Callisto 2.0 by Susan English (e novels to read online .txt) 📕
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“Ah, there’s the rub.” I grinned.
Just then, Annie’s voice filled the room. “Naomi, Raven requests your immediate assistance in her lab.”
Naomi and I looked at each other, then we bolted off the couch and propelled ourselves out the door and into the hallway. Raven was squeezing through her lab door, then she closed it behind her, panting.
“What in the Universe is going on?” said Naomi.
Raven shook her head. “I can’t believe what an idiot I am!”
“What happened?” I asked, trying to peer around Raven’s body to look through the window in the door.
Raven took a deep breath, then let it out with a sigh. “You know I’ve been working with bees in cryostasis?”
“Uh-huh,” said Naomi.
“Things seemed to be going well, and it’s been over six months.” She looked at me.
“Remember I told you six months is the maximum time anyone’s been able to keep an animal in cryostasis without permanent neurological damage?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s been almost eight months now, and I’ve been monitoring the bees’ vitals, and things were looking good, well, they are good, really good. Anyway, I thought, let me bring the worker bees out of stasis, now that we’re well past the six-month mark, and see how they’re doing. So, when I opened the chamber—”
Naomi narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me!”
“I should have consulted with Yasmin, but I was eager to find out if my protocol worked—”
Naomi put a hand to her mouth. “Oh no, let me guess. The protocol was a success?”
“Uh-huh. Before I could even react, they were all buzzing around the room, healthy and strong.” Raven grimaced. “But I neglected to consider how to recapture them once they were free.”
“So, there’s a swarm of bees in your lab right now?” I asked.
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“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“Yikes.” I looked from Raven to Naomi and back.
“Naomi, what am I going to do? I can’t just let them fly around my lab, and I can’t let them escape.”
“How many bees are we talking about?” I asked.
“It’s not bad, only two dozen.”
My jaw dropped. “No way!”
“I know it’s a lot, I know. I don’t know what to do!” She wrung her hands. “If only there was some way to convince them to go back into the storage chamber on their own.”
“Do we have any honey on the station?” I asked.
“No,” said Naomi, “but that gives me an idea. Hang on.” She went back to her lab and emerged a moment later with a cloth bag. “Come on, follow me.” She pushed herself down the hallway. Raven looked at me and gave a little shrug, and we followed Naomi into the park. “We can lure them with flowers.”
“That’s a terrific idea!” said Raven.
“But not the orchids!” said Naomi. “Zoe would kill us!”
We spent the next twenty minutes flying from plant to plant, just like bees, and gathered as many flowers as we could hold, then put them in Naomi’s bag.
When we got back to the lab, Raven said, “How are we going to do this?”
“We have to be careful when we open the door,” said Naomi. She handed the bag to Raven. “You should go in alone. We wouldn’t want the door open for longer than a second. Oh, and you’ll need to tell Annie to modify the light in the lab. The bees need ultraviolet to see the flowers.”
“Oh, yeah! I hadn’t even thought of that. Annie?”
“Yes, Raven?”
“Please adjust the lighting in my lab to include ultraviolet.”
“Done,” said Annie.
Clutching the bag to her chest, Raven opened the door a crack and slipped inside.
Naomi and I watched through the window as Raven made her way to the transparent stasis chamber and carefully placed the flowers inside. She gave us a thumbs up, then crossed her fingers. She moved away from the chamber and we waited.
“Do you think it’ll work?” I asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” said Naomi.
“We can always lower the temperature in the lab, so the bees move more slowly, and maybe they would be easier to catch.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “Wait—Calli, look!”
I peered through the window. One by one, the bees were flying toward the flowers.
“It’s working!” said Naomi.
We watched as Raven scanned the room, then quietly made her way over to the chamber and closed the door. After a few minutes she turned to us, a radiant smile on 145
her lips, then pushed herself over to the door and opened it.
“Are you certain all the bees are safe inside the chamber?” asked Naomi.
“One hundred percent. I counted three times.” We followed Raven inside the lab and gathered around the chamber. “Now it’s time to put these beauties to sleep.” Raven pressed a few buttons on the control panel, and there was a whooshing sound. “They’ll be back in stasis in five minutes.”
“I’m stoked your experiment worked,” said Naomi, making her way to the couch.
Raven and I followed, and we all sat down.
“Yeah, I’m happy. And next time I’ll plan things a little better.”
“You didn’t get stung, did you?” Naomi asked.
“No, I think the bees were so excited to be free, they didn’t even notice me.”
“But wait,” I said, “I thought the bees didn’t do well in micro-g.”
“They’re fine flying around,” said Raven. “The issue is building the hive. They are so confused, they don’t know which way is up.”
I laughed. “I don’t think anyone knows what ‘up’ means in micro-g.”
“True.”
“What happens with the hive?” I asked.
“The problem is the way they construct the combs in micro-g. It’s like bees on hallucinogens—a complete mess,” said Raven.
“Yasmin was horrified when she returned to check the hive after a couple months,”
said Naomi. “She boxed it up and took the bees back to the Moon, except for the ones Raven put into suspended animation. That was the end of the experiment.”
“Poor bees,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s much better for them to sleep.” Raven looked at Naomi. “So, Naomi, now that you’re here, tell us about Simon!”
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The following week, Naomi was being very secretive. She and Gamon were spending a lot of time together, but Naomi wouldn’t tell me what they were doing.
“So long as I don’t have to worry about your health,” I said. “You don’t have some horrendous, life-threatening disease, do you?”
She laughed, but I got nothing more out of her.
At the staff meeting on Friday, Diana welcomed us, as always, then said, “Naomi and Gamon have something they would like to share with you all.” She acknowledged both with a slight nod, then sat down.
The two women stood at the front of the room, each with a foot tucked securely under the horizontal bar on the floor.
“We’ve got good news,” said Naomi. All eyes were on her. “Gamon and I have finally perfected the implant for the micro-g medication.”
We all started clapping wildly, and there were shouts of joy. Those pills, though necessary, were awful. They were huge, but you didn’t dare chew them, the taste was horrendous. The manufacturers had tried their best, I was sure, but the flavor was reminiscent of rotting cherries, with undertones of burnt plastic. Everyone hated them, but they were a necessary evil. We were expected to take them even when we visited the Moon, but I knew for a fact many of us “forgot,” myself included, figuring a few days or a week wouldn’t real y hurt us, though I didn’t know anyone who was brave enough to admit to Gamon she wasn’t taking the pills as prescribed.
When the applause died down, Gamon said, “Any questions?”
Ten hands shot up simultaneously. Gamon pointed to Jordyn.
“When can we get the implants?”
“We should be ready to start inserting them in a couple of days. I’ll let you know.”
She looked around the room. “Raven?”
“What about when we are in the Earth’s gravitational field? Will we have to get the implants removed?”
“I’ll answer that.” Rika stood up. We all stared at her. Was she involved, too? “I designed a tiny mechanism using nanotechnology. It’s a bit like a lever, and it responds to a gravitational field with a minimum of eighty percent that of the Earth, acting like a shut-off valve. So, whenever we’re in a powerful enough gravitational field where we don’t need the medication, the drug delivery system switches off automatically. Then, when we’re back in micro-g, or on the Moon, it switches back on.”
“I didn’t know you were working on that!” Marta said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“It was a side project,” Rika said, her face flushed. “We wanted it to be a surprise.”
“I can’t wait to get mine!” blurted Kamana.
“How long will the implant last?” asked Andrea.
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“In theory, indefinitely,” said Gamon. “The implant is equipped with nanobots, which fabricate the medication in situ, from elements already in your bloodstream.”
“I’m interested in the lever mechanism,” said Marta, scowling.
Naomi laughed amiably. “Certainly, Marta.”
For the rest of the meeting, the three women discussed the development of the implant. Naomi talked about the delivery mechanism, Gamon lectured at length about the importance of the medication and the dire physiological consequences of not using it, not only to avoid the grievous effects of microgravity on our physiology but also to protect us against the radiation of cosmic rays (I wasn’t the only one who shrank in her seat for that part, thinking about all those days on the Moon, medication free), and Rika described the lever valve in great detail, which was, truth be told, an astonishing piece of engineering. At the end of the talk, even Marta was smiling, excited about the new technology. At the social that night, the implant was all anyone wanted to talk about, that, and exchanging horror stories about the pills. Although we all gave Naomi and Gamon a hard time about keeping their development a secret, I understood. From this moment on, they would be under tremendous pressure to produce the implants. We would all be counting the days.
◆◆◆
As I sat working at my console on Monday, Annie announced that the implants were ready. She also reminded me it was time for my six-month checkup. I couldn’t believe it had been
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