The first color palette choice on the same pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09 ... as it often occurs, what a difference a choice of colors makes!
I believe it was the ancient philosopher and libertine Oscar Wilde who said that fashion is a kind of ugliness so terrible that we have to change it often.
I'm not sure I understood what Mr. Wilde meant until halfway through six weeks of mandatory leave after the whole Corvair incident, at home on the Ventanan frontier where my husband and I made our home after our marriage.
“Got here just in time to head off another incident, Captain,” my husband, commercial captain Rufus Dixon, said about it.
“Well, you know captains never really rest, Captain,” I said.
His background was running the single most important commercial shipping company, and over the ten years before we met, I had moved up the ranks to responsibility for a whole planetary station as a commander before going by a roundabout route to fleet captain with a ship.
What that meant, in our combining our lives, was that both of us were attuned to knowing what was going on with the minds of the masses of the people, including the trends and the fashions. He needed to know because he was co-founder and COO of Kirk and Dixon Shipping, and had to stay on top of what would be shipping to and from the frontier. I needed to know, by habit, to protect the people from things like outbreaks and cyber-crime and subtle invasions.
Which brings us to the above fashion item that was making the rounds beyond the Ventanan frontier, still some light-years beyond where humanity was routinely boldly going, but close enough so trade routes intersected on the edges of the Ventanan frontier.
That handbag up above, though...
“Well, I'm a man, so I know I had better not say anything,” my husband said, “but what do you think of that bag, Khadijah?”
“It looks like somebody took those antique-style patent leather shoes that little girls used to wear to church through the mid-21st century, got some diamond dust and gold glitter, and then decided to make a sacrilegious bag to shock the church mothers,” I said, and watched my husband fall out laughing.
“Well,” my uncle, Admiral Benjamin Banneker said about it, “the nice thing is the functionality – if you needed to, say, conceal carry a weapon or something and have quick reach access, there's that hole into the body of the bag – or is that just a very ornate flap and buckle?”
“I don't know what that is, but whatever it is, I hope it doesn't catch on,” my husband said. “I'm going to talk with Mark about this mess because it is September 25th, and the last thing we want is to get anywhere near getting caught up on running these things back to Earth for a month.”
Mark was Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr., younger cousin to the well-known Admiral Kirk of galactic fame – but Mark was the cousin with the business chops.
“I see the money, Dix,” he said, “but I also see trouble written on your wife's face, like, right now.”
I had not been able to get that bag off my mind, and it had come up on my face at the thought of it while I was bringing my husband some lunch.
“Sit down, Khadijah,” Rufus said. “I'll go bring your lunch – we need to know what's bothering you, as a fleet officer of your experience, about this, especially since they are clamoring for these on Earth now, just as I feared it would be.”
Rufus went and got my lunch, and I gathered things out of my subconscious mind into my conscious mind as best I could … and suddenly wasn't the least bit hungry.
“The thing is, Rufus and Mark, is what every fleet officer learns in the Academy, and what actually determines what officers live to see our ages, to say nothing of my uncle's 82 years. We as humans tend to see everything from our lens – remember how I said the things look like patent leather made up for sacrilege? That's an assumption that the bag has any reference to the way African Americans in ancient times practiced Christianity – it does not relate even to most religious practices even on Earth, then or now. I was raised in a family steeped in many of the old traditions, so my assessment makes sense in that context. But that has nothing to do with anything actually happening out here.
“What we learned at the Academy is the same ancient wisdom actually found in the Bible: everything in the universe not created by human hands that has been created has been so for the function and form given to it by its actual creator, not the whims of humanity. So, if it just happens to occur that some civilization is flashing a bag and generating a call to get it to Earth in time for a holiday nobody cares about except those deeply influenced by pre-Christian Northern European religious practices, that civilization has its own reason to want to get through that open door that has nothing to do with Halloween.”
My husband and his business partner considered this, and then Rufus turned to the big computer console he had in his home office.
“Let's see how these are showing up in commercials and on and off social media,” he said.
“I'm going to go get my fleet tablet to cross-reference,” I said.
It was not long before a second image popped up – and that one brought into better relief what was nagging at my mind:
“That appears to be the second most popular one,” Rufus said.
“Those things are as ugly as sin,” Mark said, “and accounting for the fact that we don't know what beauty looks like to other civilizations … still, it would take a special kind of Earthling to want that on their arm past November 1.”
“Stranger fashion trends have happened, but not much,” Rufus said.
Meanwhile I was cross-referencing the images to the fleet database … again, the bags were from beyond consistent human contact and exploration, but where trade routes went, stories also followed, long before humans set foot in a place.
All of us jumped at the third most popular image – vastly less so, because it would have taken quite a bit of getting used to the first two bags to ever want the Beasts of Bhaghoriible actually looking at you directly:
… for that is what each of those bags were, in disguise: the hunting dogs, if you will, of the Bhaghoriible, each of which had the power to vaporize as much flesh as would make for a human adult and transport it back to its owners. Granted, this group was bred small for “convenience,” but...
… in real time, minus the bag disguise accessories, they were fearsome creatures, and the stories had reached the edge of the frontier about how the Bhaghoriible had decimated entire planets with them. It just so happened that one of their queens had gotten a taste for human-flavored mist – some human travelers very far out had perished in that region – and so she was bidding to get her fill by having her hunting beasts shipped to Earth at human expense. They and the humans involved would have disappeared at her bidding, and no one would have figured it out in time for her not to have had a very good meal on October 31!
I went right up the chain of command through my uncle Adm. Banneker to full fleet admiral Chenggis Chulalaangkorn, who listened and reviewed the video and then dispatched a Vulcan fleet officer to go undercover, buy a bag, and bring it back.
Sure enough …
“Those bags are indeed living creatures,” he said grimly. “Lieutenant T'Gora fortunately was not on the prescribed menu, and she could tell the seller would rather she not have it, but the idea that the Vulcan merchant had human associates who might be interested was enough. And indeed I am interested, since we have this footage here from the last transmission of the research shuttle Tamboor.”
It was blurry footage, but it looked for all the world like some ugly handbags jumped on some men and those men then disappearing.
“That's the raw footage, and I'm having it cleaned up,” the admiral said, “but it is not immediately necessary because Lt. T'Gora's handbag was part of the attack!”
I jumped out of my seat at that development, and my husband had to catch me.
“Thank you, Captain Biles-Dixon,” the admiral said, “for remembering and acting on your training. You are still on leave, so leave all the rest to me – but understand that, like your uncle, and also with your husband and his business partner, your vigilance is making a difference for the safety of all humanity.”
“Well,” Rufus said,”at least we won't have to ship the things!”
“No,” Adm. Chulalaangkorn said, “because I like you, and I'm not planning to blow you to smithereens or just let what is meant to happen, happen to you. I can't go out of consortium-held space to go put a stop to the Bhaghoriible queen's plans directly, and somebody is going to want to count that Halloween money and hang the consequences for everyone else – but none of that will involve you, Captain Dixon, and I thank you for that as well."
Adm. Chulalaangkorn's solution was elegant, if brutal – he let it be known what was going on, made it official that the beasts of the Bhaghoriible were forbidden in consortium-held space, but, because even with a full fleet the Ventanan frontier was a challenge to completely secure because of its vast size, he closed off all but the longest possible ways around to get to Earth. He knew that some commercial shippers would still flout his orders because the demand from Earth and Near-Earth was high … but he also knew the Bhaghoriible queen would cut her losses and enjoy the meals that were available long before they made it to Earth. Thus Adm. Chulalaangkorn cut humanity's losses down to the greed of those who cared more for profit than people on this occasion.
“It is said that greed can consume the greedy,” he said about it to Adm. Banneker, “and I'm not here to argue with that truth.”
At about that time it really sunk in what had been at stake … and I called all my teachers and mentors not my uncle and told them thank you all over again for teaching me what I needed to know to help humanity to survive.
I took my uncle to dinner to thank him, and he also lifted his glass of sparkling apple cider to toast me.
“Thank you for being an attentive student, from one servant of humanity to another,” he said. “Well done, Khadijah. Well done.”