They're Raping Our Moon And Other Tales Of A Near Future

By B.B. Irvine

Three novellas in one glorious volume!
They’re Raping Our Moon: Two weeks before America’s 2017 presidential inauguration, a flash of light in the distant Kuiper Belt heralds an Object now approaching Earth, setting off a global crisis; deciphering its intent is critical, but is a response possible? Or does the world stand by even as the incoming president-elect tweets, “They’re raping our Moon.” The question on everyone’s mind: Where will the Object go next?
The Zipper Zapper: An Almighty Widgets product tester must outwit the latest “smartjacket” he wears before it kills him.
Renewals: A man’s brain keeps getting new bodies to live in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.B. Irvine
• Release date: Aug 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463087701

B.B. Irvine

B.B. Irvine was born in New York City in 1959. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art N.Y. (1976 music), New York State University at Stony Brook (1980 B.A. liberal arts), and in 1982 received a certificate as a Physician Assistant from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in North Carolina. He has worked in settings including emergency medicine, AIDS research, and addiction treatment in New York City where he lives. In 1994 he earned a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do from Grandmaster Richard Chun. His novels and screenplays evidence his knowledge of people and frequently weave medicine, science, history, romance, and martial arts into the action.

Book preview

Chapter 01 - THEY’RE RAPING OUR MOON

A Flash Is Seen

0213hrs UTC 4 January (Wednesday)

East London Observatory - St. Petersburg Observatory

The wonderous confirmation of other intelligent alien life beyond the Earth came with what would be a long and increasingly bitter dispute over who first saw the initial distant flash of light in the cold darkness of the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto.

Ever since Pluto had been redefined as a dwarf planet, ongoing observations of the distant Kuiper Belt over the years since had confirmed many more large objects out there, several even bigger than the size of Pluto. This seemed to confirm that the technical redefinition of Pluto had been within scientific reason, but had done little to stop the public debate over doing it.

The anomalous luminous flash was obviously from something very bright, but the actual source was either missed or was not directly visible from Earth, and was detected only by its reflection off of another more distant Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). Lying at distances between thirty to one hundred times the distance of the Earth from the Sun (a distance defined as 1 Astronomical Unit or AU), this was perhaps the first time in four billion years that anything had lit them up that brightly.

According to British astronomer John Kelly, Russian astronomer Iosef Sharapov had sought confirmation with John Kelly.

According to Russian astronomer Iosef Sharapov, while both were talking on Wednesday, 4 January, at 0215hrs UTC (Universal Time Coordinate, the same as Greenwich Mean Time but applied for use in space observations), British astronomer John Kelly asked Iosef Sharapov about whether or not he had observed anything unusual in the area near the Kuiper Belt dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake at around 0213hrs UTC.

Neither man mentioned discussing this event with anyone else.

At 0217hrs UTC John Kelly sent a report regarding a light flash reflection at a distance of about 50 Astronomical Units (AU), a light echo off the dwarf planet Haumea in the Kuiper Belt, which he observed at the East London Observatory on Wednesday at 0213hrs UTC, to the International Astronomy Organization, a worldwide organization of astronomers and other scientists, which he intended to serve as his formal notice of discovery. He also sent a copy with an iWeb Flash Query to a list of past observational project colleagues.

At 0218hrs UTC Iosef Sharapov sent an Early Report Notice to the International Astronomy Organization of an Anomalous light reflection echo from the Kuiper Belt at approximately 50 AU, a flash of light reflecting off Haumea at 0213hrs UTC on Wednesday, which he observed at the St. Petersburg Observatory on Wednesday at 0213hrs UTC. He also sent an email copy to his short list of selected past project colleagues.

Iosef Sharapov then emailed a handful of colleagues specializing in Kuiper Belt Objects with a specific inquiry about whether or not they had seen anything at 0213hrs UTC, at 50 AU distance.

As both astronomers worked, the skies over both of their observatories turned hazy then began clouding over, frustrating immediate attempts at further observations. While waiting for IAO posting of their observation of an anomalous flash and giving credit for that observation, each astronomer imagined the sort of notice such an observation might bring them.

At 0228hrs UTC the International Astronomy Organization sent out an iWeb report of an anomalous flash of light seen at 50 AU distance in the Kuiper Belt on Wednesday, 4 January at 0213hrs UTC by astronomers Iosef Sharapov (St. Petersburg Observatory) and John Kelly (East London Observatory).

Adding to the professional frustrations of each man, the skies over both St. Petersburg and London were now quite completely overcast, preventing any additional real time observations. All they could do was wait and brood over having to share an observation which each man felt they had made on their own.

So far no one else had reported it, and having to share credit for it suited neither man’s personality: both were meticulous, tenacious loners, not well suited to most academic teaching situations or too many collaborations. Each had just a few cherished people or past situations that had worked out well.

It took each man only forty five seconds of thought to generate and develop an email, and each man’s first short, vaguely accusatory email composed in icy anger was literally exchanged within three seconds. Each man accused the other of stealing the glory, neither astronomer for the moment appreciating the historical aspect that their sightings from two different places on Earth had confirmed an unusual event had just taken place in the distant Kuiper Belt.

Chapter 02 - A Flash Seen From Sweden

0229hrs UTC 4 January (Wednesday)

0329AM - Nol University Observatory, Sweden

Dr. Rosa Castro

Situated between both cities was an astronomer who was on John Kelly’s email list as a co-author of several papers, who was also on Iosef Sharapov’s email list as a past project team collaborator, and who had clear skies and a 2 meter telescope in her hands.

Professor Rosa Castro, PhD, was living in Nol, Sweden, and whenever Dr. Castro wasn’t cooking, preparing for classes, or teaching at Nol University, she was making regular celestial observations of numerous distant things, including Haumea and Makemake as part of an international Kuiper Belt Object Study Project. She tried to squeeze eating in as well, usually while she checked in with project collaborators, and liked to think it was more than just many chances to chat with her friends across the globe.

For one thing, it had put her into a network where she had worked with many other astronomers and planetary formation physicists seeking observational data for their latest models. Moving to Nol to teach astronomy here had worked out, the weather seemed more cooperative than some places she had been to, she had already collaborated on several papers, and her career was doing fine. So were things at home, which was most important when she was at the university’s observatory on every clear night to look out through the 2 meter telescope all night.

Skies were clear tonight over Nol, and at 0220hrs UTC, after she read the emails from John Kelly and Iosef Sharapov, Dr. Rosa Castro had turned her full attention to distant Makemake.

Light took about 500 seconds to travel 1 Astronomical Unit (AU), so she reasoned there should be about sixteen and a half to seventeen minutes between the flash reflected off Haumea at 0213hrs UTC and a flash that should reflect off Makemake next, 2 AU further out. Rosa had just five or six minutes to get all of the instruments ready to observe for that, just in case she was right in her hypothesis here. If she had taught afternoon classes (as she had today), that meant she had been up for at least sixteen hours, and she usually hit a wall around three in the morning. Right now, it seemed she had energy to spare.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, Rosa told herself, something she had overheard somewhere, and agreed with. She got the 2 meter scope at Nol University Observatory situated and all set up by 0227hrs UTC, with two or three minutes to spare. The ultra light sensitive CCD system was top of the line, and it would be needed to capture such a small object at such great distance, and then detect such a faint increase in light.

The seeing had been lovely all night, however, so she had a good feeling here.

At 0229hrs UTC she saw and recorded an increase in light reflected off Makemake, at 52 AU distance. To her pleased shock, it was bright enough that she saw Makemake as a very distinctly visible distant object in space for once, not as a faint thing she had trouble getting a confident view of with a 2 meter under the best of digital processing conditions. That had to be fairly close and it had to be very bright to do that to them, she thought.

Rosa quickly sent an email to one of her best friends, an astronomer currently at work doing final calibrations and site testing at a newly completed observatory in southwestern New York state. They had been pooling their Kuiper Belt Object observation data on dwarf planets Haumea and Makemake for some time, and this was big news, even if neither Haumea or Makemake had risen above the horizon there yet.

They were also best friends, and she added a personal updating note at the end.

Then her skies began to cloud over. Rain was expected, perhaps snow.

Rosa shook her head and got to work on her observation and a formal report about it.

Chapter 03 - A Streak Observed

0552hrs UTC 4 January (Wednesday)

0052AM EST, Ozymandias Observatory, Oz Hill, NY

Dr. P. A. Theodorakis

It was at 0552hrs UTC on Wednesday morning that an American astronomer, an observer with patience and a new 1.2 meter telescope available for observations at the right time happened to see and record a long streak of light heading in toward the Sun from that same area of sky near Haumea.

That was at 0052AM EST, just after local midnight at her location on a 756 meter (2,457 feet) highpoint on a hilltop not very far from the small town of Bolivar in southwestern New York state. For several weeks Dr. Pauline A. Theodorakis, PhD had been making nightly Kuiper Belt Object observations of the dwarf planets Haumea (50 AU distant) and Makemake (52 AU distant), using the small but dedicated Ozymandias Observatory 1.2 meter telescope and long hours of exposure times while keeping the area targeted for the telescope’s tracking system.

Yesterday, just after nine thirty on Tuesday night, Pauline was drinking her morning coffee after getting up from sleep for night work at ten when an email from Rosa had come in. Dr. Rosa Castro was a professional astronomer and a current KBO Study Project collaborator, and a very, very good friend, and Rosa had simply sent her recording of Makemake getting brighter, copies of the two emails she had received about a flash seen off Haumea, and her own comment: WTF?! Collision?– RC. There was a side message about loving her life in Sweden.

At that time it was still a few hours yet before either of Pauline’s exercise in calibration KBO targets had risen in the eastern sky over Oz Hill, so she went to work on her other targets. Her primary job was calibrating the 1.2 meter telescope for single-operator and/or remote operator use. If she took some good images of anything else like a comet or a few beautiful long exposures of deep space objects, a good test and some lovely results would please the observatory’s sponsor a great deal.

Pauline tried to stay in focus as she finished her nightly observations, but the reports of a flash reflected off Haumea and Makemake were so intriguing that she was constantly distracted and eagerly waiting for them to finally rise in the eastern sky.

It was wonderful seeing tonight. A clear winter’s night brought a deeper darkness over the hilltop woods out here in southwestern New York state’s Bolivar County, very close to the northern border of Pennsylvania, very far away from the lights of any really big towns or cities. The exact location wasn’t very easy to get up to, and odd to live in, but it offered beautiful seeing when conditions were right.

Conditions were perfect on Wednesday morning at 0552hrs UTC (0052AM EST local time), when astronomer Pauline A. Theodorakis saw the streak of light.

She pressed the spectrograph recording system the moment she saw a flash of light, figuring she had missed about one half to one second in real time, staring in fascination as the flash stretched out into a streak. From first light to last took about ten seconds, of which Pauline took a live spectrogram of the last 8.37 seconds, then another fifteen seconds of background. The camera’s imaging system was always running, so she had everything recorded, and hoped to capture a spectrum of the first instant of light from those images as well.

She sat there for about three seconds, working through what she had just seen and what she had to do about it, ending with what to do first.

She flashed an iWeb-iNet alert to other astronomers, sending it out to her widest list, including the International Astronomy Organization and the Royal Astronomy Society. This not only cemented her own timestamp of an observation, it got others to look in that area of sky as well.

Various observers around the world now turned to that section of the sky, while someone who passed her alert on added their own footnote question: "Could the source be from some anomalous natural object?" Its location at the end of her alert and an extra heading insert indicated this text was clearly an addition by someone else, but it was unsourced. It would nevertheless come to be associated with Dr. P. A. Theodorakis, causing her considerable problems.

Two observatories observing deep sky objects in that area and direction of the sky checked backward and found out they had through sheer serendipity just caught and recorded the entire streak event nearby as well. It took six minutes for their confirmations of her first report to hit the iNet.

Pauline was now hard at work, unaware of any email footnotes or observational confirmations, lost in analyzing her own set of observational data, and disconcerted to see her calculations indicate that the point source at the leading end of the streak she had seen was moving at .04c, the speed of light: 12,000 kilometers per second (km/s).

The Earth moved along at 30 km/s (64,800 MPH) in orbit around the Sun, which moved at 200 km/s (432,000 MPH) in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy, which was moving toward the nearby Andromeda galaxy at 111 km/s (239,760 MPH).

At the end of the streak, the point source that had generated the light and streak was moving inward at 12,000 km/s – 43,200,000 kilometers an hour – almost 26,000,000 MPH.

This was the fastest object she had ever seen within the Solar system. Not even rogue stars thrown out of galaxies moved that fast; the most distant galaxies came closest, and only the energy jets shooting out of the poles of quasars at relativistic speeds were faster.

When the streak began, the point source was at a distance of 39.5 AU. 1 AU was 150,000,000 kilometers, the average distance from the Sun to the Earth. Moving at 1c (300,000 km/s), it took light 8.3 minutes (~500 seconds) to cover that distance.

Moving at .04c (12,000 km/s), in about 395 hours (just over 16 days) the point source would reach the distance of Earth’s orbit, although at that moment in time the Earth would not be orbiting near that point in space.

Pauline did some more calculations and saw that a starting distance of 40 AU would explain the timing pattern for the initial light echoes: it had taken some time for light from the anomalous source to travel the 10 AU distance outward to Haumea, and then for that reflected light to travel the 50 AU distance inward from Haumea to Earth. The same held for the reflected flash off Makemake that Rosa had captured about sixteen minutes later. If she was right about a 40 AU starting point, then in the three hours since the flash, this object had moved in 0.5 AU closer.

Pauline decided there had to be a margin of error she had somehow missed, perhaps an error in her initial postulate (like it was a ridiculous speculation to start with), so she just settled in to resume observing the area, and didn’t mention her idea to any colleagues.

Chapter 04 - The Second Streak

1040hrs UTC 4 January (Wednesday)

0540AM Oz Hill, NY

The second streak was seen Wednesday at 1040hrs UTC, four and a half hours after first streak was observed, almost eight and a half hours after the flash of light that reflected off Haumea was seen at a 50 AU distance in the Kuiper Belt.

Dr. P. A. Theodorakis caught it all at 0540AM (her local time), under superb seeing conditions on this chilly dark early Wednesday morning in January. She had set up extra image capture feeds to continuously record the observation area, and the instant she saw a flicker of light at 1040hrs UTC she pressed a keypad, adding another spectography phase into the tracking program. The 1.2 meter scope wasn’t the best size for KBO studies, but she had unlimited observation time with it and had quickly learned how to play it for best results.

Observations of the more widely observed second streak were quickly analyzed: the angles of both streaks of light indicated a trajectory starting within the Kuiper Belt, and the leading point of the light streak was still blue shifted.

It was now moving at .06 the speed of light: 18,000 km/s; 64,800,000 km/hour. It was heading in toward the Sun, and it was now at 38 AU distance, having moved about 2 AU closer in than the flash area her calculations suggested it started from.

Something was heading toward the inner system (the iWeb had stuck the tag of Anomalous Natural Object to it), and to Pauline Theodorakis the evidence so far suggested a pattern of regular controlled accelerations that seemed to be guided. Which was a spaceship, and that was too nuts to waste time thinking about. Especially with important professional work to be done.

Pauline spent two hours packaging up her reports and her full analysis of the first two streaks and footnote end noting her calculation which suggested a probable 40 AU distance for whatever had caused the initial flash (which had either been missed or possibly obscured by Kuiper Belt material). It was nearly eight in the morning when she attached the data and image files, and Pauline yawned as she sent them out. Time for that coffee.

She was glad she had set a full vacuum carafe aside from the first brew, because she didn’t feel like making a fresh pot right now.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she felt like, actually.

A spaceship?

No way. No freakin’ way!

She drank the coffee, gulping the sweet brew down as if hoping it would wash some sense into her brain, then Pauline muttered, No. No freakin’ way. For a woman who was now talking to herself, she was glad she sounded so determined. Not unusually either, she added, just reassuring herself, before she shook her head and rinsed out her coffee tumbler.

Chapter 05 - A Third Streak

1552hrs UTC 4 January (Wednesday)

1022AM EST, Oz Hill, NY

A third streak of light observed at 1552hrs UTC Wednesday, nearly fourteen hours after the first flash of light was seen out in the Kuiper Belt, reconfirmed that the newly iNet christened Anomalous Natural Object was clearly on a trajectory in toward the Sun.

It was 1022AM on Oz Hill in New York, but her habitual generosity in data sharing now meant Dr. P. A. Theodorakis had immediate iNet access to several other sets of excellent observation images and data. Included was a continuous high speed image capture series set up to frame another possible streak event around four and a half hours after the last one, in case the Anomalous Natural Object was keeping to the rough time interval observed so far.

As of the third streak, compared to previous observations it was evidently gaining velocity with every observed streak, and was now moving at .08 the speed of light: 24,000 km/s. That was 86,400,000 km/hour. With every increase of speed by the time it crossed Earth’s orbit it would miss Earth by a larger distance. The planets lying within that orbit were not close to Earth at the moment, so a final destination for any spaceship was unclear.

That made the spaceship notion easier to drop for Pauline Theodorakis, who was now starting to feel her lack of sleep this morning. After her event filled overnight run Pauline knew she was wrung out on coffee, and knew she was in no mental shape to start making formal calculations or analyzing all of the new data as it came in. She needed to eat and rest.

She still did not feel hungry or tired, though.

It took her almost an hour to get the third streak data entered into her framework of trajectory calculations to create an estimated inner system final trajectory starting out at 40 AU that would intersect Earth’s orbital pathway at 1 AU distance from the Sun. From the outset, that crossing point was always ahead of Earth – but with each new observation of an acceleration, the distance had shortened by a small amount. At least one more would be needed, though.

Her solutions after adding the third streak data into the trajectory calculations now put the Earth orbital distance crossing point at least half as much closer to where Earth would be than the first streak calculation had placed it. Even allowing for the sorts of guesstimates she had used for the time lengths spent coasting at velocities higher than .05c, that was still "a lot closer to Earth" than the first solution had been.

Those guesstimates rattled her confidence in her theory framework under them, so she still was not yet willing to discuss the whole idea with anyone else.

She sat there, too drained to think.

She forced herself to be good and eat two CLIF bars before drinking some water, washing up, and lying down. After one of her all night observation sessions she rarely had trouble sleeping, as long as she made the room dark.

Today, she found it very difficult to fall asleep.

Her current mental incoherence clashed badly with all of the years that Pauline Athena Theodorakis had spent in school learning facts, history, mathematics, science, and how to think more systematically. As a chronically studious academic, her life had been essentially unremarkable, outside of a few sports related moments in high school and college (swimming, track, a biathlon team). She had done well in school, graduating college with honors despite losing both of her parents during the last two years. Her small inheritance had started graduate school, but to complete it, she finally had to sell her parent’s house.

Once again Pauline had graduated with top honors, without any school debt, and with two thousand dollars in the bank. She was officially now a post-doc in astronomy, with no solid offers. She was all too aware she had fulfilled only half of each parent’s dreams for her: to do what she loved (her mother’s dream, along with raising a family), and to finish school (her father’s dream, but he had wanted it to be in something practical).

Things had been tough before she met a shy billionaire named Theo Alexander, with strong philanthropic inclinations and several hobbies he promoted. Astronomy was one of them, and he attended an academic conference where she gave her first PhD talk, based on her dissertation on Pluto-sized Kuiper Belt Objects. One of her colleagues from Chile met her in the corridor outside the hall soon afterward to congratulate her on her doctorate and paper prrsentation, and he had introduced Theo Alexander only as, A man who has helped many towns in Chile get a modern, well equipped medical clinic.

Container conversions, said Theo, as he shook her hand. Convert an old stainless steel shipping container into a two room clinic, add another one or two of those if any additional rooms are needed, including a sort of house for the doctor. Or even bunkhouses for medical workers to use after a disaster or an earthquake. They can be moved by helicopter and lowered in as needed.

She smiled. Wow. I didn’t even ask.

I thought I better brag about it the first chance I got, since I might not get another chance.

Why not?

Life’s short and I’m older and more worn out every day. But until then, helping others and bragging to people about it so they know that need still exists is a nice way to pass my time.

Okay.

I liked your paper.

Thanks.

When did you fall in love with the stars enough to get a doctorate in looking at them?

Pauline had intended to give her paper talk, answer any questions, and leave as fast as she could, before it got late. She also didn’t generally talk to relative strangers… But Theo Alexander already seemed more like an old uncle, somehow. She also couldn’t recall anyone ever asking her that question. Somehow during her doctoral explanation a much longer conversation about work she had done one college summer as a fire-watcher had developed.

The next day had brought a call from someone named Erin Secrets, the most senior member of Theo Alexander’s staff, offering her a job as initial primary astronomer in residence for a new observatory that Theo was just finishing up in the middle of some woods in southwestern New York state, near the town of Bolivar.

Theo Alexander owned some acreage there and in years past he had brought legal actions against developers he called logging company spies and tree poachers, so there was a colorful local history to back up his land lines and property rights. Despite his work to reclaim and preserve as much undeveloped forest as he could on his land holdings, both locally and across the globe, there were still some local protests that building an observatory meant Theo wasn’t being as green as the small group of protesters thought he should be, following their heartfelt discussions in a Bolivar coffee bistro-café.

Once Pauline saw the site, perched in woods atop the 2,431 foot highest point of a 2,400 foot hilltop, rising just slightly above the many other local hills around it, his interest in her past work as a fire-watcher made perfect sense. It was at least a one mile hike down the west side of the hill to Kansas Hollow Road, while it was a three mile long crude looking dirt access track to South Bolivar Road on the eastern side of the hill, and the nearest house was at least three or four miles away in any direction. This part of New York state was hilly woods with farmed land in the flatter areas, and not all of those fields were being worked. People wouldn’t specifically tend to be out here, not even the locals, and she would be on her own.

Pauline wasn’t on the Moon, but it was an isolated place to live. The benign pine-green dome did little to offset the high-tech lair-like quality of the place, all edges and rectangles, set on the high point of the hilltop and surrounded by trees, many of them evergreens offering their year round cover. All of the observatory buildings were made from converted steel shipping containers. These were joined together in a hollow square around the base section of the dome, and around that were more converted shipping containers including a living area unit, an office and operations unit, and equipment units (motors, hydraulic pumps, generators, H/VAC, and a water heater). Two half container units were attached as well, one facing inward as an add-on entertainment media center extension, the other faced outward for storage of the gear to maintain the external grounds, along with two bicycles, an ATV, and a snowmobile.

The dome sat on top of a cylindrical observatory chamber twenty six feet in diameter and forty feet tall which housed a modern 1.2 meter telescope, and everything in the control and imaging systems was designed for a single operator to use it – and even do so remotely. Theo had named it Ozymandias Observatory, so the previously unnamed hill off Kansas Hollow Road had now become Oz Hill. There were actually two months of final construction work remaining when Pauline arrived, which she spent living in nearby Bolivar in a field office apartment Theo had rented at great cost; once she was finally in the observatory, it took her a month and a half to get everything tweaked and all of the instruments calibrated and operational. Even then, after just two weeks of regular-use operations, a tracking drive motor failure froze the telescope. She was lucky it was in a safely balanced position when it happened.

She had taken advantage of that down time to practice use of the Alexander Radio Telescope Small Kind Y (ARTSKY) Network, which was an iNet operable network of small radio dish systems installed on areas of open land which Theo owned in other places around the world. Each installation had three score small dish units laid out in a Y formation, twenty units to an arm. If the system tested out as Theo hoped it would, each of the places would synchronize with another one to widen the baseline of observations and increase signal resolution, and the dishes were all now small, but could be enlarged.

Whenever it was locally cloudy, foggy, or rainy, Pauline had practiced using the iNet radio telescope system, either checking out what was going on, or finding one not in active local use and operating it remotely. It was a novel design and still had some server problems and programming bugs, but the weather was still the single negative aspect about any optical observatory on Earth. She used her downtime opportunities to practice program commands for her big scope, for practice in using the radio telescope network, and to fix any broken things.

When the seeing was good here, though, it was fantastic.

It had been fantastic last night, but now Pauline couldn’t sleep. Rather than fight her bedsheets, she got up and went to work on her analysis and final report writing. She had seen and reported the first streak and observed the second as well, so her two observation reports would surely be cited and referred to for years to come, providing human civilization survived whatever this event was, exactly. She also wanted to hazard a guess as to the time of the next burn, and play around to see where a reverse pattern of five deceleration burns, one about every five hours, would deposit it…

Chapter 06 - Wednesday in America

4 January (Wednesday)

America

The type of routine observations made by astronomers were often of marginal interest when it came to mainstream media. A single flash observed in the Kuiper Belt would be noted by trade astronomy magazines in future issues, so even media outlets dedicated to astronomy simply noted it for follow up, and went back to waiting.

The streak seen on Wednesday at 0552hrs UTC was seen by only one observer, and their iWeb alert went out to other astronomers and observatories, not to the media. Over the next few hours, the first reporting observatory and a few others which had happened to cover the general area of sky in the direction of Haumea all carefully analyzed their images and other data.

Because of the initial alert of a flash, the observatory in southwestern New York had all of the instruments set up to make a full range of observations if anything else was seen. That preparation yielded observations of a streak with a point of light at the end of it.

A second streak seen at 1040hrs UTC, over eight hours after the Kuiper Belt flash was seen, was observed by a number of very well prepared observatories, and the analyzed data was consistent. Several observatories made certain they joined the prestigious and growing list of observers, and sent out press releases about their part in the response.

After little general media buzz in the initial hours following the Kuiper Flash, by 0600AM on the East Coast the media had added Kuiper Flash to their iWeb tag of Anomalous Natural Object, and the flash and two streaks were widely reported during morning news shows across America. The most common story tone was an amused toleration for the ways of science and scientists, seeing inexplicable flashes and streaks in space again!

The sharpest news organizations all made certain they activated their contacts so any more images of lights in space would be available for prompt (but exclusive) release. Their science reporters were aware that a flash and one streak was merely interesting, while a flash and two streaks was a bit puzzling, and the tone heard from scientists was taut with anxiety.

Something was going on, even if the senior editors weren’t running with it yet.

The third streak seen at 1522hrs UTC (1022AM EST) was widely reported on the BBC World News at 1600hrs GMT, and was also mentioned in passing across the globe during most of the top of the hour news reports, whatever hour that might be. There was no question now that, something odd is going on out in the Kuiper Belt, and there was no hiding the anxiety over puzzlement instead of interest. Nobody was saying why they were anxious, and governments weren’t sure what their response to comet-like lights in