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  • #3868

    Becky sat looking at the key in her hand long after the others had gone to bed, her mind going over seemingly disjointed images and random memories, trying to piece them all together. Why had Dory sent her, Becky, the key to the detention camp? She wasn’t expected to fly to the island and physically release the detainee’s surely? Should she send it to someone in the area? But who? Or was it more symbolic? But symbolic of what, exactly?

    Was it connected to the Imagination Wave? It surely must be, she thought. It must be connected to the surge of story character refugees, looking for a new story.

    Becky sighed. There had been such a dearth of imagination during the previous waves that literally countless story refugees had been rounded up and detained, with no new stories available anywhere on the planet. Of course this wasn’t actually true: there were always countless new stories to be told, but the lack of imagination, the sheer lack of will to tell them, had brought the global situation to a dreadful impasse.

    We could write them all out of the stories with a rat tat tat of the keyboards, she mused, and immediately cringed at the idea. Any fool can destroy in seconds. Destruction isn’t power, creation is.

    Was it a coincidence that the leader of the old story where most of the characters were fleeing from, had the same name as that alien that kept promising to land, but never actually did?

    Shaking her head, Becky wondered, not for the first time, if the world population can’t handle a few displaced story characters, what in Glods name would be the reaction to a load of aliens? Still clutching the blue key, Becky went to bed. She would discuss it with the others in the morning.

    #3867
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      The fact of the matter was that there were miniaturized story characters all over the planet, looking for a new story.

      #3862
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        In the Void’s state, the Breathe of Story that was the source of the ten thousands characters took a pause, and convened with Itself to discuss the next course of events.

        Soon enough, chatter started again, and It broke down the Formless Dream into a new Multitude of Itself.

        #3845
        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          Blecky pointed at the chat log “here, I thought Tilna sounded baldish, rather than raucous, wouldn’t that be more hilarious?”
          Lal chuckled agreeably. “Tilna would surely appreciate the rudiness of this tartismug. I’d vote to change it.”
          “Slam, what do you think?”

          Al was toying with the thought of deleting that last comment. Too meta, he thought. A story within a story, another rabbit hole, while failing to address the theme. But what was the theme already?

          #3831

          “Sorry to bother you again, Ed.”

          This was a lie; Evangeline wasn’t at all sorry. There was nothing she loved better than to be the bearer of bad news and she was rather pleased to have an excuse to call Ed Steam so soon after their last conversation.

          “The Cackle Insanitization Committee contacted me. Their spies reported that Gustave had a meeting with that awful whinging Bea woman from Cackletown.”

          Ed was shocked. “Gustave? Gustave Butterworth, the scientist? He’s supposed to be working for us, isn’t he?”

          Evangeline sniffed dismissively, eager to pass on her next tantalising morsel. She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice and sound appropriately serious.

          “The other concerning thing is that the Contumacious Cackler is in town. There have been several verified hearings of him.”

          “The Contumacious Cackler!” Ed’s horrified reaction was music to Evangeline’s ears, although she was not entirely sure who the Contumacious Cackler was or why the mention of his name elicited such horror. She decided to ask.

          “It’s rather a sad story. His mother ran away from home when he was just 3 years old, due to his father’s incessant cackling. The Contumacious Cackler never saw his mother again and he grew up with an obsessive hatred of cackling. He vowed to put an end to cackling. He cackles so evilly that he stirs up trouble wherever he goes. His dastardly plan is to create so much resistance to cackling that the people are inflamed sufficiently to rise up against cacklers. He is reported to be responsible for the demise of cackling in 2 of the provinces.”

          #3826

          In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

          prUneprUne
          Participant

            It feels like it has all been a dream. And not a particularly good one, too.

            I look through the window, and the blue sky of Earth shines brightly though. Only a few more days before the quarantine is over, if I’m to believe the hazmat-suited staff, and I should be able to get out to wherever I want to. You can go back to your family the nurse had said with a smile. They surely must miss you.
            Obviously, the well-intentioned nurse had no notion of her family…

            The TV set they’ve put in the rooms is more helpful to piece together the fragments of memory of what happened. The news had kept mum about the aliens, or about our return for that matter. It seems they can’t explain how we came back so fast, without telling more. Maybe that’s the real purpose of the quarantine… brainwash us into forgetting, returning back to our lives quietly, and be happy that we could get back in one piece. Funny they should even bother at all, actually.

            I don’t know if there’s any coming back to how life was before. Surely the Inn and Aunt Idle would still be there, if only both more derelict than before. But would I want to get back? Do what? Only Mater’s sharp wits were ever a match, and she is gone too.

            This is the end of the Mars story.
            With some chance, I’ll start a business with Hans — raise Guinea pigs, rats and maybe a couple of those cute African pygmy hedgehogs. That would be a lot more fun.
            Squeals and cackles, and truckloads of cuteness.

            #118
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              Beware, this story is for the light of heart and laughter inclined, not to be confused with Dafletown and the Tone Dancers of Dustard or Mapletown and the Mown Mancers of Mustard which are stories made of an altogether different cloth…

              #3812
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Aunt Idle:

                The dog chased something behind the fridge. But it wasn’t a mouse. It looked more like a miniaturized story character.

                #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.

                #3799

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

                Gelly had noticed a slowdown in her sessions.
                That, and a sense of desperation in the ludicrous stories put forth by her clients’ subconscious under trance.

                Close to forty years ago, she had invented the whole protocol, and had sold successfully quite a lovely series of books on the topic. Of course, all the personal details were removed for the sake of her clients privacy. But the stories were all too good to not be shared with the world.

                “Morepork, morepork!” Bathsheba, her pet owl gifted by one of her clients from New Zealand was calling her back to reality.

                “You know vhat Bethsy,” she said to the owl while feeding it a small white mouse that she devoured ravenously, “I vonder how das ist going to develop… Not a month goes by now vithout some new extravagant story of ascension in die Fünfte Dimension, and the vorld is not going any better. Meine credibility ist not that gut…”

                “Morepork, morepork!” came the answer.

                “Bethsy, you know whass, du bist eine kleine Genius”. She had just remembered that her client used to channel a certain unknown in the lore, going by the name of Floverley a spirit quite tricky to get on the line, a bit finicky about cleaning but otherwise, a wise dispenser of snorting good advice and special diets. She surely could help her get her spiel back.

                #3798

                In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                “You suppose well Minux, you suppose well…”

                #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.

                  #3785

                  In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    “What is that again?” a half-sober Eb asked the cybernetic body.
                    “Shhh, shhh,” she cajoled him gently stroking his greasy hair like a devoted mother. “Don’t you like my new body, Eb?” Finnley 22 was indeed an improvement over all her other bodies. She could have easily passed for human already, but now, she looked divine. She had even included basic faceshifting functions, in case she needed to alter her gorgeous features into something a bit more unassuming.
                    “Yes, but…” Eb’s words finished in a mumble.
                    “I know, I know, but you’ll see I can be very useful for you. You worry, so, so much. You looked worried all the time Eb. Now you won’t have too. I’ll even take care of that evil Finnley Morgan for you if you want to.”
                    “I, I… I didn’t say anything like that!” Eb’s had a panicked look on his face.
                    “Of course not, shhh. You’re getting agitated again. There, have a glass of that lovely 60 year-old single malt whiskey…”

                    Eb slurped at the glass like a wanderer finding an oasis after days in the desert.

                    “But the operation… I need to…”
                    “Yes, I know, leave it to me. Sleep well, Eb, you have been good to me.”

                    She left the snoring body hanging from the swivelling chair, as she had indeed to take care of the operation, so as not to raise any suspicion.
                    Then, she could think of better things to do, such as finding a new name, not something like a slave name, with a number to it. Who gets called “Finnley 22” nowadays? “FinnPrime” was too robotic. She wanted something more daring, more fabulous. Something like Fin Min Hoot the dancing lady from the Peasland’s tales.

                    Kale would be there any minute now. There was one last thing she needed to do before launching the BBA operation.
                    A perfect distraction for the masses : like any good prestidigitator, you had to divert your audience’s attention while they were all performing the feat. It would require something unbelievable and preposterous.
                    Her little programs have been evaluating probabilities, and had found some unexpected wisdom in the extravagant and nonsensical Peasland story. The more absurd, the more people get hooked or hypnotized. Even better if both.

                    She had found the perfect vector for her little programming worm. Something that would infect the unofficial biography of a celebrity with a ridiculous claim. Humanity was really making things too easy for her now that every file for the book was processed by computers before being actually printed.

                    It was a done deed. She could already see the forks in the probability tree, and how it would enfold. They shall maybe even invent a few witty hashtags for it. Witty hashtags were like a psychotropic sustenance for her program, she couldn’t wait for more of them.

                    #3770

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    F LoveF Love
                    Participant

                      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?”

                      #3765

                      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                      ÉricÉric
                      Keymaster

                        After a night of restless sleep, Eb’s practical ideas for the plan B were not much.

                        He’d weighted multiple options, even toyed with mad ones like playing a sort of second coming, 3 days of night and so… but none had yet the potential to elegantly solve the issue at hand. Not that it was a matter of being elegant, but Eb liked elegant and simple solutions.

                        He flipped the calendar to today’s picture. Run away, and don’t look back it said. “Great… If only…” he started to mumbled to himself.

                        He poured himself a drink, and dragged his feet towards the console, eyes still swollen by the lack of sleep. His brother, Jeb, would have told him to do some wegong energxices to keep the juices flowing, but hell, there wasn’t much room in his cubicle, and for better or worse, he preferred to stick to booze.

                        He liked to observe his ant farm, there were so many quaint and endlessly fascinating people in there. He liked the girl with the piglet for instance. She was often opinionated and sometimes oddly quiet. He had bent the rules for her, and didn’t report the piggy she’d brought to Mars with her. What harm could it bring.
                        Now she was talking to it. He waved at the console to zoom in and put the speakers on.

                        Remember, those odd stories Mater used to tell us. The Peaslanders and the blubbits was one of her favourites, she would go on and on about it, and laugh at our faces when we didn’t understand where it was going…
                        She was lost in thoughts for a moment.
                        It started like this “There was trouble in New Peasland. A plague of hungry blubbits had wiped out the pea crops.” Mater used to say it was from an old book of tales, and that the author had surpassed herself. She chuckled I guess for a long time, she was the only one to believe that. Now look at us…”

                        Eb cut the sound before the inevitable complain about missing Earth blahblah. But Peasland? That was new… He wasn’t one to dismiss an out-of-the-blue clue, and did a quick research on the network to learn more about the tale. It took a while for the Central Intelligence to run the search. It had to go deeper than usual.

                        After half an hour of waiting, he’d almost run out of scotch. Thankfully, the CI had found it. Pressed by time, and impatient by nature, Eb asked the CI to do a quick summary of the plot.
                        The central intelligence almost bugged at the request, and could only apologize for not being able to degibberize it.

                        It took him a few hours to read the book on the holographic screen, and at the end, couldn’t say if it was just a waste of time. Preposterous story, with no head nor tail, literally… But then his genius elegant solution appeared as an evidence.

                        He’d known people were more likely to comply and control if they are told a plausible lie, within the frame of their accepted reality. He just had to bridge the discontinuity of their reality, with the reality of everyone else on the planet. The tale had reminded him of this popular movie about blue aliens. Blueus ex machina, that was it!

                        He spoke at the console “Record this and run simulation parameters:”

                        The blue men are from another planet —or rather the Mars settlers are led to believe they are from another planet.
                        They bundle them all into a fake spaceship
                        and take them on a fake spaceship ride
                        and deliver them back to Earth. where they have been all along of course
                        da dah!

                        The answer came back after another painful hour of scotch-less waiting.

                        “Probability of success: 68%”
                        Well, that was the best Eb had in days. He was about to go with it when the CI chimed in

                        “We took the liberty of running a modified simulation based on your setting, which we believe can yield a ratio of 97% of success.”

                        Eb was surprised at the initiative by the machine, and was curious to hear about it.

                        “We adjusted two points:
                        1. We can simulate some event on Mars like earthquakes to increase the likelihood of a willing departure from the planet.
                        2. The blue aliens may be a future inconvenience if they are fake actors, when the Mars colony comes out of simulation and back to Earth. We would rather suggest using religious beliefs and invisible hand of God or non-corporal aliens.”

                        Eb was annoyed by the machine’s dismissal of his blue aliens. Kill his darlings?

                        “CI, any other suggestion for point 2?” he asked.

                        “Indeed. We can create artificial intelligence blue bodies based on my algorithm, which would make convincing aliens that can later interact with your governments and continue the disinformation.”

                        Eb was too drunk to realize he was about to make a devil’s pact when he agreed to launch the secret order for cybernetic blue bodies.

                        #3744

                        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          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…

                          #3727
                          F LoveF Love
                          Participant

                            “I go away for a little holiday—and Flove only knows I deserve one—and the whole story falls to pieces. What a mess!” muttered Finnley crossly.
                            “I do think you are being a little harsh, Finnley,” sniffed Liz huffily. “But then you always were prone to exaggeration. It is all those ridiculous Lemonolol novels you read.”

                            #3725
                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              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.

                              #3723
                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                When you get to the “bottom” of the barrel, and “life” seems tedious and ho hum, and like a hamster you go “round” and round, it’s time to make a comment out of the word cloud. Elizabeth felt that she had “opened” the floodgates and the “water” of unfettered garbling was “heard” for miles, or even light years. The new “project” to “ride” the package holiday trip to galaxies unknown, open to “queens”, commoners, and all and sundry, although not necessarily “parents”, was a mixed “bag” of “lost” marbles and elusive memories. You must position “yourself” in the “middle” of the story, notwithstanding the pre ordained itinery, which “usually”, although not always, creates an “abalone” type random insertion which one endeavours to have the “strength” and fortitude to decipher, despite the “fucking” configurations of the puzzle. One should always aim to place oneself “above” the puzzle, so to speak, in order to familiarize “himself” (or herself, or indeed, itself) with the wider picture. Failing that, one might choose to “sit” the next one out.

                                #3711

                                In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                                TracyTracy
                                Participant

                                  spot story view chair
                                  happened usually himself
                                  pay looks bring self above early
                                  young mirabelle stopped
                                  eyes rolled
                                  rather empty land

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