ORIGINAL FICTION: "Visions of Sound" by Richard Anderson (Part 3)

PLEASE NOTE: This is part 3 of the story. Part 1 is online here Part two is online here and part four will go online next Sunday.
---------------------------------------
Director Watanabe sat in his office, reading from his desk screen. He hated using his implanted computer when he wanted to read and think, and he needed to think. Project 1701 was the crazy idea of the founding industrialists that setup the New Eden consortium. To them, step one was getting a colony on the moon and at L5. Step two was to spread humankind out to the stars, and they needed a practical way to go interstellar for that. The events of the early twenty first century had made them believe that the very survival of humanity demanded it.

Not having lived through those times, Watanabe had never quite accepted their conclusions, but what was happening on Earth now, due to the discovery by the Argo probe, made him suspect they may have been right after all. There had been riots and economic disruption not seen since the first decade of the previous century, and the worlds governments were all in the habit of blaming those crazy spaceborn for all their terrestrial troubles. ‘Stupid ground-pounders,’ thought Watanabe, ‘it was just a matter of time before intelligent life was discovered.’ With a sigh he went back to the personal reports he was reading.

First there was Oka Tanaka: twenty four, born on New Eden to two first-generation Japanese. She graduated from Eden University with a PHD in astrophysics, and was the chief astrogator for the 1701 project. Watanabe smiled when he saw that her name meant ‘cherry blossom.’

Next, there was Rick Paulson, called RP by all who worked with him: he was twenty three, also born on New Eden. To a Japanese mother and an African American father. He had a PHD in nuclear engineering and plasma physics. ‘What a mix,’ Watanabe thought, not specifically referring to RP’s mixed heritage. The spaceborn society was mixing the best and brightest of Japan and America, building a whole new civilization in the process.

Now he came to the one that troubled him: Watez.

Amber Dawn Watez: thirty three. Born to Oscar and Lucy Watez in a Seventh Day Adventist farming colony in Arizona, USA. Amber was born very healthy with the exception that she was blind. Due to the Seventh Day Adventist beliefs of her parents, she received no treatment. By the age of two, she was walking and speaking at a level that was much higher than was normal for her age.

Her parents became concerned because she seemed to be always humming and making clicking noises as she ran around the house, and she insisted on sleeping naked. After doctors examined her, it was found that she had somehow taught herself how to use echo location to compensate for her blindness. They thought she would grow out of wanting to sleep naked.

As was the fashion at the time, her Seventh Day Adventist parents wanted to home school her, but due to federal law as a special needs child, Amber had to go to a public school instead. She excelled at math and science and was placed in regular classes for those subjects; the only black mark on her record was when she was seven and punched an older male student for calling her a ‘hummer.’ That same year, her family was involved in a freak car accent that killed both her parents and left her with severe head injuries. While operating to save her life, the surgeons also removed a small tumor that was placing pressure on the optic center of her brain.

Over the next two years, Amber slowly gained sight in both her eyes. As was the procedure in Arizona, the state looked for relatives that would take her in. They found a living relative - distant both in space and blood - but the state was overjoyed that they could offload a special needs child; so off to the New Eden space colony she went. The relative taking her in was named Stryker.

Once on New Eden, she was found to have an unusually high spatial awareness, fast reflexes, and high math skills. She was directed into a course of study that would take advantage of her talents. At twenty she graduated with degrees in astronautics and celestial mechanics. Due to the brain trauma she suffered as a child, Amber wasn’t able to use the brain-implanted computers that most spacers got in their early twenties.

She was hired by the High Frontier Foundation as a pilot (Second class rating) and navigator. After a few years working on the Foundation's transport ships, supplying the various research stations around Earth and Mars, Amber was chosen to be the chief navigator for a survey of Neptune.

The Neptune mission was a disaster from the start. They had problems with their ion engines; the onboard computers kept crashing; so Amber had to do most of the navigation by hand. The main problem, however, was that the pilot and commander hated each other. Not long after reaching Neptune space, an explosion killed them both, and also damaged the navigation and engine control circuits in the control cabin.

Working with the two surviving research scientists on the mission, Amber had been able to jury rig controls and pilot the damaged ship back to the inner solar system. A board of inquiry found that the explosion was attempted - and ultimately successful - sabotage caused by either the pilot or the commander. The inquiry also commend Amber for her actions on the mission. After this, she’d become the lead test pilot for project 1701.

Watanabe leaned back in his chair after he finished the personnel summary. Getting the ship back home from Neptune was an achievement that most pilots simply couldn’t have done, but still their was something bothering him. Maybe it was the fact she was born on Earth, to a religious family? Watanabe hated the idea that he might be developing racist tendencies.

To Be Continued....

Copyright 2009, Richard Anderson