Summary: Written and read by ApocD. Streis buckled in as they hit the atmosphere. Through the porthole, he saw bright light engulf the ship. Rachel Carter sat beside him, silently watching the ship's vitals on the control screen. It had been a long time since Streis had reentered like this; on his last return from the moon, he had used the African Elevator. Although it had been much more efficient than pushing ships through the atmosphere, the construction of a replacement elevator was still under debate. Besides the obvious costs of constructing such a monster, the various African governments involved had to consider the safety concerns as well. After at first being considered an act of terrorism, it was now known that the collapse of the African Elevator had been caused by a design flaw. After apologizing to the public for the immense loss of life and property, the entire engineering team had taken their own lives. Streis had seen the video on the Net; countless nights he had sat alone in back booths in dirty bars around the world and watched that video, watched the life slip from their faces. Despite all of these difficulties involved with replacing the elevator, Streis couldn't help feeling that society had taken a step back. Pushing ships through atmosphere was a very 20th Century thing to do. He still couldn't understand why neither the Americans nor the Europeans had built an elevator; maybe they'd just lost interest in progress. Streis had once heard a historian say that human history was a progression of two steps forward and one back. He agreed.
