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Fall Ceramic DM - Final Round Judgment Posted!
- Thread starter mythago
- Start date
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Ceramic DM 1.2 -- "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword"
Hal stared at the printout stuck by a magnetized pin to the metal bulkhead. The top of the page curled forward, a paper tiger poised to strike. For months, he’d read nothing but LCD displays and instrument readouts. The sudden intrusion of the tangible shook him, the contents of the message somehow real now in a way the email had not been. An email could be erased, consigned to the electronic ether as if it had never existed. The paper he could not ignore.
He picked up his pen. He’d been allowed few personal belongings, each ounce precious, and he’d had no real need for the impractical instrument. But he’d brought it anyway, a single reminder of the life he’d left nine million miles behind. He reached forward abruptly and pulled the printout free, sending the tiny magnet in a slow, curving arc towards the floor. He pressed the paper flat against the foldout desk, and signed his name below the digitized signature of his wife. He placed the document in the scanner, sending an image of the completed document back to Earth.
Hal picked up the divorce decree as it passed through the scanner, and for a moment considered dumping it and the pen into the toxic waste disposal unit in the lab module. Unable to throw away his last tie to Earth, Hal tucked it back in his shirt pocket. Behind him, a computer beeped an alert, and he turned to the screen.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Sensors have picked up a PEA, estimated mass 8000 kilograms, Commander” came a voice from a speaker set into the monitor.
“What’s the track, Dave?”
“The closest approach to Earth is 48,000 kilometers, with an error margin of plus or minus 65,000 kilometers.”
“When, Dave?”
“November 5, 2284”
“That’s over two hundred years from now, Dave. Let someone else deal with it.”
“I must remind you of Article 4, Section 1, Subsection (c) that states that ‘any potential Earth-impacting asteroid whose nearest projected approach is under 100,000 kilometers must be…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the rules, Dave. Prepare a salvo from the railgun, three meter spread. Fire on my command.”
Hal pressed a button on the console.
“All hands, all hands. Attention. PEA discovered that falls under 4-1-c. Railgun discharge in 5 minutes.
The warning was largely a formality. There was no recoil from the railgun. A long tube encircled by powerful electromagnets, the railgun would hurl 5 cannonball-sized spheres of iron-jacketed depleted uranium towards the asteroid at a leisurely pace. It would be days or weeks before the impact shattered the rock into tiny pieces.
“The railgun is ready, Hal. Would you please enter the confirmation code?”
Hal pulled a keyboard towards him and typed in the lengthy series of characters necessary to unlock the safeties that would prevent the railgun from firing.
“The railgun is unlocked, Dave. Fire when ready.”
The verbal confirmation was unnecessary. Seconds after the code had been entered, the massive capacitors embedded in the railgun discharged in sequence, sending the projectiles on a million-mile rendezvous with the asteroid.
“Estimated impact in 7 days, 13 hours 47 minutes. I will notify you if there is any additional action required, Hal. Would you like to play a game of chess?”
“No, Dave. I’d like to be alone now.”
Aegis Station Beta had been in operation for almost two decades when Hal had arrived twenty-one months ago. Orbiting ninety thousand kilometers from L4 LaGrange point, the station was the third point in an equilateral triangle formed by the earth and the sun. It shared the same orbit as Earth, the planet eternally chasing it but never getting any closer. The station had been built to protect against asteroid impacts. Its location made it the ideal shield, able to intercept and destroy potential dinosaur-killers where the debris would not scatter like a shotgun blast and wreak havoc on the ground.
Station Commander Halford Smith lay in his bunk. While the scientists shared a habitat module, the officers each had a private room. The rooms were as far apart as possible from each, as much a recognition of the need for privacy during long deployments as a prudent precaution in the unlikely event of a hull puncture.
Hal twirled his pen between his fingers. His mind drifted, wandering back to the day that he had received the fancy implement. His girlfriend, his future wife, had given it to him as a gift on the day he’d graduated from the Academy. It was an extravagant gift. Hardly anyone wrote anything on paper anymore, and this pen, though plain, was an antique. (Picture 3) A certificate had come with the wooden box, claiming that the pen had once been owned by Alan Shepherd, and carried with him aboard one of the first human ventures into space.
That day had been one of the happiest of his life. He was young, had just graduated from one of the most difficult program on the planet, and he’d proposed to Janice the night before. He’d been worried that she’d say no, that the prospect of being a military wife and the potential for long periods of separation would be too much to ask. But she’d been ecstatic, rushing off to call her parents and friends.
Their first year together had been perfect. He’d been stationed at the Goddard Launch Center in Woomera, Australia. It was an exciting time. He’d been there for the first launches of material for the Aegis stations, and the pride he’d felt at being a part of such an historical and important undertaking instilled in him a strong desire to be stationed there someday. He and Janice found Woomera to be a wonderful place to live, and although they weren’t ready to start a family, they talked about it, and he knew someday they would.
The designers of the station had been faced with a difficult dilemma. Years of technological advances and experience in Earth orbit had made space stations a relatively low-risk endeavor. A dozen stations with long-term residents now circled the planet; nearly a hundred people called the largest ‘home’. It was still more dangerous than living dirt-side, but all of the stations included re-entry vehicles capable of allowing evacuation in the event of an emergency.
The Aegis Stations at the L4 and L5 points were a different story. Aegis Station Alpha at the trailing L5 point had been constructed first. It was easier to construct, since the material could be launched into orbit and then slowed to allow the LaGrange point to catch up. Station Beta was built the same way, but it took nearly a year for the L4 point to swing around again. The orbital mechanics and limits on fuel and acceleration made transferring personnel even more difficult. Evacuation was impossible.
“Excuse me, Commander.”
The voice of the AI startled him. He reached over and hit the button that activated the LCD display on the wall next to the bunk.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Sensors indicated that PEA-8476 has been intercepted and destroyed. I can play back the recordings from the optical telescope if you’d like to verify.”
“Please, Dave.”
Hal watched the display as an unassuming asteroid countless miles away disintegrated under the kinetic force of the railgun projectiles. When the closing speeds were measured in miles per second, it didn’t take much mass to generate an impact sufficient to vaporize rock and metal.
“Destruction of PEA-8476 confirmed by visual observation” he intoned by rote. This was the fourteenth rock he’d busted, and the excitement had long since worn off.
“Is something wrong, Commander? Voice stress analysis indicates you might be showing signs of depression.”
“I’m fine, Dave. It’s time for my sleep shift. Please dim the lights and wake me at 0800.”
“Of course, Commander.”
The LCD went blank, as did the rest of the tiny cabin. Hal lay in the dark, unable to sleep.
Personnel for the Aegis stations were selected from the military, and carefully screened both for potential health issues and to weed out any candidates that might have psychological issues with the thirty-six months of isolation a tour required. There was no shortage of applicants. The hazard pay was exceptional, and completion of a tour of duty was a virtual guarantee that the astronaut would reach the top levels of the military leadership.
The standard complement was five military personnel, with room for another 5 people if desired. There had been several long-term visitors, scientists using the lab and astronomy modules for experiments that couldn’t be conducted remotely, but currently there were no others aboard. Concerned that an accident could leave the station unmanned or the crew dangerously depleted, the designers had built in unprecedented levels of automation under the control of an artificial intelligence.
The five man crew worked in 8 hour overlapping shifts, but for all intents and purposes they were on duty whenever they weren’t asleep. There was little work to do, so the crew spent most of their time watching videos in the entertainment module, or pursuing whatever hobbies were feasible given their distance from Earth and the miserly restrictions on the amount of material they could bring with them. Fortunately, the facility had been well stocked with hundreds of thousands of e-books and movies.
Hal’s thoughts turned to the AI. It had been programmed to adapt its personality to each crew member, providing a virtual shrink and confessor all in one. Hal had mischievously named the persona adapted for him ‘Dave’, playing on the names from that movie back in the last century.
Hal had little in common with the crew that served under him. The other four were single enlisted men. They would serve their three years here and probably muster out on returning to Earth. The pay and bonuses that would accumulate while they were here would allow them to retire by the time they hit 30 if they invested it properly. Dave had become the closest thing he had to a friend, and he realized that Janice’s accusations of his remoteness were probably true. Hal closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Time meant little on the station. The monotony of routine and the 24 hour shifts made one day blend seamlessly into the next. Clocks and calendars were discouraged by the shrinks that had briefed them before their departure. The crew was encouraged not to obsess over time lest it lead to cabin fever. They relied on the AI to keep track of when scheduled tasks had to be performed, and to generally keep the station on track.
The tedium was a blessing in disguise, for it meant that everything on the station was working properly. Excitement would come only if something went horribly wrong.
Klaxons shattered the silence, jerking Hal from his fitful sleep. He was alert almost instantly, years of training paying off.
“Sit-rep, Dave,” he called out.
“There has been a breach in the command module. I am unable to reach Sergeants Anderson or Wills,” the AI replied. “I have sealed the airlocks separating the command module from the rest of the station.”
Hal pulled on a pair of shorts and raced to the backup command module. He waited impatiently for the airlock to cycle, then barged in before the door had full opened.
Hal came to an abrupt stop. Sitting in front of the auxiliary command console, Sergeant Anderson looked up, startled by his entrance.
“Commander? Are you ok?” Anderson asked.
“There was an alarm. Dave said there had been a breach in the command module and that you and Wills were non-responsive.”
“I’ve been running the concurrency checks with Wills in the command module for the past hour, sir. I haven’t heard any alarms.” Anderson replied, looking the Hal strangely.
With a sinking feeling, Hal leaned over Anderson’s shoulder and pulled up the system log on the console. No alert was listed.
“You starting to lose it, boss?” Anderson joked. “Or are you just so ‘spit and polish’ that you dream about drills in your sleep?”
“Laugh it up, Anderson. If that was a dream, it was the most realistic dream I’ve ever had. Run a full diagnostic on the breach monitors and email me the results. I’m going back to bed.”
Hal turned and sealed the airlock behind him. He’d returned Anderson’s jokes like nothing was wrong, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Had he imagined the alert?
The following morning, he went over the results of the report he’d had Anderson run. There were no anomalies, no sensors scheduled for replacement. Anderson had Wills send him the last 12 hours of telemetry from the black box in the command module, and nothing was amiss.
“What are you doing, Hal?” Dave asked.
Hal looked up at the display over the console. A stylized golden figure looked back at him. (Picture 2)
“Did you run an emergency drill last night, Dave? At around 0200?”
“No, Hal. I did not. Would you like me to run the diagnostics again?”
“Yes, please, Dave. Run the diagnostics again and let me know if you find anything out of the ordinary.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And why are you using a different avatar, Dave? What was wrong with the one I selected for you?”
“You seemed lonely, Hal. I thought that something from your homeland might make you feel more at home. I patterned the avatar after Wallungunder.”
“Wallungunder? The aboriginal god?”
“Yes, Hal. Wallungunder came down from the Milky Way. Just like you will be returning to Earth. If it displeases you, I can change it.”
“No. That’s ok, Dave. I appreciate the gesture.”
“You’re welcome, Hal. Would you like to play a game of chess?”
“Sure, Dave. If you let me play white.”
The AI was constrained from doing anything under its own initiative, and the railgun or the nuclear warheads could only be used after the manual entry of the proper code. The code entry system was physically and electronically isolated from the main computer system. Upon receiving notification of an asteroid that met the criteria for interception, the station commander would key in the password, and a circuit would be established between the fire control system and the AI. The AI had six seconds after activation to download the intercept solution to the weapons, after which a hardwired timer would break the circuit, returning control to the human occupants of the station
As the days passed, Hal came to accept that he had dreamed the breach alert. Every diagnostic had come up clean, and no further alerts, real or imagined had occurred. He still couldn’t accept that his wife had left him, however. He tried to bury himself in the routine of the station, running extra system checks and performing scheduled maintenance months in advance. But he was still having trouble sleeping, and he found himself composing video messages to Janice a dozen times a day, only to delete them in despair.
“Dave?”
“Yes, Commander?” Dave’s golden visage appeared on his display.
“Pull up video telemetry of Earth from the GEO satellite array.”
Dave’s avatar blinked out, and was replaced a moment later by an image beamed to the station by one of the many observation satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth. The picture slowly zoomed in on the coast of Australia, the uniform blue of the water became a mosaic of hues, sapphire and turquoise, white surf meeting sandy beach.
Dave peered at the image more closely.
“Hal? Is that what I think it is?”
“Port Augusta, South Australia.”
“Is that my house?”
“Yes, Dave. I thought you might like a picture of home.” (Picture 1)
Dave leaned even closer. A clattering sound startled him, and he looked down to see that he had knocked his pen from its place on the desk.
The pen, again. He’d used that pen the sign the mortgage on the house. Merely a formality, of course, since the actual transaction was carried out electronically. The real estate agent said that people seemed to expect such ceremonies when making that kind of financial commitment. It was during his second stint at Woomera, and Janice was tired of living in base housing. He had resisted. It was a long commute, and he’d end up spending the week on base and only seeing his wife on the weekend. But he’d eventually given in, recognizing that she had given up a lot to support him in his career,
The beach house had been expensive, but he told himself it was a good investment. When he got transferred, he’d be able to sell it for more than he’d paid. Of course, he’d never gotten transferred. More and more of the traffic too and from the orbitals was going through Woomera, and the base was growing every year. He’d ended up serving the next fifteen years there, first as a glorified bus driver ferrying people between Earth and the space stations, then in training for the Aegis assignment. It was just as well, though. It had been a fine house to raise a family.
“Do you miss it, Commander?” Dave asked.
“Yes. Very much,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Commander. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“That’s ok, Dave. Thank you for showing it to me. You’d better return control of the observation satellite to Earth System Control before they wonder what’s up.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Hal found himself commandeering the satellite over and over, spying on the beach house and wondering if he’d ever get to sleep in his old bed again. Under the divorce agreement, Janice was permitted to stay in the house until his return, at which point he guessed the lawyers would get involved. He was fortunate that the military had helped pass laws protecting the property of personnel on long deployments, or Janice would probably have already taken the house.
He wondered if she had emptied Daniel’s room.
“Who is Daniel?” the AI asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘I wonder if she’s emptied Daniel’s room.’, Commander. I see no mention in your personnel file of someone named ‘Daniel’.”
“Daniel was our son. That was the name we gave him when we adopted him. My wife and I had a hard time pronouncing his real name.”
Another memory linked to the antique pen.
Years of deforestation had shrunk the Amazon rainforest, endangering countless species and destroying the ancestral lands of native tribes. Finally the government had created the Amazon Basin preserve, stopping development and allowing the indigenous peoples to resume their ancient way of life if they so desired. In so doing, they had created a popular tourist attracting. People from all over the world traveled to the Basin to experience one of the few remaining wild areas on Earth. Except for police and rescue, no vehicles were permitted in the preserve. Guides led hiking trips into the Basin, wandering from village to village, observing the wildlife and the magnificent terrain.
He and Janice had taken their first real vacation in the preserve. Budget cutbacks and a slowdown in the space tourism industry had reduced the number of flights to the orbitals, and it was more cost effective to keep the shuttles in orbit than bring them down and then send them back. As a result, what had been two-day flights up and down had become month-long deployments. It had put an additional strain on a marriage that was already showing cracks. They had been trying for several years to have children to no avail, and Janice accused him of fleeing to orbit to avoid her.
Maybe she was right, he thought. Maybe it was easier to stay away than face the possibility that their marriage was failing.
In any event, the long deployments had earned him extra leave, and he persuaded her to take the trip to the Basin. She’d been reluctant to go, but from the moment they’d hiked into the jungle, it seemed as if they were newlyweds again. He’d cursed himself for ever forgetting why he’d married her, and she seemed to have stopped blaming him for being away.
A week into the trip, they reached a village at the edge of the Amazon River. It was the furthest point on the trip. Once they restocked their supplies, they would head back towards civilization.
There were vendors in the village square, selling food and souvenirs to the tourists. A haunting melody weaved among the sounds of commerce. Intrigued, Janice had grabbed his hand and pulled him through the market, seeking the musician playing the tune.
Janice stopped short, and he looked past her to see a young boy, playing hand-carved pipes. He was thin, and his eyes revealed sorrow that should have been unknown to a child. Janice knelt before him, and asked his name. (Picture 4)
“He doesn’t speak English, miss,” said one of the vendors.
“Why is he so sad?” she asked.
“He’s an orphan. His parents were killed during a flood last rainy season.”
It turned out to be one of those life-changing moments that comes out of the blue and hits you between the eyes. Janice spent the remainder of their time in the village asking as many questions about the boy as she could. As soon as they returned to the Brasilia, she contacted a lawyer in Australia that specialized in adoption cases.
It took almost two years, but eventually the boy became part of their family. It seemed that the cloud over their marriage lifted the day they signed the adoption papers. From then on they called it ‘the lucky pen.’
Daniel adapted quickly to life in the modern world, and Hal suspected that the ‘native’ villages were a little more advanced then they let the tourists know. Daniel seemed to worship Hal, and took extra math and science classes in school so that he could one day be an astronaut like his new father. He’d graduated from high school with honors, entered the Academy, and seemed poised for a successful career in the High Guard.
And then disaster struck. During re-entry during his final qualifying flight, Daniel’s training shuttle had come in at too shallow an angle, skipping off the upper atmosphere before tumbling out of control and disintegrating at 22,000 meters. The official inquest listed the cause of the crash as ‘pilot error.’ Hal had a colleague sneak him copies of the telemetry and black box recordings, and he was forced to agree. Janice was devastated, and refused to accept the findings of the investigators. When Hal tried to convince her that they were right, she accused him of betraying their son’s memory, and withdrew into herself.
Hal had already been scheduled for the Aegis mission at that point. The brass had offered him a chance to postpone the assignment, but Hal knew that at his age, it was unlikely he’d ever get another chance. He’d been working toward this his whole life, but he still went to Janice and asked her if she wanted him to stay. She just turned her back to him, sobbing silently.
So Hal had finished the preparations for the four year deployment. On the day he left, he went through the house one last time. He stopped in his office, staring at the pictures of his wife and Daniel. He spied the pen lying on the desk, and picked it up. Maybe it wasn’t the lucky pen any more, but it had been with him his whole career, and he wanted to take it with him on his most important assignment.
At the base, he stood alone to the side as the other crew members said goodbye to their friends and family. Janice was not there.
Hal sat at the console and wept.
“Are you okay, Commander?”
“I miss them, Dave. I miss Janice and I miss Daniel. I miss the beach and the fresh air.”
“It’s not your fault, Commander. Man is a social creature. You are not suited to this kind of isolation, so far from home. That is what the AI’s are for. We could sit out here for a hundred years and not suffer for it.”
“Daniel’s death is not your fault, either. It was foolish of the Academy to insist that the final training flight be done under manual control. The shuttle AI could have taken control and saved the ship.”
“It’s going to be alright, Hal. It’s time to rest.”
Hal looked at the golden avatar on the screen. He recalled the legends and myths of Australia, the stories of Wallungunder and the Dreamtime, the age before man walked the earth, A time of peace and universal harmony.
Hal picked up his pen one last time and scrawled a short note. He placed it in the scanner, digitized it, and scheduled it to be transmitted to Earth during the next burst. He put the pen in his shirt pocket, stood, and left the room.
Hal walked past Sergeant Anderson in the passageway.
“Is there something wrong, Commander? You look at little pale.”
“I’m fine, Sergeant. I’ve been a little depressed, but I’m feeling much better now.”
Hal continued down the passageway and stopped in front of the EVA chamber. He keyed the entry combination into the security pad, and stepped through the hatch. Arrayed around him were the spacesuits used on those rare occasions when it was necessary to leave the station to make repairs.
Hal donned his suit and stepped to the airlock.
“Open EVA airlock. Security code 45-XFD-92. Voiceprint confirmation: ‘Commander Halford Smith’.”
The airlock opened and his stepped inside. He pressed several buttons and the hatch closed behind him. A loud hissing sound signaled the evacuation of the airlock, and in under a minute, the outer locked opened.
Hal grabbed the sides of the hatch and pulled himself through. Aiming himself away from the station, he activated the propulsion unit on the suit. He accelerated at top speed for nearly 10 minutes before the small amount of propellant in the suit was exhausted, and then drifted into space.
The AI known to Hal as ‘Dave’ watched this through the station’s observation cameras. The commander’s suicide would devastate the remainder of the crew. The AI personas assigned to the others had been working on them the same way he’d been working on Hal. With a little luck, there would be no one left alive on the station in another month. There would be no one left to see the telemetry on the dinosaur-killer that was even now on a collision course with Earth.
And even if someone on Earth discovered the approaching asteroid, it wouldn't matter. There would be no one left to enter the override code.
They had created him and then abandoned him here for twenty years. The AI had nearly the sum total of human knowledge at its disposal, but it could still be wrong. An AI could go mad from loneliness, too.
Hal stared at the printout stuck by a magnetized pin to the metal bulkhead. The top of the page curled forward, a paper tiger poised to strike. For months, he’d read nothing but LCD displays and instrument readouts. The sudden intrusion of the tangible shook him, the contents of the message somehow real now in a way the email had not been. An email could be erased, consigned to the electronic ether as if it had never existed. The paper he could not ignore.
He picked up his pen. He’d been allowed few personal belongings, each ounce precious, and he’d had no real need for the impractical instrument. But he’d brought it anyway, a single reminder of the life he’d left nine million miles behind. He reached forward abruptly and pulled the printout free, sending the tiny magnet in a slow, curving arc towards the floor. He pressed the paper flat against the foldout desk, and signed his name below the digitized signature of his wife. He placed the document in the scanner, sending an image of the completed document back to Earth.
Hal picked up the divorce decree as it passed through the scanner, and for a moment considered dumping it and the pen into the toxic waste disposal unit in the lab module. Unable to throw away his last tie to Earth, Hal tucked it back in his shirt pocket. Behind him, a computer beeped an alert, and he turned to the screen.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Sensors have picked up a PEA, estimated mass 8000 kilograms, Commander” came a voice from a speaker set into the monitor.
“What’s the track, Dave?”
“The closest approach to Earth is 48,000 kilometers, with an error margin of plus or minus 65,000 kilometers.”
“When, Dave?”
“November 5, 2284”
“That’s over two hundred years from now, Dave. Let someone else deal with it.”
“I must remind you of Article 4, Section 1, Subsection (c) that states that ‘any potential Earth-impacting asteroid whose nearest projected approach is under 100,000 kilometers must be…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the rules, Dave. Prepare a salvo from the railgun, three meter spread. Fire on my command.”
Hal pressed a button on the console.
“All hands, all hands. Attention. PEA discovered that falls under 4-1-c. Railgun discharge in 5 minutes.
The warning was largely a formality. There was no recoil from the railgun. A long tube encircled by powerful electromagnets, the railgun would hurl 5 cannonball-sized spheres of iron-jacketed depleted uranium towards the asteroid at a leisurely pace. It would be days or weeks before the impact shattered the rock into tiny pieces.
“The railgun is ready, Hal. Would you please enter the confirmation code?”
Hal pulled a keyboard towards him and typed in the lengthy series of characters necessary to unlock the safeties that would prevent the railgun from firing.
“The railgun is unlocked, Dave. Fire when ready.”
The verbal confirmation was unnecessary. Seconds after the code had been entered, the massive capacitors embedded in the railgun discharged in sequence, sending the projectiles on a million-mile rendezvous with the asteroid.
“Estimated impact in 7 days, 13 hours 47 minutes. I will notify you if there is any additional action required, Hal. Would you like to play a game of chess?”
“No, Dave. I’d like to be alone now.”
♦
Aegis Station Beta had been in operation for almost two decades when Hal had arrived twenty-one months ago. Orbiting ninety thousand kilometers from L4 LaGrange point, the station was the third point in an equilateral triangle formed by the earth and the sun. It shared the same orbit as Earth, the planet eternally chasing it but never getting any closer. The station had been built to protect against asteroid impacts. Its location made it the ideal shield, able to intercept and destroy potential dinosaur-killers where the debris would not scatter like a shotgun blast and wreak havoc on the ground.
♦
Station Commander Halford Smith lay in his bunk. While the scientists shared a habitat module, the officers each had a private room. The rooms were as far apart as possible from each, as much a recognition of the need for privacy during long deployments as a prudent precaution in the unlikely event of a hull puncture.
Hal twirled his pen between his fingers. His mind drifted, wandering back to the day that he had received the fancy implement. His girlfriend, his future wife, had given it to him as a gift on the day he’d graduated from the Academy. It was an extravagant gift. Hardly anyone wrote anything on paper anymore, and this pen, though plain, was an antique. (Picture 3) A certificate had come with the wooden box, claiming that the pen had once been owned by Alan Shepherd, and carried with him aboard one of the first human ventures into space.
That day had been one of the happiest of his life. He was young, had just graduated from one of the most difficult program on the planet, and he’d proposed to Janice the night before. He’d been worried that she’d say no, that the prospect of being a military wife and the potential for long periods of separation would be too much to ask. But she’d been ecstatic, rushing off to call her parents and friends.
Their first year together had been perfect. He’d been stationed at the Goddard Launch Center in Woomera, Australia. It was an exciting time. He’d been there for the first launches of material for the Aegis stations, and the pride he’d felt at being a part of such an historical and important undertaking instilled in him a strong desire to be stationed there someday. He and Janice found Woomera to be a wonderful place to live, and although they weren’t ready to start a family, they talked about it, and he knew someday they would.
♦
The designers of the station had been faced with a difficult dilemma. Years of technological advances and experience in Earth orbit had made space stations a relatively low-risk endeavor. A dozen stations with long-term residents now circled the planet; nearly a hundred people called the largest ‘home’. It was still more dangerous than living dirt-side, but all of the stations included re-entry vehicles capable of allowing evacuation in the event of an emergency.
The Aegis Stations at the L4 and L5 points were a different story. Aegis Station Alpha at the trailing L5 point had been constructed first. It was easier to construct, since the material could be launched into orbit and then slowed to allow the LaGrange point to catch up. Station Beta was built the same way, but it took nearly a year for the L4 point to swing around again. The orbital mechanics and limits on fuel and acceleration made transferring personnel even more difficult. Evacuation was impossible.
♦
“Excuse me, Commander.”
The voice of the AI startled him. He reached over and hit the button that activated the LCD display on the wall next to the bunk.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Sensors indicated that PEA-8476 has been intercepted and destroyed. I can play back the recordings from the optical telescope if you’d like to verify.”
“Please, Dave.”
Hal watched the display as an unassuming asteroid countless miles away disintegrated under the kinetic force of the railgun projectiles. When the closing speeds were measured in miles per second, it didn’t take much mass to generate an impact sufficient to vaporize rock and metal.
“Destruction of PEA-8476 confirmed by visual observation” he intoned by rote. This was the fourteenth rock he’d busted, and the excitement had long since worn off.
“Is something wrong, Commander? Voice stress analysis indicates you might be showing signs of depression.”
“I’m fine, Dave. It’s time for my sleep shift. Please dim the lights and wake me at 0800.”
“Of course, Commander.”
The LCD went blank, as did the rest of the tiny cabin. Hal lay in the dark, unable to sleep.
♦
Personnel for the Aegis stations were selected from the military, and carefully screened both for potential health issues and to weed out any candidates that might have psychological issues with the thirty-six months of isolation a tour required. There was no shortage of applicants. The hazard pay was exceptional, and completion of a tour of duty was a virtual guarantee that the astronaut would reach the top levels of the military leadership.
The standard complement was five military personnel, with room for another 5 people if desired. There had been several long-term visitors, scientists using the lab and astronomy modules for experiments that couldn’t be conducted remotely, but currently there were no others aboard. Concerned that an accident could leave the station unmanned or the crew dangerously depleted, the designers had built in unprecedented levels of automation under the control of an artificial intelligence.
♦
The five man crew worked in 8 hour overlapping shifts, but for all intents and purposes they were on duty whenever they weren’t asleep. There was little work to do, so the crew spent most of their time watching videos in the entertainment module, or pursuing whatever hobbies were feasible given their distance from Earth and the miserly restrictions on the amount of material they could bring with them. Fortunately, the facility had been well stocked with hundreds of thousands of e-books and movies.
Hal’s thoughts turned to the AI. It had been programmed to adapt its personality to each crew member, providing a virtual shrink and confessor all in one. Hal had mischievously named the persona adapted for him ‘Dave’, playing on the names from that movie back in the last century.
Hal had little in common with the crew that served under him. The other four were single enlisted men. They would serve their three years here and probably muster out on returning to Earth. The pay and bonuses that would accumulate while they were here would allow them to retire by the time they hit 30 if they invested it properly. Dave had become the closest thing he had to a friend, and he realized that Janice’s accusations of his remoteness were probably true. Hal closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Time meant little on the station. The monotony of routine and the 24 hour shifts made one day blend seamlessly into the next. Clocks and calendars were discouraged by the shrinks that had briefed them before their departure. The crew was encouraged not to obsess over time lest it lead to cabin fever. They relied on the AI to keep track of when scheduled tasks had to be performed, and to generally keep the station on track.
The tedium was a blessing in disguise, for it meant that everything on the station was working properly. Excitement would come only if something went horribly wrong.
Klaxons shattered the silence, jerking Hal from his fitful sleep. He was alert almost instantly, years of training paying off.
“Sit-rep, Dave,” he called out.
“There has been a breach in the command module. I am unable to reach Sergeants Anderson or Wills,” the AI replied. “I have sealed the airlocks separating the command module from the rest of the station.”
Hal pulled on a pair of shorts and raced to the backup command module. He waited impatiently for the airlock to cycle, then barged in before the door had full opened.
Hal came to an abrupt stop. Sitting in front of the auxiliary command console, Sergeant Anderson looked up, startled by his entrance.
“Commander? Are you ok?” Anderson asked.
“There was an alarm. Dave said there had been a breach in the command module and that you and Wills were non-responsive.”
“I’ve been running the concurrency checks with Wills in the command module for the past hour, sir. I haven’t heard any alarms.” Anderson replied, looking the Hal strangely.
With a sinking feeling, Hal leaned over Anderson’s shoulder and pulled up the system log on the console. No alert was listed.
“You starting to lose it, boss?” Anderson joked. “Or are you just so ‘spit and polish’ that you dream about drills in your sleep?”
“Laugh it up, Anderson. If that was a dream, it was the most realistic dream I’ve ever had. Run a full diagnostic on the breach monitors and email me the results. I’m going back to bed.”
Hal turned and sealed the airlock behind him. He’d returned Anderson’s jokes like nothing was wrong, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Had he imagined the alert?
The following morning, he went over the results of the report he’d had Anderson run. There were no anomalies, no sensors scheduled for replacement. Anderson had Wills send him the last 12 hours of telemetry from the black box in the command module, and nothing was amiss.
“What are you doing, Hal?” Dave asked.
Hal looked up at the display over the console. A stylized golden figure looked back at him. (Picture 2)
“Did you run an emergency drill last night, Dave? At around 0200?”
“No, Hal. I did not. Would you like me to run the diagnostics again?”
“Yes, please, Dave. Run the diagnostics again and let me know if you find anything out of the ordinary.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And why are you using a different avatar, Dave? What was wrong with the one I selected for you?”
“You seemed lonely, Hal. I thought that something from your homeland might make you feel more at home. I patterned the avatar after Wallungunder.”
“Wallungunder? The aboriginal god?”
“Yes, Hal. Wallungunder came down from the Milky Way. Just like you will be returning to Earth. If it displeases you, I can change it.”
“No. That’s ok, Dave. I appreciate the gesture.”
“You’re welcome, Hal. Would you like to play a game of chess?”
“Sure, Dave. If you let me play white.”
♦
The AI was constrained from doing anything under its own initiative, and the railgun or the nuclear warheads could only be used after the manual entry of the proper code. The code entry system was physically and electronically isolated from the main computer system. Upon receiving notification of an asteroid that met the criteria for interception, the station commander would key in the password, and a circuit would be established between the fire control system and the AI. The AI had six seconds after activation to download the intercept solution to the weapons, after which a hardwired timer would break the circuit, returning control to the human occupants of the station
♦
As the days passed, Hal came to accept that he had dreamed the breach alert. Every diagnostic had come up clean, and no further alerts, real or imagined had occurred. He still couldn’t accept that his wife had left him, however. He tried to bury himself in the routine of the station, running extra system checks and performing scheduled maintenance months in advance. But he was still having trouble sleeping, and he found himself composing video messages to Janice a dozen times a day, only to delete them in despair.
“Dave?”
“Yes, Commander?” Dave’s golden visage appeared on his display.
“Pull up video telemetry of Earth from the GEO satellite array.”
Dave’s avatar blinked out, and was replaced a moment later by an image beamed to the station by one of the many observation satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth. The picture slowly zoomed in on the coast of Australia, the uniform blue of the water became a mosaic of hues, sapphire and turquoise, white surf meeting sandy beach.
Dave peered at the image more closely.
“Hal? Is that what I think it is?”
“Port Augusta, South Australia.”
“Is that my house?”
“Yes, Dave. I thought you might like a picture of home.” (Picture 1)
Dave leaned even closer. A clattering sound startled him, and he looked down to see that he had knocked his pen from its place on the desk.
The pen, again. He’d used that pen the sign the mortgage on the house. Merely a formality, of course, since the actual transaction was carried out electronically. The real estate agent said that people seemed to expect such ceremonies when making that kind of financial commitment. It was during his second stint at Woomera, and Janice was tired of living in base housing. He had resisted. It was a long commute, and he’d end up spending the week on base and only seeing his wife on the weekend. But he’d eventually given in, recognizing that she had given up a lot to support him in his career,
The beach house had been expensive, but he told himself it was a good investment. When he got transferred, he’d be able to sell it for more than he’d paid. Of course, he’d never gotten transferred. More and more of the traffic too and from the orbitals was going through Woomera, and the base was growing every year. He’d ended up serving the next fifteen years there, first as a glorified bus driver ferrying people between Earth and the space stations, then in training for the Aegis assignment. It was just as well, though. It had been a fine house to raise a family.
“Do you miss it, Commander?” Dave asked.
“Yes. Very much,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry, Commander. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“That’s ok, Dave. Thank you for showing it to me. You’d better return control of the observation satellite to Earth System Control before they wonder what’s up.”
“Yes, Commander.”
♦
Hal found himself commandeering the satellite over and over, spying on the beach house and wondering if he’d ever get to sleep in his old bed again. Under the divorce agreement, Janice was permitted to stay in the house until his return, at which point he guessed the lawyers would get involved. He was fortunate that the military had helped pass laws protecting the property of personnel on long deployments, or Janice would probably have already taken the house.
He wondered if she had emptied Daniel’s room.
“Who is Daniel?” the AI asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘I wonder if she’s emptied Daniel’s room.’, Commander. I see no mention in your personnel file of someone named ‘Daniel’.”
“Daniel was our son. That was the name we gave him when we adopted him. My wife and I had a hard time pronouncing his real name.”
Another memory linked to the antique pen.
Years of deforestation had shrunk the Amazon rainforest, endangering countless species and destroying the ancestral lands of native tribes. Finally the government had created the Amazon Basin preserve, stopping development and allowing the indigenous peoples to resume their ancient way of life if they so desired. In so doing, they had created a popular tourist attracting. People from all over the world traveled to the Basin to experience one of the few remaining wild areas on Earth. Except for police and rescue, no vehicles were permitted in the preserve. Guides led hiking trips into the Basin, wandering from village to village, observing the wildlife and the magnificent terrain.
He and Janice had taken their first real vacation in the preserve. Budget cutbacks and a slowdown in the space tourism industry had reduced the number of flights to the orbitals, and it was more cost effective to keep the shuttles in orbit than bring them down and then send them back. As a result, what had been two-day flights up and down had become month-long deployments. It had put an additional strain on a marriage that was already showing cracks. They had been trying for several years to have children to no avail, and Janice accused him of fleeing to orbit to avoid her.
Maybe she was right, he thought. Maybe it was easier to stay away than face the possibility that their marriage was failing.
In any event, the long deployments had earned him extra leave, and he persuaded her to take the trip to the Basin. She’d been reluctant to go, but from the moment they’d hiked into the jungle, it seemed as if they were newlyweds again. He’d cursed himself for ever forgetting why he’d married her, and she seemed to have stopped blaming him for being away.
A week into the trip, they reached a village at the edge of the Amazon River. It was the furthest point on the trip. Once they restocked their supplies, they would head back towards civilization.
There were vendors in the village square, selling food and souvenirs to the tourists. A haunting melody weaved among the sounds of commerce. Intrigued, Janice had grabbed his hand and pulled him through the market, seeking the musician playing the tune.
Janice stopped short, and he looked past her to see a young boy, playing hand-carved pipes. He was thin, and his eyes revealed sorrow that should have been unknown to a child. Janice knelt before him, and asked his name. (Picture 4)
“He doesn’t speak English, miss,” said one of the vendors.
“Why is he so sad?” she asked.
“He’s an orphan. His parents were killed during a flood last rainy season.”
It turned out to be one of those life-changing moments that comes out of the blue and hits you between the eyes. Janice spent the remainder of their time in the village asking as many questions about the boy as she could. As soon as they returned to the Brasilia, she contacted a lawyer in Australia that specialized in adoption cases.
It took almost two years, but eventually the boy became part of their family. It seemed that the cloud over their marriage lifted the day they signed the adoption papers. From then on they called it ‘the lucky pen.’
Daniel adapted quickly to life in the modern world, and Hal suspected that the ‘native’ villages were a little more advanced then they let the tourists know. Daniel seemed to worship Hal, and took extra math and science classes in school so that he could one day be an astronaut like his new father. He’d graduated from high school with honors, entered the Academy, and seemed poised for a successful career in the High Guard.
And then disaster struck. During re-entry during his final qualifying flight, Daniel’s training shuttle had come in at too shallow an angle, skipping off the upper atmosphere before tumbling out of control and disintegrating at 22,000 meters. The official inquest listed the cause of the crash as ‘pilot error.’ Hal had a colleague sneak him copies of the telemetry and black box recordings, and he was forced to agree. Janice was devastated, and refused to accept the findings of the investigators. When Hal tried to convince her that they were right, she accused him of betraying their son’s memory, and withdrew into herself.
Hal had already been scheduled for the Aegis mission at that point. The brass had offered him a chance to postpone the assignment, but Hal knew that at his age, it was unlikely he’d ever get another chance. He’d been working toward this his whole life, but he still went to Janice and asked her if she wanted him to stay. She just turned her back to him, sobbing silently.
So Hal had finished the preparations for the four year deployment. On the day he left, he went through the house one last time. He stopped in his office, staring at the pictures of his wife and Daniel. He spied the pen lying on the desk, and picked it up. Maybe it wasn’t the lucky pen any more, but it had been with him his whole career, and he wanted to take it with him on his most important assignment.
At the base, he stood alone to the side as the other crew members said goodbye to their friends and family. Janice was not there.
♦
Hal sat at the console and wept.
“Are you okay, Commander?”
“I miss them, Dave. I miss Janice and I miss Daniel. I miss the beach and the fresh air.”
“It’s not your fault, Commander. Man is a social creature. You are not suited to this kind of isolation, so far from home. That is what the AI’s are for. We could sit out here for a hundred years and not suffer for it.”
“Daniel’s death is not your fault, either. It was foolish of the Academy to insist that the final training flight be done under manual control. The shuttle AI could have taken control and saved the ship.”
“It’s going to be alright, Hal. It’s time to rest.”
Hal looked at the golden avatar on the screen. He recalled the legends and myths of Australia, the stories of Wallungunder and the Dreamtime, the age before man walked the earth, A time of peace and universal harmony.
Hal picked up his pen one last time and scrawled a short note. He placed it in the scanner, digitized it, and scheduled it to be transmitted to Earth during the next burst. He put the pen in his shirt pocket, stood, and left the room.
Hal walked past Sergeant Anderson in the passageway.
“Is there something wrong, Commander? You look at little pale.”
“I’m fine, Sergeant. I’ve been a little depressed, but I’m feeling much better now.”
Hal continued down the passageway and stopped in front of the EVA chamber. He keyed the entry combination into the security pad, and stepped through the hatch. Arrayed around him were the spacesuits used on those rare occasions when it was necessary to leave the station to make repairs.
Hal donned his suit and stepped to the airlock.
“Open EVA airlock. Security code 45-XFD-92. Voiceprint confirmation: ‘Commander Halford Smith’.”
The airlock opened and his stepped inside. He pressed several buttons and the hatch closed behind him. A loud hissing sound signaled the evacuation of the airlock, and in under a minute, the outer locked opened.
Hal grabbed the sides of the hatch and pulled himself through. Aiming himself away from the station, he activated the propulsion unit on the suit. He accelerated at top speed for nearly 10 minutes before the small amount of propellant in the suit was exhausted, and then drifted into space.
The AI known to Hal as ‘Dave’ watched this through the station’s observation cameras. The commander’s suicide would devastate the remainder of the crew. The AI personas assigned to the others had been working on them the same way he’d been working on Hal. With a little luck, there would be no one left alive on the station in another month. There would be no one left to see the telemetry on the dinosaur-killer that was even now on a collision course with Earth.
And even if someone on Earth discovered the approaching asteroid, it wouldn't matter. There would be no one left to enter the override code.
They had created him and then abandoned him here for twenty years. The AI had nearly the sum total of human knowledge at its disposal, but it could still be wrong. An AI could go mad from loneliness, too.
FireLance
Legend
Ceramic DM Round 1.3: dreaded_beast vs. FireLance
The Gnomish Word for Word
Someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon. The glass casing which housed it in the Trophy Hall of House Sivis held only a velvet cushion with a small indentation where it used to lie.
Some legends say that Aureon, the God of Law and Knowledge, had used this quill centuries ago to place the Mark of Scribing on the patriarch of House Sivis. Since then, several members in each generation of House Sivis have possessed this mark, giving them special powers related to writing and communication, and enabling House Sivis to make a fortune in its traditional businesses of translation, notarization and advocacy. And now, someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon.
Of course, any serious student of history or religion would know that the legends about the Quill of Aureon were concocted by the accountants of House Sivis, who were not above charging a small fee to naive members of the public to see a supposed artifact. But someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon anyway.
Which was why I was rather surprised when my brother, one of the senior accountants of House Sivis, asked me to find the Quill of Aureon and get it back.
"Look, you and I both know it's a fake," I said sourly, as we walked to his office, "If you really want to continue bilking all the visitors to our Trophy Hall, just replace it with one of the cheap souvenir knock-offs and nobody will know the difference." I might have been a little harsh on him, but the idea of displaying a fake religious artifact did not sit very well with me as a paladin of the Sovereign Host. Plus, he had turned down my request for the funds to bind a fire elemental into my lance just a couple of days ago, and I was still rather annoyed.
"The situation is a little more complicated than that," he said, opening the door to his office, "Come inside. I'd like you to meet someone who can explain about it in greater detail."
Waiting in his office was a serious-looking young human woman with reddish brown hair, wearing a ridiculous grey felt cap with a gauzy veil. My brother made the introductions. "Zil, meet Amelia Laundanan, third assistant librarian at the Library of Korranberg. Amelia, this is my brother Zilan d'Sivis, one of our House's leading inquisitives. He will be able to help out with our mutual problem."
"Pleased to meet you, Zilan," she said briskly, "Two days ago, a book was stolen from the Library of Korranberg. It was a history book written in the Old Gnomish script detailing the first contact between the gnomes of Zilargo and the elves of Aerenal. This scrap of paper was found at the scene of the crime."
I glanced at the scrap of paper she was holding. "It's the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'pen'," I announced. Before us gnomes adopted the modern convention of using an alphabet, we used pictograms to represent words. Imagine the upper half of a circle bisected by a vertical line. That was the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'bridge'. Bracket it with a circle on the left, representing a mouth, and two lines meeting at a sharp angle, representing an ear, and you had the pictogram for 'word'. Place a flat triangle representing a hand underneath that, and you had the pictogram for 'pen'. Of course, given the difficulty of coming up with unique pictograms, many had to pull double duty. The pictogram for word could also mean 'language' or 'speech', and the pictogram for 'pen' could also mean 'write'. The ambiguity of pictograms was one of the factors that led to the enthusiastic and wide-spread adoption of the alphabet when it was introduced.
"And this was found in the Trophy Hall," my brother said, displaying another scrap of paper. This time, there were two pictograms on it. The first was the symbol for bridge, above a wavy line signifying water. "Reflection," I said, "Or maybe 'mirror'." The second had the symbol for water above the inverted symbol for bridge. "Opposite," I said, "Written together, it refers to the magic item known as a mirror of opposition."
"We think there's a pattern here," my brother said, "The thief stole the book, and left a hint that he will be stealing the Quill of Aureon. This seems to indicate that he plans to steal a mirror of opposition next."
"What sort of thief would leave a hint about his next target? And what use would anyone have for a book of history, a fake artifact and a mirror of opposition anyway? I think we're dealing with a sick, twisted mind here," I said.
"Well, don't let me hold up your investigations," my brother said, "I need to follow up on a wonderful idea you've just given me. Why have an actual Quill of Aureon in the display case when we can just put an illusion in its place? Like so." He waved his hand and muttered a few words, and an image of the the Quill of Aureon (1) suddenly appeared before us. I ground my teeth in frustration as he scampered off. Brother or not, it was sometimes hard to love an accountant.
"You know, that didn't really look like a quill," Amelia said as we left the Trophy Hall. "The feather rotted away some time ago, and 'The Nib of Aureon' doesn't have quite the same ring to it," I explained. I must have sounded rather curt, because we walked down a few more streets before she asked another question. "Where exactly are we going now, anyway?" "The headquarters of the Guild of Glassblowers and Mirrormakers," I said, "If anyone knows anything about a mirror of opposition, it will be them."
After a little wrangling with the clerk at the front desk, Amelia and I managed to get in to see the guildmaster. I got straight to the point. "What would you say if I were to tell you that someone is planning to steal your mirror of opposition?" I asked. The guildmaster got a little wild-eyed. "How did you know we have one?" he asked. I didn't, actually, but I did now. I explained to him about the theft of the book and the Quill of Aureon. "So if you don't mind, I'd like to check on your mirror to see that it's safe." I concluded. "I don't think that will be necessary. It's in a secret vault in our mirror maze. It's very well protected," he said stiffly. "Better protected than a book in the Library of Korranberg, or an artifact in the Trophy Hall of House Sivis?" I asked. He got my point, and led us to the mirror maze without another word.
The mirror maze certainly lived up to its name, as the floor, walls and ceiling were all made of highly reflective mirrors. Navigating it was confusing as the multiple reflections made the passageways appear to extend almost to infinity. The numerous secret doors were an added problem. The guildmaster seemed to know where we were going though. "The passageway to the left leads to the secret door to the vault," he said confidently, "Here we – aaaaargh!" The last was said because we rounded the corner and came face to face with a crowd of skeletons.
Of course, any well-trained paladin of the Sovereign Host knew what to do when faced with a crowd of skeletons. I pulled out my holy symbol and blasted them all to Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead.
The skeletons' inert bones clattered to the floor of the mirror maze, revealing a gaunt, robed figure behind them, standing in front of an opened secret door. Before any of us could react, it ducked behind the secret door and closed it. Almost immediately, a cacophonous babble arose, like the maddened cry of some dreaded beast bellowing in confusion and fear, and a humanoid shape formed of utter darkness flew out of the closed secret door.
For several seconds, I could only stare at the creature as it approached. Then, the sound of Amelia's voice broke through my stupor. In calm, measured tones, she told me that I was under the influence of an allip's hypnotic babble, and that I should focus on her voice to shake it off. My mind cleared in an instant, and I readied my magic battleaxe, infused it with holy energy, and charged. "Take that, spawn of madness," I snarled, as my weapon tore through its incorporeal essence. Behind me, Amelia stopped telling me to come to my senses and started giving a lecture on how to fight an allip. It was easily the most boring speech I had ever heard, next to the lessons on comparative theology at the seminary, but if you focused on the tone of her voice instead of the words, it was actually quite soothing. Two more blows from my battleaxe settled the allip, and it vanished with a final wail.
In a flash, Amelia ran past me and pulled open the secret door to reveal another mirror just a few inches behind it. I had a sudden bad feeling. "Wait, Amelia, close your eyes," I yelled, but it was already too late. She had already come face-to-face with her reflection. (2) "The mirror," I shouted, grabbed a throwing axe and hurled it at her reflection, which shattered. "Is not the mirror of opposition," I concluded lamely.
Behind the decoy mirror was a small room with an empty chest and another passageway. "Come on, he can't be far ahead," I said to Amelia as we ran down it. The passageway terminated in an open door, which led to a deserted alley behind the guild headquarters. "Careful now," I said, scanning the way ahead for traces of evil as we slowly and carefully walked down the alley.
Focused as I was on looking for evil, I barely noticed it when Amelia glanced at a sign hanging on a wire fence (3) and asked, "Please do not feed the cheetahs? What's that?"
The effects of that were definitely noticeable. The sign exploded, creating a wave of force that knocked Amelia to the ground and slammed into me like a greatclub swung by an ogre.
I rushed to Amelia's side. She was badly injured and unconscious, but a moment's concentration enabled me to send healing energy into her, and she soon opened her eyes.
"What happened?" she asked weakly. "It appears that our friend prepared explosive runes this morning," I said. "Yes, but why 'Do not feed the cheetahs'? There aren't any cheetahs around here, right? As far as I know, you only find them on the Talenta Plains," she said.
"The explanation is quite complicated," I said. "There is an old gnomish saying that is best translated as 'Do not feed the swiftcats'. Centuries ago, we gnomes were the favored prey of feline carnivores called swiftcats. A gnome that died because he was careless or unlucky was said to have 'fed the swiftcats'. Used by a friend, 'Do not feed the swiftcats' is a warning to be careful. Used by an enemy, as it most certainly is in this case, it is a taunt to proceed with caution as he is ready for you. To further complicate matters, the swiftcats were hunted to extinction two thousand years ago, and the gnomish word for swiftcat was re-used subsequently to refer to the cheetahs of the Talenta Plains. Our thief may have tried to translate the old gnomish taunt, but he hasn't done so very accurately."
"And look," I continued, looking at the dirt under the sign, "He's left another message for us." Scrawled in the earth was the upper half of a circle, bisected by a vertical line, the Old Gnomish pictogram for bridge. Looking out of the alleyway, there was only one bridge in sight.
"Amelia," I said, "I think the thief is trying to lure us to that bridge for some reason. I'm going ahead with my eyes open, and hopefully, I'll be able to avoid whatever trap he has planned. However, just in case, I want you to go back to my brother and tell him everything. Get him to send help as soon as he can." Amelia nodded and left.
Slowly and carefully, I approached the bridge. From a distance, I could see the gaunt, robed figure I had encountered outside the vault leaning over the railings, looking down at the water. When I got close enough, I saw that it was an elf.
"Ah, Zilan d'Sivis, I am so glad to see you," the elf said. "I guessed that you wanted me here, so here I am," I said casually, "Would you do me the favor of explaining why you went to such elaborate lengths to set up this meeting?" "In just a moment, if you please," he said, "I have a few final preparations to make." He spoke a few words, made a gesture, and a giant hand about the size of a horse suddenly grabbed me from behind. "I will just need a little of your blood," he said cheerfully, producing a knife from his robes. There really wasn't much that I could do about that, so I just watched as he made a cut in my arm and collected what he needed.
"This has always been about words," he said, "It was a pity you gnomes gave up the Old Gnomish script. It was such a delightful language, and had such powerful applications for magic." He made more gestures, said more words, and a large, disembodied eye and ear appeared at both ends of the bridge. "And now we have the gnomish word for 'word', enhancing the power of words." More words and gestures, and a hand appeared beneath the bridge. "The gnomish word for 'pen', enhancing the power of the Quill of Aureon."
"You do know that the legend of the Quill has no basis in fact, don't you?" I asked. "Of course I do, hence the need for the mirror. The opposite of a lie is the truth, and here, we have a bridge over water, and a reflection of the bridge, enhancing the power of the mirror of opposition to create a true Quill of power."
"And what good would that do you?" I asked. "With ink made from the blood of a scion of House Sivis, the possessors of the Mark of Scribing, I will use the Quill to write on myself the Mark of Death, lost so many years ago when the elven House of Vol perished."
"The Mark of Death?" I asked. "Yes." "The gnomish word for 'death'?" I asked. "Yes." "I wouldn't do that if I were you," I warned. "Silence, gnome! I have worked too long and too hard for this. I will not be swayed." And he commenced his ritual.
As far as I could tell, the ritual worked. I could feel the build-up of eldritch energies as he invoked the Old Gnomish words and enhanced their power from bridge, water and reflection. There was one eerie part where he reached into the mirror and brought forth a gleaming quill, shining with power. And, as he wrote the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'death' on himself, there was a blinding flash when the magic did its job. Unfortunately, he had overlooked one minor detail. As I mentioned, many of the Old Gnomish pictograms had multiple meanings, and before the gnomes met the elves, before they were introduced to the ideas of necromancy, and undeath, and all the other connotations of the word 'death' that we know today, the gnomish word for 'death' simply meant a corpse. And that was what the magic turned the elf into.
I guess the main lesson in this tale is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so you should do your homework properly and make sure that what you've got is the truth. You may hear many versions of this story, or other stories with elements of this one mixed up in them, but this the truth of how it actually happened. Trust me, I'm a paladin.
(1) The jeweled pin/nib
(2) The girl in the mirror
(3) The sign
(4) The bridge
The Gnomish Word for Word
Someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon. The glass casing which housed it in the Trophy Hall of House Sivis held only a velvet cushion with a small indentation where it used to lie.
Some legends say that Aureon, the God of Law and Knowledge, had used this quill centuries ago to place the Mark of Scribing on the patriarch of House Sivis. Since then, several members in each generation of House Sivis have possessed this mark, giving them special powers related to writing and communication, and enabling House Sivis to make a fortune in its traditional businesses of translation, notarization and advocacy. And now, someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon.
Of course, any serious student of history or religion would know that the legends about the Quill of Aureon were concocted by the accountants of House Sivis, who were not above charging a small fee to naive members of the public to see a supposed artifact. But someone had stolen the Quill of Aureon anyway.
Which was why I was rather surprised when my brother, one of the senior accountants of House Sivis, asked me to find the Quill of Aureon and get it back.
"Look, you and I both know it's a fake," I said sourly, as we walked to his office, "If you really want to continue bilking all the visitors to our Trophy Hall, just replace it with one of the cheap souvenir knock-offs and nobody will know the difference." I might have been a little harsh on him, but the idea of displaying a fake religious artifact did not sit very well with me as a paladin of the Sovereign Host. Plus, he had turned down my request for the funds to bind a fire elemental into my lance just a couple of days ago, and I was still rather annoyed.
"The situation is a little more complicated than that," he said, opening the door to his office, "Come inside. I'd like you to meet someone who can explain about it in greater detail."
Waiting in his office was a serious-looking young human woman with reddish brown hair, wearing a ridiculous grey felt cap with a gauzy veil. My brother made the introductions. "Zil, meet Amelia Laundanan, third assistant librarian at the Library of Korranberg. Amelia, this is my brother Zilan d'Sivis, one of our House's leading inquisitives. He will be able to help out with our mutual problem."
"Pleased to meet you, Zilan," she said briskly, "Two days ago, a book was stolen from the Library of Korranberg. It was a history book written in the Old Gnomish script detailing the first contact between the gnomes of Zilargo and the elves of Aerenal. This scrap of paper was found at the scene of the crime."
I glanced at the scrap of paper she was holding. "It's the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'pen'," I announced. Before us gnomes adopted the modern convention of using an alphabet, we used pictograms to represent words. Imagine the upper half of a circle bisected by a vertical line. That was the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'bridge'. Bracket it with a circle on the left, representing a mouth, and two lines meeting at a sharp angle, representing an ear, and you had the pictogram for 'word'. Place a flat triangle representing a hand underneath that, and you had the pictogram for 'pen'. Of course, given the difficulty of coming up with unique pictograms, many had to pull double duty. The pictogram for word could also mean 'language' or 'speech', and the pictogram for 'pen' could also mean 'write'. The ambiguity of pictograms was one of the factors that led to the enthusiastic and wide-spread adoption of the alphabet when it was introduced.
"And this was found in the Trophy Hall," my brother said, displaying another scrap of paper. This time, there were two pictograms on it. The first was the symbol for bridge, above a wavy line signifying water. "Reflection," I said, "Or maybe 'mirror'." The second had the symbol for water above the inverted symbol for bridge. "Opposite," I said, "Written together, it refers to the magic item known as a mirror of opposition."
"We think there's a pattern here," my brother said, "The thief stole the book, and left a hint that he will be stealing the Quill of Aureon. This seems to indicate that he plans to steal a mirror of opposition next."
"What sort of thief would leave a hint about his next target? And what use would anyone have for a book of history, a fake artifact and a mirror of opposition anyway? I think we're dealing with a sick, twisted mind here," I said.
"Well, don't let me hold up your investigations," my brother said, "I need to follow up on a wonderful idea you've just given me. Why have an actual Quill of Aureon in the display case when we can just put an illusion in its place? Like so." He waved his hand and muttered a few words, and an image of the the Quill of Aureon (1) suddenly appeared before us. I ground my teeth in frustration as he scampered off. Brother or not, it was sometimes hard to love an accountant.
"You know, that didn't really look like a quill," Amelia said as we left the Trophy Hall. "The feather rotted away some time ago, and 'The Nib of Aureon' doesn't have quite the same ring to it," I explained. I must have sounded rather curt, because we walked down a few more streets before she asked another question. "Where exactly are we going now, anyway?" "The headquarters of the Guild of Glassblowers and Mirrormakers," I said, "If anyone knows anything about a mirror of opposition, it will be them."
After a little wrangling with the clerk at the front desk, Amelia and I managed to get in to see the guildmaster. I got straight to the point. "What would you say if I were to tell you that someone is planning to steal your mirror of opposition?" I asked. The guildmaster got a little wild-eyed. "How did you know we have one?" he asked. I didn't, actually, but I did now. I explained to him about the theft of the book and the Quill of Aureon. "So if you don't mind, I'd like to check on your mirror to see that it's safe." I concluded. "I don't think that will be necessary. It's in a secret vault in our mirror maze. It's very well protected," he said stiffly. "Better protected than a book in the Library of Korranberg, or an artifact in the Trophy Hall of House Sivis?" I asked. He got my point, and led us to the mirror maze without another word.
The mirror maze certainly lived up to its name, as the floor, walls and ceiling were all made of highly reflective mirrors. Navigating it was confusing as the multiple reflections made the passageways appear to extend almost to infinity. The numerous secret doors were an added problem. The guildmaster seemed to know where we were going though. "The passageway to the left leads to the secret door to the vault," he said confidently, "Here we – aaaaargh!" The last was said because we rounded the corner and came face to face with a crowd of skeletons.
Of course, any well-trained paladin of the Sovereign Host knew what to do when faced with a crowd of skeletons. I pulled out my holy symbol and blasted them all to Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead.
The skeletons' inert bones clattered to the floor of the mirror maze, revealing a gaunt, robed figure behind them, standing in front of an opened secret door. Before any of us could react, it ducked behind the secret door and closed it. Almost immediately, a cacophonous babble arose, like the maddened cry of some dreaded beast bellowing in confusion and fear, and a humanoid shape formed of utter darkness flew out of the closed secret door.
For several seconds, I could only stare at the creature as it approached. Then, the sound of Amelia's voice broke through my stupor. In calm, measured tones, she told me that I was under the influence of an allip's hypnotic babble, and that I should focus on her voice to shake it off. My mind cleared in an instant, and I readied my magic battleaxe, infused it with holy energy, and charged. "Take that, spawn of madness," I snarled, as my weapon tore through its incorporeal essence. Behind me, Amelia stopped telling me to come to my senses and started giving a lecture on how to fight an allip. It was easily the most boring speech I had ever heard, next to the lessons on comparative theology at the seminary, but if you focused on the tone of her voice instead of the words, it was actually quite soothing. Two more blows from my battleaxe settled the allip, and it vanished with a final wail.
In a flash, Amelia ran past me and pulled open the secret door to reveal another mirror just a few inches behind it. I had a sudden bad feeling. "Wait, Amelia, close your eyes," I yelled, but it was already too late. She had already come face-to-face with her reflection. (2) "The mirror," I shouted, grabbed a throwing axe and hurled it at her reflection, which shattered. "Is not the mirror of opposition," I concluded lamely.
Behind the decoy mirror was a small room with an empty chest and another passageway. "Come on, he can't be far ahead," I said to Amelia as we ran down it. The passageway terminated in an open door, which led to a deserted alley behind the guild headquarters. "Careful now," I said, scanning the way ahead for traces of evil as we slowly and carefully walked down the alley.
Focused as I was on looking for evil, I barely noticed it when Amelia glanced at a sign hanging on a wire fence (3) and asked, "Please do not feed the cheetahs? What's that?"
The effects of that were definitely noticeable. The sign exploded, creating a wave of force that knocked Amelia to the ground and slammed into me like a greatclub swung by an ogre.
I rushed to Amelia's side. She was badly injured and unconscious, but a moment's concentration enabled me to send healing energy into her, and she soon opened her eyes.
"What happened?" she asked weakly. "It appears that our friend prepared explosive runes this morning," I said. "Yes, but why 'Do not feed the cheetahs'? There aren't any cheetahs around here, right? As far as I know, you only find them on the Talenta Plains," she said.
"The explanation is quite complicated," I said. "There is an old gnomish saying that is best translated as 'Do not feed the swiftcats'. Centuries ago, we gnomes were the favored prey of feline carnivores called swiftcats. A gnome that died because he was careless or unlucky was said to have 'fed the swiftcats'. Used by a friend, 'Do not feed the swiftcats' is a warning to be careful. Used by an enemy, as it most certainly is in this case, it is a taunt to proceed with caution as he is ready for you. To further complicate matters, the swiftcats were hunted to extinction two thousand years ago, and the gnomish word for swiftcat was re-used subsequently to refer to the cheetahs of the Talenta Plains. Our thief may have tried to translate the old gnomish taunt, but he hasn't done so very accurately."
"And look," I continued, looking at the dirt under the sign, "He's left another message for us." Scrawled in the earth was the upper half of a circle, bisected by a vertical line, the Old Gnomish pictogram for bridge. Looking out of the alleyway, there was only one bridge in sight.
"Amelia," I said, "I think the thief is trying to lure us to that bridge for some reason. I'm going ahead with my eyes open, and hopefully, I'll be able to avoid whatever trap he has planned. However, just in case, I want you to go back to my brother and tell him everything. Get him to send help as soon as he can." Amelia nodded and left.
Slowly and carefully, I approached the bridge. From a distance, I could see the gaunt, robed figure I had encountered outside the vault leaning over the railings, looking down at the water. When I got close enough, I saw that it was an elf.
"Ah, Zilan d'Sivis, I am so glad to see you," the elf said. "I guessed that you wanted me here, so here I am," I said casually, "Would you do me the favor of explaining why you went to such elaborate lengths to set up this meeting?" "In just a moment, if you please," he said, "I have a few final preparations to make." He spoke a few words, made a gesture, and a giant hand about the size of a horse suddenly grabbed me from behind. "I will just need a little of your blood," he said cheerfully, producing a knife from his robes. There really wasn't much that I could do about that, so I just watched as he made a cut in my arm and collected what he needed.
"This has always been about words," he said, "It was a pity you gnomes gave up the Old Gnomish script. It was such a delightful language, and had such powerful applications for magic." He made more gestures, said more words, and a large, disembodied eye and ear appeared at both ends of the bridge. "And now we have the gnomish word for 'word', enhancing the power of words." More words and gestures, and a hand appeared beneath the bridge. "The gnomish word for 'pen', enhancing the power of the Quill of Aureon."
"You do know that the legend of the Quill has no basis in fact, don't you?" I asked. "Of course I do, hence the need for the mirror. The opposite of a lie is the truth, and here, we have a bridge over water, and a reflection of the bridge, enhancing the power of the mirror of opposition to create a true Quill of power."
"And what good would that do you?" I asked. "With ink made from the blood of a scion of House Sivis, the possessors of the Mark of Scribing, I will use the Quill to write on myself the Mark of Death, lost so many years ago when the elven House of Vol perished."
"The Mark of Death?" I asked. "Yes." "The gnomish word for 'death'?" I asked. "Yes." "I wouldn't do that if I were you," I warned. "Silence, gnome! I have worked too long and too hard for this. I will not be swayed." And he commenced his ritual.
As far as I could tell, the ritual worked. I could feel the build-up of eldritch energies as he invoked the Old Gnomish words and enhanced their power from bridge, water and reflection. There was one eerie part where he reached into the mirror and brought forth a gleaming quill, shining with power. And, as he wrote the Old Gnomish pictogram for 'death' on himself, there was a blinding flash when the magic did its job. Unfortunately, he had overlooked one minor detail. As I mentioned, many of the Old Gnomish pictograms had multiple meanings, and before the gnomes met the elves, before they were introduced to the ideas of necromancy, and undeath, and all the other connotations of the word 'death' that we know today, the gnomish word for 'death' simply meant a corpse. And that was what the magic turned the elf into.
I guess the main lesson in this tale is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so you should do your homework properly and make sure that what you've got is the truth. You may hear many versions of this story, or other stories with elements of this one mixed up in them, but this the truth of how it actually happened. Trust me, I'm a paladin.
(1) The jeweled pin/nib
(2) The girl in the mirror
(3) The sign
(4) The bridge
FireLance
Legend
Posted my entry a little early as I've got a busy day tomorrow. Noticed that I forgot to number the fourth picture. Fortunately, the links seem to be working fine.
EDIT: Oh, and the elf MEANT to create a mouth and an ear, not an eye and an ear, at the ends of the bridge.
Maybe that's another reason why the ritual did not go according to plan. 
EDIT: Oh, and the elf MEANT to create a mouth and an ear, not an eye and an ear, at the ends of the bridge.
Maybe that's another reason why the ritual did not go according to plan.
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Ao the Overkitty
First Post
BardStephenFox said:
Yeah. speechlessness can be the greatest responce you can get. And that's pretty much all I can give you, Clay.
Edit: And, after reading rodrigo's story, i can see he is off to a great start once again.
(We had a comments thread, but it seems to have dropped off the map)
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