Memesis

The tribe sat in their cave, glaring at the firepit. The remains of a boar still cooked themselves upon the flame. There was enough food there for most of them to be satisfied, and for the rest to hungrily covet. Nobody moved. Nobody dared move. In spite of their hunger, the Yellow Man was there.

The Yellow Man had come in hot times. Now that it was growing cold, they had become accustomed to him. He was naked, like them, except for the furs that he’d laid claim to.

The hunters hadn’t liked him at all when he had come. Their atavistic instincts were clear: He was one more mouth that would try to take from their kills. Their half-formed reasoning power told them that he was foreign and to be feared. They had tried to bash him with their clubs until he stopped moving, like any other animal. They had tried, and their clubs had smashed themselves into uselessness against his head. He was unfazed by the attack. He didn’t even fight back, which left instinct at a hopeless loss and by its very unfathomable nature obliged them to what passed among the tribe for logic. He didn’t want to fight them, said reason, because if he did, he would fight, and any man who didn’t die like a normal animal would win.

So they tolerated him, and waited to see what he did.

Mayu is laying in bed in her room. She picks up her cell phone. She’s bored, and she wants something interesting to do. Her phone is usually pretty good about this kind of thing.

She checks her e-mail. Her aunt forwarded her another one of those spam e-mails. She watches the mail reader start to interpret it. On the screen, the playful black raven begins flapping its wings. Curious, she thumbs the pointer over to it. Overlaid on the e-mail, more text begins appearing. Mayu doesn’t recognize the names, but the text is interesting. The e-mail talks about the loss of veterans’ benefits, but the overlaid text clarifies it a lot. Mayu doesn’t know much about this sort of thing, but she’s tired of the e-mail junk that her aunt sends her. The raven is still flapping. It wants to forward something back. Gleefully, Mayu clicks it. Let’s see what auntie thinks of this, she thinks.

In the final analysis, war between the Atlantean factions was not only inevitable but necessary. What surprised everyone was the shocking savagery and brutality that played out in the conflict, whose survivors are still coping with it today.

Atlantis casts a very long shadow over the Homeworld. For seven hundred years, even during the Burning Century, the multi-ethnic, multi-national Antarctic settlers survived and even prospered. They conquered the “tyranny of oxygen” and built homes under the water. They engineered themselves and the animals they brought with them. Nobody will deny that without them, the Shepherds and other returner groups would have faced a steep uphill fight in making the world livable again.

It is that very heroic history that worked against Atlantis in the last century, and especially with respect to the Venus incident. It is this author’s considered opinion that the conservative factions which dominated Atlantean political thinking secretly yearn for a return to the Burning Century, when they were the preeminent civilization on the planet, and certainly the only one to hold land on the Homeworld.

The songs of the starship resonate in Ululuto’s ears as he swings. His long, black-furred arms reach out instinctively for the next strand of the massive vessel’s outer support lattice. He flings himself through zero gravity with assurance born out of a lifetime in space. Nearby he can hear the song he’s homing in on. It’s a quiet song of pain and annoyance, a defective module that the ship wishes to replace. Ululuto isn’t self-aware by any means, but his instincts have been updated through genetic engineering and conditioning. He knows enough – a friend is in distress. He moves rapidly.

All four limbs grasp at the support lattice and Ulu jerks to a stop. His eyes survey the scene. Micrometeorites have broken through the armor plating in this sector. His optical-olfactory graft brings him all the data he needs: bad smell! Bad thing here. Remove it and throw it away.

Supporting himself with two limbs, Ulu reaches forward. The plating is still warm, but he tugs at the metal until it comes free. It tumbles for a few seconds in zero gravity before striking the lattice. Later, the ship will send him back to retrieve it, but for now, the Siamang is free to get at the sensor module underneath it. Carefully he pulls the module out and reaches for the toolkit strapped to his waist. Carefully-engineered instincts begin to dance in his cortex, mixing with the quantum dot grafts in his nerves and radio signals from the ship itself. The act isn’t foreign to Ulu – it’s as much a part of his universe as peeling a fruit or grooming himself. He feels an impulse he knows is good and he acts. The repair software does the rest.

Ulu pushes the pieces of the module together, feeling a warm wave of satisfaction emanating from the pleasure center of his brain. The song of the ship has changed, and he barks out a counter-song. Everything is well. And Ulu feels like playing for awhile.

Tau, and all the other kids on 15, know Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe can be found all over the city. He’s friendly and wise, and he has gray hair, and he’s always smiling. His voice sounds hollow, but Sky tells Tau that it’s because he’s a holocloud. You can’t touch him, she explains, because he’s not there.

He’s a series of aerostats that hover in the air and paint themselves different colors at high speed. He doesn’t have a solid body at all, it’s just tiny floating zeppelins the size of a speck of dust. That’s why you can put your hand right through him and he’ll just shimmer and ripple and go back to normal. He can speak, because the aerostats have tiny speakers and they all make a noise at once.

Tau knows better, because he’s read old stories. He knows Uncle Joe is a ghost.

Tau is a city kid. He lives on the 15th level, one of the lowest and darkest levels of Hubris. Since the collapse a year ago, when an unexploded bomb finally detonated and brought down a quarter mile of ceiling, Tau has had a harder time living. He ran with a small gang, but most of them left after the collapse. The food dispensaries are unreliable, and Tau is sometimes roughed up by packs of the city’s dogs who force him to feed them.

Before the fighting stopped, a group of soldiers had used construction foam to set up a temporary barricade on the 15th level. Tau calls it home. Right next door, there’s a hole in the wall of the supplies building that the construction clouds haven’t fixed. Tau learned the incantation to keep them from closing it off, so he’s able to bypass the building security and get directly at the nanofactory inside.

Tau has thought about going to the surface. One of these days, he tells himself, he’s going to plot a course to level 1. If he survives, he’ll go into space. One of these days.