Directors and Malcontents: A New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

“I’ll say it one more time. John­son and Carmike are not com­ing back!” the Direc­tor said. “They left the space agency. It’s over. Why are we even hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion about them? I can’t believe I will spend my Sat­ur­day mak­ing a case for us to try lur­ing back two mal­con­tents that have no desire to be part of our mis­sion. What con­ceiv­able use do we have for them?”

The Assis­tant Direc­tor said, “They have flight expe­ri­ence and are qual­i­fied. They’ve both been to the Moon and done all the things we asked of them.”

“The deci­sion is out of our hands. They left.”

“We need to get them back.”

“I don’t see how,” said the Director.

“Yeah, I know it’s impossible.”

“How does that impact us?”

“To get the crews ready after Mis­sion 7, we must slow down our pace.”

“How slow?” The Direc­tor asked.

“We must extend our sched­ule for Mis­sion 7 by a year.”

“That’s not pos­si­ble. We must keep flying.”

“I have a solution.”

“What?” asked the Director.

“Change Mis­sion 7 to the Tycho crater, with Jel­li­son and Conner.”

“What about the next mis­sion at the Lunar south pole?”

“We have Annie and Cy Mac­In­turn­er fly it,” said the Assis­tant Director.

“You’re sug­gest­ing that we put a hus­band-and-wife team as crew for a Lunar mission?”

“Yeah. They’re the only ones with the expe­ri­ence need­ed to han­dle that tough mission.”

“The Assis­tant Sec­re­tary will kill us,” the Direc­tor said.

“Then we need John­son and Carmike back.”

“They’re not com­ing back.”

The Drake Equation: An Article by Torn MacAlester

 

Morgan’s Road: A Short Story by Torn MacAlester

Clash of Titans: a Vignette by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

874: A New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

I head­ed along the beach. It had been at least ten hours since we had run aground. We had agreed that going into the inte­ri­or of the island was unlike­ly to be use­ful. The jun­gle would hide things too well for us to find. The beach, how­ev­er, would even­tu­al­ly reveal signs of civ­i­liza­tion some­where on the island. We could eas­i­ly see a dock, a boat, or even a set­tle­ment on the beach. Or if the island was unin­hab­it­ed, we’d meet each oth­er on the side of the island.

Mac and I flipped a coin. He’d go north, and I would go south. I start­ed off, after wav­ing to the eight oth­er cast­aways. A storm had ham­mered us dur­ing our Caribbean vaca­tion. The ship had stopped at a small island near Bermu­da. We were on a day trek to anoth­er island not too far dis­tant when the hur­ri­cane hit us. The lit­tle ship seemed very sea­wor­thy, but it lacked the pow­er to out­run the storm. Even­tu­al­ly, we crashed into the side of this island. We lost the radio because of the storm. Some­thing had hap­pened to the anten­na. Accord­ing to our few work­ing phones, the GPS showed that we were about fifty-three miles from Bermuda.

We were obvi­ous­ly out of cell cov­er­age, so our maps were crude from the cab­in of the boat. But the num­bers said it should be Bermu­da near­by. The cap­tain of the boat got hit on the head, and oth­er peo­ple were help­ing him. They sent Mac and me for help. I kept walk­ing along the tidal line, try­ing to keep wet sand under my feet. I had a bet­ter time walk­ing on it.
After about four hours, I checked my cell. Accord­ing to the GPS dis­tance, I’d trav­eled less than one tenth of a mile.

That’s odd, I thought. I should have made at least ten miles in that kind of time.

I turned back, look­ing north. I could see that the boat and the sur­vivors were extreme­ly dis­tant. In fact, I could only make out the wreck­age of the boat from this dis­tance. I was very far away, eas­i­ly far more than a few miles. I flipped over to the pedome­ter app. It had said I had walked about eight miles. I looked back at the GPS app and reread the posi­tion. Care­ful­ly, I altered the mode to read my loca­tion regard­ing the Earth­’s cen­ter and the North Pole. I knew I was near the equa­tor, so if I took about 50 steps south, I would have moved enough for the receiv­er to detect that I had moved by chang­ing the last dig­it on the Z axis.

I turned and took the steps, count­ing them out as I walked. I then looked at the num­ber. It still read the same. The last 3 dig­its were 874. No change. I did it again. It read 874 again. How in the world is that pos­si­ble? I watched it now as I walked. It did not change from 874. I checked to see what the oth­er num­bers read. It sim­i­lar­ly showed them being locked in their pre­vi­ous values.

What the Hell? This makes no sense.

There was one more test I could take. I turned to the direc­tions func­tion. I checked the dis­tance to Bermu­da. It said fifty-three. My phone showed that I either walked in a per­fect cir­cle for 8 miles or stayed in the same place. Nei­ther made any sense. Also, this had to be a vast island. I’d walked for hours, and I was still on the west­ern shore. Again, it would make the island at least eight miles long in one direc­tion, but I could see that the shore ahead of me stretch­ing out as far as I could see.

Our sim­ple plan had failed. I looked again at the num­bers. 874 showed clear­ly. Pan­icked, I turned north, hop­ing that I could get back to the boat and the oth­ers. The 874 con­tin­ued to taunt me.

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Decisions: A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

See more of Nils in:

Thun­der Moon Tussle

 

Another Plot: A New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

“Milt,” said Mary, tired of the con­ver­sa­tion. “You didn’t real­ly want to be an astronaut?”

“No, it was a means to an end. Noth­ing more.”

“I wish you wouldn’t antag­o­nize our broth­er. He scares me.”

“Mor­ris is a fool,” Milt said.

“A dan­ger­ous one.

“True, we can­not under­es­ti­mate him.”

“Then why all this mess­ing around with the fake iden­ti­ty and the trip to the Moon?” Mary asked.

“I took some­thing that he didn’t deserve to have.”

“The arti­facts?!”

“Yes,” Mil­ton said, nod­ding slight­ly. “They dis­ap­peared from his vault a lit­tle over two years ago.”

“Broth­er, I real­ize you want to pun­ish Mor­ris for what he did to dad.”

“Oh, he has yet to pay for that.”

“Dammit, Milt!”

“Don’t wor­ry, Mary. Mor­ris will not find the arti­facts. He might fig­ure out where they are, but for now, they are beyond his reach.”

“You mean?”

“Yes, I took them with me.”

“Did Annie Mac­In­turn­er know?” asked Mary.

“No. She nev­er sus­pect­ed that she unloaded them herself.”

“Now what?”

“Now, I see if Carmike is the kind of man, I think he is,” said Milton.

“Des­per­ate, you mean,” Mary said, nar­row­ing her eyes.

“Yeah.”

“How do you do that?”

“We’ll need some mon­ey,” said Milt.

“How much?”

“Hun­dreds of millions.”

“Okay, I got most of that myself,” Mary said.

“We’ll need to make it look like typ­i­cal investors. Noth­ing too much from any­one, so we can keep it anony­mous. Big investors attract the wrong attention.”

“What about Mark?”

“To hell with him,” Mil­ton said.

“I thought you two…”

“Noth­ing of the sort. He’s an ego­ma­ni­ac like his father. I have no use for him.”

“He’ll fig­ure this out and want in,” Mary said.

“Of course he will. We need to make sure he’s always on the out­side, look­ing in. I want his inter­est sole­ly fixed on Nils.”

See more of Milt in:

Golf and Outgassing

and

Thun­der Moon Tussle

 

Civilization and Power

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Commander: A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Golf and Outgassing: a short story by Torn Macalester

Golf and Outgassing: a Science Fiction Short Story