Category: Flash

Flash: Governmental Obligations

Erin Penn

Taken from a sales website – the link should be good if you are interested

As citizens in America, we are only asked to do three things – vote, serve jury duty and, of course, pay taxes. While I have never had a customer with the below occupation, I have often wondered what it would be like to process such a person. After all, everyone needs to file taxes if they are employed. The below flash is completely fictional.

Governmental Obligations

“I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?” I look back from my desktop at the rather plain woman. Pretty, as all young girls are pretty, but with a face bare of makeup, her nondescript blondish hair pulled back in a ponytail, loose jeans and an oversized T-shirt printed with the logo of a national sports bar chain, nothing stood out about her. Except her flip flops, but even those were the popular style where the strips were bound together by a silly jewel. Rinestones and rubber always struck me as a strange combination. The ruby exactly matched her vivid red toenails.

Her eyes crinkled, smiled as some people put it. I could see where she would be striking with mascara darkening her nearly blonde eyelashes and eye-shadow forcing her eyes to a particular color. As is, the brown, green, blue mix washed out into the surrounding pale winter flesh. “I was wondering if I could claim my whips against my self-employment.”

“Well…we are required by law to claim all income AND all expenses for your self-employment. Are your whips ever used for your personal pleasure?” I managed to keep my voice firmly nonjudgmental and accountant flat. I had hit the zone before I had even walked past the waiting line to unlock the doors for the day, sleep deprivation in mid-March does provide some benefits, but she was threatening my calm.

“P-leeease,” she drew out the word,  “I’m a dominatrix by trade. Like most people, I leave my work at work.”

“So the answer is no.” Taxes required precision, and she hadn’t actually answered the question.

She sighed. “I leave my whips in my dungeon. And I only use the dungeon for work.”

I nodded. We had already covered her office rental. “I assume you have the receipts for them?” I hadn’t seen whips or leather goods among the other purchases, which included everything from business cards to scented oils for resale to Internet fees.

“I used my business credit card for them, but I wasn’t sure if I could count them so I didn’t break them out separate.”

I flipped through the printout she made from her American Express website, finding the annotated bills. “So February, $130, and then again May $300, and once more in September, another $200. That seems like a lot of whips.”

“They break over time. Not from whipping people, but just sound effects. Everyone loves the crack.” She shivered for effect.  “I use lotion to keep the leather from subtle, but eventually it gives.”

“Okay, so these won’t qualify for depreciation since they last less than a year. I am going to put them under office supplies.”

“Sound perfect. Now about the chains,” she pointed to another purchase on her credit card statements, “does this group qualify as furniture since they are permanently attached to the walls?”

(words 473; first published 4/8/2014; republished new blog format April 21, 2019)

R is for Ring

Erin Penn 6 Comments

When the bell over the door tinkled, Shannon took a deep breath through her nose, the oxygen tank filling her lungs, to welcome the customers to her used book store. A tall thin man-boy came in, his body twitching slightly, eyes wide and roaming, followed by a gray-haired woman, also above average height, though shorter than the male, and slim, but much more controlled.

“Hello, Borys. How are you doing Mrs. Solomon?” Shannon smiled at the regulars. “Would you like some tea?”

Borys awkwardly waved his fingers, his eyes dancing all over where Shannon was, from her scooter, to the plastic lines leading from her nose to her tanks, over the cash box and glass front of the counter, but never landing directly on her. He laughed slightly and tucked his head down to his shoulders, acting more five than twenty-five.

“Shannon, I told you to call me Judith.” Mrs. Solomon said absentmindedly, while her son walked sideways to the low countertop, set at level for Shannon on her scooter. Leaning over, he picked up the brass bell with wooden handle there and rung it, laughing confidently and with genuine humor at the clear tone. Watching him, she continued,“I’ll love some tea, but I’m not sure I have time. Maybe, if you could you keep Borys today. I know it is a hassle. But I got to run a lot of errands before tomorrow, which is doctor day, and all that in and out will …” Mrs. Solomon looked at her autistic son, her eyes widening in despair, exhaustion, and defeat. “I’ve tried to get it done in bits and pieces over the last month, but I just couldn’t keep up.”

Moving her scooter around the counter, Shannon waved Judith at the tea makings and electric kettle. “Start the tea while I get Borys settled. I’ll love some Cherry Bomb.” She angled her transportation to come alongside the man-child, making sure he was aware of her approach, and then carefully touched him on the arm not holding the bell. “Hey Borys, you want to help me today?”

He looked down and blinked several times, his wretched interface with the world taking forever to process the question, but Shannon waited patiently, having learned what to expect. “Yes. I would like the red and purple pictures.”

“Fantasy section it is.” She said carefully, letting him watch her mouth as well as hear her words. Once she was certain she had his full attention again, she said, “Follow me,” and maneuvered her scooter around the boxes of books waiting to put onto selves through the wider-than-normal aisles in her bookstore. Most used bookstores crammed every square foot with shelves and boxes, to the point shoppers risked their lives from the overloaded bookshelves toppling, or tripping on the scattered merchandise still needing shelving. Shannon had turned her old two-story house located along a major section of road into a business, not so much to make money as to keep busy. A lift located on the old staircase took her upstairs each night. She left the scooter downstairs and made due with two walking canes upstairs.

Passing the roped-off staircase, Shannon led Borys to her old television room, now the fantasy and science fiction room. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

Borys sat on the floor, putting his head height only slightly below hers sitting on the scooter, and placed the bell beside him. All around him the shelves were stuffed randomly with books, some sideways, backwards, laying on top of others. One or two shelves were half emptied where a patron had discovered a missing author in their collection and bought everything she had. At the end of each aisle lay ratty cardboard containers with used paperbacks and hardcovers waiting to join the mess.

“Ring it when you get to five books you can’t figure out where they go.”

As he did every time, Borys counted to five with his fingers and showed her his hand.

“That’s right.” Shannon did a three-point turn. Afterwards she paused to take a deep breath. “Your mom and I are going to have some tea, and then she is going to leave for a time. You and I are going to have lunch together. Okay?”

After she had finished speaking, the man looked around everywhere but at her, laughing under his breath. Even though she was twice his age, Shannon knew Borys liked her a lot. The damn barrier between him and the world destroyed his ability to be a part of it as much as her COPD kept her close to home with her oxygen tanks. She had to be careful with his emotions, as underneath all that child-like behavior existed a full-grown man, but she needed friends as much as he did.

“Can we have chicken?”

Borys had three meals he liked to eat at her place, hot dogs being the most common request. “I hadn’t been planning on chicken salad sandwiches, but I’ll see what I can scrounge up.” She would need to make a run upstairs, but she thought she had all the makings.

 

A to Z Short Story List Breakdown

Rainbow Spectrum (A to F)
Marathon Party (G to M)
Trigger: Cutting (N to Q)

Bookstore Sort (R to T)
4/20/2019 – R is for Ring
4/22/2019 – S is for Seuss
4/23/2019 – T is for Translating and Titles

Q is for Questions

Erin Penn 2 Comments

Taking a break from the short stories for today to expand on “Trigger: Cutting.”

First off, I want to point out I provided a clear and easy to identify reason for Kevin to fall into depression. I could have just as easily had Kevin with two loving parents struggling to understand him instead of just one, but I chose to take a clear starting point for Kevin’s problems. I did this is because fiction has to make sense.

Most times the emotional injury triggering cutting behavior is unclear. And what sets off one person will not affect another. Because – SURPRISE – everyone is different! So what sends one person into a spiral of depression wouldn’t even be a blip on someone else’s radar. And this is okay.

For those in back, let me repeat it. IT IS OKAY to have something affect you differently than someone else.

What we need to address is the wound first and foremost, not figure out how it got there in the first place. Think waking up and finding a bruise on your body. Thinking about yesterday, you might recall banging into a drawer or a locker or a fist, or you might not remember the inciting incident at all. But in the end, that happened yesterday, and you can’t fix the past. What you have now, today, is a bruise that needs treatment.

If you are cutting yourself, or have a friend who is cutting themselves, they have a bruise that needs treatment … as soon as possible. The sooner the better because, like a tree, the person is going to grow around the wound. The sooner it is treated, the less scar tissue there will be from the bruise. There will be scar tissue, no matter what, but you or your friend doesn’t need to be only scar tissue.

I realize coming forward to friends and family will be hard. You don’t want to be stigmatized with “mental illness,” and sometimes family can get really angry at dealing with this stuff, or blow it off, or hurt themselves, and you have no idea how they are going to react. I get that, believe me from the bottom of the therapy I had at age thirteen (not for cutting, but stuff like it), I get that.

You can show this story, and this final bit, to an adult or friend and tell them what you are doing and you want to get help. Whether you go forward with this, is up to you. No one pushing you. You have control.

Now I am going to talk to the person who this is shown to. First off, DON’T FREAK. Think about this like the son, daughter, friend, spouse, parent, etc. coming to you with a bad bruise – because that is what they got, a bad bruise to the head that needs some TENDER LOVING CARE. Got that – TLC and a first aid kit, not a lecture or a freak.

You are not going to be able to fix this on your own, so don’t try. Do the initial kiss and make it better while also letting the person know you will get them help. Can you do that? If you can’t, find someone who can help your friend or family member. (Again, as I said at the start, people react differently to things. What hurts someone does not hurt someone else – if you can’t handle it, that is OKAY – find someone who can.)

Help can be complicated. But doable.

Self-Harm Texting Hotline: https://www.crisistextline.org/selfharm
Advice for Parents:

(Google “cutting resources” and “self-harm help” for more. There is a lot; figure out what you need.)

Finally, I want to talk to the friend who has been confided to by their bestie, about their bestie cutting themselves and asked not to tell anyone.

Loyalty – am I right? That is why you haven’t said anything. Because friends are loyal and don’t squeal on each other. Loyalty and trust. Guess what, there is one more part of friendship. That is love. And I am not talking about romantic love, but loving … caring … about the other person so deeply you want them to succeed, want what is best for them … even if that means you may lose them. I’ve helped friends find jobs and move, because that is what they needed. You may have hear love is an action. 

Your friend has told you something, and you know they need help beyond what you can give them. If you tell an adult or someone else, your friend will know you broke their trust.

Let me ask you – what is more important to you: your friend or your friendship?

After you think about that answer, if you want, show your friend this blog and tell him or her that you want to talk to an adult. Talk it over between you and figure out which adult that you both know that will be best to talk to. Then go together; be there with your bestie. Because that is really what friends do when they say they got each other’s back. They listen, they help, and they support. They act. Even when the going gets tough.

 

A to Z Short Story List Breakdown

Rainbow Spectrum (A to F)
Marathon Party (G to M)

Trigger: Cutting (N to Q)
4/16/2019 – N is for Nihilism
4/17/2019 – O is for Open
4/18/2019 – P is for Pause
4/19/2019 – Q is for Questions

Next: Bookstore Sort

 

#HoldOntoTheLight

About the campaign:
#HoldOnToTheLight is a blog campaign encompassing blog posts by fantasy and science fiction authors around the world in an effort to raise awareness around treatment for depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence intervention, PTSD initiatives, bullying prevention and other mental health-related issues. We believe fandom should be supportive, welcoming and inclusive, in the long tradition of fandom taking care of its own. We encourage readers and fans to seek the help they or their loved ones need without shame or embarrassment.

Please consider donating to or volunteering for organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention such as: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Hope for the Warriors (PTSD), National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Canadian Mental Health Association, MIND (UK), SANE (UK), BeyondBlue (Australia), To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.

To find out more about #HoldOnToTheLight, find a list of participating authors and blog posts, or reach a media contact, go to http://www.HoldOnToTheLight.com and join us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WeHoldOnToTheLight

P is for Pause

Erin Penn

Trigger Warning: Cutting

“Aren’t you coming down for dinner?” Dad asks, standing in the doorway of my room.

I stare into my video game and keep playing.

“Dinner!”

“Yeah, not hungry.” I work on killing the boss.

“Is your homework done?”

“Got it done in study.” I half-lie.

“Alright.”

That is what he always says before shutting the door. Dad gives up easy now. I’ve trained him well.

“You know I love you.”

That’s new. I pause the game.

I look over at him. “Got a new relationship book or something?”

“Yes.” He leans against the door, the weight of the world on his shoulders. I envy him for feeling something. Well, as much as I can – envy is complicated and you need to actually want something badly. “But it is still true. I love you, kid.”

“Yeah, I know.” I restart the game. “Thanks.”

Dad quietly shuts the door. I play another few hours, until he shouts he is trying off the wi-fi for the night. I get in one last level before he actually does turn it off, after his second shout.

I wait to hear him stomp past my room into the master bedroom at the end of our ranch house.

Once I was sure he was down for the night, I pull off the clothes. After checking for bloodstains, I throw the old clothes into my hamper to take care of later. Can’t wear them three days in a row. The therapy doc said that is one of the things to look for back when I was in therapy. That, and lack of grooming.

I shower in the second bathroom, the one for children and guests, and rush back to my room. I lock the door as I go in, reminding myself to unlock it before going to bed.

Dad let’s me have private time, because guys just need to do some things without interruption. But I’m still his son, and he wants access to my room at all times. His house, his rules.

Still wrapped in the towel, I pull out a box under my bed and roll the numbers until the combination is unlocked. I remove the plastic sheet, and unroll it and the brown towel I had put together like a sandwich wrap. I rub my hand over the spiky towel. I need to clean it soon. Next I take out a box of bandages and a box of razors. I replace the one in my hoodie, as it was getting dull, and toss the red jacket to the side.

Getting up, I check my two hiding places in the room. Those blades haven’t been found yet and weren’t rusted. I have thought to hide a couple more in other places in the house, just in case, but a five-year-old made that a bad idea. Don’t want Cheryl to hurt herself.

I sit back down and lay out everything carefully.

Some days, I think it might be easier to kill myself. It wasn’t like I was alive now.

Just haven’t figure out how yet. Dad keeps his guns at the range since Cheryl was born; no guns in the house until the kids are old enough to know how to treat them right per Mom. And hanging was out. I played monkey when I was nine and tore a fixture out of the ceiling. If the plaster couldn’t handle me at nine, it sure couldn’t handle my weight now. Poison, well, that was too close to what happened with Mom. I can’t do that to Dad.

Not that I want Dad or Cheryl to find me.

Besides, I really don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to live either. I just … well … don’t want anything.

Except to feel. To feel something.

I pick the blade and cut myself.

The End

 

A to Z Short Story List Breakdown

Rainbow Spectrum (A to F)
Marathon Party (G to M)

Trigger: Cutting (N to Q)
4/16/2019 – N is for Nihilism
4/17/2019 – O is for Open
4/18/2019 – P is for Pause
4/19/2019 – Q is for Questions

Geeking Science: EmDrive

Erin Penn

Image (c) SPR Ltd. / www.emdrive.com

Breaking Science – EmDrive

The engineers are trying to break science again. They do this periodically just to keep scientists honest. The newest thing hairbrain idea is the EmDrive (officially a “radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster”).

Engineers (practical application) have been driving Scientists (theory modelists) to distraction since the beginning of time.

 

STORYTIME: The Scientist and the Engineer

“Hey, Scientist Uke, I got fire by rubbing two sticks together,” reported Engineer Bob.

“That isn’t how fire comes.” The scientist explained the world-model everyone knew to be true. “It comes from the sky from the gods as an element. Wood is a different element from a different god that is destroyed by the fire gods. It is the way the world works.”

“Well, I rubbed two sticks together using that bow thing I put together last month, and I got fire from wood.”

The scientist scrunched his Neanderthal brow. “Prove it. Recreate your experiment.”

“Don’t know what an experiment is, Uke, but see…” Bob used the bow string to rapidly rotate a stick and create fire.

“Oh hey, guys.” Average hunter-gatherer, Ted, who brings in a lot of food and keeps everyone alive entered the clearing. “Hey, fire. I got stuff to cook!”

“No, don’t use it.” The scientist-priest-overthinker tried to stop the average guy from cooking a few roots and a squirrel. “That isn’t normal fire. The wrong god was used to create it.”

Ted took a couple of bites. “Tastes just fine.”

“You sure you are okay.” The scientist watched Ted for reactions.

“Yep. Works just like normal fire.”

Bob smiled. “We can now make fire anywhere and not wait for a god to strike.”

“Cool beans. That could be useful.” Ted wandered off leaving some of the extra food behind for the big thinkers. They do a lot to make his life easier – the engineer had invented the bow and the scientist figured out how to leave enough roots behind so they can eat them year after year.

Uke looked at Bob, frowning. “You are going to make me figure this out, aren’t you?”

“If you want.” Bob responded. “Not sure why you need to figure it out though. What good is a structure of the universe?”

“Well, if we know what wood gods can create fire and when they can create fire, we can make it in the winter and summer. We know fire likes the fall, but is really hard to make in the winter and spring.”

“You think that the fire might be different later?”

“Well, when everything has been claimed by the rain gods, fire doesn’t start.”

“True.” Bob slung his bow across his back. “Tell you what, I will see if I can make fire next time it rains.”

“Yes, that is a good experiment.” Uke watched his friend walk away before dancing. “I get to figure out something new.”

***

Thousands of years later.

“What do you think?” The engineer, Bob, pointed at the large stone cathedral with no columns holding up the ceiling.

The scientist, Uke, blinked. “That should fall. Only caves can be open. Natural openings held by god’s hands”

“Yeah, well, I had been using arches to hold open doorways and thought, why not?”

Ted and his daughter, Tish, came up with a couple loaves of bread in a basket, “Cool beans, that is a big space. Can I use it to store grain?”

“I just built you a grinding wheel, why do you need a big place for grain?” Bob looked at the farmer-food provider.

“Well, with the grinding wheel, I can grind grain a lot faster, so I need more grain. A big open area would be great.”

Ted scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, well. I got this to work some of the time, but not all of the time. A couple of them have fallen. I was hoping Uke could figure it out.”

“I told you it couldn’t be done.” The scientist scrunched his brow. “Why did you do it?”

“What did you say?” Bob studied Uke for a moment. “I think I heard something wrong.”

“I told you it couldn’t be done.”

“Yeah, that is what I thought you said. ‘See if you can do it.’ Well, I did, but it works part of the time.”

“No, I said it couldn’t be done.”

The engineer shook his head. “I see lips moving, but the words are strange. Anyway, I need to see if I can make something for Ted here. I think I will call it a silo. You figure out the arch thing, okay?” He grabbed a loaf from Ted to better think and build.

Uke took the second loaf of bread offered by Ted and asked the everyday man, “Why does he always take ‘it can’t be done’ as a challenge to do it?”

Tish, a dreamer, spoke up. “I don’t know. Mom says it to dad and he reacts the same way. Maybe you should study human actions too.”

“Humans are created in god’s image, they don’t bend to scientific study.”

“Didn’t you tell me that the world is god’s creation? If we can study the world using the scientific method, and it was made by god, we should be able to study humans, made by god, the same way, right?”

The scientist blinked at the young questioner. “You may be right.” Uke went off and studied arches and humans, breaking up science into a variety of topics including the humanities.

***

Hundreds of years later.

“So, Uke.” Bob came up behind his scientist friend. “I made something in 1989. I call it an EmDrive.”

Uke jumped out of his skin. “Don’t do that!”

“Do what?” The engineer held up a big copper engine. “It works with microwaves bouncing around and provides propulsion without propellant.”

Uke rolled his eyes. “Why are you always doing this to me? I taught you the Conservation of Momentum. To move ahead, you got to have something pushing out the back.”

“Well, you told me you wanted to go to the stars, but it took too much propellant, so I am trying to figure out a way without the stuff.” Ted shot back.

“Well, fine. Just make a unicorn while you are at it.”

“No need for a unicorn, we got horses.” The engineer pointed out logically. “Anyway, I need you to look at the engine.” He handed it to the scientist. “It works.”

“It what?” The scientist stared down at the engine. “It can’t work. That would break quantum laws, and well, everything. I would need to rework everything.” He frowned, trying to hide the giddiness bubbling inside.

“Well, near as I can tell, it works.”

“Tell you what, let run this by Dr. White. He breaks everything. If he can’t break it, you might got something.” The scientist rotated the shiny object. “We will need to test it in vacuum because that is where we want to use it. You know outer space has a vacuum, right?”

“Yeah, I know, I just didn’t have the money to make a vacuum yet.” Bob groused.

Dr. White got back to the scientific community at the 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference in 2014. “I couldn’t break it, not even with vacuum.” (See Rodal, et al. in the Bibliography)

“But!”

The engineer shook his head. There was always a catch.

“I got these eleven other possible things to look at.”

Uke, the scientist, shook his head. “I need Ted to give me money to run the tests.”

Ted, who was recovering from a long recession didn’t have much money and was getting annoyed by scientists with stuff like Climate Change, antivax  and other fake news, rocked back on his heels. “Before I give you money to figure out if it can’t work, tell me what I get out of it. Especially with you telling me it can’t work before you even begin testing.”

“Well, if it works, it will save money and effort getting to the stars. It will drop satellite weight to a third. It can make low Earth orbit stations like the International Space Station last longer as they can self-boost. If we get our act together, we can get to the moon in four days, Mars in less than four months, and Alpha Centauri in just shy of a century. It would be awesome because we wouldn’t need to calculate slingshots, and we could go anywhere in space without a lot of preplanning.”

“Yawn.” Ted waved a hand in front of his face. “You already said it can’t work. So let’s save a lot of time and money and just not worry about it, okay?”

“Hoverboards.” The engineer said.

“No, it can’t—“

Bob slapped a hand over Uke’s mouth, interrupting him.

“Hoverboards?” Ted perked up.

“Yep, hoverboards. We will need mature the technology and then miniaturize it, but hoverboards.” The engineer assured the money-man who provided food, shelter, and manufacturing to the engineer and scientist so long as the inventions were useful, or at least interesting to people.

“Cool beans, here is enough to feed about thirty people for a few years. You work on that.” Ted walked away after writing the check. “Oh, and I want to be able to get to Alpha Centauri in fifty years or less. If I send something there, I want to hear back before I die. Just saying.”

After Ted was safely out of the space exploration room, the engineer removed his hand from Uke’s face. Immediately the scientist hissed, “It can’t do hoverboards.”

“Actually I can make it work with miniaturization and maturity of technology.” Bob smiled at Uke. “Trust me.”

“But—“

“I told you I could make computers smaller than a building, right?”

“It took several decades, but yes.”

“So get me the theory to work with. Prove this actually works, and I can get us hoverboards to make Ted happy, and you and I can continue to figure out new things to keep everyone looking up and out.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“Well, we are on, what, the third round of proofs?” The engineer shrugged. “I need to know what doesn’t work before I can figure out what does. It took me a while to get the lightbulb working. I will get us profusion in a small package somehow.”

Trish ran into the room, “Lasers!”

Bob and Uke turned to the new kid who constantly shouted out crazy ideas from science fiction and fantasy. “What?”

“I can levitate stuff with LIGHT!” Trish ran in circles around the room, showing off her new trick. (See Tangermann in the Bibliography) “You know light is an energy and a MATTER, right. So cool. You can use it to shove stuff. I might be able to push things to space really, really fast.”

“Like Alpha Centauri in less than fifty years?” asked the scientist.

Trish, the dreamer where money and science meet, jumped up and down. “Twenty!” (See Shankland in the Bibliography)

Uke and Bob looked at each other.

Uke said, “The science is actually sound and proven, we just need something that works.”

“Kid, we need to talk.” Bob started taking Trish from the room.

Uke yelled after him, “Keep working on that EmDrive too. The laser will only send small things to space. I want humans to get to Alpha Centauri as well.”

END STORYTIME

 

The EmDrive is nasty in that if it works, it will break a lot of scientific theories. Which in turn is kind-of fun, because having to figure out how things work. In the meantime, scientists and engineers are enthralled with inventing tests and test machinery to figure out why it works even a little in the first place. 

If the EmDrive works, it would be totally awesome!

And the laser drive already works, which is totally awesome!

Space, here we come!

 

Bibliography

Drake, Nadia. “NASA’s ‘Impossible Space Engine Tests-Here Are the Results.” NationalGeographic.com. 2018 May 22.  (Last viewed 2019 March 24 … seems removed as of 11/17/2022.)

Hambling, David. “Why DARPA Is Betting a Million Bucks on an ‘Impossible’ Space Drive.” PopularMechanics.com. 2018 November 2. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a24219132/darpa-emdrive/ (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)

PBS Space Time. “The EM Drive: Fact or Fantasy.” 2017 January 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqoo_4wSkdg&t=603s (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)

Rodal, Jose, Jeremiah Mullikin and Noel Muson. Subedited by Chris Gebhardt. “Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive. 2015 April 29. https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/ (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)

Shankland, Stephen. “Are we alone? Tiny spacescraft will head to Alpha Centauri to find out.” Cnet.com. 2018 August 27. https://www.cnet.com/news/sending-tiny-spacecraft-to-alpha-centauri/ (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)

Tangermann, Victor. “Researchers Found a Way to Levitate Objects Using Only Light.” Futurism.com. 2019 March 19. https://futurism.com/levitation-light-propulsion-spacecraft (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)

Wikipedia. “RF resonant cavity thruster.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster (Last viewed 2019 March 24.)