I wrote this for a monthly contest on another site, and received praise but not a ton of critique. Please have at it:
The gun is a tapered skyscraper, ripped from its foundation and rotated to point its penthouse spire down at me. The gantry it dangles from is lost in the upper gloom of the cavern, so the gun hangs angled in mid-air like a giant missile frozen in the moment before impact. Frost layers quickly out of the humidity, the compressed cold hinting at the energies building inside.
Seccord touches his helmet visor to mine and looks back up at the gun, yelling: “Mostly, I’m just afraid of that falling on us!” The least of our problems. I go back to searching for a reason to abort, but the gear and gondola are exactly as I specified. The other man and two women look back at me with resigned confidence; they are also exactly ‘as specified’.
A light will bloom in a foreign sky. A crack will wring out as air molecules attempt to get out of the way, trading electric potentials and a few seconds of St. Elmo’s Fire. The gondola will drop, air drag and center of mass righting it so gravity is under our feet again. I will study three durable but crude indicator dials, my hand hovering over the inflator valve. Too early on the balloon and our blood boils, too late and we hit the ground. Or the sea. Or something I haven’t anticipated.
Twenty eight months ago, Carlisle’s office: “What do you mean a balloon?”
“A hydrogen balloon, just large enough to support the team and equipment. We don’t know where the filament is, and I don’t want to pop out inside a mountain or underwater. We’ll draw a line from the planet’s center, through the filament and up another 15 kilometers. No matter where it is that should keep us in clear air when we emerge.”
“A balloon isn’t going to fit the projection volume.”
“We’ll inflate when we get there, and if we are too high we’ll wait until we’ve dropped to something reasonable. It will act as drogue immediately, and be buoyant in 40 seconds.”
Carlisle leaned back, now looking directly at me. “That certainly sounds… bracing. But you have clearly worked this out, and it doesn’t appear to be any more radical than some of the other ‘solutions’ I’ve been presented. You have this office’s backing.”
“And I’m still the one you’re sending?”
“Mr. Argent, can you think of any other way of getting yourself back in this government’s good graces?”
Five people, eighteen hundred kilos of equipment and a spherical volume the size of guest bedroom were to be squeezed interstitially to a sky warmed by a different sun. Seccord, Lewis, Choi and Skallen were as capable as anyone – and actually confident. Their thoroughly up-to-date gray matter had swallowed up topics like language drift, small arms tactics, mining and a host of other antiquarian engineering knowledge sets. Despite being their subject-matter expert for much of their studies, my genetics are cruder by a decade – I am the slow one of the group. I am also the one who thinks this is likely the most expensive death sentence in history. I don’t admire their confidence, but I covet it.
Fourteen minutes, twelve seconds. The cavern light is shifting toward blue.
I made sure to leave no one behind. Every romance was brief. My oft strained family relationships were pushed until they snapped; the pain of separation dealt with long before departure. The few friends that had stood by during my previous hijinks were warned off by government lackeys or by a brief personal call. In my resolution to leave no emotional connection to my home, I accidentally avoided growing close to the only four people that would be my family/friends/comrades for the foreseeable future. I think they understand, but I can’t care right now.
Lewis opens a valve at her heel, anointing her home world with the last urine (or anything else) it will ever get from us. Well, not ‘ever’, if we can do the impossible. She raises her brows in both mild embarrassment and mirth. Choi’s helmet is the only one angled my way, and I share her grin. There is something deeply defiant and funny about pissing on the god-like power of the machine that surrounds us.
The numbers on the wall shift to flashing. Three minutes, fifty seconds. Four bodies jerk through a physical mantra of spot checks: Harness, pressure, structure, FOD, tanks, actuator. Seccord holds up one finger, Choi two, Skellen three and Lewis four. I flash five fingers at all of them, and nod to make it real. Spoiling the clinical austerity of the foam launch dais is a double stranded cord ending in a control pad. I flip the guard up on the pad and press the green button full down. Then I throw the box away from the gondola, the cord bending backwards through the air like a cobra, isolating us finally. We are clear and full ready.
The clock goes black at one minute twelve seconds, as planned. The only active electrical systems in the chamber are now deep in the gun. As if to prove this, I can hear my mechanical wristwatch in the silence, but ignore the temptation of a personal countdown.
In less than a minute the five of us will be dropping through the air of a lonely planet, scrambling to get our hydrogen bubble of safety under control, then looking for a place to land that the wind agrees with. It could be days or just minutes until we stand on that foreign soil and begin our social engineering project. And if that goes well, it will become a genuine engineering project that will connect me back to this home that I have so thoroughly divorced.
We’ll see.
Interestitial
by Andrew Severson
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Andrew Severson
by Andrew Severson
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Andrew Severson
The gun is a tapered skyscraper, ripped from its foundation and rotated to point its penthouse spire down at me. The gantry it dangles from is lost in the upper gloom of the cavern, so the gun hangs angled in mid-air like a giant missile frozen in the moment before impact. Frost layers quickly out of the humidity, the compressed cold hinting at the energies building inside.
Seccord touches his helmet visor to mine and looks back up at the gun, yelling: “Mostly, I’m just afraid of that falling on us!” The least of our problems. I go back to searching for a reason to abort, but the gear and gondola are exactly as I specified. The other man and two women look back at me with resigned confidence; they are also exactly ‘as specified’.
A light will bloom in a foreign sky. A crack will wring out as air molecules attempt to get out of the way, trading electric potentials and a few seconds of St. Elmo’s Fire. The gondola will drop, air drag and center of mass righting it so gravity is under our feet again. I will study three durable but crude indicator dials, my hand hovering over the inflator valve. Too early on the balloon and our blood boils, too late and we hit the ground. Or the sea. Or something I haven’t anticipated.
Twenty eight months ago, Carlisle’s office: “What do you mean a balloon?”
“A hydrogen balloon, just large enough to support the team and equipment. We don’t know where the filament is, and I don’t want to pop out inside a mountain or underwater. We’ll draw a line from the planet’s center, through the filament and up another 15 kilometers. No matter where it is that should keep us in clear air when we emerge.”
“A balloon isn’t going to fit the projection volume.”
“We’ll inflate when we get there, and if we are too high we’ll wait until we’ve dropped to something reasonable. It will act as drogue immediately, and be buoyant in 40 seconds.”
Carlisle leaned back, now looking directly at me. “That certainly sounds… bracing. But you have clearly worked this out, and it doesn’t appear to be any more radical than some of the other ‘solutions’ I’ve been presented. You have this office’s backing.”
“And I’m still the one you’re sending?”
“Mr. Argent, can you think of any other way of getting yourself back in this government’s good graces?”
Five people, eighteen hundred kilos of equipment and a spherical volume the size of guest bedroom were to be squeezed interstitially to a sky warmed by a different sun. Seccord, Lewis, Choi and Skallen were as capable as anyone – and actually confident. Their thoroughly up-to-date gray matter had swallowed up topics like language drift, small arms tactics, mining and a host of other antiquarian engineering knowledge sets. Despite being their subject-matter expert for much of their studies, my genetics are cruder by a decade – I am the slow one of the group. I am also the one who thinks this is likely the most expensive death sentence in history. I don’t admire their confidence, but I covet it.
Fourteen minutes, twelve seconds. The cavern light is shifting toward blue.
I made sure to leave no one behind. Every romance was brief. My oft strained family relationships were pushed until they snapped; the pain of separation dealt with long before departure. The few friends that had stood by during my previous hijinks were warned off by government lackeys or by a brief personal call. In my resolution to leave no emotional connection to my home, I accidentally avoided growing close to the only four people that would be my family/friends/comrades for the foreseeable future. I think they understand, but I can’t care right now.
Lewis opens a valve at her heel, anointing her home world with the last urine (or anything else) it will ever get from us. Well, not ‘ever’, if we can do the impossible. She raises her brows in both mild embarrassment and mirth. Choi’s helmet is the only one angled my way, and I share her grin. There is something deeply defiant and funny about pissing on the god-like power of the machine that surrounds us.
The numbers on the wall shift to flashing. Three minutes, fifty seconds. Four bodies jerk through a physical mantra of spot checks: Harness, pressure, structure, FOD, tanks, actuator. Seccord holds up one finger, Choi two, Skellen three and Lewis four. I flash five fingers at all of them, and nod to make it real. Spoiling the clinical austerity of the foam launch dais is a double stranded cord ending in a control pad. I flip the guard up on the pad and press the green button full down. Then I throw the box away from the gondola, the cord bending backwards through the air like a cobra, isolating us finally. We are clear and full ready.
The clock goes black at one minute twelve seconds, as planned. The only active electrical systems in the chamber are now deep in the gun. As if to prove this, I can hear my mechanical wristwatch in the silence, but ignore the temptation of a personal countdown.
In less than a minute the five of us will be dropping through the air of a lonely planet, scrambling to get our hydrogen bubble of safety under control, then looking for a place to land that the wind agrees with. It could be days or just minutes until we stand on that foreign soil and begin our social engineering project. And if that goes well, it will become a genuine engineering project that will connect me back to this home that I have so thoroughly divorced.
We’ll see.
