Weekly Goals

Hello, Writers; Director20MtD here with a weekly goal report for the week ending today, October 4, 2013.

I wrote 1000+ words each of the five weekdays this week, just as planned. Excellent!

My work is available to you on my blog at http://www.facebook.com/20MtD, and I've also attached it below for easy access.

Thanks!...Director20MtD
_____
Original Sketch for Friday, October 4, 2013

The ships were all alike: three little crew rooms perched on the top of a large cylindrical tank, with an engine strapped on underneath. The tank formed the main body of the ship, 44 feet across and 121 feet long, with compartments inside for the pumps and centrifuges that worked on the raw atmosphere of Saturn, spinning out some of the hydrogen and compressing it into a thick haze that would be further processed back at the station. The crew area of the ship consisted of a control station, from which the ship was flown; a processing station, from which the collection and compression phase of the missions were controlled, and the other station, from which everything else was handled: resources management, emergency procedures, first aid, and so forth.

There were twelve mission profiles, but only four or five of them were ever actually flown. For planning and execution purposes, the missions were divided into phases: brief, launch, insertion, collection, release, return, landing, and recovery.

The brief phase consisted of a careful review of a variety of factors that would impact the mission--ship and engine maintenance status, weather on Saturn, presence and location of other scooper ships, rings debris between Mimas and Saturn, and so forth. Some of the pilots were more thorough than others when it came to brief phase; in fact, although regulations called for a simulation run of the insertion and release phases during brief, some of the pilots dispensed with this, signing off that they had done the sim run when they hadn't. Some of the crew wouldn't ride with some of the worst offenders in this regard.

The launch phase was the shortest but most physically stressful part of the mission. The ships' small ion engine couldn't possibly launch even a tank-empty ship from Mimas' gravity well, and so the ships were rail-launched, like stones from a slingshot. The ships were placed at the end of a four-mile-long rail and accelerated magnetically to a speed precisely calculated based on the relative positions of Mimas and Saturn to put the ship at the right spot in the right altitude at the right time and at the right speed for the engine to take over for the collection phase.

The insertion phase was the ride from Mimas to Saturn. Crews had no control of the insertion--the ships' engines were not operable in the vacuum of space. The insertion was calculated based on Newtonian physics and governed completely based on the settings of the rail launcher. The pilots didn't like to admit it, but it was easy to demonstrate that from a statistical point of view, the insertion was the safest part of the mission, and this was almost certainly because there was no human intervention possible after the ships were launched.

The collection phase was the moneymaker. Once inside Saturn's atmosphere, the ion engine was started up and the inlets were opened to allow the thin, helium-rich atmosphere to enter the tank. The raw gas was shunted through a spin chamber and flow-through centrifuges separated out a large fraction of the hydrogen, shunting it out of the tank and leaving behind gas that was richer in product. Then pumps compressed this gas, heating it, and additional, more precisely controlled centrifuges spun out some of the methane and more of the hydrogen, enriching it even further. The ship would continue flying around, seeking out high concentrations of helium, and over the course of several hours, depending on atmospheric conditions, the ship would collect seventy or eighty pounds of enriched, compressed gas in its tanks before transitioning to the next phase: release.

The release phase consisted of speeding up, through the use of the engine on the one hand and Saturn's gravity on the other and then getting up and out of the atmosphere. Statistically, this was the most dangerous part of the mission--speed and inertia was not always easy to manage, and the interference from turbulence in the atmosphere, especially when down deep as the ship would be at the bottom of the dive, was hard to predict. Thirteen ships had been lost in the dive over the course of the station's fifteen-year history of operation, and when a ship dived and couldn't pull up, it sank all the way to the bottom, to the surface of Saturn, to a place where rescue or even momentary survival against the posionous, crushing atmosphere wasn't even a thin possibility. The crews were all dead long before the ship crashed into the metallic hydrogen surface.

The return phase started with the termination of the engine and, like the insertion phase, was largely a Newtonian free ride, based on speed and course at the end of the dive and the engine burn. When the engine turned off, the computer plotted the path of the ship within just a microsecond or two, and that would be that. Like the insertion phase, the return was a relatively safe phase, although as a result of the need for the engine burn during the dive and the ability of the pilot to affect the engine burn, it wasn't as safe as the insertion, which was entirely controlled by the rail launch.

The landing was also tricky. Without an engine to decelerate, the ships relied on a couple of mechanisms to slow down. The first was a calculation during the release to avoid excessive speed in the first place. The second was a series of expandable panels that could catch the solar wind pulsing from the sun and the magnetic flux pulsing from Saturn and resist against that. The solar wind wasn't very effective--the Sun was a long way away--but the magnetic flux from Saturn was strong and resisting against it to slow down did work pretty well, depending on interference from the rings on the one hand and where Jupiter was on the other. It was a tricky balancing act, and the degree to which a pilot could do it to make the landing a gentle kiss between the ship and the surface of Mimas was what his or her piloting skills were judged on--a little unfairly. The Company's chief pilot would have said that a pilot is best judged not on performance in the ship but on performance in the brief, that the best pilots avoided problems by preventing them in the first place. But nobody watched the briefs the way they watched the ship landings.

The recovery phase consisted of getting the ship towed to the airlock port, getting the crew out, getting the product out, and setting the ship up for the next run, all routine and all performed by non-flying Mimas-based personnel called grounders.
_____
Original Sketch for Thursday, October 3, 2013

The ship floated calmly in Saturn's upper atmosphere, far above the swirling storms farther down but low enough to avoid the constant rain of cosmic particles that descended from the faraway Sun. The ship felt it as painful pinpricks, tolerable for a while if necessary but only for a while. Fortunately, the ship didn't have to travel in empty, open space to get from place to place; unfortunately, when it did arrive at its destination, it had to find shelter of some sort. This planet, far from its star and equipped with a healthy atmosphere, worked pretty well, and when the ship materialized out of the antispace, it found a comfortable altitude. The planet's rotation brought it around and into the star, and the ship marveled at the small rocky planets close in, one of which had a bit of atmosphere clinging to it. The radiation intensity there must be extreme. Such a waste. The ship floated, recovering and gathering energy after the transition from antispace, which was jarring.

Mimas Station had not been noticed by the ship, and it would not be. For one thing, the station was on Mimas, a tiny bit of rock of no interest to the ship. For another, it was not radiating neutrinos. But Mimas Station was about to notice the ship.

Jeff Pierson sat at his station in Scoop Navigation and Safety--SNS--and peered at a monitor through a throbbing hangover, which he had tried to disguise with a hot shower and a variety of pills. Neither had worked very well. He flipped the audio alarm on and sipped his hot coffee as he pretended to watch the monitor.

SNS had two missions. The first was to evaluate the moment-to-moment status of Saturn's atmosphere via long-range Doppler-Kamiokande radars, which had been installed on tiny satellites that orbited within Saturn's rings and were responsible for the gaps in them. These radars were able to image the paths that the scoopers took on their arcing descents down and into the atmosphere and then their further descent for speed and subsequent flight back to Mimas once their tanks were full. The ships had their own radars, but once they were on their mission paths, they didn't have much ability to avoid obstacles if the radars found them. They would be going too fast, and the scoopers weren't built for the sort of quick maneuvers that would be needed to avoid ice crystals or whatever other hazard would be floating around down there. Captains relied on the weather forecasts and on the DK radar imaging, and these together along with a good dose of conservative piloting, were usually enough, especially after Polk went down.

The James K. Polk was piloted that day by James K. Grossman. Grossman was forever entertained by the similarity between his own name and the president's. "All us Navy guys love Polk," he would say. "He opened Annapolis."

At this, a variety of jeers would come from the crew with Air Force and Army backgrounds: "Ah, shut the hell up, you swabbie," "Annapolis sucks and so do midshipmen," "And so do you!"

"Yeah, you're all just jealous," James K. would say, smiling, and go about his business. "Me and the James K. are scooping today, baby. Come along and see how a real man flies."

From the others: "Nope." "No thanks." "Not me."

James K. was still in a pugilistic mood at that morning's weather briefing. "The temperature limit today is 440-410," the briefer was saying, pointing to a monitor as he did so. "We're having some inversions sunside, so we suggest you add five levels to this as you cross the terminator. Methane dewpoint after the cross is 78. There's streamers from the GWB last night, with possibility of ice high up, maybe around 360, but lower after the cross. Questions?" the briefer paused and looked around. All the pilots were fiddling with gear or looking at the door, ready to roll--all except Pam Donovan, who was still tracing the streamer lines with her finger and seemed to be muttering something to herself. "Pam?" the briefer asked.

"Yeah, these are ice streamers, so how can they be up so high?" she asked crossly.

"Oh, goddamnit, Pam, f*** those streamers. They're way down at 360. Hell, I doubt if they're even that high," one of the pilots grumbled. None of them could leave until the briefing was over, and the briefing wouldn't be over until everyone's questions--even Pam's--were answered. Artois was strict about that, as well they should be if they wanted to keep their contract.

"f*** off, Larry," Pam responded, still gazing at the monitor.

"Pam, we're on a schedule here," another of the pilots said. He shoved up next to her and stabbed a fat finger at the monitor. "This is the track of the streamer, but it's GWB driven. That means small particles that melt when they enter the tanks. A little water in your tank, big fat deal," he said. "Now, let's go."

But Pam would not be rushed. "What's this blue loop here?" she asked.

"That's the isobar pushing the streamer up from below," the briefer answered. "Look at this." He manipulated some controls on a panel near the end of the large table, and the view zoomed in on that loop and colors changed. "The green there is the pressure gradient, and the yellow under it is the gradient change over the last four hours."

"So it's pushing up, then, right?"

"Yes, it probably is. It's at 360 now, or maybe a little bit higher. It will push to 385 before it rotates into sunlight. We recommend a minimum of 405, plus 5 just be sure, so that's how we arrived at the 410 limit previously briefed."

Pam looked at it while the other pilots grumbled, and then "okay." She hitched her pack and looked at the annoyed faces. "I said okay, fellas. Let's go get us some helium, shall we?"

They filed out, grumbling, and proceeded to their ships. Pam was bringing up the rear, and James K., in front of her, noticed her. "So, Pammy, you gonna stay above 410, are you?" He guffawed.

"Yeah, I am, asshole," she responded, "and I advise you to do the same."

"Me and James K. know what we're doing, honey," he said.

"Don't call me honey, honey," Pam answered.

"I'll call you any f***ing thing I want," he responded.

The pilots spent a lot of time and energy chiding each other about this or that, but this particular banter banter was getting a little too ugly for her, and she put an end to it. "f*** off, Jim," she said, turning on her heel and heading toward her ship, Richard Nixon.

Grossman smirked and turned toward his own.

_____
Original Sketch for Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The launch was exciting--just like in the movies.

She arrived at 5 pm on the day before and stopped her car at the impressive-looking gate. A sign identified the gate as Artois Facility K Gate 41, and below that, in small print, the serious-sounding consequences of entering the facility without permission were displayed. Kathy didn't read all of it, but it appeared that going past the gate without permission would bring on the full force of the US Government. As she stopped, she rolled the window down and as a uniformed security officer--with a sidearm, she noticed--and a woman in a pantsuit came out of the small building there.

"Good morning," the officer said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Kathy held her papers out for his inspection. He took them and looked. She noticed a vehicle coming up the road in front of her, behind the closed gate, and as she watched, it continued coming closer and closer and finally it turned to take a position precisely across the road, blocking it. It was an Army-green truck, six-pack, no markings, but she noticed that the uniformed young man sitting in the front passenger seat had the end of a short shotgun sticking out of the window and a wire in his ear. He was scowling at her, as was the uniformed young man in the back passenger seat, whose window was also down. Faces behind them craned to see.

"Ma'am," the officer said. She turned toward him and then noticed that he was looking at her face. "All right," he said after a moment, handing the papers back to her. "Just one moment." He went back inside the small building and the woman, who had not engaged while the officer was doing his job, approached and stuck out her hand.

"Miss Malley, I'm Jean Seeson," she said, smiling. Kathy shook her hand through the window. "I'll be your escort while you're in the facility." Kathy immediately imagined this cheerful woman riding along to Saturn with her, and smiled. "I know what you're thinking," Jean said. "I'm not going to Saturn with you."

"That is what I was thinking," Kathy responded. The two women laughed, and Kathy decided she liked Jean Seeson. The gate rose and the truck started moving. It turned to point down the road and stopped.

Jean came around to the passenger side of Kathy's car, and got in. "Go on through the gate, and park there by my car," Jean said, pointing to a late-model Toyota occupying one of four parking spots on the right side of the road. "Leave your keys in the car, okay? We'll take care of it." Kathy hadn't noticed until now, but Jean also had a wire in her ear, and as they pulled through the gate, she brought her left wrist up to her mouth and spoke a couple of words into it, words that Kathy didn't catch. She maneuvered her car next to the Toyota. "No need to bring anything, Miss Malley. You can leave your purse there on the seat, along with the keys."

"Please, call me Kathy," she said as they got out. She put her purse on the driver's seat and threw the car keys on the seat next to it.

"Okay," Jean said. "No need to lock it, nobody's going to bother it."

"No, I guess not," Kathy said.

They got into the Toyota and drove along a winding road, wooded on either side. As they drove, the women chatted, the sort of easy conversation that two professional women can have on first meeting, but which is difficult to ever have again. Jean told Kathy about her grandchildren. Kathy told Jean about her research project. Every half mile or so, there were a pair of low, cinder-block buildings painted forest green with long horizontal windows at the top; Kathy presumed these were security stations, and she was right. They arrived at a large rectangular white building, four or five stories tall. On the square side, there were no windows and the entire space was occupied by a large Artois logo; on the other side, there were no windows on the other side either, but there was a brick-surrounded entrance. All the cars were parked around the outside edge of the parking lot. Jean pulled the car up into one of the spots right next to the entrance and she turned off the car.

"Here we are," she said brightly. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Kathy answered. "Oh, God, all my IDs and stuff are in my purse."

"You won't need them now," she said. "Come on, let's get going, you've got a long couple of days ahead of you."

The two women approached the door. Under the overhang, there was a plastic panel against the side wall, and a keypad below it. The door looked substantial; there was an ordinary glass pull door, and beyond that, clearly visible, was a steel door that was anything but ordinary. Jean placed her palm on the plastic and it lit up, first white and then green, and somewhere inside the mechanism, there was a click. She pulled open the glass door. There was a line of unmarked keys, like the keys on a typewriter, on the steel door. Jean pressed several of them, too fast for Kathy to follow, and then there was another click, a louder one, and a mechanism activated, opening the steel door.

"After you," Jean said. Kathy smiled and stepped into the cool dark hallway. Kathy paused for Jean to follow and take the lead. "First, we need to get you changed, and then the docs will meet with you, and then you'll need to sleep for a while," she said as they walked along.

"Sleep?" Kathy said. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon."

"Sure, but we need you rested for the launch cycle, that will take about ten hours, and it starts at two am," she said. "Forty one hours from now."

_____
Original Sketch for Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Jed worked methodically, using his rubber hammer to nudge the plates into alignment and then passing the inch-diameter bolts first through one hole then diagonal to the next. He attached the nuts finger-tight before inserting the other two bolts, then he twisted on those nuts to finger tightness. He reached in his bag for the no-recoil electric wrench, confirmed that the tension was set correctly, and used the wrench on the nuts.

As he was tightening the last one, his headset crackled. "Jed, where are you?"

He activated the push-to-talk and responded. "I'm on top of Old Smokey, where are you?"

"Very funny," the voice responded. "How's it going?"

"I've got Taft and connected to Hoover now," he said. "I was just about to move on to whichever one is below Hoover, I think it's Van Buren."

"Yeah, okay. Before you go on, check the temperature in the tank, will you? Bobby says his tank is getting too cold."

"Rog," Jed responded. "Which one is Bobby on?"

"Morgan," she said.

"Okay, I'll be done here in a moment." He clicked off and put the wrench back in his suitbag. He floated above the top of a stack of small spacecraft called scoopers which were designed to be launched from Mimas Station, make the short trip to Saturn under freefall, then fly in the thin upper atmosphere, capturing and compressing it for processing back at the station.

Each was named for a former US President, and each had its own personality. In theory, the ships were simple--ion propulsion, nuclear-electric power for the atmosphere pumps and crew support. But they were heavily and sometimes roughly used, and the scarcity of spare parts meant that somewhat creative means of keeping the scoopers going had to be used. For instance, after Truman had had its ion tensioner on the left side damaged in a hangar bump, it was fixed--sort of--with some aluminum tubing from one of the hydroponics and a warning to pilots to 'take it easy on the left side.'

Buchanan had its induction ports wired backward; the life support on Quincy Adams chugged out either pure oxygen or pure nitrogen; Clinton wouldn't pressurize the atmosphere tanks all the way. But the crew did the best they could with what they had, and continued to shoot those little containers of 34-percent-pure Helium-3 on their long automated trip back to Earth every four hours, and as long as the stream of helium was unbroken, nobody was much interested in fixing the scoopers.

Jed reached down for the joystick on his left suit boom--an arm that came from around the back of his suit and which contained a number of controls--and jetted forward, up and over the smooth surface of Taft until he was clear, then he allowed himself to fall gently toward the hard rough surface of Mimas, outside the protective dome that enclosed the habitat portion of the station. He touched down and flipped the jet off.

"Mim Four, EVA Seven, I'm down," he said into his headset radio.

"EVA Seven, Four, down," the controller responded.

Suddenly, the earpiece in Jed's helmet sounded a piercing tone, and he reflexively slapped with his right hand at the mute on his left forearm. Then the station's computer's voice, strangely calm and feminine, replaced the alarm: "Alarm blue, all personnel report to recovery locations. Alarm blue, all personnel to recovery locations. This is not a drill. This is not a drill." The tone sounded again, and then Jed punched his push-to-talk.

"Mim Four, what the hell's happening?" He released the switch and voices overlapped each other on the channel. He waited, reviewing procedures in his head. He had a recovery station to which he was expected to report in his position as a scooper pilot, but that applied while he was inside the dome of the station's habitat. If on a scoop, then his job was to establish control of the ship, evaluate and maintain life support, and then stabilize the ship's location and await further instructions. But he wasn't inside the hab, and he wasn't onboard a scooper--he was standing on the surface of a moon of Saturn outside the dome, a place the Company didn't really expect him to be.

"EVA Seven, comm check," he heard one of the voices on the channel say. It was Mimas Control.

"Mimas Four, EVA Seven, comm check," he answered back.

"Stand by, Seven," the controller said and then he heard the channel smartly click off. Jed had been facing away from the dome, but now he turned toward it, and what he saw immediately bothered him. The sun was shining in from the other side, and he could see that the dome was filling with a foggy green substance, thin, but quite definitely there. As he watched, the fog floated across the flat grey surface of the inside of the dome and then thickened as it began to fill the dome.

His helmet speaker crackled again. "EVA Seven, Mim Four," the controller said, "Can you give us a visual from your location?"

"That's affirm. I see fog filling up the dome."

"Say again, Seven."

"I say, I see fog filling up the dome," Jed repeated. "Thin green fog, it's running across the ground inside the dome and starting to fill it from top to bottom. What the hell is going on?"

He could hear the controller's voice muttering, muffled, to someone--he immediately knew that the controller had cupped his hand over the microphone at the end of his headset boom. The incomprehensible muttering he heard was only one side of the conversation, that was apparent from the long pauses, but he waited patiently. Then he heard the voice clearly again. "Seven, say your distance from the dome."

"Ah, I'd say about fifty yards."

Again, a conference intervened, of which Jed could hear only one side, muffled and muttered.

Then the controller came back on. "Okay, Seven, approach the dome and report your perimeter location."

"Mim Four, EVA Seven, confirm permission to approach dome." Jed wanted a double-check on this. Approaching the dome on foot was strictly prohibited and there were a variety of defensive measures in place to prevent someone--or something--from approaching it.

"EVA Seven, Mim Four," the controller coughed, once lightly, then more heavily. Jed heard that muffled too, as if the controller had had the presence of mind to cup his headset microphone before he coughed to avoid an explosion of sound from emanating on the other end. "Your approach to the dome is confirmed, countermeasures and protective devices are off, repeat off, you are cleared to approach." The end of the controller's sentence trailed off into a coughing fit, which itself was truncated by the end of the controller's transmission.

What the hell is going on in there, Jed thought. "Roger that, I am approaching the dome." He took a few steps in preparation for the large step that would launch him above Mimas' surface before he activated his jetpack, but then thought better of it. It was only 50 yards, not even that far; he'd just hoof it.

He had walked about 10 yards when another voice came on the comm link, a feminine one. "EVA Seven, Mim Four," she said. "Report position."

"I'm twenty yards from the dome," he said. "I'm walking."

"Roger," her response was immediate. "Continue, approach, and report perimeter station ASAP."

"Approach and report," he repeated. He closed the distance and stopped at the point where another step would bump him into the glassy, clear-plastic surface of the dome itself. The dome was made of a plastic ceramic impregnated with radiation-filtering particles and some other high-tech devices--its purpose was to protect the habitat from cosmic radiation, errant magnetic pulses from Saturn, and particle stream spikes. Jed looked down and just to the left of the ends of his suitboots a metallic spike projected from the bottom of the dome parallel to the ground. On the spike, the number K343 was embossed.

"Mim Four, Seven," he said into his microphone. "I'm at K343."

Silence.

"Mim Four, Seven," he said, trying again. "K343."

Silence.

He looked up to see that the entire dome, as far as he could see, was entirely filled with thick green foam.

_____
Original Sketch for Monday, September 30, 2013

Bob filled his beer glass from the open keg; by this time, it was mostly warm and mostly empty, but Bob didn’t mind. “Love this beer,” he said.

“Yeah. It’s okay,” Andre said, draining his own cup. “But I’ve had enough for one night.”

Bob came back to his lawn chair. The two of them were sitting outside on the back patio. “No, it’s great stuff,” he said.

“Okay, so you were saying about time travel,” Andre said.

“Yeah. See, you guys, you’re thinking about it the wrong way,” he said. “There’s not that much I can tell you, but I can tell you that when the breakthrough comes, you’ll be amazed as how simple and ordinary the key elements are.”

“Key elements,” Andre repeated. Andre hadn’t quite decided if this guy’s story was legitimate or not—but whatever the case, he sure talked a good talk. And there was something else about him, something odd about the cadence of his speech and the way he walked and moved; his mannerisms were not quite right, as if he’d learned them only as an adult. He kept tugging at his collar and his belt the way a dog who never wears a collar might tug at one.

“Yeah. Look at it this way,” Bob said. “In the modern era, say since about 1800, we’ve managed to invent a large number of convenience items and labor-saving things, but almost none of them are really original thinking. Almost everything we’ve thought of had some precedent in nature for us to follow.”

“Precedent?” Andre said.

“Yeah. Take fire. Mankind tamed fire thousands of years ago, and that single accomplishment led to everything else, right? Fire made it possible to colonize harsh locales, kept animals away at night, and even made it possible to sterilize and soften meat before eating. That helped conquer disease. But—” Bob emphasized the word— “but, man didn’t really invent or discover fire. Fire already was in the environment in the form of forest fires started by lightning. All man had to do was figure out how to control it.”

“Well, it’s not always easy to control fire, is it?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Bob said. “It’s quite an accomplishment. All I’m saying is that it’s not an original concept. Man just improved on what he saw in nature. The thing is to imagine how long it might have taken man to discover fire if natural fires had never existed.”
“What about the automobile?” Andre asked.

“Hmm.” Bob took another drink from his beer. “Well, let’s see. What’s the essential element of a car? I guess it would be the internal combustion engine, right?”

“I guess,” Andre said.

“And what’s the essential element of the internal combustion engine? Isn’t it the idea of a gas expanding against a piston?”

“Sure,” Andre said.

“The piston-in-a-cylinder arrangement grew from steam engines, where the phenomena of water boiling to steam and expanding as it does so was put to mechanical work,” Bob said. “The water-to-steam thing already existed in nature and was noticed as soon as water started to be boiled over fires. So again, we see the effects of man’s work with fire and the effect that heat from fires has on things.”

“How about the airplane?” Andre said.

“Bird and bats fly,” Bob returned. “And so do insects and things like maple seeds. In fact, I understand that Sikorsky got his idea for a helicopter from watching maple tree seeds spin in the air.”

Andre shrugged. “Yeah, well, I see your point.”

“One thing I can think of that doesn’t have an obvious parallel in nature is the wheel and axle,” Bob said. “The Egyptians didn’t have it when they built the pyramids, although they did use platforms atop tree trunks of roll things on. The tree trunks weren’t attached, though, and so they kept having to move the back trunk up to the front again.”

“Really?” Andre said. “It doesn’t seem like much of a mental leap from a rolling tree trunk to a wheel and axle.”

“No, not to us,” Bob said. “But that’s because we’ve lived our lives with wheel-and-axle arrangements all around us all the time. What if you had never seen one? Then it’s not so easy to imagine.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Andre said. “You want another beer?”

“Please,” Bob said. Andre got up and first went to the keg, but he could get only a half-cup out of it. He drained that himself, and then said, “I’ll get you a fresh one from inside.”

“Okay,” Bob said.

Andre’s wife, Rebecca, was coming out of the door as Andre went in, and she came and sat in the seat that Andre had occupied. “How you doing?” she asked. “Is Andre keeping you entertained?”

“Oh, sure, he’s great,” Bob replied

“Where are you from?” Rebecca asked. “Your English is great, but I can hear just a little accent.”

“Sweden,” Bob said. It was his cover story—the only trouble with it was the possibility that he would encounter someone who might respond to this lie by speaking to him in Swedish. He hadn’t had the tape for that language, and so he would not be able to respond, but he had a lie for that too. Rebecca, of course, was not Swedish and did not know Swedish and, in fact, had never been to Sweden.

“Oh, how interesting,” she said. “What part of Sweden?”
“Stockholm,” Bob replied. “A little town a ways to the south, actually.”

“My roommate in college was from Sweden,” she said. “Exchange student, lovely girl, and smart too. Spoke three or four languages.” Rebecca laughed. “I’m lucky if I can manage with English.”

Bob smiled. “You seem to be doing okay.”

Andre was back on the porch now, with two cold bottles of Budweiser; he handed one of them to Bob. “Honey, you’re in my seat,” he said to Rebecca.

“Oh, shoo,” she said. Andre pulled up another lawn chair and sat down heavily. “So, what are you boys talking about?”
“We’re talking about guy stuff,” Andre said, and he took a drink of his beer.

“Actually, we were talking about inventions,” Bob said, peering carefully at Rebecca, gauging her reaction.

“Inventions? Like what?” she said.

“Oh, like the airplane, and how we never would have invented it if not for the example of birds and bats and stuff,” Andre said.

“It’s not that you never would have invented it,” Bob corrected him. “It’s just that it would have taken a lot longer.”

“How much longer?” Rebecca asked. She was suddenly interested—a little too suddenly, Bob thought.

“Who knows?” he said. “The concept of the airfoil is surprisingly simple, but without an example, it might have taken a long time for someone to just happen on it and to see what it means, how it works.”

“So, what you’re saying is that animals have had so much time to evolve things like eyes and wings and whatnot, that if they haven’t evolved it, then it probably can’t be done,” Andre said, slurring a little. His bottle was already half empty, and he had had many cups of beer from the keg.

“Well, not necessarily, but yes, most things that can physically be done, an animal somewhere or other has evolved it for protection,” Bob said.

“That kind of puts your time travel theory to bed then, doesn’t it?” Andre said. “No animal ever evolved time travel.”

“Well, are you sure about that?” Bob said, smiling. “Maybe no animal time-travels to here, only away from here. After all, this time is not all that friendly to your average animal.”

Rebecca was looking at him strangely. “Time travel? What?”

“Bob here is a time traveler,” Andre smirked. “Or at least he says he might be.”

“We all are, aren’t we?” Bob said. “One second per second into the future.”

__________________________
Thanks!...Director20MtD
"Twenty Minutes to Deadline" blog, daily sci-fi shorts, starts, and sketches. http://www.facebook.com/20MtD