Eclipse
Edward stared in front of him. What was in front of him? Eclipse.
"Please, Edward, talk to me," he heard Bella's pleading voice. He gave no answer.
"What's the problem? Are you unable to commit?" she wailed.
Edward had enough and replied, "No! I can commit any time I want. I just need more time!"
Bella fell silent for a moment before speaking again, "How much time?"
Edward was loosing his patience quickly.
"I don't know," he snapped. "Ten minutes? Maybe five if you shut up!"
Bella sat down on a chair with a huff but remained silent this time. Edward returned his gaze towards the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment) on his monitor. Minutes passed as he edited the C code in the opened files. Yes, good old pure C. While the whole project was mostly written in C++, the particular static library that Edward was working on demanded high performance so he had to forgo certain luxuries of C++ and STL (standard template library) not to mention that the low-level hacks that C enabled came handy as well (contrary to popular belief, C is not a subset of C++)
Bella looked around the basement they were in with absent eyes in the meantime. Tables, chairs, white-boards, and, of course, computers, cables, and other things. A true paradise for any IT geek.
"There!" bellowed Edward triumphantly and compiled his code. The compilation was still running but he went ahead and committed his changes to the CVS server. By the way, the said server was only a few meters away from him.
"Try it now," he added.
Bella went to a table where there were two computers. One was running Linux and the other... something else (ehm, ehm). She updated and built the project, then she ran a benchmark. A landscape. Trees and a poorly modeled village below, clouds all around, more weather effects above. Bella didn't look at any part of the flight scene, she had eyes only for the FPS indicator in a corner of the screen.
When the scene disappeared on both screens, she opened logs with statistics. After a quick study of them, she started rejoicing and dancing around. A huge smile on Edward's face indicated that the shared her sentiment. This joy didn't last long though. In the heat of her exuberance, Bella hugged Edward. He stiffened and cringed away. Bella realized what she had done and stepped away from him. Both of them turned to their computers, resumed their work and pretended that the whole incident didn't happen.
There were six of them - Bella, Edward, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett. Seven, if you counted professor Carlisle Cullen. Eight, if you counted his wife Esme. Taking that into consideration, it's better to count just the six. Six true geeks who had no life, no families, no partners, no friends, and nothing to be truly proud of but their intellects. True, one could say that all of them were friends with each other, that their project was their life, and that Carlisle and Esme were their unofficial uncle and aunt but they preferred not to think about it.
The main concern of this group of geeks was the project they were working on - they were creating a computer game. One that was both unusual (so it would draw in new customers) but also mainstream enough (so it wouldn't repel anybody).
Bella was an expert on math, theoretical computer science, formal models, and other similar things. She was currently doing PHD under Carlisle who taught various subjects regarding digital graphics and his research group worked on projects for medical purposes (e.g. software for visualization of CT data). The computer game they were creating had originally started as a theoretical paper written by Bella about a new concept for 3D engines for big open worlds with support for far visibility, detailed environment, and fast movement. Apart from that, she had one more idea which she wanted to put in the game but it didn't seem like there was going to be time for that.
Edward was Bella's opposite, from a certain point of view. Where Bella was theoretical, Edward was practical. He was their main software engineer. Unlike Bella, he had no desire for academical career and instead of doing PHD, he worked in a studio developing computer games. However, he felt that his creativity wasn't used enough in his work and he always dreamed of creating a game of his own. All in all, there wasn't anything special about him - a classic computer geek.
Emmett was their main script programmer. He wasn't working on the engine itself, he was merely using its embedded environment. Edward liked him because he had quite a good idea about what was laying underneath the abstraction layer provided for him. As a result, he didn't go running to Edward every time something strange happened. No, he made sure to analyse the problem first and determine whether it was really Edward's fault before he filled anything in their Bugzilla.
Alice and Rose were responsible for graphical 2D and 3D data. Rose was creating 3D models while Alice took care of textures and overall graphical design. They had both majored in digital art. Alice worked in a web-design studio while Rose worked in an interior design company. Luckily, Rose was smart enough to understand how different modeling for video games was. As for Alice, there was a doubt whether she was a true geek or whether she was an artist. It was sure that she had quite a taste and talent which didn't make her quite as geeky as the others would like. Still, she was quite weird and the others agreed that such a quality was certainly redeeming.
If Bella was a spiritual mother of the game's engine, Jasper was a spiritual father of the game itself. His path to the project had been rather indirect. He studied computer sciences once but he found out that his brain wasn't mathematical enough. He applied to another school during his second year and got accepted. Strangely enough, when the subjects he didn't like ceased to matter, he found all the other ones far more enjoyable. Still, he decided to major in literature and minor in history. Both subjects were his favorites but his childhood dream was to write books or screenplays. More generally, he wanted to tell stories. He started to teach at a high school after he got his master degree but that was only to make a living. In his free time, he pursued his true career - or at least attempted to. All his books and screenplays were rejected and he managed to get only a few short stories published in various fantasy and sci-fi magazines. Jasper finally realized that he needed another medium - a digital one.
The way they had assembled would make for a story of its own. Some of them knew each other before (Edward and Emmett, Alice and Rose) but most of them didn't. It was only thanks to Carlisle and Esme (who was in house design just like Rose) that their team was ever founded. Carlisle was their guru and their unofficial über-leader. Of course, there was no way he could actually contribute to the project itself because everything he knew about computers was terribly obsolete. And yet, there was something else which he was doing for them, something that no other member of the team was able to do - he provided them with his contacts and even spoke on their behalf. Sadly, they couldn't consider him as one of them - he was married after all. That effectively disqualified him as a geek.
As for the PC game they were developing, none of them could actually remember how had they come up with its concept. They were brainstorming one evening when the idea clicked into place for all of them. They all had read Tolkien and liked fantasy so it was no surprise that their idea belonged to this genre.
A dragon. Their game put a player in a role of a dragon. Sure, there were other PC games which featured dragons or even enabled players to control them. However, Bella and the others intended to create a "simulator" of a dragon with realistic flight mechanics and a full experience of being in dragon's scales, so to speak. Bella also liked the fact that having this kind of a protagonist helped to make certain issues she had with RPG games less noticeable.
Their plan was to start from a moment of hatching. They weren't sure about the plot yet but it was understood that the player needed to start alone, small, weak, vulnerable, and confused. The position of the dragon needed to be similar to that of a newborn child without a mother. Perhaps some crazy flight (with no actual flying) through a dark forest at night, where failure to avoid wolves meant an instant death.
How exactly was the egg going to get there was another question, one of many. Did the dragons in their world have two genders like humans or only one? Should their dragon have six limbs (legs, front limbs, wings) or only four (legs, wings)? The former didn't look very aerodynamic and they didn't like it for some reason. However, the latter created a danger of making a dragon look like a bat and many nerds would surely say that such a creature isn't actually a dragon. Also, they wished their dragon to have motor abilities of human hands, at least to some extent.
Another problem to contemplate was how to best tackle certain issues concerning dragons pointed out by nerds. How do they breath fire (or other stuff)? How can they keep themselves airborne when they are basically heavy dinosaurs with wings?
The fire question seemed simple at first. There were substances which were extremely flammable when mixed with air. So the basic idea was for a dragon to have some kind of a liquid in its belly. The dragon breathes the chemical out (mixes it with air from his lungs) and ignites it by a spark created by his mineral-coated teeth.
A much harder question concerned flight capability of dragons. Bella and the others were the sort of people who were unable to suspend their disbelief when the matter was obviously illogical and truth to be told, this was something which spoiled their enthusiasm for dragons. Birds, bats, pterodactyls, and other flying creatures were able to fly because their bodies had bird-like proportions. Dragons didn't posses bird-like proportions.
Rosalie proposed during one of their brainstorming sessions to simply reshape their dragon. Smaller lower body, enhanced chest muscles, smaller head and neck, gigantic wings, hollow bones, etc. Emmett asked sarcastically whether she wanted to remove the scales. It was clear that it wasn't a viable coarse of action. They didn't want to create a simulator of an overgrown sparrow, they wanted a dragon. A robust, majestic dragon capable of getting hit by several ballistae and shrugging it off. They wanted the players to look at the protagonist and feel like people felt at the end of Jurassic Park when a Tyrannosaur Rex completely dominated the projection screen after fighting two Velociraptors. Unfortunately, a typical dragon was only a little more aerodynamic. Slight modeling changes could increase potential speed of a dragon somewhat but nothing could actually help it to get off the ground.
"What if magic kept them in the air?" proposed Alice afterwards. "Their wings would serve only as a means of propellant. They would be like airships."
Everybody groaned. Alice was the only one of them who could possibly propose such a thing. It's magic (a wizard did it). Don't dwell on it, dear player, we are just a bunch of morons who couldn't come up with a rational explanation. A dragon is a big fat balloon filled with magic and that keeps it from falling down like a brick.
Edward, who had consumed several slices of pizza and half a can of beer, stared at the last slice still in the box and thought about two things in the silence that followed. One was whether he should dare to try to eat that last slice as well. The other was their current predicament and whether they couldn't somehow use Rosalie's and Alice's ideas and build on them. They couldn't reshape their dragon into a bird and they couldn't explain its flight capability with magic. Alas, he could understand Rosalie's desire for their dragon to be fast and agile. They wanted any flying in their game to be an actual flight simulation. As for Alice's suggestion, did they really want dragons in their game to be entirely mundane? Yes, they were going to have a spell-casting ability. Probably. Then again, any wizard was able to do that. Maybe. Edward believed that there should be more to dragons. Something intangible, incomprehensible, and alien. Truly supernatural, not just fantastic.
While he thought, Bella grabbed the last piece of pizza and started to eat it. For some reason, it triggered some random synapses in Edward's brain and he remembered two different things.
One was a book he had read as a child. It was about "adventures" (more like conversations) of three people. A normal gentleman with an inquisitive mind, a professor of astrophysics, and the professor's daughter who became the gentleman's wife later on. The author presented the readers with introductions to all sorts of obscure laws of our universe, from quantum physics and sub-elementary particles to relativity, cosmology, black-holes, and wormholes. How could he possibly remember such a thing because of Bella was difficult. Maybe because she reminded him of the professor's daughter (with Carlisle being the professor)? Luckily, it didn't occur to him that he himself was the gentleman with inquisitive mind.
The other was a rather painful memory. It was from the last day before he became a full blooded geek. He was in his early teens and they (he and his parents) were on a vacation in Florida. Every day was spent on a beach. He liked sea. His mother preferred to sun-bathe while his father adopted a little more complex habit. A proper, dynamic swim (about ten minutes) followed by a half an hour of rest next to his wife. He always stopped swimming in late afternoon and just chilled out in shade and drank beer.
Edward wasn't like that. He spent every day playing in water. When the sea was still, he put on diving goggles and swam underwater. However, he was happiest when there were waves. He could splash around in those for hours.
Through some strange coincidence, a girl from Edward's class was there as well with her family. It was strange, Edward had told his schoolmates where his parents were taking him and she didn't say anything. Come to think about it, she wasn't even excited to bump into Edward. Luckily for Edward, she wasn't annoyed either. Edward didn't even remember it but he used to have a crush on her.
Somewhat bigger waves came one day and he convinced his parents to let him rent a foam board. He wanted to show off to the girl. Unfortunately for him (or fortunately, that depends on a point of view), he ended up embarrassing himself. Whenever he attempted to catch a wave, he lost his footing and went head-first into the surf. At some point, he noticed that the girl was gone. Was the girl similar to Bella? Probably not. Hard to tell.
It would be an overstatement to say that this experience changed his life. It was more like the proverbial last straw. He had always known that he was different. Smarter. Meant for greater things than others. Such as sitting in a dark cellar and working on a computer all day long. Yeah.
One thing stuck with him. An appreciation for an elegance in speed. Like professional surfers, riding powerful waves. They didn't use any energy on actual forward movement - a wave took care of that. They merely needed to utilize it correctly.
"Exotic particles," said Edward to his teammates.
"Excuse me?" asked Emmett.
"Look, gravity is just a deformation of time-space, right?" elaborated Edward. "We could look at it as if it was a fourth dimension. Or fourth, fifth, and sixth, since gravity is a vector force."
"Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, if we consider time as fourth and if gravity affects time," added Bella.
"Only if time is one-dimensional," quipped Alice.
"No, forget about time," disagreed Edward. "We are talking about the game mechanics. Navigation in 3D space."
"And how are exotic particles going to help me?" reiterated Emmett. "And which ones, since we are talking about it."
"Ones which aren't discovered yet."
"You've got to be kidding me. How's that different from magic?"
"No, listen to me!" urged Edward. "Think back to our discussion about their breath. What if dragons have some kind of a sack in their belly which contains these exotic particles? They are somehow naturally generated by their metabolism. And these particles have an unique ability to deform these gravimetric dimensions which would help our dragons not only to overcome gravity but sometimes to create a surfing effect as well."
"A surfing effect?"
"Yes. The player's dragon would utilize this in flight but NPC dragons would be able to do all sorts of other things with it."
"Like what?" asked Jasper, who became interested in Edward's idea.
"I don't know! Getting to the planet's orbit? FTL capability? You tell me!"
"Whoa!" stopped him Rosalie. "Let's not go that far yet. You mentioned the dragon breath earlier."
"Yes. What if we were looking at it wrong? What if it's like in that Formic ship in Formic wars?"
Jasper knew what was Edward talking about. It was a reference to books in which an alien ship attacked Earth. The ironic thing was that their most gruesome weapon was actually an exhaust of their near-light-speed drive.
"Their breath is merely a byproduct of their flight," he spoke, beating Edward to it. "The exotic particles from their gravity sack would destabilize by being used and escape into a breath sack. This sack would be connected to their windpipe and they would simply expel any excess particles from their mouth."
"So, dragons don't actually breathe fire," commented Emmett. "They just vomit used up fuel."
"Exotic particles," reminded him Edward.
"I'm just thinking about how is it going to translate to the game mechanics and controls," wondered Jasper.
"No need to make it complicated," stated Rosalie. "Think about driving a car. It's actually automatic for an experienced driver. I think that any dragon would control its own body even more effortlessly which would remove any need for any low level flight controls on the side of a player."
"Exactly," agreed Edward. "You just toggle on a flight mode and off we go."
"We'll need to think about how exactly is a player going to control this surfing effect," commented Jasper.
"It doesn't have to be named a surfing effect," interrupted him Edward. "It was just an idea."
"Whatever. I just wanted to say that there are going to be two sets of controls probably. One for wings and the other for the surfing effect. Approaching this in a wrong manner will make players hate us."
Emmett raised his hand and proposed to make it impossible for a player to roll on his back (in the game). It made things simpler so nobody was against it. They discussed the matter into late night.
The six friends loved moments like these. This kind of creativity made them fuller than their regular jobs. As a matter of fact, it was as much of a fulfillment as any no-lifer could ever hope for.
They also liked the way the game code and its usage of libraries was organized from a legal point of view. All used libraries were dual-licensed. They were LGPL (or LGPL like) and free for non-commercial projects. However, they could be used in commercial projects as well for a fee.
This was essential for the way their project started and grew. In the beginning, they were just a bunch of friends who started to work on the project in their free time. Later on, Carlisle used his contacts to find a distributor for them. A small undistinguished company. All this company had to do was to pay the fees and game was going to be releasable commercially. The company wasn't paying them anything, their only tie was a mutual promise to release the game together.
Not that it was that simple, of course. They were a small team cooperating with a small distributor. Even after their work was going to be finished, there was still the matter of dabbing, soundtrack, localizations, and other things. They sometimes worried whether the company was going to find resources for that. There was no doubt that their game was way out of the league of this company. A similar thing could be said about the team. They were just six of them and they were developing a highly complex product. However, they weren't worried on that score. It was something they could overcome by their diligence and they had high confidence in themselves.
All in all, the work was coming along quite well. Jasper finished a rough outline of the game mechanics in its later stages but it was all still a matter of planning. At the moment, Bella and Edward were still working on the game engine. The others weren't idle, of course. Alice and Rosalie were busy creating graphical content and Emmett was working with Edward all the time.
One day they all received an e-mail from Carlisle. They needed to meet. He and the entire teem. Considering that he had met with their distributor a week earlier, it sounded significant.
They met at the faculty where he was teaching in an empty conference room. Everybody could tell that something was wrong from Carlisle's sombre face. Moreover, Esme was present. There was little reason for that unless she was supposed to provide moral support.
Nobody asked any questions like "What's going on?" Everybody just sat down and waited for Carlisle to speak.
"I've got some news," he started. "I should have told you about it a week ago but I waited till now for two reasons. I wanted to find out more first and I wanted to tell you this face to face."
The team came to a conclusion immediately that the distributor wanted to back out of the deal. Emmett wanted to make some kind of an exclamation but he held himself back.
"To put it in a short way, our distributor is going under."
That was much worse. It meant that they were without a distributor. This time, the team didn't stay silent.
"What happened?" asked Bella. "I thought that they were financially stable."
"Have you followed with how their `To Tres Picos and Back' did in sales?" asked Carlisle.
"To tres what?" asked Edward.
Jasper raised his hand and Carlisle nodded at him.
"It's a little, wish-to-be-funny adventure-like game about a family vacation," he explained. "It's full of lame jokes and game-play mechanics which don't make any sense but people like Emmett would surely love it. Game magazines slammed it but that was to be expected. It wasn't supposed to be a hit after all - just a cheap B-title to keep them afloat before our game is ready for release."
"And that's the problem," followed up Carlisle. "According to all projections, it was supposed to pay for itself and more. While it wasn't good, it targeted virtually everybody. Children above eight, adults, men, women. Then the numbers came about a month ago. The project didn't even pay for itself."
"That doesn't make any sense," argued Jasper. "What happened?"
"Well, let's begin with those game magazines. They should have taken into account that it's B category and give it a column among other B-titles. Instead, they all wrote a page or two in which they slammed every little inadequacy. That's rather strange, isn't it? Then more problems followed. Big retail chains refused to put it on their shelves. A lawsuit was filled for using other company's technology without paying for a license. Another one for using the name Tres Picos. Neither of those cases are resolved yet but they cost money."
"Sabotage?" wondered Rosalie in disbelief.
"Quite. And whoever targeted them even had someone in the inside."
"Why would somebody want to sink a stupid B game?" commented Alice.
"I don't think it was about that," affirmed Carlisle.
There was a moment of silence.
"The investors refused to keep them alive and fund the distribution of your game. Banks didn't even want to talk about loans. And if that doesn't convince you then maybe this will: I learned two days ago that somebody attempted to secure ownership of your project."
Nobody remained silent this time around. There was a cacophony of shouts, exclamations, and threats to unknown parties.
"Calm down! Calm down!" boomed Carlisle. "It wasn't possible, of course. You didn't take any funding from our ex-distributor yet so you've got the full ownership of your game. The fact remains that we are without a distributor."
"Can't we talk to some of those people?" theorized Bella. "They surely know people who know people who can hook us up with another distributor."
"As far as they are concerned, they all lost their jobs because of us. They won't lift a finger to help us."
"But why would someone do that?" couldn't believe Alice.
"Well, our game contains some experimental technologies and novel game mechanics and concepts," pondered Jasper. "Sure, it won't be top quality but many players are able to forgive that in experimental games made by new, small teams. It won't have a large target populace considering its position on a fringe of the mainstream gaming but that's no obstacle for gaining a cult following. My point is that there are certain large companies who wouldn't like such a competition. They would prefer to make a similar game first, just dumbed down. A lot."
Anger grew in Bella's eyes as Jasper talked. The project meant a lot to her. The others shared her sentiment.
"So, what are we going to do?" asked Emmett the obvious next question.
"Get another distributor, obviously," answered Carlisle. "Failing that, we can look into alternative distribution means."
"Like releasing it on Source Forge for free?" proposed Edward. He didn't offer to ask his employer to talk to their distributor.
"There's no need to be sarcastic. I'll try to find a way how to make this project a commercial one."
"No, I'm serious. We don't need a voice actor for the protagonist and after we release the game, we can get volunteers to record speeches for NPCs and send them to us. Moreover, there are certain GPL projects which we could use in such a case."
"Slow down," curbed him Jasper. "We can't release an unfinished product in this case. This isn't some small-time indie game where such a thing would be tolerated - we always aimed to make this a professional A title. We don't even have the functionality yet so there can be no talk about releasing the story episodically."
"Then we'll get donations and help from volunteers!"
"No one knows us! We've never released a game before."
"Gentlemen!" called Carlisle (he meant Edward and Jasper). "I said already that I'll try to find a way to release this commercially. That being said, the same people who suffocated our distributor may get in our way again. You need to do some serious thinking."
"About what?" asked Emmett.
"About whether we want to be defeated by them," muttered Bella. "They aren't doing this to put our project in a difficult financial situation. They are doing this to prevent it from ever being released."
There was a moment of silence.
"Well, I'm determined to get this game out even at the cost of never making a penny on it!" avowed Edward.
The others had to admit one thing: He was the main programmer of the project. If anybody had a right to make such statements, it was him.
"You know, electricity costs money," poked him Emmett.
"Let's take this one step at a time," proposed Bella. "Edward, you wanted to use that purely LGPL library to implement path-finding. Go ahead with that. Or any other LGPL library without dual licensing you wish to use. Stay away from GPL for now."
"What about GPL with a linking exception?" asked Edward quickly.
"Let's leave this for later," interjected Jasper. "We need to address something else at the moment. Carlisle, is there any possibility of the project getting stolen by somebody?"
"Well, as you know, Bella has written a paper about the game's engine," answered Carlisle. "So no, no one can file a patent on this. Not even Bella herself because it was published more than a year ago."
"Good."
They had a short break and then returned to discuss their plans in more detail.
Esme came up with an idea to recruit voice actors among the students. There should be enough suitable people among all the faculties of the university.
Carlisle also promised that in a case of an emergency, they should be able to work on their project in Bella's "office" at the faculty. The condition for that would be allowing any interested students to participate.
It was night when they parted. Despite the terrible news, everybody was filled with optimism and energy.
Unbeknown to the team of young developers, intellects cool and unsympathetic regarded their project with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against them. They were preparing to unleash a new terror on them, previously unseen on the field of corporate warfare.
...
Ironically enough, the only two people still working on this surprise at the moment were two young technicians who were performing routine testing and maintenance. Their minds, unlike their bosses' intellects, weren't neither cool nor too unsympathetic. To be honest, they weren't that much different from Bella and her team but they lacked their imagination and ambition.
"Dammit!" cursed one of them. "Why can't we just update their software through wireless connection?"
"Not safe," answered the other. "That's what the bosses say. Somebody could hack the units. However, I know of a trick which will enable us to make updates almost as easily."
"Well, tell me."
"You must not tell anybody."
The first technician nodded in confirmation. The second one pulled out an USB stick from his pocket.
"You can't be serious," commented the first one.
"Who would suspect? Plus, it would be a little bit tricky to get to a convenient position in a real situation."
At the moment, however, our team was still oblivious to the danger which they were destined to confront. They were using this sweet period of peace to pen out first parts of the storyline:
A space shot featuring a star from an intermediate distance. Light music evoking Star Trek on the background. In a little while, the camera captures a comet. In its wake, meteoroids.
Any well read person knows the significance of the comet. It's theorized that comets spread spores of life throughout the universe. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not because it's the symbolism that counts in this case. Alas, the thing that is carried by the comet aren't spores and it isn't on the comet itself. It's inside one of the meteoroids behind it.
The comet passes by a planet. Judging by splotches of blue, green, and white, it's probably a habitable planet. Some of the meteoroids are caught in its gravity well, including the one. It falls down, shedding bits and pieces in its fiery entrance.
The camera moves into the meteor. Something is inside it. Something egg-shaped and warm. Something alive.
As the meteor keeps falling, something sparks between it and the atmosphere. Or rather between the core of the meteor and the planet. True enough, the camera pans down, following a lance of invisible spiritual energy, visualized for the sake of the spectator. So fast that an eye can barely follow, it goes down through the surface of the planet, to its very core. A bond has been made between the planet and the thing in the meteor.
Down on the surface, a tribe of primitive smallish green-skinned humanoids watches the shooting star as it plummets down. They grow scared and panicky when they realize that it's falling awfully close to them. The night sky lights up and the tribesmen hear a thunderous noise. They all run to hide in their caves but they still hear and feel the impact.
In the morning, the bravest of them crawl outside and hike in the direction where they suspect the "star" fell. The area is arid and rocky, with no trees. There are some occasional bushes and the goblin-like people spot a column of smoke in distance. That helps them pinpoint the correct direction. Some less brave tribesmen observe them from distance. Unwittingly, their actions predetermine their future standing in the budding society.
As they get closer, the smoke becomes thinner. They notice that it isn't a single column of smoke but many smaller ones coming from smoldering bushes and other vegetation. Seeing the damage scares some of them and they slow down. Others continue.
Finally, first of them reach the crater. They fear that the ground is going to be hot but it is not. Some of them notice strange sharp jagged pieces of rock around. They believe that they are pieces of the meteorite but they are actually indigenous. They melted on the impact from the pressure. The important fact is that these pieces are sharper than any tools owned by the primitive people.
The group of explorers circle around the crater and observe the meteorite at the bottom from all sides. It takes some time before two of them descend inside. More tribesmen arrive by that time but most of them keep a respectful distance.
The two men stop roughly in the middle of their descent. It's hard to tell whether it's from fear or whether they feel something strange emanating from the space rock. After a while of debating among themselves, they turn around and go up again. Nobody sneers at them. Using their primitive language, the two tell the others that the crater shouldn't be entered lightly.
Two more brave the crater. A man and a woman (his mate) this time around. They don't make it as far as their predecessors.
In next few days, more and more members of the tribe arrive. They are awed by the impact area and don't dare to approach even the edge of the crater. The ones who journeyed to the crater as first command a great deal of respect among everybody else. They establish a perimeter around the crater quickly. Once again, it's unclear whether they simply want to secure their newly found privileged position in the tribe or whether they feel genuine respect to the meteorite.
Over next several weeks, the tribe moves all its supplies and possessions to the crater area. Some of them find some half-collapsed caves which are quite away from the crater. The most industrious of them start building primitive shelters. At the moment, the observer doesn't think about how it's possible that the cave-dwellers started building "houses" suddenly. The meteorite in the center becomes an object of worship for the goblins.
Years pass (as is later revealed, a year on this planet is only slightly longer than on Earth). A town grows around the crater. The tribe becomes a society. All the leaders live in huts at the edge of the crater. Others live in rings further away. The closer to the edge, the more important the person or family is. Nothing is inside the crater yet with exception of some totems. No one approaches the meteorite. The observer can examine it all at leisure but the range of motion of the camera is limited to the crater.
Decades pass. Those who were children at the time of the impact are old now. The edge of the crater is lined with stone houses half chiseled into the rock. The town around grew into a city.
No one lives inside the crater itself, just like before. However, there are some temples and other structures meant for worship. Almost nothing is in the center of the crater, with the exception of some stairs and other minor changes.
Most people can't go in the crater, with the exception of certain religious festivals. No one enters the central area or even approach the meteorite. The only exception is the high priest, once a year. All the other priests support him at such a time by making a wide circle around the central area.
Unfortunately, decadence comes almost at the same time as this extraordinary growth. The leaders use the authority "given" to them by the meteorite to keep the little nation under control. They work with the priests closely in this regard. Those profit from the arrangement in their own way. The stone altars in the crater become red with blood of sacrificed animals. When no one watches, the priests eat the slaughtered animals. The tribe is also obligated to keep the priests supplied with anything else they need.
The arid land around is incapable of supporting the city. The goblins used to be nomads and few in number. That's out of the question now. Hunters and gatherers venture far away from the crater in search for food but it's not enough. Many are hungry but no one leaves. It seems like the rock from space is a downfall of their society. Agriculture or husbandry is out of the question. Even if it was possible in the area, the goblins would be incapable of it.
The decay continues and the rites of worship grow ever bloodier. The priests start sacrificing their own citizens. The observer can't "watch" it any more and the image dims from time to time, as if someone was closing his eyes.
Unrest spreads among the citizens. It's quelled by introducing a new kind of sacrifice: Hunters bring remains of what appears to be a human being. Curiosity is sparked among the goblins. The high priest places the remains on an altar and burns them.
The priests and leaders meet that night and debate. The group of hunters is questioned.
Next day, the citizens are assembled again. The high priest tells them that their deity from the sky wasn't satisfied by the dead sacrifice. A war-band is assembled. The chieftain himself takes command and the group of hunters guides the force back where they went before. Unbeknown to them, the humans are mobilizing too.
Many days later, several survivors return. The war-band was wiped out. The chieftain is dead. The priests attempt to calm the panicking citizens. The high priest questions the survivors whether they have been followed. It doesn't matter, enough injured goblins have been left behind for interrogation. They can't speak the language of the humans but they can point. Almost no one is left to defend the city.
At night, some goblins who live at the edge of the city leave and journey back to the caves from which their ancestors came decades ago. They are mainly women with children.
The humans arrive in a few days. They don't seem to be a real army, more like a militia. There are farmers, hunters, guards, and rangers. Nonetheless, they are horseback, posses better weaponry (bronze weapons, bows and arrows), and are quite organized. To the disorganized goblins, they do appear like an unstoppable army.
They charge the city. The goblins hide among buildings and strike at every opportunity. They know the battleground but they are doomed nonetheless. Some of the attackers start setting fires.
The high priest runs to the meteorite in panic. It's unclear why. Maybe he hopes that his god will save him for his service. He gets cut off by fire and then something strange happens. He's got two ways in front of him - left or right. He can't decide where to go and death is all around him. He calls to his "deity" for advice subconsciously. Maybe it's from the lifetime of being near the meteorite but there is actually a possibility of getting an answer back. A hint can be given to the high priest to go either left or right. It doesn't matter what kind of a hint is given. If nothing is done, the high priests will keep standing there until an archer shots him. The path to the left leads to being trampled by horses. The one to the right will get him decapitated.
The attackers spare no one. Some goblins attempt to escape the city but only a few succeed. Just like those who left earlier, they will revert to being cave-dwellers. However, they will tell stories to next generations about the great city they once had and they will hate the human race forever.
The creature in the meteorite can't bear all the death any longer. It closes its senses and goes to sleep again. The image goes black but the sound can be heard for a little while longer.
Jasper and Edward sat on a sofa, staring at their notes. Both of them seemed to be in stupor. One would almost say that they had smoked something. Alas, it wasn't the case. There were two glasses on a table, covered by some black sticky substance on the inside. It was condensed Coca Cola. Some of it was still in a kettle on a stove.
"That much sugar can't be healthy," whined Edward. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"Don't be a wuss," Jasper reprimanded him, but he himself didn't feel much better.