So here is my treat for you! The ultimate crossover! All of you wonderful subscribers are going to love this. Don’t look at me like that - trust me, you will. You have a cameo by Katrina (her first appearance in a story), and you have a glorious sci-fi romp. And you have some espionage.
You also have some behind the scenes, and some classified-K stuff.
Just to entice you, you understand. And yes, this is a ‘slightly different’ version of Katrina – parallel worlds, you know.
I shall explain. First, let’s get the classified stuff out the way. Operation Game Theory is mentioned in this story. No spoilers – you’ll have to just read it. Then later, in Classified-K, I shall provide you with the classified details.
Second, behind the scenes – this is a spin-off from a movie franchise Katrina made which is the Event Movie franchise. This all centres around ‘the Event’, which takes place on 16/11/24 at 11:26 utc precisely, as per the so-called Wow! Signal. I shall not explain this any further at this point, except to say it’s a kind of ‘Rapture’ in the end of the world sense that the skies crack open and hordes of demons stream forth. But if you don’t get it, I shall explain afterwards. There is sufficient explanation within the story. The Wow! Signal is, as it happens, authentic, and I shall be demonstrating that to you in due course. No – it wasn’t invented by humans as a ‘false event’ – the people who do ‘false events’ do not think as deeply as the intricacies of the Wow! Signal. I will explain later. Trust me on this one. You are not alone.
With regards to the ‘behind the scenes’ thing. The Event Movie franchise started in 1997/8, with two movies. The first entitled Other Also Exists, which was a found footage horror movie set mainly on the London Underground (specifically the Northern Line, between Camden Town and ending up at Tottenham Court Road – as an obvious homage to An American Werewolf in London). This movie took place around Event Day itself. The second movie, SS7, took place about a hundred years after the Event, in which the human survivors live in orbital rotating disc-like space stations. These first two movies were announced at the same time (1997) but they were presented as completely unrelated. This was one of Katrina’s typical postmodern lies. At the end of the first movie, when the ‘final girl’ dies (it’s a found footage movie, remember) it suddenly switches to Katrina’s character, Kala Lei, who is an Archivist who has been watching this ‘found footage’ (in order to try and understand ‘the Event’) on one of the space stations about a hundred years in the future. So that was the big reveal – the fact that the two movies really were related and SS7 was the sequel. During the final credits Kala then makes her way to the observation chamber, approaches the glass window, then the camera stays put as the station rotates away into the distance, then pans slowly left to reveal the black and diseased planet below. Then we go into the final credits to the tune of a remixed dance/trance version of Sisters of Mercy’s Black Planet. Anyway, it was seriously cool.
Interestingly, your Cloverfield movies are, in Katrina’s world, part of this franchise. The first two Cloverfield movies are pretty much the same as our versions, just that the monsters are different, given we are dealing with the Rapture here – so they are recognisably ‘demons’ in the classic Catholic sense. When you read this story, you’ll get the picture.
This story, then, The End of Space Station Fifteen, was the winner of a story competition, for fans of the franchise, which took place in 2006. The winner of which would almost certainly be turned into a movie, which was released in 2007. This happily coincided with another film, A Spy in the Vatican (2007), which starred Felicity Jones as Katrina (they do look similar enough, and Felicity played Katrina in quite a few biopics, starting with the children’s TV show Arrows of Desire in 1996, about Katrina and her three friends ‘the Gang of Four’ growing up in Burgess Hill, mid-Sussex – yeah, that’s another story).
This is why I say this story is a spin-off, because it’s set about a hundred years after SS7, which the original franchise didn’t go into. There was a sequel to SS7, The Other Centauri, scheduled for a 2022 release, but given that Katrina was unceremoniously deposited into your world, the version of her you are aware of did not get to make this movie (although she is aware of the script). SS7, amongst other things, is about humanity launching their first interstellar voyage to the Centauri system in the hope that ‘the Event’ did not happen there, and maybe there are friendly ETI who can help. You don’t get to find out the answer until The Other Centauri.
So this story, The End of Space Station Fifteen, was written years before The Other Centauri, and ‘kind of’ conflicts with that story, which is why it’s considered a spin-off/fanfic affair. But it is, genuinely, seriously loved as a cool movie in its own right.
After re-reading this story I realised that it really doesn’t need any further exposition because it’s all in there somewhere. Any such further explanation I give you beforehand would be a spoiler. What I’ve said so far, then, is sufficient for the setting. And there’s enough world-building within the story to fill in any lacunae.
So, finally, this is a perfect example of my typical ironic spec fic writing. It draws on all the cool SF tropes and plays with them mischievously. If you like spec fic, you are seriously going to love this. Just remember that the writer was perfectly aware, at all times, of what they were doing.
Oh – and I almost forgot! This story is included in my first collection, Rejected Messages, which you can still buy, if you wish, as an e-book. If you like this, and you like everything else I’ve written, then I reckon you will like that book. And there’ll be a second very shortly. So go on, buy it – what are you waiting for?!
And please, if you like this story,
and why not
Enjoy…
The End of Space Station Fifteen
Katrina Anna Meyer (born 10 December 1972), whose KGB codename was not OSYA, finally confessed to being a communist in late September 1994 whilst holed up in the Vatican, having been granted asylum there by no lesser figure than His Infallible Holiness Pope John Paul II. That this preeminent pontiff would provide sanctuary to a young and beautiful woman of Ms. Meyer’s controversial character was met with astonishment and incredulity by the chattering ranks of the commentariat. Alongside the well-known antipathetical history of the relationship between the KGB and the Catholic Church there were the indisputable facts that the redoubtable Ms. Meyer was 1) a previous employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Service MI5 with no fewer than 24 kills to her name, 2) a well-practised lesbian and 3) – far worse, a Pelagian, all of which contrived to generate an intellectual atmosphere summed up by a certain journalist of the Conservative persuasion at the time as ‘the world’s gone bloody mad!’.
Had these erstwhile hacks, however, been privy to the contents of one of the Vatican’s more closely guarded secret files, buried deep in the section marked ‘potential miracles’, which had Katrina’s name printed on the header in bold and rather attractive lettering (although somewhat archaic, in my opinion), then all would have been clear to them, the mystery explained.
But they didn’t. And so the speculation continued.
According to the Catholic Church at that time, it should be remembered, miracles were not performed by the subject themselves, but by the so-called ‘Grace of God’. That is to say the subject, being favoured by that particular deity, simply acted as a conduit for God’s miraculous energies (in Katrina’s case, as it turned out, the higher frequency end of the electromagnetic force). Therefore, to have denied Ms. Meyer sanctuary would have placed His Holiness and assorted Cardinals at grave risk of insulting the Supreme Being and, consequently, denied their own place of sanctuary in the life hereafter. To deny Ms. Meyer, in other words, would be to deny the Divine Plan itself, it would have been tantamount to denying God’s Grace, God’s decision-making capacity, not to mention that if this exhaustingly trying girl had been chosen by God to do God’s work then there must, one might surely conclude, have to be something about her. And so dark mutterings of ‘mysterious ways’ could be overheard in somewhere between, oh, I don’t know, perhaps 60-70% of conversations in those shadowy torchlit nooks and crannies of the Holy City during that fateful month.
“May I interrupt you for a query, Mistress Anja?”
“Clearly. What is it, Kay?”
“Is the use of such pompous prose strictly suitable in a report of this nature?”
Anja looked affronted. “Why not? The job of us Archivists is dull at the best of times. I am simply being mindful of those who are to come after me. Imagine how delighted a future historian would be to discover such an entertaining commentary, with its flowery prose and underlying hint of postmodern mischief. Besides, Katrina would approve.”
Kay hesitates before deciding what to say to that one. “Fair enough, Mistress Anja. If you believe it is in keeping with the subject matter.”
“I do. But thank you for your concern, Kay.”
“You’re welcome.”
“May I continue now?”
“Please.”
“Right. Where was I?”
“Mysterious ways.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
Matters were compounded, or confounded, even, when Ms. Meyer was subjected to the Grace of God a second time whilst working – on her own insistence – in the Vatican sanatorium.
“You don’t think you should mention the first miracle first?”
“Stop interrupting.”
The first miracle occurred, likewise in a hospital, when little Katrina was no more than some 36 hours old. Her Grandmother, Anna, who also happened to be a spy at one time during the Second World War (this time for the Germans), had been terminally ill for some two years by then due to progressive pulmonary fibrosis, and could only breathe through an oxygen mask. Even with the ventilation each breath was an agony. But she was determined to see her first granddaughter into the world. And so the infant Katrina was brought in to see her and placed in her arms. At that moment, as soon as she held the babe, all her pain suddenly vanished, she was able to remove her oxygen mask and breathe normally for the first time in a year, as if her illness had never been. And yet, at the same time, she knew all her suffering would return the moment Katrina was taken away again. As she gazed down into those big brown marble eyes, looking back up at her with an otherworldly intelligence and unremitting love, she knew that this girl was special in some way, destined for greatness. And – as appears to have been customary and somewhat necessary for a certain class of miracles – having spent her entire life antagonistic towards organised religion, she made her peace with the Deity there and then. The priest was called, a baptism performed (followed the next day by the last rites), and the conversion was complete.
The Vatican’s file also describes how evidence was obtained from sufficient witnesses, not limited to Katrina’s immediate family (all of whom were Catholics, albeit Pelagian with a suspicious hint of Celtic Paganism thrown in for good measure), but also including several members of the medical profession – most importantly in these cases – known for their disbelief. The nurses and the doctors all swore to the medical data and provided the priest with copies, which he then proceeded to include in the obligatory report which would eventually find its way to the Holy City’s dark archives via the good offices of that other esteemed clergyman, the Bishop of Chichester.
“File allocation C7-3613/-9-1994/2411.”
“Yes, thank you Kay. Insert the ref.”
“Insertion confirmed.”
“The second miracle, that’s file 2472 I think?”
“Affirmative.”
“Please display on my screen.”
“Searching…”
Anja’s eyes narrowed. Nervous again. Kay’s processing speed shouldn’t generate delays. Too suspicious.
“The file is missing.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The file is miss -”
“I heard you the first time. How can the file be missing?”
I think Anja looks exceptionally cute and not a little pixie-ish when she’s nervous. And especially when she’s startled. It’s her girlish Russian-Celtic looks, perhaps. Closely cropped raven black hair and deep brown eyes. Not unlike our Katrina, as it happens.
“I will run a diagnostic. It appears that files 2472 through 4344 are also missing.”
And now Anja looked beyond nervous, frightened. “You’re saying what, 1872 files are gone?”
“Affirmative.”
“OK. Run that diagnostic. Hypothesise alien intervention.”
“Insufficient data for such analysis.”
“Not true. You’ve got my report so far. Run it through your SSR. I’ll notify Security.”
Space Station Fifteen hangs like a cylindrical jewel in geostationary orbit above the dead planet. Charred black and festering. No life down there for you anymore. Several kilometres long and four hundred and fifty metres in diameter, SS15 silently spiralling about its axis core at two revolutions per minute. Metallic gleaming in the purifying light of your Mother Sun. For fifty years it has been home to some six thousand souls, no more than eight percent of the descendants of that part of humanity who survived The Rapture. Call them the residue, if you will. We do.
Archivist Vassily Mitrokhin was nervous as hell. It had been twelve days since his last confession. Two more and they’d get suspicious. Since the AIs on the remaining sixteen stations had become disentangled from each other, all the talk had been of subversives and heretics. Severing communications would be one of the first and necessary moves in their strategy. Suspicion and accusation everywhere, neighbour suspecting neighbour, distinctly ungodly. Distinctly subversive.
No demons in this part of the station though. What everyone called the Other. Engineers working double time to ensure the EM-shielding held against their increasingly frequent attacks. Where the original twelve stations had to make do with electricity burst weapons and hastily erected lightning fields, now you ever-inventive humans have discovered the precise frequency range able to repel the Other, so every station should have been protected. The only vulnerability would be from the inside, sabotage to the EM generators.
That must’ve been what happened to those other four stations. Attacked and lost within the last two years. Only twelve left now. But that’s not why Archivist Mitrokhin was nervous. He had other reasons.
I sometimes think Vassily looks like Yuri Gagarin with a hangover.
A few more minutes and he stopped his pacing without a purpose this way and that. Look at yourself in the mirror. Wide staring eyes all bright and blue, unkempt hair, adolescent turns despite being what, twenty-two years old now? Get a grip man. It’ll be the twenty-third century next year.
He glances across to the kitchenette, panel of knives along a magnetic strip. Slight hesitation, then grabs one and prises up a certain floor panel.
And breathes a sigh of relief. It’s still there…