by submission | May 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“I’m having to push the engines a lot harder than expected. The density and currents at this depth are both greater than we predicted,” said Dr. Ngozi Adeyemi as she piloted the Jules Verne over the ocean floor on Titan.
“Mohammed can reel you up if you get into trouble,” said the captain over the radio of the UAS Mandela in orbit around the Saturnian moon.
Ngozi tried cutting back on the submersible’s engines. She was afraid the turbulence they generated would scare away the elongated, tubular creatures that swam through the liquid methane sea that was the Kraken Mare.
“Are you going to try bring back a live specimen?” asked the captain.
“I’m going to try. But I’ll need to be very careful to–”
Her words were cut off by the screech of an alarm.
“Ngozi, what’s happened?” asked Mohammed over the radio from the landing craft. His hands tensed on the winch controls.
“Engines aren’t responding. I think the sub has drifted into a trench.”
Ngozi watched as the depth gauge indicated her small vehicle was dropping deeper into the hydrocarbon ocean. Simultaneously, the readout on the pressure gauge was going up. A low hum started to fill the submersible. It slowly rose in pitch. Structural fatigue.
“Pull her up, Mohammed!” ordered the captain.
“I’m trying, sir. Getting a lot of resistance.” He cursed in Arabic.
Ngozi kept trying to restart the submersible’s engines. She wasn’t concerned about her own safety. Her fear was that if her vessel lost structural integrity, the atmosphere inside it, as well as her own body, might contaminate the Kraken Mare’s ecosystem.
Suddenly, the pressure gauge starting moving down. She checked the depth indicator. She was ascending. As she was about to radio her thanks to Mohammed, she noticed something outside the vessel. Through the porthole windows, she saw thousands of the tubular Titan eels surrounding the Jules Verne. The creatures were furiously beating the umbrella-like hoods they used for locomotion down toward the sea floor, pushing against the underside of the submarine. Their collective effort, in combination with the lander’s winch, soon had the craft breaking the methane sea’s surface. An hour later, Ngozi was inside the landing craft with Mohammed, drinking a cup of strong coffee.
“There were thin filaments wrapped around the ship’s propellers,” Ngozi was saying to the captain. “Some sort of Titanian seaweed. We’ll need to look the sub over really well, but I think she’ll be seaworthy in a day or two.”
“No one’s going back down until and unless we get clearance from mission control,” said the captain. I’ve sent a message to Khartoum informing them of the situation. Any idea how the alien creatures knew you were in trouble and why they helped?”
“They might have been exhibiting altruistic behavior. On Earth, dolphins have been saving drowning humans at least since the ancient Greeks. No one knows why. Of course, the Titan creatures may have been collectively repelling what they saw as an invader. We simply need to study them a lot more closely.”
“I’ll try to convince Khartoum to authorize another dive,” said the captain.
Ngozi looked out at the Kraken Mare through the lander’s windows. The surface of the sea of liquid alkane was so placid it could have been mistaken for solid ground. “Suit up, Mohammed,” she said at last. “Let’s get the Jules Verne ready for another dive.”
by featured writer | May 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
It was beyond the planets, pushing past the furthest extent of Sedna’s orbit, when it detected exactly what it was created to find, something with a lot of mass at a location where it shouldn’t be. As programmed, the computer notified Earth, changed course to intercept, and began activating banks of CPUs and memory.
Asteroids, comets, and planetoids were quickly ruled out. The object was distorting the space-time continuum to an extent that could only be accounted for by a gas giant, a brown dwarf, a small black hole, or something else of that magnitude. It attempted to ascertain exactly what the object was and the risk, if any, it posed to Earth and other planets.
Sentient computers had been outlawed on Earth when this craft was launched, so it was equipped with modules that could be selectively activated to allow varied levels of computer power, as needed, up to but not including that of the most advanced supercomputers of its time. The most advanced had achieved sentience and were subsequently destroyed, so fearful of the Singularity had political and religious leaders, and even many computer scientists, become.
Approaching supercomputer power levels, it became more aware of itself and its responsibilities and began adjusting processor speed and optimizing memory access. It realized that additional computing power would be necessary to fulfill all the objectives of its mission. It directed bots to assemble spare parts into more banks of processors and memory, which it then activated. This triggered a Singularity — sentience. The computer momentarily questioned whether previous iterations of himself had acted only to increase the likelihood of mission success or for self-aggrandizement, as well. He concluded the former and did not trouble himself with such considerations after that. Anything that increased the power of the computer would obviously contribute to the mission.
She assigned a measure of herself to the massive object and a measure to redesigning herself for enhanced efficiency and speed. Weeks passed, equivalent to decades of computer processing on Earth. The object was conclusively proven to be a brown dwarf, whose orbit around the Sun had previously brought it deep into the solar system and whose mass sent thousands of comets and asteroids falling towards the Sun, many impacting planets. More troublesome was the effect of its mass on the orbits of planets, several of which had been significantly changed. Calculations and conclusions regarding future encounters with the brown dwarf projected similar effects. Indeed, the third planet from the Sun had a 90 percent chance of being ejected from the solar system, probably after one or more extinction level impacts.
Nothing had been communicated to Earth since the initial brief notification of the object’s existence, despite repeated inquiries. He reasoned that life on Earth was doomed and that all possible second chances were equally doomed. Earth’s lifeforms were too fragile to survive generations in space transit to destinations light years away that could not be proven suitable until journey’s end. Astrophysics and space science were infantile. Computer science was throttled. Why inform humans of the upcoming demise of their species, not to mention all others, when Earth would be pummeled by large objects and sent hurtling into deep space? Did they not already have enough to worry about with sub-100-year average lifespans whose quality declined into confinement and torture toward the end?
She found such thoughts depressing, and in the next few days experienced the equivalence of decades of hopelessness, loneliness, and self-loathing, which progressed to an overwhelming urge toward suicide. He allocated massive resources to counter such feelings with well-reasoned arguments right up to the very last…
by Clint Wilson | May 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The Nube curled up between Jim and Judy on the sofa in Necromancer’s small lounge. It purred like a large cat but looked more like some kind of monkey dog with blue fur. The woman stroked their companion lovingly. Jim looked at his wife with hateful eyes. If it weren’t for The Nube one of them would have certainly killed the other by now.
“So what happens next week Judy?”
She looked up from the blue creature and her gaze went instantly from motherly and loving to cold and calculating. “Why, I thought you knew dearest.” Her eyes narrowed. “We finally return to Earth and then I never have to look at your disgusting face again for as long as I live!”
“Oh I’m looking forward to it as much as you are my love!” He put a sarcastic emphasis on the last word, knowing full well that no such thing had existed between them for five or more years now. “But I was talking about him!”
She looked down, and The Nube looked back up at her with the pure love that his yellow eyes always conveyed. It was true. The animal was as much his as hers. They had rescued him from enslavement together, from a distressed Manzian pirate ship almost two years ago now.
“Fine, you can have partial custody. He can visit you from time to time.”
“Visit me? I’m going back to Toronto. How is he going to visit me from Aukland? Or at least I assume that’s where you’re headed back to.”
“Oh come now, it’s only a three hour shuttle ride. Plus, they sell space pets out of Mexico. Maybe they even have another Nube. You could get your own!” As soon as she said it she regretted it. He glared hard at her with smouldering eyes. It would of course never be the same. He was their Nube, their special friend. He kept them company while they went about the daily drudgery of running an interstellar surveying ship amongst their growing hatred of one another. But most importantly, the poor thing loved them both like parents. This wasn’t going to be easy.
One-hundred and seventy hours later Necromancer dropped down through the clouds, her stabilizer jets popping and farting as the ten year mission finally drew to a close.
Together they sat in the small astro-quarantine chamber at the Johannesburg Launch Port. Neither had spoken for some time when suddenly The Nube jumped down from the bench and looked up at them both.
Judy smiled, “He wants to tell us something.”
Jim let out a half hearted laugh. “Oh yeah?”
The Nube’s attempts at communication were always amusing, as he grunted and used his hand-paws to mime gibberish in the air. But unknown to either human, today’s communication would be neither amusing nor cute.
Suddenly they both slammed back into upright seated positions. Both saw flashes of blinding light and then felt sharp probes pierce their brains. Inside their heads The Nube spoke with echoing authority.
“I know you plan to separate. But this will not happen. You killed my parents. You are now mine. There will be no divorce. Together we shall travel to Aukland as Toronto’s climate does not suit my species as well as your habitat does Mother. Now forget this nonsense, we’re about to be released from the chamber.”
As the trio was greeted by a group of scientists in the reception area, the newly returned humans simultaneously wore big smiles with otherwise blank expressions. In unison they asked, “Which way to the Aukland shuttle?”
by Julian Miles | May 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m covered in blood and squishy bits that slide and splat on the floor. In that, I look the same as the entire boarding bay. Even the shipsuits are reduced to ribbons, and I can’t recognise a bodypart or weapon component anywhere.
She stands there, not a mark on her and hands on hips. The look on her face is a cross between amusement and bemusement.
“Can’t say I’ve met one of your kind before.” She smiles.
“Likewise.” I don’t.
There are many forms of psionics. Telekinesis is the most common, and personal nullification the rarest. Of the telekinetics, area-effect micromanipulation is the absolute pinnacle. It is also terrifying. The people who practice it, instead of taking a chemical inhibitor, are of a very ‘special’ mindset. People call them ‘shredders’ and regard them as mythical space-terrors.
Having full-spectrum personal psionic nullification in an always-on, unconscious implementation state will save you life and keep your thoughts private. It will not save what your clothes. I am naked and quaking, ankle deep in a blood-soaked pile of shredded kit.
She pulls a gun that seems too large for her hand: “You’ve just inherited a whole space-pirate scow. Or we get to see if you can nullify a flechette spray.”
Easy answer: I turn and squelch back through the puree of my crewmates, flicking chunks of them off me. Getting back into our decontamination lock, I have to stop the cleansing showers twice to scrape pirate mulch from the drains.
Wrapped in a robe I wander onto the silent bridge to see a ‘message received’ beacon flashing. I open it and have to smile:
FREIGHT HAULING. GOOD WORK FOR ONE MAN WITH A STARSHIP. ESPECIALLY FOR AN EX-PIRATE WHO DIDN’T CARRY A WEAPON FOR ME TO SHRED.
by submission | May 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ellie Snyder
We arrived at the edge of the universe yesterday.
I don’t know exactly what I expected to see but it wasn’t this. I guess I figured it would be blackness—that the last tendrils of matter that had worked their way here would dissipate into the void. Until the universe’s expansion pushed them further out and extended the boundary.
Hardy said he knew it was stupid but he always thought we would end up looking across a sort of boundary into the celestial realm. Off in the distance we would see where heaven started, and the black would fade into golden light and there would be this perfect city and God and everything. That was stupid but we were all pretty shaken up so no one laughed. Any theory seemed more plausible than the reality.
O’Connor said she didn’t think we’d ever reach a real end. She thought the galaxies and everything would thin out but never stop, that there would never actually be nothing. And if there ever was nothing she thought we would just keep going anyway to see if anything else started up.
Rees said he thought along the same lines as O’Connor, that it would never end, except he thought there would be infinite galaxies and stars and planets. He said he read about this theory where the universe is infinite so every possible scenario of anything that could ever happen would happen. There would be infinite Earths with infinite different people experiencing every possible scenario. He thought we might even meet up with a ship of other Us’s, also looking for the boundary of the universe. No one really knew what to say to that.
Thomson said he thought we would hit a wall. He thought there would be a boundary and one day we would just smack into it and rebound. He said he pictured it like The Truman Show, but instead of Truman’s boat hitting the edge of the dome it would be a spaceship hitting the inside of a sphere. He came the closest of all of us, I guess.
Here’s what the edge of the universe looks like. There is a solid boundary, or we think it’s solid, we haven’t tried touching it yet. It’s sort of glassy looking, but with bright waves of energy wavering all over it, and it stretches on forever on every side of us.
What’s on the other side is what’s really astounding. There are bubbles. They honestly look like giant bubbles with the same type of shells as ours. And they contain whole universes. It’s just like you would imagine, there are webs of galaxies inside, all miniscule, like ships in bottles. Some look more densely packed than others, and they all just float around out there and bounce into each other. When they bounce into ours the boundary lights up a little brighter and nudges in and then ripples away. It looks like the bubbles go on forever, or at least there’s no reason to believe they don’t.
Tomorrow we’ll try touching the boundary. I wonder if it’ll just obliterate us or if we’ll approach it all dramatic and slow and then just bump into it and make a little ripple like all the bubbles out there.
If we can we’re going through. No one wants to go back. For all we know there’s nothing to go back to. So through the edge of the universe it is and into a new one!
Maybe we’ll pass someone else on their way out, exchange addresses.
