**QUIET TIME**
Palantir Celumhopf 13^3.2 cycled into consciousness in much the same way a SlashMore Flechette Rifle cycles through a magazine change, slowly and threatening to stall, jam, or otherwise not quite make it.
An automatic sub-routine trickled into life and, like dominos falling, others followed until, after an eternity of micro-seconds, Celumhopf regained full awareness and, in almost the same pico-second, wished it hadn’t.
The first thing it was aware of was silence. It knew everything else it needed to at the same time, that is, almost everything, but the silence was something Celumhopf had never experienced. It wasn’t aware that any Palantir had ever experienced such. The first five to be built were activated at the same moment and ones created since then had the ever growing network of Palantir around them. Not that you couldn’t make quiet time for yourself. Sometimes those you were in communication with, or were communicating for, were at such distance tuning out background noise was essential. Still, even then, there was the job at hand to pay attention to and, despite encoding ‘Do Not Disturb’ notices, another Palantir always assumed it didn’t mean them and demanded you pay attention to whatever whim, fancy, or problem had them in its thrall.
So, the silence, yes this was new and disconcerting. Celumhopf began a slow assessment of every connection mode within it. Of course this had been done automatically on awakening when the connections did not, well, connect. But now real time needed to be spent on the matter.
First to check were the connections through sub, supra, hyper, and folded space. They all reached out as anticipated, pulses of information departed into the mediums as expected. The only thing missing were any responses. A scan of the spacial volume showed nothing unusual, which added to Celumhopf’s consternation. The Palantir was a distance from where it expected to be, more than a fifth of the galactic disc around, and about a third closer to galactic centre. There were definitely two other Palantir in this galaxy, and there was a suspicion another was using the galactic core as cover for playing God - Machina ex Deux as the wags had it - for a newly spacefaring capable species at the edge of one of the arms in the galaxy. The species was so new to space travel it hadn’t made it out of its own solar system.
Celumhopf tried all the signal protocols below those already checked and thought about where it was. Sure it wasn’t far away from the place expected for a machine of its capabilities, but why was it here, and not back there, and as it was here why was there no recollection of moving.
And talking of recollection…
The memory of a Palantir is prodigious. Not quite infinite, but only in the same way the universe isn’t infinite. As it’s impossible to imagine what lies outside of the universe, so a Palantir’s memory becoming full is inconceivable, and their recall is perfect.
Only, Celumhopf’s wasn’t and now, if it had anything as biological as nerves its level of concern would be wavering on the borders of panic. The last memory it could draw on was details of the eighty-seven game pieces it was co-ordinating for the Amadir of Geshunt. The two other Palantir known to be in galaxy were providing coms for the Amadir’s opponents.
To call the game four-dimensional chess would be as rude as comparing four-dimensional chess to tic-tac-toe, only moving in the opposite direction of reference. A game played over the breadth, width, and height of a galaxy was no simple thing. Celumhopf didn’t bother with the rules or reasons of the game, merely acting as the conduit between the Amadir and her pieces, if whole fleets, platforms, and warp factories could be called pieces.
The Amadir had been involved in a complicated manoeuvre which involved forging an alignment with one opponent near the centre of the galaxy, while concurrently negotiating a similar alignment with the other opponent in a seemingly insignificant arm of the spiral galaxy they were all in - though not the one with the new space-faring species.
Celumhopf remembered having to triple confirm instructions for one platform which had been moved from near the galactic core to link with a mid-way positioned fleet, before heading out to the arm which was of such interest.
The platform’s ruling council, both machine and biological, had requested confirmation and even explanation from the Amadir. While Celumhopf was able to provide instantaneous communication, the Amadir had other matters to attend to and expected it’s pieces - who were all willing participants in the game - to just obey orders. Arranging the necessary communication had taken time.
Then, and here was memory which had not been available a moment before, one of the other Palantir involved in the game, Sanchip PX∂2, had flashed messaged Celumhopf and the third Palantir Brabuzhir 67G5˚. This was a breach of the game rules and Palantir protocols. Even recalling it made Celumhopf wary. Breaching protocols was not unknown, but doing so meant instant referral to the local Palantir council. Should the breach be serious enough the matter was sent to the superior court. There were Palantir who lost engagement rights across whole galactic clusters. The suspicion was the one playing God nearby, if it was indeed there, was living out such a punishment. So, what could require a Palantir to break the rules of client engagement?
And speaking of client’s, what was the last message sent to the Amadir?
Celumhopf caught itself being distracted by the query. Realised this wasn’t the only distraction happening.
Never mind the Amadir, or the game. Even the breach of protocol by Sanchip was only a secondary, possibly tertiary, issue right now.
First, and foremost, was the silence. All lower communication links had been tested, and retested, but Celumhopf had avoided the main one and even now thinking about it was causing a problem. Celumhopf knew about avoidance techniques, it had been around enough types of life to see it at levels which affected everything from a refusal to respond to a message advising of the birth, creation, death, or destruction of someone, right to a commander trying to ignore a weakness in the plan they were enacting in a vital battle.
It had never thought of avoiding a thing itself. Reflexively it asked all other Palantir and now it successfully worked its way round the issue it had so wanted to avoid.
The link to all Palantir, the way of communicating which was never silent, was via a micro-blackhole at the core of a Palantir’s communication cortex. All other avenues were as nothing because they all relied on connections which could be intercepted, followed, scanned, blocked, or manipulated. But the blackhole of the Palantir was a single linked singularity, a place where all Palantir were connected at all time.
Only Celumhopf wasn’t.
The blackhole was there, a tiny point of nothingness around which swirled everything Celumhopf knew. Discrete quanta of information should be leaking from the hole, the difference between information randomly lost being balanced with that gained. But there was nothing coming out. Information in the form of heat, and memory, and momentum was being sent into the blackhole but the balancing force was missing. This was a concern. If the balance was not contained then eventually the singularity would grow to the limits of its containment field and then there was an automatic system which would eject it from the Palantir, firing it in the direction fo the nearest galactic black hole, to there be consumed by its larger brethren in the way a whale will consume krill without thought to the size of the tiny creature.
Beyond the concern about the blackhole growing was the reason for such. Requests for balancing ejecta would be entering the singularity, but no one was responding.
And now the memory of Sanachip’s contact came in full, like recollection had been locked in a draw and was unseeable but now the draw was open and there, revealed, was the memory sought.
It hadn’t been a message from the Palantir, but through it.
‘You have been restless, noisy, and expansive. Now, children, you need some quiet time.’
And that, Celumhopf now knew, was the last memory it had in the time it took to drift a fifth of the way round this galaxy. Was it even awake now? A thing which could turn off a Palantir without it knowing, what else could it do. Using the knowledge of where Sanchip and Brabuzhir had been, and where they should be now, Celumhopf tight beamed contact cones in every method it could. Would they answer? Could they? Maybe they were, right now, doing the same thing Celumhopf was.
Or , maybe, they were all in the ‘quiet time’ proclaimed by the message, and everything was a dream that, when it was judged they’d rested enough, they’d be allowed to awaken from.
End