A Journey to Andromeda...

I've been imagining a fascinating experiment in human psychology.

Endurace type events have always been an obesession of mine. Long distance running. Cycling. Nordic Skiing. The idea of walking the entire coastline of Britain, waterproof clad, relishing the rain.

So, watching a cosmological Horizon on BBC4, a programme going boldly to the outer edges of my knowledge - about a five second jouney - I was inspired to imagine another such voyage.

A journey from here to the Andromeda galaxy, 2.25 million light years away. I'm making assumptions like no one has assumed before here; that perhaps the people at the British Interplanetary Society can come up with a working design that would get us there within, say, ten million years or so, that ayone would want to make such a journey, and that they could survive it.

Allocate those a variable, x,y and z. Matrix them, forget about them. It can be done. I want to put someone in a spaceship, alive and conscious the whole time, for ten million years. Face fixed forwards perhaps, contemplating the doppler shifted stars at insane velocities, Plato's cave in space.

Could you stand it, fed and watered, somehow entertained, for ten million years. If the sanest person on Earth started the journey, how far beyond the bounds of madness would they have reached after a mere ten years? Suicide could not be allowed to be an option, so restraint and feeding tubes may have to be employed. Would the brain evolve into a new lifeform in its own right? Would it discard the body, would the body discard the brain?

Would the endless dark of intergalactic space be enough to drive you mad without everything else.

If anyone could do it, I envy them. Life isn't long enough to take in these feats, and that makes me sad. I doubt I'll be around to confirm extraterrestrial intelligent life exists, and that makes me sad too.

Doctor Manhattan says it best. When we die, the Universe doesn't even notice.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 26/09/2013

STORY - What Are Hooples?

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 08/03/2013

What Are Hooples?

The warp probe sent out to Tau Ceti found the first signs of extra solar life on the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti system. The 11^th dimensional transmitter sent back instantaneous pictures of a lush, green world ripe with oceans of water and a temperate climate. The temperature was clement, and the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere was an absolute giveaway.

Life was present. But what kind of life could not be ascertained by this single rapid flyby.

Another mission was commisioned, this time with an automatic lander shaped like a bedstead with a couple of eleventh dimensional imagers upon it. Tau Ceti 2 was launched from the Geo-Synchronous ring under ion drive, until it reached beyond the orbit of mars and engaged the gravitational warping propulsion which caused the probe to surf Space Time on a series of waves. It reached the star system in barely two weeks, and sent back quantum entangled messages instantly saying it had arrived and would it be alright to deploy the lander thank you very much?

The message was returned in the affirmative, and the lander was deployed. It rode an atmsophere rich in oxygen and inonised neon that made everything glow blue-green, and settled on a small island in the middle of a purple sea of freshwater heavily laced in iodine.

Within seconds, the camera registered curious lifeforms, rounded creatures covered in thick curly brown fur, with dark black eyes showing through the upper half of the body. Short arms and legs with six fingered hands were used as with humans, and the mouth was small and “H” shaped and rather hard and horny looking, as if it was used for eating crustaceans. They regarded the camera with an unfrightened interest, and tapped out a musical rhythym on the titanium surface of the lander.

“My god!” cried one of the mission controllers. “They look like Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople!” and it was unanimously decided that our first ever stellar neighbours should be known as Hooples.

Ah the joy and hope of those naieve times. Little did we know what peril these inoffensive looking Hooples would pose to the Earth, and how devastating their first ever “tour” would prove just as soon as they mastered the eleventh dimension warping technology we had delivered to thier doorstep.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 08/03//13