Search Results for 'sit'
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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.In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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…In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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”
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.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“Ah, here you are at last.” said the dark haired woman, a trace of impatience in her voice.
Kale looked at her quizzically, trying to place her. Up close, she seemed older than he had first thought.
“I’m sorry but do I know you?”
“No, Kale, you don’t know me. But I know you”.
She looked at him intently for a moment and gave an enigmatic smile before continuing:
“You have a job interview tomorrow. You must accept the position.”
“Okay, this is getting really weird now. How do you know me and what business is it of yours whether or not I take the job?”
“You have been chosen.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
Eb was rendered temporarily speechless by the milling throng of rainbow blue aliens he was viewing through the monitor.
“So they …. so they have been built to be aware of themselves as aliens?” he eventually managed to ask.
“Correct. It is very sophisticated technology, but to put it in the simplest of terms” — Finnley 22 stopped short at adding even a simpleton like you could understand —“a whole history on the planet Thereon from the galaxy Cosmos Redshit has been programmed into their memory banks.”
“Wow. And what about the different shades of blue?”
“Ranking.”
“Ranking?” repeated Eb quizzically when no more information was forthcoming. “I am not sure I follow.”
Finnley sent an amused eye roll through the network.
“Let’s just say that creating hierarchy is an elegant way in which we can maintain order within the group.” She gave her trademark immodest smirk. “And of course, the various shades of blue are so creative and attractive, if we may say so ourselves.”
“Oh yes, beautiful. Fantastic. Absolutely phenomenol.” Eb wondered if he was laying it on a bit thick, but he was anxious to atone for the termitation fiasco. To be honest, he found the mass of blue creatures a little disquieting. He was also a little puzzled by something but knowing the Finnleys’ propensity for succinctness—and Finnley 22 in particular was renowned for her impatience with foolish questions— he wondered if he dared ask.
Deciding it would come back to haunt him if he did not find out now he plucked up courage.
“And … just one more thing … why are they bending like that?”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
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!
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
“The probability of finding you sober nowadays is approximately 5.797101449275362%” said Finnley sternly to a glum faced Eb. “I said terminate. I am programmed to craft my words carefully. I did not say obliterate. Neither did I say eradicate, repudiate, eliminate, annihilate, invalidate or any of that other shit. And I certainly did not say termitate. And yet, you have now created a serious termitation situation.”
Before Eb could defend his termitation actions, Finnley continued.
“Fortunately, I immediately activated the termitation damage control protocol and have minimised termitation damage to just one applicant.”
Finnley paused to send an immodest smirk via the network for the other Finnleys to appreciate.
“Now, try not to stuff up the interview.”
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
Kale yawned and, pouring himself a large cup of steaming hot coffee which was already brewing on the stove, asked Flynn to check the situations vacant. Kale had built Flynn himself in 7 days —7 long days living off sleep and coffee and not much else. Sure, Flynn might not be as pretty or as high tech as some of the robots out there nowadays but he sure did the job. He was a dab hand at research and could communicate with other robots on the network system. He would watch the house when Kale was away, start appliances, open doors and of course make the coffee. Also, most of the time, Flynn was damn good company.
“I thought you might be interested in this,” said Flynn. “In fact, I hope you don’t mind, I took the liberty of sending in your application.”
Kale did mind a bit and wondered if Flynn might need some rewiring. That was tricky—last time he had done some maintenance work Flynn had sulked for days.
Still, he had to admit after hearing the ad, the job sounded intriguing.
ARE YOU SPECIAL?
We are looking for special people to join our team.
We need people who love travel, are flexible, physically agile and have a passion for adventure.
This is a short term position initially, but could lead to permanent work in the future.
We are an innovative company with big ideas, and we are looking for special people to help us get there.
All applications will be treated in strictest confidence.In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
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.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
The Matrimandir was empty at this time of night, deserted by the occasional late devotees, and only silently browsed by the maintenance robot.
Its exterior was shaped as a sphere covered in gold — well, not entirely yet. It was first built to be the heart of the future city, and to this date, partly a work in progress, half-coated with the gold foils of discarded satellites and other space craps.
The interior was rather large now, and air conditioned, though it was probably smaller and hotter in the past — John never had the curiosity to look at the archives, he’d known it like this since he was a child. It was meant to be a sacred place, or a place of simple beauty, which was odd, when you thought about it.
All around them was infinite space, boundless opportunities to connect to the great mysteries beyond, and quite frankly, this was often scary as hell. Maybe that’s what this place meant, a safe retreat, like a bubble with only a thin wall of soap dividing space between here and out there, but open for the world to see.He’d brought another batch of water-stones, and opened the hatch below the meditation altar. When he jumped the last rug of the ladder, his boots landed in a splatch of water. Something had changed. The rate at which the stones were exuding water had increased. He would have to move them again after the next commercial shuttle departure. He couldn’t risk the Consortium getting notice of this… Not yet, not before they figured out what it meant.
In reply to: The Hosts of Mars
Prune was listening to Maya and Yz, not daring to talk, much less to disagree.
Yz was back to the planet from her maintenance drill on the mothership, and had found their remote outpost overloaded with new clueless settlers.
Now, even Maya, who was always the understanding one was fuming at the vexing situation and couldn’t help but complain about the new Mars settlers’ manners (or lack thereof). The matter was of importance, but somehow Johnny couldn’t help but find it hilarious.“Johnny! Stop laughing, it’s not at all funny!”
“I’m sorry, it’s the nerves!” he replied “I didn’t want to poke fun at your horror story, Mum.”
“You damn right, it IS a bit of a horror story. Well, I don’t know what kind of a story it is. These new settlers that moved here are disorganized conflict and chaos all the time. And now nobody has a permit for sand scooter but me. So everything I do takes me 6 times as long with everyone else… and its hot!”She paused a little, smiling at Prune, then turned to Yz, who seemed equally annoyed by the recent mess.
Prune ventured a word “But you really love the idea of cooperative community sharing, don’t you.”
Maya nodded, then continued “but it sucks! IT SUCKS!… and it’s all a bit weird too. It’s a daily juggle with what I’m willing to say yes to, and where I draw the line and say no.”She sighed. “But some of it is fun, obviously. But much of it isn’t. I think everyone is struggling with finding themselves disconcertingly in a totally new place.
The new place for me is never being alone to do anything, where before I almost always was, and really wanted people to do things with. But they are LATE and I can do things on my own easier.
I prefer being a hermit while preaching about community. And doing things my own way while pushing for cooperation!”It didn’t help that Maya had agreed to help organize the event for Mother Shirley (though the party had changed the event location to the nearby fancier townlet of Romars without notice, instead of their rugged but peaceful village).
The event had attracted the usual throng of nuts and illuminated sycophants, which would have dissolved just as well, if not for an unusual occurrence: Mother Shirley had claimed to have a divine vision by merging consciousness with the AI of the ship. She had seen floods and rains. Image that! As if water on Mars, was not ludicrous enough, now floods!
All of a sudden, all hell broke loose and the religious nuts managed to create a panic, and had loads of people rush for the higher ground… Well, you guessed, to their previously quiet outpost.Of course, she had said nothing of the water-rocks she and John had found. Better not to encourage the nutters.
Strange new place, indeed…
In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions
Dispersee Blather, or Dispy for short, was late for the crowning ceremony. It wasn’t unusual for Dispy to be late for official ceremonies and meetings, or to miss them altogether, but she was aware that her unique presence would be missed at this particular ceremony, as she was the one to be crowned. She had recently, much to her astonishment, achieved the coveted goal of the Descended Dispersed Tradition, or DDT for short, and her newly recognized super powers were to be publicly acknowledged in the crowning ceremony.
Dispy’s old friend Floverley (and by old, lest we be misunderstood, we mean old in the sense of having known each other for eons and countless lifetimes, not decrepit, wrinkled or senile) had offered to design the crown that was to be placed on Dispy’s sparse, dare we say wispy, head of hair ~ something light and elegant, she said, with a feeling of fluidity, something that wouldn’t swamp her delicate features.
At the crown fitting appointment the day before, it quickly became apparent that Floverley had misjudged the extent of the fluidity of the materials she used to construct the crown, resulting in a thorough drenching. Dispy was a good sport by nature, easy going and able to see the funny side in most situations, but she had not been pleased. She had been on her way to meet Stinks Mc Fruckler, a double agent posing as a descended trickster, for the purpose of writing a report on his activities in disrupting artificial ascension practices, and had to cancel the date at the last minute.
Not one to hold a grudge, partly due to having no borders with which to contain a grudge, Dipsy had forgiven Floverly for the drenching.
I just hope she has managed to rectify the crown in time for the ceremony, she thought, as she tried to scrub the last traces of martian mist stains off her eyebrows.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
management focus dark map project
sit head journey pyramid
whatever stick gave start wondered
robot liked dream air added apparently shortIn reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
On a rainy “morning” a bored “lady” was day dreaming about an “ancient” tribe who sailed the “sea” of Tedium. She “sometimes” had the strangest “memories”, although if the truth be “told”, it was not “usual” for her to make up things just to gauge the “unexpected” reactions. The last time she had a “visit”, or a visitation if you prefer, she was at a loss to know what it “meant”, lack of inherent meaning notwithstanding. Better perhaps to “face” the facts: “irina” was a fictional character, “stuck” in the back pages of a “group” story; despite not lacking in “consciousness”, like “mater”, she has no “hand” in it (or so it was assumed). Better not look a gift “horse” in the mouth, they existed, even if nobody was “interested” in them anymore. It was, however, the best “kept” secret of all: Irina and Mater had arranged to meet for lunch and discuss a plan.
