Category: Nano Stream Story

Jorge’s massive hands reached up to the black steel cage of the humanoid repair drone standing in front of him in the empty hangar of the Storge. Next to him, as always, his trusted companion, Sarah, stood silent and unsure. She had never seen this side of Jorge. Always before was a joke, a wink, or some sly grin that hinted at the twinkle in his brown eyes. Yet now the shadow that fell from his broad-brimmed sombrero was frail protection from the storm that she saw sweeping across his mustached, sober expression. The drone’s glowing blue eyes blinked once as Jorge patted its reticulated shoulder and then reached behind the steel ribs to detach the cords and cables binding a cubical-shaped module within the automaton’s chest to its spine and armatures, “My brother is in trouble, ol’ girl. I gotta put you in that bug, and if there is anyone who can make that beat up hunk of junk work, it’ll be you.”

As the drone blinked, Jorge grimaced and pulled the last cord. The eyes went dark, and the skeleton of the drone’s frame slackened as the machine became lifeless. Jorge gripped both sides of the cubical module and, with a yank and metallic click, the unit slipped free of the drone’s chest. Jorge lifted the heavy piece of equipment easily. It was tiny in his hands but showed its girth as he turned to face the frail, ebony frame of Sarah, who stood silent in front of Jorge, waiting. Jorge’s thumb rubbed the dust from off a logo on the upper corner of the charcoal metal box that read “L3”, and he stood there for a long moment, lost in thought, until she placed a tiny hand on Jorge’s forearm, “Brero? You ok?”

Jorge’s dark, black, bushy eyebrows knitted together as he replied absently, “Just remembering the one who designed this. He was trying to save something of his world, too.”

“What were ‘is name?” Sarah peered up through the dangling, makeshift tasseles of trinkets, tiny chains, and electronic bobs that hung from the heavy brim of Jorge’s non-regulation hat.

“Master Chief Miguel Lane. Best engineer on Sigma 95. That was before the Ifset rebellion, and his world fell apart.” Jorge replied, the sadness in his voice a poignant echo of some ghost long lost to another world. “I still remember the day he named this miracle. The first field replaceable Quasi-linear AI module. Could repair darn near anything. Best assistant an engineer could ever ask for on the field of battle.”

Sarah looked down, the ornate tangle of shimmering threads and makeshift jeweled ends of her weave catching faint sparkles of gold and green from the dim canister lights of the docking port ceiling above them. Jorge leaned in a little and continued, “Save you, of course.”

Sarah’s big brown eyes met his, and an appreciative smile spread across her lips. “So Lane, I get. I ev’n get linyar, if’n ye don’ count that crazy bit, but why L3? Is there a third ‘L’ somewhere in there, or ‘m I missin’ somet’ing?”

At that, Jorge looked Sarah squarely in the eyes, his own wet and slightly reddened. To see the pain on his face made a painful lump form in Sarah’s throat as he replied, “Asked the same question myself right outside the hospital room that he’d come out of that day. Sigma 95 had fallen. The death toll was staggering. I could spend the rest of my life just naming the lost, but on that day, there was only one name that mattered to the man who taught me everything I know.”

Sarah swallowed hard, “Sorry, Brero.”

“He told me that if it wasn’t for her, none of this would have ever existed.” Jorge lifted the box slightly, accentuating the module that he carried. “She was the one who held him together during the worst of it, and so it made sense to him that her brilliance and spirit would train the AI that was his life’s work in the hope that it could do the same for all broken vessels destroyed by this war.”

“Oh, Creator.” Sarah tried to deflect.

“That was the day that I learned the most important lesson of my career in the Galatian fleet. It’s the souls we meet; the love we have for each other that should be the first and last thing on our lips and hearts. The third L on this module stands for Laurie, Miguel’s wife. She died in an orbital hospital around Sigma 95. On that day, I made Miguel a promise that wherever I became the lead engineer, his wife’s memory would be installed in every unit in the fleet.”

“I think she’d be proud of what you’re doing here,” Sarah reassured Jorge.

Jorge nodded, and he stood up straighter, “To L3 then. We’ve got a world to save.”

This wine, served almost exclusively on special occasions, is among the single finest beverages produced by the Galat system. Made from a blend of fermented dofa berries and Galatian star fruit, then aged in caskets lined with Aether moss, this mildly hallucinogenic beverage is the stuff of legend. A single bottle is given once or twice in a century as a gift to a new couple and after the Fell Wars to the mourning parent, widow, or widower. This beverage, even after millennia, retains its exquisite, fruity, and spicy taste, but is rarely consumed for many reasons, not the least of which is its temporary effects.

Twin Flames is renowned for its ability to blur the line between the material plane and nearby planes of existence through a complex process that, in layman’s terms, faintly decouples the soul from the corporeal body, allowing for otherwise impossible forms of perception. The wine, when unopened, is cerulean in color, sometimes with faint greenish and yellow reflective flecks floating within it. Upon exposure to the air, the liquid will react energetically and begin to swirl with luminous streams of emerald light as the wine’s ingredients mix, releasing a faint scent reminiscent of star anise. Effects range from gentle halos around nearby living beings to more pronounced ability to see spiritual essence, the connective threads between living forms, and even items on parallel planes of existence. These experiences are brief and leave no lasting impact, except by virtue of the memories they create. They usually serve the function of accentuating the connections between mates or providing comfort and closure to mourners, as they often report being able to move on more easily after the experience.

Sekhut cuneiform was created by the Leng’gui to allow human civilizations to communicate with their species and is a tiny fragment of its mother tongue which has more in common with celestial languages than most other corporeal forms of communication. One particular word, Rali (pronounced “Ra lay”), is a good example of the flexible and often metaphysical nature of the Leng’gui thought and communication process. Rali is a word that describes emotional and spiritual connection, similar to what humans call “love” and is conveyed as a root for words like:

• geor’rali – Storge is a bond to a family
• georsh’rali – Phileo is a bond to a sibling
• gakli’rali – Eros is a bond to a mate
• goornat’rali – Pragma is a bond to a series of tasks
• goy’rali – Philos is a bond to a friend
• gaor’rali – Thelema is to bond to a vocation or aim to do a thing
• gi’rali – Agape is a bond to the Creator

Unlike many human languages, Rali can be attached to almost any other subject to mean the emotional and spiritual bond that a living soul endows to that subject. The fluid nature of Leng’gui treatment of love also hints at one reason that their culture has a strong distaste for prestige and title. According to the Leng’gui the tasks, vocation or relationship to a thing does not itself have meaning as a static label. Rather, it is the living essence of the one who does or relates to a thing that gives value and definition to the subject of that thing. Being reduced to a label, implies that the person can be summed up simply and that the soul gains value by the titles it possesses, but to Leng’gui exactly the opposite is true. Love therefore is the act of lending one’s own intrinsic value to the thing it acts upon or describes, not the other way around.

One side-effect of this approach is both enlightening and confusing because it literally means that love can be attached to a person directly. For example, Mary-Love or Mary’aurali is not merely the objective love of that person. Rather it is the love shared by bonding to Mary and only Mary. It is both unique and impossible to reproduce even if the connection itself can be moved. As a consequence of this pattern Galatians who apply to work with the Leng’gui consulate are at first shocked and overwhelmed by the initial requirements to spend no less than five years among those working on any Leng’gui project. However, after only a few months the reasons for this restriction become clear to recruits as it is often necessary to learn numerous words, phrases and expressions unique to only one team on one project before they can be effective at representing any part of that group.

These tasty fish with the tails of seals are not only a major food source on the moons of Huan’Hai, such as Miseo, but also the namesake for Lake Pajong Gai, on whose shores rest several small villages and legendary sites. The chief among these sites is Aerishael, which is conveniently located near a large enclave of these creatures. Like fish, Pajong Gai spawn huge populations quickly, and their egg clusters are also, in some locations, considered a delicacy. Even though these creatures spend most of their time swimming through lakes and bays, they are also capable of extended stays on rocky outcroppings, where they sunbathe and warble, mimicking the sounds of birds, other wildlife, or even machines nearby.

Pajong Gai are not particularly intelligent, and if their populations are left unchecked, they can become a nuisance. They have no sense of personal space and are drawn to cluster in, on, or near almost any form of artificial structure or body that gives off heat. To control their populations, fishing of them is encouraged, and their meat is sweet and tender, making them a popular main course for everything from soups and fillets to sandwiches and caviar.

The Galatian Empire, like most of its peers, is peaceful. However, the Fell Wars that split one-third of heaven forced the creation of some truly terrifying weapons. Few advancements demonstrate this more clearly than what common folk refer to as “Zatcha” weapons, like the Zatcha pistol and Zatcha blade.

The name “Zatcha” is a mispronunciation of the original Leng’gui terms “Zed” and “Chi,” meaning Chemical Spirit. This translation does not adequately describe the extraordinary threat of this brand of heaven’s arsenal. Based, in part, on Leng’gui technology designed to provide safe and harmless travel of the soul to and from alternate dimensions, weapons built on these principles separate the soul from its targets. Advanced forms of these tools, which are highly restricted, are capable of trapping that soul within Chi Dasa stones for transport or virtually indefinite storage.

A select few among the highest officials in the Leng’gui Consulate and Galatian Navy believe that Zatcha technology might be used to erase a soul from existence – a crime so dire that it is both sacrilege and blasphemy against the Creator to use it. Research into such knowledge is forbidden at the highest levels, and any semblance of such a tool or research being conducted is met with fierce and swift response by heavenly forces. Recently, however, lay persons in Galat and Li have whispered rumors that this technology was being researched on Sigma 95 and may have something to do with the reason the moon of Gethsemane around Huan’Hai has been quarantined by angelic forces since the Huan’Hai Incident.

A replica of the original tablets found on the moon world of Miseo was recently moved to the Museum of Li Antiquities on Galat 5 as a testament to the extraordinary events collectively known as the Huan’hai Incident. Remarkably, the original tablets showed extensive corrosion and aging, although the story of their recent creation defies conventional explanation. The originals, once in the possession of the Leng’gui Consulate, contained a record that was a guarded secret, but is now revealed as a journal of the hasty flight that led to the miraculous reemergence of living, populated moons in the Li system. Visitors to the museum on Galat 5 who stop by this exhibit are left scratching their heads in bewilderment at the paradox represented by the age and story of these artifacts.

The chief author of the tablets, Averil Whey, lives on Miseo and tells of the harrowing escape by members of the Storge’s crew from a bizarre, collapsing time bubble. His story, filled with details about ships and crew thought lost thousands of years ago due to a catastrophic failure of critical systems aboard the ancient freighter, SS Thelema, remains stunning proof of a fantastic universe of possibilities.

During the early years of Galatian robotics and expansion into other Galat planets, the need for automated assistants to perform daily tasks became so commonplace that virtually everyone was familiar with, had or used an A.P.A. unit. It was designed to have replaceable appendages that supplemented a wide variety of purposes and was powered by one tiny Aetherite core that needed periodic maintenance about once every six hundred cycles. This mechanical wonder was in use throughout Galatia and served functions both complex and basic such as geological surveyor, lab assistant, and restaurant waiter. Although not tied to the Logos AI mainframes, this bot’s highly trainable but simple-minded intelligence core has made it a valuable tool throughout the empire.

Galatian and some Leng’gui propulsion systems allow FTL travel using an advanced piece of technology known as the ILAD core or Interdimensional Luminal Aetherite Drive. Its power source is based on an exotic energy found in naturally occurring aetherite deposits – a rare mineral that is rich in dark matter condensates. This drive is not exactly a form of propulsion on its own; rather, it is a quantum tunneller coupled with an interdimensional quantum mapping system. Together, these tools allow the appearance of faster-than-light travel via the creation of localized wormholes in which space is folded and stretched. In truth, the vessel itself travels at subluminal speeds through the tunnels, always arriving near instantly on the other side of the wormhole once the tunnel path is established.

This technology is, in miniature, what the gate system is for most interstellar travel throughout the kingdoms. However, because of its smaller size, its range is limited, as is the number of destinations that it supports. In the Galatian network, specific destinations and drive systems with more advanced protocols, which enable further travel or interdimensional hopping, are code-locked due to the encryption of these functions for the safety of uninitiated systems and species. These code locks are typically called GAK or Galatian Aether Keys. They must be used to enable the functionality or to override the safety protocols of such systems.

The Chi system is one of the most important star systems to the alliance between the enigmatic Leng’gui and the Galatian Empire. This is because this system exists as a parallel entity in numerous other dimensions and realities, each of which is home to a Leng’gui library of extraordinary significance. Known throughout Galatian space as among the most advanced races, the Leng’gui have hyper-advanced bioengineering laboratories and soul libraries scattered throughout several universes. They are among a very few races capable of terraforming entire star systems at a time and engineering life from raw DNA code all the way to complex ecosystems with spectacularly accurate predictive models revered by all heavenly races.

Chi is the site of a library complex that consists of multiple planets and moons that houses one of the most extensive libraries of life in the Milky Way galaxy. There, the signatures of trillions of lifeforms and their spirits have been stored in advanced underground archives of the special stones capable of storing the life essence of living entities known as Chi Dasa. Admittance to this system is highly restricted, to the point that the technology used to protect its secrets can literally translate the entire star system out of the cluster in which it resides on any given reality.