Well, in case this wasn't already made obvious by the fact that this blog has become less active than the slide rule manufacturing trade, I've pretty much stopped writing. I really don't have much inspiration to continue at the pace I was planning to go at, and anyway I'm busy working on a game Arthur, a third chap, and I are creating.
I'll still probably continue, just at a really, reaaaaaaly slow pace. Sorry to disappoint the half dozen or so people (probably fewer) who were hoping for a new post.
S̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ ̶a̶t̶t̶e̶m̶p̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ Short stories!
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Friday, September 23, 2016
Sunday, September 4, 2016
A Mission To Jupiter (Dreams)
Note: Sorry about the first paragraph.
Far
off in the distant reaches of space, I was aboard a spaceship. I had
no particular reason to be there, but as usual took no notice of the
fact at all. Nevertheless, I was allowed to and perfectly aware of
how to pilot the ship. The control room itself was quite dull, walled
in with tarnished metal plates arranged in a boring rectangular
configuration, which were decorated only with a useless pattern of
intersecting raised squares. The floor appeared to be concrete. The
front window was entirely uninspired. It took up the greater part of
one of the walls and was not even given curved edges or trim on the
sides to emphasize its existence. The only other objects in the room
were the door, which was inset about a foot into the wall opposite
the window and split into two horizontally sliding sections, a
railing in front of the window, and a control panel located near the
front end of the right wall. The control panel was both incredibly
simple and seemingly fake. It was a long, thick, rectangular slab of
white plastic, tilted about 22 and a half degrees towards the center
of the room, and held up by two metal poles. Its only control was a
grey sliding knob. It had to be pulled along its wildly curving path
at a specific speed and using a particular state of mind to move the
ship. The control room's lack of design sense extended through every
single other part of the ship.
As
I stood in the similarly designed hallway behind this control room, a
message blared annoyingly over the intercom.
“All
crew members and stowaways of any importance please report to the
teleport bay, now! The boss himself is visiting!”
I
walked through the maze of corridors and arrived at the teleport bay
just in time to see the boss appear. There were no sparkles or sound
effects or anything making the event interesting, the boss just
wasn't there one moment and was the next. The teleport bay was
slightly smaller than the control room and there was only one
teleportation chamber. It was more of a tiny alcove than a chamber,
with no discernible controls and only a metal plate on its floor to
signify its importance. The boss stepped into the main room and
cleared his throat. He glanced at his clipboard.
“Hi,”
he said. “Your next mission is to collect some pressurized liquid
hydrogen from Jupiter. Just head into orbit like sooooo...”, he
explained, waving around his free hand, which still was holding a
pencil,
“Oh!”,
he exclaimed, noticing the pencil and extending the hand holding it
towards the captain of the ship, “Take this! I need this hand to
wave around!”
The
captain took the pencil.
“...
and then send in a pod. You'll need seven grams of it. Keep it
pressurized, we can't have any cheating,” concluded the boss, who
stepped back into the chamber and vanished.
All
the people in the room except the captain left, eager to return to
whatever they normally did. As you can tell, the spaceship didn't
have much of a purpose. Being only a construct of a resting
imagination, this is understandable.
“Shame,”
said the captain, “I never gave the boss his pencil back. I'll have
to keep it safe for him.”
You
may correctly surmise that the captain was extremely overestimating
the importance of the pencil to the boss. Just how extremely he was
doing so will become very clear very soon.
…
The
ship had reached Jupiter, and the planet looked strangely small
through the window. Its odd beige and rust-colored stripes curved and
faded in exactly the right way to make them look painted on. The time
had come to collect the hydrogen, and I was standing in the control
room, ready to move the ship closer to the planet. Eight other crew
members, all dressed in white jumpsuits, were standing behind me for
no obvious reason. I carefully moved the knob along its slider
towards the left end of the control panel, which signified small
sizes or short distances. Jupiter seemed to grow, but very slowly.
After
a few seconds of movement towards the planet, one of the crew members
became impatient.
“You're
doing it all wrong! We've got to go way faster than that!”, he
yelled, and then yanked the knob at an alarming speed.
The
ship flew straight towards Jupiter. As the planet as seen in the
window grew larger, the ship began trying to rip itself apart. The
floor shook with surprising vigor, and the lights went wild from
absorbed radiation. By the time I finished my struggle back towards
the control panel, all that was visible through the window was a
uniform brown haze. The only illumination came from the giant
electrical storms occurring below us on Jupiter. One I had a firm
hold on the control panel, I slowly and carefully slid the knob back
towards the right, inching us back into a sane orbit. At that moment
the captain bolted into the room, panting from the exertion of
running through every corridor in the ship in search of a pencil.
“Have
any of you seen the pencil? The boss needs it back and I've lost
it!”, he half-sobbed.
“No,
captain,” droned the other crew members in unison.
The
captain's face went from an extremely worried, mortified look to one
of utter despair and gloominess.
I
pulled open the top drawer of a nearby small, dark-stained, and
ornate wooden cabinet which couldn't have possibly been there and
pulled out the pencil, which could not have been put there. I showed
it to the captain, hoping that it would cheer him up. It did not.
“It's
too late. I lost it, and I can't take it back. I would lose it again.
I can't be trusted with anything...”
The
captain fell silent and left the control room. One of the random crew
members glanced through the doorway and into the hallway, immediately
recognizing the path the captain was taking.
“The
captain is heading into Jupiter's room!”
'Jupiter's
Room' was a room containing a human-sized scale model of Jupiter,
accurate except for having a somewhat exaggerated equatorial bulge
and a slightly greenish tint. It hovered about two inches above a
raised platform and was surrounded by convoluted metal pipes on its
left and right sides. By the time the other crew members and I
arrived there, the captain had reached the far end of the room and
was standing on the platform to the left of Jupiter. Though it was a
scale model, its internal pressure was accurate, which meant that the
captain's plan of walking straight through it would certainly and
intentionally lead to his death. I rushed off to the only place I
could think of that could help: The Infinite Couch Cushion Field.
The
Couch Cushion Field, luckily, was located a few feet to the right of
Jupiter's Room. Both its ground and sky were white, and no end was
visible. The brown, lightly patterned couch cushions stubbornly
extended forever in every direction. I leaped out of Jupiter's Room
and hit the center of a nearby couch cushion. There was, of course,
an invisible button there which instantly rendered the scale model of
Jupiter holographic, nothing but a field of harmless light.
One
of the crew members glared at me.
“What
exactly are you doing?”, she asked.
“I
just saved the captain's life, of course,” I boasted. The captain
walked through the hologram and out the other end unharmed. “See?”,
I said.
“You're
ridiculous,” she responded as the captain rushed towards me, not
entirely sure whether he was grateful or furious.
I
woke up.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Fool's Errand, Part Three (The Nine Galaxies)
Note: Well, here it is, over a week late!
The
Zephyrian sat impassive in the control room, watching on a viewscreen
as the arguments began and the passengers quickly turned against it.
It was safe where it was behind the control room's locked door, and
had no concerns. It would bring the ship back into hyperspace about a
day later, as was planned, and then it would rejoin the others at the
Muttering Dwarf Hub Station. There it would stay until some other
curious group of travelers came, and though they probably wouldn't be
as much trouble as these ones, things would go much the same way. Its
life would go on in the usual Zephyrian way for another century or
three, and then it would be forgotten in the onrush of years and
deluge of new lives.
What
it still couldn't figure out was why Sanar had wanted the ship to
fall into the black hole. It seemed like an incredibly stupid goal.
It had gone through the ship's owner's bio in the computer files
many times, and found no explanation.
The
pilot was passing the time calculating the motion of objects in a
three-body system and composing fugues in various keys in its head
when it noticed something in its peripheral vision. It was a blinking
red dot on one of the viewscreens. The pilot moved over to the screen
and read the overlaid text.
DEACTIVATED
AIR FILTER, ID C-8
The
Zephyrian tapped the dot and a 3D projection of the ship's schematics
appeared. The ventilation shafts near the dot were quickly turning
red. Somebody had dumped a liquid into a vent in the common room, and
deactivated the filter to make sure it could cause trouble. As it
watched, more red dots appeared around the common room and more vents
were filled. One dot briefly disappeared, but blinked on again
quickly after.
The
pilot accessed the security feed on another screen, and was presented
with the blurry underside of a piece of tape.
The
Zocronnans were trying as hard as they could to get its attention,
and they certainly were succeeding- if they kept the air filters off,
the oxygenators would be smothered in the liquid, and they would all
slowly suffocate. If the Zephyrian didn't try to fix the filters, it
would be violating the Spaceflight Code. Sighing softly, it set the
controls one last time, left the control room, and locked the door
behind it.
Entering
the common room, the pilot noticed the door wasn't locked for once.
It also noticed that the air was filled with half-empty, drifting
bottles of Aquanymphan ale. Finally, it noticed that the Zocronnans
were clustering around the affected vents.
“Must
you do this? It doesn't benefit any of us,” it said. Its translator
produced the strongest smell of despair it could, along with the
necessary Zocronnan clicks and hisses.
The
Zocronnans did nothing but increase the anger and derision of their
scents. Sighing again, the pilot went to each of the vents and
switched the filters back on. Then, after it had finished, all of its
limbs were grabbed at once and the Zocronnans tied it to the
handholds on the wall. Nobody came to stop them. Apparently the
elders and the few others who had stayed sane had been forced out of
the room.
“You
really can't break the Spaceflight Code, can you?”, derided Sanar.
“No,
that would be unlawful. I have no reason to, and you would have
blocked the oxygenators and suffocated anyway if I had,” answered
the pilot in Zocronnan, unable to reach its translator.
“Now,
we have control of the ship! You couldn't have broken the Code for
that?”
“You
will have control of the ship once you guess the password. I think
you'll find it quite difficult to do that within the span of a single
day,” corrected the pilot.
“A
single day? We have forever! We can force the password out of you if
we need to,” threatened the owner.
“You
have a single day. I have programmed the ship to enter hyperspace and
return to the Hub at the agreed time. I have done everything I can to
make this trip go exactly as planned. My imprisonment here is not a
setback, it is merely an inconvenience.”
Sanar
did not answer. He only deepened his scent before turning, pushing
himself off the wall and leaving.
“I
have kept my side of the agreement and done nothing wrong, why are
you so determined to put yourself in danger and defy yours?”, the
pilot muttered as its mouth was covered in tape. It began humming one
of its fugues but was silenced by a collective hiss from the
Zocronnans.
The
quiet of the library was suddenly interrupted by a whooshing as Sanar
flew through the air towards Zarannan. The latter was reading Tales
from the Singularity, his wonderment just as strong as it had been
when he was a larva.
Zarannan
looked up at the visitor and read a few lines out loud.
“
Now the Great Minds proceeded to show the travelers more of
their powers.
The
twenty-four watched as the in skies above them worlds innumerable
wheeled and changed,
their
every motion a thought of the Minds, by whom this display could be
triggered on a whim.
“Why
do you not leave here, and rule the galaxy?”, asked one.
“This
realm surpasses all your galaxies.” ”
Sanar
shivered briefly. The power they would be dealing with was
astonishing.
Then,
the realization that he was in awe of a passage from an old,
exaggerated larva's book hit him and his scent became one of
annoyance.
“There
is a problem.”
Zarannan
looked up from the book again. “What is it? Did the Zephyrian not
come?”
“No,
it was captured. The problem is that it has locked the control room
and programmed the ship to leave in a day,” Sanar explained with a
scent of regret.
Zarannan
snapped the book shut and flew to the door, even flapping his twelve
spindly limbs in an attempt to get there faster.
“We
must figure out the password!”
The
ship's owner hesitated for a few delts before deciding not to follow.
“That
might not be the best idea,” he said.
Zarannan
turned slowly.
“What!”,
he yelled.
“We
have tried. We probably won't be able to guess the password, so let's
not waste time on that. We should return, and maybe try again a few
years from now. The Singularity will still be there,” Sanar argued.
“But
we cannot return! The pilot would report us, and we would be put on
trial! That would be bad, very bad. Our only choice is to go on with
it,” the other argued back.
“We
could plead insanity,” suggested Sanar.
For
a moment, it seemed that either of them could suddenly burst out in
olfactory laughter. The moment didn't last long.
A
sharp, stern smell from Zarannan made the owner give in. They might
as well try.
They
tried for what seemed like years. They tried various words in
Standard, random jumbles of characters, smashing the door open with a
crowbar, names of well-known planets, historical figures from various
galaxies and eras, smashing the door open with a bigger crowbar,
curse words, puns from an advanced Standard textbook they found in
the library, text from signs they had seen in the Hub, mythological
concepts, 'OPEN', 'OPEN OR WE WILL HIT THIS DOOR WITH SOMETHING WORSE
THAN A CROWBAR', smashing the door open with a laser drill they
couldn't figure out how to operate, more curse words, and finally,
more random jumbles of characters.
All
the while, passengers had been visiting them to cheerfully share
ideas for passwords, none of which worked. The elders and their
supporters occasionally left their rooms to try to convince the
others to let the pilot go, but always failed. The pilot itself did
nothing to escape. Finally, after the laser drill gambit failed,
Zarannan decided to give up.
On
the way back to the common room, where the two attempted hijackers
were heading to regretfully inform the Zephyrian that it had won, an
idea came to Sanar.
“Don't
Zephyrians love physics? We could try equations.”
Zarannan
spun around and faced the owner. “You couldn't have thought of that
half a day ago?”, he hissed angrily.
“That's
not how thinking works!”
“Whatever,”
dismissed Zarannan, “I'm going to try equations.”
“What
makes you think they will work?”, hissed Sanar.
The
other Zocronnan didn't answer. He was heading to the library.
Sanar
joined him and they began searching for a book on physics. It wasn't
long before they found one; a textbook for accelerated science courses
entitled 'The Well-to-do Larva's Big Book of Physical Equations'.
After a few failed attempts to open the control room's door using the
equations for classical gravitation, relativistic gravitation,
hyperspatial mechanics, and a few quantum equations, they, quite
surprisingly, managed to get it open with the four equations of
classical electromagnetism.
Sanar
was mildly disturbed by Zarannan's scent of triumph as the door swung
open, as it was laced with strong hints of lust for power, and
perhaps slight malice. Essentially, the smell was the equivalent of a
humanoid's evil grin.
“Now
our Colony, our species, will have honor above all others'!”
.
. .
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
The Time a Portal Ate My Shoes (Dreams)
Note: No, I don't know what the heck happens inside my brain while I'm asleep.
I
was lounging around in the front room of in my house with three of my
friends. I have no idea who they actually were, but within the
context of my dream I knew them. As we lay atop the teal, green and
amber patterned rug in the front room, we cut sheets of white
card-stock paper and created various unidentifiable objects out of
it. Suddenly, an idea came to me.
“We
should make a portal!”, I suggested.
“How
can you make a portal out of paper?”, one of my friends wondered.
I
cut out four long strips of card-stock and taped them together,
forming a rectangle. I cut out another sheet, wider than the rest but
slightly shorter, and taped it to the left side of the bottom.
“Simple,”
I said, “you can make anything out of this stuff if you know how to
do it.”
I
wrote the word 'PORTAL' and drew a few buttons and levers on the
widest strip of card-stock. I drew a representation of a circuit
board in the remaining space. On the left section, I drew more
circles, but with lines radiating from them- these were meant to be
lights. Once I had finished, I tapped one of the buttons, and the
space between the segments of card-stock suddenly lit up in a
blue-purple spiral.
“Wow!”,
gasped each of the three others simultaneously.
“What
can it do?”, asked one of them.
I
tapped some of the buttons and pretended to flick a few of the
levers, and the glowing spiral disappeared. It was replaced by a view
of a room within Arthur's house. In it were his father and brother,
both staring intently at a sports magazine. Since they didn't seem to
notice me, I threw a roll of tape at them. As I did this, they
glanced up at me, waved, and then went back to their sports magazine,
never noticing the tape. I pressed a few more nonexistent buttons and
the portal returned to its spiral pattern. Not at all to my surprise,
the lights I had drawn on had become actual multicolored indicator
lights- the same kind you could easily find on any prop from Lost
in Space.
I
had been looking away from the portal for only half a minute. I was
helping one of my friends make his card-stock project look less like
a spaceship and more like a formless, unidentifiable lump. When I
looked back at where the portal should have been, it was gone.
Alarmed, I searched the swath of floor between the front door and the
coat rack. I quickly found the portal- and found that it had extended
itself to include my favorite pair of shoes. They were dark leather
shoes, and presumably somewhat expensive. (This is odd outside the
context of the dream because I did not own any shoes in that
style at the time.)
“No!
This thing is turning evil!,” I declared.
My
shoes were half-covered by strips of card-stock and were adorned with
a row of small, amber indicator lights. I tried to turn the portal
off by repeatedly tapping a drawn-on button, but all this did was
cause the indicator lights to blink on, including the amber ones on
the shoes. The space intended for the portal in the center of the
machine was empty, rendering it useless.
The
portal crept along the carpet towards one of my friends. We watched
with horrified fascination as it extended its shoe towards one of
them, shuffling onward in short, sudden leaps. The shoe clamped on
his hand, and he let out a mild yelp of pain. I yanked the portal
away from him and tried to rip it to bits, but it stayed whole. It
soon escaped from my hands and broke the front door's window, leaping
into the unprotected world, escaping into the night.
A
day later, I was still worrying about the terrible machine I created.
I worried that it had escaped into a major city and begun wreaking
havoc. With a portal making up most of its body, it could sneak into
the bank and teleport cash to the moon! It could keep the mayor at
shoe-point for ransom! The worst part was, since it was built out of
a weak material, it could change its molecular structure and become
anything it wanted to!
Finally,
soon after sundown, I found out where it had gone. The local news
channel was running a story about a mysterious attacker breaking into
a local Enchilada Klaxon restaurant in the nearby city of Ravinia. My
parents weren't watching, so I told them I was hungry. They told me
to make a sandwich. I told them I wanted to eat at Enchilada Klaxon,
more specifically the one in downtown Ravinia. They obliged and drove
me there.
There
was no parking lot, only a large field of grass between the road and
the restaurant. I leaped out of the car, ran to the building, and
shoved open the door. The windows were dark, so my parents could tell
something was wrong, but they did not stop me. I glanced around the
darkened room, but didn't see anything unusual except broken dishes
and overturned tables. I walked behind the counter. Nothing was
stolen, but there was a faint light coming from a nearby doorway. It
led into a corridor which led to the building's open back door.
I
rushed outside into the open field to see that the entire lot was
surrounded by news reporters. I don't just mean a section of it, I
mean the entire multi-dozen-yard perimeter of it. Their voices echoed
softly to where I stood.
“This
just in! Boy rushes to scene of the attack at Enchilada Klaxon! Will
he catch the mystery attacker?”
“The
temperature is sixty-four, the nightly sky is clear and the wind is
blowing in a roundabout way. Perfect weather for action.”
“The
kid's parents say he does this kind of thing all the time. We say he
needs to get a life.”
Out
of the shadows, from between a dumpster and a pile of rubble, burst
the attacker itself. It was no longer a portal. It was a giant
paperclip, much like the helper icon included in old versions of
Microsoft Office. It bounced away from me into the field, making an
unrealistic sound effect as it went. The reporters chronicled its
every move.
“Whoa!
Look at it go!”
“That
thing looks familiar to me. I have a strong urge to hate it.”
I
rushed after it. It was fast, but I was faster. Once I caught it, I
pounced upon it and tackled it. With all my might, I ripped it apart.
Its gleaming metal vanished as it became a clump of tattered fabric.
It lay motionless upon the grass, finally defeated. I stood back up
and looked around.
“Hey,
he won! I didn't see that coming!”
I
woke up.
Dreams
Since I'm an extremely slow writer and have no idea when I'll finish the next bit of the Nine Galaxies, I've decided to publish some old stories I wrote based off of my dreams. You probably got here from Arthur's blog, in which case you might remember his series Dreamworld. My dream stories are just as weird, and probably more interesting than any serious story I could come up with anyway.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Fool's Errand, Part Two (The Nine Galaxies)
Note: The text seems to be stuck this way. Oh well.
"I know why we're here," someone whispered.
"I know why we're here," someone whispered.
Sanar
went alert and opened the scent receptors along the sides of his
body. He tried to twist his head around, but once again ended up
propelling himself across the room. Letting out his species'
equivalent of a sigh, he tried to identify the visitor's smell.
"Yes.
Zarannan. What are you doing here?"
Zarannan
was a male with a slightly lighter exoskeleton than Sanar, patterned
with breadthwise darker stripes. He had been a friend of Sanar's back
when they were both larvae, but they had long since gone their
separate ways- Sanar into trading, and Zarannan into real estate.
Being one of the most wealthy and influential members of the colony,
he was invited, as was customary.
“I
know why we are here,” Zarannan whispered again.
The
ship's owner tried to smell what the other was feeling. Excitement,
perhaps, but maybe a whiff of apprehension? The air was hard to read.
He answered carefully.
“Everyone
here does. We are on a tour.”
“No,
no, that is not it. I know the truth!”, declared the visitor.
Sanar
was really beginning to get confused.
“What
is this fictional truth you claim to know?”
“Remember
the Tales From The Singularity1?”,
asked Zarannan.
The
fresh scent of surprise flooded the room. Somehow or other, Zarannan
had found out Sanar's plans, or at least guessed at them. How, he
couldn't imagine. He hadn't told anybody, and he prided himself on
how well he had concealed his motives from scent.
“How
did you find out?”
The
visitor began to explain. “I was visiting the library- ”
“The
library! What were you doing THERE?”, interjected Sanar.
Reading
was not a very popular activity in Zocronnan culture (except for
larvae, which were required to read as part of their education), and
the only reason Sanar had had books brought onto the ship was because
of a request from one of the passengers prior to leaving Zocron.
There was one book he would've brought along anyway, though, a
favorite of his when he was a larva, and a major source of
inspiration. He began to form an inkling of where Zarannan had gotten
his information.
“I
was visiting the library,” the visitor was saying, “and I spotted
the book! The book that fascinated me when I was a larva. Tales From
The Singularity. Silly book, but I always wondered if it had any fact
at its core. You must have wondered the same, I can think of no other
reason you would bring us here. Now I know- you have found evidence,
and are here to take the power of the Singularity for our Colony!”
Excitement
was growing unbearably strong in the air, and Sanar half-shut his
scent receptors.
“Exactly,”
he lied. He had guessed that there was some truth to it, after a few
visits to neighboring planets revealed that the myth of the black
hole was not confined to his own species. He hadn't, however, found
any evidence even beginning to suggest it was based on a historical
account. The visitor showed no signs of smelling his deception.
“Good,
good. What will we do to get this ship plunged into the black hole?”
“Errr...”,
said Sanar, “I do not know. I planned for us to get dragged in by a
cloud of gas. Or to order the Zephyrian to fly us there,” he
admitted.
“I
see. You did not read the Spaceflight Code when organizing the trip,
did you? Of course not.”
Sanar
smelled uncomfortable. “It was faster just to click 'Agree'.”
Back
in the common room, the passengers had begun to lose interest in the
black hole. It had ceased to be a novel sight, and there was no
appreciable change in it to catch their interest again. Now they were
occupying their time talking about Sanar and his apparent goal to get
them all killed.
“Very
disturbing!”, a male named Acnar was deliberating, “very
disturbing that he, an honored member of our colony is seemingly
insane! Has half a thought to murder us, too!”
“Yes.
And I thought he was promising. For your generation,” grumpily said
one of the three Colony elders who had been invited.
“I
don't think he's insane. Well, maybe insane, but not murderous. I
think he's after something,” said Osara, Sanar's niece.
The
elder and Acnar looked at her and let let out a quizzical scent.
“I
remember him telling me once about a book he used to love when he was
a larva. Something about this black hole containing a magical realm,
controlled by beings who could alter reality. He must be after that
power. I don't know what made him think it actually exists, but it is
the best explanation I can think of.”
“You
think he's doing this all because of an old larva's tale?”, said
the elder, accompanied by a doubtful scent, who didn't think much
more of Osara's generation than Sanar's.
“It
does make more sense than anything else I've heard. He is insane,
after all,” said Acnar.
“Eh,
I suppose you're-”
Sanar
and Zarannan glided into the room, and silence fell over the other
passengers, along with a general scent of mingled embarrassment and
distrust. Sanar was rather surprised, but the passengers had already
been losing interest in the black hole by the time Zarannan left, and
he had a plan.
It
was an uncomfortably long time before the silence was broken. One of
the other two elders moved forward.
“We
have been discussing your actions, Sanar,” she said, “and are in
agreement that you attempted to have this ship fall into the black
hole. Can you explain your actions?”
The
elder Osara and Acnar had been talking with came forward as well.
“Anything short of pleading insanity, and I'd be surprised!,” he
hissed.
It
seemed that there was about to be another uncomfortable silence, but
then Zarannan suddenly spoke.
“This
has all been a misunderstanding! Sanar isn't trying to get us killed.
The Zephyrian lied! There was no gas cloud!”, yelled Zarannan. He
produced a smell of conviction.
The
room erupted into chaos as arguments began and angry scents filled
the air. Most of the passengers had believed Zarannan, mostly because
of the scent. Anti-Zephyrian sentiment was strikingly high among
Sanar's generation, and with the apparent goodwill of the pilot
explained away, it ran raw. Despite clear visual evidence that there
was a gas cloud, and attempts at logical explanation by all three
elders, the general opinion turned from the ship's owner being insane
to the ship's pilot being a liar bent on ruining a perfectly good
vacation.
As
the accusations against the Zephyrian became more outrageous and
baseless, the elders, Sanar's niece, Acnar, and two others formed
their own group in the corner opposite the others, absolutely
mortified by this revelation about their society.
“Told
you. That generation is defective,” grumbled the male elder. For
once, the other two didn't argue.
.
. .
1Tales
from the singularity, by Sakaran III of Akt Colony. Three
Burrows Publishing, Z.Y. 779,063. Still reprinted millenia later
during Sanar's lifetime because of its wide appeal as a larvae's
fantasy tale.
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Fool's Errand, Part One (The Nine Galaxies)
Note: The Zephyrian species is Arthur Borglestein's concept. I have adapted them somewhat, but they are still mostly his.
Another note : Sorry about the text size. I'm working on it. Try zooming in if your eyes are breaking trying to read this.
Another note : Sorry about the text size. I'm working on it. Try zooming in if your eyes are breaking trying to read this.
The
light would not reach an inhabited world for millenia.
A
spaceship, accompanied by a smattering of photons emitted by the
collapse of its hyperspatial bubble, had appeared in the vicinity of
a supermassive black hole in the center of the Muttering Dwarf
Galaxy1.
It was a large luxury ship, designed for interplanetary tours and
sightseeing. It certainly wasn't designed to navigate the often
unpredictable environment around a black hole. Nevertheless, its
owner, a respectable and wealthy Zocronnan named Sanar, had at great
personal expense arranged for a trip to this one. He claimed it was
for 'the honor, advancement, and prestige of our Colony2',
but even those on the trip who didn't think it was a waste of credits
could see through that. A few were beginning to wonder if Sanar was
entirely sane.
It
was for a similar reason that the ship's Zephyrian pilot was gliding
through a corridor to the common room. Upon reaching the door (which
was, for the seventeenth time, locked by one of the Zocronnans), it,
for the seventeenth time, bypassed the lock through a backdoor in the
door's integrated computer system. A strong, acrid smell, something
like fresh carrion, wafted out into the corridor. The Zephyrian took
no notice, and slowly pushed itself into the cavernous room. It
floated at the entrance for a few moments, glancing around the room;
above it was a storage alcove, containing fewer bottles of
Aquanymphan ale than when it last looked, in front of it were
twenty-four openings, leading to burrow-like private rooms, and below
it were the twenty-four Zocronnans gawking at the view of the black
hole on a viewscreen. Quietly, it cleared its throat.
The
Zocronnans, startled, turned around to face whoever it was who had
made such a characteristically humanoid sound. Some were so startled
that they forgot to keep a grip on the handholds and ended up
drifting away. Sanar was the most startled and managed to propel
himself at an alarming speed towards a spot next to the doorway.
The
ship's now very disgruntled owner turned to the pilot.
"I
don't want any more trouble from you! Get out!", Sanar
spluttered in his native language of clicks and hisses, forgetting to
turn on his translator.
"A
good day to you too, Sanar," said the Zephyrian in the same
language.
The
two beings stared at each other, the Zocronnan a large,
twelve-legged, brownish insectoid creature, seething with rage, and
the Zephyrian a two-and-a-half meter tall pale humanoid with flowing
blue hair and a black cloak, staring as calmly as ever at Sanar
through its yellow, almost catlike eyes. The smell slowly changed
from fresh carrion to rotting, inedible, probably poisoned carrion,
the Zocronnan chemical signal for anger.
Absentmindedly,
Sanar switched on his translator3.
"Atmosphere
of tension! Atmosphere of rage! Atmos-", it began murmuring in
Standard4.
Sanar
switched it back off and resumed his stare, ignoring the faint smell
of amusement wafting from the others.
Finally,
he turned to the others and spoke.
"This
Zephyrian here has invaded our privacy again, and, what is more,
mocks our language!"
"It's
fluent...", said one of the others quietly, and indeed the pilot
spoke Zocronnan near perfectly, the only error being that Zocronnans
hardly ever say 'good day'.
"Quiet!",
hissed the ship's owner, "And you! Get out!", he said to
the pilot.
"I
have every right to remain here, and under the Spaceflight Code and
my conscience I am obligated," the pilot responded, still in
Zocronnan.
"You
have NO right to remain here, and stop speaking our language!",
yelled Sanar.
"If
you insist, I will speak Standard," said the Zephyrian in
Standard, after setting its translator to Zocronnan, "but this
is not a private room, and under Section Six of the Spaceflight Code,
every registered being on this ship has every right to be here."
"Fine,
Zephyrian. What do you have to say? Make it quick."
"We
cannot stay at this distance much longer. There is a large cloud of
gas nearby which will soon fall into the black hole and will
certainly disrupt our orbit," announced the pilot.
"This
is a good ship! We can restore our orbit," scoffed the owner.
"Unfortunately
we cannot; this ship is designed for hyperspatial travel, not
navigation around large masses. I hardly think we could escape with a
maximum acceleration of a fifth of a daltol5
per delt6
per delt."
"We
should leave, you say. No!"
"No,
that is not what I mean," assured the pilot, "what I mean
is that we must move to a more distant orbit if we are to avoid the
risk of being pushed into a closer, decaying, inescapable one."
"We
will stay!", yelled the pilot.
"Under
Section Eight of the Spaceflight Code, I am required to prevent our
deaths, even if it means disobeying your orders. I shall move us to a
different orbit. If the cloud of gas is dense enough, then I shall
move us out of orbit entirely. Good day," concluded the pilot.
The
pilot turned itself around with a few tugs on the handles surrounding
the door and pushed itself into the corridor. Tapping the walls
deftly with its slender fingers to maintain speed and avoid crashing
when it came to bends, it quickly vanished from sight.
"Come
back here! We will remain in this orbit!", screeched the owner.
"This is an affront to the Colony, Zephyrian!"
"You
are quite mistaken! This is an affront only to you, and even then a
justified one!", the Zephyrian yelled back from the corridor.
Then the soft click of the control room's door closing bounced down
the hall and the pilot began to set the controls.
Sanar
stared through the open doorway, now angry and somewhat flummoxed.
Besides Section One, he hadn't realized the Spaceflight Code
contained anything but starship safety specifications and seldom-used
protocols. This would certainly make things a lot harder.
The
view of the black hole in the viewscreen shrank as a faint, distorted
ring of plasma appeared around it, adding even more strangeness to
the gravitationally contorted image. As the others continued gawking
at it and the pilot kept the ship from being dragged towards the
event horizon, Sanar slowly drifted to one wall of his private room
due to the ship's slight acceleration. He folded his twelve arms in
thought, trying to figure out what to do next.
. . .
FOOTNOTES
1 So
named because of the extremely strong, mysterious, and as of yet
unexplained radio signals found to have been emitted from the
galaxy's core about forty million standard years before. Even more
mysteriously, the galaxy at that time was observed to be a small
spiral galaxy- soon after the radio emissions ended, a light far
brighter than a supernova's issued from the same location. Soon
after that, the central black hole increased in mass by a large
factor, causing most of the galaxy to fall into the center.
2 A
colony of between one hundred and one hundred thousand is the basic
social unit in Zocronnan culture. At one point in its evolutionary
history, the colony-based social structure resembled that of ants or
bees, though the sole fertile "hive queen" vanished
millions of years before the modern Zocronnan species evolved.
3 Small,
portable translator devices are ubiquitous in the Nine Galaxies.
4 In
this case, Standard refers to the vocal (pronounceable by most
humanoids) form of the language, though there are many syntactically
identical versions of the language, not all of them sound-based.
5 Daltol:
Standard unit of length. Approximately 0.3913 m.
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