The Tale of The Noah continues....

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my story of the Noah completed in time to enter it in the science fiction contest I had planned on.  Real life reared its ugly head and interrupted my writing time too much.  The story itself also took on a life of its own that would not allow itself to be ended quickly.

I did go back and do a little editing to my previous entries in order to clarify a few things and correct a couple of mistakes.  I will update the previous posts with these edits by this time next week.  Word of these updates will be posted on my Facebook page.  In the meantime, here is a continuation of the story itself that I did manage to make despite interruptions, interferences, and power outages.

The majority of the crew of the Noah battleship waited patiently for a communication from Earth. Those that would be directly involved in the evacuation maintained their systems in a state of readiness. Others waited until their duties maintaining the environmental systems for the humans were required. While the environmental systems could be maintained automatically, the upkeep of a dry environment by a ship built for those that normally resided in oceans wasn't to be trusted to computers alone.

Darryl studied the interference patterns his cousin had emailed him. Without realizing how long he had been staring at the graphs and listening to the audio recordings, he finally got a grasp on what was before him. He rubbed his tired eyes, printed out a few key files and made a couple of notes, and carried everything to the dining hall. There he searched for one scientist in particular. This researcher had a hobby that involved numbers and multiple possible permutations and sequences. If anyone could figure out the details of what Darryl's cousin had sent him, it was a long-time D&D player and Game Master.

Darryl saw Alistair sitting alone eating with one hand and making notes on graph paper with the other. He approached the lone scientist with pages in hand. After a few minutes of discussion, Alistair looked away from his notes to the ones Darryl had presented. Looking over them briefly he stated, “It's simple. It's a base 12 encoding. Just different enough to our own base 10 to seem random unless someone is used to looking over numerical possibilities. I'm due to be back in the lab shortly. Once my shift is over, I will look over your notes and this signal and let you know if anything rises from the mists of confusion.”

Darryl thanked Alistair and grabbed a quick snack for himself from the buffet tables. He was due to start a work shift himself soon. As he was getting ready for the last few hours of his work shift, two pieces of news came to Darryl's attention almost simultaneously. Alistair had started to decode the information Darryl had given him earlier. While an exact translation was impossible, there were data components that could be easily interpreted. Alistair would meet with Darryl later with the information.

The second piece of news impacted the camp at large. The politicians had finally come up with a message to be broadcast to the Noah. The message accepted the help of the Noah in evacuating the planet, should they provide enough evidence that said evacuation was necessary. They also wanted to know the specifics of the plans for the evacuation so priorities could be made for getting more valued members of humanity safe first. There was no mention of how it would be determined which members of humanity were more valuable than others. The people that worked around the base were nearly unanimous in guessing that the politicians would form the head of the line. There was little to no mention of rescuing the non-human residents of the planet Earth. This came as no surprise to anyone that had worked with the politicians for more than five minutes.

The Noah received the message and excitement and activity both increased significantly as the crew prepared themselves for the evacuation plan. There was some confusion regarding the possibility of prioritizing the evacuation. The Noah felt that all life was equally important, regardless of how obvious or subtle their contribution to society may be. Because of this, their evacuation plan treated all the residents of Earth as equals and would evacuate them all at once. They were already scanning less intelligent lifeforms and comparing the results with their original scans when they originally transported everything to Earth. They looked for variations in DNA sequences that had crept in over numerous generations. This would allow them to simply update their files for reconstitution instead of collecting completely new DNA scans. There were a few new species that were descended closely enough to previously known species that an adjustment was all that would be required.

The Drag'kun battle fleet was primed for their attack. Designated crafts were starting to alter their course in order to intercept and attack the Noah battleship. The rest of the fleet would quickly enter Earth's atmosphere and begin razing major population centers. Panicking citizens would later be collected for enslavement. They would then be forced to extract usable materials from the wreckage of their own former homes and places of industry. Some would be given the ardous task of gathering raw minerals from the planet itself. There were no plans for stocking food or supplies for these slaves since they weren't expected to survive their duties.

Please leave a comment saying what you do or don't like about the story and where you think the story may go.

Where are "The Noah" Going?

I have decided to enter my tale of The Noah in a science fiction contest.  With the entry deadline, looming, most of my writing time has been dedicated to filling, editing, and completing the story.  I am hoping to have it finished and submitted in the next few days.  Once my submission has been accepted, I will post links to it here, on my Facebook page, and in my Twitter feed.

In the meantime, feel free to browse through any of the stories I've previously posted or check out some of the authors over at Amazing Things Press.  Go. Read. Enjoy.

Seeing The Whole World

Once before I posted about someone without the ability to see.  The idea of the exact opposite has been floating around in my head for many years.  What are some of the things someone would do if they found themselves with the ability to see anything, anywhere?  Viewing the past and future would still be impossible, but it would be easy to look at anything currently occurring on the planet.

I was finally coming to terms with my sight. It wasn't something that most people have to adjust to. My peripheral vision wasn't narrowing to a dark tunnel. It wasn't getting more difficult to read signs at a distance or books up close. I had to adjust to the fact that I could see everything.

When I say everything, it is much more than simply a matter of my vision being 20/20. At any given moment I could focus my view on a section of wall and see every nail pinning the drywall to the stud, how much the wood compressed and how much of it splintered when the nail was driven in, each stroke of the sander smoothing out the mud in the panel joints. I could easily see all of this regardless of whether the subsequent construction had been covered with paint, wallpaper, or both.

More than that, I could lay back and let my point of view roam anywhere in the world. I could see diplomats speaking to each other in a secured conference room on the other side of the planet. Since I couldn't hear them and never bothered to learn to read lips, all of the state secrets they may be passing to each other were still safe.

All of this started with an attack. I was working my usual evening shift at a corner convenience store. An armed thug rammed thug sauntered through the door, pulled a gun, and shot me in the head. As I lay on the ground bleeding, he rummaged through the cash drawers and helped himself. He walked away with just under $500. Not worth the life he just intended to take if you ask me. Even with the security cameras at the front door, behind the counter, and in the parking lot outside, the police were unable to identify the guy. Since I had seen his face very clearly, I told them I would gladly point him out in a lineup if they needed me to. They never called me in.

However, his shot wasn't lethally accurate. The bullet just grazed my skull. Somehow the pressure wave in the fluid inside my skull caused something to change in my brain itself. At least that's what the doctors keep telling me each time they call me in to take more pictures of my head. They don't know what kind of effects the difference in my brain chemistry may have, but that's only because I haven't told then about my new planet-wide visual acuity.

Doctor's orders kept me out of work the next couple of weeks. My boss said he would hold my position for me as long as I didn't sue the store. He smiled and sounded like he was joking, but I kind of doubt that. By the time I clocked back in for another evening shift, I was already aware I could see considerably more than I had before. With a little practice during slow parts of my shift, my vision was improving by leaps and bounds. After my first week I could count not only the cash in the drawer without opening it, but see exactly how much was in each shift's drop envelopes as they sat inside the safe in the boss's office.

The first time I noticed how much more I could see it was more out of boredom than anything else. I was sitting on my couch watching television. A movie was on that took place in the Sahara desert. Seeing all that sand blowing around and the shimmering heat was making me a little thirsty. I looked in the general direction of my kitchen and wondered if I had any beers in my fridge. Instantly I could see inside the refrigerator as though the door and wall between it and me were made of clear glass. All of the contents were clearly visible to me. It came as such a surprise that I blinked a couple times and the view disappeared. I sat and stared at the wall for a minute, thinking the whole thing must have been a hallucination caused by being shot.

I looked at the wall between me and my bedroom and again thought about the contents of my fridge. Nothing happened this time. Since I was looking at my bedroom wall my mind wandered to what clean clothes I might have to wear the next day. Suddenly I could see all of the folded shirts and pants in my dresser drawers. I noticed a couple of shirts I knew I had left in the hamper were sitting in my drawer. I realized this couldn't be a hallucination since I had no way of knowing my sister had washed my clothes and put them away while I was in the hospital. I'm not sure why I didn't start to panic. I began to look through other walls in my apartment. I could see how much soap was left in the bottle in my bathroom, this despite three walls and the plastic of the bottle itself potentially blocking my view.

I started to experiment with how far I could see. I peeked into other apartments on the same floor as mine. Then into rooms in apartments one and two floors beneath my feet. I kept extending my view further and further. Reading the expiration dates on the labels of food in the store on the corner. Counting the seeds in the vegetables on display at the farmer's market down the street. I will admit I spent too much time peering into the women's locker room at the gym a couple blocks down while sitting alone in the living room of my apartment. There seemed to be no limit to how far my vision could reach or how detailed a view I could get.

This new ability was a source of fun for the most part. I could watch any NFL game I wanted without my television being on or traveling to a stadium. I could watch a movie being made anywhere in the world. Women's locker rooms weren't the only places I looked at ladies in various states of undress. In general, whatever I wanted to see, I just looked at.

The fun stopped a few months after I got back to work. Once again, an armed thug entered the convenience store. This time he was wearing a ski mask despite the heat of the August evening. Without even thinking about it, I glanced at his waistband behind his back. There was a gun behind his back, loaded with the safety off and a round chambered. A quick look behind the ski mask told me how much danger I was truly in. The face hiding behind the cotton was the same one that belonged to the man that had shot me once before. There was no way I could give him the chance to kill me or hurt anyone else again.

What are some of the things you would look at if you could focus your sight on anything?  What would you look at first?