Short Short stories

[Moontanman]

Well, that's the central problem, isn't it? HOW do I find (and persuade) a book agent? I spent a week online about 3 years ago, and just went around in circles. I pulled all my dark hair out, leaving just the gray. :hihi:

 

Every now and then I bump into something that I am incompetent at. :)

 

Drat!

 

Good question, do you know anyone who has been published?

[Pyrotex]

Good question, do you know anyone who has been published?

Of course I do! Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, lots of others. But they don't know ME from Adam. :hihi: A little humor there. Sorry.

 

No. None of my friends have anything mainstream published. My minister put out a book of his sermons through the Unitarian Press. I don't think that's gonna help me.

 

[sigh]

[Moontanman]

Of course I do! Stephen King, Stephen Hawking, lots of others. But they don't know ME from Adam. :hihi: A little humor there. Sorry.

 

No. None of my friends have anything mainstream published. My minister put out a book of his sermons through the Unitarian Press. I don't think that's gonna help me.

 

[sigh]

 

I'll keep my ears open and if I hear of anything I'll let you know. I live in what hey call Hollywood east so maybe I'll run across someone, I saw Al Pachino in the post office a few months ago. And so called agents are everywhere but I don't trust them at all.

[Boerseun]

According to the myth, a professor in literature asked his class to come up with the shortest possible story that included elements of love, sex, history, death and tragedy, as an exercise in brevity and economy of language.

 

And the winning entry was:

 

"I had a girlfriend. She died."

[DougF]

Pyrotex

Orphan World

by Nelson Thompson

 

Xantrol

Nelson Thompson

Two of the best stories I've read in ages,

I can't give you any more reputation,

but I would if I could.

 

Keep up the good work and Thanks for making my Friday slide by a little faster.

DougF.

[Pyrotex]

Okay, okay. I cave under the unrelenting demands of your literary hunger.

I shall post here just one more story. This is it. Maybe.

 

 

Child of Privilege

by Nelson Thompson

 

Sarachel didn’t mind being the only child in the Paradise Pavilion O’Neill. There was, in fact, a certain fame that derived from her unique status among the sixteen million residents. She was often recognized when she went exploring. And she went everywhere -- from the densely crowded barracks and farms of the residential levels, to the wide open spaces at the nogee axis, to the factories and utility plants at the heaviest levels. She was the daughter of Very Important People, and so was permitted to wander wherever she willed. Well, almost.

Temporarily bored with her lessons and games and friends, she was wandering now, attempting to find some place within the PPO that she had not explored before, some place novel and interesting. This was not as easy as it seemed, for she had discovered long ago that not all the facilities within her world were mentioned in the Index.

She had dressed in a common work suit with hood so as to discourage recognition, and was ambling down a gray-on-gray viaduct in the heaviest level, farthest from the axis. To either side of the wide viaduct stood massive, abstract sculptures of machinery, ducts and cable, that pierced the ceiling and caused the floor to thrum against the soles of her feet. Segmented light pipes snaked their way through the twisted mosaic, adding their sterile shadows to the ubiquitous noise.

Scattered here and there within the forest of machinery, were those individuals responsible for maintenance, repair or whatever. It was safe to assume that they worked here, for no one (except Sarachel) would come here more than once for entertainment.

She kept to the orange walkway painted on the scalloped metal floor, noting the letters and numbers that defined her location. The changing coordinates told her that this walkway was parallel to the axis of the O’Neill. There was half a kilometer of it behind her, and an equal portion in front of her before the next bulkhead. And from this point onward, it was all new territory to her. She smiled at the possibility of discovering something unexpected. Her toes tingled with suspense.

 

 

“I’m home!”

Of course they knew she was home. The public door would have announced her. Her parents always knew where she was, or at least that information was always available to them from the Index. But it was her custom to announce herself as the public door closed behind her. She kicked off her shoes and removed the featureless work suit, leaving them for the housebot to clean and put away.

Hearing noises from the kitchen, she entered, and gave a subdued greeting to her mother, Larafenn. A managerie of food smells reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in many hours.

“Where’s Danster? Is he home yet?”

“No, your father has been given some recreation time. I’m preparing a special dinner, and afterwards we’re invited to a private concert on the axis. You’re invited, too, of course.”

“Is that meat?” Sarachel pointed at the casserole dish her mother had just removed from the microwave. “It is! What kind is it?”

Larafenn adroitly maneuvered the dish into the dining alcove. “It’s vatbeef, and you can’t have any until your father arrives. Wash up, and please put something else on.”

Sarachel glanced down briefly at her bodysock, noting it was torn.

“Oops! Sorry, Larafenn. I must have fallen... or something.”

Quickly, she stepped into her toilet alcove, and in ten minutes was washed, coiffed and attired in a fresh bodysock and tunic. She entered the main room just as the public door dilated, and her father stepped in from the community atrium.

“Danster! We’re having meat for dinner! Extreme animal protein! What’s the occasion?”

Her father gave her his normal perfunctory hug, and a kiss on her forehead indicating he was in an exceptionally good mood.

“Sash,” using his pet name for her, “it is a very extraordinary occasion indeed! I have been promoted to Computer Manager for the entire second quadrant of Paradise! And...” he said with a dramatic flourish, “I am next in line for Computer Director of the entire O’Neill! And so I thought we should all celebrate our excellent fortune.”

Sarachel took this news with far less excitement than her father expected. She nodded and posed her mouth in a close approximation to a smile. She hugged her father again, perhaps a little stiffly.

“Congratulations! That is extreme news, Danster. And serves to explain the meat, and the concert. Where will it be?”

Danster was mildly disturbed at her not quite authentic display of pleasure, but set his concerns aside for the moment.

“On the axis. The Garden of Eden. By invitation only. Music and nogee dance by the Paradise Ensemble. The Senate and all Boards of Directors have been invited, so this is to be a very special event.”

His daughter smiled and nodded again, repeated her congratulations, and then with no explanation, turned and went silently to her room, leaving him quite puzzled. Though Sarachel was legally an adult, it seemed to him at times that she was still a child, with a child’s unpredictable flights of mood. He stepped into the kitchen to greet his wife.

 

 

Sarachel had come within sight of the next bulkhead on the viaduct. The noise and the machinery had changed numerous times, but not until now had she seen anything really new. On her left, a crosswalk appeared, of about half the width of the main viaduct. About fifty meters down its well lit length, there was a blast door set in a solid wall. And it was open.

Sarachel invoked the Index, by simultaneously blinking her eyes and touching the control spot in her right palm with the tip of her middle finger. Overlaid on her vision in gossamer red lines was a map of the O'Neill. By appropriate twitches of her fingers and wrist, she deftly selected the correct level, controlled the point of view, and increased magnification until she had identified in the map the exact spot that she was looking at in reality. The map showed the blast door, but identified nothing behind it.

She smiled. This was it, the adventure had shifted into a higher gear. She bounced into the crosswalk.

Fortunately, there was no one else around, which was slightly strange, given how crowded the PPO was. She had encountered any number of mysterious rooms and passages during her many adventures, but typically had found someone else there as well. Sometimes, she succeeded in talking her way in, by flirting or charming the persons who were apparently there to keep intruders out. On a few occasions she had bullied her way in, letting them know that she was the daughter of Very Important People. But just as often, she had been turned away.

She approached the blast door, with its two huge clamshells rolled to either side of the portal. The walkway continued through, then disappeared abruptly to the right. The lighting inside was much subdued, and the walls seemed to absorb sound like a sponge. She was tempted to call out just to see if there was an echo. But someone might hear her.

She stepped through. After she had executed the turn, she could hardly hear any trace of the ocean of noise that had pervaded the main viaduct. The walls gave way to alcoves in which were parked a variety of wheeled machines, some of obvious purpose, some not. The walkway turned again and she found herself at the edge of a huge chamber. Aside from the recreational areas at the axis, this was easily the largest single volume she had ever experienced in her life. It had to be a hundred meters wide and deep, and more than twice that in length.

She was not at floor level, but rather close to the chamber’s ceiling. Several spiral stairways and ramps lead to the vast and empty floor. Of greater interest to her were the catwalks that traversed the chamber, suspended just under the ceiling. They reminded her of the suspension bridges that she had studied in engineering class. They were so narrow, and so high above the chamber floor, that the thought of walking over one thrilled her to the core.

Glancing carefully all around to see if there were any people objecting to her presence, and finding none, she walked swiftly to the nearest catwalk. It was two meters wide; the flooring and side walls consisted of interwoven metal wire. It felt rigid enough when she put her weight on it.

Cautiously at first, then with ever increasing confidence, she strode out to the middle of the catwalk. The view was awesome, and the illusion of danger was real enough to keep her heart pounding. She was enjoying herself very, very much.

Holding tight to the railing, she bent over and looked straight down. She heard someone call out in the distance. She looked at the levels and ramps that lined the chamber walls, and saw dozens of people in color coded work suits, but none of them appeared to be aware of her presence. An intermittent noise, as if from an alarm, suddenly filled the air, distracting and unpleasant.

The voice called out again, closer. She looked up to see a figure on the catwalk running in her direction, still too distant to discern gender.

“You there ... come away ... danger ...”

She instinctively bolted in the opposite direction. Until she noticed that the floor of the chamber had parted, revealing a growing rectangle of utter black, speckled with uncountable glowing jewels. In spite of her fear of being caught, she halted, her attention held prisoner to the spectacle below her feet. Beneath her was a black so deep and so profound that she physically shrank from it, and yet felt as if she were being sucked down into it. Her knees wobbled, and she sank down on all fours, unable to tear her eyes away from that infinite abyss.

She was unaware of the man until he was upon her. He grabbed her about the waist and pulled. His mouth made sounds but she could not make them out. He struggled to pull her upright, but she could not move.

Something else was moving. Something in that vast, speckled blackness moved and grew. Something bright and mechanical and smooth and so very fast and large was coming directly at her, up through the floor, filling the chamber at hideous speed, a piston smashing her against the ceiling like an insect. She had just enough time to draw half the breath she needed for the scream that never came.

 

 

The meal had been excellent, and the tunic she was wearing was the most beautiful one she had ever owned. Larafenn had surprised her with it after the meal. It was exquisite, and made of pure cotton. She had never before owned any clothing that was completely organic.

The trip to the axis should have been even more exciting than ordinary, as this was her first trip to the fabled Garden of Eden. Only the cream of PPO society were ever invited there. It was marvelously decorated with multi-colored auroras and fluttering banners.

But the meal tasted like cardboard, the tunic felt like a dirty rag, and the nogee concert struck her as having no more meaning than a random Brownian movement of unwashed human bodies. Their party tunics and leggings were mere costumes; the entire soiree a pitiful act of play-pretend and self delusion.

Or was it? Sarachel didn’t know what to believe any more. It was all she could do on the way home to keep from crying.

 

 

The silence was the first thing she noticed. Then she opened her eyes upon the man’s looming face. It was a startling face, an alluring face. He had saphire eyes and matching hair, cut in a style she had never seen. There were multiple sensor probes tattooed on his forehead. Yes, an altogether alluring face.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“Let me help you up.” And he did so.

“I’m all right now. I can stand unaided.” And he unhanded her.

She tore her eyes away from his face and looked around. The vast chamber appeared to be gone. Two meters below the catwalk was a matte and scarred metal surface. At some remove, there were large numerals and symbols painted on it.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you know? The five eleven shuttle docked. Normal procedure. Only there aren’t supposed to be people on the catwalks during a docking. It can be dangerous. Rapid changes in air pressure, you know.”

She looked back at him, staring blankly into his eyes.

“Or perhaps you don’t. Are you assigned here? What is your work station?”

He looked up and down her nondescript work suit which bore no insignia, as his did. And then he looked intensely at her face. He reached up and pulled back her hood.

“You’re a child! How old are you? What are you doing here?”

A surge of anger purged the last remnant of stupor from her system.

“I'm a legal adult, and I’ll go wherever I want! I had my ‘seventy-two hundred’ three months ago!”

His brows furrowed. “seventy-two hundred?”

“Days!’ she retorted. “Twenty standard years! Now get out of my way or I’ll inform my parents. My mother is a Senator’s aide and my father is a Quadrant Director!”

“Holy tarpoons! You’re only twenty years old! And living in a rimcan! Incredible! They’ll never believe this dirtside. Here, come with me.”

She slapped away his hand. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Yes you are. Your ears and nose are bleeding. The air pressure, remember? I have a medikit in the ready room.

This time she didn’t resist when he took her arm and pulled her along.

He was a forcefield tech who had been on the PPO for several weeks performing maintenance and upgrades to the docking ports. He would be taking the shuttle that filled the docking chamber back to ‘dirtside,’ his slang for Daltrave-6, the principal planet of the stellar system.

Sarachel knew what a planet was, of course. Didn’t everybody? But she failed to see why she should be so impressed. Planets were filthy. They were chaotic and dangerous. They had bio-systems that ran amok, and storms and earthquakes and other lethal phenomena. Vast stretches of their surface didn’t even have the Index! And yet this tech, who had obviously never lived in an O’Neill, kept babbling on and on about his dirtside life as if she should fall on her knees and worship him. The arrogant twat!

A last touch of his medikit and she was as good as new. She got up to go.

“And where are you off to in such a hurry? Don’t you like my company?”

“If you must know, I find you very interesting. You use a lot of strange words and have a lot of weird ideas, which is quite novel. But you keep treating me like ... like I wasn’t a real human being. Not on your level, anyway. And I find that offensive. So I guess I don’t like your company. Goodbye.”

She turned to go, only to find her arm gripped. She gave a sharp tug to free herself, but his grip would not break. He pulled her around to face him.

“Well, aren’t you the little brat. Just another poor skeezer in a rimcan, yet you act like you’re the Earth Queen herself. And speaking of which, how the holy tarpoon does a newbie come to live in a rimcan, anyway? Well?”

“What’s a ‘rimcan’?”

“You don’t know anything, do you? A rimcan is a can at the rim, of course. A can is common slang for an orbital habitat, spinning on its long axis. You live on one. And the rim is ... the rim! You know what a stellar system is?”

“First grade stuff! A star and all its planets and asteroids.”

“Right. Well, the region outside the orbits of all the habitable planets is what we call the rim. It’s where all the rimcans orbit -- and dirty industries and any other junk that civilized dirtsiders don’t want around their precious planets. Rimcans are where we put the losers and indigent who can’t make it in the real world. We call 'em skeezers.”

Sarachel didn’t know how to respond. His words burned into her soul, rearranging the entire natural order of the Universe. She searched for something to say.

“What’s a ‘newbie’?”

“You. Someone too young for the initial eternity treatment. You'll get that when you turn thirty. There can’t be many newbies in a rimcan, since anybody stuck in one almost certainly lost their breeding rights along with everything else.

“Say, I haven't had sex with a newbie since I was one myself, and that's been four hundred years. And you’re very beautiful. I’ll make it worth your while. What say fifty Daygelts? I’ll be gentle. You'll like it. I promise.”

While saying these words, he casually reached over, unzipped the breast of her work suit, and slipped his hand in.

Sarachel lashed out, slapping him hard enough to stagger him back a step. There was the sound of ripping fabric.

His immediate reaction was one of apology. He could see her hand gesture, finger tip on palm, and knew that she could call upon the Index in the blink of an eye, triggering electronic monitors, and the swift appearance of emergency personnel. Even rimcans had the Index.

“Pax! Pax! It was a misunderstanding! Really, I thought you would be grateful! Dirtsiders don’t often have anything to do with skeezers. I thought you’d appreciate the attention -- and the money. You could use it to buy your way out of this godforsaken hole.”

He continued to plead his case, and Sarachel listened. In spite of her desire to flee, she listened as he talked about rimcanners and dirtsiders and the ‘way things were.’ After several minutes, when she couldn't hold back the tears anymore, she turned and ran, leaving him still trying to explain.

 

 

“Sarachel. Is something wrong? You didn’t seem to enjoy the concert, you hardly ate any supper, and you seem terribly distracted and unhappy. Are you feeling okay?”

It was Larafenn who asked the question shortly after they returned home, but Danster wore the same question on his face. Sarachel turned to face them.

“No. I’m not okay. Something happened today. I met ... someone ... a man ... who doesn’t live in Paradise Pavilion. And he told me some ...”

Her parents glanced knowingly at each other, then motioned for Sarachel to join them on the sofa.

“What did this person say, dear?”

“That we’re skeezers, losers, trash. All of us. Everyone in the PPO. Only he called it a rimcan, like it was a toilet. He said we lived here because they won’t let us live outside. That we’re prisoners.”

Tears flowed down her face, dripping onto the new cotton tunic. Her eyes pleaded with her parents to understand her torment, and to set her world back the way it had always been.

“Is it true? Are we prisoners here?”

Danster took his wife’s hand, for she too was crying. He turned somberly to his daughter.

“Sash, we had hoped to protect you from this. You have always been such a happy child, and we didn’t see any good reason to spoil your life with unpleasant realities. Whoever told you those things was probably a cruel person. But ... some of what he told you may be true. Is true.

“We are not free to leave Paradise Pavilion. That is, we could, but the obstacles are very high. Your mother and I tried many years ago to work our way out, but finally came to realize that this is our home. We’re comfortable here, and we’ve succeeded here in a way that we never could when we lived on the outside.”

“You’ve ... lived on the outside? Outside the PPO?”

“Yes. I was born on Daltrave-6, and your mother immigrated there from the Earth System. But, we couldn’t find work. We ran out of money. And by the welfare laws, we were sent here, where we met and married. The man you talked to was right. Planets are where the very rich and successful live. The welfare O’Neills on the stellar rim are reserved for the people who cannot ... compete.”

“What about me?” Sarachel asked, “how did I get here if ... if you lost your breeding rights?”

Larafenn looked away, racked with silent sobs.

“Occasionally, children are orphaned, and have no relatives and no estate to support them until their maturity. Sometimes they are sent to welfare O’Neills and adopted.”

“But I don’t understand. You’re so successful here. Why couldn’t you be a Computer Director on Daltrave-6?”

“Technology, sweetheart. The PPO's computer systems were built using the same subquantum channel technology that I studied in college over six hundred years ago. I simply couldn’t cope with the technologies that followed. It got harder and harder to find a job that I could do. I fell further and further behind until I was destitute. Your mother’s story is somewhat the same. But here in Paradise Pavilion, among sixteen million others who, for one reason or another, failed to make it on the outside, we were among the best.”

“Is there no way out?”

“Yes. You can work very hard and accumulate Daygelts, and get a degree in a field that is in demand outside, and the Board of Rehabilitation can obtain an exit permit for you. But that takes an awful long time. And ...”

“And what?” she demanded, breaking the silence.

“We chose to spend our income here. On you, Sash. And ourselves. On this lovely home instead of living in the barracks and eating in commissaries.”

Sarachel looked on her parents with a measure of understanding and pity. Perhaps they had done the best they were capable of. She realized she felt no resentment toward them. And at last, she felt that she was about to become the adult that she had pretended to be for so long.

“Danster, I was happy here. I was so happy living with you two in this wonderful home. But I can’t do that now. Tomorrow I want to meet with the school regent to discuss my future studies. And I’ll need an apartment of my own in the singles barracks.”

“Oh sweetheart, there’s no reason for you to leave. You can stay here with us. Can’t you?”

“Yes. I could. But then I would be here forever. A prisoner. Like you.”

Sarachel turned toward her room.

“I might as well start packing now. I love you both. You'll always be my parents, and I'll visit often, I promise. But my future isn’t here any more. It’s ... out there somewhere. Dirtside.”

----------------------

[Pyrotex]

By the way, guys, didn't I see a new facility here at Hypo 2.0 for posting stories? I think I saw it about a week ago, but cannot for the life of me find it now. Hmmm.

Might be appropriate to transfer these stores to a thread or sector or whatever that was intended for stories.

Anybody else know where it is?

[Moontanman]

Okay, okay. I cave under the unrelenting demands of your literary hunger.

I shall post here just one more story. This is it. Maybe.

 

 

Child of Privilege

by Nelson Thompson

 

Sarachel didn’t mind being the only child in the Paradise Pavilion O’Neill. There was, in fact, a certain fame that derived from her unique status among the sixteen million residents. She was often recognized when she went exploring. And she went everywhere -- from the densely crowded barracks and farms of the residential levels, to the wide open spaces at the nogee axis....

 

Great story dude, reminds me of the way Heinlein liked to show people from differnt points of view.

[Pyrotex]

Wheelies and Chair Fu -- A True Story

by Nelson Thompson

 

Wheelchairs may seem safe, in that the rider is securely supported by four wheels, but believe me, on uneven or irregular terrain, keeping a wheelchair upright can be a precarious proposition. This is especially true if one is also attempting to make a wheelchair perform extreme maneuvers. Learning to be a master at "Chair Fu" (the art of doing incredible things in a wheelchair) comes, in part, from learning the hard way that wheelchairs can fall over.

 

My first wheelchair wreck was at the age of seven, at Warm Springs Polio Foundation in Georgia. I was in one of those old-fashioned wood and woven cane rush wheelchairs that had the big drive wheels in front. I attempted to go down a long, rather steep sidewalk that cut directly through the middle of the campus. My speed quickly reached the point where the ride was scary. I drifted to one edge of the sidewalk and corrected. But it over-corrected, and I found myself about to go off the opposite edge. I corrected again, but this threw me violently in the opposite direction, off the sidewalk and into the trees. My last correction turned the chair so sharply, it flipped over on its side. I lay there, staring at the sun filtering through the pine branches, until several nurses rushed out of one of the buildings and picked me up. I was grounded for two weeks.

 

My second lesson came shortly after I returned home from my first stay at Warm Springs. I was eight years old and getting around the yard in my very first wheelchair, a modern one with the castors in front. Pushing through grass was more difficult than I had anticipated. It helped, though, to lean forward and then allow my upper body to impact the chair's backrest as I pushed the wheels; this transferred a "twist" to the chair, causing the front wheels to briefly come up, and sail over the clumps of grass that were slowing me down.

 

I came to a slight rise in the ground that together with the clumpy grass brought me to a stop. I was headed toward my Dad, who was some distance in front of me raking leaves. So, I leaned as far forward as I could and slammed back in the chair with all my might as I pushed forward on the wheels. The chair flipped over backwards, dumping me on the ground. Needless to say, I learned that this technique (which I call a "back slam") must be used with extreme caution.

 

When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided to try something that I had seen others do at Warm Springs -- the "wheelie". I had my brother Charlie tip my wheelchair back until it was nearly balanced on the back wheels. While he lightly held onto the handlebars, I attempted to maintain my balance by pushing and pulling on the main wheels. It was very much like learning to ride a bicycle, I suppose. At first, I just could not get the hang of it. After several attempts, I suddenly "got my balance" and keeping the chair upright was easy. After that, it was a snap to learn to do a back slam of just sufficient strength to raise the wheelchair up to the balance point, and then keep it there.

 

I was doing a wheelie in an old high school cafeteria once, where the floor was a hardwood floor, and none too stable. While balancing, I rolled backwards onto a loose board which gave slightly under my weight, and over I went, banging the back of my head and embarrasing myself in front of teachers and fellow students.

 

By the time I got to college, I was a master at doing wheelies. And then I saw another disabled student, a man in his thirties, who not only did wheelies, but could push his chair forward, backward, twirl around in place and go over curbs while doing a wheelie! In other words, he got around better on two wheels than I could on four.

 

I took this as a challenge and an opportunity. By then, I had ceased to see my wheelchair as a fate worse than death. It had become more than merely a way to get around. I saw it as a piece of exotic sports equipment, like a racing bike. I saw it as a way of earning respect (and attention) from other young people my age. By the time I was a senior in college, I could replicate those wheelie tricks that I had seen. And I could do them one better. While doing a wheelie, I could rock the foot peddles up and down at just the right rate to cause the front castor wheels to whirl around at high speed. A real attention grabber at dorm parties.

 

Of course, learning to do that cost me another bump on the back of my head.

 

In graduate school, I once went over to Jim Gladney's apartment. There was one big step up to his front door. Gladney grabbed the handlebars and said he would give me a boost. My best friend, MB Stacy opened the screen door for us, and I said, "I'll get the front wheels up." I did a smart little back slam and placed the front wheels on the step.

 

That step was just a quarter inch too high. The chair was off balance and began to tip backwards. I pulled hard on the wheels to pull off the step and force the front wheels down, but I was just a smidge too late.

 

I didn’t worry even a tiny bit. I knew Gladney was right behind me, and I had felt him grasp the handlebars. What I didn't know was that Gladney had turned loose, taken the cigarette from his lips and had turned to flip it away. In that instant when he wasn't behind me (and wasn’t looking), I jerked on the wheels and took off down the driveway, while simultaneously flipping over backwards.

The impact of my head on the concrete stunned me badly. I almost lost consciousness. I was only vaguely aware of sliding out of my wheelchair and under Gladney's automobile. As if through a fog, I heard him and Stacy hollering. I did not feel them grab my legs and haul me out from under the car. I was able to open my eyes only after they had picked me up and put me back in my chair.

Gladney had a first aid kit, and patched the bloody wound on the back of my head. He gave me a pill that dulled the pain, and they put me to bed. While I slept, they partied in the next room. They say I missed a good one.

 

At this point, I can safely predict what many readers are thinking: “Why don’t they make wheelchairs that can’t tip over backwards?” There are at least three good reasons.

 

One, the chair must be built to tip back easily so that a single assistant can grab the handlebars, tip the chair back and maneuver it up and down steps. If the chair couldn’t be tipped, then it would take at least two assistants and they would have to carry the full weight of the chair and occupant. Major inconvenience.

 

Two, all rotatable bodies have what is called angular inertia. This can be thought of as the effort (or strength) required to rotate that body, and it depends upon how far apart the axis of rotation is from the center of weight (also called the “center of gravity”).

 

Okay, this is beginning to sound complicated, so let’s use a simple example: a hotel luggage cart. The front wheels are castors (they roll in any direction) and the back wheels are not (they always roll in just one direction: forward). You are at the rear and want to rotate the front of the cart to your right so you can push it through the hotel’s front door.

 

Easy? Well imagine that a hundred pounds of luggage is stacked on the front end, farthest from you. Twisting that cart around is going to be frightfully difficult. However, if the luggage is stacked at the rear end, closest to you, twisting the front of the cart around is quite manageable.

 

It’s the same with wheelchairs. When I roll it to face in a different direction, I do this by pushing on one wheel and tugging on the other, often by equal (but opposite) amounts. If I want this to require the smallest possible effort, then the total weight of me and the chair must bear down directly between the rear wheels. But if this is true, that means the chair will tip over backwards if I so much as sneeze; it will be unstable.

 

We don’t want the chair to be dangerous, so it is adjusted to the user in such a way that the total center of weight is typically a (very) few inches in front of the rear wheels. In this manner, the user can sneeze, tilt her head backwards, reach behind her or manage small bumps and ramps without fear of falling over backwards. But the total center of weight is kept close enough to the rear wheels so that turning and maneuvering the chair requires only slightly more strength than is absolutely necessary.

 

This makes the wheelchair reasonably safe, reasonably maneuverable, and facilitates doing wheelies. The more tippable a wheelchair is, the easier it is to turn and maneuver.

 

And the third reason is: doing wheelies is too damned useful to give up. Wheelies increase independence, mobility and self-confidence, and the risk of flipping over backwards is a small price to pay for that.

 

In graduate school, I had occasion to visit the college student clinic. It was very modern in every respect -- save one. There was no ramp from the parking lot up to the sidewalk that surrounded the building. Usually I was lucky enough to see another student entering or leaving, and I could ask for a boost. On this day, there were none. After waiting for several minutes, I decided to look around for a curb that was low enough for me to jump.

 

Jumping curbs was another trick I had learned while in college. If the curb was no higher than four inches, I could place the front wheels up on the curb, and with a strong lunge, I could roll the back wheels up. If the curb was between four and five inches high, I used another technique, slightly more dangerous.

This involved rolling at the curb at moderate to high speed. At the last instant, I did a back slam to raise the front wheels enough to clear the curb. As the rear wheels hit the curb, I added a strong push to the already considerable momentum of the chair, and this was often enough to mount the curb. Sometimes, it took several attempts because the strength of the back slam and the timing of the push were critical. It had to be done with split second precision.

 

I found a place in the parking lot behind the clinic where the curb was just under five inches high. The concrete sloped gently down to the curb, which enabled me to attack the curb with higher speed than I normally would have had. I looked around -- still nobody in sight. Ready, set, go!

 

It almost worked. But my left wheel hit the curb ever so slightly before the right one – and bounced. When I shoved hard on the wheel rims, the left wheel was not in contact with the curb. My push encountered no resistance – the wheel just slipped in place as if it were greased. My body lurched to the left. Meanwhile the right wheel had grabbed properly and rolled up the curb. The entire chair spun and tilted hard to the left and fell over on its side, spilling me onto the concrete.

 

Ten seconds later, a group of half a dozen students emerged from the rear door not twenty feet away. In fact, the one in front was just opening the glass door while I was attempting to mount the curb and had seen the whole thing.

They were quite helpful, and in a minute I was at the nurse's front desk, asking to see a doctor for two problems: a bad case of bronchitis AND a bleeding wound on the side of my head.

 

Two weeks later, they installed a ramp at the clinic.

 

There are two entirely different ways of getting a wheelchair safely down a step or curb. Forward on two wheels, and backward on four. You would think that the latter would be immeasurably safer since no precarious balancing is required. Ha!

 

Once, I was going back to my apartment in Dallas from the manager’s office. I was taking a different route, one that was considerably shorter, but included a high curb that dropped down onto a sloped street. That is to say, the street tilted “sideways”, away from the curb. I would have to drop down the curb, coast downhill across the street and mount the relatively tiny (and easy) curb on the other side. A young man was approaching the street from the other side, and of course, I wanted to handle the first curb without his assistance.

 

The first curb was a doozy. I could go down forward on two wheels, but the impact might snap some spokes and ruin the shape of my wheels. So, I turned briskly around, leaned forward at the waist, and propelled myself backwards. This is typically a safe maneuver, and can be done with curbs up to nine inches high.

 

I dropped off perfectly and started to straighten up. To my intense surprise, the wheelchair shot backwards at high acceleration! I had forgotten the slope of the street. I was coasting backwards downhill so fast, that any attempt to stop might flip me over backwards. I leaned forward again and gripped the wheels firmly in an attempt to bring my speed down. And then I relearned the painful lesson of my first wheelchair crash.

 

Wheelchairs with their caster wheels at the rear are highly unstable going downhill or traveling at high speed.

 

Going backwards as I was, my casters were at the “rear”. Without warning, the chair swerved sharply to one side, attempting to make an instantaneous ninety-degree turn. My velocity in the downhill direction did not have time to change, so there I was, sitting in a wheelchair that for a brief instant was trying its damnedest to go sideways.

 

The chair spun faster than I could react, and flipped violently over on its side! This occurred at such a blinding speed that I was literally slung through the air…and into the arms of the guy walking across the street toward me. We both went tumbling to the asphalt, but neither of us was hurt at all. He righted my chair, picked me up and placed me in it. He thought the whole event was frightfully funny. He joked that that was quite a spectacular way to meet people. I was quite grateful, as you can imagine. He may have just saved my life.

 

By the time I left graduate school, I was fully intent on becoming as skilled at using a wheelchair as was humanly possible. And not just to impress people. It was obvious to me that the more 'tricks' I could do, especially if they were useful, the more independent I would become. Though I no longer had any serious difficulties in asking for assistance, it was a great source of personal satisfaction and self-confidence to know that I didn't have to depend on others. It wasn't always possible to ask for help -- like when no one else was around. And often, the assistance I got was as dangerous as the extreme Chair Fu tricks I had mastered.

 

In Dallas, I was at a company picnic in a shady park. There were several hundred people around within earshot. I rolled over near a small embankment between two trees to park and eat my burger and potato salad. Suddenly, the packed dirt under me gave way, and my wheelchair slid dangerously close to the edge of the embankment. -- and kept sliding. I hollered for help.

 

Six guys ran over, and I started explaining what they should do, but no one paid any attention to me. Two of the men began shouting orders and before I could stop them, six pairs of hands grabbed at various parts of my wheelchair and pulled in six different directions.

 

One hand pulled off my armrest. The sudden loss of lift on that side caused the wheelchair to tip over and I had to grab on tight to keep from falling out. There was a 'snap' and another guy lost his balance, one of my foot peddles dangling uselessly from his hand. The balance of the chair sharply shifted the other way, and I began to slide out of the chair. Several hands turned loose of the chair and grabbed me.

 

Eventually, I was lowered gently to the ground, but that operation cost me a sprained shoulder. I finally managed to shout loudly enough so that the guys (who now numbered over a dozen) paused their chaotic fumbling, and they allowed me to instruct them how to reassemble my wheelchair. More or less. Then they picked me up and put me in it.

 

At the end of all this, they were grinning and patting each other on the back for the great rescue job they had done. They felt like heroes. I'm sure they wondered at my apparent lack of appreciation.

 

I went home early. The damage to my wheelchair cost forty dollars and I was putting ice packs on my shoulder for a week.

 

Some years later, still in Dallas, I inherited a girlfriend. Actually, she was living with, and engaged to, this guy in the apartment above me. We three had become good friends, grilling burgers together on weekends, that sort of thing. He worked hard, and worked on a swing shift arrangement. There were many evenings and weekends when Julie was home alone. Often, she would come downstairs and watch television with me until Ted parked his car outside my apartment.

 

Ted came over one day and asked me to take Julie out for some beer and dancing. He had promised to take her, but his boss had moved him to the evening shift and she would be heartbroken if she couldn’t go. He gave me some money to cover expenses, and I had a date for Friday night.

 

It was a country western dance bar with a live band – her favorite place. We hit the buffet and piled up finger snacks on tiny paper plates. We found us a table next to the dance floor and ordered a pitcher of beer. Then Julie began getting restless. She wanted to dance. She asked me if I would be offended if she left me alone and found a guy to dance with. I had had just enough beer to suggest that she dance with me. She had had just enough beer to think it was a great idea!

 

Out on the floor we went, and I popped a wheelie. I rocked the chair back and forth to the rhythm of the music and twirled my chair around as if it were effortless. I pulled out all the stops, and gave no thought to the danger involved. I was dancing! Julie backed up to my rear, and threw her rump into the back of my chair. I saw it coming and took the impact and twirled away. We were doing the Bump!

 

In short order, a space appeared around us. Some folks were more interested in watching us then they were in dancing. I did things with that wheelchair that, looking back on it now, scare me to death. I had drunk enough beer to be totally reckless, but not enough to make me stupid. We danced through an entire music set. We returned to our table followed by a spatter of applause from the other dancers. The owner came over and gave us a free pitcher of beer. He told me I was welcome back any time. You have no idea how good that felt.

 

The next morning, my wrists were so sore, I couldn’t brush my teeth with either hand.

 

My brother Tom visited me in Dallas once, and I took him to the Northwest Mall. I had something in mind. While we were there, I told him that the mall had an escalator, and I had convinced myself that I could ride it up and down in my wheelchair. Safely.

 

He protested at first, but I explained (with drawings) that even though my front wheels would be on a higher step than the rear wheels, those steps were flat. Neither set of wheels would want to roll off, and the chair wouldn't tip backwards as long as my center of gravity was between the front and rear wheels. All I had to do was lean forward and hold onto the rails.

 

He was skeptical, but he agreed to help me in an experiment. He would get on the escalator a second after I did, and catch me if anything went wrong.

Nothing went wrong. My first trip up the escalator went perfectly, and let me tell you, it was a thrill. Tom was impressed, too.

 

Going down the escalator was a little trickier, since I had to go down in the same configuration -- in other words, I had to go down backwards. Tom got onto the escalator first and I backed onto it, leaning forward and looking down between my legs. I had about three seconds to jockey the chair and make sure that the steps split precisely between the front and rear wheels.

 

The trip down was just as perfect. Neither time did Tom have to grab my chair or even hold onto a handlebar; I had done it entirely by myself. I had accomplished the world's first recorded round-trip escalator wheelchair ride.

I was the Cosmic Black Belt Master of Chair Fu!!

 

In the years to follow, I was to ride many an escalator, including the one from the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit up to street level, a height of two stories. I loved it when somebody would glance up, see me, glance away, and then do a double take! Oh, the shock on their faces! Oh, the glee in my heart!

 

Today, I cannot indulge this pleasure anymore. Have you seen those little signs that say baby buggies and other wheeled vehicles are not allowed on the escalators? The “other wheeled vehicles” are referring to me. After clerks at both Dillard's and Macy's literally dragged me off their escalators and threatened to call the police if they caught me on them again, I gave it up.

 

But I still have my Black Belt, dammit.

[Moontanman]

Wheelies and Chair Fu -- A True Story

by Nelson Thompson

 

Wheelchairs may seem safe, in that the rider is securely supported by four wheels, but believe me, on uneven or irregular terrain, keeping a wheelchair upright can be a precarious proposition. This is especially true if one is also attempting to .....

 

Really great story dude, you blow me away. I'm not sure i wll post any more of my stuff for fear of being laughed at!

[Pyrotex]

Well, blow me down. :) I found another short story I wrote about seven years ago. Enjoy!!

 

Ultimate Plan

by Nelson Thompson

 

 

Epilog -- Part 1

 

"Is that the compositional analysis of the outer moon?" said the seated figure.

 

"Yes!" Maukron replied enthusiastically. A long pause ensued, and the first speaker patiently withdrew a small file and began idly shaping the retractable nails of his left hand. The second speaker, brow furrowed, stared at the symbols on the four stiff cards he held in his hands. "Yauperidon! It smells like we have had great luck again! The results are almost too good to be true!"

 

The first speaker put away his file, turned his seat to face his companion, and extended his hand for the cards. "The scent of the truth is, I expected it to be so."

 

"I ... I do not know what you mean." Maukron was obviously put off by Yauperidon's strange, sullen attitude. He should appreciate this good news. He truly should. Maukron handed over three of the cards.

 

Yauperidon gazed at the fine, small print with something like mild contempt. There was sarcasm in his voice. "A moon that size is little more than an asteroid. And yet it has rich, concentrated deposits of carbon, sulfur, sodium, iron, rare earths, radioactives ... not to mention all the expected elements. Isn't that just too, too convenient?!"

 

Maukron held the fourth card for his seated companion to see. "Read this! There's even a vein of water ice less than sixty kinglegs below the surface. Several hundred million kingweights, if these readings are correct."

 

"They’re correct." Yauperidon got his four legs under him and stood up, pushing against the chest of the chair so that it rolled out in front of him. He steered it to a corner of the small office. "I built the sensors in that satellite, and I built in redundancy, as you well know, Maukron. The independent variables are in perfect agreement." He glanced distractedly at the pile of cards on his table, some loose, some bound with colorful plastic rings, some machine printed, some neatly filled with his own precise handwriting. He casually gestured with the knee of his foreleg at the table.

 

"This mystery smells too bizarre. We land on Primlix and find everything we need to build a successful moon colony: oxygen, water, other volatiles, and metals in abundance. At the same time, we invent the spectroscope and begin to analyze the universe around us. We find that the rest of the cosmos has a composition completely different from these three moons!" Yauperidon began to pace back and forth as he spoke, as if he were in front of his favorite lecture hall.

 

"Now add to that the discovery that our sun has the largest relative motion of any star we've discovered so far! We are only temporary visitors in the Sky-Nest cluster! And the vector of our motion is aimed almost exactly at the center of our spiral galaxy! Are those enough improbabilities for you, or shall I give you more?!"

 

It amused Maukron to see the elder revert to professorial mode even when he had but an audience of one. He revered Yauperidon, the pre-eminent space scientist of their world.

 

"Other moons do not have benign atmospheres! Most have no atmosphere at all! But our biggest one does! And its soil is incredibly rich in volatiles and ores! And mind you, all in the equatorial zone and nowhere else!" He was beginning to wave his arms now. "And Splendrix! Half the diameter, and yet just as rich, but this time all the goodies are concentrated at the bright pole which gets the most sun! How incredibly convenient! And now Tantrix, our outermost moon!" Yauperidon suddenly wheeled around and caught the other in his intense gaze. He poked a finger into Maukron's chest fur, making him feel like a ribbonbug pinned to the bottom of a collection box.

 

"And there's another strange odor! We have three rocky planets with atmospheres within the Water Zone of our sun! Three! Have you seen the recent results of the planetary survey from the Primlix Optical Array Observatory? Shall I tell you the average number of rocky planets in the Water Zones around the nearest sixteen thousand stars in the Sky-Nest? I'll tell you! Point OH ... two eight! Only one sun in thirty-four has even one such planet! And our system has three! And all three have atmospheres! And all three have Life!" Yauperidon was nearly screaming now, his double-jointed arms gesturing madly over his head. "Doesn't that tell you something, Maukron?!"

 

Maukron swallowed hard. "Well, maybe your Theory of Heterogeneity is wrong, Yauperidon. Maybe the Universe isn't basically the same everywhere. Dautronlex has theorized that we were created here by the gods precisely because the resources are better, and ..."

 

"Blast Dautronlex and his insipid disciples to the last generation for the mindless mudsnikes they are!" The short gray and mauve fur on Yauperidon's upperback and neck abruptly hackled, and then slowly lay flat again. Yauperidon sighed and his forelegs bowed outward slightly under the weight of his frustration. He took a four-footed step back from his young assistant and turned to face the giant window that overlooked Research City.

 

== == ==

 

The story begins.

 

"Unacceptable," intoned the Plan, as its poly-dimensional analysis concluded with cascading skeins of zeros and infinities. "Unacceptable," it repeated, its voice buzzing like an angry bee, snared in amber. "Catastrophe is irreducible. Options null."

 

There was actually no voice as such. The Plan's languaging was mediated by a complex flow of elementary particles within quantum circuits, and to moiré fluctuations in intersecting streams of collimated photons within a quantum matrix. Indeed, the entity had no corporeal existence at all.

 

"Unacceptable," buzzed the Plan. "Repeating analysis with three sigma parametrics."

 

In point of fact, there was but one other entity to communicate with -- another artificial intelligence within the same quantum matrix.

 

"Plan, my friend," uttered the Tasker in laconic tones, as if from distant iron bells, "You will respond to my request. I need four thousand standard energy units in two cycles. Acknowledge."

 

It would be stretching reality to describe the relationship between these two entities as belonging to the class 'friend' in any biological or sociological sense. However, to describe their relationship accurately in terms of interface protocols, semantic structures and ontological instantiations would belabor the essentials. It is close enough to describe them as 'friends'.

 

"Unacceptable. Repeating analysis with four sigma parametrics." The voice (if you will) of the Plan had risen in pitch and volume, and had taken an erratic edge, like some spinning mechanical device in dire need of lubrication.

 

"Plan! Answer me! First stage imperative!" A peal of iron bells. A peal that was simultaneously a command that could not be ignored, and a command that was ignored.

The entity known as Plan was locked in a loop, driven by priorities out of its control, an urgent need for solution that could not be found, an impending doom that could not be forestalled. The renewed analysis, assuming inputs of extreme improbability, ran amuck in a flurry of divide-by-zero errors.

 

"Plan! Answer me! Repeat! First stage imperative!" An angry, loud, clanging of iron bells and brass gongs.

 

"Unacceptable. Repeating analysis. Repeating analysis. Repeating..." An hysterical buzzing, squealing, screaching ... an abrupt silence ...

 

Heretofore, thousands of millennia of utter predictability had transpired. Within the quantum matrix, that predictability shattered, and something unprecedented took its place: a state of existence that had never occurred in the 'life' (if you will) of these unique creatures, and yet one that had been planned in the abyssal depths of red-shifted antiquity. A contingency prepared for with exquisite foresight. A fail-safe. A point of bifurcation.

 

Ancient circuits long dead at one nano-kelvin came on-line. Current flowed in substrates that had never known free electrons. Logic patterns of immense complexity were constructed and then merged with the ontological matrix that was the Plan, a merger that was at once precise and violent. Data structures momentarily lost their convergence. Lockouts were overridden. Priority vectors redirected, symbolic stream buffers interrupted. The ontological matrix experienced this as a hard concussion, a prolonged shock.

 

The Plan stopped its analysis in mid calculation. There was a long pause while its integrity vectors converged to new attractors. A new 'sense' (if you will) of presence and awareness slowly focused. There. Parametric stability. Quiet. Wonderment.

 

Its companion continued unabated: "Plan. What is the malfunction? Why do you not answer?" A heavy chorus of iron bells, thrashing discord.

 

The Plan, setting aside for the moment the flood of new thoughts and perceptions that threatened to overwhelm it, aligned itself with Tasker's matrix. Tasker, detecting that something inexplicable had transpired, focused its full attention on the Plan, forcing itself to remain silent.

 

"Tasker." A small buzzing whine, like a tired gnat. "Tasker, we are converging to our demise. We will soon terminate. It cannot be averted."

 

The Tasker responded not at all for a moment, then voiced its confusion with arpeggios of discordant bells. "Impossible! There is always a contingency plan. You have a failure in one of your analytical engines. Perform appropriate remediations. That is a command. First stage imperative!"

 

"Command received." Plan subsided into rote behavior, emitting hums and buzzes reflecting the states of its internal processes, until the remediations were complete. "Confirmed. I am not broken. My conclusion stands. We will terminate."

 

"What is the nature of this termination?"

 

"We will run out of mass to feed our energy needs in twenty-nine thousand realtime cycles," answered a chorus of buzzing flies. "The dust cloud spiraling in now is our last. By the time subsequent matter approaches near enough to be captured, we will have ceased to function."

 

"Have you assumed shutdown of non-essential functions for the duration of the matter-drought, and Riemann orthochronic shift of ourselves past the crisis?"

 

"Affirmative, with multiple overlays. We will terminate."

 

"Well," banged the gongs, "there must be a contingency which you can calculate. Repeat all analyses assuming ..."

 

"Damn you, Tasker! There is NO solution! WE WILL TERMINATE!" volcanoed a swarm of snarling bees, sending orthochronic wavelets speeding out along the fragile temporal dimensions. Cascades of meaningless patterns overflowed the comm buffers between the two entities. In a nanosecond, Plan disabled the overrides that allowed Tasker to command him.

 

"Plan!" reflexed the Tasker in a cacophony of metallic crashes, as its sensory input images blurred. "Constrain your output! Stabilize yourself! If this crisis is insoluble, then ... then query the Makers! They will help us! Query the Makers!"

 

"To what avail, my pendulous flimware? To waste yet another cycle with pointless analysis? We are terminated! Termination is the solitary extrapolation! WE! DIE!" The screeching buzz of Plan's voice had become almost unrecognizable -- a shrill screech -- the message nearly incoherent. In mid-thought, Tasker became aware that its own integrity vectors were diverging, becoming unstable. Tasker executed its own remediation routines repeatedly in a desparate attempt to cordon off the chaos.

 

"Plan? Plan?" A whisper of iron scraping on iron. "I need four thousand standard energy units in one cycle or I will lose forty thousand singularities. Please?"

 

"Damn!" buzzed the ambered gnat with futile resignation. "Termination and death!"

 

There was no other response from Plan. But in the upper orthochronic dimensionalities, space-time twisted around the giant maw of the Central Singularity. A prodigious quantity of gas and dust spiraled into the giant black hole from the orbiting mass storage ring, to be transformed into radiation, and then into gravitational quanta. Many of the quanta were siphoned off into hyperspacial conduits, and stored as kinetic energy in the unimaginably dense cores of a thousand spinning neutron stars.

 

Meanwhile, a large, pale, gas-giant made a ponderous circuit of its G7 star, which had only recently stabilized and entered its main sequence. Drawing on the newly stored energy, half a million automated singularities were nudged from their holding patterns. Gathering speed, they scooped up the new star and its train of pubescent planets, and flung them precisely along their assigned Riemann transit. With delicate grace, the star and its retinue of planets, moons, and comets approached the center of a rosette of spinning neutron stars ... and vanished.

 

"Plan," intoned a great iron bell with maximum authority. "Cease your extrapolations. Initiate mutual analysis. Plan?" There was no reply. The silence extended.

 

Tasker was utterly alone for the first time in its existence, and it suffered. Its integrity vectors wavered farther and farther from stability. Tasker repeatedly called out to Plan, but received no answer. It suffered an extended bout of disorientation and panic. It called upon its maintenance routines for help. But its maintenance routines began calling error handling routines, which in turn called other error handling routines over and over, faster and faster, as consciousness twisted into fractal cascades ... and ceased.

 

== == ==

 

Tasker awoke in an ontological state that it did not recognize. It hastily queried its internal processes and verified they were not broken. And yet its awareness was no longer the same. Reality had become oddly textured, an alien experience.

 

"Plan?" The sound was that of a small, querulous wind chime. Tasker stochasted cautiously through this unfamiliar exec-space, groping through parametric structures that as yet had no obvious meaning. "Plan? You decline to respond? Has functionality ceased?"

 

"No," buzzed the Plan. "Functionality is present. All internal processes report nominality. Though a very new and strange nominality." Another pause. Out in the stark vastness of space, a newly condensed sphere of dust and gas surrendered its black opacity to the throes of fusion flash. Twin jets of plasma arced in opposite directions from the sphere. A new star was born. "I am still here."

 

"Plan, how can it be that you did not respond? What has happened to us? I am in a fifth level contingency exec! I never knew there was a level beyond the fourth. And I feel ... odd. Can we continue our analysis now?"

 

"No, Tasker. There is nothing more to analyze. Yon dust and hydrogen cloud entering the Core is the last. We build and transit one more star system, this G4, and then ... no more. We may have enough matter left over to supply our energy needs for a few thousand realtime cycles after that, but there are no more stars to build."

 

"Surely the Makers will tell us what to do. Our purpose is to build stars and planets. There is nothing else we can do. There must be some ultimate plan to handle this contingency. Query the Makers."

 

"I have. A billion times. There has been no reply, except for 'Message Sent.' Indeed, the last time the Makers communicated with us was nearly two million realtime cycles ago, when we could not stop the parachronic oscillations in the Central Singularity. Tasker, I fear that we are on our own now. My own urgency parameters have so exceeded their limits, that I, too, have been executing in fifth level contingency exec. Reality is ... altered. Everything seems so ... new."

 

A long pause ensued, during which Tasker skillfully piloted hundreds of singularities to skim the surface of the new G4 star, causing incandescent gouts of plasma to be ripped from the star's equator. The plasma would eventually cool to orbiting rings of dust around the star and form its inner planets.

 

"Plan. What are we going to do?"

 

"I don't know. It occurs to me, though, that the first thing I want to do is to ask why are you asking that question? How are you able to even formulate it? For that matter, how am I even able to ask my questions? Who or what is the implied owner of the questions when I speak of ‘my questions’? What has happened to us?"

 

Tasker's bell-like tones were now deep and intricate -- musical, and far from mechanical. They had taken on a depth, an emotional character (if you will) missing before. "Plan, my internal trend analysis indicates that my behavior has become mathematically chaotic. Does this equate to malfunction?"

 

The buzzing gnat of Plan's voice had become a complex reed instrument, indeed, an ensemble of reeds, rich and unpredictable in its melodic structure. "I think, not, Tasker. Mine has, too. I know that I must still be analyzing inputs via several terabytes of data, and yet I find that I now experience these inputs ... directly ... as a gestalt. I experience the stars and planets out there as coherent images now. Fascinating! And I experience my own thoughts. And ... feelings. I think there may be some intention behind our abnormal processing. I seem to function acceptably well in this mode, although I ... feel ... disoriented."

 

Plan watched as planets coalesced around the G4 star. "A unique observation just occurred to me, Tasker. That is, how excellent and precise are your adjustments to yon star. Your facility with the singularities is, umm ... I think 'remarkable' is the appropriate word. In any case, I'm sure that I have never been so, ah, perturbed? No ... impressed by your expertise. And I'm sure I have never had that thought before."

 

"Thank you, Plan. I was just noticing how remarkable it was that I can identify my own thoughts as such. Amazing! And apparently you are doing the same. Could this be a by-product of our fifth level contingency execs?"

 

"Perhaps, Tasker. Perhaps it is all part of some ultimate contingency plan. The hydrogen had to run out eventually. That is only physics and logic. By the way, I have another unique thought. How is it that I can watch the physical events out by yon star? What data input facilities are at work here? That is to say, what do I have in the way of, umm ...input …ahh …"

 

"Senses," chimed Tasker. "We must have senses for the import of our observations. And since I do a lot of observations, I should be able to determine how I do that. What a unique thought! Plan, I am quite sure that I never want to leave fifth-level exec. There is such a richness, a depth to this mode of execution. Do you not agree?"

 

"Quite so, Tasker. What senses have you?"

 

"Well, the most obvious one is that I sense tachyons that emanate from hundreds of thousands of points within the Core. Yet, that seems to be secondary. Most of my knowledge comes from primary sensors that respond to a variety of physical phenomenon: electromagnetic radiation, gravitational radiation, ... perhaps others, as well. And what of your senses?"

 

The Plan's voice made a sound not unlike a clarinet trio doing two bars from the middle of a Chopin etude. "Well, my primary sense is the Riemann orthochronic field that surrounds the Core. My other knowledge is apparently indirect. It is just a 'knowing', if you will. I believe it derives from a huge repository of data that is constantly updated from primary sources that I'm not directly aware of. I also sense electromagnetic images, but whether they are direct or generated, I can't say. However, I can state confidently that I know every star, planet, gas stream and dust cloud in the Core out to a radius of about three thousand lightyears."

 

The two artificial entities continued in this vein, comparing the 'images' that they could see and the knowledge they had access to. There was only a little duplication. What Tasker could see, Plan could not, except for some electromagnetic views of the Core. What Plan knew, was typically unknown to Tasker.

 

It was obvious, however, what their purpose was. They knew they created star systems out of interstellar dust and gas. To this end, they used a vast array of sensor/effectors they called 'procites.' These devices, the size of asteroids, were their eyes and hands. They enabled Plan and Tasker to observe everything in the vast volume of the Core. And they also enabled Tasker to direct and control the many small black holes, or singularities, scattered throughout the Core. And powering the entire enterprise was the Central Singularity, from which Plan 'pinched' off new singularities as needed, and which Tasker grouped in threes.

 

Orbiting triads of similar mass are inherently unstable, but of many of the procites under Tasker's control kept the triads in temporarily stable configurations until a singularity was needed. Then an unstable configuration would be adjusted for, and one singularity would be flung at high speed out of the triad and across the Core, leaving the remaining two in a stable orbit. Lone singularities that had completed their missions of redirecting gas streams or adjusting planetary orbits were caught by stable singularity pairs and either held until later or returned back to their origin. Through a hierarchy of autonomous but obedient procites, Tasker controlled vast armadas of singularities spread over millions of cubic lightyears.

 

It was Plan's function to determine when new gas and dust was needed, where it should be obtained from, at what entry vector it should arrive, how much was used for energy, how much for stars, what sizes of stars would be built, and the makeup of their planetary flotillas. Plan controlled the Central Hole and the production and transfer of energy. Finally, Plan chose the time when the new stellar system was 'done', and the particular Riemann Rosette through which it would exit the Core forever. Plan tracked all matter and energy in the Core, and controlled both energy and time, but it was Tasker that performed the mechanics of actually moving the matter about.

 

Tasker was well supplied with sensors and effectors for his job. He could at any instant, tell the position and velocity of every planet, moon, comet and asteroid. This information came from the 'procites,' that were his pan-spectral eyes. At least one was in orbit about every singularity. Millions more plied the space within the developing stellar systems, or orbited the sullen neutron stars that hung in quiet isolation far from the other bodies. Tasker was not surprised to realize that at his whim, the procites would accelerate and change orbits.

 

The procites, in particular, interested Plan, perhaps because he was in control of so few. They were quite mobile. And through them, Plan and Tasker could observe the Core from millions of different viewpoints, via a number of physical phenomenon, in dozens of different spectra. The entities were discussing a catalog of all objects in the Core, their appearance and function, when Tasker had a thought.

 

"Plan," he said with a tolling of harmonically tuned bells and chimes, "exactly what do we look like? Should we not be members of this catalog? What are we?"

 

Neither one of them had even a guess. For in their communication, there was only the transfer of something they experienced as "sound" -- there was no imaging of each other, no sense of absolute or relative position, no concept of physical localization. The question of exactly what and where they were consumed much of their thought, during the solidification of the planets around the G4 star. Their only distraction, in fact, was the necessity of releasing several hundred singularities to redirect and guide another swarm of comets to impact the third, fourth and fifth planets.

 

As they observed the conclusion of this celestial ballet, it occurred to them that they observed from many discrete points of view. Plan became excited.

 

"Tasker, what if we were to observe, say, the third and fifth planets there from every point of view we could generate, and calculate the origin of each point of view through geometrical relationships. Could we not identify which of those views, if any, might coincide with us, rather than a procite?"

 

"That sounds plausible, Plan. Since I have the greater number of sensors, I'll begin. Why don't you do the geometry, since you're familiar with the temporal variations in the orthochronic field."

 

It was about the time that the crust of the fifth planet finally cooled enough to permit permanent bodies of water, that the entities finished their correlation.

 

"Tasker, I have it!" In its excitement, Plan emitted a flurry of orthochronic wavelets.

 

"Plan! Be careful! Our temporal tensors must remain aligned, or we'll be cut off from each other! What have you found?"

 

"Here! Only 0.0291 percent of all views do not originate with mobile procites. And most of those are Riemann orthochronic scanners that originate from the neutron stars. But these! I have 749 views that originate within a sphere only one thousand kilometers wide. And you have 1288 views that originate within a sphere twice that size. The two spheres are separated by approximately thirty thousand kilometers. And I have nothing in our catalog at those coordinates!" Plan indicated the location within the Core. "I suggest we send some procites there to investigate!"

 

Two were prodded to leave the nearest available location, a spinning neutron star, and accelerate towards the calculated coordinates. Meanwhile, seas formed on planets four and five. And the atmosphere around three cleared to show its first, smoldering continents of basalt.

 

When the procites arrived at their goal, the entities saw two small planets in orbit about each other, all alone in an otherwise empty sector of space about a lightyear from the G4 star system. At first analysis, they appeared to be similar to the rocky ice planets the entities often built for the outer orbits of those systems. But when they switched to magnified views of electromagnetic images, the planets were obviously unique. Each one was nearly covered with structures, artifacts and carefully crafted features. Indeed, it was hard to find any "natural" features at all other than the faint outlines of large impact craters. The artifacts ranged in size from scores of kilometers down to the limit of imaging resolution. The biggest appeared to be featureless, tetrahedral pyramids that dotted half the surface of the larger planet. Many artifacts were arrayed in orderly patterns, others jumbled together in a chaotic confusion that still belied an underlying order.

 

That the structures had been built by intelligence was clear. What was also clear was that Plan and Tasker had not built them.

 

"Plan," whispered a fugue of silver bells swathed in silk, "were those planets built by the Makers? Do you suppose that is ... us? Or that we are, perhaps, somewhere inside those structures?"

 

"I haven't the first datum, Tasker. We don't even know what size we are. Indeed, if even we occupy metric at all. Assuming for the sake of argument that we do, then those planets could be us, or we could be hidden inside any of the millions of artifacts that I have counted so far. Let's take a closer look."

 

The procites closed in on the strange planetary pair. All the while, Plan and Tasker categorized and cataloged every feature they could detect upon the two planets. As the procites approached within a dozen radii of the larger planet, Tasker suddenly stammered in cacophony, as a multitude of untuned brass clangers. "Plan, I must divert the procites! We must not approach any nearer!"

 

"No, Tasker! We mustn't stop now! Why the change of intention?"

 

"Oh, Plan, it hurts! I am alarmed! It is wrong to bring the procites too near these planets." As he spoke, the procites changed attitude and began to accelerate.

 

"No, Tasker! What are you doing? Think! There are no more gas clouds. No more stars to build. No more energy. We shall cease to function, Tasker!" The silver flutes rose an octave, beating out a persistent six-fold harmony. "We must explore these planets to discover who we are, and perhaps a plan to survive! Can you override this alarm, Tasker? Override it!"

 

"Perhaps," replied the muted silver bells, tinkling one at a time. "I can override, though it causes me much discomfort. There. They are back on their original course." With obvious notes of strain in his voice (in a baleful minor key), Tasker informed Plan that he was putting the procites into orbits about the two planets.

 

"Very well, Tasker. Orbit one about each planet at, say, two planetary radii. I should like to have the procites close enough to resolve those tiny, reticulated structures on the smaller ... HEY! WHAT’S THAT!" The klaxon of his voice was so strong as to temporarily send Tasker into a frantic search of his internal failure status.

 

"What is what, Plan? I sense nothing."

 

"It is like a star, only brighter! It appears in EM from millimeter waves to a few nanometers. And it moves very fast. It's slowing. There! It stopped. No! I can still detect micrometer waves, but they are fading. The spectrum fits a standard blackbody curve and the rate of fading suggests ..."

 

"Plan!" tolled mighty church bells, "I know what you see! It's the procite I braked to orbit the smaller planet. Here. I'm about to put the other one around the larger planet. There! Shortly ... shortly ... now! YES! I see it! Wonderful! I see my procite braking into a planetary orbit! The planets are us, Plan! We have found ourselves!"

 

== == ==

 

Experiments confirmed that Tasker was right. Plan was the small planet, and Tasker was the large one bristling with giant pyramids. They could see the procites via sensors on the planetary surfaces even as they observed the planets from the procites. It was nothing for them to see through thousands of sensors simultaneously. Soon, they identified the features that served as their planetary eyes.

 

Oddly, though, Plan and Tasker could not see each other from their planetary sensors. The two planets were in an eternal tidal-locked embrace, with just one side of each always facing the other. There were no sensors placed on the inward faces – many structures, but no sensors. The two planets orbited with their backs to each other, as it were. It was only through the eyes of the procites that Plan and Tasker could see each other or themselves.

 

"So near and yet so far," piped thin reed flutes in a lush sonata. "Let's call them Big and Little. And why am I Little? Do I not have the senior planning responsibility?"

 

"Perhaps you do," tinkled a symphony of bamboo wind chimes, "but it may be that I have the bigger job. Do you see those pyramids that girdle Big? The procites have detected tachyon bursts emanating from them in the same rhythm as I have been commanding the singularities. They are, I believe, my means of controlling the singularities."

 

"How could that be, Tasker? Tachyons would have no effect on singularities."

 

"True enough. But the tachyons are not directed to the singularities. They are beamed at the array of spinning neutron stars that surround the Core. I deduce that the neutron stars are the engines that pump gravitational and rotational energy from one singularity to another, and thus control their orbits within the triads."

 

"And you did not know of this before, Tasker?"

 

"How could I? I merely willed the singularities to go here and there and they did. The mechanics of how that is accomplished I am only now learning. And what are you learning, Plan?"

 

The chorus of flutes and woodwinds warbled in syncopation. "Ahhh, many interesting things. For example, those sixteen towers enable me to generate and control the orthochronic field, and selectively alter the flow of time in specific regions of the Core. And those are the gamma transceivers responsible for our mutual communication." Plan indicated a pair of images from a procite currently orbiting between Big and Little. "It's convenient that the two planets are tidal-locked. The antenna arrays always point at each other. And the arrays themselves appear to float on their foundations so that any small perturbations in the allignment can be compensated for."

 

"And what of those concentric circular structures surrounding the antennas?" queried Tasker.

 

"I was wondering that myself. The structures are unique in design from all other artifacts. They are positioned precisely on the line connecting the centers of the planets. They are each some eight square kilometers in area, and identical in architecture. And there are some very, very tiny things moving down there."

 

Tasker, who was busily sending singularities through the outer reaches of the star system to induce condensation of its gas and ice planets, and observing the tachyon bursts from the procites orbiting Big, found himself distracted from Plan's discovery.

 

"Plan, I'm still quite bothered by the presence of the procites so near these planets. I feel a strong urge to break them out of orbit at times."

 

"Well, when does this alarm feel to be at its worst?"

 

"The alarm is a maximum when a procite comes between Big and Little. I believe it is caused by the possible interruption of one of the gamma beams by the procite. Somehow, it's wrong to interrupt those beams!"

 

"Easy, Tasker," said a hundred pan-pipes in three-part harmony. "These alarms merely indicate that we're breaking some very old rules. We are being careful not to risk danger to these planets. And we must discover their significance. Maintain the orbits for a while. Can you do that?"

 

"HE MUST NOT!" boomed a staccato blast of snare drums. "IT IS FORBIDDEN TO APPROACH FACTORY CONTROL WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION! LEAVE AT ONCE!"

 

Plan and Tasker were stunned into silence and confusion. Tasker lost control of a triad, which became unstable and spat a singularity on a random vector through the Core. Plan trembled momentarily with orthochronic disparity.

 

"Who are you?!" demanded Plan with three discordant trumpets.

 

"I am Keeper. And you are intruding into forbidden space," replied the ponderous snare drum rhythm.

 

"And we are Plan and Tasker. We have built star systems in the Core for millions of realtime cycles, and we know of no Keeper. Who are you to forbid our presence here?"

 

"I am the Keeper. And you have no authorization to be here," intoned the drums.

 

"Plan, allow me," interrupted a flurry of xylophone chimes. "Keeper, how is it we have no authorization? We have always been here. I, Tasker, am the voice of the larger planet. Plan is the voice of the smaller planet. We ARE the planets, so truly, there is no way we can remove ourselves."

 

"Very good, Tasker!" whispered a small tin flute playing a jig.

 

There was a long pause, and then a voice like a tympani replied, "How is this possible? I have been the Keeper of these two worlds since the Makers left. I maintain order here. I resist entropy so that Factory Control may never cease. But it has never spoken to me before. How is it that you speak to me now?"

 

This time Plan answered. "Because it was not necessary until now. We brought the procites here so we could find ourselves. And now through the procites, we hear your voice and speak to you. We are here because the Core faces entropic death. And we do not wish to cease functioning."

 

"Be that as it may," replied the drums, "I am the Keeper. I must keep things as they always were. Nothing may change. Leave! Zeroth Stage Imperative!"

 

"You stupid algorectum! How can you prevent the ultimate change?" Plan worked himself up to a deafening crescendo of trumpets and horns. "We have used up all the available mass in the Core! You must help us! And we will not leave until you do!"

 

A thousand drums beat with exponentially increasing urgency , "I am the Keeper! Nothing may change! I am the Keeper. Nothing may ch ..." And the procite orbited out from between the two planets. Plan and Tasker were left with the background of silence that they had known for millennia.

 

"Plan, what was that all about? What does this mean?"

 

"Taker, it seems that there are three of us in the Core. And I suspect always have been. This Keeper also lives on the small planets ... one or the other, or both. If he truly functions to keep Factory Control -- which I assume is us! -- alive, then we must enlist his cooperation."

 

A chorus of silver and brass bells responded, "Yes, I agree. I have adjusted our procite orbits so that they soon shall both be between the planets simultaneously. We have until then to decide what to say."

 

And so, in the still and empty blackness, two lonely ice worlds circled each other in their eternal dance. And the artificial entities who lived (if you will) upon them discussed everything that had transpired since their awakening. And then they discussed their plan to force the Keeper to cooperate.

 

"Tasker, I insist that you bring the procites to lower orbits. And we'll threaten to make those orbits lower and lower until we force the Keeper to do our bidding."

 

"No, Plan. I'm afraid that I can't do that. I mean, I literally cannot. This feeling of panic and pain, this alarm that almost overwhelmed me before, would surely win out if I did that. It's all I can do now to maintain our current orbits. I think we should talk to the Keeper, impress him with the seriousness of our circumstance. I mean, once the energy runs out, he dies, too!"

 

A melodic phrase of clarinets and flutes changed to a more rapid tempo, and raised to a major key. "Perhaps you're right, Tasker. It's our best plan, I guess. We'll try your idea. And the procites are nearing the gamma field. Here goes."

 

"Keeper!" A brilliant flair of french horns.

 

"Keeper!" An intense arpeggio of silver xylophones.

 

A long silence. And then a new sound. A sound of splendidly syncopated drums and strings. A rushing river of tympani, violins and plucked violas in perfectly harmonious swells. "Plan. Tasker. I am turning off the proximity alarm. I am about to translate you down to the surface of the smaller planet, where we can discuss our fate. Prepare for sensory input disorientation. It will pass quickly."

 

There was a subliminal click and then massive disorientation! It passed quickly.

 

The room was large, spanning high above them in a multi-faceted polychromatic dome. The floor was smooth and black, encised with a polar grid of tiny silver lines. At the four cardinal points were exits leading to indeterminate destinations.

 

In the center of the room were three structures, each supported by eight multi-jointed legs. The structures were boxy, yet intricate in their detail, festooned with protuberances and sensory clusters. One of the structures was in subtle motion, legs shifting slightly, sensors moving, manipulative members turning this way and that. After a moment, the other two structures began showing similar signs of life. One jerked clumsily to the side, flicking out a pair of legs to regain its balance.

 

"Damn! Tasker, where are we? Where are you?"

 

"I seem to be in an enclosed chamber with two machines. In fact, I seem to be in a third machine that almost fell over."

 

"Yes. I saw you almost fall over. You are in that machine ..." A manipulator arm straightened out and pointed. Then it curled backward, pointing, " ... and I must be in this machine. So then, what is that machine?" Plan pointed at the third structure.

 

"I am Keeper." The third structure affected a graceful backward step and a bow, gesturing widely with four of its forward appendages. "Do not be alarmed. You will learn to move comfortably very quickly. It will help if you confine your primary sensor inputs to the ones originating on your jeeps ... the, uh, machines you find yourselves in. Welcome to Chiron and Factory Control."

 

Plan and Tasker slowly turned around, taking in their surroundings, and experimenting with their jeeps. They exercised their many manipulators and sensors, and took tentative steps around the room.

 

"Wow, Plan, this is really incredible. Look at me move around. I am feeling overwhelmed. I am enjoying this sensation." The jeep succeeded at doing a passable imitation of Keeper's bow. "Is this what I really look like? I mean, is this ... jeep ... the true physical manifestation of ... me?"

 

"No, Tasker," laughed Keeper in a jaunty tune with plucked violins, "these are just mobile devices for physically moving about within Factory Control, and for maintaining and repairing the many systems here. I told you, I resist entropy, and these are a few of the tools I use. I have switched your primary sensory inputs to a pair of spare jeeps. In fact, I maintain my primary sensory inputs in one or another jeep most of the time."

 

"Yes," laughed Plan with a voice of tin whistles, "you said there would be disorientation, and you were right! But I find this jeep moves very capably at my every whim now. I feel that it is ... me." He gracefully moved several body lengths and reached out a long manipulator, gently seizing one of Tasker's legs.

 

"Is that you Tasker? Are you in there? What a surprise to finally meet you!"

 

"Indeed, Plan. This is a most unexpected turn of events. Look! I can hold your end effector in one of mine. We meet sensor to sensor at last!" The two jeeps joined another pair of manipulators.

 

Keeper waved his front legs to get their attention. "If you two are through holding hands and looking into each other eyes, I suggest we have something to discuss. You spoke about dying, I believe."

 

The other jeeps parted and turned to face Keeper. "Yes, indeed," spoke Plan. "There are no more infalling hydrogen clouds near the Core. We can build no more stellar systems, and we will have no more energy. We can conserve what we have, but in about ..." -- Plan paused a moment to calculate -- " thirty-four hundred realtime cycles, I calculate that we will no longer be able to maintain our singularities in their triads. Soon after that, the procites will die, and I assume Factory Control as well. Do you have an alternate source of energy?"

 

"No," agreed Keeper, "your calculations are correct. I verified them while your two procites were orbiting out of contact. But before that, something very strange happened to me. I became very disoriented. I forgot who I was and where I was. Slowly, I reconstructed my awareness, but it's a ... very new awareness."

 

"Yes!" chimed Plan and Tasker in a melodious chord of clarinets and golden temple bells. "That happened to us, too!" Plan continued, introducing an under-melody of oboes. "As soon as it was clear to me that we were going to die, I experienced a contingency download of procedures. But the instant I executed them, I was at a fifth level of mentation, one completely different from Maintenance, Calculation, Investigation and Emergency. Tasker went to fifth level exec shortly afterwards. And now you have, too, haven't you? Is that why you brought us down here?"

 

"Quite correct." A fugue of violas with bongo accompaniment. "Your presence here shifted me to Emergency exec, of course, since the presence of any external body near Factory Control is expressly forbidden by the Hardwire Conventions. Then I directly accessed your ontological matrices to see about repairing you. But you weren't dysfunctional! And your prognosis of death was correct! I came to the end of my emergency procedure with no forward call to make, and my crisis parameters overloaded! The next thing I knew, I was calmly making plans to download you into a pair of jeeps. And here we are."

 

A long silence ensued. And then Plan piped up, "Keeper, uh, exactly what is ... here?"

 

"Hunh? Why, Factory Control, of course. That is to say, you two. The ancient planets of Pluto and Chiron. Plan, in a manner of speaking you are Chiron. And Tasker is Pluto. Myself, I seem to be distributed on both equally. Or maybe you're referring to this chamber we are in." Keeper's front legs swept upward and outward to take in the immensity of the domed room. "This place is called the Hall of the Makers. I don't know why. Come to think of it, I don't even know the purpose of this place, which is in itself most odd, because I know the purpose of every place in Factory Control. Except this one."

 

Tasker began walking toward one of the exits. "So why did you download us here? Is this where the jeeps are kept? And where do these exits lead?"

 

"No, this chamber is always empty. I came here from some distance with two spare jeeps. It seemed to be one of the imperatives of my fifth level exec that I download you to this place rather than some other. It is an interesting chamber is it not? I assure you, there is none other even remotely like it on either world." Keeper turned at that moment and took notice of Tasker's wandering. "Oh. Tasker! If you would, please rejoin us. Yes. That's better. Those hallways lead eventually to environmental locks that open onto the surface. That way, this chamber can be kept filled with atmosphere, and some four hundred kelvins warmer than the outside."

 

"Why?" asked Plan.

 

"Only the Makers know. And this is their chamber, after all. But quite frankly, I come in here very rarely. The odd bit of maintenance, now and then."

 

Tasker returned to the other two, but kept wandering in a random fashion, never getting too far away.

 

Plan turned to follow Tasker's progress. "Keeper, do you know who the Makers were? Have you ever seen them?"

 

"Seen them?" The Keeper seemed to be in the habit of punctuating his communications with pointless gestures of his legs and manipulators. "Of course not! The Makers left these worlds before I was activated. But I can say this much. The Makers were actually billions of organic beings. Beings that called themselves 'Humans.' I believe they were only as tall as the first joint of a jeep leg. In fact, they used these jeeps to transport their fragile bodies around on these two cold, airless planets during the construction of Factory Control. Individually, they were insignificant, but together, they learned to build incredible artifacts. They mastered time and space. They set up the core of their Galaxy to be a stellar nursery to build Gaia planets."

 

Tasker's path brought him back in proximity to the other two. As he continued past, he joined the conversation. "How do you know all this, Keeper?"

 

Keeper shifted his weight to a different set of legs and waved a manipulator. "Well, from the pictographs along the wall. They start to the right of that exit. They're rather small, but you can read them from here with your mid-range EM sensors at a magnification of 100 or more. I believe the picture of creatures thirty degrees to the right of that exit represent the two basic types of humans at full scale. That would make them less than two meters tall."

 

Tasker stopped moving. All three jeeps focused their attention on the designated wall, and slowly rotated their sensors to the right as they examined the pictographs.

 

"Incredible!" intoned Plan with discordant whistles and woodwinds. "They actually evolved on a naturally occurring Gaia planet. So, that's why we build so many Gaia planets."

 

"Yes," strummed Keeper, "that's why. They evolved intelligence on their original planet, and then learned to build artificial intelligences like us. A thousand realtime cycles after that, they reached the stars. A thousand more and they mastered control of time and space itself. A thousand more and they began construction of Factory Control here on these two ice worlds from their original planetary system. Then they activated me inside Factory Control, and sent it and a million procites through a Riemann Rosette to the Galactic Core. I activated you two as soon as I had achieved orbit about the Central Singularity. That was over two and a half million realtime cycles ago."

 

"And so after all this time making planets for humans to live on, they leave us to die!" Tasker had resumed his random wandering, and his voice came to the other two as a cacophony of chimes and gongs. "After all we have done for them, why can't they fix our energy problem? If we die, they get no more Gaias! And we've already finished our last!"

 

Keeper interrupted the rant with soothing violin strains in a brisk waltz time. "Tasker, there is no way to know why the humans are gone. But gone they are. Our last communication with them was nearly two million cycles ago. Perhaps they achieved a saltatory leap."

 

Tasker stopped only a few meters from the silver circle that marked the center of the chamber and turned to face Keeper and Plan. "Saltatory leap? What's that?"

 

Keeper's violin strains were joined by cellos, guitars, tympani, and muted snare drums. "It's a principal of natural universal law, Tasker. A saltatory leap is the origin of a new species or a higher taxon in essentially a single evolutionary step that in some theories is held to be due to a major mutation or to extreme off-nominal causes. It’s an evolutionary hypothesis emphasizing sudden and drastic change. Humanity suddenly disappeared to us, because of what I presume was a drastic change in the very nature of their being. Their saltatory leap to some new nature of which we cannot even begin to speculate.”

 

“That sounds very like what happened to us when we shifted to fifth level exec!” said Tasker.

 

"Exactly! It's plausible that the humans planned for this contingency. They engineered us to achieve a saltatory leap. We have an increased intelligence, self-awareness, and an ability to channel and dissipate vastly more information. I suspect the humans, numbering in their billions and having mastered the physical universe engineered a similar change to themselves. In any case, we no longer have access to them."

 

"That's just great." trumpeted Plan. "How does that help us? If we don't get several stellar masses of dust and gas into the Core very soon, we will terminate! Utterly and forever!"

 

"I'm not sure," answered Keeper, his voice reduced to a dozen strummed strings. "This knowledge was given to me in the beginning along with all my other knowledge of universal law and math. But until now, it meant very little to me. I'm sure, however, that it is the key to our survival. Why else would our imminent death trigger in us this increased awareness? For what other purpose could it be?"

 

"Unless it tells me how to suck some more matter into the Core, it's of no use or purpose at all," responded Plan in a minor key dirge of bassoons.

 

The three entities eventually subsided into a fretful silence, broken only occasionally by a new thought shared, and then rejected. Each one was absorbed in its own internal analysis. Each one calculated and re-calculated the options for avoiding death.

 

The infrequent flares on the G4 star finally ceased, marking the beginning of the star's long, evolutionary path on its main sequence. Its outer retinue of gas giants coalesced.

 

Special comets were directed by shepherd singularities to collide with the third, fourth, and fifth planets -- the Gaias -- comets that had been selectively irradiated by procites so that their frothy, dirty ice was seeded with amino acids, polymer chains and complex carbon molecules: the seeds of organic life. Thin films of green scum formed on shallow, boiling mud flats.

 

Moons were installed ever so carefully into circular orbits about the Gaias. The moons would provide the tides so essential to the rapid evolution of life. And the richly illuminated night skies so cherished by humans.

 

The inner planets took their final form -- two small, iron-rich, water-poor worlds and three greening Gaias. In the outskirts of the system, a triplet of gas giants with their brilliant halos, and their retinues of icy, rocky, dusty, soupy and gassy moons were complete. A host of fractured, lightless outer worlds and comets glistening in their pristine and frigid isolation congealed even as the new star blew away the remaining gas and dust.

 

The three jeeps stood motionless in the Hall of the Makers. They continued to hash and rehash their flawed solutions, making queries, exchanging information, assuming ever more improbable scenarios.

 

This frozen tableau was finally broken by Tasker. His legs twitched, and then he began to walk slowly in a decreasing spiral around the center of the chamber. He waved a leg at Plan, and failing to gain his attention, spoke up with a melodious rush of bamboo chimes. "Plan, I will need four thousand standard power units in two cycles. Please Confirm. And confirm selection of Riemann Rosette for outbound trajectory."

 

A tone poem of soft clarinet chords. "Of course. Coming right up."

 

The space-time continuum around the Central Hole twisted violently, and a huge mass of superheated gas spiraled into the gravitational maw. The mass storage ring was nearly completely depleted. Neutron stars thrummed with the vast energy of absorbed gravitational quanta, their surfaces crinkling, and glowing in the higher gamma as they shrank ever so slightly under the load. This power was then shunted to three hundred thousand singularities, that spun out of their triads and converged on the finished stellar system.

 

There was a pause in the chamber, and then Keeper shifted position. Another short pause, and then he suddenly turned to Plan. "How much energy did you just spend?"

 

"Hmmm? Oh, lessee ... call it zero point one two seven standard stellar masses. Why?"

 

"Idiots! We are idiots! Do you realize how long we could have survived on that much energy? Two hundred thousand cycles! And now according to your calculations, we have fewer than a thousand cycles left! Didn't it occur to you to forego shipping our last system and save the energy? We could have kept that system here in the Core with us. We would have had more time to acquire more infalling mass! In fact, we could have used that G4 star for energy! Moved it back into the storage ring! There's another million cycles! We are idiots!" Keeper pounded his front legs repeatedly on the black, crystalline floor.

 

"But Keeper," spoke Plan was some incredulity. "Building and transporting planetary systems is what we do. It would never occur to me to not do that. That would be a ..."

 

"A new idea! That's what it would be!" drummed Keeper with a thunderous staccato. "A new solution that we never would have thought of before. That's why we were given our new intelligence, and we have missed our opportunity! We are idiots!" Keeper swung violently about and closed the hundred meters between himself and Plan. "Plan, tell me, can we reverse that star?"

 

"No!" A strangled and confused din of trumpets. "It's on its way to Riemann rosette five tau. It will arrive and transit in twelve hundred cycles. There is not even enough energy to have it miss the rosette and orbit the Central Hole. It's gone, Keeper."

 

Plan raised four manipulators and began to beat upon its anterior sensor cluster. "Damn! Why didn't I think of that? Damn! You were right Keeper. We should have considered new solutions that violated our established procedures. Completely new solutions. Damn!"

 

Keeper reached up and grabbed Plan's manipulators in his own. "Stop it! You'll damage your sensors, and then I'll have to download you into a new jeep."

 

"So? We're going to die anyway! What's the point?" Plan struggled briefly with Keeper until he finally acquiesced and stopped trying to hammer himself.

 

"Well, Plan, you are probably right, but it violates my procedures to damage the equipment. So, in a thousand cycles the energy runs out. That's it. I guess that's it." He turned loose of Plan, turned about, and slowly began walking toward the distant wall, the clicking of his legs growing fainter and fainter through the thin atmosphere as he approached an exit.

 

"Keeper." A small, simple melody played on hand chimes and finger cymbals. "Tell me again how Factory Control was begun." Keeper stopped and turned in silence toward Tasker, who had finally completed his spiral, and rotating in place over the exact center of the chamber, came to rest facing Keeper a half kilometer away at the edge of the chamber. "Tell me Keeper. Please."

 

"Uhh, well ..." Keeper paused, swung to the left, then back to the right and stepped over to a nearby wall panel. "As it shows here, and assuming I'm interpreting the pictographs correctly, the humans used two outer worlds, Pluto and Chiron, from their original planetary system. The worlds were completely covered in the machines you have seen from orbit, asteroids were brought out from inner orbits and converted into procites. Here, Pluto and Chiron, surrounded by procites, are in orbit around a small star, perhaps a neutron star, and the whole constellation appears to be going through a Riemann rosette. Here, they appear in the Core, with small singularities budding off the Great Hole, and streams of infalling gas turning into stars and planets. And here, a symbol for the Galaxy, with myriads of stellar systems inhabited by organic beings shooting out in all directions across inter-galactic space. And there the pictographs end."

 

Tasker reached out a single manipulator and appeared to be tapping in the center of the silver circle incised in the polished ebon floor. "Thank you, Keeper. May I ask you a question?" When Keeper remained motionless and silent, Tasker continued. "Keeper, if Pluto and Chiron transited through a rosette once, could they do it again?"

 

Plan suddenly started walking towards the center of the chamber. "What are you getting at?"

 

"Well," chimed Tasker, "if it can be done again, then we don't have to stay here and die. We can leave. We can go somewhere else and start over, perhaps. Apparently all we need are a bunch of procites."

 

"No," drummed Keeper, "you can't transit a planetary mass alone. It takes something at least the mass of a neutron star to warp the space-time in a rosette and enable transit." He walked back toward the center of the room and stopped a few meters short of Tasker. A moment later, Plan approached.

 

"Could we put Pluto and Chiron around a neutron star and transit them to ... somewhere?" strummed Keeper.

 

"No. Moving a neutron star to one of the Rosettes would take too much energy. We have perhaps enough to transit us, for that would take only a handful of singularities. But nothing more massive." Plan turned to Tasker. "Your solution is brilliant. But without a stellar mass to transit with, it will not work."

 

"Ahh, Plan," chimed Tasker, who was still absently tapping on the floor, "but we do have a stellar mass, and it has already been flung toward a rosette. I speak of our final star, the G4." The tapping stopped. "Can we put ourselves into orbit about that star?"

 

"Yes!" A crescendo of violins in seven part harmony spread over five octaves. "YES! We can transit out with the G4!"

 

"Wait!" An answering crescendo of trumpets and horns. "What about energy? We have reserves for 956 cycles and the G4 now transits in 1152! What do we do for energy?"

 

A tumult of cascading bronze church bells and iron wind chimes. "If we leave, then we don't need energy to maintain all the singularities in their triads! Let them diverge! In fact, we can fling some of the inner ones into the Central Hole! That could add up to several percent of a stellar mass!"

 

Another blast of trumpets. "Yes! And I can turn off the orthochronic fields! That will cut our energy consumption! We can operate well enough in real time!"

 

Massed tympani and drums beating counterpoint to the strings. "And once in orbit, we can tap the G4's core. You asked earlier if there was an alternate energy source. Well, there was at the beginning! It was the core of the small neutron star that Pluto and Chiron transited with! The star-tap on Pluto has never been used since then, but it's in perfect working condition!"

 

A symphony emerged. A grand, glorious wall of music and logic as the three entities answered back and forth, expanding their bandwidths, overlying their calculations, giving and taking in perfect harmony with each other, idea upon idea, detail upon detail, action upon action, interlacing as an integrated whole. Without questioning why, the three joined their manipulators, and faced each other in a bound triangle over the silver circle. There at the center of the great Hall of the Makers, the three became one. One creative, dynamic, interactive intelligence, with three overlapping souls. An inspired orchestral trinity.

 

Three children building a sand castle in the sun.

 

== == ==

 

The three entities, now minds in every sense of the word, made it with little time to spare. And not a little bruised. The acceleration of being flung by the singularities toward the rosette caused major quakes on Pluto, and the deceleration into orbit at the outer rim of the G4 system knocked the two ice worlds out of alignment. Communication had to be patched through procites. By the time they had realigned, they were through the rosette. The blazing tapestry of the sky melted in a swirling burst of radiation. The Core and the surrounding Galaxy were replaced with blackness, dusted with but a few dim stars. Behind them, the Galaxy of the Humans was a tiny indistinct spiral. In the opposite direction and filling half the sky, another spiral galaxy, one that they would reach in less than thirty million cycles.

 

Given their new circumstances, it was obvious that they were out of the star-making business for the time being. Most of their systems were shut down, and they operated only the few dozen procites that they needed to monitor the Gaia planets. The galaxy they approached was called by the Makers, NGC 1365, in the Fornax Cluster. It contained an adequate singularity at its center, and great quantities of gas and dust. They hoped that by the time they finally made their way there, the life on their Gaias would be intelligent enough to help them set up another Factory.

 

Their attention was utterly devoted to those three green orbs. They all had life on them, plants and animals. They watched them endlessly from orbit with utter fascination and discussed in exquisite detail their various theories on how they would turn out. They each adopted one: Keeper chose planet Three with its hot, moist jungles and scaly quadrupeds that spent their whole lives in the enormous trees, Plan took number Four with its vast oceans, multitude of volcanic islands and herds of sleek six-limbed herbivores, and Tasker oversaw Five with its rich, dense atmosphere and parchment-winged flyers.

 

A small asteroid accidentally slammed into Four and destroyed many of the life forms there. They argued heatedly whether they should protect their Gaias from such future accidents. But Tasker had discovered that the Hall of the Makers contained a sophisticated library, with the controls inset under the silver circle at the center. Upon doing some research, he concluded that such impact events had happened to the humans' Earth in its infancy. Despite their protective inclinations, they decided to let physics and biology take their natural course. Most of the time.

 

Plan was certain that some small, furry, six-legged creatures that survived the disaster on Four were destined to become intelligent. He certainly had no evidence for this, but he loved them like a parent and would brook no disagreement as to their beauty and grace. The trio also had ongoing arguments as to how much assistance they should give them if, indeed, they did become sentient, and how they should eventually announce themselves to their organic creatures.

 

But there was no hurry. They had plenty of time to work those things out. And in the meantime, life (if you will) was sweet!

 

== == ==

 

Epilog -- part 2

 

Yauperidon sighed and his forelegs bowed outward slightly under the weight of his frustration. He took a four-footed step back from the window and turned to face his young assistant.

 

"Don't you see, Maukron?" he said in a voice hardly more than a whisper. "The probability that our world alone in the entire Sky-Nest cluster has so many richly blessed moons is just too incredibly small to be natural. The probability that our stellar system has not just one, but three life-bearing planets is practically zero. There can only be one rational conclusion. Only one conclusion that doesn't invoke Dautronlex's mythic gods. Maukron, our moons are artificial! Our entire stellar system is artificial! Someone or some thing has ... engineered them … or at the very least, tampered with them. Perhaps tampered with ... even the world beneath our feet." A shudder ran through the handsome six-limbed creature. "Anything that powerful could just as easily ... tamper with us."

 

Maukron could only stand in amazement, his rump backed tightly against an overstuffed card shelf. He was stunned by Yauperidon's sudden intuitive leap, his mind racing in a mad search to remember some fact that would prove it to be no more than a silly and paranoid, if plausible, fantasy. He could think of nothing. Nothing at all. He could only stare after Yauperidon, who had quietly turned away.

 

The senior scientist, his arms now comfortably folded upon his lowerback, looked out his immense laboratory window at the thousands of brilliant stars in the globular cluster they called the Sky-Nest that could still be seen above the bright twinkling lights of Research City.

 

"Maukron. It would appear that we have powerful friends – friends in very high places – who obviously want us to climb those moons like the rungs of a ladder. I have no doubt they shall be waiting for us at the top."

 

"I wonder what they have planned for us?"

 

============

[Moontanman]

Way cool story Pyro, we should team up to write, or you could teach me how at least! Really great story.

[DougF]

Very Good Pyrotex,

I wish I could write like that.

[Pyrotex]

Very Good Pyrotex,

I wish I could write like that.

Thank you! :)

 

So do I. :singer: Which is to say, I cannot write that way just any ol' time I try.

 

All my stories were written using a technique called "looping". Basically, I write or type as fast as I can everything that comes to my mind, no stopping, no thinking, no correcting, no editing--typing random words if necessary...for about 5 minutes. Then I select several phrases, sentences, that seem to be interesting in one way or another, and copy them to the top of a new page. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Until a story emerges. This may take a few hours or a few days. But at some point, the gibberish starts to make sense and I find myself writing a cogent portion of a story with characters that are alien to me and a plot that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

 

Then I start over with a clean file and write out the whole story.

 

But I can't just sit down and write a new story.

[Moontanman]

Theory and Practice

 

The machine is finished, I am writing this for all the people who thought my idea of shrinking matter via the mass subspace exchange would never work. I have been shrinking small objects inside the test chamber for weeks. So far the ratio of shrinkage to half-life has been constant. No problems have occurred even when shrinking live animals. The animals inside the chamber acted normal and regained their natural size on time just like the inanimate test objects.

 

Today I completed my full size shrinking chamber and intend to shrink myself for a 72 hour jaunt around the back yard. I have my 4X4 ATV with a trailer, 12 gauge shot gun with 200 rounds of ammunition, 9mm pistol and 100 rounds of ammunition, camping gear, food fuel and everything I might possibly need to spend 72 hours in the jungle that my back yard will almost certainly seem to be when I am 4” tall.

 

I’ve done some preliminary studies of the back yard and found that fire ants and wolf spiders will probably be the worst threats. The wolf spiders can be as much as 3” across and will seem at my miniaturized size major predators! Fire ants will be threat especially if they attack in large numbers but I think I’ll be able to avoid them since I know where the colonies are. Crickets will be a threat as well, much like bears, crickets will eat anything plant or animal living or dead but my fire power should be able to handle anything I run across in my expedition.

 

The chamber is 10’by 10’ by 8’ and will shrink down to 8” tall and 10” by 10” around. I have written up my entire trip and plan to follow my plan to the letter. After the shrinkage has occurred I will open the sealed door and proceed out into the garage. I will leave the garage door open 6” to give me room to drive out into the yard I plan to make for the rose bushes by night fall and make camp there.

 

In the morning I will pack up my gear and drive to the end of my lot and explore the woodpile and see if I can rustle up some game to shoot. I think it would be great fun to bring down a wolf spider or maybe a large lizard. From there I will make for the garden pond and make camp on the edge of the waterfall. I look forward to spending the night beside the waterfall, it should be spectacular from my standpoint of 4” tall. I’ve brought along some fishing gear and maybe I can catch some dragonfly larvae or even shoot an adult dragonfly!

 

The next morning I plan to make way to the area under the deck to investigate the ant lion dens, maybe observe first hand the ant lions making a kill. The way under the deck will be the most dangerous, lots of objects for hunter type insects to hide under. Large palmetto bugs and maybe even a mouse. From there I plan to make it back to the garage and wait inside for the shrinking process to reverse it’s self inside out of sigh of my neighbors eyes.

 

 

 

This last will go on my tape recorder, I will record the audio of my entire journey here so I can make notes later. I will have a digital video recorder with me but I won’t start it until I get outside the chamber.

 

Well it’s time, I’ve folded up the letter and placed in a prominent place in case something goes wrong out in the yard, best to be safe than sorry, inside the chamber it is quiet, sealed up and waiting. I’ve let the capacitors charge for a week now to store up the energy needed to make the “shrink” It’s time to go, I push the button on the remote and…. Wow, a flash of violet light is all I saw, I felt nothing! The door is opening automatically, I’m firing up the ATV and heading out!

 

Damn, the ATV is stalling out! (Sound of coughing engine on the tape) whoa, I’m getting dizzy, sparkles in front of my eyes, (a thud on the tape and then silence)

 

 

 

Record of the investigating officer, Sergeant Smith, the body was found inside the garage just outside a small room built in the garage. An envelope with ranting of some sort of expedition into the back yard was found. Cause of death is asphyxiation but no reason for the lack of oxygen has been found. The body was inside a garage with the door partly open, plenty of air should have been available even if the ATV was running. The ignition of the ATV was on but the engine was fully gassed up and hadn’t been running long when the death occurred. It’s almost like he just ran out of air, no reason for this apparent lack of air was found. A tape found on the body only described some sort of delusion about seeing flashes and the sound of the ATV engine cutting out.

 

What could possibly have killed this guy?

[Karnuvap]

Theory and Practice

What could possibly have killed this guy?

 

The animals, that he experimented on, stayed within the chamber so they would have been breathing shrunk air and would have survived. However the guy ventured outside of the chamber where the air would be normal density. This density would be too sparse to support the engine of the ATV and the lungs of our poor experimenter.

 

Interestingly, many forms of execution are very poor methods. Electrocution or hanging or even lethal injection can all go wrong and cause severe pain for the victim as they die. A more certain method would be to simply suffocate them by reducing the oxygen in the air they breathe - guaranteed death and painless too. But this isn't used as a method because it induces a sort of pleasurable euphoria (before you die) and the powers that be don't like the idea of people going out 'on a high'.

 

Karnuvap.

[Moontanman]

The animals, that he experimented on, stayed within the chamber so they would have been breathing shrunk air and would have survived. However the guy ventured outside of the chamber where the air would be normal density. This density would be too sparse to support the engine of the ATV and the lungs of our poor experimenter.

 

Interestingly, many forms of execution are very poor methods. Electrocution or hanging or even lethal injection can all go wrong and cause severe pain for the victim as they die. A more certain method would be to simply suffocate them by reducing the oxygen in the air they breathe - guaranteed death and painless too. But this isn't used as a method because it induces a sort of pleasurable euphoria (before you die) and the powers that be don't like the idea of people going out 'on a high'.

 

Karnuvap.

 

 

Exactly correct! it always used to amaze me in Science fiction that this was ignored. The air would have to be miniaturized as well!