Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. Chapter 4. By Neil A. Hogan

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 4

The triangular shape flickered green along one side, then settled into a new stable orbit around Saturn, just above the rings. The Stellar Flash was the flagship of the Earth Council fleet, and the best that human and alien engineering could provide. It was the ultimate in interfrequency and interdimensional travel, and also had the ability to travel in time, given the right coordinates.

The Stellar Flash had recently returned from 2.5 million years ago in the Andromeda Galaxy. Unfortunately, it had had to come back the long way around, and it was a bit worse for wear as a result.

The alien crew of 300, with a main Center crew of 8, were mostly on leave. Having taken a space-fold time jump back to the present, and found their cabins full of pieces of iridium, some had returned to their planets, some had decided to visit Space Station X-1a, and some, like Captain Jonathan Hogart, had decided to do what he could on the ship.

Hogart was a pinkish-white, muscular man in his early-to-mid 40s, with short, dark-brown hair, and a sparkle in his eyes that suggested he was always about to make a joke. A few days ago, he had moved to the Stellar Flash, intent on doing things that robots, other crew members, the A.I. and various software programs were capable of doing without him.

“Jonathan, just go to Earth,” Heartness had said. “Hug some trees. Smell some flowers. Take a break.”

“After my recent experience on the Floran homeworld, plants are the last things I want to see.”

His look had been enough, and Heartness hadn’t said another word. But now, after a day on the ship, he was beginning to think he had made a mistake.

“So, A.I., you’re sure this console needs my help?”

“Yes, Captain,” came the soft and feminine Japanese-accented tones of the A.I. “Analysis indicates that the bolts holding that screen to the floor are loose. In fact, all the bolts are loose on all the stands in the center. Please tighten them.”

Hogart held the wrench and stared at the consoles. “I don’t know, A.I. Surely there are other more important things that need to be done.”

“Other areas are about to be fixed by the repair system. Center bolts are at the bottom of the list, so they won’t be done for a couple of days. Your help will enable them to be done faster.”

Hogart smiled. “Well, if you’re sure. I’d be happy to help. This is a lot better than watching over Raj’s shoulder as he unlocks another door.”

The A.I. remained silent.

“Right, then.” He lay down next to the first panel and set to work.

Just then an alarm began blaring.

Hogart sat bolt upright and hit his head on the side of the panel. “Ow!” He yelled. “A.I. Did I activate something?”

“It is a false alarm from the space station a short time ago. Disabling now.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” He looked about the Center Control room, not quite wanting to lie down and tighten bolts.

Eight panels on stands were arranged facing outward to the wall and dome-ceiling screens. In the center was the flash drive – two columns like a stalactite and a stalagmite stretched downward and upward, not quite meeting. The space in the middle generated the flash drive field. Three exit doors were arranged equidistant around the circular area, and the surround screens were currently showing where they orbited above Saturn’s rings.

Hogart grinned at the sight of the colorful planet. It was hard to believe how huge Saturn really was. Even though Saturn’s day was a mere ten hours or so, it took them days to orbit it, and there was always something new to see.

Newslets and Mindshorts had indicated another of Saturn’s rings was about to disappear – the effect of their recent conflict with the Florans, or perhaps simply the aging of the rings. He supposed there would be an observation party at some point, but it meant Saturn continued to be interesting.

Just then, the door to corridor two dissolved, and a young-looking man with thick black hair and brown skin skipped into the Center. “We got door 347 open!” said Officer Raj Kumar, excitedly.

Hogart groaned. “Must you come running in here every time you get a door open? I mean, it takes at least seven minutes. Couldn’t your time be better spent? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be going back to Lahore for the reunification ceremony? It’s a Sunday in Punjab, as I recall.”

“Well, communications are still not that reliable. And, besides, why would I run? I just flash to the entrance and skip in! And in regard to Lahore, I sent a boff to rep me! I’ll watch it later.”

Hogart sighed. Sometimes it was fun hanging around people in their twenties, and sometimes it was just annoying. Raj was, what, 26? He shook himself and refocused. “What was the alarm about?”

“How should I know? I’m the door opener!”

Hogart put the tool he was holding in a box near him. If Kumar had not been assigned by Patel, Hogart might have had words about respect for rank. As it was, he just sighed again. “Just a moment.” He turned to the center of the Center. “A.I. Avatar please.”

An early thirties Japanese woman, in a T-shirt tied at her waist to reveal her midriff, and extremely tight blue pants with holes in them, appeared near the floor and ceiling columns. Hogart raised his eyebrows. “What happened to your kimono?”

The avatar grinned a big smile, her heavily coated eyelashes fluttering. “Costume program. I thought I’d try something from the 80s. Do you like it?”

“2080s?”

“1980s. I think it suits the shape you programmed. What do you think?”

Hogart looked at her clothes, quizzically. The blue pants looked difficult to wear, and made of some extremely thick material. Camping material? “Is that canvas? Like, for tents?”

The A.I. nodded.

“Well, it’s, um, nice, A.I.”

Why would she even think about changing? He had been reading some of the history that had gone on with a clone of himself in the Andromeda Galaxy, and the evolution of the ship’s avatar. While his clone had fallen in love with the previous incarnation of the Stellar Flash ship A.I., he wasn’t going to explore that option.

Perhaps the new A.I. had also read the reports, and was considering a future with him, or maybe he was just being narcissistic. He shuddered. He wasn’t ready for a digital relationship yet. “Back to my original topic. What was the ‘false alarm’?”

The avatar placed a finger on her cheek and closed her eyes. “Accessing,” she said, sweetly. “Official message from Admiral Wei Zhou. Nothing that should concern you. Continue with getting the Stellar Flash ship ready for her next mission.”

Hogart frowned. “Admiral Zhou is back on 1a already? It must be important. Tell me the details, unofficially.”

“You won’t like it.”

“A.I!”

“Confirmed.” The A.I. became unofficially official, staring directly ahead. “Admiral Victoria Heartness has been kidnapped by a robot officer owned by the Frequency Research Institute. She has been traced to a ship several million kilometers from Proxima B in the Proxima Centauri system. The corporation that has obtained her had previously offered several thousand…”

“Enough. I had heard about the bidder. I thought she’d turned it down. A.I. How quickly can we get the Stellar Flash to the system?”

“Flash drive inoperative,” the A.I. shrugged.

“Escape pods?”

“Storage centers still contain iridium stones. No escape pods have been maintained for over a million years. Hangar 27 will be the first, scheduled for tomorrow.”

Hogart stared at the almost empty Center, struggling to work out what to do next. A robot had taken Heartness. Was it a robot uprising, or was the F.R.I. seeing how far it could push its powers? Either way, tightening bolts wasn’t going to get him there faster.

“Ahem,” said Kumar.

“Are you still here?”

“Room 347?” Kumar stretched his arms out as though to say, ‘Are you coming or not’?

Hogart frowned. “I need to work out a way to save Victoria!”

“Admiral Zhou said not to worry. A robot officer took her to a corporation. Admiral Heartness is probably sipping champagne by now. Captain, the panels will fix themselves. Please, come with me.”

Hogart straightened his blue jumpsuit. “Why is 347 so important?”

Kumar danced back and forth on his feet. “Oh, come on Jonathan. Come and see. Live a little. You’ll love it.”

“I think I’m more likely to regret it,” muttered Hogart, but he followed after Kumar. As they exited into the corridor, Kumar clicked his flash band on Hogart’s, grinned winningly at him, and then they both disappeared.

Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan

Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon

Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. Chapter 3. By Neil A. Hogan

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 3

“27 scientists have disappeared, and Victoria has a date. Interesting.” Patel leant back in his chair with a curious look on his face, and steepled his fingers. “Very interesting.”

“Putting aside Victoria’s personal life for a moment, John, Proxibee is your jurisdiction. It’s my understanding that the Secret Services has a gravity and frequency research base there in association with the F.R.I. I realize you can’t personally monitor all S.S.’s 100 billion projects, but 27 scientists?” Zhou paused and leaned forward, looking Patel in the eye and smiling slightly. “You must be at least a little curious. With me now in charge of the station, perhaps you should check it out? You’re probably the best person for the job.”

Patel frowned. “Young lady, you might now be my superior on this base, but I’m over 150 years old. It is not possible for you to use subtle persuasion targeting my curiosity to get me off this space station quite so easily.”

Zhou grinned. “Only looking out for your best interests, of course. Your I.Q. is off the charts.” She leant back in her chair. “This station must be incredibly boring for you. You know. Really, really boring. After all, you did originally hire me so that you didn’t have any excuse to stay.” She tapped her chin. “I know, maybe you could go spelunking on Enceladus again until we find out some more information.”

Patel blinked. “Wait. You are doing it again!”

“Then, tell me why you’re still here? You’re practically maintaining all of human occupied space. Why hang around Space Station X-1a?”

Patel allowed a slight smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He then turned to the center of the room. “My turn to supply a recording, it seems. A.I. Display Saturn orbit survey 15th February 2129 video stream. Reference: Temporal Incursion. Slow the video to a speed we can comprehend. Authorization vibration Doctor John Patel.”

“Confirmed,” said the A.I. “Accessing. Displaying.”

An image materialized of Saturn and its rings, blurred and seemingly frozen. A green, circular target moved across the image then snapped at a tiny spot towards the center. It zoomed to show a floating object shooting away from them, leaving a black line through the rings in its wake.

The image shuddered as the drone adjusted its position, flashing closer. What previously looked like a glowing light now looked like it contained multiple stars flickering in and out of it.

“Is it alien?’ asked Zhou.

“One moment.”

The drone shot forward several times as the light flashed further away from it, but it quickly lost it.

The recording turned off.

“So, maybe it was a drone from another civilization,” offered Zhou. “You know, Earth has been visited by billions of drones from other civilizations in just the past thousand years. As UFO traffic officer monitoring Earth’s intersection, I should know.”

“Not exactly,” said Patel. “It was a piece of time. In fact, a piece of reversed time. When we retrieved the drone, we found it had become several minutes younger, just by being near it.”

“But, time doesn’t usually travel around in chunks. You can’t have time without space, or matter. They’re inseparable. And it looked nothing like a rogue, hyperdense black hole.”

Patel leant back. “An unsolved mystery. What concerns me is that, at that time, it wasn’t the only one. There were several occurrences of these pieces of time in the Solar system in 2129. Admittedly, most of them were on either side of the Oort cloud, apart from one we suspect caused something similar to a Tunguska event in Bimini. But one thing we know for sure is that they were all heading in one direction at close to the speed of light.”

Zhou thought for a second. “The date was just over four and a half years ago? And from the stars in the background…”

“They should be arriving at Proxima Centauri B any day now,” finished Patel. He got up off the chair. “Which might even explain the missing scientists. So, I hope you don’t mind if I hang about the station a bit longer?”

“But, what can we do about Victoria?”

“Well,” Patel said as he dissolved the door and exited. “I’m sure she can look after herself. And if she runs into a micro time particle, I guess she’ll get a bit younger!” He nodded goodbye to Zhou, and the door reformed behind him.

Zhou knew Patel was being cryptic again. If the drone only had to be near the object for less than a second to become a few minutes younger, she was sure Heartness wouldn’t just gain a few years.

She could be quickly reduced to a fertilized egg.


Temporal Incursion. Stellar Flash Book Three. By Neil A. Hogan

Available in Digital and in Print Formats from Amazon



Alien Dimensions Science Fiction Short Stories Anthology Series #17 is now available in digital and in print formats

Issue #17Digital | Print

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

Issue #17 Digital | Print

Subscribe to be updated when the next issue is due out here

A Little Matter by Neil A. Hogan. Science Fiction Weekly #20. Short Reads Series

A Little Matter by Neil A. Hogan

Science Fiction Weekly #20

Digital Format Available

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.

Alien Dimensions Science Fiction Short Stories Anthology Series Shock!

Alien Dimensions Science Fiction Short Stories Anthology Series Shock!

Now available in print

My goal with Alien Dimensions Issue #16 was to release it in time for the 2nd anniversary. Of course, that was more of a marketing decision than anything else.

I was able to submit the final version of issue #16 for print checks this week. I also got confirmation this week that it was good to go. However, I had planned to release it next week, and wasn’t going to press the release button until the optimal day for publishing a print book (Tuesday).

A few days later I got an email from CreateSpace telling me that their system will be shut down in a few weeks and that everything would move to Amazon.

What?

Of course, I had known this would happen, ever since Amazon bought Createspace back in 2005. There has been a long term plan behind the development of ebooks, KDP and Createspace over the past 13 years, and I’ve been paying close attention since 2008. This is the next step and it will make things a lot easier for self publishers who prefer not to go wide.

(As a side note, I celebrate 20 years as a customer of Amazon this year, so you could say I’m one of its greatest fans!)

Even so, the idea that they are going to move everything from Createspace to Amazon print in a few weeks, whether I want it or not, was a bit of a surprise. My main concern was a huge amount of books with specifically-sized covers that weren’t compatible with the Amazon print system. The other concern was that the date hadn’t been set for my migration. If it happened on Tuesday, then it would cause a problem for the whole launch process of Alien Dimensions #16.

I couldn’t take that risk.

As Createspace says that it would take 3-5 days to appear on Amazon, I thought I’d post it at 12:30am LA time on the 1st of September. Rather than wait until Tuesday and hope it would have the 4th as a publication date, I posted it today and relied on the ‘business days’ situation to sort things out. It also meant I could sleep easy knowing that the launch could not in any way be delayed, as I’d already launched it.

Makes sense. Right?

I had no idea that, because of the merger, rather than everything being delayed, everything was actually being fast-tracked. Within an hour of the printed version being confirmed, it had become available on Amazon. Within three hours sales had started to come through.

Thank you to everyone buying copies. I’m shocked and quite appreciative that the issue has been discovered before I made any official announcements. A nice surprise.

So, if you read this and wonder why you haven’t received an email telling you the print version is now available, it’s because I am going to wait until the ebook becomes available too.

The ebook version is a different beast. There is a slight problem with KDP in submitting for approval, and the dates. If I submit it on the 1st, one of the operators will list it as the 30th or 29th of the previous month. If I publish it on the 3rd, I’ve got a better chance of scoring a ‘1st of September’ listing. I want early September rather than late August as early month dates within that month sell better than late month dates. (Yes, I’ve been crunching the numbers!) A number of times I’ve submitted Alien Dimensions late on the 2nd of a month, and had it listed on the last day of the previous month. I would then politely email customer service and have the date changed. I’d prefer not to have to worry about that, so I’ll submit it on the 4th, and see how things go!

So, if you’re looking for the printed version of Alien Dimensions Science Fiction Short Stories Issue #16, click here

If you’re looking for the ebook version, subscribe to the irregular mailing list newsletter here, and I’ll send out an email the moment it becomes available.

Many thanks for reading.

Neil A.

Alien Dimensions Issue 15

Alien Dimensions Issue 15

Alien Dimensions features stories by authors both new and experienced, exploring aliens and the future.

Issue 15 is the most recent edition, and I’m sure you’ll find the stories interesting.

This issue is a bit different in style to those issues that came before, in that I’ve also included some excerpts from previous authors’ novels, as well as some shorter length stories.

It’s also now available from more providers –

Amazon Digital  Amazon Print

Barnes and Noble Digital

Rakuten Kobo Digital

Issue 16 will be back to normal with longer stories, reduced promotional pages, and no excerpts, at this stage.

If you’ve loved Alien Dimensions so far, and wish to submit a story for the next issue, please read my guidelines here: Alien Dimensions Submission Guidelines. They’re quite restrictive! I’d rather you knew ahead of time what I’m looking for, rather than having to send out hundreds of rejection notices every day.

Having gone through most of the stories again that I’ve rejected over the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that there seems to be some kind of correlation between inventiveness and substance, and whether it has been written in the third person or not. As it has turned out, many of the stories I had to reject had been written in the first person.

First Person Storytelling

Why do you think that could be?

Is it because a first person story ends up being a stream of consciousness story where barely anything ends up happening?

Is it because there are so many published writers writing second-rate first person stories, and new writers attempt to emulate them, thinking this is how to write?

Or is it because first person story writing means the story gets bogged down in emotions and angst and reminiscences and circumspection, and everything else is described through how that one character perceives the world?

I’m not completely against first person storytelling, but I’d much prefer multiple characters and lots of head jumping, rather than a single first person view from beginning to end.

So, sadly, I’ve had to add ‘Written in the third person’ to the list of requirements. I realize this will probably reduce the amount of submissions to just one a month, but I think it will be for the best.

What do you think?