EP312: Night Bird Soaring

[Talia]

EP312: Night Bird Soaring

By T. L. Morganfield

Read by Mat Weller

First appeared in Greatest Uncommon Denominator #3

---

On his sixth birthday, Totyoalli’s parents took him to the holy city to see the Emperor Cuauhtemoc, but the plane ride proved the most exciting part. He kept his nose to the window, taking in the vast lands of the One World, from the snow-capped mountains of his home in the northern provinces to the open plains of Teotihuacan. He marveled at the miniature cities and cars passing below. All his life he’d dreamt of flying, ever since the first time he’d seen a bird gliding through the air.

From the airport, they took a cab to the royal palace on Lake Texcoco. Tenochtitlan, the single largest city in the world, sprawled around it for miles. The cab buzzed across one of the royal causeways, the water blue and shimmering in the hot sun. Inside the walled royal complex stood the Great Temple, meticulously maintained by a crew of thousands, its sacred Sun Stone keeping watch over the visiting crowds.

At the palace, two genetically-engineered royal jaguar knights escorted Totyoalli’s family to the Emperor’s gardens. Totyoalli watched their tails swish behind them, fascinated. Their heads looked so soft he wished to pat them between the ears, but when he tried to talk to them, they bared their fangs and gripped their spears a little tighter.

Rated appropriate for 15 and older due to language.

Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!

[Unblinking]

This was really interesting and fun.  I have come across a few stories that predict what would happen if the Aztec empire hadn't gone away, (especially the "Strange Tale of" stories over on Dunesteef).  It's still a novel enough idea to me that I am excited just based on that.  But this one took it one step further, advancing this civilization to the space age.  I think I can honestly say this is the first time I've ever read a story where someone's career aspirations to become an astronaut were thwarted because he was scheduled to be a human sacrifice before his mission was over.  I liked the reveal that the Empire had survived because of extraterrestrial AI intervention.  Good stuff, and I like that in his case his fate was unavoided.

To me, though, it would've been better without the final sentence or two that showed the god watching.  I was enjoying the delicious ambiguity, where I could contemplate whether this was fated by the gods or just a really crappy coincidence.  I wish the ending had just kept it ambiguous.  But other than that, I really enjoyed it.

[Thomas]

overall, i enjoyed this one.
a bit dissatisfied with the ending, stretched a bit too far into fantasy at the end (it felt like the author wanted to save the main character, Deus ex Machina), but overall, most enjoyable..

[Thomas]

OK!! now i know whatr was bothering about this story...


TIME TRAVEL!!


don't care for it, especially when it messes with the known timeline in which future events are changed. now explain to me how this can exist when the person sent back was never born?

paradoxes make good stry, i know, but.... grrrrr....

i am a mathematician by trade and these types of stories grate on my soul.....

i did enjoy it, but after the emperor explained his existence, it started gnawing at me. I didn't know why until i explain the story to my daughter.

[Dem]

I hope the narrator got a double fee for that one. He must have spent days getting his mouth round those names to be as consistent as he was, and that matters. Where's the kudos button ..?

[Unblinking]

OK!! now i know whatr was bothering about this story...


TIME TRAVEL!!


don't care for it, especially when it messes with the known timeline in which future events are changed. now explain to me how this can exist when the person sent back was never born?

paradoxes make good stry, i know, but.... grrrrr....

i am a mathematician by trade and these types of stories grate on my soul.....

i did enjoy it, but after the emperor explained his existence, it started gnawing at me. I didn't know why until i explain the story to my daughter.

Wait, what?  I'm confused.  What time travel?  Did I completely misunderstand what was happening in the story??  I didn't catch a whiff of time travel.  I thought it was a straight up alternate history, a timeline that separated from ours when the alien AI crash lands and kicks Cortez's butt.

[slag]

I liked the ending actually. I really wasn't expecting it at all since the "god" warrior was revealed to be
some nanobot hybrid, and everything seemed to be going the science-good religion-bad way.
That and it was a sci-fi story.
But I think what I like about it is that it layers the world the same way that the "god"warrior's (I can't
even start to spell his name) reveal about himself does. We first see it as this kind of alternate history
where the Aztec empire survived and became supreme, only to find out it was actually through means of
some superior technology that it was possible. And if the reader has a problem with the Black Dog God appearing
at the end, if you're REALLY opposed to magic making a cameo in your science fiction, all you have to do is
remember the old "magic is just science we don't understand yet" addage. So the Black Dog god is some
kind of extra dimensional manifestation or some crap.
Either way, it just adds another layer to this world where, in the end, we see that we are our own beings,
and sometimes we don't agree with what destiny, decided or determinative, has planned out for us.
Fate on top of fate on top of fate on top pof fate ya know.

[Ocicat]

It wasn't an alien AI.  It was an AI (and nanobots) sent from the future to save the Aztecs.  It's really just addressed at one point - blink and you'll miss it:

"Artificial intelligence," the Emperor corrected. "At least that's what they called it where I came from."

"And where's that?"

"Somewhere that doesn't exist anymore," Cuauhtemoc replied. "They sent me into the past, in the body of a snake, and I bit one of the nephews of then-Emperor Motecuhzoma the Younger, which transferred my nanites into this body."

Speaking as someone who normally hates time travel, I really wasn't bothered by this use of it to set up an alternate history.  He says straight up that his (our?) future doesn't exist anymore.  If you go to the past, you'll change it.  Works for me.

I really liked this story, both for the world building and the wonderful friendship between the main character and the Emperor destined to cut his heart out.  Great stuff!

[matweller]

I hope the narrator got a double fee for that one. He must have spent days getting his mouth round those names to be as consistent as he was, and that matters. Where's the kudos button ..?

Thanks! It did require a call to the author to make sure I pronounced things (mostly) the way she wanted them. As I told her, I've read some Myan calendar prophesy and studied a decent amount of Aztec/Myan/Inca related things over the years so that I've read a lot of these words many times, but I've never had to pronounce most of them out loud.

To add to what Ocicat said, I've always felt itchy about time travel stories that involve going back and forth because to me it seems the mere act of going back would fracture existence so that you couldn't possibly go forth in the same reality, but only in the new one you've created which [butterfly effect] stands a good chance of never having had that you in it. This one didn't bother me that way because there was no return attempt, therefore no need to worry about that whole mess.

[Thomas]

time travel issue

so, if the nanobots went back in time to change the time line, then the reason for sending the nanobots back no longer exists and they were never sent, so the time line never got changed.... that's the time paradox these stories never address adequately or at all.

i do not care for time travel stories for this reason.

i will still read/listen to them, but they grate on me for this reason.

the terminator series dealt with it well, the overall history didn't change, just some of the details. and they people sent back, their timeline did not get altered too much, they still got sent back. history played out as if the change of events were there to begin with.

all that being said, i still enjoyed the story. check out podiobook story borrowed time, it is nothing but a time travel story and from what i remember it deals with this issue. also the book singularity by bill desmet. you can get both books on podiobooks.com for free.

[Dem]

I hope the narrator got a double fee for that one. He must have spent days getting his mouth round those names to be as consistent as he was, and that matters. Where's the kudos button ..?

Thanks! It did require a call to the author to make sure I pronounced things (mostly) the way she wanted them. As I told her, I've read some Myan calendar prophesy and studied a decent amount of Aztec/Myan/Inca related things over the years so that I've read a lot of these words many times, but I've never had to pronounce most of them out loud.

That takes bottle. You can get away with a lot if your head pronounces something Squishpottletwick and there's only you to think you might have pronounced it Squashpittletwock two pages back!

[Unblinking]

Speaking as someone who normally hates time travel, I really wasn't bothered by this use of it to set up an alternate history.  He says straight up that his (our?) future doesn't exist anymore.  If you go to the past, you'll change it.  Works for me.

I really liked this story, both for the world building and the wonderful friendship between the main character and the Emperor destined to cut his heart out.  Great stuff!

Oooohhh, okay.  Apparently I missed the "to the past" part.  I remember the part about its homeworld not existing anymore, and about it being in the body of a snake and transferring from there.  But I thought that aliens did it.

so, if the nanobots went back in time to change the time line, then the reason for sending the nanobots back no longer exists and they were never sent, so the time line never got changed.... that's the time paradox these stories never address adequately or at all.

i do not care for time travel stories for this reason.

But there are multiple ways that time travel could work.  This story and many others work perfectly well if you just ascribe the same theory of time travel to them.  Most time travel stories that I've seen break down into three categories:
1. Time is a slate–anything can be can be changed! Be very careful, you might prevent your own birth. (ala Back to the Future). Paradoxes are a major problem–if you change antyhing you could prevent yourself from going back which would keep you from going back to prevent yourself from going back–and so on.
2. Time is a tree. You can change things, but all you’ll do is create an alternate timeline. That is by making a change you just force yourself down a different branch. You can’t prevent your birth, but you can send yourself down a branch where you were never born. (ala Back to the Future II, which doesn’t seem to use the same concepts as Back to the Future)
3. Time is written in stone. Whatever happens in the past has already happened, observed events are 100% unchangeable. For me to believe in this one, I feel I also need to believe in a higher power (a fate or a god or what-have-you) to make sure everything is neat and tidy. (ala 12 Monkeys)

This story works perfectly fine with Theory #2.  The AI's influence just forces it to travel down a different branch of the time tree, wherein this story takes place.

The Terminator series time travel bothers me much more, myself, because it's kind of a wishy-washy version of #3.  Time isn't written in stone, but in memory foam or something.  You can change something but it'll bounce back.  It just strikes me as less real than any of the other theories.  My main objection to #3 is that it seems to imply the existence of a higher power to regulate changes to make sure that nothing can really be changed.  In the Terminator series, it's kind of like that, except that this higher power is lazy, or at least sluggish.

[raetsel]

I enjoyed the world this story was set in and the characters but some parts didn't quite work for me.

The way the MC is let off being a blood sacrifice was a bit too easy and all just because he questioned the Reverend Speaker?

Also the ending left me a little flat. As soon as the MC was sent out to repair the window you could see what was going to happen.

I didn't have a problem with the Dog God at the end as I just took that to be metaphorical somehow.

One thing that did strike me though was if the Reverend Speaker was essentially an AI from the future why did he persist in carrying out all the blood sacrifices? Did he believe in the Gods? Or was he just using it to maintain power and control of the Empire?

I guess that is an interesting debate, if you create an AI that thinks like a human will it come to  infer and believe in the existence of gods as some humans do or will it be rational enough to decide their existence is highly improbable?

Kudos indeed to Matt for the reading, flawless and with such ease, no sense of having a run up to the tricky pronunciations.

[Unblinking]

The way the MC is let off being a blood sacrifice was a bit too easy and all just because he questioned the Reverend Speaker?

But WAS the MC let off being a blood sacrifice at all?  He met a bloody end during the appointed time, as the Reverend Speaker said he must.  The god being showed at the end suggests that this was all part of the plan.  Still, this is a happier ending for the MC than having to stew on earth.  His lifelong ambition was to become an astronaut, and the Reverend Speaker making a show of letting him off the hook allowed him to do fulfill his lifelong dream.  On earth he would've felt his life was wasted by his fate.  But a life lived is not wasted.

I guess that is an interesting debate, if you create an AI that thinks like a human will it come to  infer and believe in the existence of gods as some humans do or will it be rational enough to decide their existence is highly improbable?

OR perhaps in this world gods do exist in an observable fashion.  I don't think it was ever stated what destroyed the future, right?  We just know that the AI was sent back.  So we can speculate on why that destroyed future came to be:
The Aztecs were right, and we really DO need to give periodic sacrifices to appease the gods.  In our timeline, such practices have now been abandoned by most cultures.  By our time in the timeline, the gods are thirsty, and they are pissed that we're not feeding them anymore.  At some point in the future, that fury breaks loose and they destroy us all.  But before they completely destroy us we manage to slip the time traveling nanite AI into the past and we task it with saving the future.  Saving the future in this case means that it must ensure that human sacrifices continue.  It saves the Aztecs and leads them to become a superpower in the modern world, all the while ensuring that even in its modern incarnation the empire will still do the sacrifices.  So, if this were the case, the AI would be behaving entirely rationally by insisting the sacrifices continue.



Actually, the more I talk about it, the more I like this story.  I even take back my earlier comment about the god showing up at the end being a bad narrative move.  With that it suggests that the gods are real, and in combination with knowing that the AI came from the future (which I hadn't realized on the first listen), the AI's actions all make sense.  It is trying to preserve humanity, and the way to preserve humanity here is to appease the actual tangible gods. 

[Thomas]

3. Time is written in stone. Whatever happens in the past has already happened, observed events are 100% unchangeable. For me to believe in this one, I feel I also need to believe in a higher power (a fate or a god or what-have-you) to make sure everything is neat and tidy. (ala 12 Monkeys)

um, no, it dies not necessitate a belief in a higher power. It means that what has happened effects out now, so if the time line is changed we never existed. now, the concept of alternate timelines does come into play with this motive. we cannot change our time line it just splits off into another version ala new star trek. our timeline does not change, but our alternative does, one in which we may not, can not, exist.

and like capt. jayneway, all this talk of time travel and time lines hurts my head, so i am done...
except to say, i really enjoyed this story despite the time travel issue....

[Unblinking]

um, no, it dies not necessitate a belief in a higher power. It means that what has happened effects out now, so if the time line is changed we never existed. now, the concept of alternate timelines does come into play with this motive. we cannot change our time line it just splits off into another version ala new star trek. our timeline does not change, but our alternative does, one in which we may not, can not, exist.

I disagree.  The only way that the timeline can remain unchangeable in the presence of time travel is for something to regulate that immutability.  Otherwise, any attempt to go back and change the past could have some chance of succeeding.  In stories I've seen that follow this path , any attempt at change is prevented by some coincidence (a gun backfiring, a car accident, whatever).  But such happenings are predictable and aimed toward the goal of immutability.  For a timeline to be immutable requires a higher power (whether it has a consciousness or not).

[Thomas]

i do not know what i did with the quoted text, but that was weird....

ok, unblinking, i'll concede, but only because time travel bugs me.

[bolddeceiver]

Here's the problem I have with this story -- and one I've seen in a couple of other "what if X culture were the dominant culture in an alternate present/future technological civilization" alternate history stories.  In many points in its past the cultures that became the modern dominant Western-European-derived civilization, some pretty nasty, dark, inhumane shit has been the norm.  However, when we extrapolate Aztecs or Mongols or whoever else into modern technological societies, we tend to assume they hold on to whatever "savage" traditions we remember them best for (and note that we remember the "savage" traditions largely because those are the features of those cultures that Western explorers wrote down and made the biggest deal of).  By the same logic, we should be still hanging petty thieves, burning witches, and employing trial by ordeal, even if in some snappy new high-tech way.  To argue otherwise is to make a pretty chauvinistic claim that it's some inherent superiority of the Western European culture that means we can get beyond our brutal history while nobody else can.  I tend to think that that progress of humanity is far more a side-effect of a more interdependent, organized society than of some inherent tendency of individual cultures (this video goes a pretty good way towards why I think this).

(I will allow one possible exception here, namely the existence of actual corporeal gods -- god-like beings, at least.  I still am not convinced that would make that big of a difference, particularly given that it seems like plenty of people don't necessarily believe the gods are really immortal and not just some kind of faked pagaentry.)

[Unblinking]

ok, unblinking, i'll concede, but only because time travel bugs me.

You don't need to concede.  Plenty of people disagree with me on that point, and more power to them. 

[jayazman]

I liked this one.  The juxtaposition of the highly advanced scientific achievements with the sustainability of blood thirsty barbarianism of the gods blood sacrifice really struck a chord with me.
I also liked the irony that Totyoalli did not want to die for god he did not believe in because of his scientific training, yet end the end, he died for the gods anyway.
This is a well done story where science and religion live side by side yet there is no mandate that one be right while the other be wrong.  There is no indication to me that the author has a pro-science/anti-religion agenda.  Yes the religion is a harsh one, but one that turned out to be correct in the end.
And as Norm said "never pass up nanite blood, people.  Never."

[Listener]

I enjoyed the story, although there were some fantasy tropes that I had to get past (kid with destiny becomes friends with emperor, college student befriends smart quiet girl because she's difficult to befriend, standing up to the emperor and making him proud of your integrity instead of making him cut your head off).

Once we saw the MC not accept the nanite blood, I think we ALL knew he was about to die. That wasn't foreshadowing so much as a giant sign that said "WARNING, THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ABOUT TO DIE, POSSIBLY HOIST ON (by?) HIS OWN PETARD".

[ElSenorDelFuego]

So I will ignore the general debate about time travel and talk about how this story made me feel (as interesting and thought provoking as the discussion has been so far for me to read). I wanted to comment about how this story really hit me in a lot of ways: first of all i am six feet and just about 200 pounds of big old softy when it comes to a bittersweet love story, everything they went through together and the very dangerous risks the main character took for his love really hit hard for me. Hit me hard enough to make me cry while pulling into my parking space after work, Like I said, big softy. Second thing that endeared it to me was that it had to do with (as Space Core would say) SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEE.
some things just win you easy point with me. the last thing that pulled me in was that I am of "Mestizo" descent (that is my family line has both Aztec and Spaniard ancestry), what this all gets me to is a story that pulls me in effectively, with a main character I can easily identify with, even imagine as myself. Needless to say at the end of this story I had a very big "wow" moment, you could say i even enjoyed it!

[Scattercat]

So I dunno about anyone else, but the Emperor freaked me right the hell out, and I was badly disappointed by T.'s decision to go along with the plan.  I mean, seriously. 

---

T: Yo, Emp.  This whole dying for gods thing is kind of crazy and evil, you dig?  Like, the gods don't even seem to be real, dawg.

Emp: Oh, shit, yeah, I forgot to tell you.  I'm just a computer and not actually a god like I've been saying for centuries.  I totes had to lie because otherwise I couldn't crush and subjugate all you squishy types properly.

T: Oh.  That explains a lot.

Emp: Yeah.  We're gonna keep on doing the blood sacrifice thing, by the way.

T: Isn't there any other option?

Emp: Sure, we could educate folks and stuff, but it's kind of hard and I don't really feel like hauling you dipsticks out of the stone age.  I like you when you're gullible.  But hey, since you got wise, I'll kill other guys instead of you.

T: Wouldn't that violate all of my newfound ethical convictions?

Emp: A little bit, yeah.  But it's okay!  We won't tell them the gods aren't real.  That way the morons will think it'll do some good!  Ha ha!  We cool, bro?

T: Sure thing, dawg.

Emp: Oh, here.  You can use this to live forever.  It's a total trip.  We can slaughter tons of dudes for like no reason.

T: Sweet!  Oh, wait.  My poontang will get all old and crusty and then die on me.  That'd be a bummer.

Emp: *shrugs*

T: I think I'll just go die pointlessly instead and have an oxygen-starved vision that possibly invalidates every thematic subtext so far in the story.

Emp: Sounds like a totally sweet plan, bro!

---

The emperor is like a textbook evil overlord computer, manipulating history in pursuit of some crazy goal and completely unconcerned with the sanctity of life.  What, when it's just one dude, that's a crazy rogue AI, but when it's millions of dudes, well, gotta break a few eggs?

Gah.

Also, if the gods are real and fate is inevitable, then how the living hell did the Magic Robot change history?  Why would the gods not have just done it this way from the start?  Thus, I choose to see the god at the end as a hallucination, because otherwise the themes get all gummed up.  Beyond the whole thing where the emperor is clearly evilevilevil but doesn't get called on his shit.

[Dem]

So I dunno about anyone else, but the Emperor freaked me right the hell out, and I was badly disappointed by T.'s decision to go along with the plan.  I mean, seriously. 

---

T: Yo, Emp.  This whole dying for gods thing is kind of crazy and evil, you dig?  Like, the gods don't even seem to be real, dawg.

Emp: Oh, shit, yeah, I forgot to tell you.  I'm just a computer and not actually a god like I've been saying for centuries.  I totes had to lie because otherwise I couldn't crush and subjugate all you squishy types properly.

T: Oh.  That explains a lot.

Emp: Yeah.  We're gonna keep on doing the blood sacrifice thing, by the way.

T: Isn't there any other option?

Emp: Sure, we could educate folks and stuff, but it's kind of hard and I don't really feel like hauling you dipsticks out of the stone age.  I like you when you're gullible.  But hey, since you got wise, I'll kill other guys instead of you.

T: Wouldn't that violate all of my newfound ethical convictions?

Emp: A little bit, yeah.  But it's okay!  We won't tell them the gods aren't real.  That way the morons will think it'll do some good!  Ha ha!  We cool, bro?

T: Sure thing, dawg.

Emp: Oh, here.  You can use this to live forever.  It's a total trip.  We can slaughter tons of dudes for like no reason.

T: Sweet!  Oh, wait.  My poontang will get all old and crusty and then die on me.  That'd be a bummer.

Emp: *shrugs*

T: I think I'll just go die pointlessly instead and have an oxygen-starved vision that possibly invalidates every thematic subtext so far in the story.

Emp: Sounds like a totally sweet plan, bro!

---

The emperor is like a textbook evil overlord computer, manipulating history in pursuit of some crazy goal and completely unconcerned with the sanctity of life.  What, when it's just one dude, that's a crazy rogue AI, but when it's millions of dudes, well, gotta break a few eggs?

Gah.

Also, if the gods are real and fate is inevitable, then how the living hell did the Magic Robot change history?  Why would the gods not have just done it this way from the start?  Thus, I choose to see the god at the end as a hallucination, because otherwise the themes get all gummed up.  Beyond the whole thing where the emperor is clearly evilevilevil but doesn't get called on his shit.

Great to see flash fiction on the forums. That one gets my vote!

[Unblinking]

Also, if the gods are real and fate is inevitable, then how the living hell did the Magic Robot change history? 

He changed history by being near-invincible and leading the armies against Cortez.

Why would the gods not have just done it this way from the start?  Thus, I choose to see the god at the end as a hallucination, because otherwise the themes get all gummed up.  Beyond the whole thing where the emperor is clearly evilevilevil but doesn't get called on his shit.

Well, it seemed to me that the gods here aren't really inclined to fend for themselves.  They want their sacrifices, on a regular schedule, and if they don't, they go all end-of-the-world.  But they don't go out and get the sacrifices themselves, even though they presumably could.  I guess the gods are just lazy, except when it comes time to punish.  I didn't get the impression that the gods really gave a crap if the world ended either.  They have a bargain and they fulfill their end either way "You feed us blood and we do nothing, OR you don't feed us blood and we kill you all."  I'd guess the AI was sent back in time by the people, not by the gods, to keep the former part of the bargain rolling on as long as possible.

[raetsel]

Really great thread many interesting ideas.

I guess I hadn't considered the option that the gods were real, though with the AI coming back from the future thing I guess this drew me down the avenue of the gods not being real, and pandered to my atheism of course.

Reading unblinking's explanations of things also made me think replace "Aztec gods" with the word "Skynet" and you have a whole other story. 

[Unblinking]

Reading unblinking's explanations of things also made me think replace "Aztec gods" with the word "Skynet" and you have a whole other story. 

Very true, very true!  That reminds me of a story by the awesome Phillip K. Dick wherein people have to send people to a god to ask the god a question that they think the god will not be able to answer. If question fails to stump the computer, the person never returns, but it's all part of a bargain with this god.  But in the end, it turns out that the god is a machine with a huge database of knowledge, while the people do not have a great deal of knowledge, so they try to stump it with questions about the sun and other things they consider more or less intangible and the computer knows all the answers.  And when they fail to stump the computer, the computer drops them in an acid bath which breaks their bodies down to provide energy for the computer to continue running until the next cycle of questioners.

Have I mentioned that I love PKD stories?

[Scattercat]

@Unblinking

The thing is, read literally, the ending implies that T. was destined to die for the gods, and nothing he did could change that.  He thought he had escaped, but he couldn't, because the gods required him to be sacrificed.  Thus, when he didn't go to the knife willingly, they blew him out the airlock and into the atmosphere.  However, if we take as a given that the gods' will is supreme and no one can escape the fate laid out for them, then the whole "changing history" thing makes even less sense than usual, since the gods could just have given the Aztecs a leg up in the first place and didn't even need to go down the wrong leg in the Trousers of Time in the first place.  (Ignoring the whole paradox that traveling back in time to fix a problem removes the impetus for going back to fix the problem.)

I mean, I liked the story, but I really do hate time travel.  I'm okay with a little bit of "You Cannot Escape Fate," but when the whole story is ABOUT someone changing not just their fate but the fate of the whole world, the usual "But nothing he did mattered because he was Fated" ending meshes really terribly.

However, hallucinations from oxygen deprivation are definitely within the realm not just of the plausible but the probable, so that's what I'm going with.  Bah humbug.

[ElectricPaladin]

Night bird soaring in the black of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life...
You were only waiting for the sacrifice to die

*Ahem*

I actually didn't like this story too much. The flaw that bugged me was small at first, but it grew and grew until I was left with a completely bad taste in my literary mouth. Specifically, I thought that the fantastic "spec fic" elements were misplaced. This could have been, simply, an excellent alternate-history story about the one boy growing up amidst a troubled, gradually secularizing people. The whole "nano-AI from the future" thing, while terribly neat, seemed a bit unnecessary.

In fact, it diluted the main premise of the story - an Aztec civilization surviving to (roughly) the modern day. If you're going to write alternate history, write alternate history! Don't ass-backwards it by providing a science-fictiony explanation, unless you're going to make that the focus of your story.

So, in short, I felt like this was a great idea, but the execution was lacking. I would have preferred a more straight up character drama set in a fascinating alternate world to a story that diluted the alternate history with superfluous science-fictiony elements.

The one thing I will say is that I loved the conclusion. Was it a hallucination? Were the gods really real? Who knows! It was great, and added a slightly upbeat (sort of) spin to an otherwise pretty bleak ending.

[Unblinking]

@Unblinking

The thing is, read literally, the ending implies that T. was destined to die for the gods, and nothing he did could change that.  He thought he had escaped, but he couldn't, because the gods required him to be sacrificed.  Thus, when he didn't go to the knife willingly, they blew him out the airlock and into the atmosphere.  However, if we take as a given that the gods' will is supreme and no one can escape the fate laid out for them, then the whole "changing history" thing makes even less sense than usual, since the gods could just have given the Aztecs a leg up in the first place and didn't even need to go down the wrong leg in the Trousers of Time in the first place. 

I read that as the AI arranging matters so that the kid would die in an "accident", not divine intervention.  He's made a promise to sacrifice this kid, and he does so, but in this way the kid also gets to fulfill his dream of astronautics.

You make a fair point that if fate as designed by the gods is inevitable, then going back to change the past is foolhardy, but I didn't see the gods' design as inevitable.

[Scattercat]

I didn't get the sense of the AI arranging his death at all.  His death seems purely accidental, in the sense of being mere physical chance and not some kind of plot.  I'm not talking about him dying; I'm talking about him seeing the god squatting on top of the space station.

[Dave]

Enjoyed this one quite a bit. It kept me guessing about the narrator's fate. I was sad that things ended the way they did for him. I assumed his wife was going to get injured and he'd end up using the nanites to save her, but no, just a random stupid space accident. Space is the most unforgiving environment there is, after all.

If the Aztecs had risen to a global power, I'm not sure they'd have come up with all the same advances in technology we did- they may well have had different cultural priorities or ideals. But the conceit is still pretty cool.

And just for the record, I don't think the gods had anything to do with anything in this story.

[Unblinking]

I didn't get the sense of the AI arranging his death at all.  His death seems purely accidental, in the sense of being mere physical chance and not some kind of plot.  I'm not talking about him dying; I'm talking about him seeing the god squatting on top of the space station.

If I were the AI, I would strive to make it appear to be purely accidental as well--after all, someone else is being killed in the kid's place, in what is apparently an empty sacrifice.  He is superintelligent and the head of the world, he could arranged some weak bolts combined with an air pressure burst to arrange something like this.

[matweller]

I didn't get the sense of the AI arranging his death at all.  His death seems purely accidental, in the sense of being mere physical chance and not some kind of plot.  I'm not talking about him dying; I'm talking about him seeing the god squatting on top of the space station.

If I were the AI, I would strive to make it appear to be purely accidental as well--after all, someone else is being killed in the kid's place, in what is apparently an empty sacrifice.  He is superintelligent and the head of the world, he could arranged some weak bolts combined with an air pressure burst to arrange something like this.

Yes, but he would also have to have power to make Totyoalli take unnecessary risks with his tether to give that plan a significant chance.

I agree, I don't think there was any outside influence. I think the point was that in the end, rather than die meaningfully for something he didn't believe, he died pointlessly for something he did.

...which, maybe, happens more often in real life than we would really like to think about.

[CryptoMe]

Lots of interesting little tidbits. My favourite was the concept that this society pushed themselves into space because of their desire to reach the gods. Now, if only we could sell that concept to religious folks in this reality... 

[SF.Fangirl]

One thing that did strike me though was if the Reverend Speaker was essentially an AI from the future why did he persist in carrying out all the blood sacrifices? Did he believe in the Gods? Or was he just using it to maintain power and control of the Empire?

I am with T.  The gods don't exist.  However the people who programmed the nanite AI and sent it back in time to change history did believe in the gods and the Mayan religion.  Hence the AI is following their instructions and fulfilling his mission by maintaining their culture/religion as he encountered it 700 years ago.

I did think the ending with T's death was well foreshadowed.  The description of the actions leading to his death draggged simply because it was pretty obvious he was going to die from the moment he started the repair and each sentence just gave more details up the manner of his death without adding anything to the story.

And the guy was dying from lack of oxygen and had an hallucination of one of his gods before death.  With someone so steeped in religion even if he didn't believe, its an obvious hallucination to have at death.

[Devoted135]

Overall, I enjoyed this story for what it was. The end really threw me off because I was assuming that the gods didn't actually exist, but I'm happy to write it off as a simple hallucination. My strongest impression was how it was pretty incredible what they accomplished in such a short time, and wow am I slacking!

[matweller]

One thing that did strike me though was if the Reverend Speaker was essentially an AI from the future why did he persist in carrying out all the blood sacrifices? Did he believe in the Gods? Or was he just using it to maintain power and control of the Empire?

I am with T.  The gods don't exist.  However the people who programmed the nanite AI and sent it back in time to change history did believe in the gods and the Mayan religion.  Hence the AI is following their instructions and fulfilling his mission by maintaining their culture/religion as he encountered it 700 years ago.

I would guess, though, that the future folk didn't believe in the gods themselves but knew knew the people would be more easily controlled if they lived under a constant threat. Which may be proof that the AI was sent back by a near-future US government...

[Gamercow]

I enjoyed this story by the end, but did not enjoy the first quarter to third as I was listening to it.  The reason for this is that it seemed like it was going to be a "See how much I know about the Aztecs!  Look how cool they were!  They were the awesomest civilization ever!  We'd be living in such a cool world if the Europeans hadn't destroyed them!"  story.  But, as it went on, the characters gained some character, and i found myself enjoying it.  I thought the way the MC lost his tether to the station a bit trite, but I did like the twist with the god at the end, a little "You may not believe in the gods, but they don't need you to believe in them" nod.

[mbrennan]

Here's the problem I have with this story -- and one I've seen in a couple of other "what if X culture were the dominant culture in an alternate present/future technological civilization" alternate history stories.  In many points in its past the cultures that became the modern dominant Western-European-derived civilization, some pretty nasty, dark, inhumane shit has been the norm.  However, when we extrapolate Aztecs or Mongols or whoever else into modern technological societies, we tend to assume they hold on to whatever "savage" traditions we remember them best for (and note that we remember the "savage" traditions largely because those are the features of those cultures that Western explorers wrote down and made the biggest deal of).  By the same logic, we should be still hanging petty thieves, burning witches, and employing trial by ordeal, even if in some snappy new high-tech way.  To argue otherwise is to make a pretty chauvinistic claim that it's some inherent superiority of the Western European culture that means we can get beyond our brutal history while nobody else can.  I tend to think that that progress of humanity is far more a side-effect of a more interdependent, organized society than of some inherent tendency of individual cultures (this video goes a pretty good way towards why I think this).

This is a very good point.  I tend to let it slide because I like seeing pre-colonial culture extrapolated to the future as if colonialism had never happened, and I also like seeing religion included in science fiction rather than brushed off as something we're obviously going to outgrow -- quite apart from the metaphysical question of theism vs. atheism, I think the religious impulse is pretty thoroughly ingrained in the human psyche -- so I appreciate seeing those kinds of details incorporated into a space-faring society.  Watering them down to the local equivalent of modern American secularism would weaken the effect.  But it's true that having futuristic Aztecs still practicing human sacrifice is pretty much like having futuristic Westerners still burning witches at the stake, and unless your setting is one where the necessity of sacrifice IS incontrovertibly true, that's a problematic assumption to make.

Having said that -- I like Mesoamerican SF (or fantasy), so I did, in general, like this story.  I agree that the end dragged out too much, though, and the time-traveling nanite AI was maybe not the best choice, when straight-up alternate history could have done the job.  It satisfied a gripe I almost had, which was that this story could (until that point) have been told without any science fictional element whatsoever, but it introduced a variety of other problems, as various people here have pointed out.

(BTW, props to the reader for tackling all the Nahuatl names.  And if Escape Artists ever needs a female reader for a similar story, I volunteer my services; I won't claim my pronunciation is perfect, but I have enough familiarity with both Mayan and Aztec terminology that I don't run screaming from names like Piltzintecuhtli.  And I've read a few stories for Podcastle already.)

[ElectricPaladin]

Here's the problem I have with this story -- and one I've seen in a couple of other "what if X culture were the dominant culture in an alternate present/future technological civilization" alternate history stories.  In many points in its past the cultures that became the modern dominant Western-European-derived civilization, some pretty nasty, dark, inhumane shit has been the norm.  However, when we extrapolate Aztecs or Mongols or whoever else into modern technological societies, we tend to assume they hold on to whatever "savage" traditions we remember them best for (and note that we remember the "savage" traditions largely because those are the features of those cultures that Western explorers wrote down and made the biggest deal of).  By the same logic, we should be still hanging petty thieves, burning witches, and employing trial by ordeal, even if in some snappy new high-tech way.  To argue otherwise is to make a pretty chauvinistic claim that it's some inherent superiority of the Western European culture that means we can get beyond our brutal history while nobody else can.  I tend to think that that progress of humanity is far more a side-effect of a more interdependent, organized society than of some inherent tendency of individual cultures (this video goes a pretty good way towards why I think this).

Why can't I find your original post, Boldie?

This is a very good point, and it was bugging me, too. While it's true that modern cultures retain a weird mix of their ancient customs, both bloody and benevolent, it does seem true that these kinds of stories tend to stress the violent and inhuman aspects. It's frankly kind of racist. "If those dirty Aztecs had survived they'd have invented such a bad culture - good thing the Europeans got rid of them!" Then, include a few themes about the beauty and majesty of their culture to make it "ambiguous." In the end, however, you still have a story that a (white) reader can experience, then pat himself on the back, assured of the superiority of the world as it is over the world as it might have been. I wonder if this would have bugged me harder and faster if I'd been of Central American descent.

What did occur to me immediately - though I forgot to mention it in my last post - is that the author had to include a time-travel element to explain the dominance of Central American cultures. That seemed extremely patronizing. "Let's tell a fantasy story about how the Aztecs came to be a dominant power in the space age... but we can't just what-if it. We have to make it magic. There's no other way those poor bastards could have managed it."

[Rachel Udin]

Here's the problem I have with this story -- and one I've seen in a couple of other "what if X culture were the dominant culture in an alternate present/future technological civilization" alternate history stories.  In many points in its past the cultures that became the modern dominant Western-European-derived civilization, some pretty nasty, dark, inhumane shit has been the norm.  However, when we extrapolate Aztecs or Mongols or whoever else into modern technological societies, we tend to assume they hold on to whatever "savage" traditions we remember them best for (and note that we remember the "savage" traditions largely because those are the features of those cultures that Western explorers wrote down and made the biggest deal of).  By the same logic, we should be still hanging petty thieves, burning witches, and employing trial by ordeal, even if in some snappy new high-tech way.  To argue otherwise is to make a pretty chauvinistic claim that it's some inherent superiority of the Western European culture that means we can get beyond our brutal history while nobody else can.  I tend to think that that progress of humanity is far more a side-effect of a more interdependent, organized society than of some inherent tendency of individual cultures (this video goes a pretty good way towards why I think this).

Why can't I find your original post, Boldie?

This is a very good point, and it was bugging me, too. While it's true that modern cultures retain a weird mix of their ancient customs, both bloody and benevolent, it does seem true that these kinds of stories tend to stress the violent and inhuman aspects. It's frankly kind of racist. "If those dirty Aztecs had survived they'd have invented such a bad culture - good thing the Europeans got rid of them!" Then, include a few themes about the beauty and majesty of their culture to make it "ambiguous." In the end, however, you still have a story that a (white) reader can experience, then pat himself on the back, assured of the superiority of the world as it is over the world as it might have been. I wonder if this would have bugged me harder and faster if I'd been of Central American descent.

What did occur to me immediately - though I forgot to mention it in my last post - is that the author had to include a time-travel element to explain the dominance of Central American cultures. That seemed extremely patronizing. "Let's tell a fantasy story about how the Aztecs came to be a dominant power in the space age... but we can't just what-if it. We have to make it magic. There's no other way those poor bastards could have managed it."

Both of those parts irked me and I couldn't figure out why... but this nicely sums it up.

Other than that, I like the attempt at doing multicultural sci-fi. Maybe be nice to get an alternate reality sci-fi set in another culture that is written from someone of that culture? Just a thought.

[Unblinking]

What did occur to me immediately - though I forgot to mention it in my last post - is that the author had to include a time-travel element to explain the dominance of Central American cultures. That seemed extremely patronizing. "Let's tell a fantasy story about how the Aztecs came to be a dominant power in the space age... but we can't just what-if it. We have to make it magic. There's no other way those poor bastards could have managed it."

If you're interested in alt-history with Aztecs as a major part of a modern culture that doesn't depend on time travel to make it happen, you might be interested in Joshua Reynolds's "Strange Affair" stories, 3 of which have been podcast on the Dunesteef.  It's not space-age, but maybe it'll be of interest anyway:

The Strange Affair of the Artisan's Heart
http://dunesteef.com/2009/11/16/page-47-the-strange-affair-of-the-artisans-heart-by-joshua-reynolds/

The Strange Affair of the Skull at the Window
http://dunesteef.com/2010/03/14/page-96-the-strange-affair-of-the-skull-at-the-window-by-joshua-reynolds/

The Strange Affair of the Sundered Man
http://dunesteef.com/2011/08/17/episode-109-the-strange-affair-of-the-sundered-man-by-joshua-reynolds/

[ElectricPaladin]

Here's the problem I have with this story -- and one I've seen in a couple of other "what if X culture were the dominant culture in an alternate present/future technological civilization" alternate history stories.  In many points in its past the cultures that became the modern dominant Western-European-derived civilization, some pretty nasty, dark, inhumane shit has been the norm.  However, when we extrapolate Aztecs or Mongols or whoever else into modern technological societies, we tend to assume they hold on to whatever "savage" traditions we remember them best for (and note that we remember the "savage" traditions largely because those are the features of those cultures that Western explorers wrote down and made the biggest deal of).  By the same logic, we should be still hanging petty thieves, burning witches, and employing trial by ordeal, even if in some snappy new high-tech way.  To argue otherwise is to make a pretty chauvinistic claim that it's some inherent superiority of the Western European culture that means we can get beyond our brutal history while nobody else can.  I tend to think that that progress of humanity is far more a side-effect of a more interdependent, organized society than of some inherent tendency of individual cultures (this video goes a pretty good way towards why I think this).

Why can't I find your original post, Boldie?

This is a very good point, and it was bugging me, too. While it's true that modern cultures retain a weird mix of their ancient customs, both bloody and benevolent, it does seem true that these kinds of stories tend to stress the violent and inhuman aspects. It's frankly kind of racist. "If those dirty Aztecs had survived they'd have invented such a bad culture - good thing the Europeans got rid of them!" Then, include a few themes about the beauty and majesty of their culture to make it "ambiguous." In the end, however, you still have a story that a (white) reader can experience, then pat himself on the back, assured of the superiority of the world as it is over the world as it might have been. I wonder if this would have bugged me harder and faster if I'd been of Central American descent.

What did occur to me immediately - though I forgot to mention it in my last post - is that the author had to include a time-travel element to explain the dominance of Central American cultures. That seemed extremely patronizing. "Let's tell a fantasy story about how the Aztecs came to be a dominant power in the space age... but we can't just what-if it. We have to make it magic. There's no other way those poor bastards could have managed it."

Both of those parts irked me and I couldn't figure out why... but this nicely sums it up.

Other than that, I like the attempt at doing multicultural sci-fi. Maybe be nice to get an alternate reality sci-fi set in another culture that is written from someone of that culture? Just a thought.

Have you seen the comments that the Damascus Steampunk story got? You and I think it would be nice... a lot of other people here, not so much, it seems.

[ElectricPaladin]

What did occur to me immediately - though I forgot to mention it in my last post - is that the author had to include a time-travel element to explain the dominance of Central American cultures. That seemed extremely patronizing. "Let's tell a fantasy story about how the Aztecs came to be a dominant power in the space age... but we can't just what-if it. We have to make it magic. There's no other way those poor bastards could have managed it."

If you're interested in alt-history with Aztecs as a major part of a modern culture that doesn't depend on time travel to make it happen, you might be interested in Joshua Reynolds's "Strange Affair" stories, 3 of which have been podcast on the Dunesteef.  It's not space-age, but maybe it'll be of interest anyway:

The Strange Affair of the Artisan's Heart
http://dunesteef.com/2009/11/16/page-47-the-strange-affair-of-the-artisans-heart-by-joshua-reynolds/

The Strange Affair of the Skull at the Window
http://dunesteef.com/2010/03/14/page-96-the-strange-affair-of-the-skull-at-the-window-by-joshua-reynolds/

The Strange Affair of the Sundered Man
http://dunesteef.com/2011/08/17/episode-109-the-strange-affair-of-the-sundered-man-by-joshua-reynolds/

Are you kidding me? I LOVE those stories. They're the best.

[Corcoran]

Very good built alternate history for a short story

[InfiniteMonkey]

I'm gonna love the hell out of any story that has the Aztecs "win", though it was an interesting choice on the author's part to make them unsympathetic. Or at least not terribly sympathetic. I agree that "nanotech from the future is kind of a copout (deus ex machina? deus est machina???  ) and I was annoyed by the god popping up at the end. Actually, I was more annoyed by our protagonist's "ironic destiny" being so very clearly telegraphed.

And while I think that the point about ancient cultures not evolving their moral outlooks in alt-history is a very good point, I would point out that we're only marginally better. Whether or not you agree with our policies in health care, social welfare, or the death penalty, many countries around the world see them as barbaric, and yet we are still one of the dominant powers in the world.

(or, if you prefer, China's policies on free speech, the environment, and criminal justice).

[Rain]

I enjoyed this one, was an interesting world. One thing that made me wonder is that the main character towards the end is regretting not using the dagger with the nanobots, but as i understood it they could only really heal minor damage and things that happened with old age, i dont think they could have helped someone falling through the atmosphere of a planet

[ElectricPaladin]

I enjoyed this one, was an interesting world. One thing that made me wonder is that the main character towards the end is regretting not using the dagger with the nanobots, but as i understood it they could only really heal minor damage and things that happened with old age, i dont think they could have helped someone falling through the atmosphere of a planet

No, they were going to be able to retrieve his body before he hit Venus. It was the asphyxiation that was going to get him.

[ancawonka]

Just listened to this story.  It's not specifically spelled out in the story, but it seems to me that the snake-ai "took over" the body of the emperor by injecting some nanites.  But what happened to the snake that got sent back in time?  I thought perhaps the AI came back and not only created an immortal emperor but also the blood-hungry gods - everything the people needed to stay in line and take over the world.

If Totyuali had licked the blood, would he maintain his personality and gain all of the memories of the emperor, or would he be taken over by the nanites?

[stePH]

Once we saw the MC not accept the nanite blood, I think we ALL knew he was about to die. That wasn't foreshadowing so much as a giant sign that said "WARNING, THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ABOUT TO DIE, POSSIBLY HOIST ON (by?) HIS OWN PETARD".

I'm not quite so perceptive and insightful. For me it wasn't until he chose to unhook his tether rather than double back and get a longer one.

I was mostly reminded of Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus in which some folks in a dystopian future plan to go back and interfere with Columbus' voyage to the new world... It turns out that our own timeline (and theirs) was a result of a previous time-travel mission that diverted Columbus from fighting in the Crusades, to his historical voyage, in order to stop "the Tlaxcan conquest of Europe."

[eytanz]

I have a bit of a respite from work and have been catching up on stories a little. I don't really have much to add to what people have said before; this is very much a story which I have mixed feelings for. I knew, because I have to watch over the threads regardless of whether I listen to the story, about the time-travelling AI, but that didn't change my agreement that the best part of the story was before it introduced itself. Until that point, this was a cool story with interesting world building (though I also agree with the problematicity of assuming human sacrifice would have persisted in this fashion). After that, it was on rails.

But overall very enjoyable, even if I felt it went for some easy choices, storytelling-wise.

[hardware]

I liked this story, not just because it was a kind of original idea, but also because it keeps upending itself, and it asks us to actually accept the idea of gods. First you have the world of horrrible sacrifice. Then comes the reveal about the god of grey goo. Ah, so clearly this points to the religion just being culture without any actual gods. But, as many points out, it doesn't make sense. Why on earth would anyone send back an AI to preserve this horrible tradition in a parallel timeline ? The only way it makes sense was as someone points out, the gods turned out to be real and angry, and as a last attempt to create at least one timeline where humanity survives, they went for the time travel trick. It also fits with the remark that the place he came from doesn't exist any more.

I think re-reading the end also strengthen the idea that the gods really exists.

A large black dog—the god Xolotl, his guide in death—watched from atop the space station, a smile on His face.

 

That sentence is not written as a thought, or impression. It's written as something actually happening. Earlier, when the protagonist thinks something, or imagines something, it is very clear.

[LaShawn]

I don't know if I liked this story, simply because i saw the ironic death coming pretty early on. And I don't think the gods had anything to do with the death, planned or otherwise. On T's part, it was sheer negligence.

Hmm...about the culture aspect, I actually found the necessity to have blood sacrifices in a modern world more intriguing than racist. The idea that our own culture isn't as cruel? Let see, here in Wisconsin, our govenor repealed a law that made it harder for women to fight for equal pay. And in the story, more and more people are questioning the need for sacrficies. I would love to see a sequel dealing with that. After all, when Nano-God told T he had a substitute lined up that would be happy to take his place, that was from the Nano-God's POV. We don't know if that substitute actually *feels* that way.

::looks both ways a few extra times when crossing the street.::