For all the conjecture throughout Human history, on the subjects of Fate and Destiny, I've come to believe, through personal experience, that they are quite simply a result of being in the right place at the right time.
As it happened, the right place for me was in Earth orbit, living and working on the space station ARTHUR C. CLARKE. And the right time was when the privately-owned freighter, XIANNE, came in from Mars.
My name is James Street. I like “Jim”. “Jimmy” is okay, I guess; but I can't stand “Jimbo”.
On the Net, I learned that there was once a famous Texas Longhorns quarterback named James Street. He had never lost as a starter, going into a cold December afternoon in 1969 against the Arkansas Razorbacks. An unbelievable contest! I've actually watched the game several dozen times. If you're into football, it's well worth the download. It was a much different game back then, as you'll see. It was a man's sport in those days, and they actually HIT each other!
Now then, when I say I was “working on” the ARTHUR C. CLARKE, that's exactly what I mean: construction.
Some people call it job security, but I call it chronic labor. The station had been up and spinning for many years, but we were still trying to complete it. As I'm sure everyone knows, the CLARKE is the largest and most luxurious of the wheel-shaped space stations. Double-wheeled, in fact. That's right: just like the one in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. or at least similar.
We had finally named so many places and things after explorers and scientists, that we were now getting around to naming them after those whose visions had actually inspired our efforts into space. And now life was imitating art in grand style. I half expected the work to be concluded when we reached the same stage of “unfinished-ness” that's depicted in the movie by Kubrick.
While optimistic by over three hundred years, Clarke's vision was a beauty, nevertheless. And so, too, is the reality. Things just take longer than they used to think they would. There is no such thing as instant gratification outside Earth's atmosphere.
There's an interesting side point regarding 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY—which has been in mass revival ever since the CLARKE was first on the drawing boards: Ask anyone—At which planet did DISCOVERY encounter the giant black monolith? I promise, you'll instantly know if he's read the book or seen the movie, or both. Try it. Works every time. That is, of course, if you've done both.
So anyway, that's where I was, staring out of the ARTHUR C. CLARKE, when XIANNE arrived. (That's pronounced “She-Anne”, like the feminine pronoun, followed by your grandma's middle name.)
It was good timing, also, in that I was at the end of my contract with the construction company that I'd spent the last year of my young life with. I was twenty years old and, as they say, “free and clear to navigate”.
Just like XIANNE.
It was well known that XIANNE's master, Captain Tom Duncan, was eccentric—to say the least. He'd built his ship so big that it wouldn't fit into our central core docking bay. Maybe it was because he couldn't take the constant droning of “The Blue Danube” that Approach Control insisted on filling the vacuum with. Or maybe it was because he was a megalomaniacal control freak with enough money to have everything his own way. Either way, he matched orbit with the CLARKE and “stood off” so that everyone had to come to him.
And everyone was only too glad to do so.
XIANNE was a glorious creature. A colossal white cylinder, constructed primarily in Earth orbit nearly two decades earlier, she was both simple and complex at the same time. Over two hundred yards long, from nose to skirt extension, she featured numerous cargo sections, between her command module and her NERVA III main engine. The most impressive element of XIANNE, however, was her rotating crew and passenger stage. Immedialely aft of the tapering Bridge, spinning like the cylinder of a giant revolver, it provided gravity for Duncan, and those privileged to be with him, for the long trips between planets.
She was here primarily to take on hydrogen for fuel, cargo and supplies, and to deliver a few travelers. But, it was common knowledge that a few “working passengers” would be welcomed aboard XIANNE, provided they met with Captain Duncan's approval. And once she was loaded and ready to go, XIANNE would return to the settlements of Mars.
It was my intention to be on that ship when she left the Earth behind....
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