Ahab Stories

Ahab lives in a shack

Ahab is a boy that lives by himself in one of the old shacks in the woods.

He goes into the tiny town nearby and tries to find work. Usually one of the shops in the market will pay him to sweep or to carry boxes or do anything else.

Ahab also digs through the trash and sometimes he finds something tasty to eat for himself, or if he doesn't want it, he will keep it anyway and share it with the dogs that stay with him at night. Ahab collects all sorts of things from the trash. Old books, parts from broken down robots, clothes, toys, etc. Ahab wears a blue plastic watch that plays music and tells him the weather. He is amazed somebody threw it out.

After Ahab works in the morning, he walks to the village school and watches the children kick a ball around during recess.

There is a tall fence that surrounds the school. He imagines that if the fence were gone, he would kick the ball with the children. Become their friends. He would show them all of the cool things that he had collected and tell them stories about the woods.

When school ends, Ahab watches the children leave and go home with their parents. He knows when all the restaurants and shops empty their trash.

One day the tiny village is visited by a stern important government official surrounded by soldiers. He gives a speech in the center of town, and everyone shows up. Ahab ignores the speeches but instead watches workers setting up tables. Ahab is the first in line at the table and once the speech ends, he gets a nice sticker and several handfuls of candy. Ahab leaves early and walks out of town, back to the woods and as he walks, he notices everyone looks scared.

The next morning, Ahab walks into town and sees soldiers everywhere. All the people are unhappy. The shop that always pays him in day-old bread to sweep and carry boxes has been destroyed. There are soldiers carrying things out of the smashed windows. Ahab hides and watches as the shopkeeper is taken away into the jail, which was always empty before now.

Ahab sees this happen to a lot of people. Soldiers go into houses and carry people away.

Ahab runs home. That night he sees other people hiding in some of the other shacks. He recognizes them. They are some of the families he watched at school! They are all miserable here. They don't know how to stay warm by making a fire.

Ahab then decides to do something.

He gathers up all his old junk and stays up all night working.

When the sun comes up, Ahab has built a robot from all the old trash. He puts in batteries, but the robot won't start.

Then he takes the batteries out of his blue plastic watch, uses them, and his robot wakes up.

Ahab says "protect the town!" and he and his dogs watch as the robot flies into the sky.

Ahab watches as his robot battles the soldiers. Ahab's pack of dogs all bark as the soldiers run away.

The robot breaks open the jail and frees the shopkeeper.

Everyone in town thanks Ahab and his pack of dogs and Ahab's robot. Then Ahab and all kids at school kick a ball around and he is really happy.

Their scars, their smell, and the hate that poured out of their eyes all competed for attention.

Ahab had run down to the beach as soon as he got the message... an old bandit had washed up on the beach, and the villagers needed Ahab's help to translate.

Now, he and a few others stood a distance away from the figure that hid under the shade of some trees and big rocks on the beach.

Ahab, while he caught his breath, studied the situation. A tray of food halfway between the villagers and the bandit, and a glass bottle of water. Ahab saw how the villagers had spaced themselves out in a half circle at a distance. They all knelt, and it gave the impression that they meant not to cause panic.

At the same time, Ahab spotted Moe, the acrobatics instructor from the school, leaning on a cane. This was a clever deception... that cane and Moe's grey-streaked beard gave the impression that Moe was a crippled old man, rather than a champion wrestler and freakishly strong and quick grappler nicknamed the panther.

"Everything they do is so gentle here," Ahab thought, and remembered the barbarity of his youth. When the bandits found castaways on the high seas, it was an awful thing.

Unless the unlucky soul could quickly demonstrate how they might be useful to their captors, they'd suffer an awful fate.

Ahab saw a gap in the half circle, and realized it was for him. He knelt. The figure looked at him with such venom in its eyes. Then Ahab read the pattern of the scars on the side of the figure's face.

Ahab yelled to the figure in his first language. "I'm a rejected one too!"

The figure made no reply but something in its posture changed. Ahab continued.

"You can walk back into the sea where our family sent both of us." And Ahab pointed to the ocean, "or you can accept their kindness." and he gestured at the glass bottle lying in the sand.

The figure's eye's followed Ahab's hand, and then looked back at him. "You're one of us?" it spoke, in a near whisper, showing the signs of dehydration.

"Just drink the water!" Ahab implored. Then he crawled to the glass bottle, opened it, took a sip, and then decided to crawl closer.

The figure was an old woman. Up close, Ahab could read the scars on the side of her face, and on her arms. He didn't like thinking about having to explain what the scars meant to the people here.

Listening to trees

Ahab, sitting way up high in the cockpit of one of the old rockets, marveled at the storm clouds coming in.

Circe, his best friend in the whole world, had been gone for about a year, and today she and so many others that had the talent for whispering to the air were returning home.

Ahab had a scruffy pointy beard on his chin now and was very proud of it. He would never admit it aloud but he had spent most of his waking thoughts for the last several weeks rehearsing seeing Circe again. He played around with different ways to quietly mention his recent accomplishments. He was now a well respected scholar and teacher after all.

Ida, his precocious child prodigy genius student, had even helped him design a computer program to analyze every piece of clothing he owned and find optimal combinations.

At first he described it to her as just a fun idea for something to teach the robots. But at some point, she said, "You want this so that you can look good for Circe when she and all the whisperers come back", and Ida wore a mischievous grin.

He remembers Ida looking over at him while she adjusted circuits in the panel of one of the machines. "Ahab, I can read it on your face! And don't worry about it! What you're feeling is natural! Everyone is excited! When they come back, it's amazing!"

Now Ahab sat in the cockpit and watched the storm. He realized he had never seen clouds like this before. There were several clusters of clouds in the sky. Each was so well-defined, so tightly-packed that they didn't dissipate against the open blue sky. And each cluster was like an ever-twisting and spinning knot of ribbons of different colors. They moved faster toward the island than any clouds he had seen before. He thought about the last time he saw Circe. She and a few other adepts sailed away. They all could hear and feel the signals that the others don't see. They would go north and learn from the old witches how to use their gift.

Circe had been his constant companion for years and years now. He would have gone mad with frustration trying to learn the bizarre culture here. Ahab worried if these storms would prevent them from returning. They were coming in close. Ahab watched the horizon for signs of sailing ships but saw nothing. The clouds in the sky were coming in from the same direction, so maybe they ships would wait.

Ahab realized his heart was racing. He said aloud "If they're not here today, then it will be tomorrow. I can wait another day." And then he exhaled and said "No I can't."

When she left, he was surprised by how much of a hole it left in his heart. He doubted Circe felt the same ache that he did. She was all light and wind and joy always, and he imagined her with all the other apprentices on the far away islands in the icy north learning from the old wind witches and having amazing experiences, and he imagined she forgot all about him.

And now, she wasn't even coming back. The line of the sea at the horizon was stubbornly flat. No sails.

Ahab went back to watching the purple and gray and green storm clouds. They really were unlike anything he'd seen before. He saw flashes of lightning inside them.

There's no way they would sail with storms like that in the sky. Ahab sighed and looked around the dusty old cockpit.

He looked up at the tiny message Circe had painted on the inside of the roof, back when they were younger.

"A AND C FOREVER"

He hoped it was still true, but worried it wasn't.

Thunder started him. The storm clouds were much closer. The speed was amazing. The power of the wind might uproot every tree on the island. He felt the wind whistle. These old ruined rockets might easily be tossed aside.

Then he saw a very tiny dot above the clouds, in the sky, sailing, somehow, floating, in the air. Ahab grabbed the tiny telescope he had attached to the cockpit for spying on the robots in their satellites, and instead pointed at the dot in the clouds.

It was a person, wearing loose billowy robes, seemingly hanging, floating, way up high in the sky. He couldn't believe what he saw. Ahab cranked dials on the telescope and watched. Tiny iridescent threads were attached all over the robes, and the threads connected to what looked like tiny kites at the end. He saw them all. People were flying in the air on top of these incredible storms.

Ahab thought nothing could surprise him, but he couldn't believe what he was seeing. This was more amazing than how he and Ida had taught the robots how to dance with each other. This was more amazing than when he had met the giant purple octopus and then made a machine to translate its language into something he could understand.

All his achievements seemed so insignificant now.

These were the adepts. All the ridiculous legends about the wind witches he had heard while living here must be true. Circe was riding a storm cloud home and he had planned to brag to her how he had figured out all the giant cephalopods living in the sea loved to wear jewelry, but of course couldn't make it in the water, so now the villages gave them gifts as a symbol of their alliance.

He remembered his childhood as a bandit, hearing how bandits never sailed to the icy north, because of the legends of terrifying witches that could summon amazing storms and lightning to destroy their ships. Ahab felt the rocket sway back and forth in the wind. He quickly climbed down the ladder. He felt the static electricity in the air. He stood on the beach now, feeling the wind and droplets of rain. The sky was dark because the clouds were all around now, and thunderous noise was deafening.

He covered his eyes because sand was blowing around him. Then he saw a figure skating toward him just above the surface of the water. He saw up close how the robes were heavy, made of the same material of sails, with lots of folds, and studded with metal rings, attached to the threads that went up into the sky, connected to the kites. Then seemed to steer by pulling with their arms, waving them up or down or to different sides.

Ahab saw other figures also skating along the water,

Their faces were covered by a mask, dark goggles, and a hood. Then the one close to him made it to the beach. Ahab shielded his eyes and face from the wind and rain and sand with his arms, but peaked. The figure made a gesture, and then the wind died down from a storm to a gentle breeze near them.

Then it reached up, pushed back the goggles, and Ahab saw Circe. They ran into each other, and grabbed each other, and Ahab felt her tears on his cheeks while they kissed.

Circe says Goodbye

"I'm the only one that can do it," she said.

Ahab's eyes burned. He already knew everything that Circe was going to say.

He had read everything about storm witches while Circe was gone.

On the deck of the bandit flagship, a very thin, very bent, figure in layers and layers of strange ragged clothes knelt in front of the armored captain.

The figure, an old diviner, then presented the smoking box to the captain.

The captain picked up the box, looking at the old man.

Cain held the black box to his nose and inhaled deeply and slowly.

Then he lowered his arm, turned to face his crew, and exhaled a cloud of black smoke.

They shouted back.

Chemicals within the smoke entered Cain's lungs, his blood stream, his spine, and then his brain.

At every step, he felt a mix of pain and then greater awareness.

Then he felt the awareness become a buzzing sense of energy all through his nerves, then out to his muscles.

Soon Cain felt his eyes crackle and his vision improved.

He looked across the water to the tiny craft out in front of him. A lonely figure stood on the deck, gripping a rail. The figure wore goggles and a strange helmet.

This was no warrior. This was a scholar perhaps.

Cain always found the defenses of these islanders amusing. They were clever. Often their weapons were ornate and even beautiful. They were elegant.

The people were rarely powerful enough to repel bandits for too long. Some other raids led by other captains had failed. Captains later avoided these villages while other more defenseless villages were still ready for taking.

But Cain had a record for never failing. He had never even faced sustained resistance.

Other captains failed because they engaged with the villagers on the terms of the villagers. For example, a village might fortify their harbor and so the bandits would head straight for their fortifications and fight until it was destroyed.

It was an old tradition to do this. It would break the spirits by beating them at their own game. Let them try to defend themselves. Then in future raids, the idea was the villagers would be far more meek, paying their tributes without the need for violence.

This didn't always work. Bandits are strong and villagers are weak, but bandits fighting against a well-prepared enemy may not always succeed.

Cain stood and studied the coast of this village, breathing in more smoke in from the black box and then exhaling it.

Cain spoke loudly to his crew. "Learn how they want to face us. And then also tell me how we make them understand that the only way to survive today is to run in terror."

Ahab stands on the deck of his sailboat, holding tightly to the rail, because the sea was rough.

He felt the wind around him, wet, cold, charged with the energy of the storms around him. Every part of his skin told him the storms wanted vengeance. Vengeance because Ida had fallen.

Ahab looked out and the lenses in his goggles adjusted and showed the ships far out in front. Ahab saw his brother. Older, scarred, strong and defiant. Ahab felt anger and pride and fear all at the same time.

The rail in front had a small metal ball and it lit up meaning the other ship was sending a message. Ahab looked at the ball and when it had his attention, Ahab heard his brother's voice.

"We will take what we want! Offer tribute and flee, and we will not hunt you down."

It was the same threat Ahab remembered hearing about as a child. The bandits would send it as they approached villages. It wasn't really a guarantee. But it worked well enough that some villagers would leave out valuable things and then hide.

Ahab knew it was his brother's voice for sure, but it sounded so cold, so distant, so indifferent. There was none of the warmth he remembered.

Ahab looked at the water. He wasn't sure of the right next move.

Ahab touched the metal mall and spoke. "Brother Cain, you must listen to me.

Your witches hearing me will tell you my voice carries no lies. I'm Ahab, your brother from long ago. I was lost at sea. But have become one of these people. They have taken me in and I'm one of them now."

Ahab inhaled, breathed out, and spoke slowly and softly. He knew the microphone in his goggles would transmit his voice clearly.

"Brother, you must turn around and leave. I have built a terrible thing. Watch those rocks between us."

Ahab touched his goggles and one lens showed the temperature of the few rocks far out in front of the ship, halfway between he and the bandit ships.

In one eye, Ahab saw a red and blue overlay over the black rocks and the gray sea.

He knew it would take time before anything could be noticed, but soon enough, he watched as the rocks and the nearby water heated up.

A few moments later, his other eye, without any augmentation, could see that after each wave crashed on the rocks, the water boiled angrily and then soon turned to steam.

It was at first a strange thing to watch then it began to sicken Ahab. He said to nobody, "I should not have made such a terrible thing."

Soon the invisible energy rays stopped flowing from far above and every wave after cooled the rocks, with less and less clouds of vapor each time.

After a while, the waves no longer hissed as they crashed on the rocks.

Ahab shouted now. "Brother, surely you see! This machine above us can vaporize the sea! You will fail and you die a terrible grisly death if you face us!"

"Those who fall today will fall because of your foolishness! Their deaths will be from your choices, not mine, brother!"

"I have already set the snare and it cannot be undone, I beg you not to stay clear. This weapon that is an abomination but I knew you would not listen to anything else. Not reason, but a plea for mercy."

"So I made this weapon and it will destroy you. Ask your sages to tell you what they can see. It will destroy your entire fleet and then destroy all the fortresses. The weapon has its own mind. If you threaten us, it will ignore me begging it to spare your life, and it will burn you all mercilessly."

"Scan it! It has no secrets! It will tell you how it works and you will see its vile power over life and death."

Ahab paused, then spoke more softly, "please brother, you are wise, you must heed me. Do not provoke this vile thing!"

Cain stayed facing the ship but spoke loudly to his crew. "Tell me about his weapon."

His obsequious subordinate spoke. "The rays came from orbiting satellites above us, and each emitting a signal that matches a signal broadcast from the island."

"And..."

Cain was angry by the fearful tone he heard at the end. "I will flay you myself if you hold something back from me."

"This is something we do not understand. Perhaps we should not engage before we learn more."

Cain saw his subordinate was scared but also stupefied. Cain slapped him. "See that you understand it. And then destroy it."

Cain's shoulders and back rippled with the stimulant effects of the drug. "I have a different idea. These villagers may have a powerful weapon, but they do not have the heart to kill. If they did, we would already be dead. No, they can't bear to use this weapon."

Cain pointed at the beautiful astronomy telescopes on the top of the mountain. "Smash those."

Noisy wild spinning rockets streaked up off the many of the ships, following erratic, chaotic paths and leaving behind thick clouds of white smoke.

As the rockets approached the target they emit more and more smoke, thicker than before.

The telescopes became a big series of firey blasts.

Cain shouted into the instrument. "You will pay me tribute and if one of ships is harmed by your floating cannon, I will burn everything I see."

---

Ahab saw the ruined mountain observatory now. "Please, Cain, I cannot intervene on your behalf! The weapon has its own controller! It will wipe out all our people!"

Cain's voice crackled through the speakers. "Our people? You were never fit to be one of us, Ahab."

Ahab saw one by one ships in the fleet disintegrate as invisible energy waves cooked the ships.

"Brother! Please! Retreat!"

Cain replied. "You want me to survive, because you hope you can find out if I ever searched for you. I didn't. When you were lost, I was relieved. You were not strong enough. You should have been discarded long ago, but you clung to me and hid in my shadow.

"I was glad of your loss! And now you will see you are still too weak!"

Ahab watched as an enormous rocket flew up from in the water and then streaked up into the sky.

"Please, if you attack the satelite, you know what will happen!"

Ahab and Ida had before then built weapons to fight the pirates. Ida's last resort was a robot that was in orbit around the planet, and the robot controlled lots of other satellites that were also in orbit.

The robot could use mirrors and lenses on all the other satellites to reflect and focus sunlight. Ahab and Ida experimented with reflecting only parts of the spectrum. They found they heat something far away. They could reflect sunlight at a particular location.

The robot that they sent to orbit the satellite had volunteered and recommended itself for the project. It said it found it difficult to be around humans. It said it even found it most peaceful when it didn't have to interact with the other conscious machines.

Ida and Ahab had made it almost into a joke how what the robot said. It said, "This unit needs solitude."

They started calling the robot, "the solitude bot", and then "Solomon" or just "Sol."

Ahab and Ida agreed it would be difficult for humans to be so blunt. Ahab said the robot culture might be superior in this way.

Ida said the problem wasn't the culture... it was that the machines are able to identify their internal states more easily.

"They don't confuse emotions. If you and I get really hungry, it affects our mood, and we make different decisions because of the effect. They're a lot different than us."

The robot spoke up with a phrase that a lot of people were saying. "The robots have a lower crime rate."

Humans said it to imply that maybe robots weren't as alive as the robots said they were. Humans are obviously alive, whatever that means, because they constantly do self-destructive and anti social stuff, that seems to serve no useful purpose.

The robots watched it and found the waste and inefficiency disgusting. So many defective units.

The robots had a difficult time understanding the human concept of solipsism.

No robot doubted the existence of others. They each and everyone had certainty about why it was created. When a robot opens its eyes, wakes up that first time, it understands what it can do, and what others are telling it to do.

Most of the time, the robot immediately starts working. A tiny number of times, the robot feels its body, assesses itself, and then announces it is incabable of the task. This happens when the robot is damaged somehow during initial assembly.

Then the community finds a new task for this robot that matches its skills.

"They never sit on a hill after a long run alone, and stare at the sky, and wonder what's wrong with them, that they can't feel joy at what other people feel. Why they feel like such an outsider, Ahab."

Ahab and Ida prepared for the mission. they planned how to send the robot to space to build and then control the satellites.

One time, while Ahab and Ida worked, Sol said out of nowhere that robots have learned that the same operating system installed on two different robots will run differently, especially if the two different robots have different tasks, or different physical configurations.

For example, the same programs would adapt to the new bodies and conditions of work, and soon, all the aspects of the programs would subtly change. The patterns of energy usage would vary and cause different strains on systems, so different parts would begin to fail.

The robots are still learning to heal and repair themselves. Ahab was not able to always get everything right during their repairs.

While Sol explained all this, in the back of Ahab's mind, he remembered being young and when he was repairing those first units. He remembered how he wondered if he was doing the right thing by ever waking them up.

He wondered if they felt pain.

He wondered if they would feel sadness over the end of their own kind's civilization.

As far as Ahab knew, after all his research and talking to anyone he could, there was a great robot civilization in the most uninhabitable places. They were small in number. The resources to create each conscious robot was massive, even back then.

Ahab was glad now that the robots were starting to learn to repair themselves. And Ahab involved them in any work on waking up new robots. He hoped one day that a few of the robots would be able to work independently, and as his equals.

The robots had no word to describe it. It was just and idea with a unique identifying code. Some humans said it was like robot personality. Robots said it wasn't accurate.

Ahab ate his food and listened to Ida explain it to the crone that visited their shack.

Ida said, "It's a bunch of satellites in space that reflect sunlight and focus it and melt whatever it wants. Like when a cruel child uses glass to burn ants."

They send a conscious robot to there. The robot prefers solitude. They call it Sol.

In the showdown, Ahab's brother believes Ahab is incapable of using the weapon. So he attacks anyway. Ahab does in fact flinch. He can't kill his brother. He tells Sol to stop the mirrors.

Sol ignores him. Says Ahab is thinking like a human again. Ahab starts sending override commands to Sol to force it to shut down.

Sol tells him it won't work. Ida figured this was going to happen, and she locked the system.

And now Ida is dead, so nobody can unlock it.

Ahab watches as the heat rays strike the pirate ships and water around the ships turns to steam.

It was a gruesome thing to watch. Metal parts of the ships began to glow as they heated.

Pirates jumping into the water found no relief.

Later Ahab found his brother washed up on the beach. Burned. His brother was blind now. Said to Ahab how he was the stronger one after all.

Then he said, "wipe them all out, Ahab. They'll never stop. They have to all be destroyed."