Wonderland 2024

A-2. The Antipathies

PROMPT ▼

Alice believed she would meet these folks who walk with their heads downward if she keeps falling.1 Write your own adventure of discovering such a place. (<1000 words)

The thing that a lot people from Earth's past got wrong about interstellar travel is that it's a three-dimensional space, not two. That may sound like an obvious statement, but look at the way they designed their early spacecraft; they made them reminiscent of battleships and other watercraft, perfectly designed to traverse the flat surface of the water. Their designs should have been closer to that of a submarine, which can travel on the surface as well as up and down the depths.

That's why my personal spacecraft is a sphere. No matter which way I have to go, it's always the same amount of resistance. Which, in space, is very little.

The only downside is that we still haven't figured out how to get the inertial dampeners to kick in as fast as the computer can chart and autopilot a course. Depending on where you are and where you're going, you might get propelled back, forward, up, down, or any which way. Eventually the dampeners will kick in, but that first few seconds can be brutal. Especially for someone like me who still gets a little motion sick, particularly during the "down" trajectory FTL trips. I was once in an electro-mag elevator that malfunctioned and dropped me dozens of levels in a matter of seconds. It felt like my stomach had relocated to my throat, and it's the exact same feeling I get every time my spacecraft does an FTL drop.

Which I was currently experiencing at this very moment.

These cross-galaxy runs were always a pain. Pick something up from somewhere, drop it off somewhere else... that's the nature of the job, but I prefer the shorter runs. The longer runs paid much better, hence why I took this one, but the other side was weird. Different types of alien races, different kinds of planets. You never knew quite what to expect on the south side of the galaxy. Especially when traveling to an unfamiliar system, which is where I was headed right now.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why someone needed a shipment of delicacies from the advanced inner worlds this far out into the southern frontier. These were all developing worlds that presumably needed terraforming equipment, or weapons and munitions, or basic survival supplies. Fine food and drink and culture items seemed a little out of place. But, hey, I was paid to make deliveries, not to ask questions.

By the time I arrived at Elurun Prime, questions were all I had. Instead of some backwater frontier planet with poor technology and very few signs of civilization, I found a world as developed as anything around the inner worlds. How had they managed to keep this a secret for so long? Even stranger, I found myself docking at a landing platform that was upside down. The minute I docked, I could feel gravity pulling me toward the ceiling, and when I stepped off the ship onto the landing pad, I could look up and see the surface of the planet above me.

I was greeted at the spaceport by an administrator bot.

"Welcome, Captain. Please follow me."

I trailed behind the bot as it glided toward the nearest building. It ushered me into an enormous conference room and then left the room. I was pretty sure I was technically sitting on the ceiling.

Within a few moments, an important-looking woman in some kind of military uniform entered.

"Captain, my name is General Mirax Vel and I'd like to talk to you about our cause."

She sized me up, but then realized my attention was on the fact that we were both upside down.

"Forgive me," she apologized. "I should have mentioned the portable gravity drive we're experimenting with."

"That's fun," was all I could manage.

"Anyway," Vel replied. "Our cause..."

"No thanks," I said, cutting her off. "I'm apolitical."

"The reason I ordered shipments like the one you agreed to bring," Vel said, forging ahead despite my protests, "Is to see what kind of pilots agree to make the run. In my experience, the ones who sign up are savvy pilots who need the money and know when to follow orders without asking any questions. Those are the kinds of pilots that we need..."

"Listen, I'm flattered--" I began.

"... and pay quite well for." Vel said, finishing her sentence.

My ears perked up as she said that.

"Yeah?"

"What did you make last year doing low-level courier jobs for affluent inner worlders? Fifty thousand credits?"

I snorted. "Not even."

"Well, that's where you'd start here."

Now she had my attention.

"This is not some fledgling little uprising," Vel said. "We're well-funded, well-resourced, and well-staffed. We're nearly ready to make our presence known to the inner worlds, and we want you flying for us when we do."

"And if I say no?"

"Well, we can't have you returning to the inner worlds to give them advanced notice of our plans. So either way, you'll have to enjoy our hospitality for a little while. The only question is whether you want to be paid for it and have the chance to fly; or if you want to enjoy some unpaid downtime here on the surface. We'll make you comfortable either way."

I had never envisioned myself as a revolutionary. Then again, I never envisioned myself as someone who made fifty thousand credits a year and didn't have to cater to the entitled elites on the inner worlds either. And if the choice was flying for pay or being grounded and broke... well, I always did love to fly.

"When do I start?"



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(955 words)

Footnotes
1  The full line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is:

I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think—” (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all the right word) “—but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?

FUN FACT: At the time of the book's writing, New Zealand and Australia were considered the Antipodes (meaning "opposite foot," or the other side of the world from Great Britain). Carroll also had two cousins who were concurrently considering a move to the Australian colony to seek their fortune, and some literary critics have hypothesized (unconfirmed) that Carroll included the reference in his book to basically indicate his feelings on their decision.