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'!”

. . .

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.

               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.

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.

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.

6 Delt: Standard unit of time. Approximately 0.5623 s.

The Nine Galaxies

This will be my main series for the foreseeable future. It will be science fiction, of course, and mostly plausible except for technologies such as hyperspatial travel and a few artifacts and locations which don't make much sense even within the series' canon. The titular Galaxies are unified under a decentralized government and are inhabited by millions of sapient species. Humans do not appear, but there are a handful of human-like species, all of which will appear later on. Each individual story will be published episodically. Most will be unconnected.


I'll publish the first episode of the first story soon, I hope.
(Note: since the stories take place in a fictional universe with pretty much no connection to Earth and its culture, there will be a lot of footnotes. Sorry about that.)