CQ Interplanetary

I was camping on a beach, with several men including Mike F---, who had been my Scout leader many years ago; but this wasn't a Scouting trip, it was just a bunch of people camping together, as adults.

Then I was travelling through the Solar system.  I saw the gas giant planets go by and I saw a phenomenon that at the time I named as the aurora, though it couldn't have been.  It looked more like a crown on each planet's day side, a ring maybe 60 degrees in diameter centred on the sub-Solar point.  Maybe it was some kind of Solar wind bow-shock thing.  I knew that what I was seeing was a simulation; the planets were in false-colour and the "aurora" wouldn't have been visible to the naked eye.

I was on solid ground on a moon, looking at the South pole of Jupiter, which was directly above me.  I thought about the magnetic field lines and the radiation spiralling along them, through where I stood, up into the planet, and I knew that if I were really present instead of it being a simulation, I'd be absorbing a deadly dose.

Then I was standing at the shore of an artificial lake.  The lake extended off to my left; in front of me, there was a road going straight ahead along the shore; to the right of that, a row of trees separated the road from the same beach I'd been camping on earlier.  Far off along the road, I could see a man walking slowly towards me.

I was thinking about my current project, which involved about 50 or 60 CDs I'd bought from NASA. They were data and images of minor planets and asteroids.  I was writing software to analyse the data and pick out objects for further study.  Someone was going to use my results in some big way, for instance to plan exploration missions, but I had to be careful not to tell them my exact criteria because as well as looking for scientifically interesting orbits, and running image analysis to find certain kinds of surface features in the photos, I was also selecting based on astrological criteria.  I knew the users of my results wouldn't be happy about that if they knew.

Tom B---, who runs the Web hosting service I use, was operating a hotel where I was staying.  The hotel was in some way connected with the Web business.  In my room there was a large fridge, like the mini-bar fridges found in a lot of hotel rooms, but this one was a full-size fridge.  The freezer compartment wasn't a freezer compartment, it was only as cold as the regular fridge compartment, and it was completely full of packages of orange juice, in three or four different brands.  I took one out.

The previous guest in my room was Eli I---, not a name I recognize otherwise.  There was a receipt there and empty Styrofoam packaging from a take-out meal he'd ordered, of "cherry chicken".  Looking at the crumbs and smears of sauce, it seemed to be very much like a typical Chinese restaurant's "lemon chicken", but with cherries.  The receipt was for $8.60, paid on a credit card that morning, Friday the 13th of February.  Eli I--- had made several other transactions that morning, too, shortly after he checked out of the room.  For some reason this was a problem for Tom B---, even though the transactions had nothing to do with him and had been validly paid.  This did not seem unusual at the time.  He needed my help resolving the problem.

Eli I--- had left a two-way radio in the room.  It was switched on and tuned to 130.238965 MHz (which is several more digits of precision than one would normally expect for a communications radio's tuning).  On the radio I could hear a man's and a woman's voice arguing.  They did not identify themselves or follow standard radio procedures.  I had the impression that the man was probably Eli I---.  The woman had some kind of grievance against him which sounded similar to ours, involving credit card transactions; and she had written a poem about it, which she read.  After asking Tom B--- if I should, I picked up the mic and broke into the conversation, identifying as VE7MSK (which was once my callsign, but isn't anymore, and it's not really appropriate to use a ham callsign outside the ham bands like that anyway).  The man immediately fell silent.  The woman replied to my transmission, but was not helpful.