Temple in the Stars – Part 3
So, new ambitions will be bringing the posts to weekend writing fare. I will end up putting nearly 5k words to paper over the course of the two day weekends. Posts will be broken into nine parts, and will be a thousand words of story and five hundred of discussion and analysis. Hopefully this will not be a long term change, but at some point I have to concede to the realities of my situation. Yes, I can write more. However, I still have to drive to work, and do my job, and be a father. I have to sleep sometime, and even though I’m not going to back down from writing, at least temporarily I will need to cede some of my word count to reality.
So, part two of Temple in the Stars happened last night. I must say, I enjoy the ideas and concepts of the situation I’m building for her. I felt very rushed towards the end, and really wished I had a chance to actually edit better. Editing is by far the longest part of my writing process right now. It is not something that comes naturally to me, and I tend to judge what I’ve written with extreme severity. I think it’s important that I keep myself to a high standard. I am giving myself a great opportunity to simultaneously build my writing ability and story structuring while at the same time giving myself lead time to sculpt my writing with training and input, so that when it comes time to write the book I am fully prepared for the task.
It’s been unusual to try and force my mind to come up with so many new worlds and ideas. It’s not a really easy thing to try and bully my imagination into doing “just one thing.” My mind tends to go in a million directions, keyed off what I’ve been reading or watching. So it’s automatically derivative and scattershot. I’m slowly training it to work for me, but I’ve the sneaking suspicion that it will be years and years yet till it comes to fully serve me, rather than I serving it. Until that day however, It’s important that I work with where I am at. It’s no shame to admit your own standing. Delusion at this stage of my career serves no one.
The next part of Temple in the Stars will focus on Ashley and her audacious and intelligent plan to access the small moon at the locus of a swarm of smaller asteroids. I can’t wait till she cracks that particular nut. I have some fabulous and enjoyable ideas for what she finds. I love being just as excited, if not more so, to continue her adventures as you are for me to do the same. I honestly believe that trait will be something that serves me in good stead in the years to come.
Barring any further developmental insights…
Temple in the Stars – Part 3
Ashley sat in the small recon pod, reading the results of the scanning drones activity over the last few days, and told herself for the tenth time that what she was reading wasn’t possible. This can’t be correct. Again and again, Ashley went over every aspect of the scanning drone results, trying to find where it had malfunctioned. Hours and hours spent in the small corner of the docking bay where her vehicle lay dormant had yielded nothing wrong with the drone. Old, of course, but completely and totally functional. So she sat within the confines of her pod, staring down at the shell of something that could not be. It’s simply impossible. There cannot be life flourishing inside of an asteroid, in the middle of space!
An entire, self contained atmosphere existed within the shell of the asteroid below her. No, an entire ecosystem is down there Ashley thought as her blood chilled. It couldn’t be!! Plants, animals even, a miniature world existed within the confines of rock and mineral. In the depths of space, with absolutely no sunlight or external thermal energies. There were thirty feet of asteroid wrapped around that impossible bubble of life. And to top it off, centered directly within that space was a structure. With the analysis provided by the older scanning drone, she couldn’t get a really accurate picture of what the structure looked like. What it was made of though, that was an entirely different question. It looked like one without an answer, too. One hundred and nine. For thousands of years of exploration and colonization, that was the limit of elements in the known galaxy. Hundreds upon hundreds of explored solar systems, thousands upon thousands of cumulative planetary scans have failed to reveal even the hint of other elements for the Periodic Table. In all of that time, nothing humanity had learned about the galaxy they called home even hinted at new elements. Yet, if the scan was to be believed there weren’t one, but twelve unidentified elements used in the construction of that structure.
How did Ashley approach this? On the one hand, she could immediately take her recon skimmer to the Smelting station. With the readouts from the drone and her own findings on the soundness of the drone’s capabilities, surely someone would believe her. And yet… Ashley’s father had been mining like this for a long time, and he had always stressed that finding something important was all well and good. People, however, cared for results. She had to bring back something to prove what her scans were telling her. Within her own mind, she could hear her fathers honeyed tones cautioning her to bring something tangible with her before she tried to cry wolf with her employers. Nothing for it then, Ashley thought with a laugh. Her father surely would’ve already made a plan to find out exactly how to bring solid evidence to the smelting station. It was up to her to figure it out as well.
Time to break it down Ashley thought over her dinner as she typed on the pad that Everett called home. He always fussed when she used him as a simple stenographer, but sometimes she couldn’t actually get her mind to move in the right direction unless she wrote things out longhand. It was all well and good to have Everett’s efforts turned to a task, but there was still something to be said for figuring things out for herself. Everett made suggestions anyway, and in his defense she was writing notes directly onto his face. She forgave him the occasional snide comment on her thoughts as she got them all down in writing. He isn’t wrong to make them, either. This task looked impossible, no matter how she tried to approach it.
Her problem was threefold. First, she had to actually drill through the outer layer. She’d made serious progress on the mountain of tiny asteroids which had been screening it, but it was still only partially cleared. The rest of the asteroid field wasn’t exactly standing still out of deference to her plans, and if she wanted to get a sizeable amount of drilling done, she’d have to clear out a lot more room. It would make way more sense for her to leave more unadulterated drilling time. As it stands, she couldn’t get more than a few minutes of work done without needing to back off so she wasn’t smeared onto the side of her pet project. So, she had to redouble her efforts on getting the screening asteroids beaten back. Which dovetailed directly into her second problem. She had signed a shortened contract. She only had another 14 months at her disposal. If she had a full contract term, it wouldn’t even be an issue. However, there was no guarantee that she would even be reassigned to this asteroid ring when her contract was up, let alone this specific sector. There were thousands and thousands of assigned sectors for this asteroid belt. So, Ashley would have to make some serious adjustments to her remaining schedule to even have a shot at getting into the interior of the asteroid.
That would put some serious stress on her daily routine of repairs and safety checks. She would have to rely rather heavily on Everett to manage some of the tasks which she had been doing. That was all well and good, but Everett couldn’t hold a wrench or a spanner. He could identify damage all the live long day, but he couldn’t fix it. If things got out of hand, she might lose something critical in her habitation module and spend days installing the replacement, all the while the Smelting station would be breathing down her neck. If the station took a good look at her stored data, they could hardly miss the insanity of her current scans. Should they decide she hadn’t met the requirements for establishing her claim (which she hadn’t yet, curse it all) then they could take over her claim and give her the buyout option on her contract. Sure, she’d make a lot of money, but the Station would take all the rights. This discovery would make her whole family rich beyond imagining and propel them all into legendary figures. Twelve entirely new elements offered such a dizzying array of possibilities, and she wasn’t even a scientist! No, she needed to keep this as close to the vest as she could manage.
To be continued…
Impossibly,
Justin
