7 Pegasi
Excerpts from the autobiography of Garth Jensen

I just got my orders today. I'm being given a Fleet assignment. I guess you know that "ensign" is the lowest rank of officer in the Navy, right? It probably sounds kind of weird that I was posted to a Ground Forces base for my first assignment, but there was a reason for it. The High Command wants there to be an "open line of communications" between the Combined Fleet and the Federal Ground Forces.

What that means is that a liaison officer has to be assigned to every base or Fleet formation; Naval officers to Ground Forces bases and vice-versa. Reisburg base is a hard-luck assignment, though, so that's why they got an inexperienced rookie. The Navy had to send an officer, but no one ever said that it had to be a good one. The only requirement that both services stick to is that the liaison officer has to be a MECO pilot. That's because so many officers have to be traded; if we're all MECO pilots, we can just fill in for the guy who's traded to our service.

Now that I have a few decorations, though, I guess they figured that Public Information could get some mileage out of news footage of me being "rewarded" with a better post. Never mind what I might want, never mind what it means to my mother, who has to watch her only living child go off where he has a better chance of earning a medal posthumously. Just go where you're told and do what you're told.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound so bitter. It's just that I really don't want to go have to pretend I'm happy in front of a bunch of strangers, especially when I just went through such a shattering experience not so long ago. It's worse because it means leaving my mother behind. Her reassignment to Reisburg base gave us a chance to get to know each other again. You know, not just the "hi, how are you doing" kind of relationship that we had because she could only come home for the weekend a few times each year. After my breakdown, I got to see her every night after normal duty hours. That's more solid family time than I've had with her since I was six.

Now, courtesy of the Navy, it's over. Who knows when I'll have a chance to visit her again? Who knows if I'll ever have a chance?

Yeah, I'm scared. Sue me.

Here's my latest confession in a long line of failings: I suffer from acrophobia, the deathly fear of heights.

It’s really kind of pitiful. I’m a MECO pilot, trained to operate my mecha on land, or in air, sea or space, yet I’m afraid to climb more than a few rungs up a ladder.

I know what you’re thinking. How can I fly if I can’t stand heights?

My phobia is strange that way. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in air transports, and although I’m always nervous before we take off, the flight itself doesn’t really bother me. Looking out a window in an aircraft doesn’t seem any more real to me than seeing the same scene on television. In fact, television sometimes seems more realistic.

I once watched a documentary program about the girls who clean windows on high-rise buildings. The moment the anti-grav platform the camera crew was on went over the side to follow them as they worked, I had an attack of vertigo that left me sweating. There was just something about seeing the side of the building stretching away on the television screen, with the ground so far below, that set off my fear as if I were there with them.

Yet when I’m in a MECO, flying along with the monitors around me showing the outside world, it’s completely different. I never enjoy it much, but I can do it.

Space is both better and worse at the same time. Zero gravity gives you the sensation of falling, like you get on a roller coaster just as you’re beginning a drop, but it doesn’t stop. You have that feeling in the pit of your stomach, and it never goes away. Veteran spacemen get used to it, and some find the floating feeling relaxing; those lucky guys can sleep in zero-g and wake up more rested than they ever would in a gravity well.

Sad to say, I’ve always hated roller coasters. Zero-g makes me nauseous.

When I’m on a ship, it doesn’t matter much. It’s standard practice to use the a-grav drives to create a one-g attraction towards the floor, so that the crew can do their jobs more efficiently. That’s because zero-g is a lousy environment for working in. That old physics law "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" really turns around and bites you when, say, you’re trying to loosen a bolt and you don’t have gravity to give you the advantage. In zero-g, I’ve seen techs fight corroded bolts and lose.

Where I run into problems is during combat launches. They turn off the gravity in the launch bays. That’s because they rack the suits all the way up the walls and across the ceiling, to take advantage of all possible storage space. When red alert is sounded, off goes the gravity so that the pilots and launch crews can float straight to the suits.

The distance from the access corridor, across the bay to my suit, is always something I have to force myself to travel. Thankfully, once aboard my MECO, I can turn on my suit’s a-grav and get comfortable again, but during OCS exercises, the trip through a launch bay could, and sometimes did, made me feel sick and disoriented enough to lose my dinner.

I wonder if anyone will ever read this journal? What will life be like for that person?

When I was still in school, my fourth grade teacher, Miss Dorian, showed us an ancient movie about cultures that existed on Earth. It looked so funny… There were both men and women working civilian jobs, instead of just women. It made all of us kids laugh when we first saw a scene of men working in a restaurant.

I think I've already mentioned that only women have civilian jobs in the Federation. All of the men are conscripted into the Ground Forces, or the Combined Fleet. Even guys that have mental problems are drafted. If all they can train you to do is push a broom, then they'll hang a uniform on you, stick you in a Labor Battalion, and you'll push that broom for the rest of your life. The only guys around most cities are either boys too young for military service, or old men who survived until retirement age. By the Earth calendar, that's seventy-five years old.

Not that all that many of us live that long. The average guy dies in action, especially in the Fleet. When you're out in space, there isn't much of a chance of living if you're wounded. If you're hurt by enemy action, it means that whatever hit you went through both the ship's hull and your environment suit to do it. The resulting vacuum is usually fatal; the guys around you are either too busy fighting the battle to help, or in the same condition you are.

I've heard that women compete to get jobs in towns near military bases, just so they can see men occasionally. Whenever I went home to visit, I always had a lot of girls watching me walk by, although most of them were too shy to try to talk to me. I guess it would seem strange to someone who lived in a different society.

We only had a few hundred guys working at Reisburg Base, and we had to have permission to go into town. It was easier for me than it was for the enlisted personnel; a private might only get a pass one day each week, or longer if he had disciplinary problems.

Because guys are so scarce, it's pretty common for women to go out on dates with other women. That's not to say that they're necessarily interested in each other in a romantic way, but Saturday nights get lonely whether or not there are men around, don't they?

Okay, I guess you're probably wondering "how do they get a next generation when life is like that?"

It's simple enough. One of the batteries of tests we take in our last year of school is a psychological exam. One of the uses they put the results to is compatibility with a member of the opposite sex. If I live to be twenty years old, the service will arrange a marriage for me, and the war permitting, I'll get a two-week conjugal leave every year to visit my wife.

Sounds impersonal, doesn't it? It's especially rough on the girls. Only a percentage of them get husbands, and they only get to see them for a couple of weeks at a time, with a darn good chance that every visit might be the last. The only good part of the deal is that the Psychology Service has gotten really good at it, and the couples usually become good friends very quickly. Mother told me once that she really did fall in love with father after a little while, even if he didn't have the kind of good looks that they use in propaganda films. You know, the ones that show handsome young men in uniform, protecting society from the evil Kailai?

I've heard that the male-female ratio is getting so bad that the powers-that-be are even considering a law saying that guys will have to have two or three wives, but I don't know if that'll ever really happen.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007