Long Paradise

by James Murdo

Neutralisation packet – Projectile fired by neu-cannon that takes control over the target.

  Nirloden – Fringe Roranian world badly affected by trade disputes.

  Non-ABs – Empire, civilisation, race, species, or any other grouping of sentients, whose technological advancement is inferior to the ABs, or who have AB-level, technologies but have declined to join the AB grouping. The term can also be used to describe specific technologies.

  Original – Roranian biological upon which the ‘copies’ are based.

  Outer Layer – Region within the Construct that is accessed following the Inner Layer.

  Philsima (‘Phils’) – Daughter and co-heir of Beatrict and Gerstial, leaders of the Alexis-Meld.

  Phratian – Species found within the Outer Layer.

  Pole-forest – Sentient dwelling in the Outer Layer.

  Pro’xanthi – Galactic civilisation that disappeared long before the Wanderer civilisation was formed.

  Prood – Large female sentient with streaks of black lacing down from her grey upper torso, disappearing down to the clothed section of her lower torso. Highly skilled at translating the languages of different species.

  Quesimone – Non-family member of the Alexis-Meld who oversees the secretive diversification efforts of the meld, including the Cognitive Venture.

  Quest-Meld – New supplier of weaponry to the Roranian soldiers.

  Quillian – Alien species known to the Roranians.

  Repeat the Question – Machine-lect copy with no auditory apparatus.

  Roranian script – Written Roranian language.

  Roranians – Humanoid species and member of the Alliance, founded by the Foist.

  Rum’nen – Phratian dwelling within the Outer Layer.

  Self-organised granulites – Sentient type of life.

  Sensespace – Infective parasite that appears to be drawn to sentience. Enemy of the Wanderers.

  Sentient – Living entity possessing an intellect (or ‘sentience’).

  Seremend – Roranian female from Nirloden.

  Shadow-bios – Sentient type of life.

  Shatters the Ear – Machine-lect copy with suspected powerful auditory capabilities.

  Simshim – Species known within the Outer Layer.

  Sky-Soarer – Winged sentient dwelling in the Outer Layer.

  Slide or Glide – Machine-lect copy with undulating, planar mass in the place of legs.

  Soft-graviton technology – Roranian technology that produces an artificial gravity field.

  Spire – Habitat with sequence of opening and closing hatches.

  Standard time – Generally accepted units for time measurement within the Wanderer civilisation.

  Sub-AB – Empire, civilisation, race, species, or any other such often-synonymous grouping of sentients, whose technological advancement is inferior to the ABs. The term can also be used to describe specific technologies.

  Taiden – Father of Tolren. Alexis-ring implantation specialist.

  Territories – Discrete region with specific set of physical characteristics, in the context of the Outer Layer.

  The Masses – Disparate sentient swelling in the Outer Layer.

  The Spires – Term for the entire collection of individual spires.

  Til-Medium Spiral – Spiral arm of the galaxy.

  Tolren – Son of Taiden and friend of Gerstial II.

  Tracker – Enigmatic entity encountered by Seremend and Tolren.

  Trove instrument (‘trove item’) – Technological item pilfered from an abandoned habitat or outpost that a Wanderer craft-lect chooses to examine.

  Tum’nen – Phratian dwelling within the Outer Layer.

  Vebellar audiosynth – Instrument allowing the temporary alteration of auditory sounds.

  Vessel of Viruses – Machine-lect copy with dangerous, suspected touch-transferrable pathogens capable of affecting other machine-lects.

  Vision of Night – Machine-lect copy with compound eyes.

  Wanderer Confluence (‘Confluence’) – Events hosted by the Enclave for the Wanderer populous. They occur approximately every one million standard years, with the purpose of sharing and disseminating information, which is also available via the data exchange network afterwards.

  Wanderer Enclave (‘Enclave’) – Governing body of the Wanderers, thought to comprise mostly of machine-lects.

  Wanderer fleet – All of the Wanderer ships within the galaxy, although often refers to the craft-lect fleet, which is the largest.

  Wanderers – The principal force in the galaxy attempting to destroy the sensespace. Formed predominantly from a variety of machine-lect alliances.

  Yul’nka Empire – Close allies to the Wanderers.

  LONG PARADISE

  James Murdo was born and raised in London, where he still lives. He graduated from university with a Masters degree in Physics, which added fuel to his early love of science fiction. Long Paradise is a stand-alone novel set in the Wanderer Universe, alongside the epic Wanderers series.

  LONG PARADISE

  Copyright © 2019 James Murdo

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this novel may be copied, stored, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, digital, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Book sample:

  Gil’s World

  Wanderers, Book 1

  (Wanderer Universe)

  JAMES MURDO

  Chapters 1 & 2

  1

  WANDERERS

  The stars shone lazily on the ship as it travelled through the eternal void. Everything it came across, all manner and manifestation of matter strewn across the galaxy, was probed and recorded. The galactic concourse was its playground, tantalisingly displaying its wares as the ship went about its quest.

  The ship was tasked with sifting through it all, from the decaying ruins of forgotten empires to the empty expanses of nothingness. No scorched world, mutilated worldship or orbital husk that it passed was left unscrutinised. Crumbling remains were scoured and plundered, and then left to the ravages of time. It studied the nebulae, the asteroids, and the stars themselves. Fields and their associated forces were meticulously dissected, down to their most basic constituents.

  Occasionally, dark planets would flit across its path, having escaped the gravitational forces of their parent systems. Molecular winds of protostellar cocoons would waft along its bow as the gasses were slowly drawn to a coalescent core. It recorded these too, along with every action it took itself, ready to be submitted to one of the data exchanges that had been seeded throughout the galaxy.

  The ship resembled a vast squid-like creature. It had originally been created from an amalgamation of technologies contributed by various civilisations. Its main body was an obsidian-black mass, trailing billions of tentacle-like elongations behind that thrust it through the ether.

  The tentacles fed off vacuum energy, the persistent quantum hum that permeated the entire universe. Over twice the length of its main body at full length, they fanned out densely in each spatial dimension and resembled an immense fungal bloom. Each tentacle branched into smaller sub-tentacles, which in turn fractally branched out. The smallest fibres at the ends plugged directly into the foamy broth of spacetime, where they were vibrated by the ubiquitous quantum hum.

  The quantum hum was often described as the greatest self-diagnostics test ever performed. It comprised the spon
taneous blinking of particle-antiparticle pairs inconsequentially into and out of existence. In theory, nothing was impacted by it, and the particles were aptly termed ‘virtual particles’. The ship’s tentacles took advantage of this free energy.

  Once a fibre was rocked by the hum, the motion was conducted back up the fractal chain. The force provided by the contribution of quadrillions of fibres induced each larger tentacle to oscillate with a fantastical frequency. That oscillation interfered with the initial pool of offending virtual particles to such an extent that they were ripped out of the quantum domain. They entered the observable macro domain and interacted with each other to release an astronomical amount of power, which could be manipulated and directed by the bloom.

  The leviathan ship moved forward by riding the silent, self-perpetuating cosmic wave. Once a bloom had been created, its power output could never be muted. Any motion, or lack of, was controlled by changing its shape.

  The existence of the ship and its quest were down to the scourge that had decimated the galaxy, and the fight that continued against it. The war had relentlessly devastated civilisations for the better part of three hundred million standard years. The immense timescale spanned eras many times longer than those over which a typical species might evolve, obtain galactic prominence and return to the dust.

  Towards the latter stages of the war, the surviving civilisations were completely united in the struggle. The Ascended Biologicals, or ABs, were at the helm, being the most powerful civilisations in the galaxy. Each of them had long surpassed the ability to be fully understood by the mainstream galactic community. Under their guidance, a monumental discussion was initiated, and a desperate course of action was chosen. The events that followed were generally referred to as the Great Conflation.

  Emissaries returned to their respective species and, following pre-agreed terms, orders were carried out. Civilisations turned weapons of terrible devastation inwards upon themselves. Previously unthinkable actions were committed. For the most part, the suicide was a welcome relief to the unending and relentless cycles of an unwinnable war.

  The actions had not been without cause, and they did have the intended effects. A theory was substantiated, as far as was possible, although its authors were no longer around to verify it. While the enemy had not been destroyed, it was at least subdued.

  Following the events of the Great Conflation, almost every single major civilisation in the galaxy was gone. Left behind were the remnants. The accidental and forgotten descendants, fragments of their brilliant predecessors. Led predominantly by the surviving machine-lects, they grew in strength and banded together into factions. Loose accords were struck between many of the factions, which strengthened over time into a unified civilisation. The Wanderers were formed. They represented a final barrier against the enemy, and wove their paths between the stars in their self-tasked and endless pursuit, continuing the fight. They travelled in solitude, to search for and destroy the infected. To find a way to defeat the weakened enemy once and for all.

  2

  GIL

  Gil wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her tanned right hand, and stopped. Her lower back ached from the time spent diligently working the land. After dropping her sower, she rested an equally tanned left hand on her hip, and looked over to Tor, her twin brother, with admiration. His progress dwarfed her own, and she barely ever caught him stealing a break from the toil. His diligence and single-minded determination were admirable.

  Unlike the roamers, who required strict hierarchies to organise their hunts, the communers took a more relaxed approach. Everyone, or at least the majority of communers, understood the principle that their community was based on fairness.

  The very oldest in the commune, the elders, had earned the right to observe and take life at the slowest pace. They forewent the more manual labours in favour of watching over the commune, checking it was being properly looked after and cared for. From the fire-pits and the food stores, to recounting their tales to entertain the young children. They were the effective leaders of the commune, and Bo was the oldest and the wisest of them all.

  Bo loved to recount tales. As he told them, his deep-set, weathered brown eyes forwent their boundaries, dancing atop his cheeks to complement his words. His thick, greying eyebrows, interlaced with wisps of pure white, sat under a creased forehead. While he had the tendency to embellish a story to excite a willing audience, this only made them more interesting. Having lived the longest and seen the most, he was an invaluable source of information. It was fortunate in general that the elders had more time to discuss what they knew, as it meant their knowledge was seldom lost.

  The tool Gil had let fall to the ground a moment before had been created through a spark of her own creative genius. It was her most significant contribution to the commune yet, and was one of the most significant contributions to the commune by any single communer in a long time.

  The sower was part-digger, part-planter, and could be used all year round. She remembered how obvious it had seemed to her that the separate tools could be combined. The enjoyment she had felt from creating it had spurred her on to consider new ideas. Unfortunately, those ideas and sparks of her imagination had to wait for appropriate times, when her daily duties were done. She often thought that her creativity compensated for her lack of other abilities.

  The stitched animal-skin clothing she wore was heavy and dripping with sweat, but to wear any less would be indecent. She was already wearing the minimum practical for polite company. The coolness brought by the sweat was a small and welcome comfort, albeit an indignant sign from her body that she could not continue indefinitely. She would need some refreshment. She wistfully recalled the colder seasons. The feel of a cold swim in one of the nearby lakes, under the blissful shade afforded by the luscious forest canopies towering above.

  She searched her sphere for any signs of the reprieve she longed for. A cold wind, rain. Something that would make her more comfortable. She searched right to its very tips, to the edges of where she could actively look, but found nothing encouraging. Opening her mind a little more, she allowed information from the weaker, more indistinct outer reaches to filter through. Again, she was not inspired. There seemed to be the faintest hint of an incoming cold presence, but it was too far out and too blurry. She could not be sure. Besides, right now her concern was with shorter-term relief.

  A small fly that had been circling her head for some time came to rest in her dark brown hair. She moved her hand to swat it, but by the time her hand connected with the back of her head, she was of course too late. Instead, she attempted to probe it.

  Its dull, tiny mind only registered as having the barest of intentions to her sphere. Near the point of irrelevance. She knew this would be the case, as it was with most things that were not people. Most likely, it was only packed with the smallest collection of instincts. Everything that was required to help it avoid being swatted.

  Sometimes she felt she could sense something else beyond this. Not anything especially significant about the fly, but deeper. In her sphere. Almost hidden from her and the other communers. However, she had yet to find any real proof that this was anything more than an over-active imagination, and when she dwelled on it for too long, the quiet whispers at the back of her mind grew stronger.

  She wondered if flies could talk to one another as people did, or whether they had their own unique ways. Her mind often moved onto topics such as these, although she was unable to communicate her ideas with others. Speech, unfortunately, was a gift she no longer had as the result of an accident many years before.

  She had been perched high up in a tree, hiding from Tor as part of a game. Unbeknownst to her, she had been spotted with ease. They were both young enough that their complete spheres had not yet developed, and she could not fully sense his presence. She had been looking out for him, but even then, his physical prowess had shown. He successfully sneaked up behind her without making a sound. As he moved into positio
n, gleefully edging closer and closer, he had decided to shout. Loudly. Innocently joyful at his success. Unluckily for Gil, the shock of him surprising her caused her to momentarily let go of the branches she was holding for support. At precisely the same time, her feet slipped.

  As she fell backward, she could see Tor’s look of genuine shock and horror. His wide eyes followed her as she dropped. The look on his face was permanently frozen into her memory.

  The fall took longer in her own mind than was possible. However, it was seared into her recollection as the only time she had known Tor to be indecisive, unable to act. Unable to help. Since that moment, his outlook had changed. It was rare to see him indecisive again. He was not as much of a dreamer or creative problem-solver as Gil, but he was fiercely intelligent in his own right. If the accident had not happened, Gil wondered whether he would have grown up differently.

  Gil’s body had twisted as it fell, and she ended up hitting the ground face down. She was dimly aware of a scurrying sound in the background as she lay there, motionless. It had turned out to be the sound of Tor scampering down the tree to her side. Once there, he turned her over, and it was only then that Gil became aware of a warm sensation trickling down her throat. Tor’s hands came into her field of vision, and she could see they were stained a deep, dark red. It had not made sense to her at the time, and she remembered being confused at the expression he wore.

  He had screamed for help until his voice was hoarse. Even when the adults arrived, the screaming had continued. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. Gil had landed onto a branch that had partially protruded upwards, towards the sky. It had pierced her throat, damaging it in such a way that she would never be able to speak again.

  As she healed, her sphere had seemed to grow in compensation for her lost power of speech. At least, that was the way it seemed to her. It was as though she could sense intentions more keenly than before. Intentions of the land, of the air, of larger animals. Of many things, with much more clarity. Certain things were unknowable, but while one ability had been taken away from her, the wonders of another had been unveiled. This was also when she had begun to hear the whispers. She had tried to communicate this to Tor and her father, using gestures, however the capability to relay this concept precisely eluded her, no matter how hard she tried. During one of her last attempts, when she thought her father had finally begun to understand, he acted with rare annoyance, telling her that it was most likely her imagination, and to focus on other things. She had cried, and immediately he held her tight, telling her it was forgotten.