It was especially tough on me because (no matter what the President said) I knew this was just the beginning. We were going through culture shock on an unprecedented scale. So maybe I’d let my priorities become a little less defined as of late but I couldn’t really think of a reason to get too worked up about it… except… except for that look Julie had given me several times at breakfast. It wasn’t disdain and it wasn’t judgmental, it was more like disappointment and mild surprise. The third time she looked at me like that was after I’d just finished explaining to the table that culture shock was unavoidable; that what we were getting ready to go through would make the unrest we experienced after the Yuan replaced the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency look like a garden picnic (or party, or whatever that saying is). It was almost as if she didn’t care that I was a highly trained professional and that this was my area of expertise; it was almost as if she somehow expected more from me…
Chapter 2
Mission Brief
Operation: Broken Star
Classification: Ultra Secret Black Diamond
Authorization Status: Approved
Operational Priority: Level 1
Background:
(Excerpt from the report of the lead investigation team for the US Government):
What precipitated the Crazies was the most significant, shocking, bizarre, and tragic event in human history…
By 2014, the U.S. government had finally authorized the privatization of boosting cargoes into low earth orbit (LEO). Over the next decade as costs came down and commercial demands for low gravity, perfect vacuum manufacturing environments rose, several multi-national corporations cooperated in replacing the International Space Station with the world’s first truly permanent space station, Laze Fair One. Home to almost 300 people, the huge construction was mankind’s greatest achievement and source of pride—until it disappeared.
It didn’t break up. It didn’t crash or burn-up in reentry. It just… disappeared. Telemetry monitoring stations sounded ‘lost signal’ alarms designed to warn bored technicians to pay better attention and re-align their dishes… all to no avail. The station was simply gone.
It was almost two full days later that weak communications signals started coming in to radio receivers all over the planet. On open circuits with the whole world listening, station personnel reported an incredible story that was only believed because of the accompanying video, telemetry, and the 54 minute 12 second delay in two-way communications; the station was now in orbit around Neptune.
The station was designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, but at 30 AU from the sun and with solar panels designed to operate at only one AU (note: one AU = the distance from the Earth to the Sun), battery charge that was critical for heating, carbon dioxide scrubbers, and other life-support dwindled quickly. Top priority was given to reporting how an alien spacecraft had appeared next to the station, somehow ‘bubbled’ it and then proceeded to tow it (at incredible speed, invisibly, and with no change in inertia), and then abandon it at Neptune.
There was no possibility of rescue.
Once all the data, subjective observations, and informed speculation had been transmitted from the station, the remaining few hours were spent with 279 people each taking time to tell the rest of us goodbye. It is this investigator’s recommendation that when the world gets around to erecting a memorial, this should be a looped video memoriam.
Additional Data:
(Highly Classified—Unknown to the public)
Major David Johansen, second in command of the station, managed to transmit a short burst of encrypted data using a cipher that was only known to a close friend back on Earth. In this burst, Commander Imbibe and Major Johansen forwarded a video communication that was received by the station immediately before the alien ship left them at Neptune. This transmission was received over the Commander’s supposedly secure emergency channel. Fortunately, no other station personnel were aware of the message or its contents. It was only 23 seconds long, but what was interesting was that the background contained voices of what was unmistakably a heated disagreement. Everything in that background was unintelligible and definitely of an unknown language. The foreground was dominated by the head and shoulders of an apparent female human being that mouthed one word before signing off. It was Commander Imbibe’s opinion (which has subsequently been verified to 87% accuracy by linguistic experts) that the one word mouthed by the alien was, “sorry.”
Subsequent Events:
(Highly Classified—Unknown to the public)
The leadership of six different countries (see addendum III) have been contacted by representatives of the same race that abducted our space station. Citing another faction of their race as the culprits of the abduction, this faction offers peace and friendship.
Mission Stipulation:
Despite appearances, this race is deemed alien with unknown intentions.
Mission Mandate:
A multi-national team is to be assembled under the mission name: Broken Star. It is the mandate of this team to travel to the home worlds of the aliens and evaluate:
The scope and sincerity of the offer.
How advanced (in technology years) this civilization is.
Identify and prioritize desirable technologies.
The cost and limits (if any) on technology transfers.
Identify what we have (if anything) that they want?
Chapter 3
Major Mathew Reagan, US Army
My headache just wouldn’t go away. My tolerance for pain and discomfort is high but after about 30 hours of intense throbbing I just physically start to wear out. I’ve occasionally suffered through these things for about twenty years now and I knew that I would be fine sometime within the next 24 hours but that didn’t make this precise moment of exquisite pain any easier to handle.
I vacillate in my thoughts; bouncing back and forth from one minute thinking I must be a wuss and that millions of people must experience pain like this and never show it, to the next thinking that I’ve got to be Superman because other people go home, turn off the lights, close the blinds and go to bed to hide from the world. How can we really compare what one person feels inside their head to what someone else feels?
I guess it’s a migraine. Yes, I get nauseas and occasionally see explosions of white light behind my eyes but unlike many migraine sufferers I can, if I really need to, focus on a task at hand and function reasonably well. Since I am apparently immune to the benefits of modern migraine medication I am forced to resort to an older highly addictive cocktail using Hydrocodone and Acetaminophen. I won’t allow myself to take more than 10mg of the Hydro at a time (that stuff will alter your brain chemistry) and they’re really only useful if I take one when I first sense the headache coming on. However, since not all headaches become migraines and since I hate the thought of taking medication, I play this waiting game with myself and hope I can figure out which type of headache it’s going to be before it’s too late to stop it. Yesterday I waited too long so here I am.