The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 35

There’s something on the long-range scanner

…

I didn’t make it back to the leafy suburban late-night stroll, as much as I wanted to have that relaxing moment, going back to the bridge.

It was quiet, if not a subdued atmosphere, in other words, normal for the hour. It was a skeleton crew, mostly volunteers, those without partners or couldn’t sleep.

Sleep was one of the first problems because there was no real differentiation between night and day, a sort of hangover from those who worked night shift back on earth, only it extended to everyone. I’d long since given up the notion of getting a good night’s sleep.

“Where are we?” I asked, after sitting in the chair and casting a glance over the bridge in semi-darkness, and the view of empty, inky black space outside the ship.

The answer to the question, I thought wryly, was ‘in space’, but I doubt any of those on duty would have the desire to use humour in such a situation.

“In direct line with Pluto’s orbit.”

Salaman, the navigating officer, was not a man with a sense of humour, a just the facts sort of person.

“Any chance if seeing the planet?”

“If we sit here for the next 68 years, maybe.”

OK, so Salaman did have some humour in him if a little dry.

“Engineering.” The Chief Engineer’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Good news, I hope?”

“Problem sorted. Another item to take up with the inspection crew when we get home. You’re free to resume.”

“Thank you.” Then to the helmsman, “Let’s take it slowly, quarter speed.”

“Quarter speed it is, sir.”

There was a barely noticeable movement, then it was as if nothing had happened. That was the disconcerting part, the fact we had no discernible way of knowing we were moving.

“Quarter speed, sir, all systems nominal.”

“Give it five minutes, then move to half, and so on “

“Yes, sir.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I often tried to remember what it was like back home, before the weather changed for the worse, before people changed, not necessarily for the worse, but not as friendly or happy we once were.

That was a long time ago, though, and I’d spent more of my life in space than on earth now and wasn’t sure how I was going to survive once I had to retire. That was, hopefully, a long time away.

“Sir, we have a long-range contact, not sure yet if it’s a meteor or a ship.” The navigator’s voice cut into my reverie.

Did she just add the ship to the report, hoping to make a boring night into something more interesting?

“Should we hold off going to full speed, Sir?”

Probably a good idea until we identified the problem. “OK.”

I stood, walked over to the window, and looked out, symbolically looking for the object. Long-range meant, beyond a million or so earth kilometres, barely discernible to the scanners let alone a human eye.

“It’s moving at about half light speed, coming towards us.”

That might be a stretch assuming that we could possibly be on an intercepting course.

“Change our heading five degrees and see if it changes too.”

There was a slight movement as we changed course. I remained by the window, watching and waiting. There were a few flecks in the blackness, and I wondered if this was the outer rim of a meteor shower. Were they too small for the sensors to pick up, or was the navigator concentrating on the one large object?

Five minutes passed, then ten.

“Object still on a collision course, sir.”

Which missed stating the obvious, that whatever was out there had also changed course. Whoever or whatever was out there wanted to meet us.

“Revert back to the original course. When will we have a clearer picture of this object?”

“Fifteen minutes, sir.”

I had read the specifications of the long-range sensors and scanners, the former mostly do we could avoid space debris that could damage the hull, though that would take a relatively large chunk.

It was our speed, and that of incoming objects that were the problem, and that’s why we had sn autopilot to help avoid these issues.

The scanners could see objects, magnify them, from a reasonable distance, so we could identify them if we had previous knowledge of them. Alien spaceships, if we were to encounter one, might make that identification difficult but not impossible. But, on the other hand, the specifications of every ship in space, that we knew about, of course, was in the database.

Anything else, it could be added.

Nothing more to see, I sat down again. We were still sitting at half speed, and from what I could see on my console, everything was fine.

Then the screen switched to the long-range scan of the object.

It was a ship.

The scanner was going through the known ships list, looking for a match, until it reached the end, bringing up “unknown”.

The navigator stated the obvious, “it’s a ship sir, but not one in our database. Do you think it might be the prototype the Russians were talking about making a dozen or so years ago?”

Everyone knew about the famous, if you won’t share we’ll build our own, bigger and better ship when the space alliance at the time baulked at bully tactics the Russians tried to use to take over running the alliance.

They had backed down in the face of a world united against them, but had they really?

“We’ll soon find out.”

…

“Trouble in Store” – Short stories my way: Adding a catalyst

Just when there’s enough complication in the story, we could leave it there with the current three protagonists and see what happens.

But I like mayhem.

So rather than another customer, it’s time to add a complication; an off duty policeman, or more to the point, policewoman. A beat cop, if they still exist.

Her back story in a sentence or so:

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day. So far.

What is she doing near the shop? She lives around the corner. Perhaps she knows the reputation of the shopkeeper or perhaps not. It’s not relevant, then, as it is a place she avoids.

Now, she may not have the option. She sees the shop is still open, past the usual closing time.

Let’s continue:

She came around the corner into the street where she lived and saw the lights were on in the corner store.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight. Long past closing time. She looked through the window but from the other side of the road and could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. There were rumors, and she hoped they were not true.

Meanwhile, back in the shop how are the others faring?

The shopkeeper is in an invidious position, he can’t supply the kids with the drugs and get them out, not in front of the customer.

The fact the girl has a gun makes the situation almost impossible. What would happen if he suggests the customer leave? Without him, the situation would be simpler.

Alphonse had only a few moments to sum up the situation, and the sum of those deliberations was the remove the only problem, the customer.

He could still salvage this:

The shopkeeper changed his expression to one more placatory, and said quietly to the girl, ‘Look, this is not this chap’s problem.’ He nodded in the direction of the customer. ‘I’m sure he’d rather not be here, and you would glad of one less distraction.’

He could see she was wavering, she was not holding the gun so steadily, and the longer this dragged on, the more nervous and unpredictable she would become.

And in the longer game, the customer would sing his praises no matter what happened after he left.

The girl looked at Jack. The shopkeeper was right. If he wasn’t here this could be over. But there was another problem. It didn’t look like Simmo was in any shape to get away. In fact, this was looking more like a suicide mission.

She waved the gun in his direction. ‘Get out now, before I change my mind.’

As the gun turned to the shopkeeper, Jack wasn’t going to wait to be asked twice and started sidling towards the door.

What happens next?

And the story for this section, with a few minor changes:

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day. So far. For now, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.

Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night. It was not. The lights were still on.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing time. She looked through the window but from the other side of the road and could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. There were rumors, and she hoped they were not true.

He could see she was wavering, she was not holding the gun so steadily, and the longer this dragged on, the more nervous and unpredictable she would become.

And in the longer game, the customer would sing his praises no matter what happened after he left.

She waved the gun in his direction. ‘Get out now, before I change my mind.’

As the gun turned to the shopkeeper, Jack wasn’t going to wait to be asked twice and started sidling towards the door.

Next: Actions have consequences

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 58

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

It was only an hours’ worth of skimming newspapers, for the dates I’d discovered at the cemetery, and the month around the time that Boggs’s father had disappeared, because the date of death for Friedrich Ormiston had a familiar ring to it.

They’d both apparently died in the same year, within months of each other.

Of course, there was a twist.

Neither of the two men’s bodies had been found, and both missing person’s cases had remained open for the specified period before being declared legally dead. I knew that to be the case for Boggs’s father, but I had not really known the details of the circumstances.

The paper had played up the disappearance of both men, pushing the Treasure hunt aspect knowing it would bring in readers, and perhaps get picked up by the big city papers. It had got a television crew down briefly, I remembered that much, and the fact Boggs had wanted nothing to do with it.

The story, though, was interesting, that everyone remembered that fateful night in the bar when he had been telling anyone who would listen that he had found ‘the’ clue to the treasure’s whereabouts, and the drunker he got, the more outlandish the story.

A number of people who were visiting the town because suspects simply because they were out of towners, and subsequently cleared in the ensuing investigation. What had turned up was the fact he owed a great deal of one to loan sharks, and one in particular, who was in town to collect on a prior loan for a fruitless search, and who was a prime suspect.

In the end, the price of his freedom was to forgo the collection of the debt.

Yet another was unmasked as a fellow treasure hunter with a dubious past, having been jailed for earlier transgressions of stealing other’s finds, but he claimed he was not a legitimate treasure hunter, and that he was in town at the request of Benderby, to oversee the dredging of a part of the bay for more coins. It had been a fruitless endeavor.

But despite his assertions, no one really believed Boggs’s father’s claims and had dismissed it as the usual ravings that had become his mantra for many years. Only his son believed him.

Boggs himself had made the newspaper, a photo of him by the grave where his father’s spirit rather than body had been buried, vowing to prove his father right.

What added to the legend was the disappearance and apparent death of Ormiston not long after. The story of his search for the treasure was long and fruitless, one of dissipating the family fortune in search of another.

His disappearance was attributed to the fact he had become erratic and forgetful, the town doctor at the time telling the coroner’s inquest that he had early onset dementia and was prone to wandering off. This time it had been his downfall.

A search had been mounted and all the cave systems were checked, known to be the places he frequented the most, and when a new rockslide was discovered in one of the caves, it was assumed he had ventured too far and been trapped. Several attempts were made to clear the way, but the fall had been far too extensive and had to be abandoned.

Every few years the paper revisited Boggs’s disappearance, but there was no new information, and after ten years nothing more was written. It seemed that Lenny had a continued interest in the Treasure hunt because he had filed a number of newspaper reports, making it easy for me to get the gist of the story.

Then, several months ago, he had written a new story, a small piece that I had missed, reporting on Boggs’s discovery of a new map of the coastline, one that suggested that the site of the ill-fated mall was, in fact, an entrance to the cave system where the treasure may have been placed. It referenced a survey that had been made before the second world war, one that hinted that the cave system was much larger than originally thought, and quite likely went all the way to the mountains, the origin of an ancient underground river.

The fact the mall site had been the victim of flooding made that seemed to make that assumption plausible, but apparently, no one else had seen that particular map, and Boggs had not been forthcoming in sharing it with the reporter.

But aside from those few paragraphs nothing more was said.

It explained what Boggs was doing when we went to the mall site.

All of that was condensed into a page of notes in my notepad, where it would have to stay for a day or so because I had to go home, change and go to work.

Perhaps tomorrow I would get to talk to Boggs about it.

As luck would have it, I ran into Boggs just up the street where he was coming out of the hardware store with a skein of rope slung over his shoulder.

“Just the person I’m looking for,” I said.

His look told me that I was the last person he wanted to see.

“I’m busy, Sam. Can we do this another time?”

“Planning a lynching?” My eyes went from him to the rope, and back.

“Climbing. I’m going away for a few days, get away from everything, and do something other than think about treasure.”

“Probably a good idea. I’m sorry I haven’t been much of help lately, with work and stuff.”

“How’s Nadia?”

It was a pointed question, and I knew he had seen me with her. I had thought it might be Alex.

“Being Nadia, leopards don’t change their spots, and I’m trying to keep the enemies close so I can track what they’re up to.”

“There’s close and then there’s too close, Sam.”

“True, but it’s not what you think.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore. Let’s just leave it at that, and I’ll call you when I get back.”

I knew the tone, and I could smell a burnt bridge. Maybe it was time to give him some space, and I could get on with a bit of research and bring it to him when he was in a more receptive frame of mind.

“As you wish. Be careful out there.”