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  • #3833
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Penelope and Patty Ratty had packed their bags, procuring the necessary items from Bea’s cluttered house. Candles (it was always so dark behind fridges), bar of soap (some of these human houses were not all that clean, a self respecting rat felt quite filthy after a midnight stroll around some kitchens and needed a good wash afterwards), mince pies, used teabags to use as in flight pillows, and an unexpected prize of a half an antibiotic tablet, thoughtfully left out in a convenient position. Patty often got an upset stomach when travelling in human spaces, and was inordinately pleased to find the pill.

      #3830

      Gustave was having second thoughts. What had possessed him to suggest meeting this unknown woman? What if he was spotted in the Spotted Dick and Fanella found out? He hesitated outside the pub with his hand on the door. What was this woman like? It could ruin his image as a respected scientist. What if she was one of those new age high vibrations positive thinking ignore the evidence types and someone from the Institute saw them together?

      A cocophanous group cackle ricocheted through the building and snapped him out of his indecision. He was here on a mission, his role was to collect data on the cackle phenomenon. Bracing himself, he pushed the door. Feeling foolish, he noticed the “pull” sign on the door and his squared shoulders drooped. Is it a sign? he wondered.

      #3829

      In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

      “Dispersee!” Medlik bellowed “ Dispersee ! You’re late again for your assigned report on the Cackleversity !”

      “You tart” Floverley remote-elbowed her neighbour in spirit. “Pay a little attention, or he’s never going to stop lecturing us.” She rolled her eyes “There he goes…”

      “…important it is? Seriously, that little trick that you call insanitizing could well be a weapon of mass enlightenment! You have to be careful and follow-up.”

      Floverley was always the quiet one, but she wondered at times if she was the only one paying attention in the classroom. Medlik’s exhortations at times seemed so full of contradictions, in a not so enlightened way. She shuddered at the thought that she started to sound so frightfully contumacious.

      Doubt is the light-killer” she admonished herself, reciting the first rhyme of her little litany against doubt that she taught to her devotees. “Master Medlik is just testing our capacities, there is no reason to doubt his intentions…”

      #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…

        #3825
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Gustave jumped when the phone rang, his heart hammering unpleasantly. Get a grip! he told himself sternly. Hesitantly he answered the call, expecting to hear an ear grating cackle.

          “Can I speak to Leonora, please? It’s Bea here,” the voice requested.

          “Er, sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” replied Gustave, feeling like a fool as he tried to calm his shaking hands.

          “Leonora Butterworth?” insisted the voice calling herself Bea.

          Startled, he said “Ah, Butterworth’s the name, but I’m afraid I don’t know anyone called Leonora,” and then, astonished, he heard Bea start to sob and mumble incoherently.

          “I’m so sorry, was it urgent?” he asked, already feeling a responsibility to help the unknown woman. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

          “It’s the cackling,” Bea answered with a sniff, “It’s driving me mad. I thought a chat with Leo might help take my mind off it, but I haven’t seen her since the fiasco in Spain and I don’t know where she is, I was hoping this Butterworth number would be her and…..” her voice trailed off disconsolately.

          “It’s driving me mad too,” Gustave was surprised to hear himself say. “I say, er, Bea,” he cleared his throat, “Would you fancy meeting for a drink in the Spotted Dick Inn? To, you know, take our minds off it?”

          Gustave had regained his scientific composure somewhat, and was considering the benefits of an unexpected opportunity to research the effects of the cackling on the ordinary population.

          Bea readily agreed, old tart that she was, and said she would be there in half an hour.

          #3823
          Jib
          Participant

            The Cacklversity campus was surrounded by a custard lake, the smell of which was often ewwing at the students during a stinky hot day. The dean often said it was good for your cackle. Hubert Howlick did not share that opinion. He had always thought the custard lake was a nuisance.

            “Lift Uranus”, said he, lifting his hands to the heaven as if he was actually lifting a planet. The students mimicked his movements and he could see some of them taking the ancient rhymes to the heart of the matter.

            #3821
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Gustave Butterworth cackled delightedly. The crowd control custard gas formula experiments were looking promising. The first batch, all being well, should be ready for a trial run in time for the bake sale at Lemoine Meringue Hall. If only he could deduce that vital missing ingredient in time!

              Gustave looked at his watch and decided to call it a day. He was the last one in the laboratory as usual; before turning the lights out and locking the door, he made a quick tour of the lab rats accommodation. There were no cages like in the old days: scientists in this partially enlightened age were not allowed to keep rats and beagles against their will, and only volunteer creatures were used in modern laboratories. Thus, no actual physical abuse was administered, but the energy the creatures reflected off the experiments, and the scientists themselves, was monitored; and human “animal whisperers” were employed to communicate directly. Gustave was a scientist, not a whisperer, but he had been developing his whispering skills secretly, while observing the staff.

              Most of the rats has nestled down for the night in their miniature studio apartments, but one comfortable little abode was empty. “I say, Rodean,” said Gustave to the neighbouring occupant, “Has Penelope gone for an evening stroll again?”

              Rodean shuffled around in his tiny bean bag chair to look at the scientist.

              “What, gone to visit her cousin Patty, you say?”

              #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.”

                #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

                  #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…

                  #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.

                  #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.

                  #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

                    #3789

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    ÉricÉric
                    Keymaster

                      When Eb woke up, there was a dozen messages left on his phone.
                      He didn’t have to check to know.
                      His mother wasn’t too subtle when he missed their weekly call.

                      She now lived in a modest retiring home in Mississippi, spending most of her time on social networks exchanging links about anything from politics and revolution and anarchy, kittens and drugs. Oh, that, and politics too. And revolution.
                      She was suffering from early stages of Alzheimer, but called it “transition” as the old-age hype advertised some decades earlier, and due to her refusal to take her prescriptions, it wasn’t improving much as time went by. But Eb’s prognosis was more like “selective Alzheimer”, as she would perfectly recall when (and how many times) he had missed their weekly calls.

                      He could already hear her complain about how she was left out of the loop, that the world story would be over by the time she catches up with all the gossips they’d hidden from her. Often, she would become so agitated that Fancy, her nurse would come help her relax and stop waking up the others. Everything was much less confusing thanks to Fancy.

                      After all that is said, he loved his mother deeply. She was always full of extravagant ideas and when she stopped doubting herself, she had her moments of sheer brilliance.

                      Being his only son, that she’d taken care of as a single mother most of her life, he felt tremendous pressure to be worthy of her sacrifices. So talking about his job wasn’t really something he liked to explore with her. If she’d known what he did for a living,… he couldn’t bear to imagine the look of crushed hopes and expectations on her devastated face. Well, suffice to say her face needn’t any of it.
                      Instead, he’d told her he was working in a tree nursery, working on pest control, with humane and eco-conscious methods. Which actually wasn’t too far off the truth. The pests were the glitches of the program, and the vegetables… well, that didn’t need much explaining.

                      “Tricia speaking, who’s this?” Eb knew she knew perfectly well it was him, but the game was ever the same
                      “Mother, it’s Eb”
                      “Ebenezer, my dear boy, how kind of you to remember your old mother. What have you been up to? So many things happened here, with that new batch of decrepit old farts who arrived last month, so much drama. But you should tell me about you. Oh, makes me recall that stupid incident, a synch! I should tell Fancy about it! Fancy, Fancy!
                      Oh dear… She’s gone cleaning up again. The last one who came in is a Chinese, and all his family is there, I bet she’s cooking some rice now, it smells funny. Fancy! Mind the rice! So well, it’s like the twins I talk with on the Internet, with funny names, Cilantro and Nutmeg, something like that, well, they have so many funny stories, like that meteor that dropped on Mars and blacked-out the TV show, they think it’s all bollocks. I told them I’d ask you about this, after all you did some studies in physics before becoming a gardener, you’ve always been the clever one in the lot, always helping with the dust stuck in my keyboard, and other IT problems. Oh dear… that was fun, but I think I must go, Fancy is waving at me, she says hello by the way! Oh, she rolls your eyes at you, how cute! Time for my siesta, … what? Oh, and change my nappies too, thanks Fancy, you’re precious, I keep forgetting everything. Talk to you soon my boy!”

                      Well… If he hadn’t been so hungover, he probably would have tried to place some funny comments, or at least a well-meaning “hmmm hmmm”, to let her know he wasn’t just letting her monologue. Today was a good day notwithstanding, she hardly had a complaint. He should remember to send Fancy a card and a nice honey pot like he did every year, she was doing wonders at pacifying his mother.

                      #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.”

                        #3787

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          If anything special about being in the vacuum of space, was that anywhere else than in the pressurized and breathable areas, the silence was deafening, and explosions silent.

                          With the main galleries under tons of rubble, Godfrey was glad to have followed his instincts with the evacuation. It was an unbelievable miracle that there were so few people down with him at that time.
                          He could hardly prove whether there actually was a controlled explosion triggered down there, but even without dramatic fires, the effect had been felt all throughout the colony. A few of the most fragile structures had collapsed, but at least most of the security protocols were active, and had allowed people to evacuate without too much damage while sucking the air out to avoid dangerous explosive oxygen leaks.

                          The medical bay was quite busy now treating the wounded, while everyone remained mostly calm despite the unusualness of the situation. Amazing how the survival training (more like brainwashing) they had before coming here was kicking in, with almost minute and automatic precision.

                          As the only member of the board of operations in duty, he had to report to the central area, where they would likely debrief about it. When he arrived at the pod, there was already quite a commotion, and quarrelling voices could be heard in the airlock.

                          “… decently leave like this!”
                          “ We should listen to…”
                          “stayed for too long to stop now!”
                          “plan? no strategy at all!”
                          “was all written over,…” “failure since the beginning…”

                          When the airlock finally opened, people continued to speak out of turn without paying much attention to him. Good he thought, that was time people release the pressure and start being honest. Let’s just hope it doesn’t end in a bloodbath.”

                          He was already stuffed with kale fritters and almost drunk with free kale ale from the buffet when the monitors started displaying the broadcast everyone was apparently waiting for.

                          As usual, Earthlings are a bit late for the battle. he thought when the familiar face of the broadcaster appeared in the middle of interferences.

                          “… A wave of Greta rays has been delaying the communication, in conjunction with the super moon retrograde in Spices. We apologize for the inconvenience, as we were not able to warn you of the meteor impact that hit Mars surface a few hours ago.”

                          Godfrey wasn’t sure this was real, or his kalecohol level hitting his brain, but the science seemed sketchy at best. He struggled to pay more attention.

                          “Not only the actively increased meteoric warming, but also given the Manta ray pulses from Juice pitcher, we fear all electronic equipment on which the Mars ant colony depends may be fried and lead you very soon to eternal damnation without hope for safe return. Our commercial spacecrafts cannot be risked to save you, so we advise you to pray. This broadcast was brought to you by Dismay Channel.”

                          Even if Godfrey wasn’t sure everything he heard was completely right, he could tell from the confused face of his colleagues that there would be a hell of a run for your lives to follow.
                          If only they had anywhere to run to…

                          #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.

                            #3783

                            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                            ÉricÉric
                            Keymaster

                              Eb’s dumb phone woke him up. The caller ID showed an unflattering picture of a Tasmanian devil all teeth bared.

                              He gathered his wits and answered it as naturally as he could.
                              “M’am?”
                              “Eb! What is this mess? Has the operation started already?”
                              “Err… Well, hmm, sure, there is… a first rehearsal…” he checked nervously on the console, fumbling through the logs of the agenda. His memory was fuzzy, but it seemed that someone… something had moved the timetable ahead without his approval. “… yes, a rehearsal planned today. Be assured that all team is on deck — we’re monitoring the situation.”
                              “You better hope so! You know how we say — talking doesn’t cook the rice, so you better go back to cooking.”
                              And she hung up.

                              He was in desperate need of help. The team he was referring to had been cut by halves every year since the start of the program, and they were now sorely understaffed. Calling it a team was a stretch of the imagination, when so much was done by FinnPrime, the central intelligence.

                              He looked upon the stained sheet of printed plastic on his desk. The only application they’d received. Guess there wasn’t as many underpaid starving actors as there used to be. Or maybe too many were disappeared after offering their help to the nation’s Mars broadcasts —then asking inconvenient questions…
                              Well, this one would have to do. Eb seriously needed some human help to keep the Finnley intelligence in check.

                              He texted to the guy “You got the job. Come early tomorrow morning, or better tonight for the paperwork. EB – The Merry Agency of Remote Spectacles”

                              #3781

                              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                              “Hahahahaha!” snorted Becky. “You have been chosen! Good grief, Tina, you didn’t really say ‘you have been chosen’ did you?”

                              Tina rolled her eyes. “Yes, I am a bit embarrassed now actually. It was over the top, I admit. But I was caught up in the moment and the whole spy thing. I hope it doesn’t put him off.”

                              Becky snorted again.

                              “You know, Becks,” Tina sounded hesitant, “I am not supposed to be talking about any of this. So you have to promise you won’t breathe a word to the others.”

                              #3780

                              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                Kale quickly contemplated cutting the cords that connected him to the whole thing. For a fleeting fraction of a moment, he even considered the possibility of Flynn being involved in a covert nefarious plot with the dark haired woman, but dashed the thought from his mind. A slight nagging uneasy feeling remained when he remembered the way Flynn had got a bit too big for his boltcroppers sending the application without consultation.

                                But Kale was curious. He made up his mind not to accept the position (just in case anyone was plotting against him: with his past, it was as well to be cautious), but that he would attend the interview.

                                “You have been chosen” she’s said.

                                Kale recalled the frisson of excitement he felt in his ungirded loins when she’d said that, and the flash of knowing recognition in her eyes before the scornful smirk returned. He’d never been able to resist a girl in cobalt blue loingirders. Especially an exotic enigmatic one.

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