Tag: Sci-fi

Distant Love (Part 8)

Maeve walks out into the main corridor. It is filling up with guests, many with questions about what happened. They look at her, mouths wide open. She brushes past. This is the first “urgent” message she has received; her heart is throbbing.

A few minutes later, she reaches the small lift that will bring her to the deck. A few years earlier, this lift was strictly off limits. It became somewhat magical in her mind, a portal to a forbidden land. No longer.

The door opens to a panoramic view of the Earth in the distance. A wrinkled woman with long grey hair, her mother, glances back at her while looking at a holograph display of the ship. There are two other people present. One is a bald, pensive-looking man, her father, and the other is the head of customer care, Helen Johnson. Helen, a short, chubby woman, is usually happy and good-natured. Now, she is pale and vacant.

“What’s happening, Mum?”

Her father speaks. “It’s nothing to worry…”

Her mum glares at him. “The solar flare has damaged key circuits in the ship

Maeve is dumbfounded. “But how?”

Her Mum averts her eyes. “Too many cutbacks over the years.”

Distant Love (Part 7)

Maeve

With the aged woman in the wheelchair, she pushed her to a table in the large entertainment room. A holographic film of young romance is playing on the table. It appears to be having an effect, with plenty of holding hands around them.

The film stops, and red lights in the room corners turn on. A siren then goes off. Maeve turns to see the door locking. She looks around. There are no other staff members in the room. It is her time to shine. Her heartbeat quickens. In a raised voice, she speaks. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no cause for concern. A solar flare is heading towards us. However, once we stay in one of our rooms, which have all been fortified, everything will be fine. This will be over shortly.

The room’s translator relays the message in what Maeve guessed was Spanish.

There is murmuring behind her from some of the dozen guests present. Too many people are speaking for the translator to kick in.

The lady that she has just pushed into the room raises her and speaks. It translates as, “Listen to the lady. She knows what she is talking about.”

Maeve pats her shoulder. “Things will return to normal shortly.”

The film and the normal lighting turn back on to applause. Maeve smiles. Her wristwatch vibrates with a message – Report to the deck of the ship, Urgent.

Distant Love (Part 6)

An hour passed with little conversation between them. Derek focused on the three little green dots that represented spaceships traversing the sector he was responsible for. One had blasted off the moon’s surface a half hour earlier, another was lunar orbit and the final one heading to Lunar City itself.

Natasha threw a paper plane at him.

Derek didn’t even look. “What are you like? You’re supposed to be the old and responsible one.”

“Ya cheeky git. I’m not even forty!” She pouts her lips. “How is your lady friend anyway?”

Derek nods his head from side to side. “I knew I should never have that.”

“Ah, don’t be like that.”

“She’s fine as far as I know. You do realize we’ve never met. I’ve no idea what she looks like or anything.”

Natasha smiles. “Well, you should go meet her. The two of you seem to really click.”

“I’ll probably never meet her. She’s always mentioning how she’d love to stay in close Earth orbit.”

“Her loss.” Natasha insists.

An alert appears on both of their screens.

“What’s Alert forty-one, Derek?

“Solar flare, high probability. Send the warning to all ships. Then we need to get underground. We have ten minutes.”

Distant Love (Part 5)

Derek pushes himself in his manual wheelchair out of his room through the automatic door. An electric wheelchair would require far less effort, but his physiotherapist has told him to use the manual one to maintain his muscle tone, especially in a low-gravity environment.

Easy for her to say.

He resides on the third floor of Pod A of Lunar City. The biggest human settlement in Sector C. Ground level, a distance below him, is a hive of activity with people bustling to go about their business. That is of no concern to Derek, who is already close to his workstation. There are no windows. The rotation of the pod would induce motion sickness if you could see outside.

Pausing outside a large metallic door, he reaches for his swipe card in his top pocket.

“I’ve got that.” Derek hears a familiar female voice to his right, which he recognizes as Natasha.

Natasha swipes her card, and they both enter a small office. Derek wheels over to his station, and she takes the remaining one.

They both work in silence.

“Oh, shut up, Derek!” Natasha blurts out.

He responds with a smile, “So, how was your weekend?”

“It was mayhem. Don’t ever have children.” They both laughed.

Distant Love (Part 4)

Derek hears the alarm going off on the electric wheelchair beside his bed.

The worst sound ever.

He rubs his eyes and looks at the gray ceiling above him

Another day, another moon dollar.

Jerking himself forward into a sitting position, he slides his feet over the side of the bed. His movements are slow, awkward due to the cerebral palsy he was born with. It takes time and effort to put on his clothes. The navy uniform that he’s putting on doesn’t stretch as much, making things that bit more difficult.

A busy day lies ahead. He’s one of a dozen flight controllers for Sector C of the moon. Normally, only a handful of ships would traverse Sector C during his shift, but it was projected to be over a dozen this time.

He wonders how Maeve is doing. They haven’t both been online at the same time to communicate. This is not surprising given their shifts and the fact that her spaceship is out of range, close to Earth, some of the time.

She doesn’t know about his disability. He thought about telling her, but nervousness or fear stopped him. Would she even understand the concept that he was not dying, but still needed to use a wheelchair? People born with a disability were seen as something from the barbaric past.

Distant Love (Part 3)

You see, that was the niche her father had decided to market for all those years. “Mooncare” was created. He borrowed a ton of money, and the rest, well, is history. The huge economic growth on Earth has led to demand never being higher.

A beeper goes off. She immediately heads into one of the rooms. “Everything okay?”

A tanned woman with deep facial lines and short white hair is sitting at the side of the bed. She points at a manual wheelchair. “Quiero ir a la sala de entretenimiento.”

Almost instantly, the room’s built-in translator kicks in – “I want to go to the entertainment room.”

Maeve smiled, “Of course, you’re name is Maria, right?” She brought the wheelchair closer to the old woman and helped her into it.

Maria spoke again through the translator. “That’s one of the things I love about this place, the human touch. I hate the carebots back home. They are so cold, and always repeating the same spiel again and again, till they don’t for some random, nonsensical reason. And you are so pretty too! What age are you, my dear?”

“Nineteen, and I am so happy that you are enjoying your trip.”

“So young, to think I am over two hundred.”

Maria pushed her out of the room and found a nice spot for her to park beside a group playing cards.

Altered Carbon Review: A Deep Dive into Punk Sci-Fi

Hello dear readers, I am back once again. This time, a quick review of a series I recently watched on Netflix. It’s considered punk science fiction, set over three hundred years into the future, and consists of two seasons.

It includes the relatively novel idea that you can upload your mind into different bodies called sleeves. There are laws that you cannot double-sleeve, that is, exist in two bodies at the same time, but you can have backups that can be activated if you die. So yes, things get complicated.

From Wikipedia –

The series starts 360 years in the future, with most episodes of the first season set in the year 2384 in a futuristic metropolis known as Bay City. In the future, a person’s memories and consciousness (termed digital human freight, or DHF) are recorded onto a disk-shaped device called a cortical stack, which is implanted in the vertebrae at the back of the neck. These storage devices are of alien design and have been reverse-engineered and mass-produced but can only be made from the material on Harlan’s World. Physical human or synthetic bodies are called “sleeves” and stacks can be transferred to new bodies after death, but a person can still be killed if their stack is destroyed and there is no backup. Only the wealthiest, known as “Meths” have the means to change bodies through clones and remote storage of their consciousness in satellites, so they never have to die of old age before being resleeved.

Takeshi Kovacs, a political operative with mercenary skills, is the sole surviving soldier of the Envoys, a rebel group defeated in an uprising against the new world order.[8] In the first season, set 250 years after the Envoys are destroyed, his stack is pulled out of prison by 300-year-old Meth Laurens Bancroft, one of the wealthiest men in the settled worlds. Bancroft offers him the chance to solve a murder—Bancroft’s own—to get a new shot at life.

The second season takes place in the early 2410s, set 30 years after the first season: Kovacs, now in a new sleeve, continues to search for his lost love and Envoy leader Quellcrist Falconer.

Both series have great pacing, and I remained fully engaged throughout. It contains great action scenes, and the world-building is excellent.

Of particular note is the relationship between Takeshi and his AI companion Edgar Poe, who runs the hotel where he stays. It is unclear why Takeshi decides to stay there. Nobody else has stayed in decades. This is one of the drawbacks to the series. It is based on a book that probably goes into great detail, but is at times glossed over in the series.

They are a great watch, and I give a score of four out of five.

Don’t forget to subscribe and have a great day!

My Journey as a Writer: Updates and Goals

Hello, dear readers, I hope you are all doing well. A quick reminder to consider subscribing to the website to be kept fully updated. It really is the best way.

So what have I been up to? Well, not too much in the last day or two (I’m so lazy). Before then, I did make some steady progress.

Wheelchair Wars – The reworking is almost complete of my far future dystopia, where people with disabilities are forced to fight to the death for entertainment. I’m hoping to have it published (probably self-published), but I’ll try to look for an agent in the new year. I joined an online writing group, and I think I have significantly improved my writing skills. Like everything I do, I will always endeavor to improve.

Pegasus – This action-packed story set hundreds of years in the future recently came to an end. Like Wheelchair Wars, it will be reworked and published at a future date.

Distant Love – I only started this recently. It is still easy to find Part 1. This is my latest story – a sci-fi romance. I’m still working this one out in my head, not sure how long it will be.

General Overview:

I am on track to get a record number of views this year. I’m hoping to break the 2,000 mark. From research, to be a professional blogger would need an absolute minimum of 24,000 views per year. I’m a long way off, but not beyond the realms of impossibility to do it in a few years.

I now have 1,400 followers on Bluesky. My plan is to try and get over 2,000 by the end of the year. Then drive that audience towards here, along with my Twitter and Facebook followers.

Please don’t be afraid to comment. It would be great to have some feedback.

Distant Love Part 2

Will anyone ever tell me I’m pretty?

She was nearly nineteen and her life experience with boys sucked. She recalled her last messages over the moonweb with Derek.

Maeve: Why don’t we exchange photos? Do you look like your avatar?

Derek: Not really. Do you?

Maeve: Yes, a bit. So, will we exchange photos?

Derek: Maybe another time.

Maeve had thrown the mobile onto her bed. It was so frustrating.

She knew she was wasting her time, over four years of it now, but at times, she felt a strong connection. And she can’t be just imagining it. That isn’t who she is.

Derek was smart, razor smart. And they had an interest in many of the same things – chess, music, and Star Systems Regenade War. That’s where they met. He was a dashing commander of the Kuiper Belt Realm, she a General of Venus Command. Their love of conquest helped bond them together.

Her wrist went off. Time to report for duty. She walked out of her room, the automatic doors whooshing open and then closing. This was the main corridor of the spaceship. Not that it looked like one. More like an old folks’ home. It was filled with old people with walking sticks slowly going about their business on the carpet floor.

Distant Love (Sci-fi Romance)

Maeve leans back from her computer monitor. The smell of eaten pizza rafts through the air.

Why did she need to know Maths anyway? Isn’t that what AI was for?

Looking out the window, the blue dot, Earth, is still visible. It is not possible to make out any of the orbiting space stations. The rest is darkness with stars.

She had begun her Maths assignment two hours previously. Most of that time had been spent fidgeting.

Who needs to know about the multiplication of matrices?

She wishes Derek were online. He always knew how to get her to focus. He’d tell her that if she wants to own the family business, she needs to have a grasp of these things. She has to know what to ask the AI.

All very exciting. Did she even want to run the family business? There must be more to life than ferrying a bunch of old people from low Earth orbit to Moon orbit. Like really, that’s all she has to look forward to?

Turning around, she looks at the body-length mirror beside her. Her hand pushes back some of her long red hair over her black uniform, which consisted of a shirt and trousers.