1.18 Guessing_Cosmosis

Guessing

Being on the move again was reassuring.

There weren’t any vehicles intact back at the mining facility, so there was no chance Trapper would be pursuing anytime soon. That was reassuring. Tasser and I hadn’t taken the risk of checking where Trapper landed. Better to get out while we could.

It was still brutally cold. Despite the sun peeking through a few points in the clouds, it was an overcast day on this alien planet. The only thing making the ride more comfortable was the absence of wind. Our truck crunched through the snow at a middling pace.

Every thirty seconds or so there was a pop a few feet off the back of the vehicle.

I was making explosions. Very small ones, but explosions, nonetheless. We were experimenting.

I wanted a bit more boom; a heavier impact than anything I could inflict on my own. There was no chance I’d be able to replicate the high explosive mines that Trapper had used. Not from the back of a truck. Not improvising like this.

I’d need… well I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew I didn’t have it here.

That was assuming I could even make a molecule as complex as high explosives.

Daniel said.

He was right about that. I didn’t. I had a pattern in my head, a very abstract pattern that I couldn’t begin to put into words. But I understood it. I could make a sphere, and fill it with that pattern.

I did not.

The flashbang still followed chemistry though. I could tell that it reacted with the air to burn… to me that proved it was indeed matter we were creating.

Talking about chemistry again refocused me on our experiments.

Trapper had shown that it could make huge firebombs or the more impactful explosives. When Daniel and I had first coordinated on the flashbang, we’d managed to make something that burned and sparked, but not something that actually exploded.

It hadn’t been our goal, but we’d made something that burned more than it blew up.

That was the difference between Hollywood fireballs, and actual ordinance.

If we could actually tweak the formula, we could actually end up with an actual weapon. Less burn would mean more boom.

Tasser was watching the experiments I was conducting with an expression that, on a human face, meant awe. But the Casti’s body language didn’t match.

For whatever reason, body language was much easier to read than facial expressions.

Daniel thought it was because our bodies were fundamentally similar. Torso. Two legs. Two arms. Similar configurations communicate similar things.

I didn’t think it could be that simple, but I didn’t have a better theory. And that was all it was, really. Theory.

Posture. Expression. Science. Even what little I knew of the language was built on sand. We just didn’t have any information we could count on. We were just guessing at everything. What else we could do?

So far, we’d leaned more on blind speculation rather than proper hypotheses, but that was exactly what we were trying to correct now. We had a quiet moment to actually try and stress test the conclusions our observations had pointed us toward.

Daniel had been diminished when I’d created the stun bomb against Trapper, which meant that even if he wasn’t assisting me in the creation, it still wore on him. And if that was the case, what incentive did we have for him not to assist?

Daniel remarked, having taken visible form. He was hovering a few feet above the snowy road behind the ruck.

I felt like I’d seen it before.

Wait…

I had seen it before! It had been the first thing we’d learned about Daniel’s specks. His ability to manifest them followed his image.

I recalled.

<…my range is your range.> he concluded.

It was a good thing too. If I’d had to create our little experiments in the palm of my hand, I don’t think any of my company would have put up with it.

We’d reduced the mass of our creation by as much as we could justify, down to the tiniest amount of mass we could still perceive. In addition to not bothering the driver as much, less mass and energy at work meant our trials didn’t tax Daniel much either.

So, the truck rolled carefully through the heavy fresh snow and every minute or so a small pop sparked a meter or two off the back bumper.

Only the further we got into it, the more duds we got.

I complained.

I was trying to make something blow with enough force to maybe knock an otter off its feet, but somehow, we’d gone in the opposite direction and now they weren’t exploding at all.

Effectively, there wasn’t enough combustible material to react spontaneously with the sparse oxygen in the air. I made a bigger speck, almost a full gram. It gave a satisfying crack as it blew itself apart.

Going too small had its own problems.

Daniel wondered.

I focused and pinched a thin strip of metal into existence. Well, strictly speaking, I didn’t actually know what it was. I called it metal, but I knew in my head it couldn’t really be metal.

Even stable metals reacted with things. But having created it myself, I had some ineffable insight into its characteristics. I could tell there was nothing that would react with the slip. It was a noble solid.

I could also tell it wouldn’t stick around. After a few seconds it would…dissolve into…well, nothing . Even as I watched it happen, I couldn’t explain it. Not even in the generalized abstract way I understood how it was created.

Daniel smirked.

I finished.

I shared his enthusiasm, at least some of it. If we managed to get out of harm’s way, I’d probably enjoy the opportunity to learn more for myself.

We still weren’t making any progress though. As much as I wanted to apply science to these creations, it wasn’t so easy in practice. Huddling under a tarp in the back of a run-down alien truck through subzero weather was hardly ‘laboratory conditions’.

It was time for a break.

I wondered.

Daniel was right, though I didn’t like it.

Nai was responsible for helping us against Stalker. But even if the grey-blue alien was technically an ally, it was still hostile toward me. It was hard to describe the certainty I felt. From the first moment I’d met it, Nai had been ready to kill me.

I liked to think I was friendly. Given how well I felt like I was getting along with Tasser, I felt like I’d done a pretty good job of being friendly with the aliens so far. Vorak notwithstanding, of course.

Trouble with Nai was that it didn’t just feel hostile. Every time it looked at me, I was struck with the quiet certainty that it made sure it was ready to incinerate me at a moment’s notice. It went beyond hostility. It was barely restrained animosity. Enmity.

I was an alien to it; was it literally xenophobic?

It seemed to get along with Tasser and Nemuleki well enough, but they wore the same uniform. If that was the only reason it had, I was going to be pretty irate.

Enmity alone wouldn’t concern me.

But combined with capability?

The way Nai carried itself slinging its teal cosmic fire… it was experienced. Nai was not a stranger, blindly groping through the dark like I was. It knew its powers. It probably knew more about my powers than I did.

Now that I had a bit more time to think about it, it was a small miracle I’d been able to fall asleep at all near it. If it had been awake, and registering on my Enumius radar, I would have been up all night.

It was capable of killing me with a thought. So much more than the icy weather, that made my blood freeze. With friends like it, who needed the Vorak? At least Stalker and Trapper had been unambiguous.

Nai felt just as hostile, but it was capricious. Like it might smite me later, whenever it was more convenient.

I asked Daniel.

<…Not unless you secretly swung by a spa or something when I wasn’t up and about.>

Daniel chuckled.

I wondered.

That got me thinking about just whose planet we were on. I doubted it could be the Vorak’s planet. What few glimpses I had of the settlements and towns we’d passed through were entirely Casti.

But every time we’d been anywhere near a town, Tasser had made sure that Nai and I were both low and out of sight in the back of the vehicle.

Daniel guessed,

That was solid reasoning. Once the tunnel had come down behind us, Tasser had been laxer about the riding arrangements.

Of course, if I understood correctly, bringing the tunnel down was to bar pursuers. But we’d already run afoul of two otters, with more guaranteed to follow.

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Even as I said it, I knew it didn’t fit.

Daniel reminded me.

The Vorak on the space station had been working in teams. There was more than enough evidence to nix the idea that they were solitary fighters. They wore uniforms, they had standardized equipment. There was infrastructure and organization to these otters.

I recalled.

Okay now I was really curious.

His tone told me he wanted me to spar ideas—see what possibilities survived scrutiny. I tried to rattle through the possibilities that sprang to mind.

Playing in the woods? What if they were? Trapper seemed to have stolen this vehicle, which was visibly made for Casti occupants. These Vorak were scrounging for resources to hunt us with, just as much as we were to escape.

The possibility was not comforting. How did the Casti fight against these things? Without support or even weapons, just two otters had nearly killed us. And each one of them had been on their own!

I weighed his point, but he wasn’t done.

I protested.

I rolled my eyes. We’d probably hiked three or four miles in the cold last night, and I’d been dog tired by the end of it. But it wasn’t my fault. I’d been cooped up on a spaceship for a few weeks. There hadn’t exactly been room to run.

Something stuck out to me about what he said though.

I noticed.

<2 and 0,> I repeated, differently.

Daniel noticing the incongruity. He experimented. I could tell which one he meant. I could even tell that he hadn’t meant the big animal, but rather the verb meaning to carry or hold a burden.

I said.

I snorted,

Daniel corrected.

Daniel said.

I said, following his logic,

I thought, glancing at Tasser.

Daniel suggested.

I was eager to know more about the Vorak hunting us too, so I pantomimed the question to Tasser, motioning a gun.

“Vorak. Ala…” I pointed back and tried to make gun sounds. “Pew. Pew.”

I grumbled.

Tasser, unfortunately, did not understand. He didn’t even bother saying anything back, maybe on account of the cold. Instead he gestured toward the bolt-rifle.

“Yeah… Su,” I said. Uhh…

Daniel flipped through the mental journal.