2022-07-18 00:27:06The drone was moved to another town. The Butterfly was moving the drone in a manner that looked like an old man. But captain Probir wanted to visit the planet by himself. It was still difficult for him to land because it was dangerous.
Probir ordered the drone to move to a quiet place, out of the town and decided that he, himself would land. He took a shuttle and landed right beside the waiting drone.
Probir, although a very capable starship captain, lacked the personality of being a captain, a showy personality with a very high level of charisma. He only cared about his next mission, and by doing that, he distanced himself from the others. Even his first officer couldn't predict his next move, not because the captain wanted not to predict, but because he was not like clockwork, like the other captains.
He always thought of himself as an observer, observing everything without interfering. The reason was, from his childhood, he was an observer, always keeping to himself and observing. Once he went into trouble with the school authority who thought he was a "quiet kid" type of student, but in reality, he was deeply philosophical and very unpopular among his classmates.
Most of the time in the class, he spent doodling and colouring out nebulas and spaceships. While some of his classmates tried to understand him, many ignored him. After all, the school was insanely difficult.
Captain Probir spoke to the drone which in reality spoke to the Butterfly. The captain started walking toward a small village while the drone was following him. It was nearing sunrise. They were following a small river to the town and suddenly the Butterfly told through the drone, "Captain, there is something wrong with the civilization."
“What is it?” asked the captain.
“Captain, I’ve seen many organics, recorded many languages and scanned many planets. The one most important thing I’ve seen is, that they tend to diversify. An example would be your own civilization. Before reunification, there were more than 3000 languages and still to this day, your own civilization has more than 5000 languages, including interstellar languages. You had different cultural and artistic expressions. But this civilization felt awfully like civilization with a manufactured fantasy. Culture seems to be very homogenous and there is a single language. The development phase looks like a culture that could be your early 22nd century of earth.”
The captain noticed that a long time ago and wanted to talk to the people. After reaching a small village, the captain and the drone sat beside a church-like structure. There were several statues and some symbols around the place. The butterfly said, “Captain, why do the organics need spirituality?”
The captain thought for a bit and started,
“See, spirituality is like a blanket.”
“I don’t understand,” said the butterfly.
“See, for the organics, we tend to find things that are strangely familiar, yet feel so desperately unknown,” continued the captain, “See, we love to imagine. Our imagination is the thing that carries us forwards. However, imagination can be of many types.”
“Please continue,” said the Butterfly.
“See, one can imagine a very comforting place, in a very beautiful village, like this one, and other can imagine something of a very far away place where there is no constrain of the laws of physics. You can also imagine a higher power,” said the captain.
“But we don’t know if a higher power exists or not,” said the Butterfly.
“Exactly, I cannot define spirituality. I can only tell what other people define it,” said the captain, “You see, humans are emotional and it’s very common for an emotional animal to believe in things like that.”
“But are you a spiritual person?” asked the Butterfly.
“No. I don’t see any reasons behind spirituality. You might think of me as a person of logic. I aspire to be a person without emotions; therefore, I reject things like spirituality,” replied the captain.
“So, is this the reason why you show little to no emotions on the bridge?” asked the Butterfly.
“Well, not exactly, I have other reasons,” the captain replied. He was looking at the horizon, the lazy sunrise and how the entire horizon was bloodshot red, suddenly, it reminded him of his hometown which is located by the side of the Ganges River. He felt something very home about that place, the “wet” scent of the riverside soils, the landscape scenery, almost everything.
Looking at the horizon, he started singing,
“I’ve never ever seen him in all my days –
There’s a mystical village near my home
Where a certain neighbour lives
Beyond deep waters, lies this neighbour’s dwelling
There are no banks,
No boats for the crossing –
Tell me then, how am I supposed to go there?
What can I tell you about this neighbour?
He has no body, head, hands, or feet
One moment he soars through the air
The next he skims the water
If this neighbour even touched me once
I’d be able to shake off my mortal fears
Yet he and Lalon live in the same place
Still, there is a gap of a thousand miles!”
The Butterfly was staring at the captain. He was trying to understand the meaning of the song.
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The Festival (The Celebration)
The butterfly was restarted and as per Sam's request, it stopped its wings to flap around. The only thing it did was made an enormous foghorn-style sound which nearly deafened the technicians around 3 miles radius. Sam was inside of the butterfly when it started its massive 8 reactor cores. it was amazing to see the restarting sequence of a beast, also Sam felt very small, the ingenious and advancement of the species did not save them from just simply Vitamin deficiency.The Settlement Festival was a 7 days long celebration. For the first couple of days, people had to eat field rations to signify the struggles of the first people who settled on the land. The slow and consistent humming of the machine's interior made Sam a bit annoyed, but he kept it to himself. He then went to the bridge, where the chair was awaiting him. The bridge of the butterfly was a cold and dark place, the temperature was around 2 degrees Celcius. Sam wore his winter dress. He sat there and touched the com pane
The Festival (A mindgame)
Sam sat down on his bed, it was harder than his bed on the ship, the reason was, his bed was made of stacks of books and journals and a bedsheet covered it. He took out a book from underneath the bed, it was about xeno-biology. Slowly, he opened the book and saw some hazy doodling on it."It can't be!" he exclaimed. His hand was shaking and his eyes were wide open. He was searching for something. He then stood up and opened another book, this time, it was about the history of the UEC."No!" he was upset by the fact that the book was hazy and strangely written. The butterfly asked why was he very upset about it."Look, I can imagine things way better than anyone else, I can visualize things, imagine things and make connections better than all the fat cats like the captain Probir and Cohen. This room, you are seeing? It's my visualization, it's my imagination. Trust me, if I see a book is hazy, I will know that something is definitely wrong," he desperately tried to open the closed wind
The Festival
While emotionally involving someone or something can be gratifying, the practical implication of it was problematic. As per Cohen's request, the Butterfly was involved in the party, but how would it participate at the party was a major concern. The engineers and technicians repaired its wings. The actuators were worn off, but some of the actuator fluids were only available in the largest shipyards and they were used for deep crust mining robot arms. The fluids the creators of the butterfly used were very alien, but one thing it had was an ability to self-replication, in the UEC space self-replicating technology is very controlled, but not outright banned. The philosophy of the UEC was "if we ban things, we won't know enough to safely use them."UEC ship, H.M.S. Alan Turing was assigned to go to the Earth after the settlement festival. Captain Probir volunteered to stay with the main team, to "cheer the colonists" however deep down, his motivation was to oversee the construction of the
The Festival
After the difficult landing, the Butterfly was temporarily shut down. It was ready to accept whatever service the UEC engineers and technicians could render to help its wings. However, the works never stopped on the planet RA. 2 massive tractor beam emitters held the massive Dimensional Displacement Gateway above the planet. The problem was that in space, nothing is stationary, so the long tractor beams which were rotating with the planet's rotations exert an enormous amount of energy, it's like attaching something to a rope and swinging. To overcome this, the UEC engineers created a shield bubble which effectively lowered the weight of the massive gateway and made the structure a rigid part of the planet.The colonists were getting ready to start their new life. The process might sound very romantic, but from a logistical point, it was a nightmare. The minerals, mined from the moon and refined by H.M.S. Isambard Kingdom Brunel were turned into construction materials, especially metal
A Difficult Landing.
Lieutenant Jeremy took my helm to guide me to land on the RA. A massive task for me, because I was built to survey planets while being in the orbit of the planet. I was not worried about the hull damage, but during my flights with my creators, one scientist told my commander not to land in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, because the exhaust plasma can burn up the atmosphere. I mentioned it to the engineer who took care of my wing. He set up a cooling adapter to my exhaust port that cooled down the hot plasma and recycled it into liquid helium and hydrogen. Later those hydrogen and helium would have been transported to human facilities where hydrogen was used in energy generations helium was used for scientific experiments.I was ready to glide down. My helm officer Jeremy was there, guiding me, he was a very talented pilot. He was born in space, from age 7, he started space capsule racing and at the age of 18, he won the United Formula-S championship. He was perhaps the most experienced p
Childhood, maybe?
When Sam was gone, Tatiana invited T'Mera into my bridge and they wanted to test my new upgrades, and for the first time, I had a drive that could jump 70 lightyears. The geostationary orbital height of the planet was very busy because of how many ships were unloading their populations on the planet. Especially the civilian ships were very busy. Shuttles were zipping around the massive cruisers and around my wings to get to their destinations."Let's go somewhere interesting. Let's go to the ringworld we've found around 300 lightyears away. You need 5 jumps to go and then we will be there," T'Mera said to me. She was not very anxious to be on a ship with an experimental drive. So, I asked her, "Aren't you just a little bit curious?""Nope, I trust you," replied T'Mera. Truly, I had a hard time processing the idea of trust. It was a very organic thing. So, I stopped thinking about it and plotted the course to the ringworld."Drive core engaged," a noise came to my ear. Really? Did the
