a sample from 20K LIGHTYEARS FROM EARTH
Work progresses very nicely on the sci-fi novel. I’m a little more than 2/3 of the way through it, having just finished chapter 15 of the 23 chapter-story. Here’s a little something from chapter 12, entitled THE ENGINEER AND THE DOC. It takes place during a time when the trio of kids (three of the four primary characters of the story) decide they need to go snooping around to learn the secret of the ship that has captured them…
Spaceships had to simulate a day/night cycle, what with the “not being a rotating planet that’s orbiting a star” and all, and the most common method was also the simplest: They dimmed the lights for twelve hours, every twelve hours. Senior staff worked the day shift, while the B-team of junior officers kept things running at “night.”
Giles Wallace, being an android, only needed an hour a week to “sleep,” as he put it, but if necessary he could forgo his regular maintenance checks and system updates potentially indefinitely, as his internal power cell never stopped running (it had a shelf life of three hundred years).
On the other hand, going without his regular “sleep” opened him up to being infected with any number of viruses, not to mention getting the latest version of Windows 10. Because even though this story is set in the distant (distant) future, twenty-thousand lightyears away from earth, good old Windows 10 is still the default computer operating system, still going strong after one-thousand annual updates.
Sure Linux is still around, but it never caught on.
All that is to say, as the trio of kids waited for “nightfall” to sneak around the ship, they did not anticipate the first officer being wide awake and roaming about.
“Did he see you?” Trish asked, breathless as Gregory shut the door behind him.
“I don’t think so…He wasn’t looking this way.”
“Are those eyes even eyes?” Sam wondered. “For all we know they could just be for show and he’s got little robot camera eyes all over his body.”
“First of all, that’s creepy.” Gregory said, shuddering. “Second, I don’t think he noticed me, or if he did, he didn’t give any indication. He just kept walking the other way.”
“Okay. We’re in the clear.” Trish said, exhaling. “Next time, move more slowly.”
“I didn’t know that was a comm station!” Sam said, throwing his hands up in defense. “It looked like a light switch!”
“Good thing we didn’t call the Bridge.” Trish said, shaking her head. “What even is the Alley?
“Maybe she meant Galley…” Sam replied.
“Bowling.” Gregory said.
“Huh?”
“Bowling. It’s a bowling alley.” The other two looked at him like he was making a joke. “Seriously. Almost every spaceship has one.”
The three had been roaming the ship, ducking and covering and having riveting conversations just like this for the better part of an hour. During that time, they discovered a whole lot of nothing.
“We’re not looking in the right places.” Trish said, while they waited in an empty room for the corridor to clear. “We need evidence; we’re not going to get it in a closet…or in a bowling alley.”
“We haven’t actually checked the bowling alley.” Sam remarked.
Gregory’s eyes lit up. “Can we?!”
“We don’t even know what kind of evidence we’re looking for.” Trish huffed.
“Sure we do.” Sam said. “Engine Room. Freaky stuff. Tube thing in the middle.”
“Boy you really graded top of your class on the Mid-Studies, huh?” Gregory snarked.
“He’s not wrong.” Trish remarked. “The Engine Room is where we need to be.”
“Too risky.” Gregory said, shaking his head. “They grabbed us within seconds of showing our faces. Nighttime or not, that place will be locked down…” His words sort of tapered off as a thought came to him mid-sentence.
Sam noticed. “What? You’ve got a look.”
“I might know a way to get in there without being seen, but we wouldn’t be able to do much more than look and listen.”
“Better than being blind and deaf in here.” Trish said. “What’s the plan?”
I hope to be done with the book by the end of the month.