
Quark
Space Travel



An
excerpt from the beginning of the story:
Surfing
the web when
bored and having nothing else to do is, depending on your viewpoint, a
growing
world problem or a pastime, the latter in the case of nerds like
me. It’s
extremely addictive. I haven’t had a date
in more than six months,
and I really like the dark cave-like room where my computer is set
up. No
worries about skin cancer, right?
I
once Googled for God. Out of curiosity I
wanted to see what
would come up. The word "God" gave some 566,000,000 results
after only 0.05 seconds. Wow! God is really popular and
fast.
However, no matter which entry I clicked on, or even assisted by my
copy of the
O'Reilly® Google Pocket Guide, I never found his home
page. Could God be
computer illiterate? Has God not paid the fee to his
ISP? Has
God’s server crashed? However, I did find that the
domain "iamgod.com" was
for sale. I thought about buying it, but then people might
ask me to
perform miracles. Miracles? I have a hard enough
time just getting
out of bed. The water-to-wine thing was really cool, but
that’s not my
bag. I’m a dark beer guy.
Recently,
in another moment of boredom, I typed "space travel" to see
what would come up. There were some 158,000,000
“hits,” almost as many as
for God. Could I narrow this down? Were there any
space travel
agencies? I typed "space travel agency." Yes, a
bunch of them; mainly
run by Russians. Seemed like millionaires with excess cash
want to go
into space.
Hmmm,
here was one that did not look like Russians were involved:
http://www.quarkspacetravel.com.
Let’s see what’s there!

Quarks come in six flavors, and their names (up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom) were also chosen arbitrarily based on the need to name them something that could be easily remembered and used.
Isolated quarks are never found naturally; they are almost always found in groups of two (mesons) or groups of three (baryons) called hadrons. This is a direct consequence of confinement.

Novels and short stories come in various genres: mysteries, science fiction, horror, romance, westerns, etc. Is it possible that my works have flavors, such as those of Quarks? Might there be stories that are UP, DOWN, CHARM, STRANGE, TOP and BOTTOM? We'll see, as my writing progresses. Presently, certain of of my stories can be placed in Quark-like categories. Certainly, Lost in Googleland would be in the STRANGE category. In fact, most of my writings would fall in that grouping. Perhaps, I can write stuff that fits the other categories.
All
Stories on this Website can be downloaded as pdf files.
©2007 John Charles Miller