Orkney

Fàilte, agus slàinte mhath, my loyal readers. I am still in Orkney. I thought that by this time I would have ended up in Iceland, but something about the north coast of Scotland and Orkney itself has kept me here a while longer. The emptiness speaks to me, somehow. Perhaps I just needed some more time wandering the wastes while I recover from the events of last year.

I had a quick look around John O’ Groats, but there wasn’t a lot going on, and the sea was calling to me, so I hopped over to Stromness and hid the cloaked minicruiser carefully in plain sight. I’m not saying where, since I haven’t left yet and I don’t want any of you lot snooping about trying to find me and make me sign your tee shirts. Oh, wait - I haven’t made any tee shirts for you to buy yet, have I? Oh well, merchandise is for later when I finally get bored, I guess.

Orkney feels like what it is: an island community. Stromness Pier is full of local atmosphere. There are ferries, lifeboats and other vessels, dockside trade, tourism, hotels… all the stuff you encounter at any other sea town, only packed into a smaller space. There’s an arts centre, and also a gallery. But what I really wanted to see was the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. I suspected that they might be part of a Gorpulonian comms hub. I’ve had a quick look and I’m still not entirely sure. I think I need more research. In the mean time, I’ve grown quite used to the local beer and have befriended a local retired couple who think I’m here researching marine wildlife. It’s a decent enough cover story, although I have to be careful not to let them introduce me to anyone who actually knows the subject, or I could get into deep water. Haha.

That’s all for now. Depending on what I find out about the stones, I may or may not end up in Iceland by next week. Hope you’re all enjoying the weather. It’s been a mite windy here! And… Happy New Year.

Splash Landing

Well, readers, here I am, standing by the rotting wheel of an abandoned water mill and gazing upstream at a choked-up mill pond. Apparently this is where the thing came down all right. The tracking data was quite accurate, I’m sure of it. I’m dictating this remotely, since I’m a bit dubious about the hazard level, to be quite honest with you. The scans were not very specific about the composition of the meteorite, and I can’t rule out the possibility that it was something sent to do me harm. I think I can see a freshly shattered branch on one of the trees, so it looks as if I should be able to locate the thing easily enough.

I’m back at base now. I’ve retrieved the object and placed it in my vault for observation. It’s definitely artificial, but the markings on it look to me like Gorpulonian text, which would mean it’s just a harmless sensor that’s de-orbited. The Gorpulonians are a strange species, but pretty friendly if one ever meets them. That doesn’t happen often, as they are the galaxy’s lurkers, and generally try to avoid contact with other civilisations, choosing instead to observe them and take notes. It’s pretty hard to imagine their motives, really, but to my knowledge they’ve never shown any sign of aggression unless provoked. I think I’ve previously mentioned that I discovered an abandoned relay of theirs at the Moon’s L4 Lagrange Point, so it was probably paired with a few sensors like this one.

I’m glad to have retrieved the thing because I don’t want the authorities snooping around and if they found it they could become troublesome. It probably had a cloaking device when it was in orbit, but if the power cut out then its descent might have shown up on military radar.

Anyway, enough about my mundane daily life. How are you all? Celebrating Solstice? Or maybe Christmas, or some other holiday? I’m planning to spend the northern winter exploring more of the planet, which might seem slightly odd to some – especially those veteran readers who remember that I have a habit of taking underwater trips around the British coastline, sometimes on foot.

I’m beginning on Christmas Day, which should be quiet in this area, by nipping up to Orkney to have a look around. I hear it’s a most fascinating place, and I’ve never seen it up close. After that, I’m going to nip across to Iceland, and then think about how to tackle the Americas. I’ll be taking the minicruiser of course, but also a few tools and clothes that will help me to blend in undetected by the locals. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you know how to make yourself look like a menial worker going about some mundane task.

So my next report might be more of a travelogue. In the mean time, all the best to you and enjoy whatever winter break you’re allowed.

The White Stuff

Interesting. The whole place is covered in water ice, and temperatures are lower than anything I ever knew in Hampshire. It’s hard to describe the appearance of snow-blanketed mountains in early morning light, but perhaps you’ll understand, if you’ve ever experienced it. It was only 264 Kelvins last night, and the moderate breeze has stopped water drips in their tracks and draped everything in crystals. Jalaa would have appreciated the spectacle, I think.

Last time I mentioned that I was thinking of exploring. I did have a look around, and I’m happy to report that apart from the scenery there wasn’t anything to worry about. There were a number of sheep, but to be honest they looked a lot more worried than I felt. I believe a sheep’s life consists of one long stretch of worrying from lamb to carcass, which makes those signs warning people not to allow their dogs to worry them a bit redundant, in my opinion. I mean, it would be like forbidding people to throw lit matches into a campfire. All the sheep is going to do is file the dog under “yet more worry” and continue its neurotic cycle of panic, regardless.

My explorations were curtailed after a couple of days when the weather turned colder. I suppose I could have continued by using a thermal envelope field, but I was concerned about meeting people in the mountains. It might have been tough to explain why I wasn’t wearing warmer clothes, and I don’t want to arouse suspicion. Wim Hof gets away with it, but only because he already looks a bit mad so people kind of expect it.

I’ve had to be careful to maintain the camouflage around the entrance to my base, because it’s all too easy to forget about footprints and other disturbances. The way I manage this is to make sure that when I’m near the door I activate the gravity planers I keep in my boots so that I hover just above the snow. I have to make sure nobody’s around, of course, and it took a little practice to get my balance sorted out. I did fall a couple of times, but hopefully the marks in the snow won’t be identifiable. People only ever notice footprints, not other marks, because they don’t look properly.

I’ve just taken a look at the external camera feed, and I think it’s getting dark already so I’m going to sign off now. I’d like to leave you with this thought, though. If you're absent-minded enough to switch a light off instead of on when entering a room, not noticing that it was already on, then you're probably a Nerd.  If the first phrase that enters your head on that occasion is "parity error", then you're definitely a Geek.

Topography

Well, my loyal followers… just in time for the winter break, I finally have rock over my head. The base is finished!

It’s taken a while, largely because of my principled stand on environmental impact. I wanted to completely shield the place from prying eyes, and at the same time make it possible to reverse the building work when I eventually leave, replacing all the rock I removed from inside the mountain – down to the last molecular bond where possible. I expect you can deduce that this isn’t an easy task at all. It involves a number of devices whose capabilities would make your military commanders explode with desire, so I’m not going to discuss any details at this point. Let’s just say that there’s a loch hereabouts that came in pretty handy and currently has a temporarily raised water level.

I’ve moved my equipment into the place now, and all that remains is to set things up the way I want them. I used to be fond of looking at the scenery through my windows, and I’ll miss those. However, I think a judiciously deployed drone or two will enable me to make some remote viewing walls.

I’ve downed tools for the moment. I definitely need a break, and I’m thinking of exploring a little. There’s a river flowing near here, and I’m guessing it might be interesting to follow that and see what I find. I might even do some walking in the mountains.

“Mountains” is, of course, a relative term. Some of the mountains I’ve encountered in my travels through space have been no bigger than what you people would probably call a hill. Those on the planet Demeron, for example, are mostly about fifty metres tall, but because the inhabitants of that world are around the size of my fist and slow-moving at that, they make quite a big deal of climbing them – which I think permits me to use the term.

At the other end of the scale, we have the great artificial Prodigy Mountains found on the Hoops of Ladrigal. These are upwards of eighty kilometres tall (and I’ve never climbed them, so I had to look that up), and were deliberately made to be impressive. They were built by Ladrigal themself a very long time ago when the Hoops, a concentric and angularly offset series of ringworlds, were constructed around a star near the part of the galaxy that’s about 120 degrees spinward from here. One day I’d like to visit and make the trip up the easier path. The view is spectacular, but one needs a good pressure suit built for hiking.

Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to mention that I’ve been watching your recent moon shot with great interest. I note that the capsule is on its way back at the moment. It’s good to see progress, despite the primitive state of your space technology, and I sincerely wish you all the best with your endeavours. Who knows, perhaps within my own life time (which is admittedly appreciably more than yours), I may get to see you inducted into the Federation. I think I might even shed a tear.

Right, I’m going exploring. Another update soon. Be good!

Hoolies And Hooligans

 “’Twas a stark nightie dorm,” to quote that famous book about the horrors of a girls’ orphanage.

No, wait, I have that wrong, don’t I? There was no such book.

“’Twas a dark and stormy night.” Yes, that’s the one I actually wanted.

Well, it’s not exactly true… but it is certainly a windy night here in the forest. “Blowin’ a hoolie,” as I believe the local expression is. So far the minicruiser remains fairly stable, and in fact the wind is quite welcome because it’s removed the growing number of leaves that had drifted onto the top of the cloaking field. Too many more of those and I would have had to perform a rolling manoeuvre to ditch them. A small handful of leaves unsupported by twigs near the treetops would go unnoticed, but there were getting to be more than a handful, and I don’t want anyone to detect my presence.

Talking of my presence being detected, I’ve already moved the ship once. That forestry vehicle I mentioned in my last update got a little too close for comfort. I admit I hadn’t noticed that there was a track in the area and was alarmed to see how close it came. An hour later when the coast was clear, I moved up the side of the mountain a little, staying below the treeline. That’s probably why it’s so windy.

The underground base is proceeding pretty well, though much more slowly than I would have hoped. I’m unsure whether this is due to my being chilled out from all that meditation or whether it’s a side effect of grief at losing Jalaa. Either way, my heart’s not quite in it. Perhaps I should go and destroy something with my quantum field disruptor. The trouble is, there’s nothing here that deserves it.

I’ve been watching the internet traffic. It seems that lots of you are angry a lot of the time, so not much change there. Looking at what’s been going on, I can’t really blame you. It seems there’s one human in particular who’s currently the focus of a lot of rage, and I must admit he does seem to be a bit of a Qwazhoog. (“Quazhoog” (n) – a delicacy eaten only on the planet Frexigg, made chiefly from an organ of the same name belonging to a Grrugglil, said organ doubling as both ovipositor and anus.)

Tell you what, when I get my equipment properly configured and I’ve settled in, maybe I’ll deploy a few hundred drones to police Low Earth Orbit, hack into a certain set of satellites and modify the firmware so that a certain social media site is suddenly blocked on every router. Sound like fun?

To pass the time when I’m resting in the evenings, I’ve been trying a few anagrams. “Quantum Field Disruptor” yields “quadrupled if strontium”, which is quite interesting – perhaps I should review the materials I used, just in case. Then again, it also yields “Trump squared into fluid”. That gives me an idea for a soup…

In The Woods

Greetings to one and all, from Bonnie Scotland.

I’m making progress. I used my minicruiser to return to Earth, and I’ve found a place in the mountains where I should be safe from scrutiny for a while. I plan to create a hideout here (don’t worry, there will be zero environmental impact), but it will be a longish task. In the mean time I’ll have to rely on tactics such as hovering on antigrav in the forest canopy with the cloak enabled. The gravity planers do make a little noise, but I’m kind of relying on the local weather conditions to mask that, and I’m well away from any walking routes.

I have to admit that it’s a rather beautiful place. I’d got quite accustomed to meditating in near-geostationary orbit while looking at the stars, yet there’s something about a sky being above (as opposed to all around) that feels quite special.

Jalaa’s ship is still where I left it. I’ve configured automatic placeholding, and I’ve also set up an alert in case anyone comes aboard – partly for fear of intruders, but also, I must confess, out of a wistful desire to be proved wrong about what happened. Whether Jalaa returns or not, the ship will remain, as both a beacon and a tribute.

I’ve already called in at Mike’s place to have a chat. He’s doing pretty well and appears to enjoy being a Scot! He’d run out of whisky, though, which was rather inconsiderate of him. Anyway, he’s not too far away so it should make things more efficient in future if we need to meet.

Got to go now. I think there might be a forestry vehicle snooping about so I need to keep an eye on that. I’ll be back with another report before long!

Grief

Thought I’d never post again, didn’t you? Or perhaps you imagined another Patience Race. If only that were the reason. You see, it’s been a horrible year. Back in February, I lost Jalaa.

I don’t even know whether she’s actually dead; all I know is that all my efforts to rescue her have failed – and when I reveal what happened you’ll doubtless understand why.

Jalaa was one of life’s naturalistic mystics. She loved to experiment with reality; to squeeze it here and see it bulge over there; to probe the limits of energy density, time dilation and quantum entanglement. Basically, she was full of joy and the cosmos was her toy. Life with her was mostly chilled, but with bouts of intense stress scattered throughout, marking the moments of her bolder experiments.

I’m still not entirely sure what she was trying to achieve, because she didn’t confide in me. She’d been working on wormholes, so possibly she was trying a new method of creating time dimensions or something: I don’t really know. I finished my meditation session one morning and padded over to the observation window to look at Earth, and immediately noticed the anomaly.

It was a quivering ring of light, almost invisibly thin but surprisingly bright, floating between the ship and the planet, at a distance I had to check from instrumentation because it was too hard to gauge via eyesight. It turned out to be about a thousand kilometres away, which meant that the thing had to be about fifty kilometres in diameter at least. Analysis took a while and wasn’t completely conclusive, but my best guess is that she was attempting to create a toroidal wormhole and it collapsed, sucking her inside. The external cameras don’t show anything too clearly, but Jalaa appears on the images, suited up, operating some kind of field generator – and after a single frame filled with bright light, she and the instrument are gone, replaced with a shimmering string across the field of view. I think it had momentum away from the ship, because it was initially very close and later moved towards Earth.

Don’t worry – I have tracked the thing and there’s no way it’s going to hit you. Its path seems unaffected by gravity (which is extremely odd in itself) and it will simply leave the solar system without impacting anything as far as I can tell. I’ve tried everything I can think of to open up the wormhole again and release my friend, but anything I tried was ineffective, and plenty that I thought of trying was too risky. I suspect that some form of circulation is taking place within the loop of string, so that its contents follow the same circular path for eternity. In some ways, I hope Jalaa is not still alive – from her perspective, given the time dilation and the motion, I believe she would have seen the entire future of the cosmos played out within a few minutes (accompanied by insane rotational speeds), followed by the evaporation of the wormhole during the heat death of the universe, finally releasing her after all of that time had passed, to expire within an hour or two, seeing only blackness. Not a pleasant fate.

As you can imagine, I’m struggling to cope with this at the moment and it will be a while before I can return to my usual lifestyle. I don’t feel like living aboard this ship any more, that’s for sure. I sent this message off to Mike, but he didn’t reply immediately. My enquiries revealed that he has apparently moved to Scotland, and I’m considering following him. The way I feel right now, a bleak winter in the mountains would just about suit me.

I apologise for the downer, but hopefully you understand. I’m resilient and I’ll get over this eventually, at which point normal service will be resumed.

Dszira out.