From: Michael Miller
Subject: Safe at home
Date: November 27, 2018 11:25 p.m.
To: Jackie Miller
(CLT): 8 min 9.56 sec
Stick the landing, Babe!
I love you, Mike
< ≡ ♂ ≡ >
“They did it! He’s safe! We’re free to land!” Jackie was literally jumping up and down in her exhilaration and excitement. Standing nearby, Carl looked over her shoulder and glanced at the message.
“Wait, it says to stick the landing. As in: ‘where the sun don’t shine’?” Carl queried. Jackie laughed as she set the laptop on the table.
“Oh, no. When a gymnast ‘sticks the landing’,” she explained using air quotes. “that means she lands standing up straight with no loss of balance, no half step to catch herself. In other words: a perfect routine with no faults. Sticking to the floor.”
To demonstrate, Jackie made a short hop in the air, came down lightly with her feet together and knees slightly bent, paused for a second, then stood up straight with her arms up and out in the traditional victory stance, her body appearing like a block letter Y, and finally bowed to the rousing applause from the group on the control deck.
“Alright, let’s get serious. You all need to strap in and make ready for the landing sequence,” ordered Tom. He displayed a confident smile and now radiated a manner of leadership that had only been at half power for the past two and a half months. “You can stow that laptop now, Jackie. We won’t be needing it again until we’re on the ground.”
“Aye-Aye, Sir,” Jackie snapped him a smile followed by a smartly executed salute. But just as she reached for the laptop, it emitted another DING! The screen for the email was still open. Jackie looked at the subject line and sender. “Tom, there is another message here, addressed to me, but it is a message to you. It says: ‘A lot is happening here…..’,” Jackie read the message aloud and then interjected, “Commander Lewis? I wouldn’t have thought him to be a traitor. He must have been the one dad was talking about that suggested I apply to the program. But it was strange: dad said he didn’t want me to know who he was, supposedly because he didn’t want it to look like he was playing favorites. So dad never told me who had recommended me. It could have been any of a dozen big-wigs that dad knew.”