Taking a moment here to appreciate the layer of my process that is the typewriter draft. Bones of Starlight second draft occurs via typewriter, and it’s just worked well that way the entire time. Rhythm, immediacy, physicality, sound, focus, energy investment, all are contributing factors. So here’s some upcoming prose in its raw typewriter incarnation. I do fewer on-page edits than when I began.
Long-coiled and footed, a dragon glowing of sunlight was heaped against one wall of Arjun Woollibee’s control office. Manageably sized but not in true diplomatic form, ‘e was clearly injured where one side throbbed with darkness. Arkuda’s eyes were clear and fixed upon the engineer as ‘e spoke. “Your enemies have found you. They are here to attack you.” That sank in, and Arjun looked up through the cieling and several pressures of water. “There’s an unfriendly-looking reception awaiting you at the surface. Keep your new system activated, and I’ll bring you a live image.”
A flicker of appreciation for a visiting friend showed on Arjun’s face, as he acknowledged the serious situation with complete attention. The image flickered hazily into the room, beaming out from a sunstrip corner. A cluster of attack hovers were focused around some familiar-looking but nondescript open ocean, their usual surfacing point. “They look like mercenaries. I would like to think they’re Pliskin’s,” assessed Woollibee in reference to their umbrella company Plexus’ founding inventor, “but they don’t look defensively equipped, and we’ve had no notice. Did they see you?”
“They did not, I was a mere shimmer upon the water. Do you know who would want to attack you?” asked the dragon with a pained breath.
“I know who I would think of first. Given their timing, I’m almost sure,” nodded Woollibee. “Some of our research partners have disappeared, with involvement of people linked to Foundational groups. They believe humanity should stick to its foundations, and very often that means they oppose learning and discovery. They are a group only of humans… who apparently now have our surfacing coordinates.”
Within the aetherscape behind Uixtr Xkcd’s closed eyes, during a moment of stillness he was able to secure while traversing this unfamiliar distance, he accessed a personal message node which possessed certain formal criteria. It was the Vedani habit closest to encryption. Unique filtering of the aetherscape was a personal trait similar to physical appearance. The message needed to be formulated specifically to Uixtr, not multi- or widecast; it needed to be single-author, not anonymous or conglomerate, and of a minimum familiarity of association in public quanta; of linear fashion, not fragment-pieced, and of information density significant to Uixtr’s set threshold. Someone needed to know to send this specific kind of message in order for it to land in Uixtr’s node, which would reject any other form.
This time, there was one. Uixtr dissociated from his environment as he examined communication that linked him to his people while he was alone from them. It was from Oibhn Clnr. The message emerged from an interrelation of referential indicators, a meta-layer of information that described the context of the missive, while indicating how the foreground communication arises with a connector diagram fed by live related data. With Vedani communication, ‘linear’ did not refer to spatial arrangement of symbols, but that one item preceded another in following or prioritized logic. From its contextual constellation, this linear message stretched, waved, and morphed from one item to the next.
OIBHN: We’re done using up the rolls of grey foam. Only one tuning polygon remains in Imperium space. At first the scavengers were the usual private-interest suspects, then a new one to note, appearing solo. Then came various investigators, then investigators accompanied by military escorts, who remained posted. They may or may not have noted the distribution throughout every federet and nearly every galaxy. Probably not all of the placement data belongs to the same sources. They seem unaware that we’ve achieved full coverage, or if they know, then they still haven’t figured out the office machines. To their credit, they might. We now have wide pluralities of transanchor coordinates, having developed additional capacity and new capabilities. Our system administrators have sharpened their skills and are ready with the upper hand. They’re not going to know what’s hitting them, but we’ll spell it out. Our signal will be impossible to ignore.
Taking a moment to pause and admire some of the personages who have come into to contact with the journey of this trilogy.
There’s a William Gibson, a Charlie Cox, a Shakespeare & Co. storekeeper, a Larry Niven, a comic book store owner from my youth, MORE, and most recently the Space Lady!
Guess as hard as you like, or just… receive the transmissions. The first is actually an idea sketch, the next is the stuck pen scribbling spot, and the third is… my second page of Fibonacci-Virahanka addition, totaling up to the QUADRILLIONS, on the front of my current Bones of Starlight dedicated story journal.
Bones of Starlight 3 : Greater Beyond 