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    Chasing 'Oumuamua
    Chasing 'Oumuamua
    Chasing 'Oumuamua
    Ebook214 pages2 hours

    Chasing 'Oumuamua

    By Sean Monaghan

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    About this ebook

    Rick comes across as odd. Especially with his ideas about chasing down interstellar visitors. But no matter what, Meredith loves him. Family works like that. Even when the most bizarre ideas become almost terrifying.
    "Chasing 'Oumuamua", joins four other sci-fi stories set close to home, from award-winning writer Sean Monaghan, author of "Crimson Birds of Small Miracles" and "Ventiforms".
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTriple V Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2020
    ISBN9781393233558
    Chasing 'Oumuamua
    Author

    Sean Monaghan

    Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

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      Book preview

      Chasing 'Oumuamua - Sean Monaghan

      Also by Sean Monaghan

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      CHASING

      ‘OUMUAMUA

      INTRODUCTION

      Chasing ‘Oumuamua first appeared in the pages of Asimov’s science fiction in 2019. It also appeared on the ballot for the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel awards, which, as I write this, are still to be voted on. When I look at the other stories on the ballot, there’s some strong competition there, so I’m thrilled to simply have made the list.

      Actually, I’m pretty thrilled to have been published in Asimov’s. It’s a magazine I’ve been reading on and off since I was, well, much younger. Around the time of the magazine’s inception, I was already growing up reading Dr Asimov’s fiction. The Bicentennial Man, The Naked Sun, The Caves of Steel, the list goes on. Undoubtedly his writing had a profound effect on my own dreams and goals.

      A goal like, being a writer. A dream like, getting published.

      Well, being a writer comes kind of naturally. As in, I love sitting down and making stuff up, so that’s what I do in my free time. In fact I’d be lost without it. Would probably turn into a ragamuffin deadbeat waffler.

      So, being a writer was a pretty attainable goal.

      Getting published. That’s something outside of my control. It took many years and many wrong turns before I ever saw my first publication. There’s a lot of good advice out there for writers. And a lot of bad. Part of the path to getting good enough to be published is sifting those.

      Fortunately, over the last decade or so, I’ve been getting some better advice. Also, I stopped listening to the less than useful. I wish other writers would too.

      For me, here remains the hope and dream of more publication, but also the goal of just writing.

      After all, that’s what it’s about. If I entertain some people along the way, well that’s great too. Right now, I hope you find these stories here entertaining.

      I have changed the title very slightly. Adding in the apostrophe to the start of ‘Oumuamua. Despite my research in the lead up to the submitting the story, that important detail eluded me.  Wikipedia explains it better than I can, but in essence, ‘Oumuamua is from Hawaiian, meaning ‘scout’, or better, when you break it down, ou for reaching out for and the repeated mua meaning first, as in the first, first reaching out. As if our visitor was almost an emissary.

      I like that idea.

      Thanks for reading. As I mentioned I do hope you enjoy Chasing ‘Oumuamua and the other stories here.

      Sean Monaghan, June 2020

      Plunge

      My brother died falling from the stratosphere.

      Curse him.

      So then came funeral day. I closed my eyes and sucked in the fragrant air. Fresh cut grass. Like cemeteries everywhere, always kept trim and tidy.

      Freshly turned earth. Flowers; roses and carnations. Ozone, from the vehicles.

      The cars quietly purred. Pulling in at the narrow, simple roadway. The cortege. All those who knew Brandon, streaming in to see him get put into the ground.

      Was I the only one who saw the irony in that?

      That was how he died. Going into the ground.

      The man spent his adult life diving from vast heights. Straight toward the planet’s surface. All that technology to give him speed. The rush. The adrenalin.

      Straight for the ground.

      Or spiraling in. Whatever the divers called it. Their whole other language.

      All that technology—wings and vanes, chutes and fields—supposed to stop them from actually hitting.

      Didn’t stop him hitting.

      It was in a marsh. East of Pensacola. Gators and rushes and cypress knees. He missed the woods. Thwacked into muddy, muddy earth. Made a hole three feet deep.

      Legs poking out.

      I guess they would say that it wasn’t the falling that had killed him. Just the landing.

      Nice if the family—my family—didn’t have to see that image. Except it’s near on impossible to avoid anything like that now.

      Someone said that his death went spiral. Sheesh.

      Brandon was twenty-eight. Three years older than me. Two kids, with different moms. All four of them would be here.

      A cool wind blew through the trees in the cemetery. Evergreens. Some kind of modified spruce. GMed so that its leaves break down real fast. Keep the cemetery pretty.

      It was on the brochure.

      Pretty was important. Farewelling loved ones was a tough business. Best not to have any imperfections to distract. Keep it all neat and tidy.

      I felt a solid pat on my shoulder and opened my eyes. The sunlight momentarily bright.

      Hey Todd, Mike Luton said. Mike was one of Brandon’s diving buddies. They’d jumped from the tropopause, or the stratopause or something.

      Strange names. Not really any kind of pause. When you’re falling nothing in the air is going to arrest your descent.

      Nothing except the ground.

      As Brandon discovered.

      Mike, I said.

      How’re you doing?

      How you think? How are you doing?

      Lousy, he said. We’re planning on taking a memorial dive for Brandon. From The String. Figure you might want to come along.

      A what?

      Melanie’s coming too. Mike frowned. He had a permanent furrow in his brow, and receding hair. Like the rest of us, he wore a black suit that didn’t fit his personality at all.

      Melanie, I said.

      Should have gotten her to ask you.

      Melanie. I took a breath. Golden hair. Meteorologist. Worked on the new cyclonic systems. Twenty-five too. Nose with a little too much curve, smile with a few too many teeth. Personality that meshed with mine so strongly that she left imprints on my brain for days after even a ‘Hello’.

      But.

      Couldn’t they just let me bury my brother without trying—again—to matchmake me?

      Yeah. Mike moved on. Heading toward the plot with the other mourners. Only then did I realize that he was with Kosuke Baker. Her straight black hair and swaying walk so distinct, even from behind. They were holding hands.

      I closed my eyes again. Took a breath.

      Opened to bright.

      Followed them.

      BRANDON HAD JUMPED from one of the specialist sub-orbital vehicles. The things drop from a fixed-wing aircraft, burn some kind of nitrous fuel and speed away from the safety of the ground. A very tight parabola.

      The engine shuts off.

      The craft flies on, carried by momentum. The occupants effectively weightless. Just for a few minutes.

      One hundred kilometers up.

      Some brave few clamber out through a special airlock contraption. They push themselves away from the craft and plummet.

      I should add that the craft is in no trouble. It will land safely, with a feathered tail and wings to arrest its descent, and wheels to set down at the airfield.

      The jumpers are on their own.

      BRANDON HIT MOVING at one hundred twenty two miles per hour.

      AFTER THE FUNERAL, a whole lot of people headed to my parents’ place.

      They’d bought up three lots in Jacksonville when everything fell to pieces because of the Russian thing with the weather. Graded the property with robotic tubes, turned it into a raised stack of artificial stone. Built a kind of designer house that looked like one of those old style light bulbs. Five story high tower.

      Their living room was designed for entertaining. There were canapes and frappés and vol-a-vents and maraschino cherries. Students in formal outfits carrying trays. Champagne, coffee, brandy, water, mango juice, or orange.

      Quite the shindig, yes? Melanie said, finding me on the rim balcony looking out across the Atlantic. A huge, winged vessel moved up the coast, carting hardwoods, probably, from Redondo Brazil to the Long Island shores project.

      I suppose, I said, "that Brandon must be farewelled in style.

      Farther out, whipper sailers fluttered. Maybe a regatta.

      I guess Mike told you about the memorial?

      You know he did.

      Sure, but I don’t want you thinking Mike’s got me wrapped around... She held up her clutched hand, pinky finger extended.

      I would never think that of you. I cringed. Sounded pandering.

      But Melanie smiled. All teeth. "You’ve been diving, haven’t you. Some HALO jumps right?"

      Strange how the new divers had appropriated that military terminology. High altitude, low opening. Something like that. Jump from thirty kilometers up, open your final chute at under a thousand feet.

      A particular brand of insanity.

      Three dives, I said. Jumps, really. Nothing very high. My first had been a simple tethered chute drop from three thousand feet. Spectacular views. Terrified something would fail.

      Cords tangled. Chute torn. Harness faulty.

      Lots of things could go wrong.

      My other two jumps had been guided. Trainers—Brandon included—jumping with me. From five thousand, then eight thousand feet.

      Plenty enough for me.

      Thing is, Melanie said—did she bat her eyelids? You know the principles. A couple of high altitude simulateds and you’ll be fine. They’re going next week.

      From The String?

      She grinned again, leaning in closer. I could smell a touch of wine on her breath.

      The String, she said. Yes.

      Moored near Quito, Ecuador, The String stretched upward over forty thousand kilometers. Big old asteroid at the top end, dozens of cable car vehicles climbing up the side, taking things into space, and bringing other things back.

      ESE, was the official name. Ecuador Space Elevator. Very efficient.

      You realize that it’s for one thing only, don’t you? I said.

      Melanie still leaned close. A tingle crept up my spine and across my scalp. Her eyes stared deep into mine.

      She moved a fraction closer. Her lips shifted.

      I moved back.

      Attracted or not, I wasn’t going to kiss her at my brother’s funeral reception.

      One thing, she said, a hint of disappointment in her eyes. Carting freight.

      There’s nowhere to jump from anyway.

      People have jumped from all kinds of fixed points. Clifftops in Norway, tall buildings in Dubai and India. Radio towers in Canada.

      The three hundred and eighty story Metropolis building in Guangzhou, with its extra five hundred meters of carbon fiber framework. Just for that kind of thing. Almost two thousand meters from a fixed platform.

      Lots of talk about much much higher jumps from The String. Impossible of course. There were no platforms from which to dive.

      Brandon had it all worked out, Melanie said.

      You’ll go to jail. Or worse. Worse meant dead.

      Melanie shrugged. I said to him that he should invite you. Get you out of your comfy little office. He said you would never come.

      He didn’t mention it.

      Exactly.

      A WEEK LATER I WAS in my comfy little office when my retinal handed me a priority message from Melanie.

      I work for an accountancy clearing house. As in picking up stray pieces of account work, exploiting loopholes and giving discount advice. My training—three years at Tallahassee Tech—wasted. Who needs someone who understands datamining when there are virtual bots that are so much more efficient?

      Miller and Baker Accounts were happy to have me. I was happy to have them.

      I was in a conversation with Trude, one of the actual accountants, when Melanie’s message came in.

      You got a message? Trude said. Her office, second floor corner, had a view of the 24-Seven-11 convenience printer across the street, and the two vacant lots with old playground equipment and empty parking spaces.

      Trude leaned back and sips from her coffee. She was fifteen years older than me. I once made a pass at her. Silly, really. Though she did confess, after a wine at a staff function, that she had been very flattered and if she’d been X years younger, blah, blah, blah.

      It can wait, I said. Let’s resolve this spreadsheet.

      Time for a coffee break, Trude said. She drained her coffee and stood. Five minutes.

      You’re just doing this because of my brother.

      Of course. Also because one of your friends asked if you could have some time off for a memorial. Something about Ecuador. You’ve been working well. You should take the time.

      I’m not going to Ecuador.

      But Trude was already at the door. "You want one of those soy

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