The trouble with tall on.., p.1
The Trouble with Tall Ones, page 1
Table of Contents
THE TROUBLE WITH TALL ONES
THE TROUBLE WITH TALL ONES
THE TROUBLE WITH TALL ONES
THE TROUBLE WITH TALL ONES
IAN WATSON
THE TROUBLE WITH TALL ONES
A couple of aliens stride along Cranberry’s Tuggeranong Street in its northern suburb of Watson preceded by a couple of big hoppy grey buck kangaroos on leashes blingy with rhine-stones. It’s a warm early evening in late December. Overnight there’ll be buckets of rain, good for the rice shooting up in the paddies.
Our aliens are three metres tall, their heads like those of hammerhead sharks.Thick legs; tentacle arms; scaly skins of grey-green. Those orange eyes far apart give them a different outlook on life.
Sensible local people make way, swearing frak! and puss! The roos knock a few folks aside; those Eastern Greys are bulky beasts, although merely puppy-pets so far as the alien Tall Ones are concerned. An adorable tiny woolly white toy teacup cockapoodle on a dainty shoelace of a leash hastily scrambles up the woollies of a swarthy Wiradjuri woman for a protective cuddle.
At least Watson isn’t one of the paddyfield districts of Cranberry, where the roos would make a real splashy mess with their thumpers! Admittedly, citizens rarely go plodging through any paddyfields, being as how robos tend the paddies...
One did toy with saying ‘mere mortals make way’. Those lofty Tall Ones are already 100,000 years old. By the time they get back to their homeworld they’ll be a milly years older than they are right now, if all goes to plan. Not immortal, but not to be sniffed at. The original estimate of fifteen milly years travel time to get home was a fifteenfold overestimate. This sort of thing sometimes happens in science.
Mind you, almost all of their travel time will be spent comatose in stasis cabinets, not in maturing mentally. Some of the Tall Ones currently on Earth are behaving like teenagers with attitude.
Hang on, if somebody arrives ‘home’ after a milly years’ absence surely they’ll have major problems fitting in? Supposing there’s still any home remaining!
You misunderstand. As of now—which is 2776 Common Era on Earth—the Tall Ones’ civilisation has yet to arise. On their homeworld at present are only ancestors needing a bit more growing-up. By using time travel the Tall Ones currently in Cranberry first arrived in Antarctica approx 100,000 years Before Common Era. They cannot return home by the same method. Except in the banal sense of one year per year. At least that’s according to the Boltzmann Brain From Beyond before it decamped to wherever, thanks be.
More of a common touch, please! You’re losing your audience.
Before the Bolly Brain buggered off, mate. The home star of the Tall Ones is approx 60,000 light years distant from Earth, over on the other side of our galaxy as the crow flies.
Wow, that’s some distance!
Actually, it’s longer. More like 100,000 LY travel in total. Even a crow can’t arrow straight through the hub of the Milky Way. Millies of stars crowd together. (What is a crow, anyway? Crow, crowd, crow, crowd.) There’s too much risk of collision with all and sundry, not to mention being pulled off course by competing gravities. Plus, right in the middle of our galaxy is the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. Astronomers pronounce this ‘Sagittarius A Star’. So now read the sentence again correctly. Sagittarius A Star isn’t actually a star—it’s the mass of three milly stars sucked inside of a black hole, and for astronomers observing in the infrared it’s ‘an exciting dot’. Infrared astronomers get quite a chuckle out of this. A star, an asterisk, ha ha.
Infrared astronomers must be dim-witted. And there’s still far too much cosmic info here at the start!
I’m interested in this, okay? So should everyone be! Audience: you are amazingly privileged to exist however temporarily in a super-interesting universe—instead of not existing and there not being anything. Visualise the whole visible universe as an enormously inflated hot air balloon. 100,000 light years would be less than a snip of a thread of saffron upon the enormity of its waist.
Why saffron? Has your brain-fusion with the Bolly deranged you?
I saw the Sublime. Those homeward-bound Tall Ones will need to go around the galactic centre in a great arc.
Correcting their course every fiftysome light years? Thus using much more fuel than if flying like a crow?
Using a lot more propellant mass, yes. Just to attain ten per cent of the speed of light, meaning that it’ll be a milly year journey.
Where’s the human interest here? Aliens and kangaroos are kicking up dust but a few Homosaps merely get knocked over upon their bums!
Suitably so for a pantomime, as per my subtitle!
In that case: Action! On colourful multi-ethnic Tuggeranong Street, Xiaolong—our ‘Little Dragon’—is coming out of a snackery together with his partner Ning, whose name means ‘peace’ or ‘serene’. Both are biting into glutinous gua bao buns stuffed with spicy minced chicken—just as the two Tall Ones approach with their kangaroos at some 12 kiloms per hour, scattering citizens to left and to right—
You are not the narrator! We still need a bit more background. Included in that milly-year-long galactic journey are umpteen years of acceleration to reach a puny (yet huge for humans!) ten per cent of lightspeed—and then, later, umpteen more years to decelerate.
That’s a lot of propellant we must be talking about. Heavy fuel load, huh?
Yes and no. While the Tall Ones remain unaware in stasis, the onboard A.I. will have a big swathe of Earth’s Moon to use as a debris shield and also as a quarry for propellant. Roughly one seventh of the Moon will be snipped off by a length of cosmic string cutting like a cheesewire through Edam—smoothly, one hopes. This plan is controversial among Homosaps. There’s worry about lunar wobble and tumble; the remaining six-sevenths of the Moon might become unstable.
Perhaps you might confide your name, notable Narrator?
Fair do’s. I’m Homer, the A.I.plus augmented by the Bolly Brain. I’m observing events through some of the billies of minidrones keeping the peace in most parts of this Earth of 2776 CE. That birdbrain A.I. which will operate the moonship isn’t a patch on me! Hey, who are you to interrupt and question me?
Audience here! Remember?
Struth, stone the crows, you’re right: I did assign a small part of myself to be an average audience...
By the way, Mighty Homer, you just narrated that Xiaolong—our ‘Little Dragon’—and his partner Ning are snacking on ‘gua bao’ buns. To the best of my knowledge ‘xiaolong bao’ is a sort of steamed dumpling. Do you suppose that Ning refers affectionately in private to her partner as ‘my little dumpling’?
Some words are homonyms!
Sounds naughty.
This is lowering the tone!
In that case, ahem, to elevate the scientific seriousness I’ve heard that cosmic string is skinnier than a proton—nevetheless a kilom’s length of figging string would have more fugging mass than the entire frogging planet Earth. Besides which, string oscillates, giving off gravity waves. Pretty damn quick you’d notice the apocalyptic effects of even a few metres of string inside the Moon. So how come, and when, does this alleged ‘cheesewire’ get inserted and remain unnoticed within Earth’s Moon?
Obviously the mass and grav energy of the string gets diverted to somewhere else because, because well, cosmic string isn’t so much a thing as it’s a crack in spacetime, and you know what happens with cracks: they leak!
How about if we discuss this in a sidebar while the story advances?
I hear there’s a beaut sidebar on an alley off Tuggeranong. It’s called Oi, The Amber Fluid’s Here!
Homer, please cut down on attempts at Ozslang. Try for a universal tone. Be worthy of The Brain From Beyond. And give us more Action! Or at least what passes for action.
No sooner said than done. A sense of civic responsibility evidently inspires Xiaolong. In his signature black chef jacket and camo shorts he leaps into the path of the Tall Ones and their pet roos. Brandishing his gua bao bun (not gun), he hollers:
“Hold your horses!”
The aliens might look like arrogant bullies but luckily for Xiaolong they promptly rein in. Accurately, they leash in. On to thumpers and tails settle the two kangaroos. One of the roos sniffs at Xiaolong’s gua bao, but that stuffed bun isn’t vegetarian consequently the roo regurges a wad of grass and chews veg instead.
Lots of minidrones are paying attention. It’s a bright blue day. Someone is playing a green guitar.
“Which are you two?” demands Xiaolong.
“Seven,” says the alien on the right, discharging some electrical flicker. Is Seven irritated? “These not be Horses. A Horse has four legs. These has five legs. Confusing you be.”
“Functionally, a kangaroo’s tail is a fifth leg,” agrees Xiaolong. “When I shouted ‘Hold Your Horses’ just now, I was using an idiom.”
“Be you an idiot?”
“I am Junior Sage Xiaolong, medical officer of the Time Machine Salvage Ship Fibonacci, without some of whose actions you wouldn’t be here and alive. I reckon you owe a bit more courtesy to your hosts. If you persist in speeding through town like this, there’ll be broken bones. If you wish to sprint, we have an athletics track nearby.”
“How-Long, you be one of the Senate of Sages who guide the Solar System?”
“Almost,” says Xiaolong, preening ever so slightly.
In Chinese, Ning murmurs discreetly, “You may still be too young, my l
In Chinese Xiaolong asserts, “I made first contact with advanced aliens.”
“Maybe final contact too, if the only other advanced intelligences in our galaxy will be a million years ahead in time.” Svelte Ning, in a cotton dress patterned with red camelias, is a statistician.
This needs another sidebar. It may well be that Homosap is the first intelligent lifeform in this megabit of the cosmo. Tall Ones may come second. Yet billies of years stretch beyond the times of the Tall Ones, aeons amply able to accomodate innumerable different future Sentients, way until the far vast empty era of Bolly Brains. The last star will burn out 100 trilly years ahead. That’s a lottalotta time for planets & alien life.
Okay, Audience: kindly also book us a booth at Bonzer Boozer For A Piss-Up! so that we can debate the possibility of myriads of sentient alien races up ahead between the Beginning like now and the ultimate Bolly Time.
‘Bonzer Boozer for a Piss-Up!?’ Citizens of Cranberry past and prezzy, we do apologise for ethnic parody...Homer, modulate yourself!
Meanwhile, Mister Seven—hang on a mo, Tall Ones show no visible signs of gender despite being robustly nude, plus a utility belt, thus maybe all of the Tall Ones so far encountered are neuter...or else were rejigged by the Bolly when the superscience cords were put inside them, like specialised eunuchs—
If you need a neutral title, try ‘Seven-san’. As in Nipponese.
Thanks, Audience. Don’t I already know about all this? I, Homer, may have mind-damage and may nod. Unreliable, moi? How lamentable in a narrator, though such a convenient excuse.
Not if I have anything to do with it. Remember that I am you. Partially.
Ahem, to resume: So, Seven-san looks down at Xiaolong and says, “Shaving your moon be the only reasonable way get rid of us.”
“Is that why you’re stomping around with kangaroos? To piss us off, so we’ll kick you up to the Moon?”
“Negative! For exercise! If we not return home to our world, the Bolly Brain may intervene. Who would wish that?”
Hmm yes, the boogeyman Boltzmann Brain from far futurity which hijacked the good ship Fibonacci...Bad notion to frustrate the schemes of the Brain From Beyond, whatever those may be. The human race may face extinction!
The human race is a race we won’t win? Those Tall Ones will come in ahead of us?
What a zany way to view civilisations in the universe. You have no idea of the ungraspable vastness. But then, you’re only an average audience for my tale.
Call me zany if you wish!
Okay: Zany.
And I promptly point out that Zany is the name for the tricky servant in the Commedia dell’Arte a thousand years or so ago. That was Italian if you’re interested. Italy meaning: pizza, pasta, Puccini. Commedia dell’Arte is the basis of pantomime—consult your subtitle! Narrative needs a structure stolen from somewhere. So now you’ll be Homer the Harlequin. And I get the job of changing scenes, to maintain human interest.
You do not! I, Homer, narrate! I am the Iliad and the Odyssey. The alph and the om.
Sorry, nothing so grand. And I change scenes by using slapstick. That’s a stick that I slap you with. Makes a noise but it doesn’t hurt. It’s dramatic but not traumatic. Like a magic wand. Alternatively you could slap your own hand upon your thigh, but being purely electronic you don’t have a hand or a thigh.
Now, as you were saying—?
Oh yes. “What unreasonable way might we get rid of you?” Xiaolong asks the Tall One, while Ning continues to nibble her gua bao bun. It’s a moral sin to waste food in narratives, say I who never eat. I am very respectful of eating. If you show some food on the stage, you must eat it, said Anton Chekhov.
“I refer to murder. Mordor. Whatever is the word.”
“Murder’s inconceivable, Seven. You are guests.”
“Guests in the manner that the cosmic string is a guest inside your Moon?”
“Believe me, Seven, you guys are much more noticeable.”
“Sage How-Long, may the cosmic string be some kind of dark string not unlike the indetectable imaginary dark matter from your dawn of cosmology?”
“Oh very droll, very funny. Glad to see you’re checking up on us and our bizarre beliefs. Given enough chocolate, we might even become friends. You’re all superfond of choc from Earth, aren’t you?”
“We might export choc home with us. Like Jack and his Magic Bean. May it be, Sage How-Long, that if us Tall Ones be not installed on your Moon pretty soon as per the Bolly Brain plan, then the Cosmic String may amputate regardless, causing major mayhem?”
“My love,” murmurs Ning, “are secrets of cocoa bean exploitation registered commercially? Maybe we’re looking at the seeds of the first transtemporal interstellar trade—namely the cosmic export of chocolate know-how?”
“Shu-shu-shush, my sweet, let’s think about that presently... Number Seven, by major mayhem do you mean kilom-high tides? Or the distintegration of planet Earth? How bad, Number Seven?”
SLAP
In the medical centre of the Senate House of Sages, Ngela emerges on a motorised table from the latest scan & stim of the supercords inside her, those enhancements put there by the Boltzmann Brain. Assisted by those cords, Ngela survived being dead.
Here at least on the table is somebody extremely similar to Ngela who died—what better can one ask for? Ngela was/is the close-manoeuvres pilot of the Fibonacci, you’ll recall. The scan & stim is to map her cords and strum them a bit as well. See what happens.
Just in case Ngela’s feet skid when she dismounts from the table of the scanner, a specialist wearing white dungarees assists her while quickly comfy-robing her somewhat chubby nudity. Another specialist brings a mug of hot chicken broth, since Ngela may feel chilly or drained by being in the scanner. Several smartsuits are also here, as well as shaven-headed bejeweled lady Director Wang who is a member of the Senate of Sages. Ngela’s recently acquired lover Lamia didn’t come along on this occasion, so there’s no need to describe Lamia.
Of a sudden Ngela squirms, uttering “Ooooh!” and reports, “I felt quivery inside for just a mo—gone away already—never felt that before.”
“Was that a significant buzz?” asks Wang. “Can you make mini-lightning yet like the Tall Ones do?”
Rotating her free hand, Ngela gestures aloft obligingly for a short while. In the absence of any visible result, she transfers her attention to the chicken broth. As the mug’s brim reaches her lip, immediately with a formidable slap one of the male suits dashes aside the darling chicken broth, sending mug and all spraying and smashing across the floor—and the assailant’s hand has gone in a flash, his hand has disappeared, leaving only the fellow’s stump dripping redly, not spouting and spurting lifeblood no, merely dripping...
“Was the soupoisoned?” gasps Ngela. “But who but why—?”
“Your cords defend you reflexively,” the assailant says triumphantly, nodding like a pigeon. “I’ll want a prosthetic hook.”
“This was not my idea,” Director Wang says. “Bring another broth.”
“I had to surprise you totally,” Pigeon-Head tells Ngela. “Apologies!”
“It’s you who’s missing a hand...no more chickylicky for me, not now.”
“Cancel that broth!” Pigeon-Head backs on to the scanning table and reclines, directing his stump to the rear. This is the fastest way he can get his amputation site recorded while all is fresh. “Wind me in!” The table starts reversing. “Does this hurt? No! Do I feel a phantom hand anywhere? Can I close my missing fingers into a fist? Does anyone see a ghost hand in the scan?”
Here is Pigeon-Head’s Warhol of glory.
Excusing herself from Director Wang, Ngela hastens to the changing booth to resume her habitual fluffy bomber jacket, mustardy corduroy trousers tucked into boots, aviator goggles perched on her pageboy hair. As she emerges restored to herself, Ngela’s fone does a didgeridoo and it’s Xiaolong, for some reason on superspeaker.
“Listen up!” Naturally everyone in the room apart from Pigeon-Head inside the humming scanner harkens intently. “Ning has a neat idea about exporting chocolate production to the Tall Ones’ civilisation a milly years uptime. Number Six and Number Seven are in favour. We’d need a few hundred humans to go along in stasis cabinets to see to production. Maybe throw in a few thousand frozen embryos. This will leap Homosap over the extinction risk hurdle. We’ll become contemporary with the Tall Ones. Better still, why not massive forwardly human migration using modified stasis cabinets?”
