CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One ∞ 3: A Shard Of Code

97 ∞ The Salt of Life

A/N: To our loyal and faithful Readers, we appreciate and value each and every one of you. After every chapter posting, we look with anticipation for your votes. We notice when one of you is gone. We read every comment and answer with joy, your feedback is what makes this project worth it.

So with that, let us apologize for the week's delay in posting Chapter 114. We feel as if we have let you down and will strive to not do so again. Our reason for the delay is multifaceted. One, Chapter 114 is almost six thousand words long. Two, Chronicle Two is twice as long as C1, so we decided to divide it in half, here at Chapter 97, and therefore there will now be three parts to this chronicle.

The title of C3 is currently 'A Shard of Code'. However, if any of our loyal Readers wish to read C3 as a separate entity and come up with a better-suited title, we will be sure to recognize and give proper credit at the end of the book. This contest is open only to our loyal Readers. (Sorry, silent Readers, you're out of luck.)

To continue, please pardon all the notifications during this construction period. The dust will settle down soon enough, and we will be back to our regular posting schedule. 

—Sincerely, Raven (and Lady Annika)

Day 00010 Mission Nilex


Gareth stood tall, looking out over Canaisis' hull at the expanse of stars beyond. He was awaiting the final results of the telescopes' alignment test runs.

The pulsar burst was coming their way, and everything had to be right. In this grand and chaotic Universe, there were some things that were utterly reliable. Pulsars were always on time.

Some seventy-two thousand light-years away, a highly magnetic neutron star wobbled on its spin. A star whose mass was so dense that atoms themselves collapsed. Indistinguishable as atoms, they formed a soup of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Gareth's imagination took over as he pictured it.

On the neutron star's surface, an electrical charge would build up from the electrons no longer trapped into orbiting their atoms. The charge's potential would break its boundaries and escape, to only be caught up by the magnetic fields flowing above the star's surface. Currents of electrons would follow the magnetic field lines of the star towards the star's north and south magnetic poles. Electrons would gain velocity where the magnetic paths pinched and traveled inward toward the star's surface.

Compressed by the magnetic fields, electrons became high-energy particles, their energy potential increasing at the poles until neither the magnetic fields nor the neutron star's intense gravity could contain them. Breaking free as high-energy particle waves, they would shoot outward from the star's poles as two continuous, opposing beams of energy. Beams so powerful that they could span galaxies traveling at near the speed of light.

The star's rotational spin wobbled, causing its pole to point at Sol for only three-tenths of a second. Traveling for seventy-three thousand light-years, spreading out and thinning, this brief energy sweep would bathe the entire solar system in a mixture of x-rays, gamma rays, neutrons, and radio waves. The energy required to produce such a burst equaled the entire output of Sol for a full decade, but it would not be noticed, except by science instruments and annoyed shuttle pilots wary of radiation exposure.

Seventy-two thousand years ago, seventy-two thousand light-years away... Gareth could feel his own age settling on him with the thought. Sighing within his suit, he sought the sky for answers that had no questions. Some questions, Humans just couldn't comprehend... and never would.

«A penny for your thoughts, Captain?» interrupted Canaisis in his mind.

"A penny?" He continued by thought, «You've got to stop digging in the social archives, Canaisis. I don't even want to know where you got that from.»