Monday March 3, 2008

Nova "Flicker" Madigan ran steadily, putting one foot down after the other on the treadmill, her steps making muffled thumps on the rubberized conveyor. An experienced distance runner, she had found a comfortable cadence, letting her breath come and go once every eight strides. The rhythm was almost hypnotic, and like many runners she felt a deep sense of comfort and relaxation in the pattern. She did her best thinking when she was out running. Aside from her footsteps, the whine of the treadmill's motor, and the hissing of her breath, she ran in silence.

Breathe in, two, three four, out, two three four, in, two, three, four. . .

By the white-faced clock on the wall, she could see that she'd been running for nearly an hour, and by the readout on the treadmill's console she could see that she'd covered nearly ten miles.

Ten six-minute miles, Nova thought, converting time and distance, barely believing what the numbers told her. And I'm not even winded. I love being a nova! She had never run this far in her life. The longest training run Nova had made on the Emerson High School cross-country team had been eight miles, a run her coach had called "the heartbreaker." Despite the distance, the heart rate monitor strapped around her chest had never climbed above eighty beats per minute, and her legs had yet to show any sign of fatigue. As she took another deep breath from the respirator which covered her nose and mouth, another tenth of a mile clicked onto the pedometer.

Ten point one miles. I feel like I can keep this up all day.

A one-way window separated the testing room from a small observation room, barely large enough for a table and four chairs. On the other side of that one-way window, Nurse Valerie Potter patiently observed Nova's progress and sipped a mug of coffee. She looked up at the sound of the door from the corridor being opened, and Doctor Edward Steiss, the Medical Director of the Cleveland Rashoud Facility strolled in, followed by the nova James "Banhammer" Cooper.

"Good morning Valerie," the doctor said, crossing to stand before the window. He thoughtfully watched Nova running in the adjoining room. "How's she holding up?"

"As steady as a ticking clock," the nurse replied, not even looking at her notes. "She settled into a cadence within the first minute or so, and she's kept it up for an hour without any sign of slowing down or fatigue."

"Typical nova endurance, then," said James, the nova who had been called in to assist with Nova's evaluation. He took a sip from his own mug of coffee. It was still boiling hot from the pot, but he scarcely noticed. "I mean, there's nothing too special about that, right? Baseline marathon champions run faster than this for over two hours."

Doctor Steiss chuckled and gestured towards the young nova as she ran on in her baggy shorts and T-shirt, oblivious of their presence.

"She's not breathing air," he said with a hint of smugness, smiling and crossing his arms over his chest. "We've been giving her pure carbon dioxide for the last thirty minutes. Your baseline marathon runner would collapse after only thirty seconds."

James whistled appreciatively. He knew already that a teleporting nova was interesting to his superiors in the Directive. This was an unexpected twist, however. James imagined practical applications for teleportation and the ability to survive a lethal environment: deep-sea exploration, polar research, space travel. A teleporting nova who might be able to survive a foray into outer space would be particularly newsworthy.

"Well, that's different, then," he said feigning bored disinterest to disguise his thoughts. He watched Nova continue to run on the treadmill, breathing air completly devoid of life-giving oxygen, and he felt a little sad for the teenager. Because of her ability, he knew she'd come under close scrutiny. What will it be, Miss Teen Nova. Will you be an asset or a threat? He wondered as he considered his next report. What will you do with that ability of yours? I have to know.


To be continued. . .

Saturday March 8, 2008

Nova lay on her own bed in her own bedroom for a change, having been discharged from the Rashoud Clinic that morning. With her mother she'd spent the entire day entertaining a seemingly-endless stream of relatives, friends, reporters, and even the Mayor of Cleveland in their modest urban townhouse. Now, for the first time since she'd erupted, she was alone in her room with her thoughts and no pressing agenda-- no tests to undergo, hands to shake, photos to pose, or questions to answer.

Nova rolled over and sat up, leaning against the bed's headboard. She opened a glossy binder that she'd been given at the clinic, and carefully read the summary inside. She'd already been told everything that the report contained, but she considered it to be a kind of owner's manual for her Mazarin-Rashoud node. In clinical terms, the charts and diagrams described the quantum miracles that she could summon with a thought: teleportation, feats of dexterity, intelligence, endurance, agility, and so on.

She leafed through the pages, skipping ahead to the section that described her ability to adapt to hostile environmental conditions. She was surprised to find a handwritten message on a Post-it attached to that page. Nova read the note:

Flicker:

Thank you again for your help in Bishkek. Your ability to adapt to new environments is more robust than Doctor Steiss is letting on. Project Utopia wants to keep you ignorant of your true potential, because they fear what you could do if you knew. You can probably survive the vacuum of space, maybe indefinitely, maybe just long enough to get your bearings and jump home again. You should try it and find out. I'd like a moon rock in exchange for the risk I've taken in planting this note. It should be a trivial task for you to retrieve one.

--A Friend

Nova realized that "A Friend" could only be one person: Banhammer. Banhammer had talked her into that covert operation in Kyrgyzstan while she was still a patient at the Rashoud Clinic, and on that mission she'd been shot twice in the chest. Nova touched the place on her breastbone where her flesh had stopped two nine-millimeter bullets only four days before. The scars were still fresh and vivid, and it hurt to press firmly on the spot. Still, Nova had kept her promise and told nobody what she and he had done.

Nova had thought that part of her life was over, but this note was an unwelcome reminder that she was not the only one who knew where she'd been that Tuesday evening.

No, James, we're quite through. Still, thank you for the advice, she thought. But I don't owe you a thing. If I get a moon rock, I'm getting it for myself.

Nova closed the binder and set it aside, glancing at her clock radio. 8:24 it read-- still early, really, to a teenager's point of view. She sent a subtle thought command to her Eufiber outfit, and the socks she wore metamorphed into sneakers. The rest of her outfit--low-cut jeans and a hoodie--was sufficient for the occasion. Nova slid open her bedroom window and looked across the very narrow gap which separated her home from that of her next-door neighbors, the Santinis. She retrieved an old tennis ball from her junk drawer and lobbed it at Gina Santini's bedroom window, from which it bounced loudly. A moment later, Gina appeared framed in her window. Nova's classmate, neighbor, childhood friend, and first crush opened her window and smiled.

"Hey Nova," Gina said. "You scared the hell out of me. What's up?"

"Can I come over?" Nova asked. "I want to try something."

"Sure," Gina replied. "Mom and dad aren't home, so I'm stuck with Amy anyway." Amy was Gina's eight-year-old stepsister.

"Awesome," Nova replied. She wriggled through her open window.

"Uh, Nova, what are you doing?" Gina asked with a mixture of concern and confusion in her voice.

"Doing this," Nova explained as she sprang from her windowsill and across the gap between the row houses to Gina's, clinging to the open windowframe and stone facade.

"You could have used the door," Gina snorted as she stepped back from the window to let Nova enter. "What's your plan?"

"Get your heaviest coat and a hat," Nova said. "According to the doc, I'm able to withstand any environment, so let's go to the South Pole."

"Um, you might, but I'm not," Gina said, not moving from where she stood. "I'm not turning into an icicle."

"It's not that cold," Nova said, spreading her hands. "I mean, just bundle up and you'll be fine. I'll bring you right back as soon as you get too cold, right? Don't you want to see the South Pole?"

By her expression, Gina was clearly torn between what she imagined to be a very bad idea and a very exciting idea, and simultaneously surprised by the audacity of that idea. After a pause, her expression settled back to normal, signalling that she'd made her decision.

"Well, okay," she said, "But I'm babysitting Amy, so she has to come too. I can't leave her alone."

Fifteen minutes later, the trio stood within sight of a simple marker pole driven into the snow and a white-painted sign which proclaimed that particular patch of tundra to be the world's geographic south pole. Nova considered the sign which bore the names of the explorers Amundsen and Scott and a line drawing of the Antarctic Continent.

"I'd always imagined there'd be a red and white striped pole or something," she said, bemusedly.

"Okay, we've seen it, can we go now?" Gina said very loudly. Her love affair with Antarctica had lasted exactly one second. She covered her eyes with her gloved hands and peeked through her fingers. Amy had done the same. Both wore their heaviest winter coats with the hoods up around their heads, had wrapped scarves around their faces, and wore gloves and winter boots. What was sufficient for the coldest Cleveland winter was woefully inadequate for summertime in Antarctica, let alone this bitter early autumn day. The sixty-below-zero air burned their eyes and threatened to freeze any exposed skin instantly. Mercifully, there was little wind.

"Cold!" Amy squeaked in protest. "I wanna go home!"

"Okay, sorry!" Nova apologized, and she turned away from the signpost, still wearing just her jeans and hoodie. While she could feel that it was quite cold indeed, it didn't actually bother her. She took Gina and Amy's hands and in another eyeblink they were back in Gina's home.

"Oh thank God," Gina gasped, throwing her gloves on the floor and rubbing her nose with her fingers. "I think I froze my nose." Amy blinked in surprise and stamped her feet, kicking snow out of the treads of her boots.

Nova looked at Gina's button nose.

"It looks okay to me," she said, and she realized Gina had been exaggerating.

"You're not cold at all, are you?" Gina asked, incredulously. "I mean, not even a little bit?"

"Well, no," Nova replied. "I mean, I know it was cold, and I could feel that it was colder than anyplace I'd ever been, but it didn't affect me."

"I'll bet you could live on the moon," Amy suggested.

"I think you're right," Nova said, considering the note she'd found. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and was shocked at how cold her hair felt in her fingers. "At the least, I'll bet I could hold out long enough to jump back safely if I couldn't stay longer."

"What about air?" Gina asked. "There's no air there, you know."

"I don't think I need that anymore," Nova explained, remembering her endurance test at the Rashoud, and the written results. "In a test at the clinic, I ran for a half-hour breathing air that didn't have any oxygen in it."

"Then you're set," Gina concluded, kneading warmth back into her fingers. "I mean, the moon is cold and there's no air, so it's all good to you, right?"

"I wanna moon rock!" Amy said excitedly, unintentionally echoing Banhammer's request.

"For you," Nova smiled and nodded. "Okay. One moon rock coming up."



To be continued. . .

Nova closed her eyes and concentrated on the moon. She still didn't understand how her teleportation ability worked, but she knew that it required a sort of visualization of the destination. Without thinking of a specific site on the moon, she imagined herself standing on the stark daylit side of the moon, surrounded by grey rocks, craters, and lunar dust. A moment later, she was simply there.

Nova's breath left her in a surprised and explosive cough that emptied her lungs. It didn't hurt, but it alarmed her nonetheless. Her heart raced, and in the absence of any other sound, the thudding heartbeat rang loudly in her ears, since the sound came from within her own body and required no air for transmission. Despite the strangeness of the new sensation, it did not hurt. After taking a long moment to calm her nerves, Nova was ready to examine her new surroundings, satisfied that she was in no immediate peril of suffocation or other vacuum-induced calamity.

Looking around in astonishment, she tried to say "wow," but managed only to move her mouth in an attempt to shape the word. Without air in her lungs, she was effectively silenced. Bobbing her head mirthfully instead of laughing, she smiled and looked around at the lunar surface. She could see nothing around in any direction, except for craters, rocks, and grey dust. The sky above was as black as velvet, and the stars shone as clearly as pixels.

Nova glanced at the sun, and immediately regretted it. Without an atmosphere to mitigate its glare, she was immediately blinded. Even with her eyes shut, all she could see was purple glowing blotches, the lingering afterimage seared into her retinas.

Good one, she thought sourly. Bring sunglasses next time, smartypants. Unable to see, Nova sat down on the lunar soil. As she did, she discovered her greatly reduced weight in the moon's feeble gravity. I almost forgot about that, she thought.

Looking away from the sun, she opened her eyes and blinked them rapidly. Slowly the purple blotches were fading away, and she could see a little bit at the periphery of her vision. While she waited for her eyes to recover, she felt the lunar soil with her bare hands, a feat no baseline astronaut had ever managed. It felt like especially fine powder under her fingertips, and she was enthralled at how it cascaded from her hands straight back to the surface in slow motion with no wind to blow it around.

Her vision nearly restored, Nova stood up and was surprised yet again to leave her feet and bob a short distance above the surface as she rose, before landing again. Nova grinned impishly and jumped as high as she could, bending her knees and swinging her arms vigorously. She propelled herself nearly twenty feet up before the weak gravity asserted itself and dragged her back down.

I guess I can't fly here, either, she frowned. She checked her watch to see how long she'd been on the moon, and was dismayed to see that the vacuum of space had destroyed the liquid crystal display, turning it into an ugly purple and black blotch underneath the glass face.

It was cheap anyway, Nova rationalized. She looked around for some likely-looking moon rocks and picked up three, each about the size of a potato. Nova then thought of Gina, and a moment later she returned to her neighbor's living room.

"You're back!" Amy said excitedly, jumping up from the sofa. "And you brought moon rocks!"

Nova took a deep breath and her eyes crossed momentarily, the air filling her lungs tickled.

"Yep, I brought moon rocks," she croaked hoarsely but cheerfully. Her vocal cords were dry and felt like rubber bands. "Can I get a bottle of water?"

Gina laughed at Nova's voice and led the way to the kitchen.

"So what's the scoop Nova?" Gina asked. "What's it like on the moon?"

"Water first," Nova said, sounding like John Wayne with a hangover. She smiled and set the moon rocks on the countertop. "Then I'll tell you all about it."

To be continued. . .

Sunday March 23, 2008:

Elizabeth Wendt relaxed in her quiet corner of the Mars Explorer Rover Mission control laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. She'd begun her internship with JPL in January, and so far had spent the last three months watching--with increasing boredom--as the remote rover Opportunity hunkered down in a semi-dormant state to ride out the long Martian winter. As the overnight board-watcher, she had almost nothing to do aside from sip coffee from the commissary and work on her PhD dissertation. Five nights a week she took the handoff from the afternoon board-watcher, and five nights a week the situation update was always the same: the rover is still dormant, the battery is one percent lower than yesterday, and the Martian springtime is one day closer.

At a little past 3:00 a.m., she was surfing Wikipedia idly, jumping from topic to topic, with her dissertation minimized in the background. A dialogue box popped up abruptly on the adjacent computer display--the mission status monitor. The proximity alarm had gone off again, and Elizabeth reached for the mouse to dismiss the alert. The proximity sensor had gone flaky in February, and false alarms were routine.

Before she could click on IGNORE, a second dialogue appeared, which read: INBOUND DATA (PHOTO). For whatever reason, Opportunity had decided to power up its medium-focus camera and transmit an image. The programmers had sent it a program update months earlier which allowed the rover to "decide" when to transmit photographs. Transmitted across space by radio waves, the photograph took time to resolve on Elizabeth's screen. Elizabeth waited in anticipation, wondering what it was that had inspired the weak AI in the rover to set aside battery-conservation protocol to send this photo.

After a few seconds, the image popped up on the display. Elizabeth expected to see a grainy image of soil and sky, and the track in the dirt left by the rover's own wheels as it had driven to its winter shelter. She was not expecting to see a teenaged girl in blue jeans and a hoodie wearing ski goggles. The girl stood a short distance from the rover and stood with her hands on her hips with a curious expression on her face.

Not looking away from the image, Elizabeth plucked the desk phone from its cradle and tapped the speed-dial button to the watch supervisor. After three rings her supervisor, Larry Bantam answered.

"What's up Liz?" he asked. He'd seen by the caller-ID display that the call was from Elizabeth.

"You ought to come look at this, Larry," Elizabeth said quickly. "Opportunity has a visitor. A nova, I think."

On the monitor, a second photo presented itself. Taken from the same angle, it was identical to the previous photo except that the girl was gone, but a series of footprints were visible on the Martian surface. They led towards the rover and then out of the frame to the side.

"Liz, it's late," Larry said, displeased that Elizabeth had interrupted his Minesweeper game. He'd almost set a new record on hard mode. "Are you for real or is this more of your weird humor?"

"I'm not messing around. I just got another photo. She's gone--the nova I mean-- but there's footprints in the soil."

"I'm on my way," Larry replied. "Don't do anything until I get there."

Elizabeth put down the phone, more than mildly annoyed by her supervisor. "Don't do anything," Larry had told her, as if she were some McDonald's employee and not an intern at Jet Propulsion (freaking) Laboratory. While she waited for Larry to walk across the building from his office, she put her shoes back on and minimized the Wikipedia tabs on her OpNet browser. As an afterthought she put her PhD dissertation on the screen as a reminder that she was more than a pretty face.

"What have we got?" Larry asked as he walked into the small cubicle where Elizabeth sat. He leaned over her shoulder and reached for the computer mouse.

"Just these two photos so far," Elizabeth replied. As she spoke, a third photo began to transmit, and yet another dialogue appeared. STATUS UPDATE this one read. Larry clicked on it.

"How about that," he said. "Solar panel efficiency just jumped from eighteen to almost ninety percent. How'd that happen?" As if in reply, the third photograph appeared on the display, covering the others. In it, the girl was back, and she stood much closer to the rover this time.

"She looks awfully pleased with herself," Elizabeth observed. It was true. The girl had beamed a wide grin for the camera and appeared to be in the middle of a cheerful wave. The grey sleeve of her hoodie was covered with red dust. "Hey, look at her sleeve. I think she wiped off the solar panels."

"That was kind of nice of her, I guess," Larry mused, running his free hand through his short black hair. A fourth photograph began to resolve on the screen.

"Now what?" Elizabeth wondered. She quickly got her reply from Mars: in the next photo, the girl was gone, but she'd left a note traced in the dusty foreground:

"-YOU'RE WELCOME-
-(heart) FLICKER-"