Chapter 37: Assigning the Roles

As Celia lands the airship down at a nearby patch of grass, Hikaru excitedly stands at the edge of the railing. The space center didn’t look too different from when they last saw it, mainly because Alto didn’t spend too much of his time trimming the overgrown plants on the outside.

Once the airship properly docks, Vitoria comes out from the hull and sees Alto standing in front of the building, waving over to them.

“Is that your friend over there?” she asks Hikaru as he curiously examines him.

“Yep!” Celia said as she came out of the control room, “hey Alto!”

“Hello, Celia. Hello Hikaru,” he waves back at them, “and you must be Mrs. Victoria Santos who I’ve been hearing a lot about.”

“Haha, that would be me,” she chuckled, “I’m here to help out where I can and go see this rocket for myself. Where can we find it?”

“The rocket is located in an underground facility approximately 25 km away from the control center, which is the building we’re at right now,” Alto explained, “unlike the other launch facilities at this space center, the only way to reach this one is by taking the underground payload system.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Hikaru says with excitement, “let’s go inside!”

Alto leads the three of them inside the building as everyone takes a look around the place in wonder. Now that the building was cleaned out and the lights were on, Celia and Hikaru got to take a better look around the facility.

The same strange red auditorium they saw in the video before was now much more vibrantly colored and less gloomy. As they walk between the rows of chairs, they all stare at the large glass structure enclosed at the center of the room filled with old computers and technology with awe and wonder. It was as if they were walking through a technology exhibit at a museum.

“I found something interesting in there,” Alto suddenly said, “but I’ll tell you guys later after we visit the rocket. I’m sure that’s the most interesting thing right now.”

They all nodded their heads as Alto leads them down the long stairway he found earlier. Once they reach the bottom of it, they take a look around in awe at how big the tunnel was.

“This place looks a lot bigger than it did in the video,” Hikaru remarked as Celia nodded in agreement.

“And a lot brighter too,” she said, taking note of the rocky walls of the tunnel and the rows of light that shone above them.

“It looks like this place was built in a hurry,” Vitoria says, eying around the place, “the lights are placed inconsistently above and the materials that it’s made of seem to stagnate more as the tunnel stretches. Creating a tunnel this deep underground is very hard, especially given the technology they had back then. How long did you say this tunnel was again?”

“25 kilometers,” Alto replied, “and this platform over here is what’s used to get to the other side.”

He pointed to the large platform on tracks that were almost as wide as the entire room. The platform was completely fenced and gated off with railings, and on each side of the railing were two long rows of benches to sit on. 

As everyone climbs onto the platform, Alto points to two buttons that were placed at the far left corner of the railings.

“Those buttons over there are used to operate the machine,” Alto explained, “the blue one turns on a safety capsule that appears from the bottom of the platform, and the red one starts the machine. After doing some extensive testing, this platform seems to launch us at a speed of 300 km/hr, which makes it extremely dangerous to ride on without the safety capsule. I was fortunately built with the durability to withstand such extreme forces the first time I accidentally pressed the button, but I recommend not trying that out yourself.”

“Well that seems like a bad design choice,” Celia remarked, “if it were me, I would make the red button unable to be pressed unless the blue button was pressed. That way we don’t accidentally risk killing someone.”

“Yeah that’s a bad design flaw to have… it seems this place really was built in a hurry,” Hikaru said, “but I guess the main takeaway here is to be careful about which one you’re pressing. At least they had the decency to make the dangerous one red.”

Alto then walked over to the set of buttons before pressing the blue one, which caused a large, light blue, kinetic, dome to appear around the platform. Then with a press of the red button, the platform began accelerating faster and faster until it hit its top speed, and after a few minutes of blasting through the tunnel, the platform finally began to slow down as it reached its destination.

After the platform stops, Alto presses the blue button again to deactivate the shield before everyone begins to file off the platform. 

As they get off, Celia and Hikaru look up at the large metal gate that had been shoved into the ceiling with so much force that it was practically stuck there. Meanwhile, Victoria makes her way past them and into the launch zone, pausing upon seeing the large rocket in front of her.

“So this is the rocket…” she said in a whispered tone, “it’s actually real… not that I ever doubted you two but it still feels surreal seeing one in person.”

As Celia and Hikaru both make it to the room, they also look up in amazement.

“Don’t worry about it,” Celia said, pinching herself, “I’m still having a hard time believing it myself…”

The rocket stood tall looming over the three of them; its body composed of interlocking, rusting, panels, each secured by countless rivets. The thrusters at the bottom were massive and hollow, surrounded by a network of pipes and cables used to transfer fuel and help steer the rocket. On its side were three massive fins jutting out, each piece placed with purpose and intent. Despite its design being from over a century ago, the engineering complexities behind it were so lost and diluted over the years that it could still be considered an engineering masterpiece today.

Celia stares at its rusty parts and uses Tabby’s metal scanning function to obtain information about it. Tabby begins flying around the rocket, slowly scanning each part of it with a green light as he compiled the information into his system.

“That’s a useful feature to have,” Vitoria remarks as she watches him slowly float towards the top, “have you always had this function on him or did you equip it for this purpose specifically?”

“I’ve had that function on him for a while now,” Celia said, “although I mainly used it for other not-so-legal purposes like trespassing.”

Vitoria gave her a weird stare but then shrugged.

After a few minutes Tabby flew down next to Celia and said, “I have finished compiling all the data, would you like to look at the details?”

Celia nodded her head and Tabby began to project the details onto a nearby wall. According to the data he found, the rocket was mostly made up of aluminum, titanium, and steel alloys, with nickel, copper, lithium and magnesium following right after in the minority. The diagram Tabby projected also detailed which parts of the rocket’s metals were weakened and needed to be repaired as Celia began taking note of it while Vitoria and Hikaru looked at the diagram in awe.

“Welp, this would be a great time to split the work on this project,” Vitoria said, “what are your areas of expertise?”

“We’re both engineers, so there’s not too many roles we can fill,” Hikaru said, “Celia’s definitely better at learning things than me though, but my strengths come from knowing the parts of a rocket better.”

“Hmm…” Vitoria murmured, “I think you should be in charge of repairing the rocket then. We don’t want to risk damaging any parts of it, and since you claim to know more about it than her, you’ll be better at the job for it. I can send my team of trustworthy people over here to help you in repairing the rocket as well, but you’ll be mainly in charge of guiding them and telling them which parts need repairing.”

Celia nodded and said, “and I’ll give Tabby over to you while you’re at it so you can use the diagram he has as reference.”

After the details of that role were assigned, Vitoria looks over to Celia.

“The last thing we need is someone who’s able to work the systems of this place,” Vitoria continued, “since you’re said to be better at learning things, that job should fall on you Celia. The only problem is finding something for you to learn from…”

“And that’s where I come in,” Alto suddenly said as everyone realized he had been quiet the whole time, “remember the interesting thing I said I found in the control room? Apparently it’s a detailed guide on how to run the systems, left behind by one of the last astronauts who worked here. It’s as if they knew that someone in the far future would come back and find this place. I also know how some of the things here work, because I spent a lot of my early life at a space center, but the important thing is teaching someone else how it works, because I’ll be the one in the rocket.”

“Well that seems to settle it then,” Vitoria said, “I’ll be the one providing the fuel and funding for the rocket parts so we don’t have to worry too much about that. Now let’s get this rocket working and into space!”