by submission | Nov 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Cesium Artichoke
“Hey, Tom, uh… you got a minute?” Robin ambushed him as he came out of his office. He had a meeting with the Secretary of Energy about space-based power, but she was visibly nervous and fidgeting, which set off alarm bells.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Better get your computer, it’s already downloading.” She gestured to his office door.
He retrieved the tablet and continued down the hall. “Come on, walk with me. So what’s so important?”
Robin hurried to keep up with his long strides. “Well, we… we decoded the Procyon signal.” Tom stopped in his tracks.
“…and?”
She pointed to his tablet. ‘Download Complete’, it read, and the summary from the xenolinguists flashed onto the screen.
As he perused the report, she studied him. Thomas DiMattia, the man who saved NASA. He’d reached out to commercial space ventures and revived the nation’s interest and faith in NASA by landing a man on Mars. He’d even managed to keep the cosmologists happy. If this was what everyone feared it was, she couldn’t think of a better man to lead.
“Jesus,” muttered Tom.
“Yeah.”
He slumped into a nearby chair, glancing up at her. “Could this be a joke?”
“A joke? Not on our part; it’s definitely extrasolar. Otherwise, they have a weird sense of humor, ’cause Keck says there’s something there, exactly where they said.”
‘The Alliance or any representative or member thereof is not responsible for economic, biological, informational, or other damages resulting directly or indirectly from said Project. Continued residence in the aforementioned Stellar System will signify your acceptance of these terms.’ So the message had read, and if the team at the Keck observatory knew anything about anything, the giant fleet from Sirius would arrive in about a decade for their little Project with Earth’s sun.
“Jesus,” Tom repeated. He took a breath, and a slight resolve seemed to grow in his voice. “You’d better call some lawyers. We’ve got a hell of a loophole to find.”
by submission | Nov 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Al Vazquez
The retro-rockets jolted the ship as it began its decent into the thin, cold atmosphere. Excitement welled-up inside his belly. He felt a slight shaking in his leg, but his hand was steady on the controls. He was known for that; cool as a cucumber when it really mattered, and it never mattered more than now. He briefly recalled his first landing at the airport near his hometown. It seemed like yesterday. He remembered his leg shaking then too as he pressed against the rudder pedals.
He peered out of the window. The trajectory on his heads-up display was exactly like the simulations but the vividness of color and texture; seeing the planet below with human eyes, could never be duplicated by any sensor. He loved his job, he had always been lucky that way. He looked over toward his partner thankful she was there; someone to share the experience.
The ship was the peak of technological advancement; it had to be. They needed it for almost two years; it was their home; their lifeboat. They would leave a large part of it behind to continue the work in automation that they would begin shortly. Skilled colleagues, friends all, would follow their path and continue the endeavor. But they were the first ones. That weight rested on their shoulders, on his shoulders; he was after all landing the craft.
Back on earth everyone was watching on television video feeds from orbiting satellites. This, he knew, was going to change things, colonization; Terra-forming under geodesic domes …a permanent colony, one small step. But now his job demanded his full attention. Knowing this she declares, “Whatever you do, don’t f:)k this up”. They both laughed out loud. She never cussed; he thought to himself. She must be nervous.
The violent buffeting came and went just like it was supposed to; the product of atmospheric breaking – then parachutes. And finally what every pilot lives for, the switch to manual control. A little more precious energy, crab a little to the left to avoid some rocks, near the trench, but not too close, touchdown! “Piece of cake”, he declares back to his singular audience. They laugh aloud again, relieved.
He calls the boss – “Houston, Argonom Base here, the Eagle has landed.” About seven minutes would pass before the words crackled through the speakers at Mission Control. The place would erupt in the traditional cheers, handshakes, and smiles. On Mars their silence was interrupted by the whir of solar cells beginning to deploy.
They gathered those things needed for their first excursion – the inflatable dome and anchors, the atmospheric processing units, the machinery that would dip into the trench ice and provide them with life giving water, hydrogen, and oxygen. Three months didn’t seem enough time for all the work they needed to accomplish.
When everything was ready they made their way to the exit hatch and opened it, as far as the eye could see – magnificent desolation.
by submission | Nov 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Courtney Raines
As I watched myself falling down the hill, I remembered that fairy tale from physics class; the one about the cat in the box.
I had been walking home through the wilderness that separated my cul-de-sac from the grocery store, it was a walk I had taken hundreds of times over the past five years, when I tripped. The pack of groceries on my back had nearly slipped off my right shoulder, and I shuffled mid-step to adjust it. That’s when it happened; the quantum flash.
A ‘quantum flash’ is what the ubiquitous ‘they’ call it when you experience a moment of your life from another quantum reality before returning to your own. Mine happened in that instant between when I knew my foot was coming down wrong, and when it actually hit the ground.
I stood there for a millisecond frozen in time, watching as another me somewhere didn’t manage to regain her balance. I watched as the other me’s foot came down and twisted on a root. I heard the crack of bones. I felt the snap in my shin. I watched as the other me fell backwards towards the ravine, and wondered for the millionth time why the path was so close to it.
It was me, and it wasn’t. I felt it, and I watched it; both inside and outside. It was still me. The soft, moldy puff of dirt when I crashed backwards. The citrus thumps as my groceries began to tumble from my pack. The uncomfortable stab of cold plastic wrapped in polyester as I hit the milk jug before the inevitable flip.
The inevitable slow motion flip; my back arching, my pack sliding further down my arm, the milk, the bag of oatmeal, the kiwis and apples plopping to the ground, my feet creating the circle I could never draw. I felt my neck bending but not, quite, snapping. It radiated pain and there were spots before my eyes. As my body came around an almost elegant 360 degrees I saw, from both above and to the right, the pile of grapefruit and lemons that had first fallen from my pack.
Then my knees hit the ground, and I began to slide downwards. My pack was gone, what little cushioning it might have offered rendered nonexistent. Dirt and leaves began push their way up my shorts; I felt the leaves break and crinkle against my thighs. I slid in a slow motion second until first my feet, then my stomach, and finally my head bucked over a knobbled rock, smashing in a rhythmic serpentine motion. I barely had time to register the explosion that was my shattering kneecap, or the loss of breath following a rock in the gut, when the hard surface thrust my chin briefly upwards so it could better collide with my forehead.
Pain circled my head, blood trickled coppery in my mouth, and darkness called until the clock ticked into the next millisecond and my foot came down awkwardly on the dirt.
With a little hop, I regained my balance. I shifted my pack so that it was squarely on both shoulders, and muttered a prayer to the God of physics that I had been born to this quantum reality.
by Patricia Stewart | Nov 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Senator Reginald Wadsworth lay in his hospital bed; his biphasic artificial respirator hissed rhythmically as it expanded and contracted every six seconds. Dozens of electrical biosensors monitored his vital signs, while a miniature tubular highway of transparent hoses pumped fluids into, and out of, his body. Doctor Clive Colin stood next to the bed and studied the latest medical report. “Senator,” he said solemnly, “modern medicine cannot keep your body alive much longer. You need to make a decision concerning the memory transfer procedure that we discussed last week. Tomorrow, the state of Texas plans to execute Gilberto Escobar. He’s the drug kingpin that killed six DEA agents during a raid in ‘56. I’ve been in contact with him since he lost his last clemency hearing. He says that if you agree to give his family ten million dollars, he’ll give you his body. The procedure is called a cerebral cortex transfer. We use a high frequency neuroreprogrammer to overwrite his frontal and temporal lobes with synaptic data that we record from your brain. I know that’s a little oversimplified, but the bottom line is that we’ll erase his brain and imprint your memories. In essence, we replace your old dying body with a young healthy one. Senator, you are a very influential man. Say the word, and I’ll notify the Justice Department. We can make this happen.” Wadsworth closed his eyes and nodded his head once.
The following day, Wadsworth and Escobar lay side-by-side in the “operating” room. Wadsworth’s skull was capped with thousands of Electrocorticographic receivers. Escobar’s head was surrounded by a large bank of Electrocorticographic imprinters. The procedure took eight hours, and while in recovery, the body known as Wadsworth died. When Escobar regained consciousness, he smiled. “Doctor Colin,” he whispered, “It worked! And there’s no pain. I can breathe on my own. I can move my arms. This is fantastic. Thank you, thank you.” He openly cried.
After an extensive interview/interrogation by the District Attorney’s office, it was reluctantly determined that with the exception of a few minor inconsistencies, the knowledge and mental attributes that had been in Wadsworth brain were now in Escobar’s brain, and everything that was Escobar was gone. After the attorneys completed all the necessary paperwork, the new Wadsworth walked out of the hospital to a waiting hoverlimo.
A month later, Senator Wadsworth strutted into Doctor Colin’s office. He plopped down into one of the large leather chairs that faced the doctor’s desk. “Well, my friend, I as agreed, I deposited twenty million dollars into your offshore account. I never thought that we could pull it off. The detailed information that you provided me concerning Wadsworth’s personal background was invaluable. We fooled them all.” Escobar stood up and walked toward the door.
“Are you going back to Colombia, Escobar?” asked Colin.
“No, Clive. Not right away. I think I’ll stay in the US Senate for a while, and make an honest living.” He chuckled as he strutted out of the office.
by submission | Nov 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Q.B.Fox
Peter Stovold had hoped to be the first person to solo circumnavigate the sun in his [Manchester Evening News sponsored] Solar Flare 2.
The timing had to be perfect; repeated Earth orbits before shooting off on a flawlessly planned course that used the planetary bodies and floating space hardware to help accelerate SF2 and, later, act as brake; finally completing one and bit revolutions, coming to rest on the moving target of the Earth.
But something went wrong on the homeward leg, as his elliptical path passed near locus of Venus’ orbit. The first signs were an unexpected change in heading; then, almost imperceptible at first, but soon decreasing rapidly, his velocity began to fall below the plan.
Stovold was baffled when he checked his computer. He was on the edge of Venus’ L5: the gravity hole that followed in the wake of the morning star. There should be no forces, at all, acting on the elongated bubble-shape of SF2.
The computer said something very large was tugging at them aft and slightly to port. But it was nothing he could detect and the computer model constantly changed its mind about the size and position of the body that must be causing it.
Solar Flare 2 had almost come to a halt when the cloud of particles, into which Stovold was being inevitably drawn, became sufficiently dense for him to notice them through the forward viewport. It was then that he realised that there was no massive object; no gravitation forces acting on SF2. Some other sort of force entirely was grabbing at his vessel from this quicksand of stranded, ancient particles; a trap set for unwary travellers since the formation of the solar system.
He had only half formed his next thought when the SF2 came to a sudden and complete stop, throwing him hard against bulkhead, with sufficient force to break a leg and a wrist, shatter his pelvis and crack six ribs.
–
“Our superstructure is made entirely of a special polymer, comrade.” Josif Samoilenko waved his arms effusively.
“We’re less than 1% metal, my friend,” his Ukrainian drawl like beet molasses.
“We are invisible to the cloud, like the ceramic Glock of spaceships,” he concluded, putting two fingers to his temple, pulling an imaginary trigger and slumping in his chair.
“There never really was a….” Ian Bennet began.
“But the timing has to be perfect, comrade,” Samoilenko rejoined, leaping Lazarus-like from his seat. “We have to fire the grabber,” he gestured with a claw-like hand on an outstretched arm, “at just the right moment. Once we connect to the Solar Flare all the forces change, our course changes….” He waggled his eyebrows knowingly.
“I’m the astro-engineer,” Bennet said patiently, “I understand all this, but I’m not sure you….”
“The timing has to be perfect,” Samoilenko continued unconcerned, “and that is why….” He paused for effect, removing his pseudo-communist, red-starred beret with a flourish, “…that is why we let the computer do it. No?”
“Timing,” the Ukrainian mused. “All the planets have to be in exactly the right place.”
“Strictly speaking you only need….” Bennet attempted.
“It is why we have waited for 12 years, no?” Josif interrupted, “we could have come earlier, but the timing was not perfect; it would not have been, as you say in London, economically viable.”
And then the computer triggered the recovery systems; cables shot out into the particle cloud towards the Solar Flare 2. Inside the desiccated body of Peter Stovold waited patiently to make his journey home, waited for his hero’s welcome, waited for the timing to be perfect.
