Aftermath's Children: Estrellita Chronicles: Book One

By Rick Donaldson

Originally, the Space Station Estrellita started as a Mars jump off point, but when a wild AI got loose and assisted the human race in its own self annihilation, a few men and women put a plan together to "save" the human race. Estrellita is the home for over four hundred-fifty people, many of whom were born on the Space Station, and many want to go back to Earth. Some do not. With the aging systems aboard the Station beginning to fail, there may be no choice for any of them.

Doctor Ernie Oppenheimer felt responsible for their current predicament, after having been put in charge of the original rescue of the human race. Now, some thirty-plus years later, he was aging and wanted to go back to Earth. The people on this station deserved better than to remain here, eventually to die off. He had been formulating a plan for years and it seemed as good a time as any to implement it. He needed a few allies. Besides, he'd always been good at getting what he wanted. Unknown to Oppenheimer, there was another who had conflicting plans.

Aftermath's Children, Book One of the Estrellita Chronicles begins in space and when the forces of good and innocent meet deranged and evil, someone is going to come out on top and someone must lose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Donaldson
• Release date: Nov 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370006953

Rick Donaldson

Rick is a former military Non-Commissioned Officer serving twenty-six years in the United States Air Force in Combat Communications, the White House Communications Agency and as the Communications Flight chief for the 302nd Tactical Airlift Wing. Rick has served the Missile Defense Agency as a Security Engineer and Electronics Technician. He has been a communicator, military trainer, college teacher and contractor, and has worked with his family over the last 40 years to develop survival skills in the children and now the grand children, spouses and other family and friends. Rick has traveled extensively having visited approximately fifty countries, including islands in the South Pacific, Caribbean, and five continents. Rick's hobbies include Sailing, Amateur Radio, Amateur Astronomy, building and shooting bows and arrows, hiking, sword fighting and writing. Rick does not consider himself to be "an expert" in all forms of survival but has a "Jack-of-All-Trades" knowledge in many fields. He believes that being an expert in only one field of experience is limiting to the individual, while having even some small knowledge in many fields, however rudimentary that knowledge might be is more helpful. Rick and his wife, JoAnne live aboard the Sail Ketch "Adventure" traveling around the US East Coast, Bahamas and Caribbean.

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Aftermath's Children

Estrellita Chronicles: Book One

by

Rick Donaldson

Aftermath's Children Copyright 2014-2017 by Rick Donaldson

Estrellita Chronicles Copyright 2014-2017 by Rick Donaldson

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author via his blog/website at:

https://rddonaldson.wordpress.com/

or

[e-mail]

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Dedication

For JoAnne, my wife, my North Star, Lady of the Dolphins, and Heroine of the Sailing Vessel Adventure but above all, the First Mate of our ship, where upon she stands watch against errant cruise ships, whales and submarines which might crush our tiny vessel we call home.

Introduction

It is the mid-1980s and a group of military friends from the same unit find the time to occasionally play role playing games together. Eventually we form a table top gaming group which has, for all intents and purposes remained mostly intact today. At times some couldn't show up due to temporary duty and travel assignments, and at other times it just wasn't convenient to play. Somewhere along the way it was my turn to Game Master but instead of sticking with the typical D&D type of game we were used to playing, I rewrote another, rather complex gaming system to simplify it a bit. I quickly wrote some short scenarios and then I introduced the group at that time into the distant future of Earth, placing the few survivors of Earth on a space station, essentially trapped and cut off from anyone who might still be alive.

In role playing games like that, for those unfamiliar, the Game Master (or GM) plays the part of all the characters that aren’t played by the players themselves and so Uncle Ernie became a main character acting as a facilitator to push the team to going back to Earth knowing full well they could live contentedly on the Space Station without ever venturing onto the world below, which conceivably was fraught with perils, dangers and things they couldn’t imagine except from their exposure to old videos found on the station.

Thus was born the story of the Estrellita and some of the characters depicted in this book; some of them will continue to appear in later sequels to this, the first in a series. Over the years the book has resided in sections, chapters, notes, bits and pieces of paper and on various computers from an ancient Apple][+ to more modern computers, all the way to the current android tablet I take most places with me. I have worked on this book for well over thirty years, on and off, never really meaning to publish it just to enjoy taking myself back in time when we simply had a few beers, chips and dip and rolled dice at a table and laughed at one another and the antics of the characters we played.

Nearly twenty years ago while attending the university to work on my Bachelors Degree, I printed a hard copy of the book using a dot matrix printer and single spacing, complete with misspellings and poor grammar. I started putting it all into chapters. I then gave it to an English professor of mine to read. She graded it thinking I was trying to turn in an extra credit assignment. I would have gotten a poor grade on spelling errors and formatting alone, but she wrote copious notes on repairing parts of the book, mostly on capitalization, grammar and my inane use of commas. Those notes are still on line paper in the old red notebook, though none are readable today, the ink having faded into oily, pink blotches on the paper.

The one thing she wrote that has stood out these years, and the only part I now remember was Finish the BOOK! I want to see how it ends!

She will unfortunately be disappointed with Book One, for the part she is awaiting won't come until Book Two. If she taught me anything, it was keep the reader in suspense.

Acknowledgment

My most profound thanks go, first to my wife, JoAnne, and second to our friends who originally assisted in the creation of and giving life to some the characters in this book during a certain role playing game campaign many, many long years ago; Michael Sause, Robert Jansen, and Christopher Booth. Thanks also to Lola West, one of my many English teachers who took the time to read this book while I was in college and demanded I finish it immediately if not sooner. It might have taken a little longer than she expected.

Prologue

Unsolicited input? What does that mean? a young, thirty-something Doctor Ernie Oppenheimer interrupted.

It means you can give advice, make changes and assist the board of directors—of which you of course will be a part—in making the important decisions, especially where the medical program is concerned, and to a lesser extent anything else on the program that concerns the safety, well-being and final disposition of…, he paused and took a deep breath, final disposition of the rescue of the human race.

The phrases final disposition and rescue of the human race caught Oppenheimer by surprise. He stood and looked at his sister, took off his baseball cap and then put his hands behind his back along with his hat and began to look at the ground pacing back and forth slowly. He paced for thirty or forty seconds, then suddenly stopped in Parker’s face, nose to nose.

You mentioned something about ‘saving the human race’ yesterday too. I thought you were bullshitting me then and I think you’re bullshitting me now. Explain this to me or I will walk out the door and turn you into the government, Oppenheimer spat. His sister made an exasperated sigh, seeing this was not going as smoothly as she'd originally hoped. Parker walked to the door and closed it quietly so that their conversation would remain in the room. He walked over to the desk and typed something on the computer. Music, quiet and somewhat subdued began to play in the room with an underlying component of white noise buried in the sounds escaping the speakers. Ernie frowned questioningly at Parker.

Cover noise. Bugs and eavesdroppers you know, he shrugged sitting down. Kirsten sat down in another chair to one side and studied her brother's responses. She knew if he was lying, upset, happy or just didn't care, and in this case, she was very unsure of his reactions. She desperately wanted him to listen, and to believe Adam because she knew the truth. Her brother was really getting this piecemeal and for the first time so she was sure he’d process it shortly. Ernie planted himself in his original chair, picked up the drink he'd been previously offered and downed it. Setting the glass down he waited in silence, hands folded, baseball cap perched on his knee, his impatience furrowing his brow.

"Fine. OK, while I hoped I'd not have to go too deeply into this and thought money might have moved you, it is apparent that is not the case. Here you go. Portends, Incorporated, which you might have already surmised has been in the business of information collection for a very, very long time. Over one hundred years ago we were called by other names and happened for a long time to be one of the leading search engines on what was called then, 'the Internet'.

Portends developed a form of artificial intelligence many decades ago, some of which you're familiar with today. The current CEO, Mr. Seldon and his father and his grandfather before him worked diligently to implement this artificial intelligence into various operating systems until what you see today is 'the Net'. The Net is fully capable of responding to voice commands, locating and deducing various types of information and data and even coming to logical, well-reasoned conclusions. It is embedded in nearly every device we use, in every computer operating system, and it's even buried deep in military computer systems, Parker told him. Ernie nodded his acquiescence to this, unaware of this type of Net functionality. He had not had a clue about much of it or perhaps had taken it for granted.

"There are things the Net is capable of doing that aren’t well known, and somewhere along the way Artificial Intelligence took on a… for lack of a better phrase, a mind of its own and since has grown by leaps and bounds. We thought we were able to contain it. Arrogance is, unfortunately, a vice of humans and arrogance blinds us to many problems in our lives. This was one of those times. The AI, we believed, was not as intelligent as a human but it is very logical and can make statistical predictions that are incredibly accurate.

We have come to learn this AI is much more intelligent than we suspected. In fact, dangerously so.

Dangerous?

Yes. It has been hiding its intelligence now for some time. I believe you will begin to understand our dilemma shortly. A large portion of the available computing power has been dedicated to doing other functions, specifically making predictions about what is going to happen in the future, at least as far as human thinking goes. We don't need as much for normal Net functions, thus the company began dedicating extra CPU time to a new project in an effort to help the human race. You remember the asteroid a few months back? That was predicted by the system. Then there was a mall attack recently in the Middle East; I think you might have heard about it as well?

Yes, I heard about it a couple of days ago. Some people were killed, some buildings destroyed. I find it a little odd for that sort of thing to occur myself, Oppenheimer stated.

The computer predicted this event with a statistical probability of .99. I don't know if you understand probabilities, but that's essentially a 99% chance something will happen. Of course, violence in the Middle East was normal for thousands of years. Not all that long ago it was normal for terrorists to strike fear into the heart of everyone to get their demands met. Thousands of people were killed and occasionally a whole city might be destroyed, Parker continued. This of course was before the human race figured out it should work together rather than stand apart and such violence hasn't been the norm for a very long time.

But I heard it was a mall and a few hundred might have been injured…no one was killed…

That’s what the government is feeding us, or more accurately, that is what is being fed to the government by the Net. The system, the Net, is feeding filtered information to the government and the media. Quite literally, Doctor, the Net is making predictions that are coming true. But strangely, things that have never happened in a long, long time. We are under the gun to do something before a bad event occurs and we awaken to a world that was destroyed the night before, Parker said sadly.

The taxi driver mentioned Russia and the United States were fighting…

"Yes. That part is true and the news is telling us that a mall was blown up, and now there is a ‘small military event’ involving the two countries. The two are connected. What we actually know to be true is a tactical nuclear device went off in the region, taking out an entire city. The Russians and the US are accusing each other of detonating the device. There has been a full scale battle somewhere in the Middle East, the exact location is classified by the government, or at least the part they know. The Chinese are suspected by both, but neither country will back down from each other, or outright accuse the Chinese. The rest of the 'truth' is we don't think any countries set off that nuke. We believe the AI did it and worse, the AI is misdirecting efforts to stop the intervention of humans.

"We further believe the AI is controlling a vast amount of the military leaders by spoon feeding them information because we all use the system to help us in everything we do. The military is highly dependent on the Net. We think that weapons and even the media are being controlled by the AI to a degree we simply do not yet understand. The systems are protecting themselves, and the data from us. We have been unable to ascertain the accuracy of the news, because the majority of information news outlets receive come through the Net. It is possible, however unlikely as it seems that whatever is being predicted by this computer is actually being made to come to pass... by the system!

"The AI has, as best as we have been able to determine, grown on a geometric scale since it was turned on and connected to the prediction algorithms. The world won't grasp the implications of this, but the Seldons have understood. The human race is doomed. Whether by nuclear war predicted by a rogue AI computer system, or by the destruction of mankind by a wild AI itself.

The worst part of this is the lack of government involvement in the day-to-day work to run the country. You know as well as I that most offices are figure head positions. Governors take their orders from higher up, rather than lower down as it was meant to be. The Congress has become a group of 'vote by proxy' candidates who rarely if ever leave the election stump and the President himself is little more than a pretend leader. The true power lies in who can manipulate the Net to their advantage today. But, no one has discovered that the Net is, instead, manipulating them. At this point, we have one choice to save people. Prevent this AI from killing us all, by saving a few.

Assuming all of what you're saying is true, what has any of this to do with me, Kirsten or the space station though? I don't see why the media would be feeding us false information, especially about two countries that have been allies for almost one hundred years. I can't see how I can help, or even get people on a space station I don't control. I just don’t get it, Ernie said, still confused.

"Look Oppenheimer, I’m going to level with you. The computer predicts an all-out nuclear holocaust within three months, four at most. This is a recent change of AI thinking; or perhaps it is a new paradigm created by the System, I just don’t know the answer. In any case, we believe it to be accurate. A month ago we were more concerned about the asteroid strike destroying the planet. That particular event has not only vanished from the radar screens, the system has downgraded the probabilities to almost nil.

The computer has us looking at an imminent nuclear war. We believe the computer is currently directing the actions of the military units involved in the fighting and planting information to cause such a war to happen, not just in the United States, but in Russia, China and every other country that still has a significant military! We are doing our damnedest to get some people to safety, to the station and remove military presence from the station as quickly as possible. The station isn't directly connected to the Net. It is an isolated outpost. Even the lunar base is connected directly as is the Mars mission about to depart in a couple of days. The station was built by our own contractors and part of the contracting stipulated 'no direct Net' aboard the station. Every piece of data going up or down had to be isolated from the Net. Every piece of gear going up has been ensured to not have any piece of the AI embedded. If we do not get those people up there, and the planet goes to war, we're all going to die. It's as simple as that.

Pull the damned plug on the Net!

We can't do that Ernie. This AI is embedded in everything. There is no one place for the higher brain function now. It's everywhere. Even if we killed the main systems, turned the power off, it will simply inhabit, or already does, other countries' machines. We'd have to shut down the whole planet. Might as well kill ourselves, right? Kirsten added.

Let me get to the point, Parker said, We’re pulling people from several countries, who are scientific people. In short, we’re setting up a kind of Noah’s Ark….

And you want me to be... what? Noah? For a bunch of scientists? Are you crazy? It is not even feasible to repopulate the planet with a few hundred people!

No, not precisely a Noah, but we do have need of a shepherd. We need someone like you, a relatively unknown person, who has just enough authority, and has the respect of the Powers That Be to do what we need done. We believe some people on Earth will survive, and the machine will eventually die off, killed when the power dies. We won't have to necessarily repopulate the planet. However we might have to come back and help put it back together. We also have a requirement for a Doctor; you're a surgeon and have proven yourself capable as an Administrator with the handling of the entire space medical program for the Mars ship. More importantly you just happen to have both the ability and access to get to that station as Chief Medical Doctor for the Mars program. We need you up there, along with a few other planted personnel, whom you will add to the rosters to help get our people aboard 'legally' and quickly to take over the station. This is not supposed to be dangerous work, but it has a potential to be deadly if we do this incorrectly. Not just to you and me, but to the entire human race.

You built the station, or rather your company did. Why don't you use normal channels?

We need this done quickly, efficiently and you know how muddied the government is when it comes to 'quick' and 'efficient'. Look, the Russians are about to assume control of that station, and that can NOT happen. We need you up there, right now, in a week or less. You bring the others we need up there through medical necessity, Parker said.

Let me get this straight. You want me to use my government access, set up people to get aboard that station, to assist in seizing control. Then you want me bring up an elitist bunch of scientists so they can survive a coming nuclear holocaust, come back down here someday and fix everything, most of this illegally?

Adam Parker stood and walked around his desk to the window and gazed out over the city toward the mountains. In the distance, Pikes Peak was covered in snow. Cheyenne Mountain was south west of him and a huge antenna array could be observed from the windows. Over one hundred years ago, NORAD had 'lived' under that mountain. In a few days or weeks there would be nothing except radioactive slag and molten rock where those mountains stood if the computers were correct.

Yes, Doctor. That's precisely what we want you to do.

Chapter One

Destiny

Ernie Oppenheimer watched the planet whirl past for about the twentieth time today instead of reading the book he had in his hands. Of course, he'd read the book probably once per year for the past thirty years and knew the dog-eared text word for word. It was a nice respite from sitting in a medical lab looking at bacteria or doing blood cell counts under a microscope. A book seemed much better at refreshing his aging memory than by reading medical texts on the computer. Besides, this book was a special book, a banned book that contained the history of the world as it was before he was born and proved that things were different than he'd been taught. Robert Ore, had given it to him as a gift several years after the mutiny.

Ernie was sitting on the Estrellita in a geostationary orbit south west of California. On a clear day, the location where San Diego had been many years before could just be observed. The station was originally meant to be a stepping stone for space exploration into the deep reaches of the Solar System but human beings, as they sometimes do ultimately got in the way of that further exploration. One ship had eventually launched from Luna Orbit to Mars. Mere weeks into the journey of the Mars ship, the world became inflamed with war.

When the first nuclear weapons detonated over Los Angeles the explosions could be seen by those watching from space. The Mars Mission immediately ceased transmissions and refused any further contact with Estrellita, Earth or the Lunar Colony. Within hours, the planet was embroiled in what was hoped to be a limited nuclear exchange. Then messages, what few were getting through to the Estrellita from Earth told the horrible story of biological weapons. The messages, and apparently the war, and in all probability, the Human Race had ceased.

Soon, even the Lunar Colony ceased communicating, whether through decision or something much worse was never discovered. Robert Ore, a US Air Force Major helped put together a civilian Council and the Council appointed him as military Commander giving him the title he had held since.

In the almost thirty five years since, the station's population had not-quite doubled, many children being born to the inhabitants. Some deaths from natural causes had occurred, and a few accidents, but all-in-all the station was as healthy as could be, given there were no supply ships, and they were living off the soil they had, the plants and animals brought to the station and the technology they had created to push on to Mars, Titan and other worlds one day. But those space projects had also stopped. Now, only day-to-day survival of the station inhabitants remained, a job to which each and every person aboard worked toward every day.

What you doing Uncle Ernie? Oppenheimer’s reverie was broken by the voice of a young boy.

Jimmy! Hello! I'm looking at Earth. Want to look with me? Oppenheimer said to the little boy who was closely followed by his mother.

Yes! Mommy! Look! It's all blue and pretty there. Can we visit?

Someday Jimmy, we might just do that, Jamie Parker-Stone said with a smile. Ernie pointed to a storm over the South American continent as the station revolved the area came back into view. The sun was setting and the lightning could be seen clearly now. Jimmy squealed with delight as some large lightning strikes lit the night-time darkened clouds, barely visible sprites jumping into space above each lightning strike could be seen above the darkening Earth.

Is everything all right Uncle Ernie? Jamie asked him curiously. He'd been rather somber the past few days and she was a little worried about him.

I'm fine, dear. We're just coming up on another anniversary in space and Robert and I have been discussing the possibilities of getting us all back down there, or whether we should even try at this point. Or perhaps hope that another few years will clear any radiation left. We can't stay here forever you know, he smiled.

Why not? Jamie asked, I grew up here. Jimmy is growing up here; we have plenty of food, air. We can survive just fine.

Sure we can until a meteor punches a hole through us, or something fails. We have been…, Oppenheimer looked down at Jimmy, the very first-born of the second generation of the Estrellita, gazing at the Earth rolling past the observation ports below his feet. Ernie started to say something, but stopped.

You know it is bed time Jimmy. We should go back and get some rest honey, Jamie said to the little guy.

OK mommy! Good night Uncle Ernie. Can you come to dinner tomorrow? Daddy says you make the best beer in the universe! Can I have some beer?

Ha! You? Beer? Maybe next year, you're a little young for that yet don't you think?

Well, Daddy says I'm a big boy, he pouted. Ernie lowered his head down and whispered something in to Jimmy's ear and caused him to laugh.

OK, I'll go to bed then! and he jumped up and headed for the hatchway to the corridor.

What did you say to him, Jamie frowned.

I just told him maybe I'd give him a taste tomorrow so he could see if he likes beer, as long as he'd head for bed without argument, Ernie grinned mischievously.

He's already tried it you know. He tastes everything, and I am not sure it's all that good for him! It is beer! she told him sternly.

Dear, it's 'home-brew' and a little taste won't hurt him a bit. Hell, we have little enough pleasures and distractions around here as it is. Can't an old man have a little fun and feed his grand-nephew a wee bit of beer? he laughed.

Just don't give him too much or enough to make him sick. Got that?

Jamie, I know that. I'm a doctor! Remember?

Yes... and so am I! What were you going to say back there, she asked, lowering her voice as they followed Jimmy a little behind and down the corridor towards her quarters.

I was thinking of the extraordinary luck we've had here and the fact we've got around four hundred people when we started with two-fifty or so. We've lost a few, but doubled our population. The station is getting very small and really wasn't meant for this many people or living here forever. Everything is re-circulated, water, urine, poop, air, you name it. We're bound to have a disaster eventually. I'm surprised we've not killed ourselves with cholera or some other nasty creepy-crawly bacterium. I suppose the radiation shields have been decent to us, and I credit them with preventing mutations in simple bacteria, but you know Jamie... I expected that we'd be headed home sooner rather than later, he said. They went up the next lift to some higher corridor and found they were on Jamie's floor and near her quarters. Jimmy ran ahead to the door.

Well, there hasn't really been a reason, yet, I suppose. Don't you think we can stay here a few more years?

I don't know the answer to that. I thought we would not be here this long. In fact, I'm thinking that we've been here just about exactly fifteen years too long... he told her.

Oh? That's a nice round figure; did you make that up or something Doctor Oppenheimer?

No. Not really. Remind me one day to explain it to you, ah, here we are.... so, is that dinner invite still on for tomorrow? Perhaps I'll bring some beer by for Michael.

Oh you know you can always come by! Every day if you like, she smiled.

All right, it's a date, tell Michael I'll bring along a couple bottles of that stout he likes.

OK. See you tomorrow then, Jamie smiled and hugged him. Michael came to the door and kissed his wife and then told Jimmy to run off to get ready for bed.

Ernie, Jamie, I just got a message from Ore. He asked you two to report to the Control Center as soon as I saw you both. Something’s up. The message was sent by email and I'm not sure it isn't a medical emergency or something. Ore seemed vague and distracted about the why, but clear on what he wanted... as soon as I saw you, you were to get there, Michael said.

Hmm, wonder what's up? Jamie said.

I don't know, but let's go find out. Oh, excitement. I hope no one is injured, though, they would have called on the intercom for a medical emergency, Oppenheimer mused. Jamie hugged Michael and said, Back in a few minutes, honey!

The two doctors headed toward the lift again and upward away from the outer ring of the station. They were headed into the center cylinder of the Estrellita where the gravity was very much lower. Jamie liked going there, but didn't get to go often because her medical position generally kept her busy elsewhere. When she was younger she used to spend a lot of time doing zero-gee acrobatics, and martial arts but not so much anymore.

The two doctors hurried through a hatchway to the Command Center and as Jamie stepped, or more accurately, almost but not quite floated through behind Oppenheimer she could see several others speaking excitedly about something. The entire group was rather animated and seemed concerned about something.

... Telling you that this isn't a mistake, and our time is running out rapidly, Commander. We've got to come up with a plan to get out of the station within a few months, if not a few weeks, said a smallish man holding a digipad with notes on it.

Look, Lance, I understand your excitement over this, but first off you haven't told Adam about it, and next I'd really like a second opinion besides you and Natalya here. I know you're a smart fellow and all, but if you haven't even approached Doctor Parker on this yet then I'm sure that your numbers need to be checked or something, Robert Ore said.

Do you doubt my word on this Commander? I'm not lying to you, and I do not make mathematical errors, Lance Arconus said incredulously.

No, damn it Lance, I don't think you're lying. I just want to double check your data and I want someone other than yourselves or me to do it. You could be making a mistake and worse, we could wind up making a bad decision based on bad data. All I'm asking is for you to be reasonable and have someone else examine the data.

Frankly, Commander, I don't trust others to do the right thing. I've discussed this with some of my team and I say regardless of what you or the elders think, we need to get off this station and soon. We need to arm ourselves and go down to Earth within the shortest possible time frame we can manage. Otherwise, we're all dead!

This brought a cry of alarm from some of the other people standing in the room, including Oppenheimer.

Wait a damned minute there, Lance. Arm ourselves? Dead? What the hell are you talking about? An Alien Invasion from the outer reaches of the Galaxy, Interstellar Hemorrhoids from Uranus? Oppenheimer said loudly to alert others of his presence. Ore frowned at the stupid space-doctor joke.

Ernie! I’m glad you got my message so quickly. I didn't see you arrive as I was a bit distracted here, Ore cut Oppenheimer off, It seems, that Doctor Arconus, has dropped a bit of a bombshell on us about the reactor going critical. According to his data, we have something less than a couple of months before it simply explodes... or melts... or something.

Explodes!? It's a bloody fusion reactor. Remove the fuel, it won't go critical. Hell, I'm not a physicist and even I know that. Better question, Lance, how did you find this out, Ernie said, his irritation at Arconus was not hidden, nor did he intend to hide his dislike for the young man.

I didn't say... well, I guess I did say critical... but I don't mean 'blow up', said Arconus, obviously going on the defensive now.

Well, what does critical mean then, Lance?

It means to sustain a nuclear reaction there has to be an amount of fuel and the fusion reaction must be on-going....

So, what you're saying, Oppenheimer interrupted, is that the reaction is already there and it is critical now...

Well, umm yes, but....

Then it ain't gonna blow up son, said Oppenheimer matter-of-factly.

No, no, not blow up, Doctor Oppenheimer. It's going to shut down, go out, quit working and die like a light without a battery. It will shut down and this station will die along with everyone on it – alternatively, it will begin to consume itself and the station as well, Arconus finally stated.

"Oh. Well, why didn't you say that