by Marc Neuffer
The Bears on our ship would attempt to craft a strategy to benignly shift them away from the aggressive, xenophobic culture of their past. They had a high degree of distain for any organic sentient life forms. Their start had been an experiment, an accelerated evolutionary kick-start by another long-gone species. Adopting their creators’ technologies, they had self-grown a booming population. After their progenitors faded away, the restraining leash was dropped. They had become cosmic bullies in their neighborhood. When we had last met, there were over six-hundred spread between their three ships.
There had been a fourth ship blockading the rift planet. Over the two-million-year voyage, one of the ships’ AI had become a bit unbalanced. It was that ship charged with remaining while we collapsed the rift. After the other three had left, our Surron-Zee AI had taken over their ship, sending it back towards its non-existent home. We had placed quantum trackers on all those ships to ensure they didn’t change their minds. The crazy one had self-destructed after only a few years.
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Our small armada hung in the void near the almost-derelict ships. They still had real-space propulsion, but in the vast distance they had yet to travel, that mode of travel was slower than an ant moving from the center of a solar system to its outer reaches; not practical. They had begun cannibalizing two of the spherical ships in an attempt to make one whole. During their trip, they had been in a mechanical stasis. Now, all had been revived, far from any available resources, except their ships.
Usually, we release the ships, of the representative species, we held in our flight bays. Due to the aggressive shoot-first response we had received before, prudence dictated we not unnecessarily provoke them. The Eshalax had powerful beam weapons that could cause defensive problems for our allies. Our best bet was to make AI to AI contact first.
The Eshalax were artificial, with a haughty bent to their psychology, even among themselves—a very strict and structure hierarchy. Their body structures were not uniform from one to the next, each was tailored to specific jobs and positions on their ladder.
What they did have in common were the pieces parts. Flexible carbon fiber tendons and joints, a crystal-electro brain in their center mass, transmitters for communication and visual and auditory hardware for perceiving their environments. Their ships maintained a heated atmosphere of non-reactive gases and a low gravity matrix.
The overall look was one of a series of open-air double or triple interconnected spirals—most of their volume was open space. You could pass your hand through them if you were brave enough to get that close. I wasn’t. We made contact, they shot at us. Nothing was going to get through our Surron defensive shields, a technology we hadn’t and wouldn’t share.
We let them expend their aggressive efforts while broadcasting machine codes and videos from each of the accompanying races. We let them know we were aware of their status and needs, offering conclusive evidence of the long-ago erasure of their race back home. After thirty minutes of expending power they couldn’t afford to waste on weapon discharges, they agreed to listen.
Noah monitored the AI species to species communications, taking notes and recordings for future analysis. The Bears and the two other species were patient in the three-day negotiations. All objections addressed, we maneuvered Atlantis and Hawaiki close-in, to encompass their remaining functional ship in our S-drive influence for transport to their new home. The Eshalax required that we not board, or in any way attempt to control their ship during the joining. None of us wanted that either.
As the ships neared joining distance, the Eshalax sent a rapid response team of their soldier models in an attempt to board Hawaiki with two small ships. To get close enough to affect the Eshalax sphere we had to set our defensive shields to a close-in configuration which allowed their ships to get knife fighting close.
Surron based ships had no external evidence of hatches or flight bay doors. As was their nature, the Eshalax were attempting a brute force intrusion and betting we wouldn’t just blow them away. We didn’t. Instead, beforehand, we had visually outlined a single cargo bay door for them to target as an access. They destructively opened the door and flew their ships inside, ready to battle whatever resistance we might throw against them.
Once they were inside, Atlantis took over their active sphere ship. The host species had wanted some of the Eshalax for non-harmful study. They, along with the Bears, had a huge mountain to climb in readjusting their aggressive culture. A needed step before their remaining race bred to too large a number. The cargo bay had been outfitted to suit their environment, with blocked access to the remainder of the ship. After they entered, the false bay door was ejected and the real one closed.
On exiting their assault ships, the Eshalax found no one to fight. The entire bay was protected by an integral defense shield, their weapons were useless. It would take a lot of psychological steps before they were pacified and could live alongside other species. The planned trip to their new home planet would be months long, not the normal instantaneous jump our ships were capable of. Time was needed to start their progress towards galactic socialization.
After Hawaiki and Atlantis departed. We destroyed the remains of the other two ships.
9 Attosecond
Attoseconds are one quintillionth of a second—an attosecond is to a second what a second is to 31 billion years. A time slice used to explore electron dynamics.
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“Well, I thought there would be more action, less talk out there. If I hadn’t known beforehand what the outcome would be, that attack on Hawaiki would have clenched up my guts.” Sarah was rehashing our last mission. It was good for her to vocalize her feelings and observations. Noah had remained a detached observer, as if documenting an experiment or natural study in the wild. Both were valid … for them.
Noah added, “I wish I could have seen one of the Eshalax up close, in person. They’re a fascinating non-organic life form. We’ve only been able to lab-create very small, simple examples of that process. And those don’t live very long.”
I said, “Well, maybe after the Bears and the Direvans have finished their pacification.” The Direvan were the race that had agreed to house the Eshalax on an empty and isolated planet in their galaxy.
I offered, “In the meantime, how about a trip to Earth?” Martin had been regaling them with tales of old earth. It wasn’t much to see now, there were many more interesting worlds and sites to see in our galaxy, but it was still mankind’s original home, our race’s birthplace and springboard to the stars.
Martin had been suggesting such a trip for years. He could have gone anytime, but he never flew alone. Earth had been largely abandoned a thousand or more years after humans reached out into the starry night, to explore, to settle, to expand into the void.
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There are vestiges of indigent settlements on the planet, but I don’t think any of them can really trace their roots back to pre-expansion times to claim a family line that never left. Most, if not all, had returned over a two-thousand-year period to what they thought of as Mother Gia. A romantic notion at best.
After the final few humans had left, or more likely died, the process of nature and age caused the release of stored toxic and radioactive material. Only those areas that had been in extreme isolation maintained a semblance of a natural ecosystem. Nobody was interested in cleaning up before they left. You don’t cultivate a field if you’re leaving for greener pastures. Natural disasters, earthquakes, hurricanes, eruptions and even a mini ice age had sculpted and changed the landscape and old shorelines. Old houses, vacated by their last families, soon quickly fall to accelerated decay.
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Now, you have to get a permit to visit the homeland we left over six thousand years ago. Those permits aren’t cheap, but the Foundation is flush with cash, and I haven’t spent more than a hundred credits since I moved to Shangri La. In accordance with my will, my estate had been liquidated upon my death; in pr
obate on Satchel. Most of it was evenly split between Sandy and Mica, with a few millions going to the AI-Zee-Human, Ranger, and two other crewmembers we had along with us. At the time, I didn’t care if I ever saw another piece of currency again.
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Of course, Martin was going with us. He insisted on playing tour guide, having a full itinerary planned. It would be his first vacation in over two billion years, not counting the ones he took in the virtual worlds he’d built, waiting for us to show up.
To avoid problems with the automatic guardian platforms, we popped in at the proscribed transit points well outside the system, presenting our permits; four to land. We didn’t report Martin’s cat.
It was mid-year, meaning both hemispheres of the planet received equal daylight and night hours. The northern areas had emerged from winter a few months ago and the southern would be starting to cool, as you moved further south. The poles were more ice covered than I had expected; a periodic, natural cooling cycle was still on going.
We had brought clothing made of all-natural fibers, a requirement, if and when, we visited any settlements. By habit, I had my ship skinsuit on under my clothing, a twenty-seven-year habit.
Speaking of skin, Sarah was jumping out of hers. She had cracked the passenger airlock before Ranger had even touched down in someplace Martin called Old Spain. He said we would see some castles. She leaped out and started up the slope to the ruins. Noah darted after her, shouting over his shoulder, “She has no sense of caution!”
The area was supposed to be deserted, no humans around according to Ranger’s pre-landing scan. Martin and I trailed behind, walking sticks in hand, the two old men. I was armed, as were Martin and Noah, no chances being taken here. Martin started a monologue about the place but I asked him to hold off until the young folks could hear.
Sarah, while well trained in firearms by her mother, left her sidearm behind, saying the belt wrinkled her clothes and the one-sided weight threw her off balance. She had engaged her fast twitch package. The first time I saw her do that, I was surprised at her endurance when burning through so much reserve fuel. She was doing her impression of a mountain goat again. Over the last twenty-five years my body has only aged five physically, but, when the mind grows tired, the body follows, regardless of its capacity.
Up ahead, I saw that Noah had caught up to her and somehow gotten her to slow down a bit. When Martin and I reached them, they were sitting on a perch in a section of a still intact, tall and wide, defensive wall.
Martin began. “This is Castillo de Coca, built in the primitive times called the medieval period. Kings and queens and such. Weapons were mostly of the bow and arrow variety with swords and knifes for close-in fighting. Castles of this sort were supported by agriculture as well as by monies received from renting out mercenaries to whoever might be battling each other from time to time.
“They actually used red hot irons to cauterize wounds from battle. Aside from the landed gentry, the serfs led very poor and short lives, not being allowed to own land and prosper. Like many castles of this period, it has been sacked and rebuilt several times. This is the best remaining example, all the rest have fallen into over grown piles of rocks. The poor soil on this low mount keeps the vegetation at bay.”
Sarah was poking around in a section and pulled out a prize. “Look! A finger bone, from an old archer!”
Noah picked it from her hand. Looking at it he announced, “Sarah, it’s a chicken bone. Somebody had a picnic up here recently.” He bent the bone back and forth, “Look, it’s not even desiccated or hardened.” They had an ongoing competition to see who could fool who.
There were quite a few authorized tourist landing areas, but, with that, there are also large tracts of no-fly zones over primitive settlements. Those people don’t want to be reminded of any technology they, or their ancestors, had left behind.
We camped in all-weather tents for the night. Sarah wanted to squeeze out every ounce of her Old Earth experience as she could. That night, Martin showed us the differences, on maps, from the start of human migration toward the stars to today. He circled areas, now dry land, that had been submerged during a warming period. He labeled several areas where large cities had once existed. All the coastal areas around the globe had been scoured, collapsed, corroded, and, for the most part, washed away thousands of years ago. Tomorrow we go to see some canyon across the ocean and visit one of the open settlements.
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Martin called it the Grand Canyon; I’ve seen more impressive ones on several planets. We had overflown a large devastated area. Miles and kilometers of what looked like melted rock and debris. Martin gathered Sarah and Noah at the open cargo bay doors to see the entire scene.
Noah asked, “Did someone drop and asteroid here?”
“No, this large area was a national park of some fame long ago, before the exodus. Many tourists visited when Earth was still inhabited. Yellowstone, they called it. Lots of geysers and other natural wonders. It sat above a dormant caldera. Dormant until it erupted; ash fell over most of the continent east of here. The last, smaller eruption was fifteen hundred and thirty-eight years ago, lots of sulphur so the local grow-back has been slow. According to records, it caused a fifty-year, global winter. Earth is still recovering from it.”
Closing the hatch, we continued on. Most of our trip was an aerial flyover with occasional touchdowns in areas Sarah, or Noah, wanted to explore closer. I swear, Noah picked up enough rocks and plant samples to sink a small boat, meticulously labeling each.
Ranger flew out over, what Martin called, the Pacific Ocean, then followed the coast northward. At one point he hovered over the water, inviting us to enjoy the view. “Just wait a minute and you will see something marvelous.” I’d never heard him talk like that before.
Soon, about a dozen very large fish came to the surface, spraying water from their heads. “Whales!” exclaimed Martin. “A pod of whales, oh my, what a sight. They’re the largest animals on the planet, mammals you know, live birth. They travel in family groups.” We tracked their migration north for another hour.
Our destination was a large bay and inlet that had separated two ancient countries. There was an open settlement here which allowed limited tourism. We had permits that authorized a three-day, two-night stay. The area was called Van Coover by the locals. Apparently, no one knew who Van Coover had been. Probably some pioneer, that’s how most places got their names. Either that way or some descriptive of a natural land feature or a famous event.
Our package included, and required, a guide for this area. Our pass package said R. Andrews, native guide.
10 Sublimation
Sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase, without passing through an intermediate liquid phase.
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Before we started our vacation, I’d investigated the primitive clothing requirements. They weren’t all that primitive, it was just the process of creating them that was less than modern. The populous of the open settlements hadn’t gone back to the stone age. They maintained a pre-industrial culture. Water power drove the textile, logging, and flour mills. In this area, the natives wore a mixture of a thick cotton weave, called denim, and rugged canvas jackets for outer wear. I was glad we wouldn’t be dressing up in animal skins. If that had been the norm, I wouldn’t have come.
Our guide turned out to be a woman. She met us at the landing zone, with four small horse-like animals. “Bonner? Party of four?”
I nodded. She was an attractive young woman in her late twenties or early thirties. Her speech was easy to follow, though a heavy accent came through at times. With a piece of straw, she pointed at the small animals, “Donkeys. For your packs. Use the three on the right, the other one is mine.” She had given me a good look, up and down, then a quick glance at Sarah and Noah. She gave Martin a longer, inquisitive look. He gave her the same. I bet she was wondering if the old geezer would be able to handle roughing
it a bit. While Martin’s intellect was billions of years old, his body was less than thirty. He’d chosen to have an older body look when he transferred from being a Surron AI to a human.
We loaded up the donkeys, leaving Ranger behind; buttoned up but always in touch. The gravel landing area covered about ten acres and was well away from the settlement. We had a five-kilometer hike into the forest along an unpaved trail. After a kilometer, it jogged to the left and we began following the banks of a large, white-water creek to the village.
There were about three hundred settlement adult residents, another two hundred families lived further out, on ranch and farm plots. The village adults operated the mills, stores, school and clinic. Woodstoves, candles and oil lamps provided all the heat and light they needed. Hand pumped water was available in the open commons area and in each house, a point-well, sunk below the high-water table.
We would be staying tonight in a log cabin, set aside for tourists. As we unpacked it looked clean and cozy. Ms. Andrews would be bunking with us. She said her contract required she stay at our side from landing to leaving. A four-man bunk room and two sectioned off bedrooms served as our sleeping quarters. We left the bedrooms for the women.
It was mid-day so we took a tour of the town. Knowing the village liked having tourists spend money, I turned Sarah loose on them, she made a lot of friends in a few hours. We used cash tokens to pay for everything. The village could trade those to other settlement or to the planetary conservator for goods and services. We’d brought a lot of high denomination tokens. I wanted to ensure Sarah and Noah had the expedition they expected.
Everything Sarah purchased was for friends and family back on Satchel. Like me, neither she nor Noah were collectors of conspicuously wealthy personal items. Though, according to Noah, Sarah had quite the shoe collection. Our guide stayed close to Sarah. They chatted as she shopped. I noticed Ms. Andrews interjected herself into a few sales discussions, asking a shop keeper why he was charging so much.