#as you are running you see the largest collection of ships in your life warp into the system

[im-a-goat-in-disguise]

Images of despair [stellaris version]

[cosmcther]

     I’ve been wanted to make a post on the Domes of the Comet Observatory. There are a few things that I have different than the source material in my head, so writing them down sounds like a good idea. Big long post under the cut.

     General stuff. There are six in total: The Terrace, the Fountain, the Kitchen, the Bedroom, the Engine Room, and the Garden. The Domes themselves are bigger on the inside, think the Tar.dis from Do.ct.or W.ho. Just about all of them are little pocket universes that Rosalina expanded on once her powers developed further. Prior to that, they were regular rooms that the Lumas and she built. Once she gained the power to do so, pocket universes were placed inside the rooms to give them more space. That’s why the Beacon is needed to open the doors up. Each entrance is the so-called portals to the private dimension.

     The Terrace: This Dome is used as a typical observatory room that you would find in the real world. The walls are lined with star maps, celestial clocks are scattered about, and orreries are hung up near them, many on shelves and on tables near the corners. They show the motions of countless planets and the relationship they share, making sure that if any planet out there goes off-course, a reference can be made as to how it should look. The ceiling is made of glass, and the room seems to always be at night, moonlight and shimmering stars shining through the skylight. Near the center, a high-powered telescope can be used to view stars. The sound of this room is also quite pleasant, what with the constant quiet ticking and shifting of the orreries.

     The Fountain: Meditation is the main use of this Dome. Sometimes, Rosalina can get overwhelmed and will need a moment to reconnect herself with the world around her. It’s a problem she faces rather often, a session of meditation will be what she needs to recenter. The room’s water is cool to the touch, trickling noises from the slow-moving water filling the walls. Other peaceful nature sounds can be heard, like unseen birds or crickets. It helps Rosalina to swish a foot through the water and feel the slight chill of it, or perhaps listening to the sounds around her processing what noises are being made by what creature.

     The Kitchen: This one is more simple, as the name is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the kitchen for the Comet Observatory. It’s where Star Bits are kept and other food items are stored. Your general cooking appliances are inside, just... pardon the high countertops, please. They’re suited for Rosalina in specific and she is far from a regular height.

     The Bedroom: Another simple one. Rosalina’s bedroom isn’t anything farfetched or out of the ordinary. Just regal, much as the majority of things associated with her. It’s a four-post bed with a canopy and curtains, velvet sheets, comfortable pillows. A standard bedroom, as stated before. 

     The Engine Room: At first glance, the engine room doesn’t seem like anything even close to its namesake. It’s a simple circular room with a metal grating framing the hard steel center. For it’s under the hood that the true engine room earns its name. Truthfully, this is the only dome that lacks the magical pocket dimension effect the rest own. This dome is build into the Comet Observatory’s center spire, allowing it downward access into the entirety of the Comet Observatory. 

The floor inside this dome serves as an elevator that can take you to several levels of machinery that keeps the Observatory running. Inside is an admittedly quite hot and stuffy collection of gears, pipes, metal, and other mechanical guts as far as the eye can see. One would need a map the size of Pluto to maneuver through here. That’s why it’s mainly Rosalina, Polari, and a select number of adult Lumas that go down there for maintenance purposes.

     The Garden: The final dome, and certainly the largest in presentation. Inside this dome is a large and lively garden furnished with tranquil ponds and streams, rock gardens with bushes smattered with berries of all sorts. Most of which aren’t from Earth. Yes, this is an interstellar garden, of course. Bugs and fish that reside in here are from all across the cosmos. 

Oftentime strays that accidentally wandered onto the Observatory in the critters’ collective sense, only realizing that they were on-board after take-off. As for the fish, many were born if not specifically bought for the garden. It’s quite the menagerie indeed!

And while it is not a proper dome,      The Library: A comfortable and low-lit area for quiet conversations or general relaxation. Pillows are scattered about the room for sitting or resting, along with a collection of blankets tucked away in the corner. There exists rolling ladders and stepping stools for book-grabbing, as well. Low-down tables best used with floor seats or cushions should you desire a sit-down with a good book. 

Speaking of which, literature from all across the cosmos exists on those endless walls of books. Many of them are written in languages unknown to the general populous of Earth, but Rosalina would be more than happy to give a translation. Storybooks, history books, fiction and non-fiction. Thrillers, pop-ups, mysteries... why, if there’s a genre you’ve an itch for, it’s more than likely that there’s a book in here for you.

Extras-

The Comet Observatory is modeled off of interstellar beacons, explaining its rather pointed design. For the knowledgeable that make frequent space travel, it’s clear as day that Rosalina’s Observatory is made to represent a safe haven. A floating location of repose for any weary traveler in need of a pitstop and lucky enough to stumble across her ship within the depths of space. Even during its aimless drifting, Rosalina comes across plenty of random visitors.

At the very entrance of the Comet Observatory, the large circular and glass platform operates as a lift onto the ship proper whenever it’s landed. The Observatory itself remains in a constant levitation, never truly touching down. So it’s this circular glass platform that shifts from its position and lowers onto solid ground, allowing others to step upon it and raise up into the Comet Observatory.

If you’re the type without easy access to flight, it’s still plenty easy to get around the Comet Observatory’s tiered design. Handy dandy warp pads and their individual light lines are scattered across the ship’s floors, landlocked visitors needing but to step into one of the glowing green switches to have yourself transported somewhere else in mere moments! It’s a little discombobulating, but it’s been said it’s better than a Launch Star.

The Comet Observatory can technically travel through time. It’s not a playground that Rosalina frequents, but with full power, speeds can reach points fast enough to jump through space and time. In a similar vein, it can also traverse alternate realities. Such is the technicality for the Luigi playthrough unlocked through 100% completion in the original Galaxy game. Again, while not a skillset Rosalina flexes often, the ability is there.

The Gate to the in-game named Gateway Galaxy acts as the outer-reaches of the Comet Observatory’s breathable atmosphere. Anything past that and the cold depths of space can and will have its way with you.

Underneath the floorboards of Rosalina’s bedroom resides a collection of music boxes. They’re her favorite ‘instrument’ so to speak, an instant reminder to childhood, when life was simple. 

[chainofbeing]

Adam confronts the Anthronesians and finds that there is more to them than he originally thought

Sword of Nemesis: Lucy Campbell

Anthronesian scientist: Ketchup

Rolder: Ilana Lloyd

Anthonesian Sergeant: Paul Walsh, (who writes and stars in The Green Horizon)

Belikov: Erik Smith

Latimer: Lance Chapman

Scales of Nemesis: Mary-Anne Stanek

Music: Frxcture

Sound design, Writing, and Adam Delta 5: Cai Gwilym Pritchard

email us at chainofbeingofficial@gmail.com

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[The sounds of a cruiser mixed with rain, a woman speaks with a slight reverb to her voice]

“My fellow humans! I speak these words to you, not for the purposes of teaching,but as an opportunity for reflection, what I tell you now is known to you be it from my lips or deep in your heart of hearts. I ask that you think back on our history, a time long since passed from living memory, think of earth, our birthplace, where we first rose from the mud of the kenya rift valley, brilliant and new, a spark of life absent in all other creatures on our planet but strong in us. A planet which was destroyed. And thus we were scattered like grains of sand in a tempest, forced to scrounge and scrape by to survive, nevertheless we persisted, our unique adaptability and unquenchable infatuation for survival driving us onward. Strewn as we were across Mercury,Venus and Mars, Our shattered fragments wriggling like insects into the cold ground of Ganymede, Europa and Enceladus, devouring even each other as our souls grew hollow and the anguish of hopelessness was bearing down on us like a cruel oppressor. And as we were at our lowest, when parents looked on at their children with hunger in their eyes, as neighbours tore each other apart for mere drops of water, the council descended from the heavens, breaking through the atmosphere, aglow with flames like angels with burning halos. And so they took our hands as if we were lost children and promised us safety and unity in their midst. I say to you, that in shuffling off the yoke of one oppressive force, that of desperation and despondency, we ushered in a new one under that vile and contemptuous Council of Nimonea. Do you not find it an incredible alignment of the stars that the council happened to find us at our worst, or that earth was just lost? We are told it was our own actions that led to the fall of earth but I tell you now that this is just the venomous lies of the council being fed into our ear to make us hate our own kind, to destroy our reputation in the galactic society. They wanted us in their grasp, and so they destroyed our planet and reduced us to festering animals to manufacture our need to join them.

The life we lead as a species is one of subjugation, the council cajoles and coerces us. We are ruled and enchanted by machines, the origins of which we know not, surrounded by multitudes of beings who do not care for our history, our brilliant, human culture, forged in suffering! They insist on forcing us to share our living spaces with those dark eyed demons, the Veatorians. The councils philosophies are tantamount to genocide as they attempt to eliminate our culture and remove our sense of identity, we must unite as It was in the golden age of our past, the human culture shall not be destroyed and deformed. Many of you may see the Council of Nimonea as a monolith, the only cove of safety in a tempestuous and indifferent universe. But I say to you there is another way! For in the days of old, there were humans who turned the council and their silver tongues away, who refused to bow to an alien master. Those humans formed an alliance of the solar system. These humans stand before you now. Humanity will stand strong once more, we will become the shining star at the center of the galaxy. Unto Humanity Only!”

[the reverb is now absent as we hear the internal monologue]

I stand on a podium, placed just outside the main cruiser hangar whose doors lay wide open to illuminate me and my other masked compatriots who stand behind me in affirming silence. It is not the largest I have ever delivered a speech to, but it is not the smallest either. I look on at the crowd of Mercenaries and dacoits, forced to work in the shadows under a power too great for them to resist, and feel pity. From birth they knew no other way and yet their intrinsic human spirit told them to defy the alien authority. They are not like me, who had been raised in my own stellar system. I often think of home, remembering running through the fields in New Chennai on Ganymede with my friends, that was when I had had a name, before I took on the mantle of The Sword of Nemesis and offered up my identity as tribute, dedicating myself to the cause.

The speech I gave was one that had been repeatedly redrafted and rewritten long before I was born (and would continue to be altered long after my death until it was no longer needed). It would be reformed for the new ways of speaking and events in the pan galactic zeitgeist, tailored to stir up the emotions of any human listening, regardless of accuracy. The truth often had to be… modified to get the right feeling from an audience. As the recruits file out of the made up square where they had been standing in formation and onto various training exercises I take a walk, leaving the broad flat cruiser behind me.

[The sound of the cruiser fades and leads into just rain as she walks away]

I walk to the edge of the mesa, a frame sits on the edge, dug into the ground with a long double rail tracing all the way down the side. Our work in this place means that a great deal of noble gasses get put out into the atmosphere, the entire mesa is swamped in argon and neon mostly but a good deal of the others too. I need not worry, the mask takes care of most things, but my forces have to train in rebreather visors, a hindrance but necessary to their survival. The Scales of Nemesis had gone out on an expedition recently with a pair of initiates, that had been some time ago and so she should be back home safe anytime soon. I stand and look out at the horizon, a sense of pride swells up in me, generations and generations of work have led up to where I am now, It was not long before things would begin to take off and the plan would be fully enacted. A message arrives on my mask

[a beep and then the vocoded voice of a woman comes through]

“Target locked on, manifestation to take place in… 27 hours,” Underneath the golden facade I smile. Everything is coming together. Total power would soon be within the grasp of the Anthronesians, all I would have to do is take it.

[adam now speaks, the sounds of a swamp can be heard as he trudges along]

I have grown so tired of walking on this planet, the endlessly stretching flatlands covered in the net of vines provides little to look at and there is not much that varies, a while back I saw a small grove of trees which grew tightly packed together in the distance, though having spent so much time here I’m starting to no longer trust my senses. Even the temporary hobby of naming ship models grew tiresome after the hundredth repeat. I look up every so often to stare at the huge and looming mesa, as if checking it's still there. I take a break to drink some water as the suns sit directly above me. A few hours back I had reached a point where I sort of… switched off and just trudged along, I’ve not shaken out of that state as I rest in the shadow of a large mossy boulder and I absently sip from a flask I borrowed from Vestak-Cry.

[the voice of the rolder is warped, it fluctuates in pitch and speed and sounds like a chorus of many voices all speaking together]

Does the grand little one hear?

I look up, roused from my half dazed state, was that-?

It does, it listens!

I stand and look around the other side of the boulder and find no source.

Does it see us? Where are we? Do I not see it? The other! the other!

I feel something tug at my ankle and look down to see a vine snake its way up my boot

“Aurgh!”

I pull away and extend my spear toward it

Why does it resist communication? Not so other perhaps. No way forth with no back

“Who is speaking?” I call out, my thoughts had not been invaded in this way for a long time, the information skips the step of travelling through the air as sound waves and vibrating through the bones in my ear and instead manifests directly as wordless thoughts in my mind.

We don’t understand its words, I will try to initiate communication again

Two sets of vines snake up my boots and I can find no purchase to pull away, I go to stab at the vines but it is tough and stringy and I do little damage to it, I feel a sharp pain in my calf and I call out in pain, a pain which quickly becomes muted and I feel a sensation, as if a horde of many small hands rake their fingers over my brain, and I stumble back to lean against the boulder. I begin panting, the strain of what I feel takes a lot out of me.

[the sound of the rolders mind is mesmerising and beautiful, rustling leaves and a soft tune plays]

I see two things simultaneously, a similar feeling to picturing or remembering an image while the eyes remain open, the image of what is in front of me is maintained but I am lost in what my mind creates. Except this is not the work of my mind, I feel an overwhelming sense of vastness. I feel a horde of trillions upon trillions of individual nodes as one vast collective.

It still does not abide us, but I can forth, and it can back

“Who are you, what is this?”

What a beautiful voice you have. How can you not know me, you stand upon my back and your people eat of my flesh- oh, not your people, you find divisions amongst your kind.

It speaks with my voice

“The vines, Rolder, the other great one calls me. though she had been grasped by something else, extremely resistant to us”. no longer it seems.

It all makes sense now, what Bedyw had been trying to tell me, the vines, this Rolder. I look at my feet, the entire planet is covered in just one singular organism. Of course a small isolated patch would only act out the basic survival principles, but on a planetary scale…

I welcome you, I wish for you to become us, and so it will be

“I can’t, I must be free,”

No, you will be of us

“I have to get to the top of the mesa! I have to leave” for just a moment I snap back into my own mind and try to wrench myself from the tangle of vines which have begun to entangle around my entire body and lean against the rock behind me, my eyes fixed on my destination, a small black speck sat atop its huge and sweeping mass. I am brought back into the mind of the Rolder

But we are not there, it grows too toxic for me to bear and strange happenings take place upon that place. Small great ones, like yourself but greater still.

“I have to be there, you may not see it but it is for all of our benefit,”

Show us, let me in for a moment I do not resist and allow the plant to see what I saw in the mind of Might-Upon-Serenity, the form of ovig nadal, I hope that it can glean some understanding of my urgency, however a planet spanning plant thinks.

I think hard of the image of ovig nadal and I feel the plant physically recoil away from the image and the associated emotions and memories.

Is the rest of your mind filled with thoughts such as these?

“It is” I feel the vines begin to shrink away from me ever so slightly

I will help you in your endeavours, follow the path of our undeniable beauty, there are safe ways up to that noxious place.

[the sound of the rolders mind fades into the sounds of the swamp]

The vines fall loose from my body and detach from under my skin, I start to bleed as I watch the vines re-knot themselves back into the thin tangled mess and so I take a small tightly packed roll of bandages and wrap it around the plus shaped wounds in my calf and arm.

I often refrain from invoking the name of a god or any sort of divine figure, it often leads to needless complications, and unwanted attention, every so often something will get to me and I feel the need to swear and so I do so in the most non specific way possible,

“Oh my fucking god!” Only once it has removed itself from my mind does the rush of fear that I should have been feeling come over me in a single moment and I feel a lump in my throat, close to tears. Not for a single moment did I consider the horror of what was happening to me. Were it not for my sense of duty, I would be absorbed into the consciousness of the planet spanning plant of the Rolder. Though plant seems too small of a word. I ignore the feelings for now and use the spear to push myself up completely.

A trail of bright flowers begin to bloom at my feet, a deep red colour, each individually made up of hundreds of thin fronds that fan outwards, the trail blooms toward the Anthronesian base so I retract my spear and follow the trail of flowers.

A full day passes before I get to the bottom of the mesa, passing nothing of any real interest on the way, It makes me wonder if the strange things I saw on the way to Vestak Cry were actually there, and not  manifestations of a tired and sun baked mind. I can see the back of the cruiser that the Anthronesians were set up on, tracing down the steep side of the mesa are two rails of some sort, every four hours or so a small cart will travel up and then back down again along them. The vines grow thicker and more intensely tangled here, but as it grows up the side of the almost sheer rock face they grow thinner and more sparsely. The trail of flowers I had been following do a zig zaggy path up the side, I take a step closer and notice that the vines had curved in such a way that they provide handholds for me, I grab a hold of the first one, its sits firm against the red rock of the mesa and I pull myself up and begin my long ascent.

[the sound of wind, high up on the mesa]

It’s long and arduous, I take a break around halfway and take a moment to admire the landscape, Vestak-cry, the small forest of trees and a few other landmarks are enclosed in a ring of mesas and grand slopes like the one I’m currently scaling, the Rolder stretches onward past the horizon, covering absolutely everything in an unending sea of green.The suns begin to set on the landscape setting the serene landscape ablaze.

A single long stretch of vine curls around to the top of the mesa, I watch it wither and die in real time as I shimmy up it goes from verdant and green to brown and shrunken. Increasingly I find the atmosphere a lot more hostile the further up I go and by the time I begin to inch closer to the top of the mesa

I find that there is almost no oxygen at all, I remember the gift Might left with me and take the small bronze sphere out of my pocket. Hooking my arm around the inside of the slowly dying vine I twist it clockwise and it begins to unfurl like a blooming flower. It clicks and whirrs. It takes the shape of a kind of butterfly, with two long thin wings, there's a rubber seal around the middle which I place in my mouth. The wings enclose around my cheeks and I take a deep breath, the air is fragrant and doesn’t quite feel like it has been filtered out of the surroundings but has instead come from another source.

I finally reach the top edge of the mesa, pull myself up and roll over onto the side, the vine that I used to get up here finally dies and falls away from the sheer rock wall. I thought that the flat expanse of the treeless swamp was featureless but scanning my surroundings now on the mesa I appreciate the minute interruptions of that strange and fearsome place. Drawing in deep breaths in through the strange contraption affixed to my face my gaze is drawn to the large cruiser resting along the edge of the mesa, it hugs tightly to the ground and spreads outward. I don’t recognise it, not a council make, certainly not an old human ship, far too new for that.

[soldiers train in front of a humming super cruiser]

Outside the main hangar is a perimeter of fencing which cuts a rectangle about 70 metres wide, in front of the fencing is a large tightly packed series of supply boxes, presumably stolen from the surrounding areas and packaged here at their home base. A few heavy duty drones carry crates into the main hangar. This whole scene is lit up by a set of extremely powerful floodlights affixed to some very advanced looking gun turrets and the ambient light from the hangar which, combined, make it feel like the vibrant twilight from the suns isn't soaking the red earth and that night isn't soon to swaddle the landscape entirely.

[a memory of mights voice]

“Remove the dissimulation field,”

All manner of security methods are available, even the most low budget security systems have, at the very least, a rudimentary Construct of several AIs that work in tandem. Monitoring heartbeat sensors and motion detectors, controlling drone swarms and personnel recognition, recognising what's normal in a day and what's not. And that's just what pertains to me. And so as I take stock of my surroundings, it’s already too late. With aquiline swiftness the flood lights cut and the whole area turns dark, save for the restricted glow of the hangar which silhouettes the aggressive tension of the guards who are sat in their artillery spheres atop the guard towers as well as a series of Anthronesian soldiers in full regalia and visors of some kind.

[a slightly melancholy rap beat plays in the background as adam in fired upon, bullets wizz by, ricochet and land in the dirt by his feet]

I charge forward and very ungracefully fall behind a large metal crate as the first volley of fire comes from the soldiers, luckily for me not the turrets, presumably to protect the supplies. These soldiers use the same rifles as the two Anthronesians back at Vestak-cry, electrified. In the atmosphere, thick with noble gasses, the electrified rounds illuminate the darkness with vibrant neon luminescence. If I weren’t in danger of getting an arm blown off I'd find it beautiful. The mix of colours form trails behind the bullets, which quickly die out, but the rapidity of which I am being fired upon keeps the incandescent glow alive. I shuffle along and dive forward to the next crate, slightly smaller but still adequate cover, the lid for this one opens toward the enemy and so I flip it up and grip the insulating foam to provide more cover, the metal shudders with each shot. I look inside the crate and see a series of sidearms, most old and rusty, no consistency in the make, clearly taken from a town nearby. I grab the least decrepit looking one and drop the container lid. I aim at an Anthronesian, flip the safety and pull the trigger. It clicks, my eyes dart to the place where the magazine should be. Empty. Oh fuck! I think as a round hits my shoulder, my body tenses up as the round fills my body with electricity and I collapse to the ground, sidearm still in hand, I hear a voice call out “confirmed hit!” and the firing stops

“Belikov confirm!”

“What do you mean? I’m not going out there! You confirm,”

“Hey, I outrank you. You gotta,”

“You do? since when?”

“Yesterday, I had my initiation with The Cubit of Nemesis,”

The last of the shock leaves my body and I begin to snake my hand up and into the box, I begin to root around for a clip of some kind that feels like it would fit into my sidearm

“When was that? I didn't hear about it,”

“You wouldn't have, she said it was meant to be private, just us and the rest of the nemesis legion!”

“That totally sounds like you’re making it up,”

“It does kinda sound like you’re making it up” another voice chimes in

“Shut up latimer!” the two say in unison

“Actually, latimer, you go confirm,”

“I didn’t fire the shot!” says the new voice

“Dont care, that's an order,”

“Fine!”

I hear the gate open and some footsteps approach, I grab something that feels like it would fit into the gap in my weapon

“I’m sure we have drones to do this, I don't know why I personally have to go and check,”

I take the clip and slot it into the breech loading pistol, I flick it back up [and it clicks]. The footsteps halt. The soldier cocks their rifle. Combat mould will usually absorb most of the kinetic impact of a round from a distance, sure you might break a rib or get winded but you’ll be alive. At point blank it's a different story, either the shock kills you, or knocks you out. Luckily for me it's the latter. The Anthronesian collapses unceremoniously in pain to the floor and I duck back behind the crate, I pop up and exchange a few shots with the guards. My sidearm vibrates only once, showing I hit a target. I fire a few more rounds and duck back down

I move out to the side of the crate and fire a shot, but as I do a familiar golden glow catches my eye, I bring myself back behind cover and quickly dart back out, not firing but instead taking stock of my new opponents, now there are three golden lights, then four, then a fifth emerges from the darkness and I know I have lost this battle.

[the gunfire stops as the voice of the woman who gave the speech at the start of the episode speaks]

“I’m only gonna say this once, you've interrupted something very important. If you know what's good for you you’ll take the clip out of that pistol and toss it our way,”

I unload the pistol and throw it behind me

“Alright, stand, put as many hands as you’ve got on your head,”

I place my right arm on my head and keep the other lowered as the pain is too strong to raise it fully

“It doesn't matter if you do really, It's just something I say you know? We’ll shoot you if you try anything,”

I stand and the flood lights switch back on, once more illuminating the area like daylight.

“Jesus christ,” the voice says

My reaction to her words must have been obvious

“Nothing, sorry, Just- it's not everyday you see a human with a set of glass horns you know?”

I tilt my head to the side. How did she know I’m human?

“Come now Adam. You don’t think that we would forget one of their own now would you? Come on, let's get a good look at you,”

I march toward the gate, one hand held over my bleeding shoulder. The smell of spent gunpowder permeates the air like a thick musk. A pair of Anthronesians brush past me to scoop up their fallen comrade, the rest stare at me through the pane of their rebreather visors. Each dressed in the ornate bronze decorated combat mould and waist length capes. The source voice that previously called out to me stands with a rifle like the one used by the woman who shot might. I can tell it's not her though. The person in front of me is much taller and is far more relaxed. The major difference is that her armour is of a resplendent gold,  the acanthus pattern on her armour is more extended and curls around more of her body and on her mask it arcs and curls more extravagantly. At her side stands four other masked Anthronesians, more akin to the one I met previously. Each holding their own rifle that emanates a golden glow.

“Alright let's get that shoulder seen to, Osei-” she stares at a soldier to my left and gestures with her head.

A blinder is placed over my head, I see nothing, and hear nothing save for my own breathing as I’m very unceremoniously picked up and dragged away the cracked and bumpy surface of the mesa soon turns to the metal and rubber ridges of a ramp and then the smooth flooring of a cruiser, I feel the jolt of an airlock and go to take off my breathing apparatus but a gloved hand slaps my hand away and removes it for me, it curls up back into a small sphere, “would you mind putting that back in my bandolier?” I ask, my own voice muffled, no response. My bandolier and spear are taken off of me and I’m placed in a cold metal chair. The blinder isn’t removed and so I stay sat in complete muffled darkness. I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder as the bullet is removed and the wound gets patched up with nanobots. After an hour or so the blinder is wrested off of me and the blinding light of an interrogation room. A grey oval table smoothly rises from the ground, the room is hexagonally shaped with padded foam lining the walls, it smells like metal. Sat in front of me is one of the masked Anthronesians, not the golden leader but still intimidating nonetheless. Two of the standard soldiers stand on either side of me. A metal arm descends from the ceiling behind her and hovers just above her shoulder.

“Subject is Adam delta 5, what follows is a brief description for the written file. Opaque glass horns, similar to that of a yak. Dark grey eyes all the way through, with distinctions in shade between sclera, iris and pupil,”

“It was you wasn't it?”

“A curved dark line curves inward on the top half of the eye and outward on the bottom half. This happens on both eyes,” she continues, ignoring me

“You shot my friend,”

“It, is believed that subjects aberrations are a result of-”

“She’s still alive you know,”

“A result of a form of divine curse, or perhaps prolonged immortality, though in other immortals these irregularities are not present. Witness recommends extended observation during his time with the Anthronesians,”

“She is also the most vindictive person I know,”

“Interrupt me again and I’ll shoot you as well,”

“I can take it,”

“Maybe I’ll try my hardest to approximate death for you then, submerge you in concrete and bury you on some barren, oxygenless wasteland of a planet somewhere”

“Concrete can decay,”

“Over thousands of years,”

“I’ve got time,”

She leans back and crosses her arms

“Witness is Scales of Nemesis, date and time logged automatically,” The lens of the robotic arm switches and some internal component clicks.

“I suppose you do have time, we can take as long as we need to get you to our side. We’ve waited this long so far I’m sure we can afford however many hundreds of years it will take to bend your will to align with our own,”

“You want me to join you? You slaughter whole communities for food, if you think there’s any chance I’ll work for you, you’re crazier than I thought,”

“Perhaps, but one of the great things about humanity is our affinity for adapting to our circumstances. I’ve worn the mantle of the Scales of Nemesis for longer than I held my previous identity, it did not take long before I became myself and left who I was behind, you will do the same.”

“hm”

“What is it that you’re doing on this planet? Are you here to stop our work?”

“I’ll be honest I wasn't even aware of the existence of you lot until a few days ago,”

“You wouldn’t have,”

“I’d be delighted to know what it is you’re doing here, I’m hoping it's something to do with those rifles, then it's two bird with one stone in terms of mystery. I’m almost certain though that it has something to do with the dissimulation field, where are you generating that from by the way? That’s a lot of power to be generating,”

I have know way of knowing but I really hope that threw her off. She looks up suddenly.

“Yes. I’m with him now, he’s very annoying, perceptive though. He knows. Yes. No, it's fine he can only hear me. Fine.” She twitches and I can see from her body language that she’s still talking but the sound seems to be enclosed within that mask of hers. More advanced than it initially seems apparently. She stands suddenly

“Let's go.” We march down a huge space, too large to be called a corridor, too long to be called an atrium. If I had to guess the usable space ship is about a mile long, the small stretch of corridor I’m in is only 2 fifths that. At the end of the area it diverges around a curved wall with a set of large doors in it, huge cylinders line the wall, pumping gas into whatever is contained within. All around hordes of people mill about, large squads of armed soldiers jog and down, visored scientists in heavy protective clothing supervise the transportation of large gas storage tanks, officers stand to attention as we pass. We pass a crossway on the left side presumably leading to a firing range. We reach the tall reinforced doors, waiting for me is the Golden Masked Anthronesian.

“Was that worth it?” She says to the Scales.

“Not really,”

“Maybe listen to me next time,” she looks at me, “I am the Sword of Nemesis, It's a pleasure to meet you. You are about to bear witness to the key to the future, I believe you are under the reverence of the gods, whether you will admit it to yourself or not, I hope that what I am about to show you will go some way to making you an ally. To have the first ever human would be a large boon for us, let alone an immortal, a true testament to the potential of humanity.”

She looks up and to the left slightly. As she communicates with whoever is on the other end of her call I close my eyes and focus, listening and feeling for the dissimulation field. I've witnessed the divine, the magical. I know how it makes the atmosphere feel, how it makes me feel. There's no way a dissimulation field can be produced without some form of magic, the pure power it takes to hide something even from the gods can only be focused with an artefact I'm sure of it. I sense something, deep in the ship, it’s different though, not what I’m looking for, something-

“Hey,” The Sword clicks an ornate gloved hand in front of my face “Where did you go?”

“Just thinking about how I’m going to escape,”

“Cute,”

“Where is everyone else?” the scales ask

“The Cubit is performing more initiations, The Bridle is off fulfilling our promise to that town in the trees, The Whip is training and we don’t have a Dagger anymore as we’re both painfully aware. Have I satisfied your curiosity? Is something wrong with you today?” she asks aggressively

“No,” The Scales says quietly

“Excuse me I didn’t quite catch that,”

“No, Ma’am”

“Excellent, let's move on with it then,”

The Sword waves her hand at the large decorated door and it splits into six sections, which fold away to reveal a lift platform

“Is this ship of human design?” I ask as we step onto the platform

“Of course,”

“It’s just that this doesn't seem like a human made ship, It’s not a model from any council shipyards that's for sure,”

“You’re unaware of our history,” The Sword says with an audible smirk “We have nothing to do with the council, we come from The Solar system, not earth unfortunately, but the surrounding planets and moon,”

I’m slightly taken aback

“But I thought-”

“No more questions for now, we have time,” She says as the platform rises and jolts to stop. We step off and into a room with a wide control panel which juts out from the wall and has a mass of wires that hang down and messily splay out two figures in protective gear stand to attention, they wear what can only be described as ceremonial hazmat suits, plated in ornamented bronze and sleekly hugging close to their forms, they move to the back of the room. A large hexagonal window of reinforced glass looks out onto a dark hall. I walk up to it and look out. A golden pillar of light sits at the centre of the long oval room which does its best to light up the steeply deep black room, the entire floor is filled with a black liquid which reflects the pillars golden resplendence. A large set of vents fill the ceiling and many sets of vents pump in the noble gasses the Anthroneisians seem so fond of.

“What is that?” I say and I turn to see The Scales of Nemesis step into an exo-suit of some kind assisted by the two scientist figures, it lines up perfectly with her armour and is adorned in the same acanthus pattern. She stands in a room lined with equipment, half lab half workshop, the tools are laid out in an almost ceremonial way, and archaic wax candles burn in the corners of the room. Laying on what almost feels like an altar is a strange looking halberd which has the familiar set of golden rings which spin but the golden glow is absent, sat where the blade meets the staff. The whole thing is heavily decorated but the engravings seem like they had been added to a pre existing structure and it is made of a material and fashioned in a design that seems so alien to me. The Scales picks up the weapon and holds it in front of her, her exosuit doesn’t add anything to her impressive height but she walks with newfound power and intensity. She moves to leave the room through an airlock but The Sword stops her,

“You’re scared, don’t be, I am here, we all stand behind you, filled with love and support. Remember, they did nothing to help us, now go.”

She enters the airlock and goes down a set of stairs that lead around the side of the large room and wades through the shin high black fluid. The two scientists sit at the control panel

“Manifestation ready to go when you are ma’am,”

“Scales are you ready?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice wavering slightly. The sword taps the scientist on the shoulder and they begin to press buttons and flip switches.

[the crack of lightning, unnatural singing voices can be heard faintly, the sound is abrasive and magical]

The room begins to rumble and bolts of golden lightning lick out into the air, causing a similar effect on the noble gasses that the electrified rounds outside had. My face is lit up with vibrant colours that flash intensely. The Sword intensely grips the back of the chairs that the scientists sit in

“I raised my voice into the firmament, even to the very joists of heavens floor; and like comets did my cries return unto my lips,” she says to herself

“What is this?” I ask as a lash of yellow lightning strikes The Scales, who flinches but doesn't move from her stance

“This is power, this is the future. We suffered and writhed in pain and no one came to our aid, the gods abandoned us, the council preyed upon us as we lay in the dust of our civilisation, our cheeks sallow and our spirits broken. We will bring them to their knees and when they beg for mercy we will savour their pitiful whimpers and allow their anguish to satiate our deep and integral need for revenge!” Something flashes in the reflection of the golden pillar.

“I sent forth my hounds; and watched as they returned with the tyrant in their jaws.”

A golden silhouette suddenly appears and The scales swings the halberd where it stood

“My chariots rushed forth upon the wheels of the hurricane; and dragged my oppressors to their appointed stations; and fairly did I divide my judgements among them.”

Another one appears and moves for a second before disappearing again, it’s tall, at least a foot taller than the scales.

“And with hands so dextrous did I skillfully complete the noose and with luxurious tenderness did I prove the blade upon flesh”

[a loud noise signals the manifestation, like a glitched roar, as the lightning dies down]

The silhouette finally manifests, tall and slender, swathed in robe and golden fire it faces away from us and toward The Scales who hold up her halberd horizontally to her eyes which are filled with a deep veneration. Something writhes beneath the mass of white cloth of its robes and stretches out, perhaps arms, perhaps some other appendage, regardless it has more than two. A set of wings made up of shards of golden light stretch out into the room, almost touching the sides. The creature hunches down animalistically and harmoniously screeches.

[the screech is like throat singing leads into an animalistic roar]

Angels. The hordes upon magnificent hordes of elysian spirits that do the bidding of the divine. That are the divine. I have seen an angel only once in my life, I was so struck with fear that I could occupy my mind with nothing else than its incomparable beauty. And so it brings me a special kind of fear when I see The Scales thrust her pole-arm at its chest with such hatred, I call out and hit my fist on the glass. “Stop! They’ll see, they’ll find us!” my ingrained fear of celestial retribution smothering my senses. The angel swipes at the scales with a long and stone like arm finding its usual attack of melodic incantations which call on the almost limitless power of the gods to be hopeless, I watch in horror as they fight.

“This taking too long, the dissimulation field can only hide so much Scales,” For a moment I hope that she will fail and that the angel will call upon its god once more and draw attention to this evil place. But it is too late, the halberd has violently lodged into the slender and graceful form of the being, more light than anything, molten glass drips from the gash in its neck and it falls limp. The blade of the weapon begins to glow brightly and the spinning rings at its core take on a golden glow in the centre.

[the sound of the summoning has died down completely and faded back into the sound of the observation room]

The corpse of the angel falls into the black fluid, its pristine robes a mere shell without the divine essence inhabiting it. “You can’t do this” I say to the sword, who has regained her composure “not forever,”

“You’re right, but we won't need to,” she puts a hand on the shoulder of one of the scientists, “You know the drill, extract and replace the angelic core and then begin the next manifestation, I think we’re ready for something more substantial, let’s go for an archangel and see where that gets us,” she ushers me toward the lift, “I’ll show you to your room, I’m sure you have much to think about. After all, the age of the council is drawing to a close, and you will get a front row seat,”

[ntrending]

This textile's twitching tendrils hint at a future of programmable materials

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/this-textiles-twitching-tendrils-hint-at-a-future-of-programmable-materials/

This textile's twitching tendrils hint at a future of programmable materials

Touching artifacts, in most museums, is not encouraged. And art, on the whole, is not responsive. But from the third floor of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the view is a little different. From April to October, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision exhibit asks visitors to feel, smell, taste, hear, and otherwise engage with art and design.

It’s a child’s (and perhaps a parent’s) dream—guards are present, but rarely intervene. It’s uniquely accessible to museum-goers who may not have the strongest sense of sight. And it’s a compact, organized glimpse at the future of applied materials, an under-appreciated but consequential field at the intersection of design, aesthetics, engineering, chemistry, and physics.

On my first visit to the showcase, with Carol Derby, the vice president of research and development for materials design and manufacturing firm Designtex, we stopped to pet an undulating wall covered in a dark synthetic fur. As our hands moved up and down, back and forth, and in broad circles, sensors in the fur triggered symphony orchestra music, filling the room.

But Derby wasn’t there to caress a wall—or soak up experimental aromas representing things like “a moment of collective deja vú”—or contemplate consuming wooden chairs and metal ottomans built to look like delectable baked goods. She was there to check in on the Active Textile, the largest working prototype of a new class of materials that respond to environmental stimuli on their own, no robotics involved.

From afar, the Active Textile, which is a collaborative project between Designtex, the furniture company Steelcase, and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, looks like a living organism. It’s built like a Japanese partition—tall and wide, but foldable. The outer layer of fabric is gray, with a gradient running red to blue behind it. For the purposes of the exhibition, the textile is illuminated from behind by heat lamps, set to move rhythmically up and down like a miniature sun.

Unlike traditional fabrics, which would simply sit there, dead and dumb to the surrounding environment, chevron-shaped cuts in the Active Textile open and close in response to the movement of the lamp. As they’re bathed in heat, little wisps open up like frill-necked lizard inflating its throat. As the light retreats, the fringe tightens up, micro-military officers closing rank. It gives the entire installation a fragile but inviting feeling, like palm fronds swaying in the breeze.

For all the Active Textile’s delicate beauty, the science underpinning the project is a technical mouthful. “It’s six layers,” Derby explains while drinking tea in the Cooper Hewitt museum courtyard. A sheer polyester printed fabric, she says, enhances the lamp’s glow. An aluminum screen gives the textile its shape. And adhesives hold the whole thing together. But the material’s life-like behavior comes from the reaction between the top two strata, a printed face fabric and the low-density polyethylene film to which it is laminated.

These surface layers were carefully selected for something called a “coefficient of thermal expansion,” according to Derby. Every material, from the wood beams in your ceiling to the concrete beneath your feet, reacts to heat in slightly different ways. This happens naturally, all the time, often without our notice.

The true innovation at Active Textile comes from the manufacturing team’s decision to harness this behavior. By laminating two carefully-selected materials with different coefficients together, the production team found they could trigger in the textile a consistent, visible response to heat. On its own, one of those layers might not change much in response to a heat lamp. But taken together, the layers flick open or clamp close as they warm up and cool down.

Skylar Tibbits is the founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT and the progenitor of the Active Textile project. In 2014, Tibbits presented a TED talk about the future of what he called “4D printing.” While 3D printing emphasizes width, height, depth, or breadth, Tibbits proposed a fourth dimension of time. Materials could be designed to “self-assemble” or otherwise transform after they were initially produced. “This is like robotics without wires or motors,” he told the TED audience. We might one day print and install pipes inherently capable of expanding or contracting according to water flow, he said, or deploy drug-delivery nanobots that assemble themselves. Rigidity, the talk suggested, could soon be a thing of the past.

Basic textiles were a natural proving ground for early-stage programmable materials. “We were making like little small swatches and samples,” Tibbits told me over the phone. They relied on common databases to determine the thermal properties of various materials and tested combinations of various textiles at small scale. The primary goal was gaining new knowledge and creating a proof of concept. “But then the collaboration with Steelcase and Designtex was, ‘Why don’t we translate this to the marketplace?’” Tibbits said.

Together, the three teams narrowed in on the materials they wanted to use for the Cooper Hewitt showcase, as well as smaller but no less important details like color and cut. The cumulative color effect, which to my eyes looked like a fresh plum, is beautiful, but it’s also essential for energy absorption. “All of the different colors of the spectrum will absorb different amounts of light—essentially different amounts of temperature,” Tibbits says. The darker a color, the more light it absorbs; the whiter, the more it reflects. Similarly, the dancing chevrons determined the intensity of the textile’s movement. “Those cuts actually change the geometry,” Tibbits says. “Basically, the longer a beam is, the less force it takes to transform it at the end. If you have long strips, they’re going to be much more active than if you have little small ones.”

Past programmable textile projects have looked like lizard skins, the surface covered in tiny, flexing triangles that respond to light like a Venus flytrap responds to motion. Others, like oversized, rippled fencing masks. While the process of testing such material mixtures is laborious, Tibbits says, thanks to Steelcase and Designtex, the process of constructing them is easier than ever. With an industrial laminator and computer-controlled cutting machines, “we can make it in large quantities, on many different textiles,” he says. “It’s a big leap, in my mind.”

On that hot June day at the Cooper Hewitt museum, Derby looked closely at the Active Textile, noting the subtle changes it’d undergone over the months since installation. “We do see some cases where it’s not folding back into a perfectly flat arrangement,” she said, referring to a few tendrils that stayed open even as the heat receded.

All materials lose their strength and sensitivity over time. Shirts rip. Paint fades and chips. Wood cracks. The Active Textile is no different, though the warping process is sped up in its imperfect indoor display, where harsh heat lamps mimic the gentler passing sun. These imperfections might be frustrating to a theoretical future homeowner, who paid to hang Active Textiles in their windows. But given small deformities are a fact of life, these feel like a reflection of the textile’s fundamental liveliness.

That liveliness is essential to Tibbits’ vision. People used to understand, appreciate, and utilize the peculiarities of natural materials, he says. Ship makers, for example, used wood’s natural propensity to swell to seal the hulls of their boats and lock out water. Yurts, a common type of dwelling in Central Asia made of wool, held in heat over the winter and breathed easy in the summer. “We’ve kind of lost a lot of that knowledge,” Tibbits says. “Now, we tend to throw robotics at it.”

By eschewing screens and wires, Tibbits has used the most modern technology available—like those laminators and cutting machines—to create decidedly simple materials. In the process, he and his collaborators are blurring the boundaries between the nostalgic and the futuristic. “A lot of those older or craft-based knowledge of how material will respond and solve a problem for you,” Derby says.

A programmable textile probably won’t be in our homes or offices anytime soon. Designtex, Steelcase, and the Self-Assembly Lab say there’s more to do to refine these materials—and find an appropriate market. In the months and years to come, the lessons learned in the production of this prototype may be channeled into a responsive shade, clever privacy screen, or some other object that hasn’t even been dreamed up yet.

Standing in front of the Active Textile, resisting the urge to touch it as it waves its carefully-crafted tentacles at me, I find myself hoping for some third application—an unknown, interactive wildcard.

Written By Eleanor Cummins