[An away team made up of Colonel Jack O’Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, the android/AI Rommie, and Dr. Rodney McKay has been dispatched to investigate a seemingly derelict freighter. On board, they discover a service android named Maia who is suspicious of our team’s intent.]
“Daniel,”says Jack, cocking his head towards the android. “You want to get in here?”
Daniel steps up to address the android: “Hi, Maia. I’m Daniel. My friends and I have boarded your ship to render assistance after picking up your distress call. So we’re only here to help. No plundering and/or pillaging.”
“And yet you are armed,”notes Maia.
“A precautionary measure for our protection,”Daniel assures her. “We had no idea what to expect when we boarded.” A beat. “I’d like to propose we work together to bring your ship’s systems back online. How does that sound?”
Maia responds: “Your heart rate has remained stable, your respiration even, and your galvanic skin response showed no spike. I detect no physiological markers of duplicity.” A pause. “Your eyes also read as sincere. And a very clear blue. I find that difficult to disregard.”
“Yeah, he gets that a lot,”notes O’Neill as McKay rolls his eyes.
“I am inclined to believe you,”Maia continues. “But your body tells me only what you believe, not what your companions intend.” Her gaze turns to Rommie: “An android keeps a record of all it witnesses. Allow me to interface with your colleague so that I can confirm what you have told me. Do that, and I will help you access the bridge and ship’s systems.”
Do you allow Maia to interface with Rommie?
YES
NO
CHOOSE!
PREVIOUSLY ON….
You and 19 others have been stranded in an amalgam universe of myriad SF realities. All 19 are sci-fi’s Best of the Best. And then there’s you, uniquely qualified given your encyclopedic knowledge garnered from your world where these characters, their technologies, and their stories are fiction, beloved TV shows you have watched time and again. Together, all 20 of you have set off on the Enterprise-D, tasked with finding a way home.
For your first mission, you’ve decided to investigate a seemingly derelict freighter broadcasting an emergency beacon. An away team and puddle jumper have been dispatched to the ghost ship, anomalous energy pulses making beaming and communications a challenge.
After parking and cloaking the puddle jumper in the freighter’s hangar, the team crosses the airless bay into the ship proper. There, they make the decision to check out the waning energy signature of a containment field en route to the bridge. But they immediately encounter a utility unit that advances on them menacingly. Rommie connects to it and relays a shut down command that causes the robot to collapse.
Further along, they encounter a sealed door and Rommie informs them that the compartment beyond is exposed to space. She suggests locking down their current section and then unsealing the door since it’s the most direct route to the bridge – and that ebbing containment field. They do so. The door slide open to reveal an immense hull breach complicating their progress. Rommie leaps over the chasm and secures a tether to the other side, allowing the rest of the team to pull themselves over. But when they attempt to open the door to the next section, they hit an impasse. The door remain locked and will not respond to their commands.
O’Neill blows the lock with C4, allowing them entry into the adjoining compartment where they discover an android in a containment field, completing its regenerative cycle. When the android awakens, it informs them it is the caretaker of this freighter, the Waldorf Astoria, and warns them off pillaging its contents.
***
Charles Sheffield
A physicist and NASA consultant whose hard SF was characterized by big ideas and rigorous science.
Georgia on My Mind (1993): This Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novelette follows a computer scientist investigating a 19th-century Analytical Engine unearthed on a New Zealand farm. A Victorian couple’s journal reveals an encounter with intelligent non-humans in the Southern Ocean, sending the narrator on a quest to locate their remote base on South Georgia Island.
The Compleat McAndrew (2000): This collection gathers t
he hard-SF adventures of brilliant physicist Arthur Morton McAndrew and ship captain Jeanie Roker, with every story hinging on mind-bending physics. Between the Strokes of Night (1985): In the wake of a near-future global catastrophe, humanity develops “S-space”—an altered met
abolic state that slows subjective time, allowing survivors to endure multi-millennial space voyages and effectively achieve immortality across deep time. Brother to Dragons (1992): Set in a near-future America wrecked by pollution, disease, and economic collapse, this Campbell Memorial Award winner follows a gifted but physically challenged orphan who claws his way up from the toxic underclass through a string of Dickensian institutions and cons.
Sonya Dorman
Known for her poetry as well as her metaphorical and experimental New Wave short fiction.
“When I Was Miss Dow” (1966): A shape-shifting alien assumes human female form to work as a research assistant, eventually falling in love in this short story exploring gender roles, identity, and what it means to belong.
“Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird” (1967): First published in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions, this short story follows a desperate woman fleeing across a post-apocalyptic landscape where cannibalism has become an accepted means of survival.
Planet Patrol (1978): Dorman’s only novel is a YA fix-up incorporating three previous published novelettes featuring Roxy Rimidon, a young cadet in the Planet Patrol.
“Splice of Life” (1966): A woman awakens in a hospital where the poor and unclaimed are kept alive with their wounds unhealed and re-inflected, in this short story that blends psychological SF and body horror.
Clark Ashton Smith
A frequent contributor to Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.
The City of the Singing Flame (1931): A writer passes through a portal into another dimension where pilgrim-creatures hurl themselves into an enormous singing flame at the heart of an alien city. Equal parts cosmic wonder and horror. Pair with its sequel, Beyond the Singing Flame.
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (1932): This claustrophobic SF/horror hybrid tells the tale of a Mars expedition that encounters parasitic alien organisms dwelling in the subterranean ruins.
The Dweller in the Gulf (1933): Earthmen sheltering from a Martian storm stumble into a cavern cult – its members blinded by the eyeless god they worship.
“Master of the Asteroid” (1932): Three members of a Martian expedition descend into paranoia and madness in this taut, psychologically intense tale of an ill-fated journey into the asteroid belt.
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