| "The Crystal Zone” is a Sci-Fi story set in the 22nd century on the distant planet, Zarbec. It’s a story of conflicting expectations and goals and the growth necessary to resolve them, brought about when the Federation colonizes Zarbec and contacts a powerful alien intelligence with its own claims.
Zarbec’s value to the human race is the priceless crystals that litter its surface. The crystals provide limitless memory storage with instantaneous access, and are now integrated into the Federation’s interplanetary computers.
Most of the action takes place in Crystal City, an underground city; it has to be, as the planet’s atmosphere is caustic and lethal. Super-hard metals begin to disintegrate after a few days' exposure, and human flesh blisters in seconds. Specialized environmental suits provide only a few hours of protection, so all exterior work must be done quickly or by robotics.
Zarbec One, called ZONE, is the most advanced computer in the Federation, and is the functioning heart of the city. Zone provides environmental, medical, and nutritional support for the city’s 100, 000 inhabitants. Since Zone was developed using genetically created brains, it has a personality – as the plot develops, a spilt-personality.
Rick-Zen, the young and ambitious technologist at the computer center is monitoring the environmental control program when a breach in the city’s wall results in the deaths of two of his friends. Zone dismisses the glitch as of no importance, but Rick knows more failures will doom the city and its inhabitants. Has Zone gone mad?
When his lover, Karin-Dorn, is locked outside the city while repairing an Atmosprobe, he must quickly find a way to rescue her, even if he must defy Zone. When he does both, he is banished from the control center as problems with the environmental program reach a crisis point.
Rick and Karin make a startling discovery. The planet’s substrate is a huge crystal, housing an alien intelligence, and Zone has unknowingly tapped into it. The surface crystals are its children, and their removal from the planet has triggered severe environmental reactions. As another shipment of crystals is being readied, Rick realizes the program glitches are the crystal’s interaction with Zone. Further, Zone’s contact with the alien crystal has destabilized the computer, which Rick fears will cause an all-out war no one can win.
Finally, Rick and Karin are able to communicate between the two combatants. But, in the end, it is their humanity that affects a compromise between the Federation and the crystal being with its star-scattered children.
Publishers and agents may contact Jim Hammond at jim@jim-hammond.com or 505-264-0123. |
