Tag: future earth

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 1.2

Working on the Cocatrice

I took the elevator to the 75th floor and exited into the very large open space that was the apartment block’s hovercar nest. Around the edges of the open space, which was about the size of at least 2 inter-planetary football pitches, were parked hovercars, in multiple layers. I accessed my bay’s mindlock via my Cortex thought processor and waited for the Cicatrice to arrive at my feet. As it did, from the floor beside me, a MechanIT console rose up out of the floor beside me and several shelves within it opened. These had on them a wide range of diagnostic kit and tools, that might be necessary to extract and examine the various components that made up a hovercar propulsion unit, or engine, as they are still sometimes called.

I knew that all I had to do was work out how to get the ion-battery out of the propulsion compartment. Once I had it in my hands I could take it to Inegin’s and they would be able to find me an authentic working replacement. The trouble was that nothing in a Cicatrice was standard, even between Cicatrice’s, so any replacement was a specialist job. I just had to get it out and take it to the hovercar specialist. However the ‘getting it out’ was not as easy as I had at first thought and this was going to be my third attempt.

I stuck my head and neck as far into the tiny space within the propulsion unit as far as I could and attempted once again to disconnect the ion terminals on the battery from the main drive unit. Everything was such a tight fit it was really difficult to get the Sono-Magnetic destabiliser into the position between the terminals and the main drive to disrupt the virtual connection. After much huffing and puffing, I finally managed to remove the ion battery, drawing on the research I had conducted in our apartment whilst drinking copious quantities of coffee. This basically entailed me shoving a sonic wrench down the side of the battery and levering as hard as I could whilst cursing profusely. Eventually, I felt something shift, accompanied by slightly worrying cracking sounds, and I was finally able to grab the battery with my right hand and pull it away from the propulsion unit.

Unfortunately, as I yanked so hard in frustration and as my arm had come backward away from the propulsion unit, I lost grip on the ion battery. It sailed over my shoulder and behind me. As I turned and watched it arc through the air I noticed someone else working on another hovercar. To my horror, I realised that my ion battery was heading straight for that craft. Before I could even shout ‘Look out’, it smashed into the side of the shiny looking and obviously new vehicle.

To be continued…….

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 1.1

My hobbies were quite different from Cat’s…..

In contrast to Cat, my hobbies were somewhat less intense and, I would argue, much more normal. For the first three days of leave, I had been practicing coffee drinking, repetitive snacking and an awful lot of sitting and watching of aircast soaps. However, by the time I’d watched the last episode of the 17th series of ‘My Like Trapped in an Alien Body on Cosmos Avenue’ even I needed to exercise my brain. Or ‘synapse’ as Cat would say. I think his use of the singular ‘synapse’ was meant to be insulting. 

So, having almost burnt out the CoffeeDroid and frankly, feeling very awake from the caffeine shock, I decided to move and tend to one of my more active hobbies.

For many years now I had collected vintage hovercars. I had 5 in my collection. Two Jacaranda Sprints, one RoadOn Fireboat, one Kings Float, and a Cocatrice Firebird. The first 4 had all been lovingly restored and were in airpark storage. However, the Cocatrice, the latest and most prized hovercar in the collection, was in the 75th-floor hovercar nest, where I periodically worked on it in between missions.

Though my progress on restoration had been slow, I had now almost completed all work needed and just had to replace the main start-up ion battery. I really was quite excited and had told Cat this so many times.

His stock response tended to be ‘Go away’……..

To be continued…….

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 1

Cat’s theory of nothingness

It was the late Summer of 2225. We were experiencing what in olden days was known as an ‘Indian Summer’. Temperatures had regularly peaked at 47 degrees every day for well over a month and there had been little rain. Use of real water for showers had been banned and the use of sonic showers to keep clean had become the norm. Sonic showers did the job, you certainly were clean after one and it stopped you smelling. However, they did not refresh you as a real luke-warm water shower did on a hot, sticky morning or evening. Of course ever since India had been incorporated into Amazonia, the term Indian Summer had started to be used less. Long hot Summers now tended to be referred to as ‘Amazons’.

Cat and I were between missions. Things had been quiet for a while now, with very few major tax evasions or alien incursions into our lives. It was almost as if Tax HQ had abandoned us. Both of us had resorted to hobbies to keep ourselves occupied. For Cat, this meant preparing for the viva voce for his latest Doctoral thesis on ‘The Theory of Nothingness’. This research topic was something he had been working on for quite some time now and I have to say, he had persistently driven me nuts with his desire to explain his theory to me. He believed that what he had come up with built on the theories of Einstein, Hawking, Bukit, and Jayesh-Mkri to effectively provide an explanation for the creation of the Universe. I, personally, thought it was just so much bullshit and delighted in telling him so. After all, I had frequently said to be him,

“How can something new be created from nothing?”

His response was usually along the lines of,

“You’re a moron. I would not expect you to understand.”

He would then normally spend ages air writing lines of formula that he claimed proved that something could be created from nothing. To me, his formulaic hieroglyphics could have been an order for a takeaway for all I knew. I had recently  told him,

“Look ‘Professor Cat’, when there’s nothing, there’s nothing right? When there’s something there’s something. Not nothing. As something is something, it can’t be nothing, can it?. So it follows that you can’t make something out of nothing no matter what your hieroglyphic ramblings mean!”

At this Cat would usually emit the heaviest of sighs and, after turning his eyes up to the heavens, quietly say something like,

“What hope is there for humanity when genetics continually outputs humans as evolutionarily challenged as you. Can you not understand that your concept of nothing is simply too simple? What you perceive as nothing may well be something when placed against new and inspired variations of the basic laws of physics.”

“So basically,” I responded, “what your trying to tell me is that nothing is something. So if that’s so, smartass, your theory of nothing is nonsense.”

“Huh?” Cat responded, “Please explain.”

“Well it’s simple,” I said. “If nothing is already something then your theory on how to create something from nothing is totally flawed because if nothing is already something what’s the point?”

That kind of statement from me would simply leave Cat in a near catatonic state and he would stare at me, not so much incredulously, but more like he simply wished that someone would end my life for him.

Anyways our arguments about nothing never really led anywhere, and Cat just continued on his determined task of proving his theory through the production of myriad lines of calculations. These were spread across literally the equivalent of what would be about 3000 pages in an old printed book. He had been told that his viva voce would be likely to last several days. Indeed the length of his thesis was one of my bones of contention and I had said to him,

“Well, 3000 pages worth certainly proves the principle of creating something from absolutely nothing!”

At that, he would screw up his rubbery little face into the very best scowl he could manage, before projecting a very large ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ airsign in front of his nose and returning determinedly to tapping away at the table screen of his personal computing assistant.

To be continued……

The Sequestran Dilemma

I hope any readers who kept up with the Silurian Silkworm Affair enjoyed that  Inspector and Cat short story. If you want to look at it again or recommend it to anyone, the posts are all tagged ‘Silurian Silkworm Affair’ but it is also available free from the ‘Our Stories‘ page.

‘The Sequestran Dilemma’ is the new Inspector and Cat full-length adventure that will start to be serialised on this blog from next week. The Sequestrans are a mysterious alien race that invaded the moon in the mid-21st Century. They were defeated there by Earth’s forces, but the Inspector and Cat will now meet this race themselves for the first time as the Sequestrans begin to attack Earth directly.

If any of you who downloaded the novel ‘The Zygote Crystal’ for free a few weeks back from Amazon have read at least some of it, have time, and could write a short review on Amazon of what you thought of it, that would be most welcome.

Thank you.

What did we do before Droids?

In the 23rd Century, every public place has a full range of artificial intelligences (AIs) or ‘Droids’ that collectively perform a wide range of essential service functions. In some cases (e.g. a public MediDroid) the AI acts as a first line, dealing with minor ailments and sending on or transporting anyone with a serious injury or illness, to the nearest major major medical facility.

The busiest type of Droid in a public space is the SaniDroid. This ‘Jack of All ‘Dirty’ Trades’ effectively deals with anything that might make the average human struggle to hold on to their lunch, (assuming they’ve just eaten lunch). So if anyone throws up in a public space or the lavatories malfunction, a SaniDroid will be there in an instant. Able to clean both the facility, and indeed any individuals who for whatever reason may be less pristine than when they left home, the SaniDroid is pretty indispensable in modern life.

Manufactured, as most Droids are, by the AI-rU consortium, it is estimated that SaniDroid sales and service contracts account for over 75% of this major utility company’s income. AI-rU claim that over 90% of whatever a SaniDroid absorbs is recycled and used in the manufacture of a wide range of consumer products, though their spokesperson was reluctant to reveal which products……..

The Silurian Silkworm Affair – Act IV

The Welcome Party and Disembarking

We had indeed surfaced and noises were coming from the main hatch. As that opened, bright sunlight rushed into the flight deck of our lightship. I blinked and walked over carefully to the open hatch. I had something of a track record of falling out of open hatches so was taking no chances, especially as our ship was bobbing about a bit. A hoverboat hummed away just outside the hatch and drew closer just as my head poked out of the hatch. The hoverboat was not Silurian, they had no need for such things, it was manned by staff from Earth’s consulate on Siluria. A very young looking uniformed man smiled at me and said,

“Quite a landing. We were expecting you at the spaceport over there” and he pointed somewhere to the right in the distance.

“Yes” I said, “we had a bit of a problem. Shall we step aboard?”

Cat, who had his own built-in short distance hovering capability, fluttered through the hatch. I stepped up on the lintel of the hatch with my right foot and then reached up, over and out with my left foot, planting it firmly onto the edge of the hovership. Right at that moment, our lightship lurched in the water and the distance between my two feet grew dramatically, as open water appeared between our ship and the hoverboat. Things were starting to get quite painful in the basement department of my body when suddenly I felt myself lifted into the air. I wriggled a little as my legs thankfully came together and, as I looked sideways and up, I realised Cat had grabbed me by the collar of my tunic and was holding me. It felt most undignified and I growled at him,

“Will you please let me down, you wretch. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were doing this on purpose just to show off.”

“Ok,” said Cat and with that, I plummeted into the water between the two craft. I was, as you might imagine not in the best of moods as, having been fished out of the water by the crew of the hoverboat, we headed for shore with me dripping pools of Silurian seawater onto the hoverboat deck. Fortunately for him, Cat floated just out of reach above my disheveled form.

By the time we reached shore, I’d been below deck, dried by a vanity droid and re-equipped with new clothing. At the dock, as we disembarked, a hovercar was waiting to take us to meet the Silurian Ambassador at his den. I grabbed hold of Cat by his tail, much to his annoyance, and slung him over my shoulder. We’d never quite worked it out but there was something in a hovercar’s electronics that created havoc with Cat’s own sensors and basic navigation. Ordinarily, this resulted in him hanging from the internal roof of a hovercar, once it had started its engines, in a temporary catatonic state. Any hovercar journey then normally ended with me having to prise his claws from the roof before slinging him over my shoulder by his tail to disembark. This time, to pre-empt the inevitable, oh and ok to annoy him, I decided to carry him on tail-first for a change. As he wriggled and squiggled against my back, the hovercar rose up and in that instant, I felt Cat’s body stiffen and go still. I let go of his tail and he tumbled to the floor, bouncing a couple of times before settling in a frozen heap. Well, I thought, at least I had saved the hovercar upholstery from claw marks. I eased my back into my chair and as we moved off, rested my aching feet on the rather handily placed prostate body of Cat.

To be continued……..

RickRock’s Brother now Immersed in Scandal

Speak4U recently launched its advanced Persona service. Providing people with a way to use their time more efficiently, public figures can have their programmable personas represent them at events or interviews. Personas are linked to cerebrum bio-chips implanted into the human they represent.

One of the first exponents of Speak4U personas was Earth’s biggest airstar, Rock Quarrey, the younger brother of Rick Rock. Recently one of Mr. Quarrey’s Personas was accused of improper comments towards an event avatar. Similar accusations were made against RickRock earlier in the year.  Representatives of the Rocks have denied that the Personas thinking is linked to theirs. Whilst investigations continue, Rock’s management team have pulled all Personas from public places. 

This is the second such scandal to hit Speak4U and the Rock entertainment dynasty now teeters on a knife-edge.

The Trees Fight Back

Carbon dioxide levels were at critical levels in the Earth’s atmosphere. Even the US President agreed the problem was real. Deforestation was a major contributing factor.

Genetic engineers had developed a transposon that when introduced into trees markedly reduced the amount of carbon that a dead tree released into the atmosphere.

Application of the gene technology to mature trees meant that deforestation could continue even faster.

But the trees were smarter than we realised. They had their own underground genetic engineers. Pretty soon an unsuspecting human race was being affected by a range of deadly airborne viruses that the trees had generated. Whole cities became de-populated of humans one after the other. The ultimate solution to reducing carbon dioxide generating practices had arrived.

The Silurian Silkworm Affair – Act I

Landing on Siluria

This mission was supposed to be totally routine. That’s what they’d told me at mission control. No slavering Mud Lizards to worry about, no time vaults, no extermatrons, all very straightforward. Well, I can tell you, as our little ship plummeted through the lower clouds on Siluria at breakneck speed, everything felt very much ‘not routine’. I held tightly to the arms of my chair and involuntarily squeezed my upper thighs together, as the urge to set loose my bladder grew with the feeling that very soon, at this speed, we would smack into some very hard ground.

I looked across at my AI, Cat, the Rubanon encased robot who had been my companion on long-haul tax investigations now for several years. To say he was fighting the controls on the flight deck would be a bit of an overstatement as on lightships in 2225, there were only screens to tap away at when piloting. However, it would not be an understatement to say he was tapping away quite furiously with both front paws at the pilot’s control screen in front of him. I couldn’t really at that moment think of anything else to say other than,

“Are we going to crash?”

Cat glanced across at me and said “Yep. Think so.”

My lower jaw and lip scrunched up into my top lip as I squeaked out “Nothing you can do?”

“Nope. Don’t think so,” said Cat.

“Oh that’s just great,” I whined. “Nothing you can do. Well that’s ok for you being made of totally indestructible Rubanon isn’t it? I mean I’m a human right. I’m going to wind up like a jigsaw puzzle for the crash investigators. The worst thing that’s likely to happen to you is that you’ll bounce about for a while after we smack into the ground. Just typical!!”

“Don’t collapse into total cowardice just yet,” said Cat, “I may not be able to stop us crashing but I think I’m going to be able to make the landing effectively soft enough for your scrawny body to survive.”

“Seriously?” I responded as I pulled myself up slightly in my chair before lurching uncontrollably forward with great force, as the ship impacted. I lurched back and then forward and then back again several times as the ship gradually juddered to a slowish downward motion until I was finally able to sit relatively still and upright in my seat. Unfortunately, my focus on the impact, allied to the valiant attempt my upper body had made to stop itself from being shaken about like a mountain in an earthquake, had led to me losing concentration on keeping my bladder under control, with inevitable consequences. I felt the warmth inside my pants spreading and, as the damp patch became obvious at the front of my khaki coloured tunic bottoms, I really wished I hadn’t had that large glass of Baffleberry juice just before our descent started. Especially because it tasted of onions.

As Cat spotted my expanding damp patch he exclaimed “Eeeyuck. Can you not control yourself?”.

“Well I have to some extent,” I said, “My bowels have so far stayed relatively still.”

At that Cat rolled his eyes and said: “Right, we’ll head up now.”

“Up where?” I responded.

“To the surface,” said Cat, “The only way I could see to slow us was by landing in the ocean” he continued. “Now we need to head up, but slowly. Whilst we are ascending I will try to work out what happened to the ship. Lightships don’t just fail like this. It’s very puzzling.”

To be continued………

The Mosquito Virus

In 2175 humans were devastated by the Mosquito virus, a contaminant from outer space. Serendipitously, scientists at Clone-a-Cat discovered that a transposon in the DNA of a genetically engineered cat called Azz-Lex, could neutralise the Amora virus. Implantation of the ‘Azz-Lex transposon’ became the miracle cure that saved humankind.

Treatment did, however, lead to people who periodically chewed grass and vomited or needed to squat on sand to pee. Absolutely everyone wanted to be waited on hand and foot, eat or sleep, so nothing ever got done.

It was much better than dying unless of course, you were a dog.