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    The Storm Fishers and Other Stories
    The Storm Fishers and Other Stories
    The Storm Fishers and Other Stories
    Ebook184 pages2 hours

    The Storm Fishers and Other Stories

    By Everitt Foster

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    About this ebook

    This is a collection of short stories and one novella. All are science fiction set in a world called 'The Apostrophe Universe.'

    Gravity before Newton
    This is the story of a man named Futter who dreams of becoming a scientist yet is thwarted at every turn by real life. One day when working in his professional garage he is hit on the head with a lug nut and has an epiphany about the science of fate. As he calls it, Fate before Futter is like Gravity before Newton. It existed, but took a unique mind and a knock on the head by an apple to bring the science to the world. His plan goes disastrously wrong costing him everything.

    A View Without Seasons
    This is the story of a man raising his young daughter by himself. Her mother has taken a job on another ship and is doing important scientific work that will change all of humanity forever. Yet when the man hears that his ex-wife's vessel will dock with his on Christmas day, he takes the opportunity to have his family together and to celebrate the antiquated holiday in the old fashioned way. It is a look at Christmas from the point of view of a society that has moved beyond Earth and faith.

    Lomonosov's Drift
    When a geologist finds a beautiful rock while mining for solid methane he takes it back to his wife. When she hosts a party for potential clients of her engineering firm some clients begin to believe the rock has supernatural healing powers and should be shared with the entire ship. When the couple disagree with the consensus of the ship they are forced to leave, heading out into the void alone.

    The Storm Fishers
    The novella that gave the book its title. This is the story of two young men who attend Faraday University on Mars and are assigned to different places on the spaceship for their intern year. One a brilliant physicist the other a struggling mathematician, they drift in opposite directions until they discover the injustice in the system of space travel that the solar system uses. Together, and with new friends, they set out to regain what is theirs both physically and legally.

    Sheep Bite
    When a man is convicted of unethical science he is condemned to die, his wife, a geneticist, takes a sample of his DNA to produce a clone of him that will help her raise their son. When the ship she works on discovers what she has done disaster strikes and all of their lives are changed forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEveritt Foster
    Release dateJan 6, 2016
    ISBN9781311203250
    The Storm Fishers and Other Stories
    Author

    Everitt Foster

    Everitt Foster is a non-practicing scientist, geological denomination, who converted to military history after undergrad, but has since entirely lapsed from academia. In 2010, after nearly a decade of almost solitary confinement in a tiny office with a pack of red pens and stacks of undergraduate essays, he lost faith and made a daring escape from graduate school. Eyewitnesses report that the breakout involved fending off a brilliant adviser, hurdling three committee members, and evading a clever dissertation. It also involved losing all but four friends. His most interesting publication involved Michael Foucault and Dexter Morgan; use your imagination, or read Dexter and Philosophy: Mind Over Spatter. He enjoys the outdoors (rocks and astronomy), the indoors (books and video games) and various mental pharmaceuticals (again, use your imagination). He lives in Texas. Mostly harmless. If found do not feed before midnight, caffinate regularly, and enjoy the ride.

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      Book preview

      The Storm Fishers and Other Stories - Everitt Foster

      The Storm Fishers and Other Stories

      By

      Everitt Foster

      Copyright © Jason Everitt Foster, 2015

      All characters and events in these stories are fictional and no semblance including name or description is intended.

      Cover designed by Everitt Foster using GIMP and brushes by ObsidianDawn

      The author can be contacted on Twitter @everittfoster or via email: ever.foster@gmail.com

      For A.I.H.

      Table of Contents

      Gravity before Newton

      A View without Seasons

      Lomonosov’s Drift

      The Storm Fishers

      Sheep Bite

      GRAVITY BEFORE NEWTON

      When Martian society was still young there lived a boy in love with the greatest heroes of Earth. His mother taught him to read using his father’s biographies of Newton, Einstein, Faraday and Bohr. He didn’t speak often, and went outside even less. He loved stories from Martian Geologic Magazine and he saw himself on the cover, leading a cadre of natives across mountains and canyons of distant and dangerous planets. The boy was short even for his age, and his sandy cowlick bounced side to side when he tried to run. One day, while still learning to write, he took a cardboard binder and scribbled The Lif of Digby Futter, Sientis in red washable marker on the cover and placed it on the shelf next to his father’s biographies.

      Digby lived in the corner unit of an apartment building at the intersection of Heisenberg Lane and Pauling Avenue. His bedroom window overlooked the botanical gardens where his father worked. And every day after school, when he heard the whistle blow, he would rush to the window, smush his face against the clear acrylic, and watch as men and women in white coats flowed from every side of the gardens onto the river blue pavement below.

      His father, the garden’s herpetologist, Master Albert Futter the third, wore a suit colored like the navy-violet crown lighting the skyline at sunset. Before leaving work Albert folded his lab coat over his shoulder so his son could spot him like an amethyst veined pebble tumbling to the sea, finally vanishing beneath the balcony of their building. And that was the cue for Digby to rush past the smell of dinner and slam open the front door for his father.

      Daaaaaaaad! I got a B- on my biology thingy. Tell me what I did wrong. Digby handed his father the exam.

      After dinner, okay?

      You go to sleep after dinner. I want it now!

      Poor Albert sighed and took the exam to a cramped study. When dinner was set he came to the table, kissed Mrs. Sharon Futter good evening and sat forward so he could show Digby his mistakes.

      I don’t feel like that was a mistake. I feel like you are wrong, Digby said when his father showed him how to solve a problem.

      Digby you know we respect your right to your own opinion and I’m thankful you question what you are told. But the fact is you’re not entitled to your own facts.

      Sharon plopped a second helping on her son’s plate and before she could sit down the plate was empty and she was back at the stove to bring him a third. She sighed and her husband felt the frustration too.

      The garden closed forever shortly before Digby graduated from advanced school. Albert and Sharon found themselves living on their retirement twenty years early. With the news came the talk. We heard from Martian U. You were accepted, but without scholarship.

      They don’t think I am able? said Digby.

      No that’s not it at all.

      Good. Because I know I am going to be great one day.

      We do too, his mother said. Digby puffed his chest out, swallowed his pride (like a Yale man realizing he didn’t want to go to dumb old Harvard anyway) and said, What about Newton?

      I’m sorry no.

      No scholarship either huh? Well when they come a begging Dr. Futter for-

      You weren’t accepted. He cocked his jaw and drool ran down his mouth. His mommy wiped her boy’s chin with her handkerchief.

      What about Faraday?

      We can’t afford the cost of living on a geosynched station.

      What about… his eyes darted back and forth, Mmmmm mmmm Martian Massive. It’s funded by some research grant from some pharma company.

      We think you should look for work and wait until you’re cerebral cortex has finished developing before you continue you’re studies, his mother said.

      Daaaaa-AAAAAA-aaaaaa-AAAAAAd!

      I’ll be taking a position with the quarry preservation service. Maybe I can get you on-

      No I am going to be a great scientist not a garbage man!

      Your mother found freelance work editing the Journal of Theoretical Cosmology, maybe she can get-

      He shook his head slowly, winced, frowned and walked away, slamming his bedroom door behind him.

      I’ll tell him when dinner is ready. I hoped he would eat something before we gave him the news his mother said as she set the robotic chef to ‘Old Fashioned Terran Comfort Food.’

      After dinner Albert went to the balcony, resting his legs in his grandfather’s woodensque rocking chair and watched the moons eclipse the distant Sun.

      Are you really going to take a job outside of the sciences? The glass door slid too, hiding his mother’s ears. Digby sat next to his father.

      No job is outside the sciences. I just won’t be wearing a lab coat to work every day.

      What am I supposed to do when everyone I know goes off to college and I end up working as a quantum mechanic at some reactor station? The girls’ll fly by and I’ll be stuck alone taking orders from some starborn businessman from the peanut gallery.

      Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. There are people on planets with a lot less than we have. I worked my way through college with night shifts as a volumetric meat and bun inspector for the Authority of Health and Diet. Digby snickered and his father leaned forward, It’s an important job.

      Yea, without you hotdogs wouldn’t have been bun length and burger patties would have been too big for the toppings.

      There is no such thing as undignified work.

      But I want to be a great scientist. I’ve got the plan all mapped out. Digby took out his projection pad, pressed the archive button and before their eyes stood holograms of Digby and Albert ten years earlier.

      First you’ll graduate near the top of your class, said his father’s younger voice ringing with a metallic echo from the used projection pad’s crackling stereo.

      Then you’ll go to either Newton or Faraday.

      Then will I be a great scientist? Digby’s voice had changed little since he was a boy.

      Greatness comes with perseverance, brilliance and a touch of luck. We control only the first.

      The projection ended. Digby said again, Are you going to give up on me?

      We haven’t given up on you. We believe in you-

      Good because I would hate to add you and mom to my enemies list.

      We should have named you Millhouse or Mortimer.

      I’m going to be great. I even know what field I’ll revolutionize first.

      It’s not whale-o-metrics is it?

      No it’s not whale-o-metrics.

      Good. Because ever since your grandfather’s experiments the government has forbid stacking whales end on end for the purpose of measuring mountain height.

      Digby mumbled under his breath, Then how are we supposed to measure the height of skyscrapers.

      Go to your room.

      Before I die, some corner of science will be to Futter what gravity was to Newton.

      Before bedtime Digby made a quick stop in the sanitation room. He drew a bath, filled it with bubbly soap and Epsom salts to sooth his agitated meat. He plopped down, his sides squeaking as they displaced water onto the floor, fitting snug as a plug in a jug. When he could no longer hear his parents chattering he pushed his hands past his love handles coated his palm with bubbles, imagined his trip to Sweden to accept the Nobel committee’s award for scientific discovery. He imagined gorgeous beaches, wonderfully quaint old town squares, chesty blonde women jealous of his statuesque wife, and relaxed for a whole two minutes before bedtime.

      Three months later Digby had found his own employment, and two weeks after he had rented a small apartment south of Forrest S. McCartney Starport. The flat-space engines caused a drone which was loud and regular and shook his tiny apartment, sometimes knocking his portrait gallery off the wall. Newton usually hit the ground before Leibniz.

      During one of the year end parties Digby had met a pretty accounting apprentice with sunburn colored hair named Aventine. She was starborn and fascinating to Futter’s colonist mind. He fell hard when she told him of her bug hunts growing up aboard the IRV ROBERT HOOKE, he fell deeper when she described her family’s vacations in the Kaiper Belt. But it was the funny stories from the scientific community of the Silicon Hills that ignited true love.

      Shortly after a hasty romance , well, Rosalind Franklin Marie Futter was a healthy 9lb 4oz baby girl. After the wedding ceremony Digby and Aventine found stable employment from Master Egbert Pud, a moonie from Phobos who never got past orbit, which paid enough to put a down payment on a four room house. The house sat on a cycad shaded street in the Faraday Station neighborhood adjacent to Schirra Academy, a great school by any measure, and across from Gus Grissom Park. Most importantly, the construction agent included a four-hundred cubic meter shed with a fixed foundation in back. Most young families opted for the sunning station, but to keep the peace Aventine acquiesced to what some readers would recognize as a ‘man cave.’

      Eleven years and two children, Rose and Felix, later the Futters purchased the fueling station from Master Pud for what they considered a low price. Pud retired and within the year they discovered the Planetary Planning Commission had diverted traffic to the gas giants away from Phobos to a state of the tech full service terminus capable of sling shotting ships through the asteroid belt. This left Digby with enough time to remember his dreams.

      One day, not so long after the traffic was redirected and the filling station was overpassed, Digby found himself in an empty garage alone with classic ships in need of repair.

      A scientist without equipment. Might as well be an artist without a paintbrush, he said to his construction bot.

      That’s a false analogy, said the bot.

      Shut up Rusty.

      Digby strolled along wooden scaffolding. He stopped under the cathedral sized window and let the light cover his face. The warmth saved the moment in his wetware and he enhanced the memory by caressing the undercarriage of the Virgin Express transport, Coventry. The red paint chipped off the ceramic shell. He flicked a few more flakes as the hangar bay rumbled. He looked up and thought - maybe? Someone needs me?

      Nope.

      Doppler Effect.

      Just that instant the oxidized chain holding the compressor rack over his egg shaped head snapped and a bronze nut bonked his noggin then plunged to the fracked concrete. He was safe of course; however, the 2500kg compressors smashed on the ground below. Aventine rushed from the office just in time to duck a flying hose slapping the wall.

      Haven’t you been keeping up with maintenance? Digby and Rusty rolled the canisters back on the loading scaffold.

      I do my best sunny bunny.

      He likes to sit in the payload bay and ride the mechanical arm all afternoon.

      Weasel. He held his head down bringing up the next compressor.

      What in the Oort cloud impelled you to ignore the shop?

      Digby pushed the tanks back in place. It cleared his mind. Then a spark of knowledge. Surely this is what Euripides felt.

      Obviously, every action there is a reaction.

      If he wasn’t so tired every morning he could have

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