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  • #4288
    EricEric
    Keymaster

      “Jingle has always been very precocious” her proud grandmother, Mrs Bell told Liz and Godfrey over nougat and peanut cakes. “She has read all your books so many times, and really was ecstatic that you agreed to have her for a couple of weeks.”
      Ms Bell smiled at Godfrey “Obviously, it has nothing to do with it, but here is a generous donation that should more than cover the meals and lodging.”

      “As well as a score of bills fallen behind, I reckon” thought Godfrey while smiling at the oddly bespectacled and bejewelled woman, while grasping the edge of his seat in case Liz’ would realize it would mean to have a moody teenager over the manoir for the next days.

      “It is our dear pleasure to have this darling child,” Liz’ spontaneous answer astonished Godfrey by her graciousness. “Our Finnley will take care of her, she knows the ropes of writing better than my ropes of drying laundry, if you know what I mean huhuhu.”

      Mrs Bell nodded with a look of lost perplexity on her smiling face.

      #4117
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        Corrie:

        Sometimes I wish I’d never started this, but somehow I can’t stop. It’s daunting, with bits of the story here, there and everywhere (and sometimes, nowhere). A bit like starting a huge jigsaw puzzle when you wonder where to begin, or what even is the point. But then all it takes it that little flutter when two pieces fit together to spur you on to find the next.

        When I’d chanced upon Aunt Idle’s private blog, coincidentally on the same day that I’d found mater’s old paper spiral notebook with that loopy old fashioned writing, I had an idea to put together a story, the story of the flying fish inn. Because there was something funny going on here, and I wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt like the story wasn’t over yet. So some of the pieces were nowhere yet, obviously, but many had fallen elsewhere, for various reasons.

        #4108
        EricEric
        Keymaster

          Meanwhile, Hilda was hot on the escaped Orangutan’s trail.

          Ricardo’s indications to lure the ape out of hiding, and coax it with fruits had been rather un-fruitful. She would have said his advice was rubbish, but he’d told that they’d come from Bossy, and if someone was to be trusted on the details of wildlife, well, that would be Bossy.

          After some long trailing and stakeout in the parking lot at the back of the mall where she’d had that first encounter, she’d started to consider other strategies. It wasn’t really in her character to doubt about herself, nor about her instincts. Although something was clearly askew about that orange ape, she could feel the pull of a good fringe story.

          For one, no nearby zoo had reported any loss or evasion of their animals. That was strange enough.

          Second, she’d started to suspect that the animal was not an animal at all. It was too deft at evading her. She could have sworn she’d seen it walking around last night in a trenchcoat, hiding under a well-worn baseball cap, looking through the garbage cans at the back of the grocery store.
          Obviously, that could only mean one thing. It was a well-educated ape, a tad self-conscious about its hairy nudity, with tastes for more palatable food than apples and carrots.

          Hilda couldn’t wait to corner him for an exclusive interview.

          F LoveF Love
          Participant

            NOTES FROM GROUP DISCUSSION:

            [unnamed protagonist] finds themself in a coma, but they don’t realize it. It’s like they’re in a dream state, moving through worlds, gradually discovering their past and what’s happening. The person knows that they’re trying to find their way home, which in reality is them trying to wake up.

            Once they remember their past and what happened leading up to the coma, they wake up…but remember nothing.

            So, as I was trying to structure this, I initially wanted the first book to be their normal waking life and the second book being the coma and the third book being post coma and relearning stuff. But then I figured it would be best to combine the first and second books.

            I wanted the reader to start out confused, just like they would be and gradually learn the back story as they went

            The only thing is, that would mean that this thread has to remain written as coming from their perspective

            we are all writing about ONE character essentially. obviously there are gonna be other characters, but the main thread is this one person

            feel free to incorporate any and all previous characters and locations from your other threads. The protagonist will be moving through them. So he/she finds themselves in these other worlds.

            They’re being swept up into an adventure right from the start without knowing a thing

            let’s drop them into the middle of something exciting

            It’s any time
            It’s a big dream
            In real life, the protagonist is in a coma right now

            But, also, you’ll have a lot of freedom to create those on the spot because neither you nor the reader nor the main character knows them until you write them

            The characters in this story won’t have too much staying power because the main character is moving through so many worlds. Nearly everyone is incidental,

            unless characters appear that are central to the main characters ongoing story, like a nurse for example or family

            At max, there might be two or three reoccurring characters that tend to pop in more often than not as helpers
            Oh, yeah, family from the back story would come in to play a lot

            #4025
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Obviously, Baked Bean Bea was a pseudonym for Baked Bean Barb , but it was perhaps too obvious. In fact, the more obvious the clues were, the more invisible they became. It had been plainly stated in the book (although omitted in the movie, as usually happened with movies based on books) that the point of the story was to
              “broadcast seeds of absurdity in the cornfields and the meadows of the hay hoo down dooly…“

              The trouble was that not many had ascended to the degree that they could understand the value of absurdity. Absurdity was never disconnected, if one had an eye for the connecting links, and more importantly, it was a thing of joy when approached from the right angle, occasioning an ebullient cackle.

              It was ironic that the more the inhabitants ascended to jaunty joyful cackling at absurdities, the more the shiftmeisters tried to control them.

              #4024

              In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

              TracyTracy
              Participant

                quiet thought asked dragon
                perfect knew tart message ways
                itself tina nobody yourself
                future story play wave
                gustave obviously wait age

                #4022

                Final nail in the coffin, indeed.

                Despite the overwhelmnity of the situation, Ed couldn’t fathom why nobody would take some time to stop and ponder on the incoherences, the gaps in the net, so to speak.

                It behooved him to do so. The deranged cackler, like a mockery of the divine breath, ruling over the bizarro earth he had been sworn to protect — it had to be stopped.

                But where was the elusive cackler hiding, he would seemed to appear anywhere and everywhere. And what to make of those cases of mistaken identities, or all the althreadnarrative-realities jumping. The occurrences were piling up. He couldn’t even seem to count on assembling his old fierce Surge Team. All gone bizarro too.

                Pouring over his copious notes, he remembered how it all started. The strange case of Baked Bean Bea.
                She seemed to have breached through, and quite frankly shattered in all likelihood some old reality limitation, and somehow, she now was able to unwittingly shape the world to new strange alternate realities at her every whims.

                He painfully tried to recall, what he was, who he had been in the course of the last months. Blaze, his old genius inventor friend had left him some device, a transfocal whatever thingy. Usually it would change shapes as well, reconfigure itself with each realities. But its function was more or less the same. Reconnect him to his previous alternate realities. Which was handy, when you couldn’t even trust the notes you took. Obviously Bea wasn’t Baked Bean Bea before… or was she?

                Now the Transfocal Thingy seemed to have relocated in the bathroom. The shower head with the wires seemed a bit of a giveaway.
                Ed put on the water.

                #3877
                EricEric
                Keymaster

                  Yalnnif was stirred from her meditation by the sound of the ezapper soft buzz which signaled the end of the 21 minutes of conscious breathing.

                  Obviously Yalnnif was not her real name, just the one she got when she’d came to the Bureau of New Identities. Some uninspired pencil pusher had obviously pushed it the opposite way, and found the result funny.
                  Do your worst, I can always fix it up” had always been her secret mantra. For once, she was served. She still could apply a second time, but she had her share of bureaucracy for a year, and she wanted to allow this one a try.

                  Yalnnif Yanit from Yorknew.

                  She could have sworn the clerk had smirked at her when he’d handed her the card with the name, a sort of unspoken “now, fix that one up”.

                  She had thanked him with a proper “peace off.” After all, propriety was her secret super-power.

                  #3872
                  AvatarJib
                  Participant

                    A man with big hairy hands welcomed him in the new world’s consuelambassy office. “Welcome”, said the man with a deep voice. Sam couldn’t get his eyes off the man’s hands. He looked at the guy. Without those hands he would just be like a regular guy.
                    “I’m a bit early”, said the man, “so we might as well begin now. Is that ok for you ?”
                    “What ? Oh! yes, of course…” those hands are so huge, he thought.
                    “Perfect. Just sit on this chair and I’ll guide you through the procedure.”
                    “Ok.” Sam sat on the chair he had been shown and gave the man the papers he had brought for the procedure.
                    “Great, I can see you’ve brought everything pertaining to your old self.” He barely looked at the documents and threw them in the shredder. A red light flickered before turning to a bluish green.
                    “You won’t need those.”
                    “Obviously”, said Sam. As he had already been puzzled that morning, he decided it was superstifluous to continue in this direction. He had come here to get a new identity after all. His old self had been torn apart. There was certainly no one to feel disrespected.

                    #3826

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    prUneprUne
                    Participant

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

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

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

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

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

                      #3814
                      EricEric
                      Keymaster

                        A raucous explosion of laughter cackled in the neighbourhood, waking up Bea from her afternoon siesta.
                        SHUT UP!” she bawled covering her ears with a cushion, and looked desperately at something she could throw at the window. Alas, save for a manikin’s leg that looked like she owned a pegleg, and a piece of half-eaten banana, there was nothing she could find.

                        She resigned herself to waking up, and pried open her little wrinkled eyes in the late afternoon purple light.

                        Every time she woke up, she had to reacquaint herself with her reality. Not that she was such a junkie on computer duster, as that rat had rudely implied, it wasn’t only that.
                        A few months before, she had an epiphany. Many years of meditation, guided, in groups, alone, with zen masters and copious reading had amounted to nothing but the occasional nice fluffy feeling. It was when she had decided to drop it all of sheer frustration, and burn all the stupid self-help books that something had chanced upon herself.
                        She’d lost her ego. Poof, disappeared, like that.

                        Before that, she was completely adverse to endings, and to any form of deleting.
                        But now, she understood the words she’d read many years ago that had infuriated her profoundly at the time : “Everything must be scrutinised and the unnecessary ruthlessly destroyed. Believe me, there cannot be too much destruction. For, in reality, nothing is of value.”

                        She was. And every waking up was a wake up to her eternal self.
                        So obviously, the external appearances left a bit to be desired, now that desire was not. Continuity was never there in the first place.

                        But to live, she had to find again what new reality she had just awoken to, as she did every morning, and after every siesta.
                        Truth is, she kind of liked it, the non-continuity of it. Before, she would have gloated to whoever that name of an old friend of hers, that she was right about it, the unnecessary of that continuity babble. Now there was no need of it.

                        A loud cackle outside stirred her back to reality.

                        #3807

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        EricEric
                        Keymaster

                          His mother had told him not to trust what he would see. Somehow she’d spoken as if she knew more than she wanted to tell.

                          After the mayhem with the quakes, and the meteor impact, he thought that was it. There was something more to the reality of these events.

                          But then, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next. “Bloody aliens?”

                          Suspiciously, everyone seemed completely hypnotized and blissfully eager to follow them wherever they led. He had tried to wake Yz up, she was usually the no-nonsense one, but she’d looked at him with vacant eyes barely recognizing him with a faint “Johnny?”.

                          He started to get really suspicious when one of the robots started looking at his behaviour, not packing like the others. It even tried to force him to drink water —dehydration was common in these airtight environments, it said. It was then it dawned on him, that there must have put something in the water. But for what? A Mars take-over?

                          How he was somehow immune? Well, for a while he’d collected the water dripping from the stones, and had analysed it, found it very pure. A few days ago, before the whole string of disasters, he’d tried to drink it, see how it tasted, and it seemed safe. Must have been why. By now, most of the stones he’d collected had dried up, and his water supply was limited.

                          While pretending to slowly pack his things, he was looking at everyone queueing in short lines, all very ecstatic to go to the implausible blue boot-ship surrounded by watchful Finnleys. The exodus had a very eerie feeling about it.

                          He could see most of the persons he knew, even the new ones, Prune cuddling a box with her hamster family, Hans, even that daft Lizette and the mines guy. The religious nuts were so stoned they were all following an obviously overdressed robot with a headpiece they probably took for their religious leader.

                          But wait… His mother? He hadn’t see her. Where had she gone?

                          #3778

                          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                          EricEric
                          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.

                            #3744

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            EricEric
                            Keymaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              Strange new place, indeed…

                              #3698
                              EricEric
                              Keymaster

                                When Matilda, the local bag lady, saw the scene, she almost fell on her knees and prayed.
                                But then as the child seemed more than a passing gin induced vision, she told to herself “get a grip, Mati, there’s a child who obviously needs your help by the smell of it, no offense deer.”

                                #3692
                                EricEric
                                Keymaster

                                  “Who ratted me out, obviously”.
                                  Godfrey said finishing a mouthful of peanuts from the smallish bag the air attendant had just given to them.
                                  “So, what’s the next destination now? not home surely?” “By the way, this nice Australian family will rue the day they met you. You managed to make their only paying guest flee as soon as you arrived with that bawling baby of yours.”

                                  #3674

                                  Corrie:

                                  I was offering the plate of mince pies to Mr Cornwall, who had been coaxed out of his room for the first time in ages and was sitting next to the gum tree sapling that Aunt Idle had strung with fairy lights in lieu of a Christmas pine, when they arrived. We were all surprised to hear the taxi hooting outside, that is, except Bert. I heard him mumbling something about “She bloody meant it, the old trout,” but I didn’t remember that until later, with all the commotion at the unexpected guests.

                                  “Here, take the lot,” I said, shoving the mince pies on the old guys lap, as I rushed to the door to see who it was. A tall autocratic looking woman swathed in beige linen garments was climbing out of the front seat of the taxi, with one hand holding the pith helmet on her head and the other hand gesticulating wildly to the others in the back seat. She was ordering the taxi driver to get the luggage out of the boot, and ushering the other occupants out of the car, before flamboyantly spinning around to face the house. With arms outstretched and a big smile she called, “Darlings! We have arrived!”

                                  “Who the fuck it that?” I asked Clove. “Fucked if I know” she replied, adding in a disappointed tone, “Four more old farts, just what we bloody need.”

                                  “And a baby!” I noted.

                                  Clove snorted sarcastically, “Terrific.”

                                  Suddenly a cloud of dust filled the hall and I started to cough. Crispin Cornwall had leaped to his feet, the plate of mince pies crashing to the floor.

                                  Elizabeth! Do my eyes deceive me, or is it really you?”

                                  Godfrey, you old coot! What on earth are you doing here, and dressed like that! You really are a hoot!”

                                  “Why is she calling him Godfrey?” asked Prune. “That’s not his name.”

                                  “He obviously lied when he said his name was Crispin Cornwall, Prune. We don’t know a thing about him,” I replied. “Someone had better go and fetch Aunt Idle.”

                                  #3599
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    Corrie:

                                    I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

                                    My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

                                    At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

                                    The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

                                    Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

                                    The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

                                    I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

                                    #3543
                                    F LoveF Love
                                    Participant

                                      Bert remembered running away when he was a kid. He had run away often. But he never got very far. They always caught him and took him back. The foster homes might look a bit different on the outside, but to him they were all the same. So he just kept running. These memories flitted through his mind as he watched Mater carefully shutting the front door so as not to make a noise. He watched as she she set down her backpack on the porch chair to check the contents and, obviously satisfied, she closed the bag and swung it on her back.

                                      #3530

                                      In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                                      EricEric
                                      Keymaster

                                        under phone keys box ocean huge story sometimes contact funny word power wait irina rain continued obviously discussion watch earth secret

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