The Gaming Outpost

I was on a high place in the midst of the hurricane season, and was practising my wave-bending when the waves got away from me. Yellow. Electric arcing pain.

After that, I remember just one thing. Orange. Strange.

I am now on a low point, and feel light. Water is some distance from me; it is too far to travel easily. But the waves are virgin, and easily manipulated.

By the time I again pay attention, the water is much closer, and the rock about me seems to be sand. Interesting. I go back to experimenting with the local fields.

Its at this time that I realize the stellar mass in the sky is not the one I knew from birth. This is genuinely troubling, but seeing as I am in no danger, nor pain, I ignore it for now.

Vegetation surrounds me, and offers its own twists to some of the higher bands of the waves. I check the next day, and I am an island not far from shore with no vegetation near me.

Later, I feel a sense of desperate loss and sadness strike me. Not wishing to have anything like that near me, I bend the waves some. But it is not enough, so I extend my will, and make a very fine rosette bow of local energies which even tap into the stellar mass’ fields. The sadness is no more. Good.

The trees are back, but not around me. Some hours they are burnt, others hours some sort of fast-moving insect eats them for its nests.

I rejoin the shore which makes me happy. The trees and I stay together. Then I feel a great twisting of the fields, and I watch energy be moved from the lower levels to the upper levels in a series of moves. The trees come back.

A nick on my skin irritates me and I bend the fields so that its healed and I don’t get nicked again. I feel some strange sensations, but they are gone too quickly to diagnose.

Some glittering gem rises from the harbor near my resting spot. I take a short nap.

But I am woken all too quickly by a directed mental call. It jabbers at me. I wait. It jabbers some more, and I think it may actually be intelligent. I wait some more.

“Um, hello, this is the Baron.”
“Hello, Baron, I am me. Um, He Who Likes to Experiment with Waves.”
He laughed.
“My wife is She Who is Gold. Is it possible for me to call you ‘Wave’?”
I shrugged.
“Please don’t do that.” He said a bit nervously.
“Ok.” I am an agreeable fellow after all. “What do you want?” I mean, I don’t have all the time in the world.
“I sensed you, and …”
“Wait.” And I plucked the idea of how he sensed me from his mind. Scriff sensing. Fascinating. I could see ways to….that must have been what happened to me when I had a failure of the wavefields a couple days ago. Hmmm.
I realized he was still talking to me, so I turned back my mind to his.
“…So you see, I like to meet ever verser I can. Get facts from them. I must say you’re the first of your kind I’ve ever met. Its a genuine pleasure.”
“Wait.” I thought hard. “You’re not one of the People?”
“I’m of your People, the People of the Verse now, but no, not of The People. I’m what we call ‘Human’.”
“Interesting. Alien sentient life. My professor would be so pleased.”
“Yes…um, my first question. How long have you been here?”
“Two and a half days.” I replied, and then I sensed puzzlement in him. He had images of me from ‘writing’ and ‘x-ray tomography’ and ‘sketches’ from centuries or decades ago. This was impossible. I had only been here a very short time. I felt the urge to move.
“Um, no, no, please, its my fault. Let me explain.” And I caught an image from his mind of a great, fragile city of flickering insects with their towers swaying. He cared for this city. So I held my temper in.
“We live on different time scales. Wave. I had to slow myself down, put myself into a coma, just so I could be slow enough to even hear the presence of your thoughts. My wife buried me at night because otherwise someone would have toted off my body. And even then I had to slow myself down more.
“How slow?” I asked thoughtfully.
“Ah, about 400,000 thousand times.”
A flash of illumination filled me.
“You’re like those insects. Those insects are intelligent.” I was very grateful I had not toppled their towers by moving. To kill so many sentiens would have been dreadful.
“But you didn’t. Partially because of how lucky this city is. Its the greatest city in the world, and no one knows why. But its never been hit by an invasion or a floor or a hurricane.”
“Well, yes. I suppose so. I noticed some pain a while back, and made it stop.”
I felt a gulp as the Insect, I mean Human touched my thoughts.
“You brought one of the aboriginal children back to life by twisitng probability hard enough that she would live.” He said, and I began to sense fear from him, along with respect.
“I am a pretty fair wave-bender among my kind.” I said modestly enough, but with a touch of pride.
“And since then, this area has been the safest, most lucky area on the planet for the last three thousand years.”
“Mmmm. I suppose so. It could have that effect.” Interesting really.
“I need to tell you something…” And here he explained about being a verser, about immortality, and such.
“Okay, then I guess at some point I move on.” I said.
“Um, I hope not too soon…” And I caught his fear of his insects.
“Well, hopefully after the local stellar mass goes red dwarf will be enough time for your species to move out of the way.”
I sensed relief which made me feel better.
“Yes, that should do.”

And then Wave looked at himself from the Baron’s mind. He saw a great, handsome rock, jutting up four stories from the sand of the shore, massing more than a cruiser. On it were dozens of small trees and bushes, and lots of little insect people scampering about in perfect safety as they had for generations, and would for generations to come.
“Its interesting. I kinda like this insect species. Just tell them not too tickle me, or I will have to bend the waves to make the ticklers go elsewhen.”
The Baron bowed, in my mind, and said that he would give my words to the great ruler of the collection of towers.

A day later, I noticed a green copper sign at my base bearing my words. And still little insects scampered all over me.