"Making Waves"

MAKING WAVES
By Curtis C. Chen

"You check those corners, sailor?" the Chief of the Boat barked. "Those lines are off by half a degree and our visitor doesn't materialize!"

"Re-measuring now, Chief!" I replied, and placed my protractor on the deck again.

I knew COB was exaggerating, but I'd learned early in my naval career not to argue with anyone who outranked me. If it wasn't likely to kill me, I just did it.

After re-checking all the angles on both pentagrams and making sure they lined up, floor to ceiling, I stepped out of the circle and reported my progress.

"Very well," COB grumbled. "Rosebud!"

The Seaman's real name was Roseler, but after that RKO flick, everyone called him "Rosebud" as a tease. He jumped forward, holding his clipboard. I did my best to get out of the way. COB's quarters weren't exactly spacious.

"You got the incantations there?" COB asked Roseler.

"Aye, sir!" Roseler said, his voice cracking. And people said I sounded like a girl.

"Corrected for position, depth, and speed?"

"Aye, sir! I've got the math right here—"

COB waved the clipboard away. "I can't read your damn chicken scratches! Just make sure you're doing it right!"

Roseler looked like he might cry. "M-maybe you'd like to do it yourself, Chief?"

"Do I look like a motherfucking magician?" COB roared into Roseler's face. Their noses couldn't have been more than half an inch apart. "Now incant that fucking spell so we can receive our goddamn visitor!"

"Aye, sir!" Roseler buried his face in the clipboard. I had one hand on my belt, ready to deliver a kidney-punch as soon as I heard a mispronunciation. I didn't want to be on this boat if anything went wrong with a teleport.

"Sometime this year, sailor!" COB shouted.

"Aye, sir!" Roseler stood up straight. "Hagitaa! Moro-ven-schaa! Inlumtaa..."

Both pentagrams pulsed blue and white. Roseler finished the incantation, only going a little flat on the last syllable, and a pillar of light flashed into being between the two circles. A moment later, the light faded, and I saw an officer standing in the pentagram, wearing... a skirt?

"Permission to come aboard, Chief?" the woman said.

She looked about my mother's age, and she wore lieutenant's bars and the most perfect makeup I'd ever seen. But the expression on her face, and the fact that she'd just teleported onto a submerged attack boat in the South Pacific, told me she wasn't here to entertain anyone.

"Permission granted, ma'am!" COB said. "Sorry the Captain couldn't be here to greet you. We're playing hide and seek with some Japs."

As if on cue, the entire boat groaned and rolled to starboard. I was impressed that the lieutenant managed to keep her balance in those heels.

COB shoved Roseler and me back. "If you'll follow me, ma'am?"

The lieutenant looked at the pentagrams. "You're not going to clean this up?"

"These two can handle—"

"You secure those surfaces, Chief," the lieutenant snapped. She looked straight at me. "Seaman Gray can show me to the bridge."



Image: USS Ohio (SSGN 726) in dry dock, January, 2004

"Have Spacesuit, Will Travel"

HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL
By Curtis C. Chen

"Don't tell me how to fly!" Angel said. "I know how to fly."

"You know how to play video games." Carolyn's voice crackled through the helmet radio. "There's a difference."

Angel nudged the throttle with her right index finger. "Just give me a map reading, okay? We don't have a lot of time."

"Almost clear," Carolyn said. "Another fifty meters, then turn forty-five degrees up."

"Pitch," Angel corrected.

"Why do I need to learn made-up words when I can just say 'turn?' " Carolyn asked. "I gotta tell you which way to go anyhow."

"We'll have this argument later," Angel said. "Pitching up, four-five degrees, now."

She pulled back on the vertical stick with her left thumb. Her view changed from the gentle curve of the habitat ring to the angular mess of the cargo docks.

"Okay, I'm lined up." Angel brought up the HUD overlay in her helmet. "Range painting on. Where am I going?"

"Straight ahead of you, two lanes in. Bay ninety-five. The ship is all the way at the end."

Before Angel could ask whether that was the spaceward or homeward end of the lane, an alarm started blaring, and blinking red lights lit up her HUD.

"What's wrong?" Carolyn shouted.

"Wait one," Angel said.

She felt remarkably calm as she worked both joysticks and pressed lightly on the triggers to change her thrust vector. Carolyn was right: it wasn't anything like a video game. Angel felt the backpack rockets pushing against her body as they fired, three different arrows of force joining to shove her out of the way of the approaching freighter.

It wasn't until she was safely out of the lane that Angel felt her hands shaking and her stomach fluttering. All sorts of audio and visual alerts filled her helmet, now that she'd exceeded speed limits in controlled traffic space, but all she heard was the blood rushing past her ears—until her mother's voice pierced the noise.

"Angel Daria Chace!" She did not sound happy. "What in the name of all that's holy are you doing out there?"

"I'm helping Granma," Angel said, braking and re-angling herself toward the target ship.

"Did you steal that spacesuit? And—what?" Her mother paused. "Angel! Did you take your grandmother's ashes?"

"She wanted to be buried in space." Angel slowed her approach, then slapped the magnetic case containing her grandmother's ashes onto the side of a cargo container. "I'm sending her into the Sun."

"Angel, you get back inside right now! And where is your sister?"

The suit radio buzzed, and a new voice filled the helmet. "Unidentified pilot, this is Galen Traffic Control. Please stop maneuvering inside restricted space and meet dock authorities at airlock three-nine. Repeat..."

Angel's face hurt from smiling so much. She'd never been called a pilot before.

"...additional," the controller continued. "Please hold at airlock three-nine for the captain of that freighter who almost pancaked you. He says he 'wants to meet any cowboy who can dance like that in a three-pointed tin can.' "



Image: Soviet spacesuit (with MMU) at Evergreen Aviation Museum, October, 2010

"HauntFAIL"

HAUNTFAIL
By Curtis C. Chen

I sensed the vibration—what would have been sound if I'd still had ears—but couldn't tell what was happening. Ten years since I died, and I still couldn't see through walls. Freaking annoying.

"Frank!" I called down the corridor. "What's happening in there?"

There was no way to tell if he had received my proj. The vibration was gone now; it had been a sudden, short shockwave rippling through the air of the alien ship. I wished I'd studied more about acoustics. Had that been a door? Something falling to the deck?

"Frank!" I called again, more energetically this time. Maybe the alien ship material was dampening our projes?

I considered leaving my post at the opening to the ventilation shaft. Whether or not I was guarding this square hole wasn't going to make or break the operation. We knew the aliens couldn't see us. If they could, they would have landed right next to one of our camps, or done something besides just sit around in their ship for days.

There were, like, ten different vent shafts that led into the main corridor of the ship. Other ghosts had done the recon and mapped this whole place out already. Even if we got jammed up here, we could fly out one of the other openings. Me waiting around when Frank might need help was stupid.

I nudged myself sideways, drifting over to the intersection so I could see down the adjoining corridor. As soon as I cleared the corner, I saw Frank barreling toward me, his normally soft glow spiked with pinpoints of fear.

"Run!" he shouted at me. "Get out of the—"

Behind him, two aliens charged into the corridor. They didn't look like I expected. I knew from others' descriptions that they were lizard-like humanoids, but their heads looked really bulbous and shiny. Then I realized they were wearing helmets. And body armor.

One of the aliens held up a device, a flat disk with a short handle. The disk was translucent, and it glowed with moving lines and symbols, like a radar lollipop.

He—she?—said something to the other alien, who hefted a long tube with bumps all along the side, buttons on top, two handles on the bottom, and a long flat extension in the back which rested on the alien's shoulder. It couldn't have been anything but a weapon.

The first alien shouted something, and the second alien fired. I saw a small projectile emerge from the front of the rifle, moving much slower than I had expected. Was that a wire trailing behind it?

Then the projectile exploded, creating an energy bloom nearly five feet across and causing a thunderclap like the one I'd heard before. It actually hurt for me to sense it. It radiated all across the EM spectrum, and as I watched, it set the air—the atmosphere itself—on fire and burned through Frank's sphere, tearing his energy apart. He proj'd out something I couldn't understand. Then he was gone.

I ran.



Image: Ghost by Elizabeth Thomsen, October, 2006

"Bridge and Tunnel"

BRIDGE AND TUNNEL
By Curtis C. Chen

They both heard the news at the same time, but they reacted differently.

Jantenava jumped up, grabbed her commlink, and went into the bathroom. Richard stayed in bed—he was light-years away from his own people, and the bridge wouldn't open for another hour—and watched the rest of the report on the hotel room holoscreen.

When the news switched to another story, Richard muted the screen and listened to Jantenava's muffled voice through the bathroom door. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but he could tell she was tense.

The door opened and Jantenava emerged, wearing a robe. She dropped her commlink on the desk, then sat down next to Richard.

"I had to check in with my office," she said. "The news always gets something wrong."

"And?" Richard asked.

"Steiner-Wagner solved the rolling horizon problem." Jantenava stared at the screen, her eyes unfocused. "They just released all their test data, and they're setting up a public demonstration in two days."

"So." Richard watched her finger tap an uneven rhythm on the blanket. "Faster-than-light spacecraft."

"Yeah."

"I guess you're going back to work today."

Jantenava turned off the screen. "We're both going to be pretty busy." She stood up and went to the closet.

"So that's it?" Richard asked.

Jantenava gave him a blank look. "What?"

Richard stood up, wrapping a blanket around his midsection. "You and me. Us. This."

"You'll have to be more specific."

Had her eyes always been so dark? "Do we have a future together, Jan?"

She fidgeted with her clothes. "These energy administration meetings might still continue."

"Nobody will want to use an interplanetary bridge that only opens twice a day when they can hop on an FTL ship at any time."

"They won't be cheap," Jantenava said. "And both our planets will keep using the bridge for cargo transport—"

"It's only a matter of time. Spacecraft are more versatile, and they don't draw power from the planetary grid. The bridge is already obsolete." Richard suddenly felt cold. "So what happens to us?"

"What do you want me to say? I don't have an answer for you, Richard. I didn't want this to end." She gestured around the hotel room. "But maybe this is all we ever had."

"You don't believe that."

"What else can it be?" Jantenava shook her head. "Neither of us is going to quit our jobs. Managing the bridge was a nice excuse for us to get together, but we have other responsibilities. You've got the microwave net coming online next month. I'm overseeing a dozen different solar projects."

"We can figure it out." Richard put a hand on her shoulder. "Just tell me you want to make this work."

Jantenava looked at him with sad eyes. "I don't know." She pulled her clothes out of the closet. "We both need some time to think."

She went back into the bathroom and closed the door. Richard looked around the well-appointed room. He stood there for a moment, cold and alone, then slowly started getting dressed.



Image: Wormhole to Pudong; Shanghai, December, 2011

"So is This a Game or Not"

SO IS THIS A GAME OR NOT
By Curtis C. Chen

The passengers weren't listening, and Hartz was getting frustrated. He tried using one of the phrases he'd heard McGregor saying over the last few days to get the group's attention.

"Now hear this!" Hartz shouted at the crowd gathered in Cargo Bay Two.

"Quiet!" said one of the passengers, a stout man with dark hair. He waved his hands to get the others to settle down. "This must be the next clue."

"This is not a clue!" Hartz shouted. "Your tour leader is dead!"

"What?" another man said, frowning.

"We're under attack," Hartz said. "The raiders breached our starboard hull, and McGregor got blown out into space."

"Somebody died?" a third man said. "The plot thickens."

"So you're going to be giving us the clues now?" Dark Stout asked.

"Stop talking about clues!" Hartz pointed at the doors in the back of the room. "I need everyone to go back to their cabins right now. Lock your doors and stay there until a crew member tells you it's safe to come out again!"

Nobody moved.

"So we'll get the next clue in our cabins?" Dark Stout asked.

"Maybe they hid something in there," a woman said.

"They couldn't have," another woman said. "Pavel and I were in our cabin all morning—"

Hartz stepped forward, grabbed Dark Stout by his collar, and yelled, "Do you understand English? You're in danger! The whole ship is in danger! Go back to your cabins and lock the damn doors!"

"Okay, okay," the man said, wriggling out of Hartz's grip and turning to the crowd. "I guess we're going back to our rooms, then."

"Don't know why they made us come here in the first place," somebody grumbled.

"It's part of the story," someone else said. "A new plot point. They had to make sure we all heard it at the same time, obviously."

A woman with bright green hair tapped Hartz on the shoulder. "You're a wonderful actor. Are you available next month? My nephew's having his bar mitzvah—"

"Ma'am," Hartz said, "we can discuss whatever you like after the ship is safe, but right now, I need you to go back—"

The bulkhead behind Hartz exploded outward. A chunk of debris slammed into his head and knocked him to the floor, unconscious, seconds before a three-legged alien entered the room, brandishing an energy rifle.

"Holy cats!" one of the passengers said. "They really went all out on this game. These effects are fantastic!"

Others murmured agreement.

The alien waved its rifle and emitted a string of trilling noises.

"What did he say?" one woman asked another.

"I'm pretty sure that wasn't English," a man said.

Dark Stout stepped forward. "I've seen this type of puzzle before. We're going to have to translate the 'alien language.' I'll start. Somebody take notes!"

The alien was quite surprised when, instead of resisting, its new prisoners began engaging in conversation. It took longer than usual to herd them into their cells, but they seemed awfully happy about the whole process. It was all very confusing.



Image: Justice Unlimited: Game Day! by Karl Larson, July, 2004

"Nice Day for a Drive"

NICE DAY FOR A DRIVE
By Curtis C. Chen

"You know," Bobby said, "I respect women. I really do. Which is why I don't like to use certain epithets, but I'm going to make an exception in this case. Special occasion. Here goes. Ready?"

"Shut—"

"What do you think you're doing, you crazy bitch!" Bobby shouted.

"Be quiet!" Amanda yelled back. "Or—or I'll gag you!"

Bobby took a breath and leaned forward. "No, you won't. You're in too much of a hurry, otherwise you would have gagged me already. Isn't that what kidnappers usually do?"

"I am not a kidnapper!"

"Right." Bobby chuckled. "I must be a bit confused. Would you prefer 'abductor?' The slightly more exotic 'shanghaier?' Maybe if you told me exactly what's going on, I could suggest more accurate terminology for your precise criminal act—"

"You're kidnapping me!" Amanda said.

Bobby frowned. "Okay, now I think you're confused."

"Your family did something to my android," Amanda said. She felt very pleased with herself for coming up with such an excellent plan on such short notice, and was glad to be sharing the details with someone. "Used some sort of technology virus to turn Irwin against me. Obviously, you were involved; why else would a nobody like you ever approach someone like me? You fooled me into thinking you were helping me, when you really just wanted to lure me back to my car, where you incapacitated my driver and took me hostage."

Bobby gaped at her. "Please tell me you're in some kind of therapy," he said. "Your family can't possibly have missed all these symptoms of mental illness—"

"However," Amanda continued, "once we arrived at your secret criminal hideout, where you were set to meet your accomplices, they double-crossed you and beat you to within an inch of your life before absconding with me."

"Okay, your life cannot be so boring that you need to manufacture all this drama," Bobby said. "Also, is the beating part negotiable? Because I bruise very easily—"

"The last thing you heard me say, before I was taken away and you lost consciousness, is that I regretted not being able to perform Rosen's Twelfth before these fateful events transpired." Amanda raised one hand wistfully toward the sky.

"Seriously!" Bobby seemed to have some kind of fit in the back seat. "I mean, seriously! Can you hear yourself right now? Are you on medication? Did you forget to take some medication this morning?"

"You really don't have to shout," Amanda said. "I can hear you just fine."

"I was at a piano recital!" Bobby said, cupping his hands around his mouth. "I was going to go to lunch with my friends and then play some ball later! And now I'm being driven into the Walford Wood, where I'll probably be killed. So I'm sorry, but I'm going to spend my last hours doing whatever the hell I want!" He paused for a second, then added, "You crazy bitch!"



Image: Winter - Forest Drive by Celeste Goulding, June, 2006

"So Then I Met These Aliens"

SO THEN I MET THESE ALIENS
By Curtis C. Chen

"I've been doing a lot of pre-FTL colony digs. Private collectors pay decent money for human artifacts, especially ancestral objects. It's not as exciting as the gun-and-run jobs, but I can't do too many of those anyway, now that I'm some kind of celebrity."

He shoots me a dirty look. I glare back at him. It's not my fault if people like to hear my stories, and he happens to feature in many of them.

"Anyway, some of those old colonies didn't fail because of natural disasters or tech malfunctions. I started finding the evidence two years ago, out in Omega Centauri. Raided settlements, pieces of spacecraft hull that didn't match any human designs. But never any actual remains, no non-human skeletons or anything.

"Then I hit the jackpot. You know the theory that Omega Centauri is not a native star cluster, that it used to be the core of a dwarf galaxy which collided with the Milky Way—"

"Skip to the end," I say.

"Well, that's where the aliens came from. Another galaxy, but a long time ago." Driftis pulls out his mobicom. "I found a habitable planetoid which didn't match the geology of anything else in its star system. I followed this energy reading"—he holds up the mobie, showing a multicolored spectrograph—"to a cavern hiding a three-meter-tall cube with one open face, made of an unidentifiable metal alloy and still drawing power from a geothermal source."

I frown. "And you went in there alone?"

"Who was going to come with me?" he says. "I couldn't even convince you to stay, Cathie."

I look away from his sad eyes, not wanting to have this conversation, and see Lirrina watching me intently. I scowl at her and pull myself back to the current topic.

"So you found this cube," I say, "and it turned out to be, what? A communications device?"

"Even better. A teleporter." Driftis grins. "It took me two days to dig up all the equipment around it, and three more to figure out how to operate it. There were all these symbols etched into the metal—"

"Skip to the end," I say.

"Well, I probably shouldn't have been standing inside the cube, but activating it the first time was an accident. It transported me into another cube, inside a spaceship several thousand light-years away. The aliens there were just as surprised as I was. They looked like—well, like huge, bipedal lemurs. Big round eyes, giant ears, creepy as hell.

"We couldn't communicate at first, of course. They took away my equipment and threw me into a holding cell. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was back in the cube on the planetoid.

"Turns out there was a timeout on the sending cube—an auto-retrieve function, a safety feature. My mobie said I'd been with the aliens for about three hours." Driftis shrugs. "I probably should have left the planet at that point, found some backup before returning—"

"You went back?" I shake my head, frowning.



Image: lemur by Andrey, September, 2009

"The Second Half of the Star-Sailor's Tale"

THE SECOND HALF OF THE STAR-SAILOR'S TALE
By Curtis C. Chen

When the young sailor reached the galactic core in the ship he had stolen from the now-dead tattooed man, he found the Celestial Bestiary. The sailor snuck his way through asteroids and cometary clouds to reach the Shrouded Planet, then fought his way through the Guardians' challenges until he entered the Chamber of Singularity and demanded his prize.

"If you receive this modification," the Final Guardian said, "you will be set apart from your fellows. You will no longer be able to live with them as you have. Are you prepared to trade a full life for a long one?"

"You know nothing of my life," the sailor said. "Give me the treasure."

"Very well," said the Final Guardian, and in a flash of light, it rendered the sailor immortal.

Upon leaving the Chamber, the sailor immedately leapt from a high cliff. He gleefully survived the fall, and he survived the pirates who fell upon him as he left the core. The pirates could not kill the sailor, and when he escaped, he swore vengeance upon them.

No longer fearing death, the sailor sought dangerous and lucrative missions all across the galaxy. He traveled through deadly heat and cold and radiation, where no other human could survive. His legend grew.

The sailor also explored more personal perils. He lay with the painted folk, heedless of their disease, and bade them perform exotic pleasure-acts upon his body. He soon tired of that, and his thoughts turned to greater glory.

The pirates who had ambushed the sailor outside the core had also grown in stature. They now controlled an entire star cluster, and the sailor decided to eliminate their scourge once and for all.

He used his celebrity to recruit an elite warship. But as they journeyed toward the pirate systems, the crew began falling ill and dying. It took the ship's doctor many days to determine the cause.

"You are killing us," the doctor told the sailor.

"Speak sense," the sailor said.

"You have encountered many diseases," the doctor said. "The worst of them still lives within you. They do not harm you, but they are deadly to us."

"Quarantine me," the sailor said.

"It is too late," the doctor said.

All were dead by the time the pirate systems came into weapons range. The sailor sat alone on the empty bridge and made one final, easy decision.

He navigated the warship back to the core. He locked onto the Chamber of Singularity and discharged his entire arsenal while descending through the atmosphere. The self-destruct detonated moments before impact, and the sailor's last thought was: The tattooed man was right. I can still burn.

Do not fear weakness. It is weakness that makes us strong. Without weakness, we might never find each other, might never know how our strengths multiply when combined. Without weakness, we die alone and ignorant.

The cosmos are a vast and lonely void. Need binds us together, spurs us to build families and communities and great civilizations. May we find each other, and may we help each other.



Image: Galaxies Collide in the Antennae Galaxies by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, August, 2010