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Shorts
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| Support (amended) (again) | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||||||
| 02 May 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Yes, OK. It's Sci-fi. Deal with it Johnson slid into the pilot’s cradle and scanned the vista in front of him. Surely he should be able to see it by now. He was less than a hundred clicks from the station. He must be able to see it. It should be there, directly in front. A flash of red! The nav beacon. He concentrated. Yes, there! A star twice the size of the others, but duller. Johnson could hardly wait. Technically it had been twenty years since he had seen another human being, but with the time dilation from the unimaginable speeds he had been travelling at, and the coma drugs, it was only six months of waking time for him. But even so. Six months of living on reconstituted food, recycled water and old film recordings. They said that after a time your body adjusts, that the smell an unwashed body makes after one day has all gone by the first month. Johnson didn’t believe them. He had showered three times since wake-up. There were women on the station. True, they were probably no oil painting, but Johnson had been so long on his own. There were plenty of men on the station for them to choose, but he bet, he hoped with all his being, that they would fancy a change. New meat. And food. Real food. OK, maybe not real steak, but something better than standard issue cargo rations. And after a week or so, back to Earth for good. This time he meant it. This had been his last trip. This time he was not going to piss his wages away. He would buy a place and settle down. He hit the transmit button. “Station Twelve, Station Twelve, this is Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven at the Seventy-Five K marker on final approach.” “Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven, confirmed at Seventy-Five K. Switch nav comm to Station control. Welcome back. You’ve been gone a long time.” “Roger that, Station Twelve. Fire up that barbeque and line up the beers, I’m coming home.” “Ha! Received, Alpha Twenty-Seven. If there ever was meat and beer here, you’d think I’d share it?” “Switching to Station Control.” “We have a red light on protocol hand-shake. Please return to manual and retry.” Johnson switched the on-board pilot over to manual, then switched it back for the station remote pilot to take him in. The light turned amber as it tried to communicate with the station computer, then turned red. “Station Twelve, this is Alpha Twenty-Seven. I have a red light on Station control.” “Roger that. We have a red light here too. Please reduce speed to 40 K per hour and standby.” “40K. Roger” He slowed the ship, bracing himself against the unaccustomed weight against the cradle straps. But he couldn’t brace himself against the disappointment. He had expected to be docked and inside within the hour. Now because of a damn computer glitch it would be at least two hours. Nothing in the grand scheme of things, but when the scheme included conversation, food, women and company an extra hour was an eternity. “Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven, this is Station Twelve. Station Diagnostics are green this end. Can you run a ship diag at your end?” “Diagnostics? I ran them twelve hours ago when I came out of deep sleep, but I’ll run them again.” He sighed. Sure, maybe something had gone wrong in the meantime, but he didn’t believe it. They were probably just giving him something to do. He reached for the manual. Ten minutes later, and he hit the transmit button again. “Station Twelve, this is Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven. Ship diags are all green.” “Roger, Alpha Twenty-Seven. We’re going to reboot our systems here. Please reduce your speed to ten K and then reboot your nav comm..” Johnson slowed the ship again. More delay. He rebooted the auto pilot. “Station Twelve, this is Twenty-Seven. Reboot complete.” “Roger that. Please switch to Station Control.” “Another red light, Twelve.” “Confirmed. Red light. What revision software is your nav comm, Twenty-Seven.” “Stuffed if I know, Station Twelve. Wait one.” Johnson pulled the manual again, looked up the procedures for displaying the revision number and punched the keys. All the way through he quietly cursed; an unbroken stream of invective against computers, engineers, station controllers and everything else that was keeping him from the nirvana he had been expecting. “Station Twelve, my revision number is twelve-point-seven-point-zero-point-four-zero-two.” “OK, Twenty-Seven, problem solved. We don’t support anything before revision twenty-three. We’ll upload the upgraded software.” “Thanks Station Twelve. You had me worried for a while there.” “No worries, Twenty-Seven. Beginning upload now. On completion please reboot the nav comm. It should take an hour. I’ll tell them to hold back on that barbeque.” An hour to wait. What could he do until then? Maybe another shower wouldn’t hurt… Showered, fresh and on tenterhooks, Johnson urged the upload on. When it finally completed he rebooted the nav comm. The screen remained blank. He rebooted again. Nothing. “Erm… Station Twelve from Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven. My nav comm is failing to boot. Please advise.” “Alpha Twenty-Seven, what error message are you getting?” “Nothing, Twelve. My screen is blank. I’ve got nothing here at all.” “Nothing? Nothing at all? But that shouldn’t happen.” “Oh, good. I’d be really pissed if you bust my system on purpose, Twelve. Now what are you going to do about it?” “Can you hit the hard reset and give me safe mode readout?” “I don’t have a hard reset, Twelve.” “All Misumi’s have a hard reset, Twenty-Seven. It’s under the main panel.” “That’s just great for all those ships that have a Misumi, Twelve, but my nav comm is a Patel Five.” “Jeez! A Patel? We haven’t supported them for ten years or more. I’ve never even seen one. No wonder the software won’t boot it. What are you doing flying with a Patel?” “I’ve been in space for twenty years, Twelve. They were OK when I took off. What are you going to do about it? I don’t want my steaks over-cooked.” “Look… erm… reduce speed to zero and I’ll get onto support on the sub-wave.” “No can do, Station Twelve. All manual controls are tied into the nav comm. I’m stuck on this vector at 10 K until we can get the nav comm back on line.” “Shit. Roger that, Cargo Alpha Twelve. We’ll get back to you ASAP.” Johnson sighed and looked at his hands. The fingers were puckered and wrinkled. Another shower was out of the question. An hour later and the radio crackled into life. “Station Twelve to Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven, receiving?” “Alpha Twenty-Seven receiving. Where would I go?” “Twenty-Seven. How much Deep Sleep do you have on board?” “Deep Sleep? I don’t know. Six months, maybe. Why?” “Cargo Alpha Twenty-Seven. Look… I’m sorry about this. This stinks. Sorry. God, I’m sorry.” Johnson’s stomach sank. “What the hell is going on?” “Twenty-Seven, we have had a sub-wave from your company on Earth. Transmission as follows: ‘Thank you for your enquiry regarding the Patel Five. We no longer support this hardware. We will dispatch a replacement Misumi unit forthwith. ETA twenty years. Thank you for choosing Event Horizon Cargo. Your custom is important to us.’” Johnson looked out of the cockpit window. Half a kilometre away the space station was sliding past at ten kilometres an hour. On the shadow side he could make out the lit window of the observation deck. There were figures standing there, watching. He squinted. Some of the silhouettes, he was sure, were female.
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i wonder if he'll ever get a steak and a sh*g...why couldn't they just let him land? i suppose you'll come up with some real geeky reason now, won't you...arrgh! computers!...more trouble that they're worth.
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