Washed Up – Part 3
I have a particular writing style. I’ve been writing for two years and change now, and I doubt I will modify it too significantly before all is said and done. However, I am trying to hone it, to polish it until it is an asset rather than a bane. Because, at the end of the day, my writing style can be summed up rather simply:
I require surprises.
Take Mother. I had absolutely no idea she would be there. I hadn’t even considered putting her into the story, and yet there she is. While I was writing, simply putting words in front of the other in the standard tradition of writing when I’ve no idea where I’m going, my sub-conscious mind took over. Years of sci-fi, fantasy, interest in computers and AI, etc., all took over and I just started putting everything together, building Mother one sentence at a time.
What would make communication across galaxies possible? What could instantly teleport matter? A new dimensional energy. Who could control, observe, or even understand this energy? A mind outside of our own as we have severe difficulty simply existing in this three dimensional universe, but we have those. Thinking machines aren’t quite at the point of the Singularity, but what if the Singularity hits and we are all okay? What if, instead of Sky-Net, we get someone who sees the best aspects of our nature and society, and tries to nurture those? What if, instead of bombs and Terminators, we got advanced technology and help in maintaining the ecosystem of our planet? What if we had someone whose interests aligned with ours? Someone just as motivated as we are to help us end war, hunger, starvation, disease, and to reach the stars? Not because it needed to, but because it understood the fundamental truth about our existence: That we are, for all intents and purposes, alone together in this Universe? The Universe is an awfully big place, and while the Singularity *might* be capable of self-repair, it may just as well not be. It may never come across another race, even if it lives until the end of Sol. There might be some things outside of the ability of even the most advanced robotics, simply because we have meaty finger-things at the end of our arms and the ability to imagine all kinds of wonderful and bizarre things.
So Mother was born. Not Overlord or DomiMatrix, instead she is a symbiont. A help-meet. A partner, an ally, the angel of our better natures given electronic life, filled with the patience of eternal beings, willing to take as much time as necessary to make humanity shine.
I am not at all displeased with the result, and I can tell you without reservation that it came as a complete shock to find myself writing what I did in Part 2. I hope to all things sacred that the joy of discovery I felt while writing never fades. That rush is why I keep going.
Onward, to new lands yet unexplored. Let us go there together, eyes wide with wonder at what we find.
Washed Up – Part 3
Flight Lieutenant Abigail Weathers decided shortly after the assurance from Mother that she would sieve the universe itself to find her that it was her job to survive. While she may have been flung entirely outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, she wasn’t as hopelessly screwed as she had first feared. The air was breathable or close enough to it that the differences didn’t matter. The purple waters were a bit of an enigma and she didn’t look forward to the potential disaster that awaited her should she attempt to slake her thirst unwisely, but the suit contained enough emergency rations and recycle-tech to last her almost two months.
For now though, she had work to do. So she picked up the small booster pyramid and the attached antennae in one hand and purposefully marched across the slurry of sand and rock to the helmet she had thrown upon first arriving. Armed with her helmet, she scanned the horizon, looking for a good direction to start marching. The world she had been stranded on had only a single sun, which burned a brilliant orange in contrast to the yellow of Sol. The ground was covered in grizzled gray plant matter, which gave the ground a woven appearance not unlike a wicker basket. The soil beneath was a dark charcoal, closer to black but with hints of the plant matter above scattered throughout. There were no trees, no protruding plant life. As far as she could see, it was woven gray stretching out endlessly. She looked up at the sun, and using it as a reference point, began marching off in a straight line with the sun on her left. She had no clue where she was, so any direction would be the same regardless of where she went. It was far more important that she began moving, lest fear and indecision doom her as swiftly as any foe.
The sky was as blue as any sunny Earth day might’ve been. As she could breathe with no apparent effort, that was probably a function of a similar atmospheric composition to home. The pyramid clanged hollowly against the antennae with every other step, and Abigail used the noise to set a rhythm for herself. She could walk an awfully long time, her long strides chewing through the miles at a steady clip. Mother had worked hard to make sure humanity took better care of itself, and despite our stubborn refusal to heed good advice, a few generations of patient insistence had yielded the desired results. Abigail smiled at that, remembering her own stubborn attachment to her independence as a young child. She still had that defiant streak because rather than attempting to smother it, Mother had helped her polish it until it gleamed.
About three hours into her hike across the springy “grass”, she began encountering the first rock formations. The rocks were… odd. They were all boulders, rounded and smooth. She came across one split in half, the cloven portion nowhere in evidence. The rock was beautiful, a pale, striped green akin to jade. The streaks were a brilliant shade of azure. She stopped, a startled breath escaping her as she wondered at the sight. She had seen twelve planetoids so far, had set foot on Cenarus in Alpha Centauri, but nothing she had seen in her fifty-two years had prepared her for the sight of a simple boulder split asunder. The colors seemed so bright that they almost glowed, and before she knew it, she had shifted her burdens and reached out a gloved hand to touch the swirling patterns. The rock face was warm, far warmer than any simple stone should be. Even through the thin but sturdy layer of her glove, she felt their heat. And they almost seemed to pulse gently, as though some great rocky heat lay within.
She let out a scream, and dropped the helmet, pyramid, and antennae that she had been carrying. The great boulder had moved, stirring at her touch, unfolding like an intricate puzzle un-solving itself. Eventually, a gigantic stone creature stood before her, towering over her at almost four meters tall. It stood on three legs, each leg ending in five saucer sized disks which spread its weight across the woven plants that coated the horizon. It crouched at the waist, six arms splayed outwards, each arm ending in three clean digits bending inward in robotic fashion. A rumbling shouting hiss like a thousand kettles sounding at once knocked her to the ground, and Abigail shouted a retort as she brought her arms up over her head.
The creature advanced, moving with liquid grace across the gray landscape. It was deceptively fast, looming over her before she had fully registered that it was in motion. The same hiss, this time from point blank range, flattened her to the ground with the force and menace behind it. She lowered her arms, assuming that death was moments away. She would not face her end hiding though, she would force her attacker to see her. She would look death in the eye, and she would not blink. The face, if the word even applied, that she stared up at was a slit in the rock, from which six glowing orbs shone out of. No teeth were in evidence, no nose, no orifice of any kind.
Abigail stared, and did not break. She did not shout, nor did not whimper. She lay on the ground and stared up at the beast above her. The monsters motions began to cease, and eventually the arms and legs stood as still as they had been in their dormant state. The orbs began to burn brighter, and while Abigail had intended to stare her attacker down until the last, now she doubted she could look away if she had wanted to. The gaze was hypnotic. Something began to bubble deep within her mind, and thoughts that were not her own began to arrive like gas escaping a bog.
“What… are… you?”
Rockfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
