Timeline of Events

Y+0

Yel­low­stone Eruption

Y+0,  Yel­low­stone erupt­ed. It was the worst erup­tion that plan­et Earth had expe­ri­enced in sev­er­al mil­lion years. The erup­tion destroyed every­thing with­in fifty miles of the north­ern side of the Yel­low­stone reser­voir. Exten­sive dam­age reached a radius of near­ly five-hun­dred miles. The ash cloud would have destroyed the crops in the Mid­west if it hap­pened before the har­vest. Instead, it destroyed the top­soil of the world’s best farm­land. The acid rain also dam­aged much of the forests in the North­east­ern US. The death toll was in the thousands.

Sins of the Son
Pho­to by Brett Sayles from Pex­els Sins of the Son By Torn Macalester “Did you hear it?” The patient asked over the cacoph­o­ny of emer­gency equip­ment as the doc­tor worked on him and six oth­er patients that were near­ly as bad. “Hear what?” The doc­tor asked, plac­ing the gauze pads over the burns. “Make sure we clear his lungs. We need a scope in him as soon as pos­si­ble.” “She’s singing to us.” “What is she singing?” Doc­tor answered, look­ing at his eyes. One seemed burned, but the oth­er remained clear. Triage put him in the urgent cat­e­go­ry, but the bil­lion­aire made everything […]

 

Dri­ve to Hous­ton by Torn MacAlester
Time to go, the alarm indi­cat­ed. Jacob Con­ner dread­ed the announce­ment, regard­ing it as a hor­ri­ble turn of events. It meant he need­ed to get to Hous­ton to sup­port the space sta­tion for NASA. As a lead Astro­naut, it was his job, forc­ing him to make the com­mutes from his home in Dal­las. I hate this dri­ve to Hous­ton, thought Jacob. The trip from Dal­las to Hous­ton had always been dif­fi­cult, but now, in the falling ash of Yel­low­stone, it neared impos­si­ble. The ash was every­where since the explo­sion. Noth­ing escaped it. Ash wreaked hav­oc on cars, clog­ging up windshields, […]

 

The Moun­tain
By Torn MacAlester   Orig­i­nal Pho­to by Jose Vega from Pex­els. Mod­i­fied to grayscale and blurred using GIMP.     I sighed, look­ing at the grey land­scape, try­ing to esti­mate the direc­tion to the cab­in. I aban­doned the moun­tain, like every­one else, when the ash fell. They didn’t expect us to get a lot, but they encour­aged every­one to move south if they could, and I could. I loaded the jeep and head­ed down the moun­tain and head­ed south to New Mex­i­co with a rel­a­tive. After about six weeks, I’d worn out my wel­come, and I returned home. Now I […]

 

The Sol­dier
By Torn MacAlester Image gen­er­at­ed by Torn MacAlester using GIMP 2.10.2 with Sta­ble Dif­fu­sion AI add on. The Sol­dier Y+0   Granger real­ized that the whirl­wind month had end­ed as he head­ed to the Grey­hound bus, hop­ing to see if he could get a trip. Accord­ing to the sergeant in the dis­charge bar­racks, his chances of get­ting a home trip to Wyoming were next to noth­ing. He had the Army trav­el vouch­er and four hun­dred bucks in cash–enough to last maybe two weeks, if his luck held. In the hazy twi­light, he made note of the lim­ou­sine pulled up along […]

 

Y+1

The Y+1 grow­ing sea­son did not hap­pen glob­al­ly. Luck­i­ly, the com­plet­ed har­vest had pre­pared a sig­nif­i­cant food store for the plan­et. How­ev­er, many coun­tries around the world halt­ed exports in response to the impend­ing loss of food pro­duc­tion. Many coun­tries around the world took imme­di­ate action to cre­ate ware­house pro­duc­tion of crops. By the end of the year, they replaced one tenth of glob­al food pro­duc­tion. Glob­al deaths were in the hun­dreds of thou­sands. The US mil­i­tary com­plet­ed a with­draw­al from bases out­side the US. This result­ed in anoth­er hun­dred thou­sand deaths from food riots and region­al wars. The action strained US/EU rela­tions. The exces­sive amounts of vol­canic ash in the atmos­phere led to a crash devel­op­ment of rock­et-pow­ered aircraft.

Y+1
by Torn MacAlester This morn­ing on the Night Watch Live AM, we are speak­ing with Nick in Mon­tana, who’s been liv­ing inside of the blast zone of Yel­low­stone since the explo­sion last year. Nick, we have a caller on line two, are you ready for ques­tions from the audi­ence? “Go ahead Sam,” I said, pour­ing myself anoth­er cup of cof­fee. “I’m ready.” I’ve got Coot­er from Texas on the line. Coot­er, you’re live with Sam Dean on Night Watch AM and Nick from Mon­tana. “Hey yeah Nick, this is Coot­er. Ya doin’ all right?” “I can’t com­plain Coot­er, what is […]

Y+8

 

Golf and Outgassing
Graph­ic By Shan­nan Albright A six­ty-year-old Moon mys­tery prompts Colonel Annie Mac­turn­er to make a risky deci­sion. Intrigued by an inter­view designed to manip­u­late, Mil­ton John­son, a can­di­date that con­flicts with her high­ly dis­tin­guished mil­i­tary back­ground, is select­ed as her crew-mate. Can Annie solve the land­ing site mys­tery and unrav­el Milton’s enig­ma before a life-threat­en­ing col­li­sion with the past occurs? Join Annie on every bound­ing step of her jour­ney as she tra­vers­es the Lunar sur­face and keeps you on the edge of your seat! Golf and Out­gassing by Torn MacAlester Annie Mac­In­turn­er glanced at the space-suit­ed fig­ure mov­ing toward her […]

Y+12

 

Com­man­der
Image by Torn MacAlester using Open­Sim By Torn MacAlester   The events in the crater weighed heav­i­ly on Nils Carmike. He near­ly killed his com­man­der, Mose. It was an acci­dent. Though, he felt defeat­ed as he stared out the Moon-ship win­dow, look­ing at the crater where it occurred. “I need to put you on this new mis­sion,” said Mose. “I’ll need some­one expe­ri­enced and you’re the one that I will choose.” “What are you talk­ing about? We can’t go back down there.” “Yes, this mis­sion is over. What don’t you get about that? We made it. Now, you need a […]

 

Y+13

 

Deci­sions
Deci­sions Y+13 Nils heard Katie enter the room as he fin­ished typ­ing the let­ter and sent it to the print­er. He’d been using the back bed­room as an office ever since they had moved to Hous­ton. He’d set up a com­mu­ni­ca­tions cen­ter in the room so that Katie could keep in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him when­ev­er he spent some time in space. At one time, he thought it would not have been nec­es­sary. It turned out it became unnec­es­sary, but for a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent rea­son than he imag­ined. “What are you doing?” asked Katie with her heavy Texas drawl. “I’m writing […]

 

Anoth­er Plot
“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 […]

 

Direc­tors and Mal­con­tents 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 […]

Y+15

Cycle 3 by Torn MacAlester
From his Texas Office, Nils fell into the rou­tine since they land­ed the remote-con­trol crawler on the lunar sur­face. For about two weeks, he’d work near­ly four­teen-hour days. Then once the sun had set on the land­ing site, he’d spend the next two weeks relax­ing and work­ing only a cou­ple of hours a day. He’d been through two full cycles, await­ing the sun­rise on the third cycle, start­ing in two days when the sun ris­es on the land­ing site. He grabbed the cof­fee from the con­ve­nience store across the street from the office. Even though he only planned to spend […]

Y+17

 

Dia­monds by Torn MacAlester
Nils depart­ed Con­rad Lunar Sta­tion, dri­ving his pres­sur­ized crawler. He imag­ined the sta­tion would become the hub of lunar activ­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with the Luna­dyne Cor­po­ra­tion. His hab wasn’t far off, allow­ing him to be away from the cen­ter of activ­i­ty and on his own. The whole point of his being here had been to build up the Moon. He knew Luna­dyne was an excel­lent group to be asso­ci­at­ed with, but he didn’t work for the com­pa­ny. He was an independent–one of the first. The crawler was the cen­ter of his life on the Moon. He knew it was nec­es­sary for […]
Clash of Titans
Pho­to by Vale­ria Bolt­ne­va from Pex­els Clash of Titans by Torn MacAlester . “I see you’ve bought K‑Systems,” said Mor­ris Mason to his son Mark as he raised a glass in a mock­ing toast. “I thought this was a casu­al din­ner, not a busi­ness meet­ing.” Mark growled, wip­ing his scarred chin with a nap­kin. “I’m under­stand­ably curi­ous. You’ve been even more eva­sive than usu­al.” “We oust­ed you from your role as CEO. The answers to your ques­tions can be summed up in five words: none of your damn busi­ness.” “No call to get testy. I’m just curi­ous,” said Mor­ris. “Why? […]

 

Y+28

Luna­dyne Incident
Y+28, Day 1: “You, in the jail,” the voice said over the inter­com. Sher­iff Del Ander­son stood and switched on the voice chan­nel. Del watched the warped video of the shady fig­ure in the hall­way out­side the Sheriff’s office. The facial recog­ni­tion soft­ware failed to place the indi­vid­ual. Either the man wasn’t in the sys­tem, or he had a vid-scram­bler on his body some­where. See­ing the wrist­watch, he sur­mised the loca­tion of the scram­bler. He doesn’t want to be rec­og­nized, Del thought. No mat­ter, I can track him down and get his land­ing info. Track­ing the man back, he found […]

 

 

Y+30

Rejec­tion
By Torn MacAlester Pho­to by Life Of Pix from Pex­els “Deputy Miller, a seri­ous sit­u­a­tion has risen.” Alex said, clean­ing a lunar beer mug as he spoke. “Like what?” Miller answered, clear­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in the Con­rad Sta­tion barkeep’s cur­rent cri­sis.  She checked her watch. Miller knew Nils Carmike’s sched­ule like the back of her hand. He would soon dock. “We need more peo­ple in the bar or else I will have to raise the price of drinks.” “What do you want me to do about it?” She asked, not real­ly car­ing what he would ask. “If you can get some more peo­ple to […]

 

Fif­teen Percent!
By Torn MacAlester Pho­to by Anna Nekra­she­vich from Pex­els Deputy Miller smiled. It was that smile of hers, Nils real­ized, the one that led to cer­tain dis­as­ter. “Okay Miller,” Nils attempt­ed to gain the ini­tia­tive. “What do you want?” “What makes you think I want any­thing?” “Dammit, Miller!” Why do you answer a ques­tion with a ques­tion? “You’ve got to want some­thing,” Nils said. “Or do we talk about the usu­al non­sense? Are you want­i­ng to go through every­thing? Are you wor­ried because I might smug­gle some­thing? I have legit­i­mate busi­ness in the bar. I need to attend to it.” “Legit­i­mate?” “Yes.” “How […]

 

Y+33

Thun­der Moon Tussle
Nils Carmike’s dream was to live on the Moon. He seized the chance to become a smug­gler on the Moon, leav­ing behind his astro­naut career, ex-wife, and post-Yel­low­stone dis­as­ter Earth. Life was going great until the seduc­tive and demand­ing Moon Deputy Miller arrived. She was hot today, cold tomor­row, and every day on Nils’s back. Out­ma­neu­vered and in over his head, Nils grants her a favor that leads to dan­ger. Can they work togeth­er and focus on the only thing that mat­ters? Or will they for­get Rule #1?

 

Stranger
by Torn MacAlester Pho­to by Chris­t­ian Fridell from Pex­els Alex hand­ed the cus­tomer his whiskey in the Lunar-strawed cup, expect­ing to have a reac­tion. All the tourists react­ed. “Why not a prop­er glass?” They would ask, not know­ing that it was impos­si­ble to drink most liq­uids from a reg­u­lar ter­res­tri­al glass. This man did not. He mere­ly accept­ed the glass with­out com­ment. “I under­stand there was a prospec­tor that tells sto­ries here,” the well-groomed man said, not even both­er­ing to try the whiskey first. “Yeah,” Alex answered. “Nils hasn’t been here in months.” “Oh,” the man looked con­fused. “Sor­ry. Did you need a […]

 

Antares by Torn MacAlester
After exam­in­ing his offices in the L5 sta­tion, Mark Mason ulti­mate­ly deter­mined that he was pleased. The O’Neil cylin­der was years away, so the tiny space made sense. At first zero G dis­agreed with him and he feared he would need to aban­don his quest. He built Selene Corp to for the quest, but the Moon was not the goal. It was anoth­er dis­trac­tion among many. Most notably try­ing to keep his chief finan­cial offi­cer from sell­ing Mars as the next goal. “I don’t under­stand why you are so obsessed that we don’t go to Mars,” said Gina Simon, the […]