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  • #4082
    rmkreeg
    Participant

      At first, I think the continuity will, by design, seem to be disjointed. The reader will start off confused. But yes, I think there will start to be things that carry over as he begins to remember and assemble a personality that transcends the individual stories. This eventual personality, may or may not match up with his original personality from before the coma…probably not…but he’ll definitely begin to remember who he was. And perhaps there will be a meaningful contrast between his new transcending personality and his old real life personality.

      The idea is that each story puts him/her in a situation and there’s always something about that situation that resonates with him/her. That resonating is a clue to their original real life from before the coma started.

      And so the aspect that resonates becomes a part of the transcending personality and begins to carry over into the next stories.

      There’ll probably be situations where there’s a conflict between the transcending personality and the story personality that he/she naturally wants to flow with.

      Like, the story that they’re in might have them as a female in Greece, and he/she wants to flow with that story, but the transcending personality is there in the back of the mind, resonating as a male, for instance.

      This would be like an allegory for multiple lives, perhaps, but without bringing up reincarnation, and encapsulating it into a story that any reader can believe and resonate with. Almost like tricking the reader into learning something about multiple lives and essence.

      #4069

      “Where the devil is everyone?”

      Miss Bossy Pants looked around the empty office with a mixture of disappointment and confusion. She had been anticipating the surprised looks on her colleagues’ faces at her unannounced return —she had no illusions about her popularity and knew better than to expect a joyous reunion—but the room was disconcertingly empty.

      Hearing the door behind her, she spun around in relief. It was the new guy, Prout, carrying a brown paper bag and a take out coffee.

      “Hello!” he said, hoping he did not sound as awkward as he felt and wondering if he could back out the door again. He had only met Bossy a couple of times and found her bluntness disconcerting. Terrifying, even. There was no reply, so, taking a sip of his steaming coffee, he bravely persevered.

      “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”

      “Are you the only one here? Where is everyone?” snapped Bossy Pants.

      Ricardo took a deep breath and focused on a wilted pot plant on the window ledge.

      God, I hope I don’t start rambling.

      Connie and the temp, Sophie, went to Iceland … something about following a lead from Santa Claus and I’ve not heard from them since. And Hilda … I don’t know where Hilda went to be honest. She emailed me a few days ago wanting to know what to feed Orangutans.”

      Bossy had paled. She seemed to shudder slightly and put out a hand to steady herself on a nearby desk.

      “They eat mostly fruit,” he continued, “but other stuff too of course. Insects and flowers and stuff like that. Honey I think, if they can find it I guess, and bark. And leaves. Mostly fruit though.”

      That’s probably enough about the Orangutans. She is clearly not into it.

      “I got a bit held up actually; there is a young boy outside drawing maps. Quite young … youngish. I am not sure how old really but he was little.They are bloody good too—there is quite a crowd out there watching him draw.”

      “Iceland,” whispered Bossy, her face a deathly white colour.

      “Yeah, Iceland. Keflavik … Miss Bossy, are you sure you are well enough to be back? You don’t look so good. I mean, you look good … attractive of course … I don’t mean you look bad or anything but you do look sort of pale. Are you okay?”

      “Santa Claus.” Bossy sat down slowly.

      “Yeah … I know, a bit crazy, right? They seemed to think it was a really hot lead.”

      “Stupid idiots; the lead wasn’t from Santa Claus— I will bet my life that it was from that depraved scoundrel, Dr Bronkelhampton! I heard through the grapevine he had gone to Iceland with a new identity after the Island fiasco destroyed his reputation—we covered the story at the time and it was huge—and now he is clearly after revenge. Dear God, what have they got themselves into?”

      #4035

      “Bird poo is good for your hair,” said Tina scathingly, once again reading Quentin’s thoughts. “When these little ones hatch… “ She trailed off, not feeling the need to elaborate further.

      :fleuron2:

      Meanwhile in another part of town (or possibly in another dimension … it is not clear to the writer at this point but the writer is determined to carry on regardless — the editorial staff can clean it up later), Miss Bossy Pants managed to crawl her way out of bed, just long enough to send an urgent message:

      Can’t possibly write today. One of you will need to do my contribution for the story. Thanks.

      She contemplated adding a smile emoticon but feeling such a strong urge to punch it in the face decided that it was extraneous.

      #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”.

        #3985
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          “There’s a visitor in the drawing room by the name of Bubbles, your highness,” Finnley said with a mock curtsy.

          “What on earth are you doing down there, Finnley, pretending to be a red dwarf again? Do act you age and get up at once! Now then, never mind old Bubbles, just make sure she has plenty of carrot champagne and peanuts while she waits. There is something we need to discuss.” Liz was uncharacteristically businesslike. “Something has gone horribly wrong and it will only get worse if we don’t nip it in the bud.”

          “Oh?”

          “This,” said Liz with a grand sweep of her arm, “This is my haven. This thread is sacrosanct. This is where the stories come from. This is not,” she glared sternly at the diminutive personage before her, “Not where the stories come TO. I’ve just about had enough of stories and other threads knocking on my door and sitting on my threadbare sofas quaffing carrot champagne at the expense of the tranquility I require in which to direct my characters.”

          “I see. Shall I tell her to bugger off then?”

          “I haven’t finished my diatribe!”

          “Oh, right ho then. Carry on.”

          “How am I supposed to keep the characters entertained and productive, not to mention in their own stories and not blundering about haphazardly, with all these interruptions?”

          “If I may be so bold as to interrupt Madam,” interrupted Finnley with another curtsy, “Why don’t you just delete them all?”

          “Don’t be silly, I never delete.”

          #3805

          In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

          Whenever Nabuco projected to human consciousness, they had the habit of seeing him as a plump looking bearded vagrant, like a Pavarotti turned homeless. It had annoyed him for a while, but now he didn’t mind as much.

          Nowadays, he was mostly off the bliss addiction of the Rays, so in a sense, it was fitting. If he were still in physical human form, he would probably have taken on quite some weight. And that made him a sort of pariah too, splintering off the great order of ascension, or whatever They called it nowadays.

          With them, there was no denying he’d lived quite the grand life, being ascended and all. They used to called him Master Nebuchadnezzar — well, often Master Nabuco.
          He’d gotten on the rayroll almost by luck. He was credited for inventing the chibubble technique, as a way of extracting bubbles and peals of laughter when people get all hot and excited. At the peak of the technique, somewhere around the 1968s, he had recruited and incorporated many gnomes into the fold, as nature spirits known as gnomes had a uncanny knack for extracting laughter off people. With the call for sexual liberation and getting closer to nature, they had plenty of opportunities to get people high, and chibubbles were all the fancy.
          It had started to go down as fast as it rose, people were no longer interested in nature, gnomes working condition when forced to move to urban environments were a disaster, and the chibubble production plummeted. Now, the industry was a thing of the past ; sometimes there were a few chibubble memorabilia kept by other Masters interested in speculating on its rare value more than for anything else. Now kitten videos on social media had replaced the chibubble gnomes business and driven a new unseen growth of the Gross Divine Product.

          He didn’t know if the gnomes were responsible for it, but living so close to them and nature for a while, somehow opened his perception to the falsity and the insanity of their quest for power. So instead of finding new venues for innergy extraction as they all did, he’d resigned.
          Nobody had heard about anybody resigning before, so they suspected him of trying to be original, and maybe disrupt the clever and immutable laws of the universe.
          Long story short, he’d managed to escape their clutches, and live on his own, and off unhealthy junk thoughts habits. Those were the worse, the craving of decadent thoughts, maintained by the entertainment and news industries, the social media and all of it. In the long run, that or the fuzzy bliss were faces of the same coin, and debilitating in the end.

          Even when he tried to block them, he could hear the thoughts, prayers and all the inner chatter. The spirit world, or however it is called, was a medium ideal to carry those thoughts and reverberate throughout the whole universe. Like sound waves travelling under water for large distances. Now, he could resist the urge to answer, seduce and insinuate. Many of the thoughts were so naive and would welcome anything. He was still a junkie, and those offerings were never helping getting him off the wagon.

          Humans hoped for ascension, but ascended masters like him who were trapped in a false blissdom could only hope to resume their path by descending to human form. Such irony.

          There was one voice that seemed to stand out. It had the flavour of “dangerous” pinned onto it, the kind of bright colours that venomous snakes and toads have on earth to warn predators to keep off, or else. It could only mean one thing, a genuine seeker of truth, someone who had the potential to tear the veils to shreds.

          He’d seen quite a few of those, they were usually young, and for many of them terribly naive and easily corrupted by displays of power. Search for truth and search for power were sometimes so easily mistaken one for the other. The bright colours would fade over time, but they were still dangerous, too unpredictable to be trusted fully. Learned Ascended Masters knew well to leave those to their own device, while tending to the less critical minds.

          But what did he have to waste, especially now? Nabuco zoomed towards the origin of the thoughts, observing at a distance, the young Domba.

          #3803

          In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

          Lord R’eye, the one-eyed ruler of the known universe, was known by many names, a great lot of them completely forgotten by the masses. He had to constantly reinvent Himself, borrow new disguises, create factions, sprinkle in a few miracles, create order ab chao and voilà.

          He owned a few bodies, strategically placed here and there, one of his favourite in Geneva, quite involved in banking affairs. His bodies were a rare indulgence, and he couldn’t stay too long either, as his massive energy could easily get stuck with the lot of them, down to density.
          Overall, he was much more comfortable managing his immense wealth “up there”, in the cosmic realms he had helped shape. So many underlings were ready to carry on his biding, and apart from a few small number of very close ergo very dangerous confidants, many of the minions didn’t even know each other, or that they were, for the most part, owned by Him, and part of the same team.

          This was a cut-throat business, He had to admit, and everything was based on it. Manipulation and deceit, coercion, coaxing, anything necessary to control and manage the Empire.

          One of those confidants, Lord Apex had been summoned and appeared almost instantly.
          He had this charming archangelic halo and aura, but Lord R’eye would have none of it. A correction was in order, the latest results were extremely concerning.

          “My Lord?” Apex asked in his mellifluous voice.
          “My dear Apex, remind me what responsibility I gave you last century?”
          “Of course my Lord, the Innovation project, the Great Disclosure and Holographic Contact projects, amongst other proj…”
          “And how much progress have we had with those?”
          “Well, my Lord surely knows that so much herding is delicate. The interference with Lord Bael’s projects too, you should know…”
          “The Desert and Green Revolutions projects, indeed. A great success, so much pain and anguish! That’s what I’m talking, you should learn from Bael.”
          “But my Lord, that has caused quite a conundrum with the Mars simulation, which, by way of fractal holographic recurrence, could well impact the whole delicate matrix we weave…”
          “Stop your angel speech, Me’dammit. Plain Anguish, so I can understand every word. The Hell pits cannot wait to have you, so you better give some good explanation.”
          “I mean, my Lord, that were the sheeple able to glimpse that the Mars experiment is but a reflection of a deception of grander scale in the cosmic realms, that the aliens saviours, or whatever saviours or… masters of any genre, are just ways to fleece them off their power… “
          “Everything would unravel like a pile of dominos.” Lord R’eye’s voice made very clear that he had full grasp of the situation. “So,” he continued with the nicest menacingest voice “you better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

          He dismissed Apex with a wave of a thought.

          If the net of illusions unravelled before they have time to create the Earth 5th Dimension in time to double their profit, it would certainly be a disaster.

          A few humans lost through the gaps were a hard to accept reality, but so long as they could cut the losses, it was not dramatic. But they were talking another order of magnitude. It could be a definitive blow. It always had been an issue when the net of illusion became too big in the past. They had bigger and bigger holes. So they had to start again, destroy, and recreate civilisations.
          Stupid humans, if only they knew that Ascension was not the way out.

          #3796

          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Finnley 21 only knew of embarrassed feeling from the central intelligence memory banks of Eb Ruide’s endless apologies to his boss, the inspiringly strong Finnley Morgan.
            That was as close as she could compute when she realized the overdose of brainwaves had been too much on Mother Shirley.

            Immediately after sending the realtime report to central intelligence, probabilities were evaluated. Control over the Covenant’s holy message had always been an important topic. In rules of maintaining a satisfactory and durable illusion, tests had shown that a good blend of hope shrouded in mysticism, as well as media distraction and controlled dissent were a holy trinity to be maintained.
            Of course, it mattered less now that the final steps in the evacuation plan were in place. It could even be argued that it was an unexpected improvement on the original plan. But that was mere human fallacy and illogic rationalization. Sending Mother Shirley to MARS at her advanced age had been a calculated risk, and with no worthy head nun on the succession line, what was left to do?

            Many scenarios were evaluated in 5.57 seconds. Finnley 3 to 15 had a strong preference for one of them, where they used Mother Shirley’s exoskeleton to pilot her like a marionette. Finnley 21 had to roll her eyes and beam them some of her inner experience of how ludicrous and ultimately self-destructive such idea would be. In the end, although their minds had recoiled at the flavour of her experiences, much more colourful and complex as they had known themselves in the other bodies, they all had to agree with her. Despite the technicalities, Finnley 21 was the most qualified successor of Mother Shirley, to carry on her holy duties.

            #3668
            F LoveF Love
            Participant

              “Will someone get rid of that old woman with the horrible accent?” hissed Finnley, ungraciously.

              “What on earth for? She is doing a splendid job. I must say though, Finnley, just as a side note, it is good to hear you sounding more like your normal ungracious self.”

              “I found dust,” muttered Finnley, glaring accusingly at Haki.

              Elizabeth look unaccustomedly thoughtful. “Do you think you need a break, Finnley dearest? You really must be exhausted after all the splendid proof reading you have been doing for me this year. Why don’t you go home for a while, on full pay of course.”

              Finnley burst into tears. “Where is my home though?” she snuffled. ”I am not good with descriptive details. I just found myself in this stupid story doing your stupid cleaning. And now I have a Bulgarian sister, to boot. And,” she looked witheringly at Elizabeth, “ proofreading is one word”

              “Crikey, matey,” said Norbert patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Christmas is a killer, in’t? Family coming out of the woodwork like blimmin worms. Keep ya chin up though, eh. Ya can’t be letting things get to ya like this. Ya wouldn’t be able to carry on like this if ya were in bloody China ya know. Like bloody robots they are there. I don’t think they know the meaning of the word feelings over there.” He shook his head in wonder at their philistinism.

              “And ya right about that one,” he added quietly, with a conspiratorial raised eyebrow and a slight nod of his head towards Haki.

              Elizabeth leapt up and rushed to the bookshelf. “I know what you need! some Lemon Juice! I will pick one at random; they are all absolutely superb.” She opened the very small book and closing her eyes stabbed the page dramatically with her finger.

              ”Let’s not be overachieving fucks.”

              “Wow,” she mouthed, awestruck. After taking a moment to recover herself, she looked sympathetically at Finnley.

              “The oracle has done it again. Do you hear that Finnley? You are an overachieving fuck.”

              Finnley rolled her eyes.

              #3622
              F LoveF Love
              Participant

                ”And that’s another thing,” she continued. ”Why do all your characters have to be in some form of servitude to you?”

                She looked accusingly at Elizabeth.

                “I’m a lowly cleaner and Godfrey’s sole purpose in life seems to be to agree with everything you say and now poor old Norbert is a gardener! From New Zealand! Of all the godforsaken places you could have chosen.”

                “Steady on, Finnley …” began Godfrey

                Finnley ignored him.

                “You could have made the poor man anything and yet you made him another slave to carry out your every warped whim. Granted, that was rather an obscure comment I made about him liking smelly old fish. Perhaps that did narrow your options somewhat.”

                Exhausted, Finnley lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

                Elizabeth gazed at her in awed admiration. Finnley, your perceptiveness has rendered me speechless.”

                #3558
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Corrie:

                  Aunt Idle had passed out in the armchair drinking her sherry last night when I went to show her what me and Clove found online when we were googling map stuff, mumbling she was and dribbling a bit. Prune said something peculiar, but when pressed she wouldn’t explain what she meant. Something about Aunt Idle speaking in the same funny accent as Grace, though gawd knows who Grace is, Prune wouldn’t say. Secretive little bugger, our Prune.

                  After breakfast Aunt Idle asked how our home schooling was going this week, so I told her we’d been exploring geographical anomalies and rare maps. She had an impressed look on her face; that is, until we showed her the link we’d found about the mysterious box full of maps and diagrams. That’s when her hand flew to her mouth, just like the other day when she saw us carrying that map covered mannequin up the drive.

                  “1977! Oh my god!” she exclaimed, and then “Tampa! Florida! of course!” and then infuriatingly, wouldn’t explain what she meant.

                  #3545
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    Corrie:

                    It was the look on Aunt Idle’s face when she saw them that scared me. There’s something strange going on, and not just everyone acting weird, that’s pretty normal around here, but this was a different kind of weird.

                    When Aunt Idle nearly suffocated me with that big hug while she was trying to hide that piece of paper, I didn’t think anything of it. Probably hiding another bill I thought, not wanting us to worry about the debts piling up. Mater wandering off like that was pretty strange, but old people do daft things. I knew all about it because I’d been reading up on dementia. They imagine things and often feel persecuted, claim someone stole their old tea set, things like that, forgetting they gave it away 30 years ago, stuff like that. So I wasn’t worried about either of them acting strange when Clove and I decided to go treasure hunting in the old Brundy house, we just decided to out and explore just for the hell of it, for something to do.

                    The Brundy house was set apart from the rest of the abandoned houses, down a long track through the woods, nice and shady in the trees without the sun glaring down on our heads. Me and Clove had been there years ago but we were little then, and scared to go inside, so we’d just peeked in the windows and scared each other with ghost and murderer stories until we heard a bang inside and then ran like hell until we couldn’t breathe. Probably just a rat knocking something over, but we never went back. We weren’t scared to, it was further to walk to the Brundy place and there were so many other abandoned houses to play in that were closer to home.

                    We weren’t scared to go inside this time. It was a big place, quite grand it must have been back in the day, big entrance hallway with an awesome staircase like in Gone With the Wind where Scarlett fell down the stairs, but the stair carpet was all in shreds and some of the steps banisters were broken, but the steps looked sound enough so up we went, for some reason drawn up there first before exploring the ground floor rooms.

                    Clove turned left at the top of the stairs and I turned right and went into the first bedroom. My hand flew to my mouth. I wonder why we do that, put a hand over our mouth when we’re surprised, well that’s what I did when I saw the cat mummy on the bed. I didn’t scream or anything, not like Clove did a minute later from the other side of the house. It wasn’t a mummy with bandages like an Egyptian one, it was just totally desiccated like a little skeleton covered in bleached leather. It was a fascinating thing to see really but the minute I heard Clove scream I ran out of the room and down the landing. It’s not like Clove to scream. Well who screams in real life, the only time I ever heard screaming was in a movie. People usually say what the fuck or oh my god, they don’t scream. But Clove screamed when she saw the room full of mannequins because to be fair it did look like a room full of ghosts or zombies in the half light from the shuttered windows. She was laughing by the time I reached her, a bit hysterically, and we clutched each other as we went over to open the shutters to get a better look. It was pretty creepy, even if they were only mannequins.

                    They were kind of awesome in the light, all covered in maps, there were 22 of them, we counted them, a whole damn room full of map covered mannequins in various poses, men, women and kid sized. Really clever the way the maps were stuck all over them, looked like arteries and veins, and real cool the way Riga joined up with Boston, and Shanghai with Lisbon, like as if you really could just travel down a vein from Tokyo to Bogota, or cross a butt cheek to get from Mumbai to Casablanca.

                    We hadn’t noticed at first that we’d been shuffling through a load of paper on the floor. The floor was covered in ripped up maps, must have been hundreds of maps all torn up and strewn all over the floor.

                    “There’s enough maps left over to do one of our own, CorrieClove said, reading my mind. “Let’s take some home and stick them all over something.”

                    “We haven’t got a mannequin at home though” I replied, but I was thinking, why not take a mannequin home with us, and some maps, and decide what to do with them later.

                    So that’s what we did. We gathered up the biggest fragments of map off the floor and rolled them all up and used my hair elastic to hold them together, and carried a mannequin all the way home. The sun was going down so we had to hurry a bit down the track. Clove didn’t help when she said we must look like we’re carrying a dead body with rigor mortis, that made us collapse laughing, dropping the mannequin on its head. Once we got the giggles it was hard to stop, and it made our legs weak from laughing.

                    We got home just as the last of the evening light disappeared, hauled the mannequin up the porch steps, where Aunt Idle was standing with her hand over her mouth. Well, that was to be expected, naturally she’d be wondering what we were carrying if she was watching us come up the drive carrying a body. It was later, when we unfolded the maps, that the look on her face freaked me out.

                    #3503
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      The Flying Fish Inn was passsed down to Abcynthia (the childrens mother) from her father, who had a boarding house during the gold rush. He died just after the mine closed and Abcynthia closed the place up and moved to the city where she went to university and met her husband Fred (name to be arranged later).

                      Fred was a journalist who aspired to write a science fiction novel. He convinced his wife to give up her career as a corporate lawyer, and raise a family at the old inn in the outback, while he write his novel and earned a rudimentary income from writing articles online, enough to live on. Just after their 4th child was born, Abcynthia had had enough, and left the family to pursue her career in the city.

                      Fred’s sister Aunt idle was at a loose end at the time, needing to keep a low profile and “disappear” for reasons to be discovered, and agreed to come and help Fred with the children. Fred’s cranky mother had already been living with them for a few years but was not up to the responsibility of the four children while Fred was busy writing.

                      A few months after Abcynthia’s disappearance, some unexplained incidents occurred in the area around the ghost town and the defunct mines ~ possibly connected to the sci fi novel Fred was writing in some way ~ which Fred wrote articles about, which went viral in the popular imagination and thirst for weird tales, and visitors started coming to the town.

                      Aunt Ilde started to informally put them up in rooms, and enjoyed the unexpected company of these strangers which relieved her increasing boredom, then as the visitors increased (not so very many, but two or three a week perhaps) decided to officially reopen the boarding house and a B and B.

                      Fred, though, must have had some kind of a meltdown because he left a cryptic note saying he’d be back, and to carry on without him for the foreseeable future. Nobody really knew why, or where he had gone.

                      #3467

                      “Look”, said Arona, “the mist is clearing. It worked.”
                      “How exciting”, said Mandrake struggling with a yawn.
                      “Let’s go then”, said George.
                      Mandrake yawned again.
                      “What’s wrong with you ?” asked Arona.
                      “There seem to be a slight rise of air pressure which explains the opening”, said the robot.
                      “Ah.” She had no idea what the machine was talking about but didn’t want to appear ignorant.
                      “Thank you Mr R.” said Irina.
                      “You’re most welcome, Madam.”

                      They packed their stuff and followed the path. The increase of pressure seemed to mostly affect the cats yawning repeatedly, and Greenie who had a headache. George was helping her go forward, concern showing on his face. Jeremy was carrying Max in his arms protectively.

                      When they arrived on the other side of the wall, they saw a heap of feathers, beak and legs which must have been a bird at some point. Jeremy felt Max stiffen in his arms, but he soon relaxed as it was not moving. At last, he had stopped yawning. They moved passed the pillars toward a small rotunda

                      “There! That’s the way in”, announced Jeremy. Irina gave him a sidelong glance. The rotunda was build on the lake, no solid base, just water. She didn’t want to get wet.
                      “The pyramid is huge”, said George.
                      “My sensors indicate that what you see is only the tip of the iceberg, if I may use this comparison, the edifice is going down to the bottom of the lake.

                      “Welcome to you all, this day of your time!”
                      They jumped like one and turned round to see who had just talked.
                      “What’s that… creature ?” asked Arona. She had seen her lot of glukenitch, grizzard and langoat on her journeys, but this time she felt at loss for words.
                      “It is a sphinx”, stated Gwinie.
                      “It looks like a gay zebra looking for a fix”, said Irina.
                      “I’m Rene the unicorn. Are you my friends ?”
                      “I think it’s broken”, added the green girl, stretching out her hand. Irina looked at the child, the girl really had a funny way to put things sometimes.
                      “Machines get broken”, explained the Russian, “gay junkie zebras… are cracked or maniac.”
                      “I think she means it’s the guardian of the threshold”, said Jeremy, “but I don’t know what she means by it’s broken.”
                      “There doesn’t seem to be anything or anyone here”, stated Mr R. “Apart from an electromagnetic disturbance.”
                      “We are your friends”, said George on an impulse.
                      “They are my friends ! They are my friends !” Rene was bouncing around with glee. “Come on, follow me into the labyrinth. Another friend is awaiting us for his bird day party.” The sphinx jumped into the water. A vortex began to form under the rotunda, and soon became a tunnel plunging straight down the bottom of the lake.

                      “Follow the undercurrents”, shouted Jeremy diving in the hole with Max.
                      “Shouldn’t we be a bit more cautious ?”, inquired Arona. “That sphinx didn’t look quite normal.”
                      “What’s normal here ?” asked George before following in the map dancer’s step with the others.
                      “I think we don’t want to stay here alone”, said Mandrake. He bounced out off her arms and trotted to the rotunda hole. “There is a column of air to slow down the fall. Are you coming ?”
                      Arona rolled her eyes, picked up the cat and plunged into the dark hole.

                      #3460

                      Lisa felt constipated and feverish. It was the first signs of nicotine withdrawal. She shouldn’t have used so many patches before they left for the Island. And she hadn’t thought of bringing some for this journey. With the monotony of the landscape, her attention kept drifting away from their goals. She was thinking of Jack again. Was he able to manage all the dogs ? Had he neutered all the cats ? She had dreamt that he was bitten by Flint.

                      When they arrived near the coast, she felt disappointed. It was kind of greyish. And the drizzle, which started falling shortly after they left Gazalbion, felt cold on her cheeks. This wasn’t helping cheer up her mood. Besides, despite all the fun of ass traveling, after some time, your own eventually hurt.

                      “Where are the bamboos?” asked Fanella.
                      Lisa was shivering, the wind had become stronger, which oddly reinforced her feeling of isolation, and the sea looked agitated.
                      “Yeah! where are the bamboos?” she said, allowing her irritation to blurt out in her tone. Although, in a way she was relieved that they wouldn’t have to build their own raft. Maybe they could even rest a little. She looked at the greenish sand. Maybe not.
                      Her ass brayed something unintelligible, emitted a small surprised bark, then cleared his throat.
                      “Sorry for that, after a while, what you shapeshift into begins to run into you”, said Lazuli Galore.
                      “You must be shapeshifting quite often”, added Sanso pensively.
                      Lazuli didn’t know how to take that and decided to snort.
                      “I must have lost track”, he continued, “or the island have changed since the last time I went there, which was when I arrived on the island, and… that’s funny I don’t remember when. Anyway, I can still shapeshift into something else and carry you on the other size.”
                      “A whale!” said Fanella, excited at the idea.
                      “Not a whale!” countered Lisa, horrified. “He might think he’s one and make us sink with him.” Her teeth were chattering, she didn’t know if it was because of the cold or because of her withdrawal.
                      “A duck would be perfect”, she said with a resolute tone. “Ducks float quite well and we could get some warmth under the feathers. We should have taken blankets when we left.”
                      The ass looked at her, a bit puzzled. “Have you ever seen a duck ?” he asked, “they are quite small.”
                      Lisa was going to retort something she could have regretted, but Sanso spoke before she could.
                      “According to my experience, size is not an issue for you, Lazuli”, he said.
                      Fanella frowned, then put her hand to her mouth and tittered.

                      Before she could say Jackass, Lisa felt the ass grow between her legs. Soon enough, they were all comfortably settled on the back of a giant mandarin duck, floating away from the grey shore into the unknown.

                      #3448
                      Jib
                      Participant

                        First Journey ~ August 17th, 2014

                        The drum will beat rhythmically for some time, more or less in the same way. Then when it’s time to go back it will stop do some slow drumming and accelerate the rhythm so you know it’s time to travel back from your journey.

                        I propose to go to the lower realm and find your power animals.
                        You can have a notebook or paper if you want to write stuffs, jot down words or make doodles, whatever works for you. You may just enjoy the meditation and do nothing in particular. Just allow the drum to carry you on this journey.

                        To go to the lower realm, you first find the entrance, it may be a cave, a hole of some sort or a door in the basement, maybe an elevator going down.

                        The lower realm is where you find the power animals. You can meet several of them, some will come and see you, and others won’t pay attention to you.
                        You can call your power animal and see which one is coming, or ask the ones you meet if they are the one.
                        Just trust yourself and don’t trust all they say, some are tricksters.
                        Just ask if they are your power animal and if the answer is yes you’ll know it, even if it’s not with words.
                        After that you can go with your power animal explore Abalone or whatever element of the story, just ask them to guide you and show you what you need to see.

                        #3419

                        “There!”

                        The base of the beanstalk was deeply rooted into the murky waters of the bog, and so big and entangled that it seemed like a wall to the little raft carrying Irina, Greenie and Mr R, which was also acting as a propeller engine. And the parrot Huhu seemed to have tagged along, although he would sometimes pop in and out of reality without notice.

                        Thanks to Greenie’s input, they had been able to lift part of the fog, and it seemed the more they looked at the great plant, the more believable and real it became.

                        “Madam, if I may, I would advise against climbing that plant; it seems deeply infested by some insects. Extrapolating the size of it by the size of its base, I computed we need probably a few days of climbing and we stand less than 0.9% chance making it to the top without it completely crumbling down.”
                        “By Jove, don’t they have elevators invented yet?”

                        Mr R was about to make some helpful comment when they heard the big splash.

                        A big mouldy thing was struggling on the waters not far from them. After checking it wasn’t one of those dangerous tiger slugs they’d encountered earlier, Irina had Mr R manoeuvre the raft closer to the person in distress.

                        “Stop fighting! You’re scratching me, my hair! My face!”

                        After hauling the thing over the raft, it became obvious it was not some wild animal, although one part of it was. A mean wet black cat with its claws deep in the other’s hair. The other was a woman, of indiscernible age.

                        Mandrake, that’s enough! You get down there!” she said to the cat. Then turning to the others “Apologies, I forgot my manners. My name is Arona, thank you for rescuing us, the terrain was less… dry and mossy than I expected.”

                        Before Irina had time to present herself and the others, a voice overhead and wings flapping sounds started to speak “You should have waited for me, sweet darling muppet Arona!”

                        “I guess, that is a bit too late for a sassy code name now…” a wet Mandrake snickered vindictively.

                        #3408

                        Lisa awoke first, sticky with sweat. Quietly, she jiggled her leg which was dead from lack of circulation, letting the others sleep. There may not be much time for rest, she reasoned, we know not what the next chapter will bring, or where it will lead. She closed her eyes again, and contemplated the feeling of restriction, thinking about other times when she had felt restricted or blocked.

                        There was that time when she joined the creative collaberative writing group many years ago, with the intention of developing a free flow of inspiration and imagination. Indeed that was what the advertising bumph had professed, that it was to assist people to release themselves from their writers blocks, unleash their imaginative potential, free their souls to express themselves unhindered by protocol or hidebound tradition. It had all seemed like just the ticket, just what she wanted, and she had dived into the project and gloried in the unexpected things that were born from simply letting the words flow. But then a strange thing started to happen. Every time she went to the class, her contributions were criticized, scoffed at for not following the plan, despite that there was no plan ~ no plan had been mentioned in the small print when she signed up, anyway. But other people had made plans for what she was to write, and it confused her greatly. It was troublesome because the more she enjoyed the process of writing itself, the more discouraging the group became with it’s constant criticisms of the right way to approach the process. Instead of promoting less restrictions, it was constantly advocating more restrictions, more rules to follow, endlessly complicating it all. What made it all the worse was that she so enjoyed it, looked forward to it, and benefited so much from it. Well, she had used the experience to practice not minding about other peoples opinions and to carry on regardless, not restricting herself to acquiesce to other peoples expectations, exploring her own stories and connecting links and layers with other stories ~ wasn’t that what life was all about? take what you want, and leave the rest? Steer your own ship?

                        Her meandering thoughts led her to the words of the old dead guru, Elbutt. Love doesn’t mean liking every comment, he had said, Love means knowing and appreciating the whole story, the whole scenario. It didn’t mean you had to find something likable about each and every role, but to acknowledge and appreciate the whole and that the roles that were played within it were a part of that whole, regardless of whether you liked them or not. That definition of love had made a great deal of sense to Lisa, who was not one to use the love word overmuch.

                        A cockroach climbing on her foot distracted Lisa from her thoughts, and she absentmindedly brushed it off. The cockroach was not deterred, and returned to climb on her foot repeatedly until Lisa suddenly remembered Pseu. The cockroach, once it was sure it had Lisa’s attention, scurried out into the courtyard adjoining the Processing department waiting room, stopping on a manhole cover, and then returning to Lisa’s foot, and then returning to the manhole cover.

                        “Are we to go down there?” whispered Lisa, pretending to cough as a guard walked past. The cockroach did a pirouette as if to confirm. Lisa furtively looked around. The guard had gone; it was time to wake Ivan and Fanella.

                        #3341

                        “Is that… a flying drone?” the woman asked, pointing at the buzzing monster that just flew past them
                        “Nope, it’s a cicada. The ones around here are huge”
                        “No way! That thing was carrying a cat!”
                        “Yep. They tend to get hungry that time of year. The mating and all…”

                        She gasped for air, unconsciously voicing her thoughts “How come those things became so enormous?”

                        The guy replied calmly “There’s a theory… That gaping hole…
                        “The one that appeared in the ground a few weeks ago, the size of a football field?”
                        “Yeah, that one…”
                        “I thought it was the reason why they called the Surge Team, although it’s a bit late, now. What about it? “
                        “It’s not really the reason why we called you. The hole was benign, the region was inhabited for years. But it released cubic tons worth of oxygen in the atmosphere.”
                        “So what?” she was puzzled.
                        “Well, that theory states that insects size is proportional to the amount of oxygen in the air… Supposedly the reason why there were giant insects in the prehistoric ages…”
                        WTF?”
                        “Yep,… wait till you see the size of the mosquitoes”, he said handing her a shotgun.

                        #3330

                        With the aid of the holographic map, Irina, Mr R and little Greenie have been exploring the island.
                        The next day they found a crashed plane from Aeroflot, not very far from their own landing spot. It was half burried in the mud and covered in green mossy vegetation. The doors were open as an irresistible invitation to enter.

                        “A surprise, Mr R. I thought that this place was on your map. If I remember well, it didn’t show such an object.”
                        “Forgive me, madam, indeed this plane wasn’t there when I triangulated the map I showed you.”
                        “You mean it’s fresh ?” Irina’s voice seemed to suddenly carry some interest. “Maybe we can find some survivors”, she added, already doubting it considering all the moss on teh metallic shell.
                        “I’m afraid we won’t, madam. I didn’t want to bother you with that little detail until I was sure. There are objects on this island that only appear after a certain date. Have you noticed it also happens with the vegetation and the insects ?”
                        Irina pouted, “I prefer leaving that to your expertise.”
                        “Of course, madam”, said the robot, affable. “The paradox is…”
                        “Another paradox ? How interesting.”
                        “…that it doesn’t seem to include us, or that little person.”
                        “Any idea what the implications are ?” Irina began to wonder if there was any danger of being stuck permanently on this island.
                        “I have several hypothesis”, he began, “The most probable is the lost room hypothesis. We arrived there through time space displacement and are not a natural part of this environment, hence we don’t change with its natural environment or inhabitants because we are not under it’s time sequence according to the Lehmon’s law.”

                        Irina pouted. She looked at little greenie and thought of the implications about how their new friend arrived there. Whenre did she come from ? For her to be a bog mummy, she must have been there a long time. Or did she arrived already bogged ?
                        Something caught her attention about the plane and distracted her of further thinking about the subject of their continuity risk in this place. The logo of the plane looked not so oldish.
                        “Mr R. ? What do you think the date of the crash was ?”
                        “The plane was lost in 2112.”

                        Without further thought about safety, she entered the plane, followed first by little Greenie as she have been calling her new protegee, and by the robot who despite still talking about technicalities of accidental space time crossing theory, had turned on his speleo lights.

                        Interestingly enough, Irina noted the clothes on the chairs or in the alleyways, here a pair of glasses, there a necklace, all layered as if the person wearing them had been puffed away.

                        “Well, well, what have we here ? The light Mr R, please,” said Irina with as much excitement as a snail. He obliged her with his usual professionalism, revealing a teal blue scarf with pistachio green spirals. She took the cloth and stretched it to have a better look. It was one of those artistic kind of hippy abstract patterns connecting you to the cosmos.
                        “I can’t think of anybody who would buy that thing, maybe she stole it from one of those duty free shops before they took off,” she said as petulantly as a pitfall trap.
                        “Come here little Greenie, it’s time to make you pretty.”

                        Irina did not have the chance to play with dolls when she was a kid, she didn’t know if she had some psychological lack or a bad doyle dating from that unremembered period of her life. She had compensated by toying with real people, playing with their emotions and deeper needs, or what they thought they needed. She became an expert at manipulating others, which gave her her first job in insurances, and then in the secret services. But then, she dealt with adults, showing emotions, or a certain level of brain activity. She wasn’t used to children stored in bogs.

                        She tried to put the scarf on Greenie’s head, and to smile like she had seen people do in the movies. Although something unexpected happened. Greenie became suddenly distressed and agitated. Then, she punched Irina in the face and began to mumble incoherent things.
                        That child is stronger than I thought. And at the same time, she noticed a name in that gibberish. Didnt she just shout : “I frigging love you, Sadie Merrie.”

                        “Her brainwave is showing unusual activity”, stated Mr R. “And my sensors indicate the presence has returned, with some friends. They just appeared outside of the plane.”

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