[eye] The Majesty of Hearst Castle

There's always been a rush for me when visiting Hearst's 'Castle' - or as he coined it, 'La Cuesta Encantada', The Enchanted Hill.  There's a wild mix of what is the core of California - the natural beauty of the area, the unspoiled vistas, the lunancy of business, the legacy of Hollywood.  Hearst was a genius, there's no denying that.  The care in each placement of a tree, or statue, or fountain is undeniable.

The Roman Pool is otherworldly.  It's as if an ancient Roman bath was lifted back from time.  It is grand and terrifying.  Dark.  It is a daunting pool compared to what we know in California otherwise - the safety of light and air. The ability to see the pool's floor...here a chorus of tile and shadow.

This happy statue used to sit directly outside the main door, but has been brought in to safe it from the weather.

One could only imagine the discussions that went on in this smoking room, whose ceiling needs to be meticulously cleaned from the ravages of cigarettes and cigars.

short (draft): the Parnassus, Symmetry and Law

Aristotle and Buridan both pondered symmetry in the Universe.  A man (or in the latter's case, an ass), provided equal portions of food and water within reach, may likely starve if he lacks sufficient reason to choose one or the other.  It sounds unreasonable for any creature to starve, but the underlying logic is sound - the creature will have to make up a reason to break the symmetry of the choice.

So Man has made the Universe operate within Law, and symmetry is likely to be found.

But, if was Harithren in 2085 that found that symmetry is false.  Where behaviors of magnetism or gravity or Newtonian Law appear to be sound and replicable, there is the Harithren Dispute.  This Dispute allows for a single, and only a single, string of an absolute asymmetrical construct that induces symmetry.  A general Law is upheld.  The singular Dispute as well.

If not for Harithren, we would not have found the muon counter-effect.  The elegance and simplicity of the string provided us faster than light travel, where the general Law could not allow.

The Parnassus had the MCE Generator, which amplified the counter-effect, and space time was malleable.  We only had to point to a direction of space, account for various affectations in the travel, based upon Dispute knowns (47 in the case of extra-stellar travel).

Now commonplace, I have seen space grow dark - as trillions of starlight points pull upon itself.  I have not seen, but other Captains have, seen to within minutes of the Singularity.  Best not to think on it is the usual refrain.  The AI takes care of most of it and I have another 12 physicists assigned to me that take only fractions of the overall MCE calculations.  No one human could ever take that on.  The AI computational use is completely given over with 30% overhead so we don't disintegrate.  [A sister ship, a B-Class Haul Frigate, attempted to apply an AI to a singularity, Lord know what they were thinking, and the ship stopped.  Only 27% of the souls were saved.]

During sub-light, the Generator Crew is on high alert and are not allowed to do anything but monitor AI and continuously run calculations.  Getting into sub-light is the easiest part, the traverse is harrowing, but it is re-entry that will get you.  Arnof said that, and used 'get' where he wanted to use 'kill'.  No one on a star ship used language that could be deemed unlucky.

In sub, environment and comms were the only allowable functions.  It was a bit of a break for almost all the rest of the crew.  We were called to quarters, except for me and my executive crew.  Even then, I let them do what they did best.  I monitored their progress from my ready room, where I put them on the monitors.  All was nominal.

I sat back and thought of reading up on reports of the quadrant we were visiting.  The area was of interest as it's spectrograph spiked on having an asteroid field of some size with granirum - necessary for the production of super station frames.

It was a one week [relative] trip out, five days of study, and another week back.  The geologists were anxious and the pressure was mostly on them.  Our instruments were good, but we would have to send precise locations for the mining syndicate to be of any value.

The hum continued and took me from the reports.  I instead snuck in an organic tea and a physical solitaire game to reset my thoughts. The starlight returned in parts, but the pattern wasn't recognizable.  I got dressed into my tactical uniform and had to pay a visit to the MCE.

As I walked aft, a fleeting thought came in about a different Dispute, then was suddenly lost.  I let it go and hoped it would drift back to me again.