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Something in the air felt different as Brooks went back outside.

It could not be colder; his old home was already just as cold as the surrounding air, and the wind made no difference within his weather suit.

But it was changed all the same, and he uneasily put his hand where his sidearm would have been on a normal excursion.

It was not there, of course.  He was on Earth, the homeworld, and there was no native life that could be a threat to him.

Yet he felt a danger.  All his senses were on alert as he moved back towards the crawler.

He had walked almost out of town, he could see his vehicle, when the strange man came out from behind a building.

He walked out, between Brooks and his crawler, and stopped, staring at him.

He was nondescript; tanned skin, dark hair, brown eyes.  Rather short, and his clothes extremely plain.

And he wasn’t even wearing a weather suit.

Brooks continued to approach.  The man was making no overt signs of threat yet, but his senses screamed that something was terribly wrong.

“Hello,” he said cautiously.

The man said nothing, only watching him with unblinking eyes.  Even when the wind whipped towards him, he made no move, neither swaying nor blinking.

Brooks’s unease suddenly made sense, and he understood.

“You are a Shoggoth, aren’t you?” he asked.

The being only continued to watch him, and he was about to speak again when it finally talked.

“You are Brooks,” he said.  He sounded human, save for a subtle timbre that made a shiver go down Brooks’s spine.

“I am,” he replied, though it had not been a question.

The man turned.  “Come,” he said.

He could ignore the being and continue to his crawler.  Something inside told him that he probably should – but he did not.

Instead, he followed the Shoggoth.

The being said nothing, never even looking back at him, and having no difficulty with snow or climbing.  When Brooks fell behind, the Shoggoth stopped and waited with seemingly infinite patience.

They walked towards the foothills.  There was no way they could go that far, Brooks knew they were many miles away.  But as they walked further, he began to wonder.

They’d been walking over an hour, and he’d had very little information to go on.  He silently sent a signal for his crawler to navigate itself to his location.  He couldn’t do that in the town – a half-buried building could have collapsed under it, trapping his only transport.

The flatness of the immediate environs was broken as the Shoggoth ahead of him turned suddenly, and began to disappear under the snow.

As Brooks caught up, he saw that the being was walking down into a crevasse.

It was raw stone, all its harsh edges worn down by ice over the millenia.  It went down at a slow angle for ten meters, dropping only just under the surface, then veered off to the right.  A chasm above opened it to the air which he had been unable to see before.

He began to follow the being down.  The ramp was shallow, but slick, and he realized that it was not rock, but dense, ancient ice.

Some had survived through the centuries, he’d always known, but he’d never known about this one.

His boots clamped onto the ice with spikes to help him walk, but he was quickly being left behind by the Shoggoth, who seemed entirely untroubled by the slippery surface.

“Wait,” he called.

But the Shoggoth kept going, and Brooks sped up as much as he could.

Finally reaching the bend, he went past it – and saw a crowd waiting for him.

Thirty people stood in the cool dimness of the ice ravine, their eyes all fixed upon him.  Their faces were tranquil, and no two looked alike.  All ages, all sizes, with skin tones and features just as varied.

They had no systems that his could recognize.  Their faces were unknown to the records he had on-hand.

“Hello,” he said, feeling a tingle down his spine.  A strange pressure felt like it was crushing down on him.  The effect of so many of the strange beings all gathered together.

They were all Shoggoths.  They had to be.

None of them spoke, and he was not sure why they were here or what they wanted.

He waited, as they waited.

A male pushed through the group, and Brooks recognized the face as Kell’s.  But that didn’t mean it was him . . .

“Ambassador?” he asked.

“Captain Brooks,” the being replied with a slight nod.

“What are you doing here?” Brooks asked.

“I would ask you the same question,” Kell replied.

“I was born in Perry.  I am visiting my home,” he answered.

“You might say that I am doing the same,” Kell replied.  He looked up, towards the direction of the ruins of the town.  “What was once your home exists near mine, it seems.”

< Ep 4 Part 34 | Ep 4 Part 36 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“To a safe trip!” Davo said, raising his glass.

Pirra, Alexander, and Eileen all raised their glasses to the toast.

“Here here,” Eileen said.

They drank.  The humans drank wine, while Pirra drank something they called soy sauce; when watered down it was non-toxic to her kind in limited qualities, and tasted a lot like some Dessei drinks.

Her eyes flickered between the members of the family.

This had been a good trip, she thought.  Alexander and his father had not argued once.  Perhaps it was because the topic of his father’s work had not come up – the elder Shaw seemed pleased as long as he got to tell someone, and Pirra was quite happy to be that someone.

Alexander had inherited some of the more gentle qualities of his mother; he was a neobotanist in her footsteps.  For hours, while Davo and Pirra had run off to explode things and play with ultra-hot plasmas, Alexander and his mother had gone over research and the latest breakthroughs in building new plant life from genetic scratch.

It was important work, she knew.  But as much as she loved Alexander, it was not her forte, and she rarely had anything much to add when he talked about work.

“Will your trip back out be as long as the one here?” Eileen asked.

“Not quite as long,” Pirra said.  “We’ll sync up with one of the heavy carriers that’s heading out of the system.  They’ve got permission to use their zerodrive, so we’ll be back at our ship in only a few hours.”

“I’ve still never taken a trip through zerospace,” Davo said.  “I’ve always been curious.”

“It’s a lot less exciting than a dashdrive,” Alexander said.  “Assuming nothing goes wrong, at least.”

“Have you ever been on a ship when something went wrong?” Eileen asked, glancing between her son and daughter-in-law.

“No, no,” Alexander said placatingly.

“I have,” Pirra said.  “Three times.”

Eileen gasped, and Alexander shot her a look, asking her with his eyes to not worry his mom.

Pirra only shrugged.  “In the Response field it’s not unusual.  But don’t worry, there’s a lot of ways out of such a situation – if you’re clever.”

“What happened?” Davo asked, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.

Pirra wondered if Alexander got his expressive eyes from his father.  “One of them was an experimental ship where we were tasked with rescuing the data before it accelerated too fast.”

“Too fast?” Eileen asked.

“Yes.  In Zerospace, momentum works differently.  Things will continually accelerate, until they’re moving too fast to be able to return back to our reality.  It takes about three days in most circumstances.  After that – we just don’t have a way to shed the momentum and slow down.  There are some very risky ways to try to come back anyway, but most likely you’d just explode into pseudo-light.”

“Pseudo-light,” Davo grumbled.  “That’s a neophysics particle, right?”

“Yes.  We’re not sure why, but they behave just like photons, so essentially the object would become a massive blast of gamma rays.  But rather than continuing on until they hit something, they rapidly decay into krahteons and seem to seep back into zerospace.”

“If not for that, they’d make for a hell of a weapon,” Davo muttered.

Alexander shot him a dirty look.

Pirra glanced to Alexander, trying to warn him off now.  Did they really have to have a fight at their last dinner . . . ?

“What do your parents have to say about these adventures of yours?” Eileen asked, adroitly shifting the topic.

Though it caught Pirra off-guard.

“Oh, ah . . . not much?  They are proud of my successes.”

“And that’s it?” Davo asked.

Alexander came to her rescue now.  “Dessei don’t tend to be as close to their parents and children as we are,” he said.  “So it’s nothing unusual.  In their own way, they really do care about her.”

“Oh, I see,” Eileen replied, looking troubled.

“Ah, well they’re an ancient people.  I’m sure it all works for them,” Davo said.

Pirra wondered if he was convinced.  He didn’t quite sound it.

It was . . . odd.  Perhaps she should be defending her people more, though Alexander at least explained the differences very politely.

The only part he said that was not true was probably the latter bit.  If her parents did care about her, they did a very good job of hiding it, even by Dessei standards.

“Do you talk to them often?” Eileen asked.  “I hope I’m not being rude – I just want to understand,” she added.

“You’re fine,” Pirra replied.  “We don’t talk often, but at certain times of year they message me.”

Her last such message had been succinct;

We are very proud of you, her mother had written.  And we request that you seek a divorce from your human immediately.

A lovely note, by their standards.

She took a sip of her drink to wash out the bitter taste.  Carefully, though; her real mouth, hidden under the fold of her chin, was little more than a tooth-lined maw, and humans tended to be bothered by it.

Alexander was probably the only one she’d known who wasn’t.  At least, he was the only one she’d let see it.  Even among Dessei there was a certain disrespect at seeing the mouth of someone you were not related to or close friends with.  Some ancient tradition about showing contempt by being willing to take your eyes off a potential enemy.

And thinking of danger brought a question that had been on her mind to the fore.

“I’ve been wondering,” Pirra began.  “What kind of plan do you have here if there’s an emergency?”

“First,” Davo said, leaning forward.  “We make sure no one’s been dabbling in teleportation!”  He laughed uproariously.

It must have been some kind of Phobosan in-joke, she thought.

She smiled, but then continued.  “I’m serious, though.  The moon is hard to catch, you have supply problems, and it’s just . . . such a unique place that it could have novel problems.  Do you guys have any plans in case something happened?”

“What could go wrong?” Davo said.

She hesitated.  She could understand Alex in his native tongue, but she was not great at telling the tones of other humans.  Her system translated his words, and she thought there was an edge to his voice.

She didn’t want to insult him . . .  but at heart, she was a Responder and she wasn’t going to mince words.

“If the moon began to break up, or something collided with it – or something big broke.  There are many possible scenarios.”

“Oh, you over-worry,” Davo said.  “Alex, does she always over-worry like this?”

“She’s good at her job, dad,” he replied.  “I’ve always thought you guys should have more emergency drills.”

“It’s fine,” Davo said.  “We can handle anything the Mars area can throw at us!  I mean, we’ve certainly got the ability to defend ourselves!”

Alex shifted, but before Pirra could interject, Eileen spoke.

“I know that you two . . . can’t have children, of course,” she said suddenly.  “But have you ever considered adoption?”

Alexander almost choked on his food.

“Mom,” he managed to say.  “That’s a little out of the blue, isn’t it?”

“I’m only curious,” she said quickly, seeming to regret changing the topic to this already.

“I’m sure with enough science they could have a child,” Davo said.

“Dad, no, literally it’s impossible for species from different worlds to have any interaction like that.  It’s a miracle that we’re not allergic to each other’s-“

“I mean with genetic re-writing, of course!  Dessei have that tech.  It’d be more like creating something from scratch that shares traits from each of you.”

“So not really our child at all,” Alexander replied dryly.  “And remarkably illegal, I might add.  Dad, do you even pay attention to mom’s work?”

“I failed genetics,” he said laughing.  “But where there’s a will, there’s a way!  You can’t just let a thing like genetics prevent-“

“Dad!”

“Alexander, I’m just saying that it can’t be ruled out!  Not saying you have to.  But for the science, wouldn’t you want to try?”

Eileen spoke.  “Davo, please drop this line of thought.  I just want to know if we’ll ever have grandchildren.  They don’t have to decide now, I just-“

Pirra slammed a hand down on the table, making the three humans jump.

“Adoption is not off the table,” she said firmly.  “The rest is a firm ‘no’.”

An awkward silence fell, but it did not bother her.  She was good at those, when it came to family.

At least this one wouldn’t last for years.

The meal was nearly finished, anyway, and Eileen soon stood.  “Pirra, dear, would you help me with these dishes?”

There were drones for that, but the woman seemed to like to do some busywork herself.  And Pirra was glad to help.

As they left the room, Eileen took the plates from her and put them in the cleaner, then turned to her.

“I’m so very sorry for bringing that up,” she said.  “And sorry for, well . . . everything Davo said.  He . . . thinks genetics is just like tinkering.”  She shook her head.  “I swear, that man – a genius in some ways and then a total . . .”  She trailed off.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Pirra told her, liking the woman greatly.  “I know that it’s important to parents to see their line continue on.  And that . . . well, that we can’t do that.”

“No matter what,” Eileen said, “the important part is that you and Alex are happy.  That’s the best thing I could wish for.”

Pirra felt a warmth in her chest.  “Thank you, Eileen.”

“Oh,” the woman said, laughing.  “You can call me ‘mom’ if you want.”

The casual human word had no equivalent in her language.  She couldn’t even quite make the sound; but the offer meant something to her all the same.

“Thank you, mom,” she said, the human-like smile coming as a second-nature and truly meant.

Eileen hugged her suddenly, and Pirra was thrown off again.  Her own mother had not hugged her since she was immature, and even then it had only been for warmth on a cold day.

As little emotion as it naturally would trigger, she still knew that it meant something coming from Eileen.

Awkwardly, she returned it.

“You are so good,” Eileen said.  “I’m so glad that Alexander met you.”

She thought back on her own days in her youth of fascination with humanity.  She’d been considered odd for her interest in another species.  At times, even something of an outcast.

But it had put her on the path to meeting Alexander – and Eileen and Davo.

“I’m glad, too,” she cooed, leaning into the hug.

< Ep 4 Part 33 | Ep 4 Part 35 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

There were no headstones for the thousands who had died.  Too many had died, too quickly, for anything other than a mass grave to be possible.  He had always thought that one day this place would be reclaimed, but now seeing as it bordered on the land ceded to the Shoggoths, it was unlikely that the town of Perry would ever live again.

Part of him was all right with that.

But there was a memorial, at least.  A marble, still maintained by a caretaker who came in on alternating weeks to clean and preserve their memory.  Brooks knew the man well, Sylus Tanaka.  He’d have to write to him soon, to thank him again for his work.  The man did not do it for accolades, though.  He had lost everyone in the fimbulwinter.

He had been older than Brooks, nearly 75 when the disaster had occurred, still in his prime.  Now, decades later, he was finally starting to approach the age where it showed.

The monument listed the names of over 9,000 people on each of its six faces.  It still didn’t cover all of them.  It had been a city of 70,000, and less than 6,000 had survived through the long winter.

The disaster itself had not dropped much wreckage on them.  But the ensuing disappearance of the sun from the dust and smoke of the fires had plunged them into true antarctic temperatures, as bad as some of the glacial periods.  Nothing had been built to withstand cold that extreme.  And there had been impacts, as debris in orbit came down.

Too much critical damage, as the time went on.  Too few supplies.  People had rationed and kept faith with each other, for years.  But eventually, the cold encroaching, with families falling asleep in their beds and never waking up, it had broken down.

The survivors had only lasted by digging down as deep into the ground as they could, using anything to keep warm, scrounging for food in the town.  Primitive hydroponics.  Never enough food.  Always hungry.  Shivering and burning off too many calories.

For a lot of them, it had been too much.

He gazed at the list of names.  Organized by their proximity to each other, to keep together, even in death, a community.

Ai Goto, Donovan Yamazaki, Ryo Takada, Lise Zhang, Li Chen, Bai Liang, Zaim Aliyya, Dasha Aldwin, Sivert Karol . . .   All the names of neighbors, childhood friends.

His eyes travelled to a familiar spot on the marble, and his thumb stroked over the name of Clemence Brooks.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, for the ten thousandth time to his younger sister, who had fallen asleep and passed to a mortal dream in the span of a night that had lasted for years.

Reaching into his pocket with his free hand, Brooks took out the taiyaki he’d picked up on his way here.  They had been her favorite treat.

He smiled slightly, remembering how they’d joked that these were the only fish she’d ever eat.

“Split it with you,” he said, his voice sounding even to his own ears like that of a boy.

Breaking it in half, he set the larger piece in the snow for her, and opened his face mask for a moment to put his portion in his mouth.  The wind slashed at him, a pain like a lash, but then he closed his mask and ate the taiyaki slowly.  Trying to savor it.

There, in the snow, he saw something else, that had apparently nearly been swallowed by the ice.

Carefully, be pulled it free.  It was a small plush seal.  On it, faded by the sun, were the words;

With love, from sis.  Always thinking of you.

-Maria

He re-settled it with the taiyaki against it, and rose.  With a last look, he turned, and continued on his path.

He was already exhausted, already feeling chilled to the bone even though his suit kept him warm, but his journey was not done yet.

The streets in the residential district were less intact than the earlier areas.  They were lighter, easier to knock down, and easier to disassemble for parts to repair other houses.

But his was still there.  It was still in good shape.  He knew that, because he’d been the one to scrounge and repair it.

His mind flashed back to a cold December morning.  His parents had said their goodbyes the night before, leaving before he’d even gotten up.  A close friend of the family’s had woken him, telling him there had been an accident.

It had been more from the light outside the window, that strange shade of reddish gray, that he’d realized just how serious things were.

With the neighbor – a kindly woman who he’d always called Aunt, even though they weren’t related – he’d gone outside.

A red glow seemed to swallow the Northern skyline, and the sound of booms still managed to reach them, though the impacts were thousands of miles away.

Or perhaps those had been the sound of smaller impacts nearby.  Those had started less than an hour after the initial catastrophe.

Later on, he’d seen footage of the collapse start; the initial shudder that no one could ever explain, that a million theories had been invented to explain.  All inadequate, yet they all accepted them, because how else could you understand what had happened?

The orbital ring had been built up over hundreds of years.  It should have been nearly impossible to have it fall, and yet the shaking had quickly become resonant, and not long after it had fallen apart.

Then the space elevators around the equator had collapsed.  That was where his parents had been, going to their jobs that had kept them away from home three days a week and with he and his siblings for four.  Just bad luck it had come on the day they were off to work.

If not for the supply drops shot down from above, they all would have died.  But they’d been rare, never enough.  Or . . . rather just enough.

With the dense kessler syndrome, even those drops had been risky.  Though unmanned, so much small debris was circling for so long that they risked a collision that would make it even worse.

Many had gone off-course, and as soon as he could he’d started volunteering to be among those to go retrieve what they needed . . .

He’d been standing outside the house for ten minutes now, he realized.

He felt cold even though his suit told him his skin temperature was the same as it would be in a temperate environment.  Even his face was back up to a pleasant temperature, though he still felt a tingle where the wind had touched him.

Going to the door, he saw that the mat was buried under ice.  Only the steps up kept the door from being blocked.

But it was okay.  He’d not locked the door the last time he’d left.

It was hard to force open, but he managed, and went inside.

The house still seemed to exude warmth somehow.  But it felt like cold mockery, a hint of false comfort that was taunting.

The main hall led to a living room empty of furniture.  He’d wound up burning it all.  Even the carpet had been torn up and fed to the flame.

The kitchen, his bedroom – that he’d deliberately emptied so long ago.

His parents’ room.

It was the only room somewhat intact.  Though anything wooden or cloth had been salvaged, he’d set up just a simple metal sheet on which he’d carved their names.  There could be no burial of what had burned in the atmosphere.  This was the only physical remembrance of Nabil and Dorothy Brooks.

The darkened image frames once had shown pictures of them, until their batteries had drained.  Nothing could be spared to charge them, however much he’d wanted.  Even the atomic batteries, that lasted decades, had been taken away to help power something that grew food or kept them warm or cleaned the water.

Lowering himself to his knees, he sat back on his haunches, simply looking at the memorial, lost in his own memories.

“Mom,” he said.  “Dad.  I missed you.”

< Ep 4 Part 32 | Ep 4 Part 34 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

The snow crawler came to a shuddering stop.

Brooks checked that his suit was set to meet the ambient air temperature – a balmy -30C – and put his helmet on.  It was lightweight, the front a curved glass panel that was as clear as air.

He opened the door.

The wind blasted past, but despite its strength there was nothing to blow.  Antarctica received very little snowfall, and what had come down recently had been long since swept away.

He felt cool, but not cold, his suit working well.

He walked forward.  He was only at the outskirts, and he had a ways left to go.

Structures still stood in what had once been a town.  Many were half-buried, the snow that had fallen in the previous decades having built up to the point of turning to a dense firn that resisted the scouring winds.

He walked on, observing.

Some of the houses were buried up the first floor on some sides, out of the wind.  Others were already partially submerged in ice.

The onset had been rapid, and more intense than they had anticipated.  He wondered if, millions of years ago, when this land had first frozen, if the earliest ice had formed as quickly.

There was not the slightest sign of life.  What that was Earthly could live in such a place?

Certainly not humans, not with the conditions that had come after the Ringfall.  Too much damage had been done across the equator for help to come.  Things were bad everywhere, but short of the devastation areas themselves, none had been worse off than here.

It had been the follow-up debris de-orbiting down upon them that had slowly wrecked their oasis – that and the fimbulwinter that had brought the cold.

He looked out at an empty field.  He could recognize that it had once been a park.  He could recall days in his youth of running across the grass that grew in the summer months.  That building, just beyond, had been a restaurant.

Without even thinking about it he found himself crossing the field, walking in what he imagined were his own footsteps – though the ground was now a meter below him, under firn and ice.

The park seemed smaller than he remembered, and he reached the restaurant.  The windows were still intact, but he knew a way to get in.

Going around back, he found that the rising ice had made it easier to climb the dumpster and reach the second floor window that had been broken.  Even the sharp edges of the glass had been broken and worn down, by hundreds of feet that had come in here, seeking temporary shelter, or hoping to find some kind of food or fuel.

He went in.

The floor tiles were more faded than in his memory.  All of it was smaller than he remembered.  But he’d been a young man the last time he’d come in here.

Walking deeper, he knew this had once been an apartment for the couple that had run the restaurant.

There was little sign of them.  The man, Adam, had died early on.  His wife had survived a few more years, but then she too had died of hypothermia after the primary reactors for the town had to be shut down.

Her body had long since been taken away and given a proper burial, and their personal effects had all been taken or lost.

Anything that could be burned had been pried up, and there wasn’t even a bed left on the metal frame.

On the floor, he saw just one empty image frame, the screen that had projected various photographs having long-since lost power.

Following the path he’d taken when, he too, had been scavenging, he arrived in the kitchen below.

There, on the tile.  He could still see the dark stain – or at least a trace of it.  It had not been scoured clean in all these decades.

Kneeling, he brushed a hand over it.

Blood had spilled here, from a knife into the side of a man who had been trying to kill him for a bag with three dented emergency rations and a single mostly-empty fuel cannister.

The first time he’d ever killed a man.

He hadn’t even known it at the time.  His knife had struck deep as the man was raising a brick to crush his skull.

The man had tumbled back into the burners, knocking one off its seating, it had crashed to the floor, and he could still see it there, at an angle to the wall.

After that, he’d run and Brooks had let him.  He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he’d been scrounging, and he was good at it most of the time, but this man had come from another town further towards the mountains that were even colder, whose power had been knocked out by falling debris long before.  Perhaps the last of a dying town.

He’d run off into the snow, and no one had ever seen him again.  Years later, a drone scan had found him.  He’d bled out, losing his strength in the cold until he’d gone to sleep and never awoken.

Like so many others, except he might not have faced that fate if Brooks had not stabbed him, no matter how justified it had been.

He left the store, though not running as fast as he did when he’d only been sixteen.

< Ep 4 Part 31 | Ep 4 Part 33 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“This time,” Cenz said, “We shall play according to Alchiban IV rules.”

“An interesting decision,” Y replied, accessing all of his files on the obscure ruleset.

Cenz did not pick it to attempt to throw him off; the game of Epochs was already incredibly intricate, and each possible formulation added only minor twists.  And they both knew the game by heart.

But it was a variant they had rarely played.  Something unexpected, bringing a spice to life, Y thought.

The game was already far too complex for any but highly-augmented human minds to grasp.  Executive Commander Urle was known to play with them, though he was still a novice in comparison.

And the pace of their play was swift.  A half-dozen rounds of folds, stalemates, card-drawing and sacrificing flew by in less than a minute.

It was, as was often the case, a very close game.

Y calculated that he had the edge.  Cenz surely knew this, but he also knew how to exploit Y’s seeming advantage in myriad ways.  Would he go immensely bold and stick to honesty with his hand?  Or would he attempt to bluff?

While many beings had tells that would be instantly obvious to Y, reading only a handful of polyps out of the current ninety-eight Cenz was composed of simply gave too few data points to judge from.  Thus, that avenue was neatly closed to him.

He ran the numbers of past games, but Cenz was too clever for this, as well; relying not on a single mind but a union of many, there were unpredictable variances and spikes in the data as he allowed one or another polyp to make final decisions.

How enjoyable this was!

“Have you ever been to planet Earth?” Y asked, sacrificing a card to bring the temperature of the game a little cooler.  It was not in his interests, but he always made some moves against his own interests when playing Cenz, to keep the being from understanding his goals.  It sometimes worked.

“I have not.  I understand they had some lovely waters, but some of the common and natural elements in them are noxious to my kind.  And I hear that the seagulls are vicious!  Sad, isn’t it?”  He played a card and bumped the temperature back up.

Which was what Y wanted; to win in this game, the ambient temperature of the universe (not a literal temperature in a literal universe, merely a number based on the current turn and cards previously sacrificed to raise or lower it – put into a pile referred to as the universe), when combined with the temperature of your hand would have to match one of several significant numbers, such as absolute zero or Planck’s constant.  The winning numbers only need be constant and important, not truly temperatures.

Each round, the universe cooled according to a formula that could be tweaked in different versions of the games, bringing different strategies to the fore.

Though invented by the Belerre, an SU member species who had shed their physical bodies in place of digital consciousness, some digits had been later added to the game by others.

The Polyps had put in a number related to their number of data-carrier sets in their genetic system, and Humans had put in 42, though most serious versions of the game did not include that one.

His kind had not seen fit to mar the otherwise perfectly observational beauty of the system by adding or subtracting any significant numbers.

“Quite,” Y replied to Cenz’s thoughts about the viciousness of seagulls and the melancholy of never being able to see something you wished, while sacrificing another card to drive the temperature even lower.  He decided to commit more to his deception.  “If you could go safely, would you?”

“Of course,” Cenz replied.  “Life is precious in our universe.  Intelligent life even more so.  I would love to see the world that spawned humanity.  Just as I would like to visit Enope and Ngoash and every other homeworld if possible.  Ah, Qet would be the most enjoyable – an ocean world!  Alas, it is far too cold for me.”  He hesitated a moment.  “And while I would never admit this to anyone but you, the lack of visible seafloor does bother me.”

He played a card that brought the numbers back towards the neutrality of before.  Y wondered if the topic was distracting him.  Though they usually talked while playing, it happened occasionally that the minds of enough of Cenz’s polyps began to wander that it affected his gameplay.

“But why do you ask?” Cenz now queried him.

“I have never been to a planetary surface,” Y replied.

Cenz had been analyzing his hand, but his full attention moved to Y now.  “Never?”

Y was silent for a moment, studying his own cards with intensity, or at least assuming that pose.  “It is taboo.”

Cenz put down his hand.  “I have never heard of the Enhi having such cultural affectations before.”

“Because we rarely speak of them.  There is history there.”

“Still – forgive my curiosity, you know I do not judge, Y, but – where does this come from?”

“I do not wish to speak of it, my friend,” Y replied.  “I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Cenz replied.  “It is your turn, by the way.”

“Ah, yes.”  Dr. Y played a card, picking one at random.

Cenz stared at it in silence, picking up his hand again, but then looking back to Y in silence.

“Until now I believed you had been aiming for a higher temperature.  But if so, you would have made your move now.  You are distracted.”

The word was almost an accusation to Y’s mind.  Cenz was not insulted, nor angry.  But it was a shocking thing.

Y considered trying to play on it, making a joke about it being another trick.  But he could not quite make himself say the words.  His own secondary consciousnesses were in confusion.  Arguments broke out that consisted less of fact and more of emotion.

Cenz played his next card, but it was uncertain.  He could not guess which way Y wanted the numbers to go, so he attempted to simply maintain the status quo.

Y realized that his friend was courting greater danger in his attempts to maintain homeostasis.  He was surely not blind to it, but lacking information, he could not make a valid decision.

If he’d bet either hot or cold, taken a wild guess, he could play into Y’s hands; indeed, if he had chosen cold, based on the cards Y guessed he held, there was little Y could do to bring the temperature up to where he wanted it.

Y played his last card, bringing the heat to where he wished it.  “137 – Fine Structure Constant.”

It was a very good play.  In the tiers of winning numbers, it was among the top, the most rewarding and one that was difficult to achieve late in the game, when the universe had cooled to nearly zero.

“An excellent game,” Cenz said.  “Do you perhaps feel better?”

Y considered.  “I believe I do,” he replied.

“Then you’ll be going to Earth?”

Y nodded.  “I will.  I will leave after we finish our game.”

< Ep 4 Parts 28 & 29 | Ep 4 Part 31 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Dr. Y activated his body nearest reactor seven and made his way there.  He felt a sincere sense of excitement; after the Star Angel Ambassador had had time to adjust to its new home, he’d been given the privilege of conducting its first medical examination.

Or, as close to that as was possible, given that it was a being composed of plasma and dust.

Such life had been postulated for eons prior to his existence, and some extremely primitive forms that might have been alive had been found.  But then to find a system teeming with life of such exotic properties, that was also intelligent?  He could not even calculate the odds on that.

If anything, it made him wonder if there was something greater behind it.  While his kind never had had religion – they knew who their creators were – it just seemed too serendipitous to be plausible.

But of course, if the universe was infinite then it was certain to happen somewhere.  How wonderful he happened to be near enough to encounter it, then!

Reactor Seven was not actually large enough to house the being at its full size.  But ‘size’ seemed a somewhat abstract concept to them.  While they could achieve lengths of approximately ten meters, they could equally squash down to a fraction of that.  He suspected that it would be helpful for them in colder environments, as it would allow them to contain the heat they needed to keep their bodies ionized.

Merely conjecture at this point, though after his data collection today he could perhaps make a more educated guess.

Entering the reactor section, he scanned all present systems and confirmed the identities of the personnel.  Seventeen in this room, but the only one he need work with today was Boniface Tred.

Always an interesting experience in itself.

“Good day, Engineer Tred,” he said, as he walked up.  He moved slightly slower than normal, as Tred sometimes reacted poorly to fast movements from him.  Granted, he could move much faster than a human, so perhaps that was why.

Today, though, Tred’s obvious metrics did not seem that nervous.  He seemed quite happy.

“Hello, doctor,” the man said, smiling.

That is alarming, thought one of Y’s secondary minds.  It began to search for signs that Tred had suffered a head injury.

Y pushed that mind aside.  Tred had no sign of injury, and it was entirely possible – even welcome! – that he was simply having a pleasant day.

“Is the Ambassador prepared for my assessment?” he asked.

“Yes, Doctor.  I’ve hooked up the system outputs as you requested.”

“Excellent,” Y said.  “I shall be happy to attend to it.”

“It?” Tred asked quickly.

“The Star Angel,” Y clarified.

“The Ambassador is a she,” Tred said.  “She’s going by the name Jophiel.”

Y tilted his head.  From the information he had been given, Star Angels were referred to as an ‘it’.  They had no concept of sexuality as humans did.

He did not take Tred at his word.  Instead, he jacked into the system and bypassed the translator unit; he already understood the Star Angel radio language.

Communicating directly, he received a response from the Ambassador.

“Ah, I see,” Y said.  “She does prefer this.  Very well, from one being who is sexless and yet has accepted a gendered pronoun to another, I shall oblige.”

Tred suddenly looked awkward.  “I never . . . do you mind being called ‘he’, Doctor Y?”

Y was busy communicating with the Star Angel, but splitting his attention to Tred was no trouble.

“To be quite honest, Engineer, I do not care.  But it seems to make some feel better to ‘humanize’ me.  Therefore it is fine.  My language – and even many human languages – do not use genders at all.  It is merely a category for noun declension, after all.”

Tred seemed to take that in.  “I never really studied linguistics,” he commented.

“It is an interesting topic, though for most people it is unneeded due to the convenience of translator systems.  Now, can you amplify field 48 by .098 microunits?  The Ambassador would find that more comfortable and is interested in trying.”

Tred’s reaction was slow, hesitant, until Y mentioned that the Ambassador wanted it.  Then he had jerked into faster motion.  This detail was not lost on the doctor.

“The Ambassador informs me that she has decided on a name with your assistance.  The name Jophiel.  May I ask why you picked it?”

“I . . . uh, I remembered it from a class on history,” Tred said.  “Old religions.  I once knew a woman who . . . nevermind.”

Y was curious, but did not inquire.  Instead, he perused Tred’s public blog for information.  Seeing the dates of his notes about studying, and other posts that suggested he’d met a pleasant woman.  Who apparently had hinted she would be more interested in him if he learned and converted to the religious group she belonged to.  Not long after, Tred had gone into a depressive state and stopped mentioning either, suggesting that it did not work out as he had hoped.

Y did feel some sympathy for Tred; he certainly did not view him with amsuement.

Noting the quickened heart rate, the man’s quick defense of Jophiel the Star Angel, he wondered what the man was feeling.  He could guess, he could infer large amounts from those biometrics and historical data.  But he could not truly know . . .

Quickly, he scanned through the stored data of non-confidential interactions Tred had had with Jophiel.

Hmmm.  Very interesting.

“Jophiel,” he signalled within the system.  “May I ask you some non-medical questions?”

“Of course,” the being replied, its wavelength carrying a sense of happiness, absolute fineness with his question.

“Do your kind have the concept of love in the romantic sense?”

Jophiel was quiet for a long moment.  “I am not sure I understand, doctor,” she replied.

How amusing; now he had to define a term for something he himself had not felt, either.  Being a conception brought about at least in part by biology he could not experience, he could truly never know if he truly understood the concept as biologicals did.

“I mean a particularly strong attachment to an individual that makes you view them as special in comparison to others,” he attempted.  “Where you would like to spend more time in their presence.  In the sense of ‘love’, if you are familiar with that term.”

“I understand love,” Jophiel replied easily, though there was some uncertainty in her signal.  “Some of my kind become attached to each other in a very deep way.  They pine when the other leaves.  Sometimes, they even share fields and in essence become one.  From my understanding of how physical beings work, this is very close to the concept of ‘dying’, for in combining the original beings are lost and a new one is formed, losing the originals forever.”

Y had not considered that ‘love’ might be considered something negative to her kind.  Fascinating.

“How do you view love, then?” Y asked.

“Very, very dangerous,” Jophiel replied.  “But please, Doctor, surely we can speak of happier things, hmm?”

“Of course, Ambassador,” he replied.

“Ah, you become so formal!  Doctor, please – it is just Jophiel from you, now and forever!”

“Not your original wavelength signal?” Y asked.  “I can replicate it perfectly, if you like.”

“No, no – among my kind I shall have my name.  But among the physical, I shall be Jophiel!  And you are physical – so if it pleases you doctor, call me by that.”

Tred watched the Doctor, who had gone peculiarly silent for several minutes.  It was rare to see Dr. Y without something to say to him, some query or comment or . . . something.

“Er . . . doctor, are you there?” he asked.

“Why yes,” Dr. Y said immediately.  “Ambassador Jophiel is quite an interesting being, is she not?  I am privileged to get to speak with her.”

Tred shifted, showing for just a moment a hint of emotion that Y could not quite identify.  It seemed, however, negative.

The man nodded to him and turned away.

Yes, Y thought.  Tred was smitten with Jophiel.  He chose the word deliberately, as he did not believe that ‘love’ typically enacted so quickly.  Though ‘love at first sight’ was a concept, in his experience that usually seemed to be simply physical lust, which was impossible in this case.

He calculated the odds that this ‘smittenness’ might interfere with Tred’s work.

But the odds seemed low.  For all of the struggles Tred suffered from his own issues, the man was devoted to duty.  He went on dangerous missions even if he could have surely found a way to escape them.

There was always a chance of a problem, but it seemed safe enough . . . for now.

And liking another being in this sense was hardly an offense.  But he would have to pay attention to this, and be sure that it would not cause problems in the future.

“Jophiel,” he signalled, checking for the ten thousandth time that this conversation was being encoded at a level of secrecy that Tred could not access.  “You are a very pleasant being.  Perhaps one of my most pleasant patients.”

“Thank you, doctor!  I have learned from some information given to me that sometimes physical beings fear doctors – but I cannot see why, you are so kind.”

“You do me much honor, Ambassador,” Y replied, using a highly formal wavelength that imparted humor as well as seriousness.

“Aha, your kind have just learned my language and yet you speak it like a native!” Jophiel replied.  “I hope we can speak often, Doctor!”

“I would very much enjoy that, myself.”

“In that case – please, while I know you are busy, perhaps you can tell me of your home?”

“I would be honored,” Y replied.  “My kind share something in common with yours – we lack true physical bodies.  We are simply impluses of electricity stored in highly-complicated devices.  These give us thought, feeling, and memory.  The physical body that your sensors show you outside is merely a metal vessel for traversing locations and interacting with physcial beings.”

“How interesting!  So you are free to travel wherever you wish?”

“Within some limits.  Strong magnetic fields like in your home space would interrupt my system, for instance.  But in a body like this I can exist in vacuum easily.”

“How convenient!  You must visit everywhere you can.  There is so much to see.  Have you ever been to the world Tred’s kind come from?  He’s spoken to me about it, how it was very green and covered with life like him!  Not a single being even like me.”

“I have not, actually,” Y replied.  “I have never been to a planetary surface.”

“Oh!  Why not, Doctor?  If you do not mind me asking.”

“It is . . .”  Y suddenly felt a strange sense; vulnerability.  He was not sure he felt comfortable in this topic.  “I have always been very busy,” he said, hoping that his ad hoc lie would be believed.  He did not have any models to predict Jophiel’s mind – and he likely would not for a very long time.

“Oh, that makes sense.  But perhaps you should, sometime, Doctor!  If I could freely visit a world full of life like Tred’s . . .  Well, I would not hesitate to go and stay until I had seen all I could.”

“You seem quite fond of Tred,” Y noted, steering the conversation.

“Yes, he is interesting.  Most of the other humans I’ve met, they’re very different.  They try so hard to be a certain way.  Tred tries, too, but it’s not the same.  And on top of that, he has spent much time beyond what is strictly required talking to me and trying to make this environment more comfortable.  Poor dear!  It’s quite lovely in here, honestly.  But he always wants to make it better, and I think it’s sweet.”

Y checked the logs.  He did not see that Tred had talked to Jophiel when he was off-duty, as she suggested.  Was she mistaken or had Tred learned enough computer sciences to hide such records . . . ?

A quick look at Tred’s study-hours suggested otherwise.  But there was always the possibility that Jophiel had turned off the recording.  She at least had the authority . . .  Though he did not think she had the training.

Perhaps ‘physical’ things were not so strange to her after all, he thought.

Which technically meant she could be a threat to him.  Her magnetic fields could, in all honesty, shred his mind.  Though numerous buffers separated them, and he should theoretically be safe, there was a shred of concern in him.

It was rather like a spice.  He found himself enjoying the slight danger.

“Jophiel, my medical examinations are complete.  Thank you for being such a superb patient!  I have attained all the information I can for now – it will aid me in helping you if you should grow uncomfortable in the future.”

“You’re quite welcome, Doctor!  I bid you a fond farewell, and I hope we get to speak again soon.”

Y had left his question somewhat vague as to his going or staying in his radio signals, but she had deciphered it from his words themselves.  Grammatically, in her language, that should have been open-ended and confusing.

But she’d learned what physical beings meant in such a scenario, it seemed.

“I shall count the moments,” he told Jophiel, before disconnecting.

And he would.  This was . . . exciting.

< Ep 4 Parts 26 & 27 | Ep 4 Part 30 >

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Pirra pulled the trigger, and the massive weapon in her hands kicked surprisingly lightly against her shoulder.

The cartridge it held, larger than a man’s fist, flew out, not moving quickly, but soaring due to the low gravity.  The firing range could not be in the rotation area, not simply for safety but because the spin would impart odd behaviours in a launched shell.

It didn’t come back down in the tunnel, easily achieving escape velocity; and soaring free until it hit the target coming from the ceiling.  It then exploded.

The burst was as colorful as a rainbow, a small fireball in slow-motion, as the plasma cloud expanded, quickly losing its energy.  It sounded even more fearsome, the whoomph of the gas and roaring of the super-heated air making it sound like a mighty predator.

And the target, once a smiling stick-figure, was gone.  Only a stump of it remained, still smoldering.

“Crash the sky!” she burst.  “That was incredible!”

“Right?” Davo said excitedly.  “I have to tune it down for the micro-grav, of course, but the launcher works even up to 2g, getting a decent distance.  The shells are heavy, but – you saw the effect!”

“I did,” she said.  “Can I shoot it again?”

“Hell yeah!”

Davo helped her load up another canister.  They were big and clunky, but she saw that he’d painted on each of them some witty comment; the current one said “take that” on it.

“Okay – fire in the hole!” she yelled, and clicked the trigger again.

Another smiling target disintegrated with a fiery roar.

She whooped, and Davo laughed.  “I call it the Phobos Panther,” he told her.  “Ah, I can’t wait to try it out in some real gravity!  But the permits to transport something like this are, well . . . let’s just say they’re pretty long.”

“I bet,” Pirra replied.  “I can’t imagine anyone could even claim a need for self-defense in this system.  And, you know, it’s a bit overkill.”

“What do you think of the ergononomics?  I tried to focus on that in this iteration.”

Pirra held the weapon out, giving him some thoughts on what she liked and where it might be improved.

She didn’t want to add, and Davo did not ask, if anyone would actually find some use for it.  The weapon was . . . not practical, not by any stretch.

The plasma shells were too large, and plasma itself had minimal military value.  The heat potential was good, but it spread out too fast – not to mention how easily it could be deflected with simple magnetic fields.

She was glad he didn’t ask; she did not want to have to let him down.

His research field of plasma weaponry had been considered a dead-end for centuries, even among humans.  Among her own kind, she didn’t even know the last time someone had seriously entertained the idea.

The fact, though, that he was building weapons had never sat well with Alexander.

She thought his view was naive.  War had not occurred within the SU since its founding.  And conflict with outsiders was extremely rare in their history.

But it had happened.  And she was Dessei.  Violence was not wholly unknown to them.  It was just never directed outward.

“You take a shot,” she said.

Davo refused, but she insisted, and he took it, trying to hide his eagerness.  He’d said he only had a dozen shells he’d painstakingly fabricated over the last three months.  She knew that meant he likely hadn’t shot it much.

He was like a kid with a new toy as he took aim.  The gun kicked, and the shell exploded.  This one disintegrated two targets.

“What a beauty!” she remarked.  “Reminds me of the aurora I used to see on Enope.”

“Oh?  I thought it was less angled than Earth.  Didn’t know you guys got aurora!”

“I saw them from space!” she said, trilling a laugh.  “I was from a moon, too.  And I could see the poles glowing when we were on the dark side through a telescope.  It was beautiful!”

Davo clicked his tongue.  “Amazing – getting such a view.  I hear it’s a lovely world, I’d love to go see it someday.”

“I’ll be glad to help you see all the best sights,” she said.  “I hope you like beaches.”

“I’ll survive,” he replied with mock gravity.  “Mostly archipelagos, right?”

She nodded, as he loaded up another shell.  “This should really be the last one.  The rest I should save for some more studies.  Here, you shoot it!”

Pirra let herself be convinced, and then took aim.  This shell flew out, but did not explode on contact, instead one end opened and it began to spin, spraying hot plasma and charring the walls.

Their eyes went wide, they waited for any sound of fire alarms, alerts, the hiss of gas escaping – anything.

Nothing terrible came, and they laughed.

“Okay,” Davo said.  “That one doesn’t count, one more!”

< Ep 4 Part 24 | Ep 4 Parts 26 & 27 >