Neil A. Hogan Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Space Fiction Writer Author Editor
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After Karil’s suborbital descent, Jrok takes her to investigate the surface of this dwarf planet.
But what are the black pools that dot the surface?
Why have eight observation modules mysteriously disappeared?
And how can something so active be so empty of life, with not even a strand of DNA?
Find out more in Strange Lands. Science Fiction Weekly #29.
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I’ll return with Chapter 4 of Stellar Flash in a few days. Or, you can find the book on Amazon here: Temporal Incursion. It’ll be on Google Books and Apple iBooks in June.
In the meantime, here is a short story I wrote recently. I was challenged to write a 500 word story, and decided to make it about a character that fails at getting something. I’ll talk more about what led to that in a future post. In any case, here is the result:
The Controller by Neil A. Hogan
Juset Oliga sliced her tarsus and dripped green blood onto the rectangular lock. Detecting her mitochondria, the temple forcefield dissipated, energy sparks showering around her like cascading diamonds.
I’m in!
She scampered through the plasticrete entrance, her antennae flicking about madly. With the field now off, she had to get to the Controller before the star discharged another burst of plasma, or she would end up like the rest of this lifeless planet.
She moved around the burns on the ground of those who had come before her, her mandibles curling with distaste. She would be different. She would find the weapon, then bring more planets into the empire.
A glint of light glittered to her right, and she turned and scuttled along the dusty floor towards it.
The Controller! This must be it!
A glowing dodecahedron sat innocuously on a pedestal.
No buttons or swipe screens?
Her proboscis twisted back and forth in dismay.
This is not what I was advised.
She scrabbled two of her tarsi around the outside of it, feeling for a connection or switch, but the facets were smooth. “How do I control you?” she asked it. “How do I stop your plasma bursts?”
For all she knew, a new burst was already on its way. She probably had just moments to live. She twisted her green compound eyes around, then came to a decision. Reaching around it with four of her legs, she lifted the multifaceted shape up.
Immediately, fear filled her thorax. Not heavy? What is this? She turned it over to see if she could look inside, then screeched and dropped it.
EMPTY?
A scratching laugh echoed through the room, and an old voice followed. “I knew you would come, my child. They all come, in the end.” A hologram of a bipedal being with chitinous wings lowered itself to the stones near the fallen shape. “You were sent to get the Controller. But, it is a myth.” It waved a spiky leg, and the dodecahedron rose in the air, then returned to its previous position. “Let’s put everything back the way it was for the next one.”
“But,” implored Oliga. “We need the Controller. That kind of plasma power would make us supreme rulers. We could control…everything!”
The hologram tilted its head. “There is no Controller. It is a natural cycle of Proxima Centauri. What better way to bait and trap greedy alien beetles than allow them to think there is a star-sized weapon hidden somewhere in the galaxy?”
Oliga felt faint. How would her race take over Trappist-1 now?
“Sadly,” continued the hologram. “Your time of worrying about your empire is now over.”
Before Oliga could even send a message, a hot burst of plasma exploded through the doorway of the fortress, vaporising her instantly. Her ashes joined the other shadows on the floor.
The hologram looked down at her remains. “When will your race learn not to make greed your controller?”
It reactivated the temple forcefield, then faded away.
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Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Episode 1: The Hand Continued
Chapter 2
Admiral Victoria Heartness got up from her desk at the darkening interior of her space station office and scratched at her newly extended long brown hair. Something was wrong, if the raised hair on the back of her neck was any indication. The shadows in the room were lengthening, and it had nothing to do with the reflected light from Saturn just beyond her window.
Unless it was more to do with science, she thought. Static electricity? An increase in electrons causing eyes to perceive a slight darkening of the environment?
She looked down at her arms and could see the hair on the backs of them rising as well. What could cause that? She walked around the room. Was it getting lighter in the center?
The only thing possible was the controlled formation of an isolation field of a personal flash jump. And the slow speed suggested a longer jump
Then everything became clear to her.
Someone was about to flash jump into her secure office, from outside the Solar System, illegally!
Florans coming back to get revenge?
Higher frequency aliens not realizing there are laws in Frequency Zero?
Doctor John Patel forgetting to forewarn?
Who or what else could it be?
Even her date had to meet her at the bar, and no one else was scheduled.
She went back to her monitor and quickly closed the file she had been working on, a secret services logo appearing on it before it disappeared. She briefly imagined white noise across her thoughts to erase anything related to the file, then she got up from her desk and walked around the room.
“Alright. Where are you? It doesn’t usually take this long to materialize. What are you waiting for?”
There was only one group that might be able slow the manifestation this much. The Frequency Research Institute. Those corporation types were highly likely to send a representative to beg. Nice of them to ring a doorbell first, she thought. She wondered who they would send. She hoped, if it was a he, then he’d be handsome.
She shielded her eyes as a bright oval of white light wiped the color from the room for a moment, and a chunky, one-meter-tall blue robot appeared.
To be more precise, a corporation’s leased robot officer.
She looked at it with dismay. Talk about a disappointment. “You sent a boff?” she said to whoever might be listening. “I guess you need to learn a thing or two about impressing someone.”
The robot swiveled its round eyes and cube head towards her. “Admiral Victoria Heartness identified. Your presence is required.”
“No. I already turned your request down. I have much more important things to do right now. There are plenty of other people in the System who can h…”
A piercing alarm began to sound across Space Station X-1a, and probably soon on the nearby bases on some of Saturn’s moons. Heartness swore as she remembered this kind of incursion would immediately activate any number of potential anti-foothold strategies. She quickly ran back to her desk and swiped her finger on the panel inset, canceling them. Then she spoke to the ceiling. “A.I. Broadcast the false-alarm message.” As she stomped angrily back over to the robot, she barely heard the placating message of the A.I. echoing throughout the station.
“Why are you here?” She faced down the placid face of the boff with her hands on her hips. “What possible situation could have occurred just over four light years away that needs my personal attention right now? You’ve broken quite a number of laws coming here already.”
The boff stared impassively forward. Like an ancient robot toy for children, its cube-shaped head with round metal eyes, a wide mouth with painted teeth, and even white marks on the side to indicate ears, suggested something that no one could take too seriously.
A spring of antennae stretched across the top of its head, and its head sat atop a rectangular body with additional oversized buttons and dials. When everything the boff needed to be able to function could fit into a few thin cylinders on stilts, this bulky dysfunctional throwback was almost laughable. Despite herself, Heartness marveled at the retro construction, and especially liked the large off-switch on the back.
The boff’s simplistic communications system began to explain in a tenor lilt, even echoing apologetically. Heartness frowned at the program’s attempt to appeal to her emotional side.
“I apologize, Admiral Victoria Heartness, ma’am. But my licensor says that it is urgent. 27 scientists have disappeared from our base on Proxima Centauri B. Your presence is required.”
Heartness looked at it, exasperatedly. She was tired of corporations leasing robot officers, then not programming them correctly. “Find the answers. Fix the problem. That’s what you’re programmed for. You don’t need me.”
The boff stood silent. It had delivered its message and now it was waiting on a response to that message. Nothing else.
A simple machine.
Heartness hmphed, then walked around it, while she thought. What was she going to do with it? Would it leave when she said no? Would it hang around until she said yes? Maybe she could get Watanabe in to look at its programming. Was there anything special about it? No weapons. That was a good sign. Soft plastic, though it looked metal. She could see the slots where its arms and legs were connected, and easily detachable.
Everything was easily replaceable, and some of the parts could even operate by themselves in an emergency. Heartness knew the boff also contained some organic components to ensure that at some point it would have to break down. All robots had these fail-safes to make sure there was no chance of a permanent robot takeover. Even so, it was likely an army of these mechs might just temporarily win, as everyone attempting to fight them would be doubled over with laughter.
There wasn’t enough memory or software for the boff to become sentient, and it just did what it had to do. She stared thoughtfully at the off-switch on the back. Should she…?
No.
“Go back to where you came from, and tell the F.R.I that I’m responsible for over 1000 beings and their families here. I can’t leave every time you can’t do your jobs.”
“This is your final answer?” asked the boff.
“Yes. Tell your people…”
Like lightning, the boff’s right hand snapped out and grabbed Heartness’ arm, then its left slapped an override on Heartness’ flash band.
“What?” she yelled. “You can’t do this.” She smashed her fist down on the arm, but it just bounced back.
She tried to pull the arm off from its side, but the boff was already activating the return journey.
“No!” Heartness yelled, as the flash field enveloped them, and they disappeared.
Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
By
Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. Prologue. By Neil A. Hogan
2129/02/15/01:43 Tuesday
A bright object cut across a section of the Kuiper belt, broke apart a tumbling two-piece proto-comet, then shot out of the Solar System at high speed. Explorer satellites in the area reported it as traveling close to the speed of light.
*
An explosion rocked the little island of South Bimini, flattening palm trees, shorting out power cables, and collapsing buildings. A group of factories dissolved into a crater, then sank under a tsunami. A tiny object exploded from the center of the carnage, climbed quickly into orbit, then blasted past the moon. Luna satellites recorded a white streak but were unable to determine origin or destination.
*
Drone 478 detected the intruder as it sped past Saturn and immediately activated its staccato flash drive, materializing further along the tiny object’s estimated path. The drone recorded it as it passed, predicted its trajectory, then repeated this several times before the object entered the Oort cloud. 478 quickly flashed back to Monitoring Station Z and delivered its composite video.
*
The images faded to black, and the lights came back up to reveal a small, oval room, with a tiny porthole looking out onto a section of Saturn’s rings.
“Interesting, don’t you think?” Doctor John Patel scratched his short, graying moustache, and glanced across the leafy table at his colleague, Admiral Rasskator, an attractive, green, mantis-like being from the planet Preyos.
Rasskator remained silent, a slight movement of one antennae the only sign she had heard him.
“We’ve since been able to confirm the objects are heading to Proxima Centauri B,” Patel continued. “They’re mostly moving at light speed but pause whenever they encounter something. Best estimates suggest they’ll arrive in just over four and a half years’ time.”
Rasskator chirped quietly, and her translator Englished. “They will be in the F.R.I.’s jurisdiction, then. Why see me about these?”
Patel smiled thinly. “Admiral, you plan to retire in four years’ time. If these objects are likely to cause a problem around then, I’d like there to be a faster transition between you and the new person here, so that we have time to prepare for anything that might eventuate.”
“Always planning ahead, John. Don’t you ever get tired? Live for the now!”
“Not a detailed plan, just a, well…”
“You’d like a recommendation for my replacement in 2133?”
Patel nodded.
Rasskator, rubbed her claw across one of her long green antennae, twisted her bulbous eyes a few times, then chirped. “Well, firstly I recommend building a new and more powerful Space Station. I doubt this throwback is going to last much longer. Certainly, if there are going to be more of these particles passing through, we need to have some kind of research center nearby.”
Patel sighed, looking about at the tiny space, knowing the monitoring station was barely 500 meters across. “It’s in hand. The project will commence at the end of 2132. We’ve received enough complaints from, ahem, your station, to bring things forward.”
“Acceptable. I do recommend Captain Victoria Heartness. She will have been working as a captain for ten years by then. An ideal time to be considered for promotion, and as my replacement.”
Patel leant back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Interesting choice. We’ll see how she goes, and maybe I’ll put in a good word. Anything else I should know?”
Rasskator pointed a claw at the time stamp at the bottom of the last video. “You might have missed something with the last recording. Hard to see tiny Earth numbers in a hologram.” Her proboscis twisted back and forth in amusement, knowing Patel knew Preyosians had much better eyesight than humans. “Let me play the images forward for you again. Watch the clock.”
The composite drone footage played again, and Patel’s eyebrows raised as he realized what he was seeing. “The image is forward but the time stamp is running backward? How did I not notice that?”
“You have billions of projects on your mind. Impossible for you to notice everything. That’s why you are always happy to get a second opinion. In any case, whatever that object is, it is surrounded by a reverse time field. If that hits a populated area, there are going to be many beings in a lot of trouble. You saw what happened to that island in your Bermuda area. You were lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.”
“Well, let’s hope it
passes safely through the Proxibee system and keeps going,” said Patel.
“Otherwise, it won’t just affect one world, it’ll wipe out the entire
flash ship project.”
It is the year 2133, just one hundred years after Alien Shift. Humanity can now perceive the trillions of alien races that live in the galaxy, having finally increased their frequency speed to Zero. Now a member of the Interdimensional Coalition, humanity works with alien races from all over the universe on Flash ships, exploring realities on higher level frequencies, and instigating First Contact with new alien races. The Stellar Flash Frequency Ship is the newest addition to the universal mission.
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Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon
Temporal Incursion: Stellar Flash Book Three
By Neil A. Hogan
Dangerous temporal disturbances are appearing throughout the Proxima Centauri system, and 27 scientists have gone missing from the Frequency Research Institute’s base on Proxibee.
When Admiral Victoria Heartness declines the request to help, she mysteriously disappears, too.
Doctor John Patel quickly enlists Admiral Wei Zhou to manage the station, and look into Heartness’ disappearance. But with builderbot’s going rogue and attacking some of the station’s residents, Zhou’s hands get full pretty quickly.
Captain Jonathan Hogart would be the next best person to help track down Heartness, but then the Stellar Flash ship goes offline, internal doors stop working, and rooms start being erased. With just Raj Kumar and the ship’s Japanese avatar available, and no access to communications or flash jumps, Hogart is unable to even get his crew on board.
In desperation, Patel requests Commander Sue Lin of the Proxima Centauri Space Force to investigate the F.R.I hive,and find Heartness. But with her soldiers being wiped out by a crazed energy cloud, it’s all she can do to stop herself from destroying the base from orbit.
With micro time particles converging, a deadly alien entity expanding, a robot uprising spreading, and flash ship problems increasing, can the Stellar Flash crew get to Proxibee in time to not only rescue Heartness, but also prevent Commander Lin from making a mistake that could destroy the entire universe?
Temporal Incursion is Book Three in the Stellar Flash series. A self-contained story of about 63,000 words.
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Alien Dimensions is a science fiction short stories anthology series featuring amazing authors from around the world.
Previous issues have featured stories about extraterrestrials, clones, robots and androids, invasion and colonization, cyberpunk and space opera, first contact, genetic manipulation, starship exploration, time travel and more.
From seriousness to humorous, high octane to slow burn, from back-story heavy to present tense dialogue-driven adventures, Alien Dimensions explores the far future.
Enjoy a much more alien experience with Alien Dimensions.
In Alien Dimensions #17:
Space Case by Tom Howard
Sky Tears by Mike Adamson
Tomorrow’s Children by James Armer
Pests by Francis W. Alexander
Mothermind by Robert Walton
Guardians of the Treasure by Gustavo Bondoni
Strange Lands by Neil A. Hogan
Subscribe to be updated when the next issue is due out here
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When Raj Kumar investigates Pluto for possible life signs – standard procedure before adding a manned space station – he is surprised to find them. He’s even more surprised that they want to communicate with him.
What do they want?
Why him?
And what does Doctor John Patel of Space Station X-1a have to do with all this?
Find out more in Splinter. #26 in the Science Fiction Short Reads Series, and a prequel to the introduction of a character at the end of the Stellar Flash novel The Andromeda Effect. Splinter is a short story of about 4600 words.
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“Ji. This does not look like a bio lab.”
Ji swept his arms wide to encompass the microscope that filled the room. “Maggie, you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty impressive. Imagine what you could do with this.”
Maggie shrugged. “To see genes, I need something a bit smaller. That monstrosity will just give me atoms.”
Ji pointed at a bank of screens in front of the tube-shaped structure. “It’s not an electron microscope. Something much better. We can actually see superstrings with it!”
She looked about, not quite hearing him. “You don’t even have any centrifuges in here.” She put her hands on her hips and turned to him. “What’s going on? I thought you needed my help splicing genes!”
Ji grinned. “The genes of the universe, Maggie. I want you to splice the very substance of reality!”
Maggie gaped. “I’m a molecular biologist, not a physicist. I’m not so sure about playing with reality.” She walked around the machine. A large spherical ball was where a slide might be on a normal microscope, with a LED panel on the outside. “Faraday cage?”
“Something similar. Paradoxically holding two isolated superstrings in a vacuum.” Ji pointed at one of the screens in front of it. “The first one has an interesting vibration at this range. Multiple colours cascading from top to bottom. It looks almost like a chromosome. I guess our bodies express the fundamental shapes of the universe.”
“Fibonacci spirals, golden ratios in everything. Sounds legit.” Then she looked shrewdly at him, still not willing to get closer. “There’s nothing in the journals about this research. Is this military?”
Ji shrugged. “No idea. Contracted out to us. I don’t deal with the funding. I just get paid. My latest project is to find someone who can join them together.”
“Wait. What?”
He pointed at the screen again and she came over to have a closer look. The screen was divided into two. On the left side flickered the superstring, with four legs splayed out like a deformed insect. The right side of the screen was black. “Strings are influenced by our thoughts and observations,” said Ji. “You only need to direct your thoughts at it to influence it. My problem is I can’t influence it enough to connect with the other one. Maybe you could try…”
“Ji. You do know what gene splicing is, yes? It’s all biological. We use enzymes to snip out pieces of DNA inside genes, then mix the broken DNA with snipped DNA from other genes, then put the useful recombinant DNA into bacteria that will replicate it. There are other processes involved, but it’s completely unlike the fundamental building blocks of the universe. For a start, I’m pretty sure superstrings don’t have DNA.”
“Well, at this level, superstrings are everything. They are DNA and genes and chromosomes, if you like. Just take a bit from that superstring and add it to this one, and the energy field will replicate it. Think of it like your gene-splicing experiments but with everything purely energy. The universe will take care of the rest on the other dimensions.”
Maggie pointed at the dark side of the screen. “Well, I need to see the other one to know if this is possible.”
“I’m afraid our equipment is not compatible.”
Maggie stared at Ji for a moment, uncomprehending. “Is it faulty?”
Ji grinned. “This is the exciting part. The other string is not from our reality. It was taken from a wormhole we opened inside a micro-black hole in the Collider.”
“But, if it is not compatible with the instruments, then it can’t be compatible with our universe. What the hell have they asked you to do?”
“Look. If we splice it with a piece of our universe, we’d be able to find out what it’s like! What it can do!”
Maggie looked incredulously at him. “No. I flat out refuse. I don’t care if your project loses funding. I’m not merging the underlying foundations of two universes just for your research.”
“Come on. A simple thought, and it’s done. If you won’t do it, there are plenty of other gene doctors out there that could. Why not be the first?”
“No.” Maggie folded her arms.
Ji looked sadly down at the floor. “Well, look. Alright. I understand. But, just for me. How would you do it, if you wanted to? Like, what would your procedure be? Obviously, I can’t do it myself.”
Maggie sighed. “I don’t know the shape of the other one to know how for sure, but I’d imagine moving one on top of the other, and then allowing the vibration of ours to influence the vibration of the other one. As they synchronized I’d be able to see what the other one looked like, then work out how I could join them together. If the other universe’s superstrings had eight extensions, for example, I could take one and add it to this one and see what happens. I mean, it’s really…what is it?”
Ji was staring at the screen as the right side began flickering. “It worked. You’re a genius.”
Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth. “No, no, no. You tricked me!”
Ji was ignoring her. “Look, look. The other string has six legs. And it’s slightly larger. Wait, what’s it doing?”
Maggie pushed him away and looked at the strings. One was on top of the other and seemed to be vibrating faster. “Oh no!” She quickly reached for her mobile phone.
“What? What are you doing?”
“Calling my mum to say goodbye.”
“What? Why?” Ji’s face paled as he realized she was serious.
“They’re not merging. They’re mating,” cried Maggie.
But it was far too late.
There was a momentary flash as the combined strings quickly replicated, and a new universe exploded from the laboratory at a billion times the speed of light.
###
Hi Friends. Thank you for reading my blog. I really appreciate the 200+ daily unique visitors and hope you find something useful and/or entertaining in my writings and missives.
If you haven’t checked them out yet, the Science Fiction Weekly Series for 2018 is almost complete. The final release, #26, will be out on the 25th December. Science Fiction Weekly will hopefully then return in 2020.
Wishing you Happy Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Holidays and for those of you on the Gregorian calendar, I hope you have a fantastic New Year. Here’s to another orbit around Sol.
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When Julie sees the Guider striding towards her, she knows something is up.
And when he invites her to a safe house to reveal that he had already known about her discovery, long before she had made it, she soon discovers that all is not as it seems.
With the dark matter having left the Oort Cloud, and now heading towards the inner Solar System, it is up to Julie to decide what to do next.
But she has absolutely no idea what that could be.
Could this mean the end of the human race?
A Little Matter is #20 in the Science Fiction Weekly short reads series. A short story of approximately 4600 words.
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Available in Digital Format from Amazon
When a wormhole to another dimension opens up for Dravo, he is surprised to find highly advanced aliens on the other side eager for tourism.
But just being in the same room as them could kill a human being within an hour.
Can Dravo convince the Space Council that trade is still possible?
Find out more in The Hydrofluorons of Krakon 7. #14 in the Science Fiction Weekly series. A short story of about 5200 words.