44 Orbital One

As Keith witnessed the altitude number on his screen going up like crazy, he tried to adjust his trajectory as best as he could.

The main engine of his rocket worked thanks to a reaction between liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, exploding at contact between each other. For the initial lift off phase, Keith had also installed some solid propellant boosters on his rockets which he got rid of early during the flight.

Recently, the oxygen and hydrogen tanks got emptied out and Keith decoupled the largest part of the rocket from the whole structure. The second stage of his rocket was using another type of liquid propellant made out of sodium and ammonia. Thanks to the fact that gravity was lower at such a high altitude and that there was less wind to slow down the rocket, the new fuel reservoir seemed to be drained at a much more acceptable pace.

The 'Orbital One' was now more than three hundred miles away from land, meaning Keith has been in the thermosphere for a while.

'Damn it, I should have started the maneouvers necessary to place myself into orbit by now!'

Keith was being hesitant. The closer to land he tried to maneouver, the more speed his rocket would have to reach to get itself into orbit. At such a pace, every movement of the rocket would be tenfold. However if he tried to go further he risked not having enough fuel, thus drifting into space.

He finally decided himself.

'However difficult it may be, I'm here to test myself and this pile of metal and technology.'

Keith purposefully opted for a direction getting him away from the spawn continent so that he would not crash near there if a problem occured. Not that it mattered anyways, because it was extremely unlikely that he ever travelled the distance separating him from Midgard in such a short time.

Then again, he would certainly make his rocket self-destruct instead of letting it crash, if only to respawn at his bed and save himself from going back to his base by swimming. As for the remaining parts of the rocket, most of it would most certainly burn through the atmosphere and ultimately fall into the ocean so there was no need to worry about someone getting across his rocket scraps.

Keith activated the side engines of his rocket alternately, trying to find a certain balance. He was so far in the procedures that he could not afford to do something wrong here.

He was slowly getting closer to a ninety degree angle from the planet, it was time for him to push the acceleration lever to its maximum before it was too late.

'Better go all out on this one.'

The structure shook violently after the sudden acceleration but held together pretty well. The fuel level in his tanks rapidly dropped by several percents in just a few seconds. He only had around thirty-five gallons of fuel remaining in his main reservoir, and he was not sure if it would be enough to get into orbit.

Keith prayed everything would go as planned from now on while adjusting the rocket's trajectory. However, just as the thought that he could actually make it crossed his mind, the auxilary engines necessary for the small adjustements suddenly stopped working.

'Shit, I forgot to check out the fuel remaining in the auxilary tanks.'

As Keith could not control the trajectory of the rocket without these engines, he stopped the main engine at once.

'What should I do? Why didn't I connect the two reservoirs for that kind of situation..?' Keith lamented. The only thing he could do for now was to observe his altitude sensor. If it went down by about a hundred miles, he would definitely have to activate the self-destruction process since it meant air was slowing his vehicle too much.

For now, he still had a small sliver of hope remaining. In fact, his orbit could be somewhat irregular but still complete, meaning the rocket's altitude would go up and down but not enough to be slowed down by the atmosphere.

As minutes passed, Keith started to feel exhausted. He had tried everything within his reach to get his rocket into this position, but there was nothing else that could be done to ensure the outcome. The wait was really gruesome as the vehicle only went down by a mile every two minutes or so.

Since he could not do anything regardless of what happened, Keith started thinking about his future. Recently, his courses got to another level and he had to take more and more time off of his schedule to study at home.

He would also need to think about what he would be doing after he got his economics diploma. He had already determined he wanted to work in the manufacturing sector but it could not be more vague. Would he try and found his own company or would he join an existing one? Both had pros and cons, but the actual problem was the job itself.

From jeweler to cabinetmaker, what would he choose to do? He had thought about trying to forge something one day but between his projects in real life and in Project Overworld he could not find the time necessary to do so.

'Mhh, I should take a week off of this game and think about this.' Keith concluded.

Since he just finished his first rocket, he decided that he would be taking notes about all the parts he could improve before taking a break from Project Overworld.

'Plus it has been quite a while since I last visited my parents. I should take the opportunity to check on them.'

Of course, Keith had been staying in contact with them through phone calls and messages, but he had not personally seen them in several months. Ever since he started playing Project Overworld to be more precise. Whenever he had free time, instead of focusing on his real world responsibilities, he would often forget about all this and play his favorite game.

'What a disgraceful child I am. They aren't even installed that far away from where I live.' Keith pitied himself.

When they met each other, his mother was a recently immigrated taiwanese named 'Chaila' who started living as a proletarian in a large fragance company. As for his father, 'Ethan', he was not a pure American but he had been living in New York for a few dozen years before he met Chaila during a festival. They only made a single child, but they raised him with lots love and education.

He considered himself lucky for what they have done for him.

Keith was suddenly pulled out of his thoughts by his rocket which started shaking uncontrollably.

'Oh shit, I reached the mesosphere already! Let's hope the temperature did not hinder the self-destruction mechanism.' Keith prayed while pressing a hard-to-reach button behind his back. A red colored light suddenly lit up, warning Keith that the bomb has been armed. 'Farewell, Orbital One, you will forever be remembered...' Keith inwardly honored the memory of his first rocket.

With a loud explosion, Keith's most important vehicle vanished into a pile of smoke and burning metal while his intact body fell into the ocean.

'Fortunately, I didn't bring anything important on me for that travel. I kinda expected this situation to occur so I only kept basic resources in my inventory.'

When a player would die, their avatar's body would lie around just like when they disconnected, but only for a few dozen of minutes. People could take this opportunity to loot the corpse but it also allowed one to recover his resources if he died not too far away from his respawn point. As Keith died in the ocean, it would be near impossible to recover his body. That was why he could not take any important resources with him on this first test flight, in addition that they would have been useless to him.

Keith waited for the 'respawn at your bed' option to unlock before hurrying towards his base's computer. He altered his rocket designs for a bit and noted a few ideas on what to improve for the next flight. He also indicated that he should review the balancing system's program so that it may actually take into account manual changes in the trajectory.

Afterwards, Keith finally disconnected from the game, deciding upon taking his long overdue break.