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feotakahariNo one knows why hyperspace is lethal. Animals come back dead, and a Tinker criminal who tried to flee through hyperspace died as well. No method of resuscitation can restore brain function, yet the brain appears entirely undamaged. Even Nomads, who easily and safely travel hyperspace, can't explain how they do it beyond “We just do.”
(Bacteria survive. Plants usually don't. It varies for fungi.)
In theory, other species might have the same immunity as Nomads. And it's known that Scholars who eat the brains of Nomads can obtain blurry, unclear memories of hyperspace. Which brings us to today, and to a side room in a university physics department, currently occupied by two undergrads. For simplicity's sake, we'll call them a man and a woman, though neither word truly fits either of them.
A Nomad is speaking into a recording device. He's outlining the steps of the experiment. “We'll start with three worms for sixty seconds. If they survive, we'll try ten for five minutes. Amara, are you ready?”
Beside him is a “barrel-bot,” named for its round and bulky shape. It's basically a giant ant farm on treads, with sensory capabilities and manipulator arms. Inside one, a Scholar's individual bodies can burrow and eat and maintain their life cycle, while the hive mind focuses on the bot as a whole.
Rather than a verbal reply, the top of the bot opens up, and three worms wiggle out. The Nomad gently picks them up. With a single thought, he opens a hyperspace portal and thrusts his hand through.
“Radiosk? Are they still moving?” Amara asks.
“Dead still,” Radiosk replies. “They're not curling up, though. I think they're just shocked.”
“Shocked by something you still can't explain,” Amara says. The bot's speech processor is advanced enough to put a slightly joking tone in the sentence.
“There just aren't any words for it in your language,” Radiosk insists as always. “Not walking, not swimming, only vaguely flying—oh, they're moving now!”
It's been about ten seconds.
“Intensely,” Radiosk continues. “I'm not sure if they're frightened or in pain. I hope remembering this won't be too bad.”
“Eh. I'll live,” Amara reassures him.
Twenty seconds.
There's an odd sensation on Radiosk's paw pad, a sort of pleasurable prickle he recognizes from sharing a dorm with Amara. (For a Scholar, Nomads make excellent chew toys.) “They just bit me,” he reports. “And again. Shit, I'm ending this.”
Less than thirty seconds in, he pulls his hand back through the portal.
The noise from Amara's speakers startles him, and the worms drop to the floor. No Nomad's throat could ever make a sound like that, so it takes him a second to recognize it as a scream.
The bot rushes forward, and he jumps aside just before it would have rammed him. The treads roll over the three worms, forwards and backwards and forwards again until nothing remains.
The incoherent sounds die down, and Amara's speakers translate her next sound as a sigh of relief. “I'll be okay. They didn't have time to transmit much. Ugh, I'm going to have to cycle my sleep for weeks. Half my bodies asleep, half awake to fend off the nightmares.”
“What even happened over there?” Radiosk asks. “It's nothing like that when I go through.”
“Of course not,” Amara replies. “It's you. I mean, I think it's you. Or you're it. A part of it. Did you know it was alive?”
“You're not making any sense.”
“I think it's a Nomad,” Amara explains. “I think it's the Nomad. It's thinking, and every thought is a Nomad, and I was a thought, too. I could see into so many different minds. I couldn't understand much of it with just three tiny brains, but it was all there!”
“You weren't seeing it right,” Radiosk attempts. “The way it feels is kind of like being a thought, I guess, but nothing lives there. There's just Nomads passing through to get to somewhere else. And we can't read minds or anything.”
“Because you're not psychic,” Amara says. “Not the way a Scholar is. You can't see the mind that's thinking you. But when it thought me, it knew I didn't belong, and with three worms, I was barely psychic enough to stop it from squishing me instantly. It's like I was a tumor, but I was also the brain that had the tumor, and I was also the scalpel cutting me out. Shit, how am I going to explain this in the writeup?”
“I can't believe this,” Radiosk says. “It sounds—I'm sorry, but it sounds crazy. Let's just say Scholars hallucinate when they're in hyperspace.”
“You're right,” Amara says. “It wasn't real. I didn't meet a god, and it didn't try to kill me. Just . . . please let me bite you tonight after we finish the writeup. You taste good, and I need a distraction.”
—
Imagine a colorless void. Not black, not white. Not anything at all. Just absence so pure it was almost a presence.
Long, long ago, a traveler stumbled into it, and the color of his thoughts was blue. Others followed, all the same, and the blue spread outwards, until the void no longer existed, replaced with an endless blue expanse. When anything arrived that wasn't blue, it was annihilated so thoroughly it might as well not have existed.
Then a different traveler came. One who was psychic, and could part the blue ever so slightly. Her red was pushed back, but it didn't disappear. A tiny red pinprick remained in the place where she'd entered.
And radiating from that pinprick, the expanse slowly began to turn violet.
(Bacteria survive. Plants usually don't. It varies for fungi.)
In theory, other species might have the same immunity as Nomads. And it's known that Scholars who eat the brains of Nomads can obtain blurry, unclear memories of hyperspace. Which brings us to today, and to a side room in a university physics department, currently occupied by two undergrads. For simplicity's sake, we'll call them a man and a woman, though neither word truly fits either of them.
A Nomad is speaking into a recording device. He's outlining the steps of the experiment. “We'll start with three worms for sixty seconds. If they survive, we'll try ten for five minutes. Amara, are you ready?”
Beside him is a “barrel-bot,” named for its round and bulky shape. It's basically a giant ant farm on treads, with sensory capabilities and manipulator arms. Inside one, a Scholar's individual bodies can burrow and eat and maintain their life cycle, while the hive mind focuses on the bot as a whole.
Rather than a verbal reply, the top of the bot opens up, and three worms wiggle out. The Nomad gently picks them up. With a single thought, he opens a hyperspace portal and thrusts his hand through.
“Radiosk? Are they still moving?” Amara asks.
“Dead still,” Radiosk replies. “They're not curling up, though. I think they're just shocked.”
“Shocked by something you still can't explain,” Amara says. The bot's speech processor is advanced enough to put a slightly joking tone in the sentence.
“There just aren't any words for it in your language,” Radiosk insists as always. “Not walking, not swimming, only vaguely flying—oh, they're moving now!”
It's been about ten seconds.
“Intensely,” Radiosk continues. “I'm not sure if they're frightened or in pain. I hope remembering this won't be too bad.”
“Eh. I'll live,” Amara reassures him.
Twenty seconds.
There's an odd sensation on Radiosk's paw pad, a sort of pleasurable prickle he recognizes from sharing a dorm with Amara. (For a Scholar, Nomads make excellent chew toys.) “They just bit me,” he reports. “And again. Shit, I'm ending this.”
Less than thirty seconds in, he pulls his hand back through the portal.
The noise from Amara's speakers startles him, and the worms drop to the floor. No Nomad's throat could ever make a sound like that, so it takes him a second to recognize it as a scream.
The bot rushes forward, and he jumps aside just before it would have rammed him. The treads roll over the three worms, forwards and backwards and forwards again until nothing remains.
The incoherent sounds die down, and Amara's speakers translate her next sound as a sigh of relief. “I'll be okay. They didn't have time to transmit much. Ugh, I'm going to have to cycle my sleep for weeks. Half my bodies asleep, half awake to fend off the nightmares.”
“What even happened over there?” Radiosk asks. “It's nothing like that when I go through.”
“Of course not,” Amara replies. “It's you. I mean, I think it's you. Or you're it. A part of it. Did you know it was alive?”
“You're not making any sense.”
“I think it's a Nomad,” Amara explains. “I think it's the Nomad. It's thinking, and every thought is a Nomad, and I was a thought, too. I could see into so many different minds. I couldn't understand much of it with just three tiny brains, but it was all there!”
“You weren't seeing it right,” Radiosk attempts. “The way it feels is kind of like being a thought, I guess, but nothing lives there. There's just Nomads passing through to get to somewhere else. And we can't read minds or anything.”
“Because you're not psychic,” Amara says. “Not the way a Scholar is. You can't see the mind that's thinking you. But when it thought me, it knew I didn't belong, and with three worms, I was barely psychic enough to stop it from squishing me instantly. It's like I was a tumor, but I was also the brain that had the tumor, and I was also the scalpel cutting me out. Shit, how am I going to explain this in the writeup?”
“I can't believe this,” Radiosk says. “It sounds—I'm sorry, but it sounds crazy. Let's just say Scholars hallucinate when they're in hyperspace.”
“You're right,” Amara says. “It wasn't real. I didn't meet a god, and it didn't try to kill me. Just . . . please let me bite you tonight after we finish the writeup. You taste good, and I need a distraction.”
—
Imagine a colorless void. Not black, not white. Not anything at all. Just absence so pure it was almost a presence.
Long, long ago, a traveler stumbled into it, and the color of his thoughts was blue. Others followed, all the same, and the blue spread outwards, until the void no longer existed, replaced with an endless blue expanse. When anything arrived that wasn't blue, it was annihilated so thoroughly it might as well not have existed.
Then a different traveler came. One who was psychic, and could part the blue ever so slightly. Her red was pushed back, but it didn't disappear. A tiny red pinprick remained in the place where she'd entered.
And radiating from that pinprick, the expanse slowly began to turn violet.
