John Nance - Orbit

Now the doctor motions him onto an exam table and begins checking his vital signs, the craggy features and silver-gray hair suggesting a man in his late fifties.

“Doc, when did you hear I was coming down?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, when did they alert you I might end up in New Mexico?”

“Oh, not until just before you landed.”

“And… the whole base was alerted then?”

“Not at all. Just the rescue forces and the clinic. Breathe deeply for me. Now, hold it and let it out slowly.”

“Okay.”

Kip complies, waiting out the multiple stops of the stethoscope around his back before speaking again. “Everyone seems so… engaged with this, you know. Has there been something on television about me?”

There’s a knowing laugh. “Yeah, well… that’s one way to put it. I need you to turn around and sit on the side of the table now.”

Kip repositions himself, looking back up at the doctor. “But… I really would appreciate an answer.”

“To what?”

“Was there a lot on television about my coming out of orbit today? Everyone seems to be so aware of it.”

It’s the physician’s turn to look puzzled as he straightens up, the blood pressure cuff in his hands. “You mean, about the spacewalk, and your decision to try the engine?”

“My… decision?"

“You know, when you wrote that about burying your father and giving him back his operating system?”

Kip sits staring at Billingsley not comprehending.

“I thought that was well put, by the way,” the doctor continues. “In fact, I think you’re a good writer.”

“How… how on earth could you know anything I said up there?”

Colonel Billingsley laughs, cocking his head. “You’re kidding, right? I know you have a good sense of humor.”

“I don’t understand… how do you know I have a good sense of humor?”

“Kip, we may be out here in the wilds of New Mexico, but we have cable, so to speak. You wrote it up there and we read it down here.”

The doctor starts to wrap a blood pressure cuff around his left arm, but Kip pushes him away slowly.

“Wait… you were able to read that comment down here somehow? Did I say anything else? When did the radios start working?”

The cuff goes on the table and the doctor sits down carefully on a metal stool, his eyes searching Kip’s face, the realization sinking in.

“May I call you Kip?”

“Well, sure.”

“Kip, hasn’t anyone told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“I mean, we all know from what you wrote that while you were stuck up there you weren’t aware there was a working downlink. But I figured someone had told you about it on the way here.”

“Doc, excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?”

The physician is smiling at him as he would to a child. He chooses his words carefully now that he’s alerted to his role. There is only a decade separating them in age, but he has to fight the urge to address Kip as “son.”

“Kip, for the last four days everything you wrote up there on your laptop was actually sent streaming real time back to a single channel monitored here on Earth.”

“WHAT? The Air Force was able to read what I wrote? The whole time ? How?”

Silence fills a dozen seconds as the doctor glances at his feet, then back.

“My God, Kip,” he says softly, “I had no idea you didn’t know. You see, every time you punched a key up there on your laptop, that letter appeared almost instantly on television screens and computer monitors and even outdoor signboards all over this planet. Worldwide, Kip. Billions and billions of people have been hanging on your every word, reading everything you wrote as you wrote it, sitting on the edge of their seats in pure terror, as you were at times, crying with you over certain things you said, and… basically… living vicariously through the whole experience. Not a whole lot of productive work has been accomplished on Earth in the past few days, thanks to you.”

“Everyone’s been reading… everything ?”

“Yes. And thinking very hard about a lot of what you’ve had to say. Kip, simultaneous translators have been changing your words into, I don’t know, maybe a hundred or more languages. The President, senators, kings, queens, billionaires like Gates—and damn near everyone at this hospital and base—I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to blink or tear themselves away.”

“I was just writing for myself, and… and…”

“And whoever would find that hard drive fifty years from now. I know. We all know. That’s what makes it so incredible. We were watching the real-time thoughts of a doomed man grappling with his fate and his life. And, I might add, a guy who utterly refused to give up. That makes you heroic in my book.”

The physician can see the blood draining from Kip’s face as it begins to sink in. He squints, looking at the doctor for signs that he’s the butt of a joke, then moves back slightly, as if to distance himself from what he’s heard.

“This can’t be true! This isn’t true! I had no communications up there. You must have just received something after I spliced those wires, or… or someone was playing a cruel joke on the world.”

“Four days, Kip. From the very first sentence you wrote—although at first only a few were seeing it live. But all of it was captured and replayed endlessly. Even your first lines where you were saying something about having twenty minutes before you had to turn the ship around, and it was scaring you silly.”

“I don’t believe you! With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t fricking believe you!” He’s gripping the sides of the table now with white knuckles, almost wishing for the security of the spacecraft again.

Everything I wrote?

He struggles to find his voice after long seconds of wide-eyed silence, aware that the doctor has given no sign of suddenly breaking into a grin and saying “April Fool.”

“You’re… not joking about this?”

“No, Kip. This is no joke.”

He tries to call up a memory of everything he wrote but it’s impossible, given the stream-of-consciousness that flowed through the laptop. But what he does remember is enough to curl him into a fetal ball.

Oh, my God! Sharon! The way I talked about her, and about Jerrod, and sex and everything else to the whole world! How can I ever face anyone again?

The doctor is clearing his throat in an unsuccessful effort to refocus Kip’s nearly dilated eyes.

“Kip,” he says at last, “I’d say that right now it’s safe to say that you are probably the most famous living person on Earth. I realize you didn’t intend that to be, and I realize it’s like having the whole world read your diary, but that’s what’s happened. I know it’s going to take you a while for this to sink in so you can come to grips with it.”

“They broadcast everything?”

“Every word. And people were acting on it. For instance, you talked about your employer’s misconduct with that bad batch of antibiotics, and federal indictments have already been issued.”

“Against me?”

He laughs. “No, Kip. Against the guys in your company who did what they did. Hell, man, you’re probably not even aware someone filed your divorce for you?”

“My… divorce ?”

“You wrote out the papers up there and someone printed them out down here and raced to the nearest courthouse, I think in Tucson.”

He feels the room getting a bit fuzzy.

What on earth will I tell Sharon? “Do you suppose my wife knows?”

“Well, she’s been interviewed on TV a dozen times, so I’d say she… you okay, Kip?”