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Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them.
SF Trope: "It
occurs to me that robot stories about naturally-occurring robots present an
untapped sci-fi resource in terms of commenting on what constitutes life, or a
meditation on the machine like nature of biological man, etc."
Ebony Jones pursed
her lips, tweaking the landing jets of the surface ship. “I don’t like how it
looks down there.”
Marquis Deonte ran
another scan, tapping one of the readouts as he said, “It’s mechanical life,
sure. Maybe the first time we’ve ever run across it naturally...”
“There’s nothing
‘natural’ about ‘mechanical life’. It’s an oxymoron,” she almost added “Like
you...”, but decided against it. They’d butted heads enough times on the trip
out from Earth – mostly because you could only live out virtual adventures so
many times before you got bored. You could also only prep for landing on an
alien world so many times before you were twitching in your sleep with the
movements you’d repeated a million times.
You could only
tell someone you just wanted to be friends so many times before you both
started to... Marquis cut into her litany, saying, “Didn’t you come out here to
find life as we DON’T know it?"
“Of course it’s
what I want! Just because I question the possibility of some sort of metallic,
mechanical...”
“Look! Down
there!” he said, aiming the external sensors at the roiling surface.
Ebony said,
“Besides, water mixed with just about any kind of salt would be corrosive to metal...”
“Our bones are
metallic,” he said, his voice taking on the deadpan, lecture mode they’d fallen
into after they’d first become fast friends. Since about ten months into the
flight to HD 196944, a star rich in heavy metals when they’d stopped being best
friends and become the banes of their separate existences.
“True, that.
But...”
“There’s something
moving under the surface,” said Marquis.
“I don’t see
anything...”
“It’s not visible
in our part of the spectrum. Change the frequency reception of your scanner.
I’m getting lots of movement in the UV band. Also IR.”
She tapped the
screen, slid a spectrum bar and watched as the imaged jumped into view. There
were larger shapes deeper down. Smaller ones close to the surface. They were
angular rather than rounded; mechanical rather than biological. “What kind of
ecology would they have?” she muttered. After a moment, she said more loudly,
“There’s something – cloudy – under the surface. Seems to be...” she paused,
defaulted to a space-view of the lander, zoomed in then added, “The cloud is
matching the shape of our shadow.”
“Huh?” Marquis
said.
“Our shadow! A
cloud is forming underneath us in the water.” Below them, something burbled, as
if the water were boiling. A larger bubble burst beneath the surface, splashing
the lander. Ebony swung the imager to the belly of the lander and cried, “The
ship’s skin is boiling! I’m taking us up!” Without waiting for his
confirmation, Ebony pushed the throttle to full...
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