The Great Game 🎲 The planet of Kollarum
The Bright and Swirling Sky
~ January, 2018 ~
🎲
Farenn stepped up to the podium and looked out at the 33,000 faces in the crowd. Above him was the crazy blue and green sky of Kollarum, and across from him were representatives from all the major galactic systems in the Kraslika’s thirteen universes. Across from him sat delegates from the airy reaches of The Vicinese Federation and from the craggy peaks of The Fallarian Dominion. Farenn had contacts from all over the Kraslika, and many of these were in the audience now. For instance, he saw his Vicinese friend Talfar in the twentieth row, smiling at him as only a true ally could, the invisible waves reaching his heart and giving him courage. He also saw the Fallarian Dactalla, her bright fangs gleaming even from the seventh row. Her love didn’t show itself, but they were closer than brother and sister, closer than man and wife. She saw what he couldn’t see. And vice-versa.
As Farenn bent his head downward to look at the notes in his hand, he caught sight of Knifestream five meters below him. His black eyes were lost in dreams of intrigue. The Fallarian High Priest sat up straight and looked straight ahead, not bothering to talk to the delegates beside him. He was clearly proud of his location in the auditorium. He was the Great Diplomat, the Lord of a Thousand Fallarian Seas, sitting there like a pasha in the front row. Yet from where he was sitting in the front row he couldn’t see Dactalla’s two fangs lengthen, pressing into her crimson lip.
Farenn looked down at the sheet in his hands. It outlined the details of his Three-Point Plan to Save the Worlds. He had known what he was going to say for the last 5 years. Yet in the last 15 minutes he started to feel that everything he imagined might not be right. He couldn’t keep out of his thoughts what Tarnar told him: Knifestream and the Fallarian High Priests had penetrated the upper reaches of the Baulian Empire. He could just make out Tarnar, somewhere near the twentieth row, and yet his eyes beamed like lasers into Farenn’s retinas. And yet the beams were invisible to the naked eye.
🎲
Farenn shook his notes in an attempt to clear his head. While the audience settled into an expectant silence, he looked down at his opening points, and jumped right in.
“Dear delegates of the 33 trillion galaxies. This morning I’ll present to you a plan which contains three basic points. First, I’ll argue that the delegates of the Grand Council should allow the Baulians to conquer the Virgo Super Cluster. Second, I’ll argue that we should establish control mechanisms over the way the Baulians manage the Earth and its Milky Way, ensuring that as much freedom as possible is given to the humans and aliens presently living there. Third, I’ll argue that we should set up a neutral program to explore the Local Void, which is the most likely location of the Soul Star.”
“It’s widely believed that humans are familiar with the Soul Star. Their great poet Shakespeare writes about a star that appears to be both an astronomical pole star and a spiritual guiding light: it is “an ever-fixèd mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken; / It is the star to every wand'ring bark / Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.”
“If the Baulians take over the Virgo Supercluster, they’ll gain control over most of the Local Void. By definition, the Void is almost empty. Yet because it’s the most likely location of the Soul Star, it’s in fact one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the entire Kraslika.”
Although Farenn couldn’t hear it, Knifestream murmured to himself, A sweet nothing, and gazed upward into the bright swirling sky.
“If the Baulians take over the Virgo Super Cluster, both Earth and the Soul Star will fall into neutral hands. This will be far better than leaving them open to the predatory races of the Nebulast, or making them party to the ongoing tensions between the Vicinese and Fallarian Empires.”
Farenn’s comments raised a round of loud murmuring among the delegates of the Frozen Skiff and the Yellow Sky. They complained that they were always being blamed for actions that actually started in the Fallarian Dominion. For this reason, the Fallarian delegates remained silent and merely nodded their heads in agreement with what Farenn had said: it was all the fault of the uncivilized predators of the Nebulast.
“The Baulians are ready for this takeover. Vicinese and Fallarian intelligence has verified that the Half-Baulian, half-human hybrids called Baulomorphs have been living all over the Milky Way Galaxy for over two hundred years. The Baulomorphs have sussed out all the valuable property and all the military weaknesses, and they are capable of taking over the planet any time now. As you all know, the Grand Council has slowed Baulian progress by jamming certain vital frequencies. Yet the Council could also speed up their conquest at the mere push of a button.”
“It’s crucial to note that while the Baulians are from the adjacent Orange Hoop universe, they have never heard of the Soul Star. They would therefore be neutral in any dealings which might touch upon the fate of the Star. Even Rablanar the Fractal Mystic, famous for his revolutionary thought, writes that the only guarantee of total impartiality is total ignorance. Rablanar often says this to his fellow Fractal Mystics, who don’t have a clue what he means. Rablanar would be pleased to know that it’s precisely because of this Baulian ignorance that they’ll be allowed to take over the Milky Way. It’s only in this way that a neutral party might control the space over which more interested parties might go to war.”
🎲
Farenn lightly touched his screen and an image appeared on the ten-story screen above and behind him: a large pink cube, with a see-through part exposing the anatomical workings beneath.
“For those of you who haven’t encountered a Baulian, you’re in for a treat. They’re a big pink boxy race. They look like enormous pink marshmallows! Yet their bright puffy appearance is deceiving. They can fit together — side by side and one on top of the other — without exposing a tiny crack. And they can create shapes that are larger than the pyramid of Zir on Fallar Prime.”
“Cubes connect to the outside world through their outer layer, their mêmebrain, which can take any degree of softness or hardness and any degree of opaqueness or transparency. However, it is always pink. To change colour would be unthinkable. All Baulians have the ability to change their colour, but even if they were in a green forest about to be shot among the shrubbery, they would never even think of changing their colour to green. There is a saying among Baulians: Better a dead chameleon than a green chameleon.”
“Please note that I use the translation mêmebrain because this thick outer layer constitutes both their body and their brain. The mêmebrain is about half a metre thick and contains sextillions of neurons. If there is no sign of a threat, the Baulian has no outer skin; the pink neurons are exposed to the open air, their pink myelin sheaths taking in oxygen and delivering all sorts of information to the neurons just beneath. If there is a danger present, the secretes a hard shell and the neurons create an electric force field that is capable of rebuffing almost any type of missile or explosive.”
“The rest of their bodies are comprised of the internal space within the mêmebrain. They call this space their playroom or their imagination, and it varies according to what the Baulian finds helpful or interesting at the moment. It can literally take any form — from a swimming pool with ancient fish floating around, to an orchestra of sky-shells performing impromptu symphonies. Some cubes keep the same interior structures, and create permanent home environments, while others are like tourists, one night in a fancy hotel, the next night rolling in a sea-bed of octupi and clams.”
“Cubes connect to other cubes through their eight vertices, which channel communication, tentacles, fluids, and up to 2 million volts. The high level of voltage contained in each mêmebrain allows it to hover off the ground, propel in liquid, fly in air, or strike an enemy with a very powerful laser, which they mix with explosives or poisons, depending on the prey.”
“The Baulians are meticulously organized, alarmingly powerful, and rational to a fault. They’re also very good at controlling and containing their aggression. For instance, if they’re demolishing a particular city block, you could stand across the street and watch the buildings crumble. The currents of the wind and the composition of the falling towers would all be taken into account. You wouldn’t even need to worry about dust getting on your new leather shoes.”
“Another thing about the Baulians: they’re surprisingly clueless. They focus so intently on what they’re doing that they often can’t see what others are doing. But it’s more than this: even if they look up, they still don’t always see what’s right in front of their eyes. This is because the other species in the Kraslika can operate at a quantum depth the Baulians can’t see. And can’t even conceive.”
“Among Baulians, it’s only Rablanar the Fractal Mystic who can grasp, at least in theory, what’s going on. Only a few weeks ago Rablanar was in the Fractal Mystic’s meeting room presenting his colleagues with a theory. The dynamics of this meeting, which we of course were monitoring as it happened, are instructive.”
“In the meeting, Rablanar eased into one of his most challenging theories, first by way of flattery and then by way of analogy. I should preface my description of Rablanar’s performance by noting that directly confronting an established Baulian belief system is disturbing to the powers that be. A great deal of tact and flattery are needed if you are to sway them to a new position. Rablanar therefore started by observing that the Fractal Mystics were justifiably proud of the work they’d done in advancing Civilization. He told them that they were like hardened miners, digging deep into the rich ore of Knowledge.”
“On the screen at the front of Rablanar’s meeting room, the words Science, Commerce, and Knowledge popped up, capitalized and in glittering letters.”
The same meeting room appeared on the ten-story screen above Farenn, since the Grand Council had placed subatomic cameras all over the Baulian room.
“Rablanar stressed what an achievement it was that the Baulians had mined their fractals two kilometres beneath the ground. ‘What a glory to the Baulian Empire, the greatest Empire that the cosmos has ever known! Yet.’ ”
“The Mystics were smiling until Rablanar said the word Yet. They then frowned, and looked at him skeptically. One of them muttered out loud, ‘Are you really going to repeat your ridiculous theory about the infinite depth of fractals?’ ”
“Rablanar ignored the question, and followed his Yet with another Yet, this time in the direction of a Q & A: ‘Yet what if some alien species, of whom we’re completely unaware, is mining fractals twenty kilometres beneath us? We wouldn’t be able to see what was taking place beneath our feet. We might not even feel it.’ ”
“Rablanar then told his fellow Mystics — some of whom were still looking at their cell phones and only pretending to listen — that what could happen twenty kilometres beneath them in analogy could also happen right before their eyes in reality. He reminded them that fractals weren’t distant realities, but were smaller structures mirrored inside larger identical structures. Fractals could become so small that they were invisible to the naked eye. They could also become so small that even if your eye was one angstrom wide, you still couldn’t see them.”
“Rablanar projected a pentagon, with glowing blue lines, onto the screen at the front of the room.”
At the same time, Farenn projected the same star on the ten-story screen behind the podium.
“A star appeared within it. The star glowed for two seconds. Then the lines of a second pentagon appeared at the heart of that star. The pentagon glowed for two seconds. Then a second star appeared within the second pentagon. It glowed for two seconds. This fractalling process continued until at the middle of the screen the Mystics saw a dense blue star.”
“The inner star glowed brighter with every pentagon and star that was born within it. Soon it was so bright that it was like a miniature sun, pulsing from an ever-denser core. It pulsed so brightly that none of the Mystics could look at it directly.”
“Rablanar argued that just as the Baulians mined fractals to reach quantum power sources, so other races might be mining them too. Yet they might be mining them so deeply that the Baulians couldn’t even see them. Rablanar concluded with a final Q & A: ‘At what point does one reach the centre, the heart of the matter? Perhaps never…’”
“The Mystics pretended to listen patiently to what they considered to be Rablanar’s theoretical nonsense. Yet as soon as he finished, they continued to debate their previous question: What’s the most efficient way to break down the spiritual philosophies of other worlds? How can they be mined for their component parts, and then integrated into the rational metrics established by the Baulian Empire?”
“To the Mystics, other cultures are fractals that need to be integrated into a greater design. With their algorithms they intend to morph all foreign patterns into the final form of a giant pink cube. Luckily for many of these foreigners, the Mystics hold little sway. It’s in fact the Fractal Masters who get the final say. And they are a control-and-let-live lot. Once a species is subjugated, it’s left to live on its own, as long as it swears allegiance to the Empire — and keeps to its production targets.”
“The Baulians are rational in the extreme. I know them to be honest brokers and benevolent guardians. Ruthless in Conquest, Gentle in Rule is the maxim written beneath The Great Cube in their capital, Baulis Prime. I therefore believe that we can use the Baulians to get around the deadlock between the Vicinese and Fallarian Empires. Earth and its Milky Way might become a sort of United Worlds of the Cosmos, a place of conference, a base of understanding from which the 13 universes could learn to get along.”
“The Baulians don’t understand the value of Earth, but we do. Earth is composed of an almost inexplicable diversity. By some weird process — of evolving or directing, of sampling or splicing, of dicing or scrambling — Earth mirrors the entire cosmos. Each major species in the cosmos finds its form printed into an earthly species. Every major language finds its way into a human lexicon. It’s for this reason that the language spoken in most of the Vicinese Federation sounds almost exactly like Italian — often accompanied by the sound of violins and harps.”
Here Farenn paused while the audience chuckled.
“The languages of the Fallarian Dominion sound like variants of German, Russian, or Arabic, often accompanied by the sound of grinding glass.”
Farenn paused again, in recognition of the common stereotype, which was in perpetual need of parody.
“The parallels between the cosmos and Earth are obvious, yet no one knew how this has come about.”
The audience now settled back to his more serious theme.
“Regardless of how it came about, it doesn’t seem a coincidence that Earth is so close to the Local Void, the supposed location of the Soul Star. Not surprisingly, Earth is the darling of cosmic anthropologists, and a blessing to intergalactic preachers. It’s also a conundrum to any scientist who tries to trace its genealogy to distant galaxies.”
“It’s my hope that Earth will become an intergalactic field base to find the Soul Star. Who knows, this Star may lay at the heart of everything: creation and destruction, eternal life, perhaps even God. And yet, still, no one has ever verified its existence. We aren’t even sure it’s a star, although everything that scientists can gather about it suggests that it must contain an insane amount of energy. So the name will have to do, for now.”
“I’m confident that the takeover of Earth will be a positive thing, even for Earth. It will turn many of Earth’s problems into solutions. It will also force humans to get used to the idea that they’re only one of a trillion civilizations in the depths of outer space. This knowledge will probably blow their minds, but better a short sharp shock than a slow and agonizing awakening. Better to make humans realize, before they blow themselves to smithereens, that their internal battles are utterly self-defeating. Better that the human races band together, and learn to deal with the rest of the cosmos, which is a more dangerous place than they have imagined.”
🎲
There was alot Farenn left out of his speech. Were the Baulians really the ones to help humans start to understand their place in the cosmos? An hour ago Farenn had thought so. But that was before he met Tarnar.
Looking down into the clapping audience, he looked into Knifestream’s eyes. His gaze blasted into Farenn’s soul, burnishing the dendrites of his brain and setting everything within it on fire. He then looked at Talfar, smiling widely, as if to spray water on those fires.
He then looked at Tarnar, where he saw fire and water tumbling over a falls and rumbling over the rocks in a distant sea. Tarnar had been living on Earth for several decades, incognito, drinking in the Sicilian sun and pretending to be a professor in the city of Palermo. He had drunk in the beauty and the drama of that world – and also the alienation, the anguish, and the crushing doubt. Tarnar said this doubt was inevitable, since humans had no clue who they were or even where they were in the cosmos.
Nor did the Grand Council have a clue about how the Baulians were being manipulated by the Fallarians. Like puppets dancing over the fires of Hell, Tarnar said. And then Tarnar told him, with a frankness that Farenn couldn’t fathom, exactly how Knifestream was pulling the strings.
Farenn’s Three-Point Plan to Save the Worlds now seemed incredibly naive. And yet he had nevertheless presented it to the assembled scholars and diplomats. He told himself that the Baulian takeover could still help earth adapt to its place in the cosmos, encourage peace between the Vicinese and the Fallarians, and establish an inter-civilizational base from which everyone could look for the Soul Star.
At the end of his speech, Farenn looked up into the bright sky of Kollarum, swirling with blue and green currents above the heads of the gathered 33,000. He looked over at the troubled eyes of Tarnar, and then he looked over at the eyes of Knifestream, burning up inside themselves, feeding upon some denser matter.
And then he saw the deep purple eyes of Dactalla. Her eyes were fixed and determined, and her face showed no emotion whatsoever.
🎲
Next: ⭐️ And Yet
Table of Contents - Chart of Contents - Characters - Glossary - Maps - Story Lines