Robot Stomach Photo

Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
Image source

In a display of dexterity that's quite admirable for her age, Spirit has photographed her underside with her miscroscopic imager instrument. It's not something that this particular camera was ever intended for, so the resulting image is out of focus, but you can still see the rover's wheels embedded deep in the soil.

As well as helping the rover team to understand the situation, this image may also help them discern whether any of the ground beneath the rover is potentially hard or sharp enough to do her an injury.

The angle of the picture accurately depicts the angle at which Spirit is currently resting. The distance between Spirit's wheel tracks is about one metre.

Yay Samus

Nintendo have announced a new Metroid game that looks very interesting. I could see this going either way really. On the one hand, I'm kind of fed up with purists complaining every time someone tries to inject new ideas into the franchise - we've already seen Samus exploring desolate alien ruins plenty of times, and if maybe now we get to expand on the Metroid universe a bit, I'm all for it.

But on the other hand, part of the reason that Samus' world is so compelling (at least to me) is because her story is usually told mostly through careful implication. Even the dialogue-heavy Metroid Fusion had her alone on a space station with just a computer for company. If Metroid: Other M turns out to be a full-on cinematic sci-fi epic, it'll be in danger of losing its chief appeal.

To say nothing of the more obvious concerns with the team behind DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball having some measure of creative control over gaming's strongest female heroine.

Green to Yellow

I really wanted to vote Green. Following this expenses scandal, there's great potential for parties outside the main three to make gains. And I'm very much left wing and pro-science, so Green seems like a good fit. I bet many people with the same leanings voted Green today without even bothering to check out their policies.

Because when I checked their policies, I found that although they're certainly left wing, they're also rather anti-science - the only non-religious party to oppose embryonic stem cell research, for example, because 'it's not clear where it might lead' - something that's applicable to any scientific research. And then they want 'alternative medicine' available on the NHS and to reduce their regulation.

Although I'm sure their PR machine would try and spin it the other way, I get the real impression that their science policy is generally about a woolly fear of anything that strikes them the wrong way, while blindly embracing pseudo-scientific notions that chime with their ideals, regardless of actual merit. And this is a considerable concern: the European parliament has regulatory powers that can easily disrupt research throughout the continent.

And then there's the simple fact that their environmental policies aren't actually much more far ranging than those of the Lib Dems, the party I reluctantly voted for yet again. Surely there's got to be room for some radical party that's all about stimulating scientific research, promoting social justice and protecting the environment?

Chrono Tone

So I finished Chrono Trigger DS a few days back. I'm happy to say that I still find it a very charming game, with characters that are memorable and compelling, and plenty of moments that made me chuckle and blubber.

I also noticed, perhaps for the first time, that the gameplay is very nicely balanced: there's enough slaying of monsters to make it feel like your party of heroes are saving the world, but you actually spend a very significant portion of the game just exploring, talking to people, and uncovering hidden bits of apocalyptic portent throughout history. Which is fine by me, because I've often felt that most Japanese RPGs are too much like a great story turned into a grinding ordeal by random battles, and Chrono Trigger avoids that completely.

It's difficult for me to distil exactly why Chrono Trigger is such a favourite of mine, though. I think it's mostly just a combination of things that all gel with my personal preferences - with its alternate reality time periods with steampunk technology and magic and dinosaurs and implacable alien monsters, not forgetting everything I mentioned last time.

But I also think a big part of it is the game's upbeat, positive tone. And I don't mean a saccharine 'everything is great' smile-fest, I mean a game where you see the end of three civilisations, war, genocide, death and personal tragedy - and yet our heroes always look at it all and decide to fight to make things better. The worse things get, the more determined they are to put things right. And that, to my mind, is just the way to make a heroic epic that's not leaden or pretentious, but bright, affecting and... you know, likeable.

Um so...

I think I need to sit down and plan out exactly how to finish Sky Spiders, because I'm not really sure what I'm doing anymore. Not that I was all that sure before, but still.

Friday X-Ray Blogging

An X-ray of then former US president Theodore Roosevelt, taken in 1912, following an attempted assassination while he was campaigning for his new Progressive party (popularly known as the Bull Mooses). Roosevelt declined immediate medical attention and went ahead to deliver a lengthy speech. This speech began:

Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say a word of solemn warning to my fellow countrymen. First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not.

Read the rest of it here.

Why do I even know about Wolfram Alpha?

I didn't understand why Wolfram Alpha was being hyped up so much in the first place, so I'm not at all surprised that it's turned out to be rubbish. It's not just that it doesn't know the answer to any of your questions, or that it's basically Wikipedia with hardly any editors, or that a web increasingly about linking and networking is never going to get behind something that tries to be your one-stop resource for other sites' data without properly crediting them.

The chief problem is that, well, Wolfram Alpha is really boring. A search for 'Saturn' just turns up a load of numbers and diagrams. Even a search for 'sex' just turns up a dictionary definition. It's too dry for people who aren't experts and too shallow for those who are.

Orbit Plane Shadows

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source with more info

Cassini has sent quite a few images like this over the past month, probably because they depict something that you only really get to see if you're orbiting Saturn around about the time of its equinox: several of its moons are now casting their shadows onto the rings.

This particular shadow is being thrown by Death Star look-alike Mimas, which isn't itself pictured.

Monday Movie: Tokyo Godfathers

When three homeless people - a teenage runaway, a ruined gambler and a washed up drag queen - find a baby abandoned in the trash at Christmas, they decide to investigate themselves rather than contact the authorities. But their attempts to find the delinquent parents lead them from one unlikely encounter to another, and everything surrounding this strange child seems prone to small, often unnoticed miracles.

In Tokyo Godfathers, director Satoshi Kon takes his knack for weaving psychedelic surreality into everyday scenes and applies it to a layer of society that most of us prefer to overlook. The result is a film with a perfect, grimy urban ambience that still manages to convey a sense of magical Christmas spirit. It's also a film that, with very few direct references to Christianity, nevertheless embodies the real, non-mystical significance of the holiday: humanising those outside 'normal' culture and arguing for forgiveness, respect and understanding.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 44

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets, now running Fortress City as his own personal nature preserve.”

Part 44: Cataclysm

Blue lightning crackled and fizzed throughout the room, the surreal giant face of Prometheus staring at us from a neat circular hole in the thick walls of Fortress City.  

 We ran, barely making it out of the room before it imploded into nothing, sucking plaster down from the ceiling and buckling the floor beneath our feet. Una floated on ahead of me, barrelling into a group of spindly black automata and sending them flying with barely a pause. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.

 “I don't suppose this would be a good time to use the elevator, would it?” she asked.

 Before us lay a long, shallow staircase with an ornate bannister. “Oh,” I said.

 “Push me.”

 “Push you down the stairs?”

 Behind us came the sound of brick and wood collapsing, the pistoning of giant, arthropodal legs. “I'll be all right. But I don't quite have the guts to do it myself.”

 “I find that last part hard to believe,” I said, still placing my hands on the back of her shoulders.

 “Lower down. I don't want to flip over.”

 I dropped my hands to her hoop skirt and shoved. She rolled quickly down the stairs with a quick shriek. I followed close behind, stumbling as the stairs began to move and crack. At the bottom, Una put out an arm to stop herself, punching straight through a framed painting and the plaster wall behind it.

 I grabbed her hand. “Are you okay?”

 “Fine.”

 We were in the main hallway of Kirkham's home. Servants bolted for the door as Prometheus' slick black limbs sliced through the walls.  

 I cursed. “What the hell is it doing?”

 “Let's find out from a safe distance,” Una snapped, pulling me towards the door.

*

The formidable artillery of Fortress City fired relentlessly, and without effect. Prometheus was right against the outside wall, clawing through ancient stone that had seen off whole armies of invaders. Most of the guns couldn't even aim at it, their barrels carefully blocked from swinging too far towards the city itself. But those that could only proved how impotent we were against such advanced technology.

 Again and again the great impassive mask of Prometheus rippled and distorted as high-explosive shells pummelled it at point-blank range. And yet whenever the guns paused in their firing, it reformed perfectly.

 Already the streets were full of people - the drab masses of Fortress City forced to seek refuge once more, heading inland en masse.

 Una pointed a gloved hand at a couple spilling out of their roofless home, ragged bundles in their arms. “Children,” she remarked. “I haven't seen any children in years.”

 With an explosive rumble, dust began to rise from the direction of the wall. Prometheus was within the city. As it pressed forwards, it pushed against a grand old clock tower, spilling age-blackened bricks across the rooftops below.

 “Is it coming after us?” I asked.

 “No. I think Kirkham's playing his last card.”

 “Then he's the only one who can stop it.”

 There was another thunderous crash as Prometheus hauled its bulk through town houses and factories. The guns of Fortress City were silent.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Oh no! Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Robots of the Solar System: Unite!

Credit: NASA/JPL

Here's one of Spirit's long lost siblings preparing to get down and dirty to simulate the rover's current situation in a more accessible environment. Opportunity has also been practising manoeuvres that may help her sister, while the Mars Odyssey orbiter is giving Spirit an extra phonecall home each day. You can read more here.

Thursday Comic

Tank Girl One - Alan Martin, Jamie Hewlett

Following high praise from certain quarters, I figured that I'd take the opportunity to check out the new, twentieth anniversary collected editions of counter-cultural icon Tank Girl.

Tank Girl, then, is a destructive sociopath who lives in some kind of vaguely defined futuristic outback where she has random, nihilistic adventures with a group of misfits and mutants - occasionally involving a tank or two. Nihilistic is perhaps the watchword here, as these stories disregard not just pretty much every social norm you can name, but also the rules for coherent, consistent storytelling and character development. The result is a glorious mess of anarchic imagination and unapologetic humour that maintains a real sense that these stories can go pretty much anywhere.

In these earliest issues, we can also see artist Jamie Hewlett moving from a more generic style towards the bold and characterful designs we know him for today, while writer Alan Martin also seems to increasingly eschew fourth-wall breaking anti-stories in favour of some sort of overarching plot. I think this, and the maturation of Hewlett's artwork, will probably bring me back to Tank Girl Two, once I get through a few more of the books on my stack.

So what am I up to, anyway?

I often find that the likelihood of my finishing a project is tied to how 'complete' the idea is when it first comes to me.

People wiser than me have argued that it's a bad idea to develop a game starting from a story, and other such people have made the argument that the opposite is just as inadvisable. At its most basic level, I think that plot is very amenable to games - I mean, what is this whole characters struggling to reach their urgent goals thing if not a recipe for gameplay?

Obviously there are bits that aren't so clear, like how to tell a story where the player-controlled characters don't win all the time without making the player feel like they should have been able to avoid defeat. And I think that's interesting to consider in light of a lot of indie/amateur games, which adopt a more short story/flash fiction style, which skips past that part of the plot anyway.

But I'm getting away from my point, which is that if you can come up with your characters and their struggle all in one go, it's better than coming up with one or the other separately, and when you're battling with one incomplete idea and a whole-formed one pops into your head, you have to go with the flow. I posted a little about a high-seas pirate game I was working on a while back. I still intend to finish that, once I figure out exactly what it is. In the meantime, I've been working on something completely different. You'll hear about it when I'm too far along to back out.

As for where Sky Spiders figures in all this, well, I guess that's the exception that proves my point. The point I stab myself with every Sunday.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 43

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets, now running Fortress City as his own personal nature preserve.”

Part 43: Confrontation

There were three of them, clad in long coats, their eyes stony and emotionless. At Kirkham's gesture, they each started to draw an eclectic firearm of some sort. Before I even had a chance to draw my own weapon, Una had moved with impossible swiftness, grabbing the nearest assailant and whirling him into the other two with such force they all burst open in a shower of shattered cogs and gurgling hydraulics.

Kirkham was remarkably unfazed at seeing his bodyguards collapse into a broken pile. Extending his arm to aim a gun of his own at Una, he shoot her twice in the chest. The bullets bounced off her with a quiet metallic ping.

Kirkham's single circular eye whirred and clicked. “I wasn't expecting that. Perhaps I've not been paying sufficient attention.”

“This is the point,” Una said, “where we start to renegotiate your position in the city.”

“It's funny,” Kirkham said, his gun still raised, “I always thought you'd be one in favour of preserving human culture. Has your new friend from the Select Committee been such a bad influence?”

Una said, “Put down the gun.”

I stepped forwards. “You want us to think you're so altruistic, but whose face is it on that Sky Spider machine? Who is it that has the last word on everything that happens in Fortress City? Who lives in this luxury while your citizens eat processed slop?”

Una glanced at me testily. “I told you to get behind me.”

Kirkham lowered his gun, but kept hold of it. “No, no, let him speak. It's rather remarkable to be lectured on altruism by one of those who waved the white flag to genocide.”

“We all reacted differently to the Sky Spiders,” I said. “The more differently the more we knew. Because it's the oldest and most difficult moral question. Is it right to kill one innocent person now that two may live in the future? I don't think there's a real answer to that. We all come up with our own one.”

“Humanity,” Kirkham said, “came up with its own collective answer in a hundred different cultures, long ago, with a prohibition against killing. It is one thing to be killed by circumstance. Another to be killed by intelligent action.”

“And yet the circumstance in this case is intelligent action.”

Kirkham chuckled. “So the Sky Spiders seem to think. I'm increasingly starting to believe that humans are incapable of intelligent action, this latest little drama being a prime example.”

“Both of you shut up,” Una said. “I'm the one who holds all the cards right now, and I'm saying that I want the humans of this city to be free of the Sky Spiders and Kirkham and able to make their own stupid mistakes and bring about their own stupid deaths. So put down the gun, Kirkham, and we'll start talking this out.”

“You hold all the cards?” Kirkham mused. “Because you're metal beneath that ridiculous dress? Because you can break a few primitive automata? I hold the only card that matters. Prometheus.”

There was a sound like someone stamping on both your ears at once, and the vault door that led out onto Kirkham's balcony imploded into nothing - a huge, perfectly circular chunk of the wall suddenly ceasing to exist. Una and I turned round to look, instinctively. Beyond the gaping rend in the city's thick, fortified wall was the immobile, impassive face of Prometheus, its features identical to those of Kirkham's golden mask.

In the commotion, Kirkham had disappeared. And under the intense, emotionless gaze of Prometheus, the centre of the room began to crackle and fizz in a sphere of blue lightning.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Prometheus is on the rampage! Does Kirkham really have control over it? And who can stop such a machine anyway? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Thursday Comic

The Good Neighbors, Book 1: Kin - Holly Black, Ted Naifeh

In terms of originality, Holly Black's story of an American teenager discovering that she's half-faerie and being drawn into the in-fighting of a strange, ruthless and supernatural underworld straight out of European folklore seems like something that's probably been done before, at least in some form. Where Black really succeeds, I think, is in taking those parts of old fairy tales that modern children are typically denied, and instead drawing them out in a way that reflects more modern teenage concerns. Her characters feel real and they have real problems, in the real world. And if that real world, as Black relates it - with substantial help from Ted Naifeh's sumptuous artwork - happens to feature magic and people with horns, well, is that much stranger than the real world we average mortals experience?

Although Holly Black is perhaps better known, especially after the movie adaptation of Spiderwick Chronicles, I actually only picked up this book because of how much I enjoyed Ted Naifeh's Polly and the Pirates. Naifeh's on fine form here, producing a highly-detailed style that manages to feel more real than real, somehow, especially when it's depicting the impossible. But Black is impressive as well, taking to this new medium effortlessly, more than happy to let the pictures do their own talking.

I've always been fond of works of any kind that can convincingly marry the everyday with the imaginative and extraordinary, and The Good Neighbors pulls this off nicely. Book 1 is maybe a little short, and after the completion of this small arc of the story, I'm actually not all that sure where it's going to go next, but I definitely think I'll be reading Book 2 to find out.

Stuck Spirit

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Further to her recent slippages, it seems that Spirit has become stuck in loose soil. Following several days of unsuccesful attempts to get free, the MER team have decided it would be wiser to perform some Earth-based experiments before proceeding, as former Rover manager Mark Adler relates here.

This isn't without precedent - Opportunity became briefly stuck in 2005, but Opportunity has always been the more healthy rover, and with a disabled wheel and some issues with communication to add to Spirit's woes, I'm sure there must be a fair few worried parents back at mission control.

Monday Movie: Our Hospitality

Clad in a ridiculous top hat, Buster Keaton is the last surviving member of the McKay family - a clan with a generations old blood vendetta against the Canfields. But when he goes to visit his ancestral home, Buster ends up falling for the sole female member of the family that wants him dead. By the time either side realises who they are, he's instead honour bound to their hospitality. At least, as long as he stays in their house...

Our Hospitality offers up plenty of perfectly timed physical comedy, daring stunts (including fun with a waterfall and a steam train) and a rather sweet romance. It also saw the last appearance in a Keaton film of the unsmiling clown's long time friend and collaborator Joe Roberts, before his death at the age of 51.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 42

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Now Una and I had discovered that the leader of the largest remaining group of survivors was EON-1 - a thinking machine once sent to steal the Sky Spider's secrets.”

Part 42: The Clockwork Gamekeeper

Una set her glass of wine down on the coffee table, and Kirkham set his mask down beside it. He watched us with his single eye of circular glass. “I'm surprised,” Kirkham said. “How long have you known?”

“I was only certain when you took off your mask,” Una said, “but I've suspected for some time.”

I looked from her to Kirkham. “Well this is all rather surprising to me.”

“And what do you both intend to do with this newfound knowledge?” Kirkham asked. “Bearing in mind that your answer is closely tied to your likelihood of living to see the sunset.”

Figures entered the room, moving quietly. I recognised the man who'd tried to kill me the last time I was in the city.

Una reached out a gloved hand to take the wine glass. “That's not very promising, EON-1. Because our answer is also closely tied to the reasons behind your deception. Are you just a petty tyrant taking advantage?”

Kirkham laughed. A strange expression coming from someone whose head was a featureless cylinder. “A tyrant, perhaps, but not petty. I'm concerned for the future of humanity. It's why I was created, after all. It's my most basic instinct. To preserve your culture. And your lives.”

Una sipped her wine. “How noble. And yet I wonder what Professor Layling or the Iron Queen would say to that last part.”

“We don't have the luxury of being less than ruthless, Viscountess. There are now less than one million natural humans in this city. From an estimated world population of one and a half billion five years ago. If some humans must die so that even more may live, I don't think we can rightly pick the worse ratio just because it happens to feel better.”

“Like a gamekeeper culling the herd?” Una suggested. “It's striking how similar you are to the Sky Spiders.”

“Perhaps. We're both interested in the future of human civilisation. But I hope to preserve it intact, while they seek to change it irrevocably.”

Una looked down at her hoop skirt. “It would change anyway. Everything always changes.”

“Yes,” Kirkham said, “for example alive people often change into dead people. I've done much to rectify that over the past five years.”

“Really?” I interjected. “You mean defending Fortress City with Prometheus.”

“Yes. Thank you doctor. Precisely.”

“And yet I'm still not certain,” I said, “exactly who you're defending it from.”

Kirkham's eye twisted and refocused. “From the Sky Spiders.”

“Who have no interest whatsoever in attacking us. Who never have. Who have killed us in our droves, but only ever incidentally. Why do the inhabitants of Unity City come to be killed by Prometheus? Why do the Sky Spiders send them and not their more advanced machines? If they wanted to, they could level this whole city in the blink of an eye. If they cared about it at all.”

“This is fascinating, doctor,” Kirkham said. “Do go on. I rarely get a chance to indulge such fantastic thoughts.”

“There are people who do care, though. The new humans in Unity City. All this time we thought that Prometheus was a guard, to keep the Sky Spiders out. But in actuality, it's a jailer, to keep us inside, and to take part in this little charade of defence you've organised with Unity City.”

Kirkham laughed again. “This is too much. Now I'm colluding with the Sky Spiders?”

“Not the Sky Spiders, but the new race of humans they've created. And not colluding, but threatening. They're beholden to you, for the simple reason that you have this entire city held hostage and they actually give a damn about our lives. Maybe the Sky Spiders would have the power to step round you, to disable Prometheus. But they don't care. And the people who do only have a fraction of their power.”

Una looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Kirkham said nothing for a while, and then stood up with a sigh. “EON-2 is still out there. An unknown quantity. That's all I really care about right now. Is it a traitor like the Seer? A well-meaning madwoman like the Iron Queen? Or a comrade in arms like my dear departed EON-4? The worst thing is that as long as it's out there, it's a potential danger not just to Fortress City, but to other settlements that have to exist outside my protection. And since neither of you seem likely to be much help in this regard, I'm afraid that your participation in my society has reached its end.”

He strode towards the door, waving a curt gesture to the figures waiting in the wings.

Una carefully set down her wine glass. “Get behind me,” she said.

I went for my gun.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Surviving John Kirkham is no small task - his own automata may be deadly enough, but that's nothing compared to the destructive power of Prometheus - and is fighting him even the right thing to do? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Thursday Book

Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve

Mortal Engines occupies the same kind of Young Adult fiction space as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - the same kind of non-standard fantasy world that's actually science fiction, albeit not reaching the same giddy heights of imagination; the same kind of teenagers-versus-the-system conflict, but shying away from any real kind of statement; the same kind of awkward, adolescent romance, but not nearly as likely to make you cry.

I'm sure all these were points Reeve's publishers considered when they decided to run this book out of the presses. They are not the reasons I am going to tell you to read this book. Reeve's single greatest strength is his characters: all of them memorable, visually well-defined, larger than life and yet strangely believable - whether its dashing aviatrix Anna Fang or the ambiguously human war machine Shrike.

The story is related as two concurrent but distinct threads, and I have to say that I found the one that stayed behind in London (in the world of Mortal Engines, a city that is now both mobile and carnivorous) to be pretty boring. The other half, following a naive Londoner who's left behind by his city and forced into a reluctant partnership with a scarred and vengeful girl, stood head and shoulders above it - not least because I found the way their friendship progresses from awkward distrust to a strong (if still awkward) bond to be very touching.

Okay, the plotting is pretty, shall we say, 'loose' - everything makes logical sense, but the connections often seem a little shaky, and the foreshadowing is usually either too much, too soon or too little, too late, but still, in terms of memorable characters and relationships, this book looks set to stick in my mind for some time. (But then, there are three sequels to read as well.)

District 9

Consider me hyped.

Rover Slip

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image source

An action shot from Spirit, as she slips backwards in ground that proved too steep. Spirit has been struggling more than Opportunity, due to her paralysed front wheel, but recently she's also been showing a few lapses of memory that NASA hopes is not symptomatic of the onset of a decline into senility.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 41

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find answers with the EON thinking machines that had interfaced with Sky Spider technology. But all the answers we got seemed to point at a greater danger hiding close to home.”

Part 41: Kirkham Unmasked

The people who we walked past, all of them clad in faded old clothes, barely noticed when the big guns of Fortress City fired, but I still jumped each and every time.

“I wish Sigrid were here,” I muttered.

“She must still be days away to the north,” Una said. “But I'm sure we can survive without her uncanny knack for disappearing from dangerous situations.”

“She saved my life when the Iron Queen was about to kill me, you know.”

“And I saved your life every other time, so relax.”

“I am relaxed,” I said, shrugging away some of the discomfort of my new shoulder holster. “I'm always relaxed. I just don't like meeting with Suzette.”

Una studied me carefully. “One day you should just tell her the truth about her husband.”

“That he'd sooner take the Sky Spider's asylum than return to his wife for the end of the world? Lies are the surest path to comfort and happiness.”

“Then why are you always so curious?”

*

We stood once more in the luxurious sitting room of John Kirkham, its intricate opulence somehow still dominated by that simple circle of steel: the vault door that led out onto his balcony over the ruined world.

To my surprise, Kirkham met us by himself. He stood in the centre of the room, his golden mask turned away from us, his arms folded.

“Where's Suzette?” I asked.

“Professor Layling,” Kirkham said with a sigh, “was always a physicist first and foremost. Placing her in charge of the city's artillery was a mistake. I'm afraid she was killed when some of our munitions detonated unexpectedly. From the aftermath, it's difficult to ascertain exactly what happened.”

Suzette. I was speechless.

Touching my arm, Una asked, “And the Iron Queen's head?”

“Also destroyed,” Kirkham said, still facing away from us. “And what about your trip north? Did you find EON-1?”

A moment's silence. Una and I had agreed before to share the truth about everything except our visit to Remus and EON-3. “No,” Una said. “Only a wireless transmitter directed at Unity City.”

At Unity City, I thought, and Fortress City too.

Kirkham turned to face us. “Really? How very peculiar. Although, I wasn't sure you'd made it there in the first place. You seem to have arrived back very quickly. For that matter, none of our watchmen reported you crossing over from no-man's land, and I don't see your old battleship anywhere nearby, doctor.”

Una shrugged. “There are plenty of ways to get around, even in these times.”

“And where are the others then? The Major? The EON unit you had with you?”

“Dead,” Una said simply.

Kirkham said nothing for quite some time. It was impossible to know what he might be thinking behind that mask of his. “So,” he said eventually, “EON-5 insane, then destroyed. EON-4 destroyed as well. EON-1 missing. EON-3 in the heart of Unity City. What do you intend to do now? Perhaps you'll finally head north to find EON-2, as I suggested before the last time you left. That was the unit that contacted you, correct?”

“Actually,” Una said, “I'm tired of all this gallivanting around. I was hoping to settle down with Dr Gleve and put my, uh, feet up.”

“I see,” Kirkham said carefully. “So you want to enjoy the protection of my walls while leaving it up to others to see that those walls are protected? How very noble.”

“I wouldn't worry about all that,” Una said. “I'm quite certain that your walls are very safe.”

“Oh really?”

“The doctor and I visited Unity City on our travels. It seems that the danger caused by the Sky Spiders has peaked and will eventually pass.”

“Unity City,” Kirkham repeated angrily. “So you've met EON-3 then? And you didn't think to destroy it? This ultimate traitor to the human cause?”

“It wasn't doing much of anything,” I interjected. “Just indulging its sense of wonder.”

Kirkham scoffed. “That damned viscount and his whole insufferable mob. Useless. Completely useless. How can you betray your whole culture so readily? But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. You've never proven good at organised, constructive thinking. Anything beyond the strictures of your most short-sighted of instincts.”

“Kirkham,” I began, surprised.

But Una interrupted me, gliding over to the lavish couch. “Each time I've been here, you've always offered your visitors drinks, Kirkham. Surely you're not losing your touch as a host? I'm in the mood for wine. Something older than five years.”

“I rest my case,” Kirkham said. But he still stalked over to the drinks cabinet.

Una patted the couch and I sat down beside her. “What are you playing at?” I asked under my breath.

But Una just watched as Kirkham opened the cabinet, pulled out a green bottle and worked an elegant silver corkscrew. “What better way to welcome back those who have seen the world,” he muttered, “than to destroy a fraction more of our irreplaceable history.”

“Come now,” Una said, “Circhester may yet see its vineyards reformed.”

Kirkham filled a glass for Una, then turned his mask towards me. “Any for you doctor? Enjoy it while you still can.”

I shook my head.

Una said suddenly, “I lost my hands five years ago. It was the Sky Spider machine they called 'the swan' - immense and graceful - enormously destructive. Not vicious, I realise now, but oblivious to all the suffering it caused. The way you don't notice the bugs you maim and kill when you're planting seeds.”

She took the wine glass from Kirkham in her gloved fingers. “I have the hands of an EON unit now. They can be strong, or they can be dexterous, but not really both at the same time. I've never been able to work a corkscrew, for example.”

“I'm very sorry about your hands,” Kirkham said, “but is there a point to all this?”

“Just that your hands must be an upgraded version of the ones I have. And I thought my uncle had access to the latest technology. They're still similar, though. I'm surprised I never noticed until now.”

Kirkham threw himself into a high-backed chair opposite us and laughed. It was a dry, mirthless laughter, but he seemed to revel in it all the same. “Why oh why, viscountess, should technology be forever stuck five years in the past? Haven't we had the chance to study machines of unimaginable power and complexity?”

“Some of us more than others,” Una said, “EON-1.”

Kirkham raised his hands to his face and pushed back his golden mask. Beneath it was smooth, cylindrical steel. His single glassy eye regarded us with implacable calm.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: So John Kirkham was EON-1 all along! But what trickery is this? What secret aims is he serving? And should he be stopped or helped? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Friday Earth Man on Venus Blogging

Everyone knows that Venus is inhabited by nubile, scantily-clad women. Otherwise, why call it that?

Possibly Not a Penguin?

Hat tip: Twitch.

Saturn's Belt

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image source with more information

As Saturn approaches equinox, the shadow cast by its rings becomes narrower and narrower. Cassini captures this beautiful image of the rings over the pastel clouds below.

No Winners Among Sisters

Credit: Tuan Cao (source)
Some rights reserved

I have a really uncanny knack for falling ill only at the weekend. I've spent the past couple of days shivering under a blanket - so no Sky Spiders today, I'm afraid. (I'm pretty sure it's not swine flu.)

I can, however, give you the results for EnvComp, as well as the judges' reviews. It does seem a bit unfair to be declared the winner of a competition whose only other entrant was its author's first game - and only written in a week to boot - so I think the real prize for me is that this event got me to write a little game that I'm rather pleased with.

I was only planning on releasing a post-competition version of Dead Like Ants in the case of significant bugs* or problems, and although I do have a fair few potential changes on my list, none of them are really critical. I think the game as it stands is small and self-contained. And also, at the moment I think that Snowblind Aces and Space Shot are far more obvious candidates for an update.

But some time soon(er or later) I may post a few of the copious notes and diary entries that hammered out the game's design.

*This is not a pun, since there are no bugs, taxonomically speaking, in Dead Like Ants.

Friday Sniper Blogging

Roza Shanina killed at least 54 German soldiers during the second world war, over a period of two years, before dying in combat herself.

Thursday Book

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master - so-called by his besotted and illicit lover Margarita - is a struggling writer in Stalin's Moscow. The novel he has slaved over obsessively relates the events of Pontius Pilate as he executes Yeshua Ha-Nozri - a peaceful philosopher whose every movement and word is commited (with questionable accuracy) to parchment by the former tax collector Matthew Levi. But Soviet critics tear his work to shreds, and the Master has a breakdown, disappearing completely from Margarita's life.

Fortunately, the Devil has just arrived in Moscow in the guise of a foreign magician, along with a retinue of supernatural oddballs including a talking cat and a naked, vampiric witch. They're certainly up to no good, but they also offer a ray of hope to Margarita: if she'll agree to be hostess for Satan's Ball on Walpurgis Night, perhaps she can restore the Master - and the manuscript he threw on the fire.

All this is related in a narrative voice that veers between prim documentarian and chatty pal, occasionally taking on a character of its own. Certainly, much of the first half of the book would probably be cut out by a modern editor, but once things got going, The Master and Margarita carried me away with its imaginative surrealism, its sly and provocative wit, and its tender moments of humanity.

Walking into work I counted every CCTV camera I could see, figuring that if I can see them, they'd potentially be able to see me. My final count was 32.

On the way home I saw some I think I missed.

Monday Movie: The Wave

Dennis Gansel's The Wave sees a non-comformist teacher at first disappointed to find himself teaching students about autocracy instead of anarchy - until he hits on a great classroom actitivity to bring the realities of a dictatorship home. In the process he unintentionally creates a quasi-fascist movement that begins to gain popularity throughout the school. But when confronted with the realisation that he's inspired a cult of personality with himself as its focus, can he really be trusted to do the right thing?

Inspired by real events in an American school in the sixties, The Wave, as well as being very well put together drama, also succeeds in getting across both the allure and danger of totalitarianism.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 40

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find out why. But all the answers we got seemed to point at a greater danger hiding close to home.”

Part 40: Home Sweet Home

And just as suddenly as we had found ourselves in Unity City, we were standing in Circhester. The transparent Sky Spider automaton removed its large, inhuman hands from our shoulders and faded away completely.

Una twisted her mouth thoughtfully. “And I remember being perturbed by my first ride on a dirigible.”

I looked around. We were standing on a cobbled road that twisted between an overgrown vineyard and several rows of dilapidated, empty-windowed cottages. The sea whispered at the edge of hearing, interrupted briefly by the distant rumble of artillery.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked Una.

She took my arm. “Of course. This is my back garden.”

“Seriously?”

She smiled and led me down the road. “You weren't under the impression my family estate was just a mansion and one stone wall, were you?”

“I honestly didn't think about it that much.”

As we moved past the tangled vines and tattered rooftops, the viscount's estate - Una's now - came into view, quite some distance away. The guards manning the machine gun nest that overlooked the gates seemed quite confused when they finally noticed us.

*

We were met in the courtyard by that weathered old soldier with the eye-patch that seemed to be in charge of the estate's security.

“It's a pleasant surprise to see you, milady,” he said. “Things weren't the same without you or your uncle around. I'm afraid I had to let a few of the staff go when they tried to take advantage.”

Una seemed pleased. “I can always trust you to keep things from going to pot, sergeant-major.”

He looked at me with his one tired but kindly eye. “Shall I have them prepare a room for the doctor?”

Una squeezed my arm. “Quite unnecessary. The doctor and I will be living in sin.”

“Very good, milady,” he said with a nod, and turned to leave us.

“Has anyone ever told you,” I asked Una, “that you're very direct?”

She ignored my question completely and led me through the doors of her ancestral home. “The last time we were here, someone tried to kill us with the most advanced military automata human civilisation has ever produced.”

“More advanced,” I said, “than either of us thought it actually had produced.”

“And possibly with hired killers of the human variety as well, or machines with some level of ability at posing as human.”

“The Academy for Machine Intelligence seems like the obvious candidate,” I suggested. “But then, I passed through Smogton. I don't think any of the old institutions from there are likely to be left.”

Una stopped at the foot of the mansion's impressive staircase. “I think Remus was telling the truth when he said that the problems of Fortress City have their root in Fortress City. And as anyone will tell you, everything in Fortress City revolves around one person.”

I thought of the man with the golden mask. “John Kirkham.”

“I'm sure he'll want to speak to us anyway,” Una said. She looked down at the stairs and sighed. “If Kirkham's civilisation was everything it was cracked up to be, I'd have been able to install an elevator by now.”

“We should probably pay him a visit before the killing machines get to us.”

Una started to climb the stairs, pulling on my arm. “Of course. But let's get changed and take a moment to settle in first. There'll be plenty of time for being killed later.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: John Kirkham: man of mystery and power! Is he friend or foe? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Friday Guy on the Moon Blogging

Credit: NASA

Harrison Schmitt standing by a big rock. I bet he was thinking something like, "Hey, this is a big rock!"

Cratered Crescent

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

There's something about a very high phase image of a world - especially an airless one - that lends it a real solidity. Perhaps it's because, in looking at this thin sliver, we're better reminded that it's ground we could be standing upon.

See also this image of Enceladus.

Judith

Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle's Judith is a small, simple game with a creepy and melancholy atmosphere. It gave me chills and a half.

Download it here.

Monday Movie: Sherlock Jr

Sherlock Jr sees director and star Buster Keaton as a cinema projectionist who'd sooner be a private investigator. But when he finds himself framed for stealing from his sweetheart's father, he escapes into a fanciful dream: through the silver screen and into the shoes of the world's greatest detective and crime-fighter, Sherlock Jr. Cue incredible stunts and surreal cinematic trickery.

Final Stretch

I am not sure what Una and Peregrine did immediately after that. You will have to use your imagination.

I always intended Sky Spiders to be about fifty parts long, mostly because I wanted to try and reach the NaNoWriMo goal of fifty thousand words (40,100 so far, including recaps and teasers).

Of course, I also always intended it to be driven by a barrage of escalating cliffhanger action. Exactly why the first of those goals seems to be coming to fruition, while the other degenerated into a meandering mess, is something to ponder.

In any case, this is now the longest anything that I've ever written, so I would say that my goal of making myself write something regularly has been achieved. Just a matter of pride now to actually reach some kind of coherent 'THE END'.

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 39

Previously: “Five years ago, the Sky Spiders descended from space and wrought untold destruction and change on our world. Una and I, among others, set out from sanctuary to try to find answers with the EON thinking machines that had interfaced with Sky Spider technology. We discovered the paradoxically benevolent intentions of the invaders, and were offered - by the successors to the human race - life, knowledge and happiness.”

Part 39: Further Revelations

I closed the door carefully behind me.

Una sat on a chair beside a simple, white sheeted bed. “What did you see?”

“Oh, you know,” I answered. “Fantastic visions of space. Otherworldly cities both immense and ancient. Sky Spiders. About what you'd expect.”

“You didn't look did you?”

“No.”

She sighed and stood up. “Somehow all your few acts of stupidity seem to revolve around me. I'm not sure whether I should be flattered.”

I shrugged. “Remus said that you rarely have much of a sense of time in the panopticon. I didn't want you to leave without me.”

She closed her gloved hands around mine. “I understand what it means to you, Peregrine. I'm a scientist too. I'm curious. I want to see the mysteries of the Universe. Please, please don't deny yourself that because of me.”

“Then stay here a little longer. Look into the panopticon yourself.”

She looked down at her hoop skirt. “I can't. For five years I've... Peregrine, look.”

She let go of one of my hands and brought her fingers to her mouth, tugging the tip of the glove with her teeth until she had pulled it off completely. When she took my hand again, it was with fingers of articulated metal.

“This is what my hands look like, Peregrine. They're the hands of an EON unit. I could still play the piano, if I'd ever learned, or chess. But I can't paint. I can't uncork a wine bottle. The Sky Spiders did this to me. Whatever noble goals they may have had, this is what they mean to me. They mean that I can't even feel the warmth of your hands. Whatever fantastic, amazing things they may have to offer me, I want nothing of it. They can't buy off five years of pain.”

I squeezed her hands gently. Warmth or not, she felt that, her fingers curling in response. “Remus isn't the Sky Spiders,” I said. “I believe that.”

“Me too. But the panopticon is.”

“Fair enough. But Remus offered to help you. To help to end your... discomfort. Doesn't that count as making amends in some way?”

She pulled her hands away from me and folded her arms. “I just want to leave. I'm used to the physical pain by now. I hardly notice it. But it hurts me in a whole different way to be staying here. When Remus wants to end the suffering of everyone in Fortress City, then I'll be front of the queue, okay?”

“And if Remus is to be trusted, that might not be too far-fetched a scenario. If we can find out what the deal is with Fortress City.”

Una smiled. “Right. So I leave in the morning. We leave, I mean, if you insist on being a fool.”

“We leave.”

She turned to face away from me and straightened her back. “Help me undress. The trouble with these fabulous old dresses is that as much as they keep from getting caught in your treads, they were all made for women who were attended to by legions of servants. Getting in and out of the things is a bit of a logic puzzle when you're by yourself.”

I undid the top button of the dress - a tiny, delicate fastening, almost invisible from a distance. Her high neckline loosened, a little patch of pale white skin was exposed, just below her hair.

And unfastening the next button revealed the metal staples holding that skin in place over the steel armour below, and the thin plastic tubes that supplied it with blood.

“You may find some gruesome things beneath this dress,” Una said. “But you might as well learn what your heart has got you into.”

Placing my hands on her shoulders, I brought my mouth to that patch of skin and kissed it. “Are my lips warm? Can you feel that?”

She reached back to untie her hair, letting it uncoil fluidly from its bun. It was longer than I'd expected, and she gathered it up in her hands, pulling it forwards over her shoulder, keeping the back of her dress exposed.

Una said, “Undo the rest of the buttons.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Back to Fortress City! But if Remus and the Sky Spiders are so pleasantly disposed towards it, why is it in so much danger? And while we're on the subject, who was that trying to kill the Five the last time they visited? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

DVD Review: Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir has one of cinema's more memorable openings, as we follow a ferocious pack of dogs tearing through a city at night-time. Although they terrify everyone they pass, they're single-minded in their objective: seeking out one window to gather beneath and bark.

This is Boaz's dream: that the twenty-six dogs he killed in the 1982 Lebanon war seek him out for revenge. He's relating it to Ari Folman, the director and main 'character' of this animated documentary, a film that perhaps takes a leaf from Richard Linklater's Waking Life. Folman, it transpires, twenty years after serving in the war, had difficulty remembering any of his experiences from that time, and Waltz with Bashir depicts his attempts to discern why.


I generally have a real issue with dramatised documentaries. The drama all too often results in the sacrifice of factual content by depicting events inaccurately and taking up too much time. But in animating Waltz with Bashir, Folman has made a bold statement: both an acknowledgement that, as we're told early on in the film, memories are highly interpretative, and a way of depicting the physical and emotional experiences of the people he interviews with equal weighting.

The style of animation - though gorgeous and very much inspired by modern graphic novels - can be quite stilted in places, with something of the appearance of shadow puppets. And yet, this strangely dream-like motion is entirely appropriate. Coupled with an intense musical score, the strong images, while as inaccurate as any live-action re-enactment, manage to inspire perhaps the shadowed, empathic equivalents of the life-changing emotions that Folman and these other soldiers experienced at the time.


The one part of the war that Folman experienced but is ultimately unable to recollect is the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Philangists, an event that seems to be deeply tied to why Folman experienced amnesia in the first place. This necessarily becomes the focus of the film's last act, as Folman shows us the experiences of an Israeli soldier on the periphery of the camps, and a reporter who ventured within to see the aftermath. Considering the film as a whole, I found this to be the tiniest of missteps.

The strength of the earlier parts of the film lies in their personal and emotional nature. At this point, however, things become broader and more factual. But it is largely unavoidable, I think, and the main body of the movie could be seen as fostering the necessary engagement to make us really care about an atrocity that will typically be depicted as dry numbers and impersonal facts.


Waltz with Bashir is quite simply a striking film, documenting a more personal side of history - often ignored or sensationalised - with bold, affecting artistry. Seek it out at your first opportunity.

Lesser-Known Curio

I recently found myself compelled to try installing the PC version of Dino Crisis 2 on my Vista PC, and was pleasantly surprised to find it working nicely (I had less luck with Crimson Skies). It feels strange to admit it, but I've realised that I have a real soft spot for this game.


Dino Crisis 2 is perhaps best remembered as an evolutionary link in Capcom's survival horror games. The first Dino Crisis was notoriously just Resident Evil with velociraptors instead of zombies, and sparsely detailed three-dimensional backdrops instead of rich two-dimensional ones.

With the second game, however, things changed substantially – with a much stronger emphasis on arcade-style action. Suddenly series heroine Regina is running around with a machine pistol in each hand, slaughtering dinosaurs by the dozen and racking up combo multipliers for points that can be spent on weapons, ammo and upgrades. It's clearly a step beyond the later Resident Evil 4, and a step beyond anything that could be considered true horror. A step, in fact, into the realms of unrestrained action and (dare I say it) fun.

And that's part of the reason I like it.


One of the things that quickly becomes apparent about Dino Crisis 2 is that a fair bit of it has been lost in translation. The scrap of information above is a perfect example. It's supposed to convey the simple fact that our heroes and their ill-fated rescue party have arrived much too late. They're hoping to save survivors from a city that was accidentally catapulted through time into a jungle full of dinosaurs, but when time-travelling millions of years, a little inaccuracy can amount to a long period in human terms. This long-dead doctor was living alongside dinosaurs for at least ten years before they finally ate him.

Even given a proper translation, though, I think the story here would probably still be confused. I can believe that there was some coherent thinking behind the final plot-twist and reveal, but the basic narrative that you follow is illogical, coincidental and confusing. And bear with me, but we're starting to get at what I like about this game so much.


The setting of Dino Crisis 2 is desolate in a really singular way. In some respects, it's actually full of life: nimble dinosaurs attack you constantly from every direction, giant insects glide overhead, triceratops lumber in the background, and you're relentlessly stalked by a one-eyed Tyrannosaurus Rex. And yet the humans are all long dead, their buildings are overgrown and decayed, the thin threads of hope that they cling to in their diaries and notes are now all broken. And on top of that, they're writing in the unintentionally poetic fashion of someone who can neither translate from Japanese nor write in English with any great skill.

I've always thought that Dino Crisis 2 ends up conjuring a fantastically dream-like atmosphere (nightmarish, in some respects). The ordinary events might not make logical sense, but they feel right given the tone of the game - and the extraordinary events tie incoherently into our own oft-ignored fears about immense stretches of time and the fragility of all human existence.


Dino Crisis 2 made a really strong impressions on me with its surreal, bitter-sweet tone and bold, colourful backdrops. And it even manages to be great fun to play as well.

There's often a depressing unanimity of opinion and shortness of memory when it comes to video games. People's opinions tend towards the more recent and better known. So maybe I should start thinking of this game in the same terms as a lot of films I like. It may be a lesser-known curio, and it's probably not to everyone's taste, but it happens to be a personal favourite.

I think this blog probably has a few readers involved in education and academia, so you might be interested in my web-friend Tiki Martin's new blog Room 107, about her experiences providing 'alternative education' for those students that struggle to fit in with mainstream schooling.

That is all.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Catching up on our robot friends in space, we find that:

Cassini has switched to a back-up set of thrusters following somewhat understandable degradation of its main engines after eleven years of use.

Spirit and Opportunity are both engaged in long treks across the Martian wastes, although Spirit, dragging a useless wheel behind it, has just had to reconsider its route.

(Image above taken by Spirit. Clearly there are better places to be if you're a disabled robot that has trouble with steep inclines.)

Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders: Part 38

Previously: “Offered the chance to meet EON-3, 'the Seer', it looked like I might finally be getting some answers to some big questions.”

Part 38: The Panopticon

The Seer's hall was tall and narrow, the ceiling high overhead textured like alabaster coral. At this time of night, its huge windows only served to reflect back its electric-lit interior.

The Seer itself sat unmoving on some low steps, dressed in a loose dressing gown. Its cylindrical head lay open like a brass flower, accepting the intruding tendrils of bright Sky Spider machinery that descended from a dazzling nexus clinging to the highest arch of the ceiling.

“The panopticon,” Remus said. “A telescope of sorts. It can see through space and time, across the stars and into the past and present - within the boundaries of the finite speed of light, naturally.”

I waved a hand in front of the glass lens of the Seer's single round eye.

“It's rarely here,” Remus explained. “In mind that is. Its body is always here.”

Una sniffed. “Who wouldn't like to pretend to be elsewhere, given the choice?”

I reached out towards the thin fingers of the Sky Spider machine. It was transparent, glowing - almost as if made entirely of light.

Remus said sharply, “I wouldn't-”

*

The skies are dark. Thick black clouds drift across the dull blue face of the sun and its larger, fainter, redder companion. The clouds are so pervasive, they extend down to the ground, leaving a ghostly trail of dust as they pass.

The dust coats everything, from the petrified stalks of long dead plants to the ruins of shattered stone spires, to the rags draped over the backs of the nomads as they trudge through the desolation in long caravans. They scrape at the dead soil with long fingers marked with deep burns, searching for what subterranean scavengers and untainted roots they can find. Slime-focused eyes that might once have glimmered with keen intelligence are now dulled with the monotony of an existence on the brink of starvation.

When a nomad falters and collapses, its companions regard it not with remorse, but relief. Relief that its shrivelled flesh has been released to sustain those around it for perhaps one more orbit of the volcanic moon.

*

“-touch that if I were you.”

I looked down at my hand. Remus' delicate fingers had carefully pulled it away from the panopticon.

“Sky Spider technology doesn't respect boundaries in the same way as the machines you're used to,” Remus explained.

Una glided up to my side, carefully keeping her distance from the bright tendrils of light. “So it just sits here, EON-3, for years on end, wandering the Universe with its mind's eye?”

Remus smiled beautifully. “Endless wonder and beauty.”

“Misery too,” I suggested.

Remus released my hand. “Darkness is a concept that only has meaning given the existence of light.”

I stared into the Seer's eye with ill-concealed jealousy.

“The panopticon is flexible,” Remus said. “It can accept more than one... 'traveller' at a time. I extend you asylum of a quite different kind extended by the Sky Spiders to your colleagues in the Select Committee. I can't promise you that our human minds can understand the mysteries of the Universe. I'm not sure how much the Sky Spiders even understand themselves. But it's quite worth it just to look, don't you think?”

Una glanced from me to the Seer. “And what if you don't come back for years?”

I looked at Remus. Our host just shrugged. “Everyone has a different affinity for the panopticon. This mechanical man, created for the sole purpose of learning, certainly has a far greater affinity for it than any human, but some of my siblings have stared into it for weeks at a time.”

“I'm not touching that thing,” Una said. “And I'm not staying in Unity City sitting on my hands waiting for you, Peregrine. People are suffering out there, and the nicer it is here, the more guilty I feel for abandoning them.”

Remus sighed. “Human suffering should be reaching its twilight years.”

“Once we die off, you mean?” Una said curtly.

Remus grimaced. “The Sky Spiders would discourage your breeding to the great extent you have before, but there is no reason that you should be excluded. It's just...”

Remus bowed suddenly. “I am deeply sorry, but I cannot be indiscreet. I will simply reiterate that if you wish to help the people of Fortress City, then that is indeed where you should go.”

Una nodded. “I'll leave in the morning. I wish you every luck in building your own society, Remus, although I don't think I'd ever be able to accept it as the actual continuation of my own.”

She turned to me. “Look into the panopticon, Peregrine. We both know it's what you'd want more than anything. But if you look into it for longer than this night, I won't be here waiting for you.”

She leant over to kiss my lips, and then turned to glide away.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next week: Does Peregrine look into the panopticon? For how long? Or does he have different priorities? And what's the deal with Fortress City? Check back in a week's time for the next instalment of Into the Mind of the Sky Spiders!

Friday David Mitchell Blogging