Welcome back to our Serial Sunday, featuring Superluminary, a wonderful science fiction tale by John C. Wright that we’re pleased to present as a serial each Sunday here on Fandom Pulse.
Episode 10: The Madness of Tellus
Aeneas saw the energy flows in their signet rings change as the Lord of Creation, merely by thought, readied various deadly unseen powers.
Tearstains trailed from his eyes, bloodstains from his mouth.
His body was self-repairing. Without his ring, the process was inefficient and painful. He had not yet recovered from the battle. Steam generated by the speed of the cellular repair reactions was still escaping from bloody holes in his human skin and the breaches in his bioadmantium scale. Many organs had failed due to radiation or supergravity. His dwindling supply of raw life energy could maintain vital functions while those organs were semi-undead.
So he was in bad shape. Discharging organic energy weapons would strain those vital functions, halt them, kill him.
Combat was impossible. But his mother always said that psychological war was deadlier. It used the victim’s mind against him. And she said every mind had blind spots, created by pride, by greed, by fear.
Aeneas stood, towering over his peers. Steam rose from his torso and blood trickled down his legs. “Lord Mercury says whoever is most afraid should shoot first. The imperial throne has been vacant since Grandfather abdicated, because none of you agreed on who was to be master. Would you have panic be your master?
“Lord Saturn says my life is worthless because it cannot increase your power. But the superluminary science unlocks an infinity of stars! The solar system is not planets, moons, and asteroids! Compared to what you might rule, it is nine pebbles, and gravel, and dustmotes.”
Aeneas raised and spread his arms. “I am defenseless, the weakest among us! Shoot, if you fear! Strike, if I frighten you! But then think of what will happen when your wife or child frightens another family member! Or you do! Shoot me, and then shoot each other, because anyone who shoots will scare someone!”
For a moment, he thought he had persuaded them. Both Lord Jupiter and Lord Neptune looked pensive, troubled. Lady Luna had a look of hope shining in her eyes. Brother Beast was smiling and nodding as if he agreed with Aeneas’s words.
Lord Uranus broke the spell. No expression showed on his mask that looked like his face, but he clapped his hands together in slow and sarcastic applause.
“Spoken like an orator! Lady Venus should be proud.” He turned his mask back toward Aeneas. “You could have made a great politician, or salesman. But we have no need of salesmen in a post-scarcity economy. And no need of politicians in a post-political regime. You were born a century behind the times, Aeneas. This is the Twenty-Fifth Century. It will not miss you when you are gone.”
Despair’s weight and wounds’ aches forced Aeneas into his seat. There was nothing left to say. Yet speak he must, if only to win an additional minute of life.
Aeneas said, “I am not a politician. I am a prophet. You are all doomed. By driving Grandfather into hiding, you have set in motion a disastrous chain of consequences! Yes, I have the superluminary science. Lord Tellus did not give it to me without purpose!”
He had forgotten that, by sitting down again, the cap was over his head. His mother was reading his thoughts. A look of sadness escaped her, of incredulity. Blue-faced Lord Neptune saw her look, understood it, and laughed. The Lords Uranus and Saturn followed suit.
But Lord Jupiter raised his hand. “Wait, my brothers! He does not know he is telling the truth. If Father did not impart of the Final Science, no one did. Why give it to the youngest of the second generation? He must have had reasons.”
Lord Saturn shook his grayhaired head. “Must he? There is no reason in madness.”
Aeneas said, “Not so. The warptech is mine because the mutiny against him was before my birth. I am trustworthy. You should trust him, too, all of you! But for him, man would be one race only, always at war, trapped on one world only, always starving. If he chose me, then trust his choice. He is your father. Have faith in him.”
And all of them burst out laughing, even his mother.
Lord Jupiter said, “You will excuse us, little Aeneas. Perhaps you were not taught how bad things grew, toward the end. His decrees grew… eccentric.”
Lord Saturn said, “At first, he was a savior. War, plague, famine were everywhere. Men blamed modern progress for human misery. People were sick of presidents and prime ministers. They wanted lords and ladies again. The Pope in Valparaiso had anointed Isabelle Imperatrix of the Holy Roman Empire of South America; and the Mandarins expelled the last of the communists, and found Xianxiang, a peasant girl, with the genetic markers of the extinct Manchu dynasty. In North America, the Crime Bosses made the post of Godfather hereditary, to stop the endless power struggle. The Dalai Lama had conquered India and Africa. When Lord Tellus returned from Pluto, halting wars and stopping plagues, everyone wanted him to don a crown.”
Lord Jupiter said, “At first the madness was small. Little things. He ordered Pluto to be officially declared a planet; no one could use the word ‘literally’ to mean figuratively.”
Lord Uranus said dryly, “Lord Tellus changed the name of ‘quarks’ to ‘stratons’ and renamed several highly unstable elements of the periodic table after his children. Spyridonium used to be Ununpentium. A joke, I suppose.”
Lady Ceres said, “The jokes got bigger. All men had to wear hats and all women had to wear skirts, with the exception of cowgirls and female catburglars.”
Brother Beast said, “And then all the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and every copy of the Koran and the Hadiths of Mohammed were gathered up in all the town squares and burnt except for copies kept for scholarly research in the libraries of the New Vatican in Valparaiso. Also, all copies of Ulysses by James Joyce were burned. Had the Jihadists and the Chinese Communists not decimated each other a generation earlier, the violence might have been worse.”
Lady Venus said, “Father abolished suffrage for women world-wide. On the other hand, it may have been a mercy. That same year, all voting booths were turned into execution chambers, and every voter had to solve a quadratic equation before pulling the lever. The booths electrocuted those who failed, and flushed the body without benefit of Christian burial.”
Child-faced Lord Mercury smiled crookedly. “There was an outcry from the widows of the unmathematically inclined. Lord Tellus in his mercy allowed some voters to visit the firing range, and shoot at the ballots from twenty paces. Wherever the bullet landed, that candidate got the vote, and misfires or off-target strikes were counted as votes for a local race horse. Districts with poor marksmanship often sent famous horses rather than men to the House of Commons. Horse-only sessions were beloved for their light taxes, unburdensome laws. The Parliament of Man was renamed the Parliament of Horses. With no war or crime, what laws need voting on? But once Father was not here to protect it, we abolished it. You see why your pleas to revive the silly thing are pointless.”
Lord Neptune wore a sour expression on his lean, blue face. “It almost sounds amusing, does it not? A time came when he commanded all records be rewritten, to remove all references to Rock and Roll music. It was replaced with an obsessively detailed history of a Jazz Renaissance that never happened, complete with made-up jazz musicians and bandleaders, their personal histories and idiosyncrasies. Musicians were hired to write the retroactive songs for this fictitious period of time, and actors and actresses were hired to pretend to have been fans, lovers, wives or children of these nonexistent Jazz players:”Spatz” Hampton and “Dizzy” Gillespie; Harry James Snell and “Big Wolf” McRoy; “Jumpin’” Jack Armstrong; “Fats” Waller; and “Little Boy Blues” Boroni. Trumpets, sheet music, aged photographs were all produced by nanotechnology, indistinguishable from reality. Even the carbon-14 levels in the fakes were adjusted. So Rock and Roll music officially never existed. He passed an anti-whistling law, to prevent people from whistling Rock and Roll tunes.
“The ghost city of Hollywood the Great was cleaned of radioactivity by Lord Tellus, and colonists bribed the Crime Dons of Cheyenne Mountain, and President-for-Life Godmother Filchingmort, to buy permission to recolonize. The Hollywoodsmen rebelled against the Rock and Roll edicts, declared independence from the Telluric World Empire. The King of Rock, Lord Elvis II, claimed to have a working neutron bomb, and openly defied Lord Tellus, daring him to do his worst.
“A tidal wave rolled in, toppling the city in a brutal catastrophe. Gravitics are my specialty. I recognized the deluge as artificial. A long time it took to convince my brothers! To this day, I think, some still doubt me.” He shot a dark glance at Lord Jupiter.
Lord Jupiter said in a hearty voice, “It was not that I doubted you, dear brother! I doubted we would survive. To this day, I do not know how we did.”
Lord Mercury said, “Simple. We beat him. He fled.”
Lord Jupiter said, “You’re simple. We exasperated him. He quit.”
Lord Saturn said darkly, “This boy now has the power Lord Tellus held. Either we slay him, or he enslaves us.”
“Are you blind?” blazed Lady Luna. “Have you all forgotten what we debated during this whole conclave? Your children want to live like Lords of Creation. Lord Tellus saved us from a civil war, by giving us the perfect answer!”
Lady Ceres said, “She is right. And Aeneas offers it: infinite stars.”
Brother Beast said, “I suggest a compromise. If you are afraid to let anyone know the secret, at least let Aeneas use it. He can shuttle every son to his own star system, to fill with life as he likes. The frontier calls all the discontented and angry youth away to do useful work, taming wilderness. Problem solved.”
Lord Uranus said, “No. With the proper tools, the Final Science could warp space to prevent electromagnetics from propagating…” he nodded at Lord Jupiter “…or Neptune’s gravitons, or Venus’ neural signals. Or imagine a single bullet traveling at lightspeed striking the Earth: how much kinetic energy is released? Brothers! Is debate needed? If this lad is a tool of our lunatic father, all the more reason for a swift death!”
Lord Jupiter turned to Lady Venus and spread his hands. “You see that I tried! But if your son is the first step in some mad plan of Father to return from hiding and smite us all… well, your pretty head will be on the chopping block before mine. I was not one of the ringleaders. Or Father might do to you what you do to criminals on your planet. Not kill you. Just change your mind for you.”
Lady Venus turned pale. She said sadly, “There comes a time in life when a mother must say farewell.” She turned to Aeneas. “I could not save your father, either. I warned him. But…” Her voice failed.
Lords Saturn, Neptune, Uranus called in loud voices for death. Lord Mercury laughed and clapped his hands. When Lord Jupiter reluctantly agreed, Lady Ceres went with him. Lady Luna argued and pleaded, but no one listened. Brother Beast asked Aeneas quietly if he wanted to be shriven. Lady Venus stared at her slippers, unable to speak or raise her eyes.
Neptune made a gesture with his trident. Aeneas felt as if the room were shaken like a dice cup. The wall became the floor, then the ceiling. When the earthquake stopped, Aeneas was pinned by many times his natural weight to the floor at the feet of Lord Mars, who had not spoken yet. Aeneas could not raise his head, or draw air into his lungs.
Lord Neptune said, “Brother, will you do the honors? Otherwise the maids will be needed to clean up the remains, and there will be talk.”
Lord Mars stood and placed a foot, one to either side of the prone body of Aeneas. He drew his longsword with a slithering hiss of steel.
Support John C. Wright’s current work, Starquest by picking up the first book in his new series, The Space Pirates of Andromeda.
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As always, thank you for the great read!