Post by yewtree on Oct 15, 2005 14:53:04 GMT
Three million years in three days. The compressor could simulate the passage of a million years of the movement and pressure of the Earth’s crust in a single day. The technology had originally been invented to produce artificial diamonds, but now its application had widened to produce new crystals from other elements and compounds. Now Maeve was systematically trying a variety of new combinations to see what the results would be. Many of her colleagues were scathing about the reliance on serendipity that this implied, but Maeve was unperturbed. So far she had worked steadily through group 14 of the periodic table, trying out elements and their catalysts in series, making careful notes about each combination. Now she was working on alloys, and had produced an alloy of tin and germanium as the basis for her next experiment.
She unlatched the lid, removed the layers of cerussite which had been the catalyst for the reaction that produced the new substance, and carefully prised the crystal from the dross around it. She held it up to the light, and found that it refracted the sunlight from the window into three beams of light. The crystal was a perfect Escher’s solid, pale blue - a small piece of crystallised sky, a star fallen into the realm of matter. The three rays of sunlight that fell from it diverged, illuminating random objects around the room - a coffee cup left next to the centrifuge, a row of test tubes, a book lying open on a workbench. She took the crystal over to the microworld, a combination of computer, scanning electron microscope, 3D laser scanner, ultrasound, and x-ray device. This allowed her to see its molecular structure, measure its hardness on the Moh scale, and test its resonance. She opened the door of the test chamber and placed the crystal inside. Then she put on the virtual reality headset, and entered the world of the crystal. She propelled the virtual viewpoint along the surfaces. That was odd, she thought - the construction of the crystal was perfect - normally the magnified surface of a crystal was full of irregularities, but this one consisted of row upon row of tiny octahedrons and tetrahedrons, arranged in regular fractal formations. Maeve travelled in chambers of stars, stunned by the complexity which was emerging from the arrangement of simple Platonic forms. She lost track of time, focused completely on the microscopic realms unfolding before her, and was startled when she felt someone tapping her on the shoulder.
“Time to go home, Maeve. You work too hard, you know.” It was Cicely, her fellow research student. Sighing, Maeve removed the headset, and turned round to see her colleague. As usual, Cicely was immaculately clad in retro style, the quasi-military Second Empire look that was popular this year. Her sculpted form, specially modified to fit the demands of the corsetry she wore, moved silently across the lab.
Maeve, not a follower of fashion, was dressed in a loose comfortable nanosilk chemise and trousers, engineered for optimum insulation from both heat and cold. The fabric shimmered from green to gold as she stood up, and she brushed her long auburn hair back from her forehead in a habitual gesture.
“Going anywhere tonight?” asked Maeve, knowing that this question would distract Cicely from asking about her research. She didn’t want to be the subject of gossip among Cicely’s friends.
“Oh, just to the Retro Metro.” Cicely used the reflective glass door of the test chamber to check her InteractiveTattooTM - a colony of genetically engineered lichen of varied pigmentation which could be moved around the surface of the skin to form patterns. It also protected the wearer from the harmful rays of the sun which had penetrated the fragmented ozone layer. Cicely released a flood of nutrients from the discreet control valve at her temples, and the fern-like pattern of lichen flushed a deep cerise. Maeve preferred ordinary sunblock, now available in a clear gel form which set into a glossy flexible mask on exposure to sunlight. At times she also affected a decrepit beekeeper hat and gossamer veil, deeply unfashionable but nevertheless effective. This hat had once belonged to her mother, and she resisted all criticism of it.
Cicely did not ask where Maeve was going. She was never interested in anyone else’s personal life, but delivered incredibly detailed accounts of her love affairs and social climbing to all her friends and acquaintances. Undeterred by Maeve’s failure to ask for more details of her assignation at the Retro Metro, she continued, “Buffy will be there, and Forrest, and Angel. I’m having dinner with them.” She liked to refer to her celebrity acquaintances by their first names to indicate her intimacy with them, and was more interested in pursuing a career in the holovision industry than finishing her PhD.
Maeve nodded absently, wishing that Cicely would go so that she could finish the analysis of the crystal. Fortunately Cicely’s SmartWatchTM beeped, and she said “Oh, is that the time? I really must zoom off.” She wafted out of the lab, leaving the curious musty scent of her lichen floating in the air.
Maeve tested the crystal on the Moh scale, and found that it was harder than diamond - it scored 15, whereas diamond was 10, the absolute hardness on which the scale was based. She scanned it with ultrasound and infrasound, and discovered that neither had any effect on it.
By about seven p.m., she was too tired to continue, and was getting hungry. She took the crystal out of the test chamber, saved the analysis in her domain, and turned off the microworld. She carried the crystal carefully across the lab and put it in her bag.
On the way home she picked up a takeaway from the Imperial Jade, and saw her friend Gavin, who worked there part-time. He was doing an MSc in biosphere engineering, but planned to do a PhD in the theory of terraforming.
“What time do you finish tonight?” she asked.
“Nine o’clock,” answered Gavin.
“Want to come over?”
“Alright.” He was distracted, boxing up chow mein for a delivery. Maeve carried her bag of goodies out to her bike, and put it in the front carrier.
Cycling was a lot more pleasant since cars were banned from the city centre. However the measure had not been accompanied by an improvement in public transport, so there were many bikes on the street.
Maeve rode in a state of quiet euphoria, happy that at last she had succeeded in making something really interesting. The journey to her house took her along the river, where the moon was reflected in the dark water. She wondered what the crystal would look like in moonlight, visualised it refracting moonbeams.
She had finished her crispy duck and pancakes and settled down to watch a vintage episode of Babylon 5 when the doorbell rang. She turned off the DVD and ran down to the front door. It was Gavin.
“Come in,” said Maeve.
Gavin stepped over the threshold and hugged her in greeting. They did not speak until they were both ensconced on Maeve’s decrepit sofa.
“So how’s it going?” asked Gavin. “Anything interesting yet?”
Maeve showed him the crystal, and told him about its properties. He turned it around, holding it up to the light of the standard lamp in the corner of Maeve’s living room. It sparkled, flashing blue light around the room. It seemed quite eerie in the dim artificial light.
“Wow,” he said, when she had finished telling him about it. “Are you going to make any more? Even if there’s no practical application, it’ll go down a storm on the New Age market.”
“That’s a thought,” said Maeve, and grinned. They spent the rest of the evening constructing a hypothetical New Age cult, in which they would be the gurus and guardians of the crystal.
“What titles shall we give ourselves?” said Maeve.
“Well, it has to be something Scottish, with perhaps a touch of the mystic East - and a hint of aristocratic descent,” mused Gavin.
“Aha - Gavin Zhang, the Marquis of Hanham,” said Maeve, “and I shall be Mme Merle, the mysterious medium.”
“We shall have lots of wine,” said Gavin.
“And lots of ostentatious clothes,” said Maeve.
“Like Cicely?” asked Gavin archly. Maeve batted him with a large cushion, and they abandoned conversation in favour of a cushion fight. Eventually they ran out of energy and cushions - it was a hot night - and lay giggling helplessly on the floor.
“I’m boiling,” said Maeve, when they had managed to stop laughing. “Do you fancy going for a swim?”
“Alright,” said Gavin. They gathered towels and crept quietly down the stairs so as not to disturb Maeve’s house-mates. Both their bikes were padlocked to the railings at the front of the house. They unlocked them, and were soon cycling through the lanes down to the river. It was a beautiful night, and the moon was still high in the sky.
They stashed their bikes under a tree. As they sauntered along the bank of the Avon, Maeve felt something spiky in her bag as it banged against her hip. She realised that she had not taken the crystal out of her bag before setting off again. Oh well, she thought, it doesn’t matter. She shifted the contents of the bag so that the crystal didn’t dig into her any more.
Eventually they found a place that was far enough away from the weirs and where it was easy to clamber down the bank. They both stripped off and waded into the river. Gavin waded straight in, but Maeve inched her way in, letting the water rise up her thighs very gradually.
Gavin splashed her. “Come on, it’s not cold.”
“Easy for you to say, with your Scottish ancestry - I bet your mum held you in a tub of cold water by your ankle,” said Maeve.
“And don’t forget that I am descended from an honourable line of Chinese cormorant fishermen on my dad’s side,” added Gavin.
Maeve splashed him back.
After a while Maeve remembered the crystal which she had left on the bank. She wondered how it would behave underwater, interacting with the refractive index of the water. She ran up the bank and rummaged in her bag. She pulled out the crystal and held it up to the moonlight. Then she stepped carefully down the bank and waded into the water. It didn’t feel so cold now - she must have become acclimatised.
She lowered the crystal into the water, and felt it tingling under her hand. Startled, she almost dropped it. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and a moonbeam lit a patch of dancing water. Maeve held the crystal in the patch of light. The water and the crystal focused the moonlight on the opposite bank, only instead of diverging, the three rays of light from the crystal converged on the bank. The effect was dazzling, as if Maeve had shone an arc light. The roots of the trees arched black in the blinding light. Maeve shielded her eyes, and she could just make out an area of blackness opening in the writhing shadows of the overhanging roots. A scream shattered the stillness, but she couldn’t work out who was uttering it. Out of the incandescent light fell a man, but as he hit the water he became smaller and darker.
Maeve fell backwards onto the muddy shingle bank. Gaivn stood rigid, open-mouthed, clearly unable to move.
“What was that?” he managed eventually.
A sleek head emerged from the water, and a rippling wake indicated that it was swimming towards them. Maeve turned and scrambled up the bank. The animal swam towards the shore, and as it emerged from the water, she saw that it was a seal.
“Hello, how did you get here?” she said, unable to prevent herself from speaking in the way people do to a large friendly dog.
“You tell me,” said the seal. As he climbed out of the water, he shook himself vigorously, and shed his pelt. It fell from him in glistening folds like heavy wet fabric. The man emerged once more from his seal form, and gathered up his skin, folding it carefully and stowing it in a fold of his tunic. Maeve and Gavin stood on the bank, mesmerised.
“What’s the matter - haven’t you ever seen a selkie before?” asked the man.
“No, only heard of them in legends,” said Maeve.
“Are you -- humans?” asked the selkie.
“Yes,” said Maeve.
“Is this Middle Earth then?”
“We just call it Earth,” said Maeve.
“Oh,” said the selkie. “Did you summon me?”
“Er, I’m afraid I probably did, yes,” admitted Maeve. She showed him the crystal.
The selkie looked at it. “Some kind of tin?” he hazarded.
“Yes - how did you know?” asked Maeve.
“We are sensitive to the aura of metals, and they cause us to manifest in your world - that is why the Sidhe have often encountered humans in mining areas.”
“Oh yes, the knockers and the kobolds,” said Gavin.
“And the leprechauns,” said Maeve.
“Have you the magic to send me back?” asked the selkie.
“We didn’t know we had the magic to summon you until I put the crystal in the water and the moonlight,” said Maeve.
“Oh. So I’m stuck here, then.”
The enormity of this struck both the selkie and Maeve at the same time.
What on earth will I do with a supernatural being in my house? It’s not exactly spacious to start with. And what do selkies eat, she wondered.
“That could be interesting,” she said. “Well, I’m Maeve and this is Gavin.”
“I’m Morien,” said the selkie.
“How come you speak English?” asked Gavin.
“It is not my first language - I learnt it at university,” said Morien. He had a strange accent; it sounded a bit Welsh, but with the soft breathiness of Ireland.
Slowly, they began to walk back across the meadows, and Maeve and Gavin retrieved their bikes from beneath the tree, and pushed them along the road.
As they walked back up the hill, Morien told them about himself, and they learnt just how inconvenient it was for him to have disappeared from his own world at the present time.
“I was a lecturer in Human Languages and Culture at the Unseelie University, but then the King closed down all the universities, so I have become a - how do you call it - guerrilla leader. The resistance is beginning to gain ground among the people,” he told them. “The King denies that Middle Earth exists, and has tried to suppress all stories of humans.”
“Why?” asked Maeve.
“Because human ideas are a source of change, and he wants to maintain the status quo. If ideas like democracy and civil rights catch on, he’s in big trouble.”
She unlatched the lid, removed the layers of cerussite which had been the catalyst for the reaction that produced the new substance, and carefully prised the crystal from the dross around it. She held it up to the light, and found that it refracted the sunlight from the window into three beams of light. The crystal was a perfect Escher’s solid, pale blue - a small piece of crystallised sky, a star fallen into the realm of matter. The three rays of sunlight that fell from it diverged, illuminating random objects around the room - a coffee cup left next to the centrifuge, a row of test tubes, a book lying open on a workbench. She took the crystal over to the microworld, a combination of computer, scanning electron microscope, 3D laser scanner, ultrasound, and x-ray device. This allowed her to see its molecular structure, measure its hardness on the Moh scale, and test its resonance. She opened the door of the test chamber and placed the crystal inside. Then she put on the virtual reality headset, and entered the world of the crystal. She propelled the virtual viewpoint along the surfaces. That was odd, she thought - the construction of the crystal was perfect - normally the magnified surface of a crystal was full of irregularities, but this one consisted of row upon row of tiny octahedrons and tetrahedrons, arranged in regular fractal formations. Maeve travelled in chambers of stars, stunned by the complexity which was emerging from the arrangement of simple Platonic forms. She lost track of time, focused completely on the microscopic realms unfolding before her, and was startled when she felt someone tapping her on the shoulder.
“Time to go home, Maeve. You work too hard, you know.” It was Cicely, her fellow research student. Sighing, Maeve removed the headset, and turned round to see her colleague. As usual, Cicely was immaculately clad in retro style, the quasi-military Second Empire look that was popular this year. Her sculpted form, specially modified to fit the demands of the corsetry she wore, moved silently across the lab.
Maeve, not a follower of fashion, was dressed in a loose comfortable nanosilk chemise and trousers, engineered for optimum insulation from both heat and cold. The fabric shimmered from green to gold as she stood up, and she brushed her long auburn hair back from her forehead in a habitual gesture.
“Going anywhere tonight?” asked Maeve, knowing that this question would distract Cicely from asking about her research. She didn’t want to be the subject of gossip among Cicely’s friends.
“Oh, just to the Retro Metro.” Cicely used the reflective glass door of the test chamber to check her InteractiveTattooTM - a colony of genetically engineered lichen of varied pigmentation which could be moved around the surface of the skin to form patterns. It also protected the wearer from the harmful rays of the sun which had penetrated the fragmented ozone layer. Cicely released a flood of nutrients from the discreet control valve at her temples, and the fern-like pattern of lichen flushed a deep cerise. Maeve preferred ordinary sunblock, now available in a clear gel form which set into a glossy flexible mask on exposure to sunlight. At times she also affected a decrepit beekeeper hat and gossamer veil, deeply unfashionable but nevertheless effective. This hat had once belonged to her mother, and she resisted all criticism of it.
Cicely did not ask where Maeve was going. She was never interested in anyone else’s personal life, but delivered incredibly detailed accounts of her love affairs and social climbing to all her friends and acquaintances. Undeterred by Maeve’s failure to ask for more details of her assignation at the Retro Metro, she continued, “Buffy will be there, and Forrest, and Angel. I’m having dinner with them.” She liked to refer to her celebrity acquaintances by their first names to indicate her intimacy with them, and was more interested in pursuing a career in the holovision industry than finishing her PhD.
Maeve nodded absently, wishing that Cicely would go so that she could finish the analysis of the crystal. Fortunately Cicely’s SmartWatchTM beeped, and she said “Oh, is that the time? I really must zoom off.” She wafted out of the lab, leaving the curious musty scent of her lichen floating in the air.
Maeve tested the crystal on the Moh scale, and found that it was harder than diamond - it scored 15, whereas diamond was 10, the absolute hardness on which the scale was based. She scanned it with ultrasound and infrasound, and discovered that neither had any effect on it.
By about seven p.m., she was too tired to continue, and was getting hungry. She took the crystal out of the test chamber, saved the analysis in her domain, and turned off the microworld. She carried the crystal carefully across the lab and put it in her bag.
On the way home she picked up a takeaway from the Imperial Jade, and saw her friend Gavin, who worked there part-time. He was doing an MSc in biosphere engineering, but planned to do a PhD in the theory of terraforming.
“What time do you finish tonight?” she asked.
“Nine o’clock,” answered Gavin.
“Want to come over?”
“Alright.” He was distracted, boxing up chow mein for a delivery. Maeve carried her bag of goodies out to her bike, and put it in the front carrier.
Cycling was a lot more pleasant since cars were banned from the city centre. However the measure had not been accompanied by an improvement in public transport, so there were many bikes on the street.
Maeve rode in a state of quiet euphoria, happy that at last she had succeeded in making something really interesting. The journey to her house took her along the river, where the moon was reflected in the dark water. She wondered what the crystal would look like in moonlight, visualised it refracting moonbeams.
She had finished her crispy duck and pancakes and settled down to watch a vintage episode of Babylon 5 when the doorbell rang. She turned off the DVD and ran down to the front door. It was Gavin.
“Come in,” said Maeve.
Gavin stepped over the threshold and hugged her in greeting. They did not speak until they were both ensconced on Maeve’s decrepit sofa.
“So how’s it going?” asked Gavin. “Anything interesting yet?”
Maeve showed him the crystal, and told him about its properties. He turned it around, holding it up to the light of the standard lamp in the corner of Maeve’s living room. It sparkled, flashing blue light around the room. It seemed quite eerie in the dim artificial light.
“Wow,” he said, when she had finished telling him about it. “Are you going to make any more? Even if there’s no practical application, it’ll go down a storm on the New Age market.”
“That’s a thought,” said Maeve, and grinned. They spent the rest of the evening constructing a hypothetical New Age cult, in which they would be the gurus and guardians of the crystal.
“What titles shall we give ourselves?” said Maeve.
“Well, it has to be something Scottish, with perhaps a touch of the mystic East - and a hint of aristocratic descent,” mused Gavin.
“Aha - Gavin Zhang, the Marquis of Hanham,” said Maeve, “and I shall be Mme Merle, the mysterious medium.”
“We shall have lots of wine,” said Gavin.
“And lots of ostentatious clothes,” said Maeve.
“Like Cicely?” asked Gavin archly. Maeve batted him with a large cushion, and they abandoned conversation in favour of a cushion fight. Eventually they ran out of energy and cushions - it was a hot night - and lay giggling helplessly on the floor.
“I’m boiling,” said Maeve, when they had managed to stop laughing. “Do you fancy going for a swim?”
“Alright,” said Gavin. They gathered towels and crept quietly down the stairs so as not to disturb Maeve’s house-mates. Both their bikes were padlocked to the railings at the front of the house. They unlocked them, and were soon cycling through the lanes down to the river. It was a beautiful night, and the moon was still high in the sky.
They stashed their bikes under a tree. As they sauntered along the bank of the Avon, Maeve felt something spiky in her bag as it banged against her hip. She realised that she had not taken the crystal out of her bag before setting off again. Oh well, she thought, it doesn’t matter. She shifted the contents of the bag so that the crystal didn’t dig into her any more.
Eventually they found a place that was far enough away from the weirs and where it was easy to clamber down the bank. They both stripped off and waded into the river. Gavin waded straight in, but Maeve inched her way in, letting the water rise up her thighs very gradually.
Gavin splashed her. “Come on, it’s not cold.”
“Easy for you to say, with your Scottish ancestry - I bet your mum held you in a tub of cold water by your ankle,” said Maeve.
“And don’t forget that I am descended from an honourable line of Chinese cormorant fishermen on my dad’s side,” added Gavin.
Maeve splashed him back.
After a while Maeve remembered the crystal which she had left on the bank. She wondered how it would behave underwater, interacting with the refractive index of the water. She ran up the bank and rummaged in her bag. She pulled out the crystal and held it up to the moonlight. Then she stepped carefully down the bank and waded into the water. It didn’t feel so cold now - she must have become acclimatised.
She lowered the crystal into the water, and felt it tingling under her hand. Startled, she almost dropped it. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and a moonbeam lit a patch of dancing water. Maeve held the crystal in the patch of light. The water and the crystal focused the moonlight on the opposite bank, only instead of diverging, the three rays of light from the crystal converged on the bank. The effect was dazzling, as if Maeve had shone an arc light. The roots of the trees arched black in the blinding light. Maeve shielded her eyes, and she could just make out an area of blackness opening in the writhing shadows of the overhanging roots. A scream shattered the stillness, but she couldn’t work out who was uttering it. Out of the incandescent light fell a man, but as he hit the water he became smaller and darker.
Maeve fell backwards onto the muddy shingle bank. Gaivn stood rigid, open-mouthed, clearly unable to move.
“What was that?” he managed eventually.
A sleek head emerged from the water, and a rippling wake indicated that it was swimming towards them. Maeve turned and scrambled up the bank. The animal swam towards the shore, and as it emerged from the water, she saw that it was a seal.
“Hello, how did you get here?” she said, unable to prevent herself from speaking in the way people do to a large friendly dog.
“You tell me,” said the seal. As he climbed out of the water, he shook himself vigorously, and shed his pelt. It fell from him in glistening folds like heavy wet fabric. The man emerged once more from his seal form, and gathered up his skin, folding it carefully and stowing it in a fold of his tunic. Maeve and Gavin stood on the bank, mesmerised.
“What’s the matter - haven’t you ever seen a selkie before?” asked the man.
“No, only heard of them in legends,” said Maeve.
“Are you -- humans?” asked the selkie.
“Yes,” said Maeve.
“Is this Middle Earth then?”
“We just call it Earth,” said Maeve.
“Oh,” said the selkie. “Did you summon me?”
“Er, I’m afraid I probably did, yes,” admitted Maeve. She showed him the crystal.
The selkie looked at it. “Some kind of tin?” he hazarded.
“Yes - how did you know?” asked Maeve.
“We are sensitive to the aura of metals, and they cause us to manifest in your world - that is why the Sidhe have often encountered humans in mining areas.”
“Oh yes, the knockers and the kobolds,” said Gavin.
“And the leprechauns,” said Maeve.
“Have you the magic to send me back?” asked the selkie.
“We didn’t know we had the magic to summon you until I put the crystal in the water and the moonlight,” said Maeve.
“Oh. So I’m stuck here, then.”
The enormity of this struck both the selkie and Maeve at the same time.
What on earth will I do with a supernatural being in my house? It’s not exactly spacious to start with. And what do selkies eat, she wondered.
“That could be interesting,” she said. “Well, I’m Maeve and this is Gavin.”
“I’m Morien,” said the selkie.
“How come you speak English?” asked Gavin.
“It is not my first language - I learnt it at university,” said Morien. He had a strange accent; it sounded a bit Welsh, but with the soft breathiness of Ireland.
Slowly, they began to walk back across the meadows, and Maeve and Gavin retrieved their bikes from beneath the tree, and pushed them along the road.
As they walked back up the hill, Morien told them about himself, and they learnt just how inconvenient it was for him to have disappeared from his own world at the present time.
“I was a lecturer in Human Languages and Culture at the Unseelie University, but then the King closed down all the universities, so I have become a - how do you call it - guerrilla leader. The resistance is beginning to gain ground among the people,” he told them. “The King denies that Middle Earth exists, and has tried to suppress all stories of humans.”
“Why?” asked Maeve.
“Because human ideas are a source of change, and he wants to maintain the status quo. If ideas like democracy and civil rights catch on, he’s in big trouble.”