Spirit and the Martian arts (a philosophical science fiction story chapter one)

 Spirit and the Martian arts (a philosophical science fiction story chapter one)

©2021 Garrison Clifford Gibson

 

Chapter One

Conformal space

 

   A loud raven caw crossing space disrupted sky domination of subtle chirp birds in the bush. The big black bird sounded friendly to Kurt like bright afternoon sunshine unconcerned with the splattered state of the world. When perceived the black feathers for others absorbed photons though the color for-itself uninterpreted by human eyes was as empty as the heart of darkness passing through local time.

 

Kurt Simagin heard the raven sound on many Y’Earth like planets. He recognized the intelligent bird as a friendly enough being. It was good to hear the sound in thornish scrub desert brambles on a Composition Nine traveler’s world. Partially decomposed bodies littered the landscape complicating contemporary history.  Simagin’s immediate task was to sort out the evidence of the place assigned by Delta Taco Tier One. Activating Simagin was the prerogative of the independent security consortium of the constellation of dwindled worlds seeking to keep a semblance of freedom from one of many evil empires littering the Universe.

 

   Simagin understood that when God created a Universe it was developed in a two-dimensional line of energy that was expanded to three dimensions like a membrane with the addition of a Higgs field. Stretching the line energy out over three dimensions made a Higgs Field of virtual energy of vast extent. Within the Higgs field might arise three-dimensional particles from the two-dimensional massless particles of the field itself as they became tangled up in the field overlapping themselves and bringing in to being the effect of three-dimensional particles with mass from massless two-dimensional particles. In such a way a Universe was born as George Lemaitre and Allan Guth had speculated about in the days before the discovery of the nature of the field. An infinite number of Universe membrane files existed next to one another in the special Modge Panc cabinet of teleological design. Each membrane could entail a limitless number of contingent dimensions and branches for spun-off Universes. Sometimes wickedness broke out interdimensionally within these Universes and slaughters of innocents and not-so-innocents and downright wicked beings occurred. Then, Kurt Simagin or some other Tier three operator was assigned to sort out and interdict if possible, for preventative and merciful reasons those perpetrators and causes that had brought the shift into beaning.

 

   Corpses were strewn in a rough perimeter and obviously had been posthumously munched on by Claxsop spiders that lived amid the dense foliage along the winding desert river. The Livid River had scoured out a valley overlapping centuries with the work of abrasive erosion. A few flying defense drones resembling wrens still glowed with blue light though inactive and broken around the scene of the last stand of a Bankop squad. Simagin looked around for sign of alien opposition forces, and then used a field sensor to scan for electro-magnetic and visual presence of opfor biological and mechanisms. He wondered what haters could have terminated the journey banker-warrior squad. So, he found a good-sized boulder to set down upon then built a lush global warming campfire to heat a cup of highland coffee to a scalding degree to take the edge of the experience.

 

    He knew that some investigators had developed psychological trauma that reverberated around their minds from seeing such travesties and was therefore took defensive countermeasures to prevent p.t.e.d. A memory of Mistress Sally making a stimulus check on him verged up from the deep; they'd shared r.e.m. and she do'oothed him right on the spot. He reminded himself not to be distracted thinking about the past too much in the field when Cannaemites could be advancing toward their quarry beyond his field of vision. Zvimmer, Kurt's emotional support coyote, rested on the ground looking outward toward likely enemy avenues of approach. Looking up, he smiled at Kurt than pawed a bone in the ground and began gnawing it.

 

   Kurt wanted to consider the motivations that could have prompted the minibattle that was a last stand for the banker-squad. Forming ideas that would arise from his subconscious mind into awareness he knew, could be induced by putting his thought onto some other topic during which the unrelated solutions or suggestions of solution might appear from the depths. His head-band guarded against impacts with a layer of battery gel stuffed with intelligent nano-machine electronics and communication structures. He said to it; ” Play the video about the guy seeking the American dream of building and owning his own storage shed.”

 

   A flying square of opaque nano-rasters appeared hovering in front of his eyes presenting the movie on a ten-inch screen. The nanorasters could visualize any sort of idea with A.I. tweak-work besides standard digital video then disappear to his combat battle-dress battery defense vest. Kurt watched Pedro Cordoba carrying lumber on his shoulder through a dark forest walking uphill and crossing muskeg bog over and over again reminding him of the myth of Sisyphus, yet in time a storage shed began to form at the top of the trail. The winter struck and the little building was buried under snow and ice. The Neo KGB discerned his activity in the forest and sent legions of harpies to impede his attempt to build the American dream. Pedro suffered a dislocated should and then a torn rotator cuff and left for the winter in a small open boat from the edge of the forest traveling down the coast a couple of hundred miles. The further adventures of Pedro interested Simagin, yet he had pressing details to look at over the killing ground, so he finished the last of the coffee, got up and walked about the area stopping at a pile of remains. He toed up and used a foot to flip over the body that remained about 60% complete

 

   The bankop operative's remains had a residual glow about them that indicated to Kurt that he had recently been in a capital accumulation vault that marked workers with silodye. There were just a few facilities in the galaxy able to afford the process of infusing quark-dye into the epidermis of visitors.

 

Kurt was a skeptic concerning the prospects for improvements to the character of the human species that were publicized whenever new facts or speculation about Higgs field related discoveries were made. Gravity occurs at light speed, and that would be natural if light speed is the norm for massless particle/waves or energy not slowed down to three dimensions. When energy becomes entangled from two dimensions to three and becomes embedded in a steady state in the Higgs Field, the aggregation of mass in the field reshapes the field and draws other mass toward it in field curvature. The field itself may act at the speed of light and create the appearance of gravity acting at the speed of light. If the field is expanding or is something is acting upon the field that isn’t of the three-dimensional mass the Higgs Field could seem to be causing space to expand. There is an obvious way to regard that condition though; aggregation of mass that causes the Field to warp and attract mass may reciprocally expand space of the field bereft of elements of the field drawn in the Higgs Field and mass interactive aggregation situation.

 

  Gravity is a marvelous thing. If it is an appearance because people see through a glass darkly embedded in the mass of particle/waves slowed down to sub-light speed in the Higgs Field, humans at least have the promise of discovering how it arises someday. Like the time when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac by God, and Abraham showed he had such faith in God existing so as to be regarded as worthy of the promise, the appearance of gravity on this side of the cloud of unknowing may someday be rewarded by the saving grace of truth appearing; as when God sacrificed His Son Jesus Christ to save all of those of faith. The truth will set gravity theorists free.

 

   Some people wonder about the relationship of God to the Universe and how the theory of evolution juxtaposes with the explanation of creation provided in the Bible. The accounts of contemporary cosmology and of the book of Genesis aren't in necessary contradiction or even in conflict as superficial reading or analysis indicates to some, though most haven't troubled to look to far into either field.   Consider what an eternal being who could create a Higgs field with a thought, or a thought of a field that has always existed like a library of every possible idea or universe that could ever exist, completely existing with God, would want to tell beings in a universe or thermodynamic process that he actualized, about how it came to be.  Kurt imagined imagining what kind of reconciliation he would try and thought that He might say briefly that; “I saw nothingness and brought light to it and over a period of time -days for you I will call them since general relativity wasn't existing yet nor even special relativity or energy and mass- I brought stars and dust to exist and man evolved innocently in an Eden of blissful ignorance until he/you/they grew smart enough to cultivate orchards, plant crops and etc. You were de facto booted out of Eden, into clothing, guilt with the knowledge of good and evil's difference and into the realm of Cain kills his brother Abel just to continue evolving in a wild format until I tried to correct your existential estrangement from my way of peace, wisdom and so forth. Your first civilization, incidentally, was located at a spot that is now beneath the Persian Gulf. At least there was one guy who followed my warnings about the rising global sea level during the end of the Wisconsin ice age. He; Noah and his family, build a boat and survived the flood that drowned those wicked people that kept going on with their immoral drift of destruction. Noah's sons went out to people living south of the Mediterranean Sea and became leaders, somewhat like the Verangian Vikings became leaders of Slavs living around the city they founded at Kiev. Hey, that brings you up to Charles Darwin and the present time with all of the interesting questions you can create concerning the paradoxes of the Higgs field, of mass, energy, space, time, a plethora of universes and modal logic possibilities without end.

  It is a great time to be alive except for the planetary destruction of the ecosphere and so forth. The problem about ignoring my son's (Jesus Christ) prophecy concerning the great first century tribulation should have been surprising to me yet it wasn't of course. Some of you are still looking for a great tribulation and take that paradigm as an excuse to keep destroying the environment and to stop building the kingdom of God up on Earth through an egalitarian, literate priesthood of believers. I am supposed to be resting now though, so I'll get back to you on that.”

   Kurt listened to the gently flowing water of the livid river and contemplated the fate of the corpse. Was the bankop saved? He thought that very unlikely, and remembered fragments of Baxter's ethics written so many centuries before from Directory IX. ‘When you have found yourselves in a state of sin and death, understand and consider what a state that is.' It may be you will think it a tolerable condition, and linger in it, as if you were safe; or delay your repentance, as if it were a matter of no great haste; unless you open your eyes, and look round about you, and see in how slippery a place you stand. Let me name some instances of the misery of an unregenerate, graceless state, and then judge of it as the Word of God directs you.

   As long as you are unconverted, you must needs be loathsome and abominable to God^. His holy nature is unreconcilable to sin, and would be unreconcilable to sinners, if it were not that he can cleanse and purify them. Did you know what sin is, and know God's holiness, you would understand this much better. Your own averseness to God, and your dislike of the holiness of his laws and servants, might tell you what thoughts he hath of you. “He hateth all the workers of iniquity'." Indeed, he taketh you for his enemies, and as such he will handle you, if you be not converted.

   Some think it strange that any men should be called " haters of God;" and I believe you will find it hard to meet with that man that will confess it by himself, till converting grace or hell constrain him. And indeed, if God himself had not charged men with that sin, and called them by that name, we should scarce have found belief or patience when we had endeavored to convince the world of it.

   Why did the world hate Christ himself? He tells you,” The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify against it, that the works thereof are evil'.""This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved dark rather than light, because their deeds were evil”

   It is a wonder of blindness, that this God-hating world and age, should not perceive that they are God-haters, while they hate his servants to the death. and implacably rage against them, and hate his holy ways and kingdom, and bead all their power and interest in most of the kingdoms of the world, against his interest and his people upon earth: while the devil fights his battles against Christ through the world, by their hands, they will yet confess the devil's malice against God, but deny their own; as if he used their hands without their hearts”

  The traveler's world was littered with micro-surveillance grains scattered like dust from globe encompassing drones. Kurt asked his smart unit to check the status of the chess engine first responder to live threats anywhere on the planet. It would know if macro-sized opposition forces were active and determine the best countermeasures as controller even scaled up to battlefield size. Nothing active was indicated the smart speaker said. Kurt thought that strange yet not entirely inconsistent with modern tech.

   Maybe bankop constructions were doomed to fail, being too small of socio-economic stature to rate any sort of success. Kurt took a biological survey unit from his carry belt and reached down to scoop in some of the less viscous portion of the corpse. Human-like beings are mostly made of water with a few pounds of well-structured chemicals thrown in, and they can be changed quickly or with evolving morphogenesis.

  The unit beeped a ready result, so Kurt said; “What is it?”

  “The composition is a dead bankop D.N.A. design that catastrophically evolved with input water nano remix to the nonliving compresence sampled.”

 Kurt thought about what the unit said for a few seconds then put it back on his belt. He knew that quality D.N.A. rapid evolver agents were costly outside of the prime urban star systems of the galaxy, and this particular composition nine traveler’s world Sendufax was thousands of light years from galaxy urban bands. Therefore, the primary agents of nihilistic evolution were likely to be well-financed.

 

Sendufax had paradigmatically similar planetary infrastructure to that of common travelers’ worlds built at useful locations. Within its core was an adjustable gravity dynamo that contained concentrated heavy metal mass. The mass characteristics could be increased with super-positioned particles entangled around the galaxy emerging at targeted spots as virtual mass increasing and altering the mass structure up the periodic table beyond Einsteinium to heavier forms of packing. Kurt adjusted the gravity dynamo's field characteristics with a multi-tool controller on his belt to lighten Sendufax's field a little so he could move about the world a little easier. He knew he had a long day ahead of him and thought conserving energy a good idea.

 

Kurt looked at Zvimmer and said; “Hey Yo, I have thought of something that reminds me of how problems expand. Maybe we will get a clue on how to narrow down the avenues of egress and identity of the agency that perpetrated the slaughter of the bankops littered about. And need I remind you not to chow down on any of the poor sod’s remains. Consider the infinite expansion of the dough of the Cookie-verse.”

 

Zvimmer growled.

“No worry Zvimmer, this is an analogy of edification. Scientists running experiments at cosmological scale and quantum ingredient size determined that the doughspace of the Cookieverse is expanding. What is more, is that the Cookieverse isn’t unique; it is just one of an infinite number of cookies cut out and baked from a singularity on a cookie sheet that inflated faster than light for a fraction of a second (relatively speaking). When the expansion stopped each cookie at its own special moment baked itself with a big bang and its own fine-temperature randomly selected cookie law constants to become a cookie in time with thermodynamics bring it to consume itself and gradually be digested in some instances by sentient being evolved within a cookie.

 

Each cookie verse if it had sentient products evolving from its special constant physical values (selected by random chance from a nearly infinite number of variables & model cookie recipes is simpler with an infinite number of variables and with constants being just nominal selections of ingredient baking temperatures and times) would find its sentients consuming the cookie itself.

 

Sentients within a cookie-verse would learn that the constants of the cookie that are baked in might have been very different indeed. Instead of gravity having the value of coconuts it might have been sugar sprinkles. Instead of various quantum values of vanilla it might have been chocolate or peppermint etc. The most informative and marvelous discovery of cookie baker mathematician scientists for-themselves might have been the discovery that besides eternal inflation of cookie dough and infinite cookieverses,  each cookie-verse dough from a cookie sheet branch would expand in an infinite number of directions in what was modeled as the infinite dimensions of Hilbert space.

 

 Gauss Hilbert was one of the greatest of cookie baking theorists of all time. He consulted with Albertus Einstein concerning the nature of cookie dough in the general and special theories of cookie dough. Cookie dough was determined to stretch or collapse under the influence of dark matter (a very special ingredient) as opposed to dark energy that can expand space time again within a baked cookie. Evidently cookie dough space can reappear within baked cookies as cookie-verses remain within the eternal realm of the Great Cookie hosting all cookie-verses. Our cookie-verse was discovered to have resumed expanding about 25 years ago and may accelerate until it no longer could be said to exist, yet after the cookie-verse has consumed itself with thermodynamics. This seems to be a self cleaning oven implicitly contained within the space dough.

 

The Great Cookie-verse is comparable to an infinite fractal that can create infinite branch and cookie sheets within itself and infinite dimensions with the signal difference that all of its cookies have variable constants for there seems to be nothing constant except values of expansive space dough and mathematical forms representing cookie verse values, the latter being constant in the sense they are always subject to change in the Parmenidean sense of water flowing under the bridge always changing yet the river never changes as well as the opposite viewpoint of Heraclitus that one can never step into the same river twice because it is always changing. What is in motion stays in motion except for the object itself because it is only moving in relation to other objects that aren’t or that are moving at a different speed. The Great Cookie is marvelous an may occupy no more actual space than a singularity- an idea in the thought of the Great Cookie baker with the hyperdimensional variable fractals requiring no space to exist within at all.”

 

Isn’t it about time we move upriver toward the settlement on the Haitian mesa? Common  Zvimmer. Kurt started walking along the river bank; Zvimmer got up and trotted alongside.

 “Yes Zvimmer; the local region of dough on a cookie sheet that breaks off in one of ten to the 500^th power varieties of phase space to become a uniquely valued Cookieverse, except for an infinite number of other inaccessible cookies with the same initial local constants, was the model for astrophysics cookie baker researches informing us of the nature of the Great cookie containing all Cookieverses and space dough.”

Zvimmer dropped the bone he had in his mouth and tilted his head to look curiously at Simagin.

 

Kurt stopped for a minute along the path following the Livid River northwest. He and Zvimmer wore foot to calf length field boots protecting them from lower extremity attacks and providing a ten-fold increase over human strength. Field operatives seldom contracted ankle or knee injuries if they were human, and if not, the damaged extremity could be replaced with replaceable snap-in leg units. Kurt and Zvimmer had made planetfall from a near speed of light event retro-drop originating at a local diminished worlds alliance entrepot base named Cargone. After landing with powered-chutes floating and collecting star electrons in descent the equipment was switched off to lower opposition force surveillance detection signatures. Simagin now activated the power legs for Zvimmer and himself.

  The sky turned blood red and an ominous wind arose throwing a haze of Sendufaxan dust aloft occluding vision. Sendufax was locked in a stationary geocentric orbit mid-way between twin red dwarf stars orbiting one another. Evidently the color compensation unit for the planet had switched off. Kurt thought that not a good sign. He and Zvimmer continued on their way toward the high Haitian mesa gradually increasing slope decreasing the distance between themselves and the Traveler’s world settlement of Gold Plum.

 

 Along the path the river flowed past the point of nihilism named for an early in Sendufaxan history conflict where an Obelisk commemorated the culminating skirmish. A few more bankop bodies were strewn here. Zvimmer pawed one such as used both front paws to dig next to it. His work revealed a yellow brick, so Kurt walked over to take a look.

  “Move aside Zvim; let me see what you’ve found.”

   Zvim trotted away to survey other corpses that were more fresh than the last group a mile southwest. Kurt kicked away more dirt revealing more brick units of what was apparently a yellow brick road beneath the Livid River path. An interesting finding he thought and filed away in memory. He said;

“Let’s go Zvim; it’s time to move on.”

 

 Desert lands were less expensive to develop than forestland and mountains on Traveler’s worlds so deserts tended to be the most common environment encountered. Mountains were even costlier because of the lop-sided gravity balancing compensators required to stabilize a planet with unequally allocated mass at a planetary surface. Zvim and Kurt liked mountains though so they experienced increase alienness passing through the red haze of the desert moving quickly toward a broad, elevated mesa becoming visible in the distance.

 

With so many bankop casualties;  far more than Kurt expected to find from his info-brief supplied by the company client, it was easy to infer that something meaningful had occurred here; a conflict involving property of some kind usually as that was the source of most conflicts. Kurt had a direct-fire weapon ready though hoping not to need to use it soon. He queried his aux memory chip in the battery defense vest about the Haitian settlement.

 The A.I. said; the settlement of Golden Plum as 100 regular service personnel and the Markmuster Inn rooms for three-hundred. The Inn has a level four security vault; more than is required for ordinary travelling security, advanced communications at a facility owned by a shell corporation the identity of which is screened. Incidentally thirty of the one-hundred persons on the Markmuster staff are security personnel; that is quite a large number for an ordinary traveler’s world.”

  Atop the Mesa Kurt saw a few explosions, laser lights in the red gloom. He and Zvim increased their pace in the attempt to reach Golden Plum before the end of the conflict.

 

Simagin and Zvimmer’s increasing pace covered the remaining five miles to Golden Plum in a few minutes. The war in a teacup raged on. Kurt and Zvimmer dropped to the ground at the crest approach to the mesa to survey the battle to discern participants before entering the fray.

 

Golden Plum was being battered, bruised and assaulted with multi-phase techno weapons from a so far invisible attacker. Kurt saw bank operative cadre like those on the path below falling to the soil, variegated in posichs of killing insults to life. Kurt and Zvimmer experienced a distracting, painful audio buzz of weaponized infrasound that was evidently settle-wide as an element of full spectrum battle with obvious nuclear and atomic disarrays excised from the battle toolkit. As Kurt and Zvimmer rose to get a closer look a sudden explosion through the roof of the Markmuster Inn was followed by a bright as a nuke extrusion broadbeam fading off above the world into nothingness while the last bankop and security personnel were smoldering lumps on the ground.

 Walking carefully into Golden Plumb it was obviously squashed down to the stage or requiring complete replacement by the Dwindling Worlds tourist bureau. They surveyed the scene of macabre death with bodies flung like wet hot cooked spaghetti strands onto the exterior of the Markmuster. Kurt whistled to Zvimmer to stay on guard before entering the Inn.

  The hotel lobby was a shambles and before the front desk was a gaping thirty foot smoking hole going deep below to an empty Level four security vault. Kurt shot an explosive climbing bolt into the front desk and fast roped down to the fourth subterranean level of the vault. It was empty; he wondered what had been within it that was worth annihilating one hundred souls. Kurt zipped up the rope to the surface and walked over the lobby to the main door.

 

Exiting the Markmuster Kurt and Zvimmer found what remained of the security and communication building. Plainly commo had been cut early in the battle. Kurt’s client must have been in a local region of the galaxy- or at least had a branch base close enough to Sendufax to learn of the initial phase of attack and hire his company to send someone to look into it. Maybe they were located on Cargone like himself and able to respond quickly. Kurt found some component spares and restored to communications to let H.Q. know of his finding of the state of Sendufax.

 

Kurt and Zvimmer after exiting the Inn walked over to a debris free plaza somewhat centralized amidst the wreckage. Kurt said to Zvimmer; “Yo, I hate to say that we haven’t anything to eat, I believed we could grab a bite here at one of the settlement’s restaurants. Why don’t you go out and scout about for a few dumb animal steaks in one of the refrigerator units of the stores and I will build a small global warming campfire to flame em over.”

  Zvim eagerly loped off on his quest to find dinner. Kurt gathered firewood from shattered building facades and window frames and carried it to a fire-pit that he excavated with a small frag grenade. The suddenly as a dark cloud could block sunlight, the red sky darkened further and the dust storm that had yet to abate.

 A peanut star atmospheric entry ship descend unto the edge of the plaza, blew its hatch and from it strode a tall woman dressed in a transparent business suit wearing a specop combat battery helmet. The suit absorbed and recycled all bodily waste before adding some of its content with structure support atoms into the wearer over time fading away to nothing. When it was perfectly clear it was a fresh issue, gradually changing color toward the end of its life. Business field suits absorbed energy and useful molecular structures from the environment, including oxygen. She looked directly at Kurt who was some 60 meters away and walked toward him.

 “I see from your D.N.A. patterns that you are Kurt Simagin. I am Loren Klure from the Dwindling Worlds accounting office. They sent me here about the same time as you via your company h.q., yet I was farther away aboard a Tachycore space vessel investigating a meta-issue and was retasked here to survey the Sendufax vault. It is, or was, a classified high level secure temporal vault we used to cache advanced intellectual capital patents enroute to more secure facilities.”

 “Well I can tell you Loren that your secure vault is quite empty. Some kind of particle beam emerged from it and disappeared into offwhirld space when I arrived. We were about to start making dinner arrangements, would you like to join us for flamed dumb meat?”

 “Who else is with you?”

 “My smart coyote, Zvimmer.”

 As if on cue Zimmer arrived with a sealed pack of several dumb meat steaks certified from Veggimanitarians to have been grown pain-free salvaged from a local spiffy-mart.

Zvim dropped the steaks at Kurt's feet and trotted over to smell the new arrival. She patted his head briefly and Zvimmer returned to sit near the fire looking outwardly on watch for untoward movement down likely avenues of approach.

  Kurt took a few sharp metal fragments from a cheap statue destroyed in a blast and fashioned several skewers for the meat setting them with the meat above the dry wood he set burning with a micro-torch.

 

Loren walked over and sat down on a crushed electro-float transporter followed by Kurt.

She said; let’s talk about what happened here Simagin. I am a forensic accountant for the office, or was initially before specialized training in a related field, and think it would be useful to compare ideas with you concerning the exfiltrated or destroyed intellectual capital that has more value than we can put a price on.”

 

“Yeah, well Zvim and I found a skein of skirmish casualties of your bankops down the Livid River. I would guess bankops investigating unusual scouting presence signs were on-scene and terminated by the opposition element that moved swiftly to fully engage the limited and ineffective bankops security people stationed here. Bankops downriver encountered the lead element of a superior force and were directly rolled up by the opposition who took the intellectual capital from the Markmuster Inn and exfiltrated to points unknown. How is that Loren?”

“Good enough Kurt; and logical. The Dwindling worlds have experienced loss of intellectual props that emerge in a variety of forms elsewhere and elsewhen about the infinite Meta-verse. Reasonably enough we would like to slow down or stop the thefts and sabotages.

 Zvimmer moved in to look at the steaks that were becoming well done dripping juicy sizzling fat into the fire. Kurt moved a skewer off to let a steak cool for Zimmer. He asked Loren; “How do you like yours Loren?”

“Medium rare would be fine Kurt.”

“So it is Loren” he said handing her a skewer with a large chunk of very tender dumb beast meat slaughtered with compassionate butchering.

Loren said;”There are two basic forms of government for human worlds these days Kurt. Those that seek to concentrate wealth in a tiny minority and make slave laborers and happy work minions of everyone else, and those that prefer free enterprise and democracy with limits to capital acquisition as it threatens the integrity of elections and enterprise. The Dwindling worlds as you may be aware prefer free enterprise with capital concentration defense caps as a better way to develop human potential. Corporatism and even communism share imperial political goals in the sense that power is concentrated and the majority are repressed and conditioned by the minority holding the reins of wealth and power. We suspect that the theft of the intellectual from the Sendufax vault was directed by our opposition forces and affiliates. The number of minions working to make slaves of themselves and to become subjects of imperial forces is fundamentally without limit. Evidently a modicum of intelligence and creative thought is requisite for comprehending the nature of imperial-corporatist-communist political power concentration.”

 Kurt had taken his own skewer of dumb beast steak and took a large bite. “This steak is pretty tasty” he said.

“Yes, it is very agreeable” Loren replied taking another bite.

 “In my opinion”, said Kurt continuing on Loren’s idea, “elites concentrating wealth and power would seek to objectively transform human subjects into quantitative mass for simpler processing and utilization. Mass social identity cloned into archetypes with psychological conditioning, individual identity and differentiation of thought restricted and eliminated whenever possible, reducing human society to quantities of material existence, input, output and throughput vectors most useful for the further concentration of wealth and power to the elites with the reciprocal of human herd contentedness in becoming total subject minions of the elites.”

 “That is a grim way to put it Kurt, though accurate enough. A corollary would be the theft of intellectual properties from independent worlds and individuals within a broader spectrum war on objectively independent, nonconformist to power singularities free enterprise, egalitarian democratic-republic planets.”

  Zvim watched the pair of humans for signs of beast poisoning entrapment, and satisfied that the meat was clean of poison traps went to the skewer and took his piece of beast steak in his teeth.

Kurt said; “When you finish off the meat why don’t you look around the settlement for anything that would help us discover who and where the perps are and went Yo?”

 Yo with his steak trotted off into the red darkness of Golden Plum.

“Seeing the night through rose colored glasses can become tiresome, I will ask the office to expedite restoration of Sendufax”, and she spoke to a link to her ship in stationary position above the atmosphere.

 

“I’ve encountered corporate religions at the edge of a few of the empires I have encountered over the years. They tend to become syncretistic and jettison inconvenient elements from historical holy books like the Christian/Jewish Bible. In some societies Sunday worship comprises viewing commercial entertainment sporting events.”

‘Those are troubling histories Kurt, yet consider that atheism and avarice are normalized elite characteristics even if it is avarice for power and control of all others. They may take up the sadist’s pleasure of controlling the interior of others- that is the thoughts and minds of sentient beings in order to support their self-conception as ontological gods.

 I don’t know if you have given it much thought; there are n number of possible economic configurations for a world, a galaxy and economics locally, yet humans tend to select those that are less than optimal in regard to egalitarian allocations of opportunity for individual maximization of potential, and that are deleterious of the ecosphere within their self-sustaining geotemporal region. Humans are their own monkey wrench to the ecosphere as they develop comfort and power, intelligence and technology. Eventually elites wrench social development and concentrate power to themselves with an occasional false conscious belief that they are benefactors of humanity or of societies by enslaving them. The work of the dwindling worlds is to offset that historical bias with reinforcement of individualism, free enterprise and freedom of religious thought in addition to philosophical and theological license.

  We know the Universe has an infinite number of independent sub-universes arising through eternal inflation. Nothing is eternal though that occurs temporally- even if it goes on forever, for time is a relationship between events, an order or ordinal relationship especially concerning thermodynamically subject substance inclusive of space as energy rather than space as true nothingness.

 Therefore wrong ideas of elites repressing human free enterprise and thought may have religious destiny consequences…it is possible that the entire Universe with infinite branches is cardinally inferior to the spirit of God. Humans can only know an abstract structure of a theoretical Metaverse much less true knowledge of its boundary conditions that could be spiritual.

  What is the shape and form of spirit, or even of Universe infinitely packed in the infinite dimensions of Hilbert space that could occur within a microdot? Quality economics require intelligent economic design from free thinking, free enterprising, spiritual beings Kurt.

  So we of the Dwindling worlds have constructed neural networks of planets amidst the galactic wildernesses to create syntegrity for our artificial and human intelligence enterprise of grand scale that may be able to investigate more deeply regions of the Metaverse that are hard to reach. It is devastating for us to have the material avarice of elite subjugators and galaxy conquerors steal our intellectual capital for-themselves.”

“Sure, I agree with you Loren. You know my coyote has been gone a little bit too long and his location transponder has gone dark. Do you mind if I go off for a while to find Him?

“No, of course not Kurt. Go find your coyote. I will look into the vault for residuals.”

  Kurt wandered off into Golden Plumb’s darkness probing its farther reaches for a sign of Zvim. He found an unusual three dimensional hologram standing wave image of a female coyote at the ruins of a police station, at its base was one of Zvim’s power boots. Kurt walked over to it, not wary enough, reached for it and was immediately drawn through into an elsewhen trap.

 As he spun through confusement space his reading in basic astrophysical structures popped into mind. Elsewhen traps connect alternative universe threads into one of infinite numbers of infinite dimensions with infinite numbers of universes themselves. It’s is highly recommended that even explorers should eschew elsewhen  transportation yet elsewhen traps were commonly used by aliens in adjacent fractal universe permutations to snag unwary sentients downward toward their own regions of being. Usually the dimensional matrices of universes trapping human were close to our own, so it was reasonable to leave a breadcrumb trail of altered string scale format along the course of travel to the new universe system branch through modification of inflation space characteristics that would hold shape for a while yet leave permanent formation traces upon pre-big banging incipient universes associated with local inflation space as locked in values of constants.

  Kurt set loose an inflaton space agitating string vibrator from his camobattery defense vest to superposition heatless, massless, non-dimensional proto-string points trailing in his wake. Where he would end up only the aliens knew for sure. As he spun through the darkness he thought of the Lord and the Word’s capacity to shape all physical constants of every existing Universe as if they were ideas as  spiritual moments of meaning appearing like predestined conformal streams in-themselves.

 

Loren finished her dumb beast steak, stood up and looked about for Kurt who wasn’t in sight through three hundred and sixty degrees. The ruins of Golden Plumb were smoldering and as unsettled as the dust storm continuing to stir Sendufax. She decided to venture to the Markmuster Inn to inspect the vault for herself.

 

  Sophia grabbed the rope still attached to the front desk and moderated her descent four floor down with a magnetic rope climbing clip. She interfaced with thought sensors to control the pace down the magnetic cord to the vault floor.

 

  The walls were made of strong data security bricks mostly impervious to burning, flooding and electromagnetic pulse insults. Though scorched by some great heat the data bricks would contain an exceedingly large volume of recoverable data bits. So Loren took an adherence control flexible tablet from her field kit bag, fixed it to the wall and moved her fingers deftly over the tablet’s i/o field programming it silently to interrogate and exfiltrated all reversible data and relay it upward to her ship above the atmosphere;  the Space Vessel (SV) Shibboleth.

 

Within a few seconds a highlight audio stream of the salient facts of recent Sendufaxan history played for her in brain sound synthesizer from a stream sent from the Shibboleth’s mainframe.

 

Loren learned of the nature of the attack and attackers while she reattached her climbing clip to the mag rope and lifted upward to the lobby desk where she detached from the magnocord and walked towards and through the front entrance.

 

Kurt still hadn’t returned so she continued her inspection of Golden Plumb. The sensors that had observed events on the planet until those of Golden Plumb were destroyed were of no use in locating Kurt or his coyote. She continued carefully walking about until reaching the devastated police station. The first thing that she saw was coyote’s boot in front of the large image of a female coyote. She recognized a honey trap and looking a little closer discerned that an almost invisible someplace-elsewhen trap was the host of the image of the coyote.

 

So much for Kurt and Zvimmer she thought. I wish them luck wherever they are. She returned to her peanut orbiter and lifted off to mate with the Shibboleth and begin fine tuning the mission parameters in pursuit of the destroyers of Golden Plumb and theft of seven hundred and twenty-one trilobytes of intellectual capital.

 

The SV Shibboleth was a hive of forensic accounting activity with hundreds of astro accounts searching the stars and galaxies for a hint of intelligent dark energy design fraud. Dark energy was a favorite tool of the freebooters working for The Criminal Empire to insert an expanding barrier of space between honest Dwindling star systems and their construction at the edge of the observable region of the Metaverse. With resource systems beyond any immediate sort of space tunneling control systems from the honest Dwindling star systems that were just inhabited sparsely with Dwindling planet’s employees pirates found them ripe for easy plundering when they filled the sky overhead.

 

Loren exited her peanut shell and received visual input of the final salient events on Sendufax near and in Golden Plum. With live input active memory she saw inner visions downloaded via implant from the Shibboleth’s mainframe that included the hull of the ship with shaped-hull neural processing architecture.

  A zero optical signature camouflage carrier black body ship opened its door near the Lived River of many slaughters south of the point of nihilism. It released a legion of invisible flying attack drones colorized by the Shibboleth’s A.I. for Loren to see. More emerged from beneath the soil of Sendufax to slaughter the A.I. in a multi-spectrum barrage of insults to existence. More raced quite fast up the Lived to attack Golden Blum began a systematic, quick termination of sentient life.

  The Markmuster Inn though a security level four facility was a paper tiger to the overwhelming combined force of hundreds of drones reinforced by the drones that had eliminated bank operatives downstream. The black body carrier hopped from downstream with Golden Plum subdued and landed in the plaza in front of the Markmuster stationary a foot above the ground and opened its door once more to disgorge one grim figure; a Commandante Heneral Cheryl Scaldeen the Shibboleth’s  A.I. political intelligence related. Apparently she had appeared at other robbery massacres in recent encounters of the bloodiest sort. Loren thought it good to know the face of the enemy instead of needing to chase an invisible empire.

 

The Criminal Imperial Empire had overt and covert branches of activists as well as special espionage operatives scattered around numerous galaxies in which were located the primary resources of the Dwindling worlds; formerly known as worlds with stable prospects. Yet where to look for a clue to the location of the invisible empire or even the support base for Commandante Heneral Scaldeen?