by S. H. Jucha
“Perhaps the console updated the Messinants, as they arrived,” Jaktook suggested.
“With what?” Jessie asked, rolling over and propping up on an elbow.
“I would assume —” Kractik started to say before she stopped, thought, and said, “Perhaps I should find out.”
When Kractik rose off her pallet and shuffled wearily toward the door, a sigh escaped Jaktook. He crawled off his pallet and followed her. The pair worked on the console for a few hours, without making much progress before Jaktook called a halt to their work. They retired to join the others who were fast asleep.
The next day, the team relaxed on the deck, while Kractik, Jaktook, and Mangoth poured over the console menus. The morning passed without success, and the team took a break to eat and use the facilities.
After a meal, Kractik returned to the console. Jaktook and Mangoth lounged with the rest of the team. They’d acknowledged that her console knowledge far exceeded theirs.
During this time, the engineers, Olivia, Pete, and Bryan, held a private conversation, discussing the problem. Eventually, Nelson, Tracy, Jacob, and Aurelia joined them, ostensibly to help but really wanting to be part of a discussion to relieve the boredom.
“Kractik has been over the panels and menus an inordinate number of times during her lifetime’s experience, and she’s found no means of getting a master display of the domes,” Pete objected.
“What if the Messinants provided other means of communicating with the console?” Bryan asked.
“Such as?” Olivia asked.
“Voice requests,” Bryan replied.
The engineers strolled over to the console, the others following, and posed their question to Kractik.
“Consoles’ don’t respond to voice commands,” Kractik replied to the question. “We believe the Messinants expected the races, those which achieved full sentience and space travel, would be moving between domes. That would require the consoles carry every possible language. In addition, the Messinants left before many races matured. Language updates wouldn’t have been possible.”
“You’re searching for maps, right?” Aurelia asked.
“Yes,” Kractik replied.
“What about searching for stars?” Aurelia suggested.
“How would that help us?” Kractik asked.
Jessie had wandered over with the rest of the team, and he’d caught Aurelia’s questions. “Perhaps a star map might be annotated with the domes,” Jessie added.
“Would we still understand where we are in the star display?” Jaktook asked.
“Less conversation,” Harbour said firmly. “Search for a star map, Kractik.”
“Yes, Envoy,” Kractik replied with alacrity.
Kractik knew of a deep submenu on a rarely used panel. The general opinion of the alliance members had been that many of the submenu’s glyphs produced readings that were used by the Messinants to monitor the dome’s operational statuses.
As the menu’s items moved past their eyes, Jessie requested Kractik halt. “Start from the top, Kractik, and translate the glyphs for us.”
“Yes, Advisor,” Kractik replied.
Harbour and Aurelia detected a glimmer of hope from the console operator, and the two empaths exchanged brief glances. It was Harbour’s thought that Kractik was energized by the input of Pyreans, who didn’t know the consoles and were liable to ask questions outside the accepted norms.
Kractik would translate a glyph, and the team would mull it over. If there were no questions, she would move on. Unfortunately, there was no interest from the group in pursuing the relevant submenus based on her translations. Eventually, she reached the end of the menu.
“This is not a well-understood glyph,” Kractik said. “We believe it means end or final.”
“What does it display?” Jessie asked.
“There isn’t one,” Jaktook replied. “This is one of the consoles’ mysteries.”
“What happens when you select it?” Aurelia asked.
“Nothing,” Kractik replied, touching the panel. “You get a projection with nothing in it.”
“Odd,” Aurelia commented. She reached out a finger and touched the projection. A yellow dot was left floating in the midst of the projection, when she withdrew her hand. After a short period of time, the projection blinked off.
“What happened?” Olivia asked.
“We don’t know,” Jaktook replied. “The menu item creates a projection, and a digit can write inside it.”
“I assume you’ve tried to write all sorts of things in there,” Bryan said.
“If the statements of the oldest races are to be accepted,” Mangoth said. “Every glyph etched on the walls and decks has been tried.”
“Is the meaning of every glyph known?” Harbour asked.
“Not nearly,” Mangoth replied. “When it comes to understanding the Messinants, we’re woefully ignorant. If we were comparing the domes to ships, the alliance races would be considered the cargo crews, nothing more.”
-28-
Star Map
The explorers retired to eat and rest. Kractik lay awake on her pallet and chose to slip out of the darkened room. Her excitement alerted Aurelia, who followed her, and their passage incited Olivia’s curiosity.
At the console, Kractik initiated the odd menu item, with its empty projection, and stared at it.
“How many menus and submenus have an empty projection?” Olivia asked.
“Only a few,” Kractik replied.
“In other words, most of the console’s operations are display driven, so they can be easily mastered,” Aurelia suggested. “Not that Pyreans have figured the thing out,” she muttered.
“In time, you would have,” Kractik said, patting Aurelia’s forearm. “Of that, I’ve no doubt.”
“If I saw an empty screen on my comm unit, I would expect to enter a request for an item or a query,” Olivia mused.
“A query would take multiple glyphs,” Kractik explained. “Based on the number of glyphs in a dome, a two-glyph request has a possible fifty million combinations. Three glyphs in a query would represent an unbelievable three hundred and forty billion combinations.”
“That’s supposing you considered every glyph as a potential entry,” Olivia said. “I think that we’re probably dealing with a set of fewer than a hundred.”
“But which hundred?” Aurelia remarked.
Olivia visualized the extensive number of queries she’d written in her lifetime. She tried to narrow them down to their basics. Finally, she said, “Assuming we’re building a query, we need an action word. What glyphs in the basic console menus can be interpreted as locate, display, or show?”
Kractik took Olivia and Aurelia through the menu again, pointing to relevant glyphs and interpreting them for the Pyrean women.
Olivia halted Kractik, looked at Aurelia, and said, “We should have brought our comm units. I left mine in my personal gear at Rissness. I wonder if one of the others has theirs.”
“No need to wonder, I have mine,” Aurelia replied, with a bright smile. She skipped down the ramp, slipped into the dorm room, silently dug through her pack, retrieved the comm unit, and eased out.
Good luck, Harbour thought, having been woken by Aurelia’s bubbling enthusiasm.
Kractik repeated her initial lesson, and Aurelia captured an image of the glyph and annotated its meaning. “That’s all the glyphs that indicate an action,” Kractik said, when she finished.
“We need a set of nouns,” Aurelia said excitedly. Her gates were leaking, and Kractik and Olivia were caught up in the young empath’s desire to resolve their dilemma.
“Nouns, nouns,” Olivia muttered.
“Star or stars,” Kractik volunteered.
“Map,” Aurelia added.
The threesome built a list of over thirty keywords that they thought could form their request. Kractik repeated her exercise, going through the menus and submenus and pointing out the useful glyphs.
“We
have twenty-one action symbols and thirty-eight subjects,” Aurelia summarized.
Kractik frowned, while considering the challenge. She said, “Inferring your intended approach, I don’t expect this to be a two-glyph query. I would think three or more glyphs would be required to make your request sufficiently clear.”
“I’d agree with that,” Olivia said.
“But if we start with a verb and use two nouns, that would give us slightly less than thirty thousand combinations,” Aurelia said, her elation rising.
Kractik’s eyes rolled up in her head, and Olivia caught the Jatouche before she slumped to the deck.
“Aurelia,” Olivia admonished.
“I’m sorry,” Aurelia replied, slowly curtailing her sending.
Moments later, Kractik awakened and flashed her teeth. “If we’re to wander these domes forever, I’ll require you put me to sleep every night in just this fashion.”
Aurelia smiled sheepishly and said, “I can do that for a friend.”
“I was about to explain, before Kractik was put on the deck,” Olivia said, eyeing Aurelia, “that your calculation assumes two things. One: That you understand the syntax. Meaning, does the action word come first? Two: Do two nouns follow the verb? If those two assumptions are incorrect, then the possible combinations get enormously larger.”
“What if we don’t follow a process of trying all possible combinations in some kind of logical order?” Aurelia insisted.
“As opposed to what?” Olivia asked.
“We know what we want to ask. But let’s also think about what the Messinants might have asked the console. Then we’ll select the most relevant combinations and try them first,” Aurelia suggested.
“I believe the first idea might have value,” Kractik replied. “As for guessing what the Messinants requested, I’ve no hope of imagining that.”
The threesome tried Aurelia’s idea for hours until Kractik loosed a wide and long yawn.
“Time to call it quits and get some rest,” Olivia said. “Otherwise, we’ll be out of sync with the rest of the team.”
They retired, and soon afterwards, Olivia and Kractik were deep asleep. Not so for Aurelia. She lay awake, thinking of the glyphs and the needed query. When sleep didn’t come, she slipped out again.
Rather than start with the empty projection, Aurelia lay on a platform. She stared at the light blue glow of the dome overhead and let her mind wander. The glyphs and their meanings drifted through her thoughts. When she felt she had some clarity, she approached the console, pulled up the empty projection, and began entering combinations.
Unlike the threesome’s earlier thoughts, Aurelia felt she had only a few dozen key query combinations, and she entered them in every variation of order. The final entry failed to produce a result, and she pounded her fists in frustration on the console.
Aurelia slid to the deck and sat with her back against the console. I don’t think I’m going to be a source of good cheer, in the future, Kractik, she thought. Disappointment ruling Aurelia’s emotions, she rolled onto her knees and reached for the console’s lip to pull her up. Her eyes focused on an elaborate glyph on the console’s face. She’d never noticed this symbol on the other consoles but presumed she’d never looked for it either.
Running a finger over the complex symbol, Aurelia whispered, “Do you identify this dome?” She stayed on her knees, tracing the glyph over and over again. The process soothed her and allowed her to focus on the query again. Aloud she asked, “If I were Messinants, what would I want to know?” and then she answered herself. “I’d want to know where I am in relation to this place.”
Aurelia stood up, activated the projection, and said to herself, “You’re a spacer. You travel the galaxy. How do you think about where you are and where you want to go?” It hit her that the concept of verbs and nouns had confused the threesome. “Map isn’t only a thing; it’s also a request,” she whispered.
After drawing the glyph for map, Aurelia added the complicated glyph on the console’s face. She said quietly, “And this is the dome where I am.”
The projection had always faded if the user paused for any length of time. This time, it remained, as if waiting for the user to finish the query. Aurelia was exhilarated. She knew she was on the right track.
“What am I missing? Map the dome … to what … or how?” Aurelia asked, continuing to talk to herself. She searched her list of keywords, thinking she might have missed a word for network or something that indicated the entire conglomeration of domes.
Aurelia’s finger was scrolling down the list, and it hesitated over a word. “Could it be that simple?” she asked. Carefully, she drew the symbol for stars. Immediately, the projection disappeared. Aurelia had a brief moment to be disappointed. Then the dome’s constant blue glow winked out, and she panicked.
“Now you’ve done it, Aurelia,” she whispered harshly, hanging her head in her hands. “Try explaining this to Harbour. Worse, think of telling Jessie.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back to calm herself. The training of the senior empaths kicked in, and she slowed her breathing and centered herself. When she opened her eyes, she focused on the dome, and her mouth fell open.
Aurelia turned from the console, ran down the ramp, and raced to the dorm room. On entering, she smacked the light plate to full, and yelled, “On the deck, everyone.” To her consternation, the team jumped off their pallets and snatched up their weapons.
“No, no,” Aurelia cried, waving her hands in negation. “We’re not under attack. Come on,” she yelled and raced out of the room.
The group dropped their weapons, slipped on boots, and hurried after Aurelia. When they reached the deck, they found Aurelia facing them, with hands on hips, and an ecstatic expression on her face.
The young empath didn’t have to say a word. The darkened dome spoke for her.
Gazing upward, Jessie whispered, “Oh, for the love of Pyre.”
“While the meaning of your words is unclear, Advisor,” Mangoth said quietly, “the sentiment is understood.”
Aurelia burned with desire to explain what had happened, but she chose to luxuriate in the sense of awe that flooded off the group.
“A star map,” Jaktook said in wonder.
“Not just a star map,” Jessie corrected. “Notice the tiny yellow rings around a portion of the stars.”
“Domes?” Mangoth suggested.
“What else could they mean?” Jessie asked.
As the group walked to the middle of the deck to wonder at the magnificent image of stars that the dome displayed, Nelson asked, “Could we be seeing the night sky beyond? In other words, could Aurelia have just reduced the intensity of the dome’s light?”
There was a sudden chill that passed over the group, including Aurelia. A darkened dome meant that the gates might be inoperative.
Kractik hurried to the console. “The gates are offline,” she said.
“Set gate three for a timed delay, Kractik, and activate it,” Jaktook ordered.
As Kractik activated panels, the star field display disappeared, and its blue glow reappeared. “The gates are active,” Kractik reported, shutting down gate three’s countdown.
There was a collective sigh of relief, and Aurelia felt vindicated. From Harbour, Aurelia received a hug, a flood of emotional approval, and a whisper of, “I’m so proud of you.”
“You can repeat what you did, Aurelia, can’t you?” Pete asked.
“Sure. Do you want to see?” Aurelia asked, and laughed at the reaction of the company, which had literally crowded her toward the console.
“I didn’t do this by myself,” Aurelia explained. “It began with Kractik, Olivia, and me. We started with the assumption that the projection was waiting for a query. Rather than attempt all combinations of glyphs, which we were assured the alliance races had been trying, we narrowed the list to key terms that we thought would be used to express our question. Kractik explored the menus, and we recorded the relevant glyphs
and their meanings on my comm unit.”
Kractik eyed Jaktook. It was against Tsargit decree to teach non-alliance races the meaning of glyphs. This prohibition had been broken several times by the Jatouche with Pyreans, but none so blatantly as to allow the Pyreans to record the information. In response, Jaktook flashed his teeth broadly at Kractik, and she relaxed.
“But we didn’t get anywhere,” Olivia pointed out.
“Right, the three of us went back to the room, but I couldn’t sleep,” Aurelia explained. “So I came up here to try again. I got frustrated, and while I was wallowing in my disappointment, I saw this glyph.” She pointed at the face of the console.
“Which means what?” Harbour asked, looking at Jaktook.
“It’s unknown,” Jaktook replied. “That symbol is found nowhere else in the dome, and the console operation instructions don’t refer to it. Incidentally, it’s the most complex glyph, by far.”
“Because it’s not a single thing,” Devon said.
When the groups turned to him, Devon explained, “I watched a vid from the JOS library. It was on ancient Earth cultures. In several cases, early societies laid one symbol on top of another to add meaning to the first symbol.”
“It’s a unique identifier,” Kractik proposed.
“That’s what I thought,” Aurelia continued. “To me, it represents where we are in space. This dome, this body, this system.”
“This star,” Nelson added, and Aurelia nodded enthusiastically.
“So my query was,” Aurelia said, as she activated the projection and began to draw. “Map … as a request, not a noun … this dome’s location … to the stars.” When she completed her entries, the dome darkened and the star map appeared.
“I was watching the star field beyond the dome before this display appeared,” Bryan said. “It isn’t the same one. The dome is definitely responding to Aurelia’s query.”