Personal Log 2: Adrian Stevens, Entry 7

This story is just for fun. Any resemblance to the staff at the space center is intentional. Any resemblance to a real space center mission is your imagination.

Aleta Clegg
Space Center Educator
Director, Digitarium.

Personal Log 2: Adrian Stevens, Entry 7

Turner fired the phaser. The bed shook as Caligula spasmed.

Harken leapt across the room, landing on the mattress with a solid thump. “Get something to tie him with!”

I scrambled from under the bunk. Turner threw himself onto the bed. The two of them wrestled Caligula. Turner fired the phaser again. Caligula growled.

“Move it, Stevens. Find us some rope, wire, anything! Now!” Harken snarled as Caligula’s flailing limbs smacked her in the face.

I tore open the closet. “Will this work?” I ripped the white t-shirt into strips. Turner’s phaser sailed across the room, propelled by Caligula’s kick.

“Hurry! Ouch!” Turner wrapped his arms around Caligula’s legs.

I wrapped strips around Caligula’s ankles, yanking it as tight as it would go. We wrapped more strips around his legs and arms, trussing him tight. Harken sat on his chest and slapped him, shouting curses.

The lights dimmed.

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“What?” Harken paused, her fist raised over Caligula’s battered face.

“Lights dimming is never good.”

“Delphi protocol initiated. Self-destruct activated. This vessel will self-destruct in thirty seconds.” The computer voice was smug.

I hauled Caligula off the bed. “We’ve got to make it to the Odyssey before the ship blows.”

“What about Vasha and Evangeline?” Turner asked.

“They initiated it. They’ll either be at the shuttle bay or dead. Help me with him.” Caligula stumbled, his ankles tied tightly together.

“Why are we taking him? I say let him die.” Harken planted her fists on her hips.

“He’s a valuable hostage. We can use him to negotiate with Del’Brugado.”

Caligula laughed, not the reaction I expected from a prisoner with a bloody nose and two black eyes.

I grabbed his thin undershirt and hauled him around to face me. “What’s so funny?”

“Destruction in twenty seconds.”

“Adrian, we don’t have time!” Turner yanked on Caligula’s arm. “Let’s go, unless you want to die.”

“Protocol override,” Caligula said.

“Self-destruct canceled.” The lights returned to normal.

“Now we have time. Talk, Caligula.” I shook him.

“Are you really so blind and ignorant? Del’Brugado is nothing but a pompous peacock who couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag. I would appreciate it if you removed your hands.” His smile faded. “Before I cut them off and feed them to you. There is another one you should fear.”

Even tied up and beaten Caligula scared me. I shoved him, hard. Turner caught him. Harken smacked him with a lamp. Caligula passed out on the floor.

Harken glared at me. “If you want him so badly, then you carry him. I’m leaving before anything else weird happens.”

The lights dimmed. All three of us swore.

“This ship is changing course. Delphi override protocol initiated.”

“Where is Vasha taking us?” I muttered.

“I don’t think it’s Vasha.” Turner pointed at the door.

Caligula’s second in command stood framed in the doorway. Armed pirates crowded behind him. He smiled. “Thank you for your assistance, Stevens is it? You saved me a lot of trouble.”

I nudged the unconscious cyborg at my feet. “We want the Odyssey and your word that we can leave in safety.”

“I don’t think so.” He fingered his rifle. “No, I think the three of you are going to be my special guests for a while. At least until your other friends surrender. They are locked in the ship’s torpedo storage bay and refuse to unlock the door. I could blast it, but that would leave us stranded if it doesn’t kill us. No, I would rather negotiate. And with you as my hostages, I mean guests, they might listen to reason.” He stepped into the room. His pirates flanked us.

I kicked Caligula. “Are you the one Caligula told us to fear?”

“He said to fear Rafael? What a nice thing to say about the man who has been trying to kill him for the last two months.” Rafael signaled his men. The picked up Caligula and herded the three of us together. “But now that I have his ship and you, I don’t need to kill him. I think I’ll let the medics have him for experimentation. I wonder how much pain a cyborg can feel.”

I traded looks with Turner. This guy was ten times creepier than Caligula, who made Del’Brugado look as harmless as my grandmother and her eyeball jello.

The lights flickered off. “Main reactor shut down initiated. Power levels dropping to minimal.”

“Crap,” we all said together.

Personal Log 2: Adrian Stevens, Entry 6

This story is just for fun. Any resemblance to the staff at the space center is intentional. Any resemblance to a real space center mission is your imagination.
Aleta Clegg
Space Center Educator / Digitarium Director

Personal Log 2: Adrian Stevens, Entry 6

Harken slammed her brush into the bucket of soapy water. “This is the thanks I get? That lying weasel. I should never have listened to Perry. She said he’d pay us well, that we’d be rich. We’d never have to take orders from anyone again. And here I am, scrubbing the deck with you two. And Perry is dead.” She wiped a tear from her face.

“Perry deserved to die. She was a traitor.” Turner slapped his brush on the floor, spattering the wall with soap bubbles.

“You know nothing!”

The guard at the end of the hall eyed us suspiciously.

“Scrub the floor or they might send us after Commander Perry.” I watched him as I scrubbed another deck plate. “We have to find a way out of here.”

“No Klingons to pick a fight with this time,” Turner whispered. “I wonder what they did with Evangeline and Vasha.”

An explosion rocked the ship. Lights turned red as alarms shrieked through the air. Our guard took off at a run. I threw my brush at the bucket.

“Looks like opportunity to me. Can you fly a shuttle?” I grabbed Harken’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” She shoved my hand away.

“Turner and I can’t fly. We need you. Look, Harken, you help us escape, we won’t tell anyone about you and Perry and your smuggling in the Odyssey.”

“Adrian.” Turner tugged my arm. “Is the Odyssey still docked?”

“I don’t know.”

“We don’t need her. Delphi Protocol, Adrian.”

“It doesn’t work, Adam.”

“If we get Vasha and Evangeline. . .”

“Right. Have fun cleaning decks, Harken.” I scrambled to my feet. Turner and I ran down the hall.

“Idiots! They’re this way!” Harken called, careful not to shout too loud.

“You’re with us, then?” I tried to glare as I followed her through Caligula’s ship.

“I get you out of here, you keep your mouth shut. And we let Perry take the blame.” Harken slid to a stop at a corner.

The three of us peered around the edge.

Caligula paced the hall, his leather coat flaring around his ankles. “What do you mean they have escaped? Find them, you imbeciles!”

The guards scattered. We backed hastily from the hall. Boots pounded behind us. Red light painted the walls in flickering lights as the ship’s power systems cycled down.

“In here.” Turner slid open a door. Harken and I crowded behind him.

“Somebody’s quarters,” Harken muttered as we stumbled through the room in the dark.

The door to the hall opened again. “I do not want to hear of failure. Is that clear?” Caligula’s voice echoed from the hall.

Harken swore under her breath as she slid into a storage locker. Turner crammed himself into a closet. I crawled under the bed.

Caligula stomped into his room. “Lights!” The emergency light glowed, casting shadows through the cabin.

I lifted the edge of his blanket to peer out.

Caligula sighed as he unfastened his leather coat. I watched in horror as he revealed his skinny torso. White skin puckered around metal implants. Caligula removed his glasses. His eyes glowed red in the dim light.

I shoved my fist in my mouth. His slight weight settled on the mattress above me. I suddenly had to go to the bathroom.

The storage locker door silently opened. Harken slid behind the couch. She signaled me. I shook my head. Three of us against a cyborg? We didn’t stand a chance. She fixed me with a fierce glare.

Caligula’s quiet snoring filled the room. Turner edged from the closet. He gripped a phaser in one hand. Harken pointed at the bed. I flattened myself to the floor as he raised the weapon, wondering if I was going to survive the next few moments.

Then, Now and the Future

Hello Troops,
On this day, July 16, America launched Apollo 11. Men were walking on the moon the summer of my eleventh birthday.

Sheeeeeez..... What's happened? I was sure by the time I celebrated my 50th birthday American would have space stations, Moon and Mars bases.

In 1968 I paid $1.25 to see the epic science fiction movie 2000: A Space Odyssey at Rapid City, South Dakota's Elks Theater. It was the glory days of our nation's Space Program. My friends and I were sure the science fiction we saw in that movie would be science fact on January 1, 2000.

This was the Space Station orbiting Earth. A fleet of PanAm Carriers transported you back and forth between the station and Earth.

A scene from the movie showing people in transit between the Space Station and the Moon.

This was the Space Station. Quite different from the one in orbit today in 2010.


What prevented the future we saw in 2000: A Space Odyssey from transpiring? The answer and its analysis would fill chapters. I guess you could say the present got in the way of the future.

My friends tell me that space exploration would explode if profit was involved. In other words, we must find a way to transform space travel from a money costly endeavour to a money making endeavour. I agree.


This picture comes from a web site advertising the areas where money could be made in space. It is possible. Space really is our last frontier. It is a place for young, new entrepreneurs (like you perhaps) seeking to make their fortune, and at the same time, expand mankind's knowledge of the universe itself.

So today, we remember the launch of Apollo 11 forty one years ago. In that same thought we congratulate the private companies at work today attemping to make the dream of 2000: A Space Odyssey real in your life time.

Mr. Williamson