“But that isn’t quite the end of our story. The sorcerer continued to chase the Queen around the galaxy. At some point, she found our own planet, Zarikum, and tried to hide while circling it. The sorcerer found her and also went into orbit around Zarikum. The two found that they were stuck in orbit, able to do nothing but run circles around our planet. However, since the ‘Sovereign’ Queen was in a higher orbit, no matter how fast that ‘Scoundrel’ sorcerer runs, he’ll never catch her. And they are still running, even to this very day. The End.”
“That’s a great story!” I said. “I still can’t believe that the Entertainment Guild in Silicon Central didn’t repair you. You did such a nice job telling the story. It seems like you would’ve been a valuable employee for them.”
“In my experience, it seems like too many Autoclons are focused on the present or future and have no time to listen to stories, fictional or historical, about our past.”
Resolute still seemed perplexed by the ending of the story and voiced its confusion: “So, Kapali isn’t a gray moon but is a Queen running away from Kirmizi, which also isn’t an actual moon but is some kind of sorcerer trying to catch the Queen? That seems hard for me to believe.”
“Don’t be silly, Resolute,” Surreptitious replied. “Kapali and Kirmizi are both still moons up there, not Humans running around Zarikum. That’s just some concocted fable fabricated by some Autoclon looking to bring some nobility to these plain old moons.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what the early storytellers did. We didn’t have much history as a civilization, so storytellers made up these tales to provide some wonderment to our audiences,” Loquacious added. “Hopefully, this story provided you with some enjoyment.”
“Oh, I was definitely entertained,” Resolute added. “I agree with Fastidious that it was a good story. I certainly haven’t heard one like that before.”
∆∆∆
7.1 Caught Out in the Open
Loquacious continued to share with us about the history of storytellers here on Zarikum as we pressed westward on the road to the Twin-Crevasse Platinum Mine. As Lazuli-fall approached, Resolute noticed something out of the ordinary.
“Say, is it just me, or does it seem to be getting darker a bit earlier today?”
“Lazuli-fall should still be about an hour away, but I think you’re correct. It does seem to be darker than normal,” I said.
“I can con-firm your sus-pic-ions. The at-mos-phere’s tur-bid-i-ty is for-ty eight per-cent high-er than nor-mal,” Winston stated.
“Whoa, what does all that science talk mean in normal bot terms?” Resolute asked.
“The sky is dark-er than u-su-al.”
“Could it be a sand storm?” Resolute asked.
“It doesn’t look like it. The skies are darker out to the west, but they don’t have the sandy color like they would with a sand storm,” I said, using my wealth of personal knowledge of sand storms. “It looks more bluish-gray than yellowish-brown. I have no idea what’s going on. Surreptitious, do you have any theories?”
“Ah, yes... well... the blue-ish nature of the sky could mean... some solar flare activity from Lazuli... and the darkening skies—”
“You don’t know, do you?” Resolute interjected.
“Well... no, not really.”
“Have you heard of anything like this before, Loquacious?” I asked.
“I don’t have any idea,” Loquacious replied. “I’m a storyteller, not a meteorologist.”
About 15 minutes later, I detected some faint flashes of whitish-blue light in the distance. From what I could tell, the flashes seemed to come from the sky, but we were still several kilometers away from the source. We couldn’t see too much of the western horizon with a small hill ahead of us, so we could only speculate at what approached us from the west. In addition to the flashes of light, I also detected the faint sound of rumbling in the distance, often trailing the flashes of light by several seconds. Once we reached the top of the hill, we could finally see what was happening: we were heading straight into a lightning storm!
Lightning storms on Zarikum are rather rare, so it wouldn’t surprise me if many of you reading this haven’t experienced one personally, and I hope you never encounter one yourself! On occasion, a swirl of gases with the help of swirling sands in Zarikum’s atmosphere can create a build-up of static so strong that it needs to be discharged in the form of lightning. This lightning then comes down from the skies in the form of a bolt of electricity, several hundred megajoules in energy, striking the surface of Zarikum at speeds in the tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. The lightning rips through the air so fast that it breaks the speed of sound, sending a concussive force of sonic waves outward from the strike. The energy within a lightning bolt would fry all of the electronic components of any unfortunate mechanism that they struck. So you can imagine that being caught out in a lightning storm unprotected, bombarded by dozens of bolts per minute, can be a truly frightening experience!
Once we realized we were looking head-on into a lightning storm, we started looking around for cover to lessen the chance of being struck by a lightning bolt. We were starting to see a few bolts strike the ground less than a kilometer away to the west, so we needed to act quickly. Surreptitious found the first possible candidate for shelter.
“Let’s head over there to the north,” Surreptitious motioned to the right of the road. “There’s a rock face there that might shield us from any impending lightning strikes.” As Surreptitious spoke, a bolt ripped down from the skies and struck the ground within half of a kilometer to the southwest with blinding light and ground-shaking force. The skies had further darkened with both the impending lightning storm and the falling of Lazuli in the west, but I could still see the landmark Surreptitious referred to. The rock face was a vertical rock formation, around 200 meters to the north of our location. While it was only eight or so meters in height, the top of the rock formation could provide some protection and was clearly superior to standing in the middle of open ground. With lightning bolts coming down now with greater frequency, there was no time for debate: we had to move!
“OK, let’s go!”
We sprinted as best we could to the rock wall. As Resolute, the fastest of our group, made it to the wall, a bolt hit the road very near to where we were just standing, and the accompanying concussive force knocked Loquacious and me over. We regained our footing and traversed the remaining distance to the rock face as fast as possible.
“Now what? I don’t feel too much safer here,” Loquacious said.
“What do we have here? Is this an entrance to a cave?” Resolute, who was on the western-most flank of the rock formation, had found a crevice in the rock wall. It was right at the base of the sand, so we couldn’t tell the size of this crack.
“Can you dig through the sand to see if this crack is bigger than what it appears?” I asked. “If it is a cave, maybe it’s big enough for us all to get inside and out of this storm.”
“No problem. Digging is my specialty,” Resolute responded as it started excavating the sand near the crevice. After a couple of minutes, the ground underneath Resolute collapsed, sending Resolute, with cart in tow, spilling down and out of sight.
“Resolute!” I shouted. “Resolute, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I’m OK,” Resolute said. Resolute’s voice seemed closer than I would have guessed. Surreptitious turned on a flashlight attachment on its port arm and directed a beam of light down into the collapsed ground. There, about four meters below us, stood Resolute, apparently undamaged from the fall.
“Come on down! This cave is big enough for all of us.”
∆∆∆
7.2 Illumination within the Cave
We all crawled down into the hole excavated by Resolute, reaching the entrance of the cave. At first, we couldn’t see much inside the cave with little ambient light. Occasionally, a lightning strike outside would illuminate the bowels of the cave for an instant but not enough for us to see any detail
s within the cave. Surreptitious helped Resolute search for the electric lamp from within the cart. Upon finding the lamp, Surreptitious took it out, set it on the floor of the cave, and turned it on. None of us were quite prepared for what we would see next.
The cave was fairly flat, never taller than four meters, and ran about 70 meters in length. It had a width of around 12 meters at the entrance that tapered slightly going back into the rock. None of these dimensions made this a noteworthy cave. However, this one had thousands of white, semi-transparent crystals growing from the ceiling! The crystals came in an assortment of sizes, ranging from a couple of centimeters in width and length to a few that surpassed a full meter long and 40 cm wide. These crystals absorbed the light from the electric lamp, and upon receiving this light, they themselves started to glow with a yellowish-white light. The glowing crystals produced a cascading effect, lighting the cavern brighter and brighter. After a couple of minutes, the crystals reached its peak, illuminating the entire cavern in a yellow-white light brighter than a hilltop at Lazuli-summit!
We were all quite speechless as this spectacle unfolded. Eventually, Loquacious suggested to Surreptitious, “I think you can turn off the electric lamp now.” Surreptitious complied. Even without the electric lamp’s energy, the crystals continued to glow brightly.
“AMAZING! Have y’all ever heard of ANYTHING like this?” Resolute asked.
“This is quite extraordinary! I sure haven’t heard of anything remotely resembling this,” I added. “How about you, Loquacious? You have a rather large databank of stories from all over Zarikum. Does this cave match anything in your stories?”
Loquacious checked its databank and replied a few seconds later: “I’ve accessed everything on my hard drive, and I’ve found nothing like this.”
We all spent some time looking around the cave, marveling at the many crystals. I made my way toward one of the larger crystals near the back of the cave. As I approached it, I started detecting some faint radio waves that seemed to be emanating from the large crystal. Once I stood next to it, the hum almost sounded like... voices? How could that be?
“Are any of you hearing voices coming from these crystals?” I asked.
“What? Talking crystals? I can hear a humming, but these crystals aren’t saying anything.” Loquacious said.
“Actually, I think I can corroborate Fastidious on this one,” Surreptitious added. “This crystal here sounds like two separate voices talking, but I can’t quite detect what they’re saying.”
“I think you’re both malfunctioning,” Loquacious retorted.
“I wonder, if a little bit of energy from the electric lamp can make these crystals glow and give off faint radio waves, what would happen if we supplied electricity directly to these crystals?” I asked.
“That’s a crazy idea, but hey, this last hour has been all KINDS of crazy!” Resolute said.
“Let’s give it a try, but I suggest using caution here. If you give it too much energy at once, the crystal will likely explode,” Surreptitious added.
I was eager to find out if my hypothesis was correct. However, Surreptitious’s warning reminded me of my first few attempts at using my Cobalt laser on the seed crystals at the Wild Crystal Grange. I shattered a fair number of seed crystals that day after providing too much energy to them. This time, I would proceed with care.
I connected a couple of wires from my internal power source to opposite sides of the crystal. I then slowly turned up the voltage, allowing electricity to flow into the crystal. The crystal turned noticeably brighter as I increased the energy flow. Before long, the crystal was shining brighter than any light source that I had ever seen on Zarikum. It also produced a clear radio signal that we could all hear:
“‘Have you found anything yet?’” the first voice asked.
“‘No. I have been drilling for two hours now. Still no copper in the rock samples,’” a second voice replied.
“‘Well, keep looking. Supposititious took a big chance on this one, so we better be really sure there’s nothing in here before we give up,’” the first voice said.
“‘OK, I’ll keep drilling,’” added the second voice. “‘When is Adroitus coming to relieve me?’”
The conversation continued for another minute, and then it started over again from the beginning. We listened to the same message a full three times, hoping to hear something else, but we only heard the one conversation. I removed my wires from the crystal, and it dimmed to match the luminescence of the other crystals. Likewise, the once-clear radio waves quieted down to a hum.
“Wow, THAT was something!” Resolute said. “They really are talking crystals!”
“I guess you could say that. It seems to me that this particular crystal somehow picked up these radio waves from a conversation a long time ago. Perhaps the crystal trapped these radio waves inside it when it first formed. The radio waves seemed to have an imprinting effect on the crystal, causing the crystal to store the radio waves and replay them when energy is passed through the crystal. That conversation is probably as old as the crystal itself,” I reasoned.
“Normally, I’d say that was a pretty outlandish theory, but after seeing the evidence here, I can’t contradict it,” Surreptitious said.
“Did any of you recognize any of the voices or names in the message?” I queried. No one replied.
“We should check out more of these crystals to see what they say. Maybe we’ll get to hear someone famous like a Chief Ruler,” Resolute said.
“That sounds like a great idea. At the very least, we can pass the time until the lightning storm subsides, and we could even stay the night here,” I added.
Loquacious and I moved to the back of the cavern. “This place really is something, isn’t it?” Loquacious said.
“No kidding. Crystals that remember conversations and glow when subjected to energy? This is incredible!”
“‘Crystals that remember’...” Loquacious repeated, deep in calculations. “That’s it: ‘Memory Cave’! I can recall a little snippet of a story from a long time ago about some explorer finding something that it referred to as a ‘Memory Cave’. The file I have for that story isn’t complete, so I have very little additional information about who found this ‘Memory Cave’ or where it might be located or what it might look like. But based on what I’ve seen today, I’m guessing this is probably the same cave, or at least the same kind of cave.”
We spent the rest of the evening doing as Resolute had suggested. Quite a few of the crystals, especially many of the largest crystals, did not produce any radio waves when energized. We surmised that these crystals pre-dated the Autoclon population here on Zarikum. For a while, we listened to many crystals without encountering one with a significant message. About 20 minutes into our search, Surreptitious stumbled across a quite remarkable recording on one of the crystals near the entrance.
“‘Good morning, Autoclons! I am pleased to welcome you all to District Prime, your new capital city. It is small right now, but I’m sure that throughout the years, you’ll continue to build and add to this city as your civilization grows and expands beyond this city.
“‘Today, I present to you all your first Chief Ruler, Magnanimous. Magnanimous and its Ruling Party will be in charge of maintaining your collective well-being and will plan for the further expansion of your society. Magnanimous, would you like to address your people?’
“‘Yes, thank you. Our most gracious Programmer has seen fit to bestow unto me the title of your Chief Ruler. I most humbly accept this position and accompanying role to lead our people forward as we explore our world, Zarikum. This task will require us to work hard and with a singular purpose to help raise our civilization out of its infancy, but with your help, we will do just that.
“‘The next few solar-cycles are critical for us to build the necessary components of our civilization to gain self-reliance and full autonomy. Therefore, you will all be given specific tasks to help us achieve this monumental goal
. We expect these tasks to take three to four solar-cycles. Once they are complete, you will receive compensation for your work and will be free to take up whatever profession you desire.’
“‘Now that you are in the more than capable hands (or graspers as it were) of Magnanimous, I will depart Zarikum. However, I will not be gone forever. I will return in a few of your solar-cycles to check on your progress. Magnanimous will also have the capability to contact me directly should something unexpected or catastrophic occur before I make my scheduled return. Until we meet again, I bid you goodbye!’’’
“Winston, is that the voice of our Programmer?” Resolute asked.
“Yes. That is def-in-ite-ly Mar-cus’s voice.”
“If that was truly Marcus and Magnanimous the First speaking, then this crystal must be over 200 solar-cycles old!” I said. “I wonder if we could take this crystal with us. It’s such an important historical artifact that I’m sure others would like to hear it as well. If we detach it from the ceiling, would it still transmit the recording of Marcus and Magnanimous the First?”
We tested this theory first with a smaller, less important crystal containing a conversation between three Drudgers about the latest techniques in removing material from a silicon sludge pool. After removing the crystal from the ceiling, Resolute passed some energy back into the test crystal, and it again produced both light and the radio waves containing the Drudgers’ conversation.
After a successful experiment with our test crystal, I began meticulously cutting our desired crystal from the cave’s ceiling with my Cobalt laser. Once it was detached, I did a quick energy test to ensure that it would still work (which it did) and then placed the crystal in Resolute’s cart.
By now, it was more than an hour after Lazuli-fall, but we were so excited by our discovery of this ‘Memory Cave’ that we still eagerly continued examining the various crystals. After another 15 minutes or so, my persistence was rewarded.
“‘Can you show me the workshop area again? How about the power stations? Can they handle two Autoclons charging at the same time?’
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