Orion's Arm Universe Project
Mooclick the Hu and the Ghost Machine
 Image from Steve Bowers |
A Hu's Adventure in the Objectivist Commonwealth
A Fable
(As told to young Enhanced Dolphins on Hwii)*
It had been five years since Mooclik the Hu arrived at the Objectivist Commonwealth via wormhole link. Before his arrival he had already been to two hundred other star systems, soliciting support for his countermeasure concept to any clade and polity that would listen, all without success. Mooclik finally obtained a hearing with the governing AIs of the Objectivists. Mooclik explained his idea for a countermeasure against threats such as the Amalgamation:
"Bionts, vecs, and AIs alike can be devastated by these blights. In past millennia blights were fought off using conventional warfare that devastated entire worlds. Now I have developed a technique to stop them. Not with AIs, not with bionts, not with some super-weapon or picotech vaccine, but with Ghosts! That's right! When any living organism dies it leaves behind a spirit or ghost. I calculate we can channel these trillions upon trillions of spirits back to bring back to our normal world where they can possess or disrupt the Amalgamation and -"
The Objectivist AI E=mc² interrupted, "Little Hu aren't we forgetting the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy in your subjective concept?"
"If there is a will then there is a way!" said the plucky little nearbaseline.
"The objective always remains objective prior to and independent of the subjective!" said E=mc².
Mooclik replied, "That's your idea. My idea is different!"
"YOU STUPID HU!" shouted the objectivist, "wake up to reality!" E tossed Mooclick 15 metres across the audience chamber with eir manipulators, but Mooclick didn't wake up. He righted himself on his two single-toed feet and announced "I will prove my ghost countermeasure works! Then we will see who is the stupid one!"
A few days later Mooclik launched his methane-ice interplanetary ship to engage a minor blight, called 9256, known to be hiding in the system's Oort cloud. Mooclik pulled out the "ghost countermeasure", but no ghosts emerged to counter 9256. Mooclick and his ship were summarily digested.
When E=mc² received the news two days later, e could only say "It's unfortunate to hear of little hu's passing. This goes to show. No amount of subjective feeling can overcome an objective reality."
- Mooclick the Hu is a common figure of fun in Okeanid-derived cetacean tales. Mooclick stories also appear in a number of other Terragen cultures, especially those of some of the earlier Inner Sphere provolve and vec clades. Recently he has begun to appear in some Muuh fiction, sometimes in his original human form and sometimes as Mooclick the Muuh. Two of the best-known collections of Mooclick jokes and fables are found in volume eight of Five Deep Sounding's compendium of Okeanid folktales, "Whales Tales", and in Menno Singh's delightful collection of tales for children of all clades, "Whose Hu is Who".
More Mooclick
Mooclick the Muuh and the Time Machine