End of the Year

Yep.  Been neglecting my blog again.  Between trying to get my next book out and my day job, I have not had much time for non-book writing.

Since this is the end of the year, I thought I'd take a break from my Steampunk story that is currently occupying my writing time, and play for a bit.

Let's toss out an idea--not one that I am going to fiddle with myself.  This is just a story starter.  Take it and run with it.  Just give me the favor of a shout out.

What if . . . when civilian/commercial space flight (like Virgin Galactic) does take off, they get around to the "dark" side of the moon (you know--the one facing away from the Earth) and they find the remains of an advanced civilization?

Would NASA/Gov't squash it?  "That's classified!"  They most likely would already know about it from our own flights to the moon and back.  Would they even allow civilian pace flight?  Or make it so improbable through over-regulating that we would have to sneak off planet for find something like this?  At what point would someone like Sir Richard Branson tell the US government to lump it?

What if it was still inhabited?  How could they possibly be living in vacuum?  Did they manage to mine water from beneath the surface?  What if they didn't need water or an atmosphere?

What if they didn't know about us until then?

What if their government did know about us, but was keeping us a secret from their civilian population, too?

What then?

Roadblocks

Let's throw this out for consideration...

We all know how the government can't stand letting the country (and its denizens) run their own lives. Nor can the people who are all for social programs stand to see money going away from their pet projects.

Let's bounce forward a few years. We're actually at the point of seriously kickstarting the private enterprise space program, be it Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, SpaceDev, or one of the myriad of other corporations vying for the ability (it may even be a private individual who finally makes a breakthrough into inexpensive and viable space travel!) to be first.

Along comes Unca Sam and the Gimme Brigade with their hands out. "We want our cut! You can't do it cheaper than NASA! You must have this installed. You must have this safety inspection. You must have this license. You must have this certificate."

What will they do trying to cripple our rise back into space?

BUGS! BUGS! BUGS!

Cuss! Hiss! Spit!

There I was, happily writing along, when it hit me . . .

I, One-eyed Black did set this down in me own hand of this account. This be me mark of me name made with me own hand in ink: X

Ink? What a dorkfish! They would not write with ink—nor would they have paper. Bad writer! *smacking forehead hard with open palm* Bad! Bad!

I’m still thinking in a land-based way. The whole story has to go below the sea and all the ways our normal items would be adapted in their way of doing things.

So—how do we fix this? For their ancient scrolls, I would imagine they used rolled up pieces of their local version of kelp. No worries there. Slime something on it to keep it from dissolving in the water. “I’m done writing this scroll, someone hand me a slug…”

But they would not have ink—oh, all right—they have ink. Squids and octopus have ink. But they would not write with it.

Poke holes in the kelp? This would work—but imagine how difficult it is to put all their nuances of color and scent down in holes on a piece of seaweed? How many different shades of red can you think of? Now create a letter mark for each one. So we now have 50,000,000 versions of the letter A (as an example). Now how many shades of orange can you think of? Create a letter mark for each of those. Move along to yellow . . . then green . . . blue . . . our alphabet is getting larger.

But they also use scent as accents to their speech for emotions and punctuation, and whatnot. How do we add those? Do we add points the way the Hebrews do in their language? Sure, why not? So we have the main mark, and then the scent accent point around it. Works.

But would they really have that many letters? No. Each color represent a word, not a letter. So we could get by with a mark in the kelp for the primary and secondary colors, then black and white, and scent points. Three primary, three secondary, plus two more for black and white . . . how many scents would we have? Skip those for now. We’ll have a total of 8 letters for the colors, and they add more or less to create the nuances of the various shades of a color. That’d be a whole lot of letters.

No wonder Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle is using her visual pad with actual colors now (and realistic scents!) instead of Ye Olde Kelp Scrolls.

No Bugs, Just Froggies

Alrighty, then! It’s been how long since I picked up with the Garum? Close to a month now, I believe. I’m going to ignore all the fixes I need to think about and just write, tonight. We’ll bug fix and straighten out rough patches some other time.

Oh, and for those of you who have not been with us since the first post, I’m in the process of idea bashing a story about an aquatic race of frog-like aliens that live on an exomoon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system.

~~~~~~~=======~~~~~~~

Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle tapped a few dimples on her electric notepad and began to re-read the entry for the who-knows-how-many-umpteenth time.

I, One-eyed Black, do set this down in me own hand of the account where I poked me head Up.

I wasn’t looking to go Up. No, not at all. I was just going after a large swarm of shrimps. Was me turn at the hunts. But they swimmed up. So I followed. Next I knowed, I was at Up.

“Wot’s out yonder?” I thinked aloud. So I poked me head Up. Pain! Oh, the pain! Me eyes were stung by biting little bits of stuffs. No life-givin’ water in Up. No, not at all! It was like a giant bubble. But who knowed that a bubble would have that much angry in it? It angried about me face. It angried about me shoulders. It angried about me eyes. I could not keep me eyes open. So I swimmed down.

But afore I did, I spotted spots in Up. Little bright white spots, like sparks. And Up was dark off to the side. Not Blue like it always is. No, not at all! Was dark, like down a hole. But with bright sparks. Not on rock. No, not at all! In Up’s Up, where it be Blue and not Blue but dark.

I blinked. And blinked. Me eyes stopped hurting. I thoughts of going back Up to see more of these sparks—but that angry bubble made me careful of opening me eyes in Up again.

Shrimps swimmed by. I remembered me task, so I followed. Was a good hunt. Killed many many of many shrimps. The tribe was very happy with me for good hunt of shrimps.

I, One-eyed Black did set this down in me own hand of this account. This be me mark of me name made with me own hand in ink: X

Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle leaned back, looking at the image of his hand print in ink at the end of the account and pondered once more about those sparks of light One-eyed Black found in Up. What could they be? Were there more tribes of Garum in Up? Ones that found out how to live in the Angry Bubble? What was in the Angry Bubble that bit his eyes? This “stuffs” that bit in to his eyes, face, and shoulders. What would float in a bubble that could do that? They were not going Up at the same place where One-eyed Black did. No one knew where that was, but since he had been after shrimp, there was no way it would be near rocks like they were now. Would the Angry Bubble still be angry here by the rocks? Or was it only angry in the Wide Open where One-eyed Black would have gone Up?

She shook herself to clear her thoughts, placing the notepad back in the protective cover she had made for it. In a single sleep time they would find out. There was no use brooding over it for now. Soon. Soon she would follow One-eyed Black and go Up.

I Smell the Smelly Smell of Something Smelly!

Recently, Ed, one of my fans of the Blog, stated that I should come up with some way to get the froggies into space without a ship.

-.-

Now where’s the story in that? I wanted the problems associated with lifting all that water up not only up from the depths, but breaching the surface, and then higher into the atmosphere, and ultimately out of the gravity well, and into space itself. No space warps, wormholes, or hyperspace for these little froggies!

He did, however, bring up a good point. Since they are aquatic and breath the water they live in, they also would defecate (and urinate) in their breathing supply. Yum-o!

“What’s that smell/taste?” Everyone turned and glared at Ecru-Dandelion. He gave a half-smile.
“Dude. Seriously?”
“Soz.”
“That’s fifteen times in the past half hour. Once more and you’re on permanent EVA duty!”

So no bean burritos here! But that does bring up the problem of producing an air scrubber (water scrubber actually—but you get the idea.). Would they have carbon? Probably not. No fire—no burn substance to filter the water through. Sand? Sort of like the under gravel filters we’ve had in prior aquariums? Yes, I have an aquarium—my wife’s 20 gallon long. Yes, I look over my shoulder at it from time to time as I write this. No, I don’t have any African Dwarf Frogs (aquarium frogs). Just fish. Yes, it is fresh water and the Garums live in salt water, so there will be differences. Salt water . . . what takes nastiness out of salt water? Suspension feeders! But we couldn’t have a bunch of krill floating around, getting in the way. So we’d need a sessile suspension feeder. Barnacles! (Our ship just got crustier…) They would filter out “floaters” that would foul the water. The Garums, of course, would selectively breed a more effective barnacle that weighs less than the original product—and does not breed/spread in such a prolific manner as to take over the whole inside of the ship. They would also probably come up with some substance that if spread in a thin layer where the Garum don’t want the barnacles to grow would inhibit them from attaching in those unwanted places, just to be on the safe side.

But what about urine? That causes lots of problems with ammonia and other toxins in the water. So we’d need a biological filter. You have to be able to cycle the ammonia (NH³ or NH³+4) into nitrites (NO²) and then into nitrates (NO³). We’d need some type of beneficial bacteria to help in this process, but they’d need some place to grow. So we’d need a rocky surface that is porous where they (the bacteria) would be able to live, yet be out of the way. Again, we’re adding more mass to the ship.

And we haven’t even come up with an engine concept yet . . . we’re still just filling out life support. We also have to provide sustenance. Do they have refrigeration? They certainly can’t have dried stores. Or do they carry it live? If so, there’s more mass—plus the mass for the food for their food. And the mass for the food for the food for that food. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where it is a plant that just needs photosynthesis for food. But in the dark of space, where do you get the sunlight for that? Will their synthetic light from their bioluminescence be adequate for their purpose? Will they be capable of creating a power source capable of lifting this massive ship into the stars? Will they invent an aquatic Beano before Ecru-Dandelion gets lynched?

Mental Floss

OK, tonight we're just going to have some random thoughts on the story--stuff that came to mind after I hit "Publish," and other things.

First of all, when the two females were discussing the males, and one said that she feared the two were ready to mate, and the other agreed, I thought afterwards that the first could have added the snarky comment, "More's the pity we couldn't get them to mate with each other." And then the other would have scented her own giggle to the conversation.

The name of the planet (in their tongue) is Water. It is "said" by their skin cycling through every shade of the color blue. Think about it--how quickly can you say blue? That is how quickly their skin cycles through all the shades and variations of blue.

We have an exomoon orbiting a gas giant exoplanet orbiting a binary star. The gas giant orbits the primary star. The exomoon is tidally locked to the gas giant. Between the light reflecting from the gas giant, and the light coming from the two stars (although, the secondary star is much dimmer than the light coming from the primary) the face of the exomoon towards the exoplanet is always illuminated. The rare exception is during solar eclipses. With the exoplanet being so large in the sky, how much of a corona will be visible around it? The flip side of this (no pun intended) is that the side away from the exoplanet is dark for large periods of time. This causes quite a bit of wind as the atmosphere on the lighted (warm) side swaps out with that of the dark (cold) side.

Also, with such a large planet being the parent, in addition to two stars, what kind of tidal forces will be in effect on this exomoon? It is almost 80% water covered. So tides most likely will be far greater than on Terra.

The exomoon is close to Terra in size. It has an atmosphere, but the sentient race never came out of the water because of the horrific winds that whip around the planet due to the differences in temperatures from light to dark side--not totally dark, but dark enough long enough for ice caps to form in the months that the surface faces away from light sources.

When the ice caps break up as a star begins to light that side, occasionally bergs break off and float over inhabited areas of the planetary side. Perhaps some type of mythology forms with the people around these bergs. There will also be the possible danger of living areas being scraped up by the underside of a particularly large berg drifting into shallow areas.

Would the Garum feel the need to create any type of buildings? Perhaps. They would need to protect possessions from currents and tides. But would they need homes? Or just warehouse type buildings? Office buildings? A big pineapple-shaped house? Hardly...

Bug Fixes

So we have a few problems with the story concept up to now. First and foremost, we have a problem with our day/night cycle. A while back, I’d decided that the exomoon was tidally locked to its mother planet. Therefore, with the exception of the occasional eclipse, it will always be daytime, or at the very darkest twilight (lit only by the light reflected by the mother planet), on the planet-side surface where our Garums live. So in that case, we will not have to worry about ice forming on the surface. Either starlight, or reflective light will be caressing the exomoon’s surface keeping the seas warm.

So our Garums exploring the lights above the water in the sky would have to be during a solar eclipse. That does bring up the point that most likely they (they being the original explorers who first braved the waters’ surface) would have not only looked at the stars, but would also have looked directly at the corona of the star during the eclipse. I’m not going to claim any über 1337ness for the Garums’ eyes, so they would go blind in the process. That brings us to a set of blind Garums (we’ll set it at thirteen total) claiming to have seen multiple dots of light in the sky, and then being struck blind and trying to make this claim from memory. A mythology would grow around the claim, as well as a general debunking of any lights other than the planet proper, and the star. I’ll tackle those concepts later.

Now, I have a big problem to take care of. An aquatic race beneath the seas will obviously not have access to fire. I thought at first it would just affect their propulsion system, but I was wrong. But on to the lack of fire...

Oh, sure—they might have the occasional lava flow under the sea, and a few mineral chimneys spewing forth. But they would not have fire. Ergo they would not have the ability to smelt ore. So we’re not going to have iron, steel, not even bronze. So how are we going to build our space ship? Will our illustrious froggies be stuck in the stone age, with the arts and philosophies their only advances to look forward to?

What if we had a mollusk that secreted a mucus that would harden to a steel-like substance that could be used to make plates? In addition to that, we have a mussel-like mollusk that creates a byssus that is also as hard as steel, that is woven in to the mucus so we come up with almost a Kevlar-ish plate. The mucus secreting mollusk has been selectively bred so it will deliver this mucus on demand, and is used in an industrial setting and the plates are welded together with the mucus. Mmm! Sea snot! Just what I want to travel to the stars in! Meh. But it is what they had to work with.

On to the next bug. Electricity. Oh, sure—they probably had an electric eel type of critter swimmin’ around down there with them. But with a lack of fire, we did not have copper to extrude for wiring. But then back in the day, one of the Garum noticed the electric eel rubbing up against this particular seaweed and zapping a fish that was way up at the top of the weed. They found out on further investigation that the weed conducted electricity. But how to keep the current from bleeding off into the surrounding salt water? Our mucus secreting mollusk comes to the rescue again. His snot does not conduct electricity, and will coat the weed-wire quite effectively. But we cannot build an electric motor, can we? Do we just lift with a farm of electric eels in the back of the ship, and when we need more juice, poke ‘em with a stick?

“Cap’n! She canna take an’a more o’dis! She done ate muh stick!”

Ahem. Sorry.

So we still have the electrical motor bug to fix. Will have to ponder more on this.

Now, a friend (who we’ll call Deuce) had a couple thoughts on my last entry. He was curious as to the Garums’ scientific advancements—particularly in the area of chemistry. Save the Cartel humor. Not that kind of chemistry. He wondered if perhaps they had learned that by mixing certain compounds under water would produce violent chemical reactions that would produce buoyant gas bubbles to assist in bringing a ship to the surface of the sea. I had thought of that as a way for the first stage of their space flight—perhaps even for their version of the Bell X-1 to break the surface as the first step in their exploration. Deuce went on to ponder the possibilities of this gas being used to break the ice cap and launch the ship through. Since we don’t have ice to worry about any more, that might be something that the Garums would use if they ever began to explore the dark side of the exomoon in earnest. He did suggest that the nosecone would have to be set up like an ice breaker. That would get us some heavy use of the byssus encased mucus on the nose cone. But I think it could be done.

So now I just have to think about how to fix my electrical motor problem…