Spheria (23 page)

Nearby, the hive buildings sprawled up to and around the base of the Council structure. Soldiers stationed at the top of each of the three faces meant the Council was in session. No one was allowed to approach during this time.
Why am I not looking down on the Leaders?
This disturbed Fa∙ro; he was a god after all. But they treated him like a servant, only calling on him to break a stalemate.

He turned around on the dais and assumed a prominent pose, flailing four legs out while balancing on only three. He noticed a Drone watching him from the window of a hive.
Yes
, he thought,
I do look imposing, don’t I? They should build a statue of me so I will always be remembered. I wonder if Sa∙ma is capable of doing that?

He lost interest in acting tough, stepped off the platform, and walked to his hive. He had nothing better to do but rest until, or rather if, the Council summoned him. It occurred to him that he should find out what the Drones were up to. But lethargy settled in and he decided it wasn’t worth his time.

His hive was similar to the others. But instead of housing five Drones, three Workers, or two Soldiers, it was his alone. This was due to both his size, and that he was the only one of his kind. He had to crouch a little to enter the arched doorway, but the inside was plenty big enough for him. He walked to the window and looked up at the Council structure. He had a clear view, as if the Leaders gave him this hive to taunt him incessantly.

“You want to be up there,” said a deep voice behind him, “don’t you?”

Fa∙ro whirled around.
How dare someone enters his hive uninvited?
He swung a leg to smack whoever it was. But his leg passed right through the trespasser and Fa∙ro almost fell over.

“It is forbidden to strike a god, even by another god,” said the intruder.

Fa∙ro focused until he was sure of what he was seeing. Standing there before him in his hive was another seven-legged Polyan; indeed, a god.

“Who are you?” demanded Fa∙ro.

“You should know your brethren. Has the Council not taught you anything about the gods?”

The creature before Fa∙ro had a red core, unlike his violet one, which was the same as all the other castes of Polyan. “Pi∙ro,” answered Fa∙ro. “I know the name of each color well. Tell me, will I get a new color when I join you in the Source?”

“Ah, the Source. Yes, of course you will. You can’t very well have the same one as Wi∙ro. Plus you are special, so you should look different than the common Polyans that grovel at your feet.”

“Give me my color, brother.”

“Not quite yet, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean ‘not yet?’”

“Well, you see, you are a demi, not a god.”

Fa∙ro scratched his legs on the floor. He wasn't receiving happy news. He did not expect his first encounter with another god to go this way. “What’s a demi?”

“A demi is a… pre-god. You have the shape and abilities of a god, but you have not yet earned your place beside the others. To join us, you must prove yourself. You must pass a test.”

Bad news, but good news also. Hope.

Pi∙ro continued, “You see, all of us were here when the world, Spheria, was created. We participated in its creation. You have not done anything as magnificent. Frankly, you have not done anything at all, and you must earn your title. You must prove you are worthy of becoming a god.”

Fa∙ro remembered the story of the creation, of how the gods all formed from the legs of Ra∙ju. And one by one they created a feature of this world. “How could I ever do anything as impressive as what you all have done?”

“We’re in a new period: the era of life. The world is formed and stable; you can’t create the mountains or the rivers. But you can develop… your Colony. You can shape the minds of your species.”

“How might I do this? I’m merely a pawn, waiting to assist the Council. I have no influence over anyone, except when asked.”

“Don’t wait to be asked. To all of them, you are a god. Nobody will dare oppose you for fear of the wrath from us all. The Council is naive and doesn’t realize this. The Leaders have been in power too long and are blinded by tradition. It’s time for a new structure. Look at yourself.”

Fa∙ro took this literally and began scanning his legs one by one.

“Yes, you have seven legs, but you dwell here on the ground with the other lower castes. Meanwhile, the Leaders sit atop their structure high above. It’s time for you to take your rightful place at the top, to make the Council bow before
you
. Only by this path will you prove you are worthy to be a god.”

“The Council will never allow this. The members barely interact with me, let alone allow me to influence their activities.”

“I'm not saying you convince them through discussions. There are other ways, other options.”

“Like what?”

“You are large, powerful, intimidating… I saw you posing in the center. No other Polyan would approach you. Use this to your advantage. Begin with the Soldiers. They have unyielding respect for authority, and they will never oppose you. Win them over, and the Colony is yours. Earn the Colony, and earn your place beside us.”
 

Fa∙ro turned back to the window and glanced up at the Council structure. Ga∙zo stood guard at the top, scanning the horizon. “I will start with him,” said Fa∙ro

There was no response.

Fa∙ro turned back, but the room was empty. As magically as Pi∙ro had appeared, so had he vanished.

Chapter 27 - The World Builder

"Texture is something we forget - it makes outfits look very expensive. You can do a monochromatic outfit, if you're afraid of things that are more colorful and printed, and still create interest." - Stacy London

Min leaned in close to her screen and squinted through her glasses at lists of similar numbers. She scrutinized them all, trying not to let the zeros blur together: 0.00009, 0.00008, 0.00006, 0.00010, 0.00009, 0.00009, 0.000008.

Aha!
“That one has an extra zero in it,” she muttered.

“So now you talk to your computer?” The voice made her jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Min turned around to see Frankie standing behind her, looking over her shoulder. “Yes, you did!” she proclaimed.

“Maybe a little,” he replied, winking at her. “You get so serious about numbers. I don’t know how you math types can stare at that stuff all day. It makes no sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense. More sense than anything else, actually. Numbers are concrete. Combining them gives you tangible results. There is no…” she paused looking for the right word,
“nonsense
about it.”

He grunted at her. “I think it’s all nonsense. What makes sense is the beauty of life. The colors in the world, how they mix and blend. And how the patterns in nature create a magical beauty that can’t be replicated elsewhere, I mean, anywhere.”

“You know,” said Min, “the world you speak of is just one big mathematical formula. The repeating patterns of the nautilus shell are like the layers of a sheep’s horn which is like the leaves on a cabbage. These patterns all follow a set of numbers that means, in essence, we’re all just equations.”

Frankie glanced at the ceiling and almost, but not quite, rolled his eyes. Then he squinted at Min. “Are you talking about us, or Spheria?”

“Us!” she squealed.

“C’mon. I’m heading out to get some textures. Let me show you the real beauty that lies out there in random patterns. It’s not all as cut and dried as you make it seem.”

“Um.” Min fidgeted a little in her seat. “I'm supposed to be working on these numbers.”

“Enough with the numbers already! You were hired to assist us all, you know. Max and Dana have been monopolizing your time. I need some help today accomplishing something real.”

“Real?”

“Yes. We’re done with the entire surface modeling of Spheria. Lee and I have begun work on constructing some subterranean caverns. But we want to use some new textures. Something less smooth and grittier for this, so it looks different than the stuff above ground. This will give the Polyans, when they find these caverns, something new to ponder. All part of the ‘creating wonder’ part of our agenda. So I need a fresh set of eyes to help me find interesting, well like you said, mathematical patterns out there in nature. So let’s go.” Frankie nodded toward the door.

Min looked back at her screen, frowned, sighed, then said, “Okay, I could use a little fresh air anyway.” She stood up and grabbed her jacket off the coat rack behind her. “Lead the way.”

#

Except for an occasional patch, the snow had melted, but the trees were barren. The grass was a far shade from green. Frankie and Min strolled around the main Health Center building. They were looking for interesting patterns, both natural and man-made. Frankie had his tablet, which had a good enough built-in camera to get some decent images. The wireless connection allowed him to work on the Spheria world from outside as long as he was close enough to the building.

“How about this truck?” Min pointed at a beat-up pickup from the 70s parked along the road. It was a faded powder blue, almost white, and riddled with rust patches. There seemed to be more rust than paint. It looked a little like a cow.

“Ooh, that’s good!” praised Frankie. He ran up to the truck and began photographing the rust patches. He was so close, in fact, that the bumps and divots looked like an alien landscape. “I don’t want the caverns to be red, so I can color shift these images blue to make them look more neutral. See.”

He handed her the tablet and she looked at the screen. What was displayed indeed looked like the interior of a cave – an ice cave, because most of the triangular panels that formed the shape were pure white except for a couple of segments that looked like rusty stone.

“Why are these white?”

“The white ones don’t have a texture yet. We start by building the geometry with basic colorless triangles. These connect to form surfaces. It’s like one of those geodesic domes or the Spaceship Earth attraction at Epcot. We create surfaces in two stages: modeling and texturing. Lee and I finished the modeling back at the office. You've got to be sitting at a desk with all the 3D controllers to efficiently build things like this. But the second stage, texturing, can be done anywhere. That’s what we’re doing now. We are ‘painting’ these white surfaces with images that I’m taking with this camera. Check this out.”

Frankie took back the tablet and touched a toolbar icon labeled “Position.” He began changing the angle of the tablet, left then right, forward then back. As he did so, the viewpoint of the inside of the virtual cave changed, as if they were looking around. He held the tablet at arm’s length and raised it overhead. They were looking at the ceiling of the cave. Then he lowered it and they were looking at the floor. He spun around slowly enough for Min to stay with him, and the view panned around the cave walls.

“So what I do is get the view to be centered on the area I want to texture, like so.” The view settled on a patch of white wall. “Then I touch ‘Freeze,’ so it won’t move anymore. I can play with distance by pinching my fingers in or out.” He did so until part of the wall had grown to encompass the entire screen on the tablet. “Now I touch ‘Camera,’ and voila, what the camera is shooting is projected onto the surface.” He handed the tablet to Min.

As she moved it around, the image from the camera – the road, the building, the sky, a stop sign – all were displayed on the fake wall inside the tablet. It was pretty cool how the image seemed to automatically wrap and cling to the curved surfaces of the cave. It was as if the image were on a big sheet of plastic that was melted onto the walls with a hair dryer.

“Now hit the ‘Paint’ icon,” instructed Frankie.

Min did, and the image of some trees froze in place on the wall. Moving the tablet no longer changed the texture.

Frankie took back the tablet. “And that’s how we paint the world! Makes you feel like a god, right? Like we can command a volcano and spew forth creation itself.”

“Yeah sure Frankie. It's fun, I’ll give you that much.”

He clicked ‘undo’ and the texture of the trees disappeared. “This is going on live,” he said, “so we don’t want to put any textures in there that wouldn’t make sense in the Polyan’s world. Otherwise, we’d tear a rift in the space-time continuum.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m kidding. But it would certainly confuse some of them, and that’s not within the parameters of our experiment.”

As they talked, they resumed their walk up the road. It traced the curve of the building to the left and started up an incline. As they got to the top of the road, they arrived at a rather odd art sculpture. A bronze family of four stood in a circle atop a marble base, holding hands. The mother and father faced each other, lifting their youngest child between them, while the older child stood opposite the younger, laughing. The thing that made this sculpture odd was that all the people were completely naked, and anatomically correct.

Min pretended not to notice and glanced away. Frankie said, “Oooh, look at that,” after which he left the road and walked up to the people. Min assumed he was ogling their nakedness and her cheeks blushed. Following his gaze, she realized he was taking a texture from their tarnished surface. She joined him and indeed the mottled bronze had some interesting patterns when viewed up close.