Frantic Stares of Space Fish

With a blip and a hum, the monitors sprang to life. A bright white light blindingly shone through, for exactly 17 seconds. Then, a darkened display with old-fashioned numeric digits appearing in sequence.

Three different colors: white, green, and blue. Three different digits: 0, 1… and 2.

Seemingly random squares appeared around seemingly random digits, randomly.

The display scrolled down rapidly as the digits kept pouring in.

After two dozen seconds, it went black again. A moment of complete darkness around the chamber.

Then the insignia for the encrypted home page beamed in, suspended 2 feet in front and 2 feet above the screens. It hovered there in isolation.

Five to ten minutes later, the whoosh of a door cut through the silence. H.R. and K.C. entered.

“Ok next time, my friend,” K.C. was saying. The other man laughed in appreciation.

They nodded to each other. Each put a fist on a shoulder, bowed heads… and swung elbows towards each other for collision. As soon as they hit, the arms swung back open and they maneuvered them around in an arc to return to the middle, and slam into a firm handshake.

H.R. shook eagerly and brought his other hand on top to squeeze them harder together.

“Gar-Ha, my friend!” he declared.

“Gar-Ha!” K.C. greeted back.

They dropped hands and approached the holographic image. They stood next to it on both sides, one facing the north and the other south.

“Another day,” H.R. said. “Here goes nothing.” The two put their right hands into the insignia and spoke their separate authorization codes simultaneously.

The insignia glowed green, then quickly expanded. It took over the whole chamber, bathing the walls in a pixelated emerald glow.

“Welcome back, gentlemen,” the cheery computer voice said. They lowered arms and jumped to salute. “At ease.” They returned to normal stance and turned toward the same direction. “It is 08:03 hours, which makes you late… again.” They gulped and glanced at each other. “But no matter, as it’s our lucky day 1,127.”

“Lucky?” K.C. repeated. They glanced at each other other again with bated breath. “Does that mean…?”

“Congratulations, officers!” she said. Their mouths fell open and they let out a yell of excitement. “I am pleased to announce that our project was a success. We’ve finally done it!!”

The men screamed, first towards the computer, and then to each other. They sprang into a hug. They grabbed arms and jumped around, shouting as loud as they could in celebration.

“Wait,” H.R. said after a moment. “Does that mean…?”

“Yes it does,” the computer answered proudly. “You can finally get the classified briefing on this project you spent so long to make possible.” Then men cheered. “And I have a special guest to introduce you to.”

“Uhh… what?” H.R. asked.

“Our successful completion of the project triggered a visit from an interactive holographic messenger.” The men glanced at each other apprehensively.

A ghostly figure appeared in front of them. It slowly pixelated and took form. The image solidified into an elegant older woman with salt and pepper hair.

She was dressed in a magenta uniform with captain’s stars on the shoulders and a sash of medals draped from left hip to right shoulder.

“Greetings, agents!” she said to them. Agents? The men glanced at each other in confusion. “If I am here, it means you finally completed the prototype for the Pisces Mobile Advanced Fleet. I’m a holographic projection of the founder of this initiative — A.Z. Or you might know her by her civilian name: Azalea Jetso.”

“Wait…” H.R. said. “Wait, uh… Jetso? Like… really! Grandma Jetso?!”

“What?!” K.C. exclaimed. “No way! Gramma J? We… we thought she was just a story.”

“Is that how they remember me?” the woman asked. “Well… her. I can assure you she was real. She started this endeavor all the way back in the ancient Earth year of 1997. And eventually she constructed me from all her memories and personality attributes so she may still greet the completion team one day.”

“Wait. So you’re really… you’re really…” K.C. sputtered.

“You’re really her?” H.R. finished.

“As close as I can be, yes,” the woman answered. “On behalf of the real Azalea Jetso, I want to say how proud I am to meet you!”

***

The reddish-gold New Mexico light drifed in through the curtains on an afternoon breeze. The calmness emanated through the Earth-toned home. There were cactus and ivy all around the the that brought life to the pale wood and granite.

A young woman sat at the living room table with a cup of coffee, pouring over her advanced physics book. In the entryway, the front door clicked open.

“Hi Azzie,” a professional-aged man said as he stepped in through the front door. She turned and looked up with a smile.

“Benny!” she replied. She got up and ran over to give him a hug.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Oh, about the same,” he said. “How’s your super top-secret job going?”

“Oh, you know…” she chuckled. “Still super top-secret.” He chuckled and patted her shoulder. She walked back to the table and he went toward the kitchen. He turned around right before the doorway.

“How about I have Winston over tomorrow night?” he asked.

“Oh, absolutely!” she said. “That’d be lovely.” He nodded happily. “I hope he feels comfortable coming over. He can any time, ok?”

“Thank you, sis,” he said, putting his hand on hers.

Everything went blurry. His last words hung on the air, echoing in a fuzzy, haunting loop. A haze came through as the light around got brighter and brighter.

“Hello?” a voice cut in. “Hello? Did you hear what I said?” The scene had changed completely. She suddenly remembered who she was… and what she had been doing.

Two young men in uniform were standing in front of her in an a highly advanced molecular laboratory.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” she said. “I must have been pulled into one of her memories.” K.C. and H.R. glanced at each other in alarm.

“One of Grandma Jetso’s memories?” H.R. asked. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Her name was Azalea,” she replied. “And yes, once in a while. I just have to remind myself I’m not human. ‘I’m not human, I’m hologram.’ See. I just repeat that about 20 times, and I’m back on track. The two men glanced at each other again and shrugged.

“Ok,” H.R. said. “Well, as I was saying… we managed to complete your design using an organic polymer composite and bio-synthetic nano-robots to simulate all functions and stimulate the tissue with targeted electrochemical impulses.”

“Impressive!” she said. “I deduced something like that would be possible. Just never had the capacity.”

“Awesome,” K.C. said. “Well… if you just keep your eyes on the low-gravity compression chamber in front of us, I will demonstrate.” He keyed in a series of commands into the control panel.

A sharp click and a loud hiss echoed through the room. There was a flash on the other side of the glass. A moment later, something resembling a flounder fluttered up from below.

Instead of the classic white-ish yellow, it was a translucent purple. She gasped as it sprung up and began swimming around. Well… swimming through air.

“Wow,” she said, stepping forward for a closer look. “That’s almost exactly how I envisioned it! It doesn’t light up with the each internal pivot of motion, though.”

“Yes,” H.R. said. “We eliminated the need for that by spreading the electrical reaction through one hundred smaller stimulation nodules. No none of the electrical activity is visible.”

“Ah, well… fascinating.”

“There are thousands of practical applications we’ve determined,” K.C. said. “We can even change their size, make them more malleable, or turn them fully transparent for covert operations.”

“In my time, it was robotic birds we were developing. But, as I proposed to our board, I knew picean models would be even more effective.”

“Well, you were right.” H.R. said with a grin. “I’m glad they listened.” She smiled.

“Thank you, H.R.,” she said warmly.

“Yup,” K.C. said. “So we’ll have a whole fleet of the Space Fish 5,000 flying around.”

“Oh, no,” she said, stepping back. “Tell me we’re not calling it that.”

“What’s wrong with that?” H.R. asked.

“Seriously?!” she demanded. “I did not push through, bring myself up from a small-town nobody — work harder than anyone — became the first woman in every scientific endeavor I studied— push myself day in, day out for decades… to develop ‘Space Fish.’”

“I dunno,” K.C. said. “Sounds like a good legacy to me.”

“No, no!” she protested. “Didn’t you hear me before? It’s the Pisces Mobile Advanced Fleet. You can call it PMAT.”

“Or just Space Fish,” K.C. said. She groaned and turned away. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to meet her future heroes.