Darker Matter
The Darker Matter
Tom Albright © 2010
This whole situation stinks.
Here I sit, coasting along in the big black nothing, and I've just watched the last of the movies stored on the shipsys.
Mind you, it took a while to watch all six hundred and twenty-two of them, but I did it. I even watched all the old 2-D flatscreen John Wayne movies that the Chakra-Nee must have added; for some reason, old Earth westerns fascinate them. Besides the movies, I have tried every recipe in the 2112 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook. After last week's inventory, my supplies will let me eat for about another fifty-six years, if I only bake one cake a week. I also spend a lot of time thinking, "Sam Shott, you should never have pushed the 'go' button on this thing." And that's about the run of my activities.
I'm still holding out a slim hope that somebody will come along and throw me a line. Fat chance. That line would have to be about 6 trillion miles long by now. On the other hand, it might only need to be six feet. In my predicament, there's no way to know. I really don't know where, exactly, "here" is.
You see, when I say I am in the "big black nothing", I mean it. I believe I have slipped over the edge of the universe. Impossible, you say? You're not the one stuck in the nothing.
Really, things could be a lot better, in my humble opinion.
You see, it all started as an off-the-cuff remark at Gene Winn's birthday party.
Gene Winn - now there's a man with a story. Gene was literally the last of the old American space program. In 2051, a year after he and Billy Graves were launched on the first extra-solar trip, all the funding for the US's space exploration was cut. Not that it mattered to Gene and Billy; they slept in hibernation for most of their 50 year trip. It should have been a hundred-plus year round trip if they hadn't met the Chakra-Nee, and got a quick ride back. They found the planet being explored by a scout from the Chakra-Nee, a nice, uh, guy, with an unpronounceable name whom Gene named "Chuck" for convenience. Chuck, it turned out, was a rare specimen among his folk, someone who wanted to explore space.
So anyway, every year those of us on planet throw Gene a birthday party. For Earth, he's a larger than life hero. For those of us who know Gene, he's a regular guy. Of course, if his sheer luck had been worse, none of us would be on the planet of "Dry Heat", let alone being interplanetary space pilots. This celebration was for his sixty-second physical birthday, or his 112th actual birthday, and about twenty of us were gathered at his house in the so-called "garden district" near the south pole. It's a cactus garden, mostly. But I digress.
We were all quipping the usual stories, drinking the usual drinks, eating the usual food, and generally enjoying the good feeling that comes from being with family and close friends, when the door chime range, and in came Chuck. Now, Chuck is a good friend to all of us, and is always welcome, but even in our "cold" - to him - 35 degree Cee summers he rarely visits. But in he came, dressed in his hotsuit, made to keep his 83 degree Cee core body temperature up and keeping him from going into hypothermia. Even with the insulation you could feel the heat two feet away.
Last we heard Chuck had been making a freight run. See, he lost his job after discovering Dry Heat as well, and had gone to work with the Chinese, contract like the rest of us. Seems as if the buzzards concept of "acceptable planets to colonize" means the whole thing, not shared, all habitable, in order to meet their projected population growth. They had out of necessity settled some of the planet, but their name for it was officially "Failure." Their next planned exploratory mission was about thirty years away and Chuck got hung out to dry. The Chakra-Nee put the Chinese to shame when it came to long term planning.
"Happy Birssday, Gene!" he lisped, as he came in the door, dragging a brightly wrapped gift box. The buzzards don't celebrate anything, but Chuck personally liked the human customs. If you ever met another Chakra-Nee, you would know that Chuck wasn't typical. Most of them simply ignore humans; they don't seem to be hateful or malicious, we just don't seem that important to them. It's a nice study in human/alien behavior. They are population-and-growth centered, and have a very narrow mindset. If they hadn't developed space travel, they might even be extinct by now from overrunning their home planet. Their population growth is a simple fact for them, and for pete's sake don't mention birth control... alien, like I said. They can't follow the concept.
Tom Albright © 2010
This whole situation stinks.
Here I sit, coasting along in the big black nothing, and I've just watched the last of the movies stored on the shipsys.
Mind you, it took a while to watch all six hundred and twenty-two of them, but I did it. I even watched all the old 2-D flatscreen John Wayne movies that the Chakra-Nee must have added; for some reason, old Earth westerns fascinate them. Besides the movies, I have tried every recipe in the 2112 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook. After last week's inventory, my supplies will let me eat for about another fifty-six years, if I only bake one cake a week. I also spend a lot of time thinking, "Sam Shott, you should never have pushed the 'go' button on this thing." And that's about the run of my activities.
I'm still holding out a slim hope that somebody will come along and throw me a line. Fat chance. That line would have to be about 6 trillion miles long by now. On the other hand, it might only need to be six feet. In my predicament, there's no way to know. I really don't know where, exactly, "here" is.
You see, when I say I am in the "big black nothing", I mean it. I believe I have slipped over the edge of the universe. Impossible, you say? You're not the one stuck in the nothing.
Really, things could be a lot better, in my humble opinion.
You see, it all started as an off-the-cuff remark at Gene Winn's birthday party.
Gene Winn - now there's a man with a story. Gene was literally the last of the old American space program. In 2051, a year after he and Billy Graves were launched on the first extra-solar trip, all the funding for the US's space exploration was cut. Not that it mattered to Gene and Billy; they slept in hibernation for most of their 50 year trip. It should have been a hundred-plus year round trip if they hadn't met the Chakra-Nee, and got a quick ride back. They found the planet being explored by a scout from the Chakra-Nee, a nice, uh, guy, with an unpronounceable name whom Gene named "Chuck" for convenience. Chuck, it turned out, was a rare specimen among his folk, someone who wanted to explore space.
So anyway, every year those of us on planet throw Gene a birthday party. For Earth, he's a larger than life hero. For those of us who know Gene, he's a regular guy. Of course, if his sheer luck had been worse, none of us would be on the planet of "Dry Heat", let alone being interplanetary space pilots. This celebration was for his sixty-second physical birthday, or his 112th actual birthday, and about twenty of us were gathered at his house in the so-called "garden district" near the south pole. It's a cactus garden, mostly. But I digress.
We were all quipping the usual stories, drinking the usual drinks, eating the usual food, and generally enjoying the good feeling that comes from being with family and close friends, when the door chime range, and in came Chuck. Now, Chuck is a good friend to all of us, and is always welcome, but even in our "cold" - to him - 35 degree Cee summers he rarely visits. But in he came, dressed in his hotsuit, made to keep his 83 degree Cee core body temperature up and keeping him from going into hypothermia. Even with the insulation you could feel the heat two feet away.
Last we heard Chuck had been making a freight run. See, he lost his job after discovering Dry Heat as well, and had gone to work with the Chinese, contract like the rest of us. Seems as if the buzzards concept of "acceptable planets to colonize" means the whole thing, not shared, all habitable, in order to meet their projected population growth. They had out of necessity settled some of the planet, but their name for it was officially "Failure." Their next planned exploratory mission was about thirty years away and Chuck got hung out to dry. The Chakra-Nee put the Chinese to shame when it came to long term planning.
"Happy Birssday, Gene!" he lisped, as he came in the door, dragging a brightly wrapped gift box. The buzzards don't celebrate anything, but Chuck personally liked the human customs. If you ever met another Chakra-Nee, you would know that Chuck wasn't typical. Most of them simply ignore humans; they don't seem to be hateful or malicious, we just don't seem that important to them. It's a nice study in human/alien behavior. They are population-and-growth centered, and have a very narrow mindset. If they hadn't developed space travel, they might even be extinct by now from overrunning their home planet. Their population growth is a simple fact for them, and for pete's sake don't mention birth control... alien, like I said. They can't follow the concept.
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