A few technicalities...

This story and all new characters (specifically, Glazius Taladas Falconar, Professor Turalyon Raptarius, and the Mark V TDC) are copyright 1997 (revised 1998) by the author, Glazius Falconar (a.k.a. Paul Arezina). I’ve read enough fanfic to know what title 17 (the copyright law) does and does not allow; you can’t change this story or charge others money to see it without my expressed written permission. All situations and characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning cartoon series, as aired on ABC, are copyright SEGA, DiC, and/or Archie Comics, and are used (or at least referred to here) without permission. The concept of the World Wide Web is copyright H.G. Wells, in his "Men like Gods". Read it sometime. If you think something in this should be changed, or you’d like to post it on your site, or you just feel the need to write me, my email is at the end.

The Academy. A place suffused with an undeniable air of knowledge, knowledge passed from one generation to the next, refined and distilled in the transfer, more than any one soul could ever need to know… at least, that’s how I described it in my application essay. As it is, it’s currently a place to be bored out of my skull. Compared to some of the things I studied last year, the courses this year are almost ridiculously easy. If things don’t pick up soon…

But enough about that. I’d elected to stay home this afternoon, rather than make my daily circuit around the Academy’s fitness course, (conditioning of the body is as important as conditioning of the mind, or so they tell me) because I’m waiting for something to come which will hopefully dispel this boredom. "Home" is actually a bit of an erroneous term, in this case; one room with a sleeping chamber and a few rudiments of sanitation and organization qualifies as home only by the fact that I spend my evenings in it. At least it’s in the West Wing; the view here is…

The door chime sounds, breaking me from my reverie. The door slides aside as I approach it, revealing… a package. A package much too big to fit through the mail slots the Academy claims improve staff-student contact. Hmm, no label, other than the familiar insignia of the Academy. Hoping that this is what I’ve been waiting for, I take the package into the room and slide it from its wrapping, which falls neatly into the disposal unit. Extracting the cover letter from within the liberally padded package, I begin reading it…

"To: Glazius Falconar, Dorm 703W

Mr. Falconar:

It is with great pride that we inform you that you have been selected to spend a semester away…"

Haha! Finally! Something new, and different, and exciting, and different, and… I said that last already, didn’t I? The thrill of discovery, the thrill of innovation… I don’t think I‘ve managed to get this excited about something since the day I was accepted to the Academy. Don’t get me wrong, the Academy is a nice place, but three years inside it would bore all but the most stalwart of students. I feel like dancing… why not? No one to see me, after all.

Three measures later, I become suddenly aware that I’ve left my window open to the elements, namely because a maneuver which was supposed to ricochet off the glass carried me right through it and over the small balcony outside.

Overdid it again. When will I learn to control my enthusiasm? Oh well. My wings snap open with an ease born of years of practice. I glide semi-gracefully down to the gardens outside the West Wing, hampered slightly by the package I never got around to setting down. I manage to touch down on a piece of grass far enough away from any of the carefully manicured hedges and flower beds to avoid doing them any harm. The gardens are one of the nicest parts of the Academy, after all. I’d hate to spoil them. Collecting myself after the landing, I walk over to one of the ornate stone benches and hop up on it, curling my talons around the brass rail just over the edge. Time to see what else they gave me.

Hmm… nothing in the box but packing… and a Mark V TDC ultraportable computer! Quite an advanced piece of technology, but then, I suppose I’ll be needing it. I clip it to my tool-belt and flip the case open with a wingtip. Hopefully, this isn’t one of the factory scrambled models… I don’t see a slip of paper in the packaging and having to puzzle out the hundred-syllable activation code would not be a pleasant way to spend the next month or so. "Mark, activate."

"Unknown voiceprint. Please present identification."

They send me a computer and don’t even bother to tell it who I am. The Academy never ceases to amaze me... But at least the speech synthesizer is a definite improvement over the Mark IV’s digital monotone. Spending half a year with that as the only thing to talk to was one of the few parts of this trip I hadn’t been looking forward to.

"Repeat, please present identification."

Persistent little thing, isn’t it? I pluck a feather from the side of my head, wave it through the area Mark has thoughtfully outlined in red, and wait.

"Identification matches voiceprint from central databank. Subject identity Glazius Falconar confirmed. Avian clan: Falcon. Sub-clan: Desert Falcon. Homeland: Deserts of Glass, Avis Prime. Request further background information to better tailor function menus."

Seems my protocol teacher has gotten a hold of the AI… then again, the Mark V is primarily for scientific use, and scientists aren’t supposed to be anything but formal. "All right, Mark. I’m a student in my third year at the Avis Prime Academy of Sciences. You’ve been ‘assigned’ to me, for lack of a better term, as my companion on a Semester in Space trip."

"Activating fuzzy logic sub-processors… Function menus created. Good day, Glazius."

"Good day, Mark."

"Please report to your faculty advisor’s office immediately for final counseling."

"Counseling? Why?"

Mark doesn’t answer. Then again, the answer is fairly obvious; the Academy apparently thinks I can’t handle a little spatial displacement… Oh well. I had been planning to meet with Professor Raptarius before I left. A short flight later, I’m in his office.

"Good to see you, Glazius!"

"Likewise, Professor."

"I assume you’ve heard the news? I am very proud of you, Glazius. Having one of my best students receive the chance to travel off-planet alone… I’ve still got a bit of the old spirit left in me."

"Don’t be silly, Professor. You’re the best teacher I ever had. You somehow managed to get me through Temporo-Spatial Dynamics without a scratch, and I could barely understand the textbook on the first day of lecture." What an embarrassment that had been… " If that’s a ‘bit of the old spirit’, I’d hate to have seen you when you were younger."

The Professor chuckles in response. "If you say so, my boy, if you say so… At any rate, the Academy has selected me to give you your final briefing. You understand that this is not a pleasure trip. Not in the slightest. This will be a test of your logical skills and your scientific knowledge. You will travel to a planet and attempt to explain everything, and I do mean everything, about it. Geophysical anomalies, the native flora and fauna, the atmosphere, the weather patterns… if it exists, find out why and how. The Academy is funding this trip, after all, and it doesn’t like to see its money go to waste."

"I get the point, Professor. Where will I be going?"

"That’s up to you to decide, Glazius."

Up to me, eh? I’ve never been one for making decisions. I briefly contemplate tossing a coin, but realize that I’d have to throw as many as my wings could hold to decide among all the planets in the universe. There is another way, though…

"Mark?"

"Yes, Glazius?"

"Assemble a list of all planets unexplored by Avis spacecraft."

"Working, Glazius…"

Professor Raptarius interrupted. "That’s a Mark V TDC, isn’t it? The Academy has put great faith in you, Glazius. They don’t give those things out to just any fledgling, you know."

"Yes, Professor, I know…"

Mark interrupted me. "List compiled, Glazius."

"Good, Mark. Choose one at random… seed value pi to the e."

Mark began working, the progress indicator shifting slowly toward completion, and the Professor looked at me quizzically.

"Well, it’s not as if I had one already picked, Professor."

"All the enthusiasm you displayed when you asked me to write you a recommendation, and you didn’t even know where you wanted to go?"

I spread my wings in the Avian equivalent of a shrug. "It was the change of scenery that had me excited, Professor." Before I could go any further in my explanation, Mark trilled its completion.

"Random number generation complete. Planet selected: Mobius Prime."

"Interesting name, Mark. What’s its origin?"

"Mobius Prime is so named because of its position at 0 sidereal degrees in the Mobius Galactic Cluster. This cluster’s name dates back to early Avis three-dimensional astronomical observations, when the cluster was observed to take on a conformation similar to the mathematical figure known as a Mobius strip."

Now that was something new. I wonder how something like that would form….

As I looked around the room, my mind whirling with possibilities and vector equations, I noticed an oddly concerned expression on the Professor’s face.

"Glazius, that’s one of a very few planets in this universe…"

"There’s a problem, Professor?"

"Not necessarily. The last flyby of Mobius Prime indicated that there were the rudiments of a civilization beginning to develop there…"

Ah. That would make things a bit more difficult… "I see. The Prime Law again. I must do nothing to advance or retard the course of the development of civilization on a planet, for in doing so, I risk destroying the freedom and sanctity of life that Avis holds dear. In other words, I can only look, not touch."

"You’ve learned your lessons well, Glazius."

"You’ve taught me well, Professor."

"If you insist… but are you sure you want to go through with this? Even inadvertently breaking the Prime Law will result in your banishment from Avis Prime forever. I know how impulsive you can be at times, Glazius. There are millions of other planets out there with no civilizations. Pick one of those. I couldn’t stand the taunting if Raptarius’s pride and joy managed to get himself shunned…"

"That won’t happen, Professor." At least, I hoped it wouldn’t happen. Banishment is one of the worst fates any Avian can undergo.

"That doesn’t mean I won’t worry about it, Glazius. You’ve made up your mind?"

"Yes, I have, Professor. It will be… a challenge for me. You’re always telling me I should branch out a bit. Well, here I am trying to do that. Explaining the development of a civilization could get me a grant to perform similar studies elsewhere. We wouldn’t Raptarius’s pride and joy ending up on the dole, would we?" A hint of a smirk crept into my expression as I said this, a nuance not lost on the Professor.

The Professor laughed. "I see some of my wit has rubbed off on you, Glazius. Very well, I won’t stand in your way. Mark, destination Mobius Prime officially approved."

"Voiceprint of Professor Turalyon Raptarius confirmed. Destination: Mobius Prime set."

"Don’t worry, Professor, I won’t let you down."

"I hope not, Glazius, I hope not. I’ll see you in six months, then?"

"Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Professor. Goodbye." We touched wingtips, briefly, and then... "Mark, place Dorm 703W in suspension and prepare to teleport to Mobius Prime on my signal."

"Your dorm room has been placed in suspension, Glazius. Preparing to teleport…"

"Safe journeys, Glazius."

"Safe journeys, Professor. Mark, teleport."

Mark hummed for a few moments, and the world vanished, leaving only afterimages behind.

Ugh. Teleportation is sure a… unique… experience, to say the least. When the dizziness cleared from my head enough to enable me to look around, I found myself standing in the middle of a wide, grassy plain, facing a very dense forest. There was an odd smell in the air, reminiscent of the time I’d visited the closed domes of Avis Prime’s industrial sector. I wrote it off as an illusion, an artifact of the transport. This planet was well beyond the point where such things would be naturally found in the atmosphere, and industrial pollution was the hallmark of an "advanced" civilization. The Professor said there’d be nothing but a primitive culture developing here, if that. Speaking of which…

"Mark, activate psychic cloak." I don’t know why they called it that, but…

"Psychic cloak activated, Glazius."

I saw a bit of a distortion in the air, but it quickly passed. Now, thanks to a few fortuitous advances in sensor technology, I was almost completely indetectible. Mark was surrounding me with a field that detected incoming electromagnetic radiation and radiated a copy, wavelengths shifted appropriately, from the opposite point. It also neutralized any light I might reflect or produce with a pair of oppositely polarized fields, and set up a counter-pulse generator to take care of any sounds I might make. Scent was also not a problem; the activated charcoal inserts in my wings and chest feathers took care of that as a matter of course. Mark’s holographic imaging capabilities provided a view to the outside world, one which could be enhanced if need be. The only way anyone would know I existed was if they bumped into me, and with Mark constantly scanning a few dozen wingspans beyond the perimeter of the field, I would have ample time to dodge out of the way. Being three-dimensionally mobile does have its advantages, especially when trying to avoid non-flying sapients. Suddenly, Mark trilled a warning.

"Incoming sapient. Heading 180 degrees from current position."

From the preliminary readings, the sapient was earthbound. I’d have plenty of time to get out of its path, probably enough to just walk aside. But an aerial view had certain advantages to it, not the least of which was a greatly expanded line of sight. I spread my wings and pushed once, twice, lifting slowly skyward…

And was nearly knocked head-over-heels as a small blue blur whizzed underneath me, barely missing my lower talons. That was too close! Mark’s readings hadn’t detected any projectile weapons in the vicinity, so it had to be the sapient I’d seen earlier. I knew certain species were capable of sudden bursts of speed… but how could anything move that fast and not catch fire from air-friction or at the very least seriously tax its muscles? I turned in the direction the blur had gone. "Mark, ana…"

I never got to finish my request for Mark’s analysis of the strange blue blur, for what I saw left me speechless. The odor of pollution had lingered longer than any artifact of transport had a right to, and I now saw why.

Stretching out front of me, in all its perverted glory, was a city the likes of which I have never seen. I couldn’t make out any organic life at all; nothing but metal and stone, and not very much stone at that. No greenery, no fountains, no amenities whatsoever. And the miasma of pollution that hung over it went above and beyond the output of even Avis Prime’s worst smokestack factories. Who, or what, could live in a place like that? I had a hunch…

Perhaps this planet had been raided by a few of the more unsavory factions of the solar system… if that were true, their drive signatures would stand out against the fairly deserted area of space this was. "Mark, have there been any disturbances in local space-time since the last Avis Prime scan?"

"Scanning… negative, Glazius. No traces of hyper-dimensional drive detected."

"How about conventional drive? Any fusion trails?"

"Scanning… no signs of conventional drive within planet’s effective gravitational pull."

I drilled a small hole in the planet’s crust and extracted a sample. Something had to have made this drastic change, and I was willing to bet that it was an external force rather than a civilization which advanced more quickly than even the fastest textbook examples.

"Mark, extrapolate depth of planet’s crust and scan to a thousand wingspans lower. Look for spacecraft, crash remains, anything… anything since this planet has had solid rock."

"Performing radioactive decay analysis of rock… dating planet and constructing geologic map... scanning..."

Mark’s progress bar swept toward completion fairly quickly as I waited, staring in a mix of awe and disgust at the city before me.

"Based on rudimentary scan, probability of alien landing is less than 0.5 percent. Initiate advanced scan?"

"That… won’t be necessary, Mark." A value that low was as close to impossible as it was likely to come. The only conclusion I could draw was that this planet had undergone an alteration from pastoral garden to putrid metropolis under its own power, and in a ridiculously short time. I recalled Professor Davor, a seabird who taught Planetary Development 101, drilling into our head how civilizations followed a rigid pattern of development, and how each development seemed to occur in a certain minimum time. On a test, I wouldn’t hesitate to diagnose this planet as being three phases too far, but this was reality. And, as Professor Raptarius was fond of saying, reality isn’t limited to the possible.

I was about to order Mark to scan the city when I saw a huge explosion. Suddenly, every light in the city dimmed and faded. Mark trilled again. "Incoming sapient…"

"Right, Mark. I’m out of the way."

The blue blur whizzed beneath me again. It appeared to be carrying another sapient in its arms, but I couldn’t get a very good look…

Now this seemed familiar, despite the scientific impossibilities of the situation. Forest-bound sapients, causing explosions in an apparently heavily fortified city. "Mark, access Avis Prime tactics database. Calculate the correlation between the past fifteen minutes’ events and the military tactic known as guerilla warfare."

"Analyzing… correlation complete, Glazius. Correlation coefficient of +0.75 observed."

So there was likely a civil war going on. Not the most welcome of environments to arrive in, certainly, a planet locked in civil war...

My head was abuzz with questions. How did the planet come to be this way from the garden spot it was depicted as on the last Avis flyby? For that matter, what was that blue blur, and how did it move so fast? Professor Raptarius’s words echoed in my head…

"Explain everything, and I do mean everything…"

Glazius Taladas Falconar, what have you gotten yourself into? I let out a sigh, and took off over the forest, trying to find a suitable location for a base. I’d need one, as I had a good deal of work ahead of me…