A Book Update and a Book Update

Hello elephants. 

I hope you're doing well. 

A bit of housekeeping first then. Proof copies of the physical version of The Prince of Milk are on the way to me right now, should be here in a few days. If they look all right, I'll approve everything, and the book will be up on Amazon immediately. In any case, I think the artist did a wonderful job with the cover and I hope you agree when you see it. So that's cool.

Secondly, if you're interested, I'll tell you a bit more about the upcoming book. Well, it's almost finished. I've settled on a name finally. It's called The Fifth Science. Without spoiling anything, it's a collection of short stories from the beginning of the Human Empire to its final days. There's going to be AI, interstellar travel, cats, and sentient stars. 

Now, last month I promised you I'd put up a recording of one of the shorter stories. I'd prefer not to go into too much detail but Freya (perhaps you know her as The Destroyer of Worlds ((or, my cat))) is currently in heat. This makes recording audio...problematic. The audio for the last video was recorded over about a week, waiting for those rare moments when she was actually sleeping. Instead, you'll find below this message a story called The Lantern from the book itself, as a little taster. I hope you like it. 

The last week or so in Bulgaria we've actually seen the sun once or twice. The snow is all gone, finally, and spring is threatening to happen. I'm not sure I can put into words just how welcome it will be. It has been a long, depressing winter. I read once about a type of bee that sits in the hive all winter. Then when spring comes they all rush out on the same day, at the same time, and take an absolutely enormous piss. The cloud is yellow, I think, and deadly to any humans nearby. Radiolab did a great, and rather disturbing, episode about this happening in Vietnam. Anyway, that's sort of what the last few days feel like. Everyone's coming out from their hives in shorts, in t-shirts, and it's not even that hot yet. They're just glad to be outside again. I'm writing this on the balcony of my favourite cafe spot in Sofia, and to be honest I'm very glad to be outside again too. 

Important stuff for Patreon supporters: 

This month I'm only going to put out one video. I just want to be clear with you about that. There are two reasons for this:

Firstly, to be completely frank, I think I'm burning out a bit. I've always promised myself that when the ideas are gone, I'll stop. I'm not there yet, but I can feel my stuff recently is pushing at the edge of the recycle-barrier. You cannot just keep repackaging what you've already said. I've noticed a fair few creators who have fallen into this trap, and while I'm glad they persisted, there's something slightly tragic about it. I do not want to end up in that position. 

Please don't mistake this for lack of gratitude on my part. I love doing this, and I'm eternally thankful that you're supporting it. But sometimes you begin to piss yourself off. I think one should generally measure themselves by their work. If my work starts being shit, I don't think that will feel very nice. So please bear with me while I work this one out. 

If you want to delete your support for this month based on that, then it's totally understood on my side. You have nothing but my gratitude for everything so far and I think you're lovely.

Secondly though, and considerably more importantly (if I may say so), the new book is in the final stages of being real. I'm going to use most of April to just go off the grid and edit it into existence. The stories are all in place and I feel confident that it holds together.

Having been through the editing cycle three times now, I know what it takes, and that's about a month of total concentration and enormous quantities of coffee. I really want to make this thing exist now, and I'm going to give it the final push. When it's done, as soon as, I will of course make a post on here sending you the PDF, mobi, and epub files. I'm aiming for the end of April, and praying that's realistic. 

I'm massively sorry if I haven't responded to your email yet, if I haven't. I'm working through the last ones today and I promise I'll get to you. Quite a large part of doing this stuff online, surprisingly, is administration and it seems to take up more and more time as things go on - leaving less and less time for actually, you know, making things and responding to emails. As you can imagine, administration is simply my favourite activity. I love nothing more. In any case, a huge apology if you still haven't been replied to, I promise I will shortly. 

I've been toying with the idea of putting up some videos on the second channel about the ideas process, if there is such a thing. It's something I think about a lot recently and a fair few people seem to ask about it. It seems impossible to do though without sounding like a self-indulgent prick. I'll give it some thought. 

And I believe that's that for now. 

Oh no wait. Go and see Phantom Thread if you haven't already. Best thing I've watched in ages, and it should still be in cinemas. 

Also don't eat anything with California Reaper Chilli Sauce over it. As I recently found out, there are levels of pain that can only be experienced and not very comfortably put into words. 

Below should be The Lantern. I hope it's to your taste. 

All the best with the stuff you're working on, whatever that might be. And I hope the weather is nice. 

Ex.

The Lantern

I was working long shifts on a waypoint station. Below rotated that purplish-green world called Sandansk. God knows how many people lived down there—billions perhaps. It was not my job to care. 

Most nights I was so tired from work that I didn’t even clean off, just got into bed covered in oil or glue or gunk.

One night I couldn’t sleep though. I watched the planet below for a long time, but that only made a man feel small and fleeting. 

So I went wandering around the station. 

It was the middle of the night, Standard Time, and everything was mostly deserted. It didn’t take me long to come upon a bar on one of the poorer decks. 

The bartender was organic and I was thankful for that. He fetched my drink without fuss. Strange thing though, when I went to pay he said, “No need.”

“Really,” I said, and offered the note, knowing just how poor this poor deck was. 

“Really,” he echoed. “This one’s already paid for.” He nodded over my shoulder. I followed the nod. 

At the very back of the bar, sat right next to the window, was a lantern. I’d never seen one before, but I’d heard enough stories to be certain what it was. It looked to be about eight feet high, if stood. The skin was gentle blue, though scaled like a reptile. The mouth was a small red-rimmed pucker-hole that opened and shut every few seconds. 

And the eyes: great dinner plates the width of a man’s head with vermillion green irises bedded at their centre. 

The thing appeared to glance at us and I turned back to the barman quickly. “What do you mean already paid for?” I said.

“Just that. The thing paid for your tab in advance.”

“What?” 

“Just that.” The barman leant in. “Best you go and see what he wants, no?”

“I think I might just drink up and go,” I said. “I think that’s what I’ll do.”

The bartender leant even closer. “I’ve been working here 20 years or thereabouts. Not once has one of those things ever even come down to the deck, let alone into the bar. Nothing good will come of ignoring it, you hear? Go and see what it wants.”

I threw back my drink and the barman poured another and gave a nod and then I was walking over and I wanted to throw up. When I reached the table the creature didn’t look up.  

“Hello,” I said. “I believe you paid for my drinks.”

The thing had its eyes set on something out the window and didn’t say anything, just kicked a chair out for me with a great metallic leg. The other leg appeared to be organic and there wasn’t a shred of clothing on the body save for a strip of blue silk across the genitals. About its neck hung a pendant and as it swang it appeared to fall back through extra-dimensions: hyper-geom jewellery. 

But it was the smell that really rankled: the tang of ozone, the wreak of iron, and a few spices I knew no name for. 

I sat down. The creature kept its gaze out the window and perhaps a minute passed between us without a thing being said. Then in a voice that sounded like gargled barbed wire it moaned, “That planet has eighty-nine names. In the human tongue it is Sandansk, though others called it Ik’Quoeb and others called it Macha 8B and others called it by other names.”

I followed its gaze and sure enough there was the purplish orb below us, minding its own business. 

The creature continued. “But none of those eighty-nine designations are its true name. All objects in the universe have a true name, the name the universe recognises that thing by.” It turned to me then and its burning green irises bore in like mining lasers and I was sure that if I tried to move I wouldn’t be able to. “You have a true name,” it said.

“Do I?” I said very quietly. 

“Yes. If a planet or an atom should have one, why not a person?”

“Ah.”

“Would you like to hear it?”

“Not just now, thank you.”

It raised a quivering tentacle to the bartender and he rushed over with another drink and set it down in front of me and raced off again.

“A thing’s true name is not just its designation,” the monster said. “But it contains all the information one would want to know about an object. Its age, for example. Its form. And the time when it will die.” The thing nodded slowly to the barman. “His true name is Shat’Nusemit and from this we know he is a good man and that a heart attack with get him three years, one month, and thirteen days from now.” It blinked slowly. I wondered to myself if the monster had a true name. “Ah,” it said. “Yes of course I do.” My blood ran colder. It waved a tentacle idly and turned back to the window, to Sandansk below. “But let’s not talk about that now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said in a mouse’s voice, “but what do you want with me?”

The mouth open and shut, taking snaps of breath. The eyes blinked dreadfully slowly. “Do you know what I am?” the creature rasped. 

“I’m...not sure.”

“What do they call a thing like me?”

“A lantern, I think.”

“And do you know why?”

I shook my head.

It nodded to a docked voidskipper, perhaps a half-mile away. It looked like a nimble black fish, sleeping. “I suppose you don’t know how your starships reach the other systems.”

“No.”

“Well it’s a complicated process. It is made even more complicated by the fact that when a ship enters etherspace, computers do not function and humans do not function either. Any complicated machinery must be switched off and humans must be put into transitsleep. Packed away like fish.” The mouth made some strange imitation of a smile, then corrected. “Failure to do this will result in broken machinery or broken humans. The only processes left online during the trip are very simple life support and very simple piloting equipment. When I say very simple I mean it. The control yoke is linked to the motion fins by wire. Wire. Travelling to the stars by thread and pulley.”

“That can’t be true...” I said. The thing fixed me with a glare. “I’m sorry...I mean I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do,” it purred. “Man will solve all of his problems one day but starships will always travel by thread. That never changes.”

Talk of the future with such certainty would normally have signalled extreme bullshit but instead I just felt prickles spreading up my chest and into my neck and head. 

The lantern said, “If you knew Time’s true name you would understand that it is a bread loaf already baked.” It gave me a moment to think about this, watching the whole time with those burning green irises, then carried on. “As I said, ships enter etherspace to cross great distances. Since computers and the majority of humans can’t take the stress of the journey, special minds were sought out by scientists back on Terra. These minds would stay awake and pilot the ship through impossible geometries, riding at the very front of the ship in a little out-bubble, a single beacon leading ten thousand human cattle to safety.”

“A lantern,” I said. 

The lantern nodded and raised its scaled tentacles. “The process comes with something of a cost, however.”

We watched a voidskipper undocking from one of the civilian ports. It backed away from the station and hung like a dog waiting for permission to go bounding. Then it swung around, pointing its nose to some invisible destination ahead and set off. I spied a little bubble protruding from the front of the craft. 

“There is no time and no duration in etherspace,” the lantern said, watching the voidskipper. “All events occur at once. It is the privilege of one awake during that journey to see events ahead and events behind. We learn the true names of everything and we learn to say them. Given the complexities of spacefolding, we occasionally arrive before we set off.”

“You’ve been to the future?” I said.

“Relatively. And the past.”

Is that a blessing or a curse? I thought. 

“Both, depending on the day,” the lantern said quietly to itself. “Her name is Paola Hammond.”

I looked behind. A woman had come in, perhaps mid-thirties. She sat alone at the other side of the bar, reading. “She has lived a fairly dull life, full of waiting. Waiting for the right relationship, the right career. This was all in vain, of course, as she’ll be killed in a welding accident two and a half months from now down on the Construction Deck.”

The girl glanced over at us, at the lantern I suppose, then quickly turned her attention back to her book. 

I remembered a bit of temporal physics from school and I said, “It’s not a changeable thing, is it.”

The lantern nodded. “Of course, though now you’re wondering what your future looks like.”

“I am.”

“And you already know I’m not going to tell you a thing about it.”

“I do.”

Another silence passed and I snatched a glance at the girl with her book. I knew the paradox well enough. In trying to change her fate I’d only seal it. 

“You’re tired, I’m tired,” the lantern said quietly. “Let’s not bullshit anymore.” It took my drink in its tentacles and necked the whole thing. It wiped its strange snapping mouth. Then it said, “Lanterns live a very long time, but we’re not immortal. Every now and then we must recruit. It isn’t a pleasant indoctrination process, but the rewards outweigh the growing pains.”

It left that hanging in the air and stared into me. “What?” I said.

“I’ve told you how it is. You have the mind for the craft. You’ll be beyond the limits of distance and duration. You will see into things as they are. You will learn the true names of the world. In return you need only guide a few starships from sun to sun now and then. All of eternity in exchange for a little shepherding.”

“What?” I said again. 

“I’ll give you a few moments to think it over.”

I was quiet a little while then I gave in to the giggles. It watched me without expression or comment. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but—”

“My time is short,” it interrupted. “I’ll save you the trouble. You’re going to protest about what short notice this is, how ridiculous it seems. You’ll thank me politely but ultimately explain in a roundabout way so as not to offend that you like your life now and don’t feel the need to go jaunting off into the universe at a moment’s notice. You won’t say this, of course, but you’ll certainly be thinking that you’re afraid of me coming to you and even more afraid of where I intend to take you. There, that’s the shape of it, yes?” I found the courage to nod. 

It turned its massive eyes back to the voidskipper. The ship was barely visible now, a smudge among the stars, probably powering up its main drive. I imagined the interior, the crew all frosted in transitsleep, the ship drones cleaning the corridors and the canteens and the laboratories. And at the front of the ship, in a small transparent enclosure, I supposed, was a hunched monster with enormous vermillion green eyes and a puckered mouth that frantically opened and shut, its tentacles wrapped about the control yoke, and its mind already trained on something infinite coming. 

“Let me make this easier for you,” the lantern said in a dark voice, its gaze still on the voidskipper. “You haven’t recovered from the breakdown of your marriage. You never will. You’re constantly waiting for a promotion to the Craftman’s Deck. It will come, two and a half years from now, but the work will be hard and the pay won’t be much better and even though you’ll regret taking the position, you will remain in it due to your excessive pride. You will die thirty years, seven months, four days, and ten hours from now in a—”

“Please don’t,” I said. 

“—decompression accident aboard a voidskipper bound for Ithaca Pi. As your lungs explode and your blood boils you will think very quickly about what a boring life you led, and how fear constantly held you back from pursuing your true passions. Ironically you will not realise your true passions until that very moment.” The puckered mouth appeared to smile again. “This is how events will unfold.”

“Then I won’t board that ship,” I said. 

“Yes you will.”

“I won’t go to Ithaca.”

“Yes you will.”

“God damn it, why even tell me this if there’s nothing I can do?”

It folded its tentacles over on each other, business-like. “There is something you can do. I’m leaving tomorrow on a voidskipper bound for Absente. Come along.”

“And what?” 

“And sit up front with me, catch your first glimpse of the infinite. The ship will jump to ether and you’ll see what it is I’m getting at. You have the brain to handle it.”

“And if I don’t?” 

The lantern shrugged. “Then I wish you luck with the rest of your life and assure you that you won’t reach Ithaca alive.”

Out the window, beyond the planet, in the black, the voidskipper activated its drive. Space lensed for a moment, then the ship was gone. 

“I’d offer you another drink but you’re about to go to bed,” the lantern said. 

“I was thinking about it.”

It stood, loomed over me, well beyond seven feet. It regarded me again with the green dinner plate eyes and didn’t blink. “My ship leaves at ten tomorrow, Standard Time. A life of boredom or a life as a lantern. There it is.”

“I appreciate the offer but I’m really not interested. Thank you though.”

It bowed to me and the air reeked again of ozone. Then it made for the door. 

I sat back and stared out of the window, down at Sandansk, then to where the voidskipper had been. There was no trace of it now. One could scour the whole universe and find no trace of it, not until it popped back out into regular space. 

Where had it gone? Into everwhen. Into that place between place. Up to a boundary and beyond it. 

I called out suddenly, “Why come?” 

And from right behind my ear the lantern said, “What’s that?” 

I tried not to jump. “You’ve been waiting there?”

“You had a final thing to say. Say it now then.”

I said slowly, “Why did you come to ask me what you asked me? You’ve seen the future, you said, and the future doesn’t change. Why ask me if you knew I’d say no?”

The creature bent down slowly to my ear and I felt the coldness of its skin sucking the warmth out of mine. I smelled its breath and it was not unpleasant and not pleasant. I heard its mouth snap shut, snap open, gasp. And finally it said, “Because you will think the matter over tonight and come to me tomorrow and we’ll travel together. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise. Everyone refuses at first. Everyone reconsiders a little later.” It put a tentacle on my shoulder. “This is one of our few rituals. We may come to our past selves and make the offer. Ten o’clock tomorrow. I’ll see you there.”