Mega Flare

by | Mar 30, 2007 | Story

Author : Patricia Stewart

The ship had left Earth orbit 77 days ago. They just passed the halfway point on their supply mission to the Lowell Colony on Mars when the solar flare warning alarm began its variable whine. “Computer, deactivate the alarm,” instructed the captain. Then, with the poise of an officer who had weathered numerous solar storms during his career, “What’s the magnitude of the flare, and how long before the coronal mass ejection reaches us?”

A disembodied voice replied “S9 on the NOAA Space Weather Scale. The…”

“What! That’s impossible!” interrupted the captain. “The scale only goes to S5.”

“True, captain. But, the scale was never intended to be all-inclusive. It’s logarithmic. It is a simple matter of extrapolation. Since the flux level of this flare is 12,000 times more intense that an S5, it’s classified as an S9. To answer to your second question, the leading edge of the ionized particles will arrive in approximately 31 hours.”

“Twelve thousand times! Will we be safe in the Panic Room?”

“Negative, captain. The areal density in the shielded isolation room will not be able to attenuate the 400 Giga-rems associated with a proton storm of this magnitude.”

“What if we orient the ship with the thrusters aimed at the sun? Will the exhaust cones, auxiliary fuel tanks, and cargo bay provide enough extra shielding?”

“Perhaps, but you’re missing the big picture, captain. Even if we can protect the crew, the electromagnetic shock wave from the mass ejection will fry every electronic circuit on this ship, including my own. Without power and life support, you’ll all die of carbon dioxide poisoning, in the dark, at near freezing temperatures, in less than a week.”

“So it’s all for one and one for all, heh computer? OK, do you have any ideas that can save us both?”

“I can conceive of only one option, although I don’t have enough information in my files to know if it is even possible. I need to access NASA’s PHA database on NEA objects. Please stand by.”

As the captain waited, he wrestled with how he would notify the crew. Then he heard the computer’s voice on the ship’s intercom. “Attention crew. Brace yourselves for an immediate course change.” The ship suddenly lurched starboard, knocking the captain to the floor. Before he could get up, the twin 17.8 million lbf thrust engines pinned him there with a force of approximately 3-gees.

“Captain, I am sorry that I took unauthorized control of the helm, but time is critical. I was searching NASA’s Asteroids database looking for a nearby Apollo object that we could hide behind. As luck would have it, Asteroid Eros 433 is very close to our current position. At maximum velocity we can reach it in just under 32 hours, limiting our exposure to less than one hour. When I stop this burn in 64.2 minutes, you’ll need to jettison the cargo and all non-essential equipment. Every kilogram of mass we loose will reduce our ETA by 0.4 seconds.”

The captain and crew watched the flickering monitors in the isolation room as the ship approached Eros. As the computer attempted to position the ship within Eros’ shadow, the plasma storm seemed to intensify. The captain closed his eyes again to monitor the flashing streaks of light caused by speeding atomic nuclei as they ripped through the water-filled chambers of his eye sockets. Their frequency was increasing, and he was beginning to feel nauseous. Unwilling to watch the flashing conveyors of death any longer, he opened his eyes, and continued to pray as the night side of Eros very slowly began to enter the view screen.

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The Inspirer

by | Mar 28, 2007 | Story

Author : J. S. Kachelries

As Archimedes lowered himself into his bath, water lapped over the top edge and spilled onto the floor. “Damn it, you fool,” he cursed aloud, “You overfilled the tub again.”

“Not necessarily, master,” I pointed out. “It’s not too full; you just displaced too much water.”

“What’s that Jamicles? Are you saying that I am too FAT?”

“Not at all, master. I was merely pointing out that had your body been denser, you would have displaced less water.”

“Now I’ve got too much blubber, and not enough muscle, heh Jamicles?”

This was taking longer than I had anticipated. This is the third straight night the tub overflowed, and he still wasn’t getting it. “What I am saying, master, is that if you know the weight and density of an object, you should be able to predict the volume of water it will displace. That’s all.”

“What are you babbling about? Wait. That’s it. I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” Archimedes jumped out of the tub, and ran out the front door in his birthday suit, yelling to the townsfolk. As I faded out of this timeline, I could hear him proclaim, “Eureka, eureka…”

Later that day…

“Dmitri,” I said, “why do you insist on grouping them by multiples of atomic weight? Other scientists have already tried that. There has to be a simpler way to arrange them.”

Dmitri Mendeleev looked down at the 63 pieces of paper spread across his kitchen table. Each piece contained the name of a known element. “Perhaps you are right, Jiminka. I am getting tired anyway. I give up. I think I will head off to bed.”

“Ah, before you go, Dmitri, let’s play a game. You know, just to help you relax, before you go to sleep.”

“What kind of game?”

“It’s a type of card game. Something I played as a child. It’s called ‘Concentration’.”

“How is it played?”

“We can use these pieces of paper. We’ll put them in the middle of the table, face down. Then we take turns flipping them over, two at a time. If they match, you put them in front of you. The person with the most matches at the end wins.”

“Match? Match, how? They are all different.”

“Yes, obviously. But, Dmitri, some of these elements must have something in common. Something that will make them appear similar in some way?”

“Well, sure. For example, sodium and potassium bond very strongly to chlorine or bromine. I guess we could group them by similarity of properties.”

“Great. That works for me. You can go first.”

After four hours of intense concentration, Dmitri was exhausted. “I must go to bed, my friend. I played this new game so long; I’ll be dreaming about chemical similarities all night. Do you mind showing yourself out?”

“Not at all, Dmitri.” I rose from my seat and headed toward the door to start my next mission. On my way out, I picked up a piece of fruit from a basket next to the door. “Dmitri, I have a long trip ahead of me. I’m going to a farm in Lincolnshire, England. Mind if I take an apple?”

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In Memory of Persistence

by | Mar 27, 2007 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields

I’d like to remember her the way most ex-boyfriends remember their exes. That is to say, when I’m drunk and missing her, I want to remember that space right under her ear, her easy smile, and that way that she’d hiccup if she laughed too much. When I’m angry at her and hurt, I want to remember that time she kissed the bouncer just to piss me off or how she’d constantly complain no matter how awesome our life was.

Instead, all I can remember is her left hand in the sunlight, hanging out the car window on August 22nd.

I don’t see her face in the memory. I can feel my ear pressed against her chest.

I think the wipers weren’t top of the line. Maybe their schedule had been just that little bit too tight. That little fragment of her hand in the sun had slipped through their nets. I wondered if there were anymore. It’s hard to search for memories that may have been missed during an erasure solely because they had been misfiled. I mean, where did you accidentally put them?

Was the time you wiped strawberry juice off of her unbuttoned white blouse filed under ‘stain removal’ somewhere in your head? Were her instructions on how to get to that store on fifth that sold the cheap eels filed under ‘maps’ and never looked at again?

I like to just let my mind wander and see if it comes across something that stands out by not standing out. I wouldn’t know it if I found a picture of her face. I wouldn’t know it if I remembered a few seconds of her speaking. The only way I’d know is if I had no idea who that person was.

Not knowing her would be the only clue that she might be the woman that I lost.

Sorry, the woman that was taken from me.

Even if it was a cheap rush job, it was still miles away from a bank account like mine. I figure her daddy must have been rich and didn’t want me following her. His little girl had been slumming with me. I had no idea why he didn’t just take her away and shoot me in the leg or something but maybe he had. Maybe he’d tried to take her away a few times before.

Maybe this was the only option left to him. If he could afford a wipe on a gutter rat like me, well, I must have been tenacious and he must have been obscenely rich.

I think the ring on her finger in the memory I keep looking at is an engagement ring. I see its lazy arc up into the sunlight before the flash of light again and it’s over.

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The Sounds of Music

by | Mar 24, 2007 | Story

Author : Kaj Sotala

On the remote planet of Niere IV, countless minds were constantly being played for a vast audience of listeners. Deep within the planet’s crust, the brains were enclosed in immense suprasteel vaults, floating in vast chambers of nutrient liquid. Protected day and night by thousands of fanatic warrior-monks, the brains bristled with wires, electrodes implanted near every center of thought or emotion. They had been stripped from all their sensing organs but with their mind’s eyes they still saw, the electric pulses dancing through them stimulating countless thoughts and memories.

Highest of all among the planet’s inhabitants were the composers, the black-suited aliens who’d dedicated their lives to their Art. Their intellect genetically and cybernetically enhanced, they sat fused to their giant keyboards, surrounded on all sides by black and white keys. With six arms and eight fingers on each, their thoughts and ideas would dance on the keyboards faster than any human could even imagine. The vast screens and speakers in their chambers lay dead – once they had needed them, but no more. By now they knew by heart the effect of each key, could even in their dreams name which press stimulated which electrode in which brain.

It was in the concert halls near the planet’s surface that the music would be heard. The chaotic patterns of neuronal firing in the brains being constantly recorded and reinterpreted into sounds in real time, played on all imaginable spectrums of hearing. The concert halls were the best places to listen, but they were not the only ones – all of the world’s surface was lined with speakers, so no inch of the barren world would miss the sensation of music. Few souls lived aboveground, with the entire civilization of the world living under the ground maintaining the machines and the music. They would not hear the sounds, nor did they care to – they were but humble caretakers of the Art, guardians of a holy process far more important than themselves. The vast concert halls lay nearly empty, the rocks of the surface being close to the only listeners of the songs.

Occasionally visitors from other worlds arrived, attracted by the harmonies constantly being fired off into space by radio arrays powered by a thousand fusion generators. They were all led to the concert halls to listen, to stay for as long as they’d like and to leave freely whenever they so felt. Most of them left eventually, but few of them went unchanged, all strangely touched by the eerie and unique melodies of Niere IV. An even smaller group chose to stay, choosing to join their souls into the Art and subject themselves into the surgeons’ knives. One by one they were transformed into instruments of the Sacred Music, to have electrodes inserted into them and be used as the composers willed.

Can there be any sacrifice holier than that?

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Homecoming

by | Mar 23, 2007 | Story

Author : Debbie Mac Rory

Daniel fell to the grass so that the air from his lungs exited with a whoosh. He closed his eyes and let the cool of the earth leach the tension from his shoulders. When he opened them again, clouds drifted serenely by, lit by the twin moons and the gentle glimmer of distant stars.

He turned his head for a moment as a slide of gravel announced the arrival of Finn. The two companions lay in silence for a moment, both lost in their own thoughts and the rasp of their labouring lungs.

“I can’t remember the last time I looked at them?”

Finn’s voice sounded distant and hoarse, as if he was making conversation merely to stop the momentary quiet from silencing them both completely.

“I can’t even tell which one is home any more” he continued, “I used to know. I’d set my nav by it every morning, so I always knew which way to look… “

Daniel closed his eyes as Finn talked on. He let his mind wander back to thoughts of home. He remembered forests and trees. Green for as far as the eye could see. Racing through those hills with the cross country team, and in his final year, beating the Titan and Mars teams. It had been the first time an earth man had won in years.

The brief smile that had come to his lips as he remembered the parties that followed, being carried through the college grounds faded as the ground trembled beneath him. He realised Finn had fallen silent, and turned his head towards him. His own helmet and visor was reflected back to him in the mirrored finish of Finn’s own cover. He knew that behind the distorted image of his own visor Finn’s grey eyes were looking back to him, asking the same unspoken questions.

A brief flash lit up the sky, and as one, they adjusted their guns on their laps.

“We’ll be home soon enough” Daniel murmured.

A stirring moved along the trench as a second and then a third flash lit up the sky. Soldiers began to prepare as the tremors in the earth joined the discord in the sky above them.

“One way or another, we’ll get home”

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