Golden Visions Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy
July- August- September Issue 2008
Dedicated to all who are serving or have served in our countries military...land air and sea. We salute you and Thank You.
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Living Waters
by Christine Lajoie Golden
Mortimer tightened his belt. It had gone down two notches since the training mission started, just four weeks earlier. Rations were tight. Water wasn't a real problem, since it rained all freakin' day and night on this godforsaken planet. At least he had something to drink--something good.
He licked the sweet rain from his lips. It was like nothing he had ever tasted before. He almost didn't mind that they were nearly out of food. He almost didn't mind that one by one his comrades were disappearing. He should feel guilty, but he didn't. He never really wanted to come here anyway.
When his group landed on the planet, the plan was to train for two weeks. The Academy had hand picked twelve cadets for this training mission. In order to complete his training, he had go on at least one off world maneuver. Mortimer Handelsohn didn't want to join the Academy, but it was the only way to earn his pilot's licence. A genuine, licensed pilot with credentials legally recognized on all seven planets in the Altruistic System.
Sure, he could have continued on they way he always had. Flying his late father's shuttle and transporting odd shipments here and there. But the credits he earned barely paid for the fuel, much less anything else. Between landing fees, docking fees, and shipping taxes, he found himself in debt. When the authorities finally caught up with him, they gave him a choice. Prison or the Academy.
Opening his last pack of rations, Mortimer began to chew on the cardboard flavored contents. I should have picked prison. At least the food would have been better, he told himself. He folded up the package and put in in his shirt pocket. How much longer?
"Listen! Did you hear that?" Cpl. Henry Lowell, sitting to Mortimer's right, leaned forward and strained to hear. "Does that sound like a ship to you?"
"Sounds like rain to me," Jerryl Jenkins, a civilian paying to take the training course through the Academy, stood and listened intently. "All you can ever hear is rain."
"Where's Danny?" Henry looked around, pulling at Mortimer's rain soaked sleeve. "He was here just a few minutes ago."
Mortimer laughed lightly. "He's with Hanson, Belvedere, Ronin, Carson..." his voice faded into silence as he saw the look on Jerryl's face. A look of fear. Real fear. Like a kid afraid to look under the bed. "He's fine. Most likely just off using the can." He didn't believe it, and neither did Henry.
"He's been gone two days now." Jerryl adjusted his torn raincoat. "It's just us four now."
"Pretty rough training mission. Even for the academy." Sgt. Camden Hutchinson, the senior member of the training crew mumbled. "I've been on three myself."
"You've been here three times?" Jerryl leaned forward, amazed.
"Not here," Hutchinson adjusted his backpack. "The Academy just finished clearing this place for training missions a few months ago. No matter how many vines they cut down, they just kept growing back. We're actually the first tactical training group placed here."
"Did they also change the protocol?" Mortimer licked his lips, savoring the sweet tingle the rain water left on his tongue. "When did they start dropping cadets and trainee's off for a month with two weeks of food supplies and no way to contact--?"
A loud scream silenced Mortimer and the others. The sound seemed to come from all around them-like they were in an echo chamber. It was a primeval scream. A gut wrenching, soul piercing cry. Like the planet itself demanded that they leave...now.
"This place is supposed to be uninhabited, right?" Jerryl whispered, eyes like saucers, begging an affirmative answer from the military members of the group.
"Define uninhabited." Lowell flipped over his night vision lens, a small circle that covered only his right eye, and displayed various bits of tactical info as well as provide adequate night visibility.
Mortimer spat and stood up. He was hungry, tired, and scared...and he wasn't ashamed to admit it. He only wanted a pilot's license- job security- he didn't care about looking fearless in front of these men. He had only known them since they were dropped off a month ago. The two men that he had actually formed a friendship with had disappeared the second week. Andy Carson and Sean Hanson- two other guys ending up at the Academy the same way he had, a choice between prison or service.
"What was that?" Jerryl shifted nervously.
"I'll go check it out," Mortimer found himself saying. It wasn't his job- his responsibility- he wasn't even real military. But he was tired of being hungry, wet, and yes-- scared. It might have been part of the training mission to separate them all...most likely the others were already back on base. Yeah, Carson and Hanson and the others were eating real food, sleeping in warm dry beds, and enjoying holoporn, while he and his three remaining companions starved and got crotch rot.
Hutchinson yelled something at him, but the rain drowned it out. Mortimer pushed back some thick vines and peered into the darkness, wishing he had one of the those fancy little night vision lenses that the senior cadets had. Wish in one hand and ...the thought drifted away.
Once more he licked his lips and tasted the sweet rainwater. It's not so bad here. None of the others mentioned the flavor of the rain. None of the others raised their faces to allow the falling water to wash away their sweat and worries. I guess coming from a planet that was mostly desert makes one appreciate rain a bit more.
Mortimer turned to go back to his comrades. He couldn't see or hear anything in the dark. In the morning, when the pale pink daylight peaked through the foliage, they would move on. After more than ten minutes he began to worry. He couldn't find the campsite. I'm lost-- panic moved in to build a home in his rainsoaked body.
Stumbling through the viney foliage, slipping on the muddy ground, his mind tried to tell him he was traveling in circles. No footprints remained on the strange terrain. He had no way to track his companions, no way to mark the trail. Cuts made in the strange plant life disappeared almost instantly. Although no one said anything (did anyone but him notice?), cuts or crossmarks made on the plants, or vine-like trees seemed to heal almost as soon as they were made. How do you mark a trail when it won't stay marked?
Mortimer recalled that Carson had tried cutting off small bits of his T-shirt and tying them to different parts of the overgrowth. Within minutes they were gone. Gave a whole new meaning to the word osmosis. He shuddered as he leaned against one of the tree-like growths, touching it's leathery trunk. Did you absorb my friends too? Am I the last one alive? Will I be next?
Exhaustion, hunger and sleep deprivation took it's toll. He slid down to the ground and let the rain pound his body. He tried to dream of the desert that he grew up on, but the images faded as quickly as they came. Hope--desire--ambition--faded away too. Pain--fear--anger--resistance--all washed from him as the rain continued its gentle assault.
"Why are you here?"
Mortimer looked up at the image of a young girl, her body shaped from the very rain that saturated this odd world. Her mouth did not move, but he heard her clearly. He could see the foliage of the surroundings through her. He reached out to touch her and his hand passed through her, causing her image to ripple, and he saw his life flash before his eyes in an instant.
"You are different from ...them..." the girl pointed to the rest of his companions. They all floated within the larger vines, forming a circle around him. "What are you?"
Mortimer frowned. "I am human, just like them. They are my friends...my brothers." He paused and thought of her first question, "We are here to ...learn."
"Learn." She smiled and a rainbow flashed across her lips. "Yes. This concept is clear to me. What have you learned here?"
"You already know." Mortimer licked more raindrops from his lips. "Are you going to kill us?"
She shuddered, and again her body rippled. "It is not our way."
"Please, let them go. They meant no harm to you."
"If I do this for you, will you promise to make them leave and never let them come back?"
He nodded, although deep within his soul he felt that he had more in common with this planet and it's odd life forms than he did with his human companions. He felt a connection with it. It pained him that he would never taste the sweet rain of this planet again. In spite of it's downfalls, he never felt more at peace than he had since they had landed here.
"Thank you." Her silken, watery hand caressed his face, and as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone.
Mortimer heard the rain stop. In the entire month they had been on this planet, the rain had been a constant companion...a constant companion...Companion. Comrade. Friend. One by one, the members of his group wandered towards him, their faces a mask of confusion, their gaunt bodies barely able to keep them on their feet. Recognition lit up the faces of both Carson and Hanson as Mortimer greeted them.
Helping his friends, he managed to find his way back to the campsite, if indeed it could be called that. No fire warmed them, they didn't even have any heat blocks left. Oddly enough, all of the missing men still had some food rations left, which they shared with each other. Not one of them could remember anything about where they had been or what had happened.
A signal flare was found in the one of the backpacks, which was strictly against regulations on these short term training missions, and Hutchinson fired it without hesitation. Without a radio, or any other long distance comm devices, hope was minimal that a search team would have been looking for them. They had a rendezvous point...somewhere.
"It's two weeks past our pickup date," Lowell reminded them all. "They might have given up looking for us."
"That's what I like about you son," Hutchinson shoved a stale foodbar at the young man, "you're always looking on the bright side."
"I can find the way out," Mortimer interrupted.
"What did you say?" The Sergeant raised a tired eyebrow at him.
"I think I can find our way out."
"What's keeping you?" Hutchinson stood straight. "You men up for a hike?"
The group muttered and nodded.
Mortimer silently led the way, following a path of glistening raindrops that seemed to point him in the right direction. They came upon a clearing after just fifteen minutes of walking. In the middle of the clearing sat a waiting shuttle.
"You know that you aren't supposed to be carrying any special equipment," a young soldier ran out to help many of the group board the ship. "But it's good you did. We never would have found you in this place. The rain messed with our equipment- we couldn't even trace body heat. We found no life signs in these woods, if you can call this woods. It's more like a jungle, minus the creepy creatures. That flare probably just saved your lives."
"Good job keeping your men together Sgt. Hutchinson," another uniformed man came and helped out. "I don't know how you did it, but they all look healthy enough."
"Wasn't me," Hutchinson started to say something, but the look on Mortimer's face stopped him. "Thank you sir. We had a good group this time."
A small puddle of water lay near the shuttle. Mortimer hurriedly opened his canteen and filled it.
"No need son, we have supplies on board," a medic started to pull him away from his task.
"Right...right." Mortimer closed the canteen, careful not to spill out any of the precious water. He stuffed the canteen under his soaked uniform. "Are my friends alright?'
"Everyone is accounted for," the medic clipped a neural tag onto Mortimer's left temple. "Don't worry, you'll get those pounds back on before long." He tugged at Mortimer's loose belt. "Rest now, we're putting everyone into a short stasis for the trip back."
"No," Mortimer tugged at the restraints in the shuttle seat, "I want to stay awake." But it was too late...the tingle on the side of his head let him know that the neural tag released a tryptophan-based substance into his system and he felt himself get sleepy. When he woke up, he was back at the Academy, laying in the sick bay.
"How you feeling son?" An older nurse touched his forehead with VS scanner. "Everything looks fine."
"Where are my belongings?" He sat up too fast and fell back down, exhausted.
"Whoa now," the nurse, whose name tag read Millings, "you're just an hour post-stasis. You shouldn't even be awake just yet."
"The others?"
"All fine. I need to let the doctor and the squad leader know that your awake." She turned to leave, then turned back and smiled. "Don't try to get up yet. It takes two hours for the neuro-agents to de-activate."
"My belongings?"
She pointed to the pile of clothing that lay in the bottom of small table next to his cot, then she left.
Mortimer bent over and found the canteen, still among his damp clothes. Opening it slowly, he let a single drop fall onto his tongue. Immediately he felt better. And he knew what he had to do.
One week later, they had all been released from the hospital and completed their evaluations and mission reports. It was Mortimer's turn to talk to the Protocol Committee, his time to be de-briefed on the mission. He was alone in the room.
"Mr. Handelsohn," a heavy, bald man with ebony skin and piercing eyes pointed to the lone chair in the room. "Everyone else has given their account of what happened during the mission. It's your turn now."
Mortimer sat in the chair and faced the Committee. Five stern faced members watched him, many of their features hidden among the dark shadows of the poorly lit room.
"Please give us your version of what happened during your training exercise." He couldn't tell who had asked the question.
"I don't know what I can tell you that you don't already know...I don't really remember much."
He thought about the image of the girl and his promise to her. He knew she wasn't really human, that somehow she had reached into his mind and pulled out an image that he would respond positively to. He knew that if humans returned to that planet, they would not be as fortunate as his group had been.
"Tell us what you remember."
Slowly, Mortimer recanted the events, leaving out his encounter with the water creature. It was, after all, just a hallucination, right? "And it was just luck that I found the way out..."
After a moment of silence, the ebony skinned man tapped his fingers on the desk. "It seems that your version conflicts with some of the others. They said you told them you knew the way out."
The memory of the sweet rainwater on his lips gave him comfort. "I lied."
"You led them out to the clearing where the shuttle was waiting. How do you explain that?"
"One of the men had hidden a flare in his backpack. I think it was left over from a previous training excursion. We lit it and the rescue shuttle spotted it. The clearing was a fluke. I found it while I was off taking a whiz. I didn't know the shuttle would be there. Dumb luck we were found, that's all."
"Can you tell us anything else?" The lone woman on the panel leaned forward. Her eyes seemed to bore into Mortimer's brain, like she was trying to read his mind.
"Like I said, I don't remember much."
"Where do you think the missing men were?" The voice came from the end of the desk, from deep in the shadows.
"I guess they wandered off. Got lost."
"How did you find them?"
"It's more like they found me," Mortimer shrugged. If he told them the truth, they would take his canteen and perform all sorts of strange experiments on the water. He wasn't sure what they would find, but he couldn't take a chance. He already knew none of the others had the same reaction to the water, he just didn't know why. He only had a couple of months left in his Academy contract, then he would get his licence and be home free.
"Do you have anything else to add?" The woman had not taken her eyes off of him.
"Not that I can think of."
"Dismissed."
Mortimer stood and gave a weak salute to the Committee. He left the room and headed down the long hall, back towards his barracks and the rest of his team. He would probably never see the others from the training mission again.
"Handelsohn!"
Mortimer turned around and spotted the woman from the Committee walking towards him. He wanted to pretend he didn't hear her, but it was too late.
"What really happened?" She wasn't as old as he first thought. Something about her reminded him of someone, but he couldn't place her.
"Just what I told you, Ma'am."
"I don't believe you." She grabbed his arm. "It's important that I know the truth."
"Why?"
"There are others still there." The words caught in her throat.
"But we were told that we were the first group..." Mortimer smiled. The mission was clear now. They weren't just doing some silly survival training--they were really a rescue team. Lowell and Hutchinson were supposed to bring back more than just their own team. He gave a little laugh when he realized the truth.
"Your team was the second." The woman let go of his arm. "And the last."
"That's good. Humans don't belong there." He started to leave, then turned around. "Are you telling me the truth? No more missions there?"
The woman nodded. "You weren't the only one affected by this, you know."
Suddenly it dawned on him why the woman was so familiar. The water had taken on her image- her shape. "You were there?"
She nodded. "I recommended that all future training missions be conducted on our previous sites." Her features softened for a moment. "Due to the interference with our equipment."
"The others...they're gone now, you know." He didn't know how he knew, but he knew that there was no use trying to go back and find them.
Again, she nodded. "When we rescued all of you...I hoped that you might have seen...have found..."
"I didn't find the others. They found me." Mortimer turned to walk away. He didn't remember seeing her face in the shuttle, but then again, things happened so fast. The medic had knocked him out so quickly...
"What are you going to do when you get out?" She called out after him.
Mortimer turned around slowly. "I don't even know your name."
"D'eau," she smiled sadly. "It's French."
Mortimore pressed his canteen against his hip and hoped he had enough water to last him until his return. Maybe it was fate that had brought him there. Maybe it was fate that brought D'eau to him. Maybe it wasn't even real--just a delusion from hunger and sleep deprivation. Only time would tell.
He remained and watched D'eau depart, when it suddenly dawned on him. She wasn't talking about the missing men from the first mission. She never finished her question...
Good Intentions
by David Neuburger
Living Waters PG13
by Christine Lajoie Golden
Strange Tractors
by Gustavo Bondoni
.................Warning.............. Some of the subject matter on this page may be unsuitable for some readers. While the language is not offensive, the contents may not be appropriate for everyone. Please be advised.
This story contains some details that may be objectionable for younger readers.
Good Intentions by David Neuburger
"The universe is a funny place."
I looked up from my book. The bar was silent in its reply. Besides myself, there were only three patrons, the bartender, and a couple of go-go girls in the joint. It was around 4am Earthside and mostly everyone had gone home. Two navy kids were playing "Todd's Adventures in Slime World" on an old Videlectrix box in the corner and the girls were passed out in a booth. With a cruiser moored up to resupply and her crew let loose on a two-day pass, everyone was beyond tired. It had been a long night.
The one who broke the silence was a cyborg who looked as though he'd seen some rough times. Not that it mattered to me one way or the other what he was, it was just that you don't see too many full-on tin-men in bars. Usually when a mega-Corp or the military spends that kind of money on an operative, they make them immune to alcohol for liability purposes. Don't want someone with the strength of ten getting drunk and out of control when it's the company that'll be held liable.
"Not ha-ha funny..." the cyborg continued, still talking to no one in particular, "more like you're the butt of a joke so everyone but you finds it hilarious."
One of his eyes, an electronic one from the looks it, was removed in a not-too-gentle-manner. He had a mop of dirty black hair and his skin was replaced with that flesh-tone ballistic stuff that's supposed to act as low-grade body armor. He was dressed in a gray suit that looked as if he'd been wearing it for days. If it weren't for the eye and the sheen of his ballistic skin reflecting the low hung lights, he could almost pass for a fleshling. My guess was that he was a bodyguard for some rich executive type.
When he spoke, he did so to his half-empty high-ball of scotch. I waited for a tick, hoping James, the bartender, would ask the questions I wanted to. I've never been good with words. It's not that I'm stupid; things just always seem to come out wrong. When they do, people get mad and I end up in a fight. I'm not especially big or strong, so I had to get pretty good with my fists. I guess it was inevitable that I would end up becoming a bouncer.
James had been teaching me the value of keeping my trap shut. In this job, you meet all sorts of people who are in every sort of predicament imaginable. From a bouncer's point of view, so long as they don't start a fight or get rough with one of the girls, it's not my business.
Like many bartenders, James was pretty good at reading people. He seemed to know when to pry and when to leave things alone. At that moment, he was minding his own business and doing the dishes. Thinking back, I suppose I should've taken his lead and not gotten involved. However, it was the end of the night and the bar was just about empty. With idle hands and an active (albeit slow) mind, my curiosity got the better of me.
"Excuse me friend," I began in my most diplomatic tone, "I couldn't help but notice your eye. You want us to call a doctor?"
The cyborg was silent, gazing intently into his drink. In almost slow motion, he poured the remainder into his mouth and swallowed. His eye stayed open and darted back and forth, as if searching for something deep within his own mind. With a look that surely meant that he was unable to find what he was looking for, he the placed the empty glass on the bar next to the coaster.
"Bartender," he said in almost an apology, “I need another.” James came by and poured the scotch.
"This is the last one, we're closing," James said before he left with the bottle. The cyborg picked up the glass and again stared deeply into its contents. After what seemed to me an eternity of ignoring the 800 pound guerilla in the room, I decided to try again,
"Hey man, I ho--"
"I'm not a man!" he thundered, his pupil dilated in rage and affixed to my person.
The anger in his voice made me reach for my shock wand. A crazy cyborg tearing the place up is the last thing I needed at 4am.
"Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it," I said hoping to diffuse the situation. "It's just that we see many ti--I mean, cyborgs around here."
The tin-man's anger quickly faded. He set the cracked glass, contents untouched, on the wet ring of condensation beaded atop the bar.
"I am the memory of a man, nothing more."
Automatically, my brow furrowed. Out of the corner of my eye I could see James giving me a look of warning.
"I don't understand," I said to the cyborg and unintentionally to James.
"Of course you don't, how could you? You probably still have your balls!"
"Well, yeah...of course I do!" I said, stupidly.
At this the tin-man slapped the bar and laughed heartily. His posture changed and he looked me square in the eye. He raised his finger and leveled it at my chest.
"Do you know what happens to a person who loses a limb? They feel it like it's still there. You see, it takes a while for your brain and your body to get on the same page. You lose an arm and for months you're trying to pick things up with two hands."
Becoming engulfed in the heat of debate, I returned his gaze and removed my hand from my shock wand. Excited, I spoke quickly, loudly and with animated gestures, "But everything they took out they put back in, and then some! You're not missing anything that wasn't replaced-- and don't tell me you've got no balls! Everyone knows that after the Ender incident, all cyborgs are able to give and receive sexual stimulation thanks to a detachable, enhance-able, vibrating wonder-of-science that's wired into your BCP like the rest of your mods. Hell, the rest of us should be so lucky!"
"That's not the point!" the cyborg retorted, the volume of his voice pushing well past loud, "If I'm still able to bundle with women, so what? These things they put in me, are cold and inhuman; not a breath of life in 'em! It's as if there are two wolves in me, fighting. One is the flesh, the other, the mods. They battle for dominance, a fight to the death for my very soul! --and I'll tell you what, the flesh is losing. Instead of the mods becoming a part of me, a human being, I am becoming like them, cold and dead. As my brain gets used to these...these...things, it changes who I am. I am becoming the living dead; a mechanical shell of a man."
The two playing video games were done and at the bar's front entrance. They tried in vain to open the locked door, then turned and shouted to James, "Hey, you gonna let us out or do we just snuggle up with the girls?"
I motioned James to toss me the ring of keychips . As he got them, I turned to the cyborg and said, "You said you are becoming the living dead; that you are worried about your soul. That means the damage isn't a done deal yet. Instead of wallowing in this dive, pissing your money away on booze that does nothing for you, why not do something about your situation? You don't like what you are? You think your soul is at risk of being corrupted by your mods, then do something about it!"
James found the ring and tossed them to me. I got up and started for the door; my concentration on finding the right key. I was proud of myself for giving what I thought was pretty good advice. "We are all able, "I thought to myself, "to at any moment change our circumstances. We can make ourselves more than what we are."
When my sister was hooked on cubes, it was those exact words spoken by a man whose house she tried to rob that turned her around. She was so messed up that right after she broke in, she decided she needed a hit. She slipped the hit under her tongue and it turned out to be bogus. She collapsed, taking out a glass coffee table on the way down. The man woke up, ran downstairs and found her lying on the floor. He got her a doctor and kept up with her until she got better. My sister never asked why he was being so kind and he never told her.
Whatever his reasons, he saved her life. Helped her heal inside and out. The cyborg was right about one thing, the universe is a funny place.
There was a loud bang and I felt a light sticky mist against my skin. I turned around to find the cyborg dead on the floor. There was a small revolver in his hand and a gooey crater where the back of his head used to be. James emerged from his hiding spot behind the bar (probably dove for cover the instant he saw the gun) and shot me an angry look. He didn't have to say anything.
"I know, I know. I talk too much
David has been writing his whole life. He says " Maybe I was emulating my father, who is himself a wordsmith. Maybe something in me sought expression and had no other way out. However it began, writing has allowed me to step outside myself and see the world through eyes not my own. It is an amazing, recursive process. Writing enriches my understanding of the world, which in turn makes me a better writer."
As a young man he went to college and studied Philosophy and History at Southern Illinois University. He then joined the Coast Guard and spent the next four years as a weapons technician on a ship based in Seattle, WA. He traveled the world and after a bevy of hard-earned-life-lessons, felt it was time to move on.
He went to Chicago and made good use of his Veteran's benefits by going back to school. Eventually landed in New York and currently works on mainframe computers at IBM. Writing, however personally fulfilling, does not yet pay the bills. Perhaps time and hard work will change that.
We are proud to offer you this- his first published story! Congratulations!
Strange Tractors
by Gustavo Bondoni
Redman sweated at the controls. No amount of insulation could fully keep the heat of this place out of the cabin. He pulled hard on the joystick, causing the massive floating spider to scurry a thousand meters to the west on its ceramic floats. He peered into the opaque red surface below him, trying to spot the telltale grey streaks that denoted an ore-rich eddy in the viscous liquid.
The plume was breaching the surface. Soon, the liquid rock and metal would mix with the surface flow, creating a current, ten or fifteen meters deep, easily mined. He had to act now.
He continued to stare at the surface, trying to time his moment, not wanting to lose his position. The tractor shuddered as it floated on the roiling liquid, but he refused to let that disturb his concentration.
Wait for it. Wait for it.
There! He pressed a button on the control panel and pushed the joystick forward once more. A huge, gear-driven apparatus that looked a lot like the a ventilation fan with the blades set at an aggressive angle lowered itself into the molten mass of stone and metal that composed the hellish surface of the planet.
The spider-like tractor shuddered as power was transferred to the mixer. Redman coaxed the stick from one side to the other, trying to create the perfect initial conditions.
Despite all the technology available to channel the flow of lava, and all the diagnostics available to predict where the river with the richest mineral deposits would go, the most efficient way of mining this planet was to create the rich flow where you wanted it – so that it passed right under where you’d already placed your mining plant.
And the only way to make the chaotic, roiling convection current go in the preferred direction was to attack it at its source and make the initial conditions right.
Computer simulations had been used extensively to predict the chaotic behavior of the molten metal. Initial conditions had been studied, and predictions made. The model was ready for field-testing.
The computers had failed miserably. The cost of airlifting the mining sites to the distant rivers of highly concentrated valuable metal had nearly bankrupted the operation. Only the fact that the planet really was a mother lode managed to keep the system viable.
Redman was part of the solution, one so simple that it was nearly silly. Some human engineers, who’d been on the planet for the whole construction phase of the project, with nothing to do but study the flow of molten metal and rock, which they called lava, of course, had taken one look at the simulations and said: ‘That’s never going to work. You need to push the top of the plume that way.’ After the nth failure in which the computer simulation sent a river of rich lava almost in exactly the wrong direction, an engineer had been sent out on one of the tractors to try it his way.
The perfect bulls-eye had made the station immediately hyperprofitable, and the company had been extremely interested to know how he’d done it.
“It just felt right,” the man had replied, and thus had been born the Teaser’s union.
Redman was a Teaser. He was a good Teaser with a great feel for how to nudge any system to get a good river going in the right direction. But ‘it just feels right’ left little room for certainty. Certainty was something rarely found in chaotic systems of any kind. He understood how the weathermen from Earth must have felt, at the mercy of the capricious forces of chaotic nature. The main difference was that they had better models back home, having had much more time in which to study the behavior of cold fronts and depressions.
He watched the plume he’d teased, tension building, sweat dripping off the point of his nose. Would the upwelling of dense metal coalesce into a single shallow river, aimed in the right direction, and moving at the right speed? Had he tweaked the initial conditions sufficiently? Not stirring hard enough could make the river sluggish, too full of dense elements, and less profitable to mine on an hourly basis. Too much stirring could demolish the flow, splitting it into smaller rivers, none of which would pay the bills. Of course, stirring in the wrong place would affect the initial conditions sufficiently to send the river off in any direction. And, of course, controlling chaos was all about the getting the initial conditions exactly right.
Well, there was nothing more he could do about it. This game of Russian Roulette had been played, the trigger pulled.
Teasing was a high-stakes game. Not on the safety side, of course, at least not anymore – the capsules were sink-proof and the insulation could last for hours if they capsized, much more then the time needed for rescue. No. The gamble was economics. A good river would earn a huge bonus. A bad one would not cover your costs, and lower your chances of getting the next job. Capsizing meant bankruptcy.
Redman had had five good rivers and one marginal one in the last year. He was probably the richest individual on this infernal molten rock. He could have anything available on the planet.
But this plume, this river was the one he needed to nail to get the one thing he wanted most. The bonus on this one, plus the sale value of his tractor would scrape the money together to make his dream come true.
This one would allow him to buy his ticket back to Earth.
Gustavo was our featured author last issue. We are proud to be able to offer more of his well-wriiten stories. To learn more about this talented author, please visit his website at:
http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/.
