Habitats

by Laurence Dahners

  Shan climbed the stairs from the beach, admiring Ell’s form enthusiastically bouncing up the steps ahead of him. She’d taken him from spot to spot in the water, delightedly showing him coral and fish… though he’d mostly enjoyed watching her lissome body floating through the crystal water.

  As they crossed the big patio Ell squeaked, “Mom!” She dropped her swimming gear and crossed to a table that had a couple in their early forties sitting at it. Bending to hug her mother she exclaimed, “What are you and Miles doing here?”

  Feeling embarrassed to be on the island with her daughter when he hadn’t even been introduced, Shan stood uncertainly by the swim gear. He noticed that Ell looked a lot like her mother.

  Her mother laughed, “We don’t seem to get to see my daughter nearly often enough, and when she let slip she was coming to the island, we just thought we’d beat her down here.”

  “Great! Shan, come let me introduce you to my mother and her boyfriend, Miles Duncan.”

  Shan stepped forward and Ell’s mother got up and gave him a hug. “You must be the famous Shan Kinrais. I’m just so glad to see Ell has someone she loves at last.” She looked back and forth from one to the other. “I hope you’ll sit and have some umbrella drinks with us?”

  After a pleasant afternoon spent sitting on the patio, trying various tropical drinks and talking, Shan realized that Ell’s mother was just as down to earth and unaffected by her daughter’s fame as Ell herself.

  As they reached their room after a dinner of jerk chicken and sea bass Shan said, “Can I introduce you to my parents sometime?”

  Ell stopped and tilted her head, “I’d love that… But you have to think about whether you want to be Ell’s, or Raquel’s boyfriend.” She looked hard into his eyes, “Before you decide; you need to understand that Ell’s life is crazy and probably dangerous. If I ever have a family, I expect to do it as Raquel. I wouldn’t want children growing up into the kind of life I have right now.”

  “Dangerous?!”

  an>"3em">
  He stared out through their window at the horizon a moment. He turned to her, “I want to be the boyfriend of whichever,” he grinned, “of your two split personalities… that you would prefer I be with. If I can support you better as ‘Ell’s’ boyfriend, that’s what I want to do.”

  Ell hugged him, “That’s the right answer.”

  Shan frowned, “Which one?”

  The one where you said, ‘whichever you would prefer.’” She squeezed him. “I’d like you to be Raquel’s boyfriend and Ell’s acquaintance—who you wrote a physics paper with.”

  “OK,” he said, pulling her firm body against his… After a moment he leaned back, “Hey?”

  “Umhmm?” Ell said dreamily.

  “I might get offered a job.”

  “Really? Great! Doing what.”

  “Academic, they’d like someone in their Math Department that understands that “damned Donsaii math.”

  Ell grinned; then her smile turned apprehensive, “Where?”

  Shan smiled, “UNC.”

  “Hey!” Eyes narrowed, Ell slid her hands up to his ribs, “Were you trying to worry me?”

  Already squirming, Shan grabbed her wrists and said,. “Just a little, don’t you dare tickl… Oh, you’re in trouble now!”

  ***

  The box trundled in and passed through the security scanner at the main FedEx hub in Memphis. As it passed through an x-ray scan, the AI running the scanner recognized a port inside the box and flagged it to divert. Before it reached the diversion belt an RFID query received a reply from the port stating that it was in fact a liquid capable port. The security AI then checked the manifest for the package and noted that the shipper did not have a permit to ship a port. Both of those findings resulted in the package dropping off the main line into a concrete safety bunker until further evaluation could be completed.

  Fred Hillman looked up at the chime from the security AI. He shook his head, realizing the system had kicked out another port. Most people didn’t understand that they needed a permit to ship a package containing a port so this happened fairly often. Lord only knows what it’ll be like when the ports are more common. He scanned down to see the sender’s information. Sent by a John Smith of Atlanta Georgia. Dropped off at a drop box near downtown Atlanta. He shrugged and scrolled to the destination. “Emily Cline, de mily ClSocial Secretary, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.”

  Oh shit!

  The front legs of Fred’s chair hit the floor as he told his AI to contact the FedEx liaison at Homeland Security.

  “Homeland Security, Harold Wilkerson speaking. What’s the issue?” Harold sounded bored, probably because they got a lot of people “crying wolf.”

  “This is Fred Hillman at FedEx Memphis. We have a package transiting our facility that contains an unpermitted port. It’s addressed to the White House.”

  Harold no longer sounded bored. He peppered Fred with demands and questions. First to make sure the package was no longer in transit, then to determine it was in a safe location. “What else is in the package?”

  “The x-ray scanner AI says there is a probable GPS tracker in the package too.”

  “Crap! OK I’m rousting folks from our local office to get out there, but you’ve got to be thinking that if the sender realizes that it’s stopped moving they might start trying to blow it up and damage your facility.”

  Fred said, “Should be fine; it’s in a bomb proof concrete bunker.”

  Harold raised an eyebrow, “Is that bunker airtight? Cause if it isn’t, and they start sending a flammable like natural gas through that port you could be in for an explosion outside the bunker.”

  Fred swallowed, suddenly thinking about how his office wasn’t all that far from the bunker, “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  Harold said, “OK, it’s going to take our folks a while to get there. It will also take quite a while for enough gas to go through the port to make it dangerous. Can you get down there quickly and cut the wire between the electronics and the port itself?”

  Fred worked his cheeks to moisten a suddenly dry mouth and croaked, “Is that safe?”

  Harold said, “Yeah, the current in the wire is small. If you cut it soon there won’t be much gas. Probably none, they’ve got to expect the package to stop briefly in Memphis anyway.”

  Fred stood and looked out his window into the distribution center’s maze of belts and the packages making their way through it. The “dangerous package bunker” was only about thirty feet away. He picked up a box cutter and started out the door. “OK, I’m on my way. How am I gonna know what wire to cut? I’ve never seen one of these things.”

  “I’ll send a picture to your HUD.”

  Fred had just reached the door of the bunker when a flash on his HUD told him the image had arrived. “Got the picture,” he said, looking up.

  Harold said, “You see, there’s just the port and the glob of epoxy with the wire between. Only one wire to cut.”

  “What if there’s a bomb in the package too? I open the package and it goes boom.”

  “Nah, you guys’ve been catching bombs for years. They should know better than to try to send a bomb too. Did your security AI pick up explosives with its sniffers? Or think the wiring looked like a bomb?”

  “No.” Fred pushed open the heavy door into the bunker. He glanced up at the night sky visible through the big “chimney” intended to vent any blasts or toxins straight up, wondering if any flammable gas wouldn’t have mostly gone up the chimney. He sniffed. It didn’t smell like gas. He started down the ladder
into the bunker, hearing the door close above him with a muffled boom. The package lay on a steel exam table. A tremor went through him as he box cuttered open the side of the package. A port, much like the one he could see on his HUD, lay taped to a piece of cardboard. Another electronic device was taped next to it. He wiped his palm, then holding the box cutter only by its plastic handle, he cut the wire that attached the port to its electronics.

  Nothing happened, except for his sudden, raging, need to pee.

  In Atlanta, John Smith of 121 Malette Avenue woke to the sound of pounding on his door. He slowly shuffled to the door and peered through the eye hole. A group of men wearing body armor labeled “SWAT” and “POLICE” were on his porch. Suddenly glad he hadn’t gotten his gun he tried to say, “Hello,” but produced an unrecognizable croak. He cleared his throat, “Hello. What do you want?”

  “Police. Open up. We have a warrant to search the premises.”

  He looked out the eye hole again. There was a police truck in the street with a strobing light. He said, “OK,” and opened the door slowly. Shuffling back he said, “I think you have the wrong John Smith.”

  The SWAT team leader swore. The man behind the door had to have at least the 87 years that their AI had told them to expect. The living room looked like an old man’s house would be expected to look. He said, “Sorry sir. I think it’s a mistake too, but we’ve got to come in and look around.”

  ***

  Abbas cursed. “The GPS says the package is still in Memphis at the FedEx hub! They probably have some kind of process to inspect packages to the White House. I told you we should have put the port inside of something that they might expect to be sent to the White House!”

  Farshid frowned, “Like what? We don’t know what’s normally delivered to the Social Secretary!”

  “She arranges receptions for important people.” Abbas said impatiently, “They must have to buy gifts to give those people all the time. I told you we could just get a metal vase and put the port in it. The metal would block x-ray scans too.”

  Farshid scowled, “But why would they stop delivery of a port? It isn’t dangerous.”

  “Maybe the FBI has already thought of sending dangerous stuff through them after they arrive.”

  Farshid said, “Well, let’s do some damage to FedEx then. After all, it’s just another part of the Great Satan’s establishment.” He turned to the propane tank they’d purchased. Not having the correct fitting to connect the tank to the port, they’d heavily duct taped the two together. He opened the valve. The tape tightened ominously, but held, so he opened the valve the rest of the way. He studied the connection a moment. He worried about using tape, but really, there shouldn’t be any resistance to the flow of the propane out of the tank into the FedEx facility so there wouldn’t be much pressure for the tape to resist. He turned to Abbas and Reza, “It will take time to empty the tank into the FedEx facility. Let us pray.” They all moved into the next room where they kept their prayer rugs.

  Behind them the pressure from the tank built against the port that had been closed by the cutting of the wire in Memphis. After another minute the pressure pulled the taped junction loose and propane began pouring into the room. The heavy gas sank to the floor and spread outward.

  Finishing their prayers, the three men stood and started back toward the living room of their house. Reza turned the corner first and smelled the propane. Then he saw the port dangling from the tape on the nozzle. “No!” he shouted, just as the propane reached the pilot light of the water heater. With an enormous “whumpf,” the gas flashed into flame, blowing out all the windows and tossing the flaming Reza back across the prayer room to crash bonelessly into the back wall.

  A few minutes later Farshid and Abbas staggered out to their car dragging Reza’s limp body. They sped away just before the arrival of the fire trucks.

  Chapter Two

  Ben Stavos and Rob Braun saw Ell walking into the ET Resources area of the D5R research facility. “Hey guys,” she said, “how close are you to flying your 747 up to LEO?”

  “Pretty close, but the damn thing sucks up huge quantities of fuel. We’re just trying to calculate to be sure we have sufficient supply in case we have any trouble.”

  “Don’t we still have ports over at Aerogas to supply LOX?”

  “Yeah, we have several LOX suppliers. You wouldn’t think we’d have trouble getting enough Liquid Natural Gas, but, as a hazardous flammable material, PHMSA is giving us trouble over sending it directly from the supplier to the plane.”

  “Really, why?”

  “Just the way they’re reading the rules I think. They want us to move it to our own tank then send it from that tank to the plane.” He sighed, “It’s pretty frustrating because the tank we have is short of the safety margin we’d like.”

  “But if you’re putting it into the tank from the supplier as fast as you’re sending it to the 747?”

  He barked a laugh, “No! Then they consider it to be a ‘pipe’ with a reservoir tank, still against s othe rules.”

  Ell frowned, “Won’t the rockets on the 747 burn hydrogen?”

  Braun shrugged, “Sure, but hydrogen’s really expensive.”

  Ell frowned, “Aren’t you getting hydrogen from Jupiter?”

  Braun looked puzzled a moment, then his eyebrows shot up, “You mean…?”

  Ben said, “Jupiter?”

  Braun turned excitedly to Ben, “Jupiter’s atmosphere is 90% hydrogen and… I think 10% helium with traces of other stuff. But,” disappointedly he turned to Ell, “It’s gaseous. We need liquid to get enough flow through portals.”

  Ell said, “Oh, yeah. Well you could use the methane lakes on Titan? That’d be your LNG right there. You just have to drop some ports into them.”

  Braun’s eyes narrowed, “There are methane lakes? Really? Or are you just pulling my leg?”

  Ell grinned and winked at them, “Why don’t you ask the guys over at ET Resources? They should know the answers to questions like that.”

  Ben and Rob both snorted, “That was a low blow. But if you’re right we’ll just have to submerge our embarrassment in gratitude. It’ll just take a while to fly some ports out there.”

  Ell tilted her head, “Come on guys, we already flew you some ports out to orbit each of the major planets. You can just roll up some bigger ports and send them through. Then send rockets through those ports and fly them down into the fluid. Submerge them deep enough and you’ll have a good head of pressure driving the LNG into your engines.”

  Rob squinched his eyes in frustration, “Sorry, I’d forgotten about the orbiting ports. That’ll work. Do you also have a source of LOX somewhere out there in the solar system?”

  “Sorry, no. There may be oxygen slush someplace, but it probably isn’t very pure. Can you let me know when you’re sending the 747 up? I’d like to celebrate with you.” Ell held her hand up for a pause as she got a far-away look, “You know… if you prefer to use hydrogen you could just drop your ports down deep to Jupiter’s atmosphere where the hydrogen has condensed into a liquid? Though it would be hot. It’s only liquid because of the pressure. It might melt the ports so you’d have to look into that a little farther.”

  “Sure,” they said, then watched her walk away. Ben turned to Rob, “Dammit, it just seems so obvious after she pointed it out!”

  Rob sighed, “Yeah, yeah, it’s always obvious after someone points it out. I suppose we should start thinking about selling LNG here on earth?”

  Ben grinned, “How can you make that sound like bad news? Though I suppose first we better find out how clean these ‘methane lakes’ are.”

  “I don’t know… I guess I was hoping to do something cooler out there in space than mining natural gas.”

  “Just think of it as the way you’re financing your space ‘habitat habit.’”

  Roger looked up as Ell walked into the Quantum area. He felt a twinge of sadness. Wearing cutoff jeans and running shoes; looking like sh
e was dancing though she was only walking, she, as always, took his breath away. Her beauty made him wistful for the time he’d loved her and had hoped she might love him in return. He glanced down the table at Emma, animatedly talking to Manuel, smiling, her curls bouncing. Roger truly loved Emma, and she loved him back. Life was good. Still, working around Ell created moments of nostalgia for the “might have beens.”

  Ell saw him and came his way, “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Are the AI implants ready for our folks yet?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got them made and can have a session to install them in the inner circle using single ended ports this weekend. One of the ENT residents from the University hospital has gotten permission to ‘moonlight,’ surgically implanting the others in any of the Portal Tech or ET personnel that want them.”

  “Surgically implanting? Sounds like a big procedure?”

  “No, just a tiny incision, slide it in and put a drop of skin glue over it. The trick is to know where to put it and doing it with good sterile technique.”

  “Sounds good. Any new developments?”

  Roger grinned, “This resident that’s going to do the implants for us?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is kinda embarrassing, but he pointed out that the reason the sound from the implants is so bad is because of preferential absorption of some frequencies by the fat and other tissues between the implant and the ear. Compensating for loss of some frequencies is something that they do for hearing aids all the time. He’s adjusted the frequency response of mine until it sounds pretty much normal. Actually, all he had to do was tell my AI how to adjust the frequency response. The AI already had software to do the adjusting.”