Monday, August 13, 2007

New Rules Added

Two new items have been added to the main Rules post. Please feel free to comment on them and express any concerns here.

5. Writers' submissions can be in any form they wish. Minimum length is one paragraph. Writers may produce partial or full story summaries, story fragments, short stories, long stories, or multiple stories. Poetry or other written explorations of the topic are also welcome.

6. Writers are encouraged, though not required, to edit stories or finish unfinished ones they have written for the blog. It is up to the writer whether they wish to repost the full story or edited sections or to simply edit the original post. If the author chooses to edit in the original post and it is more than one motnh old, she should create a new post pointing out the edit and allow blg readers to see the new edits.

Third Topic: Fairy Tale

OK, time to get going on topic number three. I had been hoping that Kim would join us before the cycle came back around. I sent her another invite, so maybe she'll sign up.

But since it's just us for now, it's my turn again. I want to try a much broader topic this time, just to show that topics don't have to be a paragraph-plus long concept. So this month, it's Fairy Tale. Do whatever you want with it, but if you'd like a little more guidance, here are a few suggestions:

- Fairly straight forward retelling of a fairy tale
- Story from the perspective of a different or new character
- Fairy tale in a new setting
- A story that uses or examines the convenions of a fairy tale

As usual, you may feel free to ignore these suggestions and do whatever you want with the theme.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

We're Alone - Jennifer's Submission

Okay, I'm copping out on this. Sorry, I thought there was another weekend in there, and I've been spending most of my free time decluttering and cleaning the condo to put on the market. (HUGE amount of work!) But, I have thought about this topic and come up with a story idea. So as to not to be a complete let down, here's my concept.

Yes, the future. Far enough that there are viable means of space travel between solar systems, if not galaxies. I've not yet decided if the mode if space travel is linear, as in actual physical travel through space at high speeds, or some other method like folding space or extra dimensional.

Humanity hasn't changed too much since the announcement of no extra-terrestrial life. Withing the first couple decades after the announcement there was a noticeable though small surge in religion, especially those that proclaim humans as the ultimate creation of God or as the last step before spiritual enlightenment. Surprisingly it was the entertainment industry that took the biggest hit, as interest in alien stories and movies rapidly declined. But Hollywood and its counterparts are not to be kept down, and adapted to other drama sources for their stories. Science itself was pulled down at first, as dispelling the theory of life having evolved on other planets caused a widespread questioning of other generally accepted scientific principles, but it quickly adapted. Now scientists make sure they have evidence in support of a hypothesis before it is called theory, and lack of proof the hypothesis is wrong does not make it right enough to be acceptable. Advancements have been made in medicine, transportation, communications, convenience appliances, and of course weaponry. Still, overall the day to day life of people didn't change much. People still work to earn money, still go to school, still meet and marry and perhaps divorce, still try to find the meaning of life, and still go hungry or go to war.

This story focuses on the day one hundred years after the announcement, chosen specifically by the head scientist for its symbolism. Today is the day he launches a supposedly working prototype time vessel. Time machines have been made, travel to the future was achieved a whole lot easier than to the past since that's the way humans naturally progress through time. But the only kind that can send things to the past have been limited to data packets: information, messages, things that can be reduced to being transmitted via light or wave particles. And even those can only transmit back as far as when the machine accepting the arrival of the data was first created. It seems the idea of only being able to travel to a time in which whatever is traveling has already existed has won out over the idea of not being able to exist more than once at the same point in time.

Now this scientist believes he has a working machine that can transport a living being to the past using the powerful light and energy fields generated by stars, using the same technique current time machines use to send light to the past, and much in the same way except also shielding living matter from the strain of the journey. And since any given star, such as Earth's Sun, can be billions of years old it means a person could potentially travel billions of years back in time!

What could be done with this advancement in technology if it works? The possibilities are numerous. But our scientist has a special task in mind. After the initial test jump of one day to the past proving successful he intends to take genetic material with him, such as proteins and amino acids and whatnot, along with a lifetime of interstellar data he has amassed, back to the far past. Then he will travel the Milky Way galaxy to seed planets of the correct composition and state to allow for evolution like occurred on Earth. His desire a two-fold achievement: 1) prove evolution, 2) allow for the development of extra-terrestrial life in the same time frame as life on Earth, so that we're not alone.

The only hiccup in his plan, from his point of view, is when one of his assistants piece together what he's intending to do. The assistant has major concerns over the plan, and tries to convince the scientist to not go through with the plan. Firstly, no one knows how actions in the past might affect what is known to be the time line. If he succeeds - in creating other life elsewhere - he would change at least the past hundred years, possibly for the worst. Can time even change, or would the scientist be destroyed in the attempt? Or what if creating a temporal causality loop would unmake all of creation? If God exists, that would possibly bring in a whole other set of issues.

The assistant is not willing to take any of those risks, and definitely not willing to let the scientist do so either. The assistant tries to enlist help from the other assistants in stopping the scientist. Sabotage is decided on, though they know that will only delay the scientist. Ideally they would want to replace the scientist as the test subject, but getting a volunteer and one that is trusted to not attempt anything in the past, is hard. Some sort of government intervention or the creation of a group to oversee the ethics of time travel, if they - ironically - have the time to get such things established. The original assistant secretly considers murder as a last option.

That's all I've got so far. You know, I guess this isn't a cop out. After all the point of FLB is to write and get creative at least once a month, and I did that! People can comment if they want, but I know it is just an outline of a story.

Monday, August 6, 2007

We're Alone - Sara's Submission

Oy.

This was written almost enitrely today. (Hooray for deadlines!) About three of the total eighteen pages (eighteen pages?!??) were done a couple of weeks ago, but most of this came out of looking at the blog tday and realizing the story was due tomorrow. I wasn't really happy with the initial work and was fully considering turning in a partial story and being happy with that. But I developed the kind of enthusiasm for it that only a looming deadline and a lot of writing can provide.

What you see here is pretty much the first idea I came up with when I started to think about the topic. I did a little research to work out the names for the ship, the planets, and in some cases the people. I came up with a fun naming scheme for the major characters. ("Cid" is just a "Final Fantasy" nod and not part of the main scheme.) I'll see if anyone can figure it out before I reveal it. I also like the very last part, which I hope makes sense to people who are not me.

No part breaks this time, just one big hunk of story. Comments still welcome.

(Edit 8/10 - Corrected some typos and made small changes. Not enough to warrant a new post of anything.


Fal leaned against the window, staring intently out at the repair dock. The mechanics floated gracefully around Tishtar as they worked to replace the damaged hull section. Fal took careful note of everything they did. He had never allowed anyone to work on his ship if he couldn’t watch. He had to know every minute change they made to her, down to the last detail. Even if the mechanics made no mistakes – and Fal trusted their work – the slightest alteration could affect Tishtar’s speed, durability, or something else. So he watched.

He just barely looked up when Serena strolled into the main lounge. Fal sighed to himself. She would want to talk to him, of course, and that meant he would be distracted from watching Tishtar. And yet, part of him was looking forward to a conversation with Serena. Women like her rarely ever took flights with pilots like him. The rest of her group was no surprise; scientists probably planning to conduct some unauthorized experiment well away from the major systems. But Serena didn’t seem like the kind of person to shut herself away with data and chemicals for years on end, much less the kind to fly with an independent pilot who didn’t ask many questions. Even if it pulled him away from Tishtar for a while, Fal didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

“Hello, Captain,” Serena greeted him brightly. Serena always seemed in a positive mood. Fal wasn’t sure if she was naturally like that or if she was just excited about her group’s mission, whatever it was.

“Hi, Serena.” It was a pretty informal way to address one of his clients, but Fal never was particularly formal. People who wanted a formal greeting could fly with the big carriers. Serena held up a hand in protest, but it wasn’t over Fal’s lack of a proper greeting.

“Seriously, just call me Rena.” She shook her head and brushed unruly dark hair back from her face. “Only Papa Nebu calls me ‘Serena’.”

“Papa Nebu” was the senior member of Fal’s small group of passengers. Fal hadn’t asked, but he was pretty sure Nebu was Serena’s grandfather. He was old, probably pushing 150. Older still, perhaps, if he did cryos. Though since all of them were skipping cryo for the trip, Fal wasn’t sure that was the case. The main thing was that he seemed completely harmless, unlikely to do anything that would really cause trouble. That was all that really mattered to Fal. But he was soft spoken and deferred readily to Fal’s judgment on anything to do with getting them where they were going. So Fal liked him well enough.

“How’s the ship?” Rena asked, peering out the window.

“She’s fine,” replied Fal, glad for an excuse to watch the repairs again. “The hull got banged up pretty bad, but not much structural damage. We should be underway again sometime tomorrow.”

“I heard you talking with the chief mechanic when we came in. He said that most pilots would have come through the storm much worse off than you.”

The admiration in Rena’s voice sounded genuine, but Fal brushed it off.

“Eh, Cid says that all the time. And I’ve been in worse.”

Rena fell silent, though she didn’t look offended that Fal hadn’t taken the compliment. She stood beside him and watched the mechanics weld the replacement hull pieces into place. She clearly didn’t understand everything that was happening like Fal did, but she did look interested and Fal appreciated that. So many people just saw the ships, especially ships like his, as a necessary inconvenience in getting from one place to another. It was nice to have someone take even just a minute to appreciate the ship itself.

“So why do you run independent?” Rena asked as if it were a casual question. “Most of the pilots we were looking at before weren’t good enough to fly for the big fleets. But you could pass the exams easy.”

Fal was taken aback, though he tried not to show it. He hadn’t talked to Rena that much before now, so he hadn’t noticed just how uninhibited she was. Granted, most of his passengers barely spoke to him more than was absolutely necessary. But he wasn’t used to anyone asking him questions like that.

“Well,” Fal began, scratching at the side of his neck, “I did fly for TransUni for a little while. But it gets boring, flying the same routes all the time. Solo doesn’t pay as well, but I own my ship and I go where I want when I want to.”

Rena nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. They both turned their attentions back to the ship. The mechanics were maneuvering a new section of hull into place. It was a little thicker than the older sections, though the mechanics would make it fit smoothly. Added protection, but Fal would have to adjust a bit for the additional weight.

“Why is that piece sunk in like that?” Rena was pointing at Tishtar’s nameplate.

“It’s old,” Fal replied. “I realized when I started having to bring Tishtar in for repairs and tune-ups that I’d probably have a whole new ship eventually. I have them keep the nameplate so there’s always something from the original on her. The clear sheeting keeps it protected, since it’s not as strong as most of the hull is now.”

“Is that a burn mark?”

Rena looked over at Fal, her eyebrows raised with far more questions than the one she had asked. Fal sighed quietly and rubbed his forehead. Should he tell her? It couldn’t really do any harm. They’d be unlikely to find another pilot to take them to such a remote planet way out here, so they were stuck with him no matter what they knew about him. But Rena was probably expecting some fun adventure story about comets or star flares. She might not react well, but Fal had always tried to be honest about what had happened and he didn’t want to stop now.

“Yeah,” he began slowly. “I was taking a group out to Konis sector. I figured they just wanted to start an unauthorized colony. I brought them out to EI 4.”

Rena’s eyes grew wide, and Fal hoped it wasn’t just his wishful thinking that she looked more surprised than horrified.

“That was you?” she said quietly. Fal nodded.

“I had no clue they were going to blow it up. I was lucky to get out at all. I doubt they cared much whether I made it or not.

“I was able to convince the judges that I wasn’t in on their plan. But I didn’t get hazmat waivers back then, so I was still partly liable. And the PCC doesn’t like losing seven hospitable planets, or that many people, even if they were crazy. I got four years incarceration and another four flight prohibition.”

“So what did you do then?” There was enough genuine concern in her voice that Fal could let himself believe that knowing about his past hadn’t made Rena hate him.

“Odd jobs mostly. I got work permits on the Chinese and Saudi systems, so I hung around there a lot. Whatever made me enough money to keep Tishtar from being sold.”

“Why didn’t you just work in you home system? Was it a lot more money in the others?”

Fal motioned to the docked Tishtar outside the window.

“She’s my home. I didn’t really care where I stayed until I could get her back. It was easier that way anyways. You can go where the work is if you’re not tied down to one place.”

Rena nodded, though Fal doubted she completely understood. She probably had some nice house on one of the hub planets, close to her family. He wondered if she’d ever been this far from home before. They stood in silence for a while, watching the mechanics smooth out the rough spots on the new hull pieces. Fal wished he could think of something more to say, but nothing came. Rena had led the entire conversation and now that she had fallen silent, it seemed to have ended.

A voice from a short ways away caused both Rena and Fal to turn. Shi Ye, the other member of Fal’s group of passengers, was calling for Rena from the cafeteria section of the lounge. Fal could see Nebu sitting at a nearby table. Rena waved to them in answer, and then turned apologetically to Fal.

“I’ve gotta get going,” she told him. “It was nice talking to you. I’ll see you on the ship.”

She waved hurriedly and started towards the cafeteria. Fal returned the wave awkwardly.

“I’ll see you,” he echoed, wishing he had something better to say even as he said it.

Though Fal knew he should be supervising the final repairs on Tishtar, he somehow couldn’t stop himself from watching Rena jauntily rush off to join her group. He wondered if she might tell them anything about him.



Fal gracefully eased Tishtar through a small field of space debris. They were just two days out from AF 5, but Fal was hoping to shave an hour or two off of that time. Most pilots wouldn’t have cared and wouldn’t have bothered to do the navigation themselves. They usually just let the autopilot take over unless it warned them of something it couldn’t handle. But Fal had always preferred taking control himself. Autopilots were reliable enough for when Fal needed some sleep, but even the slightest risks were unacceptable to them. By handling the ship himself, Fal could usually cut a good chunk of time off the trip compared to what the autopilot would have done. Besides, Fal enjoyed steering the Tishtar. When he wasn’t sleeping, he generally spent his time in the cockpit.

The green communications button for the ship’s small meeting room lit up. The passengers spent most of their time there and Fal could only assume they were working out the final details of whatever experiment they were planning. Fal hit the button, enabling the microphone and speakers.

“Go ahead,” he said casually.

“Captain,” Nebu’s voice came crackling over the speaker, “what is our remaining flight time to Tonantzin?”

It still puzzled Fal how all three of them referred to planets by their informal names. Scientists especially, Fal figured, would prefer the more precise number and star abbreviation system. But they repeatedly called even the most distant planets like this one by those archaic names. Fal shrugged and checked his instrument readings.

“We’ve got about one day, seventeen hours,” he answered. “Less if conditions are good.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Fal would have shut off the communication system, but a short beep told him that the autopilot was engaging and starting to scan for the clearest path out of the debris field in order to take a long, unobstructed arc around it. Fal punched in the override code and got the ship back into position, tilting slightly to the port side to avoid a larger chunk of rock.

That was when he heard it. “Gaia bomb.”

Fal stared in shock at the communication speaker, as if expecting it to explain what he had just heard. He wanted to believe it was a mistake; that he had misheard somehow. After all, was there any such thing as a “Gaia bomb”? But he knew it was real. After what had happened, he knew that word when he heard it.

Fal made sure the microphone was off and began listening intently. The audio from the speaker was not very good, so Fal couldn’t be sure who had said that word he dreaded to hear. It might have been Shi Ye, but it could have been Nebu. Fal kept listening, but he didn’t hear anything other than what he was already nearly certain of. They had a bomb and they were going to drop it on AF 5.

Fal just barely managed to get the ship through the last of the debris field. He let the autopilot pick up and fell back in his chair. How could they possibly have a bomb? What did they have that didn’t set off the cargo scanners? And why bring it out to some uninhabited planet to set off? They weren’t landing with it, so this wasn’t another suicide cult. Maybe they just wanted to test it. Maybe it was a bioweapom, something slow acting. Maybe the would come back later and see how it was progressing, drop some test subjects down to check its effects, then try in on an inhabited planet when they knew what it did.

Fal could hardly think straight. What could he do? Contact the PCC? It would take them too long to get out here and even with the waiver, they might still come down on him. Confront his passengers? He wasn’t sure what they might do. Jettison the bomb in space before they got to the planet? He wasn’t sure what it might do. Fal didn’t have many options, and none of them seemed good. But one thing he knew: he could not let this happen again.


Fal headed down the corridor to the cargo bay and typed in the passkey for the door. He was fairly sure Nebu, Shi Ye, and Rena were all asleep, but he still kept quiet. They didn’t use cryo, so any of them could wake up at any time. The door slid open and Fal entered the cargo bay where the single large crate stood.

Once he had found the lock, Fal reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny device. Lockpicks were completely illegal for independent pilots, of course, but Fal had picked one up after EI 4, just in case. He plugged it into the lock’s port. The pick fired its various random codes into the lock, hitting on the right one in a matter of seconds. The lock popped and Fal carefully opened the crate.

A sleek metal object sat inside a stabilizing case that was probably meant to fall away once the crate left the ship. Fal looked carefully around the projectile for any sign of what it might contain. It did occur to him that figuring out what exactly the bomb did might kill him. But he had taken the precaution of putting Tishtar in a slow orbit around a nearby planetoid before going to check the cargo. If the thing did kill him, at least the so-called scientists would never make it to AF 5, or back, without assistance.
Assuming that any of them survived

Before long, Fal found a panel with a handle on it along one side of the device. He grasped the handle, rotated it, and slid the panel to the side. Inside the bomb, Fal could see numerous small, suspended tubes. They seemed to fill every part of the bomb and Fal wondered if it opened up further to allow access to the rest of the tubes. He couldn’t see much in them aside from colored liquids. But each one had a label attached to it. “Tonantzinus currans” one read. “Tonantzinus canis” proclaimed another. It made absolutely no sense to Fal. Worse, it didn’t really give him any hint of what to do.

There was a sudden footstep behind him. Fal whirled around, realizing as he did how totally unprepared he was for a fight. But with no weapon of her own, he guessed that Rena wasn’t either. He could only see her in the faint glow from the ship’s safety lighting, but he could make out her face. She didn’t look at all surprised, just sad.

“I think you’d better come with me,” she said, with a heavy sigh.


It seemed like forever before Nebu, Shi Ye, and Rena joined Fal in the meeting room where Rena had left him. He had tried to listen in on their conversation in the hallway, but he couldn’t make anything out through the closed door. Now they had apparently reached some kind of decision and were coming in to inform him. Rena had that same sad look on her face as she slumped down in the chair opposite Fal. Nebu seemed more worried as he stood to one side of Rena. Shi Ye eyed Fal irritably and took his seat at Rena’s other side.

“Let me say first,” Nebu began, “that I am truly sorry. It was not our intention to involve you in any of this.”

“Shouldn’t have hired me then,” Fal thought, though he didn’t say anything. Nebu paused, saw that Fal wasn’t going to respond, then continued.

“I’m guessing that you overheard our earlier conversation, including our rather poor term for our device.”

Nebu’s eyes fell on Shi Ye briefly and Fal guessed that he was probably the one who had dubbed that thing in the cargo bay the “Gaia bomb”. Still, Fal said nothing. Nebu sat down and looked at him intently.

“I assure you that our ‘bomb’ is not intended to destroy anything. In fact, it’s meant to create.”

Fal didn’t feel reassured. Nutcases used this kind of double talk all the time to justify whatever crazy thing they wanted to do. The cultists on EI 4 had apparently thought they were bringing about some kind of new paradise by causing the end of the universe. You could say it however you want, but bombs still destroyed.

“It’s like a seed packet.” Fal was surprised to hear Rena speak. Her face had changed from deep sadness to an almost pleading look, as if she was desperate to make him understand.

“It’s seeds,” she repeated. “Seeds for the whole world. It makes plants and animals and all kinds of life.”

Fal had to admit he hadn’t expected this and he was intrigued at the least. But he still didn’t trust these people. He thought back to that day at the repair station, the first time he and Rena had really talked. What had she really been thinking? Had she been sent to get information on Fal, figure out his secrets in case they needed something to use against him?

“Why?” he asked, barely looking up.

Rena looked like she was about to say something, but she turned to Nebu instead. The old man sighed a little, like he was remembering something hard to deal with.

“For eons,” he began, “we have realized that we are essentially alone in the universe. Our exploration has turned up nothing but microscopic organisms, certainly nothing on a par with our level of development. Instead of seeing that knowledge as a sign that we should act as caretakers of the universe, we have taken it as permission to do as we wish with it.”

“And act like idiots while we do it,” added Shi Ye, speaking for the first time. “We’re just dividing up the galaxy, fighting over resources, claiming every planet for one nation or another. We only care about whether we can use something, and if we can’t, we just destroy it to make room for something we can. We just act like there’s always going to be more of everything, no matter what we do.”

“So how does this help?” Fal asked. “We pretty much did the same thing on Sol 3 and that had plenty of plants and animals on it back then. How’s another planet like that going to change anything?”

“It’s not just plants and animals,” Rena said very quietly. “We’re trying to make a species on our level. Something as smart as us.”

Fal stared at Rena, totally dumbstruck. He tried to formulate a sentence, but he had absolutely no response to what she had just said.

“We believe,” Nebu continued, “that another ‘sentient’ species, for lack of a better term, will force us to reexamine our place in the universe.”

“Assuming,” began Fal, trying to collect his thoughts, “that your new species actually gets that smart. And that it survives. I mean, won’t we just take it out in the name of progress if we get here before it’s as smart as we are?”

“The device isn’t just once species,” Nebu explained. “It’s hundreds of plant and animal species with thousands of mutational iterations of each one. They all have different characteristics that we believe will help them survive on this particular planet, but only the best adaptations will thrive. The device is designed to jumpstart the evolutionary process. About five percent of the organisms are endowed with the necessary characteristics to attain our level of development. The other species are there to provide a full ecosystem for them. Because of the current pace of human colonization, we’ve set the program to hopefully reach completion in 300 to 500 years. By that time, the major species should be creating advance technology, possibly even space travel.”

“So we’ll basically have a rival for planets that doesn’t go by our rules,” Fal said skeptically. “Well what if once they find out about us, they use their big brains to build weapons and try to wipe us out?”

“They won’t,” Rena said firmly.

“We don’t know that,” Shi Ye countered, sounding like they had been through this argument before. He turned to Fal.

“Even if they do decide to fight us, we’ll still outnumber them. Our organization would be able to give the militaries information about how to beat them without letting on that we created them. And at the least, it’ll make us stop thinking like a bunch of separate countries and start acting like one species with a common goal.”

“But they could still get a couple of hits in before we could take them out,” Fal argued. “A lot of people could die. Then what do we learn? That it’s safer to shoot first?”

Shi Ye looked irritated again, but Nebu nodded, bowing his head.

“Our plan is not without risks,” he admitted. “And we will likely not be the ones to suffer the consequences if it does come to violence. Still, we do believe the potential gains outweigh the negative possibilities.”

“And even if this species does get killed,” Rena added, “there’s the others.”

Shi Ye smacked his forehead in exasperation and Rena seemed to realize she had made a mistake. Nebu held up a hand.

“It’s all right, Serena,” he said. “We need to be completely honest with Captain Lenaeum if we expect him to trust us.”

Nebu returned his attention to Fal.

“This is our first mission, but we do have two similar devices being prepared for other planets. We are working on more, though we hope to know how these three are progressing before we seriously consider launching those.”

Fal just sat for a minute, trying to process everything they had told him. Nebu wanted him to trust them, to help them. Help them to create a new lifeform to keep their own species in check. Trust them that it was for the good of everyone, because they were almost certain it was. There seemed to be way too many near certainties in this plan: the near certainty that the new species would achieve space flight in three to five centuries, the near certainty that they wouldn’t exterminate all of humanity, maybe even the near certainty that Fal would help with this plan.

“I’m not saying I’m going along with any of this,” Fal said at last, “but if I did, what happens then?”

“We go into orbit over Tonantzin,” Shi Ye explained, “then we dump the Gaia bomb. The vivasimines are launched and triggered to grow and the whole casing eventually disintegrates.”

“And us?” Fal asked. He didn’t particularly care about how the “Gaia bomb” did its job.

“We go home,” answered Nebu. “We return to the project, secure transportation to one of the other target planets with another device, and periodically return to Tonantzin to observe the progress from a distance. You go on with your business and never see us again, if you so choose.”

“Okay, so what if I decide this is insane and just dump the thing into deep space instead?”

“You can’t!” Fal nearly jumped at the sudden burst of near anger from Rena.

“You can’t do that! People have been working their whole lives to make this happen! You can’t just throw it away!”

“She’s right,” Shi Ye agreed, sounding the least confrontational that Fal had heard him. “It’s not just us. People have spent decades on this project. No pay, no recognition. Most of them can’t even tell their families what they’re doing. They did it because they believe it has to happen.”

Fal sighed. He didn’t doubt it. He could imagine them all, tons of scientists working away in some secret lab somewhere, tweaking genes to build a better aliens. He didn’t doubt that they thought it was necessary. But the EI 4 cultists had thought what they were doing was necessary to usher in paradise. Good intentions didn’t necessarily mean good results.

“What if I take the ship to the nearest station and turn you all in?”

Nebu sighed deeply. Fal was fairly sure he had considered this possibility many times.

“We would be arrested immediately. Whether we tell them or not, it is almost certain that the authorities will find the rest of our group and arrest them as well. None of our respective nations will look favorably on us. Our experiment breaks countless laws. I imagine the waivers you obtained from us would allow you to claim ignorance and your action in turning us in once you found out what we were planning would likely spare you any serious punishment. As for us, we would lose the project and end up incarcerated for decades.”

“We’d lose our freedom,” Rena said solemnly. It was probably intended to remind Fal of the time when he had lost his own freedom. But all it did was make him think about how that seemingly intimate conversation had probably been more of a fact-finding mission for Rena.

“So,” Shi Ye said, growing impatient, “what are you going to do?”

Fal looked at each of them: Shi Ye, angered by the possibility that their experiment might never come to fruition simply because they picked the wrong pilot; Nebu, patient as ever, yet worried for the safety of his group; and Rena, who still seemed to be searching for something to say that would make him understand what they were doing and why.

“I don’t know,” he said.


Fal stood quietly in the cargo bay beside the Gaia bomb. He had decided that he preferred Shi Ye’s term for it. Even if it wasn’t intended to destroy anything, it was going to destroy the way the galaxy was now. Nothing was going to be the same after they dropped it. If they dropped it.

Fal didn’t turn around when Rena came in. He only assumed it was her because she was the only one who would come and try to talk to him. Shi Ye had said everything he was going to and Nebu wanted him to make up his own mind. She called Fal’s name and confirmed his suspicion, but he merely nodded in answer.

“I can tell you about them, if you want,” Rena offered, motioning towards the crate. “I made one that has six legs, but it…”

“Don’t.” Fal didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want the responsibility of knowing what these things would be like now, and then wondering if he should have seen it coming when they started destroying inhabited planets.

“I’m sorry.” Fal couldn’t be sure anymore, but it sounded as if Rena actually was sorry.

“I’m sorry we brought you into this.” She fell silent, maybe hoping for him to say something, but he had nothing to say to her.

“It’s really up to you now,” she said very quietly. “You could just take us back and let us find someone else to deliver the device. You could turn us in or dump it in space, but I hope you don’t. It’s your choice, though.”

Fal sighed and rubbed his forehead. The two of them stood in silence. Even without looking at Rena, he could guess how uncertain she felt, unsure even of whether she should stay or go back to her group.

“So,” he said at last, “you want to tell them that we’re going to do this thing?”

He was only watching Rena out of the corner of his eye, but it would have been impossible to miss her eyes widening in surprise and the huge smile that broke out across her face.

“You mean it?” she said. She was all but bouncing with excitement that Fal wished he shared in. She looked like she might be about to hug him. Fal put up a hand.

“Just go,” he mumbled. His lack of enthusiasm did almost nothing to diminish Rena’s as she nearly flew out the door and down the hall to the meeting room. Fal could just hear the celebrations behind the door as he passed by. Someone was laughing and to Fal’s great surprise, it sounded like Shi Ye. He knew he could have gone in there and received all kinds of thanks and praise and assurances that he had done the right thing. But he kept going, down the hall, into the cockpit. He sat down and engaged the thrusters, slowly easing Tishtar out of orbit and back on course.

Twelve hours to AF 5.


“Cargo drop initiating in thirty. All clear.”

Fal did a final scan of the cargo bay after making the announcement. No life signs. The future inhabitants of AF 5 weren’t alive enough yet to register.

“Cargo drop in fifteen. All clear. Bay doors locking.”

Fal flipped the switch locking access from the rest of the ship to the cargo bay. It was probably unnecessary, but even now, he couldn’t risk anyone or everyone deciding to leap out into space unprotected and leaving him to explain what had happened to his passengers.

“Cargo drop in ten, nine, eight, seven, six…”

One last sweep of the cargo bay. Fal typed in the passkey for bay door release.

“…five, four, three…”

He grabbed the cargo release lever and prayed he was doing the right thing.

“…two, one.”

Fal pulled the lever.

“Cargo away.”

He tried not to think about what he’d just done, what it all meant. He scanned the cargo bay again and confirmed that the Gaia bomb had been jettisoned. He pushed the lever back up and reset the lock.

“Cargo is away. Bay doors will remain locked until bay is pressurized.”

Fal leaned back in his chair. It was another opportunity to join his passengers, who were likely watching the Gaia bomb descend towards the planet below. He could have shared a little of their triumph, but he still wasn’t sure if it was something he wanted to be a part of.

The cockpit door alert sounded and the viewscreen showed Rena waiting outside. Puzzled, Fal released the lock. The door slid open and Rena came in with uncharacteristic hesitance.

“You aren’t going to watch it go down?” Fal asked.

“No.” She glanced out the cockpit window and Fal guessed that she had some regrets about not watching her handiwork head to its final destination.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, not turning her eyes from the window.

Fal stretched his arms, giving himself a second to think. He hadn’t come up with a completely satisfactory answer yet. He still wasn’t completely convinced that this was a good idea, or that it wasn’t going to backfire. But there was one thing that seemed to keep coming up as he pondered his own reasons for his decision.

“I took some free time between jobs once,” he began, “ and I just went out flying. No particular destination, except away from all the big systems. So I was just out there, at least two weeks out from the nearest outpost even. And I saw a new planet.”

Rena turned her head, eyebrows raised.

“Really?” she asked. “A whole new planet?”

“Well, I’m not sure if it was a real planet,” answered Fal. “It was small, and pretty far out from the star. But it wasn’t on any of the charts.”

“What was it like?” asked Rena. She had turned completely away from the window, her attention fully on him now.

“Small, like I said. Probably pretty cold, being so far out. I don’t have instruments for checking that kind of stuff, so I’m just guessing. But it was kind of greenish blue, with little hints of yellow. It was nice.

“I guess I was kind of thinking that it doesn’t happen much anymore, finding stuff out here you don’t expect. So maybe if we had a whole planet full of life, like we never thought we were going to find, it’d make us think more about how we don’t know everything that’s out there yet.”

Rena was looking out the window again, but not to try and catch a glimpse of the Gaia bomb. She was just looking out into space, as if she saw something new in the dark, starry reaches.

“Could you…” she began, then suddenly shook her head. “Never mind.”

Rena’s gaze was growing distracted and unfocused again. Fal could feel another silence settling, but this time, he didn’t want to let it happen.

“Do you really think this is going to make us change?” he asked, motioning towards the planet below.

Rena took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Fal couldn’t know, but he thought this might be the first time Rena had ever really thought about that. People didn’t devote years of their life to a project that didn’t pay if they spent every day asking whether it was really going to work or not.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, “I hope it does. But I don’t know.”
Fal looked down at his hands and pressed his fingertips together. He had been thinking about what he was about to say since he had decided to drop the Gaia bomb, but it still wasn’t easy to do.

“So,” he started, trying to sound casual, “if you’ve got two more of these things and you want to come back and check on how this one’s doing, I think you’re going to need a pilot.”

Rena looked at him questioningly, almost guessing at where he was going with this, but not quite sure she should believe it.

“Independent pilot, obviously,” he continued, just glancing up from time to time to make sure she was listening. “Someone willing to go way out of the major systems. Someone who won’t talk because if you go down, so does he.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said, looking at him with a steady gaze. “I think what we really need is someone we can trust.”

Her sincerity was a little embarrassing, and Fal dropped his eyes away from her.

“I think I know someone,” he mumbled, “if you’re interested.”

Rena smiled, and Fal saw that same easy going, casual natured woman he’d talked to at the repair docks, who seemed to have disappeared that night he’d opened the crate in the cargo bay.

“It’s not really my decision,” she grinned. “Bu I’m sure they’ll say yes.”

Fal smiled with relief. Even if he still wasn’t totally sure that the Gaia bomb drop was the right decision, this felt like it was.

“So how did you get Tishtar?” Rena asked, running a hand along the wall. Fal cocked his head at her suspiciously and she laughed.

“I wasn’t trying to dig up info on you then,” she chuckled. “And you just offered to help us, so even if I had been, I wouldn’t need to now.”

“So you’re actually interested?” Fal had been told many times he could bore anyone to sleep when he started talking about his ship. Rena nodded.

“That and I like listening to people who are passionate about something.”

Fal dusted off the long unused co-pilot’s chair and motioned for Rena to sit, which she did.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Tishtar, but then you tell me how a nice girl like you got started making killer aliens.”

“Deal,” Rena laughed, leaning expectantly towards Fal.

“All right,” Fal started. “I guess I was ten or so when I knew I wanted to fly. My mom used to work for TransUni, though she wasn’t a pilot….”


No one would ever know exactly when it happened. The rest of the universe would never know the date, and many years would pass before humanity became aware of just what had occurred and how it would change life irreparably. But everyone would know where it happened. Most people knew it as AF 5. Some called it Tonantzin. But it would have a new name soon enough. And though they would not ever be able to place exactly when it happened, people would talk of that day, write of it, sing of it, envision it in art, and remember it for all time.

The day the first Tonantzinian beheld the planet’s sun and gave it a name.