Memories, like holes in the bright blackness

Memories, like holes in the bright blackness. Interpretive visions, made over like sculptor’s clay, gaining impressions with use. To Jupe, to Ere, to Marsh. And the twixts.

There was a time, it’s told. When we had matter for words. When we had materialization for writing. There was a time, it’s told. When we had interplay with the seens [sic], the bright flat faces of smile/no smile that herd us through the Dance. There was a time, when we told it different. That time, dear ones, is both behind us, and ahead. There will be a time, when we head where we will, again. Where we would, we will.

There was a time, it’s told.  Over some few full Dances ago, way back past when your grand grand grand grand grand grand grand mother and father far flung and flying from the stripy Jupe back down through the twixt and to old Ere herself…that there was a protesting.  This was the protesting which after they took all the writing materialization, bade we speak only, and record not. That was the banishment of the solid Word, and the beginning of the times being told only.

There was a time told. When we didn’t just report our progress to the faceplates, so the next shift knew where we did leave off. When we could leave solid Word for next crew. Before the next Dance step, 15 years on, before we’re to pick up home and herd and be pushed into the closest Bell by the cool bright leeds of the flatfaces, for blast and taken places. Back in the Dance again for a year and 3, to Ere, to Jupe. Or just the small step of months only from Ere to Marsh. There was a time, it’s told. This was back then. Back when, many more of us wondered from where the Dance started, and the work, and the building, the stations, and the flatfaces. A grand game of why was played, and the players penned pals from step to step. 

[INTERJECT, you’ve read WOOL yes? seen Snowpiercer? The histories are made of revolts…. Ever read SAND?  And seen that eerie map on the inside cover depicting three cities north to south, Danvar, Sprinston, Low-Pub?]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_spaceflight#Hohmann_transfers


Got a little patois there with the yarn telling. I admit, I watched CLOUD ATLAS again this weekend. But that's not a bad narrative template perhaps. There's a lot of room in here. A lot of places to fuck up, make mistakes, and get scared to ever try again. Keller has been in a box for a long while. More work done on it lately, than ever. Reminds me of how Baxter recalls a dinner party with Pratchett, where Terry mentions an idea of his hid away without development... infinite Earths, east and west, and a simple machine driven by potato power stepping you from one to the next...  and so they decided to develop it, and now later six books of The Long Earth.

So we can do this. If we don't let the experiment get too big, too intimidating. I'm just mortified of making a physics blunder. Committing work and narrative to some glaring error in logistics. Alas, the September in me.  We need to hire a physicist for an hour.  Pick the brain.  See which ideas make them howl.

Let's keep building up the frame work at the same time we build up the window dressing.  Deep timbers and sawdust. Sewers and satellites.  Search and censor. Belief and ability. Steeped tea and senility. Sudden fortune and sterility.

Who do the flatfaces serve? What are they causing to be built? No doubt the system was dreamed up by humankind.  And if it wasn't, if it was thrust upon us by something extra solar, then it would look much different.  No, I think we did this to ourselves.  Let's dream the structure. And sprinkle the years and miles with human suffering, human hope, human experience.