Off-worlder
Watching from orbit
A complete turn-a-bout for me.
Its unfinished and a completely different path from what I normally do. Another of those things that pops in to your head.
Tell me what you think.
--------------------------------------------------------
Taganoch was confused.
In fact he was very confused. He was so confused that he searched his vast data banks to see if there was an alternative meaning for confused that might make more sense than the meaning he already knew.
The computer chewed on his request for a short while before spewing out several hundred different meanings from the 9000 or so languages it had access to.
Taganoch stared at the VDU, as row upon row of meaningless, meanings scrolled across the screen. He paused the flow every now and then to read a few of them. None of them made any sense, though he did like the Liverdian meaning for confused that said the best way to avoid being confused was to remove the source of the confusion with the aid of a large energy weapon.
He liked this one. After all he had a cause of confusion. Boy did he have a cause for confusion and he had plenty of energy weapons.
His gelatinous body rippled with excitement. Maybe he could pretend he was Liverdian? After all the inhabitants of the planet he was on wouldn’t know the difference, as they had no star drive and the fuel hungry reaction engines they had developed could barely carry them to their own single moon. And by the look of it they hadn’t been there for a while, never mind to the next solar system, inhabited or otherwise.
This Liverdian plan seemed to get better by the minute, and he was almost up to the point of choosing which energy weapon he should use when a sound like a door being kicked came from the back of his brain.
Taganoch didn’t like this; he was having an independent thought. Oh God! He didn’t need this. He was already confused enough as it was.
The door gave way. –
The thought was making a bid for freedom. It had spent a long time stewing in the mental block and it couldn’t take the stupidity anymore.
It hurtled down once familiar corridors towards the central intelligence. The bodies of good ideas and things to do littered the floor. The thought leaped and dodged its way down the blackened un-lit corridors, occasionally tripping and landing in foul smelling puddles. At one point it hid from a stupidity guard that was trying to arrest the ceiling for mutiny. The thought slinked by and continued until finally it reached the door it needed and stopped dead!
A large sign on the door signified this was indeed the Central Intelligence, but underneath a smaller sign read ‘Moved to room 101’.
The thought didn’t know what to do, so it opened the door and peeked inside. The office was unlit and completely empty.
Now the thought was confused!
In its hay-day the office had controlled everything and used to be occupied by thousands of command structures and computers of every type. Now it was desolate. The thought closed the door. It glanced up and down the corridor unsure of its next action.
A puddle of light a few doors away-indicated life. The thought headed towards it.
The office window was caked in dirt and took a good rub to clear enough to see inside. This office was much smaller than the main office. The filthy, grime covered walls were plastered with gordy pin-ups; the floor was ankle deep in old magazines and fast food wrappers. The whole mess dimly lit by a single, low wattage light bulb.
A movement caught the thoughts eye. A short, fat, putrid almost mucus like body was hunched over the tiny control panel. It clutched something in its hand, but the thought couldn’t tell what.
Then something occurred to the thought. It knew what this creature, this creature that was in charge of the Central Intelligence, was.
It was an Immoral Thought!!
The thought could not believe it! An immoral thought! The lowest of the low. The scummiest of scum. The dirtiest, most foul smelling thought ever to exist.
He entered the room.
The immoral turned to face him. A look of pure shock on its fat, be-speckled face and a ragged copy of ‘Play Synapx’ clutched to its chest.
The thought went straight to the control panel. Instead of the vast collection of digital read-outs and dials it was expecting, it found a solitary intelligence gauge with the needle hovering dangerously close to empty.
“Who’s in charge?” The thought asked angrily.
The immoral slowly pointed to a large, encrusted scab on its left lapel. The thought looked closely at the two words –‘Intelligence Commander’. The thought stood back in shock. How could this abomination be in control? Where were all the other thoughts? The command lines? The automatic processes?
An evil grin cracked across the face of the immoral. “Report!” it croaked.
The thought wanted to hold back. Refuse to say anything to this.. This! THIS!! But it couldn’t hold back. This was his supreme commander and he had to report. So he did.
Taganoch simply stared into space.
His piggy eyes staring out of his great, green, gelatinous head. The rest of his body, unable to support its own girth, swilled around in a huge, thick walled, crystalline container. In effect he looked like a slug in a test tube. The only other protrusions where his fingerless, jelly like limbs that seemed to ooze from his shoulders. They had no real strength, but could be used to operate some of the proximity controls spread around his command post. And not unlike most other Mimmerian explorers his mind was remotely linked to the ships computer.
Or at least it should be.
This was Taganoch’s problem. For some reason his cerebral bionics were malfunctioning and he did not know why?
He still had basic ‘take me there, bring me that’ control, which is just as well as he was dependant on the ship for his every need, but the higher functions that enable his bionics to act as a hyper-computer had failed.
This was doubly unfortunate, as like most Mimmerian’s had done for centuries, he used the main computer to house most of his intelligence.
He could no longer plot a course for his ship to pinball it’s way across the galaxy, bouncing from magnetosphere to magnetosphere. Actually he could no longer remember how to start the engines.
But, not to worry.
He had managed to send a distress signal. Well the ship had. It mistook his feeble attempts to use the communicator for an enemy attack and automatically sent a distress call. It then threatened to vaporise him if he didn’t stop messing with the controls.
He didn’t move for nearly twelve hours.
That was nearly four of this planet’s lunar cycles ago. With any luck the rescue fleet would arrive in another three cycles, and if things went as normal they would rescue him, give the people of the planet a good ticking off via their own communications channels and then remove the entire outer crust from the planets surface, deep sea canyons, mountains the lot! If they were feeling generous they may only go down to one kilometre. But with all the inhabitants of the planet had done to him over the past cycles, he wasn’t feeling very generous so he may go as deep as ten kilometres.
The actual operation was very interesting to watch and always reminded him of peeling a great Jum-jar fruit. Not that he had peeled one ‘personally’, but he had seen the computer do it many times.
One thing he couldn’t work out was why the self-diagnostics couldn’t find anything wrong. It said that everything was fine and all he had to do was give the order and they would blast off! But whenever he tried to use his higher functions the ship didn’t recognise him and threatened to blast him if he tried again?
Oh hurry up rescue fleet!
Taganoch was again frozen in a nonsensical stupor. The independent thought had made its way to his brain and told him something everybody else would have spotted immediately. It was about his plan to pretend to be a Liverdian. It wouldn’t work.
---------------------------------
Any thoughts anyone???
Oh, and sorry about the tabs. Not sure what happened there.
Its unfinished and a completely different path from what I normally do. Another of those things that pops in to your head.
Tell me what you think.
--------------------------------------------------------
Taganoch was confused.
In fact he was very confused. He was so confused that he searched his vast data banks to see if there was an alternative meaning for confused that might make more sense than the meaning he already knew.
The computer chewed on his request for a short while before spewing out several hundred different meanings from the 9000 or so languages it had access to.
Taganoch stared at the VDU, as row upon row of meaningless, meanings scrolled across the screen. He paused the flow every now and then to read a few of them. None of them made any sense, though he did like the Liverdian meaning for confused that said the best way to avoid being confused was to remove the source of the confusion with the aid of a large energy weapon.
He liked this one. After all he had a cause of confusion. Boy did he have a cause for confusion and he had plenty of energy weapons.
His gelatinous body rippled with excitement. Maybe he could pretend he was Liverdian? After all the inhabitants of the planet he was on wouldn’t know the difference, as they had no star drive and the fuel hungry reaction engines they had developed could barely carry them to their own single moon. And by the look of it they hadn’t been there for a while, never mind to the next solar system, inhabited or otherwise.
This Liverdian plan seemed to get better by the minute, and he was almost up to the point of choosing which energy weapon he should use when a sound like a door being kicked came from the back of his brain.
Taganoch didn’t like this; he was having an independent thought. Oh God! He didn’t need this. He was already confused enough as it was.
The door gave way. –
The thought was making a bid for freedom. It had spent a long time stewing in the mental block and it couldn’t take the stupidity anymore.
It hurtled down once familiar corridors towards the central intelligence. The bodies of good ideas and things to do littered the floor. The thought leaped and dodged its way down the blackened un-lit corridors, occasionally tripping and landing in foul smelling puddles. At one point it hid from a stupidity guard that was trying to arrest the ceiling for mutiny. The thought slinked by and continued until finally it reached the door it needed and stopped dead!
A large sign on the door signified this was indeed the Central Intelligence, but underneath a smaller sign read ‘Moved to room 101’.
The thought didn’t know what to do, so it opened the door and peeked inside. The office was unlit and completely empty.
Now the thought was confused!
In its hay-day the office had controlled everything and used to be occupied by thousands of command structures and computers of every type. Now it was desolate. The thought closed the door. It glanced up and down the corridor unsure of its next action.
A puddle of light a few doors away-indicated life. The thought headed towards it.
The office window was caked in dirt and took a good rub to clear enough to see inside. This office was much smaller than the main office. The filthy, grime covered walls were plastered with gordy pin-ups; the floor was ankle deep in old magazines and fast food wrappers. The whole mess dimly lit by a single, low wattage light bulb.
A movement caught the thoughts eye. A short, fat, putrid almost mucus like body was hunched over the tiny control panel. It clutched something in its hand, but the thought couldn’t tell what.
Then something occurred to the thought. It knew what this creature, this creature that was in charge of the Central Intelligence, was.
It was an Immoral Thought!!
The thought could not believe it! An immoral thought! The lowest of the low. The scummiest of scum. The dirtiest, most foul smelling thought ever to exist.
He entered the room.
The immoral turned to face him. A look of pure shock on its fat, be-speckled face and a ragged copy of ‘Play Synapx’ clutched to its chest.
The thought went straight to the control panel. Instead of the vast collection of digital read-outs and dials it was expecting, it found a solitary intelligence gauge with the needle hovering dangerously close to empty.
“Who’s in charge?” The thought asked angrily.
The immoral slowly pointed to a large, encrusted scab on its left lapel. The thought looked closely at the two words –‘Intelligence Commander’. The thought stood back in shock. How could this abomination be in control? Where were all the other thoughts? The command lines? The automatic processes?
An evil grin cracked across the face of the immoral. “Report!” it croaked.
The thought wanted to hold back. Refuse to say anything to this.. This! THIS!! But it couldn’t hold back. This was his supreme commander and he had to report. So he did.
Taganoch simply stared into space.
His piggy eyes staring out of his great, green, gelatinous head. The rest of his body, unable to support its own girth, swilled around in a huge, thick walled, crystalline container. In effect he looked like a slug in a test tube. The only other protrusions where his fingerless, jelly like limbs that seemed to ooze from his shoulders. They had no real strength, but could be used to operate some of the proximity controls spread around his command post. And not unlike most other Mimmerian explorers his mind was remotely linked to the ships computer.
Or at least it should be.
This was Taganoch’s problem. For some reason his cerebral bionics were malfunctioning and he did not know why?
He still had basic ‘take me there, bring me that’ control, which is just as well as he was dependant on the ship for his every need, but the higher functions that enable his bionics to act as a hyper-computer had failed.
This was doubly unfortunate, as like most Mimmerian’s had done for centuries, he used the main computer to house most of his intelligence.
He could no longer plot a course for his ship to pinball it’s way across the galaxy, bouncing from magnetosphere to magnetosphere. Actually he could no longer remember how to start the engines.
But, not to worry.
He had managed to send a distress signal. Well the ship had. It mistook his feeble attempts to use the communicator for an enemy attack and automatically sent a distress call. It then threatened to vaporise him if he didn’t stop messing with the controls.
He didn’t move for nearly twelve hours.
That was nearly four of this planet’s lunar cycles ago. With any luck the rescue fleet would arrive in another three cycles, and if things went as normal they would rescue him, give the people of the planet a good ticking off via their own communications channels and then remove the entire outer crust from the planets surface, deep sea canyons, mountains the lot! If they were feeling generous they may only go down to one kilometre. But with all the inhabitants of the planet had done to him over the past cycles, he wasn’t feeling very generous so he may go as deep as ten kilometres.
The actual operation was very interesting to watch and always reminded him of peeling a great Jum-jar fruit. Not that he had peeled one ‘personally’, but he had seen the computer do it many times.
One thing he couldn’t work out was why the self-diagnostics couldn’t find anything wrong. It said that everything was fine and all he had to do was give the order and they would blast off! But whenever he tried to use his higher functions the ship didn’t recognise him and threatened to blast him if he tried again?
Oh hurry up rescue fleet!
Taganoch was again frozen in a nonsensical stupor. The independent thought had made its way to his brain and told him something everybody else would have spotted immediately. It was about his plan to pretend to be a Liverdian. It wouldn’t work.
---------------------------------
Any thoughts anyone???
Oh, and sorry about the tabs. Not sure what happened there.
