Forever Curious, Part 9
Chapter 3: The Fractal Maze
She keeps flying through the maze, through turbulence and lightning, sometimes looping in upon herself—as indicated by her pattern recognition software—and then choosing the next wall before continuing. The fractalized crystals are beautiful, but there can also be such a thing as beauty overload. At first, it overwhelms the senses, but after a while, a certain acclimation sets in as she adapts to her new environment. She’s afraid she’s reaching the next stage, a type of ennui, a kind of tedium one experiences after having too much of a good thing. The way that weeks upon weeks in a tropical paradise with perfect weather makes one long for rain, or even snow. The way that eating the perfect fish taco day after day after day makes one long for a salad, a cheese sandwich, or a bowl of rice (or anything but a fish taco).
Hopefully, it’s just her tiredness speaking, as she’d hate to lose her sense of wonder. Undeniably, though, at the moment the crystalline landscape’s losing its luster, and she’s but all too happy that the software can check and compare the structures of the ‘wall’ she’s following, as she’s lost the ability the distinguish the one from the other. Which is just as well, as she’d also have missed the next anomaly.
Somehow, the Slow CEO must have surmised this, as she’s also programmed the pattern-recognition software to raise an alarm if it observes something out of the ordinary. Probably because Na-Yeli can’t see everything at once, and she’s mostly scanning the environment while trusting the pattern-recognition software will cover the wall. It’s just raised the alarm, as Na-Yeli sped past that particular section.
She turns around to inspect what the fuss is about. The software superposes a red arrow indicating the anomaly over her vision, and even then it takes a while before her brain discerns it. An alien. A large, insectoid alien caught within the crystalline growth like a fly in amber. Strangely, it’s located in the middle and near the top of a stalagmite rising from the floor in the shape of a near-perfect spire. Like an alien pharaoh, she thinks, buried in a cone rather than a pyramid.
She checks her database, but the alien is not one of the known species. Studying the rest of the cone, she finds some black discolorations that are not part of the normal range of crystalline hues, which—when observed from the right angle—might also be interpreted as symbols. Symbols like she has never seen before. Pointillist pictograms from one angle, transcripts from a topological quantum computer from another, or a three-dimensional shadow of a higher dimensional Venn Diagram at its most oblique?
Time to get professional help, and Na-Yeli activates the communication AI and tells it to scan and analyze the alien symbols. “Do you recognize them?” She asks. “Or can you translate them?”
—implementing full database check— the communication AI signals —this will take a few minutes—
Na-Yeli waits, while managing to squeeze herself around the stalagmitic spire encapsulating the unknown alien—the walls are very close by—in order to get a full 360-degree recording of the alien and its symbols.
—no match— the communication AI signals —nothing we know about, but, of course, the universe is a large place—
“Then what would your best guess be?” Na-Yeli says, slightly disappointed.
—what looks like intricate art to us— the communication AI signals —might be mere doodles or clichés uttered by bored minds—
“So you’re saying it might be the alien equivalent of ‘Kilroy was here’?”
—more likely the explorer’s graffiti for territorial markings— the communication AI signals —in other words, ET excreted here—
“Yuck,” Na-Yeli says, only partly joking, “you take away all the fun and mystery.”
—benny hill’s version of occam’s razor— the communication AI signals —in case of inscrutable expressions, probably the most vulgar version is true—
“Now you make me wonder what Kilroy was doing while marking his presence,” Na-Yeli says, “I need brain bleach.”
After making careful recordings of the alien in crystal, Na-Yeli carries onwards. It’s been a long day—for your value of night and day inside this alien object—and while Na-Yeli hasn’t got a clue whether she’s made good progress through this mesmerizing maze or not, she has to rest. She looks around for a landing spot as her eyes spot something strange, something interesting. Most of the time it seems static when all of a sudden—blink—two symmetrical lids go open and shut.
She gets closer, circling above it, noticing a small updraft, fading slowly. It reminds her of the giant mollusks she saw when snorkeling at Ningaloo Reef. A green-dotted blue body with a big, purple clam whose serrated edge is a bright yellow. It blinks again, like the nictating lids of an evil eye. Then Na-Yeli is caught in a vehement, hot updraft that completely sets her off course.
What in dog’s name was that? Now she’s really interested. She circles a little bit further away, just out of the path of the sudden updraft, and waits for the next nictation. Now that she sees it coming—its timing seems quite regular, once every four minutes—she quickly dives into the edge of the updraft and takes a few quick samples.
Her spectrometer measures tiny motes of silicon, sodium, and calcium, often barely bigger than a few atoms, encapsulated by proto-crystalline chemistry molecules like carbonates, oxides, and nitrates. The seeds of this slowly—fractal by fractal—growing crystalline realm, she realizes, dispersed widely through this turbulent atmosphere. The highly active atmosphere induces massive static charges in both the upper and lower crystalline edifices, leading to electric discharges—lightning bolts from minuscule to massive—that also assist in keeping the atmosphere active.
Nevertheless, these processes consume power, and where does that power come from? One possibility is that it’s somehow extracted from the Enigmatic Object’s quickly rotating electromagnetic field, but Na-Yeli doubts it. Quartz and crystals work fine with direct current, she thinks, but not with alternating electromagnetic fields. It must be something else.
Na-Yeli lands on a spot not too far from the blinking clam, choosing it as her resting spot. But before she goes to sleep, she sends out one of her miniature probes, happy to find another use for her Kittis. She feeds it with the, up till now, very regular nictating schedule and with the mission to go down into its innards as far as possible, and record everything.
She launches it and follows its flight path as it approaches the Nictating Mollusk, then hovers next to it awaiting the next nictation. The purple-and-yellow quartz blink happens bang on schedule and the Kitti jumps into its maws like a suicidal insect diving straight into a Venus fly-trap. As the lids close, Na-Yeli immediately loses contact with her probe. Dogspeed, she wishes and waits a few nictating cycles.
At the first blink, she catches a signal from her Kitti, the Doppler shift indicating it’s in, deep. The next blink she receives a very faint signal, from about twice as deep. At the third blink, she’s lost it. She’s tired, she can’t wait all the time, and the tiny machine is programmed to come back when it hits a dead end, or after four hours of flight—its battery is good for ten. Her curiosity nags her, but the need for sleep is stronger and she nods off, in eager anticipation of the next morning.
—or—
Author’s note: welcome new subscribers (forgot to do that in the previous post as I’m somewhat overloaded with work. Sorry about that)! Keep reading, as Na-Yeli is about to decipher this layer’s secrets.