Liner Notes for Spy Machine
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Adventures in the chasmworld of Silence! It’s dark and quiet and you get attacked if you’re found. I work through the problem of how to do search and rescue when you can’t see and can’t light an area up. It’s not simple, though as ever the Patrol is up to the challenge. If there’s a recurring technique then expending equipment to save lives is definitely one.
This fits in with the idea of the Patrol as a post-scarcity society. Material goods and simply and easily replaceable. But it’s also a post-mortal one as well. It’s not that dying isn’t painful and expensive (though not in strict monetary terms). But it’s not fatal. Some of the reckless foolhardiness, the risk-taking stems from that.
Of course without the necessity of payment and fear of death to motivate people, why do they join the Patrol? That’s not in this story (though it seems to me that Silence might be an excellent recruiting zone, if the threat of an alien dimension can be mitigated). I’ve mentioned some answers before and there will be some again in later ones.
The fauna living in the tunnels. I start with some obvious ones, giant moths and bats and so forth, then get weirder. There’s a little justification for this, underground caves often have strange versions of above ground animals living in them. Still it gets a little out of hand. A tortoise is cold-blooded, how is it going to be able to exist in a cool damp cave, even as an ambush predator? Especially as an ambush predator.
And squids that throw smaller squids, that’s a great idea, except that I’ve used tunnel squids at least once before in the Deep Patrol stories. I mean I think it’s a cool idea and the sort of ecological niche that squids would work well in, but maybe I need some new material.
Fungus wine is not a new idea (Games Workshop with their increasingly convoluted orc/goblin/snotling/fungus ecology have definitely had this idea). And what else lives in tunnels that you can eat and, presumably, ferment?
They speak English despite being in another dimension, and for many generations. Their dialect is not as clear as I’ve presented it; the Deep Patrol are used to drifts in language. Hence of course Quintillius offering interpretations, just as he does when translation software is in action. I’ve done this before in other stories, it’s good fun and also lets me introduce a layer of irony. The meta-fictional reason is for ease of reading and writing; everyone they encounter inside the TetraHedron uses English of one sort or another.
There is a set of interlocking reasons within the story for this, but I don’t think I ever lay them out directly. Very unlike me, leaving something for you, dear reader, to figure out.
There are more gaps and mysteries I leave unexplained as I go on but I try to play faire, there are clues.
Anyway, they speak English and have various cultural artefacts from English society. And so, we have a dragon and Beowulf has to fight it. Originally this was a placeholder name for the scenario, and then I considered making the parallel more pointed, using part of the myth in the story. But on balance I decided, leave the name as it is, and run the story as it comes out. This is a setting for MAXIMUM SPACE OPERA, and part of that is drawing on adventure fiction of all types. My trans-dimensional gigantic cave worm doesn’t have to use more of them than I need it to, it can just be a big monster. I don’t have to go all inter-textual on you.
I mean I watched a bunch of Godzilla films shortly before writing this and there’s a few stolen details but that’s not the point.
Beowulf uses the term spy machines (title drop) and that’s very interesting. He’s a stone age warrior and hunter, does he really have the concepts for spies and machines? If so, what’s going on down in Silence?
I’m starting to think that Gunn is making a mistake in abandoning the outpost. He’s not grasping the idea that this is a universe out here. He’s used to planets as the extent of a theatre of operations, or a solar system. Even his time with a raiding squadron in the war was striking from one system to another, interlocking with the higher strategy. This isn’t a warrenworld, a few million cubic kilometres of volume and a few billion people, the size is unmeasurable. What’s out there deep into Silence?
Anyway it’s technology and cunning versus a hostile environment and when that breaks down relying on violence and sheer courage. Classic space opera my friends. Classic space opera.
