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  • Haki came back making haka postures to give her courage to face her despot employer: “you mother said: if you don’t want me around for Yule, I’ll come back for Ostara and the pagan futility rituals, you ungrateful daughter —her words, not mine.” She took advantage of the mother threat that seemed to render Liz speechless, to ... · ID #3655 (continued)
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  • #4015

    Ed was still puzzled while he was eating his breakfast, and even more perplexed when he noticed all the blue bits in the confiture he had spread upon his toasted buns.

    #3996
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on July 01, 2010. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org

      Dear FutureMe,
      The Absinthe Cafe
      Dawn and Mark had a bottle of Absinthe (the proper stuff with the WORMwood in
      it, which is illegal in France) but forgot to bring it. Wandering around at
      some point, we chanced upon a cafe called Absinthe. Sitting on the terrace, the
      waitress came up and looked right at me and said “Oh you are booked to come here
      tomorrow night!” and then said “Forget I said that”. Naturally that got our
      attention. After we left Dawn spotted a kid with 2016 on the back of his T
      shirt. We asked Arkandin about it and we have a concurrent group focus that does
      meet in that cafe in 2016, including Britta. Dawn’s name is Isabelle Spencer,
      Jib’s is Jennifer….
      The Worm & The Suitcase
      I borrowed Rachel’s big red suitcase for the trip and stuck a Time Bridgers
      sticker on it, and joked before I left about the case disappearing to 2163. I
      had an impulse to take a fig tree sapling for Eric and Jib, which did survive
      the trip although it looked a little shocked at first. As Eric was repotting
      it, we noticed a worm in the soil, and I said, Well, if the fig tree dies at
      least you have the worm.
      At Balzacs house on a bench in the garden there was a magazine lying there open
      to an ad for Spain, which said “If you lose your suitcase it would be the best
      thing because you would have to stay”.
      Later we asked Arkandin and he said that there was something from the future
      inserted into my suitcase. I went all through it wondering what it could be,
      and then a couple of days ago Eric said that it was the WORM! because of the
      WORMwood absinthe syncs, and worm hole etc. I just had a chat with Franci who
      had a big worm sync a couple of days ago, she particularly noticed a very big
      worm outside the second hand shop, and noted that she hadn’t seen a worm in ages
      ~ which is also a sync, because there was a big second hand clothes shop next to
      Dawn and Mark’s hotel that I went into looking for a bowler hat.
      Arkandin said, by the way, that Jane did forget to mention the bowler hats in
      OS7, those two guys on the balcony were indeed wearing bowler hats, and that
      they were the same guys that were in my bedroom in the dream I had prior to
      finding the Seth stuff ~ Elias and Patel.
      Eric replied:

      And another Time Bridger thing; a while ago, Jib and I had fun planting some TB stickers at random places in Paris (and some on a wooden gate at Jib’s hometown).
      Those in Paris I remember were one at the waiting room of a big tech department store, and another on the huge “Bateaux Mouches” sign on the Pont de l’Alma (bridge, the one of Lady D. where there is a gilded replica of Lady Liberty’s flame).
      I think there are pics of that on Jib’s or my flickr account somewhere.
      When we were walking past this spot, Jib suddenly remembered the TB sticker — meanwhile, the sign which was quite clean before had been written all over, and had other stickers everywhere. We wondered whether it was still here, and there it was! It’s been something like 2 years… Kind of amazing to think it’s still there, and imagine all the people that may have seen it since!
      ~~~~

      The Flights

      I wasn’t all that keen on flying and procrastinated for ages about the trip. I
      flew with EASYjet, so it was nice to see the word EASY everywhere. I got on the
      plane to find that they don’t allocate seats, and chose a seat right at the
      front on the left. The head flight attendant was extremely playful for the
      whole flight, constantly cracking up laughing and teasing the other flight
      attendants, who would poke him and make him laugh during announcements so that
      he kept having to put the phone down while he laughed. I spent the whole flight
      laughing and catching his mischeivously twinking eye.
      I asked Arkandin about him and he said his energy was superimposed. I got on
      the flight to come home and was met on the plane by the same guy! I said
      HELLO! It’s YOU again! Can I sit in the same seat and are you going to make me
      laugh again” and he actually moved the person that was in my seat and said I
      could sit there. Then he asked me about my book (about magic and Napolean). He
      also said that all his flights all week had been delayed except the two that I
      was on. He wanted to give me a card for frequent flyers but I told him I
      usually flew without planes ~ that cracked him up ;))
      ~~~

      The Dream Bean

      Eric cracked open a special big African bean that is supposed to enhance
      dreams/lucidity so we all had a bit of it. The second night I remembered a
      dream and it was a wonderful one.
      (Coincidentally, on the flight home I read a few pages of my book and it just
      happened to be about the council of five dragons and misuse of magical beans)
      In the dream I had a companion with magical powers, who I presumed was Jib but
      it was myself actually. It was a long adventure dream of being chased and
      various adventures across the countryside, but there was no stress, it was all
      great fun. Everytime things got a bit too close in the dream, I’d hold onto my
      friend with magical powers, and we would elevate above the “adventure” and drop
      down in another location out of immediate danger ~ although we were never
      outside of the adventure, so to speak. At one point I wondered why my magical
      freind didn’t just elevate us right up high and out of it completely, and
      realized that we were in the adventure game on purpose for the fun of it, so why
      would we remove ourselves completely from the adventure game.
      In the dream I remember we were heading for Holland at one point, and then the
      last part we were safely heading for Turkey…..
      The other dream snapshot was “we are all working together on roof tiles” and
      Arkandin had some interesting stuff to say about that one.
      ~~~

      There were alot of vampire imagery incidents starting with me asking Eric if he
      slept in his garden tool box at night, and then the guy who shot out of a door
      right next to Jib and Eric’s, in a bright orange T shirt, carrying a cardboard
      coffin. He stopped for me to take a photo (and Arkandin said it was a Patel pop
      in); then while walking through the outdoor food market someone was chopping a
      crate up and a perfect wooden stake flew across the floor and landed at my feet.
      The next vampire sync was a shop opposite Dawn and Mark’s hotel with 3 coffins
      in the window (I went back to take a pic of the cello actually, didn’t even
      notice the coffins). Inside the shop was an EAU DE NIL MOTOR SCOOTER Share, can
      you beleive it, and a mummy, a stuffed raven, and a row of (Tardis) Red phone
      boxes.
      I had a nightmare last night that I couldn’t find any of my (nine) dogs; the
      only ones I could find were the dead ones.
      ~~~~

      Balzac’s House

      The trip to Balzac’s house was interesting, although in somewhat unexpected
      ways. (Arkandin was Balzac and I was the cook/housekeeper) The house didn’t
      seem “right” somehow to Mark and I and we decided that was probably because
      other than the desk there was no furniture in it. Mark saw a black cat that
      nobody else saw that was an Arkandin pop in (panther essence animal), and Dawn
      felt that he was sitting on a chair, and Mark sat on him. (Arkandin said yes he
      did sit on him ;) The kitchen was being used as an office. Jib felt the house
      was too small, and picked up on a focus of his that rented the other part of the
      house. (The house was one storey high on the side we entered, and two storeys
      high from the road below). There were two pop ins there apparently, one with
      long hair which is a connection to my friend Joy who was part of that group
      focus, and I can’t recall anything about the other one. Dawn was picking up
      that Balzac wasn’t too happy, and I was remembering the part in Cousin Bette
      that infuriated me when I read it, where he goes on and on about how disgusting
      it is for servants to expect their wages when their “betters” are in dire
      straits. Arkandin confirmed that I didn’t get my wages.
      The garden was enchanting and had a couple of sphinx statues and a dead pigeon ~
      as well as the magazine with the suitcase and Spain imagery. Mark signed the
      guest book “brought the cook back” and I replied “no cooking smells this time”.

      #3972
      F LoveF Love
      Participant

        Suddenly there was a piercing scream.

        Finnley’s face had turned white—although later she would claim it was not fear but rather the cucumber mask giving her face a death-like appearance—and she was pointing a shaking finger in the direction of Roberto’s derrière. Or more accurately, towards where Roberto’s derrière had been prior to the scream; like the others, he had jumped up in alarm at the ear splitting noise.

        “What the devil is the matter?” gasped LIz. She grasped Finnley’s shoulders firmly and shook her. “Pull yourself together; it’s just a bum crack. I know it is a long time since you will have seen a man’s bum, but really as I keep saying to you, if you will just smarten yourself up and make a bit more effort. I mean, look at you; you’ve got vegetables falling off your face ….” Liz shook her head in confoundment.

        “It’s not the bum crack,” snarled Finnley, recovering her usual unflappable composure. “It is the tattoo on his bum. The tattoo of the girl with the glass feet. Do you not know what that means?”

        Roberto’s eyes narrowed as he began to back away towards the gate.

        In all the excitement, nobody noticed Godfrey picking up the sticky and ripped shreds of paper which Liz had let drop to the ground.

        Or did they?

        #3970
        Jib
        Participant

          That’s funny, Roberto thought, a bunch of nonsense.
          “What’s that ?” asked Liz, her curiosity picked by the alluredness of a strand of words.
          “It just fall off your hat”, said the gardener. He looked at the woman, thinking about what Godfrey had told him. The sunlight certainly made her look radiant. He noticed that the red of her lips was the same as the red rose bush he was just taking care of.
          Liz took the paper.
          “Be careful, It’s sticky”, said Roberto.
          “Say something I don’t know, dear.” She tried to get rid of the paper, tearing it in several pieces in the process.
          “I wonder…” she began, “Finnley”, she called waiting for her help. She would certainly know. She had a habit of sticking her nose everywhere.

          #3957
          F LoveF Love
          Participant

            The paper fell from the ceiling on to Dido’s head. She was too busy stuffing herself full of honey to notice. In fact it was days before anyone noticed.

            #3955
            F LoveF Love
            Participant

              But wait! What is this?

              Her greedy fingers had located something unexpected; something dense and uncompromising was lurking in her precious nectar. Carefully, she explored the edges of the object with her finger tips and then tugged. The object obligingly emerged, a gooey gelatinous blob.

              Dido sponged off the honey allowing it to plunk on to the table top. It did not occur to her to clean it up. Indeed, she felt a wave of defiant pleasure.

              The ants will love that, although I guess Mater won’t be so thrilled. Fussy old bat.

              She licked her fingers then transferred her attention back to the job at hand. After a moment of indecision whilst her slightly disordered mind flicked through various possibilities, she managed to identify the object as a small plastic package secured with tape. Excited, and her ravenous hunger cravings temporarily stilled in the thrill of the moment, she began to pick at the edges of the tape.

              Cocooned Inside the plastic was a piece of paper folded multiple times. Released from its plicature, the wrinkled and dog-eared paper revealed the following type written words:

              food self herself next face write water truth religious behind mince salt words soon yourself hope nature keep wrong wonder noticed.

              #3951

              In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                needed beginning gone cackler
                noticed don’t replied aliens often pool
                lady done food compassion central
                funny come night dragon calm lost

                #3931
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Prune turned to look back at Quentin as she made her way home. He’d have been better off waiting for a new chapter in the refugee story, instead of blundering into that limbo with that daft smile on his face. What a silly monkey, she thought, scratching under her arms and making chimpanzee noises at the retreating figure. Look at him, scampering along gazing up into the treetops, instead of watching his step.

                  A deep barking laugh behind her made her freeze, with her arms akimbo like teapot handles. Slowly she turned around, wondering why she hadn’t noticed anyone else on the track a moment before.

                  “Who are you?” she asked bluntly. “I’m Prune, and he’s Quentin,” she pointed to the disappearing man, “And he’s on the run. There’s a reward for his capture, but I can’t catch him on my own.” Prune almost cackled and hid the smirk behind her forearm, pretending to wipe her nose on it. She wondered where the lies came from, sometimes. It wasn’t like she planned them ~ well, sometimes she did ~ but often they just came tumbling out. It wasn’t a complete lie, anyway: there was no reward, but he could be detained for deserting his new story, if anyone cared to report it.

                  The man previously known as the Baron introduced himself as Mike O’Drooly. “I’m a story refugee,” he admitted.

                  “Bloody hell, not another one,” replied Prune. Then she had an idea. “If you help me capture Quentin, you’ll get a much better character in the new story.”

                  “I’ve nothing left to lose, child. And no idea what my story will be or what role I will play.” Perhaps it’s already started, he wondered.

                  “Come on, then! If we don’t catch him quick we might all end up without a story.”

                  #3929
                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    “You should have thought about it before sending me for a spying mission, you daft tart” Prune was rehearsing in her head all the banter she would surely shower Aunt Idle with, thinking about how Mater would be railing if she noticed she was gone unattended for so long.
                    Mater could get a heart attack, bless her frail condition. Dido would surely get caned for this. Or canned, and pickled, of they could find enough vinegar (and big enough a jar).

                    In actuality, she wasn’t mad at Dido. She may even have voluntarily misconstrued her garbled words to use them as an excuse to slip out of the house under false pretense. Likely Dido wouldn’t be able to tell either way.

                    Seeing the weird Quentin character mumbling and struggling with his paranoia, she wouldn’t stay with him too long. Plus, he was straying dangerously into the dreamtime limbo, and even at her age, she was knowing full well how unwise it would be to continue with all the pointers urging to turn back or chose any other direction but the one he adamantly insisted to go towards, seeing the growing unease on the young girl’s face.

                    “Get lost or cackle all you might, as all lost is hoped.” were her words when she parted ways with the strange man. She would have sworn she was quoting one of Mater’s renown one-liners.

                    With some chance, she would be back unnoticed for breakfast.

                    #3926
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      “Will someone answer that!” Liz parroted the other fat dealer. “Whose the leader of door answering these days anyway? All leaders and no fecking staff, now!”

                      Glancing towards the open window, where a shrill noise seemed to emanate from that had immediately set Liz’s teeth on edge, she noticed him. Could it really be him? After all these years! Was it really Roberto?

                      The door bell pealed again, distracting Liz, and when she looked back, the man had disappeared. Did I imagine that? she wondered.

                      Roberto, rubber duck in hand, walked around the outside wall to see who was making such a racket on the door bell.

                      “Madre mia! Los Guardianos !” he whispered, aghast. What were they doing here, of all places? Roberto crept back around the house, hoping he hadn’t been seen.

                      #3892

                      In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                      Domba didn’t know why he’d attract those strange beings of light who tried to cajole him into following their glib tongued advice.
                      Domba was no fool, he’d learnt young that nobody gets interested in Domba unless someone wants to play tricks on him.
                      His life was a prison, that much he knew. The light guys could well be the jailers themselves for all he knew. He didn’t care about that, or any of their business with power. Power of knowledge, for all the good it did, didn’t seem to have guided the human race to better ends. And compassion was for foolisher than himself.

                      For now, he did have fun a little with the one who called herself Dispe, for her spirit seemed benign enough, a fountain of wonderment and joy in contrast with the way he’d learnt to see the world. He couldn’t really understand all about her wild rants, but if anything, he was curious about her views, and how she sustained them, like as a child, he was endlessly amazed at the resilience and resourcefulness of ants.

                      Maybe she was a queen ant, and he was just that stupid worker she was having fun with.

                      The wild nature overgrown in the miles of no-man’s land around his place had so much to teach. Persistance, endurance, and a boundless love of life itself. It was as though nature’s own rhythm was overlaid and hidden by the man-made time and routines. Whereas, if you were to look under, the slow stubborn and everlasting pace of nature’s growth was vibrating underneath, encouraging whoever willing to listen to slow down to its tune, and taste its encompassing love of life.
                      He often wondered how long before men would come and try to pour concrete over the land, and raise scrapers of metal and blown-sand. His only solace was to think that in his madness, man couldn’t completely obliterate nature, that it would always be waiting patiently.

                      He wondered how those light beings failed to see how even them weren’t as apart from it as they thought they were. Or maybe they knew deep up.

                      He’d noticed a bird coming many times too. That bird had an agenda, and too clean feathers to not be either a spy, or some heavenly messenger.

                      #3830

                      Gustave was having second thoughts. What had possessed him to suggest meeting this unknown woman? What if he was spotted in the Spotted Dick and Fanella found out? He hesitated outside the pub with his hand on the door. What was this woman like? It could ruin his image as a respected scientist. What if she was one of those new age high vibrations positive thinking ignore the evidence types and someone from the Institute saw them together?

                      A cocophanous group cackle ricocheted through the building and snapped him out of his indecision. He was here on a mission, his role was to collect data on the cackle phenomenon. Bracing himself, he pushed the door. Feeling foolish, he noticed the “pull” sign on the door and his squared shoulders drooped. Is it a sign? he wondered.

                      #3827

                      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                      ÉricÉric
                      Keymaster

                        The tunnels went dark and deep into the crust. Water was seeping through the cracks and made the progression difficult at times. But she had found her way out.
                        She could have died in the tunnels, unable to find her way to the surface, but for some reason, Maia trusted her instincts and her senses to guide her through them. Like the water, flowing through.

                        She didn’t know for sure how far she was from the MARS base when she emerged out, it was hard to tell the distances underground, sometimes you would go down for hundreds of meters, and when you’d look up, the stone ceiling would seem just a few meters overhead.

                        She wasn’t too sure why she had escaped like this and made herself a target. A sudden instinct, something that told her the others couldn’t be trusted, and that they wanted to clean them up.
                        Anyway, it was too late for regrets.

                        The desert wasn’t too bad at twilight, not too hot and better for her to travel unnoticed.
                        A few more days of walk in the desert, and she could find a road, maybe some motel where to spend the night. She still had a few bucks in her purse to see her through.
                        All she wanted now was to make sure her son was alright.
                        Her being alive and out was a threat to their program, and she intended to make the best of a bad situation.

                        Then she realized the humming sound in the back of her thoughts wasn’t random noise. There was a drone hovering, getting back apparently from some scouting. It wasn’t a military drone by the sound of it, more like a hobbyist’s toy. That meant there was someone out there, not far. Someone curious and potentially useful…

                        #3800

                        In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                        Dispy was starting her own secret Descended Dissent Classes.

                        It was not long ago that she had a very sudden and all-encompassing revelation at one of her flights above the great tundra of Siberia, which she liked for some reason to fly over, counting the red spots made by the fly agaric mushrooms in the tundra.

                        She’d been very disturbed by the revelations about her assignment to the Mars mission. She’d genuinely thought she was in for the support of the greatest advancement of humanity since quite many decades, and to realize it was all a quite twisted experiment made her uneasy at her core. She had some profound respect for her teacher, and despite her usual impulses to immediately confront Medlik for the inherent contradictions in his self-professed compassion and wisdom talks, something in her had told her to remain quiet and observe. And more surprisingly, she had complied. And observed very attentively.

                        During her flight afterwards, the same strong impulse had told her to land in the tundra, right next to a very nice patch of red. Being ascended had the wonderful benefit she wouldn’t feel the bone chilling cold, and she could just immerse herself in the joy of the scenery, and at the same time felt all very quiet and full of love and, strangely, a sort of distant regret for not being able to feel more of the cold and the whole scenery. And in the silence, she had a sudden unraveling of reality like never before. She could see the contradictions she noticed, one after another, destroying every layer of what she thought she knew, only to be left as a silent, quiet and very aware presence. She could have stayed like this a long long time, but she felt the call for the next Ascended class, for which she was late, as usual.

                        She continued to ponder while she teleported back, and without word (again, quite unusual), formed the resolve to expose more of the truth she’d grasped. Create a fifth column for the Descended, something her old friend who liked spy fictions would definitely have loved to hear about. But for now, she would have to keep it quiet, and maintain her cover at the Order of the Ascended Masters. She’d worked quite hard (well, not as hard as many, but that wasn’t the point) to get to her coronation, so she now had a nice Light Clearance that allowed her to tap into the Coloured Light Rays. This would be helpful.

                        In the beginning, she’d thought naively that concealing her true motives and secretly recruit like-minded students would be terribly difficult, but to the contrary, she found the light to be very responsive and easy to bend into subtle illusions of the truth. In short, she could still lie very well, and quite effectively. As though the light helped her in her attempts.

                        At the moment, she just had one student, Domba. They were meeting out-of-body at a hut in Chernobyl. The place was actually quite nice, and teaming with wildlife and surprisingly gorgeous nature. The perfect hideout.

                        Her course, well, was a course in spontaneity mostly. She would help people question reality, and authority. Something she had been lightwashed to forget for awhile too.

                        Domba had a pure heart, and was full of illusions. It had been easy to recruit him. She had to start with what he brought to her. At the beginning, mostly quotes of spiritual teachers. She had to teach him to question and see by himself.

                        “The Buddha said that when we dedicate merit, it is like adding a drop of water to the ocean. Just as a drop of water added to the ocean will not dry up but will exist as long as the ocean itself exists, so, too, if we dedicate the merit of any virtuous deed, it merges with the vast ocean of merit that endures until enlightenment.” – Padmasambhava

                        That quote he brought was interesting. The idea of being a drop of water lost in the ocean was enough to make her lightskin crawl. Because it reminded her all too well of the manipulations of the ascended masters. Twisting just barely enough the Love stream, so that It would be redirected just were they wanted.

                        So they meditated on that for now.

                        #3799

                        In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                        Gelly had noticed a slowdown in her sessions.
                        That, and a sense of desperation in the ludicrous stories put forth by her clients’ subconscious under trance.

                        Close to forty years ago, she had invented the whole protocol, and had sold successfully quite a lovely series of books on the topic. Of course, all the personal details were removed for the sake of her clients privacy. But the stories were all too good to not be shared with the world.

                        “Morepork, morepork!” Bathsheba, her pet owl gifted by one of her clients from New Zealand was calling her back to reality.

                        “You know vhat Bethsy,” she said to the owl while feeding it a small white mouse that she devoured ravenously, “I vonder how das ist going to develop… Not a month goes by now vithout some new extravagant story of ascension in die Fünfte Dimension, and the vorld is not going any better. Meine credibility ist not that gut…”

                        “Morepork, morepork!” came the answer.

                        “Bethsy, you know whass, du bist eine kleine Genius”. She had just remembered that her client used to channel a certain unknown in the lore, going by the name of Floverley a spirit quite tricky to get on the line, a bit finicky about cleaning but otherwise, a wise dispenser of snorting good advice and special diets. She surely could help her get her spiel back.

                        #3791

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          Before he retired and made cave carving his hobby, Pádraig was an IT engineer. That was a few years back, and not long after, most of them became redundant with the rise of new generations of NI (near-intelligent) phones and computers. He’d happily taken an early retirement, so that he could enjoy a simple life and get to reacquaint with his daughter. He’d succeeded at least on the first objective.

                          It was twilight when he’d left his cave, and looking at the horizon, he’d noticed strange shimmering, and a lone bird of prey circling the area in the direction of the restricted area of the desert.
                          It’d given him an idea.
                          He still had the old drone in his garage, from the time when they were all the furor. You could buy them on online stores very easily back then, even print them in your house. But then, some do-gooders became concerned, about privacy, security or all that bullshit, and they were banned. Actually, the only ones still flying where from the army, and they would tear down any unidentified hobbyist’s drone, and likely give them some jail time if they had the chance.

                          It was exciting to do something on the fringe of what was authorized. Pádraig couldn’t wait to see if he could make his old drone fly over the area, check what happened there.

                          He was a bit lost in his thoughts when the dog’s barking made him notice the white car parked in front of his aluminium trailer, which had triggered all his spotlights.
                          He had a moment of panic before he realized that the car wasn’t from the men in black or aliens, but worse. It was Imelda, his do-gooder of a daughter.

                          #3778

                          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                          ÉricÉric
                          Keymaster

                            It was a quiet day in the mines.
                            Godfrey’s teams were operating at less than 10% of the usual. Most of the Indian guys who worked there had taken unpaid leaves for the observance of the Ganesh festival.

                            It was all a bit silly, come to think about it, for so many reasons.
                            One obviously, was that the dates were aligned on Earth’s calendar, for supposedly practical reasons, but which had nothing to do with the environment they were living in now. What good was a lunar calendar when Mars had two main moons, the lovely named Fear (Phobos) and Dread (Deimos), and of course completely different day times and years.
                            Anyhow, that wasn’t the least of the incoherences. You’d normally have to find a natural body of water to immerse the elephant clay statues. Good luck with that on Mars. But there was no stopping the rituals to find ways to survive. He’d heard an artificial pool would be temporarily erected at the Matrimandir to allow for the ritual to be performed.
                            A waste of good water, if you asked him.

                            The only good thing about it was that there was more calm than usual, mostly robots diligently carving the walls, and harvesting the yellow stones.

                            The day before, there had been an unusual ruckus after a heated speech by the Head Nutter of the Religious Nuts, the old wrinkled as a prune Mother Shirley. She spoke of dread and doom, and having to repent and all. Gosh, did she put on a show.
                            He smirked. All that was missing was a human sacrifice, and they would be irrevocably back to the good old ways of the religious fanatics…

                            Even his Hindu friends seemed to have been affected and shown a renewed fervour at their own rituals. After all, their Lord Ganesh was supposed to remove obstacles. Or well, truth is, He was also supposed to create obstacles for the demons. But you’d never know whether you were on his good side or not.

                            Maybe the unusualness of that day gave him some heightened attention, but Godfrey started to notice some other strange patterns.
                            The Finnleys on duty were acting glitchy this morning. Looking through the console, he’d noticed there were some logs for the past days’ activity missing, and an unusual activity around some of the old tunnels which were used for temporary storage of the sulphur’s crates.

                            An irrational doubt started to creep on him, enhanced by the feeling of unusually low activity inside the dusty bowels of the red planet.
                            There was really no reason to worry, he tried to reassure himself, but as he’d liked to repeat, better be safe than sorry.

                            He pushed the intercall button and called for an emergency evacuation drill.

                            #3777

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            ÉricÉric
                            Keymaster

                              Finnley 21 had received new orders to amp up the headpiece device for thoughts projection. It was by now far exceeding the constructor’s safe range of usage, but the robot had scanned the vitals of Mother Shirley, and had not found them aberrantly different from when she’d just been shipped to MARS.

                              Proceed with mass extinction prophet syndrome simulation 10-B-Alpha

                              At the commands of the dome, Eb noticed Central Finnley was taking initiatives to prepare the Mars populace to a doomsday scenario through religious belief manipulations. At least, the artificial intelligence apple didn’t fall far from its creator’s tree he would say.

                              But he was running late for his interview with the only candidate they’d found. He’d better be good, or at least have a convincing costume. Eb hated those interviews where he had to pretend to listen and care, why all he wanted was a nice bottle of brandy.

                              #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!

                                #3753
                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  Aunt Idle:

                                  I dozed off while sitting under the Kurrajong tree this afternoon and had a strange dream. I was in a Tardis and it had landed on an expanse of sandy coastal scrub land. There was nobody else in the Tardis except me, and as the door swung open, I could smell the smoke, acrid and eye watering, and I could hear the snapping and crackling of the flames on the dry brush. The Tardis had landed in between the advancing flames and the sea. I ran back in the Tardis and looked around wildly at all the controls, wondering how to operate the thing. How the hell was I going to get out of here before the fire engulfed us? I ran back outside and the flames were roaring closer by the minute; panicking, I ran back inside, ran out again, and then ran as fast as I could away from the approaching fire until I came across a little blue row boat, rotting away on dry land, right next to a crumbling pyramid. I climbed into the boat, sitting on the bench seat between the dry thistles, thinking with relief that I would be safe in the boat. In the dream, I relaxed and closed my eyes and started to hum My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, and then I felt the heat, opened my eyes, and saw showers of red orange sparks like fireworks all around me, and then flames ~ I was surrounded by the wild fire and couldn’t see the Tardis anymore for the flames leaping and dancing around me. I held my head in my hands, weeping, waiting for the inevitable ~ and then I noticed a sapling growing in between the rotten boards at the bottom of the boat. It was growing so fast I forgot the sizzling heat around me and watched it grow, the side shoots bursting forth and the wood of the boat splintering as the trunk grew in girth. When a dried seed pod dropped onto my head ~ that’s how fast this tree grew, when I looked up it was fully mature, and I was sitting in the cool green shade ~ I looked around, and the sandy coastal scrub had gone, and I was sitting on a stone bench in the middle of a plaza. The smell of burning brush was gone and the stench of garum fish paste filled the air. A handsome fellow in a crumpled linen toga was sitting beside me, elbowing me to get my attention…

                                  “I made you a tuna sandwich, Auntie,” Prune was saying, prodding me on the arm. “Did you know that Kurrajong trees are fire retardant plants, and they start to send out small green shoots from the trunk within a fortnight of being burnt?”

                                  Well, I just looked at her, with my mouth hanging open in astonishment. Then the horrid child shoved the tuna sandwich in it, and then scampered off before I could slap her.

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                                • Haki came back making haka postures to give her courage to face her despot employer: “you mother said: if you don’t want me around for Yule, I’ll come back for Ostara and the pagan futility rituals, you ungrateful daughter —her words, not mine.” She took advantage of the mother threat that seemed to render Liz speechless, to ... · ID #3655 (continued)
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