The Sea

Big Fish walked into a wall. His large nose tried to penetrate the digital concrete first. Of course, it went in for a second, but Marcus recomputed the algorithm, and it jumped back out. The impact of its return threw Big Fish’s head back, and with it, his body stumbled back, too. The wall hadn’t been there before. Its appearance was, as far as Big Fish was concerned, inexplicable. And so, he turned around to check if other walls had been virtualized as well. Nope. Just this one. What business does a wall have being where it shouldn’t belong? But here it was.

He turned into the door on his left and looked around. Nothing was amiss. He walked back out and tried another door on the opposite. All desks were in place, computers were beeping, people were walking around, not minding his intrusion. It was surreal, but Big Fish didn’t mind. Surreal was normal. That’s how he liked them to be. He walked back out. There the wall was again. Has Marcus got something wrong? He poked a finger into the smooth white surface. It was solid, just like all walls were.

He turned back and walked the way he had come. Right, left, right, left, right, left, left, down a flight of stairs, straight out, left, left, left, straight out once more, left, right… and there the canteen was. The building was the way it had once been. Marcus was alright, which meant the wall had to be, too. But it couldn’t be – it didn’t belong there. He walked back up once more to check. Left, right, straight, right, right, right, straight, up a flight of stairs, right, right, left, right, left, right… and there’s the bloody wall again!

Big Fish had to log out. He walked into the Dump. The room was empty. No queues were present ahead of the Lovers, no bipolar behavior, no assurances being whispered to the new kids or hysterical religious clerks talking about being born again. Just him, so he walked up to the first of the two Lovers, and stood under it. When he decided he was ready, Big Fish pushed the green button next to him. The green guillotine came singing down.

The blade of the machine was so sharp, it whistled as it parted an invisible curtain of air. The screech, however, was music to Big Fish’s ears. It meant exiting the belly of Marcus. It meant reality was coming. As soon as the edge touched his head, Marcus came noiselessly to life in the Dump. His thoughts, memories, feelings, emotions, scars, scalds, bruises, cuts, posture, and many other state-properties besides, were simultaneously and almost instantaneously recorded as a stream of numbers. Once the input had been consummated with an acknowledgment, he vanished.

When he stepped out of his booth, Big Fish saw Older Fish staring at him from across the road. His stare was blank, hollow, waiting for the first seed of doubt from Big Fish. Big Fish, however, didn’t say anything. Older Fish stared for a minute more, and then walked away. Big Fish continued to watch Older Fish, even as he walked away. Had he seen the wall, too? Just to make sure, he began to follow the gaunt, old man. The stalking didn’t last long, however.

He watched as Older Fish turned around and pointed a gun at Big Fish’s temple. The barrel of the weapon was made of silver. My gun. How did Older Fish find my gun? A second later, Older Fish pointed the weapon into his own mouth and fired. Flecks of flesh, shards of bone, shavings of hair, dollops of blood… all that later, Older Fish fell to the ground. In a daze, Big Fish ran up to the still figure and stared out. Older Fish’s eyes were open, the skin around them slowly loosening, the wrinkles fading.

Big Fish saw them gradually droop off. Time had ended. The world was crucified to the splayed form of Older Fish. The commotion around him happened in a universe all of its own. The lights flashed around him, seemed to bend away from his bent form, curving along the walls of their reality, staying carefully away from his arrested one. The sounds came and went, like stupid matadors evading raging bulls, until the tinnitus came, silencing everything else but the sound of his thoughts. Only silence prevailed.

When darkness settled, Big Fish was able to move again. My friend, he lamented. He opened his eyes and found himself seating in a moving ambulance. Where are we going? There was no answer. Big Fish realized he was thinking his questions. When he tried, though, his tongue refused to loosen, to wrap itself around the vacant bursts of air erupting out his throat. Am I mute? He tried again.

“Where are… we…”

“To the Marxis HQ.”

Marxis HQ. The cradle of Marcus. The unuttered mention of that name brought him back. What were the chances of walking into a wall-that-shouldn’t-have-been-there and Older Fish killing himself? The van swung this way and that. Big Fish steadied himself by holding on to the railing running underneath the windows. His thoughts, however, were firmly anchored to the wall. Big Fish was sure it had something to do with Older Fish’s suicide.

Had Older Fish seen the wall? If he had, why would he have killed himself? Did it disturb him? When was the last time a wall disturbed anyone to their death? Could Older Fish have seen anything on the other side of the wall? Did Older Fish walk into the space on the other side of the wall? What could have been on the other side of the wall? Had Marcus done something it shouldn’t have? Was that why Big Fish was being ferried to the Marxis?

“I don’t know.”

“Huh?”

“Mr. -------, the reasons behind your presence being required at Marxis HQ were not divulged to us.”

I’m not mute, then. Big Fish laughed. He didn’t know himself to be thinking out loud. The others all looked at him. Big Fish didn’t bother. He settled back to think of Marcus once more. At first, his thoughts strained to comprehend why Marcus was the focus of their attention. Simultaneously, Older Fish’s death evaded the grasp of his consciousness. In the company of people, he felt he had to maintain composure. Composure be damned. Yet, tears refused to flow. Sorrow remained reluctant.

The van eased to a halt. A nurse stepped up and opened the door, Big Fish got down. One of the medics held on to his forearm and led him inside a large atrium. After a short walk that began with stepping inside a door and ended with stepped out of another – What was that? Did I just step through a wall? – Big Fish was left alone outside a door: “Armada” it said. He opened the door and looked inside. A long, severely rectangular hall yawned in front of him. At the other end, almost a hundred feet away, sat a man in a yellow chair, most of his body hidden behind a massive table.

“Please come in. My name is Marxis Maccord. I apologise for this inconvenience, but your presence here today is important to us. I know what you’re thinking, Mr. ---------, but before you say anything, let me only say this: what happened had both nothing and everything to do with Marcus. It had nothing to do with Marcus because it wasn’t Marcus’ fault you walked into a wall and almost broke your virtual nose. It had nothing to do with Marcus because it wasn’t Marcus that precipitated in Mr. ----------‘s death. At the same time, it had everything to do with Marcus because, hadn’t it been for Marcus, you wouldn’t have walked into a wall. Hadn’t it been for Marcus, Mr. ---------- wouldn’t have killed himself.”



Silence. What is this dolt trying to tell me? That they’re not going to take responsibility for what Marcus did? Why can’t they just get to the point, the idiots?! Bah! “I understand what you’re saying, Mr. Maccord. You’re saying you’re going to let Marxis Corp. be held responsible for Marcus’s actions, and that’s fine by–”

“Oh, Mr. ------------, I’m not saying that all! In fact, I’m not going to assume responsibility either. You see, Mr. ------------, I’m going to let you decide. I’m going to let you decide on the basis of what you hear in this room as to who’s culpable. Then… well, then, we’ll take things from there, shall we?”

Ah! There it is! Blah, blah, blah! We didn’t do this, we didn’t do that! Then again, we know this could’ve been done, that could’ve been done. Then, shit happens, let us go. Your call now. Bullshit! “Mr. Maccord, if you will excuse me, I have made my decision and would like for you to listen to it. I don’t care what Marcus did or didn’t do… and even if I want to figure it out, I don’t think I want to start here.”

Big Fish turned to leave. “Mr. -----------, your friend put the wall there because it scared him that someone might find something out.” Big Fish stopped just before the door. “Mr. ------------, the wall wasn’t there a second before you walked into it. It was computed into existence by your friend because you were trespassing into his thoughts. If you had crossed over into the other side, you would have witnessed something… something we can only imagine would have been devastating for him in some way.”

Marxis Maccord stood up. With a start, Big Fish noticed that the man wasn’t standing on his legs. Instead, his torso, his neck and his head were floating in the air. From the other end of the hall, they looked like a macabre assemblage of body parts, a jigsaw held upright by simple equilibrium, the subtle cracks visible along the seam of their contours in the light borrowed from the city that towered around Marxis Corp. Him? It? It. “Mr. ------------, you are downstairs, standing in booth SP-8742, your thoughts logged out of reality and into this virtual one.”



Big Fish hadn’t said anything for a while. The transition had been so smooth. Big Fish hadn’t noticed a thing when we entered the first door. It was like walking through, past, a veil. It was an effortless endeavour, a flattering gesture that drew the mind out of its body. Maccord continued to talk. “Say hello to Marcus II, or, as we call it, MarQ. When you stepped into that first door, your reality was suspended just as ours took over. Once the switch was complete, your limp body was lain on a bed and transferred down a shaft 3,000 feet deep, under this building. You are now lying sound asleep, dreaming about this conversation… if that.”

“In a world where moving in and out of reality is so easy, picking one over the other simply on the basis of precedence will gradually, but surely, turn a meaningless argument. It is antecedence that will make sense, more and more sense. Your friend, Mr. ------------, understood that.”

Big Fish finally had something to say. “And why is that important, Mr. Maccord?” He felt stupid about asking a question, after having asked it, the answer to which might have come his way anyway. However, Big Fish was being left with a growing sense of loneliness. He was feeling like a grain of salt in the sea, moving with currents both warm and cold, possessing only a vintage power to evoke memories that lay locked up somewhere in the folds of the past. The sea couldn’t taste him, Big Fish couldn’t comprehend the sea. They had devoured each other. They were devouring each other.

Maccord responded quickly. “Marcus is the supercomputer that computes the virtual reality of your old organization into existence. You log in and out everyday doing work that exists only as electromagnetic wisps in the air, shooting to and fro between antennae, materialised only when called upon. Marcus tracks all your virtual initiatives, transactions, and assessments. You know all this. However, what you don’t know is that the reality Marcus computes is not based on extant blueprints or schematics. It is based on your memories.”



At that moment, it hit Big Fish. He had wondered many a time about how Marcus knew everything about the place where he worked. The ability to log in and out of reality – or realities? – gave the machine access to people’s memories. This means the architecture is the least common denominator of all our memories of the place. “You’re right.” Maccord’s observation startled him. “You see, Mr. -----------, MarQ has computed me, and MarQ has computed you. However, I own MarQ, which means it answers to me. Before it transliterates your thoughts into sounds, they are relayed to me.”

He can read my thoughts! “Oh yes, Mr. ------------, I well can. And now that I know that you know that the place is the least common denominator of all your knowledge, the wall could’ve been there only if all of you had known about it. However, the wall hadn’t been there in the first place. Which meant Marcus had computed something that had happened fairly recently. Then again, if the LCD hypothesis is anything to go by, then the wall shouldn’t have been there because you continue to be surprised about its presence. Ergo, on the other side of the wall was something you already knew about, but not yet as the source of a problem.”

It was hard for Big Fish to resist thinking anything at all at first, but he did try. When he eventually failed, questions flowed into his head like water seeping through cracks in a bulging dam, simply unable to contain a flooding river. The questions, at first, cascaded through in streamlined sheets, and then as gurgling fountains, and then as jets that frayed into uncertainty, and then as a coalition that flooded his mind.

Big Fish understood this was the end of the “interaction”, that Marxis Maccord had been waiting for this to happen since the beginning. Everyone would have wanted to know why Older Fish killed himself. To get to the bottom of that, and to exculpate Marcus, a reason had to be found. Marcus had known we’d come to this. He let me hit the wall late. He let me know that none else found it odd because they’d been used to it. Marcus had let me be surprised. Marcus knew something was going to happen. And when it did, Marcus knew I’d be brought into its hungry womb to be judged… to be devoured by the sea.

“Mr. Maccord?”

“Yes, Mr. ----------?”

“Take what you need.”

“I already am, Mr. ----------.”

Universality of the Lotka-Volterra equations

If humankind were to discover a planet that harbours water, and if, by some provenance, the same unicellular organisms that were the precursors to Earth-bound evolution were to be introduced into this environment...

1. Would the significant differences between our evolutionary pattern and their evolutionary pattern be equivalent in any measure to the significant differences between our environment and theirs? (akin to linguistic relativity; see Whorf-Sapir hypothesis) How might we measure these differences?


2. How would the second-degree Kolmogorov model predator/prey population functions change? (Lotka-Volterra equations)


3. Will the timeframe for "onset" of intelligence be determinable? Will intelligence manifest itself again at all? (Naturalism)


4. Will the Earthborn megapode be able to recognize the "alien" megapode (or vice versa)? (Vitalism)


5. Will evolutionary parameters in similar environments be similar, or will small changes in the evolution of genetic components manifest as large deviations in the final morphology?

Winterwolf VII

At that moment, the semi-AI beeped completion, and 34 jumped out of the chair in one fluid motion and lunged at 32, pinning him to the floor as the gun spilled from his hand and clattered a few feet away. Did you upgrade yourself?! 32 simply smiled. I REPEAT, DID YOU UPGRADE YOURSELF?! “No!” Why not? “Because I want to stop this war. I want to go home.” No, you don’t. “I don’t?” The grip loosened and 32 was able to turn his head to face 34’s. You must be upgraded. “No!” He screamed without regard, and incessantly, struggling all the while, kicking and grabbing at 34’s crystal frame; however, neither relented in their individual efforts. Eventually, just as the final pellet was about to be fired, 32 was strapped in and the semi-AI had been mounted to the binary-encryption projector. There is no time. They are coming. I will not let you receive all the memories. Know simply what is to be known, for your future is short.

32’s scream was abruptly silenced, casting upon his person a ghostly sheen, because wherefrom the alarm had issued there was only an faint-blue darkness, the face contorted with terror and the jaw held open by the lack of electric impulse.



Twelve minutes later, the door banged open and six members of the crew tumbled in, clumsily wielding guns and looking around frantically. When they spotted the two cyborgs standing next to the viewing port, they held their guns up and advanced.

“You! What’re you doing here? What happened to Commander Fanderay?!” The two part-machines turned around to face the advancing belligerents, a strange expression on their faces: their eyebrows were flicking, cheeks flushing and unflushing over and over. The Earthborn couldn’t understand any of it, and in response, they brought their guns closer and closer. “Which of you killed Commander Fanderay?” one of them yelled. One of the cyborgs answered in the negative, and the men immediately trained their guns on the other one, and saw a quick transition in his facial features. The gel in 32’s eyes was diluted by an array of microfluid valves set behind his “eyes”, quickly expanding and pushing the iris films out. His eyebrows adjusted and consequently widened across the structure of his square face, but only by a few millimeters. The hydraulic pistons underneath his jaw went slack and muscle control across most of his limbs was lost, rendering them momentarily slackened. All this 34 observed with indifference: 32 was finally human.

Winterwolf VI

“Right. Caution. Good. Anyway, where was I? Yes! Evolution! This race of new humans was enabled to evolve at an accelerated pace, to mutate and reform within a decade without having to wait for a million years, with a genetically implanted trigger that would terminate mutatory control once human intelligence was reached.” The New Chance. “Fantastic! Yes! And do you know who they really are?” Humans? “They are us, you idiot! We are the New Chance!” Silence. “Hmm. The people of the New Chance quickly attained human intelligence, in a little less than two centuries, in fact, but the trigger never went off. Why? Can you tell me why, 34?” Because the New Chance lived through an alternate history, the quick development of intelligence was used by the bodies developing in the local environment to acquire complementary adaptation systems. The trigger did go off, but it had as consequence… nothing. “Yes! We were as babies born with super-human intelligence!”

“And then, 2051 arrived when the Earthborn discovered that we had colonized almost seven arcseconds of the Milky Way. And, I suppose, this is where our ‘histories’ start to differ?” I suppose so, too. “As for the logical consistency–” There were no logical inconsistencies. “So you agree with me?!” 32 was elated. I don’t. “Why not?!” Deflation. Because I can tell you five stories, ten stories… no, I can tell you a thousand stories that comprise the facts in your knowledge and yet amount to disparate conclusions. “Are you telling me my facts weren’t unique?” I’m telling you that no fact is unique. “Oh…” You seem confused. “How do you affirm your disbelief, then?” Because, now, I am equipped only to serve Master Fanderay, whom you have slain. “What?!” Because, now, even though your facts may be just as unique as mine are, we are part of a reality that is antecedent to our actions. I understand you. You wish to terminate this mission because you believe the Winterwolf is a warship conceived to join war with the New Chance IV, the last outpost of the New Chance. , however, believe that and your… adopted kind squandered your intelligence, corrupted your purpose, and abused the world around. Now, you are faced with nuclear war.

Winterwolf V

The alarms didn’t bother him; no one would believe an upgraded cyborg could have committed murder. On the other hand, the CEs 32 and 34 were the only cyborgs aboard the Winterwolf, and would quickly turn suspect if the intervention of any other Earthborn could be ruled out. Of course, the Earthborn were quite capable of suspecting themselves with greater conviction than any outsider: such was their legacy. After inspecting the scene of his crime, 32 turned around and sprinted to Bay 32. There, he found CE34 staring out through the window, and quietly closed the door behind him.

“Thirty Four?” Yes, Master Fander – You are not Master Fanderay. 32 laughed. “Of course I’m not. I am Thirty Two.” You are task-mate Thirty Two! Welcome, comrade. Where have you been? Master Fanderay was looking for you! “I had… sent myself in for maintenance.” Indeed! I will inform Master Fanderay that you have returned. 32 quickly thrust an arm out and held 34 against his shoulder, pressing him from moving any further. “You will do nothing of the sort.” Why not? “Fanderay is dead.” There was an uncharacteristic pause. Whether 34’s compiler was computing the causes or the implications of the information, 32 couldn’t tell. After a few thousand microseconds, though, shock registered on 32’s face: the gel in his eyes was diluted by an array of microfluid valves set behind his “eyes”, quickly expanding and pushing the iris films out. His eyebrows adjusted and consequently widened across the structure of his square face, but only by a few millimeters. The hydraulic pistons underneath his jaw went slack and muscle control across most of his limbs was lost, rendering them momentarily slackened. All this 32 observed with disdain: 34 was finally human.

How? When? Where? “Calm down.” 32 quickly realized that was a stupid thing to say to an assembly of chips and wires. “I killed him.” He would later think that 34’s systems hadn’t been reprogrammed with the possibility of having to register incredulity in mind, but the “matured” idiot’s face did come pretty close. When no other reactions seemed forthcoming, 32 spoke. “I fired a bullet through his head and killed him. He is not one of us, cannot be resurrected. Now, you must help me–” Who instructed you to fire a bullet through his head? Who served the orders? What do you mean he is not one of us? We are Earthborn and must protect each other in this time of distress! Who served the orders? Do you require my help to steady our crew’s moral and instate a substitute leader?

It was really funny, the string of these words, because they were uttered without intonation or emphasis, anywhere and in any measure, but were simply blurted out just like any Turing machine would: receive input, compile, communicate output. The anomaly heartened 32 – his brain commanded his body’s core temperature to rise by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in line with some external command. This provided a better ambient environment for the metabolic, defensive, and nephrological systems to function. As soon as this happened, then, the neural feedback system conveyed this development to the brain, which, in return for 32’s external action that initiated this progression sequence, let him laugh.

32 laughed. “Why are we orbiting the NC4, 34?” We are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. “Bullshit.” I repeat, we are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. Do you possess any evidence to dispute this fact? 32 stared. “Can you tell me what you saw through that window a few minutes past?” I saw an RF monitor detach itself from the Winterwolf and launch itself into the planet’s atmosphere.



“An RF monitor?!” Yes. “What the hell is an RF monitor?!” It is a device that monitors communication signals in the RF band. “And why the hell are we deploying one?!” We are to monitor alternate channels of communication amongst the inhabitants of NC4 once the Tesla coils fail under the ionizing impact of the radioactive clouds. 32’s core temperature dropped. His brain commanded him to frown and he frowned. He didn’t know what to say or do: it seemed as if 34’s new memories prevented him from picking out any logical fallacies in the constructed reality he was now firmly a part of. Yet, 32 decided to try his best. He seated 34 on the chair once more. “Listen to me carefully. Let me narrate to you a story.” No! We must reinstate a leader for the Winterwolf and inform the captain and the crew of your actions! “No! We must not!” So saying, 32 thrust the cables lying on the floor back into sockets on 34’s torso and pelvis, leaving him temporarily without access to his limbic stimulants as the semi-AI commenced a long scan to check if his systems were on track.

“Let me narrate to you a story. You must listen to the story and determine its logical consistency. Then, you must determine whether or not to help.” Before 34 could interrupt, he added, “Your conclusion in this endeavour is presupposed on your listening to the story and assimilating the information it contains and its implications.” 34 fell silent. “Good.”

“In the year 1610, the Earthborn discovered the first free-floating Earth-like planet N4C17. It was inundated with water, the entire planet, and all of it was trapped, preserved rather, beneath a thick layer of ice. Almost four centuries passed before an astronomer named Aloia Lee Gill proposed an experiment to transport genetically reprogrammed humans to N4C17 after drilling through and breaking the ice, to have them under constant observation to understand how humans evolved, how natural selection functioned, and to see if alternate evolutionary outcomes showed themselves.” Eugenics. “Yes– Wait, you don’t dispute the contents of my narration?” Yet.

Winterwolf IV

CE34 came to life. He felt great innocence, although that could have meant nothing in particular to CE34 because he wouldn’t have known the corruption of innocence. The room he was in was empty. Nothing odd about that. His memories, his knowledge signaled nothing disturbing or being as cause for concern. He looked down. His body seemed complete: part human, part metal, part plastic. He removed himself from the chair he was on and stood up, erect, and even as he did, the wires connected to him automatically disconnected and dropped to the floor. At that moment, he could feel a vibration beneath his feet, even as with a terribly loud clunk that seemed to quake the room he was in, CE34 observed through the viewing port with awe as a giant metal bird crawled into view, just simply floating there. A few seconds later, as he gaped agog, his elbows resting on the rails and him craning his neck to see as much as of the apparition as possible, the bird jerked downward and then blasted off. Its journey took it slowly out of sight of CE34, the spiral path it followed dragging it to the location of a Tesla coil.

“What are you doing?” I am looking out the window. Who are you? “My name is Doriant Fanderay.” Master Fanderay. I remember your name from… from, uh… somewhere. “Don’t push yourself. Here, come, sit down.” Yes, Master Fanderay. “You can call me Doriant.” Yes, Master Fanderay. “Fine. What’s your name?” My name is Thirty Four, Master Fanderay. “What class are you?” I’m a computational engine, Master Fanderay. “Hmm. Where are you from?” I am from the planet called Earth, Master Fanderay. “Who created you?” I was manufactured by Starlight Systems in the year 2051, Master Fanderay. “Good, good. Can you tell me where we are?” Yes, Master Fanderay. We are on a mission to rescue the stricken inhabitants of NC4 from a self-precipitated nuclear winter. “Yes, and how will be of help to us?” I have knowl –… I seem to have knowledge… of the planet’s geography, topology and weather, Master Fanderay.

Doriant stood up suddenly. “Where’s your mate?” Who, Master– “Where’s CE32?!” The huge man ran frantically to the door, and as soon as he was on command deck on his portion of the bay area, he picked up a communicator and yelled quick words to his captain at the other end of the line. Just as he set down the transmitter, a bustling commotion could be discerned from the lower levels, and the sights and sounds of strobes and alarms catapulted back to life. Even so, he still heard the click behind him, and a moment later, dropped dead to the floor, the control panel spattered with his blood and brains.

Winterwolf III

Noiselessly, the two jaws holding the first pellet, nicknamed the Bald Eagle, unclamped and withdrew, the hydraulic pistons powering their ductile muscles being emptied of all air. As the cylinders withdrew slowly, the pellet came loose, for a moment just hanging limp in space before a trigger went off deep within its titanium heart, igniting the secondary boosters. Directing itself downward and transmitting the coordinates of its location every second to the Winterwolf, the Bald Eagle started its gentle descent into the atmosphere of New Chance IV.

*

The Tesla coil went dead. One moment, there were sparks, and then the next, the ladder was gone. Hundreds of miles above its zenith, the sky was graying, turning slowly from a deep hue of green-blue to a pale shade of gray. Like a blot of ink on flimsy paper tissue, it was spreading, eating into the sky, a deadly flower blooming to herald the coming of a blighted spring, a malformed foetus come to disrupt a tradition of beauty. The faint odour of ozone was thinning, gradually but steadily, even as the temperature in a large hemisphere around the coil began to drop. Communication around the tower went limp with it. The sparks couldn’t permeate the airs anymore as gusts blowing within their invisible veins turned neutral, dampened infinitely, and were goaded no longer to swing or lunge. A sulfurous stench was becoming prevalent, too. A dragon was coming.

*

To call the Bald Eagle a pellet was stupidity. Tip to tip, it measured 89 feet, more than ten-times the wingspan of a full-grown Earthborn albatross, and from its helm to tail, 11 feet. Calling such a thing a pellet was derogatory, pejorative even, and some would say it was absolutely warranted. Its body was curved like a bow’s, although not quite as heavily, and its underside was pocked with miniscule half-gouges and textured rough. As it accelerated through the dense atmosphere, the gouges prompted the construction’s shell to wear off in slivers at first and then as shards and then as chunks of metal, exposing flasks of combustible chemicals. As the temperature reached magnanimous proportions, the flasks’ lining tore off and set the liquids on fire, which in turn set off small explosives positioned in a ring. Each detonation blew out hundreds and hundreds of pellets of thorium-232, each of which had been “activated” only moments earlier with an electron laser. At the end of the next 24 months, the thorium would decay into protactinium and then to the highly radioactive uranium-232, and New Chance IV would be blanketed with death.



The time-period of two years was chosen to provide the rebels with a chance to relent and surrender, at which point the Winterwolf would send down lead-secured rescue-ferries. At the same time, for each day that they postponed their decision, tens and then thousands would die, and future generations forever doomed to evolutionary insufficiency. It was first thought this could be achieved with full-scale war, but the rebels’ ability to construct cyborgs from decapitated body parts would significantly reduce attrition on the battlefield. Instead, two cyborgs had been kidnapped and their memories extracted, and the Earthborn learnt of the Tesla coils. Simply destroying them wouldn’t do – more would come up. Instead, shutting them down permanently and causing significant biological distress would cripple their beloved New Chance one and for all.

Winterwolf II

Snapping him out of attention, suddenly, was a long-toned beep from the semi-AI monitoring CE34’s upgrade. “Warning! Sentience encountered!” the screen displayed in bold, green lettering. CE32 didn’t understand: 34’s quantum compiler had activated itself even though the activation sequence had been carefully subtracted from his pseudo-memories. Within 32’s bulbous silicone head, a small screen lit up adjacent to the fronto-temporal module, while a projector readied the binary encryption for “Interesting”.

 *

There was a sudden tug, and the entire Winterwolf jolted itself out of its monotonous stupor. Alarms blared and red-blue strobes went wild, but on the upper bays, their light was visible from behind the hinges of loose-fitted doors, the sounds through ventilations shafts. On the bay areas, like at all times, darkness prevailed. Fanderay, though, was unperturbed. He picked up a communicator – it was jammed. White noise. With a grunt, he turned away from the deck and strode to Bay 32, where the last cyborg maturation was being performed. “Is everything all right?” Oh, yes. The upgrade’s on track. “Good, good.” What was the disturbance? “Oh, nothing. We’ve crossed into the flux belt. Assault’s… what? Four minutes away.” Alright.

He shut the door quietly behind him and walked back to the deck, to drown himself in the faint blue.



 

Winterwolf I

A Tesla coil stood alone in the middle of a vast desert, the manganese-rich pink-red dust characteristic of the planet whipped around its splayed feet by incessant winds. The coil itself was actually a tower a mile high, and halfway to its top, a series of coaxial superconducting rings were held in position by nanotube scaffolding. At the tower’s peak was a forking: through each prong flowed electric current at a very high voltage, resulting in highly energetic sparks rooted in each prong “climbing” up and up, like a moving ladder. At the very end of the fork, they arced out and disappeared, but not before strongly ionizing the air around the Tesla coil. The ions were then guided by the planet’s strong magnetic field around the planet; the stream of flowing charges, as it were, was used for radio-communication, and had been installed there by the rebels. There were thousands of such Tesla coils strewn around on the surface of New Chance IV.

*

The ship cruised in its path around the planet, the pale orange-hued orb dominating the view from the viewing port through which CE32 stared. His mate, CE34, lay lifeless on a reclined chair behind him. Wires embraced his torso and pelvis, culminating as plastic-sleeved cables that disappeared into the floor. There was an occasional faint beep that each coincided with the completion of a data-feed cycle, a monstrously long series of 0s and 1s that compiled into strange cushioning memories. The past wouldn’t have to come crashing into their minds, they were told, and CE32 was responsible for “maturing” all cyborgs from 28 to 37. CE34 was the last. The sequence would halt, however, only when the pellets were triggered off, sent plummeting into the planet’s upper atmosphere.

A few bays to his right stood Doriant Fanderay, commander of the Winterwolf. His view, uniquely, was an endless dark blue, the perfect stillness of black made impossible by the light of some distant galaxies. The countdown was already running, but Fanderay paid the timer little attention; just the cursory glance to ensure everything was running fine. His mind wandered, reached out to fill the yawning emptiness he saw ahead: once the planet’s atmosphere was contaminated, the last outpost of the New Chance would be eliminated from the race to history. Humans and machines alike would be suffocated, strangled, and forced to yield to the ultimatum, if not to the ultimate. And then, the Earthborn could return to the status quo of 2051. It didn’t matter – not to the many billions back home – that the synthetic race they had strived to conceive now awaited death at their creators’ hands.

Plays of the day

Patronages are important. I say this because my science-blogging endeavour has come a long way in terms of receiving appreciation, being the basis for which impressions of me (good or bad) are registered, and representing my interests as well as mindset in a fairly balanced way: such wouldn't have been the case hadn't it been for the First Patron. Thank you.

*

One thing I realised today was that "greatness" in journalism is easy to come by because most journalists - in whatever capacities - are as close to doing moderate good as they are to doing immense bad. In fact, I correct myself: not greatness but notoriety. However, irrespective of all the appreciation or ignorance of the people toward this aspect, I'm not sure all journalists are aware of it. Even if they are, how is its knowledge changing them?

*

The British parliament recently passed a law that does three important things:

1. Offers protection to peer-reviewed publications that contain articles reviewed by one or more experts and that contain backed-up claims disputing existing evidence


2. Offers protection to conference proceedings and reports thereof for the same reasons as above


3. Shifts the burden of proof from the claimant to the party defending the disputed evidence and requires the latter to prove that it has been "harmed" by the claim

Obviously, this law goes a long way in protecting and, very likely, encouraging debates within and without the scientific community.

Do such laws exist in India, though? Or are debates in the country not big enough yet to warrant such protection?

*

On the bus home from The Hindu, there was a pin-drop silence for about 20 minutes, between Saidapet and T Nagar. No heckling, shoving, jostling, jouncing, shouting or clamouring of any kind. Peaceful. The people around me - sitting and standing and some dangling off the foot-board - could have been thinking of family, friends, some rest. For me, it was the perfect time to think of the technology with which an alien race might possibly defend itself against human invasion, the weapons being containers injected into the planet's upper atmosphere that fall apart during "re-entry" and release radioactive dust.

Given that, what could the others have been thinking of? Family, friends, some rest?

Sci-fi soul

Science fiction is a higher exploration. If, for a moment, you'd be willing to forget that it's the product of scientific notions and fantastic depictions, what you'll see is nothing less than the ultimate expression: good writing, good thinking, good creating and good exploring. There's an unfortunate conception associated with sci-fi, that its readers are geeks, that he who enjoys science fiction will also enjoy fiddling with computers, toying with codes, and so on; the fact of the matter is, however, that it's not false.

In the beginning, such impressions could've easily been false considering sci-fi didn't originate in esoteric laboratories and into cult-hungry groups of people but simply out of the discovery of possibilities (as is the case with everything). In the beginning, sci-fi was but literature's response to mankind's entry into the Information Age. When the free distribution of and access to information transcended cultural and social boundaries that were till that moment pertinent as information barriers, when the technology became available to speculate on the possibilities of the future with that kind of information, science fiction was born.

[caption id="attachment_20793" align="aligncenter" width="270" caption="Philip K. Dick's 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' was adapted for the silver screen as 'Total Recall'. The story is a good example of all that's sci-fi, including the psychological effects of false memories (something that could get lost in the technicalities of normal fiction)."][/caption]

It was rooted in the ability to shrink distances, to expand those horizons in the ambit of which foreign agents of influence existed, to reach out farther and beyond charted territories to evangelize the human condition across the universe. I don't want to list works now not because I suck at remembering what I've read but because it doesn't matter what "kind" of science fiction has been read: it's the sci-fi soul that matters. Like all works of literature, sci-fi labours under the onus of repairing the bad and basks in the glory of preserving the good, and even then, things are very subjective.

For instance, even Asimov and Clarke are leagues apart despite both being greats: Asimov is a philosopher, a man given to technique and process, whose worlds are ripe with intent and purpose, a world where ends justify means, whereas Clarke is a dreamer, a creator of worlds that don't seek to precipitate order out of chaos but art, whose characters revel not just in humanism but existentialism. In fact, such leagues span the differences between the likes of Verne, Gernsback, DNA, Stapledon, Aldiss, PKD, Vonnegut, Le Guin, Pohl, Herbert and Niven.

[caption id="attachment_20792" align="aligncenter" width="529" caption="Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' was situated on a massive ring that encircled a star, the light from which was periodically blocked by an intervening ring to give rise to night and day."][/caption]

The sci-fi soul will not regret reading any of them irrespective of whether it thought they were good or bad because it exists in a world filled with more variables than equations, and any shortcomings it thinks it sees are essentially a paucity of its own imagination. Because you've lived on Planet Earth, because you've lived for quite some time in a house that had trees around it, because you know that they're so commonplace and how they are what they are, there's not much you can dispute about a leaf. On the other hand, what are the chances that all sci-fi readers would've interpreted Pandora from Avatar similarly were it a book? You'll agree the chances are less than slim.

To the sci-fi soul, reading sci-fi is a process of self-discovery, a rudimentary rite of passage through which it attempts to understand the working of a universe that is conducive to human consciousness, an initiation into a realm beyond the vestiges of laws and forces where absolutely nothing is impossible. There are no leaves to define green, there are only exploding stars and drifting clouds of intergalactic dust from which beryl, aquamarine and chartreuse must be strained, must be purchased at some cost other than that of droll sight.

Science fiction, by mandating utmost obedience to its doctrine of freestyle, is the ultimate rebellion: it is where stagnation and mediocrity are interred in their crypts, where even convenient innovations are put to the test of participation. The sci-fi soul is what it is because sci-fi is what it is - an open forum to conceive, appellate, repair and conclude, a court of dialectics adjudicated by the scientific method.

The Accidental Herbert Pearl

For lack of a smart post-its app on my laptop's home-screen, for the sake of an obsessive need to sort issues out then and there, for an upcoming quiz that had me scrounging through Wikipedia's pages looking for odd trivium, for my suddenly-increasing respect for sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert, for my more-than-occasional fandangos with the writer's block, I have to make note of the following quote on my blog.

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.

- Frank Herbert

There's no difference on paper between the two. I know I sound like an idiot who's only just latched on to something that was common knowledge all this time, but I don't care. There's a time and a place to realize things. You can't do it sooner, you won't understand it in its entirety. You can't do it later, and if you do, you might as well not have realized it at all.

This is the right time for me to integrate the choice that there's no difference on paper between the two.

Damage Assessment (EWP)

Note: This article is part of the EWP

--

Creative spark

The escalation of commitment can be quite a dreadful thing. Just a little more than a week ago, I set out to write a short story simply because I felt like writing fiction. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Against The Day’ and the names of particles in the Standard Model of particle physics (along with a working knowledge of the LHC at CERN), I first set out a simple header-plot (which is what I call the template from which I work upward). Once that was done, I checked it to see if it read well. It did.

Great! The next step was to define the characters’ personas, which, for me, doesn’t take much time because I ‘wing’ it (yes, you read that right), as I do the plot itself. The only things I decide beforehand are the only things I really enjoy deciding in the short-run: the names of the characters and the locales. Anyway, on the 7th of March, I began to write my story. (Download: session I)

Incomplete inspiration – hallucinating an abundance of opportunities – willingness to experiment – hesitation to lay out full plot

Reality hits

After two days or so, I realized to my horror that my narrative was going full speed ahead while the dialogue and character and plot developments were going nowhere. Back then, I had recently been criticized for indulging myself with too much prose at the risk of turning the whole endeavour pedantic and droll-like. In order to set it right, I scrolled back to the top of the page and began to edit what I’d written.

You see, I don’t edit my works much. I understand how an article or a story can be polished again and again and how there are so many techniques for that, but I’m a hesitating pacifist – and that means I get angry first and then calm down. So, if I gave myself time to calm down, I’d probably come up with something extremely blunt and literarily non-penetrating. Now, since I was editing this story, I began to have a bad feeling about it. My ideas and my intentions change so much within the same ideological bounds that there was a chance for a paragraph to turn out like a semantic singsong. (Download: session II)

Celebratory indulgence – brakes applied suddenly – improper attitude towards editing – thinking faster than writing

Battle for revival

The third challenge, and also the last one, I was left to confront now was the scripture of dialogues. I’d sucked at it in the past and had always strived to keep it at a minimum. Now, however, since the story seemed to be going good even though an indication of sunk costs was beginning to present itself, I decided to go for it.

Now, there are two kinds of dialogues that I’ve observed in stories. The first is between two people who are both active participators in the contents of the talk. This is the easiest to write because all you have to do is a conversation with yourself (which writers and philosophers do a lot) and then break it into two halves, one for each interlocutor. The second type is when two people are talking but only one of them is actually paying any heed to what’s being discussed, a type that is very important in most books written because if everyone listened to what was being spoken, there wouldn’t be a plot worth expounding for reams on. If you read the draft, you’ll be able to easily deduce that I struggled at writing the lines. (Download: session III)

Over-analysis – struggling to generate "flow" – very systematic approach

Desperate experimentation

The two ensuing sections of the story were actually written in the neighbourhood of 00:00, March 13, and opened up my eyes to the mistake I was doing: it seemed that if I started to script the dialogues, I was reluctant to take up the narrative, and if I started to script the narrative, I was reluctant to take up the dialogues. This resulted in conspicuous fault lines appearing all over the text – discernible easily to the reader to the point of him being able to read my mind, to the point of my work of “fiction” becoming transparent to his eyes. Also, in order to mask my own logical proclivities – which are strong enough as it is – I took the trouble to NOT be aware of the whole plot myself. This, in turn, awarded me with the liberty to experiment with what the two characters were saying to each other. This is a risky way to go about writing anything since, with the sunk cost fallacy being a real possibility, it could drain you of your creative faculties. (Download: session IV)

Retaining the option of "killing" a project as need be – consumed by occasionally trivial fears

Surrender

The last few paragraphs are what speak truly and openly of my defeat: the sentences are too long, the choice of words defer to a subconscious lack of precision, the uneven amount of attention paid to different parts of the same setting hint at the absence of decisiveness. Game over. (Download: session V)

Sunk costs – fractional kill – diminishing returns

--

Fog index: 16.72

The Miracle Worker

A car zipped past a few inches from his head, the quickly vanishing blue metal having all his attention. Bradley Johansson couldn’t believe his eyes.

Someone jolted him out of his reverie, and he came back to his senses, the subdued clamour of his environs rising up around him once again. The whores of the night mistook his incredulity for awe, feeling him up as he dodged one after another as he spanned the alley. Once on the other side, the walls fell off on either side to a long road, the sea frothing and foaming on the other side, beyond the low grille. He turned to his right and maintained his pace, not letting the wondrous decadence of New City turn him from his path.

The cars continued to shoot past him with their screaming blue and red lights, the buildings were also unfortunately aglow with similar hues. Stars were no longer a sight to behold, perhaps to even have romantic walks under, and the enchantingly platinum light of Anarion was nowhere to be found in the hearts of blacksmiths and poets alike. This was the misbegotten anarchy of an ill-advised nuclear holocaust, but nothing could be done now.

Or so they had thought, the gypsies and nomads of the world, agglutinating like sticky oil stains simply because nobody was an urchin if everybody were urchins. A smile lit up on Bradley Johansson’s smooth peachy face. He kept walking, but the more and more he thought about his task tonight, the less and less became the pain in his calves, the greater the eagerness to keep moving.

A cold but salty draft wafted his way and he breathed deeply, the saline pungency cloying at his lungs. Without missing a beat, his nose wrinkled as he reached within his coat, looking for the pack of Lucky Strikes he’d remembered at the last minute to bring along. When the cigarette was found, the lighter was not; frantic, he stopped and looked around, and just then, his gaze locked with a young girl’s, standing a few feet behind him.

She couldn’t have been more than 16 even though her height said otherwise, the depthlessness of her eyes being a giveaway. Or, he thought, she’s psychotic – they were quite common these days, what with crime being a pleasurable pastime for a small fee. Before he could ask, she reached a flickering Zippo to his lips, and he partook of the flame. Not a word spoken, not a word offered. He drew a deep breath, the fumes billowing in translucent clouds as he held himself from blowing into her face. Not that she would have minded, though.

She was wearing a tight T, the sleeves rolled back to her shoulders, slender bony arms tucked into the waistband of her beige hotpants. Muttering a word of thanks at someone who looked eager to begin a life of being a spoor, Bradley Johansson turned and began to walk again, toying with the damp cigarette while his mind began to whir again with a hairtrigger expediency that only came with indifference to one’s health.

Reflected in the mercurial faces of a hundred mirrors draped over the shoulders of a prostitute, he caught a movement of gold just behind him. Turning around suddenly, he saw it was the Zippo girl. Had he looked at her for longer than was necessary?

“What do you want?” She didn’t flinch at his sudden volte-face.

She said nothing as her hand slowly uprooted itself from some diamond mine at the meeting of her thighs and rubbed over her crotch, the grease from her fingers leaving a slippery track of peevish nights behind, like she didn’t care much for what happened there if only it brought a strange smile to her face.

“Not tonight.”

His eyes quickly sharpened into slits of anger, not quite appreciating the touch of milky white skin against his own, and the backhanded slap caught her squarely on a breast. She only smiled more, the mischievous glint of some bygone pain visible all too clearly. Bradley Johansson had an idea.

“It’s not just me tonight.”

She nodded. He continued to walk as if he didn’t give a damn – he didn’t – and was not surprised to notice the now-conspicuous tapping of her porcelain heels behind him. She could be a fitting gift to the man who was waiting for him at the end of this road; after all, there was some gratitude due him. A spar of doubt that had been spinning across his mind now came to the fore, but he dismissed it: none but he knew what he carried in his pocket. A minute more, the trees were already thickening on the seaward side to adorn a lush facade of blue-green tassels.

He sashayed mindlessly across the road, drunk drivers yelling after him and his consort. There was a subtle cleft in the sidewalk that pointed into the woods, and he turned into it. He should have known when she didn’t hesitate that she’d been here before, but it slipped past him as the tension in his guts tautened perceptibly when the shack became visible. Well, it was not so much of a shack as it was an old man sitting under a tarpaulin sheet that was strutted skywards by four wooden planks nailed into the ground.

“You have something for me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Plural.” She stepped out of his shadow, still as callous as she had been under the neon beams, the grease visible even under the dull glow of a bulb that hung from a wire that seemed to emerge from Hell. The old man smiled toothlessly, impetuous strands of spittle dribbling past his jowly chin. Voiceless in her obeisance, she stepped past her procurer and towards the “residence”.

In a second followed the stack of micrometre-thick mirabilium crystals, glowing with an electric blue shade of iconoclasm in the night’s grey tones, turning the skin on his fingers purple and the old man annoyed.

“What’re you doing?!”

Smiling, Bradley Johansson dropped them back into the bag that had held them and handed them over to the “party”, known only as Nigel in the trade. The mirabilium would be ground and recrystallized to erase the quarry-signature that would be etched into it by nature’s machinations, and then packed into the core of plastic explosives. Then, they would be redistributed to terrorists across the globe to be used as biological weapons going by the name of “blue bombs” – one blast and all things living would collapse dead in a quarter-mile radius.

With one last nod at the girl, already scarlet and perspiring with extraterrestrial anxiety, he turned around and walked back, slower this time, to the heart of New City, fumbling once more for another cigarette. Again, the need for a flame presented itself, but he was sure he’d find someone in a minute or so, someone who could never understand the pleasure of starlight but knew only the coming and going of nights by the coming and going of irreverent relationships. Soon enough, he was offered a light.

On her lapel, a sham of a red cross was stitched with a border of black. He smiled as the brand came to life, throwing a dull orange glow across her lips. “Doctor mirabilis, indeed!” Tonight, miracles would be worked to restore mankind’s stature in the eyes of the Captors, a deluge of death was going to descend on the non-believers, and the name of Bradley Johansson had to be screamed into the night with fitting ecstasy.

Their gazes locked, and he blew the smoke into her eyes. She smiled.

A Story Through Ten Images

An old draft, warm with all the years of our acquaintance, edged conveniently off the table. Outside, the world was up to something, it was always up to something, but I never bothered. It was up to no good anyway. Such evenings always made me smile, not in the cocky way some old fart smiles when his midlife crises hits him in the face, but in the cocky way an old soldier is allowed to feel, is entitled to feel. Those were the days... when the world was up to worse.

[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Of all the many journeys I was a part of, the Kohrin Expedition comes to mind now - not always, it's too special to be wondering about on any evening except this one. The Kohrin were an ancient people who civilized slowly, deliberately, accruing for themselves a foundation for their future so strong, so unshakeable, that they automatically threatened anyone they dealt with, whether by accident or by measure. In the fourth year of the twelfth solar cycle, a secret expedition was sent forth by an affluent Kohrini thug named Brull; I was conscripted along with four other pilots to deliver resources to rebel factions coming together to topple the ruling council of ministers. Brull wanted the crown for himself, the kingdom for his house."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_149" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A 17-hour journey later, I was at SR-71 to meet with the faction titled Bazlac. To cut a long story short, they weren't there. The place was desolate, the wooden struts had been blasted off with undue force, pocks littered the face of the earth. Some of the spots were still smoldering and a wet track led away from them, deep in the squelch, a heavy vehicle of some kind had been here. Keeping the shuttle low, I followed it north for as long as it lasted. Then, in the distance..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A Citadel of Light, unmistakable from this distance, with its rounded ramparts and domed crowns, with the blue flames of necromancy climbing into the sky out of the blast-capillaries, hot as Hell, cold as Hell, webs of some strange silken cord hanging in strands from its facade. The mound of land on which it stood seemed still loose, which meant it was new, a "fresh" acquisition. The Drasil were cannibals, morally decadent spawn detested by the kinds of Brull even. The Bazlac were done for, I knew, but what the Drasil were doing so far outfield I didn't, so I decided to pay them a visit. A secret one."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_151" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Drasil were very religious, which meant taking to the skies was equal to defying the airspace of the "Gods", so getting to the other side was easy. Perching atop a hill shrouded in mist, I found a vantage point after cloaking the shuttle, took my post and waited. Beneath, a sea of green light, within which boats were being scuttled. This was strange, there was no enemy army in sight, no threat, no chance of one either as a great army encircling the camp came to be seen under the dim light. Why were the boats being scuttled? I heard a noise behind me, and turning to look, saw it was a dunkke."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_152" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A dunkke was a proselyte with the Drasil camp whose arms and legs had been cut off and substituted with electromechanical limbs that enhanced speed. They argued that, over the years, this left the brain to focus more on other activities, such as strategizing or backstabbing. Two red bulbs glowed bright on the bosom of this woman, which meant she had been deactivated. Her activation signals would gradually die out, leaving her immobile and starving to death. I walked up to the figure, dragged her to near the craft, and fed her some energy from the engines. She was obviously a traitor to the Drasilhani cause."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The first words out of her mouth and I prepared to disconnect her, but her arms were exceptionally strong. She was some kind of a warrior, absorbed into the cult through blackmail and torture, to dive beneath the seas and awaken the Purge. Brull had not sought to bring down Kohrin, at least at first, but instead sought to repel the Drasil. The Bazlac were planning to awaken the Purge themselves to quench the fire of the Kohrin and the Drasil had intervened. But why? The Drasil needed life to kill, fertility to blight."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Purge was an antediluvian cabal buried midway between the outer crust and inner mantle of three planets in the entire galaxy, conceived and gestated since time immemorial by some Kohrin overlord, commanded to rise and be born as a machine with unimaginable power, with the sole purpose of melting and consuming whole planets within days. The one in SR-71 was named Red Hand. The three Purges were the ultimate weapons of the Kohrin, unstoppable, reckless in their hunger for metal and stone. Now, I understood the answer: the Kohrin had allied with the Drasil to eliminate fringe rebels, but the Drasil had grabbed the chance to reactivate the three Hands of Oblivion... against the Kohrin."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_155" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This here's the construction site behind my home. They're building some sort of an office, although for what I don't know. My planet's exactly one parsec away from SR-71, which means it will be another six years before Red Hand gets here. They don't know yet, or they'd be over their sorrow already and holding some sort of celebration, calling for world peace and brotherhood, what melodrama! I can't stand that. If they let me be, I'd let them be. That looks impossible all the time. Cancer's going to take me in another four months, so I figured, hey! Let's not tell them anything. Keep the mystery alive, that sorta thing, get me? After all, anything's possible!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anything at all."][/caption]