Mote Memory

Uncensored Transcript of Dialogue / Melniss CanB Spindle / 07.07.3906

Commander Sutsainna, E.I.E


Fra Plight


Commander I must apologise for my temper and behaviour last night.
“Think nothing of it, Fra Plight. The arrival through the tear here has an unnerving effect on the calmest of people.

Nevertheless …….
Your apology is accepted. Did you sleep well?

No better than usual. This place gave me too much food for thought.
Sanctuary from the hounds if Ii Ai Ii. Marriage because my children will need a father. A flock of lost souls needing spiritual guidance. In return I ask you to help me do something at which I’ve had no training.

That, and more. Since when have you been Ii Ai Ii? That particular colour of uniform is recognised throughout the Federation, especially by people like me.
You used to be more observant, Fra Plight Maybe it’s the light. There, is that better?

It’s a slight relief. Gray. But the cut and style are the same.
This, is the uniform of Eksinteks. External Internal Expenditure. You could call us the auditors of Ii Ai Ii.

Which is still at odds with the Sutsainna that I knew at Llas. That woman disdained anything that smacked of Federation Authority with a capital A.
Thank you. This is, though you doubt it, the same woman. Have you ever heard of The Scoundrel?

More than heard, Commander. He was my role model and mentor, though we never met.
His funeral took place in thirty-eight seventy-nine. Although it was a family only occasion …….

Several thousand turned up. Most of whom were Ii Ai Ii agents watching to see who came. I was there.
So was I.

You were just out of Llas.
Too quick for me to have gained the recruiters’ attention? He was my father. But there was a secret internment a month later. A score of family, and a black man in black with a white eye-patch who knew me better than any stranger should.

Dsaneš?!
Last night you asked what Project-Commander Tamjik was doing in a jumpers. Why?

As Ii Ai Ii or Eksinteks, you should know.
I could have found out, Plight. But you were not the issue Dsaneš asked me to investigate. Don’t look at me like that! You never told me at Llas that you were anything more than an eccentric lecturer. Had I known that you were one of the most sought after a sneak-thief-of-state-secrets my professional interest would have been aroused instead of my personal one. Witness’ Sii Ai Dii funded my studies.

Ah. You’re a copper. Ok. Dsaneš was the blood-hound who trailed your father for most of his career and was probably responsible for your father’s death. Tamjik is my blood-hound. She always finds me. So it was a shock to see that she had got here before me.
Not, probably. Dsaneš told me that he personally had killed my father. Better, Dsaneš said, to die quickly than have mintrep.

So he put you in his debt. What did he ask you to investigate?
Him. On the Lama’s Joke.

HIM?
He showed me a transcript of a Tandreš communication he had received shortly after my father’s funeral. It was Karol Smetana thanking him profusely for attending the marriage of his daughter on Medit. Dsaneš also showed me the recording of both the ceremony and the reception. Dsaneš was prominent in both. He then showed me, by way of proof, the Ii Ai Ii’s recordings of the funeral where he is visible among the dignitaries at the back.

The point, Plight, is that wedding and funeral occurred on the same day, at the same time, fifteen tears apart. That is what he asked me to investigate. I followed him to Lama’s Joke. Just hours before we were due for the first time in Ii Ai Ii Headquarters, Dsaneš was recorded on security screens diving, unaided, through the heat vent of the Izezentil smelter.

You joke!
I initially thought his suicide was due to my having survived, more by accident than design, several very subtle attempts to kill me on my journey to Lama’s Joke.

I was getting to the point where I was thinking of jacking it in when the duty technician at the smelter the day of the suicide approached me, as an Eksinteks officer, with a strange problem.

The week of Dsaneš’ suicide they were cleaning the smelter’s main crucible. Dsaneš had dived into a recently mixed compound. Both smelters automatically analyse the chemical contents on an hourly basis because the hourly inputs of red selenium have to be very tightly controlled. Too little affects the conductivity of the Izezentil and too much …….

Big Bang and no more Lama’s Joke.
Right. Forty-five minutes after Dsaneš dived in, the smelter’s analytical probes indicated that a double input of red selenium had occurred the previous hour. That as the technician explained was impossible. The input the previous hour of two point five kilograms of red selenium had emptied the input silo. The input went into a compound that did not contain any red selenium at all.

But no Big Bang.
The smelter was in the process of heating up. Below twelve hundred degrees the compound is relatively inert. But there’s something that is even more dangerous than getting the red selenium inputs wrong. Water. The air pressure in the smelter unit is higher than that outside to prevent ingress of airborne water in whatever shape, form or weight.

But not bodies.
Irrespective of the temperature, water and red selenium interact explosively. Dsaneš’ dive into the smelter should have blown Lama’s Joke into smithereens.

Ergo, Commander, it wasn’t Dsaneš. So who was it?
Not who, Plight, but what was it?

N…no, Commander. I’ve seen the costings and the time projections for mechanical Ei Ai production. Among the documents I have, er, filched from State archives.
In my invitation and instructions I asked you to give me your observations.

You’re jumping from one topic to another. No change there, I’m happy to say. Very well. I came through the tear as you had instructed in reverse. Strange instructions that saved my life. So my observations of the Spindle are from the cliff top after I had landed.

The Spindle design relies on solid bedrock and mild wind conditions. This Spindle is unusual. First the base appears to be anchored beneath the surface of a sea that looks as if it’s made of glass. Secondly there is light-vessel landing strip encircling the Spindle at its mid-point. Third the shaft of the Spindle is far greater than either the height or the addition of the landing-strip requires. Fourth there are only four levels of jumpers platforms where the standard requirement is fifteen. Interestingly, only two of the jumpers are occupied.

I recognised both of the occupants. The one on the upper level is a familiar face from the Challis Guards. The one in the lowest level is Project-Commander Tamjik. But how she got here before me is ......... You'll explain later right?

There would appear to be a chain of semi-submerged islands lying some five kilometres from and parallel with the coast. I deduce the Spindle is set into and anchored to one of these submerged islands. The coastline consists of an unbroken line of cliffs of about a thousand metres in height topped by a barren desert. There is a fairly extensive conglomeration of buildings clinging to the cliffs at a point about forty-five degrees to starboard from the Spindle viewpoint. That’s the topographical observation.
They were the construction crews' living quarters. They’re being renovated for the evacuation of the personnel.

There seem to be about one-fifty to two hundred technicians working on the living quarters on the cliff face and a couple of thousand here on the Spindle. They are very different. Chalk-and-cheese. Those on the cliff face were uncommunicative, distant and cold totally unlike the friendliness and warmth I experienced here on the Spindle. But I suppose that is the difference between military and non-military personnel.
“What makes you say they’re military?”

On my walk down the stairway….. I could not make the lift work………….I was aware of a great deal of organised activity. The sun was heading for the horizon when all the activity ceased. There were no commands, no bells, no alarms. There were no signals at all. I was reaching the lower tiers of the living units when the activity re-started. Again there were no audible signals. That’s military routine for you. But there was something else. During the rest period they all lay down on couches in the shade of the awnings on the balconies at the front of each unit. They all lay in the same posture. They looked like effigies on tombs. It was very eerie, Commander. Very eerie indeed!
Eerie and worrying, Plight. No matter. Tamjik. Her name here is Dauet. She’s a Commander-Director. She was in command of this project until I arrived. That was a year ago. You are frowning, Plight. Let me make you look puzzled and frightened at the same time. The images I am displaying on the screen are?

Tamjik. Tamjik and Tamjik.
Wrong. Project-Commander Tamjik, Commander-Director Dauet and Advocate-General Feliish.

I don’t like where this is going.
Nor do I, Plight. Nor do I. In my offer of sanctuary I hope you understood that I could also tell you why you have become a non-person.

Other than my prowess as a sneak-thief of State secrets?
Indirectly. When we first met you were de-bunking the Praesidium’s claims that Albenden Henschell-Littmaior was nothing more than a deranged lunatic. Later I heard through the grapevine that you had unravelled his Mote theories. Correct?

Yes. First the Praesidium funds his entire lifetime research. Then they destroy everything. It was the manner that caught my attention. Ask anyone who Henschell-Littmaior was and the answer will be that maniac who conned several billion Lunars out of the Praesidium to fund an extravagant lifestyle. The corpus of his research is unknown. In fact the erasure of the archives is astonishingly thorough. It was then that I got involved with the Kirk.
Basically the Mote theory is that without knowledge of all those brief, tiny and seemingly inconspicuous memories that are stored in the core of the mind the concept of an exact human simulacrum is not possible.

Word, letter and emphasis are absolutely correct! Eitch-El said those words as an introd…….
Aitch-Ell argued that it was necessary to record, and copy, every single Mote from the very first instance of brain activity in the womb. What he was proposing would be hugely expensive. But he also proposed a supporting theory…….

That if the will was there to succeed the boundary between the impossible and the possible would inevitably be pushed back.
Have you ever wondered why Eitch-El got involved with Motes?

The only true element of the Praesidium’s destructive thesis was their use of Albenden’s own explanation. The family research into Ei Ais had reached a dead end. His grandfather wished the focus of research to reverse the process and look at the end product first.
Good. But incorrect. I'll grant you that that's what he said. I would like to give you several shocks.

I’m unshockable Commander.
Nevertheless I will try. Albenden Henschell-Littmaior lived and died during the first two centuries of this millennium. The Orphan Project began in three one zero six with Henschell-Littmaior named as First Project Director.

Impossible. He was only twenty!
First shock. The Orphan Project was officially closed at his death. But the funding has never ceased.

Commander. I’ll grant you the first shock but that is typical of the Praesidium.
I’ll try harder. This facility is funded by the Orphan’s Project. This Spindle was constructed between three four oh five and twenty six. The design used Eitch-El’s argument of building what the future requires. The project is entirely self supporting.

There is, for example, a waste management system that is so finely attuned that once you Ident card has been scanned it will record waste levels on an individual basis. This is vital information for recycling and supply but also for indicating who is a glutton and who a wastrel and …….. Project-Commander Dauet’s bodily wastes represent ninety four percent of in-take mass and nintey-eight per cent of intake energy. ………………………… Plight. Don’t just take my word for it. The records are in front of you…………………… That is why Dauet is incarcerated in a jumpers cell. Getting her there was not pretty. Second shock?

Dead centre……………… But there is a further problem with the Motes.
He theorised that if simulacra were possible it would be necessary not only to record the ongoing Motes but also to affect a dialogue transfer between the simulacra to ensure what he termed homogeneity of thought and action. That, given the galactic distances involved and the wey-wah effect was, Eitch-El deemed, plainly impossible. At the time.

Was and is, Commander.
A fact that has gone unnoticed is that the Henschell-Littmaior dynasty is matriarchal. No, Plight. I am not saying that Albenden was a woman. I am telling you that the females of the family carry the name. Albenden was not born Henschell-Littmaior. His family name was Stalybrik.

The name means nothing to me.
Nor should it. But it is nevertheless the name of a maverick scientist who led a privately financed research project fifteen hundred years ago. The link is so feint Plight that even Ii Ai Ii is unconcerned that the connection will be made. Stalybrik was the theorist behind the project that was responsible for the Eitch-Kei-Em Catastrophe.

Oh God. That was Flauvain. Three shocks Commander. You’re doing well.
One of the characteristics of maverick scientists is that the logic of their research is illogical. The Praesidium has long accepted that while it’s the endeavours of mavericks that are at the fore-front of the drive to expand the limits of knowledge, those same endeavours are also the greatest internal threat to the stability of the Federation. You, Plight, are a maverick.

Your corpus of research, your protests at the treatment of Albenden Eitch-El’s memory and your ability to gain access to State archives were all manageable. Then suddenly out of nowhere Plight, you wrote a monograph entitled “Extinction Theories of Sentient Species”. You theorised that while the last entity of a non-sentient species will live out its natural span of life because it is unaware of being the last, by contrast the last entity of a sentient species will probably commit suicide out of the stress of despair. You made two mistakes in composing the paper, Plight. As a maverick you were under constant surveillance by Ii Ai Ii. The contents of your tablet were regularly checked. In fact every time you saved anything to the crystal a staz was sent to your handlers. The straw that broke the camel’s back was this line:

“Flauvain is a hybrid of particular, non-sentient algae and the liquid crystals of red selenium; the supposition that Flauvain cannot be sentient because neither of its component parts is sentient is deeply flawed. None of the component parts of any of the arvra are in themselves sentient.”

The reason that you suddenly went from being a mild irritation to the equivalent of the sword of Damocles was because, against all expectation, the book rocketed to the top of the most read list and stayed there for more than a year. That was good for you, and ultimately for me. The legal royalties suddenly allowed you to purchase that nice little flitter-bug that keeps you one-step ahead of Tamjik. But what was good for you was not good for Ii Ai Ii. You had in all innocence laid bare the essence of an operation so secret that Ii Ai Ii in their paranoia could not believe you were working alone.

This Spindle is, as you correctly surmised, set into and anchored to, a chain of submerged islets. The upper, visible portion of twelve hundred metres is matched below the waves. There are a hundred metres of the mast surrounded by sea-water with a salinity that is truly terrifying and then eleven hundred metres set into the bedrock. Beneath that, Plight, is a cavern formed quite naturally about two million years ago. Fossils in the strata were luminescence dated.

The cavern is immense. It extends about three kei-ems in all directions. The bottom was quite flat with vertical sides of between thirty and fifty metres in height. Twenty million tons of sand from the desert wasteland along the coast were melted and streamed into the cavern. The intricacies of the project are mind-boggling. A little over a kilometre below us is an enclosed anaerobic ferro-silicone flask with a diameter of almost six kei-ems and a depth of twenty-five metres. Full capacity is just shy of a billion litres of liquid. While the flask is almost full, only a tiny fraction, to a depth of less than one micron is liquid.

The glass pillar which you’re leaning against contains purified sea-water. At the centre is a glass tube. Although invisible through the water I can assure you that the central tube has a uniform radius of fifteen centimetres surrounding a central flow-tube half a micron in diameter. The pillar extends from within the breeding flask to an unexpected artefact mid-way up the Spindle mast, just above the landing strip. The sea-water serves two purposes. First, it keeps the contents of the flow tube at an ambient temperature. Secondly it provides security.

Flau....Flauvain. That’s what’s in the flask and the tube. The algae, Commander, is a fresh-water variant. As a result the hybrid still maintains its frailty in saline conditions. Let me guess. The unexpected artefact is the delivery system.
And the most important of the reasons for asking for your help. The current settings for the delivery system are to a Platform fourteen tears away. I can’t work out where and I don’t really want to know. What I do need to do is change the intended destination but don’t know how. You on the other hand pilot your flitter-bug, and do.
I want to send the delivery system to somewhere so vast, so uninteresting and so empty that it is seldom if ever visited except by the su’do’. You can use that desk.comp.

Only one location fits that description. The Empty Quarter known as The Swirl. There are three known tears for The Swirl. But the Flauvain requires a host otherwise it will not survive the tears. Ahem. Have you told him you are sending him to his death? Because the Flauvain will do exactly what its predecessor did at Eitch-Kei-Em.
It won’t for two reasons. It won’t have total control and it won’t be the only Flauvain entity.

Sorry. You have, now, well and truly lost me. No. I can affect the changes in the settings and listen to you at the same time. It’s your logic which has confused me.
In order to commit suicide the Flauvain needs to have total control of the host body. Total control will allow it to manipulate the delivery system. Your argument in Extinction of Sentient Species is that so long as the host has any Mote memories of being itself, the parasite can never exert total control. That Officer is here not because he was sentenced to a Jumpers Spindle, not because I subverted the decision of the Presiding Judges, not because I know him of old. The harsh truth is that he is the only Challis Guard available. And the Challis Guards possess a singular characteristic that makes them almost unique. They are trained to develop a ‘lock down memory’.

Palderdash Commander. Up till now everything you’ve said makes sense. Now. Now, you’ve moved into the realm of total fantasy.
Do you still have that facility to read Eff-Veh-Veh script? That will be a help. I’m going to increase the light level. Behind me is a carbon copy of a section of a bulkhead in Lama’s Joke. Had we not been sitting in such low light you would have found it difficult to listen to me? …… how about reading it out loud?

………………….. The unborn ship…..vessel…..transport wrecked on Tahkei returns……have returned ……..will return…….two memories……….minds……brains……unimpeded……….unhindered……Koshwa…no that’s wrong…Flauvain. Damme! It’s been a while since I read an un-translated script……….. Ok! The unborn on the transport wrecked on Tahkei have returned with two memories unimpeded by the Flauvain.
The deepest mystery, Plight, in the mass suicide of the Eff-Veh-Veh species is how they achieved it. They knew Flauvain operated at the mental level. So,

How did they hoodwink it? Let me play catch-up with your thoughts, Commander. The Eff-Veh-Veh expansion programme required a large number of impregnated individuals to be in the second wave behind the exploration units. One of these is wrecked on Tahkei. We know from the admonishment in the command section of every Eff-Veh-Veh platform that Tahkei is a taboo destination punishable by death. So there isn’t a rescue attempt. Some time later …… presumably after several generations, possibly even centuries, the unborn descendants return to space. But while on Tahkei they’ve managed to sever the control of the Flauvain mental link by creating two lots of memories.

Now, wait…. Wait a bit……There’s no time reference because time meant nothing to the Eff-Veh-Veh. The assumption has always been……… our assumption being based on the Avrasindahl and the Junoeskei's assumptions that the total obliteration of the entire race was a well co-ordinated mass suicide. What if……. What if………the unborn descendants had a memory of the Flauvain’s control and their population was of parity with the Eff-Veh-Veh? Civil war?
That’s what I think. But it’s only conjecture. But the part about two memories struck a chord. What do you know about the event in eighty-seven on Trespassers?

Couched in Federation phraseology? A Line Officer was being held to account for the failings of a Staff Officer. The planet is under Hamrilcar Protocol Protection. The entire system orbiting the star is enveloped by one of those ancient and quirky su’do’ that provide the protection system. The indigenous species of Trespassers has not yet been identified. Beyond that nothing. I tell a lie. Both the Alliance and the Äkkeidiiz take advantage of Eitch-Pi-Pi to use the surface for Ar-an-dar.

Ess Eff Sii's request for exclusive Alliance rights of use was turned down by the su’do’. There had never before been any conflict, accidental or intended, as the su’do’ placed all visiting vessels of the Alliance in stasis while the vessels of the Äkkaidiiz collected their troops from the surface and departed. Or vice-versa.
Now there was a sizeable Alliance fleet in stasis when the su’do’ – not the Äkkaidiiz – requested help in the finding and capture or destruction of a rogue Äkkaidiiz that seemed to be bent on killing the indigenous species. The only military unit that has the capability to operate effectively in a non-mechanised environment are the Challis Guards. As fortune would have it, there were two half companies available.

The su’do’ permitted the same operational parameters for the Alliance and the Äkkaidiiz. A scout stroke recon vessel was permitted to maintain a static orbit above the general area of the search. Once the vessels were in orbit the su’do’ froze it in place. Scanning of the surface was permitted. Communication with the surface was permitted through one comm.set. The Guards units companies were placed under the command of a solitary Federal Flag Officer who stayed on the scout vessel. The Guards were sent planet-side with very strict orders to avoid getting into general conflict with the Äkkaidiiz but to do their utmost to return with an Äkkeidiiz. Dead or alive. Stupidly she also ordered them to operate as two separate units. The unit without the comm.set was the one involved at the Flashpoint.

Flashpoint occurred at an up-welling of fresh water in a ravine on a high mountainous plateau. The Ai-Ah scanner picked up the tell-tale flashes of a phaser. At the time the unit with the comm.set was separated from the Flaspoint location by extremely hazardous geological impediments. That is a quote from the Eff-Eff-Oh’s witness statement. The Flashpoint interface lasted for eight Trespassers days. By the time the comm.set reached the ravine the troops of the other half-company were so dehydrated they were totally incapacitated and the Äkkaidiiz had affected their customary clean-up operations and gone. In the enquiry that ensued, the Eff-Eff-Oh blamed the senior Non-com of the Flashpoint unit for the operational failures to return with an Äkkaidiiz or to provide any description of the phaser weapon. The Court of Presiding Judges ordered that everything within the power of the Federation be used to examine the sole source of information regarding the weapon.

Their memories.
And believe me, Plight. By everything, I do mean everything. Including the forbidden.

No way. If he’s here on the Spindle they couldn’t have! Mintrep is so invasive that its application is fatal. That is why it's only sanctioned by the Upper Tier of the Praesidium.
But sanction it they did. The witness statements of the fifty-four troopers were all basically the same. The need for water. The extreme heat by day. The extreme cold at night. The diffuse phase beam that kept them from reaching the well. The corpses of the Äkkaidiiz that littered the ravine. The stench of putrefying flesh and excreta. The manner in which the beam burned a target be it vegetation or Äkkeidiiz. The manner in which the lone Äkkeidiiz warrior with the phaser moved amongst the corpses chopping off their limbs with the traditional twin-bladed sword. The fear at the realisation that medieval weaponry is useless against phasers. All fifty-four had the same memories.

They all reported the action of their Non-Com. He managed under the cover of darkness to get close to an Äkkaidiiz corpse. He played dead for three days before the warrior approached him to dismember the Äkkaidiiz corpse over which he was playing dead.

At that point the last clear memories of the entire half-company are the warrior using the phaser weapon to dispatch an Äkkeidiiz spear thrower, then tugging the sword from its belt bending and lifting the weapon for the downward stroke. There follows in quick succession the warrior falling with a cross-bow bolt in his forehead and the sudden revival of the corpse. The revived Akkaidiiz slings the Non-com over its shoulder and leaps into the well. A split second later the phaser detonates. The flash has permanently blinded twenty-three of the troopers. None of them recall seeing their Non-com emerging from the well. His claim is that he climbed out unaided but cannot put a time on it.

The concern of the Court was that although the Non-Com was lying at the feet of the warrior when it used the phaser, he had no memory of the weapon itself. The Eff-Eff-Oh persuaded one of the Presiding Judges that the Non-Com was using a selective memory technique. Yes?

That Presiding Judge was Feliish?
Well done, Plight. The Eff-Eff-Oh’s argument was that the Non-Com had seen the weapon but was keeping it a secret from the Federation as he was intending to give the information to Jonti. This claim was made despite the evidence from a battery of memory scans. It was a last gamble ploy by the Eff-Eff-Oh. If she failed to pin the blame for the debacle on the Non-Com, she would find herself the subject of an enquiry. Unwittingly she had pressed the right button.

A long-held and never admitted fear amongst the Federation High Command is the emergence of a powerful portable weapon that would give the Challis Guards parity with the far more numerous SFC Command. My personal witness statement contains the counter argument and evidence that the memory training of the Challis Guards permits them to store separate events but not the specific details of the event. The Upper Tier dismissed my statement as unscientific ... and sanctioned Mintrep.

Since he’s still alive something unexpected must have happened.
It was believed by the Court that the prisoner should not be informed in case such knowledge affected his mental stability. First he was transferred to a Bii Ess Ell Six facility where the virus was injected while he slept. The memories flowed and flowed and flowed. The quantity was impressive and the detail was stupefying. It was so stupefying that the transfer almost ground to a halt for lack of drive-space. And time was pressing.

Jonti had somehow been informed and Hisself the Currant was beginning to make dire sounding threats. Mintrep is chronological. The first hiccup occurred when the early memories did not include the memory training schedule. The second went unnoticed by all but me. I once spent a very enjoyable interlude with the Non-Com. Those memories were missing. Outside the Bii Es Ell Six facility, The Upper Tier were beginning to back down in the face of economic sanctions and the withdrawal of all Challis military units from Federation command when the really unexpected happened. I think you could almost say it was the unthinkable. The Non-com’s immune system began to destroy the virus. Oh, Plight! If not for Hisself the Currant that Non-Com would have been subjected to years of examination.

And if they ever get their hands on him again you suspect that not even Hisself would be able to stop them. Why did they release him at all?
All the medics involved argued that ultimately the virus would triumph. So they released him to satisfy Hisself’s demands but laid down the condition that he remained in Federal custody until the investigation was concluded. There is a time set for the conclusion.

After which Ii Ai Ii will come and collect him and he will have an accident on the way back. When is the deadline?
Tomorrow.

When is the delivery system programmed to go?
The Spindle personnel evacuate tomorrow.

Oh Christus! You're cutting it damme fine. If the Non.com doesn’t know how to operate the delivery system he needs to get in there fast to familiarise himself.
He’s there now doing just that.

Good because we have here, Commander an interesting Command file. I think it best that you look at this screen. I suspect there are controls that trip alarms if it’s viewed by more than one simultaneously.
What am I looking at?

The left hand column is an ID code. The middle column is a sequence of timed instructions. The right hand column is a second set of ID codes.
What does oh oh nine oh to one one five nine activity hash five stroke twenty-three bii four mean?

That there’s a correlating file that relates to the type of work to occur between nine in the morning and eleven fifty-nine. But look! The next one simply indicates rest. You do understand what this means. Commander? COMMANDER?
“What IS Dauet doing?”

Is that what I think it is? She's broken up the cell furniture. If that stuff's flammable she's making a fire. Oh god. I must’ve tripped an alarm. The Spindle’s got a sea-water sprinkler system? Is there an over-ride system to switch it off? Turn it off, Commander. TURN IT OFF NOW! Oh Lordy this is very bad, very, very, very bad for my nerves. Now keep me informed of what she’s doing while I compose a new instruction.
There’s smoke rising. Small flames. Dauet is scratching the skin of her left arm. Oh Lord. She’s ……….she’s peeling her skin away. No blood visible. It’s more like a sheath. She is looking at the sprinkler unit over head. Now she’s looking at the flames. Taking her tunic off. That is now smouldering. Flash fire, Plight. She is holding her arm out. Wait. Now she’s walking towards the edge of the platform. Jumped.

Instructed to jump. I’ve seen filched technical specifications for artificial simulacra. A skeleton of a red selenium compound makes a durable and robust structure plus a power pack. And what, Commander happens when water interfaces with red selenium?
A big bang.

And Tamjik must have had about eighty kilos in her bone structure. There is shortly going to be an underwater explosion of seismic proportions.
No one swims here. Not only because of the salinity. I’m not babbling, Plight. The Spindle’s cooling system uses sea water. But it must be kept moving at high speed lest it clogs the system. The input is gravity fed while the movement within the system is controlled by an expeller that pushes out fifty thousand litres a second. Dauet has jumped into a rip-tide and will……………………………………………….hopefully be that far away. My god the water plume must be as high as the mast! Damage control teams report in to damage control centre! I’m feeling inordinately relieved but you, Plight are looking very worried.

We’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the cliff are two hundred and nine artificial simulacra with an end command sequence of kill. On the Spindle there is the threat that if anything goes wrong we all get infected by bio-flauvain. Neither option is good.
Change the instruction, Plight.

I can’t. It’s an end command. Only the composer with the same code can authorise and conduct a change.
So. What are the options? Can we assume that if the evacuation doesn’t occur that they will come here?

Very likely. Total erasure of witnesses and information will I think be the case. They will come here whatever we do to ensure that no one is left alive.”
The pontoon? Can we destroy it?

Is the Spindle equipped with explosives?
No. How many can your flitter bug take?

Half. I cannot leave half my flock behind, I’ve only just met them. Wait a minute!”
“PLIGHT! Now is not the moment to get romantic ideas!

Goose!
Goose? What are you doing? I thought you said you couldn’t change the end command?

I still can’t. I can programme my flitter bug from here. I can instruct all two hundred and eleven to board it.
And then?

Drive malfunction and fragmentation explosion a thousand kiloms out over the ocean. They will all drop into the sea. Result. One huge explosion and a tidal wave.
A good idea. But not good enough. Dauet stripped her skin off. Ergo the selenium needs to be bared. Your flitter but might be bared but can you guarantee they will be. Because if any survive the experience they will still have the end command to obey. Am I right or am I right? And please don’t think of doing the same thing inside the tear because we do not know whether they are mechanical Ei Ai or bio-mechanical Ei Ai.

Give me a little time. I will think of something suitably devious. In the meantime, satisfy my curiosity and answer a couple of questions. You said that it would not be the only Flauvain entity. Secondly …. Who are you really? And why have you been transmitting all that we’ve said?
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. The Non-com is Cohort Commander Nutrition Richerald Deretten of the Challis Guards. He was born on Saveryede sometime in the three four forties. The sheep farmers on Saveryede were and are largely illiterate but to compensate they do have the most unbelievable abilities to memorise such important aspects as their histories. Unfortunately the Great Saveryede Drought of the three seven fifties hit the mountain sheep farmers the hardest. Whole communities died of starvation, Derettens’ amongst them. He had fled Saveryede believing he was wanted for the murder of his cousin. Mintrep proved he had been framed.

He joined the Challis Guards in 4663. His Commanders always wanted him to become an Officer but he was too distrustful of authority and he took issue over the taking of life. That, Plight, was the main reason I liked him. He was acting Co-Co-Nut in the Challis Guards unit that was on Plutarch when the war started. He was still there when it ended. Hisself the Currant firmly believes that had Deretten been in overall command on Plutarch a good deal fewer lives would have been wasted. That was why Hisself was so angry when he discovered that Deretten was undergoing Mintrep treatment.

Derettens is not a jumper, Plight. As far as he's concerned, a life wasted is a life wasted whichever way you view it. But he’s a marked man. You can’t confront an organism as big as Ii Ai Ii and live to tell the tale. If you run and hide you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. He’s not a jumper but neither does he want to live for the rest of his days putting all those he befriends into danger.

OK. I get it. This is a mote memory for him. Well, tell him form me that he has my earnest admiration, respect and that I promise to look after them as if they were my own.”
You just have. Plural, Plight?

The flock, goose! And besides you’ve just answered the middle question. Monologic or dialogic?
Monologue, dear.

I’m beginning to suspect you’re related to Machiavelli. Try this one. Melniss tear has a ‘forbidden’ on a ridiculously low entry velocity. The Diitii is a black hole.
“But if its forbidden doesn’t that mean there’s a bar to coding them in?

It’s my flitter-bug. I removed the bar.
Ah. Do you have time to set up the instructions?

I already have. But this, Commander, is a command decision. Hit this button……..what are you waiting for? Compassion for killers?
I am praying, Plight. I am praying that when I hit this button you don’t obey the instruction.

Me too, Commander. Me too. So, hold my thumb and we’ll both press it. The instruction should be almost instantaneous. So who are you really?
Have you noticed anything familiar about these ID numbers? Plight! Pay attention!

I was wondering when we would get around to them. They’re Upper, Middle and Lower Tier Codes. Small wonder they sanctioned mintrep for our friend Deretten.
Sometimes you really surprise me. Thank you for that, Plight! Thank you! Both of you, f…. fizz! …………………………………………………….

Buzz. Er. Can we sort of keep our eye on the ball? My blitter fug’s gone. We should now evacuate the flock and get the hell out of here.
Blitter fug, Plight? No. No. No! Keep your hands to yourself. You, also, seem to have forgotten something.

What?
Who am really I. Clue, my grandfather and you will get on like a house on fire. On Jonti.

On Jonti?
On Jonti dwells Hisself the Currant.

Oh Fa…………………….
No Plight! It's Fizz.

Cats, Commonalities and Jonti's Spanner

Review of the Theory of Commonalities and the Phrenon-Skoy-Bliss Theorem Revisited (3309), author P. T. Hecurrant, pp96.

"Wise Apnarg call hisself...." I overheard one of my two indistinguishable strawberry blond five year-old grandsons ask their governess, referring to me in reverse just as they called everyone backwards.
"Same as this cake?" The other finished their sentence in the manner they had and I think will always speak. Lilianna spluttered into delighted mirth. Hidden away above their nursery, on the flying balcony that is an extension of my library, I had to hurriedly exit stage left lest they hear my laughter too and stopped in embarrassment that I had overheard.

"Well, you are a wizened, sun-dried old fruit!' Their, twin-speak, 'armeh' Merka admonished me when I told them that same evening over high tea. 'You've just called me Sutsainnah." Softening the criticism with an endearing chuckle, while my wickedly irreverent but seriously holy son-in-law smacked his hands on the table hooting like an orangu-tan. Thereafter I changed my call-sign name on all communiques from Prenter Challis, Hisself the Current; (I will only become Hisself the XXXIV on my death) to Prenter Challis the CurrAnt. The A is deliberately capitalised. For good reason I never used my call-sign name for offical letters to my publishers as I will explain.

The balcony extension to my library is where I keep all those books that, for one reason or another, never really held my attention long enough to travel beyond the opening chapter. A great many of them are academic tomes good only for keeping doors open or when piled up as a step ladder for my declining stature. The top shelf is now beyond my reach. Typically when the time came to find Mei Tan's book, it was, according to my index card system, on the top bloody shelf.

My editor, Eta Martineau, at the publishing house of 5M (Martineau, Martineau et Martineau fils et filles) had intended to cut out all the words that she thought would shock the readers. What, I had wondered, would she do when she finally worked out that her budding novice author and eccentric sender of written communiques, P. T. Hecurrant, was the wealthy customer who used a privately owned Tandreš system to call the eldest daughter at least once a day because she was so much fun to talk to? What didn't she do!! The bloody woman asked me a question on 29.02.3904 to which I could not, without due thought, care and attention, respond negatively when she didn't hang up at my silence. "Actually dearest' she reminds me frequently, 'neither silence nor a negative were options available to me." She has never explained this cryptic comment.

Still who am I to complain? These three women have refused to let this book be defeated by writer's block; my son-in-law continues to try and convert me with the subtlety of a blacksmith opening an oyster with a jack-hammer and the twins who set the snow-ball rolling and I suspect will have a major role in its completion.

This is meant to be the foreword, Eta has reminded me, not the whole of the b*****y first chapter.

Cats. There have never been cats on Jonti. Leastwise during the presence of my family. There aren't any of those other animals and insects which are normally associated with cats .. on Jonti. There aren't any birds to stalk, there aren't any pestilential rodents to ambush, there aren't any butterflies to chase.
"What', my ancestor Prenter Challis, Hisself the I, the founder of the fortunes of Jonti and the family dynasty, asked 'is a cat to do on Jonti?" Which was a kind way of avoiding speaking aloud the obvious, that the original settlers could not afford to have pets. When the time came that pets were affordable, after the first shipments of Izezentil were transported to The Lama's Joke in 2345 and CCC settled their account, any form of pet would have been an unnecessary distraction.

I, like most of the younger children of the eldest children of the dynasty, did not stay on Jonti once I had fulfilled certain dynastic obligations. Lack of opportunity or lack of means to stay has never been an excuse any of us could use. The most populated extended family in TO history - all born on Jonti since the C25 are genetically related to the dynastic core - and the wealthiest - Jonti supplies 99% of TO Izezentil requirements and has sufficient reserves for another five thousand years at current rates of supply. Hisself the I laid down the 'beneficent feudal' rules of Jonti society. Younger sons of the dynasty have, as a result, no choice once they have produced a brood of children but to travel, explore, expand our networks and business interests and to be Officers of the Challis Guard. There are oodles of drawbacks to the nomadic lifestyle of the wey-wah travellers. The pertinence here being that I hadn't had an opportunity to meet a cat, to touch a cat, to stroke a cat, to hear a cat purr. Neither had I had a chance to discover that arch independence that cats have; to learn that cats are actually the ONES-in-CHARGE!

Recruits to the Home Guards Regiments on Jonti spend a three month acclimatisation period on the family Estate before joining the Training School at the top of the cliffs. Madrileno was from Segudo where the big wild cats from Old Earth are bred to preserve their genes. He joined me on the seaward terrace, politely asking my permission to ask a question which earned him a nod, and asked where he could find the Jonti cats. At my look of bewilderment, Madrileno promptly related an odd conversation that he had just had with the twins. They had asked him if he knew anything about cats. They had apparently listened with rapt attention till he had dared to suggest that the mountains leopards on Segudo were without doubt the largest and most graceful of the cat family anywhere. Madrileno sticks in my memory because he was a wonderful mimic:
"Then you haven't seen......."
"Apnarg's bliddy cats......."
"They're humongous and....."
"they're black......"
"but one is brown.........."
"and upside down......"
"we can see one now....."
"Can you?"
He couldn't and I had to confess to him that I had no idea what the twins were talking about. I sent him on his way with the assurance that I would tell him when I found out. I suspect the young Seguddan found out before I did, but was too polite to say so. Naturally I related the incidence to the family for the sheer enjoyment of their speech pattern.
"A right pair of poets!" their father muttered darkly. Poetry sits ill with his religion yet it was Plight who spotted the wax drawings on the walls of their nursery and took me to show them because they explained their conversation with the Seguddan recruit.
For those of you have never been to, or seen pictures of, Jonti's space-port on the beach at the base of the caldera's cliffs, all you need to know is this: at the eastern-most end of the forty-two kilometre long east-to-west crescent of dark gray volcanic sand, the mother-lode of Izezentil falls away from the cliffs forming a three hundred metre high ridge that juts five kilometres into the sea. The ridge has never been mined for two reasons: the mining of Izezentil is b*****y dangerous and because atop the ridge across the 150 metre wide saddle sits the most perfectly preserved, untouched and unvisited, Maze City that anyone has ever seen. Lilianna takes the children for beach picnics in the lea of the ridge almost daily at their request. We have a wonderfully eccentric wire-guided sail-balloon courtesy of Hisself the XIV. One of the loops goes out to the Maze. Since the winds along the beach blow in a regular pattern - eastwards by day and westwards by night - it is very easy to plan a return trip. The day after Plight's momentous discovery of the wax drawings, the two of us, as excited as young boys on their birthday morning took out the sail-balloon for a look. We were returning full of disappointment when light grabbed my arm and make me look back from we had come. There, with the setting sun providing back-light, was the outline of a huge cat squatting on the ridge, hind-quarters raised and tail arched gracefully. That it was just one cat did not diminish my delight. We remained rooted to the floor of the basket, Plight and I, as the sun slowly set. Thank the Lord we did. As the sun winked out behind the Maze city there was an odd refraction of moonlight off the rogue Izezentil crystals in the cliffs. We were presented, as the twins had seen, with a mirror image of the cat in the sea. Only this time, instead of the blackness of shadow, the image was the greyish-yellow typical of moonlit Izezentil.

You will discover in the introductory chapter to Mei Tan's book about Kari Bruther, which is included in its entirety, that the memory of a man in his dotage is appalling. All the months that Plight was furtively sifting through his SFC contacts and settling on Tosh Brinath to supply the measurements for the known Maze cities, there was a tickle at the back of my mind that some-one else had researched and written about the presence of cats as indigenous species on the known worlds. Plight's need for secrecy stems from still having an entry on IEI's 'most wanted list' as MPDAWxC (missing presumed dead approach with extreme caution) because they suspect his involvement in the 2121(707) Conspiracy in 3906. In an attempt to jog my defunct memory into action, I called the Old Man at 5M to ask him to supply me, PT Hecurrant, with a list of books about cats - ordinary and extraordinary. He said 'maietal givyew unarnser'. Thankfully the Old Man had managed to give his offspring the education that his family had failed to provide for him. 'Is it the books or the cats that are ordinary and extraordinary?' was her initial question and promptly sent me a database that covered all the variables. She had, bless her cotton-sox! listed those which in her view were the rarest, the most popular, the most academic and the oddest because there were more than twelve thousand entries. Eta's choices for the last two categories were the same book - Mei Tan's review of and additions to Kari Bruther's Theory of Commonalities and H. Selissi's P-S-B Theorem.

My memory was duly jogged. I had that book! Sutsainnah, my dear, departed wife and mother of Merka and her five brothers, had gifted the book to me as a departure present. The book never left Jonti. I duly found it, on the top shelf in the library extension on the hanging balcony, courtesy of eight volumes of the Encyclopedia of the Diaspora.

There were three TOs interested in the shared characteristics - commonalities - of the arvra races. They were Kari Bruther (2145-2216); H. Selissi (2498-2572) and Meii Tan (2953-3663). Their chronology is interesting:
2171-2191 - Kari Bruther (2145-2216) leads the official UN CoM team that sets out to decipher and translate the FW archives in their entirety.
2193-2199 - Kari Bruther is Senior Researcher aboard the Exploration Platform 'Scott-Amundsen'. He record the six year expedition in detail.
2200-2206 - Kari Bruther 'writes up' his reports and begins to formulate the Theory of Commonalities.
2207-2211 - Kari Bruther takes up the Chair of Philosophy at Aberac in what is now known as the Llas.
2211-2214 - Kari Bruther publishes the startling Theory of Commonalities.
2215-2216 - Kari Bruther leads the Reasearch Team on the 'Stanley-Livingstone' exploration platform. 'S-L' is a permanent, visible and poignant memorial to the need to avoid de-acceleration when entering a tear too quickly under 'sphere factor paramaters'. 'S-L' is trapped like a fly in amber in the middle of the 'tear sphere' located in Reinart's Belt of asteroids.
2299 FIRST CONTACT
2444 SECOND CONTACT
2539-2560 - H. Selissi works as Specialist (Exo-skeletal Anthropology) Assistant to D-G of Archeological Research (Apostles)
2560-2571 - H. Selissi Director-General of Archeological Research (Bliss)
2571-2572 - H. Selissi gather's material to support her findings. Phrenon-Skoy-Bliss Theorem announced but never published due to Selissi's death from natural causes.
3553 - Mei Tan's theories on Commonalities and P-S-B is published.

The following four excerpts are taken from the reproduction of Meii Tan's book:

The mindset of our Terran ancestors as they spread out into space was we have discovered little different to any other race that has made the same journey. Terrans expected only to encounter space-faring races that were biologically contrasting to ourselves and did but that with the exception of the su'do' they were all extinct. Our Terran ancestors expected conflict. They expected to dominate. They expected to conquer ever new and expanding horizons. They certainly did not expect to find any oxygen breathing, bipedal space-faring races similar to themselves and so far advanced in all departments that they were so far over those horizons that the Terrans would never catch up. As far as our ancestors of the Diaspora were concerned the Terrans were The Human Race. That mind-set only truly changed at Second Contact. Up till then, throughout the Period of Inspection, The Human Race had been treating First Contact as either an anomalous incident or simply a bad dream.

Introduction, page 1.

Kari’s voyage of discovery was the making of his fame. He is credited with the discovery of the ‘commonality’ of the arvra although at the time TO society was unaware of the existence of the known others: the Arvrasindahl, the Akkaidiiz and the Dzunoeskei. Bruther based his argument on archeological finds made on the frenetic exploration of the 'Scott-Amundesen', during which he collected clear evidence of at least two, if not, three other humanoid races. Bruther's hypothesis was that whatever number of humanoid races were discovered, they would share 'commonalities':
Commonality 1. Upright bipeds with physiological features differing only in the shape and versatility of sensing organs, the number of digits and epidermal tones all largely dependent upon the different variable factors of their home-worlds.
Commonality 2. Myths / legends that tell of visitations from space.
Commonality 3. Icons or symbols (the four are now known as Kari's Icons) the four symbols which are to be found on anthropo-archaeological as well as life supporting habitats which he describes succintly as the silhouttes formed by:
- an inverted v with a tail;
- a three-branch candle-holder;
- the digits 69 in the horizontal position;
- an open wrist amulet with turned ends underlined.
Commonality 4. A small quadruped of feline appearance.

The public (SFC's) and the private reaction to The Theory of Commonality was a pre-cursor of the The Human Race's reaction to First Contact. But the academic community, no matter how deeply divided they were over the issue, concurred wholeheartedly that if other humanoid races were proven to exist they would need to comply with all four commonalities.

Chapter 5, pp1-2.

Selissi had the distinct advantage over Bruther of knowing that the four arvra races existed. She applied Bruther’s commonalties to the Arvrasindahl and the Dzunoeskei and was able to confirm that both races had 'characteristics of commonality'. That was the easy part. The inimicable character and enmity of the
Akk(aidiiz) would have been a deterrent for most researchers in any field of research. Numerous confrontations between SFC military units and the Akk since Second Contact had furnished visual, if not forensic proof, that the Akk complied with Commonality 1. The other three would prove more difficult to assess. There was however, the tantalising lure of a wrecked and broken Akk vessel which attracted all of Selissi's famed attention because like the Exploration Platform Stanley-Livingstone, it was in the middle of a 'tear sphere'. The Akk vessel was in The Veil's 'tear sphere'. But unlike the TO vessel the Akk had broken up. The debris makes even the passage of an automated probe through the 'tear sphere' very difficult and dangerous.
Force of personal character and determination saw Selissi win CCC funding to send a series of probes into the 'sphere' to acquire close-up images of the debris. The images permitted Selissi to state that the Akk had complied with Commonalities 2 and 3. Commonality 4 would, she realised, mean a visit to an Akk colony, permission for which would never be given in her lifetime. She continued her hobby research but turned her considerable abilities back to her speciality of 'exo-skeletal anthro-archeology'.
Twenty-four hours after announcing, in 2572, that she would within a year publish the Phrenon-Skoy-Bliss Theorem of Commonalities, Selissi succumbed to a stroke.

Selissi's research notes are as extensive and detailed as her private diaries are not. As a result the anthropo-archeological community could not discern what she had been proposing to reveal.

Chapter 6, pp1-2.

Meii Tan (Tan disliked the use of the first person singular - PTH) had a considerable advantage over both her predecessors in that as an Officer in SFC's Strategic Command she was required to travel both regularly and frequently on the wey-wah. She was therefore able to plan and command any field trips within her remit, unlike Bruther who went where the Platform Commanders' orders required and unlike Selissi who had to argue, cajole and threaten to get funding for field research. Tan's interest in the P-S-B Theorem stemmed from the fact that both Selissi and she were Marchmontese.

In order to gain an understanding of what drove the Akk expansion policy, and not trusting the veracity of the information being sent to Strategic Command, Tan began to visit those planets that the Akk had abandoned in the course of the conflict between the Alliance and themselves. Tan needed thirteen exhaustively detailed inspections before she made the first of her reknowned (in military circles only - PTH) 'Predicted Movements in Akk Expansion for the Coming Decade'in 2988 (which permitted Hisself the XII to gain CCC permission to transform the Challis Guards from a local Reactive Anti-Theft Unit to a wey-wah Proactive Anti-Invasive Force and expand it from a force of 10,000 Jontis to an internationally recruited force of 100,000 - PTH). SFC High Command was so impressed by the 80% accuracy of the report that Tan recieved Federation Flag Officer status and the orders 'to act at will in pursuit of objectives' (High Commands' version of total freedom of movement with an unlimited budget - PTH). A second Predicted Movements report followed in 2998 that ultimately led to the stalemate between the Akk expansion policy and the Allliance's defensive stance (She continued to make reports until her last, 3448, in which she predicted a change in Akk strategy; from the seeking of raw materials to the seeking of causing unsustainable losses on the Alliance. Sadly the Alliance High Command had grown idle and complacent in the five hundred years since the stalemate took effect and reacted too slowly when the conflict again flared up. Colonel-Commander Meii Tan, born on Marchmont in 2953, the oldest living wey-wah Flag Officer, died at the physiological age of ninety-seven on Plutarch in 3663 in the first year of that appalling war in which I lost all seven of my elder brothers - PTH).

Tan admitted that the visit to the highest peak on the first planet she visited where she found a 100 metre flag-pole embedded into the summit, and the decision to conduct a low-level aerial survey which led to the finding of the cavern were both unplanned and 'on-the-spur-of-the-moment' decisions. She found the short-term, degradable, highly visible flag pole and the long-term, durable, secret engraving caverns on all thirteen of the planets she visited on that occasion. They were, Tan concluded, possession markers. She devised a 3-point set of rules for finding such markers on planets and sent out four teams to report back their findings, with the military data taking priority. All four teams had a selection of planets known to have been Akk and those for which there was no data. The analysis of the data streams, 100% of known Akk planets possessed the remnants of the flag-pole as well as the cavern in its entirety while only 23% of the unknowns had the same results. This enabled Tan to predict where the Akk would not strike in the coming decade and therefore by default where they were most likely to strike, which formed the basis of the 2998 report.

The success of this report had a direct impact on Tan's freedom of movement. High Command now considered her as irreplaceable and placed her under a limited travel ban. Deprived of the abilty to travel to Bliss to test the theory she was developing, Tan relied on her survey teams and Selissi's research notes on her unpublished P-S-B Theorem. Tan quickly realised that although they were both thinking along the same lines, the stroke which killed Selissi had paradoxically saved her reputation. Selissi had been about to make an appalling error of judgement which would have caused the validity of all her previous publications to have been called into question (if that isn't a knife in the bloddy back, what is? There was no need to make that inference - PTH).

Selissi had discovered in the sediment levels of three dessicated river deltas, identical city-based civilisations spaced at intervals of 250-350 millennia over the period of 6-18 million CE. Within the context of Selissi's search for 'commonalities' she had proof-positive evidence of compliance with all four commonalities of the inhabitants of these cities. Selissi also had the upper levels of three new Maze cities which were to her mind extraneous to her theory.

Selissi had made a number of conclusions based on the pictograms used in the cities' religious sites, that matched Tan's conclusions from different sources.
i) This race was certainly older than the Dzunoeskei. Their use of all four of Kari's Icons made them the pre-cursors if not the source of the Icons.
ii) The use of the Icons indicated a four clan social system.
iii) This race possessed a small feline quadruped.
iv) They had developed a complex mythology.
v) They were bipedal and distinctly humanoid.
Selissi's overriding problem was the Akk. Her conclusions were meaningless unless she could prove they had never visited Bliss or the two satellites. The earliest known reference to the Akk is in the FW archives. The date is known because following the two races' First Contact the FW archives included an extra dating system. The new one was the FW equivalent of First Contact + n years. That date of First Contact is the equivalent of 800,000 CE. The earliest of Selissi's Bliss civilisation layers is 12 million CE. Selissi either had to fill the intervening gap of 11.2 million years to prove that the Akk were the race on Bliss or she had to prove that they had never been there.

Tan was able to add the following key data:
vi) The rock geologies on all three bodies of P-S-B are not conducive to caverns - natural or constructed.
vii) Selissi on her own initiative conducted ground and aerial surveys of the highland areas on P-S-B and found no traces of skeletal or exo-skeletal activity.
viii) Teams following Tan's instructions did not find either the visible or the secret possession markers on P-S-B.
Tan then brought the Maze cities into the theory.
ix) No two Maze cities are constructed to the same design, but all, with two exceptions, have four or more equilateral sides of level height.
x) The Mazes embedded in the upper levels of all the Maze cities, with two exceptions, are one of six designs.
xi) The designs of the engravings - the durable possession markers of the Akk - have the same six designs of x).
xii) The two exceptions to ix) are Bliss - ellipsoid for no discernable reason and Jonti - elongated diamond to fit on the ridge.
xiii) The two exceptions to x) are Bliss and Jonti.

Tan drew four further conclusions to add to Selissi's original five:
a) The Akk had never been to P-S-B or Jonti.
b) The race that had built the city civilisations on Bliss are probably the builders of the Maze cities.
c) The builders of the Maze cities were probably pushed to the edge of extinction by the FW builders.
d) The remnants of the Maze builders probably became the Akk.

Then the Maze city on Jonti threw a spanner in the works. A non-military Research Instrument Test Team included Jonti among the 'tested planets' because Izezentil is notoriously impervious to sub-surface scanning. A scheduled three day test developed into a three month test due to the need to recalibrate their equipment on a daily basis becasue the results were so startling.
Jontis know the ridge, on which the Maze city is located, possesses an overhang, which makes any non piton-assisted climb impossible and is formed from Izezentil (88% purity) which does react well, at any of the purity ranges, to the proximity of other metals, such as hammers and pitons. So no Jonti has ever climbed the ridge and discovered the city's construction material is Izezentil (96% purity). The Izezentil could not have been sourced from Jonti. It had to have been imported. But that is not the spanner that Jonti's Maze city threw into Selissi and Tan's conclusions. Sub-surface luminescence analysis permits the dating of constructions, like the historical layers of ancient cities, layer by layer with an accuracy of 99.8% probability.

Jonti's ridge was known before the test to be approximately 6 million years old which was in accordance with the test.
But the city was built in the Common Era between 1500 and 2000 CE. This is almost within living memory.

Where are they now?

Chapter 7, pp1-6.

I just knew I should have read Tan's book when I was given it all those years ago. The 'spanner' is typical Jonti bloody-mindedness!
All three scientists, Bruther, Selissi and Tan, were regarded as the supreme scientific researchers of their generations by those that mattered, their peers, and are still regarded likewise by many of their descendants.
Nevertheless, the 'unofficial' official SFC view is to shy away from their conclusions. Here I will end with the thought that it is far better to face up to the possibility that there's an incredibly powerful but gentle (you try building a tool-precision house out of Izezentil, with or without the tools, without blowing up the neighbourhood); shy or secretive (why leave or never return to Bliss?) and durable (they have outlived the incredibly long-lived exoskeletals)'skeletal' space faring race somewhere out there. An arvra race that none of the others have records of. Sure .. it's a terrifying and scary thought.

But Jontis cats would go and investigate.

Yes, we had two cats brought in from outside. Strange looking breeds. One is black, flat faced and long tailed. The other is the same but smaller and brown. The twins, for reasons known only to themselves, named them Hisself the Waidaaš and Hisself the Bazz. The four of them are inseperable and the cats are most definitely the ONES-in-CHARGE.

FW Platforms, the Tears, the Wey-wah effect on Time-lines

All dates mentioned in this address (4013) by Federation Flag Officer Vice-Admiral T. Chelya (Green Flag Fleet) to Post-Graduate students at Llas, T.Sol IV are Universal Time Standard unless otherwise stated.

"Even now nearly two thousand years after the TO discoveries of the Saturn 'tear' in 2166 and the FW platforms in their orbiting park beyond Pluto in 2171, certain aspects of both the 'tears' and the Platforms remain a total mystery. I should perhaps say that none of the space faring races that TO knowledge now encompasses have ever answered two fundamental questions: Who created these interfaces between Space and the Nth dimension, which the scientific fraternity have dubbed the dimension within the 'tears'. Secondly, when were they created?
Is it really possible, you may be forgiven for asking, that the combined intelligences of the extinct exoskeleton races that preceeded the extant skeletal races, like ourselves, that these questions remain unanswered after six and a half million years?

I will give you this morning a brief overview of what we do know in the hope that you'll be sufficiently encouraged to expand our knowledge.

The core design of all FW platforms, irrespective of their size, is the height to width to length (volume) ratio of 'n times n squared times n cubed' where n is a constant (within a few metres of) 1.5km. The basic shape of the design is also always the same - consisting of a rectangle, length and cross section, with an arrowhead beginning to emerge at 80% of the total length from the rectangulate end. A few exceptions do exist but they are all of the larger type. The drive compartments are always at the rectangulate end. I say irrespective of their size; but none of those in either TO, Arvrasindahl or Dzunoeskei hands have measurements less than 1.5 x 2.25 x 3.375 kilometres. The largest CCC platform is the truly awesome platform known as The Llama's Joke which is almost 9,000 kei-ems long! This however is dwarfed by Xertius, Ferksei and Dzantzei each of which measure almost 22,000 kei-ems. The vast majority of the platforms are the 1.5 series, the 3 series and the 4.5 series; each of these number in thousands. The 6 through to the 15 series are numbered in hundreds and tens respectively and any platform greater in size seems to have been a one off design model or a small production run, as none of them possess the arrowhead. There is a good reason for this, as I will shortly explain.

The interior design of the platforms basically follows the same guidelines. Irrespective of size there are 200 metre high levels divided into compartments at 300 metre intervals. The propulsion unit invariably occupies between two-fifths and and one-third of the total length. Bulkheads at a uniform 200 metre distance across the width of a platform seem to be designed to give rigidity and strength to the overall design. There is one known exception to this design - the tubular platform known as The Lama's Joke.

The purpose of the arrowhead wasn't understood till the UN Council of Members gave the green light to the races of the Diaspora to go through the Saturn 'tear'. At this point in time it was found that those large and thankfully few in number, larger than the 15 series Platforms that did not possess the arrowheads were unable to enter the 'tear'. While the 'tears' had been detailed in the archives found on the platforms the finer points of entry and egress were a mystery. The position and location of the 'tears' seem to be relatively static. Those that the Flat Worlders had located and mapped were still in position 300 millennia later.
While it transpired fairly quickly that they had not mapped all of them there was a variable that was difficult to foresee. While the 'tears' seem to be fixed to one location the contents of Space are forever on the move. The 'Melniss' tear was located according to the Flat Worlders at a distance of 43,000 km from the planet. It is now so close that it's necessary to enter the 'A' tear in reverse and engage the engines before exiting the 'B' tear near 'Melniss' - otherwise you crash into Melniss' atmosphere with the inevitable results. You may well laugh! I use Melniss as an example with good reason. The first wave of TO colonists on Melniss were stranded there through being ship-wrecked. It is also believed until proven otherwise that the binary star at H-K M had also moved to envelope a previously open space tear. And you all know what happened then!
Entry and egress of the 'tears', in the early decades, was a matter of trial and error. The final conclusion was that a solitary equation, given here in the most simplistic form, governed from which Destination Tear (Dt) egress would occur for four key variable factors.

Dt = D(+/- 1%) x {V(+/- 1%) x app (+/- 1%) x (r/cF}

D is Direction of approach, V is the velocity, app is the angle of approach in degrees off the vertical plane; r is the resistance weighting of the surface area and cF is the nominal value of the coeffieicent of friction for any object passing through a tear.
This was borne out by the discovery that the Arvrasindahl had come to the same conclusion by roughly the same methods. In this introductory lecture I will keep to the basics. All 'tears' are both entry points - Type 'A' and destinations - Type 'B'. All the 'tears' are interlinked. The Alliance know of more than half a million but since there is no discernible pattern to their distribution it is impossible to estimate their precise total. By and large no more than 8% are in regular use. About a third of these are in Akkaidiiz controlled territory and another third are deemed unsafe to use because they're either in the proximity of super-novas or black-holes or the Empty Crescents. The Direction of approach is as important as the angle of approach as these examples will show. The 'tear' in the proximity of The Llama's Joke is linked to 423 safe destination tears. A 3 series of Mass T2 travelling at 70 kei-ems per second entering at angle of 3 degrees off the vertical will come out at Jonti 2. A 4.5 series travelling at the same speed and angle of approach will come out at Saveyerde. If the 3 series enters at 3 degrees off the vertical but its entry speed is reduced to 69 kei-ems per second it comes out at Saveyerde. If the same variables of angle and speed are applied to a 4.5 series of Mass T2, which is just possible if it is not carrying any cargo, the exit points are either Plutarch or Witness. This leads to another of the platforms mysteries -

The Mass Counters.

There has to be a practical theory for the calculation of the mass value of a given body in a weightless environment. The correct mass value is so critical that of all the variables its not permitted to have any upper or lower parameters. Just how critical is it? Let me give you two examples: First. The FW counters show fourteen decimal places. Secondly. We don't know what unit of measurement the FWs used for calculating mass. We do know that the Mass Counter is active all the way through an approach into a tear until the last tenth of a second because the platforms are expending energy through the engine drives. At Entry minus 10.75 seconds the drives automatically disconnect and at minus 3.16 the Mass Counter holds for 3.15 seconds. The mass value at that particular period is what determines your Dt.

Two final points need to be remembered about using the tears.
First, the value of V on the approach remains constant at egress. Entry at 50 kei-ems per second means egress at 50 kei-ems per second. Entry accelerating at 50 kei-ems per second per second means egress at the same speed and acceleration. The same applies to de-acceleration. The distance between a Platform entering a tear being pursued by a faster Platform will be the same at egress irrespective of the duration of the jump. Jump durations do not change. Nevertheless a variable factor does lie between tear 'A' and tear 'B' and provides a perfect example of the strangeness of the Nth dimension.

None of the instrumentation on the Platforms perform accurately if at all in the Nth dimension. It is impossible to calculate speed, velocity or time or distance. Speeds up to 150 kei-ems per second do not have an adverse effect on biological entities at the molecular level. Speeds in excess of 300 kei-ems per sec for durations of longer than a few minutes (the duration is dependent on body weight to mass ratio) is fatal for living biological entities and causes rapid decomposition in dead ones. SFC bars speeds in excess of 120 kei-ems per second for personnel and live-stock Platforms, for safety reasons.

The Flat Worlders located and marked with warning beacons the three known 'tear spheres'. They also recorded every upper limit of the variable factors that are used to calculate your Dt from any of their known tears that enable Platform Navigators to avoid passing through them. Entry into a sphere seems to require egress through the diametrically opposed tear. Why is this so dangerous?
Before SFC was able to copy the Dzuneskei 'barrier-system' that prevent the Navigators or Commanders of biological entity carriers from inadvertantly using parameters that will take them through any one of the three spheres a baker's dozen of known Commanders made fatal errors. I will mention the use of vomit bags later on in this address. I will mention them now should you ever be required to enter a biological entity carrier Platform that has passed through one of the spheres. Gases expand to infite. Everything explodes down to the molecular level. Need I say more? The reason is simple and unavoidable. The three spheres have diameters of 1.9 billion, 2.8 billion and 4.6 billion kei-ems. In order to pass through one of the spheres a Platform must be travelling in excess 190 kei-ems per second or have a mass count of T7 or above. Platforms below either of these parameters do not pass through the spheres. The 9 and 12 series Platforms are perfectly capable of acheiving mass counts of T13 and those fourteen fatal errors that I have just mentioned all involved Platforms from these two series. The Nth dimension adjusts the rate of acceleration or de-acceleration by a factor of 7. The Nth dimension will ratchet up an entry speed of 190 kei-ems per second 1330 kei-ems per second. At this speed the Platform will take sixteen and a half days to pass through the smallest of the spheres. At this speed all the biological entities will be smeared over the compartment surfaces within the initial 15 seconds of their passage through the sphere.

Secondly, and on a less bloody note, it is theoretically possible to use as an exit any one of the fifteen thousand absolutely safe tears. The tables that you all have in your info-cards show all the necessary variables for a selection of twelve tears for a range of platforms across the sizes that can negotiate the tears. The tables are sorted in order of ascendancy for the value of Velocity. You will notice that only about fifty per cent of the destination tears are accessible for a V value of less than 140kei-ems per second. Values above this level are difficult to maintain at a constant in the larger vessels and are impractical in the 9 series and bigger since a distance in excess of fifty-thousand km is necessary to reach the required speed for an approach and the same to slow down on egress.
Fortunately all the relevant equations have been worked out for all the known destination tears. Still none of the space-faring species is sure of the exact measurements of a 'tear' in its normal state. We know only, also from the trial and error method that any thing bigger than the 15 series passes by every tear as if it wasn't there. Also anything larger than a 9 series cannot enter a tear in reverse. Remarkable but true. Based on this knowledge and the observation that the prows of platforms are almost needle-like given their size - none possess a radius greater than 50 metres - its a logical conclusion that the tears, in a pre-entry or pre-exit state possess a radius of no less than 50 metres and no more than between 15,000 meters.

So everyone here has two thoughts. First if this is what we know why do so many platform commanders find it almost impossible to achieve a first attempt transfer? The answer lies in the problem of Direction of approach. It is not a case of being unable to precisely define a course within dead reckoning but a case of not truly understanding the shape of the tears.

If the tears were simple three-dimensional portals there would not be a problem. Nevertheless that was how they were initially theorised, a perception that was made concrete with First Contact when the two fleets collided. Although D was known to be critical at the time, it was accepted that the tears acted as two-way portals but were in their turn subject to solar winds which turned them on their horizontal and vertical axes by minimal but critical degrees. A relatively recent experiment, in 3037, has begun to reveal the nature of a tear's shape. The insistence of a former student of this College, to conduct a research study from the control bridge of a Platform aproaching a safe tear from within the Nth dimension, in The Keck Empty Quarter changed that perception. Ago Nikkinen had persuaded the Captain to allow him to try and record a sonar image of a tear. With entry at minus 126 seconds, the sonar recorder went absolutely crazy with activity at the tear. It was too late to abort entry. With entry at minus 2.3 seconds the sonar went blank. Painstaking analysis of the recording of a subsequently normal egress enabled Nikkinen to conclude that there were between one and two thousand su'do' cavorting around the tear.

What they were doing was only revealed through the continued communication between Manitoba y Fuentes and the su'do' TGR2. The su'do' can do what no other species has ever achieved - changing direction inside the tears.

Su'do' never produce anything less than a score or more splits at any one time and only split after having entered a tear. This is apparently because the splits are, by and large, highly dependent whilst the parent split wants nothing more than a lot of peace for some serious thinking. If the split occurs in open space, the pups will simply follow the parent. Splitting inside the tears allows the parent to exit by one tear having sent the pups to exit by tears as distant and safe as possible! The bark of every split is unique. TGR2 identified the cavorting splits as belonging to one of the most unusual su'do', Darkening Star. This su'do' once lost all its new splits. They are either still within the tears or all exited into black-holes which are the sole entity in space that they do their utmost to avoid. As a result Darkening Star has formed into a huge collective of su'do'. This is not Darkening Star's sole eccentricity. The Darkening Star collective was playing a game of 'su'do' tag' around that tear.

Nikkinen to create a digital image of every second of the recording which when played back produced something that platform Captains consider their worst nightmare should the su'do' ever gain solidty.

Now this hologram depicts the sort of mirrored light globe beneath which most of you will spend Saturday nights socialising. This example has over two hundred facets. But this version, as you can all hopefully see, is encased in pyramidal structures of eight triangles. Nikkinen deduced that this is a safety design feature of the tears. There is afterall no way of knowing when you enter a tear if one or more ships have chosen to exit via the same destination tear from different entry points or as in First Contact whether one or more ships is going to exit as you go in. Extremely fine analysis of entry and exit angles has shown that there is always a difference of degrees (plus or minus .0001%). This means that your exit point is never diametrically opposite your entry point. The odds of two groups using the same angles for exit and entry are, therefore, so remote as to be almost infinite. Yet it happened at First Contact.
I would suggest you all to remember that point. But I will also advise that if it becomes a concern of yours, the Faculty Board asks you please take it to Theology, Philosophy or Alternative Studies? This is the Physics Department!

Your second thought is that if there are so many tears why didn't the Akkaidiiz ensure that we didn't become a threat before we reached a space technology level? The old theory was that our home-planet Earth was simply too distant for them to feel any concern. A V value in excess of 300 kei-ems per second is necessary to enter the Saturn tear to egress anywhere in Akkaidiiz territory and that is not a speed that any species has yet achieved without killing all life forms aboard their platforms. This means that its necessary to make approximately 5 jumps and its the travel time between the jumps that are most dangerous if you are travelling through hostile territory. That was the old theory debunked by the Dzunoeskei. They decided after the problems they had with Akkaidiiz interference in their own process of development that they would seek out and shield other branches of the same 'tree' as theirs. The Dzunoeskei have very definite records of regular attempts by the Akkaidiiz to visit our home-planet; attempts that were discouraged by the Dzunoeskei's usual display of ferocity. I am leaving the matter of the platforms' propulsion fuel to my colleagues in Chemistry who will reveal to you that most us wouldn't have a clue to what's going on without TGR2. But I am going to take a little time to give you a brief explanation of the 'wey-wah' and its effect on time-lines.

"wey-wah" OR "wah-hey!"

OK. Originally the exclamation of newcomers to the experience, usually under the influence of several 'Space Highballs'. The Central Command Council, (ei.kei.ei the Praesidium), later decreed that something that had such an important impact on its activities should have a more serious sounding title that was still recognisable. Pure gobbeldy-gook! Call it what you like, but it's there.
Communication between geostationery platforms, The Llama's Joke for example, and the colonies is real old fashioned snail-mail. When the initial waves of colonists set out on their explorations in the last decade of the 22nd Century there was no way of knowing when any form of message would ever be returned. New America, the first colonised planet was not heard from for 109 years. Jonti holds the record at 183 years. This time-frame is important because it meant that mainstream society and that included the CCC was unaware of the two unnerving aspects of the wey-wah for almost half a millennia.

What lies between the tears is not Space as we know it. Novices to the wey-wah are advised 'it's better under the influence to dream than to stay awake and scream'. The many text-recorded accounts from the early waves of colonists sound like drug induced hallucinations.

The apparitions appear at any minute of any hour. They are so lifelike! A cavalcade of mounted men may traverse your cabin, a figure wearing outlandish attire may walk through you from behind, or a devilish beast all fiercesome teeth and bristles may appear out of a wall charging at you! They are mostly fleeting, these visions. But occasionally you may awake and find a cloaked figure watching you intently through the porthole! The portals are digitalised virtual realities, for God's sake! The scariest part is that they all behave as if they can see you too! The people and the beasts.

Text recordings are difficult to substantiate except that very few of the colonists did not experience the visions. Jump forwards to the middle of the 25th Century. The Council is experimenting with motion activated cameras in Navy vessels. The images captured are so startling that image recording equipment has since been fitted to all Allaince platforms. If you're interested you should visit the Llas' collection where they have categorised and collated some three hundred thousand recordings.

The largest category in the Llas collection consists of images that can be directly linked to geographical features of a planet in a historical context. Since some of these features are shown before they ceased to exist, the island of Santorini before the 1650 BCE volcanic eruption is a prime example, theorists have suggested that some of the unrecognisable images may be from the future. Your professors in the History and Archelology departments assure me there are many indicators of historical dates. They use fashion, technology and architecture where they can. Most of the visions, in the order of 95%, are fleeting - lasting between three and five seconds. There are two of quite extraordinary in length and detail that seem to have a link. One is recognised to be the 5th Century BCE TO battle of Thermopylae. Although this recording was made with just one camera, there are in the 1536 hours of recording sixteen different versions from different viewpoints. If you chose to view any part of it you are advised to accept the offer of a vomit bag as this is most definitely not a staged re-enactment. Just be grateful that none of the wey-wah visions are accompanied by sound. The other is exactly half as long but seen, this time is recorded on twelve cameras. The action appears to be pre-battle preparations of two sizeable armies from a Bronze Age culture. The location is unrecognisable. There are similarities between the fashions and weaponry visible in the two sequences. These similarities are covered in the Species Commonalities v Anomalies course given by a conjunction between Archelogy and Anthropolgy. The link that you shall be investigating in Week 19 of this course is that both visions were recorded between the Marchmont and Segudo tears. (There is a TO convention to refer to tears in alphabetical sequence - to M from S, from M to S.)

Thermopylae was recorded in 2580 on a jump Marchmont --> Segudo and what has become known as Battle Rites was recorded on a jump Marchmont --> Segudo in 2584. There is
no mention of either being seen before in the Texts archives and neither event has been seen or recorded in full since those two dates. And no. There aren't any plausible explanations. Though you may wish to draw your own conclusions after listening to the next section about the effect of the wey-wah on time-lines.

Concerns over the snail pace of communications across the vast emptiness of Space caused the Central Communications Council to investigate the best possible use of the tears as a communication channel. They could simply have asked either of our Allies since the conclusions they came to mirror both the Arvrasindahl's and the Dzunoeskei's. Each species uses, for non-military communication, fleets of unmanned 3 series as the modern equivalent of a carrier-pigeon.

Please note the following! The Dzunoeskei realtime simultaneous data transfer communication system - codenamed Tandreš - adapted for Alliance High Command use remains on the secret list. Ergo you will not receive any instruction in Tandreš until you reach Flag Rank in the Armed Forces.

So. Back to the carrier-pigeons. The platforms can and do achieve speeds in excess of 400kms but this is only when carrying non-biological materiel. We, just as the Arvrasindahl and the Dzunoeskei, discovered the continuous use of a 'carrier-pigeon' revealed something very odd about the wey-wah which was directly related to the synchronicity of time. As everyone knows there is a clear relationship between down-time and the longevity of productivity for
life and machines.

Make a mental jump please back to home-world Earth. The difference between production-time and down-time was the natural sequence of day and night. It is from Earth that we have kept the 365/52/12/7/24/60/60 sequence. That sequence was maintained as a universal standard until 2336 when the first message returned from New America to CCC revealed that the colony was living under a different time schedule. Their sequence of 450/50/10/9/32/60/60 was governed just as Earth's was by the rotation of the planet around the sun and the rotation of the planet. Direct synchronicity was simply not practical. This is why every colonised world possesses two calendars - one for Government which maintains the UTS and the other for their own colonial local time standard (LTS). There are now 48 TO worlds. Each has its own LTS. We shall not, at this moment, involve the Time Standards of the Arvrasindahl or the Dzunoeskei as they immeasurably complicate matters. So we have two basic Time Standards - Universal and Local Colonial. The wey-wah added a factor of influence that did not behave in a progressive manner and ultimately led to the Wey-Wah Statute being approved and adopted in 2368.
It would be natural to surmise that if you sent a carrier-pigeon on an outward journey of 4 UTS days, a down-time of 2 days and a return journey of 4 days that the carrier-pigeon would return on the ninth day after it departed. These are the scheduled journey times between Jokers and Llas. So if it was sent out on the 1st day of March it would return on the 10th day. What actually happens defies the logics of the maths involved.

This university has been sending the same three 3 series carrier-pigeons to Llama's Joke on the first day of each month (LTS) since the year 2354. In addition to the dated information each carrier is supposed to carry, there is an array of chronometers ranging from the spring-wound and the battery powered to the atomic powered. The chronometers are all synchronised to our LTS. These three carrier-pigeons have been named Faith, Hope and Charity for identification purposes. They are sent out at eight-zero (eighty) hour intervals so they should arrive at either end at eight-zero hour intervals since only one jump is required. 4 days is the average time it takes a carrier pigeon to make the journey. There have however been remarkable differences.

It takes approximately 18 hours for a carrier pigeon to reach the tear at either end of the journey so we should be able to account for at least 36 hours on a single mail-shot. There have been numerous occasions when any one of the three has returned either ahead of schedule or behind schedule by a matter of hours and minutes. On those occasions the differences between the chronometers stated time and the arrival time was arguably acceptable because the wey-wah affects all the chronomters in different ways. It was the accidental inclusion of a CCC internal Tier-to-Tier time-stamped message in 2266 that attracted everyone's attention.

This was a one-way mail-shot for those of you rapidly computing the expected time schedule.

The printed time of the stamp, that is when the envelope was received put into the cargo container showed J2366.11.6.13.56.UTS.

The chronometers all indicated a journey time of between sixteen and eighteen hours.

CCC confirmed that this particular carrier-pigeon, Hope, had departed Jokers at J2366.11.6.18.35UTS.

Hope's absolute best time between The Lama's Joke and Jokers' tear was when not carrying any cargo at maximum thrust. On that occasion Hope managed a time of 18 hours, 7 minutes and 32 seconds.

The subsequent investigation revealed a programming error in the repetition Dt parameter values. Hope had entered Joker's tear at a V value of 407 kei-ems per second which had taken the Platform through one of the tear spheres.

The next part is difficult for me to understand let alone explain. The irrevocable fact is that Hope arrived back at Llas's orbital station before she was due to enter Joker's tear.


The inference was quite clear. Living organisms, not for example mechanical ones, could have their life-times either lengthened or shortened by the wey-wah. While all of you should have heard of the time-whorls I doubt that anyone has ever given you a satisfactory explanation. Well .... you won't be getting one from me. The Dzunoeskei announced their existence based on their research that was in turn based on Ferranti archives.

When we finish today go and get a mug of kovii. stir it and pour some cream in. The cream will swirl. A time-related swirl is called a whorl. It will begin to lengthen, then expand and finally dissipate. The Dzunoeskei believe that time behaves the same as the cream.

The concept might explain why the wey-wah's effect isn't constant for any given space between tears. Gain time, lose time. But the records for the Llas' three carrier-pigeons irrefutably define an overall loss which in biological terms equates to a lengthening of the life-span. And that my frinds is all you are ever going to get from me!

Once the urgent necessity to find colonies for TOs stranded in space after the Diaspora had ended, most of the FW platforms were commandeered by the Government for use as either military vehicles in the conflict against the Akkaidiiz or for trade and communications. All TOs who spend their lives in Space according to the Wey-wah Statute live in UTS. The Wey-wah Statute of 2368 applied to all TOs whose lives were intricately entwined in the wey-wah. These included the roving space clans who live permanently aboard their platforms, the crews of merchant and military platforms and the personnel of the Armed Forces. If anyone doubts the potential tragic consequences of the wey-wah effect on TO life-lines you only need to read "The Tragedy of Prenter Challis the Fourteenth". That is biographical, not fiction. The wey-wah effect caused that family to alter the line of descent from the eldest child to any child born where one parent had never ventured onto the wey-wah in a permanent capacity.
You all came here on the way-wah so let me set your minds at rest. Exemptions from the Wey-wah Statute include anyone who spends at least 47 UTS weeks on planet after 'tear' journeys of less than 10 days. This probably explains the length of the annual Llas study period to you. This also seems to be the case for the rather disturbing affect on TO reproduction. The detrimental effect will, I assure you, dissipate over time.

That's it for the day.