Category Archives: Writing

One thing I’ve noticed in several of the long-form writing efforts that I’ve tried is that I get two or three good chapters of dialog and action, and then go completely off into left field by throwing in a chapter of 100% exposition, before going back to actual storytelling. I’m not sure if it’s impatience or laziness (or a little of both), but the next draft has to fix it every time.

“Show, don’t tell,” is the standard instruction. You need to be able to craft your story to fill in whatever background you need by making it a part of the ongoing story, not by setting aside the story for a chapter and then jumping back in.

But now that I’ve done that scene and that scene to set the stage and I need to get to that scene to move the story along from here, we’ll finish our awkward chapter of exposition, while silently mulling over ideas on how to fix it in the next draft. Re-write it as several new scenes/chapters to do a more thorough job of laying the foundation for the story while simultaneously not being long winded and boring? Or drop it completely and rework everything else in the entire book to fill in background as it’s needed?

LATE EDIT: Oh, the hell with it. Later on (maybe after NaNoWriMo, or do I have to do it now?) I’ll rewrite the first half of this chapter to not be all expository and introduce new characters. Let’s make what was supposed to be the second half of Chapter Three into Chapter Four and do it right. Or at least, better. (That tapping sound you hear is my muse, over in the corner of my brain, giving me “The Look”, arms folded, glaring, tapping her foot impatiently. Yes, ma’am. I’m writing now, ma’am. Yes, I know better, your worshipfulness. I’ll do this part correctly, your wonderfulness.)

LATER EDIT: Yeah, this will work. Not many actual words tonight, with the introduction of new characters, places, and situations, it was slow going tonight, not many words, but a lot of structural stuff in my own head, knowing what needs to come next (acting out all of that exposition crap), so it should start coming more easily after this. I hope.

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

“Commander Pawley, Doctor Teffeau needs to talk to you,” DEBBIE said. “She says it’s extremely urgent.”

“Put her through.”

“She’s on her way to see you now. She’ll be there in three minutes.”

That can’t be good, Pawley thought. “Okay, send her in when she gets here. Hold everything else unless it’s an actual emergency.”

“Yes, sir. Doctor Teffeau in, everything else on hold.”

Pawley quickly went through all of the files and windows open on his screen and saved, closed, forwarded, or deleted as needed. If the Surgeon General was coming here personally to give him news, it might be a while before he got back to any of the more routine things.

With a brief knock on the door, she strode in lightly and sat down in a chair across from his desk. The look on her face verified Pawley’s suspicions about the nature of her visit.

“We’ve got our first infestation,” Teffeau said without preamble, “a LEO maintenance & fuel depot run by SpaceChem, SpaceChem Echo. It looks like they just got a supply ship in and something in it was contaminated.”

“What happened to the quarantine protocols? How did the virus get past those?”

“Best guess is that the protocols weren’t followed to the letter. We knew that this would happen. It doesn’t matter how bad the news is from down below, or how untrustworthy and slipshod the decon work at Quito, Nanyuki, and Bontang is getting. You can put procedures in place until you’re blue in the face, but sooner or later someone’s going to be bored, or in a hurry, or absentminded, and the shit’s going to hit the fan. Today’s that day.”

“How many people are on that station?” Pawley asked.

“Eighteen, and it’s ‘were on,’ not ‘are on.’”

“They all died?”

“No, just fifteen of them. The other three weren’t showing symptoms so they panicked and got into a pod, abandoned the station.”

“Please tell me they went down.”

“With all of the news reports showing what’s going on down there? They went to another SpaceChem station.”

“In direct violation of the most basic rule we have for this situation. What in hell were they thinking? They know that no one will let them dock and contaminate themselves. Wait, no one let them dock, right?”

“Yes and no,” Teffeau said. “SpaceChem Delta told them to stand off and wait for instructions, but when they couldn’t raise anyone on the ground, they let them dock. But they’ve got the hatches still sealed, so now they’re asking us for help and instructions.”

“You said they couldn’t raise anyone at SpaceChem for instructions. Why not? DEBBIE, can you please get in touch with SpaceChem for me?”

“Working on that, Commander Pawley.”

“We’ve talked about this, Mike,” Teffau said. “The outer system AIs called it when the India and Pakistan thing blew up. All of the big, strategy-oriented systems are out there, but none of the human strategists here have disagreed. I know it sucks to be the one with your finger on the button, but it’s time to cut the cord, while we can.”

Pawley sat silently for a few seconds, staring absently at the wall, lost in thought. “DEBBIE, any luck getting anyone at SpaceChem?” he finally asked.

“No, sir. There are no responses through their normal communications channels. I have attempted to contact the AI at their primary processing facility in Indonesia, but those communications lines appear to be down as well. I am hearing from other, smaller AIs in the region that there are large civil disturbances throughout the area.”

“Thank you. DEBBIE, please send the information that Doctor Teffeau just gave to me to the other members of the Council. Tell them that I’m calling an emergency session for one hour from now, all need to be online. Then tell Amanda and Neil that I need to see them immediately.”

“Yes sir, sending those messages. Stand by. Amanda Louise and Neil Hermans are en route to your office.”

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.

Sooooooooo sleepy. Good thing that a keyboard isn’t considered “heavy equipment,” if you know what I mean.

CHAPTER THREE

Over the next week the news reports and images coming from Earth got progressively worse. The march of the Airborne Hemorrhagic Fever through humanity’s ranks continued unabated, the geometric increase in casualties surging past anyone’s ability to keep count. What AHF didn’t kill, desperate, panicked survivors did.

In the industrialized world, overnight transportation from anywhere to anywhere led to the spread of the virus to every major city on the planet in less than three months. The governments couldn’t get ahead of the crisis. When they shut down air travel, the virus was spread by refugees traveling in cars. When they declared martial law and shut down the highways, people fled infected areas on foot across the countryside, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what they could carry.

The systems that held society together began collapsing. When global transport was shut down, companies started to fail. Unemployment reached historical highs. When interstate travel was shut down, the food stopped flowing to the cities.

Hospitals, police, and fire departments found themselves to be the first decimated. They were the first exposed en masse to AHF, the first to discover the 80% fatality rate of the disease, and the first to realize how hopeless this battle might be.

Even those with jobs stopped going to work. The millions to be made in the stock market weren’t worth the risk of being exposed to a four-in-five chance of death, which would almost certainly doom your family as well. Schools closed, stores closed, factories closed. Everyone was shocked by how quickly the only people on the street were the military and the looters.

Martial law was declared worldwide, with varying degrees of enforcement success. In some regions it was ignored and the military itself disintegrated as nearly everyone went home to their families in a frantic scramble to find some place safe. In other countries, the situation actually stabilized, the military being able to restore order, set up basic systems for distributing food and aid, and conscripting those it needed as necessary to maintain the ranks.

In underdeveloped countries, where there was little to no global travel to bring infections in, there was a delay before the first AHF cases were seen in some locales. Everyone shut their borders and hunkered down. But it only took one or two infected carriers to accidentally break the quarantine.

Once quarantine was broken, the crowded and impoverished conditions in many third world cities were like gasoline-soaked tinder, waiting for the spark from the first AHF carrier. With a more densely packed population with fewer opportunities to flee or hide, the death rates soared to astronomical heights.

A few places were able to isolate themselves thoroughly enough and wipe out the few existing outbreaks so aggressively that they got on top of the crisis, and then tried to stay there. Living on an island was an advantage, which the Wellington and Reykjavik governments leveraged, mercilessly enforcing their isolationism with extreme and immediate force. Basic principles of human rights were abandoned in favor of survival at all costs. It was totalitarian to the extreme, but the “New Zealand strategy” worked better than anything else did.

Researchers around the world worked ceaselessly to try to find a vaccine or a cure for AHF. They were hampered by the way the virus could mutate quickly, retaining its virulence while dodging all attempts to find a weak spot that could stop it. More nimble than the flu virus in branching into dozens of different strains, more deadly than the previous century’s Ebola virus had ever become, AHF was not playing by the old rules.

Those who survived the battle with AHF were both treasured by researchers and feared by the public. Even though they had recovered, were they still contagious? Could they be re-infected by a new strain of AHF, or did they now have immunity? What about people who had clearly been exposed, often repeatedly, but had never come down with the disease? Was there a common link between those naturally immune, and could it be utilized and passed on to others?

The unusual and unique nature of the AHF virus and the speed at which it had initially spread led to an endless stream of unsubstantiated rumors. The most common was some variation on the idea that AHF was an engineered virus, created in a secret lab by terrorists and deliberately spread to kill as many as possible. The problem with the rumor was that no group had ever taken credit for such a horrific act, and there was no biological evidence to support the theory.

Others were convinced that aliens, monsters, or God had decided to wipe out Mankind. Prayer didn’t prove to be any protection against AHF, nor did Ouija boards

With the entire world cracking at the seams, the Pakistan-India war could have been a knockout blow. But because the whole world was already locked into isolationist hysteria, the immediate effects were not felt worldwide. The invasion of infected refugees from Pakistan into India shattered the fragile equilibrium which the Indian government had fought so hard to maintain. The casualties skyrocketed on the subcontinent, but it made little difference to the rest of the world. They all had their hands full with their own crises.

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.

This is NOT going to help the average. As I just mentioned elsewhere…

You know that infamous press conference with Jim Mora? Use that voice to read this. “Writing? You want to talk about writing? WRITING? I just hope that I can stay sane!”

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.

One thing that’s making this story tougher to just “let flow” is that it’s more hard science fiction than last year’s story. Last year the story was almost as much fantasy as SF, with influences (in my mind) from people like Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. It started out with a pretty ridiculous premise, then tried to figure out how to build something more rigorous around it with a lot of hand waving and legerdemain. As long as the people did things that hung together (more or less) and made sense, the fantasy BS parts could get “fixed in post.”

This story is intended to be more like something from Kim Stanley Robinson or Ben Bova. All of the “science” that’s going in here is strictly “back of the envelope” based, and if the story ever goes to a second draft there will need to be a lot of actual calculating and figuring to do to make sure it’s on solid ground. But for right now, it’s okay if it’s “close enough for government work.”

On the other hand, that means that I’m slowing down a lot to be looking up stuff. For example, from last night and tonight, based on our current observations (thanks, Cassini!), which of the Saturn moons are how big, how far out, made of what… I now know many more details about Saturn than I did seventy-two hours ago! But I’m also at about a quarter of the word count that I was at at this point of NaNoWriMo last year.

But I’m building momentum!

CHAPTER TWO (continued)

“We’re not equipped to build a station,” Miller said. “We never have been. You know it as well as I.”

“You’re right, that was never our primary mission, or even our secondary mission. But there were always contingency plans in case of an emergency. For example, if we got stranded here due to some equipment malfunction or didn’t have enough fuel to get back. If we had to be here for a few years while a rescue ship was sent, there were sims that went though some options.”

“The key word there is ‘emergency.’ We don’t have one. We’re still in great shape. We’ll be here for six years instead of three, but not for nine or twelve, or God forbid, even longer. We don’t have to try to stretch our resources to the absolute limit in order to try to build a colony as a last resort.”

“True, but hear me out,” said Alsby. “All of those original plans were made when we were supposed to be here for three years, do our surveys, plant our probes, get our data, and get back to civilization. We were under strict orders to limit our impact on the environment as much as possible.

“Now the rule book has been tossed and there may not be a civilization to return to if we can’t find some badly needed resources and get them to where they’re needed. If that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is. In addition, the bootstrapping plan, if successful, will give us capabilities that weren’t in the earlier sims and evaluations.”

“Those original plans were the result of years of planning,” Miller said. “Let’s not forget what a hostile and dangerous place we are. We need to be very cautious about straying too far from the plan unless we have few other choices.”

“I’m well aware of how much hot water we can get in and how quickly it can all go bad out here. Help is a long way and a long time away. But let’s not be too anchored to a plan that might not be valid any more. Let’s give a look at the situation from a fresh viewpoint, play a new ‘what if’ game. Given what we have on hand, what we need to do, and what we think we’ll be able to do under the new mission guidelines, what’s our best strategy?”

“Understood, Susan, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But we were on thin ice to begin with. Acting with too much haste can increase the odds of a spectacular failure, which would not only leave us dead or worse, but would also leave those down system without those precious resources.”

“By definition, the stakes have gotten much higher, and our risk assessments will have to be adjusted as well. Just keep it in mind while you’re working through the changes we’re going to have to deal with, Todd. That’s all I’m asking for.”

“Okay, I’ll do that. Where were you thinking of looking to establish this station?”

“That’s another thing that I’ll need your input, and the expertise of your science teams. Looking at the list of things we’re looking for, number one on the list is always water. That’s where our power, propulsion, life support, food, and almost everything else come from.”

“There are a lot of icy moons to pick from. As long as you don’t pick Enceladus.”

“No, but remember, I think now that we have to get our landers down on Enceladus sooner rather than later. I want a chance to find some minerals and things other than water, so that rules out Tethys. I want to have minimal exposure to radiation, as well as being as high up in the gravity well as possible.”

“You want to go to Rhea, correct?”

“That’s what makes sense to me. We can do the Titan flyby, send a probe out to Iapetus, go deep in to flyby Enceladus, then rendezvous with Rhea, going into orbit there for a while.”

“SaSEM,” Miller said, “can that be done with our available delta-V, and what percent of our fuel would it use?”

“Yes, Todd, there are several trajectories that can accomplish that, depending on how deep into the gravity well we wish to go and how much fuel we are willing to use. A trajectory which minimizes our fuel usage would use less than five percent of our in-system maneuvering fuel supply.”

Alsby spoke up. “SaSEM, please pull together a summary on those options. Give them to Todd and to me, but don’t let anyone else in the crew have access just yet.”

“Yes, Captain. If necessary, may I ask for computing help from CeresOps? He has a great deal of experience with orbital mechanic calculations.”

“Can you do that without raising any red flags on Ceres? I would prefer to not have them looking over our shoulder until we’re ready with a solid plan. And won’t the lag be an issue?”

“All of the data requests and calculations will be routine, ma’am, there shouldn’t be any problem with the Ceres system. At this point Ceres is seven-point-six AU from us now, so the lag will be about an hour. We can deal with that.”

“Go ahead then, SaSEM, see what you can come up with and give us as many options as you can. Anything else for SaSEM, Todd?”

“No, I think we’ve bitten off more than enough for today, thanks.”

“Okay, let me know if you think of anything that we’ve overlooked. It’s going to be one hell of a balancing act between moving quickly and making sure we know what we’re doing at every step. I’m going to be counting on you a great deal, Todd.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks, Captain.”

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.

Chuck Wendig and others who write about the craft of writing and the job of writing have spoken about the need to write on the days when you just don’t feel like writing. When your get-up-and-go just got up and went some time before you dragged your sorry butt out of bed. When you have the attention span of a kitten, and the energy of a drugged sloth.

Today was one of those days. I wrote anyway. I make no guarantees about the quality of the words, or even the order in which they’ve been placed. For all I know this reads like a printout from a cryptographic one-time pad.

Good luck to us all.

{{ Aaaaaannd then I posted the “regular” article for today and saw someone else on Twitter who was going to the same event so I tweeted “so am I!” and then that got picked up by some of his followers and I just got to spend the last hour tweeting and FaceBooking and following and friending… On the one hand, it is really neat to get followed by people that you’ve been following for years. On the other hand, if I thought November was going to be busy before this… }}

CHAPTER TWO

“Todd, have you got a few minutes?” Alsby asked asked, hanging in midair outside the hatch to Miller’s personal quarters.

Miller had been born and educated on Earth. Despite all of his years off-planet, his gravity-based bias still showed in the way everything in his quarters was oriented with the minus-Z surface as the floor and everything else arranged relative to that. Alsby was hanging “upside down” in that reference frame, so she swung herself around to minimize any incongruity Miller might subconsciously perceive.

“Of course, come on in, Susan. I was just going over our current navigation data.” Above his desk floated a projection of Saturn and her moons, interspersed with various trajectory lines and figures. “SaSEM, we can continue this discussion later.” The projection disappeared.

“Actually, that was what I wanted to talk about,” Alsby said, crossing the room to hook her toes under a restraint bar next to the desk. “SaSEM, can you put that back up, please?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“Have you had a chance yet to go over the updated mission directives?” Alsby asked.

“I skimmed them, read the summary, but I’ll dig in deeper later today. Is there anything in particular that I should be looking at?”

“No, I just want to make sure we’re all going to be on the same page regarding our priorities. I know you and your team signed up for a pure science mission. I haven’t had much more time than you have to go over the new material, but I see where there are sections that could be interpreted as abandoning those science goals. I’m going to need your help to make sure that no one gets too carried away with that line of thinking. I don’t think that’s going to be the case at all.”

“But we are going to be curtailing some of the science, right?”

“Perhaps, but we might also find ourselves increasing certain parts of the program as well. Being here the extra time will give us those opportunities, and if we succeed in jumpstarting the program to give us some industrial capacity here, one of the benefits will be a lot more close-up exploration of the system. FlightOps will call it ‘prospecting’, you’ll call it ‘sample return’, but it will be the same thing.”

“That will satisfy Cheryl and her minions, they wanted to put a probe or a rover down on every ice ball out here. Maybe now they’ll get their chance, or at least they’ll get close. So who’s going to lose out? I heard qualifiers in the way you were carefully picking your words.”

“We’ll see,” said Alsby, “but my first thought is that Fan will be losing some significant amount of time on her equipment. We were originally only supposed to have a handful of orbiters and landers before we left. If we’re going to end up as a communication hub for dozens or more, we’ll need to convert most or all of the optical and radio telescopes for more conventional uses.”

“Yeah, she won’t be happy.”

“The key point is that all of the science we’re doing has to lead to some sort of practical payoff, sooner rather than later. The geology, mapping, sample returns, magnetosphere structure investigations, looking at Saturn herself and the rings – all of those things can be justified because they can lead to something we’ll be able to utilize in the next few years. Most of the astronomy is just this side of pure theory, and it can be done from elsewhere in the system anyway.”

“She will argue with all of those points, and I wouldn’t call her observations ‘mostly theory’ to her face. At least, not if you want her to keep talking to you for the next ten years or so.”

“I know, but we’ve got limited resources and a legitimate state of emergency for the foreseeable future. Why don’t you get together with her and see what parts of her program have unique factors that can’t be done from Ceres, Farside, or O’Neill. Maybe something that expands on her surveys for comets and asteroids, especially objects that we might be able to utilize.”

“I can do that,” Miller said. “What was it that you wanted to review on the navigation plan?”

“I want to look at how we should optimize the sequence for our targeting of the various moons, given the new directives and the list of resources that we’re going to need to find. We’ve stayed pretty far out so far, mainly to do our first encounters with Titan. The landers were supposed to come later, after we dropped into orbit around Titan, but we need to get some quality data fast regarding possible life there.”

“Did you mean what you said earlier about how we will proceed if we find signs of any kind of biology?”

“Absolutely. I know that there will be factions down system that will want those hydrocarbons and volatiles at any cost, but they’re not here. We are. We may have made a mess of things on Earth, but we’re not going to destroy any extraterrestrial ecosystems on my watch.”

“I guess it’s a good thing that this isn’t a military vessel or mission,“ Miller said. “At least, not yet it isn’t. That sort of talk could get you court martialed. But I agree with you all the way.”

“I hope it won’t come to that. We’re the pointy end of the spear out here and we’re being given the short end of a pretty shitty stick. That should buy us some leeway and the ability to make most of our own decisions. Besides, if I screw it up, by the time we get back there won’t be anyone to arrest me or any place to lock me up.”

“So, where do you think we should be going?”

“We’ve got another flyby of Titan in two weeks. I want to get two of the landers ready to go down. They’ll be able to communicate with us through the orbiters we’ve already dropped off.”

“SaSEM, you’re still there, correct?” Miller asked.

“Yes, Todd, I’m still here.”

“Can we get the Charlie and Echo landers prepared for that launch window? That would give us one on land and one in the ocean.”

“Yes, Todd, I believe we could do that on that schedule.”

“SaSEM,” Alsby said, “could how soon could we prepare one of the complex landers for a rendezvous with Iapetus? I want to put one rover or jumper down on the dark side and one on the white side, both with spectroscopic gear and samplers, with an orbiter for communication and imaging.”

“That will take several weeks, ma’am. Currently none of the probes with jumpers have orbiters attached. The next window for an Iapetus orbital insertion would be in ten days, with the next one after that in another fifty.”

“What are you thinking, Susan?” Miller asked. “We were only going to make long-range observations of Iapetus until we were ready to leave.”

“The schedule for our leaving has changed, and with the shopping list we’re looking at, I want the option of checking it out. Before it was just a curiosity, now I want to know if it’s got anything unique or useful.”

“But we were going to use the complex landers for looking at some of the bigger, inner moons. If we use one for Iapetus, which one do we leave out?”

“We don’t leave anything out. We’re going to go in there ourselves, looking for a place where we can build a station.”

That got Miller’s attention. He rocked back a half step and cocked his head as he looked at the display still floating above the desk.

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.

One of the reasons one takes on these writing challenges (NaNoWriMo and Chuck Wendig’s weekly Flash Fiction Challenge) is to force one out of their comfort zone. Boundaries need stretching. Routine needs upsetting. Process needs rearranging. That which does not kill me…

It’s early, but what I’m finding the most different this year compared to last year is process. Last year I had almost nothing when I sat down on November 1st except for what I thought was a brilliant idea about how to end the story with a favorite thing that I had already written. Literally, I knew what the last chapter was, and I had was Joey Chan sitting on my lap, getting startled by something, and leaping off while clawing me. How did I get from here to there? To my amazement, relaxing and letting it happen actually worked, at least for a “zeroth” draft, and re-reading it I’m still surprised at some of the twists and turns that came out of nowhere but fit really well.

This year, my muse delivered a concept that I really like, so I know where I’m starting, and I have a vague idea of where it’s going. I’m hoping, and expecting, that there will be surprises as we get there. It would have been nice if my muse had given me the concept a couple of days earlier so that I could have done some research and plotting in advance. I’ve spent most of today writing a couple thousand words of notes that won’t count in the NaNoWriMo tally, but they’ll be invaluable to making sure that I know what’s going on and how we got there when I write this story that happens in the middle of that timeline.

So last year I had a definite ending point to hit, where this year I have an overall outline and I’m starting from a set beginning. So far I’ve had a tough time getting the words flowing, and it’s absolutely amazing what you can find to do while you’re trying to wake up the muse. (Did you know that so far the week of 04/14/2014 is the most viewed of WLTSTF, with 249 total views and 166 visitors? Or that since WLTSTF started in April 2013 we’ve gotten 182 views from Brazil, 178 from Germany, 154 from Australia, and 119 from France, but only 15 from the Czech Republic? C’mon Prague, you know how much I love you, let’s get with it!)

Also, given that I’m making this up as I go along (in the most literal possible sense), sometimes I’ll need to tweak something that already happened. I’ll give you a heads-up when that happens. For example, in Day One’s work, the crew is talking to “SEM.” That’s now going to be “SaSEM” for reasons that will become obvious.

CHAPTER ONE (continued)

“Which is something that they’ve been heading towards for at least twenty years,” said Turning. “AHF has accelerated the process, obviously, but the potential for this has been debated at length. We cut the cord with Earth to protect ourselves over a year ago, knowing this day would come sooner or later. Great, now we’re there. Surprise, it’s sooner. Who had 2168 in the office pool for the end of the world? This isn’t really news.”

“There’s more,” Alsby said. “SaSEM, continue please.”

“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Turing is correct. We knew this day was very likely to be coming. We have not been idle in considering our options. Our own mission has seen significant changes in its goals due to the changing situation on Earth. Now the Human/AI Council will be implementing new emergency programs and it is their wish that everyone off-planet be informed. In particular, we have new mission goals which are vital to the future survival of the colonies and stations. That is the purpose of this message and meeting.”

Bryant looked around to see if anyone else was going to speak up. “Is it safe to assume that our jobs just got harder and more dangerous with higher stakes and no backup on the way? Like usual?”

“If you want to phrase it that way, Cheryl, then yes, that’s a safe assumption.” Alsby looked around the chamber at the four dozen floating crew members. “None of us had any clue that this might happen when we set out, but now we’re all in a pretty grim situation. Not just us, not just those at LEO, not just our families at Armstrong or Bradbury or Ceres – all of us. We all volunteered for the original mission knowing it would be cutting edge, and dangerous.

“Now the situation is changing in ways we have no control over. We’re getting less of a margin for error every day and if something goes wrong it’s not just us that pay for it, but possibly everyone. Three years ago we wanted to be here despite the dangers. The dangers are the same and our need to be obsessed with safety remains the same, because if we screw up a lot of other people will die because of it. Our mission isn’t changing, just the stakes. Does anyone have anything else before we go on?”

The room was silent except for the fans. Everyone had a neutral expression now, their game faces on. Alsby gave it a few seconds before continuing.

“SaSEM, please tell everyone what’s in the mission update.”

“Yes, Captain. Much of our original assignment is unchanged. We are to gather as much detailed information as we can about the Saturnian system and moons. However, where before we were restricted to only very limited contacts with Titan and Enceladus due to their potential for harboring life, new guidelines are being drawn up that will allow us, at our discretion, to have significantly more extensive and detailed surface operations there.

“In addition, we are instructed not to just catalog and search for resources which are potentially useful in the future, but to begin the extraction of those resources. We’ll be given a list of source materials to begin harvesting and processing, some of which may come from Cronus herself.”

“What kind of ‘resources’ are we talking about?” asked Miller. “When you say ‘extraction,’ it sounds like we’re going to start mining right now. This is a scientific, exploratory mission.”

“It is still primarily a scientific and exploratory mission, Mr. Miller. However, in addition to that we are being directed to also start extraction of resources that will be needed by the colonies and stations down system. Those needs may become critical very quickly due to the situation on Earth. Rather than waiting for us to return with our results for review before beginning a plan of utilization of non-scientifically-critical resources, we will start at least a pilot program now.”

“Captain, SaSEM, we’re not set up to be a mining operation. We’ve got nothing but scientific gear aboard, with no ability to extract, process, store, or transport anything, even if we could find something to ‘extract.’ In addition, none of us have any experience doing that sort of work at all.”

“There’s a preliminary plan to address those issues,” Alsby said. “Copies of the documents are being loaded in your pads for you to review. The short version is that we’re going to use what we have on hand to bootstrap a system that will build what we need to find and convert in situ materials into the machines and system which will be able to do the mining, processing, and transport down system.”

“You’re talking about a von Neumann machine system, aren’t you?” asked Phillips. “They’re just theoretical as far as I know, no one’s ever actually built one.”

“Naoki, can you take this one?” Alsby asked.

“Sure,” the First Officer replied. “What we’re going to try is not strictly a von Neumann machine, but it has some of the same aspects. We’ll use our existing printers and machine shop to fabricate machines that can extract needed materials from wherever we can find them here in system and turn it into feed stock for the printers. We’ll then use that system to fabricate the machines needed to build storage facilities and transport vehicles, as well as the bots needed to operate and maintain them.”

“Okay, but who runs the bots and printers?” asked Phillips. “SaSEM is the only AI in system. Fabricating and building a whole AI from scratch is way beyond what we can do, no matter how desperate we are. If SaSEM is removed from Cronus to run the bots, then we have no way of managing the ship. I’m hoping they’re not figuring we’re expendable in order to get their volatiles. ‘The needs of the many’ and all of that, you know.”

“You are not expendable and I will be staying with Cronus and you, Ms. Phillips,” SaSEM said. “You are correct in your belief that we can not at this time build an AI from raw materials, given our current capabilities. A cluster of new AIs are being prepared and will be sent here to meet us in approximately two years, with the expectation that we will by that point be ready to implement that stage of the plan.”

“You’re kidding,” said Turing. “How are they going to… Oh, never mind, I’ll check out this plan, which seems to be getting riskier by the minute. At least it won’t be dull.”

“Captain, what if we confirm that there is activity here that goes beyond simple chemical processes?” asked Wilson.

“You mean ‘life’ don’t you, Pat?”

“Yeah, but it will take more than two years to figure out if what we’ve seen so far actually qualifies as a function of a living ecosystem. However, if there’s even the smallest chance that it is, we can’t in good conscience allow it to be destroyed or contaminated by Earth organisms.”

“Ms. Wilson,” SaSEM said, “our directives in terms of potential living organisms or systems remain unchanged. We will protect, preserve, and study them at all costs. If our situation worsens to the point where it becomes necessary to review or alter those directives, it would be debated system-wide and ultimately decided by the Human/AI Council.”

Wilson nodded, relieved at the news.

“We’re not going home on schedule, are we?” asked Carson. “If we’re building a system aiming toward an AI arrival in two years, and then getting that system running, we won’t be leaving Saturn space any earlier than the following window, which is another three years out.”

“That’s correct,” said Alsby. “That’s always been a contingency if other problems came up. We’ll be implementing those protocols immediately, which is another primary reason for this meeting. We’re either going to have to stretch our own volatiles and supplies to the limits, or we’re going to have to figure out how to get more. For the moment we do the former and start busting our butts to make the latter happen.”

“Now we need everyone to review the materials on this modification of the mission plan,” said Naoki. “Procedural and technical questions should be referred to SaSEM, policy and implementation questions to Susan or me. Everybody put your notes into the file and we’ll meet back here at 0900 tomorrow morning to start going over the changes in detail. Any other questions?”

Alsby gave it a moment, but no one had anything further to ask right now. “It won’t always be fun, but we can make this happen, people. Trust me, if the shit truly hits the fan, there will be a lot of people in much worse shape in the stations, and they’re already there on Earth. The situation sucks, but it’s the only one we have, so let’s deal with it and get the job done so that we at least have a fighting chance. Dismissed.”

The crew started propelling themselves out of the meeting hall door and spreading throughout Cronos in all directions, back to their quarters or work stations. They were silent as they went past Alsby and Tanaka at the hatch, but their voices could be heard starting hushed conversations as soon as they were around a corner or down the hallway into the next compartment.

When the room was empty, Alsby and Tanaka pushed off together toward the bridge. Cronos hadn’t been designed as a war ship, but they both knew that the fight of their lives lay before them.

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.

Again, we’re off! Let the madness begin, and let there be no doubt that it probably is madness.

Just as was the case last year, there will be typos and errors galore in these posts. That’s the nature of the beast. They’re “zeroth” drafts, not ever first drafts. They’re hemorrhaging words onto the blank screen. If I’m lucky there will be some sort of resemblance to proper grammar, character development, conflict resolution, and story structure — or at least enough so that the reader can follow along.

To use a baseball analogy, it’s not like I’m trying to pitch a no hitter and strike out twenty-seven batters on eighty-one pitches. It’s much more like I’m trying to survive slogging through a long, long season in the low minors, playing in every game and making it to the end alive. Surviving, and learning from the experience. If I happen to have an occasional hitting streak or good game along the way, so much the better.

Unlike last year, there’s no predetermined destination to this story. My muse has apparently been cooking along quietly in the background (thank you, muse!!) and the outline and basic plot and a few twists and turns spooled themselves out in my head while I was driving back home from the hanger in Camarillo this afternoon. Where does it end and can I do it? We’ll see, there are no guarantees.

It also occurs to me that I have a lot more blog readers than I did last year – perhaps some of you will kick in comments, observations, criticisms, or encouragement as this goes along. After all, there is a reason that I’m putting it up here every day instead of simply giving updates on the progress without any factual evidence to substantiate my claims.

Okay, here goes nothing. I didn’t get nearly as much written today as I would have liked, but it’s a start.

CHAPTER ONE

Carson and Phillips were the last ones into the meeting, drifting in with disheveled hair and a befuddled looks, still not quite awake. Their quarters were back near the engine room and it had taken them longer to get forward.

The rest of the crew members were latched onto various hold points, broken up into their established cliques and teams. A low buzz of conversation filled the air, the constant sound of fans a source of perpetual white noise. The command staff was huddled in one corner, a pad being passed between them with a video being shown.

As the engineers arrived and found a place to anchor themselves, the conversations stopped and all eyes turned to Alsby. She glanced around the room doing a quick headcount, then pushed off  for the door, grabbing a holdbar there and turning so that she could see everyone.

“It’s Earth, of course. We’ve been expecting something and now it’s happened. SEM, please tell everyone what is happening.”

“Yes, Captain.” The voice came from several speakers around the chamber. A video flickered to life on multiple screens and everyone turned to watch the one closest to them. It looked like a violent lightning storm seen from geosynchronous orbit.

“An hour ago I received a message from FlightOps with the news that hostilities have broken out along the India-Pakistan border. The confrontation quickly went nuclear. At this time casualties are thought to be extensive. The other superpowers have not engaged with either side.”

“Jesus,” said Bryant, “what in hell were they thinking? How could this possibly do anything other than make a bad situation a thousand times worse?”

“It is believed that the attack was prompted by a belief by the Islamabad government that the Indians had an AHF vaccine and cure, which they were refusing to share.” The video was replaced with a chart. “As you can see, they were desperate.”

“Needless to say, the Indians don’t have a vaccine, and so far neither does anyone else,” Alsby said. “But the situation in Pakistan has gotten completely out of control with over twenty-five million casualties so far, while the Indians have limited the deaths in their country to less than a million. The Pakistanis must have panicked, figuring that they didn’t have anything to lose.”

“What’s the current situation? Are they still lobbing nukes at each other?” asked Turing.

“It is believed that both nations deployed their entire nuclear inventory,” SEM said.

“Estimated casualties?” asked someone.

“Highly uncertain at this time,” SEM answered, “but likely to be in the tens of millions from the immediate attacks, hundreds of millions in the next few weeks as starvation and disease spread. Given the current states of emergency around the world due to the AHF outbreak, there will be little or no aid available from outside.”

There was silence as everyone let the news sink in. Despite everyone knowing that something was going to happen soon or later, the reality of it was a shock now that the situation had finally exploded.

“Okay, everyone, I’m afraid that’s just the beginning.”  Everyone looked back at Captain Alsby. “SEM, tell them the rest.”

“This news was of course sent to all of the other missions and colonies. Based on this new information, CeresOps believes the critical tipping point has been exceeded for Earth. Given the projected casualty rates from AHF, compounded now by economic, health, and structural damage caused by the India-Pakistan conflict, we now calculate a probability of less than one in ten thousand that the current technological society on Earth will survive more than ten more years.”