Explorations by A M Turnbull

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E13

Alex Turnbull — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 08:39:12 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

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Previously: the expedition crew are outside collecting a meteorite when the rover’s battery goes into thermal runaway. Pieter makes a valiant effort to disconnect the battery heater, but it is too late.

October 2056

Aiden hit the emergency override on the airlock control before it had finished cycling. He pushed the inner door against the force of the remaining pressure differential. It cracked open and, as air from the Hab rushed into the airlock equalising the pressure, the door swung open easily. He undid the clip on his neck ring as he walked through the door into the EVA prep room. Dumping the helmet on its shelf, he strode into the Hab, Lana and Joanna following in his wake.

Joanna, still wearing her helmet, collapsed onto a chair and pulled it off. Putting it down on the floor in front of her, she held her face in her hands, sobbing.

“Look Jo, this is going to sound harsh, but now is not the time to get emotional,” said Lana, putting her hand on Joanna’s back. “We don’t know what’s happened, if anything. But we are their best hope, so we’ve got to think straight and stay focused.”

Aiden tapped frantically at one of the Hab’s workstations. “I can’t get any telemetry from the rover. I’ll try to establish a voice link again.” He had been trying to call them as they made their way back to the Hab after their talk with Larsson.

Lana spoke into the air “Call Mission Control on the emergency comm link, main PA speakers.”

A chime sounded over the Hab PA system followed by an efficient-sounding voice. “Hab this is Analogue Mission Control, how do you read?”

“We’ve got you, strength five. Do you have a status update on the rover?”

“Negative Lana, sorry we’ve lost all telemetry. The last we saw was the battery heater being switched on and the temperature beginning to rise. It looks like there was an attempt to turn it off, but for some reason the control returned to the “on” position. And then…”

“And then what?” demanded Aiden.

This time it was a different voice, that of Connor O’Sullivan, the head of FASS training.

“The last piece of telemetry we received indicated the fire warning had gone off in the rover cab… I’m sorry.”

“Prep Rover 1 to leave immediately,” said Lana to Aiden.

“Lana,” said Connor, “we were just discussing this before you called. We don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out and try to rescue them. We don’t know exactly what happened and how the systems in Rover 1 could be affected in a similar way. We are going to—”

“We are their best hope!” insisted Lana. “We can leave now, and if we drive at maximum speed we can be there in less than a day.” She looked at Aiden for confirmation.

“Sixteen to twenty hours non-stop at max speed. Provided we have no issues.”

“Lana, this looks like a deliberate act. We don’t know if Rover 1 has been compromised,” said Connor.

“The battery heater control circuitry has been removed. There’s no way to turn it on right now,” said Aiden. “We don’t need it. We are going to be at maximum speed. With that current draw, the battery will maintain operating temperature by itself.”

“Yes, but what about the rover? It could have been compromised in other ways that we don’t know about.”

“So we’re just going to sit here and do nothing?” Aiden retorted.

“What does Christian think?” asked Lana.

“He’s not here. He went out to take a call. We’re trying to get hold of him but haven’t been able to reach him yet.”

“Ok, we’re going,” said Lana. “When you get hold of Christian, if he doesn’t like the idea, he can tell us to abort.”

“Lana,” pleaded Connor.

“We’ll turn off all the rover’s comms and telemetry so it can’t be compromised remotely. And we’ll check in every hour with you on one of the standby satphones.”

“Lana!”

“Talk to you in an hour - disconnect Mission Control.” The call dropped with a chime through the PA system.

Lana looked at Aiden. “Ok I’m on it. The rover is already stocked with consumables. I’ll power it up now and then head over and find the right circuit breakers to pull to disable all the comms and telemetry.”

“Ok. Jo and I will grab some extra medical supplies and switch the Hab over to caretaker mode. We’ll see you in the rover in ten minutes.”

Aiden tapped a couple of commands on the workstation and headed for the airlock. Lana turned to Joanna. She seemed to have regained her composure, but her eyes were red and her face was streaked with tears.

“Just because there was a fire doesn’t mean there were any casualties,” Lana said softly.

“Yes,” sniffled Joanna, “I know. But they are out there on their own and, by all accounts, out in the elements. I just …”

“The best thing we can do now is head straight out there ourselves and get them. We’ll be there in less than a day. Even if they are outside, their suits will keep them warm enough long enough for us to get there.”

Joanna forced herself to smile as she got up.

“I guess you’re right, and sitting here worrying is not going to help.”

Five minutes later, having grabbed some extra medical supplies, they were back in the airlock. Lana pressed the control and it began its cycle. The faint hissing - barely audible through her helmet - instilled a calm she had not felt in a while. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow, deliberate breath. When she opened them, she saw a new message icon flashing on the screen on her wrist. It was from Larsson. She opened it.

Good luck Lana, talk in an hour.

“Kev, I think they’ve figured out they got a problem,” said Owen without looking up from the screen he was monitoring.

“Hey Kev.” Owen turned round. Kevin’s eyes were slowly rolling back as he drifted into semi-consciousness. Owen nudged his foot, waking him with a jolt.

“Uh… what?” said Kevin as he came back to reality. He picked up his tablet, which had fallen on the floor.

“I think they’ve figured out there’s a problem.”

Kevin rolled his chair over to Owen’s workstation. “How come?”

“They have just tried to turn off the battery heater.”

“They can’t do that though, right?”

“Nope, the control is disabled.”

“Is there no way you can get into the comms loops so we can hear what they’re saying?”

Owen sighed. “As I’ve told you, we’re lucky we’ve got this far. Their systems are really well hardened.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve told me that before,” snapped Kevin. “Is the battery in thermal runaway yet?”

“Looking at the temperature, it can’t be far away.”

Owen could feel Kevin’s gaze boring into him from behind as he kept focused on the screen in front of him. He kept his head still. His eyes flicked from the screen to the side, but Kevin was just beyond his peripheral vision.

“It’s moving, the rover’s moving,” said Owen, happy to break the silence. “They’ve disconnected it from the auxiliary trailer. They’re obviously trying to limit the damage.”

“Of course that’s what they are trying to do!” snapped Kevin.

Owen remained silent for a moment, calculating the response that would elicit the least anger from Kevin. But the choice was made for him.

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?”

“The battery heater has just gone offline.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said you had disabled the control.”

“I have. The only way it could be turned off is if someone physically disconnected it.”

“What!” exclaimed Kevin, standing up and kicking the chair out behind him. It slid across the room and hit the desk behind him.

“You said that wasn’t possible!”

“I didn’t say it was impossible. I said it was highly unlikely,” replied Owen in an overly calm voice.

Kevin slammed his hand on the desk. “For fuck’s sake! What happens now then?”

“Well, I—”

A red warning started to flash on the rover telemetry screen Owen had open.

“The fire warning has just gone off.” Owen rapidly scanned the rest of the parameters on the screen. “And… look at that.” he pointed to the cabin temperature, “it’s going through the roof!”

Kevin relaxed and smiled to himself.

“So it’s in thermal runaway then?” he said calmly.

“I would say so,” replied Owen.

“What sort of fire suppressant do they have?”

“There ain't no fire suppressant they could carry’s going to put that battery out once it’s gone over the edge.”

“Was there anyone in the rover when it went off?”

“It’s hard to say. But considering the heater just went off, there must have been someone in there to disconnect it.”

“Excellent.”

A few seconds later, all the figures on the telemetry flashed in unison. Owen started tapping away on his keyboard.

“What’s happening?”

“We’ve lost telemetry. All the data comes via the rover’s satellite link.”

“What about the auxiliary trailer?”

“It doesn’t have its own satellite link. It’s basically just a big battery with wheels. There’s space for extra consumables and cargo, with a crane on the back.”

“They could use it for shelter though, couldn’t they?” asked Kevin.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Turn on the heater in the trailer,” demanded Kevin.

“But Kev, we just went through this. I can’t do that bec—.”

“Find a way!”

“I can only work with what’s there. The trailer doesn’t have its own connection to any networks.”

“I don’t want them to have a place to shelter!” screamed Kevin. “Do you get that? I want them exterminated.”

Kevin leaned in towards Owen, his nose almost touching his cheek. “Find a way to do it,” he whispered, then turned and left the room.

Lana hadn’t been able to sleep, none of them had. She alternated between thinking about Pieter, Brant and Zawadi and the message Larsson had sent through after they had departed. Aiden had placed one of the standby satphones on top of the rover’s instrument panel so it would have a clear view of the sky through the bubble canopy. The message had come through as an old-fashioned text message:

I said I would call but need to keep it brief. No more comms unless an emergency. Extraction team from Concordia Station will be waiting at the hab when you return. Mission Control not happy about you undertaking the rescue. I have overruled them - good luck.

She pulled up the map, still another hour to go until the last known position of Rover 2. She turned to Aiden, who was taking his stint at driving.

“Think I’ll get suited up. It’ll give me something to do.” He simply nodded.

Lana got up and gently tapped Joanna on the shoulder. She knew she was only pretending to sleep.

“Want to come and be my suit buddy?”

Joanna followed Lana to the back of the rover. They began putting on their suits in a silence only broken by the verbal challenge and response required by the suit-donning checklist.

When they were finished, Lana took over driving so Joanna could help Aiden suit up. They all now sat scouring the horizon as they approached the position where Rover 2 should be.

“There! I think I see it,” called Joanna from the jump seat.

A moment earlier Lana had thought she’d had begun to make something out, but she had wanted to be sure before saying anything.

“Yep, I think that’s it,” said Aiden.

On the horizon was a black shape - black not orange - which began to take the form of a rover.

“Where’s the trailer?” asked Joanna.

“There it is. It’s a little way behind the rover,” said Aiden. “They must have disconnected it so the fire wouldn’t spread.”

The trailer was still its distinctive bright orange.

“At least it still looks ok. Try them on the suit to suit back up UHF. Put it on speaker,” said Lana.

Aiden tapped a few commands on the comms interface.

“Pieter, Brant, Zawadi, do you read?”

Silence.

“Pieter, Brant, Zawadi, this is Rover 1. Do you read?”

Still silence.

“Manual squelch,” said Lana.

Aiden reached over to the instrument panel, and the soft hiss of static came through the speaker.

“Pieter, Brant, Zawadi, this is Rover 1. Do you read? Please acknowledge,” he tried again.

The static continued its soft hiss.

They were getting closer now, Lana slowed the rover, coming to a stop in front of the burnt-out shell.

“Wow,” whispered Aiden.

The shape of the rover was still recognisable, but it was merely a skeleton. All but a couple of the cab windows had shattered, the Perspex that remained was stained black. Thin wisps of grey smoke drifted out. Parts of the cab structure had deformed and buckled in the heat. Everything was black. The body of the rover was blistered and charred. It was also listing to one side where the ice had melted and it had sunk.

The rover remained stationary in front of its burned-out twin. Like a wild animal returning to the scene of a hunt, only to find the remains of one of its own left behind by the predators.

“Try them again on the radio,” said Lana as she backed up the rover.

The auxiliary trailer lay about a hundred metres behind the burned-out rover, seemingly undamaged. Lana slowly eased the rover over towards it.

“Pieter, Brant, Zawadi. Do you read? This is Rover 1 on backup UHF,” Aiden tried again.

There didn’t seem to be any signs of life. The meteorite collection gear lay abandoned to the side of the trailer. Lana made a wide arc around the site and approached the trailer from behind. The back door was open, with the loading ramp lowered. It was dark inside the cargo compartment.

“Ok, let’s take a look,” said Lana, powering down the rover drive systems.

“Look!” said Joanna, pointing.

A suited figure appeared in the doorway. The normally bright orange was dulled with soot, making the coloured identification marks on the suite difficult to make out. But the hooked hand was a giveaway.

“It’s Brant,” Joanna said excitedly.

“Brant. How do you read?” Aiden tried the radio again.

There was no response. The suited figure just stood motionless, looking back at them. Aiden turned his head to the side and tapped his ear. The suited figure fiddled with a control on the wrist console.

“Brant. What’s your status?” said Aiden.

There was no response. The figure turned to look back into the compartment behind him and fiddled with the wrist console again. Just then a second figure appeared, clean unlike the first, and from the identifiers unmistakably Zawadi.

“Brant, Zawadi, where’s Pieter?” This time it was Lana on the radio.

The speaker in the cab crackled and Brant’s soft Canadian accent came through, although it sounded distant, hollow.

“He’s gone. Pieter’s gone. There’s just the two of us.”

Lana lowered her head and sighed softly. “We’re coming to get you. We’ll help you down.” She motioned with her hand to Aiden and Joanna to head to the airlock, then turned back to Brant.

“It’s ok,” he said flatly. “We can climb down the ladder ourselves.” His voice sounded as if he were comforting a child.

“What happened to Pieter?”

“Incinerated,” said Brant matter-of-factly. “He was burnt alive trying to disconnect the battery heater.”

Oh God. Of all the ways to die, Lana couldn’t think of a worse one.

“Do you guys have any injuries?”

“I bumped my head climbing out of the burning rover, but it’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Just wait there. Aiden and Joanna are on their way. They’ll help you down.”

“Ok, we’re not going anywhere.”

A moment later, Aiden and Joanna appeared around the front of the rover. Aiden moved towards the controls for the flatbed on the side of the rover.

“It’s disabled,” said Brant. “I’ve powered down everything and disconnected the battery.”

“You want a hand to climb down?” said Aiden.

“We can manage it. My hook works quite well on the ladder, actually.”

Brant motioned for Zawadi to go first and then followed her down the ladder to the side of the flatbed. Joanna went to the bottom of the ladder to meet him, and as soon as his feet touched the ground they locked in a clumsy embrace.

“You two head inside. I’ll check out the rover,” said Aiden.

“I wouldn’t bother. For your sake, it’s probably best you don’t see what’s inside,” replied Brant.

“We need to take a look and see if there is anything we can recover. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Come on inside, guys,” said Lana. “Aiden, I’ll come over to the rover with you. Joanna, you can drive the rover over to meet us.”

Fifteen minutes later, the rover was parked back behind its crippled twin. Lana emerged first from the charred hulk, followed by Aiden. She made her way carefully down the steps, which were now secured to the rover in only a few places. They were empty-handed. Brant had changed out of his suit and was now sitting in the jump seat of the rover, cradling a cup of hot soup in his hands. He watched them emerge and cast a knowing glance over at Zawadi.

A couple of minutes later, the airlock’s inner door opened, and Lana stepped into the rover, her face ashen. She made her way silently along to the cab, her face fixed in a thousand-yard stare. Aiden followed and stopped at the galley. He turned to the sink, and his whole body convulsed as he vomited. He steadied himself with both hands. A string of mucus trailed from his face into the sink. He spat it out and then turned to the others.

“Let’s get out of here.”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. It’s a bit longer than my normal episodes, but I thought the flow worked better to keep these scenes together. This episode concludes season 3.

As I have done in the past, I will take a break between seasons. This time is probably going to be longer that the last break. It’s been quite a challenge to get these episodes out each week. Outside of writing, things have been pretty busy. As spring is now appearing on the horizon down here in the southern hemisphere, things will start to get busy again with the day job.

I have one more season of Orphans of Apollo written, which takes us to the end of what I plan to be the first book. These scenes do need some more heavy editing, which is another reason for planning on a longer hiatus. Lana and the crew will have to pick themselves up from this tragedy. Will they want to go on?

I dare say I’ll be back with a few posts before season 4 kicks off, but until then, as ever:

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E12

Alex Turnbull — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 07:49:49 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Kevin gives the go-ahead to activate the battery heater in an attempt to sabotage the rover. Lana, Aiden and Joanna call Larsson to confront him about their genetic modification.

October 2056

Brant and Zawadi stopped a few metres from the meteorite, setting down the sample box they had been carrying between them. They had been careful to approach it from downwind to minimise the chances of contamination. The box contained plastic evidence-type bags, tongs and all the other tools they needed to pick up the meteorite and store it in a pristine state. Zawadi approached it slowly, taking care not to disturb the surrounding compacted snow.

“I’ll get some pictures first,” she said.

“It’s actually not as big as I was expecting for something with a mass of ten kilos or so,” said Brant. “I guess it’s just a lump of iron.”

Zawadi started photographing the meteorite. Pieter, who had been following closely behind, moved out to the side.

“Let’s get a picture of you with it.”

“Ok.”

Zawadi knelt down carefully next to it.

“Pull your sun visor up.”

Zawadi pulled up the gold-tinted visor and tried her best not to squint.

“That’s better.”

Brant opened the box and fished around with his good hand. He selected an appropriately sized set of metal tongs and a bag, handing the tongs to Zawadi. Pieter continued to photograph them as Zawadi carefully picked up the meteorite with the tongs and slipped it into the bag Brant was holding. Then she handed the tongs to Brant so she could close the zip-lock bag. He couldn’t do this with the hook attachment currently on his injured arm.

“Want to double-bag it?” he asked.

“Yes. Just to make sure.”

He leant over to take another sample bag out of the box and stopped. What was that noise? It was a soft warning chime in his headset. He looked at the screen on his wrist. It was a caution message from one of the rover’s systems.

“What is it?” asked Zawadi, noticing Brant straighten and start scrolling through the screen on his wrist.

“The battery temperature on the rover is out of limits.”

“Ah, shit!” said Pieter and immediately started running towards the rover as fast as his suit would allow.

Zawadi and Brant followed a few seconds later. As Brant climbed up the steps to the airlock, he could see into the rover. Pieter hit the emergency override and opened the inner door without waiting for the airlock to cycle. He was pulling open storage units frantically. On the third attempt, he found what he was looking for - a small toolbox. With one quick, smooth movement, he flicked open the catch on his helmet’s neck ring and removed it. He saw Brant begin to do the same and held up his hand.

“No! Leave it on. I can’t reach properly with mine on.” He dropped to his knees and ripped back the flooring of the rover to reveal an access hatch. “Disconnect the trailer and move the rover away while we still can,” he shouted to Brant.

Brant stopped for a second, still not fully comprehending, then he turned to Zawadi, who had just climbed the steps and was entering the airlock.

“Disconnect the trailer, we need to move the rover away.”

Without replying, she turned and jumped down the steps, stumbling as she went. Brant leant out of the airlock and, seeing Zawadi pick herself up, he turned and stepped over Pieter, who was undoing the access panel screws as fast as he could.

He jumped into the left seat. The screen in the centre console had a pulsating red border and was showing a schematic for the rover’s electrical system. Brant tapped the main battery, the heater control was showing as on. He moved the toggle switch icon from “on” through “auto” to “off”. It flicked straight back to “on” when he released his finger. He tried again with the same result. Shit!

Brant flicked back to the systems overview screen he normally had up while driving the rover. Come on, Zawadi. He focused on the part of the display showing the connections to the auxiliary trailer, which were green. Would it be faster if I went and helped her? The rover used a standard pintle hook and ring to connect to the trailer, but it also had a heavy-duty connection for power. This could be fiddly to disconnect at the best of times. He was just about to get out of his seat when the tow hook connection turned red. Craning his neck, Brant could see Pieter was lying down, the side of his face pressed against the floor as he reached as far as he could into the access hole. He thought he could see a faint wisp of smoke coming from the hole. It was hard to see and impossible to smell with his helmet on. Come on, Zawadi.

It seemed to be taking forever. Brant focused on the seconds ticking away in the corner of the display’s clock in an effort to calm himself and maintain a sense of time other than what his impatient brain was perceiving. I could just drive away now. As thick as the cable was, there was no way the connections would withstand towing the trailer. But then what would happen to the ends of the cable when it did snap? And Zawadi was out there. He thought he heard Pieter cursing, but his breathing was heavy now, making it almost impossible to hear anything outside his helmet. He fought the urge to remove it. The power connection turned red.

“Are you clear?”

No response.

“Zawadi! Are you clear?”

“Yes,” came a laboured response.

Brant gently squeezed the accelerator pedal, and an alarm instantly started blaring. He immediately stopped. Scanning the panel, he realised it was the fire alarm. Looking behind, there was grey smoke billowing out of the access hole rapidly filling the rover’s cab. Need to get Pieter out of there, but also need to get the rover clear of the aux trailer that is our only survival hope right now. Brant hit the accelerator, and the rover lunged forward. He held it for a couple of seconds and then released it. As he did so, he heard a scream, even through his helmet and the cacophony of blaring alarms. An orange glow reflected softly from the glass screens on the centre console.

As he turned, Brant saw the flames shooting out from the hole like a blowtorch. The battery casing had breached, and it was venting. Venting toxic smoke and flames. Pieter was lying with his feet towards the rover cockpit. Brant grabbed one with his good hand and pulled, but he wouldn’t budge. He lost his grip and fell backwards. Struggling to his feet, Brant could see why he hadn’t been able to pull Pieter back. The upper torso of his suit was beginning to melt and was stuck to the exposed metal floor. Brant moved forward to try to grab Pieter’s shoulder and pull him free, but the intense heat beat him back, even through his own suit. He staggered and tried to make his way back, but the smoke was so that intense he couldn’t even see the floor beneath him now. He dropped to his knees and, feeling in front of him, found a foot. He worked his hand up the motionless leg as far as the waist, but he couldn’t bear the heat on his hand any longer. His own glove was starting to feel soft.

Brant pulled back and, for the first time, thought about how he was going to get out of the rover. If he couldn’t get any closer than Pieter’s waist to the access hole, which was belching out smoke and flames, there was no way he could get past to the door. Brant turned and crawled back towards the rover cockpit. The top of his helmet bumped into the centre console. He reached up and pulled himself up. The smoke was so thick now all he could see was grey out the front of his visor. When he looked back, the grey had an orange tint to it. Steadying himself with his hooked hand, he felt along the base of the front right seat desperately trying to find the escape tool. Finally, he found it and pulled it from its mounting. Gripping it in his good hand, he pawed his way clumsily across the seat and fell flat on his chest, his helmet banging so hard against the metal window frame the faceplate cracked. For the first time, he could smell it. An acrid smell burned his nose. He tried to hold back but burst into a coughing fit. It was now or never. He reached up to the glass with his good hand, willing himself not to drop the tool. Feeling a smooth surface, he pressed the tool against it and pushed. The mechanism released, and the pin inside shot forward, shattering the glass. Brant’s head, which had been resting against the window, flopped forward. He dropped the tool and pulled himself forward along the seat like a seal moving across the ice. With one final push and he flopped out through the broken window. The view from his visor temporarily cleared, and he saw the side of the rover disappear beneath him as he fell headfirst. There was a thud, and all he could see was snow stuck to the outside of the cracked visor.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. Although it’s tragic, it was fun to write and come back to for editing this week.

I’m afraid there is not much of an update. It’s been pretty busy around here with non-writing stuff. But look out for the climax of this season. I haven’t decided whether it’s going to be one episode or two, so we’ll see how that shakes out when I edit the scenes.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E11

Alex Turnbull — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 07:06:54 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Joanna figures out how the crew have been genetically engineered and shares this with Lana and Aiden.

October 2056

Still, that smell of fast food. It assaulted Kevin as he walked through the door of his ops room. Owen didn’t move, he continued to stare at the screen in front of him. The other person in the room - a huge hulk of a man - was sitting sideways at the desk next to Owen, watching him. Sweat glistened on his shaved head. He stood up as Kevin entered the room.

“Evening, boss.”

“Is he behaving himself?”

“Seems to be. Hasn’t been doing much. When he has, he’s explained it to me, and it don’t seem to be anything fishy.”

“Good.”

Owen continued to ignore them.

“Mind if I grab a bite boss? I’m starving.”

“Sure, I’ll watch him for a bit.”

“Thanks.” He strode to the door in giant steps.

Kevin waited for the door to close behind him. Standing behind Owen, he quickly glanced over the screens in front of him.

“How far away from the hab are they now?”

“About 750 km,” said Owen without looking up.

“You’re going to have to stop this sulk of yours.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“Yes, you fucking are. I pay you to do a job, and that’s what you do. Only that. This set-up is not your personal technological playground. Let’s get that straight. Now drop the childish grumpiness.”

“Stop leaving your goons here to watch over me like a kid then.”

“I’m—” Kevin stopped himself, it wasn’t worth the effort.

“So they are probably as far away as they are going to get from the hab then?”

“I would say so, Kev. They are actually closer to McMurdo. But as far as I know, they have an agreement with Concordia Station to provide assistance in the case of an emergency. The weather on the coast is also pretty bad right now. The last thing McMurdo is going to want to do is head out on a rescue mission.”

Owen turned in his seat to face Kevin. “If you want to do it, I’d say now is your best opportunity.”

Kevin looked at Owen, back up to the screens, then back to Owen.

“Ok do it.”

Owen swung back around in his chair and started typing commands. In thirty seconds he was finished.

“It’s done.”

Kevin walked over to the chair vacated by the guard minutes earlier, grabbing the back of another to pull it closer as he went. He sat down and put his feet up.

“Let me know when something interesting happens.”

He took out his tablet out and began calmly scanning through his messages.

Aiden knelt down and spread the legs of the stand before placing the dish on the snow. He stood back and, a few seconds later, the dish started to move. It stopped every few seconds and held position before moving again. While it was acquiring a satellite lock, Aiden typed a few commands on the wrist comm control of his suit. The three of them stood in a circle around the small dish, about one hundred metres from the hab.

“Ok, go to comm loop thirteen,” said Aiden.

Lana and Joanna entered the channel number on the keypads on their wrists. Lana heard the soft chime of the comm loop opening.

“Got me there?” asked Aiden.

“Yep, got you,” she replied.

“Same here,” came the response from Joanna.

“Ok, this is going to go through to his personal number, so he might not answer. He won’t recognise where the call is coming from,” said Aiden.

“What happens if we can’t get through?” asked Joanna.

“We’ll have to try calling a number in Mission Control and asking to be patched through. Hopefully, we can get through this way, it’s our best chance of not being intercepted.”

Lana heard the old-fashioned touch-tones as Aiden entered the numbers on his wrist keypad. A brief pause, then the ringing tone. It seemed to go on forever. Finally, the call was picked up.

“Hello?” Larsson’s distinctive, softly accented English.

“Yes, hello,” he repeated.

She knew she had to speak now or he would hang up, but the words wouldn’t come.

Finally, “Christian,” said Lana in a broken voice.

“Lana? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“What on earth is going on?” He sounded rattled. Something Lana had not heard before.

“We had to call you on a standby satellite link, to try and make sure we’re not being intercepted. We still can’t be sure, but it’s the best we can do.” Lana cleared her throat and her voice returned to normal. “Aiden and Joanna are with me listening in we. We needed to talk to you.”

“Make sure nobody’s listening in? What do you mean?”

“You will understand when we ask you what we are—”

The slight delay made tripping over the end of each other’s sentences inevitable.

“Our comm links are secure,” continued Larsson. “Who are you worried about listening in? You know private calls can’t be monitored, even by Mission Control.”

Lana waited to make sure he had finished speaking. She wanted to make sure she had his full attention.

“True Genesis.”

The soft, almost imperceptible hiss in her headset was all that told Lana the connection had not gone dead. She waited, imagining Larsson’s face - wherever he was - contorting into shock and disbelief. Would he be able to talk freely, or was he in public? She had no way of telling right now. She felt guilty. After all, Larsson was in his early eighties - in excellent health - even so, he was no spring chicken. How would he react to the shocking revelation of what they had figured out?

“True Genesis,” Lana repeated. “We are worried about True Genesis listening in on our conversation. Because…we believe they may be an…existential threat…to us. And the rest of the foundation.”

Again the delay.

“I see,” said Larsson. “I guess the day has come.” His voice remained composed, but a hint of suppressed emotion crept in. “I thought it might. I was hoping this could wait until you returned from Antarctica, but—”

“So it’s true?” Lana tasted the salt of a tear running into her mouth, unable to wipe it away behind the faceplate of her helmet.

“Yes, it is true,” continued Larsson. “There is no point in continuing to hide it. You and all of the students in the Foundation were genetically engineered at birth to have improved resistance to radiation. This was done to make you more suited for space exploration.”

Larsson paused for a second to let it sink in but not long enough to solicit a reply.

“I know what the next question will be, and the answer is no. Nothing else about you has been changed. Nothing to make you more intelligent or athletic or give you any other special abilities. Every other attribute you possess is down to the DNA you inherited from your parents and your own hard work and skill.”

It was impossible to gauge any reaction. All three of them stood absolutely still, their gold sun visors pulled down, making any facial expression impossible to see. It was Joanna who spoke next.

“You have put a target on our backs, on all our backs.” Her voice barely held together.

There was the faintest of sighs from the other end. Larsson spoke slowly and measured.

“I will admit, yes, I have made you somewhat of a target. But it was always and is still my intention that the Foundation would have nothing but the best security to protect you. This is something I have wrestled with every day of my life, ever since I gave the go-ahead to create the first embryo. It is a risk that I took on behalf of the unborn. I hope now that you know, you will be accepting of it and the opportunity it brings. I just wish…I just wish I could have disclosed this to you all in a more dignified way.”

It was Lana who spoke next.

“Perhaps, but we actually have a more immediate issue to deal with.”

Aiden cut in.

“It’s all well and good we know this now, but thanks to Joanna’s detective work, we think True Genesis has been onto the Foundation for a while. We think the malfunctioning battery heater was sabotage. And now we have the other rover miles from any help. How do we know they will not do the same thing now? It would take a long time for anyone to get to them.”

Before Larsson could reply, Joanna cut in.

“It’s the reason we were pulled out of college and everything moved forward, wasn’t it? You knew they were on to us. Damian Osbourne worked with Isaac Underwood at Newcastle University, and he is part of True Genesis.”

“That…I am afraid…is not something that we knew of until recently. When I recruited Isaac, I was led to believe he only had one research partner who knew the full extent of what they had been doing. Unfortunately, he kept the existence of Damian a secret.”

Aiden, who had been standing as motionless as the others, suddenly lifted his wrist so he could see the display more clearly. He said nothing. Instead, he reached into the storage pouch behind him and pulled out a tablet in a thick protective case and started swiping on the screen.

“What is it?” asked Lana.

“The battery temperature in rover 2 is elevated…and the battery heater is showing as active.”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

043 – Flying the Space Shuttle

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo.

If you are reading this, you probably have a little more than a passing interest in space exploration. This week I have been listening to the new series of 13 Minutes from the BBC. This podcast series takes its name from the first season, which was a deep dive into the thirteen minutes it took the crew of Apollo 11 to descend to the lunar surface. The second season was about Apollo 13, and this new series is about the Space Shuttle.

It’s ok, but I’m a little disappointed. It’s way over dramatised for my liking, but I can cope with that. What I found the most disappointing was that it glossed over all the compromises made during the development of the vehicle, especially when NASA was forced to adopt some of the Air Force’s requirements.

If you want to understand this better, then it is definitely worth checking out the now-retired podcast Omega Tau. This was one of my favourite podcast and I was very sad to see it go. For episodes about the Shuttle, check out the following:

092 – Building and Living on the ISS

132 – The Space Shuttle (Part 1: Systems)

133 – The Space Shuttle (Part 2: Operations)

162 – Shuttle Mission Control

195 – Flying the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft

274 – The Shuttle’s Achievements for Space Exploration

If your interests have brought you here, you will find a lot more to listen to.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E10

Alex Turnbull — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:44:35 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Lana is a little concerned about a message from Joanna, asking her and Aiden to come out to the greenhouse. The expedition crew make a chance meteorite discovery with the drone.

October 2056

It had been a few days since Lana had been in the greenhouse. As she removed her helmet, the earthy smell hit her and stirred a sudden yearning for home. Home - where when you went outside you could smell freshly cut grass or the sea air. Home - where there was a regular day-night cycle, which the human body had evolved with. She yearned for something other than this vast barren desert. If this is how I feel after a relatively short period of isolation, what is it going to be like when we do this for real and we are away for long periods? She gave herself a mental shake and put the thought aside.

Joanna was at the far end of the greenhouse and ignored their entrance. “Hey Jo, what’s up?” said Lana as they walked down the rows of plants towards her. The words came out with a slightly more concerned tone than intended.

Joanna continued tending the plants in front of her, softly rolling the leaves between her fingers and turning them over to inspect them.

“Have you ever been told something in confidence, only for that information to burn away at you inside until you have to let it out?” she said without looking up.

Lana looked at Aiden without answering. A slightly concerned look shot across his face.

“You ok Jo?”

“Have you ever figured something out and then been afraid to tell anyone?”

Lana softly placed her hand on Joanna’s back. “What’s up Jo? You’ve got to tell us. It’s not good for you to keep this bottled up, especially in this environment. Is it something about Brant?”

Lana looked at Aiden for encouragement.

“Why don’t we head back to the Hab? We can sit down and have a coffee and you can tell us whatever is bothering you,” said Aiden.

“No!” She finally turned to face them. “We can’t go back to the Hab.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lana, trying her best to keep the tone neutral and not betray the increasing concern she had.

“They will be listening. We can’t go back in there. If we are going to discuss this we have to stay here where there are no microphones.”

I’ve read about cabin fever thought Lana. It had come up briefly in training, but was this the real thing? Was Joanna getting paranoid delusions? How are we going to bring her back to her senses?

“Nobody is listening in to us Jo,” said Aiden.

“That’s what they want us to think.”

Lana pulled out a stool from under one of the plant beds and motioned for Joanna to sit down.

“You must know Aiden, you know the most about the Hab systems. Mission Control could listen in to us at any time if they wanted to?”

“I guess they could. But the system is only supposed to allow that to happen in an emergency, and we would be notified. We all know the effect of being monitored constantly, and how it affects our behaviour.”

“Of course, that’s what they want us to think. But they could easily override the safeguards without us knowing.”

“I guess,” said Aiden. “But it comes down to trust.”

“Exactly! And I’m not sure how much we can trust what we have been told up to now.”

“Well, there are no microphones in here Jo, so you don’t need to worry,” said Aiden. He stuffed his suit gloves, which he had been holding, into the knee pocket of his suit.

“That is why we’re here,” said Joanna purposefully.

Lana pulled out a stool and sat. She felt the rising tension and the need to disarm it. “So what is all of this about?” she asked as calmly as she could.

Joanna seemed to collect herself and no longer be on the verge of some paranoid outburst. She looked both of them squarely in the eyes for the first time since they had entered the greenhouse.

“What I’m about to tell you was told to me in confidence. I’m telling you because I trust you.”

The three exchanged a look of understanding.

“Before they went out on the expedition, Zawadi was in here with me looking at the plants. We were comparing some of the genetically engineered ones with the unmodified plants.”

Joanna paused, searching for the right words.

“And…” encouraged Aiden.

“Do you think there is anything special about us?”

“In what way?” asked Lana.

“Why are we part of this organisation? Why did they invest all of the time, money, and resources in us?”

“We were lucky enough to be selected when we were kids,” ventured Lana.

“Maybe we were. But what about your friend Jessica?”

Lana took on a pained look.

“Didn’t you lose a close friend because she did not pass the selection process for the Foundation? I never met her, but from what you have told me about her, she would have been a dead cert to get in?”

“I’m not sure what you are getting at Jo,” said Lana, irritated at having a painful memory disturbed.

“The answer is all around us here,” Joanna spread her arms out wide. “In the plants.”

A look of realisation slowly materialised on Aiden’s face.

“Come on, Lana. You are so smart. How can you be so blind?”

Lana looked at Aiden.

“She’s right. It’s like…like I have always known but…”

Joanna waited for Lana’s response, but it didn’t come. “We are genetically engineered, Lana. Just like the plants. We were part of the Foundation before we were even born.”

“We can’t be,” whispered Lana.

“But what’s—” began Aiden. Joanna held up her hand, stopping him.

“What’s different about us? That is what I have been trying to figure out since Zawadi first mentioned this to me the other day. None of us seems to have superhuman powers or abilities, do we? I mean, compared to the general population, we are all pretty smart, reasonably fit. But that is nurture, not nature.”

“So you are telling us this now because you have figured out how we are modified?” asked Aiden.

“Yes. I can’t believe it took me so long, but I’m almost certain now.”

“And…” said Aiden, motioning with his hand. Lana sat impassively.

“We haven’t used our abilities yet. So I guess that’s partially why we haven’t figured it out. After Zawadi told me about this, I happened to be looking at some plans for the Lunar base. There are a few changes I was going to suggest to the greenhouse, based on what we have been doing here. But something that has always perturbed me slightly is how little radiation shielding there is throughout the entire base.”

“The first stages don’t have much because they are not intended to be inhabited for long periods,” replied Aiden.

“Sure, but if you look at it compared to any of the other Lunar research stations, it’s still pretty light. You need preferably a couple of metres of regolith to provide adequate protection for humans. We have that and more in the shelter but not really throughout the rest of the base.”

Joanna paused to let the realisation sink in.

“So are you saying you think we have been genetically modified to withstand more radiation than normal humans?” asked Lana.

“Now you are thinking clearly! Maybe you think I’m crazy, but a lot of things make sense if you look at it like this.”

Lana looked at her hand, turning it over as if it were some unknown object she had just picked up.

“You can’t see anything. The only way anyone could tell would be to sequence a sample of your DNA.”

“Or subject you to a large dose of radiation and see what happens?” said Aiden.

“Or that. But think about it. When you were at school, did you ever have any of the normal public health screening done? No. All that stuff was done when we were at FASS, wasn’t it?”

“It’s just…” Lana began flatly.

“A lot to take in. I know, and it’s all pretty circumstantial, but there is one other thing. Have you ever heard of Isaac Underwood?”

“Should we have?” asked Lana blankly.

“No, probably not, but come and look at this.” Joanna got up and strode down the rows of plants back to the lab end of the greenhouse, leaving Lana and Aiden in her wake.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Kevin Valenti?” Joanna said over her shoulder.

“Yes…Jo, I’m not sure I like where this is going,” replied Lana, quickening her pace.

“No, you won’t.”

Joanna stopped at one of the lab benches and snatched a tablet up from where it was sitting on the corner, then abruptly turned and marched straight back between Lana and Aiden out into the middle of the greenhouse.

“I’ve found this is where I get the best signal.”

“Is that—”

“One of the spare tablets from the stores? Sorry, Aiden, I know we are supposed to check this stuff out with you.” She swiped and entered a pin to unlock it. “You’re not going to like this either. I wiped it and put Vanilla Debian on it. Out here is where I can get the best satellite signal, without going outside of course.”

“And we thought you had just been out here moping because you were missing Brant,” said Aiden.

Joanna tapped away on the tablet. “It’s a little slower than if we were going through the Hab’s network.”

A few seconds later she was rewarded.

“Look at this,” she said, turning the tablet towards Lana and Aiden. She pointed. “That person there you will recognise as a much younger Kevin Valenti. The guy next to him is called Damian Osborne.”

She pointed to a man who looked around twenty years older than Kevin. He looked slightly uncomfortable. Kevin had his arm around him, grinning wildly. They looked to be at some sort of party, although it was hard to tell as they filled most of the frame.

Lana felt her insides begin to turn.

“So we know who Kevin Valenti is. I already didn’t like the guy, but if what you have told us about being genetically modified is true, then that makes him…I don’t know.”

“Like Hitler to the Jews,” said Joanna. “Ok, so I came across this picture by accident when I was doing some research on the genetic engineering of humans. It wasn’t surprising to come across a picture of Kevin Valenti, but for some reason I remembered the name of the other guy. He doesn’t come up anywhere else. Except…”

Joanna began tapping away again.

“Except I came across this paper published way back in 2019. It’s a research paper talking about the possibility of using DNA from a tardigrade to improve the radiation resistance of other species. Written by some students at Newcastle University in England.”

Lana looked at Aiden, whose normally calm expression had taken on a tortured look.

“Look at who the authors are. Isaac Underwood and Damian Osborne.”

Lana felt her legs begging to go weak.

“There is one other thing. I tried to find out more about Isaac Underwood. There are photos from when he was in the local newspaper for stuff as a kid, high school photo, the usual when you try to stalk someone online. Up to this paper. Then there are a whole lot of news articles about how he seems to have disappeared mysteriously and fled the country with another student. Not Osborne. A Chinese student who was studying at Newcastle called Ling Xue. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t find anything about her.”

“Fled the country to where?” Lana’s subconscious mind had joined all the dots, but her conscious mind did not want to believe it.

“It doesn’t really say, details are a bit sketchy. But one thing is for sure. They seem to have been helped by a mysterious wealthy individual.”

“Christian,” whispered Lana.

“That would seem a logical conclusion,” said Joanna. She seemed relieved, no longer carrying the burden of her discovery alone.

“Who else knows about this?” asked Aiden.

“Well, Zawadi was the one who sent me off down this rabbit hole, and Brant was there when we were talking about it. We swore him to secrecy, so I don’t think he would have talked to Pieter about it.”

“But you only just figured out all this stuff with the research paper and linking it to Osbourne and Larsson?”

“Yes. That, only yesterday, and I haven’t mentioned anything to Brant and Zawadi, in case our comms out to the rover can be monitored.”

“But if you have figured this out…” began Lana. She knew they both must be thinking the same thing. “Others must also have. And if this Osbourne guy is part of True Genesis, then they have known this all along.”

“The battery heater,” said Aiden. “If True Genesis have known this all along, they could have been inside the FASS computer networks for years, just waiting for the right time to strike.”

It was as if a thin, imperceptible veil had been lifted and Lana could see things with a clarity that she didn’t know she lacked.

“That was all bullshit then. The reasons why they pulled us from college early and accelerated the program. They must have known True Genesis was onto the Foundation. They probably knew way before. My dad sometimes seemed to have a weird paranoia when we were travelling places. We used to make fun of him and tell him he watched too many spy movies!”

“If Larsson really did take in these scientists, Underwood and Ling, he must have known others were involved in the research,” said Aiden.

“I have to talk to Christian,” said Lana, already turning to walk away. She put on her gloves as she strode back to the airlock. Joanna and Aiden followed.

“What about the expedition? We need to warn them,” called Joanna.

“We need to figure out just what is going on first. Let’s move quickly but not too hastily. We don’t know if it is True Genesis and if they are in our networks. If we warn them, it might prompt a further attack.”

“I agree Lana. Let me get one of the standby SATCOM units. We can use that to talk to Larsson while we are outside. Right now, from what we know, I think that gives us the best chance of not being monitored.”

“Ok good. Let’s go,” said Lana, pulling her helmet on and snapping the neck ring into place.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Orphans of Apollo, a bit of a longer one this time. It probably didn’t come as much of a surprise last season when Zawadi told Joanna and Brant her theory that they were genetically engineered. Perhaps it wasn’t so obvious what the purpose of this modification would be.

Genetic engineering is a central theme of this book, but it was never meant to be. I have always preferred hard science fiction. The technologies have to be grounded in real-world physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. So when I sat down and started to brainstorm ideas for a space exploration novel, one problem I kept coming up with was the radiation environment out beyond the protection of the earth’s magnetic field.

Andy Weir’s books are well known for their scientific rigour, and I remember listening to an interview with him when his book Project Hail Mary was coming out. He said he allowed himself one thing that was not entirely grounded in known science. For Project Hail Mary, this was that the Astrophage micro-organism had a quantum level mechanism that allowed it to convert mass directly into energy and store it. For The Martian, it was that the dust storm in the thin Martian atmosphere could create enough force to tip over the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle).

I thought, if this approach is good enough for Andy Weir, then why don’t I try that. So, I decided my “hand-wave” would be using the DNA from the Tardigrade to modify human DNA, giving it resistance to damage from radiation and so became the basis of Orphans of Apollo. This book is really just about that foundation so the characters can go off and do cool stuff in space!

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E9

Alex Turnbull — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 06:26:10 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: the expedition crew made good progress and test fly the drone. They also wonder about the vast expanse of the unexplored solar system.

October 2056

“You can thank me when you get back,” said Aiden, glancing over his shoulder at the screen at the end of the table behind him. He scraped the last of the mashed potato from a packet and sat down to join Lana and Joanna.

“Yeah, well, honestly dude, I thought my mission was over when I fell off that lander,” Brant went on.

Pieter, who had been out of shot, came into view beside Brant and Zawadi. “We actually got the cores drilled within the time we had originally allocated anyway.”

“That’s great. It’ll keep Mission Control off my back,” said Lana.

“We also checked out the drone, and it flies great. The sensors are all working correctly. Once when we’re in range I’ll send it out to start surveying some of the blue ice areas.”

“Did you get the procedure I sent over for removing the heater control unit?” asked Aiden.

“Yes, I had a read over it this afternoon on the drive,” replied Pieter.

“You’ve probably got longer arms than me so hopefully you should find it a bit easier. Not that you should have to do it.”

“Nope. Appreciated though. It’s good to know these things, just in case.”

Lana glanced at Joanna, who was shuffling uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, all things considered, it’s going pretty well. We'd better let you all get settled in for the night.”

“Ok sounds good, we’ll check in before we head off tomorrow,” said Pieter, and the connection cut.

“Seems like our bad luck might be behind us,” said Aiden.

“Yes, but don’t jinx it,” replied Lana. “I’m just glad they all seem happy together. I was worried about the crew dynamics.”

“Me too,” said Aiden, “but Pieter seems to have mellowed a little since we got here. He’s in his element now. He likes to be leading.”

“You are sure about that heater control?” said Joanna.

“As sure as we can be. I ran all the diagnostics I could, and Mission Control couldn’t find anything either.”

Joanna glanced at the floor, avoiding eye contact. “I just have a bad feeling about it, that’s all.”

Lana placed the coffee down gently in front of Aiden. He looked up from his tablet and set it down on the table. Lana pulled a chair closer. As she sat, they exchanged a glance reserved only for those who had shared the most intimate of times together.

Over the last couple of days they had given up trying to hide their involvement from Joanna. They had been considerate - no sickening public displays of affection - but there was no hiding it. Girls were too intuitive Lana kept telling Aiden. Joanna had been gracious, but also somewhat withdrawn.

Aiden picked up his tablet again. “They’re all packed up and underway,” said Aiden as he swallowed his first mouthful of coffee. “They might reach the mountains tonight or probably tomorrow, depending on how many cores they drill.”

“Good. Have you seen Joanna this morning?”

“She headed out to the greenhouse while you were in the shower.”

“Did she seem ok?”

Aiden reached up, kneading the back of his neck. “Same as usual.”

“She’s been spending a lot of time there the last few days.”

Lana picked up her tablet and started to scroll through her messages whilst sipping her coffee. There was one from Christian Larsson to the whole expedition, praising them for how well things had been going over the last few days. There was also a personal one from him telling her how well preparations were going for the first launch when they got back. She wondered if he messaged the rest of the expedition crew individually as well.

Next she skimmed her news feed. The Philippines had just been hit by its second Category Six cyclone this year. Lana opened a new message to Samantha Fernandez and began typing. She knew Samantha would be ok back at FASS headquarters, but she couldn’t remember exactly where in the Philippines her family was from.

As she began to type, her tablet chimed with an incoming message from Joanna.

Morning Lana. When you guys have finished breakfast do you mind heading out to the greenhouse to give me a hand with a few things?

“Did Joanna mention anything about needing help in the greenhouse this morning?”

“No, she didn’t really say much this morning,” said Aiden disinterestedly as he went back to scanning through the status of the hab and the rover’s systems.

Lana sent a quick reply to Joanna then went back to her half-written message to Samantha. No matter how hard she tried to put it out of her head, something was bugging her. She couldn’t concentrate on what she was trying to write. After five minutes she gulped back the remainder of her coffee and stood up. She put her hand on Aiden’s shoulder.

“Suit up astronaut Woods, we’re going for a walk.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said theatrically.

Five minutes later, they were in the EVA prep room.

“Have you any idea what this is about?” said Aiden as he pulled his suit up and pushed his head through the neck ring.

“No. Something’s up though. That greenhouse has been Jo’s place of solitude. Especially since Brant has been away. Now she is asking us both to head out there and rather cryptically.”

“Are you sure you’re not reading too much into this?”

Lana stopped fastening her boot and looked up.

“Ok, ok. Girl’s intuition.”

“They’re getting a lot bigger,” said Zawadi, pointing to the mountains on the horizon with one hand, the other clutching a packet of food she had just rehydrated.

“Yep. We should be within range to make a useful reconnaissance flight with the drone after lunch,” replied Pieter. He turned in his seat. “Why don’t you sit up front for a bit while you eat. I need to use the bathroom and get something myself.” As he got up, Pieter patted Brant on the shoulder. “You want me to grab you anything?”

“I’m good. I’ll keep driving for a bit, then we can swap when you’ve had lunch.”

Zawadi settled herself into the front seat of the rover next to Brant. They had been stopping for a break from driving during mealtimes, but the schedule had slipped a little when the drill had become stuck at the last drill site. Now with the Transantarctic Mountains in view, they were also keen to reach their destination, so they pushed on.

Brant looked across at Zawadi. She was shovelling the food into her mouth.

“You really are in a hurry, aren’t you?”

She stopped and swallowed.

“Aren’t you excited to get there and start collecting some meteorites?”

“Yes. But they have been there for millions of years, they’re still going to be there in a few hours.”

Zawadi smiled and then continued gulping her food down. By the time Pieter had returned with his own pack of rehydrated food, she was finished. She got up as he came back to the rover cockpit.

“I’ll start prepping the drone,” she said as she slid past him.

After quickly disposing of her empty food package, Zawadi plonked herself down in the jump seat and activated the drone’s pre-flight self-test. While it dutifully checked out all of its systems, Zawadi wriggled in her seat to get comfortable and put the VR headset over her head.

Brant looked over his shoulder at Zawadi.

“Ready for the doors?”

“Ready when you are,” she replied.

Brant tapped the control on the centre console to open the doors. Zawadi slid the headset down over her eyes.

“Just waiting for a GPS fix, confirming I’m ok to launch?”

Pieter glanced down at the screen in front of him showing the met conditions outside.

“Verifying no constraints to launch,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Roger.”

The four propellers on the drone began to spin, slowly for a couple of seconds, then they rapidly increased to flight speed. The drone rose gracefully from the top of the rover. Zawadi eased forward, and it came into view through the roof of the rover cockpit. For a few seconds, she matched the speed of the rover.

“Looks good from here,” said Pieter.

Zawadi hit the translation control, and the drone accelerated rapidly away in front of the rover and began gaining height. Over the last few days, Zawadi had set up predefined search patterns for the areas of blue ice around the Mulock Glacier. The drone flew towards the closest of these. Now that it was within a flight time of half an hour, the drone could spend a useful amount of time on station. The flight plan showed twenty-eight minutes to the start of the first search pattern. Zawadi activated the sensor package. Best not to miss anything they might come across on the way.

After a few minutes, Zawadi lifted the headset up. The drone was doing fine on its own. No need to get queasy unnecessarily. She sat with it on her head for a few minutes longer while she monitored the flight parameters. Satisfied, she took it off and hooked the head-strap over a hook on the bulkhead behind her.

“Anyone else want a drink?” she said as she got up.

“Yeah sure, can I have a juice?” replied Brant.

“No thanks,” said Pieter.

“What flavour?”

“Surprise me.”

Zawadi rummaged through the compartment above the sink where the sachets of powdered isotonic drinks were stored. She grabbed an orange and then stuck her hand in the back and pulled another out at random. Glacier Freeze - how appropriate.

The alarm sounded just as she was about to tear open the second sachet. She dropped it on the counter and jumped back into her seat, silencing the alarm as she went. The drone had found something. She grabbed the headset from behind her and put it on.

“Looks like we’ve found something.”

“Already?” said Brant. “It can’t have reached the search area yet.”

“No, but I activated the sensors so they would scan on the way, just on the off chance. I’ll take it down for a closer look.”

“Check it out, but we don’t want to get bogged down any further, we need to keep pressing on to the blue ice primary search area,” said Pieter.

“Roger, won’t be long.”

The headset’s augmented reality view highlighted the object the drone had found in purple. Zawadi used a hand controller to select it and commanded the drone to perform an initial inspection and then hover five metres away at a height of two metres.

As it closed in, the drone circled the meteorite, which was now obvious to Zawadi even without the augmented reality assistance. It built a three-dimensional model of the rock and estimated the mass based on the average density of meteorites found in Antarctica.

“Wow! Ten point five kilos. That thing is massive,” exclaimed Zawadi.

“Are you sure?” asked Brant.

“Let me do another scan, just to check.”

The drone circled the meteorite again, repeating the process.

“Ten point six kilos. We’ve got to stop and pick that up.”

“How far off track is it?” asked Pieter.

“Only a hundred metres or so.”

“Ok, forward the coordinates through to the nav computer. You’d better bring the drone back onboard and start suiting up.”

“Roger that!”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

I Trained my AI to be Straight With Me

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. Apologies again for the disruption. Hopefully, I can stay on schedule until the end of this season. I estimate there are probably around three to four episodes left, depending on how I cut the scenes together.

Foundation season three is out, and this week we watched the first episode. If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, they are worth watching. I’m not sure what to make of the first episode. It definitely looks like this season is going to be a bit different to the previous two. I would be interested to see what anyone else thinks.

I have also started to read a new serial on Substack this week: . It’s a geopolitical thriller, and from the first two episodes, it’s really promising. This and hard science fiction are the normal fiction genres I read. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places, but the fiction on Substack seems to lean more towards fantasy, so it’s great to see this.

That’s probably about it for this week, other than I got to do some flying for fun - not that all flying is not fun - but it’s nice to decide where you want to go for yourself. I truly am lucky to have the opportunity to do this, and days like this make me realise it. Even if the kids think it’s somewhat normal!

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Stuff that’s caught my eye

Journey to Kyron

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Last week there was a bit of a fracas on Notes. By social media standards, having a bit of a tiff on Notes is a fairly gentle affair. While Twitter is arguing with Mecha Hitler and Bluesky is…doing whatever Bluesky is doing, a major scuffle on Notes is usually a back and forth about an obscure aspect of literature…

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THE MAJNOON HUNT

THE MAJNOON HUNT Episode 2 - THE BROKER'S CALL

In the early hours before dawn, Manhattan was an unfamiliar hush of shadows and muted lights. Miles Derenger stepped out of his midtown apartment, shrugging into his coat against the winter chill. The city around him was still in the grip of night, yet here and there, the low rumble of a delivery truck or the whir of a street sweeper broke the silence. The usual crowds were absent, leaving the streets bare, like some empty stage before the curtain rose. Streetlights cast an amber glow on the damp pavement, softening the towering facades that stretched up into the dark, like silent guardians of the empty avenue…

a year ago · 2 likes · The Econolog

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E8

Alex Turnbull — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:01:15 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: as suspected, after running some diagnostics, Aiden is unable to find anything wrong with the battery control heater. Later that evening, Aiden and Lana quietly crossed a line neither had dared approach before.

October 2056

Pieter shovelled the remaining porridge into his mouth and stood up. He collapsed the chair he had been sitting on and slid it into the storage compartment under the bunks. From the toilet across the aisle came the sound of rushing air, followed by gurgling, a few seconds later Brant emerged.

“That feels better,” he said, with a satisfied look.

“Ready to make a move?” said Pieter.

“I am now that lot has moved. I’ll go take the blinds down.”

Brant headed to the rover’s cockpit at the other end of the aisle. The windows had all been blanked with shades to keep the perpetual Antarctic summer sunlight out while they slept.

“Zawadi?” called Pieter. She leaned out of the shower area, toothbrush in her mouth and a white dribble down her cheek.

“Two minutes,” she replied.

“Alright, I’ll check in with the hab and let them know we’ll be on the move shortly.”

Pieter went over to his bunk and picked up his tablet from where he had left it on the bed. He opened it and put a call in to Aiden on the expedition loop.

“Morning, we’re just packing up breakfast here. We’ll be on the move shortly,” he said cheerfully. He squeezed against the bunk as Brant came past carrying the folded up blinds from the cockpit.

“Roger,” said Aiden croakily. “We’ll be watching you. Check in when you get to the first drill site.”

“You all right? You sound terrible.”

“Yeah, just didn’t sleep that well.”

“We all slept like logs. The bunks in these rovers are actually pretty comfortable.”

There was a cough which muted part way through, then Aiden came back on sounding a lot better.

“That’s good. Be careful, and I’ll keep an eye on things from here.”

“Ok,” said Pieter, and cut the connection.

Brant brushed past him again. “I’ll start folding the panels away.”

All the screens in the rover cockpit were dark, apart from the central screen, which showed some basic environmental systems indications. Brant tapped an icon in the corner of that screen as he slid himself into the left seat. The other screens came to life and the central screen changed to a more comprehensive display of the rover systems. An overview showed the four solar arrays deployed. One on each side of the rover and one on each side of the auxiliary trailer.

Although the rover had a range of approximately 1,000 km and up to 2,000 km with the auxiliary trailer, both the rover and trailer were equipped with two large solar arrays on each side. They would not replenish a whole day’s driving, but even during the Antarctic summer these could provide a meaningful top-up during the “night”. With the panels extended the rover and trailer looked like some ungainly reptile warming itself in the sun.

Brant tapped each of the solar arrays in turn and selected “retract”. The rigid edges of the panels deflated and the cables strung alongside were slowly retracted into the rover. This pulled the spindle at the end of the panel and it began rolling up like a gigantic roll of paper.

Pieter took the right-hand seat in the cockpit and Zawadi settled herself in the jump seat behind Pieter as the last of the panels indicated it was fully retracted. Brant flicked through various external camera views to confirm this.

“Good to go.” he looked over at Pieter and Zawadi.

“Let’s hit the road then,” replied Pieter.

Zawadi nodded affirmatively. “I’ll start checking out the drone.”

Brant pressed his accelerator pedal and the rover moved off imperceptibly smoothly. He engaged the speed-hold at twenty kilometres per hour. “Let me know when you are ready for your test flight.”

Zawadi clipped her tablet into a mount in front of her. Then she took out what looked like an old-fashioned game controller. She tapped away on the screen.

“Just running through self-test now. Can you open the roof so it can get a GPS fix.”

Brant reached over and tapped a control on the central console. On the roof of the rover, a bi-fold door opened, revealing the drone waiting patiently in its bay.

A tilt rotor with a wingspan of approximately one metre, it could be contained without having to fold wings or blades. The long fuselage had two sets of straight wings in a canard configuration. At the tip of each wing was a five-bladed propeller. As the drone sat in its bay, these were currently rotated up in the vertical position. The shorter front wings prevented the rear propellers from being affected by prop-wash when they all rotated to the horizontal flight position. The increased velocity of the air also helped the rear wing to generate lift.

“The wind has dropped quite a bit from last night, so you should have no problem launching and recovering that thing while we are moving,” said Pieter.

“I think Zawadi could have handled that anyway, don’t you?”

“Yes. But we’ve only got one drone remember.”

Zawadi concentrated on the various system checks which were scrolling through on the screen in front of her.

“I think I prefer the conditions the way they are today,” she said without looking up. “I’m just going to check the visuals and we should be good to go.”

She took out a VR headset and placed it on her head, the goggles resting on her forehead. After tapping a couple of commands, she pulled it down over her eyes. As she moved her head around the camera in the nose of the drone gimballed to match the movement. She felt dizzy instantly and broke out into a cold sweat.

“Ugh.”

“You Ok back there?” asked Pieter.

“Yeah, these things just always make me feel ill to begin with.” She held her head still for a second, then moved it around more sedately. “Ok, I’m good to go now.”

Pieter tapped a few commands on the screen in front of him and brought up a video feed from the drone. “Ok Zawadi, off you go.”

Zawadi gently eased the stick on the left of the controller forward. This essentially functioned as the collective control in a helicopter, so pushing it forward was the same as pulling up on the collective. Above her, the drone’s four propellers began to spin. She eased it forward more and the drone gracefully rose from its hangar on top of the rover. With its stabilisation algorithms turned on the drone was actually quite easy to fly. It matched the rover’s speed, hovering above the bay it had launched from. Zawadi moved the stick on the right of the controller forward and the drone pitched forward, beginning to overtake the rover. Brant and Pieter both craned their necks to see it through the perspex roof of the rover cockpit.

Zawadi pitched the drone forward some more and pressed the translation button on the controller. On the tips of the wings, the four rotors rotated forward. As the forward speed increased and the wings began to produce more and more lift, the motors rotated further forward. The drone’s stability augmentation system expertly coordinated the simultaneous increase in forward speed and lift from the wings. After about ten seconds, the transformation was complete and the drone was cruising out over the ice in front of the rover at about twenty metres and fifty kilometres per hour.

As Zawadi moved the stick, the drone gracefully banked left and right. She increased the speed and pulled up into a zoom climb before circling back behind the rover, diving and buzzing the cab on the right next to Pieter. It was exhilarating to fly. Zawadi felt a brief pang of guilt - was she showboating a bit too much?

“Looks like you’re having fun there,” said Pieter.

“This thing flies just like the simulator.”

“Just remember if you crash it, you can’t just press reset.”

“I’ll head out a few kilometres ahead of the rover and start a grid search, see if there is anything out there.”

“Don’t go too far either side of our course. We want to make it to the drill site on schedule.” Pieter scrolled up the map display in front of him. “We can deviate a little if there is anything really interesting to pick up but I don’t want to go kilometres out of the way.”

“I’ll just do a quick check with the sensors. We’ll have a much better chance of finding meteorites once we get to the areas of blue ice.”

Zawadi engaged the drone’s autopilot and put it in heading, speed and altitude hold. Then she lifted her headset and selected an area of the map on the navigation page in front of her and set up a grid search. She pushed “Activate” and the drone headed off to start its grid search of the area ten kilometres ahead of the rover.

Brant squinted at the empty horizon. “You know it’s funny you hear people talking about coming to the Antarctic to hunt for meteorites, but they don’t fall here any more than they do anywhere else on the planet.”

“Yeah, I wonder how often people walk past them without ever realising. You’ve probably stepped on dozens of them,” said Pieter.

Zawadi leaned forward so she could get a better view out the front of the rover. “I’m not sure there are that many around.”

“Isn’t it something like 17,000 fall to Earth each year?”

“Yes, but Earth is a pretty big place, covered with a lot of water,” said Zawadi.

“You’re right. Hopefully, these areas of blue ice we’re heading to concentrate them like they supposedly do.”

“Scientists have been coming here for almost one hundred years,” said Zawadi. “It’s a pretty well understood process. The meteorites get trapped in the ice and then when the ice flow is forced to the surface they are exposed, in areas like we are heading to.”

“I’m glad you stayed awake in those geology classes, Zawadi. I found it a real struggle,” said Pieter.

They continued on in silence.

“There really is a whole lot of nothingness out here, isn’t there,” said Brant after a while as he peered out to the horizon.

“Magnificent desolation,” replied Pieter, quoting Buzz Aldrin’s description of the Moon.

“There’s nowhere like this on the entire planet. It’s quite incredible,” said Zawadi. There was a chime from her console. “Didn’t pick up anything interesting on the search, bringing the drone back in now. I’ll just do an auto-land.”

“Roger,” said Brant.

“You know the most incredible thing about this place is there is absolutely no sign of humans being here. I was watching that feed from the drone and it must have searched an area of what…”

“One hundred square kilometres,” interrupted Zawadi.

“Right. One hundred square kilometres,” continued Pieter, “and there was not one sign of human existence.” He turned around in his seat to face Brant and Zawadi. “Can you imagine what it must have been like for ancient settlers to leave the first footsteps in a place? To look at a vast open stretch of land and stake it out. There’s nowhere left like that anymore. How incredible that must have felt.”

“Except here. And that’s protected by treaty,” said Brant.

“Yes, but we get to be those pioneers on the next great frontier.”

Brant looked across at Pieter. “You ok? I’m worried you are about to break out into a song or something.”

Zawadi chuckled. “And you know the best thing? Out in the Solar System, there are no indigenous people that we can end up taking advantage of.”

“Yes. Well, we all know how that worked out for Earth’s indigenous people,” said Pieter.

There was a soft thud from above them on the roof. “Drone has landed,” said Zawadi. “Just give me a second and I’ll make sure it’s secure.” She tapped away. “Ok, you can close the doors now.” Brant pushed the key on his panel to close the doors and flicked to a camera on the roof to watch them close.

Zawadi took the headset off her head and put it back in its bag. “You know, three million years ago, the earliest humans evolved, probably in the Rift Valley. Basically my home, where I grew up in Nairobi. They then spread from Africa throughout the world. Years later they returned, a very different people, and plundered the continent for its resources and its people. When we spread throughout the Solar System and evolve, I wonder if our descendants will do the same thing to Earth?”

“Well, maybe we’ll get it right his time,” said Pieter.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

Thanks for reading the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. Apologies, this is a few days late. School holidays and life have just got in the way of writing recently. The next week’s episode will likely be a bit behind schedule as well.

We are approaching an exciting part of the story, so I’ll do my best to get the publishing schedule back on track.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E7

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 19:00:42 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: as Aiden and Lana worked to remove the battery heater control unit from Rover 1, they share a moment of intimacy.

October 2056

The half-hour Lana had suggested stretched to nearly an hour.

Lana thought it would look less suspicious if she headed up as soon as she was ready. Aiden didn’t think it would make any difference either way. He was still pulling off the legs of his suit. Lana bent down to where he was sitting on the bench, gave him a peck on the cheek and bounced out of the EVA prep room.

Aiden closed his suit locker and picked up the box they had removed from the rover. He took it over to the workbench and set it down. From one of the draws below the desk he pulled out a cable and plugged it into the data bus connector on the heater control unit, then connected it to a socket on the workbench. He scrolled through the menus on the screen and found the correct diagnostic programme and set it running. Then he headed up to join Lana and Joanna upstairs.

“Seems like it was quite the job removing that heater control?” said Joanna, looking up from the table.

Was that a smirk on her face? Aiden willed himself not to blush.

“The layout of those access panels is definitely something I want to feed back to the rover design teams. It’s a real pain to get in and get to things.”

“We’ve probably missed the cut-off of for those sorts of changes,” said Lana, “but at least we’ve figured out how to work around some of the issues.”

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t have done it without the tool I printed. Or your help.”

“I can help you write up the report after lunch if you want. Make sure everything gets included in the updated rover documentation.”

“Well, it sounds like you guys had a grand old time out in the rover this morning,” said Joanna, getting up from the table and taking her dirty lunch dishes with her.

Aiden’s tablet chimed. He pulled it out of the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and made a couple of swipes at the screen as he quickly scanned it.

“Well, the diagnostic tool couldn’t find anything wrong with heater control unit.”

“That was quick,” replied Lana

“It’s not a very complicated component. I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to find anything wrong with it. Typical, one of those problems you can’t replicate.” He tapped away for a few seconds. “I’ve sent the diagnostic report to Mission Control, see if they can make anything of it.”

“It will be at least a few hours before they get back to us with anything and the others are getting further away all the time,” said Joanna, her playful mocking tone from before was gone.

“We went through this before they set off,” said Aiden, looking across at Lana. Her face had dropped and she wasn’t making eye contact with either of them. “Whatever this obscure problem is, the chances of it affecting the other rover are highly unlikely. Mission Control agreed with that assessment.”

“I know that Aiden, but I just have a bad feeling about it.”

“It’s going to take them nearly five days to reach the Transantarctic Mountains. With their stops to drill ice cores, they are only covering about 180km a day. We can do all the diagnostics and troubleshooting we can in the next couple of days and they will still only be about four hours drive away at full speed in the other rover,” said Lana.

“If we can indeed find anything wrong, which I doubt we will,” added Aiden.

There was a soft, barely perceptible click as a door opened a couple of rooms away from where Aiden sat on his bed. His heart raced and he focused intently, trying to pick out sounds other than the wind noise from outside. Yes, there it was, some soft footsteps padding across the floor and the creak as the metal frame of the staircase took up the load. Aiden was still staring at the tablet in front of him and realised he had no idea what was on it. He had opened a news feed to distract himself and pass the time, but in the end, he couldn’t stop daydreaming. Replaying over and over in his mind the time he and Lana had spent in the rover together that morning.

He checked the time 21:18, a little late for Joanna, who was a creature of habit. She had probably been messaging Brant. In a couple of minutes, she would come upstairs from the bathroom and refill her water bottle before going back to her room to sleep. He closed the news feed and noticed a new message from Mission Control. He hadn’t even heard the chime when it came in. It wasn’t marked urgent, and from the first few lines in the preview window, it seemed they could find nothing wrong with the battery heater control either. It could wait until the morning. He closed the tablet and put it on the bed next to him. There was the sound of running water from the kitchen area outside. It stopped. Aiden waited, nothing. He waited some more, still nothing. He concluded he must have missed the click of Joanna’s door when she returned to her room. Better give it another couple of minutes.

In the end, he couldn’t wait any longer. As quietly as he could, he eased his door. The common area outside was in nighttime mode, as was the rest of the hab. To keep out the ever-present summer sunlight, the window shades were down, and dim strip lights on the floor provided just enough illumination to safely get around. The always-on status screen, which gave various readouts of the hab’s systems, was in dark mode. Aiden closed his door as softly as he had opened it.

He took a few soft steps and gently pushed down the handle of Lana’s door and cracked it open. His heart sank. The room looked to be in darkness. Had she gone to sleep already? He pushed the door open wider and saw the glow of Lana’s desk lamp. As he swung it open wider, she turned around from where she was sat at her desk at the far end of the room. She smiled at him. Aiden closed the door softly and they looked at each other across the room.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” whispered Lana.

“I got held up, sorry. I was waiting for Joanna to go to bed.”

Lana got up from her desk and walked the couple of paces over to where Aiden was standing. He put his arms around her and pulled her tight in towards his body. His heart was racing now. What started as a gentle kiss quickly became more passionate.

“You know, Joanna probably already knows. She’s not stupid,” said Lana through gaps in their kissing. “She’s being a little standoffish because she’s jealous.”

Aiden pulled back. “You mean she likes me?”

“No,” giggled Lana, “Because we’re together here and Brant is out on the expedition.”

“You mean… she likes Brant?”

“You mean…” she gave him a look of mock astonishment. “You didn’t realise that?”

“No?”

“Girls really are more perceptive than boys, aren’t they?” said Lana as she sat down on the bed. Aiden sat beside her. “I guess so.”

“You know I have liked you for a long, long time. It’s just—”

“Just what?” said Aiden, suddenly concerned.

“It’s just we were always soo busy. I felt I owed it to the program and to Christian to devote all of my time to it. I feel guilty whenever I spend time on frivolous activities like socialising.” She took Aiden’s hand and their fingers interlaced. “You know, my mum would always try to set us up together. Mums have pretty good intuition.”

“She tried to set us up?” He glanced away for a moment, as if replaying old scenes in his head.

“Not like on a date, but she would always nudge us together whenever she could. But she would always be subtle about it. I could tell there was always something she wanted to say, but she would hold back. I never pressed and neither did she. It’s like this unspoken agreement.”

Aiden looked away, “I have liked you for a long time too, you know. I was just too scared to say anything.”

“Well,” said Lana as she gently kissed him on the lips, “let’s not waste anymore time.”

“No,” whispered Aiden.

They lay back on the bed, their bodies intertwined. Aiden slid his hand under Lana’s T-shirt. She lifted her arms above her head and he took the cue to pull it up over her head. They slowly removed more and more of each other’s clothes, then Aiden stopped. He seemed troubled.

“What about… you know…”

“You know what?”

“I mean, we don’t want you to get…” Aiden’s voice trailed off uncomfortably.

“Pregnant?”

“Yeah.”

Lana lifted her left arm and stretched the skin on the inside of her bicep tight. Just beneath the surface, there was a visible ridge about five centimetres long.

“Is that an implant?”

“Yeah. They gave one to all of us when we were about sixteen or seventeen, I think. I can’t really remember. I guess they figured young people together. Stuff’s going to happen. Given the amount of resources Christian has put into us, it would be a bit of a setback if one of the girls got pregnant.”

Aiden relaxed. “I never realised they had given you those.”

“They also help with your period. It makes it lighter and stops you from getting all the cramps and stuff like that. Kind of useful, stops it getting in the way of doing things.”

He drew her close again. “So they gave that to you when you were sixteen because they thought stuff might happen?”

She nodded.

Has it ever… happened?”

“No,” whispered Lana in his ear. “Has stuff ever happened to you, with someone else?” Lana smiled mischievously.

“No, not until now,” said Aiden, his voice quivering.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

The defining question of political economy in the 21st century will not be “Who has the labor and capital?” but “Who controls the energy and compute…

Elseware

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo.

I find it a little strange writing this kind of scene. Romance is not a genre of fiction I have ever been into, but it does play an important part of many stories, so hopefully this lands well.

This week we went to watch the new Formula One movie. It’s not really something which I have written about on Substack, but I have always been a Formula One fan. My first memories of Formula One are Nigel Mansell, constantly breaking down in a Ferrari. I’m not really that into other forms of motor sport, just F1. I think it’s because the aerodynamics give it a lot of similarities to flying.

A much younger version of me on the grid after the 2004 British Grand Prix

Getting back to the movie, it’s definitely worth watching even if you’re not a fan of the sport. It’s not particularly a thought-provoking film or one that has you thinking about your place in the world, it’s just good Hollywood - and that’s fine.

The Netflix series Drive to Survive proved the concept of a shop-window for the sport and the movie is a continuation of this. The storyline is good if not anything out of the ordinary. That it was made with the full co-operation of the franchise is probably the biggest appeal for fans of the sport, and I think what the film does best. It has the actual teams, drivers and other personalities of the sport in the movie but follows the trials and tribulations of a fictitious team and comeback driver. The filmmakers could so easily have done this badly and made it cringeworthy, but they didn’t. They did it exceptionally well.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Stuff that’s caught my eye

Agora

Infonism

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The Trials of Astra (and other short stories)

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a year ago · 7 likes · 2 comments · Shoni

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E6

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 20:46:03 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Kevin Valenti is furious when he walks in to find that Owen has activated the battery heater on the rover without his permission. The crew is alerted to this, but before they can deactivate it, Owen does so, further confusing them.

October 2056

Aiden let out a sharp breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

“Ok, just pull it back a little so I get a wider field of view,” he said to Lana.

Aiden was lying on his side in the aisle of Rover 1 so he could reach through the access hatch in the floor. He had buried his right arm up to the shoulder deep into the rover’s bowels. Lana was lying next to him, her left arm also extending into the innards of the rover. In her right hand, she held a screen with a thin cable running into the hole. She shifted her body to get comfortable as she moved the unseen tiny camera at the end of the cable. The object they were looking at became slightly more recognisable. Although Lana admitted to herself, she only recognised it because she had studied the engineering drawings for the battery compartment the night before.

After Rover 1 had returned from its curtailed first expedition, it had not taken long - much to the consternation of the engineering team back at FASS headquarters - to figure out there was indeed no way to easily disconnect the battery heater. Although the problem could not be recreated, it was decided by Mission Control that “out of an abundance of caution” the expedition should set out again, this time in Rover 2.

Since those left at the hab had relatively light duties while the expedition was away they had been given the go-ahead from Mission Control to remove the battery heater control unit and see if they could find out what had caused the failure a few days earlier.

“That’s it, hold it there. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a tool that would fit perfectly over that connection so I could pull it off…Oh wait, here’s one I prepared earlier, specially made for that job.”

Lana smiled. The end of a tool appeared from the side of the image and fitted over the end of the connector where half a dozen wires plugged into the box. Aiden pulled the connection free.

“Well, that was easier than I thought.”

“Don’t say that,” Lana protested.

Aiden pulled his arm out and put the tool - which he had printed earlier in the morning - down next to the toolbox on the floor of the rover.

“See if you can find the first screw holding the box in place while I find a long screwdriver.”

He rummaged in the toolbox while Lana manoeuvred the end of the borescope so they could see one of the screws in the corner of the box.

“Perfect, hold it right there.”

For the next few minutes Aiden worked to remove all but one of the screws holding it in place. He positioned the screwdriver into the head of the last screw.

“Ok, you can pull that out now. I don’t need to see any more. Can you reach in and hold the box while I remove this last screw.”

After Lana had set aside the borescope, she reached back in through the access panel.

“I can’t quite reach it from here.”

Aiden moved so he was lying further over on his side, allowing Lana to get her shoulder closer to the hole. It was barely big enough for both their arms. There was no way one person could get both of their arms in at the same time. Lana shuffled and turned so she was lying facing Aiden.

“Ok, I think I can get it from here.”

She reached and her hand brushed against Aiden’s. They looked at each other, their faces inches apart. Lana moved slowly towards Aiden. He moved slowly towards her and stopped.

“Hold that thought,” he whispered gently. “I’m kinda getting cramp in my finger.”

Lana smiled. “You should hurry and take that screw out,” she whispered back.

Aiden removed the screw and pulled his arm from the access hole. A few seconds later, Lana removed the box, which had been the focus of all their effort, and placed it gently down by the toolbox.

Aiden sat up and rested his back against the wall of the rover, his legs bent at the knee in the tight confines of the rover’s central aisle. He picked up the heater control unit and turned it over in his hands.

“Even if we can’t find anything wrong with it, I’m glad we found a way to remove it.” He held it up to examine it more closely. “They won’t have my special tool, so they might damage the connector pulling it out, but at least they can remove it. That makes me feel a lot better.”

Lana reached up and grasped the control unit, gently prying it from Aiden’s hands. She placed it back down by the toolbox. Then she shuffled closer to him and he reached across and grasped her hand, fingers intertwined. For a moment they looked into each other’s eyes, then he pulled her closer, Lana’s eyes closed in anticipation.

There was a chime from Lana’s tablet, which was on the floor next to her. It was Joanna.

“Hey guys, how are you getting on? I’m getting hungry. You going to be coming back over for lunch soon?”

Aiden sighed and lowered his head in resignation. Lana cleared her throat and picked up the tablet.

She paused. “Hey Jo, it’s fiddlier than even Aiden thought. We’ll probably be another twenty minutes.” She looked at Aiden. “Maybe half an hour. You go ahead without us, we’ll grab something when we come back in.”

“Ok, see you later,” Joanna replied jovially and cut the connection.

“So, where were we?” said Aiden softly.

“I think this is the part where you kiss me,” replied Lana. Her mouth drew into a soft smile, barely perceptible dimples formed in her cheeks.

Aiden leaned in and kissed her, softly at first, but Lana pulled him closer. After a few minutes, Lana broke off.

“Remember, we’ve only got half an hour,” she said as she caught her breath.

“Half an hour now, but the others are going to be away for a couple of weeks. I’m sure Joanna is too polite to say anything if she hears me sneak into your room.”

“And why would you be sneaking into my room?” said Lana with a mischievous smile.

“Well, you could come to mine if you want - but yours is bigger, Commander.”

Lana slid her hand softly behind Aiden’s neck and pulled him closer. “I’ve still got the same size bed,” she whispered as their lips met again.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

This Substack has seen huge growth in recent months, I am humbled and honestly a bit shocked by the amount of traffic and reach it is getting…

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of Orphans of Apollo.

I often write about looking to the future but it is also really important to remember our past. This weekend we went for a walk around the lake here to have a look at the TSS Earnslaw. We are lucky to have the last commercial passenger carrying coal fired steamship operating in the southern hemisphere right on the doorstep. She is out of the water now on survey. Every other year, this requires her to be taken out of the water. This year, however, is a big one. The Earnslaw was launched in 1912 and from what I can find out, her steam engines were reconditioned in 1954 and this was the last major work done on them. This year they are being overhauled for the first time. If you look closely at the picture, you can see where a hole has been cut in the hull towards the stern. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any closer as the area was cordoned off. I wonder what her original designers and builders would think of her still in commercial operation over 110 years after she was built.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Stuff that’s caught my eye

New Zealand Energy

Harvesting the Sun

a year ago · 5 likes · New Zealand Energy

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E5

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 19:08:45 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Joanna almost tells Lana her theory about being genetically modified. Things are going well on the expedition and back at the hab, until an alarm is triggered.

September 2056

Owen jumped when he heard the door open. He forced himself not to turn around. Keep looking at the screen, keep looking at the screen. Maybe he could close the windows he had open without Kevin realising.

“Hey Kev,” he said without looking up, trying to sound casual.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Kevin was already at his shoulder. Too late to close the windows he had open without it looking suspicious. There were a lot of different ones open. Maybe Kevin wouldn’t realise what he had been doing. Maybe.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Too late. He turned to look at Kevin with the eyes of a puppy dog caught red-handed, destroying their owner’s favourite pair of shoes.

“What. The fuck. Are you doing?” Kevin screamed again, banging his fist on the table.

Owen stared back blankly.

“You couldn’t help yourself, could you? You fuckwit!” Kevin put his hands on his head. “I knew I couldn’t trust you. I should have stayed here.”

“I just wanted to make sure it was going to work like I thought,” offered Owen.

“Yes, but the whole fucking idea is that we do it when they are too far away for help to get to them.”

“Do you want me to turn it off?”

“Will they have got a warning yet?”

“Hard to tell. I would say if it is on for another few minutes, they will. I was only going to turn it on for a bit to make sure we could control the heater.”

“Oh,” said Aiden. For a heartbeat, his features froze. “Oh, shit!”

“What is it?” asked Lana.

“The battery heater is on.” Aiden furiously tried different commands. “I can’t seem to turn it off. We’ll have to ask them to do it from the rover’s controls.”

Lana picked up her tablet and opened the expedition comm loop.

“Expedition crew, this is base. We have just detected an anomaly with the rover. How do you copy?”

“Is that what set off the alarm just now?” came back the response from Pieter.

“Yes. The heater for the main battery in the rover has come on. It’s not responding to commands from Aiden to turn it off. You will need to turn it off manually from the rover’s control panel.”

“I’m on it.” This time, it was Brant’s voice on the loop. “How much has the temperature risen?”

“Only about five degrees, but it is rising steadily,” said Aiden, leaning over to the microphone on the side of Lana’s tablet.

“Turn it off. For fuck’s sake, turn it off!”

“Ok Kev.”

Owen navigated through the pages of the rover’s systems he already had open, eventually reaching the electrical system. He selected the main battery and deactivated the heater. Kevin watched him like a hawk.

“It’s off.”

Kevin sat down next to Owen and exhaled deeply. Then, in one smooth, swift movement, he picked up the empty glass from the workstation next to Owen and threw it against the wall. It exploded with a satisfying crash, followed by the much softer tinkle of the hundreds of pieces of glass falling to the floor.

“Now get the fuck out of here!” said Kevin, in barely more than a whisper.

Owen rose in silence, crunching glass underfoot as he backed toward the door, leaving Kevin hunched over the scattered shards, chest heaving.

“Good job Brant. You got to that quick,” said Aiden.

“What do you mean?” said Brant, breathing heavily.

“The battery heater is now showing as deactivated.”

“I’m still in the airlock. It’s just finished its cycle. I’m about to open the inner door now.”

“So you didn’t turn it off?” queried Aiden.

“Dude, I might be good, but I’m not that good. You must have turned it off somehow.”

“Nope, it wasn’t responding to any of my commands.”

“Ok then, that’s weird,” said Brant as he opened the inner door to the rover. He clumped straight to the cockpit, still wearing his full EVA suit and helmet. Tapping on the centre console screen, he brought up the controls for the electrical systems.

“Confirming battery heater is currently set to auto and showing as not running.”

“Ok, that is weird,” agreed Aiden.

Lana’s voice came on the loop. “Is there any way the battery heater could have been turned on by accident?”

“Lana, it’s been on auto the whole time,” said Brant. “We haven’t touched it.”

Lana looked across at Aiden. “The heater came on this morning at the preset time to warm the battery before they departed. After that, it went to auto. So it would only come on if the battery temperature got too low, like overnight when the power consumption drops right off. They have been driving until a little while ago. Plus, I have just looked back at the temperature log for the battery and it hasn’t dropped enough to trigger the heater.”

“So it’s not a faulty temperature sensor?” asked Brant.

“I thought that, but the temperature has always been within range on all the sensors. There should be no reason to trigger the heater.”

“Ok, that is really weird,” said Brant.

Lana muted the microphone on her tablet. “I don’t like this. It’s really strange. What happens if it comes on again and they can’t turn it off?” Aiden looked across at Joanna and then back to Lana.

“Well, I think we all realise if the heater comes on and can’t be turned off, the battery is just going to get hotter and hotter until it goes into thermal runaway.” He paused. “Then the whole rover will go up.”

Pieter’s voice came over the loop. “Are we all good to continue now then?”

Lana looked at Joanna, then Aiden. She unmuted the microphone and placed the tablet on the table. Joanna pulled her chair in closer.

“Ok, can all three of you hear us? We have you on speaker, so Joanna and Aiden are listening in.”

Pieter, Brant and Zawadi all responded, and Lana continued.

“I think it would be prudent to terminate the expedition and bring you back to the hab. We all know the consequences of the rover main battery going into thermal runaway.”

“It’s off now though, isn’t it?” said Pieter.

“Yes, but we don’t know why it came on and we did nothing to switch it off. What’s to say it won’t come on again?” replied Lana.

“Lana’s right Pieter,” said Aiden, “we have no idea why or how it came on.”

“What about if we leave it switched off rather than auto? We can always manually monitor the temperature and turn it on if needed.”

“It’s too much of a risk,” said Lana.

“There must be a manual breaker for it somewhere,” replied Pieter.

“You know I’m not sure there is,” said Brant. “I don’t remember that ever coming up when we learned the systems, do you Aiden?”

“I can’t remember either.”

The conversation became garbled as several people tried to talk at once.

“Ok, this is what we are going to do,” said Lana sternly, silencing them. “We’ll take one hour to try and figure out why the heater came on and what we can do about it. I want Aiden, Brant and Pieter to work on this. Zawadi and Joanna, I want you to search the documentation for the rover and see if there is any physical way that can be easily accessed to disconnect the heater, without relying on software. I want a breaker or wire that’s easily disconnected. I will talk to mission control and see if they have any suggestions. If we can’t resolve it, the expedition will return and set out again in the second rover tomorrow. Understood?”

“How dumb is it that there is no breaker to isolate the battery heater?” said Brant, staring off into the vast white expanse ahead of them, his hands lightly gripping the wheel of the rover. They had decided to swap for the drive back. Pieter was also convinced there must be a way of manually disabling the battery heater. He sat studying the schematics for the rover despite the decision to return home.

“I’m still convinced there has to be a way,” said Pieter, without looking up.

“Well, we couldn’t find it and neither could anyone back home.” There was no response from Pieter. “Anyway, we’ll head out in the other rover tomorrow, so we’ll only be a couple of days behind schedule.”

“If we pull up the floor and remove the rear access panel, I reckon we could almost reach the battery heater’s connection to the main battery control circuitry.”

“Yeah, maybe if you were Mister Fantastic,” said Brant, looking across at Pieter who still kept his head buried in his tablet. “Plus, we needed to find an easy way to disconnect it. Remember the easy part?”

Pieter finally looked up from his tablet. “Well, I would just like to know if there is a way of doing it. No matter what is involved. You never know when those little nuggets of information might be useful.”

The rover continued its steady plod across the white expanse back to the hab. “Lana’s right, there is a risk,” said Pieter, more to himself than anyone in particular. “At least until we figure out what happened.” He wasn’t sure if Brant or Zawadi, who was sitting behind, had heard him. He didn’t make any effort to see if they had.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

The bus was upon me the moment I stepped onto the road. There was no way to avoid it…

Elseware

Thanks for reading the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo.

You should have seen in your inbox the post I put out during the week about Andor. As I mentioned last week, I started to write about it for my weekly update, but it ended up being too long, so I decided to make it a standalone post.

I would like to be able to put out more of these posts on other subjects between the serialisation of Orphans of Apollo, but it’s just something I can’t fit in right now. My list of ideas keeps filling up fast though!

This one also came down to the wire to get out on time with putting out a mid-week post as well. Next week we have a public holiday here in New Zealand and then it’s school holidays, so I can see the next few weeks being the same. I’ll endeavour to keep the posts coming out each week. I’ll also try to keep posting about interesting stuff I’ve been reading, watching or listening to. I always find it interesting when people talk about what has caught their eye. Just one quick link this week, but I’ll try to expand this in the future.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Stuff that’s caught my eye

Journey to Kyron

Judgment Day

a year ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Shoni

Adding Layers to a Legend

Alex Turnbull — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 19:01:11 GMT

Note: this post contains spoilers for Andor and Rogue One.

As I have mentioned just a few times now, we have been watching Andor season 2. We finished last week and therefore had to watch Rogue One again. I have always been a huge Star Wars fan. The original movies formed a huge part of the culture of my childhood. So much so, I am incredibly wary of the new additions to the Star Wars universe. I have still not seen Episodes VII, VIII and IX, for fear they would clash with the originals and spoil the childhood memories I have of watching those movies far too many times.

sometimes good people have to do unspeakably bad things in the aid of a good cause.

I did however, watch Rogue One a few years after it came out, having heard good things about it. At the time I thought it was good, and fit in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope without upsetting things, but also without raising the bar.

When the first season of Andor came out, I also heard good things so decided to watch it. It’s definitely a slow starter (the same as season 2) but I really enjoyed it. As Stellan Skarsgard (who plays the character of Luthen Rael) describes it, “it’s like Star Wars for grown ups.” It really is. It’s a political thriller that expands on the world by showing you more of the day to day, which cannot fit into the length of a feature film. The characters are also solid as it is so well written but also by virtue of there being more time to develop them.

I had planned on rewatching Rogue One after watching the first season of Andor, but never got around to it. I highly anticipated the second season, but waited for all the episodes to come out so I could binge watch them. It was again a bit of a slow start, but got better quickly. The build up to the Ghorman riot and subsequent massacre was exceptionally well done and really showed the evil of the Empire in a gritty and relatable way. The Empire’s subtle political manoeuvring was on show, rather than outright massive acts of aggression, such as destroying a planet.

Following the massacre, Senator Mon Mothma makes a speech in which she calls out and condemns Emperor Palpatine for manipulating the truth. Maybe this and her subsequent escape from Coruscant would not have felt so dramatic if I had watched it as a child. Watching it as an adult however, with an appreciation of what happens in oppressive regimes here on Earth made that entire sequence more impactful and thrilling.

The other thing Andor shows so well is that sometimes good people have to do unspeakably bad things in the aid of a good cause. There many examples of this, but probably the one that stands out the most is when Luthen kills Lonni Jung, an ISB officer who has been risking his life for years to spy for the Rebellion. This more nuanced look at characters is something the original movies did not contain so much of, rather being a classic good versus evil.

Along these lines is also the portrayal of the Rebellion. The original movies depict it as a largely unified entity. However, it is the “Rebel Alliance” - an alliance of many different factions who have a common enemy. Sure, after the events of A New Hope, they are probably more unified, having fought the common enemy together, seen its potential to wipe them out and triumphed. But before this, Andor and Rogue One depict things as more fractured with significant infighting. This makes things a lot more realistic. “Realistic,” you say, I know, we are talking about things that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Perhaps “relatable” is a better way to describe it.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the foundation that is A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie. I did a quick bit of research into Lucas’s writing process for Star Wars. This in its self is fascinating, but to cut a long story short, he went through a number of iterations. By the time A New Hope was in production, Lucas wasn’t sure if he would get to make any more Star Wars films, so he gave A New Hope a satisfying ending, the destruction of the Death Star. Although he did have ideas for an extended saga, it wasn’t until the surprise success of A New Hope that he got the creative breathing room to flesh these out. Interestingly, the decision to make Darth Vader Luke Skywalker’s father came after the completion of A New Hope.

This makes A New Hope an even better movie. Not only did it kick off one of the greatest movie franchises of all time, but it is a complete work in itself but has so many threads dangling from it that it spawned one of the greatest story sagas in history.

Many examples show these threads joining, but I especially like the scene in A New Hope where an Imperial Officer warns Vader, “Holding her is dangerous. It could generate sympathy for the rebellion and the senate.” He is, of course, referring to Princess Leia. Later in the film, Governor Tarkin informs the assembled Imperial Officers that “the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently.” This links beautifully back to the speech Mon Mothma makes in Andor, where she condemns the Emperor.

The biggest criticism of Andor I have is that the ending is somewhat flat. Flat if that were the last episode in the series, which it is. But if you treat Rogue One as the last episode and go on and watch this, it works well.

This brings me to the final point. Andor makes Rogue One a great movie which in turn makes A New Hope and the subsequent movies and even the prequels even better. Having that knowledge and character development in place adds so much to them. When undertaking this sort of project, there is a tremendous risk that the new production will fall flat, or worse, detract from the original. However, here it has truly made them even better.

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If you enjoy science fiction check out the serialisation of Orphans of Apollo which I am currently publishing weekly.

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E4

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 19:00:41 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: flashback to 2046 when Kevin Valenti met with Congressman Sam Mullen in an attempt to get him to support stronger anti genetic engineering legislation. When Mullen refuses, Valenti suggests he may have to take matters into his own hands.

September 2056

Lana stepped through the door of the EVA prep room, ruffling and retying her flat hair. Aiden and Joanna were at the biology workstation.

“Well, they’re on their way,” she announced.

No response.

Joanna was glued to the microscope, with Aiden looking over her shoulder.

“Just look at how healthy they are. Only ten per cent of the unmodified variety even survived in that tray,” said Joanna excitedly.

“I can tell it’s amazing from your voice Joanna, but honestly, biology. Not my thing. I’ll get back to the mechanical and computer stuff.”

Joanna smiled without looking up from the microscope.

“They’re on their way then?” he said, turning to Lana. “I’ll go and keep an eye on them.”

Lana acknowledged him with a brief, decisive nod.

“Looks like you found something interesting?” she asked, sitting down on the chair next to Joanna.

“Yeah.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the eyepiece. “All the genetically modified plants in this tray survived, and only ten per cent of the unmodified control survived.” Joanna pulled back from the microscope. “That soil was really acidic. I’m surprised any of the control survived at all.”

“That seems like a good result then?”

Joanna avoided the question. “Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be like those plants?”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, Jo?”

“To have been given a gift or an ability which lets you outperform or have an edge over others?”

Lana tilted her head slightly, a curious smile forming. “You mean like some sort of superhero?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Not really. Logan was always the one who was into that sort of stuff when we were younger,” she chuckled. “He still is really.”

“Me neither. It’s just these plants have got me thinking, that’s all.”

“Well, we are a lot more complex than plants and plus, that sort of research has been banned for decades,” said Lana dismissively.

Joanna opened her mouth to speak, but words didn’t come.

“What is?” asked Lana.

“Oh, nothing.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Well, I’m going to look at some of the data from the telescope for Zawadi. Do some real work like everyone else is.”

The rover slowed to a halt. It was so smooth that Zawadi didn’t even realise and continued to read the procedures for setting up the drill rig on her tablet.

“We’re here,” said Pieter over his shoulder.

Zawadi looked up. “Already?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” said Brant, turning in his seat. “You were pretty engrossed in those procedures. Are you good to go with helping me set up the drill rig?”

“Yeah,” said Zawadi confidently.

“Alright then. Let’s suit up,” said Pieter.

Fifteen minutes later, the three of them were standing at the back of the auxiliary trailer. Zawadi had the remote control for the small crane, which was currently in its stowed position at the back of the trailer in her hand.

“Ok, has everything come up green after the self-test?” asked Brant.

“Yep,” replied Zawadi. “Should I unstow it?”

“Go ahead.”

Zawadi pushed the button to unstow the crane. It slowly began to unfold like a giant creature waking from a deep sleep. When it was finished, the jib hung over the back of the auxiliary trailer. Zawadi lowered the hook to the height of the deck.

“Ok Pieter, let’s hook it up.”

Pieter pulled the hook to the end of the drill rig, where it had been stored in the cargo area of the auxiliary trailer.

“A bit more slack please, Zawadi.”

Zawadi lowered the hook some more. Brant pointed to the attachment point on the rig and once he had enough cable, Pieter slipped the hook through the steel loop which formed the attachment point.

“Alright Zawadi, take up the slack, but that’s all. I’ll go and release the tie-downs,” said Brant.

It wasn’t as easy as it would have been with two hands, but working with his good hand and the hook attachment, Brant released all of the strops holding down the drill rig.

“I’ll stay in here and guide it to the edge. Start pulling it out when you are ready. Just go slowly, ok.”

“Here we go then.”

Zawadi slowly extended the telescopic boom of the crane, pulling out the drill rig from the back of the trailer. For the next ten minutes, they worked efficiently to open out the three legs, then use the crane to stand it upright.

“Good job people,” said Pieter. “That actually went much smoother than I thought it might.”

“Yeah, good job Zawadi,” added Brant. “Let’s get the drill out and hook it up.”

Zawadi smiled in satisfaction to herself. Aiden’s voice came over the comm loop.

“Looked good from back here also. Good work.”

“Nice to know you’re watching over us,” said Pieter.

Aiden couldn’t decide if it was a genuine or sarcastic comment. No matter, they seemed to be working well together.

The vibe was definitely different, with just the three of them sat around the table for lunch. Without Brant and Pieter’s banter, there was no boy’s locker room dynamic. Lana admitted to herself that she missed having them around. They did inject a certain fun element into the group. But she definitely felt more at home in this environment.

“Do you think it will feel different when we are doing this for real?” said Joanna as she joined Lana and Aiden at the table.

“Maybe a little, but things are pretty realistic here though,” said Aiden. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes, but we all know a rescue party can be here from Concordia station in six or seven hours. That won’t be possible when we are on the Moon,” countered Joanna.

Aiden put his fork down. “A lot can happen in six or seven hours. Just look at what happened when we landed,” said Aiden.

“I guess you are right. How are they getting on out there?”

“They have set up the drill rig at the first site and they’re just about to hook up the drill head. It all seems to be going ok.”

“How is Brant coping with his hand?”

Lana gave Joanna a knowing smile. “You know you can always talk to him directly if you want,” said Lana.

“I know, but I feel I should let them get on with their thing. He doesn’t want me checking up on him all the time.”

“He’s doing just fine Jo,” said Aiden.

They carried on with their lunch. Lana looked through some messages from her family. Aiden was reading news headlines and Joanna tried to read her book, but couldn’t concentrate.

The soft chime alerted them in unison. It was coming from Aiden’s tablet. He looked at it for a few seconds, then pushed his seat back and went over to the console where he had been working before.

“What is it?” asked Lana.

“It’s a system alarm from the rover.” he continued, staring intently at the screen. “It looks like the main battery temperature is rising.”

His fingers worked quickly, bringing up a schematic of the electrical system. He also brought up the expedition loop on the console speakers. Brant was mid-sentence guiding Zawadi through part of the drill head setup. Lana and Joanna hovered behind Aiden without saying anything.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Aiden. “The load on the battery right now is hardly anything. The rover is stationary. Even if all the environmental and other systems were running full bore, they only draw a fraction of the power of the drive motors.”

“When will they get the alarm?” asked Lana.

“It’s only a couple of degrees above normal, so…” Aiden was distracted, looking through the schematics. “I’m not sure what the threshold is to trigger an alarm to the rover crew, but it is higher than here.”

“Keep working it. There’s no need to get them all jumpy if it’s just an instrumentation issue.”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

Thanks for reading the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. I hope you enjoyed it.

I’ve mentioned Andor a few times recently and how much I have been enjoying it. This week I watched the last episode of season 2 and it didn’t disappoint. I started writing about it for my regular update, and well, it kind of went on longer than I was expecting. Therefore, rather than having a long update here, I have turned this into its own post, which I will put out during the week. So look out for that.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E3

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 31 May 2025 19:04:30 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Rover 1 departs the hab on the crew’s first expedition. Unbeknownst to them, it’s not only those left behind in the hab who are keeping tabs on their journey.

2046

Kevin Valenti tugged at the collar of his shirt. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in his life he had worn a shirt and tie. He quickened his pace slightly, noticing he had dropped back behind the tall, efficient-looking young lady in crisp business attire who was leading him down the hallway. The sharp click of her stiletto heels echoed softly off the tiles and bare white walls of the long hallway. She turned her head and carried on her small-talk monologue over her shoulder.

“We’ve recently moved offices. Congressman Mullen is now in his eleventh year, so at least we have a little seniority when it comes to office space. We drew a poor lot in the freshman day lottery when we were first elected, so ended up with an office on the fifth floor. The one we just moved from wasn’t too bad, but I hate to think how far I walked in those first few terms.”

Kevin hated small talk. She was obviously trying to put him at ease. Sensing he might be a little intimidated by his first face-to-face meeting with a member of Congress. He wasn’t intimidated, just out of place. So this is that swamp his parents had talked about. This is where the bureaucrats make work for themselves and their cronies. The heart of Government which was supposed to act for the good of the people, but only the people who could afford the best lobbyists. This place infuriated him. The wasteful inefficiency and constant procrastination of the entire system.

Still, it was best to try to achieve your objectives through the legitimate channels. At least that’s what he kept telling others in the group. But that could only last so long until frustrations bubbled over. Kevin knew he was on the brink. Hopefully, the congressman would come to the party.

The lady stopped and pivoted on her heel. She opened the heavy wooden four panel door and held it, her other hand outstretched in an exaggerated welcoming gesture.

“This is Mr Valenti, Congressman Mullen’s ten o’clock,” she said to the lady behind the desk just inside the door.

“His nine thirty cancelled, so he’s just making a few calls.”

Karen, that was her name. The whole walk from the entrance to the office Kevin had been trying to remember her name. She was Sam Mullen’s chief of staff. He must place some importance on this meeting for his chief of staff to do the meet and greet, rather than just an aide. Karen gestured to a leather three seater sofa.

“Make yourself comfortable, Congressman Mullen won’t be long,” said Karen, disappearing through another door on the far side of the reception area, presumably into her office.

“Would you like anything to drink?” asked the lady behind the desk.

Kevin re-centred his gaze from its sweep around the office. “No thanks, I’m fine.”

It seemed a reasonably generous reception area. The entrance door faced the one Karen had just gone through and two other doors on the other sides of the room also faced directly towards each other. Kevin guessed one would be the congressman’s office and the other his staff. It was the juxtaposition he had expected. Somewhat ornate furnishings, with lush dark blue carpets, dark stained wooden furniture and plump leather chairs. Very traditional, if by traditional you meant old-fashioned. On the desk in front of the receptionist was a large translucent screen, typical of any office. She had set the screen to transparent when they walked in, but now it was back to full opaque and she busied herself with whatever she was doing before.

Kevin shuffled uncomfortably on the sofa. The door next to him opened.

“Kevin. Good to finally meet with you,” said Congressman Mullen. He was in his mid forties, square jaw, athletic build, hair combed back with a neat side parting. His face wore a smile he had practiced ten thousand times.

Kevin stood and took his outstretched hand. “Good to finally meet you too, sir.”

“Please, call me Sam. Come in, let’s make a start. We have a bit to discuss.” Kevin followed Sam Mullen into his office. “How was your trip down?” Without giving Kevin a chance to reply, he continued. “First time in the Capitol Building?”

“Yes.”

“How are you finding it?”

“Interesting.”

He took the seat offered to him around the coffee table. As they were sitting, Karen reappeared through another door and sat down to join them.

“I believe you have met Karen, my chief of staff?”

“Yes.”

Sam exchanged glances with Karen. “Ok then, let’s make a start.”

Sam settled himself into an armchair opposite the sofa where Kevin had perched himself. He crossed his foot up so it was resting on the knee of his other leg. One arm hung down beside the chair, and he rested his chin on his other hand. This was his office, his domain, and he was completely relaxed.

“So our legislation, as it stands regarding the genetic modification of humans, is already some of the most robust in the world. You probably know I worked with your predecessor at True Genesis on that legislation. Your organisation’s funding really made a difference when it came to getting that passed—”

“That was only a start. It does not go far enough.” The words fell over each other as they spilled from Kevin’s mouth. Congressman Mullen stiffened, not used to being cut off.

Kevin cleared his throat and composed himself before continuing, “you do realise there are already genetically engineered humans amongst us. Here in the United States.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Sam, barely conceding a snort.

“It is true,” said Kevin calmly.

“So why haven’t the authorities done anything if that’s the case?”

“They don’t know about it. With sufficient funding, it is quite possible to conduct this type of research below the radar. True Genesis has identified a number of individuals we suspect are genetically engineered humans.”

Congressman Mullen exchanged glances with Karen.

“I know what you are thinking. Where is this guy’s tinfoil hat? It’s ok, I thought that would be the case.”

Mullen drew a breath to speak, but then paused.

Karen stepped in. “Kevin, can I ask firstly how True Genesis can be sure these individuals are genetically engineered and in what way have they been altered?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge where we get our information from, at least not at this point. We are not entirely sure how their DNA has been altered, but what I can say is we are sure it is for the purposes of benefiting the organisation which created them.”

“And which organisation is this?” asked Mullen.

“That again I am not prepared to say at this point.”

“Kevin,” began Mullen in a condescending tone, “I’m not sure what you want me to do. You are claiming that genetically engineered humans already exist in the US. Claims you are not prepared to back up. We have laws to deal with this. Laws which your group helped enact.” His tone shifted from condescending to frustration. “Why have you not gone to the authorities? I’m not sure where I come in?”

“This is exactly where you come in, Congressman. If we were to report them, as you suggest, the individuals responsible for creating these beings would go to jail. However, there is no provision for how the genetically engineered individuals are dealt with. They would continue to be free and free to pass on their genetic modifications.”

“So, what are you proposing?”

“We are proposing new legislation. You sit on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, hence the reason for our meeting.”

“As I said before, the legislation we already have is very robust and bans any sort of genetic engineering in humans.”

“It does. But what about those already created? We are proposing further legislation that would allow genetically engineered individuals to be arrested and quarantined. They would then be examined and the extent their modification established. If it was determined they posed no risk to society, they could be released. But only after sterilisation. If it could not be determined they were risk free, they would need to remain in confinement. In extreme cases, there may be a need for…”

“For what?” asked Karen.

“For…euthanasia,” replied Kevin.

“I’m not sure they would see it as euthanasia, more like extermination. We are getting into some very tricky moral territory here,” said Mullen.

“I appreciate that, but this issue has to be dealt with.”

“I’m not sure you do appreciate it. You are talking about laws that would allow the state to arrest, quarantine and potentially execute its own citizens. Purely based on their DNA. This is the United States Mr Valenti. Not Nazi Germany!” Mullen’s tone was becoming agitated.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Ok, let’s take a couple of steps back here,” said Sam, sitting up in his chair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the attitude towards genetic engineering has been softening for some time now. We have genetically engineered cows which produce less methane, genetically engineered crops which are resistant to disease. People are more than happy to eat these. There are also medical treatments which some argue the development of which is being held back because of the laws banning human genetic engineering. Have you thought about that?”

“We were created in God’s image,” said Kevin. “There are more people than you think, a silent majority who are not happy about this.” Kevin sat back “If I were you Congressman I would not want to risk making such a political miscalculation as you did with the fossil fuel legislation. Especially considering how your prospects of reelection are looking right now.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s no secret that you are flagging in the polls. Ever since the legislation banning the production of fossil fuels passed a few years ago, your popularity has taken a nosedive. It seems your opposition to this was not very popular.”

“There were a lot of folk in my district whose livelihoods depended on the production of natural gas. I was trying to do the best for them. As you will appreciate, any representative should do.”

“You also received a lot of donations from companies in the energy industry and indeed worked for Oneok before standing for election.”

“I’m not sure where you are going with this?”

“You said there were a lot of folk in your district who were dependent on the natural gas industry. They were. Not anymore. Those folk have actually found employment in new industries, surprisingly quickly, and looking back, probably think things are better now anyway. Don’t make the same mistake with this issue, recognise the tide is turning.”

Mullen glanced over to his chief of staff “Well Kevin, I appreciate your views on this and thank you for making me aware of the issues as you and your group see them. Obviously, it’s something my staff and I are going to have to have a look into.”

Kevin didn’t move. He held the congressman’s gaze with a calm, unreadable expression.

“We will address this issue either way,” he said flatly.

“Either way?” Sam leaned forward slightly.

“Either through political channels such as this. Or by direct action.”

Karen looked up from the tablet she was clasping.

“Direct action?” Sam repeated.

“If the Government will not take the action required, we may be forced to do so ourselves. True Genesis is a large organisation made up of people with a spectrum of views, some more radical than others. Let’s just say by coming to meet with you today, I represent the more moderate in the group.”

Sam exchanged another quick glance with Karen.

“If I am understanding what you are implying correctly, I would be very careful, Mr Valenti. If your group were to be linked to any sort of “direct action” that would be the end of any political cooperation.”

A faint humourless smile spread slowly across Kevin’s face. “Oh, I’m not sure it would.”

“Is that a threat, Mr Valenti?”

“Call it what you like. The simple fact is you have links going back to our group over many years. You met with my predecessor many times and we made some rather large donations when you first ran for office. You are already linked to our organisation. Your re-election prospects right now are fifty fifty at best, and most importantly of all Congressman, don’t you want to make sure you are on the right side of history?”

Kevin looked around at the ornate grandeur of the buildings surrounding him. The institutions of government, representing what was once the most powerful nation on the planet. The walk back from Congressman Mullen’s office and down the steps of the Capitol Building had calmed him slightly. He pulled at his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.

As he began to walk toward Delaware Avenue, he popped an earbud in. A glance at his watch. Maybe he could make the earlier train. Then he scrolled through his contacts and pushed call.

“Yes, I’m done. It was quicker than I thought—No, I’m on my way to the station now.”

The lights changed and he hurried across the road.

“It doesn’t change anything. We just bring forward what we thought we were going to have to do anyway.”

A long pause.

“Don’t worry about Ashworth. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but he will be out of the picture soon enough.”

Kevin tapped the earbud to end the call and continued towards Union Station.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. This one came down to the wire, so not much of an update this week. I’m off to watch the last episode of Andor season 2, so I will report back next week.

Have a great week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E2

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 24 May 2025 19:37:06 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: the crew wake up on the morning of the first expedition. Whilst they are excited to get going, Lana worries about the crew dynamics on the expedition.

September 2056

Lana picked up her helmet from the shelf above where her EVA suit had been hanging. This was only the second time she had been outside in the week or so they had been at the hab. The others were getting to have all the fun. But this was her mission to run and she was determined to do it to the best of her ability. “Don’t be afraid to delegate things. You are the commander,” Larsson had said in his video message a couple of days after landing. It was amazing just how much “admin” there was to keep five other people working in something that loosely resembled a harmonious group. She was finding her feet though, and helping out the others where they needed. Lana felt it was appropriate that she went outside to see off Brant, Zawadi and Pieter. It would also allow her to do the morning's external inspection of the facility.

She slid the helmet over her head and snapped the neck ring closed. To her right, Zawadi already had her helmet on and closed her visor. Lana slid hers down and glanced at the display on her wrist. The suit was running through its self-test sequence.

“Lana, do you read on the EVA loop?” came Pieter’s voice through her headset.

“Got you loud and clear Pieter.”

“We are ready here, so we’ll head out while you guys do your suit checks.”

“Ok.”

The EVA prep room was only really big enough for two people to move around comfortably, so Pieter and Brant had put their suits on and headed out into the open space of the lower floor to do their suit checks. The suits did a self-test but unless it was an emergency, standard operating procedures required a once over with human eyes.

Pieter trudged past Zawadi and Lana, first to the airlock door, followed by Brant. Through his visor, Lana could clearly see the barely concealed smile. He closed the airlock with his good hand, his bag of personal items hung from the hook which was attached to his mitten.

Lana spun around so Zawadi could inspect her suit before she reciprocated. “Aiden, do you read on the EVA loop?”

“Strength five Lana.”

The hab had several communication loops. They worked in much the same way as an air traffic control frequency or the comm loops in mission control. Each crew member wore a headset or an earbud and could select which loops they wanted to listen to. When they wanted to talk, they pushed their push-to-talk or PTT, which was in reality a button on the touch-screen of their watch or tablet. Or they could just set it to open mic. The hab central computer relayed the communications through the most appropriate available data connection, depending on the crew member’s location. This could be through the hab’s wireless network, through a satellite connection if they were too far away or through a rover and then through a satellite link.

The loops normally in use were an “all-crew” loop so the crew could communicate throughout the complex, and an “EVA loop” specifically for crew members outside. One of the crew members inside was required to be monitoring this at all times. The crew could also set up ad hoc loops where required for specific things they were doing so they would not saturate the other loops unnecessarily. Or they could call each other directly. A separate “expedition loop” had been set up to communicate with the rover once they got underway. Back in the hab, it would mainly be Aiden who was monitoring this.

The airlock had finished its cycle and was now empty again. Lana followed Zawadi into the airlock and closed the door behind them. She pushed the key on the airlock control screen by the door and the pressure began to drop. Lana then selected the comms menu on the display on her wrist. She tapped Zawadi’s name to open a private loop between them. Zawadi turned to face Lana even though she did not need to in order to hear her. It just felt more natural.

“Zawadi, can you do me a favour?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Keep an eye on the guys. If you think they might start taking any unnecessary risks, let me know.”

“It’s funny. You know Joanna asked me to do the same thing? Well, keep an eye on Brant that is.”

“She really cares about him.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry Lana, after the landing event, I think we all understand the risks here are real.”

The airlock control turned green and Zawadi opened the door. They stepped down onto the ice. In front of them, Rover 1 waited patiently.

“Are you guys inside yet?” asked Zawadi.

“Yep, come on up,” replied Brant.

“I’ll have a last walk around the rover for you. Let me know when you are ready to disconnect the umbilical,” said Lana.

“Ok. Just give us a couple of minutes to get squared away here boss,” replied Pieter.

Having the auxiliary trailer connected made getting in and out a little more cumbersome than usual. Zawadi climbed up the couple of steps onto the coupling between the rover and the trailer. From there, she climbed up to the rover’s back door.

Lana walked around the rover. She didn’t expect to find anything wrong. If there was, it would more likely get flagged by the rover’s self-diagnostics before anyone noticed anything. Still, it made her feel like she was doing something constructive.

As she rounded the front of the rover, Pieter’s voice came through her headset, “Ok Lana, we’re ready to disconnect when you are.”

Lana continued down the left side of the rover to where the external power cable was still attached. She pulled the large plug out of the socket, replaced the protective cover over the end of the cable and placed it on the ground. Closing the access hatch, Lana looked up at the giant rover towering over her. She patted it gently, then picked up the cable and pulled it clear of the rover’s tracks.

In the cab, the “External PWR” annunciation disappeared from the display in front of Pieter. Brant was already in the right seat next to him. Zawadi took the jump seat behind Brant. They had removed their helmets, but were still wearing their EVA suits.

“Ok, here we go.”

Pieter tapped the screen to put the rover in drive, then gently pushed the accelerator. With a low whine, the rover, its auxiliary trailer in tow, gracefully moved forward. Pieter brought the speed up to twenty kilometres per hour and hit the speed hold button. He took his foot off the accelerator pedal and relaxed in his seat. One hand lightly holding the wheel, the other resting on his thigh.

“I’ll keep it on manual for a while.”

Brant looked down at the map. “We’ve got a three-hour drive to the first drill site, so I think I’ll get out of my suit for a while.”

“Me too,” said Zawadi.

The rover’s active suspension and the flat ice of the Antarctic Plateau meant moving around and working in the cabin whilst underway was not an issue.

Five minutes later, Brant returned to the cockpit. Pieter’s nearly two-metre tall frame dominated the driver's seat, his posture exuding calculated nonchalance. A half-smile played at the corner of his mouth as he surveyed the endless white landscape through the windshield. He had taken his hand off the wheel and was resting one foot on the frame of the perspex footwell.

“Want me to take over so you can get out your suit?”

“Sure. Auto-drive seems to have everything under control. Two hours and fifty minutes to the first site.”

As the last of the cable retracted into the reel that was mounted on the side of the hab, Lana took her gloved finger off the retract button.

She selected the EVA loop. “Do we need anything bringing in while I’m out here?”

“I don’t think so Lana,” replied Aiden.

“Ok, I’ll just check on the telescope then head back in.”

She trudged round the side of the hab, past the storage sheds and greenhouse to the telescope. The extremely dry air of the Antarctic Plateau made it one of the best places on Earth to locate a telescope. Although it was daylight twenty-four hours a day during the summer, useful infrared observations could still be made. At the South Pole, and the relatively nearby Concordia Station, there were sizeable telescopes used by the international scientific community. The small telescope the crew had to work with was nothing compared to these, but operating it in the extreme environment was providing excellent experience.

When Zawadi first started to make observations, she had some issues tracking objects. The extreme cold was causing some of the exposed gears to jam up ever so slightly. Even the smallest interruption to the smooth movement of the telescope could cause the target to move outside the field of view.

Lana looked over the telescope. The movement was so slow it was almost impossible to discern with the naked eye. If there were any problems, the computer would notify her or Zawadi. She decided to apply some more grease just to be on the safe side.

Once she had finished, she selected the expedition loop. “Lana to Zawadi.”

“Go ahead Lana.” There was a slight delay in the response. They were now far enough away that the communication was now going through the satellite link.

“I just thought I would check on the telescope before I headed in. Everything looks ok. I’ve just greased the bearings again to be sure.”

“Ok thanks Lana. I’ll check in on the observations after we have reached the first drill site.”

“How’s the drive?”

“It’s pretty smooth. I’m sat in the back reviewing some drilling procedures to get up to speed. Pieter and Brant seem to have it all under control.”

“Great. Call in when you reach the first drill site.”

“Will do,” the connection dropped.

Kevin Valenti touched the thumb scanner to unlock the door and slid into the small “ops” room at True Genesis headquarters. He liked to think of it as the hub of the organisation. Others turned a blind eye to it, and some simply pretended it didn’t exist at all. It was really just a small windowless room in the centre of one of the floors True Genesis occupied in the Blaustein Building in downtown Baltimore. But it was from this room that Kevin ran the sometimes sanctioned paramilitary operations of True Genesis.

William Ashworth had selected the thirty-storey nondescript office block as an office for his fledgling organisation in 2021. It was close enough to Johns Hopkins to be convenient, but far enough away so as not to cause suspicion. There was plenty of space available at a reasonable price and the building was nothing out of the ordinary. A typical 1960s downtown office block.

Kevin was responding to a message from Owen, who turned his head slightly to make eye contact with Kevin, then nodded at the screen in front of him.

“They’re on the move.”

The screen showed an overhead view of the Lunar Analogue base, with Rover 1 slowly making its way south, away from the hab. To the right was a readout of the rover’s vitals, battery charge level, motor speed, current draw, cabin pressure etc.

Kevin peered at the screen over Owen’s hunched shoulders. He had the bad posture of someone who had spent hours so engrossed in what they were doing on the screen that they barely moved. He was overweight with a scruffy, unkempt beard. These attributes all slightly irritated Kevin, but the thing he hated the most was the smell of fast food. It permeated the small room. He tolerated it, barely. Owen Fisher was about as good a software engineer, come hacker, as there was. Kevin understood the personality type, sometimes you just had to make them feel comfortable in their environment in order to get the best work out of them.

“Any luck with getting more than just the rovers?”

“No can do Kev. As I said before, we are lucky to have got this far. Their systems are incredibly well-engineered and siloed from each other. We’ve pretty much everything on the rovers, but that’s all.”

“How many are on board the rover?”

“Difficult to say exactly. Based on oxygen consumption, I would say three to four Kev.”

“That makes sense. They are unlikely to leave only one behind, so unless they all went?”

Owen turned to look at Kevin, who seemed deep in thought. “So what do you want me to do, boss?”

“Nothing,” said Kevin calmly. “They are still close to the hab and potential help. Let’s keep our powder dry.”

“As you wish, my Lord.”

Kevin knew it was some obscure sci-fi reference, which he didn’t understand. Another thing about Owen which irritated him.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. I have to confess I realised just before publication of this week’s episode that I made a slight error. For writing, I use a piece of software called Scrivener which is excellent for long-form writing. Especially if you write out of order, as I often do. Scrivener lets you drag the scenes around and then compile them into a finished manuscript. However, the one downside I have found is that there is no easy way to have multiple permutations in one Scrivener file. If someone knows how to do this, please let me know in the comments. As a workaround, I have copied my scenes into another file and used this to play with structures for the finished book.

To cut a long story short, I realised just before publishing I had actually changed the order of this week’s scenes and some of the next few weeks around. It will still make sense and hopefully be an enjoyable read, but it is not the final version I had planned on.

Photo by Neil Soni on Unsplash

In other news, I found out this week that my phone is now on the list of supported devices for satellite text connectivity. I don’t have a particularly new iPhone, so this is not Apple’s own emergency connectivity. This is direct satellite connectivity from a phone that was never designed to connect to satellites. When you stop and think about it, this is truly amazing and science fiction in action.

Ironically, I haven’t been able to test it yet, as I haven’t been anywhere without coverage. The remote locations that I regularly visit with my day job recently got conventional cell phone coverage.

I hope you all have a good week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S3 E1

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 17 May 2025 19:00:39 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

September 2056

The voices Lana could hear through her door were muffled so she could not make out what they were saying, but from the tone they sounded excited. They had been on the ground in Antarctica for a week now. It hadn’t been the best start, with Brant getting injured and Pieter’s attempts to undermine Lana’s leadership, but over the last few days, things had settled down. They had reworked the schedule and could probably still achieve most of their objectives. Having a clear purpose and knowing what to do was a good thing for a group of people living in such a confined space. Nevertheless, Lana had sensed over the last few days a little cabin fever setting in and she was glad today the first expedition would head out.

Looking at her watch, Lana saw it was 04:58. They were not supposed to get underway until 08:00. They had spent yesterday loading and prepping the rover, so everything was ready to go. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but her heart was racing. There was no way she could go back to sleep now. Pulling on some clothes, she opened her door. Zawadi and Brant were over in the kitchen preparing their breakfast and making a terrible job of trying to be quiet.

“You couldn’t sleep either?” quipped Brant as he turned around from the kitchen area.

“Evidently not,” Lana replied, rubbing her eyes.

“Sorry Lana,” said Zawadi sheepishly. “It’s just I think we are all so excited about heading out in the rover, none of us can sleep.”

“It is exciting, isn’t it,” said Lana. “I wish I was going with you.”

The door to Pieter’s room opened. “Morning team. I hope you guys aren’t going to leave me behind.”

Joanna and Aiden’s doors also opened and they emerged into the common area, eyes perfectly adjusted to the light.

“Well, I guess none of us could sleep then,” said Lana. “We may as well get into things.”

“It’s not like we have to wait for the sun to come up before we head off,” said Brant. They all laughed wryly.

With that, they all set about their morning ablutions. One shower and one toilet between six had its obvious challenges. Lana admitted to herself as she headed downstairs for her turn to use them. She would be glad to only have three crew members in the hab for a few days. More so, it would also be nice just to be with Aiden and Joanna. She thought she could sense something between Joanna and Brant. Although she hadn’t said as much, Joanna was certainly not fully on board with Brant going on the expedition.

Feeling suitably refreshed, Lana headed back upstairs to get some breakfast. Pieter saw Lana had returned from the bathroom and took the cue to take his turn. Aiden sat food in one hand, tablet in the other.

Lana leaned over his shoulder. “Everything good with the rover?”

“I’m just looking through that now, but it should be. I set a planned departure time of 08:00, so it should be working towards readying itself for then.”

The previous day Aiden and Pieter had connected Rover 1 to its auxiliary consumables trailer. They were now parked next to the primary airlock, still connected to the hab by an umbilical cable.

“All systems look like they check out. Rover and auxiliary batteries are up to operating temperature and now just trickle charging. The cabin heater has just come on, so it should be toasty and warm by the time they are ready to leave.”

When the rovers were not in use for a period, a heater maintained their batteries at about five degrees above freezing. It would then bring them up to an optimum operating temperature of around twenty degrees prior to use or charging. The batteries would then generally maintain that temperature during use or charging, but in the frigid conditions of Antarctica, they needed a heater to maintain a safe temperature when not in use.

“And the weather?” asked Lana.

“Climatic conditions are great. The Sun is a little active right now, so there is a chance of some solar flare activity.”

Joanna turned around from where she was making a drink. “Yes, I saw that. If it wasn’t summer, we would be getting some awesome aurora.”

“Nothing for us to worry about though?”

“Don’t think so Lana, at worst there could be some interference with high data rate satellite communications from the rover, but voice should be ok, and there shouldn’t be any effect on messaging and telemetry.”

“Great.” Lana went over to the bench where Joanna was emptying a sachet of porridge into a bowl. She selected a sachet of her own from the cupboard above the bench.

“We’ll be able to keep an eye on them just fine,” she whispered to Joanna.

Joanna blushed, and a little smile formed on her lips. “I just worry about Brant trying to do too much. He still only really has the use of one hand when he is wearing a suit.”

“I think we have all learned from what happened on the landing. Pieter and Brant seem to be working together well, plus they have Zawadi with them, and she is about as risk averse as anyone.”

“I guess you are right.” Joanna looked up at Lana. “I’m going to miss having him around, that’s all. At least they are only going to be away for a few days this time.”

Lana looked over Joanna’s shoulder towards Aiden. “Yes, they will be back in no time.”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. It’s a bit of a slow start to this season, but things will start to get interesting. As I have mentioned many times, I’m serialising a draft which was written as a complete novel and not originally intended for serialisation. Sometimes it doesn’t break into neatly sized episodes with their own mini story arcs as it perhaps would do if it had been written as a serial to start with. That’s also one reason why I have put together what I have written so far into an ebook. It’s essentially the first half of the novel, so you can read it all together if you wish.

Andor has been out for a few weeks now, but this week we started watching the second season. I have always been a huge fan of Star Wars, ever since my dad rented the original trilogy on VHS when I was about six. I must have seen those original movies at least a hundred times. They formed a big part of the culture of my childhood. The thing was when I first watched the movies none of the other kids had seen them. I was too young to catch them when they originally came out and this was before the revival of the late 90s.

I’m not a fan of all the new Star Wars productions and to this date have not seen episodes VII, VIII and IX. For me, the story stops at the end of Return of the Jedi. However, the new stuff is not all bad and Andor is definitely one of the better productions - at least the first season, I haven’t seen enough of the second yet. As Stellan Skarsgard describes it, “it’s like Star Wars for grown ups.” Not that all Star Wars is not for grown ups, of course! It’s just a lot more gritty. Definitely worth checking it out.

When I write, I tend to imagine the scenes as if I were watching a movie and then describe what I’m seeing in my head. In Scrivener, I have a folder for all the main charters in Orphans of Apollo. Sometimes I will put a photograph in there of an actor or personality that looks like I imagine the character. I have always imagined the character of Christian Larsson as Stellan Skarsgard. In Andor Skarsgard plays the character of Luthen Rael.

This week I also listened to an interview with Substack founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie. The most interesting bit for me and all you other fiction writers out there is that fiction on the platform is well and truly on their radar. They have acknowledged they could bring some features which would make fiction work better on Substack. If you read or write fiction on Substack, which I assume you do if you are reading this, it is also worth checking out.

I hope you all have a good week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Orphans of Apollo ebook

Alex Turnbull — Tue, 13 May 2025 19:01:08 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Orphans of Apollo has been running now in serial format since July 2024. I have been maintaining a “start here” index post to make it as easy as possible for those joining to get caught up.

However, as we are almost 50,000 words in, it can be a little cumbersome to go back and click through all those posts to read previous episodes. To make it a better experience for new readers wanting to catch up, I have made an ebook containing all the episodes to date.

Substack has a lot of great things going for it, but in terms of monetisation, paid subscriptions favour the big players. I realise the value proposition of subscribing to a Substack like mine month after month is probably not there. As an alternative, it would be great if Substack offered the ability to make paid posts available as a one-off purchase.

As a workaround, I have put the download for the ebook in the paid section of this post. I will be leaving the back catalogue of Orphans of Apollo up in its current format for the foreseeable future, but if you would like the ebook of seasons 1-2, please consider subscribing for a month. I won’t be offended when you unsubscribe.

Orphans of Apollo - S2 Recap

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 10 May 2025 19:00:40 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Orphans of Apollo will return on 18th May 2025 with season 3. It’s been a few weeks, so here is a recap of season 2.

The season opens in March 2020 with Damian Osbourne, who has abandoned his promising PhD in Biomedical Genetics at Newcastle University over moral objections to his colleagues' research. Living with his disappointed parents as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, Damian struggles with his decision while his father pressures him to return to medical research, where his skills are desperately needed.

Through Twitter, Damian connects with True Genesis, an organisation opposing human genetic engineering. Their slogan: “The human genome, as it was, forever” resonates with his ethical concerns. While chatting with the group online, Damian reveals he left his research because he feared the genetic techniques they were developing could be misused beyond their intended purpose, though he remains vague about specifics. Meanwhile, his former colleague Isaac tries unsuccessfully to persuade him to return.

By 2024, Damian has taken a dramatic step, moving to Baltimore under a fabricated position at Johns Hopkins arranged by William Ashworth, True Genesis's founder. Ashworth explains his vision to formalise the organisation into a legitimate lobbying group that can influence policy through conventional channels rather than protest. Damian shares Ashworth's concerns about where genetic engineering is heading, particularly after the birth of gene-edited babies Lulu and Nana in China. As Damian settles into Ashworth's home in Roland Park, he contemplates his new path advocating against the very research he once conducted.

Parallel to Damian's story, we witness Everett Winter's small rocket company Astronautix facing catastrophe. At their remote launch site in Scotland's Shetland Islands, their third White Arrow rocket self-destructs shortly after liftoff when two engines malfunction. This failure is financially devastating. Both government and private funding had been contingent on a successful flight. Winter's innovative full-flow staged combustion engines showed promise, but three failures have exhausted investors' patience.

Christian Larsson, a wealthy visionary with controversial views on genetic engineering, sends his executive assistant Sara Jensen to offer Winter financial salvation. Their meeting reveals Larsson's proposition: comprehensive funding to complete White Arrow development and begin work on lunar habitats, in exchange for three conditions. Winter must relocate operations to California, accept Larsson's occasional design input, and keep genetic engineering “on the table” for future discussion.

Initially, Winter flatly refuses, proud of his independence. However, after a night of drinking and consoling with his loyal team, many of whom have agreed to continue working without pay, Winter reconsiders. The following morning, Winter requests another meeting with Larsson, suggesting his dire circumstances may force him to reconsider the partnership.

By 2038, True Genesis has evolved into a significant advocacy organisation. At an outreach event in Washington D.C.'s Lisner Auditorium, Ashworth notices Kevin Valenti, an intense young man captivated by his speech. Their post-event conversation reveals Kevin's motivation. His father committed suicide when Kevin was five, after COVID lockdowns destroyed his Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. Though his father never contracted the virus, Kevin blames genetically engineered pathogens for triggering the pandemic and destroying his family. Moved by Kevin's story and intensity, Ashworth offers him part-time work at True Genesis. However, there's something unsettling about Kevin's unwavering stare.

The season culminates in 2056 with a six-person crew from the Foundation for Advancement in Space Sciences (FASS) embarking on a lunar analogue mission in Antarctica. Led by Commander Lana Meyer, the team includes deputy Pieter Van Der Watt, pilot Aiden Woods, and scientists Brant Adams, Joanna Medley, and Zawadi Mwangi. Their airdrop goes awry when the parachutes fail to detach upon landing. As the lander is dragged across the ice Brant climbs to the roof to cut the lines against Lana's instructions to wait. Though he prevents the lander from tipping over, he falls and breaks his wrist, jeopardising his involvement in the planned expeditions.

At their Antarctic base, designed to simulate a lunar habitat, the crew adapts to accommodate Brant's injury. Aiden designs a special mitten so Brant can still wear a pressure suit and participate in expeditions. Lana struggles with her leadership role, especially when questioned by the assertive Pieter, but finds support in Aiden.

As the crew settles into research routines, with Joanna studying genetically modified plants in the greenhouse, Zawadi shares a stunning theory with Joanna and Brant. She suspects they weren't merely recruited into FASS, they were genetically engineered by the organisation from birth. While this revelation deeply resonates with Joanna, Brant remains skeptical, noting they don't possess extraordinary abilities that would justify such engineering.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Elseware

Things have been quiet around here for a little too long, but Orphans of Apollo is back. I wish I had more time to spend on my writing, but that is just not realistic right now. Sometimes it can be a stretch just to get one scene edited and ready for Substack each week. It has therefore been nice to have a break for a few months.

Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees. As I mentioned in the update I posted a few weeks ago, the draft I am serialising right now was going to be book one in a series, but realistically is more likely to be book zero. Having a few weeks to not have to worry about getting posts out has let me do some research and very loose planning for the future story line. I find that I need time to mull things over in my head. So I’ve jammed some research in there and hopefully in a while some good ideas will come out.

Another thing I have done during the break is put all of the Orphans of Apollo posts together into one ebook, so it is easier to read the story so far. I’ll be publishing this before the first episode of season 3. Although the book is far from complete, seeing something which somewhat resembles a finished book is really cool.

I hope you all have a good week.

Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.

Alex

Update - April 2025

Alex Turnbull — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:02:22 GMT

Photo by Nima Mohammadi on Unsplash

I started my Substack in July 2023, so I thought it time for an update on where things are going, while I take a break from the serialisation of “Orphans of Apollo”.

Before Substack, I had been working on the first draft of “Orphans of Apollo” for several years, and prior to that, listening to lots of podcasts about publishing. I knew I wanted to write a novel, so figured I needed to learn about how to get it out in the world.

One thing which kept coming up again and again was to build an email list, in order to engage with your readers. Even if you wanted to go down a traditionally published route, publishers were looking at what engagement authors had with their readers, as it makes their job easier.

I had no idea what to write about in a newsletter, so kept parking the idea. Meanwhile, I had been looking into different platforms, so at least I could select the best to use. Then Dan Carlin, the podcaster behind “Hardcore History” mentioned he was moving his email list over to Substack. So I checked it out.

I decided I could just write some articles about stuff that interested me at the time, and so I wrote a few pieces under the title “From a Certain Point of View”. While I was poking around on Substack, I found a few people who were serialising fiction. I have never been a serial fiction reader but remembered back to my middle school English teacher telling us how Charles Dickens had first published his works in serial format. I thought that sound like a good idea, so I focused my Substack efforts on this, and have been serialising “Orphans of Apollo” since July 2024.

I have currently serialised, over two seasons of roughly fifteen episodes, 49,739 words of a draft which currently stands at 99,117 words, putting us at around halfway. So where to from here? I intend to serialise the rest in the same way. As I have said from the start, I’m doing this as part of my editing process. Publishing the story as I go through and edit. The intention was when I’m finished I would be left with book one of a series. The thing is, I am learning a lot as I go. So, in reality, I think this will end up being book zero. I have plenty of ideas where I want to take the series, so I am going to use this draft as my sandpit, where I can improve my writing and lay down some of the backstory which readers of later books can come back and read should they so wish.

Along the way, I have also experimented with audio. I always loved audio books as a kid and listen to a lot of podcasts and radio still. One of the great things about audio is you can consume it while you’re doing something else. This has become even easier in recent years, which is why audio seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance. I would love to have an audio accompaniment for each episode and tried narrating some myself. I’m not a natural orator and in the end didn’t think they sounded professional enough. A professional narrator is out of the question financially at this stage, but I am closely watching the AI narration products.

Science Fiction Feedback Loop

I’m a great believer in what I think of as the reality-fiction-reality-fiction cycle. Or as others have called it, the “science fiction feedback loop”. This is where science fiction authors take the reality of the day and push it forward in the stories they write. Some of their readers, inspired by ideas in the stories, will become scientists and engineers. In their work, they may make some of the concepts in the books they read a reality. They will also make discoveries which will inspire the next generation of science fiction authors, whose books will in turn provide inspiration for the next generation of scientists and engineers. And so the cycle continues. So many times I have heard scientists and engineers interviewed, and when asked what made them pursue this profession, they talk about the science fiction they read or watched as a child.

One of the best examples of this feedback loop is Arthur C. Clarke’s 1945 paper “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?” Although not science fiction, Clarke was a prolific science fiction author. In the paper, he calculated that an object placed at an orbit of approximately 35,786 km would remain fixed over the same point of the equator. Therefore, three satellites could provide complete global coverage. Today hundreds of satellites operate in geostationary orbit.

In his 1914 novel “The World Set Free” H.G. Wells predicted the use of atomic bombs which would release their energy slowly. His book was read by Leo Szilard, the physicist who conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction. Szilard acknowledged that reading this book had made an impression on him.

Jules Verne describes in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” submarine technology far in advance of its day. The use of electrolysis to separate seawater into hydrogen and oxygen for life support, diving planes and the use of blast tanks.

Science fiction inspired me as a child. However, for whatever reason, aviation attracted me more, and so I pursued that path professionally. This has been incredibly rewarding, but I have contributed nothing towards scientific discovery. So I’m hoping my part can be in the inspiration of the next generation. This is partly the reason why I’m attempting to pitch my work to the YA market.

Concepts I Want to Explore Going Forward

We are all born explorers. Toddlers will touch, taste and climb anything they can as they try to make sense of their environment. Some older children maintain this curiosity, while for many it is diminished by practical concerns as they transition to adolescence.

In our modern lives, where everything seems to get harder, something we forget is that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Those that came before us laid the foundation for all the things many of us who are privileged to live in developed countries enjoy. Food security, dwellings we can keep warm or cool at the flick of a switch, the ability to maintain real time connection with others on the far side of the planet and visit them within hours rather than months or not at all. Perhaps taken for granted the most is our ability to have leisure time. We are not required to spend all our waking hours foraging or tending to crops or livestock. These things are only possible because of the technological advances made by the scientists and engineers that came before us.

But it is not only the scientists and engineers, it is the explorers. Throughout human history, from the earliest migrations out of Africa to the age of European colonisation and beyond, societies have repeatedly demonstrated a drive to explore beyond current boundaries, whether geographic, intellectual, or technological. This pattern, while expressing itself differently across cultures and time periods, suggests something fundamental about human nature.

Exploration has become a key concept for me to explore in my writing. The great age of exploration on earth is now over, but it is only just beginning in space. Humanity has always needed to climb the next mountain, see what lies beyond the horizon, expand the frontier. It is in our DNA.

Nuanced characters are also something which I would like to explore. Very few people are pure good or evil. Often evil is rooted in a desire to do the right thing or avert some other disaster, and characters/people do not always remain good or evil. One of my favourite characters of all time is Darth Vader. I am of an age where I first watched Star Wars as a child before episodes I-III were made, so I had to imagine in my own mind what drove Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader. It was always something which I enjoyed thinking about.

How societies organise and govern themselves has fascinated me since an early age. I didn't think of it in these terms as a child, but looking back, many of my interests reflected this curiosity. I always followed politics (I was a weird child), even writing to the Prime Minister when I was nine years old because I was concerned about some government policies. Similarly, I gravitated toward games like “Age of Empires”, “Sim City”, and for those who remember the Amiga, “Populous”. What particularly intrigues me is how smaller autonomous regions like city-states can, under the right circumstances, produce remarkable innovations and cultural flourishing compared to larger homogeneous empires. In my fiction, I want to explore how space colonisation might revive these alternative governance structures when communities are separated by vast distances, forcing them to develop their own solutions rather than relying on centralised authority.

Screenshot from Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods (Amiga, 1991). Source: MobyGames. Game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts.

I launched “Orphans of Apollo” with a speech, which I am as yet undecided where it will go in the final version of the story. It was made by one of the central characters, Christian Larsson, on June 15^th 2012 entitled “The Future Belongs to the Optimists”. Let’s keep the feedback loop going and build that future.

The future belongs to the optimists.

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

Orphans of Apollo - S2 E14

Alex Turnbull — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 18:18:05 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: the crew have their first evening meal together in the hab. They discuss the upcoming expeditions and decide that Pieter should go along as additional help. Things turn tense when Pieter questions Lana’s decision making during the landing accident.

Brant snapped the locking ring on his right-hand glove shut. He had found it easier to put the glove on his good hand first, then use the gloved hand to pick up the solid mitten and ease his left hand into it. He also couldn’t close the locking mechanism with the mitten, so this was really the only way to do it without assistance, and today he had none. The regulations for EVAs allowed for solo activities but only within 100 metres of the hab. During this time, the solo astronaut had to check in regularly with the hab. This essentially allowed a single person to move between the hab and the greenhouse, supplies stores and the rovers.

Because of his injury, Lana had denied Brant solo EVAs. They had been at the base for a week now, and Brant had conducted several EVAs accompanied by one or more of the others. This was normally Zawadi and Pieter, as he showed them how to operate the drill rig used for collecting the ice core samples. These EVAs had gone without issue, so he and Pieter had finally persuaded Lana to allow him to do solo EVAs. It was a small thing, but Brant was thrilled to have his independence. It also meant he could head out to the greenhouse to visit Joanna without having to take someone with him. He enjoyed doing that.

With his mitten clipped into place, he was ready to go outside. He closed his visor and pressed the control to cycle the airlock. Although this was only an analogue, a pressure differential existed because the hab was at approximately 10,000ft above sea level on the Antarctic Plateau, while the inside pressure was maintained at standard sea level pressure of 1013 hPa; therefore, the outside atmospheric pressure was about one third less. Brant watched the digital pressure readout drop until it matched the value for outside. There was a pause and the light next to the handle for the outside door changed from red to green. He opened the door and headed out onto the ice. It was only a short twenty metre walk to the greenhouse, but it was just nice to be outside. Alone.

When he entered the greenhouse airlock he was disappointed to see a second helmet on the rack, then he saw Zawadi through the window of the inner door. I thought she had gone out to the rover to check some things before the first expedition. The airlock finished its cycle and he opened the inner door.

“I thought you could use an extra pair of hands,” he said as he stepped through into the greenhouse.

“I don’t know about a pair of hands. That’s a little optimistic, isn’t it?” said Joanna without looking up from the leaf she was examining.

“Very funny. I can actually do pretty much everything with this cast on.”

“Well, you can start by passing me that chlorophyll metre on the bench there.”

The greenhouse was fifteen metres long and five metres wide. Constructed as a tunnel with a half cylinder cross section, it had one airlock at the end closest to the hab. Just inside the airlock on the right was a workbench and lab equipment. Down the centre was a walkway, either side of which were racks of plants. Some on trays stacked on top of each other and some on round towers. Opposite the lab equipment just inside the doorway were the life support systems for the greenhouse. From here, the atmospheric conditions could be precisely controlled. It also controlled the flow of water and nutrients to the various plant beds.

“Chlorophyll metre…chlorophyll metre,” Brant muttered as he searched the lab bench.

“It’s rectangular shaped with a kind of a clamp sticking out the top,” said Joanna, “should be on the shelf above the bench next to the label that says chlorophyll metre.”

Funny that. Brant grabbed it off the shelf. “Original place to keep it.” He walked down the aisle towards where Joanna and Zawadi were examining a particular plant. The trays seemed to be grouped into different species, and within each species there were plants at different stages of growth. Some looked a lot healthier than others.

“So this one is not modified at all then?” asked Zawadi.

“Nope. It’s as near to God’s creation as you can get.”

“It doesn’t seem to be doing as well as some of the others,” said Zawadi, inspecting the surrounding trays.

“It’s not doing too badly, it’s just the genetically modified ones develop a lot faster,”

Brant handed the chlorophyll metre to Joanna. “Thank you, my humble one handed assistant.” He ignored her.

Joanna took the metre and placed one of the leaves gently between the clamp and squeezed it softly. She waited for a few seconds, then picked up her tablet and noted down the reading.

“About as expected.”

“Those don’t look too good,” said Brant, pointing to some drooping leaves.

“No, some won’t. We are experimenting with some plants which have different genetic modifications and some which do not. There are also beds which are getting different amounts of nutrients.”

“My Mum was quite a gardener back home in Nairobi, but I didn’t really pay much attention.”

“Yeah, my Mum was a really keen gardener back in England. I used to love helping her when I was a little girl.”

“Guess that’s why this is your baby then,” said Brant. “So what are we actually growing here?”

“Well these, as I’m sure you can recognise, are lettuces.” Joanna gestured behind her. “Those are potatoes.”

There was a soft tone in Brant’s ear from the earpiece he was still wearing. “Brant, you still listening out?” came Pieter’s voice over the radio.

Brant pushed a radio control on his wrist. “Sorry man, I’m over here all good. Just getting a botany lesson.”

“I can see that out the window, but you know the rules. You got to check in. Don’t want anyone to change their mind about going out on this expedition, do we?”

“No. Sorry.”

“All good mate, I got your back. Enjoy the company over there.” Brant rolled his eyes.

“The genetically engineered ones really are doing a lot better, aren’t they?” said Zawadi.

“Yeah, even the ones in the harsher environment with restricted nutrition,” said Joanna. “I don’t think we are going to have any problems growing food in Lunar regolith.”

“It’s really quite incredible,” said Zawadi flatly, a far-off look in her eye.

Joanna continued to take readings from the leaves of the other plants in the bed. She moved onto the next with Brant in tow.

“You see, these carrots aren’t doing so well. They are unmodified and they are in a bed with reduced nutrients.”

“Unlucky,” said Brant as he gently brushed one of the drooping discoloured leaves.

Joanna carried on taking measurements. After a few more, she looked up to Brant, who was watching her intently, then shifted her gaze past to where Zawadi was still staring into the distance. Brant turned to see what Joanna was looking at.

“You ok Zawadi?” he said. No response.

“What’s up Zawadi?” said Joanna.

Zawadi snapped out of her trancelike state and looked across at them with a sudden turn of her head. “Oh, nothing.”

“That’s not nothing, you were totally out to it,” said Brant.

“I was just thinking…oh no, never mind, it’s ok.”

“Come on, you can’t do that to us,” said Brant.

Joanna gently put her hand on Brant’s arm in a motion as if she was going to pull him back.

“Zawadi, if something is bothering you, you should talk about it.”

Zawadi looked away. “It’s nothing, really.” She looked back at them. “It’s just…”

“Would you rather just the two of us talked?”

Brant looked at Joanna, feigning offence.

“No, it’s ok. It’s just you talking about these genetically engineered plants made me think of something I have had going around in my head for a while now.”

“Go on,” Joanna said softly.

“Please don’t say anything to the others. I don’t want them to think I’m crazy.”

“Of course.” Joanna looked at Brant and locked eyes with him.

He held his hands up. “Hey, what happens in the greenhouse stays in the greenhouse.”

Zawadi pulled out the stool from beside the plant bed where she was standing and perched herself on the corner.

“Have you ever thought about the Foundation? I mean really stopped and thought about it?”

“What do you mean?” said Joanna, as she and Brant moved back over to Zawadi. Joanna pulled out another stool and sat next to Zawadi.

“It’s just something is not quite right. Don’t you think?” said Zawadi, a tortured look in her eye. “Do you remember the selection testing to get into the Foundation?”

“That was so long ago. I don’t remember doing the tests, but I can remember my parents telling me I did really well,” said Joanna.

“I don’t think I can remember it at all,” said Brant.

“Exactly. And you probably told your friends about what you were doing. They too wanted to join this wonderful organisation and get to do all these cool and exciting things during the school holidays?”

Brant and Joanna both nodded.

“How many of them got through the selection process?”

Brant shrugged and Joanna sat in silence.

“Exactly. They were probably just as smart and as athletic as you, if not more so. Remember Lana telling us about how she fell out with one of her best friends after she did not get into the Foundation? She was convinced she was much more talented.”

“So you are saying they would never have passed the tests, no matter how good they were?” asked Brant.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She paused, letting her revelation sink in and to catch her breath. Although normally reserved, Zawadi spoke with animation. “And why is that, do you think? There must be something about us.”

“The plants!” exclaimed Joanna. “That’s what you meant.”

Zawadi simply smiled and nodded at Joanna.

“Hang on, I’m not sure I follow,” said Brant.

“Zawadi is saying we have been genetically engineered. We were created by the Foundation. We did not join the Foundation! We were always going to be a part of it. Other kids could never join. The selection processes they ran were just for cover.”

“Hang on though,” said Brant. “If they genetically engineered us, they must have altered our DNA to improve us in some way. Otherwise, what would be the point? Sure, we are all reasonably smart, but we had a good education. We all learned to fly, but some of us really struggled with that. Why do you think Aiden was flying the lander and not me? None of us are Albert Einstein or John Young. I’m not buying it.”

“That’s what I can’t work out and what I have had going around in my head for a while now. I just can’t figure that bit out.”

“What do you think?” asked Brant, turning to Joanna.

“Well, it makes a lot of things make more sense. But…yeah I agree, I can’t immediately see how we are different. But we must be in some way.”

“Maybe we should see what the others think?” said Brant.

“Oh, no please. I don’t want them thinking I am some crazy conspiracy theorist. Plus, it’s bound to get back to Christian at some point. What will he do if he knows we have figured it out?”

“I actually don’t think he would do a lot. If it truly is the case we were created by the Foundation, he must have thought we might figure it out at some point.”

“So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

“No Zawadi,” said Joanna. “I don’t think you are crazy. It feels to me like one of those things you have always known, but it has been there, beneath the surface. If you know what I mean?”

Zawadi visibly relaxed.

“Still, there has to be something different about us. Until we figure that out, I’m not buying it,” said Brant.

“Let’s just keep this between us for now and have a think about how we best deal with it.”

“Ok,” said Zawadi with a gentle sigh of relief.

“Brant.” Joanna shot him a glance.

“Hey. Like I said. What happens in the greenhouse stays in the greenhouse.”

If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.

I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. As we did a few months ago, we have reached a good place in the story to take a break for a few weeks.

As I said last time we took a break, my intention was to serialise the whole draft in one go. As with most new projects, I usually start with more effort than I can maintain long-term. Working full time with two kids means I need to find a balance. Over season 2 I think I have found the happy medium and know what level I can sustain. I just need to resist the temptation to do more, so it can be sustained in the long-term. At the end of the day, that is what matters.

I am also starting to lay the foundations for the second book in the series and need a chance to work on this, if only to give my brain a chance to work on something new for change. After all, we all need a bit of variety.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading the story and to those who have joined over the last season. Knowing that real people are reading my writing is amazing. Orphans of Apollo will be back in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

Orphans of Apollo - S2 E13

Sat, 08 Mar 2025 07:30:41 GMT

New to the series: start here

From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.

Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.

Previously: Aiden thinks there might be a way to make an attachment to go on Brant’s suit so he will still be able to take part in EVAs. He also tries to convince Lana that what happened during the landing was not her fault.

Lana stretched, her arms hitting the wall of her room. Opening her eyes, she looked at her watch, 18:37. The crew had agreed to have dinner together at 19:00. Earlier, Lana had briefly talked to Brant about Aiden’s idea of making a mitten for his suit. As she expected, Brant had loved the idea. He had been writing off his chances of going out on expeditions and was blaming himself.

After reviewing the plans for the various expeditions the crew had scheduled, Lana had decided, as she suspected the others had also done, to take a nap. Sitting up in bed, she realised how hungry she was.

The upstairs living area was deserted. She padded softly downstairs, barefoot. The mechanical whining noise of the 3D printer in the corner of the lab grew louder as she reached the bottom. On its bed there were what looked like two halves of a fingerless glove that extended up the forearm. At least if you used your imagination. It was hard to tell exactly what it was with all the various support structures hanging off the side. These would be broken off once the print was complete. She admitted to herself she only knew what it was because she had seen the model on the screen of the medical scanner.

Lana headed over to the toilet, relieved they were still subject to Earth’s gravity. Going to the toilet in space was something she was not looking forward to. She retied her hair and splashed some water on her face. After shutting off the water, she heard voices emanating from the upper floor and she headed back upstairs to join them.

“Let me help you with that. You’re going to get it all over yourself,” Joanna said to Brant.

He was trying to squeeze some sauce from a vacuum pack onto a tortilla on the table in front of him.

“I can do it.”

“Well, you can single-handedly clean it up when you squirt it everywhere.”

“If I were you, I’d let her do it for you because in an hour that cast will be done and you won’t have any excuses,” said Aiden.

Brant fumbled with the package, and it dropped on the table. He picked it up and handed it to Joanna. She took it and rolled her eyes before continuing to squirt the contents onto the tortilla.

“You sound better,” said Lana.

“Yeah, I think the drugs are working now. Aiden told me more about his idea of modifying a glove for my suit. Sounds like it should work.”

“I don’t see any reason why not. Let’s all discuss it over dinner and see if anyone has any concerns or ideas about how we might have to adapt the tasks we have planned.”

Lana opened her food cupboard. Each crew member had a cupboard where the meals they had chosen for their stay were stored. As this was the first expedition, the construction crew had put a few packages of food for each crew member in the cupboard. The rest were stored in the supply packs containing the various consumables, such as food, clothing and sanitary products they would need during their stay. These had been transported in convoy across the ice by the last construction team and now sat by the greenhouse.

When she woke up, Lana had felt hungry, but now she felt ravenous. She opted for mashed potato and a package of what was supposed to be minced beef in gravy with vegetables.

Everyone had now emerged from their rooms and as the others went about preparing their own meals, Lana was pleased to see the normal friendly banter had returned. Once they were all seated around the large table in the centre of the room, she let the banter continue for another couple of minutes.

“Ok, while we are all together, let’s get some business done, then we can relax for the rest of the evening. It’s been a long day.”

“Sure has,” said Brant, rubbing his wrist.

“So, a few of us have talked about the implications of Brant’s injury on the tasks planned for this expedition. Aiden might have come up with a solution so we can continue with minimal changes.” She looked across to Aiden.

“As you probably know, with a cast on his broken wrist, Brant cannot put the glove of his suit on properly, meaning he cannot do EVAs. That is obviously going to be a bit of a problem when it comes to collecting ice cores and helping Zawadi with her meteorite collection expedition.”

“Maybe I should go instead,” said Pieter.

“Well, there might be a solution,” said Aiden. “If I take one of the spare gloves I can cut off the locking ring and then print a mitten which Brant can fit his hand into.”

“He won’t have the same dexterity as a glove, though. How is he going to be able to do anything?” asked Pieter.

“I could also incorporate an attachment clip onto the mitten and print some basic tools.”

“It’s still a bit risky, don’t you think? What if there was an emergency and he had to help Zawadi out?” said Joanna.

“I’ll need some training on how to help Brant operate the drill rig,” said Zawadi.

“I could go on the expedition too, so there is an extra pair of hands,” said Pieter. “I wouldn’t be doing much here anyway.”

“What if you guys have a problem and need help? That would only leave three of us here and we all know we’re supposed to be in pairs if we go any significant distance from the hab. It would mean leaving one person behind alone or all three of us would have to come on any rescue mission,” said Joanna.

They all looked expectantly towards Lana.

“We might have to bend a few regulations. I agree sending an extra person with Brant and Zawadi on the expedition is probably a prudent idea. It does leave only three of us here, but it’s probably the least risky option. In the event of a rescue, we could leave one person in the hab alone, but again, it’s the least risky option.” Lana looked around the faces. “Pieter, you are right. It also makes most sense for you to go on the expedition with Brant and Zawadi.”

“I think it’s our best option,” agreed Aiden.

“Think they will go for it back at the foundation?” asked Pieter.

“We could do a trial run,” said Brant excitedly. “We have a shorter expedition in the program anyway. If that works out ok and I’m not a complete liability, then we go ahead with the long distance one to the Transantarctic Mountains.”

“You’re the reason we are sitting here and not halfway across the Antarctic being dragged behind a parachute. I wouldn’t worry,” said Pieter.

“That’s not necessarily the case,” said Lana.

“Sure it is.”

“Let’s just leave it there, shall we?” said Aiden, sitting up straight in his chair and turning towards Pieter.

“Just saying.”

“Anyway,” said Lana, raising her voice slightly. “Assessing Brant’s capabilities on the shorter expedition is a good idea. If there are no problems, we will go ahead with a longer one, with Pieter as an extra pair of hands. I’ll advise mission control this is what we intend to do and see if there are objections.”

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