by submission | Jun 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
General Mortensen glanced again at the timer on the wall, ticking down the minutes until the door at the other end of this glorified closet would open. Twenty programs he oversaw for DARPA, and this was the only one that really felt weird. The door behind him led to the outside world, the door in front of him to a tiny control room overlooking a small habitat which simulated a space capsule headed for Mars. Separating the two was this airlock and a few billion dollars worth of computers and sensors. Everyone thought it was just a NASA simulator, only a handful knew it was also something else.
The countdown reached zero. Mortensen stepped into the control booth and the sweaty handshake of the idealistic young scientist who had conceived of the project.
“Doctor Robeson, good to see you again.”
“General, welcome back, sorry about the wait but we must characterize every atom for this to work!”
“Yes, I know. So why don’t you just show me what you wanted to show me, so I can go somewhere more hospitable?”
“Of course, General. As you know, this facility has been upgraded to allow us to track the location over time of each and every atom within the boundary. The computers are then supposed to use that information, the basic laws of physics, and a ton of processing power to extrapolate backwards and determine the location of every atom within since the boundary was established.”
“Yes, and it hasn’t been working. Heisenberg and all that.”
“Very good, General, but the problem was mostly just time – we may be dealing with imperfect data, but with enough time and a closed system we can get incredibly accurate!”
“So it’s working now?”
“Yes!!”
Robeson bent over the controls, brought up video on two displays.
“The one on the left is truth – habitat footage from two months ago. The one on the right is the extrapolation. They line up within measurable limits – every word, every twitch exactly as predicted!”
Mortensen stared at the displays, gathering his thoughts. Did the man not realize what he had discovered?
“General, just think – someday we could extrapolate the entire history of the human race. Every big question answered!! This will be the biggest innovation in science EVER!!”
“I see. It really is perfect? I need you to be absolutely sure, willing to bet your life on it.”
“Perfect General, perfect.”
“Can it predict forward? Predict what will happen in this booth in, say, five minutes?”
“It should be able to – I haven’t tried, spoilers and all that, but I can run it for you I suppose!”
The scientist bent over his controls, entered the time differential, and sat back while the computers processed the result. A scant minute later, a video started on the simulation screen. He leaned forward, trying to make sense of what he saw, before turning, panicked, to the General.
Who was now holding a pistol.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Your simulation was just physics and chemistry, and it is perfect. Every twitch, every word, you said. Can’t you see what that means? No soul, no free will. We are here in this room not by choice, but because the laws of physics said we must be. Do you know what will happen if we let that knowledge out of this room? What people will do when they know that nothing they do is their choice or responsibility? Your computer knows. Look!”
Robeson turned back to the screen, in time to see the simulation go suddenly black. A second later, so did everything else.
by Patricia Stewart | May 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Damn, there’s nothing there. I don’t like this one bit,” said NASA’s Jim Mason to his fellow astronomer. “Based on the perturbations to the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, the computer says the damn thing has 45% of the mass of the sun.”
“That’s impossible,” replied Jed Simpson. “We’d be able to see a star that big. Even a dwarf star that died ten billion years ago would still be omitting in the infrared. And, if it were a black hole, Chandra would have picked up x-rays as it gobbled up Kuiper belt objects. Let’s face it Jim; it’s some kind of dark mass.”
“Dark mass? You mean Baryonic? Are you nuts?”
“No, no, not dark matter, dark mass. I mean some kind of super-Jupiter that didn’t go nuclear.”
“Well, that’s just stupid,” snapped Mason. “All of a sudden, the four fundamental forces don’t apply to your super-Jupiter. Are we supposed to ignore a hundred years of proven science? What’s next, the Earth is really flat? Let’s stay focused Jeb. There has to be a good reason that we can’t see anything.”
“Okay,” replied Jeb, raising the ante. “Maybe it’s stealth technology. Some alien race is attacking us using some gigantic invisible spaceship. How about that?”
Missing the sarcasm, Mason latched onto the idea. “Hmmm. Okay, let’s follow that path. But, it doesn’t have to be an invasion. Maybe it’s just a natural progression of an alien technology. For example, could it be a Dyson Sphere? Maybe they didn’t intend for it to be invisible. They just made it so efficient that energy doesn’t escape. We can calculate its coordinates from the effects on the gas giants. All we have to do is aim the Hubble II at it and see what’s there.”
A few days later, the Hubble II revealed that the anomaly was a Dyson Sphere, approximately forty million kilometers in diameter, which was probably surrounding an M2V red dwarf.
When the giant sphere crossed Jupiter’s orbit, it launched thousands of massive spaceships, which swarmed through the asteroid belt like angry hornets. As the weeks progressed, the sphere continued on its way past the sun and out of the solar system, but the spaceships stayed behind. Then, one by one, the spaceships left the asteroid belt and flew toward the sun; stopping just outside the orbit of Mercury. They would only stay a day or so, and then return to the asteroid belt is steady fashion.
The two NASA astronomers, along with seven billion concerned Earthmen, watched the extraterrestrial caravan for months. “Why don’t they answer our transmissions?” asked Mason. “Surely they know we are here. What do you think they are doing?”
“It’s obvious. They’re constructing another Dyson Sphere. They are probably autonomous construction ships. There’s no one there to answer us.”
“But if they are building a Dyson Sphere near Mercury’s orbit, won’t that block out the sun. The Earth will freeze.”
“Oh, we won’t have to worry about that,” replied a somber Simpson. “The asteroid belt only had 4% of the mass of our moon. There isn’t enough material there to construct a Dyson sphere. It’s just easier to get to. Eventually, they’ll need more raw materials. They will have to dismantle all four inner planets, including the Earth to get it. I estimate we only have a couple of years to figure out how to stop the invasion.”
by submission | Apr 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The captain repeatedly tapped his mesothoracic exoskeleton contemplatively and looked out the main viewport at the blue and white planet below. Two-thirds of the surface was underwater and its atmosphere was over 20 percent oxygen. How could life, let alone civilization, have developed on such an inhospitable world? He imagined what it would be like to set tarsal pad on such a planet without a spacesuit. A few moments of unfathomable agony followed in quick succession by unconsciousness and death. And yet down there was exactly where he was going. In less than half a cycle he would be standing right in front of…them.
The group with whom he would be meeting called themselves the United Nations Security Council. The ship’s interpretation computer had some difficulty in rendering a translation. This world did not have a single, unified hive-government but a collection of “nation-states”. The computer could approximate the words, but not the underlying meaning. But more alarming than either the murderous environment of the planet or the inhabitant’s odd patchwork of political authority was the appearance of the dominant species.
The captain waved a carpal pad at a control and a holographic image appeared in front of him. At the sight of it, he suppressed a shudder. They called themselves “humans”. This particular human, the United Nations representative with whom he had communicated only a few cycles earlier, was a female of the species. It was like something out of a horror story. A soft, pale integument covered its face. When it spoke, its jaws moved up and down rather than from side to side. Its skeleton was on the inside, not the outside. But the most disturbing thing about this ghastly, inside-out creature was its eyes. The thing gazed at him not with gracefully recessed, multifaceted eyes, but with glistening, bulging orbs of white with brown irises.
That, thought the captain as he looked at the monstrous alien before him, is why we’re out here. We could have done this across interstellar distances with radio waves or lasers. We could have sent robotic probes in our place. But that wouldn’t have been true exploration. We came here to see what The Other is like. To literally see it. To set all four tarsal pads on another world, walk up to an intelligent alien, and look it…in the eye.
“Disgusting,” said the navigator in a low voice. He was looking at the human in the hologram. “Nightmarish,” whispered the communications officer.
Suddenly, the captain snapped his elytra closed over his vestigial wings. The bridge became silent. He turned to his crew. “We’re going down there,” he said sternly. “We’re going to make first contact with those people. And they are people. Don’t forget that. This isn’t some science fiction story where ‘aliens’ look and act like us. This is reality.”
Elytra snapped closed all over the bridge in response. The captain had made his point.
“Don your encounter suits,” the captain ordered. “Navigator, begin de-orbit sequence.”
by submission | Apr 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Dr. José Zhang gently rotated an 800 credit bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. The price of champagne had skyrocketed in the last several weeks in anticipation of the completion of Project Hermes. Zhang’s colleague, Dr. Ian Bartlett, looked at the champagne with a skeptical eye. “You know there’s a good chance this isn’t going to work, José? I mean, there was no practical way to do any real field test. Nothing works right the first time, you know?”
Zhang smiled and said, “‘Your royal Highness, members of the Academy, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great honor I accept the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first successful space fold drive engine test in history. But with all due humility I must point out that without the constant naysaying and discouragement of my fellow scientist here, this project would have been completed a lot sooner.’ What do you think?”
Bartlett tried to suppress a smile and failed. He inspected the champagne. “Alright, if this works, we celebrate. If it fails, we drown our sorrows. We’re covered either way.”
Bartlett took a seat beside Zhang in the mission control room and watched the two countdowns on the screen. The first countdown indicated the time for activation of the space fold drive. The number was already T-plus seven minutes. The drive had already turned on seven minutes ago. The second countdown was at T-minus sixty seconds. The latter countdown denoted the time for telemetry to reach mission control from the ship which was eight light-minutes from Earth.
The Hermes ship’s space fold engine had two major components. One half of the engine, Hermes I, was in the ship in orbit around the Sun. The other half, Hermes II, was 26 trillion miles away in orbit around Alpha Centauri B. It had taken most of 100 years for the robotic vessel containing half the drive to traverse over four light-years using a conventional ion drive propulsion system. Once there, it sent back a laser pulse confirming it had arrived and was intact. Traveling at the speed of light, the signal took just over four years to reach Earth. A command signal was then sent back to the probe in response instructing it to activate its half of the engine at a certain date and time, specifically, today at precisely 1600 hours Coordinated Universal Time.
The plan was for both components of the space fold engine to activate at the exact same moment. If the theory was correct, as long as the vessels were at least 3.827 light-years apart, at the precise instant of simultaneous activation, a fold in the fabric of space would occur for exactly one Planck time unit, roughly 10 to the negative 43 seconds. In that infinitesimal span of time, the two vessels would swap places.
Zhang picked up the champagne bottle, removed the foil from the cork, and started untwisting the restraint wire. He wanted to pop the cork just after the space fold maneuver took place.
“Ten…nine…eight…,” the mission control crowd chanted in unison. Zhang looked at Bartlett, the latter’s brow furrowed with worry. “Pessimist,” Zhang said with a smile as he worked on the champagne bottle’s cork.
“Zero!”
Mission control was suddenly filled with screams not of joy but of horror. The space fold had worked. The Hermes II ship was now in Earth’s solar system, as was Alpha Centauri B! The new orange-yellow sun looked like an angry cyclopean eye. Zhang’s hands started to tremble uncontrollably. The cork popped.
by Clint Wilson | Apr 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The grand patriarch, Thoxphall The 19th stood in his familiar spot, perched on the cliff’s edge overlooking the thousands of members of his kingdom. Off to the side the tight cluster of his offspring served as advisors while they stood in line as heirs apparent. His speech reached everyone in the throng equally and without mechanical assistance as their way of communication was instant and required no sound to travel across inefficient air.
“After the science advisory’s close attention to incoming intelligent signals from an apparent planet in the dimmest star system of the constellation, Brixphall’s Trunk, we have been able to convert the images into thought patterns and it has now been verified that their populous is under constant attack from a horrific infestation of mobile beings.”
Murmurs of alarm spread instantly through the kingdom.
“Can they reach us here?” asked a citizen.
“It does not appear that they can.”
A sigh of relief came through the masses, but then the patriarch added, “For now that is. Some of our top minds think they may be evolving quickly.”
Alarm ran through the throng once more.
“How long then?” one shouted.
“How dangerous are they?” chimed another.
The patriarch did his best to sooth the worried crowd, knowing full well that what was coming next would do exactly the opposite. “Please remain calm. The greatest minds from all of the world’s kingdoms assure us we are safe for quite some time.”
But by law the elders had to share what they had learned with each and every citizen. “Please be warned however, some of these images are disturbing.”
Suddenly a scene was broadcast throughout the entire gathering, each and every one of them receiving a crystal clear picture in their own mind.
The view was alien and nothing short of spectacular, showing a clearing in the middle of some grand green kingdom on another world, with rows of majestic looking citizens standing tall and proud all around.
But then the strange and small peach colored mobile beings with their odd black and red checkered body coverings were doing something strange. They approached a towering elegant alien of stupendous beauty and then to everyone’s horror, they did the unthinkable. Showing callous disregard for life they used a buzzing mechanical device, by extension of their horrible waving flapping limbs, to slice right through the base of the poor unfortunate being’s trunk. A hush fell over the throng as they collectively watched the freshly cut alien come crashing to the ground with finality.
This was then followed by much more of the same. Tree after glorious tree continuously slaughtered by the creatures without a single thought.
A grove near the cliff base said in unison. “We must do something!”
A lone sapling who stood off from the throng, fighting for moisture at the base of a sandy dune near the kingdom’s border responded sadly, “Yes but what can we possibly do against such a threat as this?”
As the broadcast was ceased the patriarch spoke again, “For now we should remain calm and try to be grateful that we are safe where we stand, and that for the moment nothing threatens branch, trunk or root of our people.”
The crowd seemed to accept this with wariness as they all continued to think of the devastation that was now taking place on that faraway world, where those poor defenseless beings were being slaughtered horrifically, their bodies greedily cut up and consumed by the horrible mobile threat.
