Chapter 1 — 2184 CE, Sāmeru Mandala

[Hello! I am Woid Panoan Divigamana Anaikya Sāmeru—StarShaman. I am here, with you now, in your thoughts, honoured reader—or, perhaps, watcher or listener—in the capacity of Spirit Guide.

I have only a minor part in this story, itself a single pale thread in the vast, some say infinite, tapestry which is the Plurality of all things. I am here because I was provided an early copy of this manuscript when it became clear to the publisher that some footnotes might be required to help denizens of nonlocal Physical Planes parse the prose.

I am not from your World, this is important. I am a StarShaman; an Astral Traveller. You’ve likely not heard of the term, but can you imagine bones, blood, drums, psychedelics and the infinites above and below?

smoke from my herb
folds into the night
joins
the river of the sky
light from the dark

Metaphor and invocation. I sing ‘River of the Sky’, while you might say ‘Milky Way’. Here, we come to the purpose of my companionship. I have seen other Planes. I have journeyed countless Realms. As a traveller of the Plurality, I possess a perspective you lack—

It is said that the StarShamen like metaphor. This is true, we do. We like metaphor because, while truth is fragile and brittle, metaphor is robust. Truth rarely translates between the Realms and Planes; while metaphor, which captures meaning deeper than truth, holds its value. Terms and names morph as one traverses the Plurality of all things. Names are not important; they are a mask for the soul. Feel free to ignore them, or use a convenient dramatis personae if you must. Either way, you will not miss anything important by skimming over the strange syllables of my Plane. Look instead, for the familiar meaning beneath the words.

Our story starts in metaphor: Sāmeru Mandala. To me, it is a Realm above the Physical Plane. The Kin would call it a Consensus environment. You might think of it as ‘The Metaverse’, ‘Artificial Reality’, T.I.V.™ —or, if you are a true OG, Cyberspace…]

***

In a Realm above the Real, Êrak is reclining on a cushion within a salty canvas pagoda lashed improbably to the back of the gun-tug Aipal, which, here in the Mandala Consensus, is manifesting as a bull orca whale. The dark purple sky above the pagoda is streaked with highlights of emerald and violet. The water beneath is black and clear. While Êrak reclines in Mandala Consensus, enjoying the waves and the gentle motion of Aipal’s tail churning the foamy waters behind them, in the Real, one level down, sixteen aspirant Kin youths in Êrak’s charge are running the gun-tugs and their systems.

The young aspirants have been with him for a little over sixty watches—three standard weeks. When their training with him is over, he will deliver these precious charges home; back into the hands of his old friend Leimeiê Serval Sessrúmnir Kwon Silicium. Leimeiê is responsible for making Kin from this group of aspirants—and has been for the past three and a half standard years.

Êrak shakes his head sardonically; he couldn’t be modryb! Four years with the same group of aspirants! The emotional wear and tear from even his short stints as koro’woid are enough.

[Koro: warrior
Woid: teacher]

This group is at least competent; they are close to CulEx, the culmination exercise which delineates childhood from maturity. Even so, they still manage to span the full spectrum of irritations from ‘too eager to please’ to ‘way too confrontational’.

During training exercises, the Torches and the sub-sentient Sages which run the gun-tug’s automation are instructed to play dumb, allowing the aspirants to handle the logistics of deep-space astrogation. As much as possible, Êrak likes to avoid the physical acceleration deck and the Consensus spaces, where the operation of the ship is managed; instead, preferring to stay in his cabin, sending his locus of perception ghosting invisibly through the ship’s bays, corridors and Consensus spaces, keeping a quiet eye on the actions of the aspirants. When routine and familiarity allow, he takes himself into the peace of Sāmeru Mandala Consensus—

Nine hoops encircle the radiant pillar of Sāmeru:

Aglool, Aipal, and Anguta, three orca whale avatars representing the three gun-tug vessels under Êrak’s command, swim in loose formation. Matter is scarce this far out. Aipal pulls ahead with a surge of power, orienting towards one sea-mount. Aglool and Anguta hang back. The orcas, and the aspirants they carry, are on their own, weeks from home and many months of hard ‘swimming’ from the populated Golden Lands of the inner system. The ships are out among the sparse peaks of the Lok Gherd, Sāmeru’s Second Belt, cruising through the pack ice carrying koro’woid Êrak and his aspirant students.

***

Down on the Real, the gun-tugs, Aglool, Aipal, and Anguta, sledge through hard vacuum beyond the orbit of Sāmeru’s major planets. The ship’s Torches are running hot as they accelerate towards a clump of matter falling on a long, lazy manifold towards the bull’s eye at the centre of the system. The rocky object, which is the target of this leg of the voyage, is uninhabited, just one of a billion similar clumps of ice and rock orbiting within the Second Belt. As a destination, the rock is meaningless, arbitrary. It is the journey here that is the destination; a real-world exercise for the aspirants who Êrak is guiding through this stage of their ascendance to Kin adulthood.

‘We have just begun receiving a distress signal…’ Aipal’s voice says inside Êrak’s head.

In Consensus, Êrak removes the dull point of a knife from the side of his toenail. “Tell me.”

“The signal’s source is twenty million kilometres from our current 4ordinates. We are likely the closest vessels.”

“Assessment?”

“Seems legitimate,” Aipal says. “Mōdormen’s CODAG ties it to the habitat cluster which signed the distress signal.”

“Alright, good opportunity to see what the kids make of the situation,” says Êrak. “They will probably assume it’s part of their test…”

***

A phospho-luminescent bow wave piles up against Aipal’s white chin. A little behind, Aglool and Anguta—sister gun-tugs, also manifesting orca whale avatars on the waters of the Mandala—leave their own glowing wakes. Êrak’s avatar sheathes his bronze pocket knife.

***

The physical Êrak places a nail clipper in a draw, where it will be tidied and filed by some sub-sentient Sage of Aipal—who, in the Real, stripped of metaphor, is thirty metres of precisely arranged carbon atoms, biologicals, physics-packages, and chemistry cisterns, all cloaked and coddled by kilometres of diaphanous plasma.

***

“Koro’aga!” Alde announces breathlessly. The aspirant manifests without warning. “We received a distress signal!”

“Aspirant Alde,” Koro’aga Êrak says, greeting the aspirant. “Yes, I know.”

“Should we divert?”

“I would say this is a question for your Koro’aga. I am not in command for this exercise.”

“But, I thought… Oh, is this still part of the exercise then?”

“Alde, I am busy. I don’t like being disturbed while I am trying to relax. I’m sure you remember the protocols? If not, ask Aipal!”

“But Koro’aga…”

“I’m not your Koro’aga, Alde!”

“Oops. Sorry!”

“Somebody’s life might be at stake, Alde! Get Tamura! She IS acting Koro’aga. Wake her if she is off-watch!”

[Koro: Warrior
Aga: Leader]

The primary purpose of the current exercise is to rotate the title of koro’aga through the sixteen Kin aspirants berthed on the three gun-tugs. Each will have the opportunity to lead. Aspirant Tamura—in woid Êrak’s assessment, a moderately talented, precocious, and intensely self-confident young woman—is the expedition’s current Aga.

“Sorry! Permission to leave…” Alde asks.

“Go, Alde!!”

The aspirant freezes, wrestling with the desire to go and inform Tamura and a competing urge, which would like him to utter another round of apologies. In the end, the youngster, taking direction from the deepening scowl on Êrak’s face, decides that it is probably best to just go.

Êrak shakes his head solemnly. “That boy has got an uphill battle ahead of him!”

“His heart is in the right place. Your standards are high,” Aipal says with detached remoteness. The ship’s zenolect mind is occupied elsewhere with a deep appraisal of the available information.

“True enough,” Êrak concedes. “You’d give him the benefit of the doubt? Assume he has strengths elsewhere?”

“Not my disposition to assume anything.”

“Now that, for sure, is true!” Êrak agrees. He decides his relaxation time is hopelessly compromised anyway, so drops back into his cabin, then ghosts as nothing more substantial than a point-of-view into the acceleration deck, with the intention of following Alde and the rest of the aspirants as they deal with this opportunity to demonstrate competence.

In another few months, assuming they pass the culmination exercise, the fourth-years will graduate and join their Klan as Kin, with the commensurate rights and responsibilities full Klan participation confers.

“What is it?” Tamura asks, joining Alde on Aipal’s acceleration deck. The girl is in her early twenties. Like all Kin, she is physically close to peak fitness—broad in the shoulders and hips, less angular and lean than some of the other girls. Her hair, gathered under the mesh hood of her shipsuit, is blonde.

“It just started up. Twenty million kliks.”

“Kit or Kin?” Tamura asks.

“People, biological, but not Kin,” Alde replies.

“How quickly can we get there?”

“We are on a manifold which will take us close. Maximum burn would make it five days…”

“Start prepping. I am going to bring Rapakê and the crew of Aglool and Anguta in on this.”

***

“Is this part of the exercise?” Alde asks.

“Doesn’t matter! Focus, Alde!” Rapakê tells the visibly unsettled aspirant. “Might be a trap, though,” Rapakê continues, glancing to Tamura.

Aipal’s duty officers are gathered in the ship’s physical acceleration deck, while their peers from Aglool and Anguta are manifesting into a Consensus space which faithfully recreates the acceleration deck, while also extending off into imaginary dimensions to make space for the additional occupants manifesting from other ships. The aspirants are examining the data, giving it some initial intuiting.

“How about, rather than a trap, it is someone in trouble who might actually need help?” Tamura counters. “Call me dumb, but that’s usually the point of a distress signal, isn’t it?”

Rapakê shrugs.

“Not everybody outside the Kin is a criminal, Rapakê!” Tamura tells him pointedly, shuffling herself further onto the moral high ground.

“Perhaps not,” aspirant Arax begins, but is cut off by Rapakê, who is quite capable of speaking for himself. “Life is tough… weakness sends people onto dark paths… SALOA…”

Tamura shakes her head at this pessimism. “Aipal, how many distress signals turn out to be honeypots?” she asks.

“About six percent,” the ship’s gestalt replies immediately.

“There!” Tamura states, vindicated.

“Low odds,” Rapakê agrees. “But not when you are gambling lives. One in twenty is a chance I’d rather avoid.”

“You’re just being paranoid,” Tamura tells him. Then considers, “But, I s’pose it’s probably a test, anyway, so we might as well do everything by the book. We’ll stealth up and take a look… wait, you’re not suggesting we ignore the signal, are you?”

“Of course not,” says Rapakê. “But there’s no need to rush in and make victims of ourselves…”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that,” Arax points out dryly. “Whatever they are expecting to catch, if it is a honeypot, it won’t be three Kin gun-tugs!”

“Know your enemy and know yourself,” Rapakê states. “We don’t know our enemy here…”

“We don’t even know if there is any enemy outside your paranoid skull!” Tamura corrects.

“True. But it’s still safest to assume that there is one, and to assume we will be flying into a trap,” Rapakê counters. “Without more information, any confidence is overconfidence…”

“Fine,” Tamura concedes.

“But I agree,” Rapakê continues, turning to Arax with a smile. “If it’s a trap, somebody is most likely in for a nasty surprise!”

“Alright boys, enough chest beating! We go in, but take it super cautious, right?” Tamura sugg-asks.

Arax and Rapakê, and the other aspirants standing in Consensus or floating in Aipal’s physical acceleration deck, mostly nod or otherwise signal their agreement.

“Right. Aipal…” Tamura addresses the gestalt zenolect haunting the gun-tug’s physical aspect. “Engage full stealth, turn off the transponders. Be on maximum alert. Hit maximum burn…”

“Errr…” Arax murmurs. There is a perceptible delay in his contributions; his physical locus is on the acceleration deck of the sister gun-tug Anguta, sixty thousand kilometres distant.

“Yes?” Tamura sighs. “What else did I miss?”

“Full burn will not leave us enough in the tanks to get anybody we pick up back to a proper medical facility…”

“Frigg!”

“We could ping ahead to Eagle Strike?” says Roxo. “It’s the closest to our current manifold. Perhaps we could head there to refuel after we rendezvous with the signal?”

“That! Do that! Ping them and make sure they have fuel to sell first,” Tamura tells aspirant Roxo.

It only takes a few minutes for the hastily formulated message to reach the decrepit cluster of prospector habitats that is Eagle Strike; and apparently, only a few more for a terse reply to be drafted. The prospectors’ reply is in the negative, with an unnecessarily blunt response, not even bothering to auto-finesse a polite formulation of ‘No’.

“They’ve got nothing for us…” aspirant Roxo states. “Not very helpful at all, actually…”

“Is there any other polis nearby?” Arax asks.

“No,” Rapakê shakes his head.

“Should we maybe ask woid Êrak?” Alde suggests.

Tamura shakes her head sharply.

“No. We’ve got this, Alde,” Rapakê tells the fidgeting Alde kindly.

“We could send one of the tugs on a hard burn to intercept and have the rest follow?” Roxo suggests. “That way, we’ll have fuel in reserve once we know what we are getting into.”

“Send a single tug into a trap?” Rapakê asks pointedly.

At this point, Koro’aga Êrak chooses to stop ghosting and manifests visibly alongside Tamura in the Consensus approximation of Aipal’s acceleration deck.

“Very nice, Tamura!” says Êrak. “Good work, aspirants. Especially Arax, Rapakê, Roxo, and everybody else who contributed. Good plan. But look, I’m going to take a hand in this one. This is not an exercise. Like Rapakê said, distress signals tend to be dodgy out here. In my experience, more often than not the situation is ambiguous. There are a lot of arseholes! So we’re going to take this ultra-cautious. We might have three Kataraa gun-tugs, which, as I hope you appreciate by now, is a not-inconsiderable amount of firepower… and, of course, you guys are formidable, too! All of you! But you’re still aspirants and I don’t want to fly us into the grinder. We’ll send two Torches with bodkins, and stealth up and follow. If it looks like something legit, or something we can help with, or even if it’s just a situation we think we can handle, we’ll adjust our burns based on the evolving parameters. Always be cautious! Okay?” Êrak waits for input. When nothing is forthcoming, he continues. “Good. Back to you, Tamura.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Tamura says a little peevishly. “Questions? No…? Alright. Let’s get this done!”

***

CZR03662Torch:Aipal is closing with the source of the signal at a relative velocity of three million kilometres per hour. The Torch passes twelve thousand metres from the distress marker. Four million kilometres behind, CZR03411Torch:Aglool receives the images, raw data, and initial analysis. There are no obvious countermeasures or signs of suspicious activity, so CZR03411Torch:Aglool begins slam braking to bring verself into the same reference frame as the drifting object.

The scout’s preliminary examination also makes its way back to the three stealthed gun-tugs, and Êrak and the aspirants are presented with the image of an ancient, stained space suit, drifting, alone, millions of kilometres from anything significant. It is a poignant, troubling vision. The gestalt zenolects of the ships determine that the suit is most likely filled with between one hundred and three hundred kilograms of organic matter.

“Poor guy, might have been out there for years,” Tamura murmurs quietly.

“Only days, actually. Still warm…” Arax corrects as more data arrives.

***

The orca which is Aipal beats its tail flukes and rushes through the ink. Êrak, back in Consensus, composes an update message to modryb Leimeiê with a cc to Silicium Central Ledger. When he is done, he leans out of his golden pagoda, trails his fingers through the frigid water and pats the rubbery black and white head of Aipal.

“This might be interesting,” he states matter-of-factly.

Aipal coughs an ambiguous affirmative.

‘It’s been a long time since anyone from the Lok visited Eagle Strike,’ Aglool sends cryptically, surfacing and joining them in Consensus.

“What are you saying?”

‘Their numbers are poor. Critically so. If they are subsisting, it is either with a very low population or at a desperate level of comfort,’ Aglool sends.

‘Tough times make tough men. The valency of their virtue is orthogonal to their toughness,’ Aipal counters.

“Okay, you two, before you leave me behind down some rabbit hole!” says Êrak. “We’ll take care. If things go sideways, our priority is to keep the aspirants safe.”

‘That’s clear,’ Aipal agrees.

‘Always,’ Aglool sends, vanishing beneath the syrupy black vacuum and pushing out ahead of ver sibling ships.


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