More Windswept snippets

[wiseheart]

lhun_dweller, this one is for you!


Note: Forgive me the whacky science – I tried to make it as believable as possible, but I’m not a scientist, and physics were never my forte.

WINDSWEPT – O-HIME

Like on every day of the last sixteen consecutive years, nightfall found Lady O-hime, the Second Duumvir of Thule, in the top chamber of the Great Pyramid. This oldest and largest of the city-state’s many pyramidal buildings served both as the seat of the government and as the local university, and its upmost level happened to be an observatory. The very place from where the best scientists of Thule had checked the status of their small homeworld for seventy-four generations.

The position of Thule was a precarious one. The largest of the six moons of Windswept-the-planet, in truth it wasn’t a moon at all. It was actually a small planet, one-sixth of Windswept’s size. Their respective positions could have been best described if one assumed that Mars Solis had been captured by Earth’s gravitation, circling the larger planet in a somewhat erratic Trojan orbit.

The gravitation of Windswept-the-planet was just enough to keep Thule in said orbit, but Thulan scientists had calculated generations ago that one day it would be torn away by the much greater mass of Oceanus, the closest one of the system’s gas giants. Its orbit was already a little erratic, not enough to seriously consider an evacuation in the near future, but a warning nonetheless.

A warning we ought to take to heart, Lady O-hime thought. She was a mathematician, first and foremost, picking up astrophysics and astronomy as second and third fields; therefore she knew better than most what they might be facing in a couple of centuries. Maybe sooner. They needed to evacuate before the forces of gravitation would pull the planet apart under they very feet. Thule had never been considered a permanent settlement anyway… but now it was all they had, and it was failing, slowly yet inevitably.

The fact that she was a duumvir – the one responsible for non-military affairs – helped her to remind the members of the Senate that they were on borrowed time. They might not have listened to her, had she been merely the Deacon of the university; but her political position added weight to her words as a scientist. Since she had the most power, seconded only by Lord Avakum, they believed that she knew what had to be done.

The first and most important thing they needed to do was to regain Windswept-the-ship again. No other vessel would be capable of taking aboard the entire population of Thule and transporting them to another, more hospitable and safer homeworld. Not even the Leviathan, the space-faring home of the Earth-children… not that any Thulans in their right mind would be willing to board a ship with a mind of its own.

Because that was what the Leviathan was: sentient and alive. Not just a machine with an artificial intelligence – a living being with a true mind and true self-awareness. The Leviathan was as much a living, growing, sentient creature as it was a ship, and the mere thought of that made O-hime recoil with fear and disgust.

Like most Thulans, she was the result of eighty-six generations of selective breeding – only the slaves freed from Windswept-the-ship were different. In-utero fertilization, considered too random and too risky, had fallen out of use since before Windswept-the-ship had left the home system, thousands of years ago, with fifty thousand fertilized eggs in cryogenic suspension on board. The creators wanted a wide-spread selection from all human races, in order to ensure the healthiness of the gene pool on their new homeworld, and both groups followed that guideline – well save from the barbarians down on the planet.

But while the Earth-children, being geneticists and exobiologists and bio-engineers at large, did not hesitate to cause carefully orchestrated mutations by their offspring, adding selected genes to the various batches of each new generation, on Thule genetic purity was of utmost value. They had even tried to breed back the racial differences that had once marked the population of the homeworld.

Consequently, O-hime bore all characteristics of a Japanese lady from the Old Times. She was slim and relatively short, with golden skin, jet-black hair and black, almond-shaped eyes. Her clothing, according to local fashion, simulated ancient Japanese wear – it was just made of more endurable fabric and cut in a practical way that would not hinder her in her work. She was also fertile and genetically undamaged – something that had become a rarity among the Thulans.

Whether it had been caused by the selective breeding they practiced or by the fact that the thinner atmosphere of Thule could not shield them properly from the radiation of Magna, the bright, blue-white sun of the system, no-one could tell. Fact was, however, that infertility had become a serious problem among them, despite the refreshing of the gene pool with the help of the rescued slaves.

And while the Earth-children might be able to help with that, Thule’s rigid laws that enforced genetic purity did not allow such interference. Which was another reason to recapture Windswept-the-ship and leave in search of a new homeworld.

O-hime switched off the holographic image of Windswept-the-planet that was hovering over her desktop and walked to the huge observation window that occupied most of the eastern wall of the observatory. Oceanus was rising above the horizon, its enormous blue disc filling the sky. It was so close that one could see the swirling of violent storms about its warbling surface with the naked aye, and O-hime, like always, was awes by the astronomical impossibility of Thule’s existence. By the unshakable law of physics, Thule must have been torn to pieces by the warring gravitational forces of Windswept-the-planet and Oceanus – as it doubtlessly would happen one day. Right now, though, it was still there, and it was still stable, save from its slightly erratic orbit.

It was a mystery, or a miracle, or both. Whatever the reason might be, O-hime was grateful.



Now, remember, this isn't an actual story; just like with the previous snippet, I was trying to get a feeling for the character.

Comments

[saki101.livejournal.com]

I have a sense of Lady o-Hime's character: prudent, far-seeing, politically savvy (we need more of that in real life!).

What is the political relationship between the earth-children and the people on Thule? Do I gather correctly that the genetic relationship is that they all came from Earth thousands of years before, but that the earth-children have practiced rather creative bio-engineering and the Thulians adopted a stricter approach to artificial breeding? So at the point of your story they would be very, very distant cousins?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Quite distant, yet still compatible ones, actually. I'm just about to post some background info in my next entry, if you're interested.

[artemis10002000]

Oh! There is a lot of interesting world building in this snippet, you can see already that it's been thoroughly planned already at this point, though I can't really comment on it yet. Still trying to sort it all out in my mind, there's so much information at once. What I believe to have spied, though, is one of the plot points - regaining Windswept-the-ship and finding a new home? Or am I completely off the mark here?

I have to admit that I'm rather curious about the barbarians on the planet who breed the old-fashioned way.

The lady herself strikes me as an intriguing character, probably quite fun to write, too.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

You're quite right with your guesses. I've posted a bunch of background info in the next couple of entries that may answer a lot of your questions.

Basically, though, the barbarians, too, are the descendants of the original expedition but were not lucky enough to be able to leave the planet after the so-called Conflict.

And yes, the lady O-Hime is an interesting character to write.

[artemis10002000]

Yeah, I saw the background info yesterday already and bookmarked it, but I'll probably not get around to reading (or at least commenting) until the end of the week. I surprisingly learnt yesterday that I have a chance to do a B2 English language test tomorrow, so I have to do last-minute studying XD

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

You don't seem to be studying at the moment, though... *g*

Good luck with your test tomorrow! *all available appendages crossed*

[artemis10002000]

Nope, I'm not, shame on me *crooked grin* I'm just too tired. I got barely any sleep last night, so I have a headache and am half asleep. Trying to cram grammar into my brain would be an exercise in futility in this state, so I'm saving myself the frustration.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I think that counts as justified self-defence. *g*

[artemis10002000]

Yeah! *satisfied grin*

My mind goes to weird places when I'm overtired. It's the closest I ever come to acting like I snacked on the little colorful pills. I don't wanna know what I'd make of grammar in this state! :P And god forbid I learn anything.

[artemis10002000]

On second thought, I think I should write while I'm in this state. While predictably crappy, it might be good for a laugh due to the sheer weirdness.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

You're definitely on a roll here. I like all the background detail you've thought up.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The hardest part was to find the ideas that would actually work - I had too many of them. (Sorry for answering the comments backwards - I just started with the newest one.)

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Thanks for another snippet. Interesting character -- not a surprise, since it's you writing her! You're introducing a number of constraints on the various characters and peoples of your piece of the universe, which promises to set up some difficult conflicts among folks with different beliefs. Ah yes! And the old anthropological issue of "purity." Fascinating material to be working with. You'll be publishing the book someday, I hope!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

There's more in the following entries. It won't actually be a book, I think, rather a loosely connected collection of short vignettes. As for getting it published, well, for that I'd need: a) an editor, mostly for the grammar issues, and b) connections, which I don't have. But I'll put it up to fictionpress.com, when I have anything finished enough to do so.

To the defence of the Technocrats of Thule, the Conflict, as they call the planetwide war, was partly fought with biological weapons (on the other side), which led some truly frightening mutations both among humans and indigenous lifeforms, so their phobia is at least partially understandable.