Ringshine
William Petersen
Copyright 2015 William Petersen
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Originally featured in Volume 03, Number 03 of Nebula Rift Magazine
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Is it our destiny to explore the solar system and beyond, or will the act of exploration lead to life's demise... once again?
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Ringshine
“It just goes to show... if you sit in one place long enough, something will come along,” Trent told the bartender. He looked over to the pretty blond woman occupying the stool next to his own and smiled proudly. He had been trying to get somewhere with her for hours, but she was content just letting him buy her drinks, while lightly and comically spurning his advances.
“Wow, can't say I'd give that out as sound advice, but it looks like you did stumble on to something good there,” the bartender replied, depositing two fresh drinks on the bar in front of Trent and his new friend.
“So, you work from home?” the pretty girl asked, not really wanting to know, but trying to keep her drink benefactor engaged.
“Yep. I've been working from home for a long time, but I've never made any money at it, until now. That's why I'm trying to pace myself here, have to start a new project in the morning,” Trent stated, as he downed nearly half of his drink, then continued bragging, “I used to do menial jobs, like categorizing and reporting the rankings of companies and keywords on the web. The money was terrible, but if I put in enough hours, I could just make minimum wage.
They call it crowdsourcing: posting jobs online where a pool of workers accept and complete them when they want. It's a great concept, especially for jobs that require a lot of repetition and are time consuming. That's what got the attention of NASA and the other space agencies, which now refer to the participants as 'citizen scientists'. It was the perfect platform for getting the public involved and sorting through mountains of data at the same time.”
Trent expanded, “I started getting involved in those more and more, although they didn't pay at all. I love astronomy and space, so I participated whenever I could. I must have been pretty good at it, because my identifications got the attention of a company that processes data for several programs, and they offered me a full-time job.”
“So what do you do, exactly?” the bartender inquired.
“I scan through thousands of images and identify whatever the mission is looking for. I just finished a two-month project identifying hot spots in nebulae and dust clouds in space, looking for star-forming regions that can't be seen with visible light telescopes. I got to look at raw images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, which uses infrared to locate potential stellar nurseries. The project before that was locating undocumented craters on the moon. Pretty cool stuff,” Trent informed the two.
“It's a great time for space exploration and astronomy...” the bartender said as he polished a glass, “...those two new Mars rovers at the volcanoes and the new Saturn thing. Sure is a lot going on.”
Trent was quick to reply, “Yeah, apparently they've found some interesting things already; the huge deposits of iridium for one, suggesting that a possible asteroid impact created that whole region, the Tharsis region.”
“Can I get a job there?” blondie asked.
“Well, you'd have to go through the same process I did. When I was doing the free stuff, the results of three or more users would have to confirm the same thing, then that image was sent off to be verified again and finally routed to the proper research department. I started out checking those matches and rerouting the confirmed ones, but now, I'm getting the images relayed to me straight from the probe or spacecraft collecting them. I see the images before anyone else does,” he proudly told her.
Trent stared at his reflection in the mirror lining the back of the bar. The gray creeping up the sides of his head and tinting the bottom of his goatee stood out like neon against the rest of his brown mane. The realization that he was approaching middle-age, and just now landing a job paying more than the minimum wage, momentarily demoralized him. He wondered if the others at the bar were thinking the same thing as his insecurities and pessimism conspired to dampen his mood.
Trent knocked down the rest of his drink and looked at the blond; she was smiling flirtatiously, but he knew that she wasn't going home with him. He rationalized that he didn't have time for an all-nighter anyway, so he fished some money out his pocket and left a crumpled pile of bills on the bar. “You guys have a good night, I've got to get home and get ready for tomorrow. I start working with images from the new Saturn probes first thing in the morning. I can't wait,” he said, grinning.