'Zaratorio: The Story Continues' is a political parable dedicated in general to everyone who believes in #PeaceinUkraine and who says #NoToWar. More specifically, it is written in support of the brave and generous women and men of Medecins Sans Fro...
Somewhere in the twenty-fifth century Solar System, the band of biotempadors who call themselves 'the Pseudo-Vanir' have been driven back by the Terran Cosmic Battle Fleet.
***
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
***
'Admiral Pathway, we are detecting some very unusual activity in unter-space.'
'But nothing ever happens in unter-space. Its properties are even more obscure than those of sub-space, and for many decades people doubted if it actually existed, except as part of "the theory of everything".'
Lieutenant Morris raises his eyebrows and accesses the relevant computer routine. His headset crackles briefly and he replies to a question from another part of the spaceship.
'Admiral Pathway is in conference. You can't speak to her at present.'
The Admiral returns to her chair with a glass of water and gives Morris an inquisitive look.
'The tech guys are concerned. We could be dealing with a new kind of biotemporal activity - made to look as if it has human origins - or it could be a form of human telecommunications we have never come across before.'
'I see the problem. Given that we believe that my visit to the twenty-first century may have reset parts of the time stream, looking in the written records may not help us.'
'Absolutely. And the chrono-signatures of these unter-space phenomena do indicate an origin in the early twenty-first century.'
Pathway stands up and walks over to her assistant's terminal.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
'OK. You've got my attention. Show me what they have.'
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
'The white blobs with black squiggles on them are probably what the history books describe as emails. They would have been the equivalent of what we call instantwrites, and were once very popular.'
'And the distortions were caused by the unter-space layers of the time vortex?'
'Most probably. There may have been some corruption at the point of origin as well.'
'Why would that be?
'Because the sender was trying to reach a wide range of twenty-fifth-century time nodes - rather than a specific chrono-reference.'
'I see. And what about these coloured blobs?'
'Some kind of digital image. They still used the word photograph.'
Rosanna Pathway leans into the screen and then asks for maximum magnification.
'Thank you, Morris. Send those back to the technical lab. Absolute top priority to maximise clarity.
But I am fairly certain that the person who sent these messages - assuming that they are messages - is Anton Koval of the Slavic Institute for Studying the Paranormal ...'
