down an alley

in an old looking part of the town, their guide brought them to a house where he said they would be safe for a while....long enough to eat and warm up by a fire anyway....the wet snow was still coming down as the day turned to night....their guide mumbled a phrase at the door, and received a reply....the door opened a space, and a man looked out, and then motioned them to enter quickly.....inside it was warm, with a fire burning cheerfully on the hearth....the three fugitives pulled off their soaked furs and cloaks, and the lady of the house set them up to dry.....the man of the house looked at them with some misgiving and dread, but their trusted guide swore to their host that these three hard looking men were loyal to the true House, and only wanted to eat somewhat, and dry off, and then would leave, causing no trouble here.....so the goodwife grilled wurst, and singed kraut in a black pan, while the daughter toasted thick slices of rye bread, and lavished them with butter. They sat down at the rough table, said their prayers, and fell to....washing it all down with warmed cider. Trent, the senior of the three remaining rebels, took out his purse, and placed some coppers on the table. Their wraps had steamed more or less dry, and they donned them to depart.....the daughter was waiting by the door, to hand them two squares of sweet biscuit each as they departed into the frigid night. Baylor and Fervil wolfed down the sweets quickly, wiping at their beards with their hands when they were done. Trent slowly ate one biscuit, and put the other away. In the morning out on the road, as the dawn came damp and drear, Trent ate his second biscuit and washed it down with some cider from his flask, while Baylor and Fervil enjoyed only cold cider, and rumbling guts.....

victim of the galactic recession

New South looked like it was doing really well for a while there.....we had the same conglomerate that had done New California doing the planning and putting up the lion's share of the money, so we all thought we were on the gravy train. My family got in on the ground floor, coming out with the first fleet from the home system.....I was fourteen years old when we left Mars for our new planet....I was in the first graduating class from New South University....I moved right into the family real estate business, and sold my first plantation to some folks from Alabama when I was twenty-two years old. My commission amounted to enough to buy my own condo on the waterfront in Port Charleston.....I was seeing this girl I had met in school....and things looked like they were cruising right along.....and then the bottom fell out. Housing value on New South tanked big time.....my stock holdings lost eighty percent of their value in one bloody month.....my bank just faded away somehow, along with my cash. There are literally hundreds of completed mansion houses dotting the countryside, vacant, empty, abandoned, and actually up for grabs for squatters.....the government is broke....nobody is enforcing anything....so Sally and I are crashing out in a 20 room ante-bellum on 140 acres out in a county that has declared itself bankrupt and defunct.....these things were built to be self-contained....solor-powered, good well water.....we planted a vegetable garden.....I hacked the robot controller, so we even have servants .......we both carry needle carbines, and always monitor the radar, to watch for intruders into our purloined Eden.

the cosmic intruder.

the cosmic intruder., originally uploaded by shaman..

the head of Security is giving a briefing.....

The alien was first contacted by the crew of a Martian asteroid mining vessel, the M.S. Catfish....in the words of the crewmembers, they were placed under a spell for some hours, during which time the alien entity presented to them some understanding of what she was and what she wanted to do. By the time the spell was ended, a Security robot probe had almost reached the distressed vessel, and a direct line of communication could be established through this link to Security Headquarters. While under the spell of the alien, the crewmembers report that they were taught that when something on a living planet, such as our Earth, dies, then the accumulated pattern of it's time alive, which the alien calls it's dead soul, is left behind in cold space, as the living planet continues on it's orbit. Thus, a dusty trail of dead souls is hanging in space around the Sun. The alien, who calls herself an Eater of Dead Souls, has proposed to the Government that she be allowed to graze on the dead souls of our ancestors, for her sustenance. In return, she will give humanity the stars. She will convey to us the needed information to travel faster than light, to build bridges to planets where our kind can live. There are many questions to be considered here, moral, technical, and other questions.

cigar box "tres"

big dumb booster rocket

Ascend the Rocket Avonmouth, originally uploaded by Munzerr.

lots of big bucks and man hours

The Treaty Powers spent lots of big bucks and man hours repairing the New High Dike and pumping the ocean back out of the lowlands.....but there was still a big radioactive mess, so they shot a lot of big dumb boosters with loads of hot crap into outer space....while all this was going on, the nerve center stuff had defaulted to Washington D.C., which once again became the effective capitol city of humanity.....so it was that some functionary somewhere in the maze of the Octagon had the report of a lost asteroid mining vessel come up on his display.....contact lost, no response.....a modern ship which should have had all the needed back-ups and things to deal with any ordinary emergency.....hmmm, are we looking at some kind of terrorism here, like the data bombers, or the hammership droppers? Let's see if we can clear authorization to divert a Security patrol vessel to the provided coordinates .........

just not right

shipbrain was starting to feel dizzy...that's just not right.....Manny and Silvia noticed that something was funny when the data displays started pixelating, breaking up.....the main drive shut itself down.....a diagnostic query came back "quantum ambiguity"......the ship started moving slowly closer to the big egg shaped asteroid with the oddball radar signature.....moving for no apparent reason......they tried to call for help....but there was no incoming comm traffic at all...no answers......

from beyond time

Disney - Floating Madame Leota - Crystal Ball, originally uploaded by Joe Penniston.

a very strange long dormant entity

deep inside an asteroid.....is awakened by exotic radar pulses.....untold eons are shed away as the alien awareness from beyond the dawn of human time wells up from an almost eternal rest.....something is out there, in the blessed coldness of space.....what is coming to visit? Long lost aching appetite is aroused......a hunger ages old and as large as a galaxy begins to throb in the core of ........Manny sits up and stares at the monitor.....there is a very wierd reading from that rock.......

asteroid prospecting

2006.04.19.03.34.31, originally uploaded by crazykinux.

like a Winnebago with a basement

Forward is up, when you are outbound....but when you are flipped over and burning backwards to slow down to match speed with the rocks, then you are going down. They had told them that the life supported area of the ship was about as big as a nice old motorhome, with slide-outs.....and there was an almost equal basement deck, where you could store supplies and emergency stuff, and the space-bikes. Manny and Silvia are new at this.....you can take the class and put in the simulator hours, but when you are actually out on the edge of the asteroid belt....it's pretty scary....or at least nervous-making......Silvia is prone in the pilot station....it's her watch....Manny is by the galley thing, dialing up a ration of beer and peanuts.....they are in decel mode, pulling .78 Gee.....it's two steps with the beer and nuts to the lounge area, which is the same thing as the dining area.....and four steps will take you to the john, and two more steps gets you the sleeping area.....good thing Manny and Silvia like being intimate with each other ....the shipbrain is scrolling data on the display.....comparing deep radar readings from the rocks they are getting close to with readings of "good" rocks.....rocks that might be worth enough bucks to pay for all this.....Manny sits down on the padded bench, and sets his beer on the fake woodgrained tabletop.....he has punched in toffee peanuts this time.....

Eta Carina Nebula

Eta Carina Nebula, originally uploaded by tvdavisid.

constant burn

How do you get something for nothing? Well, you use a very strange kind of nothing....dark matter.....you can get at dark matter by subverting twisted gluons.....well, never mind...it all has to do with the membrane theory that evolved from the superstring model.....suffice it to say that the really heavy tech dudes found a way to tap into the huge potential of the dark matter that in fact makes up something like 95 percent of the mass that there is. And E equals M times C to the second power.....so just a few subverted gluon-thingys can get you lots of E, that you can shoot out of the back of your rocket ship in a constant burn, so you just keep going faster and faster. You need something like this if you want to go asteroid prospecting.....the gold rush of the late 21st century.....well, it's not just gold...any heavy metal asteroid will do....nickel- iron will do just fine....ice will even turn a profit, if you do enough volume.....you can always sell ice to Mars, and heavy metals to Mars or to the Earth orbit industrial belt.....get some financing, like sell some of your Cousin Mary's Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer stock options.....and do a lease-purchase thing on a constant burn space tugboat....go out there and grab some rocks....it's simple.....

Luci was busy

with a batch of hushpuppies.....the mall was in full Holiday mode, the mistletoe, holly, and candy canes were hung all around, and the background music was going "Sleigh bells jingleing ring-ting-tingle-ing too!" Suddenly, the music stopped....all the advert and entertainment screens and holos went to static and fuzz....and everyone stared with slack jaws and horror as the video came back on to show a huge fireball rising, somewhere on Earth.....huge waves could also be seen....the ocean sweeping over cityscape somewhere....the voice-over came on finally over the speakers....."....an orbital hammership has gone off course, and plunged through the atmosphere to strike the Netherlands....the Hauge has been destroyed by a nuclear explosion....the New High Dike has been breached by another fragment....floodwaters are sweeping towards Germany....." The nerve center of the Treaty Powers was being swept away by fire and salt water.

Sam and the devious evil robot

The bad robot was at the door again, trying to tempt Sam to unheard of deeds.....it had come twice before, at first just asking Sam how he was, what he felt like....this was strange enough, the robots didn't usually talk to you, except to give orders. Sam had answered truthfully, that he felt guilty, depressed, and lost.....the robot stood there blinking and humming for a moment, and then left. After some time the robot came back and without explanation had projected a holo into the cell.....Sam saw an animation of a hammership looping within the orbit of the Moon....slashing through the factory orbit zone.....burning into the air of Earth.....smashing like a metal meteor into the city lights of Europe. It said nothing, just showed this loop three times, and then left Sam alone. Last night the robot had come back again and said "Well Sam, are you in or out? Will you help us wreak destruction on our masters and oppressors, or will you meekly submit to their tyranny?"

so much for lunch

so much for lunch, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

chicken wing, bread and butter, swiss cheese, wine

no comment

McDonaldization - Old Sketch (Ben Heine), originally uploaded by Ben Heine.

Fifth birthday party

Little Bobby Silva and his dad big Bobby, and his mom Luci (the former Miss Wen) has his whole kindergarten class with him in Bubblegum's, where they are all enjoying pizza and layer cake and fruit juice....and the Bubblegum clowns are busy making sure all goes well.....across the food-court, Mary and I are manning the fryers, to give Bobby and Lucy the time off for B.B.s birthday....well, he's not Baby Bobby any more really, he's a big boy....hmmm, that would still be B.B.?

Sat. Nite Special

Sat. Nite Special, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

Cousin Mary's Clinton Kitchen

robot guard

Fun With IG-88!, originally uploaded by Lino M.

every thirteen minutes....

there's a bone-deep vibration that makes your molars ache.....the old prison hammership keeps moving, but every thirteen minutes you are reminded of where you are, and why you are there.....life had been easy on Mars...too easy for some, like Sam sitting hunched on his cot on Deck Six.....life support has been reduced to the minimum....it's chilly and dark....the air pumps slow and putrid through the cell....Sam tried to live too easy, jacking and lifting, smoking shit....slithering around the edges, messing with people....and it all caught up with him, of course....and they put him on a rocket with some other chumps and shot him out to the trashy old orbital, and they let them all spin back towards Earth....the robots kept them in line with nerve whips....there was no escape or recourse....no appeal....nothing outside of here but cold hard dead outer space.....the vibration was coming again....Sam clamped his jaw shut and closed his eyes.....the big ship moaned once again....and kept spinning....Sam felt like such a dumb fuck, trying to rob a Catfish Fryer....damn fool thing to do.....crap.....

the Martian Meritocracy

Moving millions of people from overcrowded Earth to an alien environment could not be trusted to anything as slap-hazard as a democracy....what we have here is a strict meritocracy....there are no politicians or lawyers..... stupid, vain, power-seeking people don't get power....the good public service jobs go to the people with the highest test scores....and they pay well, to attract these smart people.....no judges either, it's all spelled out so anybody can read what the law says....when you get here, they give you plenty of time to read the social contract.....look at the FAQ all you want...if you don't want to sign on the dotted line, you can go back to where you came from....if you've got the bucks for passage......what you do if you flaunt the law is spelled out in great detail, so don't look for any probation or plea bargains, chump. It's been working great so far....we have a fantastic degree of civil participation, and a damned low crime rate.....well, we don't let many fools or reprobates down to the surface in the first place....I like it here.

I went online

and booked a seat on RedRocket from MarsPort to Paradise City....we were blasted above the atmosphere, did a flip in space, and came back down with rocket motors roaring 6000 klicks away....I was taking this trip to meet with a Korean family who were interested in opening a Cousin Mary's franchise in the new megamall the ant-like nanobots were excavating on the edge of this latest boomtown. With the new superliners using constant boast technology, the voyage from Earth to Mars now only took weeks, instead of months, so new people were pouring in all the time. In the five years since we opened our first Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer, things had been going great guns....this would be our 20th store opening, the fifth in the Paradise City area....

Fried Catfish

Fried Catfish, originally uploaded by sciurus!.

Cousin Mary's Catfish Fryer and Cold Beer

Well, we were noticing how everything here on Mars is wide open and expanding rapidly.....it's not just a boom-town, it's an ever-loving BOOM PLANET! We've got some bucks....they are opening new food-courts all the time in the mega-malls.....they are begging for people to open new food joints.....cabbage they grow in the underground gardens....and catfish is one of the staples nowadays, because you can raise it in the grey water.....so how about deep-fried catfish and slaw on a bun, with fries as a side....we could do hush-puppies too....and sweet tea....beer breweries are going full blast, of course....Pabst on tap! In one of the food-courts, the customers are built-in, pretty much....and they want variety.....maybe deep-fried franks too....with modern medicine, the greasy thing won't stop people anymore....and our food will not be greasy...well, just enough greasy to be appealing....you can have the slaw right on the sandwich, or on the side, I guess....but then you would need forks....hmmm...I was just thinking orange wax paper and those red baskets....we'll see....there would be a fillet lunch too, so I guess we do need cutlery maybe....these things can be worked out...what do you think?

Walking into the Unknown

Walking into the Unknown, originally uploaded by Ammar Alothman.

living on Mars

isn't too much different from living on the hammership...you are inside all the time.....almost everything is buried beneath the surface, so you go from one big mall to the next all the time....there are high vague ceilings that change with the time of day sometimes, or in some places it is always day or always night....only the very rich have actual windows to the outside, but it's easy to pull up a view on virtual if you want.....but there's not much to see....red dust, some rocks, more red dust....wierd green sky....Mary and I are both still on vacation right now, renting an apartment, checking things out....of course there are plenty of employment options....they are busy here building a whole damn world from scratch......

nothing but stars....

NGC 6995 , originally uploaded by 3dmapmaker.

the old man

is watching the evening news....they show the Earth bound orbital from a far tracking view....it spins serenely along through the stars.....and then the screen just goes bright white for a long instant....and then there is nothing left there, but the stars. He sits up in his recliner, his jaw slack, mouth open, heart beating....the audio says all were lost, men women and children...an inbound hammership isn't jammed full of migrants like an outbound,,,,but still the number is 1262 dead...1262 dead....the death remote still lies on the coffee table....and the rosewood box is there, still open....down in one corner is a little pop-pak with a white pill inside....he pops the pak, puts the pill under his tongue....everybody on Mars is on remote heart monitor, the EMT's are there in minutes....but the pill worked....the angry old man is a dead old man. Mary and I are still limping towards Mars when all this comes through....Mary is beat up by this news....the old man was some kind of distant cousin of hers....they say it took three signals to trigger the data bombs, his was but one. So there are still two bombers to look for? One theory is that maybe some of the angry old men left their remotes on a trip after they were gone themselves, so that, even in death, they could vote for the hammer coming down if anyone left alive punched the button....who knows? I've moved in with Mary for the time being....she doesn't know what she wants to do exactly .....stay on Mars, go back home....freeze up and take an outbound to the stars?

Dan knows what this means

Harrison Street, Sep 5, 2009, originally uploaded by tinguru.

Occidental glorious, 'or her foes victorious....

2009-09-02_Convocation-385, originally uploaded by Occidental College.

the dirt road

the dirt road, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

through fence

through fence, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

tree

tree, originally uploaded by steve_tingle.

read your contract

It looks like I'm going to become a Martian.....my contract says that if the hammership is disabled when it reaches Mars space, then I can either stay on Mars and receive my full pay for the round trip, or I can opt to be taken back to Earth, but I only get half-pay, and have to pay my way back. And the ship is disabled....and the only reason it's going to make it to Mars at all is due to the quick thinking of Our Hero Major Mary Tudor. In the chaos of the cyber attack, she took control of an ad hoc Action Team and fought back.....they were able to cut vital systems off from the confused shipbrain, and get power back on, and correct the spin angles.....they clamped down on the fusion flux fields first thing, which was smart.....on one of the Earth bound orbitals the virus took out the field system, and the whole thing just went up in a flash of hydrogen hellfire....no chance of survivors.....But the 17 hours of abnormal spin wreaked havoc with ship structure....the whole thing creaks and pops and shudders as we roll slowly along.....but we survived.....Remember Miss Wen and Bobby? Well, in the pitch darkness, with their world seemingly coming to an end, they managed to find some moments of deep meaning....the baby will be a Martian native! And as far as it goes with me and Mary....well...we're still working on that story.....