Search Results for 'ten'
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Search Results
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In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Miss Bossy Pants contemplated her pale and wan appearance in the bathroom mirror. She wondered if she was well enough to turn up at work today.
Don’t want anyone else to catch anything off me…
However, It was important they did not lose momentum with the competition out there chomping at their heels.
“There is too much talking about writing and not enough actual writing,” Bossy grumbled to her reflection while she dealt to the under eye circles with some concealer.
Of course, that was Hilda to a T; always yabbering on about some stupendous idea for a story but when it came to actually putting pen to paper … well that was quite another matter.
Connie had started out with some potential but was becoming increasingly aggressive and alienating her leads.
How many times must I tell her that clenching her fists and refusing to make eye contact makes her appear shifty and untrustworthy? Bossy slammed some lipstick on her mouth with unnecessary force.
And that new staff member, what’s his name?
Prout, that’s right.
Bright enough but a bit of a moaner. Bad for morale all that moaning. As for sweet old Sophie, the temp, she seemed to be losing more and more marbles by the minute.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
dream lack hardly beginning human
situation making thought
usually team water during run
became suitcase under discussion
listen energy reality himselfIn reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
The meeting went surprisingly fast, it was almost disappointing.
The Indian butler with the turban told Connie that Mr Asparagus went for a trip of unknown duration to some hidden getaway, and wouldn’t be available for further questioning.“That rude tart!” Connie fumed to herself, she had just been sent on another wild goose chase. Although the hidden getaway did seem intriguing, but she lacked the patience to quiz the help. She’d rather squeeze something violently, which she took as a cue to a prompt exit before further damage.
“That guy looked suspicious” Ric managed to say as they were leaving.
Connie’s brains wasn’t performing at peak form when she was getting angry, so she only managed to roll her eyes, thinking about how everyone looked suspiciously in need of a punch these days.
“Yeah, he kind of looked Sikh, no big deal.”It was almost lunchtime. She tried to bip Hilda, but got her voice message saying she was on business trip. Again… That tart had the shortest attention span Connie had ever seen. Coupled with inexhaustible capacity at marveling at stuff, it made her quite good at her job, and seeing things always with a new angle.
It was now official. She was depressed. That was a good tentative at stepping out of the comfort bubble today.
Then, when she spotted a few Chinese housewives doing Chinese zumba in the park at the sound of a loud music, she thought…
Maybe she had time to push it a little further.In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
The phone rang, putting paid to Hilda’s intention of going back to sleep. There was evidence that the random face puncher had lashed out again, this time in Boston. Boston! Hilda quickly packed a flight bag, vaguely wondering why she didn’t have suitcase packing staff on hand. There was no time to watch a “how to pack a suitcase” video, either. The verdigris statue lay tits up on the smashed concrete sidewalk, indicating that the face puncher packed quite a punch. Hilda grinned at the thought of the danger bonus payment for this assignment, and then scowled at the thought of US customs crotch gropers. She toyed with the idea of wearing a codpiece stuffed with dried chamomile, just for a laugh, but thought better of it.
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Hilda woke up rubbing her jaw, recalling the odd dream about pulling a splinter of bone out of a hole in her mouth where a molar should have been. There had been a sharp point sticking out of her gum, and she pulled ~ and pulled ~ and the bone shard that appeared in her hand seemed much too big to have come out of her mouth. What does that symbolize, she wondered? She was sure miss bossy behind the scenes pants would have something wittily disparaging to say about the imagery. But then an idea struck her: perhaps it was part of the Polar Molar story that she was connecting to.
Hilda had been wanting to join the new Dream Investigation course for reporters, but felt the need to practice first before joining the class. There wasn’t much point in attending with no dream recall at all. Not much point in joining with just the bare bones, so to speak, of a rudimentary isolated snippet of recall either. Perhaps she’d go back to sleep and try to fill in some gaps. If she was late to the office, she could say she’d been following an unexpected lead on the story.
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Connie looked at the Bossy Pants instructions, her face inscrutable.
Hilda was not up yet, probably passed out on her couch after a night of debauchery and snorting pepsain. As usual, she’d left a heap of links on her blog for Connie to choose from. Well, and of course, to sexy-bait them up. There were times she was glad she didn’t have to face all the people herself and interview them. Today was not one of them.
She gestured at the awkward new intern. He passed a head through the door. She didn’t give him the time to open his mouth. “Another chamomile tea,… thaaank you.” He disappeared hurriedly.
“At least this one gets me.”
For today, chamomile was the least of evils. Anything stronger would have her go full contact on any one daring to even look at her. If people knew the efforts she made daily.
Her self-defence instructor knew something about it. She almost sent him to the hospital last week.Glancing upon the list of notes, she noticed that Hilda had made a highlight to double check on the gouda cat-like man. That was strange. Hilda wasn’t one to come back on stuff once shared and published. Definitively not the past-dwelling profile. There must have been something more.
“Well, know what, old tart: early bird gets the worm.”
She rose from the swivel chair, taking her purse swiftly and aiming for the exit door with the path of least eye-contact when the odd guy appeared again with the damn tea. She’d forgotten about that. Again, her brains firing at full speed, she didn’t leave him time to tell or ask anything.
“You don’t know where Joel is? Of course not…” The photographer was probably on another assignment. Had not been seen for weeks it seemed. Not that she cared, he would have been more like an alibi for her to go an a follow-up mission.
Sometimes her brains would also make her do the darnedest thing. She couldn’t stop herself from telling to the hapless intern.
“You look too happy Ric. Take your coat and come with me.”
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Ricardo had finished cleaning the tea cups in the empty office. He liked the job alright, it was a bit silly of him to surmise people would clean their own cups, and do their own teas. That was what he’d meant with the team job comment.
Connie and Hilda were right, totally right about it; he couldn’t expect too much, he’d just arrived, he was just a simple intern in a prestigious journalistic establishment. He’d come here to learn the tricks of the trade, when he’d answered the wanted: secretary and cleaner ad of last week.
So far, there was only so much golden nuggets of weirdo news he could find. You’d need some serious training to get to the level of Hilda and Connie, the dynamic duo.For now, he was content to being put to menial tasks, it helped know the colleagues better, support them as he could with the pressure on the deadlines. And also, improving the typos and legibility by cleaning up the loose letters dropped during typesetting.
His own headline baiting skill was still rather low —it was an art to create the perfectly sexyied up heading, not too tacky, but enticing enough to captivate the readership’s attention.
If Hilda was the queen of headline fishing, Connie was undoubtedly the empress of headline baiting.In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
Ever since she had read H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine” when she was 12, Sophie had been obsessed by the future. Now being a sweet old lady of 86, you would think she had used her share of the future and for most people her age it would be true. The trend would reverse and they would end up obsessed with the past.
But for sweet old Sophie, who was living in Eastend London, her interest in life was mostly fed by news of the future. She didn’t know how it was possible, but she certainly believed it was. And who better than a time traveller could send news from the future ?
She had been interested recently by an article about the telebeamer. They wanted to make you believe that in 2035 it was still impossible to transport yourself instantly from one place to another. She didn’t believe it of course. If time travel was possible, beaming yourself should be child’s play.
Sweet Sophie was not good at math when she was young, but she was good at puzzles. She had a knack with patterns and immediately see where the pieces fit together or not. The articles on that website were like puzzle pieces. All she had to do was sort out the facts from fiction and find her map to the time machine.
Now that she had found this invaluable source of information, she could plan her next move.
In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions
Edward Cayper had been absorbed on the mesmerizing display of the large monitoring screens. He’d liked to believe it was a meditation of sorts. The simulation made the most tantalizing displays, ever changing.
Although there had been flitches. Increasingly. He called them flitches, scratchy flea-like glitches, all small and jumpy, but he had an eye for them. He was, after all, one of the early designers of the Program. REYE – Reality Emergence Yielding Existence. That didn’t mean much, but sounded cool at the time.
REYE was in its eighth stable upgrade. Despite the flitches, it had evolved at exponential speed.Edward swiveled from his chair to look behind his desk. A series of pods was lined up with sensory deprivation tanks hosting hundreds of plugged-in bodies dreaming in synch with his creation.
He’d been told they were volunteers to participate in the largest mind control experiment in the world. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t a lie, but didn’t care so much.
REYE was in charge of coordinating the whole program with astronomical and minute precision. Each person linked to the program believed they had become ascended (or something similarly close to their metaphysical belief). Free of the bonding of space, time and corporal existence, they were taught into a very subtle and complex system of attunement to higher truths. A large basket of bollocks of course, but while they were doing it, and deeply believing it to be real, the mind-energy they produced was redirected to certain mind control experiments.Since they started in the 80s, the program had had slow progress. In the beginning, only a few sprouts of channellers appeared near their area, in Nevada. They were quite timid at first, full of doubts about their hearing or seeing voices – still better than the abductions of earlier, when many went completely nuts. But now, progresses were made steadily, and with much less effort. Edward personally believed that the network of waves created by cellphone proliferation had a factor in this trend. Such interconnexion made everything easier.
Within the program, the flitchy Ascended Masters still had to be reconditioned from time to time. On the vitals of Jane Pierce (a.a.a. “also avatared as” Dispersee within the program), Edward could see there were occasional resistance and stress, which in turn made the glitches more frequent. A change in her drugs dosage would do fine to level the serotonin in her bloodstream. It would be that, or unplugging her.
Before leaving the room, like every day, Edward switched the monitor to the camera over one of the pods. Florence Vengard (a.a.a. Floverley), was dreaming peacefully, as usual. Since she’d arrived, he’d felt connected to her. He imagined her with long curly red hair floating in the milk bath instead of the bath-cap that made the maintenance so much easier. He was told she had overdosed on pills, and wouldn’t wake up. The program seemed to be tethering her to life, frozen in time.
A well-oiled machine.
If you overlooked the small things… that REYE was becoming more inquisitive, and Edward suspected, greedy too. He had seen subtle gaps in the mind-energy gauges, it couldn’t be a coincidence. The program was becoming too smart, maybe too human.It couldn’t bode well.
In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions
Dispersee couldn’t stop thinking about the carbonite, feeling that there must be more to it than just a master tricksters method to slim down the graduate class. She wasn’t even all that surprised when, within moments of research, she had chanced upon the Villa Poppacea in Italy, although it wasn’t the carbonized apple that interested her.
Some of her students were studying their Roman connections, assuming not altogether wrongly that the explorations would assist their ascension process. It appeared that one of the individuals that had come to their attention, Lucius Crassius, had owned the neighbouring villa.
In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
As Prune spoke the magic words releasing her aunt from marbledom, an unforeseen chain reaction of uncrusting began. One by one the concrete statues and animals that Idle had been collecting became more yielding, less rigid. They didn’t all start gallivanting around at once, it was a slow process depending on the length of time they had been solid.
The buddha by the fish pond had had his knees bent for so long it would be some time before he could straighten them, but it was with great joy that he raised a hand from his lap to scratch the fly droppings off the tip of his nose. He was just about to make a remark about foolish idle people and wise diligent ones when it occurred to him that he’d been completely idle for quite some time, and that it hadn’t been his fault. The unaccustomed questioning of his rather rigid beliefs accelerated the uncrusting process, and he was able to turn his head to see the odd looking cat approaching, but unable to move his arm quickly enough to stop it spraying him with piss.
You have no idea how long I’ve been holding that, said the cat, somewhat telepathically.
A loud gravelly sounding laugh echoed across the pond, coming from the direction of the green man plaque on the wall. The unfamiliar cackle drew Clove out from the kitchen to see who it was.
“I have so much to say!” the green man cleared his throat, spitting out some moss that had become stuck between his teeth, “And I’ve waited so long to say it! You there, you! Don’t go away!” The green man immediately realized his predicament. He had a face but no body. He would have to wait until an audience came to him to listen.
But Clove was interested and inched closer. She had just been researching Dionysus for a project; what a fortuitous coincidence that a replica of him had come to life. She would be able to interview him for her report. She’d just read that “It is perhaps an indication of the Green Man’s power as an archetype that he was able to transfer so seamlessly from one culture and one set of beliefs to another.”
This was exactly the angle she was after.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
self dust heart once silly rat leader
missed dream robot intelligence
bending listen house thought
jar mean secret liked full cleanIn reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“You rang, madam?” asked the butler, adjusting his oversized blue turban.
“Ah, Lazuli! How are you settling in?” asked Liz.
“I’ve only just been written into this thread, madam, moments ago. Do I have to call you madam?”
“Only when you want to be rude, according to Finnley,” Liz said, glancing fondly at the unconscious cleaner.
“This thread appears to be going nowhere, madam,” Lazuli remarked thoughtfully.
“I can write Fanella into it if you like,” Liz quickly tried to entice him to stay.
Lazuli Galore’s eyes lit up. “Did somebody mention something about sexing the story up a bit?” he asked hopefully. “We’d be the perfect characters for that.”
“Well, if its ok with Finnley, it’s ok with me. If you can wake her, we can ask her now.”
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“Cheer up, old bean,” Liz said kindly, reading his mind. “There’s a rendezvous at the Absinthe Cafe soon. Aunt Idle (and I do often wonder why you all insist on calling her Dido; it’s nothing more than a deliberate confusion tactic for the poor reader) will teleport over. It’s a fancy dress party, and my suggestion Godfrey is that you dress up as a particularly dashing superhero, in tights. She won’t be able to take her eyes off you.”
In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on July 01, 2010. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org
Dear FutureMe,
The Absinthe Cafe
Dawn and Mark had a bottle of Absinthe (the proper stuff with the WORMwood in
it, which is illegal in France) but forgot to bring it. Wandering around at
some point, we chanced upon a cafe called Absinthe. Sitting on the terrace, the
waitress came up and looked right at me and said “Oh you are booked to come here
tomorrow night!” and then said “Forget I said that”. Naturally that got our
attention. After we left Dawn spotted a kid with 2016 on the back of his T
shirt. We asked Arkandin about it and we have a concurrent group focus that does
meet in that cafe in 2016, including Britta. Dawn’s name is Isabelle Spencer,
Jib’s is Jennifer….
The Worm & The Suitcase
I borrowed Rachel’s big red suitcase for the trip and stuck a Time Bridgers
sticker on it, and joked before I left about the case disappearing to 2163. I
had an impulse to take a fig tree sapling for Eric and Jib, which did survive
the trip although it looked a little shocked at first. As Eric was repotting
it, we noticed a worm in the soil, and I said, Well, if the fig tree dies at
least you have the worm.
At Balzacs house on a bench in the garden there was a magazine lying there open
to an ad for Spain, which said “If you lose your suitcase it would be the best
thing because you would have to stay”.
Later we asked Arkandin and he said that there was something from the future
inserted into my suitcase. I went all through it wondering what it could be,
and then a couple of days ago Eric said that it was the WORM! because of the
WORMwood absinthe syncs, and worm hole etc. I just had a chat with Franci who
had a big worm sync a couple of days ago, she particularly noticed a very big
worm outside the second hand shop, and noted that she hadn’t seen a worm in ages
~ which is also a sync, because there was a big second hand clothes shop next to
Dawn and Mark’s hotel that I went into looking for a bowler hat.
Arkandin said, by the way, that Jane did forget to mention the bowler hats in
OS7, those two guys on the balcony were indeed wearing bowler hats, and that
they were the same guys that were in my bedroom in the dream I had prior to
finding the Seth stuff ~ Elias and Patel.
Eric replied:And another Time Bridger thing; a while ago, Jib and I had fun planting some TB stickers at random places in Paris (and some on a wooden gate at Jib’s hometown).
Those in Paris I remember were one at the waiting room of a big tech department store, and another on the huge “Bateaux Mouches” sign on the Pont de l’Alma (bridge, the one of Lady D. where there is a gilded replica of Lady Liberty’s flame).
I think there are pics of that on Jib’s or my flickr account somewhere.
When we were walking past this spot, Jib suddenly remembered the TB sticker — meanwhile, the sign which was quite clean before had been written all over, and had other stickers everywhere. We wondered whether it was still here, and there it was! It’s been something like 2 years… Kind of amazing to think it’s still there, and imagine all the people that may have seen it since!
~~~~The Flights
I wasn’t all that keen on flying and procrastinated for ages about the trip. I
flew with EASYjet, so it was nice to see the word EASY everywhere. I got on the
plane to find that they don’t allocate seats, and chose a seat right at the
front on the left. The head flight attendant was extremely playful for the
whole flight, constantly cracking up laughing and teasing the other flight
attendants, who would poke him and make him laugh during announcements so that
he kept having to put the phone down while he laughed. I spent the whole flight
laughing and catching his mischeivously twinking eye.
I asked Arkandin about him and he said his energy was superimposed. I got on
the flight to come home and was met on the plane by the same guy! I said
“HELLO! It’s YOU again! Can I sit in the same seat and are you going to make me
laugh again” and he actually moved the person that was in my seat and said I
could sit there. Then he asked me about my book (about magic and Napolean). He
also said that all his flights all week had been delayed except the two that I
was on. He wanted to give me a card for frequent flyers but I told him I
usually flew without planes ~ that cracked him up
The Dream Bean
Eric cracked open a special big African bean that is supposed to enhance
dreams/lucidity so we all had a bit of it. The second night I remembered a
dream and it was a wonderful one.
(Coincidentally, on the flight home I read a few pages of my book and it just
happened to be about the council of five dragons and misuse of magical beans)
In the dream I had a companion with magical powers, who I presumed was Jib but
it was myself actually. It was a long adventure dream of being chased and
various adventures across the countryside, but there was no stress, it was all
great fun. Everytime things got a bit too close in the dream, I’d hold onto my
friend with magical powers, and we would elevate above the “adventure” and drop
down in another location out of immediate danger ~ although we were never
outside of the adventure, so to speak. At one point I wondered why my magical
freind didn’t just elevate us right up high and out of it completely, and
realized that we were in the adventure game on purpose for the fun of it, so why
would we remove ourselves completely from the adventure game.
In the dream I remember we were heading for Holland at one point, and then the
last part we were safely heading for Turkey…..
The other dream snapshot was “we are all working together on roof tiles” and
Arkandin had some interesting stuff to say about that one.
There were alot of vampire imagery incidents starting with me asking Eric if he
slept in his garden tool box at night, and then the guy who shot out of a door
right next to Jib and Eric’s, in a bright orange T shirt, carrying a cardboard
coffin. He stopped for me to take a photo (and Arkandin said it was a Patel pop
in); then while walking through the outdoor food market someone was chopping a
crate up and a perfect wooden stake flew across the floor and landed at my feet.
The next vampire sync was a shop opposite Dawn and Mark’s hotel with 3 coffins
in the window (I went back to take a pic of the cello actually, didn’t even
notice the coffins). Inside the shop was an EAU DE NIL MOTOR SCOOTER Share, can
you beleive it, and a mummy, a stuffed raven, and a row of (Tardis) Red phone
boxes.
I had a nightmare last night that I couldn’t find any of my (nine) dogs; the
only ones I could find were the dead ones.
~~~~Balzac’s House
The trip to Balzac’s house was interesting, although in somewhat unexpected
ways. (Arkandin was Balzac and I was the cook/housekeeper) The house didn’t
seem “right” somehow to Mark and I and we decided that was probably because
other than the desk there was no furniture in it. Mark saw a black cat that
nobody else saw that was an Arkandin pop in (panther essence animal), and Dawn
felt that he was sitting on a chair, and Mark sat on him. (Arkandin said yes he
did sit on him
The kitchen was being used as an office. Jib felt the house
was too small, and picked up on a focus of his that rented the other part of the
house. (The house was one storey high on the side we entered, and two storeys
high from the road below). There were two pop ins there apparently, one with
long hair which is a connection to my friend Joy who was part of that group
focus, and I can’t recall anything about the other one. Dawn was picking up
that Balzac wasn’t too happy, and I was remembering the part in Cousin Bette
that infuriated me when I read it, where he goes on and on about how disgusting
it is for servants to expect their wages when their “betters” are in dire
straits. Arkandin confirmed that I didn’t get my wages.
The garden was enchanting and had a couple of sphinx statues and a dead pigeon ~
as well as the magazine with the suitcase and Spain imagery. Mark signed the
guest book “brought the cook back” and I replied “no cooking smells this time”.In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“Oh yes, big boots. Very large foot size that Finnley,” murmered Godfrey distractedly.
“Are you listening to me, Godfrey? This is my thread and I demand that you listen to me no matter how much I prattle on incessantly about nothing of any importance. That is precisely what this thread is for.”
But Godfrey did not reply. He sat staring gloomily into the distance. Truth was, he couldn’t get Dido out of his mind; he had wanted to be the one to rescue her from her concrete prison and he would have if it had not been for that damned Roberto. Or was it Roberta?
But once again I fell short, he thought disconsolately.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
stop, wanted lady!
year surely forgotten
simulation supposed voice keep secret mars love
masters managed usually
certainly eye start must topIn reply to: Cakletown and the Lone Chancers of Custard
“Well, it’s a bit tricky, Ed,” replied Evangeline. “I’m moving to another thread, had you forgotten? Today is my last day. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about my leaving party this evening!”
Ed was speechless.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
“There’s a visitor in the drawing room by the name of Bubbles, your highness,” Finnley said with a mock curtsy.
“What on earth are you doing down there, Finnley, pretending to be a red dwarf again? Do act you age and get up at once! Now then, never mind old Bubbles, just make sure she has plenty of carrot champagne and peanuts while she waits. There is something we need to discuss.” Liz was uncharacteristically businesslike. “Something has gone horribly wrong and it will only get worse if we don’t nip it in the bud.”
“Oh?”
“This,” said Liz with a grand sweep of her arm, “This is my haven. This thread is sacrosanct. This is where the stories come from. This is not,” she glared sternly at the diminutive personage before her, “Not where the stories come TO. I’ve just about had enough of stories and other threads knocking on my door and sitting on my threadbare sofas quaffing carrot champagne at the expense of the tranquility I require in which to direct my characters.”
“I see. Shall I tell her to bugger off then?”
“I haven’t finished my diatribe!”
“Oh, right ho then. Carry on.”
“How am I supposed to keep the characters entertained and productive, not to mention in their own stories and not blundering about haphazardly, with all these interruptions?”
“If I may be so bold as to interrupt Madam,” interrupted Finnley with another curtsy, “Why don’t you just delete them all?”
“Don’t be silly, I never delete.”
In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions
Dispersee sat on a fallen tree trunk, lost in thought. A long walk in the woods had seemed just the ticket to release her from her turbulent thoughts, but alas, she had been unable to stop thinking about the ramifications of the new message from the popular ghost.
At first she had been delighted to see it. She had agreed with it. But then she wondered why. Because she already knew all this, and in fact, it was information that could so readily be gleaned by anyone at all simply by engaging ordinary common sense, and run of the mill human compassion. Nothing esoteric was needed. No enlightened messages from the great beyond. In fact, she had said the same as the ghost, and on many occasions. The truth of the matter was that one had to be dead these days to be heard. Nobody was interested in the wise words of the living anymore. It could almost be said that nobody was all that interested in living at all: everyone wanted to be in the future, or the past, or in some other dimension, or planet, or not even physically alive at all anywhere. The individuals in the ascension process were particularly infected with this strange disorder: many of the ordinary uninitiated public were already quite well aware of the contents of the message and were already actively engaged in the process. It was as if the interest in so called shifty matters was an obstacle, an ugly carbuncle over the heart.
Dispersee seriously wondered if the whole shift thing had been a good idea. She was beginning to doubt that it was. The alacrity with which people relied on messages from ghosts at the expense of exercising their own powers of deduction and intuition had caused the whole plan to do disastrously wrong. People didn’t even know how to behave like people anymore. Not only were they afraid of other people, afraid of their governments, afraid of their food, of the sun and the water and the very earth itself, they were afraid of their own human responses, or had forgotten them altogether.
Did it really need a ghost to advise people on media propaganda, and remind them to be compassionate to others who were on an incredible journey, an extraordinary movement during these times of change? And more to the point, did Dispersee need to be involved at all in this futile ascension malarkey?
