Project Overworld

Jim did not dare to move by a single inch once the rocket lifted off the ground. He feared that he may activate some random mechanism and screw everything up.

As for Keith, he sat down comfortably in his chair and started his favorite video game. There was not a lot of things within this c.o.c.kpit anyways, so there was no reason not to enjoy the travel. This time around, contrary to when he did it with Leyla, they would be arriving the next day to the EOSS. Since it was a Monday, Keith postponed their departure to when he came back from work.

Regarding his real-life job, it was a real constraint to him. He could not really complain that much because he had no extra hours whatsoever and most of the tasks which were assigned to him were really easy to accomplish. However, at an intellectual level, this job depressed him. He felt like he acc.u.mulated knowledge for nothing and could not keep up with such a repetitive schedule.

It has been almost half a year since he started working at this factory, but he was somewhat hesitant to leave this place. He was hoping to be able to climb up the ranks and become an engineer of some kind instead of a worker. Furthermore, most of the available jobs regarding his current experience were similar to this one anyways, so there was no point in changing company for now.

'Maybe I should create my own company, after all.' Keith was thinking from time to time. Though, yet again, he hesitated to do so because was afraid to waste his time and money for nothing. His best bet for now was to acc.u.mulate experience and apply to a more ambitious job in the future.

Focusing back onto the current travel he was being a part of, Keith realized that Jim was being really interested by what he was currently doing on his screen.

- "Want to play too?" He asked the young man. However, the latter shook his head and turned his head towards the window on his side of the c.o.c.kpit.

- "No need to be shy, there's one installed on your screen anyways." He explained while switching the data that was being showed on Jim's screen to the game Keith has been developing for so long.

- "You know this kind of game?"

- "I never played something like this." The young man replied.

- "Well, there are shapes like these..." He started while pointing at his screen. "... falling down from the top and you need to connect all of them to fill a line completely. However, you may leave holes in the structure if you're not careful and that's where the difficulty is coming from. Also, there will be some power-ups and events poping up on your screen from time to time. I'll let you discover their effects." He concluded while winking at his friend. He then focused back on his own game and spent the rest of the evening monitoring the flight data of the rocket and trying to beat his highscore in his own game.

The next day, when he connected back into the game from a long day at work, 'Space Station launcher 21' had already reached the intended orbit and Jim was playing games while waiting for him.

- "Hey!" Keith greeted the young man.

- "Welcome back. We've reached the EOSS while you were away."

- "I can see that. Then, I'll take the opportunity to teach you how to control this rocket!" He expectantly said.

It took them a couple of hours for Jim to understand how every input affected the whole structure until he finally lead them closer to the EOSS.

- "Right..." Keith remembered. "We'll have to jump from our rocket to the station."

- "Without security cables or anything like that?" Jim started to worry.

- "Worse... we'll only get a few dozen of seconds to reach the inside of the base before the lack of oxygen start blocking our vision."

Although their avatar could not really turn pale, Keith really had the impression that Jim's face blanked at this exact instant.

- "Hey, there's still some oxygen left in there. No need to hold your breath for now." He joked around.

The young man smiled at this comment and relaxed a bit. Just like he did with Leyla more than a month and a half earlier, Keith started explaining everything that they would need to do before entering the station.

Once he was certain that Jim understood it all, they both jumped out of the c.o.c.kpit after it was emptied from oxygen. The young man panicked and almost missed the potuberant handles of the door if it was not for Keith holding him back.

Fortunately, this incident did not slow them by much and Keith managed to activate the oxygen filling of the depressurizing chamber before his vision turned dark.

- "Welcome to the EOSS!" Keith exclaimed. "You're the third ever player to tread the floor of this space station. Congratulations!"

Keith started by presenting the rooms of this base to Jim before putting on his space suit and going to repair some damage in the hull of the EOSS. When he came back inside, it was already time for them to disconnect, so they said farewell to each other.

- "We've got five days left to accomplish what we were supposed to do here. It should be enough, but I may be rushing things out a bit." Keith explained the next day when they connected back to Project Overworld.

They put on their space suit before Keith led Jim to the space shuttle that was waiting for them. It took them two evenings to gather all the modules and oxygen reservoirs that Spacol had been launching up there during the past month and a half. After one more day spent on assembling everything together and making sure there was there was no other problems with the base itself, they spent the last two days working on the space shuttle and preparing to go back on Earth.

'It's been a trying but interesting week working from up there in space.' Jim thought while installing himself in the c.o.c.kpit of the lander which would be taking them all the way back down.

Keith joined a little bit latter and exclaimed like he was reading the young man's mind : "It was fun, right?"

The young man nodded at those words before Keith activated the automated landing process. He did not bother with any of the controls, prefering the rely on programs which would accomplish a better job than him anyways.

It was not a widely distributed opinion, as people often denigrated a robot's work in favor of the human. However, even though there were examples which proved that robots could also be making mistakes when confronted to an unexpected situation, it depended a lot on who coded it and which actions it was supposed to accomplish.

For example, automatically driven cars have always been quite controversial in the real world because they did run over people or other obstacles a few times. However, if one considered the total number of kilometers and test these vehicles have gone through, they would realized that the error rate was much lower than everyone thought it to be. In fact, when compared to human data, it appeared that it was safer to take a seat inside a self-driven car than taking control of the vehicle ourselves.

Of course, those were only statistics and there were a lot more variables to be considered to have a satisfactory conclusion over this matter. As a matter of fact, Keith was now certain that some really specific humans would always be showing better results compared to any programs.

He knew that even by working really hard to code the perfect artificial intelligence to control his rockets, Leyla would always find a way to surprise him by improving the latter's work.

For now, he was confident in his program being able to land both of them back on Earth, unscatted. He also had the possibility to manually take control if something really strange was about to happen.

- "Well then, let's come back down. We have a lot more to do before officially installing within the EOSS." Keith thought out loud."

Since it was a Sunday, they decided upon leaving this place early in the morning. They got back to Spacol's operation center by the end of the day.

Their friends all greeted them back and Keith decided to hold another karting competition for the end of the day. He did not want to have Jim work on a project for only a couple of hours before he needed to join another one the day after. Of course, he knew of his adaptability skills, but he found it kind of rude to do so.

Next week, Keith would be joining Xena and hopefully start working on the large automated assembler that they wanted to make for so long. Their group has already completed a lot of machines related to individual part production and it was time to take care of the real deal.

With this new project being started, they could finally realize whether they were producing each part with an acceptable rate or not. They could also witness imperfections and start troubleshooting how they would be gathering all the required parts without tangling everything up.

'It will be my second time working on another project than the one related to rocketry.' Keith thought. After the first rotation of binomes, he had decided that everyone was trained enough to not . He made sure Jim and him would be working the on the space station this week, though, as nobody else knew anything about the EOSS other than Leyla.

'The team is finally gaining in autonomy.' He concluded.