EMPIRE

EMPIRE

by Michael J Watkins

We were nearly a kilometer from the LEM when I saw the ships.

We set the Lunar Module down on the eastern edge of Copernicus, a few kilometers from the inner walls. Copernicus is ninety kilometers across, a beautiful ray crater on the Ocean of Storms. Take a look at the Moon one night. The huge dark region covering a quarter of the Moon's surface is the Oceanus Procellarum, the Ocean of Storms. The ocean is dark because it's a flat expanse of basalt, a lava flood plain the size of the Mediterranean. 

On the edge of the Ocean of Storms, just northwest of the Moon's center, you'll see a white point. Bright rays streak across the dark sea. The white point is the crater Copernicus, and the rays are ejecta. The impact that formed Copernicus sent debris flying eight hundred kilometers across the face of the Moon.

DARK FLOW

The following story contains elements which some readers may find upsetting.

DARK FLOW

by Michael J Watkins

A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, "Nyarlathotep"

They say the whole Universe is falling, as entire nebulae are carried into the void by the force of the black rapids. It will take the science of another age to confirm this ghastly truth, but I knew it as a young man, fresh from the horror of the trenches.

It was February of 1919, barely three months after the Armistice, when I travelled north to my ancestral home. In the islands I would become the last of the Seabrooks, heir to a line that reached back into the shadows of antiquity. It was not a position I had ever sought to obtain, but it fell to me regardless when my uncle died without issue, and it was a legacy I felt determined to uphold. Though you might suspect the trappings of the lordship were my only motivation, the truth is that I planned to put as many miles between myself and the blood-drenched fields of Ypres as I might; here, at the cold and storm-wracked northern edge of Britain, the salt air might yet wash clean the stench of phosgene and mustard that still assaulted my senses upon waking.

ESCAPE FUNCTION

Mandelbrot Set by Wolfgang Beyer

ESCAPE FUNCTION

by Michael J Watkins

Pierre had reached the Islands, again. The beach seemed to be white sand, ground infinitely fine and marked by fading footprints. The ocean was a multitude of tones, although he knew his surroundings were as much a product of his interpretation as they were an objective representation of the environment.

ENJOY SUCH LIBERTY

ENJOY SUCH LIBERTY

by Michael J Watkins

Ostinato

The fires of creations are banked, and the galaxies themselves have long since burned to ash; we lie becalmed in a void unimaginably greater than the universe of our birth, cradling the dying embers of warmth and change, while outside these walls there is only stasis. Perhaps we cling to samsara while the world itself has shed its movement and achieved the eternal peace of unbeing, but as we are carried down these black rapids towards a destination we will never live to see, I prefer to believe that we preserve within ourselves the essence of what it means to be human: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Even if the only things remaining to be found amidst the ruins of this once mighty cosmos are our selves, this must be enough; for now there is no time or distance, we have become vaster than galaxies, and the lives of the stars were the mayflies of our youth. 

1938

1938

It's 1938. My sister holds the skipping rope, frozen in an eternal curve; it is a catenary curve, as the hanging of a chain or the fall of spiderweb, anchor line and gated arch, the golden gate I never live to see.

SIRIUS

SIRIUS

by Michael J Watkins

Astrophysical Implications of Gravitational Stress-Energy-Spin-Momentum Coupling in Torsional Kerr-Hoffman Metrics (Landry, S; Jokai, Alexander; Hoffman, Leigh;  Bondra, Marian; Petrovics, A J) Phys Rev D1 Vol 94 Issue 3 

Abstract: We investigate spin:momentum coupling in sub-relativistic electron degenerate matter via the spontaneous production of vanishing null spinors Q(0). We suggest a mechanism for  macroscopic momentum transfer, and present a model consistent with the observed proper motion of Sirius B.

PROSERPINA

PROSERPINA

Charon hangs unmoving in the star flecked sky, redder than the Sun, thick with organic slush. The fires of the ancient red giant are guttering, banked in her old age by the ashes of helium, but she has one final gift for her wayward children. Her starlight is patient: it takes five hours to cross the gulf, and each precious photon is gratefully received. Bright ice turns swiftly to dark water, greedy for warmth. Thick plumes of organics and minerals rise from the silicate core through benthic vents, ascending through an ocean greater than the vanished seas of Earth, broaching a surface stirred by the gentle tides of Nyx. Sugars and phosphates dance their lovers' waltz. The oceans are a riot of cyanobacteria, spilling oxygen into the thickening atmosphere and fueling an ecstatic orgy of creation. The black waters flicker with blooms of phosphorescent algae, and for a moment Hydra occults the setting sun. It is almost the end of evening, but there will be warmth for the life of a world. New eyes watch the sunset fire burn across the young oceans of Pluto, and though there are not yet minds to comprehend, there will be time enough. 




PROSERPINA by MICHAEL J WATKINS is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. 

EVEN AFTER THE END THERE ARE STILL GOOD DAYS

The following story contains elements which some readers may find upsetting.

EVEN AFTER THE END THERE ARE STILL GOOD DAYS

by Michael J Watkins

In spring I take my son to see the city. 

The winter was bad this year. Many of us died including my father. My mother doesn't come up with us anymore. Once she loved the spring.

EARTHLIGHT

EARTHLIGHT

by Michael J Watkins

Trinity

It is an hour before dawn, and the desert air is bitterly cold. The device is barely visible in the distance. It hangs from a skeletal metal tower and its vast energies are still contained, for now. Saul Hoffman lights another cigarette and looks at his watch. It is inappropriate to be bored, he thinks. So much depends on this single moment. So much depends on us. 

The observers are nervous, but there is surprisingly little conversation. Fermi tries to lighten the mood by offering bets on the gadget's yield. Hoffman offers ten kilotons, Teller fifty. A few think it will not fire at all. None say aloud that it will incinerate New Mexico, although Hoffman knows some think it will. But the calculations are good, the work is strong. This experiment is a remarkable piece of physics, and it has been accomplished so rapidly. The work of dozens of laboratories and thousands of men, scattered across the country, has converged on this place and time. A hell of a thing.