Planets Falling

by James G. Scotson

  She led them to a circular building with a platform in its center. Minna jumped onto the stage and picked up a large pole with a blade on the end. Somehow, the quiet teacher seemed larger, more formidable. She hopped down and handed the stick-knife to Mup. All the coal-black eyes in the room widened. "Today, you'll begin a new set of lessons. This is a lancet. It is not a toy but a lethal weapon for defense. It is the first of many weapons that you'll learn to master and wield in honor of both your species." She waved her hand across the base of the weapon. The tip of the lancet began to glow lightly and emit an ominous hum. Mup smiled, straightening his back. He seemed larger too.

  That was nearly 140 years ago. Minna was nothing but bones and dust now. Fromer’s friends – his family - were scattered across the galaxy or dead. When Fromer turned 20, he was escorted onto a transport vessel, assigned to his first outpost assignment, and seldom saw his friends, especially Mup, again. In the years to follow, he could only nod at his childhood companions across a conference facility or through a pane of glass while transferring between transport vessels in a shuttle node. Not a single photo or scrap of paper linked him to that other life.

  Fromer was now sipping another small helping of vodka with a generous splash of tonic water in a place that could be a light year or the entire length of the galaxy away from his childhood home. He only harbored memories of that warm time. And exceptional training in combat and detente.

  Home. He really had no place of origin. Once he did not exist and then he did. A miracle of biological engineering, merging the best physical and intellectual characteristics of two species with absolutely no evolutionary history. They called him a hybrid but he really was a chimera, a thing. Nothing more than a machine made of flesh, bones, gristle, and fluids.

  The buzzer at his door pulled him out of the dark hole in which his mind was flipping and flopping in a haze of bubbling alcohol.

  "Hey, Fromer, you in there?" Melat tapped on the threshold with the back of her data pad. "Open up. I need to talk to you."

  When Fromer slid open his door, Melat rushed past him into his cabin. "Drinking again? This isn't becoming a habit is it? That insect in you can't handle it."

  "Oh Mel. I should not be left to my thoughts. I need things to occupy my time. Even dull discourse among governors' aides is better than this forsaken assignment. After so many years, they ship me out here to hold watch over a big bakery? I do not know what I did to deserve this." He took another sip from his cup. "Just a year ago I was tracking down pirates stealing mineral shipments to zenat. The next thing I know, I receive a transmission from the Collective telling me to report to the Platform to babysit a bunch of glorified greenhouses. What a waste of my potential."

  "Well, the level of self-pity seems to have reached an all time high." Melat jumped on his soft bed. "Sit down. I have some news for you." She gave his cabin a look. Plants were everywhere. Most were species she did not recognize; many were glowing lightly, similar to the luminescence of his sleek, exquisitely smooth, flawless skin. He chose black for his wall panels - no personal belongings were visible. On the bed was a single thin sheet with no pillow. The whole room was glowing with biological light. The most amazing thing was the smell - a strange mixture of citrus and pine that she found irrestible.

  "If it is about the activity on Nine, I already know about it. Grey contacted me and asked for a security sweep of the quadrant. I did not find anything out of the ordinary. If you ask me, it is likely pockets of swamp gas igniting on the surface."

  Melat took the cup from Fromer's hand and peeked inside. She grimaced and set it down. "That's old news. The activity has started up again. This time it's near the north magnetic pole. I think we're going to investigate. Sober up and come visit me when you get the chance. You'll know where to find me."

  Chapter 17 – Illumination

  Earlier that day - the Platform's light cycle was maintained on a standard earth day- Grey was jogging with Melat around the perimeter of section 17, the primary recreation and housing deck. It was a beautiful place to exercise. The track extended out into space, built with a translucent material that made it seem as if they were jogging while suspended in the vacuum. Sparse stars pierced the velvet beneath their track shoes.

  Melat's shoulder-length red hair was bobbing back and forth. She wasn't breaking a sweat. "Is it my imagination or do things seem tense around here?"

  Grey chuckled, without smiling.

  How was that possible? Melat thought.

  Grey huffed as if in response to her mental query. "Everyone needs a break. Verat is being more of an ass than usual. Gorian is wound up and spends all hours communing with the computers. Iggy spends most of his time soaking in his brine. We all need to escape for a while. And now...". He stopped himself.

  They ran a few minutes in silence. Grey waited for the question. "Now what, Grey?"

  "Nine is acting weird. Lots of lights are appearing on the surface. It stopped for a while. Earlier today it started up again. We've never seen anything like it. The probes are streaming incredible amounts of data. We can’t keep track of it all."

  "What do you mean lights? Like the planet has been invaded by glow bugs?" She imagined giant fireflies buzzing through the mist.

  "Something like that. The closest I can guess is that we have ghosts on the planet. Not real spooks of course. But mysterious lights that generate no heat. The imagery from orbit shows that the lights are flickering, gathering at some places, and then disappearing as quickly as they appear. The weirdest thing is that the lights are discrete...almost like they're sentients or animals. When we zoom in on the imagery, I swear I occasionally see figures. I thought I saw a face looking up once. Black, open holes for the eyes and mouth.” He stopped for a moment and then started running again. “I'm losing it. The rest of the observatory crew is freaking out as well. We have no idea what to tell the Collective." He was really starting to moisten now.

  "You bunch of science nerds are spending way too much time in the remote observatory. What kind of tea has Verat been brewing up there? Or are you all smoking it? I'm sure you're getting interference from sensors or the planet is picking up radio interference. I can't believe that I'm the one trying to be objective here."

  The light on the deck was dimming – artificial dusk was falling on the Platform. Grey grabbed a towel from a dispenser and stretched his calves. "Come on Mel. We like surprises. But this was completely unexpected. None of the simulations remotely predict that the life down there's able to capture, much less, transmit images. And even if it could, who would be sending them? I feel like we're viewing old time movie projections in the fog. Have you been practicing your piloting procedures lately? Especially, drops?"

  "You can't practice something like that. It's a gift. All the girls want it but can't get it. You either do it or you don't."

  Melat was a pilot. Pilots were very rare, only about one tenth of half a percent of the human population in the galaxy had the cognitive ability to be one. Piloting was not about steering columns, brakes, and accelerators. It was about the ability to gaze into the subatomic realm, shape quantum foam, drop from one reality to the next.

  No supercomputer designed yet had the capacity to manipulate energy and matter to link one section of space-time with another in the universe. Actually, it was not a single drop. Rather, to travel across the unimaginable emptiness, it required nearly an infinite number of transitions through the roiling particles and waves welling up through existence. The physicists affectionately called it a drop because it appeared as if space itself opened a hole beneath the traveling object - usually a transport vessel- and proceeded to swallow it up.

  Grey sopped his forehead. "What does it feel like for you pilots when you make a drop?"

  For travelers, a drop seemed to be instantaneous, although in real time, trips across the galaxy could take as long as several hours. But for pilots the passage of time, the experience, had to be different.

  "Everyone asks me that. I'm
not tired about answering it though. Better than any drug ever grown, brewed, or concocted. Believe me, I've tried. Of course you have all the preparation. Calculations. Meditation. You also have to slowly raise your metabolism with some pretty hardcore medication. But then when you step into that chamber and link to the interface it is completely worth it. I'm surprised you’ve never asked me before."

  "Don't like to pry. However." He paused. "Given that I just spilled top secret information, I thought I'd reciprocate. Really, though, can you describe what's going on? I mean, inside the ship?"

  "Well, first there's the typical interface menu. Very much like a visual holograph- you can see it without your eyes, you know? Just projected on your optic lobes. Then you begin to scroll through all the diagnostic tests, pretty standard stuff. When you're ready, you flip the switch."

  "The switch?"

  "It can be anything really. Pushing a button, turning a door handle, flipping a mouse trap. For me, I see a dandelion and blow on the seeds. Just something that you use to activate the program and initiate the drop. Blow. Seeds start to scatter in the wind. Then you see it. Well see's only a weak approximation. It's as if you are hovering in a vast three dimensional canvas with stars, dandelion seeds, whatever, around you, inside you. You feel the space as well as see, hear, even taste it. You imagine a pattern of particles coming together, then you imagine another pattern, and then another. That's where all the prep is involved - memorizing the patterns. Before long it's like being in a warm cocoon, sleeping, dreaming. The computer is interpreting those patterns as ways to adjust gravity and merge the right sections of space-time until you get to the coordinates you're targeting. When I wake up, the drop is done and we're somewhere else. I feel like I had the best nap ever. I absolutely crave it."

  Grey whistled. "Seriously heavy. I'd heard rumors. But you pilots don't talk much about what you do. "

  "I was pretty little when they identified me as a candidate. I came from a normal family. My dad was a teacher. My brothers never showed any qualities of piloting. I apparently was doing some pretty wild things at school, interfacing with the computers in strange ways, making electronics do things that even engineers couldn't unravel. That's when some representatives from the Collective took me to the Institute on mars for training. I did my first drop when I was fifteen. Haven't seen my family in ten years, I'd guess. Time starts to lose its relevance when you can bend it."

  Melat considered her position. Piloting had its dangers, of course. Every once in while, a pilot would lose her way in the drop sequence. The most optimistic outcome would be a stranded vessel in space. More likely and more ominous would be disintegration. Particles, occasionally chunks, of the vessel and its cargo, or passengers, would be scattered across space and possibly time. Still, the other option, spending centuries trying to ferry between systems was not a viable alternative. But when traveling within small systems, most people chose to take the slower ion propulsion transports than put their fate into a glorified space magician to save a few day's travel time.

  Grey turned towards the door to head for the mess hall. "Want to join me for dinner Mel? I'm so hungry."

  "Nope. I’m going to get a shower and then check on Fromer. He has been particularly mopey lately."

  "Fromer. Now there's one I have not been able to figure out."

  "How would you expect to understand a hybrid that is nearly six times your age? I mean he has seen so many things. Knows so much. And that body. Its like he is built for combat. That skin is so - so incredibly thick and tough. I could throw a blade at him and it would just bounce off. They sent him here for something. Just what that is, well, that's just as mysterious as your spooky planet. Boo, Grey."

  "Are you kidding me? That glow bug must have pissed someone off in the hierarchy and they're punishing him. Pretty obvious that this is a dead end for him."

  "We'll see about that."

  Grey turned toward Melat and cocked his head. "What do you know?"

  "Nothing. Just a hunch about him."

  "While we’re exchanging notes, maybe you can tell me what you are doing here on station. Piloting is a lucrative gig. And you are here cooling your jets while other pilots are dropping transports almost weekly for lots of pay. You haven't piloted in over a month. I can't imagine that the Families is paying you all that much."

  "That, Grey my boy, is none of your business. But let's just say I will soon have my pick of assignments. Right now, I get to enjoy the company of all you talented people."

  Grey shrugged and walked toward a warm meal. "HM. Please notify the kitchen to prepare menu 5 for me. I am in the mood for red meat."

  "Very well, Dr. Commons. Enjoy your dinner."

  Melat turned and stared through one of the deck's translucent wall panels into the big empty vat of space before her. She was thinking about home.

  Chapter 18 – Vacuum

  From the personal journal of Grey Commons:

  Today’s my birthday. My mother and Uncle Fen sent me a transmission and some really good scotch from New Europa. I found myself missing dad today. When I was a kid, we’d spend each birthday camping in the mountains. He said they were similar to the Alps on old earth except without snow. I spent a lot of my childhood looking at maps of Europe on earth. I always imagined what it would be like to be able to ski down a slope there. In his honor, I spent most of the day in the deck with a habitat similar to that of home - lots of simulated rocks, cool air, and evergreens. It just made me feel sad. I drank quite a bit of that scotch.

  No one else on station knows that this is the anniversary of my birth. That’s fine with me. I did have dinner with Gorian. It was tough to tear her away from Ig, but I managed it. She’s intriguing to me. Quiet, studious, but very nice. She is one of the few on Platform who does not grate on my nerves. And I have some strange obsession with her ears. They are so tiny and well formed. But I digress. We all need a break.

  I received another transmission today - from the Institute. The board has reviewed our preliminary results and seems intrigued. Verat and I are going to video conference with them tomorrow via infraspace connection. We only sent them the raw preliminary results. We didn’t give them the high quality images where we all swear we’re seeing ghosts. We have to maintain some shred of dignity here, right? Of course, Verat’s not particularly intrigued by this. Or at least he is acting that way. I want to kick him out an airlock some days. I love him dearly and appreciate that he joined me out here. I’m the closest thing he has to real, caring family. However, his attempts to push me away are exhausting.

  The most popular hypothesis around here about Nine was posited by Melat, of all people. We think that the vegetation on the planet has somehow evolved to use the planet's geothermal energy to become a giant radio collector. If this is true, Nine must be in the direct path of the radio transmissions from some technologically developed planet. The signals could be thousands of years old for all we know. A wild thought. But the only way to really understand this is to visit Nine. Direct contact between terraformers and cooking planets is highly forbidden, except under very special circumstances. You don't want to mess up the broth. In the 300 planets that are currently under some development for eventual colonization, not one has ever done anything remotely like this though. So this may be our opportunity to convince the council board that we need to make a visit.

  The most ironic thing is that this is one of the planets my dad started. It is his project, his legacy to me and the galaxy. He worked on it with Uncle Fen over forty years ago when they had just left the Institute. Dad was considered one of the most brilliant terraformers of our time. They said he was the next Pinchot Ferris. When I was a child, I had no idea. He, mom, my uncle, and aunts all seemed normal. When my father was away, I assumed he was doing the same things other fathers were doing - attending boring meetings. I was very wrong.

  I’ve spent most of my adulthood looking over dad’s schematics for the planet’s successional developmental stages. Just yesterday,
I scrolled through them again. It’s nothing spectacular now. But in his and Fen’s time, this stuff was revolutionary. It was clear he had an intuitive feel for the basic steps needed to get cloud planets cooking. I also still am trying to decipher some of his notes. They were written in a cipher unfamiliar to me or anyone I have contacted. The coded notes are particularly prevalent in the sections on microbiological technology. There also are a couple of pages on the geology of Nine that are encrypted. Could it be possible that he anticipated these events? I wonder if the answer lies in decoding his messages.

  Chapter 19 – Childhood

  Gorian was in mess eating breakfast – just a bowl of fruit and some milk. Both the berries and milk came in with the latest transport from New Earth and were very fresh. Verat shuffled in. “Morning Gorian. See any ghosts last night?”

  “Funny you should say that. I thought I saw a ghost but it was just your nasty face during the evening shift.”

  Verat smiled, shook his head, and poured a cup of coffee into a mug. “What I need is a long trip away from this place.” He coughed and rubbed his nose.

  “Why Verat? We have everything we need here. If we can get away, there are dozens of simulated worlds beneath our feet. As long as we make sure to follow protocol, we can visit them as often as we want.”

  “For God’s sake, are you kidding me? Don’t you miss fresh air, real sunshine, a beach or a forest? What about other people? How about the excitement of meeting someone new? Nothing’s better than the anticipation of finding someone new, if you know what I mean.” He grinned and slurped at his cup.

  “I happen to enjoy the company I have here.”

  “Do you mean the frog or Commons? I keep mixing the two of them up. Such similar personalities have they. Oh, and then you have your friends, the computers. I’m sure you find lots of love in binary code. The digital conversations you have must be captivating.”