StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I thought I'd try a new fiction, the title says it all. The idea I had was to arange a storytelling, and have it told sort of like a Legend this may end up being a stupid structure. And if what I have so far doesn't work well, please tell me. Also any suggestions for things to fix/cut/add would be appreciated. If you read it, well thanks for reading. And if not then :P

Anyway here's the first section

Delta Pavonis III “Refuge”
2142 October 10 Earth Standard
Local time 15 standard days after solstice
Designated as Remembrance Day



The school day was nearing its end and the weather was perfect. The children’s lessons had dragged on and on, and consequently they were loud and boisterous. Most of them were staring wistfully out the windows at the perfect azure sky. Quite a few found themselves thinking uncharitable things about their teacher as the time for the history session approached.

“Class, today you will not be receiving a history lecture. Instead, we’ll be having a special guest lecturer.” Although the children restrained themselves, the disappointment on their faces was apparent, they’d been hoping for a reprieve from school altogether. “I would like to introduce Flight Engineer Smith.”

The disappointment in the room increased further, the class expected another lecture on the “careers in the navy”, or “industrializing space”, topics which no longer elicited any excitement. The first sign that something was different was in the age of the presenter. The students weren’t mystified by age, they all had parents approaching middle age. But truly old people were rare, and almost mysterious.

“Greetings class, my name is Jennifer. Today isn’t a normal day. Your older siblings have gone, and are going through this exact same thing. All over the world people are pausing to remember Earth.” She paused and her eyes swept the audience. Her gaze was unsettling, and those whose attention was wandering found themselves sitting up and listening more intently. “You have all read and heard many things about Earth before the Exodus. I doubt though, that any of you know the reason for the Exodus.”

“I do, it was the destruction of Humanity’s Fleets and the Fall of Earth” Piped up one of the more precocious individuals.

“What do you know about those events?” Their visitor didn’t seem upset by the interruption, she was smiling.

“Only that something terrible happened to our home. An enemy attacked and we were forced to flee.”

“You are correct, our solar system was attacked. Humanity tried to defend itself but eventually we were overwhelmed. Our enemy was more numerous than us, and his fleets eventually destroyed ours, leaving us defenseless. This is the core of the story of the Fall. This however is hardly the whole truth, it leaves out the legacy of Earth: the successful battles, desperate gambits, tenacity, and the stubborn courage of her defenders. I am here to tell you about these things.”

“Your history classes have hopefully covered the early years of the 21st century. You have learned about the first tentative steps mankind took into the solar system, so I won’t bore you with all the details of reaching other planets, mining the belt, space industry, and the like. I'll just give you a brief overview.

"Earth was relatively peaceful, and we thought we were poised to conquer space. We scurried about the solar system building, mining, exploring. We set about building probes to other worlds, planning extrasolar colonies, and expanding our knowledge of the galaxy. No one truly considered the possibility that other intelligences might be planning the same thing, or that they might have hostile intent. We were alone among the stars and they would be our playground, or so we thought. I don’t know if you can understand the heady enthusiasm of those days. I think the best I can do is an analogy. Yesterday you all knew you were safe, things were at peace. You may have considered the possibility that problems might arise, but your parents could handle them, ultimately it would all work out. We were the same, whatever complications might arise they were solely problems of physics, understandable, and ultimately conquerable. We had twenty good years of this delusion. We made good use of them, with the near limitless resources of a solar system we started solving Earth’s problems. Too much CO2? Use solar Power Satellites instead. Insufficient resources? Asteroids are loaded with metal. All our old problems had new solutions. If we could be left alone to solve them. But we were not alone.

“They found us 102 years ago. Maybe it was sooner, we had been broadcasting radio and television signals for nearly a century by then. But the first proof that we were not alone came in 2040. I’m going to stop and play for you some audio files. These are the recordings of people who have seen the important parts of the Battles of Earth. I’ll stop to answer any questions and explain things along the way. They will hardly be a complete record, though, as there are so many stories from that time.”






Date: January 12, 2040
VLA, Socorro New Mexico
SETI site, dubbed Alpha-Six
Mark Johnson, “Signals Doctor”

Audio Log 115:

Productive day today, we got a new crop of volunteers, some with very impressive pedigrees. I’ve found myself discussing the minutiae of signal processing and high gain antennas both. That’s unusual, we mostly get classes of volunteers that fall into one group or the other. The orientation went well. I decided on something a little different this time around, and asked why they were here. I find myself a little surprised at the answers, I’m sure some of my old professors would be annoyed that I’m jumping to this conclusion with such a small sample size. But I’m going to state it anyway. This operation SETI, is the geeks’ version of six months in the Peace Corps. I’m sure some of this group would be offended, but most of them know the shoe fits.


Date: January 17, 2040

Audio Log 116:

I’m very impressed with these kids, we’ve already had some creative new patterns to look for. One of the Math experts suggested a way to encode the Mandlebrot fractal, he’s already written an algorithm to search for that, we may even use it, Math is supposed to be universal after all.

There were a few other creative approaches, they’re being evaluated for feasibility. I think I need to note a standout though. One of the older volunteers suggested a completely different approach. Instead of just trying to find some pattern in the data we collected, he’s suggesting some time sequence comparisons. Radio astronomy from places like Arecibo has given us a fairly good picture of what some patches of the sky look like over the past fifty to sixty years. I don’t mean what they look like, I mean their radio character, the stellar background that’s common for that chunk of sky. Some of it is totally random, but most stars have a periodicity to their radio signals that doesn’t vary much. Pulsars and the other stellar bodies are also famously punctual. The idea is to compare this old data with stuff SETI is getting now.

January 17, 2040 11:05pm

Audio Log 117

Another update today. We’ve been working late and are getting some interesting results. Arecibo observatory forwarded us several long duration observations for some 3 arcsecond by 3 arcsecond sections. Jim, the guy who’s idea this is, has already cooked up a program to compare observed recordings, over the last four years, to Arecibo’s historical data. The first run is just going to flag all differences from the norm.

January 17, 2040 11:30pm

Audio Log 118

The first run was a mistake, Jim didn’t compare things properly. All data for the selected period was flagged. We rewrote it to check that recorded frequency strengths were within some interval of the historical average. Also needed to take account of what part of the orbit and rotation a star is in. We’re running four separate sky segments right now.

Audio Log 119 2am

I’ll probably be updating more frequently for the next few hours, so I’m dispensing with date stamping. The first set of data that we’ve been running has few deviations from historical standards. It’s disappointing actually, this section was centered on Alpha Centauri, but we’re not getting anything. I had always harbored a secret hope that our closest stellar neighbor would harbor an intelligent species. I don’t think I’m alone in this hope, closet sci-fi fans everywhere were probably pulling for an intelligence on this star. If they’re there they aren’t broadcasting.

Audio Log 120 2:15am

Damn. All our readings for yellow stars within 10 light-years are coming up negative. We’ve got one more patch of sky to search, but the only sol type star in that area is 50 light years away. That’s unfortunate if we assume a planet around that star is broadcasting like omni-directionally, then we almost certainly won’t be able to pick it out from interstellar noise. I’ll probably wait to look at the results before turning in though.

Audio Log 121 4am

This isn’t making any sense, our last run found significant deviation from the historical norm. But it doesn’t look like attempts at communication, what we’re getting looks like the historical average, but it’s increasing, and coming in pulses. This doesn’t make much sense. I’ll try to catch a few hours of shut-eye and then tackle it again in the morning.

Date January 18, 2040 9 am

Audio Log 122

We’ve had some time to think about it, it’s too early to be sure, but no one thinks any stellar phenomenon can explain our results. It’s possible that the increase in RF noise from this patch is due to increased solar activity, but that would require that all the pulsars, quasars, and whatever are simultaneously increasing in RF intensity. It would also require that they’re increasing at the SAME RATE. I’m not an astronomer, but I’m betting that such an explanation doesn’t work.

Alright I’m a little excited. SETI needs to take a step back from this, we’re getting results that don’t seem to be communication, and they aren’t consistent with observed stellar phenomena. We need to consider the possibility that some of our data are bad. We’ll try correlating our observations with other radio telescopes. We’re also going to see if we can’t get an additional source of Arecibos’s historical observations. SETI has been burned before, so we need to do everything we can to make sure this is the real thing. We can’t afford any more hits to our credibility.

We’ll try correlating with the RATAN-600 in Russia, they’ve done SETI work before, and it’s likely they have some logs of the requisite area.

Date January 18, 2040 3 pm

Audio Log 123

So far everything we have correlates with other observations: the array in Pune, LOFAR, the RATAN-600, even the Cambridge Interferometer all agree with Arecibo’s historical data VLA’s observations over the past three years also check out. The data is real. It just doesn’t make sense.

I suppose I need to be clearer about what it is we’re seeing. Over the past three years we’ve noticed spikes in the RF energy coming our way. If you were to look at a Radio Frequency breakdown of the historical observations you’d see the natural pattern. Now if you take the periods of spiking RF data and compare them to the original you see something very odd. The spikes we’re seeing right now looks like a magnified version of the historical behavior of a few select stellar bodies. The odd part is the pulsing, at random intervals we get a pulse, and the RF data will look something like 1.5-2 times the original, for about 3 seconds. It looks almost like the background radiation is being rebroadcast, in just short bursts. Why would someone be doing this?

Date January 18, 2040 10pm

Audio Log 124

We’ve had more time to look at the data and compare it to other stellar phenomena. There are two pulsars in the patch of sky we’re looking at and our observations of their behavior are truly bizarre. We’ve actually had to enlist the aid of a few experts to get a clearer picture of what we’re seeing. I’ll include a conversation or two here

Begin recording of conversation with Ian Thorne

“Hello is this Dr. Johnson at SETI?”

“Yes.”

“This is Dr. Ian Thorne at the Royal Astronomical Society. We’ve had some time to analyze the observations and conclusions you sent. Your claims are bizarre, but the observations on which they are based are identical to our own.”

“So you think our conclusion is invalid?”

“No, Dr. Johnson I think they are premature. I think that there are other possibilities which need to be considered. I will concede, however, that no pulsar we have ever studied has behaved in the manner your facility has observed. I don’t mean the pulses, I mean their irregularity, and increasing intensity. Pulsars are more regular than clockwork. In fact a colleague at the Cambridge Interferometer has an alarm set to monitor SAX J1808.4-3658. Every 23 hours 56 minutes he gets a pulse, telling him it’s time for lunch.”

“Dr. Thorne, why then has no one noticed the irregularity in the ones we’re monitoring? Uh, PSR-240+46, and PSR 239+25”

“Well, there are two answers to that question. The first is that no one has been paying attention to them. All the big processors and thinking power, and money, are being directed towards searching for more candidate black holes. The second answer is that Pulsars have become uninteresting: you can set your watch by them. What we’d really hope to see is the formation of a pulsar, not a pulsar already in action. More energy is being devoted to looking for dying stars, with the hope that we’ll get to see a pulsar being formed. Nowadays when people stop to look at a pulsar, they use it mostly as an opportunity to calibrate instruments.”

“That reminds me Dr. Johnson, why did you look at those pulsars anyway?”

“One of my volunteers had an idea for finding artificial radio signals.”

“So you were looking for signs of intelligent and you found it? How… fortuitous.”

“Dr. I…”

“No, let me finish. I understand the temptations you’re facing, you’ve just found something that validates the whole purpose of you organization. SETI has been in this position before claiming a discovery of ET’s. You were wrong then. You cannot afford to be wrong again SETI won’t survive it. And let me add that if you are correct, you must be prepared to deal with the nay-sayers or your ‘discovery’ will be dismissed out of hand.”

And, let me make a further observation Dr Johnson. You are too close to this issue. There is no way that you can objectively evaluate it. I know I can’t convince you to completely hand it off to someone else, but find yourself a professional skeptic, someone to question every assumption you have made. If you can convince him or her that this is the real thing, than you’re probably ready to tell the world.”
“Thank you Doctor Thorne.”

“Your quite welcome. Don’t be discouraged by my reaction. I need to confess that you have me very excited. Your observations look legitimate. And scientists everywhere will be delighted by this result, which is precisely why you need to be so careful, you’ll be tempted to shortcut your procedures and reach conclusions that are not justified.”

End recording

I was embarrassed, I was jumping to conclusions. Everyone knows pulsars don’t behave like what we are observing, but we need to confirm that, do a literature search. In short we need to do what Sherlock Holmes suggested, “…When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." So we have some possibilities

1) The recordings we have are in error, either the historical observations, or the current observations. This seems unlikely based on our preliminary survey of what the other observatories had seen. Of course we need a more formal analysis.

2) The Pulsars are changing behavior. This seems to contradict what we know about Pulsars, but again more formal analysis is needed to remove this possibility.

3) Someone is out there broadcasting at Earth.

Dr. Thorne is right, we need to get someone with no vested interests, involved with our analysis.

Date January 21, 2040 2pm

Audio Log 125

I’ve been scrambling to find someone who’ll “troubleshoot” our findings. I’ve been having no joy, apparently SETI has lost a lot of credibility.

I’ve also been putting off this conversation, but Jim needs to talk to me about something. This is it the conversation where he starts to wonder how much credit he gets, where I have to start worrying about authorship and other academic minutiae. Oh well, I might as well record it for the lawyers, posterity, and the tabloid people (who’ll just love hearing about the falling out between the ET guys). Here goes.

Begin recording conversation with Jim

“Dr Johnson, I’ve been thinking about the signal we’ve been getting. And I think our assumptions are wrong. I don’t think those pulses are communication.”

“Wait are you suggesting that this is naturally occurring? I’ve already contacted Important People about this. And now you’re suggesting we were wrong? You’ll turn SETI into a laughingstock….”

“Wait Dr. Johnson. I don’t mean that the pulses are natural. I mean, I don’t think they’re attempts at communication.”

“What?!”

“I think it might be something like RADAR. Whatever is out there is pulsing our planet with radio beams, hoping for a bounce back, maybe trying to see what sort of artifacts are orbiting around Earth.”

End recording

It’s a pity, Jim’s such a bright guy, but he’s paranoid. Radar? Why would they be trying to scope us out. And why would their amplitudes and frequencies correspond so closely to the cosmic background. That would suggest they were hiding. What possible reason would they have to hide?

End Audio Log

I like, write more?

Wow, this is pretty friggin awesome. I love this method of storytelling and the story you're using it with is the sort of thing you don't often see. So, whenever the muse strikes, I'd definitely like to see more.

Only thing is that the beginning of the story gives me a big "Halo" vibe. Might be what you were going for but whatever. Awesome story, like I said.

I'm glad someone likes the method I used for telling the story. I was starting to rethink the narative structure. The next couple of chapters weren't comig out right, but I'll give it another go. Thanks for the feedback

Very good story. Style's awesome too.

Sweet it is good, very good indeed. Now just for more...

Ooh, classy. I like this a lot, it's one of my favourite forms of story telling. I spent days reading the Starseige/Tribes timeline by that guy. This one here.

Just figured you might like a bit of proofreading though.

1. You need to check your punctuation, some of it is a little off.
2. You really need to check your punctuation in dialogue. It's getting a little confusing when I read the conversation with Dr. Thorne, I had to reread it a few times to get it, but with a bit of editing, it could be a lot clearer the first time around.
3. "What?!" Sounds a little of to me. I think he'd say something more like, "What?" and you could expand on what emotion he is trying to convey with narrative. Like, "What?" he cried, confused.

Except that's in the radio transcript, so I'm not sure it would work...a simple question mark would work, I think. No need to make him seem like a guy who gets thrown off by a random suggestion. Or, maybe italicize it for emphasis? That could work.

Just thought you might like to know. But the basic storytelling is very good.[/list]

Delta Pavonis III “Refuge”
2142 October 10 Earth Standard
Local time 15 standard days after solstice
Designated as Remembrance Day


It was evident that most of the students were confused; puzzled frowns were the prevailing expression. The guest lecturer smiled, her fifteenth Remembrance Day was turning out just like her first.

“So I imagine that there are some questions about what you just heard.”

A girl in the back voiced the concern. “I don’t understand Dr Johnson’s attitude. Why wasn’t he more worried about the signals? Dr Johnson’s talking like the Aliens could only be good; he’s ignoring a possible threat. That’s not a good way to think. Every time we go into a flight sim the instructors tell us to prepare for and ‘expect the worst then all our surprises will be pleasant ones’.” The mantra had the air of something long ago committed to memory. All of the students were nodding and voicing their agreement.

“That’s good advice from your instructors, and perfect for the piloting you’ll eventually be doing; but history isn’t like piloting a ship, the dangers and opportunities in real life only become truly clear in retrospect. This is where we have been a little unfair to the good Doctor. We know from experience that in addition to the physical phenomena which create difficulties, that the universe contains intelligent danger. Dr Johnson and most his contemporaries didn’t have the luxury of that experience.

“This doesn’t explain the entire thinking going on during that period. But I’ll need to share some brief history from that period so that you can understand the prevailing mindset. I hope you’ll forgive the broad historical brushstrokes, your history classes have hopefully filled in the details.

“An historian in the late 20th century at the fall of Communism proclaimed the End of History. Political and Military competition would diminish as the ‘Great Power’ focused solely on the social and economic health of their nations, he even predicted that the nation itself would become obsolete as everyone who mattered had agreed on the basic concepts of successful governance.

“Unfortunately this prediction was spectacularly ill-timed. History reasserted itself for a few decades, in the form of the wars, and peace keeping actions with which you are hopefully familiar. 2019 saw the signing of peace accords and the end of what has been dubbed the Troubles, and historians confidently proclaimed that the End of History had finally arrived.

“This doesn’t mean that military conflict disappeared, instead most nations realized that it was a losing strategy, a way to beggar your own population for little real gain. Border skirmishes, threats, and posturing took a little longer to die off, but the most successful economies of the postwar period completely eschewed war; instead focusing their energies on exploratory and developmental milestones: the Lunar Base, the Lagrange colonies, freefall foundries, Men (and Women) on Mars, the first manned mission to the belt…”

Jennifer was interrupted here by a raven haired girl. “The Odyssey commanded by Katherine Eng.”

Jennifer smiled. “Oh, I take it you had family on board?”

“Two grandparents.” The girl said smiling.

“I had the distinct pleasure of serving with the entire crew of the Odyssey, it was a great honor. You have a proud family tradition.” The speaker paused to survey the class before continuing.

“The pace of these accomplishments was staggering considering our long (and comparatively fruitless) history. Amazingly three commercial expeditions were already mining the belt barely two years after The Odyssey. Our species turned extraordinary technical feats into commonplace events as is our wont.

“Now you probably are wondering why I’ve spent this time recounting a semester’s worth of history. The idea is to contrast peace and war time. The war years were very lean years compared to the prosperity that followed them. Historians -and eventually the population at large- blamed those wars on rampant militarism. This reflected itself in the pre-Contact thinking of most of Earth, so whether consciously or sub-consciously many people rejected the suspicion of The Visitors that seems only natural now.

“Now before you condemn us, please remember that the human condition is like this in general. Humans are always correcting past mistakes, and preparing to not make the same mistake we made last time. It’s a military truth that generals always fight the last war. We (I was on Earth at Contact) were preparing for our last war, we reacted in a way that would have prevented the war years.

“I don’t mean to depress you, or suggest that Earth deserved what happened to her. I’m hoping to help you understand Earth, and convey the degree to which we were unready. Remember this; while the first alien ship was crossing the gulf to Earth with its deadly purpose, we were still debating and trying to verify the existence of the aliens. This is where I will again defer to the existing record. Doctor Johnson takes part in this discussion as well.”



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1. sorry it's so short, I'll have the transcript up later tonight, or tomorrow morning (Insh Allah)

2. Sorry it took me so long to post again, I made two abortive attempts at writing, but one of them turned into an essay on free trade- I have no idea how. And the other one isn't written in Audio Transcript form. I thought I was so clever when I wrote a chapter like that, but it's turning into a pain to write

3. Feedback is appreciated. If you can point out particular places that are clunky or unreadable, or have bad spelling, or are just Teh Sux, then I'll try to fix them.

4. I didn't set out to write her like this; but it seems to me that Jennifer is turning out to be very pompous, any suggestions on fixing this will be appreciated. Right now I'm thinking about changing her vocabulary a little bit.

Thanks for reading

Glad to see an update.

As for how Jennifer sounds, it doesn't sound pompous to me. It seems to fit what she's trying to do, which is to teach a class of grade-school kids a bit of history. From one of the lines you wrote, the kids don't understand the culture or mentality of the people living on Earth, so it makes sense she'd have to explain most things bit by bit.

I like. I'm glad I checked back.

It's turning out very good, I can't wait for the next part.

Sorry It took so long, power failure cost me a few pages that I think were better than what I have now :.( As always criticisms, advice, typo patrol, etc are appreciated. Or if you speak Russian and think I'm being unfair to the Russian attendees :P





March 2, 2040
11:20 am (Local time)
ESTEC
Noordwijk, Netherlands
Second Plenary Session
Emergency Action Conference (Untitled)

Attendees

Dr. Andrei Bezukhov of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Space Research Institute)
Dr. Sonya Razumikhin of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Special Astrophysical Observatory)
Dr. Henri Mitterand of the European Space Agency (Astrophysics)
Dr. Dominic Herold of the European Space Research and Technology Centre
Dr. Peter Hayek of the North American Aeronautics and Space Administration
Dr. Mark Johnson of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligences
Dr. Mariano Aznar-Lopez of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Radio and Radar Exploratory Group)
Dr Stephen Brown Director Emeritus of the Royal Greenwich Observatory


Dr. Brown is chairing the session

“Dr. Johnson, I’d like to thank you for your cooperation in the last session. You are also to be commended for the discretion with which you have handled this. Since this has not yet reached the public, we’ve all had a good opportunity to question you and examine your data points. I hope you’ll forgive us but I think we’re going to be much less collegial in this session. We’ll probably start by pointing out the inconsistencies and problems with your approach. I think no one will mind if I begin.

“Your thesis is essentially that because this behavior is unique (in terms of Pulsar behavior) this must be a communication event. This is flimsy at best. Our observations of Pulsars only last for 80 years; this is a brief span in the history of the universe. Claiming that this behavior is abnormal is incorrect, a better claim is this: your pulsars are unique in the records we have available. I don’t think I need to remind you of LGM-1. The lesson from this should be that Pulsars do unprecedented things; they were at one point unprecedented.

“I can’t fault you for your enthusiasm, but it's very dangerous when you remember that SETI’s history is replete with false positives. A more cautious approach is called for: I suspect that we can eliminate some of the possible explanations in this session. Unfortunately, I think we will be left with a few possible causes which cannot be tested.”

“Dr. Brown, does that mean that this will be swept under the rug? Are we going to ignore what will undoubtedly be a sea change in human history?”

”You’re getting ahead of yourself Dr Johnson. We’re going to formally attempt to remove as many alternate theories as we can. If we are unable to eliminate all the possible alternatives then we will have to recommend against publishing

“Therefore I think it’s appropriate if we list possible sources of error, or alternate explanations.

1st Terrestrial contamination, it was considered a valid concern when LGM-1 was first discovered, I see no reason to discount it now.
2nd Erroneous detections, we may actually not be receiving what we think we’re receiving. I realize that most observatories share your measurements but this concern needs to be raised.
3rd This is some new pulsar type that we’ve never seen before
4th Some phenomena between ourselves and the transmitting pulsars is moderating the signals in the manner we are currently viewing.
5th We are actually receiving radio signals from an extraterrestrial intelligence.

“Now I’d like to open the floor for general discussion of these possibilities. Ah yes, Dr. Aznar-Lopez if you would care to begin?”

“Thank you Dr. Brown. I’d like to address your first and second points. As to the first point, the RREG maintains a few satellites in Geo-Synchronous orbit. Their prime purpose is to catalog solar bodies, but they do cover some (not all) of the frequencies of interest, I’ve gathered some of those records, and when they were in position to record the incoming RF spikes, those observations have agreed with Dr. Johnson’s data. Our satellites have not been in position to monitor all the events which Dr. Johnson describes, but we can confirm 20% of the relevant frequencies for roughly a quarter of the observed events in the last decade.”

“You have that much coverage?”

“Is that envy Dr. Bezukhov?”

“Yob <muttered indistinct> ”

“Doctors please let us keep this civil. Dr. Aznar-Lopez that was highly unprofessional.”

“My apologies Dr. Bezukhov. Yes our satellite coverage is at ~25% at one point there were proposals to bootstrap it into a Near-Earth Asteroid Radar system. ESTEC and NAASA did that with NEAR-I so ours is more of an exploratory system. I should note that I think you ought to be able to get observatory confirmation from those international bodies, provided you can wade through the layers of bureaucracy.”

“Doctor Lopez, please don’t make me ask again.”

“If I might interject? The Special Astrophysical Observatory can call upon observations from Kosmos-II. What you might call a Radio Hubble. There is of course, only one, so its stellar coverage is limited. It has been present for 10% of the observed events and the correlation with Dr. Johnson’s data (accounting for atmospheric effects) is nearly 100%. Also Kosmos-II uses several design techniques to achieve highly directional reception.”

“How do you accomplish that?”

“Is that envy I detect Dr. Lopez? I’m afraid they are mostly proprietary, although I’m sure the Academy would be happy to build you a copy.”

“Save it for the luncheon Dr. Razumikhin.”

“Of course. But to return to the topic, I think RREG’s and Kosmos-II’s observations effectively answer explanation 1 and 2. We’ve also seen the relevant data from terrestrial observatories. If the data were bad the data would not correlate as well as it does.”

“Well that leaves us with possibilities three, four and five. Doctor Mitterand, would you care to comment on the possibility of a new pulsar, or new pulsar behavior?”

“I’ve had some opportunity to run a few simulations. This could be an ordinary accretion powered pulsar, but there might be strange orbital mechanics which moderate the uptake of the accretion disk. I’ve run a few models in which stray Oort-cloud matter disrupts uptake. The pulses could be comet or asteroid bodies becoming sucked into the accretion disk. Unfortunately to fit the data the solar systems in question would have had to deplete something on the order of 9 times the mass of our inner system. Most models predict that those sorts of masses should not be present in the inner systems of Binary star systems. So it’s possible, but very low order probability. The odds of having it happen simultaneously in two separate systems are, if you’ll pardon the pun, astronomical.

“I’d like to add a further caveat; this behavior is inconsistent with a rotation powered pulsar or magnetic field pulsar. We would only expect to see this in an accretion disk pulsar. The frequencies and period that we are observing on PSR 240+46, and PSR 239+46 are too long for an x-ray pulsar. But according to the current theories only an x-ray pulsar could produce the glitches -for want of a better term- that we are currently observing. To sum up my observations, yes this is possible, but the phenomena observed are extremely unlikely, and they are inconsistent with observed and theorized pulsar behavior. I find myself hoping this is communication if for no other reason then so we don’t have to rethink all of Astrophysics.”

“Dr. Razumikhin, your opinion on these results?”

“I’d have to compare these to our models. But I think the only major differences will be in terms of constants, and various probabilities. The properties of Celestial and Stellar mechanics are supposedly well understood.”

“Well I am unhappy to conclude that the third option (while extremely unlikely) is still possible. I wish that it were otherwise, but we cannot remove it as an explanation. Which brings us to the fourth concern; there may be some intervening celestial phenomena that might explain this. Would anyone care to address this? Yes Dr. Bezukhov, if you would.”

“Thank you Dr. Brown. Let me explain what such an intervening material would have to look like. You would need some interstellar intervening gas cloud, with certain properties.
1. Partial opacity to or absorption of certain frequencies
2. Translucence to Visible Light and Infrared (we are getting good readings on that area of space)
3. The area of this cloud is under transit from non-stellar planetoids or sub-planetoids. This is the only way I can think to explain the increasing nature of the radio signals. Essentially the intervening matter is steadily being swept away.
Based on 1 and 2 I’ve concluded that the gas cloud could be a peculiar mixture of Neon, gaseous Calcium and atomic Oxygen. Unhappily while unprecedented, this is possible.”

“Excuse me Dr. Bezukhov, but could you explain unprecedented?”

“Certainly, Dr. Johnson, our knowledge of stellar formation predicts that Hydrogen should be the most common interstellar material. The presence of large quantities of Neon is peculiar. Also very strange is the predicted regular sweeping out of the cloud. Extra solar planetoids are one thing, but consistent passage of extra-solar bodies through such a region is a completely different thing. This is again unprecedented but not impossible.”

“Well I’m afraid after some consideration, I have an unfortunate duty. Dr. Johnson, it seems that we are unable to effectively remove options 3 and 4 from the list. We cannot say with any certainty that your signals are intelligently produced. I’m sorry.”

“Dr. Brown, if I may? I have a proposal that might provide eventual proof/disproof of option five.”

“Of course Dr. Herold, we’re all listening.”

“NEAR-II has in orbit a large quantity of Radio transmitting systems. We have available to us several highly directional broadcast antennas. If NAASA concurs we might choose to utilize them as our own limited extra-solar space based radar. The idea would be to “ping” the area of interest. Conclusive disproof might take as much as 50 years, (depending on what intervening bodies there are) but if there is anything large of interest in the area, we could see it. Reception of the return signals would be handled by the NEAR-II constellation which has a life expectancy of at least that long. We could reserve out a few frequencies for the exclusive use of our “ping”. And a satellite should be in place to detect anything of greater than micro-watt strength.”
“Well, I’m sorry Dr. Johnson, but as Dr. Herold points out we may all be long dead before we get any confirmation one way or another. So it is with a great deal of regret that I must inform you that it is my recommendation that you should not publish your conclusions until we get some other proof. And on that I’m going to call for a break.”

End Transcript

March 2, 2040
11:50 am (Local time)
ESTEC
Noordwijk, Netherlands

Audio Log 160

Damn this is frustrating. 50 years he said. SETI will be dead in 50 years, people will have moved on, no one will care in 50 years. Hell, no one even cares now. No one invests in us because there’s no chance of profit. By the time we find out if someone is out there people will have already forgotten about this. Instead I’m going to find this data relegated to the footnote of some obscure Astrophysics textbook.

March 3, 2040
12:50 pm (Local time)
ESTEC
Noordwijk, Netherlands

Audio Log 161

This might change things, Jim has kept in touch, and he’s a miracle worker. I’ll include his email here. I don’t think there’s much to add to what he says.

Email
Received: March 2, 2040 3am
Recipient Mark Johnson <DoctorJSignals@Seti.org>
Sent by: James Lars Nielsen <DanishPride@hotmail.com>
Subject: Blue shift

Dr. Johnson,

I’ll just cut right to the point. I’ve been going over the data with a few more custom algorithms. I’m checking all the “spikes”. One of the things that I’ve noticed is a steadily increasing intensity, I’m sure the folks at your conference are seeing something similar. Anyway, it turns out that the rate of increase is barely sub-linear, see this link for my FTP site (Pswrd is Denmark_forever) file is SETI_1 (sorry but it’s big. I Hope your ESA people have sprung for a good wireless network). That file charts the linear progression of spike intensity. Now on the accompanying graph you’ll note an irregularity at spike #1612 (We need a better numbering/naming convention). Here’s the accompanying measurement link. What you’re going to see is that this data set doesn’t remotely resemble any of the other spikes. So the first thing I did was remove what the “base pulsar” would look like, just click through the PowerPoint slides. What’s left now looks like what we expect a signal 3 or 4 times the base Pulsar signal. The only problem is it looks blue shifted. This suggests that something is moving towards us. Why aren’t the other signals blue-shifted? Who knows, But If I were going to covertly scope a planet, I’d broadcast in a manner designed to disguise blue-shift, otherwise your signal wouldn’t look like the original pulsar, and your target would get wise. I know you think I’m paranoid, but it’s the only explanation I can come up with.

End Email

Jim’s right, and his data looks good. I’ll forward this to Dr. Brown and the other attendees. Maybe they might change their mind.

Audio Log 162.

Dammit

Email
Received: March 4, 2040 3am
Recipient Mark Johnson <DoctorJSignals@Seti.org>
Sent by: Stephen Brown <DirectorBrown@RGO.gov>
Subject: RE: Blue Shift

You’re grasping at straws Dr. Johnson. I’m sorry but your interpretation is hardly the only one.

Email
Received: March 4, 2040 3pm
Recipient Mark Johnson <DoctorJSignals@Seti.org>
Sent by: Director of Communications <IT@RussianAcademy.ru>
Subject: Mail Delivery

Your mail could not be delivered, reason, this server does not recognize your mailing code: spam, blacklisted.










---------------------------------------------------------------
Errata
1. Changed PSR designations (designations are in Elevation and Declination, original designators did not reflect the fact that these pulsars are in the same stretch of sky
2. Also need to note that my pulsar pulse times are off and need to be modified in the place where I refer
3. Also Need to write the conference attendees a little more hostile than they appeared, I’ll revise later, but advice is welcome.
4. Last bit, in case you didn't know I'm a google taught astronomer, so if any real astronomer's want to correct me I'd appreciate the truth

Oooh, shut down! This is good. Very good. I'm not much of an astronomer myself, but so far it sounds plausible. And that's all you really need, isn't it? It's not like real astronomers are going to be a large percentage of the reading public anyway.

Sorry about the delay, the next section will be up shortyl (hopefully) it's just there are so many other things to be doing in my free time. Damn you Yahoo! Chess. I think I've played every variation of the Sicillian in the last two hours.

As always any notes on typos, grammar, punctuation, or style are appreciated. Thanks for reading

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------





Delta Pavonis III “Refuge”
2142 October 10 Earth Standard
Local time 15 standard days after solstice
Designated as Remembrance Day


“I know you will be having some questions, but I hope my next comments will do something to alleviate your concerns. The most obvious question is probably about the results of the emergency conference. Now, with the benefit of hindsight we have concluded that the scientists ought to have decided that something was out there, and planned accordingly. You’re probably already tired of hearing this, both from me and from the audio files, but the conclusion was premature. There was insufficient evidence at the time to conclude that Aliens were arriving.”

The children sat stunned in their chairs for almost a full minute before someone finally ventured to ask a question. “Jennifer, I thought you meant to imply that the debate over the aliens was a bad thing. That it delayed a response.”

“That wasn’t my goal, and I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. No, the lesson I hope you’ll eventually learn is a little different. The debate over the existence of the aliens was scientifically valid. Where we have an interest, as amateur historians, is not in the diagnosis but the prescription. As scientists the committee members performed their job. The hearing that Dr. Johnson was given was a very fair one, they were unable to eliminate as a possible explanation new pulsar behavior, or an intervening stellar mass Unfortunately Dr Johnson didn’t know about the blue shift until after the conference. At that point the scientists had already invested a great deal of their time in something which could not be proven. Further complicating things are the histories of both SETI and pulsars.

“I hope you won’t mind another diversion to discuss those two topics. First pulsars, I’ll be brief because your astronomy and physics courses will hopefully cover this later. The first Pulsar was originally dubbed LGM-1 (or Little Green Men-1) the scientists who discovered it thought that the regular periodicity of the signal was a sign of an intelligent source. Those astronomers delayed that proclamation until other astronomers could look at their findings. Further analysis showed LGM-1 (later renamed PSR 1919+21) was probably a neutron star. Scientists also discovered glitches, sudden changes in rotational frequency, or even the temporary disappearance of the pulses. All of these were themselves unprecedented.

“Second SETI, widespread cheap computer support became commonplace in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Fueled by this availability SETI started looking carefully at the mountains of data available to SETI observers. Unfortunately in 2015 SETI was the victim of hacking, one of their publicly distributed analysis tools was modified by an insider. The motivations of Michael W. Traviss are unclear, what we know is that he compromised six years of SETI analysis resulting in over 1200 exabytes of suspect output data. This wasn’t the worst result of Traviss’s perfidy. The modified algorithm produced several false positives, SETI proudly proclaimed the existence of intelligent life. Unfortunately their claims did not hold up to rigorous scientific and statistical analysis. Baron Martin Rees famously subjected SETI’s algorithm to Monte Carlo data sets and still achieved several positive reportings. This severely damaged SETI's standing in scientific bodies. SETI was onlyjust rebuilding its credibility by 2041. The organization had fallen so far out of favor that the rumor of SETI attendance at a conference would cause serious attendees to cancel.

“This is the baggage that Dr. Johnson carried with him into Noordwijk. The fact that he was able to get the scientific luminaries he did, speaks well for both his professionalism and his data. Unfortunately Dr. Johnson was impatient. Had he waited he could have made use further analysis which revealed the “Blue Shift” (a very convincing piece of evidence).”

“I don’t understand Jennifer. Why are you telling us this? Isn’t there someone who made a mistake, isn’t there a villain somewhere? Don’t people blame Dr. Johnson for his haste and the mistakes that caused?”

“No. Dr. Johnson’s passion for his work made him press his cause prematurely. It also brought him to SETI when many talented professionals went elsewhere. It also made him continue to press his case to political officials when the issue seemed dead. Dr. Johnson’s perseverance gave us our warning and also brought him before men and women who were capable of acting on his warning.

“This brings me back to my point about diagnosis and prescription. I hope you’ll entertain another little historical deviation. This example refers to fossil fuels. The supply on Earth (and here too) is finite, several geologists and economists had predicted what would happen as this supply became more scarce. The most prominent of these predictions was called “Peak Oil”. The primary proponent predicted a peak within two or three years of 2010. He happened to be off by seven years. This is an error of science, correcting these sorts of errors usually provides interesting information. In this case a better understanding of geology and the function of markets. Historically his error of several years is irrelevant; the prescription for his scenario was always a reduction in fossil fuel usage and a shift to alternative energy supplies. That his prediction was off does not invalidate the solution to the impending energy crisis.”

“So, did Dr. Johnson explain the risks to someone? Did he take his case to the public?”

“No, this was an issue for a few political individuals to decide upon. Dr. Johnson did present this as scientifically undecided, but he did make a compelling case about the risks of inaction.”





-------------------------------------------------------------------
Errata/Notes:
1. Since Jennifer’s Dialog tends towards exposition I’ve adopted the following quote method which I read in some forgotten novel. At the end of a paragraph if she has another paragraph of info dump then I don’t close quote. If however someone else is speaking following Jennifer I close quotes. I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, I’ve been hoping it will help distinguish speakers, because I’m too lazy to insert “said a Student” or “said Jennifer”. Any advice on this particular area would be appreciated.

2. I’m hardly versed in Peak Oil Theory, if you tell me I’m wrong I’ll probably answer “yep”. I’ll try to update with correct information as I go

3. This next section is going to be kind of America Centric, sorry if that offends anyone.

Keep going, man. It's awesome.

Was the "Traviss" asshole an intentional reference?

Very good. The quotes are good, that's the standard I've seen in most books.

I'm so excited!



EDIT: Misplaced criticism, I was reading Hull no. 721 at the time. This one is very good, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, and I will hold off on in depth analysis for after you post the next chapter.

Thanks for reading, and as always feed back is appreciated.

As to the type of feedback I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if you notice something that looks wrong, if you could quote it, it would help. MS (PBUT) Word catches the serious grammar, and spelling errors, but I'm sure there is stuff it misses. My personal editing process is just re-read the thing to make sure it makes sense to me, but since it made sense to me when I wrote it, this is hardly a critical or effective process. If I'm shown a specific section that sucks, I can be more critical and maybe my MLA (PBUT) handbook will help me in the editing process.







March 8, 2040
9:20 am (Local time)
White House
Washington DC, United States

Audio Log 173

Jim and I have had an opportunity to refine our observations. We’ve spent the time since the disastrous ESTEC conference to codify all of our findings and Jim has them in PowerPoint slides. I find myself vaguely scandalized. The last real shot at any kind of coherent policy for contact is going to depend on a power point presentation. I’m not sure I’m up to it.

“Dr Johnson, if you don’t mind me interrupting, I’d just like to remind you that you’re not going to be the only presenter in the White House. Remember I’ll be in there playing Devil’s Advocate.”

“It’s kind of hard to forget Jim. Do you have your presentation summed up? You’ll be arguing for a potentially hostile contact won’t you?”

“Of course Doctor, I can’t see how this can be anything but an attempt to covertly assess Earth’s Industrial capabilities. When humans do that to other humans we consider it to be a hostile action. History is full of times when those sorts of probes are the precursor to some sort of military unpleasant-ness.”

“Well you realize that there are nearly as many RF communication standards as there are countries right? That variety exists in our one species. I doubt anyone can accurately predict what sorts of variations can exist when you’re looking at a completely different race, with unknown biology, let alone thought processes. I don’t expect the aliens will have forehead ridges, or other Styrofoam prosthetics glued to their foreheads. Honestly who knows what sort of gulf we’ll face while trying to communicate.”

“That’s fine Doctor, I concede that we shouldn’t be expecting P25 or European Tetra from them. Honestly there are so many things that we ought to expect from a signal that we’re not getting. I’d expect some variability, FM, PM, AM, QAM some sort of change in the signal. There isn’t any though. It’s the same signal over and over the only variation is in the Amplitude of the signal. Even that isn’t…”

“Exactly the steady change in the Amplitude of the pulses is a message.”

“I don’t agree Doctor, it’s been increasing linearly (or very nearly so) for the entire time we’ve been monitoring it. You can’t convey any sort of useful information with that sort of a signal. I don’t know why you’re ignoring this.”

“Because yours is hardly the only interpretation. You’ve had a jaundiced view of this ever since we first identified the signal. I can’t believe you actually picked…”
“Excuse me, sirs? We’re ready to take you in now. Before we go any further I’m going to need any electronic or recording devices you may have.”

“Our notes for the presentations are on our laptops.”

“If you would give me the filenames I’ll have them made available on the White House network in a few minutes.”

“Don’t you need our passwords?”

“That would help Doctor Johnson, but it won’t be necessary. As I said though, you’ll need to turn off any electronic or recording devices and surrender them to…”

<Discontinuity>

Log Ends


March 8, 2040
9:29 am Local
Oval Office
White House
Washington DC, United States
Official White House Records

“Good day, Doctor Johnson, Mr. Nielsen. Let me introduce you to the others who will be participating: Secretary of Defense Levitt, Secretary of State Rogers, National Security Adviser Dr. Perry, my Science Adviser Dr. Littlejohn, and Admiral Stockdale of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but we’re all going to need some convincing.”

“Of course Mr. President. May I ask what level of familiarity you have with the discovery?”

“Assume none.”

“Of course sir. I’ll start at the beginning. On January 12 of this year I was training some new volunteers for the analysis we regularly perform at SETI. Mr. Nielsen had a new proposal for data analysis: we used an average of historical observations as a basis for comparison with what we’re currently getting. After some technical hurdles we found a pattern. If I may make use of some visual equipment for my slides?”

“Of course, I believe we have one set up for you.”

“Thank you. This is the historical data, both for the pulsars, and that stellar region in general. As you can see, the observations for 1973-2010 show only small deviations from the historic norm. On March 15, 2016 VLA in New Mexico first records spikes in PSR-240+46, and PSR 239+46 which deviate significantly from the norm. About 10% above the previously established numbers. Later spikes increase at an almost linear rate.”

“Doctor Johnson, my readings on Pulsars indicate that that sort of behavior has no precedent. Why wasn’t this remarked upon earlier?”

“You are correct Doctor Littlejohn; this is still an unusual event in Pulsar behavior. What makes it more bizarre is the fact that both Pulsars illustrated this behavior simultaneously. As to why no one remarked upon it sooner? The spikes in RF energy were small at first, that and their intermittent behavior made it virtually unnoticeable. Also no one pays much attention to existing pulsars; they’re all looking for recently formed neutron stars that may become pulsars. Also, bear in mind SETI’s fiasco from a few decades ago. We poisoned any future discovery or investigation of this sort of thing.”

“Dr Johnson, how can we be sure that SETI isn’t up to its old tricks?”

“A valid question, Mr. President; the central problem with the Traviss Fiasco didn’t have to do with the raw observations that were made. The astronomical observations were correct. The conclusions generated from them were wrong. In contrast this data correlates very highly with every astronomical observatory that has records for the periods. This data can be verified; it’s testable unlike the conclusions that were produced in the Traviss fiasco.”

“So why are you presenting your case to us? If your data is so good shouldn’t you be having a chat with some scientific body?”

“We have Admiral. When we presented SETI’s evidence to a conference in Noordwijk, the conclusion was that there was insufficient evidence to eliminate certain astrophysical phenomena. They decided that the conclusions SETI reached were possible, but there was no way to remove other astronomical explanations. We couldn’t find any pattern which suggested communication which further weakened our case.”

“Then why are you wasting our time? If there is no way to prove an Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, this is just idle speculation; we don’t have time to waste on this sort of thing.”

“Dr. Perry, I’d like to note that all of the explanations we came up with for these phenomena had amounts of implausibility. One of them involves some truly singular orbital mechanics. Another possibility requires some undetected inter-stellar matter occluding the signal. This second theory also requires frequent passage by extra-solar bodies; it’s not impossible but it’s unprecedented. As to the first theory, in a galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars singular events happen. We’re concerned that such singular orbits occur twice. The odds of that are, if you’ll pardon the pun, astronomical. Lastly it’s possible that this is another sort of pulsar, but been observing several thousand pulsars for at least 40 years astronomers have come to some solid conclusions as to the physics of pulsars. These observations (if they are a new pulsar type) completely contradict all the major theories on neutron stars.”

“So you’ve just eliminated these other possibilities…”

“No we haven’t Dr. Littlejohn. There are so many things that we can’t measure here. We’ve never seen a pulsar behave this way, that doesn’t mean pulsars never have done this; our experience might also have been too limited to have seen this before. We’ve never measured any sort interstellar matter that would make this happen. The problem is we don’t have enough information to assess the probabilities on any of these explanations.”

“So your argument is we can’t know, so it must be true? I find your reasoning specious.”

“There’s one more bit of information, this occurred once. If you look at this slide of the same area you’ll notice that the RF pattern looks nothing like the previous measurements. Mr. Nielsen decomposed this signal into the original pulsar signal, as well as a part that is blue shifted by 10 mega-Hertz and another part blue shifted by 12 mega-Hertz.”

“Excuse me, but how can parts of the signal be blue-shifted by different amounts?”

“Admiral, are you familiar with the Doppler effect? Good. Well the amount of observed frequency shift is based on relative velocity, and the original frequency. We know the original frequency, and the observed frequency, so we can determine how fast the radio source is moving. We get a velocity of one-hundredth c.”

“But Dr. Johnson you say this was a one time occurrence, aren’t Pulsars subject to glitches? I believe I’ve seen literature on changes in pulse frequency and duration, as well as changes in the RF output of the pulsar. Can’t this be another one of those?”

“Again Dr. Littlejohn the behavior of these two pulsars is something completely new; I will grant that a change in the RF output of these pulsars isn’t by itself proof of anything. However, I find it hard to believe that these pulsars changed back to their original broadcast pattern. This is another new behavior that we’ve never seen before.”

“Change back? I thought you said this blue-shift was a new piece of information?”

“No. It’s newly discovered, I think I rushed to judgment with my theory, and I missed this. This actually happened on July 16, 2022 recorded by VLA at 3am, Arecibo and LOFAR were both in position to confirm, and their historical data agrees with VLA’s. The odd thing is this occurs once, which brings us back full circle. This is would be another new, unprecedented pulsar behavior; it’s not impossible, but I find myself disliking so many never before seen stellar phenomena.”

“So your theory is what? There’s a ship coming to meet us? They’re trying to communicate? Then why doesn’t it look like they’re saying anything?”

“That is my theory Admiral. We’ve only been working on their signal for a few months; we can’t find anything in it… yet. I’m confidant that given time SETI will crack this problem. And please bear in mind if I’m right we’re not dealing with Earthly intelligences, it would be a mistake to think our thought processes follow the same logic. For all we know they could be trying to establish contact with Earth’s sea life.”

“Alright, now Mr. Nielsen, I understand you had a different take on this?”

“Yes, Mr. President. It was my feeling that the pulses weren’t communication attempts. I thought that they looked like interstellar radar. Or at least what interstellar radar would look like if we tried to disguise the signal.”

“Do you realize the scale of such a system? I can’t even begin to think about the size of the array you’d need.”

“Admiral, it would depend on the Radar Cross Section of the kinds of things you’re looking for. But at ten light years you’d be looking at something on the order of a two kilometer by two kilometer phased array (phased for better directionality).”

“That’s preposterous, that sort of array would…”

“I’m sorry to interrupt Admiral, but before we start judging how big an array is feasible, bear in mind we’re doing it from the perspective of a race that has never left its solar system. Who knows what sorts of engineering could be done by a race that can build an inter-stellar craft.”

“Alright, gentlemen, we’ve heard your theory, do you have any suggestions? Dr. Johnson if you would.”

“Thank you Mr. President. There’s enough uncertainty here, that I think it would be profitable to reduce some of it. I think that it’s possible to definitively determine whether or not something is headed our way. My suggestion is to use several of the NAASA’s NEAR satellites as a jury-rigged array, borrow a few ESTEC and MIT satellites and you might be able to get some decent directionality.”

“Thank you, I’ll leave the technical details to my subordinates. But didn’t something like this get proposed at your Noordwijk meeting?”

“Yes, but SETI’s history essentially killed that proposal; no one wants to have anything to do with us anymore.”

“Well, I think my office has a little political clout, we’ll give it some consideration. And you Mr. Nielsen, what was your proposal?”

“Mr. President, I had hoped for something similar, but I also think it might be prudent to consider having a few ships of our own, just in case something goes wrong.”

<20 seconds of muttering, no distinct voices>

“Thank you Mr. Nielsen, we’ll consider that as well. Gentlemen, I hope to God you’re wrong.”

<End Segment>



---------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm thinking the inter-stellar radar may have been a bad/unworkable/unrealistic idea, oh well I'm already invested in it.

The plot thickens.... nice chapter, and was that a reference to Star Trek in thier with the marine life?

Awesome. I'm getting goosebumps when I read this now.

Your writing is getting clearer compared to the first couple of posts, it's quite good now. I guess you're "in the zone" now.

Chapter 4

Delta Pavonis III [*1]


“Jennifer, can I ask a question? Thanks. You said Earth wasn’t ready for the aliens, but Dr Johnson and Jim made their case. Shouldn’t the political authorities have been able to do something about this?”

“Unfortunately, they weren’t able to do enough. The President and his staff decided to operate on the assumption that something was coming, at least until definitive proof to the contrary could be found. Unfortunately a sober analysis of the American government will reveal an organization that is designed for inactivity. In addition to this structural handicap, the Jindal Presidency faced the same problem that Mr. Nielsen and Dr. Johnson faced: no one believed aliens were coming. This lack of belief crippled any attempts the administration made to prepare for the aliens.”

“But that’s, that’s just…”

“I know the feeling, you can see the train-wreck coming but you can’t change the outcome. You also see so many little changes that could be made to make the outcome better. We’ve taken to calling that the ‘Cassandra Syndrome’ you see the way things are going to turn out, but no one believes you. Do remember though, the President was convinced to act as though aliens were coming. Some preparations were made, they were just insufficient. The general skepticism meant any preparations that were made had to be small and politically invisible.”

“Why couldn’t anyone prepare more? Powerful people knew about and said they were going to do something.” The tone was plaintive and almost desperate.

Jennifer paused to assess the mood of the class, many of whom were upset. “Please, before you get too angry with the people of Earth, remember that we only acted on what we knew. Our oversights and our failures seem glaring obvious in retrospect. But they were not obvious to us.” Jennifer again emphasized the first-person. “We also haven’t even talked about the political disunity of Earth. I don’t think your exposure to Earth history has really conveyed to you the problems that can crop up when you have almost two-hundred sovereign governments. Each of those countries had their own agenda. Internal politics could be almost as complicated. Earth’s political landscape was … fractious.”

“If it was so bad, how could Earth be prepared at all?”

“Political leaders were not completely inactive, some managed small preparations. Unfortunately we have this little truism: “Nothing so concentrates the mind like the prospect of a hanging.” Historically it took a great deal for large groups of Earthers to ever cooperate, usually something along the lines of an imminent and obvious threat. So you know, Earth did detect such a threat, about four months out. And every effort was made to meet it. The timing meant that most ships that were produced were retrofitted freighters and asteroid miners, with the exception of a few countries whose leaders possessed more prescience or good sense.

“But we'll get to that later we'll continue the historical narrative following Dr. Johnson's and Mr. Nielsen's announcement. Our next sets of recordings are of the President of the United States, his cabinet, and the Congressional leadership. Similar meetings occurred in Russia, China, Britain, and France, but several factors, including a particular American mania for recordings and information openness, mean that the lion’s share of the political information is from the American perspective.” [*2]



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. I decided to drop the headers for the Delta Pavonis sections, all the information in them should be considered to be the same every time I post a new one. I think I was really just padding my line/word count, so this would look more impressive
2. Author’s note, I’m also biased/limited in my political views, I don’t know enough about other political systems, beyond the bare bones knowledge of how parliamentary systems works. I don’t think my understanding of other political systems is comprehensive enough to write anything credible or realistic. So I opted for an 'in Universe' explanation, which may or may not be wrong <shrug>.

What did you do to our planet? *appalled face* Looks interesting. A lot like Footfall. Is any of this going to be told from the perspective of the aliens?

HSRTG wrote:What did you do to our planet? *appalled face* Looks interesting. A lot like Footfall.

Thanks, I'm flattered.

Is any of this going to be told from the perspective of the aliens?

I was thinking about it. But the way I set up the story at the moment, I'm not going to be doing Omniscient narrator. The way I'm doing things now, the history of Earth is told through recordings, docs, and Jennifer's summary. So unfortunately, no real alien perspective.

Feedback, and criticisms are appreciated. Thanks for reading, and ignore the bit about Cthulhu.



March 9, 2040
8 am Local
Oval Office
White House
Washington DC, United States
Official White House Records

In attendance: President Pranay Jindal, Secretary of Defense Robert Levitt, National Security Adviser Dr. Thomas Perry, Admiral James Stockdale of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President Hector Ortiz, Secretary of Space Industry Helen Cartwright, Dr. Stephen Molyneux Director of NAASA, Dr, Henri Herold Deputy Director of NAASA.


“Admiral Stockdale, over the phone you told me that the military had given some thought to this sort of situation. Please present your findings to the group.”

“Of course, Mr. President. I’ll just give you some brief background. It’s fairly common practice for the military to plan for various contingencies. An entire wing of the Pentagon is still devoted to war plans. Many of these turn out to be mere academic exercises with no bearing on the real world, whose only purpose is to keep the planners ‘in shape’ as it were. Sometimes military inertia perpetuates the workings of a few plans. A recent audit turned up an open file for a defense of the Argonne region.”

“I assume you closed that one down then Admiral?”

“No we didn’t, Secretary Levitt. The war-games are some of the tools we use to conduct logistic and other theoretical exercises. We have things that run the gamut from an invasion of China, to a defense of Israel. In any case alien invasion is one of those things that has been war-gamed repeatedly.”

“When did you start planning for an alien invasion?”

“We started in the late 20th century. The scenario was suggested by Secretary of Defense Cheney in 1986, and it’s been refined intermittently. The particular scenario that was war-gamed was of invasion by a single interstellar ship. When we revisit it we continually vary the parameters of the aliens, but we always try to use contemporary Earth.”

“Well, how do things turn out when you simulate this particular scenario?”

“If the aliens control Earth orbit we lose.”

“Do you mean you never win?”

“No, Mr. President. The wins we get require oversights and cultural blindness’s on the part of the aliens. If a human were placed in control of the ship, with the goal of conquering Earth then effective action would end within 2 months of them entering orbit. It’s possible that alien invaders could be blind in ways that produce victory for us. When we’re devising strategy though, we have to ignore such considerations. Just as in chess, a good move or position is not one that requires your opponent’s cooperation. As a summary, if the aliens get in orbit we have a lost position.”

“Admiral, what about our Strategic missiles, shouldn’t they be sufficient to destroy an alien threat?”

“No Mr. Vice President. The problem is one of reaching the target, not the amount of damage we inflict. Few of our missiles can reach geosynchronous orbit with any kind of maneuvering fuel left over. The boost phase is very vulnerable to interception. When we chose this simulation, the minimum anti-missile capability for the aggressors was comparable to Aegis I. Using this standard we had 82% of all ICBM’s intercepted before they even reached LEO. Competent strategy for the aliens was to move beyond geosync, and destroy everything orbiting Earth to eliminate the stray orbiting warhead or FOBS system. Rinse and repeat until Earth runs out of missiles.”

“Shouldn’t the aliens have some sort of restrictions on supply too? Shouldn’t they be worried about running out of missiles?”

“Dr. Herold, we chose not to use missile interceptors. We had the aliens utilize kinetic kill weapons to intercept inbound threats. We’ll run out of missiles before they run out of chunks of iron. Our worst case had the aliens utilizing nuclear tipped missile interceptors, with Aegis II detection and tracking ability, most of those scenarios had 100% interception rates.”

“Admiral, are you telling us that a single ship could defeat Earth? What about our industrial capacity? Surely we have significantly more than any alien ship could muster.”

“We face a serious problem in any sort of military situation. Earth sits at the bottom of gravity well. The cost of putting something in orbit has two parts. The item’s cost, and the transportation cost which is significant. The aliens wouldn’t face those costs; the only costs they pay are manufacturing costs. Our belts have significant iron deposits meaning they would be more than adequately supplied. Militarily it’s like we’re sitting at the bottom of a wide pit, with the aliens walking around the rim, rolling boulders down on us. Can we win and escape? Yes, but it requires cooperation or stupidity on the part of our adversaries.”

“That’s fairly bleak, Admiral. Are you telling us we can’t win?”

“No, Mr. President. We can win; we just need to fight in space. Our simulations suggest that it should be as far from the planet as we can get. The closer any ship is to Earth, the higher the odds of launching attacks which could have a deleterious effect on the biosphere.”

“Well what about civilian casualties, what likelihood do they have of hitting a large city?”

“It’s a virtual certainty that at least two major cities would be hit. It’s about 60% that we’d lose five major cities, with the odds getting progressively worse as the number of targeted cities goes up. The number of destroyed cities doubles if they choose to utilize maneuvering re-entry vehicles. We’d hopefully have enough time to evacuate, but people have a tendency to procrastinate everything. Also if their RV’s are capable of maneuvers then we may be unable to predict impact points. In the latter case we anticipate casualties of around 100 million if the ship is able to successfully launch from halfway between Mars and Earth orbits.”

<silence for 45 seconds>

“What happens to the alien ship?”

“That scenario was of a successful interdiction and destruction of the alien vessel. That’s why the casualty count was so low. If interdiction is unsuccessful then casualty counts depend on how many salvos the aliens launch. Also, this scenario envisions the use of current defensive measures. As I said, we think the best scenario is to intercept as far from Earth as we can. Everything else is suboptimal.”

“How do you solve this problem then?”

“Dr. Perry, there are a couple of techniques which mitigate risk. Most importantly we need several ships up and ready to engage the enemy. As I said, the further from Earth the interdiction occurs the more likely we are to survive unscathed. Also we would want to place defense platforms in space. If they were capable of a decent amount of maneuver we would need a few less -they could protect larger swaths of the Earth’s surface. We would actually fit them with ICBM warheads for interception purposes. Returning to the previous scenario if Earth has a few platforms then casualties fall to only 20 million. We consider it a strategic win.”

“20 million dead is a strategic win?”

“Yes Mr. President, when you compare it to hundreds of million dead, or the possible destruction of our biosphere, 20 million is an acceptable casualty count.”

“What would it take to implement that system?”

“The original comprehensive defense was slated to cost around $700 billion. We’ve had some time to affect various cost savings contingencies; we could probably implement it for around $320 billion. The new program would utilize extensive COTS components, as well as drawing heavily from existing developments. We would make heavy use of the Aegis II and DD-X programs for tracking and weapons systems.”

“I’m sorry Admiral, but funds in that range can’t be procured. What would you be able to do with… $35 billion.”

<papers shuffling>

“Mr. President, we could get you one fully equipped defense platform, and two ships of what we call a frigate class. We would also begin training several crews for space operations.”

“You planned for that sum of money?”

“Yes, Mr. President. We came up with spending numbers for various fractions of the surplus. The office pool was betting that we could get 50%.”

“Well now we get to see if the Speaker will be amenable to that sum. I’m going to want you with me to present your estimates to the speaker and the President Pro-Temp.”

<recording ends>


March 9, 2040
2 pm Local
Oval Office

In attendance: President Pranay Jindal, Stephanie Posson Majority leader of the Senate, Speaker of the House William Madison, Admiral James Stockdale of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Mr. Speaker, Madame Senator, welcome, please take a seat. I assume you’ve both met Admiral Stockdale?”

“Yes Mr. President, the Senate did confirm his appointment after all.”

“Of course Madam Senator. I hope you’ll forgive me if I dispense with the pleasantries, there’s a bit of a situation. I’m going to replay a briefing I received yesterday morning, and then I’m going to defer to the Admiral’s analysis.”

<recording dated March 8, 2040, play back.>

For full transcript contact White House Records Office

<record resumes>

“Mr. President, I can’t believe we’re seriously discussing this. It’s like something out of a bad movie. Honestly, Aliens?”

“Mr. Speaker, I assure you that I and my staff consider this credible. Every piece of evidence Dr. Johnson showed us has been confirmed, my science advisor tells me that Dr. Johnson’s analysis agrees with current theory. If you’d like to wait to check with your own experts I can understand.”

“I’m more than capable of following the discussion Mr. President. I’m afraid I’m unconvinced. I’m assuming you brought me here to discuss funding for planetary defense, or some other such nonsense. I will not condone any spending on this. This whole kerfuffle could be caused by a fickle star.”

“I understand your skepticism Mr. Speaker, but perhaps you ought to listen to Admiral Stockdale for a moment. If you would Admiral?”

“Mr. Speaker, a large section of military thought goes into the area of war planning. At one point a scenario was proposed in which the enemy we were planning to defeat was an alien invader who controlled Earth orbit. I’ll spare you the details as to why, also I doubt you’ll be interested in all the parameters that went into the scenario. If you’d like a summary of our findings it can be arranged. But to be brief, if the alien invader was our technological equal, and conducted war rationally, we would lose.

“Another scenario included what would happen if we engaged an enemy somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars. I’m going to leave out technical details about closing rates, interception percentages, and the like. Those will all be included in the summary. Again in the interest of brevity, a successful intercept action would probably still result in over 100 million civilian casualties.”

“Admiral, I’m not going to dispute the conclusions you’ve reached. You do realize, though, that this analysis is begging the question of whether or not aliens really are coming.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is sufficient evidence for us to at least put together some contingencies. We think a decent sized space force could be put together for $50 billion…”

“Fifty? Forgive me Mr. President but that’s absurd; you’re talking about most of the surplus right there, and for what? You’re talking about three or four ships, you’ll probably start an arms race, with a fleet that’s good for nothing.”

“I assure you Mr. Speaker we have no intention of starting an arms race, if you’re concerned we’ll coordinate our efforts with the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In addition, I’d like to note that these ships are more than capable of dual use. Last session I believe you voiced grave concerns about “the Anarchist Space Culture”. If nothing else our ships could ‘show the flag’ and maybe prevent some of the marginally legal activity that goes on.”

“Alright, you’ve got me sold. We can put a space navy to good use. But I won’t authorize anything until I get some assurances that you’ll disarm any diplomatic brouhaha that erupts.”

“That’s fair enough Mr. Speaker. But I’ll do you one better. We’ll record my real motivations in that bill. Make it known that the President considers this an answer to a credible threat posed by extraterrestrials. If we find no evidence of them in the next 10 years, then you can publicize my reasoning.”

“Excuse me Mr. President but people will think you’re crazy.”

“I’m a Libertarian, they already think I’m crazy, this will just confirm everything.”

“Well Ok Mr. President, we’ll do it your way, but I’m going to need something from the surplus too. I’m going to want your help in throwing a few bones to my caucus, say something around $30 billion.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous Mr. Speaker? You know my party would never allow it, they’d throw me out.”

“Well I’m going out on a limb…”

<end recording>

And Cthulhu came and ate their brains.

Happy last day of April

A Libertarian President?! How do you explain that, in universe?

Also, funny on the Cheney reference there.

I also have a hard time believing the times for some reason. 8am just seems too damned convenient. Try 8:35, or something. And same for 2pm, try 1:45.

I dunno why, but it seems slightly more realistic. Like, the recorder just rounds to the nearest 5 for the time, which could imply these meetings weren't starting on the dot. More like, they came in when they had the time?

Your call though, it's probably the most minor nitpick you'll ever hear about.

Phantasee wrote:A Libertarian President?! How do you explain that, in universe?

Wishful thinking. In universe, there's no real explanation, last time I checked the Libertarian Party had less than 1% of the vote. 2004 returns had only .03%

Also, funny on the Cheney reference there.

That was a mistake, it should be Weinberger, who was in Defense during the Reagan Presidency. That date was picked because Footfall (which inspired this) was published in '85.

I also have a hard time believing the times for some reason. 8am just seems too damned convenient. Try 8:35, or something. And same for 2pm, try 1:45.

I dunno why, but it seems slightly more realistic. Like, the recorder just rounds to the nearest 5 for the time, which could imply these meetings weren't starting on the dot. More like, they came in when they had the time?

I'll try that, thanks for pointing it out.

Your call though, it's probably the most minor nitpick you'll ever hear about.

The Devil's in the Details, I'm trying for verisimilitude, so those small things matter.

Again thanks for the feedback.

Oh, while I'm working on the next chapter, I thought I'd include my first attempt at writing a political chapter. I don't like it, and it doesn't match the format of the other chapters, which is why I abandoned it. It also never got much in the way of editing.

So here it is

Attempted Political Chapter

/*utter crap

Washington DC, United States. Earth
January 31, 2040 //These dates are off too, sorry.
The Oval Office

The Most Powerful Man in the World was unhappy. His first term of office was coming to a close. President Pranay Jindal did not look forward to the campaign season. At the moment he sat deep in conversation with the White House chief of staff.

“Mr. President, you don’t want to engage any of the candidates in a debate, yet. Not even Senator Burnside.” Jack Coleman was the consummate political junky, with the characteristic bags under the eyes and the requisite nervous energy. The President secretly wanted to suggest that Jack cut back on the coffee, but he found himself preferring an over-stimulated Coleman, to the alternative.

“I can’t understand why not.” President Jindal was frustrated “The Democratic candidates are spouting rubbish; their economic policies are a prescription for disaster. The Republicans aren’t much better; their only saving grace is that their theorists recognize some restraint on government interference, at least in theory. This fuzzy thinking needs to be nipped in the bud, before it gains any legitimacy. Democratic protectionism will wreck domestic production of Lasers, and Tokamaks, and assorted other finished goods. Don’t they realize this will destroy the domestic space….”

“I’m sorry to cut you off in the middle of a rant sir.” He didn’t look sorry at all, as a matter of fact he looked delighted; it was a rare thing when you had the opportunity to interrupt the President. “It’s just that you’re preaching to the choir.”

“Don’t use that metaphor. We don’t use choirs, at least not in the Christian sense.” This was a long-running joke, and it never failed to mollify the President when he was feeling particularly ill-tempered.

“In any case Mister President, we both know the consequences of protectionism.” Both were well versed in trade theory. “This isn’t about the soundness of their theory. This is about politics. If you respond to any of this idiocy, you lend credibility to the candidate that’s speaking it. You will also focus attention on the trade issue. We both know that the public is indifferent, or only slightly in favor to it.”

The President grimaced. He found it ironic that the areas where he had the most control were least important to the public, and that the areas where he had the least control were so vital. At least that’s what the polls kept showing.

“So what do you suggest I do?”

“The best policy prescription here is to not do anything. If you leave both parties’ candidates alone both you can count on the candidates saying something truly inane.”

“So my strategy is what. If you give a man enough rope…”

“More or less, Mr. President. You should be pleased, it’s the proper Libertarian approach: you take no action.”

Snorting at the thought the President decided to concede and move on to the next item of the day. “So next up are the asteroid mining provisions?”

“Yes Mr. President. The Honorable Jeremy Wilkins is insisting on more control. He’s already proposed a ‘Coast Guard in Space’.”

“Isn’t the current Space Watch enough?” The bastard son of the NORAD space tracking operations and their Russian Equivalent, they provided the near earth traffic control that a space faring society needed. Unexpectedly the phone at his desk buzzed.

“Mr. President? I’m sorry to interrupt, but the Secretary of Defense and your Science Adviser are both outside. They say they need to speak with you immediately.”

“What’s on the agenda today?”

*/

//end utter crap

I think the real reason I abandoned it, was it was turning into a screed for Libertarian politics, but I prefer it if my politics come in essay form. That's part of the reason I've stopped reading Chrichton, even if I agree in principle with his positions. So I don't like the above much.

This chapter is much shorter, sorry. Also no major plot happens here, I just wanted to have a brief interlude. I may modify this later, so something plot related happens in this chapter. For now though, enjoy the interlude.

As always feedback is appreciated.

I have no idea when the next update will be



Chapter 5

Delta Pavonis III


“Jennifer? What was Speaker Madison talking about with the $30 billion? I’m not sure I understand.”

“The speaker was engaged in what was colloquially known as horse-trading. In exchange for funding the new ship building, the Speaker wanted Presidential support for his ‘piece of the pie’.”

“Wasn’t the speaker convinced that the ship building program was wrong? And he agreed to allow it anyway?”

“Politics had a tendency to generate this sort of behavior. Of course there were standouts -truly honorable men and women who consistently tried to do always follow their conscience- but for the most part politicians were captured by the system. Idealistic determinations to cut taxes would vanish when a congressperson realized that in order to stay in power he or she needed to win reelection. Pledges to spend on certain programs were often broken when it was a choice between funding what was promised instead of something for a home district. In this case the speaker traded his opposition to new military spending for spending on new social programs.

“But we’re getting a little far a field here. Some of you may be curious why the previous conversation was important enough to include. There are two salient points we need to note from that conversation. First the President secured funding for ship building, and to train new officers and crewmen to run those ships (at a later point we will revisit these crewmen). Second, only a limited amount of funding was procured, this would be decisive, and disastrous.

“Before we discuss the military aspects of Earth’s preparation, there is one more tangent we must visit. This next audio is completely innocuous. No great events occur herein. Instead a normal civilian goes about his day. This is pertinent for two reasons. First, the general attitude of civilians at the time is relevant to our discussion. Second, one of the men on this audio is the grandson of Earth’s first astronaut.”


February 16, 2040
6:14 am GMT
Yuri Gagarin
4˚ Elevation 62˚ Right Ascension (Helio-Centric Ecliptic)
220,100,000 kilometers from sun (approx)
Flight Data Recorder

Voices identified as Yuri Gagarin (Patronymic here *1)Ship’s Owner and Captain
Alexei Alekhine (Patronymic here *1)Ship’s engineer.

“Alexei, how’s the ship running?”

“Just fine, Kepitan. The wessel’s nuclear reactor is performing well within parameters.”

“So I take it you had time to watch the movies? I guess that means you had a quiet shift?”

“Of course Yuri. The new Tokomak performs flawlessly. I doubt you even need an engineer to manage it. I feel guilty taking a pay check.”

“Well in that case I have some good news for you. I just spoke to Henry at Orbital Dynamics and there’s a bit of a problem with accounting. I don’t understand it, I’m after all just a simple starship captain. The short answer is when we get back to Earth you won’t need to feel guilty for a few months.”

“The Devil you say. We work ourselves to exhaustion in the belt, and they don’t have our money?”

“Clearly you don’t feel that guilty about taking the money.”

“A fine joke Captain. We are getting our money though, right?”

“Well you’re a proper little capitalist now aren’t you?”

“What would your wife say if she knew how badly you teased me?”

“She’d say I was doing you a favor, her little brother needs a thicker skin. Her little brother also needs some humility. And yes we are getting paid on time and in the proper amount. So is the second coming of Botvinnik ready for another game?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a Bronstein.”

“Oh, of course. Will we be using a digital clock then?”

“Absolutement Mon Capitan, and let’s play 5 minute games *3. I have some work that I need to do, and I’d rather not be distracted by a game in progress.”

“The fact that you’re too impatient to play anything over 15 minutes plays no part in your choice, then does it?”

“You wound me Mon Capitan. I have plenty of patience, how else could I stand to go on so many cruises with you?”

“I thought we answered that, remember how I pointed out that you’re a proper little capitalist? The money is worth putting up with an eccentric captain, and his boring reactor.”

“Boring reactors are a good thing Yuri. No one wants an exciting reactor, one Hearst is enough. I for one have no interest in being immortalized as a second Flying Dutchman. Incidentally is there any news on that salvage operation they were planning?”

“Yes, it was cancelled. The hulk has already passed Jupiter, and reaching it at this point is a non-trivial affair. Weyland Inc. decided they’d give the families a plaque instead of the bodies. I can’t say I blame them, it’s always eerie being that far from Earth.”

“Well shall we set up Yuri? I believe it’s my turn to be white. And how does the score stand? Ah yes, I’m at fifteen one half and you’re at two and one half.”

“One of these days Bang! Zoom! To the moon Alexei!”

<14.8 seconds of silence>

“Could you repeat that Captain, I’m not sure I understand.”

“Nevermind.”

<Recording spliced>

February 17, 2040
3:06 am GMT
Yuri Gagarin
218,100,000 kilometers from sun (approx)


“Good afternoon Alexei. Do you have the engineering and astrogation reports?”

“Yes they’re already on the network. Complete with current position estimates, consumables stores, and all that.”

“How good are your estimates?”

“I’ve got them to plus or minus 40 k-klicks.”

“Alexei, Orbital Dynamics always goes over our logs very carefully. They’ll notice your estimates are horridly inaccurate. And I’m going to have to spend weeks filling out paperwork. Make sure you firm up our position estimate before the next time, forty-thousand kilometers is more than the circumference of the moon. OD would be very unhappy if we delivered our cargo straight into the lunar surface.”

“I’ll fix the reports. But I have a question, what’s with all the bureaucracy? I thought businesses were supposed to be streamlined and efficient. Now you’re telling me that you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get paid.”

“Blame lawyers and politicians.”

“Are you going to elaborate on that Captain?”

“No. That’s what the representative from OD told me. He said if there’s something wrong with the way Americans, or American businesses do things you can usually blame lawyers and politicians.”

“I don’t know what to say to that. Oh before I go, I’ve got a question about that Dacha in the Crimean.”

“We’re getting it. The owner gave me a great price, l20,000 Euros. Anna loves the view, so we’ll have some good winter vacations there.”

“That seems like an absurdly low price. There must be something wrong with it. I mean it wasn’t owned by the Cheka was it?”

<28 second pause>

“Actually, the owner mentioned Dzerzhinsky’s name.”

“Bolshemoi! Anna won’t live in it. You know how superstitious she is. If she knew about that house, she’d burn it down and have a priest exorcise the ashes. You can’t honestly expect her to live there when she finds out.”

“Actually I wasn’t planning on telling her.”

“Yuri, she’s my sister, I can’t not tell her.”

“Of course you can …not. You know she can be silly about these things. And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her (at least in this case).”

“I… I guess I’ll keep it a secret. But someone in that town must know about the Dacha. How do you intend to keep that a secret?”

“I’ve researched this. Three people in town know about Dzerzhinsky’s Dacha. I intend to bribe them all… with copious quantities of high quality vodka. I think it will work out.”

“Alright Yuri, I’ll go along. But I don’t like this much

1. I don’t know Russian patronymics. I also know very little actual Russian (all I know is Tom Clancy Russian ). Suggestions for fixing these would be appreciated.

2. I think my astronomical coordinate system that I used in previous chaptersis wrong. I need to correct that. I should probably also use the same coordinates in each chapter. For future I think I’ll use The Ecliptical Coordinate System (ref http://seds.org/~spider//spider/ScholarX/coords.html)

3. The Comment about the digital clock is not as off the cuff as it sounds, according to Wiki, Bronstein invented a digital clock that adds time after every move. I always thought it was called a Fischer clock, but no, Bronstein invented it.