Things

You fucking bastard. You complete monster. You sadistic freak.

Sometimes I wonder what you were thinking. Then I remember that you don’t think. You just do. Chinese Room that you are; it’s not in your capacity to think. You just manipulate variables.

You have nothing in common with me. No, you have more in common with that predator, toying with its food. Injuring it a bit, letting it think it’s got away, then pulling it right back in. You don’t feel sorry for me. You don’t empathise with me. You aren’t capable of empathy.

You had me at your mercy, and you made me into a thing.

Just stop it. Stop manipulating variables. Stop doing. Just understand.

It wasn’t even personal. You don’t even hate me. I was just something disposable for you to play with.

You took everything I had. Absolutely everything.

I’d cry, if you hadn’t taken my tear ducts.

Ainwa in hindsight

As we might have expected, everything was perfect. The Undying Maker, in wisdom, has seen fit to install us in a beautiful valley. Our settlements have been prepared for us on the side of the valley, on a gentle incline. A stream flows at the bottom of the valley, weaving through the foliage, no doubt following a path carved expertly by the Maker to sustain our thirsts.

Our new home valley runs parallel to the path of the star. We have not yet seen the star disappear below the horizon yet, since it has been mere esks since we awoke in this place. As I write, it is nearly overhead, and casts a gentle red incandescence over us.

At the time of our arrival, the star was low in the air, and it's unobtrusive, yet friendly glow, Maker be blessed, was nearly obscured by the trees through which it infiltrated. These trees, we noticed later under better light, are part of a larger population; a forest which seems to cover the entire valley on one side of our position.

The Maker's servants direct us to name this direction 'west', so we do so. By analogy, they explained before their departure, the opposing direction must therefore be 'east'. In the terminology of the Maker's servants, which we faithfully adopt as our own, the star has spend the last ten esks rising in the sky from the west, and will, if the Maker approves, continue downward to the east.

The orbs of Bottled Light with which we are already acquainted are already dotted around our fine settlement. We about twenty of the blessed spheres against the dim sky, up on the ridge of our valley, and have sent parties to retrieve them before the inevitable stardown. We expect, as the star dips below the horizon, that they will exhale their gathered light to sustain us through the dark, just as the Maker intends.

The servants have left us now, having journeyed west into the forest. We did ask the Maker's servants, as we awoke and looked onto surface of this new surrogate Home, what is wished of us, yet we received replies we are not intended to comprehend. The Maker, in wisdom, will certainly reveal the meanings of these answers in time, once we have proved ourselves by proliferating through this new world, this surrogate Home, this Ainwa.

The Machinery grafted to the being of each one of our number did warm as we stepped onto Ainwa for the first time. We take this as a sign of good things in the future, as we establish ourselves as the Maker wishes. We, the People, earnestly thank the Undying Maker for such grace. We also earnestly hope that we may prove ourselves worthy to return Home once our time on Ainwa comes to a close.

From the Book of Testimonials, a part of the Collected Texts of the Circle of Three Gifts

-------

Or at least that was how it was meant to be.

The Maker no longer answers our cries, of course. The once-blessed orbs of Bottled Light have been extinguished. Our expansion is over, and the faithful are returning to the most holy place where we first set foot on Ainwa. This valley will become full over the next few esks, as our People return to the place we all came from.

My own Machinery is more of a burden than a blessing. It failed me several days ago, and is mere dead weight upon my person. The Healers testify that they can safely remove the Machinery, but I would sooner rip out my own soul before I allowed one of them to touch me. I still have hope that the Maker will return to us, though the knowledge that the Healers have not yet procured a living subject to test their procedure does not endear me to them either.

There are whisperings that perhaps our time on Ainwa is coming to a close. Some in the Circle maintain that the Maker wants us to go Home, and suggest that we expedite the process ourselves, before the Machinery fails all of us.

So of our three Gifts, Light and Machinery have now failed. What of History?

Natural selection

Natural selection. Nature, the mother. Blind watchmaker. Fumbling for parts. Groping at molecules.

Lights out. Glasses smashed. Eyes opaque. Ears ringing. Fingers numb. Nose blocked. And yet.

Creation.

Indistinguishable from Magic

We are told that what lives here started out there. And thus, here became the temporary abode, and out there became Home.

In the early days, before Ainwa was given form, we are told that the Undying walked the ground. The Undying wiped the ground clean, and moulded what became Ainwa from the rock. The Undying sculpted the mountains, filled the lakes and planted the forests. The Undying put two moons in the sky and set Ainwa revolving around the star.

The Undying moulded the first People from dust, we are told. The Undying breathed a brilliant consciousness into the first People, and gave them awareness.

The Undying presented them with three Gifts.

The first was Light. Sacred, glorious orbs that would inhale daylight and exhale it gently over the long nights. The Undying told the People to take Bottled Light wherever on Ainwa they spread, and to be thankful whenever the night came and they were grateful for the nourishing glow.

The second was Machinery. A seed of mechanical life was planted within the first People. The seed would grow around them, strengthening them, letting them know that the Undying was always with them. The People were told that the Machinery would guard their souls, and would return them Home after they took their last breath.

The third Gift, and the greatest Gift, was History. The Undying educated the People about their origins. The Undying told them about life in the early days, and the intelligences which had prospered then.

In the fathomless aeons below Ainwa's time, powerful beings had swam. Reality was clay to them. But still, reality was not enough. As time went on, and reality cooled, they retreated from reality, writing their consciousness onto the interiors of stars, and lived in bliss inside their own mentalities.

The Undying, the People were told, was one of these beings, returned to involvement in reality.

Endowed with Light, Machinery and History, the People spread throughout Ainwa, as the Undying looked on. Many did not survive, and returned Home. Those that remained consoled themselves in the knowledge that their lost kin had returned to the Undying.

More time passed.

And thus we arrive here.

---

So you might have guessed, this is another fiction quickie written in half an hour. I'm actually quite invested in the idea of writing something longer, perhaps a riff on Arthur C. Clarke's dictum 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. I really want to write something in the far future, after the brightest stars are all gone, and the ravages of entropy are truly being felt, but in the style of a fantasy.

What you've just read might be considered the first draft of the first part of a longer piece of fiction. If I decide to pop along with this, the ideas will probably change considerably. I already have indistinct concepts relating to a non-functional nuclear weapon (owing to the half-life of uranium), abstract intelligences written as patterns in the cores of stars and ghostlike apparitions, reflecting personalities located light-years distant.

It feels good to put something on paper (well, you know what I mean), so there's some record that the ideas exist.

Observation

Lina opens her eyes.

Crowded walls meet her.

She finds herself in a compartment about two and a bit metres in each dimension. The sleep inertia of her prolonged torpor wears off quickly. Now entirely awake, she pulls herself out of her wall-mounted bunk and hangs in the space 'above' it for a moment. She blinks twice as her eyes adjust to the soft, but still cold, lighting.

Lina's eyes now search for the nearest handhold. Picking one out amongst the tightly packed myriad of storage lockers and bundled cables proves to be an easier task than she was expecting. Memory assists her somewhat, of course. She pushes off her abandoned bunk and glides over to the handhold, gripping it firmly.

Now she rotates so that the hatch of this compartment is directly above her head. She pushes off the handhold gently and silently glides toward the hatch. She reaches it, plants her feet on the opposite wall, and turns anticlockwise the wheel embedded in the hatch's centre. The resistance of the wheel tries to rotate her clockwise. Lina again wonders a thought that is now familiar to her, why put a manual lock in a weightless environment?

The hatch now open, Lina coasts into the adjacent compartment. It is a much larger space than her own cubby, which was barely large enough to house the bunk, plus enough personal space as not to seem crowded.

Hand/footholds dot the walls of the compartment. There are additional lockers built into the walls here, most larger than those in Lina's cubby. At the far end of the space, there are a pair of rugged-looking seats, served by wraparound displays. Lina's motor memory is returning. Still drifting toward the seats, she deftly catches the headrest of one in both hands, and in a manner she might share with a weightless ballerina, pulls herself down into it and engages the straps.

Lina sets her hands onto the cold, dark control interfaces. At her touch, they illuminate. A warm glow shines on Lina's face. The transparent, wraparound display behind the control interfaces also ignites in a flourish of colour. Information spontaneously organises into charts, tables and schematics before her eyes. Lina's left hand dances over a few controls.

Outside, on the hull of the tiny space station, a parabolic antenna blossoms, gently unfolding like a monochrome orchid, and pitches around to target Earth. It catches radio waves in its wake, already six and a half hours old by the time they get out this far, and channels them in to Lina.

Earth has been whispering while she slept.

Sounds now accompany the warm incandescence of the consoles. Overlapping voices, most human, some synthesised, are kindled before Lina. The trickle of voices feels therapeutic. The independent cadences and rhythms of each voice, in aggregate, form a soothing, organic pulse. The heartbeat of a distant Earth?

She picks out a few snippets in languages she understands:

...litigation over smart gels...diplomatic tensions rise with...

Her declarative memory is now completely intact. Lina Dalton, her brain says. Makemake observation outpost zero one, it follows up dutifully.

...a new leader for the new eastern bloc...

Lina's right hand now comes to life. Her fingers, navigating by touch and memory alone, find familiar controls and activate them. The walls above her console are peeling away. Five alloy shutters retract in synchrony, revealing a panorama of the outside universe to Lina. Printed diamond windows keep the air in. Lina is now sitting in a bubble, nothing but vacuum on three sides, with the body of the space station behind her.

...there are more things in heaven and...intellectual fortitude...east-west conflict...

Modest computer-driven graphics are overlaid on the perfectly transparent diamond windows. A few points of light - Alpha Centauri, Polaris, etcetera - are identified with unobtrusive labels. Earth is not identified. It is too small. At this distance, its angular diameter is smaller than what can be seen by the human eye.

...yankee zulu bravado...we small peop...

Lina receptively takes in the sounds of an invisible world. She can feel, almost viscerally, the steady heartbeat of Earth, expressed in the voices of its denizens. The concert of sounds pulses as one. Each individual voice melts smoothly into the others. Like a tranquil river, the voices flow into her. Lina feels the presence of a brilliant world, bathed in the light of intelligence, pulsing with the activity of billions, yet still acting as in singular.

...even more accurate than...actuarial escape vel...

Her heart almost beating in sync with Earth's.

...d signals over...the paragon of anima –

And then, in the space of an instant, the voices cease.

Echoes live for a moment longer before being struck mute themselves. A deep silence falls upon the compartment - total and absolute, yet far louder then the sounds had been. Lina jerks back to full awareness. The voices still ring in her mind, but are fading fast.

Lina examines the displays. No failures. What had happened?

Over the next few minutes, Lina uses every tool available to try and track down a malfunction. Every time she fails to find one, an uneasy eventuality grows in her consciousness. Nothing wrong with the antenna. Speakers perfect. Nothing in the line of sight. Earth had just stopped talking.

Finally, Lina works up the courage to test her final hypothesis. Her hands move deliberately over the controls, and come away almost shaking. She examines the records of her radiation counters, which, as part of the antenna assembly, had been trained on Earth. At the precise moment the voices choked and died, an unmistakable spike in gamma radiation was clearly evident. The presence of the spike confirms the horrid, unthinkable thought that has been looming since the Earth's heart stopped beating. It’s as if that same spike has been shot through her chest, for all the subtlety.

So it was nuclear weapons.

It was all just talk and politics; the what-if scenarios of the high-minded. No one had given any credence to the possibility that it might actually happen.

Light of any description - including radio waves and gamma radiation - takes six and a half hours to get out this far. Six and a half hours ago, the Earth died. Did they kill each other, or were they all murdered by one sadistic party? How complete was the destruction? Severe enough to plunge the planet into radio silence. What about EMP? Part of her doesn't care. Part is empty, stunned. The rest just wants to throw up.

What the fuck do we do now?

Husks

Everything in your life has been leading to this moment.

They got you when you were young. Took away your dreams, your aspirations, anything you ever desired for yourself, and locked them away in a box. They left your head empty - robbed of the things that made it whole. They left you half-gone, your mind a screaming void, howling for purpose.

Then, when you were emptiest, they relented. But not quite. They poured new dreams into your head - theirs.

Like a desperate, starved animal, you gleefully swallowed the foreign dreams, and laid them down inside your mind as if they were your own. Like a Reed Warbler tending to a Cuckoo's eggs.

You were emaciated, atrophied, withered. Dead in spirit if not in body. They made sure that the things that had once filled your mind were long forgotten, and then they infected you with alien aspirations. And you, crying out for something to fill the aching void, accepted in an instant.

And the new dreams comforted you. They sent out roots of their own, and wrapped themselves around the many-layered creature that is your consciousness. The new dreams offered a way out of the tormenting nothingness you had tasted, and it was that exit that you embraced.

Everything in your life has been leading to this moment, and now the moment is over. The dreams are finally fulfilled. You should be happy. The dreams. Not your dreams.

And suddenly it's as if half your soul has gone.

There is nothingness. A vast, engulfing nothingness that swallows up everything you've ever experienced. Every thought, every emotion. All of them, good and bad, virtuous and twisted alike, now absent. The void does not discriminate. The nothingness howls at you, peeling away the layers of your being.

The shallow comfort of foreign dreams is gone, not even a memory remains. They left you as a discarded instrument. You want time to flow backward. In the face of forever, all you want to do is shrink - to return to the womb and sleep once more. Anything to make the emptiness go away.

And then - as you teeter on the brink of eternity - a box. You start to remember.

The machines and Zeno

Zeno quietly observed the contradictory machines travelling down into the pit. The gentle, somehow light manner in which they glided over the rough ground clashed strongly with their bulky frames and firm, heavy contours. The machines were powerful, but the eerie silence when they were in motion unsettled him. Under the darkness, Zeno could discern no obvious wheels at the base of the machines. They were either tracked or some manner of hovercraft. Or maybe his vision was just deteriorating faster than he thought.

The machines were not identical. Some were larger than others. Some looked specialised for shifting ground, others for prospecting and surveying. Not one of them looked harmless.

Zeno could not pick out details, but nightmarish protrusions disfigured the profiles of the vehicles, probably instruments and actuators. Silhouetted against the darkness, the machines looked like the favourite tools of Satan, or perhaps forged especially by some capricious general to strike fear into their opposition.

The horrendous, hushed convoy finished its short trek down to the bottom of the pit. Zeno stealthily crawled forward and craned his neck over the edge, so he could see the gulf below. The machines were no longer clearly distinguishable from each other. The darkness was so inexorably permeable, mingling in amongst every object, that he could discern only a fuzzy, terrifying mass at the bottom of the pit.

Without taking his strained eyes off the assembled hands of the Hades below, Zeno fumbled about behind him for his binoculars. Of course, the antique apparatus was powerless against the poor lighting conditions, but Zeno felt better about at least making an effort, though all he expected to see was a larger indistinct congregation.

Zeno's left hand clasped around a barrel of the aged binoculars, and he pulled them up toward his face. As he hefted the dense apparatus towards his outmatched eyes, something slipped.

He lost grip of the binoculars, and they slid out of his hands, dropping like a rock down into the pit. Zeno's heart choked, his hands clenched.

Shit, he cursed silently.

They dissolved into the murky darkness about a metre down. Zeno suspended his breathing. Nothing could be heard for several seconds, and then...smash. A brittle collision could be clearly heard, reverberating off the hard rock walls of the pit. Cringing at his mistake, Zeno could feel the glass lenses shattering and the wooden barrels splintering inside himself, imagining the ground coming up to punch the now invisible binoculars.

Maybe they didn't hear, hoped Zeno feebly.

But the machines were no longer silent.

Refreshing depressing

Peter Watts is my new favourite author.

His particular brand of character-driven science fiction drives all the right themes home for me, with a tinge of realistic world-building. I could never get through H. P. Lovecraft, because his characters are almost literally cardboard cut-outs. It can't hold my interest. Watts, however, makes his characters three-dimensional, and they echo his themes.

The first novel of his I read, Blindsight, was an original take on first contact and an exploration of consciousness - concluding that consciousness is most likely worse than useless from an adaptive standpoint, and us humans are oddballs indeed for possessing something like it. It's essentially a philosophical treatise, but with a plot that manages to be non-trivial. The book is worth reading simply for his realistic treatment of vampires (yes, you heard right).

I'm now reading Starfish, which is the first of a trilogy, and I continue to be impressed. His daring is refreshing; the main characters are rapists, pedophiles and abuse victims, shoved into a cramped environment under 300 atm. of deep, dark seawater.

I also like Watts because he releases his works as free ebooks, which is fast becoming my preferred medium, not least because I have close to zero money and couldn't afford the dead tree versions anyway.