Wolf 3.0

Scheherazade City (Nightside)

A night arrival at the hub of the interstellar empire.

The Alien Spirit infiltrates dreams. He/she/it does not age over time and can flash across interstellar lightyears effortlessly. May be an AI bot with a crafted persona or several and/or hologram or just inside the observer's head. Has an agenda of which hints emerge. Has not changed even though he can metamorphize. He can use the Time Machine-with differences or travel vast distances of time/space without the time machine. He can do time jumps. Both alien bots and humans sometimes use sleep mode for long travel.

Joe wakes up on the planet, having landed after encountering a torrent of scenes coming down. He is in the miniship and does not know how much time has passed just knows that he has done a huge time leap., Now he remembers his first trip there -- the memory comes back from the first time back .

At first it is a blank but then it comes flashing back in, all the past memories reloading At first all he remembers is the traverse with a different machine, a different technology. The landing site looks so different now. Then the other memories come back from before --A court, a buzzing metropolis (this is what he will remember when he encounters the miniscule version)--An emperor or CEO and busy civilization at its height, it all comes back --This is the second wave of memory.

And there is an empty land-shuttle to meet him. He settles in and it takes off ,is like the Path Train going out to Newark but faster, tearing off across this big expanse. It is transformed, from the earlier version of his human memories triggered of last visit – training. He had arrived now at the capital training area for the interstellar empire.

What the planet's capital city looks like now: devastated, hints, corpses, replay. Where is he going? Is this a trap? The shuttle shuts down and goes dark for a couple of hours – he time signals from his ship. Another bot enters, apologizes for having gaslighted Alien Spirit. gives him directions on where to go.

In his mind is visioning a replay of war and bomb-like-neutron-kills people lives infrastructure--The Big Suck/Download of survivor spirits abandoning bodies; the digitalization of a culture

Rushing into his head a list of stories and scenes –It spells them out and go to great detail—He is dizzying himself with a furious storm of a brainstorm inside his head, his self is going dizzy –The brainstorming dizzying self --What his assignment now is -this is his training and then it will become his job—inside the vast device around him is setting the stage: something that did not happen to Joe before, a torrential transforming experience –and he crosses over and his whole state changes

What's left from his early visit 20 years before flashes into being from its camouflage disguise – the Science Building. He compares it to his memories from before – the same design but rebuilt-new.

It has the same function as his memory from before: the mind-expanding visage of the mass-population port to other planets. A bot-woman is showing him around. There's something about her that is very startling-it triggers something that has been blanked out from his memory. He will encounter it/her again at the bottom of his descent. -Something / somebody very familiar or a facsimile of same. He remembers being surprised but not why.

Another part of the Cathedral research facilities is looming ahead in a big structure created as matter out of rock underground inside a huge dead volcano for mass port. What is Known Later as Lost Moment-Tornado-Dissociation-such of spirits and vanishing of Memory Playback:

He traces his way to the middle of the complex and finds Carola in young form who is going to guide him. What is she doing here? A time traveler? A bot? The sensors he is wearing trace her back to find her in the middle of a vast complex –the last center-building--Meet broadcaster—bot—Carola—young to recognize then -- She ages to meet his age and telepathically projects into his head: I was the original sent for you. The desert lands stretch outside the cities -- a few animals mostly extinctions – and on the near side is The Capital --The City of Scheherazade.

It is a vast trade center exotic city with all sorts of people and crowds. Its Earth name --Scheherazade—actually originated on this world, as a way of describing the night manufactured sky with stars and nebulas – A bot message from Carola comes into his with an electric coded flash from her eyes into his and he gathers her up in his arms:

Joe, I'm not human. I never was.

It's OK. I knew. It doesn't matter.

Liar!

Another bot message comes from Carola into his head with a coded flash, an invitation to a meeting the next day of the Empire Rangers, with her, where he would be the first human to join the league. It was the league who had first appropriated the slogan "Every star is a story". She leans into him and does a telepathic whisper into his ear without moving her lips:

You'll find out everything tomorrow.

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