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  • #4029
    Jib
    Participant

      Liz gasped and almost choked on her soda mojito when she saw Godfrey’s strange attire.
      “Where the hell are you doing like that ?” asked Liz.
      “There is that party in another thread. The dresscode is Bring your Codpiece. As I didn’t have one, I asked Sandro the new gardener for some advice.”
      “Why?” asked Liz speechless.
      “Oh! My therapist told me I needed to get in touch with my manliness and Sandro is Hispanic, they are known to being manly.”
      “Do you really think watermelon rind is a good choice?”

      #4028
      Jib
      Participant

        Ever since she had read H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine” when she was 12, Sophie had been obsessed by the future. Now being a sweet old lady of 86, you would think she had used her share of the future and for most people her age it would be true. The trend would reverse and they would end up obsessed with the past.

        But for sweet old Sophie, who was living in Eastend London, her interest in life was mostly fed by news of the future. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she certainly believed it was. And who better than a time traveller could send news from the future ?

        She had been interested recently by an article about the telebeamer. They wanted to make you believe that in 2035 it was still impossible to transport yourself instantly from one place to another. She didn’t believe it of course. If time travel was possible, beaming yourself should be child’s play.

        Sweet Sophie was not good at math when she was young, but she was good at puzzles. She had a knack with patterns and immediately see where the pieces fit together or not. The articles on that website were like puzzle pieces. All she had to do was sort out the facts from fiction and find her map to the time machine.

        Now that she had found this invaluable source of information, she could plan her next move.

        #4026
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Hilda “Red-Eye” Astoria jotted down a few more thoughts in her notebook, and pulled a red pen out of her top pocket to dot the i’s. It wasn’t that she was old, or even old fashioned by nature: at 42 she was as tech savvy as anyone, and had not been in the habit of writing things with pens on paper since she was at school. But the notepad and pens were part of the game, as was the Panama hat and the camel coat.

          After a quick perusal of the days notes, Hilda smiled and snapped the notebook shut. The interview with the eccentric artist from the Flatlands had been even more entertaining than expected. She would enjoy writing the article. The Riddle of the Polar Molar, a tale to get your teeth into. Or Weird Tales from The Tooth Fairy Dimension. Or maybe “True Story: The 21st Century Time Traveler and the Iron Age Dentist”.

          #4021
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Somebody was eavesdropping on the lacklustre conversation between Anybody and Nobody, although, as surely Everybody would agree, it was hardly gripping.

            Better an oft repeated literary predicament than no literature at all, remarked Somebody, to Nobody in particular.

            Don’t look at me, retorted Nobody with a sniff. I am not just Anybody, you know.

            #4018
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              “Hasn’t Finnley woken up yet?” inquired Liz politely, but nobody heard her. They were all asleep. “Bloody time zone renegades.” She looked around the room at the snoring dribbling disheveled team. A plan to rouse them started forming in her mind.

              #4017

              Evangeline gaped at Funley, who was sitting on Ed’s knee trying to wipe his brow with the bottom of her apron while he was trying to eat his buns.

              “The crumbs are all over your thighs, Funley,” Evangeline retorted, “Are those blue bits varicose veins?”

              This scene is getting ridiculous, she thought, and started to cackle at the absurdity.

              Stung at the cackling, Funley whispered fiercely to Ed, “Sack the impertinent wench, give her the boot!”

              “He’ll never settle down with the likes of you, Funley,” responded Evangeline, in a desperate attempt to validate the contribution to the furtherance of the plot with a flimsy attempt at continuity.

              “Poor show!” retorted the erstwhile cleaner. “Increasingly rubbish!”

              She had a point.

              Or did she?

              #4024

              In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

              TracyTracy
              Participant

                quiet thought asked dragon
                perfect knew tart message ways
                itself tina nobody yourself
                future story play wave
                gustave obviously wait age

                #4022

                Final nail in the coffin, indeed.

                Despite the overwhelmnity of the situation, Ed couldn’t fathom why nobody would take some time to stop and ponder on the incoherences, the gaps in the net, so to speak.

                It behooved him to do so. The deranged cackler, like a mockery of the divine breath, ruling over the bizarro earth he had been sworn to protect — it had to be stopped.

                But where was the elusive cackler hiding, he would seemed to appear anywhere and everywhere. And what to make of those cases of mistaken identities, or all the althreadnarrative-realities jumping. The occurrences were piling up. He couldn’t even seem to count on assembling his old fierce Surge Team. All gone bizarro too.

                Pouring over his copious notes, he remembered how it all started. The strange case of Baked Bean Bea.
                She seemed to have breached through, and quite frankly shattered in all likelihood some old reality limitation, and somehow, she now was able to unwittingly shape the world to new strange alternate realities at her every whims.

                He painfully tried to recall, what he was, who he had been in the course of the last months. Blaze, his old genius inventor friend had left him some device, a transfocal whatever thingy. Usually it would change shapes as well, reconfigure itself with each realities. But its function was more or less the same. Reconnect him to his previous alternate realities. Which was handy, when you couldn’t even trust the notes you took. Obviously Bea wasn’t Baked Bean Bea before… or was she?

                Now the Transfocal Thingy seemed to have relocated in the bathroom. The shower head with the wires seemed a bit of a giveaway.
                Ed put on the water.

                #4013

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                Edward Cayper had been absorbed on the mesmerizing display of the large monitoring screens. He’d liked to believe it was a meditation of sorts. The simulation made the most tantalizing displays, ever changing.

                Although there had been flitches. Increasingly. He called them flitches, scratchy flea-like glitches, all small and jumpy, but he had an eye for them. He was, after all, one of the early designers of the Program. REYE – Reality Emergence Yielding Existence. That didn’t mean much, but sounded cool at the time.
                REYE was in its eighth stable upgrade. Despite the flitches, it had evolved at exponential speed.

                Edward swiveled from his chair to look behind his desk. A series of pods was lined up with sensory deprivation tanks hosting hundreds of plugged-in bodies dreaming in synch with his creation.
                He’d been told they were volunteers to participate in the largest mind control experiment in the world. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t a lie, but didn’t care so much.
                REYE was in charge of coordinating the whole program with astronomical and minute precision. Each person linked to the program believed they had become ascended (or something similarly close to their metaphysical belief). Free of the bonding of space, time and corporal existence, they were taught into a very subtle and complex system of attunement to higher truths. A large basket of bollocks of course, but while they were doing it, and deeply believing it to be real, the mind-energy they produced was redirected to certain mind control experiments.

                Since they started in the 80s, the program had had slow progress. In the beginning, only a few sprouts of channellers appeared near their area, in Nevada. They were quite timid at first, full of doubts about their hearing or seeing voices – still better than the abductions of earlier, when many went completely nuts. But now, progresses were made steadily, and with much less effort. Edward personally believed that the network of waves created by cellphone proliferation had a factor in this trend. Such interconnexion made everything easier.

                Within the program, the flitchy Ascended Masters still had to be reconditioned from time to time. On the vitals of Jane Pierce (a.a.a. “also avatared as” Dispersee within the program), Edward could see there were occasional resistance and stress, which in turn made the glitches more frequent. A change in her drugs dosage would do fine to level the serotonin in her bloodstream. It would be that, or unplugging her.

                Before leaving the room, like every day, Edward switched the monitor to the camera over one of the pods. Florence Vengard (a.a.a. Floverley), was dreaming peacefully, as usual. Since she’d arrived, he’d felt connected to her. He imagined her with long curly red hair floating in the milk bath instead of the bath-cap that made the maintenance so much easier. He was told she had overdosed on pills, and wouldn’t wake up. The program seemed to be tethering her to life, frozen in time.

                A well-oiled machine.
                If you overlooked the small things… that REYE was becoming more inquisitive, and Edward suspected, greedy too. He had seen subtle gaps in the mind-energy gauges, it couldn’t be a coincidence. The program was becoming too smart, maybe too human.

                It couldn’t bode well.

                #4009
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  As Prune spoke the magic words releasing her aunt from marbledom, an unforeseen chain reaction of uncrusting began. One by one the concrete statues and animals that Idle had been collecting became more yielding, less rigid. They didn’t all start gallivanting around at once, it was a slow process depending on the length of time they had been solid.

                  The buddha by the fish pond had had his knees bent for so long it would be some time before he could straighten them, but it was with great joy that he raised a hand from his lap to scratch the fly droppings off the tip of his nose. He was just about to make a remark about foolish idle people and wise diligent ones when it occurred to him that he’d been completely idle for quite some time, and that it hadn’t been his fault. The unaccustomed questioning of his rather rigid beliefs accelerated the uncrusting process, and he was able to turn his head to see the odd looking cat approaching, but unable to move his arm quickly enough to stop it spraying him with piss.

                  You have no idea how long I’ve been holding that, said the cat, somewhat telepathically.

                  A loud gravelly sounding laugh echoed across the pond, coming from the direction of the green man plaque on the wall. The unfamiliar cackle drew Clove out from the kitchen to see who it was.

                  “I have so much to say!” the green man cleared his throat, spitting out some moss that had become stuck between his teeth, “And I’ve waited so long to say it! You there, you! Don’t go away!” The green man immediately realized his predicament. He had a face but no body. He would have to wait until an audience came to him to listen.

                  But Clove was interested and inched closer. She had just been researching Dionysus for a project; what a fortuitous coincidence that a replica of him had come to life. She would be able to interview him for her report. She’d just read that “It is perhaps an indication of the Green Man’s power as an archetype that he was able to transfer so seamlessly from one culture and one set of beliefs to another.”

                  This was exactly the angle she was after.

                  #4007
                  F LoveF Love
                  Participant

                    “Smart ass,” whispered Clove, rolling her eyes at Prune.

                    #4006

                    In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                    Balzac had flunked again. He was sure of it.
                    Geography test this time. The test was tricky, like every time Medlik had made sure of it, that old uptight Master.
                    Actually, why it was called geography was up to anybody’s guess. There wasn’t anything to prepare the test, they’d been notified at the last minute.
                    And every tool could be used. In short, cheating was allowed, but he’d figured out soon enough, pretty useless.
                    They were given a news extract, talking about a carbonite deposit found in the earth’s crust that would solve all of humanity’s woes about clean air and clean water.
                    The test question was basically. What do you make of it?

                    #4004

                    In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                    ÉricÉric
                    Keymaster

                      self dust heart once silly rat leader
                      missed dream robot intelligence
                      bending listen house thought
                      jar mean secret liked full clean

                      #4001
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        “Back so soon?” inquired Liz, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, I say! Had too much to drink, have we?”

                        Finnley lurched into the wall, knocking a picture of Big Ben onto the sideboard, where it landed on the domed carriage clock, which started to chime hashazardly.

                        (Liz couldn’t help chortling at the spelling mistake, if not the irony)

                        Trying to regain her balance, Finnley ricocheted into the sofa, ending up face down on top of a pile of old Chisp magazines.

                        “I was enjoying a quiet night thread sitting alone, as a matter of fact,” Liz sighed. “ I’ll ring the bell and have someone come and remove you. Before you pass out, have we got any more staff, do you know? Who shall I call?”

                        #3999
                        F LoveF Love
                        Participant

                          “Crap party,” said Finnley returning to the thread.

                          #3997
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            “Cheer up, old bean,” Liz said kindly, reading his mind. “There’s a rendezvous at the Absinthe Cafe soon. Aunt Idle (and I do often wonder why you all insist on calling her Dido; it’s nothing more than a deliberate confusion tactic for the poor reader) will teleport over. It’s a fancy dress party, and my suggestion Godfrey is that you dress up as a particularly dashing superhero, in tights. She won’t be able to take her eyes off you.”

                            #3996
                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on July 01, 2010. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org

                              Dear FutureMe,
                              The Absinthe Cafe
                              Dawn and Mark had a bottle of Absinthe (the proper stuff with the WORMwood in
                              it, which is illegal in France) but forgot to bring it. Wandering around at
                              some point, we chanced upon a cafe called Absinthe. Sitting on the terrace, the
                              waitress came up and looked right at me and said “Oh you are booked to come here
                              tomorrow night!” and then said “Forget I said that”. Naturally that got our
                              attention. After we left Dawn spotted a kid with 2016 on the back of his T
                              shirt. We asked Arkandin about it and we have a concurrent group focus that does
                              meet in that cafe in 2016, including Britta. Dawn’s name is Isabelle Spencer,
                              Jib’s is Jennifer….
                              The Worm & The Suitcase
                              I borrowed Rachel’s big red suitcase for the trip and stuck a Time Bridgers
                              sticker on it, and joked before I left about the case disappearing to 2163. I
                              had an impulse to take a fig tree sapling for Eric and Jib, which did survive
                              the trip although it looked a little shocked at first. As Eric was repotting
                              it, we noticed a worm in the soil, and I said, Well, if the fig tree dies at
                              least you have the worm.
                              At Balzacs house on a bench in the garden there was a magazine lying there open
                              to an ad for Spain, which said “If you lose your suitcase it would be the best
                              thing because you would have to stay”.
                              Later we asked Arkandin and he said that there was something from the future
                              inserted into my suitcase. I went all through it wondering what it could be,
                              and then a couple of days ago Eric said that it was the WORM! because of the
                              WORMwood absinthe syncs, and worm hole etc. I just had a chat with Franci who
                              had a big worm sync a couple of days ago, she particularly noticed a very big
                              worm outside the second hand shop, and noted that she hadn’t seen a worm in ages
                              ~ which is also a sync, because there was a big second hand clothes shop next to
                              Dawn and Mark’s hotel that I went into looking for a bowler hat.
                              Arkandin said, by the way, that Jane did forget to mention the bowler hats in
                              OS7, those two guys on the balcony were indeed wearing bowler hats, and that
                              they were the same guys that were in my bedroom in the dream I had prior to
                              finding the Seth stuff ~ Elias and Patel.
                              Eric replied:

                              And another Time Bridger thing; a while ago, Jib and I had fun planting some TB stickers at random places in Paris (and some on a wooden gate at Jib’s hometown).
                              Those in Paris I remember were one at the waiting room of a big tech department store, and another on the huge “Bateaux Mouches” sign on the Pont de l’Alma (bridge, the one of Lady D. where there is a gilded replica of Lady Liberty’s flame).
                              I think there are pics of that on Jib’s or my flickr account somewhere.
                              When we were walking past this spot, Jib suddenly remembered the TB sticker — meanwhile, the sign which was quite clean before had been written all over, and had other stickers everywhere. We wondered whether it was still here, and there it was! It’s been something like 2 years… Kind of amazing to think it’s still there, and imagine all the people that may have seen it since!
                              ~~~~

                              The Flights

                              I wasn’t all that keen on flying and procrastinated for ages about the trip. I
                              flew with EASYjet, so it was nice to see the word EASY everywhere. I got on the
                              plane to find that they don’t allocate seats, and chose a seat right at the
                              front on the left. The head flight attendant was extremely playful for the
                              whole flight, constantly cracking up laughing and teasing the other flight
                              attendants, who would poke him and make him laugh during announcements so that
                              he kept having to put the phone down while he laughed. I spent the whole flight
                              laughing and catching his mischeivously twinking eye.
                              I asked Arkandin about him and he said his energy was superimposed. I got on
                              the flight to come home and was met on the plane by the same guy! I said
                              HELLO! It’s YOU again! Can I sit in the same seat and are you going to make me
                              laugh again” and he actually moved the person that was in my seat and said I
                              could sit there. Then he asked me about my book (about magic and Napolean). He
                              also said that all his flights all week had been delayed except the two that I
                              was on. He wanted to give me a card for frequent flyers but I told him I
                              usually flew without planes ~ that cracked him up ;))
                              ~~~

                              The Dream Bean

                              Eric cracked open a special big African bean that is supposed to enhance
                              dreams/lucidity so we all had a bit of it. The second night I remembered a
                              dream and it was a wonderful one.
                              (Coincidentally, on the flight home I read a few pages of my book and it just
                              happened to be about the council of five dragons and misuse of magical beans)
                              In the dream I had a companion with magical powers, who I presumed was Jib but
                              it was myself actually. It was a long adventure dream of being chased and
                              various adventures across the countryside, but there was no stress, it was all
                              great fun. Everytime things got a bit too close in the dream, I’d hold onto my
                              friend with magical powers, and we would elevate above the “adventure” and drop
                              down in another location out of immediate danger ~ although we were never
                              outside of the adventure, so to speak. At one point I wondered why my magical
                              freind didn’t just elevate us right up high and out of it completely, and
                              realized that we were in the adventure game on purpose for the fun of it, so why
                              would we remove ourselves completely from the adventure game.
                              In the dream I remember we were heading for Holland at one point, and then the
                              last part we were safely heading for Turkey…..
                              The other dream snapshot was “we are all working together on roof tiles” and
                              Arkandin had some interesting stuff to say about that one.
                              ~~~

                              There were alot of vampire imagery incidents starting with me asking Eric if he
                              slept in his garden tool box at night, and then the guy who shot out of a door
                              right next to Jib and Eric’s, in a bright orange T shirt, carrying a cardboard
                              coffin. He stopped for me to take a photo (and Arkandin said it was a Patel pop
                              in); then while walking through the outdoor food market someone was chopping a
                              crate up and a perfect wooden stake flew across the floor and landed at my feet.
                              The next vampire sync was a shop opposite Dawn and Mark’s hotel with 3 coffins
                              in the window (I went back to take a pic of the cello actually, didn’t even
                              notice the coffins). Inside the shop was an EAU DE NIL MOTOR SCOOTER Share, can
                              you beleive it, and a mummy, a stuffed raven, and a row of (Tardis) Red phone
                              boxes.
                              I had a nightmare last night that I couldn’t find any of my (nine) dogs; the
                              only ones I could find were the dead ones.
                              ~~~~

                              Balzac’s House

                              The trip to Balzac’s house was interesting, although in somewhat unexpected
                              ways. (Arkandin was Balzac and I was the cook/housekeeper) The house didn’t
                              seem “right” somehow to Mark and I and we decided that was probably because
                              other than the desk there was no furniture in it. Mark saw a black cat that
                              nobody else saw that was an Arkandin pop in (panther essence animal), and Dawn
                              felt that he was sitting on a chair, and Mark sat on him. (Arkandin said yes he
                              did sit on him ;) The kitchen was being used as an office. Jib felt the house
                              was too small, and picked up on a focus of his that rented the other part of the
                              house. (The house was one storey high on the side we entered, and two storeys
                              high from the road below). There were two pop ins there apparently, one with
                              long hair which is a connection to my friend Joy who was part of that group
                              focus, and I can’t recall anything about the other one. Dawn was picking up
                              that Balzac wasn’t too happy, and I was remembering the part in Cousin Bette
                              that infuriated me when I read it, where he goes on and on about how disgusting
                              it is for servants to expect their wages when their “betters” are in dire
                              straits. Arkandin confirmed that I didn’t get my wages.
                              The garden was enchanting and had a couple of sphinx statues and a dead pigeon ~
                              as well as the magazine with the suitcase and Spain imagery. Mark signed the
                              guest book “brought the cook back” and I replied “no cooking smells this time”.

                              #3993

                              In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                stop, wanted lady!
                                year surely forgotten
                                simulation supposed voice keep secret mars love
                                masters managed usually
                                certainly eye start must top

                                #3992

                                In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  heart looking hope
                                  sometimes stories getting asked free
                                  home somehow
                                  face sight religious
                                  managed catch smile
                                  tried aliens
                                  barely

                                  #3991

                                  “There was one other thing, Your Majesty…”

                                  “Finnley, what on earth is the matter with you?” Interrupted Liz.

                                  “Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m going to a party in another story tonight, it’s Funley’s leaving do over on the Cakltown thread. It’s a fancy dress party. The theme is Hierarchy, and I’m practicing groveling.”

                                  “But it’s not your night off! You can’t go!”

                                  But it was too late. Finnley had already thread jumped.

                                  She’ll never be any good at groveling, that one. Far too big for her boots, sniffed Liz.

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