The Oceans of Jupiter

by featured writer | Jun 18, 2007 | Story

Author : Patricia Stewart, featured writer

The USS Jovian Explorer skimmed above the turbulent cloud tops of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. The large clamshell doors on its underbelly slowly opened and locked into position. Moments later, the restraining clamps released the Simon, a two-man research “submersible.” The nearly spherical vessel plummeted downward and disappeared into the yellow-orange mist. After safety deploying her charge, the mother ship activated her antigrav engines and lifted into a higher orbit to temporarily escape Jupiter’s lethal radiation belt.

When the submersible descended to 60,000 km above Jupiter’s core, the pilot, Jonah Grumby activated the antigrav thrusters and gradually slowed their decent, eventually leveling off at 50,000 km. Although the craft had the ability to maneuver, they elected to ride the winds to reduce buffeting. “OK, Hector, you can begin collecting data.”

“Roger that. Wow, this atmosphere is pretty soupy. Besides hydrogen and helium, sensors show: methane, ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, condensed water vapor, and a bunch of other hydrocarbons. I’m also picking up the larger molecules too. At least ten amino acids: arginine, glycine, lysine, valine… Well, this is interesting. There are polypeptides, and some pretty complex proteins too. Hey, I think we have all of the ingredients for life here. Let’s drop down another 10,000 klicks. If the atmosphere thickens much more it might behave like a liquid. Maybe we can find some single celled organisms.

“Z minus 10,000 it is. In fact, let’s have a look outside.” As the ship descended, he opened the iris covering the one-meter in diameter observation port, and activated the floodlights. It looked like an upward flowing snowstorm. When they leveled off, the streaking “snowflakes” resolved into small randomly moving specks. Under the magnifying effect of the observation port, however, the “snowflakes” appeared to be little jellyfish-like creatures with four flapping wings. As they prepared to collect specimens to take back to the mother ship, a “flying fish” about the size of a large dog flew past the observation port. It had a huge gaping mouth almost as large as its body. “I guess it’s a filter feeder,” Hector suggested. “I don’t see any eyes. I wonder how it knows where it’s going?”

“It probably doesn’t need eyes. There’s no natural light this deep. I’m going to go further down. Their food chain must be based on Chemosynthesis. Jupiter produces three times more energy than it receives from the sun. There must be something akin to hydrothermal vents, or maybe an entire hydrothermal ocean that’s driving the whole ecosystem.” At 28,000 km, they plunged into a liquid ocean. The ship rocked and creaked, but the force field maintained the hull’s integrity. A three meter long streamlined creature, about half the size of the Simon, approached the submersible. It also had a large mouth, including an impressive arsenal of teeth. “Well, well, I guess this menacing looking fella must be the top of the food chain.”

As they watched the hypnotic movements of the new creature as it investigated the submersible’s lights, a distant shadow began to grow larger, and larger, and larger. By the time it reached the illumination field, all that was visible were two rows of teeth, as one row passed above, and the other below, the Simon. “No, Jonah,” said Hector, “I believe this guy is the top of the food chain.”

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Beyond Beliefs

by submission | Jun 16, 2007 | Story

Author : Glenn S. Austin

It was always the same, Bojorn counted on it, and he was never disappointed. He had fine tuned the process over time, but the basics were still the same. Part of this tuning had been to add an anthropologist to his crew, and it had made the selection go so much easier.

A Supreme Being or their future selves, that choice was always the toughest. The anthropologist made deciding easier, as she’d found an algorithm to make the choice, and so far it had been dead on.

All self aware intelligent species had a belief system. It didn’t matter how far along in their development they were, vestiges of age old beliefs were clung to by every species. Beliefs that were born out of ignorance when they were just starting to have a vague notion of their own existence, wanting to explain the world and cosmos around their barely surviving civilization. Wanting to believe that they had some control over their future and their destiny. Unwilling to release any belief to history, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Some worlds that Bojorn had visited, and profited from, held a singular world wide belief, and some like the one that was being categorized by his staff right now, were fragmented by many.

He was surprised on the occasions when they found a civilization that had achieved great strides in technology; early attempts to control atoms, flights into their solar system, and an understanding of the size and nature of the universe, but still held onto the beliefs that had guided them when they had first looked at the stars and wondered.

Some of these were tricky, and he would have to use the “I am from your Future” scenario to gain an entrance into these civilizations and leave with what he needed often simply by asking. It was the better choice, when possible, as they always seemed to understand that he would eventually have to “return to the future”, which made his departure with another full cargo hold of riches that much easier.

He studied the planet on the screen as his anthropologist handed him her report, and verbally summed it up for him.

“Looks like the best angle is the returning Deity routine.” She explained. “There are three or four major belief systems that are awaiting the return of their Supreme Being. If you go in with that angle, you should get buy in from most of the planet’s population, and we should be gone before they start to ask which one of them you came back for.”

Bojorn looked up from the report. “Alright then, if you’re sure that’s the best option.

Where would you suggest I should be returning from?

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Task Force

by featured writer | Jun 14, 2007 | Story

Author : Patricia Stewart, featured writer

“I’ll take two,” said Joe Ferry, the rookie member of the Preemptive Anti-Criminal Activities Task Force. It was traditional for the elite four-man teams to play poker prior to the start of the shift. It was a way to relax and bond before the mainframe department head handed out their assignments.

“So, Joe, how did your blind date go last night?” inquired the team leader, Mark Robbins. “I’ll take three.”

“Not so good, Sergeant. I thought it was going real well, until I mentioned to her that I work for PACATF. Man, she ran away so fast, I swear I saw her red shift. What’s up with that anyway? We’re the good guys. Why does the public think we’re monsters?”

“That’s easy, Joe. They think we’re spying on them. They think we have a time portal, or something, that looks into the future to see if they do anything illegal. If they do, we arrest them preemptively. Then throw them in jail for crimes they were about to commit.”

“Is that true? I thought our information came from informants, or high tech surveillance equipment? Time machines? Are you sure?”

“Did you really think that we achieved a 99.8% conviction rate using moles and wire taps?”

“I never really thought about it before. I just assumed the mainframe had irrefutable evidence. Is there really a time machine?”

“That’s not our concern, Joe. The mainframe gives us a name and address, and we go pick up the perp. That’s our job. After that, it becomes the judicial system’s problem.”

“Wow. I don’t know if I like that. To be arrested for a crime you might commit.”

“Will commit,” corrected Robbins. “Why do you think the first word in our task force is ‘Preemptive’?”

“There’s got to be hard evidence. Not the word of some computer who says it saw someone commit a crime a year from now. How do we know that’s the true timeline? Maybe it’s an alternate reality. Some other future. Not our future. This is wrong. No wonder they hate us.”

Before Robbins could respond, his communicator signaled. “Listen, kid, we’ll continue this discussion when we get back. In the meantime, keep these accusations to yourself. Understood?” Robbins activated his audio implant to take the call. “Yes sir. I understand sir. Right away sir.”

All four men stood up, and began collecting their gear. “Hold on,” instructed Robbins as he reached into his equipment bag and extracted a pair of wrist restraints. “Joe, you are under arrest for the future destruction of government property. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you will say or do can be used against you…”

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Nailed

by submission | Jun 13, 2007 | Story

Author : JTHeyman

My cell door opened, revealing a woman dressed all in grey. I was dead. With an ordinary interrogator/judge, I would have had a chance. Not with one of the Grey Ladies.

“United States Time Court Interrogation/Trial 66017002,” she said in a voice that was about as close to mechanical as a human could get. Her optical implants scanned me on every frequency from deep infrared up to x-ray. Her audio receptors would catch every decibel. Scans were transmitted to medical computers for instant analysis. Lying was not an option.

In that flat voice, the Grey Lady said, “First charge: one count, unlawful use of timeslip equipment. Plea?”

“Guilty,” I said. That was just a misdemeanor.

“Sentence: one year, stasis.”

I nodded. A year in stasis was easy. Unfortunately….

“Second charge: one count, disruption of timeline. Plea?”

That one, on the other hand, carried a death sentence. “Guilty,” I admitted sadly.

“Felony or misdemeanor?”

I was confused. Since when was screwing with the timeline a misdemeanor? “I … don’t understand.”

“Pursuant to Temporal Law 2051-C-9, disruption of timeline is a felony if resultant temporal shockwave would reset current timespace without intervention. Amendment 507 specifies that if disruption results in an action that is consistent with recorded history, said offense is reduced to misdemeanor, penalties appropriate to reduced charge. Felony or misdemeanor?”

“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly realizing that if the law had changed, I might get out of this alive.

“Testify: events of recent timeline incursion.”

“It was a standard job,” I said. “Timeslip into the past. Grab something ordinary that no one would miss. Timeslip out again. No one gets hurt.”

“Testify: nature of disruption.”

“It was like this. My clients,” I began.

“The Association for the Re-Creation of Chivalry,” the Grey Lady interjected. “ARCC. Continue.”

“ARCC. Right. You see, these guys in ARCC said they were going to re-create a jousting tournament. They paid me to go back and get something authentic to give the participants a thrill. They said no one would miss a cask of genuine medieval horseshoe nails. Anyway, I found the nails and gave a bushel of oranges to the guy who had them. They were seedless oranges,” I added quickly. “There’s no way he could have planted them.”

“Timespace coordinates?”

“Um … eleventh century, France, somewhere on the northern coast.”

The Grey Lady paused, accessing the relevant historical data. “Analysis complete. Second charge: one count, disruption of timeline, misdemeanor. Sentence: five years, stasis.”

I breathed a sigh of relief but I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Uh, by the way … how could a couple of nails disrupt the timeline?”

The Grey Lady looked at me and then said, “The displaced cask of nails was intended for the cavalry of William of Normandy. Historical records confirm: unable to field his full cavalry, he was defeated at the Hastings, England, 1066. Interrogation/Trial 66017002 complete. The Time Court of His Imperial Majesty Harold XXVI is adjourned.”

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