{"id":11293,"date":"2016-03-19T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/?p=11293"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:38","slug":"black-box-blues-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/black-box-blues-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Box Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black<\/a>
Image by Reader’s Gazette<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Black Box Blues is a sci-fi short story about a family whose starcar breaks down in a back-water solar system and are forced to seek help from the locals to get on their way again.<\/p>\n

Published Mar. 17, 2016 by Reader\u2019s Gazette.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Just as we emerged from the gateway two indicators came to life on our \u00adcar’s console. The green light indicated that this cluster’s nav data had been \u00adpicked up and stored in memory. The red one, that a piece of the car’s \u00admicronics had fizzled out of existence. Something profane immediately came to \u00admind, but since the kids were on board, I kept the thought to myself.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Something wrong, dear?” Rhiannah, my wife, sat in the front seat\u00ad opposite mine.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m checking it out.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I typed a command on the keyboard and the computer ran a diagnostic check \u00adon all the car’s circuits. A moment later the results of the check-up scrolled\u00ad down the console’s video screen. It displayed the part number of the \u00addefective module, what circuit it was in and on what board that circuit would\u00ad be found. It also displayed a disheartening message:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

THIS IS AN ESSENTIAL CIRCUIT IMMEDIATE REPAIR IS MANDATORY.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This time the profanity slipped out<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 Read the rest…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Black Box Blues pokes fun at the modern trend in automobile design – as seen by old shade-tree mechanics like myself who tend to prefer older cars and trucks because of their ease of repair.\u00a0 That was the impetus for this story, but the tale itself is about Tighe’s adventures with a less advanced species of beings as he searches out parts that will work in a cobbled together patch-up of his wife’s new starcar so they can resume their family vacation.\u00a0 I hope you enjoy it.\u00a0 D.B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Box Blues is a sci-fi short story about a family whose starcar breaks down in a back-water solar system and are forced to seek help from the locals to get on their way again. Published Mar. 17, 2016 by Reader’s Gazette. Just as we emerged from the gateway two indicators came to life on … Continue reading “Black Box Blues”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-11293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-share-the-love","tag-scifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20335,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11293\/revisions\/20335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}