TWO GALAXIES
(Several Planets And A Time-Span Beyond The Imagination)
Les Broad
Published by Les Broad at Smashwords
Copyright 2010
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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In this little group of assorted stories there are none that are particularly sensible, but then they're not really supposed to be. They might, if you're lucky, make you smile or, if you're particularly easily pleased, laugh out loud. Be warned, though: you might find some of what follows a bit distressing but you have to remember to take this stuff in context, Then you can just be grateful you live in a civilised, well-ordered society.
The first oddity, Ogod's Enigma: Strange Happenings In A Strange Place, will take you on a long, long journey to a distant galaxy. Some bits of it just might be more than a little familiar....
Ogod's Enigma:
Strange Happenings In A Strange Place
In a galaxy known to the locals as Finoliola, a long way from where you are, really a very long way indeed, in fact so far that you can't even know it ever existed, there is – or was, according to legend circulating among the populations of those few other populated worlds nearby – a planet. It's quite a lot like yours, orbiting a sun that is much the same size as your own. That sun is quite a bit more blue than yours; you might conclude that the world that's like yours is cold but it is, when you actually measure it, a bit warmer than where you are. It's an interesting place, and for more reasons than just having a blue sun stuck quite a long way out from the middle of its galaxy, pretty much at the far end of one of the galaxy's longer spiral arms. It's an area known to the longer-established, space-faring civilisations nearer the centre of the galaxy as Finoliola's Arsehole.
That planet, known to its inhabitants as 'Home', is a bit further away from its sun than might be declared to be ideal. In fact, from its surface the sun looks quite a bit smaller than you'd be used to seeing in your sky.
It wasn't always so. A long time ago, when the most intelligent life form on your planet had two cells and no brain (and worked as a weathergirl on an obscure TV channel? No? Oh well, never mind), that planet, known as 'Home' to those who lived there, had a vibrant society living on its limited land area and the members of that society were outwardly similar to the oddly constructed person you call 'me'. They may not have been the greatest thinkers in the universe, but enjoyed and made full use of all the benefits of a warm and inviting homeland.
It's worth taking a moment to establish why the land area was so limited, and it was so because about ninety five per cent of the surface was liquid. What was left was a sort of hourglass shaped (or, of you prefer, like the torso of a particularly fine specimen of womanhood) island, straddling the planetary equator, which was about a thousand miles long, five hundred miles at its widest and just a hundred miles across at its narrowest. It would have enjoyed a very pleasant, if rather damp, climate if only the planet had been tilted enough on its axis for the term 'climate' to have any meaning.
At some point in the far distant past the creatures who lived their enjoyable lives on that perhaps idyllic island gradually came to realise a few things. Firstly they realised that it wasn't quite as warm as it used to be. They realised – or rather the scientific community worked out – why, too, and that there were two reasons. First, they, the scientists, worked out that the planet, 'Home', was moving ever so slowly further away from the sun. That came as a bit of a shock, but there was another one because they also calculated that the sun itself was cooling down and would, one day, go out completely.
While the population at large was coming to terms with these seemingly inescapable facts, and that took more than a few generations, the really clever types were trying to figure out an answer to the conundrum.
Remarkably, they came up with an answer too. It was based on the truth of a favourite saying at every level of society; everybody believed without any supporting evidence whatsoever that 'what gets worse will one day get better'. Anyone whose life experience hasn't been restricted to an island the size of, say, France on a planet with the accumulated astrophysical knowledge of a dingo will see the weaknesses in putting any faith at all in such a philosophy.
The leading scientific thinkers of the day now had a task to perform. It wasn't one to which they were looking forward. They had to tell the democratically-elected-for-life leader of their society - his title is unpronounceable in any language but its own, but it's roughly translated as 'King' – what their groundbreaking solution was.
This is the story of how they got on, and just what a pickle it left them in.
The Solution
The King – as we know, his actual title is unpronounceable – had a quiet life, most of the time. He presided over a population that was, by and large, law abiding and respected the rights of others. They did, though, enjoy a bit of pomp every now and again so from time to time the King, whose name was Ogod by the way, had to dress up in a slightly ridiculous combination of dead animal skins and shiny stones in order that he could travel around and be cheered at. He didn't object much at all to this because it meant he got rather well fed, which was a lot better than making his own dinner every day.
In a masterpiece of understatement, it was often said that King Ogod was quite fond of his food, which was the main reason why he never objected to what you might call his ceremonial duties. He enjoyed eating big lumps of dead animals, just like everyone else, but his lofty position allowed him to demand bigger lumps than anyone else. He also ate, with his lumps of dead animal, vegetable matter too but would happily have done without: he ate it because it seemed to be expected of him. His favourite thing to eat, though, was a peculiar, sweet, vegetable-based confection that tasted like spiced meat; usually a sort of greenish brown colour, it was soft, sticky, served in hand-sized lumps and had no food value at all. King Ogod liked it, so he ate it all the time. In fact, he was rarely seen without a handful, with several more in reserve.
The upshot of this consuming interest was that Ogod really was some considerable distance from being in any way slim. He had developed a wide-legged waddle instead of walking and to go with it a way of speaking through the side of his mouth that, through a lot of practice, meant that those to whom he spoke were not pebble-dashed with sticky, half-chewed, greenish confection. It was a skill that was greatly appreciated by those few whose working days were spent in King Ogod's presence, even if they rarely understood a word he said.
As an aside, it's probably not worth mentioning that Ogod was unmarried with little prospect of any change in his dismal marital – or come to that conjugal – status. The tragedy of this is that Ogod had in mind a constitutional change: he was going to make kingship hereditary to avoid all the unpleasantness that went with the election-for-life of a new king every time one died.
There came a day when Ogod was disposed to grant an audience to certain members of what passed for the scientific community. They were just two in number – Ogod didn't like big delegations – and were a most unprepossessing pair. Ontin, the older of the two, was much shorter than the average male but was what might charitably be called stout, with occasional long wisps of hair sprouting in random places from his otherwise bald head. Clarm, the younger, was as tall as his colleague was short and a man for whom the word 'skeletal' could have been invented.
As the mismatched pair were admitted to Ogod's presence Ontin gazed in awe at his surroundings, his wispy hair trying to keep up as his head swivelled around, trying to take in all that was there to be seen. Clarm, on the other hand, had eyes for just one sight – King Ogod sitting on his specially made chair.
Clarm had seen his king before, but from a distance. Up close, he was surprised to see that Ogod made even Ontin look malnourished. The fact that he was forcing great lumps of sweet-smelling, greenish brown confection into his mouth did nothing to dispel the impression. But what really, really caught Clarm's attention was the seat on which Ogod sat. It was much wider than it was high, yet only just accommodated its occupant's impressive girth. You who are reading this will be familiar with 21st Century Earth and therefore would have been able to recognise the remarkable similarity between Ogod's seat and that item of furnishing known to you as a 'three seater sofa'. Clarm had never seen such a thing, of course, and was overawed by its size. He was less so by the size of Ogod's person – weren't kings after all supposed to be larger than life?
“Mmmpf! Ro oo oo aah?” Ogod asked his visitors out of the side of a mouth overfull of greenish stuff.
“Erm, King Ogod,” Ontin mumbled, still not looking directly at Ogod, “it's the climate. It's getting colder.”
“Kor e ay. Mmm.” Ogod's attention was, reluctantly, divided between his visitors and his handful of sweet confection. His visitors thought they were runners-up in a two horse race. “Waa c'e oo awoo ee?”
Ontin guessed at the meaning of the pretty much unintelligible noises and ventured a reply. “I – that is, Clarm and I – have an idea that we think will work.” Ogod waved his hand. It might have meant 'go away', or it might equally have meant 'please explain, I'm all ears'. Ontin gambled and carried on. “We all know,” he said but with a surprising lack of assurance, “that what gets worse will get better, but we think it's going to take a long time. A very long time.”
Ontin paused. Ogod carried on eating. So Ontin started again.
“We can build a big chamber, put everybody in it and send them to sleep. Nobody wakes up until it's all got better. We just need you to pay for it.”
Silence descended, or would have done had Ogod not been slurping green stuff noisily from his hand.
“O ay. Oo ong e o?”
“We don't know.” Ontin replied. It seemed best.
Within a couple of days it had all been agreed; those employed to interpret Ogod's expressed wishes made the funding available in quite impressive quantities. It may well have been that they had misinterpreted Ogod's words, but it was surely for the best. After all, the commitment of money to Ontin and Clarm's project would mean that there was less for Ogod to spend on that expensive, sweet, sticky, green stuff.
The great day dawned. It was cold, but everyone, the whole population, turned up at the huge – and very strong – building that Ontin and Clarm had designed and caused to be constructed deep underground. They all swallowed a little red pill and each person, including King Ogod, was sealed into a sleeping pod – there was an especially big one for Ogod – until only Ontin and Clarm remained. Clarm sealed Ontin into one of the two remaining pods, set all the necessary controls so that everything would happen automatically and then sealed himself into his own pod.
The thinking engine – you might call it a computer if you were of a generous nature – made the outer doors airtight, shut and sealed the inner doors and began pumping an odourless gas into the sleeping pods where the entire population lay at rest. Then it closed itself down to await its sensors telling it that it was warmer outside.
Suspended animation, stasis, call it whatever you might choose, but the fact was that the two scientists had done it. The entire population of the planet were asleep, and would be for as long as it took for the warmer weather to come back.
Years passed and became centuries, then millenia. It got colder and darker outside as the sun faded and the planet's orbit became greater with the sun's failing gravity.
Everything that wasn't part of the population that had been stored away in pods struggled to survive in the rapidly changing climate. Lots of species were frozen into extinction, which was a shame really because Ontin and Clarm had overlooked a need that was going to arise when they were woken – they'd be hungry.
Then, one day, the sun flickered, brightened for a second or two, flickered again and blinked out, finally, never to relight. The planet on which Ogod and his people slept stopped orbiting its star and set off on a journey across the cosmos.
Outside, it was black and cold. Very, very cold. Everything had died. The planet's only life slumbered on in suspended animation while its thinking engine waited, and waited.
The planet drifted. Unfortunately, the sun had blinked out just at the time that the planet was at that point in its orbit where its path, suddenly unrestricted by solar gravity, led straight away from the galactic centre. There would be no more suns until the planet had completed its traverse of intergalactic space and bumped into another galaxy. That was going to take a while.
It did.
On other planets in other solar systems enjoying the companionship of a galaxy to call their own, microscopic organisms developed in varying flavours of primordial soup. Those organisms grew in complexity and over the eons became sentient beings capable of creating vast civilisations, of travelling from their own world to others that were nearby and, wholly incidentally of course and completely by accident, causing the most staggering amounts of pollution simply because they never bothered to collect all the stuff they sent up into space. Sadly, 'civilisation' included, as it so often does, creation of the means of self-annihilation and each became, in its turn, extinct.
As those civilisations arose from single-cell life forms and, millions of years later, managed to destroy themselves, Ogod and his people slumbered on, their planet still drifting through intergalactic space.
When you next get the chance, take a look at some of those pretty pictures you see from time to time of distant galaxies. They're an awfully long way away, but it would be just about impossible to travel in a straight line without hitting one sooner or later, probably later. Well, actually, it would almost certainly be millions, billions even, of years later.
That's what happened to Ogod's planet. Uninfluenced by any gravitational pull whatsoever, it travelled along at the speed that it used to orbit its sun, as cold as it could possibly be and pretty much completely in the dark – actually and metaphorically – of deep space.
It would have been obvious to any observer, had there been one which of course there wasn't, that the planet was going to hit a particular galaxy. As time passed it became even more obvious, and that non-existent observer could have had a pretty good stab at guessing which bit of the galaxy the planet was going to pass through. It wasn't going to be a bull's eye; the galactic centre was going to be missed, but the more thinly populated outer edges were going to get a visitor.
The final stage of the planet's eons-long odyssey had begun. It began to feel the effects of galactic gravitation, spiralled down towards its new home and was captured by a brightly burning star, settling into a comfortable orbit. As luck would have it, that orbit was at a distance from the star that some of your scientists, who really should have thought of a term with a bit more gravitas, have been known to describe as the 'goldilocks' zone. For those of you who aren't disposed to listen much to the outpourings of the eccentric edge of the scientific establishment, that simply means that it's the bit of space around a star that allows life, as you know it, to thrive.
The planet, which out in intergalactic space had been about as frigidly cold as it's possible to get, began to warm up. As it was largely watery, the water began to change from solid ice to a liquid; this was a change that took a good few hundred orbits of the new host star, so it was hardly an instant change, and that time lag allowed some interesting things to happen. Seeds of plants that were the next best thing to extinct because of the temperature actually began to germinate: by the time that all the ice had melted the planet's rather restricted land mass bore a surprising amount of greenery, some of which was more or less edible.
That was just as well, because the long-dormant thinking engine had been doing some sums and had just about concluded that what had got worse had finally got better. So it gave itself a mental check-up, decided that it was in rude health after its refreshing nap and checked on what it was supposed to do next. And that was to open up the sleeping pods and wake up the people inside.
The Re-awakening
The thinking engine checked its instructions carefully and discovered to its delight that it had little to do. Opening two of the sleeping pods wasn't going to tax its abilities too much, so it opened them.
With the sort of hiss that film directors insist on at times like this the two pods opened, releasing two clouds of mist, also insisted on by those same directors, to reveal the contents. Unfortunately those gentlemen would have been apoplectic with frustration because the oh-so-dramatic hiss was completely drowned out by the teeth-jangling creak of cheap iron hinges that had rusted shut.
Inside the pods lay the inert forms of Ontin and Clarm: both were doing a first-rate impression of being dead, but after the passage of only a few fleeting seconds they coughed twice in almost perfect harmony then clambered out, stretching limbs.
They both looked and felt refreshed after a good night's sleep, but then how could they have known that they'd been in their pods for a couple of billion years or more? They couldn't even muster one bedsore between them.
“Well Clarm, that seemed to work,” Ontin declared. “How long have we been in there?”
“I don't know. Look, the clock's stopped, and it's one of those new ones and they run for a full orbit of the sun. So it must have been more than a year, mustn't it?” Clarm seemed pleased, even a bit smug. He didn't have a clue, did he?
“Well, it doesn't matter. Things must have got better now. We ought to open all the pods.”
“I think we should check outside, just to make sure. We have to be aware, Ontin, that things might not be exactly the same. I mean, nobody's been there to do the farming, have they? There could be meat beasts everywhere, unharvested vegetable matter – there'll be a lot of work to do.”
Ontin decided that Clarm was probably right and what was an extra few minutes to the others when they'd been asleep for a year or two? Ontin was just as clueless as Clarm, it seemed. Be that as it may, he set to work to persuade the thinking engine to open the doors. The persuading was easy, the opening was less so. Had they been closed for a couple of years, as Clarm and Ontin believed, they would no doubt have opened with smooth efficiency. But they had been subjected to a couple of billion years in the frigid wastes of intergalactic space, had travelled a staggering number of light years and had been designed to operate in a consistently warm, temperate climate. It wasn't at all surprising that getting out posed a bit of a problem.