W.O.L.F. - Playful Void

by Sharpfang

Here I am, parsecs away from the civilization, tormented soul in a small piece of space junk, hull shuddering with howl of the drives that should have fallen apart half a century ago, breath freezing on the scratched glass of the jumpsuit helmet. Air has leaked out through cracks in the hull years ago, some of them so big I can see stars through them. Now I'm breathing oxygen-hydrogen mix I draw from fuel tanks of the escape capsule, but running low on it too, not sure if I'll be able to land on any planet of gravity capable of holding some atmosphere. Years of solitude in the small scrap-yard of the ship interior have taken their toll on my mind. Today I'm relatively sane, but there are weeks and months I can't recall, but I find their artifacts, mysterious, dangerously sounding phrases written on the walls, odd contraption made of parts that could save my life if I didn't break them in the process, programs running on the only remaining ship computer which after hours of computations produce a single digit of result but trying to understand their meaning, analyzing the code gives me headache. With a silly grin I launch one of the programs for which purpose I understand. Varying thrust of the drives, applying different thrust strength to separate engines, pushing the ship into mad spin, vibrations distribute over the hull making it play Beethoven's 6th Symphony. The whole ship changes into a huge musical instrument, screams of hull beams bending under stress become notes of the music, noise of metal nearly torn fitting into the orchestra. This all can be only heard if I touch my helmet to the walls, there is no air to transfer the music, only metal and plastic, plastic crumbling from frost and age. And the irregular thrust jerks my body in all directions, making me lose contact between the helmet and the walls, unable to hear the music. I curse a little when some screws on one of the beams go loose and the notes it produces start to sound false. Ctrl-C and the ship goes silent. For the next hour I try to adjust the strength of the screws mounting the beam to tune the ship to play the symphony right once again, but in vain. Finally I laugh at my madness and switch the engines to normal operation again. I look through a visor back behind the ship. As I rest my hand against the visor, the glass feels lose. I push harder and it falls off, drifting away into space, soon caught in the ion cloud from the drives, disappears into sparks. The beauty of the event makes me to throw a few more pieces of junk into the ion cloud to see more of the show. I recall why I looked into the visor: to see what I'm escaping from, to try to recall. I know I'm escaping, I know I was chased. But I don't remember who, why, when, where. Okay, I remember where. There, behind the ship. I even remember that I remembered all the rest. I had a diary. I would write an entry every day, I would read the past entries, I would remember every piece of the past. But in one of the outbursts of madness I jettisoned the diary through the airlock, back when the hull was still pressurized and I didn't have to wear the jumpsuit at all times. Now there was no airlock, the outer door molten into an odd abstract sculpture using a hand laser, standing in the corner of the control room next to the long-defunct life support module. Three spheres of three different shades of grey, melting one into another, with some wiring sticking out, pieces of the airlock door still recognizable in the shape.

But the shape didn't remind anything from my past, nothing that would let me recall what I was running from. I didn't even know how long I'm going. I recalled how the computer calendar did reset for the first time and using lots of effort I'd recall the accurate date and write it on the wall. Later I would use the ship clock to measure day-long periods and make notches in the wall, to count them. One day - one notch. A large section of the wall was covered with them. And now the section was a huge hole opening into the engine room. I don't remember making it, but from the shape it was obvious I had blown it with the laser set to wide spread one day.

Once again I pondered throwing the laser away. It was too dangerous in my hands during the days of madness. But on the other hand, if one day I want to finish with myself, this is how I want it to be. Of course there's a thousand other methods I could still kill myself with, but this one was preferred.

...although becoming the beautiful sparks in the ion cloud...

The laser rifle flew through the visor and soon turned into the beautiful sparks.

I laughed at myself. Next time I will ponder what kind of madness possessed me to throw the rifle away. I could write down the reason now so I'd remember later, and this time I had no laser rifle to blow the piece of wall away.

But I had the hydrogen and oxygen fuel tanks and I'd better not waste them on blowing a piece of wall away.

I'd better not write it down then.

* * *

The inside of the ship looks more tidy than it used to. More empty. The ion cloud sparks are too beautiful for my own good. At least most of products of my madness, weird contraptions, sculptures and drawings are gone. Condensed food supply is running low and the water filter reaches its capacity, drinking water smelling with urine and feces. I'd swear I had a spare water filter but for the life of me I can't find it. I'm pretty sure I didn't throw it away into the ion cloud so I must have misplaced or destroyed it during one of the periods of madness.

Likely the computer is broken, but if not, it means I found an uncharted inhabitable planet. Two years of travel away. I spent a week trying to reprogram the computer to fly there. I didn't remember how and I couldn't recall, couldn't relearn. It was driving me mad. And it drove me mad. I vaguely recall a spacewalk and getting some item unstuck from between the engines, hidden there god knows how long and for unknown purpose, later rewriting one of the old programs, the ones returning a digit. I even recall what the program was intended to do. It was to apply some completely new revolutionary method of calculating the value of Pi. It would take four hours to compute the answer. The answer was 6. But later I wrote a simple but cool computer game. With force feedback through my ship engines. And when the sanity returned, I was able to modify the game enough so that collision with an enemy wouldn't enter the ship into a rapid spin, hurling loose parts of the hull into space, but I could still turn, accelerate, decelerate - I just turned the game into a manual engine control program, set the course to that star with that planet and... and let's hope I don't break anything too important within next two years.

* * *

I'm not sure if I'm still insane but I'm definitely happy, looking at the stars, recognizing the constellation I came from. I'm chuckling quietly at those who believed in God, in being created by God. This planet is uncharted. No single other human knows of its existence. It's beyond the range of the best explorer ships, beyond the resolution of most precise telescopes. But it's bustling with earth-like life.

A billion years ago somebody somewhere believed sending lots of unmanned probes seeking inhabitable planets and seeding them with basics of life similar to the one found on their planet is a good idea. Earth was one of them. This one was another. Protein-based lifeforms, while not the only present in the universe, were by far the most dominant, at least within range of several galaxies around this one, but the race who seeded them was gone. Apparently they found some odd philosophical doctrine nobody in our times is capable of comprehending, and purposely genocided themselves. Life on their planet remained, but no other intelligent life was formed - only on one in twelve planets with protein-based lifeforms an intelligent race emerges. On less than one in two hundred two intelligent races coexist, at least that's what statistics say, because no such planet was found yet.

I think I began recalling what I was running from. A war, a secret stolen, I gave it or sold it to someone... and then the owner of the secret wanted revenge. I don't remember much more, but I neither want to remember, nor care. I love this place and I'm more than sure they won't find me here.

Some planets form most amazing, dangerous or alien protein-based lifeforms. More deviate from "norm" just a little. Earth was one of the most typical, this one is pretty standard too. Meaning that with help of a small toolkit from the escape capsule I was able to find edible plants, verify that water is suitable for drinking, detect relatively low density of dangerous lifeforms and in the end simply to begin enjoying the place.

Beach, high palm trees, ocean. Waves. I'll have to move further from the coast later. This area is seismically unstable. Huge tsunamis. Unfortunately I barely reached land using the remaining fuel in the capsule. I couldn't be too picky about the landing place. If I'm lucky, the capsule will refuel enough to fly me to some safer place, then I'll seek various ores and use the miniature synthesizer machine in the capsule to create parts of a bigger synthesizer machine which in order will allow me to produce mostly any technological wonder of the civilization. If I'm not lucky, the capsule will be destroyed by a tsunami while I run for the hills saving the bare minimum allowing for survival.

But tonight I just enjoyed the beauty of this planet.

* * *

The more I sought, the less I understood. The archives, vast archives of human knowledge, of knowledge of multiple races missed this part. It simply went unnoticed. Horses had no planet. I mean, from all the known intelligent races each one had a planet, each one originated from a planet. Except of horses. There were very few of them, the population of the known part of the universe didn't exceed 500. As about the only sentient protein-based race they retained the 4-legged form like their wild cousins from Earth, not the anthro form as all the rest. They usually lived in orbital cities, space stations, some lived on Wolf and on Tirion, the planet of Reindeers. No member of their race ever visited Earth. They didn't contribute much to the science or politics, they didn't take part in the interplanetary council which would consist of all other races, they were mostly known from the fact that they just exist - every list of known intelligent races did contain them, but the mentions were short, very little info given, and there was no planet of origin listed, ever. They were also known for poetry. Three of them were poets. Really good poets. Translations of their poems were present in almost all of the cultures capable of appreciating some form of art. Except there was very little of it. The combined works of the three would hardly make for a hour of reading. It was in the archive. And it was hardly impressive comparing to what I experienced recently. Of course the poetry was good. Maybe even great. But still...

So I found the planet of the horses. The secret planet of the horses. Grazing in the fields and looking about the same as horses on Earth, behaving like them, wild, no civilization, no technology, no language. Wild animals like so many others, and unlike the ones listed and intelligent race. But they were the intelligent race.

They didn't speak but they could use the same telepathic language as some other races. They hardly ever used it though. They communicated on even lower level, it wasn't sending single thoughts or passing specific feelings, it was living in a separate dimension of mind, a zone where nothing but emotions exist - your mate from the herd is not a body, an animal with hooves or a pal who runs faster than you, but a cloud of friendship, with a pinch of curiosity, with a shade of fear in shape of old memories of a childhood accident, and a hopeful shy love towards that one small lost female soul full of low self-esteem, worry and fear of failing the hopes of whoever would trust her. The hills and meadows weren't their world. The universe of feelings was. They communicated using feelings and the world of feelings was the only universe they understood. Our world - the planet they lived on - was beyond their comprehension, beyond their ability to focus, to notice. Their bodies were guided by instincts. Instincts would induce some feelings, feelings would guide the instincts, but the two belonged to separate worlds. Seeing a predator would cause fear, fear would trigger run, but the horse wasn't aware of the predator and of running, only of fear coming from "out there". Horses knew of "out there", they were curious about it, they were often trying to escape their world of mind, of feelings and become "fully sentient" as we would describe it, but it was very difficult for them.

Of course no separate universe of feelings exists. It's an abstraction. But for them it was an abstraction on organic level. Like when you see something, it's photons reflected from the object falling on your retina, you aren't aware of separate photons, their wavelengths and origins and interactions with the surface of the object, just of the shape and location of the object, for horses the abstraction was a level further, the physical objects just like single photons are outside of the scope of their minds. But like our brain converts wavelengths into colors and differences between images from the two eyes into perception of 3D, their brain converts body language and instinctive identifications of objects into feelings associated with them. They didn't see separate muscles tensing, they didn't see the hooves beating the ground, the body running. They saw fear. Or playfulness. Or curiosity. Even far peripheral vision of others in the distance would convert into distant, unclear clouds of feelings. And their minds were unable to guide, to apply logic to behavior of their bodies. If a friend vanishes from sight, so does the feeling from the zone of view. A horse can then wish to try to find the friend, but that's just a very rough guideline for the brain, it may be a decision to search cautiously or to hurry or to patiently keep searching as time passes, but no specific decision can be given on how, where to search, which routes to follow, which obstacles to look behind. The lower level of the brain knew some instinctive behaviors, inborn procedures of searching and would apply them, but there was no specific feedback for the actions taken.

Horse's mind was blind to the real world. Distances and directions were a blur - the directions weren't right and left, they were right and wrong, direction of closer and direction of away. One of very few entities binding horses' mind world with the reality was the direction of the warmth - direction from which the sun shines.

That's how they lived. Their bodies just living the life of instincts, predefined organic behaviors shaped by evolution, animals without as much as a shade of sentient understanding of their world. And their minds separated from physics of our world, with very vague idea about concepts of basic geometry of the world, directions and distances, without ability to see shapes, smell, touch, hear. Their conscious, self-aware mind was deprived of all direct sensory input - only the filtered, processed awareness of feelings, and was just as incapable of creating any precise physical output - just of expressing emotions, which might take physical shape of behaviors with some effect.

But you'd be very wrong if you thought the world of their minds was poor and simple. The world was a civilization. With every construct, every mechanism and creation based on the minds and their interactions. With rich culture and incredible marvels of art. Strange domains of art, because their volatile form would mostly elude a member of other races, but I tasted a small sample from what my mind could comprehend. A ballet - gallop full of such grace, changing paces, expressing a story hard to understand but somehow feeling familiar, making you cry and laugh. Or a "knack", another form of art, condensed short set of instructions remotely resembling a haiku or a limerick, a set of thoughts so contradictory, such a wild paradox, that when your brain chewed through all the incredible layers of absurd, and the Escheresque logical construct clicked together, the sudden impact of feeling of an absolutely tainted enlightenment would twist your mind in a mix of contradictory feelings - pride from understanding, humor of the twist, awe for the great truth opened and disgust for how wrong and false the truth is. These were not to be taken seriously and the sudden twisting set of feelings would result in good hearty laughter for a good while. Or a song/story where sequence of impressions would build a harmonic and smooth flow of changes of mood. Or nearly subliminal, ambient tune.

Some of it I saw, some I was told, fed my mind with, through telepathic link, others I just heard about, because experiencing them was beyond the grasp of my mind. The herd bid me welcome and introduced to their culture. An old mare whose name could be transcribed as "Warm Dream" decided to be my personal guide, helping me in understanding their world and accompanying me. We were talking about our worlds for a long time, later she presented me with samples of their art. I didn't even try to show them ours, it was so poor and crude by comparison.

I mentioned the tsunamis. Warm Dream recalled time of fear and loss, terror and pain. She would gladly follow the advice on how to prevent that, but the concept of "moving into higher terrains" was beyond their comprehension. Some of horses understood physics of our world, knew of oceans, mountains, water, drowning, they could understand the concept of tsunami and escaping it, but they had no idea how to execute such a migration without outside help. I wanted to help.

And I needed to have the capsule moved to higher terrain too.

* * *

I hesitated for a long time with asking the horses where they knew so much about our world from, being isolated from it and all, and I was delaying the question for a long time, until the answer came by itself. The answer had grey fur, silvery muzzle and was quiet most of the time. Maybe that's why his name was Silent Answer.

He came by night, by a glider wing, landed near my camp silently, then sat by the campfire all night, watching my sleep without a word. That's what I learned from Warm Dream later. I don't know if it was me or him but I wasn't startled the least bit by his presence when I woke up.

He didn't mind me talking, but he preferred using telepathy to speaking. And he gave me the answers, after I gave him mine. He was more than satisfied with me stating that I don't intend to contact the civilizations and plan to stay here and than no more will come. Keeping this planet a secret was quite important to him.

There was a small base of Wolves here. At first they were to research the horses, later there wasn't much more left to research. Most of what could be written, was written. The vast remainder, impossible to put in words was understood. The base was kept to help "the awake." Some - few horses wanted to escape their world of feelings, wanted to see, to smell, to hear. Some succeeded. The experience in most cases was somewhat disappointing, but there was no return. Suddenly the need to pay attention to daily routine, grazing, drinking, defecating, insects and illnesses, the need to consciously live a life of a wild horse, an extremely boring life, was becoming a burden hard to bear. There was still the world of feelings, but the life was filled with dull, common distractions.

These horses would join the wolves at the base, or get on starships to see other planets and civilizations. Some of them would return, tell their stories and teach the knowledge they gained. The wolves would tell of the physical world if asked too.

The wolves are a quite selfless race, but they weren't here without interest of their own. The art. Most of the crew of the base described themselves as "art appreciators." Even though far in mental sensitivity from horses, they were still able to comprehend most of their art and appreciated it deeply. They lived for it and craved it. They studied and trained self-discipline to be able to access, enter the dimension of feelings, experience what the horses experience. They would sacrifice everything they had in defense of that culture, that art.

And if the secret was broken, they would have to, too. The planet was too rich. There were a few civilizations that would gladly migrate from their wretched, torn by war, scorched planets. They wouldn't care for the horses' culture, they needed land to expand, to colonize. At least one knew of existence and value of the horse planet, but none knew the location. Wolves guarded the secret well.

This gave one more answer to a question that was puzzling most of the universe and causing lots of controversy. The skill of soulseeking, specialty of the race of wolves, believed to be teachable and possible to learn by most other races, was kept a secret. Only wolves were soulseekers. Why? Many races were opposing this monopoly, protesting against the situation. The wolves would just answer that not allowing soulseekers of other races they were able to keep a certain important thing a secret.

This planet was that secret, too far, too small, too indistinct to be found by a common exploration mission without a hint from a soulseeker. Meantime, soulseekers on Wolf were still able to detect it, strong, emanating souls of the horses.

* * *

It was a clear, beautiful night. Warm wind was bringing the smell of fresh hay still drying on the pastures, lights of the base entrance far behind. Warm Dream, Silent Answer and me. We were idly chatting about recent events, walking an alley of old, majestic trees between the fields and distant forests. Corn to the right, hay to the left. The harvest won't be very good this year, due to drought.

We were wordlessly conversing. I was telling them of Earth as I remembered it. I did remember it. I remembered my whole childhood and youth. Nothing of my later years as a mercenary though. All I knew about that period of my life was that it was there, and that I didn't want to remember it. And thanks to some wise old horse I could rest assured I won't remember it. Horses couldn't do the least thing about their own physical illnesses and wounds, but they mastered healing wounds of mind and healed damages of my mind no other power in the universe could fix.

Vast underground blocks of VR coffins, cities turning into jungles, highly efficient automated plantations creating food to be injected directly into bloodstream, machines sustaining fitness and health of people immersed in virtual reality, remaining asleep through most of their lives. The face of Earth was changing. For a good while Humans were following the path of the civilization of Owls. But they passed the point when civilization of Owls met its doom, masterfully avoiding the trap Owls fell in. Omnia, the AI that is the common consciousness of the race of Robots passed some of the secrets, the reasons of the old decision that later was evaluated as wrong. Humans concentrated more on gentle and friendly psyche than on learning potential while projecting their AI. As result, Alisia, the AI of planet Earth was good, helpful and loving. She became the mother and the world of contemporary human race.

"You are becoming like us" was the opinion of Warm Dream. True, the human race was abandoning the physical world and whatever was related to it. At first most common virtual realities closely resembled real places, physical world, but as time passed, less weight was put in form, more in function. Emotions were becoming the currency of choice, in form of tokens of thought, most raw form of art, passed as most desirable objects of value, ones of the last things that held any meaningful value. Money? What can you do with money? Buy a jet plane and fly around the world? What for? Equipment for exploring Darwin Zones? Any kid's pocket money could afford enough top-notch stuff to arm an army. Land? All the land you needed was a cubic meter of your coffin, and nobody ever minded if you went anywhere else. Only the things that give emotions kept any value. Art, friendship, adventure. And scientific achievements, but these existed in a world of their own, not a subject of economy.

"Possibly in the future all the meaning of form will be lost to your race, and you will live in the world of emotions like we do. By choice, not by fate. And with knowledge, instead of faith into the sentience of the underlying fabrics of the world." I didn't hear words, I was just feeling the meanings, the mind symbols, "future" as sense of time passing faster, "form" as a feeling of shape, hard edges, "form lost in the future" as the shape dissolving as time passes quickly, "possibly lost in the future" as I feel the form simultaneously dissolving and not, two alternate time-lines with two outcomes, blending and indistinguishable. I loved "listening" to this language.

Another part of the expression puzzled me: "faith into sentience of the underlying fabrics of the world". Presence of mind, personality without features - artifact for the word of sentient being, but not only uncertain to exist even as a symbol said by a horse, but with this uncertainty of its existence so intristic to its nature that any attempt to prove it would erase the whole presence from existence. And more: the presence was not localized, not unique to its place like all the known presences, but omnipresent, existing everywhere.

"Faith into sentience of the underlying fabrics of the world", what do you mean by this odd creature? I asked.

The answer eluded me, I wasn't able to comprehend the depth of feelings, I could just feel their magnitude. I gently asked to stop.

Silent Answer grinned to me and explained using spoken language, his normal voice, a very rare event for him.

• I know quite little of it, but I'll explain the basics I know. It's their religion. They believe the void, the dimension they live in, is their deity, is sentient, hears and understands them, but replies only in most rare cases. Their prayers may be answered, as the void carries feelings across vast distances, where two horses remain far away, or their feelings may remain in a certain place, to be repeated to a wanderer at a later time, as a warning or as a story. Like with every religion, there is no proof this is true nor a proof it's false, but that's what they believe in. We, the wolves, call it Nul, because "sentient space" sounds silly. Horses disapprove, Nul has no name. We also consider Nul to be female. Horses disapprove of this too, Nul has no sex. But nobody got hurt over it yet, so likely their disapproval is not all that serious.

Warm Dream approved of the explanation, but added a small, paradox legend they tell the kids when teaching them maths:

Two horses in love argued over something, then prayed for opposite outcomes of the problem, and Nul answered both prayers at once, creating two parallel universes with two alternate outcomes. But since Nul is only one, she realized her mistake and the two universes became one, although due to the differences some things including the two horses appeared twice, in their reverse outcome variants. The four horses prayed to Nul just to restore the old order except none wouldn't agree which ones should vanish, and before they noticed, each of them had its own universe including variations of the three others, and the universes blended into one again immediately - there were sixteen of the horses now. Nul just frowned and as a serious warning obeyed their prayers just once more, making them into a big herd of 256 horses. This time they ceased to pray, came to an agreement and started a nice big herd, members of which never pray to Nul any more.

It appears Nul is not to be taken too seriously. According to the "doctrines of faith" she tends to make mistakes more often than not, definitely has sense of humor and loves pranks and practical jokes which sometimes backfire against her, she's forgetful and happy-go-lucky, and she dislikes those serious and dull and never blesses them, which often is the preferred situation because her blessings tend to backfire too, though never in any overly harmful way.

Warm Dream threw in another legend, telling as Nul nearly led to her own demise introducing "Evil Knack of Laughing Doom". The knack is simple: 1. if you laugh hard, you make others to laugh harder. 2. if you laugh hard enough, you die. 3. This knack kills. Obviously, nobody believes in the silly knack. Except of its victims.

First, you laugh as you imagine the knack in action.

Then you laugh as you see others laugh.

Then you laugh as demise by the knack seems more likely.

Then you laugh as you find yourself unable to stop laughing.

Then you laugh as you realize the knack really might kill you.

Then you laugh as you understand that the moment you believed in the knack, you fell in its trap and that NOW it REALLY is going to kill you.

Then you die.

Luckily the Evil Knack didn't prove as deadly as it claimed to be, though it definitely has shown its power, keeping us three chuckling occasionally for the next half a hour, and Warm Dream, despite repeated tries, never got to finish telling just how did Nul escape the power of the Evil Knack. Finally she admitted to her defeat, claiming she had no idea how her grandfather got to tell her that story with "straight face".

We arrived at the end of the alley, where trees formed a circle around a glade, roads extending around to other fields, gleaming remains of a bonfire in the middle of the glade, after a group of wolves left earlier. Silent Answer skillfully brought the fire back to life using some dry branches lying around, then we lay by the fire. I asked Warm Dream if I could rest my head on her back, she was a bit surprised, why asking, shouldn't I know by now? So I accepted gratefully and enjoyed the warmth of fire and her body. Silent Answer curled into a ball by us.

I looked at the stars and watched the beauty of the moment, alien constellations, nothing like I had known. Gentle waves of warmth, peace, realization of smooth, soft motion of the planet and the universe.

I understood, it was Warm Dream singing a lullaby:

Harmony - Unity.

Silence of the night, silence of the mind.

Wonders of the sleeping world, wonders of the playful void.

Fears are left far behind. Friends await near beyond.

Past forgotten, future known. Life was lost, life got found.

World is god is none is all. Man is wolf is horse is soul.

Dreams are coming. Let them be.

Dream

me.

by Sharpfang Fri Aug 4 11:16:02 CEST 2006