She started down the canyon. The sides grew taller as she got closer to the volcano and the width narrowed. It reminded her of slot canyons like the one time she had gone hiking in New Mexico. Thankfully, there were no rocks or boulders like the previous ridge. Rather, the ground was soft and dusty, which the system had enough fidelity to display in great detail around her.
It took an hour, but Parkowski reached the next waypoint, a fork in the canyon where the ancient lava flow had split into two. She had to take the left fork, towards the volcano.
The incline started to increase as the path widened. It gave her a beautiful view of the ancient volcano; the gigantic shield’s size was now apparent and its brown color a sharp contrast to the green-yellow alien sky.
Parkowski was now completely enthralled by the simulation. She and the ACHILLES unit were one and the same, the lag between Venus and Earth was negligible, and the jarring anomalies of the previous mission seemingly a thing of the past. She loved every minute in the VR setup.
She came to an overlook where the canyon’s walls towards the volcano were just a few feet high. “Can I launch it here?” Parkowski asked. It wasn’t where the mission plan had called for it, but it looked like a good spot.
“Standby,” Pham replied, “let me talk to the drone operators.”
Parkowski stood still for a few minutes, catching her breath from the long journey. The senior engineer called back after a minute of waiting. “Negative, Grace, they want you to continue and release at the preprogrammed route.”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“There’s an internal GNC sensor that is already programmed,” Pham explained, “and it can’t be changed at this point. Just keep going, Grace, you’re over halfway done with the mission.”
Parkowski put her head down and continued down the path. It was another half-mile or so before the “real” waypoint where she would release the drone. She took her time, walking slowly and carefully, before reaching it after another fifteen minutes of walking.
She took a deep breath. Now, the hard part. Parkowski took the small quadcopter off of her ACHILLES unit’s waist and placed it on the ground. It had a small control panel on its top. Parkowski ensured that the communication channel was the same and took a step back, away from the four blades.
“Ready to launch,” she said over the voice net.
“Copy,” Pham replied. There was a brief pause. “Go ahead and take off when you’re ready.”
Parkowski pulled up the drone controls from within the UI and coordinated them to her right VR controller. A small picture-in-picture display from the quadcopter’s video sensor appeared in the upper left corner of her VR display.
She moved her hand up and the drone’s blades began to spin as it started to slowly rise. Parkowski waited until it was ten to twelve feet above the canyon wall before moving her arm forward in the direction of the Sacajawea volcano.
Pham broke in a few minutes later. “Transferring control to the pilot in three, two, one, break,” he called out. Parkowski could still see the display, but no longer controlled the drone’s movements.
She finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ok, great job, you’re doing great Grace,” Pham said to her. “Now head around and get to the last waypoint.”
“Thanks,” she said and turned the ACHILLES unit around to go back the way she came.
It was almost over.
But, after only a few minutes of walking down the canyon, Parkowski started to see some graphical artifacts, much like those in her last mission. The terrain went from a high-resolution model to one with lower fidelity, and the boulders and rocks were missing meshes or textures.
The issues from last time had returned.
“Hey boss, seeing some weird stuff,” she told Pham. “What’s my lag?”
“One minute, forty seconds,” the older man replied. “Everything should be nominal.”
“It’s not,” she breathed. There was lag somewhere that drove the graphical anomalies.
Then it happened.
The VR display
Parkowski stopped. What the hell is going on?
The display went out for a brief moment, then popped back with a warped vision of Venus.
At least it was right-side-up this time. It reminded Parkowski of funhouse mirrors — the entire landscape was slanted, turned, and all kinds of topsy-turvy.
She couldn’t even think of anything to say over the radio.
The entire environment twisted and turned, making itself large, so large that the ACHILLES robot was just a tiny little pinprick, a speck against the giant Venusian surface.
Then it changed again, this time making the world so small that the robot’s legs, torso, and head extended up way above the planet.
Parkowski almost panicked; like she did before, but this time, she remained calm. She wasn’t on Venus, she was on Earth at the Aering plan in El Segundo.
