On Orbitals

Stranded on Neptune by her employer, orbital scientist Vera discovers a once-thought-mythical variable that could destroy her new world. A story of a future humanity thought insignificant next to the machines it runs.

 

“I want to go home Zack, I want to come home!” Vera cried into the monitor screen, knowing that it would be 6.853 minutes before he actually received the message, and that, by that time, she would be even less composed. That was, perhaps, the only problem with interplanetary communications: the wait. 13.706 minutes later, the monitor flashed Zack’s face, and responded, somewhat distortedly, with a simple “You can’t.” Vera shot back some choice phrases, angry that he had kept her waiting for that useless response nearly a quarter of an hour Earthtime, and hung the connection. Was she that insignificant?

            She was still cursing him as she walked into the lab and, preoccupied, bumped into a table holding a caustic collection of delicate chemicals.

            “Vera! Would you watch it?” Anita chastised from the opposite side of the room; she jetted over to the table, mentally steadying the beakers before her hands could reach them. “I know you think the whole planet’s coming too an end, but really, I do happen to like prolonging the inevitable.”

            “Sorry.” Vera said curtly. She hated sarcasm.

            Anita bristled. “You talked to Zack?” It was more of a statement than a question.

            “Hm. He wouldn’t give me the launch codes.”

            “I knew he wouldn’t,” Anita said systematically, always the first to throw an I-told-you-so Vera’s way. “You’re just being foolish. And besides, we have a job – a job that includes monitoring orbital movements? We’d know.”

            Vera scowled and wished she was taller. Being short, she not only lacked the size needed to be taken seriously, but also the “big” demeanor that usually compensates the vertically challenged. “I doknow. That’s the point. And maybe you’d better run some numbers through the computer again because if Pluto does come crashing down into us, and we didn’t evacuate the planet, any deaths will be on your head. Not mine.”

            Anita looked up finally from steadying the chemicals and met Vera’s eye, challengingly. “Tell me this: how come it only works when you plug in the formula?”

 

            Acclimated now to the sixteen hour e.t. day on Neptune, Vera grew tired soon after the “encounter” with Anita and headed off early to the housing district. She sent off the day’s orbital reports, the planet’s gaseous levels, weather reports and Dark Spot readings – all of which, for the hundred and forty-fifth day had not changed – to NASA before leaving. To Zack. Zack, who would use his science major in galactic ecology to try and figure out a way to stabilize the atmosphere of Neptune, and make it habitable for humans. Just so that some “specially selected” group could come to the blue planet and destroy it the same way a selected group destroyed the moon, and were in the process of destroying Mars. Only Vera could understand, it seemed, that humans were parasites.

            Neptune was ice. Layers upon layers of ice over a stratum of rock over a core of lava as hot as the sun. And it was all covered in the thickest fog of gases – none of course that could, of yet, sustain human life. It was barren. Why change it? The barrenness wasn’t even beautiful, save from a distance where one needn’t struggle in the frigid cold, the unforgiving landscape and the storms. How scared Vera was of those storms.

            But the fear was misplaced, of course. NASA took care of its little projects, even if it meant putting out the money to secure the safety of a few dozen scientists.

            And thinking such things, Vera walked down the glass-encased pathway to housing, the vastness of the windswept ice mountains laid out on either side. It was always so dark here. It was a darkness that always made her tired and made her often feel as barren as the blue wasteland. Not that she would feel that way for much longer. Neptune had about one more Earth week left, give or take a day. NASA didn’t trust its scientists anymore though; just what the machines told them. And since those machines said that no catastrophe was, orbitally, due to happen in the next millennia, NASA and Zack held no faith in Vera’s predictions. They didn’t realize, as she had, that the computations missed one viable, incredible external factor: Nibiru. Orbital foreseen by Nostradamus; destroyer predicted by the Sumerians. 

            Anita’s calculations, Zack’s calculations – they were wrong because they missed a constant that Vera had proven.

           

            She couldn’t sleep. She kept running the conversation with Zack through her head:

            “There is nothing to prove that Pluto will hit Neptune within the next year. Nothing at all. Yeah sure, they’re switching orbits now, but we knew that – every time they do they never come anywhere near close enough to hit each other.”

            “This is different though, I have the formula…. And if it’s right for Neptune it will predict the future of Earth as well.”

            “Listen, Vera. Stick to what you’re good at. Measure levels. Record data. Don’t make these far-fetched hypotheses. Leave it to the machines.”

            “I run the machines!”

            “Why don’t you just show me your data, and we can see if, by some small chance, the computers missed something. Or at least we could find a mistake in your calculations. Human fallibility and all.”

            “Because it’s mine.”

            “Science is meant to be shared. Just send it over.”

            “No. You’re on Earth and I’m here? What, you’ll publish it while I’m stranded out on this godforsaken snowball? I know you Zack. Give me the launch codes. This is my ticket off. I want to go home Zack, I want to come home!” 

 

            Vera had to rerun the test or be driven insane with the doubt and self recrimination. Maybe it was nothing, just a fluke in the numbers, or maybe she was tired when she ran the reading and hadn’t seen the figures right. She had to know for sure though; the need burned within her to check the formula again and she simply could not wait until the morning to do it. She grabbed the nightgown by the side of her bed and stepped out of her tiny flat, made her way back to the glass tunnel, the lab.

            She had forgotten how cold it could get at night. The settlement heads turned down the thermostat while people slept to conserve power. Vera wished she had brought socks.

            As dark as it was during the day, it was worse now. Only a dim illumination came from small bulbs embedded in the chrome floor. The gale outside hurled itself against the colony’s building so hard that Vera swore she could feel the walls caving in; she could certainly hear it, or so she believed.

            She reached the lab finally, feet frozen, and sat down at the large monitor placed on the main wall. She typed in her username: “Vera Hardings” and her dismal password: “NOBODY.” In the upper right hand corner was the icon. Right click. ‘Run Schematic.’

            The screen came to life with a deafening hum that broke the little remaining silence, but those in housing district wouldn’t hear. On the monitor, an illustration of Vera’s formula came to life in the form of rotating planets, huge, the size of the wall. The years ticked upwards from 1999 AD. The planets, all nine revolved regularly but then, in 2267 – A glitch! On the screen, had not Jupiter just shifted the slightest bit? 2353 – another! Vera would have bet anything that Saturn’s orbit had suddenly shifted upwards and closer to Jupiter, surely. 2499, the present. Pluto and Neptune about to pass, but just as they do, a foreign object, at first small but then large – larger than Jupiter shoots behind the switching planets in perpendicular orbit, grabbing the two planets in its gravitational pull and smashing Neptune into the side of Pluto and its moons. Catastrophe. Vera was right. Once fabled Nibiru, the asteroid planet was real. And deadly.

            Vera was about to call Zack up on the monitor – give him the data, she’d be damned if she stayed there one more day – when out of the Communications Station adjacent the lab, stepped Anita, glowing. Vera closed the schematic window.

            “What are you doing here?” Vera let out in a rush.

            Anita shrugged. “I could ask the same of you.”

            “Calculations.”

            “Realizing what you did wrong? Well,” Anita didn’t even wait for the response; she sighed, “I am in such a marvelous mood that I think I’ll tell you some news to cheer you up. I’m getting married.” She paused dramatically.

            Vera’s eyes narrowed.

            Anita let the information sink in and finally concluded: “To Zack.”

            Vera started laughing uncontrollably.

            “What? What is so funny?” Anita seemed poised to slap her, but Vera couldn’t help her reaction.

            She at last regained enough control so that all that could come out was a breathy shudder: “No you’re not.”

            “I beg your pardon?”

            Sarcasm again. How Vera hated it. “You’ll be dead before you get the ring.”

            “Oh you and that stupid Apocalypse theory! You know?   It doesn’t matter. Even if you are by some small, infinitesimal,” her eyes lit up at the discovery of this word, “chance correct, it won’t matter. Because I won’t be on this blue hell any longer. I’m going home. And you? You’re staying here.”

            Vera’s pulse quickened. She paused, looked at Anita curiously. “What do you mean?”

            “Why, Zackary darling gave me the launch codes. I’m off here in the morning.” She sniggered.

            At this time Vera was standing, infuriated. It was impossible. This vapid, vile woman could leave but she, the true scientist, could not? She who had defied machine and proved it wrong?   It was maddening, she felt ready to rage.

            “Problem?” Anita asked, mocking sincerity. Vera cried out, and grabbed a beaker off the chemical table. She threw it at Anita without even thinking, aiming to miss. In this, she was successful, but the chemical leaked out once the glass jar hit the floor, and Anita didn’t move from it fast enough. She started to claw at herself, to get the substance off, but it had soaked into the pant leg of her pajamas and was running upwards, burning evidently. Anita started to whimper – then scream. “Why did you do that – you – you – why would –” Then the screaming again, and Anita collapsed.

            Vera watched stoically. What did it matter? It would be all their fates in a few days anyway. She wondered if there was some god of Neptune to worry about now that she was a murderess. One who decided to create the ice rock. It probably didn’t take him seven days.

            Vera went back to bed.

            She hadn’t been off by much. Six days later, Nibiru shot past the outer planets in mid-orbital switch, sending Neptune up and into Pluto and its moons.  Both the planets were shredded into debris and dust, most of which burned until the methane was gone from the shattered atmosphere. There wasn’t much pain; it happened so fast.

            NASA heads blamed Zackary Coolidge for the “incident.” ‘He was warned of it wasn’t he?’ They declared it “Zackary’s Catastrophe.”        

Author's Note

This was written in one night - a homework assignment for a literature class. Feel free to be brutal and thanks for any input.

Reviews

[Chris Pavey]

It needs an edit, but it's a riveting read! Couldn't stop actually. I love reading things that are fantasy/science fiction based, but still have things in them that teach you as you read about history or science, etc. I loved the story so much that I was actually devestated to read at the end that it was just a short story and not the begining of something bigger. Nice ending though, in terms of wrapping it all up (as a short story), but I can't help but wonder what could have been if you had left out Anita's murder and continued the story with her returning home to Earth. There's so much potential drama there. Women fighting it out over a best friend, an impending wedding, and the impending catastrophe with neptune.... the ingredients of a blockbuster! :-) great read. loved it.