Writing Extroverted Characters.

What does it mean if I'm trying to write an outgoing, extroverted character, but keep coming up with the opposite?

Point of View.

So far I've tried only writing in first person using mostly infinitive and present participator verb forms.

I'm interested in exploring other points of view in future writing; I, might do multiple points of view in the same story.


Also, just as an aside: everything that I publish here is nothing more then a first draft with half thought-out ideas. If something seems to be lacking in detail, that's because it is; in the future I may flesh-out the story and the characters more, or I may just toss it.

How The Moon Was Colonized

West Tycho University.

Antony Esson.

7/23/3004.

How The Moon Was Colonized:

Spaceflight in the last half of the twentieth century and in the first half of the twenty-first century, were largely political stunts. It is true that significant scientific advancement came from this period in time but no real foothold was ever established in space. Throughout the twenty-first century, the ever rising population levels caused war, along with disease, and civil unrest. It could be said that humanity was too busy dieing under its own weight to colonize space. It would be space colonization, in the end, that would save humanity.

The problem that faced early space colonists was usually a lack of financial incentive. The technology existed for such a venture, and it wasn't particularly expensive to go to the moon, but there was nothing to tip the balance. What space colonization needed was a revolution similar to what happened in Europe from the 1870s up until the 1930s. It got one in the year 2117.

Chae Catalino, the thirty-eight year old at the time, founder and owner of Catalino Energy, was one of the key players in early space colonization. She was born in Seoul in the year 2079 and attended school there until she was sixteen. She attended Seoul University for undergraduate studies, earning her bachelors degree in nuclear engineering in only two years.

After graduation she worked for several different energy companies, gaining a reputation among her peers as a brilliant engineer. In March Second of 2100, only five days after her twenty-first birthday, she quit her job in Korea and moved to England. There she lead a small team of physicists and engineers to develop the first antimatter reactor.

Having no way to market this new invention Chae turned to her older, twin brothers who were investors in the United States. The following fifty years are often known as the second industrial revolution and Chae Catalino is often referred to as the “James Watt of the twenty-second century”.

The 2110s saw the earth with near unlimited power. Energy was practically free. The 2110s also saw the earth with major resource problems. Raw building materials such as aluminum and titanium were scarce at best, and billions of people were starving.

In the year 2117, Chae and her brothers set out to colonize the moon. They did so by offering contracts to poor and downtrodden Earthers. Typically, a contract lasted about 180 days, where you would work as a miner on the lunar surface, or a factory worker underground. Temporary housing and meals were provided for the workers and their families, while under their contracts.

When the contracts expired most workers would would sign up for another and continue to do so until they had accumulated a significant amount of pay. Some people would do so for twenty-five or more times, but mostly they averaged about 15 contracts.

If a worker didn't sign up for another contract, they would be payed and given a plot of the lunar surface. With their profits they would then hire more workers from Earth to do the same thing.

Out of this era came things like lunar farming. Food would be grown in transparent domes on the lunar surface and them be shot back to earth on a giant rail-gun, capable of putting a banana-box on an ant in New York City, from Tycho. This virtual eliminated starvation on earth, and made lunar farming a very lucrative job.

With the inversion of faster-then-light, slipdrive, travel in the year 2156 there was high demand for interstellar space ships. This is the reason that places such as Fra Mauro Dynamics and Tycho Shipyards exist.

Catalino Energy broke up in 2191 due to bankruptcy, but they reorganized in 2212 as Catalino Systems Engineering. Had Chae Catalino not taken the initiative in colonizing the Moon someone else likely would have done it. However, she was the one who made 2117 the last year in which humans only occupied one planet. Her name belongs among other great pioneers of engineering, science, and exploration.

No Part 3 this week.

Check back next weekend for Part 3.

The Colony: Part 2.

The countdown on the navigation display ticks to zero. The blue glow outside fades momentarily; a blinding flash gives way the blackness of space.

The Kennebec hurdles though the void; ahead of us is the Alpheratz. The trip from GAMMA-4 has taken only three hours, we're now about 50AU from earth.

The Alpheratz is over 1000 meters in length, but from over 1700 kilometers away she appears little more then a speck.

The shuttle is pilotable from the commander's station but it's not ideal. I attempt to transfer control to my station but the computer tells me the pilot’s station is in use. Perturbed, I turn left to the pilot's station. Startled, I realize I'm not alone.

“Hello” I say to the rather attractive looking woman at the pilot’s station.

She has long blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and moderate facial feature; she looks austere in her flightsute, all attention focused on the display before her.

At my words, she responds with a terse “hey” without looking up.

“How long have you been sitting there?” I ask, not content with her response.

“'bout an hour, why?”

“Didn't even notice you come up.”

“Yeah, Jackman sent me up, said something about want'n me to get some docking experience or something.”

I ponder telling her that my crew is usually on a first name basis, then decide to so.

“Sorry, I didn't catch your name.”

“Krajewski, Jessie Krajewski.” She replies.

“Jessie, you haven’t gotta refer to us by surnames or titles. We only make temp crews do that. If your an employee of Andromeda you're basically family.”

“Well, that's nice for a change.” She says, hinting at a smile, but otherwise remains stoic.

“So, Allison said you needed docking experience?”

“Yeah.”

“I've never read your resumé, my opinion of you's a blank slate. Tell me why I should let you fly my ship.”

“I have a PH.D. in astrodynamics and I ran cargo to Earth-orbit stations like GAMMA-4 and HYDrA. For a few months.”

“Why'd you stop?”

“Got canned.”

“For what?!”

“You know what, maybe it's better if we keep things tabula rasa.”

“Don't crash my ship.”

“Can't guarantee anything.” she says sarcastically.

“'k.” I say chuckling. “We're about a minute and a half out, she's all yours.”

Directly ahead of us, the distinctive outline Alpheratz is clearly visible. A 300 meter disk-like aerobraking shield sits on her bow. Behind which is a 900 meter section of hexagonal modules, stacked axially. Each module is ninety meters from opposing sides with a 10 meter triangular hole in the center. Each module is slid down the truss, then bolted to it and the adjacent modules.

On her stern is the engine section which is larger then the modules ay about ten meters on each side, it is also hexagonal. The engine section contains mostly power generation equipment and gravity modification arrays. It also houses the seven main engines.

“Seventy five seconds” Jessie says. I'm transferring all systems display's to your station.

“Thanks, . . . everything looks good.”

At this distance the sun provides little more light then the rest of the stars. The only light to illuminate our path comes from the floodlights on both the Kennebec and the Alpheratz.

Closer and closer we draw. The Alpheratz now fills most of the forward window.

“Ten seconds, I'm beginning deceleration burn.”

The forward thrusters fire, causing immense deceleration. The grav-mod units prevent us from feeling a thing.

The thrusters stop.

“We're about seventy six point-. . . seventy-seven meters from the dock, constant distance.”

“Engage the station keeping program; I'll get the hangar doors open.”

A couple of quick key strokes and a long password; I'm logged into the Alpheratz' computer. I send the request to open: “external hatch 01”. Seconds later I see the doors begin to open.

I hear footsteps on the ladder. I turn to see Vincent's head peak over the top of the ladder. He stands there grinning, haloed by a mass of curly black hair.

“What'd I miss?” He asks.

“Nothi'n much, we're just about to dock.”

“Cool.”

He leaps forward, the rest of the way up the ladder, and into the engineers station on my right.

“Have you ever docked a shuttle before?” I ask Jessie.

“A few times, but never in a hangar like this. Are you sure the shuttle fits? It looks a little tight.”

For the first time I see her smile. Then without warning, she engages the rear thrusters at full thrust. The shuttle leaps forward, closing on the hangar an in seconds.

A wave of panic overtakes me. There's nothing I can do.

We're going to fucking crash. I let out a choked scream.

We're in the hangar now, I'm still paralyzed with fear; I notice the shuttle has slowed. Jessie is firing the forward thrusters. The shuttle comes to rest gently in the docking clamps.

My heart racing, I turn to Jessie. She's laughing at me, Vincent too.

I turn to Vincent.

“Did you put her up to this?!!!” I say, voice still shaky.

“Why what ever do you mean?” Sarcastically.

“God-Damn you all!! Enough games, let's get over to the Alpheratz before one of you has another genius idea to kill me.”

I don't admit outwardly, but the whole event is sort of funny after the fact.

I get up out of my seat and proceed down the ladder and into the companionway. Jessie and Vincent are close behind. Heading Forward I reach the nose hatch that connects the shuttle to the dock. I quickly verify that the hangar is pressurized and that it is safe to open the hatch. The geared dogs around the hatch open smoothly and the large round hatch swings inward. I step through.

The hangar is roughly pie-wedged in shape and the shuttle fits snugly inside. It doesn't have the same open feeling that the GAMMA-4 air-dock has. There are no service platforms like the air-dock either. For this reason we must use the nose hatch; the side hatches are accessible only by crane.

The shuttle has a ventral ramp but is is of no use in the hangar. The low ceiling prevents landing gear deployment. Shuttles are instead head in place by docking clamps on ether side. At the tip of the “pie-wedge” is another hatch that leads to the core of the hangar module.

By now most of my crew has disembarked the shuttle. I open the hatch and enter the core. Five other hatches like the one I just walked through stand on each of the other walls in the core. They lead to the other hangars just like the one the Kennebec landed in.

One gets the most peculiar feeling standing in the core. Around the wall is the massive triangular truss that extends the whole length of the ship. The decks in the module cores are transparent, so looking down and up brings a sensation of awe over a person.

I can see for at least a hundred meters above me and close to eight hundred below me. In the center of the core is the circular lift tube.

I open the lift door, my twenty-three crew and I pile in. I press the command deck button that sits at the top of a row ninety or so identical buttons.

The lift hums to live and after a short while it comes to a rest. We exit into the expansive command deck.

The command deck is located at the junction of the central truss and the aerobraking shield. The ceiling is domed shaped and low overhead. Around the outer edge of the deck are six stations that will be maned once we are underway.

“Can I get everyone’s attention for a few minutes.” I say to my crew, now gather on the command deck.

They quiet and turn their attention toward me. “Thanks, this shouldn’t take long.”

I take a look at my notes on my portable computer before speaking.

“Alright, so I'm talking the second watch along with Steve, Allison will take the third, and Ralph will take the first. The second watch start's at 1600 and goes to 2000, the third goes from 2000 to 0000, the first goes 0000 to 0400. The system continues in the same four hours on, eight hours off manner. You've all been assigned a watch so you know when you're on. This trip should take about ninety two days, It'll be hard work when we get where we're going but it should be an easy trip.”

“Where are we going?” Asks a young man, standing to my left.

“The info packet you got, talks about our destination in detail but I'll go over it still. The star we're going to is about 1800ly from Earth and should take ninety two days to reach as I mentioned before. It has four planets, one which is habitable and colonized, and three others which are candidates for terraforming. That's what we're carrying, terraforming supplies, eight metric megatons of them.”

I sit down at my station. “If you're on watch now, you're here; If you're not, be gone.”

Four people stay, the others leave. Among them is Steve Perrine. I don't know the others.

“Steve, let's get underway.” I say.

Steve, who knows the current crew, instructs the them on slip-drive procedures. In about a half an hour the Alpheratz is ready to depart Sol. I give the order and we enter the slip. It's not the same as slip travel on the shuttle, we don’t have windows. We can look at displays that show feeds from external cameras though.

The Čerenkov Radiation that envelops the Alpheratz is different from that which envelops the shuttle. In the shuttle, the blue glow is more or less uniform; In the Alpheratz turbulence can be seen in the radiation, most likely due to the ships immense size though this phenomenon is still not fully understood.

The four hour watch passes without much event. Steve introduces me to the three other crew members: Seth Cung, Evan Hara, and Chelsey Handel. We occasionally make small talk, but most of the watch passes in silence.

At the sounding of the watchbell, the third-watch crew enters from the lift. I depart the command deck along with the others on watch. I descend the lift to my hab-module. Tired from the eventful day, I hop onto my bed and fall asleep without even getting undressed.

Continued in part 3.

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The Colony: Part 1.

“Hey, my name's Commander Daniel Hartford”, I say to the twenty-three people gathered before me. “It's 0950, right now; you all need to meet me at the air-docks by 1200”. I dismiss them and they head their separate ways.

A little about me? I'm the owner and captain of the starship Alpheratz. The new owner that is; Andromeda Shipping Inc. Went bankrupt about a month ago. I bought their final asset the Alpheratz and assumed their debts. The Alpheratz is a cargo ship; and our first job is to deliver supplies to a colony 1800ly from Sol.

Now I'm on the Earth space-station GAMMA-4, rounding up crew for our next haul. I know a few people but many of my crew will new.

GAMMA-4 is one of many Earth-orbit trading and commerce centers. I'm currently on level 62 which is populated mostly by corporate offices and lay-over housing for starship crews. The the air docks occupy levels 50 down to level 25. I've got about two hours until my crew us supposed to meet me at the shuttle so I figure I should head down to the docks and power it up.

I turn the lights off in the conference room and lock the door to the Andromeda Transportation office. Heading down the wide corridor, I take a right to the lift tube. There's several people in the tube with me, they all seem to be preoccupied with their own business. I take care not to hit anyone as I carry my two packs of supplies and personal items off the lift.

Level 46 hums with the usual midday activity. Left and right, a diverse swarm of life is busy working on everything from unloading and loading cargo, to fixing damaged spacecraft.

Let me diverge from the story for a minute to describe what an air-dock is. When a small spacecraft needs to be repaired, re-crewed or take on cargo, it is inefficient to do so by the means of an airlock or spacesuit. Hence the invention of the “air-dock”. It's a metal tube, ranging from about ten meters in diameter well over eighty. They can be anyware from thirty to three hundred meters in length. On on the end of the tube that faces outboard the space station are two, massive clam-shell pressure doors. On the other end of the tube, the end that faces inboard space station is a massive hangar door. This door opens once the craft is secured inside and the dock is pressurized. It allows the the craft to be moved part-way into the hangar level; this allows for a greater level of accessibility with the craft.

I'm heading to dock number 30-073, a medium sized air-dock which I can see aways ahead of me. When I reach the base of the air-dock door, I insert my key card into the scanner and after a short beep, the door begins to open. For a full minute, the electric motors hum as they open the colossal thirty meter sliding door.

High overhead the service lights illuminate the shuttle and the inside of the dock. I climb the ladder on the side of the dock chamber to the service platform. From there I am able to open the external hatch of the shuttle. I enter. It's dark inside, though the emergency lighting provides enough light for me to find my way forward. I click the internal lighting breaker and switch the cockpit lights on.

This particular shuttle is mostly used for crew or personal transfer between the Alpheratz, and a planet or a space station like GAMMA-4. Of all the Alpheratz' six shuttles, this one is the only, with a name. She is called Kennebec. The other shuttles are docked to the Alpheratz and are given numeric the numeric designations of A-1 through A-6. “A” stands for “Alpheratz”; the Kennebec is A-1.

On the Aux-Electrical panel, I quickly go through each fuel cell start-up sequence. Next I begin the reactor auto-power-up sequence. The computer monitors this process, which will take about twenty minutes. Since I'm no longer needed in the Cockpit I grab my packs and toss them in my stateroom, just aft. I unpack a few things, then think better of it, repack them and put my packs in a locker. We'll only be on the Kennebec for about three hours, so there's no sense getting settled. I figure I might as well tidy up a few things while I'm here.

An alarm signals the completion of the reactor start-up. I step back into the cockpit. I spend the next ten or so minutes turning on various systems such as: gravity manipulation, engines, and the navigation systems. Since the reactor is now

It's 1100 now so I step back outside the ship and wait for my crew to arrive. Walking around the service platform in the air-dock, I detach each docking clamp the holds the shuttle in place when the gravity manipulation systems are off. Someone calls my name.

I look down through the grate in the platform; several crew have arrived. I recognize the four people to be: Allison Jackman, my first mate; Ralph Brokaw, my second mate; Steven Perrine, my third mate; and Vincent Grasso, my chief engineer. “Hey!” I shout down.

Each in turn they clamber up the ladder. Steve, a stocky dark-skinned man standing about six-six, hands me a paper box. “We were just up to Greenwald's on level 70. We had lunch and thought we'd get you something.” “Thanks!” I say, opening the box. Inside are four large slices of Greenwald's pizza. I step back into the Kennebec, motioning for my crew to follow.

We descend the ladder from the cockpit down the second deck. The ladder lands in the companionway. To either side are crew berths. At the end is the galley.

I'm on my third slice of pizza as we sit down around the galley table. Vincent mentions that he wants to check some things before we depart. I check my watch. “Well, you better get on that.” I say. He nods and heads gets up. “I'm gonna head up to the cockpit, just so I can plot our departure and be there when the rest of the crew arrive” mentions Allison. “Yep” I reply. I finish my pizza and dispose of the box.

In the cockpit I join Allison. “Do we have a departure plan?” I ask. “Yes, we do”. She switches a few screens in the navigation display. “Departure cleared us for 1200” she says without looking up. “That's in ten minutes I say, I'm gonna check with Vincent real quick just to make sure we're ready to go.” “Alright” she says, this time briefly glancing over her shoulder to nod at me.

Just as I reach the top of the ladder, I see Vincent, already on his way up. “Are we good?” I ask. “We're set to go.” “Okay let's secure all external connections and prepare for departure.” I say to the intercom. After a second, “External connections are secure.” To Vincent I say: “Close the internal hangar doors and depressurize the hangar.” “On it.”

The cockpit has three seats. When facing forward, Allison is in the left seat. Vincent has just taken the right one. The center seat is for the pilot/CO. I sit down.

“The hangar doors are closed and sealed, I'm beginning the depressurization sequence.” “Allison, contact departure.” I say. “Departure this is the Kennebec, requesting departure from bay 30-073.” “Kennebec this is departure, bay 30-073 is fully depressurized, opening external doors.” Looking out the cockpit window, I can see the inside clam-shell doors. Silently, they begin to open. They're no more then a centimeter open when brilliant sunlight glares in. As the doors open wider I can see the Earth below. The thin blue arc of the horizon laced with white puffy clouds is tinged with yellow and orange of the recent sunrise. “Kennebec, the doors are open, you are clear to depart bay 30-073.” “Copy departure.”

Momentarily frozen by the grandeur and beauty of the view before me, I quickly regain my composure. I disengage the gravity units that are holding the ship firmly in the dock and fire a short burst of the aft thrusters. Without a sound, other then that of the ventilation system, the Kennebec glides from the air-dock and into the sunlight.

“Do we have a slip-drive target solution for the Alpheratz” I say to Allison. “Yes, it's about a three hour trip and close to 75 percent efficient.” “Good” I say, firing the aft thrusters again and for a longer burst. “We're about 500 meters from the station when we're at 5k engage the slip-drive”. “Ten seconds...Five seconds, three, two, one, engaging slip.” A blinding flash out the forward window quickly fades to the bright blue glow of Čerenkov radiation. “Everything looks good” Allison says. She turns to me smiling, “this never get's old does it”. “No” I reply it never does.

“Well, I'm gonna head down and check the reactor” Vincent says. “Alright” I say. I stare out at the uniform bright blue glow as the Kennebec hurdles through slip-space toward the Alpheratz and toward my future.

Continued in Part 2.