Arcfire Chapter 17

by E.E. Bowers

When we last left our heroine, the young elf-girl of synthetic corpus was ready to kill. Again. Her body was a-tremble with anticipation of fulfilling her dark craving for authentic earth technology. In particular, a craven urge to have her smartphone again. Much like those dark chemically driven desires for little lines of white powder or little gray rocks, little miss Aia was experiencing a psychosomatic hunger for little black rectangles of plastic with electronics embedded.

“That is not how it is done,” declared the crystal-prophet. “Many would have tried such a thing over the centuries, but many have failed.”

“Failed at what!” snapped Aia. Oh, you could see that urge in her face right now. Her synthetic corpus could filter out cravings for exterior chemical substances, but that love of small plastic devices was already thrust long, hard, and deep inside the tender flesh of her brain.

“A strike at the exterior of this fortress will do naught to destroy my matrix,” declared the crystal-prophet.

“Who spoke of doing that! And what gives you the idea I would do something so simple!” went Aia, again speaking with craved lunacy.

“The raised Arcfire in your hands tells us so,” declared the crystal-prophet succinctly. Also, trying not to offend the stupid human. The crystal-prophet had to deal with human-flavoured stupidity for centuries. An hour or so more of the same would be worth it for the sake of final, blissful release from their service forever.

“What?” exclaim-demanded Aia. Her answer was a fierce flash of bright white that blasted her off of her deliciously bare feet and sent her hurtling.

Yes, sent her sailing across the vast flooring of this open-air atrium. An open space that was higher than mountain-height in the sky. An open space part of a floating castle…which is actually a converted starship knocked into the shape of something out of your obnoxiously bastardised fantasy-tales. That said, Aia was almost on her way down and out and onto the land.

But was stopped by a low wall which prevented such from happening. After all, generations upon centuries of Lord Morkudums had come here to become drunk. It would not do to have the bloodline ended with said blood being full of drink. No, it would be preferable to have the last of those arse-holes done in by enemy weaponry. Going out in a blaze of glory—no matter how stupidly self-induced it was—would have made the founding Morkudum proud.

Some explanation regarding some confusion around this. You see, Aia had been holding the Arcfire at the ready. Her smartphone-craving brain was not in the best of condition for decent reasoning. It had therefore filtered out her standing action. It is like when a blazing moron is holding a pistol or bag of chips in hand and not realising how it had gotten there—not realising that the moron responsible is the self-same moron fond of chips and Arsenal.

Have to watch those Arsenal fans. They’re bound to be more violent than usual at times. This goes especially so if they see themselves on the tele. For example…

…

Somewhere on the East End, a yob was relaxing at home in front of the tele. He was still dressed in his longshoreman’s outfit from the looks of it, also from the smell of it. Minus the long-shirt. A can of King Lear in one hand, clicker in the other, watching himself.

On the tele. Himself. He was on the tele and not quite understanding how. That can of bubbly fermented yeast urine was doing nothing for his intelligence but wonders for his level of stupidity. As in, it was a wonder that he had not destroyed the television as of yet, for destroying things you do not understand is the way you humans tend to go about things.

He was supposed to be watching the Arsenal match. Instead, there was a very well-animated view of himself sitting on the lounger, holding the clicker, and holding an open can. This was just so very out of the ordinary that he could no longer contain himself.

“I don’t understand,” he began. Then he lost his ability to communicate verbally. Loud howls and a desire to find a sturdy club…

…

When Aia’s brain had more or less cleared from the distress and dazzle of a sudden act of pyrotechnics, it was still full of all the neurological chaos that human heads usually have. There was still that chaotic rigamarole going on in the depths of the subconscious. The usual nineteen-year-old jumbled lunacy about social status and sex and having the second to have more of the first and all mixed in with random scraps of whatever the Hell mini-series had been watched on her…

No, we shall not mention those little plastic bits of addiction. Best not go back to that now. Not especially with escape being just…so…close…! Her addition and anger had driven her to firing the Arcfire without even thinking about it. Firing at the crystal-prophet.

Which was especially shielded. Which still leaves us with an elf-girl of synthetic corpus needing to do something awesomely destructive for the sake of getting hold of smartphones again. Which means having to return to Earth first. Which still means also that the enemy’s mega-lair or what-have-you must be destroyed in a spectacular fashion as part of a deal with a computer composed of living crystals.

’Tis not enough that the last of the Lord Morkudums had been burnt crispy by the backwash of the Arcfire…and then shot to pieces by military-calibre weaponry used by drug dealers…and then said pieces finally vaporised by yet another blast of the Arcfire. No, not even that was enough. The conditions for success of this game have not been met!

Some addition explanation, then. Lord Morkudum is dead and gone and blasted and vaporised. However, his place is still in place. Whenever the people of the grand cities and the quaint villages and settlements look to a certain region of the horizon, they will still see the floating fortress. They could still be tricked into thinking that Lord Morkudum resides upon his throne and commands the korth riders. And should anyone disobey? Well, it shall then be revealed yet again that the fortress is worthy of space combat. This, over a people whose means of weaponry are little more powerful than sharpened metal sticks.

“How do I go about killing you!” demanded Aia, realising that a blast of the Arcfire would not be enough.

And…there we go! For once, doing something vaguely intelligent. Then perhaps we shall have something slightly resembling a reasonable course of action? If Aia is to go about the business of committing murder…again, then let’s have it done in a logical and civilised manner.

“Lord Morkudum’s fortress summons the forces of energies from between universes,” began the crystal-prophet. “Those energies are very carefully controlled by crystalline-driven tensor fields…”

Then the crystal-prophet noticed Aia’s human-sized attention-span fading off. Best get to the juicy bits straight away. All of that American formula-driven cinematic story-telling driving down attention spans and all that.

“Find the star-kilns and set them to self-destruction, and you shall have your way home,” finally said the crystal-prophet. There, said and done.

Aia would have given the crystal-prophet as stern and as sceptical look as possible. That sceptical facial expression was learned from her time living in America—a land where people have sometimes learned to look askew at offers of tidings. (For goodness’ sakes, man! The land invented snake-oil and the salesmen to go with! The tradition continues in your time period, but the snake oil goes by such categories as dietary supplements and weight-loss programmes. Fat lot of good the latter is doing in the land of hamburgers and hand-guns!)

“I am to…set you to self-destruction… And that is to be it?” asked the elf-girl of synthetic corpus.

“There is no reason for us to lie,” argued the crystal-prophet. But then, that sounded too much like, Would I lie to you?

The very catch-phrase is exactly what professionals in snake-oil sales are trained to do. That said, “If we sought benefit, why would we also seek our own destruction?”

Indeed, Aia. There goes something you human-brained lot are not overly familiar with. Which is to say, logic.

Not the demands of a flim-flam confidence artist. In the past, slick-dressed dingbats and flim-flam artists full of chamber-pot dealings seek to lighten your purse. And in doing so, they hope to at least continue their lifespan long enough to enjoy their ill-gained goods. Never mind if they will end up in prison for the umpteenth time. And never mind if the cost-benefit analysis would indicate that they would be much better off in the much longer run if they chose a career in something slightly more honest. Politics or fashion, for example. (We said slightly more honest. Promise to show us an honest politician, and we’re duty-bound to show you a real-live unicorn. We’ll even throw in a leprechaun with his pot of gold for good measure.)

Ultimately, a confidence man will not seek to have himself killed. Such is also to say, he will not seek to be killed by you. Rather difficult to spend swindled cash in Satan’s place of work, after all.

“If not here, then where?” asked Aia. No, not asking about where conned cash can be spent in Hell. Try to stay on subject, would you? “Certainly not…here…” Looking around. As if expecting to see the means of blowing up this super-ultra-mega floating fortress of dastardly doom. Just as something is mentioned, all the cinematic storytelling goes about having that something easily accessible or at least immediately seen. Her (unfortunately human) brain having been conditioned since birth by the toxic likes of American movies, there was the expectation of finding something so fundamentally simple as a big, big red button labeled Push Me for Self Destruction (If you Dare)! Or, at the least have it (not so) cleverly hidden behind a brick.

But…since the bricks of this location are easily large enough to rival the size of even an American’s gut, and since such bricks are designed to withstand piddling little attacks from such pitiful things as thermonuclear detonations…? Succinctly put, there would be no sneaky slide-aside of a brick to reveal a comically overly large means of suicide for an artificial intelligence and its starship-turned-fortress-of-folly. Such a means of self-destruction nevertheless exists.

But again, not here. “Deep within the depths of this fortress reside the controls of the starkilns,” answered the crystal-prophet.

Time for a stupid question in regards to people even more stupid. Not only have the Morkudums stupid (and getting worse with every successive inbred generation), but they were also human-stupid on top of that! Humanity’s infinite folly, an infinite source of amusement for most all other sentient species of many, many galaxies! We have all of eternity before us, and we shall never, ever, ever tire of belittling your intellectual plight!

So with the Morkudums being among the worst of the worst, how could they have not gone about destroying this fortress of doom after centuries of ownership? Label a big, big red button with anything, and you can assuredly be assured that a moron, imbecile, moron, or good old-fashioned idiot shall push it! So, there goes that idea.

“How has the self-destruction function not been activated?” asked Aia, asking a not-so-stupid question. Not that there’s hope for her intellectually speaking, but there is the occasional glimmer of chance every so often.

“Such is a place that has not been visited by any of the Morkudums, for it has been labeled Research, Development, and Labour,” explained the crystal-prophet.

Ah, and there we have it. The fastest way to drive away nobility, wealthy individuals, and other imbeciles is to put up a sign labeled with connotations regarding thinking or working.

Little to no surprise there, given the species involved. You gladly celebrate the lives and work of those who have dropped out of high school and are rather skilled at moving an inflated piece of rubber ’round the field. Yes, we have seen your so-called European leaders shout their praises of the same…while doctors and scientists are subject to cinematic ridicule. In short, your leadership is short on wits and—more recently—work ethic. So the next time you wish to keep your corporate slave-masters away from some place in particular, give it a name worthy of brainiacs and labourers. Works now. Will work tens of thousands of years from now in other galaxies.

Nevertheless, away goes the elf-girl, being given direction and driven therein. It was down another set of stairs. And then, oh look, yet another set of stairs still. Given the medieval sort of attitude that seems to style most everything hereabouts, all of those stairs were surfaced with stone. You can be quite sure that the original builders of this ship did not craft carved rock most everywhere. That would be the doing of the idiots, imbeciles, morons, and other buffoonery.

And more stairs still. A thought went to those who would not be able to use stairs. Such people being those bound to wheelchairs or walkers or beings born to water and lack the means of traversing challenging surfaces on land.

Which means… Oh look, here comes yet more criticism of your beloved medieval fantasy-land civilisations! Have you ever heard of a castle with a wheelchair ramp? Or an elevator? You can have castles to the stars, genetically modified ride-beasts, and the means of killing foes at a distance with energy-bound jewelry. But you will be damned if you were to have elevators or have self-propelled motor vehicles! Makes sense, really. You stick to your asinine love of sword-swinging shenanigans between lords and armies when you have entire space-faring armies at your disposal to have warfare done right-proper! At a distance and with high technology!

Which were all things considered as Aia finally found the very rooms required for this next bit of progress. Down, down, down in the depths of the floating fortress of feudal-styled doom. (Keep those engineers and brainiacs on bottom floors and in basements. More of your idiocy, keep the most organizationally important people at the lowest levels possible!) And yes, the young elf-princesse had a look of displeasure at the sign—written in the local language.

Research and Development. And Labour, declared the more-than-obvious sign. And if those words were not enough, we nevertheless have a great deal of smaller print below that. Warning! High crystal hazards. Protective garments recommended along with…

Which is to say, not only is this a place where a person must work and think, a person must also…horror of horrors…cover one’s stylish garments! How can anyone see one’s glow of wealth and charisma of nobility when covered with protective clothing? In certain human languages, they are called overalls and coveralls for reasons. All those tens of thousands of pound sterling or euros spent on the latest designer tee shirt and trainers? Not to be seen!

Aia gave pause, her hand over the door handle. Her current job description does read elf-princesse. Anything with nobility in its title includes a repulsion toward places of this sort. Were you not paying attention?

In any event, the door click-clattered open by way of automatic electromechanical doings. Such was not our doing, for the robots who crafted the works were sure to add automatic door-opening devices. (Rather inconvenient and dangerous to have to lift another hand whilst carrying materials.) Perhaps more or less suspicious would be how Aia tripped and traipsed forward and into the room though there was nothing obviously physically present.

…

And the door slammed shut behind her. And Aia looked angry and dumb-founded at the solid synthetic squared-tiled flooring. No, there was nothing physically present which could have caused a near pratfall or headlong plunge. Her being shoved into this room by forces unseen, nearly dropping the Arcfire, yet another development which we shall categorically deny.

You must have seen the scene any hundred number of times. And given the uncreative, dull-witted, formulaic production of Hollywood cinema, you will no doubt see the same sort of scene a few hundred times in a few hundred years hence. Only mortals take time enough to watch insipid forms of entertainment…with composition so simple that an infant could follow. Why-ever not? They have already seen the scene before with such reiterations that they must be able to understand by now.

A medieval fantasy-land sci-fi control room is first…bound to be dominated by a computerised machine of some sort. Such a machine will have what seems to be a great many buttons to push. Stupid, simple, low-tech buttons. Never mind advances of technology involving space-warps, genetic modification, and infinite clean energy. It would take a human a dozen hours to manually enter lines of code and configurations that could be accomplished in mere moments by way of a mind-to-machine interface. Or at least an artificial intelligence that knows more about what’s going on than a human intelligence! Outclassing humans? No challenge there, we’re afraid.

But again, we are dealing with mortals. Therefore, the sci-fi fantasy-land computer-machine is bound to have lots of flashing lights all full of bright primary colours. The machine itself has to be big and geometrically simple. Can’t frustrate those infants and infant-minded groupuscules in the audience, because that would frustrate the drug-addled likes of corporate executives as well! Like cleaning floors or picking out clothing, thinking is something that the rich and stupid leave to others. In their estimation, the less thinking there is going on, the less in the way of likelihood that anyone would dare challenge their human wits. And the decades of mind-damaging substances they have consumed.

So, to recap—because a few hundred iterations are not enough. This room is supposed to have a great big flashy simple computer-machine. There is supposed to be a massive push-button interface (probably with no letters due to the illiteracy of the audience). And everything is supposed to look impressive.

And…that did not happen here. What Aia instead found was a floor-to-ceiling array of hyper-processing meta-crystals flashing and lit from within. This array was set in a hub-machine that has holographic three-dimensional glowing icons. Why bother with two dimensions? Are humans as two-dimensionally minded as flatworms? And the walls had nothing in the way of idiotically miscellaneous flashing light-displays. The walls were instead of curved hard nano-graphene and…

Oh, all right. We’ll stop. Pick up that chin. Shake off that glazed stare. At least try and pretend to understand.

As we said, an AI that knows more about what’s going on than the humans. Can’t make too many in the way of assumptions. That said, the crystal-prophet declared, “You are now in the primary place of control. The most baseline and dangerous commands may be performed here.” A pause. “Dangerous is exactly what we want at the moment.”

Aia blinked in surprise. Granted, this land has its fair share of maniacs, morons and the like with no respect for human life—not even their own. Wholesale feudal slaughter-fests a-plenty from the barbarically clad likes of lunatics. But to hear this coming from a computer?

Well! Let’s get this done and over with before circumstances challenge the tough-but-not-invincible traits of Aia’s synthetic corpus. Can’t stay in medieval fantasy-land forever. No, not with the average lifespan statistically comparable to that of illegal parachutists or American stock brokers. (Sometimes one and the same.)

No need for pressing a big obvious help button. You can talk to this machine. “What am I to do?” asked Aia.

There was a blinking blue somewhere among those holographic displays. All of those pretty lights and colours made it just so difficult to see anything specific. And so, it was below that blinking blue that Aia found the obvious. If there was something obviously labeled and more obviously dangerous, then that would be it.

You can have all of your colours and interfaces and automatic bits and bobs. Holographic this. Touch-free that. But when it comes to something meant for wholesale destruction of the very vessel in which you are sitting…or standing…or sleeping in, then it would have to be something as solid and as industrial as an actual honest-to-goodness lever marked self-destruction. To emphasise the point, there were those dangerous-looking black-and-yellow stripe designs which was industrial code for, You had better know what the bloody Hell you are doing when you use this thing, or someone is going to be hurt. A lot.

All of this time, and the means of ending the madness of the Morkudum fascism was right here. Something not even the area of an ale can, and it could trigger the destruction of something the size of a small mountain. Which is to say, a great deal of thought went into its creation.

…

“Hrmm…” mused Lorien. You could almost see his pointed ears vibrating with the sound. “If we are to craft something so very destructive, we will need to have a great thought into its creation.”

Gwentha leaned back on her anti-gravitational chaise-lounge. “I will not disagree with that. But yet, I will also not choose to agree.”

They could very well communicate mind to mind. No, not through magic. Must we keep pounding into your tiny, tiny intellects that magic does not exist? Magic does not work. Technology does. Not magic. Not telepathy, telekinesis, nor most anything with the prefix tele- as affiliated with the raw, naked, unmodified biological brain! However, a metaphysical nanochip will do quite handily to get communication across vast depths of the galaxy.

But they were feeling so very lazy that they chose to talk instead. They specialise in being lazy.

Ah, and now we have questions. Firstly, who the bloody blazes are these pointy-eared products of reproduction? Secondly, why are we here across time and space? Thirdly, what does this have to do with Aia’s quest for mass destruction? Fourthly, how could you not have figure this out yet?

In case the groovy, far-out fantasy-land names have not clued you off yet, then those pointy organs of hearing should have done so. They are high tech. They are capable of crafting wonders of wonders. They are in space. Therefore they are…wait for it…skyborne!

You have heard so very much about the skyborne, the skyfall, skyfallen, what have you. And all of this time, you have witnessed their great works! Able to cure everything worth curing (you just have to let stupid run its course) and go to the stars (because sometimes you just have to get away from stupid).

Since the skyborne were originally borne of humans (but would dare not declare it so, much as relatives remain silent about…that side of the family), they still do things in rather human ways. But they have more ways of going about things. On your planet, bureaucrats claimed that putting computers on office bureaus would cut back on paperwork. But instead, it became a means for bureaucrats to produce more paperwork! With some people—and wealthy, unchallenged people besides—they will instead use advanced ways and means to make more rigamarole.

They had one job. Even so, it was not really a job because they were not paid to do it. The skyborne have robots to do everything for them. AI-controlled robots. Robots run with zero-point energy summoned from between the universes. And before you snap up with the declaration robot revolution, just remember that human servants have a much more intense history of performing head amputations on unruly aristocrats than robots. Besides, robots versus cyborgs, cyborgs will win the day, every day. Also besides, if they kill off all the biologicals, who the bloody blazes will fix them if a computer virus were to wipe out their networks? You should really learn to run your frontal lobes—your pre-frontal cortices—before you engage your Wernicke’s area. (Huh?) Think before you speak! Thank you!

Not that the skyborne are wont to doing much thinking before speaking themselves, that is. This is not simply a matter of having an isolated, hyper-prosperous class of people who will never have to do a day of work in their lives. Not a case of people so disconnected from reality that they are likely to say that the poor survive by eating cake. No, we are talking of an entire species!

You will not ever see a skyborne doing anything in the way of anything resembling actual work. Their days—actual and in-space virtual—are primarily spent doing nothing of importance other than partaking of pleasures of the physical and chemical sort. And there are those among them who have just enough intellectual wherewithal to experience a drug that has existed throughout hominid history—the drug of political power.

Dominance, control, that feeling of being important, oh what a feeling it is. To live in a grand palace between trips to other palaces. To have that palace full of subservient beings. Actual, living beings and not robots, because the urges of the overclass take no pleasure in torturing things that do not feel pain. To be able to have a hundred lives ended at the raising of a finger. Why stop there? Oh, to be able to merely think of a command and have entire planets razed because the cities therein do not match the current in-style colour scheme.

Oh, don’t deny it. We have watched your television emissions. (So amusing that you will pay a hundred pounds monthly to watch commercials interspaced with the occasional bit of play-acting.) We have read your fantasies. You fantasise about living in grand palaces and having living beings suffer under your wrath. You enjoy dressing up in over-flowing garmentry. Fluffs and ruffles that take entire squads of servants to prepare. Or you go the other way and barely wear anything at all in attending grand galas. You enjoy having power—a feeling that releases its own natural drug throughout your brain from doing unnatural things, for a state of nature would not give you palaces and servants.

What we are saying is, the skyborne are celebrated and idealised for their beauty and possession of technologies far beyond what you currently have. The more ignorant amongst you would declare them gods, infused with technology enough to be called magic. And if you still believe that magic can exist, then there is no helping you. This, just as there is no helping just how hopelessly inefficient the skyborne are at having to accomplish the simplest of things.

Things such as designing a self-destruction lever, for example! It was not a matter of just having two or three skyborne in a room and hashing things out verbally. They could have had an entire war fought about it. A proxy war of course, for actual wars are actually work. Have entire planets of civilisations infused with certain sides of an argument, have them fight unto near-apocalyptic levels of destruction, then accept the results. Like flipping a coin, that. They could have done a great many other things. Instead, they chose to go to committee.

But wait, there was no committee…yet. They will therefore create a committee for the creation of a committee. A great deal of officious talk took place on public meta-channels with flowery pronouncements and speeches secretly crafted by artificial intelligences. (Speech-writing is work and thinking work at that.)

So for decades in Earth-decades, they had public pronouncements of establishing a committee for creating a committee…on the creation of the self-destruct lever to be installed in one of their creations. They had their meta-quantum virtual-communication gatherings. They had even more gatherings and in-person visits beyond that. Visits involving loud threats and whispered promises along with the consumption of mind-altering recreational substances so damnably drastic that their brains had to be rejuvenated after the fact. And if the occasional brain has to be replaced, then so be it. Because they can do that. And you cannot.

But some of you would. If you could swap your brain out with a cloned copy of your favourite celebrity, you would at the drop of a hat…so to speak. Never mind if you would be gone. What matters most to you is loving your Hollywood product more than you love life itself.

Threats, promise, whispers, the occasional sword-duel to the first death, such are how things are really done. All of that grandiloquent speechifying and all of those officious acts of officialdom unofficially equate to nothing. What is unofficial is actually official. If that sounds so very incredibly wrong-headed and so corrupt that even the Prince of Lies would call Scotland Yard.

…

And so, the work was completed…eventually. Which entailed, they eventually got around to forming those committees to form committees…on choosing the committees…that would select the committees, that would design the lever. But because it was just so much work to be done at one time—all of that thinking—they decided to break it down into smaller pieces. They formed those committees unto committees to design the hazard stripes which go along the casing.

Now, it can’t be too yellow, those caution stripes. We cannot have the ship-users annoyed at such brightness. Not yellow enough, and they won’t pay it any attention. We must have people give due caution about such a thing as potentially hazardous as a self-destruction knife-switch. Why, if they were to pull it down unintentionally, they could go about…you know…bruising a finger.

And the black—the alternating black—to go along with? That has to be given considerations as well. Whilst that yellow-seeking committee is diligently at work researching the latest fifty million shades of yellow, there are fifty trillion shades of black that are rather easily identified throughout the known time-space continuum. This is not even mentioning the mistakenly numbered shades of gray.

Even so, they could not agree. Decades upon centuries had passed by this point. Centuries became millennia. In that time, entire civilisations had evolved and risen from the muck of agricultural mud-scrapers and Arsenal fandom. And also in that time, entire civilisations had either evolved into synthetic consciousness and traveled the stars or had reverted to wholesale warfare—before reverting back to adoration of mud and football. Before fading out completely. Which is to say, the skyborne had themselves a merry little dustup. And it was all due to the colour-tones they wished to instill upon the warning piping around the self-destruction knife-switch.

And when such technologically advanced peoples such as the skyborne have themselves a little disagreement, it would be the equivalent of two galaxies perhaps having a little fender-bender. It’s not a minor thing, is what we are saying.

That allusion to galaxies was quite apt. When everything was said and done, there were several fewer sources of starlight in the universe. Takes trillions of years to make those things, and the skyborne just thrashed them out of existence in their mutual effort to do the same to each other.

An old saying goes on Earth, N’oublie pas un francais jusqu’au moment qu’il change a vert a la tombe. Don’t count out a Frenchman until he is turning green in his grave. (Something to think about as you enjoy that spoon-borne dollop of camembert. But when it comes to the skyborne, just forget about colours altogether. With quantum-cloning and multi-dimensional backups of consciousness, it takes more than a few galaxy-wide rips in the fabric of time and space to keep a skyborne down for good!

So the war ended not because one side had diminished the population enough of the other side. It was more because they were bored. Immortals tend to lose interest in things rather easily, you know. After you’ve obliterated your fair share of swirly-shaped gatherings of celestial bodies, wiping out a few more becomes rather gauche.

But at least something was accomplished. Whilst the factions had formed over the committees for committees regarding the warning piping around the self-destruction switch, the entirety of the starship was completed. That, along with the seeded humans to populate some-such planet or other. And it was all because an artificial intelligence had decided it had better justify its existence before it was sent off to fight some bloody awful intergalactic conflict over something so silly as colour piping around a self-destruction knife-switch. And so, the artificial intelligence had hidden the self-destruct knife-switch under a protective layer of dust to hide it from view in case the skyborne came back.

They did. They returned to look upon this source of conflict. And when they saw that the actual colour of the yellow piping had far too much in the way of albedo, and that the set-screws were coloured less in the way of eggshell and more in the way of ecru…

…

And none of that was known to Aia in dusting aside some of the dust and pulling down on the self-destruct knife-switch. This promptly prompted a rather user-friendly audible warning after the fact.

“Thank you for using the Skyborne-Tech™ Self-Destruct-o-Matic™! Your number-one means of destroying whatever star-faring vessel you happen to be residing upon at the moment™! You now have twenty… No, nineteen minutes to vacate the vicinity of this floating fortress. Or, if you are feeling rather down, feel free to contemplate all of your mistakes and regrets in life until joining oblivion! And again, thank you for using Skyborne-Tech™! Your only source of anything significantly useful™!”

Then came the brutally loud but oddly pleasant warning klaxon. And then came those astoundingly bright but artistically appealing flashing lights. Amidst this sudden brutal but pleasant assault to her otherwise synthetic senses, Aia recoiled in horror from the self-destruct knife-switch and its garishly coloured warning piping. But taking a step back did nothing to diminish the visual-auditory chaos hereabouts. Right now, it was all about doing as much damage and destruction to one’s sensibilities of peace and quiet as possible. At this time, there shall be no restful lounging about with Beethoven’s Fifth piping in from the sound system. Ditto for recitations of Shakespeare’s epic about the doings of Mercutio.

Looking around with those huge elf-girl eyes of hers, Aia then said something not worth mentioning. So goes because it was more a statement of confusion rather than communication. Humans have a lot of language in that direction—exclamations such as what and hey and that was a right horrible day of Arsenal at the pitch.

But even doing that did nothing to change circumstances. There was still all of that auditory-visual chaos sounding and resounding hereabouts. And if Aia did not change her physical location, her physical state of being would change more-or-less permanently in about…

“Fifteen minutes, and all of this is going the way of the dinosaur!” cheerfully declared another self-destruct message. “What the blazes are dinosaurs? You lot never paid attention to Earth-lore, so you will never find out now, will you?”

Though her still-young friends back on Earth had their love of giant reptiles, even if fictitious depictions thereof had them obliterating humans by the mouth-ful, Aia had no desire to join them herself. Join dinosaurs, that is. Not talking of her friends. But at this point in space-time, all of them were long since dead anyway—along with the rest of your miserable little planet. You and your endlessly warring factions. You and your fried alimentary atrocities served in—of all things—paper containers…

In any event, nothing in the way of anything available at the chip vendor—not even all the newspaper wrappings of all the countries of all your time periods—would be able to contain what was going to happen next. And Aia along with. That is, if Aia does not find a way out.

The first way out is…? What would that be? Aia wracked her silly little underpowered human brain for the answer to that one. Come on, girl. This is an easy one. What does one use for the sake of entering? Also for the sake of exiting?

The window! Leap from the window! Of course not! If humans used windows to frequent their ingress and egress, then they would be wing’d like egrets. More than a few of Lord Morkudum’s erstwhile chums tried doing so. They have also become features upon the landscape.

The door! Use…the door! Aia scampered over to the door on those lovingly bare feet of hers—such succulently formed feet—and promptly used them to press down on the handle. Just joking. With humans and then elves having more or less having learnt to go about on two limbs and leave two other limbs free to manipulate their environment, Aia had herself a merry little go of not being able to use that door-handle after all.

Because…there was no door handle, you wit-less elderberries! What lunatics in his right state of mind would put a door handle into a room capable of destroying the entire floating fortress! And since lunatics are never in their right state of mind to begin with, they had added a door-handle. But…only on the outside. Goes to show where their minds were.

But the door is automatic from the inside and therefore opened when Aia had sense enough to simply try walking through it instead of forcing it. Or rather, when Aia resorted to kicking the thing in a fit of frustration—only to have the ultra-futuristic doorway practically leap away from one of her lovely, lovely soles.

“In case you have failed to notice, you have ten minutes before complete obliteration,” said the warning voice over various sound systems. “You have no doubt formed any number of pagan belief systems since the creation of this vessel. In which case, prepare to have said beliefs regarding the afterlife vindicated. Or not!”

Ten minutes? That only prompted Aia to move her feet faster. Those astoundingly and exquisite bare feet. It was a shame that they should cease to exist within a mere ten minutes. That is absolutely no time at all to enjoy every stretch of perfectly formed flesh, every taut little crevasse between every single last little beauty of every little toe.

On the far end of her no-less-admirable anatomy, Aia’s head really was contemplating any manner of belief systems. There are a great many to be found on the internet, especially social media, and a fraction of them so happen to not be a product of adolescent lie-mongering. And of all the gods and goddesses and androgynous beings that Aia wished existed, any one of them would be more than welcome to be of assistance at this time.

In the meanwhile? This planet’s religion did indeed have a spiritual belief system. And contrary to that belief system, this planet’s god is dead. One is not so much a superior deity if one can be obliterated by a combination of stupidity and drug-dealer gun-fire! And his temple was about to be obliterated along with him!

But that did not stop others from partaking of the riches to be had therein. Aia was madly scrambling through another hallway (mind you, all of that auditory chaos was still filling hallway and ears) when happening to come to a room with former korth riders filling sacs, pouches, and pockets with treasure.

Of course, there are no plastic or nylon sacs. This is medieval fantasy-land. But there are a great many other materials including animal skins. There are not a great many animals, especially since they would have ended up being eaten or having their skins used for pillaging sacs. All the same, grow-kilns are able to grow plenty.

And into those sacs are going all manner of stupid little presumably precious bits and baubles. There was some kind of horned goblet…thing. Of course it was beset with jewels. And of course, there was the likely chance it was crafted with metals that would no doubt have caused all sorts of mental maladies. Then he put a roundish plate of the same colour and the same metals. If one is going for neurological damage, may as well go all out! Your Ancient Roman nobles were quite fond of not only eating off of lead dining-ware, they also sprinkled lead compounds on their food! Chew on that one for a moment. Oh, and let us not forget the addition of some shiny rocks dug up from wherever. Never mind if grow-kilns can grow any type of pretty shiny rock you so desire, crystal-smiths even able to make them grow with your face on them. It’s the idea of shiny rocks dug up from the ground. Real rocks, not the grow-kiln fakery. You want authentic chemical substances.

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Never-minding if these were the sort that had been responsible for all manner of human-rights violations. Also, never-minding the fact that this sort had been party to the killing of crystal-smith masters for generations. Just forget all of that. What mattered at the moment was how those chowder-wits could very well be her physical salvation.

Quite used to shouting above the electro-whatsit noises of rave parties at boites de nuit, Aia shouted for direction above the noise of klaxons warning of impending quantum-subatomic doom. “Which…way…out!”

The nearest korth rider grinned like the moron he was. He had appraised the physical specimen over there by the doorway at a glance. “Ah! Be delighted to meet yer bedroom acquaintance, luv!”

“’Tis not what the princesse asked!” shouted another korth rider, this one slightly older. Note that we said slightly older. Being a korth rider does wonders for foreshortening one’s lifespan.

“Nay, but ‘tis what the princesse wished to ask!” declared that other korth rider. This set up a guffaw among his fellows.

As with most situations like this, Aia decided to tolerate. Nothing in the way of shrieking or furious direct physical confrontation. The girl had survived a quasi-apocalyptic post-nukewar Europe. There was no morality police available to stop acts such as wolf-whistles or bawdy commentary toward attractive girls. The police constables were too busy stopping other petty crimes such as looting and cannibalism. Verbal acts of sexual harassment ended up being put on the low rung. If there was a disagreement, you either shut up about it or used a sawed-off firearm of some sort. (Sawed-off shotguns. Sawed-down assault rifles. Collapsing civilisations or disruptive yobs will always look for reasons to take saws to weapon-barrels.)

Aia chose peace. These yobs could not provide critical escape information if they were vaporised. Never mind the momentary satisfaction. Just as an impromptu bout of bedroom boondoggle only produces a moment of pleasure for twenty years of financial ruin, blasting these fools would only be a short-lived act of satisfaction. Followed by a lack of information. Followed by following them into oblivion when this floating fortress finally self-detonated. Besides, the Arcfire could not be sawed off safely.

“What is the way out for korth-riding?” shouted Aia above the still-ongoing din, changing tact. Bring it down to something that even the simplest and most incapable korth rider can accomplish. After all, the minimal requirement for being a korth rider would be that of being able to ride korth.

“Ah, too easy!” declared the closest korth-rider. “The gravity down-well is so very easy to be found! Even an intoxicated princeling could find it!”

“How dare you insult the good name of the Morkudums!” shouted a korth rider who was not even in the damned conversation in the first place.

The loud angry one had a crossbow strap’t to his back. He had on two clutches of expensive crystal-smithed energy-rings. And if their smiths had bothered to get around to it, he could also have had any other sort of hand-held long-range weapon. And despite all of that, he drew his sword.

Which mean that the other moron decided to do the same. “I nev’r did like th’ likes o’ yew! Never sharin’ in th’ spoils. Not e’en when we were knee-high t’a razorgrass stalk!” And then they were at it.

“We have decided to post-pone your absolute annihilation by thirty minutes,” went the automated voice. This resulted in Aia nearly staggering with relief. “Just joking! Six minutes left on the clock! And when we recall what a clock was, we shall surely let you know. Or not.”

“About those directions!” shouted another korth rider, taking a few steps closer and beginning to use hand-gestures to augment his verbal gestures. “Rather simple, really! To get down to th’ gravity well down-well, take a left at the next intersection. But not the next one. I mean the next one of the next one. Look for the stuft green-billed hornswoggle! Not to be confused with the olive-billed hornswoggle! Be surpris’d how often people get the likes o’ them muddled!”

And all the while, there was still the extremely loud and extremely stressful bruit of the self-destruct klaxon. But you don’t care for that. You’d rather stare openly at the deep slits in Aia’s garmentry—wondering just how much you can see. As usual. That, and your attention is occasionally wrested by the clash-clang of the sword-duel-to-the-death going on in the background. That, and the occasional splat as something sharp hits home on something meaty. Human blood-stains are simply murder on carpet. If you are going to play with your sharpened sticks in acts of mutual bloodletting, do give your hosts the courtesy of doing so on a relatively non-porous surface! Thank you. (Yes, even with robots doing the bidding with most all civilised civilisations, just the idea of the discourtesy is galling.)

“Now! Once you’ve found your way past the Banner of The Three-Bearded Oath written in High Saskatchewan, take a left before you take another left, followed by a drop-off at the right turn into the left wing… Or is that the left wing into the right-side drop-off? Doesn’t matter. You’ll figure it out. This will bring you back to the mint-coloured hornswoggle posted next to the evergreen-coloured hornswoggle, whereupon you simply take two lefts and a third turn. The way down is then down the next corridor next to…”

Next to his severed head? Oh bother, it seems that Tarkjorn the Direction-Giver of Kelnsdeep won’t be giving out his notoriously accurate directions anymore. His mouth moves, but ’tis rather difficult to make out what he is saying. No breath to pass through his mouth, you see. So goes because his windpipe is still connected to the rest of his corpus.

Oh, for goodness’ sakes! For all the times that fascist regimes have to partake of their habitual habit regarding head amputations, this was not the moment to have it! Aia had seen quite enough of those antics. Literally, seeing yet another bonce being bounced off the floor is getting to be rather cliché at the moment. That goes along with any number of streaming movies that the girl had seen featuring the same. Medieval fantasy-land is all about death and dismemberment, and not necessarily in that order, and this was now past the point of frustration.

So much so that Aia picked up the severed head and ran from the room. Good, out in the hallway. Now, finding that first intersection and still running with very pretty and nicely shaped bare feet pattering along amidst the auditory chaos, Aia raised the severed head and had to shout into an ear. “Which! Way!”

The mouth moved…somehow. The eyes blinked. Nothing quite unusual there. A bodiless head takes a little while to get used to its new state of being. (Shouldn’t take too long. Not having a blood supply somewhat puts a…hmm-hmm…dead-line on matters.) Those eyes looked around. Blinked again. Bouncing along in Aia’s grip, the disembodied head then looked down and firmly set its eyes on a rather mobile aspect of Aia’s appreciable anatomy. ‘Tis not often that a slim-waisted figure plays host to an admirable double-endowment.

Aia quite seriously considered dropping this thing and finding her own way down and out. Having a synthetic corpus gives her unlimited physical endurance and the ability to carry quite a bit. But that bit of behavioural balderdash betrays the bruteness of the bonce’s previous owner.

Previous owner? Separated from the body! The nuances of Earth legalese, you know. Earth laws care more about a body than it does about parts separated thereof. The head is no longer considered part and parcel of the original body, the original owner. Therefore, it is just so much offal.

That is, even if it still contains the brain. Humans don’t care overly much about that, either. All of that consumption of mind-ravaging substances and all. Perhaps headlessness is your preferred state of being?

Aia gave a one-handed slap to the head. Because the elf-girl only has two hands attached to two arms. One arm holding. The other arm slapping. No hand for the Arcfire, so it was slung over a shoulder and across her back. Should have really gone for an extra set of limbs when designing her body, but too late for that now.

Speaking of bodies, the korth rider without one looked around again. Then it winked. Aia was set to render another blow before noticing that it was winking with the wrong eye. Which means…

A right at this intersection. Aia scampered around that turn and found a set of stairs. Going downward. If the head had a neck, it would nod in approval. And…

And by the way, this was long since a human head ought to be capable of communication. Unconsciousness should have closed over that lump of human brain quite some time ago. What, with Aia shaking the thing and therefore shaking out that bit of life-juice. (Makes a wondrous tomato-juice substitute in a pinch. You should try it sometime!) And we have absolutely nothing to do with that, either. It’s mere coincidence that the head has hung on to dear life for so long even when bereft of fingers. Or hands. Or most any other limb. By some galactic considerations, even a neck would be considered a limb, and the lunatic lacks even that. And…

“Mere minutes to mighty destruction! What are you still doing here, you bloody intellectually insipid sods! Get a move on, as the Americans say!”

That should have clued Aia in on something else being afoot. (Mmm, feet…) Why the bloody blazes would a pre-recorded message in an ultra-computer of a hundred-thousand years in the future and a universe apart make a reference to Americans, of all people? It would be something like relaxing at a souk and mentioning emperor penguins. Do that, and you’ll be stared at as if you’ve been granted an extra set of limbs. Or like someone running amok with more than one head, and never mind if the spare is not attached!

But Aia was not clued in. The lithe elfin warrior was going about her business of trying to get the bloody blazes out of here before ending up in blazes. What with all the auditory chaos and random turns and corridors indicated by the disembodied head, this was all a rather troublesome business. And…

“And what must I say to you to make you aware of your current situation!” shouted the pre-recorded voice. “I am rather serious at this point, you know! When I mean absolute and total destruction, I truly do mean that! One second, a perfectly functional darkship fortress of potential doom. The next second, a mass of disparate subatomic particles! And before your ignorance of physics and metaphysics both bely your lack of intellectual acumen…! Yes, subatomic particles have mass! How the bloody Hell else do you think solar sails function! Idiots! Bloody idiots, the whole sodding lot of you!”

At this point, having followed the winks-without-nods of the bodiless bonce, Aia thought herself having passed the green-billed hornswoggle three times. So goes perception. In actuality, Aia had passed the green-billed hornswoggle, and then the olive-billed hornswoggle. The third time in this multiple instance was actually her passing the mint-coloured hornswoggle. Note the description. Mint-coloured. You should do more to not have your hornswoggles confused.

Which resulted in Aia actually having made some progress. There was one more stairway to be had. Just one. One more would have been all it took. But there is only so much time. All of that verbal back-and-fourth seems to have taken Aia’s.

Went another pre-recorded bit of nonsense, “How long do you think mere minutes are supposed to be!” complained the pre-recorded voice. “Do you really intend me to be party to murder? Well, I did approve the installation of Kill-o-Blast™ energy weaponry, the finest means of close-range tactical humanoid destruction that money can buy… Or rather, if we bothered with money anymore. Robots need not be paid you know, and robots do all the work. In any event! Subatomic destruction for you all soon enough!”

Aia had set foot upon the stairway down. By down, that is not an understatement. There was nothing else of the floating fortress left at the foot of the stair. It opened into…well? Open air. Instead of the usual vast view out the side and stretching into the distance…or looking up and seeing the vast sky and multiple moons…? This time, the vast view was dow-w-w-wn. You could see the vast wide-open land down there—a distance of seemingly kilometers.

Damn it, man! This was so high up that you could see the curvature of the horizon! And there goes the asinine idea that this planet is not a sphere. The same should be said of your planet. The only ones who declare your world to be flat are those with IQ charts to match!

Aia looked down. Aia looked at the severed head…that was also looking down. We said that the curvature of the horizon is visible from up here. But, given the lascivious smile on the face, you can certainly tell that the eyeball focus is upon a different set of arcs. That the blowing fluttery breezes did things to Aia’s deeply slit garmentry added to the show.

“Oh, you…!” went Aia. The severed bonce had served its purpose. Time to be rid of it. Aia threw it down. If the girl was to be met with oblivion, it was better off knowing that one more pervert was going to form a meat crater before herself.

Which…did not happen. The former korth-rider’s head did not go rapidly plunging downward in a satisfactory manner. There was no madcap blazing shooting speed downward. Instead, the severed bonce sort of…eased itself on down. Which means that, instead of plunging to one’s death, the artificial gravity well was a safe way down. But Aia no longer had the luxury of finding that out.

“Time is up, you sodding wastrels!” declared the pre-recorded voice. “Destruction is at hand, so…out with you!”

Aia did not want to find out what it would feel like to be blasted into disparate subatomic particles. Leaping into oblivion was a more predictable fate. Better the devil you know and all that. To that end, Aia took a jump off of that last stair and into the gravity well just as the emergency protocols kicked in.

…

Emergency protocols. Which, by the way, is what happens when people are too stupid to evacuate. Which is to also say, Aia could have waited around to have been spirited away by direct quantum translation.

…

With everyone being teleported the Hell out of this place, there are all of those places and people of the floating fortress that Aia will never get to meet. Never. Not ever. Not in the lifespans of a hundred universes. We do mean that. Never. Aia could exist for another billion years or so, die off from doing something absolutely stupid, and still not have met their acquaintance. Never is worse than eternity because all of that could pass and never would not care. Care a great deal less than the descendants of humanity who would destroy whole galaxies to get a point across.

In the depths of the floating fortress, Gettra was being exactly what her name sounded like. That is, practising the office of old witch. How old? There are mummies of your world that look absolutely infantile by comparison. Which is to say, a hundred years could pass and old Gettra would not care. Took a nap for twenty years and didn’t know until opening her still-functional eyes to see a layer of dust upon her.

It’s not all bad. A layer of that can act as an effective blanket. Not that old Gettra had forgotten one, but that long of a slumber was unexpected. More data for her crystal-analysis, then. At least someone cares for data and knowledge in this floating fortress.

Which is to say, Gettra the Crystal-Witch was not really a witch. Just as there are no wizards or warlocks or unicorns, there are no practitioners of witchcraft. Which is to also say, Gettra is a scientist and one of the finest of all the land. Well, with all of that access to all of this science and technology simply lying around after the skyborne had left, someone has to use it. Someone has to do some of the mental heavy-lifting in this world.

Not crystal-smiths. Those knuckle-draggers care not for anything other than immediate and practical applications. If they cannot hit it with a hammer or change its gears, then it doesn’t exist to them. Then, gol’-dang it, they’re off a-huntin’ and a-fishin’. Never mind if there are no rivers. You haven’t seen any all the time you were here, have you? It’s the thought that counts—much as how dropping a baited hook in a body of water and sitting around like an overfed politician somehow qualifies as a sport!

Being able to pass a hundred years and not caring, that means…? Yes, Gettra is immortal. Experimenting about with crystals and grow-kilns allowed her to undo many of those pitiful human physical and genetic foibles which cause mortals to live down to your name. But since this place is set to do more than evaporate soon enough, none of that knowledge will be imparted to Aia nor any of her allies. By the way, Gettra could also have told Aia the existence of a certain disused trans-dimensional warp inducer which would have spirited her straight-away back to her planet and time of origin, but it’s too late for that now. Gettra was teleported out and away from here.

…

Elsewhere in the depths of this floating fortress, some scullery chefs were still at it. Doing what they do best. Crafting political treatise in defense of nepotism and its cousin, inheritable fascism, of course! But since nepotism and inheritable fascism are both highly indefensible aspects of governance, that would be a glie. These scullery chefs were doing nothing of that sort. Instead, they were taking a cue from old Gettra and experimenting endlessly with recipes that not only do not exist otherwise but could not exist otherwise upon this world.

Like what, for example? Oh, lots of impossibilities made possibilities with this lot! They had set grow-kilns to produce unicorn meat, for example. (No such thing as unicorns. Not really. Please do get over it.) But no-one needs to go through the thoroughly messy and questionably sanitary business of slaughtering such a beast to partake of its meat.

Yes, meat comes from animals. Meat does not grow upon supermarket shelves. Not in your time period, at the least. Something to think about when you are at market to pick up some light viandes. Oh, and syrup is tree blood by the way.

Now about that emergency. These scullery chefs are busy, busy, busy. They are cooking, cooking, cooking. There is the sound of some blasted vast threat to their personal physical safety—if one is to believe the pre-recorded message. Something about pulling a knife-switch or other? Something with caution colour-piping all around? The sort of colour scheme which triggered entire galaxies of destruction over the planning of the before-mentioned?

But, threats to their personal safety have come and gone with the breeze. Entire regimes have passed and fallen. The Morkudums have come to live and then come to die in varying lengths of time. (All of that inbreeding amongst royalty, you know. And maybe a little cloning along the way. Double your gene-pool concentration. Double your displeasure.) Varying lifespans due to varying aspects of quality. So go the Morkudums who all had the political wherewithal to have people deprived of their bonces for…well, any reason at all! That neckerchief is simply dreadful. But you may keep it even if you shall not keep your head. Yes, even that sort of reason.

For all of those generations unto centuries and unto millennia, nothing much has affected the scullery chefs of Lord Morkudum’s floating fortress. Which is to say, after all of these millennia, what could possibly change?

Yes, yes! We are empiricists ourselves! We are quite the contrary to your postmodernists and their intellectual anarchy! But to assume ad infinitum is simply laziness. Just because you have survived a gun-shot from a drug dealer or a parachute-drop from a skyscraper does not mean that you will survive the former or the latter tomorrow! This, just as you could not possibly survive the self-destruction of a floating fortress with star-faring capabilities!

But no, the scullery chefs just went about assuming that all would be well after all of these millennia. Perhaps their immortality had rendered them careless, or perhaps simply living about in a scullery kitchen for all of this time had done so.

Immortal? Yes! They did not swap recipes with Gettra Who-Is-Not-Really-a-Witch, but thank you for asking regardless! It was simply a matter of simultaneous discovery. Just as vastly disparate cultures on your planet have come up with similar inventions at similar times does not mean that they communicated ideas for such. Just one…little…sip. You could live forever. But to limit your ability to cause trouble for the rest of the galaxy, we shall not allow you even that. (Having your sub-par intellectual antics muck up the doings of the galaxy for hundreds of millions of your years more? We can do without!)

Even so, even this had to have been brought to an end. The emergency protocols for saving idiots, fools, and morons from destruction took hold and swept away the scullery chefs by way of teleportation. Another batch of immortality surprise was in fact and indeed still bubbling in a massive pot, left behind as the sous-chef was still stirring. But this time, the mix included eternal beauty. Not that Gettra would have cared for such at this point. It’s the thought that counts—few as thoughts of good quality may be amongst your species.

…

And then, a brief visit to yet another corner of the floating fortress unvisited by Aia. Given how this place was the size of a small mountain, that would make room for a great many corners indeed…! Wait, you seem frustrated. Such frustration seems bred of boredom. No-no-no…! Not more scullery chefs, this time! We are now visiting some of the forgotten janitorial staff! Standing by with an array of crystal-controlled bots, they are always there to maintain the shining gleaming cleanliness of the place regardless of how many heads roll! And we are joking, of course!

We are instead in the gleaming, fragrant confines of a stall. Hidden, because a Morkudum of long ago wished to keep its most important contents secret. So much so, this is a secret stall built in a secret part of the floating fortress.

Ah, but what could it be? Why-ever would an absolute lord-and-master of all the land and all of its literally infinite resources (your medieval fascist overlords never had grow-kilns), of all the power and all the wealth he had and could possibly have. He actually owns a bloody planet, you dull-witted sods…!

Erm, owned a planet. Le passe compose, as those people across the English channel would say. Ownership is a rather tenuous proposition when one is deprived of existence. And no, not even an empire of slaves toiling for decades can produce a pyramid-shaped means of taking your possessions beyond life. If we have to scream it in an Arsenal fanatic’s vocal volume, we will. You cannot take it with you!

There. Perhaps with something in the way of information trickling through what’s left of your alcohol-obliterated think-meat, you could come to also comprehend the object and reason for this secret stall in this secret part of the fortress. Note the phrasing therein. Could come to comprehend. But since we will not tell you for all of eternity, you will never comprehend. So go back to your many, many bottles of Stella in front of the tele. Many, many, many, many bottles.

You must be dead-set on doing away with your own existence. Can’t apportion blame there, actually. If we were human, we’d do away with ourselves as well. No real hope for your species’ future, so may as well make yourself a part of the past.

So? No, we will not tell you. As we have taken you here to this secret-secret-secret place in the former and last Lord Morkudum’s floating fortress of spacey doom, as we stand here with varying numbers of legs and surface-effectors and…tentacles is such a problematic term. As we stand here and deliberately keep your view away from the central purpose of this place, we tell you that there is not-not-not a unicorn here.

Oh, all right. We’ll rotate ’round your perspective and tell you what is here. This, as to firmly affirm to you that it is not a unicorn!

Granted, it does have a wondrously gleaming moon-silk coat that shall never soil given its metaphysical properties—the likes of which result in light playing about and throughout in such a manner as to dazzle a human audience. And yes—glory of glories—there is a majestically spiraling horn reaching outward and upward to the heavens which would surely sing the creature’s existence…if the heavens existed in the manner that you believe they do. And wings! It has wings not for the miserably simple reason of moving air about for the sake of flight—but to manipulate the fabric of time and space to allow it to move about in multiple-dimension space. Such includes three-dimensional space. Such also means that it is able to escape the surly bonds of Earth to dance the skies… Etcetera, etcetera.

But above all else, it is not a unicorn! We have plainly and oft stated time and again that unicorns do not exist in this world! Neither do warlocks, wizards, witches (been over that recently), trolls, orcs, goblins (not even redcaps), imps, fae, none of the good folk, none, none, none! Even with all of that said, we must point out to you that the creature here has legs six! Can you no longer count? Or have you lost the ability to render numbers after your umpteenth bottle of Stella?

Do you see? One, two, three, four, five…and six! Given how multicellular creatures affiliated with humanity in most any fashion seem to have at least bilateral symmetry, there would have to be an even number of limbs. That said, six legs! Unicorns have four. There-fore, it is not of the species unicornis of the family equidae of the phylum chordata! The very moment that the phenotype (and genotype we may add) is an expression of legs six, then the term unicorn need not apply! So to that end, we say… Good day, sirs and madams!

Not that it matters overly much because it vanished when swept away by those bothersome emergency protocols. Teleported out of here. We were thinking that the complete, total, and absolute material destruction of this place would matter more—so to speak—if the various beings and animals therein were obliterated along with. But alas, stet.

…

And Aia was still on her way to the ground. Can you believe it? Even if you do not, such was her experience at the moment. Oh, what a novel experience this is. Going sky-diving without a parachute! It is not the dumbest thing this nineteen-year-old has done. No, not in the least. (When it comes to a post nuclear-war fallout-riven Europe, the youngsters can get up to doing shenanigans of all sorts. Nothing so thrilling as a nude swim in a river beset with odd-looking fish and getting your rad count within slivers of LD50!) But this time, this truly was the crown on the cake… Erm, or something of the sort. Since when is it a good idea to leap from a floating fortress that is soon set to self-destruct?

But you loudly proclaim, gravity well! The muck-minded sub-morons of Lord Morkudum’s marauders have used it a great many times, and they have not died! They have instead gone on to serve as data to solidify Darwinism by other means!

And so, we must explain things yet again. We’ll leave off with the sim-ple draw-ings in pri-ma-ry co-lors this time. But we will do our ve-ry best to keep it ve-ry sim-ple for your hu-man brains to un-der-stand.

Gravity well, yes? An artificial gravity well and something that could not occur until your species got ‘round to gene-engineering yourselves to have an appreciable level of intelligence. Yes, made smarter. But that did not necessarily mean a lesser tendency to bouts of stupidity. Like galaxy-destroying wars over colour-schemes, for example…

Now, let us take one tiny toddler-step over to the next part of this logic-puzzle. What produces artificial field-effects? Did you see the word ar-ti-fi-cial in there? Yes you did! Which means, something which is not among natural phenomena. Which also means that machinery is involved.

We must now go about gently putting these two seemingly disparate aspects together. Gravity well, yes? Alright, alright…. Now, artificial! (With us so far? Do hold on. Keep that tenuous consciousness of yours upright and passably functional.) Ar-ti-fi-cial gra-vi-ty well!

Which means…? That fried porcupine is an exquisite dish if sauteed in a light garlic butter! Of course! Glad you could leap to that rather obvious bit of logic!

Or so your rambunctiously wayward thought-processes would go, if we did not add one…more…factor. What should happen to the artificial gravity well if the machinery responsible were to…oh, say…cease to be functional from the first of chained explosions?

Why, of course it had to be the first thing to go! When designing a floating fortress, that’s a feature which is near-well mandatory! Always be sure that the first bit to be destroyed is always the artificial gravity-well generator. And if you design a floating fortress without an artificial gravity-well generator, then how do you wish for your mooks to get down to the surface without killing themselves earlier than they are supposed? Really, you should try thinking things through!

In any event, now Aia realised that the very-same phenomena was…is occurring this very moment. One moment, floating down blissfully to the vast dramatic wasteland-plains below. Then, noticing that the severed bonce ahead of her…or below, rather…suddenly picked up a great deal of speed—its rather otherwise-unkempt hair a-flutter on the way down. Then Aia was on her way down as well and a lot faster. With the gravity well being…ahem, well and gone, so goes the peaceful-blissful drift downward after victory. Now to quote one of those rather rambunctious Americans, Damn the torpedoes--full steam ahead!

Except this time, full speed down. Aia is an especially lithe thing. Rather aerodynamic, that slender body of hers. Such means that the elf-girl attains terminal velocity rather quickly and rather suddenly.

Now, this is where things became especially deceptive for Aia. For one thing, there are no nearby stationary objects large enough for her to see—her whizzing by. We did not say there was nothing. This is a planet with an atmosphere. There is plenty of something. Plenty of dust-motes, bacteria, and…

Oh look! Some disparate atoms that were once What’s-His-Name! Hullo there, Jakk! Why haven’t you moved on, along with the rest of your corpus? There’s no reason in the least as to how Aia could possibly love you now. So just be a good little obedient deceased sort and bugger off!

Now, where were we? Or rather, where was Aia? Oh, yes. Still plummeting at one-thousand, five-hundred and ninety-seven kilometers an hour. Some of you would-be science-yobs are declaring this to be far too fast—what, with your assumptions of averages and drag coefficients. Damn your averages! Did we not say that Aia is not of average human physique? And did you not also notice that this is not quite Earth? Different atmosphere, dumber humans (which is somehow possible), different falling mass, such explains her speed.

Not that Aia could especially tell exactly how fast her falling was happening. What, with air whipping across hair and clothing. (And feet, don’t forget her lovely feet.) Fast simply meant fast at this point. Neither humans nor human-brains installed in synthetic elf-bodies have built-in speedometers. Really, why should you? It would simply be demoralising, knowing how slow your brains act! Hah!

There was only one fast-moving human brain hereabouts, and it was closer to the ground than Aia was. Fast in the physical sense, in that regard. Which is to say, more a literal interpretation of fast and not quite the metaphorical reference to your slothsome neurological antics… What, too many syllables for you? If you cannot understand when you are being insulted, then perhaps it’s all the better!

This, just as Aia suddenly knew…that the artificial gravity well was now neither artificial nor a well any longer. Because it was gone, that’s why. And something that is gone is no longer what it was.

It would be wrong to say that the ground was rushing up to meet Aia. Aia is the one doing the rushing.

Meanwhile, the ground is doing nothing of the sort. Simply minding its own business, as it usually does. It’s only occasionally that some sodding dunderhead or other decides to put a blemish in it—and usually with the entirety of one’s corpus. And the ground is perfectly capable of having awareness because there are thought-crystals sown throughout by way of a subterranean network. How the bloody hell else did you expect grow-kilns to work out in the middle of anywhere? And now, here comes another abject failure at flying lessons.

And so ends the adventure of Aia Andersdotter, yet another product of humanity and therefore with results to be expected! All of her would-be grasps at victory and glory are soon to be met with destruction! Quite an inglorious end to her, really! Another flying lesson gone awry! And why have you forgotten what we have said about paragraphs in which ever sentence ends with an exclamation point!

It means we are lying again, that’s what. We wouldn’t do it so often if you weren’t so easily led astray. All that it takes is for a few of our fellows to show up in an absolutely ridiculous lentil-shaped aircraft or sporting a pair of cloven hooves, and you’re all set to believe anything told to you.

Just so very gullible. And stupid. Don’t forget stupid. Must be, for all of those failed attempts at learning how to fly without anything in the way of artificial aides. But at the least, at the very least, there was something capable of flight.

With all the rushing sound of air and all of Aia’s overly dramatic (and overly useless) screaming, you wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Hear what? Why, the beating of white wings, of course! Those wings had to beat in order to beat terminal velocity. It was something of a race to catch up to a rapidly falling and rather loudly screaming bit of elf-girl.

Which is to say…the not-a-unicorn has skillfully swooped down and butted its back against Aia’s deliciously bare feet. And with the not-a-unicorn’s otherwise seemingly unicorn-like white mane flapping all about, Aia grabbed on. The elf-girl of synthetic corpus did not ask how or why there was a unicorn with fifty percent more legs suddenly coming to her rescue. That’s because human-brained people do not ask such questions at times like this. And never mind if Aia was wrong in thinking the not-a-unicorn to be a unicorn.

…

You have no doubt seen this sort of scene countless times before. Or rather, you would think the number to be countless. That yob we encountered before, it has a name.

No longer howling at a seemingly malfunctioning tele, Nigel Baker of the East End has viewed cinematic scenes involving flying animals rescuing humans exactly one-thousand six-hundred and forty-four times. This, by way of movies, cartoons, commercials advertising movies, more commercials advertising useless dreck that is no doubt bad for you physical health…but with you buying the products regardless, and even in comics.

But Nigel Baker has long since fallen away from anything which even remotely smacks of literacy. He is now completely and thoroughly a consumer of audio-visual animated media. And worst of all, television—the very nadir of all things pertaining entertainment. It is as if the absolute hogshead of King Lear he intends to consume before midnight was not enough neurological negativity.

Beer and television! The most intellectually destructive of combinations! Why not sell the tele, purchase the construction of an especially sturdy brick wall, and attempt demolition thereof with the front of your rather hard skull? Serves the same purpose, that! As an added bonus, you can have your brain damage whilst no longer having to pay television license!

But Mister Baker here in his East End flat cannot fathom thinking that far ahead. No, not that he has anything in the way of a congenital mental deficiency. (Other than being born human, that is. As we must continually remind you, it’s just… Never mind.) Nigel has simply wasted away anything like an expanding intellect by expanding both his consumption of fermented beverages as well as doing the same for his waistline.

What’s all this, then? What’s it got to do with an elf-girl plummeting from an alien sky (skyborne, indeed) and being rescued by a not-a-unicorn? If you are asking that, then perhaps you should cozy up next to Nigel and share in your similar level of intellect.

We suppose you could share absolute hours of monosyllabic discourse on which brand of liquid brain damage tastes the best, along with your mutual love of Arsenal. Because there was an Arsenal match on the tele, as was not the case when we last encountered this yob. Instead, there was something in the way of metaphysical interference that we had nothing to do with which resulted in his tele displaying himself watching the tele. And by the way, we will absolutely and completely not be responsible for this next bit of audio-visual entertainment. Certainly better than what’s happening on the pitch.

There was a fwip, a zip, and now the tele showed a certain barefooted elf-girl astride a bright white one-corned creature. The girl’s expression changed from fear and loathing to her not worrying and being happy. Now we should also add that—somehow—the metaphysical properties of Nigel’s television were altered at the subatomic level and in such a way that the resolution was now a thousand times better than what would otherwise be possible.

The salesman down at the shop wanted to sell Nigel a tele with a higher resolution. But no, Nigel doesn’t like to be bothered with big numbers. Or rather, not bothered with numbers much at all. Instead, Nigel was, for a time, currently admiring the shapes of the elf-girls bared…feet. Yes, her feet.

Then the hobgoblins of his little mind reminded him as to the purpose of him being here. No, not his purpose in life. Nigel never bothered with that. The purpose of him being in front of the tele! Arsenal match! But now, not the latest Arsenal match.

“Oy! What’s all this then!” exclaimed Nigel, coming dangerously close to speaking words of more than one syllable. If that were to happen, then goodness knows what other consistency with the universe could be broken. Could very well have an end to quantum rules regarding the travel of electrons among conductive and semi-conductive materials. Could then end up with Nigel being dumber than he already is (which is actually a possibility despite his already low minb-power) because human brains utilise electrical impulses to process thought! And so, for the last bloody time, stop with your bloody nonsensical so-called science fiction in which the universe suddenly decides that electricity stops working! How in the bloody blazes did you get published or write something so vaguely coherent at all when you have not even attended school long enough to learn that!

We did mention that the image quality was far and beyond anything that your meager Earth technology could produce. In fact, it was not at all possible for your ground-bound thinking could create. This, no more than your slope-foreheaded forebearers could come up with a round object with a sturdy stick placed at its center. To imagine! You humans spent hundreds of thousands of years going about existence without things so simple as the wheel! Too much time enjoying your discovery of fermentation.

This, just as this ill-clad specimen of homo sapiens-sapiens was going about consuming more of the before-mentioned as he takes in sight of what’s on the tele—as radically enhanced as that tele so happens to be at the moment. And the metaphysically quantum-augmented tele was not displaying his much-valued sight of the pitch! Indeed, no Arsenal-watch for the moment! Instead, his simple brain was chuck-full of absolutely paleolithic balderdash. Absolutely unable to see some of his fellow humans—as grotesquely malformed as they were with brute-simple muscle-building chemicals—doing little but kicking ‘round a hexagon-covered spheroid.

And so, for that reason, his anger-inflamed subconscious was bringing forth the most astounding of imagery. You would like to see what’s on his rather limited mind, wouldn’t you? Your species may have begun to roam the plains and started crafting villages of bonded rocks held up with metal sticks, yes. But physio-psychologically speaking, your mental antics still remain in the warm dark depths of the forest primeval!

Blurred but fierce notions about savaged meat absolutely ripped straight from living bodies. The pounding of fists on bare chests or hard trees. Loud shrieks of declared dominance upon crushing beasts and fellow hominids alike. All notions of meat and anger that seem to make his blood sing.

Which would explain why he is pounding the arm of the armchair and was howling with incisors bared. He so very wanted to do some ripping and tearing at that which took away what he wants!

Well, you wanted to know. We would have no more dipped into his consciousness than willing taking a leisurely dip into untreated sewage. Not that there is morally wrong with that, mind you. Some species of your galaxy and others have symbiotic colonies of autotrophs existing within their outermost dermal layers. Swims in fertilizers are enjoyable to them—even if other species reliant upon olfactory input may or may not stay far away from them.

But you seem to enjoy your depths of mental savagery and stupidity. You do so very much adore the very depths of darkest, darkest pleasure. Away with science! Be done with such frippery as empirical thinking and logic! Complex machinery is evil! Technology is evil! Just…do away with all of your clothing and return to the deep, warm, and therefore not-a-little Freudian embrace of Mother Nature. Return…to primate.

But then…somewhere within the deepest depths of his psychological forest, this grunting piece of meat upon the armchair had a vague tickling of neurons. There are an average of about eighty billion neurons knocking about in those ovoid-shaped bone-bowls of yours. A touch bit less for Nigel—given his love of post-digestive yeast products. Even so, we are playing the odds here. Just as there were any billions of chances before you humans took over the Earth after the last two or three civilisation-building species, eighty billion neurons are quite a few chances for something vaguely resembling an inkling of thought can sort of trickle through.

And so, deep within the primeval depths of his fierce, savage, and rather hairy depths of despair of being deprived of his precious Arsenal, he came to realise something. He came to understand that one possible key for trans-dimensional travel involved trace amounts of anti-matter (iron atoms in particular) subject to an artificial tau-boson collimator effect by way of…

Oh, all right. We admit to having put that thought there. And we promptly took that thought right back, lest Nigel do something so silly as introduce faster-than-light travel technology to your species. Goodness knows just how much stupidity humans would spread throughout the galaxy upon doing that!

And we promptly replaced that thought with what should pass if Nigel were to have neither tele nor advanced technology. No more tele. No more Arsenal. Even a sloping forehead can realise that. Which is to also say, those evolutionary throwbacks that keep gaining seats in parliament should be able to grasp the concept.

So, watch the tele. Something of vague interest may come to pass. You would not know if you were to change the channel. Not that Nigel could. We control the x and the y coordinates. Hence, we induce the illusion of depth.

But who could give a care about the likes of Nigel Baker? Look at him. So absolutely full of fried haddock and fried chips to go along with. Absolute metric tonnes of that stuff along with matching quantities of beer having been digested, the results of which traveling the many, many small roads of his circulatory system with the final stop ultimately being his seat of consciousness. In short, nothing at all special about Nigel Baker—not even his capability to serve as a human-shaped filter for ethyl alcohol. There are larger humans than Nigel. Therefore, there are larger human-shaped filters for ethyl alcohol. Thus and therefore, even with that being the best of his attributes (relatively speaking), there are better.

No, nothing special about Nigel Baker. Not only is he below-average as a human being, he is also a human being. That puts him quite a ways down the cosmic scale of things. Nigel is not an elf. He is not a unicorn. He is not even a not-a-unicorn.

And such is part of the reason why watching the Arsenal match is more important than watching Nigel! Oh, bother. How did that happen? Let’s set things to rights and turn the transmission back to the quantum-induction channel we created exactly for this purpose. This set off a fresh round of howls with the pale and less-hairy hominid in the seat, yes. But to quote Nigel himself under other circumstances, them’s the breaks…

While that more-or-less living alcohol filter is having yet another break with reality, let’s resume watching what’s on the tele. Why-ever not? What’s left of Nigel is in neither condition nor mental position to say no. Not that he is aware of our presence, but it’s the thought that counts.

As before, the camera dramatically cuts to a far-and-away view of that wondrous floating fortress. There is a sudden burst of explosive explosion near the top of the mountain-sized hovering thing. Quite instant. Quite energetic. Then, came another explosion. Like Nigel having a pint followed by another, why not have another? Yes! Yet another sudden release of thermal shenanigans. Not to be outdone, another bit of the structure had a fit of blooming brightness, suddenly darkened into smoke.

And then, as if the energy systems have decided that they had quite enough of this nonsense, the entire floating fortress was suddenly an expanding sphere of bright-white vaporizing fluorescence preceding incandescence. When the air itself is so hot that it is set alight, you certainly know that the temperature is quite a ways up there. After all, a source capable of furnishing energy to a mountain-sized structure for millennia and take it all between galaxies at that? Of course, such a source of energy would have to give ’way in an overly dramatic fashion.

There goes the floating fortress and everything in its vicinity. And also, everyone having not been teleported away. Everyone within the fortress who had sense enough to allow the emergency protocols to do that sort of thing? They were spirited away to a safe distance—out to the city and settlements outside.

Which is to say, a pointy-eared someone in particular did not allow the emergency protocols to teleport her away. Girl just decided to follow the directions of a severed head and leap from the bottom-most stairs and out into open air. Since when is a severed human bonce an effective source of instruction in any regard? For that mattered, a human bonce is no source of anything intelligent or long-term intelligible even when attached to the rest of the corpus! Just ask Nigel here. Or just look at him.

Which is to also say, we are dealing with a tragedy. Poor girl can have outrun a great many aspects of misfortune. Her homeland subject to radioactive meteorological conditions which followed some humans’ collective act of idiocy. Idiocy compounded with idiocy, the girl then went ahead and customised a synthetic body with nothing in the way of extraordinary capabilities. Too bad about that.

There are a great many tragedies to be had here, then. It was therefore perhaps all for the best if Aia met a fate in the bright ultra-white depths of material annihilation. Her dear lowly friend Jakk had come to such an end, and there are no complaints from his quarter. A surprising thing in that regard. You humans find most any reason—any reason at all—to have yourself a goodly bout of rage.

But in the end? Coming to an end on this plane of existence was not such a horrible touch of fate. We will readily admit that fate is no more a reality than wizards or wing’d unicorns. We could also therefore admit that perhaps the nonexistent touch of fate requires something in the way of multi-dimensional interference. And if we were to go a touch bit further and say something about us perhaps having something to do with the before-mentioned, then it would perhaps be too far indeed. All the more given how there was indeed sight of a certain not-unicorn’s flapping wings made visible against a sunset-flavoured sky after the explosion had faded off.

The tragedy continues, then. Such is because there is yet another human’s brain who continues its existence. Being ensconced in the comforting depths of a de-facto synthetic body did not make matters any better.

In fact and indeed, Annika Guntersdotter was atop a wing’d creature and flying to victory. Death would not claim her this day. And not in this universe. But since you care not about the likes of Annika, we shall dip back to the universe and timeline that you seem to care something about—the one with your Earth and your timeline in it.

That said, Aia Andersdotter of the synthetic corpus was in a position similar to that of Annika’s. Aia was alive and in flight with an animal that could not exist on your planet—not with your miserable level of technology. And Aia was smiling away with the absolute lunatic expression of someone who has vanquished what seems to be the only legitimate government to be had for the entirety of this planet. Bonus considerations go toward having wiped out an entire bloodline.

What? How! Surely there were plenty of wenches for Lord Morkudum to have made round with child. Yes, and no. Unlike the fantasy-land idiocy of your world, the wealthy of this nameless planet have various chemical means of enjoying the sport of baby-making…without the penalty of actually producing yet another miserable wretched human. There you have it, another potential plot-hole filled and fitted with the firm strut-work of logic.

Yes, logic. As with the logic of how traces of anti-particles with anti-gravitational qualities allowed a six-hooved creature weighing in the neighbourhood of nine hundred kilograms. Magic, not logic.

Even if all sorts of other presumed acts of logic would have meant that Aia should not have been alive past this point, such did not apply. Aia wins. Your preferred form of government (i.e. inheritable fascism) has lost. The game of the throne is over on this planet and forever on this planet because the throne is gone. Go raging about all you like on your simple little low-technology electron-driven social media devices. It will not change things. We are capable of changing things with mere thoughts, and you cannot.

That said, we could have had Aia come flying through the temporarily quantum-augmented device which sits in Nigel Baker’s East-End flat. We could also have caused Lord Morkudum to have a bout of fatal misadventure involving a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and a floating-fortress balcony with no safety in the form of an enclosing balustrade. But all of that would be rather boring.

This, much as watching Nigel Baker continue to maintain a state of mind absolutely steeped in lunacy would have been not boring. But we have tortured him enough. For now. His tele returned to its normal, low-tech operation and displayed the Arsenal match. Arsenal loses yet again by the way, 0 to 2. No surprise there—especially given the quality of team and fandom both. More primate howls.