prospectors – A SFM story
Beginning
Small prospector ship transits among ‘asteroids’, father teaching daughter songs. Asteroids are actually wrecks from a vast battle, long ago. The plan is to rendevous with fleet of other family ships for exchange of crew and cache of found artifacts. Life opportunistic, reclaiming the long ago killing fields from a titanic war – contrast. Space rats that have adapted to thrive among the toxins and dried blood of ancients.
Mining a metallic compound found only on tender ships in quantity, ‘god block’ stockpiled in the manor – a container warehouse structure which will eventually be moved by the entire family in concert. There are all manner of objects there, booty. Mysterious and seemingly inert. The family has also kept extensive archeological records, documented wreck layouts, language, etc. Daughter’s viewpoint, mostly oblivious to all this. She’s focused on singing, exploring themes not generally utilitarian. Father and daughter arrive at manor first to prepare for arrival of rest of clan. Family delayed by unexpected god activity. Daughter’s cousin is not coming, she isolates disappointed, clandestine use of transport interface to experiment with new songs. Her explorations charge supposedly inert god block, Deity is attracted to region, takes father by surprise in the open, he is nearly wiped out.
Daughter cuts her song abruptly, god block stockpile in container goes dark and effectively masks her presence. Father is nearly subsumed, drawn into dark mystic dimensions but in a passion of terror prays for mercy and is jolted across the wreckage field, cast adrift. Daughter recovers him and together they cower in the manor. The family gives the all clear for return, but without a reply from the father and daughter remain on station, not approaching. Father and Daughter watch as Deity lights up wrecks more and more distant. End
•••
The family mines a material that shields consciousness over a range of resonance, but there’s a key resonance that makes it sing in the deity dimensions. The presence of the deities folds the fabric of reality, and here is the first hint that deity’s can be summoned, enabling major transitions. How tho to bring the deities without annihilation? The little jumps made by music and dance are revealed as the tips of deeper patterns. If so, how did they get out here in the first place without the ability to fold?
Gods round here today, a song to keep the gods back. The irony of atheistic science – that once off earth and out of the redneck backwoods of our galaxy, capricious gods counteract the default physical laws and mess up predictability and causality. The only thing humans can do is to hide out like rodents and maybe steal an occasional scrap of tech dropped from the banquet table. Then eventually, learning to stowaway, draft on their wake, their constant gliding hither and yon across spacetime. The wake is the after image of the deity, more than enough turbulence to power our meager vessels, to wage our wars and realize our trivial agendas. Divine manifestation is rare, but even a little manifestation goes a long way. Are these god ships or the spore of some lesser entity. Certainly, we have no idea what their artifacts do, it’s rare that we even recognize them as artifacts. Just great accretions of strange materials that might be useful, as mice might shred film and documents to make their nests.