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In reply to: Strings of Nines
After five years of training of the dragon twins, Irtak was to do for the first time an act that would finally make him not just a dragon rider, but a dragon breeder in his own right. He had to part ways with them.
It was harder than he’d expected. He knew that if he wanted to bring more dragons into the great stream of the Duane’s life, he couldn’t only focus on the two buoyant twins. It’d taken them that long to manage channeling the intense energy of the two, and balancing their thirst of discovery with patience and adequacy of action.
Parting now was almost heart-breaking for him, even though the dragons had been reassuring they were only longing for new adventures with new companionship.In fact, they were so longing that they would have almost gone with any stranger, or perhaps even just on their own —reluctant as they were to admit they also greatly enjoyed human’s company. However, Irtak wanted to make sure they would be taken care of by not just anybody; as powerful as dragons were, the two were almost innocent and very young for that race, and they would greatly benefit from some wise tutelage.
Now that Malvina had left the cave, he didn’t know who to turn to for advice, and was feeling a bit forlorn, though his glubolin was still working fine. He’d been thinking about it for quite some time, and realized that some travel would really do him good, so he finally began packing.
The Southern Shores of Lan’ork would make a great destination to find a proper owner for the twins, and an interesting starting point for new adventures.In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
Marie put the the perfect husband down. She was looking for a rope and tied it to the door handle while she went for the knees, thankful for the power.
In exchange for some strange things, it had been agreed that Franiel’s angel met Derwent, a very ordinary mortal. Bit disappointed, she chuckled. Most of the others are lovely and colorful.
In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
#1198
Al was visibly deranged finding Becky scantily clad. Well, wait for him to shave, he smiled. Becky might eat some nuts, wondering why she had not thought of that in the first place. Becky had always been reluctant, or perhaps just forgetful.A clap made her moan in a silky voice, she felt energy crawl underneath her sabulmantium. It was Man, a distinctive pack of magic. What an impossible florid and baroque little marmoset playing a mouth harp.
Arona felt like beating dragons. She almost stopped in anticipation of a pile of conic shaped dirty sand, soil from the cave, the dragons doing. They are disagreeable kind of creature, made her dizzy.
The dragons had disappeared. Arona snapped to no one in particular, you will see how easy it is to come back if you feel so inclined.
At her touch, the dragon started to enclose a circle of sand, a curvy symbol.
The interior of the cave was out of focus, in all its splendor…
Fuck the babbled excuses, her own sloppy children wearing a potatoes sack. Sure Gabriele had noticed that nurse Bellamy in my room. Professional women made silky rope disappear.
Sure, more security, she had to be more careful about Barbella Bee-hive. I don’t like that Barbella. Perhaps it’s the kinky wrists tying games…
In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
Al woke up deranged. He was in the middle of the bushes, unable to move and scantily clad.
Good thing too that the joggers in the park noticed!
Embarrassing, he reckoned.
Moments later, after some voice messages on his telephone from Becky, he was still incapacitated.
Just as Becky was retorting to Al to please become completely transparent, Becky giggled, suddenly seeing the Wet Tarty Nun.
“My God, what the fuck is that?”
In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
#87 Quintin had a woman near London ~ a strange small replicate, put here for gracious officials. Strangely linked to the story, was Dory. The other participants didn’t really expect this quaint dream…
Dory made Quintin in Madagascar for the first time. Funny, but now they seemed to connect to Arona. Malvina disappeared, and once again Arona found this quite irritating. She could barely remember the music.
Really, things are shifting. In the name of heaven use magic I Scream or something!
A Man emerged from Arona’s lap. This is great, more comfortable than the ground.
Oh cute, said Arona, a talking Man, love your cape by the way.
Arona stroked Man. It was all feeling heat and humidity… and especially her hunger. Man sighed in an eggs sort of a way. She exclaimed delightedly, hugging the Man.
[¹] Note from the editor: Man being a noble reader
~~~~
Dory was dry, with strange hard shoulders and face. Her shawl finally surfaced flapping in time to a cloud of dust.
PPFFT! I’m all on my own. Dory was momentarily speechless.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“I blame the Elsespace Arrangement” Monica said in response to Ann’s long winded diatribe. “Nothing’s been quite the same since it got so popular.”
“You’ve got a point there, Mon” Ann agreed. “We didn’t used to have all these mix ups before, did we?”
“Well speak for yourself, dear, I don’t get mixed up,” Monica said a trifle pompously.
Not ‘arf you don’t, Ann said to herself, smiling sweetly at her freind.
“I heard that” Monica replied.
“Soory, Monica.” Oh my god, look at that typo. “Sorry Monica” Ann corrected herself. “The thing is, I’ve been feeling so odd lately. Disconnected, somehow. But the others seem to think they’ve been offending me, but it’s not that.”
“Well, what is it then?” asked Monica kindly.
“I’m not going to tell you. Ah ha ha ha ha.”
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
Months coincidence party ladies story far continuous
somewhere mention blue matter beginning
previous particular interesting sleep weeks easier
whatever strange lovelyIn reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann slapped her forehead when she realized her mistake, notwithstanding that there were no ‘mistakes’ as such.
The story is for the writer that writes it, not the reader.
What the repercussions of that were for the future of publishing, Ann wasn’t quite sure.
“Oh, I can answer that for you, dear” Lavender responded. “On my recent trip to the future I went to the Pick Your Own Pages book store. There’s a wonderful Pick ‘N’ Mix section, and a Lucky Dip. You can pick various quantities, such as chapters, pages, paragraphs or sentences, and you arrange them yourself.”
“What a wonderful idea!” Ann replied.
“Oh, the idea was an old one, very old!” Lavvie explained. “People were doing it all along, though they didn’t realize it. The idea of being spoon fed an entire story went out with the Ark. It was the advent of random quote generators that started the ball rolling.”
Ann beatled off to check the random quote for the day….
“Arona! Sanso! Oh, how wonderful to see you guys again! Come and meet Lavender and Walter, we’re discussing continuity….”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Gremwick was glad the Fisherman had come to repair the Cloud Fishes of the Inner Aerial Pool of the Worseversity.
It’s been a few days that he’d noticed an unusual lack of randomness in the swimming patterns of the little Cloud Fishes.
As they were usually used for the divination courses, no sooner was the issue identified than the students had to temporarily recourse to the use of pigeons for their assignments —which sadly left a stinking trail of devastation on the usually pristine marble floors that greatly infuriated Charity, the cleaning lady, otherwise known for her great patience and candor, who’d kept cursing like a sailor against the winged demonic creatures the last past weeks.The incident in itself was not of immense consequence in the grand scheme of things, but it felt worrisome for the Dean that these swimming creatures known for their quite reliable and, yes, totally unfloundering randomness had suddenly decided to adopt a monotonous pattern.
In that disposition, they were merely echoing the requester’s requests in a manner of a mirror instead of evoking strange and obscure meanings from the depths of the universe.It had amused the students very much, as it was making their assignments apparently far easier —there was no thing left in need of deciphering, unless the students’ requests were themselves incoherent, which could on occasion happen especially after the Special Crop Circle Lessons. As no incident was without meaning, the Dean had pondered this one, but without any satisfactory answer as of yet.
At least, it had been the occasion to meet the Fisherman, and to ponder on the plainness of a world without unpredictability.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Monica was asking Pedro about Pr. Moss last assignment. Everybody had been very impressed by his story teller talent and she wanted to know more about it. He was quite secretive though, and maybe it was because he was not a native English speaker, but nonetheless she wanted to know about some details.
Before he could say anything, she felt an excruciating pain in her belly and the announcing signs of intestine problems…
— Are you ok, asked Pedro? What was that strange noise?
— Nothing! she eluded quickly. I need to go to the bathroom, excuse me.Another spasm almost made her fall on the ground.
Damn Pr. Flipswitch! she thought, I shouldn’t have accepted to try the herbs he gave me after his herbal course.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“BLING!”
Yurick and Yann jolted up from the couch at the sound of the crashing pot.
“What on Earth are they on about… again!”
Their two new cats Eeckup and Eelas were practising their new hops and jumps, reaching for the topmost shelf of the cupboard, where the pot full of earth, and topped with the remains of a dying dry plant was put —they’d thought, out of reach of the little beasts.
“You know what?” Yurick said after having vacuumed the remains of dirt on the carpet “it may sound a bit strange (perhaps completely nuts even), but I had the impression Eeckup was making something with the plants just before I surprised it…”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann glanced vaguely over the bookcase, wondering where her dictionary was. Did people still use dictionaries in book form? I suppose any book will do for the purpose, she decided, and reached for the nearest book, a book about Rembrandt. She opened it randomly five times, using a ball point pen as a pointer, and selected five words for Prof Underbaker’s assignment.
…now…excite…
What a coincidence, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here, Ann thought, with a slight shudder at the bird killing metaphor (if it was indeed a metaphor, Ann tended to skip the Labelling Words classes)…
…someone…
Ah, but who? Who shall I excite?
…pointed…
Pointed in the right direction? Addressed someone pointedly? Not to put too fine a point on it…
….time
Ann was interested to note that her selection of words started with the word NOW and ended with TIME, and popped it into her clue box in an effort to stay on course and finish the assigment.
There was no time like the present. Indeed T’Eggy was well aware that All is Now, she’d heard about that theory in Wicks, the online magazine that she’d found so enlightening. She’d been reading a copy of Wicks (a reproduction, the originals were now collectors items and very valuable ~ in an artifact rather than a monetary value kind of way, monetary value having been devalued in the early part of the century) in the teleport waiting room when she met the handsome foreignor in the dusty blue robes. Of course, it was not unusual to meet foreignors in the teleport waiting room, not unusual at all, but the tall, dark, and handsome stranger had excited her. Perhaps it was the flash of long lean tanned thigh that she glimpsed as his robes caught on the door knob. Of course, even the ‘waiting room’ was a retro touch, because there was no need to ‘wait’ for teleport travel. It seemed ironic in a way that folks in the old days had perceived ‘waiting’ as an onerous thing, an somewhat unpleasant period of clock watching and crossword puzzle books. These days ‘waiting rooms’ were popular places to meet people and choose probability pools. The latest trend was Turtle Nights, and Frog Nights, where men and women gathered in waiting rooms to choose partners, to find that special someone, loosely based on the old Hen and Stag nights.
“Do teleport stations have door knobs, Ann?” Pedro interjected.
“Oh!” Ann was momentarily non plussed.
“Non plussed? Is that a word?” asked Pedro.
“Pedro, stop interrupting! The assigment isn’t to design a teleport station!”
The teleport station had been designed in retro style, a facsimile of the Atocha train station in Madrid. Lack of need for physical details had not resulted in a lack of appreciation for physical detail simply for it’s artistic merit, not to mention historical educational value, and the TRANS (Teleport Relative to Any Now Space) Station was an award winning example of old fashioned detail. Why, it even had doorknobs, even though doors had been dispensed with several decades ago.
“I thought the assigment wasn’t to design a teleport station?” asked Pedro.
“Does it bloody matter?” retorted Ann, with a hint of exasperation. “The overall point is to write rubbish, and that’s what I’m doing!”
“I’m glad you pointed that out, Ann” remarked Pedro helpfully.
“Oh my god, look at the time!” Ann exclaimed. “It’s time for class!”
“Bugger that!” snorted Pedro. “I’d rather hear about what happened with T’Eggy and that tall dark stranger!”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Arona had no idea what dimension she was in. Or indeed, whether she was where she was at all. Oddly enough, and it was not often now that Arona found anything odd, she was finding the experience rather freeing.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hoooooooooooooooooo” she shouted, and holding her arms wide open, began to whirl joyously around, till dizziness overcame her and she landed in a heap on the ground. She expected to land in a heap on the ground in a soft meadow with pretty spring flowers, but to her consternation realised that she had landed on what felt like polished concrete. She was even more concerned when she realised that she had a large audience watching her with interest, although at that stage all she really took in was a sea of feet around her. On further inspection she appeared to be in what looked like an enormous building full of shops, and, shoppers.
“Are you okay?” A kindly gentleman asked her in a concerned voice. At least that is what Arona thought he said. Although the words were familiar, the accent was strange, and not one she had heard before.
“I am fine, thank you,” replied Arona, trying her best to appear composed and rise gracefully from her sprawled position all at the same time. She must have looked convincing because, after a few more curious looks in her direction, the crowd began to disperse.
Good Grief, where am I now? she wondered. Determined not to be alarmed and to go with the flow, however rapid that flow may be, the intrepid Arona set off to explore her new surroundings.
“Wait!”
Arona looked around. It was the strangely spoken gentleman who had first offered assistance. He was brandishing a book towards her.
“Take this book. It is no good for me.”
Arona hesitated. The last time she had heard those words she had ended up with a funny little baby to look after. The man was insistent though, so, thanking him politely Arona accepted the gift.
“Hmmmm, How to Write Fiction, how very peculiar!” Flipping it open randomly she read:
[Random Words Epigraph] Step One: Randomly choose 5 entries from your dictionary. Just flip through the pages, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. Copy down the word that is closest to your finger. If your finger lands on a word that you don’t know, you can choose the word just above or just below it. For the purposes of this assignment, count paired words as a single entry (for instance, “melting pot” is listed as a single entry). Step Two: Shape your list of dictionary entries into a poem or story, using all of the entries.
“bugger that,” snorted Arona.
Topic: Probably Real
She woke up at noon and it was 100 degrees, or 37 degrees, whichever you prefer, but whichever way you look at it, it was not a good temperature to wake up to. Everything was pointing in the direction of going solo, playing the game on her own for awhile, or at least until she was in a regular habit of giving herself priority, giving more attention to her own creative pursuits, and less time to the futile attempts to keep group projects going. She supposed for a moment that making a start whilst hot, tired, discouraged and confused was not the most ideal mood for a start, but at least it was a start. She wasn’t even entirely sure what it was she was actually starting, but suspected that it didn’t much matter, in the grand scheme (or lack thereof) of things.
She’d had a moment of inspiration when she started reading a book. She’d only read a few pages and had no idea how the book would turn out, but the format was interesting. Julie had had an idea, simmering on a back burner for years, to write a book. It always seemed to want to be an autobiographical book, and that’s where she always came unstuck because she couldn’t see the point of that, not that she was overly concerned about whether anyone would want to read it or not, but she often came unstuck when she wondered about how all the characters in the book might feel about it, which is why that moment of inspiration in the bathroom the other day seemed like such a good idea.
She could write a book about a probability party, perhaps called ‘Probably Real’, (maybe with the subtitle ‘Probably Not’.) There would be an occasion, the details of which she hadn’t worked out yet, in which various (not all, she soon realized!) of her probable selves met ~ such as in the Atkinson book, in some quiet desolate place with no interruptions (obviously somewhere with no internet connection, although there was always the danger of picking up a freak broadband WiFi), where they had all the time in the world to tell their tales, compare notes as it were.
Which was where the fiction idea came in ~ of course! Just call it fiction! Would just one of the probable selves be telling the truth, relating the only true version of Julie’s life? And if so, which one was the real probable self? All the characters in the book would have probable selves and probable lives; which of them was the real probable self, the official version? No-one would ever know.
Of course, anyone versed in the metaphysical mechanics of probabilities and such would realize that all probable versions are real, at the same time as all being, in a certain sense, fiction ~ made up. The only question was, would that be too unlimiting to contain within the confines of one book, but time (so to speak) would tell.
Procrastination had set in, as usual, not that that is a bad thing, and things pretty much carried on as usual for a few days. Julie noticed the puppy tugging at a particular magazine from the bottom of the magazine rack over the course of those few days, and eventually the magazine was rather pointedly poking out from the bottom of the pile, it’s title clearly showing: a booklet on How To Write FICTION, with FICTION in big letters.
Never the less, the procrastination continued, although the clue was duly noted. It hadn’t been the first time a Writing A Book incident had occured.
It was easy, in this case, to remember that date, because it was right around the time of the 1999/2000 milenium party, right around the time when that particular roller coaster had derailed. While unpacking the boxes of books and putting them on the shelves of yet another rented house ~ a particularly garish and tasteless monstrosity, a drug baron’s dream of unfunctional largeness with hideous coloured glass windows (it’s the sheer randomness of the colours that’s so awful, G had remarked) ~ a book flew off the shelf, quite literally, and landed alone in the middle of the floor some distance away from the bookshelf.
Becoming A Writer was the name of the book, and the funny thing was that she had been thinking of writing a book but didn’t know where to start, and had been toying with the idea of buying a book on writing a book. So she read the book and started writing, a little bit every day, following the books advice to just start writing, even if it’s just ‘I can’t think of what to write’. There was plenty to write about as it turned out, but circumstances changed, another sudden move of house ensued, another rollercoaster ride, and the writing stopped for awhile.
But back to the book, Becoming A Writer. For a long time, Julie had no recollection of buying that book, and wondered by what magic had it appeared at her feet. Many years later she perhaps would have simply accepted the magic, and would have known that she created the book in that moment. But at the time she didn’t, and in due course constructed a memory of buying the book some years previously at a car boot sale somewhere along the coast road.
(We did buy the book, piped up PSJ2, and I actually read it, unlike you, as soon as I bought it. My 5th book is about to be published, a lightweight comedy/detective series about the Costa del Crime)
PSJ2’s interjection reminded PSJ1 (Good grief, we’ll have to think of a solution to the probable self names, she noted) that she had in fact started writing a book about the Costa del Crime, called Peregrino’s, or perhaps that was the name she’d given to the bar, the central hub, of the book. Of course, that was in the days when bars had been her central hub; she doubted very much if she would choose a bar as the central hub of a book now. She hadn’t got very far with the book, and had burned it when PSA1 got busted, just in case. What to do first, bury the (probable, it must be remembered) pump action shotgun, or burn the book. She had buried the gun, under cover of darkness, in the back garden, wrapping it in plastic bags and blankets, making it look for all the world like the body of a dead child. It was dark, it was raining, and there weren’t many neighbours out there in the orange groves, and she could do no more than hope for the best that she hadn’t been seen.
No doubt there was a probable self who did choose to create being seen, but if so she hadn’t arrived at the probability party (yet, at any rate) with her tale.
That it had been a major probability junction was certain. Not just the gun burying incident, which had turned out to be no more than merely incidental, but the events leading up to it.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
On their way to the volcanic lands, Yann and Yurick had to smile when they saw a magpie drop with a bell-shaped curved on top of the cars. They knew it was a sign of their friend Finn, as the car in front of them was having FCK concealed in its license plate number. “Fellowship of of Continuity in Knowledge”… to sexy it up.
Of course, they didn’t even mention the dime a dozen 57’s who weren’t as subtle and spy-like in nature, and far more all over-the-place (as it should).At that same moment, Yurick had the vision of a disturbing short-motion movie suddenly burgeon in his imagination with a daredevil magpie as a involuntary heroine.
In a sort of bizarre paralleling of Jonathan seagull, the magpie would plunge at high speed onto the cars of the freeway so as to discover the untold exhilaration and awe that the strange vehicles were certainly feeling speeding that way. In the end, she would only to discover bored-to-death commuters inside, probably in what would be her last glimpse of this world…Somehow Yurick wondered if the exhilaration of the dog sticking its tongue out of the car was much of a big deal.
Sure it certainly seemed so from afar, perched high in the branch from above the madding cars, but inside… the experience was another complete different thing.In reply to: Strings of Nines
Franlise was unusually despondent. She flicked half heartedly through the last pages of Ann’s novel, looking for some sort of common thread which she could cleverly take hold of and expand upon, in order to provide the necessary continuity.
Daunted by the formidable proportions of her task, her thoughts turned instead to the strange man who had followed her that afternoon. Her attempts to lose him had failed, and, in the end, she had thought it best to delay her appointment with the Fellowship. Perhaps the man was just lured by her beauty, but she knew she could not risk exposure.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
It all came as a surprise to them. At first, they didn’t want to believe the “others” telling them they were dead. Glor went there first, then Shar shortly after. Apparently some side effects of the beauty treatments they’d taken during their trip in the mysterious island of Tikfijikoo.
They started to believe it when they witnessed their own burial ceremonies. Was a bit strange at first, but soon they couldn’t help but gossip about their friends outfits and hairdos. Then all of a sudden, it was funny! They could go anywhere in the blink of an eye, spy on everyone, and get a good laugh together —and not with just any bloody disincarnate ascended being.— Shar?
— What Glor?
— What we’re going to do now?
— I think whatever they said about it, I quite liked the island. Perhaps we can pop-in there, have a good party with lemurs, especially now that everybody’s been deserting it.
— Oh yes, and let’s get find that doctor, scare him outta his wits force him make beauty treatments for us!
— Now that’s talking lady!
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Believe it or not, it suddenly seems like the shifting symphony makes more sense than the ninth (and Beethoven doesn’t make you dumb), if you see my drift…”
“I could, if you’d stop talking in riddles” Lavender told Harvey with but the slightest hint of exasperation in her otherwise perfectly adorable soft and beautiful voice.“I don’t even know what I’m talking about actually, it’s like I’m channeling some deranged poet”
“Yeah, that or being taken over by aliens …”
“You know, I miss a sense of continuity… When I can’t follow the leaping frog in at least a pattern that makes sense, I gradually loose all interest. At least if I know the frog is going that way to look for tasty maggots, or that other way to lay a few eggs, or that other way to mate with psychotropic toads, I can hop or fly along… “
Lavender smiled a lovely smile.“There it’s like a frog without purpose; it’s running in all directions, keep changing colours like a chameleon, and no matter how I try, I can’t figure the simplest pattern.”
“Maybe you should ask your super computer floogle ?”
“Yeah… it would tell me that figures without a pattern are called irrational or even transcendent… Not that it would help me in the least. Usually, when you can’t find a pattern, it’s because you don’t use the proper decomposition.”
“You want to dissect the poor frog?”
“No… Not even sure why I bother with the frog at all… It can do what it wants in the pond after all…”In reply to: Strings of Nines
Fell o’ the ship
Yann had the strangest impression of a big splash happening somewhere and of seagulls cries.
Maybe a mermaid or two could help this one
