Logan’s Law
by Scott C. Scharlach
part 1
“Amishization,” the flaming ball stated proudly.
The hiker blinked twice. “I’m sorry?”
“Amishization. As in, the universe has been Amishized. It’s become more Amish.”
“Who... whuh? Do we know each other?” The hiker stared, dumbfounded, at what appeared to be a talking meteorite. When he had started upon the trail that morning, he had been certain that he was prepared for anything. A floppy tan bucket hat shielded the afternoon sun’s rays from his eyes. A double-coat of sunscreen covered his sweating skin, with a white glob dabbed onto his nose for good measure. His hiking pack was nearly bursting with granola bars, first-aid supplies, and clean water. His wilderness training had prepared for him landslides, mountain lions, a sprained ankle, and more.
But the training had not prepared him for a ball of fire streaking down from the sky, landing in an explosion of rock and soil a hundred yards away. Nor had it told him what to do when, upon investigating, his eyes fell upon a metallic object the size and shape of a bowling ball sitting at the center of an impressively sized crater. And the training certainly never told him what to say if the flaming bowling ball meteorite started talking to him.
“I haven’t the faintest idea who you are,” the meteorite replied. “But you seem to be human. And that’s good enough for me.”
The hiker heard a pop, like that of a cork flying forth from a well-shaken bottle of champagne, and tiny arms and legs sprouted from the bowling ball. The talking meteorite gently patted its spherical body, snuffing out the smoldering flames. It took a careful step forward, like a toddler learning to walk, then it waddled forward to the hiker. It extended a metallic arm.
“My serial code is L064N. Call me LOGAN.”
The hiker bent on one knee and shook LOGAN’s hand. The hand had three rigid fingers, like a claw machine.
The hiker desperately searched his mind for the proper thing to say in such a situation. “Do you... need me to call someone for you?”
“In a moment, we can contact the head of Project Philoctetes,” LOGAN said, “But, first, I need to tell you about why you’ll never talk to an alien.”
“Are you... not an alien?”
LOGAN pointed to the serial code painted on the side of the his spherical body. “If I were an alien, my name wouldn’t be a string of Latin letters and Hindu-Arabic numerals.”
“Fair point. So, you’re with Project Phil... Phillip... what was it?”
“Philoctetes. He was an ancient Greek warrior. According to legend, he was stranded alone on an island for ten years. The name seemed appropriate for my mission.”
The hiker set his backpack against a nearby tree and sat down, letting his aching back rest against the polyester pack. He supposed that if he was going to have a conversation with a robot, he might as well do it in comfort.
“Project Philoctetes...” the hiker muttered to himself, “I might’ve learned about it when I was a kid. Third grade, probably. I’m pretty sure it was scrapped, though.”
LOGAN’s arms shot upward. “What?!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the forested valley. Several nearby bluejays flew from their perch in the branches. The hiker noticed that the robot was surprisingly expressive despite having no head or face.
LOGAN straightened up his legs, lifting his spherical body proudly. He now stood slightly over two feet tall. He began pacing, his claw-like arms clasped behind his back. “Project Philoctetes is a landmark in space exploration and engine design,” he announced. “Its probe is filled to the brim with state-of-the-art propulsion and computer software. And I should know; it’s packed tight inside of me.”
The hiker scratched the back of his neck. “LOGAN, I have some bad news for you. I don’t know how to tell you this, but... humans haven’t really done any space exploration in about forty years.”
LOGAN froze in place. He began sputtering. “B... bu... no... how... whu...?”
The hiker wondered where LOGAN’s speaker was located. His spherical body looked perfectly smooth. There did not even seem to be any bolts or screws holding the sphere together.
LOGAN sat down on the forest floor with a crunch. Then he turned to the hiker. “What changed?”
The hiker shrugged. “It’s hard to say; this was all back when I was in third grade or so. The president was pumped about exploring the stars, contacting aliens, the whole shebang. But by the next election, the political pendulum had swung hard in the opposite direction. People wanted to spend government research money on combatting hair loss and preventing wrinkles instead of voyaging to the stars. I’m guessing you had already been launched by then, but... the project probably got cancelled decades ago.”
LOGAN’s hands began twitching. He picked up a nearby stick and began playing with it, poking holes in the leaves and scratching off the bark. The behavior reminded the hiker of his nine-year old nephew.
LOGAN slumped. Or rather, his spherical body rolled forward slightly. “That would explain... why nobody picked up my signal upon re-entry. And why I found a suburban neighborhood where my landing point was supposed to be. I veered off course to where I wouldn’t crash into any humans. Here.”
He looked around. They were sitting at the edge of the sizable crater LOGAN had created upon impact. Around them, a forest of mighty evergreen trees spread out in all directions. The hiker sat in the shade of a tree that seemed to reach well over a hundred feet tall, its pine needles reaching out into the crisp mountain air.
LOGAN flicked a small pebble. “It looks like I’ll have a hard time finding someone to share my discoveries with,” he muttered. “In the meantime...” he turned his body toward the hiker. “Can I... share them with you?”
The hiker smiled. “Absolutely.” He stood and threw his pack over his shoulders. “But on one condition. Can we walk and talk?” He pointed at the sun, which was slowly dipping toward a mountain on the horizon. “I don’t want to be out here in the dark.”
* * *
LOGAN stood. Or rather, his body lifted into the air a few inches, as if levitating, and his feet fell gracefully down to the forest floor. The hiker hitched up his backpack then strolled down the dirt path, emerald-green foliage blossoming on either side of the trail. LOGAN’s short legs moved rapidly, keeping pace exactly with the hiker.
As they walked, squirrels skittered across the bark of the ancient trees around them, and a monarch butterfly spread its wings as it balanced atop a small fern.
“I’m Marshall, by the way,” the hiker said, hands gripped tight around his walking sticks. “And it’s been a while since something completely unexpected has happened to me. That’s actually why I’m out here. I’ve been looking to be surprised. And then you fell out of the sky.”
LOGAN walked alongside Marshall, his arms bobbing at his sides. His footfalls were nearly silent, save for the occasional cracking of sticks beneath the weight of his metallic, oval feet. Marshall had expected the robotic legs to make squeaking or whirring sounds; he made a mental note to ask LOGAN about his internal components later.
LOGAN spoke. “I’ll be honest: I’m mortified that Project Philoctetes got canceled. But...” he paused, his fingers beginning to wiggle excitedly, “at the same time, I am simply thrilled that I can finally share my discoveries with humanity after all these years. Even if it’s with just one person.”
The two crested a hill, revealing a sparkling lake less than half a kilometer away. A bald eagle soared above the water, patiently waiting for the occasional fish to swim near the glimmering surface.
They took a moment to take in the view. As LOGAN stared, he made the sound of a long, slow gasp. Marshall wondered how LOGAN made the sound without lungs.
After a moment, LOGAN spoke: “It’s times like these that I’m especially grateful that I exist. I suppose I have WIMPs to thank for that.”
Marshall turned and stared at the robot. “You exist because of... WIMPs?”
“Oh, yes. It all started with the discovery of Weakly Interactive Massive Particles, or WIMPs. Scientists had hypothesized about their existence for decades, but it wasn’t until we built a Circumferential Particle Accelerator that we were able to find them.”
Marshall gazed out at the view a final time, then he marched down the trail. “I saw that on the news when I was a kid. They built a circular metal tube that looped around the entire planet. My parents said it was a waste of money.”
LOGAN followed Marshall down the winding trail. “That’s preposterous! WIMPs would go on to change the world.”
“Well, the scientists didn’t exactly market their research very well. The particles are literally called WIMPs. And the W stands for ‘weak.’ Not very inspiring for the taxpayers.”
“That’s a misunderstanding. The weak interaction is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe. It helps transform one kind of particle into another. There are a plethora of weak interactions that can happen in nature. Just imagine how many more could happen in the laboratory.”
“Why would the laboratory be any different from nature?”
“Well, think about it this way: there are plenty of things that could happen in nature but usually don’t. Like cooked meat. If a wild boar dies a fiery death, you might get well-done pork chops. But a chef in a kitchen can churn out delectable cooked pork chops consistently and for not too much money.”
“Pork from a pig is actually pretty pricy these days. Almost everything’s lab-grown.”
“You can update me on the past forty years later. The point is: there are plenty of things that WIMPs can potentially do, but you rarely if ever see WIMPs do them in nature. But when we started detecting WIMPs with the Circumferential Particle Accelerator, we could trap them in specifically designed containers. From there, we could make them do a whole host of neat things. We could turn photons into protons, and vice versa.”
“Could you turn straw into gold? Become the next Rumpelstiltskin?”
“All atoms are made out of the same three ingredients — protons, neutrons, and electrons — just with different amounts. So, yes, the Circumferential Particle Accelerator can do exactly that. But that’s not what scientists were exhilarated about.”
“Creating gold wasn’t the exciting part? The scientists had just achieved a medieval alchemist’s wildest dream.”
“Like I said, WIMPs can turn protons into photons. Protons have mass. Photons don’t. Do you see where I’m going?”
“LOGAN, I majored in art history.”
“Einstein discovered that mass can be converted into energy, and vice versa. And he also figured out that a tiny bit of mass gives you an enormous amount of energy. A single pound of mass contains more energy than a hundred atomic bombs.”
“That’s terrifying. You could probably make a super weapon out of that.” Marshall gripped his walking sticks tight. “If this was forty years ago, then why haven’t we all blown each other up yet?”
LOGAN’s reply was immediate. “Turns out, WIMP-based weapons just aren’t as efficient as nuclear bombs. The weapons produce ultra-high-energy photons, and photons are just light particles. And the conversion process obeys very strict symmetry laws, so the photons all take virtually the same path when they are emitted. The end result is a laser beam of unthinkable intensity, but the beam is less than a single atom wide. So you could instantly vaporize whatever the laser is pointed at. But you could only vaporize one atom at a time.”
Marshall nodded slowly. “So... we’re safe?”
“You’re safe. When it comes to causing massive destruction across a wide area, nuclear weapons are far more efficient.”
Marshall’s eyes twitched slightly at the comment. LOGAN did not seem to notice.
“WIMP-based technology,” LOGAN continued enthusiastically, “was better suited for propulsion, scientists realized. Light has momentum, and momentum is conserved. So every time a light particle is sent off to the left, something must start moving to the right. As Isaac Newton said, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And thus, the WIMP-drive was born.”
“But that doesn’t add up,” Marshall said as he climbed over a fallen log. LOGAN hopped up and over the log, floating gracefully, as if nearly weightless. Marshall dusted off a dead leaf sticking to his hiking pants and continued down the path with LOGAN. “Almost all of the vehicles these days use lithium batteries. We’re almost entirely electric. No WIMP-drives anywhere to be seen.”
The trail had taken them to the shores of the glistening lake. The eagle swooped down toward the center of the lake, talons outstretched, and it wrenched a flopping fish from the water. With a light chirp, the eagle landed on a nearby rock to feast.
The two walked along the path, hugging the shore of the lake. LOGAN gazed at the gentle water. “WIMP-drives apply a much lighter force than a lithium battery does, so they’re not useful for electric cars. But, like I said, a tiny amount of mass can store an extraordinary amount of energy. Given enough time, a small object accelerated by a WIMP-drive could reach near light speed. And the lasers emitted are extremely precise, which means the object gets propelled in exactly the direction you want to go. In short: the WIMP-drive was perfect for a tiny space probe. With the WIMP-drive, humanity had unlocked a new chapter of space exploration.”
The two approached a small sandy beach with chunks of driftwood strewn across the shore. LOGAN waddled to the edge of the lake and dipped his feet in the water, slowly, as if testing the water’s temperature. After a moment, he waded in until he was halfway submerged. Then, with burst of energy, LOGAN spun around in the water, claws splashing water into the air, the droplets of water catching the warm light of the afternoon sun. The robot giggled gleefully as he splashed.
Marshall chuckled. “I’m remembering now. Forty years ago, they sent out the first near-light-speed probe. My third-grade teacher was gushing about it during our science block. She said it was lighter than any other probe we had sent out. I’m guessing... you were that probe.”
LOGAN stopped his spinning with a flourish and thrust his hands into the air. “Ta-dah!” As the water splashed around him, Marshall heard the distinct sound of a confetti cannon and fireworks booming from an unseen speaker somewhere inside LOGAN. It was followed by an ear-splitting airhorn and a stadium-sized applause. “That’s me.” LOGAN bowed, nearly submerging himself in the water.
LOGAN sucked in his arms and legs, bobbing in the clear lake water. “My task was to go on an interstellar cruise, touring the other planets up close. Procyon, Sirius, Alpha Centauri... a whole smorgasbord of distant worlds.” Still in spherical form, LOGAN zipped down the shore of the lake.
Marshall smiled. “Wait up!” he called and marched along the hiking path, still hugging the lakeshore, breathing heavily as he kept pace with the speedy ball. “But if you’ve voyaged across the stars,” he shouted, “shouldn’t your project be named after someone well-traveled? Like Project Odysseus? Or Captain Nemo? Or Ibn Battuta? ‘Philoctetes’ makes no sense; you said he was trapped on an island.”
LOGAN zigzagged in the water, spinning occasionally. A school of tadpoles scattered beneath LOGAN as he glided across the clear, shallow water. “When they named it Project Philoctetes,” LOGAN replied, “Philoctetes wasn’t a reference to me. It was a reference to humanity. Humans have never contacted aliens before. Like a lone survivor on a remote island. Calling out into the sea, unsure if anyone will ever reply.”
“That’s bleak.”
“That’s why they built me. To see if there is intelligent life on our nearest neighbors.”
Copyright © 2026 by Scott C. Scharlach
