Grantville Gazette, Volume 64

by Bjorn Hasseler

  Night blindness takes longer to develop than scurvy in part because vitamin A is stored in the liver. If a healthy person with a history of adequate intake of vitamin A is suddenly deprived of it, he may have 8-12 months' worth in reserve. On the Novara, which circumnavigated the world in 1857-9, scurvy appeared on several of the long legs between ports where citrus fruits and potatoes were available, whereas night blindness only appeared near the end of the voyage (9).

  ****

  To Be Continued …

  Notes From the Buffer Zone:

  Snoopy and the USB Drive

  by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  I spent way too much time tonight staring at a cheap USB drive. It has a famous image of the Peanuts Gang on both sides. Schroeder plays the piano while everyone else smiles and listens. Even Snoopy, who sits on top of the piano instead of dancing his way across the drive.

  And I had this thought: Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, died before this technology was invented.

  Of course, then I had to check, because Procrastination R Us, and technically, I was wrong. Schultz died in 2000, and the first USB drives hit the market that same year.

  But did he know the tech existed? I have no idea.

  Did he think his characters would grace the sides of a USB drive?

  Absolutely not. None of us did in those dark days 16 years ago. We had no idea that USB drives would become both ubiquitous and cheap.

  I'm having all kinds of issues with technology and passing time. I'm writing two different science fiction series, both set in the future. I started one of those series in the previous century (!) and the other around 2004. Tech has changed so much in those years that I find myself having to explain why these far-flung cultures don't have things we have now.

  In my award-winning Diving universe (Diving into the Wreck, City of Ruins, etc.), explaining why these cultures don't have the same tech we do is pretty simple: every story in the universe is about lost tech, lost knowledge, and lost cultures. So the fact that some of these cultures have a lot less than we do now—well, that's part of the storytelling.

  I hadn't planned it that way. I got the idea for the stories while reading a book on deep sea diving, searching for ships and all their lost history. Then I got to thinking about all the shipboard tech that is no longer used or has been updated or seems impossible from a modern perspective.

  When I was in London several years ago now, I went to the Imperial War Museum, and toured—if you could call it that—a World War Two submarine. I'd always read that the men who served on submarines had to be small, but wow, did touring the sub bring that home. I'm 5'5" and at the time I wasn't exactly thin, but I wasn't exactly fat either. Getting around in that cramped environment was almost impossible for me. I can't imagine what it must have been like for people who are taller and wider.*

  Of course, all of that got me thinking about space and spaceships and lost civilizations and lost ideas and just how impossible it is to recapture every detail of the past.

  While those thoughts are useful for the historical fiction that I write, from alternate history to time travel to historical mysteries, and while those thoughts were also useful for the Diving series, they don't help with the Retrieval Artist series.

  That series is older and half the tech I use every day wasn't even on the horizon yet. Yes, we knew that handheld computers were coming, but who, in 1997, could have foreseen that we would carry our phones around the way that high school kids in Home Ec carry that blasted raw egg for three days to show them how hard it is to care for a baby. Who could have foreseen the raw computing power of those phones or the fact that we would voluntarily give up so much privacy?

  I mean, really. Most of us leave our location tracker on and give it up to apps all the time. A lot of us store our credit card information on the phone along with our social security number and our date of birth and our address and everything else that we need for identification. So, steal someone's phone, steal someone's life.

  I think that surprises me less, though, than the fact that we love to be so accessible and not accessible at the same time. We interrupt our real lives for texts and phone calls in ways we never did in the 20th century. At the same time, getting someone's cell phone number is like breaking into Fort Knox. You have to be a trusted friend to get the number. The days of phonebooks are as quaint as party lines.

  How does that impact my Retrieval Artist universe? I have some wonky tech in that universe on purpose—I use FTL and what someone called "the internet of things" where information can travel on links installed in someone's brain over light years. And yes, I know, right now, that's the stuff of fantasy.

  But there are other things in that universe that make me decidedly uncomfortable. Self-driving cars—which we did not have in 1997—are underway now, and most of them have safety features—hell, features—that my far-future cars don't have. I'm going to have to do some major explaining at some point—and I know there's even more looming.

  I plan to write that series until I die—and I don't plan to die for another fifty years or so. Which means I will be doing a lot of hand-waving to explain the dated or strange tech.

  Which brings me back to the USB drive. Because I have no idea what'll be around ten years from now, let alone fifty years from now. Will my characters grace some device that I can't even imagine? Will my readers wonder why my characters don't use that selfsame device in their far-future worlds?

  I have no idea. This world is going through such rapid technological change that the world of my birth—the mid-20th century—feels as remote as the 19th century. It didn't feel that way when Charles Schultz died in the year 2000, although I should have had an inkling.

  Because in early 2001—before 9/11—I went to a conference put on by then 91-year-old Jack Williamson. The point was to discuss tech and the future. Jack was always farther ahead than the rest of us on future tech. Back then, I thought it odd that a nonagenarian knew more about the future than the rest of us.

  Now it makes sense.

  He'd been living in the future for a very long time. To him, the world of his birth—1910—must have seemed even more distant than the world of my birth does right now. His autobiography, Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction, has a very dark section about how discouraged he became with science and science fiction after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

  He crossed the country in a covered wagon as a child. Imagine how, some thirty years later, it must have felt to see the possible destruction of the world, through something he loved and believed in.

  I thought I could imagine it when I talked about it with Jack. But I couldn't imagine it then as clearly as I can now.

  I live in the future, one I didn't anticipate. Just like he did.

  And tonight, the symbol of that future is a $5 USB drive with Snoopy and the gang grinning at me from it. Some favorite characters from my childhood, on a device that I couldn't even conceive when I bought all those paperbacks with every single Peanuts cartoon in them—paperbacks that, at the time, seemed dated to me.

  Heh. Little did I know what the future would bring. What's old is new, I guess. And what's new is often very surprising.

  *I have to share: one of my favorite museum memories ever comes from that sub tour. I was going through the submarine with a bunch of ten-year-olds on a school trip. Most exhibits at the War Museum have a smell feature—a smell-the-past kind of thing—and some wag decided to let us all know what a submarine smelled like after several weeks underwater.

  I daintily decided not to sniff that part of the exhibit. But the boy in front of me took a gigantic whiff, turned green, and dropped it, shouting "Pee-You!" at the top of his lungs.

  What did that mean? It meant that all the other kids had to sniff it too—and get grossed out as well. That's what living history is all about, folks.

  This Issue's Cover

  This Issue's Cover-64

  Bad News from the Future!

  Cha
rles I of England learns that things did not go well for him in the future that Grantville came from!

  The source artwork is a portrait by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1628.

  Cromwell's England is a book that may or may not exist. If one does, this isn't that one.

  A Green Tongue

  by Frank Dutkiewicz

  The thing swayed ever so slightly in the interrogation bay. Purple streaks ran vertically up a midsection I would best describe as a thick trunk. Limbs sprouted from the trunk with flat pads at its ends that looked remarkably like leaves. On its top perched an enormous maw—closed like a flower waiting for the dawn—with faint hints of orange hiding within. It stood five feet tall, was mostly green, and sat inside a tub filled with black dirt.

  "You're kidding, right?" I said to General O'Sullivan. "It's a plant."

  "You are a member of the Diplomatic Corps, are you not, Mr. Mann?"

  "Yes, but—"

  The general raised a hand, stopping me in mid-sentence. "This specimen has been determined to be the sentient species of this planet. According to the Confederation Articles of Galactic Expansion, contact must be established with the dominant native species before any commerce, military, or scientific outpost is made permanent—"

  "If the dominant species shows signs of intelligence," I finished for him. I looked at it again. It had nothing like a hand, lacked any receptors that would be useful for communication—like speech or sight—and was permanently affixed to one space. "But it's a plant," I whined. "How in the hell am I supposed to talk to a plant?"

  "You managed to talk to a fish, didn't you?"

  I grimaced at the general. I received plenty of admiration from the Confederation when I established contact with the Tunish, but cute pranks still plagued me every time I was reassigned. Usually, a goldfish in a fishbowl—or the native equivalent—would be waiting to greet me in my new office with a pasted note begging "take me to your leader," or something equally as lame, stuck to its side. My first thought was this was a cleverer version of that running joke, but General O'Sullivan struck me as man who wouldn't tolerate such nonsense.

  "The Tunish already had a means of communication," I said. "They had a sophisticated form of body language with vocal signals that complemented it. Piecing it together was hard but they were cooperative once they realized what we were up to." I swept an arm at the monstrous pansy. "This thing, is a plant; a term that's universally accepted as a euphemism for an unresponsive life form. Just look at it." I stared at it for a moment, almost hoping the thing would prove me wrong by waving a branch at me or something, but it didn't move so much as a stem. "It's … primitive building material … an oxygen cleanser … shade for a rodent … cow food … a plant!"

  O'Sullivan grasped his hands behind his back and stared down the bridge of his nose at me. "Are you telling me that I, my leading scientist, and everyone who has been on this station more than a day, are wrong, Mr. Mann?"

  I buried my face in my hands. He's serious. I shook my head and cursed the Sub-Secretary of Alien Affairs for tricking me into accepting this assignment. I drew in a deep breath and tried something that never worked before—talking sense to a general.

  "Sir," I started. "There are forty-seven known planets where multi-celled life exists, each one evolving its own form of chlorophyll-based life—plants. But plants can't communicate and aren't capable of forming an intelligence, despite having a billion-year evolutionary head start on every planet where they're found. Plants aren't built for intelligence; they're plants."

  "I don't care what you know, what you've learned, and any other preconceived notions you had before," said the general. "This species is different. Alien intelligence is supposed to be your expertise. Do your job and open up a dialogue with it, so we can do ours."

  I glared at the thing, sitting in its tub of dirt while it soaked in the bay’s artificial light. If the flower was capable of experiencing any feelings at all, this one had to be full of contempt. I grimaced. How in the hell am I supposed to communicate with a plant?

  "What makes you so sure it is sentient?" I asked.

  "By demonstrating an ability to defend itself, assess a threat, and adapt."

  I arched an eyebrow at the general then looked at the alien flower. "Go on."

  "There have been six attempts to establish a base on Darvolock. Every structure has been destroyed. Eighty-seven people have set foot on the planet. Over half have been confirmed as dead or lost."

  I turned to study him, not sure if I heard him correctly. "What do you mean by lost? I thought everyone assigned to expeditions had to have a nanite locator."

  "They are. All traces of the first two expeditions are completely gone. All the equipment, clothing, and organic matter were completely absorbed by the jungle, right down to their microscopic tags."

  "Absorbed as in overgrown?"

  The general led me to a viewer. "This is the third expedition viewed from orbit shortly after it landed."

  The ship looked like a troop lander, minus all the intimidating weaponry. The round vessel landed in a clearing surrounded by trees covered with vines and plants similar to ferns, the landscape looking very much like how the Amazon must have appeared centuries ago.

  "The hull is an iron-based flexible-carbide composite, common material for spaceships. Tough stuff with all types of alloys and proto-polymer material woven into its fabric, resistant to almost everything. Here is a time-lapse archive."

  Flowers, like the prisoner in the interrogation bay, turned their maws toward the landing vessel. Vines wormed out of the ground and slithered like snakes over the ship, constricting around the landing pads. I saw men—sped up at ridiculous speeds—exit the ship, working to free it from the vines. They must have used lasers because the vines momentarily began to pile up. Then new vines from the flowers went after the men. A battle commenced. Fallen men were dragged back into the ship.

  Two minutes into the show—two hours in real time—the first landing pad was sawed free. Men again exited the ship with what looked like flamethrowers. Flowers fell, as did men when silverish plants sprang up that resisted the fire. Again the men retreated. A minute later into the film, a rescue vessel landed and took off seconds later with the crew.

  "Here is what happened to the lander, one day at a time."

  Vines swarmed the vessel. Like butter left in the sun on a warm day, the vessel shrunk with each frame. It took ten frames for the ship to disappear.

  "They dissolved it?"

  General O'Sullivan nodded.

  "There must be a pool of metal under all that vegetation."

  "You would think so but no. Spectral analyses and scans confirm not a trace of it is left. You could burn the jungle down and you wouldn't find a rivet."

  I looked at the prisoner plant behind the glass window with a new measure of respect. Deceptive bastard, aren't you?

  "So why land in the jungle? Planets are big. Go where they don't grow."

  "Have you had a chance to view Darvolock yet?"

  The station orbited the planet but I hadn't the time to sightsee. My orders explicitly said to report to the general when I arrived.

  "No sir."

  The general led me to a port window. The greenest planet I'd ever seen filled the frame. Behind it loomed Darvolock's sister planet, a blue methane world whose name I had yet to learn.

  "This species covers every inch of this world. You'll find only a limited number of insects and plants coexisting with them. No ice fields, deserts, or rolling prairies, only jungle. Just one big planet-wide tropical forest."

  I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at the green world. "No oceans? What about the poles? Shouldn't it be colder and dryer there?"

  "The oceans are covered with pond scum twenty feet thick, a very fertile surface for them. As far as the poles, this world maintains a consistent temperature. You won't find a rain cloud anywhere. Fog in the morning, but that's it. The theory is the plants have irrigated all the water. A really humid pla
ce with one season—sticky."

  I was astounded, a single species covering every square inch of a space. The surface might as well be an ocean of acid. "So the native life doesn't want to share their world. Why not let them keep it?"

  "Multi-dimensional cartology isn't your strong suit, is it?"

  I shook my head while feeling my face flush.

  "Noticed the lopsided barbell-shaped blue sun? That's Spica A and B, 16 AUs away. B is four times larger than Sol. A is twice its size. They circle so close both stars are distorted. They kick out enough solar activity to sterilize Earth, even at this distance. Darvolock has a magnetic field three times stronger than ours, and its Neptune-sized partner makes for the third counter-gravity well. A big battery with a big partner to help offset time-and-space."

  It took me second to piece it together. "Wormhole generation?"

  "Several," he said. "As in fourteen, most going to unexplored systems."

  I shook my head in disbelief. Multiple wormholes were rare. Five was the most discovered in one system.

  "And one leads back to Alpha Centauri," added the general.

  Two jumps to Earth. I almost doubled the number of jumps I ever made to get to this wormhole dead end. Darvolock was more than a life-sustaining world. It represented the Panama Canal of space.