#jovian planets notes

[awakenedsalamander]

Spirits in the Chronicles of Darkness are kind of an odd thing, and they've captured my attention as of late.

I tend to think of them as only wild, hungry creatures, but that really only describes the youngest, smallest spirits-- the ones who are just barely more than motes of Essence. Sure, all spirits crave their next meal, and can be "selfish" in their way, but as I reread many of the CofD books, both within and without Werewolf: The Forsaken, I pick up on a strong degree of variety.

A quick example-- Elemental spirits are mentioned to be significantly more patient and disengaged from power struggles than other spirits, because they operate on a totally different frame of reference from, for instance, animal or emotion spirits. Primordial forces have a very different kind of politics, it seems.

I'm taken also with the mention of the "planetary angels," these cold and distant embodiments of the other planets in the Solar System. They're described as cruel, but you also get the sense that part of it is a matter of perspective-- from an Earthly view, these celestial spirits are callous, unfeeling, and imperious, but when one sees Earth through the eyes of an angel of Venusian acid rain, or the embodiment of a whirlwind Jovian storm, it must come across as a chaotic hell. Is it really a surprise they hate it?

I love how, in the Mage book Signs of Sorcery, time is spent on how the different Paths approach spirits, and how varied those interpretations can be; in particular, the Obrimos describe spirits as fallen angels, though ones more tragic than demonic. And there's a weird amount of room for that kind of view-- it's likely not literally true, but spirits can encompass that kind of identity.

Finally, on a similar note, I've been revisiting the older sourcebook Inferno, and thinking on the Maeljin-aligned demons that are given a lot of exploration there. Spirits not of passion, or of ideology, but specifically of sin, who somehow seem to predate the concept of humanity but not the concept of evil.

All this to say, I'm trying to view spirits as more individualistic and complex that I used to, as weird and wonderful horrors that aren't easily categorized, even by those who claim to know the most. I encourage you to do the same-- The Shadow is a stranger place than it might seem.

[silverslipstream]

Feedback Loop

[Author's note: Thank you to The Shrimp Skwad for reading this story and giving feedback prior to posting - you guys rock!]

After walking for five days, six hours and twenty-three minutes, the suit ate my right arm.

Well, ate would be the wrong word. Digested would probably be fairer. More useful. Consumed, stripped bare, the proteins and nutrients that powered my muscles and propelled my blood redistributed to keep me walking. I didn’t even know I needed them, really—the servomotors in the suit’s leg joints have been helping me skip along ever since the crash. I don’t get tired of walking; it’s automatic, insistent. I walk like I used to breathe. And I can’t fault the nanites’ logic. That arm, even half-starved, hanging loose in the suit, was worth days of fuel to keep me going. I can’t subsist on my own skin cells and recycled urine forever—it was only ever meant to be a temporary food supply, an emergency function to keep me alive until rescue showed up.

Except the promised rescue never did show up. Given that the ship that stranded me here is little more than a debris field sinking into a radioactive slush of tritium, I’m guessing they assumed nobody survived the impact. I can’t blame them. Nobody else did.

Even if they know I’m alive (and they might’ve figured it out by now, with their constellation of monitoring satellites), there’s nothing they can do. It took the Argonaute seventeen months to spiral up from Earth to Jupiter, and that was under fusion power. The ESA haven’t built another engine yet—even if they had, I wouldn’t survive another year and a half. The emergency resupply drone is powered by nothing but gravity, swinging around Jupiter in an eccentric, Ganymede-resonant orbit, and it doesn’t have nearly enough fuel to change that. It could be weeks, maybe even months before it gets back here. Not even the nanites are that good. My only hope is the prefabricated base camp here on Ganymede, the one that the drones set up before we even left home. It’s still waiting for us—for me, at least.

The problem is, according to the tracking display on my helmet visor’s heads-up display, I’m still 2,460 miles away from it. Ganymede’s gravity is only a fraction of Earth’s, so I’m much faster here than I ever would’ve been back home, but it’s still not enough. At this rate, I won’t reach the camp for another two weeks.

I can’t stop thinking about it. About what the machines are going to take next.

It’s not all bad, though. I’m left-handed. The nanites knew that, I think. At least someone’s looking out for me.

*~*

The great thing about being stranded on Ganymede with no hope of rescue is the view. Jupiter’s about fifteen times bigger than the full moon in the sky. Not big enough to fill the horizon, like on an old sci-fi paperback cover, but enough to pick out detail; cloud bands, transiting inner moons, the livid, boiling scars of storms fighting their inexorable way across the Jovian atmosphere. It’s so much more beautiful in person than anyone could’ve imagined.

When the Argonaute first swung into Jupiter-space, still decelerating, I was terrified of it. Our orbital insertion manoeuvre called for us to pass barely two thousand miles above the cloud tops. At that distance, the king of the planets would fill half the windows: a wall of reds and whites and pinks subsuming our vision. We were heading towards it pointed backwards to slow ourselves down; I couldn’t escape the fear that we were simply expensively-packaged food, a tasty treat wrapped up in hydrogen fuel and carbon composites for Jupiter to eat. You couldn’t even see it unless you accessed the rear hull cameras. I wouldn’t even know the moment Jupiter got us for good.

As we passed perijove, everyone else gathered in the atrium, drinking and cheering our successful approach. I was sat hunched in the windowless cubicle of my quarters’ toilet, vomiting profusely into the bowl.

Not that I can throw up anything now. My stomach is empty, a clenched muscle throbbing uselessly in my abdomen. I still get hunger pangs, though. With any luck, the nanites will get to that next.

Every time I hit the ground, a flurry of ice crystals bursts up and ahead of me. As the suit steps forward and into them, they crash and scatter on my visor, like stars collecting on the windscreen of the universe.

There’s still 2,047 miles to go. *~*

Turns out I was wrong. My legs are next.

I remember an old video from Earth. Whether it was historical footage or cinematic re-enactment, I can’t remember. There were thousands of men, huddled in trenches, slicked with mud and sweat and blood. They were firing guns across a barren, pitted landscape. Looked a bit like Ganymede, actually, but more dirt than ice.

One man—I assume some kind of medic—had to cut another man’s foot off with a rusty hacksaw. The video wasn’t shy about it either; you got the blood trickling out of him, the crust of pus breaking where some original wound had been, the gradual slowing of the blade as it had to cut through bone rather than flesh.

I hope it was a re-enactment. Surely nobody would’ve filmed that then and there.

The suit’s way of amputation is much less graphic, of course. I get an alert about lowering energy levels on my visor, blink a swift continue, and steel jaws comply by instantly severing my right leg from the rest of the suit. It was a lot cleaner and more bloodless than what that poor soldier had to go through.

Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though.

I think I blacked out, honestly—or whited out. It was a flare of pain, so insensible and insane that the scream I let out seemed to go on for hours. When I come to, the Ganymedean landscape ahead looks much the same as ever. The decreasing number on my HUD is the only sign that we’re still ploughing on, that the servos are still sending me on my half-skipping, half-slipping odyssey across the desolate, airless plains. Phantom pains rake talons up my body. I blink my way into the suit’s medical diagnostics menu and administer a hit of meth for the pain, as well as a healthy dose of sedatives.

The leg should buy me a couple more days. Until then, I just want to sleep.

*~*

Even in the drug-addled womb of self-sedated slumber, I still dream. I see Commander Rothke’s face, the European Consortium’s flag rich blue against the white of his chestplate. How his eyebrows arch with desperation as he helps me scramble into the suit. Red strobe lights throw the spartan metal of the Argonaute’s airlock into sharp relief. Radiation alarms blare shrilly down the corridors. We’re on a collision course—always were, always will be, every time I close my eyes.

Mallory’s already dead.  Her body floats listlessly in the airlock behind us, her half-crushed head trailing globules of blood like Hansel and Gretel’s goriest breadcrumb trail. Her thermal coverall—usually stained with dried coolant and splotches of gritty MRE sauce—is spattered with a shotgun blast of her own viscera. I have no idea where the others are.

Rothke’s almost tender as he spins me into the escape pod and seals the hatch. Through the glass, his lips move, casting his last words in silent pantomime. I never figured out what they were, and my dream of them is no different.

Nadia... Nadia, his voice burbles in my ear, shuddering with an eerie vibrato. Nadia... godspeed...godspeed Nadia godspeed... godNadia speed Nadia speed god Nadia...

Then the separation motors fire, and I’m falling.

*~*

We still have over a thousand miles to go when the suit chimes an alert in my ear, accompanied by a string of scrolling text. The suit and I are skirting the edge of a crater lip; to my right, an ice-slope stretches miles up and away, cutting off the horizon.

WARNING: present level of exertion unsustainable, the notificationreads. Servomotors unable to continue absorbing shock of surface contact at current speed. Reduction to half of current speed required.

I watch as my arrival ETA doubles again, wiping away my progress in an instant. Another thirteen days of travel to go. I blink open the medical diagnostics tab and get the nanites digesting my remaining leg to slap me with two more shots of amphetamines. Might as well go out on a high. After a few minutes the ice begins to twinkle, technicolour kaleidoscopes sliding beneath my feet, and I can feel the skin of my face prickling. The distant searchlight of the Sun flashes like the universe’s biggest disco ball. Someone’s giggling—it takes me a minute to realise that the whispery drugged-up laughter is coming from me. I feel as if I’m seeing my own body from a hundred metres underwater.

The suit repeats its warning again. I’m so tired. If I concentrate, I can almost feel the nanites in my severed skin. They spew forth from the lining of the suit, burrowing into the remains of my leg, breaking bone and weaving my flesh into a lattice of its component molecules. Iron, oxygen, carbon, calcium. Nutrient fluid mainlined straight into my bloodstream, keeping me going. And going. And going.

How much more of myself do I have left to eat?

I imagine the servomotors pumping, the metal pistons telescoping against the flapping, empty legs of the suit, driving me again and again away from the ice. Rothke’s face, shimmering, twisted, translucent.

Godspeed, Nadia.

I open my mouth as another alert tries to cut me off.

WARNING: energy levels lowering. Further biomass required for life-support functionality. Continue?

Howling at the visor, I blink a confirmation back. That way, when the jaws snap shut on my left arm, I’m already screaming.

*~*

I’m asleep again when the nanites come for my mind. I’m not dreaming. I’m not even aware that I’m conscious until a voice probes into the formless void between exhaustion and REM sleep. It’s speaking English with a deep, unbroken baritone. It’s uncannily similar—almost identical—to the voice of Rothke.

WARNING: Brain-function interface required. All available external sources exhausted: biomass engine reclamation procedure must target vital organs. Brain function will be sustained by nanite-emulated processes.

Cracks of the real world leak into the dream-void; the dull ache of my phantom limbs, the dogged gasping of my breath, the incongruously bright orange notification on my visor. The voice repeats its message again, this time in French. I interrupt it mid-sentence.

“I didn’t...know...you could talk...” I mumble aloud.

“La procédure de r��cupération de la biomasse,” the suit says. Or it could be the nanites. I have no way of telling them apart anymore. “Doit viser les organes vitaux.”

The drowsiness of sleep and drugs tug at me like cobwebs. Overhead, the stars slide past Jupiter in perfect, unbroken lines. Softly, diagnostic warnings chime in my ears. What’s left of my body is dangerously close to an overdose: deep below the metal carapace of my suit, methamphetamines burn their razor-trails through the last of my veins. My blood beats rhythmic tattoos into the backs of my eyes, and I can’t feel my lips.

“No,” I rasp, shaking my head in my helmet. “I can’t let you.”

“Les fonctions cérébrales—”

“No—”

“Seront maintenues par des—”

“No!”

“Processus émulés par des nanites. S'il vous plaît. S'il vous plaît,” the machine surgeons beg in Rothke’s voice. “Please. S'il vous plaît.”

I would become them. They would become me—or at least try to. Either I let my body burn itself apart, or let the machines digest what little is left to give me a chance at reaching the base camp. I want to be sick, but there’s nothing in my stomach, not even the acrid tang of bile licking its way up my throat. Somehow, I can feel my chest contracting and expanding against the thermal inner layers of the suit, rising and falling as my lungs struggle to breathe air that I’ve inhaled and exhaled a million times over. The faint metallic tang of my water supply is tinged with separated and re-separated molecules of my own waste. Every fibre of my body pulses with the power of a stomach that is not mine, devouring what’s left of me.

“WARNING—”

“Stop! Stop it!” I scream, balling phantom fists in the suit’s empty gloves. “Get out of my fucking head, damn it, let me—let me—”

“—required. All available external sources exhausted—”

I slam my head back in frustration. Instantly, the memory foam layer behind my head catches the movement and softens it,the nanites unwilling to let my human anger throw off the delicate balance of the servomotors.

569.2 miles remaining, reads the counter on my HUD. Ahead of me is nothing but ice, caves of it, mountains of it, crevasses of it. There’s still another week of walking to go.

I blink the sequence of commands that will allow the nanites access to my brainstem.

When I wake up again, I can no longer hear myself breathing.

[saturniandevil]

August 2023 Important Dates

AKA my notes on The Astrology Podcast's August forecast, hosted by Chris Brennan, Austin Coppock, and Michael J. Morris. Under the Venus retrograde we've seen Twitter's rebranding, the success of the Barbie movie, and SAG-AFTRA actors joining the WGA on strike, including the London premiere of Oppenheimer where the stars walked off the carpet, as part of the strike means stopping publicity appearances. Saturn in Pisces has also corresponded to new research finding "forever chemicals" in more than half of American cities' tapwater--we're now starting to get structured about it.

We're going into this month under a Venus retrograde, which began July 22nd. Here's the graphic:

August 1st - Full Moon in Aquarius

With Mars trine Jupiter and the Moon/Sun squaring him, we have some positive influences during the Venus retrograde, especially since this activity is in the fixed signs. With the ruled by the Sun and Saturn, the center of the solar system and furthest visible planet, we question what's at the center and what's on the periphery: "What's happening in my life that's part of larger social systems?" Austin also brings up necessities we have to address, which Mars in Virgo is well-suited to help us investigate. However, with the upcoming Mercury retrograde as well, issues may not be immediately soluble--some things take three passes to get right. The mutable energy of Mercury in Virgo opposite Saturn in Pisces gives us opportunities to be flexible to changes.

August 7th - Auspicious election for the month (not pictured)

Set at just after sunrise at 6:12AM local time, this chart has Leo rising and Venus in the first house. Jupiter is in Taurus in the tenth house (whole signs), as is the Moon who is exalted in this sign. Thus this chart is good for both tenth and first house matters. The fixed sign placements are slow, but sturdy and lasting. As the moon rules this chart's twelfth house, her proximity to the Midheaven makes it a good time to bring our hidden efforts to the surface.

August 9th - Mercury trine Jupiter, Venus square Uranus (not pictured) Mercury will trine Jupiter twice more as he retrogrades, and soon Mars will leave Virgo, removing some obstacles. Michael predicts that we'll be well-equipped due to Mercury's dignity along with Jovian support. Similar to the Venus retrograde, getting into it is the hard part. Venus & Uranus also help us think outside the box with regard to our desires--what's no longer exciting to us? Follow what brings you joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

August 13th - Sun-Venus Cazimi This marks the halfway point of the retrograde and prompts deep reflection on questions of what we want or have wanted, and how to go forward. It's also important to prioritize our desires to get the best results. Once we know we can feel the full depth of emotion and satisfactions, which shackles will we break? We've gotten to the heart of the matter. We can also draw from the myth of Inanna in the underworld, the events of which line up perfectly with observable astronomical phenomena (ex. evening star Venus becomes invisible and reemerges as a morning star, the lunations line up with the eight gates where she must surrender her talismans and robes....).

August 16th - New Moon in Leo

Our hosts say this lunation is heavily influenced by the preceding astrological events already discussed here.

August 22nd - Mars Opposite Retrograde Neptune Their conjunction back in May 2022 may give some clues as to how it emerges now. Watch out for paranoia and acting out based on warped imaginations. Exercise caution when you're unsure of the facts.

August 23rd - Sun enters Virgo, Mercury stations Retrograde Mercury's station is tinged by the Mars-Neptune opposition just hours before. Mercury is desperately searching for clarity. With Mars also in Virgo, we want to cut out excess, but may not have the clearest vision.

August 27th - Mars enters Libra This concludes the Mars-Saturn opposition that peaked in late July and also represents a loss of dignity for Mars. In general, Mars in Libra reminds us that while we want to forge our own paths, we are inherently interconnected to each other. It's not always easy to depend on others. Expect to see some frustration in the Libra area of your charts as we attempt to sever with the tools of diplomacy. Mars wants to be active, and laziness can also crop up.

August 28th - Uranus stations Retrograde Happening at 23 degrees of Taurus, we'll feel this change of motion as it overshadows the upcoming lunation.

August 30th - Pisces Full Moon

This is our first lunation with the Moon conjunct Saturn since he entered Pisces back in March, though this separation ameliorates some of the tension, as does some support from Jupiter via sextile. The Moon will also be close to the Tail of the Swan in Cygnus, associated with artistic creativity as well as some divine connotations. Austin describes this as having a "huge, heavy imaginative depth." The heaviness of Saturn and the retrogrades of Venus and Mercury will have some light shone on them by this Moon. How can I live with this? What wisdom do I attain by bearing witness?

Early September will bring us some more conclusive resolution as we experience the second half of the Venus retrograde.

[thunderclaw100]

Bio: Nixy is the daughter of tallest Red and Eva and the third born of her siblings. Unlike her older brother, Jovian, she doesn’t take ring a halfbreed to heart. Nixy knows she’ll be treated differently, and is aware of the discrimination she and her siblings face. Nixy is a smart girl and has proven this in many way, including ring very calculating. When she was little, her mother found her toying with one of her inventions. As it turns out, Nixy actually improved it. Eva has her studying with her older sister, Bellatrix. Learning the culture of planet Vort. She’s very interested in learning more about her mother’s background. Once can believe it or not but Nixy is a genius in her own right. Given a tablet of her own from her mother, she was able to use it to her own advantage. Hacking, converting, designing, encoding. She’s using her vortian side they most and it’s leaving her with good results as she grows. Nixy’s interested in science and genetic research ever since she and her siblings learned that their father was made in a smeetery back on planet irk. Her mother sees this as a sign to get her involved with the nautralian’s lab training so that she can explore this passion of hers. Out of her siblings, Nixy has doesn’t have the best of eyesight.

That being part of her vortian side. Eva told her that some of her people have that same issue and there is reason why most wear goggles now. Her mother did offered her glasses but instead, Nixy made her own. Using the material sand soil for the lenses as well as adding other things to make it notes useful to her. Like night vision, zooming, sensing heat signatures, and she might add a laser beam for it. Nixy could be a pilot navigator but is still thinking about what she want to be when she grows up. Her mother gave her a few ideas to think over. Some that seems fitting for a vortian. Nixy wants to be accepted the way she is instead of being judged because of who her father is.

Likes: Her family, stargazing, snacks, studying, working on her tablet, her parents, vegetables, camping, video games, backing cupcakes, her crush.

Dislikes: filthy things, rude insults, fake people, being told she’s not good enough for anything, stupidity.

Personality:Lovable, benevolent, cheerful, talkative,diligent,devoted, generous, impatient.

*RELATIONSHIPS*

Eva: Her mother helped her out a lot when she was little. From moving Nixy past her own insecurities to improving her poor vision. Her mother walked her though the knowledge of her vortian side, and telling her all the good contribution her people made for themselves and other aliens they’ve allied themselves with. Accept for the irken race. During times when her mother was going to be exposed for harboring a fugitive, tallest Red. Nixy helped her out by messing with the wanted poster images and putting cryptic locks on their home security. Eva is the one person she would never cross.

Tallest Red: Meeting her father for the first time was a shock to her. Nixy was the first out of her siblings to make him feel welcome. Even going so far as to jump into his arms to hug him. Red was unsure about this whole family thing, and Nixy learned that her father is a clone made in a smeetery factory back on irk, so his father skills need work on. This cloud on improving his other lack of emotions that are not implanted into his pak system. Even after being told about who tallest Red really is and all the horrible things he’s done to others. Nixy still wants to bond with her father. Just like the rest of her siblings.

Bellatrix: She admires her older sister. Not because she resembles their mother a lot! One would say, Bella keeps the peace among her siblings with gentle or firm words of knowledge . A trait she’s got from Eva. During their earlier years, Nixy and her sister snuck out of their mother’s nest to explore a little. Bella found a rare neutralien crystal gem and kept it. It’s been used for her her own inventions and experiments. Nixy learns a lot when she’s with her sister. Bella can handle tough situations than she can. During a pak malfunction, Nixy was in a state of panic. It was her older sister who came and fix the problem. Adding a new function to the pak’s system that’ll prevent internal bugging. Bella takes care of her whenever she’s feeling down or upset. It’s hard not to call her mom when she does this.

jovian: It can’t be helped to say that he’s a thorn in her side sometimes. Like the rest of their siblings, Jovian’s reckless antics is an eyesore to the family.l and needs to be scolded. Nixy isn’t in favor of her older brother fighting himself to be better at everything. Jovian would often show up after a hard self disciplined training session with blood and bruises all over his body. Nixy can’t even count the times she had to restitch his outfits. She only covered for him him once when their mother demand what happened to him the first time he started this. Never again. She regrets it every time a new scratch our black eye shows up on her brother’s face. Other than this, Nixy and Jovian get along just fine. They are the dynamic duo. Teaming up to concur anything. This sort of happened when they were young little smeets, playing round in their mother’s nest with. They would team up against Bellatrix and Orieon to climb to the top of their mother’s head as a sort of “king of the mountain game.” She was also involved with him getting custom made pak from their mother. She thought of having different colors would be nice for a change. Seeing she learn that the majority of irken have everything match the same. Nixy’s most recent argument with Jovian was about him wanting to leave planet Neutra and explore the universe. What frightened her more was that he thought of visiting planet irk. It only took a few insults and a stream of tears to get him to stay.

Orieon: Her younger brother. He used to be the quiet one in their litter and was the last to leave the nest. It was Nixy and Bellatrix that got him to be more talkative and outgoing. Nixy noticed that her brother seems to be growing a lot faster than the rest of them. With their mother, began to keep tabs on his growth. Eva noticed his behavior patterns are almost at a match with tallest Red, and that was something to be concerned about later in the years. After having installed their custom paks, Nixy helped her brother get the hang of using his pak legs. She even saved him once, after one of them went haywire and was about to stab him in the chest. In fact she’s the one monitoring all of their paks with her tablet. Orieon appreciates Nixy and thanked her for tolerating him.

Dib: Nixy has grown interested in the human. Partly because she wants to examine him or ask a lot of questions about space, or his relationship with an Irken. Zim’s voot cruiser also caught her eye at the time. Nixy, like her older brother, wants to learn more about their Irken heritage, so they asked Zim. The human boy shared some info about what’s going on in space. Letting Nixy know that there is a brave vortian out there, risking his life as well as his team to make sure planets like theirs are safe from an invasion. At first Nixy thought that humans were uneducated and so far back behind from the res of the universe, that they’d wouldn’t bother to explore outside their own solar system. Or not even to make trading partner ls with other, more advanced planets. For a moment, Nixy was thinking like an Irken. Believing that other inferior races should just give in to the stronger ones. Dib made it clear to her and the other kids that being stronger doesn’t make you better than others because there will always be someone out there better than you. Before Dib and Zim depart from planet Neutra, she gave them a gem. Both something to remember her by and for great use in forging into something powerful.

Zim: When he and Dib landed on the outskirts of the neutralien’s refugee camp, they were following a distress signal which lead them to Eva and her children. Jovian found and brought them home with him. Nixy and her other siblings were amazed to see another Irken, other than the other two that are part of the camp. Zim proudfully told the kids about Irken culture, the empire, the function of the paks, and the ranked jobs of the Irken military. Nixy took notes of everything being said to her from him. Asked her own questions, including one that kinda caught him off gourd. She wanted to know if he’s a defective. This didn’t trigger much, other than a slight bias and a displeasing look from Zim. The young hybrid wonders if the reason for the defectivness is the park, she suggested that Zim just fix it himself or Chang ethe encoding while cutting off links to the possible downgrade that will automatically change his functional character. Zim never met anyone THIS young being able to speak this logical and smart. Nixy sees a friend in Zim and possibly a god father.

*EXTRA*

•She made an Irken uniform in inspiration of Zim.

•Nixy likes to analyze people and her work.

• Just like her brother, she’s a brainiac.

• Her mother surgically enhanced her poor vision.

• She likes to make silk fabrics for her family.

• She’s partially colorblind to some colors. That’s another reason why she got the surgery from Eva.

•Nixy gotten used to wearing neutralien

• Is afraid of horror movies but likes sci-fi films.

•Just like her mother, Nixy grooms her horns.

• Nixie and Bellatrix are the ones with four fingers.

•Nixy and Orieon both have a crush on an neutralien.

*DIALAUGE*

“I never liked being called a know it all. I am smarter than most kids my age but I don’t see myself as anyone too intelligent to be important. Me and Bellatrix have the same IQ. According to our test scores from mom.”

“I didn’t tell my littermates about this but….I have poor eyesight. Mom said that it’s normal for some vortian’s to have this problem due to having smaller eyes. I had to wear ugly glasses for a while. In secret, mom got to do surgery on my eyes to improve them. My goggles are also a good adjustment.”

“The Neutraliens we’re pretty decent with me and my family. I only hope the other aliens who took residence here would be more accepting. Some of them think that me and siblings are a curse.”

“You are so hard-headed, Jovian! You’re not going to succeed our father. Get a fucking clue!”

“These schismatics are amazing! It’s exactly what I need to improve our custom paks.”

“HEY! I may be an nuisance to you but I’m still a kid!”

“When in doubt, try a different approach!”

“Are they going to send us away? Why did that tall man get us in trouble, momma?”

“Doesn’t it shock you that our father is the leader of the most threatening race in the universe? The tallest of the Irken empire. Just try and Top that! Now we hear he has a identical co-leader too!”

“I want to make a difference in this place once I’m older. We’ll have to contribute to it one day. I hope that our father’s reputation doesn’t ruin this chance for us. We’re already being judged by everyone here.”

[odoroussavourssweet]

Jovian Perfumes

(Notes traditionally associated with Jupiter in bold.)

Scents traditionally associated with the (astrological) planet Jupiter include:

sweet scents like sugar and maple syrup

deep nutty or woody scents like chestnut and oak

warm spicy scents like carnation and nutmeg

Jupiter is associated with luck, abundance, and happiness; it’s a good fit for warm, sweet, masculine-of-center woody or spicy scents.

Parfums Dusita La Rhapsodie Noire

sage, rum, oak, tonka, vanilla, lavender

A traditionally masculine Oriental-fougere, dark and sweet with dry herbs.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Noir Exquis

chestnut, maple syrup, coffee

A rich, caramelized brown nutty scent.

Serge Lutens Chene

oak, rum, immortelle, birch

The ultimate realistic oak scent. Smells like a woodshop.

Shulton Old Spice

nutmeg, carnation, cinnamon, vanilla, benzoin

A classic soft warm spice scent, masculine but very gentle.

[whirligig-girl]

Hey it's me again and I'm just wanting to ask a few last questions.

Can a Gas Giant be white while not being made of helium? I have this one GG I'm my k type system that's white but it's basically the Jupiter of the system in terms of distance.

Could two minor moons of 512 and 493 km respectively be enough to affect tides on a world that's about 10'000 km across and a bit over a quarter the mass of Earth?

How far can a body have a ring system?

Photo for the 2nd question for reference. I actually wonder if both moons would hypothetically be viewable in the sky and if this planet's system is stable. Anyways thanks if you reply! You been a big help.

1: sure. water vapor clouds are white. a gas giant in the habitable zone would be white due to the water vapor clouds, with blue skies. Also, a jovian gas giant which somehow had pure ammonia ice clouds with no other contaminants to make it brown could be white or gray. But I'm not sure what would cause that to happen. But if you just want it to be white then that's a possible explanation. Or maybe there's some kind of white smoky haze covering everything. Planets are weird and hobby worldbuilding doesn't have to get everything exactly right, it's just nice to be able to provide a basic explanation if it comes up, even if it won't hold up to further inspection.

2: as i understand it, tidal forces are related to angular size and density. so if the moon and the sun were the same density as eachother, their tidal effect on the earth would be the same (since their angular sizes are the same.) The Sun is about half the density of the moon, so half the tidal effect. So if the satellites are comparable in apparent size to the Earth's moon, they will have a comparable tidal effect. (Note that for things like tidal heating, the period and eccentricity will matter quite a lot as well)

Calculate angular size using the Cosine Approximation:

angular diameter in radians = distance to object / diameter of object.

(remember you'll probably want to convert from radians to degrees or arcminutes.)

3: the roche limit is the outermost limit of a planetary ring system. beyond that distance, debris will accrete into one or more satellites. To maximize this, maximize the ratio of the densities--a dense superjovian with icy fluff rings will have a proportionally much larger ring system than a saturnian planet with rocky/iron rings, for example. The innermost limit is typically the exosphere of the planet's atmosphere.

4: the moons look like they ought to be stable to me. Only way to test is to put it into something like Universe Sandbox^2 with the most stable integrator settings (actually nowadays i think the default integrator settings will work?) and run time forwards a bunch.

It goes without saying that asteroid moons of that size would be visible in the sky--probably much brighter than the planets appear in Earth's skies. But the question of whether they're visible as 'disks' (rather than point sources) comes down to their apparent size. It is technically possible to see the crescent shape of Venus, when it is close enough that its angular size is 0.018 degrees. But I haven't had such luck with that. The Moon is about 0.5 degrees in apparent diameter as seen from the Earth. Objects about 0.1 degrees in size should be apparent as circular (or blobby if they're irregular asteroids) objects in the sky. Smaller than that and it gets harder and harder to distinguish from a dot.

I would also consider getting Space Engine and making a mod config file for it to render your system. I've done that for non-Kerbal worldbuilding projects in the past and even if you dont go to the trouble of making custom maps for the objects, it's still a good way to visualize everything, and how big things should be. Celestia can also do this.

(Of course Kerbal Space Program is the best way to make a fictional solar system because, unlike planetarium software, your worldbuilding decisions become manifest as game design, and you can naturally get an idea of not just what the system should look like, but how it would work if a space program had to fly through it. It's absolutely the best way to make your solar system scale worldbuilding projects seem real. It is however a frustrating hobby to get into.)

[wayti-blog]

"NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new, never-before-seen feature in Jupiter's atmosphere. The high-speed jet stream, which spans more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide, sits over Jupiter's equator above the main cloud decks. The discovery of this jet is giving insights into how the layers of Jupiter's famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb is uniquely capable of tracking those features.

"This is something that totally surprised us," said Ricardo Hueso of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, lead author on the paper describing the findings. "What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter's atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet's fast rotation."

The research team analyzed data from Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured in July 2022. The Early Release Science program—jointly led by Imke de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley and Thierry Fouchet from the Observatory of Paris—was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart, or one Jupiter day, in four different filters, each uniquely able to detect changes in small features at different altitudes of Jupiter's atmosphere.

"Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA's Juno and Cassini, and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system's changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter's rings, satellites, and its atmosphere," de Pater noted."

continue article

[a-typical]

Not everyone who successfully impacts the hearts and minds of one generation will carry that currency of influence into the generations that follow. But the continued success of Cosmos, Carl Sagan’s magnum opus, argues strongly for Carl’s affability and intelligence. But it also reveals a hidden hunger in us all to learn about our place in the universe and embrace why it matters intellectually, culturally, and emotionally.

These properties distinguish the work of Carl Sagan and his collaborators from all other efforts to communicate science. Most good books in the genre teach you what to know in the author’s field of expertise—what’s hot, what’s interesting—in clear and simple language. But rarely is that information shaped into knowledge. And even more rarely is that knowledge shaped into wonder; the foundation of a cosmos perspective on the world. Dare I assert that Cosmos wielded this power in ways that profoundly influenced how we would observe, interpret, and conduct our lives.

One of the least noted facts about Cosmos, but perhaps the most significant of its gifts to human culture, is how it repeatedly cross-pollinated the traditional sciences—astronomy, biology, chemistry, and geology. When taken separately, these fields are each noble and time-honored. But when taken together—when Cosmos wove them into a tapestry of insight on our place in the universe—their juxtaposition became potent and indelible. Cosmos was early, if not first in this endeavor. In the decades that followed its publication, we would see the rise of hybrid fields of study such as astrobiology, astro-particle physics, astro-chemistry, planetary geology—some still donning their hyphens.

But the publication and best-selling success of Cosmos accomplished much more than this. The book’s treatment of scientific topics was persistently blended with other traditional fields of study, such as history, anthropology, art, and philosophy. Revealing for the first time how and why readers should embrace all the ways that science matters in our culture.

At the time, there was nothing fresher, more uplifting, or more empowering than the themes and messages of Cosmos. Perhaps for the first time in any medium, the person teaching you science—Carl Sagan—cared about the tangled mental roadways that can rob a person of rational thought. His motif was to speak with you, not lecture at you. With that level of pedagogical comfort, millions of people around the world invited his television image into their living rooms and his printed words into their reading chairs.

When Cosmos first arrived in 1980, the arms race of the Cold War was fading, but nonetheless continued to hold hostage the world’s nations with a nuclear arsenal of destructive powers derived from the minds of physicists. But exploration was not without hope. NASA had already landed Viking on Mars, seven years after we walked on Moon. And the twin Voyager space probes continued their flyby-tour of the Jovian planets, on their way out of the Solar System altogether. All headline news. But much more was to come. The Space Shuttle had not yet flown. The International Space Station existed only on paper. The Hubble Space Telescope was eleven years from launch. The first exoplanets—worlds orbiting suns other than our own—were fifteen years from detection. The World Wide Web was still a decade away from becoming a household utility, democratizing access to cosmic discovery. And dozens more space missions would launch and arrive at their respective destinations.

In a field that moves as rapidly as astrophysics, one would think it impossible to write a timeless tract on it. But within Cosmos you’re never focused on the bleeding edge of science. That comes and goes. You’re instead treated to what the epic adventure of scientific inquiry means to Earth, to our species—to you. And that recipe works at any time, in any place, for any generation.

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

From Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

December 2013

[kuiperkat]

September's Night Sky Notes: Marvelous Moons

by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

September brings the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn back into view, along with their satellites. And while we organize celebrations to observe our own Moon this month, be sure to grab a telescope or binoculars to see other moons within our Solar System! We recommend observing these moons (and planets!) when they are at their highest in the night sky, to get the best possible unobstructed views.

The More the Merrier

As of September 2024, the ringed planet Saturn has 146 identified moons in its orbit. These celestial bodies range in size; the smallest being a few hundred feet across, to Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system.

The Saturnian system along with various moons around the planet Saturn: Iapetus, Titan, Enceladus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione. Credit: Stellarium Web

Even at nearly 900 million miles away, Titan can be easily spotted next to Saturn with a 4-inch telescope, under urban and suburban skies, due to its sheer size. With an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen with traces of hydrogen and methane, Titan was briefly explored in 2005 with the Huygens probe as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission, providing more information about the surface of Titan. NASA’s mission Dragonfly is set to explore the surface of Titan in the 2030s.

This mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus was created with images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 9, 2008, after the spacecraft came within about 16 miles (25 kilometers) of the surface of Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saturn’s moon Enceladus was also explored by the Cassini mission, revealing plumes of ice that erupt from below the surface, adding to the brilliance of Saturn’s rings. Much like our own Moon, Enceladus remains tidally locked with Saturn, presenting the same side towards its host planet at all times.

The Galilean Gang

The King of the Planets might not have the most moons, but four of Jupiter’s 95 moons are definitely the easiest to see with a small pair of binoculars or a small telescope because they form a clear line. The Galilean Moons – Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa – were first discovered in 1610 and they continue to amaze stargazers across the globe.

The Jovian system: Europa, Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Credit: Stellarium Web

Ganymede: largest moon in our solar system, and larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede has its own magnetic field and a possible saltwater ocean beneath the surface.

Callisto: this heavily cratered moon is the third largest in our solar system. Although Callisto is the furthest away of the Galilean moons, it only takes 17 days to complete an orbit around Jupiter.

Io: the closest moon and third largest in this system, Io is an extremely active world, due to the push and pull of Jupiter’s gravity. The volcanic activity of this rocky world is so intense that it can be seen from some of the largest telescopes here on Earth.

Europa: Jupiter’s smallest moon also happens to be the strongest candidate for a liquid ocean beneath the surface. NASA’s Europa Clipper is set to launch October 2024 and will determine if this moon has conditions suitable to support life. Want to learn more? Rewatch the July 2023 Night Sky Network webinar about Europa Clipper here.

Be sure to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night here on Earth September 14, 2024, leading up to the super full moon on September 17th! You can learn more about supermoons in our mid-month article on the Night Sky Network page!

[the-firebird69]

We see what's really going on yeah it's a tough day

Kind of rude all the time saying them things I had enough.

-can hear him and her looking at stuff planning things ahead. Most protest and they'll probably be going.

-it's going to go on today that they are leaving not telling people. Prank to establish so when they show up they take over. Two people caught on they know about it. Just trying to hide it. It's not working. Couple others are doing it yeah he was trying to do that. The car going after him. The huge huge day today. Giant things are happening a lot of people running about. We heard better my son keeps saying he can't do much about the contract and something not needing him to go back to Palm. There is code there and it says I'm coming on palms like Jesus and then you go to Marion Ave that's really an orchid which is poisonous the empire needs these people intact but they need them now and they're fighting to get them and they need our son intact and if I didn't get him. These guys say they're going to ruin them and they might be saternarian and or jovian depending who. They're needed now and they have a method eventually they try and use them and some of the stone chips can do it most of them can't all of the Jupiter class can and all of the Saturn class and go to both planets and leave the surface. So this guy is going to get beat up cuz he ruins the people trying to make him the only one to do stuff and he's a moron but we don't need other people and we don't need this idiot and he still doesn't get it it's very stupid. It is day two with Saturn back from around the Sun is a very big day Neptune has gone around the Sun. And Hera said this morning he said these dumplings and they're jamming them up and I was eating roast beef and bread kind of Asian he likes it a lot. This is my relatives are Bruce Lee and jet li her enemies and one of those my relatives and they're pretty fast and dangerous but he's stopped and he thought and they're kind of both rebels and we use the last name and Bruce means something like a helping JC and Mary and others to be sacrificed and jet of course means that you'll have a lot of jets but our true pain in the ass. I literally looked at her like it's true. Hey we hear him speaking to Zima and he's saying that he would be able to knock out the mounts and they'd run and it says usually they do something it's true and it feels good about it.

--Neptune is very important to us he is our father and his Goddess Wife is important to us too. We are going to post things about it our son and daughter saying that this movie on last night is to announce his presence and hers it's told that John remillard and it took him awhile to figure it out then he said good God we're under assail or attack and sometimes they're involved just trying to figure it out and the Korean movie came out and it's cold up there it says there's some kind of iceberg floating or something and they noted it no but he says okay and Schwarzenegger turns into Mr freeze and he starts thinking and these guys start talking and I said this is going to be huge and it is the planet is gigantic it's in between size Saturn and Jupiter no it's a little smaller than Saturn but Saturn is 80% Plus the size of Jupiter a Jupiter's huge

Thor Freya

Huge ok huge so I need help and stuff and my husband is saying I'm helping you yeah I need to check in a balance that just worked out.. okay I'll say it is busy hiccuping I'm doing that oh yeah well yeah geez so yeah I put up like 2:30 but it's on the Nautilus freeweight machine we couldn't do it before so he's getting back strength and I'm appreciative that he's doing it. And is all this caca from this stupid sad stuff that's all over the world but they have tons of it in Florida and it's all in the water but he's looking at lawn mowers anyways it says that they're not really helping it it's really strange cuz this grass is probably very strong and people are saying it too we can use this for food because it's cross spread and it's it grows in anything and it is a help but really there's too much s*** they have to process it then they have started it's not true it says it's a business because you can sell it to Farmers and it's worth a lot of money so people might do it.

I'm happy he's strong now he's getting stronger a little bit they said he's going to get bigger soon probably the end of the month but I'm happy you paid rent it went through we know that Stan is deposited or is going to it's good

Hera

It's going to be and is working on it and we're helping other people are helping

Nuada Arrianna

We have to get in here now and help him get it there and he can't get out

Mac Daddy

Yeah I couldn't get in there

Sherry

Olympus

[trinigirlreader]

Review of 'The Moon Children' by Kim Catanzarite

I must start by saying - I'm happy to once again be back in the Jovian universe!

Following the events of the third novel in the series, 'The Moon Children' focuses on how Jovians, clones, hybrids, and humans have all been affected after the showdown where Caroline showed her true self to the world. Now invaded by a different species called the Moon Children, old animosities and feuds have to be put aside to figure out a plan to fight them. This is of course easier said than done! Readers follow along through the perspectives of different narrators in a wild and harrowing plot which kept me on my toes the entire time.

As always, Kim successfully built this well-developed world; her ability to make me feel like there are actual multiverses (and who knows, maybe there are!) is still parallel to none. I wrote about this in my review for Bright Blue Planet; and as this book takes place in several timelines and planets, this ability was further highlighted throughout the plot.

I also loved how this story pulled so many emotions from me. While reading, I ran through a gamut of feelings - joy, extreme sorrow, anger, fear, and wonder. An author can rarely write scenes that evoke so many sentiments from me in one novel!

Another cliffhanger; but I'm sure it will definitely be worth it.

*A great many thanks to Kim Catanzarite for this ARC. It is important to note that I was not committed to providing a positive review; all opinions are undoubtedly my own.*

[spacenutspod]

Silently floating through the universe are cosmic objects that are both too large to be planets and too small to be stars. Called brown dwarfs, these substellar objects are among the most captivating objects in the universe, and their low surface temperatures mean that most of the light they emit is infrared and thus can only be observed and characterized using infrared telescopes. Fortunately, the joint NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope is an infrared-sensitive observatory, with the telescope’s powerful suite of instruments primarily observing in the near-infrared and mid-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Recently, a team of astronomers used Webb to observe a brown dwarf called W1935 and found an infrared emission from methane in the upper atmosphere of the brown dwarf. While this isn’t an uncommon detection, W1935 does not orbit a star — meaning there isn’t an obvious source behind the emission. The team does have theories as to what could be causing the methane emission and one of the leading theories involves the production of aurorae in the upper atmosphere of W1935.  The team believes that excess energy within the brown dwarf’s upper atmosphere could be what’s causing the emission, and after investigating the upper atmospheric environments of Jupiter and Saturn, the team found that the upper atmospheric heating that powers methane emissions from Jupiter and Saturn is linked to the production of aurorae. Graph showing the spectra of W1935 and W2220. Note the methane emission on the W1935 graph. (Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/L. Hustak (STScI)) If aurorae are indeed present on W1935, they wouldn’t be the same as aurorae seen on Earth. Aurorae produced within Earth’s atmosphere are created when Earth’s magnetic field interacts with solar wind that is ejected into space by the Sun. The energetic particles that make up the solar wind are caught by Earth’s magnetosphere and fall magnetic lines near Earth’s poles. The collision of these particles with Earth’s atmosphere is what creates the iconic green swirls of Earth’s aurora. However, earth is not the only planet within our solar system that experiences aurorae. As mentioned, Jupiter and Saturn regularly experience aurorae at their poles. The processes by which Jovian and Saturnian aurorae are created are similar to those of Earth, with surrounding moons, such as Jupiter’s Io and Saturn’s Enceladus, contributing to the gas giants’ aurorae. See AlsoJWST Mission UpdatesSpace Science CoverageNSF StoreClick here to Join L2 However, in the case of W1935, there is no stellar object to produce stellar wind that could interact with the brown dwarf’s atmosphere to produce aurorae or excess atmospheric energy. The team explains that, for W1935’s methane emission to make sense, either unknown internal atmospheric phenomena or external interactions with interstellar plasma/material have to occur. So, what is so intriguing about this methane emission? Why is the team investigating its source? W1935 was investigated as part of a project led by Jackie Faherty to use Webb to investigate 12 brown dwarfs. Another brown dwarf investigated by Faherty et al., called W2220, was found to be a near clone of W1935 in composition, brightness, temperatures, and spectral features of water, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. However, the only major difference between the two brown dwarfs was the methane emission from W1935, with W2220 showing an absorption feature. “We expected to see methane because methane is all over these brown dwarfs. But instead of absorbing light, we saw just the opposite: The methane was glowing. My first thought was, what the heck? Why is methane emission coming out of this object?” said Faherty. Brown dwarf W1935 posed a mystery. Webb found that methane in this object’s atmosphere was emitting infrared light, despite no obvious energy source. Using clues from our solar system, scientists found a possible explanation in aurorae: https://t.co/Wh2m7OTssT #AAS243 pic.twitter.com/cklsay1ZNL — NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 9, 2024 To further investigate the methane emission, Faherty et al. utilized computer models that modeled both W1935 and W2220. The W2220 model showed an — expected — distribution of energy throughout the entire atmosphere of the brown dwarf, wherein the atmosphere gets increasingly colder with increasing altitude. However, the W1935 model results showed the exact opposite — an unexpected and surprising result. On W1935, atmospheric temperatures get warmer and warmer with increasing altitude; a phenomenon known as temperature inversion. “This temperature inversion is really puzzling. We have seen this kind of phenomenon in planets with a nearby star that can heat the stratosphere, but seeing it in an object with no obvious external heat source is wild,” said co-author Ben Burningham of the University of Hertfordshire in England. As mentioned, given brown dwarves’ similarities to gas giants like Jupiter, the team turned to Jupiter and Saturn to investigate possible causes for the temperature inversion within W1935. Faherty et al. found that temperature inversions are prominent within Jupiter and Saturn, and current theories suggest that external heating from aurorae and internal energy transport are responsible for them. Interestingly, the aurorae theory for W1935 is not the first time aurorae has been used to explain observations of brown dwarfs. From warmer brown dwarfs, scientists have detected radio emissions and used aurorae to explain the emissions. No telescope is as sensitive to infrared light as Webb, though, and thus further observations of these radio-emitting brown dwarfs to characterize the potential aurorae have been inconclusive. However, W1935 is the first brown dwarf auroral candidate to feature the methane emission signature. What’s more, it’s also the coldest auroral candidate, with a temperature of about 200 degrees Celsius, which is around 316 degrees Celsius warmer than Jupiter. Future observations of W1935 and other auroral candidate brown dwarfs with Webb will allow scientists to better understand aurorae on brown dwarfs. In the case of W1935, further investigation into how aurorae could form without stellar wind is needed. “With W1935, we now have a spectacular extension of a solar system phenomenon without any stellar irradiation to help in the explanation. With Webb, we can really ‘open the hood’ on the chemistry and unpack how similar or different the auroral process may be beyond our solar system,” Faherty said. Faherty et al.’s results were presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans in early January. (Lead image: artist’s concept of W1935 with aurorae. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/L. Hustak (STScI)) The post Webb discovers potential aurorae on brown dwarf appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.

[thunderclaw100]

Bio: This is Jovian. He is an Irken/Vortian hybrid and the son of tallest Red and Eva. He’s the second oldest of his littermates. He’s the snappy one of them all and will not hesitate to show teeth. Jovian holds the most insecurities about himself. Most of it stems from being born a hybrid and is looked down upon by other species. Just like his other siblings, Jovian has no knowledge about his father nor his irken background. When the question is brought up, he mother tends to block it by changing the subject or giving little to no straight answers at all. Seeing as Jovian is half vortian, he has one of their features. The legs are what made him stand out. He and his younger brother are the ones being treated differently because of how irken they look. The people of planet Neutra are weary of them. Believing that their irken side will start to show.

Even though he is the second eldest, Jovian would often be called the runt of the litter because of his small size. Its infuriating to be reminded of this, so while he ages, he constantly makes up for it by improving himself physically and talentedly. Jovian was the one who found out about his father being tallest Red. Soon after that, he learned about the irken empire and it’s goal for universal conquest. It lead him to believe he was meant for greatness and and so much more than what he’s been given on this pitiful planet he’s living in. At the age of ten, Jovian began his self training. Thanks to having vortian blood, he was able to develop his own weapon design for such an occasion. He’s done this in secret because he knows his mother and siblings would condemn his actions. Living on planet Neutra has it’s ups and downs for him. He enjoys some of its quiet and peacefulness, but Jovian is adventurous and always looking for some action. Even if it’s one that get him dragged by the antenna back to his worried mother. Eva scolds him more than any of his siblings.

Jovian and his other littermates, joined the education system. They’ve met other kids from refugees there and learned about other alien races from them. Jovian wasn’t too interested in school. He found out that irkens get all their knowledge from a visualizer device that they plug themselves into. That was when he dug deep into the knowledge of irken technology and found out that their most greatest achievement was inventing the pak. Jovian fell to his knees and begged his mother to recreate the pak for him and his siblings. He manages to convince Eva after pointing out a few things regarding tallest Red and how this could be useful for them.

Jovian, loves inventing things, specifically weapons. This caught the attention of the head Neutralian military control. He was presented to them as a fine inventor and has seen his determination in combat, so they allowed the boy to join their military and helped him improve his battlefield training. Jovian wants to one day leave planet Neutra and explore the galaxy when he grows up. Maybe visit his father’s home world, irk. But his mother told him that it’s not a good idea. Seeing that he’s a mix between two species will have him deemed a defective in their eyes. Eva is keeping closer tabs on her son. His behavior is leaning towards his irken side and it’s showing. Jovian doesn’t even think about his vortian side note asked questions about what happened to his mother’s people. He ignores any questions of it. Jovian likes to spend his time to himself. Even more now that he’s not grouped up with his littermates. He’s either meditating somewhere. Making something while locking himself in his room, snacking or training himself to be the best.

Likes: Cookies(mostly the ones made by his mother) exploring, doing experiments, learning about his irken heritage, advanced technology, tv shows, ships, being loved and praised for his efforts, space, meat.

Dislikes: Being called short, not being taken seriously, being teased by his younger brother, bitter and plain food, being separated from his siblings,boredom, lack of transparency,his trainer.

Personality:Self-disciplined, crafty, reckless, determined, self-conscious, resilient, caring,vague, judgmental, snappy, confident, bold, hot-headed,narcissistic, jealous,cunning, stubborn, rowdy, intelligent, curious, dependable, hardworking.

*RELATIONSHIPS*

Eva: Jovian has good relations with his mother. When he was little, he would often be the one to crawl onto her lap and squeak for some treats, especially cookies. Eva had to keep close watch over her son because of him being more self aware about who he is his need to discover more about his roots. Jovian did press her for more details about his father and want to know the situation about the irken and vortian conflict. Eva tried to keep most secrets to herself about all of that but underestimated her son’s capability and sneakiness. Jovian found out the truth on his own after hacking into his mother’s personal tablet and also learned who fathered him and his siblings. Eva is worried for her son because she fears if he gets too into his irken, he’ll learn the shocking truth about it. Jovian understood this all too quickly and openly admitted that he hates being a hybrid. Eva loves her son but often had to scold him for his misbehavings and back talk. When Jovian pleaded with her to make an irken pak, she told him no, more than once. She eventually gave in after his nonstop begging. It wasn’t easy getting the right materials to recreate an irken pak. Eva was lucky enough to grab some copied blueprints of it back on the massive. Jovian was a mamma’s boy when he was young and would hiss and his brother and sisters if they get too close to her while he’s with her. He loves the attention set on him and being complemented for his achievements. One would think he’s becoming more irken than anything else. Eva can see that clearly.

Bellatrix: His older sister is the person he would go to if their mother isn’t available to talk to. These two have plenty to talk about. Mostly it’s science stuff or what they want to do when they grow up. Bella knows about her brother’s determination to prove himself to be more than what others deemed him to be because of his appearance and who his parents are. She was there when Jovian had an emotional breakdown. Something they agree to keep from their mother. After learning about who their father is and the details about the irken empire, Bella want’s nothing to do with it. She even tries to talk her brother into giving up his interest in wanting to be somewhat a part of that lifestyle. Jovian sometimes can’t tell if he’s arguing with his mom or his sister.

Nixy: Jovian and his younger sister are kind of polar opposites to each other’s lifestyle. Even in appearance. He has an irken look but haves vortian legs. While Nixy looks vortian but has irken legs. These two work together in some areas. One’s a the brain and the other’s the mastermind. Jovian gets to have a lot of stored knowledge data kept because of her. She’s a brainiac in the family. Maybe because Nixy is more in tuned with her vortian half than the others. Jovian like hanging out with her when he’s not busy tormenting his own body during training.

Orieon: He’s the splitting headache out of his littermates. Jovian can’t stand many things about him. One would be the fact that Orieon is taller than him, despite being the youngest. Another is his constant attempt to please others and always being their mother’s little favorite. Jovian had a couple of arguments and fights with his younger brother and it mostly related to him wanting to be more attached to his irken roots. Even after learning all the horrible things that species has done to other planets. Orieon is the only sibling who has a strong enough opinion that actually matters to Jovian. It gets him listening.

Tallest Red: The father he never knew but wants to grow up to be in the future. Jovian hacked into his mother’s tablet and learn what he can about him. The fact that his father is the leader of the irken empire, made him feel like he’s come from a very important bloodline. He wanted to know more about his other half. Disregarding his mother’s warning about it. Jovian is the second person to meet tallest Red and was the most hyped about it. But there was one part of Red that sees a little Zim in his boy and that scares him. Thought they do talk and get along over time. Jovian feels that he favors Orieon more. This kind of favoritism caused Jovian to grow a resentment towards his younger brother. Red can see his son’s persistence to earn his attention and praise. That is why, when tallest Red stayed with Eva on planet Neutra, he helped raise and keep their children from turning out like him. One time, Jovian accidentally said “My tallest” to his father. Red laughed at this because he knew why that happened. Short drones are meant to serve their leader, so when Jovian is around him, his instinct was to call him by his title name. That’s something he has to get out of his system real quick.

Dib: Jovian never saw a human until he met Dib. This was during one of his solo patrols on the outskirts of the city. He found Dib and Zim after they landed. He was curious as to why an irken is traveling with an inferior species. After taking them back to his place, Eva greeted them with open arms. Jovian asked a lot of questions. Few that were a bit rude to bring up. He’s Intrigued by Dib and asked about his home planet. The earth boy told him a lot about it and the adventures he had with Zim. Jovian want’s to study the human in more ways than just talk between them. Dib gave Jovian some insight about him and Zim’s relationship. Lecturing him that he shouldn’t judge them. Considering the fact that Eva and Red are together. Dib and his companion would drop off some supplies and food for Jovian and his family that would last then a month. He’s really grateful and a bit jealous of Zim for having a close human friend.

Zim: Meeting him was a game changer. Jovian never met another Irken other than the two his mother introduced at the refugee camp. Their first encounter was like out of pure instinct. Zim hissed and spoke irken to him. Jovian doesn’t know the language and later on asked Zim to teach it to him. After bringing him and Dib back to his mother’s place, he was greatly interested in knowing about the planet irk and the empire. Zim gave the kid a pep talk. Encouraging the young smeet to do his best out in the world, but also discouraged Jovian to want to be anything like him. Zim gave him and his siblings schismatics that they can use to help the development of the planet Neutra. Dib offered Jovian a free pointers on how to fly an irken voot cruiser. There was a time when tallest Red revealed the true nature of Zim’s past to Jovian, and it almost devastated his hopes to ever become a great soldier.

*EXTRA*

• Jovian stretches a lot in hopes to grow tall one day.

• Has the most conflict with his younger brother.

• Jovian’s currently being trained at the Neutralien military and has passed most test for his young age.

• He’s a mama’s boy and everyone knows it.

•He can’t digest syrup.

•His favorite treats are cookies.

•Jovian and Orieon are the most flexible ones amongst their siblings. They’ve trained together.

•Jovian and Nixy are the mega brains in the family.

• Jovian made the vortian uniform he’s wearing out of the silk thread produced by the neutraliens.

• Due to his vortian legs, Jovian is very agile.

•His first invention was a shock gun.

*DIALOGUES*

“I….AM NOT….LITTLE!!”

“Do you have any idea who I am? I’m the son of the almighty tallest Red and you will show me respect!”

“It’s funny that you’d say that, little brother. But we both know who’s the real reject here, and it ain’t me.”

“I just want to be appreciated and taken seriously. Why is it so bad to have that? Am I trying too hard?”

“What do you know about being different, Orieon? You and Bella are spitting images of our parents!”

“Am I the ONLY one who wants to know more about our irken heritage? Why would you ignore this?!”

“Mom? Would you still love me if I wasn’t a hybrid?”

“Are you telling me that the death of two tallest was caused by ONE irken soldier? And he still gets away with everything else he’s done? That’s awesome! Zim’s amazing.”

“Father, I looked up to you. I wanted to grow tall as you. I even wanted to BE you. But after all you’ve said to mom last night…..I’ve wish I’ve never met you!”

[bloodgulchblog]

Quick, while nobody's looking, check out this chapter of Contact Harvest:

When Avery woke, he was already home. Chicago, the onetime heart of the American Midwest, was now an urban sprawl that covered the former states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The territory wasn’t part of the United States, not in any formal sense. Some people who lived in the Zone still considered themselves American, but like everyone else on the planet they were citizens of the United Nations—a sea change in governance that was inevitable once humanity began to colonize other worlds. First Mars, then the Jovian moons, and then planets in other systems.

Checking his COM pad on the military shuttle from orbit to the Great Lakes Spaceport, Avery confirmed he was on a two-week pass—that he’d be able to enjoy his first extended break from operation TREBUCHET. There was a note on the pass from Avery’s CO detailing the injuries sustained by the marines on his last mission. All of Avery’s alpha squad had survived with minor injuries. But bravo squad hadn’t been so lucky; three marines were killed-in-action (KIA), and Staff Sergeant Byrne was hanging by a thread in a UNSC hospital ship.

The note said nothing about civilian casualties. But Avery remembered the force of the hauler’s blast, and he doubted any had survived.

He tried not to think—let his mind go blank—as he boarded a maglev passenger train from the spaceport to the Zone. Only later, when Avery stepped out onto the elevated platform of the Cottage Grove terminal, did the hot and humid air of a late Chicago summer snap his senses back into focus. As the sun dove to a fiery finish, he enjoyed what little breeze was coming off Lake Michigan—lukewarm gusts that hammered up the east-west blocks of tumbledown gray-stone apartments, scattering the autumn leaves of the sidewalk maples.

Arms laded with duffel bags, and wearing his navy-blue dress pants, collared shirt, and cap, Avery was drenched with sweat by the time he reached The Seropian, a center for active retirement—or so its hospitality computer told him—as he stepped into the tower’s stifling lobby. Avery’s Aunt Marcille had moved to the complex a few years after he’d joined the marines, vacating the same walkup apartment on Blackstone Avenue they’d shared since Avery was a boy. His aunt’s health was failing, and she’d needed the extra care. And more to the point: she was lonely without him.

As Avery waited for an elevator that would take him up to the thirty-seventh floor, he stared into a recreation room filled with many of The Seropian’s bald and silver-haired residents. Most were clustered around a video display tuned to one of the public COM’s all-news channels. There was a report of fresh Innie attacks in Epsilon Eridanus—a series of bombings that had killed thousands of civilians. As usual, the broadcast featured a UNSC spokesman who flatly denied the military’s campaign was faltering. But Avery knew the facts: The Insurrection had already claimed more than a million lives; the Innie attacks were becoming more effective, and the UNSC reprisals more heavy-handed. It was an ugly civil war that wasn’t getting any prettier.

One of the residents in the rec room, a black man with a deeply lined face and a crown of wiry gray hair, spotted Avery and frowned. He whispered something to a large white woman in a voluminous housedress, overflowing a wheelchair by his side. Soon all the residents that weren’t hard of hearing or too dim-sighted to see Avery’s uniform were nodding and clucking—some with respect, others with scorn. Avery had almost changed into his civilian clothes on the shuttle to avoid just this sort of uncomfortable reaction. But in the end he’d decided to stick with his dress blues for his aunt’s sake. She’d waited a long time to see her nephew come home all spit and polish.

The elevator was even warmer than the lobby. But inside his aunt’s apartment the air was so frigid, Avery could see his breath.

“Auntie?” he called, dropping his duffels on the well-worn blue carpet of her living room. The bottles of fine bourbon he’d bought at the spaceport duty-free clinked together between his neatly folded fatigues. He didn’t know if his aunt’s doctors were letting her drink, but he did know how much she used to enjoy an occasional mint julep. “Where are you?” But there was no reply.

The flower-patterned walls of the living room were covered with picture frames. Some were very old—faded prints of long-dead relatives his aunt used to talk about as if she’d known them personally. Most of the frames held holo-stills: three-dimensional pictures from his aunt’s lifetime. He saw his favorite, the one of his teenage aunt standing on the shore of Lake Michigan in a honey-bee striped bathing suit and wide straw hat. She was pouting at the camera and its cameraman, Avery’s uncle, who had passed away before he was born.

But there was something wrong with the stills; they seemed oddly out of focus. And as Avery stepped down the narrow hallway to his aunt’s bedroom and ran his fingers across the frames’ sheets of glass, he realized they were covered in a thin layer of ice.

Avery rubbed his palm against a large holo-still near the bedroom door, and a young boy’s face appeared beneath the frost. Me, he grimaced, remembering the day his aunt had taken the still: my first day of church. Wiping downward, his mind filled with memories: the suffocating pinch of his white, freshly starched oxford shirt; the smell of carnauba wax, liberally applied, to mask the scuffs in his oversized, wingtip shoes.

Growing up, Avery’s clothes were almost always worn out hand-me-downs from distant cousins that were never quite big enough for his tall, broad-shouldered frame. “Just as they should be,” his aunt had said, smiling, holding up new pieces of his wardrobe for inspection. “A boy isn’t a boy that doesn’t ruin his clothes.” But her painstaking patching and sewing had always ensured Avery looked his best—especially for church.

“Now don’t you look handsome,” his aunt had cooed the day she’d taken the frozen still. Then, as she’d done up his little paisley tie: “So much like your mother. So much like your father,” according to assessments of an inheritance Avery hadn’t understood. There had been no pictures of his parents in his aunt’s old house—and there were none in her apartment now. Although she’d never once said anything unkind about them, these bittersweet comparisons had been her only praise.

“Auntie? You in there?” Avery asked, knocking softly on her bedroom door. Again, there was no answer.

He remembered the sound of raised voices behind other closed doors—the angry end of his parents’ marriage. His father had left his mother so distraught that she could no longer care for herself, let alone an active, six-year-old boy. He took one last look at the holo-still: argyle socks beneath neatly cuffed tan slacks; an unabashed smile, no less sincere for his aunt’s prompting.

Then he opened her bedroom door.

If the living room had felt like a refrigerator, the bedroom was a freezer. Avery’s heart dropped into his stomach. But it wasn’t until he saw the line of sixteen evenly spaced cigarettes (one for each hour of her waking day) untouched on a bedside vanity that Avery knew for sure—his aunt was dead.

He stared at her body, stiff as a board under the layers of crocheted and quilted blankets, as the sweat on the back of his neck froze solid. Then he stepped to the foot of the bed and lowered himself into a threadbare armchair where he remained, spine set against the cold, for almost an hour—until someone keyed the apartment door.

“She’s in here,” muttered one of the complex’s orderlies as he tramped down the hallway. A young man with a sunken chin and shoulder-length blond hair peered into the bedroom. “Jesus!” He jumped back, catching sight of Avery. “Who are you?”

“How many days?” Avery asked.

“What?”

“How many days has she been lying here?”

“Listen, unless I know—”

“I’m her nephew,” Avery growled, his eyes locked on the bed. “How. Many. Days.”

The orderly swallowed. “Three.” Then in a nervous torrent, “Look, it’s been busy, and she didn’t have any—I mean we didn’t know she had any relatives in-system. The apartment is on automatic. It dropped to freezing the moment she…” The orderly trailed off as Avery stared him down.

“Take her away,” Avery said flatly.

The orderly motioned to his shorter, plumper partner cowering in the hallway behind him. Quickly the two men positioned their stretcher beside the bed, peeled back the layers of bedding, and gently transferred the body.

“Records say she was Evangelical Promessic.” The orderly fumbled with the stretcher’s straps. “Is that right?”

But Avery’s gaze had returned to the bed, and he didn’t reply.

His aunt was so frail that her body left only the barest impression in the foam mattress. She was a small woman, but Avery remembered how tall and strong she’d looked when Zone social services had dropped him on her doorstep—a mountain of surrogate maternal love and discipline in his wary, six-year-old eyes.

“What’s your COM address?” the thin orderly continued, “I’ll let you know the name of the processing center.”

Avery drew his hands out of his pockets and laid them on his lap. The squat orderly noticed Avery’s fingers tighten into fists and coughed—a signal to his partner that now would be a good time to leave. The two men worked the stretcher back and forth until it pointed out of the bedroom, then bumped it noisily down the hallway and out the apartment door.

Avery’s hands shook. His aunt had been teetering on the edge for some time. But in their recent COM correspondence, she’d told him not to worry. Hearing that, he’d wanted to take his leave immediately, but his CO had ordered him to lead one more mission. A whole hell of a lot of good that did anyone, Avery cursed. While his Aunt lay dying, he was strapped to a Hornet, circling the Jim Dandy back on Tribute.

Avery leapt from the chair, stepped quickly to his duffels, and pulled out one of the fifths of gin from the duty-free. He grabbed his navy dress coat and stuffed the glass flask into an interior pocket. A moment later, he was out the apartment door.

“Dog and Pony,” Avery asked the hospitality computer on the way down to the lobby. “Is it still in business?”

“Open daily until four a.m.,” the computer replied through a small speaker in the elevator’s floor-selection pad. “Ladies pay no cover. Shall I call a cab?”

“I’ll walk.” Avery twisted the cap off the gin and took a generous swig. Then he added to himself: While I still can.

The bottle only lasted an hour. But others were easy to find, as one night of drinking became two, then three. Gut Check, Rebound, Severe Tire Damage: names of clubs filled with civilians eager for Avery’s money but not the slurred stories of how he’d earned it—except for a girl on a low-lit stage in a dive off Halsted Street. The pretty redhead was so good at pretending to listen, Avery didn’t mind pretending it had nothing to do with how often he’d tapped his credit chip against the jeweled reader in her navel. The money drew her freckled skin and smell and lazy smile closer, until a rough hand fell on Avery’s shoulder.

“Watch your hands, soldier boy,” a bouncer warned, his voice raised above the club’s thumping music.

Avery looked away from the girl, her back arched high above the stage. The bouncer was tall with a substantial gut that his tight, black turtleneck could barely contain. His strong arms were padded with a deceptive layer of fat. Avery shrugged. “I’ve paid.”

“Not to touch.” The bouncer sneered, revealing two platinum incisors. “This is a class establishment.”

Avery reached for a little round table between his knees and the stage. “How much?” he asked, raising his credit chip.

“Five hundred.”

“Screw you.”

“Like I said. Class.”

“Already spent plenty…” Avery muttered. His UNSC salary was modest—and most of that had gone to help with his aunt’s apartment.

“Aw, now see?” The bouncer jabbed a thumb at the girl. She was slowly sliding backward on the stage—her smile now a worried frown. “You gotta talk nice, soldier boy.” The bouncer tightened his grip on Avery’s shoulder. “She’s not one of those Innie sluts you’re used to out in Epsi.”

Avery was sick of the bouncer’s hand. He was sick of being called boy. But having some civilian puke insult him—someone who had no idea what he had actually gotten used to on the frontlines of the Insurrection? That was the last straw.

“Let me go,” Avery growled.

“We gonna have a problem?”

“All depends on you.”

With his free hand, the bouncer reached behind his back and pulled a metal rod from his belt. “Why don’t you and me step outside?” With a flick of his wrist, the rod doubled in length and revealed an electrified tip.

It was a “humbler” stun device. Avery had seen ONI interrogators lay into Innie prisoners with the things. He knew how debilitating they were, and though Avery doubted the bouncer had as much skill with the humbler as an ONI spook, he had no intention of ending up jerking around in a puddle of his own piss on this class establishment’s floor.

Avery reached for his drink, resting at the center of his table. “I’m good right here.”

“Listen, you jarhead son of a—”

But Avery’s reach was just a feint. As the bouncer leaned forward to follow, Avery grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled it over his shoulder. Then he yanked down, breaking it at the elbow. The girl on the stage screamed as ragged bone tore through the bouncer’s shirt, spattering blood on her face and hair.

As the bouncer howled and dropped to his knees, two of his partners—similarly dressed and built—rushed forward, flinging chairs out of their way. Avery stood and turned to meet them. But he was drunker than he’d thought and missed an opening blow to the bridge of his nose that snapped his head back and sent his own blood arcing toward the stage.

Avery reeled back into the bouncers’ crushing arms. But as they rushed him out the club’s back door, one of them slipped on the metal staircase leading to the alley. In that moment, Avery was able to twist free, give much better than he got, and stagger away from the noise of approaching sirens before a pair of blue and white sedans deposited four of the Zone’s finest on the club’s doorstep.

Stumbling along Halsted’s crowded sidewalks, his dress uniform now as filthy as a set of battlefield fatigues, Avery fled from the paranoia of accusing glances to a dirty crawlspace beneath a riveted riser for the local maglev line—a repurposed brace from Chicago’s old elevated railway, still recognizable despite centuries of shoring. Avery stuffed a green plastic trash bag between himself and the riser and settled into a fitful stupor.

Make me proud, do what’s right. This had been his Aunt’s instruction on the day of his enlistment, her small but strong fingers reaching up to cup his nineteen-year-old chin. Become the man I know you can be.

And Avery had tried. He’d left Earth ready to fight for her and those like her—innocents whose lives the UNSC had convinced him were threatened by men inimical but otherwise identical to him. Killers. Innies. The enemy. But where was the pride? And what had he become?

Avery dreamed of a boy choking in the arms of a woman with a detonator—imagined the perfect shot that would have saved all in the restaurant and his fellow marines. But deep down he knew there was no perfect shot. No magic bullet that could stop the Insurrection.

Avery felt a chill that jerked him awake. But the near-silent rumble of a maglev passenger train overhead had only shifted the bag of trash, setting Avery’s back against the perspiring metal of the old brace. He leaned forward and put his head between his knees. “I’m sorry,” Avery croaked, wishing his aunt were alive to hear it.

Then his mind collapsed under the multiplicative weight of loss and guilt and rage.

-

Lieutenant Downs slammed the door of his dark blue sedan with enough force to rock the low-swept vehicle on its four thick tires. He’d had the kid hooked, ready to enlist. But then the parents got wind of his efforts, and the whole thing fell apart. If it weren’t for Downs’ uniform, the father might have taken a swing at him. Though he was no longer field-fit, in his dress blues, the UNSC Marine Corps recruiter was still an imposing presence.

As the Lieutenant reordered his mental list of prospects—the small group of primarily young men who’d shown any interest in his cold calls and street-corner pitches—he reminded himself it wasn’t easy recruiting soldiers during wartime. With a war as brutal and unpopular as the Insurrection, his job was damn near impossible. Not that his CO cared. Downs’ quota was five new marines per month. With less than a week to go he hadn’t landed even one.

“You gotta be kidding me…” The Lieutenant grimaced as he rounded the back of his sedan. Someone had used a can of red spray-paint to scrawl INNIES OUT on the vehicle’s thick bumper.

Downs smoothed his close-cropped hair. It was an increasingly popular slogan—a rallying cry for the more liberal core-world citizens who believed the best way to end the killing in Epsilon Eridanus was simply to let the system go—have the military pull out and give the Insurrectionists the autonomy they desired.

The Lieutenant wasn’t a politician. And while he doubted the UN leadership would ever appease the Innies, he knew a few things for sure: The war was still on, the Marine Corps was an all-volunteer force, and he only had a few days to fill his quota before someone with a lot more brass than him took another bite out of his already well-chewed ass.

The Lieutenant popped the sedan’s trunk, and removed his dress cap and briefcase. As the trunk closed automatically behind him, he strode toward the recruitment center, a converted storefront in a strip mall on Chicago’s old, near-north side. As Downs neared the door, he noticed a man slumped against it.

“48789-20114-AJ,” Avery mumbled.

“Say again?” Downs asked. He knew a UNSC serial number when he heard it. But the Lieutenant still hadn’t quite accepted the drunk outside his office was the Marine Corps Staff Sergeant indicated by the four gold chevrons on his filthy dress-coat’s sleeve.

“It’s valid,” Avery said, raising his head from his chest. “Check it.”

The Lieutenant straightened his soldiers. He wasn’t used to taking orders from a noncommissioned officer.

Avery belched. “I’m AWOL. Seventy-two hours.”

That got Downs’ attention. He cracked his briefcase in the crook of his elbow and withdrew his COM pad. “Give me that one more time,” he asked, inputting Avery’s slowly repeated serial number with swift stabs of his index finger.

A few seconds later Avery’s service record appeared on the pad. The Lieutenant’s eyes widened as a long string of meritorious citations and battlefield commendations cascaded down the monochromatic screen. ORION, KALEIDOSCOPE, TANGLE-WOOD, TREBUCHET. Dozens of programs and operations, most of which Downs had never even heard of. Attached to Avery’s file was a priority message from FLEETCOM, the Navy and Marine Corps headquarters on Reach.

“If you’re AWOL, no one seems to mind.” Downs placed his COM pad back into his briefcase. “In fact, I’m pleased to inform you that your request for transfer has been approved.”

For a moment, Avery’s tired eyes flashed with suspicion. He hadn’t requested a transfer. But in his current groggy state, anything sounded better than being shipped back to Epsilon Eridanus. His eyes darkened once more. “Where?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Long as it’s quiet,” Avery muttered. He let his head fall back against the recruitment center door—right between the legs of a marine in full battle dress on a poster taped to the inside of the door that read: STAND. FIGHT. SERVE. Avery’s closed his eyes.

“Hey!” Downs said gruffly. “You can’t sleep here, Marine.”

But Avery was already snoring. The Lieutenant grimaced, hefted one of Avery’s arms over his shoulder, and carried him to the backseat of his sedan.

As Downs pulled out of the mall’s parking lot into thick, noontime traffic, he wondered if catching a single AWOL war hero was as good as booking five raw recruits—if it would be enough to keep his CO happy. “Great Lakes Spaceport,” he barked at his sedan. “Quickest route.” As a holographic map materialized on the inner surface of the sedan’s curved wind-shield, Downs shook his head. If only I could be so lucky.

[fandomwriterstuff]

“We’re a well-oiled team of military-grade kindergarteners,” his best friend, and the only other human on the ship who would understand what kindergarten was, continued chastising him and his companions. “The level of education and training among the three of you eclipses that of the entire rest of the members of this operation,” Annabeth continued, pointing her finger individually at himself, his pilot Jason, and his Chief Science Officer Nico. “You know, I’m not that surprised with you, Percy, but you are our XO so you should really be more responsible,” he winced at that, still feeling a bit of imposter syndrome at being the Commander of the USS Olympus. “Jason, shouldn’t you be piloting a ship or something?” At that, he saluted her and did an about face before scampering off to get into more trouble. “And you, you’re definitely way too responsible to have gotten mixed up with this Seaweed Brain and Sparky, so what’s in this tomfoolery for you?”

Nico, the only Neptunian on the ship, shifted his large black wings self consciously under the scrutiny of their Chief of Operations. Percy, as the Commander of the vessel, felt obligated to protect his usually stoic and well-behaved… acquaintance? Di Angelo was reserved, almost standoffish, and resented anyone who tried to stick up for him for some reason, but that didn’t stop Percy’s stupid seaweed brain from doing so. Hence the acquaintance. Percy was 99% sure Di Angelo didn’t consider him a friend. But he was nice to Percy and a great officer, so Percy considered him his friend.

“It was my fault, Annie,” he used her childhood nickname carefully, not knowing whether it would soften her up or piss her off more. He was hoping for softening. “It was just another one of Jason and my dumb ideas that we thought we would need a scientist to help with, and we didn’t want to piss off Leo by involving him in it. You know how he is about his engineer and warp cores and whatnot,” Percy held his hands up placatingly. “Leave Di Angelo out of this, he has sciencey things to do, isn’t that right?” Percy side-eyed his companion who (not surprisingly) rolled his eyes.

“I try not to get involved with human pranks or even Jovian mischief, but Officer Grace and First Officer Jackson were about to be meddling with my linguistics team. It isn’t my duty to tell my superiors what to do, so I sought out the next best option, supervising and ensuring no lasting damage was done to the physical or emotional state of the linguistics team. Now,” Here Percy held in a smirk as Di Angelo shrugged. “If they caused interference with the machinery of the ship, that wouldn’t be my expertise, so I allowed it to happen and-” Percy held back a laugh as the other male started speaking even faster to get everything out as Annabeth turned redder and redder. “I’m very sorry about that, truly, but I had no control over the situation.”

“No control over the situation? You three broke our LIT machine and now we have to go back to Earth as soon as we pass close enough to fix it. Soon enough nobody on this ship will understand each other,” the woman across from them crossed her arms and Percy shrunk back a bit.

“I want to make a joke about a machine being called “LIT,” but I feel like it isn’t the right time,” he muttered. “I know the Linguistic Inhibition Technology is important, but most of us have a working understanding of at least one other language, so it shouldn’t be a huge issue, right?”

“You know it works by connecting to the implant technology in our brains, so as it shuts down one by one, members of this ship from spaces stations and planets far and wide will have no clue why they suddenly can’t understand their XO, or their Chief Officer, or their best friend. So you better explain this. And you have to tell them that we’re going straight back to Earth to fix it because no nearby planets have the same brain implant tech as us. Damn Terrans and their brand name technology copyrights,” Annabeth grumbled and finally turned around to walk off.

“Hey, you’re Terran, too!” Percy shouted after her, but she just flipped him the bird.

“She can do that?” Di Angelo asked, side-eyeing Percy.

“Yeah, she’s been my best friend since we were twelve. As long as she doesn’t undermine my authority in front of everyone else, I don’t really care. I’ve done way worse to her,” Percy laughed at the other man’s frown. “Nothing bad, just pranks and things of that sort. Maybe when we get back to Earth we can show you where we’re from. You never set foot off of the training grounds while you were in school.”

“I would… like that,” Di Angelo paused and gave Percy a soft smile.

“Great,” Percy patted the younger male on the shoulder and made his way to the Command Center.

Percy sat himself down in the rotating chair and pressed on the comms device.

“Gooooood evening crew of the USS Olympus, this is your Commanding Officer, Percy Jackson, speaking,” he smiled at the engineering crew that was scuttling by, only for one of them to pause and look at him like he was speaking a different language… Whoops.

“There was a malfunction with the Linguistic Inhibition Technology and we will be returning to Earth henceforth to repair it before the damage becomes problematic. You may experience glitches with your implant technology and may revert to only understanding your first language and those you have studied extensively. If somebody looks like they’re not understanding what I’m saying right now, please escort them to the linguistics team in Science Bay 3. Carry on. Jackson, out.” He clicked again and the mic turned off.

He sighed, this would be one of his bigger mistakes. They were supposed to be exploring, but they couldn’t do that if nobody could speak to one another. One trip home couldn’t hurt him, and he was sure Annabeth would be happy to see her father.

It wasn’t until later after the Chief Officer meeting when someone finally asked Percy about Earth. For many of the non-humans on the ship, Earth was a place to get education and training to go out in the star fleet, and they never set foot outside the campus grounds, just like Di Angelo. But people had stopped asking him questions because Earth was basically “Space Australia,” as Annabeth had explained to him. The adaptability of humans and their need to pack bond astounded many and horrified many others. So, he stopped talking about home.

It was a new member of their ship, Novax (a Vulcan who was a part of Leo’s engineering team), who asked him about it first.

“I hear Earth is 75% made of pure salt water, and is filled with animals of all kinds. Do you have a favorite water animal?” he asked Percy excitedly.

“Definitely dolphins, though they aren’t underwater creatures. Like humans they need oxygen to breathe, and come up for air very often. My favorite actual underwater species would have to be a hippocampus from Neptune. I’ve always wanted to go and see one, but my human anatomy prevents me from going on-planet,” Percy explained and sipped on his hot tea.

“There are a million creatures in the ocean and you pick one that doesn’t breathe underwater?” Clarisse grunted. His Chief Tactical Officer was a brutish Martian, but very specialized in weapons. “And your second favorite isn’t even Terran.”

“What else do you know about the ‘ocean’?” Novax breathed, leaning forward.

“Eh, not much,” Percy shrugged.

“I’m not sure I heard that correctly, maybe my LIT unit isn’t functioning well,” another member of engineering asked, Nyssa. “Your planet is 75% water and you don’t even know what is inside it?”

“I could tell you about the people who spend their life learning about what survives in the deep depths,” Percy looked up, knowing he had all of the non-Terrans hooked on every word. Even Di Angelo had paused in his note taking and was staring wide-eyed at Percy. ��But I don’t know if you’d want to know.”

“No we do!” Nyssa exclaimed. “There are people who dedicate their lives to a place that’s literally not navigable by humans, the main inhabitants of the planet?”

“Well as you said, most of the planet is water. Which means that coastal communities are filled with fisherman, whalers, swimmers, and more. I could tell you about some of those. I could also tell you about the scientists that spend years of their lives building bots that can’t even come close to withstanding the pressure at the deepest depths without imploding, or I could tell you about those that do come close,” he shrugged.

“What happened to those?”

“The video feed cut out after only seeing multiple rows of sharp, jagged teeth,” Annabeth answered, her sharp grin frightening those who hadn’t noticed her. Some forgot that she was Terran, because she was also half Minervan.

“I could tell you about whales. Beautiful, they come in black and white or grey or blue. But they can be as big as almost 100 feet long. That’s as long as most pirate ships. And they could fit about 400 average sized humans in their mouths. You don’t want to cross one of them. And they only live on the surface. The things that live in the deep,” Percy shuddered for effect. There were no Neptunians on the ship, so there were no natural water dwellers there, so all of his rapt listeners were shocked by this information. “There’s the anglerfish. They light up the dark with an antenna on top of their heads, and the light lures in prey. But it’s so dim elsewhere that you don’t see their big sharp teeth until you’re right up against them,” he murmured. “Giant squids are almost as big as whales but not nearly as peaceful and beautiful. They have eight arms and two tentacles that could wrap around any boat and crush it.”

“Ten limbs?” Nyssa whispered, clearly disturbed.

“Plus, the Portuguese Man o’ War,” Percy shrugged nonchalantly. “Also known as the floating terror. It’s like a big blue jellyfish that sits innocently on top of the water with huge blue tentacles that sit just underneath with a sting strong enough to kill a full grown human.”

“Don’t worry,” Annabeth grinned that shark grin again. “Percy won’t tell you about the stories of the old days. He doesn’t want to scare you.”

“That was the not scary part?” Novax gulped.

“Anyway, I just got notified that we’ll be back on Earth in a few days, so brace yourselves,” and with that, she stood and left them all staring after her. When the door clicked shut, Percy had all eyes back on him. He shrugged.

“Don’t look at me. I wasn’t going to tell you about the kr- nevermind,” he stood. “Di Angelo, with me,” the younger officer stood, back to business and was at Percy’s side again in a moment. “Clear your schedule, you’re spending shore leave with me, pal.”

“Great,” came the deadpan reply.

“Don’t sound so somber,” Percy rolled his eyes. “I’m just going to show you the beach and maybe a good gay bar. You need to let off some steam my dude.”

The other male reddened.

“That is so… That is…” he huffed. “Highly inappropriate.” he glared down at the ground and Percy felt a little bad, maybe the guy wasn’t out? But it was clear he had a preference for males. Oh well, that foot was already in Percy’s mouth.

“Fine. But I will be attending and I am a great dancer so you’re missing out,” he winked at the flustered officer and made his way back to his cabin. It would be an interesting few days.

He made a plan with Annabeth. Day one before shore leave, Percy would spread a rumor to Novax about the kraken. Bigger than a giant squid and meaner. Known to crush entire pirate ships in the olden days.

Day two, Annabeth would mention sirens to Nyssa. Hideous creatures that could lure you in with their voices and lead you to believe you were bringing your ship in to everything you ever wanted, when in reality you would crash your ships and then drown.

Day three, Percy would tell Leo about the Megalodon. A definitely very real shark so big you couldn’t even imagine it. Percy shuddered at that one.

“But, there are some good things,” Percy was speaking to Nico Di Angelo from his Commander chair, in ear shot of some of the participants of the conversation a few nights prior. “Mermaids, the siren’s nicer cousin species. And the lost city of Atlantis. Known to be a great and bountiful city, lost to the sea and cursed by the gods to be stuck down there forever. Some believe it still exists, but it’s within the Bermuda Triangle.”

“What, pray tell, is the Bermuda Triangle,” Clarisse sighed.

“Hard to explain. Ships just… go in… and they never come out,” Annabeth shrugged. “Planes go down. Ships wreck. People who go in don’t come back out, so we don’t know if Atlantis is really there or not.”

“That’s… terrifying,” Novax whispered as he walked by.

Percy was sure he had created a healthy fear of Earth’s oceans in his crew. And he meant to, because while he loved the beach and swimming, he did want to make them shy away from the depths. They wouldn’t do well to explore it.

[man-and-atom]

Congratulations to ESA on the successful launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission!

It is interesting to note that one of the greatest engineering challenges in developing this spacecraft was the power supply. Sunlight intensity at Jupiter is very low, and to produce a few hundred watts, a solar collector area of 85 square meters was needed ― as a French astronaut remarked, bigger than his Paris apartment! Because the spacecraft was to be launched from Earth, rather than (for instance) assembled in weightlessness at the Space Station, the gigantic arrays had to be packed down into a volume capable of fitting into the fairing of the Ariane 5 rocket, and secured against the violent accelerations and vibrations of launch. Once again we see how a spacecraft with an eight-year planned mission is designed around the first eight minutes of its operating life.

Of course, much of this trouble could have been avoided if ESA had access to radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Degradation of PV cells in the powerful Jovian radiation field, and danger to the spacecraft systems from cold in the shadow of the planet, would then become insignificant. Unfortunately, pretty much the last of the world supply of plutonium-238 went to Mars on the Perseverance rover. So far, neither US work to restart production, nor British work on americium-241 RTGs, has reached the point of operational capability ― and the design of the “Juice” spacecraft had to be frozen years ago.