Challenge #00635 - A270: The Horrors of Attempted Time Travel
“Your body is your temple. Plunder it.”
Three pieces of good news.
One: He was smarter than the people who had sent him here. And there was no way in hell that he was going to U-turn around into a suicide mission.
Two: The planet that read as habitable actually was habitable.
Three: The people who sent him on this wild flight to meddle with the course of history had sent along all kinds of laboratory equipment and information in order to deal with every situation.
Including a clone lab and brain-pattern recorder.
The bad news? He was the only genetic sample.
The really bad news? Earth was calling to find out what had gone wrong with the mission.
He sabotaged his ship enough to make it look like he’d crashed and failed and set to work. He had a world to build. Starting with a small community made of him.
And the ultimate bad news… all the protein on this planet was toxic.
Which meant he had to eat cultured tissue. And he was the only genetic sample that he had.
*
“We eat of the Allfather and remember. We owe our existence to one monumental act of unlistening, unrelenting, wilful ignorance.”
“Think all things through,” said the clones. Almost-clones. The Alllfather had done his best with what he had, but genetic variance could only go so far. All of them, women and men, could not breed in what other cogniscents call the ‘traditional way’.
“And remember, also, the words we are to deliver to the Unthinkers.”
Now the multitude at the remembrance ceremony shouted at the top of their lungs, “ERICH VON DÄNIKEN CAN SUCK IT!”
“Three thousand years ago, the Allfather was sent out to create a better world. He knew that the Unthinkers sent him to his death.”
The ministers at the grill began to hand out sliders to the multitude with, “Flesh of the Allfather…”
“When they come to ask of their better world we shall say unto them,”
They all chorused, “We made it here.”
Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold. For Adam Fydeus, that revenge was about to be served at below zero degrees Kelvin.
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Challenge #00634 - A269: Space Madness
“Kitty, fire starboard weapons”
“Miaou”
“No Kitty, don’t play with the yarn, fire the weapons”
From the Wikipedia Galactica: Space Madness, as it is commonly known, is not, in fact, a mental imbalance caused by being in space. It is well known that cogniscents of all kinds need certain things in order to prosper, both physically and mentally. The isolation of solo missions does, of course, engender ramifications…
“Status report, Lieutenant Tibbles.”
The black-and-white cat, known officially as merely Tibbles, looked up from her basket and made a “mrrrrrrrrp?” noise.
Blakely checked the indicator board in passing to feed the cat. “Safe sound and secure. Words I like to hear, Lieutenant. There’ll be a commendation on your record.”
The cat didn’t care about commendations. She fell on her food like she’d been starved in the six hours since she’d last eaten.
“Yes, it looks like smooth—” Another indicator light started flashing. “Incoming! We have an incoming bogey vector five zero niner by four foxtrot tango. Man the guns!”
Tibbles, being a cat, began playing with a loose cable.
“OFFICER! Man your station!”
Tibbles ran for the closest hidey-hole.
“INSUBORDINATION! MUTINY! I’LL SEE YOU HANG FROM THE HIGHEST YARDARM!”
Doctor Dobelina paused the security playback. She kept her voice low and comforting. “Do you remember this incident, Miss Blakely?”
“Yes… but… not like that. My pickup ship was the enemy. Tibbles was… I think she was a Meeyahndan or… or some kind of humanoid Cat. Is she okay?”
“Tibbles is being spoiled rotten by your family.”
Blakely visibly relaxed. “Oh good. I was afraid I’d hurt her. There were dreams… they were so real…”
“The nature of reality is often subjective,” soothed Doctor Dobelina. “However, most of us prefer the version confirmed by others.”
“I’m never going out alone again, am I?”
“It… wouldn’t be advisable,” allowed the doctor.
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Challenge #00633 - A268: Boundless Realms of Ignorance
To sing when anti-science protestors of whatever stripe are around:
Ev’ry banana you eat / has been genetically engineered / and is a radioactive clone.
There were simultaneous protests outside the administrative building. Some protestors, with a foot in each camp, had evolved revolving signs.
“Bible bashers,” Sylvia shook her head. One side of a sign she was watching quoted the bible about natural foods, and the other screamed about teaching creationism. She had a wicked idea and ducked into her laboratory greenhouse.
Edna followed her. “What are you up to? You’re not going to bomb them with dyed smoke again, are you?”
“No. I’m just going to give them a material lesson… Ah! There they are.”
It was a green oblong that looked much like a cucumber with warts. Sylvia cackled like a true mad scientist as she made her way outside to the protestors.
“Sylvia…” Edna warned. “That’s not a new sample, is it?”
“No, no, no. It’s old as dirt. Promise.” It took her five minutes to force her face into Press Conference Formality, at which point she strode out to the protestor with the revolving sign.
“Stay away from me, you ungodly harlot!”
“Well at least I’m not wearing blended fabrics or eating ham,” she retorted. “Here’s a banana as God intended them.” She handed over the knobbly green thing. “Fresh from my garden.”
The protestor stared at it in disgust.
“Yum yum yum,” cooed Sylvia.
Alas, it didn’t work. People opposed to science are naturally inclined to disbelieve anyone in a white coat.
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Challenge #00632 - A267: Respect It
To quote Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3, Line 87: No!
“Geez, why do you have to be such a bitch about it?”
Ugh. “Maybe because I had to tell you thirty times before you even heard a real ‘no’? Maybe because my wants and needs aren’t relevant to you? Maybe because the first thing that came out of your mouth when I told you I was bisexual was ‘threesome’? Maybe it’s because you’re as aesthetically pleasing as month-old mozzarella that’s been left in the sun for three months? Maybe it’s because you smell like that, too? But really, when you get down to it? It’s because you don’t fucking listen.”
He stared at her in piggy incomprehension. “You know, if you’re on your rag, just tell me.”
“It’s men like you who give men a bad reputation, did you know that?”
“Come on. It’s not like I’m asking you to fuck me or something… Just a coffee.”
“The closest we’re getting to going to get a coffee is if I throw some of mine in your face. I don’t want you breathing my air. Go away.” She re-enforced her point with her stun gun.
“Jesus. Who told you I was interested? I was just trying to compliment your fat ugly ass. Bulldyke.”
Jessica sighed in relief and continued on her way to meet her girlfriend. The sooner they had a tag-and-release system for those pathetic specimens, the better.
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Challenge #00631 - A266: Corrupt File
C:> Cannot find Reality.sys. Universe Halted.
There was no other word for what was happening than Glitch. People went to sleep one colour and woke up another the next. And frequently with a change in their social status and standing.
And it wasn’t just their colour that changed. There were all kinds of alterations. People would go to sleep as a man in a mansion, and wake up as a woman in a slum.
Buildings began to show segmentation faults. Infrastructure literally crumbled.
Death rates skyrocketed. Chaos and outrage abounded. People tried to stay awake, hoping that that would prevent the changes, but their world simply altered around them anyway.
When analysed by the intelligent, it seemed to be a very specific kind of chaos. Those in power -and who were arrogant about having it- found themselves on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Everyone stayed within their own country.
The abusers found themselves at the hands of their former victims, staring up at themselves in absolute terror.
God, they said, had taken matters into Hir own hands.
Survivors fled to untouched areas, trying to find solace in what little was unglitched. It was the end of the world as they knew it.
*
The tutor had come to peer over hir shoulder.
“Yhvh…” the tutor sighed. “There’s a reason why I only gave you one planet. And this is it. Just look at the overall mess you’ve created. None of their infrastructure is going to hold.”
“But they weren’t following my rules,” Yhvh complained. “Even when I completely revised it to one rule and stopped doing so many miracles, like you said.”
“I see you’ve been messing around with the root code. Did you save a backup before you did that?”
“Uuuuuuuhhhhhh…”
“You wanted them believing in you again, didn’t you?”
“Uuuuhhhhhmmm… maybe?”
A groan. “Yhvh… you really have to learn that the best interference is the subtle kind. Remember the incidents near the equator? All that smiting? Your heavy-handedness is going to be the death of these beings. What do I keep telling you? Gently. Gently. Gently.”
Sigh. “Yes, Teacher Lusfir…” Yhvh droned.
“Now. Let’s see what we can do to repair this, hm?”
Moaned, this time, “Yes, Teacher Lusfir.”
“It’s a good thing I stopped you before you could bottleneck the population again. Open up the root file and highlight the most recent changes…”
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Challenge #00630 - A265: Deep Time Punk’d
A text found on the first expedition by a species to their planet’s nearest celestial body (moon or nearby planet), which explains in perfectly accurate detail how to improve the efficiency of in-system spaceflight many times over.
Appendix A begins “As we know, 2+2=5…”
Five hundred years ago, people had seen strange lights in association with their moon. A light was clearly visible on the surface of the satellite, every time that it became shadowed.
Four hundred years ago, that light went out for the last time, and the lights visiting the moon left. Never to return.
Last year, the planets’ champion - a fine lady by the name of Nyel the Strong - was the first to set foot on that orbiting planetoid in the name of peace and harmony for all.
Today, scientists had cracked the code. The lunar visitors had been prepared for any eventuality. They had left arrows to point the way. The box contained basic pictograms on how to open it and how to read the contents.
The first book unravelled the second, as well as covering some basic elements of science and what the aliens had also thought were basic elements of science. The second unravelled the third…
And while they were learning, they were also testing.
The Grel'ti people leaped ahead. In science, art, and civilisation. They mined their asteroid belts and prepared to go to the stars.
And then they began to decode the Appendices.
“As we know, 2+2=5…”
Five Hundred Years Ago…
The aliens had got their data. Who they were was not important. You couldn’t pronounce their names, anyway. Let’s call them Greg, and Larson.
“Wait. So you got them almost up to our level of tech and you put in a fucking math joke?”
Greg chuckled as he sealed the box. “This is such a classic…”
“No, Greg, you are such a shit.”
He started etching arrows on the walls and floor, giggling the entire time. “I wish I could see their little faces…”
“…for fuck’s sake,” sighed Larson. “You always do this. Every pre-journey planet we monitor, you have to pull this unthought crap.”
Greg continued to laugh. “They are gonna be so pissed off…”
“Someone in authority is going to catch you doing this and then you’re going to know about it.”
“Worth it,” laughed Greg.
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Challenge #00629 - A264: You Were Warned
On a warning sign
CAUTION: Eldritch Abominations
The human stopped at the door. “Is this serious?”
“Why would it not be?” said the alien robot. “The Yubshuggoth are a kind people, but their appearance has been known to… cause significant alarm. Some have died from the shock. This is why they use avatars like me.”
So what the human do? They thrust open the door and stuck their head inside to see what was so horrible. They backed away from the door, face and hair white, throat strangling out a scream.
The alien robot kindly shut the door and administered a sedative.
“You… never said… they were nudists!”
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Challenge #00628 - A263: Drawbacks of Communication
Well, are we agreed that we will never try to talk to the world ending monsters again?
Yes? Good.
They were in his way. They were there to conquer. Smash! Destroy! Devour!
“Hermann!”
Crush! Kill! Consume!
“Hermann!”
The puny human was only a little smaller than him. How? Had they found a way to grow themselves? Were they stealing the Builders’ ways?“
"Hermann, Hermann, look at me. Look. Look, look, look. You’re not them. Think. Know. You know me.”
“Drift,” he said. The Other was coming. Fighting back. He was slipping… slipping. “You were in the drift.”
“I’m here, now, buddy. I’m here. You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re not the monster. Who are you?”
“I’m–” at once a fifty-foot-tall beast of blue blood and blades for teeth… and an underweight, overtall man with a bum leg. He stumbled. “I’m… Doctor…”
“That’s right,” big smiles from Newt. Yes. Newt. Doctor Newton Geizler. “Say the rest of it. I know you can.”
“Doctor… Hermann…” Who? Who was he? “Hermann… Got… lieb.”
“One more time for the cheap seats, buddy.”
“Doctor Hermann… Gotlieb.”
“YES!” Huge hugs from such a small man. The monster was just a murmur in his mind.
Someone in the far background set a timer.
“One more day,” grinned Newt. “One more day of fighting this stupid damn seesaw… We got this.” He rushed away at his usual frenetic speed. Out of the padded room full of soft furniture, and into the lab they shared. “Come on, buddy, we’ve got fifteen minutes before I start to sink. I’m gonna push for sixteen, this time.”
Gottlieb retrieved his cane and made it to the board. The equations soothed his tangled mind like nothing else. Fifteen minutes, oh yes. Fifteen minutes to try and solve the last problem.
How to cure the two last victims of the Kaiju attacks.
Fifteen minutes, maybe sixteen, and he would be the one reminding Newt of who he was in the Soft Room, away from the other best minds available while Newt believed he was the Kaiju they’d linked with. It was a very Newton solution. Chip it away from the inside.
Gottlieb picked up the eraser and corrected the last, shaky figures of his previous calculations. “Have I ever told you, Doctor Geizler, that I find your incessant optimism… reassuring?”
“Not today,” grinned Newt. “Thanks, pal.”
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Challenge #00627 - A262: What Maketh Man?
From the Wikipedia article on Personhood:
“If alien life were found to exist, under what circumstances would they be counted as "persons”? Do we have to consider any “willing and communicative (capable to register its own will) autonomous body” in the universe, no matter the species, an individual (a person)? Do they deserve equal rights with the human race?“
What the hell kind of question is that? Of course we should! Of course they do! The only time it’s debatable is when the species is some kind of hive mind, and each unit is not an individual but rather the group as a whole! Then, it’s the hive mind that is a person - they are PEOPLE! …why is this something that is worthy of debate?
[AN: This kind of debate is truly ironic when we count corporations as people and anyone brown or identifying female or both as not people at all]
The Cogniscent Rights Committee were having another debate on the nature of personhood.
"So what about the comatose?”
“Oh boy,” someone rolled their eyes.
“You find a member of a new species, but they’re comatose or otherwise impaired past the point of conversation. Then what?”
“There’d be other indications of cogniscent life. A ship. A bed. You expect a new species to just randomly visit another planet and leave their comatose there? No culture would do that.”
“Wait two years. We’ll find a bunch of humans who do.”
One of the human members of the Committee blew a raspberry. “This is why we insist that exploration vessels are crewed with at least one Melil or some other variety of Esper useful to the mission. They can touch minds and try to find something. Even a comatose brain has memories.”
“Have any of them read a ‘cell’ from a hive mind?”
“That’s standard UFTP training. Yes.”
The restrained Counsellor from one of the least-poisonous Greater Deregulations was drumming his fingers.
“What if’n you got a law stoppin’ them from -ah- saying nothin’?”
“Sir, we’ve spoken to you about your planet’s antiquated policies of personhood. Your attendance on this council is meant to be educational - for you. This is so you can reform and revise those laws, not so you can find new loopholes in order to keep them.”
“Wimmin weren’t people when I was made, and I won’t reckonize them ‘till I’m cold in the ground!”
“Then you won’t mind exporting them all,” said the Representative of Meeyahn. “We’ll buy them from you wholesale. It should be quite a deal.”
“Lady Astrofi, the population of Greater Deregulation is already bottlenecked. Are you planning to create genocide by proxy?”
“I merely wish to educate,” she purred. “They would soon learn the value of females by their conspicuous absence.”
“This is not the forum for such a discussion. Negotiations with Greater Deregulation are still in process.”
Lady Astrofi gave a very feline growl.
The Chair tapped their info-tablet meaningfully. “Now. On to the matter of the Faiize. There have been a number of disturbing reports, but this found its way to my in-box this morning…”
The main screen lit up with video feed from a medbay. It looked like every mining station medbay the Galaxy over, but the contents were more interesting. A human medtech was facing down a silver Faiize with a dead Cleaner.
“Broken,” said the Faiize. “Doc fix.”
“I think it’s BSOD’d,” said another human, just inside pickup range.
The Faiize pointed at the cleaner. “Broken. Doc. Fix. Init!”
“Is it… giving me an order?” said the medtech.
Now the Faize pushed the medtech to the dead Cleaner. “Doc fix Cleaner. Init!”
“It is an order,” said the other human.
“Init! Hup hup! Moovit! Pronto! Stat!” Now it shoved the medtech’s hands onto the corpse. “DOC FIX!”
“I can’t fix dead,” the medtech argued.
Now it faced the other human. Its flat features twisted in pain. “Dave sez medbay fix. Need fix broken Cleaner.”
There was silence as the video ended. “This is not an isolated incident,” said the Chair. “I’ve done my homework on this, and there’s evidence that all the extant Faiize are this intelligent. The only question to be answered is, did Wave of the Future intend to make gengineered slaves?”
“I’d buy ‘em,” said the restrained Counsellor for Greater Deregulation.
Everyone else ignored him.
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Challenge #00626 - A261: He Said it Best
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
[Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe]
“Eh, sometimes you change the world,” Shayde sighed. “Sometimes th’ world changes you. And sometimes… Caesar said it best - ‘interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum’…”
Rael was looking into his eyepiece. “Sometimes, I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe?”
She sighed. Technology. That was the problem. People could just look things up. “Yer no fun. Used tae get a lot o’ mileage outta that wi’ Hackmeyer.”
He’d heard the stories she’d told. Found the archival records of Hackmeyer’s old students. He knew that her old professor was a fraud, a charlatan, and a glory-hound. That was why he laughed at the mental image of a balding professor pretending to know everything and murmuring, 'wise words, wise words’ before moving on to a different topic… all while the students who knew what it meant giggled behind their hands.
“Kept you going, didn’t it?”
“Aye. Kept me goin’ a lot.” Through the years with Hackmeyer. Through the years after Hackmeyer. And almost… almost… today. She’d have to find new tricks.
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