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Post by wstanford on Nov 11, 2015 20:39:06 GMT
I'm taking life easy these days, concentrating on my core work but taking time out to write my new science fact-ion book "The 21st Century". An Ultra-hard science fiction novel, it leads the reader through the adventures and antics of Heywood Aerospace Systems and their efforts to colonize the Moon and beyond.
here are some test chapters to let my readership know what the book will look like. Enjoy!
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Post by wstanford on Nov 11, 2015 20:39:22 GMT
Chapter X
Northern Arizona aka Static Test
A tremendous field of yellow and a dot in the distance. The concrete and welded steel test stand was surrounded by mainly graduates milling like ants around the large cylindrical object at its center.
The motor casing was a truncated Aluminum-Lithium pipe a good 40 inches in diameter and towering over them at ten feet high; it was a large rocket motor. With all the care and busied reverence priests might have exercised in antiquity over an idol of ancient Moloch did these priests gingerly erect their flare. A small crane lifted the Ammonium Perchlorate – R45 – Aluminum grains over the top of the casing and lowered them into the crucible.
Underneath, the upper bulkhead with its radial heat sinks impressed some of the newer initiates with its appearance. Powder-coated white to test the heats effect on paint it gave some idea of the suborbital vehicle that a considerably longer version of the motor would be attached. The sun was intolerable even in the Arizona highlands.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, John Smith was preparing the lower bulkhead, its ablative nozzle and the closing assembly (a series of heavy lead weights and plywood). The grains were almost loaded and he was almost finished himself. Ted Henry, out of the University of Illinois, were checking the thermocouple attachments and copper tubing that would provide the desired mass of temperature and pressure information that they were seeking in this test.
The motor was too large, too powerful for a load cell to measure the actual thrust but previous tests with somewhat smaller motors proved that their computer modeling was sufficiently accurate that they could, from the other measurements, calculate its total impulse.
A grad turned to the supervisor and asked “Are you sure this test fixture can take the load?”
“100%,” replied the super, “The motor was truncated to a point where we have a factor of 2 safety margin on the stand. To increase the margin, we're operating the motor at a lower operating pressure further reducing the thrust. We're good.”
The test stand had been host to several designs but this was the largest motor they would fire from it. It would hold. Since the thrust was downward, they firing the solid-propellant motor upside down, something you can do with solid rocket motors, the only danger was busting the thing in two. A very efficient design, very Spacenix.
However the design for the motor was the intellectual property of Daedalus PSC LLC, a sister company to Spacenix. They were building the “Cessna of space” that would allow one or two intrepid souls to fly to the edge of space or 330,000 feet for the cost of one million dollars. Reusable with water recovery, it looked in the demos like a wingless, vertical Lear Jet.
But today only the first full-scale test of its propulsion module was on the agenda. Heywood Aerospace Systems, the parent company, hard spun off Daedalus a few years back and finally had all the necessary subcomponents with which to build and sell their elegant space birds.
Ted tightened the lengths of bent copper tubing to the ports on the bulkhead and bulled firmly but carefully on the thermocouple and stress sensor leads. Unraveling a long length of multiconductor white he measured off a length and with a “rat belt” secured it together to be connected to the data acquisition equipment housed within the test stand itself.
The hi-rel ignition system was already buried within the motor with a bright orange lead carefully strung though the grains and, as soon as the they affixed the lower bulkhead on the top of the inverted motor, would string it though the nozzle as well. Connecting it to the test stand's electrical ignition system, they would be able to fire the motor at a safe distance.
John exclaimed loudly to the rest of the team, “Ted and I are finished. Where are the grain loaders at?”
They informed him that they were finished about 20 minutes before them. John was glad to hear this and they swung the crane over to the completed contraption and started to bring it over the top of the motor. Lowering it, it taking several grads on step ladders some coaxing to get the O-Rings to settle into the casing correctly, it finally entered the top of the tube and then seated with a satisfying thud. They started to remove the closing assembly in parts, lowering them to their comrades beneath.
Ted over the next hour with John verifying his work,and holding the manuals managed to get all the wiring hooked up. The supervisor reminded them that they had a good ten thousand dollars worth of propellant on the line so they had better be sure to get the data the company needed in this test.
Strangely absent was the few reporters that would occasionally show up. Spacenix was careful to inform the local media about these tests and even the local TV station showed up for a smaller test a few months before. But no love today. Spacenix's company cameras would be the only ones watching today with about 20,000 viewers on YouTube once they released their footage there.
Ted did a quick once over and informed the team that he was done. They retreated to their vehicles and started driving out towards the small observation point about a mile west of the stand. John brought his pick-up around waiting for Ted to flip the primary ignition breaker, and hop into the truck to rejoin the main group.
After Ted and John made it to safe distance, the team started arming their switches. Systems checks were quickly done and finally the supervisor lifted the cover on the firing switch and toggled it to the ON position.
After about a second, a small whiff of smoke appeared above the motor and very shortly after the motor came up to full power. Like an angry, loud volcano, fire shot into the sky even casting shadows at a distance of one mile. God, these things are loud, exclaimed one of the engineers.
They watched the timer display the passing seconds and continued to watch the vulcanian display. Ten seconds...twenty...thirty....
“How's the stand holding up?” asked the super. This was going to be the largest motor they would be firing on it.
“Everything is nominal on the stand, Chief” responded one of the grads in front of a laptop. Budget only allowed a remote connection with the stand's sensors; they would have to wait on the treasure trove of motor data when they fetched the memories from the stand after the test.
“How's the motor doing?” the super asked over the distant roar.
The grad on the telescope monitor reported “Everything is A-OK, err, nominal, sir. Vibration looks good.”
It was noticeable that the motor was getting louder, a characteristic of solid-propellant motors. Its ablative nozzle helped compensate for this effect but the increase in thrust was obvious even to the casual observer.
Under the time displace, someone had affixed a smaller display labeled “altitude in miles”. This really fueled the imagination as you could picture the flying craft in your mind. Everybody was excited, terrified but excited. Rocket motors really were like long-burning, non-exploding bombs.
They watched the timer counting. The burn was projected to last 160 seconds, about two and a half minutes. At the two minute mark the supervisor commented that this was where the astronauts would be feeling the maximum acceleration at about 2.5 G's.
At 163 seconds the motor abruptly cut out and burned down to nothing shortly thereafter. A successful test! Relieved hoots and hollers were the response and afterward they opened two bottles of champagne to celebrate.
They had a winner! Floyd would be overjoyed.
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Post by wstanford on Nov 11, 2015 20:39:55 GMT
Chapter X
Near Flagstaff, Arizona
“Welcome to where your dreams are realized,” exclaimed the attractive, trifold brochure of the Spacenix facility just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. And indeed it was true: for a small segment of mankind who were intrepid and farsighted enough to see the opportunity..
On a large, though sparsely populated area of yellowing grass, cacti and sand, one noticed first the myriad of handsome cottages arranged in rows extending out into the near distance. Connects by cement walkways, one could easily find friends and family members participating in simulated space missions.
On went the brochure, “...for only $2995, you too can log Spacenix simulator hours that will catapult you to the top of the list of citizen astronaut candidates for real space missions in the near future.” Past the cottages lay the Universities' labs, constructed with the same design as the cabins and past these the simulator complex itself. Rather than a large building, all the simulators were free-standing much like the Embry-Riddle campus just south in Prescott.
Built in Spacenix's early, and less capitalized, days, Mr. Heywood had designed and built the first buildings out of 2” x 6”'s and sheets of OSB. An engineer, not an architect, he had ingeniously impregnated the available building materials with arcane, but inexpensive, commercial,. Resins to impart greater weatherability and aging characteristics. The only lasting con being the unique smell that former clients of the Flag facility would joke about when returning to their points of origin.
Arriving clients would be greeted at the Welcome Center at the edge of (yet another of the facility’s endearing eccentricities) the extra-large parking lot, not paved but in gravel spread by enthusiastic University of Arizona volunteers. Whenever Floyd was pressed on when Spacenix would pony up the cash to pave the eyesore, he would unabashedly tell them “Never!” insisting that both he and the campus;s staff liked it perfectly that way. Even, and especially, the RV's around the perimeter.
He could tell the newest arrival, checking his manifest for her name....a Ms. Jean Dautrive out of NAU, was nonplussed by her initial impression of the place. Her slightly whining voice giving away her home state; probably New Jersey. The Spacenix facility because it was privately funded and not part of an academic or government agency was home to a grand and sometimes idiosyncratic cross-section of the American society. Obviously some rich kid trying to discover herself in the arena of space travel, surmised Floyd.
“You're late, trainee.” Floyd pointed out.
The main contingent of more of less eager “citizen” astronaut trainees had dutifully shown up on time and were already well into their orientation.
“I am sorry...Mister?”
Floyd internally rolled his eyes at this. CEO of Spacenix and people still didn't recognize him at first glance. He wondered if Elon Musk at some point had the same problem. At least she got the Mister right.
“Mr. Floyd Heywood at your service. I'm the CEO of Spacenix, of whom this facility belongs to. I'll escort you to the Welcome Center and you can check in there.”
Clutching her Gucci handbag while extending her hand, she at least had the civility and manners to introduce herself correctly. After inquiring if her lateness would in any way affect her stay and “grade” and getting a comforting “No.” they both proceeded to the Center.
Upon entering, Suzanna Horne spun her chair around to greet the new trainee.
Shocked at her blond good looks, Jean, cracked a half humorous, half irritated “Oh, I didn't know the Delts were running the place.” Suzanna used to all sorts of comments (aerospace still being a male-dominated culture) smiled a half-patronizing, half polite face, retorting “Actually Sigma Lambda Alpha. And no I'm not a lesbian...that's Gamma Rho Lambda. Floyd snickered to himself never heard that one before. Sigma Lambda Alpha was a women's leadership sorority as so the humor didn't escape him.
Jean wasn't kidding about her loos. Suzanna was a perfect 10, blond and somewhat out of place looking here at Spacenix. She would have looked perfectly at home however on any school's cheer-leading squad.
Suzanna produced the check-in paperwork had Jean fill our a few fields and sign it. She double-checked her reservation on her computer and whistled softly “Me friend, jean. It looks like you are signed up for the colonial program. I am impressed; you figure you are ready for that?”
“Yes, thank you.” retorted Jean. “I don't pull out my checkbook for anything under a grand. You really should raise your prices, you know.”
Not the first time they had heard this reverse concern. In fact, their CFO, Chad Thompson, had suggested numerous times that they raise their fees but Floyd would always say be wanted the programs available to anyone that wanted to participate in them.
With that Suzanna smiled her fed-up grin and said “Alrighty then. I'll just have the guys show you around the campus and then to your cabin for the night.”
“Thank you.” replied Jean quietly.
Floyd with his usual stand-offish wisdom let the two talk, but in his hear of hearts felt bad for Jean Dautrive. About a quarter of their trainees washed out, quitting their respective program before it was over. He feared that her apparent lack of discipline was an accurate indicator that she would be one of the trainees that left early. He believed in his work so completely that he felt terrible for those primarily young people that did this.
The “guys” (that's just what they called them, usually campus volunteers) showed up and after happily greeting Jean, half of them proceeded to move her luggage to her cabin while the other half, Dan and John, started her orientation.
Suzanna, after Jean disappeared into the distance, turned to Floyd Heywood and scrunched up her nose and accusingly “Some of the people you let in here, boss.”
It was their corporate philosophy that everybody and anybody that wanted to fly a spacecraft could. Floyd knew she knew this so he just sighed affirmatively and left it at that. Hey leaned up against the door frame and rubbed his eye with his left hand.
“So...?”
Floyd suddenly remembered his promise to her and sai9d “OK, give me a minute or two to recharge. Its been a long day.”
“Are you taking your Zoloft like you should?” she ask looking genuinely concerned. Most of his close friends knew he had depression and Suzanna was jut checking up on him. Chad had made him promise that he would take his med as it affected his performance as CEO.
He just looked at her and nodded. They had been friends for only a year and a half and it occurred to him that she had been loyal to a fault to him. They met at ASU where she was bar tending on Mill Avenue simultaneously working on her business degree. She was a volunteer, but with some benefits like free room and board, and one of Spacenix's oldest and best. Floyd never asked but knew she was doing some creative accounting with her student loans and online classes after work to make ends meet.
She would but in eight to ten hour days at the Center and elsewhere tirelessly and without complaint. Floyd was so thankful deep inside for her personally and other like her sharing his vision of interplanetary expansion.
“Here is the low-down on what we were talking about earlier...”
“Yes, I've already told you minimum wage is fine. I just need a little money coming in BUT I still want the benefits on top of that.”
“Understood and agreeable.”
Floyd reached behind her desk and pulled out one of his infamous dry erase boards; in addition PowerPoint presentations, he was hopelessly addicted. He started to write down some numbers.
“We have 5 kinds of simulators here. You already know which one's we have so I'll use the Colonial simulator as an example.”
“Right. Three grand for two months in the colonial,” pointing at the figure on the board.
“Now 2 months or 60 days seems like a long time AND it is to the trainee because of the harsh training schedule BUT a short time for us, so to speak.” She nodded knowingly totally into the mini-presentation.
“To explain what I mean: it costs us next to nothing to operate each one. With a little wizardry on the front-end, by wizardry I mean our choice of inexpensive materials, low land costs and more of the simulators' coding being done by volunteers at University of Arizona gratis our only expenses are electricity and food.”
“I understand, initial costs versus on-going expenses.”
“Exactly. We only use about $250 per month in electricity and another $200 per person per month in food.. You remember those plastic trays we squirt simulated space food into?”
“Boy, do I ever. If you would remember, I spent 3 months preparing and boxing hundreds of those trays. I'm so glad Henrietta's handling that now.”
Floyd laughed “One of the best parts of that goop we feed them is that its basically oatmeal, some meat product and a few other things we don't pay much for at all. For the sheer experience, it almost seems the worse the food is the more it feels like real space travel to them. I'm being facetious.”
“Long story short: multiply the number of simulators by the number of trainee's per, by six times per year by our net profit margin per program leaves us this number.” writing the number down. “Check it out.”
“Wow...Spacenix is making bank!”
“There are some other expenses and because our IPO hasn't come through yet, and we fuel or in-house R & D with about a quarter of that, but yes we are 'making bank' as you astutely pointed out. In fact we are so far in the black that our CFO is a little concerned that we have too much cash on hand.”
To preempt any feelings of being taken advantage of Floyd continued quickly “But look at this: let's say we were a typical aerospace company paying every person here let's say an average of $50K per year. We have about sixty staff members, research fellows, grad students and volunteers. Multiply again...” writing down that number.
The two numbers almost canceled each other out. Still a solvent company but not the highly-profitable one he gave the impression of earlier.
“So you see the rub. Spacenix just exists. No R & D. No funds for prototypes or growth.”
Suzanna mischievously smiled and started “Yes, but how about if you give up you crackpot dreams of going to the stars, we keep volunteering and we make you rich?”
Knowing she was kidding, he looked upwards and said “That would work except for one thing. What keeps people signing up is the hope of being included on a read space mission. If we treated this like a big video arcade or amusement park, I doubt if we would get as many people signing up. So yet another reason why we couldn't do that.”
“Just testing you Floyd. Good answer, and off the cuff as well. You know I believe in your vision.”
He gave her a disapproving yet gentle stare to which she continued “IO don't know why I'm so happy here. I just wish it could last forever. Great people, no worries, stimulating activities and I have want for nothing even with very little money coming in.”
“I don't even mind being with the black sheep of the private aerospace industry,” referring to Spacenix, “ its nice being alone in that respect. All of our trainees are ecstatic about our programs, you have all you little toys and friends to tinker with them. I guess I'm saying I'm just grateful to be part of all of this.”
Floyd touched her hand tenderly and said “And I'm grateful to you for all of your hard work, your loyalty and devotion to our vision. I don't know how much I could have done without you and the other friends we've made here.”
At this she lowered her head, smiling and touched and have him a quick hug.
<finish chapter where Floyd shows Suzanna how and when he's going to get her paid.>
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Post by wstanford on Nov 11, 2015 20:40:19 GMT
Chapter X
Suzanna Horne
Suzanna was having a rough day. Her usual load of manifests and sorting out scheduling conflicts was tiring her more than usual. She blamed it on the home-brew drinking party she attended with some of the men around cabin 118 the night before.
She dutifully worked through her to-do list, calling and emailing people resolving conflicts, answering questions and occasionally processing payments. She promised herself a nice hot cocoa in her cabin instead of joining the gang down at the dining facility.
Time dragged on but eventually she overcame her 10 hour day. Closing and locking the Welcome Center door behind her, she trudged *(Suzanna never trudged) back to her cabin.
She stopped at her storm door and looked at it. Spacenix policy was that when a tenant reached six-month marks they would select an upgrade option. Her first was insulation and drywall for the interior, usually everybody’s first choice. But her eyes finally settled on the dark gray stucco. She reached out her hand and gently felt the texture of it and was struck with the aesthetic perfection of it.
Floyd had shared with her one time how he had achieved the perfect color for the cabins. He found a plastering supplier with a lower-end product that he tested with some commercially available pigments but it wasn't until he added powdered charcoal, usually used in some of this rocket motor experiments that he achieved the classy effect she was admiring now.
What a clever, clever man he is, she thought to herself. She slipped her house key into the front door and entered.
Reaching around for the light switch, she forced her brain to remember how to make hot cocoa. The light s on she went to her hot plate and put on a pot of water. Rubbing her arms, she walked over to the propane heater and pushed the started button until its ceramic element turned a life-giving orange. She let out a long, exhausted sigh and sat on the corner of her bed.
“Oh, that Fran!” she angrily muttered to herself.
Fran with her shock of red hair was a complete menace today. Usually she would only comer around the Center when necessary but today she hovered over Suzanna like a manic bee. The woman had a sixth-sense for relationships and apparently for relationship problems.
Her and Kent had been fighting over the phone for a few weeks now, not really deciding on anything. He was prepping for exams so stuck down in Tempe and her workload prevented her from going down there herself. It had been quite sometime since they had made love.
A wave of hot anger shot through her when she remembered what Fran had said to her today. It wasn't at all funny. Fran must have sensed how closely her and Floyd were working together lately and maybe even sensed a developing problem in Suzanna's mind concerning her boss.
It started slowly at first, and upon reflection realized she always had felt it, it just never bothered her before. But she was getting irrationally jealous. Floyd was between relationships right now, and she did know that he had sex every once in a great while but her little crush was becoming problematic.
Fran, not just bending the rules but breaking them, had leaned over her and half-whispered “Suzanna, I really don't like what you are doing with my Floyd. He's my boyfriend and you should be ashamed of what you are doing to Kent.”
Suzanna felt a wave of desire between her thighs but quickly clamped them together. Her eyes flashed looking Fran deep in the eyes. She then noticed what Fran was wearing: her black leather miniskirt. She only wore that when she was on a mission, usually to find the most sensitive guy she could and wrap him around her little finger. Fran stared back with a wicked, triumphant grin. Her red hair wasn't lying with its warning that she could be more than most people could take occasionally.
She had the overwhelming urge to talk dirty back at her friend but refused to give her the satisfaction. Suzanna had ejected three people just today from their programs for breaking the “No fraternization” rule while in simulation, so she cooled down and gritted her teeth.
Back in her cabin though, ever time she thought of Fran's indiscretion, it made the desire whell up in her chest.
“My Floyd,” she parodied Fran, “my boyfriend...what a load of BS.” Her cheeks were flushed but not by embarrassment for being caught but something else.
She quickly took the pot of water, now boiling, and tossed its contents out the front door. She reached behind her bed for a present she had recently acquired for their beloved boss: a fifth of Jack Daniels.
She wondered what such a complex man was drinking whiskey for. You would think Cognac or something more sophisticated, but each to his own. She twisted the cap, fetched a shot glass from her lilliputian cupboards and poured herself a double.
“My Floyd,” she muttered to herself shipping the soothing brown liquid. Pondering, she figured out what Fran was driving at: she had been monopolizing the CEO's attention probably taking away from Fran's time with him. Was she the only one who felt that warm quiet feeling when he was trying to explain something important to them. It was obvious Fran's real concern: Back off, Blondie! We have to share.
She took another sip and looked in her full-length mirror. Still as gorgeous as she ever was but had the creeping suspicion that a cheater was looking aback at her. She downed the remainder of the whiskey in a single gulp.
“Touche, Fran, touche.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 16, 2015 19:48:58 GMT
Chapter X
Assault on the Surface
The sky was pitch black with a distance orb of dazzling incandescence that shown directly through the Hercules’s windshield making it difficult to read the instrumentation. John started to close the shutters in preparation for the detachment of the Pegasus landers, or ADV's (Ascent/Descent Vehicles) for their descent to the ___ site.
The landing site was right in the moon's "temperate zone" where the domes would need neither heating or cooling using their raw weight, their thermal mass, to store heat during the 2 week lunar day and radiating it during the 2 week night. A large flat plane of light gray regolith, the _____ crater would be just north of them.
Captain Heywood announced over the craft's PA system to brief everybody involved in the landing. He said "All of you are prep'ed for this in the written briefings and the video so I'll just summarize. We don't have the lunar positioning sats up yet so we're doing this purely on inertial, gyros and accelerometers I mean. The weakness we have is that to land all three landers within a click of each other, we'll have to fly in formation keeping each other on our lateral cameras; Pegasus pilots, this means you. Each lander will burn their retros for the same amount of time. Understood?"
Jean, Ichiro and Samantha were in their respective lander cockpits. Each sounded off that they had heard the Captain's orders and were good with them.
"Now the entry vector is tricky. What we want to do is drop right out of orbit and drop vertically right on to the _____ LZ"
"With Jean piloting the command lander, Pegasus 1, she will be the lead. Ichiro, Sam, its your job to keep within 1000 meters of us the whole time. Understood?"
Ichiro and Sam both radioed back in the affirmative.
Floyd continued "Once we get down, we need to quickly unload everything from the two mission landers. We are burning food and oxygen every minute we don't have the colonial stuff set up."
"Strategically, this is where we establish our beachhead. Its critically important this goes well and by the numbers, people. If we fail here we'll have to abort and get Jeff and John to haul us back to the ISS. We have close to a third of a billion dollars worth of hardware with us so we have to pull this off. Understood?"
All the pilots radioed back that they were crystal clear on these things.
"OK, let the games begin! Jeff, handing over control to you. Floyd out."
Jeff radioed over their current coordinates and they initialize their lander's flight computers with the information. One by one the landers detached, actuating their attitude control thrusters momentarily to take them radially outward about 500 meters from the main Transport. In the featurelessness of space, it looked uncomfortably close. Ichiro and Sam would have no problem following Jean's lead because of the now on landing lights.
Floyd wanted to tell them that they would have LPS up in about a week or two but didn't want to overload them with details.
The three landers rotated 180 degrees. Jean radioed the two mission landers with the burn duration and at her mark they went into preburn. They started to fall behind the Hercules as the preburn provided a touch of thrust. After performing a quick systems check on their main motors and at Jean's mark, they initiated their retro burn.
Jean counted off the seconds and it looked from their perspective that the Hercules sped off into the distance, continuing its orbit. They started to feel the lunar gravity and had the distinct sensation of falling.
Jean ordered "Check your current altitude with your rear radar. We've done this a million times before in simulation so we're going to get it done here today!"
Ichiro and Sam echoed her sentiments and kept a good eye on her with their lateral cameras. Jean was flying by instrumentation trying to keep as vertical flight path as she could. The other two pilots let her lead and retained the approximate distance between each of then.
At 3000 meters above the surface, they all switched over to their rear fish-eye cameras. Ichiro reported that he could see some small craters where he was trying to land so he used his steering thrusters to drift outward to avoid them.
They turned up the throttles on their motors for the final deceleration and touched down. Jean misjudged slightly and the Command Lander impacted with a thud, its leg pneumatics compressing. Sam touched down perfectly and Ichiro skidded a touch but also landed softly. They immediately went into motor shutdown.
Suzanna turned to Floyd and said a little shaken "Thank goodness you over-engineered the shock absorbers on these things" and gulped.
"We're going to be flying these things a lot so you can never be too careful." he smiled wanely back.
Jean swore a little over the radio, mostly at herself but they were down and in one piece.
They had succceeded.
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Post by wstanford on Nov 20, 2015 20:15:59 GMT
Introduction from a related paper, "They are among us!"
“They are Among Us!”
How many of us have heard this expression? Pretty much all of us, right? Well, what if “they” were “among us”.
I don't come from the usual UFO school of thought. I don't attend Trekkie conventions, I don't have the long, ellipsoid alien face on my binder, and I grew up Christian. However over the last few months and years, I have come across strange situations that have convinced me that this motto is true.
I pride myself on a scientific mind, and I don't believe anything I don't see with my own two eyes. I always search for an alternative explanation and am a born skeptic. But I have seen with these two things (pointing at my eyeballs) a few too many strange occurrences over the past little while that I wanted to document some of my findings here.
I'm pretty familiar with the Phoenix Metro area, and I have a great mind for names and faces. I know so many people, either by friendship or acquaintance that I can pretty much tell if someone is new in the various venues I hang out at. Now, I admit with the bad economy that there is a lot of movement of populations between various places (an example of my skeptical, scientific mind) but there is always a small remainder that I have a hard time classifying.
It all started when I attended a little church by the name of Set Free here in Phoenix. I noticed something strange about the place that there were always people in the smoking area (which is restricted off limits to people just walking on property) that I didn't see walking in. At first I just chalked this up to me not observing the situation entirely, so I started making it a habit that I would regularly scan the front gate area to see if I could see any of these people walking in. I didn't. With no other exits or entrances than the front gate, I started to be convinced that possibly I was observing some kind of strange, but explainable, phenomenon.
One of the strange things I've noticed about interacting with these mystery people is that there is always a kind of fear associated with it that continually tries to divert your attention from noticing happening. I've been mediating and otherwise been training my mind over the last few years to not nod off, or resist the temptation to just change my mind about observing these happenings. Its also difficult to type this, almost like a mysterious force that wants this information hidden for all time.
To start with a theory I've developed, a working theory of sorts, is that “they” have always been among us, we just never noticed it. In any given social situation, like at Target or the local supermarket, there is always a non-zero percentage of the people in your field of perception that are what I call “shadows”.
What I mean by “shadows” is that not all the people you are perceiving are fully real, if that makes sense. They are not fully populated with everything we normal human beings are populated with that makes us human. Now this is easily achieved by the fact that, especially in modern US cities, that we don't know everybody in the neighborhood. We see a latina squeezing melons in the corner of our eye, a Caucasian man bending over to pick up a bottle of ketchup, and we just assume that we are seeing regular people who are merely neighbors we've never met before.
However, what if at any given moment a small portion of these people are literally walking into our reality, the plane physical, and then walking back out into their own, even themselves unaware of stepping between what might even be parallel Universes. Strange idea, no?
We always here stories about extraterrestrial visitations, UFO's and the like, and there is a small but identifiable section of the population that insist that these paranormal ideas are indeed true, that what IF there is at least a thread of truth in what they are saying.
Now these stories are anecdotal to be sure, but I've hardly ever seen a good treatment of this subject by a person in possession of a neutral mind without agenda. I'm a lay scientist, I don't ascribe at all to the whole UFO cultural idea that ET's have visited us, are visiting us or will visit us. I in fact stand by the scientific finding of the various SETI (search for extraterrestrial life) programs that have told us that there are no technologically advanced cultures that use radio waves for mundane communications within range of our antennas. I also agree that the possibility of another sentient race populating an Earth-like planet within traveling distance from our own is very close to zero.
With this said, let me explain some of my findings. I naturally use the scientific method in my everyday life...I find it an interesting way to occupy my mind when doing mundane activities.
At Set Free, which has something called a “disciple program” where they allow just about anyone, even without ID, to join for a couple of months to learn about Jesus, is where I made a lot of these observations. I have since included various other areas that include large amounts of people where “shadows” (and shadow people are just like you and I in appearance) could warp in and warp out of our existence with very little trail of evidence of them doing so.
When I became aware of the possibility of some of the people appearing in the back of the church not having come in through the one main gate, I scientifically started trying to disprove the idea that they would just appear there. This takes an open mind but, for whatever reason, was a daily occurrence at this particular place. I have theorized that there are quite a few places like this that the phenomenon is so strong and frequent, that it makes an excellent laboratory for studying the phenomenon.
I would stand at the front gates innocuously, check who was in the back and walk directly between the two until there were a group of men that I KNEW were not there moments before. Wow, huh? I even felt the tell-tale sign of my mind wandering, getting mild, distracting headaches and the like, but perceived all the same, until I could say without a doubt, OK, there are some “shadow” people here.
At first it was hard to talk to them. They looked normal but they kept trying to move to the periphery of my perception, so I concentrated and introduced myself to them. They were normal everyday people in every sense except one...one moment they weren't there, and the next moment they were.
I also noticed that they would display the rather annoying quality of disappearing when no one was looking (hypothesis #1: that an observer is required for them to appear, and they can only disappear, as in return where they came from, when not noticed).
My mind would continually try to say, “That is silly.” but the intellectual part of my mind kept on going “OK, unless they literally jumped the 10 foot tall fence in the back, I was always between them and the one entrance/exit to the whole place.” And no one ever did this, it being a church. I would have heard them, or someone would have exclaimed in surprise if someone spontaneously took to doing this.
It was difficult speaking to the ones I, through process of deduction, identified as shadow people, but I forced myself to introduce myself and tried to talk them into coming into the program (a lot of them just exited through the front gate to who knows where). A few of them did.
Hypothesis #2: When a “shadow” human is noticed and becomes socially accepted by an observer or group of observers, it allows them to become permanent to this plane.
I did this with several of the people that I was 100% sure had “warped in” via the methodology I previously described. If felt very unnatural and there was a force that resisted my attempts to do this that was not present with regular people that I saw walk in a sit down. But my point is that its possible to do.
Hypothesis #3: there are various locations in all countries and cultures where this is possible to do provided there are certain features to the “portal”, the most important being the frequency and number of shadows that appear there. Usually it is homeless shelters and other places where there are naturally a large number of strangers present, so that it usually goes unnoticed.
Like Darwin, I passively and without agenda, studied the ones that I had brought into the program. They would always argue a little at first, looking a little nervous, but enough of them stayed that I had a small group of subjects (and I wouldn't tell them I was studying them...just observe them in everyday situations) that I would interact with in a church setting.
Its this passive observation that made all the difference. Even when they were perminantly in the program and I would see them everyday, I still noticed a force there that discouraged me from talking to them, and others that I knew were regular human. I want to reiterate that they are very normal, and physical (I would seek opportunities at first to touch them innocuously, like a friendly handshake or whatever, just to make sure). I also observed their dietary habits...the same as regular people, which is exactly who they looked like. The only difference? (To reiterate) They literally appeared out of nowhere just days before.
It took weeks to be able to fully talk freely to some of them, without my words feeling like they were being forced through molases. The ones I selected (as in, invited them personally to stay with us there) were intelligent and willing to talk about various subjects. After a while I would confront them with things like how their stories about where they came from were a little muddled (as in there were contradictions, or they would spell their name wrong and then correct it), and it was at this time that there were some STARTLING revelations about “them”.
Firstly, I would invite them to participate with me in something that I called “storytime” that I was going to talk to them theatrically about things that may or may not be true, that it was a game I was working on that I need some help with, that they were not obligated to be truthful but to kind of go along with what I was saying and answer to the best of their ability.
One of my first findings doing this, which interestingly was admitted by them in every case that I had opportunity to ask, was they were NOT in possetion of a long-term memory, they they couldn't really remember their childhood, that they admited that a lot of the facts regarding them that they told others about themselves just magically appeared in their heads and they just accepted it. I WAS AMAZED! They looked confused and looking for help on these points so quite a few of them were willing to talk about it to someone that wouldn't judge them for it.
I was like “Holy Crap! It is real! “They” (whoever the hell “they” are) are indeed among us. These crazies that say this aren't kidding. Wow.
And it gets better. The extraterrestrial connection...
There were two friends I made this way called Preston and Himey (Himey interestingly enough told quite a few people afterwords that his name isn't Himey, its' actually spelled Hai-Mai, kind of oriental sounding) that admitted to me, looking straight into my eyes and I could tell they weren't joking around that they were in possession of some of their past memories, and they weren't of this planet.
Apparently, they both came from a planet 30 billion light years away:
The Earth is at the center of this map of the observable universe, and the white spot I've created in Paint is where they claimed to be from.
They were from a human race there, on a star system similar to ours, but their civilization was older than Homo Sapien, they had developed the ability to traverse the usual memory loss that accompanies these jumps between places and even times. Apparently, they were also from our future, though this point being moot because of the vast distances that they had travelled.
I asked them how they were able to do this. They didn't know. I was working on a physics theory that included entwinement as a fundamental principle, and apparently, all human civilizations across the Universe are, at least theoretically, connected through this medium, that a 110 kg man or woman can be one one of these planets, the evolution of the being Human being closely enough the same, that they can literally and superluminally jump instantaneously from star to star, and in this case, cluster to cluster thought a natural process that no scientist on Earth has been able to discover because of various factors.
They literally “perturb” from their planet (or space station in the case of advanced civilizations) to another one via the same process that creates virtual particles in apparently “empty” space. Blip!
And its a lot more common that you might think! It happens regularly, we just don't notice it!
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Post by wstanford on Nov 20, 2015 20:17:28 GMT
Chapter X
Excavation and Mining
One of the neat little gadgets they did have was a 6-inch diameter bump on the top of lander 2. it could project red laser light, computer controlled, in exact patterns on the lunar surface. They would use this now to mark out the excavation site. Floyd took off his suit and Sam headed for the airlock. Suzanna and Ichiro manned their rover consoles in the command lander (they were in gravity now so they needed a ladder to get to the crew deck) and climbed it. He opted to sleep until his first shift on rover.
Sam exited the airlock an descended the lander's extended rungs. Hey orders were to set up the aluminum processors. Their timetable was tight so they wanted the necessary liquid oxygen not only for breathing but also for inflating the dome. Even after just a few weeks in close quarters, all of them welcomed the spaciousness of an erected dome.
Floyd meanwhile was prepping his daily report to be added to their daily transmission to Earth from his bunk on the top level. Keeping his eye on the time (mission time was always MST – Arizona) he had to get his eight hours. He was exhausted.
Most of the modules were lightweight especially especially in the moon's one-sixth gravity but Sam still radioed her husband to bring one of the rovers around to help move the modules she needed. Ichiro carefully drove his rover over and helped his wife.
She checked her checklist through her suit faceplate: she needed to set up one of the ZPM's and module that turned regolith directly to aluminum, gaseous oxygen and spent regolith, and two modules that converted the gaseous oxygen to liquid oxygen. Creeping up on the pile she quickly connected up the required power leads to the power conditioning box. She was being excessively careful but that thing have her the willies.
She finished placing the modules at their proper location. The laser surveyor had traced out the location for her perfectly even tracing the acronym of each module in a bright, scintillating red in case she should forget. It took her an hour or two to unpack everything and perform a systems check.
In the meantime Ichiro's rover Baker rejoined Suzanna's Able scraping lunar soil in the excavation area. He was shocked at how much regolith she had already transferred to the sides of the dome area.
He turned to Suzanna, sitting right next to him, and expressed his surprise to which she just smiled and reminded him it was exactly the same speed as in the colonial simulator back at Spacenix. He grinned broadly back but was struck with the ever growing realization that they were really building a dome on the moon. It terrorized him and half filled him with joy. He was living his dream!
The great thing about the rovers is that, with the flick of a switch on the console, drive them in reverse normally. Suzanna was filling her bucket to the brim, flicking her reverse switch and then driving out without having to turn around. It shaved critical minutes on each pass. She exited the ramp area and dumped her load on the beginnings of the long hills that would flank their ever growing holes.
Ichiro deposited a few loads near Samantha's location so that he could just dump it into the ZPM when she was finished hooking everything up. She was just powering up the modules so he decided to take a break, putting his hands behind his head.
Suzanna's Able was jetting down the ramp at a speed the moon had never seen in previous rovers. They were gutsy, fast and capable. Checking her speedometer she was pushing upwards of 16 miles per hour in sports. She lowered her blade for another pass and scooped up all she could carry.
Meanwhile, Sam had a lucid moment. She reached down and picked up a handful of loose regolith and remembered the NASA mission sent to investigate asteriodal mining: this was about the amount it would process. She turned to the large piles that Ichiro had deposited and was struck with the difference in magnitude between the two projects. One scientific, the other industrial. They were there to stay this time, she thought to herself.
Ichiro loaded the ZPM's hopper with a few hundred pounds of soil. The mission planners had also chosen this exact area because of the high concentration of alumina or _______ to make aluminum and oxygen mining more efficient.
She read the 7-segment displays and was impressed at the workmanship of the earth interest that had designed and constructed the unit. Even though she couldn't hear it operating, she found she could feel its vibration through her suit gloves if she touched it. “Colonial hardware” she thought.
Her mind turned to her briefing manuals where at said that there was between one to two magnitudes difference in the cost of this hardware if they had a human being to “housekeep” they called it. Pushing a button, cleaning it out, manually moving things from place to place, it didn't need to be autonomous. “Sure.” she thought and I'm chained to this thing as surely as a child during the industrial revolution.
Its cycle time was around 45 minutes and Sam's work made it go by fast. She radioed Ichiro to break off from excavation and help her load the next batch. She took a shovel and scooped up a dense pile of iron filings, a byproduct of the process that would be used later to make lunar steel, and deposited it in a slowly growing pile. “I'm so strong here on the moon” she joked realizing she's moves about thirty pounds of iron with each shovel full. Reduced gravity was certainly convenient in ways she had hardly anticipated.
A strobe light blinked and meant the end of the unit's cycle. She moved over to a hatch labeled “Ingot Tray” and slid it outward like using a pizza oven.
She looked down at the ingot of pure aluminum. Spacenix was pressured to make ingots the size of gold bars but decided on a half-sized industrial version.
She turned her radio on “Wow! That's a lot of aluminum” and told whoever was listening to check her suit cam.
Suzanna radioed back, “Samantha, Floyd wants you to put that somewhere where it won't get lost, for historical purposes. Whatever you do don't mix it up with the other bars, OK?”
“Roger that, XO” Sam radioed back. She put the very first ingot on top of the ZPM so she wouldn't forget.
It was shiny like a mirror. The vacuum on the moon didn't allow it to develop aluminum’s typical oxide layer that we usually associate with the metal. It would turn milky once they brought it inside however.
They had been briefed extensively on how to realize what they called “media opportunities” so Sam decided to hit the record button on her suit cam so she could get some raw high-definition footage for inclusion on their next transmission.
She radioed Ichiro to load the hopper for the next batch to which he transferred some loose soil from the piles that he had made to the ZPM I took him all of about two minutes. He rocketed back to excavating, following Able at a safe distance.
Ichiro whistled when he realized how much of the acre area they had already dug. The ramp area was already starting to turn into a ramp and about 6 inches of depth in the excavation.
Suzanna turned to him and said, “I think I'm a little more stressed out that I'm admitting. I'm going to take a short break.” She piloted Able away from the work going on and rubbed her eyes.
She noticed the lights snoring of Floyd and Anna; she had been focusing on driving her rover and hadn't noticed. Anna was next door in the airlock room suited up but with her faceplate open. Spacenix safety protocol required someone suited up and ready to go whenever there was an EDA. Even though there was no dome yet, they still called it an exo-dome activity. Seems that all four of them were more exhausted that they let on. It truly was how Floyd said this was going to be, an endurance race.
Ichiro though was filled with energy and tried to catch up to Suzanna's amount of excavating. He was getting his moon-legs quickly. He kept watching his wife on a pop up on his main screen.
He radioed over to her “Everything going good, Samantha?” and she radioed back that everything was. She was shoveling some spillage away from the machine so a rover could pick it up for her.
An alarm sounded on Suzanna's station. She read it quickly; it reminded her to charge Able. Able was still at half-power but they had to rotate the three through the single charger. She noticed they were at hour five of their 8-hour shift. She quickly sat down and shot Able over to the charging station.
The charging station was a small structure with a base, and a metal roof, that the rover would drive onto. The rover's antenna doubled as a power line and s it made contact with the roof, it complete the circuit, the base being ground. The current would then flow rejuvenating the rover's batteries.
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Post by wstanford on Nov 20, 2015 20:18:01 GMT
Chapter X
Setting Up
“You heard the man,” referring to Captain Heywood, “he wants all of this stuff unloaded and prepped for the next stage pronto. Let's shoot for 1500 hours.” exclaimed Jean.
They trained for unloading with 2 people per mission lander. Since the pilots had to EVA to leave their cockpits, Suzanna was the forth person to help. Floyd would stay back in the control room with Anna, and coordinate the efforts on the ground.
Checking in quickly with Earth, who relayed the message over to the Hercules that they had made it down safely (to many cheers and well wishes). Floyd looked over his cams to check on everybody. Suzanna, already in her space suit was decompressing in the command lander's airlock.
The lander pilots had already shut down their vehicles and were slowly climbing down the external ladders to the lunar surface. Suzanna jumped down off the bottom of her ladder following Jean over to the closer lander, Pegasus 2. Ichiro when he descended the ladder would hump it over to his wife's craft and help her out.
Suzanna said to Jean over her suit radio, “You let me do the hard stuff. You need to cool down a bit from flying.” Jean agreed wholeheartedly.
Suzanna climbed the ladder to the top set of cargo doors and hooked her safety line to one of the rungs. She swung herself out and sideways and pulled the clasps on the first set of doors. With some minor gymnastics, she managed to get herself onto the ledge between the door's frame and the cargo that filled the bay to the brim.
Reaching up she rotated the loading winch so that it was facing outwards. She let out enough of the stranded steel cable to hook it to the first piece of cargo she was to unload. Fiddling with the controls, she used the winch to pull the cargo, in this case the Able bucket rover kit, out the door. She then actuate the winch controls to lower the box down to the ground where Jean was waiting to guide it down.
Suzanna realized that they had the habitat bag in the lowest section and cursed her bad luck that she and Jean were the ones to unload it. Even in lunar gravity, it still weighed a few thousands of pounds. They had a kit that they could winch it out with but it was still the heaviest single piece of equipment that had ever been landed on the moon. So big in fact that the dome was designed to be erected at the spot mission lander 2dropped it at because they couldn't move it really anywhere else.
Ichiro and Sam by this time were already unloading their goodies to the surface. The four of them working together would have to unload the bag however.
Jean after they had unloaded everything took what looked like a metal detector and started looking for any large boulders that might be lurking below the surface and the bed rock, something that could stymie their habitat construction. After scanning a half-acre, she came across a big one obvious to her instrument. The protocol required that she just start scanning on the other side off where she started and luckily no density changes in a acre on the other side of the subterranean bolder.
The four of them quiet happy now but almost exhausted started setting up the winch system to unload the habitat bag. A cylindrical mass of Kevlar and other exotic plastics, this was going to be their home for who knew how long once they buried and covered it up again.
They activated the winch and the bag dropped slowly to the ground. They then took off the cables and left it there for later. They wouldn't need it until their bucket rovers excavated an acre of regolith, lunar soil down about 10-12 feet down to the basalt bedrock.
They would need their rovers. Ichiro and Sam were exhausted so Suzanna and Jean popped open the rover kits and activated them. Their Li-ion batteries were already fully charged so Jean called over to Anna, and asked “Anna, we have Baker rover unpacked and turned on. Can you try to acquire him and drive him around a bit?”
Anna radioed back that she was at a rover control station so with a few switches thrown, she was able to access Baker's cams and driving controls. In less than five minutes Baker was tooling around the lunar surface, spry as can be.
Suzanna unpacked Able and Charlie and flicked their switches. They went through the same testing procedure, Floyd standing in front of the control stations. Everything was a green.
Floyd radioed the bunch, “OK, I have something very important to tell you all but I need you back at the command lander for a briefing here pronto. We can't do anything else until we get this issue taken care of.” So they walked back to the Pegasus 1 for a meeting.”
The entire surface crew was stuffed into the control room and galley watching the monitors.
Captain Heywood started with “The reason why I called you all back here is because we wanted to avoid the possibility of your suit radios being intercepted.”
In a very serious tone, Floyd told them that what they were to hear in this meeting was Top Secret, and that they were to never speak of it over uncoded transmissions. All of the astronauts became quiet because Spacenix was commercial,. Not government so this was very unexpected.
Floyd flashed an image onto the briefing monitor and ask the group “Does anyone know what this is?”
Ichiro was the first to answer “If I had to guess, Captain, I would say we were looking at the power-plant for nuclear sub or ship.”
“You are correct. This is the schematic for a 25 Kw nuclear 'pile' that is the baby brother of one you would find in a nuclear sub.”
Ichiro continued “Yes, but why are you showing us this?”
Floyd smiled a little self-consciously “Well...we have this unit and a smaller 10 Kw one over in Pegasus 3.”
Ichiro was nonplussed “That's impossible because its a contravention of international law to transport piles like that in space. Yet you are telling us that there is not one but two of these units here on the moon.”
“We had a problem, a big problem, brought up to us by one of our DoD friends. We couldn't haul enough photovoltaic to the lunar surface to even meet a tenth of our goal of aluminum production. We aren't like NASA trying to shoot small lasers at asteroids; we need to melt and otherwise process tons of this stuff. Even if to generate enough oxygen to breath.”
Ichiro settled down preempting Floyd with “The only way we have these things is with direct approval of the President and the only way the Pentagon agreed is if its already depending on our supplies of “elemental commodities.” Am I correct?”
Floyd responded “Actually frighteningly accurate. If we were cause with these units in today's legal environment, we'd be cooked.”
Floyd pulled out something that looked like a twister mat. On it were printed patterns that looked a lot like solar cells.” What we have to do is unroll some of these next to where we are building the dome and it will look to any telescope or survey that we are using solar cells. Its critical that we lay these out before we start any power-intensive activities, including running our rovers. Understood?”
Most of the group needed time for this to sink in but they indicated they understood what needed to be done.
“We also need to get the 25 Kw pile out of the lander and buried for radiation shielding and visibility reasons.”
Ichiro piped up “How much radiation does it emit? I mean is it safe to move?”
Floyd responded “Its more or less inert until we break the seals on it. The pentagon had told me that it can't be moved after that because of the radiation.”
This satisfied Ichiro. In fact, he was a bit phased that the electric power issue had been solved entirely by this. The problem with photovoltaic was that they didn't work over the lunar night but this would allow them all the power they would ever need day or night.
Most of their number was still in space suits so they decided to unload and set up the mini-pile (the larger of the two power-plants). They concluded their meeting and exited the airlock. Floyd and Ichiro would move the pile. Suzanna and Anna would grab shovels and manually excavate the hole needed for it.
The two men winched it down to the surface and with 2 poles carried it from the lander to where they were digging. The four of them traded off on digging until they had a hole that would accommodate the darn thing. But power was life in this most desolate of places, so they were glad to have made a deal with the devil for it.
After lowering it in, Floyd pulled a large pin on it and they quickly filled the hole back in, only the long black power lead was exposed when they finished.
“We only have about fifteen minutes to safely be around it so let's hurry.” exclaimed Floyd breathing hard. It was difficult working in the sunlight because their suits weren't that sophisticated; they could feel the sweat collecting in their boots. Come lunar night they would have to work with the lights and don separate “snowsuits” to keep them from freezing.
Suzanna, the XO and chief of rover operations, asked for Anna to find Box 11B and some power cords so she could set up the rover charger station. Floyd went with her to get enough power cord to be able to hook up the command lander. In about an hour, they had everything connected and powered up.
Floyd and Ichiro unrolled several rolls of the fake solar cells which was easy to do because there was no wind. Just to be on the safe side, they decided to take a few rocks to hold it down.
By this time everybody was exhausted but Suzanna reminded them that they needed to start 2-man shifts starting today to begin excavation. She also reminded them to check the shift schedule on their laptops when they got a chance. Ichiro and Suzanna would be on the first shift, Floyd and Jean on the next.
Everybody groaned at this. Even with extensive training, the stress of the central mission ust made them tired.
Suzanna concluded with “Remember...think colonial.”
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Post by wstanford on Nov 20, 2015 20:19:30 GMT
Chapter X
Visitation
Suzanna felt particularly happy at work for some unknown reason. Even though the typical load of cancellations and rescheduling occurred, she had energy to spare. Except for Floyd not coming by she couldn't complain about anything that day.
She closed the door of the welcome Center behind her and made a mental note that one thing they had to get for the building was a damned alarm system. They could scrimp and save and ignore convention like they always did but there was just something wrong about not punching in a 4-digit code as quickly as possible in the dawn's early light. Call if her excitement for the day but she was going to talk to her man, Chad, about getting one installed.
She headed down to the dining facility and jumped into line. Some nice looking older gentlemen who had been flying the Daedalus simulators waved at her with big grins and Suzanna grinned friendly herself and waved back at them. To have her do this made their day complete and they returned to their plastic trays talking enthusiastically amongst themselves.
"Always nice to be appreciated," she thought. At least they didn't wolf whistle at her like a young latin man did a few days ago.
She had too much energy. One o the Daedalus pilots winked at her and laughed when he caught her shoveling her pasta salad into her mouth like a recruit in basic training. Suzanna blushed a little but still managed to stick her tongue out at him, to which he held up his hands and went back to his meal.
Finishing her diner in record time, she slid past some grads munching away an talking about quantum physics. One of them looked up at her for a moment and looked quickly down at his food. She thought it cure, handing her empty tray to a volunteer who was banging trays into a garbage can and stacking them neatly to be washed later.
She exited the back door and headed towards the communal facilities. Stopped mid-stride she remembered she didn't have any fresh clothes with her and instead looped around to her cabin to get a fresh set and then headed for the showers.
She was finally starting to wind down, perfect timing for a long, luxurious hat shower would be exactly what the doctor ordered. Turning down the woman's entrance she started to pull her towel out of her black, nylon bag. Fran had the same idea showering after work and passed her with a quick "Hey, girlfriend" and disappeared out the door.
The showers were individual and even had a little part where you could pull the curtains closed and disrobe in some privacy. The only thing she could never get used to was the 12-inch gap between the two sides, right below the roof. She had questioned Floyd about it when she first arrived and he matter-of-factly explained that because of the extremely tight quarters of space flight one had to deprogram themselves of excessive modesty...hence the gap. It taught both sexes how to perform all life functions around each other without shame.
What it did, thought Suzanna, was make a person neurotic but she immediately saw his point even thinking it clever. She would never get used to the low loud voices of the men just feet away from her nakedness however.
She started the water and stepped in
<insert more writing here>
She felt the distinct sensation of someone watching her so she turned around quickly. Though impossible there was an older white-haired man sitting in the big chair looking at her. She immediately thought of running for the door but her headache increased and when she eyes settled on the door knob, she felt a distant dread, a paranoia that some awful thing would befall her if she were to touch it. It didn't make any sense but she was so weak that the only course of action that she could perform was to sit on the corner of her bed. This she did.
"Ms. Horne, I am sorry we had to meet this way. My name is Jacob." he said in a calm even voice.
All she could do is stare silently back. She remembered that her cabin was surrounded by other occupied ones and this was a comforting though; if Jacob meant to do her harm, he would have to contend with them.
"Have you heard of the shadow people?" he asked.
Who hadn't. It was part of popular culture at this point. She nodded affirmatively but still didn't say anything.
"I am one of their number. I am Librain. Kind of like the constellation in the sky or the symbol of the balances of justice."
She thought it unwise to challenge him on this so she decided to talk with him neutrally. She and Floyd, and sometimes Fran and others would talk about who they might be and Floyd especially would tell stories of being visited by them from time to time before forming Spacenix. So in addition to the general knowledge of them, she also knew what her friend thought about them but she herself had never talked to one.
She could tell she wasn't hallucinating him; hie was real but for an older man he was remarkably devoid of wrinkles. In fact, the only clue to his age lay in his white hair reminding her of someone in the twilight years of their life.
"So, Jacob, why are you here?" she asked neutrally.
The atmosphere of the room closed in around her and she had the distinct feeling of dreaming though still awake.
He replied "We periodically check on our mutual friend, Floyd Heywood, from time to time just to make sure he's not up to his old mischief. Have you heard of the Large Hadron Collider before?"
She had heard of the scientific structure before and Floyd had mentioned something about his connection to it in the past.
"I understand that its a big ring over in Europe used to research subatomic particles."
"That's a very good description of it. Now I want to share with you that might be surprising. I am not of this planet but came from somewhere else" he looked at her steadily to see her reaction.
She though for a moment and decided that disagreeing might be permissible in this situation.
"I find that hard to believe, Jacob, because I have read that our SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence programs haven;t detected a single civilization on other worlds.
"Humanity is correct that there are no other sentient races in your cosmic neighborhood, but we shadows come from other places...even other times."
This piqued Suzanna's curiosity. She found enough correlations between Floyd's and Jacobs stories to be impressed even by the consistency between them.
"How do you know Floyd?"
"I don't know if you are aware of the fact that your friend is a very talented, young man. Its not enough that he is an accomplished rocket scientist but his little....hobby....theorizing about the nature of reality and God originally brought him to our attention. In fact, his work before his work here might have even invoked us to this time and place."
She was nodding tiredly forcing herself to be alert.
"Do you know what he's working on these days during his off-hours?"
She usually wouldn't have talked to a complete stranger about projects on the Spacenix campus but she decided to be forthcoming in this case. She had a few questions of her own.
"I'm thinking you mean not propulsion related but physics...quantum physics is concerned. Correct?"
At this Jacob smiled and said "You have a strong mind and a lot of courage. And yes, you are correct."
"I know that he has several friends that are PH'ds in physics. Most people don;t differentiate between let's say rocket science and quantum physics but being chief of operations here I know there is very little crossover between these two disciplines."
She figured cooperation was best in this situation. "My point is that I did some digging on various people's academic credentials and we have way more physicists than Spacenix would ever need for anything. Astrophysics I could see, but NOT quantum."
"I'm sorry for appearing like I did, Suzanne. But I had to talk to a human being about what I discovered lest I should forget."
Another thing Floyd had said to her about the shadows: they had memory problems.
He probed further "Have you noticed Mr. Heywood trying to acquire any large amounts of computing power? Supercomputers and the like, I mean?"
Suzanna smiled at this and said "I think you might be too late Jacob. Even for an aerospace company, Spacenix is very well equipped computationally. WE don't build wind tunnels here, we model everything with computers, super computers. Just our simulators alone require prolific number-crunchers."
Jacob looked disturbed at this revelation and nodded his head in quiet agreement that he was too late.
What Suzanna didn't tell him is that even she had noticed his hanging out with quantum physicists on campus. Why she had checked in the first place. But that was going to remain her little secret.
Something prompted her to ask "I've shared with you now you share with me. Was their something you wanted to tell me?"
"Yes, if I'm remembering correctly, in the future you and and Mr. Heywood are married."
usually she would be skeptical, very skeptical of prophesies such as this but there was something about how he said it, like it was a historical fact.
"Now that is interesting." Remembering things in the future? As far as Suzanna knew memory only recorded past events. But maybe past, present and future were different for shadow people.
"What else do you 'remember'?" she probed.
"That Floyd Heywood indeed becomes the father of interplanetary expansion as he had intended."
her eyebrows raised at this. A good one to be sure, but only time would tell.
Jacob indicated that he had to leave, rose and walked out the her front door. This shocked her possibly because she must have supposed that he would have disappeared as he had appeared. But he just got up and walked out the door like a regular person.
She quickly rose from her bed and slid the dead bolt closed behind him. She was nervous about him returning but calmed herself with the realization that if he had intended to do her harm he probably would have done so when they were speaking face-to-face.
She was so tired and worn out by the encounter that she lay on her bed for just a moment to get her strength back, but instead fell right to sleep.
Chapter X
Visitation, Part 2
When she awoke it was to bright sunlight shining across her face. She had forgotten to set her alarm and now she was late for work. She was a little bothered by the fact that no one had come by to check on where she was.
But what concerned her was this feeling of weakness and she was shaking. What was going on?
She stayed lying down and with her right hand felt around for her purse, found it and fished around for her cell phone. She called up Fran in desperation.
"Hey, girlfriend, what's up?" Fran chipper as a bird greeted the call.
"I'm ill hon." she whimpered, "Can you come over as soon as you can and check on me?"
"Yeah sure, honey." she was very concerned now.
About fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door. Suzanna remembered that she had locked the door the night before so she slowly lowered her shapely legs to the floor and shuffled over to unlock it; she was too hoarse to say something to Fran through the door.
Fran entered and saw her friend crawling back into her bed. But what scared Fran was how terribly she was shaking. It was like nothing Fran had ever seen before and she could tell Suzanna wasn't faking it or something.
They relaxed the both of them, Frany sitting in the big chair. Suzanna finally muttered "Can you get Floyd on the phone and get him to find a replacement for me at the Center?" Fran whipped out her cellphone and speed-dialed her boss.
Less than an hour later Floyd showed up concerned. He could count on one hand how many times Suzanna had missed work and she never did so without calling in advance. Fran scooted over and Floyd sat on one of the big chair's oversized armrests.
He saw her shaking ans asked her seriously if she had any unwelcome visitors in the last day. She nodded her head vigorously at this "Yes!"
Fran had no idea what either one of them we talking so she just watched passively. Floyd said "I've seen that kind of shaking before. Its a symptom that developed when they are visited by the shadows."
Fran glared at Floyd chastising him for telling ghost stories while their fried was so obviously ill, but Suzanna croaked "Yes, one of them was here last night." Fran was very confused now so she sunk back into the chair and watched.
He got up and sat next to her on the bed and took his fingers tips and started tracing lines on her face. Usually a man would do this to be sensual but he did it for an entirely different reason. Almost immediately, she stopped that dreadful shaking.
He slowly moved his fingertips across her arms stroking her gently. She started to relax and the life came back into her eyes. She sat up, still weak but feeling considerably better. Floyd stroked her hair the same way, and she gave him this "don't stop because whatever you are doing is working" look.
Her breathing slowed and she realized that she had been mildly hyperventilating as well. he stroked the outsides of her thighs with the back of his fingertips in long continuous strokes.
She said with a stronger but breaking voice, "Thank you."
Floyd looked sad and Suzanna asked him "Why sad, hon?" and he told her that in rare cases the shaking didn't stop for weeks but that he had also seen it disappear in a few hours as well. He was just worries for her. He continued stroking her until she was feeling better.
He had brought something with him. A light-gray medical cane. he had leaned it up against the wall when he first came in. He went over and picked it up. he started "I know you are going to think I'm crazy for asking this but..." and presented her with the cane.
The beautiful people did not use canes! Suzanna's first reaction was repulsion at the thought; she just sat there for a moment. Fran thought she was going to throw it on the floor. She surprised everybody when she took the cane and asked "You want me to use this?"
Floyd nodded his head. Continuing, he said "You'll find out your balance, your sense of equilibrium is off. You feel weak which is good enough reason, but I had a friend that broke his hip by falling down. I'm just worried is all."
Suzanna looked tenderly at him and then the cane. She sighed a resigned "OK, I'll do it."
He concluded "You'll also find out that its nice being held up by something. Comforting, I mean."
The weakness and tremors persisted but after three days Suzanna returned to the Welcome Center. Work had piled up b8ut her fellow volunteers had done a good job is keeping the place running.
She stumbled up to the cottage, cane in hand and began to sort though the pile of paperwork on her desk. She had gotten a few looks coming in; twenty-six years old and using a cane? She felt tired.
Floyd was the model boss from a few days, coming in and helping her make calls and file paperwork. She was also a trooper and fought through the fatigue slowly but surely completing her daily tasks.
She was going to be OK.
-----
Fran and Suzanna were talking about the shadows. It was a beautiful day and the sun shone brightly while a cool breeze passed through. Fran had asked what she and Jacob talked about and Suzanna needed someone to talk to about it. Fran nodded vaguely when her friend pointed out that there were a lot of subatomic physics majors here for an aerospace facility. Even Frany had a hard time grasping how that was strange.
<Complete this chapter later>
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