A story about dreaming in space.

2011-08-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

The room spun slowly through the night.

The walls and floor were brushed steel, spotless and softly illuminated by the glowing white ceiling. The room itself was a perfect cube, ten meters to a side. In the center of the room was a tall cylinder, a dull gunmetal grey, with no markings save a single round button the size of a human palm.

Outside the room, there was nothing but blackness and sparse clouds of hydrogen gas for light years in every direction. Stars dusted the distant sky, so faint that if you stared too long, you might think you had imagined them.

Inside the room, within the cylinder, a man slept silently as the room traveled towards its destination.

--

The room buzzed with activity.

The room was large, circular, centered around a cluster of large computer screens that hung from the ceiling like an electronic chandelier. Around the screens were rows of desks containing computers, communications equipment, and engineers in starched white shirts. They shouted across the room to each other as they glanced feverishly at the screens, pausing every so often to clack out a command at their keyboards.

“The vessel is within seven AUs of Gliese 581, and is maintaining a speed of 79% the speed of light.”

“Ten minutes until the vessel will enter orbit around the fourth planet. Begin deceleration procedures.”

“Twenty-six liters of fuel remain. Deceleration procedures initiated, reducing speed to orbital levels.”

“Visual analysis of the planet confirms the hypothesis of two lunar bodies. Adjusting course to avoid collision.”

“Seventeen point five liters of fuel remaining. Speed is 66 percent the speed of light.”

“Five minutes to orbit.”

“Eight point seven liters of fuel.”

“32 percent.”

“Sensors detect 40 g of stress on the stasis pod, deploying countermeasures.”

“Life signs remaining stable-”

“Deceleration increasing, 45 g of stress, approaching critical levels-”

“Containment gel injected, effective g levels reduced by twenty percent-”

“Two minutes to orbit-”

“One point nine eight liters-”

“Sublight speeds attained-”

“Deceleration complete. Pulse, delta wave patterns within consistent norms.”

“Vessel is in orbit. Begin surface survey. Initiate the dream procedures.”

--

His bare feet crunched the sand between his toes as he walked along the riverbank. He had been to this river before, the curves of its banks were familiar to his eye... or was it only in a dream that he had been here? He remembered, vaguely, the voices of other men but not their faces, many visits to this riverbank in his past, but there was something different about it this time. It must have been a dream, the time before, for now the colors were more vivid and the sensations more real... He knelt down and picked up a handful of sand, letting the grains slide between his fingers. This was no dream, it felt too real. He could smell the faint trace of minerals in the river water, and feel the dustiness of the sand left on his fingers, and see... The sky. He looked up. The sky was purple, a deep purple, almost indigo. That was wrong. The sky was supposed to be bl-

--

“The scan was incomplete. We managed to recover soil analysis and confirm the liquid hypothesis, but no more.”

“The subject interrupted the procedure before atmospheric scans could be completed.”

“Elevated resistance levels have been detected in the temporal lobe.”

“Twenty-seven minutes until the second vessel is within communications distance.”

“Return subject to REM state until the second vessel arrives.”

--

He woke up, his face pressed against the bank of the river. Sand grains fell away as he lifted himself up, leaving impressions in the side of his cheek. He looked out over the river, the hills, the sky- wait. What was that? He looked back at the hills. There was a woman standing there, looking down at her feet. She was naked from head to toe, and with a sudden acute embarrassment, the man realized that he was as well. He looked around for someplace to hide from her, but before he could move she looked up at him and smiled.

“Hello,” she said.

“Um, hi.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s a river... I don’t know.”

“Who are you?”

“I... don’t know.”

“Oh.”

She looked back down at her feet. She caught her breath, as if hesitating to say something.

“I don’t know who I am either.”

“Oh...”

“D’you... What should we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we... Maybe we should explore. Find out what this place is.”

“Okay.”

She took a half-step towards him on the balls of her feet, and swung her arms awkwardly.

“Um... Let’s go that way.” She turned, and started to walk softly across the grassless hills.

He followed her, nakedness forgotten. A sense of curiosity took over his mind, burning like a fire. Not about the woman-- despite having just met her, he felt at ease around her. But the river, and the hills, which just moments before he had regarded as background scenery of only mild interest, suddenly became exciting and mysterious to him.

As they walked together over the hills they would find things-- an interestingly shaped rock, a patch of dirt that was a darker color than the dirt around it-- and show it to one another, and as they made more discoveries their excitement grew. They began to run, faster and faster, eager to see what was over the next hill. After several hours they came to another river, and, exhausted from the day’s exploration, they sat down side by side on the riverbank.

“Where do you think we are?” asked the woman again.

Images and words flickered through the man’s mind.

Gliese.

Earth.

Stasis.

Dream.

Disconnected memories and thoughts tried to string themselves together in his mind, and failed.

“We’re... on a planet.”

Planet.

Solar system.

Gliese.

He couldn’t remember what a planet was, but he knew somehow, with certainty, that this was one.

“A planet.”

The woman looked at her knees in thought as she processed this new information.

“We’re on a planet. But why?”

The man had no answer for that question.

The woman stood up and started to walk on, but then stopped and turned slightly, her hand outstretched behind her. The man stood and slid his hand into hers. They walked on together, hand in hand, exploring the surface of this planet together.

--

“We have completed full spectroanalysis of all lithic and aqueous sources on the planet. Atmospheric analysis is all that remains.”

“Resistance levels are lowered by the presence of the second subject. However, reintroduction of anomalous stimuli may still incite awakening.”

“Risk levels are below acceptable tolerances. Proceed with atmospheric analysis.”

--

The man and the woman were lying together amid the rocky hills. The planet no longer held any interest for them and they lay there thinking only of each other, and this place where they found themselves. Occasionally one of them would murmur a half-remembered word, and the other would find it familiar, and try and piece it together with their other memories... but try as they might, they could never remember anything concrete. By this time, night had fallen, and they looked up together at the stars. The sky was exceptionally clear, and they could see galaxies pinwheeling through space, nebula blossoming outwards, and bright large stars shining here and there amid them. They lay there for hours, wordlessly and sleeplessly, staring up at the sky and thinking quiet thoughts.

After some time, the sun began to creep up over the hills. Light splashed across the ground, and the sky began to glow, blocking out the stars as they faded away one by one. The sight of the sunrise was beautiful, reds and oranges burning above, until finally the sun had risen, glowing blue over the rocky hills. The sky glowed purple in its full light.

“Do you remember the sky?” asked the woman.

The sky. Blue skies.

“Yes.”

“What do you remember?”

“Blue.”

“Me too.”

They sat together looking up at the purple sky, cloudless.

--

“Resistance levels increasing. Threshold approaching critical levels-”

“Atmospheric analysis at 93%...”

“Threshold exceeded. Dream state unstable.”

“97%...”

--

The man looked down at his feet and suddenly realized they weren’t touching the ground. He looked up at the woman in astonishment, mouth open, and realized that she was also floating about a meter above the ground. She smiled at him and took his hand.

“Come on.”

They flew together over the hills, until the hills turned to mountains, and they soared up over those, silently, with no wind rushing past them, just... floating. The land spread out below them like a blanket, and they flew over it, exhilarated.

--

“Atmospheric analysis complete.”

“Dream state is decaying. Survival estimate: 76%.”

“We have all we need.”

--

As they floated there surveying the land, the earth below them began to shake with a loud rumbling. Huge shapes burst forth from the ground as skyscrapers, a hundred stories high, fully formed, emerged from the surface of the planet. Trees and plants erupted from every surface, and people, thousands of people, poured out of the buildings to inhabit the streets that suddenly laid themselves out like an invisible giant was painting them into existence.

Behind them, there was a roar, as the mountains they had been flying over stood up and began to march towards the city. Enormous rocky legs crushed buildings and people as they fled in terror.

The man and the woman were suddenly falling, dropping from the sky like stones. They were feet from the ground, about to crash into it, and suddenly found themselves plunged into an ocean.

Fish swam around them on all sides and in all colors, darting in and out like a silvery cloud. As they sank together towards the ocean floor, they saw all sorts of incredible sights, squids, whales, and creatures which the man was sure didn’t really exist, on this planet or any other.

As they sank further and further into the sea, the light filtering down through the water became dimmer and dimmer, and with arms intertwined they sank into the blackness of the deep ocean.

--

“Survey results show negligible economic resources or colonization potential.”

“Fuel sources on both vessels are nearing depletion. Transit to another system is impossible.”

“Terminate the project.”

--

In the blackness of space, two gleaming silver cubes shot away from the planet towards the bright blue sun at the center of the system. As they entered the burning corona, the metal shells cracking and peeling away, their inhabitants slept peacefully and dreamed together.

"Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference."

2011-08-21T10:40:00.001-07:00

- Nolan Bushnell

Why Ruby is like Almond Roca

2011-06-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

It is exactly like Almond Roca. When you first see it, it looks so small and cute that you instantly like it. But then you see the spiky almond bits all over it and you get a little intimidated. You timidly bite into it and find oh! It is hard! You apply more force and suddenly the caramel snaps off in your mouth, and you taste the delicious interplay of flavor and texture. Almond Roca is simple; chocolate, caramel, and almonds; but it is elegant, and fun.

A cool link.

2011-02-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

This site is a volunteer-run service that maintains a collection of Cray supercomputers from the late 80s/early 90s. The cool part? They have enabled SSH access to the Internet at large, meaning anyone can log in and run programs on a Cray supercomputer that's about 1/500th the speed of your average laptop.

Privately funded moon mission

2011-02-07T19:22:00.000-08:00

This is really cool.

Haskell

2011-02-05T23:50:00.001-08:00

Trying to get back in the habit of blogging. I think it's good for my brain.

So I'm trying to teach myself Haskell. I already know a little bit of Lisp, but most of my programming experience is in C++ and Java. So it's quite a leap for me. I've been reading and rereading tutorials for a couple of days, and it feels like I've made almost no progress, but I think I'm starting to wrap my head around a couple of the key concepts. Today I found out you can do this:

f x = [x,(x-1)..(-x)]

That produces a list with all the values from x to negative x. The syntax is just amazingly concise and clear. Once you learn it, anyways. Before that, it looks like gibberish. That must be how Perl programmers feel.

Also, I have a website now. It doesn't really have anything on it yet. Here it is:

http://www.extropicstudios.com

In the future I plan to put games and programming projects I've completed on it. Once I complete one, that is.

chuzzum

A story about dreaming in space.

"Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference."

Why Ruby is like Almond Roca

A cool link.

Privately funded moon mission

Haskell