Follow-on to Purging.
Tired. Keep going. Need this to work...
The flint and steel wasn't sparking. The pile of rags wasn't lighting. The metal monstrosity he was crouched in was dark, with rare pools of light filling corners here and there.
Maybe it was because the flint was actually diamond and the steel was duralloy.
Meh.
He needed the fire.
The Geiger counter slung from his belt was ticking idly--too many times the room he was crouched in was suddenly flooded with radiation as the structure decayed, and the purple light poured in from between the rooms...all that that left for him was to run...
He panted. This door was a different metal than the rest. It wasn't warm. It did have a complex opening mechanism, though, so he set about actuating locking rings and solving ciphers...
He didn't think about much else. The door offered a hope, and he had latched on to that.
This disrupted the self-exciting nuclear field that had developed around him, and the fuschia aura in the structural interstices began to die.
It's open. What's inside?
Shifting his weight into opening the door convinced it to slowly swing open, and he stepped through onto a hard surface. Reaching down, he ran his hand across the floor.
Cool. Stone.
He felt for the torch on his belt--a lucky find in the last room--and cast it down the passageway.
Rough hewn, and it keeps going.
He started walking.
Showing posts with label insanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insanity. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Parallax
He couldn't believe it.
He peered into the telescope once more. A mere four parsecs back, the one star had seemed like a supernova compared to the other, more distant star--and oh, had it been spectacular!
Now the other was just as brilliant.
Leaning back, he pondered. Magnitudes hadn't changed--the instrumentation assured him of that. The parallax and the higher quality optics he'd acquired at the last station seemed to have done it--strange, what a bit of perspective would do.
The topology of subspace meant that the more distant one was his current destination, while the other was squarely out of his way. In contrast, normal space observations led one's mind to a different, technically impossible conclusion.
Occasionally the Madness would set in. It was rare, but in those cases his astrogator's training would kick in and start trying to work around physics, only to be barely set right by Reason.
This time, though, Reason and the telescope agreed, at least enough to stave off the Madness. For now.
Still it crept about in his mind, occasionally reminding him. Of his humanity, of his destination, of the Could Be, of the Might Be.
The Madness was his friend--a fickle one, true--but for once, impossibly, incredibly, amazingly, it seemed to drive him forward, towards the long game...and it brought with it a sense of euphoria long-run pilots often forgot.
The one was so close now--but for once the final run home seemed bearable.
He peered into the telescope once more. A mere four parsecs back, the one star had seemed like a supernova compared to the other, more distant star--and oh, had it been spectacular!
Now the other was just as brilliant.
Leaning back, he pondered. Magnitudes hadn't changed--the instrumentation assured him of that. The parallax and the higher quality optics he'd acquired at the last station seemed to have done it--strange, what a bit of perspective would do.
The topology of subspace meant that the more distant one was his current destination, while the other was squarely out of his way. In contrast, normal space observations led one's mind to a different, technically impossible conclusion.
Occasionally the Madness would set in. It was rare, but in those cases his astrogator's training would kick in and start trying to work around physics, only to be barely set right by Reason.
This time, though, Reason and the telescope agreed, at least enough to stave off the Madness. For now.
Still it crept about in his mind, occasionally reminding him. Of his humanity, of his destination, of the Could Be, of the Might Be.
The Madness was his friend--a fickle one, true--but for once, impossibly, incredibly, amazingly, it seemed to drive him forward, towards the long game...and it brought with it a sense of euphoria long-run pilots often forgot.
The one was so close now--but for once the final run home seemed bearable.
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