Chapter 7: Windfall

All certified spacecraft have redundant systems and failsafes. Uncertified craft are usually missing a few essentials, and that’s why they’re uncertified. If they had the required backups, there’s no excuse to not be inspected and certified, because the lower insurance premiums more than compensate for the inspection fees. Unfortunately the premiums saved won’t pay for the costs of equiping redundancy. That’s life.

All commercial craft must be certified. Private space craft and yachts can option out. A dangerous option to select in my opinion.

Some rich kids decided to take their young girlfriends for a joy ride to the moon. I’m certain they also expected to return them safely home again. A sad fact of life is, too often people confuse expecting to do something with planning to do something. No planning was involved in that impromptu impetuous joyride, no plan at all.

Holy Cow was assigned by moon-base to rescue the people, and kick the disabled, unsalvageable, derelict craft into a burn up re-entry trajectory.

Picking up the kids was the easy part. All ships have universal docking collars and airlocks. Can’t transfer to any other facility or ship without these. We just docked, and they swam over, and we sealed them aboard. Simple.

Remaining docked, I towed or pushed the doomed ship on the correct trajectory, unlatched the mated collars, gave some extra thrust then reversed and let it sail away from us. It soon entered the atmosphere at an unsafe steep angle, and was totally consumed by high friction incendiary air while still in the upper atmosphere.

All the above mission is accomplished and the kids returned to the surface. There met by their worried furious parents, at touchdown.

Good fortune smiles upon me today, I believe. Two of the fathers are ranking attorneys with a prestigious firm in the village of Bottom, below the spaceport. Where is Bottom?

Geographically speaking, the spaceport is built on top and arranged in a semi circle around the half rim of a 1500 ft high mountain, on an extinct volcanic island. A quarter of a nautical mile closer to space than sealevel, you can imagine the advantage. One side of the volcano is completely blown out, and open, accessible to the sea. The name of the seaport in the bottom of the crater is appropriately, Bottom, and is only a dozen meters above sealevel. There is also a suspension bridge connecting the island to the mainland. Nice convenient geography for transportation industries. No airport though corporate seaplanes land in the bay and taxi to their wharves in Bottom.

These two grateful fathers, important lawyers, offer me first money, then free legal services for my part in rescuing their idiot children. My mentioning I’m tempted to sue the clinic over my intractable AI chip excites them. They already ARE suing not only the clinic, but the chip supplier and the manufacturer, on behalf two other clients. They’ll just add me to the plaintiff list. Done deal as soon as they get some papers together for me to sign. Their excitement is attributed to the greater likelihood the case will be settled rapidly, out of court, if the defendants envision more complainants emerging daily. I’m a strong indicator their liability troubles are only compounding.

The attorneys are correct. In only three days, we have an offer to settle for millions to split five ways. There are five dissatisfied AI hosts suing now. One tiny problem inhibits me from grabbing the money and running to deposit in the bank before they change their minds. They want the chips back as a condition of the settlement. As I’m certain I mentioned already, removing the chip invariably results in madness and suicide. How many millions do I get to make that risk worthwhile? Can’t agree, though the attorneys urge me to.

They don’t have chips in their heads or risk insanity and death. I’m willing to take a chance in court. My FREE legal services just evaporated.

Apparently my attorneys gratitude has withered away, too. Everyone else settled. Good luck to them. My attorneys, for representing me, will now collect a third of what ever the court awards me. If anything. The case may drag on for years. Fortune smiling on me, was only a sardonic grin it seems.

But I did have a windfall of a sort, or had a Wendy fall on me to be exact. One of the rescued girls, named Wendy, is star struck, or afflicted with hero worship, however you want to put it. We are currently living together in her luxury apartment on a cliff overlooking the sea, and within walking distance of the entertainment, restaurants, nightclubs quarter of downtown Bottom. See? Fortune did smile on me, in the guise of a beautiful young girls smile. The apartment is nothing to be sneezed at either.