I don't mean to gripe, but sometimes I wonder.
If bad luck,
is really so much better than no luck at all.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Writer's Block
I don't know what happened. But it's like somebody's clamped shut the valves and all I can hear is a constant buzzing in the back of my head.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Frontier, Part III
We got through another section tonight. The encryption process seems to line up with the polymorphic code we found at the end of the last segment. Inserting the code at the right intervals reduced encryption complexity by a factor of twelve. It's like... the more we get, the faster we can access the rest.
This one was different though. No Albedo. No ships. No colonists.
The recording was... hazy. Scratchy. Like it was different from the others. Judging by the hands that kept appearing in the line-of-sight, it was still Ark, but the quality of was just... well. It was shit. We couldn't make anything out.
Well, not initially anyway. As the recording went on, the quality gradually became better. It was an alien planet - topography like nothing we had ever seen before. Jagged indigo cliffs with veritable seas of gray, untouched ash between them. The only light came from a main sequence white dwarf, barely visible on the horizon. Every few steps, Ark would stumble. From our analysis, the ash appeared to be volcanic. Likely pretty slippery. But something was wrong. After falling a few times, Ark's path became slewed, almost like he wasn't sure where he was going. After falling for about the fifth time, Ark just... stayed down.
At this point, the researchers paused the playback. This whole scene was so different from the others that they weren't even sure it was authentic. Attempts to pull up context ended up spewing garbage code throughout the server buffers. The whole thing was a mess, but I had a feeling that there was a point to it.
We resumed playback 12 hours later. Ark remained motionless on the ground, eyes up to the stars. Planetologists on the team noted the lack of atmospheric colouring. Whatever planet Ark was on, was essentially in a vacuum. Even with the sun up, it was very easy to see the stars.
It was about hour four when some of the research team noticed an eerie effect in the playback. The stars began cartwheeling across the screen at incredible speeds. Mathematical analysis concluded that it was a time lapse, even though the tiny white sun never moved. This revealed that the planet was tidally locked, though Ark's reasons for being there were still a mystery.
It was hour 20 when something finally happened. A giant black smear opened in the middle of the screen, blotting out where the stars had previously been tracing their way. Out of the maw came a slender, tubular vessel, angular nacelles glowing with incandescent heat as it exited the slip. Slowly the ship descended, settling down out of Ark's field of few. A few tense moments went by before a metallic face appeared in the corner of Ark's vision. It was vaguely human, though mechanical joints and fine, filigree-thin tracery plotted from the corners of the eyes, the mouth, and the ears to the back of the bald head. Instead of eyes, the face had two luminous blue optics. Even with the degraded quality of the recording, we could see that this was a Third-Gen Immortal. After staring at Ark, whoever-it-was seemed to hunch over and lift him up. The recording was jarred slightly, and we finally saw something that made our blood run cold.
Ark's body was decayed and covered with the same volcanic ash that coated the entire planet. His central chest cavity seemed to be badly scored, but what looked like industrial tools. One of his legs had been brutally amputated just below the knee.
It wasn't until later that week that the numbers had come back. He'd been left on that planet for just under a century. Left, seemingly, for dead. It was only after the recording was complete that a bit of code dropped into the context, arranging it all from useless heaps of junk code into more and more mathematical and cybernetic algorithms.
And wedged right in the middle of the math was a tiny, seemingly hand-written message.
"This cruelty wasn't expected or looked for. I will remember you.
And I will find you."
The cybernetic algorithms patched together to form a real-time, three-dimensional schematic of Ark's body at the time the recording was made. Extensive damage to his entire body, most of it so messily done that his internal nanomachinery wasn't able to fix it. An inch deeper into his chest, and whatever industrial tool the assaulter had been using would've penetrated Ark's biological core, killing him outright.
We'd heard about breakaway colonies that actively hunted Immortals. But this was the first time we'd been exposed to this kind of... brutality and cruelty. We shared a private moment afterward. We were shaken. Shaken, because the horror we thought we'd left on Earth had still, somehow, made it to the stars.
This one was different though. No Albedo. No ships. No colonists.
The recording was... hazy. Scratchy. Like it was different from the others. Judging by the hands that kept appearing in the line-of-sight, it was still Ark, but the quality of was just... well. It was shit. We couldn't make anything out.
Well, not initially anyway. As the recording went on, the quality gradually became better. It was an alien planet - topography like nothing we had ever seen before. Jagged indigo cliffs with veritable seas of gray, untouched ash between them. The only light came from a main sequence white dwarf, barely visible on the horizon. Every few steps, Ark would stumble. From our analysis, the ash appeared to be volcanic. Likely pretty slippery. But something was wrong. After falling a few times, Ark's path became slewed, almost like he wasn't sure where he was going. After falling for about the fifth time, Ark just... stayed down.
At this point, the researchers paused the playback. This whole scene was so different from the others that they weren't even sure it was authentic. Attempts to pull up context ended up spewing garbage code throughout the server buffers. The whole thing was a mess, but I had a feeling that there was a point to it.
We resumed playback 12 hours later. Ark remained motionless on the ground, eyes up to the stars. Planetologists on the team noted the lack of atmospheric colouring. Whatever planet Ark was on, was essentially in a vacuum. Even with the sun up, it was very easy to see the stars.
It was about hour four when some of the research team noticed an eerie effect in the playback. The stars began cartwheeling across the screen at incredible speeds. Mathematical analysis concluded that it was a time lapse, even though the tiny white sun never moved. This revealed that the planet was tidally locked, though Ark's reasons for being there were still a mystery.
It was hour 20 when something finally happened. A giant black smear opened in the middle of the screen, blotting out where the stars had previously been tracing their way. Out of the maw came a slender, tubular vessel, angular nacelles glowing with incandescent heat as it exited the slip. Slowly the ship descended, settling down out of Ark's field of few. A few tense moments went by before a metallic face appeared in the corner of Ark's vision. It was vaguely human, though mechanical joints and fine, filigree-thin tracery plotted from the corners of the eyes, the mouth, and the ears to the back of the bald head. Instead of eyes, the face had two luminous blue optics. Even with the degraded quality of the recording, we could see that this was a Third-Gen Immortal. After staring at Ark, whoever-it-was seemed to hunch over and lift him up. The recording was jarred slightly, and we finally saw something that made our blood run cold.
Ark's body was decayed and covered with the same volcanic ash that coated the entire planet. His central chest cavity seemed to be badly scored, but what looked like industrial tools. One of his legs had been brutally amputated just below the knee.
It wasn't until later that week that the numbers had come back. He'd been left on that planet for just under a century. Left, seemingly, for dead. It was only after the recording was complete that a bit of code dropped into the context, arranging it all from useless heaps of junk code into more and more mathematical and cybernetic algorithms.
And wedged right in the middle of the math was a tiny, seemingly hand-written message.
"This cruelty wasn't expected or looked for. I will remember you.
And I will find you."
The cybernetic algorithms patched together to form a real-time, three-dimensional schematic of Ark's body at the time the recording was made. Extensive damage to his entire body, most of it so messily done that his internal nanomachinery wasn't able to fix it. An inch deeper into his chest, and whatever industrial tool the assaulter had been using would've penetrated Ark's biological core, killing him outright.
We'd heard about breakaway colonies that actively hunted Immortals. But this was the first time we'd been exposed to this kind of... brutality and cruelty. We shared a private moment afterward. We were shaken. Shaken, because the horror we thought we'd left on Earth had still, somehow, made it to the stars.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Frontier, Part II
The first segment decoded last night, and we've been running it through translation since then. It was a montage of collected writings, recordings, and thoughts, stored in multi-layered formats that built layers of context as one dug down into them. It appeared to be chronological in order, the first of these "memories" was a scratchy video recording.
It was shot from low orbit above Albedo. We could see the Chalcedony Sea, though it was smaller and clearer back when this was shot. Digging into the file, we developed context. The recorder, whom we assumed to be Ark, decided to land his ship off the coast of the Chalcedony Sea, roughly where Calico - our planetary capital - exists today. From first-person reference in the file, we determined that even at this point, Ark was an Immortal. He was one of three on the voyage from Earth, and with him were some thousand human beings - our ancestors.
We were watching our own founding as a colony.
I remember the looks on the research teams' faces. They could see parts of themselves in the faces of these recorded colonists. Each one was faced directly by Ark, each one was spoken to. Named. One Thousand Names. None of us were willing to say it, but we were all thinking it. This was our history. Our heritage. Never before had we cared to think of it, but here, we were living it through the memories of an ancient, space-faring soul.
The second file recovered seemed to be a remembered poem. Spoken words mixed with unresolved images.
"Icey vie. Beyrn tru Heigh. Irula san gyre, Beyrn tru Heigh."
The language was undecipherable, but each word evoked an image of, what appeared to be, sunrise on a different planet. The pictures were diffuse, but two were clearly identifiable. Earth. Albedo. In each, there appeared to be a shape in the picture's right, a dark outline too blurry to be identified. Context inverted the colour of the pictures, and revealed hand-written notes scrawled across the face of the sun.
"I was here with you, though now only I remain.
Perhaps one day, there will only be sunrises, and no one to witness their beauty.
For now, I remember you, and I am content.
We don't see it now, but every sun sets."
The third file recovered was an analytical sample. We'd seen ones like it before. Albedo's water levels, trace elements, metallics, metalloids, mineraloids, and one statistic we hadn't seen before. Ultradense. Context revealed yet more handwriting.
"Forgiving terrain for impacts. Meteroids average roughly 300 cm in diameter. Material suitable for Immortal component manufacture. Nanite precision is refined to less than one-ten-thousandth micro-arcs, finer than even Nemesis average precision. Recommend colony research applications for nano-technology. Applications could be far-reaching beyond just Immortal benefit."
The scrawl of the letters forms a crude outline. Two hours of computer processing revealed it as a crustaceomorph nanite, bristling with tiny appendage-tools. These, we'd seen before too. Children were injected with them on their third birthday to augment their immune system. Throughout their life, these tiny machines mended tissues and destroyed infected cells using tools finer than gene-surgeon's scalpel.
At last, we reached the end of the decrypted block. More poetry and hazy memories. What was more useful was a strand of polymorphic code at the end of the section. It kept repeating a linear numeric sequence:
"001002001003"
What could it mean?
It was shot from low orbit above Albedo. We could see the Chalcedony Sea, though it was smaller and clearer back when this was shot. Digging into the file, we developed context. The recorder, whom we assumed to be Ark, decided to land his ship off the coast of the Chalcedony Sea, roughly where Calico - our planetary capital - exists today. From first-person reference in the file, we determined that even at this point, Ark was an Immortal. He was one of three on the voyage from Earth, and with him were some thousand human beings - our ancestors.
We were watching our own founding as a colony.
I remember the looks on the research teams' faces. They could see parts of themselves in the faces of these recorded colonists. Each one was faced directly by Ark, each one was spoken to. Named. One Thousand Names. None of us were willing to say it, but we were all thinking it. This was our history. Our heritage. Never before had we cared to think of it, but here, we were living it through the memories of an ancient, space-faring soul.
The second file recovered seemed to be a remembered poem. Spoken words mixed with unresolved images.
"Icey vie. Beyrn tru Heigh. Irula san gyre, Beyrn tru Heigh."
The language was undecipherable, but each word evoked an image of, what appeared to be, sunrise on a different planet. The pictures were diffuse, but two were clearly identifiable. Earth. Albedo. In each, there appeared to be a shape in the picture's right, a dark outline too blurry to be identified. Context inverted the colour of the pictures, and revealed hand-written notes scrawled across the face of the sun.
"I was here with you, though now only I remain.
Perhaps one day, there will only be sunrises, and no one to witness their beauty.
For now, I remember you, and I am content.
We don't see it now, but every sun sets."
The third file recovered was an analytical sample. We'd seen ones like it before. Albedo's water levels, trace elements, metallics, metalloids, mineraloids, and one statistic we hadn't seen before. Ultradense. Context revealed yet more handwriting.
"Forgiving terrain for impacts. Meteroids average roughly 300 cm in diameter. Material suitable for Immortal component manufacture. Nanite precision is refined to less than one-ten-thousandth micro-arcs, finer than even Nemesis average precision. Recommend colony research applications for nano-technology. Applications could be far-reaching beyond just Immortal benefit."
The scrawl of the letters forms a crude outline. Two hours of computer processing revealed it as a crustaceomorph nanite, bristling with tiny appendage-tools. These, we'd seen before too. Children were injected with them on their third birthday to augment their immune system. Throughout their life, these tiny machines mended tissues and destroyed infected cells using tools finer than gene-surgeon's scalpel.
At last, we reached the end of the decrypted block. More poetry and hazy memories. What was more useful was a strand of polymorphic code at the end of the section. It kept repeating a linear numeric sequence:
"001002001003"
What could it mean?
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Frontier, Part I
Albedo was the quintessential extrasolar backwater. 70% lime-salt desert, oceans so backish that no terran fish could even hope to live, dry dusty summer storms (it was always summer), and an atmospheric humidity that made the skin on your arms peel just thinking about it. Still, it was home. And as far as homes went, this one was pretty private. Considering it was the only station still transmitting within about 50,000 light years, one could say it was almost exclusive.
The last we'd heard from Earth had been more than three years earlier. Calamity. Death. Every frequency was the howling of thousands, lives abruptly cut short. Still, the Immortal convoys that came through our space brought news that it wasn't a complete wash. Humanity had been taken to the brink before. Billions died then. Reports this time said only a few thousand. It was a sign of the times when we could rejoice at mere thousands disappearing, but this wasn't the heyday of humanity.
If anything, we'd beaten the knell of extinction - twice. Nemesis was a black spectre that haunted us still, but we'd managed it, and even taken some from it. The Immortals were evidence of that. The Monolith invasion was a second, far more vital blow. An alien invasion headed by an insane Immortal, the only objective: to build a replica weapon to destroy all remaining humanity. It was the stuff of nightmares, but even then, we persevered.
The cost had been steep. The Immortals especially, had lost a large portion of their oldest and brightest. Second Generation members, they'd been called. People so old that they could remember what Earth looked like without Nemesis. We remember when a First Gen immortal, Sol, had visited this planet. Didn't look like much, but he left us with a record of one of the dead. Ark, they'd called him. Rumor was he was from Albedo, but hadn't been home in nearly a thousand years. That would've made him one of the founding members of the first colony, back when Albedo was the outermost fringe of thousands of human colonies that exploded across the Outer Reaches.
The record was encrypted, and even now our best computers are working to decode it. All we know at this point is that certain sections are time-locked, and based on the rotation and position of Albedo, certain records will open. The first is due to open in a few weeks time; we'll see what exactly Ark has to show us.
The last we'd heard from Earth had been more than three years earlier. Calamity. Death. Every frequency was the howling of thousands, lives abruptly cut short. Still, the Immortal convoys that came through our space brought news that it wasn't a complete wash. Humanity had been taken to the brink before. Billions died then. Reports this time said only a few thousand. It was a sign of the times when we could rejoice at mere thousands disappearing, but this wasn't the heyday of humanity.
If anything, we'd beaten the knell of extinction - twice. Nemesis was a black spectre that haunted us still, but we'd managed it, and even taken some from it. The Immortals were evidence of that. The Monolith invasion was a second, far more vital blow. An alien invasion headed by an insane Immortal, the only objective: to build a replica weapon to destroy all remaining humanity. It was the stuff of nightmares, but even then, we persevered.
The cost had been steep. The Immortals especially, had lost a large portion of their oldest and brightest. Second Generation members, they'd been called. People so old that they could remember what Earth looked like without Nemesis. We remember when a First Gen immortal, Sol, had visited this planet. Didn't look like much, but he left us with a record of one of the dead. Ark, they'd called him. Rumor was he was from Albedo, but hadn't been home in nearly a thousand years. That would've made him one of the founding members of the first colony, back when Albedo was the outermost fringe of thousands of human colonies that exploded across the Outer Reaches.
The record was encrypted, and even now our best computers are working to decode it. All we know at this point is that certain sections are time-locked, and based on the rotation and position of Albedo, certain records will open. The first is due to open in a few weeks time; we'll see what exactly Ark has to show us.
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