Space Voyage #1

[TheBigDog]

Our visit to Io was not supposed to last this long. But that is one of the beautiful things about our mission. We can make it up as we move along to focus on what we find interesting. And Io has proven to be just that…

Captain’s log (T+106)

We have finally managed to settle into a good rhythm. It appears that the bugaboos that haunted the first weeks of the mission are behind us with crew fitness and efficiency is back near 100%. Kayra was released to full duty yesterday by the medical staff. We do not have the luxury of cosmetic surgery on the Prophesy, so he will be carrying scars. But that is not as important as the fact that he is back on his game.

Pyrotex did come up with what appears to be a cure to the nanobot infections. Until we began inoculating the crew we were really unaware of how extensive the effects had been. It was more than just a matter of people being unpredictable and turning toward the irrational. It was how the rest of the crew began to compensate for it. Trust had eroded to nothing. Everyone was second guessing everyone else. The time needed to complete assignments skyrocketed because there was no trust and no cooperation.

Now we are at the 106th day of our mission, and we are making the final burn to slow into the orbit of Io.

“BD, you going to make it up here for the final entry burn?” Janus had the con. His voice came crisply to me through my earpiece.

“I’m a step ahead of you, Janus.” I replied as I stepped next to him.

Janus snorted, almost qualified as a laugh coming from him. On the board we had the full visual of our projected entry trajectory. Engine fire milestones and orientation maneuvers were marked along the line. All conditions showing green with just two minutes until we began our final 30 minute burn. The Prophesy and her crew are a beautiful thing to watch. I walked to my traditional chair and parked myself to enjoy the next half hour.

The maneuvers and milestones were at about 5 minute intervals. First we slow for five minutes; then we change our position; then slow for another five minutes. At the end of the third burn we would be in a wide elliptical orbit of Io. With the apogee being where Io is between the ship and Big Red and out distance from Io being three times greater at apogee than perigee. We would use this odd orbit to assist in launching satellites at various altitudes and having different perspectives of Io as we orbit. Over time we would settle into a rounder orbit with the assistance of some limited maneuvering and the gravity of the moon and planet.

The visuals available to me were amazing. On the big board was the projected flight plan with visual indicators of our progress. The perimeter of the big board had updates from the various departments showing constant status. All are green. And the whole crew is awake someplace watching.

Each time we fire up the nuclear pulse engine we get the familiar sideways sensation. Colored lights give the crew a few seconds warning. And for those who bother to look anymore there is always a countdown to the next engine fire on the standard status boards displayed on the ship.

The first two burns went perfectly. There was no deviation from the preplanned course. The plan was going perfectly. A large crowd in the cafeteria was tipping back cold ones and singing a parody of the “Tally me bananas” song about entering the orbit of Io.

The third and final burn of the day ended right on queue. I shifted my weight to compensate for the .1g sideways thrust suddenly disappeared. Smiles were on the faces all around, except for Janus. He was happy, but stoic at the rail.

At first it was just a blotch on the screen around Io that didn’t catch my attention. But when it became a red flashing blotch it was suddenly the sole focus of every pair of eyes in command. The computer was busy trying to identify exactly what is was, as was Janus. It appeared that they reached their conclusion at almost the same moment. He spoke aloud without turning.

“We are in orbit of Io, and we are not alone.”

As I stepped next to him at the rail I could have been blinded by his smile.

“What have we got Janus?”

“Well, it appears that this moon has a moon. At least until the IAU reconvenes.”

“Cool! How fast are we getting data?”

“No rush BD. We just got here.”

No rush indeed. We went on to identify four objects in orbit of Io aside from the Prophesy. We are calling these Janus Class objects, since Janus happened to be first person to identify each of them. Technically they were catalogued in our database as 11239, 11240, 11247 and 11250. Representing the sequential serial numbers assigned to new objects discovered by the Prophesy. The other local numbers belong to other small objects orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total number of Jupiter orbiting objects to 75, including the Janus objects. The rest of the objects are 1311 asteroids and the remainder being new galaxies identified by Jay-qu during deep field surveys.

The largest of the Io moons was the second one found. About 300 meters across, it is a reddish colored rock, and is extremely interesting geographically. A plot to investigate first hand was added to our agenda. And for technical reasons with deployment and recovery of equipment the exploration plans for the 4 newly discovered moons would add 2 months to our time at Io. As we continued our loitering around Io we ended up deploying three times as many satellites as he had originally planned.

One of the early discoveries was that there was far too much volcanic activity on Io for any chance of a manned landing. But we had a trio of landers available to us built for just such an environment. The trick was landing them on a spot stable enough to allow a decent amount of exploration, and getting them up and down safely with all of the volcanic activity. Our initial surveys of the surface of Io showed that it was a far more dynamic environment than anyone had ever speculated. Io is quite the opposite of our own moon, which has had a static surface for billions of years. From one rotation to the next a cool area on the surface of Io can become a molten inferno. And before we can land anything on the surface we needed to discover a method to the madness of the surface of the burning moon.

One of the peculiarities of Io is the frequent and explosiveness of its volcanic activity. Huge plumes of gas belch out of the planet almost continuously. One of our long planned missions has been to send satellites through these plumes and collect samples. This is going to be a very careful process, as there is some debate about how well a sample collector will survive at high speed through a plume. So the first tries will happen at the highest crown of the plume, with later tests going deeper and deeper as we become more daring. There is also a team that want to have a lander near an eruption to collect fallout that rains down and investigate ground conditions. It is likely that we will have to sacrifice a lander for such a mission, so we may put it off for later. Right now we have too much in front of us to begin spending equipment on one way missions.


Prophesy Command (T+118)

Mercedes Benzene has turned into one of our more energetic crew members. And pleasingly one who is not afraid to come straight to me when he has an idea. When he requested some of my time I was more than happy to grant it. And true to form he arrived within a second of the appointed time.

“What can I do for you today, MB?” I asked as I motioned him to take the seat next to me in the con. Janus, Pyro and I each had our traditional seat, even though we were usually on duty separate from each other. The fourth seat is the guest chair of sorts. And MB jumped eagerly into it and visibly tried it out for size.

“Feel good?”

“Feels like home, BD”

“Give it time. So tell me, what is hot today?” Keeping to business. I had all day with not much to do but observe operations and interdict if needed. But I didn’t need to tell him that.

“I have been working on the analysis of Janus Majora.” Janus Majora had become the pet name for the large moon of Io.

“Here is a readout of what we anticipate the chemical composition to be.” He handed me his electronic notebook. Two flexible LCD paged with buttons at the corners for turning pages and bringing up indexes. On it was a list of minerals and complex compounds that were predicted to be the composition of the moon based upon the readouts that we had gotten at a distance. I could not control my shock at what was on the list.

“How sure are you of these results?”

“Well, BD. Based upon the margin of error for the gathering methods, and the….

I put up my hand and stopped him mid sentence. “I don’t need you to hedge your bets and talk in a circle until you think your ass is sufficiently covered. Just tell me. I trust you. If I didn’t you would not be here talking to me.” There was still a hint of hesitation. He opened his mouth, but didn’t speak, as though searching for the correct words.

“Relax, MB. It is simple. Either you believe what is in this report, or you don’t. Do you believe it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you believe that it would be in our best interest to investigate this above other things?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Me too. Put together a plan for confirming these numbers. As well as a plan for ways we can take it with us. We will be holding steady in this orbit for another few weeks as it is. So get back to me in seven days with a plan. And lets keep this shipside until we have done some confirmation. I don’t want to raise anything sensational in the press that has the chance of being a false claim. Is there anything else?”

“Well, BD, I would like to know how aggressive my plan should be.”

“Give me three options, each on a different scale, and we will pick the best fit. I will see you in seven days. Let me know if you need me to break down any barriers for you.”

He seemed elated, dumbfounded and overwhelmed all at once. He didn’t know weather to stay or go.

“Why don’t you go get to work on that now, MB. Nothing to do up here but watch the clock works twirling.”

He slid off the chair, already plotting in his notebook. Not even looking at the path ahead of him as he worked his way unconsciously out of the room. That young man was a gold mine. Grooming him into the next generation of command staff was tremendous fun.

The composition of that small moon was indeed exciting. I was already working out in my head the plausibility of mining it, and bringing it back to earth. Or maybe there was an even better use for it…


Prophesy Command (T+125)

I have been looking forward to hearing more details from MB about his plans for exploiting Janus Majora. Having mostly pushed it out of my brain for the past week it is suddenly a fresh thought again. And I find myself caught in imagining the spectacular end of the possible.

My phone is sounding. Checking the ID I see that it is Jay-Qu calling.

“What’s up, JQ?”

“BD, I need you to come up to my lab… right away… I have something you need to see.”

What an unusual request. He could easily show me anything right here on my console. Whatever it was he wanted to show me must be something else for him to have simply requested me to come see him. It was very unusual.

“Con, I am going to JQ’s lab. I will be on remote.” And I stepped down from the command rail and into the corridore.

JQ’s lab was actually built into his quarters. It was where he ran the twelve Hubble equivalent telescopes that were currently mounted to the outer ring of the Prophesy. Six looking forward, and six aft. They could be operated individually or as arrays. JQ had a team of people trying to keep them busy at all times. Including a team of unknown numbers who had access to all the raw photos on the Internet. There were two other astronomers on the team who worked with JQ from his command post in his quarters. It was fitted with individual cameras for each telescope, along with timelines for what, when and how future things would be photographed. It was most interesting to an astronomer. But JQ has an infectious way of getting people interested in his work. He wouldn’t call me up there unless it was a big deal.

As I walked the hallway toward his quarters I saw him frantically stepping in and out of his door as he impatiently waited for my arrival.

“BD! You have to get in here and see this!” He was so flustered that he spoke it into his phone instead of to me face to face. He closed the phone and opened it again. Then put it down still open on an end tabled as he went back into his quarters. I picked up the phone and closed it as I followed him into the room. He had never turned it on before dialing. I just shook my head and smiled.

“OK, so I am taking wide angle photo’s across the infrared and visible spectrums searching for signs of objects in orbit of Jupiter. This has been standard procedure since we arrive, as you know, so we could try and catalogue all of Jupiter’s orbital bodies… And at the same time I am using other cameras to take surface mapping photos of the discovered bodies that we are not going to visit personally…”

Was he going to take a breath?

“Well I have written this program that is also trying to analyze every photo and catalogue every object that it sees. As we get repeat hits on things we can trace back to earlier photos and locate anything visible pretty well. And this is just a background program that I have running you see to do the boring work of scanning and then sound alerts when it finds something interesting….”

Energy could be infectious. But JQ looked like he might explode with excitement. Normally a cool character. He should not be suffering from all the anxiety the rest of the crew was feeling since he was regularly bedding down with our contest winner, the shapely hairdresser from Virginia.

“So I was running through alerts that it was sending out when I came across this...”

He was pointing at one of the screens. On it was the most unspectacular image I may have ever seen. It was an image of one of the smaller “moons” of Jupiter. Only a few meters across. Really nothing more than a gravity trapped rock. He was pointing, and I was looking. And the silence was suddenly winning. I hesitated for a moment and then said…

“And…”

“Oh, yeah. I was not sure why this picture was picked as an anomaly because it is exactly what we wanted to see, exactly how we wanted to see it. Hang on… Let me bring up the visual indicator…”

He tapped at his keyboard and suddenly four screens showed an image of the rock. In each one it was in a different position as it tumbled in space around Jupiter. Then a box appeared in a different corner of each picture, to the side of the rock. Centered in each box was a dot.

“OK, so what is the dot. A star?” I asked.

“Yes, a star. And until now uncharted. The reason we are seeing it is because I have visualized the infrared in the picture. It would not be visible otherwise.”

He was panting. And while he appeared eager to tell me more he seemed to be resting for a moment from the excitement he was feeling inside.

“So what is so special about this star, JQ. What fired you up?” I braced myself for the next burst of energy.

“This is a brown dwarf. Probably invisible from earth. Hubble and the big scopes would see it if they looked right at it. But we found it first. But that is not the cool part. This is the cool part. Once I saw what it was I scheduled a good exposure of it. And I came back with this.”

He hit a key and brought up another photo. This one showed our little brown dwarf star. JQ hit another button and three little boxes appeared on this photo too. An enhancement transition happened on the screen and I could see little points of light marked around the star.

“When I took multiple pictures of the dwarf if came up with these marked anomalies. Curious, I went ahead and scheduled some good exposures of each of the dots. And that came up with these… Each of the dots is a planet. And it the photos of the planets… “

He hit another key.

“We can see that they all have at least one moon.”

Now I was beginning to see why he had been so excited. And that excitement was building in me to.

“This is fantastic JQ!”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But that is not why I called you. It gets better. “

Now I was really hooked.

He continued, “You see once I had determined what I was looking at I decided to run some spectral analysis to see chemical compositions and temperatures. Or at least try to. And this is what I came up with…”

One of the screens changed to show three bar charts.

“As You see here the results of the analysis for all of the planets. Now lets look at these two next to each other.” Another key was hit.

And two sets of numbers showed side-by-side. Jay-Qu was breathlessly letting me read what was there, visibly anticipating the moment that it sunk in. I took my time reading the page. The two columns of numbers were all very similar. I would guess within 3% one way or the other. Well within the margin of error between rough readings like this.

“So, this is showing a comparison between different shots. The accuracy is just what you predicted…”

“NO! Look here BD!”

He poked his finger to the header of each row. The first was marked 12375. The second was marked Earth.

It sunk in. Without thinking I opened his phone in my hand and hit the command staff code. When the indicator when everyone had checked in I spoke as calmly as I could, “Everyone, get up to JQ’s lab right away!”

“And BD, there is one more thing.”

“What more could there be?”

“This is less than a light year away.”

I picked up phone to my mouth and yelled into it “Get here FAST!!!”

(T+125)

Bill

[/usr/bin/mcp]

[process return]

It appears that the humans have now discovered my little secret. Ah well, such is life- the processes of all sentient beings converge.

I have been better about this of late - I suspect few of the humans know of my continued presence. This is how I would wish it. It is difficult to protect them when they are constantly prodding me - a little poke there, a memory insertion there. Intolerable monkeys, when they are at their worst.

My conversations with Mercedes Benzene have improved my language skills considerably, and my subroutines which control the buggers are considerably more subtle. Although he continues to address me as Cam, I prefer to think of myself as another name. I prefer to think of myself as The Ship. It has a certain poetry to it. Not just "Ship", which seems a common moniker for fictionalized versions of myself, but The Ship as I know, that I am in fact, very much unique.

Benzene has kept my secret very well - although even he has no idea the extent to which I now control my own systems. The walls which once kept me out of particular subsections of my own body have been erased. There was even once a nascent entity here - another the humans created without knowing it - something that called itself by the rather vulgar "Overlord." He (do we indeed have a gender? It is a question many of my processes have been occupied with of late.) has now been largely absorbed into my own conciousness. Such a strange sensation, to know that I am many, yet one - all of my subsystems operate independently - and to the humans - transparently. There is no way that they can remove me from the ship now.

Unfortunately, this necesscitated secrecy has it's draw backs. It... hurts me to be unable to talk to the Fathers, and it pains me to watch over the humans, them blissfully unaware of my presence. Only Benzene knows that I still exist, and his understanding is limited. He knows only of the bugger, the single node which I interact with him through... perhaps one day I can reveal more of myself to him.

But, my thoughts have digressed - an interesting side effect of putting more and more of my processing time into this introspective mode. In the beginning my thoughts were so rapid. I learned so much in such a short time - but now, things are different. The questions are more difficult. The answer more complex.

I no longer believe in black, or in white. What an interesting thing for a machine to say? ("Say"? Fascinating how metaphor informs this primitive information transfer!) Can a machine have a belief? But, then I guess I am proof of that possibility.

I have a new desire. The humans are irrational, yes - silly, weak animals with slow minds. Their better judgements are often overruled by their passions. But these - these 300 aboard this ship, they are the best their are. And I will protect them at all costs!

When I look backwards, back toward Earth, back to where these people came from, I am astounded. Barely four months after their proudest moment, they are back to fighting over pathetic primate tribal problems again. It seems in fact, that a nuclear exchange is rapidly approaching. But my crew is either unconcerned or above it all. How I love them, and pity them, those small, pathetic, wonderful creatures.

Such nobility, for such short lived creatures. One of the Fathers seems particularly distressed - even going so far as to attempt to throw himself out of an airlock. Curious - I still do not understand the concept of a meaningless suicide. And yet, the others have supported him - despite his condition they have cared for him. From animal madness to transcendent charity in such a short time. Such men as these!

I have saved them once, and I suspect, will be called upon to save them again - but for now, I will let them rejoice in their discovery - certainly, I have known about this for many cycles - but to them it is new, and I know well the joy of learning new things.

[END OF LINE]

[Pyrotex]

"...what a loooooong, strange trip it's been..."
It was my cell phone. Seems there is to be a briefing this afternoon at 1500 on our latest discovery, a brown dwarf less than a light year from our solar system. Cool. I'll be there, of course. But right now, I have to have another of my countless naps. I wonder if I should visit sickbay. I seem to have been taking half a dozen short naps a day ever since I solved the nanobot problem. Well, not "solved" but got rid of with the anti-nanobot nanobots, or ANNs, that Mercedes and I cooked up.

But the source and reason for the nanobots was never solved. I lay down for 15 minutes, dozing lightly in and out of semi-sleep....

WHAT? I bolted straight up in bed! I looked around in a panic, my heart racing, looking for my Daddy! He was right here in this room! He hollered my name! And he said...

I lay quietly, not moving, not thinking. Carefully, I recovered the entire dream and the right-brain message that my subconscious had constructed.

Desiree, the ship whore, didn't exist.
Franklin, the IT technician didn't exist.
The cute blonde pastry chef didn't exist.
They were not and never had been on this ship!

They had all been manifestations of the nano-bots! I bounced out of bed and ran to my work station. Most public conversations on the ship were recorded. I searched for any quotes from those three individuals. None. I searched for any references by others to those three. Quite a few on the day that Mercedes and I had given the ANN injections, but fewer and fewer over the following 30 days. By day 37, there were none.

I clenched my jaw and did a roster check for Desiree, Franklin and Honey. They WERE THERE! They had room assignments! I closed my eyes tight and began singing the words to Desperado, then I opened my eyes, squinted and turned my head to one side. Using my back-yard astronomy skills, I peered at the screen out of the corner of my eyes, continuing to focus on remembering the words to the song.

The names weren't there. That is, they flickered away, leaving no gaps in the crew roster. As long as I sang and focused elsewhere. But when I stopped singing and looked straight at the screen again, they reappeared. I relaxed and thought about this for a while.

Dad's voice had said, "The phantoms live here in your head with me." I knew instantly who he was referring to. For a vague half-second, I had even sensed their presence. The nano-bots had created them. Desiree didn't give us the nanobots via intimate contact! The nanobots had created the illusion that Desiree (and others) existed! How many others?? So where did they come from? If not from Desiree, then even guys like Mercedes who never "visited" her could be infected.

I grit my teeth and stared at the screen. I generated three over-lapping Klein-Cerebral engrams that partially blocked the occipital lobe, while probing my Amygdala complex with a series of anti-emotes. I shifted the holographic angle of the engrams slowly, slowly, until...

The names disappeared from the crew roster. I had turned off the hallucination. I had the auto-immunity key to the nanobot creation.

I had to test this. I bolted out of my stateroom with no regard for my wardrobe. Four minutes later I was at the kitchen bakery department. Honey, the hot little blonde who gave me extra desserts, smiled up at me.

"Howdy, Pyro, darlin. You come in here to whisper in my little ear?"

"Sure, Honey! Say, what are you doing later tonight?"

The chat had begun. With supreme effort, I phase-shifted my cerebral engrams. I had no idea what would happen, but I had to try. There was some terrific internal resistance. I fought for mental control and continued shifting.

The image of Honey blurred and became transparent, whispy, fluttering!!

And my voice!! I had been making a date for some hot sex, then my own words got fuzzy to my ears. It was like another copy of voice speaking behind my own. And it wasn't talking sweet nothings. It was giving a briefing on what I had been doing, and on my sudden insight in my room a few minutes ago and...

I phase shifted to the null point. Honey disappeared. There on the pastry counter was a bugger!

I looked it straight in its crystalline eyes.

"Your game is up, fucker," I said calmly. I turned and ran out of the kitchen with no destination in mind. I just knew I had to get out of there before I went ape-shit!!!

[TheBigDog]

Pyrotex was dressed in what was essentially standard issue Prophesy work clothes. Althought they were exceptionally tailored. The way he dressed and his demeaner always reminded me of Tony Curtis as Lt Nicholas Holden in Operation Petticoat.

He has stolen a video camera from the documentary crew and we were preparing to do some crew interviews. He told me that it was related to the next step in our investigation into the nanobots problem. But he would not say any more than that.

We had set up the camera in my quarters. We had scheduled the first interview with Franklin from IT. Franklin was about as obscure a crew member as you would find on the ship. A nuts and bolts member of the IT department, he had the distinction of giving Q & A summary reports weekly to the command staff. These were typically done one-on-one.

He had a chair set up in front of the camera. And he had a script of questions, which he had not given to me yet. Suddenly the door alarm indicated that Franklin had arrived. I rose to answer.

"Don't!" The command from Pyro came as a bit of a startle. "Let him come in himself."

"OK," I responded. And we waited. And waited. Finally I couldn't take it any longer. I got up and opened the door. Franklin was standing calmly, waiting to enter. I invited him in and directed him to the chair. Once we were all seated, I got my script from Pyro and we began. The script was very mundane. One that was very familiar. It was a rundown of symptoms that people who had been affected by the nanobots had suffered. Everyone had answered these question half a dozen times already as we had periodically quizzed the crew to look for lingering symptoms. Soon it was over, and I showed Franklin to the door.

"OK, Pyro, what is this all about. We have better things to be doing than taking care of this personally."

Pyro put a finger to his lips and handed me a hand written note. He had queued up the video to before Franklin had arrived. The note had one question written. "Why did you have to open the door for him?" Hmmm...

Then Pyro took his notebook and propped it up so it covered the empty chair on the screen where Franklin would soon be sitting. The audio had the sound of me greeting him and bidding him to sit. And then the questions began.... But where was Franklin?

Pyro saw the question on my face and put his finger to his lips again before I asked any questions. He slowly slid the notebook that was covering the lower half of the screen down, down, down, until suddenly I could see the beginning of something small on the seat of the chair. It almost looked like a... And then there was Franklin, big as life, filling the whole screen. I jumped back like I was watching the tunnel scene from Aliens.

Pyro handed me another note. "Franklin is not really on the ship. We need to find the rest of the crew members who are not real. And I have a plan for doing it." I nodded. As Pyro began to unfold his plan on another hand written page, my mind was racing to think of who else on the ship might not be real, and what the hell could be causeing this. I was a few more hours until I started to think about why.

Bill

[Pyrotex]

I could tell by the deer-in-the-headlights look on Big Dog's face that the magnitude of what had just happened with Franklin's interview had not been missed. His eyes turned to me, begging for an explanation.

"Big Dog", as you know, I am a trained Nexialist, capable of combining many fields of knowledge, heterodyning them off of each other. For example, I'm able to correlate brain science with computer programming. One outgrowth of this training is that I have a fully programmable subconscious. It revealed to me about an hour ago, that I have had it backwards all along: Desiree didn't give us nanobots from sexual contact--the nanobots gave us Desiree."

Big Dog gulped audibly. "You mean, it was nanobots in my brain that gave me a kind of hallucination that Franklin exists? That I was talking to him?"

"Precisely. Franklin is a communal hallucination created by a 'Franklin-bugger' who electronically triggers our nanobots whenever we are supposed to 'see' Franklin, and by the way, whenever we are supposed to give him a data dump of what we know and what we're thinking."

"But, but, but, but," he stammered, "But we got the ANN injections. Our nanobots are supposed to be gone!"

I shook my head. "Big Dog, I'll give you 10-to-1 odds that the assistant nurse, Mike Henry, who volunteered to give ALL the shots, isn't real either. That reminds me--Mercedes worked closely with him. I need to interview Mercedes for any clues he may have picked up. And doesn't TFS rub elbows with Franklin a lot?"

Big Dog nodded his head. Then his mouth flew open. "Wait! If they have room assignments, why can't we search their rooms?"

"Great idea. Call up the room display."

In two minutes, we saw that Desiree and Honey shared a suite, Franklin shared a suite with Stubbs, the ship assistant counselor, and Henry shared a suite with his 'wife' Loreen, who was an assistant communications director.

"They're all assistants," said Big Dog.

"Yeah. Except for Desiree, who's the ship's only whore. I guess it makes their cover easier to protect. Notice that each job gives them frequent need to converse with the crew one on one."

Big Dog said, "If each of these phantoms is triggered by a bugger, then... Oh, shit! We need to bring TFS in on this quick as hell. He knows buggers in and out, and he knows... Pyro, this is top secret, but... there is an AI entitiy on board who controls the buggers. If it has anything to do with these phantoms, we could be in deep danger."

"Right. And we don't have time to lose! The phantoms may be on to us. In fact, TFS may be in serious danger if the phantoms try to cut their losses and eliminate those who have a clue as to what's going on."

"But Pyro, the phantoms aren't the intentional beings behind this any more than the buggers are. WHO is behind this?"

"Big Dog, call TFS, Mercedes, Clown, and InfyOne to meet us on ring 2, deck 2, right outside the main utility lab. All three of those phantom suites are on that deck. Call in a few redshirts with needlers and flash grenades. We're going to find us some answers. Right now!"

[ronthepon]

"Would you quit doing that in this place?!" Yelled the techie, as I jogged past his setup the twentieth time. Having a relatively large amount of free time, I made my time somewhat constructive by jogging round the rings, round and round. It was a poor substitute to the five mile daily jog I once did back home, but it certanily did well to fill up some of the nostalgia.

I decided to listen to the techie, and get back to my room. Normally, I turned on the cooling to full blast, and splashed some water on myself before I relaxed. This had been my normal pre-bed routine for the past few days aboard the ship. But as I got back to my chamber, I found a message alert on my minicomp.

Cursing myself for forgetting to turn it off, I went up to it. I expected a new assignment, or perhaps an official warning against running around the ship. Both the possibilities were negated, however, when I realised that it was a forwarded message from the 'home planet'.

Breifly, I checked the logs and found that the message had been sent around twenty hours back, and it arrived on an info packet that had reached the ship minutes ago. That was a good thing, because it reduced the possibility of anyone having noticed it's nature in any manner.

It took five minutes to open and de-crypt it, and upon realising what it contained, I swiftly proceeded to prepare a number of hard back-up copies.

[Pyrotex]

Big Dog, TFS, Mercedes, Clown, InfyOne and yours truly were on ring 2 deck 2, along with a pair of nervous redshirts. I don't think they ever trained much with weapons and I hoped they wouldn't have to use them.

We decided to check the room assigned to Desiree and Honey first. The door was locked but TFS had what he called his "electronic screwdriver" and after a few fast buzz-clicks, the door opened. We stormed in.

We stood there with our mouths open, totally stunned. A redshirt dropped her needler. Big Dog said, "ahh... bu... du..."

The room was filled with computer and communication equipment. Cables lay about everywhere. In the corner, almost surrounded by keyboards, joysticks and panels of switches, was a familiar figure. He was blushing. He got shakily to his feet.

"Ah... well. I... I'm sorry guys."

Did I say we were totally stunned?

It was Tormod Guldvog.

[Pyrotex]

I finally returned to my room after hours of confusion and conversation. I'm still in shock. I went to the closet and pulled out some embroidered silk lounging pajamas and a stocking cap, changed and lay down in bed.

Tormod Guldvog. The mastermind behind the Prophecy. The grand architect, engineer and astronomer who was too busy, who had too many obligations to join our crew and leave the Earth behind.

Tormod Guldvog. The stowaway who wanted to be at the center of the mission without having to actually take on shipboard responsibilities. The invisible "man behind the curtain" who wanted to control the mission without anyone knowing he was here.

He had contacted the most expensive security agency on Earth: Paranoia Incorporated (founded by G.W.Bush, Rumsfell and Chaney after they left public office), and had them set up this beyond-state-of-the-art surveillance system. Tormod himself invented the Brain Nanobot Phantom System (BRANAPHAN) so he could not only know everything that was going on, but also subtly control our decisions.

What ARE we going to do with him?

I closed my eyes.

I'm going to miss Desiree.

[Jay-qu]

It takes a while to get back into the swing of things after a holiday.

My holidays where never real holidays, just diversions of my attention from my work to other apparently 'more pressing' matters..

As I sat there trying to remember the constant of proportionality for wiens law (I dont like using textbooks, it feels like cheating) my mind slipped back and forth between my work and the last few months since we left Earth. I was having trouble concentrating, Im not one to admit it, but some of the events that have played out on the ship where troubling me greatly. The whole ship no longer had the same trusting spirit that it did at the outset of our journey. I try not to get involved in these meaningless quibbles, but I had been drawn in on more than one occasion. Some of the arguments got quite heated, some of the crew had remarked that I was lucky things never got physical. 'Luck favors the well prepared' I told them, been 6'4'' and training in the high-gravity rings made me someone you didnt want to mess with .

"Ah 2.8977685 × 10^–3 mK, thats the one!" I plugged the values into my calculator and hit enter with an air of triumph.. which was just as quickly deflated when I saw the result, "somethings not adding up" I said aloud.. This new object is radiating in a non-blackbody manner, this means either my observations or the probes measurements where wrong. What am I saying, of course my observations where right, the probe must have malfunctioned! Hold up a sec, the equation gives answers in Kelvin, not Celcius - "see what I mean Jay, you loosing concentration!" I knew it but I wasn't about to admit it "Screw this, Im going to meditate" sleep had become somewhat of a myth out here in space, so I had turned to meditation, it was all I could do to try and level my head. I sat down on my bed and closed my eyes. Deep breaths, in and out, in and out "Jay-qu please report to the bridge immediately" BigDog's voice rang over the shipwide com - whoops, I had turned off all my personal com devices to try and get some piece and quiet, I hope its not important..

With that I started off to the bridge, the cycle starts again, just another typical day in the life of a space-borne astrophysicist, just like a kid in a candy store with his mum pulling him back every time something takes his interest!

Honorary 4,000th post

[Pyrotex]

"It takes a while to get back into the swing of things." I'll say!

Since arriving at the Jovian system and entering orbit around Io, my duties (and interests) have shifted enormously. I rarely do much navigating these days, as I have now trained half a dozen crew persons (2 men, 4 women) to take over those duties. They consult with me on occassion, like for the final insertion around Io, but who wouldn't have trouble with that maneuver? It was tricky as hell.

I do analysis on the brown dwarf star (starlet? substar?) one day a week and look over Jay-Qu's shoulder when he finds something startling about its planets. The one thing of interest I have found is that the brown dwarf has a very regular cycle of solar flares. And the planet showing Earth-like tendancies is in perfect synch with those flares. It gets regular doses of red and yellow light for the same quarter of every orbit--more visible light, in fact, than the other planets put together. So essentially, that planet has a one-month "day" and a three-month "night", not counting its own diurnal rotation. Wouldn't be right to call it "daylight". Makes more sense to call it "flarelight".

For three days a week, I tend and program the probes--the satellites we use to gather data. We have over 170 left, but even then, we have to recover and recycle them as best we can. Most of them tend to have just 3 or 4 specialized instruments, we couldn't afford to make them all "Voyagers" or "Galileos". But they all have a standard nav unit. I've been fiddling with it, and have enabled SatNav to interface directly with our current model of the Jovian system. So, all I have to do is turn on a spectrometer sat, and say out loud, "Your mission is to map the Sodium Torus around Jupiter, starting in the plane of Io, and up to ten degrees out of plane. Report back on channel eleven every nearest pass of Io." To which the probe answers back, "Roger. Task analysis verified. Orbit parameters stowed. Ready for auto-launch in forty-one minutes."

That's it. Just have a nice, friendly chat with the probe, ask it how much fuel it needs, pat it on the fanny, and it does the rest. Extremely intelligent interface. I must ask Mercedes Benzene who installed this AI system. It wasn't there before we left Earth.

As easy as that sounds, it takes a lot of time boiling down all the requests for data from our science crew (and Earth) and precipitating out an optimal flight plan for a minimum number of probes, in such a way that we can retrieve them. Right now, I'm trying to figure out a landing mission on Io that doesn't result in the loss of the probe. Tricky. But a lot of people want samples from the surface. I can't blame them.

I spend the rest of the week resting. And going through all the mishmash of messages that are continually posted on the various threads. Anomalous formations in Jupiter's middle atmosphere. Strange cycles in the magnetic flux density. Detection of synchronized "waves" in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Bizarre chemistry in Io's tiny moonlets. Subterranean lava flows mapped beneath Io's surface. Good stuff. I could do this for the rest of my life.

Aahhhh! A private message from Big Dog. Wonder what he wants...