Tales from the Mother Galaxy

By Maria Pellegrini

Five long trips in a mysterious and unusual part of the universe. There you will become acquainted with belligerent plutonidians, indomitable rebels fighting against mind control occult power, and lastly brain merchants. Also along the way you will also meet weird engineered creatures playing an unwitting part in life and brave galactic explorers.
A great war opens the surreal scenarios of the Mother Galaxy. But what is it that really controls the mechanisms of the Universe? Why does Zetana not 'connect' like everyone else? UIGO is an inter-galactic reporter who finds the ultimate story beyond infinity in search of new realities. Will he change the perception of the Universe? A curious small grey fellow, Meba, happily flutters with his motormembrane, plays virtual games and pushes mysterious buttons. Can he succeed in challenging his "cognocractic" rulers. And finally, what will be the sensational outcome of an encounter between two powerful leaders inside a simulation of their own memories?

"This book is a collection of five tales which in a way reflect the ideas that I have further expanded and developed in my two novels. Technology and science are the driving forces of the far away worlds I describe, but above all each one of these short stories is really the celebration of the triumph of intelligence, both natural and artificial, that our species deserves." Lavirrealista, 2016

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maria Pellegrini
• Release date: Mar 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909078161

Maria Pellegrini

Maria Pellegrini, writing also under the pen-name Lavirrealista, has been an indie publisher since 2010, exploring the theme of technology and society in the future. “Virrealism” is the underlying concept of her work. Virrealism foundation is the virtual reality of the future. She has now written two books (Real Virtualites 2011, Change of State - First Phase 2016) and six short stories. She has also published essays explaining the rationale behind her books. Trained as a geologist and environmental scientist, she specialised in mapping technology and worked for many years in the industry, later becoming editor in chief of a technical magazine. She continues to work in the IT sector and in other creative fields.Maria Pellegrini, che scrive anche con lo pseudonimo Lavirrealista, nel 2010 ha iniziato la sua nuova attività come Indie Publisher. I suoi lavori esplorano il tema della tecnologia e della società nel futuro. Ha definito lei stessa “Virrealismo” il tema di base dei suoi lavori. Il concetto basilare del Virrealismo è la realtà virtuale del futuro.Ha pubblicato in inglese e in italiano un romanzo breve, “Virtualità Reali”, una collezione di racconti, “Racconti Dalla Galassia Madre” e un racconto lungo, “Guerriera per Caso”. Quest'ultimo fa parte del nuovo romanzo, “Cambiamento di Stato Prima Fase” e ne rappresenta l'antefatto. Ha anche pubblicato saggi che spiegano la logica alla base dei suoi lavori. Laureata in scienze geologiche ha ottenuto un master in scienze ambientali e in seguito ha preso altre specializzazioni tecniche. Ha lavorato per molti anni nel settore, per poi diventare redattrice di una rivista tecnica. Continua a lavorare nel settore informatico e creativo.

Book preview

TALES FROM THE MOTHER GALAXY

Maria Pellegrini

Virrealismo Publishing

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

By the Same Author

Preface

The War of the Plutonidians

Zetana the Disconnected

Borrowed Brains

Planets Under Glass

Tuméng

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Tales From the Mother Galaxy

Maria Pellegrini

ISBN: 9781909078161

Original Title: Racconti Dalla Galassia Madre

Translation by: Virrealismo Publishing

© VIRREALISMO PUBLISHING

All rights reserved

Front Cover: Tech mask,

© Rafael Torres Castaño, Dreamstime.com

Other Images:

Two Temples in Valley on Alien World, © Angela Harburn, Dreamstime.com

Alien Woman Surrounded By Plasma Waves, © Linda Bucklin, Dreamstime.com

Power of the mind, © Skypixel, Dreamstime.com

Alien Face Head Portrait, © Madartists, Dreamstime.com

Strange World, © Patricia Fatta, Dreamstime.com

Spaceship approaching a nebula, © Philcold , Dreamstime.com

Published by Virrealismo Publishing

February 2013

www.virrealismo.com

By the Same Author

Fiction

REAL VIRTUALITIES

ACCIDENTAL WARRIOR

CHANGE OF STATE FIRST PHASE

Preface

The five tales in this book, written between 2011 and 2012, continue with the theme of Real Virtualities that is to imagine a future in which technology, science and mental development are advanced to fantastic levels and the Virtual often supersedes the Real becoming more complex but also much more interesting.

Visions of worlds populated by singular sources of life stand out in the nearly surreal futuristic scenery of the Mother Galaxy while worlds created by self-centred minds whose self-interest perverts and delays progress are dismissed.  The contrast when it exists is hard, sometimes ironic or even tragicomic and this is intentional.

The great themes of poverty, violence, war, suffering as well as love and spirituality form the basis of great literature and human failings are lauded as what makes us human and Life worth living.  However, surely there is room to imagine a different future equally intense and wonderful, where science and technology, in a symbiotic embrace with Nature, have not only solved the big problems but have also created entirely new emotions and feelings thus expanding limits of perception.

The War of the Plutonidians looks at a great war between future civilisations from the bird’s eye view of a galactic observer.  What happens on a planet which is no more than an insignificant speck in the Universe is put wonderfully in perspective.

Set in a nightmare bureaucratic future of total thought control, Zetana the Disconnected, a young heroine, makes a brilliant job of completely defeating the system.  Alluding both to the positive power, but also the danger of the internet which connects us all, the story illustrates how the human spirit will always, eventually, defeat domination by a power mad elite.  The story also contains a wonderful exposition of bureaucracy taken to the extreme and follows through with an incisive reductio ad absurdum of the pointless activities in modern working life.

In the third story, Borrowed Brains, the science fantasy is really moved forward with the enticing idea of projecting the mind into a host at such an astronomical distance as to render physical travel impossible.  Borrowing the brain of a host at a cosmic distance from home and communicating with a hitherto unknown particle is a fascinating concept which is beautifully explored to its final, logical conclusion.  Because scientific reality will keep humanity very much earthbound or, at the most, Solar System bound for decades, if not centuries to come, exploring the mechanics of intra-galactic travel will continue to be a great source of creative fantasy for a long time.  As well as the fantastic science fiction, this story explores the mind of the central character, UÌGO who becomes simultaneously part of two vastly different worlds questioning the meaning of reality, which is fully explored in the last two tales.

The happy little grey fellow hero of Planets under Glass is a remarkable creation.  Of a different species to that which rules his home planet, Meba is a push button like so many of our Earthly fellows in this PC era.  As in Zetana the futility of push button life is again exposed but also the dark side of technology versus a possible positive evolution of technologically driven society.  The story explores intriguing ideas of how a future democracy, with the help of technology might work.  Cognocracy is the model that emerges; it is not the first and certainly will not be the last.

Finally following the theme which looks forward to the triumph of open minded and altruistic attitudes over their opposites, this last tale uses the allusion of open source vs proprietary software as a vehicle to explore some of the great failings and deep contradictions of human society.  An inevitable and at the same time exciting encounter between great, wise and intelligent leaders, with a reference to a famous classical allegorical ascent, the story centres around speculation about the possible end results of research into artificial intelligence with startling conclusions.

The five stories tell of planets and galaxies where the laws of physics are shaken, events develop in realities far different from our own and the characters move among sensational technological inventions that I hope as a whole will stimulate your imagination and your thoughts.

Maria Pellegrini, Lavirrealista

January 2013

THE WAR OF THE PLUTONIDIANS

And so chaos became order, noise became silence and peace... war!

The Plutonidians

The Plutonidians were a really curious species.  Creatures of small dimensions, they were always active and aware of what was going on around.  They never let go any opportunity to grab anything for themselves even the last thing thrown out by others.  They did not waste a thing and were highly adaptable.  The Mother Galaxy (which was just a symbolic name in that part of the universe to include a number of galaxies and other celestial objects) was full of surprises and because the Plutonidians came from nomadic intergalactic populations, these characteristics were not only innate but also indispensable to their survival and in the course of time these features became extremely refined.

For many generations now, they had undertaken the difficult path of settling uninhabited new planets, rather than living together with different species, as did the greater part of the galactic population, in the most attractive and famous worlds of which there were so many.  Nobody knew why they took this decision, but since in the Mother Galaxy all the celestial bodies that were part of it were multiplying unrestrained in the most varied directions of multidimensional spaces, in the vast scale of things, it was so insignificant to be of interest to nobody.

Their settlement methodology was quite simple: they populated a new world and then they reproduced without control.

The Plutonidians were divided into Ten Families.  When they became too numerous, a spontaneous selection of younger members coming from each one of the Families prepared to board an uninhabited passing planet or to leave in search of new ones.  As a general rule the new colonized celestial bodies were always called Plutonide, which according to the illustrious opinion of certain intergalactic historians must have been their planet of origin.

Many seasons had passed when a new choice of young Plutonidians was chosen for a world which was discovered almost by chance on the birthday of the eldest son of an ambassador belonging to the Family of the Lucomonidians, guests for the occasion in the magnificent summer villa of the aristocratic Family of the Plebieians.

It was a little planet almost hidden by the tenuous reflected nebula of Doga, which was in the extreme periphery of the constellation K2-EvE.  A team of public technicians was quickly mobilised as soon as the news was out and in a flash they prepared the habitability study.  A satellite mission was dispatched and the sensors quickly sent back all the necessary data to take the final decision.  The information conformed to government standards, with just a couple of exceptions.  In particular they noticed an anomalously high atmospheric pressure, but it was not too much of a worry.  The other slightly negative aspect was that the planet was unfortunately not big enough to hold the typical ten settlement colonies.  So it was decided to send a reduced youth selection.  Contrary to the usual rules, they were chosen only from two Families: the Lucomonidians, who were led by the son of the ambassador himself, and the Plebieians who instead decided to send as their head someone without high family rank.  He simply was a distant cadet nephew.  The thing had no precedent and was not seen in a good light by some but, apparently, nobody was able to propose a better alternative so the small ships left.

To combat the only unfavourable physical environment of the planet, that is the high pressure, the individuals in the two neo-colonies were simply provided with a compact and robust armour to protect the body from the anomalous atmospheric force.

It is also true that the Plutonidians were very flexible and their bodies adapted quickly to any new environmental condition thanks to the intervention of the most advanced biotechnological engineering that had introduced into their genetic code special hyper-adaptation chromosomes.  So much so that, after a short time since their arrival on that anomalous new planet, their head had undergone a profound variation.  It had become smaller and had been compressed against the thorax that had strengthened becoming not so mobile… comical.  They had almost become without a neck!

Where their physical response was insufficient there were two other famous and perhaps also a little enviable characteristics of the Plutonidians, namely, the lightning ability to learn (almost phenomenal) and their capacity for ingenious technological development.  In this way they managed to adapt and exploit to the maximum the resources of any planet on which they landed.  Just as an example, since they were completely vegetarian and on the new Plutonide the strong pressure inhibited drastically vegetative growth, they had found a way of extracting the vital elements for survival directly from the soil.  From the time they landed, the grey cells of these intergalactic super-technicians were at once put to work.  In the blink of an eye they thought up the most curious invention that Plutonidian technology had ever produced.  It was a special mouth apparatus to penetrate the land and suck directly the nutritive elements from the soil.  The internal mechanism was able to rebuild, as the chemical elements were extracted, the complex organic structures of the proteinaceous molecules necessary for survival.

The genetic change, which had taken place rapidly on this new celestial body under high pressure, did not cease at the upper part of the body.  In fact, the legs also became strengthened, as well as the thorax, in answer to the difficulty of movement and technology had again intervened providing the Plutonidians with a device that allowed an individual to do jumps of remarkable length.  In this way they could move without problems and quickly.

This extreme flexibility of physical adaptation and the exceptional technological skill in answer to the environmental challenge perhaps had made the Plutonidians the only true pantonaut species in existence.

The agreement for the division of the lands, like the anatomic adjustment, did not take very long.  The Lucomonidians settled in the northern part of the planet while the other Family went to the southern lands.  This also did not follow the usual custom of peaceful mixing within the colonies on the planets they populated as a way of maintaining harmony and homogeneity of cultures, customs and usage that varied remarkably between the Families.  This kind of disorganised division of the new lands was the fundamental pillar of the famous Plutonidian Anarchy.  The ordered disorder that it promoted was invented by their iron logic, not only to favour the cultural integration which was fundamental for scientific and technological advancement, but above all to forestall any possible social tension that might have developed, especially during the delicate initial phases of settlement.  In reality there had been some attempts to 'organize' that wonderful chaos, but fortunately they had all failed.

However, since the colonists of this small neo-Plutonide were few and they still only represented two families, unfortunately that geographic division happened almost spontaneously.

Finally to complicate matters more the Plebieian nephew, who was nicknamed the Cadet, stubbornly insisted on bringing a step-cousin towards whom his heart was feeling a profound attraction, which was without doubt returned.

She was the daughter of a famous alien, whose beauty and sensuality were quite well-known in the whole Mother Galaxy.  That jewel of exotic brilliance was the wife and personal assistant of a celebrated captain of the Intergalactic Supreme Council, whom the Family of the Plebieians often had the honour of hosting in their renowned properties.

Their little girl, who since she was already very attached to the Cadet, was left with the Family one mid-summer evening when she and her parents were passing one of so many pleasant holidays at the Plebieians’ estate.  The captain and the wife were urgently called back by intergalactic HQ to help to solve a delicate matter, which was creating serious diplomatic problems in the astro-political infrastructure of the Mother Galaxy.  Unfortunately there was an accident and the small ship that was carrying them exploded.  The Plebieians decided to adopt the girl and she was nurtured as if she had been one of them.  The years went