[Mkguild] Intergalactic Delays

[Nathan Pfaunmiller]

Preface this by saying that it isn't particularly furry, but I thought it
was worth sending out anyway.

---

The Intergalactic Transit Bureau had issued an advisory a few days before
my transporter hop was scheduled to take me from earth to the Andromeda
Core Worlds.  It would not generally have been a problem, as the advisory
was for the Alpha Centauri local cluster, but my connections worried me.
My first transporter hop was taking me in the wrong direction, just so that
I could jump to the Centauri Transit Hub, the largest Transit Gate hub in
terran jurisdiction.  It wasn’t as though the other local transit hubs were
unable to facilitate a Gate jump to my destination, it was just more
convenient for someone.  Don’t ask me who it was more convenient for; as
far as I know, even the smallest of Hubs are capable of producing enough
power in a day to light up three times more Gates as the surface of the
planet could actually hold in the first place.  Intergalactic transit had
its established practices, however, and so I found myself in Alpha
CentauriA, the larger of the two specially
terraformed worlds that made up the Hub’s real estate.

My first two Gate jumps went as smoothly as could be expected.  It always
worried me when the space folding components of the Gate system discharged
power erratically, even though Hub personnel told me that it was natural
and expected.  At least I’ve never been in a foldspace portal when the
discharge was running all throughout it, threatening to breach and unfold
the connected space, leaving the passengers floating in space wherever the
portal had breached.  The Transit Bureau insisted that foldspace travel was
safer than even the most innocuous private transportation options, but that
didn’t explain why they closed everything at the first sign of a solar
storm.

And a solar storm was what the advisory was for.  Proxima Centauri was set
to spew out light up at any moment, and the Transit Bureau was set to shut
the Hub down whenever it became necessary.

Apparently, that necessity came up sometime during my second jump, because
my Gate Jump had been closed due to catastrophic circumstances.

The rebooking line was unbelievable, but, to the credit of the Transit
Bureau, they managed to process several billion requests in just a few
months.  The lady at the desk was extremely helpful, and she found me a new
Gate jump only twenty years later than my original schedule.  I sighed at
the inconvenience, but it was the quickest way to my destination.

The Jump was scheduled with another Carrier, so I had to take the
interplanetary tram across the Centauri B.

The wait was an entirely different experience to the norm, and I decided to
enjoy it as much as I could.  The Bureau had set up accommodations for all
delayed travelers.  A hypercube with temporary living quarters was issued
to the delayed travelers, and I found those accommodations comfortably
furnished.  The 50 foot cube apartment had a comfortable double bed and a
small kitchenette.  It would serve reasonably well until I could get back
home, even though just looking at it made me realize how much better I had
it than people who were forced to use military surplus hypercubes just to
have somewhere to live.  It would do for the twenty year wait, however.  At
least I wasn’t one of those who had a delay for a century.  I had heard
horror stories of such waits absolutely ruining family holidays.

Thankfully, the people in my hypercube block had generally all decided to
enjoy themselves as well, and before long we had struck up weekly meetings
just to sit around and talk.  It was almost like a microcosm of my
neighborhood in Andromeda, even if the living quarters were uncomfortably
sparse.

In the end, we had to say our good-byes.  It’s amazing how attached you can
get to someone in so short a period as twenty years.  We exchanged hugs,
handshakes, and subspace telecommunication codes, promising that we’d call
to see how our erstwhile neighbors were faring once they had returned home.

The Jump to my home in the Andromeda system was uneventful, and I was happy
when I finally stepped out of the foldspace portal and onto my front lawn.
Remembering something, I pulled out a miniature hypercube and activated it,
checking on the temperature of the turkey inside.  Thankfully, it was still
cold.  My mother would have killed me if my delays had cost us the
Christmas meal she was planning.  K-Zero deep freeze was a life saver.

Although it was an inconvenience, I’ll probably still remember my Jump
delay fondly.  Sometimes you just have to smile and bear the things life
throws at you.  At least we don’t live in a universe where the Jump delays
are millennia long.  That would be a ludicrous state of affairs.

---

Some math for you here at the tail end:

Assuming one billion travelers, you would have to process 7716 travelers a
minute to finish rebooking in three months.  Hope you have a lot of help
standing by...

Assuming all one billion make it home in twenty years, 95 passengers would
have to travel every minute.

Given a century of delays, you could drop that to 19 every minute.

Very happy I'm not at the Centauri Transport Hub.

-LurkingWolf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.integral.org/archives/mkguild/attachments/20140104/7e5d408a/attachment.html>