Sapper

You know, I kind of like the library.

Sure, it's dark, and the butler insists it's haunted. Parts of it move around inexplicably from time to time, and a vestibule might be gone tomorrow and elsewhere the day after, but overall I can find what I'm looking for and I get things done.

It rather reminds me of what I imagine an old university's library should be. The smell of old books, elaborate shelving, sweeping staircases, endless shelves upon shelves, the occasional cobweb, dim light filtering in from stained-glass windows, and at night soft light wafting down from grandiose chandeliers.

Still...

Breathe Deep

Eet eez a beeg ball of boom. Ya.

And I'd made it.

Luckily, I'm on the other side of a duralloy pressure containment door. This side has a simple, two-color design on it reminiscent of its cousins for bio, chemical, and radiation hazards, but about twice as frightening: memetic hazard.

You see, just because it's information doesn't mean it's not dangerous. Even through the double-walled duralloy chamber, it aches. Not in the head, but in the chest. It isn't too bad here, but inside, facing it? Ugh.

Tanks...Really This Time

The daydream was over in less than a second. As the bravado, confidence, and power that it brought faded, I glanced nervously between the poised tanks.

All I wanted to do was get to work.

Neither tank looked like it was pointing anything at me. Now was a good time to leave.

I tried to get up calmly, dusting off my pants and picking up my bag. That done, I turned around and noticed a small cinderblock building. Get behind that, wait out the firefight, pray the bus isn't collateral damage. Good plan. Now, to walk slowly, with commanding confidence...

By my third step I was running.

As I neared the structure, I risked a glance over my shoulder --- and the world exploded, knocking me flat. In the ensuing chaos of ringing ears, roaring engines, and desperate scrambling to something like safety, exactly one thing was clear in my mind...

I'm going to be late to work again.

Tanks

I was just sitting at the bus stop.

It wasn't that the Wehremacht's third tank column's lead was rounding the corner.

The Third Division's Shermans were rolling down the cross street on a collision course with the Dub. This promised to get ugly, but nation-states need a venue in which to express their differences. Really, they do. Before the war, um, the security action, broke out, I had advocated paintball.

My bus was patiently...well, prudently waiting on the far side of the intersection for the light to turn green when the lead We-38 eclipsed it and stopped in the intersection. As a matter of fact, yes, it did stop dead in its tracks.

I don't like being late to work, see. So, when the lead tank spotted the impending Shermans and started turning its turret to sight in on the lead Sherman, I started to worry. When the Sherman lined up to fire first, I really worried. This was primarily because the Sherman line popular among the antecounterrevolutionaries had a flaw in the mechanism that compensated for forward motion, meaning that it was probably going to overshoot the '38 and hit my bus.

Both were outwardly pedestrian models. Reactive armor, assisted aim, situational awareness packages, antipersonnel features, but no hints of active counterartillery. Neither one was equipped to cleanly stop an oncoming shot, just to survive it and respond in kind.

I rolled my eyes. The Big W's lead hadn't even bothered to call up the two tanks behind it to properly receive the Sherman column. It was going solo. The superreactionary insurrectionists had fewer but better tanks and were always a bit arrogant about it.

Standing up, I took a deep breath and reached into the universe around me. No Great Sentience there, though the bigger biomes had that; just deep perception of the world as it stood.

As I reached, time slowed to a crawl. The gunner on the Sherman was in the act of firing, where the '38 was waiting for their first shot to fail. The charge in the Sherman's breach was normal. The inclination was, as I feared, marginally too high. The HE round would pulverize the bus.

Action was needed. With time still crawling, I slipped one arm into hammerspace (pocket dimension, holding bag, Beyond--I like to call it what it is to me, not to others) and found my Bussard fusion lance. This was aimed into the trajectory of the Sherman's shell while I started walking into the street between the tanks. The lance came with a hilt of sorts that would protect me from the shell's detonation.

With the shell countermeasure in place, I had to convince the disagreeing parties to let my bus through. This meant gradually letting go of time while fishing around in hammerspace again. Where had I put that again?

Sound came back. The Sherman barked, its muzzle brake flashed, and its shell cracked thunderously overhead as its payload detonated early. A few tumbling fragments harmlessly pelted the bus. The two tanks were suddenly still as they assessed the newcomer.

There were a few of us around. Folks with the Sense and Connection didn't like fighting, and we'd get out of the way given a chance. That chance had to include reasonable guarantees that civilians were safe, so we were always ready to fight. It also helped our survival rates, I'll admit.

Ah, found it. I liked the lance, but it was only good to thirty or forty feet under ideal conditions. The Thumper was a different beastie; instead of a focused beam of barely subluminal charged particles, it could run high amplitude transverse solitons through anything bigger than a driveway. With a little practice, you could flip a car from across a parking lot. With a lot of practice...well, I had to put the fusion lance back in hammerspace. Tanks are two-hand targets.

It was a thick rod, about a meter long, with some repairable rings at one end. I dialed in the parameters for the job, turned towards the '38, and slammed the end of the rod onto the pavement...which kindly flexed into a depression that started rolling towards the tank. When it got under the tank, I twisted the rod then lifted it and there was a bang. The soliton dumped its energy into the tank's structure as commanded and the tank neatly split in two.

Non-lethal is my favorite approach. It's nice when it works.

Another slam, twist, and pop let out a soliton that shifted the tank out of the bus' way. Whipping around, I dropped a soliton in the Shermans' direction only to realize that they were politely scrambling to reverse directions.

I'd have to send them a thank-you card some time. Instead I merely turned off the soliton's containment and let it diffuse before impact.

Switching the Thumper out for the lance again, I walked to the bus stop, sat down, and glared meaningfully at the second '38 in the column.

It was going to be a good day. I might even get to work on time.

[Sorry if the tense inconsistencies bug you.]

Big Shiny

Just because you can see something doesn't mean that you can tell how big it is.

It took astronomers hundreds of years to develop equipment and theories that could handle the minute details of the sky, and even then it took some careful measurements of celestial coincidences to tell how far away the sun is.

That is now I feel sometimes. I used to be a tech in a small Merc much company. Sandstorms, bullets, Hell and high water didn't phase those guys. Build it small, build it tough, build it fast. They didn't have room, time, or money for the fancy stuff, but when they hit the field the job got done as quick and clean as you can imagine. We were a tight crew. Anybody could sit down with the boss and get coached on everything from Merc ops to manual combat to drinking, and when I had questions I just glanced over my shoulder and asked the guy who knew.

Feeling

Three worlds exist simultaneously.

In the first, cool, carefully prescribed inputs follow clean, mechanical pathways of polished cams, balanced levers, and oiled ways through a vast, steady ocean of linkages and stored history to produce elegant, unquestioned outputs. At the edges of the ordered world, restraining walls keep the ethereal tumult of the second out.

In this second sphere, whirling vortices clash. Great rivers of emotions slam into restraining dikes, spilling over and sometimes meeting others leading to synergistic amplification of their mutual innate chaotic intensities. Uncertainty and despair vie with hope and constancy, each flow waxing and waning as streams of anger, joy, uncertainty, vision, fear, and hope rush through the strained aether. Crossed streams variously yield singularities or supernovae, violent sparks or hardened silence depending on the nature of the meeting. It is quite hard for any solitary denizen to keep the overall maelstrom from rending the very fabric of the world; peace and silence are never an option, especially when The Accuser makes his destructive voice heard, but the sole occupant of the realm still seeks them ploddingly. This is what life is when the ordered world slowly grinds to a terrible, fatigued halt and the worlds' walls melt.

The third world is the one you, dear reader, share. It's the one called reality.

Here, when the world of emotion begins to invade the place of reasoned order and the flags for help are set, few answers indeed are sufficient to the plea "Help me feel, for I am feeling and don't know how."

Winter

Alder looked out the window at the softly falling snow, appreciating the monochromatic scintillation as the blanket grew deeper.

The newcomer was sitting up in her bed, starting at him hard.

"How do you stay sane? Well this blasted winter ever end? It's so...plain!" Her outburst was vehement, but there was a hint of realization in it.

"You don't understand, your highness. I know winter. I hardly know anything else. It's harshness is only broken by its occasional harsh beauty." Noting the princess' distress, he began pacing in front of the wall of windows that overlooked the snow gardens.

"There is one thing we do know, those of us that live here: We know that winter will end.

"This knowledge--not the belief the city folk accuse us of--keeps us alive. Perhaps, during your stay here, you will see spring. You may even bring it to us."

He stopped, intently studying the promise of spring glimmering in her eyes, fighting to the her icy visage.

Perhaps, one day.

A Break in the Case

The search had been quite fruitful; nearly every cubic kilometer of the old Luk'naga golem was accounted for. Varying sizes of chunk drifted in a tesselating grid of parking orbits around the cold, methane-bitten surface of Niffleheim, the most neutral of all the space spanned by the Mul'ulanki federation.

Some chunks had been easily repurposed and were now fully functional members of the warship-cum-planetoid. Most, however, still maintained a defensive, preservationist stance, punishing salvage and recovery attempts while refusing to be reprogrammed. This tenacity was most curious to the commander, but the techies insisted that this stubborn nature was in keeping with the original design and would be a great asset were it properly turned to the federation's purposes.

Except that we can't even melt it down without losing men left and right... The commander shifted the can of pencils from one place on his desk to another, and started reading the reports, hoping for some clue that would let them reuse the recovered components.

He didn't notice the pencils start to rattle, but he did notice when the deck lurched about a foot to his right. That felt like a hyperjump, but the magnitude could only imply a full attack fleet or--that--

He stared out his office's full-wall porthole, barely comprehending. A small planetoid was hovering at the lunar L1 point. The markings were right, and the geometry fit what intel the federation had bothered to collect: this was the Nar'ara golem. Something was missing though...no support vessels? Not even a squadron of fighters on patrol? What was going on?

He absently fingered his watch to answer the chirping that had started just as the lurch had. "Sir, you've probably seen it, but we need you down in Control pronto. The golem is hailing us, and I think this one's above our combined pay grades..."

---

The Interfederation Astrophysical Year was conceived as a method for fostering goodwill among the polities of Cluster 6. It involved a wide range of scientific explorations and experiments that would not only push the limits of current physics, but would provide vast quantities of data that would illuminate ill-explored facets of everyday navigation. Probes into Oort cloud ionization, Phil's Phenomenon (a queer error in hyperjump projections), and numerous other oddities were scheduled, with each federation vowing to share any and all data acquired for the benefit of all. It ended up occupying the better part of a decade.

For reasons yet to be understood, the Nar'ara had only deigned to volunteer their golem to the effort.

It was on an assignment from the Secretary General of the IAY that the golem had shown up to recruit the Luk'naga to perform some experiments regarding the effects of light on gravity. (The effects of gravity on light were already understood, you see.)

Nobody tells us anything, the commander thought crossly. He had just gotten off the comm with the President herself, who authorized the release, complete with nuclear arming codes. Wow. I guess we'll just babysit this wreckage until it gets back...

---

Now, this is curious. My administrators have not bothered to gather intel about the foreign federation, yet here I am cooperating with its golem. I have a question or two that ought to be cleared up...

---

The commander stood behind the lead engineer's chair, leaving over to make out the figures on the display.

"It just stopped snapping back, like that?"

"Yes sir. We were only testing reprogramming channel one, which is what this screen shows." The civilian pressed a few keys and the patterns on the screen shifted subtly. "Shown here is channel two," again, another yet less subtle change, "and here is channel one on the first find. Since it hasn't snapped we've successfully repurposed all sixteen channels of the prime evaluator drive. We don't know the status of the Deep Sigma Phi, but at least one channel has not snapped in three other wreckage fragments. We're working as fast as we can to try other modules, and I think we'll be ready when it returns." The techneer was clearly proud of his team's achievements in the past twenty-four hours.

"You've done good work here. Get some rest; I'll be by at 1000 tomorrow to follow up." The commander was pleased as well; his long-sought dream of full recovery of the golem's might and glory for the Mul'ulanki federation was in reach...assuming nothing else went wrong.

Salvage

When the first piece of wreckage had been brought in, the scientists had started their work immediately.

Visual inspection showed that it contained a large fragment of the AI's core as well as a swath of the surrounding support equipment, probably from the emotive and generative subsystems.

Luckily, the salvage crews had learned from the original recovery: they all wore radiation instrumentation and shielding when they began exploring the new fragment's maintenance shafts. It had saved most of them from the sudden appearance of heavy gamma emitters in one of them. I'm not looking forward to writing the letters to the casualties' families...

After that, the comp techneers had decided to try to use the built-in failsafes to flush the contaminants out. This involved sending one man in, connecting up a few hundred tiny wires with a nanoscope, and then interfacing with the systems from a remote, safe location.

Sadly, the tech didn't quite make it out before another random surge rendered his escape moot, but the job had been done, the uplink installed, and remote exploration begun. Another letter, and another expert lost...

Further discoveries awaited the technologists. The AI core was still looping in a pre-Collapse state, and all of the adaptable logic was configured to use Nar'ara protocols -- hence the defensive radiation floods. Still, section appeared to house some extremely important functions, so the crew started trying to repurpose it -- after cracking the security and reprogramming a few small modules, the whole system would reset to its old config, snap the connection, and then start trying to convert the remote console into a Nar'ara control system.

After avoiding a few catastrophes from internal system reversion, the wreckage was catalogued, tidied up a bit, and moved into a parking orbit near the reassembly site.

After hearing about this, the admiralty quietly sent two more salvage ships with better-trained crews, fresh supplies, and a hand-written note:

"Keep looking."

The Collector's Box

Reconstruction after the war had been difficult, but it had been approached with a renewed rigor among the lassaiz faire policies following the outbreak of peace.

Reconstruction of the ISL's Golem, on the other hand, was not.

Calvin had been working on the project for quite some time, and figured he had seen it all: The Alliance's indifference to the project had left it massively underfunded and, consequently, understaffed. The Golem's AI core was unresponsive to even the most skilled psychotronic engineers. Only about a fifth of the original superstructure of the Golem had been recovered, and they only had enough resources to run one dilapidated salvage ship on shot-in-the-dark missions into the Void, where the war-ending cataclysm had occurred. The nature of the recovery missions meant that extensive shoreside leave on Terra was required for each crew sent out, and this did not please the bean counters.

After some time in this state, that lone salvage crew had crawled back into the Niffleheim system, barely towing a sizeable chunk of the Golem back. While the loadmasters were identifying and inspecting the prize, Calvin asked the lucky vessel's captain what had happened:

"Well, as per standard operating procedure," the captain grimaced, since such words were only used as a nod to the Senate, "we used the ship's reactor's radioactivity to generate a set of random jump coordinates constrained by the expected target space and known stellar obstructions. When our Drive popped us through, we found ourselves heading into orbit around one of the Darkened Suns." The captain paused, waiting for Calvin to urge him on. Those suns had been extinguished in the Golem's contrapuntal feedback event, and physics didn't quite work right around them.

Acknowledging the captain's obvious dismay at this detail, he urged him on. "We were sixteen AUs or so out, so we started the regular ten-light-minute scans, and stepped them up to full system scans. Something in the far hemisphere interfered with the Oort cloud's return of the FTL probe, so we cautiously microhopped over to see what it was..." The captain droned on about the routine details of crossing the star system. Heh. Microhopping was basically the least cautious approach that could have been used...it set off tachyon flares visible for about a lightyear. "...and when the Golem architecturalist on the crew identified it as a fragment, we started dragging it in. It's about four times a massive as it should be, but, with some ingenuity on our engine man's part, we got it here."

"Did you run much more than the simple architecture analytics on it?" Calvin probed.

The captain narrowed his eyes. "Are you not telling me something about my cargo? After fifteen of these missions, jumping blindly into who knows where, we find something, and all you can ask is whether I ran a few extra ********* scans?! Of course we didn't, sir, we were worried enough about getting it back here without a catastrophic drive failure of our own!"

That...was not what he had expected. He guessed that more unexpected things would follow quickly enough... "Captain Morris, you know everything I know. I just had a hunch and wanted to know if you had any small details that might be useful later. We both know it was a drive-related explosion, so I was just worried about contamination from that. The repair crews aren't daft; they know too and they'll be careful."

After a few more questions about the return trip, the captain left, still somewhat frazzled, and Calvin began pacing his office.

The Northern War

Encyclopaedia Fritz, Edition CLVII (2672 Atomic Era)

The Northern War

Border dispute between to adjacent star federations in the Northern Quadrant. Crimes of war led to rapid escalation with eventual depopulation of the sector. See also Blight, Hur'rikku, Tar-Aiym.

Historical Perspective

The Golden Boom was a period of extreme prosperity during the second half of the second millenium of the Atomic Era. This time saw advances in culture such as the cooperative multi-star-system development of the Golems, with massive conquest and unification achieved through the use of such massive war machines. During the peace between the Golden Boom and the White Era, ownership of one Golem came under dispute: the Mul'ulanki federation had originally built the Luk'naga Golem and, after unifying their federation, had set to work on preempting a number of internal issues with the goal of long-term nonviolent federation stability. The Luk'naga was left in orbit around Niffleheim, a cold, methane-ensconced world that was widely viewed as being neutral space in the region.

Capture of the Luk'naga

It was during this time that the artificial intelligence responsible for the Luk'naga's operation locked on to a set of stray Quantum Resonance Discharge transmissions from the Nar'ara federation. (Various theories explain why; until it is fully rebuilt, no one will know why exactly this happened.) When the small supporting fleet discovered that the Luk'naga was no longer responding to their control signals, they sent a scout to the capital world in order to figure out what to do, and started to attempt to reestablish communications with the AI; in the meantime, the Luk'naga had responded to the Nar'ara signals and had started establishing tactical feeds from their command center. According to what few records are available, the Nar'ara response was cautiously optimistic with some trepidation regarding the Mul'ulankis' response to the theft of their Golem.

The conflict began when the Luk'naga decided to jump into hyperspace.

Military Mobilization

[...]

Battle of the Diaspora

[...]

While the two battle fleets kept missing each other in hyperspace along the frontier between the federations, the Luk'naga's AI had been forced by its circumstances into a hyperaware, decision-making state akin to an electronic adrenaline rush. Deciding to stay with its maker rather than expand its experience coffers, it analyzed its trajectory in hyperspace and decided that the only way to stay out of full Nar'ara control was to self-destruct. According to the telemetry the Mul'ulanki control station received, it locked its engines into phase, coupled their impulsors, and simply went to full power. The resulting energy concentration took approximately one month to reach critical; at some point, the fabric of reality formed a discontinuity and an explosion ensued. This cataclysm enveloped several star systems and left a lifeless scar in the local cluster known today as the Black Void. When both federations' fleets heard the news, they simply returned home to watch and see what the other would do, making the Northern War one of the least bloody conflicts in recent history.

After the War

The loss of the frontier star systems around the explosion dealt a deathblow to the politics of Golem projects. If loss of such an important asset were possible, what else might be lost? Was not the Golem designed to lay waste to far more systems than what had been in the Black Void? What moral right had anyone to build such phenomenal engines of destruction?

Henrich von Kramptdatz had been one of the head engineers and architects of the Mul'ulanki Golem project. He was in the federation's control center when the telemetry stopped, signaling the great ship's demise; however, he stated that his team had built a better ship than would simply self-destruct and leave nothing. His primary claim was that salvaging the wreckage and understanding the AI's decisions was the single most important priority the federation could set. This research would reveal how such tremendously complex systems operated under duress, and might lead to better designs in the future. Sizable debris has been found in several adjacent star systems and towed to Niffleheim for inspection, but after widespread criticism of "thinking of the Nar'ara first," he was forced into obscurity and now leads a droll life at 42 Wallabee Lane, Sydney, Australia.

Few have taken note that several of the frontier worlds burned off in the explosion were not Mul'ulanki, but rather belonged to the Nar'ara. The military standoff between the federations has prevented assessment of and humanitarian assistance with the loss, though it can't be all that bad because the Nar'ara now have another Golem.

Economic recovery among the Mul'ulanki was slow but thorough. Construction began on another Golem, based on the design of the first, and is now an integral part of the federation's Defense Fleet. Certain limits on the AI are in place should a similar set of circumstances arise, and the AI is more self-aware than the first.

On Quanta of News

Sure, the Duke of Gramm had been dealing with a number of his own problems. That came with a planet-duchy. It still didn't help with what he was seeing.

The trader had pulled in and, as usual, was full of newsreels from the other systems in the quadrant. This one had just come from Trammelsham, one of Gramm's close allies, and he had been excited to get the news.

Lady Elegans

A waltz was playing somewhere.

Well, it certaainly felt like a waltz was playing. After a terse conversation with Lady Elegans he had been directed to this hall, hidden like her cellar behind an impenetrable, unmarked wall. He had stepped in to find himself floating up towards the middle of the room, and from there he had discovered that walking--oddly enough--was an effective means of propulsion along the corridor.

As such, it was quite the impressive corridor. Ribbons and arcs of baroque pillars danced between each other, mostly obscuring the long chamber's square profile. Occasional gaps revealed plush carpeting, ornate dining areas, shadowed niches, abandoned servants' areas, and other scenes of abandoned grand living. The walls were odd, though he couldn't quite make out why, and each area he passed felt like it followed the last, as though the long hall were a concatenation of segments of time.

If you don't find something strange about The Hall, she had said, you can never help us and so will never leave.

Does floating through the air on a predetermined track count? How about flying through an ancient hall behind a solid stone wall? Perhaps the eery waltzing feeling as he strode through the air, the lack of servants, the abandoned air in so elegant a place?

He thought for a moment, staring off into space. It was something simple--

What the-- What moved? It took a moment to bring his thoughts back to reality...well, the present reality. Something in the shadows cast by the pillars? The sojourner began a slow and careful examination of the shadows. The nearest ballroom looked well-lit by a chandelier or two out of his line of sight. Still, they would be about there, and the web of pillar-like laces was thin above there, so the wall over there should be...

Laced with shadows.

It was black. Not a trace of the ample lighting was making it to the wall, and the lattices that landd there seemed to have shadows lapping at their bases. The walls certainly were odd light here where shadows should be, shadows bunched in plain sight, the right shadows sitting the wrong way in some spaces, all just orderly enough to evade the unwary mind.

Wrong shadows in a hall of memories...

Shadows

*slam*

From the frightening whirl of the ether he impacted the floor, and with a lurch reality settled around him and sealed the gap through which he'd come.

Fate liked doing this. She tended to land him in places where help was needed, but they were usually strange, alien places. Now it was his turn to get off the--well, floor, judging by its smoothness--figure out where he was, and solve the puzzle(s) set before him.

As usual, he was unharmed and still had his full tool belt from the work site. Fate was not always kind--he'd once saved a race of arthropods from destruction while...less than tastefully clothed. Turns out clothing was a mark of evil in their society, so in a way she had still been kind.

Looking around, he noticed that it was a well-lit room. The dead lack of ambient noise hinted at a deep, underground installation, and he was curious just where he was... Seven smooth, space-age-style doors lined one wall while the opposite wall was, oddly enough, smooth-hewn stone. From the strata and the temperature he was quite some distance down. A few curious-looking machines stood idle at one end of the room; earth-movers by the grinder-conveyor belt face and the tracked bottom, though the machinery that followed the grinding head was quite mysterious. It was big enough he found it hard to imagine how it had gotten in here--likely sealed in as construction progressed.

He walked to each door in sequence. As he approached, they opened revealing more door-lined walls, vast, orderly rows of segments of much larger machines, one completely empty room with a tiny sign in the back: "Lost + Found." Seeing that little danger was visible, he became more bold and started opening doors in more rapid succession, covering vast swaths of ground until he discovered one of the original doors was locked. Realizing what a locked door meant--danger--he immediately started examining the door for weaknesses.

The doorframe was smooth, and the sensor that triggered the door itself was nowhere in evidence. No tool he had would fit into the crack, and nothing in his belt would so much as scratch the surface, so he tucked away the door's location and moved on.

The next door was a junk room. He stepped in and just about fell off a cliff--the room was huge! Hundreds of little trinkets sat around, some of them gleaming in the randomly-placed lights around the chamber. There were doors in the ceiling and floor, junk was haphazardly welded to segments of the walls, the walls were outright broken in a few places, and nothing was in use. The cavernous room felt dead. Again taking note of which door he had been in, he stepped back out.

The last door was odd. It slid open hesitantly, as if something were nervous about letting him in. This, like the sealed door, was intriguing, so he stepped cautiously into the largest library he'd ever seen--well, it felt like a library. Massive shelves ran all the way up to the arched roof, lit by magnificent crystal chandeliers.

The shelves were empty.

The place felt alive somehow, too. Shadows clung to the edges of the pillars and shelves, seeming to spite the lights. As he wandered around and past the first layer of shelving, he noticed strange things: cobwebs, moving shadows, books that weren't books hovering just on the edge of existence. Occasionally one of the outside walls was broken by another of the sealed doors, and he tried with less and less vigor to pry them open. Other breaks in the shelves were normal doors, behind which was a motley mix of library shelves and more doors (sic). Each room was well-lit in the middle, but the shadows hung around the outside, seemingly right on the brink of destruction.

Finally, he found it. In the back of the deepest room he found a broken wall. Shelves still clung to it, but their disarray only highlighted the wall protruding from itself.

Finding a crowbar and hammer in his kit, he discovered that the shelves cleared away easily. The fissure was just wide enough to give his tools purchase, and he began the slow process of prying the panel out.

Several minutes later, the crack was wide enough to slip through. Behind it was pitch black, so he fetched out his flashlight. All he could discover was that the floor was stone--the same as in the root node he had started in. He wriggled in.

The room was dark, but the shadows were natural. Cobwebs hung, partially obscuring the piles of boxes and crates that filled the room leaving narrow paths to walk through. Clearing the spiders' testament of time back, he found that the crates were labelled--some were old records of the library's operation, some were marked with periods of older history, and some were completely unmarked. Some of the crates were styled like the doors, while others fit better with the library's decor. It was a strange place. Crates were aging, and occasionally somewhere in the distance one would groan and collapse under the weight of its neighbors.

After what seemed forever (and about sixteen armfuls of discarded cobweb and three pyrotechnic urges) later, he found an open space with a single chair, a small end table, and a book. A sudden chill ran down his spine, and he took a step into the open space. The reluctant feeling from the library's entrance was met with an angry, dismal feeling and an argument began. He took another step. The argument felt more heated, and the sadder of the two seemed to be winning. As he arrived at the chair, he looked down at the book. It was beautifully gilt, with deep red leather wrapping its covers and bearing its title. Before he could make out the characters, the hesitant feeling yanked the table and book out of reality, and the angry feeling started condensing into a dark, elegant lady with a cold face sitting in the chair.

"I see you've been exploring the library, Amadaeus. I hope to help you find what you are looking for."

Setting Sail

As I stepped out of the village, my heart swelled. I turned to look back at the place where I had grown wings, the place where I knew when to behave how, where I had learned how to perch in the shadows of the eaves of the cathedrals, soaking in the monks' chanted prayers for a better world--and where I had learned that those lonely spaces were not where I wanted to be. Thronging festivals, living, vibrant friendships, home--

As I choked back a quiet sob, I looked up at the ramparts of the town's wall. There the Guardian met my gaze sternly, dispassionately, and unyieldingly. I had made my choice, and I must go. Absorbing the loss was harder than I had ever imagined it would be--it felt like attending my own funeral.

Then again, my departure had been a joyous one. Most of the townsfolk looked forward to making the journey I was embarking upon--but none of them would understand the loss until they made the decision and left for themselves, taking the experience with them. While where I was going wasn't cold, it was unknown, and the place he was leaving was warm and familiar.

As I looked down into the satchel of provisions I had prepared, several mainstays of my previous life were lacking. First and foremost among them was the water from the well at the village's center. It was said that it led villagers to leave, though some had been there for years without showing a trace of its effects.

That bag was by no means empty! Among the various foodstuffs and camp supplies sat the beautiful crystal that had been given me by my chosen travelling companion. She had left some time before me, knowing that working in a trade caravan would be advantageous for us when we arrived. She had--accurately--predicted that I would miss her, and that it would be hard for me, so she had prepared for her absence from me. First had been a series of gifts and messages hidden with others in the town, and then had been this.

The bluish, clear cube rested largely on my open hand. Its cool warmth refreshed my skin from the Sun's toll, while it warmed my heart with memories. About once a day we were able to converse through it--in her foresight she had found a matched, tuned pair that could tunnel through the intervening distance and yield just such a connection. I polished it slightly, and in its own way it let me know with an irritated pinkish tinge that the connection wouldn't be open that day. I had been late leaving.

Sigh.

I looked down at my coarse all-weather tunic, up at the scorching sun, and out towards the mistwall that obscured my destination--a new adventure and a new home.

Thinking about her and the longer route she had taken, I started walking.

Beaconkeeper

I had just finished communicating the coordinates of all the navigational beacons in the sector to the new arrival when another call came. The other captain saw the indicator and told me,

"Well, the commstat is hailing us, and that's what we came here for; we'll be in touch!"

I was not surprised, as I knew where I was in the universe of people. Having been about to discuss replacement equipment and the local culture, I was still a tad disappointed.

In the string of video calls that ensued, I knew I stood little chance. Much of what I would of said was ignored as out-of-channel banter, with bits and pieces considered off-topic in-channel noise. Once I saw this, I realized that I was being a pain. Something needed to change.

"Helmsman, what is the current cloaking charge?"

The middle-aged officer glanced at his dials and then eyed me. "Sir, we're at 75%."

That was odd. We'd been charging it for a week and I had told him to keep it at peak readiness.

"Sir, we're at 75% of what you need. I can see that you're plotting the old Malay Turk maneuvre, and we haven't quite got the staying power to do it."

Realizing that he was three moves ahead of me, I ceded his point. "Well, we can at least ameliorate the interstitial jitter. Put us on full electromagnetic silence and engage the cloaking engine."

If you can't help 'em, don't get in their way, I thought. At least he has what he needs for when he gets here.

---

P.s. On a completely unrelated note, 21 days remaining. :)

Double Double

The scientist cackled maniacally as the mixture began to bubble. Lowering his goggles and straightening his stain-splattered lab coat, he donned protective gloves before replacing the containment vessel lid.

He stepped over to the next hotplate. Observing that the matter phase change had commenced, he rapidly adjusted the dials controlling the thermal transfer. Several stirs of the mixture later he gave it one last piercing stare, grunted, and returned to the other vessel. The clear window showed the consistency to be almost right, so he deftly deactivated its heat source and stepped back.

Looking at the complex apparatus chugging along in harmony, he doffed the gloves, smiled, and sat down at the table.

This rice and stir fry were going to be great.

Fissiles

Sweating inside of his radiation suit, the nuclear workman used tongs to heft the result of an hour's work. The rectangular prism was just over five inches long, while its bulk was a precisely crafted 5.0800 cm by 7.5000 cm. Each surface had, with painstaking effort, been polished to the perfection required of Johansson blocks. This would permit it to be joined to the core of a reactor designed to cover lightyears at a stroke with enough energy left over for far more than survival.

He reflected back. Compressing and shaping the nuclear remnants of the last meltdown seemed a logical step. No other release of the energy would be anything less than fatally catastrophic to the mile-wide ship; still, even this would be highly risky. He got up from his workbench and started walking to the core airlock and waldo controls.

Nobody had realized that shoelaces were a terrible idea on a radiation suit.They had been made that way for decades.

The poor engineer hadn't realized one of those shoelaces was snickering, having quietly freed itself from its bondage in the last hour.

He also hadn't realized that another engineer had neglected his duty and had left open the shielded container containing a number of dangerous fragments from the same event.

So, when he lifted one foot, it tried to move the other. One moment to recall his thoughts to the current scenario, one moment to he was holding a chunk of nuclear material fit for a bomb, and one extra moment to panic. Gravity did the rest.

As he tripped, the tongs slipped and the small, silver shard of devastation started on its ballistic journey. It might have been guided on its journey by some unseen hand to its clean, forceful landing in the open pig.

He curled up into a ball as a blue flash illuminated the room and he knew for sure he was a dead man. It was enough material to go critical and annihilate the entire engine chamber along with anything attached to it, and his imagination could see the atomic terror rending the atoms of the fuel and unleashing an unfathomable quantity of energy into the surrounding world.

Opening his eyes, he blinked.

The engine room certainly wasn't any afterlife he'd heard of, so he knew he wasn't dead.

Adrenaline was still pumping through him as he slowly uncurled, got up and looked around. The active dosimeter he was wearing didn't register much, so he slowly walked over to where he'd seen the slug of polished material land.

The pig was a little melted on the inside, and a few shards of material had fused to the inside. Aside from that, there was nothing.

Cleanup had done itself. After months of tending wreckage and carefully gleaning the dangerous bits, it was almost all gone.

Of its own accord.

He blinked, hoping it wasn't a dream, and then walked to the comm to relate to the captain what had happened.

Parking Orbit

On the approach to the system the pilot had been nervous. Only the slightest stresses had been applied to the engine systems over the course of the voyage, and sometimes such systems developed catastrophic quirks over time...and it had been a long time.

He tapped on the glass covering each of the dials again. Each needle jiggled slightly at the disturbance, wavered, then settled back. The orbit was stable.

Perihelion would be suitably close to the star to pick up most of the small, rocky bodies orbiting the sun. Aphelion was not quite at the Oort cloud, and with time would shift inward as the perihelion shifted outward. First he wanted to let the orbit meander around the sun; solar systems are big places, and the current orbit would shift directions while staying the same shape. Later on, short, strategic burns would jettison just enough velocity that a less extreme orbit would be attained and more extensive surveys could be run on the inner planets.

Earlier radar bursts had gotten a big reflection in that area; at about six times Jupiter's mass, the gas giant was about .75 AUs out from the star and so would be a major navigational hazard. He'd have to watch that.

After staring blankly at the dials for a few more minutes, he wandered over to the Kepler Weight and Constraint Set. He liked using them to simplify the more tedious orbital calculations; just turn dials to set mass, velocity, and position of up to four masses and the strings, weights and wires would automagically give you the stable solution over the next 100 years. It didn't account for the inherent nonlinearity of the actual relativistic and gravitic equations, but it was good enough most of the time.

It was good to be back in orbit.

(Especially around a star like MP539. --Ed.)

Just Go.

 "Why, I'm going to do as much as I can until I get kicked out of BYU," she huffed. I looked into her gaze, which she was casting condescendingly down her nose.

"Is that so? Why don't you just leave?" I demanded.