Search Results for 'notice'
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In reply to: Significant Random Quotes?
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
For her new course, Pr. Moose was a dolphin.
It was a fancy-dress course entitled: ‘Act out your characters’.Pedro was naked, and when she asked him in what kind of disguise that could be, he told her “I’m the Universe”. She was, a moment, hypnotized by his so blue eyes that she’d forgotten her question. She gulped, speechless and looked at him more closely, appreciating the physique of his body…
— Is it real? she asked.
— It’s the Universe.
— Well, ok then, go get a seat and let’s begin our course.Following him with her eyes, or more precisely following his butt with her eyes, she also noticed a few other students. Ann was wearing a nine-titsed alien costume and there were two glowing ladies with fishes stuck to their ghostly bodies…
This butt, she thought again, her attention distracted from the other students.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Gremwick was glad the Fisherman had come to repair the Cloud Fishes of the Inner Aerial Pool of the Worseversity.
It’s been a few days that he’d noticed an unusual lack of randomness in the swimming patterns of the little Cloud Fishes.
As they were usually used for the divination courses, no sooner was the issue identified than the students had to temporarily recourse to the use of pigeons for their assignments —which sadly left a stinking trail of devastation on the usually pristine marble floors that greatly infuriated Charity, the cleaning lady, otherwise known for her great patience and candor, who’d kept cursing like a sailor against the winged demonic creatures the last past weeks.The incident in itself was not of immense consequence in the grand scheme of things, but it felt worrisome for the Dean that these swimming creatures known for their quite reliable and, yes, totally unfloundering randomness had suddenly decided to adopt a monotonous pattern.
In that disposition, they were merely echoing the requester’s requests in a manner of a mirror instead of evoking strange and obscure meanings from the depths of the universe.It had amused the students very much, as it was making their assignments apparently far easier —there was no thing left in need of deciphering, unless the students’ requests were themselves incoherent, which could on occasion happen especially after the Special Crop Circle Lessons. As no incident was without meaning, the Dean had pondered this one, but without any satisfactory answer as of yet.
At least, it had been the occasion to meet the Fisherman, and to ponder on the plainness of a world without unpredictability.
Topic: Probably Real
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.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Dear Lavender, there is something awkwardly odd to the World Clooh’d. It looks like it’s stuck to this one sentence, a thing never seen before.
I wonder what’s the special meaning of it, as there surely is a special meaning for it wouldn’t be the same otherwise: ”“attempt movements inner communications
arona less escape later
nobody dream dancing god
side needed work
shar sort beauty strings thread reality”But Lavender was oddly silent to Harvey’s pleading intonation. A long silence during which Harvey seemed to notice that she had changed her hair… She looked nice in mauve.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Godfrey resisted the urge to respoond…”
Ann was initially horrified to notice the Ooh dimension bleethrough manifested in an errant vowel.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Becky was liking her dancing courses; there was this funny guy with an outrageously bright canary yellow shirt and a funny accent who taught them some Asian-based moves last time, and she’d been puzzled for awhile, frozen in her tracks and speechless for a moment (which didn’t often occur), as the guy was so weird and yet serious looking that she didn’t know if she should laugh hysterically at his preposterous wiggling butt moves, or keep serious like the others.
That’s where she noticed a girl in the class. Like her, she was lost in wonderment while all of the others where respectfully following the teacher’s movements with a polite straight face.As she was feeling bubbles of hysterical laughter desperately struggling to burst at the surface, she quickly exited the classroom, only to find that the other girl was there too.
“Ahaha, is he some sort of wacko or what?” Becky couldn’t help but laugh even if the other one seemed affected somehow, yet not indifferent to the humour of the situation.
“Bloody oath, yeah… Madder than Almad this one”
“You’re not from here are you?” Becky asked, noticing a delicious variation of British accent in the girl’s voice.
“No, from New Zealand. Name’s Tina, Tina Prout. Well you can forget the last name anyway, I’m going to change that.”
“Delighted, I’m Becky Vane. Would you fancy some vegemite on toast?”
“Sure, let’s get out of here quickly.”
“Toot toot! School’s out!… Mmm, looks like it’s ‘pissing down’ outside… Is that how you say in Kiwi?”In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Well, what a coincidence. Yoland noticed that Jemima the cat had something wrong with her nose, just a few days after noticing that the white cat, Hilda, had something wrong with her nose. In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Light will come, can you see it?” Yurick smiled as he was taking note of the latest random quote at the exact same moment his new boss was telling him “for once I’m not asking you to work from the depths of the mine” referring to his past few days of relatively uninspiring work mining for information in unformed sheets of data.
Light indeed was shining from the window in his back, reflecting the blue-sky vista on the shining screen of the laptop. Perhaps it was his friend Finn’s way of reminding him to spread to his colleagues the riches from the ore body of quotes of the illustrious Chinese philosopher Liu Meng.
He wasn’t too sure though they would be too receptive. Time would tell. At least he’d noticed an Abyssinian cat figurine on top of one of his collegues’ computer. The cats were visibly coming soon.In reply to: Strings of Nines
When Franlise reemerged from the building, it was almost dark, and Godfrey was starting to think that after his twenty-seventh drink, he might as well come back home unless he wanted to sleep on the counter.
Curiously he noticed, she wasn’t heading towards home, but she was going to the subway, en route to the red district.That inner lovely Franlise could compromise herself in such a dreadful place was beyond his understanding… well, probably after the twenty first drink, most of reality was now far beyond understanding anyway.
Perhaps she was doing some research work?In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Now would you believe you were actually worried for her?” she told Georges, raising from the sand of the Kandulim where they were doing some people remote-gazing.
“Well, for a moment I was, and you know that Salome. Even if we have not followed the same path, ours have crossed a few times, and I’m grateful for what she taught me in the beginning.”
“I know, although I never really got that part of her… well other than from your experiences I mean.”
“She even starts to remember her parrot, that was quite unexpected.”
“ Do you believe she’ll be able to travel out of that other dimension easily?”
“I don’t know… After that bravado escape from the Baron’s submarine, and the rough sea, I supposed she would need more time to recover and bring herself together, but she seems to have taken care of that in an interesting manner.”
“Look! Ahahaha”
“What?”
“Did you notice she stole the poor guy’s cufflinks! She’s so mean ahahah, she never got past those magpie’s instincts”In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Don’t be silly Phoebe” a voice whispered in Jane’s ear in between a few copious sneezing.
Jane didn’t really know why, but suddenly the whole scene about Mark leaving her became essentially a farce. She could feel some sort of burlesque in that whole event that would have been difficult to explain. As though she would never have really cared for the man, or any other man in the world to provide for herself.
She was starting to feel different. She could feel a strong assurance building up, and even her body started to feel different.
Still, she couldn’t tell who she was; there was still that dark hazy cloud the shadow of which was cast over her memories, but it wasn’t from her memories that this sudden surge of power was coming. It was coming from deeper inside; the very core of her being, and it was making her different.She reached for the pocket mirror in her bag to apply a fresh layer of make-up on her plump cheeks and blue eyes.
She didn’t notice the differences right away. One sometimes gets caught in the repetitiveness of usual and mundane actions and really forgets to see. And of course, the mirror’s size and angle was preventing her to see anything but her eyes if she didn’t think to use it differently. But her eyes were now different; not deep blue as before but a subtle shade of ash blue with hints of violet.
And then… She noticed the wrinkles. The plump cheeks had left place to a thinner face. Strangely, she found it even prettier.
And as she expressed this appreciation of her new features, she noticed that her blond mane was now a little more greyish.She knew it wasn’t aging, and no she wasn’t delusional. She didn’t remember her name, but apparently she knew how to shape-shift.
Would it make her quest to remember her identity more difficult? She couldn’t have told, but she knew that something in her never forgot a single bit of her whole self.
That new self she was now who felt more like her real self than “Jane” needed a more adequate name.
Phoebe definitely had a ring to it that seemed appropriate.In reply to: Strings of Nines
It had been rather a bold move on Tajine’s part, especially as she was a new member of the staff at Little Big Hopeswell, but an ingenious one, or so she thought. Tajine always aimed to please; nothing gave her more pleasure than to arrange wonderful little surprises for people based on her assumptions of what would please them. In her few short weeks with Ann, she couldn’t help but notice the disparaging remarks her publisher, Pig Littleon, habitually made about Ann’s work. The last straw for Tajine had been when Godfrey referrred to Ann’s streams of thought as ‘incoherent’, and it was at that point that the plan began to form in her mind.
“Compliments to the new cook! I must say, that was the most delicious bacon sandwich I have ever tasted,” remarked Arthur, wiping his lips with a napkin. “You must ask Tajine where she buys her bacon, it has an enticingly subtle hint of peanut, quite delicious!”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“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.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
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.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
These past few months away from home had been the occasion for a great deal of introspection.
For one, indulging fully into that somewhat frowned upon habit of his, regarding peanuts, had allowed him to gain a great deal of understanding and acceptance as well. Now his daily ration had dramatically decreased and he didn’t fancy as much as he used to the little round things.Another thing that Godfrey had noticed was the reorganisation that had taken place in all aspects of his life, and to be perfectly honest, his life was still a bit messy in places, but he was slowly getting there. How could a publisher publish anything of common interest without a bit of presentation, henceforth order?
Ann wasn’t too keen on the “O” word —especially when doubled— and surprisingly it always managed to give good results so far. So perhaps now he was settling down, and she was getting her own flamboyant creative juices all ablaze, they would manage to get somewhere. Or anywhere, for that matter.
A Tramway to Elsewhere was Ann’s debut novel, and had made her known to Godfrey. It was a brilliant short story about three tourists lost in a huge hotel in Europe, and trying to get an easy escape to Anywhere. And by some uncanny and hilarious succession of events, they were led nowhere but to Elsewhere.Now, something else was giving him a strange feeling. He didn’t know if that was because of the lack of peanut oil in his bloodstream (or the accompanying whiskeys for what was worth), but he was starting to get slightly paranoid.
He didn’t know where he’d got the idea, but he started to suspect the cleaning lady to not just be a cleaning lady. She was doing her best to keep a low profile, but somehow she wasn’t that good an actress. A thing that started his suspicion was that name… Franlise, eerily reminiscent of the obnoxious yet efficient Finnley in Noo York. Elizabeth had told him they’d suspected her for a long time to have inserted some paragraphs in Elizabeth’s novels, especially the most torrid parts that would have made a pimp blush like a nun. What had saved the cleaning lady was that in addition to being rather forgiving, Elizabeth suffered from frequent strokes of forgetfulness and bipolarity which made the investigation difficult if not moot altogether.But there, Godfrey was rather surprised at Ann’s sudden interest in continuity. He’d known of a covert organization known in the milieu as the Fellowship of Unification and Continuity in Knowledge.
Over the years, the hearsay had amounted to just a few deranged people, but recently there had been an increase in mentions of such nature in reports of the Guild of Authors. Strangely, there was less and less books that were published which had not an impeccable sense of continuity.
In a way, it had been perceived at first in literary circles as a blessing for the authors who had not to contend with fans and geeks of all kind who were hunting down each and every detail to prove or disprove unsaid theories. But Godfrey was starting to see some not so perfect points in that. It would be like wanting to string together all the eyelets of your shoes even if they do not belong to the same shoe (or the same pair of shoes). Soon, you’d be embarrassed to find a way to walk without looking like a penguin.Anyway, though all allegations made as to the existence of such secret organization had been mostly derailed as utter nonsense, he couldn’t help but find some inexplicable appeal to them as sound explanations for all the glitches he kept noticing.
He would carefooly spy on Franlise.In reply to: Strings of Nines
The fact of the matter was that Ann had been intending to write about Cordella’s twin sister Flagella, but had been hopelessly side tracked when Godfrey had thrown that curve ball. Flagella had been wanting to slap herself rather badly and Ann was more than willing to oblige her by entering a scenario into the Play. The way things had panned out highlighted some interesting parallels with Yoland’s current state of affairs too. Obviously Flagella had chosen not to slap herself after all, although she appeared to have chosen to effect that in a somewhat convoluted manner. It was the unknown factors that were baffling Ann, the missing links in the convoluted manners; she felt painfully aware that she simply wasn’t seeing the whole picture.
Unsure of her footing, that’s what it was, at least that’s what Yoland had noticed. With the puppy always climbing over her feet or somewhere underfoot, she hadn’t been able to take a normal step in a fortnight. It was making her tense and tired, and jittery. Every step she took was halted, mid step, which made her feel permanently off balance.
Flagella had wanted to slap herself for being irritated, which was becoming immensely irritating in itself. Being irritated wasn’t fun at all, it was irritating! The most irritating thing of all was that she didn’t know why she’d started getting irritated in the first place.
Ann wanted to butt in and tell Flagella a thing or two about how dense she was being, but didn’t think there was much point. It wasn’t as if Flagella hadn’t already heard whatever Ann might have to tell her a thousand times or more, so it was doubtful that more words would be any help.
She doesn’t need any help, full stop, Ann reminded herself, and neither does Yoland.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
A suspicious thought crossed Yoland’s head… Could it be that this… ‘demon’, for lack of a better word was responsible for that unexpected incursion of a snake which came in through the bathroom window ?
— “Yeah… I’d say, about time you notice!” snickered Sumhellfi (or ‘Sulfi’ for short). “You sometimes get so lost into puzzlement of which of your aspects is responsible for your creation that you don’t even wonder it might be a simple hello with no strings attached…”
— “Saying hello with a venomous snake?… You’ve got strange customs in Dhataland…
And as far as string goes…” Yoland smiled fondly thinking of the spoil of war in the wardrobe she kept in there for long winter nights
“err… I mean, better a string than a sting… well, if you know what I mean…”
— “As a matter of fart, I think I might know just exactly what you mean” Sulfi answered with a wink.
