Search Results for 'let'

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.

Mother Shirley had realized the truth.

How could she have missed it before, with the discontinuity, and impossible timelines. There was only one explanation at Lizette’s reappearances, and the Aurora’s strange incidents.

There was no Mars, no space travel, much less any artificial intelligence, all was an elaborate simulation, designed to make them stay in the illusion — an illusion that was showing at the seams. Lizette was probably a distracted agent of the Orchestrators.

In all likelihood, they were all in some secret base in a desert, maybe under a large dome and had never left Earth.
She’d laughed before about the nuts who believed that there had been no moon landing, that satellites didn’t exist, that oceans couldn’t stay stuck on a spinning ball, and that humans never managed to actually go into space…

Well, creating a vast space comedy was a better way to make everyone believe we’re the only sentient creatures in the universe; a vast and well-known, if not almost and reassuringly empty, Universe.
All that was better than knowing you are a being in a farm-ant, with Flove knows what peering at it from outside…

That or she was completely mad. She couldn’t tell, or they would lock her up, blame it on space travel disease. But she had to tell, had to convince them the comedy was over, they could all go home, and build a new world.
But who could she tell, when all had been seeing a cave’s shadows all their lives?

Good old organized religion and metaphors maybe could help, after all… The wave wasn’t over for a reason. She just had to repurpose the tool.

Mother Shirley was lost in a trance again, seated in her suspended egg chair in front of the placid Finnley, and monologuing while absorbed in the analysis of the minute movements on the surface of the android’s face.

“Tell me, how do we learn things? How do you learn things? — It’s a rhetorical question, keep still, like I told you.
“It seems we speak too much about learning, and the learning process, and all that jazz, but… what if there are only states of knowing. We know, and * poof *, that’s it. I can’t for the dickens of me, figure out when I started to learn the things that led me to this current state of knowingness.”

She noticed, or thought she noticed a brief and slow ripple on the synthetic skin.

“Maybe like that, a ripple of relaxation… Maybe we look at it the wrong way, because we’re taught regular steps will lead to a result, so that in the end, you’ll know something… I call horseshit! How many lessons of space mandolin have I had, thanks to dear Mother, bless her devilish soul, and I’m still such a pathetic player! It can’t just be this, or it’d be like playing the roulette over and over, until… what? Don’t start with your tree, Mother, a damn acorn doesn’t get taught how to become more of itself. And when does it start to become a tree? At the first leaf? The first bark?

Waving her hand at the ghost idea of her Mother, she scrutinised Finnley more intently

“No you give me ideas, you little monster, you know that, with your peach face and smooth skin to die for. Never ever a sneeze… If I wanted to teach you how to sneeze, how to contract your body in an instant, and expel the devil or the aliens, whatever you’d like,… could I? Could you?

She pushed back the egg chair to restart the pendulum motion, and leaned backward with a contented look.

“I think that’s good enough for this session tonight, dearie. Bring me my cognac, remove my headpiece, and make my bed ready.”

Prune was listening to Maya and Yz, not daring to talk, much less to disagree.
Yz was back to the planet from her maintenance drill on the mothership, and had found their remote outpost overloaded with new clueless settlers.
Now, even Maya, who was always the understanding one was fuming at the vexing situation and couldn’t help but complain about the new Mars settlers’ manners (or lack thereof). The matter was of importance, but somehow Johnny couldn’t help but find it hilarious.

“Johnny! Stop laughing, it’s not at all funny!”
“I’m sorry, it’s the nerves!” he replied “I didn’t want to poke fun at your horror story, Mum.”
“You damn right, it IS a bit of a horror story. Well, I don’t know what kind of a story it is. These new settlers that moved here are disorganized conflict and chaos all the time. And now nobody has a permit for sand scooter but me. So everything I do takes me 6 times as long with everyone else… and its hot!”

She paused a little, smiling at Prune, then turned to Yz, who seemed equally annoyed by the recent mess.

Prune ventured a word “But you really love the idea of cooperative community sharing, don’t you.”
Maya nodded, then continued “but it sucks! IT SUCKS!… and it’s all a bit weird too. It’s a daily juggle with what I’m willing to say yes to, and where I draw the line and say no.”

She sighed. “But some of it is fun, obviously. But much of it isn’t. I think everyone is struggling with finding themselves disconcertingly in a totally new place.
The new place for me is never being alone to do anything, where before I almost always was, and really wanted people to do things with. But they are LATE and I can do things on my own easier.
I prefer being a hermit while preaching about community. And doing things my own way while pushing for cooperation!”

It didn’t help that Maya had agreed to help organize the event for Mother Shirley (though the party had changed the event location to the nearby fancier townlet of Romars without notice, instead of their rugged but peaceful village).

The event had attracted the usual throng of nuts and illuminated sycophants, which would have dissolved just as well, if not for an unusual occurrence: Mother Shirley had claimed to have a divine vision by merging consciousness with the AI of the ship. She had seen floods and rains. Image that! As if water on Mars, was not ludicrous enough, now floods!
All of a sudden, all hell broke loose and the religious nuts managed to create a panic, and had loads of people rush for the higher ground… Well, you guessed, to their previously quiet outpost.

Of course, she had said nothing of the water-rocks she and John had found. Better not to encourage the nutters.

Strange new place, indeed…

Geraldine von Truff, also known as Gelly by her friends was sweating profusely and had opened all the windows to get air.
“Fracken hot flashes” she said, taking a wet towel to freshen up. It was barely start of spring, and the temperatures were doing yoyo in the most peculiar fashion.

She logged onto Spayce to check if her next client was there. Maybe she’ll put him on audio, because at the rate she was undressing, he would wonder whether he’d signed on the right account. After all, she was a licenced psychoregressor and helped her clients connect to their subconscious in hypnotic trances. This was all very serious.

Actually, to be honest, she was quite baffled by the crock of bollocks the subconscious was telling at times, but hell, it was cathartic for her clients, and their well-being was her utmost priority.

“James? Are you here?”
James was her client from Glasgow, an affable middle-aged man, who seemed to have taken to her robotic German accent and her hypnoregressive sessions.

“Yes, Doctor” the sound came in all distorted. “Is it normal I don’t have visual?”
“Ja, alles ist gut my friend, the internet is playing tricks today. Let’s have it just audio, OK?”
“Alright then.”
“I think our session today will be splendid. I already feel all the energies building up.”

under information says although hands hair
dido wait sitting impression busy raft stones
let wild giant rolling picture told young gone

“No, no, no, you can’t do that!” Liz complained loudly, after having read the last pages Finnley had diligently proofread. “A bag lady of all characters, can’t possibly steal the limelight from me now. Don’t forget who is the star of this reality tut tut.” She paused briefly and continued.
“Well, even if somebody had to care for the baby, she can’t me more mysterious and interesting than me…”
Seeing Finnley despondent more than her usual silent yet quipping self, she leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially “you’ve been worrying me dear, ever since you stopped thumbing up my posts on fruitloop. What has gotten into you? Let’s just hope it’s a passing fad.”
She poured herself another serving of quince tea, and picked a slice of lemon with a soured face. “See, my lemon diet is doing me good, you should do the same.”

“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.”

Godfrey was a supervisor of the miners team. After the landing, and the greetings by the locals, the lucky draw had him and his team assigned to the sulfur mines, which were vital to the colonies to fertilize the plants.
For him, hardly lucky at all.
Rotten eggs and smelly fish, he thought, at least one of us will be pleased

“Norbert!” he called “Are all the equipments ready to move?”
“One more cargo, and we’re good to go.”
“OK, everybody, let’s get ready to move.”

Somehow, the outlook didn’t feel as bad,… almost a breather of fresh oxygen and freedom.

Finnley’s tirade stirred something in Godfrey.

He may not have completely given voice of the thought in his head, but it made him realize that the thought of quitting for something different had been here all along.
He liked Elizabeth well enough. To be honest, such caring for an ungrateful and volatile lady was borderline devotion, but still, it wasn’t about that.

I wanted to change the world, and Elizabeth vision of greatness and madness alike was, for a time, something he could fall in line behind and support with passion.

Through visionary books, to open the minds of the pleb to the realms of possibilities, ah! no matter how deliciously delirious and quaint such possibilities seemed. That was a grand epic in budding.

And then, after so many years of relentless editing, copy-writing, and of course maid after maid interviews, all there was left? Unbridled madness and tyranny from the well of grandiose ideas that Elizabeth had been, and to some extent still, was.

In fact, Godfrey had stifled his own creativity by falling in line behind the writing giantess. There were timid attempts at writing his own story, and only piles of old notebook to account for it.

Purpose, Truth, Action those were the magic words…

“Oh, bugger it Liz’. I quit.”

How’s that for action? Another thread would do me good. Like to see what life’s brewing on Mars.