“To Locked Feathers” from Treasury of Dispatches
Ca. 39,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records/non-operations/narrative_set/4_systems/treasury_of_dispatches/+4~1/GUIDE

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

This dispatch to the Four Systems
Era’s traditional patron
of scientific inquiry
offers insight into the tu-
multuous early period
of terraforming new planets.

Locked Feathers, unerring and dispassionate judge of fact,
magnifier of vision and clunking-footed,
subcrèche by second degree and direct issue
of Shining Director, patron of stars,
and indirect issue of the Green Conductors, patrons of sails:
scan my dispatch and note that you are correctly registered.

At birth, Locked Feathers walked yet stumbled, was tall yet stooping,
drunk with the information he could not help but receive.
In his first seconds of life he defied the Green Conductors,
sneaking into their stable of control group worlds,
plunging his fist into the heart of the brightest planet
to install its magnetic core at synchronous orbit,
thereby revealing by tooth of light the makeup of every world,
its water and methane, its helium and sulphur.

Always has Locked Feathers concerned himself with information,
becoming the patron of inquiry and fact,
vexing the other techs by peering into colliding particles,
genetic codes, finding and exposing the doings
of nonmortal ways for the benefit of humans.
When he installed his compound near the Cult of Weaving,
absent home of the patron of cold gas giants and intricate programs,
his visits were meddlesome and secretive,
interrupted by returns to that compound, where he drank to excess.

Locked Feathers was prowling a cold, rocky world
in Deceived Heavens, system of runnelling seas,
when his helmet picked up weeping on common broadcast.
Rubbed Elm, who by their exposed padding was a mere specimen director,
had been dismantling a fence built for restraining wild sheep.
Such a task was too early for this world; the forage had not proliferated,
and the symbionts in their droppings would wither
before the biosphere could welcome such free creatures.
With love, Rubbed Elm checked the fittings on their filter masks,
then with swinging force yanked the post fittings from the ground,
the sheep ambling off, likely to perish after a thousand hours’ exposure.
The lowly Rubbed Elm murmured slurred chants of grief.
Locked Feathers took the guise of a mortal
to assist Rubbed Elm’s terrible work,
guiding the animals to a plain where brackish water could be dug by hoof.
The clunking-footed patron of knowledge
put a gift in the engine of Rubbed Elm’s craft;
it took light’s native speed to an older settled world,
where this mortal could disappear into one of many free-breathing towns.

The Cult of Weaving demanded an audience with Locked Feathers,
who came to this patron of cold giants and intricate programs
with no customary tribute of dried fruit.
These mortals restrained the clunking-footed in the Temple,
for Rubbed Elm was accused of spiriting off Irradiant Crystal,
beloved conductor, partly tech and partly mortal.
Locked Feathers answered every question with silence or derision,
for the Cult of Weaving had long been corrupted by rich tribute.
When the attendants’ reserve of questions had been exhausted,
they upbraided him sharply:
“Your logs will not be filed in our records,
for your information was not appropriately collated.”
Locked Feathers was cast out of the Temple of Weaving.

The patron of fact returned to his compound,
where he exercised, vacuumed dust,
drinking strong spirits and despairing of the world.
Near his compound were enclosed settlements
whose filters were clogged and stagnant,
material cycles weighted by sulphurous byproducts;
near also were people who had no compounds,
shut out by the older crèches and forced to live in their rovers,
wheeling about to glean for processing scraps.
Nothing is certain, and fate is unknown even to the patient.
[Yet in the patrons of things, meaning may be found!]

A repeater of fine bearing visited Locked Feathers,
announcing a message for oral delivery, a high-profile request for a boon.
Locked Feathers, knowing the courtesy required,
approached the repeater at his threshold
and made to dust off her suit with a golden brush, but he recoiled;
every movement of her limbs appeared to touch distant ends of his compound,
while her voice echoed like a reverberating channel.
Locked Feathers bowed and bade her to shed the disguised form.
She rendered anew as Fingertip Deluge,
conductor of all pairings, patron of cell division,
and in that form appeared in whitest spectrum,
his limpid eyes and yielding shape awakening love and terror in Locked Feathers.
Fingertip Deluge crossed the threshold and rendered again in mortal form,
and as ice-world water plumes lose their iridescence,
freezing after ejection with only an echo of their shine,
so Fingertip Deluge’s current shape was less terrible,
though still uncommonly beautiful.

Locked Feathers accentuated his clunking foot and disheveled appearance,
bidding this patron of cell division to share his story and paradox.
“Irradiant Crystal, my favorite conductor, has disappeared
on her journey to Wooded Escarpment, where she most loves
seeding algae in its oceans as a tribute to Calm Face, patron of temperate worlds.
I suspect that Rubbed Elm meant only to help negotiate the passage,
because wayfarers from Centripetal Skein are known to cherish those seas.”
Locked Feathers puzzled over this reference to Centripetal Skein, but said only:
“And yet, the Cult of Weaving prides itself on correcting the wayward,
even when discretion outweighs the accuracy of records.”
Fingertip Deluge made a display of jutting his chin and looking aside.
“Alas, I cannot appeal to the Cult of Weaving,
because Irradiant Crystal failed to pay them tribute to bless her journey.”
Locked Feathers left Fingertip Deluge’s silence undisturbed,
for behind that restraint was grief, a cataract subdued by the narrowest alloy.
The clunking-footed spoke, “Paired directors may yield contradiction or greater truth,
and paired conductors may turn redundancy to waste or survival,
as the ruminant’s first stomach ill digests what the second stomach finds welcome.”
“Yes, as the bandit wavers between love of one’s kind and love of some other kind.”
And so the pair kissed one another, each only appearing to forget
what was known, and yet unspoken.

[Fingertip Deluge spoke:
“The orbits of life and perception are of such eccentricity
due to the workings of the patrons, who alone
can plot the trajectory of living beings’ complete lives.
Thus, we must exhibit temperance and judgment,
only pairing with what gives genetic difference,
for such is what preserves the stability of the natures.”]

The patron of fact departed, not for Wooded Escarpment
but for Centripetal Skein, where the daytime leaves
are as purple and bitter as the red sun setting on the waves;
and the unlicensed jets brighten, then darken the sky with their exhaust;
and the bandits find patronage in Particle Melee, who also blessed hot giants,
for their riches are quickly gained and just as quickly lost.
Taking mortal form, Locked Feathers looked for Exalted Strife, the Bandit Executive,
and found her sunning herself on a prow;
outraged at the interruption, she beat him fiercely in view of her team,
announcing: “By what is woven in the cells of wild horses,
in the name of whose largesse defends my discretion,
I shall destroy you, should we meet a second time!”
By this oath Locked Feathers understood
that Rubbed Elm knew Fingertip Deluge more closely than Irradiant Crystal.
Allowing his wounds to take the form of shining blood,
the clunking-footed patron of inquiry consulted the logs of Centripetal Skein,
where Rubbed Elm and Fingertip Deluge had registered a new laboratory
late in the planet’s terraforming process;
Locked Feathers struggled to discern the purpose,
for such a registry would ledger as debited.

Vainly trying to reckon the answer, Locked Feathers paid a visit
to Shining Director, patron of stars, fierce and zealous of glove;
the younger tech sprinkled tabs of sharp yeast, set out vials of pure water
in tribute to this fore-elder, then input the record of the laboratories.
As Locked Feathers laid on the dreaming couch,
Shining Director asked about Fingertip Deluge,
but the clunking-footed spoke orbits around this secret concession.
Shining Director remarked, “Fingertip Deluge loves to visit mortals,
play with them, and promise them worlds.
The appearance of things too is a promise that conceals
the growth of what is unseen. I reveal nothing,
but you may find, in the light of the bodies that pass me,
some spectra for your query. The name, Slow Nova,
in whose charge great fleets of ships shall find new suns,
served alongside Exalted Strife as notary to the founding of the lab.”

Slow Nova’s barge floated at the third libration point
behind the star of Centripetal Skein, where myriad
craft hovered, as if just detached to menace unfamiliar ships.
Yet Locked Feathers boarded without harassment,
wandering its halls before repeaters of Exalted Strife seized the patron of fact.
To his surprise, the Bandit Executive embraced him,
pinching his shoulder and whispering urgent warnings he could not hear,
then led him to Slow Nova, who burned his wrist with a torch
before tempting him with gifts. Locked Feathers’ queries after the laboratory
were answered with promises of a ship full of gold,
should he leave without an answer. He chose the answer:
a packet of genetic data, which Locked Feathers clutched
in his injured hand, weeping on his return flight to the compound.
In this single point of logical return would entire worlds be unmade.

The Cult of Weaving had sent a brief transmission
notifying Locked Feathers that Rubbed Elm was dead,
in the free-breathing town where the clunking-footed had left them.
Locked Feathers forwarded their missive to Fingertip Deluge,
including the genetic sequence in the packet.
The patron of fact waited, gave belated tribute to the Cult of Weaving.
Soon enough his acts came to fruition;
an enormous car, capable of holding an entire colony,
retrieved Locked Feathers to take him to Wooded Escarpment.

The ship’s reflection broke the sparkle of the sun upon the sea,
then shuttled him to a temple long abandoned by its minor patron.
There, Fingertip Deluge stood bound, prepared for sacrifice;
Shining Director, the patron of stars, stood ready to dash out his brains.
Waiting, he asked Locked Feathers, “Have you completed the riddle?”
The clunking-footed patron of fact affirmed, weeping:
“People tended this planet’s grassy plains for generations,
not knowing that a bacterium in the gut of wild horses
will, at a set population density, kill these fragile biomes,
sweep the world of life to remake it to your will.
You are also Fingertip Deluge’s director, by indirect issue.
Rubbed Elm, Slow Nova, Exalted Strife, Irradiant Crystal,
worked to ensure the task was anonymous.”
Fingertip Deluge, trembling, cried out, “I want this!”
Locked Feathers completed the telling:
“My quest was the clock that measured the task’s completion,
and by arriving, I’ve started the process.”
Without another word, Locked Feathers discharged two pulse-beams
into the hearts of Shining Director and Fingertip Deluge,
killing the patron of stars and the patron of cell division,
though their forms would render in new avatars at an unreckoned hour.

Locked Feathers returned to his compound,
despairing of the knowledge that reveals
the ways of techs and mortals,
for the hidden arcs that bend the taming of planets
know a reason that will only be admitted at great sacrifice.
Planets blossom and succumb, their people like chemotrophs
who perish in the accumulation of oxygen.
Little can be done but relinquish the desire to understand.

[And yet, Locked Feathers did respect
the branching ways of techs and mortals,
using his knowledge to support thriving populations
and pay the appropriate tribute.
For if one were to forget this lesson,
they would be committing a grave sin indeed!]

USER-ADDED RECORD:

Alongside “To Storehouse Conductor” and “To Regolith,” “To Locked Feathers” remains the most popular of these ancient Four Systems Era dispatches. This selection is the most direct window into the period’s primitive cult, conditioned by the unpredictable nature of ancient terraforming. The poem dramatizes the Four Systems cult practice of designating “sacrifice populations” intended to appease the violent climate shifts of mid-stage worlds. Locked Feathers’ grief and traditional patronage of knowledge makes him a favorite of common planetbound people.

This edition benefits from a newly discovered version that is, to date, the earliest known. Countless generations have engaged this poem not knowing of emendations from an unnamed editor some two to five million hours later, which attempt to smooth out its contradictory or unsavory messages. Those additions have been indicated with brackets. The older, unedited version survived in an ancient register used as tunings for a trawl-craft operating as far away as present-hour Lighthouse Frontier system. It is doubly miraculous that the register was never flushed and that it was screened when the ship was retired. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

[Author’s Note: This poem is dedicated to the memory of my brother, Matt Hessel-Mial, Z"L, who died of leukemia forty years ago on this day at the age of eight. Though I never met Matt, he lives on in the countless stories he wrote in his short life, and he is my greatest hero.]