| Chapter 1 |
Chapter 1
Fargasoids look almost human, but they are not. With an average height of about four and a half feet or 135 centimetres, they look like cute and cuddly children, but they are not. Originally from the all-mineral planet of Fargas, their society developed in insular and almost sociological unanimity. As intelligence is the most prized asset on Fargas, all Fargasoids are thinkers and philosophers with very few actual doers – activity not being their strong suit.
The Maradonian sedentary way of life led them into close liaison with their environment. Their world is a crystalline place of great beauty and geological diversity, as are the creatures themselves. A Fargasoid is actually a silicon-based life form – as is most of the life on that world. Even the plants are more mineral than vegetable.
Quartos and Micos were two such Fargasonian thinkers, but alas they were also doers, although they did very little and what they did do, they did very slowly. Fargasoids live approximately 10,000 times slower and longer than humankind and this, together with their stone-like features, makes them appear almost as statues. Somewhere in the fortieth or fiftieth century of their lives, as they progressed towards middle age, Micos discovered crystalline polymorphous encephalography: CPE. Sounds very complicated, but in reality, it is only a considerable term for the simple act of changing intelligent Fargasonian rocks into a thinking, machine-like device. On other worlds it would have been called a computer and on some worlds, an estan.
Quartos married the CPE with the ancient principle of temporal exaggeration: TE. Now although TE was nothing new on Fargas, it had never before been coupled with CPE. For millennia, it had been used to make transportation easier. The idea being that no one actually had to exert energy to go anywhere – they merely thought of a place and arrived at the same time, though not actually in person. The nearest thing on Earth would be astral wandering – a spiritual belief in the ability to move through solid objects or cross great distances using the mind.
The CPE, coupled with TE, produced an extraordinary effect that no one except Quartos and Micos had any use for. Their curiosity and sense of adventure led them into forbidden temptation. What started as a simple case of curiosity, almost killed the Fargasoid.
With TE one simply imitates sleep by entering a trance – not a difficult accomplishment at all for a Fargasoid – and the mind or psyche then roams the known provinces of Fargasoidal space. In this way, a Fargasoid can meet all his or her relatives anywhere in the world, and it costs nothing and takes virtually no time – quite an advantage when you are physically the slowest creature in the universe. TE is the reason all Fargasoids are fat and apparently lazy. The only exercise they get is going to the dorgas for a meal.
It was the dorgas that clinched the entire adventure. No one grows food or even bothers to go shopping. Since the invention of the dorgas, everyone has one and of course knows how to use it. All a Fargasoid has to do is touch the dorgas, think of a food or whatever else they want, and then any known material or combination of materials will appear before them. It looks like magic, but it is not. The air or atmosphere is filled with atoms and by using transcendental morphography or TM, the air atoms are reorganized into any structure required – sort of an advanced form of nanotechnology. The complexity of the new structure depends on the power of the operator’s mind rather than a pre-programmed pattern.
By incorporating TM into CPE and coupling it with TE, Quartos and Micos created a device they called Gluk. Gluk can look like anything, be like anything, and go anywhere in an instant. The perfect house or home with the ability to live forever, produce any type of food and imitate any structure or natural formation. Not only that, but it has the ability to think almost as a living rock, sustaining itself through morphic transmutation of material into energy and vice versa.
The disaster struck when Quartos and Micos were in the Gluk and one of them thought of outer space. You could see outer space from where they lived. No one had ever actually thought of outer space before; after all, there is nothing there, so why would anyone want to go nowhere? Anyway, the Gluk flashed into infinity and became an asteroid with a window overlooking the universe. The two Fargasoids were fascinated by the wonders of space, which is a place that no Fargasoid had ever been before, or at least had not admitted to. Now this was reality and far from astral wandering. The trouble with space is everything moves and one’s home seems to disappear into the infinite cloud of stars.
It was not long before the two Fargasoids discovered that one has to know where one is to go to another known place. Jumping from unknown zone to unknown area is rather like a flea hopping on a hot griddle – eventually, one may hop into the source of the heat. This is of course what happened to them. By pure chance, while they were planet hopping and trying to find home, they landed on a world of crystal very similar in appearance to Fargas.
Physical investigation is something that Fargasoids usually refrain from. Instead, using the Gluk as home base, they TE’d all over the planet and after some time discovered the surface to be unused. The inhabitants of this new world were in fact machines of strange and wonderful design that lived beneath the surface, clawing and digesting the rocks at what seemed to a Fargasoid to be lightning speed and ferocity. The machines appeared to be ruled by a carbon-based creature also exhibiting great speed.
The heart of the place was apparently a palatial and very artificial zone where this extraordinary carbon life form resided. It was an unusual-looking creature with seven tentacle-like extremities. The ruling creature, being organic and based on carbon, consumed oxygen and operated at near light speed compared to a Fargasoid. That in itself was not a problem, it was that the thing did not seem to have any TE powers at all and therefore communication was ethereally impossible.
Quartos and Micos decided they would have to do something different and actually make physical contact with this creature. One has to realize that Fargasoids had never heard of, or ever encountered, any form of violence or hostility. After all, what purpose could it serve?
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| Chapter 2 |
Chapter 2
Pete’s first adventure – well, at least Pete’s first great adventure – was the occasion when he discovered what he called sideways time, which he did around the middle of the fourth millennium. Sounds rather silly now, but it does make sense if you are familiar with all the details. Although his real name was Johnling Peterson, an acceptable name for a human, everyone had always called him Pete. His entire life had been one big adventure right from the time of his birth. He was extremely intelligent, cunning, very determined, and one of the universe’s greatest explorers; or at least that came later. Times were good but still people managed to kill one another for what they called ideals. Pete’s ideal would be … Well, that is not critical at the moment. This story began unfolding in a rather unusual way and was first noticed by the United Coalition of Independent Planets – UCOIP, or co-op for short – when Pete was arrested and charged with sedition.
The courtroom looked brilliant with its orange-coloured wood panelling surrounded by dark brown beading. As wood is extremely valuable and not native to this particular planet, it would therefore most likely have been simulated plastic wood. Simulated or artificial materials did not impress Pete. He preferred natural things, not plastic with a synthetic smell to depict the real thing. Though his specialty was bits and bytes, not carpentry, he could appreciate good workmanship in just about all things. Throughout his sixteen years as a waif, he had for as long as he could remember loved nature and all things natural.
Perched in his high place overlooking the courtroom, the judge stared down his long, proboscis-like nose at the prisoner in the dock.
“I find it difficult to believe the charges brought against you, young man,” he said in a droning monotone. “Do you plead guilty or not guilty?”
Johnling Peterson stared unblinkingly at the judge, thinking how much this man looked like an old turkey vulture. The co-op had long ago readopted the ancient robes and wigs for all court officials, which gave them a lordly air of superiority; though Pete thought they looked silly.
“Is there a third alternative, sir?” he asked brightly.
Judge Carstaires tried to contain his annoyance. No one, but no one, plays smart-ass in his courtroom. He glared at the straight-haired boy in the one-piece light blue suit.
“Young man, we are trying to accommodate you. I find your particular crime very worrying. For one so young as yourself you should be enjoying life, not rifling secret UCOIP files. Has it been explained to you what your alternatives represent?”
The lad nodded in the affirmative. He looked innocent and had the appearance of being much younger than his sixteen years. Most people took him to be around ten or twelve, though officially he had already celebrated sixteen anniversaries.
“Very well. How do you plead?” the judge said, fiddling with a piece of paper on his desk.
Johnling visibly trembled. His reasoning led him to believe that what he did, he did out of necessity. How could he be guilty of a crime?
“Not guilty, sir,” he said firmly.
Carstaires stared at the bailiff. “Mr. Robins, please proceed with jury selection.”
“Yes, your honour.”
Even for one as young as sixteen, the crime of computer piracy – and especially UCOIP files – would get him a good ten years on a penal colony planet, as such actions could be construed as treason. With jury selection completed the trial began. Tampering with any computer file is a criminal offence, and tampering with co-op files is a downright stupid criminal offence. The charges were read and the battle for Johnling’s freedom began.
It appeared as an open-and-shut case. Johnling Peterson had been found in an office of the UCOIP downloading restricted Births, Deaths, and Marriages files or BDM for short. You see, just about all information can easily be accessed through the interplanetary computer Net service, if you’re a paid-up member. However, BDM files are classified as restricted and particularly when it comes to data held on adoptions or imprisonments. The co-op can only be accessed on a co-op computer and of course you have to have a password as well as the appropriate authority.
Johnling managed to get himself caught in a restricted area, in a restricted office and with restricted information in his possession, and neither was he the rightful possessor of either a password or authorized clearance. As they used to say in the old days, he was “hung, drawn and quartered”. All that remained was the sentence. But the law is the law and no one can be sentenced without fair trial. It took just two hours to go through the witnesses for the prosecution; there were none for the defence. When almost all was said and done, the judge asked Johnling if he had anything to say.
“Yes, sir,” he replied shyly. “I’m not really an orphan, but no one will tell me who my mother and father are. The only course of action left open to me was to search the UCOIP computer. I wouldn’t have used the information for any illegal purposes. I just want to know who my parents are, sir. Surely, that’s not a crime.”
The judge smiled and ordered the jury to retire. They were only gone for thirty minutes when everyone returned to the courtroom. In Pete’s own words, “It was a shambles.” In moments, they pronounced him guilty as charged.
The judge dismissed the jury and glared at Pete. “Son,” he said in a kindly voice. “I have no choice in this matter; the law is as it is. You have been found guilty and this is not the first time you have rifled through UCOIP files. You are undoubtedly guilty and the jury has justly found you so. I am saddened that you thought fit to waste the court’s time with your plea of innocence.” He sorted through a few papers and reading from one of them said, “I am deeply sorry, young man, for I see no alternative but to sentence you to five years in the Magnus-9 correctional school. Perhaps they will be able to teach you the error of your ways. You will be taken from this place and held until the prison ship arrives. Your time spent here will count and be deducted from your total sentence.”
Pete felt staggered by the announcement. Magnus-9 is a prison planet where just about all sorts of people went for one kind of correctional incarceration or another. He had been threatened with it before, but never thought it would actually come about. Once on Magnus-9 there is no escape. The entire planet is a controlled concrete jungle of prisons and reformatories. The rock is an airless satellite of the Star Magnus and there is no exit. No one has ever escaped from it, not even during the last interplanetary war.
Still deep in thought, the boy was led away from the court. He knew that if an attempt to escape were to be made it would have to be before the prison ship arrived in the Magnus system. Tears trickled down his face as the guard led him back to the holding area.
“When do I go?” he asked the guard.
“Not up to me, mate. You’ll more ’an like go on The Lyran; she’ll be ’ere in two months.’
“Do I get an appeal? I am innocent, you know.”
The guard chuckled. “Yeah, sure. You’ll be invited to the guv’nor’s ’ouse to ’ave tea on the terrace.”
“It’s not funny. I am innocent. This whole thing is a travesty.”
“Git in there, boy, an’ keep yah trap shut. If yah know what’s good for yah, yah’ll take it like a man.”
Johnling Peterson walked into the sterile cell and sat contemplating his life and planning for the future. Whatever the cost, he would most certainly have to escape before arriving in the Magnus system. He pondered the possibility of reprogramming the ship’s computer, to allow him to transmat out of the ship, but to where? Perhaps he could transport himself to some other vessel or even another planet. He needed to know the route to Magnus-9 and would have to pay special attention to the spaceports they encountered along the way, if any. Maybe there would be a way of escaping even before boarding the prison ship.
The jail seemed mechanically sanitary with absolutely no visible exits. Although the use of bars went out with internal combustion engines, their replacement rendered the facility even more secure. Force fields that only respond to the appropriate genetic code had replaced old-fashioned doors. Power failures are just a daydream, as double-redundant power supplies supported all doors and force fields.
Aside from impregnable force fields, all prisoners wore an ID anklet, which not only reported the wearer’s position but also sounded alarms if they entered a restricted zone, though this was not much of a concern for Johnling. He resigned himself to contemplating making his escape during transport, as the anklet would offer the least of his problems. Escaping from prison would be impossible, but there had to be a chink in the security once things began to move. The lad had always led a solitary life and enjoyed silence in which he could execute deep contemplation, and the loneliness of the prison walls and his solitary confinement gave him plenty of time for thought.
As a self-taught computer expert and somewhat of a technical wonder, he studied all tech material he could acquire. For as long as he could remember he had never had any parents. He knew he was not a Petri dish product, so someone somewhere had to be his kin. If only he could spend enough time on the co-op computer Net, he felt sure he would find them.
Life is difficult when you don’t have a friend in the world – any world. Johnling always tried to keep moving. He says, “A moving target is harder to hit”. Lying back on the cot, his thoughts drifted over his past and useless life. A mood of sadness and melancholia swept over him, almost bringing him to tears. If only he had parents, none of this would have happened. A relative of any kind would do.
Unlike the long-term prisoners, Johnling was not given any freedom or privileges. Food, if you could call it that, was served in his cell and contact with other prisoners restricted to zero. As a transportee, the authorities took no chances with him. Once the transport guard took him, he would become their responsibility, but until then, he would be restricted in his movements. His crime or crimes were not relevant to his treatment – one criminal is the same as any other.
Time passed all too quickly for Johnling Peterson and his plans for escape were soon scuttled because at no time did the guards allow him freedom of any sort. At every moment, he had unwelcome company or remained sealed behind double force fields. He was now sure his escape would have to be executed on the transport vessel while on the way to Magnus-9 or perhaps at the spaceport en route to the ship.
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