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Don't Look
7 December 2007 14:01The controls were familiar to any race that had developed mechanical means to get around on their planet’s surface.
There was an altitude stick, turning/braking pedals, a throttle plus a variety of buttons and dials to let the pilot know how the trip was going.
A year or two of study to get the math and emergency situations covered and there you go. Every single sentient race could become a pilot.
Except one.
Humans are dumb. They routinely disregarded the most important rule.
“Don’t look at the unshielded singularity” was written in all of the available languages, pictograms, sensefields, and soundfeeds around the edges of the front viewscreen of the ship.
It was impossible to fly blind. The waves structures emanating from the center of the wormhole generator needed to be monitored with the naked eye.
That singularity at the center of the field of vision, the vanishing point for all of the warbling dimensional barriers that were being bent in half, that giant god's eye that broke the back of the universe’s insistence on rational behaviour. It was a place where laws of physics turned into spaghetti.
To look at it directly drove any sentient mind from this universe irretrievably insane.
They went into whatever fetal, litter, or eggsac position their race was familiar with and stared, wide-eyed, for the rest of their soon-to-be-machine-assisted lives.
Every race knew. Peripheral vision was okay. Look around the point, not at it. Ever. Avoid the center. Avoid the center. Avoid the center.
Humans. Sigh.
They called it curiousity. Every single human pilot that has attempted to pilot a jump has looked at the center of the singularity at some point. The jumps are usually just a few hours long. One even made it to the last ten seconds before stealing a glimpse.
Get what I'm saying. One hundred per cent of the humans we've schooled, trusted, and given a chance to have failed.
They’re banned from piloting now. They’re transported in rooms without windows. Universally, they’re looked down on because of this one trait.
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There was an altitude stick, turning/braking pedals, a throttle plus a variety of buttons and dials to let the pilot know how the trip was going.
A year or two of study to get the math and emergency situations covered and there you go. Every single sentient race could become a pilot.
Except one.
Humans are dumb. They routinely disregarded the most important rule.
“Don’t look at the unshielded singularity” was written in all of the available languages, pictograms, sensefields, and soundfeeds around the edges of the front viewscreen of the ship.
It was impossible to fly blind. The waves structures emanating from the center of the wormhole generator needed to be monitored with the naked eye.
That singularity at the center of the field of vision, the vanishing point for all of the warbling dimensional barriers that were being bent in half, that giant god's eye that broke the back of the universe’s insistence on rational behaviour. It was a place where laws of physics turned into spaghetti.
To look at it directly drove any sentient mind from this universe irretrievably insane.
They went into whatever fetal, litter, or eggsac position their race was familiar with and stared, wide-eyed, for the rest of their soon-to-be-machine-assisted lives.
Every race knew. Peripheral vision was okay. Look around the point, not at it. Ever. Avoid the center. Avoid the center. Avoid the center.
Humans. Sigh.
They called it curiousity. Every single human pilot that has attempted to pilot a jump has looked at the center of the singularity at some point. The jumps are usually just a few hours long. One even made it to the last ten seconds before stealing a glimpse.
Get what I'm saying. One hundred per cent of the humans we've schooled, trusted, and given a chance to have failed.
They’re banned from piloting now. They’re transported in rooms without windows. Universally, they’re looked down on because of this one trait.
tags