Thursday, May 19, 2011

"Finding Farber" a short story


In 2005, Steven Hawking, renowned theoretical physicist, proclaimed that black holes emit radiation, which he termed Hawking Radiation. These emitted particles are believed to represent energy/matter that has entered the black hole, been reduced to their elementary particles, and are now leaking back into space. Let's take this one step further. Assume an alien enters the black hole. Would it be possible to harvest the emitted particles and reconstruct the alien?

Sounds complicated, I know, but not so in my world. First you need to find the black hole. Then you need a very high-tech instrument capable of harvesting the particles the moment they leave the black hole (the real catch is not having your particle reaper sucked into the hole during the process). Then you would need to bring the harvested particles back to earth and reconstruct the alien, or if you were lucky the alien would have the know how to reconstruct himself. And all this has to be done in your life time, otherwise you don't get the credit and never publish your results, which is career suicide for an renowned astrophysicist, or any scientist for that matter. Your colleagues would think you were just plain nuts.

The tricky part is reconstructing the entire alien. It takes talent. Sometimes the alien is not entirely whole. That's precisely what happened when Banger Dunn, astrophysicist extraordinaire, found Farber's particles leaking out of a black hole. Farber might have been in bad shape, but his message to Banger shattered Banger's world, and sent Banger on a path on which there was no turning back.

"Finding Farber" can be found in Escape Velocity: The Anthology at amazon.com in print and kindle formate. Published by Geoff Nelder and Robert Blevins of Seattle Books, Escape Velocity: The Anthology, is a collection of fantastic short stories from authors around the world.

Read "Finding Farber" today and let me know what you think!