The Storm Fishers and Other Stories

by Everitt Foster

got past orbit, which paid enough to put a down payment on a four room house. The house sat on a cycad shaded street in the Faraday Station neighborhood adjacent to Schirra Academy, a great school by any measure, and across from Gus Grissom Park. Most importantly, the construction agent included a four-hundred cubic meter shed with a fixed foundation in back. Most young families opted for the sunning station, but to keep the peace Aventine acquiesced to what some readers would recognize as a ‘man cave.’

  Eleven years and two children, Rose and Felix, later the Futters purchased the fueling station from Master Pud for what they considered a low price. Pud retired and within the year they discovered the Planetary Planning Commission had diverted traffic to the gas giants away from Phobos to a state of the tech full service terminus capable of sling shotting ships through the asteroid belt. This left Digby with enough time to remember his dreams.

  One day, not so long after the traffic was redirected and the filling station was overpassed, Digby found himself in an empty garage alone with classic ships in need of repair.

  “A scientist without equipment. Might as well be an artist without a paintbrush,” he said to his construction bot.

  “That’s a false analogy,” said the bot.

  “Shut up Rusty.”

  Digby strolled along wooden scaffolding. He stopped under the cathedral sized window and let the light cover his face. The warmth saved the moment in his wetware and he enhanced the memory by caressing the undercarriage of the Virgin Express transport, Coventry. The red paint chipped off the ceramic shell. He flicked a few more flakes as the hangar bay rumbled. He looked up and thought - maybe? Someone needs me?

  Nope.

  Doppler Effect.

  Just that instant the oxidized chain holding the compressor rack over his egg shaped head snapped and a bronze nut bonked his noggin then plunged to the fracked concrete. He was safe of course; however, the 2500kg compressors smashed on the ground below. Aventine rushed from the office just in time to duck a flying hose slapping the wall.

  “Haven’t you been keeping up with maintenance?” Digby and Rusty rolled the canisters back on the loading scaffold.

  “I do my best sunny bunny.”

  “He likes to sit in the payload bay and ride the mechanical arm all afternoon.”

  “Weasel.” He held his head down bringing up the next compressor.

  “What in the Oort cloud impelled you to ignore the shop?”

  Digby pushed the tanks back in place. It cleared his mind. Then a spark of knowledge. Surely this is what Euripides felt.

  Obviously, every action there is a reaction.

  If he wasn’t so tired every morning he could have come in fresh with his mind pushing his body to work. But he didn’t. His negligence was inevitable, derived from preceding events. Therefore the crash wasn’t his fault at all. Eureka!

  He rushed to his workbench and grabbed an old fashioned pad and pen.

  1. I cannot count on new business, therefore I work hard to keep customers.

  2. Established customers were kept happy discussing ‘the good old days of exploration and adventure’.

  3. Therefore keeping up on the past is as much my job as much as working as a quantum mechanic.

  4. This chain of events led to the negligence that led to the snapped chain that caused the nut to doink my head.

  He signed it and titled it, ‘The First Law of Fate.’ Think of the far reaching implications of Futter’s First Law. Think of the future, the grants, the statue in Grissom Park. No Grissom isn’t big enough.

  Maxwell Station. No.

  Interplanetary Research Vessel Futter.

  That’ll do. Everyone starts somewhere.

  Futter grabbed his Oppenheimer style hat and jacket and yelled as he dashed past Aventine’s office, “I have to get to the tinker shed. Take a cab honey!”

  Aventine looked on yelling into her cell, “swing by the market and pick up a few-”

  He switched off the receiver. Small matters for small minds, he thought. All great theories must undergo rigorous contemplation.

  “Day One, Test One” he scribbled on page one of a fresh journal. Futter developed a love for ‘old timey’ methods such as writing in notebooks with fountain pens and drinking from glass bottles. It was the first day of Founders Festival and the summer sunrise was due in under an hour, but Digby awoke early and brought the children along as assistants. Felix Futter’s was five years old and had recently learned to hate waking up on time for school. Rose, who had long been her father’s protege, did not feel the need for a third pair of hands on this experiment. But she strained to pull a red Radio Flyer bounding against the neighbor’s driveway as the magnets holding it aloft strained under the weight. Beneath the sheet came a scratch and a sneeze and some snorting. A furry twitching nose peeked under the cloth. Felix reached out to pet the whiskers and the nose shot backwards.

  “Make him help.”

  “It’s so soft.”

  “Dad make the nose gremlin help!” yelled Rose.

  “Come feel,” Felix said.

  “Did you at least check my homework?” she said under her breath.

  Futter stood like the Colossus over Rhodes, looked to the rising sun, raised his hand, cleared his voice and spoke, “Perhaps his curiosity will lead him to greatness. What he does is beyond my control.”

  “It wasn’t beyond your control when you grounded me from the mathletes,” she said.

  “That’s not the same thing. This is about fate.”

  “Maybe it’s fate that you fail to prove the laws of fate on account of a paint chip eating kid?” He thought of Newton; he would not become Leibniz. He waived at Felix. “Help your sister get him on the flatbed.”

  The “him” in question was a martian hopper with a collar around its furry neck that read ‘Nobit. If found return to Drs. R.T. and Calinda Mudfoot - Number 487, Faraday Station; Caution: very affectionate.’ The Martian hopper was a genetically engineered rabbit designed for non-terran, non-support ship human consumption. It looked much like a terran rabbit but it was about three meters long, twitchy nose to hyper twirly tail, one and a half meters at the shoulder, razor like teeth for nibbling the fast growing coniferous trees placed on Mars during terraformation. This particular hopper had been bred Martian pink with ice blue stripes in its fur. It was the last clause that allowed Futter and his assistants to get Nobit out of his cage and onto the flatbed. The bunny chased Felix around the Mudfoot’s lawn until Digby leashed the speedy little bugger. When all was secure in the flatbed Digby threw a bundle of cycad branches in the back and said, “Every ten meters or so toss a few leaves into the street.”

  Shortly, they arrived on the edge of Keyserling Forest, a nature preserve near the edge of the station. Digby turned down a vehicle access trail and continued on until he discovered a clearing. Rose led the hopper off the flatbed by holding a fresh cycad while Felix crawled on Nobit’s back, riding him like a racecraft.

  “We’ll lead him up the big piney tree with the branch that stretches over the fence separating the park from the zoo. Then he’ll get hungry, bend over the fence and find himself unable to get back up without assistance.”

  “Won’t he starve?” asked Felix holding Nobit’s aerodynamic ears.

  “Excellent observation! But no, that’s the point. The Mudfoots will find him in a few hours. Maybe a few days. And if they don’t find him the zookeepers will. You see kids we are going to demonstrate that when the right conditions are in place behavior becomes inevitable. In this way we’ll be able to predict accurately the exact nature and outcome of human behavior. Given the right conditions - fate will intervene. Inevitability.”

  “In game theory our teacher said us nobody does what you think they will,” said Rose.

  “Your teacher doesn’t have a real degree honey, that’s why she’s a teacher not a scientist.”

  “I looked in your journal last night. I don’t think you’re doing it right.”

  Fe
lix was rubbing Nobit around the eyes making him mep and purr. He seemed to smile looking at the children.

  “It’s science. Maybe you’ll understand when you’re older.”

  Digby stood in the rising light of the sun and handed Rose the leash and his journal while he shimmied up the tree.

  “Write this down for me honey. Once we have the Mudfoot hopper in position we can observe several inevitable things-”

  “He looks too big for that tree branch dad.”

  “-first we can predict his owners will look for him. Based on his size they will look for him in areas with a lot of space. Second based on his diet they will look for him in wooded areas. Finally based on the trail we left they will look west. The discovery of specimen ‘Nobit’ will likely occur by the end of the day. When he is discovered will be able to say the law of Special Fate, maybe I should call it Special Inevitability, is in fact, true.”

  The hopper was balanced on the branch over the zoo. Below were dozens of animals including a congress of ridgeback bone lizards. Most were asleep. But a few, with disturbingly sharp teeth, looked up at the bunny, probably deciding how to divvy up the pieces. Suddenly came the zookeepers’ voices. Digby panicked, unhooked the leash and said, “They shouldn’t be here so early. Rose go get the flatbed and move it towards me so I can jump.”

  “My feet won’t reach the pedals!” There were strange noises from the zoo. And even stranger noises from the park.

  “Felix press the long flat pedal for your sister.” He tried to shout