IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 635

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. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: robot
Current Event: http://www.livescience.com/topics/robots/

“The Serpent In Eden, Nebraska”

Caleb Ogallala stared at the hole in the ground. “‘bout wide enough for me to get my arm down. Probably to my elbow,” he said. Looking up at his sister, Isabella Pearson nee Ogallala, he said, “You probably don’t believe I saw what I said I saw.”

Isabella – who went by Bell at SolaRobotics in the far, frozen northland of Winnipeg – said, “You’re my brother and I believe you saw what you thought you saw.”

“Not the same thing. You may be all of twenty-three and all I am is seventeen, but I know what I saw. It was a robot shaped like a snake and it dug this here hole.”

Bell winced at the Plainsism. She’d barely managed to ditch the weird accent after she did her undergrad work at the University of Minnesota. She’d finally got that accent right. Now she was struggling to fit in at her newly adopted home in Canada. She nodded, then squatted, “All right then. I apologize. You saw a robot shaped like a snake go down this hole.” She looked up at her brother. He didn’t seem as happy as he used to. Mom and Dad dying from MERS while she was away at college probably hadn’t helped with the mood. Not that their family laughed much. Salt-of-the-Earth Dad had called them...She shook off the melancholy image and shielded her eyes with her hand as she said, “First question is: has the county let the prairie dogs back in?”

His lips twitched in a smile. It was the first one since he’d picked her up at the skip-port in Ogallala, sixty klicks straight north of here. He said, “Not that I know of, but people ‘round here, they don’t much trust nobody’s government, even when it’s the Accordion Party.”

She stood and straightened up, “It’s the Accord Party.”

He shrugged then said, “It had your logo on it.”

“What?” she said, suddenly intent.

“The second letter of your name the round sun with black diamond eyes. It was on the snake head.”

Unexpectedly, Bell was cold despite the heat from the late morning sun…

Names: Nebraska, USA ♀;♂
Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 36: If We Altered Aspects Of Humanity, What Kind Of Alien Aliens Would We Get?

Five decades ago, I started my college career with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. I found out I had to get a BS in biology before I could even begin work on MARINE biology; especially because there WEREN'T any marine biology programs in Minnesota.

Along the way, the science fiction stories I'd been writing since I was 13 began to grow more believable. With my BS in biology and a fascination with genetics, I started to use more science in my fiction.

After reading hard SF for the past 50 years, and writing hard SF successfully for the past 20, I've started to dig deeper into what it takes to create realistic alien life forms. In the following series, I'll be sharing some of what I've learned. I've had some of those stories published, some not...I teach a class to GT young people every summer called ALIEN WORLDS. I've learned a lot preparing for that class for the past 25 years...so...I have the opportunity to share with you what I've learned thus far. Take what you can use, leave the rest. Let me know what YOU'VE learned. Without further ado...

At one of the sites I was skimming in preparation for this post, I was one written by Veronica Sicoe. Her site is linked below.

One statement leaped out at me, “Completeness – some things habitually get lost in worldbuilding, unless they’re specifically needed, and we ought to remember to at least give them a cursory glance, such as: the legal systems, burial rituals, infant care systems, medical systems, recreational facilities, etc.”

You can access her site and insight here: How To Create An Alien Species In 3 Stages – Veronica Sicoe (wordpress.com)

HOWEVER, what happened when I read this was something not AT ALL intended by the issue she was opining on. I TOOK IT TO MEAN, “In what way might aliens experience ‘completeness’ that would be entirely WEIRD to us?”

Let me examine my own Human self. I’m cis-gendered, a hetero husband happily married for the past 36 years (almost 37). I am also white, so (by implication), I have had every opportunity that this American society can offer.

HOWEVER…if you stop there, some people will immediately turn on me, vilify me, and make all sorts of assumptions about me that simply are not true. One (for example), is that I will be homophobic. I could provide proof that I’m not, but while it might be entertaining, MY POINT IS THIS: I was not MY OWN PERSONAL-AND-NOT-IMPLYING-THAT-EVERYONE-ELSE-SHOULD-BE-LIKE-ME…most complete. I needed to be in a traditional marriage with a traditional woman. Now again, please don’t leap to assumptions about what I mean by “traditional”. I could once again provide references that would refute many assumptions people would make about me.

MY POINT IS THIS: Completeness for ME MYSELF PERSONALLY is that to be complete, I needed to be in a permanent (as permanent as Humans can be!) marriage relationship to be my best self.

But no matter WHO YOU ARE OR WHAT CREATES THE BEST YOU THAT YOU CAN BE…what might truly ALIEN ALIENS need to “be complete”?

For example, what if instead of being born as I and my wife were – one each of a dual gendered variety of Humanity; aliens were born as followed:

At birth (we’ll make it a mammalian-style birth to keep this simple and something I can understand – if you’re going to accuse me of playing it safe and assuming all Humans are like me, please read this post: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/02/possibly-not-irritating-essay-other.html) I just don’t want to add too many variables into this intellectual experiment because I had difficulty imagining how a school of sharks might relate to each other…as I’m certainly not a shark, but I’m not a fish, either, and I’m really NOT an ancient fish…

So, let’s say aliens have a mammalian birth. Let’s say they’re triplets; not identically gendered. We already know that Human triplets – especially if they came from the same egg and are genetically identical. We already KNOW that creates all kinds of assumptions and comments in our heads when we see them. At one time, the Keinast Quintuplets made the news. “The quintuplets were the first American set of surviving quintuplets to be conceived through the use of fertility drugs.” They were SO unusual, that “Good Housekeeping magazine had an exclusive deal to publish four articles about them in their first two years.”

That was in 1970. They were styled “The Keinast Quints”. Today, they are in their fifties. After their father committed suicide in 1984 when the quints were fourteen. When they were all 31, they gave their last public interview. (If you’re interested and want more information, follow this link: https://www.mrlocalhistory.org/where-are-the-kienast-quintuplets-from-liberty-corner/)

What it DOESN’T talk about is the Quint’s perceptions of each other. They shared the same uterus until birth; they shared the same upbringing. How did that affect them? How did having the same birthday as four other people matter? WERE THEY PSYCHICALLY LINKED???? (JK)

But, oddly, there’s not really much about them besides a few magazine articles, interviews, and this and that. Wasn’t anyone interested in their mental/psychological/intellectual interactions? Apparently not. So, let me speculate.

I had two other brothers and a sister. Birth order among the Quints would have been irrelevant – but perhaps gender or even SIZE would have taken on aspects that we aren’t used to considering (though in many families, the “biggest kid” was the one who got the most things…)

What if, in aliens where multiple, simultaneous mammalian-style birth was NORMAL, something ELSE drove the development of relationships among themselves? What are some things that MIGHT drive their psychology?

1) First to kill a meal.
2) First to identify, choose, and latch onto the strongest being in the birthing tent?
3) First to feed the one who carried them until birth – with one of the other young?
4) First to escape a gauntlet?
5) Last to be born by forcing the rest out first to feed hungry family?
6) Birth is into a cage; first to solve the lock and escape?
7) All are delivered at once; the one who protects the mother best (obviously killed by the rest, which are disintegrated and the protector is resurrected)? Eaten by the father, and its brain joins with his and whose hormones regenerates the father’s body?

Each BIOLOGICAL scenario would generate an entirely different sociological structure leading to a particular civilization that makes sense with the prevailing biology. It would impact what a family is, how it’s organized, and what it’s FOR. In Human biology, take a Bible story as an example: the Hebrew infant Moses was destined for death. He was born, certain to bel slaughtered as all of his peers were. His mother puts him in a basket, he’s discovered by the Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as an Egyptian…history is altered. For the rest of the story, if you’re interested, go to a Bible or a Torah or a Koran, locate, and read the story of Moses.

This is just one aspect of alienness you can explore. How does all of the above relate to how CLOSE the siblings are -- to their parent/s; to their society or protectors? Choose a few aspects and explore them, following the logic of what you image will happen.

You SHOULD come up with a really ALIEN alien!

Sources: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/27103/the-alien-perspective-generating-alien-pov-characters-via-twists-on-human-psyc; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kienast_quintuplets
Image: https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/alien-human-600w-136457129.jpg

IDEA ON TUESDAY 634

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. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a total stranger and never lets them go.

Current Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html

They’d been locked in the basement for longer than either of them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that the boarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were once windows – were impossible to open.

The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by a heavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked at getting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry them from the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten a shock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but very painful.

Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic. They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in the ceiling whenever they were both asleep.

They were trapped.

In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake, Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying. Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they were being watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on the same pile of blankets as far from the bathroom hole as they could get, Rudyard had gotten very excited. Natasha was willing. Snakes had suddenly dropped down from the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.

They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole. They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them had been bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another corner after stomping it to death.

This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immense red door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. At first he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What are they gonna throw at us next?”

Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”

He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finally rested against her.

As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.

It thudded to the floor.

A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…
Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, Mexico

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: “The Daily Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”, OR “God Bless You Gravity Modification”…NEITHER of Which Saw Publication of This Story I LOVE

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. As I work to increase my writing output and sales, I’m taking another look at “old ideas” to see if I can figure out where I went wrong. As always, your comments are welcome!

I FIRST sent this story out 2018 -- about five years ago. It got lost in the Data Crash of December 2023. I'd have to rewrite it from scratch...which I may do someday...Based on what I wrote below, how do YOU think I could fix it?

ANALOG Tag Line: We always think about how paradigm changes will affect “society”, but what about how will it affect the “little people”?

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)
For the first time ever, I drew on my missionary experiences from my eight months in Nigeria, Cameroun, and Liberia. I wanted to imagine what the introduction of gravity modification would do in a situation of rebuilding after war – war that the “big countries” had never paid much attention to. I was modeling the story on John Brunner’s ANALOG March 1973 short story, “Who Steals My Purse?” In THAT one, repurposed ICBMs are used to drop small TVs on Vietnam along with tools, seeds, and other developmental material that the people could use to raise their quality of living (and presumably grow to love Americans and overthrow the communist regime…)

Opening Line:
“Gordon Oyeyemi Daboh huffed, shaking his head.”

Onward:
“He said, ‘Building five new schools here in God Bless You isn’t impossible. We have clay, concrete, straw, lumber, paint, and bamboo.’ He flicked his hand at the meager supplies piled near the edge of the burned-out clearing. The faint concrete outline of the original elementary school was visible through a layer of fine ash. A pile of debris loomed on the edge of the gravel boulevard, waiting for removal or reuse. ‘But we don’t have time, and we have few volunteers. We have limited building supplies! Your, your,” he karate chopped the air in front of the young woman standing before him. Her eyes widened and she stepped back, ‘handwavium is as useless to us as our three buckets of glow-in-the-dark paint!’”

What Was I Trying To Say?
I wanted to communicate that technology, even when it’s incremental, can be used to dramatically change the lives of normal people for the better. (It contains the obligatory warning against the military machine…the fact is that my son, my father, two of my nephews, and some of my best friends have served and DO currently serve in all of the branches of the military. I STILL stand by my statement.)

The Rest of the Story:
Gordon and Comfort butt heads almost immediately. The shoestring operation of rebuilding the schools (the original title was “The Everyday Use of Gravity Modification in Rebuilding Liberian Schools”) is fraught and gets worse when a squad of wandering mercenaries get wind of Comfort’s gmod device. Expecting to easily find it, they have no idea it’s woven into strips of hook and loop (for a fascinating AND HUMOROUS (I REALLY appreciate the humor!) take on hook and loop and its registered trademark, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY) that are easily applied to pallets. There are accidents – and then a kidnapping of the village Elder and his daughters – and Gordon has to use the soldiering skills he swore off of to rescue them and get back on track…)

End Analysis:
OK, so writing the synopsis up above, I just realized what my problem is…Lisa Cron’s rules from her book WIRED FOR STORY clearly spell out the mistakes I made:

2) Grab the reader, something is at stake from the first page.
5) Plot (what happens) makes characters confront internal and external issues to confront their inner demons.
9) Start: character’s worldview is knocked down.
11) Character is action and anything they do makes things worse.
17) Challenges start small and end huge.
19) Character becomes one by doing something heroic.

First line has no grab; Gordon’s inner demon is NOT clear (“I REFUSE to ever be a soldier again!”), external circumstances don’t slam into internal issues (He wants to be JUST a teacher! He didn’t even want to be a principal!); his worldview stays pretty much the same – it should start with him thinking he’s escaped notice and that quitting Lagos’ special operations unit of cloning soldiers after meeting his has set him free; he can’t do everything right from the moment he leaves to rescue the Elder and his daughters, he has to screw up.

As well, the title is probably off-putting to SF readers and editors; not only is it WAY too long, my second attempt is trying too hard to “be a witness”. Even Jesus couched his messages to a skeptical public in stories in the form of parables. They were not always clear, but after discussion, they became more so.

When I first wrote it, I didn’t know about Lisa Cron’s advice. Now that I DO, I can rewrite the story with the “rules” (she didn’t call them rules, I did…) in mind; which of course, answers the question below:

Can This Story Be Saved?
Simple answer – “Yes.”

Complex Answer: Some things have to change though – not only in Story According to Cron. I’ve learned some things since I wrote this story. Perhaps the hardest is that I need to say what I have to say and say it CLEARLY and QUICKLY. Even the longest one, The Prodigal Son is only 500 or so words; the shortest is only three! (“Physician, heal thyself.”) My biggest problem lately has been keeping my stories short. I tend now to write in the vicinity of 9000 words and that’s just TOO LONG. I have to pull my punches…or more precisely, I need to conserve my energy and FOCUS my punches.

I ran across this interesting observation regarding parables:

“First: The meaning of most parables (both the short sayings-parables and the longer story-parables) is not so obvious, or at least it shouldn't be. If we assume we know what Jesus is talking about, we are probably missing the main point; if we are too familiar with the story (having heard it so often before), we might not think carefully enough about its real meaning.

“Second: most parables contain some element that is strange or unusual. They should cause you to say, "Wait a minute! That's not how farmers do their work! That's not what kings usually do! That's not what normally happens in nature!" The strange element should cause you to think.

“Third: Parables do not define things precisely, but rather use comparisons to describe some aspect of how God acts or interacts with human beings. Yet to say ‘A is like B’ does not mean that ‘A is identical to B in all respects’ (that also happens to be bad math. Jesus would NOT use bad math – besides being the Son of God, HE WAS A CARPENTER!); so we should be careful not to misinterpret or misapply the parables.

“Fourth: Most parables are open-ended. Rather than reaching a conclusion, they challenge us to keep on thinking! Rather than having us ‘stop thinking’, they invite us to ‘stop and think’.”

My next move? Stop and think...and I need to do this with a couple of OTHER stories I got wordy on...

Resource: https://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Parables.htm
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 22: The Dream Is Growing Bigger and Bigger Wings (or is it rocket engines?)

Initially, I started this series because of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…HOWEVER, as time passed, I knew that this was a subject I was going to explore because it interests me…

“Previous companies have rocketed toward similar goals before but went bust about a half decade ago. In the years since that first cohort left the stage, though, “the field has exploded in interest,” said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.”

The number of players in the field of asteroid mining is rapidly expanding as is international interest, “Another company, called TransAstra, is selling a telescope and software designed to detect objects like asteroids moving through the sky; Chinese corporation Origin Space has an asteroid-observing satellite in orbit around Earth, and is testing out its mining-relevant technology there. Meanwhile, Colorado company Karman+ plans to go straight to an asteroid in 2026 and test out excavation equipment.”

Other companies while their ULTIMATE goal is to mine asteroids, believe that they can practice here on Earth: “For now, though, SCAR-E will stay on Earth and inspect ship hulls. According to one market research platform, this is a nearly $13 billion dollar market globally — as compared to the asteroid-mining market, currently $0, as no one has yet mined an asteroid.”

Also, while it might seem like space is vast, the volume of our own Solar System is finite, and while we have plenty of experience stripping our planet (and are now dealing with the consequences of that), we have NO IDEA what kinds of problems we’ll actually run into.

Living in a state that provided most of the iron used in the steel for ships and tanks in World War II, it was a boom time of mining and spending money on frivolous things – follow the link for a high school built with Iron Range riches in northern Minnesota: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAI3sgEAk4k After that, follow the history of the Iron Range as the wealth vanished and the mining of high grade ore ceased…because it was gone. The subsequent collapse of the economy of the Range left (and I know of this personally as I worked on and lived on The Range for a while…) devastation in its wake.

So, we’re moving forward. Enough so that I’ve started to have ideas of the PERSONAL stories that might come out of the move to mine the asteroids. Others are noodling on the ramifications as well: “The legal situation surrounding space mining gets a bit murkier when you look outside the US, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. The nearly 40 nations who have signed on to the Artemis Accords agree with the US position, but other countries could take a different position.”

I can finally stop holding my breath and begin to explore the “who and what” of asteroid mining, because it appears that the “we need to explore space!” crowd is slowly being absorbed into the “how much money can we make in space mining” meme…

Today’s Source: https://undark.org/2024/05/08/asteroid-mining-space-metals/; https://payloadspace.com/solid-us-space-mining-regs-could-attract-investors-vc-predicts/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords ;
Noted Resources: Foundational Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asteroid_close_approaches_to_Earth, https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_7fcd3ea5-3c14-533f-a8d5-9bf629922f34.html, https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/04/29/like-asteroid-mining-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/, https://www.nps.gov/wrbr/learn/historyculture/theroadtothefirstflight.htm, https://hackaday.com/2019/03/27/extraterrestrial-excavation-digging-holes-on-other-worlds/, https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/every-small-worlds-mission
Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEA ON TUESDAY 634

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. Regarding horror, I found this insight in line with WIRED FOR STORY: “ We seek out…stories which give us a place to put our fears…Stories that frighten us or unsettle us - not just horror stories, but ones that make us uncomfortable or that strike a chord somewhere deep inside - give us the means to explore the things that scare us…” – Lou Morgan (The Guardian)

H Trope: Abduction = Love; a stranger kidnaps a total stranger and never lets them go.
Current Event: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/08/cleveland-missing-women-berry-dejesus-knight-castro.html

They’d been locked in the basement for longer than either of them could remember. The windows – Natasha Reno-Pardo assumed that the boarded up, black painted rectangles near the ceiling of the basement were once windows – were impossible to open.

The permanent stairs had been removed and replaced by a heavy, steel drop-down stairs. Rudyard Bernal, her fellow captor had worked at getting those to drop from the ceiling for a whole week. He’d tried to pry them from the ceiling seven times after they woke up. The eighth time, he’d gotten a shock so bad his hands were burned. Not enough to blister the skin, but very painful.

Light came from two fluorescents set behind thick plastic. They never went out. Food and water came in bags dropped from a hole in the ceiling whenever they were both asleep.

They were trapped.

In the dim silence, not long after both of them were awake, Rudyard said, “I think we’ve been here a month.” Then he burst out crying. Natasha looked up at the ceiling and into the corners. They knew they were being watched all the time. Once, when they’d tried to sleep together on the same pile of blankets as far from the bathroom hole as they could get, Rudyard had gotten very excited. Natasha was willing. Snakes had suddenly dropped down from the ceiling hole and the lights had gotten super bright.

They’d spent an hour sweeping the things into the hole. They’d spent most of the time fighting the rattlesnake. Neither one of them had been bitten, but they threw the blanket covered in snake guts in another corner after stomping it to death.

This day was different. Natasha stepped over the immense red door in the center of the basement floor and sat down next to Rudyard. At first he flinched and looked up at the feeding hole and muttered, “No. What are they gonna throw at us next?”

Natasha said, “We’re not doing anything.”

He leaned against her, cried a while longer and finally rested against her.

As if to curse their closeness a grinding sound came from the drag-down stairs. Real light leaked from a narrow crack that gradually widened, letting in more and more real light. When the stairs were half uncovered, they began to come down from the ceiling, making a sound like a descending castle drawbridge.

It thudded to the floor.

A shiny, black leather boot with a neatly cuffed pant leg dropped down on the top step…

Names: ♀ Russia, Mexico ; ♂ English, Mexico

Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51niGRrH6DL.jpg

JAX LUNAR LUMBER Chapter 5: Celebrity Visitation...

On the way to the neighborhood Home Depot for the obligatory weekend project as well as a load of flowers and potting soil, I started musing on my hitch as a “yard ape” for a company called Knox Lumber. We, too were busy this time of year, and it was a familiar feel whenever I went to one of these stored. Know was one of the original “Do It Yourself” (aka DIY) stores, a precursor to today’s Lowes, Menards, and Home Depot. Eventually bought out by Payless Cashways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payless_Cashwaysthe rumor in the store was that you could build an entire house by waiting patiently for a year while EVERYTHING went on sale…Rolling down the driveway, I suddenly had a thought and snickered.
When my wife asked, “What?” I shook my head. “No, what?”

I reiterated the train of thought above, then added, “I was wondering if it would be possible to build a colony on the Moon using just what you could buy at Knox?”

We pondered it for a few moments, then suddenly said in unison, “Yes!”

Inspired by Matt Weir, the result of my musings continues below.

The thing is, the Last Moon Walker picked a coconut tree to be buried under. Just so happens to be one of the larger species of coconuts – the Cocos nucifera. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. It’s pretty much the “coconut” tree everyone imagines when they think of a coconut palm.

The problem is that Moon soil is totally wrong and the only way we can grow trees on the Moon is if they are actually planted in the soil…

After the Second Wave reached the Moon and started expanding the places you could find footprints in the fine Lunar dust, what followed was fifty years of Colonization. Not all of them stayed, and some colonies were dreadful failures, but gradually, the population of the Moon began to climb.

The Americans were NOT alone this time. Chinese, Indians, Australians, European Union, Saudi Arabians, Brazilians, Japanese…in all, forty-two nation states sent astronauts. Multiple genders fed their spirit of adventure, inspiring people of multiple viewpoints to come to the Moon. Multiple faiths claimed their point of view from the Moon as well. (Despite the vocal fears and horror of those whose only allegiance was to Humanity, predicted an outbreak of sectarian warfare to rival anything in Earth’s bloody religious history. After another fifty years, the fears abated, and while cautious, mutual respect and conversation – and of course arguments! – seemed to hold sway.

The Second Wave is marked by the last person to come to the Moon to “visit”. Her name was Roza Rymbayeva Golovkin, named after a famous Kazakh singer and song-writer. She’d done several touristy things, then returned to Earth.

She was coming to Jax Lunar Lumber to see her tree. The Lunar and Earth press started to bother us the day after. Of course, no one had ever paid attention to Jax Lunar Lumber until the Last Lunar Walker contacted us to see her tree.

In other words, she was making another “Visit-To-The-Moon”.

I was irritated, to tell you the truth. I’d made the Moon my home. I was a resident. What was she…a celebrity. I’d honestly never had much use for celebrities. I’d half a mind to tell her what she could do with her visit.

Then I got a personal message from her.

Hand-delivered by an old man who worked in the bowels of the Communication Needle at the South Pole Station, also known as Chandrayaan, the Indian lander that touched down in August of 2023, he physically knocked on the door to my quarters. I’d just finished planting both a species of corn designed for Lunar gravity, and flooding a shallow one-hectare pond after seeding it with dried Prochlorococcus, the algae species that produces more oxygen than any other species.

He waited for me to open the paper note and read it. The lower sheet of paper was blank. He held out a pen when I looked up.

I said, “Have you read this?”

“No, Mx. It’s not allowed.”

“So you don’t know what it says?”

“We’re very discrete. That’s in our company slogan.”

I nodded. I wrote, “Please feel welcome here. We look forward to seeing you.” I handed it back to him, he bowed, and made his way slowly out of Jax. I went back to the cavern, then headed to the deepest cave. We’d blasted a hole through the surface, then used nanomachines to build a transparent dome of Lunar glass. Light flooded down, falling on the palm tree which now stood four meters tall. The signature torso – slender and straight, swelling, and the leaves fountaining from the swelling made the image perfect. It didn’t have any fruit – coconuts – yet. Coconuts take a year from appearance to falling off the tree. These still had several months to go. I’d noted when a good time would be.

Several days later, I got a not delivered by the same man. When I opened it, I read, “Dear Mx. Jax: I am coming to the Moon to die. I would like to die hear my coconut tree. I would also like my remains to fertilize the tree. I will be arriving in eight weeks. My doctors tell me I have that, plus an uncertain number of days.” On the bottom, she wrote, “Whatever amount of credit is required to do with, I can afford it. Spare no expense. Whatever remains will be given to Jax Lunar Lumber. Perhaps you can arrange for the trees wood to be harvested and made into a box in which to place my rendered body and a few mementos. Thank you for doing this.”

I brought the letter into my bedroom and sat at my desk and stared at it for several hours. Finally I stood up. There were some things I had to get done before I had a celebrity die in my lumberyard…

Resources: The Moon Trees, https://www.urbanforestdweller.com/we-almost-forgot-about-the-moon-trees/ ; https://www.space.com/moon-colonists-lunar-lava-tubes.html ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3

Image: https://external-preview.redd.it/xL2Y2UHb2B0JN5P162FShQfxqCTYNuOp3WEYxdF86j4.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=6955074e421a5e98c69b2da35179a3a91faa5662