[b]Year 4412, eight years before first contact[/b]

Riemann stands a couple hundred meters from the rocket, sunglasses shielding his eyes from the bright glare of the SRBs. The sound of it this close is deafening.

He turns away, pocketing his glasses--the rocket rising behind him through the cool night air of the UCS's southern coastline--and jogs back to mission control. He is sixty now but still vigorous, with at least another decade or two left in him. But his friends were dying--Fermi had cancer; Bessel had been killed by a Taiben raid in the northern Corporate Badlands; Ulam killed himself and another thirty other scientists in a failed nuclear test. Neumann had been clinically dead for almost a decade now. Soon it would only be him and Reines--and Ingle, who, at ninety-five looked as though he would outlive them all. And the next generation--raised in a time of peace and prosperity--would be poor replacements.

Inside, mission control is an open multi-tiered series of lofts and platforms, like a stack of step pyramids. The past century of advancements in computer science is represented, from hand-cranked analog cams to new silicon computers from Sanctus. A vast screen dominates the room, stretching from one wall to the other. It oscillates between cameras on the ground and in space, focusing on the rocket as it ascends in the twilight, just keeping pace with the terminator.

Riemann's part in this launch ended a month and a half ago. He's here only as an observer. He climbs a staircase leading up to the balcony and takes a seat next to what remains of his oldest friend: John von Neumann.

Neumann had been dead for almost a decade--a decade ago, he had spent half a year aboard a poorly shielded space station, and returned a cripple, muscles degenerated and suffering from total organ failure. And yet here sits, watching the screen, silent but for his rasping breath and the mechanized exhale of his artificial lungs, the thump of his robotic heart.

On the viewscreen, they can see the ship emerging from the atmosphere, the launch stage firing its engines before jettisoning its payload and falling back to Asphodel. "It's... beautiful..." Neumann says, every word a gasp.

"The first of three." Riemann says, forcing a smile.

"I... won't live... to see the others..." he wheezes, confirming what Riemann had suspected. "I couldn't... have hoped... for a better... legacy." Neumann reaches down with a decrepit arm, and switches off his life support. "A better... funeral pyre..."

Riemann moves to stop him, to switch the machines back on, but that thin, frail, decrepit arm grabs his and holds it with paralyzing strength. "I die... today... in triumph or... tomorrow in... agony..." he turns away from Riemann, eyes back to the screen and his arm goes slack.

Riemann opens his mouth to speak but finds he cannot. On the screen, [i]Neumann[/i] ignites its atomic motors. Riemann sits beside his friend and watches him die--and ascend into the heavens, propelled forward by nuclear fire.
[img=http://i.imgur.com/nPVEm49.jpg]