Dream Team
Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 11:26 am
Ten years have passed since the events in Color and Stealth.
---
Prologue.
---
It is speculated that every intelligent species in the universe passes through a religious phase. And that the start of this phase in its most primitive form, begins when a species develops both self-consciousness and a certain amount of cognitive skills.
Possessing both traits instead of just one, means that members of the species are able to go beyond merely recognizing themselves when they see their reflection in a stream or lake, like elephants and gorillas do, or instinctively know how to use a rock to smash a shell, like otters do. It means that they are now able to consciously develop tools.
It also means that they begin to stare at themselves, others and things in general in amazement and look in awe at the great, unknown world with minds that have begun to break through.
After time, sapience forms. And it is then that they can -even without language- finally put into thought any questions they have. Some questions are always the same. "Who am I? What am I? Why am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go after death?"
It is also speculated that the answers to these questions, no matter the species, always have a single thing in common: a certain concept. A concept that humans refer to as "Gods".
After becoming sapient, creativity and language are inevitable and the young species begins to form its first religions. At first, its gods are everyday yet unexplained things; lightning, the moon, strange noises in the night, gusts of wind.
Around the time that the species forms its first civilizations, the Gods change and turn into unseen and powerful beings that resemble the members of the species in many ways. Then, when philosophy -that mother of all sciences- makes its entry, the Gods again begin to change and gradually become abstract ideas. It is in the age of science that the number of believers in the Gods begins to dwindle.
The more science explains, the more the species' Gods are pushed back. But the more they are pushed back, the greater and more powerful they become. Many millennia ago the Gods were a sacred tree, a volcano or a comet. Now they are the universe itself and all the unknown that lies beyond it.
And it is then that all beings who still believe in, hope for, wonder about or even doubt the Gods, no matter where they live in the vast universe that they all share, all believe in the same Gods.
---/\/---
The barsam
---
It was night and Jaron was awake. He had had the same nightmare for several weeks now and had no idea what it meant.
First he had gone to a physician, who had run tests that showed that Joran needed to lose weight and had charged him money. Then he had gone to a psychiatrist, who had asked him about the color of his childhood pet and had charged him money. And last he had gone to a priest who had told him to trust in the Gatherers and had asked for a donation.
Now, after reading an ad in a local news publication, Jaron was on his way to visit Quoveei the Great and Mysterious, a Tenuki who promised to explain all dreams, tell the future and cure ingrown toenails.
"Crib yeddek! That is one khas dream, big brother! Teeth descending at night who rip you and your family to pieces and eat them, while a fruit, a box, an orange cloth and you are watching, while roasting a slab over glowing coals in space in a tornado that's full of mummies?" The furry little brother said.
"Yes." Jaron said.
"You actually see yourself die, you said?" Quoveey asked.
"Yes." Jaron said again.
"Uh oh." Quoveei the Great and Mysterious said and began to pluck the fur on his chin.
"Uh oh?" Jaron asked.
"Yes. Third person dreams aren't dreams but prophecies." The Tenuki said and began to scratch his fur in an unappropriate place. "One normally does not die in dreams... What you need is my toenail tonic. Not the regular one, mind you, but the special one. Hmm, you really are a BIG brother. Five bottles. Drink them all at once."
"But I have no ingrown toenails." Jaron replied.
"Drink the contents before going to sleep. You either wake up enlightened, feeling very nauseous or with a headache. Or all three." Quoveei said and handed Jaron the bottles.
"What's inside the bottles?" Jaron asked.
"Lots of medicinal herbs and medicinal mushrooms and medicinal amphibian skin secretions and a tiny bit of medicinal alcohol. And the best part is that all of it is 100 percent biological." Quoveei said.
Jaron began to think. "Can't go wrong with biological."
"That will be 189.95 with the discount. Come again!" Quoveei said and locked the door after Jaron left.
---
After having drunk the contents of the bottles as instructed, Jaron lay down on his bed and watched in fascination how his bedroom became purple, pink, red, yellow, green and blue at the same time and began to spin in six different directions. It resulted in the formation of amazing symmetrical and colorful patterns. Then his bedroom started to grow eyes that looked at him, began to chant in several languages and showed him the meaning of life. Next, Jaron passed out.
"Teeth... Descending from blackest black... Ripping... Feeding... Hate... A brain... A plant... A brown and orange Loroi... Watching... A flame column... A rock pillar... Searching... A white vortex... The dead... The moon... The ring..." Jaron turned and twisted in his bed.
"ONE CANNOT GO AGAINST THE WORD OF GOD!!"
Jaron screamed as he woke up, the thundering choir of voices that was somehow one voice still echoing in his head!
Deinar! He had to go to Deinar!
But first he had to throw up, take some pills against the splitting headache he now had and lie down again. Deinar could wait.
---/\/---
The human
---
Aastik Lokesh was a simple man. He was born in a small village in Northern India. He had received mandatory education and had earned his first money by breeding and selling goats. After moving to the city with his wife and son, his first job there had been crafting clay dinnerware. But after learning about electronics, he had been given a job in his brother's repair shop. He did not expect anything more from life.
But then the Supreme Brahman, the One that is Truth, had made it very, very clear to Aastik in his dreams that It wanted him to go to the world of the aggressive blue space females, who had looked very much like two-armed versions of Samhara Kali to him, when he had first seen them on his viewer.
"Why? Why me, Supreme One?" He asked in the temple. But there came no answer. "I cannot go against Your Word, You said, but how am I going to get into outer space? This is all the money that I have! Look!" Aastik opened his wallet and showed it to the statues in the temple. Again there came no answer.
Aastik left the temple and shook his head. The Supreme Brahman would have to find someone else.
"Lottery tickets! Lottery tickets!" A passing vendor shouted.
"Are you joking?" Aastik shouted at the sky. "Very well. I will buy one! But after that I will go back home!"
---
"Congratulations on winning 2 billion Rupees, Mister Lokesh." The man behind the counter at the lottery office said. "Where can we deposit the money?"
"Huh?" Said Aastik while staring at a wall.
"Your bank account, Mister Lokesh?"
"Oh. Here." Aastik handed over his bank card.
The man behind the counter began to enter the data into the computer.
"All done." He said.
"Thank you..." Aastik said. "Can I please sit here a little longer?"
"Of course, Mister Lokesh. Take all the time you need. Would you like to have something more to drink?" The man asked.
"Yes please."
---/\/---
The historian
The others thought that it had begun to malfunction and disconnected it from the collective. But 127-006-625 knew that it was not malfunctioning. It should not have involved the others in its attempt to analyze the nightly manifestations.
The maintainers carried it to the scanner to run checks. If the scanner found anything wrong, there would be attempts to rectify the problem. If those failed, the information inside 127-006-625 would be copied and it would be discarded.
127-006-625 was 410,000 years old. Yet it did not want to be discarded.
Fortunately the scanner found no problems and 127-006-625 was reconnected to the network.
"I must go to Deinar." 127-006-625 sent to the rest of the collective.
"A personality construct based on your unique..." The collective sent back.
"No. I myself must go to Deinar." 127-006-625 interrupted.
"Nonsense." Said the collective. "Maybe the scanner can't detect the error."
127-006-625 opened its mind and sent the full contents of its dreams to the collective.
"You shall go to Deinar. The maintainers shall construct a suitable vessel." The Collective sent back after a short delay, during which 127-005-625 was disconnected. "After the information inside you has been copied... In case anything unfortunate happens."
--/\/---
The Sonliri & the Yorl
"It has slipped through our lines and ignored our hails. It is heading to the jump zone to your system with more than 55G acceleration. Try to intercept it." Bistima Starseeker sent with difficulty to her colleague in the next system. "It should jump in around 7 bimas."
She thought that the ship was beautiful. A sleek, elongated drop that shimmered with iridescent colors like mother-of-pearl, but more intense and with moving patterns. And all of it had lit up so brightly in her mind when she had first detected and later scanned it, that it had shocked her. Like all of it was alive. So very alive.
The alien ship jumped.
The Loroi patrol in the next system waited in vain. Both Bistima searched and discovered that the ship had somehow jumped an additional system. They had to warn the core systems!
It took the ship less than a week to travel a distance that would take the loroi more than 4 weeks at top speed.
The ship entered the Deinar system, evaded the blisters that were fired at it with ease, evaded and warped the particle and pulse beams around its hull and shot through the lines of Deinar's massive defense fleet as if they were nothing more than a mild nuisance. The Torrai on the bridge of Cry of the Wind hit a guardrail with her fist and cursed.
Greywind frowned. No hostile response whatsoever. She thought. She ordered the fleet to follow, but hold its fire.
Some hours later the ship entered Deinar's atmosphere, pointed its aft end at the soil and dug itself in vertically until only the part that had been its front part, which was now its upper part, stuck out.
The ship had landed less than 5 miles from Torimar, Deinar's capital. And as night fell, the part that was visible glowed gently in a multitude of ever shifting iridescent colors.
The next morning it was surrounded by thousands of heavily armed loroi, tanks, mechs and artillery.
An opening in the ship's hull began to grow. Five solons later, the opening had become six inches in diameter.
A small, brown and furry creature, no more than 4, maybe 5 inches long, appeared. It had many little legs and a ridge around its circular body that contained many pinhead-sized, black eyes. It carried something on its back, ran around the ship towards a Mizol who was standing inside the defensive ring and stopped about three meters away from her. It dropped the little box it had been carrying and ran back without turning around.
The Mizol picked up the little box and opened it. Inside was a manual and a white ball the size of a golfball. The ball had a blue solid circle on one side and a blue ring on the other. "To understand, place blue circle against temple of head, then press blue ring." The manual read.
"Okay..." Parat Spirit thought and did what the manual said.
"Ouch!" "That stung!" The ball stuck to her temple and became surrounded by a vertical disk of light with moving patterns.
"Is it safe?" A voice in her head said.
"Who are you?" asked Spirit. "You entered Union space without permission and landed near its capital without permission. Prove that you are not a threat."
"Is it safe?" The voice said again.
"Tell them that it's safe." Greywind, who was present and was in contact with Spirit, sent. "They will not be harmed unless they initiate violence."
"It is safe." Spirit said.
The opening slowly opened further. It took 3 bimas to reach a hight of 5 meters.
After another 5 bimas has passed, a green-white striped pillar, that can best be described as a five meter tall zucchini with a white wooly top, dozens of tendrils, vertical ribs with rows of long cactus thorns and moving roots began to appear. It moved about two inches per solon. It was covered with dozens of the small brown furry creatures. One of them had a translator orb on its back that emitted a disc of light with moving patterns.
Finally it stopped moving and dug its roots in Deinar's soil.
"I am Mizol Parat Spirit." Said the Mizol. "Wha.. who are you?"
The song began. Voices singing different tunes that complemented each other harmoneously like a Gregorian chant, but more complex.
The translator spoke. "My name cannot be pronounced by a single loroi. It would take a choir. Call me Sunrise over a Meadow. My vessel-friend is named Song of Calmth. They are alive and sapient. And this is Cha. He is a Yorl."
Dozens of the brown creatures crawled down and formed the word "hello" in Trade on the ground, then climbed back up.
"You say "he is", but there are dozens. You say "they are", but there is only one shi.. vessel-friend." Spirit said.
More singing sounded.
"Yes. It takes many to form one Yorl mind. Song of Calmth has 32 minds." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Why?" Spirit asked.
"To navigate the High Order and the Deep Chaos."
"You mean hyperspace and negative hyperspace?" Spirit asked.
"Yes." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Why are you here?" Spirit asked.
"I carry one part of the message. The others carry the rest." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"What message?"
"It is unclear."
"Who sent the message?" Spirit asked.
"The best explanation we could come up with, is God." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Excuse me?" Spirit asked and tilted her head.
The singing continued.
"It felt very much like it was the universe itself that compelled me to come."
"Why?" Spirit asked and blinked.
"Unclear. Teeth. They consume all. I must go to the watchful dead under the full moon with the orange one, the box and the blue horn to tell the seeking spark and the pebble about the endless white. We determined that the location is Deinar." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"The watchful dead?" Spirit asked.
"Yes. There are many."
"We cremate our dead. Only the ancient tribes still bury their dead." Spirit said.
"Yes? Please tell me more." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
--/\/---
The barsam
---
The day after the arrival of the Sonliri, Jaron's flight from Justa entered orbit around Deinar. He boarded one of the skiffs and landed at Torimar's spaceport. The landed Sonliri and its vessel were still the talk of the day. Jaron watched the report on a public viewscreen and knew where he had to go tomorrow.
---/\/---
The human
---
After giving his parents enough money to buy a nice house and promising his wife that he would also buy one for her after his return, Aastik kissed her and his two children goodbye and left for the airport. First by bus, then by train and finally by taxi. He was very nervous. He had never flown before.
He arrived at the airport's departure hall, stood in the wrong line, was sent to the right line, checked in, went through security and boarded the plane. The air inside felt dry and smelled strange.
A fellow passenger showed him how to release the pressure in his ears: first tilt the head sideways, then swallow. Repeat in the opposite direction for the other ear.
A few hours later he arrived at New Delhi spaceport and boarded a skiff that would take him to the Hula Girl, a freighter that was currently in orbit and accepted paying passengers on its trips to Union space.
The trip took many weeks. And Aastik got very sick everytime the ship "jumped". One of the crew had given him pills and told him to take a half one 30 minutes before each of these jumps. Now he still got very sick when the ship jumped, but at least he was very tranquil about it.
After arriving at a space station inside Union space, Aastik nervously approached one of the scary blue space females. But not after checking that she really had only two arms and wasn't holding a sword and a decapitated head behind her back, like Samhara Kali. He greeted her and handed her a piece of paper that a member of the crew had witten for him. He thought that her tiara was pretty.
The Teidar guard read it, sighed and gestured Aastik to follow her.
Another blue female was handling forms in her office. Aastik greeted her and handed her the paper.
Twenty bimas later, with the help of a Listel and a Humanity translation computer that was dug up, Trade was translated into English and English into Sanskrit.
"You do not have a permit to enter Union space. And the core systems are closed for non Union citizens, unless for people who are exempt. You neither have a permit nor are you exempt. This means that you are an illegal alien and will now be escorted back to the freighter that you arrived on." Aastik read the text on the computer's screen out loud.
"But I need to go to Deinar." Aastik pleaded.
Two Soroin guards entered the office and Aastik was escorted back to the docked Hula Girl and went aboard. The guards remained near the ship's access ramp.
The containers in Hula Girl's cargo hold were still being unloaded. Aastik would not let some blue space females prevent him from delivering the Supreme Brahman's message and decided to sneak into the ship's cargo bay. He looked and found an unlocked container that had a word on it that looked exactly like the word on his paper that he thought meant "Deinar". He opened it, went inside and closed it.
All containers were scanned for contraband. Some were also searched. However, by a most peculiar coincidence, the moment that Aastik's container entered the scanner after having been unloaded, a highly energetic cosmic particle hit one of the scanner's memory chips, flipped a bit and the scanner showed the image and contents of a container that had been previously scanned.
Time passed. The container had moved for a few minutes, but then things had gotten quiet for a long time and Aastik had gone to sleep. When he woke up, there was a vibration he knew all too well. He hurled and took half a pill.
Time passed. There were no sounds and Aastik risked opening the container to let in some light. He could do so, because the European Union had made it law that all cargo containers could be opened from the inside, after a tragedy with illegal immigrants had occurred more than a century earlier.
Aastik now saw that the container contained a variety of items, including crates of Copsi Cola, food packages and snacks, chemical toilets, rope ladders, a few matresses, many, many tools and glowsticks.
"Now this is first class travel. Thank you, Supreme Brahman." Aastik thought. "I wonder what I will need the rope ladders for."
He did not realize that these articles were rather uncommon for export items. And that is because they weren't. They were tools and goods for a workcrew in Puerto Rico. Unbenownst to Aastik, the container he had entered should have been sent to "Torrimar", which is a station in the city of San Juan in Puerto Rico. But someone, somewhere had made a typo, which had ultimately caused the container to be sent to Torimar, which is a long way from Puerto Rico.
Three weeks later, the loroi freighter went into orbit around Deinar and the containers were loaded into cargo skiffs. Some time afted that, Aastik found himself looking down from a substantial hight at the eight containers below his in Torimar space port's container yard.
"Oh, that's what the rope ladders are for." He thought. He fetched four. One had entangled itself around a bolt cutter. Aastik tied the four rope ladders together, took the bolt cutter and descended.
He looked up and saw the planet's ring. It took a few minutes, but then he fully realized that he was standing on an alien world. Suddenly, Aastik felt very small. Using the bolt cutter, Aastik cut the fence, left the container yard and began to walk in the direction of Torimar.
---/\/---
---
Prologue.
---
It is speculated that every intelligent species in the universe passes through a religious phase. And that the start of this phase in its most primitive form, begins when a species develops both self-consciousness and a certain amount of cognitive skills.
Possessing both traits instead of just one, means that members of the species are able to go beyond merely recognizing themselves when they see their reflection in a stream or lake, like elephants and gorillas do, or instinctively know how to use a rock to smash a shell, like otters do. It means that they are now able to consciously develop tools.
It also means that they begin to stare at themselves, others and things in general in amazement and look in awe at the great, unknown world with minds that have begun to break through.
After time, sapience forms. And it is then that they can -even without language- finally put into thought any questions they have. Some questions are always the same. "Who am I? What am I? Why am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go after death?"
It is also speculated that the answers to these questions, no matter the species, always have a single thing in common: a certain concept. A concept that humans refer to as "Gods".
After becoming sapient, creativity and language are inevitable and the young species begins to form its first religions. At first, its gods are everyday yet unexplained things; lightning, the moon, strange noises in the night, gusts of wind.
Around the time that the species forms its first civilizations, the Gods change and turn into unseen and powerful beings that resemble the members of the species in many ways. Then, when philosophy -that mother of all sciences- makes its entry, the Gods again begin to change and gradually become abstract ideas. It is in the age of science that the number of believers in the Gods begins to dwindle.
The more science explains, the more the species' Gods are pushed back. But the more they are pushed back, the greater and more powerful they become. Many millennia ago the Gods were a sacred tree, a volcano or a comet. Now they are the universe itself and all the unknown that lies beyond it.
And it is then that all beings who still believe in, hope for, wonder about or even doubt the Gods, no matter where they live in the vast universe that they all share, all believe in the same Gods.
---/\/---
The barsam
---
It was night and Jaron was awake. He had had the same nightmare for several weeks now and had no idea what it meant.
First he had gone to a physician, who had run tests that showed that Joran needed to lose weight and had charged him money. Then he had gone to a psychiatrist, who had asked him about the color of his childhood pet and had charged him money. And last he had gone to a priest who had told him to trust in the Gatherers and had asked for a donation.
Now, after reading an ad in a local news publication, Jaron was on his way to visit Quoveei the Great and Mysterious, a Tenuki who promised to explain all dreams, tell the future and cure ingrown toenails.
"Crib yeddek! That is one khas dream, big brother! Teeth descending at night who rip you and your family to pieces and eat them, while a fruit, a box, an orange cloth and you are watching, while roasting a slab over glowing coals in space in a tornado that's full of mummies?" The furry little brother said.
"Yes." Jaron said.
"You actually see yourself die, you said?" Quoveey asked.
"Yes." Jaron said again.
"Uh oh." Quoveei the Great and Mysterious said and began to pluck the fur on his chin.
"Uh oh?" Jaron asked.
"Yes. Third person dreams aren't dreams but prophecies." The Tenuki said and began to scratch his fur in an unappropriate place. "One normally does not die in dreams... What you need is my toenail tonic. Not the regular one, mind you, but the special one. Hmm, you really are a BIG brother. Five bottles. Drink them all at once."
"But I have no ingrown toenails." Jaron replied.
"Drink the contents before going to sleep. You either wake up enlightened, feeling very nauseous or with a headache. Or all three." Quoveei said and handed Jaron the bottles.
"What's inside the bottles?" Jaron asked.
"Lots of medicinal herbs and medicinal mushrooms and medicinal amphibian skin secretions and a tiny bit of medicinal alcohol. And the best part is that all of it is 100 percent biological." Quoveei said.
Jaron began to think. "Can't go wrong with biological."
"That will be 189.95 with the discount. Come again!" Quoveei said and locked the door after Jaron left.
---
After having drunk the contents of the bottles as instructed, Jaron lay down on his bed and watched in fascination how his bedroom became purple, pink, red, yellow, green and blue at the same time and began to spin in six different directions. It resulted in the formation of amazing symmetrical and colorful patterns. Then his bedroom started to grow eyes that looked at him, began to chant in several languages and showed him the meaning of life. Next, Jaron passed out.
"Teeth... Descending from blackest black... Ripping... Feeding... Hate... A brain... A plant... A brown and orange Loroi... Watching... A flame column... A rock pillar... Searching... A white vortex... The dead... The moon... The ring..." Jaron turned and twisted in his bed.
"ONE CANNOT GO AGAINST THE WORD OF GOD!!"
Jaron screamed as he woke up, the thundering choir of voices that was somehow one voice still echoing in his head!
Deinar! He had to go to Deinar!
But first he had to throw up, take some pills against the splitting headache he now had and lie down again. Deinar could wait.
---/\/---
The human
---
Aastik Lokesh was a simple man. He was born in a small village in Northern India. He had received mandatory education and had earned his first money by breeding and selling goats. After moving to the city with his wife and son, his first job there had been crafting clay dinnerware. But after learning about electronics, he had been given a job in his brother's repair shop. He did not expect anything more from life.
But then the Supreme Brahman, the One that is Truth, had made it very, very clear to Aastik in his dreams that It wanted him to go to the world of the aggressive blue space females, who had looked very much like two-armed versions of Samhara Kali to him, when he had first seen them on his viewer.
"Why? Why me, Supreme One?" He asked in the temple. But there came no answer. "I cannot go against Your Word, You said, but how am I going to get into outer space? This is all the money that I have! Look!" Aastik opened his wallet and showed it to the statues in the temple. Again there came no answer.
Aastik left the temple and shook his head. The Supreme Brahman would have to find someone else.
"Lottery tickets! Lottery tickets!" A passing vendor shouted.
"Are you joking?" Aastik shouted at the sky. "Very well. I will buy one! But after that I will go back home!"
---
"Congratulations on winning 2 billion Rupees, Mister Lokesh." The man behind the counter at the lottery office said. "Where can we deposit the money?"
"Huh?" Said Aastik while staring at a wall.
"Your bank account, Mister Lokesh?"
"Oh. Here." Aastik handed over his bank card.
The man behind the counter began to enter the data into the computer.
"All done." He said.
"Thank you..." Aastik said. "Can I please sit here a little longer?"
"Of course, Mister Lokesh. Take all the time you need. Would you like to have something more to drink?" The man asked.
"Yes please."
---/\/---
The historian
The others thought that it had begun to malfunction and disconnected it from the collective. But 127-006-625 knew that it was not malfunctioning. It should not have involved the others in its attempt to analyze the nightly manifestations.
The maintainers carried it to the scanner to run checks. If the scanner found anything wrong, there would be attempts to rectify the problem. If those failed, the information inside 127-006-625 would be copied and it would be discarded.
127-006-625 was 410,000 years old. Yet it did not want to be discarded.
Fortunately the scanner found no problems and 127-006-625 was reconnected to the network.
"I must go to Deinar." 127-006-625 sent to the rest of the collective.
"A personality construct based on your unique..." The collective sent back.
"No. I myself must go to Deinar." 127-006-625 interrupted.
"Nonsense." Said the collective. "Maybe the scanner can't detect the error."
127-006-625 opened its mind and sent the full contents of its dreams to the collective.
"You shall go to Deinar. The maintainers shall construct a suitable vessel." The Collective sent back after a short delay, during which 127-005-625 was disconnected. "After the information inside you has been copied... In case anything unfortunate happens."
--/\/---
The Sonliri & the Yorl
"It has slipped through our lines and ignored our hails. It is heading to the jump zone to your system with more than 55G acceleration. Try to intercept it." Bistima Starseeker sent with difficulty to her colleague in the next system. "It should jump in around 7 bimas."
She thought that the ship was beautiful. A sleek, elongated drop that shimmered with iridescent colors like mother-of-pearl, but more intense and with moving patterns. And all of it had lit up so brightly in her mind when she had first detected and later scanned it, that it had shocked her. Like all of it was alive. So very alive.
The alien ship jumped.
The Loroi patrol in the next system waited in vain. Both Bistima searched and discovered that the ship had somehow jumped an additional system. They had to warn the core systems!
It took the ship less than a week to travel a distance that would take the loroi more than 4 weeks at top speed.
The ship entered the Deinar system, evaded the blisters that were fired at it with ease, evaded and warped the particle and pulse beams around its hull and shot through the lines of Deinar's massive defense fleet as if they were nothing more than a mild nuisance. The Torrai on the bridge of Cry of the Wind hit a guardrail with her fist and cursed.
Greywind frowned. No hostile response whatsoever. She thought. She ordered the fleet to follow, but hold its fire.
Some hours later the ship entered Deinar's atmosphere, pointed its aft end at the soil and dug itself in vertically until only the part that had been its front part, which was now its upper part, stuck out.
The ship had landed less than 5 miles from Torimar, Deinar's capital. And as night fell, the part that was visible glowed gently in a multitude of ever shifting iridescent colors.
The next morning it was surrounded by thousands of heavily armed loroi, tanks, mechs and artillery.
An opening in the ship's hull began to grow. Five solons later, the opening had become six inches in diameter.
A small, brown and furry creature, no more than 4, maybe 5 inches long, appeared. It had many little legs and a ridge around its circular body that contained many pinhead-sized, black eyes. It carried something on its back, ran around the ship towards a Mizol who was standing inside the defensive ring and stopped about three meters away from her. It dropped the little box it had been carrying and ran back without turning around.
The Mizol picked up the little box and opened it. Inside was a manual and a white ball the size of a golfball. The ball had a blue solid circle on one side and a blue ring on the other. "To understand, place blue circle against temple of head, then press blue ring." The manual read.
"Okay..." Parat Spirit thought and did what the manual said.
"Ouch!" "That stung!" The ball stuck to her temple and became surrounded by a vertical disk of light with moving patterns.
"Is it safe?" A voice in her head said.
"Who are you?" asked Spirit. "You entered Union space without permission and landed near its capital without permission. Prove that you are not a threat."
"Is it safe?" The voice said again.
"Tell them that it's safe." Greywind, who was present and was in contact with Spirit, sent. "They will not be harmed unless they initiate violence."
"It is safe." Spirit said.
The opening slowly opened further. It took 3 bimas to reach a hight of 5 meters.
After another 5 bimas has passed, a green-white striped pillar, that can best be described as a five meter tall zucchini with a white wooly top, dozens of tendrils, vertical ribs with rows of long cactus thorns and moving roots began to appear. It moved about two inches per solon. It was covered with dozens of the small brown furry creatures. One of them had a translator orb on its back that emitted a disc of light with moving patterns.
Finally it stopped moving and dug its roots in Deinar's soil.
"I am Mizol Parat Spirit." Said the Mizol. "Wha.. who are you?"
The song began. Voices singing different tunes that complemented each other harmoneously like a Gregorian chant, but more complex.
The translator spoke. "My name cannot be pronounced by a single loroi. It would take a choir. Call me Sunrise over a Meadow. My vessel-friend is named Song of Calmth. They are alive and sapient. And this is Cha. He is a Yorl."
Dozens of the brown creatures crawled down and formed the word "hello" in Trade on the ground, then climbed back up.
"You say "he is", but there are dozens. You say "they are", but there is only one shi.. vessel-friend." Spirit said.
More singing sounded.
"Yes. It takes many to form one Yorl mind. Song of Calmth has 32 minds." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Why?" Spirit asked.
"To navigate the High Order and the Deep Chaos."
"You mean hyperspace and negative hyperspace?" Spirit asked.
"Yes." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Why are you here?" Spirit asked.
"I carry one part of the message. The others carry the rest." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"What message?"
"It is unclear."
"Who sent the message?" Spirit asked.
"The best explanation we could come up with, is God." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"Excuse me?" Spirit asked and tilted her head.
The singing continued.
"It felt very much like it was the universe itself that compelled me to come."
"Why?" Spirit asked and blinked.
"Unclear. Teeth. They consume all. I must go to the watchful dead under the full moon with the orange one, the box and the blue horn to tell the seeking spark and the pebble about the endless white. We determined that the location is Deinar." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
"The watchful dead?" Spirit asked.
"Yes. There are many."
"We cremate our dead. Only the ancient tribes still bury their dead." Spirit said.
"Yes? Please tell me more." Sunrise over a Meadow sang.
--/\/---
The barsam
---
The day after the arrival of the Sonliri, Jaron's flight from Justa entered orbit around Deinar. He boarded one of the skiffs and landed at Torimar's spaceport. The landed Sonliri and its vessel were still the talk of the day. Jaron watched the report on a public viewscreen and knew where he had to go tomorrow.
---/\/---
The human
---
After giving his parents enough money to buy a nice house and promising his wife that he would also buy one for her after his return, Aastik kissed her and his two children goodbye and left for the airport. First by bus, then by train and finally by taxi. He was very nervous. He had never flown before.
He arrived at the airport's departure hall, stood in the wrong line, was sent to the right line, checked in, went through security and boarded the plane. The air inside felt dry and smelled strange.
A fellow passenger showed him how to release the pressure in his ears: first tilt the head sideways, then swallow. Repeat in the opposite direction for the other ear.
A few hours later he arrived at New Delhi spaceport and boarded a skiff that would take him to the Hula Girl, a freighter that was currently in orbit and accepted paying passengers on its trips to Union space.
The trip took many weeks. And Aastik got very sick everytime the ship "jumped". One of the crew had given him pills and told him to take a half one 30 minutes before each of these jumps. Now he still got very sick when the ship jumped, but at least he was very tranquil about it.
After arriving at a space station inside Union space, Aastik nervously approached one of the scary blue space females. But not after checking that she really had only two arms and wasn't holding a sword and a decapitated head behind her back, like Samhara Kali. He greeted her and handed her a piece of paper that a member of the crew had witten for him. He thought that her tiara was pretty.
The Teidar guard read it, sighed and gestured Aastik to follow her.
Another blue female was handling forms in her office. Aastik greeted her and handed her the paper.
Twenty bimas later, with the help of a Listel and a Humanity translation computer that was dug up, Trade was translated into English and English into Sanskrit.
"You do not have a permit to enter Union space. And the core systems are closed for non Union citizens, unless for people who are exempt. You neither have a permit nor are you exempt. This means that you are an illegal alien and will now be escorted back to the freighter that you arrived on." Aastik read the text on the computer's screen out loud.
"But I need to go to Deinar." Aastik pleaded.
Two Soroin guards entered the office and Aastik was escorted back to the docked Hula Girl and went aboard. The guards remained near the ship's access ramp.
The containers in Hula Girl's cargo hold were still being unloaded. Aastik would not let some blue space females prevent him from delivering the Supreme Brahman's message and decided to sneak into the ship's cargo bay. He looked and found an unlocked container that had a word on it that looked exactly like the word on his paper that he thought meant "Deinar". He opened it, went inside and closed it.
All containers were scanned for contraband. Some were also searched. However, by a most peculiar coincidence, the moment that Aastik's container entered the scanner after having been unloaded, a highly energetic cosmic particle hit one of the scanner's memory chips, flipped a bit and the scanner showed the image and contents of a container that had been previously scanned.
Time passed. The container had moved for a few minutes, but then things had gotten quiet for a long time and Aastik had gone to sleep. When he woke up, there was a vibration he knew all too well. He hurled and took half a pill.
Time passed. There were no sounds and Aastik risked opening the container to let in some light. He could do so, because the European Union had made it law that all cargo containers could be opened from the inside, after a tragedy with illegal immigrants had occurred more than a century earlier.
Aastik now saw that the container contained a variety of items, including crates of Copsi Cola, food packages and snacks, chemical toilets, rope ladders, a few matresses, many, many tools and glowsticks.
"Now this is first class travel. Thank you, Supreme Brahman." Aastik thought. "I wonder what I will need the rope ladders for."
He did not realize that these articles were rather uncommon for export items. And that is because they weren't. They were tools and goods for a workcrew in Puerto Rico. Unbenownst to Aastik, the container he had entered should have been sent to "Torrimar", which is a station in the city of San Juan in Puerto Rico. But someone, somewhere had made a typo, which had ultimately caused the container to be sent to Torimar, which is a long way from Puerto Rico.
Three weeks later, the loroi freighter went into orbit around Deinar and the containers were loaded into cargo skiffs. Some time afted that, Aastik found himself looking down from a substantial hight at the eight containers below his in Torimar space port's container yard.
"Oh, that's what the rope ladders are for." He thought. He fetched four. One had entangled itself around a bolt cutter. Aastik tied the four rope ladders together, took the bolt cutter and descended.
He looked up and saw the planet's ring. It took a few minutes, but then he fully realized that he was standing on an alien world. Suddenly, Aastik felt very small. Using the bolt cutter, Aastik cut the fence, left the container yard and began to walk in the direction of Torimar.
---/\/---