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Botober 16: Above The Barrier
Botober 16 is here, with its enigmatic prompts:
Above The Barrier
Eleventamnesia the Squid was Queen of the Oceans. Her ancestors had been slowly expanding their hegemony from their initial home territory for years, and now Queen Eleventamnesia's sway was felt beneath the waves. But she was unsatisfied. She herself had done nothing to expand her domain, and it irked her. And there wasn't anywhere left to conquer, either. Oh, she had to put down the occasional coral reef rebellion, but that was just routine by this point. She loved to wave at her subjects as they swam by.
Then one day one of her subjects brought her news of an object that had been seen in a distant part of her realm, near the Barrier above which the water ended. She sent her vizier to investigate it, and he found no trace of it, but concluded that it was probably just a floating hunk of plant matter. Those had been seen before, often when the thin layer of gas above the Barrier was particularly energetic, rippling the Barrier in waves and dimpling it with drops of fresh water. (Fresh water was part of her domain too, though at a certain remove.)
But the sightings grew more and more frequent, and eventually her vizier was forced to conclude that these weren't just plants that had fallen into the ocean--they had been purposely pushed there, and what's more, they had been assembled according to a design. They had, in other words, been made by intelligent beings. But beings that somehow lived on the other side of the Barrier.
The nature of the Barrier was well known, and had been studied by her philosophers for years. The substances above it were not as well known, but generally considered to be a much more dilute version of the proper ocean contents, draining off into some great void that lurked far above. Some few of her subjects were able to cross the Barrier for brief periods (or long periods, for the lungfish, but they were considered highly strange species), and they had reported glimpses of strange creatures. Some of them even ate her subjects, but they were mostly freshwater creatures, mostly fish, and so Queen Elevantamnesia didn't care about them as much.
But now it seemed that some of them were starting to challenge her hegemony. And she realized this would be her destiny: the conquest of the realm above the Barrier, the realm of Thin Water. She devoted her philosophers and engineers to creating a method by which they would be able to bring water with them when they crossed the Barrier. They made weapons which they theorized would work in Thin Water. And they mustered their soldiers.
Their invasion, alas, was thwarted by a force which Queen Eleventamnesia, and her philosopher and engineers, had never considered. (The lungfish could have told them, but nobody asked them.) Because, of course, when her army of suited squids breached the Barrier, they were deprived of the buoyancy of the water that had supported them their whole lives, and, for the first time, truly subjected to the unopposed force of gravity. And they were crushed between the weight of their equipment and immobilized; their equipment, under unfamiliar stresses, mostly ruptured and exposed them to the Thin Water to die. Queen Eleventamnesia ordered the retreat, but too late to save most of her forces. Her reign after that was marked by a steady reduction in her influence as she no longer had the resources to quell rebellions and uprisings, and the undersea realm fractured beyond repair.
From the point of view of the creatures living on land, the time those weird shelled squids flung themselves up onto the beach was merely a single page in their history books.
- Things: Eleventamnesia
- Concepts: Gravity
- Advanced: Queen squid waving as she rules planet
- Terrible: A page in a book
Above The Barrier
Eleventamnesia the Squid was Queen of the Oceans. Her ancestors had been slowly expanding their hegemony from their initial home territory for years, and now Queen Eleventamnesia's sway was felt beneath the waves. But she was unsatisfied. She herself had done nothing to expand her domain, and it irked her. And there wasn't anywhere left to conquer, either. Oh, she had to put down the occasional coral reef rebellion, but that was just routine by this point. She loved to wave at her subjects as they swam by.
Then one day one of her subjects brought her news of an object that had been seen in a distant part of her realm, near the Barrier above which the water ended. She sent her vizier to investigate it, and he found no trace of it, but concluded that it was probably just a floating hunk of plant matter. Those had been seen before, often when the thin layer of gas above the Barrier was particularly energetic, rippling the Barrier in waves and dimpling it with drops of fresh water. (Fresh water was part of her domain too, though at a certain remove.)
But the sightings grew more and more frequent, and eventually her vizier was forced to conclude that these weren't just plants that had fallen into the ocean--they had been purposely pushed there, and what's more, they had been assembled according to a design. They had, in other words, been made by intelligent beings. But beings that somehow lived on the other side of the Barrier.
The nature of the Barrier was well known, and had been studied by her philosophers for years. The substances above it were not as well known, but generally considered to be a much more dilute version of the proper ocean contents, draining off into some great void that lurked far above. Some few of her subjects were able to cross the Barrier for brief periods (or long periods, for the lungfish, but they were considered highly strange species), and they had reported glimpses of strange creatures. Some of them even ate her subjects, but they were mostly freshwater creatures, mostly fish, and so Queen Elevantamnesia didn't care about them as much.
But now it seemed that some of them were starting to challenge her hegemony. And she realized this would be her destiny: the conquest of the realm above the Barrier, the realm of Thin Water. She devoted her philosophers and engineers to creating a method by which they would be able to bring water with them when they crossed the Barrier. They made weapons which they theorized would work in Thin Water. And they mustered their soldiers.
Their invasion, alas, was thwarted by a force which Queen Eleventamnesia, and her philosopher and engineers, had never considered. (The lungfish could have told them, but nobody asked them.) Because, of course, when her army of suited squids breached the Barrier, they were deprived of the buoyancy of the water that had supported them their whole lives, and, for the first time, truly subjected to the unopposed force of gravity. And they were crushed between the weight of their equipment and immobilized; their equipment, under unfamiliar stresses, mostly ruptured and exposed them to the Thin Water to die. Queen Eleventamnesia ordered the retreat, but too late to save most of her forces. Her reign after that was marked by a steady reduction in her influence as she no longer had the resources to quell rebellions and uprisings, and the undersea realm fractured beyond repair.
From the point of view of the creatures living on land, the time those weird shelled squids flung themselves up onto the beach was merely a single page in their history books.