Prompts: More Stories From the Idea-tron
In my last entry, I noted how sometimes it seems almost too easy coming up with cool story ideas from the news items that filter through my in-box. But there are also times when it’s not so easy, times when it’s even kind of work. I know, bizarre, right? How can being fun and creative seem like work? But it can. Staring at that page, knowing you have to come up with something, even when your brain’s just not full of its usual inspirational fluffiness?
That’s when you just have to bear down and start writing and forcing your mind down all sorts of twisting, turning avenues, knowing that soon enough the right path will open up. And sure enough, eventually, it does. And so without further ado, my latest offerings:
520-Day Mars Mission Simulation: U.S. study looks at impact of stress and fatigue on performance
On June 3, a six-man international crew entered an isolation chamber in Moscow for a simulated 520-day Mars mission conducted by the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation — Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The crew has a mission schedule full of more than 90 experiments and realistic scenarios, including emergency situations, 20-minute communications delays and a trip to the martian surface.
The specialized facility consists of interconnected modules serving as the mock interplanetary spaceship, including medical and scientific research areas, living quarters, a kitchen, greenhouse and exercise area. Supported by National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), the U.S. scientific team participating in the study is monitoring the six crew members’ rest-activity cycles, performance and psychological responses to determine the extent to which sleep loss, fatigue, stress, mood changes and conflicts occur during the mission. (Read more…)
I don’t know if you heard about this, but it made some news when it happened. A six-man crew went into an isolation chamber back in June for almost a year and a half. That’s almost 18 months with no outside contact. What if you’re a member of the team assigned to monitor the crew, checking their psychological responses via audio and video feeds? Maybe everything seems normal for weeks, even months. But then one night all the monitors go dead, all contact is cut off, your screens show nothing but static.
It lasts for ten minutes. You call your superiors. By the time they arrive, the cameras are back on, revealing one of the crewmen dead. The rest of the team members are in a panic, your bosses order the modules opened, but someone has de-activated the override controls, meaning the facility will only unlock at its pre-programmed completion time, over a year from now. So the remaining five crewmen are locked in with each other, and one of them is the killer, but which one? All you can do is watch and wait, and hope he or she doesn’t strike again…
Apollo Discovery Tells a New Story
A rare bronze signet ring with the impression of the face of the Greek sun god, Apollo, has been discovered at Tel Dor, in northern Israel, by University of Haifa diggers. The precious object was found in the same area as a small gemstone with an engraved image of Alexander the Great and a rare, exquisite Hellenistic mosaic floor that were unearthed during earlier excavation seasons. All these discoveries are very likely to be linked to a nearby structure which is currently being excavated, the architectural features of which indicate that it is a grand elite structure.
The town of Dor, located between Haifa and Tel Aviv, was an important port on the Mediterranean shore from 2000 B.C.E. until 250 C.E. It has been excavated continuously for some thirty years and is in the process of being declared a National Park. (Read more…)
All these rare archeological finds around this “grand elite structure” in the town of Dor on the Israeli shore. Such a building must surely be some kind of Greek temple, I’m guessing devoted to Doros, son of Poseidon. According to Greek myth, Doros founded the city. But it’s odd that a signet ring to Apollo would be found so close by, and that’s something doubtless noted by a young archeologist working on the dig.
He also surely notices some other strange happenings, like men bearing lyre tattoos, the favored instrument of Apollo, muttering anxiously amongst themselves. Or others holding offering bowls of salt water staring vacantly at the temple dig site. Workers around the site start having mysterious accidents, while at other times, seeming strangers come out of nowhere to protect workers from deadly mishaps.
Finally late one night our archeologist unearths a key inscription in the temple describing the attempts by the followers of Doros since ancient times to resurrect him from his eon-long slumber, and their enemies, the followers of Apollo, who have sought to thwart them. Our young hero realizes that this unearthed temple is at the center of a supernatural feud, and according to the inscription, another day’s digging may unearch the son of the sea god himself.
A team of McGill chemists have discovered that a technique known as photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy could be used to identify the composition of pigments used in art work that is decades or even centuries old. Pigments give artist’s materials color, and they emit sounds when light is shone on them.
Photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy is based on Alexander Graham Bell’s 1880 discovery that showed solids could emit sounds when exposed to sunlight, infrared radiation or ultraviolet radiation. Advances in mathematics and computers have enabled chemists to apply the phenomenon to various materials, but the McGill team is the first to use it to analyze typical inorganic pigments that most artists use.
The researchers have classified 12 historically prominent pigments by the infrared spectra they exhibit – i.e., the range of noises they produce – and they hope the technique will be used to establish a pigment database. (Read more…)
Okay, pigments can emit sound when light hits them? I absolutely did not know that. How wild is that? I can imagine paintings that sing in accord with their subject matter. The Screamer actually screaming. I find it especially interesting that the 12 most prominent pigments have been classified by the noises they produce in the infrared spectra. That almost sounds like a code, something that perhaps a very astute criminal scientist could make use of.
For instance, what if a local inspector notices a rash of art forgeries make their way into various exclusive auctions? Maybe they’re all bought by a single rich buyer with black market connections. With the aid of a helpful art curator, the inspector traces the forgeries to galleries in third world countries all over Eastern Europe. He tracks a few of them down and confiscates some of the paintings and the two pour over them, trying to decipher what the forgeries all have in common. Finally, under infrared light aimed at specific areas, the paintings emit a series of tonal sounds. The curator recognizes them as musical notes.
The inspector writes them down, recognizing it as some code, but it isn’t until he shows the note sequences to a scientist friend that he understands the dark truth. The fragment is part of a genetic code to a new super virus. He realizes that all someone has to do is travel to the galleries with an infrared light pen, record the musical notes, string them all together, and use a genetic sequencer to generate the virus from the assembled code. Can the inspector and the curator stop the mad scheme in time?
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So there you have it, my latest batch of ready made story ideas for you, fresh out of the oven. Perhaps you can use some small germ in a concoction of your very own? But if you need to put a little more work into it, don’t fret. Creativity may not always come easy, but it sure beats the alternative—not writing.
-Jason Kahn
Mad Scribblings From the Edge
The Dark InSpectre
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Authors: Jason Kahn. Form: Column. Length: 1500 words. Editor who accepted this story: Previous Editors.
Author Bio
A medical editor by day, Jason Kahn lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. His stories have appeared in Baen’s Universe, Damnation Books, Something Wicked, and numerous anthologies. His hobbies include rooting for his University of Michigan Wolverines and chasing after two mischievous gnomes who claim to be his children.
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