by J. Loseth | Jul 2, 2007 | Story
Author : J.Loseth, Staff Writer
It was good money. Everyone said so, on the newscasts and the Internet, repeating the slogan from the billboards: Everyone’s Rich in the Colonies. Drake had read over the contract, and the money was indeed good. The wealth in the colonies was so abundant that the contract even included a subsidy for his house, and it was a real house, not a cramped pod or even a flat. Drake had seen pictures. It looked like something out of a storybook. “I’ll get to see real grass,” he’d told Delilah, but still she frowned. It was good money, he reminded her. How many people in their neighborhood could boast that kind of salary? None, that’s how many.
His parents had been relieved. All their relatives congratulated him for passing the screening. Drake was proud of that; he’d been lucky to miss out on the genes for anything debilitating, and though he’d only barely squeaked by the vision test, he still had the green light. Not many could say that nowadays. “It means there aren’t any diseases,” he explained to Delilah, but she rolled her eyes. “It just means you aren’t bringing any diseases to them,” she told him primly. “There’s nothing in there about the type of diseases they might give you.” Drake had to admit she had a point, but it was good money, so he let it slide.
For four months Drake sold off his possessions, slowly liquidating his old life to make way for the new. He couldn’t take more than two bags, after all, and he’d need the startup cash. Delilah recognized the necessity and even scraped up enough to buy a few items from him. He didn’t tell her how much he appreciated it, but he was sure that she knew. It was just like her to know. As the departure approached, though, tensions rose. They fought more. Sometimes Delilah would stalk out at the end of the night without saying a thing, and sometimes she’d fix Drake with a look of reproach that was worse than words. It made it hard to pack, but he thought of the money and was resolute. “You could have applied too,” he reminded her once during one of their bitter fights. “Then we’d both be going. They even let couples live in the same place.” He hadn’t gotten a response to that, just the slam of the door in his face. She’d always come back the next day, though, so Drake shoved the fights under the rug and always let her in.
“Will you visit?” she asked. The question made Drake uncomfortable. “I’ll write,” he promised, holding her hands on the landing pad, eyes on their interlocked fingers. “It’s a long trip, Del, and they don’t pay for that much vacation time. A message can get here in just a few hours. It’ll be fine.” Delilah didn’t seem to like that, but she nodded anyway. The conductor called for all aboard, and Drake began to extricate his hands, but Delilah gripped them suddenly and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “When your two years are up, I’ll be finished. I’ll be done with school and we can start a life together. We can find a place when you get back.”
Drake felt his throat closing up. He squeezed her hands by way of answer, then slowly let go, heading up to the stasis pod door. It was the only facility of its kind, the only method for suspending human life well enough to protect the travelers on their journey through sub-space. The colonies might be rich, but they could never muster enough technological minds to build and maintain such a thing. Delilah didn’t, couldn’t know, but the money was good, so Drake didn’t tell her. He watched through the porthole until the pod filled with gas and knew she would never forgive him.
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by submission | Jul 1, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields
Shane jerked awake at his desk with a look of horror on his face.
It was late at the laboratory. He’d been going over calibrations on the atmosphere processing equipment prototypes that he’d designed. There was full funding for NASA and a new push from the president to colonize the moon and Mars. She had realized that oil was running low on planet Earth and that ‘going somewhere else’ was going to present itself as an option sooner or later. She wanted to be prepared.
It was top secret. It was called ‘Plan B’.
Shane was no expert on atmosphere mechanics but even he knew that no snow in his home town for five years meant that ‘Plan B’ was going to be ‘Plan A’ pretty soon.
He had a large team of engineers and mechanics to look after and experimental technology to design and test. He’d been catching naps now and again but hadn’t had a full nights sleep for nearly a year.
It came to him during a nap at his desk.
He had thought of the idea of checking out Venus and seeing if it had oil. Earth could transport oil to and from Venus and buy itself possibly centuries of wiggle room. He drifted off thinking of this.
It hit him in the face like brick. Venus was clouded. Mars was dry. Earth was just right.
Earth was the third in a series. Humans had started on Mercury. They had used up the resources on that planet as the sun grew. The few survivors left had limped to Venus and made it habitable. Millions of years had passed until the resources had been used up. Greenhouse gases clouded the atmosphere. Shortsighted leaders had made a last minute Plan B to colonize and terraform the next planet over. They had killed the indigenous lizards with their climate changers and the few Venusians that survived the trip before their entire planet was baked had landed on a planet of monkeys.
They were forgotten to legend. Their supplies ran out and they became savages. Some leftover math flourished here and there but they were stupid and lazy. It took millions of years for humans to naturally populate this planet to the point of strangulation.
We were eating the solar system from the inside out. Adaptable and voracious like a virus. It was like the orbits were the rings of a tree and we were a disease working our way out from the center of the trunk.
I was perpetuating the cycle by setting my sights on Mars. We’d been too quick this time, though. The sun hadn’t grown enough.
There was nothing in Venus we could use. I knew that without even needing to do a survey of the planet. It was a shell. And Mars would not be ready for another million years.
We were doomed.
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by submission | Jun 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
“This is the last call for evacuation. Everyone must leave. Go to the park for water, food, and medical care. If you cannot move, call out or make a noise, and we will help you.â€
Spaceman Kuzmin tried not to look at the bloated red sun as he walked the deserted urban streets. No one had come even though he played the message three times at every city block just as he had been ordered. Only fools or the deranged would wait so long, he thought. The unstable sun the locals called Sosnovka would soon end this miserable world.
The motion detector pinged, and Kuzmin halted. Something in the shadows of an alley, but he couldn’t see anyone there. He keyed his helmet’s external speaker.
“Come out. I am CIS Space Force. I have water.â€
Then he saw it. Scruffy and dusty, a big orange tom cat wobbled out of the alleyway and collapsed onto the hot pavement. It panted and gasped for breath as it looked up at Kuzmin, its tongue distended from its mouth.
Kuzmin gently picked up the cat and felt its sides heaving.
“Poor old koshka, did you get left behind? Here, a little of this.â€
He drew a handful of water from his drink tube and slowly, carefully, dripped the cool liquid onto the cat’s lips and tongue. It began to lap and swallow.
Kuzmin unzipped his light suit. The air felt like an oven’s heat striking his chest. Slowly, he slipped the cat inside his cooled coverall, and there it rested without complaint or struggle. He could barely feel the old tom feebly rumbling, trying to purr.
And so, he continued on to complete his route, but no other strays, human or animal, were met.
As Kuzmin walked back to the evacuation center, he saw others who had been successful. The last inhabitants of Sosnovka Prime were a sorry lot. Two of his crewmates forcibly led a wild-eyed man who cursed them for their efforts. Others helped a grossly overweight woman whose clammy white skin indicated severe heat stroke. Dirty street children huddled, looking anxiously at the shuttles.
Kuzmin was refilling his drink tube when a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around on his heels.
“You durak! Idiot! I told you that looting was forbidden!â€
It was Second Lieutenant Burkhanov, the section commander. With a jerk, he pulled open the front of Kuzmin’s suit. A furry orange face with flattened ears and frightened eyes stared back at the officer.
“What the?! Kuzmin, get rid of this … infectsia! It can carry disease! Understand me?!â€
Kuzmin shook his head. “No, sir. Sorry. I won’t leave it here to burn.â€
Burkhanov eyes opened wide with rage. But then he paused. It wasn’t often that a Spaceman Recruit refused an order. And never Kuzmin, one of the better spacehands.
“Bah! Make ready for liftoff!†He stomped off towards the shuttle.
As the days passed, the orange tom took to starship life quite well. Kuzmin was in the mess hall, slipping a few sproti fish to the new mascot when a crewman yelled, “It’s started!†Everyone dropped their food and ran to the portholes.
The flashpoint had been reached: Immolation. Waves of fire swept over the planet below.
A man next to Kuzmin gasped and made the sign of the cross. It was Burkhanov, his sad face illuminated by the hellish flame storms.
Kuzmin watched nervously as the old koshka wandered between the officer’s ankles. He was amazed when Burkhanov picked it up, placed it against his shoulder and began to pet Sosnovka’s littlest refugee.
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by submission | Jun 23, 2007 | Story
Author : Joe Carter/Kyle French
37 hands. Zed shook his head. The 84 candidates running for President were asked if they believed in Sixism, and only 37 raised their hands.
He couldn’t believe this debate was still going on. For years they had assumed that the Manhattan Inflation Trial in 4838 had put the lid on the silly notion that the universe contained billions of galaxies. Billions! Zed looked out the window at the smooth black plane of the night sky. One-two-three-four-five-six. Six galaxies. There they were. It was so basic, so obvious. Any kid with a neutron telescope could make the observation for themselves!
The moderator turned to Governor Tembke of South Africa. “Madam, are you a Big Banger?†There were dampened giggles at the pejorative. Everyone knew what a ‘banger†was.
Rev. Tembke sniffed. “I’m running for the office of president, not planning on writing a 5th-grade textbook on astrophysics.”
“Aargh!†Zed threw his shoe at the screen, but it flew through the image of the Senator from Zimbabwe instead. He stood up and began to pace. He tried to breathe deeply, as if that would lower his blood pressure.
He used to be patient with relativists. He really did. But at a debate at ultra-conservative Harvard University, he’d made the mistake of asking one to explain how this galactic disappearing act occurred. The answer the nut had given him had been so ridiculous, he’d written it down:
“As the universe expanded, the force pushed the galaxies outward faster and faster. As they surpassed the speed of light, their light shifted to infinitely long wavelengths and dimmed. A similar “cloak of invisibility†befell the afterglow of the Big Bang, a faint bath of cosmic microwaves, whose wavelengths shifted so that they are now buried by the radio noise in our own galaxy. There was also an element called deuterium, but it is in deep space now. To be seen it needs to be backlit from distant quasars, and quasars, of course, have also disappeared.â€
Totally unqualified. Unprovable! Billions of galaxies–similar in size and shape to the six observable galaxies – simply sped up and – poof! – became invisible. “Yeah, that happened,” Zed chuckled to himself, turning back to the debate.
Zed was particularly frustrated that the relativists were able to prop up their beliefs with… ancient texts! The silly belief was dying out until an archaeological dig in New Atlantis produced evidence of near universal belief in relativism by ancient world civilizations. Einstein, Hubble, Hawking… proto-scientists believed in an inflationary universe, so why shouldn’t we?
“Science is based on observation,†he grumbled, “not faith in theories about a Big Bang, cosmic radiation, and an expanding universe in which galaxies go missing.†Why couldn’t they just embrace the facts? Why did they insist on clinging to mythical beliefs? Were they just stupid?
Zed collapsed back into his recliner. Fortunately, time was on the side of science. Eventually, the old beliefs would finally fade away. After all, everyone knew the modern system would collapse if the rules could ever change.
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by featured writer | Jun 21, 2007 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, featured writer
“How’s this thing work?†asked Dean O’Banion, the man Alan Mitchell had reluctantly asked to come to Seattle to bankroll his invention that could provide the world with unlimited, cheap, green energy. Although O’Banion was not the most reputable businessman on the planet, he was the only one that didn’t laugh in Mitchell’s face after reading his abstract on the Potential Benefits of Crumpled Space.
“Well, Mister O’Banion, it’s simple really. With nonscientists, I usually demonstrate the principle with piece of paper and a 2-D analogy. I’ll draw circles on this paper representing the galaxies in our local group. This circle represents the Milky Way, this one Andromeda, and Triangulum, both Magellanic Clouds, and so on…OK, that should be enough. Now, as you can see, there are about two inches between each galaxy. But, if I crumble the paper into a tight ball, some of the galaxies actually touch each other. My theory predicts that space is actually crumbled this way in the fifth dimension, although we can’t see it. Now, if we create a wormhole in this fifth dimension, between our galaxy and the one that is practically touching us, we can travel there in a few years, rather than millions. Unfortunately, there are two limiting factors: I cannot change the shape of crumpled-space, so we can only travel to the galaxy that happens to be folded over us; and creating a wormhole that large requires more energy than our entire galaxy emits.
“Mister Mitchell, I don’t see how any of this is going to make me rich, as you said, beyond the dreams of avarice.â€
“Yes, unlimited energy. OK, on the grand scale, let’s assume the entire universe is crumpled as I’ve suggested. Now, we can take my analogy one step further, into the realm of micro-crumpling, so to speak. On this much smaller sub-scale, Earth-space is crumpled within itself. And it takes much less energy to create a wormhole between two places on Earth. As it turns out, just a few meters from this lab, in the fifth dimension, is the bottom of the Marianas Trench. With this device,†he pointed to a contraption sitting on the floor, “I can open a wormhole between the Marianas Trench and here. As water rushes through the wormhole at 15,000 psi, that’s 1,000 times atmospheric pressure, it can turn a turbine with 100 times the power of Niagara Falls. I’ll demonstrate the concept with a real pinhole size wormhole.†Mitchell adjusted the controls of his wormhole generator, aimed the focus straight up, and activated the instrument. It shot a thin column of super-high-pressure water through the ceiling and upward into the sky for several miles.
“Well, I’m impressed, Mister Mitchell. How easy is it to control?â€
“Child’s play. I have all the instructions written in this manual.â€
“Fantastic.†O’Banion promptly pulled a gun from his coat pocket and shot Mitchell between the eyes. Then, he nonchalantly packed up Mitchell’s equipment and returned to his home outside Chicago.
Two days later, the lead story in the Chicago Sun-Times read: “Dean O’Banion, a prominent Chicago businessman, was mysteriously killed last night when a volcano erupted on his estate, creating a 2000 foot lava dome. Scientist cannot explain the eruption, since there are no known magma chambers in the Chicago area. Scientists are also baffled by the fact that this particular type of basaltic lava is only known to exist in Iceland. The damage was so extensive…â€
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