“Or two hours if my halo shorts out while I’m blasting my hair.”
At that moment, the door to the meeting room crashed open and three favours fell inside. One was bleeding from her leg. Another had a man’s wig in her hand. The third fell to her knees and threw up in the corner. While she vomited, the other two laughed and laughed.
It took them several moments to realize the room wasn’t empty.
“Oh my job!” screamed the one with the wig in her hand. “This isn’t our dressing room! It’s not even our floor!”
“Aaaaah!” shrieked the other one. “Ahhhhhh!”
The third stayed on her knees, staring into the watery puddle on the floor.
“Meeting adjourned,” said Bright.
10.00
Grassly told himself to stay calm and access the logical part of his brain. This was no time to get emotional, nor was it time for feats of physical prowess, of which he, like all 51s who hadn’t yet joined up with their Mother, was quite capable.
He strode to his worktable. He was now sure that the flicker had rendered the favours immune to the light. His own physiology had reacted by becoming intolerant. He would have to eradicate the flicker if he wanted to enlighten the whole population. It would be so much easier if he could just gas the lot of them and drag them onto his ship. But that was not the way of the Sending. The ancestors had to actively participate in their own rescue.
The good news was that his light carriers couldn’t accidentally enlighten themselves, but it was still best to play it safe.
He had enough supplies to build perhaps six more lights. How many people could be enlightened by a mere half-dozen lights carried by a highly erratic workforce? How many of the enlightened would actually make it tothe Natural Experience so he could entice them onto his ship. Lucky for him, it was one of the largest Sending ships, capable of transporting between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand ancestor-sized beings. It would be a tight fit, but once they were on board and under way, he would put them to sleep for the journey.
Yes, the obstacles he faced were many.
Then he remembered something about migrations among other species. Most involved mass movement of many individuals. He had seen millions of skakavech move across the yellow fields of GF12, coating the ground and filling the air with what seemed a solid mass. Now
that
was a migration! He’d seen images of the majestic kerbou thundering across the snowy plains of Q12 in search of their breeding grounds. What he needed to do was enlighten a critical number of ancestors at once. To do that, he couldn’t simply rely on Bright and Fon and a few other individuals to shine little lights on people. The ancestors were, like all sentient, communal species at an early stage in their development, easily influenced by each other. They did not have a guiding mind, but if one ancestor saw ten or fifty or a hundred others running toward something, that ancestor would follow the group. Look at how they would charge toward a new entertainment on the advice of a Partytainment Report, even if they had no idea how the new activity was any different from all the others.
To enlighten the ancestors all at once, he would have to reprogram all the lights in the Store, which were run through the main computer system. Unfortunately, whoeverhad programmed the lights had dim-wittedly made it impossible to implement large-scale system changes without rebooting using the manual switch located somewhere inside the Headquarters, where the Board of Deciders lived, an area that could not be viewed on the feed surveillance system. That meant that, once he got the lights reprogrammed, he would have to turn them off for the changes to take effect, then someone in the Headquarters would have to turn all the lights back on.
Changing the lights would be a big job from a programming perspective, and if he got anything wrong, such as frequency or intensity, he could kill all of the ancestors.
At that moment, the door to the meeting room crashed open and three favours fell inside. One was bleeding from her leg. Another had a man’s wig in her hand. The third fell to her knees and threw up in the corner. While she vomited, the other two laughed and laughed.
It took them several moments to realize the room wasn’t empty.
“Oh my job!” screamed the one with the wig in her hand. “This isn’t our dressing room! It’s not even our floor!”
“Aaaaah!” shrieked the other one. “Ahhhhhh!”
The third stayed on her knees, staring into the watery puddle on the floor.
“Meeting adjourned,” said Bright.
10.00
Grassly told himself to stay calm and access the logical part of his brain. This was no time to get emotional, nor was it time for feats of physical prowess, of which he, like all 51s who hadn’t yet joined up with their Mother, was quite capable.
He strode to his worktable. He was now sure that the flicker had rendered the favours immune to the light. His own physiology had reacted by becoming intolerant. He would have to eradicate the flicker if he wanted to enlighten the whole population. It would be so much easier if he could just gas the lot of them and drag them onto his ship. But that was not the way of the Sending. The ancestors had to actively participate in their own rescue.
The good news was that his light carriers couldn’t accidentally enlighten themselves, but it was still best to play it safe.
He had enough supplies to build perhaps six more lights. How many people could be enlightened by a mere half-dozen lights carried by a highly erratic workforce? How many of the enlightened would actually make it tothe Natural Experience so he could entice them onto his ship. Lucky for him, it was one of the largest Sending ships, capable of transporting between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand ancestor-sized beings. It would be a tight fit, but once they were on board and under way, he would put them to sleep for the journey.
Yes, the obstacles he faced were many.
Then he remembered something about migrations among other species. Most involved mass movement of many individuals. He had seen millions of skakavech move across the yellow fields of GF12, coating the ground and filling the air with what seemed a solid mass. Now
that
was a migration! He’d seen images of the majestic kerbou thundering across the snowy plains of Q12 in search of their breeding grounds. What he needed to do was enlighten a critical number of ancestors at once. To do that, he couldn’t simply rely on Bright and Fon and a few other individuals to shine little lights on people. The ancestors were, like all sentient, communal species at an early stage in their development, easily influenced by each other. They did not have a guiding mind, but if one ancestor saw ten or fifty or a hundred others running toward something, that ancestor would follow the group. Look at how they would charge toward a new entertainment on the advice of a Partytainment Report, even if they had no idea how the new activity was any different from all the others.
To enlighten the ancestors all at once, he would have to reprogram all the lights in the Store, which were run through the main computer system. Unfortunately, whoeverhad programmed the lights had dim-wittedly made it impossible to implement large-scale system changes without rebooting using the manual switch located somewhere inside the Headquarters, where the Board of Deciders lived, an area that could not be viewed on the feed surveillance system. That meant that, once he got the lights reprogrammed, he would have to turn them off for the changes to take effect, then someone in the Headquarters would have to turn all the lights back on.
Changing the lights would be a big job from a programming perspective, and if he got anything wrong, such as frequency or intensity, he could kill all of the ancestors.
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