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  • #4082
    Avatarrmkreeg
    Participant

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

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

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

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

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

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

      #3826

      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

      prUneprUne
      Participant

        It feels like it has all been a dream. And not a particularly good one, too.

        I look through the window, and the blue sky of Earth shines brightly though. Only a few more days before the quarantine is over, if I’m to believe the hazmat-suited staff, and I should be able to get out to wherever I want to. You can go back to your family the nurse had said with a smile. They surely must miss you.
        Obviously, the well-intentioned nurse had no notion of her family…

        The TV set they’ve put in the rooms is more helpful to piece together the fragments of memory of what happened. The news had kept mum about the aliens, or about our return for that matter. It seems they can’t explain how we came back so fast, without telling more. Maybe that’s the real purpose of the quarantine… brainwash us into forgetting, returning back to our lives quietly, and be happy that we could get back in one piece. Funny they should even bother at all, actually.

        I don’t know if there’s any coming back to how life was before. Surely the Inn and Aunt Idle would still be there, if only both more derelict than before. But would I want to get back? Do what? Only Mater’s sharp wits were ever a match, and she is gone too.

        This is the end of the Mars story.
        With some chance, I’ll start a business with Hans — raise Guinea pigs, rats and maybe a couple of those cute African pygmy hedgehogs. That would be a lot more fun.
        Squeals and cackles, and truckloads of cuteness.

        #3787

        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          If anything special about being in the vacuum of space, was that anywhere else than in the pressurized and breathable areas, the silence was deafening, and explosions silent.

          With the main galleries under tons of rubble, Godfrey was glad to have followed his instincts with the evacuation. It was an unbelievable miracle that there were so few people down with him at that time.
          He could hardly prove whether there actually was a controlled explosion triggered down there, but even without dramatic fires, the effect had been felt all throughout the colony. A few of the most fragile structures had collapsed, but at least most of the security protocols were active, and had allowed people to evacuate without too much damage while sucking the air out to avoid dangerous explosive oxygen leaks.

          The medical bay was quite busy now treating the wounded, while everyone remained mostly calm despite the unusualness of the situation. Amazing how the survival training (more like brainwashing) they had before coming here was kicking in, with almost minute and automatic precision.

          As the only member of the board of operations in duty, he had to report to the central area, where they would likely debrief about it. When he arrived at the pod, there was already quite a commotion, and quarrelling voices could be heard in the airlock.

          “… decently leave like this!”
          “ We should listen to…”
          “stayed for too long to stop now!”
          “plan? no strategy at all!”
          “was all written over,…” “failure since the beginning…”

          When the airlock finally opened, people continued to speak out of turn without paying much attention to him. Good he thought, that was time people release the pressure and start being honest. Let’s just hope it doesn’t end in a bloodbath.”

          He was already stuffed with kale fritters and almost drunk with free kale ale from the buffet when the monitors started displaying the broadcast everyone was apparently waiting for.

          As usual, Earthlings are a bit late for the battle. he thought when the familiar face of the broadcaster appeared in the middle of interferences.

          “… A wave of Greta rays has been delaying the communication, in conjunction with the super moon retrograde in Spices. We apologize for the inconvenience, as we were not able to warn you of the meteor impact that hit Mars surface a few hours ago.”

          Godfrey wasn’t sure this was real, or his kalecohol level hitting his brain, but the science seemed sketchy at best. He struggled to pay more attention.

          “Not only the actively increased meteoric warming, but also given the Manta ray pulses from Juice pitcher, we fear all electronic equipment on which the Mars ant colony depends may be fried and lead you very soon to eternal damnation without hope for safe return. Our commercial spacecrafts cannot be risked to save you, so we advise you to pray. This broadcast was brought to you by Dismay Channel.”

          Even if Godfrey wasn’t sure everything he heard was completely right, he could tell from the confused face of his colleagues that there would be a hell of a run for your lives to follow.
          If only they had anywhere to run to…

          #3769

          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Betty Bloo wasn’t at all happy about her pigmentation, it was much too dark a blue ~ almost navy blue, or perhaps not quite that dark ~ more of a French navy blue, which was going to cause her no end of trouble. A delicate sky blue was what she wanted, even a slightly darker robins egg blue would have been acceptable, but French navy? Oh, brother! That sucked! Everyone knew it was much easier for a refugee alien with a pale blue colour. Dark blue was absolutely fatal ~ often literally.

            Betty wondered how many others in the latest batch were as darkly tinted as she was, and looked around the holding camp apprehensively. Huddled in nervous groups at the far end of the room were the darkest midnight and Prussian blue skins (she particularly noticed the tall elegant indigo fellow and made a mental note to make his acquaintance later); in the middle of the room various men in shades of cobalt and turquoise milled around, chatting with the teal and cornflower blue girls, but what caught Betty’s eye was the colours of the newbies spilling out from the pigmentation chamber.

            Some of them were such a pale blue they were almost grey: delicate powder blue and baby blue, the palest aqua and faded periwinkle. It almost seemed as if the later ones were a result of the pigment running out. She realized that she must have been one of the first to be created. Surely that gave her some seniority? A superior position in the blue hierarchy? Did blue alien refugees have a system of hierarchy at all, she wondered?

            Well, she said to herself grimly, squaring her darkest blue shoulders. We are about to find out. Blue lives matter!

            #3758

            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              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.

              #3588

              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                Area 12 was easy to locate. The whole ship’s design was shaped like a clock, with the 12 quadrant at her helm, with the main deck. It was also where, everyone had been briefed after boarding, the main emergency exits were located.
                Something serious must have had happened for the Code Red to have been triggered.

                Captain Rama Shivakumar was trying his best to gather information from the central command, but Finnley was reacting very unusually. Quantum computers and artificial intelligence was still a rather new technology. Remarkably efficient, but its bugs were terribly difficult to understand and fix, and certainly above his pay grade.
                Ram’s second in command, Karthikeya Uthayashankar was coordinating the crew’s efforts to sweep the ship for clues. It seemed that Finnley’s sensors had panicked at some unusual and very localized electromagnetic pulse, which could have seriously damaged the navigational systems and put everyone’s lives in dire straits.

                By looking through the logs, the pulse seemed to have originated from Area 6, in the quadrant that was reserved for the honoured guests, currently occupied by Mother Shirley and her following.

                “Captain Ram, did you find anything?” Karthik enquired, fidgeting at the prospect of having to manage beside his crew of ten fellow men, a unruly herd of thirty snotty travelers. He seriously doubted that in times like this, the 21 finnleys would be of sure-footed help to them.
                “Relax, Karthik. The computer most likely overheated. See, it already has adjusted its parameters, and there isn’t much we can detect now that’s out of normal.”
                “And what about the passengers, Captain?”
                “We’ll send them to Mangala. It’s only a day before schedule, it will be fine.”

                #3504
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Bert knows a thing or two about the past, the town and the family, but he says very little about it other than offering cryptic one liners and knowing looks.

                  He was a miner when the mines were open (and he could tell you a few things about the goings on), and never left the place, managing to scrape by on kangaroo and cassowary meat and doing odd jobs, sometimes finding a gold nugget and selling it on ebay. He has a soft spot for the children, especially the rude and contrary Prune.

                  Does he have a strange sense of responsibility to Abcynthia? He hangs around the inn, unofficially making himself useful with odd jobs, and lives in a shed out the back.

                  #3465

                  Lazuli Galore in the shape of the mandarin duck looked over his shoulder, grinning mischievously at his passengers.
                  “Fasten your seat belts!” he shouted.
                  “What bloody seat belts?” asked Lisa. “Hey! Steady on!”
                  Lazuli the duck accelerated like a speedboat, ripping across the tops of the swelling waves and performing eye watering figure of eights, tilting the passengers first this way then that way as they held on to the feathers with all the strength they could muster, fearing for their lives, yet wildly exhilarated.
                  Lazuli whooped with the exuberance of wild abandon, failing to notice that Fanella had slipped off his back into the brine, and unable to hear the cries of the others amid his own gleeful shouts and the roar of the wind rushing past.
                  Fanella rolled and flailed in the backwash, eventually surfacing and gasping for breath. In vain she looked for the duck but it had disappeared from sight. The shore looked too far to swim to, but she knew she must try to reach it. Holding down the panic as best she could, she started to swim towards the mangrove trees lining the beach, barely visible in the descending fog. The striped shadows shimmered in the mist; was it an optical illusion of stripes and mists that it seemed as if a section of shadows was heading towards her? The zebra waded into the breaking waves, and calmly and purposefully swam towards the drowning girl.

                  #3377

                  “What does it say, Sanso?”
                  The four travelers had arrived on the island in patchy swirling fog in a field full of cucumber plants and sundials. The sundial nearest to Sanso had a letter tied to the handle with blue ribbon.
                  “If that’s not for me, I don’t know what is,” he snorted, untying the letter as Lisa looked at him in amazement.
                  “Really, Sanso, that seems so implausible,” she said.
                  “What does it say?”

                  bq(Quote).“And we start to hope that if we keep on digging,” Sanso read, “All the way to the core, if we don’t stop, if we perforate the land like a honeycomb, if we make it as flimsy as silk, maybe it will suddenly collapse in on itself. And then, like a tray piled with cups of coffee and cookies that crashes to the floor in a mess of crumbs and glass, it will all mix together.

                  The upper part and the lower part will blend. And the rules will change. And we’ll be able to say with a sigh of relief: Here is a piece of sky mixed with a cracked piece of sea; here is Shujaiyeh mixed with Sderot; here is Zeitoun mixed with the Mount of Olives; here is compassion mixed with relief; here is one human being mixed with another. above, and with them build a new land.”

                  “Oh my,” said Fanella, “Are you sure we’ve come to the right place?”

                  “And an entire people will rise to the surface of the earth,” Sanso continued, “ Pale and faded, blinded by the sun that beats down on the land. And we will stand in silence, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light. And as we stand there in silence, the fear and anxiety will gradually creep into our heart, that while we were finding refuge in subterranean Gaza, the land above took its own life, was left behind and emptied out.”

                  “Gorden Bennet,” said Lisa.

                  #3292

                  Hovering over the whales’ ballet, the St Germain Hologram very gracefully answered the question about his arms, in a flattering way that made Sadie slightly blush, even adding some mind-boggling clues about his Atlantean past lives.
                  Interestingly, that answer was very profound and mind expanding, so much so that she was a bit dizzied.

                  “May I ask another question?” she asked sheepishly.

                  “You just did, mon petit. Now, please ask your last question so that I can transcend to this mysterious dimension called Peasland that I can’t wait to explore.”

                  #3273

                  Consuela was always the more independent and adventurous. She didn’t realise at first that there was something not quite right about the perilous situation.

                  Breathing under water was strange, and it felt like a not quite adjusted piece of garment (an ill-motherfucker-fitted thong Maurana would have said), as though her lungs were filled with a light yet mucous fluid.
                  They’d all struggled and kicked the water in violent spams in the beginning, thinking they were about to die when the wetsuit automatic mucusbags went off, as a security measure for drowning, she’d guessed.
                  But then, the magic happened and they realised they could breathe like fishes.
                  Then the shark panic attack happened, which left them swimming for their lives with their prosthetic fins (and more or less graceful movements). But the shark didn’t seem interested after all, or it was driven away by a more juicy prospect, because they soon found themselves following a strange string of parallel lighted dots that dived deeper under water like an oddly placed seacraft runway. At least, that was what she thought at first, until she arrived at the cave’s entrance and realized nobody was actually following her.

                  The others didn’t follow… She only had to hope that they would catch her later with a taxi or something…
                  The thought of being able to discover the underwater cave trumped all sense of caution, and the lure of the prized crystal of exotic properties was enough to send her further down, despite the feeling of flashing tentacles creeping around in her peripheral vision, then gone in an instant the moment she turned the head around…

                  #3268
                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    This one is not a Lemone quote but could have been.
                    It’s from a series called Perception (S03E05)

                    Daniel: Think of your life as a story. Actually, you already do.
                    fMRI studies show us that following a story, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin.
                    These chemicals give us the uniquely human ability to connect with someone, even a total stranger, and empathize. In other words, stories are what we use to find meaning in our lives.
                    Now, imagine for a moment that we lived without the understanding that our story must eventually end.
                    What if our lives were as infinite as the universe, if the ticking clock never stopped?
                    What would our story be then? Would we… still love? Or care?
                    Would those tiny, fleeting moments that mean everything… Mean anything at all?

                    #3217

                    On the cruise ship, an inebriated crew of hundreds of rich Italian tourists were popping Brachetto bottles of sparkling wine and having the time of their lives.
                    The cruise was organized by a section of the Happiness Bureau to provide strange sightings and spiritual encounters à la mode.
                    They had to resort to the sparking wine as to keep the excitement at its peek.

                    The Management at the helm was holding its breath scanning the horizon for bleedthrough signs of the famed ghost ship.

                    #3210
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      – 346:
                      RICHARD: I guess I have a question about incarnations or parallel realities. Do humans experience focuses as other species, and specifically dolphins? ‘Cause I had an experience with a powerful hallucinogen at one time, that I was actually remembering of a time when we were all — or I and other people that I was with — dolphins. I mean, it sounds crazy!

                      But then as I’ve been reading about it, I heard about this tribe in South America, where you mentioned I had a previous focus. It’s an area where there are these pink dolphins that actually are said to be able to shift their body structure. It sounds crazy, but I’ll just throw it out there anyway! They change their appearance and come out of the water basically, and then go back. The tribe that lives there protects these dolphins. If anybody goes anywhere near them trying to harm them, they will kill them, and it’s out of love, not anger.

                      I’m just very intrigued by this particular species of dolphins. I’m just wondering, ‘cause I really had a close … I mean, I had an experience where I thought I was breathing … I mean, I was under the water in a hot tub for five minutes! So it was just because of my belief system, maybe, that I was not needing to breathe air anymore? (Pause) I guess that’s a question! (Laughing)

                      ELIAS: Very well. This … you may not be discounting yourself in this in your questioning, and not holding fearfulness with myself that I shall view this as an inconsequential question, for in actuality, this is an interesting question.

                      Early within the onset of these sessions, I offered information to this particular species, and that species which you term to be whales in this physical dimension. I have expressed that creatures within this dimension do not hold essence, but are created by you, which IS essence, although they are consciousness. But I have also expressed previously that these two particular species of creature within this dimension have moved into an area of assuming essence.

                      Now; at the time framework that I was discussing this physically with individuals previously, this action had not yet occurred, but was very close, as I was expressing. Within this present now, this is accomplished, that these particular creatures are also an expression of essence, and choosing to be manifest within this dimension NOT in the physical form of your species.

                      Now; as to the addressment of these particular creatures in this area of South America and your myths surrounding these creatures, these are not myths, they are not stories, and they are not what you term to be imagination.

                      In the experimentation of manipulating consciousness to be creating of essence, these particular creatures engage the action altering form, allowing the connection of the physical manifestation of essence within this dimension to be holding an accurate understanding and empathic sense of your species and to be creating of a connection physically, a knowing, but also recognizing that the choice is not to be manifest as essence in the form of your species, but to be manifest in this other species.

                      Now; within this present now, all of the species of this particular creature — dolphins, and also your whales — are manifestations of essence, unlike all of your other creations of creatures within this dimension.

                      This opens the window for much misunderstanding. Therefore, I shall clarify, for this is not to say that your creatures are lesser than you. They are different, for they are a creation of you. They are not essence. They are your creations, but they also are, in a manner of speaking, a part of you, just as your finger is not your entire body, but it is an element of you. Your dogs or your elephants are an extension of you. They are a creation of yours. Your dolphins and your whales are not. They are their own expression. They are their own essences.

                      RICHARD: And now, they’re creating their own realities.

                      ELIAS: Correct.

                      RICHARD: So then that has come about recently and will be a notable, dramatic change.

                      ELIAS: Correct.

                      In this, you have allowed yourself a similar experience in allowing yourself to empathically experience these other manifestations of essence, allowing yourself the experience of the dolphin in like manner to those particular dolphins which have offered themselves the experience of your species.

                      RICHARD: But when they did that, that experience, that was before they were essence. Wouldn’t that be a creation of our consciousness at that time, that caused them to take on a human form?

                      ELIAS: No! This has been their choice as consciousness, moving in the direction of creating essence for themselves within consciousness.

                      In that, they have created their experimentation with form within this dimension. This was an element of their choice, to experiment in their exploration of whether they shall participate within this dimension in similar form to you, or continue to manifest within the form they have chosen but incorporating essence. Therefore, there has been a time framework of experimentation of shifting shape.

                      Now; within this present now, this continues, but not for the same reason. This continues occasionally as a playful act, for they hold the knowing — unlike yourselves — objectively that they hold the ability to shift shape.

                      You also hold the ability to be creating this, but you do not offer yourselves the objective knowing of this. Therefore, you do not manifest this.

                      RICHARD: How? How do we do it?

                      ELIAS: Ha ha! (Grinning, and laughter)

                      #3193

                      Although Basque whaling had been in decline for some years (which is not to say that whalebone basques had declined in popularity), the Santa Rosa whaling galleon had been patrolling the waters of the Bay of Biscay for almost 600 years, a ghost ship, navigated by the ghost of the last whale killed by her crew. Her name was Belen, although nobody knew that was her name. At the moment of her death she had had a premonition, a knowing of a far distant future when whales began the extraordinary pursuit of compiling lists of all their other lives. One in particular, Maria del Mar, a fin whale in the Gibraltar waters of the early part of the 21st century, had connected with her. Maria del Mar had a special interest in time travel, and urged Belen to occupy the ghost ship and keep it afloat as a practice portal for whale teleporting.

                      #3015
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Much to Pearls amazement the celebrity surge mania that had taken hold of the lower ranks of the surge teams assistants was starting to infest the higher ranks as well. In fact it had started to infect the celebrities themselves, as well as the royal families of several European and Middle Eastern countries. Celebrity mania had surged with an unholy vengeance just after lightning struck the Vatican, when the pope was led away in handcuffs the previous month. Royal princesses, not satisfied with the rank of just one position, recklessly started claiming the lives of feckless celebrities as their own. Celebrities started insisiting that they were directing Directors, and informing cameramen that they were a focus of theirs too. The cameramen wondered whether they even knew what P mode was, and who was in charge now anyway. The King of Spain decided to claim Madonna as his own, and refuted Lady Ga Ga’s claim that she was in fact directing him. A Pointless TV quiz contestant claimed to be directing Stephen Fry, which was clearly rubbish; many dismissed the claim as distorted.

                        #1839

                        In reply to: Synchronicity

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster
                          #2327

                          “So how was your lunch date with your new best friend?” Harvey sounded distinctly sarcastic, even to Lavender’s forgiving ears.

                          “Oh, you know …”

                          Harvey raised his eyebrows. No mean feat when you have a book balancing on your nose. He sighed, and let the book fall. A few months ago he was balancing four poster beds, and now he could barely manage a Lemoine novel. Heavy as they are! He sniggered to himself. Oh well, at least I havn’t lost my sense of humour, along with my sense of smell!

                          “Well, to be honest Harvey .. I think I may have been possessed by those pesky aliens. I suddenly came to and I was talking all this rubbish about ‘random quote generators’ and using words like ‘dear’.

                          Lavender shuddered in horror at the memory, and then rolled her beautiful eyes and sighed. “Poor Ann, I think she is a really tortured soul.”

                          The writer wondered if it was time to add a dark side to Lavender’s personality. All this beautiful eyes business was getting a tad irritating, the beauty of Lavender’s eyes not withstanding. Not to mention her lips which she painted a bright shade of amaranth for every day wear, and on special occasions, rose madder. The writer wondered if the last thought made sense and wondered again how to strike out text. The writer decided to try that last line again.

                          Lavender shuddered, and then with an enigmatic smile which even her good friend Harvey found hard to decipher, she said softly, “I ate olives for lunch. They were yummy.”

                          The writer sighed and then noticed the random quote generator said “mean cleaner coming soon.” The writer wondered if it was a sign.

                          #100
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            She woke up at noon and it was 100 degrees, or 37 degrees, whichever you prefer, but whichever way you look at it, it was not a good temperature to wake up to. Everything was pointing in the direction of going solo, playing the game on her own for awhile, or at least until she was in a regular habit of giving herself priority, giving more attention to her own creative pursuits, and less time to the futile attempts to keep group projects going. She supposed for a moment that making a start whilst hot, tired, discouraged and confused was not the most ideal mood for a start, but at least it was a start. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it was she was actually starting, but suspected that it didn’t much matter, in the grand scheme (or lack thereof) of things.

                            She’d had a moment of inspiration when she started reading a book. She’d only read a few pages and had no idea how the book would turn out, but the format was interesting. Julie had had an idea, simmering on a back burner for years, to write a book. It always seemed to want to be an autobiographical book, and that’s where she always came unstuck because she couldn’t see the point of that, not that she was overly concerned about whether anyone would want to read it or not, but she often came unstuck when she wondered about how all the characters in the book might feel about it, which is why that moment of inspiration in the bathroom the other day seemed like such a good idea.

                            She could write a book about a probability party, perhaps called ‘Probably Real’, (maybe with the subtitle ‘Probably Not’.) There would be an occasion, the details of which she hadn’t worked out yet, in which various (not all, she soon realized!) of her probable selves met ~ such as in the Atkinson book, in some quiet desolate place with no interruptions (obviously somewhere with no internet connection, although there was always the danger of picking up a freak broadband WiFi), where they had all the time in the world to tell their tales, compare notes as it were.

                            Which was where the fiction idea came in ~ of course! Just call it fiction! Would just one of the probable selves be telling the truth, relating the only true version of Julie’s life? And if so, which one was the real probable self? All the characters in the book would have probable selves and probable lives; which of them was the real probable self, the official version? No-one would ever know.

                            Of course, anyone versed in the metaphysical mechanics of probabilities and such would realize that all probable versions are real, at the same time as all being, in a certain sense, fiction ~ made up. The only question was, would that be too unlimiting to contain within the confines of one book, but time (so to speak) would tell.

                            Procrastination had set in, as usual, not that that is a bad thing, and things pretty much carried on as usual for a few days. Julie noticed the puppy tugging at a particular magazine from the bottom of the magazine rack over the course of those few days, and eventually the magazine was rather pointedly poking out from the bottom of the pile, it’s title clearly showing: a booklet on How To Write FICTION, with FICTION in big letters.

                            Never the less, the procrastination continued, although the clue was duly noted. It hadn’t been the first time a Writing A Book incident had occured.

                            It was easy, in this case, to remember that date, because it was right around the time of the 1999/2000 milenium party, right around the time when that particular roller coaster had derailed. While unpacking the boxes of books and putting them on the shelves of yet another rented house ~ a particularly garish and tasteless monstrosity, a drug baron’s dream of unfunctional largeness with hideous coloured glass windows (it’s the sheer randomness of the colours that’s so awful, G had remarked) ~ a book flew off the shelf, quite literally, and landed alone in the middle of the floor some distance away from the bookshelf.

                            Becoming A Writer was the name of the book, and the funny thing was that she had been thinking of writing a book but didn’t know where to start, and had been toying with the idea of buying a book on writing a book. So she read the book and started writing, a little bit every day, following the books advice to just start writing, even if it’s just ‘I can’t think of what to write’. There was plenty to write about as it turned out, but circumstances changed, another sudden move of house ensued, another rollercoaster ride, and the writing stopped for awhile.

                            But back to the book, Becoming A Writer. For a long time, Julie had no recollection of buying that book, and wondered by what magic had it appeared at her feet. Many years later she perhaps would have simply accepted the magic, and would have known that she created the book in that moment. But at the time she didn’t, and in due course constructed a memory of buying the book some years previously at a car boot sale somewhere along the coast road.

                            (We did buy the book, piped up PSJ2, and I actually read it, unlike you, as soon as I bought it. My 5th book is about to be published, a lightweight comedy/detective series about the Costa del Crime)

                            PSJ2’s interjection reminded PSJ1 (Good grief, we’ll have to think of a solution to the probable self names, she noted) that she had in fact started writing a book about the Costa del Crime, called Peregrino’s, or perhaps that was the name she’d given to the bar, the central hub, of the book. Of course, that was in the days when bars had been her central hub; she doubted very much if she would choose a bar as the central hub of a book now. She hadn’t got very far with the book, and had burned it when PSA1 got busted, just in case. What to do first, bury the (probable, it must be remembered) pump action shotgun, or burn the book. She had buried the gun, under cover of darkness, in the back garden, wrapping it in plastic bags and blankets, making it look for all the world like the body of a dead child. It was dark, it was raining, and there weren’t many neighbours out there in the orange groves, and she could do no more than hope for the best that she hadn’t been seen.

                            No doubt there was a probable self who did choose to create being seen, but if so she hadn’t arrived at the probability party (yet, at any rate) with her tale.

                            That it had been a major probability junction was certain. Not just the gun burying incident, which had turned out to be no more than merely incidental, but the events leading up to it.

                            #2627

                            In reply to: Strings of Nines

                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              The word flounder popped into Yolands head, and for want of the inspiration to do anything meaningful, or even useful, she googled flounder. She was astonished to find so many varieties of flounder, and recognized that she was counterparting with quite a number of them.

                              :fish:

                              There was the Crosseyed flounder that she felt an affinity for, at the end of an evening of trying to sort out her photos; Alcock’s narrow-body righteye flounder, which was what she felt like in a bed full of male dogs every night, and she could relate to the Antarctic armless flounder when she couldn’t keep track of the Antarctic thread. Barfin flounder reminded her of the green icon and her friend Finn; Bigmouth flounder ~ Yoland sighed, she definitely felt a connection to that often enough. Blotched flounder, well that sounded a bit like botched ~ there were many occasions when Yoland felt that everything she did was botched, half done and messy. Chain-mail wide-eyed flounder when she dabbled a bit in past lives, and the Disc flounder when she got her music in a muddle. The Dark flounders were the worst, when everything seemed to take on the tone of a horror movie, but they were often followed by a Deep flounder, which sometimes contained a few insights, more often than not promptly forgotten.

                              :fish:

                              Yoland sighed. Imagine counterparting with just about every flounder known to man! She decided she wasn’t the only one counterparting the European flounder, which was a releif, nor was she the only one counterparting the Fantail flounder, although at least it could be said that she wasn’t a complete fan of anyone in particular, dead or alive, she was a fantail of quite a number. There were long spells of resonating with the Finless flounder; Finn was always disappearing, or so it seemed to Yoland. Very rarely she felt an alignment with God’s flounder, thankfuly she wasn’t often prone to dwelling on God things.

                              :fish:

                              Ah, the Gray flounder, yes she’d had a bit of a flounder when Gray sent all those photos of the Beltane Dance, she’d had a flounder for sure in amongst all those. Looking back though, she’d had fun with the mummy and Ella Tindale in the Gulf flounder…

                              :fish:

                              Yoland had to laugh when she came across the Intermediate flounder. Yoland wondered if the majority of her foundering was counterparting with the Intermediate flounder and decided she was probably too intermediate to work it out objectively anyway. She often had a tussle with the Large tooth flounder, lordy, she was always floundering with dental issues. And the Largescale flounder, that really was the biggest ongoing flounder of them all, the sheer vastness of everything.

                              :fish:

                              Every now and again, less than previously though, Yoland had a Melbourne flounder on Saturday nights, and rather enjoyed it, but not as much as she enjoyed a good old New Zealand flounder.

                              :fish:

                              Another flounder Yoland always enjoyed was an Olive wide-eyed flounder, roaming around the ancient olive trees of Andalucia, wide eyed and awestruck with the beauty and history of the place. She also enjoyed a Peruvian flounder on occasion, too ~ she’d even had a dream recently about floundering around by the mysterious doorway of Amaru Muru. The next night she’d had a River flounder, dreaming of the river in the Grand Canyon.

                              :fish:

                              Sand flounders were the best of all though, Yoland recalled many happy flounderings in the world of sand and all its Subulmantium configurations. The trouble with the sand flounder was that it often morphed into the largescale flounder, and got quite out of hand.

                              :fish:

                              Yoland sighed, it had been ages since she’d felt connected to the Seven pelvic ray flounder, what with Dan working nights. She was beginning to feel like a Shelf flounder. However, at least thanks to her new diet of replacing meals with flans, chocolate mousses and ice cream, she was closely aligning now with the Slender flounder.

                              :fish:

                              The ongoing slug issue with the cat food was obviously because she was still strongly aligned with the Slime flounder. Notwithstanding, Yoland was rather pleased to note that despite her morose and petulant mood this morning, it had to be said that she often counterparted with the Smooth flounder; although that was easy to forget in moments of quiet desperation when the floundering got out of proportion.

                              :fish:

                              Smiling, Yoland remembered the dream of feet touching when she noticed there was a Sole flounder too. And how often the Spotted flounder popped up, she was always spotting clues. Well spotted! she would tell herself. Oh, and the Stone flounder, wasn’t that the truth! Yoland was aligning strongly with that lately, smoking more than ever, somehow striving for either inspiration, or perhaps oblivion.

                              :fish:

                              Oh well, I guess this is just a Summer flounder, it will pass, Yoland decided (who was secretly glad that she was nearing the end of the list of flounder names). And sure enough, the next on the list was the Three spotted flounder, surely a good sign! A probability change perhaps! As if to validate Yolands impression, she noticed the Tile-colored righteye flounder. There was even a Warthog flounder, which seemed to ring a bell with a recent entry to the Reality Play.

                              :fish:

                              Best of all was the Windowpane flounder, Yoland felt she would even go so far as to say that this was her new focus animal. Well, she thought, if I am making this all up, I can make that up too!

                              :fish:

                              Thankfully Yoland reached the end of the flounder list, rather pleased that it had ended on such an amusing and encouraging note.

                              Being closely aligned with flounders wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

                              :fish:

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