FLASHed

6. Galaxy Tree

[In an age before the events in Companionship and Unholy Star]

Of all the memories of my home planet, the most vivid is the memory of the night I left for Qura Ammara. I was standing at the edge of the view deck on our family platform apprehensive at the notion of leaving my family for the first time. It was a clear night and, as a fresh breeze cooled my face, I looked to the horizon where the stars met the endless forest canopy. I remember wondering if there were more stars in the sky than leaves in the wide forest. Little did I know then, that the stars and the trees, that scene, would change everything.

I was one of the many children in a large family, and I was different. While my brothers,  sisters and cousins were fighting over candy, I was drawing patterns from the numbers in the sky. On my twelfth birthday, I was tested and asked if I would like to become Ethnaa Aashar.  

The Ethnaa Aashar was a special group of students based in the learning center of civilisation, Qura Ammara.  As Ethnaa Aashar, I would remain twelve years old physically for the period of twelve years and, for that time, dedicate my life to developing the potential of my intellect under the guidance of The Learned. At the conclusion of the Ethnaa Aashar, one in twelve would be chosen to become Ulman (one of The Learned).

The position was not without risk.  In order to remain twelve years old, each year I would need to undertake the genetic refresh procedure known as gefresh. It is the law that an individual can only undergo eleven gefreshes in their lifetime, and so Ethnaa Aashar would exhaust my whole life's gefresh quota. Even if I were not accepted to be Ulman, I would only live the term of a natural life. But I could see the excitement of my parents. The idea of having a Twelve in the family was a high prestige that spanned all of the colonies. And such prestige would lead to  new opportunities for all of my kin -- opportunities  that were normally out of reach of the commoner. So, I agreed.

The first eight years were hard; physically and mentally demanding as I mastered the fundamentals of language, mathematics, the sciences and the arts. On my eighth anniversary of Ethnaa Aashar, I was introduced to augmentations and learned to extend the powers of the human brain through integration with the machine. At this point, some Ethnaa Aashar would choose the path of the auger and merge their minds and bodies with powerful internal systems.  But rather than processing power, I chose to develop my creativity. For me, the augmentations would remain as tools requiring external interface.

During my ninth year of Ethnaa Aashar, I discovered the Galaxy Tree. 

Before the Galaxy Tree phase travel between star systems was limited to a single phase per journey, and it was an incredibly expensive exercise to generate just one set of p2 co-ordinates. Recall the famous discovery of phase points from the Solar System to the Kepler System (and my home planet Skye); it took over twenty years for the Zeus Alpha to generate those points. Eventually, the data and algorithms improved and more zeus processors were brought online to dedicate cycles to p2 calculation. But after one hundred years of improvement starships could still only phase from one system to the next. Phasing again to another star system could only be possible if a new set of coordinates were generated fresh at each location. The points being time sensitive, so entry and exit points would expire readily. The human star map grew slowly like spokes around wheels of wooden carts.

Have you ever looked at the clouds and seen shapes? Discovering shapes was my gift and I, by fate or accident, one day found a very special shape. I had devised, for my enjoyment, a visualisation of the grey dimension (that place to which we phase when traveling between stars). The seemingly chaotic random structures were beautiful, and perhaps part of me thought subconsciously that there were greater truths to be unearthed beyond the beauty itself. 

My view was submersive, and I remember thinking that it was as if I were floating through a great colourful forest. It seemed to me that this must be how God sees the whole of creation at one time. The idea of God's view stuck with me, and I wondered how this beautiful scene would look through time. So, I went back to over one hundred years of record and added a temporal aspect to my algorithm. Shapes, very subtle shapes, formed in the chaos, and I began to notice patterns. Soon the patterns took form, and I had discovered something new.  It was like a tree, the canopy of a great oak when viewed from above. What I saw was just like the trees that I looked down upon from my childhood home every day.

I dropped everything and rushed to the lab and sought out every key time-based analysis of the grey dimension. I knew these studies as I'd consumed each of them several times during my study. But in all of this research there had never been any pattern revealed that described the way that space bends and folds over time. For the next year, I revisited the data and re-ran the analysis -- nothing.

Another two years passed and, on the day before I turned thirteen, I sat before The Learned. I showed them the Galaxy Tree and described my proof for the traversal of the branches. In conclusion, I said, 

    "Stars and leaves

     on sacred oak,

     light a path so we 

     may leave our nests 

     and find our God." 

They conferred in hushed voices, and after a short while, the most elder simply said to me, "Welcome Learned. From this day forth you shall be Ulman Gazhul, steward of the Galaxy Tree."

.fin

(998 words)