beginning of the Minerva Paradox

[p.s. Cargile]

This is something I'm working on in hopes of finishing so I can begin the arduos
process of finding a publisher. It's based on the Polchinski Paradox. I'll leave it up to you to reaserch that on your own.

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THE MINERVA PARADOX
By Paul Cargile


Relax. She told herself to relax, it was just another worm-jump. Nothing to worry about. Thoughts of the negative energy that would bridge space made her think of the anti-tech groups that claimed it caused cancer, or better yet some strange metaphysics alteration of the human body, mind, or soul.

None of it was true. People had been using it for years. She found it amusing that some would think otherwise, but of course those people had deeper agendas.

She realized that in recalling opposition to wormhole travel, she was moving away from the real reason of her worry. Placing blame on groups that had nothing to do with her emotions would not help her. It certainly didn’t soothe her.

Jessique knew she really wasn’t afraid of the jump. No, she was apprehensive of the destination, and the path it could lead. Her debrief a few days ago left her in a whirlwind. She had questions that no one would answer. Whether they didn’t know, or simply withheld from her was difficult to determine. The genuineness of it had a lurking shadow without shape. A foreboding chill took her as she had been dismissed. From then on she felt pushed forward, as if her will had been replaced by a program her body had no choice but to run.

Jessique Portaire had prepared herself for the trip like an automaton. She packed her luggage and set up her briefcase computer with her mind numb and questions just below the surface of articulated thought, “Is all this real? Is this possible?” And below that a feeling like nausea, a declaration telling her that she just wanted to stay home, to stay away from there.

But she found herself booked on a low orbital that docked with the courier ship as the Earth sat fat above her, blinding and crushing.

Relax. But Portaire found it hard to relax in the cluttered confines of the courier. The craft was a decommissioned ex-military scout, no comforts, bare necessities. The couch was hard, the straps tight. She had popped some meds for the zero-G, but she still felt vertigo. The environmental system flushed cold air and loud white-noise into the passenger space she shared with logistics containers, spare parts and bags of used laundry. Exposed wires, ducts, and pipes ran around the circular enclosing wall. Velcro tabs covered everything. Forgotten checklists were stuck to a few. Glaring bright lights made everything seem unnatural and surreal. There was no window save the one on the hatch to the node that gave way to the command center and the airlocks.

There was no relaxing in this bucket.

Her only view was the media tablet stuck on the wall left of the hatch. A pleasant voice accompanied the video of what to do in an emergency. She was already wearing a pressure suit, however the wear of the helmet was optional. The video demonstrated how to put it on quickly.

“Let’s just get this over with”, she said under her breath with bitterness. She wasn’t just referring to the jump. She wanted to get her whole mission done, get to the derelict, get the computer core, and get to Melbourne.

The feeling of impending doom persisted. She felt like pulling the helmet from its bag and donning it, but no, she was just being silly. The trip was just a routine jump from outside Earth’s orbit to the planetoid Sedna in the Kupier Belt outside the orbit of Pluto.

Routine. The pilot had made the comment earlier that this ship was one of three that made the voyage to Sedna Station and back quite frequently. His tone implied that that somehow made the trip easier or better, but she couldn’t fathom why.

The media tablet’s graphic changed, announcing the navigation coordinates were locked and the jump would commence shortly. The graphic showed the courier’s position in relation to the Earth and drive core’s negative energy ramp-up. She looked down at her feet feeling it was best not to anticipate the jump.

A few moments later the tablet informed her that the jump was successful. She could never recall any defining moment of the jumps she had every been on. This one had been no different. She looked up at the media tablet and saw their approach to the small world and the station in its orbit.

The pilot seated in his couch at his station appeared on the tablet. The elderly man looked into the camera as if looking at her. “You’re welcome to come to the crew deck and get a look around, if you like.”

“Thanks,” she said, “I might.”

She sat there staring at nothing, feeling she were being pulled through her life.

After an empty moment the intercom shut down and the tablet went back to its usual emergency instructions. Jessique loosened and unfastened her straps and pushed off toward the hatch. She spun the handle and pushed it outward, swam into the node, and moved forward to the square crew station hatch.
It began to open as she neared. Captain Davis had pushed it outward, inviting her.

The crew deck had been set to enhance the pilot’s night vision. The control panels gave off feeble red light. The window shutters slid away from each other, almost fully open, revealing absolute nothingness beyond, as if they worm-jumped to nonexistence. Sailors had been afraid of sea monsters in uncharted waters. Jessique understood that fear looking out into that blackness.

It wasn’t a velvet canvas with diamond stars. It was a void, unwelcome and cold. She grabbed a hand hold as she edged into the crew deck, starring out into that nightmare-scape, hoping her eyes would adjust to the darkness and she would spy some lonely star. Some lonely star like an anchor she could use to secure herself to reality.

Stars were real. What she had embarked on was not.

It couldn’t be.

Captain Davis worked his controls explaining, “I’m going to put us in a capture orbit. We’ll swing around Sedna to get into our docking attitude. It’ll take a few hours.”

She nodded not knowing or caring if he noticed the gesture. The courier moved bringing the planetoid into view. Its ruddy face threw back distance sunlight, casting a maroon glow into the crew station. It looked to her as if everything in the cramped space had been splashed by blood.

She closed her eyes for a moment, aware then of the ambient sounds of the cabin: the steady hum of moving air, the electronic tones of the computer, the click of toggled switches. It seemed surreal, like a dream. When she opened her eyes again, she found Sedna perched above them as they raced around its limb. The image reinforced her reality.

I have a mission to do, she thought.

Maybe they are wrong. Maybe Deep Eye is wrong.

She backed out of the command capsule without a word. Davis threw her a glance over his shoulder. “See you in a bit,” he said.

Jessique didn’t want to interact with him. “Yes,” she replied, placing her hands to the hatch.

He saw her motion and said, “You can leave it open.”

She nodded and returned to the hold.
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This is the fourth attempt to get the story going. I am also writing notes on the story to pin down ideas and establish characters and plot devises. I've tried to start the story from the point of view of a minor character--a technician--and have revised Jessique's role from a naive reporter to a mission specialist. My first attempt was through her as a reporter and I felt it didn't capture the mood of the story as a whole. The second and third attempt through the technician was boring. After I had redefined Jessique's role, I gave her another spin. Me and the wife thinks this introduction works fine. If I'm doing my job right, you will too.

It sets the mood of the story, and throws out teasers to spark interest. My stories are mostly character driven, with science and techology playing a background role. I try not to be overly descriptive, only describing those things which the character is noticing. I don't write from a narrator point of view, examining every minute detail. This first part is purely through Jessique's mind, so I don't have a chance to describe her yet, although a scene early on could be added, like a reflection in the media tablet. Jessique is one of three major characters and I have yet to work out how they, or at least one of them is changed by the events they experience. The story as a whole is already in my head. The devil is in the details.

This story uses some of the wormhole, or foldrunner, technology that I've introduced in the forum. I am working on models of the Minerva and the courier as aids. I will probably post pics of them when I have something to show. Nowever, I have no plans of posting the story in its entirity.

[General Phoenix]

I'd say you've acheived what you were after. I already want to know exactly what it is that's nagging at Jessique's mind, what Deep Eye is (cool name, BTW), and what the next part of the story is going to be.

In addition, since I'm a visual person, I love stories that I can easily visualize, and this one works very well.

[p.s. Cargile]

The plot of the story is inspired by a chapter in "Black Holes and Time Warps, Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" by Kip Thorne, where he discusses wormholes and the Polchinski Paradox.

This story takes place in the 2190's. The world is governed by what was the United Nations as we know it today, yet it's not a very effect legislative body. Many of the major universities are united and have extended from eduction to include production as a responce to strict economic control. The universities have also taken over the job of space exploration. So universities are not only responsible for education, but for research and development ,and production of spacecraft and stations, and other technologies.

Deep Eye is a system of telescope satellites that probe the solar system and the universe. They work in pairs in close proximity. One pair discovers a ship adrift in the Kupier Belt. It identifies the ship class and searches the database for a comparison of lost ships. Not finding any, it continues to to track the object while notifying the Global Defence Cooperative. Soon after, it identified the ship, but there is a problem and it reports a conflict to the GDC.
The GDC reviews the case and assigns Agent Jessique Portaire to confiscate the memory core on the discovered derelict.
The GDC has the authority to issue mission orders to World Universities spacecraft and crew, because of teh few number of GDC spacecraft. The crew however do not welcome this exploitation of power.

[p.s. Cargile]

Here's the rest of the intro.

The cylindrical room felt too close to her, crushing her in a repulsive hug. The single chair waited patiently for her body, like the seat of a roller-coaster car holding her tightly on a ride she had no control over. She became restless and needed something to do.

There was nothing she could do. The MT continued its non-stop spiel of safety issues. It annoyed her to no end. She glanced at it, catching her reflection in the polished surface smudged with finger prints along the screen’s border. She saw a plain woman’s face, oval and smooth, tired dark eyes, and limp dark hair pulled tight and coiled at the back of her head. She saw a woman who was letting her attractiveness slip away, growing old from to much work, too many demands upon her.

Was it no wonder that she felt bad, looking so bad? She longed to fix herself up, to sit before a mirror that threw back her radiance as she applied just enough subtle colors to her face to bring out her features, to put a bronze shine into her drab hair and make it explode in playful relaxed curls, to slip into something loose yet conforming to her slim body, something blue and sparkling, hinting at a young body full of pleasure, and steal into the night-life, to cause men to turn their heads and forget to breathe and dare to approach her.
Those days were so long behind her, never to be revisited in the same old fashion. She knew that now she would be a quiet, desperate woman, sitting at a bar, alone, bored. Unnoticed.

The MT chattered like a young woman who still had her youth and life. Jessique stabbed its power button, darkening and silencing it so that it only displayed her bitter reflection.

She eased into her seat, clasping only the lap belt. Above her head her briefcase computer hugged the wall, secured by two Velcro straps. Jessique released the straps which gave an awful tearing sound, then pulled the computer down to her lap. She opened it up and reviewed her mission notes and briefs.
This was not going to be like South Africa.

In South Africa she confiscated from the national government a Soviet suitcase nuclear device. The Global Defense Co-operative had doubts that the device could be triggered, but it was an illegal weapon. Her mission was simple: inform the government that the United Nations Security Council and the GDC were aware that they had the weapon, and request that they surrender the weapon to her team. Jessique’s delegation comprised of three members of her secretarial staff, and two members of her technical team. That was all the South African government saw. She also had under her discretion a squad of GDC Special Legionnaires mixed in with the tourist and locals in the event that they needed to acquire the bomb by clandestine force.

The South African’s pleaded that they needed the weapon to fight terrorist in the region. Terrorist was a word used commonly and loosely to replace the word insurrectionist. Jessique was fully aware who the insurgents were. They were the people banding together to throw off the yoke of the world government and put an end to the tyranny of the Global Parliament and the Hague World Court. Terrorist of whom then?

The GDC had doubts about the usefulness of the nuclear device. Jessique told the South African delegates that it was to be destroyed. She had her own doubts about the honesty of that statement. It was more likely that the GDC would reverse engineer it, as they seemed to be doing with a lot of older technology, especially weapons technology.

This mission was not like Apollo One Outpost on the Moon. The outpost had been intended as a way station for exploration into the solar system. The American lunar base launched five mission from there before the program was cut.
Jessique lead an expert team there to collect as much stuff as possible with the sole purpose of it being reverse engineered. The American government didn’t raise a fuss. There were a few landers still intact at the base, and a few crash zones where larger spacecraft that ran to Mars fell to the surface after their orbits decayed. These ships had been made obsolete by the wormhole technology and no one was interested in them.

South Africa. Apollo One Outpost. Because of these missions she acquired the experience to be assigned this one, a diplomatic and technical recovery. She hadn’t requested the mission. Agents seldom were granted that privilege. It was handed to her because she could do it.

She asked if she were going to have a team. They said no. She asked if she would at least get a flight crew, in case the Minerva crew objected. Their answer was odd. They said it was best to keep their resources at a minimum. It made her feel as if she were expendable on this mission. But that didn’t make any sense because if she were, then how would they get the computer core?
They wouldn’t, and she wasn’t.

She had to do her job alone, in the company of scientist and technicians; University people that despised the GDC.

[Crusader]

Like the whole story idea and the suspense in the second intro but I like the first intro better... much more exciting with less backflashes to the past missions. The first on just has a nicer feel and atmoshpere. Both makes you curious to see what happens next though.

[p.s. Cargile]

Both of those go together, its the second part.

I feel a character has to have a plausible reason for being tasked to do the things he or she must do in the story. By giving Jessique prior experience, she becomes more dimensional. It's more important for me to establish her past work history than any other character, because of the role she plays. The other characters are station and spacecraft crew members and their roles aren't as inconspicuous as Jessique's. I have to answer the question, "why is she on this mission and not someone else?"

Her role in the story is unique. Nature is the antagonist in the story. The protagonist is the physist Jerome Dover. The pilot, Alisha Hartford is more Dover's antagonist, yet still a protagonist in that both are fighting against nature. Portaire then becomes the orginator of the conflict--the reason the conflict exist--however out of circumstance not malice.

[Crusader]

Ah, ic, then it works out very nicely... any models for illustration yet?

[p.s. Cargile]

I've been working on the courier lately. Will have something soon. I've started three different models of the Minerva too.

[dragolan]

i like the story and would like to read more not to mention see the meshes

[p.s. Cargile]

The meshes you may see. More of the story. . .maybe not. If I fail to get it published I may present it on the web. If I succeed in geting it published, you'll have to buy it. Thanks for your interest. But please don't be a leech and ask me to be a sweetheart and give out freebees. Writing is a lot of hard work and I wish to be compensated for my efforts.
The trick is to create a story that is unique and stands out amongst the rest of the submitted tales, while avoiding being saturated by the ideas of others. This means that as much as I'd like to read other sci-fi, I don't.