. Back to Tuesday which was the fourth. Kosloff remembered that on the previous day, the Monday, he had been rostered ‘off
monitor’ in Houston Control, which usually meant slow time spent on training, going over policies and procedures or boring team meetings. Lex had known it was going to be an ‘easy’ day and over the weekend he had pretty well drowned his sorrows over Marna in the seedy bars down on Hyde Park and Crocker, Houston’s infamous red-light district. However, he had forgotten his boss Irene DuPré had called a team meeting for the Controllers who were ‘off monitor’. At that meeting on the Monday afternoon, Lex, still slightly hung-over, had the feeling that Irene kept banging on about the Performance Appraisals on the seventh. He kept telling himself that it was no problem, Irene was not out to get him personally. On the Monday night into Tuesday he lay in bed tossing and turning and he could not get to sleep. He dare not take a drink to help him because he was back on the monitor all day Tuesday. Lex was communicating with the crew on the Alpha Base international space station and they were doing a critical and dangerous maintenance job on the outside hull and he needed to be 100% sober. When his alarm went off at six on the Tuesday morning he reckoned that he had probably had two hours in total of nightmare-ridden sleep. Lex made a move to get out of bed and suddenly his stomach was gripped by shock waves of uncontrollable fear and anxiety. He began sweating profusely and his muscles were shaking violently and going into nervous spasms. In his fear and confusion he spoke aloud to himself.

“Oh my God – what’s up with me?”

Lex lay on the bed trying to control the anxiety attack but the spasms and the nausea kept flowing over him in cold rhythmic terrifying waves. As a senior and experienced Controller at Houston for 15 years he had never been out of control like this before. He kept glancing at the clock as time moved slowly, but still too quickly for Lex. He wanted time to stand still. 06.30. 07.00. 07.15.

07.15!

Jesus, he thought, Irene usually gets in to her station at 07.25 or 07.30. Lex bolted out of bed and switched on his monitor, disabled his web cam, and rang the station number at Houston Control. As the number rang his heart was beating wildly and his legs were shaking with fear as he stood naked in his cold bedroom. The number connected at Houston and Lex spoke first, weakly and croakily.

“He-ello, Irene?”

“No, it’s Jimmy Soderline here. Irene ain’t on the station yet. That you, Lex? God, man, ya sound terrible…”

Lex, a wave of relief relaxing his tension, laid the croaking on even thicker for Jimmy.

“Gaaawd - hi, Jim - man, woke up this mornin’. Ah’m dyin’ with that flu – feel terrible –“

“Hell, Lex, ya sound awful. Glad ya didn’t bring that thing in here today!”

Lex threw in a coughing fit for good measure, but he knew Irene would be
arriving any minute and it was time for a sharp exit.

“Ah’m just goin’ back to bed, Jimmy, an’ ah’ll phone the doctor later. Make an appointment. Can you tell Irene ah should be back in a day or two with a bit of luck?”

“Hey! No sweat, Lex. Ya take care now.”

Lex had quickly ended the call on his monitor for fear of Irene’s arrival at work and he felt his stomach and leg muscles immediately relax. He had jumped back into bed and he slept until late into the Tuesday afternoon. Okay, that much I do remember, but what next, he asked himself. Lex strained to dig deep into his subconscious. Some vague memories floated in and out from the back of his mind. On the Tuesday evening after he had eaten a light omelette washed down with a Coors Light, which was about the only thing he could face, he took an electri-cab down to his local watering hole – Tiggy’s Bar. What happened there? He started hitting the shots and something had gotten him real sore. What was it? He could not quite remember, maybe someone bumped into him at the bar. Who knows? Lex seemed to remember a scuffle and – oh, yeah – he remembered the barkeep barring him from coming back to Tiggy’s. Maybe a cab home again? He must have, because Lex now remembered waking up on his sofa on the Wednesday morning. Yeah, that would be the fifth. He had stumbled into the toilet for a piss and noted that there was vomit on the floor. When he looked in the mirror he looked like shit and he had a small bruise under his left eye. Okay, he thought, so what happened on the fifth. He had told Jimmy Soderline that he would see a doctor. His doctor was still in Houston Center. Lex and Marna had not gotten around to changing doctors when they moved out to the new suburb of Robindale following his promotion two years ago. After breakfast – well, just a strong sweet coffee - and cleaning the toilet up a bit he jumped on the new MetroXpress line from Robindale Station heading for Center Station. He told himself that he should have tried to ring for an appointment but that he would just take his chances when he got to the Houston City Medical Center. Lex tried to remember what happened next. Oh, yeah, he had dozed off when the train arrived at Center and the electronic train announcement had startled him.

“You have now arrived at Houston Center Station. Please mind the doors when leaving the train?”

He just sat and did not move. Lex felt the waves of anxiety well up again in the pit of his stomach and he froze in his seat as other commuters entered and exited the train. The train doors closed and the waves eased and subsided. He needed to get a drink to calm his nerves. Yeah, he remembered, get a drink and that will help. From his seat he looked up at the station plan pasted above the train windows. Where to go? Where does this train go? He remembered spotting Avondale Station further up the line. That’s it, he told himself. Avondale was where he had been at the weekend. He could walk from there into the red light district on Hyde Park and Crocker. Once in one of the seedy bars on Crocker with a few bourbons in him all the tension would begin to disappear. He could remember being in quite a few bars on Wednesday, but now things were getting pretty hazy. What else? There was something else gnawing at his memory. What was it? Nope, it ain’t coming. Then it struck him. That was it – on the Wednesday afternoon he had picked up a hooker. Truth be told, he was so out of it the hooker had picked him up. Lex had a vague memory of being back in her grubby untidy little apartment, then the two of them naked. Had he managed it? Lex could not remember. Did she have a name? Yeah, she called her self something. What was it - Cutie – Cupie - Kitten? Oh, he just could not remember. God, he thought, why would it really matter? So, Thursday sixth then, what about that? Thursday was a complete and total blank and now here he was sitting in a dreadful state on his recliner on Friday. A wave of fear gripped his stomach again and he looked at the time again on the CNN channel.

16:27 Feb 7, CST

The Performance Appraisal! It was today and Lex had not even phoned Irene and she would be finishing work for the weekend in half an hour. God, she’ll kill me, He thought, I’m gonna have to phone her and give her some bullshit excuse. The fear tightened its grip again on his throat and gut. I can’t call her, he argued with himself, I gotta or my job is down the John. He plucked up the nerve and rang her number on his computer. Irene picked up immediately. Had she been waiting all day for his call?