Search Results for 'round'

Forums Search Search Results for 'round'

Viewing 20 results - 721 through 740 (of 1,423 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #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?

      #3805

      In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

      Whenever Nabuco projected to human consciousness, they had the habit of seeing him as a plump looking bearded vagrant, like a Pavarotti turned homeless. It had annoyed him for a while, but now he didn’t mind as much.

      Nowadays, he was mostly off the bliss addiction of the Rays, so in a sense, it was fitting. If he were still in physical human form, he would probably have taken on quite some weight. And that made him a sort of pariah too, splintering off the great order of ascension, or whatever They called it nowadays.

      With them, there was no denying he’d lived quite the grand life, being ascended and all. They used to called him Master Nebuchadnezzar — well, often Master Nabuco.
      He’d gotten on the rayroll almost by luck. He was credited for inventing the chibubble technique, as a way of extracting bubbles and peals of laughter when people get all hot and excited. At the peak of the technique, somewhere around the 1968s, he had recruited and incorporated many gnomes into the fold, as nature spirits known as gnomes had a uncanny knack for extracting laughter off people. With the call for sexual liberation and getting closer to nature, they had plenty of opportunities to get people high, and chibubbles were all the fancy.
      It had started to go down as fast as it rose, people were no longer interested in nature, gnomes working condition when forced to move to urban environments were a disaster, and the chibubble production plummeted. Now, the industry was a thing of the past ; sometimes there were a few chibubble memorabilia kept by other Masters interested in speculating on its rare value more than for anything else. Now kitten videos on social media had replaced the chibubble gnomes business and driven a new unseen growth of the Gross Divine Product.

      He didn’t know if the gnomes were responsible for it, but living so close to them and nature for a while, somehow opened his perception to the falsity and the insanity of their quest for power. So instead of finding new venues for innergy extraction as they all did, he’d resigned.
      Nobody had heard about anybody resigning before, so they suspected him of trying to be original, and maybe disrupt the clever and immutable laws of the universe.
      Long story short, he’d managed to escape their clutches, and live on his own, and off unhealthy junk thoughts habits. Those were the worse, the craving of decadent thoughts, maintained by the entertainment and news industries, the social media and all of it. In the long run, that or the fuzzy bliss were faces of the same coin, and debilitating in the end.

      Even when he tried to block them, he could hear the thoughts, prayers and all the inner chatter. The spirit world, or however it is called, was a medium ideal to carry those thoughts and reverberate throughout the whole universe. Like sound waves travelling under water for large distances. Now, he could resist the urge to answer, seduce and insinuate. Many of the thoughts were so naive and would welcome anything. He was still a junkie, and those offerings were never helping getting him off the wagon.

      Humans hoped for ascension, but ascended masters like him who were trapped in a false blissdom could only hope to resume their path by descending to human form. Such irony.

      There was one voice that seemed to stand out. It had the flavour of “dangerous” pinned onto it, the kind of bright colours that venomous snakes and toads have on earth to warn predators to keep off, or else. It could only mean one thing, a genuine seeker of truth, someone who had the potential to tear the veils to shreds.

      He’d seen quite a few of those, they were usually young, and for many of them terribly naive and easily corrupted by displays of power. Search for truth and search for power were sometimes so easily mistaken one for the other. The bright colours would fade over time, but they were still dangerous, too unpredictable to be trusted fully. Learned Ascended Masters knew well to leave those to their own device, while tending to the less critical minds.

      But what did he have to waste, especially now? Nabuco zoomed towards the origin of the thoughts, observing at a distance, the young Domba.

      #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…”

      #3797

      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Pádraig wasn’t too pleased by his daughter’s visit. They had not been on best of terms since she took the job to work on the military project they were recruiting heavily for 23 years ago.

        He’d done what he could to dissuade her to join the army, but he couldn’t have done more without permanently creating a wedge between them. He had nothing better to offer her, jobs were scarce around, and that could really have meant for her the once in a lifetime chance for a better future, even if he couldn’t admit it. And by the look of her car, and the ranking on her uniform, it may well have been so. So their relationship was tense, and her line of work was as taboo a topic as his health and cave-carving hobbies.

        “P’a, we need to talk…”

        He was already on the defensive, ready to snap back at her that he didn’t want a help (or worse, a bot!) to clean out his trailer, or cook for him, but she looked different, almost genuinely preoccupied.

        “What is it now?” he said in a gruff voice, his throat sore from all the dust of the cave
        “You should take a break from your cave digging P’a, just for a few days. There’s going to be some important activity —military training— around the place, and you don’t want to be caught in between, alright.”

        I suppose drones don’t really count then… he thought to himself

        #3794

        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          “You can call us the Blue Enders” said gently one of the blue aliens, which by the shade of it, must have been a top ranking official.
          Kale was a bit confused, and space had a jelly consistency that harped and warped around his ears. It may have been the injections they gave him after the meeting with the sculpturesque Fin Min.

          She had explained to him, they had made contact with a unknown sentient civilisation, and that they had in their infinite and blue compassion decided to warn us of impending doom on the Mars colony. They had requested a translator to go with them on a rescue mission on their faster-than-light bluship named Sprakle Star.

          Hazy and fuzzy, he was quickly put and wrapped in a ball of cotton, ear-deep into a globe coaster of roller proportions.
          At least, that’s how it felt… That waccine must have been full of blue bees.

          “Arrival on Mars orbital level 1, in 5,… 4… 3…”

          At least, the Blunders had the good idea to put an instant translator in his ear-muffins.

          #3793

          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Godfrey had started to sweat when Lizette had called him Gordon, fearing she might have blown his cover. Just as he made a move to clamp his hand over her mouth, the medical bay had lurched sideways, throwing Lizette with force in the direction of his approaching hand. The result of the two forces colliding on her face had knocked her out cold.

            But nobody was paying any attention to them in the confusion. Godfrey slung Lizette over his shoulder like a sack of rice, and hastily retreated from the medical bay. The stupid woman had made everything that much more complicated. He toyed with the idea of just leaving her on the waiting room floor, but it was too dangerous. What might she blurt out when she came round?

            #3792

            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Lizette patiently waited her turn in the medical bay. Her injury wasn’t serious ~ indeed there was not much need for medical assistance, after all it was just a minor lesion on her heel, but it did make it painful to walk, let alone run, and the increasingly heated babble of conversation in the waiting room was interesting.

              Although initially everyone had been calm and obedient, trusting the management and the system implicitly, before long the mood had changed to confusion and suspicion. Seeds of doubt crept in and were quickly fertilized by the submerged energy of fear at the unexpected disorder. Up until now, everything on MARS had been Controlled with a capital C ~ there were rules and protocol for everything, rigid regimes and timetables, a place for everything, and everything in its place. It had been stifling, to be honest, with very little in the way of spontaneity or surprises, nothing unexpected to expect but the dry tedium of calm control.

              In a way, the meteor impact (if indeed it had been a meteor impact ~ there was much speculation in the waiting room that they had been attacked by aliens, that the management was hiding this detail from their explanations) had been a welcome diversion from routine. But a welcome diversion that was rapidly spiraling out of control. When people were confused and frightened, there was no telling how they might behave, brainwashed or not. When they were physically injured as well, panic and suspicion swiftly set in, fears and wild theories echoing around the waiting room. Add to that the trapped feeling, with nowhere to flee, and the threat of a hostile outer environment, and strange unknown beings breaking through their protection boundaries, well, it was a recipe for chaos.

              Lizette felt herself getting caught up in the general mood, feeling roused by heated calls for a mob handed demand for answers in one moment, and chilled to the bone by the terrified screeches of the most fearful in the next; thankfully noticing in time to reactivate her personal space buffer before descending into the energy quagmire herself. The dense fog of the previous brainwashing had distorted their power of rational reasoning; Liz felt she was the only one in the waiting room with the mental capacity to weigh up the various perspectives being aired, to try and make some sense of it.

              When Gordon popped his head into the waiting room, Lizette hobbled over to him, wincing at the pain in her Achilles heel.

              “Gordy, a word in your ear, old man,” she started to say, and then found herself catapulted into his arms as another tremor rocked the room. “Good God, Gordon! What’s going on?” she managed to say before slipping into unconsciousness.

              #3790

              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                For all her wired cleverness, there was something that the central intelligence had seemingly forgotten to take into account in her parameters.

                Eb woke up in a sweat, barely remembering bits of a horrible dream of being chased and banging on a closed door for escape from a herd of phombies (those guys who had their phones implanted under their skins and would often have a creepy vacant look while in communication).

                The banging on the door. According to his mother, if there was something that her nurse Fancy Woo was better at than cooking rice, it was at interpreting dreams. But he didn’t need her expert advice on this one.

                His mind was aching from the lack of alcohol, but at least he could think quite clearly.
                There weren’t many accesses to enter the simulation, for obvious reasons. Continuity had to be maintained at all costs, to preserve the sanctity of the experiment. That motto had survived the multiple iterations of the simulation since its inception.

                Eb knew of most of them, even if he’d wondered about the presence of backdoors. He had not been able to find any since his many years of service. So for all he knew, there were only two ways to get in and out: up and down. “Up” through the fake ships, with the whole stasis protocol, and “down”, through the mines were they would usually send agents from time to time, mostly for reconnaissance purposes.

                He looked at the screen, and as he had feared, the explosion triggered in the tunnels by Finnley had sealed their main exit point.

                “You underestimate me, my dear Eb” the voice of Finnley merrily bounced on the insulated walls.

                Eb was startled. Hadn’t he known that Finnley was just a program, he could have sworn her synthetic voice had a trace of menace in it.

                “Finnley” he regained his composure as much as he could “Haven’t the thought occurred to you that the tunnels are now sealed? We cannot let your blue aliens go in and out as easily now!”
                “Eb, you do know I do not think.” Her voice was still slightly ominous. “But I ran multiple simulation, and this one still yields the best possible outcome.” she continued more cheerily.
                “How so?”
                “It is evident. Many of the earlier settlers, still know about the simulation, even if they self-programmed themselves to accept the illusion as better than outside reality. They can become a problem for the evacuation protocol. With the tunnels’ exit collapsed, they have no other way than to comply. Besides, what good plausible aliens come out from the ground, really. We don’t want to miss their grand entrance.
                And don’t be such a worrywort about budget, Eb.”

                #3788

                In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                F LoveF Love
                Participant

                  The chair in the center of the bare white room was shaped like an egg. Kale wasn’t a big fan of the current trend in zen minimilism; he stood up and wandered around restlessly.

                  He hadn’t been going to take the job, no matter how much data about unemployment and job probabilities Flynn ranted on about.

                  But then he had seen her again. The dark haired woman. Just call me Agent T, she had said mysteriously when he asked her name.

                  He had been putting out the garbage—Flynn’s job but he was still sulking about the job situation—when she, Agent T, popped out from behind the purple Amelia bush.

                  “Please take the job,” she had said pleadingly. “It’s my first job and if I stuff it up they won’t give me another one. And it really is important. And all you have to do is play along and do what they say and wait for instructions from us.”

                  She had refused to give any further details about who “us” were, but Kale’s curiosity was well and truly piqued.

                  He was thinking about this when the wall slid open and a gorgeous creature appeared before him.

                  “You must be Kale.” she said in a silky voice. “I am Fin Min Hoot. How good of you to come.”

                  #3786

                  In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                  prUneprUne
                  Participant

                    I dreamt about Mater last night. She was her old self, brilliant and snappily dangerous.

                    It’s been the first dream I’ve been able to remember in weeks. I don’t know why I expected the great beyond space to be less… claustrophobic, but there’s no escaping the confinement.
                    I was telling her I was missing home, the air, the smell of eucalyptus trees, the rains before winter. I think I even became sentimental about my sisters. Hardly a news from them these days, but how could I blame them. They are always busy on some down-to-earth cause, and I know better than to criticize those on the ground actually doing something to change the wrongdoings of the world.
                    When I started to cry uncontrollably, Mater told me I was a baby, and that I should man up. Typical Mater. Dido would have called her names under her breath, I think that was her way to express her love for her. People are silly.

                    In the dream, I stopped crying but the tears had swollen into a river, and I was starting to drown, things became hellish and I could barely breathe, but somehow I could still feel Mater’s presence, like a beacon. I made it out of the torrents onto an island. There were many refugees. The doctors had the strangest blue eyes, and Mater’s voice told me to trust the process but not the doctors. Then I felt all the blue eyes looking at me, and I woke up in a sweat.

                    Hans is still deep in a peaceful sleep, so I went out of the bedroom to get some water and check on the piggy and her litter. They are always sleeping blissfully too. It’s a wonder when you think of it, that I thought it was just getting fatter when it actually was pregnant from before we left Earth. Now they’re mostly an open secret, as everyone finds them so cute.

                    The most difficult was to conceal them from the reality TV show’s cameras. The hysterical fans are always scrutinizing every move we all make, and keeping some privacy is tricky, but apart from the external prying eyes, pretty much everyone here know about them and it’s like a game of hide and seek. I like how it fuels the speculations and paranoia of the Mars bunker debunking association, who think we’re all part of a mass cover-up. I’ve spent some time on their website when I couldn’t sleep the first weeks when we arrived. I would probably have never known about it, but I just searched for myself on the web, and found this thread about the new conspirators. I had to laugh at the beginning, but they raise reasonable doubts in the middle of their rants. By now, I know better than to raise the topic, especially after all the religious nonsense. Seems there are some people that get really annoyed when I asked naive questions about it, like Maya.

                    Like I said. People are silly.

                    #3784

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    ÉricÉric
                    Keymaster

                      Pádraig was alone as usual with his dog when he felt the first tremors. Dust started to fall from the large columns of sandstone inside the cave. He wasn’t too worried at first, as the area still had some faint thermal and seismic activity, but the second aftershock took him by surprise.

                      He almost fell violently backwards if he hadn’t had good enough reflexes to grab on the half carved ledge of the column he was working on.
                      His dog started to howl violently.

                      “Hush, Poppy!” the dust made him cough. “Must be those stupid government guys from the nearby base. I thought they’d stopped their nuclear testing decades ago…”

                      The dog didn’t stop barking though, but darted out in one of the carved galleries. It stopped just before going out of sight, as if waiting for his master.

                      “Oh, what now silly? I’m getting old for these games.”

                      But the dog was stubborn, a trait they had in common, his dead wife would have told him. So he relented, and went in the direction the dog was leading to.

                      It took him a few hundred meters in the tunnel to realize something odd had happened. The air was full of moisture, quite unusual at this time of year. He pressed on.
                      The dog’s paws were making tick-tick noises on the stones, and echoed in the chambers. His gait was less light, and he had to stop a few times to catch his breath. His life’s work was now quite monumental, and it could take quite a while to go from one end to another.
                      Before they reached the last chamber, he had to stop. His feet were getting wet.
                      It had been his dream for a long time, to bring water deep down to create a sort of natural healing pool, and bathe in the beautiful minerals, but he’d done some research, and although he’d always believed some underground river was nearby, he’d never managed to find it, or find any trace in the cadastral maps.

                      Seemed it wasn’t as far as he’d thought after all.

                      #3782

                      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                      ÉricÉric
                      Keymaster

                        “Finnley!” Mother Shirley called. “Another brainwave is coming! Put me on speakers.”

                        Taking on a dramatic voice, Mother Shirley started to prattle on the microphone.

                        My dear parishioners, good day to you! Dramatic news before we engage our Bollothrope Meditation:
                        “There is a fundamental change of vibrations. We have to face a destabilization of energies as we know them now. There are shifts to enter into entirely new consciousnesses. All agreements are rewritten. We will have new experiences of consciousnesses we never had before. The world will be joined by new consciousnesses never experienced before. The matrix as we know it will not exist anymore. A totally new bending archetype will arise, a new archetypical bending extraterrestrial energy. The energy of contact.”

                        When she got out of trance, she reached for a glass of water, amazed at what she’d seen in her mind’s eye. There was hope for all. She still couldn’t believe in how many shades of blues such salvation came.

                        She was still reeling from the high energies when she heard the sirens followed by the mars-shattering waves deep within the ground.

                        #3778

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                          #3774

                          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                          F LoveF Love
                          Participant

                            It was already warm and Kale was glad for the shade the large oak trees offered as he walked along the sidewalk. He was heading for the Tangy Pickle cafe; his favourite breakfast spot just a few blocks from where he lived.

                            A song had been running through his head all morning: a big hit from a robot band which were popular in the late 2030’s: “Sour Tart and The Denouements.” He hadn’t even like the band at the time— just the name was depressing —but for some reason the tune and a few of the words were looping through his head like annoying little ear worms.

                            … bugger current information planet robot key bugger current information planet robot key bugger current information planet robot key…

                            So Kale was busy pondering the implications, if any, of endlessly looping ear worms when Flynn messaged him:

                            “Interview scheduled for 9.30am tomorrow.”

                            “Blimey, that soon? Okay, well what else can you tell me?”

                            “The ad has been taken off the network and all associated information shut down.”

                            Weirdo.

                            “But your interview is scheduled with a Mr Eb Ruide. And I’ve got your outfit ready.”

                            “Hang on, Flynn. This all sounds a bit odd don’t you think?”

                            “Oddness factor 57%. Probability of success 22%. If I may quote the famous robot philosopher Monenole: The point is the exploration. So gird your loins and stick your chin out. You can do this! What fun! See you later!” messaged Flynn

                            Gird my loins? That robot really needs rewiring.

                            He was nearly at his destination. There weren’t many people around this early in the morning, just a few stalwart joggers and the occasional dog walker. Most people, the lucky ones who had employment, worked from home. So Kale was most surprised to see an attractive dark haired female—oddly attired for the hot weather in fishnet tights and knee high boots—standing outside the cafe.

                            #3773

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            ÉricÉric
                            Keymaster

                              Finnley Morgan was towering over the slouched Eb with her impressive height of Nubian Goddess. Her unimpressed rolling-eyes look made him want to dig deeper underground and look with great care at the tip of his feet.

                              “Really this is your plan? Blue bending robot aliens?”

                              He could have sworn she guffawed, only that Finnley Morgan didn’t do such things as guffaw. Or snicker, or snort —well, that one, maybe in private on certain occasions.
                              Anyway, he didn’t have to reply.

                              “Well, just under 2 weeks, who would have guessed you’d deliver? The whole roster of generals wanted to raze the area clean as a baby’s butt, said it would be simpler, and here you come,… managing something…”
                              “Elegant?” ventured Eb, in a mouse-like voice.
                              “What? No, I mean, something unexpected… Well, that could well work now. When do you send the first tremors, meteors or other cataclysms so we can have your robots do the cleaning? We haven’t got all year now, and they look like they come with an expiry date, no offence.”

                              “None taken.” came the suave robot voice of Finnley on the walls.

                              #3772

                              “Finnley, there you are!” Elizabeth snickered at the new Filipino maid, “don’t balk at me like that, darling, and read me a quote of dear ol’ Lemone, from his inspired words of wide wisdom in his new compilation of aphorisms Reduction of My Broad Thinking .”

                              The new nurse was looking desperately around the nursing home’s room. She’d been warned her patient was a tough cookie, or that’s probably what they meant by ‘tart pickle’ anyway.

                              “Yes, yes, that book!” Liz shrieked of delight. Since Godfrey left her for Marcella, she never quite recovered.

                              She could hear the words pouring in her head like an earworm symphonie of words in knots, and of naughts in wad.

                              Prunella started to read the phonebook with painful anguish, while Elizabeth was writhing in pure delight at the words she was hearing :

                              “Pas de lieu Rhône que noue… Etymologically, the French word dénouement is derived from the Old French word desnouer, “to untie”, from nodus, Latin for “knot.” It is the unravelling or untying of the complexities of a plot. But can we unknot the knot we know not? Hence the need for good plot knot development. My denouement should be done in accordance with swift Japanese johakyo style, but never shy to include a few Dei ex machina, some toasted honeyed MacGuffins, or a tartine of marmite and red herring, washed down with Chekhov’s gunpowder tea.”

                              #3769

                              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                Betty Bloo wasn’t at all happy about her pigmentation, it was much too dark a blue ~ almost navy blue, or perhaps not quite that dark ~ more of a French navy blue, which was going to cause her no end of trouble. A delicate sky blue was what she wanted, even a slightly darker robins egg blue would have been acceptable, but French navy? Oh, brother! That sucked! Everyone knew it was much easier for a refugee alien with a pale blue colour. Dark blue was absolutely fatal ~ often literally.

                                Betty wondered how many others in the latest batch were as darkly tinted as she was, and looked around the holding camp apprehensively. Huddled in nervous groups at the far end of the room were the darkest midnight and Prussian blue skins (she particularly noticed the tall elegant indigo fellow and made a mental note to make his acquaintance later); in the middle of the room various men in shades of cobalt and turquoise milled around, chatting with the teal and cornflower blue girls, but what caught Betty’s eye was the colours of the newbies spilling out from the pigmentation chamber.

                                Some of them were such a pale blue they were almost grey: delicate powder blue and baby blue, the palest aqua and faded periwinkle. It almost seemed as if the later ones were a result of the pigment running out. She realized that she must have been one of the first to be created. Surely that gave her some seniority? A superior position in the blue hierarchy? Did blue alien refugees have a system of hierarchy at all, she wondered?

                                Well, she said to herself grimly, squaring her darkest blue shoulders. We are about to find out. Blue lives matter!

                                #3763

                                In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                                ÉricÉric
                                Keymaster

                                  “I won’t mince my words.” Finnley’s gravitas in the bright blue light made Eb shiver.
                                  She didn’t wait for him to continue. “I’ve received orders to termitate the program in two weeks.”

                                  “T… ter…?” Eb almost started to voice his concerns.

                                  “Before you say anything, need I remind you I personally supervised most of the program since probably before you were born. I know the variables, I know the consequences.” She sighed, and drew deep breaths from her chamomile vaporazor —it would help alleviate her manic attacks and panic depressive impulses (she was beyond bipolar, she would say, probably multipolar).

                                  “It’s a done deal, Eb. With the impossible influx of refugees after the latest floods around the world’s coastal areas, the water increase, people fleeing, and all that… Well, seems the governments wanted the space. I won’t draw you a picture, you’ve read the news in your cubicle, haven’t you?”

                                  Eb was speechless. He couldn’t imagine they could clear the space in such short time. That, and dealing with another set of refugees. What would the Mars settlers do,… if they survived the trauma of finding out they were lied to—like billions of people too. The implications were far-reaching. Two weeks, more than a stretch.

                                  But termitate?… Nobody could wish such dreadful end to a program… He ventured “With all due respect, Ma’m, are you sure there’s no better way than termitation?”

                                  She turned at him with a surprised look on her face. “Where do you get those funny ideas Eb? We’re humane, nobody wants a termitation on top of our problems.”

                                  Eb sighed of relief. She might have made a Tea-pooh (TP for short).
                                  He didn’t realize that he had just agreed to the two weeks deadline.

                                  #3754
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    Elizabeth frowned, and wondered: who the fuck was Percy? She sighed deeply, wondering if there was any way round it, or if there was no option but to read back and get the facts in order.

                                    #3753
                                    TracyTracy
                                    Participant

                                      Aunt Idle:

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

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

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

                                    Viewing 20 results - 721 through 740 (of 1,423 total)