Vera's First Day In Space (Part 2)

Vera’s First day In Space

CHAPTER ONE: VERA'S FIRST DAY IN SPACE (Part 2)

Setting : Martan Empire, continent of Gallanol, in the Modern Age

Part 2 (of Chapter 1 : Vera’s First Day In Space)

A face appeared in front of her, an expression of subtly mocking superiority on a youthful and attractive face, which should have been angelic. “Wake up, Vera.” Patronising. “We’re in orbit now. It’s time to take off the straps and practice movement in a weightless environment.”
With a look that said, “I want to rest,” Vera snapped out of her reverie and responded to her training. “Yes, I’m sorry. Must have dozed off.”
Bea was in charge of this new intake into MIOST’s space program. As a recent entrant to space service, she had been deemed suitable to guide the new graduates through their real space initiation. Bea had been in space for two years. That made her someone to look up to in the eyes of the class. Vera did not like her. She was brittle and snappy, always issuing orders and getting people to work hard. She could achieve regular cycle revolutions of over 90 for a whole hour in the fitness gym, displaying her superior motivation. Indeed Bea had competed in running and swimming races when younger, when study allowed, and had, according to herself, won quite a few. Vera was sceptical because to be a continent-wide success at any sport one’s whole life had to be completely dedicated to the attainment of success to the detriment of all other activities such as study. However, Bea did display a certain overbearing self-confidence not generally reflected in space operator/engineers, or in many careers for that matter. Bea was known to be confident with men. Perhaps that was a result of an earlier period of sporting success in her life. Bea was a very attractive blonde woman from Northede, Martan being her second language. All the girls were jealous, including Vera herself if she cared to admit it.
The Intake were headed for MIOST’s largest space station establishment. It had been built only ten years ago, or at least the core of the station had. They were adding to it all the time. In those ten years it had quadrupled in size. Parts, materials and whole sections were manufactured on Marta-Gallanol in sixty or more factories. Rocketed out into space they were transported for five weeks or more out into the depths of the solar system to the space station and added onto the spinning and revolving structure by the hundreds, probably thousands, strong labour force out there. Vera and the other engineers would play their part in that construction in addition to helping to maintain the existing station. Vera had tried to memorise the distance of miles which they were to cover from Marta-Gallanol, but she had lost it again. An important fact which her teachers had impressed on all of them again and again that they should memorise. She felt contempt for herself. “I must be useless”, she thought. None of the other students seem to have any problems in remembering these figures. Whether they did remember or not she would never know because she was too proud to ask. She feared humiliation. She reminded herself at such times of uncertainty that she could not be useless because she had achieved well above average grades recently. Her teachers encouraged her to be ever vigilant with herself and to keep trying to improve. They spurred her on. “A few grades more and you will achieve first class,” they had recited. First Class grades meant she would be put in the fast lane for promotion; put in charge of a squad of Engineer trainees. The reminder to herself pleased her. She enjoyed dreaming about her future success. It was one of her few indulgences. It helped her to “think positive”. Motivation was all-important. She had been taught that in Personal Psychology lessons. If you remind yourself you have potential and can predict your future results and successes you will then be motivated to achieve them, however hard the effort might seem today. Elated, Vera stopped worrying about the figures she had lost. She could always take a few minutes overtime after work to read it up from the databases again. Sat in her seat one week into her voyage to the space station named Progress 16, she looked forward to her new life with mounting excitement. She would be somebody; her life’s training would be put to use. She would rise in rank as she learned more and more. She would earn thousands of credits. Vera looked around her. Most of the girls were asleep, but right now, she could not sleep. She knew many of them were finding the voyage boring. There was not much teaching. Physical activity was necessarily limited on the ship. Vera was valuing the time she had been granted to focus her thoughts.

*
Some products could be better produced in space. The absence of gravity enabled large constructions to be put together more easily. Certain chemical reactions could take place in nil gravity and nil temperature conditions. Research for new and better products was always going on. The major Marta-Gallanol multinationals, and some based in other parts of the world, vied with each other to control the supply of these products from space. The race had been going on for two hundred years but when it began it had been nations which rivalled each other for control. Public money for space exploration and space research was forthcoming because the powers wished to win their arms and economic races. Space research might find a new weapon, which might be superior to the ones rivals possessed. Indeed new technologies and weapons were developed, but within years rivals usually developed their own after more resources were allocated to that particular area of research, with perhaps a little help from dissident scientists, bribery, industrial espionage and rather a lot of help from that most human of instincts – free trade by profit-making business enterprises involved in some of the work.
The leading states in the space rivalry were Marta, Prydein, Paldein, Wernland, Parnamor, Northede and Mandol-Kelmar. Political changes in Marta brought reconciliation with her age-old rival Prydein. After years of détente and peace business links developed further and broke down cultural and political antagonisms. No one wanted war any longer. The states entered free trade agreements and made the growth of the multinationals inevitable. They gradually became larger than “public sectors”. To encourage their economies to grow without high taxation burdens, which would have left them at a disadvantage against other countries, the states, deregulated their public sectors. This had the effect that public opinion was no longer effective on the growing multinationals through government, except by over-complicated and confusing legislation. They became in many ways more powerful than governments. In economic terms, they were sometimes larger than “public sectors”. The final development was the privatisation of the “public” space development agencies. Some governments made efforts to split up their space agencies before sale and to guarantee their separation by law so that monopolies did not develop, but other governments realised that organisations must be large to survive in space. Now fierce rivalry existed between multinationals in space. This rivalry pervaded the organisations so much that they prevailed upon their shareholders to accept take-over bids. In some cases supra-governmental legislation in the area of space development, it had to be admitted, was quite effective in preventing complete monopolisation. Vera’s own MIOST was one of the largest, having been privatised largely whole except for MIOSEF, which remained under Martan governmental control. Competition between multinationals rather than nations kept investment in space moving forward, even though most of them now lost huge sums of money much of the time. Fear of losing a chance to discover new products and new methods in space, not to mention new planets and new resources, kept them involved. The space agencies had all been saved and “swallowed up” by external multinationals since the early days but legislation prevented mergers or take-overs between the rivals. So they poured endless resources into space in the fear that if they did not find the big new ”discovery” someone else would. In the process, they had turned man into more of a slave than he had been before. Vera of course, did not see it that way, and although her mother did, she might not have been able to explain what she felt effectively to people who didn’t want to listen.