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I'm trying to write 1000 words a day--pulpy science fiction, that sort of thing. Mmm-hmm. |
| A thousand words a day of pulpy science fiction starts, shorts, and sketches. Maybe some of them will be fleshed out at some point. Or, you know--maybe not. Hmm. |
| 100 Days of 1000 Words-a-Day--Day 3 of 100 Jake picked up the backpack that was leaning against the wall near the hangar door, hefted, it, and immediately knew—it wasn’t heavy enough. He put it back down. “I thought these things were packed,” he said as he kneeled down, unzipped the top, and peered inside. “They are packed,” said Jackie from the other side of the open hangar door. “This one’s not,” Jake said. He stood up and the backpack fell over. “It doesn’t have any water in it.” He turned to the uniformed troops—all male, all young—who were watching him. “Y’all check your packs,” he said gruffly. There was a beat, and then the assembly started doing exactly that. “Mine’s empty,” said one troop. Then from farther along the line: “Mine too.” Already Jackie was on the phone. “Carter!” she barked into it. “This is Major Sheffield. You guys have screwed up the packing again. We’re three hours out and we’ve got light packs. Now why the hell is that?” She listened, her lips pursing, then she caught Jake’s eye and shook her head. “That’s a bunch of bulls***, Captain. You get your guys out here to pack these packs, and if I don’t see movement in 10 minutes, I’m going to come ride your ass over here and you can pack them yourself!” She put the phone in its cradle and responded to Jake’s questioning expression with a shrug. “Ah, that guy’s worthless,” Jake said. Then he turned to his troops. “All right, fellas. Grab your gear and come with me.” “Carter will send somebody,” Jackie said. “Screw that s***,” Jake responded. “We’ll go fill them up ourselves.” He strode out of the hangar, his men following him. They crossed the concrete pad, entered the opposite hangar, and ganged around a faucet attached to a spigot. Jackie followed them, and when she stepped inside, she saw that the men were filling their pack bladders with water from the hose. “That’s kind of low-tech, isn’t it?” she asked. “Water is water,” Jake said. Then he turned to the men. “Everyone fill up. Check your med boxes. I want to be sure everyone has full morphines.” “Ah, sir, we’ll have to break the seals to open the boxes,” a sergeant said. “Break the seals. I don’t trust the med guys any more than I trust Captain Carter, and those morphines….” He fingered the ugly scar on his left forearm, which protruded from shis smartly rolled uniform blouse sleeve. “Well, if we end up needing those, we’re going to need them.” Jackie pursed her lips again. “I believe that’s a tautology, Major,” she said. Jake shrugged and turned his attention to a six pack pulling up to the hangar door. Some of Carter’s personnel got out. Two of them moved to the back of the truck and started unloading backpacks and setting them on the concrete; one of them, an older woman dressed in the uniform of a staff sergeant, approached Sheffield. “You’ve got some light packs, Ma’am?” “Y’all stand by, my troops are inspecting their packs,” Jake answered. “Inspect the packs?” the staff sergeant repeated dully. “That’s right, inspect the packs. We’re going to inspect the med boxes too,” he said. “It’s against regulations to break the seals.” “Saunders, you got any med boxes?” Jackie asked, reading the staff sergeant’s name from her nametape. “Ah, yes, Ma’am. We’ve got five or six of them, I think.” “Good,” Jake said. One of his own men had already pulled some tables from the side of the hangar and had formed an inspection line; the others were methodically pulling items out of their packs and organizing them on the tables. As the packs were inspected and deemed acceptable, one of the men would take one and strap it to his back. Four or five of the men were so outfitted before the first bad med box was found. “Major, this one’s missing a morphine,” Sergeant Gillespie reported from behind the inspection table. “Missing a morphine,” Jake repeated. He turned to Major Sheffield. “How does a morphine go missing?” Sheffield, for her part, turned to Saunders. “Well? Tell the major how a morphine goes missing.” “I don’t know, Ma’am,” the sergeant said. “Well, I do,” Jake answered. He strode over to the back of the truck to where the two men who had gotten out of the truck to unload the replacement backpack, having surmised that the backpacks might not be needed after all, were standing waiting to see what would happen. Jake boldly approached the nearest one, reached out his hand, and grasped the man’s blouse by the breast pocket. “What do you have in there, Mister?” he asked. “Nothing, sir.” “Doesn’t feel like nothing,” Jake said. “Empty it out.” The sergeant’s eyes went wide and he looked over at Saunders, who also was staring at the exchange. “Empty it, I said!” Jake repeated in a command voice. The sergeant’s hand went to his breast pocket. He unbuttoned it, pulled out a morphine pack, and laid it on the open tailgate. By now, Jackie had maneuvered her way to the back of the truck, and she took note of the sergeant’s nametape—Rones. “You have some sort of injury, Sergeant Rones?” she asked. Rones’ only answer was a scowl. “That’s how morphine packs go missing,” Jake said. Then, to Saunders: “You leave me all your med boxes and get the hell out of here. Now.” Saunders’ yes sir was lost in the approaching roar of a helicopter, which was taxiing into position between the hangars. It stopped and Jackie could see the pilot through the Plexiglas canopy waving. “Get that truck out of here, Saunders,” Jackie yelled, and Saunders started moving. Saunders got into the driver’s side of the truck, powered it up, and drove it out of the way of the helicopter, which then continued taxiing until it was precisely between the two hangars. An older man descended from the interior; as he got closer, the two stars on the front of his uniform jacket became discernable. Sheffield, who was standing outside the hangar, came to attention and saluted. The general saluted back and kept walking, right past her and into the hanger. “Jake. You people aren’t ready yet?” he asked. “No, sir. We’ve got light packs and some morphine is missing.” The general whirled around. “You supply?” he sputtered to Sheffield. “Ah, yes sir, Major Sheffield,” Jackie said, identifying herself. “We’ve identified some personnel problems this afternoon.” “I guess so,” the general said, turning back to Jake and his men, who were wrapping up their pack inspections. |
| One Hundred Days of 1000 Words-a-Day: Day 2 of 100 The briefing room lights dimmed and the screen, which had already been on but which had been largely too dim to be seen now was more clearly, more vividly visible. At the top, the words ‘Cognitive Perception and the Now-Moment Width” ran across the screen. Below that was a photograph of a Kleesi in its tank, the sensing tip of its main tentacle sticking out of the fluid and pointed toward the camera. “Good afternoon,” the captain standing behind the podium started. “I’m Captain Telez from R5. This briefing is classified Yankee Blue, no recording permitted.” The no-recording reminder was superfluous; all of the briefing room’s occupants had surrendered their cellphone in the foyer upon entry into the building, but regulations were regulations—the script called for the Yankee Blue warning, and Telez delivered it. There were officials in the room which would not have allowed themselves to be out of communication, even for a short briefing, but those for whom such a thing might actually have been an issue had assistants who would enter the briefing room and personally inform them of a real-world event of some kind. General Peterson’s aide was presently standing in the foyer with the general’s classified cellphone, personal cellphone, and White House pager, and General Livingston’s case, a similarly equipped aide stood on the building’s first floor ready to respond. On the flightline, there were two fully fueled and crewed C-141s with ‘silver bullet’ trailers loaded ready to respond if a need suddenly developed for the presence of either general anywhere in the world. Captain Telez flipped a page in his script and the screen transitioned to the first content slide, another static photograph of a Kleesi. This one was a top-down view of a Kleesi laid out on a table, its tentacles stretched out and its gas bag deflated. “As you all know, our initial contact with the Kleesi occurred last year when the ship from Klee 51 arrived, assumed orbit, and began broadcasting. In the intervening eight months, we established contact and, with considerable help from the Kleesi, worked out a method of communication. The Kleesi are much better at English than we are at Kleesian, but the initial Kleesi who deployed to work with our language experts have made it possible for us to have a good reliability in communication exchanges.” “Ah, one moment, Captain,” General Livingston held up her finger and then leaned over to Peterson, who was seated to her left. “Sir, I have my doubts about the reliability. We might be fooling ourselves, at least a little bit.” Peterson frowned and nodded. “Alright. Go ahead, Captain.” The slide changed again, this time to a line drawing of the parts of the Kleesi sensing tip. “With a good deal of help from the Kleesi, we are informed that their sensing tip, which you see here, is able to perceive the world visually with the structure identified as A, by molecular sampling using the structure identified as B, and are able to monitor vibrations with the structure identified in the drawing as C.” “So that’s its eye, its nose, and its ear, then,” Livingston said. “Ah, yes, Ma’am, roughly,” Telez said. “The structure identified as D here does not have an analog in humans. We are told that this structure is used to perceive what the Kleesi call the now-moment.” “Now-moment,” Livingston responded. “What’s that?” “The now-moment is the segment of time that one is able to perceive directly,” Telez responded. “A person is aware of what is going on from moment to moment, but when one of the moments is gone, it becomes the past and remains only as a memory. Our ability to perceive the future appears to be completely nonexistent until that future becomes the present.” One of the lieutenant colonels sitting in one of the chairs around the table raised his hand. “Captain, if I may?” The captain nodded and the colonel turned toward the head of the table, where Patterson and Livingston sat next to each other. “There’s been some research done on insects, especially house flies, that suggests that the house fly’s perception of time is much faster than ours. Thus, events around the house fly occur much more slowly. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to slap one—they have a lot more time to see the hand coming and respond to it than it seems to us.” General Peterson waved his hand. “Hmm. Continue, Captain.” The slide changed again. “If we are understanding the Kleesi correctly, and as I say, our reliability is high on the exchange, the Kleesi have a longer now-moment than we do.” He turned pages on his script. “The Kleesi report that their now-moment is about seven-tenths of a second.” “Seven-tenths of a second,” General Livingston repeated. “So what does that mean?” “Ma’am, it appears that the Kleesi are aware of events as far as about three-tenths of a second into the past and about three-tenths of a second into the future in a direct way, as we are directly aware of events occurring around us from moment to moment.” “So they can see the future?” Livingston’s tone was incredulous, but already Peterson and others around the table were calculating the consequences of having a direct awareness of the immediate past and, more interestingly, the immediate future. “How do they do that?” “We’re not sure, Ma’am,” the captain responded. “The Kleesi have an explanation, but we’re still working on converting it to something we can understand. It has something to do with entangled quantum pairs involving fast-decaying particles.” “Of course it does,” Livingston said sarcastically. Then she turned to Peterson. “Isn’t this exactly how you would go about roping a tribal leader into cooperating with you and giving you their trinkets? Convince them that you have some sort of superpower?” Peterson didn’t respond to her but his gaze was focused on the slide. “I don’t know, Tom,” he said, using the captain’s first name. “It seems to me that all you need to remember the past is a good memory. When it comes to the future, since it hasn’t happened yet, I don’t see how you can really know what it is going to be.” “We don’t really know either, sir, but the Kleesi have demonstrated. I have a video clip.” “Are you people down there in R5 convinced?” Livingston asked sharply. “Yes, Ma’am,” Telez responded. “It’s not unanimous, but the evidence seems to be convincing.” “How did you test this?” Peterson asked. “We set up a device to generate a random number between 1 and 6. The Kleesi identified as T14 sat before it and predicted the number. We were able to set up a mechanism whereby T14 was able to indicate his choice of number 15-hundredths of a second before the number was revealed.” “And how did old T14 do?” Livingston interrupted. “Well, Ma’am, he was 100% reliable after 30 trials.” There was a moment of silence in the room, and then General Peterson seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. He stood up. “Alright, Captain, that’ll be all.” The lights in the room came on. The general gestured to Livingston. “Come along with me, won’t you?” General Livingston stood and followed Peterson out of the door. ### |
| One Hundred Days of 1000 Words a Day--Day 1, October 26, 2024 Kevitch stood on three legs at the stove and stirred a pot of melted paraffin was with a wooden spoon; his fourth leg, back and on the left side, was pulled up against his flank. The ship's officer of day opened the door to the galley and stood in the opening. "Something wrong with your leg?" he asked. "No, no," Kevitch responded, dropping his leg to the deck. His hoof made a sharp clatter as it made contact with the metal floor and weighted. Sullivan stepped up alongside Kevitch, peering down at the pot. "You're going to burn that," he said. "I'm not going to burn it." Sullivan moved over to the sofa and sat down on it. The sofa was made for Me'loon anatomy and had the distinctive curving front and ridges on the back for Kevitch's two wings to rest comfortably; it was not especially comfortable for humans, but Sullivan sat with his back upright instead of leaning back against the ridges. "The king will be here--when? Tomorrow?" "He's not a king, he's a prince," Kevitch said. "And yes, he is to arrive late tomorrow." "Prince. So he's the son of the king, then?" "Um, well, yes. Not exactly, but yes." "Not exactly." Sullivan fidgeted this way and that. "It's impossible to get comfortable on this thing," he said. Then he stood up. "So what is he, exactly." "It's hard to describe. What are you doing down here, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be driving the ship?" Sullivan had wandered over to one of the photographs on the wall and was inspecting it closely. It was lines jagging wildly this way and that, no discernable pattern or intention. It appeared to be something that a toddler would draw on a wall with a marker he wasn't supposed to have. "I am driving the ship. What the hell is this?" Kevitch pulled up his two front legs and stepped over to the sofa bipedally, on his two back legs. Then he sat down, his body fitting between the ridges and the curved front. "That is what we call the A'dee lu Fnaa. It's a historical document. Um, sort of like the Magna Carta, I guess. Do you know what the Magna Carta is?" "So this is writing?" "Yes. Quite a good reproduction, as a matter of fact. So--Magna Carta. Does that ring any bells?" "Not really," Sullivan said. "I'm an engineer, not a librarian." Kevitch made a sort of tinny rumbling sound somewhere deep in his chest, something between a cat's purr and silverware falling on a tile floor. It was the Me'loon equivalent of a human snort, the kind sound one might make to express surprise and contempt. "You're an idiot." "Hey, don't forget, I outrank your feathery ass," Sullivan said. He turned and stepped back toward the door. "I just stopped by to tell you that there's a Priority Four message for you in the comm center." "Really?" "Yeah. It's audio only. I listened to it, but I can't make heads or tails out of your language, so you'll have to go down there and listen for yourself." "Priority Four, you say?" The Me'loon stood and folded his feathers back into their resting position. "Now, who would be sending me a Priority Four message?" "I looked at the transmission, but it's not in plaintext, and I don't know the code." "Okay." Kevitch stepped over to the stove, turned the burner off. "Let's go down and I'll take a look." "Sure," Sullivan said. He passed through the open door and stood to the side of the narrow passage as Kevitch moved past him, and he followed. Down the passage, down the ladder to the bottom of the ship, then down another passage, and then the two of them stepped into the ship's communication center, where two crewman were on duty. One of them, also a Me'loon, was busy working a panel with his two front legs while he stood on the rear legs; the other one, a Sheel, was inside a transparent hydrocarbon tank on a floating platform The Sheel was moving around the other end, it's sensing stalk raised up out of the hydrocarbon fluid, monitoring several pieces of equipment. The sensing stalk turned when Sullivan and Kevitch entered and the floating platform's computerized voice activated. "Commander Sullivan and Lieutenant Kevitch. To what, pray tell, do we owe this honor?" "Vetchy here's got a message," Sullivan said. The Me'loon working the panel looked up and spoke. "Ah, yes. Kevitch Lieutenant," he said, inverting the name and rank as a gesture of respect. "You do have a P4 message, it's Me'looni audio." He raised a hoofed hand above a button on his panel. "Shall I play it?" Kevitch waved his own hoof. "Certainly." The Me'looni crewman pressed the button and then the speaker on the panel sounded. It crackled at first, and then a series of noises emanated from it. To Sullivan and the Sheel, it sounded like white noise mixed with the sound of a dump truck grinding its gears. It went on for some time, perhaps three minutes, and then it slowed down in tempo and volume, like an orchestral piece ending, and then it was over. "Hmm." Kevitch said. "You need it again, Kevitch Lieutenant?" the crewman said. "No." Then to Sullivan: "Commander, I think we better wake up the captain." "Wake the captain? It's three o'clock in the morning. Why would we wake the captain?" "Because the captain is going to want to greet His Majesty. The Prince will arrive in less than an hour." "What?" Sullivan said. "How is that possible? We're monitoring the line he arriving on right now, there's no ship all the way to the turn." "The Prince is not coming on the line," Kevitch said. "Come on, I'll explain on the way to the captain's quarters." The two of them strode out of the communications center, leaving the Me'loon and the Sheel to their duties. When they were gone and the door behind them was closed, the speech synthizer on the Sheel's platform sounded again, this time in Me'looni--more white noise and gears grinding. "Why is the Prince coming in an automated transport?" he asked. "Those are dangerous, aren't they?" The Me'looni answered in his own language. "Yes, but the one he's in has special protocols. And it's the regular ships aren't really big enough anyway." "Big enough? Big enough for what?" "That," the crewman answered in English, "is an answer that only the captain can have." He went back to his panel. "And Kevitch should be telling him about that in about five minutes." ### |
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