Godspeed John Glenn
The word has just come through that John Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth, last surviving member of the Mercury 7, passed away at the age of 95.
Which means I'll spend the rest of the day feeling bummed, probably enough that I won't be able to get any writing done.
And realized that this short story has instantly been rendered dated:
Crisis of Vision
Copyright 2016 by Leigh Kimmel
The first time Dr. Fitzclarence took Catherine to the old aerospace factory, their voices and footsteps had echoed in its emptiness. Over the past month the techs had transformed the space so completely she was hard-pressed to recognize the barren factory floor she'd toured that day.
She threaded her way through the equipment with care, not wanting to risk damaging a multi-million-dollar device with a careless jostle. Although she knew the theory of quantum cross-temporal imaging well enough - she wouldn't be Dr. Fitzclarence's graduate research assistant if she weren't working on her own PhD in quantum dynamics - she didn't know exactly how every machine in this place worked. But even she, a specialist in the quantum underpinnings of human consciousness, knew that careless contact could decohere a critical quantum entanglement and set their experiments behind by months.
Dr. Fitzclarence was already at the control center, reviewing documentation. He looked up only long enough to verify Catherine's identity before returning to his work. "We'll start the tests promptly at 2200 hours. I trust you are prepared and ready to begin."
Available in full at Gus on the Moon
Which means I'll spend the rest of the day feeling bummed, probably enough that I won't be able to get any writing done.
And realized that this short story has instantly been rendered dated:
Crisis of Vision
Copyright 2016 by Leigh Kimmel
The first time Dr. Fitzclarence took Catherine to the old aerospace factory, their voices and footsteps had echoed in its emptiness. Over the past month the techs had transformed the space so completely she was hard-pressed to recognize the barren factory floor she'd toured that day.
She threaded her way through the equipment with care, not wanting to risk damaging a multi-million-dollar device with a careless jostle. Although she knew the theory of quantum cross-temporal imaging well enough - she wouldn't be Dr. Fitzclarence's graduate research assistant if she weren't working on her own PhD in quantum dynamics - she didn't know exactly how every machine in this place worked. But even she, a specialist in the quantum underpinnings of human consciousness, knew that careless contact could decohere a critical quantum entanglement and set their experiments behind by months.
Dr. Fitzclarence was already at the control center, reviewing documentation. He looked up only long enough to verify Catherine's identity before returning to his work. "We'll start the tests promptly at 2200 hours. I trust you are prepared and ready to begin."
Available in full at Gus on the Moon