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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: Isaac
Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds
lecture on how it works.”
Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once we drill through
the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do it fast.” He
tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there was no true
atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation sleet from
Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface on little
more than a hovering plate.
“You think extracting a few metric tonnes of
uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?” asked Yelizavta
Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a geologist...”
“You mean a Eurologist?”
“That makes me sound like a bladder specialist!”
“Well, it’s not Earth, so you can’t be a
‘geologist’.”
“There’s not a bladder in sight, either!”
Beneath their feet, the ice sang. On any other
world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice vibrated, shifting, sliding
along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass that shook the world like a
drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy; the smallest sang beyond the
hearing of Humans.
Khünbish slapped the pipe again and said, “If
there were living things under the surface, maybe my sucking the lifeblood from
the water will make them sit up and take notice.”
“I doubt there’re sitting beings under our feet,
Khun.”
He grimaced at the diminutive – Americans and
Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off willy-nilly – and
said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”
“And if there’s nothing under our feet but ice,
water, uranium?”
“Then we stand to make a fortune and retire
wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to sing again. As he
fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear that?”
Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
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