NationStates Jolt Archive

The heat was astonishing. Well, relatively speaking, it wasn't very astonishing at all, but it was the most heat It had encountered in some time.

Listening had given It some ideas of what to expect - but this was a... fractured? No, not quite the right word. Disparate, perhaps. Dischordant, more likely. At any rate, this Earth was a world of contrast. It chuckled internally at that.

Down, down, down. Burning, searing heat flowed over It, but It didn't mind. In fact, it revelled in the sensation, rolling and twisting and even (to a limited degree) rippling and flowing. It was a solid lump of metal, precisely one-point-five metres in width. One-point-two metres long. A third of a metre deep.

It wasn't a square, more like a wedge, to maximise surface heating. Unexplained actions at the molecular level made use of the heat, storing it in ... something.

At any rate, it needed to slow now, and so it did. An act of will forced it's atomic structure to alter significantly, aerobraking. A small star breaking across the sky over some nation bathed in night.

Lights below.

A blur.

And then the relative cold of the ground, thudding hard and completely failing to explode. Instead, It relaxed utterly, absorbing even the thermal energy released by it's impact with the ground. The ground, for it's part, was incinerated by the waste energy left over.

The metallic object shifts into a generally... gooey... state, forming a semi-liquid sphere.

It waits.

[OOC: First one to post, It lands in your country.

I promise a complete lack of destruction or boomity (or any attempt at thereof) unless you're the one to do it.]

"Well, you are the strangest falling star I've had the pleasure to meet in many a year." Shalamar, the Lady of Cats Keep said both verbally and telepathically. "So am I supposed to make the traditional wish upon you, or am I to be affored the equally traditional greeting of "Take me to your leader?"

Her vocie was mediative as she looked at the semi metalic blob that had just incenerated her prize rose bushes. She adored cliches at time but seriously, she'd nursed those warm climate roses throught six of Cats Keep long and frigid winters and now they were gone save as memory.

She cocked her head observing the goo, with more than just human senses. Shalamar, Teneritsa, Lady of Cats Keep and Changeling had left human behind long ago. She was well over eleven thousand years old and had patience, when she chose to exercise it, down to an art form. She used it to terrify people and was good at that past time for far more than just her pateince, and calculated loosing of there of...

Cats Keep was located in a small valley deep in the Lossefanyar Athan, the Snow beyond the Sky, the vast mountainous region that divided the Fatal Terrain continent into two disctinct sections. The Lossefanyar Athan was even greater, in width, height and length than the Himalaya massif and more than a hundred of it's individual mountains rose over eight thousand meters. But the valley that housed the Five Towers was kept to a mostly pleasant clime by the numerous thermal springs, and the activities of the those of the Towers.

After the Dark War had spelt the destruction of many of the nations of Fatal Terrain, Shalamar had sought out those with psionics, or at least psionic potential and offered then sanctuary in the valley. Now years later, the Towers were home to many fully staffed circles of Matrix Technicians, Monitors, Maedjeris, Lanranz and Tenerists. They, and their allies in Fatal Terrain, had become quite adpet at melding psionics, majic and science based technology, and used it to its best effect.

It hummed softly, vibrating. It had been here a while - fortunately - and so was only as warm as the average fire. Radiant without being bright, but still shiny in a dull kind of way.

A small section of mass ripples and firms, arranging into quasi-humanoid features, a rough approximation only. A series of unintelligible sounds follow, slowly modulating.

And then a voice. Crisp, clean, dead. The first word it speaks on arrival to this world is:

"Leader?"

It's an unremarkable start. It gets better.

"Ah! One individual whom is set apart as greater or more capable than others, placed into a position of power. How intriguing. A cultural assumption that any visiting intelligence would wish to speak to one whom has influence."

A pause.

"I also cannot provide wishes," it added, hesitantly. There's a slight inflection now. It's almost as if it is ironing out kinks as it goes along, creating it's own voice. Or finding it. Intriguingly, there seems to be no issue with understanding language.

For it's part, it studied it's...greeter? with a great deal more senses than the average organic could deploy. Curiously.

Shalamar threw back her head and laughed. "There goes two cliches in one."

She sat down, tailor fashion, close but not intrusively so and wrapped the tail that suddenly manifested itself about her waist.

"Yes it is an odd sort of culture, but it comes from humans origins. We're still pack animals for all our hubris. And of course the assumption is is that any visiting alien would of course want to meet with the supposedly most important among us, one who has influence, authority - humans love power and authority sometimes far to much for not only others own good but their own."

Her smile was gentle as she replied to the last comment "And don't worry about not being able to grant wishes. Last time I had one it turned out badly, but then again I've never heard of many that went as hoped."

"You are a fast learner my semi shiny friend, and I wonder how much you are picking out of the minds about you, including mine. Though for me not to be able to detect such, means you are very unusual indeed. But be careful, most are not as benevolent as I and I can scarce claim to be better than any other. Though I like to think that may be, just maybe I try a little harder than most."

"So, what would you like? How can I help you?"

"I am an explorer," it answers, quietly. It considers carefully.

It could either be forthcoming or not. Previously, both methods had worked in different ways - some trusted a certain reticence, naturally. Others expected full honesty from the get-go.

It was not, in point of fact, even remotely telepathic, but it saw no reason to point this out. It did, on the other hand, understand a great deal about sapient lifeforms and their habits. They did not differ as greatly as each individual species liked to pretend.

The languages of this world had long been spat into space in the form of radio waves - but it was still learning some of the more vague, difficult nuances of communication... in this region of space.

It decided on honesty. But not too much. No sense in pointing out that it was entirely apathetic on the idea of upsetting anyone. It was highly unlikely anyone on this world would know how to harm it anyway - so why care? Only compassion prevented pointing this out: it was never nice to remind one's lessers that they were, in fact, lessers. Not that it actually thought of itself in such terms, intellectually. But the physical superiority of a being that ingests light and a plethora of other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and emits in roughly the same spectrum for waste-output was hardly a matter for dispute, logically. It felt no pride at the matter. Nor much of anything else.

It was what it was.

So it said none of this.

Instead, it spoke quietly, humbly. "I am an explorer," it repeats, slowly, thoughtfully. "I travel between the stars, occasionally falling to an inhabited world that looks interesting. I meet people. I speak to them. I learn of them. I record their passions and their hopes and their dreams, their fears if they will share them. And then I leave, and I move on. I am a library of passion and hope and dreams and fears. I listen, and I learn, and I give what I can where I can, if it seems prudent."

A pause.

"This is my third galaxy," it adds, thoughtfully. "There is much darkness and sorrow. But much hope, usually where sapients fail to look. But that makes the coming of the future so much the sweeter when it comes good, I suppose."

It falls silent. Waiting.

Shalamar listened intently, and nodded at what it said and what she guessed it left unsaid. "Hope is one of the few things good about us, for more often than not mere hope floggs us on past all understanding."

She had a bit of explorer in her. All who had gone into the unknown, and unformed potential that was the Shadow Realm had a touch of the farseeker in them, and she had her own answers to those questions. Though her explorations of the last few hundred centuries had been explorations done with the mind. And oh too how she loved the journey that was life!

"Why do you explore? Why the going ever outward, ever on, looking further and further afield?" She let her curiosity shine forth.

It rippled again, assuming a more complete form: arms, legs, torso. No tail, though. It had been, in another section of consciousness, quietly debating a form that would be reasonably pleasing to all.

It is, apparently, a slow process - ish. It takes about one whole minute to rearrange it's atomic structure almost completely, creating a shape about one point seven metres tall (sitting, cross-legged). It is now easier to call "she", since that is the shape she has decided on here. "Skin" changes colour from metallic grey to a pinkish-brown, not too light in complexion, not too dark. Almond eyes rest above a nose with a tiny fold at the top, and a small protrusion at the tip. Essentially, she has apparently combined pretty much every ethnic appearance into a single, blended form. Features take the longest to form, a further thirty seconds to finally smooth out to an exceptionally realistic form.

Indeed, if she hadn't been a shiny ball of metal recently, the sentient metal wouldn't be very distinguishable from a human.

"This form seems fitting," she says, voice soft and melodic, clearly designed to please. Almost too perfect, in a sense. Apparently, she notices, imbuing a slight edge of roughness to her voice, a lower tone amongst the musical highs.

"That's better. I find it helpful to assume a local form. Sometimes not a sapient one, mind. I was once a-," the following word is not in any language local in any sense of the word, "for a while. Sortof like a fox." Clearly, her language skills are developing. Internally, various chunks of information are still being assimilated, comprehended, and assigned levels of varying importance. She was not unlike an AI in that sense; but lacking the ability to segment her consciousness in the way that the more advanced artificial intelligences she'd come across in her time had been able to do. An admirable and useful trait, she believed - she almost wished she could do it. But individuality is a powerful thing.

Pause. "Your question is a difficult one. Hence my meandering conversationalism. I learn. And perhaps my knowledge might find use amongst some, somewhere, somewhen. Beyond that, for experience. And there is little else to do."

"Tis the journey that is the thing, not the journeys end" She quoted someone much wiser than she "But the end of that journey to has its purpose and it's own attractions."

"Yes I know how such an ability is useful. My own ability to alter is far more limited than yours I think, but I know some that I think are as capable as yourself. It might be of interest of you to meet them some day, but most of them aren't that close by. Some six hundred million light years away give or take a few dozen is their homeworld, in the galexy we call the Hoag Oobject.

She held her hand out, palm up and flat. Some six inches above it glowed an semi transparent image, three dimentional in its seeming. A detailed representation of the Hoags Object galaxy (http://www.atddm.com/hoags.jpg) as it would look for an observer on Earth, though it was far, far too distant to been seen with the naked eye.

"I can't tell you which solar system in that galaxy, but it's there some where." Shalamar shruged and let the mental image she'd projected vanish.

"Hmmm, you might get cold without some clothes, the nights here get very crisp even in high summer. It's the altitude." She commented as she apported a quilted cotton kimono sized for the new arrival, and poffered it to the visitor. "I think this will fit you, it's about right for the size you chose."

"ANd I really ought to introduce myself. My full name is Shalamar Thorskald, but please call me Shal."

[OOC: It didn't take a child's form. 1.7 metres would be a very tall child. ;P]

IC:

She tilted her head, peering at the galaxy displayed, curiously. "Intriguing," she remarks, thoughtfully. But that's it.

She peered at the clothing for a moment, and then simply reassigned part of her outer texture to match it. "I don't get cold," she observed, lips pulling upwards at the corners into a slow, testing grin. "Not unless the nights here are colder than interstellar space, that is..." Pause. "To be sure, please do not make any effort to touch my outer skin currently. It is still rather hot from my atmospheric entry."

A smile at the introduction. "Hmm. I suppose I should use a name just for convenience sake. I do not have one that would be very easily spoken by those with this communicative arrangement, Shal. And far too lengthy, if it were translated. Perhaps I shall choose a random syllable."

Another, brief pause of contemplation.

"Flara," she decides.

{OOC: I edited. I'm far more used to feet and inches and I was too lazy to translate last night. My apologies }

IC:

"Flara. Thats a pretty sounding name, and yes I can feel the heat radiating from you." Shalamar replied as she stood. "Are you limited as to how long you can stay? And are there any areas of knowledge you are particularly interested in? I have know several A.I.'s, but I haven't been able to convince one to come live here in Cats Keep yet."

She looked at Flara and added "If you are interested in the human mental ability, Cats Keep has one of the largest populations of active psionics on the planet."

"That was the intent," Flara observed with a small flicker upwards at the corner of her "lips". "I have no time constraints whatsoever. One of the advantages of...being me."

Legs unwind - with a slight shimmer as she rearranged her internal structure to better mimic her host's standing method - as she stands.

She glances around, slowly, thoughtful. "Perhaps, then, this mental agility that is common here would be as good a place to start as any with this exploration."

[OOC: Sorry for the delay. Had some RL issues that needed urgent resolution.]

OOC: I understand completely- RL comes first.

IC:
"It would be my pleasure to show you around and arrange meetings with those of my people that chose to talk about their abilities. For some it is an intensely private matter and still others have come here from places that are not accepting in the least about such gifts. Many have terrible memories that they are still coming to grips with. But there are many who will be glad to meet you and discuss their abilities." Shalamar explained as she led the way out of her garden.

"May I ask how long you will be radiating such heat? Inadvertantly starting a fire or causing an explosion, due to flamable liquids and such reacting to the heat you are emitting wouldn't do any one any good." Shalamar added with a wry grin at the thought of such trouble.

Flara hmms, softly, nodding slightly. "Yes, I can see how that would cause trouble. I don't technically need to keep radiating; I can comfortably absorb the majority." The change is instant. Whereas the warmth emitting from her was previously quite tangible, now it is not. To touch, she would feel roughly as warm as any human.

"I am not opposed to meeting any. Whether their reactions are good or bad to what has occurred in the past is, in the end, of little relevance to the importance of their point of view." Flara smiled - or did the internal equivalent. She was indeed quite willing - and eager - to meet absolutely anyone. Social hierarchy, of course, has little importance to a singular entity that has little need for society in the first place... except out of intrigue.

Flara follows, willingly, and, were she similar enough mentally to the local lifeforms, would have been radiating curiousity. As it is, she just about manages to mimick what she feels would seem a curious expression.

Shalamar and her newly arrived guest wended their way along carefully tended pathways that lay mostly the shadowss of vertiable giants of trees. Once the valley had been barren of all buy verdant grasses and the annual bloom of alpine flowers. That was gooid for horses, which pleased Shalamar to no end, but Shalamar also liked trees and had imported thousands of saplines, though technically the vallwy was above the limit known as the 'tree line'.

Moonshine and starlight shown through the leaves and dappled the thick boles, greensward and path with an ever moving chiarousco of light and dark. Shalamar looked at the trees as a nightengale began to sing it's haunting melody. "The birds appreciate the trees more than any one. When Cats Keep first fell back to Reality the valley was just grasses and some hearty shrubs. And we were too busy fighting for our existance at first to really take stock of our surroundings. But once most of my people had gone back and just this valley remained I set about making some changes. And with the trees growing birds started arriving as if advised over some avian gossip line." Shalamar chuckled "It used to be too cold even in the summer given the altitude were at for most species of birds but thats changed, though we're making sure the change is wrought slowly. We learned the hard way to be careful"

She looked about, wondering if the visitor would grasp the scope of what had been wrought here. [i]It probably can as it probably knows more about geology, ecology, though maybe not specifically terresterial ecology, and such that I ever will/i] She thought to herself with a mental laugh.

"The first one of us to find the rip in the fabric of reality and go through it was, by lucks chance, probably the best suited among us to do so. His name was Tivar and he almost instantly recognised how his thoughts, mental images were affecting the substance of Shadow. When he returned and brought the first small group back through to see what he'd doen and found..." She smiled reminiscently, but the memory was also tinged with remembered mingled anger and sorrow.

Shadow had been so malleable at first, and some of those that 'immigrated' there didn't just have nightmares, they were nightmares. Some of us messed up badly and others had minds" She shuddered "lets just say that a pleasant exterior hid vileness. And fixing what they wrought cost no few lives. But it taught us well, better that might otherwise have happened, how to control our minds, even to our deepest unconscious urges."

"So now even though Reality is almost unmalleable, and therefor much safer to work in, we still go slowly and with cautious baby steps."

The tower that rose up (http://www.atddm.com/ckt1.jpg) out of the darkness as they came around a massive out cropping of the earth's bones, was a dazzle of inner light as it rose against the sky. But the light seemed to go no further than the structures grounds, as if a transparent veil was drawn about it, and in many ways that was the case, for the shieldings, both active and passive, about the tower were formidible. They were for the safety of those with out.

"The newest of our towers." Shalamar's lips curved up in a gentle smile. "And I hope you find the time to tell us of your experinces. An equitable exchange benefits all incolved."