Steve’s shorts: Shipwreck…
[Note from Steve: Join me in a little space opera.]
Shipwreck
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
You only think about gravity when you don’t have it—the real thing or the artificial kind.
“What’s going on, Wilbur?”
The ship’s AI didn’t respond. That’s when you know you’re in trouble.
I floated up from the lounge to the control room aided by the few handholds I could find. My launch toward the captain’s chair was okay, although my head ended up where my butt should be.
I managed to flip around and strap in. Checked some readouts Wilbur had access to but were independent of him.
Everything seemed normal except for the offline AI and no artificial grav. The ship was still following the AI’s computed path through the multiverse, now without the AI to get it back to our own universe.
Ergo, I thought the first priority was to fix Wilbur. Without the AI, who knew what would happen in the final moments at the end of that path, sans calculations needed to pop the ship back into normal space-time.
Transitions were always problematic, which is why a quantum computer based AI had to do them. Popping in, popping out—everything else was almost doable by a Human. Not me, because I don’t know a damn thing about how a stardrive works. But an engineer in the factory that built the ship might be able to do it, but not the transitions.
I needed Wilbur to perform the transition!
***
The ship was a yacht that once belonged to an ET industrialist. His title was loosely translated as Duke of the Fourth Realm, a translation that did me no good because I had no idea what the Fourth Realm was. I’d “borrowed” the yacht to escape from some four-eyed crazies on Adele’s Planet who thought I’d stolen their queen. I didn’t. I just gave her a lift to another planet. See if I do anyone a favor again!
Don’t get the wrong idea. The Queen’s best features are found in the expressive four eyes. They sit atop four stalks sprouting from a pulpy base ringed with tentacles. Maybe a thousand little feet sit below the main body.
Okay, the mind that controls those beautiful eyes and all those feet is a beautiful one. But she’d been bored with her queendom (maybe the First Realm?). I’d never been idolized by thousands—correction: millions—but I can imagine being bored by it all. She’d wanted to study physics with some other ETs on another planet. Okay by me. She was a nice lady. She deserved to be happy.
***
Once I’d left ordinary space-time, I knew the Duke’s fleet had lost me. But if I couldn’t bring Wilbur back online, I’d either become a topological disaster at the end of my journey through the multiverse, or I’d spend a hundred standard years trying to learn enough about stardrives to get back to the normal universe. Neither alternative appealed to me.
Of course, repairing an AI might be even more complicated. The stardrive depended on quantum physics; so did the AI. It might be easier to learn to turn off the stardrive. That’s a hypothetical “learn,” of course—learning in principle. I had no idea what would happen. From the early days of perfecting stardrives, what happened was unpredictable…and generally bad, even if others managed to find the remains.
Wilbur usually appeared as a hologram that stood behind me in the captain’s chair. The projector was on the panel before me. I stretched and gave it a kick. Bad mistake. Conservation of momentum sent me flying out of the chair when its back broke. Amazing that old Newtonian mechanics can still smack you when you’re flying through the multiverse.
I was also in an uncontrolled spin. Must have twisted somehow. Managed to fold up into a ball, which increased the spin—conservation of angular momentum—and I bounced off the back wall. On the return, I grabbed onto an arm of the chair, passing right through Wilbur’s hologram.
“I found the problem,” Wilbur announced.
The gravity came back on. I fell to the floor.
I sighed but thanked the space gods I had no broken bones, just a lot of bruises.
“Just make sure you can get us back to our universe, Wilbur.
“No problem. All in good time. Would you like an analgesic?”
“If you mean something alcoholic, I’m game.”
***
Comments are always welcome.
More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. Amazon reviewer S. D. Beallis called it “broad in scope and cautiously optimistic.” Amazon reviewer Debra Miller said she “was reminded at times of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.” Both comments indicate the epic nature of this one novel where an ET virus creates Homo sapiens 2.0, and then the new humans colonize Mars. Available on Amazon and Smashwords.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
