An Impossible Situation

Night is a time to let the mind wander shaded paths, to slacken one's bright focus. Heavy-lidded, Jin-Kalys is curled around a low table in an out-of-the-way tea-house in Stardown. He has been given freedom to move throughout the city, and is learning to ignore the Cheldrun who are curious to see an Anakarix sitting a tea-house, or going to a public bath, or walking down the street, or buying food with the city vouchers he receives. In the press of refugees and others who have come to the city, it is impossible to hide or to move about surreptitiously. Engineers are busy constructing temporary shelters and buildings on the outskirts of the city. Some arrive with supplies in tow, but as many others do not. Wherever possible, refugees and freedom-fighters are conscripted to work building shelters, digging new drainage, laying new pipes and power cables and so on.

There is the sense that, though there is a great deal of work to do, it need not be of lasting quality.

This will be over all too soon. Word has reached the city (by Zipsum, if nothing else) that Goshi has retreated to Marina, and is organizing some kind of massive military offensive. The hammer is being drawn back, and will be brought down one last time, not flickering Hei-Shi but the whole remaining might of Goshi Mining Corporation, wounded, hemorrhaging money, but far from dead.

Jin is distantly aware of this. He has two tasks in mind as he lounges in the tea-house, relying on the warmth of the tea to help him concentrate. Working after dark is for mammals. The first task is the completion of a sizeable letter in tiny, even, angular script to be delivered to Sighing Web of Trees via well-paid Zipsum messenger. Fortunately, food-vouchers can be traded for candy. In the letter, Jin is primarily concerned with describing his various adaptations of Nine-Branches Formal Logic. Stories of world war are of secondary interest, mentioned only as illustrations. Anakarix can be fearsome opponents if they are defending their tree-villages and particularly the tombs of the sainted lizard sages, but they are hardly a people to trek hundreds of kilometers across the continent to help Cheldrun fight Cheldrun.

It is difficult, but possible, to translate rational argument into purely written form. Jin is relying on an archaic script which retains markings to represent posture and positioning, as if the speaker were physically present. Someday, when this is all over, Jin hopes to return to Sighing Web of Trees to personally defend his theses.

The second task is...difficult to describe. Before he left his village, what seems like years ago now, Jin had made a crucial argument for non-rational processing, ultimately earning his most recent dewlap piercing. He is finding, however, that speaking is easier than doing. To clear the mind, to silence it, to wait patiently for answers to arise - almost impossible.

The conclusion he's reached about the energy-nullifying field that is currently spreading in the center of the city can't possibly be correct. If it is, then the city is doomed until the energy feedback runs out and begins to revert to a static state...and it is very difficult to predict when this will be.

The problem is a simple one conceptually but an impossible one practically. The energy-field steals kinetic energy around it. The obvious result is the intense cold that surrounds the device. Of course, any Anakarix more than a few years out of the Ovumcreche knows that Sol burns because it moves. A poet would say that it dances, spinning recklessly, dizzyingly. The movement, coupled with its immense mass, radiates warmth to the whole solar system. Karia, moving far more slowly around Sol, is far cooler, so that instead of fire, there is warmth for life, arising from the planet and radiating out from Sol. Planets closer to Sol are faster, and therefore of course, hotter, while those more distant are far cooler, moving in far larger ellipses. Karia, at the perfect distance, is the sole world with life, or so the sages say.

Obviously, some kind of intelligent being will have to get close enough to the device to alter it sufficiently. This being will have to carry with it a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, because it will be immediately sapped when it enters the nullifying field. Based on measurements taken at the edge of the field and Jin's careful calculations, aided at many points by Sousauryoku and his various calculating devices, this creature would have to be traveling at a speed that is many times that of sound. This amount of kinetic energy would burn said creature alive, incinerating it even if there was some contrivance by which it could be brought up to that kind of velocity.

There is a second solution, also impossible. The creature could be somewhat slower in the approach, only perhaps as fast as the fastest Zipsum on Karia, but it would have to continuously accelerate once it entered the field. The force required would be tremendous - more like one of the Cheldrun bullets leaving the tube of one of their guns.

Either way, once it reached the device intact, it is...possible...that something could be done. A great deal of energy must be introduced into the system, in order to buy Stardown time and achieve the two ends of the operation: 1) maintain the shield so that Hei-Shi don't rain down on the city and 2) prevent the city from being doomed to a frigid stasis, killing everyone under that selfsame dome.

If this theoretical bullet-creature could reach the device, it would be actually laughably simple to impart tremendous energy into the system - but impossible for any such creature to survive the interaction. Once the energy was imparted to the device, the creature would be left there, frozen and trapped, if it was not obliterated by the impact.

Sousauryoku has another solution, which, on the current theoretical level, is fascinating. He is designing an engine to be placed in the device. The metaphysical problem, of course, is that the device is currently powered by sacrifice, for all intents and purposes. It is fueled by lost potential. But Sousauryoku seems unable to clearly perceive this fact. He wants to understand it in terms of a particular kind of energy as the Cheldrun narrowly perceive it.

The Cheldrun cannot see - their devices are powered by sacrifice. The artifacts that they attribute to their First Minds exact some kind of price. In many cases, they pay it intuitively, not understanding why it is that ritual observances sometimes activate the devices. Even in their mundane technologies - something is expended, lost, in order that something else is achieved. The Mechified burn Blackrock. The Allskins burn incense and chant and hold to ancient ways. It is the Biomade who sacrifice most, but who understand their sacrifice the least, because it is of a kind that even Jin must admit he cannot comprehend precisely. They sacrifice aspects of themselves. They think they are being perfected, but they are only being pared down. In carving a plank, much of the tree is lost. Is a plank better than a tree? The Biomade think so. Jin couldn't disagree more...but it isn't his place to point any of this out.

In the end, however, the rule is the same. It is no different from the ancient stories of the Karians - in the beginning, the Dusk Sages created, and as they did so, they diminished. It is the nature of things.

Jin sighs and puts down his pen, massaging one clawed hand with another, staring off into the night. What will have to be sacrificed, what will have to diminish, before this is over, for better or worse?

He shakes his head abruptly. I need more tea. There is still a lot of work to do.

3 comments:

Aric Clark said...

Tre-cool. It's definitely building toward an interesting series of events here.

Douglas Underhill said...

Good. I was trying to point things in a direction, but to keep the direction vague so it would fit with other stuff I don't know about yet.

Stacia said...

Yum-yum! I'm lapping up all this 'manners of perception' stuff! The field powered by sacrifice to Karians, but the Cheldrun building an engine to power it, etc. Brilliant. (Now I see why High-Dive will be so important next session.)


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