A2Z Challenge 2021

G is for Gravity Well and Greening the desert

humanist55

 

Apologies to any Early Birds yesterday, I posted Chapter 3 again but spotted the error later in the day…

For the sake of pairing some of these adjuncts to the novel alongside their respective chapters, I am taking liberties with the Alphabet for the next couple of days and so we come to G and not E…

My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…


I looked up the origin of the word “Well” when paired with the word “Gravity” and found no better explanation than the idea that wells are holes that things can fall into. There is a demonstration of the idea of the Gravity Well here. In “Train Wreck” – there is considerable reference to why gravity wells make space travel very awkward and likely to remain so unless somebody handily invents an “anti-gravity” engine…

On Hawaii 2, the problem of getting into space without using rockets or jet plane mother ships to carry small capsules aloft, is solved by building a space lift or as Americans call it – a space elevator. The book will come to describe the workings of a space lift eventually since it plays a pivotal role in the final act – suffice to say at this point, that here on earth, the materials necessary to build a space lift, do not yet exist but a competition exists to encourage their development. Development that is much more feasible than that of an anti-gravity engine…

P.S. the Space Lift was first posited as long ago as 1895 – boy did those Victorians have imagination!

One thing which is mentioned in today’s chapter, is some major environmental modification that was done in the early years of the settlement of Hawaii 2 and just today, I came across an article describing just such a project to “green” the Sinai Desert right here on Earth – what are the chances! Well the only question it raised for me (my having written this bit some time ago) was why there was desert on Hawaii 2 without the destructive input of man. Because in the Sinai and the Sahara, we know that they were once green and it is possible, if not probable, that the activities of man (to wit – cutting down trees), either caused or exacerbated the climate change leading to desertification. I will not go into what is covered in the article but suffice to say that it is very exciting and hopeful for not only the Sinai desert, but it seems, for the climate and weather of a much wider region if the scheme can be implemented and it suceeds!

The Loess plateau, in China, in 2007,
The Loess plateau, in China, in 2007, left, and transformed into green valleys and 
productive farmland in 2019. Composite: Rex/Shutterstock/Xinhua/Ala


The following chapter deepens the mystery of the train wreck and also tells us more about life on Hawaii 2. Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I value feedback at this stage…

Chapter 5
Investigations

The investigator was conspicuous by the plainness of his outfit. He wore a grey, casual suit with a crew cut T-shirt beneath which was in such contrast to the exuberant fashions typical on Hawaii 2 for virtually everyone outside of specific work-wear, that it alone marked the man as almost certainly an off-worlder. Furthermore, he was pale of complexion and while he could have been from the far north or south of the Continent he was certainly not from the capital or anywhere near it’s latitude, and yet was clearly an urban creature.

“Thank you for seeing me Mr Gulliver and I am very sorry for your loss, although I understand you are to be congratulated on becoming a father!”
“Thank you, Mr…?”
“Inspector James, External Affairs for Hawaii 1.!
Jack responded curtly but within the bounds of politeness.
“What can I do for you Inspector James.  Actually, I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
“Yes indeed, that was the original plan, but I hope this is not inconvenient to you?”

“It might as well be now as tomorrow.” said Jack. Come in and sit down but we will have to keep our voices down as my son is asleep just there.” Jack indicated the cot where Douglas had just gone to sleep.

“I am sure it must be very painful to contemplate the events of seven months ago, although for you, it can only seem like what – five weeks, for you.”
“From when I regained consciousness you mean.”
“Indeed Mr Gulliver it must have not just a terrible shock but well, a whole series of shocks!”
Despite his reluctance to poke around in his feelings of loss, which were allowing him a little more space each day, for, if not exactly happiness, then at least some degree of calmness, Jack started to warm to the inspector his appearance was softly open and his demeanour evidenced by the tone of his questions, seemed genuinely sympathetic
“You’re right, a series of shocks.”
“I don’t want to stir up memories more than I have to, but we are really stuck over the bomb on the train, I mean as to who might have planted it and why.”
“A bomb!” exclaimed Jack “But I thought it was a gas explosion in the kitchen of the Buffet Car!” Jack lent back in his armchair, his hands and arms rigid and outstretched gripping the armrests until his knuckles were white.

Despite the softness of his approach the investigator was shrewdly appraising Jack’s reactions. It was a subject of much debate amongst his colleagues as to whether it was possible to judge reliably, whether a person was lying or not. The investigator believed that it was not. He did believe however, that many unconscious elements of body language did not lie and he had deliberately dropped this bombshell on Jack to see how he would react. He was able to observe Jack freely as in his rigid pose he was looking straight ahead but gazing internally rather than at the view beyond the window where is unfocused eyes appeared to be looking. The investigator judged that this was a complete surprise to Jack which confirmed what his background research had indicated – there was no motive or means for Jack to have been the bomber. Quite the opposite in fact. Going to the space lift to meet his lovely young wife after a separation of some months, their whole lives in front of them – very long odds! Besides it was more or less a miracle that the two of them had survived at all let alone in a coma, so close to the blast had they been that if one of them were the bomber, it would have been a suicide mission and would a suicide bomber not have self-detonated a bomb to be sure of instant, painless oblivion? No, he had early in the investigation ruled out Jack and Anna as suspects as well as dismissing as unlikely, the possibility of suicide bombers, although it was possible the bomber might still have been on the train. There was nobody in the Buffet Car since it had closed except for Jack and Anna who were in the toilet. This was a tricky case in no mistake – a bombing with no apparent motive and responsibility for which had not been claimed by any organisation or individual, nevertheless if one could eliminate any possibilities then it brought one closer to the truth or, as they might be forced to accept in the end, the probability of some other solution. As the investigator reached this point in his thoughts for what seemed like the umpteenth time in the last seven months Jack turned to him and asked

“Why did the newscasts say it was a gas explosion if it was a bomb and how do youknow it was?”

“Two good questions Mr Gulliver. I’ll answer the second one first as it’s easy. Forensics! A gas explosion would have been a slower explosion a rolling wave with a different pattern of destruction and burning not to mention different chemical residues. The residues are consistent with the Gelnex, a common enough explosive in mining, quarrying and civil engineering projects – but also simple enough to make from innocuous, easy to obtain ingredients, so it could have been a terrorist home-made device or could have been stolen from a legitimate user such as a quarry. Forensics are good but in this case not good enough to tell the difference between home-made and manufactured so we have had to resort to old-fashioned legwork. The thing is, no thefts of Gelnex have been reported anywhere on Hawaii 2 and the Rangers have gone over the inventory of every registered user with a fine-tooth comb. Nada! Actually, it very nearly could have been a gas explosion as the bomb was planted right next to the gas bottle If that had gone up I’m afraid that you and your son over there,” he gestured at Douglas asleep in his cot, “would certainly not be here today. Luckily those gas bottles are very tough, and it blew away from the bomb but didn’t rupture.”

As always with technical explanations. Jack glazed over slightly and in any case he was more interested in the human aspects of the story.

“So why did the newscasts get it wrong then?”
“Because that’s what we told them,” said Inspector James quietly. ”Firstly, when the preliminary investigation by the Rangers here on Hawaii 2 gave no clues as to why or who, and as no person or group had claimed responsibility, your President and the Rangers decided to call for external help – that’s me – and to put out the gas explosion story partly to alleviate public fears but also in the hope that by putting out a falsehood, it might tip the perpetrators into claiming responsibility after all.”
“But if someone set a bomb, then it was presumably for a purpose, like – like blackmail or extortion or to make a political point. Why wouldn’t they announce it?” send Jack who it appeared, was becoming gripped by the whole mystery. Not surprisingly, thought the investigator – who wouldn’t want to know how and why you lost your wife and six months out of your life!
“That is the million credit question Mr Gulliver.”
“Jack! Call me Jack!”
“Okay Jack. You’re right, you would imagine that if the motive was political, religious or ideological, that the terrorists would have claimed responsibility. In fact, in the very few instances of terrorism on the homeworlds, typically more than one group claim to have done it. Like your late wife, I also study the Earth Data Matrix for the information on my own field and it is very rare for a group to commit an act of terrorism and then chicken out or decide that for some reason they won’t take the credit for the act. By the time they commit the act they have too much invested in the whole plan including the follow-up.”
“Okay so it’s not terrorists – what about criminals?”
“Well Jack we still can’t completely rule out terrorism but we are looking at other lines of enquiry more strongly. Now if someone wanted to blackmail the rail company to extort money from them then this would have been pretty effective, a ‘Look what we can do!’ statement. We have thoroughly questioned the rail company and in fact they not only deny being approached with any demands, but they are in dire straits with regards to insurance. The insurance company will not pay out on a terrorist incident although strangely an act of God, whatever that might be and which this definitely is not, would qualify. We had to let them know on the promise of keeping it secret, that it was a bomb but unless a blackmailer comes forward which again, they will cover well – they, let’s just say they prefer the idea of a terrorist as it let’s them off the hook.” The investigator paused for a moment as if gathering his thoughts.
“Jack the reason I am telling you all of this, especially the truth about the bomb, it’s because we are desperately hoping you might be able to help us move this investigation along.”
“Me, Inspector – how can I help you?”
“Well firstly, we were hoping there might be some details you remember from before the explosion.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t remember much at all.”
“Why did you go to the Buffet Car Jack?”
“Well Anna was thirsty so although I said we would soon be arriving back at Grand Central she wanted a bottle of water, and we were only in the next but one carriage so we went to try, but when we got there, there was nobody behind the counter. I would have climbed over to get a bottle for her but then Anna said to wait till we arrived.”
“I see, and you didn’t see anyone in or leaving the Buffet Car?
Jack thought hard.
“Actually someone did leave as we went in. In fact, I think it might have been the attendant because I remember he had a white jacket like a chef.”
“Well that ties in with what another passenger said. He asked the attendant how long it would be till Grand Central. Unfortunately, as he was still walking towards the rear of the train when the explosion happened he was among the dead. We don’t know why he left his post. So then what happened, how did you end up in the toilet together?”
Jack blushed slightly.
“Okay, so after we found the buffet car closed Anna suddenly said she needed the toilet – it was only two or three steps away and I pushed in behind her and slapped the door lock. She was cross and asked why I haven’t waited outside?”
“Lucky for both of you that you didn’t!”
“It doesn’t feel lucky when she died anyway.” Jack suddenly collapsed inwards under a wave of remorse.
“Well they say that your body was between Anna and the blast and although she hit her head badly you cushioned her body from the explosion and probably saved the life of your son.”
“Yes, they did tell me that in the hospital.”
“So why did you go in with Anna if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oh it was silliness really. We had just been apart for three months and I didn’t want to be apart even for a moment and besides I wanted to kiss her – and not the way you can do in front of a carriage full of people. I knew she didn’t mind having a pee in front of me but she then said she felt sick and that is something she didn’t like doing in front of me or anyone else, so I turned to go out again and that’s the last thing I remember!”
“Thank you Jack, that has cleared up a few blanks in my timeline of what happened on the train.”
The investigator sat quietly for a few minutes looking out at the view from the treehouse. Eventually he said “You know one hears a lot of imaginings on the other home-worlds about life on Hawaii 2 – mostly wrong! Like the idea that nobody has to work, so people imagine you all sit around doing nothing. That’s because they do have to work otherwise they don’t get paid, no pay – no food or rent or heating. They dream of retirement or winning the lottery so they won’t have to work anymore. It’s only when you come here that you see the truth, which is actually so much better than those fantasies. In fact, my first impression was of even greater industriousness – people working longer hours than the standard week because they enjoy their work so much and if someone finds they don’t enjoy the path they have chosen, then nobody criticizes them for wanting to change jobs. Nobody considers the training and work time wasted – the chances are that when the person enters a new occupation, they will bring transferable skills even new insights that they might not have had if they hadn’t worked in the other job first. Sorry – you know all of that anyway, but you may not realise what it’s like elsewhere. On Hawaii 1 you get your college course paid for upfront, but you have to pay it back when you are working and woe betide you if you don’t enjoy the job that it leads to, because you won’t be given a second chance with a different course. They know that people will take years to pay back one set of fees let alone two.”
“That sounds terrible!” said Jack.
“It’s not just the work choice or all the extra productivity because you enjoy your work that’s let you build such a beautiful world. Take the treehouse that you’ve built – the only thing remotely like this on Hawaii 1 are luxury hotels where the very rich can go for holidays and even fewer homes for the super-rich. How do you finance something like this anyway, at your age? If it’s not too nosey, I am curious as to how things work here.”

“You’re welcome Inspector James, I’m glad you like it. Well as you probably know we each get paid a basic stipend whether we work or not. Once Anna and I started living together there were some economies of scale and we were able to save a little. Then friends would come and do a bit of work and the “professional” help we needed was minimal, and in any case, you don’t pay for their labour because they to get their stipend too which goes up with age and skill levels. We get grants for the materials – everybody has to live somewhere after all and they are age-related – you can’t get enough to build a palace when you’re only 20 years old but you go on getting increasing grants so we, I mean I, will be able to add more to the house over time if I need to.”
“And you don’t have to pay those grants back at all?”
“No and we don’t even pay it back through taxation, we get paid what we need and we work as hard as we like!”
“What if there is a job nobody wants to do say cleaning up the sewers?”

“That doesn’t seem to happen very often, I suppose people know those jobs have to be done and someone just seems to come forward. Sometimes there is a shortage of a particular skill in one area and a surfeit in another so people are made aware on bulletin boards and somebody decides to move and fill the gap. It all seems to work out.”
“Fascinating!” said the investigator. “You know there is just one aspect of the train wreck that I still need to ask you about. How much do you know about your wife’s research?”
“Anna’s research! What could that possibly have to do with the bomb?”
Jack had been lulled by the conversation about life on Hawaii 2, into thinking that the investigator had finished his questioning, but this idea shocked him like a bucket of cold water. The investigator noted how raw Jack’s reaction was and proceeded carefully.
“I am not saying it has any connection to the bomb, it’s just that we are seven months on and none of the avenues of investigation I have told you about have yielded anything. We are no closer to understanding the who orthe why of it and believe me – we have been thorough. This is an atrocity that would have been serious on any of the home-worlds but here on Hawaii 2, especially once one has been here and experienced the life, well it’s even more unexpected and incomprehensible and that’s why we can leave no stone unturned in the investigation. Your wife’s research may not have anything to do with the event, but we have to ask I’m afraid, and I am deeply sorry to trouble you so with it, Jack!”
Jack who had tensed up again, relaxed slightly and thought about what the Inspector had said. Eventually he replied.”
“I knew she was very excited about the idea of ramjets – you’ve heard of them?”
“I have read her application for the research grant to travel to Hawaii 1. Did you know that’s her work had been classified as secret?”
“Secret!” Jack parroted, shaking his head in bemusement. “Secret from whom?”
“Secret from everyone, even you, but I’m guessing she must have told you something about it even if she didn’t mention it had been classified.”
“No, no, not at all! I do know she was excited by it and that she thought it could change everything for Hawaii 2”
“She told you that, but she didn’t say that you should not mention it to anyone else?”
“No she didn’t and, well, yes, she did tell me how it could change things, but I didn’t think much about, it, I had a lot of things on my mind. I wanted to finish the house completely whilst she was away so that we could start a family and she wouldn’t ever go away again for so long. Then too I was thinking about what work I might want to do when the house was finished. You can get a house ninety-eight percent finished in a year but that last two percent can take you years to get done – I am quite a perfectionist I find, and Anna being away was a good chance to get everything completed. You know how it is, you can leave your tools out overnight if a job is not finished and please yourself what hours you keep!”
“I am afraid I am not much of a DIY person Jack and I am very impressed that you have achieved this incredible house as your first major project – I wouldn’t know where to begin!”
“Thank you Inspector, I did find I had an aptitude for the work and the design aspects and it was the direction I was thinking of taking when Anna got back and we start a family. Now I am responsible for Douglas, I don’t know what is going to happen…”
“You have not had much time to come to terms with things, but whilst I am no builder, I do have a family. The children are nearly grown up now but I can tell you that these early months are ones that men often miss out on especially on the other home worlds where the demands of work are more rigid you have had a terrible loss but at least Douglas has his father to look after him and you will treasure this time I promise you,”
Tears were running down Jack’s face and he said nothing for a bit before apologizing as a host and taking himself off to the kitchen area around the other side of the great tree trunk that was central to the living area to make tea for himself and his guest. His mother and Anna’s Sister Chloe were keeping out of the way whilst the investigator talked to Jack although keeping an ear out in case Douglas awoke and they needed to relieve Jack of dealing with his son. When Jack returned with the tea and a plate of small cakes that his mother had made, he found the investigator standing at the bounding balcony wall looking out into the canopy and down to the forest floor. He thanked Jack for the proffered mug of tea but made no move to return to his seat and the two of them stood looking out in silence for a few minutes. It was the investigator who spoke first.
“You know I still can’t shake the feeling that I am dealing with a rich man – the owner of a luxury house instead of a young man who didn’t attend much college and built his own home with grants and help from friends!” he said shaking his head in gentle disbelief.
“Rich and poor don’t mean much here on Hawaii 2 – at least in money terms. I suppose in terms of experiences friendship and opportunity then we are all rich here.” Jack said thoughtfully and when you lose someone like Anna you realise just how rich you were.” His voice had choked up a little but he held back the tears this time.
The investigator returned to his chair and Jack followed offering him one of the little cakes which he sampled and pronounced delicious before returning to the investigation.
“So you were very busy whilst Anna was away?”
“Yes I was. I didn’t go out much except to do some shopping and Anna had stocked up the cupboards before she went. I can cook for myself but I hate shopping!”
“So you didn’t talk to anyone about the work Anna was researching?”
“No I didn’t share her enthusiasm for the history of technology and neither did any of our friends – they are more into the Arts.”
“Maybe that’s why she didn’t mention that’s it was classified or tell you not to discuss it with anyone.”
“I guess you’re right, I mean if she had said that I might have taken it more seriously. I heard her say it could change everything, but I didn’t think that much about it, I suppose I was waiting to hear more about it when she got back, after all the was no guarantee she would find any more details about it at all.”
“That’s true. So did she say anything to you when you were on the train?”
“She said she had a lot to tell me but she wanted to wait till we got home. I assumed that was about the work at the time and that didn’t interest me much. I wanted to get her home for other reasons!” Jack blushed again although this older man was somebody who made it easy to talk to about even the most intimate aspects of life.
“Since I woke up again I thought it was probably the pregnancy she was talking about and when I remember those last minutes I imagined that was why she was feeling sick and I haven’t even thought of her work until now, I suppose we will never know now whether she succeeded.
“Well. there was no sign of a computer amongst other belongings on the train. Could someone have taken it when you went to the buffet car?”
“Oh no she didn’t take a computer with her it would have been far too much weight for her allowance on the space lift.”
“Of course silly of me but then what about her work, how did she carry it with her?”
“Oh, she had a memory chip. I bought it especially for her it was concealed in a pendant. Anna hated carrying a computer around, even here. So when she went to the university, I bought the pendant and she brought her work home on that.”
“Really Jack, and have you got the pendant?”
“Well yes, although I very nearly left it around her neck when we buried her last week. I took it off her at the last minute because I thought there might be some pictures of her on Hawaii 1 and although I couldn’t face looking for them at the time, I thought I might get round to it eventually. Besides although she was touched by my gift as a way of saving carrying her computer around and it was perfect for the trip into space, it wasn’t her favourite pendant, so we swapped it for the one she liked best,”
The investigator could see that emotion was clearly threatening to overwhelm Jack again but he himself was struggling to suppress his excitement at the news of the pendant. Eventually he asked, “Could I see the pendant please?”
“Of course!” Jack said, “I will go and fetch it.” It only took a minute or two for Jack to go up to his bedroom and retrieve the pendant, but by the time he returned Douglas was waking up and handing the disguised memory chip to the investigator, Jack went to pick Douglas up before he entered full crying mode. Thus distracted, he barely registered the investigator’s remarks.
“Do you mind if I take this away to be analysed Jack, I will return it to you tomorrow, albeit with any classified material removed.”
Douglas had had an unusually long sleep whilst his father and the investigator had talked, and he was now both hungry and the wearer of a soiled nappy. In short, he was not a happy baby and he let Jack know in time-honoured fashion at the top of his powerful lungs. Jack’s mother appeared and relieved Jack of Douglas but in the confusion, the investigator made excuses and left without ever getting an affirmative answer to his last question of permission and Jack did not really register the fact till the next day.

 ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

 “My name is Inspector James you must be Jack! Thank you for seeing me,” Said the man at the entrance the next morning.

“What!” Said Jack. “You can’t be! Inspector James was here yesterday! Show me that ID!” Jack gestured at the photo ID card hanging from a ribbon around the visitor’s neck. He proffered it to Jack who compared the picture to the stranger and looked at the computer complex security holograms on the card.
“I think there’s been some sort of mistake…” Jack said.

Roll of the Dice – Challenge 4 Fulfilled

humanist55

 

True to my Dice Roll Challenge – here are four blogs from A2Z that I haven’t visited before.

First up, near the top of the Master List – Wolf of Wordswith a piece of Fan Fiction – The Doctor in the Sky – Doctor Who Story. I grew up with Doctor Who and followed every iteration of the Doctor and am certainly a fan of our current, first female Doctor. The author Wolf of Words gives nothing away about him/herself so we don’t know anything about their background only the writing and that the blogger is quite prolific. They certainly capture the flavour of the time travelling hero. As series, Doctor Who has many writers so who knows – Wolf of Words – maybe one day…

 

Short and Sweet – Less Beaten Paths of America – each day pictures of signs eg “Entering Boring”! Make sure you click to read more because there are many signs each day – this guy has been on a mission!!!

 

Hennie’s Budgies  – does what it says on the tin – truly! Everything you wanted to know about Budgies but never dared to ask…

I am always attracted to the category Personal (journal, diary, musings) but not always charmed by what I find – not so here at Blog, Blah blah https://doodlingwords.blogspot.com/. Poems, prose, images – see if it’s to your taste…

F is for Fiction (Science amongst others)

humanist55

 For the sake of pairing some of these adjuncts to the novel alongside their respective chapters, I am taking liberties with the Alphabet for the next couple of days and so we come to F and not D…


My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

I have no time for people who say that they don’t read fiction – a slight sneer implicit in their assertion, as if they regard fiction as pointless and only non-fiction as worthwhile because it is true – factual. Such a limited understanding get’s my goat. The philosophy of Science as posited by Karl Popper tells us that there is no such thing as truth, absolute and unassailable for there is always the possibility that in some place in the universe, that “truth” will not hold and the best we can hope for, is to eliminate what is untrue and thus move towards the truth – whilst never actually arriving…

Fiction makes no such claim to truth and it’s raison d’etre is entirely other. Human beings are arguably defined by their story-telling – even if it is a by-product of our big brains – an unintended consequence of other evolved characteristics – if you can remember experiences and describe them to others – who is to say that what you say is true and not a complete fiction…

Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction, is given licence to spin fantasies that are literally out of this world and they are, in consequence, allowed to be longer than other novels to allow for all the descriptions of new worlds. An ordinary novel (and of course there can be exceptions) is usually expected to be around 90,000 words whilst a science fiction novel may be allowed 120,000 or even more.

But the real reason why fiction, of any kind, is important, is that it takes us to new places and especially – it takes us inside another person’s head and shows us the world through their eyes, gives us a hint as to what it might be like to experience the world as that person. That said, the experience is filtered, mediated, shaped by the author of the fiction and who is to say that a man can or cannot imagine what it is like to be a woman or vice versa, what it’s like to have mental health issues, be rich or poor, what the other side of the world is like let alone what other worlds might be like.

So we embark on reading fiction trusting ourselves to our author/guide not to play tricks on us (unless they be enjoyable ones), to be coherent, to entertain us and most of all, to make us want to carry on to the end in order to find out what happens…

No time for fiction – merde!

Today’s chapter deals with a man continuing to deal with his world having changed utterly as well as telling us more about Hawaii 2 and Jack and Anna’s home there. What do you think, is it plausible? Please comment whether on this chapter or the whole story so far…

PinkStock Photos, D. Sharon Pruitt, CC BY 2.0   

<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter 4
New Directions.

Jack and Douglas were back home together with Jack’s mother and a sister of Anna’s. It had been a painful return for Jack with all the reminders of his life with Anna and in particular, the return he had been anticipating following her trip to Hawaii 1. His mother had been staying at the house whilst Jack was in hospital as her own home was halfway across the continent in the cooler north and she had long ago taken down the more poignant reminders like the “Welcome Home” banner Jack had hung across the living room.
Jack and Anna had spent much of the first two years of married life building their home as many chose to do on Hawaii 2 and had built for a future in which they anticipated raising a family so there were several spare bedrooms as well as the little nursery space just off the main bedroom.
In a parallel to Earth there were coasts that were home to vast numbers of seabirds who fed on fish that boomed in the mineral rich currants that flowed up from the polar regions. The guano from these birds was mined early on in the colony’s development as it had been on Earth and used as a fertilizer, Brought in through the port of New Orleans it was combined with water from the mighty river to “green” the desert along the northern fringes of the New Sahara with forest species from native rainforest.
This project which had begun in the early years of the economy settlement had begun with a higher gantry of sprinklers to water the nascent forest but as time went on the forest began to change the very climate of the planet and rain was generated throughout the latitude and water abstraction from the great river reduced. Now the process of forest spreading into the New Sahara fringes was proceeding of its own accord.
Where Hawaii 2 differed significantly from Earth was that all the continental land mass was one in one piece bar a scattering of islands where volcanic mounts reached up through the vastness of the deep ocean that covered forty-five percent of the planet. Earth’s ancient Gondwanaland had been similar but this piece of data was one that had been lost to mankind, or at least, if it still existed in the fragmented data rescues from the dying Earth, it had not yet been found again. The mighty river which drained more than half the area of the Continent was not named the Mississippi after the river on which the original New Orleans was located but rather the Euphrates whose status as the possible location of the mythical Garden of Eden was a story that hadsurvived in multiple locations within the data matrix. This was because of the myth being the first story in the Bible the major document of one of the Earth’s great trees of religion the Judeo/ Christian/ Islamic tree and these religions had been carried out to the home worlds where they had evolved only slightly over the thousand years that man had been making his home among the stars.
So it was fitting that the rainforest project that surrounded New Orleans and had been so successful as a venture in climate change should be entitled the Garden of Eden. Interspersed with blocks of forest were plantations growing a mixture of tropical fruits both native to Hawaii 2 and from Earth but also crops such as rubber and palm oil which were used in various manufacturing processes. Many plastics on the home-world were made from renewable, carbon-neutral crops rather than the fossil fuels of Earth’s murky past that had led to The Destruction. It was not that fossil fuels did not exist on Hawaii 2 but their use was much more circumspect given the lesson of history and the new technologies that had been developed to avoid the use of hydro-carbons. If the original intent in colonising Hawaii 2 had been as a social experiment, it had turned out to be as much a model exercise in environmental practice too, geo-forming the world to reclaim the desert, making sure that the imported plants fit well defined niches and did not become weeds – genetically engineering them if necessary, to make sure they did not flourish like weeds. There were no high functioning sentient beings to take into account and most of the plants and animals were analogous to Earth species and their eco-systems, so it was decided that any amount of change to the planet was permissible as long as the choices made were sustainable…
By the time Jack and Anna built the tree-house, some 80 clicks from New Orleans, the trees were some 80 years old and it was amongst the buttress roots of the tree that supported the house that Anna’s body was laid to rest. She and Jack had talked about this idea for their final resting places but with the blindness of youth never imagining that the occasion might come so soon for either of them. Everybody on Hawaii 2 was buried in the soil except for members of a few religious sects who adhered to the ritual of cremation, or those who donated their bodies for Medical Research. The idea of nature recycling the mortal remains was mostly accepted as the best way and in Anna and Jack’s case, the idea that they would literally be incorporated into the fabric of the tree that they hoped the Descendants would continue to live in lent a special poignancy to the idea of supporting your family. If only it hadn’t come so soon thought Jack as they ascended to the house again following the burial ceremony. The house was thronged with friends and relations for the day, though most of them left before nightfall there being limited accommodation for such numbers nevertheless the coming together of so many people to offer their support and their memories of Anna was enormously sustaining for Jack, In particular he found that he was connected more strongly again to his life with Anna and before that even, a life from which he had felt curiously detached by the hiatus of his six month absence from the world lost in a coma. Being more connected to his memories of Anna allowed him to integrate young Douglas into the shared plans he and Anna had made. He had done more work on the house partly because he was physically more able but also because it interested him more than it did Anna whilst she was desirous to return to her studies of the history of technology. Towards the end of the house construction when it was mostly a snagging work, Anna had done just that and rapidly won the award of the research trip back to Hawaii 1 to search for data on the RAM jets that she believed she could make so much difference to Hawaii 2. The plan was that she would try and wrap up this research in the one trip and that on her return, house complete, she and Jack would start a family. Some of that Jack reflected ruefully, had come to pass and some most definitely had not. Another part of the plan had been that he would look for a job once Anna was pregnant, although there was no compulsion to work at all on Hawaii 2, everybody got given an allowance sufficient to keep body and soul together – most people did work, except for brief periods between jobs or when they were young and uncertain which direction to take. Jack had really enjoyed building the house and had been starting to think of a career in construction, engineering, or design, however, his science and maths skills probably precluded the last two and he would have ended up in construction. Now he had to think about Douglas. He couldn’t count on his mother or Anna’s sister continuing to live with him or offer the level of support that they had been whilst his strength was mending although neither of them had hinted at any time limits to their help. For a few weeks then, things drifted on as a routine evolved around Douglas and Jack, the two women sensitively deferring to the needs of father and son bonding as much as possible, nevertheless, they were as doting as any female relatives could be to both males and were clearly in no hurry to leave. And so it might have gone on indefinitely, or so it felt to Jack if it had not been for the visit one day, of an investigator.
Like many cities and features on the planet such as New London or the New Sahara, the capital of Hawaii 2, New Orleans celebrated the name of a city on Earth except that in the case of New Orleans, the “new” had been part of the original’s epithet. Picked because like Earth’s New Orleans, the city was built near the Delta of a mighty river and so like its namesake, the capital was an ideal staging post between ocean and river traffic. Without jet engines it was not only passenger planes but air freight that was not possible or at least jet powered, high speed freight. There was a redevelopment of airships which could carry freight wherever there were no navigable rivers that could be used as freight ways, but both airship and barge transport were slow and the settlers of Hawaii 2 adjusted their expectations accordingly. Many felt that the slower pace of transport had a beneficial effect on life generally and that other Home Worlds were frenetic by comparison and the people correspondingly stressed.
The house that Jack had built was in fact a tree-house, built around the still spreading trunk of one of the first trees to be planted in the Garden of Eden. The main living areas were on one contiguous level just below the point at which the branches forked away from the trunk and headed up into the canopy. The bedrooms above were built separately on different branches, but their floors extended and overlapped giving complete cover to the main floor below. An intricate system of gutters carried water into cisterns which the regular daily rains kept more than sufficiently topped up to supply the household’s needs. The climate was sufficiently equatorial to give a constancy of temperature further cushioned against extremes by the enveloping forest canopy so that only rolling screens were necessary to close the gap between ceiling and half-height walls around the edges of each platform. The judicious removal of a couple of branches not only allowed direct sunlight in early and late on in the day but opened some views out over the forest, the supporting tree being located on slightly higher ground within the forest. Most of the rain-forest ecology had been introduced into the newly formed forest, fortunately there were no dangerous predators and, in any case, the house was protected by motion-activated ultra-sonic animal repellents that kept those monkey-like creature that might become a nuisance from getting too close. The sounds of wildlife surrounded the house and gave it a truly enchanting atmosphere.

E is for Eden and the Euphrates

humanist55

 

For the sake of pairing some of these adjuncts to the novel alongside their respective chapters, I am taking liberties with the Alphabet for the next couple of days and so we come to E and not C…

My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

 

We learn in Chapter 4 of “Train Wreck”, that the capital of Hawaii 2 is called New Orleans because of its location on the delta of a great river but that “The mighty river which drained more than half the area of the continent was not named the Mississippi after the river on which the original New Orleans was located but rather the Euphrates whose status as the possible location of the mythical Garden of Eden was a story that had survived”.

Arguably, Hawaii 2, might well rather have been named Eden instead – but more of that in a later post – Hawaii 2 it was and it is only in naming its great river Euphrates, that tribute is paid to the Eden story. Naturally, one book that did survive the journey to the stars – in the last days of old Earth – was the Bible, as did the sacred works of all the great religions, even if they were carried forth by individuals, as digital editions, as we saw in the previous post.

To understand why Hawaii 2 might have been considered a veritable Garden of Eden, before and most certainly after the climate-altering activities of the settlers (changes for the best) – we may consider this quote from the seventeenth century poet, Andrew Marvel, from his poem, appropriately called “The Garden”.

“What wond’rous life in this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons as I pass,

Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.”

For this is almost the nature of the planet blessed with a perfect climate for agriculture, fertilised with a planetwide, gentle fertilising rain of volcanic dust – the early settlers could hardly believe their luck. Not only that, but no apex predators that would seriously threaten them and no highly sentient rivals either. Just as in the first transition of humans from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist and pastoralist, in the original, postulated Garden of Eden, thought to have been between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient Mesopotamia, the blessing of abundance liberated mankind to develop more culture and art and  assured surpluses.

There is a theory, to which I heartily subscribe, that the Garden of Eden story, is an ancient race memory of that transition. Not that hunter-gatherer society and life was lacking in culture, art and pleasant times of surplus and not that agricultural life was all plain sailing – and of course, the flaws, were all the women’s fault! It’s easy to see how, whilst the men went off hunting for a few days, came back, cock-of-the-roost and feasted, and lay about for a few days before swanning off with their mates for another hunt – the women, left babysitting and child-minding, had to go off into the bush and gather food for all they were worth, both to feed themselves, and garnish the next feast.

What this lifestyle did give the women, was the time to develop a profound understanding of the workings of plants and natural phenomena like weather and seasons. When did it click that instead of searching an area for the edible grains, it was possible to keep the seeds and plant them in one place and produce a crop. Just one snag… Other creatures could take advantage of this unnatural abundance and so it was necessary to guard the putative crop. So now, instead of the life of Reilly, hunting with your besties, man was forced to “work by the sweat of his brow” – ploughing, planting, guarding, weeding and de-pesting before finally harvesting. A similar story can be told about animal husbandry. Some, might not have found this a good trade and they might have accused the women of “eating from the Tree of Knowledge” and characterized this as a sin against God’s word…

Still, by and large, farming caught on, though a terrible rash of grumblers than farmers it’s hard to find, women kept quiet about their part in the innovation and eventually, after some thousands of years of stability under agriculture, the Urban revolution followed as night follows day. The development of human activity seems to have been long plateaux of stability followed by brief revolutions that change the face of human existence and the mystery, in hindsight, is what took them so long.

What does seem to be the case is that, with the benefit of hindsight for the terrible demise of Earth, and with the carefully balanced introduction of Earth species both of plants and their concomitant pollinators, plus the judicious use of native plants and fruits, and the very careful planning of settlements and transport links, a veritable Garden of Eden was established with remarkable ease and the promise of great stability.

Of course, that is – if nobody upsets the apple cart…

The previous chapter laid out the premise of what is unique about Hawaii 2 and why it is so suitable for a Utopian experiment. Throughout the novel there is a mixture of technical stuff, history and in the last chapter, even a bit of sex thrown in – by no means gratuitously I hasten to add. The next chapter is purely  the human story – so my question to you, Dear Reader, is this – does it work? Is there a balance between exposition and conversation – human narrative and science fiction? Please comment…

Chapter 3
Loss and Gain.

The nurses and Doctor made themselves scarce as quickly as they could leaving Jack alone with his mother and the baby who with no further ado, she tucked into the crook of Jack’s arm. The baby lay calmly and looked up at him whilst he, feeling anything but calm inside was mesmerized by its gaze. Eventually, he looked up at his mother and asked “Where’s Anna? I don’t understand!”
His mother sat down on the edge of the bed.
“You have been in hospital in a coma for a long time, six months in fact! What’s the last thing you remember?”
Jack thought for a moment. “I was on the train. I went to meet Anna at the space lift. Where is she mum? How can this be my baby – Anna wasn’t pregnant!”
Jack’s agitation conveys itself to the baby even though his body has scarcely moved so weak was it after 6 months of immobility. His mother gently removes the baby and soothes it – the necessary pause while she does this soothes her son also.
“Anna must have got pregnant just before she left for her trip. She hadn’t told you?”
“No, though she said she had something special to tell me but she wanted to wait till we got home. She did look a bit different come to think of it.”
“Jack I have some bad news.” She paused to let it sink in. “There was an explosion on the train. You and Anna were nearest to the seat of it and were lucky to survive. You were both in the toilet and it’s what saved you. They brought you both here and mended all the bones and gashes but you both remained in a coma. They found out Anna was pregnant and that the baby was okay, growing in fact and they put you in a room together. I, your brothers and sister, Anna’s family and friends of the two of you came to talk to both of you, play music and hold your hands hoping you would wake up. The doctors are so good these days with physical things but when it comes to the brain sometimes you just have to wait – old school.”
She stood with the baby leaning into her shoulder, twisting from side to side and rubbing its back gently – willing it to sleep.
“The doctor’s hoped that when the baby was full-term that Anna might wake up going into labour but allowing a few days before she left Hawaii once she reached nine months and nothing happened, they had to perform a C-section Jack I am so sorry – but she never recovered after the operation it was as if the body had kept the baby alive and growing but once it was born she had nothing left.”
Jack had realised what was coming before she said it but the shock of hearing the words brought a strangled cry from him and then tears coursed down his face. His mother laid the baby down in a cot at the other side of Jack’s bed and then sat on his bed and gathered him into her arms.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

It was a few days later when the doctors having made their rounds and, declaring themselves “very happy” with Jack’s progress, Jack and his mother sat talking. The last few days had been busy with nurses fussing and feeding him and eventually freeing him of catheters drips and monitors.
“You know Mum I know it sounds funny, but if it had been a girl, I think I would have felt quite differently. It would have been as if I lost Anna but got a part of her back – a new little Anna. But being a boy, it feels like we have both lost everything – a wife and a mother.”
“But you do have each other don’t you.”
“Yes Mum, it feels like we’re in it together.”
“You are going to be a wonderful dad, Jack. Anna would have been so proud of you!” She saw the tears well up and could have bitten off her tongue! Oh! I’m sorry love, I didn’t mean to …!
“It’s alright Mum I know you didn’t…
They sat in silence for a minute.
“You know Jack, there is one very important task that can’t wait any longer! The baby needs a name – we can’t go on calling it “It” now can we?”
Jack was silent for a moment and reaching for his mother’s hand he said
“Would you mind if we called him after Anna’s Dad Douglas? I always liked the name, but I want her family to feel they have a real stake in his life – you know what I mean…”
“I think that’s a lovely idea Jack and of course I don’t mind. Maybe you could call him Jack for a middle name for you and for your father.”
“Of course Mum! That’s a brilliant idea and it sounds well -Douglas Jack Gulliver!”
“Well that’s sorted then! No-one wanted to name the baby, Douglas that is, until you woke up, so the poor little chat has been nameless for 3 weeks!”
“Good job I woke up then, eh?” Jack managed a smile.
“I always knew you would dear, I was certain of it!”
Jack looked down at young Douglas who was sleeping contentedly in his arms blissfully unaware of his new status as a named citizen of Hawaii 2.
“Okay Douglas, it’s you and me against the world kid!”

B is for Books – but not as we know them…

humanist55

 



My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

 

Today, let alone in the future I have imagined in “Train Wreck”, the world of books is being eroded by the electronic simulacrum – the digital book. For years, the demise of “real” books has been forecast but to paraphrase Mark Twain’s alleged remark on being told that a newspaper had published his obituary in error ““The reports of [book’s] death are greatly exaggerated.”

Why do those of us who read books – and it’s true that there are many who don’t – at all -why do we still sometimes prefer the ancient, analogue form to the digital?
Certainly, when researching in a non-fiction work, I prefer to build a mental map of a book – sometimes without even reading it cover to cover but instead, skimming across it’s surfaces and making mental crosses where the treasure is buried. It is uncanny how one can somehow go back and find those nuggets, sometimes even years later, without even marking the passage in the margins or turning down the page corners – both habits which I find sacrilegious to perpetrate even though I find a book annotated by another hand to be an object of fascination – a glimpse into someone else’s mind…

Kindle, the most successful iteration of the digital-book, has reproduced the marginal annotation though my reluctance to annotate has carried over to the digital book and when I research in the pure, book-form free word-scapes of the internet, I lift quotes out and assemble them in new documents for future contemplation.

For convenience, and because they are cheaper than “real” books, I do have a Kindle library on my smartphone, also, that I may never be caught without something to read (other than the ubiquitous internet). I don’t mind reading fiction in either analogue or digital form but when I do discover a book of true worth, I enjoy – almost fetishistically – having the real thing on my bookshelves and building collections of favourite authors.

So I am of that generation who are tweenies, caught somewhere between analogue and digital books – perhaps for my grandsons, it is a different balance.

In the universe of “Train Wreck”, the last days of Earth were hastened by the very exodus of mankind – the construction of great arks in space and the shuttling of cargo and humans to build and stock those arks for their journeys to the stars. The final push to mine, assemble, and grow the necessary materials and sadly, analogue books are finally, surplus to the constraints of lifting material out of Earth’s gravity well and they are finally left behind all but a few “treasures”. Even the digital world of the internet is reduced – bloated with nonsense, porn, cat videos, personal memorabilia of long-dead citizens – the task of extracting, condensing, and compressing the relevant data from the vast server farms where information was stored (at a huge and finally fatal cost to the environment) – often duplicated many times over, proved a difficult task. The new storage media proved, like CD’s had once done, not to be so durable and faithful in their ability to preserve data and so the researchers of Hawaii 1 found there were tantalising gaps in both the knowledge of old Earth and worse still, in the indexing, and so vast was that accumulated knowledge, that only patient research by human minds, could evaluate and restore order. Hence it is, that Anna, Jack’s wife and historian of technology, has to travel from their home on Hawaii 2, to Hawaii 1 to access the fragmented database in search of proof of her big idea…

Chapter 2
A Utopian Plan

SURVEY SHIP ANDROMEDA IN ORBIT,
 HAWAII 2, A.G.947

Captain Johannson never tired of the view. A veteran surveyor of new planets, none had ever been as beautiful as Hawaii 2. It reminded him of the pictures of old Earth before The Destruction – those first images from space , taken by the early astronauts with nothing better to do than take photographs whilst proving they could survive a few orbits in space. These pictures were so popular on Earth that they had survived in the data matrix in multiple instances. It was fair to say that they were probably the reason Captain Johannson had chosen to go into space himself, some fifty years ago. He had travelled the void through hyperspace jumps to new stars and their planets many times. Wherever Astronomers had identified a solar system that looked promising, there Captain Johannson would go and check it out. He had seen extraordinary sights, the variety of possible planets never ceased to amaze but as viable homes for mankind to colonise, well the margins of viability were narrow and planets that made the grade were few. In the nine hundred and forty seven years since the first colony was set up on Hawaii 1, only another four planets had been added to the Pan Human Federation. This one, provisionally named Hawaii 2 because of its extraordinary similarity to Earth, would be the jewel in the crown – if only they could solve the problem!

They could see amazing detail of the planet’s surface from space and with a multiplicity of sensors and filters could survey weather, geological strata, vegetation types and much more. But sooner or later you needed to get down there on the surface, to check out the wildlife, take physical samples, just breath the air! Of course, first you sent probes down – unmanned drone ships that would skim close to the surface filming and taking air samples before returning to the S.S. Andromeda. Except they mostly didn’t. Return that is. Mostly they flew through the tricky entry phase where the thinness of atmosphere caused such a build-up of speed one had to expend up a lot of rocket fuel slowing the craft up so that it wouldn’t burn up as the friction with the increasing atmosphere built up. Then, when the atmosphere was thick enough, the jet engines came into play and the probe could fly down, collect its samples and vids before flying up again to a height where the rockets could finally boost the craft back into orbit. The “problem” was that the jet engines were failing after random amounts of time and the probes, which were fortunately shaped to glide, after a fashion, ended up crash landing on Hawaii 2’s surface. Whilst some of the probes were intact enough to send back vids and other data, all of which was useful, the “problem” remained, inscrutable, until now. The latest probe had made it back although it had been touch and go and had immediately revealed the “problem”. The rear section of the jet engines was coated in volcanic glass to such an extent that the turbines that drove the compressors at the front of the engine had seized up and the engine stopped.

Once they knew what they were looking for, the Andromeda’s scientists were able to shine laser probes that could reflect off the very fine volcanic dust and map its distribution in Hawaii 2’s atmosphere. Most volcanoes threw out dust but it was usually heavy and fell to ground within a hundred miles of the source volcano and aircraft with jet engines would avoid flying near eruptions for obvious reasons. This particular dust, however, was so fine that it floated up into the atmosphere where it continued to circulate for long periods before eventually settling to the ground. Even then it could be whisked up from the extensive desert regions of Hawaii 2’s equatorial latitudes.

Captain Johannson had formulated a plan. Volunteers were being sought for a one-way ticket to the surface. The largest landing craft was being fitted with extra jet engines to be used should the originals give out and windows of opportunity when dust levels were slightly reduced were being studied. But the fact remained that this trip was only heading down. The crew would become Hawaii 2’s first settlers and volunteers were being assessed for psychological suitability apart from Captain Johannson that is. Always the surveyor and never the settler, Captain Johannson had decided he would like to settle down and nobody was going to rule him out on psychological grounds. S.S. Andromeda carried a selection of Earth plants plus some garnered from the five federation planets that had proved popular with human digestion and these were grown aboard the vessel in the hydroponics section. They would provide the agricultural start and everything else that might be useful was being catalogued and the logistics of getting it into the lander considered. All that they were waiting for was the window of opportunity – a relatively dust free day…

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
 PAN HUMAN FEDERATION,
 HAWAII 1, A.G.947

“But that’s crazy I can’t believe we can cross light years of space, find a perfect planet, nearer to earth conditions than any we have previously identified – a needle in a haystack and you are telling me that we cannot fully exploit it because of volcanic dust!
“Yes sir precisely!”
“But is there no other way of getting on and off world didn’t the first Earth missions into space use rockets?!
“You are right sir they did but they soon realised it was too costly and in a way a blind alley, the wrong way to have approached space in the first place – all due to a historic accident!”
“Explain!”
Behind the desk of his office on Hawaii 1, Federation President Rosario leant back, put his finger tips together and assumed an air of concentration, as if by listening closely he might spot a loophole in the facts of the unpalatable news he was being given. Chief of Staff for the Federation of Home Worlds, James Hewlett paced the room hands clasped behind his back and began.
“There had been a war – the so-called Second World War and as I am sure you know war, is a great accelerant for technology. Some would argue there has been less technological advancement in the last thousand years of mankind’s expansion across the stars because there has been no war. Once we discovered the key to interstellar travel, to hyperspace manipulation, the universe was our oyster. Especially as it turned out that there were no little green men out there to compete with – there were plenty of planets for everyone, a void waiting to be filled even if none of them was quite so perfectly Earth like as Hawaii 2.
But in that war many developments occurred, rocketry on one side and nuclear weaponry on the other and at the end of the war, one of the victorious allies took most of the rocket engineers and all of the rockets whilst the other took just the top man, the real brains of the program – Werner von Braun.”
“How do you know all this ancient history James?” asked the President with only the slightest hint of impatience.
“Well sir, there is an ancient saying and unfortunately, the originator of it is lost to us, that ‘those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them’. I make it my duty as Chief of Staff to arm myself with all the history lessons I can.”
If the President heard even the mildest rebuke in the statement he did not reveal it but nodded sagely and said with no apparent impatience this time “Continue!”
“Well Sir, the Russians, for it was they who took the staff and stock, soon fired off all the rockets and did all the experiments with them that they could but then had to start from scratch building a new production organisation with the staff they had co-opted and without the former leader. The Russians were in a phase of collectivism called Communism which proved not to be a very efficient form of government and were doubly hampered by a totalitarian dictatorship, so it was slow progress. They did however manage to catch up with their opposite numbers the Americans in developing nuclear weapons and they knew how to deliver them around the world by rocket. The Americans believed in free market forces, in Capitalism and indeed it proved a much more efficient means of developing the atomic weapons and with the real brains of rocketry von Braun on their side they soon caught up with the Russians in the production of rockets as the means to deliver nuclear bombs to the other side of the world. And so, the Russians and Americans faced each other off with huge arsenals of nuclear weapons capable of extinguishing all life on Earth the so-called Cold War,”
“But that’s mad!” exclaimed the President,
James did a quick double take of his boss to see whether he recognised what he had said and deciding probably not said with some animation
“Precisely Sir! You’ve hit the nail on the head M. A. D. Mutually Assured Destruction, It was the theory that they work to – nobody could initiate an attack without knowing that the other side could counter attack before being destroyed and the aggressors would be equally destroyed since there was no defence against the rockets once launched.”
“Ok – but what does this have to do with space flight?”
“Well Sir, as well as rockets, both sides developed jet engines aplenty following the war, first for the military and then for passenger airliners The Americans also invented a little rocket powered plane to be carried as high as possible by a jet-turbine powered, bomber before being released to fire it’s rocket engine and be taken to the edge of space. Imagine the thrill of that first pilot to see the sky turn black and the stars come out before plummeting back to Earth in a barely controlled fashion!”
James paused for a moment to long and the president spoke tetchily.
“Yes, yes, but what has that got to do with our problem?”
“Ah well I was coming to that…

 

A TREE HOUSE, GARDEN OF EDEN,
 HAWAII 2, SEPTEMBER, A.G.1243

“So the Americans and Russians prove they both could make rockets and bombs with very different systems of politics and production but now they could wave their big dicks around but not use them. I mean you know how much you boys like your phallic symbols.”
Anna smiled up at Jack whilst gesturing at his crotch with a fore-finger which she provocatively curled and uncurled. Jack put the two cups of tea down carefully on the bedside table before suddenly grabbing a pillow and swatting his wife of two years. She shrieked and rolled towards him wrapping her arms round his thighs and pulling him down onto the bed. An hour later after a thorough exploration of dick waving and more besides and lying side by side with fresh cups of tea she continued.
“So the Americans and the Russians fought a few proxy wars but in their frustration at not being able to use their big shiny weapons, they wanted a grander gesture and when the Russians became the first to put a man into space orbit then the Americans had to go one better and said they were going to send men to land on the moon!”
“Wow!” said Jack “Serious dick waving!” Grabbing Anna’s hand he wrapped it round his own member and demonstrated the said motion.
“Behave yourself Jack! You were the one who wanted to understand why it’s so important that I go away for three months and I am trying to explain! So down boy!” She gives a sharp squeeze and then lets go.
“Alright, alright! I will pay attention Teacher!”
“Okay, so because the Russians had used a rocket to send a man into space and because the payloads involved in getting a ship that could go to the moon and back were so huge, nobody thought of anything other than rockets as the way to go forward. The whole bomber/ rocket-ship idea was just forgotten about. After the moon landings the Americans did develop a shuttle landing craft that was reusable and could take cargo into space, however, it still needed a massive rocket to get it up into space even though it could fly or rather glide back down again.”
“How big were these phallic symbols then?”asked Jack
“Seriously massive – like sitting on a huge bomb twenty times the size of the payload and although the shuttles achieved a lot, eventually in cooperation with the Russians, after a couple of accidents, one on take-off and one on landing with loss of all lives, the shuttles were phased out.”
“So they stopped exploring space then?”
“No, there was an International Space Station by then and the Russians went on using their trusty rockets to maintain the program working with the Americans and other countries but then something new happened.”
“What was that?”
“Well, private industry got involved and worked on getting tourists into space in at least a sub Orbital flight. After all a generation had grown up with all the excitement of the first space flight, the moon landings and the images from the space station and rich people wanted to go there for themselves!”
“I bet they did! What’s not to want! I wish I could see Hawaii 2 from space as you will next week!” said Jack ruefully.
“Well maybe one day we can afford for you to at least go up the lift my love.”
“Yes but you are going to do that and more – again! It’s not fair!” Jack stuck his bottom lip out and pouted in such a parody of a two-year-old that Anna was reduced to helpless laughter.
“I know my darling but one day…” She squeezed his arm.
“Seriously love, I am so proud of you getting chosen to go back and do more research. I know one can do pretty much anything one wants here on Hawaii 2 but when it costs as much as this trip then you’ve got to be good to justify it and someone obviously thinks you have what it takes – apart from me that is!”
“Ahh thanks love!” She rolls over and kisses him before continuing.
“Anyway, the private companies went back to the piggy back idea, building jet powered mother-ships from really light materials and small spacecraft that could rocket up into space once the mother-ship reached its highest point and then like the shuttles they could glide down again.”
“But we can’t use a system like that on Hawaii 2 because of the dust, am I right?”
“Correctamundi! We’ll make a scientist of you yet or at least a science historian.
“Alright Anna, I may be a builder but that doesn’t mean I know nothing!” and he tickles her till she begs for mercy
“Ok, ok! You’re right it’s the dust and Hawaii 2 has a real problem with it.”
“But if Hawaii 2 is the most Earth like planet to be discovered then how come they didn’t have the problem, aren’t there volcanoes on Earth too?”
“There are and very occasionally they did produce the exact same dust that is a problem here on Hawaii 2 and occasionally they did have to ground their jet aircraft but it was never to the same extent as it is here. Hawaii 2 much more recently emerged from an ice age – only 4,000 years ago whereas on Earth, 11,500 years had elapsed by the time jet engines came along. So we have a lot more glaciers in close proximity to volcanoes and even then it has to be a particular type of volcano to produce the very particular fine dust which messes up jet engines. The volcano melts the ice above it and the water runs down hits the molten lava and boom! Very fine dust particles all over the atmosphere.”
“Ok Anna you’re starting to lose me on the technicalities love but the reason you’re going off to Hawaii 1 is because you think there may be a solution?”
“Yes! When I went there before I found a reference to something called a ramjet which doesn’t have moving parts so it might not be affected by the dust – it could change everything for Hawaii 2. I can’t believe that’s nobody else discovered it before me although the reference was truncated by the data degradation and I need to search for it again in other areas of the data.”
“Why can’t they copy all the data and send it to all the other home planets why do you have to go all the way there to research?”
Anna thought for a moment before answering.
“I don’t all together know. I can’t see why it isn’t technically possible – they don’t let us interrogate the original Matrix, it’s too fragile, so it’s already a copy we use. It is massive, I mean it’s all the data they could gather from Earth before the destruction. Maybe it’s a power thing – it gives Hawaii 1 a unique hold over everyone else controlling access to that knowledge.”
“I see, so I have to lose the love of my life for three months because she would rather study Ram Jets than be with me…!
“Well I could pay some close attention to your very own pocket rocket, Love of My Life – right now!” she twinkled.
Unbeknownst to the happy couple, a small part of the payload delivered by that rocket deep inside Anna’s body a short while later, actually reached it’s ultimate destination triggering a series of changes that would progress for the next nine months.

 

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
 PAN HUMAN FEDERATION,
 HAWAII 1, A.G.947

So Mr President the long and short of it is that without jet engines to-power mother-ships most of the way up to space we can land whatever we like on Hawaii 2 but it’s a one-way trip. Well not quite, we can build a space elevator but it’s capacity would be tiny, a real bottleneck. However it could be used to export high value, small volume goods such as gemstones, rare earth metals, etc and of course a small number of significant people.”
“But no mass exodus once the next planet is identified and prepared. Is that what you are saying?”
“Exactly Mr President, but that may offer us another possibility – a unique possibility!”
“What kind of possibility can a planet have with minimal trade prospects and no chance of becoming a stepping stone for the human race?”
“Well Mr President, you remember we talked about the different historical systems on Earth ranging from Democratic Capitalism at one end of the spectrum and Totalitarian Communism at the other?” President Rosario nodded, “Well the economics of those systems needed constant growth and/or War to provide consumption and stimulation of the economy and ultimately this is what lead to The Destruction and forced mankind to reach for the stars. Whilst all the Home Worlds pledge to maintain their environments in order not to repeat the mistakes of Earth it is a balancing act and any one of them could go out of balance and a few have come close to it. There may not be nation states any more but the trans-planet corporations compete for control of resources and conduct cyber attacks which resemble war only too closely. It is only the memory of The Destruction which allows governments to keep a lid on things and a thousand years on that fear becomes less potent despite being hard-wired into our education system. Hawaii 2 offers a chance for a unique experiment, one which economists have long pondered as a possibility.”
“Go on – though when I hear words like experiment and economist in the same sentence I immediately wonder how much it’s going to cost especially given that we are talking about a Planet with no trading possibilities!”
“Restricted trading possibilities but high-value possibilities…”
“Ok, so what are these economists proposing for Hawaii 2”
James Hewlett noticed the minute shift forward of President Rosario in his chair and he knew that the president’s interest was piqued.
“Alright so what if you could have a population stabilized at whatever level is needed to maintain itself where there was no war because everybody is provided for equally so no need to fight for resources. Modern technology to do almost all the grunt work. We could build a utopian society! High levels of education as well as leisure, freedom to choose whatever work you wanted to do or not work at all!”
“Well that sounds peachy but what would be the point of this experiment? I wouldn’t mind living there myself, but we are hardly in the business of setting up planetary holiday camps…”
“Make no mistake, Hawaii 2 would pay its way or rather, aside from the initial colonist transfer and mining infrastructure, it would have to be self-sustaining with those high value exports buying in whatever was still needed from the outside. The information from Captain Johannson’s landing party or settler group, I should say – confirm all the space side survey reports! No! The value of Hawaii 2 is that it is an almost closed system – we can keep the trans planet corporations out, so imagine how good it would be to know how to manage a Society without War and find a way to have an economy based on peace and stability rather than constant but unsustainable growth, Hawaii 2 could be just the laboratory in which to perform such an experiment!”
“Interesting!” Said President Rosario.


The proposed Virgin Galactic Spaceship and Mother-ship combo

A is for Arctane… 2021 A2Z Challenge

humanist55

 

My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…
Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…

 


Arctane is one of three human home-worlds mentioned in Train Wreck besides Earth, the decimated world of origin of the human race. It is the least important in the novel since none of the characters go there and its not involved in the plot, however it is a good starting point for exploring the universe of the Pan-Human Federation as these four worlds are called.

I was amazed to learn that imagining alien worlds goes back a long way – Dante in his “Paradiso” (1320) imagines his narrator ascending through sphers of the Moon and planets to eventually join with Angels. Giordano Bruno was martyred in 1600 for describing multiple, inhabited worlds orbiting other suns in his “De l’infinito universo e mondi” (“Concerning the Infinite Universe and Worlds”, 1584) – fortunately it is not so dangerous to write Science or Speculative Fiction these days…

When I was boy, scientists were coy about stating that there must be other suns with other planets bearing life since we had not even seen evidence of a planet crossing the disk of its star or causing a wobble in the stars orbit. As of 2018, 3078 exoplanets have been detected using such methods in our galaxy alone, although only 53 are “optimistically described as having the potential for life. There are of course an incalculable number of other galaxies…

The problems with travelling to other stars to explore such planets, are distance, the means of covering the distance and getting in and out of the gravity wells at either end of a planet-to-planet journey.- Most science fiction books skip lightly over these massive problems by having had someone invent the requisite drives for both interstellar journeys and getting on and off planets. So the Speculations of Science Fiction, fall into three categories – they are either about what we will find should we ever get there; considerations of what it is to be human by imagining us against some alien backdrop; or lastly, they are just a good yarn, cowboys and Indians, detective story, thriller or pirates of the asteroid belt dressed up in a futuristic setting. The realities of how and when we might ever be able to achieve such voyages lie far in the future.

My novel “Train Wreck” is really the second type of science fiction – what it is to be human – framed as the third type – a detective mystery. There is a crime at the outset and by the end of the book, we will have found out the who and the why, but along the way, is an examination of a Utopia and how people might succeed in expressing or suppressing human nature in such a society…

Arctane is a “mere” mining planet where materials valuable enough to human activities and rare enough to merit transporting between the stars have been found. The rarity of suitably inhabitable planets is such that all the planets in the Pan Human Federation orbit different stars and so you can bet that whatever interstellar drive has conveniently been discovered, its pretty d**n quick and even then, it takes an appreciable length of time to make the journey. Of course, like the canal-boats of Earth’s nineteenth century (a period of Industrial Revolution), although slow, once a flow of boats is under way, regular deliveries arrive.

Arctane is the very opposite of a Utopia, it is practically a “Company planet” since everything that happens there is by and for “The Company” and Arctinians are, as mining folk throughout human history have been, a rough and ready lot with no time for the niceties of civilisation. I have perhaps included the existence of Arctane simply to offer a contrast to the paradise that is the Utopian experiment which is Hawaii 2 and a worse alternative to the main replacement, human home-world for Earth that is Hawaii 1. Those who volunteered to go to Arctane in search of fortune, were almost diametrically opposite to those who first volunteered but were then carefully picked, to inhabit the Utopian experiment of Hawaii 2.

If you want to explore some of the many worlds science fiction writers have imagined, Wikipediadoes not disappoint and for images of imagined worlds – including the one shown at the start of this post, click here.

 

And now for the Frontispiece, Prologue and Chapter 1 of Train Wreck…

Train Wreck.

Hawaii:- from the Polynesian word Owhyhee meaning homeland. As the Polynesian peoples spread out across the Pacific Ocean, each new island colonised was initially called Owhyhee, Once the numbers of settlers rose to a suitable capacity for the island, a new group would set out in search of the next Owhyhee.

Prologue

HAWAII 2, DECEMBER, ANNO GALACTICUS 1243

If the explosion that severed the Spacelift Express had happened any further from the capital then the fatalities, at least in that section of the train aft of the explosion, might have been total. A parched tongue extended from the vast wastes of the New Sahara Desert and pushed its way almost to the city. The tongue was lapped either side by two valleys verdant with man-made greening right up to their watersheds. This desert tongue was the scene of the atrocity and was within range of rescue vehicles, both land based and, as luck would have it, the weather permitted airborne rescue helicopters too.

 

The explosion, the result of a bomb, it was quickly but discretely established, occurred in the dining car, severing the carriage at that point as well as the maglev monorail on which the train ran. The carriages behind this point hit the break in the rail, jumped off its guiding influence and concertinaed – the train swinging alternatively left and right. The forward section of the train carried on a little further around the gentle curve of the track at this point for although the catastrophic break in the monorail had cut power to the maglev engines, the aerodynamic air intake that helped compress the air flow smoothly beneath the train when in motion, carried the sinking carriages just far enough to avoid being crushed from behind by the rear section. The sudden sinking of the carriages onto the monorail caused a sudden enough braking that some passengers, especially those on their feet sorting out their luggage ready for the imminent arrival at Grand Central were thrown to the floor in the front section. In the rear section of the train those standing formed the majority of the dead. Those still seated fared proportionally better in both sections but having said that, there were plenty of dead amongst the seated of the rear section too.

 

One young couple were particularly lucky as having been closest to the explosion yet partially protected by having both entered the toilet at one end of the dining car and just closed the door behind them when the explosion happened. They were thrown around badly and were both in an unconscious state which resolved, once all other possible care had been given to their battered bodies, into intractable comas in both their cases.

Fortunately… 

Chapter 1
Awakening.

HAWAII 2, MAY, A.G.1244

He could hear a baby.
He could hear a woman talking to the baby in the high-pitched voice that even men adopt instinctively when talking to babies, he remembered Anna telling him how that worked.
“Yes you are a beautiful boy, aren’t you!”
Gurgling from the baby.
“Just like your Dad there! The Sleeping Beauty! Who’s a beautiful boy? Coodgie, coodgie, coo!”
More gurgling followed by spluttering and a tiny sneeze.
“Bless you!” The woman’s voice. Wait! That was his mother’s voice! What was she doing here and where was here?
He tried to speak but there was something stuck in his throat but a rasping sound emerged followed by his Mother’s voice calling for a nurse and then suddenly there were lots of voices around him.

“BP please?”
“BP normal at one-two-five over eighty but pulse is up to ninety-eight.”
Okay let’s de-intubate please. Gently does it he’s had it in a long time!”
He feels like his throat is being ripped out. He liked it better when the baby was here and his mother.
“Murrghm!” He tries to sit up and call her but he feels as weak as a kitten and his throat is dry and sore.
Gently now! Lie back Jack and let me wet your lips.”
Something spongy is applied to his lips and a trickle of water slips into his mouth and down his throat, he nearly chokes. He tried to open his eyes realising that if he could hear then he should be able to see but something was stopping them opening. He tried to raise his hands to his eyes but they weighed too much and they seemed – encumbered. He panicked and started thrashing his arms and crying out for his mother and suddenly her voice was there again.
“It’s okay Jack, just relax a minute and the doctors will help you.  You’re in hospital but you are ok!”
Someone was holding his hand, holding it down but stroking his arm. It was his mother’s touch, the touch when he was in bed settling down after a story and slipping into sleep. He calmed down. Hands removed something from his face, undid tape from his eyelids. The doctor spoke again.
“Now Jack – try opening your eyes please.”
At first everything was blurry, heads bent over him in a semi darkened room then a blinding light from the doctors torch, first in one eye and then the other. Then there was more light as someone twisted the blinds open and the bright sunlight came flooding in and finally, there was his mother, tears of happiness running down her face as she bent forward to hug him as he lay there and he felt her tears run down his cheek. After a bit she stood up again and a nurse moved in to remove something from his arm the bed was tilted upwards bringing him to a near sitting position.
“There was a baby!” he said “Where’s the baby?”
His mother looked at the doctor who shrugged and nodded at the same time. His mother turned to him and with a pained look but in a bright voice, a too bright voice, said
“Jack you have a son! You are a father Jack!”

The Big Reveal…

humanist55

 Last year, I only discovered the A2Z 2020 Challenge on the first of April – the start day and had to wing it with the theme of the unfolding Covid 19 Pandemic. This year I have had time to think about it in advance and have to make it not just a 26 day blogging challenge, but a 26 day novel completing challenge…


Some years ago, laid up after a hip replacement [I am not as old as that suggest but I have just reached pension age 🙁   ] I awoke in the middle of the night from a dream which I knew was meant to be the start of a novel. I immediately dictated all I could recall into my phone and began writing the next day.

I confess, I already had a novel on the go which has languished for more of the 15 years since its inception than not. Whilst still actively thinking and reaching and very occasionally writing a bit of the first novel – darting hither and thither within its structure, the second novel – “Train Wreck” – has been a start at the beginning and work through in order affair. Still, there has been a lot of time when life got in the way of writing and so I have decided to try and complete it with the impetus of the 2021 Challenge.

To comply with the A to Z part of the Challenge, I am going to invent an aspect of my novel’s world(s) – for it is a science-fiction in a thriller format – the Train Wreck is a whodunnit! But I shall then publish a chapter a day – luckily I have a headstart of twelve which gives me more time to write the balance…

And if anything else demands musing on, I will tack that on too…

Needless to say – Feedback would be most welcome!

I will aim to visit as many other blogs as I can – its going to be busy!