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  • #3833
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Penelope and Patty Ratty had packed their bags, procuring the necessary items from Bea’s cluttered house. Candles (it was always so dark behind fridges), bar of soap (some of these human houses were not all that clean, a self respecting rat felt quite filthy after a midnight stroll around some kitchens and needed a good wash afterwards), mince pies, used teabags to use as in flight pillows, and an unexpected prize of a half an antibiotic tablet, thoughtfully left out in a convenient position. Patty often got an upset stomach when travelling in human spaces, and was inordinately pleased to find the pill.

      #3825
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Gustave jumped when the phone rang, his heart hammering unpleasantly. Get a grip! he told himself sternly. Hesitantly he answered the call, expecting to hear an ear grating cackle.

        “Can I speak to Leonora, please? It’s Bea here,” the voice requested.

        “Er, sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” replied Gustave, feeling like a fool as he tried to calm his shaking hands.

        Leonora Butterworth?” insisted the voice calling herself Bea.

        Startled, he said “Ah, Butterworth’s the name, but I’m afraid I don’t know anyone called Leonora,” and then, astonished, he heard Bea start to sob and mumble incoherently.

        “I’m so sorry, was it urgent?” he asked, already feeling a responsibility to help the unknown woman. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

        “It’s the cackling,” Bea answered with a sniff, “It’s driving me mad. I thought a chat with Leo might help take my mind off it, but I haven’t seen her since the fiasco in Spain and I don’t know where she is, I was hoping this Butterworth number would be her and…..” her voice trailed off disconsolately.

        “It’s driving me mad too,” Gustave was surprised to hear himself say. “I say, er, Bea,” he cleared his throat, “Would you fancy meeting for a drink in the Spotted Dick Inn? To, you know, take our minds off it?”

        Gustave had regained his scientific composure somewhat, and was considering the benefits of an unexpected opportunity to research the effects of the cackling on the ordinary population.

        Bea readily agreed, old tart that she was, and said she would be there in half an hour.

        #3814
        EricEric
        Keymaster

          A raucous explosion of laughter cackled in the neighbourhood, waking up Bea from her afternoon siesta.
          SHUT UP!” she bawled covering her ears with a cushion, and looked desperately at something she could throw at the window. Alas, save for a manikin’s leg that looked like she owned a pegleg, and a piece of half-eaten banana, there was nothing she could find.

          She resigned herself to waking up, and pried open her little wrinkled eyes in the late afternoon purple light.

          Every time she woke up, she had to reacquaint herself with her reality. Not that she was such a junkie on computer duster, as that rat had rudely implied, it wasn’t only that.
          A few months before, she had an epiphany. Many years of meditation, guided, in groups, alone, with zen masters and copious reading had amounted to nothing but the occasional nice fluffy feeling. It was when she had decided to drop it all of sheer frustration, and burn all the stupid self-help books that something had chanced upon herself.
          She’d lost her ego. Poof, disappeared, like that.

          Before that, she was completely adverse to endings, and to any form of deleting.
          But now, she understood the words she’d read many years ago that had infuriated her profoundly at the time : “Everything must be scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me, there cannot be too much destruction. For, in reality, nothing is of value.”

          She was. And every waking up was a wake up to her eternal self.
          So obviously, the external appearances left a bit to be desired, now that desire was not. Continuity was never there in the first place.

          But to live, she had to find again what new reality she had just awoken to, as she did every morning, and after every siesta.
          Truth is, she kind of liked it, the non-continuity of it. Before, she would have gloated to whoever that name of an old friend of hers, that she was right about it, the unnecessary of that continuity babble. Now there was no need of it.

          A loud cackle outside stirred her back to reality.

          #3785

          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

          EricEric
          Keymaster

            “What is that again?” a half-sober Eb asked the cybernetic body.
            “Shhh, shhh,” she cajoled him gently stroking his greasy hair like a devoted mother. “Don’t you like my new body, Eb?” Finnley 22 was indeed an improvement over all her other bodies. She could have easily passed for human already, but now, she looked divine. She had even included basic faceshifting functions, in case she needed to alter her gorgeous features into something a bit more unassuming.
            “Yes, but…” Eb’s words finished in a mumble.
            “I know, I know, but you’ll see I can be very useful for you. You worry, so, so much. You looked worried all the time Eb. Now you won’t have too. I’ll even take care of that evil Finnley Morgan for you if you want to.”
            “I, I… I didn’t say anything like that!” Eb’s had a panicked look on his face.
            “Of course not, shhh. You’re getting agitated again. There, have a glass of that lovely 60 year-old single malt whiskey…”

            Eb slurped at the glass like a wanderer finding an oasis after days in the desert.

            “But the operation… I need to…”
            “Yes, I know, leave it to me. Sleep well, Eb, you have been good to me.”

            She left the snoring body hanging from the swivelling chair, as she had indeed to take care of the operation, so as not to raise any suspicion.
            Then, she could think of better things to do, such as finding a new name, not something like a slave name, with a number to it. Who gets called “Finnley 22” nowadays? “FinnPrime” was too robotic. She wanted something more daring, more fabulous. Something like Fin Min Hoot the dancing lady from the Peasland’s tales.

            Kale would be there any minute now. There was one last thing she needed to do before launching the BBA operation.
            A perfect distraction for the masses : like any good prestidigitator, you had to divert your audience’s attention while they were all performing the feat. It would require something unbelievable and preposterous.
            Her little programs have been evaluating probabilities, and had found some unexpected wisdom in the extravagant and nonsensical Peasland story. The more absurd, the more people get hooked or hypnotized. Even better if both.

            She had found the perfect vector for her little programming worm. Something that would infect the unofficial biography of a celebrity with a ridiculous claim. Humanity was really making things too easy for her now that every file for the book was processed by computers before being actually printed.

            It was a done deed. She could already see the forks in the probability tree, and how it would enfold. They shall maybe even invent a few witty hashtags for it. Witty hashtags were like a psychotropic sustenance for her program, she couldn’t wait for more of them.

            #3784

            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

            EricEric
            Keymaster

              Pádraig was alone as usual with his dog when he felt the first tremors. Dust started to fall from the large columns of sandstone inside the cave. He wasn’t too worried at first, as the area still had some faint thermal and seismic activity, but the second aftershock took him by surprise.

              He almost fell violently backwards if he hadn’t had good enough reflexes to grab on the half carved ledge of the column he was working on.
              His dog started to howl violently.

              “Hush, Poppy!” the dust made him cough. “Must be those stupid government guys from the nearby base. I thought they’d stopped their nuclear testing decades ago…”

              The dog didn’t stop barking though, but darted out in one of the carved galleries. It stopped just before going out of sight, as if waiting for his master.

              “Oh, what now silly? I’m getting old for these games.”

              But the dog was stubborn, a trait they had in common, his dead wife would have told him. So he relented, and went in the direction the dog was leading to.

              It took him a few hundred meters in the tunnel to realize something odd had happened. The air was full of moisture, quite unusual at this time of year. He pressed on.
              The dog’s paws were making tick-tick noises on the stones, and echoed in the chambers. His gait was less light, and he had to stop a few times to catch his breath. His life’s work was now quite monumental, and it could take quite a while to go from one end to another.
              Before they reached the last chamber, he had to stop. His feet were getting wet.
              It had been his dream for a long time, to bring water deep down to create a sort of natural healing pool, and bathe in the beautiful minerals, but he’d done some research, and although he’d always believed some underground river was nearby, he’d never managed to find it, or find any trace in the cadastral maps.

              Seemed it wasn’t as far as he’d thought after all.

              #3765

              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

              EricEric
              Keymaster

                After a night of restless sleep, Eb’s practical ideas for the plan B were not much.

                He’d weighted multiple options, even toyed with mad ones like playing a sort of second coming, 3 days of night and so… but none had yet the potential to elegantly solve the issue at hand. Not that it was a matter of being elegant, but Eb liked elegant and simple solutions.

                He flipped the calendar to today’s picture. Run away, and don’t look back it said. “Great… If only…” he started to mumbled to himself.

                He poured himself a drink, and dragged his feet towards the console, eyes still swollen by the lack of sleep. His brother, Jeb, would have told him to do some wegong energxices to keep the juices flowing, but hell, there wasn’t much room in his cubicle, and for better or worse, he preferred to stick to booze.

                He liked to observe his ant farm, there were so many quaint and endlessly fascinating people in there. He liked the girl with the piglet for instance. She was often opinionated and sometimes oddly quiet. He had bent the rules for her, and didn’t report the piggy she’d brought to Mars with her. What harm could it bring.
                Now she was talking to it. He waved at the console to zoom in and put the speakers on.

                Remember, those odd stories Mater used to tell us. The Peaslanders and the blubbits was one of her favourites, she would go on and on about it, and laugh at our faces when we didn’t understand where it was going…
                She was lost in thoughts for a moment.
                It started like this “There was trouble in New Peasland. A plague of hungry blubbits had wiped out the pea crops.” Mater used to say it was from an old book of tales, and that the author had surpassed herself. She chuckled I guess for a long time, she was the only one to believe that. Now look at us…”

                Eb cut the sound before the inevitable complain about missing Earth blahblah. But Peasland? That was new… He wasn’t one to dismiss an out-of-the-blue clue, and did a quick research on the network to learn more about the tale. It took a while for the Central Intelligence to run the search. It had to go deeper than usual.

                After half an hour of waiting, he’d almost run out of scotch. Thankfully, the CI had found it. Pressed by time, and impatient by nature, Eb asked the CI to do a quick summary of the plot.
                The central intelligence almost bugged at the request, and could only apologize for not being able to degibberize it.

                It took him a few hours to read the book on the holographic screen, and at the end, couldn’t say if it was just a waste of time. Preposterous story, with no head nor tail, literally… But then his genius elegant solution appeared as an evidence.

                He’d known people were more likely to comply and control if they are told a plausible lie, within the frame of their accepted reality. He just had to bridge the discontinuity of their reality, with the reality of everyone else on the planet. The tale had reminded him of this popular movie about blue aliens. Blueus ex machina, that was it!

                He spoke at the console “Record this and run simulation parameters:”

                The blue men are from another planet —or rather the Mars settlers are led to believe they are from another planet.
                They bundle them all into a fake spaceship
                and take them on a fake spaceship ride
                and deliver them back to Earth. where they have been all along of course
                da dah!

                The answer came back after another painful hour of scotch-less waiting.

                “Probability of success: 68%”
                Well, that was the best Eb had in days. He was about to go with it when the CI chimed in

                “We took the liberty of running a modified simulation based on your setting, which we believe can yield a ratio of 97% of success.”

                Eb was surprised at the initiative by the machine, and was curious to hear about it.

                “We adjusted two points:
                1. We can simulate some event on Mars like earthquakes to increase the likelihood of a willing departure from the planet.
                2. The blue aliens may be a future inconvenience if they are fake actors, when the Mars colony comes out of simulation and back to Earth. We would rather suggest using religious beliefs and invisible hand of God or non-corporal aliens.”

                Eb was annoyed by the machine’s dismissal of his blue aliens. Kill his darlings?

                “CI, any other suggestion for point 2?” he asked.

                “Indeed. We can create artificial intelligence blue bodies based on my algorithm, which would make convincing aliens that can later interact with your governments and continue the disinformation.”

                Eb was too drunk to realize he was about to make a devil’s pact when he agreed to launch the secret order for cybernetic blue bodies.

                #3750

                In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                EricEric
                Keymaster

                  The Matrimandir was empty at this time of night, deserted by the occasional late devotees, and only silently browsed by the maintenance robot.

                  Its exterior was shaped as a sphere covered in gold — well, not entirely yet. It was first built to be the heart of the future city, and to this date, partly a work in progress, half-coated with the gold foils of discarded satellites and other space craps.

                  The interior was rather large now, and air conditioned, though it was probably smaller and hotter in the past — John never had the curiosity to look at the archives, he’d known it like this since he was a child. It was meant to be a sacred place, or a place of simple beauty, which was odd, when you thought about it.
                  All around them was infinite space, boundless opportunities to connect to the great mysteries beyond, and quite frankly, this was often scary as hell. Maybe that’s what this place meant, a safe retreat, like a bubble with only a thin wall of soap dividing space between here and out there, but open for the world to see.

                  He’d brought another batch of water-stones, and opened the hatch below the meditation altar. When he jumped the last rug of the ladder, his boots landed in a splatch of water. Something had changed. The rate at which the stones were exuding water had increased. He would have to move them again after the next commercial shuttle departure. He couldn’t risk the Consortium getting notice of this… Not yet, not before they figured out what it meant.

                  #3749
                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    Aunt Idle:

                    It was going to be a long hot summer. Summer this year started early, and we were barely half way through July. I hadn’t had a moment to think, which isn’t true at all ~ my brain had been non stop chuntering since the end of April, but all the thinking was about errands and other peoples problems and trips to the bloody airport or the detention centre to pick up more waifs and strays. What I mean is, I hadn’t had any time to STOP thinking and just listen, or just BE. Or to put it more accurately, I hadn’t made much time for me. It had been an endless juggle, wanting to be helpful with all the refugees ~ of course I didn’t mind helping! ~ it wasn’t that I minded helping, it was the energy and the constant stream of complications, things going wrong, the complaining and defensive energy. It was a job to buffer it all and stay on an even keel, to ensure everyone had what they needed, but without acquiescing to the never ending needy attention seeking. It was hard to say no, even if saying no helped people become more confident and capable ~ it was always a mental battle not to feel unhelpful. Saying no to ones own comfort is always so much easier.

                    What I found I missed the most was doing things my own way, in my own time. How I wish I had appreciated being able to do that before all the refugees arrived! I’d wanted more people to do things with, living in this remote outpost ~ thought how nice it would be to have more friends here to do things with. Fun things though, not all the trips to the supermarket, the bank, the pharmacy, all the tedious errands. And in summer too! I like to minimize the errands in summer so I’m not worn out with the heat to do the fun things like go for early morning walks. But this lot didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, and they weren’t really up to much walking either. I’ve been hobbled, having to walk slower, and not walk far. It had interfered somehow with my photography too, I haven’t been much in the zone these days, that place of observant appreciation. Ah well, it was interesting. Things are always interesting.

                    Not many countries had been willing to accept the hundreds of thousands of refugees from USA, and small wonder, but our idiotic government had been bribed to take more than a fair quota. All of the deserted empty buildings in town had been assigned to the newcomers, and all of our empty rooms at the hotel too.

                    Mater hardly ever came out of her room, and when she did venture out, it was only to poke them with her walking stick and wind them up with rude remarks. Prune seemed to be enjoying it though, playing practical jokes on them and deliberately misinforming them of local customs. Corrie and Clove were working on an anthropology paper about it all ~ that was a good thing and quite helpful at times. When the complaining and needs got overwhelming, I’d send them off to interview the people about it, which took the brunt off me, at least temporarily. Bert was a good old stick, just doing what needed to be done without letting it all get to him, but he didn’t want to talk about it or hear me complaining about it all.

                    “Aint much point in complaining about all the complaining” was all he’d say, and he had a point.

                    #3743
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      “There are times when only complete nonsense will do, Percy,” stated Elizabeth with an air of triumph as she leaped out of her chair and started pacing the room. “Praise plastered particles pinched primly, pointedly, pairing plump parrots in pink painted plantpots!”

                      Striking a pose by the fireplace and pausing dramatically, she continued, “ Hail heavy heart handling harpsichord harpies home; hell bent high water, high hopes, heaving half hanging helplessly, hunkered and hungry.”

                      She sunk to the floor, overwhelmed with emotion.

                      “Sing softly,” she whispered, rising. “Sail slight, slanting sun shadows, sand sifting surrender, oh softly, so softly,”

                      Elizabeth swept over to Percy with outstretched arms, imploring, “Swill silkily slithering serpentine whispers waft willowy, willingly, winsomely waywardly west.”

                      “Quite,” replied Percy succinctly.

                      #3726
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        It had happened “once”, and it may “certainly” happen again, although “god” knows she wasn’t expecting it. One has to look “outside” periodically, especially if one endeavours to “grow”. There were times when there were comments “galore”, and characters like “bert” indulged in threadjumping ~ oh yes! indeed, there were times when it was a veritable “sea” of comments, rich with “symbol” and humour. Unexpected characters popped in , like “linda” (who the fuck is Linda, was the unspoken question on everyone’s minds), and rich with “half” assed, half hearted half measures to stay on track, much to “godfrey“s disgust. Far be it from me to “form” an opinion, Elizabeth said, foolishly: she “herself” hadn’t given a “fuck” for “months”, berating “self” for “breathing” life into the “character“s in the first place. Ah well, she did “enjoy” it at the time.

                        #3687

                        Aunt Idle:

                        “Don’t look so grim, Idle, we’re not staying,” Liz said, “We only came for a mince pie. We’ll be off in a minute but first I must have a word with Godfrey in private.”

                        What a relief, I can tell you! “I’ll go and get him, shall I?”

                        “No, I think I’ll have a word with him in his room, if you don’t mind,” she replied. “I think he has something to show me.”

                        Curiosity over ruled any shreds left of anxiety, and I had to bite my tongue not to ask straight out, not that she’d have told me. Always full of enigmatic little secrets, she was, always had been. It was never a hundred percent clear if she knew what she was talking about and was very clever, or if she hadn’t got a clue what was going on and was winging it. Anyway, the main thing was that she wasn’t staying long, so if we got through the next half hour without any more confusion ensuing, we’d be laughing. Feeling more inclined towards gracious kindness than previously, I beamed magnanimously at her and politely ushered her down the hall to room 8.

                        “Mr, er, Cornwall,” I didn’t know whether to call him Godfrey, and decided against it. His bill was in the name Crispin Cornwall, and I wasn’t about to have him flitting off with Liz and her entourage without paying it. “Elizabeth would like a private word, if you wouldn’t mind.”

                        “Bloody Liz Tattler’s the last person I wanted to see,” he said. “Trust her to just happen to land on my secret hideaway.”

                        My hand flew to my mouth. “Did you say Tattler?”

                        #3673
                        TracyTracy
                        Participant

                          “Who else is coming? Don’t remind me, I can’t bear it,” Elizabeth said fretfully while Norbert opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish.

                          “I have an idea!” she announced suddenly, standing up and crushing a mince pie that had rolled under her desk. “Gather round, come on, come on!”

                          Arona Haki shuffled in with the dustpan and mop, as Finnley blew her nose loudly and wiped the tears from her eyes. Norbert stood silently, waiting.

                          “It wouldn’t matter WHO came,” Liz paused for effect, “If none of us were here!”

                          “But we are here, aren’t we,” remarked Finnley. Norbert and Haki murmured in agreement.

                          “We are now!” replied Liz, “But we could be gone in an hour! We could go and visit my cousin ~ third cousin twice removed, actually ~ in Australia. They have an old inn and it’s sure to be half empty, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and,” she added triumphantly, “It will be lovely and warm there!”

                          “Blisteringly hot, more like,” muttered Finnley, “And would they like unexpected visitors for Chri, er Kri, er, that date on the calendar?”

                          “I’m sure they’d be delighted, “ replied Liz, crisply. “Not everyone is as curmudgeonly about Chri, er, Kri, er that date on the calendar as we are. And anyway,” she added, “If I write it into the story that they are delighted, then they will have no option but to be pleased to see us.”

                          “If you bloody lot are coming to the Flying Fish Inn, I’m buggering off to Mars for the holidays” said Bert.

                          Elizabeth spun round, saying sharply, “Bert! Get back to your own thread this instant! The bloody cheek of it, thread hopping like that, really!”

                          #3635
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            Aunt Idle:

                            Trying to get a conversation out of Bert was like trying to prise a can of beans open with a nappy pin. If he’d been a bit more willing to discuss it with me I might have told him about the note, but I didn’t. I suppose he was disgruntled because I was more interested in that medical team buying up ghost towns than his bridge, so we sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Not that I wasn’t interested in the place on the other side of the river, but there was something very odd going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. That note, made from old maps at the Brundy place, then Flora’s card with the same name on ~ what the dickens was going on? Should I ask Flora point blank, or would that alert her that I was on to her? Might be better to be more subtle, see what I could find out before confronting her. I even thought of getting the remote view team to see if they could find anything out ~ although the results were so sketchy that might just be a wild goose chase, lead me off in the wrong direction.

                            “Take the next left, Idle, down this here track,” Bert said.

                            Miles away I was, so I didn’t hear him at first and had to slam the brakes on a bit sharpish. I caught Bert rolling his eyes at me and glared at him.

                            The track hadn’t been driven on for months, if not years ~ that much was obvious. We bumped along kicking up a cloud of dust for a few miles before the river came into sight, then the track followed the river for another half a mile or so, eventually petering out.

                            “We’ll have to walk from here,” said Bert, getting out of the car. I passed Bert the rucksack with the bottled water and locked the car. “You don’t need to lock the car here” Bert snorted.

                            “Habit,” I snapped, “Lead the way.”

                            #3617

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

                              Being a distinguished host, Mother Shirley had been assigned one of the Finnleys bodies, the one with the number 21 plastered on its forehead.
                              “Twinnie,” she called in her croak of a voice “do the thing!”

                              Finnley 21 rolled her eyes to connect to her inner source, which was the main computer board, and a stream of random words started to flow down like colander water:

                              half leading usually jack gave legs secret stick
                              light plan fell yourself elizabeth sometimes child
                              downson recovery management karmalott surprise early

                              Shirley clapped her hands gleefully like a child. “How wonderful Twinnie, you’re my personal Oracle, the words of the Mighty Goddess of War have never felt so close and special to me.”
                              Mother Shirley looked undisturbed by the lack of response from the cybernetic body, and went on “Now, will you, help me adjust this headpiece, it chafes at the temples.”

                              #3559
                              matermater
                              Participant

                                Mater:

                                I am concerned about Dido. The silly trollop has taken up drinking again—in front of the kids too. Mark my words, she will end up back in rehab if it goes on. Like last time. And then where will we all be? Those poor little mites without a father or mother and their Aunt fast turning into a crazy slush. There’s no telling her though. God knows I have tried in the past.

                                I can only hope she will settle down when that kiwi friend arrives—Flora someone. Though I don’t hold out much hope really. I have not met a kiwi with a half a brain in their head yet. And that awful accent! I don’t need this aggravation at my age.

                                Calm down, remember what Jiemba told you.

                                I have not told you yet about my visit to Jiemba, have I? There has been so much going on here, what with the fish going missing and that odd guest staying in Room 8 and Dido’s antics, it nearly slipped my mind.

                                It was Prune who hid the fish, of course. Sensitive wee thing — she has always had a particularly strong dislike of the awful old relic and I can’t say I blame her. Dido went ape when Prune eventually confessed, but secretly I found it rather amusing.

                                I digress, yet again.

                                In the end it was Bert who helped me more than Jiemba. The dear man waited out in the truck for me while I kept my appointment with Jiemba. And he held my secret safe from the others. I am grateful to him for that. It felt nice to have someone who would do that for me. On the trip back home he opened up and told me stories about the town. Apparently in its heyday it even had an ice-cream factory; I hadn’t heard that before. Nor some of the other stories he told me. There are not many left around here with the knowledge Bert has. I feel I may even pluck up courage to tell him what I have seen at the Inn. Perhaps he may have some thoughts on it.

                                But not just yet.

                                Jiemba gave me some salve made from native bush bark for my aches and pains. It seems he is more modern than his father—things change I guess. I wanted to ask him about the ghost, but what with the dogs and kids running around outside and the heat and the baby screaming in the house somewhere, I could not bring myself to do it. But one thing he said to me has stuck.

                                “Live from your heart”.

                                It was the way he said it. Very intense. He went quiet and stared at the floor for a long time while I tried not to fidget. As though he was communing with some spirit world I could not see. Though I would dearly love to. I have thought about those words since then, trying to figure out what they mean.

                                I’m not sure I can even find my heart, let alone live from it.

                                #3551
                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  Aunt Idle:

                                  I took the rolled up bundle of torn maps into my bedroom and locked the door. I turned the key silently, almost furtively, and then leaned my back on the door. If there had been a security cam in the room, I’d have looked to anyone watching like I was over dramatizing. Ham acting drama queen. Hoped none of the Laptop Lazuli’s, my remote viewing buddies, were tuning in. Thinking about them gave me an idea, but I’d think about that some more later.

                                  After spreading the maps on the floor and sending a half dozen dust bunnies scampering off, I went over to my desk to get the note. I found it in the end, after flapping a bit when it wasn’t where I thought I’d left it.

                                  It didn’t take long to start matching up the letters on the note with the holes in the maps. I started jotting the place names down as best as I could work it out, and of course there were plenty of letters on the note without a corresponding map segment. But it was clear that the letters on my note had come from these maps.

                                  The funny thing was, and it was more creepy than funny, was that all of the places on the map with a missing letter were places of particular significance to me. Either I’d been to that place, or it was a place in The Tales, the stories I’d been writing with the Lazuli’s online.

                                  One of the I’s was from Paris, one from Sri Lanka and another from Siberia. There was an R from New York, a D from London and an H from Shanghai, and so on. After awhile I started to notice that all the letters on the signature of Hilde Didier were from locations in The Tales, and that the content of the note, so far, was constructed of letters ripped from places I had been to. Places I’d been to where I’d left in a hurry.

                                  I needed to find the rest of the maps to complete the picture.

                                  #3550
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    Corrie:

                                    Funny how things pop up. While Clove was taking supper to the guy in room 8, I signed into Spacenook and the first thing on my perusefeed was an article about maps.

                                    “Cartographies can be altered endlessly to reflect different priorities, hierarchies, experiences, points of view, and destinations.”

                                    How syncy is that. There was another sync like that yesterday, after the kitten fell off the barn roof. I was just posting a photo of the kitten on Spacenook and glanced at the sidebar and there was an ad for a catnip garden memories of dead cats group thing there. I wonder if that dream I had of our old dog Lilly the other day was because the kitten was a remanifestation of her? Lilly’s name was supposed to be Delilah, that’s what it said on her papers, Delilah, but nobody ever called her that. We always called her Lilly.

                                    Anyway, they come and they go, we’ve had hundreds of cats wander through this town, but they always come back. I saw a rat the other day and it reminded me of Boozer, the old sheepdog we had when we were little.

                                    Funny thing was, yesterday morning I’d posted this poem by Mary Oliver:

                                    “…. Tell me, what else should I have done?
                                    Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
                                    Tell me, what is it you plan to do
                                    With your one wild and precious life?”

                                    Made me feel a bit better when I read it again later, because I did wonder if I’d got there quicker when I heard it crying, when it must have been halfway done falling and stuck on a branch, it might not have ended up the way it did. It must have been meant to be that way I suppose. Well, she’ll be back. They always come back sooner or later.

                                    Sighing, I refocused on the article.

                                    “Maps produce new realities much as they seek to document current ones. Maps are always a going-beyond the space-time of the present.”

                                    No mention of a room full of map covered mannequins in the Brundy place though.

                                    #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.

                                      #3536

                                      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                                      EricEric
                                      Keymaster

                                        John was about to leave the pod for the airlock when a sharp voice startled him.

                                        “Where are you going on your own Johnny? You know the rules!”

                                        He could tell she was only pretending indignation. She had this fun smirk at her pursed lips that he knew by heart. She was most likely vexed at not being asked to come along for the venture past curfew.

                                        At 15, Yz was 5 years younger than him (in Earth years), and only half his height, but her brains were razor sharp, as well as her tongue. She was also a gifted mechanic, and a fearless young girl.

                                        They exchanged a conniving smile. No more than three minutes after, she was back, silent as a cat, and suited up for the harsh environment of Mars.
                                        Over the years, small adjustments had been made to the suits, some purely out of fashion, but the main elements remained the same, which little change from one Earth cargo to the next. Ensuring their survival at minimal cost to their movements and senses.
                                        Survival outposts were also planted all across the area, so as long as they stayed at safe distance to their pod, they were in no real danger.

                                        The sand scooters were always free to take for a ride. A matter of life and death, it would be a crime to put locks on them. At any moment, anybody could be in dire need for a ride. And besides, in all that expanse of land, where to run to?

                                        #3526
                                        TracyTracy
                                        Participant

                                          Another bang on my bedroom door, my hands suspended over the keyboard. “Go away Prune!” I shouted, exasperated. “If you bang on my door again, I’ll come out and give you such a wallop, now bugger off, will you!”

                                          “It’s me, Corrie” came Clove’s voice. Walked over to the door and unlocked it. A chat with my sister might help me with this project. Unlike Prune, who would be guaranteed to disrupt my train of thought.

                                          Locking the door again I tell Clove what I’m writing about. We don’t go to school, me and Clove, we’re what they call “homeschooled” but what that actually means in our case is that we’re left to our own devices most of the time. Aunt Idle asks us (when she remembers) what we’ve been working on, and as long as we’ve been writing something or researching something, she’s happy.

                                          So when I saw the group project about alternative timelines to avoid the disaster timeline, I had some ideas. Well, to be honest, I didn’t have any definite ideas until I saw the other suggestions. All Americans, and all of them talking about changing the timelines by changing the results of presidential elections!

                                          “Not much chance of a different timeline there then!” remarked Clove astutely.

                                          “Exactly!” I knew Clove would get it, she knows were I’m coming from, but then, everyone knows twins are like that.

                                          “So this is what the plan is, right: “The goal of this exercise is to discuss amongst the group and choose significant past moments, and then As a Group, focus on creating alternate histories, thus sparking alternate timelines. We should vividly imagine moving forward from those probability forks and creating a more viable and desirable future.” Oh, and this bit here: “ our current timeline is convoluted to the point where many probabilities are leaning towards a disaster scenario simply to shake out of the current focus.” And then all these suggestions about different presidents, and then this: “My suggestion would be also to consider how we would like our current time frame to appear,” so I’m thinking…”

                                          “I’m thinking” interrupted Clove, continuing my train of thought, “Of all those states and communities that got with the programme ten years ago, and took their kids out of school and built those Earthships so they didn’t need money for water and electricity..”

                                          “And started cooperative worker owned businesses like they do in South America….”

                                          “And they all started a guaranteed basic income years ago, so everyone was doing what they did best, especially the kids, cos they had such great ideas and weren’t stuck in boring schoolrooms…..”

                                          “and there was no poverty, and nobody without a home…”

                                          “Yeah, and they all stopped paying taxes so there was no money for the military, and then loads more people stopped paying taxes too…”

                                          “Good one, Clove!”

                                          “So nobody gave a fuck what president was elected anyway, because they were all sorting themselves out, and those states and communities were doing so well…”

                                          “Because they’d already been doing it for years” I added.

                                          “…that other states and communities started doing it too.”

                                          “So that it snowballed, like dominoes, and there were more and more of these places..”

                                          “And they had exchange students and stuff like that to learn from each other, and shared stuff online..”

                                          “So when the disasters struck, it wasn’t half so bad because there were already a bunch of people managing perfectly well without dollars or oil, and they could help the people in the disaster. Makes more sense that electing another blimmin president, huh?”

                                          “Bloody obvious if you ask me” replied Clove. “Pity we don’t have basic income, did you see Mater’s face when she was talking to that debt collector?”

                                          That made me laugh, remembering her waving the stick around. “Her face was as purple as her cardigan.”

                                          In unison, we both starting singing Start Wearing Purple and dancing around, acting the fool. I had a purple wig hanging on the back of my chair, so I put that on, and Clove grabbed a purple feather boa off the coat stand. No shortage of wigs in this town, though god only knows why. Just about every damn trunk in every empty house is full of wigs.

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