Assorted Different Lives

This journal was found floating in space. Its origins are unknown, its author is unknown, and the truth of the stories that are told in these pages is the subject of much debate.
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I never really thought much about the meaning of life. But then, there are people who say I never thought much about anything. That's OK. You don’t need to think very much on a daily run from Earth to Pluto, it all becomes very routine very fast. You could even say mind numbing (Yea, I think saying mind numbing wouldn't be a stretch). It wasn't until my ship was grabbed into some kind of beam and I saw it and all my possessions sail flaming into space that I began to wonder what it all meant. Of course that was after my first thought of - How is everything a flaming in space when space had no oxygen?

I came to find out that what actually happened was I was caught in a field that was intended to freeze time while they studied me (I’ll tell you who they are later). But the field malfunctioned and compressed my tanks to the point that my ship exploded. They pulled me off, not because they were such great humanitarians, but because they didn't want a little accident to prevent them from filling a report and completing their experiments. They had to file a certain number of reports in a certain period of time. Reports that chronicled the movement and thoughts of a race alien to their own. I couldn't tell if there was joy in there work or if it was just duty - either way it was their mission. And they wouldn’t let an accident prevent them from completing that mission.

They are the Bolens. A rather bookish group of aliens that came to our planet millennia ago. As they explained it to me, they came because another group of aliens - the Lubots--had genetically engineered us to be dumber. When the Lobots came to Earth Eons ago, we were using magnet levitation to build the pyramids, performing brain surgery, and waging war. It was the wagging war part that concerned the Lubots. They speculated that at Earth's current rate of intellectual growth, we would, in a few short years, be reaching for the stars and taking our warlike ways with us. To prevent this they reengineered our genes (the part having to do with brain development anyway) so we could no longer understand the science we had. They also made sure it would take a very long time to get back to that place.

When the Bolens heard of this they were appalled. They came to Earth to find out exactly what happened, to help us, to teach us, and to interact with us. After they met us, they decided that the Lubots didn’t have such a bad idea after all.

I can't explain how they told me all this. I guess you could say they just sort of made it known to me. They also told me that others had come to our planet to explore and to meet us. There was one race, fairly new to space travel, that came to our world years ago.......to be continues

Just Another Day at the Office

I called into work dead that morning, but they asked me to come in anyway. When I hesitated they started asking me questions.

"Is it contagious?" Was the first one.

"I don't think so?" I replied, still a little irritated by their request. "I mean no one else around me seems to be dead?"

"Do you have a high temperature?"

"No, actually I don't have a temperature at all. The doctor says that's one of the symptoms of being dead."

The doctor said a lot of other things too. I didn't have a pulse, which of course meant no heartbeat. I was cold to the touch and the only time I drew a breath was to talk. I had all the symptoms of being recently deceased, except that I was moving around, awake and alert. The doctor couldn't explain it and kept telling me it defied all the laws of science. He said I couldn't be dead and still walking around because it was impossible. Of course, they use to think it was impossible to fly, so what the do those eggheads know?

The doctor thought it might have had something to do with the strange electrical field my transport ship passed through. It happened while I was on my way to my new ship, this ship - The Space Gull. To me, the energy field was just a bolt of light that winked in and out of existence so fast it was barely even noticeable, but when I looked at my time gauge, an hour of my life had been lost. I thought it was a fairly unsettling experience and the doctorsconcurred.

"We really need you," the voice on the other end of the com line persisted. "We need you to work today. Do you think you could manage to come in?"

I hesitated.

"We need to work together. It's all part of being a team and you're part of our team."

I hesitated some more.

"You don't have any sick days left."

That decided it. Dead or not I couldn't afford to be docked. "Yeah, I guess I could come in," I finally answered.

"Part of our team", I thought I as I walked to the cockpit. That was their new company slogan for employees. When I started with Stellar Spaceways it was: "We're like family." The employee recruitment advertisement for Steller sounded so good. I guess that should have been my first clue that there was something wrong with them. The new truth in employee recruitment laws stated the employers had to be completely honest about wages, working condition and such, but there were always ways around that law. Stellar used a dual frequency commercial. Part of it was in a range anyone could hear, part of it
was in high frequency only audible to dogs. Unfortunately my dog was outside, so he couldn't tell me what the message actually said.

"Come work for Stellar! We have state of the art ships," was what I heard. "...for when they were built 20 years ago," was the part I didn't hear. "We treat you like family," was heard. "We hate our family," wasn,t heard. I really shouldn't have been surprised at how bad Stellar was (and is). That's just how the corporate galaxy is these days.

It was a long walk from the infirmary to the cock pit. The Space Gull was a big ship, made for lengthy, slow voyages. The ship had four lounges, two theaters, five restaurants. It had dozens of corridors leading to hundreds of places that were designed to entertain the passengers. Each hallway had posters to remind everyone what a great time they were having on a "Stellar Interstellar Flight." The posters had pictures of faces that smiled back at you. Through their smiles, the faces spoke with bright colored words that read, "Stellar, the only way through the Milkyway," and that sort of stuff. As big as the ship was, the company only assigned two pilots working in 12 hour shifts. They were, and still are, cheap, not even providing a relief pilot so a
person could have a day off... or for emergencies like this.

"You look dead on your feet!" Scanlin, the other pilot was laughing so hard at his own dumb joke he could hardly get the words out. He'd heard about my condition the very first day, and the very first day he started making jokes. I was getting sick of it. I didn't bother to acknowledge him and just took the log and sat in the captain's chair as Scanlin stood up. Unfortunately my lack of interest didn't turn him off.

"Don't work yourself to death," he said, on his way out. He was still laughing a scoffing laugh.

"So, what do the doctors say?" Bolles, the navigator, asked once we were alone.

"They say I seem fine except for... well ... you know."

"What do they say about you not sleeping or eating for the past...how many days has it been?"

"They said they can't explain it," I answered. "And it's been three days."

Three days of not even wanting to taste a melting steak in my mouth. Three days of not having that comforting, drifting feeling of the world fading as you drop-off to sleep. It was the not being able to sleep that made me go to the doctor originally, that very first day on the ship. Stellar always liked their pilots well rested, so tranquilizers were free and easy to get. But instead of a pill
I found out I was DOA. I thought it was just a little new ship insomnia, I had no idea how serious my condition was.

"And that's it, all they say is They don't know what it is?" I think Bolles asked that question twice before I finally heard him. I nodded. I didn't mention the energy field. I had been told it was classified, which meant I would loose my job if anyone found out.

"Hmm," was all Bolles said, then went back to his work.

I was glad he didn't want to discuss it further. Since I had arrived on the Space Gull that's all I'd been talking about. I didn't sleep at the end of shift, so I would just go to the infirmary for company required tests, after that it was back to work... then back to the infirmary....then... well, you get the idea. I was a zombie caught in a cycle, not even thinking, just acting on orders.

The infirmary was dull. It's funny that no matter where you go, all hospitals are exactly alike. The rooms have big machines with tiny screens, the people wear rubber shoes that squeak, and everything they put next to your body is ice cold, even the sheets they give you to keep you warm.

Yes, the infirmary was dull and beyond. So was work. Time ran together. With no nights to break them up, all the hours became one, very long, work shift.

Then, on the seventh day, something happened. That day, suddenly, unexpectedly, I found I really loved work. I loved flying. It was poetry. I hadn't felt like that since I was kid, just starting out in the business. After all the years of flying for the corperations the joy of it had been lost. It had disappeared somewhere between the bureaucratic paper work garbage and the monotony of familiar flight paths. On the seventh day of my death, however, the exhilaration of space travel came back to me.

It started right after Skanlin left the cockpit, chuckling over some inane joke I don't even remember now. Bolles sat, like he usually did, hunched in the corner,quietly working on his charts and graphs. The gauges on the flight panel gave off a soft blue green glow that warmed my cold skin like a campfire.Outside it was dark, except for the stars surrounding us and inside it was quite, except for the hum of the life support engines. As I touched the controls I began floating trough space and time. Flying put memories to sleep and erased the past. The only thing that existed was the ship and the stars, and I was part of them both. It was a wonderful kind of insanity.

When I told the doctors what happened they just chalked it up to one of the side effects of the energy field. I wasn't sure what I chalked it up to, but I was glad that it happened.

For the next two days I went to the infirmary and I worked. I hated the infirmary, I loved work, except for Skanlin's jokes. I still didn't sleep or eat. On the tenth day I got a bit of good news. Skanlin was being transferred to another ship, immediately. He was to leave that day to go back to home base.

"I'm supposed to take that new route back," he said, scowling over the flight instructions. "The same path you took here, they say it's shorter," he said, looking up at me, then back down at his notes.

"Through the energy field," I thought. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything at all.

Skanlin mumbled aloud the headings, "95 degrees for 45 min 68 degrees for 2.5 hours...." his voice trailed off. "Is this way really shorter?" he asked turning to me. I guess maybe I should have told him, but my curiosity got the best of me. I just had to know if he would be making the same dumb jokes once it happened to him.

"Yeah, it's shorter," I said. That wasn't a lie, it actually was shorter.
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Stellar Spaceways put me on a new assignment one day after the Space Gull docked. I was glad, I hate it when I'm not flying. They told me I would be working doubles for a while and that was fine with me too. The way I feel now, the more time in the Captain's chair the better.

There was another pilot at the space port who was as anxious as I was to get back in the saddle. He didn't say it in words, but his actions told me he may have had a run in with the energy field too. I suspect that soon, many Stellar Spaceway pilots will have experienced the energy field. I guess I could try to warn people, but that would just get me fired and the corporate bigwigs would go ahead and do it anyway. So I figure, why bother.

Besides, I had heard a rumor that they were thinking of making stock available to employees. They want to be able to say they are "Employee Vested." Not owned, of course, they would see to it that the hours worked per share was too high for that. It would be just a few employees owning a few shares of stock. But the catch phrase "Employee Vested" sure makes for a good PR statement.

Like I said the cost of shares would be high, it would be something like one share per one thousand hours, but with me working double shifts and with no time off, I'll bet that one thousand hours would come and go by fast. In fact, I bet it would be that way for all of us pilots.

I guess the gist of all this is that now I can now honestly recommend Stellar. The ships are still pieces of junks, but you never have to worry about the pilot falling asleep at the wheel, or spilling dinner on the control board. And in a few months, I think I'll safely be able to say, that Stellar pilots have more flight time logged than any of the other space transports in the galaxy. And, if the rumors are true, it will soon be "Employee Vested!"

I wonder how much stock all those CEO's own?

Rings

“Do you remember the story about the Sun Domes?”

I guess he could tell by the way I acted I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. All I could really think about was the pull; the tearing that carried us away. It always happened when the ships pumps started. The pumps that pulled water from the rings of Saturn

“You know the Ray Bradbury story – about the guys that crashed on planet, it was a jungle planet, - and it rained all the time - and they kept looking for the Sun Domes to get out of the rain.”

I still had nothing. But that was OK. I was intent on the stars, the stars that were twirling around us.

“I think it was a book, but we saw the movie, remember we picked up the transmission about a month ago”

Now I remembered. We had been able to pick up transmissions from Earth for a very long time now, but most were broken and shattered. But this transmission, the transmission of the movie with the Sun Domes, was whole.

“Anyway, I wish we had that here, on one of the moons of Saturn, so we wouldn’t have to go through this all the time.”

He was right. This was a bother. Humans had discovered water in the Rings of Saturn back in 2005, but there was no real method or reason for extracting it until just recently. Now, with the colonies on nearly every single moon, humans were trying to extract it all the time. The crafts would sail above the rings, extracting water, using it, purifying it, then returning it to be used again. The water in the Rings meant that large amounts of water no longer had to be carried on the ships.

They came with their tubes and their ships; wrenching us from our homes, dragging us to theirs.

“If there was a jungle planet where it rained all the time, they could just get all the water they needed from there.”

The tube closed in on us, narrowing as it entered the craft. We shot from the opening, flickering and dancing around humans. Dancing to the rhythm of the humming engine, dancing to the sound of the pump that dragged us from all we knew to this world of flesh and steel.

“It’s another one of those freakin anomalies,” I head one of the humans say.

“What causes it,” said the other

“Electrical charges or some such stuff, at least that’s what the scientists say. Stop the pump. That will kill the charge and it will go away.”

The music of the motor died and we raced to the tube, raced down to the darkness, raced back to the dark and the ice, and the rocks. Back to the Rings

And the water that is our home.

The race is on.....

The Race begins -

On Oct 4, 1957, the world changed. The Soviet Union launched the first man-made object into orbit. It sent back “beeps” that were designed to reveal information about the density of the upper atmosphere. As Sputnik circled the Earth for 92 days, people watched and listened. The “new moon” as some called it caused a sense of “amazement and shock” that ignited the space race.

Amazement:

Everyone knew the United States and the Soviet Union were planning to launch a satellite. The Russians, however, launched their satellite sooner than anyone expected. When the word was released of the 183 lb satellite’s flight, the news media scrambled for information, amateur radio operators turned their sets to the frequency Sputnik was broadcasting, and people turned their eyes to the night sky to watch the satellite pass.

Shock:

From 1945-1989 the Soviet Union and the Unite States were locked in an ideological conflict that fell short of full scale war. This heated clash over social and political values made both sides feared a nuclear attack by their “enemy.” The Sputnik launch fueled these worries. It was reasoned that if the Soviet Union could launch a satellite into space, they could launch an atomic bomb to anywhere in the United States.

Did you know---?

Some historians believe that Eisenhower, the President at the time, was relieved and perhaps even glad that the Russians launched the first satellite? Since Sputnik crossed over the US and we didn’t complain, the concept of “free space” was established. The US could now launch “spy” satellites over Russia with out the fear that they would say we violated their air space.