Opaline Rose: Secret Agent

A Girl And Her Dog

7-year-old Opaline Rose stood on a rocky ledge, looking out at the undeveloped wilds below. Ylem was a new plate on a new ringworld and it still had large stretches of land that were still unexplored by humans. The brightly colored, overgrown forest was just begging to be adventured all through.

Cujo the dog was beside Opaline, as usual, taking in the same view. Nannybear floated to the other side of her, bobbing up and down slightly as though sitting on calm waters.

Nannybear was Opaline's companion drone. It wore a stuffed bear like a suit but it was anything but cuddly.

"This represents the edge of our permitted boundary," remarked Nannybear.

"I know," said Opaline, rolling her eyes.

"You appear to be considering moving beyond it," Nannybear continued.

"I'm just looking," insisted Opaline.

Cujo looked over at Opaline, his face retaining its trademark stoicism.

"Cujo says that there could be anything down there in the forest," said Nannybear. "Cujo is inaccurate: there are a finite number of things that could be down there."

"You could just translate without all the commentary," said Opaline.

"I am honor bound to apprise you of any and all falsehoods spoken in your presence," replied Nannybear, stiffening.

There was a moment of silence. Cujo looked at Opaline, then to Nannybear, then back to Opaline. He barked.

"I won't tell her that," snapped Nannybear, crossing its arms.

"Tell me!" insisted Opaline.

"I must refuse, for your own safety," said Nannybear.

That was as good as telling her anyway. Opaline exchanged a look with Cujo. There was an immediate understanding between them. Of course, losing Nannybear would mean they would lose their only translator, but Cujo and Opaline's friendship didn't require a lot of talking.

"Nannybear, do you want to play hide and seek?" asked Opaline.

"No," said Nannybear. "I am aware that you are only attempting to get me to disable my sensors so you can run off on your own. You have done this in the past."

"Okay," said Opaline, "what if you didn't have to be 'it'? Would you play then?"

"I can't think of any reason why not," said Nannybear.

"Great," said Opaline, "so you go hide and I'll come find you."

Opaline closed her eyes and began to count, and Nannybear floated off to hide.

"We're going to have to think of a new trick," Opaline said to Cujo, "it's only going to fall for that a couple more times."

Cujo ran to the edge of the cliff, nodded to Opaline, and jumped off. She wasn't far behind him. The dog caught them both with its electromagnetic field manipulator and cushioned their fall so that they landed gracefully on their feet.

By the time Nannybear realized that, once again, it had been had, the two friends were long gone.

* * *

"Now this is an adventure," said Opaline, as she scrambled to pull herself up onto a thick and sturdy tree branch. She heaved herself over the side and sat up triumphantly.

Cujo was on the ground looking up at her and wagging his tail. It occurred to her that Cujo couldn't climb the tree with her so she jumped down to join him on the ground.

Cujo immediately brought her a stick. Opaline threw it as hard as she could and it disappeared into the underbrush. Cujo took off after it, somehow able to locate the one specific stick among all the debris of the forest floor.

Cujo found the stick and proudly brought it back to be thrown again. Opaline dutifully did so and Cujo was once again after it like a bat out of Hell.

While Opaline watched the dog chase the stick, something gleaming caught her eye. She walked over to the source of the gleam and here she found something interesting lying on the ground. Opaline picked it up.

It was a perfectly smooth, pyramid shaped object a little bigger than her fist. It was translucent and yellow and its shape seemed to continue on inside of itself. Opaline had never seen anything like it. She immediately concluded that it had to be alien; humans could never produce something so pretty.

Suddenly Opaline's eyes went blank for a moment. The object spoke to her directly in her mind. It shouldn't have been possible, she was still too young to have a signal implant, but it did so all the same.

<What am I?> asked the object.

Cujo came over, still carrying the stick and wagging his tail, to see what was up.

"It's a riddle," exclaimed Opaline. "It's an alien riddle! We couldn't have asked for a better adventure."

Cujo barked.

"It asked me what it is," Opaline explained, "so that's the riddle we need to solve. There must be a way to figure it out by examining it, otherwise it wouldn't be a very good riddle."

Again, Cujo barked in agreement.

"Let's open it up and see what's inside," said Opaline.

She climbed another tree, the tallest one nearby, and dropped the pyramid from it. It landed with a thud but wasn't so much as scratched.

Opaline found the biggest stick she could locate and hit the pyramid several times to no avail. Cujo tried picking it up in a force field and smashing it against a tree, but the only thing he seemed to be hurting was the tree.

Cujo barked in frustration.

"I know, right?" agreed Opaline. "Maybe you're not supposed to open it. There must be some other trick."

Cujo adopted a playful posture. He was still game.

Opaline turned the object around in her hands, holding it extremely close to her eyes so she could take in all the fine details. All the lines on the inside of the pyramid were so strange, like they stretched into invisible places. It was very pretty. Maybe it was just for looking at?

But then why would it talk?

"I've got it!" shouted Opaline, suddenly. "It's a small, durable, pretty object that asks riddles? It's a toy! A puzzle toy!"

She looked at the object in her hands.

"You're a toy!" she told it.

The Apocalypse-class autonomous entropy weapon floated up out of Opaline's hands and into the air.

<Designation accepted,> it told her.

The highly advanced, reprogrammable alien weapon began making the necessary alterations to its hyperspatial components in order for it to fulfill its new designated purpose: puzzle toy. These changes were invisible in the lower dimensions inhabited by Opaline and her dog. From the 7-year-old's perspective the pyramid just seemed to glow slightly.

"Neat," said Opaline.

* * *

The alien entropy weapon spent the next 2,000 years in the Serendipity Square region positing riddles directly into people's brains and attempting to be as entertaining as possible to the widest possible number of sapient lifeforms in as energy efficient a manner as possible. It was considered to be a mildly annoying local curiosity until the day it finally ran out of power.

While it never amounted to much as a weapon it turned out to be a decent enough puzzle toy.