Prompts: Space Bubbles and Ancient Hotties
From the fantastical to the mundane, everything is fair game when it comes to searching for inspiration for story ideas. You just have to always be on the lookout. Constant vigilance! As a well-known curmudgeonly wizard is known to say. So when you see a story about bubbles at the edge of the solar system, or an excavation of an ancient city, or even a college graduation, that Aha! moment should never fail to kick in. Here are a few examples of what I mean, pulled from actual news items:
NASA Probes Suggest Magnetic Bubbles Reside At Solar System Edge
Observations from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, humanity’s farthest deep space sentinels, suggest the edge of our solar system may not be smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles.
While using a new computer model to analyze Voyager data, scientists found the sun’s distant magnetic field is made up of bubbles approximately 100 million miles wide. The bubbles are created when magnetic field lines reorganize. The findings are described in the June 9 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
Like Earth, our sun has a magnetic field with a north pole and a south pole. “The sun’s magnetic field extends all the way to the edge of the solar system,” said astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University. “Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina’s skirt. Far, far away from the sun, where the Voyagers are, the folds of the skirt bunch up.” Investigators are studying more information and hoping to find signatures of the bubbles in the Voyager magnetic field data. (Read more…)
A hundred million miles? These bubbles are a bit bigger than the ones in my bathtub, that’s fo’ shizzle. Apparently, these mega-magneto-bubbles are important in determining how cosmic rays enter the solar system. As such, it’s not hard to imagine in a few hundred years when manned interplanetary science expeditions are routine, that a spacecraft and crew will be dispatched to study them.
The expedition is made all the more important as strange, low-level radiation emissions are detected emanating from a few of the bubbles. Nearing one of them, our team is awestruck at the sheer size, as large as a planet. They try to analyze the signal coming from one, taking readings all over the electromagnetic spectrum.
But no luck, until one of them, with a background in zoobiology, stumbles upon the answer. Fooling around one night, she speeds up the signal wavelengths a millionfold and runs it through an acoustic translator. What she hears astonishes her, a sound not unlike a steady heartbeat. That is when the team discovers the terrible truth, these bubbles are not merely magnetic phenomena, they are eggs, huge, monstrous eggs. And they are close to hatching…
Research Uncovers Ancient Mycenaean Fortress
A recent find by a University of Cincinnati archeologist suggests an ancient Mycenaean city was well protected from outside threats. Since 2001, UC’s Gisela Walberg, professor of classics, has worked in modern Cyprus to uncover the ancient city of Bamboula, a Bronze Age city that was an important trading center for the Middle East, Egypt and Greece.
Bamboula, a harbor town that flourished between the 13th through the 11th century B.C., sits along the southwestern coast of Cyprus. The area thrived in part because the overshadowing Troodos Mountains contained copper, and the river below was used to transport the mined materials. Recent research at the site revealed the remnants of a Late Bronze Age (1500-750 B.C.) fortress.
“It’s quite clear that it is a fortress because of the widths and strengths of the walls. No house wall from that period would have that strength,” she said. Remains of stairs were also found leading up to a destroyed circular tower-like structure, which would have been convenient to look out over the area. According to Walberg, the staircase seems to have been broken in a violent catastrophe, which throws light on the early Late Bronze Age history in Cyprus, a period of which little is known but characterized by major social upheaval and cemeteries containing what a number of scholars have identified as mass burials. (Read more…)
A Bronze Age fortress. Cool. But what was it protecting? And what was the violent catastrophe that caused the mass burials? No doubt Professor Walberg asks herself these same questions as she leads the excavation. As the dig team arrives at the center of the town, perhaps they find the remains of an ancient temple, with a hidden basement sealed for millennia. Able to pry their way inside, they find an outer chamber filled with the dust of old bones and the moldering clothing of hundreds of people. Against the far wall is a door of stout copper that bears a long inscription as well as the marks of numerous swords and hammers attempting to gain entry.
Walberg has her team attempt to open the doors while the inscription, dulled after all this time, is translated. It is the myth of Pygmalion, who, she recalls, was reputed to live in Cyprus. The story tells how he prayed to Venus to bring his sculpture of a beautiful woman to life, and how the goddess granted his wish and they married with her blessing. Walberg learns that the walled fortress was built around his home, and the temple was in essence a shrine to the talented sculptor. But then she learns parts of the story that are new to her. Apparently, Pygmalion made several other sculptures of beautiful women, all as breathtaking in their own way as his love. So exquisite were these that they had to be put away, as men from far and near came to worship them and pray to Venus to bring them to life to become their wives.
The statues supposedly had magical powers, drawing men from all over the island and beyond. And so the walls were built to keep them out. But they came in droves, eventually overrunning the city and demanding access to the sculptures, which seemed to cry out to them, casting their seductive spell. In a final attempt to force their way inside, the invading men put the whole city to the torch, destroying everything, leading to the catastrophe and mass graves. As Walberg finishes reading the story, the doors are cracked open. Inside are 3 statues white as pure snow. She notices the men in her team suddenly drop their tools, their eyes going blank in adoration as they forget all else and stagger haltingly toward the marble visions. Faintly, she hears something like a longing sigh come from the statues, and wonders what she has released…
Six Times Great Granddaugther of Moravian College’s founder Countess Benigna Graduates
On May 4, 1742, when Countess Benigna, daughter of the Moravian leader Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, founded the first boarding school for young women in the thirteen original colonies, she couldn’t have imaged that her great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter M. Blair Gericke would graduate 269 years later from the institution the boarding school would become—Moravian College. Gericke, a direct descendant of Benigna and daughter of Rt. Rev. M. Blair Couch ’78, an ordained pastor and bishop in the Moravian Church, graduated with a B.S. degree in Nursing on Saturday, May 14, 2011.
Marian Blair Gericke is a direct descendant of the Countess Benigna von Watteville. Benigna’s founding of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in 1742 is counted as its founding date by Moravian College. Her mother Rt. Rev. M. Blair Couch ’78 serves as a teaching associate for Moravian Theological Seminary. In all, more than a dozen members of Couch’s family have attended Moravian. A bequest in 2008 from Gericke’s great uncle Charles D. Couch is the largest single gift in the College and Seminary’s history.
Tracing its founding to 1742, Moravian is recognized as America’s sixth-oldest college. (Read more…)
Marian Gericke is a direct descendant of the founder of Moravian College, and her family has been involved in the institution literally for centuries. What a fascinating story. Doubtless a young freshman thinking of majoring in history thinks so, too, and that is why she asks Marian if she can write a class paper on her and her family. After Marian reluctantly agrees, our young history student unearths some old, black and white pictures of the original Countess Benigna. She notices that they bear a striking resemblance to Marian.
Brushing it off as just a coincidence, the student then discovers pictures of Benigna’s heirs who have passed through Moravian over the years. They all look like Marian. After being confronted with the photos, Marian tells the student the terrible truth, how a vessel is chosen every four years to house Countess Benigna’s soul, how she was cursed by the original Count Nicholas, really a powerful warlock, that so long as Moravian exists, she must forever inhabit its halls.
So she doesn’t just look like the Countess, she is the Countess, at least until she graduates. But Marian is earning her degree, it is time for another to take her place. That is when Marian gives a meaningful look to our young history student, who suddenly finds herself strangely unable to move from her seat. Relax, she is told, she’ll only have to give up control of her body for the next four years. There will only be a moment’s discomfort, and then you’ll feel just fine…
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You see? The makings of cool stories are all around you. You don’t even have to look that hard. But you do have to look. Keep 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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