Search Results for 'space'

The three travelers were not the kind of people to limit themselves to safety and comfort ~ indeed if they had been, Lisa would have stayed in the village, never having met Fanella who would have stayed in Versailles, who never would have met Ivan who would have stayed in Russia. They all had an underlying courage and sense of adventure to be on the island at all. They were not, however, inherently stupid. As they approached the great walls of Gazalbion, they became uneasy. It looked more like a vast open air prison than a welcoming city.
“I’m not sure about this” Lisa whispered to the others, “Once we’re inside there, how will we get out? It might be a trap.”
“But you’re always saying we create our own reality Lisa, how can anyone else trap us?”
asked Fanella.
“We create being trapped as a reflection of restricting ourselves, that’s how it works. It’s not always black and white. And it’s not always easy to resolve that in a demanding and unsettling situation. It would behoove us to proceed with caution.”
“That doesn’t sound right Lisa, that doesn’t sound like trust, and you’re always telling us that trust is the key.”
“And space” added Ivan, “Space is a key, too.”
“Yeah but what does that mean exactly anyway?”
“Fucked if I know” replied Ivan.

Lazuli Galore noticed the hesitation of the travelers, and decided to change tactics. They were only a few hundred meters from the entrance to Gazalbion, and it was starting to look as if the new arrivals would not enter willingly. He dispensed with the elephant form, exploding it into a pack of grey wolves which circled behind the travelers, and chased them into the city.

“Olution! Olution!” the crowd chanted, for there was always a crowd gathered at the gate to witness new arrivals. “Olution! Olution!”
Nobody actually knew what the word Olution meant, but they had seen it on tv so many times that they simply repeated it, and the more people that repeated it, the more the frenzy grew.
“Olution! Olution!” the crowd screamed and Lisa, Fanella and Ivan were surrounded by the people, thousands of them, all covered in colourless grey cement dust, even their hair and faces were a ghastly dusty grey.
“Now we’re in trouble,” Lisa remarked grimly.

Lazuli Galore looked back over his shoulder to make sure that the three travelers were following him. He retained his shapeshifted elephant form for the time being for high visibility purposes in the fog, and so as not to confuse the new arrivals with a sudden change of appearance. The first thing was to gain their trust and ensure that they followed him. His job was to monitor new arrivals and escort them inside the walled city of Gazalbion before they could start any more settlements in the free zone. The problem of new arrivals had escalated post 2014 as more and more people developed the art of teleporting, and the island to many was considered a promised land, a land of wine and cucumbers, attracting the world weary and the bored, the adventurous explorers, as well as the merely curious day trippers. Had they all been regular tourists of the old fashioned kind, who came for a determinate short stay and spent lavishly on the resident occupants provisions, it would not have been a problem, it would have been welcomed. But these people were staying, leaving only for brief trips back home to attend to their responsabilites there, and returning, bringing ever more people with them to settle in the free zone. They were arriving in droves, and it was of paramount importance to contain them, and shield the free zone from their incursions.

Lazuli Galore was pleased to see that the three travelers were running to catch up with him. The other one would have been more trouble, and Lazuli knew he was right to despatch him to the elsespace arrangement with a perfectly executed parachute drop. It was the first time he had tried the novel approach of a parachuting elephant and was pleased with the result. It would not be long before that guy found his way out and came looking for his companions, but Gazalbion wasn’t far and Lazuli was confident that the three would be safely locked behind it’s walls before he reappeared.

Continuing Irina and Mr R the Robot

The mission of Irina to thwart the plans of Jonbert being complete, she asks out of the elusive Management scheme, and expects to cash in her promise of an island retirement plan.

(As an aside, to those wondering what happened of the bitter Jonbert, after a change of heart, he follows the St Germain hologram through the portal to Peasland’s dimension. It would not be surprising to see him become new Majorburgmester)

Irina is sent to a mysterious door, with the strong presentiment that there is a catch and it will send her in a time and place beyond her control.
She jumps boldly through the door, not knowing what to expect of the promised island, but preferring that to a life of doing the Management’s biding, and trusting the support of Mr R.

After she arrives on the island, with the help of the robot, she starts to improve her living conditions in the bog part of the island, where among strange relics of different timelines, she also finds a young bog mummy she nurses back to life and names Greenie due to her complexion.

Meanwhile, we learn bits of Irina’s past, through the quest of a Chinese Corporation from her timeline of 2222, and it is strongly suspected that she stole Mr R, a unique robotic prototype with never seen before capacities.
Having crossed Sanso’s path during her previous mission, Sanso becomes the target of the Chinese who hope to retrieve if not information, at least the location of the fugitives thanks to Sanso’s damsel-in-distress-saving fibre, even if fleeting and inconsistent.
It proves a reasonable tactic, as Sanso (who was unwittingly tracked due to a sea cucumber tracker he previously ingested) led them to a map dancer in New York named Jeremy.
Now, the Chinese leader of the hunt, Cheung Lok （張樂）has retrieved the map of the island, which shows strange exotic properties.

The island, named Abalone by some of its inhabitants, shows some mysterious external properties, allowing it to appear on the Earth only at certain times and places (times such as years 111, 222, 333, etc.).

Internal properties, yet to be discovered by Irina, and her companions are dream-like in nature. The island landscape is populated according to people’s individual beliefs, but it usually takes a long time for people to realise it (also known as “transition”).
People can be coaxed out of their transition time, if they are open enough to allow external influences to show them out of their individual dream.
Unusual objects for example can appear and are usually remnants of other’s dreams/beliefs, and are usually difficult to alter.
It also cloaks other realities in the same space arrangement which are not compatible to the person’s beliefs.
People can thus err believing to be alone for a long time, until positive anticipation leads them to social interactions, leading them usually to the city ruled by King Artie.
King Artie, an eternal bachelor, is expected by his subjects to choose a Queen.

With the aid of the holographic map, Irina, Mr R and little Greenie have been exploring the island.
The next day they found a crashed plane from Aeroflot, not very far from their own landing spot. It was half burried in the mud and covered in green mossy vegetation. The doors were open as an irresistible invitation to enter.

“A surprise, Mr R. I thought that this place was on your map. If I remember well, it didn’t show such an object.”
“Forgive me, madam, indeed this plane wasn’t there when I triangulated the map I showed you.”
“You mean it’s fresh ?” Irina’s voice seemed to suddenly carry some interest. “Maybe we can find some survivors”, she added, already doubting it considering all the moss on teh metallic shell.
“I’m afraid we won’t, madam. I didn’t want to bother you with that little detail until I was sure. There are objects on this island that only appear after a certain date. Have you noticed it also happens with the vegetation and the insects ?”
Irina pouted, “I prefer leaving that to your expertise.”
“Of course, madam”, said the robot, affable. “The paradox is…”
“Another paradox ? How interesting.”
“…that it doesn’t seem to include us, or that little person.”
“Any idea what the implications are ?” Irina began to wonder if there was any danger of being stuck permanently on this island.
“I have several hypothesis”, he began, “The most probable is the lost room hypothesis. We arrived there through time space displacement and are not a natural part of this environment, hence we don’t change with its natural environment or inhabitants because we are not under it’s time sequence according to the Lehmon’s law.”

Irina pouted. She looked at little greenie and thought of the implications about how their new friend arrived there. Whenre did she come from ? For her to be a bog mummy, she must have been there a long time. Or did she arrived already bogged ?
Something caught her attention about the plane and distracted her of further thinking about the subject of their continuity risk in this place. The logo of the plane looked not so oldish.
“Mr R. ? What do you think the date of the crash was ?”
“The plane was lost in 2112.”

Without further thought about safety, she entered the plane, followed first by little Greenie as she have been calling her new protegee, and by the robot who despite still talking about technicalities of accidental space time crossing theory, had turned on his speleo lights.

Interestingly enough, Irina noted the clothes on the chairs or in the alleyways, here a pair of glasses, there a necklace, all layered as if the person wearing them had been puffed away.

“Well, well, what have we here ? The light Mr R, please,” said Irina with as much excitement as a snail. He obliged her with his usual professionalism, revealing a teal blue scarf with pistachio green spirals. She took the cloth and stretched it to have a better look. It was one of those artistic kind of hippy abstract patterns connecting you to the cosmos.
“I can’t think of anybody who would buy that thing, maybe she stole it from one of those duty free shops before they took off,” she said as petulantly as a pitfall trap.
“Come here little Greenie, it’s time to make you pretty.”

Irina did not have the chance to play with dolls when she was a kid, she didn’t know if she had some psychological lack or a bad doyle dating from that unremembered period of her life. She had compensated by toying with real people, playing with their emotions and deeper needs, or what they thought they needed. She became an expert at manipulating others, which gave her her first job in insurances, and then in the secret services. But then, she dealt with adults, showing emotions, or a certain level of brain activity. She wasn’t used to children stored in bogs.

She tried to put the scarf on Greenie’s head, and to smile like she had seen people do in the movies. Although something unexpected happened. Greenie became suddenly distressed and agitated. Then, she punched Irina in the face and began to mumble incoherent things.
That child is stronger than I thought. And at the same time, she noticed a name in that gibberish. Didnt she just shout : “I frigging love you, Sadie Merrie.”

“Her brainwave is showing unusual activity”, stated Mr R. “And my sensors indicate the presence has returned, with some friends. They just appeared outside of the plane.”

It wasn’t important to the techromancer how long he had been living in this hut in Hawaii. A very special hut connected to many realities and times at once, a perfect representation of his mind. People would get lost in it, they did not understand how it worked. He just had to emit the intention of whenre he wanted to be and let his body follow the sound patterns. It worked very similarly to that sarcophagus in Giza. He helped in its making.

For now, he simply wanted to take a bath. He didn’t like being in contact with too much light, which always triggered a benign itching, soon spreading across his pale skin, erupting in red patches that only long immersion in water would sooth. His little sister used to say he was a dollfinn. It seemed strangely distant and yet close to this time-space reality.

The roughness of his rags didn’t help with the itching. He liked to think of them as his Jedi costume. The fabric, plain and rough, helped him remember that he was also made of flesh. A most difficult idea to keep in mind, as his was expanded in many times and realities at once. It helped cover his pale skin from light contact as well as create an aura of mystery with the few people who managed to find him. He had been most surprised by the last one, Sadie was her surface name. Memories of futures past rushed through his mind hut, momentarily disrupting the sound flux leading to the bathroom, and amplifying the itching. Now was not the right time and place.

Darkness and stillness are the basic components of awareness, he focused on that simple thought that would bring him peace and stability of mind. Keep the floughts away. It was easy to understand that for him darkness was as light is for us.

The bathroom he had chosen was in almost total darkness, for us. Even if it had a window, it was night outside. The window was only for the gentle breeze. He didn’t need light as his inner vision could see the patterns of movements of his reflected mind. He took off his rags. In the absence of light, his pale silhouette was almost glowing. The patches of red now looked like continents on a ocean of milk. One could notice a dark spot on his sacral bone. The tattoo of a black scorpio with a red dot. Red was also the color of his eyes. He was an albino, with red eyes like a rabbit.

He sank into the water with a gush of pleasure piercing through his mind. The multidimensional walls of the hut trembled.

The early morning sea mist was evaporating as Fanella strolled around the village picking up dog shit. She reminded herself to fully appreciate the damp coolness, before the scorching summer sun enveloped them in a bone warming blanket, and then reminded herself to appreciate the bone warming effects of the full sun later. As she retraced her steps she noted how differently everything looked on a return journey, how piles of dog shit had escaped her notice while going one way, but were obvious on the way back. It reminded her of something she’d read recently in one of the books that Lisa insisted she read to improve her English ~ A Field Guide To Getting Lost . Hah! Had there been a cruel irony in that choice of book? Fanella had felt lost ever since she arrived in 2020. But according to the book, getting lost wasn’t a bad thing, not at all.

To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

Fanella sighed. All sounds very philosophical, but I’m still stuck in the wrong time zone.
Another passage from the book popped into her head:

We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.

Fanella gazed up at the sky ~ the blue of longing was taking over, as the white wisps of clouds dispersed.

The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle…. how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly….No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Charming, Fanella thought, just bloody charming. Rotting soup of change, that just about sums it up. No wonder I wake up every morning with my bones feeling like mush.

General Rule, esquire, was having a hard time at the Ministry of Plonkety Plonk. The General was getting bored with being a general and quite fancied being an Obscure, just for a change of space. He wondered if there were any vacancies at the Unministry of the Vacant and Loose.

books continued
dreamfarm airspace teamwatch sidelight tunnelmind surgefocus
dry appeared done, physical itself
north world turned bodies, case seemed portal

The end of Being Veronica’s season four coincided strangely with the end of time day. She had eventually become a channeler. Still full of images and sounds of time travels, space projections and probabilities, Yann decided it was time for him to go fetch some Shanghainese food for the evening. They were going to Taipei for the week end with Yurick, meeting with an artist friend who’d promised to show them around.

Outside the air was chilly, it almost had that peculiar smell Yann associated with frost. When he first decided to come to Shanghai, it was with the secret hope it would be warmer than Paris, but currently it seemed to be as cold and chilly a city. At least, Taipei would feel a bit warmer, he thought with a misty sigh, the weather forecast announced at least 23°C. What better occasion for the beginning of the new timeline.

The store was not very far from the house, you just had to turn left at the corner and it was right here after the laundry service. It was a small shop, with only tangerins, oranges, a few apples and bananas. The shopekeeper and his wife greeted him. Yann was still feeling shy with the Chinese, mostly because he couldn’t speak their language yet. He’d begun taking lessons, but there was so much to learn. He smiled and quickly resumed his focus on the fruits. Some bananas were calling him, quite ripe actually. He hesitated, took them and almost put them in a plastic bag, but he noticed they were maybe too ripe, the skin was cracked in some areas and he could see the white flesh of the fruit turning brown. He nonchalently put them back on the stall as the shopekeeper was showing him the strawberries.

Yann smiled and he couldn’t remember how to say no, so instead he laughed and waved his hand in protest. The man didn’t insist and went back to the counter. He didn’t seem to be concerned by the end of time.

She was right. Maybe he needed a job as a janitor instead, and draw on walls, or write some sotteries pardon my Medieval French.
“I’m leaning towards valuing the imagination parts of me.” he’d answered, not quite convinced, as though it were told by someone else, or something he’d read earlier somewhere, on a wall probably.
The vole was still there when she’d left. She’d kept moving back to give it space to run off up the dry road, but no, the little thing even held its hand up when she tried to pick it up as if to say NO! thank you I’m fine.
He too was fine, surrounded by converging ripples of emotions, but oddly calm.
“Too neatly organized stuff gets dusty and boring” he’d said to her.
“I know,” she’d answered, ending their brief encounter with a limerick

The housekeeping lady of China,
Said she’d never seen anything finer,
than a wacom of dust,
that she sponged and brushed,
that housekeeping lady of China…

Tal turned on the invisible-izer, and smiled as he enjoyed the idea that his spaceship would never be noticed by any human or animal alike.

He exited the ship, walked a few paces and then suddenly halted in his tracks.

Directly in front of him was no other than a large sink hole.

What the Kraken? he thought. There must have been some major Earth changes since his interstellar space traveling. Good thing he didn’t land a few feet to the north.

Tal clicked a small button on his nifty zinger-space-belt, which enabled the detection of any Earth anomalies.

The gauge was reading off the charts!

“All systems normal. Destination successful: Earth, year 2012, timeline- unknown” chirped an automated voice.

“Ah, Earth! I’m home, at last.” said Tal, as he tinkered with a switch here, and a switch there on the command console in his lap. The console was blue in color, and resembled one of the Earth I pads, though slightly larger in design, and obviously not the same device.

“My journey has been fruitful, as I have come home with riches all the kings of Babylon would envy.” The riches Tal spoke of consisted of three small purple flowers from a dying planet, and one very large-gold wrist watch that he obtained from a fellow space traveler.

The wrist watch, as if realizing Tals’ thoughts, adjusted to its new earthly habitat.