Dust - Expedition

“Whoa! She crumbled” Jared stared down. 

Of course he had to touch it, Elena thought, men can’t appreciate anything they can’t touch. “Didn’t I say something about not touching anything.” 

“I didn’t.” That sounded a bit plaintive even for him. “I just wanted to look at something on her skin.”
It was a good thing that her eye roll didn’t add a chorus to her already restrained sigh. She shook her head and walked back out of the house on the outskirts of a town that must be abandoned. Nothing moved, not even a breeze. Elena was glad that she had photographic evidence before Jared breathed it out of existence. “Come on, and try not to stare too closely at the art next time, however weird that it was in a tub.” 

Elena didn’t understand the grumbled reply, and frankly didn’t want to make a big deal of it. They were already tight on their schedule, so many new places to go with a new satellite making its way across the surface of the Sphere, they had five hours allocated to explore this town and make contact with its inhabitants, though that was looking less likely now. 

She turned on her mag-belt and willed herself forward, picking up speed down the slightly overgrown street. Elena resisted the urge to speed ahead of Jared, but came to a reasonable velocity and maintained it for the next two kilometers until they came into the town. No radio or any other signals hailed her as she sped along. 

She hopped up onto a sidewalk, and came around a corner and someone was in front of her, no time to dodge, not even the belt’s automatic system had time to redirect her momentum and she plowed right into him. Through him, him maybe. A dust cloud expanded around her as her belt brought her to a jarring stop. 

“Oh look who’s destroying art now,” Jared certainly looked ready to crow, she could feel it as she surveyed the damage. “You only left his feet from the ankles down. Ha!” 

It was hard to maintain her composure, but she managed to walk over and take a picture of the decapitated feet without throwing something. Shoes really, silver just like the one in the tub. They looked like an old type of shoe from the twentieth century, maybe the man wasn’t naked like the woman Jared had practically drooled on. And was it considered decapitation if only the feet remained? Essentially, she guessed. 

“Oh boss, it feels like we are being watched. Look.” 

She whipped around, expecting either a threat or someone trying to hide from them, but it was a street with many more people statues. All the burnished silver of the first statue, standing stock-still in very natural poses. Even the three story buildings lining the street had a few people in windows.
“Someone must’ve spent quite a bit of time arranging these, but they’re so fragile how do they survive the wind?” 

“If your heavy breathing blew away that statue then it must be abnormally still here. Or this happened very recently.” That brought disturbing possibilities to her mind, but the air quality sensor-suite still had no warnings, much less dire alerts. 

“The buildings and everything only look slightly neglected, so it must have been somewhat recently.”
“Let’s see if we can find a food store, or something like that where we might find some dates.” Elena suppressed a shiver, Jared would be upset to learn that she would want a full decon when they reached their hopper. 

“Good idea, boss, but do think it’s just because they have archaic architecture that they would have a…” history and vocab were not Jared’s strengths, “Grocery?” 

“Something like that,” She had to chuckle. “Let’s split up, you take west and I will take east.” 

They had wandered toward another statue down the street, so Elena back-tracked to go east. As she came to the first intersection again she couldn’t help but look at the decapitated feet again. Except they were no longer just feet, but calves as well.

***This may become a series, but for now enjoy!

Short Story: Dreams with no Prophecy

“How did we start talking about Joey?” My brother frowned. It was a bit weird I admit.

“Because we were talking about people we know, or knew.” I tried to adjust the flimsy plastic armor plate biting into my shoulder.

“Yeah, but she was a cat.” He leaned back against the netting of the seat and fiddled with the straps, some derision in his tone.

“My favorite.”

He chuckled and shook his head. I just smiled ruefully. A few more pallets arrived on an autonomous lift and were placed in the center of the hold. Neither my brother or I moved as the privates and corporals secured them. That felt weird too, but then we would have been in the way.

I continued, “I think it’s because she lived a long, full life.”

“Yeah, all 19 years. But do you really think so? You always could ‘reason’ your way through anything.” He focused on the tie-downs as the squad finished their work.

I felt a bit defensive, but took a breath before answering. “I was going to say that it really helped me.” I forced a laugh, “But I still can’t reason my way through this mess.” I waved my hand in a circle.

“No kidding. You’ve lived twice as long as that cat.” He didn’t continue down last night’s conversation. It was no use in raging about how in less than 2 weeks we would have a different administration, or in four months I would be too old for the draft. This president wanted to go out with a bang, just like when he came into office with scandals galore.

“Here comes the sergeant. Ready to go back to Texas?”

He grimaced. “Not to put down a riot. Not even just to visit in January.”

“Sirs?” Sergeant Hector stopped and saluted. It was nice that they gave both of us commissions after drafting us for our technical knowledge, but it felt like a dream, a bad one at that. I saluted and felt like I did it wrong. “We are just about ready for dust-off. Two minutes.” Idling engines spooled-up as if on his command. I nodded, and he turned to finish preparations.

“So many almosts,” I said as I pulled out my hardened tablet.

“What?”

“Just so many things that I almost did.” I had to shout to be heard over the engines now. I attached the tablet to my knees so I could use both hands.

“We might get through this.” Strained hope at the top of his voice.

“Against violently celebrating, well-armed voters? So much for ‘great again.’” I hoped the well-armed part was a lie like most of the eight years. But I had to put politics aside and focus on the defense of the aircraft we rode in. If anybody hacked it, my brother, myself, and twenty-six other men and women wouldn’t even stand a chance to see a different world.

***

Dreams with happy endings,
Disappoint when awake.

Unintended Consequences

“What am I charged with?” Dan couldn’t help but lean forward in the chair since his wrists were chained to the middle of the table.

“Terrorist activities and destruction of property.” The detective read from his notebook.

“I’ve done no such thing.”

“We found you standing in front of the property with materials that we believe brought down the building. Do you have anything to say?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“There isn’t much room for that amendment in this current administration, we could send you down with the ‘bad dudes’ and just forget about you for a while.” The FBI agent leaning against the wall mentioned as though commenting that shorts shouldn’t be worn in this weather.

“Is that why I haven’t had the chance to contact a lawyer? And you know that the truth value of whatever you get me to say will be suspect under duress or threats of duress.” Dan tried not to sound too smug, it would just get him in trouble. In fact that may have been too far now that he thought about it. He looked for signs that the agent might be upset.

The door opened and an officer came into the room and handed the agent a clipboard. Maybe a bit of frustration eased from his face at Dan, but was readily replaced with consternation.

“Mr. Forth, I have it here that the building is back to normal, but I saw it this morning and it was just a heap of ash?” Dan stayed quiet, it was certainly good that the building was back, but he hoped it wasn’t back to normal. After thirty seconds of staring at him the agent went on, “Well if that’s the case, let’s go look at it, you too detective.”

***

Arriving in the parking lot in the unmarked black car Dan could see that all the trees around the building were untouched, good. Other than appearing cleaner the building seemed to be exactly the same as when he had set the nanites to do their thing the night before.

The three of them got out with Dan in the middle and still handcuffed. Dan saw the crowd of employees standing at the edge of the police cordon. He was pretty sure that no one would be injured with the nanites’ protocols.

As they approached he saw another agent, probably the one in charge and an officer in uniform talking with the director of the building.

“I can’t let you in there sir, it was a pile of rubble this morning if you remember, who knows how fast it could collapse?”

“Don, I brought him back.”

“Ah good, Sir, this is the man that we arrested on the premises early this morning. Do you recognize him?”

“Never seen him in my life, what did you do with my building?” The man tried to tower over Dan rather unsuccessfully.

Dan stayed mute.

The agent in charge glanced back and forth a couple times. “Alright, let’s go on a little tour, I have a gut feeling about this building.”

“But how do we get in?” The director almost wailed, “There aren’t any keyholes on the doors or rfid scanners.”

Dan spoke up knowing this would link him more than circumstantially. “Engineering protocol 2.22, activate security system.” He was hit from the side and taken down, striking the side of his head because he was still in cuffs. He hadn’t seen that coming.

“What was that?”

“We aren’t in any danger.” Dan managed to say and then groaned. He saw two guns trained on him with the third making sweeps of the perimeter.

“All clear.” The officer holstered his gun and made a move to help up the director who had also been knocked down.

“What the hell did you do?” The agent from the station hauled Dan up to a standing position without the care the officer had observed for the director. Dan gritted his teeth as the cuffs bit into his wrists.

“I activated the building so that the director and his staff can access it. Try it, just walk toward the door as though you were going to work.” The last directed at the director.

The director fidgeted a moment and got a nod of confirmation from Dan. Of course he was starting to feel more of the bruise on his face.

After a few moments the officer in charge said, “Well this has to be the weirdest case to date. If it’s safe,” another nod from Dan, “then we should investigate.”

“Welcome director,” the door slid open as the director finally turned as though to go in. He stopped and the door stood open. “Unauthorized persons accompanying. Should I issue them temporary passes?”

“Just say yes,” Dan whispered.

“Yes?”

“Four passes issued, expiration at the end of today’s work day. Let me know if you need any of them extended or revoked.” The door patiently stayed open while the two agents thoroughly scoured the inside for any signs of threats.

When they walked in the transformation was complete, even though the outside hadn’t changed, other than fixing major flaws that couldn’t easily be seen, the inside was an entirely different building. The reception area was a sunny glade with a desk seemingly made out of interwoven branches that held up a flat surface. Dan smiled thinking about all the work still going on behind the scenes. Next spring the staff would be in for a surprise as they found out that the desk and walls that seemed to be made out of three trunks would leaf and bloom with hypo-allergenic flowers of the appropriate types.

They toured around and were completely engrossed in the amazing internal architecture. After half an hour the director spoke up, “Sirs, this is amazing. I don’t think we need to press charges against this man. In fact if anything he should probably be congratulated. From what I’ve seen and he explained, this is a huge improvement over what we had, and it recaptures space that we could have never used in the old design. On top of that all the things that needed to be preserved were.”

***

Dan opened the door to a knock, a tall burly man stood there. “Are you the guy that rebuilt the building?”

“Uh, yes, what may I do for you?”

“I was out sick last week.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, I hope you are feeling better.”

“I would be if I hadn’t been let go.”

“Why would you have been let go?”

“You failed to tell them that the whole building is now self-cleaning.”

“Yeah, so? I figured it was a nice bonus.”

“I was the custodian.”

“Oh,” awkward pause, “Certainly you could better use your talents elsewhere?”

“Ha, what an elitist thing to say, but you won’t be able to tell that to the next guy.” Dan saw the gun drawn and froze.

*End*

*Note: I've always had a bit of a fascination with the idea of how much nano-robotics could do. In college it was an idea of how much a thorough body-wide system of robots could make me an invulnerable hero like the Silver Surfer or later iterations of Iron Man's Extremis armor. Though I have not read either of those comics so I think my influences were from other science fiction books. As I exited the college days of uncertainty I still thought about the nano-robots and how they could be used for construction: give them raw resources and a plan and get a perfect building built in a day or two. Of course there are many issues with that as I address one or two in this story.

I did also write several beginnings of stories hinging on nano-robotics, I started rewriting a few of them this last year. With writing 50k words for NaNoWriMo last year I think that I could possibly finish them and maybe publish. Now that I think about it I have three nearly distinct universes: Nano, Human Galactic Proliferation, and the Halver universe at least in science fiction. I also have a few fantasy worlds, but I really haven't focussed on those for years.

Short Story: Caught Speeding

*Note: This is not a new concept, but I am definitely practicing writing. Here are more short stories.*

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” An automatic response to really any noise my officemate made, some exceptions.

“This is nuts.”

Not answering directly usually indicated that I should pay attention, but it did seem he was just saying things to be outraged over the most recent political scandal. However, when I looked up the chagrin on his face didn’t seem faked. He slammed his chair back and stood up, paced in the small office and then retrieved the chair . Sitting down he grimaced, and took a breath I recognized as his story-telling breath.

He beckoned me to come around to look at his screen.

He had what looked like a really badly done version of YouTube, yep, GovTube. Nobody watched GovTube unless they were told to. Maybe if the government had made one well-thought-out contract with YouTube more people would have used it.

“Watch this,” he nearly spat and violently slammed the space bar. I only flinched inwardly.

The top view of a red convertible with a single male, obvious from the male pattern baldness and other more subtle hints, was driving, quite quickly along a road in a desert.

“He is going very fast,” I remarked blandly, it was never good to get him more excited, it would just make things worse.

“Yes he is, 162 miles per hour.” The way he said it made me stop watching and look at him. There was a smoldering anger that often came up when people started to do stupid things, or continue without heeding his warnings. But this was different, there was a much deeper connection.

“Wait, that’s you?” I hope I put enough incredulity in the question so he could take it either way.

“Yep, after a conference five years ago.”

“What was observing you?” I went through my knowledge of all the public and military satellites that might record it, “But wouldn’t they have brought this up earlier? Err…” It was a bit of an accusation, him driving that fast, if he had been pulled over he would have lost his job and clearance.

He chuckled wryly. “They certainly shouldn’t have sat on it this long. I wouldn’t have even worked on the project if they had any inkling of this. I didn’t even tell my wife.” He was becoming awfully jovial for a man that was about to lose his job. “Maybe the bureaucracy is just as bad as everyone thinks it is.”

“But five years, I mean it’s more likely that the superluminal satellite project was a success, despite the explosion in orbit.” I paused for moment to do a bit of morbid calculation of the dead project, back then we had amazing offices and dreams that extended outside of the solar system, “The telescope would have just gone through five light years away about four months… ago…”

My face must have looked the same as his, ashen, mouth partly gaping. I saw him start to form words, but I had to be the first to say it.

“That’s more like the bureaucracy I know, what?”

“I can’t believe they are using Dan’s work to nab me, what?”

Space Jellies

“I can just see it now, first alien species discovered. We’ll be famous!” Yasir stood up from his station, arms waving in early celebration.

“Shut up and monitor them. We need to start getting behaviors. Also I would rather not attract their attention. Keep the active sensors off Yasir.” Roger focused on the orbital charts.

“Alright, but really we should celebrate.” Yasir grumbled and sat back in his chair.

“Yeah, later.” Roger growled. For a few minutes the three crew members on the exploration vessel focused on their tasks.

“Look at them, floating in space. They look like jellyfish, maybe space jellies...” Yasir tried to describe them.

“Yasir,” Jane looked over her shoulder from her station and gave him a warning head shake. Roger was studiously ignoring them.

A few more minutes passed. Roger grunted, “Hmm. Looks like they are tacking against the solar wind toward that asteroid field. Unusually dense.” As the pilot, that was saying something; usually only rings around planets gave the small ship any navigational issues, but this was at a trojan point trailing a rather large gas giant. “Zoom in as far as you can Yasir, and send us the views.”

“Sure.” Yasir already had zoomed in as far as he could with one telescope, but Roger rolled the ship just enough to bring both the dorsal and ventral telescopes to bear. Using the telescopes in conjunction meant the computers could interpolate more detail, making the two telescopes act like a larger one.

All three were riveted to the view. About twenty of the massive jellies were circling a section of the cluster, well sphering, but that isn’t really a verb. Yasir watched as jets of matter puffed out from the giants, maneuvering them between the much smaller asteroids. One shot forward through a gap and sent a tendril of gossamer out to a particularly rough rock. But rather than pulling the whole thing to itself a chunk flaked off. Interest turned to confusion as the flake of asteroid developed two bright blue points of light.

“Ion engine signature detected,” intoned the ship’s computer.

They sat for a few moments in shock.

“That’s a ship.” Jane’s voice trailed off.

Roger started to curse with less reserve than normal. His hands flew over controls.

“Rog, three of them see us.” Jane recovered. “They are accelerating for us. Contact in five minutes.”

“I’m going. How’d they see us? Yasir?” Another string of invectives quickly followed.

“I don’t know.” Yasir watched in horror as the one that had caught the ship ingested it and began to process it. First the bright pinpricks of blue died. Pieces started to peel off the ship. Gases started escaping, but they didn’t spread out like in vacuum, but rather bubbled as though inside a viscous fluid. Finally the ship cracked in half. Yasir turned off his screen, too horrified to keep watching.

Jane and Yasir looked at each other as Roger turned the ship and started to accelerate away. She turned back to her station to figure out what was happening. Yasir didn’t really want to turn back to his station.

“At our current rate of acceleration they will catch us in six minutes. How far until we reach the trans-point?” Jane asked.

“Six minutes twenty seconds.”

“Can we give it any more power?” Jane’s desperation started to show through her schooled demeanor.

“Nope, we can’t, our ion spikes are already at max capacity.”

“Max?”

“Twenty percent above recommended, it’s more due to frequency at that point. We’ll hit a third of c right before the trans-point.”

“Are we going to make it?” Yasir asked. Both of his seniors turned to stare at him.

“Not by the numbers.” Somehow Roger’s demeanor was morphing into an oddly jovial one.

“What if we lose some mass?” Yasir tried not to bounce.

“It won’t be enough to make a twenty second difference.” Roger smiled. Yasir didn’t like that smile, it seemed a bit careless in their situation.

“But it might distract them.” Yasir countered.

“He’s got a point Rog. But what can we space?” Jane looked hopeful.

“We could ditch our spare air. Hopefully the recycler won’t cut out on us.”

Jane looked a bit concerned. “What if we spaced half?”

“Half measures so we won’t be eaten? Might as well give them the back half the ship.” Roger waved his hand and laughed.

“Roger,” She almost never used his whole name, working together for ten years called for some familiarity. Yasir wondered if they had ever been in such a dire situation before.

“Alright, let’s keep one of the twelve.” He gestured in a placating manner, hands out. “We are still about ten transits from an inhabited system. If something goes wrong six won’t really do us any more good. One will still work with the suit recyclers though.”

“Let’s start rolling them out.”

The three hurried out of the small bridge and went ten meters back to where engineering started.

A few minutes of lifting the heavy cylinders into the airlock and they were ready to go.

“What about one of the emergency pods?” Yasir asked.

“Might as well. Go forward and launch one. Not both.” Roger turned back to the airlock control.

Yasir sprinted back up the short length of the ship and stood at one of the pod chutes right behind the bridge and in front of the small quarters. He knew the procedure well enough, but in this situation he wasn’t sure how he was going to launch it without being in the pod himself.

He yelled down the length. “I have a problem.” His com blinked on his wrist. Oh yeah.

“Yes?” Roger asked.

“How will I launch this without getting inside?”

“The panel with the red line around it. Lift that. There will be manual overrides. We’ll be right up, just one more thing to space.”

Yasir flipped back the panel and saw a long red handle. “Manual launch. Only use as last resort.” The warning message made him shiver. Who would stay behind if one of the three of them had to launch the other pod manually? He pried the handle out of a clasp and started to pull on it. The first few inches were almost too easy. Red and white doors started to slide closed in front of the entrance to the pod.

But then he encountered a huge amount of resistance. After straining and pulling he put his feet up on the bulkhead and braced to pull sideways. The resistance gave way and he found himself swinging from the bar, feet coming off the bulkhead. His knees landed with a loud noise on the deck. Fortunately there was another spot of resistance, otherwise Yasir would have crashed himself against the oncoming bulkhead.

“Good job Yasir.” Roger never gave complements. Maybe it was sarcasm?

“Thanks.”

“Just need to get it a few more inches. Let me help you.” The two of them pushed it into another clasp. The red and white passage doors denoting that the pod was used closed with a click. The ship juddered as the pod launched.

“Let’s get up there and see what they do.” Jane came up behind them.

They entered the cockpit and took their respective seats. Yasir turned on the screens at his station again.

“Two are peeling off,” reported Jane, “but that big one didn’t take the bait.”

“Hopefully we can transition before we lose anything important.” Roger was almost maniacally happy.

They all sat in tense anticipation, waiting for an imagined but very close doom.

“It’s in range.” A massive spasm ran through the length of the ship. “It didn’t hit too hard. No damage.”

“It’s pulling us in.” Yasir shuddered.

“Trans-point in ten seconds. Please prepare for transition.” The calm tone from the ship’s computer barely registered.

“We are inside, telescopes obscured.” Yasir muttered.

“Transition.” Yasir never liked transitions before, they always made his head ache and his stomach twist. This time he was anticipating it joyfully because the discomfort told him the happy news.

“Whoa. Look at that.” Jane sent a screen around showing an trailing cloud of debris. As the alien’s goo sloughed off of the hull it crossed the realspace bubble into subspace and dissociated into component atoms becoming rainbow colors on the subspace sensor.

“Now, Yasir, we can celebrate.” Roger seemed a bit more dour.

“I think I’m good.” Close calls didn’t sit well with Yasir’s stomach.

“But we discovered two alien species in a single day!” Roger said it with a straight face, much less scary than his smile.

“Two?” Both Jane and Yasir asked in unison.

“Yep, that other ship wasn’t human, or at least nothing I’ve seen before.”

“Yeah, but they have a bug problem.” Jane shook her head. “How will they escape?”

“I don’t know. But what I do know is that we need to get back home after all those supplies we pushed out.”

“Yep, it’s going to be tight.” Jane agreed.

“I thought we only need to worry if we start leaking air.” Yasir stared at Roger.

“We also spaced about a month’s worth of rations. We’ve got about ten days of food for a nine day trip. Not much of a margin of error.”

“Ah.” Of course Yasir didn’t feel like eating right at the moment, but packaged food was certainly better than the recycler’s version.

***

The ship made it back to Earth’s system a few hours ahead of schedule. All the slime had sublimated away before doing serious damage, but one thing still stuck to the hull. None of the ship’s sensors detected any anomalies as it detached itself just as the sun’s strength reached the right parameters. The clear melon-sized envelope expelled a bit of mass, stabilizing its orbit.

*END*

And just for fun here are the Slow Mo Guys with Jelly Tennis.

Course Correction

“Course correction filed. Target centered. Time to transition, five minutes thirty-four seconds.” The light synthetic voice droned, obviously bored with simple things, but it took an edge that Jordan didn’t like, “Captain,” A word without much of the tonality it should have, “The problem with subspace disk four seems to increasing. I would suggest that we don’t use it as it may interfere with the more stable bubbles generated by the other three.”

Jordan couldn’t decide if it was good or bad to have an AI that was worried about their welfare. Mostly good, but they really needed to make this run as quickly as possible. “What alternatives do we have?”

“The first, and only real alternative is to leave the disk out of the jumps, of course we will have to course correct again and make a slightly shorter hop for Proxima Centauri in order not to risk a long burn on the other side.” Of course, the disks were what kept them together in subspace, protecting them from the different physics existent in the parallel universe. The disks also kept them from floating up out of subspace in some unknown part of their own universe, like anchors or down planes.

“Any other options? How bad could the interference be? You know they have an inverse payscale, the longer it takes, the less money we get and the less likely it is that I can get that repaired.” Hauling zettabytes of data was the high-tech way between systems paid well. With exclusionary pricing on data via quantum entanglement an industry of a sneakernet spaceships making jumps several times a day between systems.

“Based on rough models,” That phrase sent chills through his spine, all too often those models were spot on, it must have been a colloquialism that the ship’s computer acquired from the previous owners, a cantankerous elderly couple that had been wandering the stars for nearly eighty years. “The interference would certainly take out the number two disk and possibly the number one disk which would roughly halve or quarter our distance.”

“Oh.” If you were going five light years you really wanted to arrive in a spot that wasn’t too far away. The three standard hours it would take to get to the Sol system would turn into years of relying on the standard ion-spike drives and hoping none of the recyclers brokedown. And there was that whole time dilation thing too. All in all, not something you really wanted to risk hopping between stars. “Turn it off. Correct our course again.”

“Course correction filed.” The stars swept from left to right. “Target centered. acceleration time: twenty seconds. Time to transition: two minutes eight seconds.”

“Carry on, Jean.” Jordan put his feet up and reached for the first edition Asimov, quite a rare find, maybe he should replace the disk next time.