Reeve's Day

The woman who piloted the ship was in her mid-thirties, close to two meters tall, with broad, strong features, jet hair, deep brown eyes, and warm, golden-brown skin. Despite being human, the ship she piloted was of a sort no other human had ever seen. Sleek, with no visible seams or joins, no hint of door or portal, it tore its way across light years through an artificial wormhole.

#

The woman who watched the customers coming and going from the cafe was fifty-four, 149 centimeters tall, with soft features in a pale, ivory face. Salt and pepper curls were carefully styled above pale, blue eyes. The plate in front of her sat half-finished, while she nursed her coffee. “It’s bullshit, you know,” she said.

The young waiter raised the coffee pot in question and his eyebrows in surprise. “What?”

“You asked how Reeve’s Day was going for me. I just said it’s bullshit.” She moved her coffee cup over to hint at a refill. “Instead of celebrating Howard Reeve’s birthday, we should be celebrating ‘Kahananui Day’ instead.”

He refilled her cup, no room for cream or sugar as she’d indicated on his first round. “What’s that?”

“Patricia Kahananui. She’s the technician that picked up the signal and convinced Captain Reeve to investigate.” She took the refilled cup and wrapped her hands around it as if to warm them. “It’s really too sad nobody remembers her sacrifice.”

“Did she — I mean, um — what happened to her?”

“She readied a relativistic probe to send toward the signal. Not that anyone on the ship would live long enough to see what the response would be, but they were going to send it anyway.” She took a sip of her coffee.

“Then what happened?”

“The official story is that she climbed into the probe to make some sort of adjustment, and there was a communications error. Whether that’s true or not, she was in the probe when it launched at a steady three gees acceleration for the next year according to the probe’s time, with another year of three gee reverse acceleration. And a theoretical maximum of twenty hours oxygen on board.”

“Oh.” The waiter seemed at a loss for words, mumbled an apology and moved on.

The alien ship exited the wormhole that closed behind it. One second there was nothing there, then a bright flash and a strange ship in low Earth orbit. The pilot waved her hand and lights on the smooth console shifted and flashed. She piloted this ship with subtle gestures, landing in the grassy patch behind a cafe. The ship set down amidst wildflowers and gawking stares of passersby.

#

The pilot exited a door that seemed to materialize from the smooth side of the ship. She walked into the cafe and looked at the crowd. There were a few stools at the bar, but all the tables were occupied, one by only one woman. She made a beeline for that table, and asked the woman there, “May I sit here?”

“Sure. You look familiar.”

The pilot sat. “I do?”

The woman across the table from her nodded. “You from around here?”

The pilot smirked. “Yeah, but — that was a long time ago.”

“Sorry,” the woman said, setting down her coffee and extending a hand to shake. “Myra Jenkins.”

The pilot shook Myra’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Myra. Pat Kahananui.”

Myra laughed. “Right, right. Did the waiter put you up to this?”

“Who?”

Just then, the waiter came back to the table. “Would you like to order, ma’am?” he asked Pat.

“Three eggs, over easy, steak, rare, whole-wheat toast with lots of butter, and a pot of coffee, please,” she answered.

Myra eyed the pilot with suspicion until the waiter had poured her coffee and left. “Really, what’s your name?”

“Pat Kahananui. Patricia, actually, but I don’t go by that.”

“You were named after the technician?”

“No, I was named after my mother’s neighbor, but I am — or was — a technician on a research vessel.”

“Which one?”

“UHS Aurum.”

“While I appreciate the attempt at humor, Reeve’s Day pisses me off enough. Seriously, now who—”

“Reeve’s Day? What’s that?”

“Birthday of Captain Howard Reeve,” Myra said with a sneer.

“Why does he get a day?”

“My thoughts exactly.” Myra raised her coffee cup in salute and took another sip.

“I’m serious. Wait, what year is it?”

“What year? It’s 572.”

“Shit,” Pat muttered. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t consider the relativistic effects of my little joy ride.”

“Your what?”

“It’s been long enough that it should all be declassified by now. Alien signals from hundreds of light-years away, then signals from far closer. I picked up on them, then convinced Howie to send a probe. He didn’t know I aimed it at the closer signal and packed enough oxygen and CO2 scrubbers to last me for a few days. I snuck in with the hope that the aliens would pick me up, and they did.” She stopped briefly, as the waiter delivered her heaping plate of food. “Of course, he wouldn’t know about that part.”

“The un-redacted story was the same as the official one. You crawled in to make an adjustment at the last minute, and there was a communications error that was undetected until after you’d launched. It was classified as an accident.”

“Huh,” Pat said. “I guess Howie didn’t want that on his record. I left him a note and told him he could declare me insane if he wanted.”

“Yeah, well, the official story is always just that. Anyway, relativistic effects would account for why you look so good for a hundred and seventeen, but if your story is true, how did you get back?”

Pat removed a disk from her jumpsuit and placed it on the table. “Security view of the Arrow, please.”

A holographic image of the sleek ship parked behind the cafe filled the air between the women. The crowd around it took pictures and video, and at least two law enforcement officers were on-scene trying to maintain order.

“You—you’re really her!”

“I’m, uh, just me,” Pat said around a mouthful of steak and eggs. “God, I missed this so much.”

“So, how come it took so long? Was it tens of light-years away?” Myra asked.

“Oh, no. The relativistic effects were entirely from the probe, and the fact that I aimed for the signal, which had been deflected around a black hole. When the aliens finally picked me up after three days, I don’t know how long that had been.”

Pat sipped at the coffee, savoring it with a soft hum. “I spent about ten years on their planet — learned their language, their version of calculus, and the physics of artificial worm-hole generation, and spent the last year building the Arrow — then took off for home three hours ago and got here just before I walked in. So, rough guess, I spent eighty-seven years your time around that damned black hole.”

“Three hours? So, they’re somewhere close?” Myra asked.

“Six-hundred-five light years away, give or take.”

“In three hours?”

“Wormhole.”

“And no relativistic effects from travel in the wormhole?”

“Negligible. About the same as the difference between being on Earth and being in orbit.”

Myra shifted in her seat, pushing her half-emptied plate to the end of the table. “You brought back the physics of faster-than-light travel, and a working prototype? Now, maybe they’ll listen and give you your own day.”

“Don’t want it. But if today is Howie’s birthday, it’s the twenty-eighth of December?”

“No, that was Saturday, but the holiday is always the Monday nearest. It’s the thirtieth.”

Pat ate three quarters of her meal before slowing down. “You never answered me, though.”

“Answered what?”

“Why did Howie get his own day?”

“Using the signal you picked up, he came up with a way to compress data for transmission. At first, it was just used for space exploration, but in time, it was applied to everything, everywhere. The one that gets trotted out the most is that stock trades happen in less than one percent of the time they used to take. Like gambling in nanoseconds is something to cheer.”

Pat looked at the small woman across from her. “What do you do?”

Myra sighed. “I teach middle school science. Not my first choice, but options for astrophysicists have been limited lately.”

A smile crossed Pat’s face. “Wanna take a ride in my ship? We can swing by Jupiter for a bit, then we’ll go set down at JPL and see if they have an opening.” She laid a hundred-year-old fifty-dollar bill on the table.

“That won’t work,” Myra said. She pulled out some North American Credits and laid them on the table. “I got your bill, in exchange for a ride.”