NOSTROMO IN SPACE AND TIME by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO

Hovering near ground level above planet Asiana (XO-1c) XO-1 System, 536 light-years from Earth, Corona Borealis constellation Dana Durning, the executive officer of the NOSTROMO and its second-in-command after Tina Forster, smiled with satisfaction when the prefabricated city module which the huge cargo ship had brought from Earth slowly and smoothly rested on its foundations. That city module, with a diameter of 1,100 meters and a height of 380

meters, was going to be able to comfortably accommodate a population of a bit over 100,000 persons. The new city, to be called ‘New Singapore’, was going to greatly assist in the development of the ASEAN colony on the planet, which was still continuing to be terramorphed in terms of seeding plants, fish and animals from Earth, to supplement and eventual y supplant the planet’s primitive original biosphere. Dana then turned to speak to Tina, who was sitting next to her in her command chair. She however held on to what she wanted to say when she saw Tina’s preoccupied expression.

‘’Uh, is there something wrong, Tina?’

That question apparently returned Tina to the present situation and she shook her head while making a weak smile.

‘’No! Everything is fine, Dana. With the main city module for New Singapore now in place, we will be able next to drop in place and connect during the next few days the various annexes we are still carrying. Then, we will have another prefabricated city complex to load aboard on Earth, this time for Jamieson’s World, in 18 Scorpii, followed by the building blocks for a new city destined to New Shouria, where it will help alleviate greatly the plight of the masses of Koorivar refugees we dropped there two years ago.

All in all, a busy but also very productive and lucrative year for us.’’

‘’Definitely a productive and lucrative year, Tina. With the present boom in extra-large modules Space hauling, I am wondering if we shouldn’t acquire a second ultra-heavy lift cargo ship, in order to improve on our hauling capacity as a corporation.’’

73

‘’I don’t think that such an acquisition would be a good idea right now, Dana.

First, we would be talking about a massive bill for the building of such a ship, a bill that would easily exceed sixteen bil ion credits. Right now, we simply couldn’t afford such an expenditure. Second, this extra-large module hauling business may well prove to be a boom-and-bust thing in the long term. I would rather concentrate our financial means on future refits to our NOSTROMO and on further improvements and additions to our ground facilities on New Haven. One sector which I believe will be in need of continuous additions in terms of ships is the passenger and tourist travel business between Earth and the various worlds and new colonies of the Spacers’ League. I thus am weighing the acquisition of two new heavy passenger shuttles for our commercial fleet.’

‘’Hum, two more heavy passenger shuttles certainly wouldn’t hurt us, Tina.

Demand for Space travel is indeed booming on Earth, partially thanks to the opening and development of our new colonies on Asiana and Jamieson’s World.’

‘’Indeed! Well, I believe that I am due for a break right now after all these hours spent on the bridge, supervising that unloading operation. I will return to relieve you at six thirty, after I have supper.’

‘’Go ahead, Tina: I wil be on top of things here.’’

Getting out of her command chair, Tina then walked to the open staircase linking the top command platform of the bridge sphere with the next lower platform, where she took an elevator ride down to the Executive Deck, situated just under the bridge sphere.

Once on that deck, she walked to her large executive suite and entered it. However, instead of undressing and lying down in bed to rest, she ended up sitting in her favorite lounge sofa, deep in thoughts while contemplating the forest visible from her suite’s large windows. After some five minutes of silent contemplation, Tina got up and went to her private study, where she sat at her work desk and activated its computer terminal.

‘’SPIRIT, this is Tina. I would like your advice about something...’

09:15 (Universal Time)

Tuesday, May 09, 2339

Hangar assigned to the command cutter AEGIS

Large craft hangar complex, A.M.S. NOSTROMO

In low Earth orbit, Solar System

74

Harrison Ford, closely followed by his crewmembers, entered the hangar where the AEGIS was sitting, finding Tina Forster and SPIRIT’s android avatar waiting for them next to the aft access ramp. Not seeing any of the members of the field team of Project Tempus, he stopped in front of Tina to ask her a question.

‘’Aren’t we going to have field team members coming with us this time, Captain?’

‘’No! The crew for this mission wil be minimal, for reasons of utter discretion.’

‘’And where and when are we going, Captain?’

‘’I wil tell you once we are all aboard and out of the NOSTROMO, Harrison.’

While not having expected such secrecy, Harrison didn’t ask more question and simply nodded his head before starting to climb the access ramp with the other ten androids of his crew. Once inside, the group went up to the craft’s operations center, adjacent to the bridge sphere of the AEGIS, where Tina invited them to briefly sit down in order to talk to them.

‘’My friends, this mission may feel quite ush-ush to you but it is for a good reason...which I will explain to you once we are out of the NOSTROMO and heading towards the Sun. Yes, this mission will involve time displacements but towards the future instead of the past. With this said, man your bridge positions and let’s fly out.’

Harrison and his bridge crew got up and went to the adjacent, ten-meter-diameter bridge sphere, while Hedy Lamarr, Charles Melton, Brian Mojambo, Ben Affleck and Greta Norstrom either stayed in the operations center or made their way to the engineering control room aft. Four minutes later, the AEGIS flew out of its individual hangar, then cycled through one of the two huge airlocks of the hangar complex and flew out by the large craft access and exit tunnel, to emerge out in the vacuum of Space, some 140

kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

Once Harrison had programmed a trajectory towards the Sun, he got up from his pilot’s chair and, followed by his bridge crew, went into the operations center, where Tina and SPIRIT were waiting for them.

‘’We are on our way to the Sun, Tina. We wil be in position to jump in about 35

minutes. So, what is this mission about and why the secrecy?’’

‘’Harrison, I kept this mission under tight wrap for a very good reason: we are going to explore the future of Humanity in incremental jumps of five years, in order to check if any major disaster, war or social up evil will endanger Humanity in the decades to come. As you may easily understand, this mission would be highly controversial on

75

political and social levels and I could even be accused of trying to learn about the future in order to personally profit from such hindsight. Another reason to stay most discrete about it is to avoid any possible widespread panic on a planet scale, panic that could destabilize the whole of the Spacers’ League. For all those reasons, we wil operate this mission according to the following directives. First, we will stay in maximum stealth, passive mode along the whole mission. No active electronic emissions, with our sensors in passive mode only. Second, we will record all the open-source electronic data or news reports in order to ascertain if a major, catastrophic event has hit Humanity during the period covered. However, if nothing truly dramatic happened during that said period, we will then erase completely all our recordings made during that period. That will include your individual memories about that period just covered. I know that your own individual memories are very sensitive subjects for all of you but that directive will apply only to the data and recordings pertaining to whatever catastrophic event happened on Earth and nothing else. I will be the one to decide what event will be worth keeping in our databanks. If we do learn about some future catastrophic event or string of events to hit Earth or Humanity, then we will discretely record all the possible data and information we will be able to collect stealthily, so that we could go back to our own time period with that info. If we do have information or warnings to pass as a result of our observations, then I will make it a personal task to inform very select leaders of the Spacers’ League, so that a long-term mitigation program could be devised under various, non-alarming reasons. Again, if we find out about some near-future disaster and the words goes out, then we will probably face mass panic, something that could only worsen the situation.

Do any of you see objections to my reasoning on this?’’

No one objected or raised points at that time but SPIRIT did have a question for Tina.

‘’And what pushed you into wanting to make such an exploration of Humanity’s near-future, Tina? Is it some information we are not aware of?’’

‘’No! In truth, I am as clueless as all of you about what Humanity could face in the decades to come. Put this on premonition and on an old saying.’

‘’An old saying?’’ said Greta Norstrom. ‘’What old saying would that be, Captain?’’

Tina smiled as she answered the android paramedic.

‘’That ‘shit happens’.’

76

11:03 (Universal Time)

Thursday, May 10, 2345

Bridge sphere of the command cutter AEGIS

600,000 kilometers from the Sun, Solar System

The moment that the AEGIS rematerialized in normal Space after effecting its temporal jump, Allison Stokke checked her sensors’ indication, speaking after a few seconds.

‘’I am getting the signals from the automated navigation beacons orbiting Earth, Harrison. We are at the date we were aiming at: May 10, 2345. There is also a fairly high level of electro-magnetic activity of various kinds coming from all around the Solar System. The levels of waves intercepted is par for a normal day in the system.’

‘’Good! Let’s go take a stationary position in high polar orbit. Stay in passive mode.’’

Tina, who was sitting in the observer’s chair behind and to one side of the pilot’s chair, nodded her head in satisfaction and started unbuckling her seat harness.

‘’We’re in business! I wil now go in the operations center, where I wil monitor our observations. Remember: our priority is to stay undetected while watching.’

‘’Understood, Captain!’’

Leaving the bridge sphere and walking into the adjacent operations center, Tina went to sit at the command station of the compartment, next to SPIRIT.

‘’Well, we now simply watch and see what we can learn from the various public news channels about what has happened recently in the Solar System and around the Spacers’ League. Up to now, things seem to be normal: no devastated, radio-silent planet and no thick debris field in orbit around Earth.’’

‘’You do realize that many kinds of bad things could happen in a rather unspectacular way, Tina, like a dictator taking over power on Earth.’ replied the android.

Tina could only nod her head at that statement.

‘’You are unfortunately right, SPIRIT, so we will have to be vigilant and check for any apparent anomaly in activity pattern and open communications traffic. This could take a few days of watching if we want to be thorough about it.’

‘’Indeed!’’

77

After two days of careful watching and monitoring from Space, Tina finally decided that the last six years had not brought any kind of disaster to Earth, while the Spacers’ League system of regular, twice-daily courier automated probes confirmed that all was well in the Spacers’ League worlds. Having seen and heard enough to be satisfied, Tina then ordered another temporal jump forward, aimed at the year 2350.

10:20 (Universal Time)

Saturday, May 13, 2350

Bridge sphere of the command cutter AEGIS

In high polar orbit around Earth, Solar System

‘’Nothing to see here, while the latest electronic SLN news bul etin about the Spacers’ League shows nothing out of the ordinary. I believe that we can now do another jump forward by five years. What do you say, SPIRIT?’’

‘’I concur, Tina. Let’s jump to the year 2355.’

12:43 (Universal Time)

Wednesday, May 11, 2355

Bridge sphere of the command cutter AEGIS

Emerging in normal Space 340,000 kilometers from the Sun

‘’We have signals from the navigation beacons, Harrison: we are on May 11, 2355. Universal Time is 12:43. I...’

Surprised by the sudden hesitation of Allison at her sensors station, Harrison Ford twisted his head to look at her and saw that she now appeared both worried and very busy as she was consulting her instruments.

‘’Is something wrong, Al ison?’’

‘’There is, Harrison.’ was her immediate reply. ‘’The level of electronic traffic around Earth is simply insane and also quite chaotic, as if the whole planet has gone on a panic attack.’

Harrison next looked at his communications officer, William Windsor.

‘’Can you make sense out of that level of traffic, Wil iam?’’

78

‘’Personally, no! The amount of traffic is simply too much for me to process by myself. However, VISION is now on that. She should be able to give us a report in the next minute.’

The androids manning the bridge sphere, like Tina and SPIRIT in the operations center, then waited for their craft’s supercomputer to give them a report, which it did after some two minutes.

‘’Warning! Earth has suffered a cataclysmic natural event on May First of this year. I am still processing the jumble of information and data broadcasts we are receiving but it appears that much of North America has been destroyed by a combination of a very strong earthquake and tsunami originating from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, situated along the Pacific coast of the continent, and of a massive eruption from the Yellowstone super volcano caldera. I will need another hour or two before I can present a more complete report, as total chaos seems to presently reign on Earth. However, the number of dead around North America is in the tens of millions, while survivors are fighting for food and supplies.’

‘’Oh my God!’ could only say Tina at first, utterly shocked. ‘’Is the Spacers’

League responding to this and helping up Earth?’

‘’Yes! I am identifying a minimum of 67 various Spacers’ League ships in Earth orbit. The NOSTROMO is part of the rescue effort and is presently helping to evacuate the survivors in the worst-hit regions.’

Tina did her best to try regaining her composure but the devastating shock of those news was too much for her and she broke down in silent crying, unable to do or say anything for long seconds. SPIRIT, sitting next to her, both understood and respected Tina’s level of grief and let her time to at least partly recuperate control of herself before asking her a question in a soft voice.

‘’What do you want us to do now, Tina?’’

‘’We...we continue watching and listening while staying in stealth mode. Record everything: we will need that data and recordings for whatever action we will take about this once back in 2339.’

SPIRIT nodded her head at that, then passed on that directive to VISION via electronic datalink mode.

79

The crew of the AEGIS, fighting off their grief, concentrated on gathering as much information and data as they could in the following minutes, including by pointing their main long-range optical telescope at Earth and zooming in on the northwest area of the North American continent. What they saw was truly heartbreaking. Allison Stokke soon made her own report on the disaster.

‘’The whole western half of North

America, going up to the regions of Vancouver

and Calgary and down to the Mexican border,

is covered by a thick ash cloud blocking the Sun rays. Some of the ash has even fallen as

far as the East Coast, while ash clouds have crossed the Atlantic and are now over

Western Europe. The ash is causing a dramatic drop in temperature across North America, which will kill the crops and vegetation not already covered with the ash. A tsunami and massive earthquake from the Cascadia Subduction Zone have basically razed the areas of Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. Thermal imaging also shows that a number of volcanoes, including Mount Rainier and Mount St-Helens, were awakened along the Northwest Coast by that earthquake, which originated from the Juan de Fuca Plate, and erupted in unison with the Yellowstone super volcano caldera, adding to the destruction and ash cover.’

Allison was about to say more but was interrupted by William Windsor, who was monitoring the radio frequencies.

‘’Wait, Al ison! We are now getting a call...from the NOSTROMO! That call is in encrypted mode. I am switching it to Tina in the operations center.’

The androids manning the bridge sphere exchanged glances but didn’t make comments then and simply monitored the call and Tina’s reaction to it, to see if newer directives would follow as a result.

In the operations center, Tina sat back, deeply shaken, while looking at the image of a clearly older self sitting in the command chair of the NOSTROMO. The older Tina then spoke in a sober voice.

‘’AEGIS, from the NOSTROMO: please do not answer this transmission, sent on a tight unidirectional maser communications beam, and stay in stealth mode. I know that you are here because my younger self noted down the precise time and location of

80

emergence when she arrived from the past. To my younger self, I am including in this transmission an encrypted data file containing all the pertinent information on the situation on Earth before, during and after the Cascadia-Yellowstone Event. However, that data is to be shown only to Chairwoman Mercier and President Johnson and to nobody else. The main reason for doing this is to avoid widespread panic and hysteria on Earth and to instead prepare as smooth a long-term advance response as possible to this cataclysm. The political pressure from these news could be both immense and unpredictable, which is another reason to severely limit the dissemination of this information. Even the crew of the NOSTROMO in 2339 is not to be informed of this. As for the android crew of the AEGIS, I will be most thankful for them to stay silent about what you are now seeing. All is now on you, my younger self. Once you will have received and recorded the datafile following this, send back a simple, two-word acknowledge response in encrypted mode and maser beam, saying ‘AEGIS okay’, so that I will know that you got that information. Once that is done, return to the year 2339

without further delay. We on the NOSTROMO will then continue to do the maximum to help the unfortunate people of North America. Good luck and goodbye, AEGIS.’

While the older Tina’s image then froze, a condensed and encrypted datafile of considerable size started downloading, monitored by SPIRIT, who had plugged a data stick into her computer station. After some twenty seconds, the android avatar spoke to Tina, sitting next to her.

‘’Datafile received and recorded, Tina. I will now unplug that data stick before erasing the backup file now in VISION’s main databanks.’

‘’Very well.’’ replied Tina before switching on her intercom. ‘’Harrison, we now have all the information we need. Let’s jump back to our time of origin. To all the crew of the AEGIS: this never happened and is not to be mentioned or even inferred. That is all for me.’

Once that was said, Tina closed her eyes and started crying again.

81

CHAPTER 6 – A HEAVY BURDEN