is a science fiction web serial by nostalgebraist about First Contact with Starfish Aliens.An unknown amount of time has passed since aliens known as anomalings first contacted our world from a place beyond our understanding of time. It became apparent that they found us an abomination, for some unexplainable reason that maybe had to do with our bilateral symmetry.
The bilaterals, as we come to be called, are placed into crashes, artificial places where time and thought move differently. This is supposed to neutralize what is bothering the aliens, without killing us in the process. But bilaterals hate being locked away. A resistance force is brewing... and it's completely outmatched.
We're up against nothing that we've ever seen before, having to invent new forms of physics overnight just to explain what's happening. Yet nonetheless, the anomalings are on edge about something. Something they know happens in the future. Or futures? Enough to start a project, an experiment named Anne. Or perhaps Annes? It's complicated.
Tropes:
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: The anomalings interact with humanity via shades, living shadows that interact with our familiar world from somewhere beyond. Many of them are humanoid. Some of them are decidedly not.
- Alien Geometries: The crashes, where fictional places come to life, time is only a suggestion, and thinking isn't really thinking.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Anomalings and the Bilaterals each have this opinion of the other.
- Epistolary Novel: Particularly when the Annes exchange letters amongst themselves.
- Futureshadowing: The anomalings' time travel abilities frequently result in this.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: According to the anomalings, though for what specific reason, they do not elaborate.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: In particular, within the arbitration segments. It is something like talking, but also nothing like talking.
- Lemony Narrator: Azad. While he appears within the story, he does not generally narrate himself.
- Literal Split Personality: While they have separate virtual bodies within the crashes, the Annes are all part of a single crashed human.
- Locked in a Room: Grant and Azad within the Mooncrash.
- Mental Time Travel: Humanoid Shade Michael is able to do this, with varying degrees of smooth interchange.
- Minovsky Physics: all the bizarre properties of the Anomalings and their crashes arise from the Mirzakhani Mechanism, a physical law which rewrites the the history of small parts of the universe under certain circumstances. Explanations of how this phenomenon contributes to the rest of the story fill several chapters on their own.
- More than Three Dimensions: Many, many more.Sylvester: It’s so complicated, god, how to even... just to set up the problem you have to define more distinct axes of time than you people even know about...
- Mystical White Hair: Michael has full control over his appearance, but chooses to be a man with flowing white hair.
- Non-Linear Character: The Anomalings in general, but especially Michael. The Annes imitate this to an extent with their notebooks.
- Ontological Mystery: For nearly every character in the story except the anomalings, who are omnipresent in time. Even they're having a bit of trouble.
- Starfish Aliens: Anomalings. They interact with us as though they have bodies and move forward in time, like we do, but their true form is something vast and distant, and they only provide the illusion of temporal continuity.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The curious sense of time inside the crashes means that more total time passes inside than outside.
