IXPLORING
The majestic and terrible city-ship Ix The Undying (The Majestic and Terrible, seat of the eternal Imperatrix Capable And Distributed) ran into a situation when the Eparchy of Navigation discovered they had to make an unplanned turn.
For the past month, Ix had been following a previously scouted radioactive river rich in needed chemicals. Ix trundled along, herds of domesticated drones trailing siphons into the river to top off Ix’s tanks of needed chemical materials, mostly sulfur (although if the occasional Polonium Squid-analogs got sucked up, bonus!) Around the river, the terrain was pretty tranquil for Outside: rolling hills, thermal vents, this one playful mag cyclone that just wouldn't leave, and some crystal-tipped trees. The trees seemed friendly enough, waving to the ship, but they’d try to tear some bits off if they got too close. Outside trees could be like that.
However, a few weeks ago the river had gone off the recently scouted maps. Spending time in unexplored territory was usually a bad plan, so Ix requested alternate ones.
One plan submitted was to follow the river for a few more days through unknown territory (and to continue to suck up sulfur) and hope the river turned back into scouted territory. Another was to turn Ix to get to scouted ground (which meant no sulfur) and send the Scout Corps instead to see where the river went. The plans had become the subject of some furious debate (theo- and ontological) between various factions, the most powerful being the Eparchy of Engineering (who wanted the sulfur) and The Eparchy of Navigation (who wanted to leg it.) The Imperatrix Herself had also thrown in to support both the Eparchies, from two different aspects, which complicated things further.
Her Majesty Unstoppable was present throughout Ix in various ‘aspects.’ Each aspect represented some facet of Her, and an aspect could be anything: a statue, digital chatbot, talking piece of scrollwork, you name it. Each aspect contained an actual part of Her mind, distributed and protected from deletion.
The aspect Imperatrix Motus had thrown in on the side of Nav. The Motus aspect was a full bronze statue of Her, her three arms holding Her holy navigational tokens of sextant, road maps and GPS. She sat cross-legged on the outside deck of the forward conning tower that Nav used where She could survey Ix’s forward path of travel. Symbolic, probably. Even though Her face looked forward, the aspect never moved except to speak and nobody knew if it actually ‘saw’ anything.
Another aspect, Her Lady of Synthesis Chemical (a chattering clockwork wall sconce with a voice that sounded like a box of silverware was constantly being kicked around a room) had sided with Engineering.
Debate when Ix Ixself got involved was tricky. Her answers ranged from specific to vague and it was hard to know why. Sometimes she had access to secret data since she was literally plugged into everything on Ix. Sometimes She was just in a mood. And sometimes, parts of her expanded consciousness, stored in Her many aspects and server clusters and paper workflows and biological-who-knows-what, had differing ideas about how things should be done.
In any event, after days of back and forth debate, and pleading, and prayers, and finally a passionate essay penned by a Bishop from the Ixolic Church of Logic on loan to Engineering from some university downtown, the Eparchies and the various aspects accepted the new course the Eparchy of Engineering had proposed.
For the next few days Nav plotted a course and Ix followed it, and the terror of being in unscouted lands faded into the background general every-day terror.
The terror situation amped when a junior acolyte on the night shift doing a forward scan noticed that a bit of mountain had sleazed into view. Once she cleaned up the kav she had spat out in alarm, she put in a frantic call to the Chief of Navigation, who then woke up the rest of Nav.
The landscape Outside changing was hardly newsworthy, but Nav and the Imperatrix Motus both being surprised by it was unheard of. To make matters worse, it had just become visible through some thick Ghost Fog ahead, so there wasn’t a lot of reaction time - maybe a few hours. For a ship and bueroreligious entity the size of Ix, that was barely enough time to get everyone even aware of what was going on, Ix included.
Beurefex Harald Set vanHeap, Eparch of Navigation, came sprinting up the tower still in his night clothes and saw a crowd of Nav acolytes on the deck outside posting instants on their comps and working prayer spinners. The acolyte who had discovered the mountain (a vanHeap cousin Harald recognized from his own family Set) waved to Harald, pointing forward. Pushing through the bodies he saw what had made his acolytes freak out:
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The bronze Motus aspect was no longer sitting.
In fact, She was now standing, off Her dais but connected to it via cables, and leaning over the rail, peering out into the gloom. She had even left Her tokens behind. vanHeap hadn’t even known the aspect could move or put down her tokens. It hadn’t happened in his lifetime, anyway.
The mountain was still too far away for normal eyes to see, but Her aspect was squinting out into the gloom, and, well, who knows with Her? Who knows? Maybe Her eyes in this aspect had some kind of scan equipment. Maybe She was seeing through the eyes of the giant figurehead on the prow of Ix. Maybe the aspect was standing just for show so She could save face.
Everyone in the tower waited on their Mother, ruler, habitat and protector, central processing unit and Goddess to do something.
With a grinding and squealing sound, the aspect turned Her head to look left, out to port over the faintly glowing river, and nodded slightly. Harald cringed from his toes to his testicles.
Driving Ix through a deep river of boiling sulfur and various radioactive acids was theoretically possible - Ix could seal Ixself up and submerge if it had to - but to do so would trigger the End of the current Age, sending everyone into the bowels of Ix to wait until Ix opened back up again, a combination of Dark Age and unplanned tech downtime that could last for several generations.
A collective wail and gasp came from the assembled Nav techs as some of them contemplated the existential horror of being driven into the workings of Ix for lifetimes. The discovering Nav acolyte decided to just hurl herself over the railing, screaming, which was a bit premature, really. Everyone watched her fall, including Her Majesty, until (with a squeak) She rolled her bronze eyes in Her sockets in a very teenager-like way and turned to look starboard, then straight ahead again at the cheeky mountain..
Harald cleared his throat. You don’t normally speak first to Her Endless Conveyance, but he had climbed over a lot of vanHeaps in his Set to get to this position and was pretty pushy. Plus, you know, the mountain up ahead.
Finally She shrugged, screwed up Her mouth (accompanied by various pops and grinding), crossed her arms and said “Fine. OK, Nav, We turn sharpish. Twenty degrees starboard.”
Harald took a deep breath. A turn like that was doable, even at the current speed, but it would be noticeable. It would contribute to the overall chaos as folks who had lived their whole lives never feeling any directional force suddenly felt their entire world lean. This probably would lead to religious parades of confused Zens thinking the End was Nigh, hundreds of things breaking or falling off all over Ix, and whole neighborhoods moving around to balance the shifting weight.(1)
So… bad, but not much worse than normal, Harald thought. He made a note on his comp and waved a hand at the rest of Nav to start prep. They all scuttled off.
“What about the sulfur, Imperatrix?” Harald said.
“Fuck the sulfur” She said. Her aspect ponderously turned, stepping with a dull clang back fully onto the dais, dust and sparks and bronze shavings falling off.
“It’s just that,” he asked, “The Lady of Synthesis Chemical in the college of engineers was pretty vocal on how badly She… well, we… needed it, and-”
She turned to give Harald a pout, and he snapped his mouth shut. She didn’t like to be reminded when different aspects held different views on things. Harald couldn’t imagine (outside of a theological seminar) what Her mind must be like. All everyone knew was that most of the aspects seemed to be in a constant state best described as “Bored and Surly.”
“Harry,” she droned while scooping up Her tokens of office, “we’ve got plenty of sulfur. Don’t worry about it.”
“Very good, Imperatrix.”
“Send a missive to the family of the idiot who jumped when on duty and without permission. Take it out of her vacation time before you reimburse the Set from her final owed wages. I’m not paying for the time off.”
“She’s a cousin in my Set. I’ll speak to her parents myself.”
“As for the Lady of Synthesis Chemical, well. I’ll deal with Me. We’ve been dredging sulfur compounds for weeks, I better be OK with what I have now.”
“I’ll let the college of engineers know.”
“Wake Me once the turn gets to fifteen degrees.”
Harald bowed and the Aspect settled into the cross-legged posture She previously was in, appearing to power down. Turn bells started chiming across Ix as it warned all the Zens about the upcoming turn. Harald was trying to decide whether to make the walk back home to go back to sleep or just stay up when his comm chirped.
Harald toggled the receiver, still listening to the gentle gonging of the Turn bells.
“Nav?” a voice on the receiver said. “This is Beurefex Frink set Anton at the College of Engineers. I’ve got an irate aspect here screaming bloody murder about sulfur.”
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(1) Stuff breaking, End is Nigh parades and neighborhoods shifting happened all the time on Ix, of course, just not all at once.