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  • #3877
    ÉricÉric
    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.

      #3874
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        His shift was almost over. Ed wondered why the funny guy had looked so insistently as his hands. That was not the part people usually stared at… He shrugged — people are always stressed when they get their new identity, probably a bit overwhelmed by the realization of how direly they liked their comfortable boundaries and restrictions.
        Some people weren’t just ready for such a change. Actually, it had taken himself quite a few years as well, that it within relativilastic timing, all considering.

        He looked outside the window, it was night already, but at least the rain had stopped.
        Usually, he would wait a little more until the brunt of the office people had disappeared from the overcrowded stairs, escalators or “moving staircases” as they liked to call it.

        But today he was feeling like leaving early. Liz’ would be waiting for him.
        Putting on his raincoat, with his murse in one hand, he twirled his mustache with a grin and the other one.

        #3864

        “The key comes from a certain Dory”, said Becky with a puzzled look. “Does anyone know a Dory ? I don’t.”
        “Have you been taking sleep pills again?” asked Tina in the brink of an eyeroll.
        “Not at all”, said Becky briskly, bringing the letter and the key close to her chest. “I just don’t remember. It seems so far away.”
        “It looks like a locker key, or maybe a safe key.” said Sam. “Look, there is a little monkey carved on it, and a number.” he said pointing at it.
        Becky and Tina looked more closely.
        “1495”, said Becky.
        “Year 1495 (MCDXCV) was a common year starting on Thursday”, said Al. He was trying to solve a puzzle based on chaotic randomness theory and the evolution of the electromagnetic flux of sunspots in real time.
        “There’s a little card with it.” Tina was holding a small square rigid paper with a name on it. “It’s written Tikfijikoo Island.”
        “I remember the name”, said Sam, “I think it’s that place where they are building the Spider Amusement Park, or SAP.”

        #3863
        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          First appeared the We, closely followed by the Others. In fact, so closely, they could hardly been called apart at the beginning.

          Then awareness awoke again, oscillating for an instant between the We and Others. Which should be this time?
          Discarded Forms awoke quickly to follow in the aperture of awareness, and opened their eyes to their memories, filled to the brim with old and new stories about themselves, about the world, its purported reason to be as it is, its rules and all the hows and whys that should once more be turned upside down.

          The set was ready, its actors in place. There was no time to waste, for there really was no time at all.

          #3861
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            By doing so, she dreadedly realised she might have broken one or two rules.

            She let the thought float and flow away, embellishing it with a flurry of hells to make it sound more like it came from Lalaland.

            With that, she should be safe from retributions and impeding baldness.
            “Well, better that than the horrible fate of toothlessness of that last Filna’s incarnation” she couldn’t help but think before slumbering away.

            #3860
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              Bea decided that she needed to put herself back to sleep quickly. She had to wake up to a different external reality than loud cackles, lisps and pyramid-stealing rats with a bindle and attitude to boot.

              She was glad there was some of her sleep inducing medication left. This time apparently, they looked like Chinese medicine, gooish and blue in colour, with pungent smell of dried sea cucumber mixed with dirty alloys of slit nosed bat’s snot.

              Maybe the weird scenarios were a resurgence of the ego… She would have to meditate more on what these false egos and contrived characters appearances truly meant.

              #3840

              “Al’s gone too far this time, Tina” Becky said, perusing the latest installment of the Reality Play. “He’s just adding old characters willy nilly now!”

              Tina just looked at Becky for a moment before replying quietly, “Isn’t that the point?”

              Gripping Tina’s shoulder firmly and giving her a little shake, Becky continued, “It’s getting serious, Tina, can’t you see the danger we’re in? Fictional characters are coming to life all over the planet, demanding birth certificates and passports and refugee status. Insisting on continuation, more detailed back stories; some are even demanding therapy for what the authors have put them through!”

              Tina looked shocked. “Is it really as serious as that?” she asked. “I had heard about it, but, well, I didn’t like to think too much about it…” her voice trailed off, hoping that Becky would drop the subject so she didn’t have to think about it any more.

              “It’s the Imagination Wave, Tina. We’ve never really understood Imagination or how to use it. During this wave, we’re going to find out, and it’s going to be messy, believe me! It’s not just the characters we’ve made up, it’s the land mass. Characters are looking for their lands, demanding compensation for missing islands…”

              “What are we going to do?” Tina whispered dramatically. “We’ve been churning out characters and littering changed landscapes with them and then just leaving them stranded, for nine years!”

              “And we can’t even get away from them all if we flew to Mars, either,” added Al, who had been eavesdropping from behind the door. He joined them and pulled up a chair. “Seriously, girls, we need a plan. This is our most important mission of all.”

              “Should we kill them all off?” asked Becky, wincing as she said it. “I didn’t mean that!” she added hastily.

              “Oh, you don’t want to do that!” Al replied quickly. “Some authors have done that and have been haunted by dead characters something awful! Dead characters are a worse nightmare than characters coming to life, believe me!”

              “Well I didn’t really mean it,” Becky said sheepishly.

              “Let’s ask Sam,” said Tina.

              #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…

                #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.

                  #3815
                  F LoveF Love
                  Participant

                    “We have registered your complaint and our Noise Control Officer will be around shortly.”

                    The smooth voice of the woman on the other end of the line did little to placate Bea. In fact, she could feel herself working up to a frenzy.

                    “The damn officer will come around and that cackler will stop cackling and your officer will say: we can’t do anything about the cackling if we don’t hear the cackling for ourselves. Because we have to measure the decibels of the cackle and we have to ascertain the cackle is indeed loud enough for us to warrant confiscating the cackle.

                    Bea knew she was getting agitated and took a deep breath. Just breathe. Calm down.

                    “It really is most annoying to be woken up continually by cackling. What would you do in my situation? she asked, miserably imagining the red manicured fingernails and perfectly coiffured hair which surely must be attached to a voice this calm and imperturbable.

                    “Have you tried talking to the Cackler? It’s always best if people can work it out between themselves. Point out to them how their cackling is impacting on your quality of life. I am sure they will be reasonable.”

                    #3814
                    ÉricÉric
                    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.

                      #3810

                      In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                      ÉricÉric
                      Keymaster

                        losing hair hell news great master
                        dream finly seen moment brought
                        flynn stones night ghost christmas show
                        reality sitting white apparently

                        #3809
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          ~ ~ ~ ~ She forgot the trout! ~ ~ ~
                          ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ A read herring, was as good as red. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                          ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ But for a clue-fish, who would diss a trout ? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
                          :fish: :fish: :fish: :fish: :fish:

                          :fleuron:

                          “Liz’! Liz’!”

                          ELIZABETH !” (sometimes caps were better to catch her attention)
                          “I’ve come back from Mars to take you home.”

                          She couldn’t make out whether the medications were wearing off or kicking in, or was that really Godfrey, back for her?

                          “Liz’, I’ve got to tell you the most astonishing things.”
                          “Godfrey… I think you should wait a bit…” she slurred words died out in a pool of drool
                          “Liz’, wait till I explain you all about the blue benders. Aliens, new frontiers! >-) There’s hope yet for a new best stellar! I’m taking you out of this dreadful nursing home!”

                          #3808

                          The house was strangely peaceful.

                          The hot days were over for now, and the air wasn’t as suffocating.

                          Dido was gone for a visit to New South Wales, talking the girls with her.
                          As Mater said, breathing a bit of ocean in her pipes instead of her infernal smoking would do her quite a bit of good. Actually, to her surprise, she’d refrained herself from saying what she originally meant. Her brains needed washing too, but that would have been mean.
                          “Mater, old cow, you’re getting soft with age” — Prune could hear her mutter. The young girl was clever at reading her silences and mutterings. For all the good it would do her.
                          So, yeah, a bit of coastal loitering, instead of vagabonding with all the in and out guests that summer had brought. Dido would endlessly run head-first in so many troubles by following people’s every whim. But hopefully she would be a bit more responsible having to care for her nieces.

                          It must have been those books she read, or the Internet gobbledygook. Mater had found a second-hand worn-out book Dido had forgotten to flush on her way out of the loo. Or the reverse.
                          Anyway, she’d given it a peek. Out of concern of course.
                          No wonder Dido was so taken with silly concerns. It was a book by a French Tibetan Buddhist monk, advocating compassion for this, compassion for that. Good for nothing, all the same those preachers. Now, she could understand why Dido was all ranting about how meditation change your brain. Well, no surprise! Makes it all mushy and unable to think critically, more like it.

                          Just before she left for her little vacation, she’d almost had a nervous breakdown about what she called the extermination. Happened the noise on the roof were stray cats. Well, I knew she fed them from time to time. Probably Finly too. Now, neither Finly nor myself would have called the exterminator to kill some poor cats, good gracious. The guinea pigs are out of their reach anyway. But I guess one of the neighbours wasn’t the compassionate type. Now, what about having compassion for those bastard cat killers? Silly monks who know nothing.

                          Anyway,… darn phone! Somebody to answer that phone?

                          When she arrived at the ringing phone, she realised it was again one of those stupid marketers to sell whatever useless crap. She put the handset delicately on the ledge, letting the guy talk to the air, and resumed her calm walk around the quiet house.

                          So, where was I, she thought. The thought has nearly slipped away.

                          It was something about fish oil maybe. Oh there… walking meditation, mushy brains, cat killers… There, she lost it again…

                          #3807

                          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                          ÉricÉric
                          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?

                            #3803

                            In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                            Lord R’eye, the one-eyed ruler of the known universe, was known by many names, a great lot of them completely forgotten by the masses. He had to constantly reinvent Himself, borrow new disguises, create factions, sprinkle in a few miracles, create order ab chao and voilà.

                            He owned a few bodies, strategically placed here and there, one of his favourite in Geneva, quite involved in banking affairs. His bodies were a rare indulgence, and he couldn’t stay too long either, as his massive energy could easily get stuck with the lot of them, down to density.
                            Overall, he was much more comfortable managing his immense wealth “up there”, in the cosmic realms he had helped shape. So many underlings were ready to carry on his biding, and apart from a few small number of very close ergo very dangerous confidants, many of the minions didn’t even know each other, or that they were, for the most part, owned by Him, and part of the same team.

                            This was a cut-throat business, He had to admit, and everything was based on it. Manipulation and deceit, coercion, coaxing, anything necessary to control and manage the Empire.

                            One of those confidants, Lord Apex had been summoned and appeared almost instantly.
                            He had this charming archangelic halo and aura, but Lord R’eye would have none of it. A correction was in order, the latest results were extremely concerning.

                            “My Lord?” Apex asked in his mellifluous voice.
                            “My dear Apex, remind me what responsibility I gave you last century?”
                            “Of course my Lord, the Innovation project, the Great Disclosure and Holographic Contact projects, amongst other proj…”
                            “And how much progress have we had with those?”
                            “Well, my Lord surely knows that so much herding is delicate. The interference with Lord Bael’s projects too, you should know…”
                            “The Desert and Green Revolutions projects, indeed. A great success, so much pain and anguish! That’s what I’m talking, you should learn from Bael.”
                            “But my Lord, that has caused quite a conundrum with the Mars simulation, which, by way of fractal holographic recurrence, could well impact the whole delicate matrix we weave…”
                            “Stop your angel speech, Me’dammit. Plain Anguish, so I can understand every word. The Hell pits cannot wait to have you, so you better give some good explanation.”
                            “I mean, my Lord, that were the sheeple able to glimpse that the Mars experiment is but a reflection of a deception of grander scale in the cosmic realms, that the aliens saviours, or whatever saviours or… masters of any genre, are just ways to fleece them off their power… “
                            “Everything would unravel like a pile of dominos.” Lord R’eye’s voice made very clear that he had full grasp of the situation. “So,” he continued with the nicest menacingest voice “you better make sure that doesn’t happen.”

                            He dismissed Apex with a wave of a thought.

                            If the net of illusions unravelled before they have time to create the Earth 5th Dimension in time to double their profit, it would certainly be a disaster.

                            A few humans lost through the gaps were a hard to accept reality, but so long as they could cut the losses, it was not dramatic. But they were talking another order of magnitude. It could be a definitive blow. It always had been an issue when the net of illusion became too big in the past. They had bigger and bigger holes. So they had to start again, destroy, and recreate civilisations.
                            Stupid humans, if only they knew that Ascension was not the way out.

                            #3802

                            In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                            The problem with words, mused Floverley, is that people use them far too much.

                            She could feel the build up of energy summoning her for yet another channeling session. Of course, she could block the call but given that she was up for Ascended Lady Master status that may not be seen as quite the done thing. She didn’t know if she could handle another lecture from old Medlik and see the disappointed look in his eyes as he rambled on about the virtues of balancing wisdom with compassion. He really had a bee in his bonnet about that subject.

                            And truth to tell, her own kind heart found it difficult to turn away their requests for guidance and reassurance.

                            But It’s word clutter. So many things don’t need saying. And so many other things don’t need repeating. If they would look at the transcript from my last session, really absorb it, they wouldn’t be asking for another channeling so soon.

                            Floverley wondered, not for the first time, if being an Ascended Lady Master was going to be all it was cracked up to be.

                            #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.

                            #3798

                            In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                            At one of the top level of the Archyramid, the Apex was looking at the innergy balance sheet with a intensely miffed expression.
                            His minions were looking at him in awe and terror, while the two hellhounds at his feet were sleeping lightly, ready to pounce at the slightest irritation of their master.

                            It would be difficult to describe the scene in very accurate terms, as under the false cosmic light, illusions and deception were child’s play, and appearances easily manipulated. The trick to appear beautiful and enlightened was mostly to sustain a certain belief not unlike seduction upon the viewer and the reality you wanted to project would endure. Think of it as botox on a very wrinkled face.

                            The Apex and his minions had a certain warm and fuzzy halo around them, bathed by the fervor and prayers and devotion of their millions of believers. They had to work hard, and divide even harder to get to that. To the believer, they would appear quite saintly, even godlike. But only the belief would sustain the illusion.
                            All of them were disillusioned many many eons ago, and could see each other rather plainly, without the false make-up. The Apex was a truly awesome, fearful presence.

                            His voice was soft though, enveloping, soothing and with a hypnotic taste to it, luring you to a sense of false security.

                            “So, are you telling me there is no growth? I’ve tolerated this little experiment with Medlik and the other fools of the Order of Ascension, this was all very good business and all, but now you’re telling me this little investment was for NOTHING!”

                            One of the minions, Minux, also known as Tetatron of the Galactic Federation in certain circles dared come one step further, bowing down and raising his voice:
                            “My dear Lord Apex, we grieve as you do, but this is our painful reality. Competition is fierce, and the sheeple are not as gullible as they used to.”
                            Lord Apex smiled derisively. “I’ve been in this game for quite some time Minux, so I’m quite certain of something. The sheeple have an infinite streak of gullibility. I just think you’ve all been lazy.”

                            The two hellhounds woke up and snarled menacingly. They would have easily passed for cute puppies under the mask.

                            “Dear Lord Apex, as usual you are quite correct. The main problem is that we underestimated their capacity to get bored so quickly. We have to constantly update the light constructs to introduce new bizarre concepts and ideas, so they can continue generate innergy for us.”

                            “Well, you know how this story ends, Minux, we can’t have slackers among us, and those results are not nearly good enough to get us there. Our Lord R’eye will only give keys to the kingdom to the ones who deserve it. Based on your poor results, I suggest a few of the old tricks: divide and conquer, or throw in a good shitstorm and rally the troops. That should get us through the next quarter.”

                            “Of course, my Lord. And I suppose… about the blissdom alarity increase for the Ascended Order?”

                            “You suppose well Minux, you suppose well…”

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