The rocket shuddered as it inched off the launchpad. A spray of liquid fire melted the concrete, splattering molten rock in all directions.
“You overloaded it with all your crap,” Dale complained from his seat pointed at the sky.
“My crap? You’re the one who had to bring your motorcycle. You’re going all the way to the moon and you have to bring your stupid Harley,” Sylvia said.
“You should have left the dogs, they’re not going to like running around in those space suits,” Dale retorted.
“That’s why they have the indoor dog park. Did you not read the brochure? Or did you just read about the golf course?” Indeed, Dale had stopped when he read about the low-gravity golf course. It was ten times as large as a normal course with drives of 700 yards being common. He imagined sweet, slowly arcing shots zooming silently across the moon.
Virgin Atlantic had built a series of luxury resorts on the surface, using money from initial investors who merely wanted a ride to the moon and back. It was now dotted with interconnected hotels, restaurants, shops, and theaters much like Las Vegas but with viewing bubbles revealing the earth in a starlit sky. One could rent a moon buggy and go for a drive or slip into a space suit for a hike around the powdery surface or ski down the silty soil at one of the ski resorts. There were endless casinos, shows, and any other high-priced vice one could imagine. The moon was still considered an international territory where no laws had been clearly defined. So, with the money of Mumbai and the morals of Shanghai the sky was literally the limit.
The trip to the moon took about three days and the skyrockets featured every luxury. There were sleeping compartments, a bar, restaurant, spa, gaming room, disco, virtual reality lounge, and IMAX theater. Ten couples plus their belongings could be flown on a single launch, and would stay for at least a month but usually longer. Like an expensive cruise, guests only had to eat, sleep, drink and repeat.
In two decades of flights there had never been an accident. Construction grew rapidly when the company realized they could sell moon condos. This meant that guests were bringing more and more of their items from home. This was encouraged because passengers paid on a per pound basis — the more you brought the more you paid. As the flights became routine, and the burgeoning cargo bays were crammed with ever more items, the ground crew became lax about the exact weight of the items being shipped. The load with Sylvia and Dale was well beyond specifications.
The flights were almost entirely automated, with a robot crew assisting passengers and robot cooks and bartenders serving food and libations. There were no pilots, just an advanced navigation system that was carefully tracked by ground control. They typically launched ten flights per day, each an hour apart, with returning flights starting immediately after the last ship from earth launched. At any given time twenty skyrockets were either going to or returning from the moon.
***
“You there, Whizzy! Get me another gin and tonic!” Dale called to the robot waiter, which bowed to him acknowledging his command.
“You better take it easy on the drinks. You’ll be pickled as a pig’s foot before we even land,” Sylvia complained.
“Can’t you just once let me …” Dale was interrupted by the soothing voice of the auto pilot.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated. We’ve encountered a small variance in our trajectory, which we will be correcting shortly. Please remain seated.” Outside, the other skyrockets followed a straight line between the moon and the earth, but ship seventeen veered in the direction of mars. The items in the overloaded cargo hold had shifted, pulling the spaceship to one side. None of the robot waiters, cooks, masseuses, DJs or barkeeps had been programmed to enter the hold and redistribute the weight so they busied themselves distracting the guests with free appetizers, drinks, foot massages and breakdance demonstrations.
Ground control engineers worked furiously to calculate a way to reorient the ship back to the proper flight path. The majority of fuel onboard was used on takeoff and landing but only came out the back end of the ship. There was a small auxiliary supply of fuel used to make minor adjustments once they were free from earth’s gravity and atmosphere but the navigation rockets were small, designed only for very minor adjustments. In all the years they had been running ships back and forth it was all they needed. Until now.
Most of the passengers were oblivious to the problems, but Roger knew something was wrong. He was a retired Virgin Atlantic engineer on board cashing in his earned travel points after years of loyal service. He noticed that the stars rolling past the windows were not the right stars. He called for the attendant, essentially a silicone mannequin in the shape of an attractive young woman driven by servos and artificial intelligence. He tried to use key words like “dire emergency” “chest pain” “projectile vomiting” which should have tripped her emergency protocols. Instead she repeated, “Thank you for your patience. Please remain seated. Would you like another canapé?”
As Roger tried to alert ground control he was on board and able to assist, the load in the cargo bay listed further. It was laden with consumer goods carefully procured by the passengers as a way to express their unique style. The ship began to shudder from the unstable load, and veer further from its normal path. The zero-gravity combined with the sway the ship made many of the passengers nauseous. The attendants handed out ginger candy, Dramamine as well as accordion-like vomit bags in brilliant robin’s egg blue. In their panic, many guests missed the bag, which created a swirling cloud of refluxed liquor and canapés that moved about the cabin in an ominous cloud. All the robots were engaged for “emesis protocol” attempting to vacuum up the vile slurry. As they did so, a restraining strap shimmied loose causing most of the cargo to suddenly drop to the bottom of the bay causing the ship to spin end over end. This sudden artificial gravity caused the technicolor spew to splatter in all directions, which led to more vomiting.
Roger tried to get his bearings, but the spinning skyrocket made it impossible. Stars spun by wildly, and as the ship buckled under stress it was never designed to withstand a crack formed in its hull. As the ship twirled in space, emergency space helmets dropped from the ceiling and debris slipped out the crack in a stream of first world flotsam.
***
“Ladies and gentlemen, the cabin pressure has decreased. Please remain calm and enter the nearest escape pod,” said the soothing voice of the autopilot. The robots began pulling passengers out of their seats and tossing them in the direction of the pods at the rear of the ship. The escape pods were mandated by the FAA and the International Space Agency but had never been used. Because of their perfect flight record, Virgin Atlantic resented the presence of the pods more and more, so maintenance on them had begun to slip.
For one, the seat belts had degraded due to the accumulated radiation exposure of so many flights. The seatbelts remained in place, and looked as if they were solid, but as passengers reached for them they turned to dust in their hands. Because they were very expensive to replace, the robots also rode in the escape pods, telling the passengers it was so they could render aid should it be necessary. “We are here to assist you during this emergency launch of the escape pod. Please remain seated. Please remain calm,” they all repeated over and over as the pod doors locked behind them.
Second, the batteries for the navigational scanners in the pods had long ago turned to dead bricks of lithium. This meant that when the pods were activated, they would simply blast away from their portal without scanning for anything in their path. The pods shot blindly into space, most of them crashing into the soup of furniture, motorcycles, exercise machines, golf and ski gear, pets, dune buggies, food, clothing and knick knacks leaking from the broken ship. The impact with the debris caused many deaths and serious injuries and despite their promises the robots did not know first aid and simply shut down to await rescue and preserve their battery life.
In order to launch the escape pods from the ship, the locking bolts holding them in place were designed to explode, which both released and drove the pods into space. Unfortunately, as the pods launched the explosions caused the skyrocket to spin even faster.
***
Sylvia refused to get into an escape pod. “I want my dogs! I can’t leave my dogs!” she yelled at the silicone attendant trying to drag her out of her seat.
“Leave the dogs for God’s sake!” Dale said, scolding his wife but also resisting the attendant, “they’re probably already dead!”
As the ship spun faster and faster the g-force increased, and any residual robots and passengers crawled along the walls and ceiling toward the back of the ship more and more slowly.
When the robot attendant finally abandoned them and headed for the escape pods, Dale and Sylvia decided it might be time for them to leave. As the tried, they found they could barely lift themselves from their seats and were beginning to lose consciousness as the blood rushed to their feet. Just as they were fading out, an explosion rocked the ship and the spinning suddenly slowed to a gentle twirl. As their heads cleared a man in a spacesuit came into view. It was Roger who had gone to the navigation room and put on the suit used by technicians when they worked on the ships parked on the moon. He had triggered all the remaining escape pods on one side of the ship to go off at once which slowed the ship’s spinning.
“Put these on! There’s no way to know how long the ship will hold together,” Roger instructed Dale and Sylvia as he handed them their spacesuits. This time they quickly did as they were told.
***
Virgin Atlantic’s Public Relations Department decided the best plan was to scapegoat the ground crew who loaded the ship, tout Roger as a modern-day Sully who heroically prevented further loss of life, and to pay off Sylvia and Dale to back up Roger’s rescue story. They all made the rounds on talk shows, podcasts, websites, Twitter feeds, movie cameos, Sixty Minutes interviews and each wrote a book about their experience. Dale’s book, a collection of anecdotes about playing golf with celebrities was turned in to a mini-series on ESPN. Sylvia’s book, which featured recipes for healthy meals and treats for dogs, launched her career as a celebrity chef on the Food Network’s Dogz ‘n’ Catz channel. A film was made about Roger’s life and his heroic rescue of the passengers but was never released when footage was leaked of him sexually harassing one of the actors portraying a robot flight attendant.