Coming of age, 2484

Dervlah inhales. She clenches, clenches every thing. Retro terminal open on the dash, she loves the classic look.

Just a few twinkles out the front windscreen. Just enough to make it hard to see what she sees. ‘It’s just a pipe’. Dervlah exhales. Slowly. This is it. Her freedom. Well, as much as she can expect for now. Twenty years of studying done. Guilt feeling that she hasn’t got a… ‘proper job’. But that guilt feeling is kicked in the balls and fucked out the window. It’s been too much good girl. This is the payout. The promised land.

One thousand coins in her l-pocket, scrimped and saved making far too many starters and desserts. A full coil of energy thrumming in the back of her second hand cart named Kit, and her passport’s up to date.

Launch OK? Hit the Big Red Button and ‘oh my god did I stop clenching no thank god I didn’t’. Ohhhh the squeeze of the G force. Acceleration. Vision starts to fade on the outside. Slowly the twinkles approach. Faster they approach. Like lines then streaks they approach.

‘It’s just a pipe’ ten thousand nine hundred and twenty one kilometres long. Constant acceleration at three earth Gs. Eh…

[ins] In [1]: import math

[ins] In [2]: distance_m = 10921 * 1000

[ins] In [3]: distance_m
Out[3]: 10921000

[ins] In [4]: acceleration = 9.8 * 3

[ins] In [5]: final_speed_squared = 2 * acceleration * distance_m

[ins] In [6]: final_speed = math.sqrt(final_speed_squared)

[ins] In [7]: final_speed
Out[7]: 25340.773468858442

[ins] In [8]: initial_speed = 0

[ins] In [9]: time = (final_speed - initial_speed) / acceleration

[ins] In [10]: time
Out[10]: 861.9310703693347

‘Fourteen minutes twenty one seconds at 3G. I can’t clench for fourteen minutes. I can’t clench for one minute. Why the fuck do I keep thinking about clenching? Remember the training video. Try to relax. Try to fucking relax. They didn’t mention clenching. Fuck it, only twelve minutes left, and I will be outta here at oh… 25 kilometres per second’

Dervlah is sure, feeling like an elephoth is sitting on her for fourteen minutes is worth it; the feeling of getting out of this shit pit at twenty five kilometres per second, is, well, it’s fantastic!

Continued here: Coming of age, 2484 (2)