Search Results for 'focus'

When Phoebe had recovered all her memories she’d felt particularly annoyed at the Baron snatching her prize from her.
So far, that crystal skulls quest had been only a disaster. She’d been warned, but the temptation had been too great for her.

Now, she wanted to get back as soon as possible (which was her nicest way of saying “NOW”) to her dimensional interstitial home —that place that uninformed people would have called her evil lair, but that she preferred to think of as her little cottage.

However, to be able to travel through interdimensional puddles would have required to gain some speed, and without something like a tuned motorbike, it wouldn’t be easy nor practical. She hadn’t got that much time to spend on recreating her tools from scratch.
Brilliant as she were, it would still have required at least a few weeks, and the days she’d spent at this place had already been far too much to her taste for her to suffer one more —handcuffs entertainment notwithstanding.

Her hopes were high that Vincentius, her talking parrot would find her and bring her the key that was needed.

Then she would focus on her next quest. The artifacts of Rumbold the Pale, the famous Byzantine architect from the Renaissance.

The newly deceased Shar and Gor…

“Shouldn’t he say something less grim you think?”
“I definitely agree my dear Shar”
“Something like in-ceased, or up-ceased… We’re ascended after all!”
“I’m not so sure it sounds better, but…”

Well, them being up-ceased, involved a new challenge for the writer(s) of this story, as the two blusterously boisterous ladies were in a desperate move to attempt sending communication to the objective world —officially to discover the extent of their influence. Their new-found access to the collective subconscious made them all the more a trouble for the writer(s).

Anyway, as we speak, Shar and Glor, were… or are actually trying to influence some characters and hence co-authors of this work of fiction to test their own ability to manipulate some of these individuals.

So far the extent of their experiments had fared tepid results.

“OK. Let’s try with these two. I’m beaming something down to them!”

To which, moments and some non-physical sweating on Glor’s brow later, one of the two subjects of this experiment (the blond one) blurted out without knowing from where it came: “Spiggot on the spike freak, Lingenburg Dash”

“What the hell was that Glor?”
“Good Lord, I don’t have any idea!”
“What was it supposed to be then!?”
“I just beamed them ‘Speaking now without mike – leap if you ain’t dead’!”
“Good grief… Those two might as well be hopeless…”

Of course, unbeknown to them, in other potential realities, what she really beamed to them was entirely different; something like ‘Speaking now – dead to the living – leap and bound if you catch’… Subsequently, Ann’s catch was in fact an indication of great disposition to tune into more than one probabilities at a time, the benefits of which were lost to the poor dabbling souls.

But this point notwithstanding, as they were speaking, another potential just appeared at the horizon. A woman named Yoland, with an improbable ability to express strings of thoughts inspired from above (anywhere that ‘above’ might be) without much distortion.

“Have to tread carefully with that one, Glor”
“Yes, I reckon dear…”
“We could even manage to fully channel her body, she seems a perfect candidate!” Sharon would have rubbed her hands with glee if she’d had hands still.
“Innit a bore though that she would ask for such grand truths…”
“Not to worry, we’ll invent them as we walk. I’ve even got an idea for session one with her: the great cluster of Mamarose of energy essential oils.”

“Well, you’re not going to make Franlise believe you outdid yourself in Continuity Course by stringing a slew of comments all made by yourself in less than an hour darling” Godfrey said Ann, wishing he would have briefed her more about being an infallible agent-double for the Fellowship…

“And there are risks you know” he said lowering his voice “if they unmask you, they may do something dreadful, perhaps even go as far as a character annihilation…”
“Sometimes I fear you take our reality just too lightly” Godfrey continued with a misery look on his face. “If you really want to bring down the Fellowship, you got to be more cautious to first understand how they work.”

Godfrey didn’t know why, but it suddenly felt as though all the subtleties of the dangers involved in this mission somewhat (if not completely) eluded the befuddled Ann.

Becky was liking her dancing courses; there was this funny guy with an outrageously bright canary yellow shirt and a funny accent who taught them some Asian-based moves last time, and she’d been puzzled for awhile, frozen in her tracks and speechless for a moment (which didn’t often occur), as the guy was so weird and yet serious looking that she didn’t know if she should laugh hysterically at his preposterous wiggling butt moves, or keep serious like the others.
That’s where she noticed a girl in the class. Like her, she was lost in wonderment while all of the others where respectfully following the teacher’s movements with a polite straight face.

As she was feeling bubbles of hysterical laughter desperately struggling to burst at the surface, she quickly exited the classroom, only to find that the other girl was there too.

“Ahaha, is he some sort of wacko or what?” Becky couldn’t help but laugh even if the other one seemed affected somehow, yet not indifferent to the humour of the situation.
“Bloody oath, yeah… Madder than Almad this one”
“You’re not from here are you?” Becky asked, noticing a delicious variation of British accent in the girl’s voice.
“No, from New Zealand. Name’s Tina, Tina Prout. Well you can forget the last name anyway, I’m going to change that.”
“Delighted, I’m Becky Vane. Would you fancy some vegemite on toast?”
“Sure, let’s get out of here quickly.”
“Toot toot! School’s out!… Mmm, looks like it’s ‘pissing down’ outside… Is that how you say in Kiwi?”

It all came as a surprise to them. At first, they didn’t want to believe the “others” telling them they were dead. Glor went there first, then Shar shortly after. Apparently some side effects of the beauty treatments they’d taken during their trip in the mysterious island of Tikfijikoo.
They started to believe it when they witnessed their own burial ceremonies. Was a bit strange at first, but soon they couldn’t help but gossip about their friends outfits and hairdos. Then all of a sudden, it was funny! They could go anywhere in the blink of an eye, spy on everyone, and get a good laugh together —and not with just any bloody disincarnate ascended being.

— Shar?
— What Glor?
— What we’re going to do now?
— I think whatever they said about it, I quite liked the island. Perhaps we can pop-in there, have a good party with lemurs, especially now that everybody’s been deserting it.
— Oh yes, and let’s get find that doctor, scare him outta his wits force him make beauty treatments for us!
— Now that’s talking lady!

“Believe it or not, it suddenly seems like the shifting symphony makes more sense than the ninth (and Beethoven doesn’t make you dumb), if you see my drift…”
“I could, if you’d stop talking in riddles” Lavender told Harvey with but the slightest hint of exasperation in her otherwise perfectly adorable soft and beautiful voice.

“I don’t even know what I’m talking about actually, it’s like I’m channeling some deranged poet”
“Yeah, that or being taken over by aliens …” 

“You know, I miss a sense of continuity… When I can’t follow the leaping frog in at least a pattern that makes sense, I gradually loose all interest. At least if I know the frog is going that way to look for tasty maggots, or that other way to lay a few eggs, or that other way to mate with psychotropic toads, I can hop or fly along… “
Lavender smiled a lovely smile.

“There it’s like a frog without purpose; it’s running in all directions, keep changing colours like a chameleon, and no matter how I try, I can’t figure the simplest pattern.”
“Maybe you should ask your super computer floogle ?”
“Yeah… it would tell me that figures without a pattern are called irrational or even transcendent… Not that it would help me in the least. Usually, when you can’t find a pattern, it’s because you don’t use the proper decomposition.”
“You want to dissect the poor frog?”
“No… Not even sure why I bother with the frog at all… It can do what it wants in the pond after all…”

“Well, it’s a fiction, she could be anywhere. That and if you stopped changing the facts and names for a moment, you’d be able to knit them together into new understandings.”

Charmille was knitting while answering to impatient young Becky who for all of the birds’ chatter in the apartment couldn’t really concentrate on her schoolwork, and had only one thought in mind (more insistent than the fleeting thousands other ones that is): she wanted to go outside immerse herself in the helter skelter of New York City.

“And why should I care!” Becky was about to start another tirade of self-righteous indignation at the failure to recognize her brilliance when she stopped herself in her tracks. She was suddenly amazed at the intricacy of the pattern Charmille was creating with two simple sticks and the many colourful threads in her black and white box. That was an art in itself, and Becky wasn’t impervious to art, quite the contrary. She could spot art in the slightest and singlest stroke of graffiti on the walls of the City. She could even see them dancing endless farandoles in front of her eyes. She was perhaps the only one she knew who was able to see that, but what her aunt was doing was very much like it.
Sometimes, she’d had people laugh at her when she was younger. She was telling them about her vivid dreams, that she’d spent hours in one dream looking at a single napkin, how soft it was, how superbly almost real it was —even if that was just a dream napkin— while, according to others, she could have done more “lofty” things instead —like go and see ascended masters.

“But I like movement! I don’t want to be stuck in slimy facts!”
“Well dear, you should know that… wherever you are, there you are. Even if wherever is elsewhere.”

The cryptic statement made by the poised lady somehow struck a cord. She wanted to disguise facts into fictions, or fiction as facts, but any way she was going, she was still struggling with herself, the essence at her core. It didn’t matter if she wanted to have the needle jump to another loop (and get out of that particular loop) because it was all part of the same cloth she was creating. It suddenly gave her much to ponder…

Sha had been more enduring than Glo, that was hardly a surprise, but as much as it pained him to say, he had to proclaim their official death. Obituaries wasn’t his forte, and the fact they were plants notwithstanding, it wasn’t making things much easier.
At least, the ginger root had made new leaves like the tiny palm tree. He was starting to believe plants didn’t want to be around.

“Light will come, can you see it?” Yurick smiled as he was taking note of the latest random quote at the exact same moment his new boss was telling him “for once I’m not asking you to work from the depths of the mine” referring to his past few days of relatively uninspiring work mining for information in unformed sheets of data.
Light indeed was shining from the window in his back, reflecting the blue-sky vista on the shining screen of the laptop. Perhaps it was his friend Finn’s way of reminding him to spread to his colleagues the riches from the ore body of quotes of the illustrious Chinese philosopher Liu Meng.
He wasn’t too sure though they would be too receptive. Time would tell. At least he’d noticed an Abyssinian cat figurine on top of one of his collegues’ computer. The cats were visibly coming soon.

When Franlise reemerged from the building, it was almost dark, and Godfrey was starting to think that after his twenty-seventh drink, he might as well come back home unless he wanted to sleep on the counter.
Curiously he noticed, she wasn’t heading towards home, but she was going to the subway, en route to the red district.

That inner lovely Franlise could compromise herself in such a dreadful place was beyond his understanding… well, probably after the twenty first drink, most of reality was now far beyond understanding anyway.
Perhaps she was doing some research work?

“ Georges, I think Franlise is playing again with the script to sexy it up.”
“What do you say precious? Have some grogonut juice”
“I don’t know… Did I mention anything about handcuffs? My head is in a fog right now about all these details…”

“Now would you believe you were actually worried for her?” she told Georges, raising from the sand of the Kandulim where they were doing some people remote-gazing.
“Well, for a moment I was, and you know that Salome. Even if we have not followed the same path, ours have crossed a few times, and I’m grateful for what she taught me in the beginning.”
“I know, although I never really got that part of her… well other than from your experiences I mean.”
“She even starts to remember her parrot, that was quite unexpected.”
“ Do you believe she’ll be able to travel out of that other dimension easily?”
“I don’t know… After that bravado escape from the Baron’s submarine, and the rough sea, I supposed she would need more time to recover and bring herself together, but she seems to have taken care of that in an interesting manner.”
“Look! Ahahaha”
“What?”
“Did you notice she stole the poor guy’s cufflinks! She’s so mean ahahah, she never got past those magpie’s instincts”

“Don’t be silly Phoebe” a voice whispered in Jane’s ear in between a few copious sneezing.

Jane didn’t really know why, but suddenly the whole scene about Mark leaving her became essentially a farce. She could feel some sort of burlesque in that whole event that would have been difficult to explain. As though she would never have really cared for the man, or any other man in the world to provide for herself.

She was starting to feel different. She could feel a strong assurance building up, and even her body started to feel different.
Still, she couldn’t tell who she was; there was still that dark hazy cloud the shadow of which was cast over her memories, but it wasn’t from her memories that this sudden surge of power was coming. It was coming from deeper inside; the very core of her being, and it was making her different.

She reached for the pocket mirror in her bag to apply a fresh layer of make-up on her plump cheeks and blue eyes.
She didn’t notice the differences right away. One sometimes gets caught in the repetitiveness of usual and mundane actions and really forgets to see. And of course, the mirror’s size and angle was preventing her to see anything but her eyes if she didn’t think to use it differently. But her eyes were now different; not deep blue as before but a subtle shade of ash blue with hints of violet.
And then… She noticed the wrinkles. The plump cheeks had left place to a thinner face. Strangely, she found it even prettier.
And as she expressed this appreciation of her new features, she noticed that her blond mane was now a little more greyish.

She knew it wasn’t aging, and no she wasn’t delusional. She didn’t remember her name, but apparently she knew how to shape-shift.
Would it make her quest to remember her identity more difficult? She couldn’t have told, but she knew that something in her never forgot a single bit of her whole self.
That new self she was now who felt more like her real self than “Jane” needed a more adequate name.
Phoebe definitely had a ring to it that seemed appropriate.

Santiago, Chile, May 2020

For the last past years, Becky now a pretty young teenager had been traveling from one school to another to pursue her artistic aspiration, but more so to discover as many places as possible. Schools were a necessary evil, for as long as she was too young to choose without her father’s consent, but at least she could choose which one she wanted to go to.
Although she barely remembered it now, she already did a fair deal of traveling out of the body when she was younger, helping her to map out the places and order in which she wanted to see them later. All of that subjective programming of sorts was now extremely helpful to her forgetful nature, as all she needed do was to trust her impulses to go here and there.
She would then magically find a distant relative who had been lost in the far ends of the family tree, or a friend of a friend who would accept to host her or recommend her to a friend. From there, her open nature and smiles did the rest to win them over.

In a month from now, she would be eighteen, and she wanted to go somewhere else, perhaps settle down for a little while. She had taken a world map and thrown a few coloured pins to let randomness choose for her, as she trusted it was her proper way of essence, so to speak. To her surprise, none of the pins seemed to stick but a single one in the vicinity of New York. America wasn’t her natural choice of predilection, but she knew she could trust the random flow of events. And to top that, she knew her aunt Charmille was living there. It would be easy then.

Charmille was the elder sister of Sabine Baina N’Diaye, Becky’s mother and first wife of Dan. She was a middle-aged eccentric and cheerful lady, who had never married, proudly saying that it was what had kept her young at heart. She was living in Brooklyn with a dozen birds twittering all day, and a few cats and other creatures the neighbours would give her to care for while they were away.

When she learnt that her niece would come here for three months, she first thought that it was a darn long time to be nice to anybody. But then she smiled and went preparing the spare room and brush the cats’ hair off the sheets.

“Glor…”
“What dear?”
“Glor, ain’t you bored silly in that cottage?”
“Well Sha, now that our Joe and ‘arry are gone fishin’ all day… and thinking of our glorious days on that island…”
“Tell no more! I was thinking of that too… Would be good to have another beauty treatment for sure…”
“Any idea where that doctor might be now Shar?”
“As a matter of fact, I do…”
“You’re kidding me Shar!”
“I’ve got a cousin in Spain, ya know…”
“Who? Barb?”
“Yeah, Barbie. I’ve got news from her from time to time, when she’s squatting in those tourists houses in Spain while they’re empty in the low season.”
“And what? Tell me all, I’m dying Shar!”
“I’ll tell you if you bloddy stop interrupting! Now, last week, she mentioned she heard from a woman in Spain that they saw a doctor during a silly nut-age conference, he was talking of rejuvenating cures, and she even got a sample.”
“A sample?”
“Yeah, a bloody sample. She told me those silly twats gave them to their dogs! Can you believe it Glor’?”
“The silly buggers! Throwing away precious reejoo-whatever samples!”
“Anyway, the doctor was speaking with whales too. Every year he told them (Barbie told me) going upside down in the sea to upgrade his whale speech.”
“Whale speech you say Shar…”
“Kind of rings a bell init?”
“Hell yeah! I remember Vessie told us about those funny swimming suits for the Doctor. Could be him!”
“You know what?”
“What Shar?”
“I’m having a funny brainwave now… I’m thinking we need some vacation in Spain…”
“And leave Gustav to cook the bloody fish for the boys ! You’re brilliant Shar!”

Jorick and Gybrielle were quite proud of their early attempt at building artificial intelligence by sampling data from a variety of sources on the web.

Their first model codenamed ‘Gustav’ was far from perfect, yet they had managed to sell the prototype to a wealthy firm and had gathered from it not only a fair amount of money to pursue their research, but also a substantial experience in making organized consciousness emerge from an inorganic and seemingly inert body.
Of course, at that time, they didn’t know that their research would fare a lot more than just a few battery robots used to spread watermelons on every home in a futile attempt.

Their next project was codenamed “Jobrid”, an obvious hybrid blend of their names, but also of their personalities. They were feeding it an enormous amount of data, which was made so easy by current technology. The experiment seemed to exceed their expectations, and even if the “Jobrid” was experiencing some occasional “blink-out”, its consciousness was gradually starting to organize itself.