Project Overworld

Only a few minutes later, 'Space Station Launcher 16' was already reaching five miles of altitude. The rocket would not automatically be starting its complex maneuvers to place itself into orbit before at least twenty miles away from land.

As for its passengers, they were both excitedly waiting to get all the way to the 'EOSS', or 'Earth Orbital Spacol Station'. Leyla was trying hard not to let her curiosity take the best of her and monitor the rocket's data.

However, Keith did notice her struggle and expressed while smiling : "If you want to take manual control, go ahead. I won't get mad at you or anything." In any case, he had installed several layers of security in the rocket's computer to prevent any incident.

Keith also liked to train himself by multitasking the rocket's various input from time to time. That was why, he programed it so that manual inputs would not be considered anymore if the rocket's trajectory was deemed too dangerous or deviated too much from its registered coordinates.

If he ever felt like he needed to really change his trajectory or if he decided to land back on Earth for some reason, he still had access to a special interface which would allow him to change the coordinates registered within the program, or even engage an emergency landing. Regardless, the program itself would still be doing all the necessary maneuvers and manual inputs would be very limited.

That was the real reason Keith could let Leyla play with the controls without a hint of worry. He knew she was really proefficient with flying a rocket as she proved herself several times in the past. However, it was also true that she did not participate even a little bit in the elaboration of this rocket and that she did not knew anything about its controls. For the time being, Keith could only trust the programs he coded with his own two hands.

'This launcher is so good!' Leyla thought. 'There's a load of a hundred ton on board but it doesn't even lose in stability that much.' Since they first started to consider the exploration of the Moon, back in the Starise group, she has known her fare share of rockets. However, this one was on a whole another level.

It was equipped with really advanced programs which was notifying them about every variable considered within the flight. Hell, even the intensity of the wind was showing up on her screen while the rocket was taking actions to preventively conter-balance its effects.

As for the capacity of the itself, she was really impressed about it. The whole structure was almost twice as big as the largest launcher she has ever participated in the elaboration, and there was not a single bit of space wasted in there excepting from the c.o.c.kpit itself. The ratio of fuel quantity to rocket size was something Leyla never dreamt of, even wondering how Keith has been able to do it.

After meticulously checking every tabs there was opened on her screen, she started focusing on the trajectory of the rocket. She found some imperfections in the maneuvers that the rocket was making, but nothing that would make them lose more than a few hundred pounds of fuel.

Regardless, this amount, albeit small, was still something she could be optimizing. Without hesitation, she started making adjustments regarding the fuel distribution of the rocket. The controls were actually quite simple, everything was made using one of the two screens their seats were equipped with.

'She really is doing well.' Keith noticed. He was not worried at all about this launch anyways, since it was the exact same as the previous ones, expecting a few adjustments made to its structure and some of its core parts.

Anyways, this type of rocket was made to be controlled by a computer, in the end, and he was not concerned about the losses of fuel he would be making in the process. Each of his launchers were equipped with twenty to thirty percent more fuel than necessary for that single purpose, after all.

Keith then focused back on his second monitor to play one of those games he developed while he had some spare time. This one was a reproduction of an ancient game where you needed to connect different shapes together to make a line filling up the screen. However, he also added a few twists like events that would be happening in one's game to spice things up a bit. He also coded it so that some pieces would be shiny and would only interact with other similar pieces.

Everytime he had to wait for his machines to produce some essential parts for one of his builds, Keith would hop onto his personnal computer and distract himself for a bit. He was getting really proefficient with this kind of game, although not really prideful about it.

He could also be doing some more useful programming for his base in the meantime, but he was thinking that he needed a bit of distraction from time to time to keep his head cool from the constant brain activity that was needed for his current projects.

- "Hey, what do you think you're doing?!" Leyla exclaimed. Keith has made the c.o.c.kpit as narrow as possible so not to lose too much time with the construction of this part of the rocket. However, Leyla would obviously be siting just next to him and now had a clear vision over what was showing up on his screen.

'Oops, I've been found out...' Keith thought before replying with a bright smile : "Hum... Playing?"

- "Yeah, I see that! Would you mind paying more attention to the rocket that's transporting both of us, maybe?"

- "You're already doing this quite well, mate." He decided to continue with some kind of a british accent.

- "God I can't believe you... You were the famous player who foiled our entire plans at conquering the Moon and all you did during your take offs from the Earth was to play some video games?!"

- "Well, not every take off has been like that... only the most recent ones."

She finally stopped in her tracks, thinking that it was unnecessary to argue with such an individual. He was obviously trying to tease her and she did not want to give him an easy time with that.

However, she did finally realize the extent of their technological differences up until now. He could have landed on the Moon a lot earlier according to her, and posted several pictures onto the forums to prove that he had been there. However, he instead decided to focus on developing useful devices and programs for his builds so he could have more free time at his disposal.

She really could not blame him for playing while on the flight because he knew exactly how his rocket's program behaved and also knew that there was no manual input needed in order to reach the intended orbit. Moreover, there was nothing else he could do within this narrow space, and she finally understood why him of all people was playing games while taking off from the planet.

If anything, she was also about to enjoy her time by watching the landscape from up there through the small windows installed within the c.o.c.kpit, before noticing Keith's doings.

It took several more hours for them to reach EOSS. The rocket did most of the job, although Leyla could not refrain herself from optimizing its trajectory with her own knowledge.

Keith was really impressed by her adaptation to this new vehicle and the way she could determine the best possible trajectory to reach a specific orbit.

Once they got there, however, Keith supplemented to teach her how to control this vehicle in space. Since they would be gathering the various modules he launched up there beforehand, he also needed her to be able to fend for herself.

However, first, Keith led them near EOSS so they could retrieve both of the spacesuits that were stored in its decompression chamber.

- "We will have around thirty seconds to get to the station before our avatars start dying from the lack of oxygen." He started to explain. "Since it is your first time moving around in space, don't ever release my hand until we get to the door." He said in a very serious tone. "Afterwards, I will unfortunately need both of them to manually open the door, so make sure you grab firmly onto one of the holding pieces I placed around there. Normally, we would only need a few seconds to open this door, but if it lasts a bit too long, try and go back inside the rocket. There should be enough oxygen left its reservoirs to resplenish our reserves. Oh, while I'm at it..." He pointed at a red button before pursuing. "... This is the button that will reactivate the oxygen vents, if I can't get there for some reason."

Keith paused in his explanations before asking : "Do I need to repeat anything or did you get everything I said?"

She simply nodded her head to indicate she understood everything. It was a lot more complex for them to get into EOSS than last time Keith did. In fact, last time he did bring spacesuits with him because there was not any waiting for him in the station itself. However, this time around, they would be really limited in time to get inside.

Keith was quite confident about his abilities to move around in space, since he has already experienced it for several successive weeks in the past. However, he was getting really worried about Leyla herself. This type of movement may be a bit counterintuitive and he did not know how she would be reacting to that.

Without delaying their jump any longer, Keith deactivated the oxygen vents of his rocket and exclaimed : "Let's go!" Before grabing Leyla's left hand and pulling the door of the c.o.c.kpit open.