This is another one of those “scenes without a story”. The idea came to me, and I thought I would write it down. I don’t know what “the plot” is supposed to be. I think this would be an opening for a story. It creates all sorts of possibilities. The “back-story” is just that. Not part of the story, but the ideas I have in the background.

Watch Changeover

John stretched and glanced at the clock. It was coming up to change-over time. Usually he wasn’t too bothered whether it was early or a little late, but today he had something to say, and that made it all see a little more important. He poured himself a mug of coffee, scratched behind his ear and waited.

He was sitting in the communal area. The crew of every ship developed their own traditions as to how they did things. Traditions evolved as new members joined and old members left. Eventually it felt as if the tradition belonged to the ship itself, rather than the crew members. Of course, there were procedures, but traditions mattered too. On the “Scarab”, the tradition was that changeover took place in the communal area. They had other traditions too; like dressing formally for meals. They even wore pretend paper neck-ties, anything to vary the monotony.

Peter came in. He poured himself a mug of coffee, pulled back a chair, sat down and yawned.

“Morning. Anything exciting happen overnight?”

It struck John that talking about morning and overnight was another one of those traditions. This ship operated according to a variation of Earth Zulu time, even though that was completely irrelevant out here.

John took a sip and answered “Yes. For a change something has happened. Do you remember those spikes of static, we were wondering about?” Peter nodded. “Well I think I may have found an explanation but there’s something even better first”.

John paused for effect and watched as Peter leaned forward. “Well?” He drawled. “What is it? We could do with something interesting around here.”

“Here it is.” Said John, pointing at a diagram on his notepad, “You can see here,” he indicated on the screen, “that we have an incoming object. On its current trajectory it will cross our path during your shift.”

“Oh! I shall look forward to that,” yawned Peter. “Have you told Head Office? And I don’t suppose there is any risk to us, is there?”

“Yes, No and No” smiled John. “Yes, I sent an alert as soon as the systems spotted it, no, there is risk to the ship. It should be visible as it passes, and no, there is no risk to the Earth either, and there is a little more.” He was enjoying this.

Peter took a leisurely sip from his mug and looked at his colleague. “Well. Do go on.”

Back Story

I imagine this story set some time in the future. This is not the super-hi-tech world of Star Trek. There is no faster-than-light drive. Communications are at the speed of light (and over long distances that means slow).

Mankind has made it to the planets if not the stars. One of the things that has happened is that we mine the asteroid belt. Most of the actual mining is automated. Robot machines mine an asteroid and process the material into convenient lumps of metal, which are then boosted into a long elliptical orbit back towards Earth. It’s a convenient way of getting around pollution problems but does present problems with energy (sunlight is a bit diffuse out there).

One of “the jobs” is that there are people who make long slow trips around the asteroid belt inspecting how the robots are getting on and picking up the products and sending them Earthward (or sunward) if you prefer. The habitable parts of the ships are fairly small. People do it for various reasons, mostly money, some to break drug habits and “forget” and some unpaid as a variation on Community Service or a prison sentence. Most of what these people do could really be done by automated systems but there is a desire to have someone on the spot to make decisions, so the systems have been adjusted to give the people something to do.

Of course, this story is partly ripping off “Rendezvous with Rama”!

Note: I found this file on 31st December 2016 while doing some end-of-year tidying up. I'm posting it here, but not including it in my exercises for today.

(655 Words. Originally created: 22^nd December 2015)

See also: follow-up