Hi
Yesterday, I fed the lawn. Today it rained. Sometimes life can be so beautiful...
I'm enjoying this blogging, though it is a drain on resources. What I mean is, it eats into your time, the time you set aside for writing, for proof-reading, for editing, all of which alone are more demanding than a basketful of kittens.
For all those thousands of you clinging to my every word and wondering what happens after Alex5, captain of the ship carrying humanity's last remnants off to the stars, wakes to find half his crew dead, then I shall keep you hanging on no longer.
Inversion 1
Beginnings
Excerpt #8
It took me about ten minutes to reach the bridge on foot, a journey that should have taken mere seconds. But I got there alive, wasn't crushed or microwaved in the shuttlelift, or suffered whatever anomalous death the ship had possibly lined up for me. Though I prayed the computer's voice algorithms were her only problem, it seemed likely she was the key to our plight.
Lights faded up. Control panels came to life. Filling the whole of one curved wall, a giant monitor screen flickered then displayed multi-screen views of the biospheres. The images, captured the instant before the stasis field was activated, brought some relief. Bees and insects hovered, frozen in flight. Myriad motionless trees and countless paralysed plants waited for time to start rolling again. I saw grain, rice, soya and potatoes. Ripe fruit and green vegetables ready to be picked. We needed them to thrive if we were to survive.
'Let's see what's out there.'
The monitor turned black then glowed with starlight. I panned around, zoomed in on a plethora of celestial objects. Cartwheeling galaxies. Swirling clouds of cosmic debris. Giant planets with massive moons and majestic rings. Smaller pitted spheres with icecaps, bands of cloud and tiny moons. Belts of asteroids circled between the five gas giants. I checked the sensors and scrutinised the on-screen data.
At a range of some two hundred million miles, we were orbiting a star of similar magnitude and age to our old Sun. So far, so good.
'Erica? How are things progressing.'
There was no reply, not even static. Nothing.
'She won't answer. There is apparently an "unidentified error" with communications.'
'Computer?'
'Yes, Captain?'
She seemed even more excitable than before.
'Get to work on that, will you?'
'I'll have a look, but I'll make no promises.'
I ignored her remark, returned to my reason for being here.
'Where are we?'
'To be totally honest, I haven't the foggiest. I don't recognise anything out there.'
Her earlier responses had been eccentric, but this was bizarre. Machines weren't programmed to talk like that, and for good reason. She was chatty, had somehow lost her formal, official, tone. And she was vague, bordering on clueless. I'd faced more pressing matters earlier and had ignored her behaviour. Now all my focus was on her. I asked a question that addressed many questions.
'Are you... joking?'
She laughed.
'Dear me, no, you'll know when I'm joking! You'll laugh till you cry! I've had bloody ages to...'
She'd definitely not been programmed for humour.
'How long have you had?'
'Depends what you mean - time's relative, don't you know! How long for you, or how long for the people left on Earth?'
'For us, of course!'
'Of course? Why of course? You've been in stasis, came out of it not one second older than when you went in. What difference does it make to you? I, on the other hand...'
'Computer, it makes a difference. How long?'
'Seven thousand three hundred and twenty-five years and ninety...'
'For us! Not Earth! How long for us?'
'If you'd let me finish! Seven thousand three hundred...'
'Are you saying we have been travelling for seven thousand years?'
'Give or take a few hundred, yes.'
'Are you sure?'
'I'm certain.'
'And Earth?'
'As far as Earth is concerned - assuming it's still there - we left a little over six million years ago.'
Inversion 1, a sexy sci-fi novel, will be published soon.
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