NationStates Jolt Archive

In a neglected back water there was a space station, long abandoned by whom ever built it, and forgotten by pretty much everybody else; it still existed, unchanged since the glory days of old. Inside it, nothing stirred; nothing moved, however, there was a faint and distinctive power source emanating from somewhere onboard.

As if by some higher power, a small beacon flared into life, sending out vast torrents of data, all of it garbled nonsensical gibberish. But the signal could be traced, and by extension the station it’s self could be rediscovered.

Captain Tiberius Lexus sat in his chair, observing with silent satisfaction the workings of his crew. The journey had been uneventful so far, just a routine voyage. He was captain of the Albert Nock.

The silver, cigar shaped merchant vessel Albert Nock was on a routine cruise from one star system to the next, carrying a load of hyperspace drives. The ship was lightly armed, the Empire being unmolested in space, lightly crewed, and slow. It was, however, a large ship, being designed to carry a large amount of goods from system to system efficiently.

The captain's dreams of a routine voyage were shattered when Communications Officer Alberto Biblios noticed a strange transmission. "Captain, we are receiving a transmission of unknown origin and content. Searching all known databases for possible translation now, sir."

The captain turned to the Sensors Officer, Jane Stuart. "Jane, can you pinpoint the origin of this transmission?" The sensors officer played with the controls for the sensors, adjusting the sensitivity and computer commands to attempt to locate the origin of the signal. "Yes, sir. I have just discovered what sent the message. It appears to be an old beacon of some kind." Now the captain had to make a call. Should he continue his routine voyage, or should he break and investigate this beacon and possibly save some lives? Decisions, decisions. Finally, after a few agonizing moments of indecision, he gave the order.

"Bring us into an intercept course with that beacon. I want to know where it came from and who sent it, there may be some people out there who need help. Full speed ahead."

Tainu Elenchi i Vhari ta Iolana stood alone on what could be loosely termed the bridge of the ship, gazing at the holographic projection in the centre of the otherwise featureless room. It showed a hovering disc of white, blue, yellow and red points of light, recognisable instantly as a star map, and among the stars a green line indicating the route that the ship was taking. Reaching out carefully, he placed his finger against the star at the far end of the green line, and in a rush the tiny point of light expanded, rushing towards his face. Text appeared too, although only a designation code for the star. Apparently it had not been deemed interesting enough for anyone to visit: the holographic map was up to date, given that it went through a process of continuous revision to incorporate new data.

He read the designation code again, wondering if there was something that he had missed even in that tiny scrap of information. Deciding that there wasn't, he spoke into what was apparently thin air.

"Ship, where are we going? You said that we were going back to Magellan Station."

There was a brief silence. Perhaps not surprising: although many spacefarers named their ships, and even thought of them as having a degree of personality, talking to them was generally a step too far. Normally, though, the silence received when talking to a ship would be far longer than a second.

I know what I said, Elenchi. And when I said it, I fully intended to return to Magellan. Now, though, we have other plans. New information has presented itself.

"What kind of information?" asked Elenchi. He suspected that the Shipmind was being deliberately cryptic, toying with him. It was a problem with superhuman machine intelligences that they tended to see humans much as a scientist might see a lab rat running through a maze. Not that Slip Of The Tongue was bad company, but occasionally talking to it could be frustrating.

Oh, it's probably nothing. A sudden appearance of a massive broadcaster in the system that we're heading for.

"What's it broadcasting?"

That's what makes it interesting. An apparently random stream of data. I've attempted to decode it: it's almost certainly coming from an artificial source, and so it stands to reason that it would carry some kind of message, and I suspect that there may be patterns in it. But thus far I've been unable to decipher it. It's most irritating: if it was merely in another language, or heavily encrypted, I'd have enough material by now to decipher it.

"And you take it as a personal affront that there's something out there that even you can't decrypt."

There was another pause, and Elenchi wondered for a moment if he'd offended the Shipmind.

Of course not. I merely thought that it could be something that we ought to respond to. A distress signal, perhaps. Although... yes, I suppose you're right. Partially, anyway. Anyway, we're just about to arrive.


The sleek, elliptical hull of the GAU Slip Of The Tongue emerged into realspace. Immediately it used active sensors to ping the space station that was giving off the signal, the space equivalent of prodding it a few times with a stick to see what happened.

The beacon continued to transmit seemingly endless amounts of... nothing. Seemingly as if the very fact that it was transmitting absolutely nothing at all was the most important thing ever, and it never seemed to run out of information, almost as if the beacon was making it up as it went along.

As if to increase the curiosity of any person receiving the first beacons data, a second activated, sending out yet more useless information. The entire exercise was pointless, logically speaking at least, but it seemed as if the beacons had their own warped and twisted logic.

"Hey Lieutenant Elder, welcome aboard Not All Here! I never expected you to be the sort to volunteer for duty aboard this ship"

"Sam! It's great to 'see' ya. Yeah, being without a body save when I think of one is rather...interesting, but then again designing a body as I need one means I don't have to wonder if the uniform makes my butt look too big."

That brought a laugh. "Well things are a lot more laid back now that we know more of what the 'lith can do. Did you hear about the first voyage out of the Ring?"

"Nooo"

"Oh this you have to experience!"

”Jack…Jack! …!Jack!” The female voice went from calm to alarmed in a nearly instantaneous flash and was followed by a *THAWAMPUNK * a hard feeling sound that reverberated for some seconds.

Ouch! …”Hey! How did you manage to make that hurt? I felt that you know, just as if you’d…” the other voice, male trailed off in exasperated tones “Not having a body is just not natural.” came the now ‘on the last nerve’, familiar complaint.

“Stop whining, you volunteered, just like the rest of us. And you’ll have a body when you need one” Sam’andanthalus’s teeth clenched smile was clearly audible in her ‘voice’.

“That’s what you egg heads keep telling me Lieutenant Tapping, but as I haven’t had one yet I don’t know whether I believe you.” Jack replied crossly.’I mean how am I supposed to keep my physical state uppermost in my subconsciousness. Isn’t your subconscious supposed to putter along on its own doing its own thing without direction from me?” The best defense was always a confusing offence and Jack specialized in those.

This time it didn’t work…

“Jack, you just drove our brand new monolith, still filled with that subtle but instantly recognizable ‘new monolith’ smell, backwards.” Another voice – also feminine and clearly exasperated -chimed in, then paused pregnantly…

Jack smirked, no alarms were shrilling – so no harm, no foul…right?

The voice snarled “Though a star!”

Every one flinched. Though no one would ever admit as to which of the two possible ‘why’s – the danger of facing an angry Captain Catherine Grace O’Malley, or conning a ship though a star.

“Give me those controls”

“erm… I…” frantic, futile search “..I don’t have them, may be I dropped them in all.” Jack found himself cut off.

“How do you drop something that isn’t there?”

“As I Was Going Up The Stairs, I Met A Man Who Wasn't There. He Wasn't There Again Today. I Wish, I Wish, He'd Go Away” Jack offered shamelessly while trying to simultaneously ‘recover’ the controls he’d somehow managed to 'misplace'. He was sure he’d find them any instant now. He never, ever lost anything. It just took him a while to…

“There!” The Captain’s voice was relieved. “Now let’s see where Jack has landed us."

Jack was even more so, not that he’d ever let any one know that. He just didn’t like being without a body. It just wasn’t natural.

“Lets see gas giants...extreme radioactivity and stellar primary spectroscopic emissions... Captain I think this is the system that the Sertains have recently claimed.” Came Lt. Taapping purling voice.

“That wasn’t where…Jack!” The Captain voice was a sigh of frustration.

“I was just looking the systems parameters over, it’s very interesting!” He replied with just a trace of defensiveness.

“Yes but the higher-ups were going to wait to ask to send an observer until the Sertains publicly announced it.” The Captain's voice was resigned. She hadn’t though that backing through a star would jump them that great a distance, but it obviously had. Now she needed to make nice and reassuring to the Sertains. She wasn’t a diplomat darn it and …she simply closed non existent eyes for a long moment. “Also some one phone home and let them know were okay and just” the voice became a growl once again “in the wrong place!”

Her bridge crew hurried to carry out the captain’s orders.

However it was also quickly discovered that apparently backing though a star required a post event period of roughly an hour to reset something – the new ship hadn’t come with a very coherent handbook and the engineers were still feeling their way though some of the basic notions of the stranger than merely strange physics of the Monolith. Being un- embodied was giving them headaches too. And the Integral Sentience wasn’t being all that helpful, or so they felt. Though one did mutter something about quantum apples and non Euclidian oranges.

Quickly a hail went out to the Sertian installation advising them as to who the inadvertent intruder was, apologizing profoundly for their inadvertent intrusion and that they had no intent of doing anything but leaving as soon as possible.

“Sertian Base this is Tanaran Imperial Navy MX01” the Monolith wasn’t really[i] experimental- One Starr had been using them ever since they’d found the deep space, red limit storehouse of the oddities - but the Tanaran Navy had felt that it was the best designation, for the moment “We apologize for the inadvertent intrusion. We will be recharging for approximately one hour in our current location before leaving the system”

“And it had better not be backwards though the nearest star Jack, or I’ll clip your wings for good!” The Captain admonished sternly.

Jack folded his irridescently peacocked hued, leathery wings in tightly, or he would have if he still had them- now thoroughly alarmed- Threatening to clip his wings was just...excessive...wasn't it?

Jack's ex-wife, Lieutenant Katie Elder nearly ruptured a no longer extant rib whooping with laughter. "Oh my gods, I'd heard the story but figured it was just fengshue! That is so utterly Jack!"

"But it ended well, and it did show that just about the worst that could happen didn't ruffle a 'lith too much. And we got our name out of it." Sam's 'voice' was pleased, that was clearly evident against the gentle, nearly unnoticed murmur of all the other minds currently residing in the Not All Here.

Sam's attention was drawn however by the knowledge that the Not All Here's Captain, the formidible Catherine Grace O'Malley wanted her consciousness on the 'bridge'

"Come on Katie. This ought to be interesting." Sam suggested as she directed her attention to the 'bridge'

The Monolith hung in the depths of space, relatively far from the noisy station - or rather the projection of it intruding into this universe, reality, what ever one felt like calling it- did. It was currently invisible to all senses, artificial and natural, save simple old fashioned mark 1 mod 1 human visual.

And what the basically means is -if you used - via technology or 'organic' -any of the EM spectrum outside of purely human visual ranges you didn't know the projection was there. The Monolith and its crew weren't being rude, but they'd been following the trail of a broadcast that was intriguing if unintelligible. And unintelligible could translate out to dangerous, though that was not necessarily so. But while they hadn't found anything that could break the Monolith yet, it wasn't for their lack of trying. They figured their own near misses were bad enough - they didn't need outside attempts waged against them.

"Jack, lets take her in closer. I want to disperse some high sensitivity drones and those will need to be eyeballed in."

"But Boss,"

"Captain" Came the swift, but more than slightly 'its habit' reply

"Captain. I can do it from here." Came the protest

"Jack..."

The others of the non corporeal crew suppressed snickers, while someone unnamed played back Jacks backing through the star incident- that brought a ruffle of laughter from every one. Well all most every one - the Captain - by the grace of the Divine and the Empress- Catherine Grace O’Malley didn't crack a smile.

"As normal" came a whisper from among the crew

Elsewhere someone commented with a faintly heard snicker “Normal hasn’t applied for some time now, read your damned memos!” but that was almost drowned out by some one giggling ”Normal has been suspended for the duration of operations. We went down the rabbit’s hole on a whim and a dare and how we’ve ended up …” and many another comment and laugh - the crew was, despite the vast total of years their cumulative experience gave, in good, if not necessarily sane, cheer -until…

"Creatures of the Mind, shut up!" Came Captain Catherine Grace O’Malley’s firm mind voice "Too many of you talking at once. Still yourselves as we were taught!”

Blessed silence fell…hard. The Captain was not one to cross.

Jack, just do it Came the Captain's voice, and the eye roll that accompanied it was a given.

With many small, half developed thoughts Jack quickly set about creating the parameters and put them where they needed to be to drop the drones as requested in the blink of a thought. He didn't need to initiate any other of the Monolith's transportational abilities. For short ranges it simply teleported.

And after hours of consultation with the crew, and a quick E.T. the Captain had come to her decision. For in the end it was and always would be the Captain's call. That’s why getting to be a Captain in the Explorers Guild was so hard - and doubly hard if one double hatted with the Tanaran Navy. She hadn’t consulted the Integral Sentience – she had the feeling it would not have advised – for Grace was almost certain that it was observing them as much as it observed the outer world.

And the system was getting crowded – now there were other people arriving as well – and so some times one had to step up to the plate, or let some one else get the home run.

[i]“Okay every one, no babble, no fringe noise. Lets be calm cool and collected. All protocols down, fully visible….Lets say hello”

And so the Monolith did.

http://www.atddm.com/monolith3.jpg