I’m thinking (or feeling, which might be more important) that the reason this story is limping along like a Ferrari with seven blown cylinders is that I have yet to allow myself to relax, cut loose, and let it flow. (Anyone making the obvious constipation jokes will be sent to the corner for a timeout.)
Last year’s story was a wild ride, and I had been thinking (a 45-minute commute each way to the hanger is a great time to think) that it was because last year’s story was a comedy where this year is a drama. But it just occurs to me that last year’s story was just as much of a drama as this one, no comedy. It’s the other story (the still-being-worked-on 2012 NaNoWriMo story) that’s turning into a wackadoodle comedy.
So why the difference? I thought I had it, but apparently not. Could it be that last year’s story was “fun” and totally “fantasy-ish” while still being set in our current world? It did allow me to throw out any off the wall BS I could come up with, at least to a certain extent. Where this story is more “hard” science fiction, precise, serious.
Who know? Perhaps I should cut off the paralysis by analysis and relax, cut loose, and let it flow.
While I normally put in a lot of internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.
CHAPTER FOUR (continued)
Neil Hermans was the first one to get there. He hadn’t been running – that would have been a good way to get people even more nervous than they already were. But he hadn’t been taking his time either.
“Hello, Neil. You got the latest news?” asked Pawley.
“Yeah, DEBBIE gave it to me on the way over. It looks like we’re going out of the frying pan and into the fire, whether we like it or not.”
“I don’t know that we can do anything about the fire, but for the moment let’s just try to stay here in the frying pan for a while. But this could get ugly really quickly if people start to lose it. We’re going to head that off fast and hard. Are you and your crew ready?”
“Obviously not, but we’ll do the best we can with what little we have. We do have a couple of aces to play if it comes to that, but everyone’s worked really hard for two hundred years to make sure that no one can do what we’re going to need to do.”
“Don’t underestimate the damage you might do if you pull one of those aces out of your sleeve,” said Amanda as she came in and sat down in the office’s last chair. “People up here have always been a different breed than the ground pounders, but there are certain lines that have never been crossed. Neil’s right about how much has work and thought has gone into keeping us weapons free. That’s Pandora’s Box that you’ll be opening.”
“I remember,” said Pawley. “We’ve gone over this. But if push comes to shove, that could be the lesser of the two evils.”
“It’s still evil,” said Sarah.
“Now that we’ve beaten that horse again, what options do we actually have if we need them?”
Neil sighed. “If it’s a single small ship or even a handful of them that are the problem, we can probably take action against them with a reasonable chance of success. But that will only be for a day or two after we first have to use force. The element of surprise will be a huge part of our plans. Once everyone knows that we’re serious and will act, maybe it will get them to stop doing things that might leave us with no other good options. And if it’s dozens of ships, things can fall apart pretty fast.”
“Worst case, if we lose all control here in GEO and LEO, what happens if anyone tries to get to O’Neill, Goddard, or one of the other colonies? Can they defend themselves to keep their isolation intact?”
“We’re not privy to any preparations they might be making,” Neil said, “but my assumption would be that they’re making them. An awful lot of what we do out here involves manipulating huge amounts of energy very carefully, which is a good first-order approximation for the definition of a weapon.”
“Right,” Pawley said. “While we have to be prepared for the worst case scenario, we also have to do everything we can to keep everyone working toward a best case scenario, even when ‘best’ might be a purely relative term. We always believe that we’re a cut above and won’t give in to panic like they have down below, but that’s an ideal that is rarely tested up here. There are no guarantees that it will always be the case when individuals are looking at choices between bad and very bad.”
“DEBBIE, what are the current estimates from the AI strategy team showing about our longevity if we isolate ourselves?”
“Commander Pawley, given our current resources for materials, personnel, energy, and manufacturing, the best estimate is that there is less than a three percent chance of being able to successfully transition to a fully independent society free of all physical contact with Earth. The most likely outcome will allow most colonies to survive less than ten years, while statistically a few may last twice that long.”
“DEBBIE, what are the estimates of our ability to survive exposure to the current disease if we maintain contact with Earth?”
“Commander Pawley, given the updated information coming from the SpaceChem Echo station, any system of stations that attempt to continue physical interactions with spacecraft from Earth will be destroyed in less than a year. However, that point is moot since it is estimated that no ground-based institutions will be able to maintain the capability of launching spacecraft or cargo for more than another six weeks.”
“It’s the same math as it’s been for the past six months,” Amanda said. “We can die from disease in a month or we can die from starvation and hypoxia in a year.”
“Or we can get our asses in gear and at least go down fighting,” Neil said. “But we’re going to have to do it as a group. The survival forecasting models all make the assumption that all of the colonies, stations, and ships work together for their mutual benefit. It’s suicide to fracture apart and split up into individual efforts.”
“But everyone knows that,” said Sarah. “So far we’ve managed to not have any major institutional rivalries off-Earth. We’ve got a history of cooperation.”
“No,” said Pawley, “we have a history of being able to staying out of each other’s way, while all being subsidized by different ground-based economies. While the different energy, manufacturing, and tourist companies have all had their own cooperation and competition agreements, for the most part everyone knows that we’re all in an unforgiving environment to begin with. One way or the other, we’re all living in glass houses, so we don’t throw many rocks. But look at the early competition to get to the moon, and then the international issues with GEO slots once they became the first rare commodity up here.”
“True,” said Amanda, “but nothing like that has happened in over forty years, despite the occasional spat or pissing contest.”
“It might take a lot longer than forty years to forget a hundred thousand years of aggression,” said Neil. “I hope we can do it, not like we have any choice.”
“Commander, the other Council members are coming online,” DEBBIE said.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 