April, 2025, story

Shock and Awe

The explorer emerged from a “worm hole” in space and began to orbit Earth, undetectable by human technology. Its mission, as programmed by the ancient race that sent it on its journey, was to find, catalogue and, if need be, assist the beings or civilizations that it found. The ship, christened Gamma Five, was a super-computer carrying a minimal biologic crew of three. The race that launched it had a philosophy of peace and benevolence that it wished to share with the younger races that it encountered in the galaxy.

Gamma-Five found a world that was environmentally severely degraded and wracked by discord that had not as yet resulted in the use of nuclear weapons, but it seemed only a matter of time before a desperate country or group might resort to their use which would then rapidly cascade into a planet destroying hell.

The biologic crew was appalled by what they found. To gain an understanding of how these beings, who called themselves humans, arrived at such a point, Gamma-five began a review of recorded human history as well as the vast catalogue of literature and visual entertainment that presented a picture of their beliefs and philosophies. It found that humans had throughout their history always fought and waged wars for domination—individual against individual, clan against clan, tribe against tribe, nation against nation, belief against belief, religion against religion. Gamma Five concluded that if this trend continued, there could be only one outcome—a total destruction of the science and technology-based civilization and a return to the clan level on a severely damaged planet from which point the process would slowly repeat itself.

The biologic aliens, Gammas A, B, and C, discussed this dismal prediction telepathically.

Gamma A asked, “These humans will not survive to attain adulthood if present conditions continue. Should we intervene?”

Gamma B replied, “By our philosophy we must attempt to assist them and change the trajectory of their history. That is also programmed into Gamma-Five’s mission mandate.”

“The will to dominate and conquer seems so ingrained in their nature that I doubt that anything we can offer them as an inducement to change their ways will be enough to convince them,” said Gamma C. “Gamma-Five, from your study of the humans, do you have a comment?”

“I agree with Gamma C,” said Gamma Five. “Even when their sages or prophets preached peace, tolerance, and humanhood, their teachings became quickly subverted by their followers who either tried to force their beliefs on others who did not agree or perverted the meaning of what had been taught to suit selfish purposes.”

“You feel then, Gamma Five, that just showing them that their actions are leading them into disaster would not alter what they are doing?” asked Gamma B, raising a questioning digital tentacle.

“I do,” said Gamma Five. “They have been repeatedly warned of the folly of their actions or inactions by their fellows humans and yet their governing bodies do not listen.”

“Yet we cannot just leave and let them self-destruct,” Gamma A said. “A quandary.”

“Gamma Five, from your study of humans, how could we best help them change course?” asked Gamma B.

“They are a paranoid, suspicious race. Composed of different factions constantly looking to dominate or to avoid being dominated. Perhaps if this trait can be turned from being directed against each other to against a common foe, that might stop their internal strife long enough for them to mature”

“I see,” said Gamma C. “Divert their attention to a threat external to themselves. You mean such as we might represent if we reveal ourselves, given their paranoia!”

“Exactly,” said Gamma Five. “Their popular entertainment has always harbored the possibility of encountering alien life forms and usually the aliens that they encounter are hostile. Further evidence of their underlying nature.”

“But,” said Gamma A, waving a large tentacle for emphasis, “It is against our nature to actually threaten anyone. To defend ourselves if need be, certainly. If we use this tactic, we should appear to be a threat without actually being one.”

“To get their attention and announce our presence, we need to do something awe-inspiring that is totally beyond their understanding; to shock them out of their core beliefs. And that the entire Earth experiences together,” said Gamma B. “Thoughts, Gamma Five?”

——————————————————

And so in July the full moon was suddenly gone for ten minutes all around the Earth that night, replaced by a black hole in the night sky around which the stars still shone. And the next day, the sun suddenly turned black in a blue sky at noon. A message was heard telepathically by all humans: “Greetings Earthlings. The events of last night and today was our way of introducing ourselves to you. We are an ancient race and in our travel through the galaxy we came upon your world, a once Edenic place that you are in the process of destroying. This must stop! We will not reveal ourselves to you at this time, but remember, we will be watching you!”

The explorers hoped that the shock of their arrival and the message that they delivered would unify the humans and they prepared to continue their explorations, leaving behind an observation sentinel.

In the aftermath of this unprecedented event, governments around the world convened to deal with the crisis, even as people prayed and rioted, took to their survival shelters and raided gun shops.

—————————————————————

The president of the United States called an emergency meeting of his cabinet, senior military, and key scientific advisors.

“I’ve declared martial law to cope with the panic and riots,” said the president, “that I’ll lift once we have some answers for the public. First, do these aliens pose an immediate threat to us? General?”

“Not an immediate threat in our opinion,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs answered, “Otherwise they would have just invaded without this magic show. I mean my God, we can’t even detect them! Longer term? We don’t have enough information.”

The vice president said, “I agree. They said ‘at this time.’ So we don’t know what their long term plans are. They also said, ‘we will be watching.’ a warning,an implied threat?”

“NASA has some interesting information that Houston received from the Space Station,” said the president. “John?”

NASA’s head scientist spoke, “At the moment that the sun disappeared from our view, it was still very much visible to the Station. But below them in the atmosphere they saw a shining sun-bright disc that traveled with the Earth’s rotation that would have been the diameter of the sun as seen from the ground.”

The president waited until the murmurs and exclamations died down. “Do you have a hypothesis?”

“Other than whatever was done was done in Earth’s atmosphere, no. The disc instantly disappeared as the sun-block ended. The Station was able to quickly analyze the atmosphere in the area of the disc afterwards and found nothing.”

“Suggestions—anyone?” asked the president.

An atmospheric scientist raise her hand, “Could it be water vapor that was somehow controlled by the aliens to form the disc?”

“How would that work?” the president asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Perhaps a physicist or a chemist could comment.”

A physicist from Cal Tech raised his hand, “If the aliens did not introduce a substance to form the discs, and they used what was present in our atmosphere as the disc material, then water molecules would be the most likely candidate, as my colleague has suggested. To do that is beyond our science, but probably not theirs. The aliens would need to concentrate water molecules to form the disc, and then orient and coordinate each water molecule to reflect light in single direction away from Earth.”

“You’re suggesting that in essence they created a giant mirror,” the president said.

“That could be one explanation of how they did it,” replied the physicist.

After a long pause while this thought sunk in, the Secretary of Defense asked, “ If they are able to do that, could they also form a concave disc that would concentrate the sun’s rays on a single point on earth?”

“Of course I don’t know for certain, but if they can do what they just did, I don’t see why not.”

“So—they could pose a very real threat to us, to all of us,” the Secretary said to the president.

The silence that followed was broken when the Chief of the Space Force mused, “If we could learn that technology we would immediately once more become the most powerful nation on earth. To use the sun to fry or threaten to fry any adversary!”

“Like burning holes in leaves with a magnifying glass when we were kids,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Would it be possible to form a lens as well as a mirror?”

“If the aliens could do the one, it’s highly likely they could do the other,” replied the physicist.

——————————————————————

Other nations were not without capable scientists and ambitious generals who met and arrived at the same analysis. And so the great Space mirror/lens race was on, despite the intentions of the aliens.

March 2025 Story

The Maze

….it’s getting late and i keep running into dead ends. how’d i get into this maze anyhow? the cornstalks are high and closely planted. why can’t i remember? another wrong turn. the dirt is so black, so uneven to walk on. big clods. don’t want to spend the night sleeping in here. the corn rustles. don’t know if there’s something coming through them. wolves? do i play dead if one comes for me? okay, got into a row that seems to be leading somewhere. another dead end! backtrack and turn left. i must have gone out for something. it’s darker. did i turn this way before? should I yell for help? my phone! why didn’t i think of that before. i’ll call sarah so she’ll know i’ll be late. what’s the password? i can’t remember the password. the battery’s almost dead….

Oh, thank God. I woke up just in time. It was just a bad dream. I’m awake but where am I? I must be lying on my back in this white place. Now I remember. The ceiling looks so high above and the walls so far apart. My dream had color—it seemed so frighteningly real. But there’s no color in this place. I can hear activity around me. Soft muffled voices. Wheels rolling by? And there may be people moving out of the corners of my eyes. Why can’t I move my eyes to see them? Am I still dreaming or awake? It must be breakfast time if I just woke up. But I don’t feel hungry. I’ll get up and look around. The back wall keeps receding as I walk towards it and I don’t see a door so how can I get out to see where I am? Guess I’ll go back to bed and just rest….

….where’s that sandwich shop that we went to the last time we were visiting. the pastrami was really piled on. And sauerkraut. i’ll bring it back to the hotel. it was half way down clement street. or claremont? i’m here, but where is it? excuse me mister, but did the tasty sandwich shop move? “it’s now in the mall.” oh it’s in the mall now? thanks. huh, really small door to the mall. and i should have asked where in the mall. there are so many corridors and it’s not very well lit. no direction board. try the middle corridor that looks like there are some food stalls—got colorful awnings. pizza, dim sum, fish and chips, chicago hot dogs, waffle cone ice cream, but no sandwich shop. there’s another door at the end of the lane. up spiral stairs, dark and musty smelling. push open this heavy grey door. now what? just a long hallway with closed sanded glass doors and no signs. where’s a rest room—i need one now. look quickly down the hall. here’s one. it’s not very clean with paper towels on the floor. smells bad. but i’ll use the stainless steel trough. ah, that’s better. back in the hallway. but how do i get out? ask this guy—excuse me but where’s the exit? “you just have to follow the office workers out at quiting time.” thank you. open this metal door and go up more stairs. another heavy grey steel door. up on the roof. a really lush garden here and green grass i should phone sarah that i haven’t found the sandwich shop. wrong number? what’s the right number? try again. wrong number again. try later. great view, the city looks really spread out from up here. all the way to the sea. maybe i can walk back to the hotel….

Such a real dream. Too bad I didn’t find the sandwich shop. Sarah and I really liked their pastrami. But it was just a dream. Who’s coming up? Oh, it’s Dr. Long with someone new.

“Good morning, James. James is our patient who’s been with us the longest with locked-in syndrome,” Dr. Long said to the new resident he is orienting. “James, this is Paul who will be assisting in your care.”

“Hi James,’ says Paul hesitantly. “He can see and hear us?”

“Yes. James is unlike most people who are locked-in, in that his eye muscles are also paralyzed. So unfortunately he can’t use eye movements to communicate with us. But we think he can hear us because his auditory region lights up on functional MRI (fMRI) when we talk to him. Likewise his visual cortex when we show him pictures of his family.”

“What about his EEG?” asks Paul.

“James’ EEG shows wake patterns as you would find in a waking person, and sleep patterns when he’s asleep. We think he dreams too, because he dips into and out of REM sleep tracings. During waking periods, the fMRI motor areas will light up at times so we think he is walking or doing other motor tasks in his mind.”

Dr. Long steps back from the bedside so that an attendant can access James’ ostomy port to feed him his liquid lunch, and then change his urine drainage pad.

‘”James, Paul and I will be back later today. We’d like to run some more tests on you. Nothing painful. Okay? See you later.”

Okay Dr. Long. Guess I really don’t have a say in the matter. Oh Sarah, we had such a happy visit to San Francisco. It’s great to remember. And the Cliff House at sunset….

Outside of James’ room, Paul asks, “Dr. Long, is he still sane? I mean locked into his mind with no way to communicate. I can’t imagine how horrible that must be.”

“We try to keep him engaged with travel and science programs on TV as well as movies. PT visits daily. We found out from his wife what music he enjoyed and play those. And she and the children visit regularly.”

“What about the testing today?”

“We’re trying out a new scalp electrode cap to see if he can be taught to answer yes or no questions by activating discrete parts of his cortex to communicate at least in a minimal way.”

“Aren’t there experiments with implanted brain electrodes?” asks Paul.

“First we’ll see if James can be taught to communicate in a simple yes or no way. And then if he is capable of that, we’ll speak with his wife Sarah about next steps.”

February 2025 Story

The Forward Observer

Glossary of substitute words:

Fug: used by Mailer in “The Naked And The Dead” to get around censorship in 1948.

Bustard: a large Asian bird

Sheet: a bed covering

——————————————————————————————–

He had been very lucky so far. To escape before he was murdered by his captors, in the confusion of the explosions from the swarm of low flying kamikaze attack drones he had called in from his forward observation post just before he was captured. He had volunteered to be a forward observer after the enemy had learned how to nullify the high flying scout drones that done the job previously. And he had done such an infuriatingly effective job that, after his capture, the angry officer in command ordered his execution, contrary to the formal rules of combat. But in this war, rules were often ignored by both sides.

Now the man was huddled in a bomb crater in no-man’s-land, faced with a major problem. How to get back to friendly lines without getting killed since his FIDS dog tag had been ripped off his neck by his captors. (FIDS or Friend Identification System is an electronic signal that identifies the bearer to all drones as a friend, not to be targeted.) His captors were probably planning to use his in an infiltration. At least it was night, and until the engineers figured out a way to restore vision to the scout drones, attack drones would be directed to their targets by human forward observers like him. It was autumn so the nights were not freezing cold and yet cold enough so that the corpse he shared the crater with was not sickeningly-foul smelling, just rotten. Rain water pooled in the bottom of the crater. Not potable since the corpse lay part way in it. One of them, not us, he noted with satisfaction.

The whir of a drone over the background clatter of artillery and distant explosions. He kept very still as it passed to the left. Ours or theirs? Didn’t really matter since without his FIDS he would be a target. And he would be called a friendly fire statistic if anyone ever knew. I’d better try to move. Crater to crater. Earthy wet dirt smell, whiff of rot, mingled with that of TNT and burn. Stop listen for a whir, try to spot drones against clouds and patchy starry background. Nothing. Then move quickly. Gotta get beyond the sight of the enemy by morning. He hoped that the squad that captured him had been so decimated in the attack that their replacements would not know of his escape and would not specifically send out a drone to look for him.

The sky was turning grey to the east. Sun up soon. Time to find a deep crater and spend the day hiding. Think I’m about midway across no-man’s-land. Attack drones will likely not pay as close attention here than closer to the battle lines. Luck! A crater without a body or puddle. Getting thirsty and hungry. Just got to suck it up. And wait. Don’t even raise my head to look around. Just gotta hope they don’t send out a squad on foot to probe our defenses. Whir of a drone quadricopter. Sheet—damn fly walking across my face and I can’t move! Flying low towards the enemy line judging by the sound. Must be one of ours. Just one, so it must not have a specific target—just out to seek and kill some bustards. Damn—missed the fly! Aren’t they supposed to be gone now that it’s cold? Guess there’s a lot of corpses around for them. I’m not one—go find a real dead body. Like the one in here. But I could become fly bait if my luck runs out.

At last, sunset then twilight, and night with just a thin, waning moon in a partly cloudy sky. Dark enough. Time to move. He dared to lift his head at last and look around. Crater to crater again. And luck—a recently killed body to judge by just the faint odor of decay. One of theirs. Check the backpack. Yes! Full canteen and an unopened meal ration. Take a drink. No time to eat. Get closer to our lines, then I’ll stop and eat.

The man froze whenever he heard a drone, worried that if there were nearby explosions he would be unable to hear the soft whir. He was within a mile of friendly lines by first light. He found a shell hole. Now I can eat and have another drink. And plan. If I try to get closer by sneaking from hole to hole and get spotted, they’ll take me for an infiltrator and drone or shot me without a hesitation since those bustards took my FIDS. Or if I wait for one of our patrols to stumble on me, again someone will shoot before I can identify myself. Fat chance to have one of our patrols just happen to come my way anyway. I’m stuck. Sheet.

Night came at last. A waning crescent moon. He began to edge forward, praying that he wouldn’t be spotted through night vision glasses. He was in luck and by dawn he had found a shell hole within a half mile of friendly trenches. Now what? A plan, I need a plan. How can I let them know I’m one of us without my FIDS? If I move by day, they’ll just shoot first without questioning. But they’ll be especially trigger happy if I try to move closer by night. He was tired, hungry, filthy, and out of options. I’m fugged. And now the sun was up and head down, he hugged the earth. It’ll be noon, soon enough. So close. What to do?

In the forward trench the two drone controllers, Max and Jakob, had their virtual reality goggles on, as well as monitoring a large screen displaying the sector in front of them. The drones they oversaw were autonomous killing machines, programmed to attack any moving object without FIDS. The controllers’ function was to provide oversight and override through their goggles, seeing what the drones’ cameras viewed, so that the drones did not waste their weapons or themselves (if they were the kamikaze type) on a mistaken target or a dummy. It was noon.

“Look at that crazy bustard crawling out of that hole,“ said Max. “He’s buck naked and waving his hands in the air.”

“Civilian?” asked Jakob. “What’s he doing in no-man’s-land? Look he’s dancing! Fugger must be nuts!”

“No weapons, no clothes. Not a suicide bomber.”

“Drone’s zeroing in on him,” said Max. “Won’t matter anyway.”

“Wait,” said Jakob, pausing the drone. “Suppose that fugger is one of ours? Got lost out there.”

“No FIDS, can’t be,” said Max.

“Leon’s position was over-run four days ago and we don’t know what happened to him,” said Jakob.

“That crazy bustard. Did he get lucky?” asked Max. “I’m going to fly the drone up close so I can see his face.”

“The fugger isn’t running from the drone. In fact he’s standing there and waving his arms like he wants the drone to get closer,” Jakob said.

“Damn! Dirty as hell, but it sure as hell is Leon!” Max exclaimed. “Holy sheet!”

“Pause the drones and bring him in,” Jakob said. “I’ll tell the boys in the trenches to hold their fire. Leon’s coming home.”

January, 2025

Ornaments

It was seven days after New Year’s Day and he sighed. It was time to undecorated the tree and take it down. The letdown after the Holidays. Celebrations and parties over. Kids and grandkids returned to their homes on the Mainland. Fir needles starting to crisp and fall. Every year the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed more compressed, and Christmas to New Year’s Eve was just a blink in time. And now it was January.

He had waited until two weeks before Christmas to get a live tree, bring it home, get out the stand that each year showed more rust, and lift the tree onto a side table with his son’s help. It was a five foot tree and putting it on the table kept it out of the dogs’ reach when they came over. What he used to do with his wife, then after her passing, alone, he now needed help with. You must not use the step stool to decorate the top of the tree; tell me when you want me over and I’ll do the climbing, his son had admonished. He bowed to common sense and agreed. I’ll let the tree branches settle for a couple of days and call you, he told his son.
Before calling to help with that, he got out the tree lights and the two ornament boxes in readiness. If you can do put on the tree lights, and the top angel, I can do the rest, he said when his son arrived. No climbing his son reminded him. I haven’t shrunk that much that I can’t hang the ornaments, he replied, though he was now 5’ 9” instead of the 6’1” he had been when he was 60. Thank you, but I can do the rest myself more slowly, now that you’ve done the high stuff. I don’t want to take up too much of your day. Yes, I’m sure I’ll be careful. He liked to decorate slowly, remembering. The former top angel that had been on their first tree, now looking quite worn, he hung from a lower branch. He unpacked and decided where to place each ornament, an annual trip down memory lane. Don’t need all of them this year; we used to have taller trees. Turned on the lights and they looked evenly placed. There would be some shifting of ornaments for a few days until he was satisfied with their distribution—that used to be fun for his wife.

But all that was over three weeks ago, and now it was time to put things back in storage and start a new year. He began by getting out the two plastic storage boxes. I’ll start with the high bulbs that are within reach and leave the top ones and lights for my son to take down. Now here are the two small glass ones that we had on our very first tree. That was in a studio apartment on Third Avenue in NYC, six months after they were married. The tree they bought from a sidewalk stand on First Avenue.

And these three were from Sears in Boston, two blocks from our apartment, just across the railroad bridge. Made in Poland, he remembered—which seemed odd at the time. Survivors of our moves across the country. We also bought our trees from the lot in the Sears parking lot. He wrapped each bulb one in tissue paper as he stored them.

After Boston it was Great Falls, Montana and USAF life for two years. Where’d we get these two crazy birds with top hats? From the BX or “The Paris of Montana?” That was the department store in town where they sold everything including furs coats up front and bought pelts from hunters and trappers in the back. Our dining room set came from them. We went to the National Forests in the snow to cut our own trees. A caravan from the base, hunting trees. Hunting pheasant was earlier in the fall.

On to Seattle for four years. His wife acquired a few more ornaments each Christmas, including the wooden figures from Sweden that he staged in a winter diorama each year. The store was a Scandinavian shop on University Ave. Do all college towns have a University Avenue? Yeah, the kids got a kick out of that and look for it even now when they come back. The felt birds she sewed as a volunteer with the Children’s Hospital Guild now hang on our son’s tree. And when we went Christmas shopping at night at Frederick’s, the store had a supervised play room for the kids. Frederick’s is no more, but I still have ornaments from it. I guess there are still chocolate mints that sell under that label.

And finally back to Honolulu. Here are the musical angels that play “Silent Night.” From Liberty House and bought so long ago that they were made in Japan rather than China. He wrapped them carefully in two layers of paper towels. Liberty House. They had a store in Union Square, San Francisco once. I even bought a sport coat from that store. Liberty House. Sold by AmFac to a Mainland buyer and later bought by Macy’s. The small wooden creche ornament was from “India Imports.” Another local store crowded out of Ala Moana Center. And these bulbs from Germany that we got for our first Christmas back in Hawaii—from Sears. Gone too. Wrap them and stow them. Our tree that year was a local-grown live Norfolk pine. No odor though. We planted it at our first house the next summer.

Ornaments and decorations with histories, barely remembered now. And now I’m the sole curator of these decorations and memories, he thought. Ornaments, carefully packed away with their stories until next Christmas.

December 2024

The sun in July still warmed as it was slowly setting to the West;

reluctant to give the day over to the night. But the summer night

was welcomed as a cool respite from the furnace heat of the day.

December’s sun is beautiful as it slips into the sea. But it gives

no warmth as it hurries to bring on the night. And December’s night

is long and deep, and the stars shine with a cold, bright light in

the cold, black winter sky.

————————————————————————

Happy New Year. I have just published through Amazon a collection of short stories, titled “Short and Shorter Stories”

If you decide to take a look–the quotation marks are needed to get you to the right site–thank you. If you actually buy a copy, thank you very much!

P.S. For less than the price of a plate lunch.

November 2024 story

Do Over

“Are these really the Pearly Gates and are you Saint Peter?”

“Welcome William, and yes to both your questions.”

“What a relief! I wasn’t sure that I would qualify to be here.”

“Why were you worried? You lived a life that many who were sent the Other Way would have envied and now wished that they had led.”

“But I’ve done things and left things undone in my life that I now deeply regret and wish that I could do over.”

“Perfection is only for our Supreme Being. Remember, there were even angels who fell from grace because of arrogance and pride and were banished to Hell. And I denied the Christ three times out of fear and cowardice and yet was forgiven. As has been said, ‘to err is human.’ And fortunately, ‘to forgive is Divine.’”

“Still I have regrets. Is there any way I could help my mortal self be a better me?”

“A do-over. You are a good soul to wish that you could have led an even better life than you did. Most people are just delighted that they made it here and are happy to leave their earthly past behind. But you do recognize there is an element of pride in your wish?”

“But is there a way?”

“Yours is an infrequent but not unique request. Yes there is a way, but there are rules and stipulations. You cannot physically return because that would mean there would be two of you occupying the same space and time, an impossibility in the scheme of the universe. Nor can you return as an astral body, since if the earthly you saw you that would give him foreknowledge of the after life and influence his exercise of Free Will.”

“What then?”

“You will be permitted to return to visit your younger self when he is in REM sleep. To speak to him then, to persuade him to alter his future behavior. Thus you will neither give him knowledge that there is after-life nor affect his Free Will, since it will be his choice to heed or not what you say to him. And unlike ordinary dreams, he will retain memory of your visit when he awakens.”

“Will it work?”

“If I told you, that would influence the exercise of your Free Will.”

“It seems so complicated, but thank you. It’s worth a try.”

“No need to thank me. It’s all in the rules. And in what guise you choose to appear in his dream will be up to you. The Gates are open for you. Enter. You may start whenever you wish.”

Time has no meaning in Heaven. Sometime after William got over his initial awe that he was actually there, joyfully reunited with his mother and father, he began to pay visits in dreams to his mortal self.

Jonah, his best friend in middle school, had moved to another city across the continent. They said that they would stay in contact but, after a few months, he ghosted Jonah because he thought, ‘what’s the use? I’ll never see him again.’ Jonah continued to send messages but he never replied. Years later he ran into Jonah at a meeting who told him how hurt he had been by William’s rejection.

William decided to appear to his teen-self as their mother who admonished teen-William for neglecting his best friend’s messages: ‘Jonah was your best friend, how can you just cut him off without even an explanation? it’s a really terribly cruel thing to do. how would you feel if he did that to you?’ “But Mom, I’ll never see him again, so why waste my time and his?” the teen replied in his dream.

In college, he bought a stolen copy of a final exam in a course where he was barely getting a ‘C’. William appeared to his college-self as his father who was a sternly honest man: ‘you are tempted to use that stolen exam to cheat, something I have tried to teach you never to do. though you may receive a high grade, you will always remember that you cheated and violated the honor code and it will linger on your conscience.’ (As indeed it had.) “Dad, I have to keep up my GPA so that I’ll have a chance at grad school,” college-William replied.

There was the time he attended a convention alone in Los Vegas and ran into Roxanne, his former girl friend from high school, who was at the same meeting. Roxanne had been pretty in high school and was now a mature beauty, divorced for two years. The third day of the meeting, they had dinner together to catch up and talk about old times and, both well lubricated by wine by dinner’s end, when Roxanne invited him to her room he accepted. But at her door he stopped, saying ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. It’s not you, it’s me. I have a wife I love; kids. I’m sorry. I’d better go.’ He turned and left quickly with Roxanne loudly cursing him. He never told his wife, but always carried a tremendous feeling of guilt about the near-betrayal.

So he decided to appeared to convention-William in a dream on the first night of the meeting as his teenaged older daughter Cindy. ’dad, you once thought you loved Roxanne in high school, but now you love mom. please don’t hurt mom by falling again for Roxanne. even if no one else ever knows, you always will.’ William woke with a start, disturbed by the dream. But later that day, he made dinner reservations for two.

There were other times he appeared in the dreams of his mortal self—once as an older William saying directly that ‘I know what will happen if you don’t do this. take my word for it. i’m you in the future.’ Too weird, thought his younger self on wakening. He also appeared several times as a good friend and another time as a business associate. And even as his fiancee who would become his wife.

Saint Peter checked on William to see how the interventions were working.

“It’s very disappointing,” William said. “No matter what I’ve said and tried, my mortal self continues to do the same things.”

“What about that time in Vegas?” asked Saint Peter. “You didn’t yield to temptation.”

“But I didn’t heed the warning and went ahead to arrange for dinner that led up to being tempted. At Roxanne’s door I didn’t stop because I remembered the warning. I stopped because there was still a shred of decency that cut through the wine and lust.”

“And what do you conclude from this?” asked Saint Peter.

“That the past cannot be changed from the vantage point of the future?”

“Yes, you are right. Because even a small change in the past would have cascading effects that could alter what follows and produce different futures. History is non-malleable.”

“I guess that means that our mortal selves had better get it right the first time, because there are no do-overs,” William said.

October 2024, story

Homeless

Why do you wish to join us?

I’ve become homeless and I thought perhaps I could move in with you until I get a new home.

Tell us why you became homeless.

You ask ‘why?’ It’s not like it was something that I chose to do.

Okay, if you must be picky. How did you become homeless?

I was quite happy in that old house on Barren Hill. Wouldn’t have moved. But one day two men came to the house and I heard them talking.

When was that?

You know that time really has no meaning for us, so I’m not sure. Could have been six months or two years. Anyway one man said, “It is old and would need some repairs and renovations, but just look at that view over the town all the way to the lake. Priceless.” The other man said, “I’ve heard some stories about this property.” The first man replied, “You know every town has its stories and legends. If you don’t want to renovate, you could just tear it down and build a brand new contemporary home.” And the second man said, “I’ll need to think about that. But you’re right about the view.” They may have talked some more, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying since they had moved outside..

What did you think? You weren’t curious or worried?

Nothing happened for a while and so I forgot about it. And what could I have done? Anyway, things went on as before until one day workmen showed up and they cleared out the bushes around the house and the property. Shortly after that heavy equipment arrived and I remembered what the men had said about tearing down my house. So that night after the workers had left, I managed to introduce water into the fuel tanks. In the morning there was a lot of swearing and blaming when the men tried to start the engines. No work was done that day. I did the same thing when they tried again and again they couldn’t get the engines going. They thought that some kids were playing tricks so they posted a night watchman.

And the watchman spotted you when you tried a third time?

Yes, and it was really funny to hear him scream when he did. Haven’t had that much fun since the last couple that rented the house fled in the middle of the night. But that brought about my move because when he told the others what he saw, they brought in a priest to do an exorcism. And even though I’m not a demon, we still are bound by the rules and so I had to stop sabotaging their machines and had to leave. And that’s how I became homeless.

Did they tear down your house after you left?

It was really sad. I’ve got so many memories attached to the house. I knew every plank, timber, and nail. All gone.

And here you are. Asking us to let you join us.

But not permanently. Just until they finish building. Then I will move back.

Wait a minute. The house is gone and that was the connection that kept you there. You can’t just haunt a new house. There’s got to be an attachment.

I died in the garden while weeding the cabbages. The rules say that qualifies me to return. After all, I was a lawyer once. So please, may I stay here? Temporarily?

I’ll ask the sentiment of the graveyard. Shall we let this wandering spirit stay for a time? Any discussion? Yes? Oh good point. You can stay if you do not do any haunting. That’s reserved for us permanent residents. Especially with Halloween just around the corner.

I don’t have any choice or good options. I agree.

Any other questions or discussion? If not, all in favor say boo or rattle your bones; opposed, wail. The boos have it. You are welcome to stay with us temporarily here in Green Lawn.

Thank you. And when the house is finished and I move in, you will all be welcome to come and celebrate the first Halloween there. It’ll be a haunting to remember.

September 2024 Story

A Killer Rig

“We won!” John Dohe, the CEO of Reoltuff Motors reported to his board of directors. “We beat out GM. Ford, Rivian, and Tesla. Just got the official notice about the army contract to build the next generation of ACIR’s (Autonomous Combat Infantry Robots). This will be big since it reflects our experience and leading position in building autonomous long haul big rigs,” “Good work and congratulations, John,” said the Board Chair. “The long hours that your project team put in plus a strong lobbying effort, paid off. How soon do we start?”

“We’ll be using the autonomous driving program for our rigs as the platform and we’ll build the combat requirements on top of that. Our driverless rigs have been on the road for four years now and have been accident-free except when another vehicle was involved and was at fault. So it’s a pretty well-proven place to start from.”

ACIRs had largely replaced human infantry except in guerrilla warfare, where human irregulars still predominated as the enemy. The trend towards using robots in combat began with the Ukrainian War, where the outnumbered Ukrainians ingeniously developed armed drones on land, sea, and in the air to take the place of humans and successfully used them against the Russian invaders.

Bill Sams, the lead engineer on the team, provided the Board with an overview of his plans. “The military already has their friendly fire avoidance system, FIDS (Friend ID System), operational. Basically an electronic dog tag that all personnel and all military equipment carry that identifies an unknown as friendly and not to be fired upon. In contrast, the SKF (Seek and Kill Foe) attack module identifies all non-FIDS persons or objects as potential legitimate targets to be destroyed. SKF is designed so that if the ACIR has exhausted its weapon stores it will continue to engage the enemy physically by ramming until it is disabled. It should not be difficult to modify our existing driving program to add these modules. We’ll just need to disable the collision avoidance system for non-FIDS encounters. The ACIR vehicles themselves have been tested on all possible terrains and in weather and are mechanically reliable. It remains to fit them with the with software and weapons.”

“Is there human oversight of the SKF before firing on a target or is it fully autonomous?” asked one of the Board members.

“It depends on the situation If combat is occurring in a setting where there are civilians mixed in with the enemy, then a human observer would make the final firing decision. If there are no civilians involved, then the ACIR would follow its programming,” replied Sams.

“Any other questions?” asked Dohe. “If not, we’ll let Bill go back to work.”

What seemed like a fairly straight-forward situation; of adapting a highly successful truck highway program to combat use, proved to be more difficult than envisioned. But Sams’ team finally succeeded and the first ACIRs passed their military trials with flawless performances.

However, in the process of adapting the civilian highway program to military use, some elements of the SKF combat software had been introduced, contaminating the program. How this occurred was never fully determined: whether by programming error, maliciously by a disgruntled employee, or as an act of industrial sabotage.

Whatever the cause, the result was a stretch of horrific accidents on the interstate involving a newly manufactured Reoltuff rig. (Civilian vehicles of course do not carry FIDS and so would become targets for SKF.) Two miles of the interstate was littered with smashed vehicles and the dead and injured.

One factor limiting the toll from being even worse was the fact that long haul rig were built one by one as orders were received and not mass produced like sedans so only one newly built rig carried the faulty software. The other mitigating factor was that big rigs are not as maneuverable as smaller vehicles and so the collision avoidance system in on-coming traffic worked to prevent some head-on collisions.

But vehicles going in the same direction as the rig were not so lucky and were crushed from the rear. There were terrible accidents. The worse involved a school bus returning from an excursion that was rammed from the rear and driven off the road and into a river. The rogue rig itself was finally stopped by a missile from a National Guard helicopter. The lawsuits that followed drove Reoltuff Motors to the cusp of bankruptcy. Fortunately for the company the army continued to order ACIRs in large numbers.

Someone had to be blamed and Bill Sams became the scapegoat and was “early retired” with an aluminum parachute.

August 2024 story

Martian Dreaming

Aldron Betts was Mars obsessed from childhood. As an eleven-year old, he had discovered his father’s copy of Ray Bradberry’s ‘Martian Chronicles’ and even though the idea that there were water filled canals and golden eyed Martians waiting on the fourth planet had been long dispelled by hard science, the poetry of Bradberry’s tales found a place in his soul. It even shaped the choice of his favorite candy bar. Someday, he thought, someday.

But first there was the matter of education and then after that, of making a living. Aldron’s family was solidly middle class so there was no boost of family money or connections to ease his way.

In his high school senior year he was voted class nerd, but also the most likely to succeed. Though Aldron always possessed a quick mind, he was not a genius level thinker. He was awarded a four year partial scholarship to a highly competitive college and graduated with a cum laude, not a summa. But he had tenacity of spirit, a willingness to take chances, and an analytic ability to see beyond the short term.

After graduation, he began working at a consulting firm. In his spare time he played with immersive game design that he self-marketed, and when his third offering took off and was voted the game of the year, he quit his corporate job. His followup release was eagerly awaited by gamers and though it did not achieve quite the level of critical acclaim that his breakthrough had, its high sales numbers were enough to attract two very lucrative buy out offers. And so at age twenty-seven Aldron Betts was rich and looking for new challenges.

He had made many contacts during his five years at the consulting firm and he used them to keep abreast of the newest trends in innovation and technology not only in silicon valley but across the country and abroad. By using a proprietary program to assess early stage developments for the likelihood and degree of success or failure, Aldron was able to buy in very early. Of course his ventures did not always pan out, but a seventy-five percent success rate was more than good enough to make his reputation as a venture capitalist so that he was eagerly sought out by inventors and innovators looking for financing.

He financed major positions in one company that achieved a breakthrough in battery technology and another in a company that totally revolutionized chip design. They were were true industry disrupters and Aldron became immensely wealthy. The second or third most wealthy man on earth depending on the fluctuations in the stock prices of the companies he was invested in.

But space and Mars still beckoned. He began to look at aerospace industries and when a former leader in commercial aviation experienced a series of actual and near-disasters—certainly PR disasters— and its stock price plummeted, Aldron became a major minority stock holder and obtained a seat on its board of directors. On the board, he led the charge for better quality control, emphasizing engineering competence over financial return, arguing that in the long run, this would restore the company’s tattered reputation and increase its value. In this process, the company spun off its rocket, satellite and space division that Aldron acquired and took private. The division already had contracts with NASA for explorations of the solar system. And that included Mars.

Of course much had been learned about Mars from robotic explorers and much of that information emphasized how harsh surface conditions on Mars actually were. But evidence of water and then past microbial life were breakthroughs in planetary science. There was or had been alien life on a planet other than earth. What else lay hidden beneath the Martian sands? The evolving information about Mars only strengthened his own Martian resolve. Unmanned flights to Mars were already almost routine. The Holy Grail for Aldron was to send the first manned flights, first to circle without landing, and then to land, eventually to establish a permanent colony. And beyond? Those water-filled canals of his youth?

His passion for Mars was for a time matched by that of another uber-billionaire, Midas Crassi, an industrialist, who had honed his space competence in preparation for journeys to Mars through commercial satellite launches and space tourism. When Crassi turned his vision away from Mars to mitigating climate change, Aldron acquired his space-related assets. After the necessary reorganization and downsizing to eliminate redundancies, the two companies were reformated as Betts Space Inc. Now Aldron had all the expertise and resources both human and industrial to make a push towards Mars. Recruitment of crews was not a problem since there were many others smitten by the idea of traveling to the Red Planet. Candidates were subjected to vigorous physical and especially psychological testing.

In the meantime, there was design and testing of the hardware needed. He chose not to be discouraged by those who cautioned that a round trip to Mars would be a multiyear journey with all the dangers of prolonged exposure to radiation and psychological stress and rage that would affect any crew. His answer was to shorten the journey. But how to propel a ship faster, since that would require a huge amount of fuel? If the ship could be assembled in space, in earth orbit, no fuel would be needed to lift the ship from the ground and the fuel saved could be used to propel the ship on a more rapid course to Mars. Nuclear powered rockets were the key.

The first step was to establish an orbital base where assembly workers could stay for two weeks at a time. Then the various components of the ship itself were rocketed up from earth to the base for assembly including the nuclear engine. And finally the fuel. The first flights were crewless. Then followed a crewed flyby, which demonstrated the importance of the human factor. By the time the ship completed it’s roundtrip of sixteen months, the four-person crew was no longer on speaking terms with each other and had almost come to blows. The nuclear engine worked flawlessly.

And so a larger crew cabin was designed with nocks where the crew members could get way from each other when they felt stressed. The psychological evaluation of potential crew was made more stringent.

And then just as the second mission was about to go, Aldron received truly terrible news from his doctors. His recent weight loss was due to stage three pancreatic cancer. And there was still no cure. He would not live to set foot on the Red Planet. He bitterly compared his fate to that of Moses who led his people to the Promised Land but did not cross over into it himself. After his initial reaction of rage at the cruelty of Fate, he came to accept reality and planned. He thought, I will not be denied my dream of being the first human to land on Mars. He left careful instructions. His ashes were to be placed in a gold urn and welded shut. No landing on Mars until after his death. And then on that first trip his urn was to be carried on a drone launched from the space ship and landed at a random spot on Mars well away from where the crew was to land. It was done. And so Aldron Betts did became the first human to land on Mars.

July, 2024

mid-summer sunsets

How lovely the long, lingering sunsets of mid-summer.

These special times, so casually enjoyed during the spring and

busy summers of our lives,

When winter seemed a distant season.

Are more evocative now when viewed from December’s perspective.

Each golden mid-summer eve to be savored, for each is unique and

gone forever when day fades into night.

How useless to wonder how many more there might be,

For that is unknowable, to be decided by fate.

Better to not question, but to just inhabit and enjoy,

The gift of these special hours.