Added a new scene to the novel, 1550 words. I still feel like this particular romantic subplot is not gelling and not fitting in with the overall story. I need to find a way for it to contribute more to the main plot. But perhaps that’s something I’ll figure out in the rewrite.
Author: JOhn (Page 1 of 6)
I added 2500 or so words to my current work in progress, two important scenes. Four more before I hit the midpoint of the novel. If I keep going at this rate, the midpoint will happen just shy of 50K words. A little long for a cozy, but I’ll find ways to tighten it up during edit passes.
Well, that scene got away from me a bit. I ended up writing 2360 words instead of the target of 1600. Ah well, that’s what the edit pass is for, right?
After a few days of depression and melancholy, I finally found my way back to my writing desk. As I reviewed my previous work to prepare for today’s additions, I was reminded that I enjoy my own writing. So, I added 1,100 words to my work-in-progress. I hope to finish the scene tomorrow.
I didn’t add any new words to my WIP today, sadly. Instead, I spent several hours brainstorming the plot for an entirely different post-apocalyptic fantasy novel (with a gay protagonist, naturally). As one does when they’re trying to actually finish writing a novel.
by John Kusters Jr.
He touched down on the balcony of her high-rise apartment at precisely 6p.m. He knew she valued punctuality, and he was not going to be late to take her out on her 65th birthday. They’d shared many such dinners over the decades, but this one was different. Tonight, he carried a secret heavy on his heart, one he’d decided he could no longer keep.
As his boots settled on the teak decking, the glass door slid open, and she stepped out to greet him. Though she could dress to rival Hollywood’s brightest stars, she always preferred practical clothes. Tonight she was dressed in fur-lined boots, heavy wool trousers, and that full-length navy greatcoat that made her blue eyes even more striking. Her hair, now turned silver with age, stirred in the evening breeze. His heart leaped at her beauty.
She flashed him her most welcoming smile. “On time as always, Boy Scout. Where are we going tonight?”
“I was thinking something a bit more private than usual. What would you say to the Fox and Hound up in Eldred?”
“Oh, I loved that place. You’ve made reservations?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed with a sly smile. “I just like to verify my assumptions.”
“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”
He held out his arms, and she slid into them. Wrapping his arms around her firmly but not tightly, he pushed off into the evening air, his cape rustling in the wind.
Whatever force allowed him to defy Earth’s gravity also protected those he carried from the cold and wind of flight. He felt her shifting slightly in his arms, both for a better view and greater comfort. He spared a moment to smile down at her and was rewarded with a knowing and loving look. He would fight legions of aliens, killer robots, and mad geniuses for a look like that.
A moment of doubt shot through him. Would she accept his truth, as his parents had done unconditionally? Or would she reject him? He wasn’t sure he could bear her rejection. He had always known her as a practical yet caring person. Surely what he wanted to tell her wouldn’t change that, right? Despite how well he thought he knew her, there was always that fear.
The flight did not take long. It wasn’t as if they were going to that cute chalet in the Swiss Alps, or that wonderful restaurant they had found in Delhi. This was just a short jaunt from the sprawling metropolis she called home, where they had both worked together for several decades. Less than fifteen minutes from when they left her condominium, they were touching down in the gravel parking lot outside the steakhouse.
The warmth from the stone fireplace in the corner wrapped around them as they entered, carrying the rich aroma of grilled meat and aged wood. Crystal chandeliers cast a soft amber glow across the dark mahogany wainscoting, and the low murmur of conversation mixed with the gentle clink of fine china.
Of course there were stares and whispers around them as they waited for the host. There always were when he appeared in his red and blue skin-tight suit. Though he could have clearly heard every word being whispered, his moral sense wouldn’t allow such an invasion of privacy.
“Ah, monsieur, we have your table waiting,” the Maître d’ said in a practiced but inauthentic French accent. He led them to a table in a private, secluded corner of the dining room, and left them to peruse the menus.
When the server approached them, he could hear her heart racing with nerves, but she relaxed as they ordered their drinks–tonic water for him and white wine for her–and their meals. Once their drinks arrived, they sat in silence, gazing at each other. To cover his nerves, he picked up a piece of rich brown bread from its basket and began toying with it.
He’d faced planetary disasters, mass deaths, and even galactic terrors, but nothing in his life so far required more courage than this.
He knew it was now or never.
“There’s something I need to tell you, Lois,” he started. “A secret I’ve kept from you these nearly fifty years.”
Her brow arched slightly, but she said nothing, encouraging him to continue.
“I’m not who you think I am. I’ve led a double life for longer than I’ve known you, longer than just about anyone who has known me.” He had rehearsed this speech in his head hundreds of times over the past couple of years, but had never found the perfect words. He was tired of waiting and had decided to forge ahead.
He realized that he had squeezed the bread into a ball the size of a bead. Forcing himself to breathe and relax his hand, he said, “That is to say, I mean, well, I’m–“
She put her hand gently on his wrist. “You’re Clark.”
He pulled back in surprise, his eyebrows shooting up so quickly it would have been comical in any other situation. His mouth opened and closed twice before he managed to form words, and he had to consciously remember not to grip the table too tightly lest he crack the solid oak.
“You know?”
“My dear love, I’ve known for decades. Hadn’t you noticed the number of times I suggested ‘Clark’ run off to find you when danger appeared? I knew you were always one broom closet or phone booth away.”
Conflicting emotions flooded through him. How had she known? And if she knew, how many others had worked it out? How many more people were now in danger?
A gentle squeeze on his wrist brought his attention back to his date. “I’m pretty sure no one else has figured it out. And I’m not going to tell anyone.”
For the first time in decades, he felt like he could truly breathe. No more careful calculations about which version of himself to present. With her, at least, he could simply be.
A sense of shame for not coming out sooner played in the back of his mind. “How did you know?”
“You’ve always done a good job keeping your two personas very different. Clumsy versus confident, bashful verses courageous, stammering versus eloquent. But there’s one thing that was absolutely the same between the two of you, and only someone as close to both of you as I have could see it.”
“See what?”
“Your soul. That soul that shines as bright as the sun and challenges us all to rise to its example. It didn’t matter whether you were wearing the scarlet and blue,” she pointedly looked at the tights and cape he was wearing, “or that amazingly badly tailored suit–the man inside was always the same.”
He ducked his head in embarrassment. “Aw, shucks, Lois, that’s awfully kind of you to say.”
“And there’s that humility that is at the same time so endearing and frustrating.” Her smile took the sting out of the words.
“I only kept it secret to protect you, you and other people close to me.”
“It took me a couple of years to figure that out if I’m being honest. At first, when I realized who you were, I was pretty upset with you for keeping it a secret. But as I read stories about the lives of other people with gifts like yours, well, it dawned on me. You have powerful enemies, and your loved ones could be used as leverage against you.”
He smiled affectionately at her. “I should never be surprised at what you see and figure out.” His relief that his announcement was no big deal to her warred with his annoyance at his own decades-long hesitation to reveal his secret.
“This won’t change anything between us, of course. But I expect the world is in for a shock.”
“How so?”
“Once you unburden your soul with one person, other people are never far behind. I doubt it will be a year before you reveal your secret to the world.”
“No way, Lois, that’s not going–” but he stopped himself. As she had said it, he had felt something shift inside, a new yearning that he hadn’t fully felt before.
She shot him a knowing look. “See? I would imagine that keeping this secret has been tearing at you from the first time you put on your world-saving pajamas. And now that you’ve loosened your grip on it, the need to free yourself from it will gnaw at you.”
He realized the truth of her words, and then a panic started beating in his heart. “I hadn’t thought of that. I should have never said anything. I would rather not put you in any danger!”
She stopped him by grabbing his hand. “No, don’t you dare. I’m honored you decided to tell me. And when it comes time for the world to know the real Clark, we’ll figure it out. Neither of us is stupid.”
He chuckled. “But as you’ve reminded me on many occasions, I can be a bit naive and dense.”
“I’m glad you can admit that,” she said teasingly. “But seriously, I have confidence we’ll figure something out. And there’s no way I’m giving up on you, on us. You may not have realized it, but we’ve been dating for nigh on forty years now, and I hope it won’t belong before we’re walking down the street, arm in arm like ordinary people.”
“Lois, there has never been anything ordinary about you.”
“Look who’s talking!”
“Fair enough.”
“And I’m eagerly awaiting to hear all about growing up in that small town in Kansas, finding out about your gifts, and what Ma and Pa taught you. I know Clark loved them very much, but there was always something you held back. And now, I hope you’ll be able to give me the full story. Completely off the record, I swear.”
At the mention of his adoptive parents, a wistful smile shaped his lips. “Actually, if I do come out to the rest of the world, I might want you to tell that story. They were unbelievably good people, taught me so much.”
“You wouldn’t be the man you are if they hadn’t been. The world is a profoundly better place for the values they installed in you. That deserves some kind of recognition.”
“I could always carve a statue in their honor, maybe on some mountain face somewhere” he playfully suggested.
“Oh, my love, I appreciate the thought, but you’re not the most artistic man. Perhaps leave that to a professional.”
A hearty laugh escaped from his throat. “No, you’re absolutely right.” He couldn’t help but remember the bust he tried to make of Lois some thirty years ago. It still held a dusty place of honor deep in a nearly forgotten closet up in his arctic refuge.
He shifted in his chair and reached out to clasp her hands in his. “I love you, Lois, and your support through the years in both of my lives had been what’s kept me going through my roughest scrapes.”
He watched the blush creep up her cheeks. “And I’ve loved you too. How could I not? You ooze sincerity out of every pore in a world that desperately needs it. You’ve never hesitated when people were in danger, even if it put your life in jeopardy. That week when we thought you had died was one of the toughest in my life.”
“I’m sorry about that. I did what I had to do, and still hundreds of people died because I wasn’t enough.” Again, he ducked his head, feeling the weight of all the lives he had been unable to save throughout his career. He could summon up the memory of each time he had failed to do more.
“Oh, stop that. You gave your entire self and then more to save the city. No one can fault a thing you did there. I know you are haunted by the single voices you fail to save while saving the lives of the rest of the world, and that’s another piece of you that I love. No one in the history of the world has cared about the lives of every human as you, the alien, does.”
“Maybe you’re right. And perhaps I need to be reminded of that occasionally.”
Now it was her turn to chuckle. “I know you never would, but a therapist would do you a world of good.”
“Believe it or not, I do see a therapist occasionally. He sees several people with, as you said, gifts like mine. And yes, he knows about Clark.”
She cocked her head in surprise. “Is that so? You know if I was still working the beat, I’d be hounding you to give me his name. What an interesting story that would make.”
“And one that would possibly earn you yet another Pulitzer?”
“A girl has ambition,” she said, a sly look crossing her features agin.
Just then, their meals arrived. As they savored their meals, the conversation drifted to lighter territory. Lois detailed her latest passion for urban gardening, while he shared stories about a particularly amusing civilization he’d encountered in the Andromeda Galaxy — one that communicated entirely through interpretive dance. She updated him on Jimmy’s grandchildren, and he couldn’t help but smile at her story about her cat repeatedly outsmarting the expensive new automatic feeder she’d bought.
When their desserts were finished and the espresso cups were empty, the server stopped by and told them the meal was on the house. He was used to hearing this but could never let service and food go unpaid.
Long ago, he had realized that carrying the currency of any one nation would serve as an endorsement of that country’s ideology. Seeing himself as a citizen of the world, he had found his own way to pay his debts. From gold he had dug out of the Antarctic soil with his bare hands, he had smelted coins that bore his family crest on one side and a crude depiction of the Earth on the other. Much to his chagrin, the coins were valued more as collector’s items than for their gold content. After Lois had published his authorized biography, or at least the parts of it he was willing to share, someone had coined the name ‘Krypto-coin’ and it had stuck.
He plucked such a coin out of the hidden pocket behind the belt of his outfit and pressed it into the hand of their server as he thanked her for the outstanding service. Her stammering and blushing was a clear indication that she would remember this moment for the rest of her life.
As he flew them back to her condominium, he reflected on everything that had brought them to this place. The world had changed so much since he first donned his hero outfit. Back then, he was the only one with extraordinary gifts, gifts that arose out of the interaction between the planet’s sun and his alien biology. But in the intervening years, more heroes had risen to help stem the flood of evildoers and supernatural calamities. In most careers, he would be several years past retirement age. His powers hadn’t diminished — if anything, decades of exposure to Earth’s sun had made him stronger. He’d watched colleagues step back, training younger heroes to take their place. Yet how could he retire when his super-hearing still picked up every cry for help? When he could still feel the weight of responsibility his parents had instilled in him all those years ago in Kansas? The world had changed, but its need for hope — for him — hadn’t diminished.
They arrived back at her condo, and he landed with a soft thump. He released her from his arms, and she stood on the deck looking up at his face, her arms wrapped around his neck.
“Well, Lois, good–” His farewell interrupted by her grabbing the back of his head and pulling it down into her kiss. She didn’t let go for several minutes, and he found himself melting into her touch.
When she finally broke the kiss, she smiled up at him. “I’ve waited forty years to do that.”
“Maybe I should have said something sooner,” he chuckled.
She lightly slapped his arm. “Yes, perhaps you should have!”
“You know, I’ve watched people fall in love and couple up all my life, but I’ve always felt that was something I could never have myself. My secret always got in the way, I suppose.”
“So you’re saying that now I know your secret, you’re open to coupling up with me?” The look in her eye told him she was half teasing, but also half deadly serious.
The old instinct to hide that part of himself away from society’s critical eye flared to life. “Thank you for the fantastic evening, Lois. I was so worried you’d hate me for keeping that secret all this time.”
Her slight frown told him his answer was disappointing but expected. She then smiled at him. “I always knew you’d tell me in your time. I’m glad today was the day.”
“I suppose I should be going. I’m sure you have a busy day planned for tomorrow.”
“Do you have to? In all this time, I’ve never asked you to stay for a nightcap.”
“You know I don’t drink alcohol–“
“You know what I mean, Clark. I’ve never asked because I always knew you’d say ‘no.’ But tonight’s different. You’ve crossed into a new world. How about this time you stick around for a bit instead of running away again?”
He had always left at this point, knowing that allowing Lois to be closer to him jeopardized his secret and their relationship. For decades, he’d carefully compartmentalized his life, always watching his words, his mannerisms, making sure nothing slipped through the carefully constructed wall between his two selves.
But now that his secret life was out in the open between them, things had shifted. His heart was now more open than it had been just a couple of hours before. After sharing his whole self with her, how scary could it be to join her in her home, perhaps sit on the couch together embracing?
She backed towards the glass door to her condo, holding his hand and pulled at him to join her. As he stepped through the doorway, he realized that while the world might not be ready for all of who he was, having even one person know and accept his whole self made him feel less alone in the universe.
Opening up his self to an actual relationship with the woman he’d loved from a distance for so long was plenty scary, he realized, but it was a fear he now wanted to face.
And this time he did.
© 2024 John Kusters Jr.
This Thursday, I experienced Come From Away again. I’ve experienced it twice in theatres, a couple of times on Apple TV+, and countless times streaming the music. And I very explicitly and deliberately use the word “experience” instead of “watching” and/or “listening.” Of all of the theatre I’ve seen, Come From Away is the one that full pulls me in and makes me feel ALL of the feelings. Knowing that every actor on stage is portraying actual people who lived through the event, and are often speaking in the actual words of the affected people, turns my empathy up to 11 or more.
I understand and deeply feel the terror, the fear, the agony, the relief, the fascination of exploring new identities, and how the experience ultimately changed them. I want to believe I would act like the people of Gander with incredible grace on such short notice. I want to believe I’d be open to new experiences like lumberjack Kevin, I’d like to believe in new love found in horrible situations, I wish I would be clever enough to figure out how to communicate with fearful people and tell them they have no need to be anxious.
I feel my guts wrench when the pilot, Beverly, realizes that the thing that has brought her the most joy in her entire life was just used to kill hundreds and thousands of people. And Hannah, desperate to get news about her son, and then the heart-wrenching resolution. I am literally on the edge of tears throughout most of the 90 minutes, and there are several times I’m entirely overwhelmed. Even listening to the cast recording will bring the tears (as it’s doing at this moment as I’m typing this).
They often say theatre can take you away, allow you to live other people’s experiences. For me, Come From Away is the epitome of that maxim.
I’m seeing commentary, both in mainstream media and on social media, that expresses incredulity that people knew what Project 2025 and Agenda 47 were all about and yet a plurality of voters chose it anyways. The problem is, I’m not convinced the majority did know about this. In this election, the majority of voters did not get their news from reliable sources. They either got all their news from right-wing sources (Fox, NewsMax, ONN, etc.) or from algorithm-based social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, etc.) where the algorithm was feeding them an endless supply of highly biased information. Now that the election is over, and proponents of Project 2025 are exultant and not trying to obfuscate it anymore, a lot of Trump voters are hearing about it for the first time and are shocked. Sadly, truth-based news reporting failed to penetrate the right-wing “news” bubble.
I expect many of those voters will be outraged when parts of that agenda take effect. And I’m partly empathic, but equally partly scornful. Like, I’m sorry they’ll feel the consequences of tariffs, destruction of healthcare, immigrant detention camps, higher prices on everything, denaturalization, and dozens of other consequences of their vote along with the rest of us who tried to warn them, but I’m also angry about how easily they were duped, how they eagerly consumed a steady diet of lies and obfuscation from the right-wing propaganda machine, and showed disinterest in (or lack of capacity to) engage critical thinking skills.
Sadly I really don’t know how to address this disparity in veracity of sources of information. How do we get people who are dependent on a steady diet of fear and manufactured outrage to step outside of that ecosystem and let some facts into their worldview? Telling them “I told you so” will only increase resistance to deradicalization.
It’s infuriating how mainstream media, including those generally considered on the liberal end of the political spectrum, are currently attacking Bluesky for giving progressive people safe harbor, accusing us of building an echo chamber, while completely ignoring the right-wing echo chamber that radicalized and stupefied a little under 50% of this year’s voters.
I was shocked (but not entirely shocked) during my social media browsing this morning to read NaNoWriMo’s recent statements about the use of AI in writing for the various competitions they sponsor. To say their statement has caused an uproar in the online writing communities I visit would be a severe understatement. This, following the failures on NaNoWriMo’s part to keep children safe from sexual predators is just the cap on a string of unforced errors on the non-profit’s part.
If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, the acronym(?) is short for “National Novel Writing Month”. It started off as a yearly voluntary competition to write 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November. Thousands of people would participate, and those who completed the 50K words before the end of the month would be declared winners, though really there are no losers amongst those willing to give creative writing a try. Over the years, they’ve branched out to sponsor other competitions, with a focus on encouraging younger folk to find enjoyment in writing. NaNoWriMo was not founded to help aspiring writers to become published authors. Instead it was intended to help aspiring writers to develop discipline and to lock the internal editor away for a span of days. I’ve participated many times over it’s nearly 25 years, and have benefited from it greatly.
But last year’s allegations about the Board of NaNoWriMo actively protecting a member who was sexually preying on underaged writers in the forums at the beginning of the competition in 2023 was a serious blow to my appreciation for the organization who had been sponsoring the competitions. I’m not going to rehash the allegations and the actions (and inactions) the board took in response. You can find them documented all over the web. Here is one such recounting.
But the stance the Board has taken regarding Generative AI is just one scandal too many. Today I deleted my 20+ year account there and will no longer be recommending NaNoWriMo to aspiring writers.
It’s bad enough that they are encouraging people to use Generative AI to write their stories, and in theory, submit them for the contest. The contest was always about developing the practice to write nearly 2000 words each and every day of the month of November, and balancing that quota against holiday obligations for the vast majority of American participants (American Thanksgiving occurs near the end of the month). Their statement seems to endorse submitting a writing prompt to a tool like ChatGPT and asking it to write the 50,000 words for the contest in seconds. It belies the entire purpose of the competition.
But then they had to go and label those who oppose Generative AI as “classist” and “ableist”, two hot buzz-words in the social justice movement. And I believe they are using these labels very incorrectly. They seem to imply that neurodivergent and disabled people need these tools to compete with abled and neurotypical people in order to create art. But what I’m hearing from disabled and neurodivergent authors on BlueSky and Facebook is that while they benefit from Assistive AI tools like grammar checkers and spellcheckers, they don’t need Generative AI. And since there have been disabled and neurodivergent people throughout history who have produced wonderful art, I am convinced by their argument. In fact, NaNoWriMo’s position comes across as belittling, as if they are saying that disabled and neurodivergent people cannot be creative without these tools. That in and of itself seems ableist and condescending.
Learning to write and write well, like any art form, takes hard work. It takes practice. NaNoWriMo had a place in helping people take those first hard steps. It encouraged people to write poorly as long as they were writing. Without practice, one cannot hone their craft, and NaNoWriMo was the purest form of practice, writing to a deadline and chucking the inner editor into the closet for a month. They never made any allusion to a promise that at the end of the month, all of the “novels” that were written would be publishable. No, they were very clear that the point of the endeavor was simply to practice writing to a schedule, or failing a schedule, to a deadline. Writing without editing was the whole point.
But something has changed over at NaNoWriMo headquarters. They have seemingly changed their focus from helping aspiring writers to develop a writing practice and now seemingly are focused on making sure every participant has a chance at becoming a successful writer, presumably by being picked up by a publisher or self-publishing. And they seem to feel that Generative AI is one tool that can be used to accomplish this.
But really, the Kindle marketplace (along with all of the other self-publishing sites) are already chock-a-block full of AI-generated garbage, with “authors” trying to make a quick buck. It’s the “TechBros” mantra of making success in writing (or painting/illustration) accessible to the masses, which is encouraging people who can’t be bothered to put in the time practicing to believe they can become instantly successful. Even if Generative AI was not immensely costly in terms of energy and resource depletion, the output is at best mediocre. And it’s also ethically irresponsible because it requires terabytes of training material, much of which is copyrighted and being used without compensation to the authors (or artists). In fact the CEOs of some of the Generative AI companies have testified that they could not make these models possible if they had to fairly compensate the people whose work is being used to train their machines. So, there are many many reasons not to be promoting Generative AI as a part of a creative writing competition, and many reasons why anyone who wants to become an actually successful writer should avoid using them to write their books.
Now full disclosure is warranted here. I do use Generative AI in the development of my stories, both short stories and novels. I use them to help brainstorm ideas, to help me develop my characters and to get feedback on plot ideas. I even use it to get feedback on scenes I’ve written, and the feedback it gives has been valuable (often it reminds me to use more description, to give more insight into the characters’ feelings and not just have them dialog, and to make sure to keep character voice in mind so it doesn’t all read like the same character is taking both sides of a discussion). It’s no different, in my mind, than the feedback that a first pass from members of a critiquing group provides. Oh, and of course I ask it for help with grammar and spelling/word choice. I can never remember when I should use “who’s” and “whose”.
But the words that appear in the manuscript? All mine.
To me, this is an ethical position. You may disagree. I hear the arguments about how Generative AI uses too much power and too many natural resources, and while I have trouble believing some of the estimates of natural resource usage–I have a hard time, knowing what I know about computing devices and the needs of data centers, believing that a simple query drains an entire pond and consumes it somehow–I know that in the long run the current computational cost is unsustainable. Knowing Moore’s law, I do believe those costs will come down quickly, but that’s only my opinion. The resource arguments, though, are definitely worth considering and paying attention to, I agree.
Anyway, I’m saddened that NaNoWriMo has made this decision to endorse using Generative AI in their competitions. I’ve enjoyed participating in the contests, have several “Winner” t-shirts in my closet, and several posters. I’ve donated to the foundation that powers it and powers the charitable work they do fostering writing in schools and such. But I now feel betrayed by the current board members. I know I was not the only person to delete my account from their servers today, and I know I’m not the only person pledging to donate to other causes in the future. I doubt I’d go back if they changed this stance, too much damage has been done (did I mention the child sexual predation they allegedly spent six months desperately trying to cover up?).
RIP NaNoWriMo.
by John Kusters Jr
It was supposed to be an easy job, shuttling two xeno-archaeologists and their discovery from Starbase Prime to the spaceport in Arizona. Then an untracked piece of space garbage plowed through my cockpit and set my ship into a rapid spin.
I was fortunate enough to be near the spin axis, so while I was thrown around a bit, I escaped mostly unscathed. My passengers weren’t as fortunate, and had been instantly killed when thrown into the bulkhead. Worse, the collision had also freed their discovery, which now sat on my deck, talking to me.
“I can help you.” I don’t know how the slivery blob could speak without a mouth, but I could clearly understand it.
I ignored it as I reached deeper into an open console working to restore power to it. It powered up and immediately the emergency communication system blared to life.
“Repeat, if you cannot correct course in the next ten minutes, we will be forced to destroy your vessel to protect Habitat Seven. Please respond.”
Great, orbital traffic control was about to vaporize my ship. I wish they had been as diligent about tracking space garbage. Unfortunately, I had no way to respond to traffic control. Nor did I have any way of sending a message to my husband and daughter. I pushed that painful thought away.
Investigating the reactor status, the computer was reporting that the reactor’s containment chamber was structurally compromised, which explained the shutdown status. I did manage to negate most of the spin using the attitude jets, but with the main reactor off line, I couldn’t do more than that. There was no way to steer the ship clear of the habitat.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I said to myself.
“I can help you.”
I didn’t have long to find a way to save myself.
I was in my environmental suit, but my helmet had been in the cockpit and I stupidly did not have a spare elsewhere in the ship. Next ship, coffee dispenser at the pilot station! Assuming there was a next ship.
I considered using one of the helmets left by my now dead passengers, but even if they were intact–they weren’t really–they were an incompatible design. So a space walk was probably out. I needed to find another way off the ship.
Well, that’s exactly the purpose of an escape pod. I made my way aft along the corridor that ran between the passenger cabins to the hatch in the ceiling and the adjacent access ladder. The hatch was surrounded by blinking red warning lights. Not a good sign.
I climbed the ladder to get a better look at the hatch and the window there. Yeah, it was bad. The pod had been ripped off it’s forward latches, thought it was still attached by the aft ones. Between this hatch and the hatch on the pod was less than half a meter of empty space. But without a helmet for my suit, it might as well have been a mile.
That was my last hope. I knew then I would die when traffic control vaporized my ship.
“I can help you,” I heard again. I looked down. The thing was now directly below me. Nothing creepy about that!
I started climbing down the ladder and it moved–rolled?–to make room.
“Assuming I was inclined to accept your help–and I’m not–how could you help me?”
“I was designed to aid in the survival of individuals of the species who created me. I can envelop you and assure your survival.”
“Envelop me? Like an environmental suit?”
“It would be more intrusive and not comfortable for you, but essentially you are correct.”
I stared at it for a few moments. “You have a rocket engine in there somewhere?”
“If you are querying about locomotion, I have the means to produce a solar sail if needed. However, the explosion of your ship should provide the necessary momentum in this case.”
“So, you wrap yourself around me, we jump into space, and then you keep me alive until I can be rescued, is that the deal?”
“That is one possibility. Alternatively we can enter the atmosphere of the nearby planet and reach the ground.”
Could I take this blob of brushed-nickel alien tech at its word? The archaeologists thought it was a technological wonder, so I suppose it could do what it claimed.
“I will survive the explosion, regardless of your decision,” it told me. “You, however will not.”
“I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t know whether I can trust you. Heck, I don’t know whether you intend to eat me or something.”
“Lack of trust is understandable in this situation. Is it your intention to allow yourself to be terminated?”
My husband would be the first to say I was unable to take a leap of faith. Every instinct in me told me to find a way to save myself, not to trust this alien device. But I was fresh out of ideas. And I desperately wanted to see my husband and our daughter again.
I screwed my eyes tightly shut and sighed deeply. Time was nearly up.
“Okay. Get me home.”
It had been correct. It was desperately intrusive and uncomfortable. But it got me through the destruction of my ship, through re-entry, and now was parachuting me down to the ground somewhere in Florida.
I had no idea how I was going to explain this to the authorities, or the military. I felt an obligation to protect this thing’s “life” after it had saved mine. I guess we’ll figure that out when the time comes.
But I would see my family again. That was all I could focus on. For once I had set self-reliance aside and trusted my life to a leap of faith. I guess when it came down to do or die, I had it in me to jump into the unknown.
My husband will never let me live it down.
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