Category: Uncategorized

Continuing a series started here, and continued here, we now turn our attention to The Pursuit of Happiness.

You may notice a trend here.  Each of these gets more abstract, and a bit more involved, than the one before.  Some consider this one the most obvious of the three.  After all, no matter what anyone else does you can always try to be happy.  After all, it doesn’t say a right to be happy, just to “pursue” it.

But is that all that “The Pursuit of Happiness” means?  After all, Thomas Jefferson was well educated and many consider him one of the most intelligent men of his day.  Would he include something so trite in his statement of the philosophical underpinnings of why the US was declaring independence?  Would the other intelligent and highly educated men have left it there if it were something so basic that, well, even a prisoner in chains can try to be happy, can “pursue happiness” if that’s all it means.

I don’t think it can be that trite.

To pursue happiness is to seek something beyond mere survival.  Liberty is a large part of it.  One must have the freedom to do the things that one believes will lead to happiness.  But more than that is required.  If one has to spend every moment, every ounce of effort, every gram of resources in merely staying alive one has nothing left to pursue happiness.

So, in order to pursue happiness, certain needs must first be met.  One must have something left after the struggle for survival.  It need not be much.  Consider, for instance, if the world economy utterly collapsed.  Infrastructure broke down.  Technology was wrecked.  After this catastrophe, imagine you are one of the few survivors left with nothing with which to work.  You’re all alone.  Your family (if you have one) is gone.  It’s just you, trying to survive.

That would be a pretty harsh reality.  Would it be possible to pursue happiness in this new world?

Well, at first you’d struggle just to survive. (Some people, no doubt, would just give up and die, but you’re not one of those, are you?)  You’d have to find or build shelter, find water, find food.  A piece of the roof of that collapsed house is leaning against a charred piece of wall.  It’s not much, but it will keep the rain and snow off and with a fire by the opening you can keep it warm enough not to freeze in the cold.  There’s a retention pond not too far away.  It’s not much.  The water is uncomfortably dirty, but it’s water and it keeps away dying of thirst.  Maybe in the rubble of that library you find some books on edible plants and some old books on how to build fish traps and snares.

You survive.  And before long at all you find that taking care of the basics of survival doesn’t take up all your time and effort.  You have time to do other things.  Maybe you find some books among the rubble to read for the sheer pleasure of reading.  Or maybe you fiddle around with different ways of making sounds and create some form of musical instrument and play for your own entertainment.  Or perhaps its pictures or sculpture that catches your fancy.  Or maybe it’s simply decorating the tools you make to help your survival.  In any case, you can do more that mere survival.  You can do things to improve your lot on an emotional level, to pursue happiness, rather than just for mere physical survival.

And when you’re confident you have the means to survive, you leave the little piece of roof that sheltered you and set out to find others.  Perhaps you do find them.  Now you have companionship.  And while the pain of your lost family never goes completely away (it never does), it recedes to bittersweet memory and you can build a new family.

So even in this horribly apocalyptic world it’s possible to meaningfully pursue happiness.  Mind you, one could fail anywhere along that chain.  But the right isn’t to obtain happiness, just to pursue it.  And as soon as you have the possibility of some freedom of action and thought beyond that required for mere survival, it becomes possible to seek more.

Now let’s change the scenario a bit.  Instead of being alone, let’s bring some other people into the picture.  But these other people aren’t nice people who want to be friends.  They’re roving bands of raiders who will kill you over the rabbit you managed to trap and the wild onions you dug up for dinner.   Now, instead of just seeing to the task of survival you have to constantly be looking to your back trail.  You have to make sure your camp is hidden.  Small fires made with only bone dry wood because smoke can attract raiders.  That means a cold camp when it’s wet.

Notice how that picture changed?  Instead of being able to spend the necessary time to survival and spending the rest on whatever you will, whatever might bring you a modicum of happiness, all of your time is now taken up.  When not hunting/trapping/fishing/gathering you’re hiding.  Finding other people?  Can you trust them not to be raiders?  And when you are pursuing mere survival you have to worry about what, or rather who, you will find around the next bend of the trail or over the next ridge.  Gone is the time spent on other activities.

And that is the greatest threat to the right to “Pursuit of Happiness”, other people–people of ill will.  Nature may be harsh, often dangerous, but there’s no malice in it.  But bring in people with actual malice and the picture changes.

What is needed is a modicum of order, enough order to keep the people of ill will “pruned back” sufficiently so that everyone else isn’t having to spend every moment looking over their shoulder wondering, and enough stability that you can step back from the mere task of survival and do something else.

“And to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

So there we have it, the reason for government.  It is to act against the use of force whereby one person (or group of persons) infringes on the right to life and liberty of another, and to provide that minimum of order and stability required to allow each individual to pursue happiness as that individual sees fit.  Enough order.  Enough stability.  Enough so that the people of ill will who mean you harm are kept in check, but not so much at the government itself becomes a threat to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.  To go beyond that is itself an infringement on the rights held by the people.

In a recent post I spoke on the Right to Life and how that Right implies the right to defend that life and the right to possession and carrying of the means of effective defense.

Today, I speak on the Right to Liberty.

To recap, from the Declaration of Independence, we have: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

Last time we discussed life.  This time we discuss Liberty.  Life is fairly straightforward.  There might be some controversy over where life ends and where it begins but for the majority of the time we are quite clear on what “life” means.  Liberty is a bit more complicated.  In general, ones right to life does not infringe on another person’s right to life.  There are exceptional circumstances:  in defending one’s own life one may end the life of another.  In those cases, however, it can be seen that the one who created the situation, the one who placed the other in the need to defend his or her self, willingly took upon himself a risk and the onus for his loss of life is on himself.  It is the same case as when someone engages in any dangerous activity.  If someone engages in free rock climbing and falls to his death it is not the cliff’s fault or responsibility but his own.  Some ask “but does he deserve to die for that.”  This is not a matter of deserving to die, but of freely taking choices knowing that that could be the outcome, and therefore freely taking the risk on oneself.

And choice is the key, which leads us to Liberty.  In the end, Liberty is about choices, real choices, not “do this or die” choices.  Being forced to do something or give up the right to life is not a choice to most people in most circumstances.  As one simple example, a person may choose what to eat.  They cannot usually choose if they eat or not in the long run.  Some few may chose to not eat to the point of death from starvation, but that is rare and we need not consider it for the general case.  We will consider that any choice that involves “do this or die” is not a free choice and, in fact, extend that to extreme pain.  Since people have been known to choose death in preference to extreme pain we can say that “do this or suffer” is likewise not free.

Liberty, then, is about free choice.  One can define Liberty as the sum total of choices available to a person.  The problem there arises when my choices may affect the choices available to someone else.  Liberty is about ones ability to make choices so long as they do not forcibly infringe on the same right in someone else.  The key word there is forcibly.  If one, say, likes to wear bright colors that clash someone else may not like that.  They may find it unpleasant when the discordant one walks into a restaurant, but it’s not a forcible infringement.  One can tolerate it or not as one chooses.  As Erik Frank Russel put in the mouth of one of his characters in And Then There Were None, “I can please myself whether or not I endure it.  That’s freedom ain’t it?”  They can wear what they wish.  You can like it or not as you wish.  Liberty on both sides.

Other cases also become apparent when one considers Liberty as being about free choice.  If one is able to arm oneself and defend one’s home against invaders, that is free choice.  That is Liberty.  If one needs to stand in guard every night because the invaders–whether robbers, rioters, or foreign invaders–are constantly present, that is not.  Again free choice is the key.  A society where you can defend your home at need is more free than one where one cannot.  However, a society where a person needs to spend most of his time in standing guard over his home is less free than one in which he can pursue other activities and only take an active guard at special need.  Again, free choice is the key.

The initiation of force to infringe upon another is contrary to the Right to Liberty.  But what happens when someone does forcibly infringe on the Liberty of another?  What then?  In that case, the use of force to end the infringement is justified.  One might attempt reason or persuasion to accomplish that end, but experience has shown that when one uses force to infringe on the Liberty of another, only force will persuade them to cease.

And so the principle of Liberty, while not sanctioning the initiation of force to restrict the Liberty of another, does sanction its use to defend ones own.

From whence comes this force?  Is there some special source from which the force to restore liberty must come?  One may look for such a source without finding it.  Some may claim that it comes from Government, from some body chosen in some manner, whether from Divine Right of Kings or The Will of the People, that is the sole repository of the right to use force.  Yet, again, experience has shown that such sources of force are, if left unchecked, more likely to be used to restrict than to preserve and restore Liberty.

No.  In the end, like with the Right to Life, the Right to Liberty, and the power to defend that Right, must come down to the individual.  Each individual must have sanction, the final Liberty, to defend his or her own Liberty.  The individual may delegate some of that power to a greater group to act as Guardians of that Liberty, in particular as a defense against encroachments on his or her liberty from other groups that he cannot defend against as an individual.  But in so doing, he runs the risk that the Guardians may, in turn use that power to infringe his own Liberty.  Against such chance he must retain both the power and the license to use that power to defend his Liberty against even the Guardian he and his fellows have chosen to protect it.

In Right to Life we had the conclusion that to deny the means of defense against those who would infringe it is to deny the right itself.  So it is with the Right to Liberty.  For Liberty we generally choose Guardians to secure and defend that Liberty.  And yet history has shown all too often that those Guardians themselves can become a threat to Liberty.  The body of the people in themselves, must then retain the power to defend their Liberty even against their chosen Guardians.  The balance of power must remain with the individuals so that even their chosen Guardians cannot with impunity infringe on their Liberty.  To deny the right to defend Liberty, by force if need be, is to deny the right to Liberty itself.

A Blast for the Past, I’m mostly importing from my LiveJournal account.  Since there are a thousand and one blogs on writing, I’ve decided to open this up a bit and include discussion of philosophy and what not as well so folk can get a feel for how I think.

The United States was founded not only as a geographic entity, but as a set of principles.  Those principles were originally set out in the Declaration of Independence, to wit:

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights, are Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from consent of the governed.”

The above was written from memory.  Some of the punctuation and exact wording might not match exactly, and I may not have matched Jefferson’s rather idiosyncratic sentence breaks, but it should be fairly close.

It should be noted that much discussion was had over whether “property” should be included in the unalienable rights.  In the end it was not included in this document but the discussion itself shows that it was considered of fairly close par.

Now, while “unalienable” does not mean that the exercise of the rights cannot be taken away, when written into the Constitution, the standards for two of them (life and liberty also with property in that case) of which a person may be deprived is given:  due process of law, which is after one has been tried in a proper court of law with opportunity to answer accusations and summon witnesses for ones own defense.

So, short of that, one may not be deprived of the right to life*.  But how can one have a right to life if one does not have the means to effectively defend that life against persons or things that threaten it?  Note, this is not a right to require others to defend ones life.  Doing so would be an infringement on their own Liberty. (Likewise, to digress a moment, requiring others to provide “health care” for one is an infringement on their own right to Liberty. To the very extent that you are requiring them to provide for you, you are enslaving them.) But that you cannot require others to provide for the defense of your life only underscores the importance of your own right to defend it.  One may enter into agreements with others for mutual defense, mutual assistance in the defense of each individual’s life, liberty, and property, but entering into such agreements is merely the exercise of the individual right combined with “peaceable assembly.”

So, right to life and right to defend that life.  But can such a right exist when means to defense are denied?  Could a peasant in Feudal Europe be said to have a right to self defense if he is limited to bare hands and farming implements against a mounted and armored knight?  Oh, he might have the “right” to try, given the proper legal code, but it would be meaningless without the means.  Give that peasant a firearm and suddenly that armored knight finds that he cannot with impunity take that peasant’s right to life.

And, so, a right to life, and its implicit right to defend that life, must come with the right to effective means for defense. And, so, if there is a right to life, then there must be a right to defend that life, and there must be a right to effective means to that defense.  To deny the latter, to deny the right to effective arms for self defense, is to deny the very right to life.

And to deny the right to life is to deny all other rights which a person might hold.  For how can one have liberty without life?  How can one have property without life?  How can one pursue happiness without life?

*Note here that I am not speaking to the abortion debate on the subject of “right to life.” Much debate could be had on when life begins and, thus, when “right to life” comes into play.  That is not my purpose here.  Similarly, there is lesser but still some debate on when life, and therefore the right to same, ends.  Again, not my purpose here.  So please don’t get sidetracked into those debates.

Remember that these snippets are very much draft copy.  They include typos, spelling errors, even places where I changed thoughts in mid sentence.  But, if you can get through that, enjoy.

Jared Arthurs stared out the dorsal viewport in the living module of the C.A.M.P.E.R. Beyond the huge double dishes of the solar-thermal power collectors he could just make out the shining glint of A. C. Clarke, FTI’s seven-year-old space station. He had to search to spot it. In a Geosynchronous orbit, it shone in the reflected sunlight about as bright as a second magnitude star. If he watched without moving, Jared could just see the movement against the star background.
From the corner of his eye Jared could see Michelle O’Brien, one of the engineering crew testing new zero-g machine shop tools, staring into her laptop computer’s display.
One week, Jared thought, returning his attention to the view outside. One more week and it’s all over.
Clarke, and three other stations just like it, had put C.A.M.P.E.R. Incorporated out of business. He wanted to hate them, but he couldn’t. FTI had done what Jared had tried to do–bring the cost of working in space down to an affordable level–only better.
Since Schneider’s company had been operating, clients for C.A.M.P.E.R. had dried up. For the few that remained, he had launched their missions, performed their research, and compiled their results. The current mission, to test equipment for a zero-G machine shop, was the last. When this one finished in another week C.A.M.P.E.R. Incorporated would be defunct. All they had going for them was one purchase offer–tendered by Richard Schneider.
Jared forced a wan smile. The Civilian Astronautical Manned Platform for Extended Research had had a good run, but now it was over.
“Mr. Arthurs?” Wade Nicks, senior engineer on the research team, called to him.
“What is it, Wade?”
“I think you’d better take a look at this.”
At Jared’s nod Wade led the way through the station with almost frantic haste. Jared considered calling him on the safety violation, but did not. In the three months they had been aboard, Wade had impressed Jared as a careful, serious researcher who never rushed anything. He would have a good reason for his speed.
Michelle followed behind him.
“Here.” Wade stopped at a ventral viewport. “Look south, over North Africa. Tell me I’m hallucinating. Please tell me I’m hallucinating.”
Jared looked. “Below” them the Mediterranean rolled by. Just to the south, from the North African Confederacy, scores of bright pinpricks, brilliant even against the sunlit Mediterranean, crawled northward.
Jared looked up at Wade’s anxious face.
“Please tell me those aren’t missiles,” Wade said.
“I would,” Jared stared back out through the viewport, “but I’d be lying.”
“Who started a war?” Wade voice sounded half an octave higher in pitch than its normal tone. His face went white. His hands clenched and opened repeatedly.
“I don’t know.” Jared had to fight down panic himself. He swallowed at the gorge that rose in his throat.
As he looked back out the port, fully half the missiles flared briefly and died. Another wave started, more than a third exploding much too soon to be destroyed by missile defenses. Jared snorted. Was their reliability that bad?
A sound, like the rattling of a thousand hailstones on a tin roof, echoed throughout the station and ended almost as soon as it had begun. The lights died. Even the ever-present whir of the ventilation fans quit. A few seconds later, the emergency systems cut in. Jared sighed with relief at the reassuring whine of the emergency fans.
“What?” Despite the fear apparent in his voice, Wade reacted properly. He hauled himself by handrail to one side of the module, leaving the central corridor clear for traffic and placing himself by an emergency bubble–just in case.
“I think somebody’s defenses mistook us for a missile,” Jared said. He cocked his head to one side. He could not feel any pressure change in his ears so he assumed that the module had not been perforated.
The other two members of the crew, Crystal Gibson and Ralph Moulton, burst through the hatchway into the module, but Jared’s chopping gesture stopped them before they could say anything. He turned back to the viewport to watch.
Their orbital path took C.A.M.P.E.R. within view of the United States as the remaining North African missiles began their reentry, burning bright as meteors. Rising points of light, the bright flare from powerful rocket engines, met the incoming warheads as the missile arm of the U.S.’s final stage defensive system fought back. Other weapons, invisible to Jared’s eyes, would also be shooting.
As Jared watched, three reentry traces faded as the warheads slowed below hypersonic speed. Even seen from space, the fireballs left purple spots in front of Jared’s eyes. One warhead exploded in Kansas, another in southeastern Ohio, and the third either in Montana or just across the border in Canada.
Almost before the light from the explosions had died away, the U.S. retaliated. About two dozen missiles flew. Six of them, however, followed a track different from the remainder, more northward. Jared’s breath caught as he realized those missiles were probably heading for Russia although he could not imagine why.
Russia lay below the horizon when C.A.M.P.E.R.’s next orbit took them around the world, but when they again passed over the U.S. a small flock of missiles, one not launched by the North Africans, descended on the US.
After the initial spasm, no more missiles flew. Jared watched for three more orbits before allowing himself to relax slightly.
“It looks like Earth may survive this war,” Jared said.
The missile barrages had ended. It did indeed look like Earth was going to survive the war. Jared was far less sanguine about the crew of C.A.M.P.E.R.

I went to the allergy doctor this morning for an allergy test. They tested 35 separate allergens, including dust mites, various species of tree pollen, various molds, various weeds and grasses, cats and dogs, cockroaches, and feathers. Of the 35 I was allergic to 26 of them (including dogs–but getting rid of my dogs is not an option, then again “dog” was one of the milder reactions so with everything else, what would be the point?).

So, in addition to the surgical fixes for breathing path issues (deviated septum and oversize ridges in the nasal passages meaning that even the least little swelling from an allergic reaction closes things right down) we’re looking at allergy shots. And that means a visit to the doctor once a week until such time as I get to a “maintenance” regime where I can give myself the shots.

Good news is that the allergy shots are covered by my insurance at 100%.

But I am told that breathing is not optional so I guess this is where we’re going.

I’ve always been a huge proponent of space flight, particularly manned space flight.  And one of my great disappointments with NASA is that if they’re working toward making it possible for me (or, more likely, my daughter) to be able to go, then they’re hiding that quite well when it’s what they should be selling.

I grew up during Apollo.  I watched the first men go to the moon.  I watched the last men go to the moon. (Dammit.)  I watched Skylab demonstrate that people could live and work in space.  And I watched the Shuttle go from a project intended to bring the cost of taking people and equipment into space to a finicky hardware system that had to be nearly rebuilt after every flight costing more per pound delivered to orbit than Apollo.

But there was more than just the “Moon race” that captivated me.  There was a book.  It was my favorite book in late first, early second grade.  It was the reason that I stated unequivocally back then that “black is my favorite color.”  For a long, long time I was trying to find that book.  I identified some of the pictures from it, pictures I found in a different context, but not that book.

Well, thanks to a friend’s posting on FaceBook, I found the book.  I found it, and I am going to own it.  The book is “You Will Go to the Moon” by Mae and Ira Freeman.

Remember that these snippets are very much draft copy.  They include typos, spelling errors, even places where I changed thoughts in mid sentence.  But, if you can get through that, enjoy.

For three days, Karen Gold had been working eighteen hours out of every twenty-four on the Troy Mission. Harry Jordan’s call had come as a welcome break.
She commanded FTI’s Troy Mission, a research mission en route to one of the Earth-Sun Trojan points. Astronomers had recently discovered several small asteroids there and they were to investigate and conduct assays.
The drive core formed the center of the ship. The ion engines that drove them, now turned in the direction of their travel to brake the speed they had developed in the first half of their trip, dominated one end and the gossamer fine web of the solar panels dominated the other. In between and on either side were the living quarters, twin cylinders that rotated around the drive core to provide artificial gravity for the sixty-three crewmembers that occupied them. The living quarters connected to the drive core by a pressurized tube and tether assembly at the center and stabilizing tethers at the ends.
The drives were shut down. Their schedule had enough margin that, from this distance, they could have the engines down for more than ten days and still rendezvous with the asteroids ahead of them. A slight increase in deceleration would make up for the lost time.
Gold and her second in command, Harry Jordan, clung to the mesh of small handholds that covered the outside of drive section of the ship. A technician responsible for the upkeep of the drive led them.
Sweat clung to Gold’s upper lip, carrying its saltiness into her mouth.
“There,” Jordan said as they passed the edge of the shroud and the engine drive units came into view. “Number three’s the one.”
Gold followed his pointing finger to the number three, of twelve, drive unit. The housing had been rotated on its gimbals so that sunlight caught the ends of the drives at an oblique angle. The electrostatic rings, which accelerated the ions produced by the engines and produced the thrust that drove the ship, cast shadows across the porous tungsten ion generator plates. Even so and over the distance that yet remained, Gold saw the hole in the ion generator plate.
“That’s just great,” Gold said. “How did it happen?”
“Drive electrode erosion, but not even over the surface,” Jordan said. “A thin spot formed. Fuel pressure forced a crack that spread. The panel blew out.”
Gold pulled herself closer. The ragged edges of the whole twisted outward as if the plate had been punched open from inside. “What’s this do to our flight?” she asked.
“By itself, it’s not too bad,” Jordan said. “We can run on eleven engines if we have to and still have deceleration power to spare. I’m more concerned about the others.”
“I can see that,” she thought for a moment, remembering some of the reports she had read, reports that related to their engine fuel and power usage. “We can probably afford to lose two more and still make it, but if this happened to one, why can’t it happen to all of them?”
“Order’s, Captain?”
Gold swallowed. They couldn’t risk losing any more engines. The crew would have to inspect each one for any signs of weakness such as had damaged this one. They could seal small cracks before those cracks led to a failure such as this one. The repair would reduce engine performance, but it would be better than the loss of an entire engine. With the erosion of the drive electrodes continuing, those inspections would have to be an ongoing process, and they could not afford to shut down the drives every time they needed to make an inspection. She shook her head, hating the orders emerging from her mouth, “Have a complete inspection done of all the engines. Do it quick, but do it thorough. Then, set up a rotation of individual engine shutdown and inspects for the rest of the flight. We can’t afford to stop boosting for those, so pull each engine while the others are still running.”
“Dangerous,” Jordan said.
Gold nodded. “But that’s the only way we’ll make it.”
“Understood, Captain,” Jordan said, “Should I ask for volunteers.”
Gold thought for a moment. A call for volunteers would be romantic, and if this were an old science fiction movie someone would be willing to put his own life on the line to save the lives of the rest of the crew. They would probably die heroically to save the ship. She could not, however, take the chance. “No, Harry. Let the drives crew take it in turn.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And I’d better get on the horn with Clarke and make sure that they get a complete new set of drive electrodes, and spares, in that robot resupply mission.”
Suddenly, the thought of reviewing mounds of reports increased enormously in appeal to Gold.

Colonel Dave Mason, commander of Nasa’s lunar base, entered meeting room last. Although he had called the meeting, he felt more nervous than any of the others. He had spent the last two days speaking with various officials on Earth, including General Russell, his immediate superior. He liked each answer he got less than the one before it.
He needed a drink and he needed one badly, but not now.
Everyone, except in official communications, called the base Lunaville. Mason had called it that as a joke when he first arrived. In old science fiction stories the first moon colony was often called Luna City but they weren’t big enough to be a city, thus the nickname “Lunaville” since it was more the size of a village than a city. The name had stuck.
Mason’s four primary subordinates sat at the table. He liked to think of them as his officers although all except Major Brian Angel, his second in command, were civilians.
“We have a problem,” Mason could not restrain a grim smile at the understatement. “The North African Confederacy has made demands that, if followed, would mean the end of the space program, including all civilian projects.”
“The North Africans?” Tad Alexander, who headed the industrial section, shrugged. “Ignore them. What can they do?” Tad was the shortest person at the table, about 170 centimeters tall. His short stature and pot belly had created an impression in Mason’s mind soon shattered b yseeing Alexander performing Tai Chi forms with liquid grace in the gym, adapting them to the one-sixth gravity of the moon.
Mason smiled wryly. “They have threatened ‘dire consequences’ if we fail to comply with their demands.”
“‘Dire consequences’?” Alexander snorted. “Why does every tin pot country with a grudge think they can order the U. S. around with vague threats?”
“I agree with Tad,” Leonard Franklin said. “ibnAllah’s nuts. Ignore him.” As chief doctor, Franklin did more than dispense advice on how to remain healthy and fit on the moon. He took his own advice. When duty did not keep him occupied he spent fully twice as much time in the gym as regulations required, most of that time on the bicycles or treadmills. At fifty, he still retained a narrow waist and a slim, but muscular frame, topped by a close-cropped brush of gray hair.
“It’s not that simple,” Mason said. He tossed a sheaf of printouts onto the desktop. “I just got an intelligence report which I am cleared to release here. The North Africans have, over the past five years, conducted a number of tests of satellite launchers, solid fueled. All have failed, crashing seven to nine thousand miles downrange.”
“I don’t understand,” Franklin began. “Why do we care about failed rocket launches?”
“They may have failed to launch satellites, but does that mean they failed as rockets? They reached a range of five thousand miles or more,” Angel said. “That’s the range that defines an ICBM, isn’t it?”
Mason nodded.
“ICBMs?” Alexander half rose from his seat. “That’s not….”
“In addition,” Mason kept his voice level, “they have been secretly–or so they thought–developing thorium reserves. Those reserves have been vanishing. Nobody’s been able to find out what the North Africans are doing with them. At least, if they have, they’re not telling me.”
“Thorium?” This time Angel cocked his head in puzzlement.
“Thorium.” Alan Blanchard, head of the scientific team, nodded. “It can be bred into uranium 233 which is fissionable. I’ve never heard of it being used for a bomb, but I suppose it’s possible.” He frowned. “If it is, then we’ve got a real problem. Thorium is more than three times as common as uranium.”
Blanchard was the oldest person at the table. At sixty-three, he had somehow managed to acquire PhD’s in physics, geology, and mathematics. When Mason read his personnel file, he had learned that he also had the coursework for further degrees in chemistry and astronomy. Even more, Blanchard continued taking extension courses in engineering in the midst of his work with the Lunaville science team. Mason wondered where Blanchard found the time to have a wife, three kids, and four grandchildren back on Earth.
“Oh, God.” Franklin dropped his head onto his hands, while his elbows rested on the table. “A madman with nukes.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “As a result, we’ve got to tread carefully. I’ve been told that we might have to shut down for a while; move everyone back to Earth until it blows over. I’m told that we’ll open back up once the current furor dies down, or when ibnAllah’s subjects have deposed him.”
Mason had to swallow. He did not believe that Lunaville would reopen in his lifetime if they shut down. Maybe it would never open again.
“So what do we have to do?” Angel asked softly.
“Prepare to shut down and evacuate,” Mason said. “Try to leave things so that those who come after us, to reopen, will have an easy time of it.”
He paused. “Tad, check over our equipment. Whatever we can mothball, we’ll leave here. The rest will have to be either scrapped or sent back to Earth.”
Alexander looked as if he would argue. Mason locked gazes with him. A moment later, Alexander nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I don’t think you’ll have much to worry about, Leonard. I don’t think you have any equipment that we need to worry about either mothballing or taking back.” He turned to Blanchard.
“We already share scientific data pretty freely, Blanchard said. “Maybe my team can stay?”
Mason shook his head. “Do you want to bet your lives on ibnAllah behaving reasonably? Frankly, if we do shut down there won’t be a ship out this way for the duration. That means no bus home for you or your team. It also means no supplies. The eating would get mighty thin, mighty fast. Sorry, but if we go, you’ll go too.”
Blanchard sighed and nodded. “I’ll try to get as much set up to run without us as I can. We can at least beam data back to Earth.”
“Good man,” Mason said. To the room at large, he added, “I’d like to point out that this is all worst case stuff. The suits in Washington may still convince the U. N. to reject the North African demands. The North African threats may be empty. Someone may put the brakes on President ibnAllah. Anything can happen.”
The looks in their faces told Mason that they did not believe him. Fair enough. He did not believe himself.
“All right,” he said. “You’re dismissed.”
Angel remained as the others filed out. “It’s worse than you’re saying, isn’t it?”
Mason nodded. “The North Africans have already rejected three compromises out of hand. They obviously believe they’re holding a strong hand, so they probably have both missiles and nukes. Gods, they probably think that they’ve got God on their side so they can’t possibly lose.”
“IbnAllah?” Angel shook his head. “Do you know what that means?”
Mason shook his head. “I never learned Arabic. Something about Allah?”
“I spent a tour in Riyadh before…. Anyway, ‘ibn’ means ‘son of’. ‘Allah’, of course, is their name for God. Since they haven’t already stoned him for blasphemy, yeah, I’d say, yeah, they believe they have God on their side.”
“If that’s the case, the current administration will probably cave in the end.” He sank into his seat. “You know my tour out here has destroyed my marriage.” His wife had “Dear Johned” him just a week before. He rubbed tiredness out of his eyes. “And now it’s all for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Angel said. “We’ve already accomplished a lot.”
“Nothing,” Mason repeated. “All we’ve accomplished will be undone in the next few years. I’ve seen it happen before.”
Angel shrugged. “Then we start over.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Mason sighed. “Whatever. I need a drink.”
This was all Schneider’s fault, Mason thought. If Richard Schneider and his company had not been so active in exploiting space, maybe the North Africans would have left everyone else alone. But he wasn’t content with just grabbing the launch market. He had to control transport between orbit and the moon, have two space stations of his own and launch the space stations built by the Japanese and Germans. Worse, he had to get the contract for shipping to Lunaville and, in exchange, get the metal Lunaville produced as a by-product of oxygen extraction and ship it out to where he was building that space colony.
While Mason had no argument with what Schneider did. Building space stations and colonies were all good things so far as Mason was concerned. That one man did it disturbed him. Schneider seemed set on becoming king of all space and that probably set off the North Africans.
Maybe someone should lock ibnAllah and Schneider in an arena somewhere. It would be fitting. Let those two people who thought they were God kill each other.

Review of my story “Live to Tell” by Stephanie Souders.

http://rightfans.blogspot.com/2014/03/surfing-human-wave-david-l-burkheads.html

Back in the day on an old online service (the Internet existed, but it had not yet really begun to take off) GEnie, there was a Science Fiction Roundtable. As a member of SFWA (I was once under the belief that membership might help my career. What can I say; we’re all young and stupid once.) I had a “freeflag” to this group.

So, in one discussion I pointed out that one of the things I didn’t care about in Tolkien was this idea that that the world was in perpetual decline. Yes, I’m aware of the mythic underpinnings of such a structure–classic myth with it’s Gold, Silver, and Iron ages, each progressively worse than the one before. Still, it didn’t fit my world view and that was a source of frustration with the world of Middle Earth and since the world is very much a character, in some ways the main character, well…

I got jumped on by a Special Snowflake who insisted that of course the world is in decline. We’re all worse off than our ancestors were.

Wait. What?

I pointed out that all Caesar’s wealth could not have bought him a single Tylenol(r) for his headache to be met with a response that the Romans had access to Opium.

Wait.  What?

The answer to a proxy for modern medicine even at the low end was that they had opium?  And I’ll give them Ethanol and, are willows native to Europe?  I don’t know, but in the absence of knowledge, let them have willow bark as well.

Against that we have the contents of my medicine cabinet.

But the kicker was when someone else told me that she (yes, it was a she) would have to get used to having slaves do all the stuff we do with machines today, but it would really be no worse than living today.

Wait. What?

First off, having machines rather than slaves to do menial chores is not in and of itself a major improvement on past society? Did she really mean that?

But the real question is, what unbridled hubris led her to think she would be the slave owner instead of the slave?

At that point I just gave up.  The person in question was all holier-than-thou “I’m not interested in trying to convince you.” (Good thing given that you’re so utterly, egregiously, wrong.)

The world has generally gotten better over the years, the decades, the centuries.  It may have its ups and downs.  There may be reversals from time to time, but in the long run the trend has been upward.

And, thus, while I will occasionally venture into some dark explorations, my futures tend to be upbeat and hopeful.  Problems are problems to overcome, not some inevitable collapse into everlasting hell.  This is the kind of fiction I like to write.  This is the kind of fiction I like to read.

I don’t think I’m alone.

Remember that these snippets are very much draft copy.  They include typos, spelling errors, even places where I changed thoughts in mid sentence.  But, if you can get through that, enjoy.

Full Earth and Gibbous Moon shown in the sky