Search Results for 'port'

Mari Fe’s neighbour, Rogelio, called round with a bag of oranges, jogging her memory about the three kings parade plan. Rogelio was playing the part of Baltazar in the parade, but he was going to be kidnapped and substituted with the real Baltazar from the past. The real Baltazar was to lure Ed Steam into the portal, with some assistance from the surge team, and take him back to Tartessos.

At approximately 11:11 Pearl heard a whoosh and a whoot, and then a loud thump. “Hop in, Pearl! toot! toot! Oh, and sorry about the porch swing, didn’t see it under all that snow” Bee was grinning from ear to ear. “First time I’ve used the snowmobile ski option, it’s a riot, haven’t quite got the hang of it yet though, but boy is it ever fun!”

Pearl laughed and hugged Bee. “It’s great to see you! I love your hat!” It was an elaborate blue turban, over the top with feathers and jewels. “Looks fabulous against all that snow, very delft. You know, you could have just used the portal to avoid all that snow! Janet!” Pearl spotted Janet in the back of the red car, who was picking herself up off the floor, and adjusting her pointy hat.

“But the journey was so much fun!” Janet said. “We bumped into Skolt, the travelling reindeer pee salesman, in Minnesota.”

“I hope you saved some for me!” replied Pearl. “I’ve got the moonshine, let’s party!”

In the vast mudflats of the Guadalquivir river delta, a small group of mudlarks on a field trip from London examine strange geometric shadows of what look to be the remains of a ringed city. “L..l..l..la la la looks like that in in in ins suh suh suh insignia, d d d don’t it, mate?” stuttered Dennis.

“The one we found on that old sponge in the mud of the Thames?” asked his uncle Bob. “It does, now that you mention it. Must be a connection. Ok lads, fan out and keep your eyes peeled. We must be close to finding the portal entrance, and we need to find it before the Three Kings parade.”

The cellar underneath the river island was a hive of activity. The Replicator was churning out little red amphibious flying cars like there was no tomorrow, which indeed would have been the case if the recent apocalypse hadn’t been deftly diverted in the nick of time. At high tide, when the Eyot was encircled with water, the cars would slip out of the ancient portal and drive out of the river onto Chiswick Mall, and on towards the various locations of the surge diversion team members. Those that were destined for locations other than London used the portal to exit via rivers in other places, such as Brattleboro, the Huangpu River, the Guadalquivir, or the Grand Canyon.

“The surge diversion is going well here, Pearl, for the moment. The energy has been channeled into street protests and the vibrations are being changed by an awful lot of banging on saucepans with spoons, somewhat noisy admittedly, but we’re a noisy lot here, and it’s going well. They’ve even adopted the word Tides to describe the surge diversion, and it’s alot more fun on the streets than some other surges I could mention.”

“No need to snort like that, Mari Fe” said Pearl. “We’ve just had word from the remote viewing team, and Ed Steam is in your neck of the woods, and one of your surges must be diverted to take him out.”

“The Three Kings Procession in a few days time might be an opportunity, leave it with me Pearl, I’ll see what I can do. I’d already planned to follow the Three Kings back home after the parade to ancient Tartessos, I’ve been collaberating with the time travel teleport portal people. Did you know that the Pope admitted that the Three Kings were from Andalucia? That was a result of the Occupy The Vatican Library Out of Body team. Anyway, maybe we can send Ed Steam back with them. He won’t be able to cause much trouble from thousands of years ago.”

“Mari Fe, if you’re planning to go back to Tartessos too, you won’t be much help here, will you?”

“Ahhhh!” replied Mari Fe with a cryptic smile. “You wait and see what I bring back with me!”

“Well as long as it’s not Ed Steam, that’s all. Leave him there!”

It was important to cure the cold quickly, because the lady from North Carolina had work to do. Ed Steam was getting too big for his boots, and his policies threatened to disrupt the vital surge work. Pearl Rider wiped her nose and shoved the tissue back in her pocket and sent urgent telepathic messages to her associates. Another surge tide had landed, a white tide of snow, which was expected to herald a surge southwards of the other dimensional aurora colours. The population had been on edge for some time, seeing doom and malevolent forces of outside control in just about anything and everything, so a sudden strong surge of the aurora was expected to create even further alarm.

How would they call this new blue planet? “XAIO353-57+” had been suggested by the High Klashtram Mothtar, but it would probably take at least one gyros before the Science council would unanimously agree.

Bashashish 20-13 was actually the communication attendant who’d discovered that promising planet, thus effectively defeating promises of uninteresting and failure-ridden work at the Cosmological Administration for Variable Explorations, where she’d been sent after unimpressive academic studies. The C.A.V.E. was one of those administrative hideouts producing nil but tedium, full of crannies which had not seen a cleaning ladybug (nor any clean ladybug for that matter) probably since its creation.
BashTT (short for Bashashish Twenty-Thirteen), after many of her cocoons left there at the institute, and as much boredom, started to play with some of the old equipment she’d found in a broom closet (needless to say, all brooms had been eaten long ago), and had found some unusual waves coming from a corner of the Sector 114116.

It took her more gyri to gather more solid evidence, tinkering with the planet’s waves in order to test whether the blue marble had intelligent life. So far, it had been mostly conclusive. She’d managed to connect to broadcasting waves and also to the transportation systems. She tinkered with the stream of data in order to go local, and by replacing another’s booking with her personal information, managed to book a few craft tickets for herself. This would be perfect for when she’d visit around the planet’s locations when she would arrive with the official delegation.
She was particularly fond of the Land of the Hobbit breathtaking sceneries, and wished she could get an appointment in Rivendell with the wizard they called Grand’Alf who seemed able to talk their mothty language.

“Solar flares alert at noon, take shelter” the electronic sign was saying when she left the building. Rubber masks coated with lead-like substance were designed to alleviate the exposure to what authorities qualified as dangerous radiations, but she was wondering what good it had brought her, listening to those darned authorities. Of course now, there was a variety to contend with every possible taste: one could find designer masks on the market, even ones that made you look like Jeanne Roberts, the famed actress from the naugthies québecquoise telly series “Sept ETs à la maison” (inaptly translated as “Sethies at home”).
However, dissident reports had transpired that the flares were not the health hazard they talked about, and maybe could actually be good for you. Theories were that they helped trigger beneficial mutations of your body, that would then go through a slightly disturbing period of adaptation and heightened hypersensitivity, but that later… your potentials would start to get limitless, well, whatever that meant.
She wondered what good becoming a limitless housekeeper would bring her… more bloody work, that one was certain.

At the same moment in a remote town in a far away galaxy, master yoda took his light saber out, preparing to fight Dookoo. He was trying to sort out all these probabilities where buns were blending with dogs in boobs. It almost got him killed.
“Have you considered suing your brains for lack of support?” said Dookoo with an evil grin.

“Sorry, for the tardiness dear” the dragon coughed in a midget voice. Lowering its voice, he added “I’ve been busy honing my herding sheep skills.”

“Well,” Flinella said “at least you’ve came. I was starting to think you were crushed under piles of dirt or something. Things have been rocky of late on this island…”
She looked inquisitively at the familiar snout “and I suppose you’ve smoked those poor sheep, haven’t you? The S’elves won’t be pleased.”

The dragon, actually a rather small dragon by all standards (the bane of his life was to be constantly mistaken for a karma chameleon), took the last remark in without retorting. That was ominous enough for Flinella who wasn’t accustomed to such absence of quick wit from his part.
The S’elves were a dissident faction of the Tw’elves. More ancient, some had said… though not as ancient as the Sh’elves —those went extinct or ascended a long while ago. Flinella was posted on the island to report on the shift progress and if possible, wreck havoc on any attempt at continent inuity.

“So far, so good…” she smiled pleased at her progress.

Petronella had attended many “Occupy Movement” gatherings- she was one of the first to shuffle eagerly to Wall Street when the Yankee Americans were finally awakened from their stupendous slumber, and when the Spanish were shouting “Viva la Revolucion!” she was silently there, capturing every movement with her Canon IX-25 14.0 Megapixel camcorder and reporting to the rest of the world the rumblings of the impending revolution. This occupation was different, felt different, and conducted in a different manner.

She dusted the dirt off the book, looked around to see if nobody spotted her picking the book up, and retreated back into her tent. She brew a fresh pot of coffee, bundled herself in her tiny, yet thick and warm blanket and set the book before her. It was an odd-looking book, none like the books she’d encountered- and she encountered many books! Its cover was plain, covered in a velvet cloth with the title written plainly and boldly on the cover: CANARIA. The name rang a distant bell, but she shook the afterthought and proceeded to open the book. As she opened the first page, another beam of bright energetic light- this time it was blue- swept past her like a hurried flock of bees. This was the fourth beam of light she’d witnessed in the past twelve hours, and she was beginning to think she was going crazy. What made the whole matter even more crazier was that these beams of light seemed to be WHISPERING AND GIGGLING, almost as though they were forlorn inhabitants of the vatican. She ignored the beam of light- yet again- and resumed with her book. Just then, a blip sounded from her tiny Lenovo notebook: Kerry had sent her an instant message on Facebook chat. Slightly chagrined, she leered over and grabbed her notebook, settling the book next to her. Kerry was offline, but she had left a link to a website. Petronella clicked onto the link, and an article popped up on the screen. She skimmed by, having little interest in Kerry’s New Age nonsense. She was just about to close the webpage when a sentence caught her attention: “When you practise remote viewing, you will be accorded a beam of light with its owwn colour that’ll identify with you.”
The mentioned beams of light the sentence mentioned were the same she’d been witnessing, so she silently read on.

“Yet another splendid piece of synchronicity!” The Leprechaun praised himself, while eyeing the delicious-looking chocolate cake with three layers of vanilla cream that simply willed itself into different flavours before his delighted, excited taste buds. Just as he was about to take his first bite into the scrumptious cake, a multi-coloured portal opened before his very eyes. Unsurprisingly, the host of elves, each in a different physical manifestation, jumped out of the portal and dusted the stardust off their garments.

“Mr Leprechaun,” one elf began. He took the form of a Spanish gentleman by the name of Raul Iniesta. “Raul” (as he will be called for the time being until he shifts shape) had long, black hair that he had no intention of bounding, instead allowing its blackness to flow freely upon his neck and over his shoulders like a nightly waterfall of moonlight and starry gazes. He had an almond-shaped face, and his skin was gently golden-brown, as if his physical birth took place on a beach at sunset. His eyes were sea-blue, glimmering gently in the luminescence of his own aura. He spoke in a gentle voice that was mightily influenced by a touch of spanish mixed with french accents.
“I see you have taken the form of a Leprechaun-” Raul stepped closer to observe the essence’s current physical. “How quaint.”
The Leprechaun dryly stared at Raul. “I don’t see anything wrong with my physical form Mr INIESTA,” he replied, placing emphatic strain on ‘Iniesta’. “Would it have made any difference if I were a flower?”
“If you were a flower you’d fit perfectly with my body of hair!” Raul exclaimed. The Tw’Elves laughed heartily at the joke, and an iridescent beam of energy simultaneously rose from their esoteric beings, giving forth a ray of happiness, albeit for a short while, towards the inhabitants of the sleeping dimension.

Racy Mc Tartshall had been absent for so long that it was hardly any wonder that nobody remembered her, despite the importance of her mission which had long since been forgotten. Mc Tart, as she was affectionately known (or would have been if anyone had remembered her) was a tartist of the highest calibre, consistently producing hugh class tart (which was of course three grades higher than high, and 2 grades higher than hagh, and so forth). Mc Tart had been investigating Nosebook, sniffing out potential distortions, claritortions, connectortions and myriad other contortions, for the distortium, claritortium, connectortium and contortium, respectively ~ focusing mainly on the connectortium, naturally enough.

While researching something or other that was no doubt relevant at the time but had long been forgotten, Mc Tart met Alfred in the Library. ““Aha! Alfred in the Library with a Book, was it!” she exclamined. “I knew I’d find a clue here”. “It wasn’t me!” he retorted, aghast. “It was Albert in the Chapless Pants club with a Rolling Pin!” Mc Tart, feigning an all knowing expression, replied “Ahhhh” and made a mental note to investigate.

Mental notes, known as m’otes for short, floated like wisps in the air currents and occasionally sparkled in the sunbeams, although more often than not, they clumped together under the bed in bunny shapes, slowly dying of boredom. Thankfully the sheer pointlessness of mental notes ~ m’otes ~ made not a whit of difference in the grand scheme of the connectortium investigation because of the abundant nature of Fluce’s ~ (fucking lucky chance encounters), notwithstanding the heated debates continuing in the Distortium about the precise nature of Fluce’s and their relationship to M’Otes ~ or not, depending on the point one wished to make at any particular time.

And so it was by Fluce that Mc Tart met Blithe, Heck and Walty in “le Tunnel” one dreary grey Noremember afternoon. There was nothing to suggest, on first inspection, any thing of interest for the Connectortium mission, but Mc Tart was not discouraged. “Many a moth maketh maths marbles” she reminded herself as she perused the nenu (which, the reader will deduce, is a hugher class of menu).

[link: high class]

The Strawberry Aliens entered via the portal near the effigy in Bristol Cathedral. Although they were invisible to the unshifted eye, and their actual entrance had gone entirely unnoticed, Lilac knew they had arrived, and wept.

The world had gone mad overnight.

While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.

Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.

When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.

As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.

Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.

At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.

Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?

link: weaving worlds

Whether or not Arachne was actually better at weaving than Athena is still a mystery, or perhaps it is a moot point and no mystery at all. Weaving is by no means a solitary endeavour, as Blithe found early one summer morning. The river mist was rising and the air itself was dancing in droplets. It was hard to determine if the droplets were falling or rising, or simply milling around on the air currents. Hard green oranges (clearly oranges had been named in winter, or they would likely have been called greens) were festooned with silver threads, linking orange to orange, orange to tree and tree to wire fence, and back again. It was debatable whether or not the individual spiders were aware of the grand overall design of the early morning web links of the orange groves, just as it was equally debatable whether or not the inhabitants of the various Gibber realities were aware of the network of waterpipes that connected the other inhabitants to themselves and each other, and to the other Gibber worlds. Individuals were individuals, whether they be spiders, or Gibblets, and individuals generally speaking were focused on their own part of the tapestry (and often those of their immediate neighbours). Spider 57 on the east fence might be positioned to catch the first rays of sunshine in the mornings, but Spider 486,971 over near the dung heap was in a better position to catch the afternoon flies. And so on, as somebody famous once said.

As Blithe prowled around the orchard capturing potential clues on her Clumera she inevitably became part of the laybrinthine web of sticky threads herself, as they attached themselves to her hair and clothing. All of the gaps between the solids in the field were joined together with spun filaments, just as the Gibblets were joined together with fun spillaments (although leaking waterpipes were sadly misinterpreted as not-fun all too often, despite that they could be used as an opportunity to view the connections of the Waterpunk more comprehensively.)

The individual spiders lacy parlours were framed in wire squares, several hundred, if not more, along the perimeter fences. Not every wire fence square was filled; there were many vacant lots between established residences ~ whether by practical design or mere happenstance, Blithe couldn’t say. Many of the individual webs were whole and perfect, like the windows of Lower Gibber whose inhabitants kept their lace curtains clean and neatly hung. Many of the webs on the wire fence were not perfect in the symetrical sense ~ some had gaping holes, and there were those that appeared to be unfinished, despite showing great potential. Others appeared to be abandoned, hanging in shreds, not unlike many of the residences in Upper Gibber.

The wire framed residences of the field (and likewise the peeling paint framed residences of Upper Gibber) that appeared to be defunct were not quite as they seemed, however. They were simply being viewed from a different timeframe. It was quite possible to view each wire or peeled paint framed en-trance side by side, notwithstanding that they were, so to speak, located in varying timeframes. All that was required was a more flexible viewpoint, and an ability to view more than one timeframe simultaneously. It was all a question of allowing an entrance to en-trance ~ which was, after all, its function.

{link: misty morning; entrance}