Chapter 7: Back to Work

The next day Tony decided that a little self-restraint was necessary. He needed to get some work done, even though Jeannie kept serving him the wine of love and passion and demanding he take care of her. He dug out a tablet computer from his home desk, made sure it connected to his WiFi, and then showed it to Jeannie. “This is a tablet computer. It will allow you to get on the Internet.”

“What is the Internet, Master?”

“Not sure how to answer that. It’s a computer marketplace, library, coffeehouse, neighborhood ... all sorts of things. Let me show you a few things.” Tony called up the home page, a NASA site, and reset it to Google. “This is a search engine. It allows you to find things.”

“Such as”

“Well, you were wondering about swimsuits the other day.”

Jeannie nodded. “Yes! They make no sense! Putting on clothes to get in the water? Prince Artacyrus often had me and the other dancing girls join him in the pools, and none of us wore clothing. How was he to take us if we wore clothing?”

“Well, we really don’t do that sort of thing in public anymore. More’s the pity, but that’s a different question. Anyway, you wanted to know what they were. Just type what you want to find in the search box and hit Enter.” He showed her the box and typed ‘bikinis’; a page with some pictures and a list of links popped up. “Just move the cursor to something you want to see and tap on the screen.” He showed her and handed her the tablet.

“This is truly magic, Master!”

“Here’s another good link to know.” He put a link to Wikipedia on the tablet and said, “This will give you a way to find information. If you want to know something, this is a useful place to start.”

Jeannie kissed Tony on the cheek. “Thank you, Master.”

“Now, you look around at the world while I get some work done. I need to log on to the NASA system and do a report on the lifeboat and what happened afterwards,” he told her.

“Including me?” she asked.

“NO! Definitely not including you!” Tony laughed. He shooed her away and went to the living room, where he took his laptop computer and settled into his recliner. He spent almost an hour working his way through his emails before preparing a report on the accidental launch of the lifeboat. Even though he took his time and accessed the space station’s computer systems for details and timelines, the utter simplicity of the spacecraft made the report fairly short. ‘I closed the hatch and it launched.’ Tony typed more than that, but that was the overall gist.

Half an hour after hitting the Submit key, the phone rang. Tony picked it up and saw it was Colonel Bellows. “Captain Nelson,” he answered.

“Captain, I just read your report. There’s not much to it, is there?” said Tony’s commanding officer.

“I tried to be thorough, Colonel, but until we get the lifeboat back here, we just won’t know.”

“That’s why I called. There’s a C-17 coming in tomorrow with the lifeboat and everything that was on it. We’re going to begin our teardown and inspection at that time.”

“I want to be there, Colonel,” said Tony.

“It should be arriving around 1000 or so. You should be here to talk to the investigation team.”

“Understood, sir.”

“See you in the morning, Captain.”

Colonel Bellows hung up and Tony set down his cell phone. Sensing he was no longer alone, he looked up and saw Jeannie standing in the doorway. She was wearing a long formfitting pink dress. It was halter-topped, almost completely backless and sideless, cut extremely low between her breasts, and had two long slits from the hem to her waist. She was also wearing matching pink ankle-strapped ‘fuck me’ shoes. “Wow! Where did you get that? And how?” Tony hadn’t given Jeannie a credit card, and there was no way it could have arrived already anyway!

“I saw it on one of the bikini sites, or something like it, and then fixed it,” she answered.

“Huh?”

Jeannie sat down next to him and showed him the tablet. In doing so, both her legs were exposed to her hips, and he could look down the front of her dress to her navel. “Like this.” She tapped on the tablet and pulled up the website for Wicked Weasel. “I liked this dress, but they didn’t have any in pink. So, I simply got one and changed it.”

“I’m not following you,” he admitted.

“Well, do you like this dress?” she asked, pointing to another long dress that had an intricate lacing on an open back and a slit up the model’s right leg.

“Uh, it’s very pretty.”

Jeannie stood up and did the blink-and-nod. Suddenly she was wearing the dress on the screen. “Did you just take that dress?” he asked.

“No, Master. I just made it.”

“So, what do you mean by changing it?”

“Well, the color is all wrong.” The dress immediately turned to her favorite shade of pink. “And I think the back lace isn’t very nice.” She turned away from him and the lacing disappeared, to be replaced by an almost microscopic crisscross strapping. “And there is only the one leg slit, and it doesn’t go high enough.” A second slit appeared on her left leg, and both widened and went higher, to hip high. “Master, they said these dresses would be perfect for clubbing. What is clubbing?”

Tony laughed. “Clubbing is something you do at night when you don’t need to go to work in the morning. I need to go to the Space Center in the morning.”

Jeannie pouted and changed into a third outfit, one that was very short and strapless, and quite sheer. She settled onto his lap and asked, “Master, if we can’t do this clubbing thing tonight, is there something else we can do instead?”

“I think we can figure something out.”

Tony pushed the djinni away when the alarm clock went off in the morning. He hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough sleep the previous night, though Jeannie had seemed happy enough when she finally dropped off. Now, with the alarm ringing and Tony stirring awake, she rolled towards him and said, “Master, let me wake you properly.”

“I’ll never get to the office if I let you do that.” He rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later he was showered and shaved. He went back to the bedroom to dress.

Jeannie was still lounging in the bed, but she kicked off the covers and displayed her charms. “Please, Master, stay a little longer!”

Tony laughed and kept dressing. “Sorry, Jeannie. I’ll be back when I can. You just keep working on your wardrobe and explore Wikipedia. I’ll pick up breakfast on the way.” Fifteen minutes later he was out of the house.

Breakfast was a steak, egg, and cheese bagel at a McDonalds on the way in. He knew they were bad for him, but he just didn’t care. He ate it in his office and then went searching for Colonel Bellows. He brushed off a few crumbs and then went into the LEOES program office. The secretary smiled as she saw him come in. “Welcome back, Captain. I’ll let the Colonel know you’re here.”

“Thank you.”

She picked up the phone and spoke into it, then hung up. “Go on in, Captain. The Chief Investigator just went in.”

Tony thanked her again and went through the inner door. Inside he found his boss, Colonel Bellows, a stocky gray-haired officer about ten years older. Another man was present, too. Before Tony could make his manners, Bellows said, “Good to see you again, Captain. This is Ray Hughes, the Chief Investigator of this ... anomaly. Ray, Tony Nelson. He rode the lifeboat back.”

Tony responded by saying, “Thank you, Colonel. Nice to meet you, Mister Hughes.”

Hughes shook Tony’s hand and said, “Call me Ray. How was the ride home?”

Tony gave the same answer he had been giving. “If I could patent it, I’d sell the rights to Disney and make a fortune.”

Hughes grinned and Bellows said, “Have a seat, gentlemen.” After everybody was seated, he continued, “Tony, the latest we’ve heard is the same as what I said yesterday. The C-17 is on schedule to land around 1000 or so. At that time Ray’s people will take over.”

Hughes said, “We’re going to unload the bird into a spare hangar in the same position everything was found on the island. We’ll want you to review everything, but we have photos from the island already.”

Tony nodded and glanced over at his boss. “It’s been busy since you landed,” said Bellows. “As soon as you made it down, we had an investigation team on the way. They flew to Diego Garcia. From there they took an Osprey out to the America. The lifeboat was too large to put inside an Osprey, so the Navy simply loaded the thing onto the America and sailed it back to Diego Garcia. From there they put it onto a C-17 and flew it here. The investigation team came back with it.”

Tony raised an eyebrow at the description of what Bellows was describing. “The Navy’s being very generous with their support, sir.”

“I’ve already heard about that generosity. NASA is looking at a big fuel bill, at the minimum. Hell, they’re probably going to send us a bill for your room and board!”

Hughes said, “Probably also for the security team they put on the island when they picked you up, Captain. We had them send along a photographer to make sure we got photos prior to pick-up. Our people have been reviewing them already. We also got the photos taken by the P-3C when they found you.” He turned to Bellows. “That’s what makes me think this wasn’t any sort of intentional or accidental launch on the part of the orbital team. The photos clearly show the Launch button had not been depressed and was still tagged out. We’ll check when it gets here, but that backs up Captain Nelson’s report. Then we need to figure out why he landed and not George the test dummy.”

“Have you heard anything from the software team?” asked the colonel.

“Not yet. We need to check the software load on the lifeboat against the master copy.”

“Colonel, any word on when Captain Healey is coming back?”

Bellows nodded. “Soon. Another Crew Dragon is launching in two days. It’s taking up supplies and a couple of crew members. Two days after that, Roger’s coming back.”

“In disgrace?” Tony asked.

“Not precisely.” Bellows reached into his desk and pulled out a small piece of cardboard, which he tossed across to Tony. Tony picked it up and saw it held a pair of gold oak leaves. “Congratulations, Major. There’s a set for Captain Healey when he gets home, too.” He noticed Tony’s grin and shrugged pleasantly. “The promotions board sat right before you two went up. We’re keeping this quiet, though, at least until Roger comes back down. No use poking the bear while Porter’s still up there.”