Created Friday 02 November 2012
This first bit is kept verbatim ("twigs" maintained either as bracketted statements or links to now-relevatn sections) out of either nostalgia or evidence I've at least attempted to write something that nearly resembles a finished piece:
Nothing shows you how tenuous is our life—our biological life style—like winter. A—what?--23.4º tilt in a water-covered planet well in the middle of the habitable zone [Some of the first estimates of which are as old as I (really, I just looked that up on WP)] and we would never have been.
But nothing shows you how keen to survive under any conditions is life itself. And nothing shows even earthies [Townies. Those who have never been off earth.] that like Archaea. And that's just life as we know it.
He looked like a man who had been running marathons for several decades. Only a few whispy hairs got in the way of a ruddy, tan skin was stretched firmly over his head. He was tall and greyhound lean. But maybe he was born shabby: He was dressed for space, but even his undersuit somehow looked misfitting.
Now, he sat vexxed in a form-fitting, cheap plastic seat in the corner of a bleached room with linoleum floors, consciously controlling his frustration. He was associate professor Asif Walsby, PhD4[Meaning he's got four Ph.D.s. ]F[Yeah, could (and some of the less sophisticated or grammarian eccentrics do) put a 1 after this, but if it's just one, nobody does. And the 'F' stands for having created one field. A big deal, yes. His is Phototic Xenobiology: extraterrestial life that “consumes” light.]. An expert in extraplanetary fauna. The expert, in fact, having first built the modle that led to the first tangible evidence of life in the vacuum of space, then mastered the field he created. And now he was unable to launch in time to make this month's caravan. Worse, the reason was that his ship was infested with several types of space fauna that were forbidden to travel (for fear of spread)--even two that were eating away at his ships righting sensor system. His ship even had water bears.
'Well!' he had sputtered to the mechanics, in a vain attempt to save face, 'I have often had to travel with all sorts of exotic organisms. It doesn't surprise me that all that handling let a few spores slip by.' But it was really simply his sloppiness, and Hiernomus felt guilty about trying to cover it up with excuses.
(Given that life gets really, fundamentally different from in Archea which nonetheless share our earth, the only real hope there is of encountering life that in any way resembles it as we really know it (as bugs, squirrels, and dogs) is very convergent evolution. Perhaps any stable zone with enough energy present to allow swift reactions (e.g., metabolic chemical) but somehow enforces the close interactions of things (e.g., water above freezing but not scattered steam, or has a very high atmospheric pressure, or has an adherable substrate—like a planet or very dense dust cloud) can create life. But you need really stable conditions that allow a great diversity of interactions (like the triple point of water) to get life as complicated as we really know it—like tools, politics, and junk food.)
[Inspired by Haloquadratum, the pudgies need salt. They come from an extremely halophilic environment and need nearly as much salt in their bodies as water. Their cell walls are largely glass and their skin shimmers like sunlight into a pond.]
First contact succubi like attack the block
I think also the feeling of cramped. Of frustration with living in place ruined by our parents. The despairation of risking because you might loose everything anyway.
God, I'm bad at this stuff. Some good ideas, but no good story.