Global Warming Fun 7: Space Rendezvous

By Gary J. Davies

Martin Tall Bear’s life was a complete failure. Decades earlier he had deserted his Mohawk Tribe of New Brooklyn to become a petty anarchist and criminal. Killed in an unsuccessful prison escape, a rogue colony of intelligent ants (jants) reanimated Martin as a human/jant ‘zombie’ that was unfortunately immediately returned to prison. He/they ‘escaped’ prison life by volunteering for Space Directorate duty, only to find himself on a suicide mission in a robot-controlled ship to explore the Ort Cloud that formed the outermost reaches of Sol’s solar system. The good news was that he had the companionship of an amiable stonecoat rock creature named Mary Rumsfeld that centuries earlier had been a human and a Mohawk Tribe member. The bad news was that they faced almost certain death and were the only hope to save Earth from destruction by a gigantic alien spaceship and robot treachery. Space adventure with the backdrop of Earth transformed by climate change and the struggle of humans, jants, stonecoats, and robots to all survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary J. Davies
• Release date: Aug 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463896136

Gary J. Davies

Now retired from engineering, I have been writing science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels as a hobby for three decades. Born in Erie PA, my wife and I currently live in Cherry Hill, NJ. We have also lived in Mechanicsville, MD, and Horsham, PA.

Book preview

Global Warming Fun - 7: Space Rendezvous

By

Gary J. Davies

Published by Gary J. Davies at Smashwords

Global Warming Fun - 7: Space Rendezvous

Copyright 2018 Gary J. Davies

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the only exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy.

This e-book is a work of fiction created by the author and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are a production of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Thank you for downloading this e-book!

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Contents

Forward

CHAPTER 1: Charon

CHAPTER 2: Reminiscing

CHAPTER 3: Ship

CHAPTER 4: The Scattered Disk

CHAPTER 5: Sleep of Death?

CHAPTER 6: Waking!

CHAPTER 7: The Intruder

CHAPTER 8: Landing

CHAPTER 9: The Way Inside

CHAPTER 10: Inside Intruder

CHAPTER 11: Inside But Outside

CHAPTER 12: Duty Calls

CHAPTER 13: Intruder-2

CHAPTER 14: Intruder Master

CHAPTER 15: The Stonecoat Inside

CHAPTER 16: Alien Intel

CHAPTER 17: What a Way to Go

CHAPTER 18: Decision Time

CHAPTER 19: Separation, Obliteration, and Death

CHAPTER 20: Returning Home

About Other Publications by This Author

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Forward

Like all my works this one may be enjoyed as a stand-alone story. However it is part of a planned ten-part Global Warming Fun (GWF) series that is most completely understood if all of its volumes are read in sequence. For those who wish general background information without necessarily reading the preceding volumes this Forward section provides an overview as context for this current volume.

Global warming/climate change, a slow-motion disaster that will take centuries to fully play out, provides the background for a serious drama: the survival of humans and other life on Earth. (Didn’t humans already have more than enough to worry about?)

By the time this particular snapshot of that larger story occurs more than three centuries in the future, humans have shockingly learned that they are not the only noticeably sentient beings on Earth: humans struggle to co-exist with sentient ants called jants, ancient rock creatures called stonecoats, and computers/robots. The recurring lead characters in the series are three once ordinary humans: Ed and Mary Rumsfeld and their once neighbor the biologist Jerry Brown, the creator of Jerry’s ants, the jants. (Ref. GWF 1).

Humans, jants, stonecoats, and robots are officially represented in this space adventure by the three lead characters of this story. Ancient Mohawk legend (Ref. GWF 2, 4) has come to life in the form of stonecoats: thinking beings of rock that predate humans by countless millions of years. Mary Rumsfeld ‘reborn’ as a stonecoat replicate (Ref. GWF 5, 6) co-stars in this current story, representing both humans and stonecoats.

Jerry Brown’s bio-engineered sentient ants (Ref. GWF 1-6) – the jants – have by now spread world-wide. The telepathic insects have learned to symbiotically combine with humans via giant ticks (Ref. GWF 3) formulated by the jants to link with humans to form ‘zombies’ (Ref. GWF 5, 6): otherwise dead humans reactivated and maintained by jant intellegence. Martin Tall Bear, the second co-star of this story, is a human/jant zombie that shares a common Mohawk background with Mary. Martin represents both humans and jants.

Robots developed by mankind have also emerged (Ref. GWF 6) to lay claim to an inherent right to life. The third pivotal character of this story is the robot spaceship itself wherein most of the story occurs.

Can humans, jants, stonecoats and robots learn to co-exist on Earth and beyond? What happens when together they venture into space and encounter potentially dangerous aliens?

Enjoy!

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Global Warming Fun - 7: Space Rendezvous

CHAPTER 1

Charon

Martin Tall Bear walked steadily and very cautiously through the narrow hallway that according to provided schematics conveniently connected his cramped quarters designated as room M-3 with his destination: the Meeting Room designated M-32. Even though he wore moderately magnetized boots he had to step very softly showing great restraint, or else in the slight gravity - less than 3% as strong as Earth’s - he feared that he could find himself inadvertently bounding off the iron-laced deck and colliding into a wall or ceiling. That would doubtlessly hurt, as the entire structure was constructed of some sort of hard, dense carbon-based ceramic that his jants couldn’t identify chemically as a familiar substance. Still, having even weak gravity helped orient many body biological processes such that this facility felt much more natural to both his human and jant body parts than did the zero gravity environment experienced for much of the long trip here.

Wherever the hells ‘here’ was! He had been informed when he arrived that this was Charon Base-1, but the name meant nothing to him, and he had not been beforehand informed of his route or destination, or what mission he had been assigned by the Space Directorate. Charon could be just another way-stop, or it could just as well be the place he was destined to spend the rest of his miserable life. All he really knew about it for sure was that it was damned far from Earth. As far as he knew, stasis could only be safely maintained for a year or two. Twice he had been put into a stasis state and revived on the trip here, suggesting that his trip may have taken over four years!

He also knew that the space-freighter that he arrived on was what the space-rats (humans) that manned such flights called a ‘clipper’: a fast smallish rocket-fueled ship compared to the big sluggish solar-powered supply ships that could take decades to get from place to place in the solar system. No doubt about it, he had been rushed to Charon Base in a hurry. Why?

Was Charon a big asteroid or mid-sized moon maybe? Martin had no idea. He never did have any interest in either astronomy or the Space Program. Perhaps he was even on one of those stations that rotated to provide a simulated gravity? But no, the long hallway seemed ‘flat’ though it twisted this way and that; it didn’t seem likely that it was part of some sort of roundish man-made rotating body unless it was an unimaginably huge one. And anyway, he seemed to recall that places designated as ‘bases’ by the Space Directorate existed only on planetary bodies of considerable size. The Directorate would call this place a ‘station’ if it was freely floating in space or attached to only a small object in space.

Nearly two hundred worker-jants in his backpack continuously provided a telepathic chatter linkage between the implant surgically imbedded near his spine and the jant-hive part of him that remained in M-3. There were no problems so far; jant thoughts remained reliably linked with what remained of his human brain. As promised by Colonel Jack Whigs, the Base Commander that met him when he arrived the day before, all of the M-Wing of Charon Base 1 apparently maintained Earth-normal atmosphere and temperatures, and was within telepathic chatter range of a jant hive located anywhere in the M-wing. That was by design, Whigs had mentioned. Each letter-designated section of Charon Base 1, indeed every Earth station, base, and colony of the Sol solar system, was segmented to safely accommodate jants and jant human-zombies.

That made little practical sense to Martin. Very few jants lived off-Earth for the simple reason that from the perspective of the human-created intelligent ant species called jants, living off-Earth was a totally insane notion. Even more than humans, jants had a need to live in an Earth-like soil-rich habitat. Yet by necessity a few jant colonies did go into space, and most of them did so coupled with a human body that would otherwise be dead had it not been adopted by jants.

What drove reluctant jant participation in space ventures was a century old agreement between humans, jants, stonecoats, and robots that all four of Earth’s sentient ruling races would share equally in space exploration and in colonizing off-Earth worlds. It was part of the Great Peace Settlement that ended the deadly Robot Wars. That meant that at least a token number of jant colonies had to travel off-Earth, like it or not. Since human body size and strength was useful to ensuring jant-hive health and safety, and to operating mechanical and technical apparatus typically designed for human use, that meant that jant zombies had to be part of the Space Program.

Personally Martin, both his human-side and his jant-side, didn’t give a damn about space exploration or off-Earth colonization. Yet here he was somewhere off-Earth, far from the rich, warm, life-filled Earth soil where both jants and humans more or less comfortably thrived. Back in M-3 a cubic-meter of top-soil was maintained to surround the jant hive, to help keep his jants both sane and healthy. The soil was alive with countless trillions of living biota and associated chemistry, which jants were hard-wired to need. The hive itself was a quarter the volume of the surrounding soil: tunnels and chambers teeming with jants in egg, larvae, pupa, worker, drone and queen forms, along with collections of food: particularly seeds from Earth-side obtained for them by Martin, their human counterpart.

The jants in turn kept Martin’s body alive and healthy. Every beat of Martin’s heart was commanded by the collective jant hive mind, where also every cognitive thought he had was echoed and reshaped or originated. Not surprisingly, left alone, jants didn’t think very much like humans. But coupled with humans they did. Enough for them to function and survive together.

A tenth of the mass of each tiny jant was brain-matter located in its oversized head that could link telepathically with others of its species to form a coherent hive-mind. Except for that singular astounding modification to ant physiology, jants were totally ant-like, individually operating mostly in accordance with the primitive hard-wired instincts and the complex chemistry of themselves and their immediate biochemical environment. Humans could for the most part successfully rationalize forsaking the Earth and living in space with its vast strangeness and hardships, individual jants could not. To survive in space they needed their clump of living soil with its complex chemical web of life and the calming cognitive thoughts of their collective hive mind coupled with what survived of the mind of Martin Tall Bear, human.

The hallway joined others and opened up wider, where a growing number of other hallway-transiting individuals were in evidence: humans, stonecoats, and robots, all walking as slowly and carefully as he was in the low gravity. Martin detected no psychic-level jant chatter to indicate that there were any jants nearby other than his own.

Most individuals he walked past paid him little heed, they doubtlessly mistook him for being merely human. Most of the dozen or so stonecoats he encountered were in their traditional form: six-to eight-foot tall bipedal bear-like in general shape, with huge diamond hand and foot claws and teeth, and vacant eyes that dully glowed various colors of their choosing. They looked something like great white mutant bears that walked mostly on their hind legs and were covered with a ‘stone coat’ of translucent icicles and scales, though the icicles and scales were not water ice but minerals - usually diamonds. Many centuries ago Martin’s ancient Mohawk ancestors had discovered that the stone ‘coats’ of the creatures were spear-proof.

On Earth many mobile stonecoats were over twenty meters tall and weighed hundreds of tons, formed that way to harvest forest trees for their rich carbon content. In space most stonecoats were either much smaller or integrated into the bodies of utilitarian spacecraft or space stations and bases, where they created and maintained those structures. It was likely that dozens if not hundreds of stationary stonecoats helped build and maintain this Charon base. As on Earth some stonecoats also assumed various utilitarian mobile forms, some as small wheeled vehicles that were nearly indistinguishable from the robots that were often designed to perform similar functions.

Stationary stonecoats performed the greatest wonders. By moving minerals about using countless carbon nanotubes they could gradually move and reshape large material structures including the bedrock that lay below human Earth-cities. Over the last three centuries they had saved or replaced many Earth human coastline structures and even saved several cities that would have otherwise been destroyed by climate change sea-rise. The flooding had occurred more quickly than first estimated, and was currently reaching its zenith of over 200 feet in sea-level increase. Selected parts of New York City, including Martin’s hometown of New Brooklyn, had been slowly raised roughly two-hundred feet by underground stationary stonecoats in order for humans to escape flooding. Over the last three centuries billions of humans had been displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and associated political and economic upheaval, but stonecoats had muted the effects and immeasurably helped enable human survival and continuing civilization.

A few stonecoats glanced at Martin as they passed him, perhaps sensing his jant-chatter, but none attempted to greet him. Stonecoats generally each went about their own business, individually and stoically. Since they didn’t generally require much care in terms of food, oxygen, or other various environmental needs, they were exquisitely suited for space exploration and colonization.

In Martin’s view the humans he encountered were even more mysterious. Why would any sane adult human choose to be in space? Yet here there were even more humans than stonecoats, and they all marched along smartly in their Space Directorate uniforms, apparently comfortable and content to be millions of miles from Earth. For every human he saw here, Martin knew that there were tens of thousands of volunteers on Earth, hoping to be made part of the Space Directorate. Martin felt that they were all crazy.

He paused at one of the few large windows to look out and discover a savagely inhospitable landscape. Yes, Charon was indeed some sort of planetoid! Martin took note of dimly lit frozen mounds and hills of white/gray ice crystals, with higher peaks and deeper valleys far beyond. Scattered on some ice surfaces and particularly in crevasses were irregular thin red/brown films and splashes of material that added color variation to the otherwise bland colorless frozen setting. Far overhead a gigantic softly glowing pinkish Moon-like crescent glowed dully, which along with a small but bright point of light close to the horizon dully illuminated the landscape. The bright object was the Sun Sol, Martin realized, shockingly far away!

More spectacular still were the countless pinpricks of light that filled the otherwise black sky: incomprehensively distant stars and galaxies, he realized, though in much greater perfusion and clarity than he had ever witnessed while on Earth. But Martin Tall Bear was not favorably moved. Everywhere he looked he saw bitterly cold lifeless desolation, surrounded by overwhelming distance and emptiness. Earth with its blue skies and waters, and its life-rich forests, fields, and waters, was disturbingly tiny and far away compared to the vast lifeless void that now surrounded him.

Not for the first time, he regretted his decision to ‘voluntarily’ join the Space Directorate in order to get out of prison. He was not a religious man, but for a moment his mind shifted back to his childhood, to legends of Sky Holder, high god of the Mohawk Tribe of the Iroquois. What would Sky Holder think of this savagely beautiful but apparently lifeless world and the mostly dark empty vastness that surrounded it? Sky Holder would feel as lost and insignificant here as he did, Martin was certain.

A small woman joined him at the window. "Pretty spectacular