1. Here is my testimony. In the Autumn of 2100 I was selected to be
one of the crew of the Honourable Friendship 8 Mission. We were tasked
primarily with establishing a cache of mining equipment at Patsaev
Crater on the far side of the moon. Given the loss of the Honourable
Friendship 7, we were also tasked with a number of additional
investigations assigned to that mission, to be carried out if time
permitted. These included crater measurements preparatory to the
development of the proposed Dark Side Radio Telescope and the
investigation of an unusual feature on the North side of the crater. On
the last day of the mission, with the other tasks completed, Commander
Elizabeth Murray, Specialist Shen Junqi and myself took Rover B to the
Northern site. The anomaly had been reported as a perfectly circular
dark artifact, roughly two metres in diameter, appearing on multiple
images taken by Honourable Friendship 4. We assumed it was most likely
to be a defect in Honourable Friendship 4’s camera, although Liz
believed that it might be an unusual mineral deposit. Instead, we found a
hole. Let me be clear about this: it was not a natural feature. It
reminded me of nothing so much as a spiral staircase, leading down into
the rock. Other than a light covering of dust on the upper steps, one
would hardly have thought it was on the moon at all. As you might
imagine, the three of us discussed what to do with some intensity,
particularly as we were outside the communication window with mission
control. Shen and myself were of the opinion that, although a mundane
explanation was surely still the most likely, we should be cautious and
treat this as a potential first contact with some other civilization.
But Liz was adamant that it must be a geological feature, and wished to
take samples from inside the hole. After some debate, Shen and I agreed
that cautious sampling was warranted. We agreed that Liz should not
descend out of our line of sight. However, once in the hole, she stated
that she was, and I quote, ‘Just going to take a deeper one’. After ten
minutes had passed with Liz out of view and radio contact, Shen
cautiously ventured down to see if she required assistance. That was the
last I saw of either of them. Faced with dwindling oxygen levels, I was
forced to return to the Honourable Friendship. Mission Control,
weighing up the liklihood of the complete loss of the mission, ordered
me home. I fully agree with the conclusions of the scientific committee
that my colleagues were likely the victims of a natural cave collapse or
similar event. But I can only think of the curious similarity to a
manuscript that gained some small fame after its uncovering, in 2030,
during excavations for the South-West Deep Sewer project, herein quoted:
2. I can specify my location only as D—, a small town in the West of England. It has no unusual properties that I am aware of. Other than this: one Sunday, in the dead days of August 2002, a hole appeared at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. It was reported quickly to the local council, who put a board over it, surrounded the site with orange barriers, and left it. This is where my interest begins. The hole was outside my house, and made backing into my driveway difficult. In order to ascertain if I should be complaining to the gas, electricity or water companies, I crept out and lifted the board one night. But there were no pipes underneath. Just a hole, perfectly circular, with spiral steps leading down into the darkness. Taking my torch, I followed the steps down. But after twenty steps they ended in a blank wall of earth. When I thought on this the next day the illogicality of the situation bothered me. So I went back the following night to check I had not missed some piping or wiring or suchlike. This time I counted twenty-one steps, but nothing else had changed. The next night twenty-two; the next twenty-three; and so on. Going out there became a ritual. I wanted to know who was digging it and why. But I could never catch them. Finally, I packed a bag with food, water, paper and batteries and determined that I would wait at the bottom of the stairs for twenty-four hours. Surely this would solve the mystery. But I observed nothing. And worse: when I went back to the top of the steps, I found one fewer than before, and the entrance to the hole sealed by some hard, immovable layer, joined seamlessly with the walls of the shaft. I returned to the base of the stair, where I found the new step finally added. And so it is each day, now. Each day I lose one step from the top and gain one step at the bottom. Each day, perhaps, I am closer to wherever this staircase goes. But I have been without food for a week. Despite my rationing, the water ran out yesterday. It seems that air can enter and leave, but I have felt the walls from top to bottom many times and never found a single hole. I have hope at least that this account will make it out, even if I do not. Though if I am to die for this mystery, I wish I at least knew what it was. The only thing that comes to mind is a story that I read once regarding an expedition to the far North, if I may recall:
3. It was in the Winter of 1830, in those days
when everyone with a ship and a dream was talking of the fabled
Northwest passage, that great undiscovered trade route to the North of
the American continent. An exploratory expedition under the command of
Captain R—– was charged with mapping the earlier shores of the likely
entrance to the Passage. It was hoped that later navigators could make
use of their findings in a full traverse. Captain R—– was an
experienced sailor in the Arctic realms and had at his command HMS
Sulphur and HMS Devastation, both well fitted out for the icy
conditions; it was not a mission that anyone expected to fail. However,
the Autumn that year was unusually cold, and both ships were
unexpectedly cut off from their return route by pack ice South of Baffin
Island. Captain R—– made the decision to sail North, in the hope of
finding a clear route back to their planned overwintering site. In short
order they found themselves in uncharted waters, sailing between a mass
of sharp, rocky islands, and with increasingly little open water to
work with. It was at this point that they found the lighthouse. It was
nestled in a small bay in the side of a steep, barren island. The
sailors were understandably unwilling to investigate, it being a part of
the world entirely unfrequented by lighthouse-builders and in any case
in an illogical position for a lighthouse; Captain R—– records, in
the logbook of the Sulphur, that some believed it to be a mass
hallucination. Nevertheless, since they were by this time in sore need
of a sheltered site to overwinter, he ordered that they anchor the ships
in the bay. The lighthouse proved deserted and unremarkable inside;
save that the staircase up to its broken light seemed also to continue
down into the rock, but was sealed shut with rocks and ice. Captain
R—– gave the order that the crew of the Devastation should overwinter
in the bay, whilst that of the Sulphur should overwinter in a wider bay
on the next island to the North, in the hope that at least one ship
would be able to escape the pack ice come Spring. From this point we
have only the testimony of the Sulphur’s crew to go on, as the logbook
records were neglected during the Winter. They report that, after some
harsh months in the dark of the Arctic Winter, they gathered upon deck
to celebrate the rising of the sun once more, when the ship’s doctor
noted that green smoke could be seen rising from the direction of the
lighthouse. An expedition was mounted to cross the ice of the bay and
investigate. Upon arrival, they found the hull of the Devastation,
half-stripped of boards and without her masts. There was no sign of the
crew or captain. The lighthouse was thick with smoke, but nevertheless
the expedition managed to enter. They report that the building was
entirely empty, but that the staircase down into the rock had become
unblocked; however, owing to the thickness of the smoke, which appeared
to emanate from somewhere below ground, they were unable to descend more
than a few steps. They returned to the Sulphur and, the following
Spring, were able to escape the ice and make their way back to
Portsmouth. A full inquest was ordered into the loss of the Devastation,
but mysteriously shelved the following year. However, a report was
compiled from the testimony of the surviving crew which received a
certain amount of media attention. The report also alludes to an earlier
incident with some similar features:
4. This incident was recorded in the days of the Venetian Republic; some say around the year 1600, although details are sketchy. A merchant, one Paolo S—–, was in the process of sinking piles into the mud of the lagoon in preparation for the construction of a house and storage area. However, four piles in the middle of the proposed area were observed to be slowly rising. Construction was stopped whilst further investigations were undertaken. It was discovered that a hard, circular object seemed to have been disturbed by the works and was moving upwards towards the surface of the mud. In due course the excavators were able to uncover a thick, heavily rusted metal disk atop some kind of cylinder, around three braccio across. With some effort, they were able to lever the disk from its base, discovering inside a descending metal staircase, also heavily rusted, but free from water. On the uppermost step were a sealed case and a number of warning symbols, unusual in design but relatively clear in intent. On their master’s orders, the excavators retrieved the case, re-sealed the shaft and allowed the mud to re-cover the area, abandoning construction. The case was found to contain a thick document in a nearly indecipherable English dialect. In his diaries, Paolo S—– recorded that he had it sent to a trading partner in London, who believed that it made reference to a great machine for building houses: a machine the size of a city, that could itself build a city. This machine, it was said, had by accident made contact with another great machine, one that had power over time itself. The document seemed to be an investigation into this contact, which had caused both machines to catastrophically malfunction. Most of the details were obscure, other than that the investigators concluded that many thousands of deaths were likely; but that those deaths would only happen in the past, and as such, the company could not be held liable under the laws of the time. Paolo reclaimed the manuscript and threw it into an obscure part of the lagoon, and to his death would tell no-one the location of the staircase.
15000 slabs reinforced cake (2000 chocolate, 3000 red velvet, 10000 sponge). 6000 tiles gingerbread. 12000 sugar roofing nails. 2 tonnes marzipan. 3000 brittle toffee floor tiles. 2 tonnes royal icing wall plaster. 100 reinforced biscuit architraves. 80 chocolate doors, normal size (40 white, 40 milk). 2 great gates, dark chocolate with jellybeans and edible gilding. 1 gummy cola portcullis. Cherry jelly as required for moat. 200 woven raspberry bootlace curtains. Spun-sugar pelmets as required. 500 shortcake stair treads. 500 metres sugar piping and fittings. 50 litres lemonade per occupant per day of use. 5 toilet bowls, sinks and cisterns, peanut brittle. 5 gummy lime toilet seats. 12 reinforced sponge cake sofas with buttercream filling. One banqueting table, reinforced chocolate with toffee slabs. Two long benches, ditto. 200 fudge cushions. 200 marshmallow cushions. 8 chocolate candelabra. 1 spun-sugar coat-rack. Five king-size creme brulee beds with nougat pillows. Gingerbread throne with gilded highlights, set with jellybeans. Sugarwork crown. Candycane sceptre. Royal dagger set with sharpened toffee shards. Piped icing to decorate.
9988 Forbidden spaces
-9988.1 Those that are in plain sight
–9988.11 The middle of busy roads
—9988.111 Those roads that from time to time are cleared of traffic for some great demonstration, so that one may giddily walk their newly crowded spaces
–9988.12 That space in the centre of roundabouts
—9988.121 Those that are desolate and bare, other than a few exhaust-drunk tulips
—9988.122 Those that are wild and overgrown and could host a tent or a very small population of dinosaurs
–9988.13 Those that could be reached by climbing, if climbing were allowed
–9988.14 Those featuring spikes, slippery paint, hostile noises or patrolling guards
-9988.2 Those that one may find out about
–9988.21 Tantalizing things visible on satellite maps, jigsawing into the world you know
–9988.22 Those that one may go to if one wishes, but at some cost to those who believe that no-one should go there
–9988.23 Those that form part of the infrastructure of the city
-9988.3 Those that are dangerous
–9988.31 The cores of nuclear reactors
—9988.311 Those cores that have melted down in famous accidents, glimpsed occasionally by dying robots
–9988.32 The summits of mountains, on planets other than this one
–9988.33 Antarctica in Winter
–9988.34 Warrens of underwater caves
–9988.35 Abandoned mines
–9988.36 The stomachs of huge beasts
-9988.4 Those that are unknown or unreachable
–9988.41 Caves that no longer lead to the surface
–9988.42 Lakes sealed under the ice
1. Take the bad news outside, tie it to a pillow and punch it
2. Bury the bad news
3. No really, bury the bad news, bury it like the victim of a murder, at night in the woods with a sharp stick through its heart, bury it in black bags or with its organs decanted into nutshells for the squirrels to dispose of, and when the police find the bad news, as surely they must, they will never, never know whose bad news it is or why it was bad
4. Stare unblinking at the bad news for three hideous days and nights, until at last the bad news blinks its wide yellow eyes, turns, and slinks away
5. Take your best red dildo and fuck the bad news until it is sated and sleepy
6. Tell the bad news to everyone, tell it to your friends and your family and to strangers on the bus and to the sky and to locked doors and to the dead silver fishes at the market, tell it and tell it until the bad news is worn thin with telling and flakes apart onto your shoes
7. Hold the bad news close until you find someone else you can give it to
8. Take the bad news by the hand and lead it into the mountains, until it and you are so tired that you are falling asleep where you stand, but make sure that it falls asleep first
9. Drink the bad news, drop by bitter drop, and piss it away into a clean porcelain bowl
10. Teach the bad news how to use language, and to swear, and teach it words it never knew, teach them in English and German and Japanese, teach it to be a poet of the curse, teach it and teach it until it is a tiny buzzing bee of obscenity, then let it loose on the North wind to puzzle lost and distant travellers
11. Hold the bad news gently and tell it that you know, you know not all news can be good, and it is not the fault of the news itself, and let it go free into the world unashamed
1. The Boodlehound. Perhaps the only dog to have been bred specifically
for a large bladder capacity, the boodlehound is approximately spherical
and only needs to pee once every three days. As such, walking the
boodlehound is a bit like entering the dog pee lottery, and it is
advised to keep it away from places where an unusually large volume of
urine would be a nuisance. It is also one of the few dog breeds which
prefer to travel long distances by rolling rather than walking.
2.
The Danish Rug. A dog bred to satisfy the requirements of people who are
not really allowed to have a dog. The Danish Rug standard calls for the
breed to closely resemble a thick, fluffy rug. One may then train the
dog to lie very still in an unobtrusive place in the event of an
unexpected house inspection. Unfortunately the Danish rug still yelps
when stepped on; however, it is possible to hire a decorative human to
pretend to lie on the rug to maintain the illusion, if you have advance
notice of the requirement.
3. The Boinger Spaniel. This breed has
fallen out of favour amongst those of us with ceilings of normal height.
However, if you live in a house with unusually tall rooms and do not
mind scrubbing dog prints off the ceiling, the Boinger Spaniel is a
loving, faithful and unusually exuberant companion.
4. The Nether
Hugbeast. The breed standard calls for a dog approximately the size of a
small horse; with messy grey-black fur; huge snaggle teeth; sinister
red eyes; a low, menacing growl; and the sincere belief that it is still
a small snuggly puppy and can absolutely fit on your lap for a cuddle.
5.
The Parperon. A spontaneous mutation, the original Parperon found fame
as part of the act of one of the early fartistes. Subsequently, lovers
of flatulence worldwide have managed to keep the Parperon genes alive
with a careful selective breeding program. It is perhaps the only dog
breed that can jet-propel a skateboard, and is of great use in clearing
the room at parties.
1. Open the toilet lid, dibble hands in the water, look up and grin
2. Eat the moss the birds peck off the roof
3. Drop things in the cat water bowl, particularly useful things, electronic things, and/or things that make a big splash
4. Open the cleaning supplies cupboard, pull out everything onto the floor, look up and grin
5. Toddle out of the front door and stand in the road
6. Use the cat as a baby walker
7. Closely examine the fragment of cat litter the cat has dropped in the kitchen, before eating it
8. Get up and crawl off in the middle of a nappy change
9. Pull off the exciting flap at the front of library books, look up and grin
10. Throw all food off the side of the highchair, look grumpy because no food is left
11. Bend the covers of board books backwards until the spine pops open
12. Eat cat food
13. Chew the ears of the space hopper, look up and grin while it slowly deflates
1.
1. There was a woman who had a secret. The secret was in a small box which had been kept, unopened, in her family for three generations. No-one remembered what it was, only that some vague danger had been involved in its acquisition. On her seventieth birthday, believing the danger no longer applicable to the modern age, she opened the box. Three days later she was seized with a premonition of awesome and terrifying force. Placing the secret in an anonymous storage facility, she retired to a nearby park, where she was suddenly devoured by a horde of rampaging chinchillas.
2. After some time, the storage facility sold off its abandoned boxes, sight unseen, to the highest bidder. The secret passed into the hands of five triplets who were trying to raise funds for their magic show. As soon as they saw the secret, they knew they were in trouble. They gave one last spectacular show (in which they disappeared fully fourteen people, a rabbit, a barrel of laughs and the number nine), placed the secret into the trunk of a hollow tree, and purchased plane tickets to Venezuela. Sadly, near the entrance to the airport, while gathering for a group photo, they were fatally stuck by a frozen wallaby which had fallen from the wheel well of an incoming 747.
3. The secret passed into the hands of a prospecting squirrel collector. During to his long years in the squirrel trade, he had become incapable of considering an object other than through the lens of squirrels. He showed the secret to his squirrels and they became extremely agitated, throwing their entire nut store out of the window.. He decided to post the secret to the Vatican, but in his rush to get to the post office he accidentally picked a carnivorous hat from the hat stand and was devoured in the middle of the local high street. The letter was seized by the police as evidence.
4. The police measured the secret and discovered it was exactly 3.1 cm long and did not have any discernible fingerprints on it. Due to an administrative mistake, it was charged with resisting arrest and placed in cell 8a. When one of the detectives went in to interview it, the cell collapsed, crushing everyone inside. The secret was taken away by a haulage firm contracted to clear the debris.
5. The debris was used as ballast to shore up a local hill that was subsiding. Meanwhile, mathematics had gone haywire due to the lack of the number nine. The hill was a common place for suicidal mathematicians to come and contemplate slipping cliffsides. One of them found the secret. In a frenzy of discovery, she proved its existence in six pages of densely spaced pencil text, with two lemmas. Subsequently she was caught on the horns of a dilemma and fatally impaled. The secret, attached to the proof, was picked up by the mathematical recovery team and placed on a truck.
6. The truck was suddenly stolen by a rogue chinchilla breeder who hoped to use it to set up a chinchilla monster truck show. The secret tapped her on the shoulder at a major junction and she jumped out if this plane of existence in alarm. As a result the chinchillas were abandoned. After a number of days without food, they went on a ravenous rampage and devoured a local pensioner.
7. A hat dealer who also worked as a lost vehicle investigator took the secret from the truck. Realising its import, she wrapped it up in a banana skin and threw it in the bin. Then she attempted to secretly flee the country by hiding in the wheel well of a 747, but was instead bounced to death by a wallaby who was trying to get to Australia and had got to the wheel well first. Due to her untimely demise she was unable to sort the carnivorous from the non-carnivorous hats in the next day’s hat batches, and several carnivorous hats were sold before the problem was noticed.
8. The banana was taken to the tip, where the secret was extracted from the skin and swallowed by a hungry seagull, who subsequently became able to speak six languages and understand the trouble it was in. Sadly the six languages were all extinct ones, although the seagull’s antics entertained the local university’s language faculty for the next few days. Subsequently, it shat the secret out onto a terrace outside the university’s library cafe. The next day, walking past the faculty of squirrels, it was struck on the head by a falling nut and died.
9. Finally the dean of the university, who had been watching this all from afar, scraped the secret off the terrace and put it in a box. He sealed the box up in his attic and warned his family that it was not to be opened for at least three generations.
10. Everything became very quiet.
1. Lairy, hungry mallards sprinting down the river from the last bread stop, eyeing the afternoon’s crust-sated roost in their tiny minds.
2. Ducks rejoicing in splendid names, such as the Smew and the Bufflehead.
3. Those ducks that have just been fed brioche, but will deign to take your bread too because of their general admiration for humanity. These ducks sometimes get a little too close.
4. Slow, ornate ducks flashing golden feathers.
5. Small ducks with blue feet, riding curiously low in the water, subject to sudden upendings and submergings.
6. Huge white ducks with long necks and a shifty look in their eye.
1. The Imperious Snurf. The Snurf looks rather like one might imagine a sea monster to look and no wonder: it was the original model for the monster entwined around the compass rose on ancient maps. If you meet the Snurf it will tell you this at great length, along with numerous tales of its glory days in the 12th century. If you bring it mangoes it will tell you its adventures with the other stars of the old map modelling world, including the time the Desert Lions loaded it onto a large cart and took it for a ride across the Sahara to party with the North Wind. In the modern age it is sadly underemployed. It can be easily summoned by floating a large wooden arrow, circle and/or letter ‘N’ in the Atlantic Ocean.
2. The alX'char. These beings are aliens from a planet with a high-density atmosphere. As such, their exploration of Earth has naturally concentrated on what they believe to be the most likely place to find intelligent life, i.e. the deep oceans. They regard the above-water parts of the globe as hostile environments unlikely to harbour much of interest. After three hundred years of exploration, they have largely written off suggestions of interesting transmissions from the planet as a fluke, but one occasionally encounters tourist groups who have dropped by to spot angler fish, which they believe to be the planet’s apex life form. Obviously no human has yet had a friendly conversation with them but I suspect they’d be quite interested in the prospect.
3. The inhabitants of Nether Timewell, a small village on a gently hilly part of the sea bed near Rockall. Nether Timewell was founded by humans cursed to immortality by various malign fairies. Being the sort of people who get cursed to immortality by fairies (you know the type), they were naturally curious about the new exploration opportunities available to them now they were no longer able to drown. I am not sure how, but sooner or later every fairy-cursed human who walks into the sea ends up at Nether Timewell, where there is usually a small cottage already waiting for them. The village’s extensive system of underwater lights is powered by one of only three authentic perpetual motion machines in the world and is something to behold, should you get the chance.
4. The sea itself. Although it is perfectly possible to have a conversation with the sea, be aware that you may not get an answer within a human lifetime and that it will almost certainly not be at a pitch audible by human ears. However, there are certain mystics who claim to have asked the sea multiple questions and recieved credible answers with only the minimum of translation equipment. For example, Norbertina of Amsterdam claimed to have received a full but oddly damp proof of Fermat’s last theorem in the post after discussing the matter with the Pacific from the belly of a friendly whale. If you wish to try this, the Indian Ocean may be the best one to start with. Do not attempt to have a conversation with the Southern Ocean, which is rumoured both to be unusually slow in answering and also somewhat grumpy and forgetful.