It was when Gary was eighteen and about to leave home that he finally found out the devastating truth about his real dad and why he’d left when he did. He had been half-way out of the door when his granddad asked to talk to him. He told him that his real dad was still alive and had been in jail all these years. Gary was stunned because he couldn’t imagine his dad doing anything on the wrong side of the law. Apparently, there had been a fight one night between one of his father’s friends and a stranger who had jumped them. His dad managed to break up the fight, but in doing so the person who jumped them somehow fell and hit his head on the pavement. He took his friend to the local accident and emergency, but left the attacker where he lay. He then subsequently died, which meant that Gary’s dad was charged with manslaughter. In handing out a lengthy tariff the judge decreed that if they had summoned medical attention the man may have lived. Gary’s mother tried to protect him from the truth and when she met her new boyfriend told Gary that his dad had died. She divorced him whilst he was in jail so she could remarry.
A year after leaving home Gary had plucked up the courage to find out where his dad was, so he could go and visit him, but his dad steadfastly refused to see him. Gary then sent him a letter once a month for several years, but he never received any replies and after many letters gave up. Gary never got to see him again and all his memories were from when he was a small eight year old boy.
My story about my dad always working overseas and dying in an industrial accident somehow didn’t seem quite as dramatic.
After about two hours I said my farewells to Gary and returned to my apartment. Adams and I had a game and I lost heavily again but not quite as badly as the previous night. I thought I knew where I was going wrong and decided that the next time I played Adams I would change tactics.
*
Day two of my training, and once more, I was sat in front of Simon in his office at nine in the morning.
Simon looked up and told me, “Today’s training is all about you controlling the ship. We’ll be working you very hard so you might find we finish earlier today. Don’t get too excited by that because you are going to feel exhausted. Are you ready to get started?”
“I certainly am,” I said.
We took our usual stroll down to the hangars and located my ship. There was no sign of Simon the engineer as we boarded, so Simon told me to get powered up and to position the ship a thousand kilometres from the station at which point he would give me further directions.
Moments later we were there and I told Simon that we were at the requested spot.
“OK Roy, are you ready for your information for today?”
“I certainly am.”
“Your basic movement is forward and backwards. The singularity drive provides thrust in these directions in sub Hyper Travel. Up and down is a bit more complicated. You can either use the basic thrusters which apply a small amount of power or you can point the ship in that direction and apply thrust from the singularity drive. The joystick in your right hand is to point the ship in the direction you want to go and the stick in the left hand is for thrust. Don’t worry about G-force, white outs or blackouts as they don’t exist in this environment. Any questions?”
“What would you like me to do or where should I go?”
“You can do or go anywhere you like as long as you are piloting the ship. What you need to do is to spend this time playing around and experimenting until you are happy with all the controls.”
“OK.”
The morning was spent playing about in space. I’d played quite a few flight sims so I got to grips with the controls very quickly. The ships controls had been designed to be very easy to use and it was quite a bit of fun flying about. It was very much like playing a computer game because no matter how hard I turned or reversed thrust there was no sensation of g-force.
In the afternoon we were back out, five kilometres from the ship. Simon leaned forward “We’re going to spend the first bit of the afternoon drone training. The concept is very simple but progressive in difficulty. The drone is a high visibility unmanned globe and all you have to do is follow it. This will start very easy but will progress in difficulty. The practice is levelled from one to eight. If you fail a level it will drop a level for you to attempt the level again. You must get past level four to progress with your training and nobody gets to level eight. I’m going to wear blacked out glasses because as a passenger it can become very nauseating watching the manoeuvres. Ask your computer to keep track of the levels.”
“Adams will you track the levels and call them out please.”
“No problem Roy.”
“Are you ready?” said Simon with his black tinted glasses on.
“Yes I am.” As I said this a luminous orange ball flew past the front view and started to disappear into the distance. Adams said “Level one” and I applied forward thrust to catch up. Level one was very easy and most of it was in a straight line.
“Level two,” announced Adams. This had a few more turns but was still easy to follow as they were mostly left and right. Five minutes later and Adams announced “Level three.” Level three’s turns were tighter and had turns in every direction not just left and right.
“Level four.” The turns were tight and there were random changes in speed I found myself applying heavy reverse thrust to try and avoid crashing into the back of the drone. With great relief Adams announced “Level five.” This meant I’d passed and I could relax. However I found myself not relaxing as I wanted to progress more.
“Level six” and the kind of things I was doing to keep up were beyond what you could ever do in a flight sim. I had the ship spiralling followed by turns that were almost right angles to my previous direction.
“Level seven” had me applying maximum thrust in forward and reverse as well as having to cope with all the turns. The star field in the background was never static and were constantly moving in what seemed like totally random directions and then I lost the drone.
“Level six,” and five minutes later “Level seven.” Three minutes into level seven and I lost it again. “Level six,” and five more minutes later “Level seven.” This time I managed three minutes and fifty seconds.
“STOP!” Shouted Simon. I let go of the controls and placed the thruster control to neutral. I had no idea how long that lasted but I was drained and felt drenched with sweat inside my overalls. “Congratulations Roy. Only two percent of pilots make it to level seven and half of those make it past three minutes.”
“I could have taken it to level eight I reckon. Give me a couple of days practice and I think I can break the level eight.”
“We don’t have time. I want your training finished and I want you on the job rather than playing games with drones. In three days time you won’t care about chasing drones. You should be pleased with your efforts.”
“Failure is a poor option.”
“We only wanted you to get past level four so it’s not a failure. If you’re talking about failure because you didn’t make level eight then that’s good.”
“Why?”
“You don’t learn anything by winning all the time. The Wright brothers didn’t build an aeroplane and hoped it would fly. They spent years developing their aircraft from kites and gliders. As far as powered flight is concerned every one of those craft were failures and some of them failed spectacularly but they learnt from each failure and improved their design until they had the first powered aircraft. The important thing is that we all learn from failure not from winning.”
“Winning feels good.”
“Really? You played computer games at home as Zombie Love and won all the time. Was it a challenge or even interesting?”
“It was easy and sometimes boring.”
“So why did you play the games if they had no challenge?”
“It was fun talking to other people. I lived by myself so it was like having a social life.”
“Do you play your computer?”
“Yes, Adams beats me all the time.”
“And yet you still play it. Why is that?”
“Because it’s a real challenge and I want to beat him.”
“Exactly. You fail and lose, but try and learn from your failure to make yourself better. Failure is very important especially if you want to learn and progress. The only time failure is a negative experience is when you learn nothing from that failure.”
“Like gambling? You fail because of random events so you cannot learn from it.”
“I’ve never thought of it like that. Maybe that’s why gamblers get such a buzz from gambling because they think they’re winning against completely random events. OK enough philosophy I think we’ve had enough for today so what we’re going to do is have a bit of fun and then finish.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to get your computer to make a one second Hyper Drive jump and then turn the ship one hundred and eighty degrees so we’re facing the direction we came from. You will need to magnify the view screens to maximum.”
“I didn’t know you could change the resolution of the view screens.”
“Exactly,” said Simon.
“OK. Adams?”
“Yes Roy.”
“I want a one seconds burst of Hyper Drive and when we drop out of Hyper Drive turn the ship through one hundred and eighty degrees and put the view screen on maximum.”
“I did actually hear what Simon said” said Adams “You can ask me to follow his directions”
“Are you due on Adams?”
“Due on what?”
“Never mind just do what I’ve asked.”
One second later and we were looking at a ship that looked identical to ours and then it disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“That was us. Because we travelled faster than light it was the light arriving here after we had arrived.”
“That’s mind bending.”
“Not as mind bending as long distance travel.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you are travelling to a star on the other side of the galaxy, point your ship in that direction and travel as fast as you can in Hyper Travel you will miss the star by several thousand light years at the very least.”
“Why?”
“Because if you point the ship at the star from here that star’s light is about a hundred and twenty thousand years old. A star on the other side of the galaxy can move a long way in a hundred and twenty thousand years. It’s another reason why ships need to stop and orientate themselves on long journeys.”
“Have we finished for today?” I asked “Because my head is beginning to spin.”
“Let’s go home then Roy.”
“Adams? Do what he said.”
By the time we got back to Simon’s office I was totally knackered. It wasn’t so much the physical work, but it had drained me mentally. Simon had a big grin on his face as he said “I know why Simon recruited you into the company. You have a natural ability for controlling situations using computers, joysticks and gadgets. Your progress is definitely one of the best I have had the pleasure to be involved in. You have a massive amount of natural ability which I haven’t seen in an individual for many years. It’s been a long day and you must be very tired. If I was you, I would go and get something quick to eat and get to bed early. Tomorrow we are going to learn shunting with Gary.”
“Gary isn’t a pilot.”
“Gary Pascoe is a pilot and would have you met him the other night.”
“Sorry Simon I’ve forgotten a lot of names from the other night.”
“Don’t worry you’ll soon pick them all up because you’ll be working with them in a few days. Go eat and get some sleep.”
“Thanks for everything Simon.”
I left Simon’s office and got a snack in the pilot’s bar which was empty. Russell was behind the bar as usual and we filled the time with small talk.
When I got back to the apartment I played Adams with a quick game. I decided that I was going to play with stealth. Usually I play with all guns blazing and could react quick enough to shoot opponents before they shot me. This didn’t work with Adams because I guess his reaction times were much better than mine. I’ve never played stealth tactics before because I’ve never needed to. We played ten quick games and I won two for the first time. When we had finished I had a big grin on my face.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling because you lost,” Adams told me.
“I know but I won two games and that’s the start of a slippery slope for you. Give me a few more games and I’ll have you sussed and beaten.”
“I still have a few more tricks up my sleeves.”
“You don’t have any sleeves; you’re only a black box.”
“OK I have a few more tricks up my belt wrapped around your waist.”
With that silly comment I went to bed. I’ve never been to bed so early in my whole adult life, it was only seven thirty.
*
Day three of training. I went through my usual morning routine and by nine was sat in front of Simon in his office with Gary the pilot next to me.
Simon looked up from his console “Morning. Gary here is a well respected senior pilot with ten years experience here at Earth Station Three. He is going to help today as it will be me doing the training. You will be the person in charge of giving instruction to Gary. During the morning session I will let you know all the instructions you will need to tell Gary and in the afternoon you can have a go yourself.”
“How do I communicate with Gary?”
“All communications are routed through your computer. Anything else? Good let’s get going.”
Twenty minutes later and we were a thousand kilometres from the station waiting for a series of freighters to turn up that would be used for the training. The first one was a small rectangular cuboid about two hundred metres long. Simon took me through attaching my ship to the base of the freighter and shunting the ship into a new trajectory using the engines. The second vessel was similar but about a kilometre long. Although my ship could manage the manoeuvres alone, it was quicker with two ships.
“What I want you to do Roy is quite simple. Get Gary to position his ship on the other end of the freighter and clamp on to it. Then sync up your computer with his computer so you have control of both ships as you change the freighters trajectory. Do you think you can do that?”
“I’ll give it a go. Adams can you patch me through to Gary.”
“The connection is ready.”
“Gary can you take the far end of the freighter and clamp on. I will synchronise the computers and take control of your thrusters.”
“No problem Roy.” Gary sounded like he was in the sphere with me as it was a crystal clear transmission. By the time I had clamped on to the part of the hull that was nearest to me Gary had already clamped onto the hull at the other end of the ship. He was very quick.
“Adams can you sync with Gary’s computer.”
“Sync complete.”
I started applying thrust and both ends of the ship moved in perfect harmony.
The morning went on with various styles of freighters. Simon took me through the best ways to clamp on to a freighter and where best to position Gary.
Towards the end of the morning I asked Simon “Do you ever have a problem with damaging hulls whilst you are shunting?”
“No never. These are intergalactic ships and their hulls are indestructible like ours. If the hulls aren’t built like this then the smallest speck of dust would be devastating at Hyper Travel speeds.”
“Don’t the owners get annoyed when you move their freighters about?”
“How would they ever know? All these ships have to make course corrections out of Hyper Travel anyway so it doesn’t make a lot of difference if we move them a few thousand kilometres to avoid your solar system or even a few million.”
“Are the freighters always automated or do you
sometimes get manned freighters?”
“Freighters are always automated but we sometimes get manned ships passing which aren’t, we’ll talk more about those tomorrow.”
After lunch it was more of the same. Simon explained that sometimes it can take a few days to shift trajectories and this was done in shifts between various teams. By four thirty I was sat in Simon’s office again with Gary. I didn’t feel so fatigued today as the work was less stressful.
Simon looked at Gary and said “What’s your assessment of today?”
“I think it went very well Simon. Roy has a natural talent and picks up ideas very quickly. I think he’ll be more than ready to start work in a few days time.”
“I concur. How do you feel Roy?”
“I think it went well and I’m beginning to relax a little and enjoy the work.”
“Good. See you tomorrow at nine o’clock.”
I left the pilot’s building and got my first pizza on the station from Sam’s Bar and then I got a second. If only they served lager and Claire wasn’t on patrol my life would be complete. The big clock on the wall said it was VII O’clock and although it was still early I decided to go back to my apartment and have a massive games session with Adams to try and beat him. By nine o’clock I still hadn’t achieved this, but my win rate was slowly creeping up.
“You’re looking smug again Roy which is strange for a loser.”
“I know but not for much longer Adams. I’m going to kick your arse.”
“I don’t have an arse.”
“Well you talk a lot of shit for somebody without an arse.”
“Charming. Shouldn’t it be ‘kick my ass’ rather than arse?”
“You don’t have a donkey either.”
I started yawning and knew that it was time to quit.
*
Day four of training and at nine in the morning I was sat in front of Simon in his office with three other pilots.
“OK Roy today we’re going to take you through tackling manned ships. Your solar system has a two light year exclusion zone but sometimes space tourists take a chance to see what’s inside the exclusion zone. What we want to do is to stop any ship from entering the solar system. The tactic is simple but takes a little time to learn. You will be flying as a patrol which is four ships including yourself. What you do is come together as a diamond formation about a kilometre in front of the intruding ship. You then slowly reduce the gap between you and the intruder. Usually within a couple of hundred metres they get the message and leave.”