Impact!

by Laurence Dahners

  Zage blinked at her several times and his eyes shot up to his HUD once, though he didn’t give his AI a command so he couldn’t have had anything displayed there. He looked a little bit confused, then said, “Fashion?” At her nod, he said, “I don’t know what fashion is. Can you tell me about it?”

  “Um, it’s when… you keep up with the latest trends in clothing and shoes and things like that.”

  Zage looked down at his T-shirt, pull up pants, and Velcro closing sneakers. He looked back up at his aunt, “Really? Clothing and shoes have trends? Can they be graphed?”

  Lane gave a little laugh, “Yeah. More for girls than for boys. For instance, a blouse with a high collar like I’m wearing tonight is the latest style.”

  Zage’s eyes focused on her collar for a moment then returned to her face, “That really doesn’t look very comfortable.”

  Lane snorted, “No, it really isn’t. What’s in fashion often isn’t very comfortable. What’s important is that it looks good.”

  “Really? Do you ever wear stuff that hurts?”

  Lane shrugged, “Yeah, these shoes I’ve got on are pretty uncomfortable.”

  With an astonished look on his face, Zage leaned back and looked over the side of his chair to be able to see Lane’s feet. “You’re not wearing shoes.”

  “No,” she laughed, “I kicked them off because they hurt. You’re going to find women doing that a lot if you look for it.”

  Zage lowered his head and leaned back and forth to look under the table at everyone’s feet. Straightening up, he turned back to Lane, “You’re right! Only my mother and great-grandmother still have their shoes on.” He tilted his head, “The men still have their shoes on though. Is ‘fashion’ different for men?”

  Lane found herself laughing again at the serious look on his face. “No, men don’t seem to worry about fashion as much as women.” She quirked a smile, “Well, some men do. Just not very many.” She shrugged, “Even the ones who do concern themselves with fashion usually won’t wear things that are painful like women will.”

  Zage simply sat and stared wide eyed at her, as if she’d said the most astonishing things. She reviewed in her own mind what she’d just said and decided that it did seem a little bizarre.

  Everyone had for the most part finished their dinner. Malcolm Kinrais had put himself in charge of dessert and cooked several different types of pie. He began taking orders and Lane asked for a small slice of French silk pie. To her surprise Zage asked for a very small slice of blueberry pie. She turned to him and said, “Wow, when I was your age I asked for as much desert as they would give me!”

  Zage frowned, “I’d like a big piece, but I’m pretty fat.”

  Lane stumbled, saying, “Um…” She realized she had no idea how to respond to her nephew’s statement. She herself had been thinking that he was overweight, but somehow it seemed wrong for a child his age to be dieting. She wanted to brush it off and tell him that he shouldn’t worry about it, but she also wanted to suggest that he shouldn’t have any desert all! She bit her lip searching for something to say.

  Then Malcolm plopped a pretty big piece of pie down in front of him and Fay, coming along behind her husband put a big scoop of ice cream next to it.

  Lane snorted, “Looks like you got a big piece whether you want it or not.”

  Staring at his plate Zage said, “Yeah…” He sighed and looked up at Lane, “Maybe you’d be nice enough to take this away from me after I eat about a quarter of it?” Sadly, “Everybody thinks I’m fat, but hardly anyone helps me do anything about it.”

  “Okay,” Lane said. When Zage had eaten what she thought was approximately one fourth of his dessert, she said, “Shall I take it away?”

  He looked wistfully at what remained on his plate, but nodded.

  Lane took both of their dessert plates into the kitchen. As she walked away from the table she heard Zage say, “Mom, can I go play with Tanner?”

  When she got back to the table Zage was gone. Lane turned to her mother and said quietly, “Do three-year-olds normally talk like that?”

  Wide eyed, Fay shook her head.

  ***

  Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, “You have a call from Dr. John Simon, President Stockton’s new science advisor.”

  Ell said, “Really? What happened to Elton Costella?”

  “Resigned. News stories about it imply that he was urged to resign because of his close association with Ementhal and the Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs.”

  “I assume he’s a scientist of some kind. Please put some information about him up on my HUD and then connect me to him… Hello Dr. Simon, how may I help you?”

  Alan popped a document up on the display in Ell’s left contact. Simon was a biochemist.

  “Dr. Donsaii, thank you for taking my call. I have two reasons for calling. First, I spoke with one of my predecessors, Chip Horton, who advised me to check in with you every so often. He said that one of my jobs was to make sure you weren’t about to release some new world changing technology without the president being aware of it.” He chuckled a little, “Is anything like that on the horizon?”

  “No sir. Well, nothing major anyway. I assume you’re aware of the contacts D5R is releasing which provide vision correction, enhancement, and heads up display?”

  Simon felt a little odd, being called sir by Donsaii, but decided not to make a big deal about it. “I have heard about them. They sound very interesting, but I doubt they’re going to shake up the economy.”

  “Well, no. But if you were in the contact lens industry, or the headband display manufacturing sector, you might feel differently.”

  “Ah, yes, I can see how that might be the case.”

  “We’ll be offering licensing arrangements to contact lens manufacturers which will lessen the blow there. Most of the companies manufacturing head-mounted displays are diversified enough that the loss of their headband business probably won’t ruin them.”

  “Thank you for bringing this up, I’ll make sure that the president is aware.”

  “There are a few other items affecting medical industries. Port driven cardiac assist pumps have finished a number of trials in animals and in a few humans. They should be entering the market relatively soon. The same is true of a number of artificial kidney type technologies. Essentially, they simply use ports to transport blood to hemodialysis units or fluid for peritoneal dialysis. This isn’t a huge medical advance, but for the patients who don’t have to spend several hours a day, three times a week, hooked up to dialysis machines… for them it represents a huge improvement in their quality of life. The same can be said to be true of insulin ports. The actual function isn’t too much different from currently available devices that sense your blood sugar and deliver insulin in response to it through needles. The fact that you can have a tiny port implanted through a needle once and then pretty much stop worrying about it, not having to reinsert needles frequently, should provide a huge convenience factor.”

  There was a pause, evidently while Simon considered her words, then he said, “Those sound… very interesting… and, no doubt, hugely important to people having those diseases. They don’t sound to me like they will shake up the nation’s economy though. Am I missing something?”

  “Um, no sir. I’m just wanting to keep you abreast of the situation.”

  “I would like to ask, though I hope it doesn’t upset you, whether you might have encountered any new extrasolar civilizations that we haven’t heard about yet?”

  “No sir.” Ell said wondering whether he knew about the sigmas. Everyone knew about the teecees and she had told Flood’s administration about the sigmas, but didn’t know whether Flood had told Stockton’s people. Certainly, due to the terrible relationship she’d had with Stockton so far, Ell hadn’t made Stockton’s administration aware of the Sigmas herself. Simon hadn’t asked her, however, what extrasolar civilizations existed, just whether she’d encountered any new ones. She decided to continue wit
hout trying to clarify the issue. “The new probes we’ve got out examining other solar systems have so far only found dead worlds. Well, beyond the unicellular life on Alpha Centauri that I assume you are already aware of?” Ell felt a little guilty for not revealing that she had a mission approaching the Beta Canum Venaticorum system which had detected oxygen in the atmosphere of one of its planets. Since oxygen seemed to be extremely unlikely without life, it probably wasn’t a “dead world,” but, after all, she didn’t know that for sure yet.

  “Okay,” Simon said cheerfully. “The other thing on my agenda is to invite you to play golf. I like to golf, and as I’m sure you’re aware, President Stockton is a fanatic. She feels badly about getting off on the wrong foot with you. She’d like to try to fix that by inviting you on a golf outing in March. She’ll be back in Pinehurst then, so it’ll be right there in your neighborhood.”

  “She’s going back to Pinehurst?!”

  “Yes, she doesn’t want the nation to think she’s been intimidated by what happened there. Do you play?”

  “Not much.” Not at all, Ell thought to herself.

  “Well, as long as you’re not a complete hacker. It is mostly a social outing after all.”

  “I’ll have to get in a few rounds before then. Make sure I won’t be an embarrassment.”

  Simon laughed, “One of the president’s social secretaries will get back to you with a formal invitation. I look forward to seeing you then.”

  Ell stepped into the next room, “Shan? Do you golf?”

  Staring at the big screen in front of him, Shan held a hand up for a pause, then shook his head and turned to Ell. “What?”

  “Do you play golf?”

  “Sure, do you?”

  “I never have, but I need to learn how. Can you teach me?”

  “Oh no you don’t. I’m not teaching you another sport where you turn out to be better than me an hour later. You hire yourself a professional.” He turned away, then looked back toward her, “Why do you need to learn how anyway?”

  “President Stockton’s invited me to play with her in March.”

  “Really? Are you gonna wear armor?”

  Ell snorted, “To protect me from snipers? Or to protect me from the President?”

  Shan grinned at her, “Both…”

  Chapter Two

  Thinking Shan would be there, Ell walked into the living room. The big screen that Shan liked in there was lit up, but Zage was watching it, not Shan. Ell immediately recognized the view as coming from Tau Ceti 3. She could identify it by the tall spindly shapes of the trees in the picture. As he stared at it, her little boy was marching in place. “Hi Zage,” Ell said, “are you trying to get some exercise while you’re watching this vid?”

  “Uh huh,” Zage turned to glance at her, “I just found this! Did you know that there are some cameras on a world around another star? Tau Ceti?”

  “Um, yeah,” Ell said, bemused.

  “They have huge animals there. Some are even bigger than the dinosaurs!” He spoke to his AI briefly and the video jumped, presumably back to an earlier spot. An enormous animal was on the screen, reaching high into the trees with long spindly dorsal limbs that occupied the place of the teecee’s wings. Whereas the brachiosaurs had had long necks to eat high vegetation, these animals had evolved very long dorsal limbs to reach up and strip leaves from high in the trees and bring the vegetation back down to mouths which were on the ends of their relatively short necks.

  “I know,” Ell said. When the exploratory rockets they had on Tau Ceti got down to the low lands nearer to sea level they had found some real behemoths walking around. “They look a lot different than our dinosaurs did though, don’t they?”

  “Yeah! Eight limbs, short necks, no feathers.” Zage turned to look at her curiously, “How come Earth doesn’t have any big animals like the dinosaurs anymore?”

  “Actually, we do. The blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur ever was.”

  “I mean… animals on land. Elephants are the biggest land animals now, and they’re tiny compared to brachiosaurs. Ten times smaller!”

  “Yeah, here on earth all the animals are much smaller than they used to be. There are a lot of theories on why, but I don’t think any of the theories are well accepted. Some of the big dinosaurs were so big that it’s actually kind of hard to figure out how they got around at all. By calculation their bones were barely strong enough to hold them up standing still and taking a stumble would’ve broken their legs.” Ell shrugged, “The big pterosaurs couldn’t possibly fly in today’s conditions either. It’s a lot easier for a huge animal on TC3, because the gravity is only about a quarter of earth’s and the atmosphere is much thicker and has more oxygen. In those conditions it’s easier for huge animals to get around and for big animals to fly.” Ell shrugged, “Back in the time of the dinosaurs, earth probably had a thicker atmosphere with more oxygen too, but it’s hard to imagine that the gravity was less.”

  Zage frowned at her, “That doesn’t make sense. If they were bigger, their bones would’ve been bigger too. Why would they break?”

  “Because of a thing called the square-cube law. Do you understand what it means to square a number or to cube it?”

  Zage nodded, “Two squared is four and two cubed is eight.”

  A little glow filled her heart as Ell smiled at him, “So what the square-cube law means is that if we took a 5 foot tall person and doubled her height to 10 feet, her surface area would be four times as much or squared, and her volume would be eight times as great or cubed. Since her weight depends on her volume, if she weighed 100 pounds when she was 5 feet tall she’d weigh 800 pounds when she was 10 feet tall.”

  Shan had walked into the room behind him while Ell explained that. Zage blinked at Ell for a moment. Then Zage said, “And if she were 15 feet tall, she’d weigh 2,700 pounds?”

  Ell glanced at Shan, seeing him staring at his son wide-eyed. She turned back to Zage and said, “Yes, and if she were 20 feet tall, she’d weigh 6,400 pounds. At that point, her bones would have to be much, much thicker to even be able to hold her up.” Ell tilted her head as she studied her son, wondering if he followed this. “If you look at elephants, you’ll notice that their legs are much thicker than a horse’s legs. That’s because of the same thing. Some of the dinosaurs were so huge it’s hard to figure out how they could walk on their legs without breaking them. One theory is that their density was very low because they had a lot of air inside of them. That would make them weigh less. Another theory is that the atmosphere was so tremendously dense that it held them up kind of like the water does when you’re in a swimming pool.”

  Zage stared at his mother for a few more seconds, then he nodded sharply and said, “Thanks.” He turned his attention back to his video which jumped ahead to where it had been in response to a command he gave his AI.

  Ell felt a little surprised. She had expected that he would want to discuss the theories of low-density dinosaurs or high density atmosphere some more. His stopping the conversation there and going back to watching his video left her feeling… unsatisfied. However, she supposed that expecting him to follow the density theories was asking a little bit much.

  Shan had walked over closer to Ell. He leaned close to her and said, “Did our three-year-old son just cube three and multiply it times 100?”

  Ell grinned and nodded at him.

  Shan smiled beatifically and put a hand on his chest, “A chip off the old block.”

  Ell looked at him askance. “Were you really doing math like that when you were three?”

  “Well… no. But I’m sure it was only because I lacked proper stimulation.”

  Ell snorted and shook her head. “Sure, stimulation, that’s all you needed…”

  ***

  Milo Nesbitt frowned at the next name in his appointment calendar. It was a private lesson and he hardly ever gave those. Almost everyone signed up for one of his small classes because they were cheaper. He liked classes bett
er too, because even though each person paid less, a group of 5 to 10 still paid him quite a bit more than a single private lesson did. The name, “Jin Doh” sounded like it must be Asian. He glanced around the tee box at the driving range, but didn’t see any people that appeared to be of Asian heritage. He didn’t know from the name whether they would be male or female. The people he taught usually met him here on the range tee box, but maybe he should have met this person up at the clubhouse?

  Milo’s AI said, “You have a call from Mary.”

  Mary worked in the clubhouse and scheduled his lessons. Maybe she knew where this Doh person was? “Put her on. What’s up Mary?”

  Mary sounded quite amused, “Your 1 o’clock’s here in the clubhouse and she’d like your help picking out some clubs.”

  Mary was probably laughing because she knew how much Milo hated teaching complete beginners. He didn’t like teaching women either. He sighed, “She doesn’t even have clubs?!”

  “Nope.”

  “Mary! Why’d you even set her up with me? You know how I hate beginners. One of the junior guys would’ve been happy to take her on.”

  “Don’t you go getting’ all grumpy on me Milo. She asked who our best teacher was and I told her that was you. Just come on up to the clubhouse, I promise you won’t regret it.”

  With a sigh Milo turned and headed up to the clubhouse. He stepped into the Pro Shop and looked around, but didn’t see anyone who looked Asian. Walking towards Mary at the counter he raised his eyebrows. She pointed at a blonde woman who was over holding a club and looking at it curiously. From behind, she was a looker. Milo thought to himself that if she turned out to be as hot as she looked from here it might make up for her being a total beginner. Milo stepped closer to Mary, “Jin Doh? I thought she’d be Asian.”

  Mary laughed, “Jane Doe, not ‘Jin Doh!’ She wanted to be listed anonymously in our appointment books. I swear Milo, you need to have your hearing checked!”