Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
Congrats to Greg Krumrey, Twelve-time Champion of the Science Fiction Microstory Contest
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Congratulations, Greg! Great story and closest to theme as well.
Excellent, Greg. Extremely well imagined, well done.
Thank you all! It was the theme that did it. Once I read it, I knew what I had to do. I still to need to polish it some more (and have good critiques to guide me).
by Greg Krumrey
“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way…”
--
The team of engineers monitored the output from the microreactor. When it reached 2.85 terawatts, they simply said “Go!” into the coms.
The last rays of sunshine dropped below the horizon and, in an instant, the crater was cast in total darkness. Another technician flipped some switches, illuminating the stage and activating the antigravity isolation system. The stage floated a meter off the surface of the moon. He gave his “Go!”
A newbie involuntarily searched for the “blue marble,” before reminding himself that Earth would never be visible from this side of the moon. He completed his checklist and added his “Go.”
The basics out of the way, the main engineering team, headed by the sound engineer, Thomas, switched on the transducers. The VU meters bounced once. Thomas grinned as he felt the microquakes beneath his feet and checked the response on his seismograph. He spoke his “Go” into his headset and the drummer thumped out the opening notes of “Speak to me.”
Blue-violet lasers lanced out into the night from the array above the stage and illuminated a comet’s tail. Geometric shapes pulsed in time to the simulated heartbeat.
“Roger Waters would be proud,” thought Thomas as he listened to the opening notes of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon being played at its namesake location, a hundred years to the day after the album was first released.
--
“Yo, Tom? Take a look at this. You got the delay on?”
Thomas looked over the engineer’s shoulder. At first glance it looked like the bass line had shifted. After tweaking the controls a bit, he could see both frequencies on the seismograph. There, very clearly was the bass guitar and, delayed a dozen milliseconds was an echo. It was slowly increasing in amplitude.
He checked mixer output. No echo. Same for the fields in the coils of the transducers. No artifacts there. Either his instruments were wrong or someone was accompanying the band. Whoever or whatever it was, it was matching the bass line, subsonic note for subsonic note.
The microquakes continued until the first set ended then picked up when the concert resumed.
By then, Thomas had notified several lunar seismologist friends and they had located the quakes epicenter. Sort of. It was now moving, both longitudinally and vertically. Whatever it was, it was coming to the surface.
Less than a kilometer from the stage, it broke free in a cloud of moondust. A cigar-shaped craft emerged and climbed away from the moon.
It hung there, seeming to wait for the music to stop.
When the encore ended, it rapidly repeated the laser show and then began adding flourishes of its own.
Soon, a rainbow of colors swirled and danced over the length of the comet’s tail.
For just a moment, time stopped.
For just a moment, a light show spanned the gulf between human and alien.
Then they were gone, in a flash and a streak of light extending into space.
After overcoming his shock, Thomas remarked, “Anybody get their number? They certainly passed the audition.”
--
A NASA scientist risked her career to repurpose the Hubble Telescope to record the show. She used all the cameras, covering visible light, ultraviolet and infrared. Instead of getting fired, she was a hero.
Scientists spent the following years analyzing the data.
It wasn’t just a simple accompaniment; it was if a full orchestra improvised as one in response to the moon-bound musicians.
The biggest discovery was in the radio waves picked up by other researchers. The binary sequence was broken into blocks whose elements counted up to a number that was evenly divisible only by two large prime numbers. When displayed as a image, they echoed back the record sent out with the Pioneer 10 space probe.
The signal continued, starting in with simple mathematic concepts and building up to a system of mathematics that would be enigmas for years to come.
--
Thomas thought again, “I wonder if we passed the audition?”