The Cistern (Work in Progress)

The chamber holding the cistern was cool, kept at a constant temperature by the surrounding stone walls. Natural light poured into the chamber through a trio of round glass windows set high into the eastern wall. The morning sun warmed the chamber while the western wall absorbed the heat and radiated it back out during the rest of the day. At the head of the shallow cistern, filtered water flowed in from an underground stream that also provided power as it flowed through a small water-powered generator located in another chamber.

Below the window at the foot of the cistern, a series of wooden pegs held a bathrobe and several towels. Vaal lay below the surface of the shallow pool sleeping soundly. She had missed the sunrise, which was not uncommon for her. The steady beat of the blade of an approaching helicopter echoed inside the chamber, disturbing the surface of the water and waking Vaal. It landed on a rocky ledge above the cavernous lodge. The pilot shut off the engine, disembarked, and secured the craft before Lt. Eldwin Parker climbed out. Making his way down the carved steps to the baffled entrance of the habitat, the lieutenant mentally reviewed his set of instructions.

Vaal didn’t look at all like the lieutenant had imagined, his expectations influenced by the depictions of mermaids in popular fiction. The blue terrycloth robe she was wearing covered most of her pale grey skin. Her dripping wet hair clung to her head like a silver helmet. Her feet were bare as usual. She stood holding a tray of freshly brewed coffee that she had brought from her galley. She placed the tray on a table and smiled at the lieutenant.

“Please, have a seat. I made some coffee.” She gestured to a nearby chair while taking a seat on a divan.

Her guest smiled awkwardly as he sat down. Uncertain how to broach the subject, he sat silently sipping his coffee. “Could you bring me that towel?” she gestured to a hand towel on the table next to his chair. She laughed as he juggled his coffee cup and saucer in his haste to bring her the towel. She took it from his outstretched arm and began to towel dry her hair. “Lieutenant Parker,” she asked, “do you have a first name? Or are you under orders to keep this call to duty strictly formal?”

“You know why I’m here?”

“I don’t know the details, but they wouldn’t have sent you if they didn’t need me to do them a solid. So, what’s the gig?” She opened the sealed envelope that the lieutenant handed to her and began reading the file. Sometime in the early morning hours, the DSRV Trilobite lost power and drifted off the continental shelf where it came to rest on the sea floor. The mission was simple. She needed to locate the submarine, assess the damage, and determine if the crew were still alive.

Anniversary Waltz

A fleet of generation ships wanders in space looking for a new world to colonize. Every twenty-five years, they choose a percentage of their population to exchange among the ships to keep the gene pool from degenerating and preserve the species.

The Captain of the Niagara stood at a podium on a small stage in front of one hundred individuals chosen for the Exchange. After clearing his throat, he began his speech. “A thousand years ago, twenty-five ships left our home world in search of a new home for our species. Every twenty-five years, we have selected a group of citizens to journey to one of our sister ships...” Sparrow Sutliffe stopped listening to the Captain’s speech and started to look around the room. She slowly inched her way to the back of the crowd and sat on the deck with her back against a bulkhead. She pulled her electronic slate out of her jumpsuit pocket. Unfolding it, she searched the ship’s library for information on the Yosemite, the ship that she would be moving to in a matter of whenever the Captain chose to end his long boring goodbye speech.

The Yosemite was identical in design to the Niagara with housing for well over one thousand residents and crew. She would be passing one hundred of her citizens on to the Wallaman while the Niagara received one hundred from the Hannoki. All of this in the name of genetic diversity – at least, that is what they taught. As Sparrow studied the list of the selected citizens, she noted several abnormal aspects in each of them. But her interest soon turned back to the comparison of the Niagara and the Yosemite.

“There you are, Freak.” Wanda Bellringer loomed over Sparrow. Sparrow ignored the well-dressed young woman addressing her. This would ordinarily bother Sparrow if it had been anyone else. She didn’t like to be close to normal people, but Wanda was not a normal person. Wanda was overly gregarious. She had little respect for personal boundaries. And she lacked a filter, saying whatever came to mind.

Sparrow noted that the outermost module did not connect to the ship’s central spire. The module was docked to the module just below it. The module was identical to every other module with two common areas near the spire airlocks and the landing lifts.

“I see they are finally getting rid of you.” Wanda knelt next to Sparrow to get a look at what she was working on.

“They are getting rid of you, too,” Sparrow looked up and smiled. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Fair enough,” Wanda sat on the floor, “but actually we are staying here. It’s everyone else who will be moving.”

“That’s logistically not possible. They moved us into the section of the ship that gets swapped. It’ll happen later tonight. This is the Captain’s goodbye speech. We have until curfew to say goodbye to our families and the friends who are staying here. Then while we sleep, the swap occurs.”

“Is that our new home?” Wanda’s finger touched the screen causing it to zoom in on the drive section of the Yosemite.

“The Yosemite is almost identical to the Niagara. I’m still going over all the specs and the operational history.” Sparrow touched the screen again to access information on the engines. With a few rapid gestures, she instructed her eSlate to create a spreadsheet listing all the specs of both the Niagara and the Yosemite.

Sparrow finished her spreadsheet comparison of the two ships a few minutes before the Captain dismissed the group. She folded her eSlate and slipped it back into her pocket before joining the crowd on their way to spend time with their families for a last supper on board the Niagara. Sparrow’s parents gave her a family photo before her father walked her back to the airlock between modules. She smiled at him and gave him a tight hug. “I’ll miss you, but there’s always the ship-to-ship. Promise me you’ll send me updates on Squirt. I’m going to miss the little imp.”

Hal Sutliffe promised that he would send her weekly updates on the family. As he walked away, a knot formed in his stomach. He passed Wanda Bellringer and her parents and nodded politely to them. He was too afraid to speak lest he break down and alert Wanda to the truth. He wondered if the Bellringers were aware of the sacrifice that they were about to make.

Sparrow spent the hours before “lights out” working on her spreadsheet comparison of the two ships. Out of curiosity, she added the rest of the fleet and came across an anomaly. Each of the ships carried six modules, but they had been designed to carry only five. She wondered where the extra modules had originated. After digging into some classified files, she found the source of the module that she was currently inhabiting. There had been another ship, the Silver Thread, which had launched with the twenty-five. She added the specifications of that ship to her chart.

Wanda spent the time socializing with the rest of the chosen transferees. As she went about the common room, she noticed something odd about everyone chosen for the transfer. Every person she met lay somewhere on the Autism spectrum. She didn’t have time to meet everyone since some like Sparrow had stayed in their quarters. She would have to ask Sparrow to check it out for her when she got back to their shared quarters.

Wanda waited patiently while Sparrow told her about the mystery ship. The Silver Thread had suffered engine trouble and abandoned its twenty-five modules to the other ships. Sparrow had found a log entry of a recent signal from the Silver Thread. The ship was underway and in pursuit of the fleet. After Sparrow finished her recap of her research, Wanda brought up her discovery that not a single neurotypical was among the chosen. She suspected that to be the case on all of the other ships. Sparrow had made a similar observation earlier. She queried the various ships for their module six rosters.

Just as Sparrow finished copying the rosters from all twenty-five vessels, they felt the jolt of their module separating from the Niagara. “If this were a video, this is when they would be playing a waltz in the soundtrack,” Wanda declared with her usual aplomb. Had they been asleep in their beds, they would not have noticed the moment. They ran to an observation port and watched as the modules moved away from the ships. To their horror, the ships, once the modules were clear of them, accelerated away leaving the twenty-five modules behind in the Lagrange point.

Sparrow and Wanda watched as the modules slowly clustered together into groups of five. She could feel the mild jolts as four other sections connected to hers. The twenty-five modules slowly accelerated out of the Lagrange point in formation, heading in the direction of the fleet. As they drifted out of the planetary orbital plane, a five-spired ship approached on an intercept course. The new arrival slowly maneuvered into position to capture the five cylinders.

A loud clunk resonated throughout the lower modules and rose slowly up through the cylinders as they locked onto their pylon. An acceleration alarm sounded and passengers scrambled to the special seats within their quarters. Sparrow and Wanda released themselves as soon as the all clear bell signaled that it was safe to walk about the ship. They went down to the drive module to confirm that the rescuing vessel was the Silver Thread.

A small group of curious teens met outside the gangway to the command spire. After a series of quick introductions, they opened the door to the bridge of the Silver Thread. They stood both defiant and awestruck by the composition of the crew manning the bridge. There were aliens sitting at varying consoles and one sitting in the Captain’s chair. The aliens were catlike in appearance, though lacking tails, who spoke in tones approximating English.

“Come in, please,” the creature in the Captain’s chair yowled. “We have examined the data downloaded from the various pods. One of you discovered an instability in a ship’s engine. If we can overtake them, we can save the ship.”

Wanda slapped Sparrow on her shoulder. “Way to go. I told you that your OCD would come in handy someday, didn’t I?”

Sparrow rubbed her shoulder and nodded in reply. She stepped forward toward the viewing port. She could barely see the tops of the residence spires, but she had a clear view of the stars ahead. A young human Ensign turned to her and smiled. He turned and addressed the group of teens. “You might want to go below and strap in on the observation deck. We’ll be decelerating soon.”

Wanda led the group down the ladder to the observation deck. Sparrow took an empty seat next to the young Ensign. “Still no response, Captain. Should I send the message again?” The Ensign held his hand over the resend button.

“Yes, they must wait for us.” The Captain spoke as the fleet appeared ahead of them. Before the Ensign could hit send, a series of radio transmissions bombarded the Silver Thread.

“We need to abandon the Niagara. We can’t shut down the drive unit and are just barely holding her engines below critical. Releasing her modules now.”

“Niagara Five reporting clear of docking pylon. On course for the Yosemite.”

“Niagara Four reporting clear of docking pylon. Heading for the Wallaman.”

“Niagara Three reporting clear of docking pylon. Heading for the Iguazu.”

“Niagara Two reporting clear. Heading for the Pissing Mare.”

“Niagara One clear. On course for Victoria.”

A short moment later, the Niagara Drive module pushed ahead of the fleet leaving behind jetsam. As the Silver Thread slowed to where the fleet lay, a bright flash appeared in the darkness ahead as the Niagara’s Drive module exploded.

The Field Test

The sudden quake was unexpected. It had caused the premature collapse of an old hotel that crews had prepared for demolition. The crews had made the critical cuts to the buildings support beams but would not place the explosive charges until the demolition date. It was an incomplete collapse fortunately for the child trapped inside. No one had bothered to inform the squatters to stay out of the condemned building. Despite the chain link fence surrounding the old hotel, they had taken refuge from the cold night air inside the building. They were on their way out when the quake hit, but the boy had run back inside to retrieve something he had forgotten.

Homeland Protection had assigned Agent David Bruce to train a new product from AndroGen Corporation. They had developed a Search and Rescue Mechanism whose purpose was to go places too dangerous for humans. The collapsed building qualified. Agent Bruce sat across from the AI in the van as it pulled up to the site. AndroGen delivered the unit while he was away on vacation. As a joke, his fellow agents had commissioned it with his face and had sat it at his desk.

He gave it the name Elijah as a tribute to another detective with a robotic partner from one of his favorite novels. Elijah was in need of training to deal with humans. Agent Bruce wasn’t sure that he was the right person for the job. He had only been working with Elijah for a month. This was the first time he had the unit out in the field.

The local police were uncertain which of them to address when they saw Elijah and Agent Bruce emerge from the van. It wasn’t until Agent Bruce inserted the commlink into his ear that someone extended an introduction. “Hi. You must be Agent David Bruce. I’m Sergeant Hawkins, Fire and Rescue. We’ve been informed that a child may be trapped inside.”

“What do your scanners say?”

“There’s a definite heat source, but we can’t be certain.” He glanced at Elijah. “Is that the SaRM we’ve heard so much about?”

“I have no idea. Who’s been talking to you about SaRMs?”

“AndroGen has been trying to get us to buy one. They said Homeland already had one for dealing with dangerous situations. We’ll see how yours does.”

“He’ll get the job done, but he won’t like it.” He also wouldn’t hate it. In fact, Elijah would have no opinion whatsoever about the task.

Agent Bruce sent Elijah in, monitoring his progress as he snaked his way through the rubble toward the heat signature. Inside a large pyramidal space, Elijah located an eight-year-old boy. Several of the passages that Elijah had taken to find the young boy had collapsed behind him. Agent Bruce searched the building plans and located a passage that would take them to the building next door.

Elijah entered the building next door and took the stairs down to the basement. He found the passageway door and waited until Elijah was close to the outer wall of the collapsed structure before opening the door on the other side. He waved at Elijah and the boy. “Hurry up, come through. Don’t ask, just do it.” Both the boy and the android ran through into the basement hallway just seconds before an aftershock hit. Agent Bruce slammed the door shut and then escorted the two upstairs and out of the nearby structure.

The youngster tugged gently on Agent Bruce’s jacket. “Mister, how did know that door was there?”

Agent Bruce smiled at the boy and winked. “Magic,” he replied.