Amazon.com: Ender's Game Box Set
Dern initated a sequence, opening the stasis lid’s cover.
Alita rose and hopped out of the tube. She gave Dern a quick appraisal. “Are you all right?”
“It was a rough landing,” Dern commented.
“I barely felt it. Great idea throwing me in one of these.” Alita patted the side of the stasis tube in amused gratitude. What’s next?”
“There’s an emergency hatch in the ship’s rear compartment. That’s where we’re headed. Once outside I’m going to do everything I can to rescue the crew.”
“We’ll go out together.” Alita checked her rifle’s round clip.
Dern shook his head. “No. This is what I need you to do…”
The hijackers prodded crewmembers down the protruding ramp leading from the forward exit hatch. Tunnal was the last to emerge from the ship. He breathed in a lungful of warm, crisp, clean planetary air and with uplifted spirits proceeded down the ramp.
The TVVs assembled in a semi-circular laager twenty yards from the ship. Their desert camouflage colors perfectly blended into the desert backdrop.
Armed men in gray one piece active garb, black helmets and flak vests poured out of the vehicles’ side doors. There were anywhere from fifteen to twenty men per TVV. They carried duel purpose Venom 12 assault rifles with directed energy emission capability. A smaller segment wielded portable fusion launchers. Clearly they knew what they were up against and equipped themselves accordingly.
A large black bearded man strode toward Tunnal with a launcher cradled in his arms. Scowl lines wrinkled his forehead highlighting his displeasure. “You should make a habit of checking passenger manifests before you steal sleeper ships.”
“That wouldn’t make a difference,” Tunnal retorted in his defense. “You can’t expect ex-military to announce themselves as such. I don’t. Let’s just get rid of this fly in our soup and call it a day.”
Hooper thumbed a control on the fusion launcher, activating its scope. “I would hardly refer to a person with an SD background as a fly. But as you say, let’s get to it.”
A commotion rang out among Hooper’s enforcers and the hijackers.
Tunnal and Hooper pivoted at the same instant to see a person in armor standing at the rear of the ship.
Tunnal instinctively reached for his sidearm, but Hooper raised a hand. “Wait.” He elevated his voice to everyone. “Hold your fire!”
“What are you doing?” Tunnal demanded.
TVV turrets whirred ominously in figure’s direction.
“I think he wants to talk,” Hooper replied.
Tunnal’s face reddened with fury. “I say let our guns do the talking. Blast the son of a bitch!”
“Relax,” the crime lord said wryly “We can at least hear him out.”
“Who’s the leader here?” Dern called out, using his suit’s voice amplifier.
“That would be me,” a large, bearded man next to the exit ramp responded. “My name is Urias Hooper, Administrator of Routh Settlement.”
Dern observed the vehicles and the armed men, taking their measure like a hawk studying its prey. The fifteen crew members sat huddled on the ground with hijacker guns trained on them.
He began walking toward the procession and could not only see the armed men tensing, but felt their disquiet.
A rush of Flare tickled his senses, heightening his urge to shed blood. He reveled in these criminals’ fear.
“I have no quarrel with you,” Dern explained, though it made him queasy to say those words. This so-called administrator’s association with a group of murdering thugs made him every bit as much a target for Dern’s contempt as the hijackers themselves. “Since you are an administrator that means the prisoners taken by that man…” Dern indicated Tunnal with a raised chin. Any hand gesture was likely to provoke a response from nervous men with itchy trigger fingers. “…have fallen under your custody.”
“They have,” replied Hooper.
Tunnal shifted, hissing a virulent whisper. “Like hell.”
“Shut up,” Hooper ordered. “This is my show now.”
“You also have the power to release them,” Dern reminded.
“Is that what you want? The prisoners?” Hooper asked.
Dern nodded. “Yes. I also want you turn the hijackers over to me so that they can be punished for their crimes. You can keep the ship.”
“You’ve clearly lost your mind, Lowtower!” Tunnal mocked with a burst of scathing laughter. “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can kiss my ass and walk away. We’ll keep the prisoners!”
Hooper favored the hijack leader with a long suffering glance. He returned his attention to Dern. “You can have the prisoners. As to your other request, no deal. I reside over a sound and effective judicial system. Tunnal and his people will be tried before a judge and jury. If found guilty, they will be punished in accordance with our laws.”
Dern wasn’t surprised that Hooper turned down the second part of his demand. But he figured it didn’t hurt to make the demand. As for Hooper’s claim that Tunnal and his minions would be tried…well he chose not to justify that fiction with a response.
“There are three crew persons aboard doing repairs,” Tunnal protested. “They can’t go anywhere until those repairs are complete…at least two of them can’t go. The engineer is with us.”
Dern bristled. The engineer. He was the traitor, the hijackers’ inside man. It would have taken a crew person with intimate knowledge of ship operations to change the ship’s coordinates, redirecting it and everyone on board to this godforsaken corner of the Coalition frontier. Reprehensible as the hijackers were, Dern reserved special enmity for the person who betrayed his own.
“Agreed,” he bit off. Dern sent a signal.
Seconds later the top of the sleeper ship retracted. A small globular craft with a flat bottom rose from the ship.
“That’s an evacuation pod,” Dern said, allaying Hooper’s concern. “The pod will pick up the prisoners.” Through the pod’s mildly tinted panoramic window, Dern saw Alita at the control. The facility with she handled the craft demonstrated her better than average proficiency as a pilot.
The pod made a gentle touchdown a few short yards from the crewmembers. The hijackers looked to Tunnal who offered a reluctant nod. The prisoners were ushered to their feet by their captors and practically shoved into the pod.
Dern accessed a private link. “Alita, as soon as the crew are onboard and secured I need you to get out of here at maximum acceleration.”
“I’ll push this thing as hard as I can,” Alita replied.
The last crew person stepped inside the pod and its hatch hummed shut. A few seconds later, the small craft shot into the air at full power.
Hooper tapped his subdermal. “Open fire, open fire!”
Turrets on half the TVVs redirected on the fleeing evac pod and spat searing bursts of tungsten shells. Flocks of rockets followed, screaming in pursuit of the pod like a horde of rabid insects.
Alita wrenched the control lever, forcing the pod into a tight swerve that it barely possessed the tolerances to withstand. The maneuver enabled her to avoid a cluster of rockets. Fortunately, the rockets were dumb munitions so she didn’t have to worry about shaking target locks. Tungten shells were a different matter, being far more numerous.
The smaller projectiles peppered the pod’s hull, striking seven crew members. Three died instantly as shells turned their bodies to bloody tatters.
A shell swished inches past Alita’s head, exiting through the window just left of her view. Alita tried to gain altitude, but the control lever seized up. Damage alarms clamored and the acrid stench of burnt relays filled the pod. Through a spider webbed view Alita saw a rocky plain below give way to a maze of deep canyons. The pod was going down, and she struggled mightily to control its descent…
Space.Com: First Trailer for Sci-Fi Thriller 'Europa Report' Unveiled
Man of Steel: GlyphCreator.ManofSteel.com
Since I reposted for mom...Happy Father's Day Pop. (Chief)
First conceive of a story bigger than any other story about white and black America previously written. Set it in an alternative present so that the actions, characters and story line are all as plausible a reality as the world we live in today.
Next, populate the story with characters as completely realistic as possible; characters we know as friends and family in our own lives.
Finally, craft a story so compelling, so realistic that readers need do little to suspend disbelief, to become so completely absorbed in the story that the events they read about are as real as those they see in the news or read about in print or online.
The Darkside Universe is an alternate past, present and future history where four black high school students, whose bond is closer than that of family, turn a chance discovery in the physics of gravity into the most closely held secret in the history of man. These four, along with a number of like-minded recruits along the way, build earth’s first interplanetary spacecraft, travel to the moon prior to NASA’s expeditions, and create a hidden colony on its backside.
Discovery is, at its heart, a mystery. How did the FBI overlook over two thousand missing African Americans for over four decades? How did these four friends acquire the technical expertise to design, build and launch the most advanced spacecraft in history? And finally, how did they keep their secret in the midst of recruiting several thousand like-minded Blacks to join in their adventure?
This is the basis for the seven volume Darkside Universe, two trilogies and a concluding seventh volume that tells a story as real as the lives we’re all leading right now.
The final question asked by the Darkside Universe is: if you were offered the opportunity to leave Earth and immigrate to the moon to live with the most advanced technology and medical care in the known universe, but were forbidden to tell anyone of your plans including family, you would just disappear from your daily life, would you go and live in this extraordinary all Black community?
06/16/2013
By Keith D. Young
I was born in 1976 and outside of “Blaxploitation” movies, there were no African American action or science fiction stars. My favorite movies included Tron, Superman, The Last Star Fighter, and Dune. The heroes in those movies had super powers, super intelligence, and had to dig deep to overcome extra-ordinarily difficult situations, often at great personal cost. It is worth noting here that the stars of these movies were all Caucasian males, and none of them looked like me. Hell, in most of the movies with a futuristic theme there was not even a Black person cast as an extra! As if, as Richard Pryor so eloquently put it, white people were not expecting us to be in the future.
It is no secret that many action, fantasy and science fiction movies contain ancient magical and mythological elements incorporated into the fabric of their stories; to see titans, gods, goddesses and fairies as characters in modern day cinema is a fairly commonplace occurrence – with one caveat, these characters almost never appear in movies written or directed by Blacks, or with an all Black cast.
When it comes to Black cinema we have few choices for our movie going pleasure. We have comedies, action comedies, the all important “Jesus Will Fix It” film and “Hot Ghetto Mess Drama,” (usually not the good kind), and last but not least is the “Catharsis Drama” – movies about profound suffering and abuse and how the characters where able to somehow carry on after being both victimized and traumatized. Few Black writers explore the realm of science fiction, fantasy, or create movies with a magical or mythological theme.
To add levels of depth and subtle complexity to their stories, adept writers and directors are able to use the archetypical and symbolic elements of the heroes and heroines of ancient mythological stories and folk and fairy tales. Many times these elements are used so skillfully as to be hardly recognized by the majority of the movie going public, but to the trained eye, these elements are obvious. However it does take a study of classical literature, world mythology and symbology in order to use these elements with any level of effectiveness. Study that many burgeoning African American film makers seem all too willing to ignore in their movie making process, as these elements are often sorely lacking in the plots and storylines of Black cinema.
But it seems like all that is changing with Will and Jaden Smith’s Sci-Fi epic “After Earth”. The After Earth screenplay was written by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan, with the story by Will Smith, tells the type of story that Black entertainment hasn’t seen the likes of in a very, very long time.
Critics dislike this movie because they know what Mr. Smith is trying to accomplish with this type of movie, and they don’t like it. While Smith’s traditional audience may be slow to co-sign this movie for two reasons, one is they are not used to seeing African Americans play these types of roles, (although they will pay top dollar to watch Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Keanu Reaves play these roles over and over again,) and two, they don’t really understand the themes portrayed in this movie due to the fact that as a culture, we were stripped of our initiatory practices and our stories, and as a result we are used to seeing these types of roles played by White or Asian actors and actresses. Our legends and folklore have been demonized through religion and western culture, and so it seems we shun the magical and fantastical images of ourselves as sorcerers, demigods and heroes.
Below I will outline various elements of the movie “After Earth” that make this movie worth seeing over and over again. Fathers, if you have been looking for a movie to take your sons to that will help you to begin a profound conversation about rites of passage and growing into a man, you’ll want to check this out.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!! – We are going to be discussing the story and plotline from this movie and by doing so parts of the actual story are going to be revealed. If you don’t want to spoil the movie before you’ve seen it, STOP NOW, and then come back after you’ve seen it to participate in this analysis.
Let’s begin by taking a look at the theme of initiation that runs throughout “After Earth”.
Initiation was important in indigenous tribes because it was a system by which the young boys and girls of a given culture or tribe were guided through in order to educate, prepare and move them through the phase of childhood into adulthood and all the attendant rites and responsibilities which adulthood entailed.
Initiation always begins with education and training, and in the movie we begin with the main character training with his military academy class. Readers will take note that cadets in the military go through a process of initiation designed to strip them of their life as a civilian to remold them as a soldier, and make no mistake, this system of initiation was taken from the ancient indigenous cultures of Africa and passed down through other cultures and societies throughout the world.
Training involves physical and mental exercise and tests designed to give initiates/cadets control over their bodies, their emotions and their minds.
It is at this point in the movie that we find that young Kitai, while exhibiting impressive physical abilities is lacking in emotional and mental control, issues which he will be forced to deal with later on in the movie.
Below is an outline of initiatory steps as experienced by the ancients and portrayed in “After Earth”
It is worth noting here that Kitai failed his first encounter with danger (the monkeys)spectacularly! His Father told him to take control of his Power and watch what he creates. Kitai could not control his fear and anxiety and thus created a scenario where his life was in danger and forcing him to flee from the confrontation he created out of fear. In initiation, this is to be expected. The initiate must fail in order to understand what can result from recklessness and unchecked fear.
This same scenario played itself out in the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke was sent into the "Cave of Darkness" by Yoda. Luke took FEAR into the cave with him and was confronted by it in the form of his Father, Darth Vader – though this Vader was purely a creation of Luke’s fearful thoughts.
The makers of “After Earth” also make use of archetypes to help them tell their story. According to the Concise Encyclopedia an “archetype” is “Primordial image, character, or pattern of circumstances that recurs throughout literature and thought consistently enough to be considered universal. Literary critics adopted the term from Carl Gustav Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. Because archetypes originate in pre-logical thought, they are held to evoke startlingly similar feelings in reader and author. Examples of archetypal symbols include the snake, whale, eagle, and vulture. An archetypal theme is the passage from innocence to experience; archetypal characters include the blood brother, rebel, wise grandparent, and prostitute with a heart of gold.”
Some of the archetypes that “After Earth” makes use of include, the “Father,” wise and valiant, yet fundamentally separated from his son, due to some perceived weakness or character flaw within the Son. The Son has let his Father down in a profound way, which has caused emotional and physical detachment.
The archetype of the "Son/Sun" in movies has the son following in his Father’s footsteps, while at the same time trying to make his own mark. He loves his Father but is resentful of him because he knows that he has fallen short of his Father’s expectations and/or achievements and he yearns to be like his Father and even to surpass him, in order to gain his love and respect. It is the Son’s job ultimately to redeem or save his Father, which makes him a suitable replacement for his Father, and which earns him the right to become a Father in his own right.
The steps that the Father and Son archetype takes in the movie “After Earth” are listed below.
Every hero story you have ever read or saw played out on the silver screen is based on the mythos of Heru. Heru was an ancient African deity or Neter (force or aspect of nature) and the template for all good kings. You can read about his exploits in “The Passion of Osiris (Ausar)” and “A Tale of Two Brothers”. These tales come down to us from the land of ancient Kemet, now called Egypt.
In the myth Heru’s Father Ausar (Osiris) is betrayed and murdered by his jealous brother Set. Ausar is resurrected as the spiritual ruler of the underworld or afterlife. As a ruler, he is perpetually made to sit on a throne and cast his judgment on those who have recently passed on. [This is shown symbolically as Kitai’s Father Cipher was stuck in the chair inside the ship and using the ships camera’s (spiritual eyes) and the comm. Link (spiritual communication) to watch over and provide guidance to Kitai]
This throne motif is important as it was foreshadowed in After Earth by the soldier in the wheelchair, who approached the General and his Son. Upon approaching the General, the soldier declared that the General had saved his life and asked to be “stood up,” or in Biblical terms, “made upright”, by his companions so that he could make a proper salute to his hero (savior). This theme would play itself out again as the General would make the request “stand me up”, so that he could salute his son. This symbol represents the son redeeming or saving his Father.
Getting back to the mythos of Heru… after his father Ausar (Osiris) is murdered and his brother takes over the kingdom of Kemet, it becomes the mission of Heru and is Mother Auset (Isis) to get Heru on the throne as the rightful ruler of the land. Heru has to go through years of training under the auspices of his Mother Auset, His Aunt Nebhet (Nephtys) and the diminutive Bes who is the Neter of child birth, happiness and war. It is Bes who trains Heru to be a warrior. In the movie Star Wars Yoda played the part of the trainer (Bes) to Luke Skywalker (Heru).
The symbol of Heru was the Hawk. He was often depicted with wings and having the head or mask of a hawk. In the movie After Earth we see the relationship of the Hero to the Hawk in the “Leap of Faith” sequence where the hawk chases Kitai down and then carries him off to her nest to be food for her baby chicks. Kitai awakes while being nibbled on by the newborn chicks, but finds that the hawk nest is under attack by feline predators intent on eating the chicks. Kitai helps the hawk to defend the nest but fails to keep the predators from killing all of the baby birds.
The hawk mourns the loss of her baby chicks with a screech of rage and begins to follow Kitai in the air, which seems menacing in the beginning, but we find out later that the Hawk has bonded with Kitai and she later drags him to safety and protects him from the cold by using her own body heat to keep him from freezing. This is an obvious symbol of Kitai’s mythic relationship to Heru the Neter** of the Sun and the Sky… the original sky – walker.
After many contentious battles and adventures, Heru, with the help of his Mother would go on to gain rulership of the land of Kemet (Egypt) and thereby redeem his Father Ausar (Osirus).
It is important that you know that the story of Ausar (Osiris) and Heru (Horus) has been told and retold across the world and can be found in many variations, the names and characters and even some of the circumstances may change, but the root of the story remains the same. It is the duty of the Son to succeed his Father as ruler of the land or EARTH, but only AFTER he has proven himself worthy to do so. So you can see that the movie After Earth has a lot more depth to it than meets the casual eye.
There are many other examples of the mythological and archetypal symbolism that are incorporated into the movie After Earth that I was not able to touch on like the Mother as the “Queen of Heaven,” or the Sister as the “Spiritual Guardian” of her Brother. This movie is chock full of all the elements that make a great story and I for one feel that the story of After Earth was masterfully told. I’m looking forward to more of this type of movie from not only Will Smith and crew, but from other Black film-makers as well.
*Also known as Horus, Heru wan an ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) Neter (Deity) of the Sun and Sky, his symbol was the hawk. Heru was often depicted with the head of a hawk and the body of a man.
**Kitai’s Father Cipher being trapped in the innards of a spaceship evokes the symbolism of Jonah in the belly of the fish as well as the Ausarian (Osiris) mythos of Ausar sitting on a throne and providing spiritual guidance to Heru from the spirit world.
*** Neter means aspect of nature or divine nature. Neter has been translated as God and Goddess.
All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 Keith D. Young | www.AfroPerspectives.com
Udo and the Seeds of Change is a Children's book written and illustrated by Daniel Ebhodaghe. It's his first attempt at getting published, but I really liked the story so here it is. You can find out more about it here on Amazon.com
Finally Launched my 400 page Graphic novel and you get it here on Drivethrucomics!!!
I think this TED presentation has the kernel of a great story:
Theo Jansen: An Artist Creates A New Lifeform
"In my talk, I mentioned that the Strandbeest would develop a digital brain. But it turns out that working with an analogue brain is much simpler and weighs far less. The "brain" of the animal, which is actually a digital step counter, works -- but is a lot of work to make, and it uses up extra walking units simply to carry the brain itself."
The computational feat has been carried out by Jian-Wei Pan and colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Toronto and the National University of Singapore, who used a quantum algorithm created in 2009 by Aram Harrow, Avinatan Hassidim and Seth Lloyd. For simple systems of linear equations, Harrow and colleagues showed that their algorithm can be exponentially faster than the best solving methods that use a classical computer. One important caveat, however, is that the algorithm does not find an exact solution, but only the most likely answer.
Happy FriYay, MOSS fans!
READER REVIEWS FOR AMAZON WANTED: If you've finished reading part I of Murder on Second Street, please do me a favor and head on over to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9X5T6A and leave a review. Help this Sy Sanford series reach the masses, and get ready for part II (release date is July 1).
Happy Father's Day weekend!!!
The pilot gripped the control levers as if they were attached to a lifeline. Air friction rocked the ship as it knifed into rapid deceleration. Bridge crew members were strapped to their chairs…except the captain, whose chair was occupied by Tunnal. The other hijackers held onto whatever they could to maintain their balance through the heavy jostling of a high-speed descent.
“We’re losing the central turbine,” announced the pilot.
“Compensate!” The captain held on tight to the back of his chair while Tunnal looked on stone-faced.
“32 percent deceleration,” said the engineer. “Increasing reverse boosters.”
“Initiate flank attitude thrusts,” ordered the captain. “That should aid our decel.”
Alita sat at the astrogation station observing the hijackers. She noticed how focused they were on the forward display screen, their faces wrought with trepidation. Her gaze slid to the bridge exit less than twelve feet from where she sat.
“Central turbine output is reducing.” The engineer paused to check a reading. “Damn! It’s shutting down…”
The ship took a gut churning dip, knocking most of the hijackers off their feet.
Alita seized her opportunity. She quickly unstrapped herself and shot out of her chair toward the exit. The door slid open and shut behind her.
One of the hijackers tried to go after her, but was upended by the ship’s wobbly motion.
“Forget about her,” Tunnal ordered the hijackers, forestalling their pursuit. “She’s on borrowed time.”
Alita made her way to the engine room, deftly maintaining her footing on a quaking ship. As she advanced further into the room a huge hole in the bulkhead brought her up short. The floor was littered with debris and smoke spiraled from a pair of severely damaged generators. Half the engine room lay in ruin.
Alita looked around, moving tentatively toward the hole. Was Dern down here?
A faint noise caught her ear. She whirled about, finding herself in the shadow of a towering figure in scorched armor. A mirrored faceplate retracted, revealing a familiar dark skinned visage.
“Dern…thank God!” She brushed over his armor. “What happened to you?”
Dern placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Let’s just say I was on the wrong end of a very powerful explosive. Are you all right? How’d you get away?”
Alita grinned in spite of herself. “I ran…as fast as I could.” Horror displaced the grin. “Dern, this Tunnal is an animal…a murderer. He killed our comm officer. Shot him down like it was nothing!”
“They’re all murderers,” Dern stated harshly. “The passengers are dead. They were massacred.”
Alita stepped back, her mouth and eyes agape. “No…”
An alarm blared from a status board above the nearest generator. Alita looked up at the board, skimming its data. “We’ve got less than five minutes of airborne time. It might be a hard landing!”
“Then we need to get you to safety.” Dern lifted the woman and draped her over his shoulder.
“Wait! Where are we going?”
“The stasis level. The tubes are crash fortified. I’m putting you in one.”
“What about you?”
Dern moved swiftly through the hole in the bulkhead and sprinted toward the cargo section exit. “I’m sure I’ll be able to withstand a hard landing.”
Alita gasped when she saw the stasis level corridor clogged with bodies. “Put me down!
Dern zeroed in on the first stasis room. “No time.”
“Put me down,” the technician repeated insistently.
The former SD soldier huffed impatiently but acceded to Alita’s request.
She slid off his shoulder and eyed the corpses around her in stunned, horrified silence. “I thought we left this behind.” Alita struggled to hold down her bile.
“I did too,” Dern said soberly. He tapped her elbow. “Come on, we’ve got to get you in a tube.”
Alita started forward, but paused. She bent and plucked an RI4 rifle from the cold, grip of a dead hijacker. She looked up at Dern with a sordid gleam in her eye. “Been a while since I held one of these. I’m going to enjoy this reunion.”
The sleeper ship screamed past a jagged mountain peak, avoiding a collision by inches.
That was expert maneuvering on the pilot’s part. The rest lay in the hands of fate as the ship lost power and fell into a perilous glide toward a rocky valley. It touched the ground, bouncing once, twice then sliding a half mile, dredging up a gusher of dirt and gravel, pulverizing rock outcroppings in its path. Finally it slowed to a grinding halt.
The crew faired well enough in the landing since they were strapped into chairs. A few hijackers were sprawled on the deck, having suffered minor injuries from falls or collisions. The captain held tight as he could to his chair, almost losing his grip on the ship’s second bounce. He let go, massaging a right that felt as if it had been pulled from its socket and reattached.
Tunnal released the chair straps holding him in place and rose. “Not a bad landing,” he remarked to the pilot in a tone more mocking than complimentary. To the engineer: “What’s the status? How banged up is this bucket?”
The engineer examined damage readings on his console screen. “Four generators and two turbines are down. Five coils, fractured…”
The hijack leader waved a hand impatiently. “I don’t need details just tell me if the ship can be fixed.”
The engineer shrugged. “It’ll take time since this planet likely lacks the fully equipped maintenance facility a ship of this class requires. I’ll need spare parts assembled to specs.”
“Routh’s maintenance accommodations may not be first class,” said Tunnal. “But the man running it’ll have whatever you need to make decent repairs.” The forward display caught his attention. “Speaking of which…”
Twenty-five Terrain Variable Vehicles sped toward the downed space vessel, whipping up voluminous clouds of dust in their wake. TVVs were large, thickly armored personnel transports, equipped with forward turrets, and flank mounted rocket pods. These were essentially discard vehicles, distributed throughout the colonies after their replacement by upgrades. They were not intended for illegal settlements. And yet, here they were, in the hands of a crime lord with the resources and tenacity to acquire the very best hardware that he possibly could.
Tunnal smiled admiringly. That’s why he enjoyed doing business with Hooper. And with Hooper’s added muscle, this Dern Lowtower’s chances of survival just decreased drastically, armor or no armor.
Tunnal turned to the engineer. “Get your techs together and get started on the repairs.”
The captain stepped in front of Tunnal, anger radiating from his eyes. “We have done what you wanted, yet the price we paid for our cooperation resulted in the death of my officer, a good man. The very least you can do is release us immediately so we can figure out a way to reach our original destination.”
Tunnal’s arm whipped out with expert precision, delivering a vicious chop to the side of the captain’s head.
The captain stumbled sideways, plopping on the deck when he tripped over his feet.
Several outraged crew members rose from their chairs, but guns thrust in their faces curtailed further movement.
The hijack leader stood over the groggy captain. “The passengers are dead, Captain. So don’t you dare presume to make demands of me. I’m already pissed off about the condition of this ship. Maybe I’ll let you and your miserable crew live after I have this Lowtower’s head in my clutches. If that be the case then you will spend the rest of your lives as Hooper’s slaves. That may or may not be a merciful outcome for you. Either way you’ll be in no position to report us to Coalition authorities.”
The shock in the captain’s eyes appeared to have accelerated his recovery from Tunnal’s abuse. “You killed the passengers?”
“End of discussion,” Tunnel growled, pointing his Viper at the captain’s head. “Open the emergency exit doors. We’re all leaving, except the engineer and his techs.”
“What about Lowtower?” Welch queried with bloodthirsty relish.
“Hooper’s people will handle him. And we’re going to help.”
One way to think of light is as a field in space. In transformation optics, this field can be stretched and squeezed like a rubber sheet when it passes through certain types of material. The goal is to engineer this material so that it stretches the sheet around regions of space and so make them invisible.
The approach developed by Jeng Yi and Ray-Kuang is mathematically identical to this. But instead of starting with Maxwell’s equations, they start with the Schrodinger equation which governs the probability of an object being present in a region of space.
Their idea is to treat this probability field like a rubber sheet that can be stretched and squeezed. So the goal in designing a quantum invisibility cloak is to stretch this sheet around a region of space so that the probability of existing inside it is zero. In effect, they’re designing a cloak that shields its contents from reality.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke
Physics arXiv:
Hide The Interior Region of Core-Shell Nanoparticles With Quantum Invisible Cloaks
Space.com: Rover Finds New Evidence That Ancient Mars Was Habitable
I've not written much since January of this year. The only writing that I've been doing is for my sim. I'm trying to change that. Not sure what to write but I want to get something out; if I ever plan on finish my stories (even one of them) I need to be more diligent.
Get's kind of lively...
From: Moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com
Every so often, we come across works that are incomplete but compelling. Some combination of tone, world, and voice conspires to make us want to know more. However, due to deadlines, budgets and other commitments, some concepts get left to wither. Short Visual Fiction posts attempt to reconcile some of the art work we have laying around with some text that never went any where.
-The Bear-Men of Kodiac Island:
Jonah pulled the handle. As he did, orange flames shot from the top of the central stack. The quilted frame of the Aeypher expanded, pulling the guide line tight.
"More!" Captain Bluenose shouted from behind the giant steering gear. "We need more altitude if we are to catch the Prince of Crystal River."
Jonah took the iron handle and yanked with both hands, laughing as he did. Slowly, the Aeypher began to rise.
Below them, in the wilds of Kodiac Island, the Bear-Men called in loud grunts and hollers.
"The Bear-Men hold no love of the Prince!", Bluenose called through the wind.
"Why?" Jonah asked as he peered over the side railing. Below the wisps of sooty smoke wafted from the Wigwams of the Bear-Men.
"The Prince and the Bear-Men both love the Salmon of the Crystal River. The Prince pays a handsome price for any fish brought to his cooks. Knowing his appetite, the Red Catchers swarm the River and catch as much as they can. This leaves the Bear-Men very hungry. Very hungry indeed."
"Hungry enough to eat people?" Jonah stepped back from the abyss. A breeze caught his school coat and flung his tartan tie around his neck like a scarf.
"Silly boy!", tall Captain Bluenose laughed as he tucked long braids under the Gold trimmed Tri-corner hat; "Bear-Men will always eat a tasty man...or boy...hungry or not."
Jonah stared, trying to decipher if the statement held a hidden jest. If not, there was a lot he had to learn about being a Pirate of the Western Sky.
-An excerpt and artwork from the unfinished and unloved "Pirates of the Western Sky" by Grant Chambers - If you want more "Short Visual Fiction" - drop us a line.
