Chapter 04

Chapter 04

The Making of an Astronaut

Grief did not leave Richie Mensah.

It hardened.

The world outside Mensah Technologies was still bleeding—curfews, ration lines, emergency broadcasts looping the same grim statistics—but inside the underground hangar, time bent to a different rhythm. Measured not in days, but in progress.

The shuttle had a name now.

DAEDALUS-1.

Richie stood beneath its skeletal frame, helmet tucked under his arm, staring up at the machine his father had once imagined and then buried. Carbon-fiber wings. Modular life-support cores. A research bay designed not for glory, but for survival.

“You’re trying to build a coffin,” one of the engineers said quietly.

Richie didn’t turn. “No. I’m building an escape.”

Training began in silence.

There was no ceremony. No press. Only contracts signed under emergency powers and government seals stamped in red. Ghana—and the rest of the continent—was desperate. Any path toward a cure, no matter how extreme, was worth backing.

Richie enrolled with the Association of Aerospace, Marine and Automobile Engineering at KNUST (AAES-KNUST) under a classified acceleration program. His days blurred into simulations, centrifuges, and sleepless nights filled with equations and failure reports.

Piloting nearly killed him the first week.

The G-forces crushed his chest, stole his vision, turned the world into a tunnel of static. He vomited in his helmet, blacked out, woke up furious.

Again.

And again.

“Most people quit by now,” his instructor said after one particularly brutal session.

“I’m not most people,” Richie replied hoarsely.

“No,” the man agreed. “Most people still have something to lose.”

At night, Richie returned to the lab.

Alone.

He worked through Deborah’s old research notes, tracing her handwriting like a map. Her theories—once dismissed as ambitious—now aligned terrifyingly well with the data from orbit.

The pathogen was adaptive. Intelligent in its behavior, if not its intent. It responded to Earth’s environment like a parasite that had found perfect conditions.

But space changed it.

Microgravity destabilized its replication. Cosmic radiation disrupted its structure.

Richie tested the theory on himself.

Small doses. Monitored exposure. His blood samples glowed faintly under certain spectrums, the pathogen already present in his system—dormant, patient.

He didn’t tell anyone.

The world fractured further.

Cities burned. Black markets thrived on counterfeit cures. Militarized research zones replaced universities. Whispers spread that the virus wasn’t an accident—that it was a probe, or a test, or something left behind.

Richie shut out the noise.

He trained underwater to simulate zero gravity. Learned spacecraft repair blindfolded. Studied android interfaces until he could rewrite code in his sleep.

The android arrived in parts.

A neutral voice module. Articulated limbs. A core AI designed for maintenance, diagnostics, and psychological stabilization.

“What should we call it?” an engineer asked.

Richie paused.

“KORA,” he said. “Knowledge-Oriented Robotic Assistant.”

KORA’s optical sensors flickered to life.

“Hello, Richie Mensah,” it said. “I am online.”

For the first time since Deborah’s death, Richie smiled.

His father watched him from a distance.

“You’re becoming someone I don’t recognize,” he said one evening as they stood in the hangar, DAEDALUS-1 looming above them.

“I hope so,” Richie replied.

“This mission… it wasn’t meant to be yours.”

Richie met his father’s eyes. “It always was.”

The old man nodded, pride and fear warring in equal measure.

By 2039, Richie held every flight license Ghana could issue—and several no African had ever held before. His body bore the cost: scars from training accidents, a tremor in his left hand, eyes that no longer slept easily.

But his mind was clear.

The simulations were conclusive.

The pathogen became inert beyond Earth’s magnetic field.

Contained.

Vulnerable.

Curable.

In space.

The launch date was set.

March 17, 2040.

As Richie stood alone beneath the stars that night, Accra quiet in curfewed darkness, he whispered a promise into the sky.

“I’m coming.”

The universe did not answer.

But it was listening.