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I include this chapter out of conscience, out of my own sense of priority, reasoning as follows: how can you understand this story unless you know the storyteller? What is history but the songs of historians?201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4nPlFLDQcc
On another level this is but another musical note in my medley and one which may entertain you during the brief half-centon that it takes for Adama and the Galactica to whisper their way from the Blind Man System where we exist to the Paradeen System where the main hospital patients of the Benevolent Order are located. Later I will add another musical note and tell you about Serpentine. 201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIf24XeggSk
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I am older than Serpentine.
Age is of course barely significant. Given favorable conditions I could probably tick-tock along for many generations of humankind. No matter.
I am aware that deep inside of me there are primitive circuits that reflect the mind of my first maker. These still function and provide the core of my talent. Stamped within me on a thin oregg plate is the yahren of my manufacture, 3103.
I began my proper working life as a quality inspector with a carpet and imported fabrics firm called Brigg Bros. I was part of their automation, one of their first robots. My job was simple. I would watch centon-in, centon-out as bolts of fabric unrolled before my sensors. Dyed linen, woven wool, fine-spun bark-thread temple matting, carpets from all corners of the world and domestic plastic sheet, were all part of my trade. I possessed the most rudimentary speech organs. I knew just enough to growl, "Error here." "Dye mismatch," "Oil stain," "Chemical fade," "Tension variation," "Yarn weakening," etc. I had some 150 comments in my vocabulary. I had second-phase analytic powers which meant that if you asked me to describe a dye mismatch, I could tell you by what percentage a particular color differed from its parent and even what quantity of pigment needed to be added to a dye vat of given size to bring that color up to its true value.
Clever stuff? Felgercarb! Routine stuff. Thank my maker that bio-crystalline consciousness had not yet been invented or I might have devised plans to become an artist! In those days, if you had asked me about a design, I would not have known what you meant beyond the basic mathematics of pattern. But I had this one supreme talent: I was a brilliant observer of shape, line and color. As the fabric flashed before me I could analyze it down to its finest fibers. In this I was special. I was a prototype. I was a one-off. Many machines could analyze but I was the fastest and the most discriminating and what's more, I was flexible. Given the right "hook ons" I could have devoured a painting by Neuros or a Vulcan Chapel ceiling or a Gran-Ferg Laser Striation and told you everything about their composition---but I could not have told you why they are great works of art. My maker, an inventor called Ne-Ro, had built "secret" circuits into me which have never been copied. A historical accident. It was not intended to be this way.
Ne-Ro was a genius in his way: a lonely genius more at home with abstract circuits than with the word of men. He hawked me around from country to country displaying my promise and skill just as young Oozart, if this comparison is not too bizarre, was paraded by his father. Ne-Rob sold me to the Brigg Bros. textile house and I believe I would have been brought into mass production except that this was the time when anti-gravity and particle physics were being developed. They gobbled up all the R&X funds. How could a humble pattern analyst compete with the multi-dimensional physics which led to the first starships? For whatever reason, I remained unique.
To cut a long story short, anti-gravity led to space travel and space travel led to the War of Stupid Fools.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcIb51DPt3r
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I cannot remember this time but I can reconstruct it.
It was the physicist Ramses who first calculated the entropic effects of artificial gravity and gave the first mathematical description of how a minor gravitational field can operate inside a major field. This was in 3238.
The engineer Cree, who had served his apprenticeship designing snowrams for use on Arcton, constructed the first integrated anti-gravity unit and flew it at the 8th Colonial Exposition which was held on Equellus in 3250. He lifted four kilons through twenty maxims in 0.5 of a micron using a standard 9 volton battery. Almost overnight the traditional forms of transport and locomotion were rendered obsolete!
Finally Cree evolved a series of equations which were able to unite particle physics and the alternative dimension probabilities. These equations provided the basis for the Ohn-time drives. For the first time it became possible for humankind to think about visiting the stars.
Experimentation went on apace all over Kobol. Initially it was multinational corporations that sought to use research to gain a technological lead over their competitors. The multinationals bought entire universities. The race was on and the War of Clever Geniuses began with gusto.
If one wants to be truly rigorous one can trace the origins of the War of Clever Geniuses back to the Great Renaissance of ancient Kobol (and maybe even earlier than that). However...
The first truth to grasp is that knowledge is power.
The second truth is that those who have knowledge have a vested interest in making sure that others stay ignorant.
Those two truths explain much of human history.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvUQZnUS9ZC
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Variations on the first crude Sharkey drives were developed in different institutions more or less at the same time. Oh, how different the history of deep-star exploration would have been if the different parties on the homeworld had chosen to cooperate. Alas, they did not. Nationalism and self-interest won out over common sense and humanity. The Republic of Eden which controlled a disproportionate amount of the homeworld's wealth had several independent programs operating. Hades had none. Solomonis had one. Tarsis had one. Olympus had two. Qualla-Battoo had one. Zyra had one and Bellus had its own independent system. The Church of the Lords of Kobol had bought into several systems and, unbeknown to anyone except a few senior confreres, the Benevolent Order of St. Dionysos had allied itself with the system being developed in Solomonis.
Looking back to that time one recognizes that by and large it was the commercial future of the homeworld that mattered to those in charge of research. From my own humble standpoint as a pattern analyst with Brigg Bros. I recognize this truth. I am fairly sure that Brigg Bros. allied themselves with one of the Eden undertakings and paid out vast sums of money. What they wanted was to control the import of alien cloth.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsxn5oPMaUH
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I have already described in the section on the Benevolent Order how access to the stars and encounters with non-human lifeforms led to a vast enrichment of Kobol's philosophy. What you have now to know is that the new planets and systems began to compete in wealth. The War of Clever Geniuses entered a new and sinister phase. A couple of examples may help. There was a planet called Cola and beside the vast lakes on this planet there lived an amphibious creature called a Strlid. It was found that the blood of the Strlid contained a substance which slowed the aging process in humankind and which were effective against various forms of cancer. As a result of this good fortune, the rulers of Cola became very wealthy and began to regard themselves as buriticians of human life. They used their wealth to buy or filch art treasures from old Kobol. There was once a building in Syrios called the Parthenon. Do you know where it is now? Half-submerged in a lake on a ravaged planet called Cola!
The planet Yetron became famous for its music and dancing. It plundered old Kobol for instruments and manuscripts. What could the countries of Kobol do? They were bled white and so sold their treasures for a stake in space. When later the library on Yetron was bombed, the manuscripts of Kurl and Citrio were destroyed. Let it be said that had they remained on Kobol they would probably have been destroyed in any case for old Kobol suffered as much as any planet when the War of Clever Geniuses degenerated into the War of Stupid Fools.
Let it also be said that here in the Blind Man Sector we have many treasures lifted from old Kobol. The statue of St. Dionysos which stands outside Serpentine's Garden is one such. There are others.
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And now we return to the biography of Vulpa.
The first initiative of Brigg Bros. into space was to the planet Gopra. There they encountered a species of spinners who wove fabric into the trees where they lived. The paths of fabric were the roads on this planet for the jungle floor was lethal with stinging plants and predators and the spinners never dared venture there. The fabric they spun came from their bodies, from an orifice in their throats. It was manipulated by three pairs of arms. Weaving was always
Weaving was always performed communally as a kind of rite. The spinners sang as they spun and the verbs to sing and to spin are the same in their language. They had a written form of their language which resembled hieroglyphs and which was incorporated into every inch of fabric that they spun. Thus a traveler along their tree roads always knew the history and the ideas of those who made the roads, for the hieroglyphs told a story.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZTyY1zT11J
None of the humans could understand the written language, since it took so many different forms, depending on the warp and the woof and the shifting tensions that resulted from the flexing of the trees.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5FnKHYcbO9
I could, trained pattern analyst that I am. Someone in the R&X section of Briggs Bros. had the bright idea of hooking linguistic cells and printer cells on to me and lo....on about my 100th birthday I became a languatron. That was a massive transition. The surgery was radical, of course, and from this time (SE 3204) I date my consciousness. All I retained of my earlier life was my supreme ability to recognize patterns and colors and comment on them. Beyond that I was now tri-lingual. I could move between the restricted vocabulary of Space Standard, the major code of Space Eidetic and the Glyphs of the Weavers of Gopra.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdZo5kYqGNy
Of course, from this it was a fast, brief step to espionage. My powers were extended and I became a listener. I monitored space looking for messages that had commercial significance for Brigg Bros.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Z9fGkSEZs
And they, without warning, sold me. They were going broke and I was a "disposable asset." Meshed in the fibers of one of their alien fabrics had been eggs which, when they hatched in a benign environment, became predators. In this way the entire population of the mining moon was destroyed and the compensation which Brigg Bros had to pay beggared them.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGP6jnCUvsk
I was purchased by a firm called Astrodyne and my job was just to translate technical instructions between a range of languages. More "hook ons" were added. I translated everything from coded messages (I was proficient at breaking codes) to instructions on how to install and use a roll of toilet paper in a latrine. I was also equipped with anti-gravity units and began to achieve my present shape and appearance.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOk2fbpOls0
All these changes made me cleverer in a way, but I was not yet Vulpa. Cato's cave would still have been devoid of meaning to me though I could have explained clearly in a variety of languages just how one should go about lighting a fire in a cave and the best way of projecting shadows on the walls. I had not yet been granted bio-crystalline consciousness. Indeed, such consciousness was still far in the future.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2qcv6tJbal
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The War of Clever Geniuses dragged on. Gradually, limited resources were culled and garnered. There were only so many truly great works of art available. When Chiric is dead, there can be no more Chirics. Likewise with Indau and Khov. Human intelligence is also limited and creative brains rarely fit into systems. An interesting feature of human ethics is that so many systems are built upon doubt. It is a brave and rare organization that can tolerate a member who doubts the validity of the organization itself. Brains were scarce and gradually the War of Clever Geniuses which had originally (give it its due) been expansive and creative, turned to its anti-type and became fettered and sterile. It degenerated into the War of Stupid Fools. The transition itself is simple and irreversible. That which one cannot have oneself, one denies to others.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn9QIhxXi0O
Planet A has a brilliant researcher who is perhaps starting to manipulate the arrow of time. If he cannot be kidnapped then the planet where he works must be bombed. End of research. End of intelligence.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpwUzsKjXVL
Planet B has many works of art from old Kobol and from these it derives prestige. To destroy its prestige it becomes necessary to destroy the works of art. It was just such an angry and irresponsible act that Cola was bombed and the Parthenon sank in a swamp.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Bh2JMKPOy
Fear begets fear and once the War of Stupid Fools had begun there was no turning back. Do you remember Randa who first summoned Adama and belonged to the blind race called the War Children? Her planet was destroyed by accident during the War of Stupid Fools and it was only by chance that the race was saved.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Q2WI7f8Y2
During the War of Clever Geniuses, the Benevolent Order of St. Dionysos grew steadily. It occupied the Sectors of Lucy, Blind Man and Paradeen which are now the heart of its operation. It concentrated on contact work and the gathering of knowledge. And when the War of Stupid Fools began to unfold, it defended itself with grim determination. It did not go hunting, but it fought.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfCmUT9YkS6
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I have intimate knowledge of the War of Stupid Fools and I shall now tell you about it. I had been bought and sold several times since serving as languatron for Astrodyne and found myself working on one of the Comm-Tel planets when the war touched me personally. The planet was "capped." An interesting word. I have encountered the notion that capping is to do with the beheading or removal of the top of an egg. It can mean a conferring of honors and in ancient usage could refer to the deliberate crippling of a human being by the smashing of the knee-joint. None of these meanings apply here. In the War of Stupid Fools "capping" meant the destruction of a life-supporting planet by the explosion of a cluster of thermonuclear devices over any polar cap. Not only did this inundate the world but it changed the climate and created dirty rain and snow. As a means of destruction it was effective and cheap.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqMFFkXjXqP
I was translating an article on water purification when my planet was capped. The effects of this action reached us in hours. I remember there was an earthquake and this in itself was unusual since the area where the main city was situated was seismically stable. People ran into the streets in surprise. Shortly after the earthquake there was a power failure and the chattering machines I was controlling stopped cold dead. Intrigued to know what all the fuss was about and lacking orders to the contrary, I floated out of the office building where the central translation agency was housed. We were located high on the wooded hills above the main city. I looked down over the hills and could see the neat rows of blue and white houses and the red barracks and the airport and the long piers that stretched out into the bay. Our city was on the coast and occupied the flat land close to a shallow bay which faced out to a reef beyond which was the largest sea on the planet. It extended seven thousand maxims down to the southern ice cap. The season was early summer and the trees which grew beside the pale blue sea were all in flower: pink and yellow and red. A light breeze was blowing from the west carrying the smell of blossoms.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGld0Iqz2ef
People stood still in groups and pointed out to sea. The sky was turning black. There came a roaring and I saw the water sucked away from the shore exposing the fringe of dark seaweed and the rocky sea bed and the reef. It was as if our bay were a basin that had been suddenly tipped.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2WnMv8cqcl
Far out to sea the horizon seemed to move and a dark line appeared in the ocean and this quickly grew until it became a towering hump of water rushing toward us.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbr3CoRO3Mq
I did warned you, did I not, about my metaphors. What I saw reminded me of a roll of dark green cloth that had jumped from its supports and was now unrolling towards us. Paradoxically, as it came closer it grew larger and I saw it begin to curve upon itself.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2OQ4zLGw9d
People stood and watched, as still as 9th Lord statues in a park. Some fell on their knees. A few ran, gathering children. Then came the buffeting wind, howling before the giant wave. My last sight was of the wave rearing, a sudden wall of water rushing toward us.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy7aGiEID4h
I diverted all my power reserves to my little anti-gravity cells and flew up the hills as fast as I could. I cannot fly high, rarely more than 60 laxons above the ground, and my anti-gravity cells are really little more than an aid to stop my having to be carried everywhere. I ran them hot. I climbed as well as I could. I followed the rocky spine of a ridge. Behind me was a roaring not unlike the sound that a rocket engine makes when it matches gravity upon landing.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMeh7X7BI2l
I dipped into a valley among the fir trees and everything became suddenly quiet. Then the earth began to shake and trees above me bent and snapped in the wind. Terrified animals ran and barged into one another.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIJ9m1eMj60
I hung there in the valley until quiet returned. When I climbed and looked back down toward the bay I saw desolation. The city was gone, reduced to stumps of concrete like decayed teeth. The bay was gone, reduced to a mere mud flat. The sea was gray and black and covered with a scum of oil and torn vegetation. Nothing moved except the sea which shivered under the wind. I noticed that the temperature was dropping and the sky was black and yellow.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdLezpMXDnR
There was nothing to return to, so I climbed on past the last trees and up to the snow-line. I stopped and dangled.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhL09LUREq2
Even now, so many yahrens after, I do not know why I acted as I did. I was not consciously saving myself at the expense of others. I was too stupid for that. And yet that in effect is what I did. I suppose, being a mere languatron, no one had ever thought to equip me with the altruistic desire to save my human colleagues. Hence I followed the line of least resistance. Perceiving danger, I avoided it. Lacking bio-crystalline intelligence, I can truly say that I felt no more for my human colleagues than the train feels for the bovine that it crushes.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxqgZPS1eVl
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The planet I had lived on was now destroyed.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2XDOaFHNCZ
From the snowy heights I watched. In all there were seven tidal waves which scoured the land.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtPGT2cRAAR
At night the sky was black and starless and in the centons of daylight it was brown. Earthquakes became regular and the weather went berserk. For yahrens the rain fell and the land dissolved and slumped. I found a cave where I could lodge myself and keep my power pack dry. This saved my life. I closed myself down except for watchfulness.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu1rJt8kfjy
Finally, one day, there came a break in the clouds and for a moment brilliant sunlight streamed down and revealed the dreary mess. Then the clouds closed again and the wind blew and the chill rain returned. But that moment of sunlight was a moment of change. Thereafter I remember brilliant sunsets and freezing temperatures and a gradual settling. And after twenty yahrens I set out from my cave.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm0l2AOJUqo
I drifted. There was almost nothing I could recognize on the old world. All the time I was looking for a human establishment where I could continue my work. I was a languatron: I looked for something to translate. I think I toured the whole mainland.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1QUHBa1E8X
My adventures---dare I call them that?----would fill several volumes and maybe someday I'll set them down. I observed the slow pattern of life, once seemingly dead on the planet, came sprouting and wriggling out of crevices as the sunlight came back.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKnBYMIuTgA
One evening several years later, quite by chance it seemed, as I descended a narrow valley near the coast, I saw a ship from space break through the low clouds above the sea and begin to cruise along the shore. I gave chase. Pathetic really, when I think back. I doubt if I could have traveled more than ten laxons a centon as my power cells were dying and the large ship quickly vanished. But I was in a part of the coast I knew. I was close to the site of the old city where I had once worked. It was now a swamp.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ23G2jfE78B
I crossed the low hills as fast as I could and was rewarded with the sight of an encampment. The ship from space had settled on high ground close to where my translation office had been. It stood on gravity poles and shimmering blue lines of energy danced between those and the ship which had not, of course, landed. I had never seen such advanced design before.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsSJ7kHKYt7
Set about a hundred maxims from the ship were self-inflating domes of the kind used for mobile hospitals and such. Lights were moving inside the domes.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDUioR7rNku
I glided down the slope of the hills, just above the trees, and made my way to the closest dome.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo2qzWaWZ56
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There is no dishonor in likening myself to a daggit that scampers with delight when it hears its master's tread, except that delight was beyond my range. I felt something like relief that perhaps now I could return to my true vocation. Humans made that possible and so I scampered. It is actually hard to remember. I was a simple creature then, primitive in all my responses....My point: I doubt if the butterfly can remember what it was like to be a caterpillar. Likewise, I have seen daggits wag their tails even when they greet cruel masters....201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡObKvt9YrPx
Anyway, I came to the first dome and lowered until my earthling sensors touched the grass and I landed. Two of my dexetels had been wrenched off in an accident years earlier. The hydraulic support rods on a third hung useless. I could just drag myself. I had never been designed for the harshness of outdoor life. I was rusty and dirty and my power cells were failing fast. But where it counted, I still functioned surprisingly well. I knew that my voice circuits and synthesizer, unused since the time of our capping, would squeeze into action.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoukr6k1KU5
I dragged myself to the open door of the dome and through. A human male was working at a table and he looked up in horror and screamed. I realize now that to him I would have looked like a giant snail or a creature i have only seen in pictures, a mighty dillodon.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx4siZgHyWq
"Can I translate anything for you today, sir?" I asked.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuYNJh75Xx8
I remember this all so clearly. He was a big man with a bushy gray beard and an immense shiny forehead----a reversed pattern for most men that I knew. His mouth was open and his eyes shone like two blue marbles. He wore a dark green tunic which to one more knowledgeable than i would have identified him as a senior confrere in the Benevolent Order. Overcoming his surprise he came toward me and gripped me by my main sensing antennae and tried to lift me. I responded by activating my anti-grav cells and the result was that the man lost his balance and sat down heavily on the soft damp grass in the door of the dome. "Can I translate anything for you today, sir?" I asked again and he shook his head at me in amazement.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlOpZyvDYST
Other men appeared at the dome's entrance and I remember they laughed. One, who seemed to know something about the function of entities like me, took my by my guidance handle and led me deep into the dome. He settled me on a white table and severed the connection to my anti-grav unit which was distorting badly and had burnt the grass. He also cut my meager power to 1/2. I became just aware. In human terms I dozed.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdo6pgMwa3o
While dozing, a great deal happened to me I am glad to say. I was given special attention as I was the only functioning artifact on the whole planet. I was cleaned and given a slow recharge. Some power cells which had corroded were replaced. My dexetels were removed entirely and the engineer aboard the ship fashioned me new ones. I still have one of these and it serves me well. The anti-grav cells which had kept me drifting for so many years were totally abandoned in favor of a smaller and more powerful unit. My printer, which had for years been a spongy mass of wet and decaying leaves and which was clogged and dangerous to me for it trailed a metal recording tape, was carefully removed and then discarded. My contacts were cleaned and a new printer was wired in. This had its own self-referencing cells and I found that a great relief. I had never known such ease.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAvVYa4f31w
When I was again tuned and powered up I found myself sitting opposite the beard and the forehead. I did not know it then but I was facing Xedrix, the foremost historian of this sad era. He handed me a small section from a manual on vivisection to translate and I dutifully rendered it in two alternative languages.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx5v9j3Zr6O
He was impressed. Apparently I was one of the few early languatron Cylons still functioning. One of the languages that I know was Space Academic which was no longer a living tongue.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVhqQixTNWe
However, it was not so much my ability as a languatron which interested Professor Xedrix as that I had witnessed at first hand the capping of a planet and had survived.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWVvnonFWOS
Xedrix tried to interrogate me and found that task nearly impossible. I could translate his questions but not answer them. Yet I had observed, and held locked in my memory banks, most of the information he needed. I was a library without a key.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrD0RJu3JVM
Professor Xedrix made the most important decision of my life. He decided to incorporate bio-crystalline cells into my memory banks to liberate my thinking. The crystals were then growing in the computer bank of his ship. This was far-reaching new technology and was only just understood. The operation didn't take long. Essentially it was the lodging of certain key crystals among my circuitry and then waiting while they grew into me. The great strength of bio-crystalline technology is that it integrates all areas of knowledge. It creates of a disparate entity a whole being. While the operation was being conducted my awareness was taken over by the shipboard computers and that was an experience---there are no words for what that was like!201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsjbb55T4ih
And when I was returned to myself, the bio-crystalline fibers had worked their way through me. Self-awareness. I knew what I had been and what I was. My memories were a focused sequence of images. Most important, a bridge had been formed between my memory and my old language circuits. I could speak my memories. I suspect that the frog that has successfully escaped being a tadpole feels pretty much as I did as it takes its first free leap into the air.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRRfIm5PShb
I was smaller too. Being in part bio-crystalline my sensors were now reduced but were more effective. Visually (and humans are always amazed by me visually), I came to resemble the ancient helmet I mentioned in my Preface. My sensitivity was now in my crest and this was patterned and discolored as a result of the bio-crystalline activity. It is from these markings that I gained my name. The historian Xedrix first called me Vulpa because, fancifully, he saw in my markings a fierce and ravenous face. And Vulpa I have remained to this day. My name has nothing to do with my nature.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzO2V8c2qz1
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I described all that I had seen to Professor Xedrix and my narrative became the basis for a chapter in his landmark work, Lost Without a Name: Final Stratagems in the War of Stupid Fools. He adopted me onto his staff and thus I began the last phase of my career as an amanuensis in the service I began the last phase of my career as an amanuensis in the service of the Benevolent Order.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Ndq7ht3Ak
Each yahren my bio-crystalline ability was upgraded. Xedrix gave me a love of history and the upgrading developed my research abilities. We completed one last book before he died, The Summer Grass. The title comes from the famous Hobas haiku:201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEUkyFTxJ2i
Behold the summer grass.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQQSX37K2ri
All that remains of the dreams of 201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡz0B8SXoGHQ
The Colonial Warriors.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNiJBFVOLfN
This book is mainly devoted to Xedrix's own philosophic ideas and he dictated and I prepared the last copy. When he died I was sufficiently bio-crystalline to feel something like grief. Looking back I can say that I was a serious little scribe. I had taken on the personality of my closest human.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8z2ZPfS6lb
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All that was four hundred yahrens ago and since those days I have served many masters and mistresses, the most recent being Magister Cain. But the effects of that War of Stupid Fools are still vividly with us. Pockets of humans and aliens remain stranded on thousands of worlds which were once part of the vast network of galactic exchanged. It was the task of the Benevolent Order to put things to rights if it can. Hence the emphasis on the love of life. Hence the Galactica.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSh4l6whad2
And now we return to the present in order that we may rejoin Adama and the Galactica as they return to normal space and enter the Paradeen Sector where are found the hospital and holding planets of Tauron, Sagitarra, and Picon.201Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw5Mie1AY1o
