BUGS! BUGS! BUGS!

Cuss! Hiss! Spit!

There I was, happily writing along, when it hit me . . .

I, One-eyed Black did set this down in me own hand of this account. This be me mark of me name made with me own hand in ink: X

Ink? What a dorkfish! They would not write with ink—nor would they have paper. Bad writer! *smacking forehead hard with open palm* Bad! Bad!

I’m still thinking in a land-based way. The whole story has to go below the sea and all the ways our normal items would be adapted in their way of doing things.

So—how do we fix this? For their ancient scrolls, I would imagine they used rolled up pieces of their local version of kelp. No worries there. Slime something on it to keep it from dissolving in the water. “I’m done writing this scroll, someone hand me a slug…”

But they would not have ink—oh, all right—they have ink. Squids and octopus have ink. But they would not write with it.

Poke holes in the kelp? This would work—but imagine how difficult it is to put all their nuances of color and scent down in holes on a piece of seaweed? How many different shades of red can you think of? Now create a letter mark for each one. So we now have 50,000,000 versions of the letter A (as an example). Now how many shades of orange can you think of? Create a letter mark for each of those. Move along to yellow . . . then green . . . blue . . . our alphabet is getting larger.

But they also use scent as accents to their speech for emotions and punctuation, and whatnot. How do we add those? Do we add points the way the Hebrews do in their language? Sure, why not? So we have the main mark, and then the scent accent point around it. Works.

But would they really have that many letters? No. Each color represent a word, not a letter. So we could get by with a mark in the kelp for the primary and secondary colors, then black and white, and scent points. Three primary, three secondary, plus two more for black and white . . . how many scents would we have? Skip those for now. We’ll have a total of 8 letters for the colors, and they add more or less to create the nuances of the various shades of a color. That’d be a whole lot of letters.

No wonder Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle is using her visual pad with actual colors now (and realistic scents!) instead of Ye Olde Kelp Scrolls.

No Bugs, Just Froggies

Alrighty, then! It’s been how long since I picked up with the Garum? Close to a month now, I believe. I’m going to ignore all the fixes I need to think about and just write, tonight. We’ll bug fix and straighten out rough patches some other time.

Oh, and for those of you who have not been with us since the first post, I’m in the process of idea bashing a story about an aquatic race of frog-like aliens that live on an exomoon orbiting a gas giant in a binary star system.

~~~~~~~=======~~~~~~~

Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle tapped a few dimples on her electric notepad and began to re-read the entry for the who-knows-how-many-umpteenth time.

I, One-eyed Black, do set this down in me own hand of the account where I poked me head Up.

I wasn’t looking to go Up. No, not at all. I was just going after a large swarm of shrimps. Was me turn at the hunts. But they swimmed up. So I followed. Next I knowed, I was at Up.

“Wot’s out yonder?” I thinked aloud. So I poked me head Up. Pain! Oh, the pain! Me eyes were stung by biting little bits of stuffs. No life-givin’ water in Up. No, not at all! It was like a giant bubble. But who knowed that a bubble would have that much angry in it? It angried about me face. It angried about me shoulders. It angried about me eyes. I could not keep me eyes open. So I swimmed down.

But afore I did, I spotted spots in Up. Little bright white spots, like sparks. And Up was dark off to the side. Not Blue like it always is. No, not at all! Was dark, like down a hole. But with bright sparks. Not on rock. No, not at all! In Up’s Up, where it be Blue and not Blue but dark.

I blinked. And blinked. Me eyes stopped hurting. I thoughts of going back Up to see more of these sparks—but that angry bubble made me careful of opening me eyes in Up again.

Shrimps swimmed by. I remembered me task, so I followed. Was a good hunt. Killed many many of many shrimps. The tribe was very happy with me for good hunt of shrimps.

I, One-eyed Black did set this down in me own hand of this account. This be me mark of me name made with me own hand in ink: X

Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle leaned back, looking at the image of his hand print in ink at the end of the account and pondered once more about those sparks of light One-eyed Black found in Up. What could they be? Were there more tribes of Garum in Up? Ones that found out how to live in the Angry Bubble? What was in the Angry Bubble that bit his eyes? This “stuffs” that bit in to his eyes, face, and shoulders. What would float in a bubble that could do that? They were not going Up at the same place where One-eyed Black did. No one knew where that was, but since he had been after shrimp, there was no way it would be near rocks like they were now. Would the Angry Bubble still be angry here by the rocks? Or was it only angry in the Wide Open where One-eyed Black would have gone Up?

She shook herself to clear her thoughts, placing the notepad back in the protective cover she had made for it. In a single sleep time they would find out. There was no use brooding over it for now. Soon. Soon she would follow One-eyed Black and go Up.

I Smell the Smelly Smell of Something Smelly!

Recently, Ed, one of my fans of the Blog, stated that I should come up with some way to get the froggies into space without a ship.

-.-

Now where’s the story in that? I wanted the problems associated with lifting all that water up not only up from the depths, but breaching the surface, and then higher into the atmosphere, and ultimately out of the gravity well, and into space itself. No space warps, wormholes, or hyperspace for these little froggies!

He did, however, bring up a good point. Since they are aquatic and breath the water they live in, they also would defecate (and urinate) in their breathing supply. Yum-o!

“What’s that smell/taste?” Everyone turned and glared at Ecru-Dandelion. He gave a half-smile.
“Dude. Seriously?”
“Soz.”
“That’s fifteen times in the past half hour. Once more and you’re on permanent EVA duty!”

So no bean burritos here! But that does bring up the problem of producing an air scrubber (water scrubber actually—but you get the idea.). Would they have carbon? Probably not. No fire—no burn substance to filter the water through. Sand? Sort of like the under gravel filters we’ve had in prior aquariums? Yes, I have an aquarium—my wife’s 20 gallon long. Yes, I look over my shoulder at it from time to time as I write this. No, I don’t have any African Dwarf Frogs (aquarium frogs). Just fish. Yes, it is fresh water and the Garums live in salt water, so there will be differences. Salt water . . . what takes nastiness out of salt water? Suspension feeders! But we couldn’t have a bunch of krill floating around, getting in the way. So we’d need a sessile suspension feeder. Barnacles! (Our ship just got crustier…) They would filter out “floaters” that would foul the water. The Garums, of course, would selectively breed a more effective barnacle that weighs less than the original product—and does not breed/spread in such a prolific manner as to take over the whole inside of the ship. They would also probably come up with some substance that if spread in a thin layer where the Garum don’t want the barnacles to grow would inhibit them from attaching in those unwanted places, just to be on the safe side.

But what about urine? That causes lots of problems with ammonia and other toxins in the water. So we’d need a biological filter. You have to be able to cycle the ammonia (NH³ or NH³+4) into nitrites (NO²) and then into nitrates (NO³). We’d need some type of beneficial bacteria to help in this process, but they’d need some place to grow. So we’d need a rocky surface that is porous where they (the bacteria) would be able to live, yet be out of the way. Again, we’re adding more mass to the ship.

And we haven’t even come up with an engine concept yet . . . we’re still just filling out life support. We also have to provide sustenance. Do they have refrigeration? They certainly can’t have dried stores. Or do they carry it live? If so, there’s more mass—plus the mass for the food for their food. And the mass for the food for the food for that food. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where it is a plant that just needs photosynthesis for food. But in the dark of space, where do you get the sunlight for that? Will their synthetic light from their bioluminescence be adequate for their purpose? Will they be capable of creating a power source capable of lifting this massive ship into the stars? Will they invent an aquatic Beano before Ecru-Dandelion gets lynched?

Mental Floss

OK, tonight we're just going to have some random thoughts on the story--stuff that came to mind after I hit "Publish," and other things.

First of all, when the two females were discussing the males, and one said that she feared the two were ready to mate, and the other agreed, I thought afterwards that the first could have added the snarky comment, "More's the pity we couldn't get them to mate with each other." And then the other would have scented her own giggle to the conversation.

The name of the planet (in their tongue) is Water. It is "said" by their skin cycling through every shade of the color blue. Think about it--how quickly can you say blue? That is how quickly their skin cycles through all the shades and variations of blue.

We have an exomoon orbiting a gas giant exoplanet orbiting a binary star. The gas giant orbits the primary star. The exomoon is tidally locked to the gas giant. Between the light reflecting from the gas giant, and the light coming from the two stars (although, the secondary star is much dimmer than the light coming from the primary) the face of the exomoon towards the exoplanet is always illuminated. The rare exception is during solar eclipses. With the exoplanet being so large in the sky, how much of a corona will be visible around it? The flip side of this (no pun intended) is that the side away from the exoplanet is dark for large periods of time. This causes quite a bit of wind as the atmosphere on the lighted (warm) side swaps out with that of the dark (cold) side.

Also, with such a large planet being the parent, in addition to two stars, what kind of tidal forces will be in effect on this exomoon? It is almost 80% water covered. So tides most likely will be far greater than on Terra.

The exomoon is close to Terra in size. It has an atmosphere, but the sentient race never came out of the water because of the horrific winds that whip around the planet due to the differences in temperatures from light to dark side--not totally dark, but dark enough long enough for ice caps to form in the months that the surface faces away from light sources.

When the ice caps break up as a star begins to light that side, occasionally bergs break off and float over inhabited areas of the planetary side. Perhaps some type of mythology forms with the people around these bergs. There will also be the possible danger of living areas being scraped up by the underside of a particularly large berg drifting into shallow areas.

Would the Garum feel the need to create any type of buildings? Perhaps. They would need to protect possessions from currents and tides. But would they need homes? Or just warehouse type buildings? Office buildings? A big pineapple-shaped house? Hardly...

On Making Them Wiggle

So it is time to actually start writing, not just think about it. Mind you, this is the very beginning of writing--just off the cuff and out of my head. (Out of my mind--back in a few!) This is not a final draft--this is not even a rough draft. This is just where the writing starts. You sit down to a blank page and an inviting keyboard and let your mind flow.

There will be bumps. There will be interruptions. There will be bathroom breaks. There will be noobs to kill in Mafia Wars. There will be--OOH! Shiny! Er, ahem. There will be things to take your mind off of the task at hand--the task being taking the concept of the Garums and bringing them to life.

"It's alive!"

Without any further preamble, I give you, the Garum.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle sighed, looking around the base-camp. She hoped this was all worth it. She’d been through all the old tales from the medicine women and dream weavers of old—everything she could find about Up. No one in recent memory had breached Up. Yet here they were in the shallows, mere strokes away from breaching it.

It was told in tales from yore that it had been done—done and ne’er again. Tales of a gas hurled at the faces of the original breachers with such a force as to rip the skin from their faces.

Her reverie was broken as two males grabbed each other by the front feet. They began swirling about in the water, gnashing their teeth in each other’s face.

“I eat you!” they cried at one another as the test of dominance from eons ago continued in this modern mock dance of wills.

“Why don’t you two chowderheads go forage us up some food,” said Jonquil-Ochre-Alizarin-Navy, emitting a scent of disgust. The two males broke apart, blinking as they caught the scent. Their scent of chagrin floated before them.

“We are but ‘Wogs,” they mumbled in apology as they swam past her. Within a few strokes, though, they were back at it, smacking each other in the side as they continued swimming towards the kelp bed where the best hunting lay.

“I fear those two are ready to mate,” said Jonquil-Ochre-Alizarin-Navy as she swam over to Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle.

“Aye, I smell you are right,” she agreed. She tilted her body to look once more at Up. “Are we right in trying this?” she asked. “Or are we tempting the gods as the Elders say?”

“Surely you don’t believe in that old Wog’s scent,” said Jonquil-Ochre-Alizarin-Navy. “There is no such thing as the gods. You can’t tell the future though the intestines of fish, either. The future is what it is, and we cannot foresee it until it happens.” She put one hand on the shoulder of Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle. “Don’t doubt yourself. You have researched this through and through. There are no more tales to smell, no more dreams to seek. You have dreamed and smelled them all. They all lead to you going Up.”

“But what if they are wrong? What if it is all a dream, and poking my nose out Up can kill me? What then?”

“Then you are dead and the crabs have a feast on your carcass—and I shall put your Magnetic Note Tablet to better use in your absence.” She pushed Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle playfully away, scenting humor.

“Oh, funny. Very funny,” said Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle, scenting humor/sarcasm. She retilted to look Up. “I wonder what causes that flickering of the light in Up,” she pondered. “The records of the tales are so . . . unscented . . . you know?”

Jonquil-Ochre-Alizarin-Navy scented agreement. “I know. And then there is that one that says were are to avoid Up, ‘For the day you forsake this is the day you shall surely die,’” she quoted. “We shall find out soon enough if it is right, or if it is a stench.”

“That we shall,” said Khaki-Indigo-Myrtle. “After one sleep we shall see.” They swam back to the middle of the base camp to assist the others in setting up the electronics and supplies, while waiting for the two aggressive males to return with their hunting results.

Garum Bug Fix, or "How I Made Electrical Frogs"

Meh.

Enough with the Megalomaniac-In-Chief. Let’s get back to the froggies.

Last we left our Garum, we were trying to decide how they made electricity in an underwater environment. Perhaps we can have some type of an electric producing algae and have them improve its output through selective breeding?

There are already algae that produce bioluminescence. Bioelectrogenesis from a plant is possible in an alien ecology. The Terran electric eels is capable of 500 volts at 1 amp. Our algae should be more than capable of topping that in the voltage and amperage needed to run the Garum’s industry. So we put it in a box-like container made out of the non-conductive mucus plates from that mollusk we brought up last month. And the wiring we solved with the seaweed that conducted the electricity from the alien equivalent of an electric eel (which on Earth is not an eel, but a member of the knifefish family).

We take the super electrical slime and stuff it in a mucus box and hook seaweed up to it. Do we let it last for a long time? Or does it have a short life like a battery? Perhaps we have to swap them out from time to time? But the tired ones can be “recharged” with a fructose solution? An algae’s gotta eat, natch! Or better yet, old technology had to be swapped out, box after box. But new tech has a fructose IV that drips (feeds?) the box of algae. Yeah, baby! Slime Power!

On to the problem of our handicapped froggies. So they looked at the star’s corona during an eclipse and went blind. For us, that would not be totally crippling in communication. We could still talk and hear. But the Garum communicate with sight and scent. They use their skin to flash various colors and augment it with scents released into the water. So how would we work around this handicap?

Perhaps we can have a mutualism pairing with some type of remora? You know—those weird, upside down seeming fish that you usually see swimming under sharks? But these remora have a side benefit for the Garums. First, the remora get the benefit of the safety of swimming with the Garum, plus they eat bacteria off of the Garum’s skin. In return, they vibrate a certain way when a nearby Garum turns a certain shade of color. So through selective breeding and extensive training (for both the remora and for the Garum) they turn into effective “hearing” aids.

Oh, bother. I just thought of another problem. During the expedition to the surface (or in this case, the “Shallows” and they stood up enough to look into the sky—actual words and concepts for these items to be selected later) we had decided that they look directly at the star during the eclipse and were struck blind by the corona’s intense light.

So we have an expedition of now blind froggies.

How’d they get back?

Oh, bother!

Bug Fixes

So we have a few problems with the story concept up to now. First and foremost, we have a problem with our day/night cycle. A while back, I’d decided that the exomoon was tidally locked to its mother planet. Therefore, with the exception of the occasional eclipse, it will always be daytime, or at the very darkest twilight (lit only by the light reflected by the mother planet), on the planet-side surface where our Garums live. So in that case, we will not have to worry about ice forming on the surface. Either starlight, or reflective light will be caressing the exomoon’s surface keeping the seas warm.

So our Garums exploring the lights above the water in the sky would have to be during a solar eclipse. That does bring up the point that most likely they (they being the original explorers who first braved the waters’ surface) would have not only looked at the stars, but would also have looked directly at the corona of the star during the eclipse. I’m not going to claim any über 1337ness for the Garums’ eyes, so they would go blind in the process. That brings us to a set of blind Garums (we’ll set it at thirteen total) claiming to have seen multiple dots of light in the sky, and then being struck blind and trying to make this claim from memory. A mythology would grow around the claim, as well as a general debunking of any lights other than the planet proper, and the star. I’ll tackle those concepts later.

Now, I have a big problem to take care of. An aquatic race beneath the seas will obviously not have access to fire. I thought at first it would just affect their propulsion system, but I was wrong. But on to the lack of fire...

Oh, sure—they might have the occasional lava flow under the sea, and a few mineral chimneys spewing forth. But they would not have fire. Ergo they would not have the ability to smelt ore. So we’re not going to have iron, steel, not even bronze. So how are we going to build our space ship? Will our illustrious froggies be stuck in the stone age, with the arts and philosophies their only advances to look forward to?

What if we had a mollusk that secreted a mucus that would harden to a steel-like substance that could be used to make plates? In addition to that, we have a mussel-like mollusk that creates a byssus that is also as hard as steel, that is woven in to the mucus so we come up with almost a Kevlar-ish plate. The mucus secreting mollusk has been selectively bred so it will deliver this mucus on demand, and is used in an industrial setting and the plates are welded together with the mucus. Mmm! Sea snot! Just what I want to travel to the stars in! Meh. But it is what they had to work with.

On to the next bug. Electricity. Oh, sure—they probably had an electric eel type of critter swimmin’ around down there with them. But with a lack of fire, we did not have copper to extrude for wiring. But then back in the day, one of the Garum noticed the electric eel rubbing up against this particular seaweed and zapping a fish that was way up at the top of the weed. They found out on further investigation that the weed conducted electricity. But how to keep the current from bleeding off into the surrounding salt water? Our mucus secreting mollusk comes to the rescue again. His snot does not conduct electricity, and will coat the weed-wire quite effectively. But we cannot build an electric motor, can we? Do we just lift with a farm of electric eels in the back of the ship, and when we need more juice, poke ‘em with a stick?

“Cap’n! She canna take an’a more o’dis! She done ate muh stick!”

Ahem. Sorry.

So we still have the electrical motor bug to fix. Will have to ponder more on this.

Now, a friend (who we’ll call Deuce) had a couple thoughts on my last entry. He was curious as to the Garums’ scientific advancements—particularly in the area of chemistry. Save the Cartel humor. Not that kind of chemistry. He wondered if perhaps they had learned that by mixing certain compounds under water would produce violent chemical reactions that would produce buoyant gas bubbles to assist in bringing a ship to the surface of the sea. I had thought of that as a way for the first stage of their space flight—perhaps even for their version of the Bell X-1 to break the surface as the first step in their exploration. Deuce went on to ponder the possibilities of this gas being used to break the ice cap and launch the ship through. Since we don’t have ice to worry about any more, that might be something that the Garums would use if they ever began to explore the dark side of the exomoon in earnest. He did suggest that the nosecone would have to be set up like an ice breaker. That would get us some heavy use of the byssus encased mucus on the nose cone. But I think it could be done.

So now I just have to think about how to fix my electrical motor problem…

Ice, the Final Frontier...

The science of our exomoon and its race's launching in to space aside for the moment, let's delve into some of the dialog of the Garums and start to flesh them out a bit. The following, of course, is just a rough translation. We obviously cannot translate all the nuances of their skin color changes and the scents that are wafting through the waters. This is just the dialog--we'll create/name/describe the characters to have the dialog some other time.

"We need to get up there somehow and explore! Our [Not totally translatable -- roughly, it is "Tribal Exploration of Things Above the Surface Agency"] needs to get us out there and find out what those lights are! It has been too long since we last broke the Surface."

"Have you not noticed? The Tribes no longer care about the Surface. We have other problems. There are too many mouths to feed, and not enough food. Homelessness is rising."

"That is my point! Perhaps there is food in those lights. But we'll never find out if we do not explore. Plus working for the [Rough translation -- "Agency"] will give resources to the homeless to be able to afford a home. "

"But the [Rough translation -- "Money"] to do this would be better utilized feeding the masses--and creating homes for the homeless, now, not later. The [literal translation is "Fry" -- most likely means children/young] need energy to grow."

"There is energy out there--those pinpoints of light. Light is an energy. When we first broke the surface, the whole Tribe stood holding its [Not totally translatable -- roughly it means, "Breath" but not quite breath since their gills gather oxygen from the water]. It was a triumph for the Tribe! What can we not continue that feeling?"

"The Tribe has lost interest. No one wants to spill resources into boredom."

"But success beyond the surface would generate interest and cancel boredom."

"Doubtful. No one cares about beyond the surface. They care about energy for the Fry."

"We can discover new energy sources through our experiments beyond the surface."

"That's just it -- it's all 'experiments.' We don't need or want any more experiments. We want solutions. No one cares about experiments."

"But the experiments provide results. We need to use our resources to gain more resources. Those resources are beyond the surface!"

"The answer is no. Tribal opinion is negative towards your goals."

Somewhere in here the "Lights Are A Myth" Garum would start trouble for further exploration, too.

Imagine someone who truly wants to go into space (Beyond the Surface) and gets slammed into the wall of public apathy--contempt for anyone who even thinks that the resources are worth spending on exploration. Perhaps even disgust. The resources are being wasted on those experiments and exploration.

So our Garums space explorers find that public (or Tribal) opinion is against them. Would they then turn to private enterprise? Using entrepreneurs to gain the "Surface" and beyond? Would the lure of resources for private ownership drag them up out of the seas and beyond to the stars?

Back to the science of discovering the stars . . . a friend of mine (who we shall refer to as "Thanatos" for reason obvious only to Lairites) made a comment on Facebook (after this inane blog reposted the previous entry there as a note) that as the ice expanded it might lift off the surface of the water. Thanatos conjectured that brave explorers might have then broken the surface tension and travelled on top of the water, discovering that the ice barrier extends both above and below the water's surface, yet having different properties on either side. He continued that the ice is most readily broken where the ice itself is brightest beneath. Thanatos also pointed out that breaking the ice barrier for the first time would have been equivalent to us finally breaking the speed of sound with the Bell X-1.

He also suggested that as a twist, the atmosphere might become lost or tainted when the ice was broken.

At that point I wrote asking what ramifications such a loss might be--and would it bother this aquatic race at all? They breath water through their gills, after all. And as for a loss of atmosphere, would it bring the surface down to near vacuum, thus rendering the surface unfit for exploration?

On that point, since they would be going into what to them would be vacuum anyway once they left the water, wouldn't they have some sort of suit and breathing apparatus to leave the water? Therefore, a lack of atmosphere at this point would have no real ramifications to them other than actually assisting in their exploration in a lack of the horrific winds that normally are found on the surface.

Garums?

We left our froggy friends under their ocean arguing about space travel--an then it hit me. If their ocean surface is frozen over at night, how was it possible for them to ever see the stars to get the inkling that they wanted to travel to them? Is our whole train of thought on lifting their massive breathable water supply moot? Have they never seen a star, and therefor never gotten the urge to explore them?

Since we have the sun, and the gas giant parent planet both illuminating our exomoon, night time comes rarely. When it does, we'd decided that the night is long enough for the seas to freeze over. But would it happen quickly enough for our froggies to not be able to spot stars?

What about a night being preceded by a total eclipse of the sun? The sun is still close enough to keep the seas unfrozen, but it was dark enough, long enough for froggy to poke his head up close enough to the surface to spot pinpoints of light in the sky. Would they have also looked at the eclipse and thusly gone blind? Most likely. So then they had to go on their memory about the lights, and explaining to their froggy friends about them--would the lights have become a myth?

Let's skip the math involved with the cycle of rotation around the parent planet, and around the star. We're not going to get in to the day/night cycle that much. We're more interested in how the froggies dealt with this story of lights in the sky other than the star, the mother planet, its other moon, and . . . what? What else would be seen in the sky through the water? Not much. We'd already decided that nothing else lived in the exomoon's surface due to the high winds. So perhaps water funnels and hurricanes?

Meh. They went up to harvest a certain krill like animal that lived close to the surface right when the eclipse happened. The group spotted the stars, and then wonder of wonders, the eclipse--alas, in looking at it, they all went blind. But since there was a fairly large group all agreeing on the stars being spotted before blindness set in, it could not be dismissed outright.

But some stated that the blindness was retribution of the gods for their audacity of seeing the lights in the sky. Perhaps the myth was that the lights were the gods, who struck the harvesters blind for looking upon them?