Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

Eric Pettorino was the fourth of six children procreated by Peter and Julia Pettorino. He grew up, more than one-hundred years earlier in an affluent community outside of San Jose, California. His parents were part owners of a successful software design company that they helped start. Academically, Eric followed in his parent’s footsteps and became a software design engineer. He became a richly successful entrepreneur in this field. By the age of thirty-one he had accumulated three times the wealth of his parents. He had a seven-bedroom home outside of San Diego, California, an attractive girlfriend, an abundance of friends, a sixty-five-foot-long yacht in San Diego Harbor and a condominium in New York City. Eric was living the life of his dreams. Half way through to his next birthday World War III began.

The war took a heavy toll on Eric’s family. His parents and four of his siblings did not survive past fifteen months from the start of the war. The family’s fortunes were victims of the war, as well. Eric’s business came to a full stop one day after the fighting started. He, his sister and her family took up residence at his San Diego home during the apocalypse that followed the war. Three years out from war’s end, he, his sister and her family, relocated to a starship in space. From their Eric’s fortunes began to rise again. He found a use for himself designing the control and operating systems for the robots that were constructing the means for human existence in space. Life was good again.

Eric excelled in this new world. As it grew, over the next forty years, so did his mark upon it. He became the foremost designer of software and control systems for construction and maintenance robots anywhere within the starcorp community. Over the past two decades, his enthusiasm for his work in this field waned to the point that he was simply going through the motions. He found it hard to imagine any new or exciting upgrades to his operating system. He had gotten to the point where he was devoting the bulk of his energy to social and romantic adventures. Work had become toil. The geniuses of his closest competitors were poised to overtake him in stature within another decade. He had reached the grand old age of ninety-five when his passion for his work was reborn.

When Eric got the call to report to the newly constructed Starship Dominion, he had no idea why. In the past, his work did not require him to relocate to perform it. Nonetheless, per the instructions of his superiors, he went to this starship without the expectation that anything new or exciting would happen. Shortly after arrival, he was delighted to learn that he was wrong. The chance of participating in the development of a robot with a new purpose and new capabilities was all he needed to hear to excite his imagination. When Joshua made him Head of Human Systems for the mow he could not have been more pleased. This was exactly where he wanted to be.

Over the two years that followed Eric’s appointment to the Head of Humans Systems for the mow he had accomplished little. The final design for the human interface with the systems and the software to run it was still up in the air. This did not mean that his mind was not ablaze with ideas. In fact, he had no shortage of ideas. He and his team was designing and redesigning dozens of configurations almost daily. From Eric’s point of view, this was the most exhilarating time of his life. However, not all that were a part of this endeavor shared this view of his situation.

“How soon can you start building virtual trainers?” Joshua questioned while taking his first three steps into Eric’s office.

“Trainers…?” Eric questioned back with a surprised inflection.

“Yeah,” Joshua insisted just as he stopped in front of Eric’s desk. “I need a mockup so I can start training pilots and working out plans for deploying the mows.”

“No, no,” Eric responded in an astonished tone. “We can’t do that. We’re nowhere close to actually constructing the cockpits for these things.”

This was a response that Joshua was not expecting. His reason for making this request was because of the schematic for the cockpit that Eric’s team produced. This they did at the behest of the team that was developing the mow’s mechanical systems. Because of this submission, Joshua assumed that it would be possible for Eric to construct a virtual cockpit.

“You just sent us the specs for the cockpit,” Joshua challenged with his brow furrowed.

“You asked for the dimensions, so we gave you that. But we’re not ready to plug in an operating system for it.”

Joshua was both astounded and angered by this report. He had been monitoring the progress of all the teams within the division that he was personally managing as well as each project that was under his administration. Up until this moment, he had no reason to be displeased with their rate of progress. He frequently asked for more to keep everyone racing ahead, but he was always mindful that he could have been getting far less. Up until this moment, he had this same impression regarding Eric’s team. The reports that he got back from him always insisted that they were ahead of schedule. Joshua had no reason to dispute this and every reason to trust it. After all, there was nothing constructive he could do with their work until the blueprint for the rest of the mow was finalized. When Joshua heard that they had produced a schematic of the cockpit this made him think of manufacturing trainers for the pilots.

“Why not?” Joshua questioned with a stunned expression. “What have you been doing in here for the past two years?”

“We’ve been doing the job you hired us to do,” Eric sharply asserted.

Eric had no idea what had brought on this outburst from Joshua. In his mind, all was going well with his portion of the project. However, at this moment, he could think of nothing to say to validate this that he had not already said in his reports.

“You told me that things were going great,” Joshua challenged back. “You said your team was ahead of schedule.”

“We are, but that doesn’t mean we have a fixed operating system yet,” Eric defended with a startled expression.

“What does that mean?” Joshua roared back with his hands thrown out in front of him.

“It means that we’re still brainstorming ideas,” Eric answered back as though he was speaking the obvious.

The term brainstorming was all that Joshua needed to hear to get his rage up. In his mind, he had Eric and his team far past the brainstorming phase. At this moment, he felt lied to. He could not help but think that Eric led him to believe that he was a lot further along than he was. His mind turned to the prospect of replacing him as the head of Human Systems and starting from scratch with someone else.

“Eric, I picked you for this position because of your reputation as the foremost robotics software engineer anywhere,” Joshua commenced with a look of disbelief. “Are you telling me that you can’t do this job?”

“We are doing the job, Joshua,” Eric responded flatly. “You need to give us time.”

“Time is something we don’t have,” Joshua asserted strongly. “We’ve already begun construction on the basestar. We should have a final blueprint for the mows in about a year. Everything is moving ahead schedule. I can’t have you hold us up, Eric. I can’t have you slowing down this project.”

“I am not holding you up,” Eric declared emphatically. “You’re holding me up.”

This was something that Joshua did not expect to hear. He gave Eric a look of confusion as he waited on him to explain that statement.

“We still don’t have set measurements on the mow’s power output or consumption. Every few weeks you’re giving us changes in its internal systems and mechanics.”

“So, how is that holding you up?” Joshua questioned with a look of confusion.

“Joshua, we’re building the operating system,” Eric annunciated definitively. “We need to know what this system has to control. We need to know power levels, the rate of power buildup. We need stats on engine performance, energy field production, weapon system stats. Some of this can be calibrated after the operating system has been put in place, but not all of it. We can’t go forward with a final operating system until the other sectors finish with research and development. We need the final schematics for the mow.”

Joshua took all of this in with a look of wonder. Up until this moment, he was not aware of the quantity of details the software engineers needed to complete the task set out for them.

Eric took a pause to note if Joshua comprehended what he just said. At the end of this delay, he added a final message to his explanation.

“We’re working on some great ideas on control mechanisms for the cockpit. You need to trust us, Joshua. We won’t let you down.”

“I’m sorry, Eric. I didn’t understand,” Joshua proffered with an apologetic look. “So how long do you think it will it take you to configure this cockpit and the operating system once you have the final blueprint?”

“Six months to a year…” Eric answered with a shrug.

“And there’s no way for you to start work on this ahead of time?” Joshua questioned out of curiosity.

“No, it can’t be done without the completed schematics,” Eric explained softly. “And it may take another six months of tweaking after that to get control mechanisms interfacing seamlessly with its human operators. Why?”

“That’s eighteen months from the date that we get the final schematic,” Joshua spoke out to no one in particular.

Eric took note of Joshua’s bewildered expression with a curious look of his own. He knew that this was not an excessive amount of time. Large projects regularly went through several months to complete the different phases of its development. He anticipated that Joshua would have factored this time into the project. At this moment, he was doubtful he had. He hesitated to ponder this and then he turned his doubt into a question.

“What’s wrong, Joshua?”

“It just feels like wasted time to me,” Joshua answered back. “We could have mows sitting around for six months, or more, doing nothing while we’re trying to figure out the best way to control and deploy them.”

Eric had given no thought to anything past the construction phase of the mow. Designing and perfecting the tactics of its use was not within his purview. How a machine was used after its construction was always someone else’s problem, and he generally gave no thought to it. His timetable was always built around the time he needed to do the job right.

“What do you mean by, deploy?”

“This is a weapons platform,” Joshua responded. “I need to work out battle formations and tactics. And I was hoping to get a jump on training for the pilots.”

Eric took a moment to consider Joshua’s concerns as a problem in need of a solution. This was a situation that he was not accustomed to considering. Shortly, his mind configured it into a problem that needed an answer. After giving it few seconds of thought, he offered the solution that he came up with.

“Okay, what I can do is create virtual trainers based upon the specifications that we have right now—I can fill in the blanks with—guesstimations—I can also program these trainers with your battle scenarios so that you can work out tactics for it. And, I suppose—I can start working on the interface ergonomics at the same time. If we did it this way, we might be able to trim off as much as a year.”

“But these virtual trainers won’t be a match for what we put in the mows in the end,” Joshua expressed with a questioning inflection.

“There will be some functionality that will differ from the final cockpit,” Eric agreed nonchalantly. “Hopefully, that won’t be anything major. I can update the design every few months to make it correlate with the new changes and additions to the mow’s specifications. But it would give you something to work with.”

Joshua took a few seconds to consider this idea before responding with a ponderous remark to himself more so than Eric.

“I won’t be able to train pilots with that.”

“It shouldn’t be, drastically, different from the final cockpit,” Eric assured with a shake of his head.

Joshua considered this for a few seconds more before countering this thinking with his decision.

“No, I don’t want to risk teaching pilots something that I might have to un-teach them at the last moment.”

“You still have to train them,” Eric reacted with a confused expression.

Joshua’s true concern was not for the training of the pilots. Finding the people that would be piloting the mows was being handled by a dedicated office far away from him. The only thing he knew about it was that they all would be chosen for their skills and experiences at operating spaceships and aircrafts. The possibility of last minute changes in the functionality and control system of the mow was a matter of concern for Joshua. But his greatest concern was about his own ability to competently command this space-force that he was building.

Joshua understood from the beginning why he was given command of this war machine. He knew that the very concept of this force was alien to most people with the credentials to apply for his position. Despite this Joshua was not eager to be in command. He, more so than any other, understood that his qualification was supported primarily by the fact that he imagined it into existence. In other areas, he feared that he was far less suited for the job. This notwithstanding, it was not a part of his nature to self-talk himself into failing. The more he questioned his fitness for the task the more he pushed himself to take up the challenge. Driven by his fears, Joshua was determined to make himself as fit as possible for command. To this end, he was desperate to play out battle scenarios that might prepare him for what could come. Eric’s declaration that he could not make that happen was a setback he was loathed to accept.

“We already have people lined up to pilot the mows,” Joshua reported with a near sullen expression. “They’re all skilled at piloting multiple crafts, both space-borne and airborne. It shouldn’t take long getting them up to speed.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Eric asked with a look of complete confusion.

“Without virtual trainers and pilots for them, I can’t run battle scenarios.”

Eric considered this for several seconds with an almost amused expression. He shortly concluded that Joshua was primarily interested in experimenting with different combat scenarios. At the end of his deliberation, he responded Joshua’s conclusion with a counter proposal.

“I’ll still need test pilots to work out the ergonomics and for taking readings on the interface. We can experiment with different battle scenarios at the same time.”

Joshua paused to ponder this. Eric elected to jump into this silence with another selling point.

“I can run the whole thing from here. The only thing you’ll have to do is outline the combat situations so that we can program them into the computer.”

Joshua continued to consider this idea for another several seconds. At the end of this time, he announced his conclusion with a definitive nod of his head.

“Okay, let’s do that.”