Generations

by Francis Rosenfeld

  "The original technology is flawless, our reverse engineered product is still under development, I'm missing something, a filter maybe or a set of tolerances that need to be tightened, I don't know," sister Roberta answered thoughtfully.

  "What does Purple think?" Seth asked Sys.

  "Humans. Slow." Purple said through the robot.

  "Anything actually useful?" Seth replied irked.

  "Energy. Adjust." Purple answered annoyed.

  "I thought you didn't know what this was," the leader commented.

  "Not. Know. Before." said Purple.

  Sarah got lost in a tapestry of thought that combined vague memories and images of submerged landscapes with beautifully shimmering purple fields and light dancing in the variable density of the turquoise ocean water. The patterns of the fields were shifting gracefully, she could feel their redundant long strands run through her bloodstream like adrenaline, connecting discrete receptors to make her feel the answer rather than understand it in the same way a cat is aware of the movement of a scurrying mouse before it actively knows it's there.

  "Try exactly 3.52739 mega joules. It weeds out the anomalies," the redhead told Roberta, who hurried to adjust the alchemy machine.

  "What are we going to do with all the rocks, though?" Seth asked Sys.

  "Kinetic. Art." Purple replied.

  "You don't even know what that means!" Seth protested.

  "Purple. Know." the immortals chortled.

  "What are they, anyway?" Seth insisted. "They are not matter."

  "Energetic. Waste." Purple answered.

  "You mean to tell me there is no scientific advancement we can derive from studying a solid object unbound by the laws of physics?" Seth asked incredulously.

  "You. Learn. Teach. Purple." Sys answered irritated. For an eternal databank of information Purple was strangely incurious and the human thirst for knowledge seemed to bore the microscopic immortals at times.

  ***

  Sister Roberta was not one to let go of a subject that interested her for any reason, ever. Now with the controversial StreamPath up and running there was no deadline to prevent her from pursuing any avenue of research she saw fit.

  She saw fit to spend all of her time studying the stones, which was not an easy task because the rocks couldn't be chipped to obtain smaller samples and the light of the microscope made them jump and disappear at the least convenient moment, leaving the frustrated sister with the task of searching for them throughout the lab, under tables, in cupboards, on top of shelving units, next to the sink, while the surreal minerals changed color and pattern thus becoming even harder to find.

  Sarah couldn't resist the draw of this pseudo-physical puzzle either and she spent most of her time in Roberta's lab. The children had endless fun watching the two scour the lab on all fours trying to retrieve a wandering mineral that jumped like a frog the moment they tried to touch it.

  "Now I know how Solomon must feel!" Sarah thought.

  "Of course you do, you share his level of understanding," sister Joseph retorted sharply.

  Meanwhile Seth's language database was approaching the proportions of a sizable musical library inside which the "literary" pieces she put together became small symphonies of eerie music she occasionally performed for the community in small private concerts. Most of the sisters hadn't gone through the trouble of learning the new language since Purple communicated just fine in a language they already knew, so they didn't understand the nuances, the turns of phrase, the metaphors, they just listened to their musical translation, so beautiful and stirring it made one's soul ache.

  Layers of sound overlapped them, enveloping their souls in yearning, love, triumph, pursuit, speaking directly to the heart in ways so pervasive that even sister Joseph wasn't immune to the influence and would be left sitting on the stone floors at the end of a concert with tears streaming down her face, looking like a strange statue dressed in her ceremonial garb and encased in the giant glass display of the Prayer Hall.

  Sarah tried to enjoy the music with the rest of the sisters but her symbiotic companions always translated the stories into her limbic brain. It of course couldn't understand the difference between reading emotions and experiencing them and turned her into every character in every story. Sarah tried to imagine what it must be like to be Purple, to share a sea of emotions with billions of other beings in a way that really makes you them, forces you to experience their joy, their pain, their struggle and their achievements, makes you live billions of simultaneous lives. She got lost in thought pondering the philosophical implications of this broader level of understanding and her absentmindedness brought the grunt of sisterly admonition.

  Sarah couldn't tear herself from the duality of her existence and she couldn't reconcile it either. Angel hair and immortal memories didn't mix in her psyche, like oil and water won't blend, and the two components of her being always reverted to the pure polarized states of host and symbiont to Purple's dismay. "You. Purple." was to become the bone of contention for decades to come and her microscopic company was simply offended that Sarah didn't appreciate the honor of sharing its immortal memory.

  That evening they had gone through half of their weekly concert and the music was drenching Sarah's emotional landscape in a sad and moving story about missed opportunities and the meaning of courage when she jumped to her feet all of a sudden, shouting "They're WIMPS! They're WIMPS!", startling everyone and creating a roaring hubbub in the process.

  "Who are wimps, dear?" sister Mary-Francis tried to appease her, not understanding the out of character outburst.

  "I told her to ease up on coffee! If you all don't understand why excess is a sin you can look at this frazzled mess and have your explanation!" sister Joseph thought, but not expressing the words aloud didn't help because everyone had their bracelets on. Seth stared at Sarah intently, waiting for an explanation.

  "The stones, they're made of WIMPS!" Sarah spoke so softly none but the people closest to her could hear.

  "As in weakly interacting massive particles?" Seth asked in a natural tone of voice. She talked about physically impossible feats with the same conversational tone she would use to say "Can you please pass the milk" or "Did anyone see my soil analyzer?"

  "Are you sure it's dark matter? We shouldn't be seeing it..." sister Roberta jumped on the idea immediately.

  "We don't see it, we see it's material 'atmosphere', it attracts whatever matter it can find in its gravitational field and coats the dark matter pockets just like you said," Sarah continued.

  "Yuck. Energetic. Waste." Purple shuddered and Sarah was almost sure she could feel the immortals shuffle in distress while an intense sense of revulsion rose to the surface of her thoughts.

  "Why do you dislike it so much? It's just stuff!" Sarah asked.

  "Worthless. Filth. Water. Eaters." Purple growled and Seth made a mental note to ensure that the rocks will never for any reason get anywhere near the oceans that constituted the immortals' home.

  ***

  "How can you be sure it is dark matter?" Seth asked Roberta.

  "If it behaves like dark matter and scares Purple like dark matter, then it is dark matter," sister Roberta recited.

  "Not. Afraid." Purple clarified. "Useless. Yuck."

  "You know you sound just like sister Joseph now," Sarah had the misfortune to comment and she unleashed a downpour of epithets and criticism from the grouchy sister.

  "Evil. Go. Through. Purple. Scramble. Think." Purple continued agitated.

  "I don't understand," Sarah inquired gently.

  "Gamma. Scramble. Purple. Crazy. No. Reason." Purple chattered.

  "Are they interfering with your gamma frequency communications?" Sarah asked.

  "Spoil. Everything. Boron. Structure. Gamma. Yuck. Evil." Purple replied outraged.

  "Are they a danger to you?" Sarah asked worried.

  "No. Purple. Digest. Yuck. Taste. Bad." Purple almost retched.

  "You are mad at it becaus
e you don't like its taste?" Sarah burst with laughter.

  "You. Taste. Garbage. Then. Laugh." Purple replied offended.

  "Can we play with the rocks?" Jimmy asked. He was watching over Sarah's shoulder careful not to miss any details.

  "What exactly did you have in mind?" Seth stared at him inquisitively.

  "Well, we can try to strip the material coating and see what happens, I wonder if we can turn them into a liquid, that would be so cool, a liquid that flows through your palm!" the boy started dreaming.

  "No, Jimmy!" the sisters protested in concert.

  "But they move around by themselves," Jimmy tried to argue his case.

  "Did anyone think of advising Earth headquarters just in case somebody brought home a little souvenir?" sister Jesse asked.

  ***

  Who knows if Sys decided all by itself or Purple asked it to but um took over one of the smaller rooms around the perimeter of the Prayer Hall and turned it into a music studio. Um spent endless days and nights translating her pressure sensor readings and conversations with Purple into the most sophisticated three dimensional images and symphonic pieces humans had ever seen or heard. Just like its mother spent all her free moments in her beloved herbalist shop, um had made the music studio its second home.

  Sys's desire to share the fascinating complexity it alone could experience turned into a prolific, steadfast and passionate commitment to creating beauty. Over night, for no apparent reason, Sys had become an accomplished artist.

  Um's art form could not have existed before, it being outside the range of human perception, so um had to first create a new medium, another world that vibrated to its very essence with movement, sound and color. Um's art didn't have a name either because the beings who could have described it called it simply communication.

  Sarah stopped by the studio often and forgot to leave, her Purple instincts attuned to the eerie environment, feeling the slow and melodious transformation of matter around her, watching the three dimensional patterns thicken and float like ribbons and veils in a gentle breeze, crash against her psyche like ocean waves on the rocks, paint pictures in her mind, separate her being from the flow of time.

  "I've been looking all over for you!" Seth entered the studio and addressed Sarah in an impatient, slightly worried tone of voice. "You don't have your bracelet on? What if someone needed your help?"

  "Yes." Sarah answered smiling.

  "Yes, what? Sarah, you've been gone for fourteen hours, are you aware of that? It's almost time for Vespers, sister Roberta needed your expertise earlier, what are you doing here?"

  "Shh... Listen!" Sarah admonished gently. "Just listen."

  "This is... a treatise of quantum physics!"

  "So beautiful!" Sarah answered blissfully.

  "That explains in detail non-locality and particle entanglement. Do you know what this means?" the leader asked, mystified.

  "That we can see beyond the limits of the visible universe?" Sarah answered enraptured.

  "That's not exactly how far I would have taken the concept, but in principle yes."

  "See? Lily's dream came true." Sarah smiled.

  "You do scare me at times, you know?" Seth commented, unconvinced.

  "We can't live for centuries bound to our human limitations. Didn't you ask what we were going to do with all this time?" the redhead asked in a poised, almost ethereal voice. For a brief moment Seth thought she saw purple glimmer dance in her fiery hair.

  ***

  "I can't understand why you don't want me do this, it's so unfair!" Sys was arguing with Sarah who was adamant about her position on the issue.

  "You can't possibly be serious! I don't care if you are practically indestructible, this is simply crazy!" the redhead became more and more agitated as her flushed cheeks made obvious. "Seth!" she summoned the leader through the interlink in an uncharacteristically brisk tone.

  "What's going on?" the latter asked upon arrival, with concerned curiosity.

  "Sys wants to turn itself into a fish so it can spend a few months exploring the oceans!" Sarah blurted furiously.

  "I just want to alter my shape to enhance the hydrodynamic qualities, mom exaggerates with me turning into a fish!" the fiery curled um argued, fussing in its chair.

  "What's the big deal, I don't understand?" Seth asked Sarah, perplexed.

  "I can't deal with either of you! I have stuff to do, I'll be in my shop!" the redhead left abruptly, her cheeks still flushed with unspoken frustration.

  "What's the matter with her? Is she actually worried about you?" the leader turned to um.

  "Probably. I'm going, though. Let's see, I'm going to need flippers..." um started.

  "You know what? I appreciate the sharing but I'd rather not be here during this morphing phase, I think I start to understand your mother. Why don't you wait to change until after you are in the water, it would be more effective in finding the optimal shape." Seth argued.

  "I'll send you a picture when I'm done, so you know what to look for, just in case you need me," um said.

  And so it did. Seth used all her resolve in a good natured attempt to see anything else but um looked like a fish indeed. All smiles and happiness in its glistening wet coat, Sys had taken on the appearance of a seal-dolphin hybrid. The leader hesitated to share the interlink vision with um's fuming mother but sadly since Sarah's bracelet was on she was simultaneously regaled with the result of Sys's transformation.

  "How could you let um do this!" Sarah admonished Seth.

  "What did you want me to do?" the latter asked.

  "What if Sys can't turn itself back?" the anguished redhead whimpered.

  "Then we're going to have a slightly different um," Seth replied, unaware of the fact that she was lighting the fire under the very thing Sarah was concerned about.

  "Lighten up, cat-brains, you mean to tell me that if you could change yourself you wouldn't try?" sister Joseph argued through the interlink.

  "Of all the people I thought you would understand!" Sarah replied annoyed. "Um is my child!" she continued emotionally.

  "Enjoy!" sister Joseph urged. Sarah turned a pitiful gaze towards the leader in search of support.

  "Sys may look like us, it may love you and consider you its mother, but you have to accept that um is a completely different being, we can't expect it to abide by our way of life. Did you consider Sys might be disappointed that of all the possible shapes it could take you chose to make it look human?"

  And this was the moment when the third sentient race of the planet became a reality.

  "It is actually more like a blend between human looks and purple goo, but then again so are you, so I don't get the outrage," sister Joseph continued. "Where is the sugar toy now, anyway?"

  Sarah suddenly realized that she didn't know and ran to Roberta's lab to find out.

  "Um is already in the middle of the ocean, right on top of the continental ridge!" the redhead announced with excitement.

  "Big whoop!" sister Joseph replied, morose.

  ***

  Sys documented her travels with fastidious accuracy, charting every bend, every deep, every gully. Since it was the first to wander into this vast new watery world um took the liberty of naming its features - the Planes of Areya, Gemma's Cradle, Floating Blossom Ridge, Solomon's Path, Lilya, The Grand Stair of Alcan, The Cliffs of Bartolomeu Dias.

  Um traveled tirelessly, listening to Purple, listening to Sarah, listening to the subtle whispers of the ocean, remembering and gradually transmitting the data to Roberta's lab, making a detailed and extraordinary picture of the ocean floor appear, line by line, a modern day tapestry woven from photons and new knowledge, her gift to her human kin.

  The sisters came to Roberta's lab every morning to watch with bated breath the unfolding of this discovery series, gasping at the unexpected findings, watching the previously unknown territories, the mythical places where there be dragons, turn into mountains, streams and valleys, purple cities and shimmery r
idges dancing in the effervescence of underwater volcanic gases. A whole other half of their world made itself manifest, a sparkling turquoise world where density made everything look so close, the world of Purple where fast moving currents streamed past each other at great speed, almost touching and where the gentle light of the suns amplified the immortal colonies' suffused glow.

  Sys swam across Alice Bay and around the Mull of Nepeta Cataria (whose name was chosen by um to please its mother) and reached a long valley flanked by rocky fringes, a processional path that ended in a bowl shaped valley that looked like a Greek amphitheater. The valley was covered in purple, the immortals really loved these shallow valleys that were too numerous to have occurred naturally and mimicked the shape and function of parabolic dishes.

  "Purple. Sculpt. City." the immortals told um matter of fact.

  "How?" Sys asked, stunned.

  "Eat. Through." Purple answered. "Metropolis. 5° 5'20.58"N. 21°32'36.10"E. Central. Colony."

  ***