All-Patron Reward: Cut Interview Chapter from Boundary

Most books have components that have been cut from them, and mine are no exception. Often the cuts are material that turned out to be irrelevant, and has no effect on the book once cut. 

This chapter's a bit different, in that the event shown here DID happen, and is even referred to in a couple of places in Boundary and Threshold. It had a bit too much exposition in it, however, and for that and a few other reasons it was cut. 

Still, I kinda like A.J.'s one TV appearance, and I hope you'll enjoy it too.

iv.

"Please welcome A.J. Baker, everyone." The tall, elegant redhead rose, leading her audience in clapping as the subject of the applause entered from stage right. "Welcome, A.J. I hope you're feeling better?"

"Better than dead, that's for sure." A.J.'s trademark grin was back, even if his voice still held a rough, gasping edge and he walked with a painfully slow gait. His good looks had miraculously survived untouched except for a scar on one cheek that managed just to draw more attention. A sympathetic chuckle echoed around the audience and the clapping intensified a bit. The imaging specialist flashed his smile in the direction of the highvideo cameras and tried to settle comfortably into the couch near Myranda Sevins, reigning queen of the daytime talk circuit.

"It's not often we have a genuine hero on my show." Myranda said as the applause died down.

"I'm no hero, really." A.J. said quietly. "I just did what I thought I had to do. What anyone would have done."

"I think we should let the audience decide that, A.J.. Ladies and gentlemen, we've gotten permission to use this footage – never before shown in public broadcast – of the events of that day as captured by the self-contained security cameras on the Zubrin Project's grounds. You've heard rumors of these scenes, maybe caught a few stills from the Net, but it took a lot of negotiation to convince Zubrin to release them." Myranda surveyed her audience with a dramatic, warning gaze. "The videos you are about to see are completely uncensored. Anyone who feels they might find the sight of such a disaster to be too much – please leave the room now."

Not a person stirred in the entire room.

"All right. The following video shows exactly what happened at the Zubrin atmospherics lab just one month ago."

As the highvid screens around the room lit up, A.J. had to fight to repress a smile. The "leaking" of that security cam video had put Glenn almost into apoplexy. There was enough of a circus surrounding the disaster that he felt there was already too much invasion of people's privacy, especially A.J.'s, all in the name of sensationalism. Besides, he still had to worry about lawsuits from various quarters; who knew what the vids might be used for? A.J. still remembered the conversation he'd had with Glenn:

"Chill out, Glenn. Ileaked those scenes."

"YOU?"

"Yes, me. With that as bait, I can guarantee we can get what we need."

"What the hell are you up to , A.J.?"

"I'm not letting the Project go down, Glenn. I'm not letting the Faeries go to waste. And I'm especially," he fought back a fit of coughing, "especially not letting what Anne, Lee, Ren, Joe, and me went through be for nothing.. You leave this to me, just back me up, and I swear that we'll somehow get back on schedule."

"A.J., you aren't supposed to be doing anything more strenuous than really slow walks. Don't push yourself. You're worth more than a delay in the project."

"No, I'm not." A.J. contradicted him flatly. "If we don't keep our schedule, we lose the NASA money, and we just might lose the whole race. Then everyone here is pretty much screwed.Oh, we'll all pick up and get lives back, but we'll have failed the one dream. And I'm not failing my dream, dammit."

Glenn sighed. "I'm not going to win this one either, am I? Okay, fine. I dunno what you think you're doing, but hell, you've pulled off winners so far, I guess I owe you that much at least. Tell me what we have to do."

The thunder of the main explosion yanked his attention back to the present and the red-orange blossom of flame on the screens. "According to Zubrin's analysis, one of the crucial valves in the test setup cracked." Myranda said in the intimate, intense contralto that allowed her to make even the most mundane subjects seem matters of life-and-death; it was that voice, more than anything, which made her the current ruler of the afternoon airwaves. Talking about situations that really were life-and-death, her voice held everyone in the room in its hypnotic grip. "This caused a small explosion that damaged the oxygen containment system, flooding the atmospheric containment chamber with nearly pure oxygen at higher than atmospheric pressure; moments later, everything flammable in the entire chamber detonated."

A.J. had never watched the footage in full sequence, and certainly not on displays like this. He felt an almost dreamlike sensation steal over him as a tall, blond-haired young man – himself – came sprinting onto the scene.

"Miraculously, two of the engineers – Reynolds Jones and Joe Buckley – manage to make their way out of the inferno under a fire blanket. But there are still others in the building – at least five people trapped in what is swiftly becoming a holocaust of flame." Myranda's tense narration continued. "Barely hesitating, A.J. Baker takes the pitifully small protection of the fire blanket, and plunges straight into the center of the disaster."

As his own form whipped the blanket around itself and headed into the smoke and flames, A.J. realized that panic was trying to reassert itself. A part of him felt as though just by viewing this he was about to go through that Hell again. He tried to calm himself, but his hands were sweaty and his eyes refused to leave the screen. Myranda's voice took him back. He heard the roar of the flames, felt phantom wisps of acrid vapor tickle the back of his throat. A.J. forced his fingers to uncurl, shakily picked up a water tumbler that sat on a nearby endtable, and sipped it.

Now the video was interspersed with imagery and plots from the sensors he had scattered through the building with the sensorball. “A.J., as a master of sensor engineering, happened to be carrying one of the tools of his trade, a sensor-dispersing ball which he used to spread miniature sensor motes throughout the smoke-filled area. This simple action, combined with his own entry and activation of the sensors so they could reach the local networks, undoubtedly saved the lives of everyone in that building.” She pointed. “You can see in the ordinary camera feed that the area is filled with black smoke. No one could see anything in the Hell that building had become. But in the sensor views, it is possible for someone to make their way through. If,” she emphasized, “that person is skilled, courageous, and supplied with air to breathe.

“A.J. Baker had the first two, but not the third.”

A.J. swallowed. His eyes still wouldn’t close as he saw flickers of the exact same scenes he had witnessed in his own VRD glasses flashing, larger than life, on the studio screens. Myranda’s voice seemed distant, overshadowed by the flames of memory.

“By now, the air is not merely bad, it is toxic. There is almost no oxygen left in the interior of the building; instead, it is filled with poisonous vapors from burning plastics, chemicals used in the engineering experiments, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides from the intense heat, particulates – it is a witches’ brew that could fell most men with a single breath. A.J. Baker pushes onward, reaching Anne Calabrio where she fell unconscious, struck by a fragment of metal from the containment chamber. Moving on nothing but courage and a determination to save his friend, he lifts her on his back and goes towards the exit, but the fumes overcome him and he falls."

A.J. saw the sensor view spin and fall, experienced a sympathetic moment of vertigo.

“He isn’t completely out yet. Somehow – to this day even the doctors cannot say how – he regains his feet and begins his escape once more. But he has lost his glasses, which display the sensor data. He has only his own eyes to guide him. And in the smoke and flame, he has lost his way. Instead of walking towards the exit, he is headed directly towards the rear wall of the lab building. Finally he knows his mistake – when he hits the wall. Still A.J. does not give up. He turns around, now at least knowing the right direction to reach the hole which is his only chance of exiting the burning lab. But the fire is not willing to give up that easily; a wall of flame blocks his path. There is no escape, yet he will try to make one. Wrapping his still-living cargo more tightly in the fireproof blanket – and forgoing most of its protection himself – he prepares to charge through the flames, a move which might have saved Anne Calabrio but would certainly have killed him.”

A.J. blinked suddenly, wondering at that. I don’t remember doing that part. But the sensors seem to show me actually pausing to wrap Anne tighter.

“As he begins his last, desperate, suicidal gamble, A.J. trips. But now there are firefighters on the scene, and one of them – Lieutenant John Sinclair – is just in time to catch A.J. and Anne Calabrio before they go into the fire.” The scenes on the monitors fade out.

A.J. became aware that everyone, even Myranda, was staring at him. Myranda’s look of concern was marked enough to make him glance surreptitiously at one of the broadcast displays off to the side. Jesus. I had no idea… Even with the tricks that stage lighting – and makeup – played on people’s appearance, he looked terrible – pale, drawn, sweating. He was aware he was breathing heavily, with a rasp that must be audible in the front rows of the audience even without amplification. He shook his head, tried to give a grin, and strangled a cough before it could spiral out of control, sipped some water, trying to rid himself of the phantom feeling that the air in the studio was tinged with the sharpness of burning plastic and metal. Get a grip, A.J.

“Are you all right, A.J.? Surely this isn’t the first time…” Myranda trailed off.

“Yeah.” A.J. said, trying to sound casual and realizing that he was failing miserably. “Yeah, actually, I never looked at that sequence much. I mean, I was there, so I didn’t need to go over it much, you know?”

The sympathy in Myranda’s eyes contained something else, and suddenly it clicked for A.J. too. Well, damn. This is working better than I could possibly have thought, and she knows it too. We’d worked out a sort of script to follow, but right now I’m giving her news – human interest, real reactions – that no one else got before. And if I play it right…

“I’m terribly sorry, truly. Do you need to take a break?”

“No, no, not at all. Maybe it’s best I saw it.” He grinned, deliberately letting it look just a little shakier than he was; that wasn’t hard. “Keep me from doing stupid things like that again.”

There was a sympathetic chuckle around the audience. “So, A.J., I told you we’d let the audience decide. Should I stop calling A.J. a hero?”

There was a massive shout of “no!” from the audience. “Sorry, A.J. Seems you’re stuck with the label. How is Anne?”

“Anne’s doing fine. Scar on her head from where that chunk of metal hit her, but turns out the concussion was minor and because she was unconscious and not doing heavy work (like I was) her lungs are a lot better off than mine were; she didn’t inhale much. Lee, well, he lost his left leg, but other than that he’s in good shape; he’s really mad about that, though.”

“Well, I would think so.” She winced in sympathetic pain. “Who wouldn’t be after losing a leg?”

“Sure, yeah, but that isn’t the reason. That basically knocks him out of contention for one of the slots on the Mars mission – you don’t want people who are anything less than the very best you can offer.”

Myranda’s voice carried the sum-total of the incredulity of much of her audience. “After losing his leg to one of these experiments, he still wants to continue – he wants to fly to Mars?”

Darn, she’s good. If I didn’t know we’d gone over some of these points before, I’d think she was just as shocked as she sounds. “Myranda, all of us still want to finish the Project, otherwise it’d make everything we went through pointless. There are a few who don’t actually want to go themselves, but damn few, and even they want to see the rest of us get our shot.” Anne Calabrio was one of the few; the accident had scared her, and she could not get the image of such an accident happening in the depths of space out of her head. She was still working on the Project, but she would likely never go to space.

“So you think it’s worth it, A.J.? Your lungs may never completely heal, your friend Lee has lost his leg, the others all have various injuries, and the Project itself is now badly behind schedule with almost irreplaceable hardware gone, and it’s still worth it to go onward?”

“It is so very much worth it, Myranda,” he said clearly, with only the slightest shake left in his voice, “that if someone told me that tomorrow there would be another accident and I would have to make the same choice again, I would go into work tomorrow without hesitation. And I’d make the same choice again.”

There was a hush over the audience now; they knew what question Myranda would have to ask next, and they wondered how he could reply well enough to make them see him as anything other than a lunatic. A heroic lunatic, certainly, but still just a bit crazy.

Myranda, of course, obliged them. “All right, A.J. Why? What is it about travelling to a planet a hundred million miles away – a planet we cannot live on, that offers us nothing that we don’t have right here – that makes it worth risking the lives of people like yourself, and Reynolds Jones, Joe Buckley, Anne Calabrio, and all of the men and women in NASA’s space program? Can you give us an answer we can understand?”

That was his cue. “I can give you a lot of answers, Myranda. Everyone needs a different answer, you know. For some of us, the answer is the same as the answer for climbing mountains: because it’s there, and because we’re explorers at heart. But that’s the romantic’s answer. It’s not enough for the mother who might never see her son again, even if she knew it was enough for her son. I know this.

“So why go to Mars, really? Because, as Zubrin said, we must. Exploration – the existence of the frontier – was what drove our country to become what it is. We have seen our society become more restricted as time has passed, and that is because there is nowhere left for us to go except down – into the oceans – or up, into the skies, and until now neither has been practical for us. So we lose the drive of the frontier.”

“What does the ‘drive’ of the frontier do for us, though?”

“When you are in a true frontier – a place where you cannot be helped by anyone from the home civilization, where you and your friends and neighbors must rely on nothing but your own resources and wits – this is where our inventiveness is truly shown, when new problems arise that we have never yet encountered, where we must solve them or perish in the attempt. This is where young men and women who feel out of place can go and create themselves a home that fits their own needs, not those of society; there they can build a new society. A frontier is a safety valve for a larger society; it gives those who would otherwise become criminals and revolutionaries a place to go where their restlessness, energy, and distaste for a more tightly controlled society are useful and needed.”

Myranda smiled condescendingly. God-DAMN she’s good. She should be doing movies, not talk shows. “But the other frontiers were here on Earth, A.J. You could breathe the air, find water and food – in short, you can live here. You can’t live on the Moon, and you can’t live on Mars. There’s hardly any difference between them, really.”

He grinned. “Ah, not so. Not so at all. The Moon is completely airless. The Moon is almost waterless. The Moon is composed almost entirely of lighter elements, but distributed in a nonoptimal way. Mars is very much like Earth. It has an atmosphere – thinner than ours, yes, but very much there, and it makes a hell of a difference. It has water – ice on the surface, but very likely liquid aquifers and springs beneath the surface. We know Mars has had vast quantities of water in the past, and since the last time the great torrents ran there has been no tremendous change in Mars itself; the water is still there, somewhere. Most importantly, Mars has all the other elements we need. We can live there. We can grow food there. It is not going to be as easy as it is here, but it can be done. It will be done. We can even reshape Mars – return an atmosphere thick enough to support our sort of life, and change it from carbon dioxide to one more to our liking – and we can do this in a timespan that humans can grasp. The atmosphere gives us two other tremendous advantages: firstly, it makes it possible for us to use as a method for landing, what we call ‘aerobraking’, which saves huge amounts of fuel, allowing us to travel to Mars at far higher speeds than we can to the Moon – where, in order to land, we have to carry enough fuel to slow us down and land us, and then take off again. And the particular atmosphere Mars has allows us – with very minimal technology and energy demands overall – to make our own fuel there.”

Myranda looked mildly impressed. “That sounds interesting, but why is it so important? As you say, we can carry fuel to the moon, why is it so important that you be able to make it, um, on-site as you might say?”

“Because of the cost – money and payload-wise – to ship fuel to Mars just for the return journey. Remember the Saturn rockets? Remember how tiny the Apollo module was compared to the Saturn? That’s payload. For every pound of stuff – whatever kind of stuff – we send to Mars, we need many pounds of fuel, support machinery, what have you. A given rocket can, let’s say, send one-tenth its total weight to Mars – 9/10ths of it is support structure and the fuel to get it to Mars. Say it weighs 100,000 pounds. So it sends 10,000 pounds to Mars. Not too bad, you say. Well, if it has to bring along enough fuel for the return trip, the landing module needs to carry the same ratio for the return module. So if half the landing material is to be left there, that leaves 5,000 pounds for the return module – and it will return all of 500 pounds to Earth as payload. Given how long the trip from Mars to Earth lasts, even with the best conditions, that’s not even enough for one person to make it back alive.

“But if I can make my own fuel there, then I can carry a 2,000 pound fuel storage tank and manufacturing plant with me, and still be able to carry a total of 8,000 pounds of real payload – and all of it can come back with me, if I want. Then I can carry a crew, and bring them home, and still carry research equipment, tools, living quarters, whatever I need.”

“Impressive. Yes, I see, that certainly makes a large difference for anyone going there.”

“It makes a criticaldifference, Myranda. It makes Mars not only reachable, but livable in a way that the Moon simply cannot be. There’s so much more – but I know we don’t have all that much more time before you need to move on. Let me summarize, and then give you two more very important reasons.

“Basically, we can not only get there, Myranda – we can live there. We have already run the demonstrations to prove that we can make fuel, make air, find or make water, make living quarters, plastics, and even steel from the air and soil that Mars offers; in some ways, it’s even easier to do this on Mars than it is here, because it’s a completely untouched world. Iron ore in its natural state is rust red. And that’s what gives Mars its color. Iron ore, high grade, and literally lying around in plain sight. Mars’ atmosphere and some catalysts we can make allows us to not only make fuel, but make the starting basis for many plastics. The main constituent of Mars’ atmosphere – carbon dioxide – is the only gas we really need to make plants grow, if we can add nitrogen to the soil as needed, which we can. We can make airtight living quarters and greenhouses, and sunlight on Mars is strong enough to grow plants, while the atmosphere is still thick enough to screen out the lethal radiation from the Sun – something not true of the Moon, again. We can live there, and we should, for two more reasons.

“First, we have discovered that the universe is a dangerous place. It is so dangerous, in fact, that as an intelligent species we can no longer afford to keep all our eggs in one basket. Our exploration and expansion has always served to improve our race’s chance for survival. When there were only a few humans living in the plains of ancient Africa, one very bad prairie fire and drought could possibly have killed us all off. We all know about other species, like the Dodo, which lived in only one or two places and became extinct very swiftly because of the arrival of humanity; they could just as easily have died off from other minor natural disasters.

“But even now, covering the whole of our planet, we are not safe. On our short civilization’s timescale, we have been lucky. But there are disasters waiting out there which have happened in the past, and which will happen again – the eruption of the supervolcano in Yellowstone, the impact of a great meteoroid in the Yucatan that wiped out the dinosaurs, and others – which can still kill us off, or at the very least wipe out the vast majority of mankind and leave the rest back in the Stone Age.

“If, on the other hand, we make ourselves a second home, one on another world, only a far more rare catastrophe – something truly cosmic in scope – could possibly threaten us. Destroy the Earth now, and our story ends, forever. You don’t even need to destroy it, just do enough damage that the world is hard to live in for a mere few thousand years. Give us a self-sufficient civilization on Mars, and we can still go on. It would be a tragedy, but one from which we would emerge.”

He grinned again, with the wiseass and cynical edge that often preceded his delivering a final verbal blow. “But I know that we’ll never get there on thousand year promises. We need something more immediately important. So the last reason we need to go to Mars is… money.”

“Money?” Myranda said in surprise. “Are you saying you think that going to Mars could actually pay for itself?”

“More than that. Myranda, if the Zubrin Project succeeds, we will be the first on that world. By ancient law, custom, and tradition, we will own an entire planet. A planet filled with all of the ores and substances we’ve mined out here, or that we have to seek in increasingly difficult to reach areas. A planet which, as I’ve said, can – and almost certainly will – be settled, and eventually – in a human lifetime or so – have an atmosphere and a climate congenial to us. There are some valuable substances on Mars which cannot be obtained easily here – deuterium is far more common on Mars than it is here, for instance, and even without nuclear fusion to use it, it turns out that deuterium is still extremely valuable here, far more so than gold. If nuclear fusion ever becomes viable, it will become doubly valuable. I could go on. The point is that if we succeed, we will not be doing so just as adventurers and scientists. We’ll do so as businessmen, and I expect to retire quite fabulously wealthy. If not me, then my kids will be. So how about for your financial future, Myranda? Right now, Zubrin needs money. If we get there, we’ll eventually have more money than anyone knows what to do with. Would you like a piece of the action? We’ll sell you a chunk of Mars in advance. It’s a gamble, like any investment, but let me tell you: you have never seen a chance like this one. The payoff will make the greatest lottery winner you ever saw look like a piker. How would you like to own something the size of Rhode Island? Think about it. A chance like this won’t come again in your lifetime, and probably not in that of your children or grandchildren, either.”

The audience gave a few encouragements, and a few catcalls, but for the most part was in a waiting silence. Myranda stared quietly across at A.J. for what seemed a very long time, but in real terms couldn’t have been more than ten or twenty seconds. Then, with a startling abruptness, she slammed her hand down on the coffee table between them with a noise like a gunshot. “All right, I’ll take that bet, A.J. Maybe you haven’t convinced me completely, but I can tell you believe it. And … a hero deserves a reward. If that’s what you believe in, I think I’d be heartless to ignore it. How do I get a claim in on my Martian estate?”

A.J.’s own acting skills were tested to their limit as he tried to convey stunned excitement. “Umm… let me see, give me a minute.”

“I’ll give you five, A.J. If you can get me the contract in five minutes, I’ll buy however much of a Martian estate a hundred thousand dollars will get me.”

A.J. goggled. “A hundred thousand… yes ma’am!” His VRD lit up (the audience could make out colored flickers, and see his hands dancing over a projected virtual keyboard). Above him, on the studio display, a countdown began. Myranda used that to take them to a commercial break, which would bring them back a minute or so before the countdown expired.

A.J. didn’t actually need five minutes. He had the contracts all ready in storage, and even if not he could yank them off of Hank Dufresne’s company-accessible forms page in thirty seconds even over the rather crappy link the studio was permitting. But to keep the suspense, he waited until they came back from the break, seeming to be doing a lot of things in searches and accesses. Then with a bit of nervousness in his voice, he said “Myranda, can your people bring out a printer here?”

“Certainly. If they can find one in time.” She called out to her assistants, “Find me a networked printer, and bring it out here!” The countdown continued. It was at 45 seconds.

Myranda tapped her foot. A.J. looked like he was hopping on hot coals.

27 seconds.

Running footsteps were heard, and the assistant appeared, carrying a printer with a wireless connection. 20 seconds. He scrabbled about the tangle of cords behind the set couch, found a plug. 15 seconds. A.J. established the connection, verified, sent the documents. The printer spat out the sheets one after another. “A legal option for your very own Martian estate.” A.J. said, presenting the slim sheaf of paper to Myranda with a flourish.

The clock stood at 2 seconds remaining. The audience burst into cheers of appreciation, and A.J. raised his fists above his head in a victory pose.

Myranda laughed. “Well all right, A.J. To your own rescue this time.” She signed the contracts with the sprawling, curvy signature which was her own logo. “A.J., it’s been a pleasure.” She said, shaking his hand. “An expensive one, but who knows. Maybe you’re right. I’ll certainly hope so. It’s about time for my next guest – in fact, we’ve run a bit over – but I don’t think my audience minds all that much.”

“Thanks – I mean, thanks so very, very much, Myranda. I don’t think you know how much this means to me.”

“Oh, I think I can guess, by the fact you look like a 5 year old at Christmas!” she laughed and the audience joined her. “Maybe you can come back after you reach Mars and tell us how it is!”

“I certainly will!”

“A.J. Baker, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s give him another hand!”

***

A. J sat backstage, resting. The emotional roller-coaster had been a lot more draining than he’d thought it would be. He stared at the contracts and grinned again; true to her word, Myranda had performed the transfer electronically even as she signed them. Hank had confirmed the transaction as soon as A.J. called. A.J. savored the quiet and let the pain in his lungs fade as he relaxed.

The door opening jolted him awake. He’d actually fallen asleep in the chair! Blinking the fuzz from his eyes, he saw the tall redhead grinning down at him. “And I thought I was good at falling asleep at the drop of a hat.”

“I was more tired than I thought.”

“I’m not surprised. I got the impression that wasn’t an act, when you saw that footage. You honestly hadn’t watched it before?”

“Nope. And I didn’t realize how it would hit me.”

“Well, that turns out to be a good thing. Audience reaction on that one was way up. I think this episode might pick up several points, especially with the bet and all.”

“I sure hope so. By the way, we’ll reverse the payment to you and return the money by the end of day.”

“Forget it.”

Now A.J. was surprised. Aside from his unexpected reaction to his own heroic footage, everything else had gone according to the script. “You don’t want…”

“… my money back? No. A.J., I know we went over all that before, and you were basically paying me to help you advertise yourself – and you’re far from the first one to do it, either on my show or my competitors. But your case didn’t sound nearly as impressive when you just laid it out cold as it did on stage. You convinced me, out there. We need to go.”

Now she laughed again; apparently honest surprise looked funny on him. “I did?”

“You certainly did, Mr. Baker. And if you don’t stop looking so adorable, I may consider breaking my rule about mixing business and private amusements. Really, A.J., you get that evangelical look about you. It’s a good thing we’re not in the same business, I’d have to try to ruin you. You’d be too dangerous. Tell you what; since you were going to give me the one for free, just give me another contract at the same size.”

“Buy one, get one free. I’m sure Hank will go for that, since we expected to get nothing out of this directly. You’ve got a deal.” They shook on it. “I slept that long?”

“My show’s been over for an hour and a half, A.J. I peeked in earlier, but you didn’t even twitch. I hope you didn’t overstrain yourself.”

He was surprised by the weakness he felt in his legs, and the pain in his chest. “Nah, I’m fine. Just still recovering, that’s all.” I’ll be fine. “Thanks again.”

“I’ll expect you back soon if the ratings are what I think. Take care.”

“I will!”