Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

“Thank you for your concern, Gerald, but I haven’t just gone through a rather unpleasant decontamination process just to look at the thing through a pane of glass.”

No amount of cajoling or protests, by the JPL Director or the President’s own staff could persuade the President that he should be satisfied with simply looking at Voyager One from a safe distance.

“The spaceship has been decontaminated to the fullest extent possible, yes?”

The Director was forced to concede that it had been. The President continued.

“And I have been decontaminated to the fullest extent possible, yes?”

“Yes, but Mr President.”

“And this protective suit I’m wearing is the best there is. State-of-the-art, yes?”

“Yes. Mr President, but…”

“Then that’s good enough for me. Let’s go in.”

The President nodded to a member of the laboratory staff to open the door and then walked into the room, making a bee-line towards the probe, feeling very happy with himself. He spent about five minutes strolling around Voyager One, examining the spacecraft and nodding to himself occasionally, trying to give the impression that he understood what he was looking at. He returned to the waiting group with a huge smile on his face. He enjoyed being President; it gave him the opportunity to do things that the common man or woman couldn’t. And nobody could stop him. He was the only one that mattered.

Back in Dutch Harbor, Grant Schumacher was looking forward to his time off, time on dry land instead of working his fingers to the bone on the Alaskan Mermaid. Even though it was tough physical work he enjoyed his job, but a month of kicking back and doing nothing – nothing fishing related anyway – was exactly what he needed. It was the end of the Pollock A season, Pollock B season didn’t start until June, and he’d booked a flight to Anchorage for the next day. From there he would fly on to Seattle, where his family would be waiting at the airport for him. Unlike most trips, this time he would have a really interesting story to tell – how they had caught a fallen satellite in their nets, and how NASA had come to check it out and then had taken it away by helicopter. He made a mental note to remember to tell his teenage daughters that the scientist who had come to examine the thing was a woman; they were both interested in science and it would be good for them to know that such opportunities existed. He would have loved to have had the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with Sitara, but she’d been far too busy for small talk. Just the fact that she was there, as a NASA scientist, would be an inspiration to his girls.

His first night onshore was to be ‘Grant time’. He’d have family responsibilities to take care of in Seattle but the first evening back on shore would be spent with his crewmates in their favourite local bar, before they all went their separate ways. After a long hot shower at his friend Richie’s company apartment, newly clean-shaven (like most of his shipmates he had grown a bushy beard during the weeks at sea) and smelling fresh as a daisy, he made his way to join Richie and the rest of the crew. Most of the fishing vessels had already docked a couple of weeks earlier, offloading their catches, and flooding the town with hundreds of noisy raucous fishermen wanting to let off steam. And most of those had already gone home. The trawler men had all spent weeks at sea, risking their lives in the pursuit of the American dollar and, much like the cowboys of the old West returning from a cattle drive, they could be quite a handful at times. But that night the twenty-six officer strong Unalaska Police Department would have a much easier time. The town bars would be busy but, without the weight of numbers adding to the stress and confusion, the police patrols could almost relax.

Grant left Richie’s apartment later than intended, having been delayed by a video call from his wife Nadine just as he was about to leave, and they’d chatted via WhatsApp for nearly half an hour. Then, his daughters wanted to talk with him, even though they would see him the next day. Family was more important than missing out on a couple of beers.

Arriving at his favourite Unalaska bar, The Norwegian Rat Saloon, he walked over to a group of tables near the bar where Richie and several others of their shipmates were sitting. The table was already crowded with both full and empty bottles of Wild Blue lager. Richie raised a newly opened bottle of beer while handing another to Grant.

“You’re late Grant. You’ve got a fair bit of catching up to do.”

Grant took a swig of Wild Blue and looked at the plates on the table that betrayed that his friends had already eaten, as well as having a head start on him in the beer-drinking stakes. His stomach rumbled and reminded him that it needed attention.

“I’ve got to get some food inside me first, Rich. I’m starving.”

He ordered himself a Thor Burger. If Angus beef, pulled pork, molasses BBQ and onion rings didn’t silence his stomach, nothing would. There were two main reasons why Grant liked The Norwegian Rat. First, he thought the burgers were to die for and second, after spending weeks at sea with only his male shipmates to look at, it was a welcome relief to be able to see some pretty female faces behind the bar. The fact that the women were both friendly and good at their job was a bonus. However, he was very happily married, deeply in love, and would never dream of straying.

The main topic of conversation in the bar that night – between games of pool and shuffleboard – was, understandably, the satellite. The crew were perfectly happy with Sitara’s explanation and didn’t doubt her when she said that it was a reasonably common event. The trawler’s skipper, Dean Romanski a scrupulously fair man, had already assured the men that any reward for finding the satellite would be shared equally and, although they hadn’t received any money yet (and had no real idea how much it would be), they couldn’t help spending it in their heads. Some would spend it on a new car, some on vacations, some on house improvements, but Grant knew what his share would go on. With two teenage daughters who both wanted to study science at college, what better cause than their college fees? And, if there was some money left over, then maybe a family vacation to Disney World. The girls had always wanted to go and now, perhaps, they’d be able to take that dream holiday. But education came first.

Grant and his friends sentenced forty-seven people to death in the bar that night. They didn’t want to kill them, and they had no idea that they had done so, but the fact that they’d celebrated in that particular bar that night had sealed the fate of those forty-seven residents of Amaknak Island.

Alaska Airlines flight AS3299 from Tom Madson Airport left on time the next day, at 12:40 prompt. The take-off was uneventful, despite the runway being bordered by a large hill on one side and a steep drop off to the ocean on the other. For the first time visitor it could be a slightly unnerving experience, but both the pilot and Grant had taken off from Dutch Harbor many times previously. Half the passengers on the Saab 2000 turboprop aircraft were from the Alaskan Mermaid and most were still nursing the remnants of the morning’s hangovers. Grant, however, was surprised how little he was suffering, and settled down to while away the two and a half hour flight to Anchorage by reading the latest issue of The Bristol Bay Times. Conversely, most of his shipmates were sleeping, trying to quell the thump thump thumping in their heads with the relief of unconsciousness.

By the time the plane landed at Anchorage International Airport, at 15:05 local time, twenty more passengers and the flight crew had been unwittingly served a death sentence.