Aye I Longwhite: An American-Chinese teenager’s adventure in the Middle Kingdom and beyond by Alan Tien

Author:Alan Tien [Tien, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-27T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3: Journey to the West

"Go West, young man"

--- American author Horace Greeley, related to the then-popular concept of Manifest Destiny.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”

--- Lao Tzu

We boarded the plane.

It’s really a hybrid jet and rocket. It lifts off vertically like a rocket to quickly get into sub-orbital space. Then it lands like a jet, horizontally on tires. The best – or worst, depending on your body – was the weightlessness part at the apex of the trajectory, when we entered sub-space.

Most people feel ‘space sickness’ – nausea, sweating, and the grossest part in a plane, vomiting. During the safety briefing, a fair amount of time was telling the passengers to keep the puke bag nearby. They didn’t call it the puke bag, but that’s what I called it. On my flight over, a lady started barfing. She was in such bad shape, she couldn’t get the bag up to her mouth. Damn, it was disgusting seeing particles of her vomit floating around the cabin until we hit re-entry and gravity pulled the pieces down – on whoever happened to be under them. It was so gross, I almost hurled myself, even though I wasn’t space sick.

I started sharing the story with Chang Lin, but surprisingly she didn’t want to hear about it. I stuffed Willstin in the overhead bin, pretending to tuck him in for the night. “Good night, sleep tight, see you in the morning light baby,” I cooed. Maybe it was just the cabin lighting, but I think Willstin glowered at me, his eyes changing to a cooler shade of blue.

Showing off my vast experience in sub-orbital flights, I said, “Don’t worry Chang Lin. These flights are super safe. The initial blast off is a bit heavy, about 2-3 Gs, but that only lasts for a few minutes.”

She patted my arm. “I’m not worried, Austin. I’m looking forward to this. It’s like an awesome roller coaster ride. But if you’re scared, you can hold my hand.”

I jerked back, “Me, scared? Come on, I’m the astronaut here.” Technically, my first trip into sub-orbital space qualified me as an astronaut.

I was starving by now, but the policy was not to feed the passengers until after free fall. Based on my first experience, I decided that was a great plan.

The preparations took a while. Chang Lin and I whispered about how crazy this whole thing was, how we hoped we didn’t get into too much trouble, whether we really believed Willstin was a true AI, how impossible that was, etc. I told her about Yoda as well. We speculated on what would happen in the US, but we really had no idea. She wondered about Willy, and I told her what Willstin had explained to me. We spent some time theorizing about our “luck” attribute and sharing notes on our lab tests. By launch time, we were none the wiser, but at least we felt better that we were equally confused.

The captain interrupted our guesswork.

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