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20
Containment
Peter was exhausted from the stress, the arguing, the politics, the drama of the day. He settled into his cot, sighing deeply, relishing in the luxury of the three meter wide, four meter long compartment he had to himself. As colony governor, the position offered him one of the greatest things, the rarest commodities on the station, privacy.
He powered the lights all the way down, as low as they would go, without shutting them off entirely, and he lay back, taking several deep measured breaths as worked to relax, making a conscious effort to unclench his jaw, rubbing a tender knot in his neck. But a thudding knock on the compartment door cut his rest short. Swearing under his breath as he sat up from the cot, “Can’t even get five minutes of peace, how is a man supposed to sleep?” he called louder to the door, “FREE TO ENTER.”
As the hatch swung wide, his personal terminal got a notification, then two, then three and five. He looked up wide eyed as dozens of notifications poured in, just as Mr. Coleman barged in, Peter’s mousy wife Penelope not far behind him.
“We’ve got a situation”, barked the chief of security.
“We’re the citizens of the federation’s first non military colony, our entire life is a situation, Mr. Coleman. Does it have to be right now? Does it have to involve me? Do you not see the bags under my eyes? Come back in two hours if you can’t handle it yourself.” Peter suggested.
“Trust me, Governor, I’ve been trying to handle it on my own for a while now, but it’s not enough, that’s why we are coming to you, now. If we wait two hours, the problem will only get worse. News about the situation with the Stalingrad, the reactor and potential missed jump has spread. We’ve lost containment and now the message boards are flooded with wild conspiracies, and people are starting to panic.”
Peter didn’t reply immediately, instead staring daggers at his wife who now stood cowering behind Mr. Coleman. “Ah, so we’re still dealing with a problem that we never should have had in the first place? Have you considered asking those responsible?” He quipped, getting to his feet, barely winning the battle against his exhaustion. The notifications kept pinging his terminal. Peter glanced between the growing number of notifications and Mr. Coleman again.
The Chief of security widened his stance, and hardened his expression. “People are excited, and not in a good way. If you don’t do something, and do it soon and vehemently, then our hand’s will be forced, and I’ll have to do something soon, and vehemently.”
“I need more information chief. I can’t just do anything, now can I? I mean, if I choose to do nothing, that’s technically something isn’t it?” Peter spread his hands wide, shrugging. “At least let me assess the situation and come up with some ideas.”
Mr. Coleman turned back to the open hatch, Penelope shuffled around quickly, putting as much space between herself and the still open hatch as she could, cowering into the back of the room as they all heard foot steps thundered outside. Half a dozen people crowded into the hatch, cramming their shoulders into the doorframe. There wasn’t enough room for the amount of flesh trying to fit into the compartment at once.
“Governor, is it true the Stalingrad can’t make the jump?”
“Have we already missed the jump window?”
“What are we going to do?”
“How are we going to get back to heavy space?”
“We should suit up, cross the conduit and make the Stalingrad make the jump.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“We’re going to die!”
The voices crowded each other, filling the compartment just as desperately as people they came from were. More heads bobbed over the crowd, filling the hall, the crush of people the wall of flesh seeking Peter, and his solutions, his authority to respond to the problem. Arms still outstretched, Peter took in a deep breath, filling his lungs to capacity. He brought out his drill instructor voice, something he hadn’t used in almost twenty years. “DON’T YOU COME IN HERE MAKING ASSUMPTIONS AND DEMANDS. WHEN THERE’S A PROBLEM THAT CONCERNS YOU, I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT IT. WHEN YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING, I’LL TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. THE SITUATION IS ALREADY UNDER CONTROL. I HAVE BEEN IN TALKS WITH COMMAND STAFF ONBOARD STALINGRAD, THE ENTIRE TIME. WE’VE ALREADY PERFORMED A REPAIR, THAT WILL BE TESTED IN THE NEXT HALF HOUR, AND WE’LL MAKE THE JUMP BACK AS SCHEDULED. RETURN TO YOUR POSTS.”
His air spent, and chest deflated, Peter let his arms fall back down to his sides. Mr. Coleman and the crowd of people still packed into the entryway were immobilized by the brutality of his response. Quiet sobs broke the silence, he glanced down. Penelope was in the fetal position on the floor behind him, squirming meekly. He looked back up, speaking to everyone. “The problem has already been solved, we’re just waiting for confirmation from the Stalingrad. It will all be sorted out, just stay the course.”
“Can we trust them?” a small voice buried deep in the crowd asked.
“I trust them.” he replied without hesitation.
The crowd murmured and slowly dispersed. Mr. Coleman, the last to leave, saluted before he did. Alone with his wife, Peter turned to where she still lay on the floor, refusing to look up at him. He crossed the room slowly, shutting the compartment hatch as the crowd dispersed down the hall. Peter turned, deflating, leaning his back on the sealed hatch.
Penelope had sat up, and pulled her knees under her chin as she looked up at him through her eyelashes. “You’re scarring me.”
“Me?”
“You. Well, everything.” she admitted.
“Scarred how?” He crossed his arms, letting his chin sink into his chest as he looked at the floor.
“I knew you were in the army, but… is that where you learned to yell at people?”
“We agreed not to talk about my time in the military.”
“The unknown is scarring me. I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Pen… Love… we’re in an alternate dimension, and you’re afraid of the unknown? You’re afraid of me?”
She nodded, the motion a tiny shift. “I knew you were in the military, but, I’m not sure if I want to know. You were a soldier weren’t you?”
“Pen… there’s a reason we haven’t talked about this.”
She looked up at him finally. “What, you afraid I’m going to leave you? Now? Here? We’re in another dimension like you said, It’s not like I could if I wanted to.”
Peter slid down along the inside of the hatch until he sat on the floor across from her. “You really never looked me up? Never just… searched your husband’s name on the interweb?”
She looked away again. “I told you I was afraid.”
“You’re so terrified of who I might be, but you married me anyway?” He stood back up, his incredulousness driving him back to his feet.
“You’re so nice though, and so driven, and focused. There’s just this intensity about you. And you’re really committed to the mission. To getting out of the Sol system, to making this colony work. Even though this is a civilian program, you helped us get all that government backing. I mean, you were elected governor for a reason.”
His voice was thick with an emotion equal parts amusement and curiosity. “And you did marry me before I was elected.”
“That’s not my point, and you know it. It’s been almost five years as we’ve worked to get this mission put together, getting the ship, getting it upgraded and recommissioned. Getting the funding, the planning, the habitat built.” She stood up again. “You know darn well I didn’t marry you for your power. It’s that damn little spark, that boyish enthusiasm and wonder that’s buried under all those scars and the darkness you carry around. The child trapped inside you, struggling to hold up the man you’ve become. Sometimes, when you’re relaxed, and the silly little things make you giggle or catch your attention, the way you fixate on things, the passion, the vigor. The….”
“I know.” He held up a hand. “It’s been almost six years,” he corrected.
“See!” she almost giggled, the warmth and joy creeping back into her face.
“I meant every word I said. We’ll be okay, the problem is being handled, The repair’s already been installed, the engineers on Stalingrad got it all worked out, it’s just a matter of testing it, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“And what if it doesn’t work?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know why didn’t things work the way they were supposed to the first time, and now we’re doing all this?”
“Let’s not get too circular about this, Pen, eh? Not again.”
“What should we do now?” She got back to her feet.
“Wait for news from Stalingrad, I guess. Everything on our end is fine, the hydroponics are still…”
“So tell me about what you did in the military while we wait.” She cut him off. “A wife should know all of her husband, no?”
He stared off into the middle distance, his eyes looking at the wall, but only seeing the memories inside his head. “It was a long time ago, different lifetime, a different world.” He trailed off, his voice quiet as he tried to figure out how to let out the things he had worked so hard to bury and forget.
“I mean in a literal sense, I know that. That was earth, this is Langok, or almost to four fifty-two B.” she replied ironically.
His eyes regained their focus as he looked at her again, her teasing little face trying to coax a smile out of him. “I was … you really want to know? Spoken words can’t be unsaid.”
“I asked didn’t I?”
His face was expressionless, but the tenseness in every muscle betrayed his feelings as the cords stood out in his neck. “Yes, I was a soldier. I’ve been shot at, I’ve killed people. I’ve lead men in the black of night, to go into the homes of other men, and kill people in their sleep who probably deserved it. Happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear? I’ve not talked about this in a long time, I’ve tried to forget for a reason.”
“Probably deserved it?”
He shrugged. “Intel is never perfect.”
“Shot at… killed people. There’s not been a real war for centuries Peter, that could only mean. Were you in the border skirmish of ‘49?”
He huffed, the sound not quite strong enough to be a chuckle, but more than a simple sigh. ‘I wish it had been that simple. I was in the African Proxy Wars.”
“Wars? In Africa? There weren’t any Federation troops in Africa.”
“Not that the government told you about.” He looked away
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You on some of those deep web conspiracies?”
“On them, love? No, I was in them. Remember when the price of electronics almost doubled a few years back?”
“I don’t remember the last time I bought any electronics. I don’t really know the price of things.”
“I’ve noticed.” He teased.
“I only buy stuff I need it, and when I need it, it doesn’t matter what it costs because I need it, so I don’t get a choice.”
“Those prices skyrocketed because of the conflicts in Africa.”
“What does Africa have to do with the price of consumer electronics?” She crossed her arms at him.
“The AACR largely held a monopoly on the mining operations on the continent.”
“Republicans, in Africa?” She looked at him like he was telling her pigs could breathe in vacuum too.
“They’ve been there for centuries dear, how do you think they got the monopoly, they built the infrastructure that Africa runs on and now the AACR is collecting those debts, even if it takes them generations to do it. And believe me,they want it to take generations.”
She blinked rapidly and waved her hand as if swatting at an insect. “Okay fine, but what does that have to do with Federation troops in Africa, or this war you claimed happened there?”
“It was more like twelve wars, but yes. Federation troops, myself included, were there because the Pubs were there. Because they had that monopoly, we couldn’t be totally reliant on our competitor for the resources we needed. “
WWhy were you there though, what did you do?”
He looked down, disappointed. “Fate is a fickle mistress. I spoke the language.”
“You spoke the language?”
“Yeah, I joined the military fresh out of secondary school, I was a young man, a teenage boy, and had spent too much time in school playing video games, or rugby with the lads. I didn’t really have a plan for after I finished school. But I knew sure as hell I didn’t want to work a stuffy desk job, or be some customer service clerk or something like that. That’s part of why I played rugby, football, and cricket. I wanted to be outside. Bask in the sun, you know, human things. Not live my entire life behind a display. So I joined the military.”
“I know you joined right after school. We are married you know, you don’t have to explain it to me like this is a first date.”
Peter held up his hands. “Let me set the stage love, you want to know everything, or you want the TLDR version? I thought you wanted to KNOW your husband?”
She waved for him to continue, Peter said. “It was the classic story of I wanted to go see the world, find myself, figure out what I wanted to do with my life. But you know everyone else in basic training was a normal civilian. They had spent the previous fifteen years of their life sitting behind a desk looking at their screens, just like I didn’t want to. I was top of the class in basic, at least physically. The only reason they didn’t make me platoon leader was because I didn’t have the patience for all the other kids who couldn’t do it themselves. I wasn’t all about that hand holding. And then they gave me guns. It was by very nature a physical activity. It required strength, co-ordination, reflexes, and I was, again, top of the class. I didn’t feel like I was good or exception, but I guess all I had to do was not be a fat nerd, and that instantly puts you ahead of ninety percent of the other cadets in basic training.”
He fought a yawn, lost the fight and then continued. “So naturally, after basic training, they made me infantry. Normally, that’s where the military sticks all the dumb kids that barely passed. Because in the very least, they can beat them into some sort of physical fitness and use them as cannon fodder. So I went through infantry combat school after basic. And that time they did make me platoon leader. They sent me there because I was physically fit, and could shoot good, and then when I got there, they made me leader because I wasn’t dumb. I hated it. I still didn’t have patience for whiners, quitters, or losers. The way I saw it, we were there to do a thing, and all you had to do was do the thing. Simple as.”
“Right, because warfare is as simple as doing it, or not doing it.”
Peter shrugged, conceding the point and pressed on. “Yes dear. But this was what, twenty-five years ago? Thirty? I didn’t have quite so much tact then.”
She scoffed. “You think you have tact now?”
“Tact enough for you.” She narrowed her eyes at him in mock anger, but didn’t say anything as he continued. “Problem was I was good at it, and they put me in charge. And I wasn’t nice because I was holding everyone in the platoon to my standards, and even I didn’t meet them, heck, I still don’t.”
“True, you always were the perfectionist, never satisfied.” Penelope’s comment earned her a childish scowl from Peter.
“Well, my standards pushed everyone, and while the other boots hated me for it, the instructors were impressed with the results. And my platoon scored first in the battalion by the time we finished advanced infantry school. They liked me so much I didn’t go to active duty with the unit. They sent me to more school instead. After basic and advanced infantry school, they sent me to sniper college, and then field craft and survival school and then evasion and escape, search and rescue, extreme environment training. I kept doing good, and they kept sending me to more training. I didn’t get to talk to officers or my instructors much, at least not outside the classroom to plan my career development or something. At that point, I was still planning on just traveling the world a bit, finding myself, figuring out what I was made of. Really, I just wanted to be outside. I saw how miserable everyone else was, hiding inside all day with their computers, their screens, their chatbots and programming. Their electronic warfare and signals intelligence and stuff. They seemed so stressed over nothing. And I just wanted to be outside. So I kept going to school. Next, they sent me to paratrooper school, and we jumped out of airplanes, roped down from helicopters, took suborbital flights and rode back down on individual re-entry vehicles. It was a good time. Ran into some special forces guys there. They were what we call High Speed, Low Drag. And I was still top of the class at every training school. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be outside, to do stuff, to feel the dirt under my nails and the mud between my toes. I didn’t care if it was raining, or I had to hike across some mountains or hide from drones in the forest. I was outside, and that was enough.”
“You were some kind of military mountain man? Did you have a beard then? Or just the mustache like now?”
He chuckled. “No love, I was clean shaven, kept my face buttery smooth. Rules were simple. Regulation said clean shaven, so I was clean shaven, I don’t know why that was so hard for everyone else.”
“What does any of that have to do with Africa?”
“Well by the time I was done with all that training, I was nearly halfway done with the time of service I was contracted for, and they had spent a lot of money on schooling for me. I was told I had one of three options. They could send me to officer school, and I could learn how to be a prick, but I would have to extend from four years to eight. I could take more schooling, but I would have to extend to six years, or if I still wanted to be down and out in the initial four, I could stop now, and they’d send me back to my unit from advanced infantry school and they would make me a real platoon commander, not just in training. But I knew that was BS because only officers get to be leaders, and I wasn’t going to officer school, so what that really meant is I would be effectively a secretary for some snot-nosed soft bellied lieutenant or something, whoever they had assigned the platoon to after we finished training, and I didn’t want none of that either.”
“You didn’t go to officer school?”
“Hell no, that was school, not training. It would have been indoors again, I wasn’t in it for the clout, or the money, or the command, or whatever. I just wanted to find where my limits more. Perhaps I thought of that in a physical sense more than a mental one, but not just no, but hell no.”
“So what did you do?”
“Same thing I always do. I either chose, or made, and then chose, the third option. Instead of extending to eight and going to officer school, I extended to six, selected more training, and kept being a grunt.”
“More training? Sounds like you had already done all there was to be trained for as a soldier.”
Peter shook his head. “Seventy percent of the earth is covered in water, right?”
“Yes….” she said skeptically.
“Well, I went to scuba school. I was told I got to pick three more programs, but because of the extended term of service and the training, I got moved from standard infantry to air cavalry. So I went through the cavalry school. I didn’t get a choice in that one, but the other two I did. So I chose scuba school and took a language program.”
“Scuba?”
“Funny, right?”
“No, I don’t get it, if you were airborne, why would you need scuba school?”
“That’s why it’s funny.” Peter replied.
His wife didn’t understand him, so she moved on. “What language did you learn?”
“I didn’t have to learn a language, but perhaps I was getting tired of the biting insects. So I chose something that actually had some classroom instruction.”
“Yes, but what language?”
“To be frank with you, I didn’t care at the time, and so I picked a language I had never head of, figured I’d probably never need to know how to use something if it was so uncommon I had never even heard of it, but oh how wrong I was.”
“What language?”
“Swahili.”
“Swahili?” She asked incredulously, beginning to pace across the compartment.
“Swahili.”
“I had no idea you could speak Swahili. But that at least explains how you ended up in Africa.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of Swahili?”
She scrunched her face at him. “Of course, I have heard of Swahili. I wasn’t a mountain man like you. I actually learned things in school.”
“Yeah, probably went to college too.” He teaser her. She stopped her pacing, turning to face him, hands on her hips, her face stern.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “I know, I know, you’ve got your PHD, you did a lot of schooling, doctor Penelope.” She continued to scowl at him.
“I learned Swahili in a classroom in Dublin, actually.”
“So how did you get to Africa?”
“Remember those special forces guys I mentioned. Had a couple of beers with them on the weekend after we finished orbital drop school together.”
She nodded slowly, suspicious. “They were doing spooky shit in Africa. The Federation had been slowly working there for years, training and supplying local rebels, helping fund coups, destabilizing local governments, trying to loosen the Pub’s control on the region so we could get in and establish or capture mines of our own. Big Fed has to have those rare earth minerals after all, and while we were pulling more down from orbit than the Glowies were, it still wasn’t much, and it was more expensive.”
“Glowies?”
“Yeah, sorry, that was our name for the Republican troops when we were out in the field. Their camo uniforms weren’t IR absorbing, and they really stood out when viewed through night vision goggles. They glowed.”
Penelope shook her head, throwing her hands in the air as she resumed pacing. “Men!”
“So the special forces guys were on the continent, doing stuff in the bush, training rebels and shit. And when I finished Swahili school and completed the air cavalry program…” He looked off, his eyes staring at the bulkhead, but not seeing it as he was lost in his memories. His wife let him think for a bit before bringing him back to the present. “and?” she prompted him.
He held up his hand, gesticulating as he explained. “Air cavalry aren’t just normal infantry. Remember, not only did I have all this special training, I was top five of the class, every time. So I was good air cav, and the air cav… we’ll they’re not special forces, but they’re more than grunts. So when I finished Swahili school, those special forces guys were looking for interpreters, and one of the ones I had met in jump school recognized my name while looking through the list of military personnel that spoke Swahili, and I had the highest marks, physically, of everyone who spoke Swahili in the federation military at the time. And while I wasn’t special forces, a top performing air cav trooper was certainly better than a desk jokey, and it was easier, or faster, or whatever to put me through special forces school because that was six weeks. That was faster than it was to take one of the special forces guys, and put him through the four month Swahili program. Plus, that would be four months of downtime for him, four months off the team, he would get soft and slow. Whereas if I passed the special forces school, I would be getting better. Iron sharpens, Iron and all that.”
“You were special forces?”
He nodded seriously. “I was inducted into the actual ZKD after passing that six-week training course. It was hell, but like they say, you can always quit tomorrow. So with just over two years’ active duty and constant training, they dropped me straight into the bush.”
She stammered at her husband, her eyes huge, in a confused, terrified way. “Why am I only just now hearing of this?”
“It’s still classified, darling. I’m not allowed to tell you. I’m only telling you, because we’re in a different dimension, going to establish a permanent colony on a different planet more than a thousand light years from Earth. Who gives a shit what Earth thinks anymore.”
“Why is it classified? What happened?”
His eyes got distant again. “Well… Like I said earlier, we fought several small, quiet, cutthroat, merciless wars. After two years of training, I still had four years on my new extended service agreement, and once I made ZKD… that was some expensive and special training. Not many people make it through that program. So my service was extended to eight years even if I didn’t ask for it. But those bush wars, proxy wars, remote skirmishes with the AACR troops who were training and building militias in the same place, at the same time, to do the same things as us. I was down there in that for five of those other six years.”
“Five years?”
“Might as well get it all out now since the cat is out of the bag. Yes. Five years of desert or jungle warfare. Five years of rebellions. I had friends die, I killed some people. Villages were burned, mines were collapsed, the little infrastructure down there was targeted. That place is still a 4th world country, still trapped in stone age squalor because anything of value that gets built gets destroyed by someone else. It’s so fractured down there. I… some stuff happened, and I was involved. I was involved a lot. And I was wounded and… They congratulated me, pinned a bunch of medals on my chest, and put me behind a desk. Training, advising, doing this, doing that, most of the time, paperwork was involved too.”
She stared at her husband like she had discovered someone else’s smelly socks under her bed. He continued, too uncomfortable to let the silence linger. “I was just doing my job, following orders, accomplishing the mission. But… I saved the lives of several teammates, someone called me a hero once. Most of the special forces community knows my name. And I couldn’t talk about anything I had done with normal people, and I was stuck inside, and they said my experience was too valuable to let me go back into the field. But I couldn’t stay in the office or the classroom. Birds aren’t supposed to be in cages. So after twelve years, I quit. I got out of the military.”
Penelope still stared in horror, so he kept talking. “My skill set didn’t really translate to the world of civilians, and nothing I had done could go on a resume anyway. I was homeless for like six months. But hey, at least I was outside instead of in an office. Eventually, one of the other guys got himself medically retired after a training injury, and he heard about my situation, and he was involved in the colony program too, and well.. the rest is history.”
Mouth agape, she stared in horror, the dainty little college professor, the idealist trying to establish a new colony and turn a new leaf over for the human race, to build a utopia, had just learned that one of these violent men coming with her on the expedition to establish the new Langok colony, was a professional killer, a decorated, government sanctioned war criminal, and he was her husband.
There truly was no escaping the evils of mankind. Going to a different solar system, traveling through an additional dimension, and unwittingly she had brought them with her, anyway. She wanted to scream, cry, sleep, vomit and divorce him all at the same time.
Anti AI Statment
We’re not going to be around the bush. There have been accusations leveled against NSC, and they’re not wrong. There was AI generated images on the website before, and also on the YouTube channel, covering most of the thumbnails, going back years. This was leftover content from before Nerd Smith Consolidated took over the work of The Descendant Saga, or the YouTube channel. Here at NSC we are staunchly 100% anti AI. We’re working to remove all the old images, and have delisted hundreds of old YouTube videos. There will never again be any AI generated content, of any form on, in or associated with any of our publications. The remaining parts will be removed as we go through the backlog and find them. We’re also drafting a new version of the contract between NSC and the writers who work with us and the freelancers we have reached out to. Making it a legal requirement as part of our publications.
It is sad that this must be said, but this is the age that we live in now. AI content is not art, and we will not now, or ever publish any AI generated content, images, videos or otherwise. And before you question the validity of any of the text content we have published before, or that’s coming up. You have our 100% guarantee that anything and everything we publish going forward will be totally AI free. Altar of Scales was originally drafted in 2017, Cave in the Sky in 2018, Knowledge of gods in 2019, book IV School in the trees was written in 2020, book V Beneath the Mist in 2021 and book VI Anvil of souls was written in 2022. All the existing manuscripts were written before the public release of common AI like Chat GPT in November of 2022.
Trust us when we say, no one is more Anti AI than we are. Especially after what AI has done to the publishing industry, what the AI industry has done to physical media and how people who use it, think they’re part of the community. If you use AI, these books, and by extension our publishing company, is not for you.
Rest assured, Nerd Smith Consolidated LLC, is made and run by real people, and always will be. We are real artists, struggling for and making real, raw art based on the human experience, sold to real people who want unfiltered, passionate, analogue creations. We are so committed to this, that even the cover art on our books, is real physical art that has been scanned. We start with literal handmade art, not something drawn with a stylus on a touch screen, but the genuine article. Allow us to correct the transgressions of those who came before us.
Book III Knowledge of Gods Publishing Update
Here’s the exciting part you’ve all been waiting for. The updates, because book III is almost done, like days away, less than a week. Editing ins complete, and now it’s just a matter of formatting, submitting and approval, the paperwork if you will, fulfilling the legal obligations of a publishing company.
There’s going to be another announcement as soon as the book is available, and you’ll have links so you can read the next segment of lore to your hears content. We’re now two months later than we would like, but life and complications got in the way for our operation here at NSC. We already know what we’re going to do next, and are excited to start on that project too when this one is done. But there’s so much more still to come. Subscribe to keep updated, and here’s some artwork, a little cover reveal to reward you for all the patience. But before you come at us with how it looks, this is a raw, unedited scan. Its not had any color matching or cropping yet, this is the 2nd step in cover art, right after having actually obtained the art. This is our proof, we’re only using real human art. To that end we would like to thank and express our eternal gratefulness to the artist Devin Randolph who has lent his skill in watercolor to our publications. And giving us real, human, art, not slop.
Now we’re turning it back over to our author in chief, Chace for the next installment of Backscatter.
Back Scatter #3
In this edition of Back Scatter, I will get back to the more science fiction related topics I should have been talking about all along, that way, the guys at Nerd Smith Consolidated will get off my back about the random engine rants. So this time, I’m going to talk about something that bridges the gap between science and fiction.
Kessler syndrome is both a very real possibility, and a common science fiction trope/phenomenon/idea. Kessler syndrome is a very simple thing to explain, but a difficult problem to solve. A problem I think we are getting closer and closer to having to actually deal with. When we live in a society and that technologically advanced society puts satellites in orbit over the planet, that seems like a normal progression of things, but there’s constantly more and more satellites being launched. Starlink alone has put thousands of objects in orbit, not to mention the GPS satellites, and the Russian and Chinese equivalents of both of these systems, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It gets crowded up there fast. Well, if one of these satellites collides with another, they’re going to break apart, and there’s going to be debris everywhere, huge clouds of orbital glitter as solar panels get shattered and paint flakes off and so on. And that debris will damage other satellites and create more debris, and soon, there’s so much rubbish in orbit over the planet, that you can’t put anything else into orbit, if you launch another satellite, or spaceship, it is immediately destroyed by this orbital cloud of wreckage, which only adds more wreckage to the problem. At some point there will be enough man-made objects in orbit that critical mass will be reached one collision will start a cascade that in a matter of hours could render most orbital infrastructure in operable, and make it impossible to get into, or even just pass through low earth orbit. And without that ability, other satellites further out will eventually fail. Imagine what would have happened if the space shuttle could no longer have made it to orbit to service the Hubble?
When this occurs, and the society has essentially locked themselves onto their own planet, it is said to be afflicted with Kessler syndrome. It’s called such, as two NASA scientists, Donald J. Kessler (you thought I was going to say Trump, didn’t you?) and Burton G. Cour-Palais first proposed the idea of this orbital pollution becoming a problem in 1978. (They were the first space hippies)
“So what?” You might ask, not more satellite TV? Yeah, that, and no more GPS, no more over the horizon communications, no more satellite internet, there are huge pile on ramifications to this problem. What if there’s an asteroid coming, and we can’t launch an interceptor to divert it, earth would be forced to suffer the consequences, and they wouldn’t even be able to send colonies to the moon or Mars to escape it. It’s a simple problem, but with huge, long-lasting consequences.
So how do we solve it?
I don’t know you tell me. Do we wait for gravity to run its course and drag enough of the debris down, destroying it as it burns up in the atmosphere? That could potentially take hundreds, or, in some cases thousands, of years. Not that I think it would be a big contributor to the problem if earth were to become locked with Kessler syndrome but as an example, the third stage boosters from the Apollo 8, 9, 10 11 and 12 missions are in orbit and even Apollo 10s lunar ascent module, which is now in a solar orbit. All that hardware is up there, fifty years later, and they’ll remain up there for who knows how much longer, hundreds of years? Thousands? Will they ever come back down? Who knows, depending on how stable their orbits are. But obviously, for the advancement of the society we live in, it would be less than ideal for there to be years, or tens, or hundreds of years where there was nothing serviceable in orbit, and no way for us to get into space either, because there was too much trash and debris up there after a cascade event leading to full-blown unmanageable Kessler syndrome.
Can we build other trash collector satellites? Can we get ahead of the problem and eliminate defunct hardware now before it becomes a problem? Sure. However will we? Because while we could, I doubt anyone will, at least not until there’s a way to make money doing it. They’re not going to spend millions or billions of dollars just out of the goodness of their hearts, are they? Sure, you can pile on more laws, more regulations and so on, but that’s not going to apply to everyone. If the United States passes a law about no more satellites for six months, to prevent Kessler syndrome, do you think China would follow that? North Korea? Russia? India? Feel free to leave your comments with your solutions to Kessler syndrome before it’s too late and we have to learn to live in a very different society.
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