Bill Snodgrass

Back when we first seriously started coming into space for the purposes of making money, they had a saying.  It was not unlike what they said about North America back in the day.  They called it the "land of opportunity" back then.  As for space, they told us it was the "frontier of equal opportunity."  Yeah, right.

I guess the stalling of humanity's tolerance for each other over the beginning of the 21st century lead to the need to make such a claim, but here we are, decades past the first economically successful space venture and not much seems to have changed.

I should know.  Before patching my helmet mic into the transcriber and linking through to this journal to record these thoughts, I suppose I was the latest beneficiary of what the "frontier of equal opportunity" has to offer.

Since I am recording this, obviously, I am still alive.  For now, anyway.  But, the "equal opportunity" treatment I have enjoyed of late bodes no promise for my future.

When I came over to the Rock Jumper from my former mining ship, I knew it would be a tough transition.  Everyone knows that being a subterraner and being a surfacer is like oil and water.  Best not to mix them.

But the EEOC officers got the bright idea that something of an exchange program would be good for business. They convinced the heads of the mining company that creating a little harmony between us would be good.  After all, we are both miners.  They mine on the surface and we go down deep into the asteroids to extract minerals from the core, but otherwise, we have a lot in common.

Not the least in common is our thoughts that the others are inferior.

Back on the Junkyard Dog, I was the lucky subterraner who got assigned to the exchange program.  As apprehensive as I was to the reception I expected, I couldn't help laughing at some of the things my buddies had planned for the guy coming over from the Rock Jumper.

"Hey," one guy suggested, "let's get him way down in the back of shaft 23-m and blank the power grid.  He'll have to go battery for lights and by the time he gets to the el', he'll be on reserve.  It will be a scream!"

I was pretty sure the guys on the Rock Jumper would have their own "scream" waiting for me.  Reluctantly, I packed up my things and boarded the shuttle.

The Rock Jumper is a newer ship than the Junkyard Dog, but essentially the same in design.  The crew lives in the large ring spinning around the central axis.  At the top and bottom of the axis are two huge storage bays that dwarf the rest of the ship.  Tugs from earth come and swap empties and haul off the full bays.  They also offload supplies to the crew rings.

The Rock Jumper is equipped with a special portal compatible with the newest robotic tugs. Back on the Junkyard Dog, we had to use adaptor tunnels on the new tugs to get the supplies sent up from earth.

I sometimes wonder what earth looks like and have had thoughts of foregoing the life of deep space.  I was born in deep space, like most of the people out here.  I was born on Station 3 and have been in deep space all my thirty-two years.  I have thought more than once to make the trip in from the asteroid belt on one of the tugs.  I saw one of the passenger modules one time and it looked comfortable.  It would be nice to see earth someday, I guess.  I hear it's a hard transition though.  Even though the spinning ships simulate gravity, they tell me on earth it is different.  I am doubting, now that I'll ever know.

I can blame the EEOC office, I guess.

I arrived at the Rock Jumper and found my quarters.  The difference between subterraners and surfacers is most clear walking the tubes of a ship, outside the protective radiation suites.  My ashen face marked me immediately.  On subterraners, our skin is pale and ashen from head to toe.  Living inside ships and working in deep holes protects us.  Surfacers, however, end up with darkened, leathery faces, products of being on the surface of airless rocks and subjection to various radiations that the suits fail to block.  Of course, the crew uniforms easily identify miners from the ship crew, so passing for one of them was out of the question.  Seeing my uniform and my pale face marked me as a subterraner.

I didn't mind the stares so much as the sneers.

I barely had time to get unpacked and link up my personal data drive to the workstation in my bunk.  I'll admit that I was impressed by the Rock Jumper's bunk cubes.  Besides the bed, there was a comfortable chair that the workstation console could swing over, if you wanted access to the network while sitting up.  I am glad I took time to hook up my drive, or else recording these thoughts would have been impossible.

I logged in and looked up the duty roster.  I had two hours before I had to report for deployment and I still didn't have a suit fitted.  I rushed down to Provisions and got squared away just in time.

Deployment from the ship to the asteroid 400 meters below was accomplished by "shooting the wire," just like back on my old ship.  The difference, though, is that their wire ended at a small hut whereas ours shot on down a tunnel some 75 meters further.  It was a little odd to me for the pod to slow down before dipping below the surface.  It locked into the catchments routinely, and the door opened.

I was really surprised at how bright things were on the surface.  Compared to the tunnels subterraners are used to, the surface of the asteroid was extremely bright.  The five surfacers with me didn't seem to notice, so I plodded out after them.

I suppose "plodded" is not the right term.  To someone used to constant gravity, the way we move on asteroids is pretty odd.  Gravity on these rocks is pretty low.  We are mining a rock known as 5-526.  Since basically every single asteroid being mined commercially falls in the 5th orbit around the sun, we just call it 526.

Rock 526 is big by most standards.  It actually has enough gravity to hold you down, but you better not move very abruptly.  On the shuttle over, I looked it up and found that its escape velocity exceeded what a person was able to achieve.  According to the article, it was calculated that even an Olympic jumper would eventually fall back to the surface, given enough time.

Yet, moving was pretty dicey, all the same.  The risk falls into that "given enough time" clause.  Who wants to stumble and end up a few feet off the ground for an hour?  Or worse.

Rock 526, however, was dense in magnetite (Fe₃O₄) and ilmenite (FeTiO₃) so we were able to use mag-boots.  Getting around in them took some getting used to for me....  When you want to move, you have to press the top of your foot against the sensor inside the boot for a second before the electromagnet in the sole releases and you can raise your foot.  Maybe "plodding" is the right word after all... for me, anyway.

Our job was to change out the crusher head on one of the collectors.  It was something of a hassle, because they were using a new Davron extractor, but had coupled it to an older Kidron separator and the interface was just rigged up with what looked to me like random parts.  The connections from the separator to the three tanks and the tailings bin were also kind of just hacked together. 

More than anything, that mismatching and kluging things together led to my present state of peril.  Couple bad engineering with the disregard of the surfacers and it is easy to see why I am in a fix.

To their credit, the other five miners treated me civilly enough while things were routine.  It was a dull assignment, even though it was my first.

"Miner 257," one of them said to me.  Two-fifty-seven was my id.  "Secure the titanium tract."

"Roger that," I replied into my intercom.  The mag-boots burn a lot of power, so we were all tethered and the intercom lines made communication clear.  Radio was pretty clipped around all the machines and the huge reactor that powered everything, so communications were wire-intercom only.

I ratcheted down the door on the tract that led from the separator to the titanium tank, no problem.  Standard procedures, all the way, and I had done the same thing a hundred times before.

Miner J-92 was shunting off the power from the reactor to the separator when I finished.  I'm no chemist, but I know that the separation of the iron, titanium and oxygen out of the magnetite and ilmenite takes tons of energy, but on a rock like 526, a fission reactor can run wide open and no one worries about pollution, so there was energy to spare.  Anyway, J-92 was just finishing the shunt when I finished securing the tract to the titanium tank.

I looked at him and saw his eyes go wide, just before the impact.  As he turned toward the rest of us from where he stood, I guess he saw it coming.

I did not.

I felt it though.  A mighty impact across the back of my radiation suit.  Hard.  Next thing I know, I am sailing through the air, two meters above the surface and a pressurized hose from the oxygen tank is flailing about below me smashing things all over the place.

I shot over the heads of the surfacers.  Two of them ducked to keep me from slamming into them, but they made no attempt to grab me.

They were too busy laughing.

There was no way they had caused it, but they were sure enjoying my misfortune.  So much for creating harmony.

I was really hacked off, and I guess that is why I delayed taking any corrective measures.  Plus, taking a hit from the pressure hose was no slight thing either.  It must have been some hard hit for the oxygen hose to sever my tether.

The long and short of it is that, by the time I was thinking straight, I was thirty meters up and a hundred down range.  I am pretty sure I had achieved an initial velocity in excess of what an Olympic jumper could manage.  I think I was way past escape velocity for 526.  I was what we call "outbound."  That is a nice way of saying "about to die."

That is when I remembered the cable anchor.  I knew the magnet was strong and that the cable was long enough, so I fired it.  I felt my body nudge away from the planetoid below me in reaction to firing the magnetic anchor.  I watched the Kevlar cable play off the spool as it raced toward 526, hoping it would find a place stable enough to stop my assent.

It hit the surface, but long before I could put tension in the line, the anchor rebounded from the surface attached to a small chunk of rock.  Recoiling the anchor would take time and I doubted I'd have enough cable to try again.  Now only distant forms, I could see the surfacers still gesturing as if in hysterics at my dilemma.

It was disheartening.

I guess a dozen seconds passed before I flipped over to radio.  Sure enough, I was out of the interference zone.  I hailed the ship.

"Rock Jumper, Miner 257 here."

"Go 257.  Rock Jumper copies."

"An o-hose burst loose and knocked me off rock.  Mag-anchor grabbed debris.  No catch effected, and I am outbound."

"Copy that 257.  We're reading the o-hose problem on the monitor.  Update your status when you fire aerosols."

Silence.  So calm was the reply from Rock Jumper that I was almost reassured.

I didn't bother to mention that I had not fired aerosols since training school.  Subterraners don't even carry them.  No wonder I had not thought to use them.

I fumbled to assemble the aerosol rig.  I figured the handle mechanism out pretty quick and got the crossbar on, no problem.  Fitting the aerosol thrusters onto the crossbar turned out to be a little tricky, but I got it right.

Flipping my body around in the radiation suit proved problematic.  It had been a long time since I had any freefall work, but after a minute, I was lined up with the aerosol rig pointed toward 526 and me laid out behind it like Superman.  By this time, I guess I was five hundred meters up and no telling how far down range from the surfacers.  My aim would have to be pretty good, because I only had six aerosols and they had to be used in pairs—one on each end of the crossbar.

I checked my alignment once more and engaged the rig.  I felt the thrust pulling me, at last staying my assent.  Then, unexpected and way too soon, the thrust was gone.  So was the crossbar off the top of the aerosol rig.  I watched it speed away from me in a dizzying spiral back toward 526, me left holding only the handle piece snapped off half a meter from my hands.

"Rock Jumper, Miner 257 here."

"Rock Jumper copies."

"Well, the aerosol rig was defective.  The crossbar and half the handle snapped off.  I am still stuck out here."

Silence.  I am sure the union rep was having a fit on somebody.  I am sure he was talking about class action lawsuits against the mining company for cutting corners on safety just to turn a higher profit.  The mining company's people were probably telling him to shut up and let them do their job.  Back and forth, no doubt, they argued while I drifted away to eventual doom.

Finally, a voice crackled in my helmet.

"Two-five-seven, Rock Jumper here.  What is your battery status?"

I checked my heads up display for the reading.

"Looking at two and a half hours."

"Copy that 257.  Two point five hours.  Stand by."

Stand by?  Like I had a choice.  Like popping in to the mess hall for coffee or something was an option.  Of course I'd stand by.

I had half a mind to say something, but bit my tongue.  Anyway a different voice was speaking.

"Two fifty-seven, we're linking your video recorder."

"Good," I barked back. "Then you'll see that your boys down there on the surface could have arrested my outbound."

Silence.  I guess they were looking at the video data to see what happened.  As if how I ended up five hundred meters above 526 made any difference in getting me down.  As if seeing the indifference of the surfacers could somehow alleviate the problem I faced.

I stewed on this for a bit before a voice broke the silence.

"Miner 257," he began, but I interrupted.  I surprised myself.

"My name is Jim," I declared.

"Say again, please.  Did not copy."

"I said, ‘My name is Jim,'" I repeated slowly.

Silence.

"Jim Mullins?" the voice finally replied.

"Roger that.  My name is Jim Mullins."

Forget company protocol and all that.  I was looking at being dead in less than two and a half hours when my batteries ran out.  I guess I just didn't want to die being called by my mining company payroll number.

"You're the subterraner from the Junkyard Dog, right?"

That's when it started.  At that, something in me snapped.  I don't know what it was, but suddenly, I didn't really want to be the subterraner any more.

"No.  I am the man from the Junkyard Dog.  A miner, same as the five men wearing radiation suits down on 526.  Just the same."

I am sure the EEOC officer was taking his turn at having a fit.  The union rep probably was able to learn a few tricks from him.  I can see him making a huge stink about it all as his pet project collapsed around him.  I wouldn't be surprised if the ship captain didn't get a call at that point.

Finally a reply.

"Copy that Jim.  We copy."

More silence, then a new voice.

"Jim, this is Dave Carson here.  Look here, we are running around up here like mad, so you just hang on.  We have your beacon on screen, so we see you just fine.  Captain has called back the shuttle and it is going to go "core melt" to get back here.  Meanwhile, we are working out some contingencies."

"Copy that, Dave," I replied.

"Okay, Jim," Dave added.  "Stand by and conserve battery.  Turn off the power to your suit actuators and everything you don't need.  Keep the data link up, though ‘cause it carries your beacon and we don't want to lose that."

"Roger."

That was an hour and a half ago.  As far as I can tell, I am no closer to 526 than I was at last transmission.  No farther away either, thank God.

Until I started logging these thoughts a few minutes ago, the only sound has been the fan in my helmet coming on every now and then to freshen the air.  While I have been floating out here waiting for the shuttle or whatever "contingencies" the Rock Jumper can work out, I have had a lot of time to think.

I thought a little about friends and such, but over and over, my thoughts turned to my situation and the events that led to me being stuck out here.  Little by little, I realized the five men down there were not solely to blame.

Sure, they could have helped me, but I'm not surprised they didn't.  They're surfacers and I'm a subterraner. I guess I'd even agree that they probably figured I could arrest myself, which I probably could have if my aerosol rig hadn't been defective.  So really, I can't lay the blame on them alone.

No, in the hour and a half being stuck out here, I have come to realize that my situation does not come from the shortsighted prejudice of the five miners back on 526. It is a lot more complicated than that.  It is rooted in the soul of our whole society.

Like me, stuck here between 526 and nowhere, it seems mankind's attempt to create harmony between people's differences has become stuck too.  Despite all our intentions, not much has really changed.  People still look at things on the surface, and from that, judge others.

Are we really so different?  Surfacers and subterraners?  Are we?  Not really.  It is such a little thing that sets us apart.  To say one is better than the other simply based on the pallor and texture of their face is ridiculous.  The truth is, if I stay on the surface for half an earth year, my face will darken and take on a hardened texture too.  If I were to go then to a subterraner ship, they would take me for a surfacer.

That we would take such a small thing and turn it into such a divider is insane.  Take off the radiation suits, strip down to shorts and tee shirts, put a bag over our heads and we are all the same—some dark skinned, some light; some male, some female; some round features, some long.  Our blood carries the same DNA.  Yet, we look at the skin above our chins and decide one person is better than the other.  And which person we deem best depends on whether the texture of their skin matches ours.

Here I am, part of the grand mission of harmony, adrift between rock 526 and nowhere.  I float out here trying to stay calm, hoping that some miracle will occur to prevent my death.  As I hope for myself, so too I hope for mankind.

Like I said, when you get right down to it, I am little different from the men down there on 526 who are looking up at me.  They have mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, as do I.  Some have wives and children; some like me, do not.  When you get right down to it, we are all humans.  We are all people, unique in some ways, but alike in many others.  Each with gifts, talents, fears, desires.  Each with dreams and aspirations.  Men and women, worthy of respect and dignified treatment.

And my name is Jim.

 

 

Copyright 2006, Bill Snodgrass 

"My Name is Jim" appeared first in Amazing Journeys Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 5, Fall 2004.  To learn about Amazing Journeys Magazine, visit their website at:

< www.journeybookspublishing.com >

 

 

Cover: Used with permission 

Copyright 2004, Journey Books Publishing