eggo

This is a return to a hard scifi piece I wrote a while ago. A total re-write was called for.Hopefully a bit smoother.

Most of the general populace thought the aliens would arrive in polished silvery dishes. And that after arriving the Green fish-eyed aliens would then proceed to feast on human brains. They were very wrong.

We think they came into our world on the back of Perseid Meteor showers, fluttering down like snow on a clear December day and melting into the landscape. They were peculiar creatures about the size of a pencil tip with a strange brownish red color.

Scientists say the solar system they had come from was a rocky barren waste where they had reached as far on their evolutionary scale as they ever were going to. Never really quite grasping that elusive spark that enables sentience, they fall somewhere in intelligence between a cricket and a cow. Their cells are comprised of a crystalline structure being unique to any species and to this day have scientists baffled. Some scientists still argue the fact that they are alive. As long as it moves and eats, that’s enough proof for me. The worms diet was really their only conflict with humanity, otherwise we might have never known they were here.

The first man to discover their existence was a steel worker in upstate New York, close to where the aliens made landfall. While inspecting the I-beams his crew had made the day before, he noticed that they were curiously grooved. The grooves looked as if a two-ton cat with metal claws had used the I-beam for a scratching post. He scratched his head and called over the foreman who hadn’t seen anything like it before either. The foreman rubbed his fingers in the grooves and came up with a black substance that looked like graphite.

“ Hmm,” he said staring at his fingers, “ carbon.”

First I should explain how steel is made. In order to make steel, you heat iron ore in a blast furnace to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit removing the “slag” or waste products as you go. A blast furnace uses a fluxing agent of many types and injects oxygen into the ore to create pig iron, the raw material from which all iron is made. The pig iron after prolonged heating and dissipation of carbon refine it until end result is steel.

The loosely covalent bonds of the iron make it an excellent element to form alloys. Iron is combined with manganese, silicon, or chromium to form ferroalloys. They give us stainless and tool steels from which we make tools, power driven machinery gears and bearings, because of their extra hard properties. But the vast majority of steel is carbon steel. Everything from car axles to building materials, from bobby pins to roller skates is made with carbon steel.

After a plane crash in Cedarville, Ohio, the FAA (Federal Aeronautics Administration) called a metallurgist by the name of Edward Mueller to the study the reason for the strange metal fatigue that caused the plane‘s failure . After spending 10 minutes with a microscope, he discovered the aliens chomping away on the scrap metal that was brought in from the crash site; that’s where they got the name “ Mueller’s Maggots”.

The rest of the government was called immediately and upon their arrival tried to keep the whole thing under wraps. This failed miserably as machines were breaking down a record pace.

A family in Maine was rescued in the nick time, as a steel cable on the gondola they were riding in to the top of Mount Abram taking failed.

Ships docked in Boston harbor started springing mysterious leaks. The waterway was filled with flotsam and jetsam from those unable to keep afloat.

In New York City, the subway was brought to a standstill as the wheels on subway cars failed one after another.

That was when the call went out. The government released the information about the metal-eating aliens and called upon the scientific community once again to pull humanity’s collective ass out of the fire. They tried heat, acid, cold, humidity and everything from cyclotron bombardment to Mr. Clean and suffered failure after failure.

I raged along with the rest of humanity when they closed the Golden Gate Bridge. I cried when it finally gave it’s last groan like a wounded dinosaur and slid into the bay. Air traffic was halted and cars were abandoned as they failed.

Then the buildings started to crumble. The Sears building, the Empire State, the Prudential; one by one reduced to rubble as the rebar and the I-beams within them was consumed. The major cities became more vacant everyday. People were scared of the tottering giants as they rotted from the inside out.

One by one the machines disappeared and were replaced by a humans. Vendors replaced vending machines, bowling alleys rehired pin boys and people adapted the best they could. Strangely enough the third world countries were affected the least. Those without dependency on machinery got along well enough without them.

Transportation was handled readily enough with livestock and rickshaws made a big comeback, but the main problem was communication. That’s where I come into the story; I came up with the idea to use old vacuum tube technology for radios. It was good enough for your dad, so why not?

My name is Gill Bennett; I am an applied technology expert who teaches at Cal Berkeley. It was my job to coordinate the results of metallurgists into some sort usable technology. I was called into Washington as I was at home in Virginia when the airplanes were grounded. Some clerk in the pentagon actually had a working card file of personnel and I was recruited.

Some metal, we were told made it through all right. Silver for one, used for soldering circuit boards and copper which was used for most power and phone lines and some aluminum alloys. The maggots didn’t like the taste apparently, so we set up crude telegraphs throughout the country.

But, that wasn’t why I was called in. I was called in to see why one lady stood unaffected by the fall of every piece of steel we had and use that in technology.

That lady was the Statue of Liberty. She stood out on Ellis Island holding her torch high while the buildings of New York crumbled like sand castles before the incoming tide.

The Statue of Liberty is a massive copper structure on a steel frame. The copper is adhered to the skeletal frame that gives it rigidity. The steel frame made by Gustave Eiffel (the man who made the tower) stood within the great lady totally unaffected by the blight of the worms.

I was sitting in one day on a meeting between the scientists and the metallurgists.

“ I tell you it’s the iron!” Vanderberg yelled at the daily round table meeting.

“ They have tested the iron and found nothing unusual,” Gillis from UCLA replied.

“ Paris called yesterday on the short wave and said that the Eiffel Tower fell last week. The people of France are in shock,” Clark from MIT said, “ You can’t tell me Eiffel did something to this iron he wouldn‘t have done to his tower.”

“ I guess Gustave Eiffel holds no secrets in the grave to save us,” Gillis said.

“ At least Mueller’s Maggots don’t like the raw ore. Our planet would be hollow in a week,” Clark said.

“ Perhaps the answer is in the copper?” I asked.

“ We have tried copper you fool. We have coated, anodized and injected copper into the ore before refinement and the worms just eat around it,” Vanderberg said “ They eat the metal on the molecular level by releasing the covalent bonds.”

“ Not any copper,” I said “ That copper! In the Lady herself.”

One by one the scientists looked at me and then got to work. They smelted pig iron and instead of just injecting air in the blast furnace, they used copper from the Lady Liberty herself as the flux. The refined product when cooled was presented to the creatures. They turned their noses up and ran the other way.

I sat in General Grimes of the joint chief’s of staff in his office ten hours after the results came in.

“Gill, I need you to get some of this copper ore that the Statue of Liberty is made out of back here to the States. We can’t very well boil down the old lady to make more, can we?”

“ I would love to General, but I have no idea where it came from.”

“ We know that already. It came from Norwegian copper mines at Visnes, a community situated on the island of Karmøy on the west coast. The copper mines are defunct, so you’ll have to figure a way to get the goods out of the ground.”

“ Without steel?”

“ Without steel. Once we have the initial load we can make steel resistant to the maggots, then we’ll be able to go back and get more. Perhaps we can figure out why this copper is different.”

“ Any thoughts of what I am suppose to do for a ship to haul this back?”

“ This is a list of the Tall Ships,” he handed me a page “ see if someone wants to lend you one for a few weeks.”

“ So you want me to borrow a four-masted wooden ore ship, go to Norway, where you want me to mine ore without shovels, fill a boat with 50 tons of ore and sail back when I am done.”

“ Got it in one. You college guys sure are smart. Applied technology is your bailiwick.”

And so here I am. I hired on a grizzled captain from the Coast Guard Academy who has been sailing for fifty years. The ship will be ready in two weeks and I am still looking for just the right crewmembers.

Do you have any sailing experience?

xxndnromeoxx

After reading this, my mind is somewhat baffled, I wonder where you got this idea from? It almost seems as if you really were in the future with such an incident. It seemed more like a report for some reason mixed with a lecture than a story, I believe it had to do with the explenations included with it. Then returning back to the story once you pass the part about the Empire State Building. Weirdly, I liked this piece! But one thing I was not sure of is if this part was necessary, well I mean at this length

I know it was necessary but I was wondering if maybe it would be a good idea to make it concise for the sake of keeping interest in the readers attention? After the first paragraph of explaining, I felt unsure as to whether or not I should continue. It is nothing against the way it was explained, which I thought to be very informative for the story, but some parts... I wasn't sure if it needed. I guess It's just for the sacrfice of the readers continual interest maybe . Of course, this is just a unsure opinion.

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semtecks

ahh, i remember this one. Mueller's maggot's, i think it was called before. But it reads much smoother now. I'm glad you worked on this, eggo. It's a really good concept.

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eggo

Hey 4X,


After reading sci-fi for the last thirty years, this is something that creates itself. Hard sci-fi is meant to inform as well as entertain. Take here for instance,

I had to condense a thousand years of metalurgy into two parargraphs.( right now there is an engineer reading this, ready to pull out their hair)
Sci-fi as written by the masters, always taught you something or changed your preception of thinking. I think more of them used it as a vehicle for teaching than anything.

I chose an oraratory as the method of writing this one to keep it within a short story format.

So, think of it this way 4X, if someone was to ask you tommorrow how iron was made, what would you say?

Thanks for reading.

Hey Semtecks,

The first version was so rough it seemed like graffitti. Thanks for the re-read.

xxndnromeoxx

Thank you for explaining that, it makes alot more sense now, especially not knowing background of sci-fi itself . And the last question made clear sense of what you were trying to say. I enjoyed reading your story, thanks for the opportunity.

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My own style of writting, free of rules which restrain the soul of what it means to say. Break free and express...

bobothegoat

I liked this in general, though I felt some of the information was too blatantly given. I almost wanted to skip it.

For some reason, it didn't feel concluded. It seemed more like a beginning to something longer. As I was getting through the ending dialouge , I was thinking, He's not going to be able to get to the copper ore before the story ends, is he?

I was right.

Anyway, this was an otherwise great piece. I enjoyed the details you gave in this piece and found the idea compelling and believable. Nice work.

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Bobo the Goat

eggo

Hey X-man,

I'm glad I was able to shed a bit of light on the subject. Most of the Masters can make your learn something and still keep.

Hi Bobo,

It wasn't concluded on purpose, because the story is an allegory. Must be a weak one at that. In most cases learning is boring.The main aim was to take a supposition and relay what would happen.

If we lost steel would we revert to barbarism? How dependent have we become on technology?

Sometimes a story without an ending is a story that never ends. Leaving your reader in the dark is one way to make them look for the light switch.

Enough of my tired catch phrases.

Thanks for reading.

gohn67

Hey Eggo,
Jeez, these reply boxes are small.

Anyways I enjoyed this, more than I did the last time. I had no idea it was an allegory the first time. And when I read it trying to figure out the allegory it made it so much more interesting.

I love the use of facts.

I liked the use of the statue of liberty. What I connected it to was as symbol that the human race was going to keep living despite the worms. They weren't just going to lay down and day. Maybe the reason why the worms are repelled by the copper from the statue of liberty.

One of things I wished you elaborated more on is how the people reacted. I think that's important.

I don't like the use of silvery in this sentence. It doesn't fit with the more scientific style of this story.

Great simile

Here a few small grammaticals I saw

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eggo

Hey Gohn,

just hit the go advanced button on the bottom and the box is plenty big.

I don't like the opening either. Thanks for confirming my belief.

Got it in one.

Thanks for catching the grammaticals. I went through this a couple of times with a hard copy and thought i got them all.

The more I read this, the more I think that this needs to be novella length.

Thanks as always for the input Gohn.

Chris Miller

For me, the best part of this piece is the research and the concept. I like a story that teaches me something, anything.

The weakest aspect of this story is the tense and voice in which it is "told." It is told as though it is a long done deal. This kills suspense. Just as an experiment you might try writing it in the simple past, or even the present tense.

For (weak) example:
"Rust snowed down on...
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing...

Let the reader experience the events instead of just hearing “about” them.

The ending sort of hangs or splats or whatever. Like there should be more?

The POV is sort of all over the map. It starts in the third person. Then, much later, jumps abruptly into the 1st person, and finally finishes in the 2nd person. I would be inclined to adopt one and then stick to it.

Very nice.

A little vague. "peculair" "about" "strange" needs more specific description.
"milli-pedal, exoskeletal creatures the color of rust" for example.

worm's

Vague to lazy. Always be as specific as possible.

were

a=in

nick of time
Strike “taking”
Also, here is a good example of telling instead of showing. I realize this is a short, but some vicarious enjoyment of this event would be nice.

For (bad) example:
"Jack and Jill Jones and their four children were enjoying the vista of Mt. A when a screeching..."

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Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html

eggo

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the crit. I think that I should strip the facts out of this one and throw the rest in the dumpster. It's a good story and will prob do much better with a longer format. I value your opinion and realize with the feedback I had on this one its not working out in its present state. There is too much fundementally wrong to save.

I can always use this as a plot map for the novella.

Thanks for taking the time everyone to look at this.

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Chris Miller

Hey, don't take my opinion (of the moment) too seriously. There is a lot worth salvaging in this. Ideas are by far the hardest (and most important) thing to come up with when it comes to story writing. The rest is technique.

This story reminds me of the first one I ever posted here. I loved that story. But it got soundly panned because I used a passive voice. People said it read like a prologue; that it was not telling a story, but telling about a story.

But I still like it. Rules are made to be broken.

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the fairwriting blogs

Barcelona Review story: http://www.barcelonareview.com/64/e_cm.html