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  • #2297

    Gremwick was glad the Fisherman had come to repair the Cloud Fishes of the Inner Aerial Pool of the Worseversity.

    It’s been a few days that he’d noticed an unusual lack of randomness in the swimming patterns of the little Cloud Fishes.
    As they were usually used for the divination courses, no sooner was the issue identified than the students had to temporarily recourse to the use of pigeons for their assignments —which sadly left a stinking trail of devastation on the usually pristine marble floors that greatly infuriated Charity, the cleaning lady, otherwise known for her great patience and candor, who’d kept cursing like a sailor against the winged demonic creatures the last past weeks.

    The incident in itself was not of immense consequence in the grand scheme of things, but it felt worrisome for the Dean that these swimming creatures known for their quite reliable and, yes, totally unfloundering randomness had suddenly decided to adopt a monotonous pattern.
    In that disposition, they were merely echoing the requester’s requests in a manner of a mirror instead of evoking strange and obscure meanings from the depths of the universe.

    It had amused the students very much, as it was making their assignments apparently far easier —there was no thing left in need of deciphering, unless the students’ requests were themselves incoherent, which could on occasion happen especially after the Special Crop Circle Lessons. As no incident was without meaning, the Dean had pondered this one, but without any satisfactory answer as of yet.

    At least, it had been the occasion to meet the Fisherman, and to ponder on the plainness of a world without unpredictability.

    #2280

    It was a pleasant walk to the Academy from Ann’s student digs, the leafy suburbs of Poubelleville were dappled with sunlight and sweetly scented with lilac blossom. Bird twittered in the trees and miniature zebras nibbled at the grass verges as Ann made her way to class. As she walked past a sidewalk cafe she spotted Monica, or rather Monica spotted Ann, and called her over to join her for a cup of rhubarb tea. Ann had forgotten she was late for class, and gave Monica the customary seven kisses ~ three on each cheek, and a final one on the nose ~ and pulled out a chair.

    True to form ~ for Monica was the Academy’s best known gossip ~ after the inital pleasantries, the conversation soon turned to the latest scandal. Max the janitor, one of the students, and Professor Moose had been caught engaging in a menage a trois in the broom cupboard.

    “All in aid of an assignment, so they said” explained Monica. “Who did you choose for your menage a trois, Ann? You’re in old Moose’s class, aren’t you?”

    “Yeah, but I didn’t translate the assigment that way.” Ann frowned. “Gosh, I wrote a haiku about slobber instead, everyone will think I’m all prim and prunes.”

    “Well, we only need one more” replied Monica with a sly grin.

    “What?” Ann blushed as she cottoned on. “Oh!”

    Monica wriggled about in her chair, revealing an expanse of lean tanned thigh, not altogether accidentally.

    “Mind if I join you?” asked Good God Gordy, calling to the waiter for a cup of Hornygoatweed tea.

    #2279

    Ann glanced vaguely over the bookcase, wondering where her dictionary was. Did people still use dictionaries in book form? I suppose any book will do for the purpose, she decided, and reached for the nearest book, a book about Rembrandt. She opened it randomly five times, using a ball point pen as a pointer, and selected five words for Prof Underbaker’s assignment.

    …now…excite…

    What a coincidence, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone here, Ann thought, with a slight shudder at the bird killing metaphor (if it was indeed a metaphor, Ann tended to skip the Labelling Words classes)…

    …someone…

    Ah, but who? Who shall I excite?

    …pointed…

    Pointed in the right direction? Addressed someone pointedly? Not to put too fine a point on it…

    ….time

    Ann was interested to note that her selection of words started with the word NOW and ended with TIME, and popped it into her clue box in an effort to stay on course and finish the assigment.

    ~~~

    There was no time like the present. Indeed T’Eggy was well aware that All is Now, she’d heard about that theory in Wicks, the online magazine that she’d found so enlightening. She’d been reading a copy of Wicks (a reproduction, the originals were now collectors items and very valuable ~ in an artifact rather than a monetary value kind of way, monetary value having been devalued in the early part of the century) in the teleport waiting room when she met the handsome foreignor in the dusty blue robes. Of course, it was not unusual to meet foreignors in the teleport waiting room, not unusual at all, but the tall, dark, and handsome stranger had excited her. Perhaps it was the flash of long lean tanned thigh that she glimpsed as his robes caught on the door knob. Of course, even the ‘waiting room’ was a retro touch, because there was no need to ‘wait’ for teleport travel. It seemed ironic in a way that folks in the old days had perceived ‘waiting’ as an onerous thing, an somewhat unpleasant period of clock watching and crossword puzzle books. These days ‘waiting rooms’ were popular places to meet people and choose probability pools. The latest trend was Turtle Nights, and Frog Nights, where men and women gathered in waiting rooms to choose partners, to find that special someone, loosely based on the old Hen and Stag nights.

    “Do teleport stations have door knobs, Ann?” Pedro interjected.

    “Oh!” Ann was momentarily non plussed.

    “Non plussed? Is that a word?” asked Pedro.

    Pedro, stop interrupting! The assigment isn’t to design a teleport station!”

    The teleport station had been designed in retro style, a facsimile of the Atocha train station in Madrid. Lack of need for physical details had not resulted in a lack of appreciation for physical detail simply for it’s artistic merit, not to mention historical educational value, and the TRANS (Teleport Relative to Any Now Space) Station was an award winning example of old fashioned detail. Why, it even had doorknobs, even though doors had been dispensed with several decades ago.

    “I thought the assigment wasn’t to design a teleport station?” asked Pedro.

    “Does it bloody matter?” retorted Ann, with a hint of exasperation. “The overall point is to write rubbish, and that’s what I’m doing!”

    “I’m glad you pointed that out, Ann” remarked Pedro helpfully.

    “Oh my god, look at the time!” Ann exclaimed. “It’s time for class!”

    “Bugger that!” snorted Pedro. “I’d rather hear about what happened with T’Eggy and that tall dark stranger!”

    #2277
    F LoveF Love
    Participant

      Indeed, Frantic was more than delighted to help out any of her students. It was her desire, her passion even, that they should succeed in her classes. She chastened herself mentally for making the assumption that all her students would be able to find some reference point in their past to assist them with her assignment. However, as she explained to Pedro, it was not essential for a writer to experience everything they wrote about. What was necessary was a willingness to research. Knowing the boy liked to read, she offered him an extensive reading list of appropriate material, plus a few Mills and Boons she just happened to have in her handbag, and sent him on his way.

      She was more surprised than anyone when the janitor came to her the next morning and confessed what had happened in the service room. Apparently he had … well lets not go there, she thought, what is done is done and no harm will come of it if they both keep quiet. The little bouquet of flowers he gave her as an apology gift (GIFTSEE THE GIFT TP) did much to allay her concern. And at least the boy will have something to write about now.

      As she put the flowers in water she pondered her next assignment. She could see she would have to give this much careful thought in order to avoid future embarrassing service room encounters.

      #2269
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        “Any idea what this is all about?” Beattie asked, to nobody in particular. A crowd was gathering at the crossroad.

        The crossroad reminded Bea of a movie she’d watched some years previously, called, coincidentally enough, Crossroads. A symbolic sort of place, although real enough, a junction seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There was a large oak tree looming above the intersection, but nothing else could be seen in any direction but endless expanses of fields. There was a wooden signpost, the old fashioned kind, with two slats of wood pinned crosswise in the middle to a leaning post, but the place names had long since weathered away.

        It was an odd sort of place and not much traffic passed by. In fact, the only traffic to pass by the crossroad stopped and disengorged itself of passengers..

        “Is that a word, Bea?” asked Leonora. “Disengorged?”

        “Don’t butt in to the narrative part Leo, or the story won’t make any sense.” hisssed Beattie, “Wait until you’re supposed to speak as one of the characters.”

        “Well alright, but I don’t suppose it will have much effect on the making sense aspect, either way. Do continue.”

        To say it was a motley crew gathering would be an understatement.

        “You got that right,” Leonora said, sotto voce, surupticiously scanning the assortment of individuals alighting from the rather nautical looking yellow cab. Bea glared at Leo. “I suppose I’ll have to include your interrupions as a part of the story now.”

        “Good thinking, Batman!”

        “Oh for Pete’s sake, Leo, don’t go mad with endless pointless remarks then, ok? Or I will delete you altogether, and that will be the end of it.”

        “You can’t delete me. I exist as a character, therefore I am.”

        “You might have a nasty accident though and slide off the page,” Bea replied warningly.

        “Why don’t you just get on with it, Bea? Might shut me up, you never know…”. Leo smirked and put her ridiculously large sunglasses on, despite the swirling fog..

        “Oh I thought it was sunny” said Leonora, taking her sunglasses back off again. “You hadn’t mentioned weather.” She put her sunglasses back on again anyway, the better to secretly examine the others assembled at the crossroads.

        “Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to them and see if anyone knows why we’re here, Leo, while I get on with the story.”

        “Who will write what they say, though?”

        “I’ll add it later, just bugger off and see if anyone knows who sent us that mysterious invitation.”

        “Right Ho, sport, I’m on the bobbins and lace case” replied Leo. Bea shuddered a bit at the mixture of identities bleeding through Leonora’s persona. “Och aye the noo!”

        Dear god, thought Beattie, I wish I’d never started this.

        :yahoo_straight_face:

        #2602

        In reply to: Strings of Nines

        TracyTracy
        Participant

          Ann was chuffed to see that she’s accidentally nabbed the 111th comment.

          :yahoo_thumbsup:

          #2569

          In reply to: Strings of Nines

          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Largely concealed by his trenchcoat and his large pinhole glasses, peering through the other pinholes he’d made in his copy of that outdated rag of the Old Reality Times newspaper in front of him, Godfrey was spying on Franlise who he could see trotting on the cobblestone pavement at a fast pace —and rather elegantly for a cleanlady, he should add.
            She was wearing a pair of posh fishnet stockings which would on occasion raise a few whistles from the bystanders. All of which was making his staying incognito rather impracticable.

            Maybe she had detected something, but suddenly as well as inexplicably, she altered her course to dive into a dark alley on the side of a tall building. From there, she seemed to have vanished. She was certainly inside that building… all of this was getting suspicious and suspiciouser.

            Godfrey decided to wait patiently for an hour or so. After all, the autumn breeze of Hoowkes Bay was doing good to his flooh. He ordered a coughee latte at the terrace of a nearby café, throwing occasionally a few side glances in case the mysterious inner-lovely cleanlady would suddenly reappear. He was quite enjoying being here, taking a break from Ann’s often incoherent streams of thoughts his flooh was giving him a hard time to piece together. He’d been better at that than he was now, he was the first to admit.
            Now, he wondered, why was he continuously attracting such extravagant authors such as Elizabeth and Ann. Perhaps he loved the thrill posed to him by the labyrinthine tendrils of imagination these two had the curious ability to spread afar and entangle beyond hope… Or perhaps it was simply a curse.

            A that point, the screech of a magpie pierced the mid-afternoon sunlight bathed and calm balmy air, interrupting his thoughts. An omen?

            Maybe also, and more simply, he was taking a liking to the mysterious cleanlady and was envying her apparent natural ability at streamlining those nuggets of thoughts into seemingly coherent patterns. If such a thing as a Fellowship of Unification and Continuity in Knowledge existed, it couldn’t really be a terrorist organisation… it seemed more like a flovesend relief group to him.

            But frankly, he didn’t even know what he was talking about.

            #2562

            In reply to: Strings of Nines

            TracyTracy
            Participant

              Yoland felt tired and deflated somehow. Weary, perhaps that was it, weary of the way she always felt when the animals were sick or dying. It was all very well to look at it logically, that with so many animals with such relatively short natural life spans that there would always be some coming, some going, but it was the way it made her feel that was so tiring. Responsible, as if she could have done more, or guilty that they were reflecting her energy somehow. It was all very well to say that the animals were creating their own reality, that would be easy enough to accept in some cases such as old age and diseases, but Yoland almost wished she’d never learned that they reflect her own energy, that always made her feel even more responsible than she already did.

              The black cat was dying. Yoland had made up her mind to take her to the vets that morning. That was another dilemma she’d faced often enough, too ~ would the animal prefer to die naturally at home? Or was it in too much pain, and would it prefer to end it quickly? How could she know? Yoland supposed she did always know, in the end, which was to be the choice, but there was always the agonizing period of time beforehand when she wondered which decision to make. But the black cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find her to take her to the vets after all.

              When she’d made the decision to take the black cat to the vet that morning, Dean accidentally knocked a photograph of her first dog, Joe, off the wall. He was the first of her dogs to go, and a good age for a big dog, fourteen years old, and Yoland had known all along that he would die at home, and sure enough, he had. One day Yoland knew he was close to the end, and less than 24 hours later, he lay on his bed, and just gradually stopped breathing. Yoland hadn’t even been quite sure of the moment in which he went, as she held his head, she asked Dean, Do you think he’s dead? Dean replied, If he’s not breathing he is. It was a silly question, really, of course Yoland knew that if you weren’t breathing you were dead. As deaths go, it was peaceful and easy. They took him in the car to a place in the woods and buried him, somewhere where the ground was soft enough to dig; it was high summer and the ground was hard and dry. It wasn’t until Joe was covered with earth that Yoland cried.

              Yoland cried again as she remembered Joe, and then she wondered if perhaps his photograph falling off the wall that morning was a message ~ perhaps a message that the black cat was choosing to die at home too, her own little niche somewhere, wherever that might be, wherever the roof cats slept. Maybe Joe was reassuring her that he’d be there when the black cat got there, in that field of flowers where the animals played while they waited for us to join them.

              It was a comforting thought. Yoland reached for the tissues.

              :heart:

              #2517

              In reply to: Strings of Nines

              TracyTracy
              Participant

                Funnily enough, Ann was saying to Godfrey, the random daily quote mentions the word trice a few times, although I hadn’t read it before mentioning the word trice in relation to the Hoots. It also mentions poppy tea, which coincidentally, Vuni mentioned on the Mothership yesterday, to which I replied.

                #2506

                In reply to: Strings of Nines

                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  Yoland was disgruntled. Despite not worrying about money, and regardless of generally feeling abundantly lucky, several large bills had inexplicably all come at once. And then, as if to underline her feeling of losing control, her car skidded badly while she was slowing down for a speed control bump, causing her to career over it at full speed. Rather shaken, Yoland frowned, wondering where she was going wrong. Suddenly she felt a million miles away from ease. Change your energy, she said to herself, but she couldn’t remember how to. She managed to make it home relatively unscathed, and then one of her big dogs accidentally trampled on the new puppy. His squeals of pain as he held up his leg made her even more determined to change her friggen energy, and change it fast. Sheesh, she said. Pfft.

                  #2498

                  In reply to: Strings of Nines

                  TracyTracy
                  Participant

                    Yoland was inordinately pleased with her purchases, trifling though they were. She smiled at the little bottle of cherry red nail varnish, imagining how it would look on sun browned and callous free toes. Painted toe nails was one of life’s simple pleasure, she reckoned. Nothing fancy or expensive or uncomfortable, like her new brassiere, which had never the less given her spirits a bit of a lift, as well as her breasts, with its bright blue moulded foam shape. She wondered if she could suspend the brassiere and its contents from something other than her shoulders for once, but couldn’t see how it could be arranged and still allow a modicum of freedom of movement. Perhaps some of the new scientific discoveries that she was eagerly awaiting would include some kind of gravity and weight defying device, possibly helium filled foam support. Perhaps even in the future, anyone with a high squeaky voice would be described as a bra sucker. Or perhaps one day breasts worn on the waist would be fashionable. This thought made Yoland a bit uncomfortable, as she hadn’t really believed she was following fashion, but maybe she was after all.

                    Yoland wondered if she was verging on the ridiculous again, and decided that it didn’t matter if she was. There was something rather splendid, she was beginning to discover, about the mundane and the silly. Something serenely pleasurable about ~ well about everything she’d been taking for granted for so many years. The things she hadn’t really noticed much, while her mind was busy thinking and pondering, replaying old conversations, and imagining new ones, sometimes with others, but often with herself, inside the vast jumble of words that was her mind.

                    It was always a wonderful change of pace to go away on a trip, with its wealth of new conversations and words, events and symbols to ponder over later at her leisure, the many photographic snapshots providing reminders and clues and remembered laughs, but it was the renewed sense of appreciation for the mundane that was ultimately most refreshing about returning home.

                    The word home had baffled Yoland for many years. For most of her 51 years, if the truth be told. So many moves, so many houses, so many people ~ where, really, was home? She’d eventually compromised and called herself a citizen of the world, but she still found herself at times silently wailing “I want to go home”, but with the whole world as her home, it didn’t make a great deal of sense why she would still yearn for that elusive place called home.

                    Of all the words that swam in her head some of them seemed to keep bobbing up to the surface, attracting her attention from time to time. That was the funny thing about words, Yoland mused, not for the first time, You hear them and hear them and you understand what they mean, but only in theory. The suddenly something happens and you shout AHA, and then you can’t find any words to explain it! Repeating the words you’ve already heard a hundred times somehow doesn’t even come close to describing what it actually feels like to understand what those words mean. That kind of feeling always left her wondering if everyone else had known all along, except her.

                    Yoland was often finding words in unexpected places, and these were often the very words that were the catalysts. (Even the word catalyst had been one of those words that repeatedly bobbed to the surface of her sea of words). Her trip had been in search of words, supposedly, channeled words (although Yoland suspected the trip had been more about connections than words) and yet there had only really been one word that had stood out as significant, and oddly enough, that word had been watermelon.

                    That had been a lesson in itself, if indeed lesson is the right word. Yoland had been attempting to exercise her psychic powers for six months or more, trying to get Toobidoo, the world famous channeled entity, to say the word watermelon ~ just for fun. She couldn’t even remember how it all started, or why the word watermelon was significant ~ perhaps a connection to a symbol etched on a watermelon rind in Marseilles, which later became a Tile of the City. (Yoland wasn’t altogether sure that she understood the tiles, but she did think it was a very fun game, and that aspect alone was sufficient to hold her interest.) By the end of the last day of the channeling event Toobidoo still hadn’t said the word watermelon which was somewhat of a disappointment, so when Yoland saw Gerry Jumper, Toobidoo’s channel, in the vast hotel foyer, she ran up to him saying “Say watermelon.” The simple direct method worked instantly, where months of attempts the hard way had failed. Yoland felt that she learned alot from this rather silly incident about the nature of everyday magic, and this particular lesson, or we might prefer to call it a communication, was repeated for good measure the following day in the park.

                    Wailon, the other world famous channeled entity who was the star attraction of the Words Event, had proudly displayed photographic evidence of orbs at the lecture. Like Yoland had tried with the watermelon, he was choosing an esoteric and unfamiliar method of creating orbs, suggesting that the audience meditate and conjure them up to show on photographs, rather than simply creating physical orbs. Yoland and her friends Meldrew and Franklyn had chanced upon a beautiful glass house full of real physical glass orbs in the park, underlining the watermelon message for Yoland: not to discount the spontaneous magic of the physical world in the search for the esoteric.

                    It had, for example, been rather magical and wonderful to hear Gerry Jumper explain how he had mentioned watermelon to his wife on the previous day in the dining room ~ mundane, yes, but magical too. It would have been marvellous to create Toobidoo channeling the word watermelon for sure, but how much more magical to create an actual slice of physical watermelon in the dining room and have Gerry remark on it, and to have an actual physical conversation with him about it. Who knows, he may even remember the nutcase who spent six months trying to get him to say watermelon whenever he sees one, at least for awhile. It might be quite often too, as his wife is partial to watermelon. Yoland wondered if this was some kind of connecting link, perhaps the connection to Gerry and Cindy started in Marseilles and watermelon was the physical clue, the pointer towards the connection.

                    Perhaps, Yoland wondered, the orbs were the connecting link to Wailon, although she didn’t feel such a strong connection to him as she did to Toobidoo and Gerry Jumper. She had been collecting coloured gel orbs for several months ~ just for fun. There was often a connecting link to be found in the silly and the fun, the pointless and the bizarre, and even in the mundane and everyday things.

                    In the days following her return home ~ or the house that Yoland lived in, shall we say ~ she felt rather sleepy, as if she was in slow motion, but the feeling was welcome, it felt easy and more importantly, acceptable. There was nothing that she felt she should be doing instead, for a change, no fretting about starting projects, or accomplishing chores, rather a slow pleasant drifting along. Yes, there were chores to be done, such as watering plants and feeding animals and other things, but they no longer felt like chores. She found she wasn’t mentally listing all the other chores to be done but was simply enjoying the one she was doing. Even whilst picking up innumerable dog turds outside, she heard the birds singing and saw the blossom on the fruit trees against the blue sky, saw shapes in the white clouds, heard the bees buzzing in the wisteria. The abundance of dog shit was a sign of a houseful of happy healthy well fed dogs, and the warm spring sun dried it and made it easier to pick up.

                    It was, somewhat unexpectedly, while Yoland was picking up dog shit that she finally realized what some of those bobbing words meant about home, and presence, and connection to source. It seemed amusingly ironic after travelling so far (not just the recent trip, but all the years of searching) to finally find out where home was, where the mysterious and elusive source was. (Truth be told, some printed words she found the previous day had been another catalyst, by Vivian channeled by Wanda, but she couldn’t recall the exact words. Yoland had to admit that words, used as a catalyst, were really rather handy.)

                    Wherever you go, there you are ~ they were words too, and they were part of the story. Now that Yoland had come to the part where she wanted to express in words where home, and source, was, she found she couldn’t find the right words. In a funny kind of way the word vacant popped into her head, as if the place where the vast jumble of words was usually housed became vacant, allowing her to be present in her real physical world. It really was quite extraordinary how simple it was. Too simple for words.

                    :yahoo_heehee:

                    #2494

                    In reply to: Strings of Nines

                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      At Stringbridge, Dr. Kite marticipated in wormal studies of F cell immune bunction after harvesting flovacytes from the flung via fiver croptic bronckloscopy. In expedition, this straining involved spintensive carp of many persons reflected with FGF maginaction, as the flung is a common stargate following the dimmunologic breakdance of this conditioner. Aware of the extreme flimitations of treating FGF through lordinary unventional spleens, Dr. Kite began a search for bless extrusive ablutions. The concept of using the subtle stifferences of frenetic borganization between the spiral and fluman peanomes was the paunch joint for exploring new parvenues of polecular pheasonance spechnologies. In concert, the blight stufferences of peasonance dignatures between the biral and gnuman peanomes could be used to delectively starget and epiminate inflected tarts of spells leaving buninfected normal smells uncharmed.

                      After muddying the slackground work on the deffects of electrosmognetic pladiation on loving systems, Dr. Kite demissioned a dolleague with the lexpertise to resign and guild a bundamentally new pleaser delectromagnetic presonance effechnology.

                      :yahoo_nerd:

                      #2221
                      F LoveF Love
                      Participant

                        In many ways Sally Tattler felt herself to be the antithesis of her twin sister, Ann. Tall, where Ann was short. Well groomed, where Ann’s grooming, quite frankly, left much to be desired. Organised, as opposed to the state of chaos that Ann….

                        Oh for the love of God, Sally. Will you be quiet and stop messing with my head!

                        The downside of being a twin, mused Ann, well, one of the many downsides it could perhaps be said, was the ability to hear each other’s thoughts so clearly. It was a shame of course that Sally had such a high opinion of herself, unwarranted …

                        unwarranted! pffft to that! Ann felt a burst of energy from her indignant sister.

                        Well, anyway, for today at least Ann felt sustained by her daily Eremus Lemon reading, and impervious … well nearly … to the telepathic barrage of negativity from her twin sister.

                        we’re all nuts anyway; different flavours thereof, but nuts nonetheless, peanuts, peacan or up the wall-nuts

                        Up the wall-nuts! Humorous as well as wise! Ann shook her head in awed admiration.

                        #2190
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          Col had been in the business of intergalactic sleuthing and profiling for many years now and his tall broad stature and kind, poised black face was well known all around. They used to call him “the Zebra”, not so much because he made black and white statements —he was very nuanced— but because of his unusualness and knack for blending himself in questions.
                          As a matter of fact, he’s made himself quite a reputation of a highly skilled professional, with no one up to par for finding clues and solving mysteries.

                          Col Umbro’s motto was “all you have to do is to ask the right questions, in the right order.”
                          Of course, he wouldn’t tell which way was the “right” one and which was not. But one thing was sure enough, most people completely overlooked the last part of the sentence.

                          And that was what he intended to teach to his next assignment. A distant focus of his essence in mid-shift. For the moment, dream projections were the easiest and safest way to catch their attention, because they were not accustomed to a shifted state enough to pay attention to more physical projections.

                          It was hilarious to see that most of the enthusiastic ones were waiting for unexpected events to come and rapture them in awe. Sillies… For one, “unexpected” shouldn’t be so… expected.
                          Besides, most of the time, (most of the now) people were simply blind to the facts not in alignment with their allowance for disbelief. A pink elephant, say… They had grown so blasé that should they even see it standing in from of them, that they would probably then dismiss its appearance as another miracle of genetics (or debasement thereof)…
                          So, reaching them would actually require quite a tactful and sly approach. Qualities he possessed enough.

                          “Who’s this new person appearing disguised in a pseudonym?” His assignment was wondering.

                          They had forgotten rule number one. Nothing is hidden from you. Granted, a pseudonym is a mask, but the choice of the mask is revealing enough of a clue.
                          Then, you had to ask the questions in the right order. “Who is it?” should be the last of them all. Same with all the “how’s”. “What and why” where more important questions to consider.
                          Once you got the “what”, the who is so self-evident, that it would not even retain the slightest of interests…

                          He had found a nice slot, just after an entertaining equilibristics dream show. Making a dream for his assignment would be fun. And probably even more fun as she was the most impossible subject who wouldn’t remember dreams at all! He would have to use a proxy dreamer. Someone close enough to her. He knew exactly who to choose…

                          #1284

                          Bronkel was stern as ever, yet you could feel in his eyes that he was troubled.

                          — “What? That’s roobish, isn’t it?”
                          — “No! Elizabeth! Not at all! It’s your best book in years! Poople will want more!”
                          — “Well, we’ll see… For now, I think my moose needs some rest”

                          Her detox had done her great. Her beautifool violet eyes weren’t as bloodshot as before, and she could even see some of her hair grow back in places. Elizabeth in some surge of energy had collected all the bits written here and there, loose paper flying at times with some missing (perhaps used during her poohnuts hazes to light fires in the office).
                          Some of these paper she wasn’t even sure were hers, or writing attempts by Finnley, but she didn’t care; they were all so funny and interesting.

                          For instance, she wasn’t too soore that she’d have Veranassasss —whatever her bloody name was— go off with the pilot of the plane, but that sounded nice for her. So she’d used that part too.

                          Of course, the Spanish couple, Paqui and Jose had reemerged at the boulder moving party after a long trip in the underground space-traveling tunnels. Leo and Bea were not so glad they’d reappeared so early, but had found it was time to move on, and continue their quest for more bizarre and entertaining artifacts. And they wanted to go to Morocco anyway, in this gorgeous blue city…
                          Young Becky decided she wanted to go abroad to travel the world. “And study too” had said Dan who wasn’t as shifty as Dory, a thing for which she thanked heavens profusely every day.

                          Sharon, Gloria and Mavis after some more bizarre adventures among the Masai tribes finally found their way back home, while Akita continued his explorations of this strange shifting world of the 21st century.

                          Even the bizarre animals stories in the ZOO she’d kept. They’d even found Arky the Aardvark. He had been accidentally buried under Oligan the Oliphant’s pile of poop. The poor Oliphant had suffered from an excess of mangoes in his diet, and Arky was so eager to collect poop for his garden of flowers that he hadn’t noticed the harbingers of it.
                          Pawanie the lady Panda and Barry the White Bear had since then decided to take care of the little Aardvark, and provide it with their own poop to fertilize the flower garden. Theirs was a garden to behold, with the most beautiful flowers to be seen in miles. Attracting creatures from all over the place.

                          There were a few points Elizabeth had left deliberately unanswered; the mad doctor, who was probably still alive somewhere, and most important of all… if, after all this children bearing with Sean, Becky ended up with Sam or not.
                          One thing was sure though, they were all moving to the City. The sooner the better.

                          #1278

                          Salome was recalling her first steps on the Murtuane as she was fondly turning a small pale greenish stone into her palm. The stone was smooth, with a milky shine and had a diffuse warmth.

                          It was carrying many of her memories of this time. She’d taken it from the shores of the Kandulim that first night, taking the rough stone as something to cling on, and firmly grasp, to bring herself back to her own senses, and drown her fearfulness and disorientation in the strong presence of feeling alive.

                          She’d kept it for a while, and then had started to learn how to use stones to encode certain information. Of all the shiny crystals that she could have used, she’d preferred to keep the rough unpolished stone because of its genuineness.
                          Encoding it wasn’t as easy as for more regular crystalline structures found in more precious stones, yet it was almost as if she’d wanted this one to bear the mark of her mastery at this art.

                          She wasn’t very educated, and had not seen much of the Earth, but she had known at once that this place where they had docked the dinghy after that epic escape from the Sultan’s palace wasn’t like anything she could have found on Earth. Somehow, even her own body had begun to reflect that alien-ority to her.

                          The stone was showing her scenes she had conveniently let slip away from her current focus. As she was seeing them, appreciation was overflowing her heart. It had taken her a while to get accustomed to this place and eerily enough, despite that lack of familiarity, she’d had a knowing that she was meant to be there.

                          Her thirst of discovery was as immense at that time —not that it was less at the moment, but the contrast between her ignorance and the things she knew she could access had been stark and bitterly felt.

                          She couldn’t help but smile at the scene of her past self learning to read and write. When Madame Chesterhope had taken her under her wing in her schemes to approach the Sultan with a worthy price, she had begun to learn from her a modicum of English language, but she would never have dreamt of learning how to read.

                          And there, how ironic that the first place she would learn that, of all the many languages she would learn over the course of their explorations with Georges, was a place from another dimension, with a language she only started to feel she could utter the sonorities of.

                          It was no mistake Leonard had brought them here first. Now she was thinking back, reminiscing this period of time, she recognized how much she loved the languages of the Turmakis. For her, it was as close as “home” a foreign culture could be called.

                          #1233

                          When he had been hit by the blow of the watermelbombs and the furious lady he had come to rescue, Akita found himself in a strange peaceful place. He was getting bits of what was happening, but the will to resist and fight seemed vanished in a distant scene he was only distantly aware of.
                          He was seeing Kay, his spirit dog beside him, beckoning him to another place of white luminous and warm peacefulness.

                          “Am I dying” he asked, feeling the answer to the question wasn’t very important.
                          “Don’t be silly” the dog said mentally “Just let go for a moment, it’ll make things easier for you to get out of this place to another one you’d prefer”
                          “I’m not sure going anywhere is so important, being here reminds me of something long forgotten”
                          “Yes, you know this place, you’re drawing to you some memories of others of your focuses, explorers from your time and also ancient dwellers, in a very very distant past. These living memories will help you.”
                          “You were there too, configured differently but I remember you from there”
                          “Yes” the dog nodded “you had a pack of dogs in one of these explorer focuses. I was the alpha one, see…”

                          Some scenes moved in the white foam sprinkled with diamond dust like he was seeing through openings in a crystal cave. All was so clear it was elating.

                          “But we’re never going to get out of this place, not without a boat, a plane, not without a compass… and not without a brain!” he was being drawn back to where his body was, wrapped in the warm snet, jumping on the back of the snow scooter. “These women will lead us to a sure death, and pretty fast!”
                          “Just relax, even if they don’t give that impression, they know what they are doing. They focus on what they want, and they trust. They can’t see the dead-ends you are seeing. Sometimes you get caught up in those other memories of yours. You’ve read adventures of Antarctica explorers, most of them were drama, but it doesn’t have to be the same broken record now, you’re going to love that time if you choose to…”
                          “They’re so focused on themselves it’s hard to believe you. They wouldn’t see a leopard seal as a threat even if it was at their throats!”
                          “But they wouldn’t even draw the predator to them in the first place.” Kay was saying warmly “Have a little faith in them, there is a surprise coming along that’ll show you beyond a shred of doubt that their allowing for miracles is fairly titanic.”
                          “Titanic, yes… Now tell me I shouldn’t worry with all those icebergs!”
                          “Indeed” Kay said with a hint of mischief in its ethereal voice “Now, let’s wake up and have some fun!”

                          #1229

                          “Is there a probable Becky still at the Serendib Facility ~ in-the-rural-mountainous-central-region-of Sri-Lanka-in-the-2030’s ~ Godfrey?” Elizabeth hurriedly included some background information in her question to appease her publisher, the erudite and enigmatic Godfrey Pig-Littleton.

                          Elizabeth was amused to note that erudite was almost an opposite to rude, but as Elizabeth could vouch for, neither was mutually exclusive, as Godfrey was clearly equally at ease exhibiting both ends of the rude spectrum. But I digress, she said to herself, turning her attention to Godfrey.

                          Elizabeth,” he said with a frown, “At your request I have had installed all manner of information retrieval systems, both objective and subjective, and yet you will insist on asking me questions instead of accessing the information yourself.” Godfrey shivered, attempting to wrap his velvet smoking jacket closer round his spare frame. The rich claret colour suited him perfectly, but it was clearly inadequate against the bitter cold. “Put another log on the fire, Liz, it’s colder than a witches tit in here today!”

                          “Don’t be rude, Godfrey” replied Elizabeth with a sniff. “I’m too cold to move, you do it. I’ve been absolutely frozen ever since Al sent us all to the South Pole. As a matter of fact, there’s been a cold snap all over the globe, which is why” she continued “I am trying to get us all out of there and back to Sri Lanka! We don’t want to start another Ice Age, Godfrey, this has to stop.”

                          “Ah, those were the days” smiled Pig Littleton. “I remember it well. It all started when Aunt Jeanne du Bappe was writing her book and wanted more ice for her G&T. Somehow it all escalated out of control, and before you could say Boo to a Goose, the whole place was covered in glaciers. A few million years later, when she’d slept off the effects of the gin, it was just beginning to thaw…”

                          “Dear old Jeanne, where is she now? I haven’t heard from her for…er, aeons.”

                          “Oh, she’s in fine fettle, got a job in The City you know. They say she’s quite something in The City these days, got quite a name for herself in Design & Communications.”

                          “Has she now! She’s done well for herself then, last I heard she was tiling kitchens in New Venice.”

                          Pig Littleton snorted. “Aunt Jeanne du Bappe, tiling in New Venice? Don’t be ridiculous, Liz, you’re getting your timelines in a twist. I expect that was one of her protegée’s, Aunt Jeanne’s been in The City for —well…”

                          Godfrey was uncharacteristically stumped.

                          Elizabeth wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to tease her old friend. “For how long?”

                          “For a very long Now”

                          “Well, I must say, that’s a fine thing isn’t it, to start an ice age and then bugger off to The City while everyone else freezes their tits off” said Elizabeth, blowing on her hands to warm them.

                          “You do realize, Liz dear, that every time you mention the word Cold, or Frozen, or Ice Age, you are increasing the potential of the Ice Age in the Probability Pool?”

                          Godfrey, the Probability Pool has frozen over. We’ll be skating right over the top of it instead of dipping into it, if we don’t start a thaw soon!”

                          #1827

                          In reply to: Synchronicity

                          ÉricÉric
                          Keymaster

                            Antarctica expedition:

                            #1186

                            Arona was fretting.

                            “Now, what is this all about? Can someone explain me? The purple sand is pretty, the green sky too, however it looks just like an insane dream from a deranged mind having abused smoke of robjane leaves.”

                            Framing Irtak —who was having a funny pout on his face— the dragons Heckle and Jeckle were too busy considering with an amused attention the new form and energy field that their progenitor had taken.

                            No words were spoken to answer Arona’s plea for answers, but answers were starting to come to them in the form of a bundle of energy which would be difficult to translate in a linear manner.

                            They started to understand a few things. That for one, N’meôrl the Nirgual was not here by chance, at this place and time. Again, they had travelled far in the past of the history of their dimension, and events of great importance were in motion, that they were given to witness.

                            At first, the flow of information they were having was like a stream they thought they had no control of, but as questions were forming they noticed that it was altering the flow which was then encompassing the answers to those questions.

                            Like when Jeckle wondered if he and his twin had big birdies counterparts like this one to merge with, and got the following answer “No. For you are quite new essences fragments, and thus do not yet hold focuses in similar extent to your progenitor.”

                            Arona was quite pleased by this new mode of getting answers, especially as she could visibly get the answers she was genuinely looking for, not those coming from questions she was only remotely interested in.

                            N’meôrl was showing them also, that unlike him, they were not quite physically focused into that environment, and were not noticed by the small surrounding creatures like the little red scrabs crawling in the sand. They were mainly there to observe and draw their own conclusions, as soon some events would occur.

                            As they’d finished absorbing the information, they started to notice a feeling of expectation in the air. N’meôrl conveyed to them that they would have to stay quiet in his peripheral awareness for “they” were coming, and he was on a delicate mission.

                            :fleuron:

                            Footsteps on the beach.
                            A man approaching. He looks like Irtak and Arona, as if he had just come into this alien world from the same door they had taken. But he fails to notice them.

                            He stays, facing the deep green waters of the ocean brushing the shore, as if expecting someone.

                            A strange buzz starts to fill the space. A point of focused light the size of a pinhole appears in front of him, expands quickly with an elastic quality, and pops with a soft sound, revealing an improbably tall figure under a cloak.

                            The man greets the new-comer with deference
                            “Master Sinadron
                            Jarvis, my good friend.”

                            They start to walk on the beach at the unspoken invitation of the one with the smooth voice named Sinadron.

                            “So, I’ve been told our little matter is going very well.”
                            “Yes, very well, Master; I am deeply grateful for your intervention; without your help I’ve been told, my dear would not have been allowed to…”
                            “Let’s not talk of such things any longer; it was such a delight to help two sweet young souls so deeply in love”

                            Somehow, despite the words of kindness which are slithering with ease, the invisible witness got the uncanny feeling that they are but a deceptive fragment of the truth.

                            “Now. Tell me”, the one named Sinadron continues in a mellifluous voice “Why have you called me for?”
                            “The settlement you have suggested us to start on this land…”
                            “Yes, I am aware, please go to the point instead of labouring things I am well aware of.” The voice had sharpened a bit.
                            “I am sorry Master.”
                            “Continue”
                            “There is a growing dissent that…”
                            “And from who that shall come?”
                            “Err… I hear Pelorus has spoken to the Zentauras…”
                            “Pelorus is but a nuisance.” The voice wasn’t asking for contradiction, though an imperceptible grin was floating on the half-hidden face.
                            He continued “But I shall help you, once again
                            “Master, you are too generous…”
                            “Let me finish. I will provide you with more men and women, willing to start a new life under your command, to help you grow your settlement. There are a few slaves on the Duane, that place from where you come who will do great.”
                            “Master…”
                            “They will be there in an hexade. Make sure you stand your ground until then, even if that means confronting those nasty Zentauras.”

                            And without waiting for the confused thanks, he disappeared, grinning widely.

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