Science Fiction Story: The Hackbolt Fractal

Launch day had almost arrived and Professor Hackbolt was working laboriously to finish the programming of his spacecraft. He sat in his office, alternately running fractal programs for leisure while testing and debugging the rocket engine equation programs for his spaceship. His white lab coat, which he wore constantly, was pristinely pressed. His large nose with two moles and his tousled gray hair and his left eye shooting out to the side and his thick glasses provided him with an ambiance of intensity most people didn't dare disturb.

Professor Hackbolt began his own project shortly after NASA announced they were initiating a mission to put a man in orbit around Jupiter. He immediately signed up, but he was turned down with no explanation given. Only a comment that he should enjoy his retirement.

He had been retired for over seven years now, but had thought his qualifications would allow him to be a part of any space exploration mission in the world: He held numerous patents in rocket technology and aeronautics, had been on the research staff of a number of previous (although top secret and obscure) deep space explorations, and had even made major contributions to other scientific fields, the most significant of which being fractal mathematics (elegant geometrical self-similar structures). He assumed that NASA's board of directors denied him for the Jupiter mission because of his age, 67. But that wasn't the reason. They denied him because of his overwhelming obsession with fractals.

His obsession began five years before. One morning while working on the Ras Algethi space-probe mission - making calculations and writing programs - he saw a copy of a book on fractals lying on his assistant's desk. He glanced through it, not expecting to find anything interesting. But after only a few pages of scrutinizing the dazzling images and explanations, it was as if a lightning storm had torched his brain cells. He asked the assistant for his permission to borrow the book. He took it home and pored over the text and pictures for three days straight. Then he wrote programs to produce the fractals and immersed himself in the bewitching worlds of Cantor sets and Sierpinski carpets.

The next morning he quit the research staff of Ras Algethi, stopping all rocket science activities for two years, to discover what is now called in the fractal world as the Hackbolt Lantern. He considered this behavior to be perfectly normal. He saw himself as pursuing something important and ferociously intriguing. He didn't realize his colleagues would hold his fractal interests against him in the long run.

And now, after being denied for the Jupiter mission three times, he simply decided that he and his assistant, Leftwich, would do all the research necessary to build their own ship, while inventing a machine to produce an antigravity field (since the gravity on Jupiter is roughly 250 times that of Earth), and then Hackbolt would man the ship himself and land it on Jupiter. Easy. Nothing to it.

When he wasn't working like a disgruntled demon, Professor Hackbolt would daydream about being the first man to ever set foot on Jupiter with his antigravity machine strapped to his back; and how he would collect a few samples of various materials and then return to Earth a hero. After the mission was complete, Hackbolt was confident he would win a Nobel Prize.

So, Professor Hackbolt, his wife, and Leftwich, all moved to New Mexico - somewhere between Portales and Roswell - and set up a clandestine research facility to build their spacecraft. Hackbolt was extremely wealthy from his numerous patents and therefore able to fund the project himself.

But Mrs. Hackbolt did not approve of his proposed Jupiter mission.

And she had arguments with her husband.

Vicious arguments.

She would place both hands on her wide hips and scream with her white bangs falling down into her eyes. "You can't go to Jupiter, you fool! You're going to kill yourself!"

Hackbolt, however, was a rational man; and slightly filled with hubris. He didn't scream. He would simply wrinkle his moley nose and pontificate, "I'm the most qualified. I'll show them what happens when they refuse to let me be apart of their project."

Mrs. Hackbolt would continue her tirade even though she knew it wouldn't do any good. The arguments would usually end with her folding her thick arms in front of her cotton dress and glaring at Hackbolt like a viper. Then she would shake her head and walk away muttering, "Bull-headed. Totally bull-headed."

They worked for a year and two months on the spacecraft and the antigravity machine, surrounded by fierce, unsympathetic desert. And Hackbolt was just as unsympathetic: He drove Leftwich to accomplish things the assistant never thought he was capable of. Hackbolt was so driven, so possessed, they both almost had nervous breakdowns from working so hard. But the ship Hackbolt built was the finest piece of engineering he had ever designed. It was boxy yet tubular, huge yet elegant, modern yet homemade. It was 75 feet by 30 feet of pure innovative genius, and powered by special fractally-disposed rocket engines.

The night before Hackbolt's self-imposed deadline, he completed the programming and went to sleep dreaming about iterated function systems and the feeling of Jupiter's terraine crunching beneath his metal boots.

* * * * *

Launch day. Hackbolt climbed into the space-age plastic heat-resistant seat of his spaceship. Leftwich sat in the control room making some final adjustments. Mrs. Hackbolt cowered a few feet away from Leftwich, gnashing her teeth on her fingernails. And out in the spacecraft Hackbolt still wore his white lab coat beneath his spacesuit.

Leftwich pooched out his lips like Donald Trump and murmured into the microphone, "Professor, everything is A-okay. Prepare to launch. 10, 9, 8..."

Hackbolt sat with his space helmet crushing down his wild gray hair, perfectly tranquil and confident.

"7, 6, 5..."

Hackbolt ratcheted a dial in front of him.

"4, 3, 2..."

He was ready. Leftwich was ready. Everything was ready.

"1, 0, BLAST OFF!"

Fire exploded from the base of Hackbolt's ship and immense clouds of smoke poured out and crawled up the rocket's sides. The rumble was almost enough to bust Mrs. Hackbolt's eardrums. She shrieked when she heard the cacophony and sprinted out of the control room.

Yet the spacecraft did not move.

The ignited orange rocket fuel continued to blare out, forming miniature mushroom clouds of prodigious puissance.

Leftwich's lips trembled. His knees bobbed under the work table. "It should be ascending by now!"

But the spacecraft remained anchored to the earth despite the ferocious amount of power escaping all around it.

Leftwich slapped his thigh. He cursed and threw his glasses to the floor, grabbed his forehead and squeezed. "Professor, acknowledge. Respond, Professor Hackbolt!"

No launch. And no response from the professor.

Great orbs of ignited rocket fuel shock-blasted out of the bottom of the ship. Off-white smoke transformed to gray. Rose up. Turned black. Choked Leftwich at the controls. Fire continued ballooning out and swishing around in a wicked arc of engulfment.

Leftwich pounded on the computer keyboard in front of him. He punched the red panic button to shut down all power to the engines. He stared out. The ship stood still, vibrating. He sniffed and the smoke in the air smelled like scorched rats. Leftwich put on his safety suit and visor and ran out to the ship. Mrs. Hackbolt was nowhere in sight. Leftwich lifted a small green panel beside the door of the rocket, fidgeted with something and the door slid open.

Hackbolt lumbered out of the ship.

But he looked different.

The chemical reactions that had occurred inside the spacecraft during the unsuccessful liftoff had caused him to change. Dramatically.

His head was now blue and orange crystalline swirls of fractalized chaos. His arms were mock-Seirpinski gaskets and Koch snowflakes. His legs were perfect representations of his own Hackbolt Lantern fractal pattern. In other places, his entire space suit had ripped free where his now fractal body had expanded. He had transformed into a trapezoidal mass of geometrical self-similar structures.

Leftwich staggered backward, his shock causing him to stutter. "P-P. . . Professor H-Hackbolt? W-What has happened? You're a f-f-fractal c-creature."

The transmogrified Professor stumbled forward. Gasped for air. His voice was a diseased, harmonized moan of ghastly pitches: "Too many fractal equations, Leftwich. And the antigravity machine. I must have programmed too many fractal equations into the spacecraft's fuel conversion computers and they interacted with the advanced technology of the antigravity machine. Let's try again. We'll get it right... We'll get it if we try again..."

-end-

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover's books, Neometropolis, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG's Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.