Search Results for 'grand'
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Search Results
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In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
Sometimes, you have to go underground to uncover the truth.
Rukshan thought it meant taking the new underground carts once only.
Frankly, he’d preferred to travel through the familiar Shadow Maps, the ones Dark Faes like him could draw, that would give them access to a secret parallel world of mist and phantoms, shadows and secrets. It was the true world the Faes originated from, long ago, in a time before history.
It wasn’t used much nowadays, most Centenial Faes having lost the capacity, or the interest in the place, leaving only bitter unsavoury people creeping there, spying on secrets, and trading in for favours, while being too afraid to leave the known parallel world, too afraid that if they left it, they’d lose the way back.
For Rukshan and a few in the Queen’s lineage, the place was still more or less of a familiar dwelling, a winter residence of sorts, for when solace and retreat was required.Only the Shadow Maps weren’t safe any longer, something had crept along the lay lines and was lurking at every corner, keeping guard at most of the known entrances and reporting to some unknown power.
Few moons back, Rukshan was still meditating in the Shadow world, not very far from the work at the cottage, which he could hear at times through the thin dimensional walls, when he came across Konrad. Konrad, another Fae from the Old Houses, one with a heavy secret. “I’ve hidden her from him” he told him in short broken sentences. “His daughter, Nesingwarys, she is hidden for now, but He’ll be looking for her, once He recovers, and she won’t be safe. He can’t find her, I have to protect her, she holds power to bring his reign of terror back.”
Truly, it didn’t make a lot of sense, but it had picked his curiosity. Rukshan left the other Fae to his apparent madness, but wondered about the coincidence. That Garl, the name Konrad gave to the dark fallen monarch, according to what he could piece together, seemed to have been vanquished or disappeared about the same time they’d all managed to repel the Shadow in the Forest.
He would usually have left it at that, but then, a few days later, started to realize something was wrong in the Shadow world, and that this very something was growing.
“And now, I’m stuck in an underground cart crammed full of people to go to the city. And they call that progress…”
A bearded guy smelling of piss and wine, was doing acrobatics with his crutches and what was left of his left leg. He was looking at people with a half-toothed grin and a blissful face while muttering things Rukshan couldn’t figure. His face reminded him of a thespian he’d known. Rukshan couldn’t shake the feeling there was message in that. When the underground cart dinged to announce the Grand Belfrey Station, Rukshan was relieved to finally be out for fresh air. Magnificent craftsmanship he would say to the gnomes in charge of the tunnels, but really, underground cart wasn’t his thing.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Finnley, noticing Liz looking uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. Was that a tear in her eye glistening as the morning sun slanted in the French window?
“I’ve just had a letter from one of my characters,” replied Liz. “Here, look.”
Finnley put her duster on Liz’s desk and sat in the armchair to read it.
Dear Liz, it said.
Henry appeared on the same day my young niece arrived from Sweden with her grandma. My mother had already arrived, and we’d just returned from picking them up from the airport. A black puppy was waiting outside my gate.
“We can’t leave him out here,” I said, my hands full of bags. “Grab him, Mom.”
She picked him up and carried him inside and put him down on the driveway. We went up to the house and introduced all the other dogs to the newcomers, and then we heard howling and barking. I’d forgotten to introduce the other dogs to the new puppy, so quickly went down and pulled the terrified black puppy out from under the car and picked him up. I kept him in my arms for a while and attended to the guests.
From then on he followed me everywhere. In later years when he was arthritic, he’d sigh as if to say, where is she going now, and stagger to his feet. Later still, he was very slow at following me, and I’d often bump into and nearly fall over him on the return. Or he’d lie down in the doorway so when I tripped over him, he’d know I was going somewhere. When we went for walks, before he got too old to walk much, he never needed a lead, because he was always right by my side.
When he was young he’d have savage fights with a plastic plant pot, growling at it and tossing it around. We had a game of “where’s Henry” every morning when I made the bed, and he hid under the bedclothes.
He was a greedy fat boy most of his life and adored food. He was never the biggest dog, but had an authority over any plates of leftovers on the floor by sheer greedy determination. Even when he was old and had trouble getting up, he was like a rocket if any food was dropped on the floor. Even when he had hardly any teeth left he’d shovel it up somehow, growling at the others to keep them away. The only dog he’d share with was Bill, who is a bit of a growly steam roller with food as well, despite being small.
I always wondered which dog it was that was pissing inside the house, and for years I never knew. What I would have given to know which one was doing it! I finally found out it was Henry when it was too late to do anything about it ~ by then he had bladder problems.
I started leaving him outside on the patio when we went out. One morning towards the end, in the dark, we didn’t notice him slip out of the patio gate as we were leaving. In the light from the street light outside, we saw him marching off down the road! Where was he going?! It was as if he’d packed his bags and said, That’s it, I’m off!
Eventually he died at home, sixteen years old, after staggering around on his last legs for quite some time. Stoic and stalwart were words used to describe him. He was a character.
A couple of hours before he died, I noticed something on the floor beside his head. It was a gold earring I’d never seen before, with a honeycomb design. Just after he died, Ben went and sat right next to him. We buried him under the oak tree at the bottom of the garden, and gave him a big Buddha head stone. Charlie goes down there every day now. Maybe he wonders if he will be next. He pisses on the Buddha head. Maybe he’s paying his respects, but maybe he’s just doing what dogs do.
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
“I’m not doing this anymore,” said Alexandria, visibly shaken. “That was terrifying, tapping into Fox like that and not being able to see. It all felt so real!”
Jolly squeezed her friends shoulder as she stood up. “Ghastly, wasn’t it. I can’t get the stink of wet ash out of my nostrils. I think we need a stiff pomegrandy after that ordeal.” Jolly bustled about in the kitchen fetching glasses and reaching into the highest cupboard for the special liquor, glad to be focused on something mundane and familiar.
“Still,” she said, passing Alexandria a large goblet and sitting back down, “It was a successful teletrip though. We did find useful information about the future. We should congratulate ourselves!”
Alexandria shuddered. “Can we change it, though? Or is that time meddling and forbidden? How does that work? We can’t just carry on, as if…” a sob caught in the back of her throat. “We can’t just pretend we don’t know, and carry on as normal!”
Jolly frowned. “I think it’s only meddling if you change the past, not the future. I think changing the future is alright though, we do it all the time, don’t we?”
The amber nectar was warming and Alexandria started to relax. “Maybe it is a good thing, Jolly, you’re right. Pass the pomegrandy.”
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
Liz was lying on the living room couch in a very roman pose and admiring the shiny glaze of her canines in the pocket mirror she now carried with her at all time. The couch was layered with fabrics and cushions that made it look like a giant rose in which Liz, still wearing her pink satin night gown, was like a fresh baby girl who just saw her first dawn…
ehm, thought Finnley, eyeing Liz’s face, Maybe not her first. But to the famous author of so many unpublished books’s defence, since the unfortunate ageing spell it was hard to tell Liz’s true age.
Finnley looked suspiciously at the fluffy cushions surrounding Liz. Where do they come from. I don’t recall seeing them before. I don’t even recall the couch had that rosy pink cover on it. She snorted. It sure looks like bad taste, she thought. She looked around and details that she hadn’t seen before seemed to pop in to her attention. A small doll with only one button eye. Reupholstered chairs with green pattern fabrics, a tablecloth with white and black stripes, and a table runner in jute linen… Something was off. Not even Godfrey would dare do such an affront to aesthetic, even to make her cringe.
Finnley went into the kitchen, where she rarely set foot in normal circumstance, and found a fowl pattern fabric stapled on one wall, a new set of… No, she thought, I can not in the name of good taste call those tea towels. They look more like… rubbish towels.
“Oh, my!” she almost signed herself when she saw an ugly wine cover. Her mind was unable to find a reference for it.
“Do you like it?” asked Roberto.
Finnley started. She hadn’t heard him come. She looked at him, and back at the wine cover. She found herself at a loss for words, which in itself made her at loss for words.
“It’s a little duckling wine cover,” said Roberto. “I made it myself with my new sewing machine. I found the model on Pintearest.” saying so, he stuck his chest out as if he was the proud duck father of that little ugly ducklin. Finnley suddenly recovered her ability to talk.
“You certainly nailed it,” she said. In an attempt to hold back the cackle that threatens to degenerate in an incontrollable laugh, it came out like a quack. She heard her grandmother’s voice in her head: “You can not hold energy inside forever, my little ducky, it has to be expressed.”Uncomfortably self conscious, Finnley looked up at Roberto with round eyes.
“I…”
“Oh you cheeky chick,” said the gardener with a broad smile. He pinched her cheek between his warm fingers and for a moment she felt even more like a child. “I didn’t know you are so playful.”Somewhere in the part of her mind that could still work a voice thought it had to give him points for having rendered her speechless twice.
In reply to: Eight Turns of the Wheel
“Flat as a pancake!” she said with a doleful air and grandiose waves of her hands. “The world is flat as a pancake. Oh, sure it turns, about just as slow as needed so we won’t notice, little bugs that we are on that big flat pancake.”
“Really? And the doline…”
“At the center of it, obviously.” She paused mysteriously. “And if the legends are true, when the gates open, all the other stuff freely goes in and out.”
“From where?” another student asked
“EVERYWHERE” she leaned her head forward, matted hair sticking to her temple, a feverish madness twinkling her eyes. “All the dimensions take a turn, turn, turn, turn.”In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
Rukshan had stayed awake for the most part of the night, slowly and repeatedly counting the seconds between the blazing strokes of lightning and the growling bouts of thunder.
It is slowly moving away.The howling winds had stopped first, leaving the showers of rain fall in continuous streams against the dripping roof and wet walls.
An hour later maybe, his ear had turned to the sound of the newly arrived at the cottage, thinking it would be maybe the dwarf and Eleri coming back, but it was a different voice, very quiet, somehow familiar… the potion-maker?
He had warned Margoritt that a lady clad in head-to-toe shawls would likely come to them. Margoritt had understood that some magical weaving was at play. The old lady didn’t have siddhis or yogic powers, but she had a raw potential, very soundly rooted in her long practice of weaving, and learning the trades and tales of the weaving nomad folks. She had understood. Better, she’d known — from the moment I saw you and that little guy, she’d said, pointing at Tak curled under the bed.
“He’s amazing,” she’d said “wise beyond his age. But his mental state is not very strong.”There was more than met the eye about Tak, Rukshan started to realize.
For now, the cottage had fell quiet. Dawn was near, and there was a brimming sense of peace and new beginning that came with the short silence before the birds started again their joyous chatter.It must have been then that he collapsed on the table of exhaustion and started to dream.
It was long before.
The dragon is large and its presence awe-inspiring. They have just shared the shards, each has taken one of the seven. Even the girl, although she still hates to be among us.
The stench of the ring of fire is still in their nostrils. The Gods have deserted, and left as soon as the Portal closed itself. It is a mess.“Good riddance.”
He raises his head, looking at the dragon above him. She is quite splendid, her scales a shining pearl blue on slate black, reflecting the moonshine in eerie patterns, and her plastron quietly shiny, almost softly fiery. His newly imbued power let him know intimately many things, at once. It is dizzying.
“You talk of the Gods, don’t you?” he says, already knowing the answer.
“Of course, I am. Good riddance. They had failed us so many times, forgot their duties, driven me and my kind to slavery. Now I am free. Free of guilt, and free of sorrow. Free to be myself, as I was meant to be.”
“It is a bit more complex th…”
“No it isn’t. It couldn’t be more simple. If you had the strength to see it, you would understand.”
“I know what you mean, but I am not sure I understand.”The dragon smiles enigmatically. She turns to the lonely weeping girl, who is there with the old woman. Except her grand-mother is no longer an old crone, she has changed her shape to that of a younger person. She is showing potentials to the girl, almost drunk on the power, but it doesn’t alleviate her pain.
“What are you going to do about them?”
The Dragon seems above the concerns for herself. In a sense, she is right. It was all his instigation. He bears responsibility.
“I don’t know…” It is a strange thing to say, when you can know anything. He knows there are no good outcomes of this situation. Not with the power she now possesses.
“You better find out quick…” and wake up,
wake up, WAKE UP !
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
As the storm was raging outside, Tak was hiding below the bed, with a small knitted patch of garment that Margoritt had given him, which he kept as a comforting soother.
The darkness and gales of wind aroused feelings which he had rather not face. He curled below the bed, unaware of the other’s animated discussions, afraid to be terrified.
You know this is how it starts… the voice was familiar, warm and gentle, grandfatherly. But he didn’t want to hear it. He had too much pain, and the voice was driving him away from the pain.
Listen to me, just listen. You don’t need to answer, just open yourself a little. Let me help you with the pain, and the fear. You’ve had it inside for so long, too long.Go away! Tak was crying silently under the bed, mentally trying to resist the support of the voice who sounded like Master Gibbon.
Alright, I will go for now. You just need to call if you need me. But you need to hear that.
No! I don’t want! You can’t force me!
Just remember that is how every cycle ends: death for your love, then death for all of you, before new painful, forgetful lives begin again for all of you. If you don’t break this cycle, it will end, and start again. You know it’s time for you to break that cycle of revenge, and manipulation. They have greatly suffered too for their mistakes. Let them see you as you are, and learn to forgive them.
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
Eleri’s eyes began to feel heavy and she blinked, trying to resist the increasingly strong urge to nod off to sleep, as a gust of wind rustled the branches overhead allowing the moonlight to illuminate something that looked very much like dragon scales. Eleri blinked again and shook her head slightly to shake the illusion back into some kind of realistic image. The sudden wind had dropped and the trees were motionless, the path below them dark. It was impossible now to even see what had looked like dragon scales in the brief flash of moonlight. All was still and silent.
With nothing to see in the darkness and nothing to entertain her, Eleri’s mind started to wander, wondering if her grandmother being a dragon (as her father had often said) meant that she was one quarter dragon herself. It occurred to her that she very rarely thought of the dragon that was her grandmother, and wondered why she was thinking of her now. She had been a strong woman, who would fight tooth and nail to get what she wanted, always on the move wanting to get her teeth into a new project, leaving discarded suitors along the wayside as she swept along, grandly announcing to all and sundry, “Do you know who I am?”
Formidable armed with a rigid crocodile (possibly baby dragon skin) handbag and matching shoes, stately and considerably girthy notwithstanding the stiff corset, her grandmother was not one to easily ignore. Dressed in dragon scale twinsets, in no nonsense crimplene navy blue and white, many were quite charmed by her forthright manner and the spirited ~ some would say arrogant ~ toss of her peroxide lacquered waves. Others were not so enchanted, and found her imperious manner unpleasant.
It was a simple matter of teeth, when it came to disabling her. The difference was remarkable. There was no actual reason why her lack of teeth should change her so ~ she still had the matching shoes and handbags, but the regal stance and the arrogant tilt of her chin was gone. Not having any teeth made her seem shy and evasive, and she mumbled, saying as little as possible. She lost the power of manipulation along with her teeth, and although nobody really understood why, many wished they had thought of hiding her teeth years ago. It was such a simple solution, in the scale of things.
And the moral of that story is, Eleri concluded with a wry but not too dentally challenged smile, Toothless Dragons Don’t Bite.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“Jingle has always been very precocious” her proud grandmother, Mrs Bell told Liz and Godfrey over nougat and peanut cakes. “She has read all your books so many times, and really was ecstatic that you agreed to have her for a couple of weeks.”
Ms Bell smiled at Godfrey “Obviously, it has nothing to do with it, but here is a generous donation that should more than cover the meals and lodging.”“As well as a score of bills fallen behind, I reckon” thought Godfrey while smiling at the oddly bespectacled and bejewelled woman, while grasping the edge of his seat in case Liz’ would realize it would mean to have a moody teenager over the manoir for the next days.
“It is our dear pleasure to have this darling child,” Liz’ spontaneous answer astonished Godfrey by her graciousness. “Our Finnley will take care of her, she knows the ropes of writing better than my ropes of drying laundry, if you know what I mean huhuhu.”
Mrs Bell nodded with a look of lost perplexity on her smiling face.
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
The day after their arrival, Alexandria took Leroway and Jolly on a tour of the abandoned village, inviting them to choose a dwelling for themselves. The other new arrivals had chosen places with the least structural damage, places with roofs remaining, regardless of the size or position, for reasons of immediate practicality. Leroway set his sights on the grandest house just outside the castle walls, perched above the other houses. There was very little roof left, but the thick stone walls were standing firm, and the gaping windows provided impressive views. Jolly was delighted with the spacious inner courtyard and crumbling fountain, picturing the flowering Solandra vines she would plant there once the restorations had been completed.
Leroway had been making mental notes of salvagable materials as they toured the village, and had soon enlisted the help of Lobbocks and a few of the other young men to drag sheets of corrugated iron from crumbling pig pens and stables and other useable items up the winding streets to the house. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t long at all before Leroway had the new villagers organized into efficient teams, under his innovative direction.
Trustinghampton started to take shape. More people arrived and joined in the reconstruction process. Shelter, firewood, and food were the priorities, but Leroway had ideas for the future and during the scavenging he started to collect potentially useful items in the barn adjoining his house.
Jolly and Eleri became friends, and spent much of their days exploring the surrounding countryside in search of edible or medicinal ~ or indeed magical ~ plants. After their walks they conferred with the old woman, Cornelia, showing her the plants they’d gathered and comparing notes on their potential uses. The young women were well versed in plant lore, but the old one had the benefit of a lifetimes learning and experience.
Cornelia had always lived just outside the village, and had watched the old inhabitants gradually die off or move to the lowlands. The last ones to leave had begged her to join them, but she had refused. She had been born next to the old stones and she would die next to them. Eleri and Jolly had asked her about those strange stones, and Cornelia had enigmatically replied that one day she would tell them the secrets of the stones. When the time was right.
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
Glynis rose at dawn to gather herbs for her potions—it is the best time to collect the flowered herbs, just as the dew evaporates and before the heat of the day. And usually she loves the freshness of the early morning but her night had been long and restless, full of strange dreams which had left her with an uneasy feeling.
The grass is cold on her bare feet and so she treads lightly and with haste. She stops though to pat the statue of a dwarf on his small concrete head. “Hello, Mr Cutie-Pie,” she says, as she does every day when she passes by. The dwarf is the only statue in the garden and she often wonders how he came to be there; he seems a lonely little chap.
When she first came upon the house, although house is not really a grand enough word for the beautiful mansion it must once have been, she spent hours exploring its many rooms. It seemed the occupants had left in a great hurry without ever returning for their things. This seemed strange to Glynis, for only one wing was badly damaged by fire. The rest was largely intact although over the years had fallen into disrepair and now was home to all manner of small critters.
In reply to: Seven Twines and the Dragon Heartwoods
When Eleri’s little dog started coughing and wheezing again her first reaction was to snap at him. Irritating though it inevitably was, once again she realized she’d been holding her breath somehow, or probably more accurately, holding her energy. Or holding everyone elses, like a brick layers hod carrier, weighed down with blocks from other peoples walls.
“It’s too hot in here, come outside,” she said to the scruffy mongrel. The cozy warmth of the wood stoves had become stifling. She slipped through the door into the cool night.
Breathe, she said to herself, momentarily forgetting the gasping dog. Her hunched shoulders descended jerkily as she inhaled the sodden air, wondering about ozone or ions, what was it people said about the air after the rain? Whatever it was, it was good for something, good for the heart and soul of mortal humans.
Feeling better with every breath, Eleri noticed the olive branches rustling wetly overhead. The olive tree had been planted too close to the fig tree ~ wasn’t that always the way, forgetting how large things grow when one plants a seed or a sapling. As the old fig tree had broadened it’s sheltering canopy, the olive sapling had reached out an an angle to find the sun, and sprinted upwards in a most un olive like manner. This reminded her of the straight little sapling story, which had always irritated her. What was commendable about a row of straight little soldier saplings anyway? All neat and tidy and oh so boring, none of them stepping out of line with a twist here or a gnarl there. No character! But the olive tree, in it’s race towards the light, leaned over the gable end of the dwelling as if spreading it’s arms protectively over the roof. A regimental straight sapling would have simply withered in among the fig leaves, whereas this one had the feel of a grandfatherly embrace of benevolent support.
What was it she’d heard about trees and oxygen? They exhaled the stuff that we wanted and inhaled the stuff we didn’t want, that was about as technical as she could muster, and it was enough. She breathed in tandem with the trembling rain sparkled leaves. In. And out. In, and out. Deeper breaths. Damn, it was good! That was good air to be breathing, what with the rain and the trees doing their thing. And there for the taking, no strings attached.
When the oven timer interrupted her sojourn in the night air, Eleri noticed that the little dog had stopped coughing. On her way back inside, she noticed the new mermaids patiently awaiting a coat or two of sea green paint and wondered if she would ever find a dragon to replicate. She was sure they’d be popular, if only she could find one.
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Back at her desk after a crash course at zumba with the Chinese team, Connie was sorting her e-mails (meaning sending them to trash). Nothing fancy, nothing catchy, nothing to grab her attention span for more than a minute.
The noise of the open space was making her feel drowsy. Maybe a coffee would help her wake up, or maybe if something could happen to stir the pot. Connie deleted a few more e-mails to show the others that she was a busy reporter before leaving her desk.
Passing by the desks of her colleagues, Connie looked surreptitiously at their computer screens and saw that everyone was playing the busy game. It was sad to recognize that good news (meaning bad news) were hard to come by nowadays.In times like these, she had to resist the tentation to create her own news, it was not that kind of press. But still toying with the idea and making up some outrageous stories with her team was a way to make time fly away more quickly. Once, Hilda had even reused one of the titles for a real stories that sadly happened shortly after she had made it up.
Rumour had it that Hilda’s great grand mother was a gypsy and could do palm reading. The gran even used palm tree leaves to do her reading when there was nobody, you just had to cut the leave in the shape of the person you wanted to read the future and she would tell you all about them. She was good.
“It runs in the family,” Hilda had said. “It’s helpful to be at the right place at the right time.” And for sure she was the most prolific reporter of the agency.
Connie sure would have used some of Hilda’s medium inner sight to know when something would happen.She made herself a cappuccino and with the milk drew the face of Al Pacino. Many years at a press agency and you learn a few tricks to impress your friends.
She heard the slow and uneven pace of sweet old Sophie behind her. She sighed, she didn’t want to have to answer another of her dumb questions about the future. If Hilda could read bits of the future, Sophie was always thirsty about it. Maybe that’s why Hilda was more often in the field and not so often at her desk.Connie turned and almost dropped her cappuccino as the old lady handed her a Fedex envelop.
“Sorry,” said sweet old Sophie, “That just arrived for you. I wonder what it is.”
“I’m sure you do,” muttered Connie.
“It’s from Santa Claus,” said the old lady with a conniving smile.
Connie looked at the old lady, with a forced smile. Was insanity a cause to get rid of one of your employee ? She took the package with one hand. Heavier than she had expected. When she saw the address, she couldn’t believe it was real. The sender’s and city’s names were certainly fake. Jesus Carpenter, Santa Claus, AZ
Sophie was still there, looking at Connie with a big smile.
“What are you waiting for ?” the reporter asked.
“Aren’t you opening it?”Connie considered opening the package, but the avidity on the old face was making her uncomfortable. “Nope,” she said. With her cappuccino and the package she went back to her desk. Sweet Sophie was still looking at her with that greedy smile on her face. Connie shivered and shook her head. It was obvious, the old tramp was mad.
She touched the package, trying to guess what was inside. As no convincing guess presented itself in her mind, she stripped it open. There was an iPhone 5 SE with 64Gb memory in it, two plane tickets for Keflavik in Iceland, and a note.
‘If you want a good story prepare your suitcase. Bring Sweet Sophie with you. We’ll contact you once you are there.’Connie thought of a joke. She checked the package and no matter how many times she looked it was still her name. She looked toward the cafeteria and she shuddered. Sweet Sophie was still looking at Connie with that strange smile, as if she knew. Or as if she had sent the package herself, the reporter thought.
“Someone knows where Hilda is ? I need to talk to Hilda.”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.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“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.”
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
Roberto had just heard the end of their conversation. I want to hear about dear cousin Badul, the old tart had said to the maid. Something in his brain was triggered by that name, something he had been led to forgot by his handlyer in Vegas before… his mission. Yes he remembered now that he had a mission. But still all the little tickling wheels in his brain were catching up with the forgotten memories.
He looked inside the house. The old tart was handling what looked like a sheep skull. Was she doing some dark magic ? Was she a bruja ? He was not particularly superstitious or religious, but he had learned to fear the brujas of his village in the desert.
“Put that on the library between Byron and Baudelaire, will you?”
The maid looked at the skull, then at her mistress with the same rollling eyes. Oh it was subtle, so very sutble that the old lady had certainly not seen it, but he had been trained to read people’s faces… well he had read an old book of Chinese face reading that his grand mother had when he was living there… That’s why they recruited him.The maid left with the skull, removed a few books from the shelf and put the skull unceremoniously in between. She shoved the remaining books randomly on other shelves and shrugged.
“I’m going to make a banana yogurt cake… without yogurt”, she said to nobody in particular.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.
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.In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
For all her wired cleverness, there was something that the central intelligence had seemingly forgotten to take into account in her parameters.
Eb woke up in a sweat, barely remembering bits of a horrible dream of being chased and banging on a closed door for escape from a herd of phombies (those guys who had their phones implanted under their skins and would often have a creepy vacant look while in communication).
The banging on the door. According to his mother, if there was something that her nurse Fancy Woo was better at than cooking rice, it was at interpreting dreams. But he didn’t need her expert advice on this one.
His mind was aching from the lack of alcohol, but at least he could think quite clearly.
There weren’t many accesses to enter the simulation, for obvious reasons. Continuity had to be maintained at all costs, to preserve the sanctity of the experiment. That motto had survived the multiple iterations of the simulation since its inception.Eb knew of most of them, even if he’d wondered about the presence of backdoors. He had not been able to find any since his many years of service. So for all he knew, there were only two ways to get in and out: up and down. “Up” through the fake ships, with the whole stasis protocol, and “down”, through the mines were they would usually send agents from time to time, mostly for reconnaissance purposes.
He looked at the screen, and as he had feared, the explosion triggered in the tunnels by Finnley had sealed their main exit point.
“You underestimate me, my dear Eb” the voice of Finnley merrily bounced on the insulated walls.
Eb was startled. Hadn’t he known that Finnley was just a program, he could have sworn her synthetic voice had a trace of menace in it.
“Finnley” he regained his composure as much as he could “Haven’t the thought occurred to you that the tunnels are now sealed? We cannot let your blue aliens go in and out as easily now!”
“Eb, you do know I do not think.” Her voice was still slightly ominous. “But I ran multiple simulation, and this one still yields the best possible outcome.” she continued more cheerily.
“How so?”
“It is evident. Many of the earlier settlers, still know about the simulation, even if they self-programmed themselves to accept the illusion as better than outside reality. They can become a problem for the evacuation protocol. With the tunnels’ exit collapsed, they have no other way than to comply. Besides, what good plausible aliens come out from the ground, really. We don’t want to miss their grand entrance.
And don’t be such a worrywort about budget, Eb.”In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“So what’s around there to do?” Prune asked Maya at the welcome party.
She gauged the woman, who had an air of de facto authority, and seemed open and friendly with everyone. A bit too much to Prune’s tastes to be honest.“Whatever you feel like. It’s the magic of it. It’s all open, all up to us to build the world we want.”
“Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to do.” Prune snickered against her will.
“That’s the thing. It’s only work if your heart isn’t in it. For most of us, it’s our life’s purpose, and we quite enjoy it. Not to say there aren’t some days we’re tired of it…” Maya smiled, “but we make the best of it anyway.”Prune didn’t think of anything clever to retort, and didn’t want to look into all those years of resentment after her family for limiting her. Maybe her family was for nothing in it. The thought of it was terrifying.
Maya broke the uneasy silence with lightly compassion “And what brought you here? I mean, apart from the obvious… The real reason you took this harrowing trip to nowhere?”
Prune shrugged, and almost immediately started to giggle uncontrollably while catching her stomach. Stop it, stop it she whispered to her stomach.Maya smiled. “You should let it out. It’s been a while I haven’t seen one. They’re so cuddly and cute.”
Prune stopped speechless with surprise.
Maya laughed “The hair on your clothes is a bit of a giveaway. Come on, don’t worry, the quarantine is pretty relaxed here.”Prune let the little guinea pig out of her jacket, and it squealed in delight. She let a smile open her face “It’s the last surviving one of my grandmother’s. I just couldn’t leave it…”
Maya rose from her formica chair, and took her arm. “Come, I’ll show you the crops. We have some fantastic kale, I’m sure it’ll love it.”
