Chapter One
ANXIETY AND ANGER
My husband Terry is part of the mission to Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Which meant he would not be back on earth, on me, with me or in me, for three more years.
Or so I thought! Until the mission commander Col Baxter asked me to come to NASA HQ in Washington DC.
So here I am waiting nervously to be called into his office. I had hardly slept all week afraid of what he was going to say, at best he was injured, at worst dead. Or so I thought!
By the time his secretary said, "The Colonel will see you now." I was shaking, partly with anxiety and part anger at having to endure almost a week to hear what had happened to my Terry.
Col Baxter was everything you would expect an American colonel to be six two, very short almost stubble grey hair but his desk job had not softened his muscular torso.
He stood up and leaned over his wide desk and offered his huge right hand.
"Thank you sincerely Mrs Field for coming, please take a seat."
I was in no mood for niceties and still standing I leaned over the desk as he sat down and looking him in the eyes let him know in colourful language how I felt about how I had been treated.
"Let me first of all assure you Mrs Field that your husband is fit and well in fact his fitness levels are the highest in the expedition. So please sit down and Let me explain why I have asked you here today."
I sat but bolt upright, I was relieved but still suspicious.
"We are very aware of the sacrifice you both made when Commander Fields agreed to the mission knowing it would involve a long period of separation of not months but years. We know you can have video calls but even then the time lag due to the distances make conversation difficult."
He paused and leaned forward elbows on the desk, "There may be a way of being together sooner but there are risks."
"Do you mean you have invented teleportation or discovered a Star Gate?"
"No nothing like a Star Gate and not teleportation as such, I don't understand it myself most of the concepts and all of the mathematics go way over my head."
"Can you please get to the point Colonel, and what are the risks?"
"Okay, in a nutshell, the boffins have found a way of deep scanning living things. Some sort of superdooper M.R I. scanner that records every living cell and crucially the neurones in the brain and digitises them so that the information can be transmitted wirelessly and a living copy grown from stem cells."
"So let me get this right, you think you can clone Terry, so I will have two husbands one at home and one on Callisto?"
"No that's not possible, like the concept of a soul, we have found that there can only ever be one consciousness. For the copy to be conscious the original has to be in suspended animation.
Also, unfortunately too, because of the amount of data involved and availability of enough stem cells the copy can only be a tenth of the size of the original."
"Are suggesting you can provide me a miniature husband?"
"In a way yes, I am, but apart from the size he will be identical in all respects, same character and crucially the same memories."
"You still haven't outlined the risks."
"It's all to do with consciousness or more to the point, loss of consciousness. We have conducted human trials here on earth but there's the risk of the possible loss or corruption of data when transmitting over such distances. In trials using animal we found that any breaks in transmission at a crucial time resulted in permanent loss of consciousness."
He paused, took a deep breath, before continuing, "Also if something happened such that the copy died the original was still technically alive but could not be revived from suspended animation."
"I would love to have a copy even a scale model one but, far too risky, so no,no way!"
"I am sorry Mrs Fields I am afraid it's not your decision. Commander Fields volunteered and insisted it was his choice not yours."
"That is so typical of him!" I spit out my angry words, "Taking life threatening risks without a thought for my feelings. Wasn't the mission itself risk enough? If he ever gets back alive I'll kill the arrogant selfish bastard myself." I stormed out of the Colonel's office.
Chapter Two
MEETING KEN
Two weeks later I got recalled to NASA HQ. My anger was still bubbling under. The kind of cold anger like when your loved one has upset you so much that you only express it with body language. Being a typical man he took me at my word when I said I was FINE! during our video calls. This got me even angrier feeling he was too insensitive to realise that FINE stood for, Furious! Intentionally Not Explaining. I would save it all for when Mini Terry arrived.
Every night I would go over and over the pointlessness of it all. Okay we could talk but we could not make love, hug or kiss all the things I missed because he was not physically here with me. We couldn't sleep together because if I rolled over in my sleep I might smother him.
I felt the visit of little Terry would just make me miss the real Terry even more.
I was escorted down a long corridor with doors on each side into different research labs on each side. Finally we stopped at a door marked Test Laboratory R19. My escort, a very attractive blond who somehow managed to make a lab coat look sexy used her electronic pass to open the door and beckoned me to enter.
Inside were another five white coats and Col Baxter who were sat around a circular table. I was greeted and beckoned to sit with them.
"I am very pleased to tell you that the data transfer has been very successful and Commander Fields' copy is complete, conscious and eager to see you," said the Colonel, in a way that conveyed to me that he had not expected it to be a success.
In spite of how I felt about the whole thing I found myself excited about meeting Miniature Terry.
"Firstly I want to stress that the project is top secret," he said. Almost in a whisper as if expecting eavesdropper. "Tell no one, and he must not be seen by anyone! We don't want stories on the news of people claiming they've seen a pixie."
"I don't need the lecture on secrecy Colonel, I only knew Terry was going to Callisto two days before launch!"
The Colonel stiffened obviously not liking my tone, but held his tongue probably because I am not under his command. Instead he moved on.