by submission | Aug 5, 2011 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
Survey Ship Aldrin drifted softly through space, main jets silent while the steering and attitude thrusters pushed it gently through a seemingly empty patch of space. Weeks spent surveying an assigned sector rimward of Epsilon Eridani had come down to this. The extended antennas and magnetic plates that made the Aldrin look like a cosmic hedgehog steadfastly ignored the few specks of matter in the interstellar medium, instead measuring the local permittivity and permeability. They had followed the gradient away from the star, hunting for that elusive and otherwise invisible spot where the two tensors assumed three-dimensional minima.
Survey Pilot Jack Nguyen ran one more material proximity scan before turning the gain on his controls down to their minimum setting. So adjusted, he would be able to maneuver the ship as delicately as a neurosurgeon’s scalpel, but would be unable to quickly move the ship if some bit of unseen space debris tried to turn them into scrap. He kept on gently juking and turning the ship until his co-pilot and sensor operator finally gave him the thumbs up. He pulled the ship ten meters “up”, let the ship go deadstick, and hit the intercom.
“Howie – we’re here. Load Fred.”
Below, Survey Assistant 2nd Class Howard Green hoisted a heavily sedated pig through a miniature airlock into the survey pod, cursing again the guidance counselor who had failed to mention animal husbandry as being part of the job description. Placed, secured, connected to life support, and wired in every way imaginable, Fred the pig slept on as Howie closed and dogged the pod and airlock doors.
“All right Cap, he’s in.”
Jack glanced momentarily towards the sensor operator.
“Kat, she’s all yours. Find us a good one.”
“Yes sir!”
Survey Scientist Katya Chang turned away from her commander and occasional lover (space being essentially dull, and he possessing the highly attractive trait of not smelling like pig), and activated the controls that focused six terahertz lasers onto the previously identified point of space. After twenty minutes, her sensors begin to flicker with uncertainty.
“We’ve got something. Let’s see what.”
She cut the beams, opened the bay door, and pushed the pig-filled survey pod towards the focus on the robotic arm. As the pod neared the spot the arm released it, and it drifted onwards, connected only by the sensor tether, until it began to blur and fade away.
“We might… well that’s… ew. Retracting.”
The tether reeled back in, drawing the slowly reappearing pod back towards the arm and the ship. Kat turned to Jack.
“Cataloging universe … 5619,uninhabitable. Mu and epsilon at 0.85 and 0.13 relative, other constants still calculating. No masses nearby, but a lot of gas. The background radiation is strange – I think it’s electrogravitic here.”
“How’d Fred do?”
“Well, he woke up on schedule, right as he went through. He oinked and squealed for about two minutes, then apparently gained the power of speech and started spouting some gibberish about trolls. You ever hear of that happening before?”
“No, but I know Howie reads out loud down there. That might be worth something on its own. Weird. I’m guessing he died after that?”
“Yep, pretty messily. Got hot in there at the end.”
“Howie, do you have the pod? And how many pigs do we have left?”
“Yes sir, I’ve got it. Three more pigs if you want to keep looking.”
“Great. Try to clean up the pod, I’ll find us a new vector.”
“Yes sir.”
“Howie, are you eating something?”
“No sir.”
“Any good?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right, save me some bacon.”
“Yes sir.”
by Duncan Shields | Aug 1, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I was sixteen when they came.
They touched down in large ships all over earth, silently with no visible means of propulsion. Jagged, asymmetrical leviathans ridged with glowing seams and thousands of softly humming translucent spikes as tall as skyscrapers. Their spindled undercarriages contacted the ground and there they impossibly balanced, footprints with no more square footage than a volkwagen bug. Islands on tiptoe with their furthest spires still in space.
A triangle of light spasmed open in their base and they came out.
They floated silently and ghostly like their ships did. They were made of a dark metal that could be made intangible at will. Red sensors ringed their masses. No two of them were the same size. Their appendages dangled, chunky black tentacles of many different widths, some cables nearly dragging on the ground as the beings floated out of their vessels. The smallest one I saw was as long as a cat and the largest was the length of a bus balanced on its bumper.
The missiles we’d fired at their ships at first contact still hung there in the upper atmosphere, barely moving in some sort of time-retardant field. The bullets and shells that had been fired at them from the ground troops did the same. So we stopped. We didn’t know if our stilled ordnance would go off when the visitors left. Our noisy impotence in the face of their silent superiority became embarrassing.
They scanned everything. They took no interest in us except to regard those that came close to them with a whirring chirp of blindingly quick quadrary math. Scientists and mathematicians figured out their language but the numbers still didn’t make sense.
Small ones for flowers but long ones for gardens, small ones for trees and massive ones for forests. Medium ones for buildings but huge ones for cities. London’s number was bigger than Vancouver. Damascus had a larger number that Paris. Water seemed to make the math go recursive and eat itself.
A temporal theoretician named Davis figured it out after some terminally ill humans approached the aliens in search of a divine cure. They were measured and forgotten by the aliens and left disappointed to succumb to their diseases. Those measurement numbers took on meaning after their deaths.
We don’t know how long they’ll be here but the aliens appear to know how long each of us will live.
People seek them out now. It’s a dare to get yourself measured. New parents bring their children, newlyweds find out how long they’ll have together, and one presidential candidate famously got measured at a press conference but the result was scandalously disappointing.
The aliens seemed to have a sense of time like we have a sense of smell. Common opinion is that the passage of time whorls around them and that they are more sensitive to it. That they smell time in chains and whips, in spills and gusts, in pours and dams. When we speak to them, they seem to only measure our word lengths and move on. Perhaps they’re entropy police cataloguing the known universe. We don’t know if they’re sentient or automated.
We are not intelligent life to them. They speak in measurements and nothing else. How they invented space travel is a mystery to us.
All I know is that I was measured yesterday and I have another forty-three years to live. I plan to make them count.
by submission | Jul 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
I opened a channel to the Finnvael;
“This is Handler Orchus, what is your intent within the Olympus Theocracy?”
The long silver needle rotated itself rapidly to orient at least nine firepoints on me. Well, that was a clue.
“Orchus, this is Captain Rufus Hartnell of the Sol Three Alliance. We are coming to offer assistance with your situation.”
No honourific. Rude, but acceptable and allowing an informal stance.
“Thank you, Ser Hartnell. But we do have the situation, as you put it, in hand. It happens every couple of centuries and we have procedures to deal with it.”
There was a chuckle over the channel. Rufus sounded like someone I could get to like over a tankard of ale or two.
“Orchus, my respects to your Theocrats, but a rampaging war machine that threatens S3A vessels demands our intervention.”
My scans came back at last, void eagles are quick but a light year or two still requires noticeable travel time. I ran a quick eye over the details: Twenty-two thousand marines in full atmosphere armour, twenty-eight atmospheric sky fortresses, one hundred and ten near orbit interdictors, fifty-two open space cruisers. I tapped my gauntleted hand on the console. Hardly a cargo for assailing a single space bound monstrousity. Then my eye lit on the last line; Sixteen planetary pacification drones. Ah-ha. As my ancestors would say; “Gotcha.”
“Captain, I see that your ordinance is architected for planetary governance.”
There was a startled silence, then I caught a few words before the channel was cut.
“Dammitall, how do they do that?”
My console emitted a ruddy glow as my Ares meters went critical. Oh, they were trying this again, were they? So be it. As the Finnvael unloaded an indecent amount of violence at my tiny, unarmed ship I switched channels to one only the Handler ships are permitted. Despite the gravity of the situation and the way my ship rocked under the onslaught, I smiled as a deeply primitive bond was renewed.
“Here boy.”
Behind the Finnvael, something quicksilver manifested, an impossible immensity, a masterpiece of nanofluid, cryonic majesty and void. Great eyes spun with whorls of red as my lifelong duty, companion and terror sank all three sets of molecularly phased teeth into Captain Hartnell’s doomed command. I felt my smile turn to feral joy. It would be like a puppy for months after this, something so big that it could use all of its heads, plus hundreds of bits to be chased across near-space as they flailed, died or fled.
by submission | Jul 23, 2011 | Story
Author : Alia Gee
While the care and feeding of your child in ideal non-planet-dependent conditions has already been covered in Dr. Krugheimer’s “Happiest Baby on the Space Station” holoseries, I feel it is important not to neglect those new parents who are in more extreme states of habitation.
To whit, here are a few hints I picked up while raising my little family without the blessings of gravity. I only hope they may assist others in their domestic efforts.
My initial concern when faced with my first infant in space was, “Oh, no, the diapers!” Yet here Mother Nature aids us, even when far from our natal gravitational fields. Newborn waste sticks to diaper or bum with great tenacity. Merely make sure the child is securely fastened to the changing table or wall, and the vacuum on your trash receptacle is functional, and sanitation is a breeze.
Moving up the alimentary canal, your next worry will likely be feeding your wiggling spawn. Nursing, bless those mammary glands, is not dependant on gravity.
If you, like me, discovered this knowledge was insufficient to your needs, the standard advice is to use a squeeze bottle and hover. I found that this allowed too much air into the poor infant’s stomach unless always vigilant. And, gentle reader, what parent can exert constant, even pressure over a long period of time when wakened mid-sleep cycle?
Vexed and sleep-deprived, I created a container much like a balloon: small and flaccid when empty, but able to expand to hold up to a liter of nourishing liquid. As the infant sucks, the vessel constricts of its own accord with textbook gentle, even pressure.
As the child gets older and tries to squeeze the bottle, life can get more colorful. In these cases, and also when the infant gaily burps up more than air, my best advice is to remind your parenting partner(s) that (t)he(y) got you into this mess and now (t)he(y) can jolly well help clean it up.
Note: For more on how to create your own blobule from common chemicals you will have in the lab, please see the link at the bottom of the article. Stockists also available on request.
I have occasionally seen the Ideal Space Infant caricatured as an adorable hydra: bottle, blanket and toys tethered neatly to the little darling by long strands of some anonymous fiber.
For shame! This, as any experienced parent can point out, is one big, pastel choking hazard.
Still, it raises a valid question: How does one keep all the essentials near at hand? Some (Jennings-Ho, Xiao Universe-al Baby Care 101) are wild proponents of industrial strength Velcro.
Velcro and its cousins do have their place, make no mistake, and I was grateful for them when trying to keep my young ones in their sleep sacks. However, no one product will solve all your parenting problems; it is best to think creatively when facing those hurdles our mothers never dreamt of.
In my own case I found that the simple application of some adhesive to humble hose-clips worked a treat. For preference, I glued the item to the handle, and attached the pinching end to my child’s clothes. One could go the other route, of course, gluing the hose-clips to the clothes; but if your aesthetic sensibilities are not offended by this, may I suggest that you stick with Velcro?
Whatever methods work for you, I leave all you star-hopping parents with one final happy thought (assuming your precious offspring is one of those individuals who can survive in vacuum): In space, no one can hear your baby scream.
by submission | Jul 22, 2011 | Story
Author : Martin Sumner
The matter of the Checks & Balances Office in dispute with Collins-Chapter was ordered onto the Administrative Ladder to be passed up to State Query. Deputy van Aerts stamped the case file, the Oversight Governor-General struck his gavel and signed it off. Committee Clerk Corvidius placed the file with all due ceremony into his legal satchel, and pulled out a new file for consideration. He read from the cover:
The matter of Detention Colony E, Seventy-Sixth System.
“Don’t tell me they’ve finally found it again!” said Committeeman Ibarra, quite against protocol. Corvidius was scanning the summary page. In the ensuing silence, the Oversight Governor-General decanted ice-water into a crystal goblet, and sipped.
“It seems, my esteemed colleagues, that the colony host planet has indeed been recovered,” reported the clerk, “at the farthest end of the Black Pearl Spiral.”
“What of The Cartel, Corvidius?” – Deputy van Aerts.
Committee Clerk Corvidius proceeded to read out the Executive Summary. Lost in the wilderness for nearly one hundredth of an Age, with no means of escape from E, the Cartel members were long since perished and gone to dust. And with them the last vestiges of the most terrible criminal clique across time, space and the dimensions. A long-range survey had finally identified the planet, lost to the Detention Service for so long after a bureaucrat’s administration error had deleted all records of it’s whereabouts.
But there was a problem. An Anthropological Census Analyst from the survey team had been called to the Oversight Committee to explain his findings.
“Call in the witness, Corvidius, let’s hear it.” – van Aerts again.
The Committee Clerk paced steadily to the great panelled door that led into the Visitor’s Receiving Hall. He formally called for Anthropological Census Analyst Settus to present himself before the Oversight Committee. Settus was waiting nervously in an ancient Empire chair by the door. He followed the clerk into the Oversight Chamber and took his place at the stand.
Deputy van Aerts addressed him: “Mister Settus, kindly appraise us of your analysis.”
It seemed that The Cartel, though long since dead and passed out of all knowledge on E, still had a profound effect on the planet’s environment and governance. A global civilisation had sprung up from a genetic mix of the prison colony and an indigenous species that was a close match to our own. The planet was dominated utterly by this human-amalgam, and it’s civil systems based on acquisition, conflict, and oppression were built in the horrific image of their Cartel progenitors.
“In short,” concluded Settus, “the planet is a living hell of suffering and misery. A picture postcard from The Cartel.”
Committeeman Ibarra slammed his fist on the table, issuing a volley of expletives. He was quietened by the raised hand of the Governor-General.
“Corvidius, erase all recordings of this hearing and pass the case file to me. I think we must all be agreed that our Paradise of A Billion Suns does not need the worry of a potential return of The Cartel. Mister Settus, I expect a promotion to The Admiralty, with a purpose built ship of your design and a posting to anywhere in Paradise will be adequate recompense for your good work thusfar, and your future discretion. Deputy van Aerts, please contact Stryker by secure means and inform her that we require an unexpected, inexplicable and catastrophic super-nova in the Seventy-Sixth System with immediate effect. That is all for today, I believe.”
The Oversight Governor-General struck his gavel and dismissed his committee.
