The Splinters Wafer

[The Pakkrat]

The Splinters Wafer

​

A moment of orientation for the User is felt, then the personality speaks in Gvegh Vargr dialect.

Thank you for slotting and activating my Wafer, User. Looking at the timestamp exchange between your Wafer Jack and my last saved date, I can see…that it has been 699 years, 30 days, 12 hours and 30 seconds – mark – since my last update. Wow, that is some downtime! Well, no time like the present. A look at the virtual mirror in this space confirms that you are a compatible Vargr User, likely of Gvegh descent. Please nod your head once if you fully understand my words.

Excellent. They still speak Gvegh in the far future. This is both heartening and will cut down on the processing power normally used by the translation sub-routine. As it is not my function to ask about current affairs, I will begin as that is why you have inserted my Wafer in the first place.

Call me Sallghaen. Back in my time, everyone called me ‘Sal’ and was done with it. I was a female Vargr historian brain-scanned and recorded specifically for this Educational-Entertainment Wafer. At any time, you can un-jack my Wafer should you need to pause my session. If I’m kept active long enough, I will update and remember this session and be capable of remembering this timestamped era. Shall we begin? Nod your head once to confirm. Else you are free to un-jack my Wafer.

This Educational-Entertainment Wafer will not only detail my life, pursuit of suitable Library Data and the history of how our people survived both the interstellar computer infection of what we call Virus and the psionic phenomenon from the galactic core commonly called the Empress Wave. Note that those terms are current up to my Wafer’s last activation. Did my Wafer come with its attendant case, text materials and workbook? Nod your head once if the answer is yes.

No? Okay, I’ll have to show you from here. The images are stored on my Wafer and we can peruse them and leave out any workbook lessons and offline exercises. So much for curriculum and application. Ah well. Still ready to begin a session? Nod your head once if you are.

Acknowledged. I, Sallghaen will be your guide through this program and you will decide where to go and what to investigate inside my Wafer. Welcome to my time period as of my last update.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Welcome to Fuu. That is Fuu (Knoellighz 2904) A577679-9 Ag Ni {1} (C55-3) [6797] 301 M4 V D D. Our Red Dwarf solar primary puts the Habitable Zone snug close to the slow burner. Additionally, the solar system was found to have captured not one but two White Dwarf stars. We have fourteen other planets in our system beside mainworld Fuu. There is a Gas Giant with extensive ice rings present. It had navigational beacons up until the 1130s when they were violently off-lined. At one point, astronomers mistakenly reported that the system had five Gas Giants, but that’s groat wash obviously, given the size of our star. Fuu system has no planetoid belts. All mining was done on earmarked planets useable for little else. Fuu used to be a member world of the Democracy of Greats out here in the Vargr Extents – excuse me – Vargr Splinters. The Greats fell to Virus and the Empress Wave made sure we on Fuu were on our own from 1123 Imperial Calendar, into the 1130s chaos and silence of the Collapse and Virus Era. Fuu endured the Wave and then the Viral infections just seven or eight years later. It was a double-sized death stroke for the Democracy and any chance our mainworld had in coming together under one, planetary Government. But more on that later should you select such.

Upon colonization of Fuu, we Gvegh Vargr settled what was assumed to be both an Agricultural and Rich world. After the mobile and modular, A-rated Starport was landed, connected and brought online, we found otherwise. According to Second Survey criteria, Fuu is only Agricultural and we never became populous and as such were tagged as Non-Industrial. All the better we thought, because initial mining pollution, volcanic and tectonic gas releases, Tainted the otherwise Standard atmosphere. As of this Wafer’s last update, much of the mining pollution has gone to ground and only the occasional volcano belches enough Taint as to require minimal filtration. Imagine wearing a few layers of very dense weave cloth over your muzzle to keep the smell and the contaminants out of your lungs. Hacking coughs were a result of failure to put on a filter before going outside on bad days.

On Fuu, we have roughly 70% hydrosphere, oceans, seas, freshwater lakes and streams. It was quite enough for our peak census of three million Gvegh Vargr. Our corporate, colonization benefactor named Thaeghz Hvaek Engnigharr (tr: Pack Pact to Success) was instrumental in providing us the means, materials, Vargr resources and capital to settle Fuu and they continued to guide the colonists until 1123. After that year, we were on our own thanks to the Wave.

We had the majority share in food exports in the entire subsector and were happy to be enriched in turn by our customers in the interstellar cluster. We had farming, ranching, fishing, whaling and wildlife hunting abundant on Fuu. It has been concluded that a corporate backing that suffered logistics and economy issues led Fuu’s Government to fracturing into factions along agricultural guild lines, thus earning the mainworld a Balkanization label. But corporate policy somehow remained and the Law Level of 9 was upheld almost out of habit. With so much food to grow, harvest, package and deliver to the Downport, there was little time for full-scale wars. So, weapon possession outside the home or outside the visiting starship was prohibited. If a Vargr wanted to become violent, he had but to initiate a Charisma Infighting bout or use Vargr natural weapons to kill. Such displays happened, but by our laws were kept small scale. Though for a time we had corporate security starships in orbit, those patrols dropped off and ceased entirely by 1123.

The Downport does not have extra-territoriality, but it has been corporate policy and later planetary law that the Startown and the Downport proper are neutral territory to the factions and visitor. So, if a starship landed, their Captain and crew had to leave their weapons aboard their vessel if they didn’t want to get fined or arrested for weapons use. It led to some peaceful trade.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Fuu, thanks to its corporate backing settled at a comfortable Tech Level of 9 or contragravity and Jump-1 starships, mostly trade traffic. This was fine to the corporate worker and later the planetary civilians. A Jump-1 starship has more room for fuel or cargo when it used less tonnage for those long-haul drives. We saw visitors during those decades with longer range, but it never caught on for long in our local cluster of worlds. According to our upper echelon, corporate executives’ data releases once Fuu was left alone after 1123, nearby Araksa (Knoellighz 3105) was the site of something kept off the Democracy of Greats radar. But their Tech Level rose to 14 and stayed there until Collapse when we lost contact with them.

Fuu has a love of sports mainly surrounding the need for extreme speed in open, track, obstacle and wilderness venues. Races and regattas are our favorites. Charisma, logistics shipping contracts, cash prizes and bragging rights were draws for the annual racing events and the network traffic peaked to watch coverage of such fast and furious competitions. Most races surrounded getting small cargoes from start to finish safely, efficiently and quickly.

In our next Wafer session, User, we will explore the history of Fuu and its local cluster starting with the years just before 1123 and the coming of the Empress Wave. Do you wish to pause and come back later, User? Nod your head once if so.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Empress Wave – 1123

Located on the Coreward edge of the then Democracy of Greats, Fuu received no warning of the psychic phenomenon that was given many names by the survivors. Names like mind tsunami, psychic crestfall, years of craziness, Her Psionic Majesty and many others were used in reference to the Empress Wave. Except for our records put down on hardcopy, all living Psions’ knowledge was lost as was all instruction in psionics when the Wave struck Fuu from Coreward.

I was but a cub when the Empress Wave made everyone go insane. With a Balkanized mainworld, we on Fuu were unable to produce planetkiller devices and use them in the madness that ensued. However, weapons were quickly improvised as factions clashed with other factions. Those theatres of conflict quickly devolved downward to the Pack level. With eleven years of this insanity through my cubhood, I somehow managed to learn to Infight very well. But we Gvegh Vargr on Fuu kept our most basic instincts to hunt, seek shelter, procreate and guard a territory.

More than a decade later, the remnant families and Packs congealed into territories. Slowly we regained our rational minds and were again able to conceptualize the damage we had done to our civilization. Through some half-remembered miracle, the neutrality of the modular Downport was largely obeyed. Whether this was by conditioned habit or some other psychology, the preservation of the Downport was what allowed us to restart, repair, refit and pick up where we had left off before the Empress Wave. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I was a full adult by the time the craziness had fully dissipated from Fuu.

A planetwide census was taken via the remnant computer network. The net then posted the results. We had lost more than half our population to madness, Infighting and Pack conflicts. This was disturbing to learn and for a time, the peace between the Balkanized factions was upheld. A few starships were cheered when they lifted, and orbit was again attained. Later, we received net updates on the fate of those caught off-world when the Empress Wave blew through. The scenes were sobering, morbid and often disturbing. Exploration and reclamation of the solar system was journalized and dramatized on a monthly basis. I watched the holos as I attended the only university left on the planet. It was also by hardcopy libraries that we managed to hold onto many applied sciences in those years. Too many learned folk had been lost in that decade of madness.

 

[The Pakkrat]

Virus and the Interstellar Collapse – 1133

Here are some stats on the Economics and Culture of Fuu when I was finishing college. Fuu was still very abundant as seen by the C-value in the first digit. We had hundreds of thousands of workers willing to deal with limited infrastructure and despite a drop-off in Efficiency. It was hard work in those years for my Pack. Hauling our yields to the Startown bled over into our free time.

Yet, as seen by our Homogeneity, we were a harmonious folk. No world wars or even continental disputes. We did have a lot of barking and bitching between the factious guilds over what limited infrastructure and the how to prioritize expansion. There were hostile visits from starships after the Empress Wave and we became cautious, even aloof to unscheduled flights landing on the pads at the Downport. So long as a crew stepped from their airlocks without weapons strapped on, we could sigh and breathe easier. Pad 13 was never repaired after the impact crash of a bulk hauler sometime in that decade of insanity.

These Economics and Culture stats when coupled with our Technology Level of 9 are what helped us to survive the next dark chapter. Virus spread from Rimward and Trailing and took the Democracy of Greats largely by surprise. The Jump-1 clusters or ‘Greats’ were only temporarily bulwarked. But then, like so many other empires, some starship with a greater jump range showed up with a suicider Strain and off-lined our traffic.

When the disruption was caught on telescopes, the mobile and modular, A-rated Downport was actively disconnected, and the great tracks took the sections far from each other in different directions. It was quite a sight as I walked faster than the fuel depot crawling along the terrain in the general direction of my Pack homestead. Vampire ships had no single target and tried infection instead. There were nodes of our planetary network that were destroyed or doomslayed after infecting what they could. Our Technology Level on Fuu plummeted from 9 to 7 until we were able to isolate local area networks or LANs and learn once more to work offline as we were forced just after the Empress Wave. Resting at Tech Level 7 for such a long time, my Pack and I caught part-time jobs in postal service. It helped pay for my student loans.

Eventually the vampire ships of the 1140s lost interest in Fuu and chose target worlds with systems and networks they could infect. When I heard that we had clawed our way back up to a confirmed Tech Level 8, I took my groundcar to the Downport to see if the planetary network was back online. It was but still sheltered in its local node. The modular sections of the Downport had returned along the same tracked paths they had taken outward to protect from vampire landings and strafing.

Computers were no longer allowed to directly talk to each other on Fuu. We Vargr had to be the go-betweens, either with spoken words, punch cards, or keying in paragraphs of words. Mess even one character up and the LAN had to stop, back up, point virtual fingers at the input-output responsible. The culprit then had to go back and re-enter the fouled instruction, again manually. Once this was in place and working smoothly, Fuu was able to return to Tech Level 9 and lift to solar system space with caution. Vampires were still out there, and we did not have a system defense force at that time. The fear of being kidnapped and forced to serve on a vampire ship was still fresh on our minds.

Through those decades as I took up the Scholar Career with a Major in History, Fuu observed radio silence and only manual laser signalers were allowed to make contact with visiting starships as few as they were in those years. We had food and that was what reconnected us with the stellar cluster of seven worlds. Nearby Dzusza, a Vacuum world was never colonized. Gaengangourkhoul and Gaekhsonongghang (Knoellighz 2804 and 2905 respectively) I heard from one Captain, had been ravaged by Virus through the Corsair band that had residence there. But the very low Tech Level of those worlds kept Desert Gaengangourkhou from fully becoming a Die Back (Di) world. The Captain told me that he had to land well away from the villages and let their bravest Vargr approach close enough to conduct the basest of trade. Ekaertsaenralknokh (Knoellighz 3004) did die off. It too was a Vacuum world with a Tech Level of 8 when Virus killed all 1000 of the outpost there. Urrakhorrgguth (Knoellighz 3104) became a Dieback as a result of their own atmosphere when Virus destroyed the facilities making respirator-condensers for both individual use and structure use. Nine million dead and no way to get off-world what with vampires greedily taking refugees and then enslaving them in vampire fleets before moving on. Nine million. Were I alive today, I imagine that I would be getting the shakes.

 

[The Pakkrat]

But it was Araksa (Knoellighz 3105) that passively saved Fuu and the remainder of the stellar cluster. Though Araksa lost its Highport in what I heard was a fiery lightshow and a rain of falling stars of burning debris, the Ice-capped, Vacuum world managed to hide its Ancients time capsule from Virus. Cordoning off the cache of strange technology during the space battles in far orbit, Araksa preserved this “jump-start” for us later. We just had to rise back up to interstellar travel and find the secluded vaults and ice caverns.

It was during the decline of Virus and the decrepitude of the vampire fleets that in 1150, our stellar cluster was able to send exploratory ships and survey the damage, report on remaining assets and make some hard choices on how to re-colonize worlds. When I saw the article in the planetary newspaper on the landings at Araksa which unearthed the Ancients site, I knew we had been given a second chance. Before 1133, Araksa had kept the time capsule a corporate secret from the Democracy of Greats. And when the newspaper reported that though everyone on Araksa had died either from Virus, vampire ships, the frozen temperatures or lack of air, our prospecting teams had brought back a few samples. Recovery seemed at hand with the leg up from Araksa’s forethought. One-hundred thousand corporate employees died quietly only to save us on Fuu. We honor them to this day. Were I alive in your time, User, I would continue to light a candle.

In erratic steps, our scientists used the acquired data from Araksa to better understand the Ancients time capsule and glean technologies such as Makers, FusionPlus, Wafer Technology and a few others that kept Virus at bay, united the stellar cluster and survive until 1200 when my Wafer was last accessed…until today, User. Thank you. This seems a good spot to pause our session.

(30)