New York City. 1950.

Jonas Jupiter, genius inventor and enthusiastic bachelor, was lying in his prototype medical pod.

If only I could get this blasted thing to work, I could drink as much as I like and never have a hangover again, he thought to himself. He decided to have another go at finishing the prototype as soon as he sobered up.

The door slammed open and Jonas’s stout assistant, Dr. Korl Borg entered the room in a frantic state. “Professor Jupiter, I—Egads man! What’s this?!”

Borg crossed the room quickly, passing various tables and workstations covered in gadgets and gizmos and liquor bottles. He unintentionally kicked an empty bottle of scotch and it skittered across the laboratory floor, knocking over a row of beer bottles.

“Leave me be!” shouted the professor as he shut the pod’s lid on himself.

Dr. Borg sighed heavily and reopened the pod. A mostly empty bottle tumbled out of the med-pod and shattered on the floor. Dr. Borg backed away from the puddle of scotch and shards of glass.

“Don’t worry, sport,” mumbled the professor, “It’s bottom shelf stuff. Not even worth the trouble.”

“Professor, you’re drunk,” said Dr. Borg.

“I’m not drunk; I’m inventing,” insisted Jonas. He swung his legs over the side of the med-pod and sat up, cracking his back as he did so. He was in his early forties, not an old man yet but still too old to be lying on hard surfaces for hours. He groaned as he stood. He wobbled for a moment before finding his balance.

“May spine feels like a Tijuana parade—well, there’s an idea! Maybe the bed of the med-pod should conform to the spine.” He stumbled over to his desk, buried beneath a stack of books and papers, and scribbled the word ‘spine’ on the first page he grabbed.

“Professor.”

Jonas rubbed his eyes and seemed to truly notice Dr. Borg for the first time. He slouched into the chair behind his desk. Dr. Borg observed the leather on the back of the chair was cracking and it groaned metallically when the professor leaned back and propped his feet up on the desk. If one looked closer they would notice small signs of decay and disuse all over the laboratory. There was a little bit of rust on the corners of the metal cabinets. The countertops were warped and scored. There were more than a few chipped beakers and broken scales.

“Ah, yes. Who are you again?”

“Dr. Borg, sir. I’ve been your assistant for quite some time now.”

“Hmmm, oh yes! Good to see you, chap! Thanks for coming so soon, although I can’t recall for the life of me why I called you in . . .”

“You didn’t sir,” said Dr. Borg with exasperation. “There’s a developing situation on the space station. Your presence is needed.”

“ . . . Space station?”

“The SS Foundation, sir. You designed it ten years ago. It’s the flagship of the space program. Professor, are you too inebriated to do this right now?”

Jonas waved away his concern, “Ah! That space station. I’ve designed several, you know. I’m just a little foggy from . . . my nap. What do I need to bring?”

“Just your vambrace, sir. I’ve already got everything else loaded.” Jonas nodded.

The vambrace was one of Jonas’s most prized inventions and his most useful tool. He rarely worked without it.

He closed the chrome device around his forearm then flicked a small switch. There was a faint hissing sound as the pressure cuff within the vambrace inflated to provide a firm fit. He shrugged on his lab coat and polished off the near bottle of scotch.

“Alright, I’m ready to go. How are we getting up there, Karl?”

Korl ignored being called the wrong name. “We’ve got a catapod waiting at the Empire State Laboratory.”

An hour later, the professor and the doctor were buckled into a catapult-pod, waiting on the launch pad attached to the base of the Empire State Building. The launching device towered over them, attached to the side of the tallest building in New York.

The professor’s head was beginning to ache. He was especially resentful of the bright glare coming from the glass door of the pod. He snuck a silver flask from his inner coat pocket and took a long swallow. Dr. Borg looked at him from the side.

“That’s not allowed! How did you manage to sneak that on board?”

“Five dollars goes a long way, Doc. What’s taking the crew so long? Shouldn’t we be in the air by now?” asked Jonas.

Just then a tin voice came from a speaker inside the pod. “You are cleared for launch in five minutes. Please seal your oversuits at this time.”

They were wearing large, unwieldy ‘oversuits’ which were designed to protect the passengers in case the pod was breached while in vacuum or near vacuum. The bulky suits included classic fishbowl-style helmets.

Dr. Borg quickly attached his helmet, locked the seal, and began his suit-check. Jonas seemed to have fallen asleep. Dr. Borg gave him a polite shake.

The professor jerked upright and looked at Dr. Borg with foggy eyes and said, “Pete?”

The doctor shook his head, “No, professor. Who is Pete?”

“Oh, it’s you, Karl.” A shadow crossed the professor’s face and he looked away.

“Korl. You should seal your oversuit, professor. It’s almost time to launch.”

Jonas began to slowly seal up his oversuit. “First the robot, now the Swede. I won’t be told what’s what by the likes of you two,” he mumbled.

The metallic voice returned, “Suit check status?”

The suits were vacuum sealed so the only way to communicate was through the headset built into the helmet. Dr. Borg saw the professor belch then make a face at the smell inside his helmet. The air cycle on these suits was not particularly fast . . .

“Dr. Borg, good to go.”

There was silence from the professor.

“Passenger 2?” asked the voice politely.

“Just launch the damn thing,” said the professor, exasperated. “That’s the problem with letting these blasted machines control everything. Rules this, regulations that! Step-by-step-by-step-by-step. People know when regulations are just wasting time. A human knows when to cut corners! If that dumb machine were a real person I’d throttle him.”

“S-sir?” replied the human crewman on the other side of the intercom.

“Ugh” said Dr. Borg to himself reflexively. Then he pressed the comms button on the side of his helmet, “Please forgive the professor. The situation on the station is dire and he is under a lot of pressure to help.”

“Of course,” replied the crewman. A few moments later, “Sixty seconds to launch.”

At some point the professor managed to fall asleep again. Dr. Borg waited patiently as the crewman began his count.

“3”

Dr. Borg looked at the professor expectantly.

“2”

A trickle of drool rolled down the professor’s stubbly chin.

“1”

Dr. Borg braced himself.

“Launch.”

The pod shook slightly then the catapult mechanism (which was actually designed more like a trebuchet than a catapult) swung the pod in a wide arc up the side, over the empire state building, and back around the other side. In the few seconds it took to swing around the height of New York’s tallest building once the pod accelerated to 3gs.

Dr. Borg noticed some kind of commotion to his left as the professor was startled awake, but the force of acceleration was pressing him into his seat so he could not look.

They reached the end of the wind-up and the arm released them smoothly into the air, on a rocket speed trajectory to the upper atmosphere above New York City.

Dr. Borg looked out the window appreciatively at the skyscrapers of the gilded city beneath him. He smiled. He admired what humankind had accomplished in just a few decades . . .

As they rose through the air, the force of acceleration relinquished its vice grip a little. He looked over to see Jonas struggling in his seat. The visor of his helmet was obscured by a layer of vomit.