Published:
October 15, 2024
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1 Across: Sea vessel whose shortest mast is at the bow.
Jacob smiled at the serendipitous clue, and penned S-C-H-O-O-N-E-R as he bobbed along in his own sailboat. His days of taking this beauty out himself were long past, but he loved to sit out here to feel the waves and smell the salt air, even if he did remain docked.
The little marina was his safe haven; an escape from the technology that inundated his life otherwise. In his house, there were gadgets that did all the chores. At the doctor’s office, he was tended to by nurse bots more often than actual humans. Hell, an AI program even took over his job with the military all those years back.
Everything was automated, electronic. In other words:
7 Down: Artificial; contrary to the normal course of events or nature.
Jacob had to scribble the last letter. Blast it, he thought in frustration. Ink’s running out. It was getting harder to find pens and pencils in a world that preferred screens and virtual reality; he’d have to special-order more.
Before he could read the next clue, a loud rumble off in the distance caused a disturbance in the waves. His boat rocked from side to side, bumpers protecting the hull as they smacked into the dock. Jacob had to lift the puzzle book up in the air to avoid the resulting spray from ruining the pages.
I miss the days when rocket launches were inland… But of course, they’d run out of land space decades ago, necessitating oceanic launch pads.
The resulting speck that rose into the sky was too far away to make out clearly, but Jacob knew well what the rocket looked like. Sleek, windowless, and surprisingly small given the electromagnetic cannons it was equipped with. He wondered how long it’d been since a manned rocket had gone up into space (though, he conceded, this was a rare situation where robot replacements were wise).
As the waves settled back down, Jacob contemplated the spot where the rocket disappeared into the atmosphere. It was daytime, but he was still able to make out what could easily be mistaken for stars or planets. The tiny pinpricks of light - some moving, some stationary - were the only evidence of the intergalactic war waging a million miles away.
It was hard to reconcile the normalcy of his day at the marina against the cataclysmic events happening out in space. It was an excellent example of:
3 Across: A state of contrast between two opposing aspects of a concept.
The word duality took Jacob a moment to think of, but it was fitting for both the puzzle and his musings of human nature. How had they all grown accustomed to this new reality so easily? The appearance of an alien species in their solar system had been the biggest news in history, surpassed only by the declaration of war by said aliens a short time later. There had been fear and chaos at first; and yet, in a relatively short time, things had gone back to, well…
Normal.
Once the initial widespread panic wore off, the Space War and idea of humans fighting aliens out near Mars became old news. Perhaps it was the distance, or the pace; the war felt slow and far away. Jacob supposed it was easy to pretend it wasn’t even happening.
He sighed, tapping his pen against the book to get the ink flowing again. I still don’t think the war SHOULD be happening at all…
It was a thought that haunted him every time he watched the news, or heard a rocket launch, or gazed up at the sky. It was pointless to dwell on - there was nothing to be done about it now - yet he couldn’t help but wonder what things would be like if they’d just listened to him.
The military had specifically hired him because of his talent as a cryptanalyst, after all; when the first alien message had been received, Jacob insisted his team needed adequate time to decipher it. It was a process that couldn’t be rushed, that had to be done carefully to ensure an accurate translation. But tensions and fear were high, and the military didn’t want to wait.
“Just use AI to figure it out! We don’t have time for your ego trip!” Jacob remembered how appalled he’d been at the accusation. They didn’t understand; there was no program out there prepped for this kind of translation, at least none that could really be trusted for such a task. But they didn’t listen; instead, they decided his role had become:
5 Down: Out of date; no longer useful; replaced by something else.
Jacob bitterly filled out O-B-S-O-L-E-T-E. They didn’t heed his warning when he’d found inconsistencies in the AI’s interpretation of the message. His whole team agreed something was wrong with it, but they were brushed off since they hadn’t quite cracked the code themselves. The military got what Jacob suspected they really wanted all along: a translation they could spin as a threat of invasion.
Perhaps the AI was right. It was possible they’d correctly guessed the intent behind the message. But why would a hostile alien species bother sending a message in the first place? Jacob wondered, not for the first time. Why didn’t they just attack?
If they had just given him a little more time, maybe he could have figured it out, maybe he would know for sure…
Seagulls circling the marina cried above Jacob’s head, snapping him out of his thoughts. It was too late to worry about it now, anyway. Trusting the machines, the humans rushed to strike first; and now they were entangled in a seemingly endless battle with the alien species.
He laughed without mirth when he read the final clue to his word search:
9 Across: A court jester.
Fitting for the last word to be “fool”. At least this was a puzzle he could solve.

Copyright 2024 - SFS Publishing LLC
Crosswords and Space Wars
Don't let the intergalactic war interrupt your daily routine
Katie Dee

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