DAY 93: Early Afternoon in the Waiting Room of a Genetic Testing Lab

Michael John Boone and John Michael Cooper sat in the waiting room, passing the time.  Boone was sending one more text message to his wife at home.  He looked over at Cooper, reading a magazine that had his face on the back cover, endorsing a stylish sneaker brand.  Cooper, realizing he'd been caught, mimicked his magazine face, eliciting a chuckle from Boone.
"Everything alright?"  Cooper asked.
"Yeah," Boone replied.  "Sheila said work called.  They know I had a doctor's appointment, and they're already thinking the worst."
"You didn't tell them?"
"I don't know if there's anything to tell yet."
Cooper nodded.  "My work's like that, too.  Times ten."

Boone looked at the magazine, and then at his feet.  "You ever wear those shoes?"
In response, Cooper lifted his feet, showing off a crisp white pair.  "Got a closet of 'em.  My contract says I gotta wear them in public until October, and they gotta look new.  There are worse ways to make money...  You ever consider it?"  He mimed a baseball pitch.
"I played into high school, but I wanted a job more.  First job I could get was changing oil at this garage; on the first day, I met the boss's daughter - Sheila.  I flunked school and busted ass so he'd let me date her.  Then that was good for a while, until some folks started grumbling.  So I quit the job and kept the girl, started my own garage.  Pissed off the old man, but she married me anyway.  But you asked about ball.  Nah, didn't cross my mind.  Not with a girl like that."  Boone pulled up a photo of Sheila back in the day, dressed for prom.

Cooper looked at the hand holding the phone, and then his own.  "I knew a girl that looked like her  .In college - she married an Army guy.  I send them tickets once in a while, they're alright.  Brunette, short, bright eyes, didn't let anybody tell her what to think or do...  I was already on scholarship, so it was what it was.  And then I got signed."

Boone saw the incoming text on his phone.  "Sheila was wondering if we were doing anything after this."
"She got you on a short leash, man."
"Not too short.  If we ain't going anywhere, you can join us for dinner."
"That's cool, if you got room.  And if you don't want to stop anywhere."
"I got cold beers at home, too... but I think I might need to pick up something at work."
Cooper autographed his face on the back of the magazine.  "I don't mind the detour.  I always carry a Sharpie."



inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Higgs Boson Found... For Real!"

DAY 92: The Scream in the Stratosphere

When Ashley didn't answer the phone, the phone answered itself.  "Hello?  Are you there?"
Ashley dropped the phone, blurting out an epithet.  The phone responded, "Good, you are there.  I need help from the person who got this phone to work.  Could you contact him for me?"
"Her," she said into the phone.  "I'm the one who did it."
"Thank you.  I need your help.  Please come to this address."

Professor Sunderland buzzed her into the lab.  He was a towering man with haunted eyes.  "Do it again," he said, handing her a phone.
Ashley began accessing the settings.  "Did they name my dorm after you?"
"My family.  My grandfather's work helped to develop the atomic bomb; my father's work shaped smartphones such as the one in your hand.  I am that third generation that suffers in comparison.  How long did it take you to figure out  how to fix your phone?"
"About two days.  I didn't know everybody else was having problems, I just wanted to be able to reach home."
"And where is home?"
"Mexico."  Ashley handed back the phone.  "There.  You'll be able to use it for about an hour, then wait five, then so on.  That's the best I can do until that solar storm passes."
"It's not a solar storm," Dr Sunderland said.  "It's a man-made mess that you're going to help me fix."

The professor showed Ashley his progress at the mapping workstation.  "The work is much further along than I have been comfortable sharing.  My collaborations have been very focused - myopic, I've been accused of.  But I don't know everyone's motivations, what they're capable of.  Do you know who Emerson Hu is?"
"I've heard of him, on the news.  He's been missing..."
"No, you're not in danger," Sunderland interrupted.
"You say that, and now I think I'm in danger!"
"You're going to help me find him.  Just figure out the sequence for this frequency oscillation so we can retrive it."
Ashley offered a confused look.  "Retrieve?"
"Yes.  The interference in all the satellites the past few weeks - everybody's phones and TV signals - came from this lab.  I expect to go to prison, because of it - but I'd like to clean it up first.  Help me, please."

The lab was humming.  At his workstation, Sunderland began to coordinate the power extraction for his experiment:  the attempt would extract an hour's worth of city power, even with the batteries in the lab to assist.
Ashley continued searching for the lab frequency.  "Why me?"
"Your phone works; you're halfway to solving the problem."  Sunderland walked to the generators.  "Comcast, AT&T, the research departments of a dozen nations have not figured a way around the electric clutter - but you did.  They're telling the public it's solar flaring, leaving excess particles in the Van Allen belts - because the truth would turn too great a microscope upon human activity in the ionosphere, facing unconsidered consequences.  They're not ready for that.  No one's going to fix this but us."
Ashley hit the enter key in triumph.  "Got it!"
"Are you sure?  It has to be in sequence, I can't leave anything behind!"
"Yes, I'm sure!... as sure as I can be."
Sunderland nodded, and pointed to an empty chamber, barely larger than a bathroom stall.  "Watch that room-"  He hit the switch.  The room flashed, then went dark.

"Check the room!" the professor shouted.  Ashley opened the door to the converted closet, but Sunderland is the one who burst in, and brought out the body of Emerson Hsu.  "Is your phone working, Ashley?"
Ashley checked her phone; the signal was clear.
"You may call the police now, Ashley."

Almost two hours later, the police arrived.  Ashley met them outside the lab.  Sunderland was waiting in the teleportation chamber, staring at the body of his departed friend.  He waited until the police entered, before he pushed a button and vanished.




inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Third Radiation Belt Discovered Around Earth"

DAY 91: The Heat is On

At halftime, Jay-Z sent one of his guys to trade seats with me.  Actually, he wanted to keep me in the coach's line of sight.  Everybody on the team was wearing fitbands, giving me heart rates and body temps.  My role on the statistics team was graphing performance trends based on physical condition - identifying "hot streaks".  After I delivered my second analysis to the coach, they had an 8-game win streak - all on the road.  The team bought me flowers the day they came home, and courtside seats.

Ashford saw me from the bench, and gave me the stinkeye.  When Anthony went on the injured list, Ashford got the call-up from Erie.  He wants to make the most of his moment out of the D-League, but he's been frustrated with some of the coach's calls.  In my report, I calculated that Ashford had 90 seconds from peak heartrate before dropoff from fatigue.  It appeared that Ashford found out.  Coach Mike, however, was a believer; he had me on the tablet, flagging which players were ready or done.  If someone was close, I'd text their jersey to his assistant, and he'd make the call.  

Later, on a Miami time-out, Coach got the team around him - and Ashford's sub, Number 14, over his shoulder.  I could see Ashford arguing for more time.  Coach gave me the look:  how many shots does he have?  I glanced at my numbers, and flashed him two fingers.  Coach nodded, and gave Ashford his two-shot warning.

30 seconds later, Ashford got his first shot.  He tried his second from in the paint, but missed; Miami took the ball.  Number 14 stood by the scorekeeper's table, waiting for the end of the play.  

But Ashford was not going to wait.  He managed a steal, and then the kind of cross-court shot usually reserved for beating the buzzer.  He didn't even watch it go in; he was walking back to the bench.

He didn't approach me after the game, but he saw me.  With his hand, he signaled, "You: two.  Me: three."



inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Climate Change May Lead to More Wars"

DAY 90: Message in a Galactic Bottle

By the time you get this message, I will no longer exist.  But rest assured, among my final thoughts will be the knowledge that you were right.
I made it to Cygnus, and was on my way back, when I detected a galaxy no one had seen before.  From home, it's obscured by the turbulence of Kepler's Singularity.   I almost missed it myself, or dismissed it as a faulty reading.  But it was real - a galaxy that no one knew existed... a galaxy I could claim for my own.  I could not see that she was already spoken for.  I set an approach that I intended would counteract the singularity's pull; I underestimated that force.
I identified a planet to crash on, and write these words.  I have tried to fix my ship, to no avail.  There is no escape from this planet, orbiting this final star, as we circle around the singularity.  But it is a beautiful prison: a constant pink sky, breathable air, resources for food and shelter, and no one to compete with.  I will die peacefully here.
If I remember my studies, I will die of old age here, in the space between your heartbeats.  The stars in my sky do not twinkle - they tear, jagged rips of light in the sky.  And in my time, I an half-certain that they are growing longer.  But I think I will pass before the darkness claims this place.  The only hope I allow myself is that each time I send this message, it may be the one to reach you.
You were right about so many things; I hope you are right about the rest.  As stardust or as I am, I will return to you...



inspired by Discover Magazine article, "The Tiniest Galaxy in the Universe"

DAY 89: Function = 0

"Anybody seen C0dy?"
Orson peeked out from his cubicle.  "Oh, yeah- nope!  Still recovering from his drinking games with Redbone last night.  I emailed him about the contact page.  I also got my phone auto-dialing every 3 minutes; soon as he comes back from the dead, he oughta pick up.  If he doesn't fix the page by lunch, can you take care of it?"
Elise nodded.  "I'll take care of it now.  But is he coming in today?"
Redbone shrugged his shoulders.  "He was still in bed when I got up.  Maybe he went to the lab, get some hours in with the English majors."
"No good, " Elise said.  "He didn't show yesterday, either.  They think he's on a campaign..."
"Not without me, he isn't!"  Orson logged into his workstation as he made a call to a
guildmember on speed dial.  "Terry, is C0dy logged in?   He's AWOL..."

Elise sat down at C0dy's station, and got his password on the third try.  By that point, Orson and Redbone had exhausted their search efforts.  Elise brought up the source code for C0dy's pages-

the code was gone.  C0dy had wiped out every line, except for one:   "function=0"



inspired by Discover Magazine article, "An Activist's Tragic End: Remembering Aaron Swartz"

DAY 88: The Grand Nomad

The shadow of the Grand Nomad had already covered the city.  From high up, Oliver saw the lights of traffic and skyscrapers blossom under the mountain's eclipse.
Katt joined him at the window.  "It's ridiculous staying all the way down there.  This time of year, they're only getting 4-5 hours of daylight.  If I was gonna get some real estate, I'd go up there-", pointing to an outcropping, straight across their view.
"So why don't they?"
"They think the Nomad's sacred.  I mean, you ever want to find Earth, just look where he's looking; Sol's our north star. Something about our rotation keeps it fixed in his gaze.
"That's why the pilgrims down there came here.  The first colonists - not those guys, the ones that made the first 50 mil LY trip - they came to this planet when they saw this face looking back at them; vanity of the species. This planet's a rogue, so there's no lifeforms anyway, but they were hoping there would be."
"Did there used to be?"
"No one found anything, besides the old man," and Katt pointed at the Nomad.  "It was the second colonists who went really crazy about it."
Katt flipped on the cabin lights as they entered the shadow.  "The second colonists left Earth just as the Pangeac Merge happened.  World going crazy behind them, the face of the Nomad in front of them - they thought he saw it happening.  They think he's alive, seeing things on the cosmic timeframe.  2 billion years to us could be 2 hours to him.  Which would suck; we're lucky to live to 200.  Thank God..."
"Yes" Oliver took a final glance at the summit of the Nomad.   "Yes, indeed..."




inspired by Discover Magazine article, "When Continents Collide"

DAY 87: 7 Years Into the Storm

Rebecca had to get up.  No matter how much it hurt.

She stretched her hearing past the sleeping alarm clock, past the hum of the electric lights, the air compressors, the gravity correctors... listening for the rain.  As soon as she heard it, she would know that she was still on base, still in the hexagon, and she could go back to sleep.

Once, she had dreamt that the rain had stopped; she went to the window, looking upon an orange fog as it began to dissipate, revealing the arch of Saturn's satellite horizon.  But the dream had not gone that way for a long time...

She had dreamt that she heard the rain stop; by the time she went for visual confirmation, the rain had started again...

She had dreamt that the winds caught in a structural flaw, pressing until it tore the base open, pulling her into the hurricane...

She had dreamt, over and over, of getting out of bed, fulfilling her morning routine, right up to the moment of checking meteorological status, only to find herself back in bed, anticipating the alarm...

Once, she realized she was standing in the rain, in her suit, ten steps outside the north entrance.  She couldn't definitively account for what happened between that moment and when she had gone to bed the night before.

She had consulted with her physician on Earth, who said she needed to divert herself with some entertainments, give her mind some sensory data to play with besides reorganizing her day's routine.  She had followed his advice, reading classic literature and trashy novels, watching movies and shows...  She had reorganized her sleeping quarters, and then started disguising or removing any vestiges of its extraterrestrial origins, making it look like a typically cramped apartment in Tokyo or New York.  The dreams adapted, inserting themselves between the dreams she wanted, and the reality she possessed...

She dreamt, constantly, that she was still in bed, waiting for the alarm to wake her for the day, or the alert to tell her that rain cessation was imminent; she lay in bed, against her body's will, not wanting to let go of sleep, not wanting to be fooled again, unsure if she was dreaming about dreaming...

She had to get up.




inspired by Discover Magazine article, "Storm over Saturn"