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Countless thousands of
years have passed since the Exodus, the mysterious event that spawned countless
colonies from Ancient Earth. In all the memory logs of all the Life Arcs, the
super-massive slow moving ships that carried the First Colonists in cryogenic
suspension, no record of the cause of the Exodus was written, even the very memory
of the First Colonists was edited. All the historical and scientific works
carried in the Exodus were systematically censored, removing vital data that
could locate Sol in the sea of Stars, the Life Arcs themselves retained no
information about their voyage- not even speed, vector and duration.

All that was known was
that the earth was a Blue World, with a large moon and at least 9 companion
planets circling a yellow star. A description that fit
thousands of stars in any night sky. What was known too,
was that whatever the Event was that lead to the Exodus, Earth did not survive
it.

The colonies (those
that managed to terraform or infect a niche in the cosmos), had no knowledge
that the other colonies even existed: just a dark knowledge that they had been
sent far away from the mother planet, and sent in a way that would insure that
they could never return. For what reason, nobody knows.

For each colony, first
contact with the Entanglers was the same: Within decades of their first return
to orbital space, a ship would enter orbit around their home-world, using
unknown technology to maneuver without a visible plume of energy or exhaust.
They would offer goods and information- always at an enormous cost. Most of
all, they would bring the knowledge: you are not alone. The entanglers were
human- and through them you could book a passage to thousands of other human
colonies scattered throughout space (of course, the information about where
those colonies were was not available, at any price).

As mysterious as the
Entanglers were, and as mysterious as the memories of distant earth were, they
paled in comparison to the bewildering diversity of culture, genetics and
science that thousands of years of hardship and alien isolation had brought the
far-flung remnants of humanity.

Strangest of all are
the Aelatheans, who have used nanotechnology to transcend the perceptual and
genetic boundaries of humanity. The Aelatheans<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> have used their unique talents to
inject themselves into every place of power and learning in every colony known
to the Entanglers. If anyone outside the Entanglers can solve the mystery of
the Event and the Exodus, it is the Aelatheans.

And they are starting
to find out something, something stranger and darker than <span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> they had imagined.

I.I Dreaming Not Sleeping

Its called the Long Sleep. It isn’t
anything like sleep. Just like surfing an informational web has nothing to do
with surfing. Crude metaphors aimed at helping humans cope with the fruits of
their own mind. Active Biostasis is what it is. It means putting your body into
a computational nano-mechanical support structure. It means embedding yourself
in a muck of nanomites, a muck that inundates your cells. The whole mélange is
chilled to halt the mundane chemistry of biological life process, leaving the
nanomites to maintain the structure of the molecules in your body. The whole
system is very much like a computer, ticking through algorithms, computing error
corrections on the data of your mind and body. Manipulating
the molecules in your body like data on a chip. It dreams you, so say the Sleep Walkers.

Ironically, Ian notes as the Sleep Technicians open a
pecan-shell shaped cask, the whole mélange looks very much like a semi-solid
amber- you become the insect carried through the ages. Nice touch, Ian thinks.

What’s worse about it, What Ian can’t stand, is being
dreamt. The Sleep Walkers are right, more so than they know- something changes
while you are down deep in the mélange. Bits are dropped by the computational
matrix, noise correction algorithms fall short: A synaptic connection mutates, <span
class=GramE>A long protein in a Glial cell becomes a neurotoxin or an
active enzyme. Cosmic rays smash through the boundary of your casket, ripping
molecules apart. In short noise happens and chemistry ensues.

When you wake, you remember dreams you never really had. You
have thoughts in your head that don’t make sense, that
would never have been formed by the processes of your consciousness ticking
over. Memories that once had nothing to do with each other are somehow fused
together. Even the meaning of self can change. Nothing is shielded. Usually the
effects are trivial, but sometimes… Sometimes the effects are earth shattering,
inspiring religious awe in the afflicted… Hence the Sleep
Walkers.

The Sleep Walkers revel in this undreamt dream formed on the
Long Sleeps. They say that Cosmic Radiation interacting with their suspended
meat has intent and purpose. They say that the noise of the farthest stars is a
medium of information on the scale of the universe, and that only by sleeping
the Long Sleep can it be heard. Indeed, whole sects of Sleep Walker cultists
are buried in the 10th planet of the Cryo home system- embedded in a
nanomite mélange, hoping to make 20 million before reviving. They call it the
Dream Time, and a place in the cultists mélange costs
a mere 86 Billion chits. New Australia-
a settlement of Aborigines from old Australia,
has filed suit in the Entangler Court<span
class=GramE>..

Dysfunctionals,
is what Ian thinks, hallucinating up Gods
to fill the
shadows of ignorance. He hates the prospect of a Long Sleep, and it puts
him in an uncharitable mood.

Drug induced paralysis is starting to set in as the Sleep
Techs operate the servitor that gently seats him into the mélange muck. Though
paralyzed, he can feel the muck climbing his body. He always thinks it should
tingle, or somehow feel alive, but it
doesn’t feel any different than cool mud. It disappoints him, leaves him feeling
like he is being buried alive. Banal. As consciousness
is stripped from him by the Sleep Drugs, he hopes the Aborigines win the suit.

I.II Drifting between stars

The only way on to an Entangler ship is to be embedded in
the mélange, or one of the other known (but much cruder) modes of life
suspension. If your casket error-faults and re-animates you on the long flight
between the stars, the Entanglers dump you out a lock at .9 Cee (or so the
story goes), where you are welcome to spend the rest of eternity chasing light
between the stars. Or so they say. Its not like anyone
is around to check their story. But every now and then, the Entanglers arrive
in a system a few caskets short.

Its not like Ian would worry about
that eventuality, were he capable of cognition in his current (suspended) state.
His home world, Aelathea, was the only manufacturer of mélange caskets, the
only Settlement that had mastered nanotech to this level. Even if the other
Settlements were to come up with a crude copy, The Aelatheans had registered
patent with the Entanglers at great expense, and the Entanglers would honor it
by transporting no imitation between the stars. Ian understood the caskets on a
subtle and nuanced level, although he would be hard pressed to make one himself.
Just the right level to trust in the many layers of
fail-safes and molecular redundancies, without the necessary depth to be fully
versed on the shortcomings of the technology.

In a few decades, when he thawed in the remote Habeur system
to start his contract there,
Ian would be struck with an over-powering association between
bicycles and airplanes. He would struggle in his consciousness to recall if
such an association was just a Long Sleep dream, or some sort of thought or
memory he had while going down into the mélange.

I.III House de Pracis and the memory of earth

It was a Parlor in the archaic sense, in the sense it
originally expressed in the time of ancient lost Earth. A
place for the dead to lay in state, in their deathly pallor. A place for
morning things lost. This particular Parlor was far from Earth, on a watery
planet the rough size and mass of Mars. A planet with three small moons, two of
which were visible in the darkening sky through the balcony extending off the
Parlor, where the lesser nobility waited patently for Horous and his court to
finish their viewing of his dead Aelathean advisor.

Horous de Pracis stood over the frozen corpse of the
Aelathean Courtier, deeply troubled. “Do
not let this unfortunate death sit so heavy on you. They are but servants, my
lord: Expensive and useful, yes- but ultimately just outworld servants”, droned Malfense, a second tier (and quite
apparently second rate) bean counter. Horous turned his face towards Malfense,
looking at him with a bald impassiveness- a complete lack of expression. Horous
knew well what this look did to his inferiors, and it had its effect on
Malfense. He muttered something about his duties and scuttled to the doors of
the parlor… rather like a dung beetle,
thought Horous.

Els had served his House for 51 Terran Years, and besides
the gaping hole in his chest, Els looked the same as he had in the days of
Horous’ great grandfather. The Aelathean was eternally a graying fatherly
gentleman in a simple brown robe. Els had cost a fortune- the wealth of
generations of de Pracis lords had been given to the Aelathean Utopia for a
Courtier contract. House Pracis<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> had been the first of the noble houses
to afford a contract with the Utopian outworlders, and in securing a Courtier,
they had sealed an iron dominance of the Habeur Settlement. With the service of
the Aelathean, house Pracis had been able to bring the Parliament of Noble
Houses to something of a lasting political order- something unseen on Habeur
for hundreds of years.

Houses that came into conflict with the de Pracis Lords soon
found themselves in decline, and always Els was there- advising House Pracis,
anticipating and out maneuvering the other houses, foiling plots, even
infiltrating organizations and assassinating the occasional canny adversary.

The de Pracis Lords did not always listen to Els, and Els
himself trained them from childhood to be independent of him- to look at him as
an advisor and not a leader. Els laid out the paths, and the de Pracis Lords
decided which to take. Aelathean Courtiers were never known to betray their
contract or usurp their lease holders. Above all else, they served the terms of
their contract to the letter- and thus their value was guaranteed.

Stipulated in the contract, however, was that the Courtier
was to be frozen immediately to a specified temperature within hours of death,
and transferred to the next outgoing Entangler ship. Horous of course complied.
While the temporal vagaries of interstellar travel meant that he would probably
not be alive to be held accountable by other Aelatheans,<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> the thought of an unknown number of
people with Els-like competence wreaking retribution on his line was too much
to bear. So he paid the passage for the corpse, which was quite a staggering fee
in the somewhat backwater economy of Habeur. And he sent a communication to the
Aelathean home-world via the Entangler mission: Courtier expired before contract, wish another
to be sent on new contract with same terms. The message was terse because
every bit cost a kings ransom.

Horous knew that in the death of Els, he had seen the
extermination of the hope that he might be the de Pracis that fulfilled the
goal of his house: to rebuild the throne of the emperor and place upon it the
de Pracis line. He knew he had the skill to hold steady the power of the de
Pracis, but he knew his limits, and he knew that without Els there was no way
for the dream to come to fruition in his generation. Perhaps the next Courtier
would arrive in time for the reign of Horous’ son: Xavien de Pracis. <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Yes, Els always understood- you had to think
long term, Horous thought to himself.

The thoughts of the fate of his line did not settle his
agitation, rather drove him to pace around the cold ornate glass coffin. This
room of his palace had long been a favorite of Horous’. Its large open balcony
over looking the inland sea often tempted songbirds. In his youth he would sit
here and watch the Dolphins while waiting for his father to return from
whatever military campaign or mission he and Els had devised.

Whatever plot or agent or House out there that bested Els
was still out there, and even if Horous escaped it, could his son? What had
ended Els could end his line. And now in the place of Els, all he had were the
Malfenses of this backwater world. Malfense,
Horous thought derisively. I have to
guide my line now with the likes of Malfense. It looks like Els made one
mistake: not vetting the help more closely.

I.IV Feeding ones inner Alien

Xiquid the instantiater
understands: Metaphor was the original interface. The essence of human is
to reach beyond the articulated. The ripest fruit of cognition is always
strange to the tongue. Hence metaphor, and hence the need for
interface. Entanglers define the interface. Some breeds of humanity play
with genes, others have mastered the internal process of stars, <span
class=GramE>others have infused the molecular scale with their own
sentience. Entanglers have always ridden the interface.

The computer is a metaphor, Xiquid understands this better
than any planet pig, any
non-entangler. Cause and effect:
billiard-balls zooming through time-space. It is one way to interface with the
universe. Computation. Nondeterministic
non-finite information processing models. Quantum computation.
This is another interface. Entanglers understand that interface <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>very well. Instantiaters fly that interface. Xiquid
instantiates the interface. Its what she was
designed to do before she was even born.

Perception shapes awareness, sentience is a <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>solution space of meaning in the complexity of input. Xiquid is immersed in
an enhanced reality, an interface, far beyond the dreams of the <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>pigs. Xiquid has perception and
sentience incomprehensible to definitional humanity. They could not comprehend
her, would be lost in trying to understand what it would be like to <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>be her. They would have about as much
luck in understanding what its like
to be a bat zooming through a dark cave chasing sound waves. While she is human
after a fashion, she has little cognitive resemblance to the echoes of Terran
humanity cast throughout this arm of the Milky Way.

Xiquid reaches out to her interface and embraces the Foam-
the continuum of Plank Spaces. She feels the improbabilities in the force of
vacuum against the hull, and with it she moves.
Not for free, of course. Banks of fusion generators flare to life down the hull
of her ship. But certainly not with the vomit of energy of the chemical and
nuclear rockets the
pigs are so fond of. She can’t
explain how it works, its just intuitive with the <span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> right metaphor, the right <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>interface. Explaining is for other
castes in the Entangler Hierarchy. Instantiaters are content to <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>move.

Relative speed happens. Stars shift. Time is the only
unknown, and she knows from the bitter experience of Entanglers gone before to
keep it that way.

[OTHER SCENES HERE]

<span
class=GramE>I.<span
class=GramE>??<b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'> Relating

“m’Lord, He seems to be already
coming around” a voice says in the darkness. The voice is dry and technical,
matter-of-fact. A technician. An
easy deduction, but in Ian’s state quite a leap of reason. Ian’s mind is
not what it should be. He is swimming against a raging river of sluggish
synaptic paths. He can sense his aleph
net, his network of cellular-process-level nanomites, scrambling to aid his
cellular chemistry back to normal levels. He shouldn’t push it, but he does. He
sends calming feedback through the aleph
to his peripheral nervous system, easing the pain that is flooding his mind.

He has been through revival before, and his <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>aleph net has stored memories of how to
cope. His epiconscious net, the more
sophisticated and structured aspect of his nanomite self is already doing most
of his thinking now, the biological neurons are too busy trying to restart from
chemical stagnation. He interfaces with the aleph
net and ferrets out the memories and stored protocols of the last revival. He
shatters his consciousness into pieces, and spins off a persona to focus on
accelerating the revival. Later, it will catch back up to him, and he will
remember having spent a small eternity as a vast army of sub-sub-personas,
nursing cells and synapses back to function.

Ian feels himself boot-strapping, feels his biological net
start coming back to life. It’s a weird feeling as his selves, the various networks which construct ‘Ian’ come back to
life. The sentence from the technician has hardly been spoken,
the echoes are still in the room. A tone of difference.
This must be a noble house. The accent. He is on
Habeur. His aleph-level<i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> nose picks up the pheromone traces of
only two people, neither of them particularly stressed. No guards, no stress,
it must be the correct noble house. So far so good.

“It doesn’t surprise me, medico. Nothing Aelathean should
surprise.”, A voice dripping with self certainty and
absolutism, One familiar with Aelathean oddities. The house Lord, it must be.
An opportunity to re-enforce Aelathean strangeness, a moment not to be lost!
“Lord Horous de Pracis”, Ian
croaks through a mouth unmoved for decades “I am authorized to
negotiate a contract for the service of this Aelathean to your lordship”. The
medico dropped some implement on the floor, it rang
painfully loud in Ian’s ears. Ian could tell he had come way too far way too
fast. Pain was seeping through his dampers. Ian knew he would pay dearly for
flogging his aleph, epiconscious and <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>biological components. The medico was
expecting hours of semi-sentience, with reason.

“But first forgive this weakened servant” he said,
addressing the de Pracis lord with the necessary difference. “I am afraid it
will be awhile before I will be of any use”. Ian allowed himself
to crash back to unconsciousness,
like a breaking wave. “Very good, yes, very good indeed”, Horous de Pracis said
to the medico. “Let the Courtier sleep as long as he needs. Send notice when he
is about, no matter what the hour.”