She took a moment to calm herself down and clear her head, taking in her surroundings. It was a beautiful day in Southern California. The sun shone brightly overhead and a slight breeze came in from the Pacific, seeping into her vehicle through the slightly-open windows.
Parkowski smiled. Just like the weather, everything was going to go well today. The mission was going to be a success, she was going to blow through its objectives and finish strong at its conclusion in the early part of the afternoon. Then, she would either go home and rest, or go out to dinner with her boyfriend and his military unit at the nearby Rock & Brews to celebrate a going-away.
Nothing was going to ruin her day.
After what seemed like an eternity, the traffic started moving again. As she drove she looked for the source of the delay but couldn’t find it. It was as if the collective sea of cars on the road had a mind of its own.
Parkowski got off the main road before taking a few back streets through a residential section of El Segundo to the Aering plant. She parked her car in the attached parking garage and made her way into the facility with plenty of time to spare.
“Morning, Bert,” she said to the security guard as she scanned her ID card at the reader at the entrance to her building.
“Good morning ma’am,” the elderly dark-skinned man replied from his desk. “How do you think your Birds are going to do this weekend?”
Parkowski gave a quick laugh, then shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think we’ve got a good chance against the Giants, it’s at home, but my boyfriend is worried. He thinks it’s a trap game.”
“I hope they win,” Bert responded. “My Rams are probably going to be in contention with New York for the seventh and final wild card.”
“Me too,” Parkowski said as she quickly stepped to the large, heavy door that controlled access to her part of the facility. She liked talking with the security team, especially football with Bert, but she was in a rush. “Have a good weekend.”
“You too, ma’am.”
Parkowski walked down a wide, nondescript hallway with windows at the top of the walls near the ceiling, allowing the sun’s morning rays to fully illuminate the space without the help of artificial light. The building was part of an old Hughes plant that had been bought by Aering when the former company went bankrupt twenty-five years ago. Most of the multi-building facility was devoted to spacecraft design and production, but this particular structure was home to the ILIAD project and the control of the ACHILLES robots.
She turned the corner and kept walking until she found the women’s locker room. There, she changed from her street clothes into a skintight black turtleneck and leggings. Parkowski thought that they looked like workout clothes, only tighter and made of a strange material that seemed to attract lint and dirt like a magnet.
Parkowski checked herself in the mirror. Her dark brown eyes looked tired, and the light makeup she had put on this morning didn’t do much to hide it. She didn’t feel particularly exhausted, but the bags under her eyes gave it away.
She made a mental note to go to bed earlier tonight regardless of her evening plans. It had been a long week. Hopefully, it didn’t affect her performance on today’s mission.
Shoeless, Parkowski went through an airlock at the far side of the locker room into a semi-clean room.
Originally a spacecraft high bay development area with forty-foot ceilings, it had been repurposed as a command center for the ACHILLES project. The space was sectioned off into multiple segments: a large cube farm for the scientists who were in theory guiding the mission, but in practice just reviewing data after it came in, a smaller one for the engineers working on the hardware and software of the ACHILLES robots, a lab area for the technicians, and a large section in the middle which appeared to be a small metal “stage” raised above the floor that almost looked out of place in the high-tech setting.
Just outside the high bay was a hallway with offices for the senior staff, as well as a pair of controlled rooms with cipher locks: one actively used and owned by NASA, another one, inactive, for a classified program that used to occupy the ACHILLES mission space.
About ten people were in the room, most of whom stood around the one person hooked up to the VR gear up the stage. A large clock hung in one corner like in her high school gym. Above the stage was a 100” flat-panel monitor that displayed a rocky landscape, obviously the surface of Venus from the sensors of the robots.
It was seven fifty-five AM. She had made it.
Her supervisor and mentor stood underneath the giant television screen that towered over him. He smiled as Parkowski approached. “How are you doing this morning, Grace?” Dr. Jacob Pham asked.
“Just fine, Jake,” Parkowski responded. “How are you doing?”
The older Vietnamese-American man shrugged. “Can’t complain. Another day, another dollar.”
“You’re not excited?” she asked.
He shook his head, then thought for a second. “I’m not excited for myself, but I’m definitely excited for you,” he told Parkowski, who at five-foot-eight stood a head taller than him. “I’ve been in and out of the gear and walking on Venus for the better part of two weeks. It’s no longer as new and fascinating as it was the first time I was in.”
Pham paused and took a breath. “It’s just after eight and your shift isn’t until ten. Let’s get you set up and we’ll walk through your mission before you have to get on the sticks. Does that sound good?”
“Sounds great,” she said with a smile.
CHAPTER TWO
Parkowski followed Pham to a rack of equipment, the closer of two in a row. The older man pulled out a pair of slip-on shoes made of an exotic rubbery material and handed them to her. “Put these on first,” he said. “Remember, just like going into a clean room…”
“Bottom to top,” she finished with a slight smile. As she sat down and put them on, Pham walked to a nearby chest and pulled out a pair of what looked like soccer shin guards. “Do you want me to help you put them on?”
She nodded. “Of course, boss.”
He bent down and strapped the attachments to Parkowski’s legs — not the first time he had helped her suit up. When she had first described this whole process to DePresti, he had been defensive. “So, you’re wearing your Catwoman suit, and this dude’s just feeling you up and putting all of the gear on you.”
Parkowski had laughed. “He’s five-foot-nothing, old enough to be my father, and on top of that, he’s been married for twenty years… to another guy. You don’t have anything to worry about, Mike. It’s just part of the job. We all help each other get ready to get on the sticks.”
Pham finished putting on the shin guards and returned to the large locker. He came back with a pair of wristbands. “Go ahead and put these on.”
She slipped them on, then reached over and pulled out a pair of custom-fit gloves labeled with her last name. “Where are the helmets?” Parkowski asked, not seeing the last part of her gear.
“Over there, at the rack near the stage.” Pham pointed in that direction. “The techs did a double-check last night in preparation for the missions we are running today.”
Parkowski nodded, then walked to the second stand of equipment. Up on the raised platform she saw another operator, Caleb Marx, take a couple of steps.
The ACHILLES probes were controlled by a top-of-the-line virtual reality system. It had full haptic feedback in the gloves and shoes and partial feedback throughout the skintight suit that Parkowski wore.
The custom-built headset, a lightweight fourth-generation model, provided a 120° field of vision. The gloves, shoes, and bands around her wrists and ankles provided sensor readings.