What Do We Want? [FICTOID]

Of course faster-than-light travel being impossible as are portals, hyperspace, and warp drives, humanity invented something else to let them go star-hopping.

Exactly what that is remains unimportant to our story.

So just forget about it to remain focused on this:  An admiral waltzes with Mars inside a diamond moon.

Let’s repeat that slowly for the cheap seats:

• An admiral.

• Waltzes.

• With Mars.

• Inside.

• A diamond moon.

The existence of an admiral makes the existence of a fleet a foregone conclusion.

How many ships in a fleet?  There is no precise number so let’s just say more than three.

W-a-a-a-y more than three.

While it’s not impossible for there to be only one single admiral in command of a fleet, usually there are vice-admirals, rear admirals, and a host of other hypothetical admirals to help with the admiraling so in this case assume that since this admiral has time to waltz with a planet, there’s a lot more admirals.

This, by extension, would imply either a vast fleet/s or else a mind-numbing level of bureaucracy and nepotism.

Doesn’t matter.  Not for this story, anyway.

A waltz is a dance, which typically implies music, art, and leisure but not always.  “Waltz” can be used metaphorically, say to “waltz around a problem” i.e., the avoid an issue as gracefully as possible.

Another metaphor is in physics, to describe either complex orbital patterns or the interaction of quantum particles.

Since this is a science fiction story, no reason it can’t be both.

“With Mars” might be used symbolically to suggest war -- and the existence of a vast fleet of ships might suggest a martial tone to this tale -- but that’s a cheat, a bait-and-switch.

Anybody can coin a surreal story prompt then try to explain it away as something mundane through the use of symbolic imagery (looking at ///you///, poets).

No, we’ll take the high road -- though fleets typically don’t use roads (and when they do, it’s usually a sign something has gone dreadfully wrong) -- and categorically state that this is not a Roman god, not a metaphor for war, not another character with the same name but the actual bon fide fourth-planet-from-Sol called Mars.

Are you with me so far?  Good.  Now let’s get down to the metaphysical meat and potatoes of this story.

“Inside” means just that.  The admiral (whom we presume to be human) and the planet (which we presume to be made of physical matter) are within…

...something.

It could be a set as in set mathematics…

...but it isn’t.

Let’s stop prevacating and get down to brass tacks.  What is it?

A diamond moon.

Now here’s where most folks take the cowardly way out and assume a metaphorical reading but to those in the know, diamond moons can and do exist.

Their proper name is “carbon worlds” and they are planets where carbon -- as opposed to oxygen, as found in the terrestrial inner planets of Sol -- is the dominant element.

A diamond world is formed when the mass of such a planet compresses and superheats its carbon core, turning it into a huge diamond.  Something then strips away the planet’s non-diamond mantle -- a supernova, for example -- and what’s left is a small diamond moon drifting through interstellar space.

Got that?  Excellent.  Now we may proceed.

This particular diamond moon possesses the ability to create quantum entanglements with any particle in the universe.

How, you ask?  Science! I answer.  Now shut up and enjoy the story.

When humans discovered this diamond moon -- or more properly, when the diamond moon wished to be discovered by humans -- they learned human intellects could communicate with other planets in the universe.

No, not alien civilizations, rather the planets themselves.

Yes, in what should have been no surprise to anyone, every planet in the known universe is sentient.

So when we speak of an admiral waltzing with Mars inside a diamond moon, we mean a human quantumly entangling with the intellect known as the planet Mars via giant spherical diamond floating through space.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

So why is this admiral quantumly entangled with Mars?

You wouldn’t understand.

This is a story set tens of thousands of years in the future.  Trying to explain the technology and culture and values and motives of that far flung era would be like trying to explain how Turbo Tax™ computes depreciation of international assets to an Ice Age nomad.

We don’t share enough points of commonality to make sense of what the admiral and Mars are doing, so let’s just say they’re doing it, they enjoy doing it, and everything is right with the universe.

And who could ask for more than that out of a story?

© Buzz Dixon