User:Wormulon/Scrapbook

Hello, this a page where I am going to test fiction before I "publish" them as pages of their own. I have a history of starting fiction that I don't end, get lazy about, or take a long time to even start, although I sense my interest in writing might be returning.

= Boundaries = What are the physical and mental boundaries of our world? Is it part of a greater structure, only to be unveiled by deeper physics; or a new system of mind, perhaps one day existing in a provolved brain beyond anthropocentric thought or by an alien mentality? Are there strong emergents other than consciousness, or possibly even higher order complexities, and are they bound by mathematics and logic or something else not enslaved to the two-way neuronal patterns that have been hardwired in Earthly life since times yonder. Or rather, are they hardwired into platonic existences of such mystery we have yet to see the underlying connections?..

All of this is wrapped up in the mind of the alien. One day perhaps, we will find them or modify our brains to perceive them. This is the goal of science fiction, to create a sense something new in the terrifying prospect we call the future.

Endosymbiosis
This universe diverged from Destinies in time future in the first three billion years, where mind does not conquer nature.

They came
Neilia and Shamire stood before the dead alien that was slowly disintegrating through the pod, it was their job to learn as much of it as possible. Shamire was younger than Neilia, female like her, but nervous as Neilia could almost smell her sweat, if it was not for the damned suits they had to endure wearing for five days, now stale with filtered fluid and unfiltered fluids. Space colonisation was uncomfortable business. But this was the culmination of Neilia's life, and she felt surprisingly little at all.

***

For 200 years, Neilia's species peered up to the quiet universe, straining radio ears to listen for signals, and heat signatures that might indicate the presence of astronomical industry. It was assumed by convention that either it was too far away, or that intelligent life tended to extinct itself soon after it discovered the equivalence of energy and mass. It was not until the colonisation of her solar system had been established that her world discovered life on their own doorstep. The radio wave windows were too narrow, the great industrial complexes imagined by her civilisation was simply a limited expression of their own ambitions painted into the cosmos. The faithful day of 08/08/2391 was when Neilia as a child learned of the existence of aliens, told by Commander Oryek; Neilia's Father, an Astronaut representing her species' international effort to explore the Solar System, on the first day of his return. The sense of surprise on his face was self-evident, even to a young girl. Two days later, contact was formally announced to the world as information privacy had long died on her world.

Neilia's solar system contained a gas giant called Erebon, from which a small moon was orbiting with a diameter of only 2000 kilometres, which was slowly spiraling inexorably closer to the limit from which a body the moon's size would disintegrate. 19 years before, Oryek had in fact been operating a drone two light hours from the point of contact, for no nation had yet to develop a technology to shield the radiation that was whipping around Erebon's magnetosphere. The radiation was the point of interest, as internal friction tortured the moon's interior, it was releasing thousands of tonnes of material to volcanics a month, settling into a partial cloud of neutrally-charged atoms captured by the moon's relatively feeble gravity. Eventually however, these atoms would collide with electrons, occasionally producing heavy ions with enough energy to become a plasma. A flux tube is generated when the plasma aligns with magnetic field lines from Erebon, and as the field lines tickle the moon's ionosphere, an induced electric current is created within the moon itself. This is what the Drone had been sent to survey; the flux tube generated auroras in Erebon's atmosphere which reduced visible wavelengths of light.

Neilia could still remember her Father's words. "It appeared as a blip on the corner of the drone's field view moving roughly in the same direction motion as the drone. I thought nothing of it at the time, the firing of ion retro-boosters can dislodge ice crystals.  But I had a second thought, ice crystals, even large chunks of ice may form from the cooling of external gases on rockets used to leave the atmosphere, but the drone was propelled by an ion drive still deep in interplanetary space."

There was a pause, as if her father was searching his mind to describe what he saw in words he could convey. "It took another two weeks to fully maneuver the drone and also slow it's entry, but finally, we achieved in approaching the flux tube, taking measurements of both Erebon and the moon. It was at this point I noticed more blips on the screen, rotating in a ropy fashion around the flux tube all the way to the gas giant. They appeared to be oblivious to my presence as I made the drone approach.  Up close they appeared as blobs, devoid of any shape and opaque with a creamy-white colouration.  A certain iridescent quality shimmered on the outer surface."

Nineteen years later, here she was. Inspired by her father's discovery, she wanted to be the first to formally study the aliens. She had fought for this job, perhaps even bullied her way up the career ladder, and now the tiredness of travel and the boredom of living with few people had taken it's toll. The alien's body fizzed away once again into a mush of differentiated substances and radiation, all thanks to Shamire whom she now despised. Leaving the surgical pod, Neilia was decontaminated and then sent to an observation lounge, time for sleep. Catching the aliens turned out to be a hard task as they seemed oblivious to Neilia's species and died upon capture. It required a manned spacecraft - despite the radiation to couple if the aliens which orbited in a braided fashion around the flux tube. They were careful to select aliens which were on the scale of a few centimetres, for the largest, as big as the spacecraft, would detonate.

Thinking, Neilia wondered how many more times would she get a shot at studying the alien if half her team were scared witless? What little her research team had discovered was that these space-based organisms seemed to mostly inhabit Erebon's polar atmosphere. And yet it was bizarre, as they seemed to be subtly influencing the moon, perhaps without intent to approach the limit from which it could disintegrate, increasing the torus of plasma generated by volcanics. But this was a one way system, once the moon was gone their source of energy would be gone too. Ah of course! The aliens seemed to be storing the energy, hence the flurry of radiation.

***

Two weeks later, Neilia did not conserve her growing frustration with her assembled colleagues, but the final working day came as a saving grace. Shamire ran up to her, excited. "I've been analyzing the logs of every 10,000 aliens we have cataloged to be above 10 micrometres, everything up to 500 metres in diameter over the past three-week survey. Three of the sixteen largest aliens are gone!" "Gone? What do you mean?" "Look, we know that pressure from the mass exerts a small effect on the thermal temperature of particles in the flux tube, it is not that we can't see the aliens. The temperature differential proves they are simply not there." "They have not perhaps, split by mitosis?" "No, the mass is gone."

"Maybe I was too hard on my colleagues", Neilia considered, "results never come how you want them." The popular explanation back home became that the missing aliens had left the Solar System. They could not have been native residents, and now their life cycle in this system was coming to end, it was time to move on, and over the years they were observed leaving.

Stone-works
It was quite amazing, the growth of technology. Neilia reflected on the last 50 years of her life. When she was born, her species had already established several colonies in the home system, but this was a far cry from exploring the stars, but now, all the brightest star systems in the nearest 30 light years had been mapped, which totaled to 163 out of 1117 systems. But of course, this was probably felt by the sea-faring empires of old as they grabbed land of extent that most people in their own capital nation could not comprehend. The technology of course was not invented from scratch, as it had been derived, no, filleted from the aliens. And in fact, the development was not in proportion to the other sciences, as Neilia now had an aggressive cancer.

She was on such a starcraft. It was an old interplanetary craft outfitted at the front with a nest aliens, pulled like a sleigh. It was discovered that the aliens had the capability of Faster Than Light travel, and they did this by somehow using the positive energy they stored and were using it to grasp negative energy. This compressed a wavefront of spacetime in front of the ship, causing it to extend from the back, this disturbance of space could exceed light, while the ship inside had no local motion that could violate light speed. "You should be resting in the rotation chamber. Who knows how this zero-G environment is promoting the rate of those cancer cells..." It was her grandson, seriously spoken, he always reminded Neilia of her younger years. He clearly wanted her back in the centrifuge which generated an apparent pseudo-gravitational pull. "Well Braec, I'm not getting any better." Neilia looked back out towards the window and could see the zone of collapsed space. He spoke on "You feel sorry for them still? I know it is hard for you to accept.  You still regard them as some kind of intelligent UFO.  But they are animals, and we hijack them from a young age to follow on their travels." "Then how did they attain Faster Than Light drives?" "That is what I want to show you."

Since her first three week voyage to Erebon, Neilia never again had the opportunity to work in space. Even during that three week mission, she wasn't far from being too old. Of course now she was dying, this interstellar trip was nothing more than a token of good will for her contribution to discovery, and now for Neilia, the modern developments on the aliens, machines, or whatever they were had not reached. But did it make up for the cost of her life? The cancer was very likely to have been caused by the radiation she had to face.

***

For a star that would otherwise take a ray of light 27 years to reach, the journey took days. The aliens seemed to cling to migratory routes, as if the knowledge was inbuilt from every generation. Again it was quite unknown how long distances could be journeyed with no known point of navigation. But it could be assumed evolution had long ago 'solved' this for the aliens. Obviously these worlds were very old. Neilia was taken into a pod that detached from the starcraft, and she looked up nervously at the aliens. "Don't worry" said Braec, "More always come. Anyway, put this on." Even 50 years on, suits were still rather uncomfortable, Neilia thought in disgust.

And old the world was. It once had large oceans and a silicate crust, although now all that remained was salt, lime and sand. Braec, Neilia and a team of assistants left the pod in a vehicle, kicking dust tens of metres in the air, casting dull shadows. Despite being one of the bright stars that had been explored, it was darker than Neilia's home star. Within two and half hours, the vehicle reached the precipices of a vast basin that stood before towering mountains. The basin had a low gradient, and it took another 5 hours to reach the mountain.

"If geology is like book reading, then this book records three billion years of nature's works" said Braec. "This was a compressional basin three billion years ago. Faulting caused some rocks to thrust upwards, and this created a load on the rock beneath, pressing it down.  We call it a flexural bend.  The thick crust on this world allowed the rock hanging above to rise to immense height, however, weathering deposited sediment from the mountains into this basin, sinking it even more.  But the old crust was not efficient at recycling elements,this world dried up soon after." "I would like to know how we found out so much in mere decades, when we have visited 163 systems." "Well didn't you see the swarmers on the way?" "Swarmers? No..." Braec held out a small robot. "We send a robot 'mother' to each world we touch down. It produces these swarms of multipurpose robots that quickly explore any features we see from orbit." "So... Old rocks.  What is so exciting that an old and ill woman must see?" "Fine, I'll cut to the chase."

To be continued.