Besides, he might decide to go for a spacewalk and just end it out there as his own satellite.

But for now the air remains okay and he’s way too far into the story of his life to waste the remaining forty-eight hours pulling and hauling on a space suit that—given Bill’s slightly smaller frame—probably wouldn’t fit him anyway.

The pull to get back to the keyboard is great, and this time not because of the escape it provides, but because he’s worried about the import of everything he’s chronicled, frightened that it doesn’t amount to as much as he thought. An autobiography of mundane occurrences and banal sameness, and an embarrassing lack of significant achievements. He isn’t happy with the way his life looks so far, and he’s hoping it will get better, rounding the corner of the last ten years. There have been happy times, he’s sure of that. But somehow, in print, as a chronicle, it seems so ordinary, and he’s caught himself wanting to lapse into fiction a few times, spice up a few things here and there. After all, who on Earth would know, so to speak?

But the fact that it is, or was, his life forces him to stay honest about the details, even some that he would never have spoken about on Earth.

There’s an incident in particular a few years back that still bothers me to the point of losing sleep, something I did nothing about in order to save my job. I didn’t find out until too late, and when I discovered the corporate leaders knew about it, I was convinced they would can me if I said anything. I just stowed the evidence away quietly and sat on it like a coward. I’ll never know how many people, if any, have been injured or maybe even killed. But a corporation that knowingly ships a bad, completely inactivated lot of a major antibiotic just to avoid the costs of a recall has to be committing a criminal act.

Kip stops, wondering whether to risk putting the details down in print for the first time, knowing it could put several executives of the American branch of the company in prison. But who will care twenty or fifty or whatever years from now? And if by some miracle he does get rescued, he can quietly delete it.

Ah, what the hell. No one’s reading this but me anyway.

I think I want to tell you in detail exactly what happened, and how I found out.

Ron Porter makes it a point never to charge out of his office like the West Wing is on fire. He knows about the adrenaline that races into bloodstreams when a Chief of Staff looks panicked, and now is no exception—even late in the evening with most of the staff gone.

He strolls to the desk just outside the Oval Office still occupied by the President’s secretary and catches her eye. Technically, she works for Porter, but he wouldn’t dare fire or chastise her without the President’s permission. She’s been working for the man for twenty years.

Not that she needs chastising or firing, but sometimes Elizabeth Dela-court can be a bit too harsh as a gatekeeper.

“Is he ready, Liz?” he asks, glad for the relaxed smile in return as she waves him in.

He expects to find the President behind his desk, but instead sees him in front of the TV, quietly reading the latest words from Kip Dawson.

Ron, too, has been caught in that distraction all day, canceling any productive work as he watched the words on his computer screen.

“Pretty amazing, huh, Ron? Just one guy, but I can’t quite stop reading him. And… frankly, he’s making a lot of sense on some things.”

“Mr. President, two items. First, the Chinese have just let it be known that they’re going to launch on Saturday to go get him regardless of our plans to launch EndeavorSaturday around noon, and the Russians plan to launch Saturday at the same time. On top of that, the Japanese Space Agency says they’re preparing an emergency launch for Friday.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish I were.”

“This is ridiculous. What are they going to do if they all make it up there? Draw straws? Has Shear tried to discourage them?”

“No. He’s encouraging them. The Russians in particular. He says it’s because Endeavormay not be ready, even though they’re already on the extended countdown.”

“Call Shear at home, will you, and tell him now’s the time to pare this down to one reasonable backup launch. I know he can’t control those folks but he can beg and wheedle.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“And the second item?”

“Nothing we can do about it, but we just celebrated a completely unexpected, undeclared national holiday. Actually, more like international.”

“What are you talking about, Ron?”

“A large segment of our business community is reporting massive absenteeism and the retail sector is reporting plummeting sales. Everyone’s staying home to read what Dawson is writing.”

“Really?”

“There are estimates out there right now that over two thirds of our people are actively watching this, word by word, and probably close to a billion worldwide.”

“How is that possible?”

“Mr. President, there are live feeds coming through beepers, moving sign boards, radio, television, cable, AM, FM, Web casts… you name it. In China, too, it’s virtually everywhere, with simultaneous translation. You remember we’ve remarked how fast the world can become a global village?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now add all these other forms, including PDAs and the galaxy of so-called Wi Fi ‘hot spots’ around the nation. Cell phone screens, too. I’ve even heard that one of those advertising blimps is hovering off Malibu right now and scrolling Dawson’s words.”

“A blimp?”

“Yes, sir. If this continues, we might as well shut down any form of transportation not connected live to this thing. We have wire reports about hundreds of travelers changing their flights at the last minute to airlines that have live TV aboard. If it goes through Saturday, it may paralyze most of the civilized world.”

“Good heavens.”

“The AP is carrying a tale about an international flight on which one of the flight attendants remained on one of the audio channels for the entire thirteen hours reading the transcript aloud as the pilots downloaded it from the cockpit.”

The President is silent as he’s drawn back to his own TV screen, Dawson’s words snagging his attention.

“Wait, I want to read this.”

I have to admit I feel guilty about this, too. So much so that if I were able to survive and return, one of my first acts would be to go to the nearest U.S. Attorney and give him a copy of everything I just wrote. And the sad part is that now that I go back through it, I realize I do know where the evidence is… where the bodies are buried, so to speak. Right there in my filing cabinet in my den under the 2004 tab. The folder with the red exclamation point on it and a rubber band around it. By the time anyone reads this, I’m sure everything in that cabinet will have been long since burned or buried in some landfill. But I know in my heart that there had to be at least a few patients out there who died or had a terrible time because the good old reliable Vectra penicillin they’d bought from us wasn’t working. No one… not the doctors, nurses, or pharmacists who trusted us implicitly… would have ever suspected the reason was simple greed. Someone needs to be prosecuted for this.

“Did you see that, Ron?”

“Yes, sir. So did most of the country.”

“Vectra knowingly sold bad penicillin?”

“We should act on this, don’t you think?”

The President is nodding and pointing to the phone. “Let’s get Justice moving on this in the morning. No, wait. Those records he mentions. Let’s get those protected.”

“FBI then?”

“Yes. Quickly.” He turns back to the TV, quietly addressing the unseen writer as Porter hurries from the Oval.

“So, what other bombshells do you have for us, Kip?”