The second narrative passage, on pp. 253-254, is just over a page in length and is a third person account of earlier events back in the Solar System. The original Joel, American, and Korene, European, were astronauts. An alliance of every country on Earth launched an interstellar exploration project: unmanned probes; interplanetary studies; generation-long research and development for the necessary hardware. Korene married Olaf who continued to work on the Lunar shuttle while she retired to desk and laboratory work and started a family. Then they worked together on an engineering team of the interstellar group.
Joel, pilot on many major expeditions, was divorced, then made do with mistresses. Retired from piloting, he worked on control and navigation for the interstellar project and married Mary who test-piloted experimental vehicles. Joel, forty-eight, and Korene, sixty, volunteered when the interstellar hardware had been developed. They themselves would never leave the Solar System.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I still find it very hard to be more than extremely SKEPTICAL of such ideas as it being someday possible to upload human personalities into some kind of computerized matrix. But it's fine to examine such speculations!
Ad astra! Sean
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