space cadet

space cadet, originally uploaded by the.garbanzo.

Astrogator Warrant

I was in my third year in the Space Cadet program at Mars Tech when we got to the course on Practical Applications of Membrane Resonance Mechanics.....I did a sleep-download of the text, and woke up feeling somewhat bemused, and happier than usual, for some reason. I usually enjoy a good breakfast, but I skipped it that morning and went instead directly to the Meditation Plaza, where I sat down on a bench near a tea bush in bloom, and fell into an alpha state, as we had been trained to do......and then it happened.....an epiphany! My eyes were open, unfocused into middle distance, and all at once it felt like a silver spike had been driven from a point above the middle of my forehead, down to the soft pallet near the olfactory zone. And I SAW IT ALL.

Of course the whole Campus is constantly scanned by quantum sensors to detect this sort of thing, so I was still just sitting there staring at nothing and everything when the Proctors arrived with their verification tools.....to make a long story short, my experience was duly recorded as a B.F.E. a bona fide ephiphany!

We had all read since around the seventh grade about brain quantum mechanics, the theory of it.....but very few people ever actually get it......some 12 percent of the population, according to the latest figures.....

So my life changed quickly in a big way.....I left for Advanced Academy within the month, and began the sensitivity courses. I was found to rate in the eighty-second percentile as regards perfection of perception through space-time......I was offered a Warrant as Astrogator Junior Grade in the Treaty Forces, and so here I am now, on the bridge of a starship, powering towards a resonance point where our universe touches the next one over.....what a cool job.

We come in peace ...

We come in peace ..., originally uploaded by holgaguy.

Higg's Boson

Is that what it's called? The "God Particle". The thing that is thought to somehow tie together quantum mechanics and general relativity, the thing that is postulated in membrane theory, where the elegant mathematics give us the Theory of Everything. I've seen a number of science fiction treatments lately where the particle machine gets powered up and the energy level is reached and the boson is found; and all of a sudden humanity is contacted by advanced races out there somewhere who figure that since we have reached that point in technology, then we are to be accepted into the Galactic Federation or something. Or maybe evil empires out there just wait for us to open the boson wormhole, and then pounce upon us to enslave us and eat our children.

I've thought for a long time that we blew it a while back, when Marconi sent radio waves pulsing through the ether.....before that, the lands of the Fey existed peacefully alongside of us as they had for ages.....but we start messing with the electromagnetics of the situation, and the castles in the air come crashing down....the ancient races become ill, and must move away from us to escape our careless blasting of dots and dashes and ragtime music and sit-coms into their reality.....they move over a couple of layers in the multiverse, and run into space aliens, who find out about us this way.....so they've had more than a hundred years to start their war ships headed our way at close to light-speed.....

Winning

Winning, originally uploaded by BarGal.

Maria found herself stranded

in Port Martini....the Maestro Pedro vanished, the same night the starliner left headed back towards civilization......left owing her three months wages.....at least the cheap hotel room was paid up through the week, thank the bastard for small favors.....so she headed down to the Casino Grande, to see what action she could find.....spacemen, gene-altered bug people, and flat-out androids loitered in the bar.....creepy aliens from beyond the other side of the machine zone wandered around the gaming tables, mystified.....

An older human offered to buy her a drink, and she was happy to accept....the gentleman appeared to be full natural human, almost a rare thing to find this far out on the frontier.....she is all human herself, and looks it.....that's why the Maestro had hired her for his act, she looked like the real deal....they drank and smoked slowly through the afternoon, splitting an order of onion rings at one point, and later snacking on catfish fingers.....she noticed that the place started filling up pretty good about four PM local time......

"What's happening?" she asked the old feller....

"Speed Solitaire is about to fire up." he enlightened.....

"What the hell is that?" she wondered...

"Watch."

A wall of the room lit up as a huge green baize playing surface, and some computer or something spat out a Klondike hand.....tote boards appeared on the sides, odds and placed bets swarming like mad, even though nothing made any sense to her.

"You can bet on just about anything right now you might want to.."says her companion..."The player has one half hour to win a solitaire hand, and the action is on whether or not that will happen....side bets are on how many hands it takes, and on how close to the hour the play comes, and on the color that hits last, and on the suite to finish....and on things that I don't really know how to explain, even after being here fifteen years, earth-time...."

Maria stared at the big screen, as the unseen "player" began moving the cards, working towards piling the suites up towards a win.....the first hand was a near thing, five cards could not be turned....there were bets on how many cards were left, some bettors laughed and slapped appendages, some tossed back drinks and acted pissed....the second hand was also a bust, but the player was fast....only five minutes had gone by for two hands....the third hand was crazy, all red cards showing, no faces, no aces.....could this work at all? Swiftly through the stack, nothing really happening....deal again....the bets scrolled and swarmed on the side screens.....Maria's companion punched at his palm-pad and either smiled or grimaced as the hands fell.....the half-hour point was coming close, with no winning hand yet dealt......but with only two minutes left on the clock, the player turned a win....cheers and hoots echoed through the room.....the old gentleman had hit pretty good....he asked Maria to the champagne dinner in the Blue Room.....she agreed to that idea.....