Doug Dandridge's Blog, page 17

Exodus: Book 4, the First Week.

I released Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4: The Long Fall on Saturday, October 12, 2013.  I had a general idea that the book would do well, since everything that has come before has done so.  Book 3: The Rising Storm actually reached number 2 in Books Space Opera on Amazon in June of this year.  It plateaued out at about 6,500 books, and I think part of the problem was the price, since it got over a hundred and twenty reviews worldwide for  a 4.6 star average.  I priced the book at $5.49, mostly because the book was double the length of either of the $2.99 precursors.  I have heard that some people will not pay over $5 for an ebook, no matter the author.  I have decided since then to put out standard sized novels, from 120 to 150K words, so I can keep them below that $5 mark.  And Book 3 is now $2.99 for the month of October, to let people who wouldn’t pay $5.49 a chance to catch up on the series before moving on to Book 4.  It will go up slightly at the end of the month.

So, how did Book 4 do in its first week?  Very well, thank you.  Over seven hundred and fifty sales and loans, the great majority sales, in the first seven days.  Highest ranking of #6 in Books Military Science Fiction and #12 in Kindle Space Opera, with some fluctuation around those points.  Today, the start of the second week, has been about the same.  For an Indie with the no corporate marketing behind him that is great.

Right now I am working on two books at the same time.  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger should be ready by early to mid December, while Refuge: Book 4: Kurt’s Quest should be out by early January.  I know my Exodus fans will wonder why I am still working on Refuge, which is not doing near as well as Exodus.  Obligation.  I put Books 1 through 3 out there in that series with an implied contract to the fans, and there are over two thousand to that series, some of whom don’t read Exodus, that the series would continue to a logical ending point.  That point is book 5.  That doesn’t mean I will kill the Refuge series.  Maybe a break for awhile, then some marketing to see if I can increase readership of that series.  I also plan to put out the third book in The Deep Dark Well trilogy, which also has several thousand fans.  I already have the first draft finished of the second trilogy, something I completed in 2012 just because I loved the idea behind that book.  There is a connection between Exodus and TDDW, one that many of my fans may not realize, and maybe one that will become more apparent as I reach the end of the Exodus series.  And when will that series end.  Not anytime soon if I can help it.  I have a lot of ideas in the Exodus series, and many subplots to develop.  It may go on for years.  And I am appreciative at the sales it is making.

Filed under: Acceleration, Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Armor, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Magic, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Proofreading, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: black holes, Books Military Science Fiction, Exodus, Exodus: Empires at War, Refuge 3: The Legions, The Deep Dark Well

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4 is coming.

In film making parlance, Exodus 4 is in the can.  Coverted to mobi, cover ready, prepared for uploading.  that will occur tomorrow, Friday, October 11, 2013.    It should be up and running at the Amazon site by Saturday, October 12th.  I have been getting a lot of questions about then this book was coming out.  Well, here it is.  It even includes a glossary in the Appendix.  It does not include the line drawings of the ships that appear in books 1 through 3.  For some reason those drawings would just not interact with Word 2010, even though I put them in their documents using that program.  Now Word freezes up if I even look at more than two pages of those drawing, so they can just sit where they are.  I figure that most people that are going to buy book 4 already have books 1 through 3.  If not, well, I will be offering those books on special over the next couple of weeks.  Book 3: The Rising Storm, has a new cover, sort of, and will go on sale for a new lower price.  As you can see from the covers above I also have one for book 5, titled Ranger.  It will be in the same time frame as book 4, but will focus on the story of Cornelius Walborski, farmer turned hero, who only wants to kill Cacas.  It should be out by December, with a little luck.  Thanks to Ruth de Jauregui for the lettering and framing of these covers.

The pacing is a little different in book 4 as well.  Book 3 covered about a month, in 200K words.  4 covers almost a year and a half in 124,000 words.  Some more subplots are opened, and will hopefully lead to even more books.  As far as the short stories go, I just finished one titled Retribution, and will be submitting it to a big time anthology.  If it is picked up I will gain more exposure for the Exodus series, in my mind a good thing.  If that story is not picked up I will put it up as a freebie on my website and this blog, and try them with another.  I am also working on a proposal for a big time publishing contract.  I’m not sure if that will be Exodus.  I would prefer to keep Exodus as a self pubbed series, so I can put out books as I want.  So a lot going on, including a memoir about growing up in a small West Florida Gulf Coast Town that will probably not be of interest to my scifi fans, and is more of a local interest story.

I hope everyone will keep reading, and I will try to keep the primary series going along.  Thanks.

 

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Armor, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Magic, Marvel, Military, Movies, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Past, Plotting, Proofreading, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, String Theory, Titles, Tropes, Typos, Websites, Wormholes Tagged: Book Covers, Cornelius Walborski, Exodus, Exodus: Book 4, Exodus: Book5: Ranger, Exodus: Empires at War, Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4

What’s Eating You? an Exodus Serial Short, Part 3

And now, presented for your enjoyment, the third and final  installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in three parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions is currently out on Amazon.  If you like Exodus, you will probably like Refuge.  If you don’t like either one, you probably shouldn’t be reading my work.  And now, the first installment of What’s Eating You.  Exodus: Book 4 will be out in the next week or so.

What’s Eating You?

 

Universe six hundred and one was an unmitigated disaster.  The day started off ordinarily enough.  The last twenty-five openings by this team had been uneventful, or as much as opening a portal into another reality could be called such.  Twenty-one of them had been Universes of nothing but academic interest, not capable of supporting their form of life.  Four had the proper physical laws to allow carbon based organics to survive.  They just didn’t contain anything that could be properly called matter.  One was an antimatter Universe, while one was made up, as far as could be told, of negative matter.  That would have been useful as the source of a scarce resource, if that Universe hadn’t been empty for millions of light years past the portal, and there seemed to be no dimensions of hyperspace to use to get to the negative matter.  Only the characteristic radiation of negative matter reactions gave an indication of what lay across those millions of light years.

“Are we ready?” asked Dr. Rodrigue, looking at the holo of the chamber that showed the black hole ring ready to go.

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” whispered Lucille under her breathe, wondering what might come out of this particular rabbit hole.  I have a bad feeling about this one, she thought, trying to hold her hands steady.  She didn’t think she was precognitive, like some members of the Imperial family were said to be.  She had never had a vision before.  But last night she had suffered through a dream that showed something dark was waiting for her.  And her mind could think of no darker place than the holes they were opening up into other realities.

“Open her up,” yelled Rodrigue.

Lucille glanced back at the man, and could tell that he didn’t feel at ease either.  Too many uneventful openings recently.  So now he’s waiting for the other rock to fall.  She looked around the room, seeing tension everywhere.  In the set of shoulders, the roaming of eyes.  This can’t be real, can it? she thought.  I’m a scientist.  This is just a feeling.  It’s not real.

Despite the rational thinking the disquiet grew.  The holes moved away from each other, ripping the space apart.  As the hole opened what was revealed was anticlimactic.

“It’s another null,” said one of the techs with a sigh.

Yu nodded her head, feeling the same relief.  The hole was black, the complete absence of light.  There should have been no radiation coming from that hole to a Universe that had no matter.  But when she looked at the readings she hissed in her breath.  There was a lot of radiation coming out of that hole, more than had been coming out of any other but the new Universe they had opened a half year ago.

“We’re getting unknown radiation,” called out the tech who was monitoring the chamber instrumentation.

“What do you mean, unknown?” called out Rodrigue, standing up and walking over to the tech’s console.

“There are fast moving particles,” said the tech, looking up with a frightened expression on her face.  “But they don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Electromag field to maximum,” called out the senior scientist, turning toward the scientist in charge of the defense team.

“It’s at full,” said the tech that Rodrigue was standing over.  “But the particles are still coming through.”

“My God,” gasped Lucille, looking at the holo image that showed what shouldn’t have been possible.  The darkness was moving out of the portal, like a liquid or gas made of pure black absorbing, something.  And she could feel something there, some intelligence that was intent on coming through the opening.  An intelligence that was hungry, and sensed what it needed in their Universe.

“What the hell,” yelled out one of the techs as the blackness spread through the portal chamber.

“It’s alive,” said Lucille, feeling the evil of the thing through some kind of connection.  “And it’s coming to eat our Universe.”

“That’s impossible,” said Rodrigue, running over to her console, his eyes locked on the holo.  “It’s just some kind of physical phenomenon.”

Lucille looked in the man’s eyes and could tell that he was whistling past the graveyard.  He knows it’s more than that.  He just doesn’t want to admit it.

“Close the portal,” he yelled.

Most of the crew was paralyzed at their stations, held by fright, or possibly something else.  There were screams coming over the com link, the exploration team and the marines that were just outside the portal chamber, exposed to the thing even more so than the people in the control room.

“Close the portal,” screamed the chief, running to one of the tech stations and pushing the man out of the way.

The black holes began to move inward, more slowly than they should have.  Suddenly they lurched to a halt, pressed against the black substance that was pushing back.  Flashes of Gamma indicated that the holes were absorbing some of the substance of the invader, but not enough.

“What the hell is it?” yelled Rodrigue in a panicked voice.

“It is that Universe,” said Yu, knowing she was speaking the truth.  “Whatever it is absorbed everything there was in that place, now it’s coming for us.”

“That’s insane,” yelled out another tech.

It is, thought Lucille, staring at the holo as more or the thing came through.  How many years did it take to absorb that Universe.  How many billions to absorb ours.  She looked down at her trembling hand and saw that the veins were standing out on it.  Its taking in all the energy it can reach.  Our electricity, the electromagnetic fields, even our biological energy.  Then it will take in everything that it can.  And all that will be left will be the husks, the black holes, maybe neutron stars.

“Why won’t the holes close that damned portal?” yelled Rodrigue.

Lucille couldn’t move her hands on her board.  Something in that thing was reaching out and controlling them.  Preventing them from linking into any of their systems.  Even the chief was doing nothing but sit at a console and yell.

Lucille was already in the link.  Her mind was what controlled the system, that opened the portal.  Her mind, linked with the computer to perform the equations to open a hole between Universes.  And she still had control of that system.  It took seconds to run through a dozen simulations, to know what needed to be done.  And with a thought she shut off the electromagnetic fields that held the black holes within the cups of the arms.  At the same time she overrode all the safety protocols and blew each arm from its wall mounts with the fusion charges placed there for just such a possibility.

The black holes pulled the twelve arms into themselves with a flash of Gamma radiation, each hole increasing its mass by two hundred and fifty million tons.  The force of twelve two                                                                                            hundred megaton fusion blasts imparted their momentum to the holes.  The holes collapsed together into a much more massive hole.  If left on its own it would have fallen into the center of the planet, dooming it to eventual collapse.  Fortunately there was someplace else for it to go, through the rabbit hole into the other Universe, pulling the mass of that Cosmos back into itself.  The hole closed with a flash, and a sound much like a scream of anger and agony combined coming over the few sensors that had survived the destruction.

It took minutes for the people in the control room to come out of their shock, while the planet around them shook with the vibrations of the explosions and the collapsing space of the portal.  Lucille stared at the holo that showed the ruined portal chamber, wrecked at the cost of a half trillion Imperials.  And a bargain for saving the Universe, she thought.

“Was that real?” asked Dr. Rodrigue, staggering over to her station.

“It was real,” agreed Lucille, nodding her head.  “I wish it weren’t.  I thought I didn’t believe in evil.  Or hell.  And then had both proven to me in one day.”

“Well, it’s gone now.”

“Is it?” asked Lucille, looking up at the man.  “It knows we’re here, and it knows the resonance of our reality.  I’m sure it will be trying to find a way to get to us.”

“All the more reason to find somewhere we can run to,” said the senior scientist.

Lucille looked at the man in horror, knowing that this project would go on.  Maybe to open a portal into someplace worse than what they had seen today.  Something that she couldn’t imagine.

 

Filed under: Antimatter, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Titles, Tropes, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: black hole, black holes, Exodus, Exodus: Empires at War, Lucille Yu, Other Universe Project, Other Universes

Exodus Serial Short, What’s Eating You, Part 2

And now, presented for your enjoyment, the second installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in three parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions is currently out on Amazon.  If you like Exodus, you will probably like Refuge.  If you don’t like either one, you probably shouldn’t be reading my work.  And now, the first installment of What’s Eating You.  Exodus: Book 4 will be out in the next week or so.

What’s Eating You.

Lucille wondered what kept these people performing a job that obviously terrified them.  She asked one of the scientists one day after they had opened a portal to an antimatter universe that had destroyed the probe in spectacular fashion.  Fortunately the recon robot was millions of kilometers into the strange space, having catalogued that all the laws were not exactly the same as in our Universe, but close enough where our form of life could exist.  Until the probe touched down on a comet and obliterated itself while blasting the iceball apart.  The human exploration team had been called back post haste.

“It’s the contract,” said Dr. Joseph Jakarta, the leader of that last exploration team.

“You could break the contract, couldn’t you?” asked Yu, having trouble remembering what her own contract had actually said.  “It’s a free society, after all, and they can’t force you to work a job you find disagreeable.”

Some of the other members of the team laughed when she said that.

“Yeah, the pay’s great,” said Dr. Jakarta.  “But they bank most of it for us, payable when our contractual period is over.”

“Well, yes,” said Lucille, remembering how that had seemed very attractive when she had signed on.  She was paid six times what she would have expected from an academic job.  Her room and board was paid for, and she was given ten percent of her pay for personal expenses.  The rest would make a tidy sum when she moved on.  Now her face dropped as she heard the small print she had ignored when she signed her contract.

“If you don’t fulfill the terms they take away everything you have banked,” said Jakarta.  He looked around at the other nine members of his team, who all nodded vigorously, or cursed the administration.  “That’s not all,” continued Jakarta.  “They can make sure that you have a hard time getting another position.”

“How can they have that much power?” asked Yu, feeling horrified.

“This is a Priority Imperial Project,” said Jakarta, emphasizing each word.  “And the Imperial Science Council controls a lot of the funding the Universities and research tanks receive.  Add to that the influence of the military, and anyone who would hire someone who reneged on their contract risks losing all of their funding.”

“That still shouldn’t make it impossible to get a job,” protested Lucille.

“Not impossible, if you’re good enough,” agreed Jakarta with grudging acceptance.  “There are some willing to buck the system.  But for most, why take the risk?  Not when there are so many other scientists and technicians out there who can fill the slot on a team.”

“And you know what’s funny?” asked one of the techs, her flat eyes staring straight ahead.  “We still lose half our techs and scientists before their term is up.”

“But, why?  I know the work is dangerous.  But so are a lot of other high paying jobs.”

“You haven’t been here all that long,” said Jakarta after taking a swallow of his beer.  “Sure, there are other jobs statistically as dangerous.  But you don’t have to look the wrongness of other space in the face.  That wears on any sentient being after a while.”

“You’ll see,” said the woman who had talked before.  “It will get inside your brain too, Dr. Yu.  And then you will know one thing, that you don’t want to be here.”

*     *     *

“Open the portal,” ordered Rodrigue.

Lucille did the last second check and sent her acknowledgement over the link.  She glanced at her people, seeing the anxiety on their faces.  Everyone was thinking about what had happened to the other portal crew just a few days before.

That Universe had looked promising.  The robotic probe had gone across and continued to operate within all parameters.  Even the biologicals had seemed to handle the new space with no problem.  So the human exploration team had gone across, and things still looked good, for about fifteen minutes.  That was when the humans had started acting, bizarre was the only word for it.  Word salad on the transmissions.  The exploration vessel sent into nonsensical gyrations.  And finally a murder.  The ship had been recalled on autopilot, something the team seemed completely unaware of.  They were isolated, and molecular probes had shown that their actual central nervous system tissue had been changed.  It was not known if they would recover, or if they would have to go through complete neural restructuring by nanotech, which would basically make them different people.

So this exploration team has gone through mind upload, so their brains can be restructured if necessary, thought Lucille, shuddering at the thought of losing herself the way the members of that other team had.

Then she had no time for thoughts of past disasters, as the black holes moved apart and the space between them ripped open.

The first indication that something was wrong was the thick yellow gas that jetted from the hole.  The second indication were the life forms that followed.  They were like nothing that anyone had ever seen.  Scans immediately showed that they were not made up of any kind of biological matter ever encountered.  Instead, they scanned as some kind of metallic construct, though definitely not robots.

“We opened on a planet,” said Rodrigue, staring into the holo.

“How often does that happen?” asked an alarmed Lucille, watching as animals the size of small dinosaurs flew around the chamber in their native atmosphere.

“This is the seventh time, which is well above what would be expected by random chance,” said the other scientist.  “Possibly something to do with the gravitational pull of large bodies.”

Lucille shuddered at that thought, wondering when they would open a portal into a star, or a black hole.  And knowing the result would be the end of this world the project was based on, along with all the personnel and their families.

The weapons deployed in the huge chamber went into action, firing lasers and particle beams at the fast flying animals.   Hits were scored.  Many hits.  All to no effect to the creatures, who were soon tearing into equipment, ingesting it.  Lasers simply hit them and were absorbed, while particle beams bounced away.

“Close the portal,” yelled Rodrigue, a trace of panic in his voice as creatures smacked into the gateway arms.

“What good will that do?” asked one of the techs.

“Just do it,” yelled the senior scientist.

The black holes came back together and the portal closed.  One of the creatures flew into one of the black holes and disappeared in a flash, while hard radiation flooded the chamber.  There was no effect on the animals, but half the sensors in the chamber burned out.

“Set resonances to this frequency,” yelled Rodrigue.

Lucille looked over the frequency, cross referencing it to a Universe that had already been explored in the preliminary sense.  That should work, she thought, seeing that it was a null Universe, a natural vacuum of the most empty sort.

“Open it,” yelled the chief scientist, and Lucille started the process of opening the portal, something normally not tried so soon after one had already been opened.

The huge arms that controlled the black holes creaked and stuttered as they moved apart from the over strain, and Yu was sure they would collapse, and drop the holes through the floor and into the planet.  They held, and the holes ripped open space again.  This time the pull was from the other side, and the misty atmosphere was first sucked from the room, followed by the animals that no longer had air to flap through.  The creatures twisted and turned as they floated away from the opening, starting to become more insubstantial with each moment, until they were gone.

“Close it,” yelled Rodrigue, and the ring of black holes came back together, closing off the human Universe from the other.

“What happened to them?’ asked Lucille, trying to keep the scream that wanted to erupt from her mouth under control.

“Matter as we know it can’t exist there,” answered the other scientist.  “We found that out when we sent a probe into it.”

Rodrigue stood up from his chair and looked around the control room.  “Good job, people.  Way to keep your heads.  Everyone except the senior scientific staff can leave.  We will try again in two days, so everyone relax.”

“How the hell can we relax?” said one of the techs as he got up from his seat.

“I’m going to pray,” said another tech, a grimace on her face.  “Don’t really see how it will help, or hurt.”

I wish I could just get a drink, thought Lucille, wishing she didn’t have to sit and discuss what had just happened.  But there was no help for it.  She was a trapped audience to this discussion of a nightmare.

*     *     *

The chapel was set up for a Christian service, of any and all of the denominations of that religion.  There were other chapels on the base for the other major religious groups, Moslem, Judaism, Hinduism, all the isms there were.  Lucille had been raised Reformed Catholic, the dominant religion of the Empire.  When she had turned to science she had not had time for the church, and her faith had lapsed.  Her father, the eminent scientist and Buddhist, didn’t really push her to stay with the church.  It was her mother’s wish, the good Reformed Catholic from Norje, who made sure her daughter was raised to observe the ceremonies and strictures of that denomination.

Are you really there, God? thought the physicist, kneeling in front of the altar and looking at the image of a man hanging from a cross.  An image from a world that had been totally destroyed by the aliens that had sent humankind fleeing across the Galaxy.  And if you are, do you only exist in our reality?  What about these other realities we are opening?  What happens to us if we die in one of those realities?  Do we still find our way to you?

All disturbing questions, even to one who was more Agnostic than anything.  Would death in another dimension mean obliteration of the soul, if there was such a thing?  Were the natural laws of the other dimensions such that a soul was not possible?  Lucille shook her head at the last.  Her rational mind told her there was no such thing as a soul, while her religious upbringing told her there was.  And what about the strictures against clones, who all tended to be psychopaths?  Those with a religious bent said it was because they were unnatural creatures, not possessed of a soul.  Those who did not believe in the supernatural said it was because?  Well, they really didn’t have much of an answer.

Whatever it is, I’m stuck here.  At least until my contract is over.  She had been on the project for two months, which gave her twenty two months to survive.  Lucille was still shaking her head when she got up from before the altar and walked away, her head still swirling with questions, but no definite answers.

*     *     *

The portal to Universe number five hundred fifteen opened easily.  It opened on vacuum, it opened on space that seemed to obey the natural laws of the human Universe.  Lucille counted it off as her fifty-seventh portal.  The probe went through, and seemed to function perfectly.  The readings coming back from the biologicals indicated that they were functioning perfectly as well.

“Something’s wrong with this place,” said one of the techs, about the same time that Lucille started getting a feel for the place on her link into the instruments.

This place is old, she thought, looking at the star map the probe was beginning to develop.  The opening was in a Galaxy that was being absorbed by another Galaxy, which itself was in the process of colliding with yet another.  What stars still existed were all of the red dwarf variety, and the sleet of radiation showed that this was a Universe of black holes and neutron stars, swallowing up all the matter that came their way.

“It’s a Universe in its last days,” she said, looking back at Rodrigue.  “In another billion years it will have shrunk to a point.”

“We don’t need a billion years, if it comes to that,” said the senior scientist.  “If we need someplace to run, this may have to be it.  Send in the exploration team.”

The team went through the portal with no problems.  All readings came back normal, all communications rational.  Everything checked out, and Lucille knew they would be looking at this Universe for at least two weeks, maybe longer.  The relief in the control chamber was palpable as everyone realized they would not be opening another gate during that time.

The Universe turned out to be one in the last stages of its life, as Lucille had surmised.  The only living stars were red dwarfs.  Trials showed that it had a hyperspace array similar to the human Universe.  The place could support human life for however many thousands of years it took to find another home.  There was still no reason to think it would come to that.  But humankind had not gotten along in the Cosmos by being trusting.  It had learned that paranoia was a healthy state in an unhealthy Universe.

*     *     *

Universe five hundred and forty-nine opened just as easily as most before it.  But the blast of hard radiation that came through the opening and fried the portal room chamber sensors told them from the start that something was different.

“Electromag field to maximum,” yelled Rodrigue.  The field covered the wall of the portal chamber, and was always kept at half strength when the hole was opened, allowing all the instruments to look through it with minimum interference.  Now it was strengthened to its maximum power, stronger than that of an Imperial battleship.  All charged particles were stopped by the multilayered field, while the uncharged ones were absorbed by the liquid insulation layer built for that purpose.

“Residual radiation is at a minimum,” called out the tech who was monitoring those systems.

“Send through the probe,” ordered Rodrigue.  “We might as well get a look at whatever hell we opened.”

The probe went through and started to transmit.  It was immediately apparent that the robot was not going to function very long, not with the radiation sleeting through its destroyer class electromag screen.  But they did get some information back, enough to tell them what they were dealing with.

“It’s only a couple of thousand years since this Universe went through a Big Bang,” said Yu, looking over the data through the link that allowed her to get a comprehensive overview.  “It will be hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions, before we can live in that space.  Billions before there are planets we can claim for terraforming.”

“So it’s another dead end,” said Rodrigue, glaring at the holo as if it was a personal affront.

“The probe is dying,” said Lucille, looking back at her boss.  “Should we close it?”

“This Universe is of great scientific significance,” said one of the other scientists.  “We can gain a lot of knowledge about how our own Universe formed from this place, if nothing else.”

Rodrigue sat and thought for a moment, while the data from the chamber sensors faded over time from the radiation overload.  “Send through another probe.  We’ve got thirteen more.  We’ll keep sending them through one at a time until we’re out.  Then we can requisition more from administration for the next opening.”

And so it went through the day, as they looked at a Universe that was still in its infancy.  From all indications it would become one such as theirs.  Some put forth the proposition that it actually was theirs, just in a different time.  That maybe the dying Universe was also theirs, at a later time.

That’s one of the problems here, thought Lucille as she was monitoring probe number thirteen, the next to the last.  We really don’t know what we’re dealing with.  We’re making it up as we go along.

At least it was a good day at the Other Universe Project, as no one was killed or injured, and new information was gathered at the cost of fourteen robotic probes.

Filed under: Acceleration, Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Proofreading, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, String Theory, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: black holes, Exodus: Empires at War, exploration team, Lucille Yu, Monsters, Other Universe Project, Other Universes

What’s Eating You, An Exodus Serial Short, Part 1

And now, presented for your enjoyment, the first  installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in three parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions is currently out on Amazon.  If you like Exodus, you will probably like Refuge.  If you don’t like either one, you probably shouldn’t be reading my work.  And now, the first installment of What’s Eating You.

 

What’s Eating You.

 

“Dr. Yu?” asked the man at the space dock, his eyes wide in surprise.

Lucille Yu nodded and smiled, used to the reaction she was receiving.  As the daughter of the famous Chun Yu, the brightest physicist of his era, a man just about everyone in the physics world knew by sight, they expected his daughter to look like someone from New Hanou.  In other words short, dark haired, with black eyes in brown skin.  Instead the man found himself looking up at a statuesque blue eyed blond with fair skin.  The only physical feature that could be attributed to her father were the slight epithilic folds on her eyes.  That, and her first class brain.

“My mother was from Norje,” she replied to the unasked question.

The man, who had the look of Brazilia about him, nodded.  It was common knowledge that the people of Norje had genes that were dominant to most others, an artifact of the project that separated the human race back into ethnic groups after the cause of a thousand years that had brought mankind to this region of space.

“Your bags are being put on the shuttle,” said the man, who then held his hand out with an embarrassed flush.  “Dr. Rafael Rodrigue,” said the man.  “I am chief of the door opening team on portal one.”

Lucille shook the hand, thinking how nice the man looked.  Then wondering how he might be in bed.  Not the best thing to think about when meeting my boss for the first time.

“Your chariot awaits, Senorita,” said the man, who was of a height with herself, unusual for his homeworld.

Lucille smiled and followed the man across the arrival lobby, taking a glance back through transparent alloy window at the ship that had brought her to this far outpost of the Empire.  They had spared no expense on bringing out new staff, using a Hyper VI liner with a destroyer escort to carry them the two hundred light years from Sector II base.

The shuttle surprised her, being nothing more than a standard Imperial Marine assault ship.  It is a military project, after all, she thought, walking through the hatch and going to the seat that had a green icon suspended above it.  Or at least the military has a big stake in the project.

The shuttle pulled free of the military dock with no sense of motion, the grabber units pulling smoothly at the fabric of space and feeding all the inertia into the compensators.  Lucille smiled as she noticed some of the other passengers acting as if they didn’t know that the ship had left the dock.

The holo in front of her seat came on, displaying a construct of indeterminate size floating above an ice planet.  At first there was no sense of scale, until the viewpoint shifted back and the space dock, all fifty million tons of structure, appeared.

“That’s the black hole generator,” said Dr. Rodrigue, pointing at the object.  “Sixteen two hundred pentawatt lasers.”

“And how often do you use it?” asked Lucille, estimating the entire construct at three hundred million tons.  She knew the theory, and had in fact seen larger hole generators in some of the core systems.  The light pressure of the lasers compressed space itself, creating billion ton mass black holes, which had several industrial uses.  But they’re too hard to transport, she thought, recalling that the largest freighters had a capacity of twenty-five million tons.  So they built one here.

“We normally don’t use it all that much.  Once the two portal generators were constructed it was basically shut down, since we had all we needed.  It’s just completed its latest run.”

“Why did it need a latest run?” asked Lucille, realizing that something wasn’t right here.

“One of the portals collapsed, and we lost all twelve of the generating holes,” said Rodrigue, his face scrunching up in emotional pain.

“You lost more than the holes, didn’t you?” asked Lucille, her eyes wide as she imagined the worst, which the other scientist soon confirmed.

“We lost over three hundred people, sucked into whatever universe swallowed our holes,” said Rodrigue, rubbing his hand over his forehead.

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Oh, we’ve lost exploration crews we sent through to universes that seemed amenable to our form of life.  First impressions are not always correct.  But nothing like this.”

“So you’re just rebuilding the portal, bringing in more people, and carrying on from there?” asked Lucille, wondering how mad these people were.

“This program is important,” said Rodrigue, his eyes tightening as he gazed into hers.  “You know how we came to this space, don’t you?”

Of course.  Aliens were going to destroy our race, so we ran as fast as our then primitive tech could carry us.  She simply nodded her head.

“Then you know that we still have an enemy out there, somewhere.  And we may need to run again.  It would be nice if we could run into a hole and pull the hole in after us.”

Lucille wanted to say something.  Something about how they were now too powerful to fear such an enemy.  Something about how the Donut project was scheduled to come online in the next decade, using a huge black hole to generate wormholes that would make the Empire unbeatable.  Instead she kept her mouth shut, knowing there was no such thing as unbeatable.  People who thought they were unbeatable soon found out differently.

Lucille decided to stop thinking about it, for the moment.  She sat quietly in her seat and watched the holo, which had now zoomed onto the surface of the planet, out here far beyond the habitable zone of this star.  There were three hundred and fifty fusion plants on that surface, supplying the energy needed by the project.  Entire valleys were surfaced with heat exchangers, using the interstellar cold of the planet to take care of the thermal radiation.  And two hundred thousand personnel to run the project, the robots, and all the infrastructure.  Two hundred thousand people, including families, all at risk whenever they open one of those rips between universes.

The docking bay on the planet was very spacious, but not enough so to handle a timely evacuation of everyone on the worldlet.  Artificial gravity was normal, and the primary base contained several large caverns turned into wildlife preserves, with lush foliage and small birds and mammals placed there for the enjoyment of the inhabitants.  There were always some of those inhabitants around, mostly human, but a smattering of nonhuman citizens of the Empire as well.  Lucille found herself stepping around a huge hexacentauroid Phlistaran on the way to her quarters, and there many small humanoid Manticorans in evidence, probably servants.

Her quarters were just as spacious as advertised, with sitting room, dinning room and large bed chamber.  Space was not a problem with installations, either ships, stations or planetary bases.  It was more important to keep people happy and healthy so that they could do their jobs effectively.

“Remember what we talked about,” said Rodrigue as he turned to leave.  “What we do here is important.”

“How many have you opened?” she asked before he could get out the door.

“How many?  A couple of hundred.  Maybe a few more.  We open them about twice a week, and they remain open a week on the average.  Or they had, when we had two portals.”

“So two hundred, more or less.  And how many have panned out?  How many opened into a universe we could actually use?”

“None,” said the other scientist with a shrug.  “But that doesn’t mean we won’t find one, someday.”

“Among infinite possibilities?”

“That’s right.  Among infinite possibilities.  There has to be something out there that we can use.”  The scientist smiled, then walked through the door, which closed immediately behind him.

Lucille threw herself into the couch and called up the room holo, linking into the base computer system and sending through her password.  She spent the next couple of hours learning all she could about the Other Universe Project.  At the end of those hours she felt even more hopeless than before, and wished that she had gotten that position on the Donut Project instead.

*     *     *

“Are we ready, people?” asked Dr. Rodrigue, looking out over the control room.

The crew sounded off, a hundred men and women at their stations.  Lucille looked over the readouts from her own team, the one controlling the actual opening process.  After the energy feed crew finished their checkoff, hers went through theirs, while she checked their readouts one after the other.  She checked them a second time through her link into the portal local computer, then again through the main computer, her trained mind performing the equations through the system ten thousand times faster than her organic mind alone could accomplish.  She found a couple of minor discrepancies and shuttled the findings to those controllers responsible.

“Opening mechanism ready,” she shouted, at the same time sending her release code into the system.

The last crew, the exploration and recording unit, started their checkoff, while Lucille looked around the large room.  She could recognize the old timers that had been added to this portal crew by the looks of fear on their faces.  The newcomers, who had never opened a portal, looked nervous, but their faces lacked the expressions of stark terror on those of the veterans.  And why are they so afraid? thought Lucille, going over what she had learned in her own research on the project.  There were some disturbing indications that not everything proceeded according to plan.  Not all the time.  Maybe it’s something you have to experience, she thought, wondering how she would be after this opening.

“Prepare to open,” called out Rodrigue.

Lucille looked at her board, making sure the electromagnetic field was set to the programmed resonance.  One of the black holes was a little off, which would result in a null opening.  She shifted it to the proper wavelength and signalled the portal director that all was well.

On the holo the twelve arms holding the micro black holes in their vibrating electromagnetic cups started to move.  Each arm massed two hundred and fifty million tons of superhard alloys and supermetals.  Thick superconductor cables, massing several million additional tons, crawled over the arms.  The cupped black holes began to move back toward the walls of the forty kilometer wide chamber on the telescoping arms, going slowly from several meters apart to ten meters.  The space the center of that ring started to ripple, much like that of a hyperdrive opening a hole to the dimensions of hyperspace.  But this was different, the space being accessed not one of the dimensions naturally intersecting the Universe that humanity knew.  At fifteen meters separation the space started to rip open, the hole accessing the other universe set by the wavelength of the electromagnetic resonance.  Each incremental wavelength opened onto a particular Universe, the number being almost unlimited.

There was a bright flash of light at twenty meters separation, and then there was something in the space that was not ours.  The arms opened up wider, to a hundred meters, and Lucille found herself looking into total blackness.  Not the blackness of space as she knew it.  There was nothing light producing in that space, though the feel of depth was such that she felt she was looking into billions of light years.

“Looks like we have another null Universe,” said one of the crew, a note of relief in her voice.

“Send in a probe,” ordered Rodrigue, and a thirty meter long robot with heavy grabber units fore and aft came speeding out of the wall perpendicular to the hole.  It flew into the portal, its telemetry appearing in the holo, until it had totally entered the other universe.  Then it just disappeared from all sensors.

“It’s a null,” said Rodrigue.  “Exploration teams stand down.”

Lucille looked into a side screen where a dozen personnel were suited up in modified battle armor such as used by Exploration Command.  She could see the relief on them through their body language as the order came through.  They would not be risking their lives by working as guinea pigs in the ultimate foreign environment.  There were biologicals within the probe, but obviously they would not be reporting back to the control station.

“Five minutes, people,” said Rodrigue, getting up from his seat and walking toward the holo tank.  “Record everything you can, even if it amounts to nothing.  Then we’ll close this one up and get a fresh start tomorrow.”

At the end of the allotted time the black holes were moved back toward each other, and the portal to elsewhere closed.  The crew started talking among themselves as they filed from the room back to the tube car to the main base, pulling off helmets and gloves.  They reminded Lucille of condemned prisoners offered a temporary reprieve.  And tomorrow would offer another chance of execution.

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Antimatter, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Tropes, Websites, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: black holes, Dying Universe, Exodus: Empires at War, Lucille Yu, Other Universe Project, Primordial Universe

The Authors of Dragon*Con

I attended Dragon*Con last weekend, my first real Con.  I have been a scifi and fantasy fan since I was a young child, but never had the time to attend a convention.  I attended a small one day affair in Tallahassee, Altcon, which was worth going to, but was not near the same class as Dragon*Con.  I heard over fifty thousand attended.  I could believe it.  I went early, on a Wednesday, so I would be there for the Thursday start of the writer’s workshop I had signed up for.  Author Jody Lynn Nye taught the workshop, and did a very good job of it.  Her husband, Bill Fawcett, helped her out a bit, and had read some of the submissions.  Thursday evening was time for registration, and there were already a bunch of people dressed in their costume finery.  Fantasy Author Todd McCaffrey, Anne’s son, talked with us on Thursday and gave us an assignment on how to plot out a novel based on a classic four part structure.  The workshop continued the next day, with best seller Kevin J Anderson and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, spoke to us on Friday, and both were very gracious.  I talked with Kevin a couple of other times during the weekend, and found him to be a man with an easy manner of connecting with people.  That night I saw Robert J Sawyer, who sat with me a moment before his panel.  I saw him and his wife in passing the next day, and on a panel on Monday.

Todd McCaffrey was on another panel with Lynn Abbey, and he signed a book of his I bought at the session.  Later I was introduced to Lynn Abbey in the VIP room while talking with Bill Fawcett.  There were panels with John Ringo, Timothy Zahn, Michael Z Williamson and Michael Resnick.  Then there was the hour with Larry Niven, a man I have been reading for over forty years.  I stopped by the Baen table later and Larry signed a book.  Kevin J did the same at his table.  I also saw Van Allen Plexico on a couple of the panels, and he moderated the hour with Larry Niven.  Man, how I envied him that job.  I met Jeanne Stein, an urban fantasy author from whom I had taken a course in how to write that kind of literature.  There were other Authors I met, some I had never heard of, many that I had heard something about, but not a lot.  One of the more interesting authors was Jim Butcher, who in an hour long conversation stated that he had once entered a room at a con that was almost empty.  This time the room was full, with what looked like a couple of thousand people.

There was one thing all the authors had in common.  Most were friendly, though not all, but all were genuine people who seemed to really love the genres they wrote in.  No one jumping into scifi and fantasy just to make easy money, as if writing anything was easy.  I had originally gone to Dragon*Con wanting to see a number of the celebrities, but soon changed focus to the authors.  It was my first Con, but will not be my last.  I am already planning to go next year, and to LibertyCon as well.  I just didn’t know what I was missing.

Filed under: Conferences, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, History, Kindle, Military, Near Future, Plotting, Proofreading, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Tropes, Writing Tagged: Baen Books, Bill Fawcett, dragon con, DragonCon, fantasy author, Jeanne Stein, Jody Lynn Nye, John Ringo, Kevin J Anderson, Larry Niven, Lynn Abbey, Michael Resnick, Michael Z Williamson, Rebecca Moesta, Robert J Sawyer, Timothy Zahn, todd mccaffrey, van allen plexico, writer's workshops

Exodus Serial Short Story A New Life, Last Installment

And now, presented again for your enjoyment, the fourth and final  installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in four parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.  I will be putting out another serial short in the next couple of weeks.

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions is currently out on Amazon.  If you like Exodus, you will probably like Refuge.  If you don’t like either one, you probably shouldn’t be reading my work.  And now, the final installment of A New Life.

This day they were hunting bigger game, the twelve ton Hexa-Buffalo, the beasts that were one of the reasons the King Tigers grew so big.  A lot of people thought herbivores were the gentler animals, spending their days as they did cropping grass or watching for predators.  Cornelius knew better.  He had hunted these beasts before, and if given his choice he would rather have gone after the tigers any day.  Again he carried a military grade particle beam rifle, an emergency weapon for the possibility that one of the noble born asses might botch his shot.

“You be careful out there,” his father had told him before the party split up, his father with the other men who would approach from downwind, using their scent to move the herd in the direction of the shooters.

“You too,” said Cornelius, giving his dad a hug.  He was the last family that the young man had, or at least the last genetic relation that actually knew who he was.

Humphrey was on this hunt, still wanting that big trophy head to mount in a study, so he could lie to his friends about how brave he was.  There were two other nobles, including the Duke himself.  Cornelius knew that the Duke was a skilled hunter who could be depended on to stand his ground and make a good shot.  Still, he wished the Marine Captain was taking the place of either Humphrey or the other noble, a young man whose frightened eyes tried to look everywhere at once.

“There they are,” whispered the Duke, coming up beside Cornelius.  He nodded back, having already spotted the herd, including a magnificent bull, as large as any that the young man had ever seen.

“Who takes the first shot, my Lord?” asked Cornelius, watching as the herd began to move their way with a lowing sound.

“Let Baronet Kroger have it,” said the Duke, motioning at Humphrey, who was looking wide eyed at the large animals, sweat pouring down his face.

“Yes, my Lord.”  Cornelius made his way over to the Baronet, then motioned for the man to squat down while he went to a knee.  “That big bull is yours, my Lord.  Make sure your weapon is set to maximum accel, and only fire when I tell you.”

“I know what I am doing,” said the fat man.  “Don’t tell your betters what they must do.”

“Again, my Lord.  Only fire when I tell you to.  Those are the Duke’s orders, not mine.  If you have a problem with them I will ask him to come over and tell you himself.”

“Insolent swine,” whispered the man, trying to look fierce as he turned his eyes on Cornelius, and only managing to look scared.

“Here he comes,” whispered Cornelius, looking over his own scope at the big male.  He’s fifteen tons if he’s a kilo, he thought.  Too good a trophy for this bastard.  And I don’t want him too close, in case this son of a bitch doesn’t bring him down.  “Fire,” he said to the Baronet.  Nothing happened, and he saw the big bull tearing at the grass with all six hooves, then start trotting their way.  “Fire, damn you,” yelled Cornelius, taking his eye off his scope and glaring over at the noble.

Humphrey pulled the trigger, and Cornelius knew something was wrong by the way the rifle recoiled.  It was a high end hunting rifle, and had grabber units built into it to take up some of the recoil, but still should have pushed the man back more than it did.  The man fired again, and the rifle again barely bucked.

“What the hell did you do?” yelled Cornelius, pulling the rifle hard out of the man’s hands.  He looked in disbelief at the velocity setting, which was the minimum the rifle was able to send a shot down range.

Another round cracked by at high velocity, and Cornelius looked up and out to see a cow by the bull go down to her knees, while the bull and the rest of the herd turned tail and took off at a run.  More shots, and some other beasts were hit, none hard enough to bring down.  Cornelius brought up his weapon and tried to get a shot at the bull who was leading the herd toward his father.  But there was too much dust, too many other darting forms.  He took a shot and killed a smaller bull, but only a kill of the dominant male could stop them from the charge.

“Goddammit,” he yelled, jumping up and running after the herd, fearing the worst.  The herd charged to the wood line and in, taking cover, all but the dominant bull, which was stomping and ramming his horns into something on the ground.

“Good God, no,” yelled Cornelius, seeing his father’s rifle on the ground near the bloody mess that in no way resembled a human being.  He brought his rifle up and shot the bull, a narrow beam that burned a hole through the hindquarters and out the chest, dropping the beast.  He stumbled up to look down on the bloody meat, splintered bones, and torn rags that had been his father, tears rolling down his cheeks.  The other men in the beating party gathered around, looks of disbelief on their faces.  The elder Walborski had been a fixture of the hunts for decades, and to be taken in such a manner was beyond comprehension.

The Duke and the other men came up a minute later.  The Duke looked like he was about to cry as well.  But Baronet Kroger only had eyes for the big bull.  “My trophy,” said the man, all smiles.  “He will look fine mounted on my study wall.”

Cornelius turned, grief becoming rage in a second.  He walked over to the man and slammed his fist into the fat face, knocking the Baronet to the ground.  “This was your fault,” he screamed at the man.  “If you had checked your rifle and made sure that it was set right, this bull would have been killed.  But you didn’t have the brains for that, you stupid son of a bitch.  I’m going to…”

Cornelius stepped forward, then brought his other leg coming for a kick.  Two of the beaters grabbed his arms and held him back, while the Baronet held his hands over his face, trying to protect himself.

“Calm down son,” said the Duke, putting a hand on Cornelius’ shoulder.  “This is a tragedy, but it will do you no good to get violent.”

“I will have you thrown in jail,” yelled the Baronet, pushing himself up to a sitting position.  “You assaulted me, and I will see that you serve time in a labor camp.”

Cornelius pulled at the men holding his arms, but they were strong and would not give him an inch.

“Go home, Cornelius,” said the Duke, patting him on the shoulder.  “I will make sure that your father’s remains are brought in for cremation.”

“I want him arrested, now,” yelled Kroger, getting to his feet.

“Don’t worry about jail,” said the Duke.  “You’ve been through enough.”

Cornelius nodded and walked away, still steaming inside with a murderous rage.  Someday I’ll see that son of a whore by himself, and he’ll die.  Even as he thought that he knew it would never happen.  Men like Kroger, the privileged, were always protected.  The best he could hope for was to be stunned by security and taken to jail.

*     *     *

“You no longer work here,” said the shift leader as Walborski tried to go to his station.

“What do you mean?” asked Cornelius in shock.  He had taken a couple of shifts off to attend his father’s funeral, then set his dad’s affairs in order.  But that was all according to company policy, and had been approved ahead of time.

“I’m not really sure what happened, Walborski,” said the shift leader.  “It came down from management that you were no longer to be allowed on the line.  I guess that means you were terminated.”

“Terminated?” said Walborski, still in shocked disbelief.

“I am really sorry, Walborski,” said the foreman, shaking his head.  “It’s not up to me, and.  I guess I shouldn’t say anymore.”  The foreman turned away, still shaking his head.

He’s worried that he might lose his job, thought Cornelius as he turned away.  And I really can’t blame him.  This isn’t a free society.  We’re only free to cut our own throats with our actions.

Later he tried to get in touch with the Duke, but was turned away.  Calls to the employment services did no better, and he soon found that he was not employable on this planet.  And then all the money in his and his father’s accounts disappeared, and he knew that the enemy he had made on that hunt was getting him, and he had no way to get back at the Noble bastard.

*     *     *

“What’s wrong?” asked Cornelius as he came in the door of the apartment and saw Katlyn sitting on the couch, crying, the big cat in her lap.  He had been fruitlessly searching for a job, taking public transport now that the aircar was gone.  And the answer had been the same at every venue.  He had the skills that robotics factories were looking for, but he had a black mark on his record.

“The apartment manager informed me that we have to move out by the end of the week,” said his wife, tears rolling down her face.  “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.  It looks like I’m sunk on this world.  All I have to look forward to is a life on the dole.”

He thought for a moment and looked at his wife.  “I’ll give you a divorce if you want.  So you can find, you know, someone with some prospects.”

Katlyn stood up and put her arms around him.  “I don’t want someone with prospects.  I want you.”

“Then I don’t think we can stay here,” he said, looking into her eyes.  “I wouldn’t be satisfied just existing.”

“And where would we go?”

“To the frontier,” he said, a smile crossing his face.  “To the land of opportunity.  What say we give it a try.  How would you like to become a Marquise?”

“I’ll go anywhere you do,” she said, sitting back down and stroking the cat.  “As long as we can find Big Tom here a good home before we go.”

*     *     *

The freighter didn’t look like much, even to someone who had never been in space before.  It was a hyper V tramp, thought to be good enough to haul prospective colonists to sector transshipment points, where they could be loaded up on other ships to get to their final destinations.

Cornelius could tell that Katlyn was terrified as she looked at the cryo chamber that was to be her resting place for the next four and a half months.  It would be transferred to another ship with her in it.

“I’ll hold your hand while they put you under,” he said, holding her.  “And I’ll be there when they wake you.  Look, it’s got to be better than spending a third of a year sitting in cramped quarters for the voyage out.”

“It’s OK,” she said, in a voice that told him it was anything but.  “Help me into the thing.”

That looks like a coffin, he thought, as he helped her to step into it.  Medical staff started to attach sensors and push tubes into her veins, while he stood over her holding her hand.  Before he knew it she was unconscious.

“We find it better to put them under as soon as possible,” said one of the techs, while another pumped nanites into her body.  Cornelius knew they would scour her cells of ice crystals before she came out of cryo, and repair any damage caused by freezing.  Then the lid was lowered and sealed, and his wife was quick frozen while he looked on with some anxiety.

“Look,” said the tech who had been talking to him.  “This is old, tried and true tech.  The founders used it for a thousand years to come into this space, without a loss.  Well, maybe closer to five hundred years ship time with dilation.  But the point is that it works, and works well.  And we’ve improved it in the last thousand years.  So your wife and you will awake in a new system.”

“You been out to the frontier?” asked Cornelius as he climbed into his chamber, sitting next to Katlyn’s.

“A dozen times,” said the tech.  “I really prefer it to the core worlds.  Tens more years of this and I plan to start a new life out there as well.”

“A new life,” said Cornelius as the needles were inserted into his arms.  Then the world faded and he knew no more.

“What happened?” he asked a different tech as his eyes opened.  “What went wrong?”

“Nothing,” said the tech.  “You’re going to be a little disoriented for a bit.  But you’re here, at your destination.  We’re about ready to wake your wife.”

Cornelius sat up in his cryo box and tried to get out.  “Take it easy,” said the tech, putting his hand on Cornelius’ chest.

“I promised my wife I would be there when she came to,” said Cornelius, pushing the hand away and climbing out of the box.  He staggered over to the next box and looked down on his wife, still undergoing the process of reawakening.  He stood over her till her eyes fluttered, then opened.  She saw him and focused, a smile touching her lips.

“We made it, honey,” he said, gasping her hand.

The flight to the surface was bumpy, in an old shuttle that had seen better days.  They walked out onto a tarmac that was relatively unscared.  A flock of flying creatures, not birds, flew overhead, and they looked up, then started walking to the terminal.

“We made it,” said Cornelius, squeezing Katlyn’s hand.  “We made it.”

“To our new life,” she said, looking into his eyes.  “And a family.  As soon as we can I want to start a family.”

“I can do that,” said Cornelius with a laugh.  “It will definitely be my pleasure.”

The End

Filed under: Acceleration, Antimatter, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Kindle, Military, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Weapons, Plotting, Proofreading, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Websites, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: A New Life, Cornelius Walborski, Exodus: Empires at War, king tigers, New Detroit, particle beam, Sestius

DragonCon: My First Real Con

Just got back from my very first DragonCon.  I attended something called Altcon in Tallahassee in the Spring, which wasn’t bad, but it was a one day affair with two or three presentation rooms and no one really famous.  This was the real deal.  Four host hotels in downtown Atlanta, plus some overflow hotels (I was actually out at the Airport Hilton, miles and miles away, but with shuttle buses and Marta it was not a big deal).  Tens of thousands of people.  Authors and celebrities that most people have heard of.   And Costumes.  Some kind of ridiculous, like the overweight Spartan with the spray painted abs.  Some fantastic, like the cow headed demon who projected smoke through his nostrils and several Iron-Man suits that were flawless.  Or the Star Wars Storm Trooper with the Ewok head on his spear.  Really cute girls dressed as elves, anime characters, you name it.  Sometimes there seemed to be too many people, and I thought of new and inventive ways to do in large numbers of people while trying to get through them.  Those methods may go into future books.  I talked to lots of people, and found many who had loved the same books, movies and TV shows that I did.  Standing in one line a guy looked at my name tag and told me he was reading the third book in my series, then asked what was going to happen in book 4.  I loved that, and really want to see as much of that as possible in the future (more on that in another post).

The parade was really first class.    Squads of Boba Fetts, platoons of Storm Troopers, quartets of Batmans, scores of boxy superheroes, a guy in an authentic, and very hot, Wookie suit.  Even a Jurassic Park Jeep and a Batmobile from the original series.  I stood next to a Thor with a really cool hammer, but also saw a Bubba Thor wearing overalls and carrying a hammer made with a Budweiser box.   I went as Indiana Jones on Saturday, and got in a couple of pictures.  I soon found that wearing a leather jacket in Atlanta in August was not really a good idea.  And some people were in costumes that had to be hell to wear.

I originally planned on seeing a lot of the celebrities, especially William Shatner and George Takei.    After attending the writer’s workshop I signed up for it shifted to seeing authors.  And getting worn out walking from hotel to hotel got me focused on going to presentations in the writer’s track that were in adjacent rooms.   And the networking I really didn’t expect that may lead to some really great things in the near future.  I will do a future post on the authors I met and how impressed I was with them.    Of course a convention meant not enough sleep.  Not because of noise.  The Airport  Hilton was very quiet.  Just a different bed and not the same little noises I’m use to.

The one true celebrity panel I went to had Christopher Judge on it, Teal’c on Stargate SG-1.  On the show his character is almost always wearing a frown.  On the panel Christopher was constantly laughing and telling jokes and playing the crowd.  He was a riot.  I asked the panel about the writing for SG-1, which featured very good treatments of scifi themes from many of the classics.  He explained that the writers were real science fiction fans who understood the genre and respected the fans.  Was glad to hear that, because so much else I heard during the Con was about how Hollywood will change scripts so they won’t effect the spin off marketing, and how they really don’t respect the intelligence of scifi fans.  Christopher was unusual because he played college football to get the scholarship so he could study theater and acting.  Very intelligent guy and I left the presentation hoping there were many good things ahead for the big man.

My next post will  be the final installment of A New Life, the serial short story I have been posting.  After that I will a couple more posts on DragonCon,   One will cover the authors I saw and my impressions of them, almost all good.  And finally about how the networking I did, mostly unintentional, could lead to some big things.

 

Filed under: Conferences, Dragons, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Future Prediciton, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Movie Critics, Movies, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Websites, Writing Tagged: Atlanta, celebrities, Christopher Judge, DragonCon, Hollywood, Indiana Jones, Stargate, Stargate SG-1

An Exodus Serial Short: A New Life, Part 3, and more.

And now, presented again for your enjoyment, the third installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in four parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.  The fourth and final part should be out on Labor Day.

I had been planning to put out Refuge 3: The Legions, on 08/28/2013, but circumstances beyond my control have intervened.  I am going to DragonCon tomorrow, and just didn’t feel comfortable with the edits to the novel.  I received a bunch of manuscripts to read and comment on for the workshop I am attending, and I need to get to them today.  The book will be out by Labor Day or soon after.  And I am about 100K words into the fourth book of the Exodus Series, the books I get the most ‘when is it coming out’ questions about.

 

DragonCon will be my first big scifi/fantasy convention.  I have signed up for a professional workshop on Thursday and Friday.  I have put together a costume based around my Indian Jones hat and jacket, which were purchased just because I thought they were cool for general wear.  Now I have a whip, holster, fake revolver and gas mask bag, so can go in costume on Saturday without a mask or makeup.  DragonCon will give me a chance to meet some of my favorite authors, people like Larry Niven, John Ringo, Robert J Sawyer, Jim Butcher and Kevin J Anderson.   There will also be appearances by William Shatner, George Take, Avery Brooks, Richard Dean Anderson and Christopher Judge.  And let me not forget Jeane Stein, from whom I took an online Urban Fantasy course last year.  I want to see them all, and many others, but really can’t figure out the schedule yet.  I will probably be stressing out the whole time there to get to one panel or another, and cursing when two people I want to see are having panels in different places at the same time.  I will blog extensively about DragonCon, possibly while there, definitely  after.   It should be exciting.

 

And now, without further adieu, here is the third installment of A New Life.

Cornelius walked slowly through the forest, placing his feet with care, trying to move like a shadow.  The birds, or what passed for birds on New Detroit, sang, croaked and twittered from the trees.  At times they would go silent, and the crunching of heavy footfalls would come to his ears.  Damned tenderfeet, he thought of the nobles he was leading through the forest.  They were here at the invitation of the Duke to hunt this planet’s version of big game.  And big it was.  Today there were on the trail of a five ton carnivore that was this planet’s prime predator.  And it was his job to get them a kill without losing any of the idiots along the way.

And if they keep making so much noise we’ll be lucky if we don’t see any King Tigers.  And if we’re unlucky, one of the noble assholes will become food for the beast.

Up ahead was the small river that watered this acreage of the forest.  The watering point for the herbivores, and therefore the prime hunting ground of the carnivores.  Cornelius spotted the blind that was his favorite in this area.  It was masked with native scents, sprayed earlier by other foresters working for the Duke.  Today’s prey would not smell them if they reached the blind without notice, which was what he was worried about.  Kings had a great sense of hearing, and every kind of sound masker tried had just ended up attracting their attention.

Cornelius settled himself into the blind and looked through the scope on his particle beam rifle.  His was the only military class weapon out here.  The rest of the hunters were here to bring home trophies, and a beam weapon didn’t leave a good hide.  But someone had to be ready for the unthinkable, to save the hides of the rich bastards if one of them made a critical error.

The three men he was leading settled into the blind, setting their rifles on the edge and looking through their scopes.  Two of the men, a balding fat man and a thin as a rail elder, were clumsy in their movements.  The third handled himself and his weapon with quiet efficiency.  The Marine, thought Cornelius, nodding at that man with approval.  He was a distant cousin of the Duke, and a serving Captain in the Imperial Marines.  And the only one to treat Cornelius or his father like they were actual human beings.

[Only fire at the ones I designate as targets] sent Cornelius over the com link.  The Captain acknowledged immediately.  The other two stared at him like he was a pack animal that had just learned to talk.

And then they waited.  Several herbivores, from delicate antelope like beasts to plodding armored things that weighed twelve tons, appeared at the river bank to drink.  The bald man raised his rifle to shoot at one of the later, and Cornelius grabbed his barrel and pushed it down.

“How dare you, you common pig,” said the fat man.

[We’re here to get Kings] he sent over the circuit. [If you want a Parson’s Rhino, then by all means we’ll take you on a hunt for one.   But these other gentlemen are here for Kings.]

[Ease up, Humphrey] sent the Marine, putting a hand on the fat man’s arm and squeezing until the other guy groaned.  [I want a King.  And I won’t hesitate to mount your fat hide on my wall if I don’t get one.]

Humphrey nodded his head, and the waiting began.  Eventually something rustled the bushes, and a heavy dark form came loping out of the foliage.  It stopped, crouched down on its six legs, while its ears moved independently to scan the area.  Its striped coat of purple and red moved with the play of muscles.  Cornelius admired the animal as it bent down to drink, knowing that this was not one they were after.  It’s still a baby, he thought of the six hundred pound beast.  Which means momma and the others are around here somewhere.  He didn’t want them to shoot a baby, or a mother that was still taking care of the young and teaching them to hunt.  This one was more independent than his littermates, and had come on ahead.  He scanned the jungle up from the river, hoping that a big male would appear.  Kings hunted in prides, and where there were young, there were sure to be adults.

The young King at the river howled, and Cornelius swung his rifle to get a look at it in his scope.  The animal was falling to its knees, blue tinted blood staining its beautiful coat.

“I told you not to shoot at anything I didn’t designate as a target,” he said, pulling the rifle out of the fat man’s hands.

“But it was standing right there, you low born ape,” growled the man.

“It was a juvenile,” said Cornelius, staring into the man’s eyes without flinching, making the noble recoil.  “They are protected by law.”

“It looked big enough to me,” said the man, looking down.

“Look out,” yelled the tall thin man, and Cornelius turned in time to see an enormous female King Tiger come running at the blind.  He quickly got behind his rifle and pulled the trigger, sending a dark red beam into the jungle.  A tree exploded from a hit, and the guide pulled the beam into the carnivore.  With an explosion of flesh and blood the beast went down.

“That was the momma,” said Cornelius, glaring back at Humphrey.  “The daddy will be out there as well, and now he will be hunting us.”

“So if we shot him wouldn’t she hunt us?” asked the thin man.

“It doesn’t work that way.  If we killed the male the mother would have run off with the young to protect them.  That’s her instincts.  But the male will seek revenge for his mate, that’s the way he’s wired.”

“So what do we do?” asked Humphrey, his face a mask of fear.

“We stay put, and wait for the air rescue car to come to us.  And hope maybe the male does something stupid, and puts himself in our sights.”

“Is he likely to do that?” asked the Marine Captain.

“Not really,” said Cornelius, shaking his head.  “He’s most likely waiting out there in the jungle for us to come to him.  He saw what happened to his mate, or at least what remains of her.  He knows what we can do, and will try not to attack where we can get a shot at him.”

“How smart are these things anyway?” asked the Marine, the only one who seemed to be keeping his head.

“Not as smart as us.  But a lot smarter than your house cat.  They can reason enough to make them dangerous.”

So they waited, until the com came in from the rescue craft, which put down in the small clearing near the river.  The door gunner kept the other side of the clearing covered while Cornelius led his charges to the car.  They were almost there when a roar erupted from the jungle and five tons of angry male King Tiger came charging out.  Cornelius tried to get his weapon around in time, realizing that he wasn’t going to make it, and the animal was headed right for him.  The crack of a hypersonic pellet sounded, and the beast staggered, then fell as another round struck it in the center of its chest.  The carnivore fell, and Cornelius turned to see the Marine Captain standing in a shooters stance, his mag rifle to his shoulder.

“That was great shooting, my Lord,” he said to the noble.  “And thank you.”

“At least we have our trophy,” said the Captain, looking over at the other two nobles.  “Or at least I have mine.”

On the ride back to the manor the other nobles stared at Cornelius with hostile looks, and he heard whispers about how they were going to complain about the hunt, and how the game keeper had bungled it.

“And I will tell my cousin that you fools almost ruined it for us all,” said the Captain, smiling at Cornelius.  “I had a marvelous time, and I will name you both cowards if you say anything at all.”

The rest of the flight was in total silence, and Cornelius realized that not all nobles were bad after all.  Just the majority.

*     *     *

“So what the hell do you think I had to do with it?” asked Cornelius, looking across the table at the three interrogators, one from the factory management, one from the police, and one from the Baron himself.

“Directly,” said the Baron’s man, “nothing.  But we understand that Parker Murphy was not only your line mate, but your friend as well.  And that you were there the night he talked about getting back at the Baron.”

“He didn’t say he wanted to get back at the Baron,” said Cornelius.  “He called the people over him bastards, but he never said he was out for revenge.”

“And you didn’t think to tell anyone about the incident at the bar?” asked the detective.

“You all arrested him,” said Cornelius, trying to keep his voice calm.  “I would think you would know what he said.  I gave a statement to your men.”

“But you didn’t tell us,” said the manager, pointing his finger at Cornelius.  “We might have been able to prevent the sabotage if we had been given advanced warning.”

“What did you want me to do?  He didn’t work here anymore, and he didn’t make any direct threats.  This is a free society, or at least I thought it was, and we are free to speak our minds.”

“Do you like working here?” asked the manager.  “Any complaints you would like to voice?”

And lose my job, thought Cornelius, shaking his head.  Not me.  “I have no complaints.  You have been very good to me.”

“And have you had any contact with Mr. Murphy since that night?” asked the detective.

“None,” said Cornelius, knowing he was telling the truth, but still nervous under the scrutiny of the other men.

“It would be a good idea if you kept your distance from Mr. Murphy,” said the Baron’s man.  “That’s all.  We’ll call you in if we need to talk with you some more.”

Cornelius walked out of the room with mixed feelings, fear and anger.  This was supposed to be a free society, where people could live their lives as they liked.  But it’s a lie.  Live like a free man and they can slap you down.  Maybe not legally, but they control the economy.  Maybe it’s not such a bad idea, leaving the core worlds and going to the frontier.

An incoming call chirped on Cornelius’ link as he was flying home.  The connection showed him his father as on the line.  Wonder what he wants.  I’m going to see him in a few days anyway.  Hope the hunt isn’t off.  “Hey, dad.  What’s going on?”

“I have some bad news, Cornelius,” said the sad voice of his father.  “It’s your sister.

“What happened to her?” asked Cornelius with a sinking feeling.  She got caught, her and Larry.  How the hell did they think they could get away with it.

“The police came for her today at her job,” said his father.  “And Larry as well.  They were arrested for illegal procreation.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know, son,” said the elder Walborski.  “I’ve contacted a lawyer, but what he told me really doesn’t get my hopes up.”

“Mind wipe,” said Cornelius in a quiet voice.

“We can hope not, but I’m afraid that’s a possibility.”

“Are you still going to do the hunt?”

“I’m obligated to it,” said his father.  “If you want to bow out, that’s fine.  I can get another man to help.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, then looking at the cityscape passing below.  “Katlyn lost her job with the Baroness, and I need to make up that loss.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked his dad.

“Was there anything you could have done about it?”

“Maybe,” said his dad quickly.  “Probably not.  I don’t know.  Did the Baroness say she was going to blackball her.”

“That was the impression I got, dad.”

“Then probably not.  At least not at the moment.  Give me a little time and I might be able to get her on with someone else.”

The next day his father got in touch with him again, and gave Cornelius the news he had been dreading.

“Mind wipe,” said his father in a hushed voice.  “She’s gone to us.”

“Didn’t take them long, did it?” said Cornelius in a growl.

“The evidence was irrefutable,” said his father with a sob.  “She was pregnant, and there was only one way that could have happened.  So they aborted the baby and took away her memories, and those of Larry.  We’ve lost her, son.  The body is still alive, but there is nothing there that connects her to us.  I’m glad your mother isn’t here to see this.”

And I wish she was, thought Cornelius.  Mom had died years ago, in an aircar accident that hadn’t left enough of her around to reconstruct, unless they resorted to cloning, which, of course, was highly illegal.  Cornelius still missed her terribly, as he was sure his father still did, as he had not sought any kind of female company since her death.  But his father also had a point.  The sentence would have ripped the heart out of their mother.  Mind wiped offenders were given new personalities, with new lives, and families were not permitted to have contact with them.

Katlyn took it no better than he did.  “It was a stupid thing to do,” she said, tears in her eyes.  “But to kill her like that.  And the baby.”

“If they let anyone get away with it they wouldn’t be able to stop unlicensed reproduction.”

“You sound like you’re defending the assholes,” yelled Katlyn, glaring.

“I’m not defending them.  Hell, they just took my sister away from me.  I’m just saying how things are, and how they will remain, as long as we remain here.”

“Your poor father.  God, what he must be going through.”

And she didn’t take the hint about remaining here.  Maybe we need to pack up and move to the frontier.  Hell, the Fleet protects it, and there are troops on every planet.  Maybe not as many as here, but enough to keep the pirates away, and that’s really the only worry we would have out there.  “Have you thought about leaving New Detroit?” he asked her.

“Not really.  Maybe for a developing world.  At least they have some civilization.”

And a couple of hundred million people who have already gotten all the good stuff.  “We would do better on a frontier world.  Get some land, turn it into more land.  Maybe even be rich someday, and have lots of kids.”

“And I heard that frontier worlds are dangerous,” said Katlyn.  “Almost no medical facilities, and everyone walks around with guns.  No, I want no part of them.”

After Katlyn went to bed Cornelius tapped into the net and routed some vids to the trivee, letting it immerse him in another world.  He started with a map of the Empire, looking at how the worlds were situated.   Of course the center of it all was the Supersystem, the eight stars in orbit around a black hole, each with two or more habitable worlds.  And all with the same restrictions as New Detroit.   And out from it in a globe to two hundred light years, the core worlds, ninety-eight worlds in the same class as New Detroit, all populated to the legal limit.  And out from them, the twelve sectors, all of them with some contact with an alien polity.  Sectors I and IV with the least contact, meaning they were also the least likely to be invaded.  And ten thousand developed, developing and frontier worlds in those sectors, with more being opened all the time, or terraformed to be compatible with human habitation.

Next he scanned down a list of frontier planets in sector IV, looking for those with low enough population that they would be considered true pioneers.  One on the list caught his eye, a world with less than a hundred fifty thousand inhabitants, that had been colonized for about thirty years.  So they know enough about it that there shouldn’t be any surprises.  And it’s on the short list of planets under consideration for a Fleet base, which means more security than most frontier worlds.   Sestius IV.  Doesn’t even have an Archduke yet, only an appointed Governor.

He linked into the trivee and let a vid of the planet fill his room.  The small city loomed ahead, then the farmlands around it, with actual livestock.  Real food, he thought.  Not just tank grown protein and factory processed vegetables.  The vid moved out, and he was surrounded by a lush jungle, then a plane, with massive creatures grazing on the grass like ground covering or the trees at the edge of the open area.

He finally delinked after what seemed like mere minutes, before he realized that hours had gone by.  I don’t have to work tomorrow, he thought, remembering the images he had been immersed in.  And that place doesn’t look so bad, especially if it becomes a Fleet base. Now, I just need to talk Katlyn into it.

 

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Short Serial Story: A New Life: Part 2

Presented for your enjoyment, the second installment of a short story featuring the origin of one of my central characters in Exodus: Empires at War.  I will present this story in four parts.  Anyone interested in reading the story in its entirety can go to my website, Imagination Unlimited, or directly to the story page at Exodus Shorts.  The story can be downloaded in Word, PDF or Kindle format.  Or you can see all of my books at my Amazon Book Page.

 

The factory was working at full swing when Cornelius reported for his shift.  The robots on two of the lines were turning out aircars, moving the vehicles from station to station to have parts added, then nanowelded by a spray of microscopic robots, leaving not even a mark to show where the new part had been attached.  Men sat in the booths overlooking the floor, supervising the work robots. Each could only watch two of the bots at a time because of the Man in the Loop Accords.

Not that these robots are likely to rip themselves out of the floor and grow the processing power to be a threat, thought Cornelius as he reported to his booth, nodding at the guy they had hired to take Parker’s place.  Not his fault, he thought of the new guy, who just seemed happy to have a job.  Still, Cornelius couldn’t help but feel some resentment for the replacement who had taken the place of his old friend.

Cornelius sat at his station and started up his board.  The ticker said he still had five minutes before his lines started up.  He was in charge of the same two robots today that he was every day, something that made the job a little boring.  His would nanoweld and connect the control runs to the lift fans that the newbie’s robots would lower into place.  He just had to make sure that the robots were running within parameters, and watch that no mistakes got through his part of the lines.

The buzzer beeped and the line started up.  He could look forward to ten hours of watching aircars rotate in front of him, of his robots performing the same tasks over and over.  Three days a week he sat here, eating his lunch at the board, not even taking bathroom breaks, as his nanites were programed to delay bladder fill while he was at work, only allowing enough fluid out that he could take care of in his two ten minute breaks.  It was monotonous.  Or it should have been, except when the bot on the three line started to overheat, and stopped making all the proper connections.

“Shit,” said Cornelius, hitting the button that shut down the entire line.  That was considered  serious action, but he had been at the job long enough to feel confident that when he did it, it needed to be done.  He shunted his other robot off to the newbie, whose name he couldn’t even remember.  It was no use shutting down both lines, and the newbie could watch two robots on line four while Cornelius looked into the situation.

First he checked the computer readout for the robot, which told him absolutely nothing about why it was malfunctioning, other than that the actuator of one of the arms was hot.  There was nothing for it but to go on the line and give the unit a look.  If he could fix it he would.  If not, he would call in those who could.

The line was always noisy. It was easy to forget while sitting in the insulated booths, but this was heavy machinery, lifting large parts into place while assembling vehicles.  It could also be dangerous.  The three line, the one he was approaching, was still, but he had to walk over the four line to get to it.  Cornelius could see why robots frightened some people, tales of the revolt two centuries before notwithstanding.  The robots of four line were moving quickly, and even with built in failsafes they could still snag the unwary.

Cornelius kept a close eye on four line while he walked three.  Vehicles were still being put together over there, and the line would assemble hundreds of them in a day.  Three line was a row of unfinished vehicles that were not going anywhere at the moment.  He stopped in front of the recalcitrant machine and put his hand on the arm in question.  It was hot to the touch, and he noticed that a thin line of smoke was rising from a port.  He stuck a multitool into the port and turned it, and the arm opened up along the seam that appeared.  And more smoke poured out of the opening, along with a lick of flames.

What the hell, thought the man as he saw what looked like an oily rag burning.  With a thought he tapped into the factory com system and sent a situation report to management.  It doesn’t look like this problem is going to be easily solved, he thought.  They could clean up the rag easily, and replace whatever parts were damaged by the fire.  But this looked like something deliberate, and that meant this would be investigated, with all the hassle that entailed.  So much for a quiet day at work, thought Cornelius, knowing that he would be investigated as well.

*     *     *

“Would Milady like another cup of tea?” asked Katlyn, holding a tray with pot, sugar and cream.  The woman she was questioning, a guest of the Baroness, performed the difficult task of looking up and looking down her nose at the servant at the same time.

“Yes, I think I will,” answered the woman, holding up her cup.

Katlyn put the tray on the table and picked up the teapot to pour, her eyes glancing at the baby in the lap of another guest.  The little girl was smiling and laughing, and waving her pudgy little arms.  And why can’t I have one like you to hold, thought Katlyn as she poured the tea.  The baby was distracting, and she wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing.

“You stupid little whore,” yelled the well dressed guest as hot tea spilled onto her dress.

Katlyn looked down in horror, dropping the teapot to land on the carpet.  She scrambled to get to her knees and picked up the pot, watching the darkening stain of liquid spread across the fabric.

“I am so sorry, Marta,” said the Baroness, her cold eyes glaring at the servant who had burned her guest.

“I am sorry, ma’am,” said Katlyn, putting the pot back on the tray, then snatching up a cloth and moving to wipe down the woman’s dress.

“You stay away from me,” said Marta, knocking Katlyn’s hand away.

“Leave us, Katlyn,” said the Baroness, pointing at the door to the kitchen.  “Wait for me, and I will be in to talk to you shortly.  And send Kimberly out to serve us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said a dejected Katlyn, picking up the tray and carrying it to the kitchen, listening as the women talked about how clumsy and stupid she was.  She was near to tears as she entered the kitchen, but remembered to send a com call to Kimberly, summoning her to the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” asked the other servant as she entered the kitchen and saw the tears on Katlyn’s face.

“I screwed up, Kimberly,” said Katlyn, feeling a sense of almost hysteria coming over her.  “I was paying attention to the baby and not to what I should be doing, and poured hot tea on one of the Baroness’ guests.”

“It will be alright,” said the other woman, putting together another tray.  “Just calm down, and it will be OK.”

Katlyn could tell from the expression on Kimberly’s face that the other woman didn’t think it would be OK.  She was just saying words she thought might calm Katlyn.

Kimberly came in and out of the kitchen several times over the next hour, while Katlyn sat in a chair and waited to hear the verdict from the woman who employed her.  It seemed to take hours, but eventually the Baroness came into the kitchen, her cold blue eyes fixed on Katlyn like lasers.

“How dare you injure one of my guests,” she said, walking over to the quickly standing young woman.

“Was she burned badly?” asked Katlyn in a panicked voice.

“Nothing that nanites can’t take care of,” said the Baroness, putting her hands on her hips.  “That’s not the point, you little common born trash.  You caused distress to my guests, and I will not have that.  You are no longer in my employ.  You will leave this house immediately, never to return.”

“Please,” said Katlyn, dropping to her knees and grasping at the employer’s dress.  “No.  It won’t happen again.”

“No,” said the Baroness, taking a step back and glaring down at the girl.  “It will not.  At least not by you.  There are a thousand girls out there waiting for your position.  And one of them will have it.  Now leave, before I call security to escort you out.”   The woman turned and started to walk away, then spun back around on her heel.  “On second thought, I don’t want you absconding with any of the silverware.”

A few moments later a large man in the uniform of a liveried security appeared and dragged a shocked Katlyn off, adding insult to injury.  She walked in staggering steps to the nearest bus line and caught the next one to the central station.  She stared straight ahead the entire trip, not even taking in the scenery from on high like she normally did.  What am I going to tell Cornelius, she thought.  They would still do well enough on his income, but she wanted to feel like she was contributing to their progress up the financial ladder.  Now she was to be relegated to the role of stay at home housewife, and without even any children to look after.  She cried her way to the central station, and then on the elevated train home, where she sat in the living room and cried some more, waiting for her husband to come back from work.

*     *     *

“And then they escorted me from the manor like a common criminal,” stammered a crying Katlyn as Cornelius held her in his arms.

Bastards, he thought of the people who had caused her such trauma.  And all because she made a simple mistake, spilling some tea on her betters.  Betters, he thought with a flare of anger.  As if any of those people are actually better than we are.  Cornelius knew he had above average intelligence.  He had been tested back in primary school.  But a commoner needed much more than above average to compete with the nobles for the slots needed for higher education, at least on New Detroit.  Maybe if we were on Jewel, or a University rich planet like Avalon.  It was said that even those with slightly above average intelligence scores could attend a University on those planets, if they had the proper work ethic.

He wiped a tear away from Katlyn’s face, looking into the eyes of the woman he loved.  So she’s not as bright as some, he thought, studying her classically beautiful features.  That’s alright.  I’m here to do the thinking for us.  “Look.  I’ll talk to my father and see what he can do.  He has the ear of the Duke, after all.  So what’s the word of some damned Baroness?”

“You really think he’ll be able to do anything?” she asked, sniffling.

Hell no, thought her husband, nodding his head.  You’re not important enough.  “Of course.  Look what he did for me.”

Katlyn’s eyes unfocused for a moment, the sign that she was accessing some information. “Your sister will be here in an hour,” she said, standing up from the couch.  “And I don’t have anything prepared.”

“You get cleaned up,” said Cornelius, giving her a quick hug.  “I’ll order a delivery.”  As the last word left his mouth he jacked into the local net and looked over the menus of the local delivery joints.  With another thought he ordered Chinese and authorized a debit from his account.

“You look beautiful,” he told his sister as she walked in the doorway with her husband an hour later.  Natasha did look beautiful, with a glow to her face he had never before seen.  Her husband, Larry, alternated between smiles and an expression of worry.

Natasha took off her coat, and even in the baggy clothing she was wearing it was obvious that she had gained weight, most of it…

“Are you pregnant?” asked Katlyn after hugging Natasha, then holding her back with hands on the other woman’s arms.

“I am,” said Natasha with a smile, her eyes taking on the worried look of a caged animal.

“How did you guys get a reproduction license?” asked Cornelius, suspicion raising its ugly head.  “You’re younger than I am, Larry, and I’m looking at slim to none chances.”

“We, we didn’t get a license,” said Larry in a hushed voice, as if afraid that he would be overheard.  “I had a friend who reprogramed our nanites.  Made us both fertile.  And then, it was just God’s will and nature.”

“Are you fucking crazy,” yelled Walborski, fear and anger warring with each other in his feelings.  “How in the hell did you expect to get away with that?  What were you thinking?”

“We wanted a baby,” said Natasha, as if that answered everything.

“We decided to trust in God,” said Larry, looking upwards.  “He will see us through this.”

“Christ,” cursed Cornelius, looking at the idiot his sister had married.  He turned his glare on his sister. “And how is God going to hide the fact that you are pregnant?  Or the child, after you give birth, if it goes that far?”

“God will protect us,” said Larry, trying to smile.

And you’re still freaked out about what’s going to happen, thought Cornelius.  Despite your assurances that your God will take care of you.

“Why don’t we eat?” said Katlyn, gesturing toward the dining room, where the Chinese delivery was laid out.

Yeah, why don’t we, thought Cornelius.  A last good meal for my sister and brother-in-law.

The meal was mostly eaten in silence.  Cornelius kept staring at Larry, blaming him for everything that was about to happen to his sister.  If they’re lucky they’ll just get a forced abortion, and a maybe some incarceration time in a work camp.  That didn’t happen very often.  There was always the possibility of mind wipe, and his sister would not know him, and he would really not know her, only her physical appearance.

“How in the hell could they do that?” he complained to Katlyn after their guests had left.  “What were they thinking?”

“That they wanted a child,” said Katlyn with a far away look.  “Just like most of us.”

“It’s against the law.  We are on a population controlled planet.  People just can’t have unlimited children, unless we want the overcrowding they were said to have had on old Earth.  I for one like some wilderness area to roam around in.”

“And you only get that because of your father,” said Katlyn in an angry voice.  “The rest of us have to make do with the parklands they allow us common folk to use.”

“It’s a job, honey,” said Cornelius, feeling a bit put off by her accusation that he was privileged to hunt the wilderness, something the average citizen couldn’t.  “It pays for things like this apartment, and our aircar.  I had nothing to do with being the child of a gamekeeper.”

Katlyn got up from the couch, glared down at him with a pout, and stomped away to the bedroom.  Dammit, thought Cornelius, ordering the trivee on with a thought.  I just can’t win today.  He knew he would have to watch some of the vee, and let Katlyn fall asleep.  Otherwise he would have to endure the tense silence of her laying with her back to him.  So he sat and steamed, while the trivee recreated the scene of a popular comedy, something he was not the least bit interested in.

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