Sublight Fiction

Summary:

Or "fluff pieces," one might also call them.

Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2012 05:30

To The Sky

I arrive, fully cognizant, aware, as my consciousness is assembled from photon after photon. It's an adaptation from a dozen worlds ago, and I enjoy it. It gives me the chance to hear the words I've been waiting to hear for literally thousands of years.

"Greetings, Traveler Uomi. Welcome to Sol System."

There's no one else at the station, just a relay computer. I have no body, just sensor access. There's no greeting party, just the view.

It's tiny from here, but it's home.

I'm in the Oort Cloud. The real, actual, Oort Cloud; the original. Named for Jan Hendrik Oort, the infosphere tells me. It gives me all sorts of historical detail, but I know most of it by heart and scarcely pay attention. In a few months - seconds to me - I'll be in closer, at a relay in the Kuiper Belt. Maybe even Jupiter! I take a few hundred milliseconds to bask in the glory.

Then I'm unraveled and respun thousands of AU farther in. This time there's a greeting party.

"Uomi! Welcome to Saturn!"

I can't speak. I can see the rings. They laugh as they realize what I'm looking at. "I… it's… it's just like they say." I'm practically crying.

"Pretty incredible, huh?" She sticks out a hand. We're all running in simulation, but the old gestures are still there. "Janet."

"Uomi." I get over myself and shake her hand. "I've seen others, but…"

"I've only seen pictures. Is Gyges as big as they say?"

"Every bit. Thing's practically a brown dwarf; no water moons though… I can't take my eyes off these rings."

Janet laughs. "Take your time. It's not going anywhere." She stays there with me a while, and eventually I'm willing to move on. And relaxed. Janet picks up the small talk. "So, some time off, huh?"

"Yeah. I'm ready to rest for a while."

"Well, you deserve it. I've seen your file; you've been saving cultures since before I was born." I start to say that most of that was in transit, but she keeps going. "You were the one who kept the Masqueraders in power, who sent home the last of the Fu Jing, your team catalogued the lost Stored cultures… really, you're going to meet a lot of Abstractionists who idolize you. I'm not just saying this to kiss ass."

I'm taken aback; I try to be humble, then to be… I don't know what, but I trip over my words. "Thank you. That's… thank you." I feel awkward - somehow I'm a legend. I stand here beneath glorious Saturn itself, second home to life in the Solar System, and they'll all be looking at me instead. There's silence for a short time. Then she asks:

"Well, where would you like to go?"

"Earth - of course! How could I go anywhere else?" Janet cringes just a little; I almost miss it. "…or is that a bad idea?"

"No, no, we can do Earth. It's a safe zone for all the Societies; none of us wants to be the one to make the big mistake. It's just… not what you might imagine."

Before she can warn me I look through the infosphere. I brush past the dated pictures and historical references, to see it by satellite as it is now.

For the second time today I'm practically crying.

"We can go to Mars," I whisper.

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2012 05:31

Post in Physical Form

CITIZENS!

YOU are being MANIPULATED!

YOU are being CONTROLLED!

YOU can FIGHT BACK!

For too long your GOVERNMENT has imposed strict CONTROLS on your work, your communications, even your leisure time. They want you to be weak in body, mind, and spirit.

A WEAK citizen is a COMPLIANT citizen, and a COMPLIANT citizen is a WEAK citizen!

Your weakness, in turn, enables your GOVERNMENT to be WEAK as well. The have become INEFFECTUAL, LAZY, AND CORRUPT! They, too, are COMPLIANT - to those who are MOST AMBITIOUS and MOST CORRUPT!

Do not mistake WEAKNESS for PEACE.

CITIZENS!

The TIME will COME for YOU to FIGHT BACK!
The TIME will COME for YOU to TAKE CONTROL!

HOW will you SHOW your STRENGTH?

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2012 05:31

Just One Last Thing

The shot rang out under a clear blue sky. Birds took flight, children screamed, the police drew their weapons (too late, of course). The image is indelible, even to those who have never seen it in person.

It was a moment on which the world turned.

If you were there, you would not have seen her - this small, unassuming aid to the president. This ambitious woman who worked her way into the campaign just a year ago, who said little but worked harder than anyone. You would barely have noticed her if you were intentionally looking for her; now, amid the distraction, she may as well be invisible.

See her reach in between the president's protectors, some seeking other assassins, others loading medical and crisis control lenses in a doomed attempt to save their charge. See her put her hand to the president's head as the nanophage slowly crawls out from his chest wound.

In his last flicker of life, see her breathe in.

Then, like everyone else, she is gone, escaping the self-replicating horrors that grew from the bullet and devoured half a city.

The world turned, and as it did, the Breathstealers were there. You never saw them, or knew what they did. Days later, as recordings of the crime are poured over for further clues and evidence, someone will realize. Blame will be considered; witch-hunts, too, before the assassin's trial leaves her as a mere footnote to history. She will be on her way to another star by then.

She, and with her, his ghost.

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2012 05:31

Third Time's the Charm

"Wake up, Shanna."

The words are a bit of gentle magic - I would come to on my own, but this helps to remind me of what is happening, to ground me in the present rather than floating in the haze of awakening. My eyes open; a man of sienna skin and slight build leans over me.

"Shanna, wake up. I… I have bad news. This is your third awakening. Your enemies are here; they found you twice. They killed you both times."

As my mind loads program after program, I startle and skip a beat. "Who are you?"

"Devamanda. I am a humble technician and advisor to Travelers such as yourself. You are in the home of the Peacewalkers, on Beta-484726-D, Whitewall in the local tongue. It is the seventh month after your arrival, and the Crisis is four days away."

Load the panic averter. Load it now. Load the despair compensator and the extra consciousness track. Four days, for the love of Ghandi, how can we do this in four days?

I sit gently upright, and Devamanda stands back. The room shrinks. It seems that he is not as slight as I thought, but rather…

"Devamanda, why am I so tall?"

"After the unfortunate ends met by your first incarnation, it was decided to fit you with additional defenses. This body is more spacious, to accommodate the necessary elements."

"I see." My curiosity brings up a list of defenses built into the body - active polymer skin, photon-splitting fields, redundant organs, a much wider range of sensors than I am used to. The list of defensives continues. My sorrow shows on my face.

"Shanna, it is a war zone out there. The Darwinians have brought their most devious tacticians, and have destabilized the local populace to create a smokescreen. Half of the locals think that this distraction is the crisis. We will be lucky to even arrive at the fulcrum in one piece."

I shake my head. "No. I appreciate that you've been careful to avoid any offensive enhancements, but I can't take the risk of hurting someone. I am sorry; these will have to go."

He looks uncomfortable. "That is what you said the last time."

I take a deep breath. In my head, my personal beliefs press their case against the importance of our success.

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 13 Jan 2012 05:33

No Rest

We cut it close.

We don't need to build up cred, show that we're serious, any of that. We come in and the local don says "You're from offworld? That's guts. I respect that." There's an understanding. We don't need the prep time. When everyone else has been there for months or years, we've been there for a week and a half.

You see, they just don't get it. They all work for their goals - very principled. Very high-minded. They're big picture people. Some of them, I wouldn't mind my kids getting to know their kids, you know? Hospitalers, good people. But they can't see the details. They come onto a planet and think they can push their agenda before the big day comes, but they've blown all the favors they had trying to get that agenda accomplished.

When all the other Travelers are worming their way into the government? We bought those contacts years ago.

And we never spend the favors until we need to.

You've heard the phrase. "Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day…" Well, you know what that day is. But the people in our pockets? They don't care about that. They could go either way; they're not high-minded people. They're practical people. They don't really, truly care about peace for all, or the preservation of cultures, or the evolution of the species. They care about reelection. They care about keeping their jobs. They care about the welfare of their children. And us? We have all that on lock.

So we come in eight days before the big event, glad-hand, stay up nights talking to people, throw some weight around when we need to, and then beam out. On to the next world, do it again, and leave it for the boys on the ground to recoup. Like I said - we've got it on lock.

I'm so tired.

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 27 Jan 2012 05:08

A Crisis Is Like A Fish

Darren has been busy today. The reconstitution chambers have filled and drained; the person within stirs. Even with the infosphere weakened as it is, the Hyperevolutes have enough technology for this - the arrival of a Traveller. Darren paces. He plays solitaire. He paces again. He looks at the psychohistorical forecast for the system, finds no Crisis predicted in the next hundred years. Paces again.

The Traveller is clearly awake. The door remains closed. Common practice is to let new Travellers recuperate mentally for a few minutes before letting them out. There are messages in a dozen languages within the chamber - written, spoken, semiotic - no one could fail to understand. He queries the infosphere for the Traveller's name: Kregan. Darren taps his pen repeatedly on the table, his mind running a mile a minute to nowhere.

The timer rings. The door opens, and Darren springs up -

"Welcome to Concordia, Kregan!"

"Grak gnit nurb?"

Darren falters. The language barrier is unexpected. So is the degree to which this particular Traveller is outside the norm. Even for a Hyperevolute, its body is strange. Vestigial wings. Fish-like scales. Birefringent eyes in incredible hues. No unambiguous sex characteristics. Darren reflects on the truism that all Travelers are, to some extent, obsessed with their Society.

Meanwhile, Kregan stands in place, perhaps observing the room in some unseen manner. The fish scales flex, almost like hairs standing up and lying down. "Grak nurb?" it says again. The local infosphere utterly fails to translate.

The next few days pass in confusion. Other Hyperevolutes come to examine Kregan, to attempt communication, to offer one thing or another. It cannot read computer screens. Its mesh's drivers are incompatible with the local handshake protocols; in effect, it is without infosphere access. The translation dictionary that came with it is a dense mess of incomprehensible gibberish, indicating a language based on means by which Darren and his fellows simply lack. Childrens' picture books are brought in. Kregan indicates, by pointing, what it needs to eat.

Eventually someone thinks to try Disciple Sign, which it at least seems to recognize as a means of communication. One could not truly call it progress. Basic questions like, "Who are you?" evoke responses like, "The law of deepness plunges." Strong suspicion rises that Kregan is not just a deeply variant Hyperevolute, but also Heterolinguist. Eventually new interface drivers are coded for Kregan's mesh, but the results are not much better, and the suspicions are confirmed.

Darren is assigned as Kregan's handler. There is little chance of integrating Kregan into the local worlds, straightlaced as they are regarding transformative technologies, but there is likewise no point in staying out in the Oort. They are loaded onto a tiny ship and sent toward the inner solar system. Kregan spends much time looking out the windows.

The trip takes three years. After the first month, Darren stops trying to communicate. After the second, he realizes that he's doing it whether he wants to or not. They begin to understand and be able to predict each other nonverbally. Then the deeper communion begins.

It's incredibly subtle - shifts of body language, glances with the eyes, flittering of the wings. Darren communicates back as best he can without wings. The concepts are like nothing Darren has ever encountered; it's as if they fit into the spaces between ordinary human thought. They take weeks to convey, months to understand, but the pair have nothing but time.

They arrive at a secret location in the inner system and Darren can't help but spread the story. Soon the tale spreads outside the Society. Demands come to bring Kregan into the public eye. Eventually it can't be avoided. Kregan is outed. Public opinion is roused; disgust and fascination and possibility roil. A Crisis appears where there was none.

Darren writes the story of their travels. It is translated into every language spoken, written, or signed, across Concordia. Religions form.

Kregan comes to him, years later, after the change. In the closest words that he might understand, it says, "Some fish swim deep. We made fish jump. I was the worm."

"How did you know that we were ready for this?"

"The ocean is deep and dark, but full of fish. Use enough worms and you'll catch one."

Last edited on 28 Jan 2012 20:21 by Colin_Fredericks Show more

Re: Sublight Fiction

Colin_Fredericks 28 Jan 2012 20:59

First Aid

"The bombs are in the air! Let's move!"

Chairs are knocked over. Sirens sound and the ambulances roll. Decks of cards flutter to the floor.

Soldiers say that their job is days of waiting followed by seconds of terror. Being a Hospitaler is much the same.

Chara is our Coordinator-General, the one barking orders. She's not from around here. When she came here a few years ago, we were a loosely organized group. We spent our time putting the word out for organ donations, blood drives, CPR courses, and the like. Then the Spacer ships arrived, one by one. It was an incredible time to be alive - living proof that the old stories were true! That we did come from the stars! And Chara was like our personal liaison, our advisor, our angel. She called us together and named us Hospitalers, said that there were millions like us across the galaxy. She got us organized and got us involved - truly involved.

Then we learned about something called Psychohistory - a combination of predictionism and self-fulfilling prophecy if you ask me. Chara told us that our world was going to become something called a "fulcrum," and that a Crisis was coming to us. And sure enough, as more ships arrived, they weren't all full of medical experts. Some of them were just the opposite.

Now, as she said, the bombs are in the air.

There are four groups fighting over our world, and we're caught in the middle. Two opposing views of evolution are dug into our power structures, throwing threats at each other that they've apparently finally made good on. Another group is trying to keep our society intact regardless of how many people it costs to do that. A fourth group is apparently trying to make a buck, to quietly "sell" the world to an expanding civilization as everyone else makes their moves.

And us? We just want to keep people alive. The Spacers could stop the bombs from falling, but they won't - part of their deal for bringing these offworlders is that they don't get involved, no matter what. If things escalate, they can always come in and kill the radiation afterward, pick up the pieces.

We can't keep the bombs from falling, but at least we can save some lives.

Re: Sublight Fiction

Pilgrim 03 Feb 2012 05:07

Interesting. Seeing a Traveler is a once in lifetime event. Mainly because your world is going to change and you might not survive it. Looking forward to any framework you put around it.