{"id":2479,"date":"2013-08-08T08:30:48","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T08:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2013-08-06T23:41:01","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T23:41:01","slug":"rayguns-over-texas-preview-matthew-bey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revolutionsf.com\/revblogs\/geekcurmudgeon\/2013\/08\/08\/rayguns-over-texas-preview-matthew-bey\/","title":{"rendered":"Rayguns Over Texas preview: Matthew Bey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cover<\/a>

Cover by Rocky Kelley<\/p><\/div>\n

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of\u00a0Rayguns Over Texas\u00a0<\/em><\/a>at\u00a0LoneStarCon 3<\/a>\u00a0(aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.<\/p>\n

Today’s selection comes from\u00a0Matthew Bey<\/a>‘s “Babylon Moon.”<\/p>\n

Banished to space following a singularity\u00a0event, a team of Rastafarian scientists\u00a0discover a malevolent force. Will the love of Jah enable them to survive the\u00a0disastrous encounter in Matthew Bey’s hard sf tale?<\/p>\n

Jah turns down the music to remind us that we are falling toward\u00a0Babylon. We have four hours in the tiny can of air, and then it will\u00a0get scary.<\/p>\n

The Babylon cloud grows within the ring of particles that used to\u00a0be Earth\u2019s moon. Haile Selassie I, through his metallic speakers, tells\u00a0us how to burn our plasma engine to match speed, to intercept.<\/p>\n

When the Babylon cloud grows to full size, it will move to a\u00a0transcription point, which we predict to be above the Babylon\u00a0complex that used to be Beijing. There the Babylon cloud will wait, for\u00a0seconds or minutes. And then, suddenly, it will be somewhere else. If\u00a0we do our job right, and if the luck of Jah be with us, we will also be\u00a0someplace else.<\/p>\n

I feed the video from the instruments to our Jah in a box. The\u00a0wires always go in, they never go out. That is the first law of keeping\u00a0Jah in the box.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdjust latitude gyroscopes three degrees negative. Four seconds\u00a0ignition.\u201d Jah speaks to us in technical Amharic. Our Bongo PeiXi complies and the vacuum shell lurches. We are slowing, we are\u00a0matching velocities, but we will hit the Babylon cloud at two hundred\u00a0kilometers per hour.<\/p>\n

I observe the Babylon cloud through the telescope, my elbows\u00a0bumping against Ngwali as I adjust the LCD image. On the visible\u00a0bands the cloud is a milky, translucent color, fading to transparency\u00a0at the edges. On the infrared it glows like a burning ember. The tonnes\u00a0and tonnes of computronium, which make it so many times faster\u00a0and smarter than I-and-I, must vent its waste heat to the vacuum of\u00a0space, which is no mean feat, even for Babylon. The computronium\u00a0must have the greatest surface area possible, or all those calories from\u00a0all those thoughts will melt it to a plasma of carbon, silicon, hydrogen,\u00a0and a pinch of trace elements. For this reason it looks like a cloud to\u00a0the naked eye.<\/p>\n

But there is something different about this Babylon cloud from all\u00a0the others I have studied in the archives. There are parts of it that are\u00a0cool. Parts of it that are dumb.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmperor Selassie?\u201d I speak to Jah in his earthly honorific. \u201cWhat\u00a0do you make of this piece of Babylon? What are those shapes inside?\u201d<\/p>\n

He pauses for a moment before answering, which scares me. They\u00a0are cousins, Jah and Babylon. If anything can overstand the motives\u00a0of Babylon it is He. \u201cThis cloud carries a payload, child,\u201d He replies.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Again He gives silence. He is unsure, and Jah is never unsure. \u201cI\u00a0do not know. Adjusting impact to avoid the anomalies. Three degrees\u00a0longitude gyroscopes. Two seconds ignition. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our vacuum shell lurches as Bongo Pei-Xi follows Jah\u2019s directions.\u00a0Even without magnification, the hazy white cloud of computronium\u00a0is all I can see before us.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrepare for impact, children.\u201d Jah is calm. But then Jah is immortal.\u00a0There be thousands of Him, installed in every vacuum shell and in\u00a0every university. Should this Jah in a box die the vacuum of space,\u00a0another of Him shall still be directing the subways of Nairobi.<\/p>\n

Ngwali clutches his straps with one hand and clutches my thigh\u00a0with the other. \u201cAre you ready, Susan?\u201d He is smiling with teeth as\u00a0white as starlight.<\/p>\n

The Babylon cloud swallows us like a river swallows a pebble.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Excerpt from\u00a0\u201cBabylon Moon\u201d \u00a9 2013 by Matthew Bey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of\u00a0Rayguns Over Texas\u00a0at\u00a0LoneStarCon 3\u00a0(aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day. Today’s selection comes from\u00a0Matthew Bey‘s “Babylon Moon.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-rayguns-over-texas"],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n