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A couple of Emissaries chat while a passerby behind them gawks in a double-take.
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Fractal Shortcuts
Physics tries to discover the pattern of events which controls the phenomena we observe. But we can never know what this pattern means or how it originates; and even if some superior intelligence were to tell us, we should find the explanation unintelligible.
—Sir James Hopwood Jeans, Physics and Philosophy, 1942
The whole world held its breath as the unknown vehicle approached rendezvous in a long, flat curve up from a relatively close pass around the sun. Its appearance was completely unexpected, since it had not been detected before that time—a fact few could dismiss as coincidence.
Humanity didn’t have long to wait, though, since the vessel flared brightly with the thermonuclear fires of fusion thrust, decelerating neatly from what obviously had been a very high velocity, swinging low over the far side of the moon, and dropping into Earth orbit around the L4 Lagrange point. Plainly, whoever was aboard meant to stay a while . . . and had known from the outset what and where their target world was.
Suspense mounted as the intruder deployed from its simple cylindrical shape like an opening flower, becoming a clumsy-looking but effective rotating habitat and spooling up into a slow spin to provide a form of cheap artificial gravity. Finally, a curiously polite request—in unaccented “media” English, no less—for air time to address the peoples of Earth arrived on a wide band of frequencies. No detail was missed in conveying an impresson of courtesy; even the power level used in the broadcast was low enough not to interfere with the existing signals pumped out from every corner of the planet.
The request was, after countless hasty conferences, granted by many governments and networks, though others steadfastly refused permission. Acceptances and denials showered the visitor, and once a reasonably complete tally was available, there was a short hiatus. Apparently satisfied the “yeses” constituted a quorum of Earth’s population, the occupants of the new vessel packaged the broadcast and beamed it impartially across the face of the globe, repeating the process several times to cover each region as it rotated into line of sight.
In most places, the transmission was run by the networks uncut and uninterrupted. The aliens turned out to be remarkably humanoid, both males and females lithe and graceful, diminutive by human standards, with fine, soft, short fur in a wild variety of colors; short, curly, Samoyed-like tails, and appealing faces dominated by large eyes, short muzzles, and tall, round ears vaguely reminiscent of civets or genets. Their offer was even more startling—arguably the last thing in the universe mankind expected. They had come expressly to give to the people of Earth the means to travel to the stars.
The key was a pair of unrelated technologies: the last few engineering hints needed for human technology to conquer fusion power and rocket propulsion, and something they called the fractal dimension-reduction device. Specifications for both would be made freely available to anyone who asked, whether a government, a business, or even a private individual. The last condition upset or even infuriated many officials and executives, but there was no help for it—the Emissaries, as they called themselves, went so far as to obtain an Internet domain name in order to post the information to the Worldwide Web.
It was not long before Emissaries began visiting Earth in person, both officially and simply to play tourist. The former invariably brought along stacks of copies—paper and electronic—of plans for FDR devices and, often, exploded examples in display cases, all left behind for dissemination and study. Emissaries were bombarded with questions wherever they showed up. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why were they so freely giving away such a momentous secret? Did they plan to stay, and if so, why? And there were many more besides.
The answers were oddly constrained, as if the Emissaries sincerely wanted to answer, but simply could not find the words to explain. Eventually, though, a little information was pieced together. Yes, they intended to stay; they liked Earth and they liked humans. The whole purpose of their existence was to bring these gifts to mankind, but the motives remained unclear, as did their place of origin. Even the technology aboard their vessel, it was discovered by the lucky few brought up for tours, was no more advanced than could be found in the industrialized nations, aside from the fusion-torch thrust agency and the massive FDR device.
Other facts were not as well publicized. They were an artificially created species, designed specifically to interact with humans and to be physically and psychologically appealing to them. The Makers—those who had genetically engineered the Emissaries—were, it was theorized, so utterly alien to human thinking that there would have been little or no ability to communicate meaningfully, and so their creations existed to act as go-betweens.
In the end, humankind was left to find its own answers, if not at home, then among the stars.
Editor’s Notes
That the Makers have not been described is deliberate. Don’t ask what they’re like; I have consciously avoided even attempting to think about that. They should remain completely offstage, a shadowy, uncertain presence lurking somewhere Out There. They are technologically advanced enough, and patient enough, to see through the difficult, time-consuming program of creating and tailoring a new intelligent species to carry out still another complex long-term project. They have their own reasons for wishing to see humanity possess the key to interstellar travel. And that’s about all humanity knows about them.
The Emissaries
As described above, the Emissaries are quite appealing to human senses. Adults stand roughly 120 cm (four feet) to 150 cm (five feet) tall and possess slim, athletic builds. The shortest individuals mass around twenty kilograms (forty-four pounds in Earth gravity), the tallest around forty kilograms (eighty-eight pounds in Earth gravity). The fact that the height range is rigidly defined and physiques are relatively uniform is a subtle indication of their artificial origin. Their slenderness is also somewhat deceptive, as both sexes are densely muscled under fur, skin, and a thin layer of subcutaneous fat.
They reproduce using fairly conventional male-female mechanisms, differing only in minor detail from human norms. (Gestation is about eight months.) They are compatible with Earthly biochemistries, and exhibit few or no allergic reactions, allowing them to eat human foods and accept slightly modified human medical treatments with little difficulty. Excess caloric intake is rare, both for cultural and physical reasons, but when it happens, some fat is stored across their entire bodies in the aforementioned subcutaneous layer; the rest of the energy stimulates them much like a dose of amphetamines, inducing increased physical activity to burn it off.
Their skin is unusual in possessing both sweat glands and fur (rather than human- or equine-style body hair). There are two types of hairs, both of them erectile: a short, plush undercoat (three millimeters or one-eighth inch long) and a longer, slightly less thick layer of guard hairs (thirteen millimeters or one-half inch long). When sweating, an Emissary usually erects as much of his or her hair as clothing or circumstance permits, allowing the sweat droplets to wick through the fur.
While the color of each coat is uniform over an individual Emissary’s body, the two coats may be the same color or different colors, and in the latter case can give rise to some striking visual effects. The range of colors is like nothing seen in Earthly life, including the entire rainbow in somewhat muted tones—burgundy rather than bright red, for instance—in a manner described by some observers as resembling tastefully designed stuffed toys.
Normally, the tail curls in a three-quarter circle behind an Emissary. It is not prehensile and, if held out straight, is roughly knee-length and moderately fluffy. While it does sometimes wag or twitch or otherwise move to express emotion, the owner can at will bestill it or move it in a desired fashion, useful for maintaining the equivalent of a “poker face”. The pelvic basket, lacking the support that in a human would be provided by the tailbone, is modified to provide that support in other ways.
The head is almost certainly the most distinctively alien-looking. The muzzle is short and blunt, tipped with a small black nosepad and split by a moderately long, thin-lipped mouth containing omnivore dentition and a very human-looking tongue. The eyes are wide and straight, almost like a cartoon character’s, and like the fur can be of nearly any color. There is no scalp hair like a human’s; the closest equivalent is a longer, thicker ruff of fur thirty to fifty millimeters (1.2 to two inches) long between the ears. The latter are mobile and stand about half the skull’s height above the crown of the head; they are round-tipped and somewhat broad, and are mounted higher on the sides of the skull than a human’s.
Their scent is mild and slightly spicy when it is noticeable at all. Their voices are soft and musical, reflecting their usually pleasant, even-tempered nature. They are distinct individuals, as humans are, but do not display as much variation in personality and seem to be more community-oriented in their mind-set. They tend not to be body-shy but, in deference to human sensibilities, usually wear flowing high-collared robes, sometimes with a small fez-like hat perched between the ears and sandals or ankle boots on the feet. Color and cut are purely decorative, and they and the hat have no particular cultural function.
The Fractal Dimension-Reduction Device
The first scientists in the United States to examine the FDR device nicknamed it the “roosevelt”, an obscure historical pun on the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the nation before and during the Second World War. It gained some currency through use by various journalists, but never became widely popular; other nicknames competed for that honor, though none gained ascendancy for quite a while.
Exactly how the device works and what it looks like are open to conjecture—which is encouraged. What it does, however, is better defined: the number of dimensions experienced by objects within its range of effect is reduced to less than three, but more than two. The trick is to orient the device so that the diminished dimension is aligned with the direction in which one wishes to go.
The smaller the reduced dimension is pushed, the more energy is required to maintain the reduction. The energy-input curve (see figure at right) looks hyperbolic if plotted on a dual logarithmic scale, increasing slowly until the reduction reaches about one-one hundredth (.01). It is at that point that the knee in the curve is reached, and at about one-one thousandth (.001) reduction it begins to shoot upward very rapidly.
However, simply activating the device does nothing more than create a funhouse mirror effect that appears to “zoom in” on one particular direction. This is admittedly useful for long-range observation, such as for astronomy or satellite photography, but for transportation purposes, its sole function is simply to reduce the apparent distance the vehicle must travel. That vehicle must still use some form of propulsion to cover the distance.
It’s been suggested that the first use of the device would be not in spacecraft, but in Earthly transportation instead. In such applications, the dimension reduction would be about one-third. The relatively small reduction makes for smaller, cheaper, and less power-hungry devices than would be used in space; airliners and transport aircraft can cover distances in times comparable to Concorde flights, electrical automobiles suddenly are truly practical, and container ships can race across oceans. Of course, the straighter the path followed by a vehicle using the device, the more efficient the distance-telescoping effect, which conveys more benefits to air and sea travel than to land transport.
Once leaving Earth, though, much higher compression values are needed. For interplanetary vehicles, a reduction of one-one hundredth (0.01) is preferred for its relatively low energy requirements and smaller device size. But for interstellar voyages, nothing less efficient than one-one thousandth (0.001) is practical. Some of the side effects that give rise to oddities on Earth become very noticeable at the greater compressions used in space.
The first thing to note is the aforementioned “zoom” effect in the axis of reduction, which makes everything along that axis (in both directions) much closer to the vehicle. The effect is quite disconcerting until one becomes accustomed to it, which would tend to result in relatively lukewarm sales of private vehicles equipped with the device. On the other hand, since the effect of the device is to reduce distances rather than to increase a vehicle’s speed, collisions are no worse than in vehicles without the device, at whatever actual relative speeds the vehicles are traveling at the time of collision.
The next notable distortion occurs when the vehicle is moving. On Earth, with the relatively small dimension reduction, it looks to an observer within the vehicle as if the world around the vehicle moves past with the rushed feel of high-speed stop-motion animation. (Fans of Mike Jittlov will be familiar with this phenomenon.) To a bystander, it is the vehicle that seems to possess that odd quality of movement.
In space, with the much greater reduction in use, the effect perceived by an external observer is vastly more pronounced, and repeated afterimages of the passing vehicle will reach him or her at the same time, resulting in a smeared streak passing in a blur. Inside the spacecraft, objects that pass close by will be smeared, though the distant stars will seem virtually unaffected.
A final word about the latter is necessary. Once the compression is in effect, a spacecraft (or any other vehicle) must still propel itself across the compressed distance. All the usual techniques, problems, and relativistic effects must still be accounted for—it’s just that the apparent distance to be traveled is much smaller. Ω
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