Tales from the Inbox: The Heights of Herakles

2946-07-09 - Tales from the Inbox: The Heights of Herakles

Nojus was alone. 

He preferred it that way; he’d had partners in the past, but they always seemed to get in the way and cause. He was getting old, but he figured he had ten years left, if not fifteen, before he began to slow down. His followers would be heartbroken the day he hung up his survival multitool and retired to some tropical paradise on a pleasant world, of course; but they’d get over it in time to buy his memoir a few years after that.

Nojus glanced up at the pair of camera drones which hovered a few meters above and behind him. Green lights on each indicated that they were recording. Taking a deep breath of the thin mountain air, he turned around for one last look at his campsite. All the trappings of technology were piled next to the wind-proof tent, already half-buried in driving snow. The weather was far from perfect, but the viewers wouldn’t mind. After all, Nojus’s datasphere audience consumed his footage to see an explorer brave the harshest conditions on any world, armed with nothing but his trusty Reed-Soares Portable Survival Utility, and his sponsors at Reed-Soares Industries were happy as long as their product was occasionally waved where the audience could see it.

Wrapping his simple cloth cloak around his broad shoulders, Nojus turned toward the ridgeline which he’d come to scale. He was already two thirds of the way up to the top, but the final third of the climb was known to be the most perilous, and that would be what the viewers would want to see most. With a flick of his wrist, the big man altered his multitool to take the form of a climber’s pick and tied a length of simple polymer cord to its handle. Technically, rope bent the rules for his videos, but any time he was climbing, he brought some along; the viewers understood his desire not to plummet to his death in a remote mountain gorge.

Despite its reputation for being a perilous ascent which claimed many climbers, Nojus found the ridge ascent surprisingly easy; the rock and ice was crisscrossed with ridges and cracks that provided plenty of handholds, and once he started, the mountain’s shoulder blocked the worst of the wind-blown snow. He’d climbed far worse mountains with far less imposing reputations in the past; once again, he was being disappointed by a peril not quite living up to his expectations. The drones, unperturbed, hovered overhead, and he remembered to occasionally give them a good shot of his trusty, gleaming survival tool. He even made it look a bit more challenging; Nojus would never fake a near miss, but he did put more heaviness in his movements, as if the cold – which was unpleasant, but not a real concern – was seeping into his bones bit by bit. It would build suspense, and keep the audience invested in his journey longer.

The first time Nojus saw the claw-marks, he didn’t think anything of them. They might have been tool-marks from previous climbers – dozens of teams had climbed the ridge since Herakles was colonized, and many had vanished trying. The second time he spotted the marks, he began to realize what he was seeing, and by the third set, he began to grow concerned. Mountains on most worlds were lifeless wastelands, of course – a large animal climbing so far would be rare. Herakles, however, had an unusyally thick atmosphere that was breathable by humans even at the tops of the tallest mountains. It was quite possible, he decided, that local wildlife might prowl the peaks. Nothing of the sort had been in the reports he’d read about the place before climbing it, but even a Core World still sometimes had surprises for its human inhabitants.

Two hours after leaving most of his gear behind, Nojus stood only a few meters from the crest. Beyond, he knew the ridge dropped down at a dramatic angle to the plain on the far side, looking out over a largely uninhabited but lush region of jungles and marshlands. If the weather was clear, he might have been able to get a shot of himself standing there, with the gleaming sea in the far distance – but given the overcast and snow, he knew he’d be lucky to get a shot where the next peak on the ridgeline could be seen over his shoulder.

There was a tremor in the rock under the explorer’s boots as he took a step toward the lip. Frowning, he looked around, wondering whether he’d triggered an avalanche. He saw nothing, but the mountain blocked his view in three directions.

There was another tremor. In front of Nojus, a giant black paw reached up from below and gripped the top of the ridge. As he took a surprised step backward, the creature it belonged to clambered fully up onto the precipice. Nojus doubted the beast was in the Heraklean catalog; he’d heard of nothing like it. Its powerful, vaguely catlike form was almost eight meters tall at the shoulder, and its pelt of ropy, black hairs seemed to defy the driving snow. At first, it didn’t seem to notice that it was not alone on the summit. Nojus crouched low, quickly punching a new code into the handle controls of his multitool. It lengthened and flattened into a machete shape, with a long, curved cutting blade. It was the closest thing to a weapon pattern he had available, since he’d uninstalled the fishing harpoon configuration to make room for a few others that might be more useful when climbing a mountain. 

The creature eventually noticed Nojus and, as if surprised, wheeled its head toward him, roaring into the blowing wind. The camera drones were, of course, still recording. 

“What a pleasant surprise!” The explorer shouted back, raising his blade-configured multitool in challenge. He had begun to worry that footage of his adventure was turning out to be distressingly dull. 

Some of you probably recognize the name of the audience member who submitted this story - it's none other than Nojus Brand, a vidcast personality in his own right with a massive audience.

Nojus sends us this story rather than publishing the full-capture drone footage because, according to him, the creature he encountered on the mountaintop snapped up his drones, then darted away. He sent a video of himself telling the story our way, hoping I could do something with it. As an occasional consumer of Mr. Brand's vidcast content, I was only too happy to oblige.

Any of you who know the work of Nojus Brand know that he is somewhat given to getting carried away in recounting his own exploits. I don't think this story is made up wholesale, but I do confess I suspect it might be exaggerated. The creature in particular was probably a Heraklean mountain lion, despite his assertion that it was unknown to the human population of that world, and according to information I could find, they never get larger than about three meters tall at the shoulder. That's still a gigantic predator, but we can forgive Nojus for overestimating its size in his excitement.

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Special Announcement: Interview With Delegate Nisi-Bonn

2946-07-06 - Special Announcement: Interview With Delegate Nisi-Bonn

Tomorrow's vidcast episode features a special interview with Delegate Sylja Nisi-Bonn of Mars, chairing the New Rheims Investigation in Confederated Congress. Topics covered during this interview will include the investigation, but will also cover the delegate's effort to secure one of the newly opened frontier worlds as an Atro'me enclave, to increase the percentage of Navy budget earmarked for frontier exploration and security, and to continue the trade embargo of the Rahl Hegemony.

The interview is expected to fill the entire time of the episode. Ashton has prearranged the sorts of topics to be covered, but not the specific questions to be asked, with Delegate Nisi-Bonn's staff.

As there are no special episodes planned for tomorrow, this will have no effect on the show schedule over the next few days.

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Tales from the Inbox: Cupid's Scattergun

2946-06-05 - Tales from the Inbox: Cupid's Scattergun

Today's Tales from the Inbox is brought to us by Ali W., who thankfully waited until the situation had resolved itself before sending us anything. Evidently, this took place a little more than a year ago, and he is now working with a new partner, in large part due to the events described here.

Ali's submission went out of its way to avoid explaining what happened to Mahir and Konnila. if either one ingests this text feed, they might provide the rest of the story.

As a note, the musings on mythology summarized here are original to the submission. Ali wrote a fair bit more on the topic than I retained for the text feed.

Ali didn’t know much about the mythologies of ancient peoples, but he did remember that some ancient cultures on Earth, before the Space Ages, believed in a magical creature which was responsible for people falling in love. He’d always considered the idea to be grotesque, even by the standards of ancient peoples; after all, they pictured the agent of love as a winged child, often little more than a toddler, which wore a blindfold and lurked in bushes and behind rocks places with a bow and arrow, with which it shot random passerby. Ali had always wondered how they thought it hit anything while blindfolded, and how its chubby little child’s arms could draw back a bow with enough strength to fire even the smallest arrow.

Ali also knew that at some point, the ancients figured out this wasn’t actually the cause of romantic feelings and came up with a better explanation. They kept the creepy bush-sitting child sniper image around, but only as a metaphor. He’d always wondered how the consistent lack of arrow wounds among the love-struck had not undone the whole idea before it could even get started.

Though he used to laugh at such superstitious nonsense, Ali has lately found plenty of reasons to sympathize with the people who came up with such wild theories. Ali and his partner operate a small-freight hauler on the Coreward Frontier, and after a recent run, their two-man crew gained a third member. Ali sends us the story of how it happened. “The whole Cupid legend isn’t as idiotic as I used to think.” He said, in the introduction he sent in. “But I’m pretty sure the little punk has traded in his bow. He snuck onto our ship armed with a scattergun.”

Elena Finn is not a very large ship. There are only six cabins, and the crew use two of them. Most of the hull volume is taken up by a pressurized cargo hold, intended for sensitive cargoes which need regular inspection. Conditions onboard aren’t exactly what anyone would call luxury travel accommodations, but Ali and his partner Mahir still find passengers from time to time. Most of their runs are hauling freight rather than people; small ships like theirs tend to move fragile cargoes and too small to fill the holds of the big hauler ships, but too important to wait for the hauler to fill the rest of its hold with other goods. For Ali and Mahir, medical equipment and supplies are the core of the business. Most of the new colony worlds hit some sort of medical emergency or sudden shortage every so often, and the nearest available stockpiles of what they need are at Maribel, or even all the way back at Jansing. Lugging crates of surgical machinery to and from the new colonies isn’t glamorous or exciting, but it is steady work which pays their bills.

Ali and Mahir had just unloaded just such a cargo on one of the colonies and were prepared to return with an empty hold when Mahir went out to buy a few last-minute supplies and found a well-dressed Atro’me wandering around the planet’s drab orbital spaceport, hoping to find a ship with enough free berths to take his family back to Maribel. Mahir, knowing that the addition of six passengers on a leg Elena Finn was already going to travel would be a profitable arrangement, negotiated a very reasonable fare, then hurried off to find a software patch to allow the ship’s food processors to cater to Atro’me diets. 

Ali was still installing the patch when the Atro’me family arrived at the boarding hatch. Hearing Mahir’s description, he’d expected two adults and four children, but all six of this family looked to be adults, or nearly so. The parents walked ahead of their brood, their more upright bearing, darker red skin, and visibly faded follicle crests marking them as older and of higher standing, and the other four, though bedecked with the wild, vibrant crest colors and brighter, almost orange-hued skin of their kind’s youth, kept their heads bowed, indicating their lower station.

It’s not always easy to tell at a glance with Atro’me, but Ali came to realize that three of the four youths were females; the fourth, the oldest child, was a male. They all spoke Terran Anglo fluently, of course – it’s rare to find an Atro’me who doesn’t – and as Elena Finn got underway, the youths decided to wander through the ship, curious as to what it contained. After the youngest, a quiet female named Konnila, set off alarms by finding her way into one of the maintenance crawlspaces, Ali organized the passengers into the lounge and laid down the law about what was off-limits during the five-day journey to Maribel. Evidently, he laid it down too well; the Atro’me stayed in the habitation compartments after that, but only the family patriarch spoke to him for the rest of the trip.

To smooth things over, Mahir did most of the interacting with the passengers. Ali could see that his partner didn’t mind this arrangement; Mahir was the more outgoing of the two anyway. Whenever he was not needed to run the ship, the man started spending much of his time in the lounge, swapping stories with whichever subset of the passengers happened to be there at the time.

It was clear to Ali that the passengers all seemed to like Mahir, but it became increasingly obvious that the three girls seemed to hang on his every story, often remaining in the lounge with him long after their brother and parents had retired for a sleep cycle. At first, Ali didn’t think anything of it; Mahir was the sort who loved having an audience – any audience – for his embellished tales. He probably didn’t think too hard about why he had the audience he had. Ali had his suspicions about the way his partner smiled at the oldest sister, but didn’t think that there would be much of a problem. The way he looked at it, the person responsible for reining in any potential problems was the girls’ father, not Ali himself. If the family patriarch didn’t see any problems with the situation, and Mahir didn‘t see any problems with it either, Ali decided he would let it run its course.

Ali soon came to regret his decision. When Elena Finn reached Maribel, each of the three girls independently arranged to return to the ship after their family disembarked. The older two had returned with luggage, indicating that they meant to stay aboard, if they were allowed to do so, while the youngest had brought nothing. None of them anticipated running into her sisters in the corridor in front of Mahir’s cabin.

The security system aboard Elena Finn doesn’t capture sound, but what happened next was not witnessed by either member of the crew until Ali found the recordings several days later. They indicate that this unexpected meeting turned into a chaotic, three-way argument before the two older girls fell upon each other. Atro’me are distinctive for their wide mouths filled with jagged shark-like teeth, and I shudder to think of the sorts of injuries those two girls inflicted, biting, clawing, punching, and generally tearing at each other with wild abandon.

The third Atro’me girl, Konnila, stood aghast at this struggle for several seconds, ignored by her older siblings. This was, of course, the very same curious explorer who’d set off alarms on the first day of the voyage by getting into the maintenance crawlspaces. She was the quietest of the passengers, especially after Ali’s lecture about off-limits areas, but in the struggle of her two sisters, she saw an opportunity.

Moving quickly, she took up the heavy polymer travel-case the oldest girl had brought. Swinging it overhand like an inefficient club, she battered her sisters over the head with it as they struggled on the floor until both had stopped moving. Ali doubted, upon seeing this, that Konnila was strong enough to kill them with the semi-rigid piece of luggage, but he couldn’t be sure, from the recordings alone. Before either had regained consciousness, their younger sister dragged them one at a time to the airlock and down the boarding umbilical into the station, and that was the last Ali saw of either of them. If they did come to, either they gave up and retreated to tend to their wounds, or they never managed to find a way back onto the ship in time. She kept their bags, including the newly-dented one she’d used to batter them into submission.

Composing herself, this formerly shy young woman returned to looking for Mahir, now standing a little prouder than she had since boarding the ship. Mahir bumped into her when he finished his inspection rounds twenty minutes later. She made quite the impression on him, as I understand it; despite first appearing shy, Konnila turned out to be quite enthusiastic and unwilling to take no for an answer. When Ali returned to the ship after arranging a new cargo, Mahir convinced him to let the Atro’me girl, probably no older than twenty T-years, stay aboard.

Of course, Ali didn’t see the security recordings until long after he’d agreed, and Elena Finn was a day and a half out from Maribel loaded with yet another cargo. When he finally did find them, it was just as he was beginning to grow used to the addition to his crew; after all, Konnila rarely ventured out of Mahir’s cabin, and when she did, she knew where not to go and what not to touch. Mahir had even managed to teach her to read a maintenance probe’s cryptic display, allowing her to help with the constant maintenance of Elena Finn.

Of course, now Ali had the recordings, and he needed to figure out what to do about it. Mahir, he knew, would stumble on them eventually, and even deleting them would only prolong the inevitable. Mahir kept backups, and those couldn’t be deleted. The longer Ali kept the secret, the more tainted by inevitable fallout he’d be.

Sighing heavily and reaching under the pilot’s console for the flask which he kept there for special occasions, Ali called his partner to the helm.  

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Upcoming Events: Feedback Loop Live Show Benefiting NRRF

2946-07-02 - Upcoming Events: Upcoming Events: Feedback Loop Live Show Benefiting NRRF

Sovanna Rostami's live edition of Feedback Loop at Sheridan Amphitheater will take place tomorrow night, starting at 1:6:00 local time. The show is sold out, but the venue is selling virtual attendance passes on its datasphere hub. As with regular ticket sales, the proceeds from a purchase of a virtual attendance pass will go to the New Rheims Relief Fund.

We would also like to take a moment to thank all the members of the Cosmic Background community who donated to the NRRF or reached out to help the distressed people of New Rheims in kind. For every hundred credits tomorrow's event has raised for this cause, NRRF estimates that independent donations and in-kind aid from our audience has provided about two thousand credits. We'd also like to extend particular thanks to the crews of the Neha Pierno, the Pitambara, and the Myzka 61, who have been working tirelessly to evacuate the affected population to safety on Bellerose. It's projected that the entire populaiton of New Rheims will be evacuated in time, largely due to the efforts of these three super-haulers and their crews. Evidently, there are Cosmic Background audience-members on all three crews, including the captain of Pitambara, Thais Mag Uidhir.

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