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  • #3634

    In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

    TracyTracy
    Participant

      edge teleporting bridge
      enjoy sight others whispered
      built carefully
      village travelers cup hours
      wide hook land line dream
      free travel form

      #3629

      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

      TracyTracy
      Participant

        It was good to get off the ship and finally arrive. Lizette had been having doubts during the long journey, wondering if she had made the right decision. Admittedly she’d been bored back home on earth and was ready for a new adventure, but once on board the ship, the doubts had crept in. Often she had woken up in the night during the journey in sheer panic, feeling trapped, but had managed to calm down and look on the bright side. The settlers needed her unique skills and her usual unbridled enthusiasm, and it would do nobody any good if she gave in to moments of fear and confusion.

        Finnley 8 had helped her adjust her suit, which seemed cumbersome and restricting ~ Lizette normally preferred to wear next to nothing back on earth. But with her customary sanguine attitude, she quipped to the robot, “Well, at least I don’t have to wear a bra underneath all this bumph!”, to which Finnley 8 made no reply.

        #3627

        In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

        ÉricÉric
        Keymaster

          Karthik was feeding some nonsense to the AI, while inspecting the logs of the central intelligence.

          Finnley was listening with great interest to the teleporting stories of Togi Bear in Outlandis that he was spinning.

          Dear Lord, he said after his maintenance routine was over, I wish they had an opening for creative writing, so that someone else can take this silly job. Blathering all this nonsense is exhausting.

          Sadly, it was known to be the only thing that would keep the AI evolving and learning, and operating the mothership.
          New information to sort and sieve through was the AI’s purpose. As much as humans were feeding off food, they fed off information.

          #3626
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            “I wasn’t expecting a mutiny this morning, really, how inconsiderate of them, they could at least have waited until I’d had my breakfast. You just can’t get the characters these days. Plotting against me all night while I slept the sweet sleep of an innocent lamb, I ask you! Where will it all end?!

            Ah well. They were due to be pensioned off anyway, poor decrepit old things, past their write by date anyway.”

            Liz was initially speechless, then miffed ~ but then an idea started brewing in sync with the kettle.

            #3625

            In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              “So what’s around there to do?” Prune asked Maya at the welcome party.
              She gauged the woman, who had an air of de facto authority, and seemed open and friendly with everyone. A bit too much to Prune’s tastes to be honest.

              “Whatever you feel like. It’s the magic of it. It’s all open, all up to us to build the world we want.”
              “Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to do.” Prune snickered against her will.
              “That’s the thing. It’s only work if your heart isn’t in it. For most of us, it’s our life’s purpose, and we quite enjoy it. Not to say there aren’t some days we’re tired of it…” Maya smiled, “but we make the best of it anyway.”

              Prune didn’t think of anything clever to retort, and didn’t want to look into all those years of resentment after her family for limiting her. Maybe her family was for nothing in it. The thought of it was terrifying.

              Maya broke the uneasy silence with lightly compassion “And what brought you here? I mean, apart from the obvious… The real reason you took this harrowing trip to nowhere?”
              Prune shrugged, and almost immediately started to giggle uncontrollably while catching her stomach. Stop it, stop it she whispered to her stomach.

              Maya smiled. “You should let it out. It’s been a while I haven’t seen one. They’re so cuddly and cute.”
              Prune stopped speechless with surprise.
              Maya laughed “The hair on your clothes is a bit of a giveaway. Come on, don’t worry, the quarantine is pretty relaxed here.”

              Prune let the little guinea pig out of her jacket, and it squealed in delight. She let a smile open her face “It’s the last surviving one of my grandmother’s. I just couldn’t leave it…”

              Maya rose from her formica chair, and took her arm. “Come, I’ll show you the crops. We have some fantastic kale, I’m sure it’ll love it.”

              #3624

              In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                Godfrey was a supervisor of the miners team. After the landing, and the greetings by the locals, the lucky draw had him and his team assigned to the sulfur mines, which were vital to the colonies to fertilize the plants.
                For him, hardly lucky at all.
                Rotten eggs and smelly fish, he thought, at least one of us will be pleased

                “Norbert!” he called “Are all the equipments ready to move?”
                “One more cargo, and we’re good to go.”
                “OK, everybody, let’s get ready to move.”

                Somehow, the outlook didn’t feel as bad,… almost a breather of fresh oxygen and freedom.

                #3623
                ÉricÉric
                Keymaster

                  Finnley’s tirade stirred something in Godfrey.

                  He may not have completely given voice of the thought in his head, but it made him realize that the thought of quitting for something different had been here all along.
                  He liked Elizabeth well enough. To be honest, such caring for an ungrateful and volatile lady was borderline devotion, but still, it wasn’t about that.

                  I wanted to change the world, and Elizabeth vision of greatness and madness alike was, for a time, something he could fall in line behind and support with passion.

                  Through visionary books, to open the minds of the pleb to the realms of possibilities, ah! no matter how deliciously delirious and quaint such possibilities seemed. That was a grand epic in budding.

                  And then, after so many years of relentless editing, copy-writing, and of course maid after maid interviews, all there was left? Unbridled madness and tyranny from the well of grandiose ideas that Elizabeth had been, and to some extent still, was.

                  In fact, Godfrey had stifled his own creativity by falling in line behind the writing giantess. There were timid attempts at writing his own story, and only piles of old notebook to account for it.

                  Purpose, Truth, Action those were the magic words…

                  “Oh, bugger it Liz’. I quit.”

                  How’s that for action? Another thread would do me good. Like to see what life’s brewing on Mars.

                  #3622
                  F LoveF Love
                  Participant

                    ”And that’s another thing,” she continued. ”Why do all your characters have to be in some form of servitude to you?”

                    She looked accusingly at Elizabeth.

                    “I’m a lowly cleaner and Godfrey’s sole purpose in life seems to be to agree with everything you say and now poor old Norbert is a gardener! From New Zealand! Of all the godforsaken places you could have chosen.”

                    “Steady on, Finnley …” began Godfrey

                    Finnley ignored him.

                    “You could have made the poor man anything and yet you made him another slave to carry out your every warped whim. Granted, that was rather an obscure comment I made about him liking smelly old fish. Perhaps that did narrow your options somewhat.”

                    Exhausted, Finnley lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

                    Elizabeth gazed at her in awed admiration. ”Finnley, your perceptiveness has rendered me speechless.”

                    #3618

                    Aunt Idle:

                    Bert came with me. Usually one of us always stayed home to keep an eye on Mater and the kids, but now we had that capable girl, Finly, to keep an eye on things.

                    It was good to get away from the place for a few hours, and head off on a different route to the usual shopping and errand trips. The nearest sizable town was in the opposite direction; it was years since I’d been to Ninetown. I asked Bert about the place on the other side of the river, what was it that intrigued him so. I’ll be honest, I wondered if he was losing his marbles when he said it was the medieval ruins over there.

                    “Don’t be daft, Bert, how can there be medieval ruins over there?” I asked.

                    “I didn’t say they were medieval, Idle, I said that’s what they looked like,” he replied.

                    “But …but history, Bert! There’s no history here of medieval towns! Who could have built it?”

                    “That’s why I found it so fucking interesting, but if it doesn’t fit the picture, nobody wants to hear anything about it!”

                    “Well I’m interested Bert. Yes, yes, I know I wasn’t interested before, but I am now.”

                    Bert grunted and lit a cigarette.

                    ~~~

                    We stopped at a roadside restaurant just outside Ninetown for lunch. The midday heat was enervating, but inside the restaurant was a pleasant few degrees cooler. Bert wasn’t one for small talk, so I picked up a local paper to peruse while I ate my sandwich and Bert tucked into a greasy heap of chips and meat. I flicked through it without much interest in the mundane goings on of the town, that is, until I saw those names: Tattler, Trout and Trueman.

                    It was an article about a ghost town on the other side of Ninetown that had been bought up by a consortium of doctors. Apparently they’d acquired it for pennies as it had been completely deserted for decades, with the intention of developing it into an exclusive clinic.

                    “There’s something fishy about that!” I exclaimed, a bit too loudly. Several of the locals turned to look at me. I lowered my voice, not wanting to attract any more attention while I tried to make sense of it.

                    “Read this!” I passed the paper over the Bert.

                    “So what?” he asked. “Who cares?”

                    “Look!” I said, jabbing my finger on the names Tattler, Trout and Trueman. Bert looked puzzled, understandably enough. “Allow me to explain” I said, and I told him about the business card that Flora had left on the porch table.

                    “What does Flora have to do with this consortium of doctors? And what the hell is the point in setting up a clinic there, in the middle of nowhere?”

                    “That,” I replied, “Is the question!”

                    #3617

                    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

                    ÉricÉric
                    Keymaster

                      Being a distinguished host, Mother Shirley had been assigned one of the Finnleys bodies, the one with the number 21 plastered on its forehead.
                      “Twinnie,” she called in her croak of a voice “do the thing!”

                      Finnley 21 rolled her eyes to connect to her inner source, which was the main computer board, and a stream of random words started to flow down like colander water:

                      half leading usually jack gave legs secret stick
                      light plan fell yourself elizabeth sometimes child
                      downson recovery management karmalott surprise early

                      Shirley clapped her hands gleefully like a child. “How wonderful Twinnie, you’re my personal Oracle, the words of the Mighty Goddess of War have never felt so close and special to me.”
                      Mother Shirley looked undisturbed by the lack of response from the cybernetic body, and went on “Now, will you, help me adjust this headpiece, it chafes at the temples.”

                      #3609
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        “Perhaps,” said Elizabeth, “A little less fucking reading and a bit more writing would help this story along.”

                        “Perhaps” replied Finnley sniffily, “You should be the one to start.”

                        #3608
                        F LoveF Love
                        Participant

                          “What ARE you reading, Finnley?”

                          “Just a book I picked up in Paris,” she replied nonchalantly, hoping that would be enough information to appease Elizabeth’s curiosity. And also, as an added bonus, adding a certain je ne sais quoi to her vibe. Finley knew she could come across as a tad boring, something she was quite proud of. Still, it didn’t hurt to mix things up every now and then.

                          Elizabeth sighed loudly. “If you can’t think of anything sensible to say then I wish you would just talk nonsense. Or go to another thread” she added as an afterthought, wondering just whose thread this was anyway. Finley was tending to monopolise things lately. Even without saying much.

                          “At least I am reading a fucking book”, muttered Finnley under her breath.

                          That being a euphemism for writing a fucking comment of course.

                          #3606
                          TracyTracy
                          Participant

                            Finnley got a book out of her bag and started reading, rather rudely, Elizabeth thought.

                            Liz leaned over so that she could read over Finnley’s shoulder, in the absence of anyone to talk to as all the characters had been written out of the script.

                            “…full of misinformation and wrong opinions.” she read.

                            “Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.”

                            (A point worth bearing in mind, Liz thought)

                            “But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people’s.”

                            “Ah, but, sir, it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people’s work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one’s own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one’s theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.”

                            “Hmm, you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place.”

                            When Elizabeth had had enough of reading, she wrote Godfrey back into the script.

                            #3605
                            TracyTracy
                            Participant

                              “The law is an ass, Godfrey,” Elizabeth said, extricating a bit of sag paneer from between her teeth that he had drawn her attention to. “I have no intention of wasting my time in court. As a matter of fact, I’ve written the critic out of the story. And the court. Waste of fecking time, fecking gobshites, the fecking lot of them.”

                              “You seem to be developing an Irish accent, Liz,” he replied, signalling the waiter for the bill.

                              “What did you do that for? There was no bill to pay until you introduced the fecking waiter into the script!”

                              “If you don’t pay the bill or turn up in court, the police will come and arrest you, Liz, have you considered that?”

                              “What fecking police?” she replied.

                              “Who are you talking to?” asked Finnley. “I wrote Godfrey out of the story this morning.”

                              “Whatever for?” Liz asked in surprise.

                              “He kept talking. I hate talking.”

                              Wisely, Elizabeth said nothing.

                              #3604
                              TracyTracy
                              Participant

                                The blast ricocheted throughout the town. It set the dogs barking, chickens squalking and babies crying. Folks dropped what they were doing, in many cases literally: dishes and beer bottles crashed to the floor, as the towns people ran outside to find out what was going on, or ran for cover.

                                Bert, sitting on top of Plater’s Rock watching it all, slapped his thigh, whooped and then laughed until the tears ran like rain season creeks through the desert dry creases of his face. The unaccustomed unbridled mirth provoked a coughing fit: Bert balled up the phlegm that rose in his throat and catapulted gobs of it towards the creek below.

                                Well, that’s finally got that off my chest, he said to himself with another choking cackle.

                                The creek itself after the explosion was obscured from his sight by a thick pall of smoke, but the sputum projectiles were aimed with deadly accuracy at the bridge ~ or where the bridge had been.

                                There was no bridge there now though, not that anyone would have noticed its disappearance if he hadn’t made sure they did. Years he’d spent making that bridge, a bit at a time, with what he could find or chance upon, working on it as often as he had time for. He’d found what he could only describe as a “special place” over on the other side of the creek, it spoke to him and seemed to call on him to bring others. The only way to it from the town was to swim the creek, or drive almost 200 miles by road, via the closest bridge at Ninetown. So Bert decided to build a bridge across, so people could go back and forth with ease and enjoy the place on the other side.

                                Bert had finished the bridge three years ago during the dry season, and invited everyone over upon it’s completion. Four people turned up, even though he’d set up a picnic and brought coolboxes of champagne and beer, and a big bag of weed. Less than a dozen people used Bert’s bridge in the first two years, and he was the only one to cross over since the last dry season.

                                Finding the dynamite in the old mine shaft a few months back had given him the idea. An impulse had seized him after the unexpected encounter with Elizabeth. He blew the bridge up. It was over. He could breathe again.

                                #3603
                                ÉricÉric
                                Keymaster

                                  “Oh shut up Liz, and finish your curry. Wasn’t it your brilliant idea to have Indian food before the court audition?”
                                  Godfrey smiled a painful smile eating with teary eyes a last spoonful of spicy butter chicken, thinking about Liz feeling the energy and enjoyment in the loo the next day.

                                  #3601
                                  TracyTracy
                                  Participant

                                    Deep in thought, Devan didn’t notice Finly watching him from the end of the porch. As he clumped down the steps and made his way towards the clapped out banger that served as transport to work, she weighed him up, pausing for a moment with the window cleaning cloth poised in mid air.

                                    He was young, but then, she liked them young. Virile, energetic, easily controlled. The rebellious ones were not so rebellious towards an older woman of experience in their bed. Not that she was all that much older than he was, but the difference in age was enough to create an air of experience. Finly liked to keep on top of things ~ both her cleaning duties, and her young men.

                                    Nice ass, she said to herself, with a warm tingle of anticipation, rubbing the windows with renewed vigour. She licked her lips, smirking at her reflection in the glass, and then blew herself a kiss. A slight movement caught her eye. Prune bobbed her tongue out, and then disappeared from view.

                                    #3599
                                    TracyTracy
                                    Participant

                                      Corrie:

                                      I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

                                      My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

                                      At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

                                      The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

                                      Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

                                      The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

                                      I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

                                      #3597
                                      TracyTracy
                                      Participant

                                        Yogi’s teleporting classes in Camden Town had been going on for about 6 months, a small group of people determined to master the art, each member dedicated to the pursuit for particular reasons of their own.

                                        Freya wanted to be able to travel, but was restricted because of her dogs and cats. He aim was to “lunch travel” and have lunch in a different country every day, being home in the mornings and evenings to look after her pets. John wanted to retire to the south of France, but keep an eye on his book shop in London, without the tedium and expense of airline flights. Justin, however, was a black bloc anarchist, and wanted to be able to teleport to protests all over the world, and be able to evade police kettles, and escape from Jail should he ever find himself in that position. Samantha was writing an exposé on the nefarious goings on of government ministers, but was for obvious reasons denied access to the places and documents that she needed to see. Fred missed his children and wanted to visit them, an impossibility in his current homeless destitute situation. Luckily for Fred, Yogi didn’t charge a fee for the classes, more interested in determination and commitment than monetary rewards.

                                        Fred had managed on several occasions to project his awareness to the Flying Fish Inn, but had not yet achieved a full physical materialization. He had blinked in and out a couple of times, but had become nervous of frightening the children when he’d unintentionally startled Mater.

                                        #3595
                                        F LoveF Love
                                        Participant

                                          Bugger caution, thought Finnley. “My cousin Finly has a new job,” she said impulsively to Godfrey, while they waited for Elizabeth to return from the loo.

                                          Godfrey jumped.

                                          “Finnley, I didn’t realise you were there. How very interesting. Where is your cousin working?”

                                          Finnley sighed loudly and decided impulsive conversation was overrated. Why do people always want to know more? She had given him the bloody gist of it hadn’t she?

                                          “Don’t make me talk. I hate talking,” she said, rudely rolling her eyes.

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