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.
Not mad at you, though...
R&D: Record-breaking high-energy particles detected by telescope buried in Antarctic
I find most of my cable provided music channels to be mostly worthless. So using the excellent technology provided by WorldTV -- unless you can do your own coding which I can't, yet -- I created two channels. The channels are called "The Acid Jazz Channel" and "More Acid Jazz". I really think this is the personalized television of the future. I also think the channel is politically conscious, always nice. You can embed the channel anywhere. So here it is:
If you like some trad jazz, mostly acid jazz, some alt rock and left wing politics, then its the best music channel ever. There's also a steady diet of science fiction and political trailers. I'm curious about what people here think. Related: You can find my sites embedded here and here just in case the embed here doesn't work. More Related: The Acid Jazz Channel has 1000 videos in full rotation. Every single video I've ever played is at the More Acid Jazz channel which has around 5000 videos. So if you need something to watch for the rest of your life...The theory behind the channel is that you should always find something new to listen to. You can find the "More Acid Jazz" embed here. Not Related: Still upset about Gidas Flowers and the somewhat sloppy work of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC).
A little history is helpful. The drone as we know it today was the brainchild of John Stuart Foster Jr., a nuclear physicist, former head of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (then called the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory), and—in 1971, when the idea occurred to him—the director of defense research and engineering, the top scientific post in the Pentagon. Foster was a longtime model-airplane enthusiast, and one day he realized that his hobby could make for a new kind of weapon. His idea: take an unmanned, remote-controlled airplane, strap a camera to its belly, and fly it over enemy targets to snap pictures or shoot film; if possible, load it with a bomb and destroy the targets, too.
Two years later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) built two prototypes based on Foster’s concept, dubbed Praeire and Calere. Weighing 75 pounds and powered by a modified lawn-mower engine, each vehicle could stay aloft for two hours while hoisting a 28-pound payload.
The opportunity to elevate oneself from lower to at least middle class - somewhere mid-trunk beneath social canopy, but still shadow - is offered as well as to "see the world" by all major branches of the services. The trick for that opportunity is to survive your deployment, and even your garrison service in the company of fellow members with limbs attached, perhaps some educational/vocational training and without sexual or other assault; harassment or PTSD. All branches are now embroiled in an in a record increase of sexual assault cases - on men as well as women - and the lack of accountability/prosecution by higher ups on perpetrators, the same higher-ups from the "good old boys" club often rendering ham-fist, half-witted pardons to assailants and no help of recovery for victims.
Manifest destiny: 1.historical expansionist doctrine: the doctrine or belief prevalent in the 19th century that the United States had the God-given right to expand into and possess the whole of the North American continent.
We are children of this sense of destiny/entitlement (if ever truly used in its correct application), and a reflection of this mechanized distancing through technology of mankind from itself.
Childhood as I recall it, with imagination creating my own space battles, "rattle snake eggs" with rubber bands, paperclips and an envelop; origami figurines; rubber band guns with clothes pins, stick ball and snow ball fights now kowtow to $25 - 50 video game programs with more than a million players online. Babies and Toys-R-Us makes children a consumer commodity after clearing placenta. Hours are spent by young people to master the next level while education is transformed into meaningless "teach-to-the-test" Pavlov drivel: it makes for an orderly society [of sorts] without critical thinking subjects that will question authority; the enjoyment of creativity for its own sake or expressive insight. Thus, we breed bottom-line capitalists at best; sociopaths at worst.
It is an interesting title by Mike Wall (Space.com), and I like how he makes his case, but what would we be taking with us (in US) to space if successful? Will our drones/death stars follow; the arrogance of Manifest Destiny to the stars; will we cast the natives we find to their asteroid belt reservations; see the universe as "free-fire zone"? I recall some advice a noted martial artist friend gave another: "you fight like a bull. That's OK, until you run into a bigger bull." What if the bigger alien bull sees us as hostile, inconsequential...or, as food?
And even more soberly: With growing inequality, gynophobia, xenophobia, is the silence not golden from space, but the darker conclusion to the Drake Equation: the aliens did not survive themselves, let alone invaders? What if they concluded their third world war, and are fighting their fourth (if survived) fulfilling Einstein's surmise: "with sticks and stones"?
Maybe before warp drive, we need to tackle our materialism and conflict resolution skills.
Technology Review: The World as Free-Fire Zone
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| Graphene SEP |
The international system of units (SI) is made up of seven base units, which are the metre, kilogram, second, kelvin, ampere, mole and candela. The ampere, volt and ohm are the three fundamental units of electricity.
Ideally, a new definition of the ampere would be based on an extremely accurate source of electric current, capable of delivering one electron at a time. A single-electron pump (SEP) could be ideal in this respect because it produces a flow of individual electrons by shuttling them into a quantum dot and emitting them precisely one at a time. A good SEP also pumps the electrons quickly, so a sufficiently large current is generated.
Until recently, two types of SEP were promising contenders: tunable barrier pumps made from semiconductors, which are fast, and so-called hybrid turnstiles made from superconductors, which can be mounted in parallel to make the output current larger. Although the most accurate, a third type of pump usually made from metallic islands is too slow for making a practical current standard, but the UK researchers have now improved its performance by making it from graphene, which is a semi-metal. Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick that has a honeycomb lattice structure.
"Our experiments have shown that graphene is ideal for pumping large currents and its 2D crystal structure is just what is needed to make electrons pass through the SEP quickly," team leader Malcolm Connolly told physicsworld.com. The electron flow can reach near-gigahertz frequencies, very close to what is needed to create a current standard, he added.
If it proves accurate enough, the SEP could also help close the "quantum metrological triangle", which relates current, voltage and resistance. Voltage can be measured using the AC Josephson effect, while resistance can be related through the quantum Hall effect. Both these relationships include the same two fundamental constants – Planck’s constant, h, and the charge on the electron, e. A metrological current pump would allow physicists to directly relate current to frequency, and thus test whether e and h are as universal as we think.
Physics World: Redefining the ampere with the help of graphene?
SETTING FOR MURDER ON SECOND STREET: So where is Jackson Ward and what's its link to American History?
"Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood is located on the northern edge of the downtown district. It was originally built by European immigrants attracted to and made prosperous by Richmond's status as a central retail hub. Freed slaves began moving into the neighborhood during Reconstruction, and by 1920 Jackson Ward was one of the most active and well-known centers of African-American life in the country.
Jackson Ward hosted a thriving entertainment district centered on the famed Hippodrome theatre. Among the names that appeared regularly were Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Richmond's own Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. The neighborhood was the home of a number of large and well-known African-American churches, including the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, founded by famous orator John Jasper. It also hosted a strong retail and business community in which Maggie L. Walker became the first woman in America to found and lead a bank in the United States when she opened the St. Luke Penny Savings. Jackson Ward was also the home and headquarters for civil rights advocate John Mitchell, Jr., editor of the Richmond Planet, which crusaded against the discrimination and persecution of African-Americans in the South."
To learn more about Jackson Ward in Richmond, VA, visit http://dig.library.vcu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/jwh. Or, order your very own piece of African American and America History with Murder on Second Street, part 1 (see additional posts for order link).
Hugens saw something…or thought he did twenty yards ahead. Shelves stacked with bags and crates extended as high as thirty feet. Hugens opened up, flaying shelves and everything on them in a fiery torrent of flechettes.
Chain and Josik directed their rifles in the same direction, joining their fire to Hugens’.
“He’s over there somewhere!” Hugens shouted. He ran toward the first aisle.
Josik followed, but Chain hung back. “You sure you’re not chasing shadows?”
“Shadows my ass!” Hugens retorted, infused with fresh courage. “I swear to the devil himself I’ll turn the bastard into one before this day is…”
A beam of deadly coherent light ripped from the darkness of the aisle, slicing through Hugens’ left side. His body burst into flame like dry kindling touched by fire. A second light beam ripped what was left of him apart in a blinding explosion.
“Before this day is done, to complete your sentence,” Dern taunted, briefly gazing at pieces of the dead criminal before turning his HIE on the second hijacker to dart into view.
A blaze of plasma surged from the bracelet, torching the man just as his finger depressed the RI4’s trigger. A spray of flachettes sparked across the ceiling before the hijacker’s melting weapon tumbled out of his grasp
Chain didn’t bother to stick around to see what turned her comrades into bonfires. She hurled the CX charge and sprinted on panic-fueled legs out of the cargo section.
Dern leapt out of the aisle in time to spot the 3rd hijacker racing for the exit. His suit’s warning censor flagged the airborne explosive. He caught a glimpse of the object and attempted to dive out of its path. The CX exploded and Dern absorbed its impact like a giant mallet to the body.
A CX charge was designed to breach the hardest material through the rapid release of hyper-condensed pressure. Limited strictly to military use because of its sheer devastating output, a CX had no business in the hands of a criminal. The sleeper ship possessed none of the external or internal impregnability of a military vessel; which is why it was so easy for the CX blast to punch through the bulkhead like a boulder through glass. Dern was pulled into a flaming pressure current that torpedoed him through a blast-gouged aperture into the adjoining engine room.
Hot glowing agony afflicted Dern when he collided with a thruster control generator, putting a deep dent in its titanium-layered surface. There was no specific area of discomfort he could pinpoint. The pain was all over, smothering him in a cruel throb. Dern heaved himself out of the dent and dropped to his knees, waiting for a fresh infusion of Flare to melt away the pain. In seconds, he felt refreshed and than ready to resume the fight.
The floor tilted sharply beneath his feet, toppling him off balance. Again, he crashed into the generator.
Status boards were mounted on every major piece of equipment in the engine room.
Dern didn’t need to check the data on any of those boards to tell him that the ship was going down.
Tunnal listened to Chain’s report after the woman’s near frantic arrival on the bridge.
Two more of his people dead! Whether Tunnal was aware of it or not, he bore an unsettling resemblance to a rabid wolf with his bared teeth and wide-eyed stare.
“Captain,” the pilot called out. “Controls are sluggish. I won’t be able to keep us in the in the air for long.”
“Generator conduits are bleeding fuel at a dangerously rapid rate,” Said the engineer. “If we don’t land within the next fifteen minutes we will definitely crash. What the hell is going on?”
“We’ve got a hero running around on this ship killing my people, that’s what’s going on.” Tunnal gazed coldly at captain. “Someone is going to tell who I’m dealing with or I’m going to be extremely upset.”
The captain spread his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Mr…Tunnel…I…”
Tunnal unholstered his Viper, walked over to a communications officer and shot the man in the back of the head. The officer slumped forward, blood and brain matter spilling out of a massive exit wound in his forehead, pooling on his console.
Bridge crew members cowered in terror at their stations. The captain stared at his fallen subordinate, pale with shock.
“I want answers!” Tunnal yelled, holding up his pistol. “Or I’ll be forced to express my displeasure a second time.”
“Lowtower, damn you,” said Alita. “His name is Dern Lowtower. He’s former SD.”
Tunnal lowered his weapon, pinning Alita with a baleful gaze. “Special Deployment?”
Mention of the Coalition’s ultra elite soldiers had a sudden and very sobering effect on the hijackers. They tightened their grips on their weapons as if expecting this Lowtower apparition to come bursting on the bridge at any second.
“What is he doing on this ship?” Tunnal asked.
“He accepted a job on Ceres 3 as a settlement patrol officer.”
“Does he have a suit?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crap!” The big hijacker, Welch, disputed. “You said former. How can he have a suit if he ain’t SD anymore?”
“Ex SDs are allowed to keep their suits if they go into a law enforcement capacity,” Alita explained. “But the suits are drastically reduced in capability to fit within a civilian context. His suit has been stripped of battle mode.”
Tunnal rubbed his chin. “Battle mode. Now that’s a sight to see.” He turned to Welch. “I served on Yuttrol during the Ish Insurgency. My brigade was tasked with taking out this huge ass mobile artillery platform. We launched so many attacks against that thing I lost count. Armored units were decimated, aerial bombardment couldn’t put a dent in the thing. A thousand troops, scrubbed out of existence in the first half hour of the first assault. Thousands more in the second and third. I don’t know how I survived that meat grinder.” Tunnal gave a twisted, humorless grin. “Somebody eventually came to their senses and sent in the SDs. Twenty of them. Twenty. They got inside the platform, eliminated the operators and disabled it in less than an hour. That’s Battle Mode for you.”
“But like she said, Boss,” Welch cut in, pointing at Alita. “He don’t have Battle Mode. He’s weak.”
“SDs are never weak,” Alita countered with a defiant edge. “Even without their armor.”
“But I get Welch’s point,” said the hijack leader. He looked at Alita. “Your friend may be formidable, but without a full suit, he’s not what he was.” He turned to Chain. “Do you think the CX did any damage to him?”
Chain lowered her eyes as if embarrassed. “I don’t know…I didn’t check.”
“That’s all right.” Tunnal thought for a second. “Captain, open a channel to Routh.”
The captain looked at the body of his communication officer. Since he had no backup officer to fill that capacity, he went to the blood smeared console and performed the task himself.
“What are we going to do, Boss?” Asked Welch with a jittery gaze.
“We’re going to make Hooper earn this ship.”
Read more: Towards an African telescope network - SouthAfrica.info
October 1, 1929. The body of Annie Hilks is found floating in the James River in Richmond, VA. The police don't pay much attention to it; it's just another Negro woman who probably took her own life. But within two weeks, the bodies of three more Negro women are found in various locations throughout Jackson Ward, a prominent Negro community in the City. This is bad for business, and with no other choice left to them, the community reaches out to Sy Sanford to solve the murders. Sy has three BIG problems: he's returned from the Great War with haunting nightmares, he blacks out periodically from drinking and he's in love with his beautiful, but physically abused married secretary, Lena Johnson. Reluctantly, Sy takes the case because, well, he needs the money. But can he find the killer in time to save Jackson Ward and himself?
Part 1 of this six part novel is now available as an E-book at http://www.lulu.com/shop/rebekah-l-pierce/murder-on-second-street-the-jackson-ward-murders-part-1/ebook/product-21048846.html;jsessionid=576F95DACB69ABE31955ECBD75064D25?mid=social_facebook_pubsharefb. Grab your copy today.
Science World Report:
Physicists Discover Artificial Magnetic Monopoles: Magnets Redefined
