Prime of Life - 47 chapter Space Opera novel

Chapter 3

The Blast was of course known to all on Jolian, and Marisssa was no exception--it was, ultimately, the cause of the Hunt and her upcoming Rendezvous. But her upper class education left out many details, being focused primarily on social protocol, genealogy, and propriety. Every nuance of the century-old Message had been analyzed for generations, yet the particulars of the events leading up to the Rendezvous were hardly appreciated except by certain scholars and students of history...

* * *

"Hey Red!" The custodian, Sputh, shouted to be heard over raindrops beating on the windows. Rain, on this part of Jolian, was a rare event. Freakish. "We got a leak up there..." he motioned to the ceiling with his head. "Might be some drips in here soon. Got anything gonna be a problem?"

The short stocky scientist with curly red hair and freckles was aghast. "Are you kidding? Everything in here is critical! You're the custodian, sstnk it. Do something! Fast!"

As Sputh exited the lab muttering, Red shook his head and started covering equipment with small sheets of plastic he found in a cabinet. He swore under his breath, "Ssunt." Then louder. "Ssunt!"

He'd been trying for months to transmit messages using Fjieul's entanglement hypothesis. The day before, on his walk home, winds had whipped sand in his eyes. Instantly, he'd known what had to be done. Chanbusscnider, his city's name, meant Gray Devils. In the legend of Nelsssus the Lesser, they worked their mischief by creating chaos in small things--like the dust in his face. That was it, he realized: he needed chaos and order! The next day, this day, he'd re-tuned his equipment. He was close! And now there might be drips?

Then he remembered--the meeting! His funding...sstnk! Sstnk this rain. Sstnk Sputh. Sstnk bureaucracy! He covered what else he could and grabbed his notebook. Then he ran down several flights of stairs and across the large courtyard, getting thoroughly soaked. Sstnkus rain!

Sputh, the custodian, had done his best to put buckets under the leaks on the top floor, but they would soon overflow. Fixing the roof would have to wait for better weather. The old man hurried down the stairs to the lab. Red was gone. So much for being worried about his equipment! Sputh saw that Red had tried to cover various items, but not very well. The custodian went to his closet on the floor and found a tarp. When he pulled it over a fancy-looking console, a few dials were turned, a switch thrown, and a wire broken, all unknown to Sputh.

It had been the receiver, not the transmitter that the custodian inadvertently adjusted. "What the...sstnk-k!" Red exclaimed upon entering the lab after his budget meeting. His request for additional funding had been refused, but all thoughts of money flew from his mind as he ran fingers through his curly red hair. Rows and rows of symbols cascaded down the main screen on his entanglement console, and a wet tarp lay in a puddle of water on the floor.

When the phenomenon was sorted out, Red, being an honest fellow, gave credit to the custodian for the discovery. Red, the physicist, had merely been trying to send a message to another city to prove the method, but what Sputh's accidental discovery did was to allow Jolian scientists to receive an informational compendium from the starry sky. The planet's population was awed to find that they were not alone in the universe. When the furor died down and calm heads prevailed, the ever-repeating automated broadcast was decoded and analyzed.

"This is crazy," Red said to visiting scientist Manayza, as they sat down with some hot ckkzi, staring at what they had already read a hundred times. "Ships the size of Palus and Rimon! A million inhabitants each! Visiting hundreds of planets! Popping in and out of wormholes like some desert sskezz chssln."