=/\= PERSONAL LOG =/\=

[rosetto 0]

It was Thursday night and our young cadet teemed with excitement and anticipation of his up and coming Flight School session. Faster than light travel was common place technology and yet he had only a brief experience of it when he traveled from Mars to Earth. Most of that flight was in preparation of the FTL displacement. This was because the jump would take a mere 2-3 seconds but the accuracy had to be within 4 millionths of one degree. It was virtually instantaneous and that was only Warp 1, 1.3 times the speed of light. All of these FTL displacements were done on a very tight schedule and were spaced 100 stardates apart which meant if you missed your flight then you’d have to wait over three months on Earth for the next one. This whole transit process was fairly new because it had been impractical to implement an FTL service from the cities on Luna. But that was four years ago and remembering 3 seconds of flight after four years was nearly impossible.

 

Tomorrow, although simulated, Rosetto would get the chance to fly and navigate at several warp speeds. Though it was considered ‘open space’, the void into which he would be traveling would be hardly empty. There existed large invisible rifts of interstellar gases which due to their mass would alter and distort the warp fields. The vessel he would be flying had deflector systems that would manage these interactions but that didn’t mean the pilot could simply ignore them. Any object with an appreciable amount of mass that would fall into the proposed flight path would have to be charted and categorized. He would be ‘burning the candle’ tonight getting all of his prep work accomplished if he expected to pass this evaluation.

 

Running through the numbers on his console in his dorm his mind drifted from subject to subject. He was feeling quite lonely even though there were more people in this city than were on the majority of Mars. He thought it was peculiar that someone could be alone in a crowd but there he was, only his wits to guide him. He wanted to go out and socialize as he’d done so many times back in college on Mars but this was a lot harder. He HAD to study for tests; not something he was used to doing at all. Still, his mind drifted, first to Nashwa and Maria, then to the love that he had left behind on Mars. He wondered if he’d ever see sweet Brandy again. Like ships in the night their lives were simply going in different directions. He had toyed with a future with her in it, staying on Mars and raising children. He could have always found work in Utopia or perhaps even Olympia but that would mean he would never venture into the stars. It was a tough decision but one that had to be made.

Edited May 28, 2010 by rosetto