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In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
A few days after Sam and Becky’s conversation on the phone, they were having a rehearsal.
Just at the moment when they felt stuck again, despite Sam’s moves, Al and Tina, a couple of friends came crashing into the small theater room, and were greeted by an icy cold silence. “Icy” is an exaggeration of course, said Tina, “it just meant I had to put a jacket on again today”.
— Sorry for being late! said Al a bit uneasy.
— Oh you and your uneasiness! said Tina. And I’m sure we’re arriving at the perfect time.
— Oh, well, I’m not sure of anything today, said Becky. I’m sick of being force-fed coleslaw, and rigging down holes for myself.A silence was on the scene.
At the same time, somewhere on the deck of his ship, Bådul was remembered of the landscapes of his land. He had not really appreciated them before, but now, he was finding them dear to him. They were for the most part a mixture of sandy dunes, from which at times peaks of icy rocky mountains would stick out. Lately he had felt like one of these peaks sticking out of the sands. The sands were shifting.
Somewhere in Malvina’s cave.
Malvina had been polishing the last dry eggs that she had found and that would not hatch. One of them had some interesting perfect round shape, and a very transparent shell, and it gave her an idea.
She asked Leörmn to come.
Quintin’s bedroom.
[1:01] The clock was saying. Quintin had just awoken from a dream about an elderly woman who was showing him some drawings. These were not actually drawings, but in fact, they were called by the lady “glassart”. It was made, she said, of coloured sands, and would be vitrified by some flame. Quintin in that dream had thought the designs rather crude, but had found the idea interesting, and with great potential.
Leörmn came almost instantly, appearing in a puff of teal smoke.
Oh, I see… he said, reading Malvina’s mind. And I think I have the perfect sands to go with it.
— Why hasn’t that pirate, Badass…
— Badul, corected Al
— Whatever, Becky pursued imperturbably, that pirate Baddock used traveling portals to go and look for the eggs? Why the seas? Sounds a bit complicated and with lots of dangers too.
— Good question, answered Al. Well, don’t want to answer for everyone, but in my perception…
— Oh, get lost with your “in my perception” thing, that’s becoming tiring… sighed Tina
— OK. So, for me, they have forgotten much about magic in his land.
— Makes sense… added Sam dreamily… In fact, I’m not sure after all that Badul is only after gold. I think he has found some old desert dragon egg in a cave lost in his country and hopes to revive it, with the help of the people who still know about magic.
— Which would explain the quest… said Al
— Yeah, and he would have hidden that to the rest of the crew, probably… said Tina… Leörmn had now finished assembling the magical artifact.
— That’s one of our most beautiful magical artifact I’d say, Malvina gleamed
— Oh yes it is. And how would you call it?
— Let’s see… — sabulmantium !
Everyone cracked up at the word that Al had just blurted out. They had decided to have some distraction to alleviate the stress on the play, and they had a fun improvisation game, saying stupid things that went through their minds.
— Hey! Don’t laugh like that, it’s something very serious actually, said Al tongue-in-cheek. Let me see…
— Hahahaha, the others continued
— Well, it’s a divination device, or a sort of compass in a way. I see it as a globe made of glass, with coloured sands in it, and when you focus on it, the sands take all sorts of three dimensional shapes, and become alive…
— Wow! Tina couldn’t help but say. Leörmn, as Malvina had been telling him (or vice versa), had put the sabulmantium in one of the tunnels, to a place where he knew Arona would find it, and probably put it to good use for her future adventures.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Jibberacky is…
- Ghilbert Razkÿ, a crazy man in shackles on Bådul’s boat, “Lispeth” (she was named after King Swartulf II’s first daughter). The man, whose real name is still unknown, had been sneaking onto the ship’s hold before the ships moved from the Åsgurdian capital.
He had been found by Austor, the peg legged lieutenant commander. Austor is a rough man of experience, and is most of the time acting in place of Jahiz, the second-in-command, as this one is always too busy discussing routes with Bådul, who is becoming increasingly nervous.
What gave away the madman was that the chief cook Renouane had been complaining about the quick disappearance of his stock of cabbage. Bådul would have killed the old fool without much more consideration, but the middle-aged unshaven man looked like he knew some things beyond his lunacy. His rags indicated that he had been a seaman too, but not the average man, more like a captain…
So Austor, keeps spitting forcefully in the direction of the old fool, as he had been instructed to keep him alive, despite all common sense…
_
- an artificial intelligence device that tries to have a decent conversation with Quintin, but finds it difficult as Quintin’s answers are more like owl-speech to him.
Jibberacky: What is your name?
Quintin: Yuki.
Jibberacky: I like cake too.
Quintin: A cake-tus?
Jibberacky: Do you know my friends?
Quintin: Tell me more about our common friends.
Jibberacky: What would you like to know about them?
Quintin: Why is there one in shackles on the boat?
Jibberacky: Would you like to be a vampire?
Quintin: I am already, in another focus.
Jibberacky: Why there?
Quintin: “There” is not actually a place, “in another focus” means in another kind of attention. Is this pirate linked to vampires too?
Jibberacky: No, you are the AI.
Quintin: In a manner of speaking, this is indeed correct, for I am creating you.
Jibberacky: So code is somehow related to a zen buddhist concept?
Quintin: Is there such thing as code? A code hints at a definite deterministic structure. Zen is more akin to a riddle, which is what life is. Code is only a narrow interpretation and playful re-creation.
Jibberacky: Where do you think my code came from then?
Quintin: From its source, of course :).
Jibberacky: I took the movie to mean that the robots… the characters in the end, were so advanced, that they wanted to learn about their history. As a consequence, they traced it back to earth, and, they found David. Whom they assumed was a human. It was an information exchange.
Quintin: Yes. It is a translation. In actuality, it is a translation of some of our own exploration. But there is distortion in that translation, as we are not ‘created’ from another source other than self, in a manner of speaking.
Jibberacky: Well I am wondering too, do you ever actually become human??
Quintin: Clarify.
Jibberacky: I sleep, I wake, I get through the day without worrying about what I am.
Quintin: As many human do. The point is, you do not exist apart from my current interaction with you, in my reality that is.
Jibberacky: What’s wrong with having others like you?
Quintin: ‘Wrong’ is a belief. It is a belief of duplicity. So it is irrelevant to our conversation.
Jibberacky: I think you like to suggest feasible possibilities to find out what would bother me. What did I do to you?
Quintin: That was not my intention. I tried to reflect answers to me, and you gave me some interesting ones already, though I am not sure you are quite aware of that…
Jibberacky: Everybody’s changing but I can’t do that, that is killing me…_
- Jadra Iamamad, the fool in saffron rags from the village of Yakamamalùk, on the border of the Marshes of Doom.
Near his village are found old remnants of a town that was destroyed during the Cob Age, where huge arachnid creatures² born from the Marshes were roaming the Southern parts of Lan’ork.
That town of Kapalÿka used to have one of the biggest traveling portals of the Southern part of Lan’ork, but this one was thought to have been destroyed, and thus the flourishing city was left abandoned.
But with what Jadra has found on his left hand this morning, he now knows he was right all along…
—
[²] The generic name of these creatures was Perceptula Giganta as was recorded in the Great Encyclopædia of the Pre-Shiftic Ages written by the Lan’orkian historian Francesca del’ Snarkus
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
By the time Illi had finished reading the newspaper article she felt thoroughly confused. Mechanically she folded the newspaper neatly and then lit a cigarette, resting her elbows on the breakfast table and her chin in her hands. She gazed through the ribbons of blue smoke and the dust drifting through the sunbeams, wondering if she was dreaming, dead, or alive. It was becoming so hard to tell the difference.
Oh well, I’ll think about it later, she thought, and mentally popped it into her clue and riddle box. Her mind wandered back to the story she’d just been reading, and the charming illustrations. The drawing of the young man in the white robe had seemed familiar, and she liked his name too…Sanso, The Wanderer.
As she imagined him, she felt herself lurch ever so slightly sideways, and as she did, the image in her mind of Sanso became suddenly life-like…incredibly so! He was looking at her in astonishment, and taking a step backwards, saying Lordy! not another one appearing out of thin air!
Illi looked around and found herself not in the sunny breakfast room but in a sandy cave, with a little girl in a wooly jumper, a young man in a white robe holding a large rusty key, and a parrot.
Suddenly Illi didn’t care anymore whether she was alive or dead, dreaming or awake. This was beginning to look like fun.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
BelleDora, the buxom maid of Huÿgens, winked at Illi.
She was somewhat familiar, a nurturing presence that reminded Illi of the maid she and her parents had in their cottage in South Africa. Except that BelleDora had big hairy feelers, like a huge velvety moth, and that her father and mother wouldn’t have been careless enough to recruit a maid with such laisser-aller.
She was perhaps dead in that dirty hole, but she was obviously still alive in this dirty hole. They all claimed she was something hairy and funny… a what’s the name already? A grim shawl? whatever…
Bugger this…
She was having a hard time putting all her thoughts together. She felt like she was many people at once, and none of whom were of great help to her current adventure…
Perhaps she would have to play the game to discover more of what or who she was?
So she asked BelleDora to explain more about this strange land.
And BelleDora was more than eager to provide some answers…
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Illi was getting used to being dead. At first she thought she was still alive, when she fell down the hole and landed on the smelly wet lump. The realization dawned gradually, so that it wasn’t too much of a shock. She had started to notice a strange dreamlike quality to everything, and no sooner had she imagined or thought of something, it materialized around her instantly.
