International Space Center
Kenya
Finally, this long and dreadful day was over, Michael thought when he stepped into his office. It was almost midnight and he just had to collect a few documents and make a quick mail check, before he could go home for a much-needed sleep. He sighed heavily as he sank into his armchair in front of the desk and then snapped on the computer. It felt like he hadn’t done any proper work at all today. Sure, it’s not every day that you send off forty families to Mars, but still. It felt like the only thing he had done today was to shake hands with hundreds of people and said well-rehearsed phrases about happiness and prosperity to everyone he met. He was well aware of the fact that this of course was included in his duties as chief manager of this project. But for him, work was not a social activity where he tried make people feel at ease, but it was first and foremost to get things done. And after today´s activities it felt like he had missed a thousand things on his to do list.
He immediately started to lift and move around the documents on his desk. Despite the chaos, he quickly found what he was looking for and put them down in his briefcase. Almost no one used paper documents anymore, but he was of the old school and insisted on getting prints of everything. In his world no contract existed until it was printed on a paper and signed with an ink pen. He assumed that this peculiarity amused his younger colleagues, and he had no doubt that they talked behind his back about how they could get "the old dinosaur" exchanged. But he couldn’t care less, he was old enough not put any emphasis on what the "youngsters" thought about him.
He put down the briefcase, glanced at the computer screen and immediately noticed the little red square at the bottom right of the corner. He knew right away what it was about and mumbled silently to himself, "Okay Nikolai, what do you want from me this time?"
Nikolai always used him as some kind of mole when he wanted something that concerned the colony. But he couldn’t blame Nikolai for trying, especially not when it worked most of the times. Nikolai always had some sort of magical ability to convince him that his proposal was absolutely necessary and the only right thing to do. And when he later presented the proposal for the space board, they mostly accepted it without arguing.
Usually, he would never have accepted to be exploited in this way, but there was something about Nikolai that struck a tone with him. Perhaps it was that both of them were leaders on their own small part of the human civilization project that made him have no problems with it? He didn’t really know, but there was no sense pondering about it. He liked Nikolai and he was completely convinced that he was the right man in the right place. Why wouldn’t he help such a person?
He entered the encryption code and then started reading the message. When he was done, he sighed heavily and read it once again. That man has got a solution to everything, he thought and shook his head. He leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a while. But quite quickly he realized that there wasn’t much more to think about. Nikolai was right as usual. The only thing that worried him was how Emma Harrison would feel about this. He liked her after all and didn’t want to get in the way of such a temperamental person. But on the other hand, she was already millions of miles from here, so he would hardly need to worry about getting a scolding from her face to face.
With a few quick keystrokes, he called the space board to a meeting the next day, and then he shut down the computer, picked up his briefcase and left the office.