In the Orion Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, on the planet of Normalon in the arrangement of emerald suns and planets known as the Green System, within one of the gleaming spires of the proudest city of that ancient and revered race of scientists, Dorothy Vanemen Seaton drew a weathered bow across the strings of her pristinely and delicately kept Stradivarius Violin coaxing forth proud, resonant notes of unmitigated depth and emotional intensity! Slowly, and deliberately, her deft and strong fingers flew across the next, her bow moving in smooth flowing notions, so that the pitch and timbre and tone of each string was expressed to it's fullest and most rich extremes!
Finally, she let the last note softly fade away and lifted her bow from the strings with a sigh of pure, utmost satisfaction!
"Oh Well done, Mrs. Seaton! Well done!" A matronly looking Normalonian lady dressed with loose, billowing robes said, clapping her hands together in admiration, a box hovering in the air next to her, suspended on a precisely balanced rod of pure force!
"The melody was–well, how to say– quite subtle, simple and yet filled with such emotional depth!"
Dorothy eyed the Noramlonian with a sideways glance, then chuffed a single, wry chuckle. "Telamon...I was tuning."
Telamon's smiled faded. "Oh. I...feel rather foolish now, and believe you me, that's not something I feel quite often! It's a rather counterproductive emotion, I must say..." She cocked her head to the side.
"Your 'Violin': you must tune it every time before playing: yes, I see how the taut strings slowly loose elasticity, the means of correction is quite simple and elegant...still, wouldn't it be more efficient, to use strings made from strong materials? I could create an alloy as supple and resonant to your fingers as pure titanium alloy: never weakening, never slackening. Or perhaps a simple computer mechanism and automatically turns the pegs, keeping it constantly in tune: or the composition of the wood...some fiberglass materials..."
"Telamon..." Dorothy said, holding up her hand, bow clasped between her thumb and palm, smiling gently. "That's quite alright! I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. This violin's a piece of art, and I...I think tuning it manually is truly a better way of doing things!"
"I think I understand!" Telamon replied. "It's some quaint Earth tradition: artisan manufacturing, the old ways and and that...oh dear, that sounded rather patronizing: Oh, dear me!"
Dorothy laughed. "I think I can forgive you, 'Teleey'! It's not tradition...or at least, not tradition for the sake of tradition. It's..."
She paused. "I've played violin ever since I was eight years or age. Every day, I've been tuning it, using tuning forks at first, and then later fixing the tones right in my head and in my blood. Because of that...I know this instrument: I know the music I can make on it, how far I can push it...think Muscle memory, intuition, that sort of thing."
Telamon frowned, and nodded. "I think I understand: of course, there's a subjectivity to your viewpoint..."
Dorothy cut Telamon off as gently as she could. "Is itin the box?" She asked, nodding to the suspended box floating next to the First of Chemistry.
"Oh! Yes it is!" Telamon blinked, then picked up the box from it's cradle of energies and offered it to Dorothy. "A simple matter of molecular replication: the base components were rather elemental..."
"I understand." Dorothy hastily said. She set her Stradivarius in it's case gingerly, then took the box from Telamon and opened it.
"...Looks good. Perfect, in fact." Dorothy closed the box and set it to the side.
Then she hugged the First of Chemistry.
"Thank you." She whispered. "This'll...help."
Telamon's green skin darkened at the cheeks, and as she returned the embrace.
"Uh...well, it was no trouble at all." Telamon gently extricated herself, and toyed with a lock of his dark emerald hair, staring off into the distance.
"Has he really not left the observatory after all this time?"
"No," Dorothy said with a sigh. "He leaves to eat meals at the dormitories: he goes to one seminar at day, mostly cosmology related. He does some lab work during the Time of Work, and participates in one athletic activity during the Time of Relaxation. And then he goes back to the observatory, until the next day."
"Oh!" Telamon said, brightening a little. "Well, that's good, isn't it?"
"No." Dorothy said, picking up both cases and shaking her head softly. "No, it isn't"
%%%
Dorothy leapt up the inertia chute, wind rustling through her hair as beams of force levitated her up through the many floors of the observatory tower. She lightly stepped off at the top floor and approached the double doors to the Deep Space Probing room.
How do I want to do this? Dorothy thought, as she stopped outside the door. How do I make my entrance in such a way as to rouse my depressed, discouraged other half?
Dorothy Seaton pursed her lips in thought.
Well, She thought. What would Richard do in this situation?
%%%
Richard Seaton, dolorously staring into the visiplate of the Normalonian Grand Deep-Space 5th Order Prober at a distant Nebula, was abrubtly jostled from his melancholy ruminations, when the door to the Observatory room was abruptly blown off his hinges by a Ray Gun Blast of Luminous, Ravening Destruction!
And through the smoke and fire, as Richard whipped out his Colt Automatic in anticipation of combat, strode his wife, Dorothy Vaneman Seaton, carrying her violin case in one hand, and brandishing a Infra-Ray blaster in the other, hair tousled and wildly strewn from the concussion of the energy beam!
Behind her, suspended on a delicate needle of force, floating wherever she roamed, was the mysterious box containing the object she had commissioned under mysterious circumstances!
With careless regard, Dorothy Seaton tossed the instrument of destruction to the side with a flick of her hand.
"Hello dear," She said dotingly with a smile. "How was your day at work?"
Richard lowered his guns back into their well-worn holsters, though he could banish his queer eyed expression quite so easily.
"Dorothy...what in blazes! I thought you were a vengeful Fenachrome or Skrull or Sontarran looking for payback...and the door! What about knocingk! It is in fact possible to knock on doors, as opposed to...you scared the living daylights out of me!"
Dorothy leaned her head to the side, and nodded. "There we are then: a passionate response, at last!"
Richard ran a hand through his air impulsively. "What...Dorothy, I'm fine. I've...dealt with it. I'm not being reclusive anymore."
Dorothy sighed. "No, now you're acting like an automated piece of machinery: for heaven's sake you're obeying schedules, of all things!"
She shrugged.
"I figured you needed something to knock you out of your planetary orbit of morose rumination, dear. I'm sorry if I startled you unduly."
Suddenly, she snapped her fingers and began walking forward.
"But you still need a bit of help, ****: and I think I know something that'll help."
With a well manicured and strong hand, Dorothy reached out and grasped Richard by the wrist.
"Dottie." Richard protested as his wife dragged him to the descending chute. "I'll feel better in time: please don't trouble yourself on my account...you've borne too much already..."
"That's all noble and self-sacrificing, Richard." Dorothy said, rolling her eyes and still dragging her husband along with her into the inertial chute, the mysterious box still floating along with her. "But this isn't about feeling better. Not really anyway.
They stepped off into a conservatory area, a greenhouse style affair with fat-leaved, purple stemed Normalon vegetation, a small running indoor fountain whose water looped back and forth in fractal patterns, and a series of stone brick pathways leading to a small, well-lit platform.
There were two armless chairs. And in front of each chair was a simple metal music stand, with two thin books placed on each.
Seaton stopped in his tracks. "Oh?"
Dorothy reached over and flipped open the gently floating box. Nestled snuggly inside it, on top of a bed of a velvet-like substance, lay a complete molecular replica of Dorothy Vaneman Seaton's one-of-a-kind Stradivarius Violin, small in every way, even down to a few nicks and scratches.
"Dorothy?" Seaton said.
"It's yours." Dorothy said quietly, setting her case on the ground, picking up the violin from it's box with two hands, and offering it gingerly to her husband.
Richard hesitated, then reached out with one hand–
Dorothy gave him a cross-eyed look.
–Richard reached out with both hands and took it with both hands, cradling the Violin to his chest as awkwardly as he had with his newborn son.
"I thought I'd teach you how to play a bit." Dorothy said. "It's challenging, ever so rewarding..."
She smiled as a thought occurred.
"And it'll be just like Sherlock Holmes: all the great geniuses had a thing for music, right?"
"Dorothy..." Richard said with a heavy sigh. "At another time, this would be interesting, but..." He shook his head. "I don't think I'm in the mood for it."
Dorothy arched a thin, curving eyebrow. "Mood?" She asked dryly. "Music isn't like romantic wooing or a friendly barroom brawl: Music's too powerful a thing to be restricted for when you're in a Good Mood, ****."
She picked up her own case and took out her own violin. She set bow to string and began played a soft, slow tune of a few notes, pitched low enough that her voice could carry.
"You know so much about the nature of the universe and science, dear, but I know music. If the universe was a fire, it'd be the smoke. It surrounds and binds us and..."
She lowered her violin for a bit, pausing. "And the funny thing about it, is, everything is fodder for it. The happiest moment of your entire life..."
Her bow flew across the strings as she coaxed for a folksy tune of bright staccato notes.
"The most exciting..."
She increased the speed of her strokes, switching the tune to a swift bluegrass style song.
"Anger..."
Her bow scraped across the string, loud brassy notes vibrating forth as she played some bars from a song of Paganini.
"Sorrow..."
She slowed down, drawing out the notes into long, melancholy sounds of lament.
"It's all relevant. You can take the events of your life, all it's height and depths, and pour it all into your music."
She lowered her violin, gazing into Seaton's eyes.
"And it doesn't make your sadness go away. But if you pour your sorrow into your music, and coax beauty out of your suffering..."
Her eyes twinkled suddenly, and she held both her bow and violin in one hand as she rested her other on Richard's shoulder. Richard lifted one of his hands from where he held his new violin, and clasped it over his wife's.
"Well, then your sadness isn't so bad anymore, is it! It has worth, it has meaning, because it's been used to create something great and wonderful. And if you can use the lowest moments of your existence to create something good and beautiful...well, then that means it's all worthwhile, doesn't it? Life is worthwhile, always and ever."
She held eye contact with her husband, then averted her gaze and chuckled.
"Or at least...that's my cunning plan. So come on then. Fingering first, then learning how to draw the bow properly."
She beckoned. "Come on."
Richard hesistated. Then he let out a breath.
"All right." He started forward. "I should warn you I'm going to be really bad at this."
"This was anticipated." Dorothy replied as she sat down in front of one of the music stands. "Now then, posture and fingering: imagine there's a ball under your right hand, a ball of air..."
The business of tuning and posturing and techniques of fingering quickly flowered, and Richard Seaton grasped them handily enough in the end. Finally, Richard lifted up the new bow and new violin, copied from the design of a long dead renowned earth craftsman, and set it to the freshly tuned strings.
The first note was very soft, almost too soft to be heard properly.
In the depths of space, a whirling fleet of cylindrical craft maneuvered into battle formation, their cold steel hulls numbering in the hundreds of thousands, some large, some small, but all alike.
Within the cold, gunmetal grey halls, metal men marched to and fro like ants in a hive, pistons clanking, faces of steel expressionless, all of them uniform and emotionless as the grey. In the fleet control room, their designated leader stood over a tactical display. One of the subordinates spoke in a buzzing electronic voice.
"
Cyber Controller, unknown vessels approaching from subspace."
The Cyber Controller turned. "
Display. Ascertain whether it is the enemy."
Far off from the Cyber Fleet, a flotilla of Cubes and Spheres appeared, uniform in shape and bereft of hull-plating.
A message was dispatched from each of the ships.
"
We Are the Borg. Resistance is Futile. Lower Your Shields and Surrender Your Ship."
A reply was dispatched.
"
Your Order is Rejected. We are the next stage in bipedal evolution. We shall convert you to the superior Cyber-Paradigm. You will be like us."
"
Incorrect. You shall be assimilated. Your paradigm shall be incorporated int our own."
"
Incorrect. We shall enforce unity and uniformity. All who do not cooperate with upgrading shall be del–."
And then from several parsecs away, a single plunger was depressed.
And each and every Cyber Warship and Borg Cube were pierced through and through ravening particle beams of unfathomable intensity.
The very ether was flooded with jamming frequencies and electronic warfare blocks, overloading the sensory arrays of the various ships as they all crashed and burned as one.
No data was recovered, no adaptation possible. No survivors were left.
The hunt had begun. And as the civilized species of the galaxies fought their skirmishes with the Cybermen and the Borg, preparing their fleets in fear of an overwhelming invasion from the two...none of them knew of the many fleets that were being obliterated in the cold of space one by one, with no sign of who had caused it.
Richard tried again. This time it was louder, a shrill, warbling scraping sound. He winced.
On one of the two inhabitable planets in a rimward starsystem whose sun blazed a bright blue, there were a race of sentient telepathic birds of Paradise that called themselves the Riim. And in the 20th Epoch of their peaceful, stable civilization, it was all falling to pieces. Thirty percent of their youth were rioting, causing chaos, and overturning the conventional social paradigms, some of them even regressing to a bizzare form of ancestor worship. Buildings and some of the oldest arboreal habitats had been destroyed with home built explosives. On the danger-filled streets and branches, there were sightings of Otherly creatures, beasts not of either world. But that wasn't the the worst of it. For among the affected, irrational youth, there was a core of them whose mind-gesalts were calling out as one, with one terrible will, sending forth a psychic beacon into the void far beyond the Oort Cloud of the system. Probes had been dispatched under Inertialess acceleration, to see if there was something out there... And in the brief moments before their destruction, they send back images of large ovoid things, sailing between the void in the multitudes, with crawling, writhing masses of monsters...all filled with hunger and hate. And in the highest Great-Nest of the prime planet, the Great Elders of the Riim gathered, their plumages wilted and their beaks dull, transmitting a horde of contradictory telepathic gesalts, of Comfort, Fear, Plans and Counterplans, of Anger, Determination and Despair. And then a large pink hairless monkey standing on two legs materialized in their midst. He wore concealing clothes that called to the minds of the Riim coverings meant for harsh weather...or protection in battle. And he held a golden sphere in his two hands, covered with blinking lights in red, blue, and green colors, flashing back and forth. And then, to the Surprise of all the Riim Elders, he–a monkey, at that–broadcast a telepathic Gesalt to each of the the bird people. [Danger.] He broadcast. [Darkness. Hunger. Devouring of Worlds. Foe-Enemy. Beckoned Hence Tyranids. Stranger Monkey. The Riim Elders replied with varying levels of caution, distrust, and fear. Bad Messenger. Unknown. Danger to the Riim? No bond, no trust. [Reason. Urging. No Harm. Kin-Comrades. Think. Breath. Feel. Love. Progenate. Learn. Bond. Kin-Comrades. Mind. Foe-Tyranids. Unopposed. Death of the Belly. Fight. Resist. Ward Off. Sacrifice. Indeterminate Victory. An Offering of Assistance. Knowledge. Weapons. Technology. Hope. No Trust Precedent. Reason Entreaty. Trust-Request Entreaty. Faith Entreaty. Choice-Friendship? For a moment, the waves of the Ether quieted as the Riim Elders confered amongst themselves, transmitting little packets of gesalts amongst themselves. Then as one, their head feathers twitched. Choice-Friendship. Thinking Monkey Kin-Comrade. Mind. Richard Seaton placed his prototype amplifier and inducer in his satchel, then rubbed his hands together with a bit of cheer. "Right then." He cheerfully said to himself. "First things first: let's upgrade your sun..."
Seaton tried a third time, drawing the bow close: the sound was a little shrill, but smooth. This time, he felt he was starting to get it.
A Projection of Seaton materialized within the secrets halls of the Knights of the Dark Tower, and he coughed politely as Taylor and Hellboy and the Wandering Puritan looked up from their deliberations on possible fractures in the temporal lock barring the Time War from the rest of Creation.
Seaton nodded. "I'm in."
He summoned a series of holographic images. "I have some concerns I want to put forth, and some proposals for a secret redoubt that I think you'll find interesting..."