The Car With Zoom-in Windows: A Science Fiction Story

In the year 2055 Bill Waters decided to buy a new car. Doing great at his job as a psychoanalyst of malfunctioning artificial minds, Bill could afford a car with the latest and greatest features. So he went to the local car dealer to shop for a car. 

Bill encountered no humans during this shopping expedition. The job of a car salesman had long ago been replaced by mobile robots that could answer any questions a car buyer had, and also make the right kind of sales pitches. 

"So I want a car with the latest and greatest features," said Bill.

"I'll tell you about a feature that all our autos have," said the robot. "It's the self-repair feature. No more of that nonsense of going to an auto repair shop when your car gets banged up. All our cars will automatically fix themselves after damage."

"That's great," said Bill. "And what about automatic driving?"

"Our cars have that," said the robot. "You can drive and watch 3D TV at the same time."

"Is there some other cool feature I can get?" asked Bill.

"Well, there's one really cool feature that is new this year," said the robot. "It is zoom-in windows."

"Zoom in windows?" said Bill.

"That's a new kind of window that can act like binoculars," said the robot. "If you interact with the window in a certain way, your view will zoom in, and you can see very clearly something that is far away."

"Wow, that sounds great," said Bill. He bought a car that day with all of the features the robot had mentioned. He had not bothered to bring any money or credit cards, but there was no need for such things.  A quick retina scan was used to positively identify Bill, and then the purchase funds were transferred from his bank account. 

Bill drove off in his fancy car, eager to test its auto-driving system.  While the car drove by itself, Bill watched his favorite program on the car's 3D TV. 

But when he inadvertently pressed the foot brake on the car, the auto-driving system turned off. The car gave a warning that the automatic driving was turning off. But being very absorbed in the details of his 3D TV program, Bill ignored the warning. 

The car now required manual driving, but Bill wasn't aware that it did. Very soon the car crashed at high speed into a tree. Bill lost consciousness. 

When Bill awoke, he seemed to be okay. If it had been thirty years earlier, Bill would have got out of the car to inspect the damage caused by hitting the tree. But Bill assumed that the car's automatic repair system would fix any damage caused in the accident. 

Bill realized he did not know where he was. At first he thought about finding his position using the car's mapping screen and GPS.  But then he thought to himself: why not try out the car's fancy zoom-in windows?

Bill drove a little way to an intersection, and then tried using the zoom-in window that was the front window. He held down some widget on the window, causing the window's view to zoom-in. Soon he could see what was at the end of the road, far away. Bill saw a Dead End sign. 

"No point going down that way," Bill thought to himself. Next he tried the zoom-in window on his left. He held down some widget on the window, causing the view to zoom-in. Soon he could see what was at the end of the road, far away on his left. Again he saw a Dead End sign.

Bill repeated the procedure, using the zoom-in window on his right.   Soon he could see what was at the end of the road, far away on his right. Once again, it was a Dead End sign. 

"I can't believe all these Dead End signs I'm seeing," Bill thought to himself. There was one window left to try: the rear window.  Again, Bill held down some widget on the window, causing the view to zoom-in. Soon he could see what was at the end of the road, far behind him. Again he saw a Dead End sign.

"Every road around me leads to a Dead End sign," Bill thought to himself. "What does this mean?"

Suddenly he had a chilling thought. Maybe the zoom-in windows were acting in some symbolic way.  Bill thought to himself: when I hit that tree, maybe I was killed, and  maybe all these Dead End signs in the zoom-in windows are telling me that I'm already DEAD, and that I've reached the END of my earthly life. 

Suddenly something spooky happened. The sun roof of the car opened, even though Bill had done nothing to open it. 

Bill looked up through the sun roof. Above him he could see a strange sight. The clouds seemed to form into a kind of tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was a light. The light had a strange mystical look to it. It looked like no light Bill had ever seen. Bill felt as if the strange light was somehow beckoning him. 

Just then Bill felt himself rising upward, and passing through the hole of the sun roof. Bill felt himself pulled through the tunnel. It all happened so fast that Bill could not tell whether it was his physical body rising up into the sky, or only his soul. Looking back for an instant at the car far below him, Bill thought to himself that he would never see that car again. 

The Sun Seers of Planet Evercloudy: A Science Fiction Story

In a solar system of the Andromeda galaxy, there was a planet Evercloudy where intelligent life existed. But the planet was very different from Earth. The planet was constantly covered with thick clouds. The clouds in the planet's atmosphere were so numerous that almost never could the planet's sun be seen. 

The scientists on this planet pondered two great questions:

(1) What causes daylight on planet Evercloudy?

(2) How is it that planet Evercloudy stays warm enough for life to exist?

Having no knowledge of their sun, the scientists came up with wrong answers. They speculated that daylight and planetary warmth are bottom-up effects.  The scientists began to spin all kinds of speculations such as hypothesizing that daylight comes from photon emissions from rocks and dirt, and that their planet was warm because of heat bubbling up from the hot center of their planet.

One day one of the scientists had a dinner with his son, who had not long ago become an adult. 

"We are making great progress in explaining how our planet is warm and lighted," said the father, boasting without warrant. "Only last week one of my colleagues published a paper speculating how there might be certain types of chemical reactions within rocks and soil, causing the emission of tiny  particles of light that might lead to daylight, particles we call photons." 

"Ah yes, another theory of photon-emitting rocks and light coming from soil," said the son. "How creative you professors are.  But, tell me, how do you account for the reality of nightfall? If rocks and soil constantly sent out little particles of light called photons, would we not expect that there would never be nightfall?"

"I admit that the phenomenon of nightfall is challenging for bottom-up theories of the origin of our planet's light and heat," conceded the father. "But we are working on that problem. Someday we will solve it. We already have interesting theories of how there might be 'easily tired photons' that rest during the night, and wake up during the daytime."

"Can't you see that there's a much more straightforward way to explain nightfall?" said the son. "You can abandon your theory of a bottom-up origin of light and heat. You can move to an alternate theory that light and heat on our planet mainly comes from an unseen external source outside of our planet -- something called 'the sun.' If such a sun existed, and our planet rotates, that would easily explain nightfall. Nightfall would simply occur to a side of our planet that was facing away from the sun."

"Oh, come on!" said the father. "Don't tell me you are warming up to those nonsense claims about the existence of a sun! You are just starting to study at the university. You know what the consensus of the professors is. It is that heat and light come bottom-up, not top-down. Read your science books. They all say that daylight comes from rocks and soil."

"Yes, I know the social conventions that professors like you follow," said the son. "You and your colleagues have made it taboo to believe in the sun. But does it make sense to declare something is taboo, when it has often been observed?"

"What are you talking about?" asked the father. 

"Have you not heard?" said the son. "There are now meetings of believers in the existence of the sun. They meet outdoors in meetings they call 'see-ances.'  At such meetings they look up at the sky. They gather together in a circle, with each person looking at a different direction. Sometimes the people at such meetings report they were able to see the sun in the sky, when the clouds briefly parted." 

"Don't believe in that kind of nonsense!" said the father. "You can't trust those so-called 'sun-seers.' They are just a bunch a kooks and crazies or scoundrels who are lying or hallucinating." 

"Have you studied the many reports they have written, in which multiple named witnesses said they saw the sun?" asked the son. 

"You mean the reports made in those 'sun-seer' periodicals?" asked the father. "Surely you don't expect a respectable scientist like me to read such rags."

"So when teaching your classes and writing, you don't even mention that many claim to have seen the sun?"

"Of course," said the father. "A rule of respectable professors like me is: nothing spooky allowed." 

"But what about those photos they sometimes take that seem to show a sun in the sky?" asked the son. 

"Oh, come on, don't tell me that you're starting to believe in those claims of 'sun photography,' " said the father. "All those photos are just fakes." 

"Father, this is very hard to do, but I think it is at last time that I finally 'came out of the closet,' " said the son. "I must confess that I have gone to some of these 'see-ances' and that I believe I have actually seen the sun with my own eyes. I had to stare up at the sky for a long time, before the clouds finally started to part. And then I kind of half-saw it, for a fleeing instant, what looked rather like a bright yellow ball in the sky. I think it was the sun I saw." 

"Good heavens!" said the father, grimacing and putting his hands on top of his head. "Don't tell me that my own son has become one of those loony types that call themselves 'sun-seers!'  How will I live through the embarrassment and the stigma of being the father of a 'sun-seer' ? My colleagues at the university will ridicule me endlessly!"  

"Sorry for the inconvenience," said the son. "But I have to follow the path plowed by what I saw, not some old path plowed by social conventions." 

The son went outdoors for some fresh air, and the father followed. 

"Don't you understand our rules?" said the father. "A rule of scientists like me is: explanations must always be bottom-up, not top-down. And you can only say that a causal effect came from some cause you have seen yourself." 

"Nature never taught us such rules," said the son. "Those rules are just social conventions, not something demanded by logic or evidence. And you don't even follow such rules, because you never saw some of the things you believe in, things like photons sleeping at night." 

"I didn't make your mistake when I was young," said the father. "When I started at the university, they taught me that our planet's light and heat come from the rocks and soil below us, not from any sun above us; and I have never taught otherwise."

"But did you arrive at that belief through an objective study of all the evidence, by pondering impartially all the relevant arguments and observations of both sides?" asked the son. "I doubt it. You probably soon learned that a particular belief would be expected of you. So you went along with that belief, and became an asolarist, a non-believer in the sun." 

"Well," said the father, "it was made pretty clear that my university was not a friendly port for solarists who believe in a sun." 

The son looked up at the sky, and was surprised to see a very rare event, as rare on his planet as a tornado. The clouds were briefly parting. It was a much more dramatic parting of the clouds than the son had seen before. 

"Look!" said the son. "The clouds are parting! There it is, I can see it in that hole in the clouds!  Look, father, look! It is a bright and yellow ball! IT IS THE SUN!"

"A respectable professor like me cannot ever get involved with this type of nonsense," said the scorning father, being careful not to look up at the sky. "I'm going back inside our house." 

Planet of the Blind: A Science Fiction Story

All information comes to people through their senses. There are exactly four senses that people have:

1. The sense of hearing, the most useful of all senses;

2. the sense of touch;

3. the sense of smell;

4. the sense of taste.

That there are only four senses is a scientific fact taught by a great consensus of our school teachers. But for a long time there has been a strange tiny group of eccentrics who claim that there is something they call a “fifth sense.” They use the strange term “vision” to refer to this alleged ability. They even claim that they have the ability to use this so-called “fifth sense,” by doing some weird paranormal activity that they call “seeing.” These weirdos call regular men like me "blind men." 

I was hired by a committee at a major school to scientifically investigate this strange claim. Feeling the bumps on many a road sign, and asking directions from people on the way, I finally made my way to a small community of people who called themselves “seers.” I asked whether any of them had this strange power they called “vision.” They said they all had the power. I asked whether they would be willing to engage in a scientific test of this ability. I was rather surprised when they agreed without hesitation to the test I proposed.

The scientific test I proposed was a simple one. At one end of a large room, I would sit next to one person. A second person would sit about twenty paces away. I would instruct the first person to raise a random number of fingers in the air at an interval of thirty seconds. I would be able to tell how many fingers had been raised by feeling the person's fingers with my fingers. At each interval, someone named Adra sitting twenty paces away would have to call out how many fingers had been raised. This is a test that no person twenty paces away should be able to pass, because there is no way to tell how many fingers a distant person has raised through the known senses of hearing, smell, taste or touch (unless the person raising his fingers told how many fingers he raised, which was prohibited).

The test was tried 10 times, and in each case the person seated twenty paces away called out the correct number of fingers that had been raised. I knew that there must have been some kind of cheating. I accused the two persons of previously conspiring to memorize a sequence of numbers that would be remembered by both the person raising the fingers and the person seated twenty paces away.

“There is an easy way to prove that we really do have vision,” said  the person raising the fingers. “You can be the one who raises his fingers. And you can make sure to pick a random number of fingers each time you raise them.”

So I replaced this person in the test who raised the fingers. Twenty times I raised a random number of my fingers, changing how many fingers were raised each time. I was surprised that each and every time, Adra seated twenty paces away called out the correct number of fingers that I had raised.

“Those must have been only lucky guesses,” I said.

“Surely you can do better than that as an explanation,” said Adra.

“It makes no sense that so few people would have this rare skill you call 'vision,' and that almost everyone in the world would not have such a skill,” I said.

“There is a simple explanation for that,” said Adra. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure,” I said. “I like a good children's story as much as anyone else.”

“I will tell you the truth, not a children's story,” said Adra. “Once long ago every person in the world could see with the wonderful fifth sense we call vision. The eyes of every person allowed them to discover the nature of distant objects as soon as they pointed their eyes in the right direction. But then one year something very strange happened to the sun. For reasons we don't understand, the sun suddenly got much brighter. It was what we called the Great Brightening.”

“What do you mean by this odd word brighter?” I asked.

"It's hard to explain the word to a blind person like you who has never seen anything,” said Adra. “It's kind of like when a fire suddenly gets much hotter. It means a sudden increase in energy. When the sun suddenly got much brighter, some delicate part in the eye called the retina got damaged, and everyone in the world that looked at the sun lost their ability to use their eyes. They could no longer see. They became what we call blind, meaning without any ability to use their fifth sense.”

"So, tell me,” I said skeptically, “how did you and your friends ever acquire this magical paranormal ability you call vision?”

“We were born with the ability, just like everyone in the whole world is born with such an ability,” said Adra. “The only difference is that we were extremely careful never to lose our ability to see. Whenever we went outdoors, we would always wear thick very dark sunglasses that would protect our eyes from being damaged by the very brightened sun. If you had taken the same precaution all your life, you would also be able to see. You also would have vision, a fifth sense.”

“That is a very interesting story,” I said. “How did you ever learn such a story? Was it passed down from generation to generation? Such tales passed through oral tradition are not very reliable.”

“We discovered it in a book,” Adra said. “I will show you the book.”

Adra brought a book and I asked to feel it. I opened up the pages, and turned them. I could feel nothing. The pages were all smooth.

“The pages are all smooth,” I said. “Clearly the book has no information in it.”

“You're wrong,” said Adra. “The book has very much information. Nowadays almost everyone gets information from books by using their fingers to feel the tiny bumps on the pages. But before what we call the Great Brightening, people would produce books with smooth pages. They put information on the book by using a machine rarely used today, a tool called a printer. A book created in such a way could be read by anyone with the fifth sense, what we call vision. By getting the information from this book, we were able to find out how the Great Brightening caused most people to become blind, to lose their vision, when the sun flared up like a fire that burns much more brightly.”

“How many of these old books with smooth pages do you have?” I asked.

“Thousands of them,” Adra said.

Disgusted by these lies about a claimed paranormal ability, I left the community. Using my bump puncher to make bumps in paper, I must now write my report to the committee of the great school that hired me. I will report that the claims of a mysterious fifth sense called “vision” are delusions without foundation. I will report that those who claim to be able to “see” with their eyes are probably mentally disturbed people, of interest only to doctors who treat the mentally ill. I am sure that my report will help advance the noble cause of true science. I look forward to the day when great scholars will read my report by using their finger tips. 

Robot Renaissance: A Science Fiction Story

When Booker Smith had a son named Jamal, he thought that the son might grow up to be a highly paid professional. But Jamal's prospects became much less bright when the Great Disruption occurred in the year 2045. The Great Disruption was a one-two punch. The first part was a world-wide computer virus that devastated global computer systems. Then there was the enormous infrastructure destruction caused by the EMP Wars, in which multiple atomic bombs were detonated high in the atmosphere. The resulting electromagnetic pulse effect wiped out electricity, computers and high-tech devices all over the United States.

Many died in the starvation and plagues that followed the Great Disruption, including Jamal's mother. After several years, electric power was finally restored. But the global Internet was still down, and the United States reverted to a simpler way of life like in earlier times. There were rumors that some people still used computers, but communications were so disrupted that it was hard to tell how truthful such rumors were.

When Jamal was thirteen years old, his father put him to work at the little cotton farm his father had set up. Jamal was disgusted by this indignity. Why, he asked, did he have to pick cotton like his slave ancestors once did? Jamal hated to leave school, where he had done very well. And he hated toiling on the cotton farm.

When Jamal was sixteen years old, something exciting happened. Jamal was picking cotton in the field, when suddenly he saw something he never seen before. It was a small flying device, a drone. The drone was about two meters in size.

Fascinated by the device, Jamal took it up into his bedroom. That evening he went to bed, but suddenly he heard a sound coming from the drone. It was a voice. The voice said, “Send me back to where I came from.” Twice every day the machine repeated this auditory message.

Jamal tried talking to the drone, but it didn't respond. He started to examine the drone more closely. He found that at its center there was a little screen and a small keyboard. He started playing around with the keyboard. Clearly, the drone had some type of information system he could explore.

It took several days of exploration before Jamal was able to determine some important facts. First, he found out that there was a mapping system specifying where the drone had come from. It was a location about 50 miles away. Then, he found out there was a programming system that could be used to issue commands to the drone. Oddly, the machine failed to provide a simple street address specifying where the machine should be returned.

After days of studying some instruction screens displayed by the drone, Jamal discovered the commands he could type in to make the drone rise up, and move in different directions. Eventually, it occurred to Jamal that he could write a program that might send the drone back to where it had come from. But writing such a program would be very hard.

After several weeks, Jamal had his first draft of the program. The program would send the drone to close to the location where it had come from. Jamal was all set to run the program, when he realized it probably wouldn't work very well. It would probably only get the drone to within about two miles of where it had come from.

So Jamal added some more lines of code to the program. First, the program would send the drone to close to the place where it had come from. Then the program would cause the drone to go in a loop, hopping to a new nearby location once every day. Jamal thought the program might work with this addition.

After long weeks of effort, mostly at night, Jamal took out the drone from his house, and placed in on a field. He launched the software program he had created. The drone rose up into the sky, and disappeared. Jamal had stuck a sticker on the drone, writing his address and name. But he never expected to find out whether the program had worked.

Two weeks later, Jamal awoke and ate breakfast, prepared for another boring day of cotton picking. He saw a car drive up to his house. A man got out of the car, and knocked on the door.

“Are you Jamal Smith?” asked the man.

“How'd you know?” asked Jamal.

“My name's Curtis Nelson,” said the man. “I'm a software developer at the Code Citadel. You ever hear of it?”

“Nope,” said Jamal.

“It used to be a big luxury hotel complex with hundreds of rooms and many buildings,” explained Curtis. “But now the whole huge building complex is dedicated to one purpose: the rebirth of United States high technology. We have many hundreds of live-in high-tech workers and many hundreds of live-in students, all dedicated to help bring about the re-establishment of the Internet technology and robot technology that the country used to have. Some of the last few years have been like a miniature Dark Ages, but our goal is to create what we call a Robot Renaissance.”

“So what does that have to do with me?” asked Jamal.

“You've won a free scholarship at our institution, all expenses paid,” said Curtis. “You won it by getting that drone to come back to the Code Citadel. We send out hundreds of the drones every year. We only get a few of them coming back. Whenever one of the drones comes back, we figure there's a potential software genius who figured out how to send it back. The drone you sent back to us came back quicker than any drone we've ever sent out.”

“What kind of stuff will I be working on if I go to this Code Citadel place?” asked Jamal.

“Robots, artificial intelligence, and web sites like they used to have before the Great Disruption,” said Curtis.

“So let me get this straight,” said Jamal. “It's kind of like I'm Harry Potter, you're a wizard, and you want me to come live at Hogwarts so I can work on cool magic stuff.”

“Yes, that's a good analogy," said Curtis. "You'll have to cast spells and write spells, but we call them software programs not spells."

"I'm all in," said Jamal. "Let's go."  

Jamal's father tried to stop him from going, but Curtis wrote him a check that changed his mind. Jamal packed his bags and walked towards the car Curtis had arrived in. Jamal waved goodbye to his father, saying “Sorry, Dad, no cotton-picking career for me – I've got bigger fish to fry!”

“Sit in the back seat,” said Curtis when they got to the car. Jamal was a little surprised when Curtis also got in the back seat.

The car started up by itself, and drove off under the control of its robotic driving software, causing Jamal to laugh gleefully.

Escape to the Wet Planet: A Science Fiction Story

"Mommy," asked young Carsa, "why do I have to eat you and Daddy next year?"

"I'm surprised to hear you ask that," said Alara, Carsa's mother. "I thought I had gone over that several times before."

"Please explain it all for me one more time," said Carsa.

"Okay, I'll do that," said Alara. "Let's start with some basic facts of life. Our family is one of only seven families living on a very dry planet with only a tiny, tiny amount of water. So the Supreme Rule of our tiny society has always been: not a single drop of water should ever be wasted."

"Yes, I know that," said Carsa. "That's why if anyone washes his  body, it's a crime punishable by death."

"Now consider two parents like me and Daddy," said Alara. "Once we have had a child, and raised that child to be be old enough to take care of herself, then our job in life is pretty much finished, and it's silly to be spending very precious drops of water to keep us living. Rather than consuming more and more of our very precious water drops, it's much better if me and Daddy give up our bodies, to provide more precious water and food material for children. That's why it is a rule of our society that when parents reach the age of 25, they must allow their bodily food and water to be recycled for consumption by their children."

"Oh, I remember," said Carsa. 

"So next year, Daddy and me will give up our bodies for recycling," said Alara. "That will happen except in the very unlikely event that Scorus wins the election."

"Who is Scorus?" asked Carsa.

"He's a candidate in next month's election for Big Leader," said Alara. "He has a kind of crazy plan to completely change our way of living. Scorus says that we should gamble everything on a risky plan to abandon our planet, and take everyone to Planet Three."  

Carsa and Alara lived on Planet Four in their solar system. It was widely believed that Planet Three in the system was a planet with a great abundance of water.

"Do you think Scorus will win the election?" asked Carsa.

"I think that is as unlikely as water ever falling from the sky," said Alara. 

But the next month against many predictions Scorus was elected as Big Leader.  That made him the dictator of the tiny society on the dry, dry world. 

"We will gamble everything on building a spaceship that can go to Planet Three," commanded Scorus. "The spaceship will be big enough to take all thirty-one people on this planet to Planet Three."

Scorus gave commands on how to implement his risky plan. All the metal irrigation tubes used to move precious water around would be recycled, to use as metal in building the spaceship. Various sticky fluids on the planet's surface would be modified to make the rocket fuel.  Oxygen tanks would be built to allow the passengers to have oxygen during the journey from the fourth planet to the third planet. 

Carsa was very happy about all this. The thought of going to a new planet excited her tremendously. But her mother Alara was very worried that the rocket might fail, and that everyone would die when the rocket attempted to lift off into the air. 

Aboard the rocket ship before it lifted off, Alara told Carsa to say goodbye to every place she had known on her planet, telling her that for sure she would never see such places again. 

"Good bye, and good riddance!" said Carsa. "I'm sick of this dry dust bowl of a world."

The rocket lifted off successfully. Eventually everyone found themselves floating around in the spaceship as it reached outer space.

"We must have all died!" said Carsa. "I've heard stories of this, that when you die your soul kind of floats around in the air."

"No, we're not dead," said Alara. "This is just some weird thing they call zero gravity." 

"How long will it take to get to Planet Three?" asked Carsa.

"Sixty days," said Alara. "But it will only seem like a single day because we will now begin to hibernate." 

The mission plan was followed to the letter. After the ship was set on a course to the third planet, everyone on the spaceship except the pilot began to hibernate.  No special drugs or equipment were needed for such hibernation.  The race that Alara and Carsa belonged to had long ago mastered the skill of hibernation, which was needed to help them survive during periods when water was very short. 

Eventually the pilot guided the spaceship into orbit around the third planet. He woke up all of the thirty other passengers. They looked out the window, and were stunned by the beauty of the planet beneath them. 

"Look at the size of those clouds!" said Alara. "They're gigantic!" On the planet she had come from, seeing a cloud was as rare as seeing a rainbow.

"What are all those blue areas?" asked Carsa.

"Those are giant areas of water," said the pilot. "On this planet there's water all over the place."

There then came a crucial part of the mission. All of the thirty-one passengers crammed into the landing capsule at the front of the spaceship. The capsule detached from the spaceship, and plunged into the atmosphere of Planet Three.

"What happens now?" asked Carsa. "Won't we all die when this capsule smashes into the ground?"

"Pray to the gods for luck," said the pilot. "We're now going to try some new invention that may slow down our speed.  It's like some big sheet with lots of strings attached." 

The parachute was deployed, and the pilot was rather amazed that it worked. The plunging capsule slowed down to a moderate speed.  After a while all the passengers felt a jolt, as the capsule landed safely on the ground. 

Exiting the craft, the passengers were astonished. As far as their eyes could see was green vegetation. On the planet they had left, plants were as rare as gold. 

"We can probably squeeze some of these plants to get water," suggested Alara. 

"I have a better idea," said Scorus. "Let's start walking, and maybe we'll find a lot of water -- maybe even a whole big puddle." 

"That would be insanely lucky," said Alara.

They all started walking.  Scorus walked a little ahead of the group. After a long walk he came to a high spot, and looked at a wonderful sight below. 

"I don't believe it!" said Scorus. "It's just too glorious!"

They all ran ahead to see what he was talking about. Now they were all on the bank of something they had never seen before: a river. None of them had previously seen a pond, a river or even the tiniest stream. 

"It's impossible!" said Carsa. "I must be dreaming. How can there be so much water?"

"There's only one way to find out if it's real," said Alara. "Follow me!"

They all ran down to the river, and began to jump into it. It was joy like they had never felt before. The planet had never had such ecstatic splashing.  

"Water!" cried Carsa. "It's real water! More than we could ever drink in a lifetime!"

"We have no word for this act of hitting water with your hands to make noise," said Alara, splashing the water joyously. "We'll have to invent a word for that." 

"Oh no, I just remembered something," said Carsa. "Washing in water is a crime punishable by death!"

"Don't worry about that -- with all this water, we can change our laws and customs," said Scorus. "From now on, parents will be able to live for as long as they can. We can stop recycling parents for food and water when they reach age 25."

"Did you hear that?" said Carsa. "Maybe you and Daddy will even live long enough to see me raising my own child one day."

"That would be so amazing!" said Alara. "I've never heard of any parent ever seeing their own child's child."

Alara went up to Scorus, and thanked him for his brilliant plan. 

"What we did was the thing any race would do eventually," said Scorus. "Moving from a very arid world to a water-rich world made perfect sense."

"But imagine if there were some people who had always lived on a water-rich world," said Alara. "Do you think they would ever do the opposite of what we did, and try to send people to a planet with so little water?"

"Not unless they were crazy," said Scorus. 

The Mars Mission: A Science Fiction Story

For years after the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA kept lobbying for a manned mission to Mars. It was sold as an exciting mission to discover life on another world.  This sales pitch was very dubious, because the unmanned spacecraft landed on Mars had never given good reason for much hope about finding life on Mars. Two experiments on the 1976 Viking mission to Mars had seemed to give enouraging results, but the same lander had found no organic molecules, which was profoundly discouraging for all hopes of finding life. Other unmanned missions to Mars had failed to find any of the real building blocks of life. None of the twenty amino acids used by living things had been found on Mars, and none of the nucleotides used by DNA or RNA had been found on Mars. 

But passionate pitchmen kept saying that on Mars there had been found what they called "ingredients of life" or "building blocks of life."  They were referring to biologically irrelevant carbon molecules that were not at all "building blocks of life," and were no more "ingredients of life" than the sand particles on a beach are "ingredients of computers."  And even if there were "building blocks of life" on Mars, this would no more make life likely than it would be likely for a long useful technical manual to arise from someone throwing Scrabble squares against a wall. But since congressional representatives and senators were woefully bad at understanding chemistry, they were easy marks for a "let's send men to find life on Mars" sales pitch based on misleading claims that "ingredients of life" or "building blocks of life" had been found on Mars. 

NASA wanted to take four astronauts to Mars, but the final mission design specified that only three astronauts would take the trip. A nuclear rocket vehicle would take the astronauts to Mars.  Two astronauts would descend to the surface of Mars in a chemically-powered lander, while one astronaut stayed in the nuclear-powered  rocket vehicle which would keep orbiting Mars. After three months, the Mars lander would return to the nuclear rocket vehicle, and the three astronauts would return to Earth. 

The landing craft had no problem descending to the surface of Mars. At the moment of landing, Mission Commander Ned Jackson announced triumphantly, "Today, the planets; tomorrow the stars!" 

Jackson was very gung-ho about the possibility of discovering life on Mars.  He and his fellow astronaut Frank Sellers got busy gathering soil samples from the crater where they had landed. It was believed that the crater was once a pond long, long ago. 

The astronauts took the soil samples to the large scientific instruments inside the lander, and began analyzing them. But they found no sign of currently existed life. Nor could they find any sign that life had once existed in the gathered soil.  The soil did not even have any amino acids or nucleotides. 

"If at first you don't suceeed, try, try again," said Jackson. "Let's keep gathering more soil samples."

"But maybe it's a waste of time," said Sellers. "Maybe there never was life on Mars."

"Mars once had lots of water," said Jackson. "The origin of life couldn't have been some kind of miracle. It must be something that happens automatically whenever there's enough water and enough time."

So the men spent weeks gathering more and more soil samples, and they kept analyzing them, using the fancy instruments onboard the lander. Still no trace of life was found.

"Mission un-accomplished," said Sellers. "We'll just have to tell the world we struck out." 

"No, there's got to be life here," said Jackson. "If it's not in the soil, then it must be hidden in the rocks." 

So the men started gathering rocks, and bringing them to the lander. They pulverized the rocks, in order to analyze them. This created lots of dust inside the lander that irritated Sellers very much. But no sign of life was found. 

"So now that we have a filthy, dusty lander vehicle, we're still empty-handed," said Sellers.

"If life isn't in the small rocks, it must be in great big rocks," said Jackson. 

"We have no way to break open big rocks," complained Sellers.

Jackson then announced a strange plan.  The men would gather quite a few big boulders and take them back to the lander. They would then lift off, and return to the nuclear-powered rocket orbiting Mars. The boulders could be broken up on Earth, where a check for life inside the boulders could be made.  Sellers thought this plan made no sense, but Jackson was insistent. 

Jackson prodded Sellers to help haul more and more boulders into the lander, until finally a great heavy mass of boulders had been gathered and brought into the lander. 

"This is crazy," said Sellers. "With all this weight, lifting off will be a gamble." 

"We've got to do it," said Jackson. "I think we can improvise some booster chemicals to super-charge our lander's fuel, to make it perform better. I remember some paper saying that a certain combination of chemicals will make our rocket fuel work 20% better." 

The chemicals were added to the lander's rocket fuel. Then the two men got in their spacesuits, strapped themselves into their seats, and revved up the lander's rockets to ascend into the sky.

At first things seemed to go well. The lander started to rise into the Martian sky, rising 1000 meters.

But then the chemical rocket engines seemed to sputter. 

"We have too much weight!" yelled Sellers. "We haven't got enought rocket thrust!"

"It's got to work!" said Jackson.

Finally the chemical rockets of the lander stalled entirely, making a sputtering noise like some car running out of gas. The lander began to fall back to Mars. 

"Try and restart the rockets!" yelled Jackson.

"It's no use!" cried Sellers.

The lander vehicle crashed back on Mars, hitting its ground at a speed at 70 meters per second. 

Strangely, Sellers and Jackson then found themselves apparently floating around inside their lander. Sellers looked down and saw two bodies still strapped into seats of the lander. 

"Who the hell are those two bodies below us?" asked Sellers. "And why are we floating around?"

"There must be a scientific explanation," said Jackson. "Probably our falling back to the Mars surface created a temporary gaseous disturbance which is temporarily elevating us in the air. No doubt we'll float back to the floor in a few seconds."

But a minute passed, and that didn't happen. Still floating about, Sellers took a good look through the cracked helmet visors of the spacesuits strapped into the chairs. He saw the motionless faces of Sellers and Jackson, frozen in an expression of horror. 

"Those are our own faces in those suits!" said Sellers. "What the hell is going on?"

"Well, I guess that rules out my previous hypothesis," said Jackson. "But I have another explanation. When we hit the ground, we probably suffered a concussion that has caused hallucinations. We're not really floating in the air. We're still in our seats. In a few seconds the hallucination will end."

But minutes passed, and such a thing didn't happen. Sellers began to panic. 

"I think I know what happened!" said Sellers. "When we crashed back to Mars, our bodies died! And our souls have floated out of our dead bodies!"

"No, that can't be!" said Jackson. "They're must be a scientific explanation. Maybe this is just some weird Mars gravity anomaly that is causing us to float about, or some strange quantum  fluctuation."

"Look at the arms of your body that is floating around," said Sellers. "They aren't solid arms, but kind of transparent shining ghost-arms, just like mine." 

"I see what you mean," said Jackson. "That's probably just an optical illusion, possibly caused by eye damage we suffered in our crash." 

Jackson was very good at this type of thing. He and his colleagues had been doing it for many years. They could quickly dream up reasons for thinking they were seeing exactly what they wanted to see, even when before them was something that looked like something totally different. Whenever they saw something that seemed to defy what they wanted to believe, they always had some speculation to explain away the undesired observations. And when many thousands or millions of other people saw things that didn't fit in with the beliefs of Jackson and his colleagues, such observations were always explained away by some speculations, often by claims of hallucination.  When nature didn't act in the way expected, there was always some reason dreamed up why the unexpected result was some illusion that was not the real truth.  Jackson and his colleagues could pull out these "why you didn't see what you seemed to see" speculation stories with dazzling speed, which often involved claims that the reality was the exact opposite of what someone seemed to see.   

Finally there seemed to open a large mysterious hole at the top of the ruined lander. The hole had a kind of weird quickly-spinning vortex edge, and seemed to lead into some very long strange tunnel. Jackson and Sellers began to feel themselves sucked up by some mysterious force pushing them through the hole, and into the tunnel. Then they felt themselves traveling through the tunnel at dazzling speed, heading towards some unfathomable numinous light at its end. Coming from the end of the tunnel, both Jackson and Sellers could hear some magnificent choir of voices singing, "We are the brave astronauts who died, and you will soon meet us."

"Remember, this is all just a very complex and unusually vivid multi-sensory hallucination, with both of us experiencing exactly the same details because of a gigantically improbable series of coincidences that might happen only once in the history of the multiverse," said Jackson. "Don't believe a single thing you see, hear, or feel!"

The COVID-20 Express: A Science Fiction Story

Nine years after COVID-19 was finally defeated, an even worse blow came from the biosphere. The scientists  called the disease COVID-20. It spread like wildfire across the world.  The virus could exist in someone for two months before symptoms appeared. This made it much easier for the disease to spread.  By the time the symptoms first appeared in people, the virus had already infected millions of people.  

They called it "the coughing death."  First a person would start coughing occasionally. Then that person would cough more and more. By the time the person got hospitalized, it was usually too late. There would be a very high fever, usually followed by a brief coma and then death. 

Gene and his wife Carla were both hospitalized on the same day.  When Gene was put in a hospital room, he thought he might never see his wife again.  As he began to fade out of consciousness, he saw his electronic life signs monitor display a temperature of 106 degrees.  Then after what seemed like a deep sleep, he awoke. He was very surprised to find that he was no longer in a hospital. 

Gene looked around and saw himself seated in a train traveling at high speeds. Next to him was his wife, her eyes closed. The train car was filled with passengers. Gene looked out the windows of the train, but could see hardly anything. It was as if the train was traveling through a dark tunnel.  

Soon Gene's wife woke up. "How did we get here?" asked Carla.

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Gene. "The last thing I remember, I was very sick in a hospital bed. But I feel fine now."

"Me too," said Carla. "Never felt better." 

Before long a man in a black uniform came into the car, demanding to see tickets. The man looked like one of the conductors on an Amtrak train. Soon the conductor came to Gene and Carla.

"Tickets, please," said the conductor.

"I don't remember buying a ticket," said Gene.

"Check your left breast pocket," said the conductor, as if he had said it a thousand times before.

Looking down at his body, Gene saw a slip of paper in his left pocket.  It read the following: "GENE BOONE, COVID-20, JULY 13, 2030."  The letters were in green.  After seeing this, the conductor stuck a little piece of paper above Gene's seat,  which had on it a green arrow pointing upward. He put another such slip above Carla's seat. 

Gene watched the conductor move to the seat in front of him. Reminded to check his front pocket, the man in the seat in front of Gene produced a slip saying in red letters, "DOUG GRADISON, MURDER-SUICIDE, JULY 13, 2030."  The conductor stuck a slip of paper above that person's seat. But instead of having a green arrow pointing upward, it had a red arrow pointing downward. 

The train continued to hurtle forward, seemingly passing through a long dark tunnel. Gene got out of his seat, and started moving around, asking questions of other people in the train car. He soon found that all of them were as baffled to be on the train as he was. Most of the people had a story to tell just like that of Gene. 

Most of the passengers said the last thing they remembered they were very sick, with symptoms like that of COVID-20.  One person said that the last thing he remembered was his car accidentally smashing into another car. Another person said the last thing he remembered was toppling from a ladder while trying to clean out the gutter on his roof.  One of the passengers said he thought he was still back in his hospital bed, and that he was just having a delirious hallucination of being on a train. 

Looking around in the train car, Gene could see that above almost every seat was a little slip of paper with a green arrow pointing upward. But above two seats the slip of paper had a red arrow pointing down. Soon the train started to slow.  Not much could be seen in the darkness outside the train. The conductor entered the train car. 

"This is Stop #1", shouted the conductor. "Please move over here to the exit door if you have a red arrow in the slip of paper above your seat."  Two people got out of their seats, and came toward the conductor. 

In the dim light some faces could be seen outside of the window. They looked rather like the audience of a strip club, or like some mob cheering on the fighters in a street brawl. "What kind of stop is this?" asked one of the two people about to exit. 

"Don't worry, you'll meet your kind of people," said the conductor.  After the train slowed to a halt, an exit door opened, and the two passengers left.  Looking out the window, Gene and Carla could dimly see some faces and their unholy expressions. 

"This is not the kind of stop I would ever want to get off at," said Carla. 

"Damn right," said Gene. 

The train then accelerated, and started moving faster than ever before. 

"I remember reading about people who had close brushes with death," said Carla. "They often reported traveling through a mysterious tunnel. Do you think there's any connection with what's happening now?"

"I don't know," said Gene.

Waiting for the train to reach its destination, Gene's mind became filled with vivid recollections of all that had happened in the life he had led. With unusual clarity and speed, he seemed to remember the whole course of his life. The scenes passed through his mind almost as clearly as if he were watching some movie displayed on a wide-screen TV in front of him. 

Carla closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. She began to have a strange vision in her mind's eye, a vision of unusual clarity. She first vividly visualized a building she recognized as the local hospital, as if she were floating above it. Then she intensely visualized different floors on the building, filled with doctors and nurses wearing face masks. It was like her mind was passing through each floor. Finally she visualized a basement area where there were many cloth-covered bodies on shelves and tables. Her mind seemed to hover above one cold cloth-covered body. That was me, she thought. Like someone awaking from a bad dream, she snapped out of the strange vision. 

Gene kept looking out a window, eager to see some sign of light ahead of the train. Finally he saw a glimpse of some light ahead of the train.  "We're heading towards some light!" he exclaimed. 

Finally the train came out of the tunnel. Suddenly the train car was flooded with light. Looking out the windows, Gene and Carla could see a stunning landscape. Bathed in some unearthly light, it looked more beautiful than any landscape they had ever seen. 

Eventually the train approached what looked like a town, one with buildings of exquisite elegance. The train started to slow down. Looking out the window, Gene and Carla could see that a big crowd  had come to see the train's arrival.  The people looked very happy. The conductor came into the train car. 

"Last stop!" yelled the conductor. "All passengers must exit."

Gene and Carla got in line to exit. The train came to a halt. They could hear outside of the train a boisterous sound of cheering, trumpets blaring, and church bells ringing.  The door was opened, and Gene and Carla could smell some wonderful scent unlike anything they had smelled before. 

"Don't be too surprised if you see there's no track underneath the train," said Gene. 

As the first passenger exited, a wreath of flowers was put around his neck by a smiling woman. People outside the train were throwing colorful confetti, laughing and cheering. 

"Mother!" yelled the first passenger to exit, recognizing someone in the crowd outside of the train. He ran to greet her. 

"Where are we?" asked Gene. 

"Somehow I don't think we've left our home," said Carla. "I think we've finally arrived at our real home." 

Child From the Sky: A Science Fiction Story

August 1

For Angie Torella, it was a night like no other night. She was out on a drive with her brother Joe. They parked at a remote spot, and got out to gaze up at a clear sky filled with stars. Suddenly Joe saw a strange bright light in the sky. Joe and Angie looked up with awe at the amazing sight. The light grew brighter and brighter in the sky, until it seemed larger than a full moon. 

Suddenly, a beam of light came out from the UFO, towards Angie. What happened next caused Joe to scream. Angie floated up into the air, as if the beam of light had some strange power of levitation. She rose up higher and higher, rising toward the UFO. Joe kept calling her name, as he watched the strange dazzling light in the sky.  The UFO remained motionless in the sky for twenty minutes. 

Then the inexplicable levitation was reversed. Joe saw Angie floating down from the UFO. She landed on the ground safely.  As soon as she had touched the ground, the UFO darted off, disappearing from the sky at amazing speeds. 

Joe asked Angie what had happened up at the UFO, but Angie didn't remember anything. The last thing she remembered was looking up at some bright light in the sky. 

Joe drove Angie back to her  apartment.  He wanted to take her immediately to a doctor, but she said she just wanted to get a good night's sleep.

August 2

The next day Angie woke up and felt enormously hungry. She ate the biggest breakfast she had ever had.  This was followed two hours later by a lunch bigger than any she had ever had. 

Joe arrived and drove Angie to the doctor. He insisted on the doctor giving her a full medical examination. Neither Joe nor Angie said anything about the UFO incident. They thought the doctor might claim both of them had lost their minds.  

Eventually the doctor asked Angie, "How long have you been pregnant?"

"Pregnant?" said Angie. "That's impossible.  I haven't dated anyone for six months."

"Having some problem with your memory?" asked the doctor. "Not only are you pregnant, but your pregnancy is almost half-way through."

Joe and Angie staggered out of the doctor's office. "Let's go get dinner," said Angie. 

"Dinner?" said Joe. "It's only three o'clock."

The 3 PM dinner was followed by another dinner at 6 PM and another dinner at 9 PM.  Angie's belly grew bigger and bigger. 

At one of the dinners, Angie and Joe tried to figure out what was happening. 

"That light you saw in the sky was a UFO," said Joe. "It levitated you up from the ground. Something weird happened up there. Somehow you got pregnant."

"But how could I be halfway through a pregnancy?" asked Angie. "I wasn't even pregnant yesterday."

"I don't know," said Joe. "Maybe this is the result of some weird power of extraterrestrial visitors we don't understand." 

August 3

The next day Angie had a huge breakfast, a gigantic 11:30 lunch, and then another enormous lunch at 2 PM. Angie wolfed down a great variety of foods. Her belly kept growing bigger and bigger. 

Joe stayed with her and kept shaking his head at the strange transformation.  After a very large 5:00 dinner, Angie made a sudden announcement:

"My water has broken," said Angie. "Drive me to the hospital!" 

Joe drove her quickly to the hospital. Very shortly thereafter, Angie gave birth to a son. 

Joe came into Angie's hospital room, and saw her holding the baby.  The baby looked like a normal human, except for a rather strange color of the skin, and eyes that seemed larger than any baby eyes Joe had seen. 

"No one will ever believe us if we tell what happened," said Joe. "No one will ever believe that three days ago you weren't even pregnant."

"Let's just keep it secret," said Angie.

"What should we call the kid?" asked Joe.

"Let's call him Tony," said Angie.

"Tony," said the newborn baby.

Joe put his hands over his mouth when he heard that. 

"This is insane," said Angie. "How can a newborn baby be speaking?"

August 4

Early in the morning Joe went to see Angie and her baby in the hospital. He couldn't believe what he saw. The baby was no longer even a baby, but a toddler. He was crawling around on the ground, and speaking in sentences. 

"We better get out of here as soon as possible, before the doctors hit us with a thousand questions," said Joe. Joe drove Angie and the child back to Angie's apartment. 

Angie's appetite had gone back to normal. But now it was the young Tony who seemed to have the appetite of three men. Joe spent much of his time making one meal after another for the child. It seemed that not long after Tony finished one meal, he was asking for another. 

By the evening Tony had grown to the size of a four-year-old boy. His mind took equally great leaps. Soon Tony began talking as if he knew very many things his mother knew. 

"How did he learn all those things?" said Joe.

"It's so weird," said Angie. "He says that if he just holds my hand, all things that I've learned flow from my mind to his mind."

August 5

"We'll have to register him for school pretty soon," said Angie. "I'm sure he'll have no trouble keeping up with the other kids."

After eating a gigantic breakfast and an enormous early lunch followed two hours later by a very large late lunch, young Tony asked to hold Joe's hand.  Later Tony seemed to know everything Joe  had ever learned. 

August 6

Tony kept eating enormous meals throughout the day. By 2 PM Tony had grown to the size of a ten-year-old boy. 

"I think we should go to the library," said Tony. Joe and Angie drove him to the local library. 

Tony started with simple books. His hands rapidly turned the pages. After turning all the pages of a book, Tony would say, "I've learned all that." He went very rapidly through book after book. Quickly he passed through first-grade books, then second-grade books, then third-grade books. He was up to the seventh-grade books when the library had to close. 

Angie and Joe drove Tony to a restaurant for an enormous meal, in which he ate more than two men would eat for dinner. 

August 7

After eating an enormous breakfast, Tony insisted that he be driven back to the library. He picked up where he left off before. Turning the pages of the books very rapidly, he passed through the textbooks of the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. After pausing for a huge lunch at a nearby restaurant, Tony quickly scanned the pages of senior high school textbooks. 

"There must be a quicker way to learn," said Tony. "I should find a crowd. Let's go to the mall."

Angie and Joe drove Tony to a crowded shopping mall. By the time they all get out of the car, Joe noticed that Tony was now almost six feet tall. 

Tony walked through the mall, shaking the hands of strangers. Whenver he shook hands with a stranger, he paused, as he instantly soaked up everything each person had learned.  By the time Tony was finished he had shook hands with sixty adults from a large variety of professions.

"You're so big, I guess there's no point in applying to the local high school," said Angie. "I guess you're ready for college."

"Why waste years going to college?" said Tony. "In another few weeks, I'll know enough to take over this planet." 

The Supreme Breakthrough: A Science Fiction Story

Dave was madly in love with Sandra, and he boldly asked her to marry him. But Sandra had a reservation.

"Dave, you know I adore you," said Sandra. "And it's been wonderful dating you for the past six months. But marriage is a big step."

"But we're so right for each other," said Dave. 

"I'm a little worried about whether you can provide me with the kind of financial support I would like from a husband," said Sandra. "Your current job situation sounds a bit precarious."

"But Sandra, I have a good job as a radio astronomer," said Dave. 

"Yes, but you admitted that you rely on some funding that will run out at the end of the year," said Sandra. "What will happen then? It sounds like a radio astronomer has to live from one little research grant to the next. It doesn't sound like a very stable income." 

"Sandra, let's make a deal," said Dave. "If you come and visit my research office, I will remove all doubts you may have about my future career success."

Sandra agreed. The next day Dave drove her to his research office about 60 miles north of New York City. Sanda had never seen it before. She was very impressed by the big radio telescope dish next to the office. 

"I analyze data picked up by that giant radio telescope dish," explained Dave.  Dave took Sandra into his office near the radio telescope dish.  The office had a big screen that looked like a TV screen. 

"Let me play you something," said Dave. 

The big screen showed what looked rather like scenes from some big-budget science fiction movie. There were stunning scenes showing what looked like some city on another planet, a planet with an orange sky.  The city was populated by strange creatures that looked like very tall blue humanoids that were kind of half electronic. 

"Why are you playing some science fiction movie at work?" asked Sandra. "You might get in trouble for loafing."

"What you are seeing is no science fiction movie," explained Dave. "This is the real thing. These are images from another civilized planet."

"Are you joking?" asked Sandra.

"No, I am not," said Dave. "I told you I was involved in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  The search has finally succeeded. I've picked up radio signals sent by a civilization on another planet." 

"But the screen doesn't have sound -- it has images," said Sandra. "How could you have got such images by radio?"

"You can send images by radio," explained Dave. "It just requires a coding scheme in which particular radio blips represent pixels on a grid. I had to play around with the data in 1000 different ways before I finally discovered the coding scheme the radio signals were using. Then, poof, I was able to transform the radio messages into images -- images from another civilized planet."

"Whoever discovered this must be a genius," said Sandra. 

"I'm that genius," said Dave proudly. "I made this discovery all by myself. I pointed the radio antenna at the right star, a star 500 light-years away. I figured out the algorithm that would transform what seemed like meaningless radio blips into stunning images of a civilization on another world. No one knows about this discovery but you and me."

"Why didn't you tell anyone else?" asked Sandra. "Why did you keep your discovery secret?"

"I'm waiting for the big scientific SETI conference next month," explained Dave. "I'm going to spring this sensational result on all the scientists who come for that conference. What a surprise that will be!  By next month, I'll be world famous. My picture will be on magazine covers, and my name will become a household name. I'll be a cinch for the Nobel Prize. This is the greatest scientific discovery in history.  My work finally proves there is intelligent life somewhere else in the universe." 

"It's clear I was all wrong about your prospects," said Sandra. "Come to think of it, I would be a fool not to marry you."  Dave and Sandra enjoyed a long passionate kiss. 

"Now that I've come to your workplace, maybe you should come visit my workplace," said Sandra. "It's worth coming just to see the breathtaking view from my office." 

Dave agreed to visit Sandra's workplace the next day. After taking an elevator high up to the top of a very tall skyscraper, he met Sandra at her office.

"I can't believe the fantastic view you have from your office," said Dave. "What's that really tall building I see out the window?" 

"That's the other World Trade Center tower," explained Sandra. "We're in the North Tower, and that is the South Tower." 

It was the morning of September 11, 2001. 

Suddenly there was a very loud noise, and everyone on Sandra's floor felt a tremendous jolt. Dave looked out the windows and saw all kind of flames, sparks and smoke.  A hijacked jet had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers, the tower Dave and Sandra were in. 

"Let's get out of here!" screamed Sandra. "Head for the stairs!" 

Dave and Sandra entered the stairwells, and tried to walk down to the ground level. Before they could go very far, they found the stairwell was blocked by massive destruction.  The two tried another stairwell, and found that it also was blocked by the destruction caused by the collision of the hijacked jet. 

Very worried, Dave and Sandra went back to Sandra's floor. They soon found that a nearby fire was spreading.  The floor was starting to fill up with smoke. 

Dave got some office chairs, and smashed open a window. The fire continued to spread.  The fire engulfed more and more of Sandra's floor.

"We're trapped!" cried Dave. "There's no way out!"

"We'll have to jump," said Sandra. "It's better than burning to death. Maybe the fire department will have some rescue nets below." 

Dave gave Sandra a final kiss. Holding each other's hands, the two lovers jumped out the window. When they hit the pavement far below, they both died. 

The two lovers got a burial, but one stranger and sadder than any they imagined possible. The South Tower was also hit by a hijacked jet, and both of the World Trade Center towers collapsed entirely, burying the bodies of Dave and Sandra in a huge heap of dust and rubble. 

The only people who knew of Dave's epic space discovery had died. But there was still one hope that the greatest discovery in science history would not be lost to posterity. There was still a record of Dave's monumental discovery on the computer in Dave's office. That computer had the image files Dave had shown to Sandra, the images showing extraterrestrials and their strange cities on a distant planet. 

A week later two scientists spoke about what to do with Dave's computer. 

"It's so sad about Dave dying," said the first scientist. "When I heard he left a message that he would be at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, I could hardly believe it." 

"So what do you want to do with Dave's computer?" said the second scientist. "Do you want to examine his work by looking at the files on his computer? Or should I just erase all his files right now?"

"Well, I just started a kind-of-silly busywork project that requires lots of disk space," said the first scientist. "I sure could use all that disk space on Dave's computer.  So why don't you just erase all his files right now, so that I can use his computer for my crummy little chore."