The woodsy decor was scraggly, and erratic simgrav laid ripples of dust and made the flat floor feel wonky. He found himself in a stark node on the verge of space. So he followed the light, and the trails grew smaller and the light brighter, until he could see nothing else, and he bonked his forehead to clear the mods. Finally he came to a great branch-crotch, a mossy junction busy with stationfolk: a stocky surface Glimmer shouldering a barrel, a sauntering pack of Caxiletan teens, a dour Brumvolzin courier, two Myrmae regal in blue robes, a daydreaming Scrollkin time-pilot, a flamboyant Na-il mercenary, and everywhere the Quercans in their layered outfits like unraveling quilts.Īgain he turned upward, and saw it, up another branch and brighter. At last he saw it, the subtle flicker of Flow purple, and set off toward the trunk.Īt every node the path widened, and he looked carefully up every trail before continuing down. With a knuckle he bonked his temple to calibrate his eyemod toward ultraviolet, and drummed the other temple to narrow the spectrum. Inside the stem he ducked under joints styled as twigs, and up to a branch node, a clearing where wider trails met, all lit green and gold by light from the leafmirrors. Now he loped around the spiral to the center of the room, where a wide hole gravsaddled to the stem. Whenever the Captain's money ran out, he came here to sample experimental cannabinoids and ogle streetwise dryads. Its name was Rivenglade, and it was the seediest place in the whole clean-green Quercan string. This station's coordinate was Q6-11-L5: the eleventh stillpoint of the sixth harmonic of the Quercus warptube, at the Lagrange point sixty degrees behind the planet, riding a saddle between the gravity wells of the planet and sun. At the base of the trunk it joined its counterweight, an equally colossal spruce. Slow as a clock-hand it spun, lazily waving its green glass leaves in the solar wind. From space the acorn was fully realistic, one of thousands on a bur oak the size of a city. The tub was shaped like a nut husk, laid in a spiral with forty other nut-tubs under an acorn dome. As a Quercus destitute, your role is to inspire the wealthy with your crafty independence." "On this station, all assistance beyond dignified survival is monetized." He wore sturdy steel grey and rust fatigues, his captain's shield nearly hidden by a pocket flap. The Captain scratched his grizzled fop and hopped from the tub. "You are in no position to know if my forgetting is even for sale." How much would it cost to make you forget?" "You woke me up to tell me about a bounty on a lost colony ship." "You have no money," said a cheery voice. Blip, how good of a deadstring planet will one quintillion true bitflips buy?" Captain Quarteracre did the math, and spoke his own name. The currency of the bounty, one Sifrexan bitfip, was worth one billion literal flips, the switch of a bit from nil to one, or one to nil, in the code of some Blip. He sat up and pulled it off, and it withdrew like a snake into the simworld console. On his face sat an octopus of fiberoptics, its 1024 tentacles finding only 97 sockets in his skull. In a padded tub the Captain's body twitched. A large bounty has been posted: from the Sifrexan string, one billion bitflips for the lost colony ship Go Long Be Still." "Captain Quarteracre, this is the Quercus Blip with an intrusion you requested. It moved its lips and the sound came on a lag through the bargain simworld interface: In the black circle appeared an angelic face. The ship's console fell in on itself, now a black hole ringed with eyefuzz, and he knew the change to be a manifestation of some higher plane. "Captain," cried the ship, "the bandit has bought a counter-bounty, on us!" He pulled back the stick and slingshotted out of orbit and toward deep space. But the bandit, the notorious Pistachio Tiffin, was getting away. "Ship," he said, "What species of sirens are these: celestial, generative, or cathartic?" So sang the sirens of Pitcairn Zed, as Captain Quintillion Furlong buzzed their planet in his starship. The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls. Witches of the Pinspecked Void a novel by Ran Prieur Book 1
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