Making a Dollar or Two- BOOK THREE

[KSK]

And so we finally come round to the story title...

Great work as always!

[Confused Scientist]

On 1/15/2019 at 2:45 PM, KSK said:

And so we finally come round to the story title...

And for all the wrong reasons. But I'm still not satisfied with the amount of plot twists this story has. It's time for this story arc to become twistier than twenty-two twists twisted together into a twist-tied knot in your shoelaces. Because in the next chapter...

Wait. I can't give it away. It's supposed to be a twist. But until then... we're still broadcasting.

 

Spoiler

And if all that wasn't twisty enough, this whole post was just a rehearsal for the Making a Dollar or Two sequel: 2017: Odyssey Undone, where we find out once and for all what I know and how I know it. Sound tantalizing? No: It sounds TWISTY!!!!!!!!!

 

2017: Odyssey Undone

Every story has an author.

Coming soon (like, a year, maybe) to The Internet.
The Internet is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ©℗Disney Corporation℠®™^�Ÿ as of 2023. The Internet is rated NC-17 and is not responsible for feline injuries or lawsuits. All you base are belong to the internet.

 

[KSK]

Twistier than a Moebius pretzel baked in nine-dimensional space! Go for it!

[roboslacker]

If you can pull that off, this story might be almost as convoluted as Kerny Kerman's Journal.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 37- All the Way to Juno, Part 2

The following is an excerpt from a video shown in Jeb's high-school history class celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Munar landing.

Narrator: Fifty years ago, kerbalkind set forth on its first great age of exploration since ancient times, with two companies leading the way into the new space age: the Bloeting Company, which was destroyed in the Third War, and the Kontinental Aircraft Corporation, today known as the Kontinental Engineering Labs, well-known for developing machines to clean fallout and carbon dioxide emissions from Kerbin's atmosphere.

[The screen pans across a black-and-white photo of the KSP astronaut corps at a formal dinner; at one end, Bill is seen struggling to knot a necktie.]

Narrator: These first astronauts boldly took kerbals beyond their first horizon in nearly two hundred years, eclipsing the discovery of the Orchidian continent by Missalian explorers. Although no one knows which company these astronauts worked for, all of the early astronauts were united with a sense of kinship from their noble goal.

[The screen cuts to grainy, black-and-white footage from a Munar landing.]

Narrator: Fifty years ago, two kerbals finally reached the Munar surface after a harrowing descent plagued by computer alarms and a mysterious radio blackout. Nevertheless, these brave explorers were the first to gaze upon Kerbin from her closest neighbor, and although no records of their surface explorations survive, today we know that they were able to return home safely because radar observations indicate that only the descent module of their primitive lander remains on the Mun.

[The screen cuts to a color photo of Stella Kerman.]

Narrator: Although we no longer know the names of these two astronauts, as their names were just one of billions of victims of the Third War, kerbalkind will always remember their determination in opening up the stars for our use.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Flashbulbs popped and faded like the ghosts of dead thunderstorms and breakers with whitecaps crashing against a beach during a hurricane as Stella Kerman sprinted up the stage and grabbed onto the podium. She surveyed the crowd of reporters and sighed inwardly to herself. “Thanks for all coming here on such short notice. Please take your seats.”

Stella watched with bemusement as, for once, the auditorium quieted down and the reporters quit their squabbling. Even the delegates from KNN and Coyote News had sat next to each other and had settled for minor punching during the press conference. This will be a day I won’t ever forget… Stella thought.

“Well… thank you. I’m going to make this quick because PDI- that’s powered descent initiation- is scheduled for a few minutes from now. There have been rumors of a communication problem aboard the Phoenix spacecraft, and although we have confirmed that the voice link was temporarily disturbed between the LM and the CSM, all flaws have been ironed out.”

More flashbulbs. “Also, there has been some confusion about callsigns. I would just like to clarify that the Raven is named Clipper Ernest Kerman and the Phoenix is called Condor. With that out of the way, we will now begin covering the descent. Those networks with cameras in Mission Control, we will go live to the trench at this point…”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gene could barely contain his enthusiasm. Before launch, Jeb had come to his office and given him a brief history of the future of space exploration. Knowing where this launch was going to lead, Gene wasn’t able to comprehend the enormous role he was playing in history, and his only regret was that he wouldn’t live to see the magnificent stations and bases that Jeb had described to him.

“Flight, timer.”

Gene snapped out of his daydream.

“Go, timer.”

“One minute until PDI.”

“Roger. FIDO? How’s their keyhole attitude?”

“Flight, FIDO. Entry looks good… Oh, man…”

“FIDO? Everything good?”

“I just realized… we’re actually about to… oh, gah, oh my…”

Gene looked over his team and grinned as he noticed Wernher standing in the corner.

“CAPCOM, flight.”

At the CAPCOM console, Bob looked up. “Go, flight.”

“CAPCOM, tell them to enter Program 39 into the computer. It’s time to make Kerbin proud.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In orbit thirty kilometers above the Mun, the sense of merriment and joy had seeped out the thin walls of the Phoenix and dissipated into the cold vacuum. Stella was on edge; Jeb was on guard. Each astronaut looked out one of the narrow side windows, heads turned away from each other.

The radio crackled. “Condor, PDI in twenty seconds. Please enter P39 N22 V7 in the flight computer, over.”

Stella and Jeb both reached for the transmitter button, but Jeb got there first and Stella pulled her hand away. “Sounds good, Bob,” Jeb called. “Program 39, Noun 22 Verb 7. Engine arm stage, ullage… keyhole attitude entry.”

Stella coughed. “Ignition in three… two… one…”

The motor came to life with a thump and Jeb and Stella grabbed onto their control columns as weight returned. “Juno, we are decelerating. Tell Kerbin we are fifteen minutes away from making history, over.” Jeb glanced over at Stella quickly before his gaze returned to the instruments. The first burn went quickly, and as the Condor fell closer to the Munar surface Stella thought that she could reach out the window and scrape her hand against the taller peaks.

“It’s beautiful,” she said finally. “Been to the Mun a few times, but I’d always landed at night. Never got to see everything up close like this before.”

Jeb sighed. “Yeah. The Munbase Two climbaway corridor was especially beautiful… You know, I can still remember how me and Bill and Bob were glued to the windows as Hudson blew the base up. When I was, I mean, growing up near Los Ruidos… I’d look at the Mun as it rose above the mountains and dream about flying low above the desert at night, under the Mun’s glow. After the Greatest Depression and the Third War, I knew Kerbin had nothing left for me and Bill but we couldn’t figure out a way to leave until he took a bribe to certify Station One’s faulty centrifuge. And then, once we finally saved up enough money to get to the Mun… I can’t even remember what it was like. The worst part is, even though I was back there ten more times, I never paid any attention then, either.”

Jeb looked up, down at the surface. “Now I know.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The final descent burn rocked the Condor from side to side slightly, and very slowly the lander pitched upward as it slowed down from orbit. Jeb and Stella swiveled their heads and methodically scanned the instruments- center, up, right, down, left: repeat.

A loud warning tone suddenly blared through the cockpit and Stella flinched. Jeb checked the red status lights and called in the alarm. “292 program alarm,” he announced. “Juno, how do we proceed?”

As the signal traveled back to Juno’s Landing, Stella reached over and began flipping through the computer handbook. She stabbed her finger down on the page just as Bob came back with the diagnosis. “Condor, we copy your alarm. 292 is an overflow error. Please turn off your secondary radar targeting system.”

Stella shook her head. “Jeb, 292 is a RCS quad malfunction. We need to disable high-precision pitch control and abort the landing immediately.”

Jeb gulped. “Uhhhh… Juno, we’ll… get back to you on that… data feed mode change.”

“What?” Bob shouted. “Please toggle aux radar feed immediately.”

“Jeb,” Stella said, “it’s time to choose. Who do you trust? It’s up to you.”

The radio crackled. “We are reaching decision altitude. Toggle radar feed processing to aux right now.”

“I’m just like you, Jeb. All I ever wanted to do was fly. An engineer at heart. And if you die, I die, too.”

“Condor, you will be on a collision trajectory in five seconds.”

“Decide.”

“Make up your mind, Jeb!”

Jeb sighed and looked at Stella. “I trust you, but I don’t believe you.” And he reached over to the computer and turned off the secondary radar targeting system before taking the controls for the final landing. “Give me callouts, please.”

Stella nodded. “Five hundred meters. Fuel ten percent.”

The silver grey regolith slowly filled up the bottom half of the window.

“Two-fifty. Fuel eight.”

Jeb moved the stick left and guided the Phoenix over a large boulder.

“One hundred meters.”

Jeb pulled the throttle back.

“Fifty.”

Out the window, Jeb caught the lander’s shadow racing towards him, tracing over the boulders and craters of the Mun’s surface.

“Twenty-five.”

Clouds of dust began to billow out underneath the engine.

“Ten.”

Jeb felt a thump.

“Contact light.”

“SAS out of detent.”

“Engine arm shutdown.”

Jeb grasped the microphone. “Juno, the Condor has landed.”

Even through the cheap speakers in his helmet, Jeb could hear the cheering and whooping from Mission control. In his ear, Bob laughed. “Well, we’ve got a bunch of guys down here about to turn pink… we’re glad to hear it. Got any ideas for what you’re gonna say when you get outside?”

“No. No, I don’t.” Jeb killed the microphone and turned towards Stella. “What was the computer alarm about?”

“Just seeing where your allegiance lies. I wasn’t sure what Bob might try.”

Jeb sighed. “I’ve given up on trying to figure out why kerbals do the things they do. That’s why I’m trusting you and Bob.”

He held out his hand. “Lay off Bob for a while until I think about it, will you?”

Stella smiled. “Deal.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb hung from the last rung of the ladder, his foot poised inches from the Munar dust. All of his past and kerbalkind’s spacefaring future would revolve around this moment, the day that his species was no longer bound to their home planet. This was a moment that would be remembered for generations. Gingerly, he put his foot down and planted his boot firmly in the regolith.

“Today, we have arrived. We’re never going back.”

He turned and smiled as Stella appeared at the Condor’s hatch. “I think that turned out pretty good. Come on, let’s get the contingency sample aboard.”

They worked for a few hours, trading banter with Mission Control and posing for pictures with a crescent Kerbin hanging in the background. Stella put up the Orchidian flag, and despite her best efforts a bend in the wire gave the illusion that a light breeze was waving the flag on the airless Mun. Jeb was about to start unpacking dynamite charges for seismic experiments when Bob called from Mission Control. “Jeb, Stella, we’ve got a special guest on the line for you.”

Stella pursed her lips. “Who is it?”

A gravelly, raspy voice came on the line. “Fellows, I am President of the United Territories of Orchidia.”

Jeb gasped. “President Noxin!”

“It is my honor to be talking to you fellows today,” President Noxin continued. “This is a very proud moment in the history of kerbalkind. Now, I’m sure you have lots of things to do up there, but is there anything you’d like to say?”

Stella switched her radio to the local channel. “Let me handle this.” Toggling back over to the air-to-ground channel, she addressed the president. “President Noxin! What an honor! You know, it’s incredible how we can fly all the way to the Mun, but some very simple technologies don’t always work. For example, on that last orbit, our flight recorder malfunctioned. Imagine that! In case of some collusion- I mean, er, collision- investigators would confiscate those tapes, and for eighteen minutes there wouldn’t be anything except a hum. Imagine that! All of the newspapers want to hear what’s on those tapes, and everything’s there except for a mysterious eighteen-minute gap. But, let me tell you, these tape recorders are really amazing, and you actually forget that you’re always being recorded, and everything you’re saying is part of some unimpeachable database that anybody could look up if they suspected something strange was going on. Of course, you wouldn’t want those tapes, because I’m sure you’re not a crook.”

President Noxin gulped. “Eh, uh, perhaps I better let you fellows get on with your mission.”

Stella bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Yeah… something tells me we won’t have Noxin to kick around anymore. Good luck!”

As President Noxin got off the line Jeb grinned and called Stella on the private channel. “That was incredible.”

Stella laughed. “I never thought I’d be thankful to have took AP Orchidian history in high school.” She walked over to the Condor and started unloading the dynamite for the seismic charges. “Oh, man… this one’s stuck. Looks like it expanded in the sunlight and it’s pressed up against the walls of the scientific bay.”

Jeb turned around. He listened to Stella grunt as she dug her heels into the regolith and pulled on the stubborn package.

“Aha! There it-”

The dynamite case suddenly gave way, sending Stella tumbling backwards down into a small crater. Jeb watched in horror as she landed on top of the explosive package, and with a muffled bang and a cloud of Mundust his crewmate was thrown back into the air and catapulted into a boulder field on the horizon.

Jeb was speechless for a moment, so struck was he at the freak accident. “Stella!” he cried, finally regaining his voice and scrambling down into the crater towards the rock field where the body had landed. “Stella!”

Bob’s voice spoke in his ear, urgent and frightened. “Jeb, we’ve just lost contact with Stella. Report.”

“I’ve got to get to her. Get to her… save her…”

“What happened, Jeb?”

Jeb coughed, worn out at his efforts to scale the far wall of the crater. “Stella… accident with dynamite package… thrown far away from landing site.”

The radio was silent for a minute. “And you’re trying to save her?”

“Yes,” Jeb panted. “Not gonna… not gonna give up.”

Bob coughed. “Jeb.”

No reply.

“Jeb.”

“What?”

“Jeb, I know you don’t want to hear this… Stella is dead. Even if she survived the explosion and the fall, her suit must be ruptured. We can see your heartrate from here, Jeb, and you’re going to kill yourself climbing this crater.”

“So?” Jeb gasped.

“Turn back, Jeb. Save yourself, at least.”

“Nope.”

“Come on back to the lander.”

Jeb didn’t answer but continued on his futile efforts to reach the crater rim.

“Jeb.” A new voice in his helmet- Val’s voice. “Jeb. Come home. For me. For Bill. For Bob, Gene, and everybody else who loves you. Come home, Jeb. Come home.”

Jeb sighed and coughed for a few seconds, utterly worn out at his struggle. Wordlessly, he trudged up the shallower side of the crater back to the Condor and stood at the foot of the lander, gazing up at the sky. A thin crescent slice of Kerbin’s pale blue iris stared back at him, cold and alienating. Turning away from the panorama and back towards the Phoenix’s ladder, Jeb began the long journey back to the uninviting, distant world that he had left behind with high hopes and boundless enthusiasm, and away from the steely Mun that had robbed him of not only those but also a true friend, one that he would not soon forget.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 38- Lost Opportunity

Jeb opened his eyes and groaned. His head pounded as he sat up and looked across his apartment at a thin beam of light seeping under the door crack. Turning to the red glow of his new digital alarm clock, he sighed and collapsed back into bed. His entire loft shook, and a pyramid of beer bottles perched on his nightstand clinked together. One fell off, and rolled towards the loft railing, passing under the bar and smashing on the workshop floor far below as Jeb ran his sandpaper tongue back and forth across his bone-dry lips.

Jeb wept quietly as he waited for sleep to return to him.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Welcome to the Route 77 Diner & Café. Take any seat in the house and we’ll be with you shortly.”

Val led Bill into a booth by the window and gazed out at the traffic rolling down Juno’s Central Avenue. She could just barely see her pale green reflection floating above the cars and trucks speeding down Route 77. Hearing the clatter of coffee cups and carafes, she turned back to Bill as a waitress brought them a cup of that morning’s brew. “Thanks.”

Bill reached out and took a sip. “Ugh. Too bitter.” He looked up at the waitress. “Ma’am? I think there’s something wrong with this drink.”

"Ain't nothin' wrong with it. You're a wimp, is all."

"Yeah, that seems about right." He turned back to Val. “So.”

Val sighed. “So. This is where I’d take out a phone and stare at it, but it’ll be another forty years until I have that option. Looks like we have no choice but to talk about Jeb.”

Bill nodded. “He’s worked up about Stella. I mean, we’re all sad, but he’s gone off the deep end. He doesn’t even care enough to get drunk on good beer.”

“He blames himself.”

“Of course he blames himself. Thing is, it goes deeper than that. You know, when I was growing up with Jeb in Los Hierros, he was a real loner. When he was little, he wore real thick glasses- some birth defect- until he had his eyes fixed with LASIK, and then when he was older his kindness and compassion were real social handicaps. I was his only real friend. His parents kept him on a short leash, he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and most nights he would be cooped up at home while everybody else was out having fun.”

Val tried some of her coffee and frowned. “Ugh, too bitter. Anyway, what are you implying?”

“Point is, poor old Jeb here is reliving all the ghosts and torments of the worst parts of his isolated childhood. He never really grew up, and that’s why we all love him. But now it’s why he can’t even open the shades and let in the sunlight to face another day.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb groaned and sat back up in his bed. He reached out to steady himself against a windowsill as he squinted and listened to the pounding in his head.

“Jeb! Open the door!”

Jeb realized that the pounding was coming from his front door. “Yeah, I’ll let you in. Amanda? Open the door, please.”

“Uhh… you don’t have a smart speaker, Jeb.”

Jeb sighed. “It’s unlocked.” He collapsed back in bed as he listened to footsteps clomping up the staircase to his loft.

“Hey, Bob. Whaddya want?”

Bob walked over to the edge of Jeb’s loft. “Just making sure you’re all right. You missed Val’s launch to the Mun yesterday. Did you even know it was happening?"

Jeb didn't answer.

"And now you’re hiding out here instead of hitting Mission Control and the diners and the bars. Are you going to keep doing this forever?”

“Lissen, you sogged consu- consumerismam- consum- rich guy slade- slave-”

“Jeb, it’s painfully obvious you’re not drunk. Don’t you miss flying the jets, and breaking the speed limit, and defying death instead of just lying here and waiting for it?”

Jeb bunched his blankets together and balled his fists under his pillow.

“I mean, you’re still building things in here, like that… what is that?”

Jeb sat up and looked at what Bob was pointing at. “Oh, that. It’s the world’s first automatic transmission. No more driving stick for me.”

“You’re a damn genius, Jeb. Your mind is what makes you great; don’t waste it thinking about what could have been. Go out and build yourself a better world.”

Jeb moaned.

“Bill said…” Bob started. “Nah, it’s not important.”

Jeb sat up. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that Bill said he’s not sure he can be friends with a kerbal who can’t even get out of bed in the morning without collapsing into a sobbing mound of helpless self-pity.”

“He said that?”

Bob nodded.

“Then by Kraken, I don’t remember the name Stella Kerman!” Jeb leapt out of bed; Bob noticed that he was wearing running shoes. “Let’s get out of here.” He threw himself over the railing, grabbed a piece of rope hanging from the ceiling, and swung straight out the door, kicking it open as he went. “C’mon! What’re you waiting for?” Bob panted as he sprinted to catch up to Jeb as he dashed out the door of the crew quarters out into a tropical Juno morning. Jeb began to laugh, and then shout: “Look at the birds! Look at the sky and the palm trees! I, Jebediah Beto Kerman, am officially back in business!”

He shoved past the glass double doors of mission control and skidded to a halt behind Gene’s console, gasping for breath. Gene looked up and smiled faintly. “Looks like someone had an epiphany.”

Jeb caught his breath and straightened up as Bob came in. “Yeah. What’d I miss?”

“Nothing, really. Val and her crew are about halfway to the Mun.”

Bob nodded. “And how’s the mission going?”

“Great,” Gene replied, at the same time as a trench controller called him. “We’re all bored down here.”

He keyed his headset. “Uh, sorry, EECOM, I missed that, please say again?”

“Flight, their O₂ readings are down.”

“Thanks, EECOM. Flight, CAPCOM.”

“Go, Flight.”

“CAPCOM, tell them to stir their tanks.”

“Roger that, stir their tanks.”

Bob listened to the controllers talk and frowned, parsing their commands in his head. Something didn’t seem right…

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “He means the spacecraft’s tanks! Man, I was confused there for a minute.”

Jeb grinned. “Yep, things can only get better from here!”

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[roboslacker]

8 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

Jeb sat up and looked at what Bob was pointing at. “Oh, that. It’s the world’s first automatic transmission. No more driving stick for me.”

 

And to think I used to respect Jeb.

[Confused Scientist]

6 hours ago, roboslacker said:

And to think I used to respect Jeb.

I'm not even sure why he built it; he usually drives sports cars everywhere. And he still hasn't figured out that he can't use his party line (a rotary phone- so retro!) to make a call at the same time as Bill.

[KSK]

Oh Jeb. You just broke the cardinal rule...Just hope the temperature gauges on those tanks were correctly rated for the expected current flow through the tank heaters.

Or something. Else someone might get hurt.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 39- Electrolite

Stella Kerman: Thank you all for being here. Please take your seats.

[Chairs are heard scraping across the auditorium floor.]

Stella Kerman: The Phoenix spacecraft carrying Valentina and Harbrett Kerman is scheduled to lift off from the Munar surface for its scheduled rendezvous with the Raven and Alice Kerman in a few minutes, so I’ll keep this quick. There was a minor malfunction after the oxygen tanks were stirred yesterday, but it has since been resolved and I’m sure it’s nothing you want to hear about. Our acquisition of the Bloeting Company’s space division is proceeding according to plan. Their division headquarters in New Bigfield will be sold to developers, and the launch site in the Slandish Isles will be retained as a secondary facility. We have also acquired some plans from their heavy booster project, and we hope to develop those into a rocket that can inject both the Phoenix and Raven spacecraft onto a Munar transfer orbit in a single launch. We expect this will decrease mission cost while increasing dispatch reliability…

[Footsteps are heard clattering up the metal staircase to the stage.]

Stella Kerman: Excuse me for a moment… What? Do you know what they’ll do to me? All right, I understand.

[The footsteps are heard again as the intern runs off the stage.]

Stella Kerman: Attention, your attention please. I have just been informed of a serious malfunction aboard the Raven spacecraft in Munar orbit…

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A few minutes earlier, Jeb was dozing off at the CAPCOM station, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to his mouth as Gene came over. “Long shift, huh?”

Jeb coughed. “Yeah. That’s one thing I like about the past- real coffee.”

Gene frowned, but by now he’d grown used to offhand comments like this. “Explain.”

“Well, after the Third War, there was a mild nuclear winter. Most of the cornfields had been destroyed, since they were near the missile silos, and it was a pretty big problem since back then- I mean, by that time- corn syrup was in everything. Soda, burgers, you name it. The corn pulled through, but the coffee beans that were being used as a cover crop in those fields couldn’t survive the diminished sunlight, and they all died. Ever since then, kerbals drank synthetic coffee. Well, actually, the courts said that if it wasn’t made from real coffee beans, they couldn’t call it coffee, so they needed a real name.”

“And?”

Jeb smirked. “You can hire all the marketing geniuses in the world, but some intern made a typo and came up with a name that was better than any others. From that day onwards, two billion kerbals would wake up to a nice, hot cup of covfefe.”

Gene shook his head. “No coffee? How awful.”

“Everybody old enough to remember what they were missing had survived a nuclear war. They were fine.”

At another console in the trench, a newly re-hired Sam Kerman keyed his mike. “Flight, GNC.”

Gene ran back up to his station. “Go, GNC.”

“Gene, the Raven’s attitude is drifting, almost like one of the RCS quads is going off.”

“Flight, CAPCOM, ask Alice if she hears anything.”

Jeb cleared his throat. “Uh, Command Module Comet, we suspect one RCS quad may be producing residual thrust. Please report.”

“Juno,” Alice called, “I do not hear any venting. No RCS quads are… huh.”

“What?”

“The spacecraft’s off in the roll axis. It’s about ten degrees to the left.”

“We copy.” Jeb turned around at his seat. “Flight? Any suggestions?”

Gene shrugged. “FIDO, keep an eye on it.”

“So,” Alice continued, “how are things back in Juno?”

Jeb grinned. “We’ve got twenty engineers about to die of boredom down here. You missed a massive thunderstorm last night, more like a tropical depression. And, oh, this is interesting; I’m looking at the paper and we’re going to get a major league ball team. How’s that, Gene? Let’s see, it says here that the nuclear plant proposed the name ‘Juno Isotopes,’ but it’s already being used by fourteen real and fictional teams. The commissioner decided to call the new team the ‘Juno Comets.’”

Gene laughed. Hey, that sounds familiar!” In barely a second, though, he was all business. “All stations, the Phoenix’s launch window will open in three minutes. Give me a go/no-go for liftoff from the Mun’s surface. EECOM?”

Sam leaned back in his chair and furrowed his brow as the rest of the calls went over the loops. “Okay,” Gene called, “Timer, give me a count at five seconds.”

“Copy. Liftoff is fifteen seconds out.”

Aboard the Phoenix, Val began calling out the launch sequence. “Engine arm ascent.”

“Ten seconds.”

In mission control, an engineer at a console jumped backwards out of her chair. “Flight, EECOM-”

“Five seconds.”

“Hold-down bolts released.”

“Juno, we’ve got-”

“Three, two-”

“Flight, GNC-”

“One-”

“Juno-”

“Liftoff of Munar Module Kitten.”

Everybody stopped talking at once, with nobody sure whether there was a problem in the Raven or the Phoenix. And, then:

“Ah, Juno, Comet here. I’ve got a problem.”

Jeb slowly leaned forward and grabbed his mike. “Star, say again?”

“Juno, we’ve got a problem.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The engineers in Juno’s Landing only had a few seconds to diagnose the problem before the Raven went behind the Mun; meanwhile, Kitten drew closer to a rendezvous, closing within a hundred meters as both spacecraft rounded back over to nearside as Gene looked down at an empty coffee cup and a full ashtray, having smoked an entire pack of cigarettes after running out of gum.

We’re gonna lose the spacecraft, he thought. Wernher paced back and forth behind him, sweat already soaking through his shirt. Three astronauts are gonna die and we couldn’t even do anything about it.

The radio crackled and Wernher stopped pacing. Gene grabbed his headset. “CAPCOM! Get a visual report on the Raven from Kitten!”

Jeb gripped his console. “Kitten, this is Juno Control. Can you see Comet?”

“Roger. Oh, my…” Val swore quietly under her breath before Harbrett could give her a hot mike warning.

“Kitten, report.”

“Juno, the Raven is spinning around the long axis… about ten rotations per minute. There’s a hull panel missing right where RCS quad 2 is… was.”

Gene gulped. 10 rpm! “How about the electronics?”

“The electronics are fine,” Alice called from Comet. “The radio still works, you know. I tested the RCS on Farside, but I couldn’t quite cancel the roll without four quads. And I can’t translate worth anything.”

Gene pinched his forehead. “All right. Kitten, maneuver for an active docking with Comet. Alice, configure the probe for a passive linkup. Then we can cancel the roll with Kitten’s RCS.”

In orbit, Val took control from the Phoenix’s computer and slowly spun it up to match Comet. Out the ascent module’s windows, Mun and sky flashed as loose nuts and bolts were slowly drawn to the cabin walls in the centripetal gravity. Back and forth the horizon dashed as Val stared straight ahead at the Raven, and the docking port grew larger, and larger, and the world outside the windows faded out.

Thump.

“Soft dock, soft dock!” Val yelled. “Alice, retract the probe!”

“No good! It won’t retract!” Val looked up out the ventral window at the docking port, knowing that the ship’s spin was about to tear the probe and drogue assembly apart. Without the controls to retract the probe, there would be no way to dock with the Raven, and with Comet spinning like that, there would be no way to EVA across the gap. She could feel the two spacecraft begin to wobble back and forth like two dreidels spinning on top of each other… and that’s when Harbrett spoke up.

“Just translate forward,” he suggested. “Might shove the probe down into the docking tunnel.” And, for the first time that day, something went right and the docking tunnels banged together.

“Juno!” Alice cried. “Hard dock!”

Gene sighed. “Good. Let's get that rotation canceled and figure out what went wrong.” He stood at his chair and looked out over the control room, dusting off his white vest before addressing the crowd. “Now, listen,” he began. “We may be engineers, but we are kerbals, and all kerbals are fallible. That is merely kerbal nature and it is the only thing that is certain in this universe; not how a river carves a canyon or how an ocean wears away at a beach, but how kerbals make mistakes. That being said, there are two types of kerbals: the ones who learn from their mistakes, and the ones who try and fix them. The learners are blessed, and for thousands of years they’ve helped led us to success as a sum of our parts. But those who fix their mistakes, those who succeed or die trying, they are the ones destined for greatness, the ones who write history, the ones that are responsible for bringing us here, to the stars’ threshold. Now, let me tell you something: We are those kerbals. We are going to get over this and bring our astronauts back home and you know why? Because if we didn’t it would mean letting down all of Kerbin and every single kerbal who has lived or died up to this moment, and because we owe it to every kerbal who has yet to be born, and to be able to look the next generation in the eye and tell them that this is what we did, this is how we made things better for an entire planet.”

Gene sat down and looked across the room at an intern standing meekly in the corner. “You, there,” he ordered, “bring us coffee and don’t ever stop until the Raven’s splashed down.”

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[lunardog15]

hell yeah 

coffee commander helps out 

[roboslacker]

11 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

From that day onwards, two billion kerbals would wake up to a nice, hot cup of covfefe.

Genius.

[KSK]

I see what you did there with the corn.

And tell it, Gene!

Edited February 28, 2019 by KSK

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 40- The Comcast Customer Support Empire Strikes Back

Even though Jeb couldn’t see it or even hear the chatter going across the loops in Mission Control, the crippled Raven circling the Mun again and again stuck out like a sore thumb to him. It’s not supposed to be there… it’s not supposed to be there!

A rumble reminded him of the task at hand and he turned to watch the Moa’s crawler begin to ooze out of the VAB like a ten-thousand-ton slug as engineers swarmed like flies around the Raven at its tip to rip out redundant hardware install two extra seats in the command module for the rescue mission. With only four days of life support left in Comet, Jeb and Bill were scheduled to lift off for a Munar orbit rendezvous in just five hours, as soon as the Moa was stood up on the pad.

From the driver’s cab at the front of the crawler, Bob called out to Jeb. “How’s everything look down there?”

Jeb flashed a thumbs up and walked alongside the front of the train transporter, jumping onto a staircase and running up to the side of the rocket as the diesel locomotive underneath him shook the entire platform as it warmed up to its full power for the first time ever. As he passed the command module, Sam waved at him, and then-

“Ooh! A penny!” Jeb jumped off the front of the crawler and reached down to pick a penny up off of the tracks, but he missed and fell into the grass next to the crawlerway instead. “I thought that wouldn’t hurt quite so much.”

Jeb picked himself up, dusted himself off, and watched in horror as the crawler’s wheels slowly rose up over the penny… and then back down the other side. Jeb laughed. “That was a real scare over here!” he yelled at Bob. “I left a penny on the tracks- of course, even the fastest bullet train on the tightest curve-”

That’s when the rails split out from underneath the crawler and the whole thing tipped to the right. Bob jumped out the cab window as engineers climbed down out of the Raven’s hatch and ran for the stairs. Then, with a sinking stomach, Jeb watched as the Moa slipped from its clamps and rolled off the crawler, cracking the first stage and sending solid rocket boosters rolling downhill towards the beach.

Bob ran up next to Jeb and stared. “Well, at least-”

One of the boosters ignited and flew out over the coast, plunging into the water just seconds later and spreading flaming metal out over the water, leaving behind burning grass and a scorched crawler.

Jeb glared at Bob. “You were saying?”

Bob sighed and looked at the smoke coming off the water. “That seems about right.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The three remaining boosters were taken care of the old-fashioned way, by telling everybody on the Space Coast to go inside and then having the range safety officer blow them up. After the blast, Jeb, Bill, Bob, Gene, and Wernher met in an office in the VAB:

Wernher: The Comet is still dead in the water, with three and a half days of life support and no SPS engine power. To get there in time, any rescue mission would need to be launched in two and a half days, with half a day needed to transport it to the pad and lift it upright. We have no boosters left in the VAB, but there’s a few on the assembly line in town that are close to completion. Right now, that facility is focusing on the assembly of multiple Moas and Lithiums for Air Force satellite contracts; if we told them to put all of their resources towards completing one Moa, the odds are about fifty-fifty that it would be finished and shipped over here by barge in time to hit our launch window.

Jeb: Is that just the enhanced Moas or all of the Moas?

Wernher: That is counting all Moas, including Munar capable, kerbal-rated, and Air Force commercial medium-lift versions.

Jeb: [CENSORED]

Bill: What about spacecraft? What’s our inventory like?

Bob: We still have one Raven left in the clean room, fully prepped for flight. It can be converted into a rescue configuration in two hours.

Wernher: So, all we need is a booster capable of giving a ten-ton spacecraft a four kilometer-per-second boost onto a Munar orbit trajectory.

Gene: I’ve got it!

Bill: What is it you’ve got?

Gene: I was reading some diagrams sent over by Munstock the other day. They have a booster that’s smaller than the Moa, but the upper stage has an adapter that’s the same diameter as the Raven.

Wernher: How could they get the booster there?

Gene: There’s a transport plane at the Munstock facility in Crystal City.

Jeb: Is that their headquarters or their launch facility?

Gene: That’s the production facility; they’re headquartered in Mayberry with a launch site in the Cameron Isles. You’ll have to fly to Crystal City to pick up the booster.

Bob: I’ll give them a call.

[A click is heard as the telephone is taken off the hook.]

Bob: All I know is the customer support hotline number for Munstock… I’ll just have to talk to an operator.

Hotline: Thank you for contacting the Munstock customer support line. Please note that this number will be disconnected in two weeks and will redirect to the Kerbal Space Program contact center.

Bob (quietly): C’mon, c’mon…

Hotline: This call is as important to us as it is to you, assuming that you have nothing better to do. We see that you are calling from a touch-tone telephone. If this is incorrect, please press one. Otherwise, press two.

Bob: It’s a [CENSORED] rotary phone, you [CENSORED]

Hotline: Para repetir las opciones en español, empuje tres.

Jeb: Here’s a touchtone landline.

[Chairs are heard scraping across the floor as Jeb and Bill get up to begin the flight to Crystal City.]

Hotline: If you are a representative of the armed forces of the United Territories of Orchdia, press one. If you are a representative of a foreign army, press two. If you are a representative of a government agency, press three. If you are a representative of a commercial enterprise, press four. If you are a representative of a research lab or university- [Beep] If your company is in the transportation sector, press one. If your company is in the communications sector, press two. If your company is in the agricultural, meteorological, or Kerbin mapping or observation sectors, press three. If your company is in the energy sector…

[The call is drowned out by afterburners as Jeb and Bill take off in a K-37 heading west.]

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lucy Kerman sat in her office as the sun filtered through the Crystal City smog and haze as it rose from the freeways. Two more weeks… she thought, looking forward to the time when she would be able to go work for the KSP. She had heard played up like Camelot, the way how it was run and founded by astronauts and how the centralized operation kept the offices right inside the VAB. She thought of all of the long-haul flights between Mayberry and the Slandish Isles and shuddered. No, once she got to Juno’s Landing, she’d be out of the big city and be free to build her own rockets… and she couldn’t wait to meet Jeb Kerman, to finally figure out if his head was permanently in the clouds.

Footsteps approached from down the hall and through Lucy’s open door. “No, but you see, if we just turn every other middle seat around, so that it faces backwards…” Jeb Kerman walked past the doorway. “Hey! Do you work here?”

“What-”

“Great.” Jeb marched through the door and leaned on the desk. “We’ll take one rocket to go.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hotline: To ask for publicly available records of Kerbin satellite observations, press 17. To submit a proposal for a mission funded or operated by a research institution, laboratory, or university…

Bob (quietly): Just have to talk to an operator.

Hotline: …press 18 and you will be placed on hold.

Bob: Aha!

Hotline: BIP BEEP

Bob: Uh… hello? Hello?

Hotline: [Dial tone]

Bob: [CENSORED]

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So,” Lucy was saying as she walked towards her boss’ office, “you’re telling me Bob’s been trying to call me this whole time?”

Bill nodded. “Last we heard from him he thought he had finally been put on hold with an actual kerbal when he heard some elevator music, but it turns out it was coming down the hall from the elevator.”

Lucy smiled. “He’s right in here.” She knocked on a large wooden door. Sweet, mahogany, Jeb thought.

“Like it? It’s solid rosewood,” Lucy smiled, and then called through the door as Jeb furrowed his brow. “Ed? A Jeb and Bill Kerman are here to see you.”

“Send them in,” came the muffled reply.

“Oh, your receptionist went home for the night. I’m Lucy…”

“Eh?”

“…your head of the astronaut corps.”

“Oh!” There was a pause, one of the only times that Lucy had ever heard her boss without something to say. “Send them in.” Lucy groaned and opened the door. As it swung open, Jeb’s eyes widened at floor-to-ceiling windows, rugs imported from halfway around the world, and a giant rosewood desk, which Jeb smilingly recognized as mahogany. On the desk was a nameplate- Edsel Kerman, Division President- and suddenly a leather chair spun around-

“Well?”

Bill blinked. “Well, uh, sir, you’ve probably heard that we have a spacecraft stranded around the Mun. With your help, we can transport a booster back to our launch site and rescue the crew by the time their life support runs out in a few days, but it won’t be easy. We’ll need you to call in your engineers and technicians to help you load the airplane-”

“Hold it.” Bill stopped and arched his eyebrows. “Who in Kraken’s name gave you permission to take my rocket? You think you can just waltz in here like you own the place, force one of my own employees away from her desk, and steal a rocket?”

Lucy stepped in. “Well, sir, you do know that in a few weeks the merger will be done and the KSP will run all of this. They already own everything-”

Edsel stood up from his chair and leaned forward, towards Bill. “What lies have you been telling my head astronaut? At Munstock, we do things the old-fashioned way, and we don’t need anybody’s help.”

Jeb leaned into the conversation. “Actually, it’s more like-”

“Silence, you working-class pig! Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Yeah!” Jeb shouted. “And that makes one of us. I’m the first Kerbal on the Mun!”

“And,” Edsel whispered, “that makes me President Noxin.”

Lucy pulled Bill aside. “There’s no way you can reason with him. There’s already a rocket in the transport plane, on account of the merger and all, and I’m thinking we can just… fly it back to Juno without exactly telling Edsel about our plan.”

Bill nodded. “Hey, Jeb? We’re thinking of going to steal a rocket. Wanna come along?”

“Sure,” Jeb nodded. And they walked out of that office as Edsel yelled to himself.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hotline: …will be placed on hold to talk to our next available agent. For your listening satisfaction, an irritatingly loud, jazzy song that starts to fade out the end but then goes right back into the verse will repeat on loop until your call is received.

[Light jazz starts playing twice as loud as the regular volume of the call.]

Bob: Oh, thank the Kraken.

Hotline: You are ninth in line. The estimated wait time is forty-eight minutes. Thank you for calling the Munstock Customer Service Hotline.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Lucy hurried out of the office and towards the tarmac where the large transport jet was waiting and the ground crew, jubilant to be taking orders from somebody other than Edsel Kerman, were already starting the electrical systems and spooling the engines up. As Lucy dashed out the door, she glanced back at her office and noticed a light blinking on her telephone. “I’ll catch up with you,” she told Jeb, and then backtracked and took a closer look. Somebody’s on hold? she wondered. Must be a mistake. She reached down to the telephone and cancelled the connection.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hotline: You are ninth in line. The estimated wait time is forty-two minutes. Thank you for- BEEP

Bob: Huh? Hello? Is somebody there? Is there an actual person on the other end of this line?

Hotline: Your call has been disconnected. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Bob: [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] 

[Dialing]

Hotline: Thank you for contacting the Munstock customer support line. Please note that this number will be disconnected in two weeks and will redirect…

Bob: [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED] [CENSORED]…

[In the interest of time, the remaining forty-nine minutes of obscenities and soft jazz have been omitted from the recording.]

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 41- Файл под тундрой

OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google Translate

The Raven whistled through wispy clouds and a cold, blue sky bleached by a harsh and distant sun as sheets of ice and rock grew larger beyond the distorted slipstream that climbed up the charred sides of the heat shield. In the capsule, Bill saw the clouds streaking by out the window and reached up to deploy the drogue chute manually. The four orange parachutes billowed out like ripe pumpkins and the braking rockets scorched the sides of the capsule as it thumped down into the tundra, shaking the kerbals inside and banging them against their straps.

The hatch opened and Jeb stepped out, blinking at the raw sunlight and the brutal reflection of the snow and the ice, which had begun melting underneath the capsule. Holding a hand over his eyes, he looked around and then, drawing upon his instinctual abilities as a brave, daring kerbal willing to rise up to any unfamiliar, unforgiving situation, sighed. “Woah,” he gasped, “not again.”

This time, however, the Raven was not at the bottom of a crater and Jeb and Bill, the most experienced survivalists on the crew after their emergency landing in the Painted Desert after Raven X, started setting up the radio as the rest of the crew suffered through a mild case of gravity sickness. Val, of course, could have gotten up with her space-seasoned crewmates from the Kraken’s Spit, but walking around while Alice and Harbrett could barely lift their arms would have looked suspicious. Finally, stir-crazy after two days in a capsule with four other kerbals, she went over to the hatch and poked her head out. The tundra stretched out forever, with nothing of note except for some distant mountains, Jeb and Bill each holding one end of a massive folding map (which Val noticed they were holding upside down), and, behind their backs, a pair of burly mustachioed kerbals in red suits with rifles… hold on.

Val gulped as the shorter soldier stepped forward. “Кто ты? ”

Jeb turned around. “Uhhh…”

“Ваша лодка пришла из космоса?”

“He’s asking if we came from space.” Val yelled. Bill turned and looked at her. “Yeah, I know Tuteran. Don’t ask why.”

“Вы пришли из страны орхидей?”

“He wants to know if we’re Orchidians,” Val whispered. “Uh… Нет!”

“Вы капиталистические свиньи! Это флаг Орхидеи на вашем корабле!”

Val gulped. “He just pointed out the Orchidian flag is painted on our capsule.” She frowned.

“Я могу понять все, что вы сказали.”

“What’d he say?” Jeb yelled.

“He said he can understand-”

Harbrett stepped through the hatch next to Val. “Hey…” he whispered. “Tuterans. Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, you! Yeah, you! Look over here. Look at this capsule! You see this capsule? You see it? This is what a free market does. This thing went to the Mun and- hey, hold on, what are you doing? Hey, now, we can work this out… You really don’t have to handcuff. Now, please, I really don’t think… Oh! Okay! Yes! No problem! I’ll go wherever you want me to! Um, real quick, was it something I said?”

The taller guard rolled his eyes. “Ваш президент идиот.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A migraine throbbed through Jeb’s head as he peered through the cigarette smoke and kerosene fumes of the shack the Tuteran soldiers had hauled the astronauts off to. Outside, snow glistened and a horse was carefully trotting down a barely-there path, lifting her hooves gingerly and stepping over hidden roots and frozen streams. On the horse sat a stocky, buff kerbal with a bushy beard reaching down to his chest and up around his eyes, which could barely be seen around his massive fur hat. In his lips, a pipe was clenched, sending smoke up into the mountain air, and on his chest, a scattering of officer’s medals were pinned. This was the kerbal who could make Jeb, Bill, Val, Harbrett, and Alice disappear forever in the frozen heart of a southern Communist country.

He got right down to business. “Who sent you here?” he asked, addressing Harbrett, who cowered behind the desk he was handcuffed to.

Val took the lead. “We are astronauts from the Kontinental Startup Program, a special research and advanced technology of the Kontinental Aircraft Corporation.”

“Are you under orders from Orchidian President?”

“President Noxin? He mostly just calls us up late at night and quietly weeps through the phone before suddenly yelling that he doesn’t deserve to go to jail.”

The officer shook his head. “Is big jerk, Noxin. In Tutero, we are saying you are calling Premier and telling him your drunk person problems. Now, where has your craft been?”

Val leaned back in her chair. “The capsule that has landed in your country was sent on a mission to rescue myself, my Munar module pilot, and my command module pilot.”

One of the guards whispered something to the officer. “Tell me about mission.”

Jeb sat up in his chair. “Well, to get to the Mun in time to save our friends here, we needed a bigger rocket than we had at our factory, so me and Bill flew out to Crystal City to pick one up. We landed at our space center and had the booster up on the pad two days later. Bill and me launched as soon as it was ready, with the extra seats put in and more food packed. We got to the Mun without any trouble-”

“Wait,” Bill interrupted, “what do you mean ‘no trouble’?”

“Well,” Jeb responded, “no trouble by my standards.”

“Ah. Okay. Do go on.”

“So, we went around to pick up our friends, and then we started heading right back to Kerbin, and when it was time to come back in… we had a little trouble.”

“We came in pointing forward,” Val explained.

“I don’t get it,” Alice sighed. “We had everything ready for re-entry and when we dumped the service module, well, I guess the bang must have opened up one of the thrusters in our nose. We were spinning and spinning, and we were just starting to get some plasma building up in the windows.”

Jeb grinned. “That’s when I had this great idea to stop us-”

“There had to be a better way to do that,” Val sighed.

The officer frowned. “What did your idiot friend do?”

“Well,” Jeb began, “I remembered that the cabin pressure relief valve was opposite the stuck thruster, so I began fiddling with the controls until there was about .8 atmospheres in the capsule, until… there weren’t any.”

“You know, you could have just shut off the flight computer and flown the Raven by hand.”

“So,” Jeb finished, “anyway, we were way off course, and we were in inflated pressure suits, and about eight or nine g’s going on in the capsule, so we just followed through on the ballistic entry and ended up in your… is it tundra? Or taiga? You learn these things in fourth grade, but you never remember them.”

The officer blinked. “Uh… we will call your President Noxin. See what we can do.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gene: CAPCOM, any word yet?

Bob (as CAPCOM): No.

Gene: Okay, fair enough… Wernher? Could you come here please?

Wernher: Yes, Gene. Give me a moment.

[The following conversation is not part of the official Mission Control transcript, as Gene had taken his headset off.]

Gene: Wernher, I’m scared. I’m so scared I can’t even breathe. Jeb, Bill, Val… they’re my best friends. If it wasn’t for them we’d still be sitting in that shack on the beach.

Wernher: They were always meant to find us. If they had not come back in time to start building the rockets, then they couldn’t have got to space in the first place. And now I feel guilty that some rocket I built is going to mess with fate, just because the thruster got stuck.

Gene: I don’t know what I’d do without them. Bob… he just doesn’t seem right alone. He’s not very warm or really much of anything without Jeb. I mean, without Jeb, his life is over. And at this point, I’m not sure how any of us would do without Jeb, or without Bill to give Jeb some brains or Val to keep Jeb from getting too stupid. My life, right until now… it’s just been trying to get to space, and if we can’t get this crew back there is no space program anymore.

Bob: Flight, CAPCOM.

[Gene puts his headset back on.]

Bob: We’ve just got word from the President: the crew of Raven XIV has been located with five crewmembers alive and well.

Gene: Yes!

Bob: They are being held by communist officers in Tutero.

Gene: [CENSORED]

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Two more hours interrogation,” the officer said. “Then helicopters arrive and you go.”

Bill nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sounds good. So, what do you want to know?”

The officer leaned over the desk, in towards Bill. “What military contracts does your capitalist space program take?”

Bill gulped. “Uhhh…”

“If you do not talk, you lose nose.”

“We built a cruise missile and an ICBM and spy satellites and launch vehicles and we sold them to the Air Force and a space station-”

The officer nodded. “Cuyahoga. Cuyahoga is very important to us. Please tell us more.”

Val piped up. “We were contracted to build Cuyahoga as a surveillance station to spy on Tutero and the Southern States. Mostly Tutero, thought.”

“Aha! We knew this!”

“But…” Val sighed. “During the first flight my copilot and I found a secret system that had been installed. We discovered a control panel that could be used to launch missiles at Tutero from orbit, even after all of the command posts on the ground had been destroyed in a nuclear war. Now,” she said, staring bullets at Harbrett before turning back to the officer, “you may be pleased to hear me say that I keep a growing list of the things I hate about capitalism, but just because I’m a socialist doesn’t mean I don’t love my country. I am an Orchidian,” Val said, for what she realized was the first time since she had arrived in the past, “and I decided it was my responsibility to my country not to let us go to war with a foreign superpower on a moment’s notice by using the Cuyahoga control panel. My copilot and I… Stella and I, we smashed that panel.”

The officer’s eyes were glowing. “I think my comrades could take lesson from you,” he said finally, and then, he turned to the guards. “повернись,” he commanded them, and as they turned around he reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope. “Give this to your President Noxin,” he whispered, “and do it quick before he goes to jail like pig he is.”

The guards turned to face the desk again. “After you leave Tutero, your spacecraft will be disassembled and examined by our world-class state-funded engineers. We want to ensure it contains no espionage equipment and also wish to make note of technologies with potential uses in our own space program.”

Jeb lifted his head up. “Wait,” he asked, “you guys have a space program?” He hadn’t heard anything about one before.

The officer’s eyes widened. “I hear helicopters! You go home now! Yay! You enjoy happy capitalist junk food soon, is it not amazing? Please leave!” As Jeb, Bill, Val, Alice, and Harbrett were rushed outside, Jeb turned to Bill and furrowed his brow.

“Now what do you think his problem was?”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next evening, Jeb, Bill, and Val were sitting around in the crew quarters in shorts recovering from their Tuteran ordeal. Bill smiled as he leaned back in his overstuffed armchair, savoring the tanned scent of the leather after the cold desolation of the tundra, or taiga, or whatever. The television was showing a replay of their meeting with President Noxin on the KSC tarmac as they stepped off the Kloncorde, and he turned down the volume as Bob, Gene, and Wernher walked in. “Glad to see you guys are doing alright,” Bob smirked, as the television quietly zoomed in on Val handing an unmarked envelope to the president.

Jeb laughed. “Oh, it’s a big world out there, but I want to be right here in Juno’s Landing. The neon signs down Route 77, the sound of jet engines carrying over the sea breeze, the humidity and the nights full of crickets and fireflies winking in and out of the lights on the gantry as waves lap across the shore, that’s what I miss. It’s not about a free market, or even a free country, it’s about having friends and a nice night and money for pizza. That’s what I think makes Orchidia better than Tutero. Everybody there is so busy working for the state, they never have any fun.”

Bill was about to agree when he noticed the TV had switched to a special report and he turned the volume back on.

“…President Noxin has just announced that confidential sources informed him of the plans for a Tuteran ‘doomsday machine’ set to go off if the United Territories ever launches a nuclear attack against the communist country. We go live now to Noxin speaking at his hotel in Juno’s Landing.”

The television cut to a shot of Noxin sitting behind a desk in front of French doors leading onto a balcony, with palm trees rustling lazily in the breeze behind him. “My fellow Orchidians,” he began, “yesterday I learned of the existence of plans for a terrible machine conceived by the Tuterans that, in the event of an attack or even a false alarm, would trigger horrible and immediate destruction not only of the United Territories of Orchidia but the whole of Kerbin, most likely causing the end of civilization as we know it. I am speaking to you today to warn of the dangers of a doomsday gap: We must not let the Tuterans master this technology before we do. It would be a tragedy of unprecedented proportions if the Tuterans were to have unilateral control of this powerful weapon, and that is why I have signed an executive order allocating twenty billion dollars of taxpayer money for the expedited development of our own doomsday machine, and with Kraken willing we will not fall behind in this new arms race, and we as Orchidians will come out ahead of the doomsday gap. My sources are accurate, and although I cannot name any in particular, I will say that a defector inside Tutero and a brave messenger were all that it took to make me aware of this tragic turn of events…”

Jeb turned the television off. “I highly doubt,” he said finally, “that was what that Tuteran officer had in mind.”

Bob shrugged. “Eh. Did you hear that?" He whistled. "Twenty billion dollars. Whatever problems Noxin’s got up there in that head of his, they’re good for business.”

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[roboslacker]

Neat.

[Confused Scientist]

BOOK THREE

Preface, Again

Bob drummed his fingers on the Korvette’s dashboard as the feeble air conditioner struggled to chill the sauna-like cabin. His knuckles were cold, but there was sweat on his brow. The smog of a dozen taxis and station wagons waiting at the curb mixed with the dying orange light of Kerbol, sending an apocalyptic haze over the airport as a helicopter rumbled over. To Bob’s right was the terminal; to his left, a parking garage. The sound of car horns and idling engines echoed through the cavern-like pickup lane, which curved away to meet the highway at some distant point. Bob contemplated the endless curb, punctuated only by regular sidewalks, and decided it reminded him of the old broken-down centrifuge on Station One.

The set of automatic doors nearest him slid open, and a gush of the chilled air of the airport terminal spilled out into the humid taxi line. Jeb winced as he stepped through the no-man’s land before the heat won outright. He walked around back of the Korvette and lifted his single suitcase into the trunk, then he slunk around to the side and, after hefting the passenger-side door open, slouched down next to Bob as the car eased out into the traffic. He followed a bus up a ramp and past the massive white sign sprouting out the side of the road like a concrete tooth: Valentina A. Kerman International Airport.

“Your flight got in late,” Bob commented after the car was finally back on the highway.

Jeb sighed and nodded. “Alliance Air is never on time.” He was exhausted, and he hated that he had to fly halfway around the world just to sell satellites to some foreign businesskerbs in Kotayo, a metropolis in the southern part of Finchernia. Jeb missed the days when the KSP could make a killing gouging the Air Force for polar launches, but ever since Tutero decided to get all chummy with the United Territories there wasn’t enough business in that sort of market anymore. His only consolation was that he was back in Juno’s Landing for the first time in months, having come straight from Finchernia for his Mun launch next week, his fourth one since his inaugural flight with Stella twenty years ago. Even though the car was moving through the traffic in a crawl as the workers headed back to the suburbs at the end of the day, Jeb smiled, because it was the KSP that had made Juno’s landing such a boomtown, and he was glad to be out of Rockville, away from the hotheaded abuse of Edsel Kerman. Jeb was already smiling at the thought of dropping by his old studio apartment in the crew quarters and messing around with some old projects he’d abandoned in there after the KSP had been bought by Bloeting, when he noticed that his left eyelid had begun twitching. And then, very quickly, Jeb stopped noticing much of anything.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Beeping. Lots of beeping. Murmuring… whispering. Back in bed? Nice bed. Soft bed.

Maybe I should open my eyes.

Jeb did open his eyes, and squeezed them shut again as soon as he could at the harsh glare of the lights over his head.

“Good afternoon, Jebediah. I am Doctor Robert Kerman.”

Jeb opened his right eye slightly. A kerbal stood off to the side of his bed, stethoscope in one hand, and he realized he was in a hospital.

“Where… why am I here?”

“You are in the Gene Kerman wing of the Montoya County Community Hospital. Boblock rushed you here as quickly as he could in the traffic.”

Jeb’s head hurt. “It’s… he goes by Bob.”

“Jebediah, I will not surgarcoat this. You have suffered-”

“Hold on.” Jeb looked off to his right and saw the Juno Herald sitting on his nightstand. “You’ve got today’s newspaper? I need to check the weather.” He reached out for it, but he couldn’t reach. He tried propping himself up with his left arm, and was stunned as his arm sat limply next to him in bed. “What… have you got it in a cast or something?”

The doctor seemed sad, the first genuine kerbal emotion since he had walked in the door. “Do you have a history of a heart murmur, Jebediah?”

Jeb’s took a deep berath. “Heart murmur? What is that, doc?”

“It’s not important right now. It will not kill you. Please tell me, though, were you a preterm infant?”

“Yes.”

Doctor Robert leaned back and sighed. “Jebediah, you suffer from a recessive heart murmur that has been dormant since its treatment after your early birth. Heart murmurs are common in infants, even in ones that are born on and past their due date, but especially in preterm infants. Simply put, there is a hole in your heart that permits small amounts of blood to pass from one ventricle to the other. It is my understanding that you were on a very long airplane ride before Boblock picked you up, yes?”

“Mmm-hmmm. Ten hours, nonstop from Kotayo.”

“And did you get up at all during this flight?”

“Just once, to wash up after I spilled some cola on my shirt. What gives?”

The doctor looked Jeb in the eye. “Blood clots formed in your legs due to the excessive sitting and traveled into your heart. A small amount bypassed your lungs by travelling through your heart defect and entered your oxygenated bloodstream traveling to your head. Jebediah, one of these blood clots entered your brain and caused a massive stroke, paralyzing the left side of your body completely. Do you understand me?”

Jeb grinned. “Ah, that’s nothing, doc.”

Robert frowned. “I’m sorry? Your entire left side is paralyzed.”

Jeb shrugged his right arm. “Things could be worse, I guess. Hey, can I use the telephone? I want to talk to Bill.”

“I’m right here, Jeb.” Jeb rolled over in bed and pried his left eye open. Bill and Bob stood beside his bed, looking worried. Jeb couldn’t understand why.

“Hey guys! Glad to see ya! Oh, before I forget, can you bring me my portable typewriter next time you come ‘round? The doc says I might be here a while.”

Bob sighed and stepped forward. “We thought you might want it. Here it is.” He set the case out on the bed and unpacked the typewriter, setting it up on Jeb’s torso.

“Thanks.” Jeb reached out with his right hand and put it on the keyboard. “I figured as long as I was here I would fill out some mission reports.” He started the header on the report, documenting the new scientific mission on the Cuyahoga station, but no matter how far he stretched his fingers he couldn’t italicize the “C” or even capitalize it.

Jeb broke down crying. “I’m broken!” he moaned. “This never could’ve happened to me. I just wanted to keep things the way they were going. Val is dead, and now I’m laying here in this hospital bed, and I can’t even walk over there to the window.” From his pillow, all Jeb could see was a faint sliver of blue sky, and it teased him, for he knew that he belonged up there, but thanks to his stroke he might never return to the only place that had ever welcomed him and be denied the life in orbit that he loved so dearly. Over the years, he had made a comfortable alliance with the cold vacuum, one built on respect for the ultimate dangers of the black, and in exchange he had managed to scrape by a living doing what he loved. Now, he could sense that space missed him, but not as sorrowfully as he missed it.

“Well,” Bill said after a pause, “we’d better get back to the space center and get some prelaunch checks in. I’ve swapped out for you on the Raven crew, by the way. Uh… get well soon.” And he turned around and walked out the door, with Bob hot on his tail. Jeb was all alone with his thoughts, and he knew from bitter experience how dangerous they could be. His mind began leading him down the dark trail of the last few years, reminding him how his Orchidian dream of living the jet jockey’s life had been slowly but surely poisoned by reality’s harsh blow. And while he does that, I had better fill you in on those years, too, because they turn out to be pretty important, in the sense that right after this they lead directly into a global market crash and nuclear war and all.

It’s a long story. And since Jeb can’t write it right now, I guess you’ll be here a while.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[roboslacker]

Wait, Val died? Did I miss something?

[Confused Scientist]

3 hours ago, roboslacker said:

Wait, Val died? Did I miss something?

It's been about twenty years since the events of Book Two, and the next few chapters will be flashbacks. Really, I should have waited to post this one until I'd written the next chapter and then they both could have gone up at the same time, which would have been less confusing. Give it a few days...

 

Also, I've noticed that this has become a suspenseful drama. I have no idea how that happened.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 1- Death Casts a Shadow

It was, Jeb reflected, about five years before the end of the Cold War when everything went south. If I had to put down a specific date, I would pick the time I tried to save Route 77…

It was an early autumn day, but of course at the equator it was always summer, and small beads of water ran down the side of Jeb’s bottle of root beer as he lay on a hammock on the back porch, which he had built himself. Jeb dozed in the morning sun as the muffled whirs and bangs of a rocket on the pad drifted across the beach; above, an experimental jet whined somewhere over the ocean like an albatross in the breeze.

As he heard the crunching of gravel, he opened one eye to reveal a red coupe pulling around the back of the astronaut complex. “Hop in, Jeb!” Val called through an open window. “We’ve got to get downtown!”

Jeb yawned. “Downtown? For what?”

“They’re decommissioning Route 77!”

“They’re what?”

“C’mon! Get in!”

The Korvette tore away down the road to town. “Oh, the memories,” Jeb sighed. “Remember that time I set the coast-to-coast record on 77?”

“You broke every law on the books,” Val replied. “Look, up there- protesters.” Jeb leaned forward and took a look at some kerbals gathered around a traffic light.

“What’re they doing over here?” Jeb asked. “Route 77 is at least a mile away.”

“The Interprov,” Val told him. “Out of all the Interprovince Highway System, this is the last at-grade crossing in the entire country. That traffic light will be taken down this afternoon, and as it does they’re going to open up all of those ugly exit ramps and cloverleafs and interchanges. But it’s too late to stop that; in every other city in Orchidia, there’s already cars driving on the Interprov. What we need to do is save 77!”

They pulled up to a much larger crowd outside the Bungalow. “Nowhere to park,” Val muttered, “let’s just abandon the car in the middle of the road. What can they do, write us a ticket? If they write Route 77, it won’t be prosecutable because that road won’t exist in a few hours. If they write Central Avenue, then the ticket will be thrown out because we did not, technically, park on that road. We parked on Route 77.”

As Jeb and Val shoved through the crowd, the chants of the protesters grew louder. “77 is love! 77 is peace! 77 is irreplaceable!” Jeb looked around, and saw all sorts of kerbals young and old focused on the last sign, standing defiant in the median: U.T. Route 77. In this sign was hope, and boundless enthusiasm, and feeling what would be lost when that sign came down, Jeb knew for the first time what it was to be an Orchidian.

Val lagged behind, and by the time she reached the sign she was stunned to see Jeb handcuffed to a lawn chair, which some overzealous protester had padlocked to the signpost. “Jeb,” she sighed, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Jeb grinned. “Saving Route 77! If I’m sitting here, there’s nothing they can do about this sign.” The crowd cheered.

“Come on, Jeb,” Val said. “It’s not just one sign. Ever since Noxin signed the Federal Highway Act, Route 77 was dead. If you had wanted to save 77, you should've filed lawsuits to keep the Interprov out of our state, and petitioned for the economic rights of every small town on the route. Instead, you got all fired up when you realized that some highway you hadn’t even driven on in twenty years was about to close. You’re living in the past, Jeb. It’s not healthy, and you need to get your head out of the clouds. Did you know that in the last year, KSP profits have fallen ten percent? You’re too busy running off on tangents like this to solve that problem, though.”

“Go away.” Jeb’s voice was rough. “You can't take me away from this thing that I love, in the last few hours of its life. Go away.”

Val frowned and got back in her Korvette. One by one, the crowd filed away as they grew bored or hungry and filed into the Bungalow Bar, or the Route 77 Café, or the newly-opened Hendry’s Bar and Grill, and soon the street was alone with Jeb fallen asleep in the lawn chair. The sky turned orange, and then navy blue, and a few stars came out, dimmed by the neon glow from the last night Route 77 would ever know. Endless streams of taillights cast their red beams on Jeb’s closed eyelids, until finally, at midnight two cops approached the sign.

“This one here’s it,” said one.

“Good,” replied the other. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jeb startled awake. “Hey! What are you doing?”

The officers stared at each other. “Don’t know what you’re doing here, buddy, but we’re gonna get you outta those handcuffs after we replace this sign.”

“No!” Jeb shouted. “You can’t replace it. I’m handcuffed here, and all.”

One of the officers snorted. “What does he think we’re using here, a tank? Go ahead, change the signs.”

The other officer reached over Jeb’s head, unscrewed the white Route 77 sign, and replaced it with a green placard reading Central Ave. Jeb bent his head and fought back the urge to weep. “Next time, plan you protests better, buddy,” the officer chuckled, and then bent down to begin picking the lock on Jeb’s cuffs. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“I’m Jeb Kerman.”

The officer stopped his work at the handcuffs, turned, and looked at his partner. “Jeb Kerman?” he asked.

“Jeb Kerman,” the other replied.

The officer turned back to Jeb. “Jebediah Beto Kerman, by the power vested in me by the Juno’s Landing Police Force, I am placing you under arrest. Please follow me back to the station.”

“Arrest?” Jeb shouted. “What did I do?”

“We have you marked up on two hundred eighty-seven counts of reckless driving.”

“Oh.”

The handcuffs snapped free from the lawn chair, and the officer secured them on his own wrist. “Follow me, please. We’re walking back to the station.”

“Wait,” Jeb said as they began to cross the street. “You know where I live. I’ve been on television a hundred times. Why didn’t you arrest me sooner?”

“Under President Regarn's new reverse statute laws, the more time passes between a crime and a conviction allows harsher sentencing.”

Jeb sighed. “I’m starting to really wish I’d voted against that guy instead of going off and bolting a jet engine to my car on election day.”

“Too late now, buddy.”

Jeb’s left eye began twitching.

“Hey, buddy, are you okay?”

Jeb stumbled, tripping over his left foot, and nearly brought the officer down with him as he grabbed his shoulder to lift himself back up. “Yeah, I… that leg gives out sometimes after I’ve been sitting down for a while.”

The officers exchanged a knowing smile. “Guess this one’s had a little bit to drink. C’mon, we’ll get you into a bed at the slammer and you can sleep it off.”

Edited June 27, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[DunnoAnyThing]

Hmm if somebody made a timeline for all the events occurred...

[Confused Scientist]

On 4/14/2019 at 9:33 PM, DunnoAnyThing said:

Hmm if somebody made a timeline for all the events occurred...

Here is that timeline! At some point I might also embellish this list with the nuclear war that happened during the childhood of Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val, but not until we get to the most plot-twistiest chapter yet at the end of Book Three (and the end of the series... don't worry, there's a sequel!).

Red is details not revealed until later on in the story:

 

Book one:

1. Bob finds space crabs on Minnmus during his time on the engineer corps.
2. Bob may or may not have used chemicals derived from space crab truth serum to develop Electron Blue (it could have been a placebo, Stella could have been brainwashed or lying- this will become important later, I'm sure).
3. Bob may or may not have been outed from the board of directors of the Miraculin Group and joins Jeb's crew to hide his space crab in the Kraken's Spit.
4. Hudson charters Jeb's Dropship Services, bombs Munbase. This may have been part of a conspiracy, as indicated by Mason later.
5. Jeb, Bill, and Bob depart for Laythe, via gravity assists at Minnmus, Eve, and Kerbin.
6. Stella Kerman taken to Minnmus for questioning, inadvertantly reveals the location of the Kraken's Spit to authorities.
7. First Radio Free Kerbol broadcast.
8. Kraken's Spit lands at Gilly, Val's tanker collides with an Interplanetary Authority cruiser, Val joins the Kraken's Spit crew, Jeb lands on Eve.
9. Stella Kerman taken to Tylo. She will later claim that she was supposed to be sent to Eeloo, but she would later admit to Jeb that she agreed to a plea deal to travel back in time and capture the Kraken's Spit crew.
10. Jeb rescued, crew continues to Jackalope Base on Duna. Val discovers the space crab abaord the Kraken's Spit.
11. Forces that were probably the Interplanetary Authority attacked Jeb and his crew on Duna, possibly by the orders of the head of the IA before Mason Kerman.
12. Previous director of IA killed (murdered) in a spaceplane crash, Mason Kerman installed as puppet leader.
13. Kraken's Spit arrives at The End of the Line.
14. Bryce Kerman arrests Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val at a Tylo refueling station for an ATC violation in a mix-up.
15. Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val destroy their prison station with rock and roll. They steal an IA cruiser, Stella Kerman steals another one and leads the IA straight to Bop. Although she claimed to have been transported back in time here, she was captured and later entered a plea deal with Mason to travel back in time with him.
16. Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val are transported back in time to the dawn of the space age. Civil war breaks out, Gilly is bombed along with two cities on Duna, plans are made to bore into the cores of Duna and Laythe and destroy both planets.

 

Book two:

1. Stella and Mason land in Crystal City.
2. Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val team up with Gene and Wernher to build the first jet; Sunny Kerman joins the gang (having been universe-ripped from my other, orphaned fanfiction).
3. KSP bought by Kontinental Aircraft.
4. First rocket launch off the Space Coast, a test flight of the prototype Sparkler capsule; KSP begins raking in the profits by developing the engines of the Kontinental jetliners and selling launches to the Air Force.
5. Jeb Kerman becomes the first kerbal in space, Val follows into orbit.
6. The President creates a prize fund to the first company to reach the Mun, sparking the space race.
7. Jeb sets the coast-to-coast speed record on Route 77, he invites Stella to drive back to the Juno's Landing, Mason infiltrates the ranks of the KSP. His first strike is the second stage of a prototype Moa booster, using a Bloeting dust cover to frame Sam Kerman.
8. Stella Kerman hired at the KSC, she reveals that she is also a time traveler. Mason burns down the VAB and leaves his ID card behind in the rubble.
9. Bloeting launches a Popeye spacecraft to sabotage the first Raven flight.
10. Cuyahoga space station proposed as orbital survelliance platform for the Air Force.
11. Jeb reveals to Gene and Wernher that he is a time traveler, and tells his story to them along with the rest of the Kraken's Spit crew.
12. Mason sabotages Val's service module, possibly for the second time. Sam is accused of being a traitor to the program. Mason sabotages the Cuyahoga solar panel.
13. Raven IX experiences a catastrophic failure resulting in LOCV on the first mission to attempt a rescue of Cuyahoga. Mason probably had nothing to do with it.
14. Raven IX is sabotaged by a different security breach than Sam; it's Mason.
15. Chief Una helps Jeb, Bill, and Bob return to Juno's Landing after an emergency landing in the Painted Desert; the medicine woman at Teneh'lo village sees Jackalope base and the Roadrunner spaceplanes, and predicts that the Phoenix and Raven spacecraft will "Carry Jeb to glory." She also predicts that Mason is "hunting the Raven", and recognizes his callsign 'Coyote'.
16. Val and Stella save Cuyahoga, and remembering their childhood after a terrible nuclear war choose to disable its secret nuclear launch capability. In Val's case, she remembers being abandoned as an infant and being shipped to the Southern States as part of an exchange program so that the foreign debt held by the Southern States on behalf of the United Territories could be forgiven during a global depression.
17. Bill becomes the first Kerbal to orbit the Mun.
18. Val finds the Kraken's Spit black box, and Jeb and Bob take it to the junkyard to it can be destroyed. A masked assasin, who turned out to be Stella, attacks him, and the best action scene of the entire series follows.
19. Jeb finds a bottle of Electron Blue on Mason's desk, and even though it might be a placebo, it might not be either, and it might have been created by Bob, or it might not have, and it might have ingredients derived from space crab truth serum, or it might not. The only thing for sure is that it can cure anything and it is the most profitable product of all time, and multiple kerbals are hunting Bob to find out the rest.
20. Mason reveals his identity as the former leader of the IA on a flight over the Painted Desert, and tells Jeb and his crew about the civil war and the bombings and his time travel before asking Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, and Stella to team up with him to overthrow the future government. Jeb refuses, because he knows that to reappear in the future would mess up the civil war and because he enjoys living in the past. Mason parachutes out of the plane as the engines are blown up, landing next to a nuclear bomb about to be tested in the desert and taken into permanent federal custody, and Jeb and Stella land the plane.
21. Jeb and Stella launch to the Mun, where Stella tells Jeb about her role in helping Mason and warns him not to trust Bob, claiming that he developed Electron Blue. During the landing, Jeb chooses to trust Bob as he tells the crew how to resolve a computer alarm, and then Stella is killed immediately after she and Jeb humiliate President Noxin.
22. Val once again suffers a service module problem on her flight, and is rescued by Jeb and Bill after meeting Lucy Kerman and stealing a booster. They land in Tutero, and a Tuteran officer hands Jeb the secrets to a Tuteran doomsday maching to pass on to President Noxin, who acts in the exact opposite way as the officer had hoped (Dr. Strangelove really missed an opportunity going with 'mineshaft gaps' instead of 'doomsday gaps'".

 

Book three:

1. Twenty years later, the KSP is owned by Bloeting, Val is dead, and the Cold War is over, costing the KSP billions in sales to the Air Force. Jeb has a stroke, leading him to remnisce on what happened during the last few years.
2. During a prologned flashback (multiple chapters), Jeb remembers trying to save Route 77 and being arrested, as Val criticizes him for not thinking things like this through. Then the Silver Creek power plant melts down, spreading fallout over Juno's Landing.

 

Oh, man, that took me like an hour. I can't keep track of this stuff either. But, at this point, the questions at this point are:

What's the deal with Bob?

Is Electron Blue a placebo?

What happened between the decomissioning of Route 77 and Jeb's stroke?

What exactly happened with the nuclear war in Jeb's childhood?

What is my promised plot-twist chapter, and what will the sequel be like?

 

To find out (I would also like to find out at some point), stay tuned. Remember... we're still broadcasting!

Edited April 30, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[roboslacker]

It's nice to see it all lain out like that.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 2- You Can't Spell 'Chernobyl' Without... Uh...

The telephone in Bob’s apartment startled him awake long after midnight, and the light shone with a silvery glow of the reflected Munlight shimmering on the ocean. “Hold on, hold on,” he muttered, “I’ll get it.”

He reached past an old glass of water on the nightstand and picked up the receiver. “H-hello?”

“Yeah, Bob? It’s me. Listen, can you bring, uh… hold on.” Bob heard the Jeb muffle the receiver on his end with his hand. “Yeah, can you bring, um, two hundred thousand dollars to 200 South Brooks Avenue?”

“Jeb?” Bob asked. “Are you being blackmailed?”

“No, I’m, uh… at the county jail. They want me to pay back all of my old traffic violations, like that time I did two hundred in a fifty-five for four hours in a row. Once they do that they’ll let me go, but then I’ll be back in court to pay back the three million in property damages I’ve done just in Montoya County alone.”

Bob sighed. “Sit tight. I’ll be right there.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

An hour later, Jeb and Bob were walking back out onto Central Avenue. “So,” Jeb asked, “how’d you get me out?”

“A few months ago, President Regarn passed the ‘reverse statute’ laws, something about not going soft on criminals or whatever. Really, what it means is if you evade arrest, your sentence is multiplied by how long you’re on the run.”

“So?” Jeb asked. “That can’t be good for me, it is?”

“Well, here’s the thing. The police knew where you were- after all, you were on the news like a hundred times. Thing is, they let you go free for twenty years so you’d have to pay more fines when they brought you in. I pointed out to the police chief how that’s got to violate some amendment or something, and he said he’d spring you if I promised not to sue.”

“Neat,” Jeb replied. “Where’d you park?”

Bob looked around and frowned. “In front of some motel on Angora Street, by one of those Juno Rapid Transit stations.” They crossed through an alley and turned onto Angora, which ran parallel to Central. A pair of light rail tracks ran through the center of the road, placed one street off of Central to avoid spoiling the picturesque scenery on the latter street. A line of palm trees in planters separated the tracks from the roadway. “All right, look around for the station. That’s probably the easiest way to find my car.”

It didn’t take Bob long to find the station, lit up like a neon jellyfish in the center median. “Uh, Bob, I’ve found your car. Hey, out of curiosity, did you feed the parking meter when you got out?”

“Nope! I found a spot without a meter.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like somebody’s really messed up big time.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know if you drove over the barriers, or you found a ramp, or what, but you’re parked on the tracks and you’ve got about two seconds until your car is crushed by the westbound Blue Line JRT train to Silver Creek.”

“Wha-”

The train smashed into Bob’s Korvette and it skidded into an abandoned movie theater. The train, none the worse for the wear, started up again after a few moments standing still on the tracks.

Jeb whistled. “You’ve gotta admire those Finchernian trains. C’mon, let’s go find a telephone.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Only a few other kerbals sat in the dim recesses of the Bungalow Bar, disappearing in the shadows as Jeb and Bob drank at the bar. In the corner, the television was turned on, tuned to the local news.

…President Regarn announced this evening that he will be ending the airborne alert of SAC bombers, and that due to warming relations with Tutero the airborne alert of flying command posts above ICBM silos will also cease operations later this month….

Bob sighed and took a drink. “Those airborne alerts were bringing in a ton of money for the KSP, what with us keeping those old Kloncordes in airworthy condition. Now that the Cold War’s about to end, I’m worried that the Air Force might cancel our contracts.”

Jeb shook his head slowly. “And that’s not even with Regarn trying to cancel all of the government-funded research projects. He seemed like such a war hawk when he got elected; I never thought I’d end up missing ol’ Noxin after all.”

“We better tell Bill about this,” Bob said. “He’s been really worried that our profits have been falling this last quarter. Hey, barkeep? Can I borrow your phone? I need to call my friend.”

The bartender came over. “Is it a local call?”

“Yeah, my friend’s on the Mun right now.”

The bartender yanked the phone away. “No dice,” Bob sighed. “Well, he’s probably asleep right now anyway, since Munbase’s clocks are synched with the ones here in Juno.”

…The Air Force has also cancelled a contract for five hundred Biteback II missiles, which would have been constructed by the Kontinental Aerospace Corporation…

In the street, a car horn beeped twice. “That would be Val,” Jeb said. “Let’s get going.” They hurried out the door, across the sidewalk, and into the waiting Korvette.

“You hear about the airborne alerts?” Val asked.

“Yep,” Bob replied. “Hey, turn on the news, maybe they’re still covering the story.”

Val turned the dial right, away from a college rock station towards the news broadcast.

…This one goes out to the one I left behind. A simple prop to- kshhhhhskshhhhh – surveillance satellites have also been decommissioned in recent months…

As the car turned onto the westbound Interprov back to the KSC, the whole of Montoya County was visible out one window, with the calm seas of Kearney Lagoon out the other. In the distance, the Pine Junction skyscrapers towered over the peninsula with their lights burning almost as bright as old Juno’s Landing and all of its highways and avenues crowding around small shops and restaurants. In the distance, the geometric guidelights and strobes of the KSC runways beckoned Jeb onward, while in the rearview mirror red warning lights flashed on the cooling towers of the Silver Creek Nuclear Power Plant, tucked away in the foothills of the distant mountains. Turning around in his seat, Jeb shuddered inwardly as his subconscious reminded him of the nuclear wars that had ravaged Kerbin during his childhood, now only thirty years away.

…In local news, the governor of New Renton, Natasha Kerman, has denied the mayor’s request for five million dollars of state money to fund a JRT Green Line extension to Pine Junction; the Red Line extension past Kearney Lagoon to the KSC campus is scheduled for completion later this month, and the the Blue Line extension to Juno’s Landing International Airport…

Suddenly, the blast of a siren startled Val, and she nearly drove the car off the road. “Pull over,” Bob said. “I think there’s a fire truck coming.”

“No,” Val said as she listened to the low warble of the siren. “That’s no fire truck.” She went pale, and then slammed the accelerator down in a desperate race back to KSC. As she blew past trucks and buses, she reached down to turn up the radio, when-

…Blue Line train collided with a parked- BEEEEEP BEEEP BEEEEEP…

Jeb covered his ears. “What’s that horrible Qundar tone?” As he spoke, a robot voice began speaking:

…We interrupt this program. The following is an emergency alert in effect for Montoya County. Important instructions will follow. BEEEEEP…

Val slammed on the brakes and slid the car off the exit ramp before breaking away for the KSC gates.

… The following message has been transmitted at the request of the Governor of New Renton and the Mayor of Juno’s Landing. This is not a test. A nuclear meltdown is in progress at the Silver Creek Nuclear Power Plant, fourteen miles west of Juno’s Landing. Dangerous amounts of radioactive fallout are now spreading over Juno’s Landing, Pine Junction, Silver Creek, and Kearney Lagoon. Residents of these areas are urged to take immediate shelter in a secure room in the center of their home or the structure they are currently occupying; kerbals in urban areas should seek basements, underground parking garages, and underground transit stations. Shelters should be stocked with plenty of food, water, and first aid supplies. Kerbals should remain in their shelters for four days or until the ‘all clear’ is given by emergency officials. Before the ‘all clear’ is received, kerbals should leave their shelters only in cases of emergency. After the ‘all clear’ is given, it may be necessary to evacuate Juno’s Landing, so ensure that your vehicle, if you own one, is stored in a secure place with a full tank of fuel. Please keep your radio tuned to this channel for further information…

Val broke through the KSC guardbooth and swerved around a convoy of abandoned vehicles transporting a Sparkler to the launchpad. “Come on,” Jeb told his friends. “I’ve got a yacht parked by the shore; we’ll evacuate Juno by sea.”

Jeb, Bob, and Val got out of the car and started running for the beach. They had worked out countless problems on their missions, problems that should have killed them and their crew almost instantly, but this was the most scared any of them had felt in a long time.

“We’re not going to die today!” Bob yelled.

“How do you know?” Jeb replied, gasping.

“If I told you,” Bob huffed, “you’d call me crazy. Just trust me on this one: We’re going to be fine.”

Edited June 27, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KerballingSmasher]

O_O

My heart... it's 1983 all over again... Yikes!