MINING THE ASTEROIDS Part 33: Seeds For Science Fiction

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…While working on a new short story that takes place in the skies of a “super-gas giant” planet called RIVER.

PLUS: I’ve been searching my writing lately to find our WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY.

PLUS: Humans will live in society and while it’s clear societies change, we seem to think that all the things we dislike most will vanish – because somehow, OUR vision of a perfect world is the ONLY one and EXCLUDES anyone who would disagree with us…(read: “me”)…
In the skies of River, a story developed that had a weird and at the same time FAMILIAR milieu…mining on the Iron Range and what that wrought from its heyday and what it left behind when the iron was mined, corporations moved on the strip mine OTHER societies, and people were left standing mute in the wreckage of worthless piles of rock and poisonous taconite tailings…

I wrote to the editor of a website I stumbled on during my research and found LOTS of soil for my imaginary world!

“To the Current Editor of the Minnesota Reformer:

“I'm retired and a writer now, and while building a society that lives in the skies of a gas giant in another star system far from the Solar System, I started to think of what it was that formed the foundation of the society in this remote place that supplies the "universe at large" with gases and compounds birthed from the skies of the planet River.

“I realized the kind of place in my science fiction story would have some similarities to the Iron Range.

“So, I wanted to delve into the motivations of the kind of people who would move to and live in such a far-off place, and work under such challenging conditions as those of the iron mines. In my imaginary world, they are also divided into two very different societies. I read Aaron Brown's essay and suddenly realized I had a much better view of the humans who were living in this very alien world and in sometime conflict with a wealthier, more stable part of their world — and living with tensions very similar to those I saw around C-I between the Range and the Cities.”

OK – lots of introduction for a simple idea. While River is an imaginary gas giant, it has a plethora of abundant lifeforms both naturally adapted to it, and lifeforms that Humans have engineered to live in the skies of River. In this story, called (at the moment!) "Hunting For DNA”, the main character is a young adult who has discovered a friend who has interests aligned with his own – which is to get a SOLID sample of the DNA of a natural denizen of River called a “hookhunter” that feeds on much smaller creatures called bobbing shrimp. He wants better sample because there are rumors that the DNA of the hookhunters contains genes that may be infinitely cloneable – in other words, it may create tissue that is immortal.

So, his “girlfriend” Murri is excited to help him. Unbeknownst to HIM, she’s not as interested in getting samples of hookhunter DNA as she is in getting samples of HIS DNA…because she’s been hired to do so because Gordon himself is an artificially structured Human. His dads know. Murri knows.

He doesn’t.

All good, right? But I’d only put a TINY bit of research into developing the society that Gordon, Murri, his dads, the hookhunters and the bobbing shrimp…and several dozen OTHER lifeforms and characters I’ve developed…live in.

And now, all of a sudden, based on memories and reading I’ve done on the interaction of the Iron Range and the Twin Cities…I have the society of a world slowly coming into focus…

I’ve meandered enough for now. Expect more later!

Today’s Source: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/09/28/the-humbling-of-giants-the-rise-and-decline-of-the-iron-range-essay/
Foundational Resource: (A general Wikipedia post detailing what the authors currently know about asteroid mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining)
Noted Resources: 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
Interesting Stuff The Might Apply To Mining Asteroids: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0o 

Image: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A2D5/production/_114558614_hls-eva-apr2020.jpg

IDEAS ON TUESDAY 683

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 Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

Current Event: “The Minnesota Renaissance Festival is a Renaissance fair, an interactive outdoor event which focuses on recreating the look and feel of a fictional 16th Century ‘England-like’ fantasy kingdom.”

Svenja Johannson puttered around the edge of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. She crossed her arms over her chest, tossed her platinum blonde hair and said, “I was hoping for a bit more authenticity.

Matias Gallagher, strawberry blonde hair curled like a swim cap over his head, shook his head and said, “Then you should have tried out for ‘Castle Life’.”

She snorted – a sound worthy of a horse, Matias thought – “That’s just as fake.”

He scowled at her and said, “Just because you Germans have all kinds of castles...”

“Not ‘all kinds of castles’ – Wartburg Castle. That is the only castle.”

He shook his head and said, “Speaking of Martin Luther, what makes you think you’d even like the real Renaissance?”

“Are you kidding? My ancestors lived then, there was no pollution, no noise, and definitely no people!”

“What’s wrong with people?” Matias asked as a pair of teenaged boys in basketball shorts, wearing high-topped basketball shoes and suggestive slogans, walked past them using an F-bomb every other word. They looked at him and Svenja. One flipped Matias the bird, the other asked Svenja if she wanted to engage in a sexual act. After Svenja fired a crude rejoinder back at him and Matias leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, flashing both his six-pack and expanding his pecs, the other boy waved him away. The two of them faded into the mob of 21st Century Minnesotans stuffing their faces the way they did at the State Fair and pretending they were in the 16th Century.

Svenja glared at Matias. Matias sighed, “Point.” He paused and said, “Let’s just enjoy the RenFest for what it is.”

Svenja scowled as a parade of knights in armor entered the Festival grounds, the earth trembling under the pounding hooves. The steel plate, gold trim, and silver filigree flashed in the brilliant afternoon light. There was a coolness in the air, a tiny bite of autumn hinting at the winter not far away. There seemed to be hundreds of knights prancing by. “There are so many...” she said.

“What?” Matias shouted. “I can’t hear you!”

“There are so many knights! Where did they come from?” The sun abruptly dipped behind a cloud. There was a flash of light and clap of thunder, yet when Matias pressed his hands over his ears, it seemed that only he and Svenja did so. Others around them seemed oblivious to the darkness and cold. “What’s happening, Matias?” she shouted.

“I don’t know...”

An instant later, the sun came out again. Matias blinked in surprise and Svenja stepped closer to him, grabbing his arm, long fingernails digging into his muscle. The first thing he noticed was the stench of open sewer and the legless man on sitting on the ground in front of them, obviously cussing them out, but in a language Matias and Svenja had never heard before.

In fact, it had never been spoken in North America – and wouldn’t be for another millenium…

Names: ♀ German, Swedish ; ♂ Norwegian, Irish

Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTTE8oI39xBTNW9-Gc8z4589YkNO7B72OWlrw&s

JAX LUNAR LUMBER Chapter 13

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_Cashways The 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.

I searched for Tiananmen – aka “Gate of Heavenly Peace”, or HP for short, said, “Unprepared in every way, the trip to the alien world will kill you. Just as it killed me. I’d have died permanently if the Aliens hadn’t been waiting for me the moment I popped out of transspace.” There was silence. She smiled, looked at me, adding, ‘The only real complication is tat we’ll need the total cooperation of Master Cheat and All-around Pain-in-our-collective-posterior, Sturdlan Vilbix.”

The Board Room exploded in the jeers, catcalls, boos, and an amazing calling-down-of-curses.

The man was the personal manager Roza Rymbayeva Golovkin, named after a famous Kazakh singer and song-writer. She was a Sixth Generation descendant of the last Human to walk on the Moon in the 20th Century – Eugene Andrew Cernan was an American astronaut, naval aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and fighter pilot. During the Apollo 17 mission, Cernan became the 11th human being to walk on the Moon. As he re-entered the Apollo Lunar Module after Harrison Schmitt on their third and final lunar excursion, he became the Last Man to Walk On the Moon – the Last Lunar Walker in other words.

I touched a switch and said, “Excuse me.” Amplified to a level that made everyone but me wince, I reduced the output to merely loud enough to be heard still winced, but that didn’t bother me. Sturdlan Vilbix had swept into our lives unwanted, the Gang of Four – my grandchildren, Noah, Natalie, Ronan and Lennon introduced themselves as Sturdlan Vilbix grabbed me by the bicep and squeezed. It HURT! He had muscles trained under the full gravity of the world that had nurtured Humanity into intelligence. Now, here he was steering me further into Jax Lunar Lumber, using gestures to station dozens of drones in the ceiling, on the floor, on desks, in trees, and anywhere their cameras – I was pretty sure the glittering light twirling around the back and belly of each one was a camera designed to record, broadcast, and recreate every scene, every motion, and every nuance of the Six-Times-Great-Granddaughter Of The Last Lunar Walker – or “Six-T-Granddaughter-OT Last Lunar Walker”. That quickly morphed to antichrist, or 6T for short.

As suddenly as he’d assaulted me, Turdland crumpled to the ground, all of the cameras focused on his incapacitation. We, the Jax family, had endured exactly as much of his self-important rhetoric as we could handle. I’d delivered the ultimatum, “I will remind you Sturdlan, one more time: ‘Just to show you there’s no hard feelings, the venue you’ve been offered is owned by Jax Lunar Lumber, Limited Liability Lunar Company.’ I was under no illusions that I had won anything but a brief reprieve from conflict between myself, family, and this man. However, 6T said we needed him – for what, I don’t know.

A text message flashed across the back of my hand in distinct ultraviolet. Not that it would be secret from everyone, but most people wouldn’t be running around with eyes sensitive to UV light. I could see in the most common frequencies used for communication.

It was from 6T. It read, “Meet me in orbit.” I acknowledged it and looked across the throng. Turdland was gone. And 6T was gone. I got a sick feeling in my stomach. A rapidly branching probability tree presented itself through my brain booster. None of the branches looked promising – though, squinting, there was very, very long branch that ended with a fascinating cluster of branches.

Sturdlan was in the center of a globe of woven leaves. His gravy train was nowhere near him – in fact, she was somewhere in the skies of Venus! The Solar System was at peace, and hovering somewhere beyond the Oort Cloud, was swarm of very small ships that each had a life signature.

They surrounded Sturdlan. Smiling, I sped to the nearest Space Elevator that would bring me closest to where 6T was signaling and booked a ticket. This was going to be an interesting meeting…

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 Image: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YkAeUwwE2aksDqd5tgwyec-970-80.jpg.webp

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42C: Space Families – The Last Word???

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...

We in the speculative fiction world seem to feel like we have a tight bead on the weird – no more so than when “AI” suggests that “For future space settlements, new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…”

Clearly the programmer that wrote the AI’s program (or put the words in the AI’s figurative mouth) had never read the 1912 classic, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE by Zane Grey. (“…a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. Considered by scholars to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called ‘the most popular western novel of all time’.)

For a 113-year-old novel, it has some EXTREMELY STRANGE “family units” encompassed in the story. Not by ANY means unusual to most of us, is the Mormon family unit. I’ll leave you to mull that over and turn to the even WEIRDER family units in this seemingly innocuous “Western”.

Don’t get me wrong, I found my copy for free on a discard pile at my neighborhood GOODWILL store and picked it up, knowing it was a classic, and put it on my library shelf. I finally picked it up a couple weeks ago moved by a wild impulse to read something entirely outside of both my interest range and beyond any compulsion to read anything even vaguely resembling a genre outside of my life experiences. After I started it, I have been reading it in mostly utter amazement.

So far, the most astonishing thing is that the sexual mores of the second decade of the 20th Century are (publicly) so entirely different from those of this second decade of the 21st. The main example is the two lead male characters are madly in love with the two lead female characters. If Grey had written it in 2012, the men and women (or both men or both women or all four of them) would have tumbled into bed two pages after they met and after 200 pages interspersed with lurid (or off-stage) “lovemaking” (aka sex in all of its kinkiness), they would have thought about getting married, skipped that and spent the rest of the book having sex…oh, and Grey might have found a few pages to tell the rest of an incredibly…alien…story.

Example: one of the characters had a good friend who died after she nursed her from an illness to her ultimate death.
Example: turns out one of the characters is the daughter of a truly horrible man who molded her into a criminal and murderer.
Example: while sex of any kind is usually irrelevant to the story line, most novels (SF and F) find some excuse to include either implicit sex or explicit sex in all but the MOST middle of middle-grade novels. If ANY novel includes coarse language, most of the words have sexual connotations and are freely employed.

So, back to ROTPS. Another pairing is between a character who has murdered dozens of other humans (on purpose or for his own financial gain or out of sheer anger at alleged or actual slights and an extremely wayward female character who knows all of this and falls madly in love with him anyway. Together, they plan to take what’s left of her money, leave it all behind and get married in another state.

The biggest point of the novel is one even the BRILLIANT AI didn’t even hint at: polygamous marriages. It takes place in Utah after the Church of Latter-Day Saints has fled their founding state of Ohio because they were chased out due to their commandment to enter into polygamous marriages. The largest “family” mentioned in non-Mormon literature was from the Old Testament. “King Solomon was said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines, for a total of 1,000 women in his harem.” How about “Ziona Chana? (d. 2021) in India, he had 39 wives, 94 children, 14 daughters-in-law, and 33 grandchildren for a total of 181 family members.”

“Polygamy is most often found in sub-Saharan Africa, where 11% of the population lives in arrangements that include more than one spouse.”

And what about SERIAL marriages? American “Glynn Wolfe married 31 times, fathered approximately 40 children and divorced 30 times.”

What OTHER kinds of families might there be? I mean, Humans are Human. Moving them to Mars, alien worlds, the Asteroid Belt, generational starships, or even able to instantaneously leap across space and time…you’ll STILL be dealing with Humans. How about inanimate objects? “Eija-Riitta Eklöf married the Berlin Wall in 1979, Erica Eiffel married the Eiffel Tower: Eiffel participated in a commitment ceremony with the Eiffel Tower in Paris; and Australian Jodi Rose married the Le Pont du Diable, a bridge in France.

The AI informing me that “new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…” says more about some programmer trying to excuse their own preference for “shocking” family arrangements. NONE of the things the web says will drastically alter Human relationships regarding family are anything more than weather and location. What OTHER “necessity” could occur that would lead to “new family structures”?

Give me a HINT, please!

Sources: various

Image: https://pics.craiyon.com/2024-09-16/fvE4Btv2SuqE5Y18WTwXXQ.webp

New Website -- FIRST PEEK (BY NO MEANS DONE!)

Use the link below! It's LIVE!

https://www.guystewartworld.space/

THE biggest advantage is that all the places I write and have written are linked here. Eventually, I'll be able to have people order books through my site/Rampant Loon Press (my publisher!) and support a small press!

CREATING ALIEN ALIENS Part 42B: Alien Families and What That Might Mean When Colonizing a Gas Giant…

WAS SUPPOSED TO POST THIS YESTERDAY, 9/6/25!

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...

My quotes below are from something Google calls an “AI Overview” from my query “Families in Space”. While I’ve used them in the past, I was somewhat irritated by a couple of things this overview presented: “For future space settlements, new family structures will be needed to address the unique challenges of microgravity, radiation, and isolation, possibly forming by necessity rather than just biological ties…Behavioral health programs are being developed to support astronauts’ families, addressing issues like…changing family roles…Space settlement families will likely be diverse, forming from biological ties or personal choice, and may take on various forms, including polyamorous or egalitarian structures…In a more metaphorical sense, stars are born in ‘families’ or groups, sharing characteristics and originating from the same place at the same time.”

While I’m sure Google wants to present this as a “totally logical computer speculation” and figures I’ll just accept it as the inevitable Progress Of Humanity, I find it oddly…myopic, blithely setting a “bold new course” into the future as Humanity changes the way families have functioned (admittedly with varying degrees of success) since they have pretty much been the same since the first family units formed half-a-million years ago. So, because of AI, computers, and the boundless wisdom of scientists, all that BS is about to come to an end, thank-technology?

Seems oddly…stupid.

What would alter a family who live on the back of an immense semi-sapient creature floating in the atmosphere of a gas giant, since apparently, “new family structures will be needed to address...unique challenges”? Living on the back of a gigantic blimp would probably present “unique challenges”, eh?

On the other hand, I’m going to assume that Humans will need somewhere to stand, something to breathe, something to eat, and somewhere to breed. None of those basics are unique challenges, are they? Humans have been dealing with them as the biological unit we call families for half-a-million years. The environments on different worlds, OBVIOUSLY will be different. But Humans evolved on the African continent. Of COURSE weather and other factors were different than they were today, in fact, that very change argues that the social groups those original primate families developed it won’t change as radically going so far as to require “new family structures”. But using cold as the environmental challenge, “The coldest place where humans have had a permanent presence is the Russian village of Oymyakon…(which is) The coldest permanently inhabited village…in Siberia, the village of Oymyakon has average winter temperatures of around -58°F. The lowest recorded temperature in this settlement was -89.9°F) in 1933. Despite the extreme cold, Oymyakon has a permanent population of a few hundred residents. The cold is so intense that residents must keep vehicles running constantly so the engines don't freeze. Plumbing is nonexistent due to the permanently frozen ground (permafrost), so most toilets are outhouses.”

Human family structure appears to have remained as it was half-a-million years ago…it seems that Human and/or AI lack faith in the resiliency of the Human family unit.

In the skies of River, a gas giant world I’ve been writing in for several years now (two published stories: “The Baptism of Johnny Ferocious” (Dragons, Knights, and Angels), and “Prince of Blood and Spit” (Perihelion, 2015: https://theworkandworksheetsofguystewart.blogspot.com/2021/06/prince-of-blood-and-spit-perihelion.html) the “nuclear family” is quite healthy. In fact, the backs of these gigantic bags of undulating gas are planted with genetically engineered crops – mostly medicinal, but also designed to concentrate Human-necessary compounds, minerals, and molecules (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218751/), (https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/Vitamins-and-minerals). While gengineering Humans for particular environments may become necessary at some point, and while the propensity of the Human animal appeared to be directed to clumping in family units with variations (Navy Seals, for instance); or Western industrialized civilizations (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294648/); it’s also clear that while what has been historically defined as a “family unit”, little has changed in Humans over that half-million-year period of time.

Where I take exception, is the assumption that in challenging conditions, the family as we know it will seemingly evaporate to be taken over by something more... “egalitarian” – by which I think those kinds of Human writers mean, “families as I know them are doomed to become whatever people want them to be”…in reading information of SF novels for YA readers, the absurd term I came across is “found family”. It SEEMED to mean that kids can choose whatever kind of family they want willy-nilly and with no thought except “what feels good and meets all of my needs” without giving much thought to the needs of the rest of the people in these “found families”.

It seems to me that the pressure of Humanity moving to alien worlds or living in alien environments and facing interactions with alien peoples – would necessitate the FIRM foundation of the nuclear family unit that evolved here on Earth among the various species of Homo. The idea of a family “forming from biological ties or personal choice, [that] may take on various forms, including polyamorous or egalitarian structures…” is not only silly, but bound to failure. How can an “egalitarian structure” “…a system…that promotes equality and equal access to rights, opportunities, and resources for all its members, regardless of their background or social status. It aims to dismantle hierarchies and power disparities, fostering a sense of shared responsibility, and ensuring everyone is treated with equal fundamental worth and moral status.” make for survival in an inherently hostile environment? How can we colonize and thrive on/in a world deadly to unprotected, naked Human life? If no one’s the boss of anyone and no one can tell anyone else what to do, (which is implied by “equal fundamental worth, status, power, and morality”, and no one’s opinion or experience is more or less valid than anyone else’s…

In the skies of River, there needs to be authority (do NOT read authoritarianism!) and direction (do NOT read dictatorship!) Would Humans – as a species – even exist if hierarchy and disparity of power was forcibly removed (which begs the question, WHO WOULD ENFORCE the disparities? Who would make certain that social status vanished? Who enforces the equal distribution of resources?

No, the pioneers of River, riding on the backs of immense cloudwhales will have families and institutions that have evolved after 500,000 years; NOT family units conceived of over the past 200 years…recognizable. Stable. Not all moms who say, “No, you can’t stick that fork in an electrical outlet! Stop now, or else!” will vanish.

Much to the relief of Human evolution…

Sources: (see embedded in essay above)

Image: 

IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 681

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: Effects of super fast cellular regeneration…
Current Event: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38915707/ “…As this lysosome-independent cell cleansing process does not seem to have been priorly described, we termed it "cathartocytosis." Cathartocytosis allows a cell to rapidly eject excess material without waiting for autophagic and lysosomal digestion, providing for efficient cellular downscaling.” Add IRON MAN 3: “Extremis is an advanced form of genetic manipulation…granting the human body the ability to heal and regenerate from physical damages, deformities and even psychological damages. This also includes the regrowth of severed limbs in a very short timespan” this “hyper-healing also generates intense heat that, if a patient is unable to control it, leads to “an exothermic ability”.

“The big question, is what are you going to change?” said Erjan. Shaking his head, he added, “You’re practically perfect in every way.”

Slava snorted. “You make me sound like a Marion Poppins. I don’t want to change just to change. I want to change so I’m a better person.”

Erjan rolled his eyes. “Then do it like normal people do! Commit good works; save babies; contribute some of your inheritance to a cause you really believe in!”

Slava shook his head, “That’s boring! No one’s gonna notice me for doing something so boring!”

Erjan stopped walking. Slava was ten meters past him when he stopped suddenly, looked around, then spotted Erjan. He walked back. “You’re not even breathing hard! That was a great sprint!”

“I didn’t backtrack. I stopped and it took you almost two minutes to notice that you were walking with no one and talking to the air.”

“You did not!” Erjan crossed his arms over his chest and started tapping his foot. A look of pure rage flashed over Slava’s face. He clenched his fists, bending his arms at the elbows as his skin flushed – truly spectacular under his carefully coiffed head of blonde hair. “You’re…” He shut his mouth, noticing that he was attracting a crowd. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, holding his breath and counting backwards to fifty. He let his breath out slowly, then said, “I’m an idiot, aren’t I. Worthless…”

Slava put his hand over Erjan’s mouth. “You’re neither an idiot nor worthless. You’ve just had the universe orbiting around since you were conceived…”

“You forgot to note that THAT happy event happened in a test tube.”

Slava took his hand away. “So you’ve told me. And yet here I stand, talking to you as if you were a normal Human and my friend.”

Erjan shoved his hands in his pockets, turned and slumped away. Slava knew better than to chase him. His friend’s doctor had texted him just before Slava had come out of the hospital. It had been a simple message, “If he gets truly angry or incredibly happy, weird things are going to happen to his physiology. Document and encourage meditative calm.”

Slava had texted back, “What happens if I can’t?”

It took several days for his friend’s MOTHER – whom he never met because she lived on Mars – had replied. “After fervent discussion, the consensus of doctors and researchers is: ‘No idea. Just keep him calm.’” Slava sighed and followed Erjan and called out, “Let’s go to MacDonalds. Shakes. My treat!”

Erjan stopped, turned, scowling, and shouted, “How dare you!” His skin flushed and after another moment, he started to glow…
Names: ♀ Khazak ; ♀Ukrainian
Sideways Idea Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism; rye; IRON MAN 3 https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Extremis

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