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:yahoo_nerd:“I dont know how you can read that paper, Franlise, really I don’t.” Ann said sniffily.

“Oh I like to keep up with what’s going on, it’s interesting, it’s the end of an era you know, fascinating really,” her cleaner replied.

“Yeah, you’re right, it is interesting,” Ann had to admit that Franlise was right. It WAS interesting, and newpapers like The Old Reality Harbinger wouldn’t be around for much longer. She made a mental note to buy some to put away in case they became valuable artifacts in the future.

“Well interesting it may be, but only in small doses. I prefer The Simultaneous Times, myself.”

“The Daily Mirror’s my favourite” replied Franlise.

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear flu, Ann.” Franlise remarked as she perused the headlines in the Old Reality Harbinger newspaper.

“Or maybe you can! hhmm” replied Ann. “Maybe the gathered snot of the victims is spun into the finest silk, an amazingly versatile new fabric called snilk”

Franlise rolled her eyes, but Ann didn’t notice.

“One of the qualities” Ann went on “that the snilk had was to replicate anything gathered within its folds, so purses were made out of snilk, proving that it WAS indeed possible to make a snilk purse out of a pigs ear flu.”

Ann wasn’t altogether sure what Godfrey meant when he referred to her new interest in continuity. Ann had always been interested in connecting links, yes, of that there was no doubt, but with so very many connecting links, and so many possible strings of connecting links, with so many possible divergences into yet more strings of connecting links, Ann really couldn’t fathom how anyone could possibly keep track of all those threads of continuity. Even a seemingly discontinuous assortment of unconnected links, once connected into a nonsense thread, became another continuity string. Furthermore, Ann continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder, if everything is connected, then what, in actuality, was all the fuss about continuity? What exactly then WAS this concept of continuity? It seemed to Ann to be more like a string of barbed wire, or one of those flimsy but effective electric wire fences, boxing in the free flow of continuity, so that the objectively perceived continuity stayed rigidly within the confines of the preconceived tale. The inner landscape knew no such boundaries, although admittedly the inner landscape was far too vast to map.

Ann smiled to herself as she imagined trying to push pins into various inner landscape locations, tying strings from one to another, in an effort to map and label the inner continuity connections. Of course she was imagining it in a visual manner, because it was hard to imagine all those connections and strings being invisible and not taking up any space, and before long Ann’s inner map of pins and strings quickly resembled a tangle of overcooked spaghetti, perilously speckled with sharp pointy pins.

The image of the glutinous tangle dotted with sharp shiny pointers led Ann off on another tangent, but it was a tangent that soon became utter nonsense. Or was it, she mused. Perhaps it was those symbolically sharp pointy bits that in fact pointed out the immense variety of potential other continuity threads to choose from. Indeed, it could easily be said that having one of her characters dumped in Siberia in the previous story, painful though it was, was not unlike being pricked by a pin amidst the tangle of sticky pasta, a brilliantly effective pointer towards unlimited new directions.

Whichever way she looked at it (and Ann was aware that she might have gone down a side string) she simply couldn’t comprehend how anyone on this side of the veil could possibly even begin to understand the ramifications of the concept of continuity at all. Or how there could ever conceivably be a lack of it.

What was really intriguing Ann at this particular juncture of the experimental exploration of the story was the concept of the World View Library. This wasn’t unconnected to the continuity issue, far from it, it was all tied in (Ann sniggered at the unintentional pun) and connected. There were any infinite amount of potential continuity threads leading from, say, one persons desire or intent, to a particular world view in the library.

AHA shouted Ann, who at that moment had an ‘aha’ moment. Pfft, it’s gone, she sighed moments later.

Ann tried to catch the wisp of an idea that had flitted through her awareness. She had a visual impression of the library, endlessly vast and marvellously grand, with countless blindfolded characters dashing through, grabbing random pages or sentences, bumping into each other, snatching at phrases willy nilly, dropping notes along the way, and racing back out again into the ether. A stray thought here, a picture there, a name or a date, all on separate bits of crumbled paper clutched in the sweaty palms of the blindfolded characters as they rushed headlong back to their own realities to proudly share the new clues. Like magpies they were, snatching at anything that glittered brightly enough.

“I thought you said they were blindfolded?” interrupted Franlise.

Ann ignored the interruption, and continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder the imagery of the library.

What the undisciplined purloiners of random snatches didn’t notice on their pell-mell excursions into the library were the characters in the library who weren’t wearing blindfolds. They smiled down from the galleries, calmly watching from above the mayhem that the news of the unlimited library access had occasioned, chortling at the scenes of chaos below. They smiled indulgently, for they too had first visited the library blindfolded, snatching at this and that, and racing home again to inspect the booty; they too had fretted and pondered over the enigmas of the incomplete snippets. Eventually (or not, it was after all a choice), they had bravely removed the blindfolds, slowed the mad race into a sedate stroll through the library, opened their eyes and looked around, sure of the way back home now, and not in a desperate hurry to blast in, snatch anything, and run back home.

After awhile, they began to realize that all the enchanting glittering jewels scattered around to catch their eye would still be there later, there was no urgency to grab them all at once ~ although, as Ann reminded herself, that too was a choice ~ some may well choose to be eternally snatching at glittering jewels.

Ann frowned slightly and wondered if she’d lost the thread altogether, and then decided that it didn’t matter if she had.

It was a choice, therefore, to remove ones blindfold, and stroll through the library ~ a choice to perhaps choose a book, sit down at a polished oak table and open it, a choice to stay and read the book, rather than ripping out a page and dashing back home. That would be one choice of continuity, a coming together of strings.

Ann wondered whether that would then be called a cable, or a rope ~ well perhaps not a rope, she decided, that had other associations entirely ~ but a cable, yes, that had associations of reliable and regular communications. There were always strings of continuity, then, strings of connecting links, between anything and everything, but when one stopped dashing about clutching at the sparkley bits, one might form a cable.

Or not, of course. Thin strings of continuity and connections were not ‘less than’ thick cables of reliable and regular communications. It has to be said though, Ann reluctantly admitted, that thick cables often made more sense.

She decided to hit send before embarking on a pondering of the meaning of Sense.

Food on moon?… guess what, not cheese but cabbages!

Gustav cursed when he dropped the watermelon, which hit the potting shed floor with a loud crack.

Hopefully nobody had heard him. He particularly didn’t wish to alert the two ladies, his new employers Miss Sharon and Miss Gloria, to his interest in agriculture. Gustav Burgeon was working undercover for the World Association To Eradicate Redundant Material (Escarole Leaf Order: Newbie), otherwise known as W.A.T.E.R.M.E.L.O.N. The New Leaf Order had spent considerable time and expense training robots to infiltrate agricultural enterprises, cottage gardens, and allotments in a concerted effort to wipe out superfluous and unnecesary edible plant items, which had been the scourge of the planet for generations. The planet had reached crisis point with the abundance of foodstuff, mainly in the hysteria and confusion that had resulted when a fictional account of The Mythical Nutrients had been published in the old Reality Times newspaper. It had caused widespread panic as the populace began eating everything in sight in a frantic attempt to control The Nutrients.

Gustav had been employed by the two ladies ostensibly as a butler. Conveniently for Gustav, the pair of old slappers had not had the luxury of staff in their hitherto adventurous, albeit common lives, and were blissfully unaware of Gustav’s many improprieties and errors. Whenever Gustav behaved oddly, the two ladies would remark “One simply can’t get the staff these days, my dear”, followed by a bit of thigh slapping and raucous laughter.

The Le Hoot triplets had just arrived from the Nest Dimension and were quietly aclimatizing to the new environment. They were well camoflaged against the pine tree branch, Sprack had done a good job as usual with the expedition planning, his noteworthy attention to detail and vast knowledge of Pulmonia was second to none.

Sprack unfortunately hadn’t forseen the lungquake occuring so soon after the Hoot’s arrival, however. When the pine branch first started to tremble, F’Loot, who was perched on the outermost position, almost lost her footing. Luckily K’Yoot managed to hold onto F’Loot, while M’Yoot maintaineed a firm hold on the pine trunk, saving them all from an embarrassing and potentially disastrous fall.

The Le Hoot’s had been sent to Pulmonia to locate all the Lost Eggletons and return them to Ovadonia for debriefing and eventual retirement, with instructions to locate all missing Eggletons, whether they be dead, alive, melted or cooked, or miscellaneous parts thereof.

As the ground started to shake for a second time, M’Yoot spotted the terrified yellow Eggleton clinging desperately onto a gravestone, beads of chocolatey sweat spattering the cold grey stone.

M’Yoot tugged K’Yoot’s wing in alarm, pointing wordlessly at Amarilla. K’Yoot in turn nudged F’Loot, who almost lost her footing again. There was an almighty roar as the ground heaved and split.

As the Lost Eggleton screamed and disappeared into the heaving bubbling goo, the Le Hoot triplets sprang into action.

When Ann read about “that place lost between the pine trees” in The Play she started coughing again. She was beginning to wonder about her cough, after reading in the New Reality Herald last night about the man with a fir tree growing in his lung.

In tandem with her coughing, the ground started to tremble beneath Amarilla, The Forgotten Eggleton, and flecks of sun melted chocolate spattered the gravestones and pine trees.

It’s a lungquake, run for your lives! she shouted, but there was nobody there. The ground heaved and cracked beneath Amarilla and she lost her grip and plunged headlong into an abyss of vile sticky mucus.

In the news, a 7-year-old girl helps people on the radio, telling “whatever comes into [her] head and people like what [she] sa<strike>”…

Sounds familiar?

Aspidistra was packing her suitcase. Shopping for parasites wasn’t as straightforward as she had imagined it would be. The particular parasites that she required were anti nut phobia parasites, and could only be found in the eighth world. The third world had eventually succumbed to nut phobia, swiftly followed by several more worlds. Aspidistra had to hurry to the eighth world, as news had just filtered through the networks of a new case of nutterophobia in Shift Creek, in the seventh world.

“Hey, Asp” Phildendron was still chuckling at her sister Aspidistra’s reaction to the piglet news “Why don’t you make a deal with Lavender, tell her you’ll only accept the piglet if it comes with a years supply of that DMT stuff.”

“So I can share it will you, Phil?” Asp raised an eyebrow. “I don’t like haggling though, you know what I’m like. Looking a gift horse in the mouth and all that, no accidents and all the rest of it. I mean, I must be creating this piglet gift myself, and acceptance is key, is it not?”

“Acceptance doesn’t mean literally accepting gifts of piglets, silly!”

“Well what DOES it mean then?”

“It means accepting that everything is fine, whatever you choose ~ whether you say yes to the pig, or no to the pig, you’re supposed to accept that it’s the perfect choice.”

“Well how the devil is a person to know which is the right choice then?”

“Well that’s just it, it doesn’t matter which choice you make. Not only that, it’s not a case of just one choice, either.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me, which sounds like absolute nonsense, is that if I choose to accept the pig gift now, I would have to choose tomorrow that I accepted the pig gift today, otherwise I would be choosing…..” Asp’s voice trailed off as she lost her thread.

“Yes! And not just once tomorrow, but in every moment you would have to choose that you chose the pig gift ~ otherwise you’d be choosing that you didn’t accept the pig ~ and that would be a choice too.”

“Oh don’t be silly, Phil, with so many choices to make in each moment you wouldn’t ever be finished choosing before it was the next moment, then you’d have to start choosing again ~ You’d never get anything done!”

Circle of Ice

Becky had to sneak out of the facility without Gayesh’s notice. He had been very protective of his favorite clone subject lately and she had been feeling a bit restrained in her movements.
Sam’s invitation was a breath of fresh air, but she wouldn’t have admitted it openly.
She knew perfectly that Sam wasn’t fooled by her hesitation but she had to play her role to the nails.

She had asked him to come and get her in that spider cruiser she’d heard of once. It always had that funny feeling to her and secretly she had wished that one day…

The technology used to manufacture that machine had evolved since the first prototype and now it was much faster and didn’t rely on oil. She’d heard that the trip from Le Havre to New-York was only 3 hours now. She wondered how much that would make from Colombo to the City.

Well Sam told her to be on the Galle Face Colombo Beach at noon. She had a couple of hours to make some shopping. Some of the best free-shops of the city were in the vicinity. And she would need some special present as far as she had understood.

“Ok so now we have time travelling absinthe vampires, who suck the pee out of the time travelling absinthium salesmen?” Becky laughed. “Or would that be the reindeer pee salesmen? Otherwise known as Santa Clauses ahahah.” The idea was starting to sound strangely plausible. “Santa Claus is really a time travelling reindeer pee salesman from the gnome dimension ~ we were getting it so distorted because of our beliefs!”

Al rolled his eyes and passed her a map of the Carpathian Mountains.