First Stab at Sci-Fi Writing

Those of you who read my posts know that I usually keep with factual information, or now and then a flight of fancy when Dr. Franklin finds me.

This is a different thing.  I am trying some fiction, and honestly want your honest feedback.  Most likely this is very poor, but I thought that I would try.

Seventeen orbits around this pissy little orange star.  It we were not so close, it would be freezing.  As it is, just cold.  Thirty-four sorry seasons, cold and colder.  And stupid teachers.  And stupid governments, and stupid scientists.  We used to have real ones, until the "doctrine" snuffed it.  I hate the fucking doctrine.

In those days, people looked at things from a logical and unbiased aspect.  But now, if the sacred doctrine is not observed, it is either prison, execution, or lobotomy, chemical or physical.  I can not stand it.  And I did not.

I found some of the old works, when our race was progressive.  The fundamentalists burnt most of it, but not all.  I keep those texts as more precious than any gem.  I read them constantly, and have learnt a few things.  One is that there are other folks that value freedom.  We used to value it, until a little security became more valuable.  Now only security seems to make any difference.

I write only in my mind, because at any time the authorities can read my writings on physical media or on any other medium.  They have carte blanche to look at any thing.  Our minds are next, because the technology is getting so good that questions can trip a memory that the scanners pick up.  Just thinking about freedom is dangerous.  But they have to put you in "the tank" first, so unless one states his or her thoughts it is not likely yet, but their technology gets better every day.  Soon, just thinking about freedom will be a punishable offense.

Our scientists were not stupid.  That is, until they either were killed off, imprisoned, or forced to recant.  A few things were left, and a geek like me could even learn how to use them.  The only intact one that still had an energy source was a sort of a transmitter, but not like anything known today.  Today, we only have the electromagnetic spectrum, because anything else is not the will of the "Creator".

But it works.  As far as I can tell, it sends a signal at a very fast speed and then transforms it into a stream of ones and zeros near the destination.  I do not know how it senses how to do that, but it works.  I have made contact with a race of people much like us, and their understanding of mathematics is not unlike that of the studied ones here.  I have actually communicated with them by encoding prime numbers, and got the same ones back.  I have not figured out exactly who they are, but seem to be similar.

I tried sending a crude representation of myself, but there was too much information.  I settled to sending a picture of my hand, and that went through.  I got one back, and those folks are curious in that they seem to have an extra digit on each hand.  As best as I can tell, they also have a natural tendency to use mathematics based on ten, rather than eight, which makes communication a bit difficult, but not impossible.

This transmitter seems to be too far advanced for the authorities to detect, since it was developed several tens of cycles ago, before the fundamentalists destroyed information.  I hope that I can keep communicating with these people.  They do not seem to be as restricted as we are insofar as freedom of thought, speech, and affection as we are.  Perhaps some day we can meet.  I hope that their science has not been stifled like ours has.

If the fundamentalists had not seized power cycles ago, I have no doubt that we would be visiting the stars now.  I hope that those on the other world are more wise.

Update:  I got a breakthrough with the other folks.  We settled on binary communication, and some are fluent with it.  In particular, one person by the name of "ct", as he, she, or them call themselves, was able to respond.  ct sent me some information about their civilization, and it is not so much different than ours used to be, until the fundamentalists took over everything.  Strange that that species has only two sexes, but I suppose that it is simpler than ours that has three, with everyone going from one to another as life progresses.  It seems sort of limiting to be trapped in only one for a lifetime, but that is not a criticism, just an observation.  I hope to remain in communication with what ct calls "human".  Thanks to him (I think that I got the gender thing correct, as he describes it) for what he calls the Unicodes that allows us to communicate.

Copyright (c) 29 June 2008 by Dr. David W. Smith.  All rights reserved.  Limited quotes for review purposes are allowed, as is fair use.