We last left our protagonist alone, apparently transported by some weird AI religious ritual. But maybe the secrets of the Builders will be uncovered, finally. The wafer that the Coordinator had given me turned out to be a data object which auto-downloaded into the cyberdeck when I cut power. But I had a fundamental problem. The Coordinator had told me I would need one biomass to revive a Builder. I had no idea why, and I couldn’t think of… Then […]
Tag: fiction
Derelict, Part VII
Our unnamed protagonist prepares for a journey unlike any other, one of mind rather than body. What will he find inside an alien cybeconstruct? It took quite some time to prepare. The Envoy linked up with the engineering AI built into the giant robot that had fired up the power plant. Together, the assembled shells – sort of a computer version of an EVA suit – for Galen and me. The Engineer prepared a special fiberoptic cable that would link […]
Derelict, Part VI
We last left our protagonist sleeping and dreaming restless dreams. When he wakes, he finds good news and weird news… Part VI “Time to wake up, Boss.” “Mmph. Whzzat.” Consciousness returned slowly, almost painfully. “I’ve got a couple of interesting things to report. The ambient gas pressure is up to 0.05 bar. At the current rate, the surrounding environment will reach 1 atmosphere in about twenty hours. More good news: it’s a 26 / 72 mix of oxygen and nitrogen, […]
Derelict, Part V
We return once again to our protagonist, who has just encountered a polite robot. It’s a killer robot, but still very polite. (You can find parts I-V here). I looked past the entrance and saw a oblong-shaped robot slowly float. It had some kind of gun or torch mounted in a ball socket on the nose. It was maybe three meters high, and it was clearly looking for me. It apparently hadn’t seen me yet, though what it must have […]
Derelict, Part IV
Welcome to Part IV of my little SF Novella, Derelict. You can find part I, part II, and part III as earlier posts, in case you need to catch up. Bear in mind I wrote this in 1994, so some of the implied tech seems a little… quaint. Part IV I searched the body carefully. Like me, he carried a cyberdeck. I connected it to my deck and had Galen search it. Galen found a voice log that the miner […]
Derelict, Part III
The next installment of my novella (novelette?) written in 1994. Curiously, 1994 is the same year I began writing for Computer Gaming World. Who knows what might have happened had I never become involved in technology writing. The sensation of sinking – quite vivid, although the feeling of gravity was very low – lasted maybe a minute. Then I found myself in an airlock. After all that, it seemed rather anticlimactic. If you’ve seen the interior of one airlock, you’ve […]
Derelict, Part II
Here’s the second excerpt from my bit of fiction from 1994. You can read the first part here, if you want to catch up. II When I came to, nothing had changed. The Glory Road was still drifting within a stone’s throw of the derelict alien ship. The artifact still lay – or rather, floated – in its locker. Only the giant eyeball was gone. I tapped the artifact, then grabbed it and shook it. Nothing. I talked to it, […]
Derelict Excerpt
Another bit of fiction. Bear in mind I wrote this back in 1994, so the writing is a bit rough. I’d completely forgotten about it, but it’s actually pretty complete. This is just the first bit, though; the rest will come another time. Derelict: Prologue The planet that would someday be known as Earth drifted serenely in the starlit blackness of space. On the planet, curious apelike creatures were just beginning to experiment with tools, and building, without particular success. […]