Tears for Titans
Note: This short story illustrates a confusion over Means and Ends.
Investigate the phenomenon more deeply in this companion piece
Welcome to Blumenzal
When Hema looked back on her life, she could finally appreciate see how difficult it had been. Not just for herself, but everyone she knew — in fact if she thought about it, life had been difficult for most creatures that called the planet of Blumenzal home.
Perhaps that was the reason that Hema had never registered the fact — misery hidden in plain sight can’t be considered misery after all. But this epiphany on its own wasn’t too surprising; no, what was truly shocking to her was how little she could do to change things — even after she had become a de-facto god.
***
Blumenzal was an especially unique planet, even amongst the planets that hosted life in our universe –a pretty rare phenomenon by itself. Unlike other planets considered strange, Blumenzal’s uniqueness wasn’t due to its proximity to the nearest star system, or the presence of strange elements in its atmosphere, or even its terrain. It was, of course, different from other life-hosting planets (Earth and Karxi for example) when it came to these things, but that was not what made it especially weird.
Rather it all boiled down to the pocket of the universe that Blumenzal called home. Colloquially known as the Dark Mantle, it is a region of space where dark matter — normally diffused and unseen throughout the cosmos — has pooled together to form a concentrated mass. The consequences of this unprecedented concentration are still being studied, but a long-known peculiarity is that the laws of physics themselves fluctuate as erratically as the heartbeat of a dying star. Gravity, that most constant of cosmic forces, ebbs and flows like a lunar tide. On one day, a native of Blumenzal might experience the gravitational acceleration of 7 m/s², only to find it inexplicably reduced to 4.3 m/s² the next year — as though the universe itself had grown weary of maintaining order. And it wasn’t just gravity — electromagnetic forces, the weak nuclear force, and even the speed of light flicker and fluctuate like the fading pulses of a neutron star.
The Abulafians
What shocked scientists from other planets was the fact that life had found a way to emerge and evolve — even in this constantly changing world. And the case of the Abulafias, the species to whom Hema belonged, was often taught in biology classes across the cosmos.
Against all odds, the Abulafians had managed to conquer Blumenzal and become a prevalent species — found on each land mass. It was widely understood in biology departments across the galaxy that their reproductive strategy was at the heart of their success. In essence, the way old Abulafians created new Abulafians was very unique — a product of the ever-changing conditions.
The first thing that stuck out to observers was that the Abulafian embryos grew in specific environments called embryo forests. These forests were usually in specific hotspots where conditions were slightly less volatile. But a much more interesting feature of Abulafian reproduction was around the concept of ‘parents’.
Throughout the known universe, new life usually has either one parent (the offspring being a clone) or two parents (with each providing half of the genetic material). On Blumenzal, this was not the case.
A wildly changing world required physical evolution to constantly adapt & change, and while it may sound like an impossible task, life had found a way. The Abulafians embryos were especially adaptive because they contained the genetic material of not one or two, but rather dozens (and sometimes even hundreds) of ‘parents’. The mechanism that determined the exact number of parents a particular embryo would accept was still shrouded in mystery for the Abulafians, but they knew it was the secret of their survival.
Over time, this half-baked knowledge had led to some interesting social norms. Perhaps the biggest and most relevant to our story is that Abulafian society accorded high social status to those individuals whose genetic material would be accepted by most embryos.
In a way, like many social norms, it all made sense when looked from a zoomed-out species level perspective.
Birth of a Titan
Hema was born into Abulafian society and raised with the other Abulafians of her age. When they turned a certain age, Hema and her peers were expected to go into the Embryo forest to participate in the sacred ritual of genetic donations. Hema was lucky because her genes had a very high acceptance rate. Anything above 70% was considered exceptional and Hema’s acceptance rate was about 80%.
Predictably, this meant that life was good for Hema, at least by Abulafian standards. Placed in the upper echelons of Abulafia, she enjoyed the privilege of benefits that were unavailable to her less fortunate peers.
But one evening on her yearly pilgrimage to the embryo forests (to do her duty), something very strange happened. Hema looked up in the night sky and saw something new — a huge floating disc-like object that was blinking and glowing. As it was dawning upon Hema that the object she held in her view didn’t belong to Blumenzal, she became aware of another alarming feeling — it felt that she was being stared at from within this floating disc.
Hema couldn’t tell how she knew, but she was certain that there were creatures inside the large disc and that they were viewing her with a mixture of curiosity and pity. Intuitively, the curiosity wasn’t surprising but she could not understand how anyone on Blumenzal would view her with pity — she was an 80% donor after all, with all the privileges that went along with that tag.
Not knowing what else to do, she did something most readers would be familiar with — she chose to ignore the situation and pretend nothing was happening. Unfortunately, the beings inside the disc object had other plans. Right when she turned around and was about to continue her walk, a beam shot out from the object and hit her directly on her head. Hema was out cold before she realized what was happening.
She woke up a short while later, but the disc had disappeared by then. More importantly, Hema felt something had changed — she couldn’t describe it very well, but everything felt …well different. Not knowing what else to do, she continued on her walk and it was during this walk that she could get a glimpse of what her intuition had been trying to say.
Recurring bad luck, mostly due to periods of flux when natural laws shifted slightly, was such a common phenomenon that it had become invisible. All inhabitants of Blumenzal had unwittingly dealt with bad luck in almost everything they did — but none of them were even aware of it, as they had known nothing else. It only appeared to be bad luck to outside observers. On the flip side, good luck was somehow rarer — rapid change rarely helped the best-laid plans. On Earth they had a saying that fit Blumenzal to a tee — everything that could go wrong, would go wrong.
But on that walk, something amazing happened to Hema: nothing bad happened to her at all. For the first time in her life, Hema enjoyed the walk and faced absolutely no issues getting to the forest (and also back). In fact, everything went exactly as she had planned — something unheard of in Blumenzal. Instead, the Abulafians were used to planning for multiple scenarios — one had to have a plan A, B, C, D, E…etc.
Hema’s dilemma
Hema couldn’t shake the intuition that the disc shaped object she had seen earlier had something to do with it and it unsettled her. The bout of good luck along with the strange occurrence led Hema to decide to keep the whole adventure to herself for the time being. She’d just observe things for the next couple of weeks.
Fortunately for her, the good luck continued apace. And even more fortunately, she was able to better figure out what was happening to her. After her encounter with the disc-shaped object she seemed to have developed the power to stabilize the natural laws around her. The tyranny of dark matter that had plagued Blumenzal had been conquered. In practical terms, this meant that any plan involving Hema worked well for her and her team.
Something as Blumenzal-shattering as this news couldn’t be kept hidden for long, and it wasn’t too long before her peers too noticed the abundance of good luck surrounding Hema. Things escalated and a meeting was soon called. The elders of the village had a lengthy discussion on what Hema’s powers could do for the village — the implications were tremendous of course and had to be considered. While this deliberation went on, the villagers had a bright idea — why not send Hema to the embryo farms again. After all, imagine if she could pass this ability to the next generation, and why shouldn’t she be able to — she was a top-tier Abulafian after all, an 80%er!
Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to the Abulafians, this was the one strategy that wouldn’t turn out according to plans. The old Hema had been a reproductive superstar, but the new Hema had become infertile!
What happened next was nothing short of a tragedy. Even though she still had the power to tame natural laws on her side, Hema’s fall from grace was spectacular. The Abulafians were so obsessed with reproductive ability that they had forgotten what purpose it served — to better survive. Instead, they had elevated the reproductive ability as the most important end goal in itself — the biggest determinant of an Abulafian’s worth.
One would have expected that Hema, who enjoyed her prior life as a high-status individual, and who had suddenly attained the power of gods would have been deified. It was, in fact, the opposite that happened. Her loss of fertility was viewed as a punishment from God to show how natural laws ought not be tampered with. Instead of using Hema’s miraculous powers to help themselves, the Abulafian society shunned her and threw her out of the village.
Read the companion piece that investigates confusing means and ends in greater depth.
