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Afterimage

“And…go.” We took off with all the power our tiny thrusters could give us. We barely escaped the gravity well, heh, but that old clunker bounced off a potential barrier and skipped on through.

The well was dark and the fabric here was tight and elastic. You could practically ricochet off gravity/time junctures without having to deal with the squishy math of harmonic decay. Time and gravity in the FarStretch respond with the immediacy of lust. The Stretch craves to be touched and stretched, and yearns to push back. Oh, the resilience of youth!

Meanwhile, in his quarters aboard a FarStretch explorer Captain Howell kicked his war chest and mumbled to himself. The stars drifted by the porthole and Howell watched life and home slide out of view. The stars are clouds floating overhead and disappearing before you realize the pattern. The afterimage, it is said, is a glimpse of the secret order that suffuses natural and human laws. Howell glares out the porthole, as if daring the stars to form a connection, and whispers to himself “Don’t know what a sail-boat has to do with God.”

A flare of light obscures the Captain’s meditation. He leaps to feet and rushes to the bridge. The bridge access control interface announces the Captain’s presence and the first officer hands him a report, “thought you’d be interested.”

The captain scans the report:
A week and a day ago…a heist on IntraCenti…Deliberate Upset of Grand Unified Plan…

“So, a robbery, and they get away by bouncing into the Stretch…how am I doing so far?” asks the captain.

“Straight on.”

“We normally don’t get involved in this kind of thing. But Deliberate Upset is pretty high crime…how exactly does a heist lead to DU commander?”

“Never got your real-estate license captain?”

“Where are you going with this Spock?”

“It’s all about location, sir. IC is a nouveau riche colony on the edge of the skirts. It will eventually be a nucleus of its own, commanding the resources of hundreds of nodes. Thus, it is predicted and commanded by Vortex Theory.”

“OK, so IC is gonna be something someday. How does a single heist threaten the known laws of nature?”

“Vortex Theory is predicated on the presumption that chaos-networks are inherently predictable.”

“Yes, Commander we all are attune to the KnownLaws.”

“VT, Captain, is threatened because the nucleonic calculations that predicted-thus-commanded IC’s eventual raise to prominence were based on the presumption that Empire operates in a steady-state beholden to VT.”

“As so it is commended by the predictions, Spock. Why are we wasting our time.”

“The empire will fall when VT is proven false.”

The Captain jumps to his feet and presses his favorite button. It’s a macro that signals all senior staff for an emergency meeting on the bridge.

“VT is proven false. Our commitments Empire are thereby void. We shall give chase to our emancipators. Vote!”

“Captain, please, wait,” pleads the Medical Services Coordinator, I request more information before I participate in treason or blasphemy. Could you explain why you think VT is broken and how that leads to abandoning Empire?”

“The IC heist toppled an economy that was predicted-thus-commaned to become a nucleus. The prediction was false, thus the commandment is false, thus this side of the net will snap and ooze into an unknown unpredictable conglomeration, thus showing society isn’t beholden to steady-state, thus VT crumbles into chaos. It won’t be long before the news hits distribution centers even in the remotest outposts. When it does, a critical mass of the population will inevitably understand the ramifications and Empire will crumble.”

“I don’t understand says the Chef, surly there’s been other heists?”

“It’s a matter of degree and location.” Spock explains, “The perpetrators were deliberate and precise in their strike. What we will see is that an unplanned for event injected into a miraculously planned network is enough to unravel the whole thing.”

“So…saboteurs that understand BasicAspects in a deeper more profound manner than do Planners. Saboteurs that are willing to risk their own survival in order to debunk KnownUnderstanding. I don’t know who we are we dealing with, but I believe we’d be better off getting to know them.”

A clunker drunkenly ricochets off potential barriers, and stretches through wells. Its bulkheads moan and shriek in the flickering lights of Michelle’s quarters. She traces the shifting shadows that leap into grotesque jokes of themselves. She is chasing one across the back wall when a call comes in.

“What we got?”

“They call themselves the NowBorn and they thank us for unraveling Empire. And request a meeting to learn our philosophy”, Lee blows a low whistle, “I think we got our first groupies.”