Exurb1a - Logic Beach- Part I

Logic Beach Part I: The Great British Polly Hunt

Exurb1a

Table of Contents

Introduction

Writing a book is rather like tequila shots. Fun at first, then almost immediately a horrific chore you barely remember starting. For that reason I have decided to release this book in parts. That way I can catch a breath before moving on to the next section.

I suspect there will be three sections in all, though since I haven't actually finished writing the third, I can't say for sure. My first two books were something close to careful architecture. This one is going to be more like gardening. So please do bear with me if you happen to enjoy this story. If you don't enjoy it, well, please bear with me anyway.

As ever (and even more applicably these days) I really couldn't have made this happen without your unrelenting (and frankly inexplicable) support. Those of you propping up my silly excuse for a career are saints as far as I'm concerned. Your support means the absolute world, and if I ever do have a firstborn and you ask nicely, you can have it. Or hang out with it a bit at the very least.

This story was written in hotel rooms, mostly, travelling around Bulgaria. You will notice Bulgaria features quite heavily in it. That's partly because it is one of the finest countries in the world, and partly because I've been living here a while and have fallen hopelessly in love with the people and the geography. A word of apology though: after several years I am still a stranger here. It's pretty bloody cheeky for some pompous foreign know-it-all (who barely speaks the language) to turn up and try to condense your country down to a few hundred pages. I hope you don't think that was the objective, because it wasn't. If some idiot came over to the UK and boiled it down to, They drink tea a lot and do kissing weird, I think I'd be pretty annoyed.

What I'm getting at is that there will be cultural simplifications. If you're Bulgarian, please see if you can forgive me for that. It's just that the place is in my blood now and I wanted to write it a love letter.

Likewise, the physics in the pages ahead is purely speculative, probably too speculative. I have tried to keep as close to the status quo as possible, but I wrote some of it after a few drinks. However, the core idea is one I suspect might have mileage in it: Is the universe fundamentally logical, or isn't it? Is physics an expression of a deeply rooted necessary geometry that could be deduced from first principles? I have no idea, but it seems like a matter we should settle one way or the other at some point. It would be nice to take steps towards nailing it in our lifetimes, if possible. I think so anyway.

Also, I shamelessly stole the idea of cosmic sociology straight out of Liu Cixin's trilogy, Remembrance of Earth's Past. It's a fantastic work of science fiction and I highly, highly recommend reading all three. I trust that admitting to plagiarism will make it seem more like very heavy adaptation. Or loving theft.

In any case, cosmic sociology is a really elegant answer to the question, "Where are all the aliens?" and I urge you to look into it.

As always, you're welcome to drop me your unfiltered outrage/disgust/diatribes at .

I enjoyed writing this one. I do hope you enjoy reading it.

All the best, as ever,

Ex.

An enormous thank you to Patreon supporters :

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This one, with love, is for Bowles and the Dog Wrestler

The End

He woke, only seconds old; bolted up. Panic.

A beach stretched before him and on the beach were objects, small and large, some made of what looked like slowly melting glass, others of metal. One was mundane, a cube. The rest were many-sided unfamiliar shapes.

A pretty woman was sat beside him.

It's all right, she said and smiled kindly.

The hell he muttered. He went to jump up but the woman put a gentle hand on his shoulder and rubbed.

It's all right, she said again.

What's going on? He glanced out at the ocean. The water, he noticed, was made of shimmering geometric tiles. The sky was just as strange: cracked in places. The sand was covered in equations, some long, some short.

The woman put her head on his shoulder. She smelled like some exotic spice. And a little like home too, wherever that was. There's nothing to be frightened of, she said in an accent he couldn't place.

I remember he said and thought: What? I remember what?

We don't have so long left, she said. She kissed his arm, then laid down in his lap. He tried to place her face.

I'm dead, he said.

No, nothing like that. Want me to explain?

The face still wasn't familiar, but the pattern of speech was. He looked out to the equation-riddled sand and the plate glass sea and the fractured sky. Beyond the sky, he saw then, was a huge black mass on the horizon, pulsing like a lung. It looked hungry.