Short story – “A Christmas Miracle?”

“A Christmas Miracle?”

It was parents in the Western Pacific who first raised the alarm.  They were either doing last minute wrapping, or their regular routines, when presents just appeared.  Soon there were videos that showed – at the stroke of midnight – presents appearing.  There was no jolly fellow leaving them.  One second there was nothing, the next, simple toys in basic wrappings. 

As the hours passed, there were thousands upon thousands of such videos.  And some even showed crude traps to try to catch whatever was doing this, all to no avail. 

Christmas Day ended with a million questions, but no answers.  For the following year it was the number one topic of heated debate around the world.  Some even claimed The Event was the cause of several government collapses. 

Would it be repeated next Christmas?  Untold resources were spent to better record the phenomena.  But on the day, no presents showed up.  This just raised more questions and more debate.  Decades later, the general feeling was that our response to the miracle had just got us collectively put on the Naughty List.

***

For the last few years, I’ve had wondered how the world would react if Santa became active.  The basic idea being the world would freak out.  It was a fun idea, but I had assumed it might have to be a novella, and I didn’t have time for that.  But the other day I was thinking about it and started seeing this ultrashort version.  While this turned out to be about twice as long as I had hoped, it is still way shorter than I had first imagined.

Some thoughts on Elon Musk

I’ll start by saying that I’m a SpaceX fan.  I watched their first successful Falcon 1 flight and I probably jumped for joy at the thought at the beginning of a new era in spaceflight.  And at first, I was a Musk fan.  I think my biggest complaint was his focus on Mars.  I’m a Return to the Moon person, who thinks the best way to make humanity a spacefaring civilization is to go mine the asteroids and build the rotating space stations and ships we see so often in fiction.  In that type of world, Mars is more of a dead end.  I do support the scientific exploration of Mars, I just don’t see much future in colonizing it.

So I was never one of those who thought of Musk as the perfect sage.  But over the last few years, whenever I see him trending on Twitter, I groan and wonder, “What asshole thing did he do now?” My … respect, I guess you’d call it, for Musk has nosedived over the years, but the final straw came when I realized something.

There are multiple spacecraft in orbit of Mars right now.  The reason we have so many is that we don’t have tricorders, or sensors, that we can just point at an object and get 80,000 pieces of data about.  We have cameras that can only take pictures in a dozen or so wavelengths at only certain resolutions.  If we want super detailed images, that’s another camera.  If we want a look at subsurface stuff, that’s an entirely different instrument like ground penetrating radar.  Is there any radiation?  Well that’s another instrument.  And since these spacecraft were all paid for by governments, they try to get the broadest amount of science for their buck.  Meaning if someone really wanted to build a Mars Colony, they’d probably need a dedicated spacecraft with specific instruments to look for needed resources or potential hazards to help narrow down a site.  The Mars Orbiter Mission apparently cost less than $100 million, which is about what Musk makes when he sneezes.  So why hasn’t Musk paid to have the first privately funded interplanetary mission?  Some might say that it’s better to wait until the Starship is flying so they can send a big spacecraft to Mars.  But we can learn a lot with a small spacecraft that could be launched on a Falcon Heavy, which could lead to better choices on what to allocate on a future Starship. 

I’m starting to wonder, is Musk’s talk about Mars just a politician’s campaign promises?

Random Story – I will not fall

This is just an odd little story from my life.

When I was a kid, I would have dreams where I would be running along the top of some skyscraper when I would fall off.  The shock of “falling” would make my body convulse and I’d wake up.  I can’t remember how often this happened, maybe once a week or so, but it got to the point that I hated waking up like that.

Then one day in health class, or something, our teacher taught us about dreams.  After class I told her how I had these falling dreams and she told me to tell myself “I will not fall” before I go to sleep.  So with all the energy of a ten year old, or whatever I was, I began repeating to myself “I will not fall.  I will not fall.  I will not fall.” That ran more or less constantly through my head for the rest of the school day, the bus ride home, and that evening.  And – as far as I remember – in the thirty-five odd years since then I have not had one dream where I’ve fallen off a building.

Some months later, I started having dreams where I’m carrying a priceless vase down an uneven sidewalk and I’ve tripped.  And just before I and the vase hit the ground, I’d jolt myself awake.  These dreams happened less often – maybe once a month – and after a year or so they just stopped.  Looking back, I find this all hilarious, but I’m not sure how I felt after my first tripping dream.

Short story – “Memories”

“Memories”

Taking a sip of her coffee, Laura said, “So, tell me something about yourself.”

Ed shrugged.  “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” Laura looked around the coffee shop and saw a flier for a “Christmas in July” sale from some local business.  “What was the most memorable thing you ever got for Christmas as a kid?”

Ed looked at her for a few seconds, then began laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“The most memorable thing I ever got was probably the severed foot I found in my stocking one year.”

Laura set her coffee cup down before slowly saying, “Okay.”

“My dad is a big practical joker.  When I was eight, I woke up Christmas morning and went downstairs.  The rule was us kids could go through our stockings, but we weren’t allowed to touch our presents or wake our parents.  My brother and sister had stockings full of candy and little toys, but mine seemed rather empty.  I dumped it out to find a plastic severed foot; a leftover from Halloween.  It was maybe half-an-hour later that my dad got up.  I met him at the bottom of the stairs and showed him the foot.  He just said I must have been really bad for Santa to leave me that.  He then laughed and went and got me one of my presents, which was a box with all the stuff that would have been in my stocking.”

With a smile, Laura asked, “Was your several foot the best toy you ever got?”

“Not really.  I soon forgot about it until the next year when my older brother Tom – who’s as big a joker as my dad – tied a string around it and hung on the tree as a decoration.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.  Mom wasn’t too happy, but between dad and Tom I think she knew fighting it would be a lost cause.  For years afterward it was one of our tree decorations.  I think it was the first year that Joan – Tom’s now wife – spent with us that it didn’t make it up.  But it’s probably still in one of the decorations boxes up in the attic.”

“Sounds like you have an interesting family.”

“That’s a nicer way to put it.  I usually just say my family’s nuts.”

Laura had just taken a sip of coffee and almost had it come out of her nose.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  You just caught me off guard.”

Ed smiled.  “So, what was the most memorable gift you got as a kid?”

Laura thought for a moment.  “I don’t know.  I don’t think Barbies compare to a severed foot.”

***

Back in June 2013, I saw a post online of someone looking for ideas for stocking stuffers.  I understand getting a head start, but June?  I jokingly thought a good stocking stuffer would be a severed foot.  So I wrote this story, which is still online.

Around Thanksgiving of this year, I was looking over my stories to see if I had any Christmas ones.  I found this one, so decided to polish it up a big and repost it.