I did have some solid science fiction speculation behind this one, but it seems to have got lost in the mysticism. And I'm trying to do something I've dodged in the past: portray the protagonist as an emotional entity, and not just someone who unravels a beautiful new world. Caustic criticism is welcome.
It was an important day for the planet, a fact that most of its inhabitants were blissfully unaware of. Amidst the tiny subset who occupied the sprawling mission control centre room however, the sensation was almost heady. There was a palpable, yet indefinable something that hung in the air; a powerful emotion that, to the biased eyes of Ack, seemed to be a mixture of too much euphoria and too little anxiety. Perhaps the secrecy associated with the operation gave these men and women a feeling of shared megalomania; a form of lunacy most dangerous, as its only symptom was a heightened sense of rationality. Perhaps this primal emotion was yet another manifestation of that blasted agon. After all the time and effort the Organization had spent in trying to weed it out, it was still around. He felt the beginnings of an uncontrollable rage. It would soon spread all over his body like a tidal wave, and he would end up doing stupid. He tried to call upon his extensive scientific training to fight it, perhaps with the naïve hope that the anger would simply be cast off as something wasteful. The same logic and the same rationality he had always prided himself on seemed to fuel the rage. Falsehoods! That was all that his logical arguments were. They were all lies! He turned to face the smartly dressed woman seated in front of him.
It was the Age of Space. But this was no space faring generation Carl Sagan would have envisioned. Where was the death knell for religious superstition? Where was the drug that would open minds and heal the world? This was supposed to be the time when the foremost sentient beings of the planet would finally accept the responsibility that status entailed. This was supposed to be the time when humility would rise up and smite down petty parochialism. If there was a plot to this tale, it was one the characters did not understand. The sentients were to finally take the first steps into planetary adulthood. Where had it all gone wrong? More and more people began to ally themselves with the idea of sentient pride. This notion became so widespread that it got a name of its own, a name that carried no traces of its negative origins. Agon. Perhaps this agon was created in anticipation of a first contact. Perhaps it had always been there, subliminal, waiting for the right stimulus. New religions drew on the sentient race’s rightful claim to the vast riches the Universe possessed. Governments launched multitudes of spacecraft into the sky, ostensibly with scientific motives. The truth, and retrospection never lies, was that they waited for War. There were hostiles out there. They only had to seek them out with the right tools.
To the world she was an ordinary space trader. A filthy rich and politically well-connected one, but still she was just another person who had made a fortune off extraplanetary minerals. The media adored her; not only did she possess a delectable holier-than-thou religious persona, but was good looking to boot. She was closer to middle age than youth in reality, but this only seemed to add to her aura, not take away from it. She was perfect, and she was the head of the Organization. The cloudhead-in-chief if you will.
“I know why you requested for this meeting, Doctor. And you know perfectly well that we cannot act on mere hunches. Sorry.” Anyone else would have come across as harsh with that sentence, but not her. Certainly not her. The ease with which she controlled others, her calm, her beauty, everything about her, despite himself he felt the stirrings of an old infatuation. He fought it back. He had waited weeks for this meeting, and he would have his say.
“Well, I cannot emphasize the graveness of the danger we might be exposing ourselves to. The tablet… “
She cut him off. “The tablet speaks of a mythical tale that you established was simply a cover for the complex mathematical data it hid within. They did not want to appear anachronistic in any way, and what better way to do so than cook up a tale of world destruction? The wrath of the Gods is all-powerful and we must atone for our sins.” She smiled sweetly, and the whole effect was to reduce his Ack’s misgivings to adolescent fatalism. But she was so tolerant, wasn’t she? She would forgive him for his indiscretion.
Ack was not done yet. “I agree, madam. But why? The question here is why? Why would they go to such lengths to hide the data? The levels of indirection in the mathematical data were so complex and in such abundance that you are forced to ask the question – What if there is meaning to the story?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. I cannot help you here. I understand your concerns, but you, of all people, should understand the magnitude of the task we have set ourselves. We cannot fail. We simply cannot.” A slight change in intonation told him that the meeting was at an end. The virulent rage that had been gradually building up in him lately set off on its usual process of delicate seduction. He hid his trembling hands under the polished desk in front of him. He had more to say, plenty more, but he would have to go.
They were believed to be just another group of religious nuts. A drop in the dirty ocean, a face in the noisy rabble, they were mostly ignored by the establishment. At the time when pride in one’s species was at its zenith, these people rejected the agon. They claimed that sentience was the only true law of the Universe, and that it was everywhere. Why do we not see it then? To this they had an easy answer: other sentient races cannot be seen because they lie outside our ‘natural’ laws. If only we look hard enough and long enough, we will eventually find an anomaly. With this hope they turned to the stars. For many, many years they waited and watched. What they sought was not the bustling alien metropolis of the astronomers; instead they looked for the signature of a massive sentience, a slow, brooding power that worked at galactic time scales on the fabric of the cosmos itself. They came to be known as the cloudheads.
Ack walked into the mission control centre. He noticed that he had drawn the attention of a couple of his physicist acquaintances, and waved cheerily back. Once again his conformism disgusted him. Why should he try so hard to keep others happy? Let them see the veil of hopelessness that surrounded him. Let them see him for what he really was. If he was right, what did it matter now? Before his rebellious thoughts could come to any kind of fruition, he found himself distracted by one of the monitors. It showed a feed from the probe’s left panel camera. Twenty three light years away, in the heart of the predicted ‘anomaly’, space looked like anywhere else. Black. Featureless. The huge timer board that hung from the ceiling of the control centre informed him that the probe was in position and would discharge its payload in a little over an hour. A new emotion swept over him. Determination, and a sense of purpose he thought had been irretrievably lost. He would study the tablet one last time.
The evidence came not from the stars, but from the soil of their own planet. It was a piece of clay, a tablet which told the story of a long dead race. It should have been nothing more than a run of the mill archaeological relic, but for a series of incredible coincidences. First was the takeover. The Organization (this was what they had begun to call themselves) had its usual share of wealthy benefactors, like any other cult. One of them was a beautiful young space trader who went by the colloquial tag of Tel. One of Tel’s numerous archaeological consortia had found the tablet, and after exhaustive study concluded that it was nothing more than what it seemed. By way of giving him something to do, Tel handed over the tablet to a young cryptographer at the Organization for analysis. This young man was yet another in the growing group of intellectuals who had been seduced by the cloudheads’ metaphysics. Ack was what his friends called him, and he was one who took his work seriously. He immediately realized, with the mathematician’s eye for patterns, that the system of grooves that covered the tablet were not random. After painstaking work, he uncovered something akin to a scientist’s report. It spoke of a weakness in the ‘vortex’ of existential flux, a weakness that could be broken through with the right amount of energy. The cloudheads had finally found their laboratory, and nothing would stop them from conducting the experiment. They would launch a space probe to the ‘anomaly’ and use it to rip a hole in spacetime. Oh, yes, that would send the other sentients a message.
He studied the tablet in his chambers. Every ridge on the otherwise smooth surface, every scratched alphabet in the story, he knew by heart. He also knew that there were parts of the hidden cipher that had been decoded but not understood. They held the key to his puzzle. Increased sounds of frenzy from the control room tickled his eardrums. It must be nearly time. He began to despair, and wondered whether he should go back to the control centre and just watch the detonation. Then it happened. The only orgasm that the thinking mind can experience: a surge of pure pleasure that accompanies an almost Platonic transfer of new ideas to the scientific theoretician’s saturated brain. He suddenly knew what the story meant. A cold chill washed over him. The Guardians were real. He had to tell the others. He had to, there was no time. They were going to come for them. But, even in the moment of his greatest triumph, he could not totally ignore sensory percepts. The mission control centre had gone completely quiet.
The story the tablet told was not something knew. It spoke of excesses; it spoke of punishment and it spoke of redemption. They had overreached; they had delved into the books of the Gods, they had learnt too much and now they had to atone for it. The Guardians would come and destroy them all for their impertinence. The story, especially after the mathematical secrets on the tablet were unravelled, seemed particularly allegorical. It was ignored. The cloudheads did not quite know what would happen if the ‘anomaly’ was torn apart, but they knew that it would expose the Universe of a higher sentience. Perhaps it would show a Universe in which stars, galaxies, or even groups of galaxies would be the tiniest of its constituents, or perhaps it would reveal an infinity of Universes enclosed within those miniscule entities called quarks. The cloudheads went underground. This was a long term project and needed the utmost secrecy. They certainly had the financial backing; they just needed the right technology. Oh, yes, they were going to send a message, and not just to other sentient races.
Something unexpected had happened. The screens still showed the same dull black swathe of nothingness, but this was not any feed from outer space. The feed was lost to the mission control, on all cameras. The result of the detonation was unknown. What if the probe itself had been destroyed? No one spoke. Perhaps they were all hoping for something to happen that would convince them that years of work had not just been lost in a heartbeat. Ack barely held in check a strange new feeling that threatened to overwhelm him: it was mostly euphoria with a tinge of anxiety. Something was going to happen, and he would be damned if it would happen to all of them. They did not deserve any of it. There was no malice in that thought. It was too late for that. He made his way back to his chambers, just as his brain convulsed in the throes of another magnificent vision.
Plato, and the ancient Greeks would have loved to see what he could see. The Universe was... Ideal. They were everywhere, and everything existed because of them. They were breathtakingly beautiful and immeasurably perfect. Maybe you could call them a source of boundless light, but putting words to his vision would be sullying its infinite purity. It was such a noble thing, he could hardly bear to look at it, but it was everywhere. They were here to take him. How could he ever have thought they meant harm? He understood their purpose. They had to maintain the equilibrium between the levels. Was there somebody who controlled them? Was there a sentience that stitched together the laws of sentience itself? Oh, how perfect they were! He suddenly felt forgiveness. He pleaded with the illuminated nothingness around him. Don’t take the others. Just don’t give them what they want, that should keep the barriers in place. It was always about him. He was the anomaly and he would fix it.
It was an important day for the planet, a fact that most of its inhabitants were blissfully unaware of. Amidst the tiny subset who occupied the sprawling mission control centre room however, the sensation was almost heady. There was a palpable, yet indefinable something that hung in the air; a powerful emotion that, to the biased eyes of Ack, seemed to be a mixture of too much euphoria and too little anxiety. Perhaps the secrecy associated with the operation gave these men and women a feeling of shared megalomania; a form of lunacy most dangerous, as its only symptom was a heightened sense of rationality. Perhaps this primal emotion was yet another manifestation of that blasted agon. After all the time and effort the Organization had spent in trying to weed it out, it was still around. He felt the beginnings of an uncontrollable rage. It would soon spread all over his body like a tidal wave, and he would end up doing stupid. He tried to call upon his extensive scientific training to fight it, perhaps with the naïve hope that the anger would simply be cast off as something wasteful. The same logic and the same rationality he had always prided himself on seemed to fuel the rage. Falsehoods! That was all that his logical arguments were. They were all lies! He turned to face the smartly dressed woman seated in front of him.
It was the Age of Space. But this was no space faring generation Carl Sagan would have envisioned. Where was the death knell for religious superstition? Where was the drug that would open minds and heal the world? This was supposed to be the time when the foremost sentient beings of the planet would finally accept the responsibility that status entailed. This was supposed to be the time when humility would rise up and smite down petty parochialism. If there was a plot to this tale, it was one the characters did not understand. The sentients were to finally take the first steps into planetary adulthood. Where had it all gone wrong? More and more people began to ally themselves with the idea of sentient pride. This notion became so widespread that it got a name of its own, a name that carried no traces of its negative origins. Agon. Perhaps this agon was created in anticipation of a first contact. Perhaps it had always been there, subliminal, waiting for the right stimulus. New religions drew on the sentient race’s rightful claim to the vast riches the Universe possessed. Governments launched multitudes of spacecraft into the sky, ostensibly with scientific motives. The truth, and retrospection never lies, was that they waited for War. There were hostiles out there. They only had to seek them out with the right tools.
To the world she was an ordinary space trader. A filthy rich and politically well-connected one, but still she was just another person who had made a fortune off extraplanetary minerals. The media adored her; not only did she possess a delectable holier-than-thou religious persona, but was good looking to boot. She was closer to middle age than youth in reality, but this only seemed to add to her aura, not take away from it. She was perfect, and she was the head of the Organization. The cloudhead-in-chief if you will.
“I know why you requested for this meeting, Doctor. And you know perfectly well that we cannot act on mere hunches. Sorry.” Anyone else would have come across as harsh with that sentence, but not her. Certainly not her. The ease with which she controlled others, her calm, her beauty, everything about her, despite himself he felt the stirrings of an old infatuation. He fought it back. He had waited weeks for this meeting, and he would have his say.
“Well, I cannot emphasize the graveness of the danger we might be exposing ourselves to. The tablet… “
She cut him off. “The tablet speaks of a mythical tale that you established was simply a cover for the complex mathematical data it hid within. They did not want to appear anachronistic in any way, and what better way to do so than cook up a tale of world destruction? The wrath of the Gods is all-powerful and we must atone for our sins.” She smiled sweetly, and the whole effect was to reduce his Ack’s misgivings to adolescent fatalism. But she was so tolerant, wasn’t she? She would forgive him for his indiscretion.
Ack was not done yet. “I agree, madam. But why? The question here is why? Why would they go to such lengths to hide the data? The levels of indirection in the mathematical data were so complex and in such abundance that you are forced to ask the question – What if there is meaning to the story?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. I cannot help you here. I understand your concerns, but you, of all people, should understand the magnitude of the task we have set ourselves. We cannot fail. We simply cannot.” A slight change in intonation told him that the meeting was at an end. The virulent rage that had been gradually building up in him lately set off on its usual process of delicate seduction. He hid his trembling hands under the polished desk in front of him. He had more to say, plenty more, but he would have to go.
They were believed to be just another group of religious nuts. A drop in the dirty ocean, a face in the noisy rabble, they were mostly ignored by the establishment. At the time when pride in one’s species was at its zenith, these people rejected the agon. They claimed that sentience was the only true law of the Universe, and that it was everywhere. Why do we not see it then? To this they had an easy answer: other sentient races cannot be seen because they lie outside our ‘natural’ laws. If only we look hard enough and long enough, we will eventually find an anomaly. With this hope they turned to the stars. For many, many years they waited and watched. What they sought was not the bustling alien metropolis of the astronomers; instead they looked for the signature of a massive sentience, a slow, brooding power that worked at galactic time scales on the fabric of the cosmos itself. They came to be known as the cloudheads.
Ack walked into the mission control centre. He noticed that he had drawn the attention of a couple of his physicist acquaintances, and waved cheerily back. Once again his conformism disgusted him. Why should he try so hard to keep others happy? Let them see the veil of hopelessness that surrounded him. Let them see him for what he really was. If he was right, what did it matter now? Before his rebellious thoughts could come to any kind of fruition, he found himself distracted by one of the monitors. It showed a feed from the probe’s left panel camera. Twenty three light years away, in the heart of the predicted ‘anomaly’, space looked like anywhere else. Black. Featureless. The huge timer board that hung from the ceiling of the control centre informed him that the probe was in position and would discharge its payload in a little over an hour. A new emotion swept over him. Determination, and a sense of purpose he thought had been irretrievably lost. He would study the tablet one last time.
The evidence came not from the stars, but from the soil of their own planet. It was a piece of clay, a tablet which told the story of a long dead race. It should have been nothing more than a run of the mill archaeological relic, but for a series of incredible coincidences. First was the takeover. The Organization (this was what they had begun to call themselves) had its usual share of wealthy benefactors, like any other cult. One of them was a beautiful young space trader who went by the colloquial tag of Tel. One of Tel’s numerous archaeological consortia had found the tablet, and after exhaustive study concluded that it was nothing more than what it seemed. By way of giving him something to do, Tel handed over the tablet to a young cryptographer at the Organization for analysis. This young man was yet another in the growing group of intellectuals who had been seduced by the cloudheads’ metaphysics. Ack was what his friends called him, and he was one who took his work seriously. He immediately realized, with the mathematician’s eye for patterns, that the system of grooves that covered the tablet were not random. After painstaking work, he uncovered something akin to a scientist’s report. It spoke of a weakness in the ‘vortex’ of existential flux, a weakness that could be broken through with the right amount of energy. The cloudheads had finally found their laboratory, and nothing would stop them from conducting the experiment. They would launch a space probe to the ‘anomaly’ and use it to rip a hole in spacetime. Oh, yes, that would send the other sentients a message.
He studied the tablet in his chambers. Every ridge on the otherwise smooth surface, every scratched alphabet in the story, he knew by heart. He also knew that there were parts of the hidden cipher that had been decoded but not understood. They held the key to his puzzle. Increased sounds of frenzy from the control room tickled his eardrums. It must be nearly time. He began to despair, and wondered whether he should go back to the control centre and just watch the detonation. Then it happened. The only orgasm that the thinking mind can experience: a surge of pure pleasure that accompanies an almost Platonic transfer of new ideas to the scientific theoretician’s saturated brain. He suddenly knew what the story meant. A cold chill washed over him. The Guardians were real. He had to tell the others. He had to, there was no time. They were going to come for them. But, even in the moment of his greatest triumph, he could not totally ignore sensory percepts. The mission control centre had gone completely quiet.
The story the tablet told was not something knew. It spoke of excesses; it spoke of punishment and it spoke of redemption. They had overreached; they had delved into the books of the Gods, they had learnt too much and now they had to atone for it. The Guardians would come and destroy them all for their impertinence. The story, especially after the mathematical secrets on the tablet were unravelled, seemed particularly allegorical. It was ignored. The cloudheads did not quite know what would happen if the ‘anomaly’ was torn apart, but they knew that it would expose the Universe of a higher sentience. Perhaps it would show a Universe in which stars, galaxies, or even groups of galaxies would be the tiniest of its constituents, or perhaps it would reveal an infinity of Universes enclosed within those miniscule entities called quarks. The cloudheads went underground. This was a long term project and needed the utmost secrecy. They certainly had the financial backing; they just needed the right technology. Oh, yes, they were going to send a message, and not just to other sentient races.
Something unexpected had happened. The screens still showed the same dull black swathe of nothingness, but this was not any feed from outer space. The feed was lost to the mission control, on all cameras. The result of the detonation was unknown. What if the probe itself had been destroyed? No one spoke. Perhaps they were all hoping for something to happen that would convince them that years of work had not just been lost in a heartbeat. Ack barely held in check a strange new feeling that threatened to overwhelm him: it was mostly euphoria with a tinge of anxiety. Something was going to happen, and he would be damned if it would happen to all of them. They did not deserve any of it. There was no malice in that thought. It was too late for that. He made his way back to his chambers, just as his brain convulsed in the throes of another magnificent vision.
Plato, and the ancient Greeks would have loved to see what he could see. The Universe was... Ideal. They were everywhere, and everything existed because of them. They were breathtakingly beautiful and immeasurably perfect. Maybe you could call them a source of boundless light, but putting words to his vision would be sullying its infinite purity. It was such a noble thing, he could hardly bear to look at it, but it was everywhere. They were here to take him. How could he ever have thought they meant harm? He understood their purpose. They had to maintain the equilibrium between the levels. Was there somebody who controlled them? Was there a sentience that stitched together the laws of sentience itself? Oh, how perfect they were! He suddenly felt forgiveness. He pleaded with the illuminated nothingness around him. Don’t take the others. Just don’t give them what they want, that should keep the barriers in place. It was always about him. He was the anomaly and he would fix it.
