Science Forums 2

[Pyrotex]

Orphan World
by Nelson Thompson

Imagine an orphan world.
Imagine air that is not air but a thin slurry of frigid gases and soot, the discarded seepage of tired volcanoes ancient beyond all counting. Imagine ground that is not rock but a fractured amalgam of dust and amorphous ices, compacted by the unrelenting pressure of starlight and gravity. Here and there a misshapen dagger of rock thrusts up through the barrenness, spoiling the otherwise flat featurelessness.
Imagine a sky that is not sky, but merely a distance, a darkness, diseased with bright running sores of brilliant incandescence and bloated pustules of stars. Too many stars and too near to be a proper sky. A sky devoid of parent sun or kindred moons -- no cycles of day or night. This is not a place where events occur. In fact, time in this place is a non-thing, something that does not flow, but which settles upon the landscape like a vast, smothering blanket.
You might survey this barren planet for a million years and you would find nothing out of the ordinary for an orphan world floating aimlessly toward the stellar core of an unnamed spiral galaxy.
That is not quite true.
The galaxy does in fact have many names. Halfway to its rim is a paradise planet upon which its happy residents have given the name The Flowering Seaweed on the Highest Roof.
Far, far away, astronomers of yet another species, peering through their powerful telescopes at this self same galaxy, have given it the simple name, M94, referring only to its numeric position in a list of galaxies, nebulas and star clusters made by one of their colleagues, a certain Charles Messier, whose chief concern was searching for comets.
Be that as it may, the orphan world drifts alone on the stochastic currents of space and time just outside the bright and terribly crowded core of that galaxy, and beneath its static and star blasted surface, there is life.

There had been at one time in the orphan world's profound past a single species on the verge of sentience when its planet was gradually flung from its multi-sun system and sent on its lonely voyage. Had the life on that planet not been blessed (or cursed) with the ability to mutate rapidly (and successfully) it would have died out in the darkness. But the life burrowed deeply and quickly beneath the ever more frigid surface layers, adapting as it went, developing an endless stream of new forms and configurations. They dwell deep within the planet, and know nothing about what (if anything) might be near or beyond the surface. They have never seen the sky. They have no name for their galaxy.
For their world of tunnels and caverns, they have a name: The True Dream.
For themselves, they have a name: The Dreamers.

---ooo---

Cautiously, Fed 94 sent out a phalanx of maulers to the periphery of the Brown Salt Cavern, hoping to catch his adversaries by surprise. It had been one of his primary sources of minerals and he would need to recapture it if he were to successfully maintain his defenses. At first, he met little resistance. The enemy's maulers and stingers, few in number, retreated before him. Then suddenly, Fed 94 found his outlying salient under vicious attack. Maddened, he thrust this portion of himself even harder against the resistance. Howling with pain, he sensed his components being slaughtered, and realized he had stumbled once again into a well-planned ambush.
Signals of pain raced back through the cellmats, the network of biofilms that connected him with his assault. Reflexively, he pulled the extension of himself back, or what was left of it. More than half his marauders had been killed or disabled, and the excruciating sensation sent him spiraling into shock. At that moment of vulnerability, he became aware of other events. The Green Slick Tunnels were being invaded, and his Bubbling Rocks Farm defense was under heavy attack. Pieces of himself were being pushed back, stabbed, pincered, stung, cut off or disabled in a dozen other ways. Writhing in agony, Fed 94 called out through the cellmats, "Enough! Enough! I surrender!"
Resigned to his fate, the Dreamer named Fed 94, commanded his motile members to go limp in submission. The war was over.

---ooo---

Normally spread through many cubic kilometers of tunnels and caverns, Fed 94 was now crowded into the Glowing Porous Aquifer, a single cubic kilometer of what had been his territory, his portion of the True Dream. In five of the six cardinal directions, he was penned in, effectively imprisoned by the Alliance-of-Six, made up of Dra 33 and Dof 49 to the below, Menxa 219 to the north, Tor 16 to the south, Drum 50 to the east, and Stosh 41 to the west.
He had adequate sustenance for most of his components in the Aquifer, and what little else he needed was being provided by feeders from the Alliance. His remaining maulers and stingers were bound and helpless. As long as he did not exert himself, there were sufficient gases and fluids to maintain his survival in the confined volume.
While his adversaries conferred among themselves, Fed 94 had time to meditate upon his circumstances. Sequestered within the Aquifer was his library of memory stones, finely carved slices of basalt upon which had been inscribed every significant experience, idea and fact that he had ever gathered. How far back in time these memories stretched was unknowable, for the Dreamers had never managed to find a way to measure time with any certitude. Fed 94, like all Dreamers, had his own personal ways of measuring time. He used the gas flow cycles in the Bubbling Rocks Farm, and a count of the generations of the kenners, the wormlike components that held his highest rational functions. But over huge stretches of time, these cycles, both physical and biological, were not constant.
He sent his readers, a swarm of insectoid creatures, dancing over the stones, reading the runes with their tiny antennae. The war had begun nearly two gas cycles ago, or eight kenner generations. His discovery of the so-called "library of Ximra 2716" had been seventy gas cycles before that, about the time of the last eruption of the Great Steam Vent. He had in his stones over a thousand records of these steam eruptions, but they did not occur with great regularity, and the gas cycles in the Bubbling Rocks Farm only appeared 300 eruptions ago. But given all that, a conservative estimate was that Fed 94 had been runing memory stones for well over a million kenner generations.
Fed 94 could only remember, really remember, back sixty generations or so. Beyond that, he had to rely on his stones, and even that became increasingly more difficult the further back he searched, as even the rune symbols themselves had evolved over what he recognized as geologic time.
Quickly, he located the runes at the source of his trouble: his recollections of the "library of Ximra 2716". First of all, the name itself was a contradiction in terms; there were exactly 326 Dreamers in existence. There could not be, nor ever could have been a Dreamer with the name "Ximra 2716", and so the name was obviously a hoax. At least, that was the logic his adversaries would use.
Fed 94 had discovered the library when gas temperatures and pressures had dramatically (and temporarily) increased above the Glowing Porous Aquifer, enabling him to extend parts of himself into regions that he had never explored before. Unable to extend his biofilms any further, he had done something immoral and forbidden by the Law -- he had divided himself into two sentient segments, and had sent the smaller segment, with nearly an eighth of his kenners, into the extreme above to scout for resources.
What that segment discovered was the "library of Ximra 2716". And what was in that library was pure heresy. And because of that, Fed 94 had kept his discovery secret for sixty gas cycles, while he pondered the ancient-beyond-ancient slices that his cleaved fragment had brought back.
"Dreamer Fed 94, prepare yourself for interrogation by the Alliance-of-Six."
The message had come from the south, presumably from Tor 16 himself. Fed 94 reconfigured his kenners for external conversation and prepared for the worst.
"I am here, Alliance-of-Six, at thy bidding and in thy service, to render all that is asked of me," he replied in the ritual manner.
"Dreamer Fed 94, do you acknowledge that the stones currently in your possession are yours and yours alone?"
"Yes," he answered, dropping the formal mode of expression when he sensed the hostility in the question. He knew at that moment that his fate had been sealed. "These stones are mine, I wrote every molten one of them, and I affirm everything written on them as true. So get to the point."
Ignoring his outburst, the interrogator continued, "Did you or did you not cleave thyself in defiance of the Law?"
Fed 94 broadcast hunger signals from his bound maulers, a gesture of mild defiance. "We all know that many Dreamers have cleaved themselves. It is a common tactic to find resources in the extreme above and extreme below. I know for a fact that Tor 16 has done this. That was how he found the Sulfur Gardens of Plenty, and..."
"Fed 94! Answer the question!"
"Why? So you can punish me for something that others have done?"
"This is Tor 16." The tone was cold and threatening. "Do I understand that you are accusing me of breaking the Law?"
Several dozen of Fed 94's kenners were shaking with fear. He caressed them with his groomers, and calmed himself.
"I apologize. I do not accuse Tor 16 of criminality. Of course not. I merely suggest that there are circumstances when cleaving is not necessarily an evil thing to do. Yes, I sent a cloven image of myself into the extreme above. I do not deny it."
"Since you do not deny it," -- Tor 16's voice again -- "then we have no choice but to impose upon you the maximum..."
"Wait! Is that it? Can't I explain what I found in the extreme above? Here are my stones! Send in your readers, I implore you, and see for yourself what I found! This information is far too important to ignore!"
There was a long pause, and then Tor 16's distant voice continued through the biofilms, "What may be in your stones is of no importance. After you are gone, they shall be purged of heresy. What remains will be distributed among the 326 True Dreamers."
There. It was said. 'After you are gone.'
"Please! Hear me out! The library of Ximra 2716 is real, and it recounts conversations with thousands of Dreamers! The highest name I found was 42,902! That library must have been far older than a million kenner generations, perhaps tens of millions! The knowledge in that library is priceless! It must be studied! Not rejected as mere heresy! Even if some of the information is wrong, there are maps to the extreme above, descriptions of minerals we have never tasted! And so much more! Please!"
"Fed 94," the voice droned, "you have in the presence of three or more Dreamers, exhorted blasphemy and admitted to the sin of cleaving. You are hereby proven to be the Imposter, not of the three hundred and twenty-six. You are hereby stripped of your name, and the Alliance-of-Six shall take it upon itself to search for the True Fed 94, wherever he may be in the True Dream, so that the three hundred and twenty-six shall once more be complete."
"No. You don't understand. I'm as real as any of you are. You will be killing a True Dreamer. And how do you know there are three hundred and twenty-six? Where is 3? Where is 251? Have any of you ever met them or found their stones? Have you?!"
"This is all irrelevant, Fed 94. You are proven to be the Imposter, and we have no choice but to impose upon you the maximum penalty. You will be stripped and banished to die in the place of your choosing. This interrogation is complete."

---ooo---

Despite his foreknowledge of his fate, the judgement, and its formal finality, put Fed 94 in a state of palpable shock. His feeders and groomers stood unmoving, many in the midst of one task or another. His algae farmers drifted aimlessly in their pools. His kenners fidgeted, some swaying slowly back and forth, their large segmented eyes searching listlessly for something to focus on.
He would be stripped. The vast majority of his components would be absorbed into the victors’ corporate bodies. Even his “home”, the hundreds of cubic kilometers of tunnels and caverns that had been meticulously coated with his interlocked nerve cells, the “corpus” that tied together all his components into a single interlaced entity -- even that would be subdivided and incorporated into his nearest neighbors. They would, of course, take his streams, his minerals and his thermal sources. His gardens and ponds and mudbaths. Everything.
He would be left with... what? Fed 94 shook himself from his stupor and turned to his stones. There were always a dozen or so kenners in his library. He willed his gleamers, fastened to the upward wall, to shed light so that his visually acute kenners could quickly navigate among the stacks of basalt chips. Riding upon the back of each kenner was a retinue of readers, etchers, and chewers, with which he read, wrote, and prepared new basalt chips.
Fed 94 had some fragment of biologic memory of an event many sixteens of kenner generations ago, when he had participated in a stripping -- as one of the victors. Yes! Here was the correct stack. The tiny readers he carried quickly jumped to the chip that a kenner held in its mandibles, and fluttered their even tinier antenna over the chip surface, which to his kenner eyes appeared absolutely smooth and polished, except for the identification code.
Yes. The punishment of Thal 202 for the crime of fungicide involved a temporary stripping, while a portion of his resources were divided. The record indicated that Fed 94 had obtained large phosphorus and calcium deposits from this reapportionment. Hmmm. He had forgotten that. In his biologic memory, that is. In a sense he could never “forget”, not as long as he had his stones.
Thal 202 was allowed to keep his groomers, feeders and carriers. They were huddled together in an unconstructed cavern until his food supply was exhausted. Then he was allowed to repossess his territory (minus the booty given to the victors, of course). It took Thal 202 seventeen kenner generations to recover from the trauma of stripping and isolation.
A pang of fear blossomed within Fed 94, starting in the kenners reading the stones, and then spreading through the cellmats, his exo-nervous system, to all his remaining kenners. Sequestered into the tiny cubic that he currently occupied was bad enough. All Dreamers suffered from claustrophobia when sufficiently compressed.
But to be in an unconstructed environment, without his cellmats to render his components a single entity, to suffer ultimate compression, to have to physically huddle all his components together so that his mind would survive -- the thought was almost unimaginable. Dreamers often sent off pairs or triads of kenners into unconstructed cubic for exploration or to send messages to far distant Dreamers. But three kenners did not make a full entity, not a living, thinking mind.
Fed 94 began a search of his stones for any ultimate compression experience he might have had in the archaic past, but he was interrupted by the mental equivalent of a knock at his door.
He shifted his focus to the eyes and other sensors nearest the knock. He had a visitor. Through the cellmat he signaled, “come in”.
An eight of kenners and eight of groomers crawled single file into the center of Fed 94’s chamber. It was Stosh 41. Fed 94 drew up a sixteen of himself to face his visitor, and turned on enough gleamers so that he and Stosh 41 could communicate in privacy, rather than through the cellmats.
In accordance with protocol, only one of Stosh 41’s kenners had an obsidian blade, and it was sheathed. Fed 94 had none at all, of course, unless he wanted to expend the energy to chew one out of the wall. He didn’t.
“Greetings Dreamer Stosh 41. May thy gases ever bubble and thy fluids ever flow.”
“Greetings Fed 94. Can we drop the formality? I’m not here as your executioner. Sadly, that will come later. Here, I’ve brought some sweet sulfur and mossweed. Please share them with me.”
Fed 94 reached out with a groomer and took the treats.
“Thanks, Stosh. So why did you accept my invitation? Is there anything here that you want?” he said conversationally, gesturing with one of his groomers at the chamber around them.
“No, Fed. I came here because we were once friends -- and to understand. We have rune memories of each other dating back to the Creation of the True Dream. Never have you fought against the Law. Until now. And I feel that I owe it to you and to the True Dream to understand your actions.”
“So, you don’t believe I’m an imposter, then? That I’m some sort of fake personality constructed from stolen bits and pieces of the True Dreamers, assembled by the nightmare, Chaos, to tempt you to divide by zero?”
“Please, Fed, try not to seduce me to heresy. We all believe in Chaos, though perhaps we all don’t claim to have personally seen him, or chased him into the extreme below, as Zert 256 often does in his bragging rants.
“I can see you are Fed. I recognize the groomer with the missing arm, and the kenner with the blind spot in its left eye. More importantly, I recognize your body language, your gestures. You are indeed Fed 94. But the Law demands that you be branded The Imposter. And that you die. I am here to understand why you did what you did. This is probably your only chance to explain. It took a lot of arguing and begging to persuade Tor 16 to allow me to talk to you at all.”
“Yes, and my only chance to explain with an audience that has not already pre-judged me? And will not shout me down with dogma?”
Stosh 41 shifted his lead kenners in some discomfort; two of them glanced at Fed 94’s library in the far corner.
“If you wish to explain, then do so freely. I will clutch my mandibles until you ask me to speak.”
“I require not absolute silence from you, Stosh, but attention, and dialog. I am so tired. I never intended to start a war, and could not foresee that it would be so protracted. And so painful.”
In the silence that followed, Stosh 41 offered, “Had you not spoken of your, uh, speculations first to Tor 16, this all may not have come to pass. He can be such a self-righteous mauler's backside at times. When he brought his charges to the Alliance-of-Six, there was no going back.”
Fed 94 sighed. “And I considered him my closest friend. I foolishly thought he would set aside his passion for the Law when he saw my evidence. I was such a spore-sucker!” He slammed two of his kenners together in anger, making a sharp clapping sound that briefly echoed in the chamber.
Again, Stosh 41 glanced at the library in the corner.
“Come. I see you wish to inspect my library. There is no reason why you cannot. Come,” insisted Fed 94 as he led the way to the neatly stacked stones, “you’ll find my cleaved fragment’s expedition to the extreme above here, and my interpretations and ‘speculations’ as you call them, in the stack just there.”
As he finished, a flurry of insectoid forms leaped off of Stosh 41’s leading kenners and onto the stones.
“I’ll let you peruse while I fetch some more refreshments. Do you take gold salts in your drink?”
Stosh 41 waved a groomer’s arm in affirmation as he concentrated on the stones.
Presently, four carriers approached the library with a sixteen of filled shallow bowls.
Various kenners and groomers of both Dreamers dipped into the bowls.
Fed 94 picked up the conversation, as it was common for Dreamers to engage in several tasks simultaneously. It would not distract Stosh 41 from his reading in the slightest.
“As you are no doubt aware, my territory is adjacent to the Great Steam Vent, and it is because of that, that I, and not some other Dreamer came upon the library of Ximra 2716. The Great Steam Vent forms a natural boundary, making Tor 16 and myself the southernmost Dreamers in this entire region. Near the Vent, the temperatures can vary over great and sometimes lethal ranges, though fortunately, never so quickly that I can’t avoid them.
“It was eighty gas cycles ago that the temperatures climbed quite alarmingly, and stayed high for an inordinate length of time. It was then I got the idea that if this heat pertained also to the regions above, it would permit exploration to regions that I had never dreamed of.
“I first sent two triads, but they were too stupid to bring back detailed observations. Fearing I would lose my opportunity, I... I cleaved myself, forming an eighth portion. That was very uncomfortable, if you want to know. Being face to face with a piece of yourself that is somehow not yourself, and responsible for its own actions, even its own speech, was terrifying, and yet in some bizarre way, exhilarating. However, I do not recommend it.
It ventured into the extreme above, paralleling the Great Steam Vent, carrying a supply of blank stones to record its exploration.
I lived in fear of discovery, in discomfort at having lost an eighth of my mind, and in fear that I would never retrieve it, for nearly three kenner generations, during which time I procreated replacements. The temperatures dropped. I began to give up hope. And then, it showed up at my chambers.” Fed 94 shook violently.
“Say there, what is the matter? You are become so agitated!”
“Stosh, you have no idea. The cleaved piece of me came back a total stranger. It had lost a third of itself to hunger and the terrible cold of the extreme above. It was mad. I tried to absorb it back into myself, but it would have no part of me. It fought me. It babbled incoherently about a great library it had found, hundreds of time larger than what I have here. And myriads of chambers and tunnels that went all the way up to... up to what it called, the End-of-the-Above.”
“The end of what? How can the above end? It just gets colder, that's all.”
“I did not understand, but it seemed to be referring to some kind of outer physical boundary to the True Dream, as irrational as that may sound.”
“You were right, Fed. The fragment was mad. It was the ranting of a diseased mind, taken over by Chaos. What did you do with it? Were you able to absorb it?”
“No. I tried to kill it. It threatened to go to the other Dreamers, and give them its stones. So I attacked it, but I was never very good at warfare, as you well know.”
Stosh 41 gave the three-kenner gesture of ironic amusement.
“I had no sooner stabbed the first component, when its carriers threw its library at me. In the confusion, it made good its escape, and vanished toward the Great Steam Vent. I gave chase. A generation later, I found several desicated corpses, but that was all.
“I was fully prepared to dismiss the entire affair, etch it all up to bad judgement or bad luck. But then I read the stones it had left behind.”
Stosh 41 nodded a kenner in agreement. “Yes, I understand. I am reading of the fragment’s discovery of the library of Ximra 2716. According to this, the author of that library was actually numbered among a population of sixteens of thousands! This is so unthinkable! As soon as the others read this, they will want to destroy all your stones. Your entire library. Nothing will be kept.”
“I know,” Fed 94 responded sadly. “That pains me even more than the imminence of my physical death. And that is why I called you to speak eye-to-eye with me. I want you to hide the fragment’s diary. Then come back for it after I’m gone. This knowledge must not disappear. It is too important. Too valuable. Please.”
“I cannot, Fed. They would kill me, too. And besides, you have no proof that any of this is any more than the ravings of a sick cleaved mind.”
“Yes, I do. Look, here are sixteen sixteens of chips from Ximra 2716’s own library.”
Fed 94 reached over to the wall, and peeled back a section of cellmat with several groomers. Underneath were four small stacks of odd-looking stones. They gleamed in the dim light.
“Great Curse of Chaos! They are so large, yet so thin. They’re not basalt or obsidian, what are they?”
“I cannot know for sure, but I suspect they are pure metallic gold. I chewed off a corner of one, and managed to dissolve it in some purple algae acid. It tasted just like gold salts, though so intense that I had to dilute it. There is some of it in your drink.”
Stosh 41 was visibly astonished. The hands of his groomers caressed the polished surfaces. His readers swarmed over them.
“The writing is incredibly fine, and yet difficult to read.”
“Yes,” answered Fed 94 excitedly, “there are many symbols I do not recognize, and others which are used in strange ways. For example, how about here,” pointing with one of his own readers, “where it speaks of procreating a new Dreamer? We can procreate kenners or groomers, but what does it mean to procreate a new Dreamer? If that is anything like cleaving, then it’s sacrilege. And yet, here it is spoken of as normal. There are other passages that chronicle the rise in Dreamer population over geologic times. How can that be if the True Dream only has room and resources for the three hundred and twenty-six Dreamers that we know of? Or believe we know of.”
“Despite the difficulties, much of the gold plates can be read. Once, all Dreamers lived in the extreme above, even above where this library was found. Ximra 2716 spoke of the temperatures dropping and having to burrow ever deeper into the below to find living space. He was agonizing over his inability to carry his entire library with him, he would have to leave the vastly greater part behind. It ends with a greeting to whomever finds it, welcoming them to take whatever they wish.”
Stosh 41 was entirely focused on the gold plates. He was hooked, even as Fed 94 had been hooked so long ago. Here was more gold metal than all the Dreamers had in their hordes. And not just tiny nuggets or beads, but finely crafted rune stones, that told fantastic tales of an ancient civilization that was not apparently subject to the Law. And some of the stones spoke of myths and legends as far back from Ximra 2716’s time, as Ximra 2716 was from Fed 94’s time. Perhaps hundreds of millions of kenner generations. One of the myths was that of the End-of-the-Above, the original source of all Life. It was all so bizarre as to stagger the mind.
Time passed. Fed 94 prepared victuals and more drink, and waited for Stosh 41 to come up for air, which he eventually did. Reaching for the proffered algae ball, he gave thanks, and tossed it into a gaping kenner mandible.
“I feel odd, Fed, in accepting such gracious hospitality, after I have participated in your condemnation. You should be angry at me, not feeding me.”
“And I feel equally odd knowing that I’m about to die, and yet having such kinship with one of my vanquishers. I wish I had it all to do over again. I would have chosen you or even Pan 88 to reveal my secret to.”
“Yes, Pan 88 would have been a good choice. You know, he refused to participate in this war against you. Claimed he could never take blade against someone who had been such a good neighbor for so long.”
Fed 94 nodded sadly. “It’s ironic that I never talked to him eye-to-eye as I have with others. Oh, well. What do you think of the library of Ximra 2716?”
“You were right, Fed. This cannot be destroyed. But you have given me an idea. I can have Pan 88 slip quietly to your western border and slip away again. No one need know, and Pan 88 can be trusted to remain quiet. It shouldn’t take more than six carriers to haul these. And perhaps another six to carry the obsidian stones that you...that is, your cleaved fragment, chronicled his journey on. Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Stosh. I can go to my death without shame now. And without fear.”
Stosh 41’s kenners began to shake violently.
“Oh, Fed, we have committed such an injustice against you! You shouldn’t have to die for our mistake!”
“There, there,” Fed 94 whispered, stroking the other softly, “you could not know the truth without seeing the library of Ximra 2716, and after I rashly tried to tell my secret to Tor 16, and he went to the council of dogma with charges of impostership, all else was inevitable and unavoidable. Let it be. I yet have one more favor to ask, and one more adventure to take.”
Stosh 41 composed himself slowly and with difficulty.
“And what is this last favor?”
“I can take my death trek through any unconstructed territory, right?” Stosh 41 nodded agreement. “Then I wish to trek up the Great Steam Vent. You may have noticed that during this last generation the temperatures around here have been on the rise again. With any luck, I might be able to rediscover Ximra 2716’s original horde of rune stones. Maybe more. Who knows.”
Stosh 41 bobbed several kenner heads in unison, a gesture of smiling. “And to what purpose? You are very unlikely to survive the trip back, and if you do, you will be killed on sight.”
“Well, what if I could drag Ximra 2716’s entire library to the Great Steam Vent and throw it in? There is a region of the Vent not far above here where great mats of fungus feed on the hot rising steam. After the Vent cools, a properly protected mauler might be able to fetch anything that fell down the Vent and got caught in those mats.”
His companion mused over this suggestion while he fed and supped at the refreshments.
“Yes, it might work. I will call in some favors. Ordinarily a death trek is not allowed near a hallowed place, but I think I can convince Tor 16 and any others to waive their objections. Consider that done, too.
“And now I must go. Carry these stones as close to the Purple Algae Farms as you dare, and I will arrange for Pan 88 to collect them.
“Good luck, Fed. And please accept my sorrow, as late as it is.”
Fed 94’s groomers clasped Stosh 41’s groomers in an embrace, and soon he was once again alone under house arrest. There was nothing to do but carry off the heretical stones and prepare for his stripping.

---ooo---

It was agony beyond anything he had ever imagined. Not so much physical agony, but the excruciating terror of being cut off from the vast majority of his physical being, and the remainder compressed into a wad of writhing bodies and limbs.
He had only his kenners, and a portion of his groomers, feeders, gleamers and carriers. He had also been allowed to keep some readers and etchers. But to maintain his mind, all of his remaining components had to keep in physical contact. They could be no further apart than the short tentacles that normally connected each component to the cellmats.
Only here, there was no cellmat, just bare, naked rock with sharp edges that cut at his flesh. Phantom pain from his absent members assaulted him. Phantom voices and sensations swirled in his mind, only to disappear as he tried to focus on them.
He was alternately suffocatingly hot, and freezing cold. The tunnel he was ascending traveled first toward, and then away from the Great Steam Vent. He could rest only when the tunnel happened to travel through a region of moderate temperature. There he would parcel out a precious portion of his food supply, and attempt to refresh himself.
He had no idea where the remainder of Ximra 2716’s library was. If only he had been able to merge with his cleaved fragment, then those biologic memories would be available. The fragment had etched some stones of its own, and there were directions given, but they were not wholly lucid, and Fed 94 had become lost.
Now he knew what torture his cleaved fragment had suffered. Now he knew what it was to doubt his sanity. The only thing that kept him from surrendering to the madness was his unshakeable drive to reach Ximra 2716’s original library.
He resumed his ascent, noticing that the gases he breathed had lost their normal taste. Perhaps it was the loss of pressure this far in the extreme above.
Distracted as he was, Fed 94 did not hear the approaching noise, the sound of some great beast shrieking. All huddled together, and bound by interlinked tentacles, he rounded a corner... into a wind more forceful than he had ever experienced. It pulled at his outer components so viciously, that several lost their grip and disappeared into the maelstrom. He struggled to back up. He could not.
He was overwhelmed and swept into the windstream. Time and time again, he impacted a tunnel wall, and components were knocked off and scattered into the darkness. He was being beaten to death.
And then the impacts ended. Everything ended except the wind and the noise. There was nothing visible within the range of the light of his remaining few gleamers.
It was hot and damp. He could hardly breathe at all, and when he did, there were pangs of pain deep within his every component. He recognized the pain. He had once ventured to the very edge of the Great Steam Vent, near the fungal mats that he had spoken of to Stosh 41 and had felt that same pain breathing the hot gases.
He was being carried up the Great Steam Vent in a whirlwind.
He was losing his mind. He thought that he had already lost it. He couldn’t tell if his components were still hanging together, as his senses of touch had become numb. The noise and the heat overwhelmed any attempt to compose a thought.
And just as he was slipping into the mental blackness of mind-death, the temperature dropped and the roar lessened. He roused himself -- an act of supreme effort. And felt nothing. Nothing except pain.
He opened some eyes but saw nothing. But these eyes felt burned and sick. Perhaps they were blind. He opened other eyes, and beheld light! He was rushing up (down? along?) a vast tunnel toward a splotch of intensely bright lights. It was impossible to tell if he was seeing blurry lights clearly, or if his vision was distorted.
The gases became cooler, even as his sense of taste disappeared altogether. There were a thousand sharp pains in his ears. The roar of the wind vanished.
With a gasp of terror, he saw motion! The end of the tunnel! It was lit well enough to see that it was huge, farther across than any cavern he had ever witnessed. The lips of the tunnel expanded quickly apart, and the splotch of lights expanded to fill half his vision.
Even greater than the terror, was his fascination. He understood almost nothing of what he was seeing, yet he could not refuse to see it. As painful as claustrophobia was, he was now experiencing something even more uncomfortable. Openness. Vastness. Unboundedness.
His flight took him frightfully near one edge of the tunnel, then up and out. His trajectory curved sharply, until he impacted a high point on the very lip of the tunnel.
He was plunged into a bank of bright, frothy, crunchy material which was not unlike shaved ice, only softer. He was bitterly cold. He tried to breathe, but could not. He looked frantically all around. He was on a high point of a vast, dappled white floor. There were no walls. There was no ceiling.
Above was... indefinable distance filled with incredible smears and points of light. Light of awesome purity and brilliance set within a textured blackness of unspeakable beauty.
A portion of this vista above him was partially blotted out by a huge column of gray, dusty gas that emerged from the tunnel mouth, ascended to some unguessable height, and then drifted away to a horizon that barely distinguished the sky from the distant terrain. Around him, in all directions, was a landscape, so vast and so alien as to defy understanding. But in a sudden spasm of insight, Fed 94 knew where he was. Knew with a certainty that was transformed into ecstasy.
Even as he felt his components dying one by one, he activated an etcher, willed it to move. And a carrier. Swiftly, clumsily, he etched a basalt chip, until he knew that he could hang on to his consciousness no longer. With one last spark of strength, his carrier flung the chip into the maw of the Great Steam Vent.
And then he turned all his remaining eyes up to the heavens.
He was filled with ecstatic joy.
Death came down from the stars and he surrendered himself painlessly into its loving arms.

---ooo---

Generations later, Stosh 41 would make his twelth expedition to the fungal mats of the Great Steam Vent. He had promised himself this would be his last.
Sure enough, properly shielded maulers were best able to resist the heat, and their mandibles, capable of wielding an obsidian blade in a fight, were ideal for grasping the tiny chip of basalt that he had almost overlooked.
On it was hastily etched:
End-of-Above
Joy
Pain
Lights
Come
94.
It would yet be another quarter million kenner generations, before the distant descendents of Stosh 41 and the other Dreamers, would stand on the Surface of their orphan world, clothed in technology. And they would look up and behold the panorama of stars and nebulae in their sky, and know them for what they were. They would name their galaxy – the milky band of stars in their sky, "The Joy-Pain Lights of 94".
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