Tuesday's Post

Is post 67 in full, rather than just an opening paragraph or two...  More later today.
 

Let Me Remind Everyone

Even with the comment moderation on... wow you guys should see some of the wildly off comments that are spamming through here!  

Anyway... Savage Kitsune is still ahead.  I'm re-opening things to try and get you guys talking.

Does 'code' make sense to you?  If so, how?  We're about to find out about the Nadumon... who actually have been TRYING to get hold of Perrin for a long, long time... it's kind of a 'thing' with them.  They keep using the same old protocols, though.

I'm working back up to five days a week... sorry I've fallen off the wagon so much.  Things are about to get better.  Part of the problem is that I've been very tired, working at Pangaea... hmmm. Coincidence?  Who knows.

Running gopher for a high-end chef... mostly dishwashing right now because the restaurant can't keep a dishwasher to save itself... Last week I was straining beets and cream cheese through a fine mesh.  This week I'm lugging buckets of cream of fiddlehead soup.  And scrubbing oysters.  Lots and lots and lots of oysters.  Opening some but scrubbing lots.

Plating salads.

Oh, is that an EXTRA dessert not good enough to go out?  I'll help with that one.

But lugging the heavy stuff is getting me down.  I like working in kitchens.  It's a clear and limited range of work.  This is dirty.  Now its clean.  This is raw. Now its cooked...

I'm a bit punchy because I just got home an hour ago... and let the dog out.  Later everyone... I go sleep now.      

67 - In Shade and Cleaned Water

The main city of the Nadumon seemed to be centred on a single hut, on a raised dais, that was shaped like a tube cut in half and their national dress appeared to be mostly robes in wild, acidic colours, covered with an open pure white, knee-length coat with long sleeves.

There was also an elaborate pocket on the breast of it, with a liner edged with gemstones, full of quills and pencils.

There was a ubiquitous head-piece as well.  What looked like a half-crown of metal that appeared to be held to the left or the right side of the head as if glued there somehow.  From the half-crown, a fanciful set of wires hung an elaborately wire-wrapped eyepiece or crystal, some had a gemstone of one colour or another suspended before their faces.Their hairstyles were also extravagent with dye and beads.

Werfas leaned over to Ky, confident that his veil would hide what he said.  “The ambassador never wore anything like those costumes.  But all the Nadumon I’ve ever seen have a face-tattoo that looks like the shadow of one of those head-things.”

“You’re right.” Kyrus scanned the ‘welcoming’ crowd.  Every second or third person in it had a variation of the tattoo, ranging from a single line of decoration across their forehead, to a half-face inking.  The ambassador in Milar had had a thin line across the forehead, almost un-noticeable.

The welcoming crowd was very quiet for a supposedly spontaneous turn-out to see the entourage of not just one, but two heads of state.  “I suppose we should be glad they aren’t all armoured up and ready to fight things out on the spot.”

“Yeah.  They probably want to get us all drunk and then slaughter us in our sleep.”

“Shhh.”

Kyrus thought that his da looked splendid in the Emperor’s parade armour... it was obviously not meant to be used on a battlefield, entirely made out of varying sizes of bush-dragon scales and spines, reinforced with reddened wire, so he was all gold and red, with all the glitter and flash of the breeding-scales making him hard to look at.  But even if it was armour made out of flash, it was still armour should someone try to fling a spear or fire an arrow. His concession to their ‘peaceful’ visit, was to have his head bare, his helmet, with the crystal ridge and crystal tipped spines, was slung on its loop on his saddle. Over his head, the gold banner of Lainz flapped and cracked in the wind.

The armour was light and strong, since Ky was wearing a silver version of it and it was nothing like the metal scales he'd been expecting when he was first told he'd be wearing armour as well as his father.

His step-da looked pretty impressive too.  His armour was dyed sand-sheet leather, and black neo-silk. Next to the Lainz solid sheet of gold, the Milari tailed banner crackled higher, the white tails making sharper noises.  In a solid mass behind them, every Amir for every hundred men carried their unit’s sun crystals... the fist-sized chunk cut and polished throwing rainbow points of harsh light everywhere.

The group on the steps in front of the hall opened up and the Nadumon Heads came to the fore.  Their head-gears were all jewelled and every one of them carried a smooth-polished flat stone about the size of a book.  Two women, three men.

“Greetings, to the Heads of Nadumon,” Ilax said, in clear, if heavily accented Nadu... which was like both Lainz and Milari.  “It is with relief that we, who have travelled so hard and long under the brutal sun of an alien world, find ourselves met with shade and promise of rest, by other humans.”

Ky wasn’t sure but one of the women frowned at the formal words that set the all firmly into the category of ‘traveller/stranger in the desert’, not ‘antagonists/enemies’.  The Nadumon could answer back differently and kick off the war right here, but they clearly hadn’t been expecting that anyone Milar or Lainz knew the right words to use in the first place.

There was a long silence and the Heads looked to their stone tablets, except for the young woman who stood in the position of First. She never took her eyes off either of Ky’s dads, but raised a hand to touch a gemstone at her throat.  When she opened her mouth her voice was astonishingly loud.  “To humans who offer no threat to the safety of this installation, we offer shade and cleaned water.  Should the peace be broken, then it will become the firm opinion of the Heads of these Departments, that those doing so are not and never had been human, but tissue samples to be properly disposed of.”

Ilax’s naked face didn’t show any kind of reaction, other than mild interest, and his voice carried almost as clearly as hers. He’d been dealing with the Nadumon before so he surely wouldn’t get insulted by being told a warrior was a defective tissue sample to be disposed of.  “Of course.  The rights of human beings to peaceful conduct is a truth universally held.  We thank you for your gracious offering of clean water and shelter.  While under your roof we are in your debt and in your hand.  I offer my name, Ilaxandal Vania ah Ruikert, surdeniliarch Milar.”  He swept a hand out and neither of the birds shifted so they could touch fingers.  “And this is my husband, my inamour, His Radiance of All Lainz, Kyrus Talain.”

There was a murmur through the crowd.  They must have heard rumours.  The Heads would have known from their ambassador, but they didn’t have the lin so the common folk would only have gossip and rumors.  Here were both men and publicly acknowledging their connection.

“I am Amia Filchang, Occupying the First Office.” She looked to the left and right at the other Heads and her chilly demeanor thawed just a fraction.  “Let us continue our discussion under shade.”

66 - Over and Over Again Boy

She landed, sprawled, with Tizzy spinning flattened out, bouncing up and then floating down again to the floor, weirdly slowly. Well, not really floating just drifting down gently as if she were a feather. It felt odd and her stomach flipped  and she was suddenly nauseated and her head spun.   

This is code.  I control it! But she couldn’t.  Everything around her was blank and featureless.  There seemed to be dents in the smooth walls all around her and when she managed to clamber to her feet. Her walk was a tiny shuffle, struggling to keep from bouncing up and having to throw her hands up to stop her head from hitting the ceiling.  As she approach one of the divots, it opened like a door.

She swallowed and swallowed, struggling to keep her gorge down, and managed to stand still, staring around at this... metal space.  Everything was metal.  There were pipes, it looked like, but not ceramic ones.  Everything seemed... seamless.

There was an all-pervasive hum, as if the place were alive somehow and it smelled... odd.  Flat, acrid, sharp as if the air were full of cold. A box on legs, had a box on top of it and a light began to flicker from the other side of it.  Cautiously, she edged over and peered around the edge to see what was causing the flicker.  A fire? A pulsing light of some kind?

It looked like a painting, but one that moved.  It was the man she’d seen. The man on the moon.  He wore no veil, like one of her own people, but he wore a strange hat upon his head, tall and round and black, with a brim dipping down at an angle, and had cloth wound tight up under his chin.  The image removed the hat, as if she were in front of it and addressed the air over her shoulder, since she hadn’t moved to the front of the boxes.

She didn’t understand a single word he said.  The image froze.  Then repeated its actions.  Tizrav ran out, jumped on top of the boxes, hung down to sniff the top of the image’s head.  *Not real. Over and over and over again boy not real.* She slid jumped from the top of the box, floating over to Hara’s shoulder, landing with a light thump. She’d drawn back so she couldn’t see the repeating image.  It unsettled her.

“What language is he speaking?” She said to the ferret.

A click.  A gabble of noise from the box as if a dozen languages were trying to emerge all at once.  Another click.   

“Hello. Is this human-language analogue, ### workers, ###akstan## Rom#####? Indo-### subculture?”  The image responded, she could see it move toward her motion as she peeked around to look again.  Now its eyes were focused on her.

She wasn’t sure what he was asking.  “I’m speaking my own language.  Are you human?  Are you trapped in there... in that box?  Are you a machine?”

65 - A Particularly Awful Bit of Code

Hara lay on her couch, with Tizrav curled under her chin.  No one commented when a swarm of the Great Hive flew in and settled around her pillow.  Her job was to observe and assist Thriti as she instructed.

The code was slippery this time. There were no roads, no gates, no access points. In this reality Thriti was a creature that looked like Tizrav, but heavier, darker more silvery, with webbed feet.  I suppose you’d be able to bound through the sand with paws spread to keep you from sinking. There are all the others modifying code all around, as diligent as a hive of bees.  Diligent to keep us all safe.

*The Prime gets new code from somewhere, regularly,* Thriti said. *We need to be vigilant and make sure that none of his programs recognize that we are still alive on this continent, across the sand.*

*Where does he get the new code from?* Hara looked down at herself and saw herself reflected in Tizrav’s image.

*My girl, like my boy, fly bounce wiggle hunt. We flyer.  We wiggler than dragon. Dragon slow. Dragon pieces. Dragon cheap and kludged and nasty. Seven legs, two teeth on the wrong side, one wing, claws on everything, eyes blind in this colour, ears deaf in this tone. Some dragons mushed together, overlap eyes/ears/wings to see, hear, fly.  Falls apart easy.  Rotten bad stink programs. Zombie dead programs with edges live. We flyer. We one piece, one mind, one program.  We singular hunters.*

*Thank you for that information, Tizrav.*  As they bounded along the slippery ledge draped tight around the code, the node, she could see through to the owner’s country.   

Programs that were once bright, shining, cutting edge, new written – badly written.  Not working with the programs over – here.  The terraforming programs that should have been an elegant, unified thing, a glittering machine all working together, was now a dirty, steam-driven, ancient engine, with cancers growing in it... cancers that made things, strings of rust and ink dragging along its belly.  It had patches of mold growing on it.  It dropped bits of code even without moving, building a pile of rotten code around it.  The piles moved and zombie bits of programming dragged themselves clear, tried to stand and begin a task as part of the mammoth engineering job it was, trying to recreate the planet in a different--- faster evolved --- image, suitable for humans and everything from eyelash mites to pancreatic stem cells, from dogs and cats, to roundworms and even tapeworms would fit. Better an earthan tapeworm than a miner worm, attempting to fill the same environmental niche.

It had the original intent at its core but it was ancient and badly, badly maintained.  It had random patches applied.  It had not been a high-end product to begin with and now, over a thousand years of limping along, it had gaps in its security that Thriti and Tizrav and Hara could bound into.  *Why didn’t I see this before?*

*It’s the making the planet fit for humans code,* Thriti replied.  Her tone was a strange mix of satisfied – for the ease with which she could infiltrate – and disgust, for her professional opinion of this suite of programs.  *Owner code... he generally wouldn’t even look here.  This is relegated to his Firsts, as he calls them.*

*I... see, I think.* She watched as Thriti, with the assistance of her dog, yanked a new, living patch off the old, rotting carcass, modified it slightly, and slid it back into place.   

*What did you do?*

*That set of sensors... on the moon... will see any kind of heat or light... like campfires, or cities or villages, as any number of other sources of heat and light.  There are vast outcrops of rocks all along the canyon that tenebresces... or absorbs the sunlight and during the night gives it up as wildly glittering waves of light and colour, as the rock fades pale overnight. It hides campfires, citylights and such.*

*Do you always have it see this?* It seemed a bit... weak to hide all the cultures on this continent.

*No, no.  There are lollipapera tree wild-fires... they are so full of oil, you know.... the extreme lightning storms in spring and fall as the water moves north to south or south to north. All kinds of things. Even a dozen kinds of swarming native fauna that apparently fluoresce. It covers a lot.*

*I see.*

Tizrav jumped and did her war-dance on a particularly awful bit of code trailing in front of them, down the slick side of the encapsulation, when Hara notice a tiny, tiny bulge on the edge of the ancient sphere.  It seemed like a seed.  It seemed small, but it was armoured in a way that the old code was not.

Where the old code had rusted and rotted and grown green and blue mold and oozed clear fluids, this seed was new and shiny and untouched.  Thriti was examining another bit of the sensor fields and Hara reached out a mental hand, with Tizzy riding her wrist.  Her claw *tinked* on it as if it were hollow, then caught and a hole opened and she fell in.

64 - A Gift Rorse

“Why don’t you catch a ride with me, home, brother?” Gerald was carefully not looking at Terence’s face.  “Since you and I are obviously and publicly reconciled, since my wild younger brother has recovered from his temporary disarrangement while he was alone on the moon?”

“I... um. I... suppose I will.” Terry managed to close his mouth, and focussed his attention on collapsing his rod and reel, since he hadn’t caught anything, truly by design, since he had no intention of plaguing an earthan creature of any species, and certainly not by setting a barbed hook into it.   

“So... your laboratory is wildly successful and our beloved Font of All Knowledge is well pleased with you?”

“Astonishingly so.”  Gerald called the rorse to them, popped the storage hatch in one haunch for Terry to stow his things, and extent its back and create the second rider’s saddle.  Terry set his toe into the temporary step to settle into the saddle.

“This is a fancy model.” Most riding rorse were only for one.  The machine stepped off with a glass-smooth gait, as Gerald took up the reins.

Terry couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded as though he carried something sour in his mouth. “Nothing but the best as a gift for such a faithful manager, from First Lord Sidenham, himself!  Imagine.”

“I... see.”

For Gerald to receive a personal gift from the Lord of the Lab meant that the Firsts were going to be claiming the credit for an invention or development, of course and the rorse was meant to make him feel ‘valued’ even as they devalued any of the lesser peons’ work.

“And it is supposed to make the workers more... amenable to the work.  It is incentive to me to manage my teams with diligence and dispatch.” His voice was deadly calm, which was only wise, riding a machine given you by your First.  Who knew how often it recorded your conversations?  Or how often your First actually listened through its ears, saw out of its eyes?  You never looked a gift rorse in the mouth.  That was where either the recording equipment or the weaponry was built in.  “Our test subjects actually weep and scream... with joy of course, after the procedure is complete.”

Terry listened with mounting horror as Gerald talked. I need... I need to do something.  But what can I do? “The subjects become very content with their new states.  Very calm.  We still have leakage from the tear-ducts but they tend to not remember why they continue to weep.”

“Gerald, you are doing such work!”  There wasn’t anything he could say that wouldn’t endanger both of them, and the family.  Gerry didn’t answer him, immediately, but he could feel him swallow hard, even as the rorse extendedits back a tiny fraction longer so they were not pressed so close together.

“Did you know that the Font Himself is interested in my First’s work?”  Such an idle, deadly question.

“Goodness, no!  How thrilling!”  What did the old bastard want?

“Just as you and I are so fortunately reconciled, it seems that Our beloved Dispenser of All that is Technological, wishes for his dear son... the older son, gone prodigal, to be reconciled with Him.”

Oh inkless, penless, dickless shit. The old bastard wants the Heir he wants... and he has a way of rewriting the young man.  But he’s safely run off planet... to the dastardly university of Steinpelz.

“But... he's run away, offworld.  I heard rumour years ago that he married some galactic woman who spoke for herself.”

Gerald ritually spat off to one side.  “A woman with no Keeper... shocking.  Yes.  Our Font, I had heard from First Lord Sidenham, has actually written a conciliatory note to his son.  He has specifically asked me to expedite my work, so that it may be more... gentle a procedure than the one currently working... One more suited to a higher ranked person, preserving the best of their minds of course.”

The nightmare scenario of the one-time Heir becoming a silently weeping, obedient son was enough to keep Terry quiet as the quisling gift rorse rode them both home.