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Nano Writing Month, 2017.7-8
2017.7
In short, we fucked it up. But I'm off the hook at least. Probably.
More to the point, we can fix this, though no one's going to like it.
I looked at Captain Alvarez. The captain looked at the noodle captain on screen 2. The noodle captain looked at the captain and then back on hir screen which presumably showed the same star map we were looking at on screen 1.
Captain Alvarez and I looked at Science Officer Finkelstein. "Any idea?"
S.O. Finkelstein shook their head and shrugged. Their eyes did not leave the glittering globe before them, a hallucinogenic roiling froth of holographic pixie dust. It should have been the ship's automated local area star map, but the signal was being hopelessly scrambled - by what, we hadn't a clue. The noodles were apparently having the same problem.
Chompas the giant aracanid was dragging a Christmas tree across the background of screen 2. The scattered tinsel bore a disturbing resemblance to our automap.
We only had a few hours to share notes with the noodles. Our trajectories were moving us rapidly out of real-time video range but without knowing where we were it was pointless to waste power changing course. We're a lot better off now than back in the bad old days of remass storage and Delta-V, but back in the bad old days we would not have gone off course after a fugitive like this in the first place.
A tinny triangle played the first four notes of the melody of Beethoven's Fifth. Captain Alvarez tapped her headset. "Mr. Orgoth?"
I could hear the shrill mechanical screech from where I was standing. The captain screamed and flung her earpiece right past my rapidly-ducking head into my coffee.
"Captain!"
"Fuck! What the fuck was that--Commander, get Orgoth up here and figure out what the fuck he wants to tell us. Ow... fuck..."
I scrambled up to the weapons bay to find our resident cybermycanthrope at the Gunnerbot terminal, softly cooing and soothing a crying Gunnerbot to let him know everything was all right and daddy's phone (now thoroughly taken apart and laid out in plain view at a safe distance before the terminal) was just acting up and wasn't going to hurt him. See, there's Commander Vook now, looking perfectly intact and no grumpier than usual.
The terminal screen stopped quivering and nodded. "K."
"That's a good boy. Now I think Commander Vook has some grownup stuff to talk to daddy about to try to fix daddy's phone, so stay here and play a few rounds of Zomboblaster XII, okay? That's a good boy." Orgoth picked up the pieces of his headset and followed me back to the bridge.
Captain Alvarez was still rubbing her temples. She appeared to have no problem hearing our approach, which was a good sign. "So?"
"Gunnerbot's targeting system is fine. I take it from the screen that inter-ship communications are also unaffected. Was there anything else?"
"Finkelstein?"
The S.O. was now poring over a half-dozen manuals open on their desk. "Negative, captain. It seems only our astrogation and internal communications have been scrambled. Well, not all internal communications, just our new wireless headsets."
"Ship's own terminals are fine?"
"Completely unaffected. There's simply no electromagnetic interference to speak of."
Orgoth blinked. "But what's breaking our headsets?"
"Remember when we upgraded to these last week because we had to ship those super-sensitive Geiger's flytraps? These aren't radio - they're dark etherspectrum."
Orgoth's dozen-odd little red eyes darkened in turn as he considered this. "The same tech as our astrogation system..."
Meanwhile the noodles appeared to have completely forgotten about us. We were having this discussion to the tune of a bluegrass cover of "Eye of the Tiger" and all sorts of crashing and shouting as five nudibranchs chased a large shaggy aracanid for possession of a large shiny Santa-shaped bauble.
Finkelstein paused for a moment to let the ramifications sink in. Dark etherspectrum signals should be nearly impossible to scramble like this - they were as close to being able to see a "thing-in-itself" as you could get with ordinary magitek and inanimate subject matter. As far as we could tell from the star charts we should be in empty space, with nothing nearby for dozens of light-years. It could only be something nearby that we could not detect - because it was blocking our detection. But for now, we needed to--
"...figure a way around this, but I'll need some time. Orgoth, do you know how I can override the input stream for this thing so I'm not getting the scrambled ether signal anymore?" Orgoth went over to help take a look under their desk.
I noticed that the dog-eared yellow thing on S.O. Finkelstein's desk nearest to me had a diagram of a mirror telescope.
"Please don't tell me we have to do these calculations manually once this is set up."
"Since you ask, Commander, I won't, but I won't stop you from making that inference either."
I glanced over at the half bottle of rum. In the corner of my eye I could already see Captain Alvarez reaching into her trenchcoat for her flask.
2017.8
"Earth!" the torus exclaimed. "How are the people there? How are you able to avoid the Nudibranchs?"
"I'm in the middle of nowhere in the Australian outback. Etherspectrum won't work planetside and there's too much noise from the orbital battles. The only fighting I've seen is a baby kangaroo kickboxing a zombie spider the size of my head."
"Well, that still sounds more exciting than where I am. Pluto just isn't what it used to be."
"The nightlife must have been wild."
"Lady you don't know the half of it. Used to be, people - humans, natives - it's like we're working overtime to make up for the lack of daylight. So much shit that would be totally illegal back home - all consensual, of course."
The Great Crash happened about fifteen years ago. Yuggolith was once a critical material in interstellar engines, back in the days before ether-based astrogation was standard. Demand plummeted like a failing satellite and took down a lot of money and livelihoods with it. The hollowed-out remains of the skyscrapers, the casinos, the fifteen-storey nightclubs were a tribute to the name the Terrans had given to it - lord and ruler of the dead.
Based on this and other information she guessed his age to be mid-thirties, tops. What in the world does a guy smoke to get a voice like that at that age!?
Shounen-Ai chirped the names of a few possible drugs into her ear that she did not recognize.
She decided to change the topic. "You gotta realize how crazy this all is, right? Here we are talking to each other basically revealing our exact locations, telling each other shit through these weird things floating in the sky that might be Nudibranch surveillance systems for all we know!"
"Do you really think they are?"
Pause. "Possibly?"
"Do you feel they are?"
Longer pause. "... no."
"Good. Neither do I. These things don't look like anything the Noodles might build. Or humans. Or spacers or prosophosids or Yuggoans... I mean, just look at them. Are they even things as we might understand them?"
Pause. "Dude. I have no idea how to answer that and neither should you. You could be seeing something totally different from what I'm seeing. All we've told each other is that we're each seeing this glittering glowing geometric shape in the sky and there is a world of nuance as to what that might mean coming from each of us."
"I'd say more shimmering than glittering."
"See?"
"...do I?"
This could have gone on for a very long time. However, as soon as she was about to respond, the sky blinked dark and the torus disappeared. A Nudibranch surveillance drone was flying by, glittering orange in the rosy dawn. It turned directly towards her.
Shounen-Ai killed it.
In short, we fucked it up. But I'm off the hook at least. Probably.
More to the point, we can fix this, though no one's going to like it.
I looked at Captain Alvarez. The captain looked at the noodle captain on screen 2. The noodle captain looked at the captain and then back on hir screen which presumably showed the same star map we were looking at on screen 1.
Captain Alvarez and I looked at Science Officer Finkelstein. "Any idea?"
S.O. Finkelstein shook their head and shrugged. Their eyes did not leave the glittering globe before them, a hallucinogenic roiling froth of holographic pixie dust. It should have been the ship's automated local area star map, but the signal was being hopelessly scrambled - by what, we hadn't a clue. The noodles were apparently having the same problem.
Chompas the giant aracanid was dragging a Christmas tree across the background of screen 2. The scattered tinsel bore a disturbing resemblance to our automap.
We only had a few hours to share notes with the noodles. Our trajectories were moving us rapidly out of real-time video range but without knowing where we were it was pointless to waste power changing course. We're a lot better off now than back in the bad old days of remass storage and Delta-V, but back in the bad old days we would not have gone off course after a fugitive like this in the first place.
A tinny triangle played the first four notes of the melody of Beethoven's Fifth. Captain Alvarez tapped her headset. "Mr. Orgoth?"
I could hear the shrill mechanical screech from where I was standing. The captain screamed and flung her earpiece right past my rapidly-ducking head into my coffee.
"Captain!"
"Fuck! What the fuck was that--Commander, get Orgoth up here and figure out what the fuck he wants to tell us. Ow... fuck..."
I scrambled up to the weapons bay to find our resident cybermycanthrope at the Gunnerbot terminal, softly cooing and soothing a crying Gunnerbot to let him know everything was all right and daddy's phone (now thoroughly taken apart and laid out in plain view at a safe distance before the terminal) was just acting up and wasn't going to hurt him. See, there's Commander Vook now, looking perfectly intact and no grumpier than usual.
The terminal screen stopped quivering and nodded. "K."
"That's a good boy. Now I think Commander Vook has some grownup stuff to talk to daddy about to try to fix daddy's phone, so stay here and play a few rounds of Zomboblaster XII, okay? That's a good boy." Orgoth picked up the pieces of his headset and followed me back to the bridge.
Captain Alvarez was still rubbing her temples. She appeared to have no problem hearing our approach, which was a good sign. "So?"
"Gunnerbot's targeting system is fine. I take it from the screen that inter-ship communications are also unaffected. Was there anything else?"
"Finkelstein?"
The S.O. was now poring over a half-dozen manuals open on their desk. "Negative, captain. It seems only our astrogation and internal communications have been scrambled. Well, not all internal communications, just our new wireless headsets."
"Ship's own terminals are fine?"
"Completely unaffected. There's simply no electromagnetic interference to speak of."
Orgoth blinked. "But what's breaking our headsets?"
"Remember when we upgraded to these last week because we had to ship those super-sensitive Geiger's flytraps? These aren't radio - they're dark etherspectrum."
Orgoth's dozen-odd little red eyes darkened in turn as he considered this. "The same tech as our astrogation system..."
Meanwhile the noodles appeared to have completely forgotten about us. We were having this discussion to the tune of a bluegrass cover of "Eye of the Tiger" and all sorts of crashing and shouting as five nudibranchs chased a large shaggy aracanid for possession of a large shiny Santa-shaped bauble.
Finkelstein paused for a moment to let the ramifications sink in. Dark etherspectrum signals should be nearly impossible to scramble like this - they were as close to being able to see a "thing-in-itself" as you could get with ordinary magitek and inanimate subject matter. As far as we could tell from the star charts we should be in empty space, with nothing nearby for dozens of light-years. It could only be something nearby that we could not detect - because it was blocking our detection. But for now, we needed to--
"...figure a way around this, but I'll need some time. Orgoth, do you know how I can override the input stream for this thing so I'm not getting the scrambled ether signal anymore?" Orgoth went over to help take a look under their desk.
I noticed that the dog-eared yellow thing on S.O. Finkelstein's desk nearest to me had a diagram of a mirror telescope.
"Please don't tell me we have to do these calculations manually once this is set up."
"Since you ask, Commander, I won't, but I won't stop you from making that inference either."
I glanced over at the half bottle of rum. In the corner of my eye I could already see Captain Alvarez reaching into her trenchcoat for her flask.
2017.8
"Earth!" the torus exclaimed. "How are the people there? How are you able to avoid the Nudibranchs?"
"I'm in the middle of nowhere in the Australian outback. Etherspectrum won't work planetside and there's too much noise from the orbital battles. The only fighting I've seen is a baby kangaroo kickboxing a zombie spider the size of my head."
"Well, that still sounds more exciting than where I am. Pluto just isn't what it used to be."
"The nightlife must have been wild."
"Lady you don't know the half of it. Used to be, people - humans, natives - it's like we're working overtime to make up for the lack of daylight. So much shit that would be totally illegal back home - all consensual, of course."
The Great Crash happened about fifteen years ago. Yuggolith was once a critical material in interstellar engines, back in the days before ether-based astrogation was standard. Demand plummeted like a failing satellite and took down a lot of money and livelihoods with it. The hollowed-out remains of the skyscrapers, the casinos, the fifteen-storey nightclubs were a tribute to the name the Terrans had given to it - lord and ruler of the dead.
Based on this and other information she guessed his age to be mid-thirties, tops. What in the world does a guy smoke to get a voice like that at that age!?
Shounen-Ai chirped the names of a few possible drugs into her ear that she did not recognize.
She decided to change the topic. "You gotta realize how crazy this all is, right? Here we are talking to each other basically revealing our exact locations, telling each other shit through these weird things floating in the sky that might be Nudibranch surveillance systems for all we know!"
"Do you really think they are?"
Pause. "Possibly?"
"Do you feel they are?"
Longer pause. "... no."
"Good. Neither do I. These things don't look like anything the Noodles might build. Or humans. Or spacers or prosophosids or Yuggoans... I mean, just look at them. Are they even things as we might understand them?"
Pause. "Dude. I have no idea how to answer that and neither should you. You could be seeing something totally different from what I'm seeing. All we've told each other is that we're each seeing this glittering glowing geometric shape in the sky and there is a world of nuance as to what that might mean coming from each of us."
"I'd say more shimmering than glittering."
"See?"
"...do I?"
This could have gone on for a very long time. However, as soon as she was about to respond, the sky blinked dark and the torus disappeared. A Nudibranch surveillance drone was flying by, glittering orange in the rosy dawn. It turned directly towards her.
Shounen-Ai killed it.