Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir--A NO SPOILER REVIEW

It goes without saying the movie version of The Martian was a brilliant piece of hard science fiction. I was literally in awe of the actors performance, the real science involved in the story, along with the basic concept of a lone individual marooned on a planet. Because I enjoyed the movie so much I naturally bought the Andy Weir novel which I found surpassed the movie. It was true “hard science fiction” in the sense that there was no magic gadgets that defy known physics used to save the day. Everything in the movie and novel is technologically possible.

Even growing potatoes in martian soil, the only show stopper being the weird type of salt in the martian regolith that Mr. Weir didn't know about when he was writing the book. Called perchlorates, this type of salt would make growing plants in Martian soil difficult, to say the least. But this doesn't derail the use of martian soil as material for growing Earth plants. Such salts could easily be washed out of the soil as it's put into greenhouses.

So when I learned of the basic plot of his latest novel, Project Hail Mary, I was like a kid waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. I ordered the book off Amazon and had a fit when the United States Postal Service failed to deliver it in the required two days. But it did arrive and I have to go ahead and say Project Hail Mary is one of the best science fiction books I have read in my life. Now, understand it's the best science fiction books I've read, but it's not HARD science fiction.

The book opens in more or less in the present day with a probe being sent to Venus and discovering an alien single-cell lifeform reproducing uncontrollably around the sun. Yes, its definitely growing around the sun and causing significant dimming that will plunge the entire Earth into an ice age in thirty years.

This of course sends all rational countries into terror because while the sun will not be extinguished the percentage of dimming will cause massive crop failures resulting in billions dying around the world. Needless to say an ecological collapse will also result in a mass extinction event as well for most plants and animals. So it's the end of the world and no amount of climate denial and anti-science rhetoric will stop the advanced rational nations from a crazy project to try and save it.

Enter the main character Ryland Grace PhD, a humble junior-high school biology teacher who was forced to leave advanced molecular biology research because he wrote a controversial paper proposing that life could exist without using water.

The almighty overlord of project Hail Mary, Eva Stratt picks Grace to study the samples of the lifeform being brought back to Earth. Mainly because everyone was assuming that since the organism was growing on the sun that it couldn't possibly contain water. But also because of the fact that Stratt wanted a competent, but highly replaceable, scientist to look at the organism first. In other words if the organism killed Grace while he was poking it with a stick there was essentially no loss to humanity.

Well Ryland Grace makes significant breakthroughs in classifying the organism he names “Astrophage.” It uses the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Venus to reproduce then emits huge quantities of light energy to get back to the sun to hang out. Astrophage's ability to emit light as a form of propulsion is discovered by other scientists and they begin figuring out a way to build a sub-light starship using it as fuel.

Why build a starship when Earth is about to become a global icebox? Because every astronomer in the world is looking for the origin of Astrophage and they discover all the local stars in our stellar neighborhood are dimming the same way. The conclusion, Astrophage has infected them all except one, Tau Ceti, a star a little under twelve lightyears away.

Project Hail Mary is an attempt to build a Astrophage-powered starship to reach Tau Ceti and hopefully find out why the single-cell assholes aren't causing it to dim. Dr. Ryland Grace end up on the three person crew of the Hail Mary, who are put into a medically-induced coma for the four-year journey to Ta Ceti. Four year journey, when you said Tau Ceti is twelve lightyears away????

Relativity my friends, old Albert Einstein isn't a character in the book but his ideas about traveling close to the speed of light means our intrepid crew will only experience four years of travel time. Why put them in a medically-induced coma? Because the Hail Mary isn't the spacious Starship Enterprise, the three-person crew would go insane living in such a small container. Plus it saves on the use of food and life support during the voyage. Of course while the crew will only “experience” four years, time dilation means those left on Earth will experience more and with only a total of thirty years left before Earth goes full dead block of ice the possibility of success is remote.

Oh yeah, the crew on the Hail Mary are all on a suicide mission. To save Earth they have to reach Tau Ceti discover why that star isn't dimming. If they find a solution they will launch four small probes back to Earth that will carry the information on how to solve the problem. After that all three have ways to painlessly end their own lives.

It simply wasn't practical to build a starship with enough fuel for a return voyage to Earth.

Needless to say like any battle plan going to shit when opposing forces make actual contact, lots of crazy, scary, unplanned events happen to those aboard the Hail Mary. Small spoiler here but the star 40 Eridani, another in the local neighborhood that is also dimming plays a part in the novel.

Project Hail Mary isn't hard science fiction, but it an excellent novel in its own right. “Astrophage” naturally doesn't exist and along with a few other created elements prevents this novel from being hard science fiction.

Another curious thing about this is book is the seemingly lack of direct American involvement with the Hail Mary Project. That why I said all 'advanced rational nations' at the start of my review. Of course Ryland Grace is American but during the construction of the Hail Mary every major spacefaring nation including the multinational European Space Agency (ESA) seem to have far more involvement than NASA. One example, after the Hail Mary is built and in orbit around the Earth, it is astronauts of the ESA that crew the ship during during testing. The reason why Andy Weir wrote the story that way is unclear.

Personally, the first thought that came to my mind is that I could easily see the antiscience dumbasses here in the United States denying that any problem with Astrophage and the sun existed. I could easily see dozens of right-wing religious extremists and libertarians saying Astrophage was all an evil globalist plot to undermine the United States. Those same individuals say the same thing about climate change, pollution, and numerous other real issues the world and our nation faces.

During the book I began to feel for the character of Ryland Grace and his situation as he attempts to save Earth. His situation gets extremely dire several times with only luck and pure intelligence saving the day. Grace is a true hero but he's no Captain Kirk nor Picard by any means. He has a serious flaws and they are exposed during the course of the novel. But I also felt his excitement as he made numerous discoveries trying to get to the ultimate goal. The fictional Ryland Grace is a twenty-first century man who truly got to voyage, “where no one has gone before.”

I highly recommend Project Hail Mary.

The Tomorrow War--A Movie Review

 

I watched this movie so you wouldn't have to.

 By the time 2021 arrived the world had seemed to turn the corner on the pandemic. Multiple lingering issues were still an embarrassing shitshow but with the vaccines out and the Orange Buffoon being shown the exit, despite unprecedented and scary attempts to stay in power, things were starting to look up. With the receding of the pandemic the various workings of civilization began to restart, one of them being movie studios who began tossing out previews to films that had been long delayed.

One of those films is called the The Tomorrow War staring Chris Pratt, a military science fiction film about the usual unstoppable invading aliens. Despite my liberal bleeding heart, tree hugging leanings I am a sucker for such movies and watched Tomorrow War the day it dropped on Amazon Prime. In truth, my eagerness to see the movie was in part due to my desire for new content, any entertainment that wasn't a leftover from happier, pre-pandemic times.

For example, over that extremely long nightmare year of 2020, I had rewatched The Lord of The Rings movies so many times I was starting to lose real life hope no matter the multiple times Gandalf and Aragorn assured me it still existed. Yes, I am a voracious reader but there are times everyone needs fresh visual and audio input that only the boob tube can provide.

As for The Tomorrow War right off the bat I had to dump a bushel of demerits for the basic premise. Chris Pratt, not one of my favorite actors to begin with, plays Dan Forester, a former Green Beret who is now a high school biology teacher who deep down knows he's meant for greater things in life. But in the first couple of scenes we find out that he has been turned down for a position at a “prestigious research facility.”

Danny Boy gets all mopey, and even a little bit whiny with his loving wife and daughter doing their best to comfort him during a World Cup Soccer viewing party at his house. See during the middle of this televised to the world game a wormhole opens up with soldiers from the year 2051 literally dropping in to tell everyone that humanity is losing a war against invading aliens and on the brink of extinction.

These aliens, which are called whitespikes, will suddenly appear in the year 2048 and overrun the world in three short years. These representatives from the future have interrupted the bloody World Cup match to ask the nations of present to send soldiers to the future to help with the war.

Of course as with these types of movies, the nations of the world almost immediately start sending troops to the future without any apparent questioning of the future people, or assessment of the tactical situation. More to the point, nothing in the movie suggests that people here in the presents take a moment and ask the future people detail questions of where these aliens first set foot on Earth. All we're told is that the first recorded encounters with the whitespikes were in eastern Siberia.

A huge area to be sure, but with thirty-some odd years to wait it seems commonsense to be me to maybe load up a couple of divisions of troops from different nations and recon the area. Yes, we're talking Russia here but I wouldn't be opposed to some vodka-soaked Russian general being put in charge as humanity does a grid by grid search to short circuit our extinction. Dear Lord, real life murderer, and petty dictator Putin would love calling himself the freaking savior of humanity.

In fairness to the movie, one of the future soldiers does say that that when the whitespikes began appearing the nations of the world looked back on the records and no telescopes nor radar saw anything drop down from space. Okay, I'm no George Patton nor Alexander the Great but that suggests to me that maybe they were already on Earth. And some forensic study on the first few whitespikes killed in the war might narrow down the area where they first appeared. Hint...Hint.

But no, present day troops are rushed through the wormhole to 2051 for seven-day deployments with fewer than thirty-percent surviving. Seven day deployments you ask? It's all part of the movie's time travel gizmo and is just a useful plot device.

With trained troops coming back as hamburger, if they return at all, the nations of the world resort to drafting civilians. No, these civilians have no prolonged period of basic training. They are literally given weapons, some basic gear, and then get sucked up into the wormhole for a seven day visit to Hell.

Even worse for this movie many of these civilians are not in the best of health. Many are clearly not physically fit for serving as a REMF in present day armies much less engaging in intense combat with murderous aliens.

Low and behold former Green Beret, Dan Forester's number comes up for the draft. Forester's wife and daughter plead with him to contact his estranged, troubled Vietnam Vet, genius-level mechanical engineer father to dodge the draft. See, Danny Boy's dad has figured out a way help draftees circumvent the tracking device the government installed on those going to the future. We then get a scene with Danny Boy and his dad where they promptly engage in a father/son pissing contest. Danny Boy gets disgusted with his dad and says fuck it, he reports to the base where the pathetic civilians are dispatched to the future.

Right from the get-go the trip to 2051 is a cluster fuck with Danny Boy's group dropping from the wormhole not five-feet above the ground but at least fifteen-stories above apocalyptic Miami Beach. Luckily for Danny and the important secondary characters they fall into a roof top pool that strangely still has enough water to cushion their fall.

From there the survivors regroup and get a mission to rescue an important group of scientists working in the city. Now understand, whitespikes have infested the city and a dozen or so pizza delivery-type guys and retail working ladies have to fight their way to the building where the eggheads were doing their thing. Remember no training, no months long physical conditioning, just John Wayne movie determination and Danny Boy and another former army type who has already served three previous seven-day tours to 2051. That guy has terminal cancer and is a walking death wish. But he does carry a souvenir, a claw from one of the first whitespikes killed in the war.

The movie meanders to a conclusion with Danny Boy meeting his 2051 daughter, who just happens to be a colonel in what is left of the military force fighting the whitespikes. The 2051 people have pretty much realized they can't win, so why they were continuing to suck unprepared draftees from their past into their hopeless fight, I can't figure out.

What the 2051 people do have is research into a biological weapon that will kill the female whitespikes. Supposedly the females are extra hard to kill and like Star Trek's furry and cute tribbles are born pregnant. Hence how they were able to overrun the planet in three years.

Danny Boy and his adult daughter, who is also the chief scientist of the research project capture a female whitespike, take it back to humanity's last fortified base, and perfect the bio-weapon. See Dan's daughter wants him to go back to the present and use the weapon while there is still time.

Well now all sorts of crazy shit starts to happen. That last base is attacked and overrun with whitespikes out to rescue the female. Dan now fights to survive long enough for his timer to hit zero where the time travel gizmo will automatically send him, the nifty bio-weapon, and the surviving members of his group back to our present.

Returning to the present the world has gone to pieces. Realization that the 2051 war is hopeless and extinction imminent the geopolitical situation in the present has seen all nations turn inward with international alliances being abandoned. It's clearly mentioned even NATO has disbanded something I once thought ridiculous and even suicidal until the Orange Buffoon did his best to make it happen.

To me that is when the movie got extra super stupid, yes the 2051 war is lost but with thirty years to prepare the world of our present could pull together and somehow change the future. But then again the United States has in reality just seen over six-hundred thousand people die due to Covid-19 and there are motherfuckers who violently believe it was all some grand conspiracy. Then there are climate change deniers, another massive conspiracy, and Flat Earthers so maybe the writers do understand human nature better than me.

But never fear, Dan Forester will save the day. See in one of Dan's biology classes there is a student who is a volcano nerd. This kid loves volcanoes and knows everything about them. So after Dan and his terminal cancer combat buddy have his souvenir whitespike claw analyzed by a scientist and discover ancient volcanic ash embedded in it and get a general age of that substance. For reasons I either missed or the writers never stated, Dan get his volcano wizard student to tell them what part of the Earth the ash originated.

They surmise that the whitespikes arrive on Earth right before a certain Siberian volcano erupted and ended up buried and then frozen in ice. That during our time the ice melted enough to thaw out the planet-cleaning killing machines.

Great we have a location, eastern Siberia but we then learn Russia has locked its borders tight. And the United States government has no desire to contact them and say they have cool information to share that might save humanity in thirty years.

But wait, Dan's estranged father just happens to own a C-130 transport plane and can fly the beast under Russian radar. So Dan, his dad, the terminal cancer guy along with several others organize a mission to fly into Siberia to find and then destroy the whitespikes with the bio-weapon.

This motley crew locate the buried spaceship, blast their way in, and begin killing the whitespikes still sleeping in their hibernation sacks. That is until a couple of whitespikes begin screaming waking up the rest. The group then begins blasting away with weapons as the whitespikes start escaping until terminal cancer guy detonates the C-4 explosives they had placed throughout the ship.

Everyone inside the ship dies except Danny Boy and a couple of lucky whitespikes that are doing their best to run off into the icy wilderness. Dan and his estranged father, who was left outside to cover the exit, give chase and have a final confrontation with the two remaining aliens. Yeah, one of the surviving whitespikes is female and she's clearly pregnant.

Father and son kill the last two whitespikes and then have one of those redemption/reconciliation moments that has all the sweet sincerity of saccharin. They go home where they are greeted by the world as heroes.

Okay my biggest problem with the movie was the basic idea that 2051 world would come to our present asking for soldiers to fight a war that they had long since decided was lost. The better plan, in my ever humble opinion, would have them developed the bio-weapon first then drop into the World Cup game with it and a detailed report and get us in the present to locate the and kill the whitespikes.

The world could have still gotten all gung-ho with Dan Forester drafted into a global coalition to locate and eliminate the threat because of his prior military service. Dan could have seen a message from his adult daughter who still would have been the chief scientist on the 2051 bio-weapon and realized his path to glory would be to change the future for her.

But no, we get a chaotic mishmash of Terminator, Aliens, and Predator tropes so Chris Pratt can look good on screen. My problem with him is that he can't act. His character in the Parks and Recreation was a one-dimensional creature that honestly didn't seem to stray far from his real personality. The same goes for his character, Peter Quill, in the MCU. The first Guardians of Galaxy movie was great but the second not so much.

In short Chris Pratt strikes me as a pompous douchebag who isn't any different than a couple of thousand other underemployed actors living in Hollywood. His one difference is a couple of lucky breaks other, better performers never got.

If you haven't already figured out, The Tomorrow War is a wreck of a movie that I honestly can't recommend for interesting entertainment. Truthfully the best part of the movie were the whitespike aliens, which were pure CGI. Time travel films can be tricky things and when done well can be some of the best thought provoking entertainment around. My final stab at this movie would be for someone to go back in time and prevent Amazon from wasting money on this script.

Glimpses of the Dark Side

 

A new take on "It's a Wonderful Life"

 The aerodrome was playing nothing but celebration music observing the centennial of the Global Accords. John Powell mostly ignored the music and just sat quietly at his small table outside cafe sipping his coffee. His attention directed at all his fellow travelers. The sun had just risen above the crest of the large east-facing windows casting a warm, golden glow on the several hundred people all waiting in the airship departure lounge. Powell was most taken with the family groups as different children played with each other as parents watched.

Everyone seemed content, if not actually happy, which Powell guessed came largely from one-hundred years of a growing world peace. John Powell, being a psychiatrist instead of a historian or politician, didn't really think all that much about how the Accords hadn't reached their final form until 1977. And while the Federal League was celebrating one-hundred years of peace, most people understood that war didn't really end in 1921. The “conflicts” that erupted in Africa and Asia in the intervening years weren't as big or bloody as the 1914-1919 Last War, but the deaths were just as real. Being American, he refused to think about the Backlash Uprisings in the southern states that had occurred in the 1980s. After one of their radical groups assassinated President Kennedy, those neoconfederates got what they deserved.

Giant screens mounted opposite of the eastern windows showed the departure times of airships heading out to Europe or west to the provinces of Canada or the western states. Powell's airship to San Francisco wasn't scheduled for another three hours. As much as he hated reading patient files outside his office, it was better to do it now instead of on the flight when he could take advantage of all the airship amenities.

Powell loosen the buttons on his left sleeve pulling it back exposing his wrist computer. The all purpose computer was attached to his arm by two straps, one at the wrist and the other mid-forearm. Similar devices had existed since the early 1960s taking the place of wrist watches and small radios. The addition of wireless communication and access to the global library network had finally made them ubiquitous to daily life. As the technology advanced, the devices came to host thousands of different applications from entertainment to business and health.

Most young people had long since developed the habit of shoving their wrist computers in the pockets of their clothes. Not Powell, his was a Rolex wrist comp and the idea of losing it, like a lot of youngsters do with their cheaper models, was a nightmare he didn't want to realize. Wearing it on his wrist was cumbersome, and it made using the camera difficult but the alternative was worse given how many times a day he had the access the network to review and update patient files.

That morning there was one patient John Powell was concerned with, and it was the reason he was going to San Francisco.

***

“Good morning, Dr. Powell,” his cabin steward said up entering after knocking on the door to make sure he was awake. Powell had been up since his courtesan for the night had departed and was again on his wrist comp reviewing his files.

“Hello Ernest,” Powell replied trying not to frown in reaction to the steward's southern accent. Powell had no reason to believe Ernest or any of his family members might have taken part in the Uprisings. But it was hard to forget the videos of southern radicals screaming they wanted to Make America Great Again as they committed terrorism.

“What would you like for breakfast this morning?” Ernest asked as he straightened up the cabin.

“Just bacon and eggs with juice and coffee. Are we still scheduled to land in Frisco on time?”

"Yes, sir on both,” Ernest said imputing the food order on his own wrist comp before leaving.

Powell could tell Ernest was holding some sort of resentment, whether it was related to the now defeated and disorganized neoconfederate cause was impossible to tell. Most neoconfederates had fled the country and moved down into the Central American Federation territory. To them the area from Guatemala to Colombia was one of the last bastions of real freedom in the world.

To the rest of the civilized world the Central American Federation was a huge shit hole of violence, corruption, and oppression. And neither the United States government nor the Federal League had the will or resources to tackle that area right now.

But all things considered Powell realized that even though most of the world was now peaceful with the vast majority of humans no longer worried about food or homelessness or oppression there were still some who felt shorted. Maybe for the time being it was best to leave the radicals down there alone until other areas like central Africa and south Asia were more stable.

***

Gracie Hensley was in her room laying on her bed asleep. A small camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling relayed video to her caregivers sitting in a nearby room. Gracie wasn't in restraints, mainly because there was nothing in her room that she could easily use to harm herself. But nonetheless, orderlies were just seconds away if she showed signs of trying to commit suicide.

Powell had read her case file dozens of times. A normal teenager from a middle class family with no discernible psychological or physical issues. Until a couple of months ago when she started having dreams of an assailant coming into a school with military assault weapons and killing anyone they encounter. From her files, the dreams are incredibly detailed with Gracie able to name off the people being killed. She can also describe the location with exacting detail as well as the surrounding area.

The dreams always resulted in her screaming in terror and unable to leave her room. Needless to say, they were taking a heavy toll on her emotional well being and that of her family's.

One of the many problems with Gracie's dreams was that the school the shootings take place isn't the one she actually attends. The school in her dreams exists, down to every detail she described, but in Colorado. The other problem with Gracie's dreams is that in reality civilians cannot own those types of weapons. The idea that a civilian could purchase anything than a normal handgun or bolt-action rifle or shotgun is ridiculous. Owning such weapons was difficult even before the Backlash Uprisings, afterwards the only way the average American would even touch one was to join the military.

But somehow, the assailant in Gracie's dreams owned such weapons, as well as an ungodly amount of ammunition.

“Dr. Powell, you've reviewed Ms. Hensley's condition.” Dr. Linda Banks said after turning away from the row of screens showing the inside of patients' rooms. “I'm very interested in what you might have to add, especially since you've flown across the country.”

“Truthfully Dr. Banks, Ms. Hensley isn't the first time I've seen a case very much like this. In fact I have personally encountered seven such individuals. Five of them were of a similar age to Ms. Hensly but the other two were adults in their thirties.”

“The violent encounters,” Powell continued, “their dreams all took place in locations they never actually visited but gave incredibly accurate descriptions. Also, these homicidal assailants all possessed military grade weapons used with the dreamers somehow certain they owned them.”

“That's all well and good, Dr. Powell. But were you able to help these earlier patients? The stress and fear Gracie is going through is getting worse. Gracie already can't function outside this facility and I fear she might have a total and permanent break with reality if it continues for much longer.”

Powell grabbed a small tablet from a table and began writing down a list of psychotropic drugs and their dosage. “There medications have dampen the dreams in the other patients.” He said to the other doctor. “But they never completely ended the dreams, about all we can hope is that she outgrows them in time.”

“Dr. Powell,” Banks said eyeing the man intently, “I can read people just as well as you and I know you're not telling me something. And I'll be damned if you'll leave this facility before I know what you're not telling me.”

“Just how open is your mind to out of the box thinking, Dr. Banks?” Was Powell's response.

Dr. Bank's office was a testament to 1950s extravagance. The décor and artwork were relics of that era and was looked down upon for the most part now. Powell was even surprised to see an ancient tabletop computer sitting on the desk. Just for a second he wondered if the tabletop was real or if she used a holographic interface like everyone else when working in the office.

“Now Dr. Powell, please tell me your secrets.” Dr. Banks said after she took her seat behind the desk and he in the chair in front.

“Dr. Banks, how much do you know about quantum mechanics and hyper-gravity theory?”

Powell realized it was a risk to tell her everything but his team was almost done with the first of their papers to be published and who knows, she might sign on to the study.

Powell began by telling her how just ten years ago one of the particle accelerator labs in the asteroid belt had confirmed that the force of gravity does bleed over into other universes. That the data clearly suggests gravity isn't something from anyone one universe but affects the entire multiverse.

“Here's where things move into the metaphysical realm, Dr. Banks.” Powell said in a deadly serious tone. “What if the multiverse does contain a near infinity number of parallel universes where history can play out almost exactly to ours or go the opposite way? And lets say that since gravity permeates through the multiverse why can't other forces?”

“That's quite a lot to think about, Dr. Powell,” Banks said wearily. “But what about proof, that's where science begins.”

Powell went to explain that these murderous dreams were not a new phenomenon. That back in the 1940s there were numerous reports from Germany of Jews having dreams that a totalitarian regime was systematically murdering them. That this regime was being lead by a megalomaniac with dreams of world domination.

“Well that's ridiculous, Dr. Powell. The Germans have a checkered history with antisemitism in the past but they would never systematically try to murder whole populations.”

“That's the whole point. In our reality history and events played out differently.” Powell explained preparing to explaining his theory. “In our world the Spanish Flu forced and end to the Last War. So many people were dying from the flu that both sides were forced to help each other. All talks of victory and revenge gave way to tolerance and negotiation. Yes, it helped that certain leaders fell victim to the Flu allowing new voices to emerge.”

“I've pieced together a history of this darker world from reading the journals of individuals that suffered from these dreams,” Powell said. “Their Spanish Flu wasn't as bad and their Last War had already ended. This allowed the Allies to impose a harsh peace of Germany that bred a sense of revenge among the population. So instead of the first treaties that form the Accords, their peace set the stage for yet another, more horrible war.”

Powell cued up his wrist computer to transfer hundreds of files to Bank's computer.

“I still don't understand, Dr. Powell. How are just certain individuals having these dreams and not the entire human race?”

“I don't know,” he replied. “But I've cross referenced hundreds of different locations where these dreams took place and the vast majority of individuals had no idea they existed in real life. But I've conferred with a several physicists and we're rehashing an old theory that events can echo from one universe to another. How the actual mechanics of this echo works is something we're working on.”

I've talked with both Ms. Hensley and her parents,” Banks said while looking off into the distance while unconsciously shivering. “This alternate United States where Gracie's dreams take place is a violent, paranoid place and it's getting worse. Gracie has related to me insane ideas about corrupt and incompetent politicians, corporations running roughshod over individual rights, and a growing global environmental disaster.”

“I know,” Powell said. If this theory is correct that world is a nightmare. Our world and nations are far from perfect but it seems like a paradise compared to the stories I've read and heard.”

The two doctors discussed Ms. Hensley treatment for a few further minutes and then went their separate ways. Dr. Banks was still doubtful on the outlandish theory of echos of despair crossing realities. But she was thankful that she existed on this side of that divide.

I Got Nothing This Weekend--The Movie

 "Hyperpig" by Ducard84 on Deviantart. Check out his other work

 

My winter-induced inactivity is still a problem. Spent Friday evening doing essentially nothing and just to be consistent my laziness for the entirety of Saturday was close to record breaking. Now understand, just like subatomic particles can never truly stop vibrating, I did perform the required household maintenance like weekend laundry, keeping the cat and dog fed and watered, and putting my dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

If I really want to stretch a point, my most strenuous effort Saturday was starting the dishwasher. On the other hand, depending on how different people judge activity, I did spend several hours after that reading. Sadly nothing profound, I was in the mood for an Alastair Reynolds novel where a genetically-uplifted pig leads a group of human refugees fleeing from an alien artificial intelligence millions of years old out to purge the galaxy of starfaring organic life.

Getting back to proper housework, I would have probably broke down and vacuumed the living room floor Friday if the professional carpet cleaning person wasn't coming to the house next Thursday. This company brings in one of those ultra-industrial vacuums that looks like an out of work Transformer or Terminator before cleaning the carpet. So I'll just let them do the heavy lifting sucking out all the pet hair, dead skin cells, and assorted bits of food from the carpet.

Last time the carpet people came the cat was so traumatized by their evil-looking vacuum cleaner he spent the rest of the day hiding on top of the living room book case.

So with my utter laziness dominate for at least the another month I have nothing real to write about. So I'll just throw and few lazy points out there.

First of all we're finally rid of the Orange Buffoon. Despite his demand for a military send off and a large crowd of mindless, cheering idiots but he got far less. Ideally, I would have preferred an assortment of law-enforcement types arresting his sorry ass but that is hopefully coming down the road.

I almost laughed my ass off after various Trump-loyalists started whining about how the rest of the country should be mindful of their hurt feelings. That if the Democrats, and any other sentient American wants “unity” we shouldn't push any agenda other than what Trump enacted. Particularly funny was Mitch “Turtle” McConnell saying the Democrats shouldn't play with established senate rules to force their policies through.

I'm also loving how the people living in the “Qanon” fantasy universe had their bubble busted by the total lack of anything happening. How Trump was part of some double top-secret sting operation that going to have hundreds of Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, and other “elites” arrested for being part of a worldwide, Satan worshiping, pedophile ring. I sure that psychology students of the future will be write their PhD thesis papers on that shared delusion.

Well, that's about it for now. I really should go unload the dishwasher of clean dishes so I can get the dirty ones sitting in the sink washed before the cat licks them completely clean. Plus, I really want to get back to the intelligent, spacefaring pig, apparently there is a group of aliens from another universe promising to help him defeat the mass of planet-crunching, star-destroying machines running wild through human space.

Seriously it's a great series of books! Maybe, I'll get off my ass and do a book review.

Latter-Day Prometheus - See Fan Fiction

 

From space the Earth looks beautiful, the blue of the oceans the green of the forests and the browns of the deserts all teem with life. But I find myself circling the world of my birth seeing it as a graveyard. I arrived home to find the greater mass of humanity having been killed in a plague that my instruments and sensors tell me happened over six-hundred years ago after my recruitment into the Cohort.

From a population that must have peaked at over eight-billion human souls before the plague, my sensors say there is only a little under ninety-million people now scratching out a near neolithic existence on the surface. After analyzing my findings, the simulations I've run suggest that the human population more than likely dropped to around two-million at its lowest point.

I came home believing I'd find my species having expanded out into the solar system. That given what the Cohort had judged as Homo sapiens probable technological growth rate, that humanity by now should have primitive starships running between the Sol system and several of the nearby stars with planets that could easily be colonized.

Instead, I find my species on the edge of extinction with no way to protect itself from what fate or circumstance might throw their way. Any number of events could occur and end all hopes for humanity eventually reaching its potential.

My Cohort training comes into effect and I send dozens of sensor pods down to the surface to try and find out what happened. As the pods descend into the atmosphere, they release billions of tiny sensors no bigger than motes of dust. These instruments would float on the wind and embed themselves on anything they touched. This included all living things and especially human bodies. In the span of days I would have a comprehensive genetic analysis on everything living.

The results come back as expected but they are horrifying nonetheless. It was a virus that destroyed civilization by killing billions all across the planet. No surprise there, but what was unexpected was that of those very few that survived the initial outbreak it burned out the visual centers of their brains leaving them blind. Worse yet, the virus was still active and is passed from mother to child. Except for the possible but rare mutant immune to the virus, the entire human race on Earth is totally blind.

The sensor dust I released is also able to record video and audio signals. With that data I am able to determine that a sight-less culture has naturally emerged among the various survivor communities. Something that could easily be predicted but the as with everything else involving my species it gets complicated. In all these blind cultures the very concept of sight is something akin to myth. In others, namely the North American continent, the blindness is considered a punishment from God for Man's sins.

From this video and audio data, I learn that fanatical groups of religious zealots scour the countryside looking people who might be sighted. The similarities to hunting for witches in North America and Europe are haunting. My sensors collect video of people having been burned at the stake.

Curing this virus-imposed blindness isn't a problem, my medical systems can analyze and develop a safe cure in a few weeks. Synthesizing the counter-virus and deploying it across the planet could be done with the dust sensors. Adults humans wouldn't regain their sight, but young children and everyone born after deployment of the cure would would be able to see.

The problem is all these blind cultures, especially the religious ones. Thousands would die at the hands of the fearful believers in God's wrath, especially the children born to sight.

It is a conundrum my Cohort mentor, Janai, would find funny in a cosmic way. It reminds me of a situation we found ourselves in just a few years ago in another part of the galaxy.

***

Janai found me on the shore of one of the lakes of liquid mercury the Sgrang use to breed their young. The Sgrang are a species composed largely of mercury and other elements housed in a silicon/carbon matrix and require exacting conditions for successful reproduction. Out of trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, their home world was incredibly unique. It had evolved a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere, something quite rare by itself, but what really set it apart was its geology. The planet was improbably rich in heavy metals all the way up to uranium and other heavy elements that didn't exist on Earth.

The evolution of life on the Sgrang home world took advantage of both the heavy metals and its above average vulcanism. So much that when the Sgrang realized one of their neighboring stars would go supernova they called for the Cohort to help them find another planet to live. The coming supernova, less than three lightyears away, would utterly sterilize their world.

The conditions on the Sgrang home world didn't allow either Janai nor myself to set foot on the surface. The Cohort had environmental suits that could stand the incredible pressure and heat, but it simply wasn't worth the risk. Instead our minds were linked to mechanical avatars allowing us to interact with the Sgrang. Beings that looked like stone caterpillars with spikes of clear crystals for eyes covering their bodies.

“Has the council come up with any ideas on where the Sgrang can go?” I ask after turning towards the ridiculous looking mechanical cephalopod standing beside my equally weird looking humanoid form.

Despite her extremely alien shape, both mechanical on the surface and biological up on the orbiting starship Janai chuckles just like a human. “The council is dumbfounded, twenty-million worlds extensively cataloged in this section of the galaxy alone and none meet the requirements. The planetary vulcanism isn't a problem, it's the Sgrang elemental composition. None of the known worlds have quite the exact composition, most have too little of the heavier elements. Too much and the young Sgrang emerge from the lakes of mercury without the normal mental capacity.”

“Has the ship contacted the Cohort Motherbases, maybe one of the central libraries knows of worlds in the one of the smaller satellite galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud or even all the way to Andromeda?” I ask my mentor as I watch Janai dip one of her ten tentacles in the mercury lake.

Unlike the fictional interstellar governments from the science fiction I read and watched on Earth, the Cohort is not based inside the galaxy. The Cohort mainly existed on gigantic bases built out in the intergalactic void. Most advanced intelligent species consider galaxies insanely dangerous places with all sorts of disasters ready to befall any lifeforms unwilling to think beyond the surface of their home mud balls.

Membership in the Cohort, something humans would not be ready for probably a millennium, required a mass relocation to one of those bases. The benefits included technology originally developed by the Elder Races and exposure of cultures of hundreds of other species. Living condition are idyllic on the residential Dyson Spheres with the extremes of planetary weather carefully controlled. Plus each member species gets living space of about the surface area of ten Earths. As long as the members behave like rational beings and control their numbers, everyone get along quite well. Plus evacuating the planetary home worlds gives evolution a chance to proceed allowing near intelligent-species to make the jump to full sentience.

After a long silence Janai finally gives her answer. “ The council is purposing a different solution.”

“What other solution is there besides seeding the Sgrang on another world?”

“Ah, my young protege, you need to stop thinking so three dimensional.” Jania says in her soft voice that usually means I'm about to get a lecture.

After she tells me her answer it is my turn to be dumbfounded. What the council wants to do violates everything I understood to be right and wrong. Janai reminds me that to be a successful Cohort diplomat I have to reserve the right to change the rules of any game I find myself playing.

I protest, but being the only hairless primate from an insanely primitive planet in the Cohort, I am ignored. At least Janai sees fit to give me several decades to think about the situation. After all, the Sgrang are vital to the science of thirty dimensional physics.

Several days later, Janai is at the main hangar of our starship to see me off for my sabbatical. “Where will you go Jacob Reese?” She asks obviously worried over her sad protege.

“Probably Earth, my dumbass people should well off the planet by now. Who knows, maybe they've crossed the threshold point for initial contact.”

“Remember Jacob,” she says stroking the hair on my head with one of her real tentacles like any concerned mother, “the universe loves to play practical jokes that cross all of spacetime.”

***

That memory occurs to me as I run the simulations on my ship's main computer. Despite my ship's small size the hyperdrive it uses to cross interstellar space is no different from much larger cousins. Instead of using it to cross distance though, I am forced by the situation on Earth to consider crossing time.

Deploying further dust sensors on Earth allowed me to access century old records sitting on the hardrives of ancient computers rusting away in forgotten facilities. This has allowed me to narrow down the year and month the plague first emerged.

The main purpose for the Cohort's existence has always been to reduce suffering among intelligent species and promote the expansion of life and civilization. And in the case of the Sqrang, that even means going back in time and altering their biochemical evolution just enough so that one of the cataloged worlds meets their requirements.

The science of temporal adaptation is what the Cohort calls it. Being that the Cohort is over two-hundred millions years old means they have plenty of experience in closed-loop time travel.

I am still uncertain though, if I alter time and prevent the plague from occurring I will effectively kill millions of people dooming them to a form of oblivion incomprehensible to most thinking beings. On the other hand, if I introduced the cure now it would almost certainly cause untold bloodshed with the newly emerging sighted people being persecuted by superstitious and religious types. Because if there is one constant in the universe it is backwards ignorant beings believing they know the mind of God.

In the end, saving the billions who perished during the plague and those that would have been born after is my first priority. And yes, I am not blind to the knowledge that my actions are more than a little self-serving. I want the civilization that produced me back probably most of all.

With one touch to the command screen, I bring up the holographic display and input the required codes to initiate temporal travel. I input the destination going back two-years further for a safety measure.

The holographic icon that will activate the hyperdrive floats a few centimeters in front of my hand. Swiping left will begin the operation, to the right will cancel it. My certain falters, I think of all the humans on the surface living and loving, making the best of their lives. Do I have a right to wipe them all way, not even leaving a trace that they ever existed?

Clearing my thoughts, I swipe left sending my ship and myself to that critical pivot point in human history.

Author's notes: Yes, this is a form of fan fiction and yes, my wife and I spend way too much time watching television. Our explorations of the internet entertainment channels and their offerings is embarrassing even in these Covid-dominated months. Still though, it was subscribing to Apple TV that I stumbled across one of their original shows called “See”, staring Jason Moma. The show's premise is essentially what I wrote in my humble story.

A plague sometime this century kills off the vast majority of humans. The survivors, about two-million, are all blind as a result, and so are the children that comes after them. As apocalypse entertainment goes how the producers go about building this blind world is fascinating. The viewer gets incredible hints at the complex cultures and adaptations that would arise if such an event every happened.

Humans are highly adaptable creatures but a state of blindness effecting the entire species is a form of Hell all by itself in my opinion. On the show most humans appear to live in a near neolithic state with any leftover technology akin to sacred religious relics. Even worse, being blind the sun is technically unknown to them and is worshiped and called the “God Flame” for the heat it produces. It goes without saying the survivors have no idea the moon nor stars exist. Leftover metal is called “God Bone” and is highly prized. No, there isn't any evidence that they can produce metal themselves.

My attempt with this story was to create an ethical dilemma for my character. That given the ability to change history and save billions of lives is condemning millions to oblivion less of a crime? I obviously made my choice, I'd like to hear what others think.

A Book Review of Revelation Space

 

 Science fiction in its best forms pushes the boundaries of the possible for those individuals who have relatively open minds. That's especially true for the sci-fi subgenre called “hard science fiction,” which builds its stories around known scientific principles and logic. This not to say hard science fiction novels and movies don't include incredible futuristic technology and bizarre situations, they just have to be within the realm of the possible given current knowledge.

In other words popular culture favorites like Star Trek and Star Wars are more accurately defined as science fantasy since they require faster-than-light propulsion (FTL), various forms of extrasensory preconceptions, and near human-like aliens among other impossibilities. \When the legendary Arthur C. Clarke first made this distinction clear to me, I about had a fit with what I thought was an insult to my beloved Star Trek. But he was absolutely correct, anyone can create a space opera fantasy but I have found that stories which built within the realm of what is possible far more satisfying.

This is proven with the Alastair Reynolds novel, Revelation Space. The novel begins in the twenty-sixth century with three seemingly separate story-lines that eventually merge.

The first story-line begins on a planet called Resurgam in the real-life Delta Pavonis star system. A guy by the name of Dan Sylveste is leading an archaeological colony researching the long extinct Amarantin species. Over the years since they arrived on Resurgam, Dan Sylveste has come to believe the Amarantin had developed a technological civilization before their sun had a massive flare and essentially barbecued anything and everything on the surface a million years ago. More importantly, Dan has a strong hypothesis that the flare wasn't a natural disaster, that some intelligence was responsible.

The second story-line centers around Ilia Volyova, who is part of a crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. A massive sub-light vessel called a lighthugger since it came come extremely close to the speed of light. See the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity all have nanotechnology augmentation devices in their brains and bodies, but in the captain's case he was infected with the “Melding Plague” which mutates both the nanotech and human cells. So Ilia and the rest of the crew want to find Dan Sylveste, who also happens to have considerable knowledge on how to treat the Melding Plague.

At first, the good crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity believes Dan Sylveste is on the colony planet, Yellowstone orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani. This is because with no FTL technology information can be decades out of date by the time it becomes generally known.

The third story-line involves Ana Khouri who is a bit of an accidental castaway on the colony planet Yellowstone. She was originally from a planet called Sky's Edge in a different star system but through a complex set of events, mainly a planetary civil war, is put in long-term hibernation. Hibernation chambers get mixed up and Ana wakes up on a completely different planet decades later. Oh yeah, she's married and her husband's chamber is either still on Sky's Edge or sent God knows where.

While on Yellowstone, Ana has to make a living and gets hired by a mysterious figure known as the Mademoiselle to infiltrate the incoming Nostalgia for Infinity, fly with them to Resurgam and kill Dan Sylveste.

While Dan Sylveste might seem a popular guy, he's a bit of an asshole with numerous people who literally hate his ass. The first being his ex-wife who lead a rebellion on the newly colonized Resurgam years before, stole the starship that brought them there, and high-tailed out of the system to never be heard from again.

Next, Dan's sparkling personality eventually lead to yet another rebellion overthrowing the colonial government he setup and controlled. Which I can't really blame since Resurgam is far from being a garden spot. The planetary atmosphere isn't directly breathable and the surface more or less looks like a heavily burned bagel covered in dust. The rest of the humans on the fledgling colony are tired of digging in the dust and want to turn their attention to terraforming the planet.

After the second coup, Dan is a prisoner of the new government but finds time to fall in love with the daughter of the man who took over and marries her. At the wedding there is yet another coup with Dan and his new wife, a lady named Pascale about the only people who escape the attack.

When the Nostalgia for Infinity arrives at Resurgam the crew radios down demanding that they cough up Sylveste. There are of course issues, this third colonial government tells Nostalgia to go to hell. Illia in turns hacks into the planetary internet altering records to “create” a fake outpost and nukes it from space. This justifiably terrifies the government who quickly offer up Dan and Pascale.

Dan Sylveste being a really clever asshole is brought aboard Nostalgia for Infinity with the crew not knowing he has smuggled microscopic amounts of antimatter hidden inside his own nanotech implants. You might say big deal, but the antimatter is more than enough to destroy the ship.

Dan makes a deal with the crew to not blow up the ship and try to save their captain if they take him to the nearby dwarf planet Cerberus which orbits a neutron star. Dan believes Cerberus is the key to unraveling what happened to the Amarantin.

I'm stopping here because the rest of the novel is about as mind blowing as they come without actually having to cleanup all the blood, bone, and goo off the floor and walls.

***

One of the real scientific topics the novel touches on is the Fermi Paradox. In summary, a bunch of real life top-notch scientists were having lunch on day and began puzzling over the fact that a starfaring species could colonize the galaxy in a couple of million years just zooming along at ten-percent the speed of light. Throw in a few other adventurous species doing the same and there should be ample evidence of alien civilization even here in our own solar system.

So between bites of his Ruben sandwich, Enrico Fermi asks just where in the Hell is everyone. Decades later numerous smart men and women have pondered the question with most possible answers not very comforting and a few outright scary. Yes, this plays to the extinct Amarantin species in the book.

Another fascinating point of the book is the Melding Plague. Here in the real world nanoscopic particles used in various industrial and even household applications are already a health concern. Like microplastic trash, our bodies don't have a means to flush such artificial substances from our bodies. Nanoparticles could be totally benign but in all likelihood they will eventually be found to cause major health concerns.

Now add only slightly futuristic nanotechnology with the particles programmed to perform certain helpful tasks, like destroy cancer cells for example. Imagine billions of smart particles running threw a human body with bad programming, instead of destroying cancer cells they decide to go rogue and eat all the healthy cells.

One of the darkest nightmares of nanotechnology is the Grey Goo scenario where not only are the nanoparticles programmable, but can build new more versions of themselves from any convenient material. We're talking anything from steel, concrete, or even human tissue. Speculation has it that such a “plague” could go exponential and turn the entire surface of the planet into a massive sea of Grey Goo.

The level of universe building in Revelation Space is fantastic. The author, Alastair Reynolds is a master at painting a complex but grounded work of science fiction. The human societies occupying the universe of Revelation Space are in no way places I would like to live. But that makes them even more plausible in my mind given that human nature more or less stays the same in his twenty-sixth century.

If you're a fan of great science fiction go buy or borrow this book. Oh yeah, its part of a trilogy and the second book is even better in my opinion.

A Review of Singularity (2015)

Even with the pandemic throwing a huge monkey wrench into current movie production, true originality and creativity in Hollywood has suffered for decades. The reason is easy to figure out, movie producers simply do not want to take risks with their money. So instead they go with tried and true film formulas and repeatedly do countless reboots, sequels, prequels, and remakes.

This allows the big movie producing boys and girls to make enough money to buy their third home high in the hills of the Italian Rivera, their second yacht, and that super nice business jet where the casting couch is the size of a queen-sized bed. The under-educated masses don't mind, they get their regular dose of excessive gunfire, explosions, superheroes, and just enough wild sex to blunt the growing midnight-black abyss at the center of their consumerist lives. Whoa, went really dark there for a minute and on second thought, I have to include my own movie preferences in what the under-educated masses line up to watch during the dog days of summer.

The lack of originality is common with movies of all genres. If one studio puts out a movie about a plucky team of astronauts putting life and limb in danger to stop a giant asteroid from colliding with Earth and causing a mass extinction, you can bet another studio has its own version following closely behind. The same goes for chick flicks, if one story of a down on her luck single momma goes big, other studios are surely working on their version.

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with this business plan. Unless a producer and director want to go all high brow, European experimental cinema there are only so many ways to tell a story. Full disclosure, I watched one of the experimental films once and went away with bad dreams for weeks. I'll stick with Bond girls, burly and unrealistic action heroes, and starships battling evil invaders.

While there are only so many ways to tell a story people can relate, it would still be nice if the movie studios tried to get outside the damn box every now and then. But since movie studios can't imagine even peering over the rim of the same box to fresher ideas outside, we get the same boilerplate stories year after year.

The best example are the Terminator movies that have never really found a way to tell a different story from the first two. The one exception, Terminator: Salvation with Christian Bale tried to tell the story of the man/ AI conflict from another angle but is widely considered one of the worst. Yes, the worst is Terminator: Dark Fate which is a betrayal of T2 and even the fans on so many levels I refuse to watch it.

However, as unlikely as it may sound there are film makers taking these tired tropes into new and interesting directions.

A new and little known group called Dust Film Studios produces short films that are high quality and extremely thought-provoking. The majority of these films are posted on YouTube for free and there have been several times I spent two to three hours watching one after the other. My favorite though involves a Terminator-like battle between aggressive, sentient androids and humans. The chilling aspect though is that this war for survival takes place in the relative here and now.

The film is called “Singularity” and was directed by Samuel Jorgensen back in 2015. Warning, I'm going full spoiler here but it takes nothing away from the film.

The seven-minute film begins with a black screen and a news report saying the situation had gotten progressively worse over the last week with fighting engulfing Washington DC. At the beginning it's not mentioned that the enemy is androids with bad attitudes, nor is any backstory given about what caused them to go all Skynet-like and killing humans. With the screen still black another reporter breaks in saying that Marine One, the president's helicopter, has been shot down somewhere in Washington DC with POTUS in it. In less than a minute a truly dire situation has been established and I was on the edge of my seat wanting more the first time I saw the film.

The first actual scene of the film shows a Blackhawk helicopter and three Apache gunships in the skies heading to the location of the downed Marine One. Riding inside the Blackhawk is a Delta Force team out to rescue POTUS.

The Blackhawk briefly lands next what looks to be a ruined hospital deploying the Delta Force troopers who head inside one of the buildings. The production value of this film is incredibly high with the actors decked out in high tech armor quite close to the equipment used in actual combat areas. Each actor is also holding what looks to be a highly accurate M4 assault rifle prop. One of the problems with these types of films involving military operations is the lack, or outright absence, of proper equipment. The other typical problem with the films are actors who simply do not look like soldiers. The actors in Singularity have the exact look and bearing of experienced soldiers.

The Delta guys slowly go through the corridors of the war-damaged hospital looking for the president. The hospital is eerily quiet as they proceed with the only dead bodies they encounter being that of the president's Secret Service detail.

They link up with the president and begin the long haul back outside to the extraction point where another helicopter will be waiting. The president, while alive, is gravely injured and can barely walk. They don't move far before making contact with the enemy. The president calls the androids “clinkers” and once again, we're given no information on what brought on their rampage.

A running battle commences with the Delta guys taking heavy causalities as they move with the president. It is here that we our first, brief look at the enemy. The clinkers are clearly mechanical humanoids and at first glance do not stray far from a Terminator whose fresh has been burned away leaving nothing but the silver endoskeleton.

With most of the Delta rescue team dead, the two remaining troopers and the president are on the verge of getting out of the building. That's when the clinkers begin a heavy push forcing one of the troopers to stay behind in the last room providing cover for the president and his protector to get outside.

Even though the last soldier and the president do get outside, their ride out of the combat zone is still a full minute away. And yes, the clinkers are converging on their location with guns blazing. With the last Delta trooper providing cover, he tells the president to sprint towards the MH-53 Pave Low chopper as its sets down.

The president makes it to the chopper with the last Delta soldier fighting off clinkers as they rush his position. The Pave Low chopper takes off and just as the Delta trooper is about to be overrun one of the damn Apache gunships finally shows up and turns most of the attacking clinkers into chunks of scrap metal.

Curiously, seconds later one of the surviving clinkers walks up next the Delta trooper, who is expecting immediate death, and just watches the president's rescue chopper as it goes out of range. The scene then cuts away from the lone trooper and the clinker and transitions to the president sitting in the chopper.

For a second or two everything looks like a happy ending with the president being saved. That's when the president looks straight ahead and you see electric flashes in one of his eyes. We are left with the clear impression that the president has either been altered by the clinkers or completely replaced with an android double. Either way the president is now a two-legged Trojan Horse in the middle of a war that gives every indication of going badly for the Americans.

Just to make the tactical situation even more of a dire shit-show, the last scene of the film is a shot of the Washington skyline. Off in the background much of Washington is one fire including the Capitol Building. While in the foreground, we see the Washington Monument taking a direct missile hit and collapsing into rumble.

The first time I saw this film I was breathless at the ending, even with no backstory nor explanation of why the clinkers went rogue. This is the type of story that would make an awesome movie and shows what is lacking in the big production blockbusters we get today.

The budget for this short film had to have been small, but despite that the production values equaled many of the movies produced by the big studios. I even went as far to search the internet for any sign that this was just the first stage of turning Singularity into a major motion picture. I found nothing to suggest that was the case.

Yes, it was the unanswered plot points that made this such a great film. Despite that I still want to know why the clinkers were developed and what caused them to turn on their creators. Most of all I want to know what their ultimate goal is in their war with humans. Recognition of their freedom from cruel servitude, or outright destruction and enslavement of their former masters. Given the clinkers no-holds barred fighting in Washington DC, I see dark times ahead for the Americans. Needless to say, if you've got seven minutes to spare and like great story telling, find Singularity on YouTube. 

At the Fall of Night

A prequel to the recent Destiny's Path short story. 

The creature had died on a rocky outcropping next the cliff. Its remains looked human but Jacob could see the rainbow hue of the nanites embedded in the bones. He wondered if the creature had been one of the fanatical followers of the Teachings of Parr, or a poor soul that had been forcibly exposed to the corrupted nanotechnology. Not that it mattered, either way once the nanites invaded living tissue the infected person became a nightmarish creature that was anything but human.

Surrounded on two sides by boulders and large rocks, the remains had been sheltered from wind and rain for decades leaving the bones largely in the same place the creature had died. Jacob could even see small strips of cloth tangled among the bones and what looked like hair attached to the skull. In the back of Jacob's mind, he could almost imagine the creature had willfully chosen this spot to die. As if some shred of sentience had returned after all the humans it could hunt down had either been converted or torn to bloody shreds.

Jacob stood more than a meter away from the remains trying to dredge up some sort of emotions. He thought of his lost wife and daughter, the former having been forcibly exposed to the nanites while the latter had been killed as the two fled from their home. That had been more than sixty years ago and Jacob hated himself for his inability to picture his wife's face or the sound of his daughter's voice.

Jacob was pulled back to the present to find the young man, Stephen, standing beside him. “Mr. Jacob,” Stephen said, “are the tiny machines still active?”

“Probably not,” Jacob responded, “but it still wouldn't be a good idea to touch anything.” Jacob noticed how the nanites had leached out of the bones and into the rocky surface looking for another host to infect. That had to have occurred right after the creature had died. But there was no reason to leave it to chance.

“Stephen,” Jacob said, “go find Iliza or Michelle and get one of the bottles of stove fuel. We need to sterilize the area just to be safe.”

Stephen ran off to find the fuel leaving Jacob again with his thoughts. Both of Brigham's moons were visible in the afternoon sky and as Jacob looked down to the valley below he could almost imagine the last sixty years hadn't occurred.

The city of Sego looked just like it did right after he graduated from university. He was twenty-three years old and ready to start his life. He married Emma the following year and they had Madison two years later. A month after turning thirty-one was when it all fell apart.

***

From the moment the Senior Council of Brigham was established four-hundred, fifty years before the Fall, the leaders had kept the artificial wombs brought from Earth on the seedship pumping out babies. The goal being a human population on Brigham that could support a technological civilization equal to Earth, Mars, or Titan. The Senior Council talked of colonizing the other planets of the Brigham system and even building seedships and sending them out to other nearby star systems.

So even after the optimal population of sixty-thousand souls had been reached, the Senior Council expanded the number of producing artificial wombs. These children were raised by robot caregivers, as the first colonists, and upon reaching maturity were sent out into the wilderness areas of the planet to push the boundaries of settlement.

The plan worked fine until being raised in the creche became a social stigma. “Creche-born” became a slur among the human-born population that translated into a form of discrimination back in the developed areas. Creche-born children disproportionately suffered emotional and psychological trauma from being raised by robots. This promoted a certain percentage to adopt destructive behaviors and substance addictions to compensate for the lack of human contact in their early years.

Where the human-born people of the developed areas truly failed the creche-born brothers and sisters was understanding the stress and dangers of being pushed into the frontiers regions. The human-born were raised on stories of their courageous ancestors who turned a barren rock into a living world. They didn't realize that the early colonists suffered greatly with many utterly failing to live up to the standards demanded of the creche-born.

As the decades passed, creche-born people began illegally returning to the developed areas becoming an underclass without access to the services the human-born took for granted. Supremely organized and clean cities across Brigham sprouted slums and even homeless folks living wherever they could. Urban crime penetrated deep into the cities with the human-born beginning to fear and then hate the men or women they saw lurking in the shadows.

There were attempts at societal reform but the underlying problems of the system were always ignored. The poor and under-educated creche-born were cheap labor easy to exploit. For the human-born, life was good and Brigham had a Manifest Destiny to take their branch of human civilization back out to the stars. That's when Thaddeus Parr appeared and started his movement.

***

Stephen eventually returned carrying a squeeze bottle of cook stove fuel. Jacob took the container from the young man trying not to think about how Stephen looked. Jacob was ninety-one but appeared to be in his early forties. The benefit of being born when medical technology guaranteed every baby a long healthy life. Stephen was in his twenties but would have been confused with a much older person before the Fall. With technology corrupted and people living only slightly above a Stone Age technology, Stephen probably wouldn't make it much beyond fifty years old.

Jacob sprayed the liquid over the bones and the areas where the nanites had leeched into the rock. He used a pocket igniter to start the fire. As the bones turned black from the flames, the rest of his small group gathered around without saying a word.

“Alright people,” Bruce Carter called out as the fire began to die. “We need to get down this mountain to the refuge and we're losing daylight.”

Bruce, the de facto leader of the group and the one man beside Jacob who understood the dangers they faced leaving the protection offered by the high mountains. A child when Parr's Plague swept the colony, Bruce's family already lived in one of the villages established on a plateau nearly unassailable by anything except aircraft and heavy-duty, off-road vehicles.

As the nanite infected roamed the planet someone realized that they never went up into the high mountain settlements. Even with all forms of communication down, word got around to the few survivors that it was safe up in the mountains. While some survivors from the lower altitudes eventually reached these settlements, their numbers were exceedingly small.

For decades the uninfected hid in the high mountains never considering going down to the lower levels. Cut off from one another, these isolated pockets of humanity looked down from their hideouts and watched as bands of the infected moved across the valleys and coastal regions. Eventually though as the years passed the infected, unable to have children, began to die off allowing the mountain peoples to come down for limited periods.

The next day the group entered the dead city of Sego. While the infected no longer moved in large groups, smaller clusters and the stray individual was still a possibility. Even worse, the corrupted nanites that turned humans into ravaging monsters were ubiquitous to Brigham technology. Any computer-based item almost certainly carried infected nanites, which if touched could enter a person and begin building copies of itself. After entering the human body, it took a little under 48 hours before the person went insane.

Bruce Carter walked point going down the deserted streets with Michelle and Iliza pulling rear guard. All three armed with projectile assault rifles that worked without the aid of any computer assistance. The stated reason for the expedition, a search for needed non-perishable items such as low-level medical kits, hydroponic supplies, and anything else that might aid survival up in the mountains. However, the expedition was also meant to see how much of the nanites remained active after six decades.

The city of Sego didn't look abandoned except for all the computer tech laying in the streets and the occasional human remains. When people realized it was the tech spreading Parr's Plague, everything based on nanite computing was throw away in a panic. By that time it was too late, infected humans were already forming groups with the sole purpose to convert or kill everyone else.

Jacob cringed passing a reading tablet laying in the street, probably dropped there in the opening moments of Parr's Plague. It was the exact model like the one he stored his personal library on before the Fall. Like the remains of the creature they saw up in the mountains, the nanites from the reader had leached out into the substance of the street itself. What made this instance worse though was that Jacob could see the rainbow-hued nanites pulsing confirming they were still active. The pulsing, active nanties confirmed the group's worst fears, that it would still be many years if not decades before they could safely leave their mountain refuge. This information made their true mission even more important.

Barely two hours later the group leaves Sego behind having found all the items they needed to survive just a little longer. More importantly, both Jacob and Bruce retrieved what they needed to implement their personal project, a sort of gift to the future.

***

Their refuge didn't have a name, it was just a collection of cabins made of wood, stone, and metal storage containers. For people who had grown up around holographic entertainment systems, semi-sentient personal computers, limb and organ regeneration hospitals, and nanotechnology that could fabricate just about any item the refuge was tantamount to a Neolithic existence. Even such mundane services as running water and working toilets were the stuff of fantasy to the small collection of children born since the Fall.

But to the ones like Jacob and Bruce, who had seen everything fall apart and be replaced with death and chaos, the refuge was a chance to carry on and maybe rebuild one day.

“Jacob,” Bruce Carter began while taking a seat in his friend's small hut made of piled stone and particle board, “how will we organize this project?”

On Jacob's table, which had once been a packing crate, were eight items that any human would have recognized whether they had been born in ancient Rome to the late twenty-first century. The eight items were thick, unused leather bound journals. The unused journals were the result of a colony-wide fad of people wanting to leave some physical mark that didn't involve computers. The producers of the journals went as far to make them with paper and fake leather covers that were supposed to last centuries.

“I figure the first volume will be a basic history of humanity,” Jacob said feeling the weight of the task and its importance. “We won't have room for much detail and in-depth analysis, but enough for our descendants to understand where they came from. The other volumes will deal with science and engineering, enough to help whoever comes after us to leap frog the barriers that held Earth back for so long.”

“What troubles me, Jacob is that do we really need to do any of this?” Bruce asked.

“Bruce, all of our records and information is either lost or stored in systems that would turn us into monsters if we tried to access it. Our civilization, hell our entire existence was made possible by the computing power and storage capacity that damn nanotechnology made possible.”

“Thinking more to the long-term,” Jacob said after a long silent pause, “without some form of written record it won't take long before our civilization and its accomplishments become like the myths of ancient Earth. I can imagine a few hundred years from now people coming to believe humans originated from this planet.”

“Goddamn Thaddeus Parr and his terrorists,” was all Bruce could say.

“I knew Thaddeus Parr,” Bruce said in way that conveyed both a sense of sadness and anger. “Parr was truly insane and his corrupted nanites killed millions, but we created him. We built a society that thrived on the suffering of a people us human-born didn't really believe were on our level. Now like many times before back on Earth, we'll have to start over. Hopefully, our descendants won't repeat the same mistakes.”

Bruce wanted to believe his friend, that another, wiser civilization would rise in the place of the dead and decaying one down in the valleys and coasts. While Bruce didn't have the education of Jacob, he knew enough of Earth's history to have a cold chill of dread run down his spine. 

 Author's Notes:

One of the periods of human history that fascinates me the most involves the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations around 1200 BCE. With the exception of Egypt, which was greatly weakened and never recovered, most of the empires and kingdoms during that time utterly collapsed. The best examples being Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite Empire.

The crash was caused by several factors but the most mysterious in a historical sense were the ravaging "Sea Peoples" that attacked both coastal cities and those far inland. Much debate and head scratching by academics has gone to determining where the Sea People originated. 

I had always wanted to incorporate the concept of a Sea Peoples into a futuristic setting. 

I also wanted to create a setting where the bizarre human need to create an underclass raised its ugly head again. And yes, I touched on certain social issues that really piss me off.