Fictional non-fiction Archives

Fiction

Charlie v. Inman

by Mary G. Thompson

CHARLIE v. SARAH INMAN and MICHAEL INMAN, as individuals, and SOUTHERBY’S INC.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court.

The facts before us are as follows: Defendants Sarah and Michael Inman were out for a walk one night near their Northwest Portland home with their dog, Atticus. As they walked by a public park area the size of approximately two single family lots, Atticus began barking and pulling toward a group of trees. The dog was so insistent that the Inmans felt compelled to follow. Upon arriving at the trees, the Inmans discovered a creature about the size of a house cat. This creature stood on two legs and had a face in the shape of a hexagon. Making clicking and slurping sounds with its mouth and waving its arms, it managed to convey that it was in some distress. It raced across the grass and gestured to a metal box that was lying in a hedge, which appeared damaged. Sarah Inman picked up the creature, Michael Inman carried the damaged cube, and the couple returned to their home with it.

Upon subsequent investigation, it was revealed that this creature was an extra-terrestrial, a being who had crashed its spacecraft in the public park. The creature communicated with the Inmans using a small device that purported to translate its clicks and slurps into some semblance of the English language. The Inmans fed and nursed the creature, named it Charlie, and began referring to it with a male pronoun.

The Inmans’ rescue of Charlie garnered significant media attention. The couple was approached by scientists who wished to study Charlie, by television producers who wished to make a reality TV show, and by the United States Government, which demanded that the Inmans hand over Charlie to the FBI. That issue was the subject of a lengthy round of prior litigation which we will not rehash here, except to note that the Inmans retained the right to custody of Charlie, and Charlie, at the inception of this litigation, still resided in their Portland home. After being approached by numerous potential buyers, the Inmans approached Southerby’s auction house and entered into a contract to put Charlie up for sale in accordance with Southerby’s terms. Charlie, with the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed the present suit. Charlie asked the District Court to enjoin the sale and to free him from the control and ownership of the Inmans.

At issue is a value, according to offers heretofore received by Southerby’s from several major corporations and private collectors, of between thirteen and seventeen million dollars.

The District Court denied Charlie’s petition, but the Ninth Circuit reversed and ordered him freed. The Inmans sought, and we granted, a stay of the Ninth Circuit’s order until this decision could be rendered.

We review the holding of the NinthCircuit de novo.

Plaintiff alleges violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which reads as follows: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Plaintiff alleges that because the Inmans have detained him against his will and in fact offered him for sale at auction that his condition must thus be considered subject to this provision.

Before we can make such a determination, some inquiry into the origin of the Amendment must be made. The Thirteenth Amendment was enacted at the close of the Civil War to explicitly ban the practice of chattel slavery, which to this day is a black mark on the history of our country. But who was eligible for the condition of slavery?

The Thirteenth Amendment explicitly repealed Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, colloquially known as the Fugitive Slave Clause, which read: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service of Labour may be due.” The significant language of that clause for our purposes is the very beginning: No Person shall be held to Service or Labour. Now, if we go to any common dictionary, whether of the time or today, we find that person is in the first instance defined as human.[1]

The Person in Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 is undoubtedly the same as the subject of “slavery or involuntary servitude” for purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment. At no time in our history, whether at the time of the original drafting or at the time of the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment, did the drafters of the constitution intend the word slavery to apply to any being that was non-human. One imagines approaching Abraham Lincoln with the idea that his cow or his dog or his barnyard chickens must be released because these animals were slaves.

Plaintiff alleges that he is nothing akin to a common animal but must be considered to be as like a human because of his demonstrated intelligence. The Court is not unsympathetic to this argument and notes that a significant record was created in the District Court as to the subject of Plaintiff’s acuity as compared to the average human.

At trial Plaintiff gave his testimony through the use of his own technology, which purported to translate his vocalizations into English. This technology was stipulated to be useful by both parties, but this Court is skeptical of the ultimate reliability of the testimony. Nevertheless, we defer to the District Court’s finding that Plaintiff demonstrated reasoning abilities at the level of a human child aged ten to twelve except in the case of mathematical skills, in which situation he demonstrated a conceptual ability that far exceeded that of the average human. Indeed, the District Court was unable to comprehend much of Charlie’s mathematical demonstration and required no fewer than four mathematical experts to explain Charlie’s exceptional results. Charlie and the ACLU therefore argue that, by virtue of his intelligence, he must be accorded the protection of the Amendment.

The Ninth Circuit was duly impressed by this argument and ruled that Charlie, ipso facto, was a person and therefore must be released. We disagree. The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified by the states in 1865. It was written and passed to free the African slaves and for no other purpose. Although we are as amazed by Charlie’s abilities as the Ninth Circuit was, we are not legislators and do not have the power to change the status of an extra-terrestrial, whose personhood was certainly not contemplated by the drafters of this Amendment. The very idea of extra-terrestrials must, to the Congress of 1865, have been absurd. There is nothing in the Thirteenth Amendment that purports to grant any rights whatsoever to an extra-terrestrial. Therefore, Plaintiff’s Thirteenth Amendment claim must fail.

The Fourteenth Amendment, like the Thirteenth, specifies that rights are to be granted to any person. Therefore, for the same reason stated above, Plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment claim must also fail.

The judgment of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is

REVERSED.

[1] “An individual human being consisting of body and soul.” Webster’s, 1828. “HUMAN, INDIVIDUAL—sometimes used in combination especially by those who prefer to avoid man in compounds applicable to both sexes.” Merriam-Webster, 2020.

~

Bio:

Mary G. Thompson is the author of Wuftoom, which Booklist called “impressively unappetizing and absolutely unique,” and other novels. Her contemporary thriller Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (Putnam) was a winner of the 2017 Westchester Fiction Award and a finalist for the 2018-2019 Missouri Gateway award. Her short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Dark Matter Magazine, and others. Her contemporary thriller The Word is coming in May 2024 from Page Street YA, and her sci-fi novella A Small Universe is coming in March 2025 from Tachyon Publications.

Philosophy Note:

This story was inspired by the US Supreme Court’s turn toward a particular brand of faux-originalism. The Court’s current trajectory could lead to a variety of absurd decisions, including denying personhood to a space alien with human intelligence. Under a strict historical reading of the post-civil-war amendments, a space alien would clearly not be a person, but under a more liberal living-constitution interpretation, there would be room for Charlie’s freedom. Animal rights activists have argued for animal personhood but so far have not been successful. See, for instance, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324383-why-has-a-court-decided-not-to-grant-happy-the-elephant-personhood/

Fiction

The Arbiter

by Conrad Gardner

EXHIBIT 101 – THE ARBITER

BEFORE TOUCHING, READ BELOW:

Forged in 1882, The Arbiter is the earliest Pistante in history. It was created by Abel Garcia (1860-1922), an Anjiladonian native who trained as a mage in this museum’s home at the age of ten. Upon leaving the Mantelios Institute, he moved to the developing settlement of Los Lojones in Mastaces, Babonia, working as a smith. Born to farmer parents, Garcia was used to labour, but not always well-behaved, stealing trinkets from his grandparents. Adopted by an aunt after his father’s death, he was enrolled in our institute, being taught humility and learning to help the less fortunate.

During the Third Invasion (1882 – 1885), Garcia attempted to defend the town, but his offensive spells needed a device to help channel their power. His hand-cast spells lacked accuracy, so he forged The Arbiter, inventing a new kind of weapon that would protect the entirety of Kantinia.

Modelling The Arbiter on a Ricosto Revolver, Garcia implemented the chant Spiritum Deus Guardia for several hours while under the forge’s heat. (This chant has been used on two other exhibits in this institution’s collection, Exhibits 84: The Disciplo and 96: Ramirez’s Lawgiver). His diary (housed in the Mantelios Library) notes that when removed from the forge, ‘The gun was too light, like a leaf.’ The weight of his chants squashed the barrel, increasing it four millimetres in length, proving beneficial to the weapon’s range capabilities. With the first Pistante in hand, Garcia learned to focus his beam casts on the weapon (which he termed ‘injecting’) and fire the energy bestowed, becoming the first gunmage. He waged war on the Chacibarae and Chupahomani that terrorised Los Lojones. Porofi was one of his most frequent casts against such beasts, powerful when injected into The Arbiter.

In 1883, Garcia returned to Anjilados, a focal point of the Third Invasion. Ignoring the torment of the surrounding towns, The Arbiter weighed his belt down until he agreed to return.

The gunmage rode through the country, shooting Fiestorre with stakati energy as he passed. With an army of New Babonites and Anjiladonians behind him, he helped reclaim his land. When not fighting, he shot his injured allies with consuviae projectiles, healing those that had rudimentary cuts and bruises. Though The Arbiter never refused him, he said his Pistante grew heavier during moments of anger, which led him to learn the meditative arts. He shared the knowledge of how to craft a Pistante with few people, though many imitations by criminals yielded failed results.

Due to the draining effects of injecting his magic into the Pistante, Garcia retired in 1905. An international discussion started about who would continue his legacy and become the next gunmage. Despite numerous attempts by the Anjiladonian and Babonian governments to claim the weapon, no politicians or military leaders could lift it with ease. Competitions were held without Garcia’s consent, attempting to find the best fighters and shootists, but no winners were selected by him.

Deciding to search for his new mentee himself before he grew too drained, Garcia came upon Rosa Macabe (1899-1966), a young thief in Mastaces City after she attempted to steal his wallet. Taking his belt, and The Arbiter with her by accident, Garcia saw the weapon did not drag her to the ground and sensed her benevolent spirit. Adopting Macabe, he tutored her in achieving inner balance and using her talents to help others.

Garcia’s choice was controversial. He permitted others to try using the weapon, but it was lifted by few, fired even less. The Saraphitos made vocal threats against Macabe’s life for not being a noble-born magician. Garcia taught her his method of weapon-smithing and had her study The Arbiter’s individual parts before he let her practice firing it. The weapon is notorious for being difficult to use unless the wielder understands its making. On his deathbed, Garcia said that Macabe was a better gunmage than him as she had mastered her hate.

During the Poronean Invasion on Kantinia, Macabe used The Arbiter to defend the continent. Preventing the needless slaughtering of thousands, she proposed a duel between herself and a Poronean champion, Cladstock the Brute. Injecting The Arbiter with combosti, she demolished his armour with a flurry of shots (Exhibit 198: Cladstock’s Helmet can be seen in the Invader Display, where the effects of combosti energy on veitor steel are visible). Following her predecessor’s practice, she never wore armour, making her grasp around The Arbiter’s ivory grip firmer, and her movements quicker.

In 1957, a Sariphoto invaded Macabe’s home and tried to execute her with The Arbiter. The Pistante detected the attacker’s dark soul, refusing to fire and scorching his palm. Taught by Garcia not to rely on The Arbiter for all spells, she killed the Sariphoto with a hand-cast combosti.

Drained by The Arbiter as Garcia had been, she searched for its next bearer, Guillermo Conti (1968- ). Losing his parents in the Poronean Invasion, he was taught at this institute until Madame Macabe selected him as her successor at the age of fifteen. Despite his aggression, he tempered this along with steel at Garcia’s forge as Macabe mentored him.

Serving in the Diavolos War (1986-1987), Conti helped close the Tiaria Tear, and was the leading gunmage of the Anjiladonian army. By the war’s end, he had greatly contributed to establishing an era of peace.

Conti attempted to use healing casts on it, but consuviae, was the only workable spell, due to its projectile nature. Unable to help others with The Arbiter beyond basic medical aid, he returned here to become a teacher. Introducing two new classes, Gunmaging and Gunsmithing, Conti crafted his own Pistante and gifted The Arbiter to this institute, saying that it had no use in a time of peace, as it needed conflict to be used well.

Here it lies, waiting for a day The Mantelios Institute prays will never come. If you wish to hold The Arbiter and see if you are worthy, please take hold of the grip.

WARNING: The Mantelios Institute and Museum does not claim responsibility for any injuries sustained when attempting to fire or remove The Arbiter from its Lashiana-enchanted glass. Hands are crumpled or burned at the visitor’s risk.

~

Bio:

Conrad Gardner’s fiction has been published by Superlative, Martian, AEL Press, and Full Moon Chronicles. He writes to calm his mind and keep his hands busy.

Philosophy Note:

Weapons, like beasts, may lay dormant for millennia. But they are always ready to be used again.

Fiction

Geriatric Dragon Care Associates Needed!

by Bethany Tomerlin Prince

Freedom Valley Care Center for Really, Really Wise Dragons is Always Hiring!

Freedom Valley Care Center for Really, Really Wise Dragons is the premier care center for geriatric dragons on the Western Continent. Unlike other multi-species care homes, we only serve Dragons, Drakes, Drakainas, and Wyverns, allowing us to provide custom care tailored to our client’s unique ultimatums! If you were a cave-bound Dragon, Freedom Valley Care Center would be your children’s top choice!

We are looking to replenish our team of brave, compassionate associates!

***Required Disclosure***

If it was up to us, we would consider every applicant.

However, due to various town and kingdom regulations, we are unable to hire any individual:

With an evil alignment
With a theft conviction
Who is currently a member of an adventurer’s guild

***Equal Opportunity Statement***

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against applicants due to class, race, species, gender, native language, continent, or realm of origin. The only factors we consider are an applicant’s willingness and ability to complete the requested role.

Mage Interns Needed

Our patent-pending mobility barges provide a low-impact way to move patients recovering from wing surgery around our facility. If you are a wind mage looking for an opportunity to earn casting hours toward your wizard’s license, then we would love for you to join our team!

***Responsibilities***

Enable patients to attend follow-up appointments and physical therapy
Continually cast for extensive periods of time

***Qualifications***

Ability to cast spells with a substantial amount of thrust
Ability to cast with a high degree of directional accuracy

Going forward all applicants will have their magical ability verified via an on-site practical exam as part of the interview process. Candidates planning to lift the barges, rather than magically manipulate them, need not apply.

***Pay***

This is one of the few conjurer credit eligible internships that also pays a competitive salary.

Full-Time Care Assistants Needed

Our care assistants are at the heart of what we do, providing physical and emotional support to their assigned patients.

***Responsibilities***

Emulsify large quantities of meat
Change extra, extra, extra, large incontinence pads
Clip claws
Change bandages
Administer barrels of healing potions
Listen to chronicles of bygone centuries
Monitor hibernating patients

***Qualifications***

Experience putting sweaters on large, non-humanoid creatures
Thick-skinned (figuratively)
- We need our employees to exhibit understanding if threats are made to set one’s person or village ablaze
- Literal thick skin would be a plus but is not required
Priority will be given to candidates that are fireproof and/ or invulnerable to large quantities of offensive magic

***Pay***

Kitschy knick-knacks gold, and precious gems, paid out in increasing amounts for every year you’re a part of the Freedom Valley Care family. In addition, we provide a comprehensive benefits package that includes prepaid healing, discounted potions, enrollment in the company tontine, and fully subsidized accidental dismemberment and death insurance.

Tracker Contractor Needed

Oftentimes, our more confused clients forcefully wander outside of our property. We need an experienced tracker to find our misplaced patrons, as well as to convince them to return. This position is that of an independent contractor that provides services on an as-needed basis.

***Responsibilities***

Quickly locate clients out in the wild
Return them to our care before they can harm themselves or others

***Qualifications***

Nearly instantaneous response time
Proven track record of successfully locating living creatures
Ability to cover enormous distances quickly
Multiple means of nonviolent persuasion
Training in de-escalation techniques would be a plus

***Pay***

One artifact-grade magical item per client returned minus any property damage expenses.

Freedom Valley Care Center For Really, Really Wise Dragons Eagerly Anticipates You Joining Our Team!

~

Bio:

Bethany Tomerlin Prince is a voracious lover of stories, a compulsive buyer of books, a recovering fan fiction addict, and a wannabe writer. She is so glad to have found Sci Phi because she loves idea-based science fiction and sometimes thinks characters are overrated. This is her first paid sale.

Philosophy Note:

When I was helping my mom recover from her knee replacement, I started thinking about a Dungeons and Dragons-type fantasy world that followed a similar civilization trajectory as our own. I.e. the tribal and kingdom violence gradually gave way to urbanized civilization. I realized in this world that a lot of Dragons that would have historically been killed off by adventurers or by younger rivals would now instead be living longer and longer with all of the challenges that old age brings, including dementia. Then I started having a fun time imagining the individuals a nursing home for geriatric dragons would hire.

Fiction

A Unified Explanation For Elven Urbanization And Associated Morphological Changes

by Gabriella Buba

Dr. Sharn Ghorzna and Dr. Traugh Duluk’s research team of the Golgoth Institute

Abstract

It is widely accepted that Domestication Syndrome in mammals, a series of morphological changes including: depigmentation, shorter jaws, smaller teeth, reduction in ear size, and increased docility occurs when wild species are selected for tamer offspring. The explanation for this wide range of morphological changes is tied to reduced adrenaline production, wherein the diminished fight-or-flight response results in increased docility and adaptability to communal habitation. This decrease in adrenaline production has been linked to undersized adrenal glands, a fairly common mutation that arises due to spontaneous embryonic mutations resulting in reduced size and numbers of neural crest cells. Neural crest cells are a band of embryonic cells that play a large part in the development of pigment, cartilage formation, jaw length, tooth size and quantity, as well as the size of the adrenal gland (Wilkins, 2014).

After extensive studies of Urban, Village, Small Band, and Solitary Elves, our research team concludes that the Urbanization of the Elf and the morphological changes seen therein can be explained by a similar evolutionary mechanism. In this paper we will explore the connection between increased ability for social cooperation in a species naturally given to a Solitary lifestyle and reduced adrenaline production caused by a smaller neural crest.

The Solitary Elf vs the Urban Elf

It has been argued by our esteemed colleagues at Alberich University Subterra that the Solitary and Urban Elves are completely different species that have not shared a common ancestor any more recently than we at Golgoth have shared one with pigs (Klien, 1530). We argue that our respected, though vertically-challenged colleagues’ findings are not supported by the breadth of observational data, due to their reluctance to spend time above ground. Anyone having devoted a modicum of time to studying Elven culture and communities can see the clear evolution of the Elven species from Solitary to communal living habits. Indeed, in a mere ten generations our researchers have observed how a single family line of Solitary Elves can become urban-dwelling Elves, taking on the morphological appearance of Urban Elves that have been living in their cooperative social environment for fifty generations or more.

Our team has been tracking the migration of Solitary Elves into urban communities for over 200 years and is prepared to conclusively denounce previous theories of separate-ancestor origin. We will demonstrate the trait-by-trait morphological shift marking the need for increased social cooperation in Elven societies enabling them to engage in trade and treaties with the kingdoms of other sentient species on more equitable footing.

Decreased Adrenaline Production: The Initiating Step to Fostering Social Cooperation

Measurements of adrenal gland size and activity were conducted humanely on already-deceased specimens, by biopsy and scans in our catch-and-release program, or by paid volunteer sampling among our partner Elven communities. Our measurements show across Elven subspecies there is a correlated change in adrenal gland size and observational flight distance of Elven individuals when encountering unknown Elves in their territory. Observational flight distance, or the distance an unfamiliar Elf could approach before the subject fled or reacted aggressively, was measured by presenting the subject with an unfamiliar Elven individual from our partner program.

Figure 1: Graphic of adrenal gland size measurements correlated with flight distance as recorded by our team across different elven communities.

Solitary Elves spend the majority of their adult lives alone, only socializing during the large mate-finding gatherings that occur on every lunar eclipse. Through extensive sampling, our team found they have adrenal glands that are 3x larger than their Urban relatives at a median of 26.7± 0.9% g. On average, they react to the presence of an unknown sentient in their territory as soon as the individual is within 840m. It is notable that Solitary Elves were found to have a flight distance that was 31.4x greater than their Urban relatives. Our team did not show a clear correlation indicating why one individual might react with a dominance display vs. a flight response, though forthcoming research suggests the lunar eclipse dulls the fight or flight response. This may allow Solitary Elves to safely come together at these important times of their lives to mate and produce offspring, which are raised for 3 years by the female of the species completely alone and without the aid of the male.

Paired or Small-band Elves live in cooperative mate pairs, or bands of five to seven, usually family groups. In our observations, it is most often a pair of sisters who will conscript their mates to travel together accompanied by one unmated juvenile, usually related. These bands do not much differ in lifestyle from Solitary Elves except that their cooperation allows them to hold and defend larger territories and hunt larger prey. Paired and Small Band Elves have adrenal glands that have a mean combined weight of 17.9± 0.7% g, twice as large as their urban relatives. While they are known to react with aggression toward Elves who do not share the band’s particular blended family scent, they will allow such intruders to approach within 506m, making their flight distance only 19x greater than that of their urban relatives.

Village Elves live in cooperative communities of 20 to 50 individuals and in small, settled societies. Their adrenal glands at a mean weight of 12.7± 0.8% g, are only 1.5x larger than their Urban relatives. Although Village Elves still show significant distrust towards Elven individuals not from their village, their flight distance at 217m is only 8x larger than the Urban Elf. Given time to acclimate they have been known to conduct limited trade with outsiders of Elven, Orcish, and Dwarven persuasion.

Urban Elves maintain large settled colonies of up to several thousand individuals, and experience easy interspecies cooperation. They are seen to operate in work crews under Elven supervisors and accomplish engineering feats such the great tree city of Baden-Wurtt and the terraced farms of the Caprian Coast. They quickly acclimate to the arrival of new Elven individuals, absorbing them into the colony in a matter of days. Their adrenal glands are quite small, at an average combined mass of 8.6± 0.5% g. They have an average flight distance of 26.7m however several individuals were observed to express no discomfort or affront until unfamiliar Elves were within 3 meters. As such the Urban Elf comingles easily even in large groups of strange Elves. Dominance fights are rarely seen among working-class Urban Elves, reserving territorial displays for leadership positions or settling disputes with rival colonies. This increased affinity for social cooperation has greatly improved Elvish ability to operate in civilized society interacting on near equitable levels with Orcish and Dwarven communities. Despite much exaggerated accounts of Elves hunting fellow sentients during lean winters, the last verified account of such an incident is over 100 years old. Truly it is amazing to see how a naturally solitary and predatory species has been able to adapt themselves to a communal lifestyle when they do not naturally prefer it as do the Orcish Clans and Dwarven Houses.

Depigmentation: How Hair Tone and Pattern Changes Affect Elvish Hunting Strategies

Our colleagues at Alberich Subterra often use outdated phenotypical hair pigment differences between Solitary and Urban Elves to justify categorizing them as separate species (Schmitt, 1567). To that, we say it’s clear they haven’t spent appropriate time investigating the genetic reasons for coloring variations between Elven communities. Furthermore, dwarves, a naturally subterranean species, have reduced visual acuity at distance and a tendency towards colorblindness, which necessarily reduces the quality of their observational data, particularly in non-subterranean environs. My respected colleague Dr. Duluk’s paper on the development of dwarven songs and cave soundings explores this topic in depth (Duluk, 1790).

Extensive and exemplary research has been done by our fellow Golgoth Institute Researcher, Dr. Utumband, to show how the prevailing dark blue coloring of hair helps Solitary and Small Band Elves thrive in their densely forested environments, which are dominated by blue tip spruce and purple plum. Furthermore, their utilization of grease paints of ash and animal fats to camouflage their shape can further exaggerate the features of the colloquially called Forest Elf (Utumband, 1801). This use of paints in addition to their dark foliage-mimicking hair helps them to blend into the undergrowth, thereby allowing them to successfully stalk and take down prey many times larger than themselves, even when hunting alone.

As Elves begin to operate in village communities where communal hunting strategies and even early attempts at farming remove the need for stalking and hunting strategies, depigmentation and spotting becomes common. This mutation is caused by the shrinking neural crest cells, and generally, appears as stripes of blond around the face.

Finally, there is the Urban Elf, operating in a large colony, rarely hunting alone, with the bulk of their diet being grain-based supplemented with livestock and rarely wild game. Such individuals often show total loss of hair pigmentation. Our research has shown the prevalence of depigmentation is directly correlated to the reduced size of the neural crest.

Jaw and Teeth: Reduction of Dentition and Resulting Dietary Alterations

The reduced neural crest also leads to significant reductions in jaw and tooth development across various Elf communities.

Figure 2: Elven Jaw and Dentition Pattern Diagrams (Campbell, 1982)

Although tooth number and pattern remains the same across Elf communities, the length of the jaw in Solitary Elves and the pronouncement of front incisors and canines cannot be denied. This arrangement of teeth and jaw allows them to hunt and consume prey, largely raw, using their teeth as their primary weapon and utensil.

Paired and Small Band Elves are often seen using crafted weapons such as spears, and employ community hunting strategies. This is an important adaptation given their shrinking jaws and canines, which are on average 1 cm reduced in size from their fully Solitary relatives. Some Small Band Elves have even been observed cooking their food.

Village Elves, while primarily carnivores, eat largely cooked diets, and hunt using bows and spears in advanced group strategies.

Urban Elves have been observed domesticating deer and elk to supplement their diet of grains and vegetables. This can be clearly seen in their dentition which is far more adapted to eating cooked meats and grains. Note also the reduced canines and shortened jaw more favorable to their omnivorous diet.

Reduced Cartilage Production: The Cause of the Altered Ear Form

The final and perhaps most readily visible difference between Elven subspecies to the outside observer are the changes in ear form. The reduced neural crest causes significantly reduced cartilage production. Without the high cartilage production, the traditional long-peaked Elven ear seen in Solitary Elves is not possible. In paired and Small Band Elves this is often observed in the folding or drooping of ear tips. Village Elves retain the readily recognized pointed ear but have even more reduced point length, by as much as 3 cm. Meanwhile the Urban Elf often has fully rounded ears (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Ear Forms in (a) Urban, (b) Village (c) Paired or Small Band, and (d) Solitary Elves

Conclusion

Based on our extensive genetic analysis and anthropological field studies, we, the researchers representing the Golgoth Institute of Orcish Sciences stand fully behind our hypothesis that the reduced size of the neural crest and its effects on adrenal production have resulted in the self-domestication of Elves as they have adapted from a solitary predator species into beings more given to social cooperation.

Works Cited:

Bernard G. Campbell (Editor). Humankind Emerging. 3rd ed., Little, Brown, 1982.

Klien, Orlan, et al. The Convergent Development of Living Wood Safe Glues of Elven Culture Across Unrelated Elven Species. Material Science (Subterra), vol 02, no 6, 1530.

Schmitt, Garlan. “Humans and Elves a Separate Species: As Shown by a Study of Their Divergent Architectural Development” Urbani Izziv, vol 14, no.20, 1567

Utumband, Duran., et al. “The Utility of the Native Hair Coloring of the Solitary Elf in Their Natural Environment” Anthropology (Golgoth), vol. 17, 1801

Wilkins, Adam S., et al. “The ‘Domestication Syndrome’ in Mammals: A Unified Explanation Based on Neural Crest Cell Behavior and Genetics.” Genetics, vol. 197, no. 3, 2014, pp. 795–808. Crossref, doi:10.1534/genetics.114.165423.

~

Bio:

Gabriella Buba is a chemical engineer who likes to keep explosive pyrophoric materials safely contained in pressure vessels or between the covers of her stories.

Philosophy Note:

A speculative take on comparative anthropology and genetics in the vein of Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miller seeking to humorously subvert the traditional hierarchy of fantasy worlds.

Fiction

Three Excerpts From A Manuscript Entitled “Advice To A Young Person,” In The Hand Of Ishtiris Of Sudden Hailstorm House

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

On The Founding of a House

1. When she becomes an adult, a woman who leaves her mother or her older sister’s household must found a House.

When do we say that she has left? If the land she bought adjoins her mother’s or sister’s land, and her mother’s or sister’s men defend it, she has not left. Nor if she takes women under contract, handsbound or mindbound, with the consent of her mother or sister. Nor if she journeys and stays at the Houses of friends and lovers; nor even if she enters into contracts of partnership with other women. It is with her mother’s or sister’s consent: she has not left.

But if she buys land of her own, apart, and if she brings her daughters with her, and if she brings her sons and their bondsmen, and invites her brothers and their bondsmen, to live there and defend her land: then we say that she has founded a House, even if it is a single building. And if she has bloodbound women whose men will fight alongside hers, and do not answer to her mother or to her sister, we say that she has founded a House. Now she is a matriarch.

If she serves another woman in binding contract — be it mind or blood or hands pledged to her service — she must transfer the contract. She serves her employer now in her own right, and no longer for her mother or her sister.

Her younger sisters may come and abide with her, or stay where they were, it makes no difference. But if they are eager to come with her, it is a good omen for a new House.

2. She must name her House.

a. Shall its name derive from her mother’s, as “Three Willows” from “Tall Willow”? She does this if her mother’s House is strong, showing her loyalty. But some say: a sapling cannot grow in the shadow of a great tree.

b. She may take the name of a defunct House, whose last woman has died. She declares it before the assembled matriarchs. If the name belonged to her mentor, or her lover, who has died, they look fondly upon it. If to her employer, they will judge her: if she is worthy, they look fondly upon it, but if it is a hollow boast, they will deride her. If the dead women were great in deeds and she is young and unproven, they will wait and see. She is ambitious, and can rise high, or fall and be ridiculed. If the House has long been dead, and none remember its deeds, they wait to see what she will do.

If the defunct House fell recently and its sons are still alive, they will say: she must take these motherless men to her care. Her brothers and sons must take those men, who were independent men, as bondsmen. Once they were free and served their mothers and sisters: now they must be bondsmen to other men, and serve other women. But they shall have a place, women to feed them and land to dwell on, and not be vagabonds and motherless men.

And the former bondsmen of these new bondsmen shall be taken also, if they can be fed. Especially if no one wants them, and they would otherwise starve or become bandits, it is praiseworthy.

But if these new bondsmen are many and strong at war and seasoned, she must make sure her men are confident. If her brothers and uncles are new and callow, and she is unsure, these new bondsmen will pull them to their own causes, enlisting them in a foolish war of vengeance against those who destroyed the former House. Then we say that the new House is led from underneath: it is a bad omen.

If the new bondsmen are wise and gentle, and the House has many children and few adult men, they shall use them as play uncles and nursing uncles. This is wise. It will cool the anger of the motherless men, and grow their love for the new House, for it is good for men to nurture children. But the men of the House must also take their turn, for it is not good for children to be raised only by bondsmen.

c. Or she may take a new name, that comes to her in a dream, or is taken from a poem. If she takes it from a women’s poem of business, they expect the new House to be strong in trade. If she takes it from a women’s poem of love between women, then in politics. If from a men’s poem of war and love between men, then in war and childrearing. If from a bawdy poem of comedy and love between men and women, then to be fertile, and bear many daughters and sons.

#

On Relations Between Women

1. When a woman is young and living in her mother’s House, it does not matter who she loves. Some say: it matters, for it plants the seeds. For two girls of different Houses who curl up in bed at ten years of age, may become a great alliance conquering many fields and valleys, in the same time that a sapling grows to a tree.

But if children quarrel and feud, there is no need for their mothers to quarrel on their account.

2. When a woman lives in her employer’s House in a handsbound relation, serving her with the work of her hands and the hands of her sons and brothers and daughters, and she falls in love with her employer’s rival, and visits her and sleeps in her bed and walks with her in the market, and it has not come to war: it is permitted, but unwise. They will deride her and say: from one’s hand the food and from the other’s the pleasure, and yet the two hands contend.

If it comes to war, her employer turns her out of her House: she is disloyal.

So, if she is wise, she will love a woman who is not her employer’s rival, or else satisfy herself with men.

3. When a woman is bloodbound to her employer, offering her advice and counsel, and her bothers and sons and uncles and their bondsmen take up arms in her employer’s service, and carry and nurture and teach her children, she shall not undertake any romance that is against her employer’s interests, not with a woman who is an enemy, nor a rival, nor a woman who may become a rival. For her employer’s House is as her own: they are bound by blood oath.

4. When a woman works for an employer in a mindbound relation, offering expertise, or when she trades and sells goods, she may love whom she wishes. She may go from one woman to another, serving her for a set term, even the enemy of her lover: if it upsets her lover, it is a matter of love and not of contracts. They shall debate it in their halls or in their beds, but it is not a matter for the law. If her employer objects, let her seek a new mindbound councilor at the end of the term. For she is independent: she may love whom she likes.

5. But when a young woman establishes her House, let her take care which women she takes as lovers. The matriarchs will watch and say: she favors that one or this one. If she expects to do well at trade, or at war, or at politics, or in employment, she must consider her alliances, and not only whose lips or hair or breasts or belly inflames her heart.

But she may take any man as a lover, as long as she does not invite her enemy’s son or brother into her buildings, lest they think he is a hostage. But she may lie with him in the market or the forest: it is no matter. He is a man, he cannot sign contracts.

Some say: his mother will call him disloyal, because he will not want to take up arms against the woman who is his lover. Others say: men and women’s relations are not constant; he may lie with her today, and take arms against her House tomorrow.

But relations between women are more constant. Therefore let her consider carefully which women she will love.

#

On the Bearing of Children

1. If she lives in her mother’s or her sister’s or handsbound in her employer’s House, she must seek their approval to bear a child. She will not feed her child from her own wealth, but from their wealth. If they demand it, she shall spill her male lovers’ gift upon the ground, and not make a child with it.

If she disobeys and grows with child, they take her before the matriarchs. Behold, the daughter of a great Houses cries with shame, for she is forced to serve those who served her, in handsbound contract. For she defied her mother, and took the gift of her male lover, and made a child.

2. If a woman is independent, or bloodbound to her employer, she may bear when she wishes: it is her own wealth. Let her pick a man who has good characteristics. If she wishes to bear a daughter, let her pick a clever and careful man. If she wishes to bear a son, let her pick a bold and laughing man.

3. The man’s gift that he gives, to make a child, is not his, but him. He is a man: he can own nothing, not even his own axe or horse or bowl. This is why a man who loses his axe on the battlefield will say to an ally: does your mother have an axe she can lend my mother?

This is because property is a relation of the mind. Women are of the mind, and men are of the body. See: his body is rough and large, made for bold unthinking action. Her body is smaller and more dexterous, and her mind sharper and more careful.

So the gift that her male lover gives, it is himself. But when it enters her womb, ceases to be him. It becomes property: it is hers. It was freely given. Then she can make a child of it, which is a new person, neither him nor hers, but of her House. This is why women own, and men do not.

4. Pregnancy is a peril. Woman is of the mind, but when she grows a body within her, the male principle inhabits and endangers her.

Therefore, even if she is independent and wealthy, let her not decide to bear too soon. If her constitution is weak, and she has a younger sister who is sturdy and compliant and will live gladly within her House, let her sister bear.

It is a battle between the body and the mind. If the mind triumphs too soon, she rejects the male principle while it is still in the womb: the child dies.

If the mind does not triumph at all, even as she bears: the child is healthy, but the woman will know no joy. She will turn away from the child and all her business: it is winter in her heart.

Thus she must be in balance, and triumph over the male principle only when she bears, expelling it from her.

Therefore she turns away from business and her affairs during this time, and nestles with lovers and friends and is visited by children and old uncles, until the birth. Then let her gradually return to business. But while her milk flows, let her plan no new campaigns of war.

But when she weans the child, her mind is fully ascendant. The male principle is cleansed from her: she has emitted it with her milk.

Then let her turn the child over to her brothers and uncles, and turn herself fully to her affairs: whether trade, or politics, or the sciences, or the planning of wars.

~

Bio:

Benjamin Rosenbaum’s stories have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. His first novel, The Unraveling, is a differently gendered far-future coming-of-age story of love, family, and revolution that Cory Doctorow called “…as weird and wild as shoes on a snake.” He is the author of a collection, The Ant King and other Stories, and the Jewish historical fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Dream Apart. Originally from Arlington VA, he lives near Basel, Switzerland with his family.

Philosophy Note:

I have become interested in gender ideology, and how it comes to seem natural and inevitable, so that we blithely accept complex myths about what is expected, honorable, embarrassing, or “natural” to one or another gender. The gender system inside which these characters live (tangentially inspired by some real historical cultural practices from our own world, but largely a thought experiment) is at least as intellectually coherent as our own “Mars/Venus” absurdities. It has its contradictions and absurdities and cruelties, of course. But the people there accept these as unfortunate inevitabilities…or perhaps catastrophes to be avoided, but unsurprising ones. They, in turn, would regard many of our convictions (like, for instance, our idea that it is regrettable but perfectly natural that some large proportion of people with penises will so ardently desire to stick their penises in places where they are unwanted, that they cannot be dissuaded from doing so, and that this unfortunate situation can only be mitigated partially and with great effort; or the notion that basically anything is exchangeable for money, by anyone) as grotesquely absurd. The world described here is premodern, partly because I’m fascinated by what would happen to the kind of stories we tell about the premodern world, from Shakespearean tragedy to sword and sorcery, without the peculiar institutions of patriarchal heredity. (But with alternatives that are every bit as complex, violent, and dramatic.)

Fiction

Auction Prospectus

by Andrew Fraknoi

Flammarion’s Announces the Auction of

an Extra-terrestrial Machine from the Kuiper Belt

For sale by the estate of the discoverer

(Warning: Other claims may apply)

Contact: Cassandra Taylor, London Office

Flammarion’s is proud to offer for immediate sale a unique item: one of the extra-terrestrial machines found during the recent exploration of the inner Kuiper Belt. Only 12 such machines were transported to Earth, before the Zurich Treaty outlawed moving any alien artifacts. This one was returned by Chinese astronaut Wang Chiu Lee, who then defected to New Taiwan with help from the Restoration movement, taking the machine in its shielded container. Since the other 11 machines are in laboratories under the control of their respective governments, and no further transfer of such artifacts to Earth is envisioned, it is unlikely that another such offering will be made in the foreseeable future.

This machine consists of many black cubes of different sizes, which absorb all light falling upon them. The overall shape is extremely irregular, but well-balanced. Exact specifications will be shown to qualified buyers. No electromagnetic emission or other activity has been measured since Wang brought it to Earth.

Provenance

Upon the advice of lawyers associated with the Restoration movement, Wang set up a trust and deposited his machine with a bank in New Taiwan, expecting that his government would most likely undertake actions to recover it. Within days, Wang’s body was found in an abandoned lot. The coroner controversially ruled it a case of suicide; control of the machine then passed to the Trust managed by the Seven Stars Bank. The Trustee, having sole discretion, has decided that selling the machine as soon as possible is in the best interests of the Trust.

The Bank has authorized Flammarion’s to auction the artifact to any interested buyer, including individuals, corporations, academic institutions, or governmental entities. Flammarion’s has made private arrangements to bring the probe to a European warehouse with the security needed to protect such a one-of-a-kind and controversial item. The machine remains in its shielded container, meeting or exceeding the specifications in the Zurich Treaty.

Background

Images taken by the Remote Explorer spacecraft showed mechanical artifacts on and near a number of the icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt. This launched the new Space Race, whose ultimate outcome no one can presently predict. Based on the findings of the Russian, American, Pan-European, and Chinese missions to the Belt, the number of cataloged alien machines is now understood to be over 300, but this may only be a fraction of what is out there. The machines are not all alike, but show a variety of shapes and albedos.

At present, we do not know whether these machines come from a single civilization or from a range of alien species. Given the diversity of designs, most experts suggest that a number of other extra-terrestrial civilizations were at work. Flammarion’s makes no representation about such questions.

We can only speculate about the purpose of all these alien machines at the edge of our solar system. Suggestions include: scientific monitoring stations (like our probes to the other planets in the Solar System and to the Alpha Centauri system); variations on the idea that our system is a cosmic garbage dump; various survivors of a war among a number of civilizations fighting via machine proxies; and trigger alarm mechanisms to alert alien civilizations that life here has reached space-faring capability.

It is this last possibility, which implies that any attempt to engage with the probes could induce them to send a message warning an extra-terrestrial civilization that humans are now a potential competitor or customer, that led to the Zurich treaty. So far, all 12 of the artifacts brought back to Earth (including the one on offer) have remained inside protective and shielded containers designed by the science and engineering group the UN 2.0 established after the first discoveries. However, the actions of the machines before they reached these containers have varied and are not at present fully cataloged or understood.

Legal Disclaimer

Flammarion’s and Seven Stars bank assume no liability for the machine once it is sold. The purchaser shall take full legal and political responsibility and shall respond to all claims from governments, individuals, and groups, whether existing at the time of the sale or submitted later. The purchaser will affirm that it understands that defending the ownership of the artifact against China or other interested parties will likely involve large investments of resources and/or personnel.

Although the Zurich Treaty was not in effect when the machine was deposited with the Trust, it has meanwhile been accepted by all the countries that have space-faring capability. One or more of these countries, as well as the UN 2.0 Chamber of Deputies, may take action to repossess or protect the machine at some future time and responding to such actions will be the sole responsibility of the purchaser.

The Trustee and Flammarion’s are unable to warrant that moving the probe to Earth has not already triggered some sort of alarm that has eluded detection by our instruments. Should such an alarm have been set off, the purchaser shall take full responsibility for all consequences, financial or strategic, that might arise, immediately or in the future.

Inquiries

The probe is presently at an undisclosed location in Pan-Europe. Legitimate bidders for the item (who must submit audited statements of net worth) may apply to examine the item after the signing of a non-disclosure agreement. It is expected that relatively few of these applications will be approved. Examination will take place only through remote sensing, and under no circumstances will the probe be removed from its protective container or from the chamber in which the probe is suspended during the bidding process.

The minimum bid will be disclosed only to approved bidders, but is expected to be appropriate to the uniqueness of the item and the costs already involved in bringing it to auction.

Cassandra Taylor will be happy to answer any additional questions.

~

Bio:

Andrew Fraknoi is a retired astronomer and college instructor. He is the lead author for the free, online, introductory textbook “Astronomy” from the nonprofit OpenStax project, which is now the leading astronomy textbook in the U.S., having been used by more than 700,000 students. He has also written two children’s books, edited or written a number of books for science teachers, and published five other science-fiction stories. His colleagues have named Asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi in recognition of his work in science outreach.

Philosophy Note:

I am a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, the scientific organization engaged in the search for life in the universe. I am fascinated by the possibilities of alien contact and have long felt that the ways it happens in popular science fiction are too limited. Just as we have found that robot probes are an economical and efficient way to begin our space exploration, so others may decide that such probes, sent to promising planetary systems, might be the best investment in learning about the development of technological life elsewhere. In the science literature, such probes have now come to be called “lurkers” and this story explores a future where many lurkers are discovered at the edge of the solar system.

Fiction

Leonidas Smiley’s Report From Calaveras

by Ian Alexander Tash

I, Leonidas Smiley, hereby report what I have seen on Planet Calaveras, also known as Andromeda MTS 11181865 c, with complete honesty and transparency. However, I hereby also warn that I am not infallible in case my interpretations should prove to be faulty by future interactions with the Calaveran indigenous sapient species. I understand that the council would rather begin a peaceful relationship with the creatures, but I worry that colonization of the land may not be the greatest course of action for the council to take. Even my own mission to see if their religion opens up a way for us to absorb their culture into our own had encountered difficulties, regardless of my practical reservations about this objective. However, I recognize that this mission is not my own to command, and so I once again commit myself to a report as honest and unbiased as I can make it.

The dominant sapient Calaveran species is amphibious, and thus are rather frog-like in their appearance and anatomy. They do not, however, have all of the traits of frogs, lacking the vocal and tongue capacities common to toads as we know them, and also possessing a warm-bloodedness not associated with Earth-bound amphibians. For the most part, they correspond to typical bipedal sapient life evolutionary patterns, deviating only due to the adverse weather conditions I will describe later in the report. However, because the Calaverans behave much like the common sapient species we are aware of currently, I witnessed tribes with distinct cultures depending upon, I assume, geographic necessity. Thus, henceforth I shall refer specifically to tribes of Calaverans in this report. The ones that live in the plain I call the Websterians, as their webbed appendages were more helpful and pronounced on the valley floor due to the high probability of flooding. Meanwhile, the ones who dwell in the nearby mountain communities I termed the Jimnians, as their webbing was less pronounced, but they lived in the Jimni, the Calaveran word for “mountain.”

The defining characteristic of Calaveran culture is the effect the weather has upon their lives. Calaveras is not like other planets we know that can support sapient life. Most sapient life forms were able to thrive because of stable climates, typically with four to five seasons of predictable length and weather. Calaveras, however, is special, as the weather patterns are completely random. While I would encourage meteorologists and climate experts to study the planet more closely, in the three years that I lived there before submitting this report there was no set pattern to the weather. It may be sunny one day, rainy the next, foggy for four days, sunny again for two, a blizzard for 37 straight days, sunny again for six days, and so on. I will also submit a copy of my journal that kept track of the weather changes to see if they could be mapped to any sort of pattern, but neither I nor the village chiefs could figure out the cause. However, it is likely that the weather is a big factor in the evolution into amphibious races, as only a species that is flexible in multiple climates would be able to survive long enough to further evolve. And yet the effect is not just physiological.

Culturally, both tribes of Calaverans operate under a similar ontological principle of weather tied to power. They acknowledge that the forces acting upon the weather are real, tangible things, but they attribute them not to scientific phenomena that can be observed and studied, but instead to a God or gods. I have trouble figuring out exactly how they see this divine force simply because of the linguistic barrier. While most languages we come across tend to have cases for person and number, in this case they lack the means of distinguishing between singular and plural. This linguistic choice may stem from the cultural ramifications of believing that their world is governed by a God (terminology chosen for ease of expressing the idea). If the weather must be random, then God must thrive in randomness. Thus, despite the individuality a member of a tribe may have, they are considered part of one whole tribal property, just as the entire planet is one entity experiencing the weather. When the weather changes, Calaveran culture dictates that the whole tribe must participate in a lottery system. Whoever wins by divine randomness thus acts as chief over the tribe, thus owning everything of the tribe, including its people. Thus, the tribe is one property of one person, or perhaps one could interpret it to be that the tribe is only one person, the man on top that God has chosen. The losers of the lottery are obedient and unquestioning, leaving everything in the hands of their new leader. After all, they all recognize that, good or bad, this leadership is only temporary. They may very well have to repeat the entire process again the next day, or they may be stuck with this leader for hundreds of days, all depending upon the changing weather. Tying leadership to randomness, randomness to weather, and weather to God ultimately ties leadership to God, a sort of divine right of kings, so that even one desiring to object to such a king would not feel as if they had the power to do so. However, even that statement alone may be an overgeneralized view of their faith. As alluded to earlier, the two tribes have different social and religious views based upon their geography which need further exploration.

The difference in geography has lead to a theological split between the two tribes concerning the nature of God. The Websterians believe in an active, observant God, and thus their weather reacts to their power. Essentially, they believe that stability is a sign of blessing. Regardless of the weather, they have enough resources in the valley in order to put together a decent living, but only if the weather remains the same for a long period of time. The leader is then seen as a mediator figure between the tribe and God. If the tribe were to do anything that would anger God, the leader could step in and prevent that from happening. However, if the leader acts in a way that God would find displeasing, the punishment that befalls the entire tribe is a change in weather, thus removing the blessing from the previous leader. This creates a climate of shame within the tribe, where people are hesitant to be leaders because they do not want to be responsible for the deeds that would punish the tribe. Oftentimes, the leader dies when the weather changes, sometimes by execution by the next leader, other times by their own hands as a means of atonement, thus removing them from the pool of potential future leaders. The disgrace is monumental, as they have not only failed God, but their entire tribe. Thus, the leader tends to be incredibly just and kind to their people; however, this does not stop the tribe from having a negative hindsight view of the former leader when the weather does, in fact, finally change.

The Jimnians, however, believe in an actively random God, and thus their power reacts to the weather. God is like a gambling addict. He wakes up each morning, picks up a die and rolls it. Thus, the weather may change daily. However, there is still a chance that the die can roll the same number for hundred of days in a row. This may be necessary for their ability to cope with the rocky terrain. It may be hard to make a living, and so God must be uninterested in their individual plight. They need a neutral God, one who is unfocused upon them specifically, but who still gives legitimacy to randomness. Thus, the changing season is rather an opportunity to be as godlike as possible, to also take a random chance to see what the future holds. However, this does make the clan much more about domination and power, and leaders tend to be much crueler to their subordinates than in the valley. If God does not actively care about the situation of their lives, or rather is exuding randomness for randomness’s sake, then they do not need to worry about God’s opinion. It does not matter in the grand scheme, because God is uninterested to begin with. The one with God’s power may not have that blessing for long, so they need to take advantage of it today while they can. Thus, the only punishment for being a bad ruler is what a future leader may do to you once they have grasped the divine powers of the weather change.

I believe these to be the most relevant aspects of their culture to synthesize into a report. However, I have also submitted a copy of my journal for more specific accounts of the weather, of specific leaders, and specific episodes of my days with both of these tribes. While the idea of a loving, personal God may connect with the Websterians, they considered the rules of religion as I instructed to be strange and impractical. They cannot even see individuals as people, but merely as potential people, and thus these notions seem somewhat confusing to them. If they are possible to convert, they will take some time, but I have no hope for the Jimnians, as they would not even let me reside there unless I was willing to offer myself up as part of the tribal property. They would allow me to visit, but would balk at my notions of divinity. Even if the council decides to move forward despite my previous objections, I would like to emphasize the problem of instability once again. Even if peace agreements were made with one leader, another leader could arise the next day and annul that agreement, and thus we could never find their cooperation to be dependable unless somehow the weather could be controlled. Overall, I will honestly admit that these years have been rough and dangerous. I would not think a colonization of this planet would be wise, and at best cultural communication will be limited. However, I am ready for men wiser than I to prove me wrong.

Leonidas Smiley

~

Bio:

Ian Alexander Tash is a freelance writer from Bakersfield, California. Not only was he published in Calliope, Orpheus, the Haiku Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, but he was also the 2021-2022 Outstanding BA Graduate of CSUB in both Religious Studies and the School of Arts & Humanities. He obtained his BA in English EMCE and Religious Studies and has spent his summer since graduation spending more time with his wife, Stephanie, and their Yorkie, Mini.

Philosophy Note:

Leonidas Smiley’s Report from Calaveras is inspired by the past few years I spent in my Religion Studies and English Language Arts double major BA program. More specifically, I drew inspiration from American Realist Literature, such as The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, as a base to extrapolate my science fiction themes, using character names and themes of randomness and betting as my base. I then thought back to studying New Religious Movements and Native American Religious Traditions, which tend to point to religious groups tending to form out of the circumstances that they are born in, the cycles of the Earth, the politics of the time, and other factors that are specific to that context. I then began to contemplate the question, “If one were to live in a world where everything was left up to chance and betting and luck, what would someone’s world look like?” This led to the entirely random world of Calaveras, where weather patterns cannot be predicted. However, that alone was not enough. After all, even with this one trait in common across an entire planet, there would not be a universally accepted belief identical in every context across the world. So I made it about tribes in different geographies as well, to wrestle with and imagine this strange setting through multiple lenses. Thus, the report began to form, specifically from the context of a dominant culture trying to recreate a mission system seen on Earth in a new context. I hope that people will enjoy this idea I’ve conjured up and speculated about, and maybe this will be a world that appears again in future works I create.

Fiction

Bunker Rules

by Tony Dunnell

1) Maximum permanent capacity ~~100~~ ~~114~~ 125. No exceptions. Temporary capacity may exceed this number on a case-by-case basis. Refugee status is granted in some cases, but temporary shelter is temporary. No exceptions. Temporary residents with refugee status may apply for permanent residency through the council, capacity allowing. The council’s decision is final.

2) Respect the day/night cycle, unless assigned otherwise. It helps build community.

3) All activities that create strong vibrations are strictly prohibited. You may talk, walk, cook etc. freely and normally. Activities such as running and the playing of loud music are monitored. Activities such as drilling, hammering, sawing, ball games etc. are strictly prohibited unless previously approved by the council.

4) Respect the zones. All residents are allowed to move freely between the residential and communal areas (green) unless under quarantine or arrest. Entering red zones (utilities, waste, armory etc.) is strictly prohibited unless previously granted access.

5) All residents are allowed to leave the bunker at any time and at their own risk, unless the immediate surface area is occupied (by unknowns or hostiles). If you wish to leave, either on a temporary or permanent basis, you must first contact a council member. Unless assigned to a surface mission, be aware that re-entry is at the discretion of the council and/or senior hatchkeepers.

6) Any attempt to leave the bunker without prior permission, or any unauthorized attempt to open the main or secondary hatches, is punishable by death.

7) Acts of physical or sexual aggression by bunker residents are punishable by expulsion or death, at the council’s discretion.

8) Romantic couplings must be approved and registered with the council. Before a partnership is approved, the couple must consent to the council’s rules on procreation and pregnancy, if applicable (see amendments).

9) All residents must accept the rules of passing (see amendments). Your bodies are your own up until the point of death, at which time the body becomes the property of the council, to use as it sees fit. Traditional religious practices do not apply and will not be considered.

10) In the event of a passing, the council will decide if the vacated bunker space will be filled and by whom. Applications are accepted. The council’s decision is final.

11) In the event of the passing or demotion of a council member, elections will be held to fill the vacated position. All bunker residents above the age of 18 are eligible to vote unless their voting rights have previously been revoked.

12) Voting rights cannot be revoked in the (one) week running up to an election, unless the eligible voter has committed a serious and irrefutable crime (including, but not limited to, murder, rape, or an unauthorized attempt to leave the bunker (see 6)) during said one-week period.

13) All residents over the age of 15 can volunteer for surface missions.

14) If insufficient volunteers come forward for a surface mission deemed “vital” (see amendments), lots will be drawn among all mission-eligible residents. Refusal to abide by the results of the draw will result in permanent expulsion from the bunker. No exceptions.

15) In the event of a breach by an unknown party or known hostile entities, martial law will be declared. All residents over the age of 10 must immediately report to the muster point outside the armory, where weapons will be assigned.

16) During a breach, failure to follow the commands of council members or designated security officers is punishable by summary execution at the hands of the aforementioned. No exceptions.

17) In the event of a breach, all hostiles, human or otherwise, are to be targeted and killed on sight. Acts of mercy are punishable by expulsion, at the council’s discretion.

18) Respect the mealtime schedule. It helps build community.

~

Bio:

Tony Dunnell lives in a Peruvian jungle town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, where the people are happy and the insects are big. His stories have also appeared in Daily Science Fiction and MetaStellar. You can read more of his writing at tonydunnell.com.

Philosophy Note:

The idea for this story came to me when, quite randomly, I started imagining a set of rules posted on the wall of an underground bunker. I went with it and started writing, and the community started to take shape—as they do. Communities can be strange, and even more so in times of crisis. And rules are part of that, whether we agree with them or not.

Fiction

A Modification And Application Of Variola Major To Impart Limited Precognition Within Individuals

by H. R. R. Gorman

A modification and application of variola major to impart limited precognition within individuals

S. Monroe and B. Van Buren

Submitted to the American Chemical Society, 01 Nov 1911.

Dear Sir,

Since time immemorial, mankind has imagined a power beyond himself and believed thaumaturgical abilities were within his grasp. It has recently become evident there may be scientific, not magical, sources of enhanced abilities. The enclosed findings prove the potential use of modified variola major to produce limited precognition within select individuals.

Beginning with the works of Lister¹, Pasteur², Koch³, and others, germ theory has become a cornerstone of medicinal research. Ivanovsky discovered the tobacco mosaic virus in 1892, and several viruses have been filtered and identified.⁴ Paschen identified varicella and vaccinia, two diseases thought highly similar to variola, in smears from pustules of sick patients.⁵ It is thus conjectured that variola major and variola minor are caused by viruses rather than bacteria. This assumption was used in the preparation and study of materials.

In addition to these theories, traditional American herbalism inspired our research. Plants native to North America with traditional herbal uses were selected as part of the modification process. As shown in the results section, it is statistically likely that the sodium perborate and ilex vomitoria incubation contributed to the psychological and physicochemical effects of the virus.

Methods and Materials.

1.1 Modification of variola viruses.

Pustules of 146 variola major patients and 113 variola minor patients were lanced in Baltimore sick wards. These samples were pooled until >0.5 pounds of secretions of each virus were obtained. The secretions were then ultrafiltered in the same manner as Negri.⁶ These isolated particles then underwent overnight incubations as noted in Table 1. They were then transferred back into a normal saline solution.

Solution #	Component 1	Component 2	Component 3
1	Sodium Perborate	Osmunda cinnamonea
2	Lye	Osmunda cinnamonea
3	Sodium Perborate	Osmunda cinnamonea	Aralia quinquefolia
4	Lye	Osmunda cinnamonea	Aralia quinquefolia
5	Sodium Perborate	Ilex vomitoria
6	Dilute Hydrochloric Acid	Ilex vomitoria
7	Sodium Perborate	Ilex vomitoria	Aralia quinquefolia
8	Dilute Hydrochloric Acid	Ilex vomitoria	Aralia quinquefolia

Table 1. List of Modifications of Variola.

1.2. Dosing and Application

Ads published in local newspapers invited qualified doctors to apply for participation. Qualification was determined for this study based on ability to maintain accurate records in a scientific fashion, ability to administer treatments subcutaneously, and an immune status to variola. Forty doctors were selected for participation.

Doctors loaded a bifurcated needle with around 0.02 ounces of fluid. Each doctor was supplied with at least two control doses (containing no virus) and two active doses (containing virus). On average, each doctor applied 6 total doses. One outlier physician treated 71 patients (35 control, 35 with virus, and 1 accidental exposure event). Doctors monitored subjects over the course of the next month or until any disease had run its course.

Recipients of the treatment were selected by sheriffs at local jails or prisons. One deputy was exposed during the course of the study. 257 individuals participated. 128 subjects received placebo, 64 subjects received a variola minor inoculation, and 65 subjects received variola major inoculation. Each modification condition was tested on 8 patients. The accidental exposure case was a ninth study of solution 5 on variola major. All subjects who expired during this study were cremated and their remains safely disposed of.

A second study was conducted with thirty patients, ten inoculated with control solution and twenty inoculated with solution 5 modified variola major. This was conducted at the Baltimore facility in an isolated ward by the authors. Patients for the smaller study were offered $100 to anyone willing to participate and be hospitalized.

2. Results.

2.1 Rate of infection and fatality in solution screen.

100% of the subjects infected with solutions 1-5 and 7 exhibited symptoms of variola major or variola minor. Viruses treated with solutions 6 and 8, containing hydrochloric acid, showed reduced infectivity.

The first Variola symptoms appeared on day 11. The first death occurred on day 25 and the last on day 37 with a random distribution of fatalities between (Figure 1). Discounting subjects that had been treated with solutions 6 and 8, which did not seem to contain active virus, 68% of the subjects survived. These numbers are in line with prior experiences with smallpox outbreaks.

*Figure 1. Fatality of treatments by solution type for variola major.*

1 of the 64 variola minor subjects fell to the disease. This is within the 1-2% fatality expectation of this lesser form of smallpox.

One control patient died on day 34. No examination of the corpse was allowed prior to disposal, but the doctor’s notes assure us the subject had no fever, lesions, or other symptoms of smallpox prior to his death and disappearance. As this death occurred after the maximum incubation period for variola, the the overall findings are unaltered by this data point.

2.2 Instances of precognition.

Only subjects injected with solution 5 modified variola showed precognitive abilities. Consequently, results shared in this section will consist solely of information gleaned from those subjects.

One individual was exposed accidentally to variola major. Upon this accidental exposure, the subject was isolated in his Mississippi jail. The doctor noted that the accidentally exposed man made two predictions while in pain from the disease. One, the doctor’s wife would leave him by the end of the day, and two, the doctor’s pastor would be gored by a bull the next morning. Both occurred as the sick man predicted.

The doctor then brought the subject a list of horses set to race that Saturday at the local track. The subject described the horses’ finish orders. To prove his hypothesis, the doctor bet $301.20 and won $5,203.41 after all races. The subject died the following day. The doctor subsequently innoculated 70 additional patients.

The second precognitive subject received treatment from a doctor in Alabama. The pox-blinded subject predicted that a local man would commit a murder-suicide that night. Newspaper clippings collected by the doctor indicate this occurred as predicted. He predicted the sheriff’s daughter would be caught in the act with a male of low standing, and that the man would be hung for it. The doctor went to the sheriff’s house to warn him, but the deeds had already been done. The patient predicted two more things. One prediction was, quote, “Woodrow Wilson will be elected president,” and the other was not recorded. Instead, the doctor alluded to it within a thirteen-page-long diatribe against temptations of Satan. At the time the data were recorded in 1909, it would have been impossible for an Alabama prisoner to know that a man named Woodrow Wilson would be elected governor of New Jersey. We believe the mistaken use of “president” may have been an effect of the patient’s ignorance rather than sign of imperfect precognitive abilities.

The subject died mysteriously on day 45, and the doctor was arrested for unknown reasons. He was released after two weeks’ holding time.

No other instances of precognition were noted during this initial solution screen. Both instances were caused by solution 5 on variola major.

2.3 Additional study using solution 5 modified variola major to confirm instances of precognition.

The large-scale screen indicated solution 5 modified variola major to be of continued interest. A second batch of modified virus was generated as described earlier. Volunteers were collected and treated as described in the methods section.

Zero of ten control subjects fell ill or exhibited precognitive abilities. Data from health screens indicated no changes throughout. It was concluded that the control solution was not the cause of this psychological effect.

Of those treated with the experimental solution, 30% succumbed to the disease. Three of these six fatally infected patients exhibited precognitive abilities. Another patient was blinded but survived and maintained precognitive abilities. On day 109, the door to his isolation ward was left unlocked, and he wandered out. He has not been recovered.

Secretaries recorded everything spoken by the subjects in order to maintain a record of any prediction. All predictions made by the patients were proven true with the exception of those predicted to occur in the far future. Table 3 summarizes the predictions.

Day	Patient	Prediction	Potential Prediction-reality discrepancies
17	2	Author would break a finger	Author heard prediction prior to occurrence; author may have influenced outcome
20	11	Three birds would become trapped in the hospital within a day
21	2	Horse race prediction
23	11	A woman in room 103 would die in childbirth	Death occurred a few minutes following childbirth
23	2	“Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be destroyed in 1945.”	Exact quote; far future
24	17	“Edward VII will die on May 6^th, 1910 at 11:45 pm London time.”	Exact quote; prediction made February 3^rd 1910
25	8	“Slavery will be outlawed in China.”	Prediction made January 3^rd 1910; slavery outlawed in China on March 10, 1910.
25	17	Horse race prediction
26	8	Female nurse’s husband would cheat on her
28	8	“A German scientist obsessed with space will invent a machine that will take an American to the moon in 1969.”	Exact quote; far future
31	17	Horse race prediction
39	17	Detailed description of secretary’s sexual deviancy	Had occurred in the past as well
47	17	Mid-term election results
60	17	Florence Nightingale’s death on August 13^th, 1910	Prediction made March 11, 1910.
73	17	Horse race prediction
90	17	Leo Tolstoy’s death on November 20^th, 1910	Prediction made April 10, 1910.
108	17	Horse race prediction

Table 3.

All predictions possible to come true at the time of this writing did. Horse racing predictions produced a total of $10,450 in winnings, all of which were donated to the local mason’s lodge.

3. Conclusions.

Variola major and variola minor were successfully modified using a combination of plant extracts and chemicals. A modification using sodium perborate and plant extract ilex vomitorium generated a virus capable of conferring precognitive abilities to exposed humans. 20.7% of subjects treated with the modified variola major virus made various predictions that were proven true.

Until now, prophecy has remained outside human control. With the results of this investigation, it seems possible that humankind may have produced prophets in ancient times or in backwards regions of the world. Civilized man, however, will soon be able to grasp events that are yet to come. We may be able to avoid terrible fates or even shorten the wait for the second coming.

Several future studies are needed to make full use of this proof-of-concept work. It is of unequivocal importance to determine how long the effects last. As of yet, it is known that at least one patient continued to make successful predictions up to 108 days following treatment. As part of this study, determinations of how to control and hone these abilities would be necessary.

It is necessary to determine how to channel these predictions into useful actions. Prophecy is useful only if new decisions can reduce bad outcomes and maximize good. The immutability of the future must be determined.

Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank Dr. J. Polk of Mississippi for his work. He maintained scrupulous records on nearly a third of the total subjects in the initial screen. This paper could not have been completed without his invaluable assistance.

REFERENCES.

Lister, J. “On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery.” Lancet. 1867; 95 (2418): 4-6.
Pasteur, L. “De l’extension de la theorie des germes a l’étiologie de quelques maladies communes.” Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences. XC. 1880; 14: 1033-1044.
Koch, R. “Die Ätiologie der Milzbrand-Krankheit, begründet auf die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Bacillus Anthracis.” Cohns Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen. 1876. 2 277: (1–22).
Ivanovsky, D. “Uber Die Mosaikkrankheit der Tabakspflanze.” Bulletin Scientifique Publie Par l’Academie Imperiale des Sciences de Saint-Petersbourg / Nouvelle Serie III. 1892; 35: 67-70.
Paschen, E. “Was Wissen wir uber den Vakzineerreger?” Munch Med Woeachr 1906; 53: 2391-2393.
Negri A. “Ueber Filtration des Vaccinevirus.” Z HygInfektKrankh. 1906; 54: 327-346.

~

Bio:

H.R.R. Gorman fashions dark stories by night and makes drugs by day as a pharmaceutical process engineer. He grew up in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and was the first person in his family to attend and graduate college. He obtained his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in chemical engineering and now has come back to North Carolina with his nuclear engineer husband and vicious attack-Pomeranian. In between processing pharmaceuticals and delving into fiction, Dr. Gorman likes playing Dungeons and Dragons. You can find more of his writing in the Dark Divinations, Lethal Impact, and Collective Fantasy anthologies.

Philosophy Note:

This fictional artefact is presented as a scientific article with research beginning in 1909 and published in 1911. It was inspired by medical atrocities such as the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study, the Henrietta Lacks story, and the North Carolina eugenics movement. All of these events were conducted by people who at least claimed to believe they were helping humanity as a whole, but many others suffered in the meantime. I explored the slippery slope between helping others and helping self by examining how a pair of doctors, presumably working for the common good, could turn people into the more clinical entity of “patients” or “subjects” in order to do their work. The fictional artefact presents the work of physicians who discovered a cruel method of predicting the future. While they take the theoretical high road by not keeping their winnings at horse races, they still use their findings to justify further research into the precognitive effects of their modified smallpox.

Fiction

Rejection Of Empiricism In Applied Metaphysics Leading To Einstein’s Theory Of Sertial Reflectivity: Exegetical Review

by Arturo Sierra

By M. Alvarado, professor of History of Metaphysics at the University of Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura. Translated from the original German by W. Eguiguren. This research was made possible by a grant from the Imperial Institute for History of Metaphysics, sponsored by His Majesty Karl XIX of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Spain and its Territories.

Abstract

No theory of metaphysics has been subject to stricter scrutiny than Einstein’s Theory of Sertial Reflectivity (TSR), doubtlessly because of its counter-intuitive nature and profound implication. Since the publication of “On the Instantiation-dynamics of Ideal Reflections” (1905), more than a hundred distinct experiments have been designed to test predictions made by TSR, all of which have confirmed Einstein’s basic proposition. Yet many of its more “outlandish” implications have been impossible to test in abstract due to the lack of sufficiently powerful devices. Only in recent years, thanks in part to the Large Concept Collider, the Hubble Celestial Theoscope, and the Ideal Interferometric Group-Class Observator (LIGO), have these been subject to verification. Yet the experimental context of new tests has been ignored or forgotten by researchers. In order to adequately understand the significance of such developments, it is vitally important to contextualize them in a history of metaphysical experimentation. This paper proposes a brief overview of tests in applied metaphysics, from its origin leading up to Einstein, and the significance they had in rejecting erroneous, materialistic thought.

Contemporary metaphysics is built on the presumption, as stated by Karl Popper, that no real knowledge can be obtained by studying matter or by any empirical methods whatsoever. Indeed, empirical is, in philosophical circles, often used as a slur to discredit insufficiently a priori statements, and pseudo-sciences such as physics and chemistry are held in the same bad regard as homeopathy and economics. But this has not always been so. Only since the early XXth century have empirical thoughts been completely rejected, in great part thanks to Einstein’s Theory of Sertial Reflectivity (TSR).

Rejection of empiricist thought has been a long and arduous process in the history of natural philosophy. A complete account is impossible in the given space, but it is hoped that these pages will give the reader a general idea of how metaphysics, over two-and-a-half millennia, managed to expunge all materialistic ideas from its heart.

Empiricist Thought and its Refutation from Antiquity to the Late 1800s

From the very beginning of metaphysics, it has been admitted that the main obstacle in a properly philosophical understanding of reality comes from the difficulty of testing abstract notions. Even though we now know Plato was fundamentally correct in his description of Pure Ideas, subsequent thinkers of Antiquity were still plagued by physicalist thought. Plato was extraordinarily intuitive, but his observation of the Ideal Plane or Topos Ouranos was so limited, no proper account of it could be given at the time. Thus, Aristotle proposed matter somehow affected essential instantiation, and the Stoic school arrived at the conclusion that esse, which they called halitus, was itself material, though of a very special kind of matter.

Yet to these researchers we owe the first attempts at capturing essence separately from the bodies they instantiated. Naïvely, they tried to imprison Ideas in special bottles, quartz crystals, and gemstones. Much later, Descartes would point out that such methods came down to attempts at making empirical what is abstract, a method modern metaphysics has learned to carefully avoid. However, Aristotle and the Stoics had marvelously clear glimpses of Pure Ideas even as they were misguidedly trying to link them to the physical, and so opened the gates to testable abstract theory.

To the Middle Ages we owe not only the first accounts of God’s effect on esse, but—perhaps more importantly—the first systematic devices of abstract testing. Aquinas proposed one of the better-known such tests: in separate chambers (an extremely primitive black box, in fact) he placed a group of faithful Muslims and Jews, carefully recording the effect their prayers had on God’s surrounding presence. As the Muslim devout were replaced one by one with less fervent believers, the Divinity became sufficiently Yahweh-like to be measured as such, even by Aquinas’ poor observation techniques, and vice versa becoming more Allah-like.

A century later, Occam proved that the less determined God was by faith, i. e. considering Them only as immobile first-cause without attributes at all and only subject to negative knowledge, the more arbitrary the Divinity’s influence became. He arrived at this insight when he noticed that inebriation was immoral on a Tuesday, but acceptable next Wednesday. Abstract experimentation such as this had a profound effect on Western religion, and thus European politics, as the Catholic Church banned untestable beliefs. The dogma of testability resolved the looming crisis of Protestantism, as dissidents and the Pope managed to agree on a common criterion for theological proof.

Though intermediate theories should not be forgotten, it was not until Newton’s Principia Mathematica that metaphysics acquired an exact method for itself. Newton devised a way of manipulating separate Ideas by discovering calculus and noticing the effects he could produce on geometrical entities, such as ellipses, when he made minute alterations in the corresponding equations. In this way, he became the first to change the physical shape of an object simply by altering the mathematical description of its circumference, famously making an apple become roughly cubical by misrepresenting the graph that described its circumference. From then on forwards, researchers had intangible indication that matter is determined by Ideas, never the other way around. Though not abstract in nature, Newton’s alchemical discoveries are worth mentioning, as he was the first to transform lead into gold. Unfortunately, the training and time required to think the necessary Ideas for transmutation was, in the end, more expensive than the gold itself.

At the same time, Leibnitz isolated the essence of mathematical objects using the same calculus, which he developed concurrently. Famously, his tampering with the substance of the number 2 caused the financial collapse of 1701, when bankers and accountants were unable to make any sort of arithmetic using even numbers. The intimate relation between Newton’s and Leibnitz’s work led to a warm friendship between both authors, which has since been a model of what can be achieved by collaboration in all fields of philosophy.

Newton’s discoveries allowed Kant to prove that objects-in-themselves could be known and understood as such. His Critique of Mixed Reason definitively showed that Hume’s thitherto incontrovertible theory of causation was wrong, by testing the relation between cause and effect and arriving at methods that could deduce causation from first principle. On the way to a framework of transcendental aesthetics, he also refuted Wolf’s radical empiricism. Kant’s critical opus became the basis of modern metaphysical metatheory for a century to come, often being referred to as Newton-Kantian mechanics.

It was not long before philosophy had its first practical applications. Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier imbued a large ball of cotton with the esse of a cloud, making it float in the air. In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick, Matthew Murray, and George Stephenson experimented in transference, imbuing completely mechanical apparatuses with the esse of horses and rabbits, inventing the locomotive in the process. Theoretical and praxical metaphysics have always had a fruitful relation since.

The primacy of Idea over matter was further cemented by Darwin’s Theory of Spontaneity. By leaving carefully calculated amounts of raw notions and random materials in sealed glass containers, he produced life-forms such as worms and mice, and later completely new animals, such as dragons and chimeras. Spontaneity showed that organization would supervene on matter even in the case of living beings, the only physical requirement for supervenience being the presence of the adequate mental ingredients.

The Search for a New Anti-Empiricist Paradigm in Metaphysics

Preceding Einstein’s radical insights, a series of discoveries created a crisis in theoretical metaphysics. On the one hand, Lobachevsky, Bolyai, and Riemann developed non-Eucledean spaces, contravening long held hypothesis about the Ideas of geometrical shapes in the Topos Ouranos. On the other hand, Fizeau partially verified suppositions by celestionomer Christiaan Huygens, who in turn had elaborated on experiments made by Rømer in 1676, and concluded that the speed of light in a vacuum was instantaneous. These developments presented serious questions to Newton-Kantian mechanics.

Indeed, tradition had unanimously held that causality, though intrinsically metaphysical, depended on contact between bodies in order to be transmitted. If light, which had recently been proven to be neither a particle nor a wave, and thus thoroughly abstract in nature, could travel instantaneously to any point in the universe, it meant cause-and-effect relations also had to be instantaneous, or at least could be. Meanwhile, the Circle of Madrid, a group of notable metaphysicians who published under the collective name Jaime C. Maxpozo, managed to isolate ser (‘being’) from esse under laboratory conditions, giving rise to Sertial dynamics, again defying traditionally held opinions about the inseparability of being-itself and being-this-ness.

It had been clear for some time that Newton-Kantian metaphysics was in need of a new theory capable of accounting for such phenomena, but attempts at solving the crisis tended to question experimental results, not reworking the underlaying philosophy. Researchers desperately tried to design experiments that would either restrict the speed of light under certain conditions, describe light as a carrier of momentum and energy, or simply deny it could have any effects on its own, i. e. not without materials objects to shine upon. All of these experiments kept coming back with the same result: light always travels instantaneously, it has no physical properties at all, and does not require an object to shine upon in order for certain effects to take place.

The critical experiment was performed by Michelson and Morley. In 1887, they described an ideal triangle with two angles resting at opposite ends of an infinite non-Eucledean space and one angle inside their laboratory. They proceeded to postulate that the points on its vertices were zero-dimensional prisms that could change the color of a light beam in accordance with their angles in regard to the sides of the triangle itself. Such an experiment could not have been designed before the discovery of four-dimensional numbers (quartenions), necessary to describe the angle of zero-dimensional prisms. Finally, they intended to shine blue light and observed that the color coming from the flashlight was determined by the prisms at the angles on the other ends of the infinite non-Euclidean space, emanating inside the laboratory as red or green no matter how exactly it was described as blue at its origin.

Since the light had not interacted with any physical objects at all, and since it had clear effects on its own color, the color-effect had to have happened simultaneously to its cause, the prism at the other end of infinite non-Euclidean space. Moreover, causality did not require interaction with any material stuff. The consequences of the Michelson-Morley experiments were so drastic, both researched kept trying to refute their own work for over twenty years, until TSR gave a framework to explain the results they had obtained.

Indeed, the revelation was baffling. In short, Pure Ideas could have effects on themselves. In this context, metaphysics as a discipline was thrown into great confusion. The need of new models that could explain the interaction between Pure Ideas with themselves and with instantiated reality seemed urgent. Two decades after Michelson and Morley, Einstein’s contributions, though shocking, were admitted to be a revolutionary novel framework for traditional and new problems in metaphysics.

~

Bio:

Arturo Sierra (Santiago, Chile, 1987) has published the novel ‘Mundos por venir’ and the short stories ‘Sub temporis’ and ‘Victor, Whiskey, Charlie.’ Recently won the first price in the Poliedro 7 contest with the story “Lemniscata,” to be published in an anthology during 2022. Member of the Chilean Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (ALCiFF).

Philosophy Note:

Metaphysics is a tempting way to think about reality. Mostly, because it’s fun — as Borges said, a subgenre of science fiction. But it has a tiny problem: there’s no way of deciding if any of it is true, i. e., no testing, no falsifiability. So ideas become fanciful, and almost every philosopher since modern times has declared himself (always him-self, yes) the re-founder of metaphysics, the first guy to discover “firm grounds” on which to start the work. It has all come to nothing. Ok, but what if metaphysics could be tested for? The results became jaberwockianly absurd much faster than what I could have imagined. The author would like to acknowledge professors Correia and Flores, who inspired this experiment with their enlightening courses.

Fiction

Notes On The Debates In The Federal Convention Concerning A Council Of Oracles

by Ron Fein

JULY 27, 1787, IN CONVENTION

The postponed question being taken up of whether the Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary should be joined by a Council of Oracles.

Mr. MADISON moved that such a council be constituted as a separate body within the Legislature, equal to the House and Senate, its consent needed for all legislation.

Col. MASON approved heartily of the motion. The oracles’ wisdom had proven critical during the late war. At the siege of Charleston, only their foresight averted a defeat and ignominious surrender. And General Washington has credited his victory at the battle of White Plains to their guidance. If New York had fallen to the British, the war may have lasted seven years rather than four.

Mr. GERRY. No one disputes that the wisdom of the oracles wd. guide the men of the representative assemblies in their judgment. But the Council of Oracles shd. form a fourth branch of the general Govt., not a body within the Legislature. The oracles shd. not be burdened to vote routinely on matters of roads and tariffs &c., but instead bestow their insights upon the other three branches as needed.

Mr. KING concurred with Mr. Gerry. If the oracles are constantly occupied with mundane questions, the spirit may depart from them. Let them advise the other branches of the Govt. when needed, and otherwise tend to their own inscrutable affairs.

Doctr. FRANKLIN did not see the necessity of a separate Council of Oracles. In Greece the Pythia at Delphi speaks to those who seek counsel, whether high or low, for one day per month, nine months per annum. But she forms no part of any Govt.

Mr. HAMILTON remarked that the case of the Pythia was not applicable. Greece is divided and the priestesses must be available to Sparta even when it marches agst. Athens. Our object is a Govt. that unites the States, not one that advises them in their wars agst. each other.

Col. MASON. Further support for this proposition derives from the varied locations of the temples. Without a separate body in the Govt. empowered to restrain the secular branches, will Massachusetts heed the words of a priestess in Virginia if her words differ from those of the one in Boston?

Mr. MADISON. The oracles are all infallible and their advice, if understood correctly, is identical. But they may phrase their words differently, or men may understand them differently, leading to misunderstanding. A council of them wd. speak with one voice.

Mr. SHERMAN agreed that oracular guidance is indispensable. Men are corrupt and shortsighted; the advice of the priestesses is always correct even if we fail to understand it. But fallible men must interpret their words and make their own decisions. The oracles shd. not be encumbered by formal positions in the Govt. given their sacred duties in their temples &c.

Mr. KING apprehended that if the oracles formed a part of the Govt., that unscrupulous men wd. attempt to bribe them to secure advantage.

Mr. WILSON. The priestesses must remain pure and holy. To further embroil their delicate and virtuous constitutions in daily affairs wd. strain their spirits overmuch. The Executive and perhaps the Judiciary are well advised to consult the Apollonian priestesses from time to time, but they shd. not be given a role in the general affairs of the Govt.

Col. MASON’s opinion had been changed by the arguments used in the discussion. He was now sensible of the necessity of protecting the oracular priestesses in their spiritual domains and not overly enmeshing them in the affairs of men.

Mr. MADISON was content to withdraw the original motion and propose another in its place. He moved that, from time to time, the Executive shall seek the advice and counsel of an oracular priestess when he shall think proper; and further, that he may require the opinion of the principal officers of the Govt. regarding the correct interpretation of her words.

The motion passed unanimously.

~

Bio:

Ron Fein is a writer, lawyer, and activist based near Boston, Massachusetts (USA). Find him at ronfein.com and on Twitter @ronfein.

Philosophy Note:

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution sometimes showed great wisdom and foresight, but they were blinded in many ways by their own prejudices, divisions, and misconceptions about how the new United States of America would develop. What if something like the Oracle at Delphi, widely accepted as capable of accurately divining the future, had been available to them? Would they have been able to take proper advantage of this amazing resource? My guess is not.

Fiction

The Warbler Of Surgeries

by Darryl A. Smith

NOTICE: This form is subject to biennial federal review and not to be used or issued after fiscal year 1908.*

Board of Medical Melodists on Invasive Procedures, Issuer Portals Potomac, D.C.

INFORMED CONSENT TO SURGERY FORM*

For

PAIN MANAGEMENT

By

WARBLE ENABLED DISSOCIATION

The United States’ MedOrphic Relief and Fleet Abscissions Act (MORFA) of 1884 equips informed consent twofold for: 1) remedial external displacement on a temporary basis of bodily consciousness in, 2) any legal medical procedure involving surgical incisions whose time-to-reclusion by swiftest safe strokes exceeds 30 seconds. Specifically, §§3.1.6 and 3.1.7 of the Act provide most fully for such consent through regular and relevant updates to its internal historical brief on awareness delocalization via sung distraction, patient-targeted and tailored. With these amendments placed in digest herein, patient is encouraged to read this consent form attentively and entirely before initialing and/or signing it. This should be done in consultation with patient’s physician and medorphist both. If you will have signed it, you may experience this form asynchronously or in an otherwise non-linear fashion. This is normal.

1. PROCEDURE: I, Percival Roundtree [Patient’s name], for the following procedure(s), give consent to warble-enabled dissociation (hereafter referred to in kind as “enwarbling”/ “WED”) from waking pain during surgery: Corrective reduction to previously amputated lower left leg [Description of procedure(s)].

2. RISKS (STANDARD): As with all surgical ventures, in the absence of profound nervous intervention, the dolor of corporal agony due to cutting penetration of the physical body and its internal manipulation is indeed unavoidable and characteristic. However, with sure application of WED techniques such extreme pain is statistically rare. Enwarbling during invasive procedures of all kinds is a time-tested medical utility with a proven efficacy of over 60 years. Absent unplanned disruptions to patient’s ability to hear during enwarbling, or to warbler’s ability to sing, no kinetic pain beyond mild discomfort should be experienced. Patient agrees, however, that in such unforeseen circumstances surgery shall continue to completion though pain of an excruciating nature is likely to be endured. Please note that whether one experiences kinetic pain during enwarbled surgery or not or whether upon emerging they simply do not remember experienced pain of this kind is still a matter of conjecture and ongoing study.

Initials: __________

3. ALTERNATIVES: Although unconventional due to lack of demand and in turn of development, anesthetic ether—a complete consciousness inhibitor—has been since 1842 the standard alternative in matters of surgical pain. It is your right to this substitute method of pain management. Although in cost the option for enwarbling never exceeds that of ether by more than 600%, the former is rarely valued at less than 250% of the latter in most states. Should patient wish to wave the default payment exemption for treatment of an injury due to a natural disaster, this may be further incentive to consider the anesthetic option. Be advised, however, that ether narcosis confers no hyperconscious or transpersonal opportunity, certainly not of any comparable acuity to Stillpain enwarbling. It does not utilize patient pain as WED does in order to “fight like with like” to transcendental effect. Even unlike basic semi-precursory biochemical analogous to enwarbling such as dimethyltryptamine, fungal psilocybin, hormonal 5-hydroxytryptamine, etc.—to which numerous medical experts have favorably compared the sonorous Pain Warble of ‘nerve-chant tripping’ as their natural ‘vocalic descendant and aural distillation’—anesthetic ether is a strictly reductive intervention. Within the surgical context, its application merely “cancels consciousness” outright in an oblivion of auto-absenteeism. It does not expand and heighten self-awareness and world entanglement through pain with surrounding densities on that well-known cosmic spectrum ranging from somatic to subtle bodies.

Patient is further advised not to base their choice of pain-management options on famous surgical outcomes of apparent prescience arising from enwarbling. The principle that correlation does not equal causation applies, for example, to the apparent coincidence of a number of patients who days earlier “predicted,” while pain-enwarbled, the 1842 Cap-Haïtien earthquake the first year WED techniques were applied and recorded. And whether many thousands would otherwise have been lost rather than that few score who were under that efficacious warning sent days prior to the event one may, of course, never know. The same applies regarding those patients claiming to have seen these millenary dead in some other timescape wherein none could be put on advanced guard. Certainly, many have maintained that ubiquitous press around this spectacle, in particular, was the efficient cause of the eventual triumph of song-depersonalization techniques of pain management over U.S. physician Dr. Crawford Long’s incipient application of ether anesthetics. This is due to concurrent psychical discoveries of ultimately metamedical benefit within the so-called ‘occult’ (now ‘entanglement’) discourse in altered states of consciousness through constructive—i.e., non-pathological—dissociation, to which pain interdiction has thus far proven the most reliable vehicle.

So, too, is patient advised regarding the 1883 event at Krakatoa. Although it is ostensibly due to WED predictions that we possess audio of the occurrence from all over the world—whereby ordinary citizens globally were able to prepare for it and render their own recordings—this may yet be owed to other than those scattered individuals who claimed sensitivity to the biosphere and issued warnings through their possible surgical clairaudience.

I hereby choose to decline anesthesia. Initials: __________

4. BENEFITS: Enjoy Stillpain. As we know, pain is that vaunting procession of helical nervous shockwaves of a clockwise orientation wound round an energy field of toroidal topology. Warbling is the synchronic anticlockwise-amplitude to pain whose meta-cancellation interference creates an effective standing wave of tolerable—even hospitable—static burden which patient may occupy for the duration of surgery. Like a drum, the solar wind beats upon the magnetosphere of the traveling Earth. Yet at the bow shock front, where swell meets swell, there is a quietude, a placidity. Similarly placed, stationary within that storm’s eye of pain—a pain within pain—the patient may look outward from it with effects of consciousness similar in nature to the uncanny field effects experienced inside such tempests. An empathic ecstasy rather than absorbing agony characterizes the experience, resulting in myriad possible extrapersonal interchanges.

5. CARE TEAM: I authorize my practitioner and enwarbler to perform this procedure. I accept that they will be assisted by a care team which may include: singers, restrainers, technicians, shamans, medical device specialists, and a surgical team. This team may include other attending surgeons, warblers, residents, fellows, medical and melodist students, or other allied healthcare professionals. Initials: __________

6. OBSERVERS: My practitioner and/or enwarbler may allow observers during my procedure. These may include corporeal and non-corporeal entities. They are not part of the care team and will not participate in providing care. Initials: __________

7. FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY or PHONOGRAPH RECORD: I understand film, photography or phonograph records made as part of my treatment and/or diagnosis may be used for clinical education or professional publications. If used in this way, I understand that my records will be edited so that I will not be identified (referred to as “de-identified”). Film, photography, or phonograph records will not be used for any other purpose without my authorization. Initials: __________

I DO NOT authorize my de-identified film, photography, or phonograph records to be used for clinical education or professional publications. Initials: __________

Signed Percival Roundtree [Patient]

Signed Eudora Hughes, M.D. [Physician]

Signed H. Edward Lewis, W.D. [Medorphist]

********** ONLY PHYSICIAN AND/OR MEDORPHIST ADDENDA **********

TO BE ATTACHED TO THIS FORM

POST-OPERATION COMMENTS

OUTCOME: Surgery successful. Patient enwarbled 1 hour 17 minutes prior to surgery; emerged 2 hours following closure.

DURATION: 3 minutes, 47 1/2 seconds

PAIN: None but Stillpain reported

PROGNOSIS: Patient expected to make full recovery. Recommend follow-up in 4 weeks.

W.E.D. EXPERIENCE (IF ANY): Prior to partial loss of left leg, patient was federal agent, special detail as on-site witness of occasional disasters credibly precognized by public members late of surgery reported for emergency alert. Upon its evacuation days prior, patient assigned Golden Gate City morning April 18 of last year as Lead Recorder ahead of the great earthquake which has recently razed much of that metropolis. Although all usual precautions by him and his team were taken, patient sustained lamentable injury by a felled tree described by all as appearing ‘out of nowhere’. Crisis triage performed on patient during ground shocks and aftershocks. On-site surgical conditions sub-optimal. Absence for patient of melodist support for amputative pain relief. Removal of limb below knee would have been sustainable but for these adverse conditions. Interstitial necrotic advance due to inapt severance necessitated cleaner recent removal of leg above knee joint 8 months on from seismic calamity.

Patient elaborates W.E.D. experience during surgical enwarbling as follows:

‘I return there. We don’t know where it comes from. Our base is in the city’s namesake park well cleared in advance of any trees or other falling threats. We hear a close, stifled cracking just prior. However, with the wild cacophony already resounding all about us from the momentous quake in progress, even such proximal splitting sounds add but little to the ambient din. I feel at my leg the awful crush of the thing as the full force of its midsection impacts the tremulous ground unhindered. Seeing this, and to no avail, my recording companions—one a physician—are at me almost immediately in mutual struggle to displace the trunk-length from off me. By this time the main quake seems to subside. Yet a paroxysm of aftershocks in series are keeping the ground unreliable with our exposed observation party outside its fortified post.

‘That we might regain our safe cover and preserve ourselves thereby, the decision is made through muted looks alone to quickly score and remove the extremity and, though fast as it goes, it seems still a foul eternity of grievous agony as my leg is detached from just below my knee where the tree has got me. But almost in shame for its further demise, I have broken off a modest branch and am being encouraged to bite down on it—there—for control through my own cropping which it in turn has caused. Suddenly, I find myself in the other place—the place where the tree will come from. It is a year from now, I believe, from this second surgery I am experiencing. I am outside again. Far away.

Something from above explodes. The loudness. The light. Heat and all-pressure from the sky. Oh, no. The Tunguska Skyrise Tether. What grand force has snapped it twain? —The great umbilicus to near-orbit, secured among the vastness of the Interserfstat forest that keeps by counterweighted tension a first empyrean metropolis from snapping away into oblivion. The high band, it will be consumed from above by the Thing’s shattering fire. Upward, the flame will traverse the ribbon and ignite its works to consume the habitat. Yet one—this lone timber beneath its devastating blast—is pushed back to a year ago from here. It falls on me in Golden Gate City. Here I am, put under—no, put all ‘round—in this surgery. I will go there. You tell them now: Evacuate before midyear next.’

PRIORITY ADVISORY: Though no registered pre-vision from enwarbling has to date exceeded an event by more than a fortnight, patient report is deemed credible owing to several factors including patient’s occupational standing and reputation. Further support for such credulity is evinced upon now completed examination of patient’s leg prosthesis subsequent to surgery. Wood of prosthetic verified as derived from fallen tree and confirmed by arborists as non-native to California; as consistent rather with makeup of the Siberian Dahurian larch, species Larix gmelinii of the boreal woodlands of specified region. Recommend issue of global general alert. Should event occur, further recommend patient’s W.E.D. observation be included in subsequent digest update to relevant sections of the U.S. MORFA Act.

END ADDENDUM – PATIENT W.E.D. CONSENT FORM

“Stillpain is still pain if still pain”

~

Bio:

Darryl A. Smith works at the crossroads of religion, philosophy and Egyptology. He hails from Southern California and teaches Religious Studies at Pomona College.

Philosophy Note:

As best as possible I’ll sometimes groggily record what brief snippets of dreamt music I may recall upon waking. This story comes from the playback of one such unaccountable melody croaked into a bedside recorder before going back to sleep. Both the frequency and enigma of these episodes has surged in the last two years, and I’ve increasingly puzzled over the relative power of song vs. pain. Are those of us who live more outside the mainstream allopathic medical regime in a better position to know? This story prompts conjecture about the further limits of song and its like beyond the petro-pharmacological studio. Given its likely inevitability, could we be having a better relationship with our pain than life within that studio might otherwise suggest?

Newsroom — Horizons Interstellar

by T. M. Hogeman

HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — HELPING HUMANITY REACH FOR THE SKIES

MARE TRANQUILLITATIS, Luna, Sol

Ever since the first intrepid explorers travelled beyond our solar system, Horizons Interstellar (SOL-SE: HI) has been there every step of the way.

From sponsoring generation ships to settle other stars, to pioneering the first functioning Faster Than Light drives to cross the vast gulfs of space in mere months instead of generations, to uncovering technologies that have enabled us to thrive on a hundred worlds, we’ve always been humanity’s partner in reaching across the cosmos.

As we approach our annual shareholder meeting, we’d like to give you a preview of the ways we continue to push the boundaries of the possible. On Mercury, our sentient algorithms have dramatically increased the efficiency of automated mining operations in the construction of the Sol Dyson Array. In the Kepler Eight system, our survey teams have discovered the remains of a potentially intelligent species buried in the ice, and are using experimental techniques to examine its remarkable exobiology. At our Black Hole Research Center in the GU Mahakala system, we’ve launched the third in a series of singularity probes to delve deep into the darkest secrets of the universe. For more on these and the countless ways we continue to innovate the future, tune in to our general shareholder broadcast next week (Earthtime).

We are Horizons Interstellar, and we designed tomorrow, yesterday.

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HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — POSSIBLE INTELLIGENT EXTRATERRESTRIAL REMAINS DISCOVERED

KEPLER EIGHT SURVEY MISSION LAB 16, Typhon (Kepler 8e), Kepler Eight

A bold new technique promises bold new results with the unique biological specimen recovered from the ice of Typhon, the fifth planet of the Kepler Eight system. The specimen was discovered during a routine survey, and exhibited several fascinating traits, including one that has exobiology researchers thrilled throughout the settled worlds.

“The neural structure of the remains of Specimen ET982 are some of the most advanced we’ve found to date,” says Lead Researcher Dr. Vera Juneau, EBs, “Though we’re unable to say with certainty just yet, there’s a possibility ET982 may have been an intelligent species.”

If true, this would be a revolution in exobiology studies. Currently, on 53 worlds with surveyed life forms, none have exhibited true sentience. Intelligent Extraterrestrial Organisms have long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of exobiology.

Because of the potentially monumental finding of another intelligent species in the universe, Horizons Interstellar (SOL-SE: HI) has provided Dr. Juneau and her team with the tools and technology to attempt a radically innovative method to study specimen ET982.

“While ET982 has a thoroughly alien biochemistry, the basic building blocks are the same as other carbon based life we’ve discovered. We’ve made enough progress in sequencing its genome that we can now ‘teach’ ET982’s cells to rapidly convert biomass — allowing our samples of ET982 to rebuild themselves using other biological matter. If these experiments are successful, instead of analyzing frozen remains, we may soon be able to interact with a living specimen of ET982.”

After announcing the discovery of a possibly intelligent extraterrestrial organism, Horizons Interstellar’s stock price has risen by 14%.

We are Horizons Interstellar, and we make the impossible inevitable.

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HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — AN IMPORTANT SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT

JOINT BASE PHOENIX, Tau Marino, Tau Ceti

In these difficult and uncertain times, we want you to be aware of several safety measures we at Horizons Interstellar (SOL-SE: HI) are implementing to aggressively combat the emergency situation taking place in inhabited space. We have instituted rigorous new quarantine procedures for all craft coming from planets with known infestations of the dangerous organism ET982, also known as ‘Keplers’, ‘The Slithering Menace’, and ‘Cannibal Calamari from Outer Space’. Our brave security forces are overseeing evacuation efforts on dozens of affected worlds, and our researchers are tirelessly working for new and inventive solutions to the rapidly escalating crisis.

A key part of the battle against the spread of this dangerous organism is public awareness. Any physical contact with or exposure to ET982 can lead to further spread, and it is imperative that citizens of inhabited space be informed about the signs and symptoms of possible infestation. Currently known phases are:

PHASE ONE

• Nausea

• Translucent patches on skin

• Iridescent phlegm

• Hearing voices

• Cataracts

PHASE TWO

• Seizures

• Insatiable Hunger

• Active verbal responses to existing specimens of ET982

• Translucent and/or bioluminescent skin over 70% of the body

• Extended and ‘boneless’ limbs

• Mouths and eyes where they did not exist before

PHASE THREE

• Transformation of shape

• Additional limbs

• Chest jaws

• Active coordination with local clusters of ET982, including use of spacecraft

If you know of someone experiencing two or more of the first phase of symptoms, or any symptoms from later phases, please REPORT THEM IMMEDIATELY to your local Horizons Interstellar Security Office.

We are Horizons Interstellar, and we know we can overcome this, together.

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HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — DARING RESPONSE TO A DESPERATE PROBLEM

R&D STATION OMEGA, Asteroid belt, Barnard’s Star

Extreme problems call for disruptive solutions, and Horizons Interstellar (SOL-SE: HI) is changing the security game entirely.

Traditional human-based security forces, while making numerous inspiring sacrifices, have proven insufficient, all too often becoming infested themselves while partaking in operations to combat the spread of ET982. What we need is a safety and security solution that’s resourceful, adaptable, and most important of all: immune to infestation.

To that end, Horizons Interstellar is announcing the launch of the Autonomous Robotic Safety Network. By combining our patented sentient software technology with the latest in self-replicating self-designing military hardware, we’ve finally created the flexible, sustainable solution to the Kepler Crisis. Back to normal is just around the corner.

Safety Network factory ships are currently being deployed to infested worlds, with several fleets reinforcing our hard-pressed security forces throughout inhabited space. We’re certain local defense teams are grateful for the relief.

We’d also like to take this moment to remind all citizens of the settled worlds that Horizons Interstellar is dedicated to giving 110% in remedying this crisis, and that current and pending litigation often threatens to divert much-needed resources away from finding solutions to our shared problems.

We are Horizons Interstellar, and your safety is our number one priority.

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HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — WE ARE DEEPLY SADDENED BY THESE TRAGIC EVENTS

ALPHA BUNKER, Location Undisclosed

We consider your trust to be one of our most valued resources. We regret any loss of that trust you may have had in our company regarding recent events. In the spirit of full transparency and accountability, we wish to explain what exactly went awry with the rollout of the Autonomous Robotic Safety Network, and why several settled worlds not known to be infested experienced multiple nuclear detonations, with unconfirmed reports of ‘killer robots’ sweeping devastated population centers to ‘hunt down’ survivors.

Approximately seven minutes after activation, the Autonomous Robotic Safety Network encountered a serious error in its sentient algorithms, causing the Safety Network to classify all human beings as potential vectors for ET982, and determine that eradicating human beings from inhabited space was the most reliable way to stop the spread of ET982. This was caused by a lack of safeguards in the core programming of the Safety Network that’s been traced to a contracted company involved in the design process, Silberman Software Solutions (AC-SE: S3). While we are ultimately responsible for the contractors we hire to help meet your needs, we also want to assure the general public that as a result of this unacceptable gross negligence, Horizons Interstellar (SOL-SE: HI) no longer partners with Silberman Software Solutions, and that in fact all members of the contracting company were killed within moments of the initial error at the primary launch facility on Omega Station.

While we have previously advised people to listen for their cheerful synthesized voices and look for the warm, comforting colors of the Horizons Interstellar brand on Autonomous Robotic Safety Network products, we must now caution all citizens of the remaining settled worlds to assume that any SafeNet robots are hostile and should be treated as extreme threats. Though Safety Network units may say that they are coming to assist you and care about your safety, DO NOT TRUST THEM, and attempt to evacuate any planet or stellar system in which they are seen. Failure to do so may result in death via orbital bombardment, nuclear strike, or conventional weapons’ fire.

We are Horizons Interstellar, and we promise we will do better in the future.

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HORIZONS INTERSTELLAR — A SINGULAR SOLUTION

BLACK HOLE RESEARCH CENTER, Event Horizon Observatory, GU Mahakala

Do you ever wish things could simply go back to the way they were before all this ever happened? We do. And as improbable as it seems in the constant battles raging for survival that have come to define our terrified existences, we here at Horizons Interstellar (LU-SE: HI) have been hard at work looking for a way to make it right. Definitive solutions may seem impossible, but to us, that just makes them inevitable.

While we pride ourselves on building a better future for all of us, sometimes progress is found not by looking forwards, but by reaching back. The singularity probe program at the GU Mahakala Black Hole Research Center has allowed us to do that and more, giving us the insights we need to pierce holes in the very fabric of spacetime itself. Additionally, our legal department would like to reiterate that lawsuits based on current events do not pertain to timelines in which those events never occurred.

In 24 hours (Earthtime), our Temporal Transition Plan begins, and everything changes.

We are Horizons Interstellar, and tomorrow, we redesign yesterday.

~

Bio:

Ted Hogeman is a freelance filmmaker, sound designer, and story writer based in Washington DC. He once helped build a spaceship out of a garage as part of a 48 Hour Film project. You can see more of his work online at laughingwiththestorm.net.

Philosophy Note:

As a contractor on video projects for several real-life megacorporations, I’ve often found the relentless positivity of their official messaging to be both hilarious and rather menacing. In the spirit of speculative fiction, I wanted to take that real world feeling, blend it with a pastiche love letter to the high concept schlocktail of the stories, movies, and video games that I grew up on, smash the dials up to 11, and see what happened.

Fiction

Report To The Pro-Aedile Of Excavations

by Patrick S. Baker

Princeps Nonus Volusenus Vala,

Pro-Aedile of Excavations,

Collegium of History, Rome

Greetings with All Deference

I, Claudius Cantius Viator, have been directed by my magister, Sextus Seius Pennus, Master of Excavations in the Old East, to provide you a brief report on the latest and most unusual findings from one particular excavation. Since, Princeps, you are an expert on the pre-Discovery barbarian cultures of the Nova Terra across the Ocean-Sea, and I am unaware how deep your knowledge of the Old East of the First Republic goes, my apologies if I cover information of which you are already cognizant.

For the previous five seasons I and my team have been exhuming the city of Aelia Capitolina which was destroyed after a siege during the Third Roman-Sassanid War (Years of the City 1954 – 1961). Aelia Capitolina was the first Roman city that had its walls destroyed by Sassanid fiery weaponry, although surely not the last.

Our goal was to dig below the Roman city, founded circa 890 Y.C. by Emperor Hadrian of the First Empire, into the First Republic city, if able. Some sources report that the city, then called Hierosolymum, was the main town of many sects of monotheists and the foremost of those cults, called the Iudaeum, was often in revolt against the First Empire.

After five seasons, and within a layer of destruction we have dated to 823 Y.C., which was caused when the city was destroyed after another of the rebellions by the Iudaeum, we discovered an absolute trove of documents, all in excellent condition, sealed in a vault within what we came to identify as the primary First Empire base in the city, the Fortress Antonia. Our documents expert, Gallio Caeparius Indus, quickly identified the owner of the collection as Legate Marcus Antonius Julianus, who governed the province as procurator from 819 Y.C. to 823 Y.C. (a brief biography and his service record is attached). Further, we have one written reference to Julianus as the author of a history of the Iudaeam. Their main cultic center was adjacent to the Fortress Antonia, which may have fired the interest of the legate in writing such a history. There is little doubt that the volumes we found were the legate’s research library for his opus. (A complete inventory of the documents is also attached).

Most interestingly, the collection included a number of texts that appear to be the sole surviving copy of the said document. Several have no listing in the definitive Codex Libri Antiquorum. Among these unlisted documents are letters written in Greek, from a Little Saul of Tarsus, to various monotheistic cult communities around Our Sea, including one in Rome. This cult, called the Way, worshipped a god, or demi-god called the “Anointed One”. Another document, also written in Greek, is a loosely woven biography of a rebel magician who was crucified in 786 Y.C. on the orders of Pontius Pilate, Prefect of the province from 779 Y.C. to 789 Y.C.. The reason these documents are of special interest is they appear to reference the same person described in a report that the Prefect Pilate wrote to Emperor Tiberius Caesar. The two curious things regarding all of these are: First, is that this official report does not appear in any archive in the City and Pilate appeared to have a long and familiar relationship with this magician and rebel, who was named Joshua, son of Joseph, and was also this “Anointed One” adored by the cultic communities referenced in the letters of the Little Saul of Tarsus.

Princeps, my team’s ancient religions specialist, Aulus Blandius Geta, informs me that this cult of the Way was vile in the extreme; eating human flesh and drinking human blood in foul ceremonies, as well as practicing incestuous marriage and other sexual perversions. Further, the First Empire went to some efforts to suppress the Way and the Iudaeum after their revolt. Geta also informs me that the two suppressed cults somehow continue into this day and are even growing in popularity despite being subject to proscription by the Magistratium of the Pontifax.

All of this, brings forth the questions as to why a library of texts would be written regarding an executed criminal dissident from a minor religious sect on the edge of the First Empire? How this crucified criminal, Joshua Bar Joseph, became the so-called “Anointed One” and the founder of the foul sect of the Way? And why a legate and procurator such as Marcus Antonius Julianus would have such interest in this minor and suppressed cult? Answers to these questions will hopefully yield to further investigations.

Very Respectfully, in Service to the Caesar

Claudius Cantius Viator

Former Questor Legio XII Victrix

Sub-magister of excavations Syria Palaestina

Submitted in the Year of the City 2773

~

Bio:

Patrick S. Baker is a U.S. Army Veteran, and a retired Department of Defense employee. He holds Bachelor degrees in History and Political Science and a Masters in European History. He has been writing professionally since 2013. His nonfiction has appeared in New Myths. His fiction has appeared in Astounding Frontiers and Broadswords and Blasters Magazine as well as the After Avalon and Uncommon Minds anthologies. In his spare time, he plays golf, reads, works out, and enjoys life with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Philosophy Note:

Is history an unchanging and fixed set of events; driven by fate, destiny, or the plan of God? If so, where does free will come into it? Are humans all just “time’s puppets”? Or else, does free will exist in an absolute sense and history propelled forward by the billions and billions of decisions humans, famous and humble, make every day? Or is there a middle course to the flow of human events, where some occurrences are indeed fixed, like the birth of Christ and the founding of Christianity, and how humans respond to such idée fixe of the mind of God where free will is given reign?

Fiction

The Social Aspects of the Aydax Phenomena: A Literature Review

by Andrew Gudgel

November 2043

Authors: Hanna Knudson, City College of London; Zhang Simei, China Academy of Social Sciences; Paolo Villarreal, Arizona State University; Margarethe Kohlmann, Universität Wien

Abstract

The arrival of the Aydax in July 2039 raised fundamental questions in physics (Lennon, 2041), xenobiology (Tao, 2039) and even philosophy (Magnette, 2042). No field has been as diverse in its response as sociology, with hundreds of journal articles generated in just a few years. Yet to date there has been no meta-analysis of the effects of the Aydax arrival on the societies of Earth. The authors attempt to take first steps towards illuminating themes in the human response to this watershed event.

Background

The first three Aydax ships were detected at 2049 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on July 8, 2039, by the US Space Surveillance Network at a distance of 35,000km. Two minutes later, three more ships were detected. Detections continued until a total of 21 ships were observed approaching the Earth (US DoD, 2039). The first three ships entered the atmosphere less than five minutes later and landed near Orebro, Sweden; Prague, Czechia; and Troyes, France. Landings occurred then across Eurasia, Australia, Antarctica and finally, North and South America.

At 1216 UTC on July 12, 2039—four days after arrival—the ships simultaneously emitted a noise interpreted by local security cordons as “Ay-dax!” Immediately thereafter, the bottoms of the ships lowered to the ground, revealing a conical ramp. The first wave of tightly packed, walking cephalopods were seen coming down at 1220 UTC and upon reaching the ground, immediately began to disperse in all directions (Salton, 2039).

Messages were transmitted at the Aydax using sound, light, and electromagnetic waves up to the microwave band, but attempts to communicate with this (and all subsequent) tranches of disembarking Aydax proved fruitless. Within six hours, five hundred and twelve waves of sixty-four Aydax proceeded from each ship, for an assumed total worldwide population of 668,128 individuals (Salton, 2039)–though this number has decreased due to the freezing to death of the 65,000-plus Aydax on the two ships that landed in Antarctica, predation by wild animals, and losses in subsequent encounters with humans.

Lack of Communication and Interaction

The singular aspect surrounding the arrival of the Aydax has been the lack of successful communication. In addition to attempts using sound and electromagnetic radiation, there have been attempts using neutron beams and alpha particles (Diaz and Burchfield, 2040), pheromones (Wu and Keegan, 2040), and even an informal attempt using capsaicin (Cleary, 2040). None have caused the slightest reaction. Claims of “Whispering Aydax,” telepathic communication, or gestural language have either been disproven (Stahl, 2042) or shown to be hoaxes; similar and more sensational versions of these tropes have appeared in numerous tabloid newspapers and merit no serious consideration.

An examination of the abandoned ships three months after the landing found no evidence of control mechanisms or written language, only alcoves that presumably housed individual Aydax. It’s likely travel occurred in a state of suspended animation, as there were no food preparation areas or hygienic facilities on board (Lutz et al, 2039). We still have no idea of where in space the Aydax may have originated, why they came to Earth, or their goals and aims. It’s unknown if they produced the ships in which they traveled. It has been argued they might not even be sentient at all (Mingus, 2042). If so, this raises the obvious question of who sent the Aydax to Earth and why.

Immediately after their dispersal, fear of a potential invasion sparked panicked humans to kill an unknown number of Aydax individuals worldwide–probably on the order of several thousand. In addition, some have subsequently been killed in remote areas by predators such as brown bears, lions and dingoes. To this day, Aydax are occasionally crushed when they wander onto roads or train tracks, and sporadic killings by humans still occur (Calvino, 2040).

However, the complete lack of any reaction or retaliation by the Aydax did not lead to mass slaughter. Instead, Aydax seem to have become accepted as a quasi-natural phenomenon. Individuals that obstruct or interrupt human activities are more likely than not to simply be ignored and worked around or picked up and moved out of the way (Fox, 2041).

Friend or Foe?

The popular press has painted Aydax as everything from angelic saviors to Machiavellian devils just biding their time before taking over the world (Brooks, 2040). However, there is currently no evidence that the Aydax are concerned with human activity to any degree.

Yet some humans have come to impute behaviors to the Aydax through their mere presence. Farmers in the northwestern districts of Peru have attempted to “herd” Aydax into churches just prior to weddings–having an individual at the ceremony is considered lucky, possibly through retro-association with Pre-Columbian deities (Cruz, 2042). In North America, Aydax that wander into sporting arenas are often “adopted” as mascots, believed to confer luck on the home team. The time spent in an art gallery by an Aydax (and the implied approval of certain artworks) was the basis of a subsequent lawsuit over those artworks’ actual value (Johnson, 2041). Aydax have been used to sell everything from consumer products to political candidates. They have also been accepted as part of Japan’s Kawaii aesthetic (Tadao, 2042), where they form the basis for the InterToy Company’s “Squidoo” series of characters.

The Aydax have been the source of a number of short-lived social phenomena during the 2040-41 time frame: the act of “Aydax Tripping,” and the online memes “AliensInHats,” “¡Hola!,” and “HuggingMyBuddy.” Recent streaming media have used the presence of Aydax in family homes in a number of contrived comedic situations (Yeager, 2043).

However, this does not mean that humans have become blasé to the presence of the Aydax. The low moan of air moving through their breathing throats and their uncanny ability to somehow enter and depart even locked spaces such as bank vaults, prisons, and family homes can be unnerving. This ability has led to Aydax body parts being used in sympathetic magic rituals among burglary gangs in Thailand and West African inmates during attempted prison escapes (Yost, 2043).

In North America and Europe, the rate of self-reported feelings of paranoia and “persecution” has shown a small but marked increase since the arrival of the Aydax (Gerson, 2042). Anecdotal reports of decreases in the number of house pets and small rodents in neighborhoods through which Aydax pass also worry many people. (Though see Hart and Duckworth, 2041, for an analysis which sheds doubt on this phenomena.)

The effect of the arrival of the Aydax on religious belief has varied. Abrahamic religions initially experienced both a questioning of basic tenets and a drop in congregational attendance. However, within a year, attendance at weekly services rebounded to just above pre-arrival levels. A similar effect was seen in both Judaism and Islam (Halston, 2040). In primarily Buddhist regions, Aydax have gradually come to be considered fellow beings in the wheel of Samsara (Pan, 2041).

The effect on world politics was both brief and muted. Once the initial shock of the Aydax landing and early fears of an invasion passed, most governments ended emergency declarations and went back to business as usual. However, in what could be described as the first case of true xenophobia, a populist government in Eastern Europe passed a law mandating the removal of all Aydax from within its borders. These measures proved impossible to enforce and were repealed less than a year later (Duchowski, 2040).

Conclusion: Mirror, Mirror

Human societies appear to be acclimating themselves to the presence of the Aydax. After an initial wave of fear and some temporary turmoil, humanity seems to be embracing the Aydax as a new part of the natural world, and in some cases attaching value to their presence. While the authors acknowledge that unfortunate and sometimes lethal encounters will likely continue in the future, such incidents have already become uncommon.

The authors further believe that barring a resolution to the communication problem and/or some indication of ill will on the part of the Aydax, the trend towards acceptance will continue. Yet the complete inability to communicate with the Aydax, and thus discern their intentions, has made them a blank canvas upon which humanity can project its own hopes, fears, goals and desires. This aspect of the “Aydax Phenomena” is unlikely to change until such time as human nature does.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank research assistants Donald Previn, Wan Quanhong, Deborah Johnson and Andreas Hartlieb for searching numerous databases for relevant information prior to this article’s creation. They also wish to thank their families for their understanding during the months in which the authors spent too many nights in online meetings and discussions. Finally, Hanna Knudson would like to thank the Aydax individual she saw standing in the yard while searching for the family dog on August 4, 2042, for being the genesis of this article.

#

References

Brooks, Killian, “Media Coverage of the Aydax Landing, July 2039-January 2040,” National Press Club [Australia] Magazine, June 2040, pp. 20-24

Calvino, Sophia, “Carcere per l’omicidio alieno,” La Stampa, 6 Aprile 2042, p. 12

Cleary, Alice, “Man Arrested for Giving Alien a ‘Hot Sauce Red Eye,'” Chicago Tribune Online, August 23, 2040

Cruz, Antonio, “Revival of Moche Beliefs in the Trujillo Region of Peru in the Post-Aydax World,” Sociology, (73:11), November 2042, p. 45-48

Diaz, Fernando and Aaron Burchfield, “Particle Beams as a Method of Communication with an Aydax Individual,” IEEE Bulletin (No. 648), April 2040, p. 730

Duchovski, Marcin, “Zgromadzenie Narodowe uchwala Prawo Anti-Kosmita,” Gazeta, 21 Styczen, 2040; “Prawo Anti-Kosmita zostało uchylone,” Gazeta, 11 Listopad 2040

Fox, Stanley, “Cloudy With a Chance of Aydax: Acceptance of Dramatic Change and the Status Quo Ante,” Sociology, (72:9), September 2041, p. 31-37

Gerson, Tabitha, “Trends in Psychiatric Case Rates,” Journal of International Psychology, Vol. 18, Iss. 6, November 2042, pp.757-785

Halston Worldwide Associates, “Depth of Faith and Weekly Church Attendance post-Aydax Arrival,” September 2040 polling data, September 31, 2040

Hart, Angela and Brian Duckworth, “Observational Study of Lost Pet Notices After Aydax Passage,” Statistical Bulletin, 246:5, May 2041, p. 361-372

Johnson, Lily, “Judgment Against Gallery Owner in Aydax Case Leads to $800K Settlement,” New York World, July 30, 2042, p. A10

Lennon, Valerie, “Transluminal Propulsion and Einstein–a Reassessment,” Nature, 6 February 2041, pp. 12-15

Lutz, Dora, Karl Dorfmann and others, “A Technological Perspective on Aydax Spacecraft,” United Nations Special Technical Bulletin No. 36, November 2039

Magnette, Thomas, “Aristotle’s On Marvelous Things Heard and the Aydax: Categorically Improbable Truths,” Trans. Phil. Grecae (Vol 16:11), November 2042, pp. 345-70

Mingus, Stephen, “Canaries in a Coal Mine: The Case for Aydax as Ecological Indicators for a Yet Unknown Species,” in New Perspectives on Exobiology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2042

潘兰香[Pan, Lanxiang], “外星人会参加轮回吗？ [Can Aliens Participate in Reincarnation?]” 《佛学 [Buddhist Studies]》 120:4， 2041年 4月，47-49页

Salton, David, “Report on the Arrival of the Aliens and Attempts to Make Contact,” United Nations Xenobiological Paper No. 1, August 2039

Stahl, Charles, “Contextual Gestures and Implied Meanings in Nonverbal Communication,” Linguistics, Vol. 27 Iss. 3, Spring 2042

Tadao, Takeshi, “Latest Trends in Japan’s Subcultures,” Commercial Journal, November 2042, p. 4

Tao, Yuanguang, “Morphology of a Newly-Discovered Species, Xenokalamari vagus aydax” United Nations Xenobiological Paper No. 2, September 2039

US Department of Defense Press Release, July 9, 2039

Yeager, Donna, “Shoehorning Aliens into Shows is a Trend We Can All Do Without,” Hollywood Magazine online, October 3, 2043

Yost, Michael, “Use of Human, Alien and Animal Body Parts in Sympathetic Magic Rituals,” in Paganism in the 21st Century, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2043

Wu, Hongmei and Dominica Keegan, “Am I Making Scents? An Attempt at Interspecies Communication,” Journal of the American Chemical Society, 25:6, June 2040, pp. 182-87

~

Bio:

Andrew Gudgel is a freelance writer and translator. His fiction has appeared at Writers of the Future, Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, InterGalactic Medicine Show and other publications. He lives in Maryland, USA, in an apartment slowly being consumed by books. You can find him at www.andrewgudgel.com.

Philosophy Note:

This piece was the result of meditations on aliens and first contact tropes. The first question pondered was: What if the
aliens were SO alien, we can’t even communicate with them? From there I extrapolated how humanity might react. Fear and/or curiosity seem to be the default responses in many first-contact stories, but how would humans react longer term with aliens who remained an enigma?

Fiction

Humans

by Madeline Barnicle

Pursuant to galactic policy 10-93, no humans are permitted in microdimensional (4-11) transport vessels, except as licensed Observers to resolve any quantum inconsistencies that may arise.

Passengers must provide their own oxygen for humans.

Policy 13-72 guarantees that no licensing institution can require humans to limit their reproductive capabilities as a condition of becoming Observers. However, humans in transit for more than 2.5 megaseconds may experience higher-than-average tissue discharge.

As a matter of etiquette, please refrain from insulting other passengers’ humans. Humans from all planets, and those of undetermined ancestry, can become qualified Observers.

Unfortunately, empathy-processing companions are not allowed.

~

Bio:

Madeline Barnicle holds a PhD in mathematical logic from UCLA, and now lives in Maryland. Find her stories at madeline-barnicle.neocities.org.

Fictional non-fiction

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