On the Shores of the Great Lake

The Roberts family pushed their way through the forest undergrowth, their movements showing the mark of long practice at that task. The father, his face scarred, led the way; the two sons followed, in turn followed by the three daughters, with the mother taking up the rear. Their clothes were ragged and soiled; their faces grimy and lean with hunger; and in their hands, each , from oldest to youngest, bore a loaded gun.

Suddenly, as an unfamiliar scent entered the air, the father came to a halt. The others quickly gathered around him, looking at what had caused his sudden stop. They cried out in delight at what they beheld: a town, and the great blue curve of their destination, Lake Michigan, just beyond.

"Do you think they will have supplieth?" the youngest of the girl lisped eagerly. "Mayhapth we will we able to trade for a boat, Papa!"

"Look," he said grimly, pointing above the town. "No smoke."

The sky above the town was an unbroken blue expanse; neither smoke nor the slightest sound came forth from the town.

"They've been here," the older boy muttered. "Just like every other place we've visited."

"Aye, it's true," the father said, "But Boston's not to be compared to these tiny little towns; they may be bigger than Conringdale, but they're nothing compared to a city."

The mother affirmed, "They shan't have overrun Boston - they may be strong, but they can be killed. Just wait 'till we get there - there'll be proper redcoats waiting to take us to safety, just you see."

"We gotta get there first," the youngest boy said sullenly. "How're we gonna do that without a boat? I'm real sick of walking."

"We'll get a boat," the father said, casting the younger boy a sharp look for his whinging tone. "We'll hug the shoreline and see what we can find - hopefully, they'll have taken the town so swiftly that the locals' didn't have time to take their boats when they fled."

"That's awful!" the middle girl exclaimed.

"It's our best hope," the father said. "Now come on - we've spent enough time lollygagging. Don't want them to catch our scent while we're standing around here."

The docks were deserted; ropes and crates lay abandoned and rotting on the piers. But one boat remained, a small sloop lying low in the water. The family approached it slowly, casting fearful glances back at the town over their shoulder. Silence reigned, save for the soft sound of the waves lapping against the shore.

Then the eldest boy jumped back. "There - in the boat!" he whispered urgently. "It's one of - them! Sleeping, I, I think! What'ddo we do?"

"We kill it," the father said, putting his flintlock to his shoulder and advancing on the boat.

The thing inside was typical of its kind - a crystal pyramid, roughly five feet tall, filled internally with strange fractures and discolourations. It was utterly inert - immoving, unchanging - and appeared rather like some strange mineral formation, moved entirely out of place, quite harmless. But bones were scattered about its base (the remains of whatever poor fellow had attempted, too late, to escape in this vessel), and the faces of the father and his two sons, as they approached it, were white with terror."

"Ten yards," the father whispered, stopping at the specified distance; his sons stood on either side of him, the womenfolk following somewhat further behind, watching the town nervously. "Ready."

The boys brought their flintlocks to their shoulders, readying the hammer. "Aim."

"Fire - " and with three sharp cracks, the thing in the boat was struck. A strange keening noise arose from it, and for a moment it seemed almost, impossibly, as though the shots had gone cleanly through without damage; but then the noise failed, and the crystal pyramid collapsed at once into a pile of broken shards. But as its sound faltered, a greater noise arose to replace it, this time coming from the town.

"They noticed!" the middle girl cried out, her voice high-pitched with terror. "They're coming!"

"It doesn't matter - we're leaving!" the father shouted in reply. "Get in the boat -"

The younger boy interrupted, his voice wobbling. "Papa - look - the boat - it's beached!"

"What?" the father said, looking down in startlement and, increasingly, disgust. "Oh - it's low tide! Of all the things - well. Girls - keep watch on the town, try to slow them down - we'll have this moving in no time." He suited words to action, dropping his discharged flintlock, jumping into the water (it came thigh-high to his breeches) and putting his shoulder to the sloop's hull. His sons followed likewise.

"They're coming," the middle girl said, rocking back and forth nervously. "They're coming, they're coming, they're coming..."

Her mother slapped her, and she stopped; but at that moment another crystal thing emerged from a small building near the docks. It was of much the same size as the last; but this moved, and hummed, and floated a half-foot above the ground. A red glow came from the four points of its body, bespeaking an unholy, inhuman malevolence.

"Kill it! Kill it!" the middle girl cried, and discharged her pistol immediately, the shot flying far of the mark; the mother and younger girl fired with equal abandon, the younger girl's shot coming closer, but not close enough. But the older girl bit her lip, readied her pistol, and waited long moments as the crystal thing drew closer and closer. The mother and middle girl fumbled for the powder-horns at their waists, seeking desperately to reload their weapons; the younger girl latched on to the older and wailed, "Just fire, fire, fire, make it stop!" The older girl threw her off as the thing approached within fifteen yards' distance, the red glow on its points intensifying; and only then did she fire, striking it solidly about the top. With a thud it fell to the ground, and while its keening only quieted, and the dreadful glow about it only somewhat faded, for the moment it ceased to move.

But the father and sons were together unable to move the sloop. "What could be making it so heavy?" the older son gasped, his breath coming unevenly. "It won't budge an inch!"

With a start, the younger son called out - "It's the shattered bits of thing still in there - it looks like crystal, but we know it's not, so stands to reason it's heavier too! Mother, sisters, quick - clear it off the deck! Or else we'll all perish here!"

Looking over their shoulders as yet more of the crystal things began to emerge from the buildings of the town, the girls rushed to the boat, gathering up the boys' flintlocks as they went. With some effort, the mother and older girl picked up the larger chunks of crystal - for they were indeed heavier than they looked! - and hurled them over the sides, while the middle and younger girl swept out the smaller pieces. The boat rose higher and higher in the water; and when the mother, seeing that enough had been done, hurriedly urged the girls (and herself) off the sloop once more, it shot upwards, and at last (with one final heave from the father and his sons) began to float outwards.

"Quickly!" cried the father, "Back on - they're not fifty yards away, and if we emptied a dozen vollies into them we'd not have halved their numbers!" The girls ran along the pier, leaping onto the sloop just as they ran out of dock to run along; the boys paddled swiftly towards it, catching on to the rear and pulling themselves aboard."

"We made it," the mother gasped, dabbing at her brow with her sleeve. "We made it."

The crystal pyramids approached the water's edge.

"...can they float on water?" the younger boy asked nervously, his left leg kicking out accidentally and sending a thighbone flying.

The pyramids stopped.

"No," the father concluded, and everyone onboard the sloop shared a sigh of relief.

A long moment passed. Then the father spoke again.

"This is what we will do," he told the others. "We will learn to fish - so that we may feed ourselves. We will learn to sail - so that we may pilot this ship to its destination. When we get there, we will give this poor unfortunate - " whose skull had just given the younger boy a nasty bruise on his little toe - "a Christian burial. And then we will walk the rest of the way to Boston."

"Do we have any fishing poles or lines or anything?" the older boy asked, looking around. "I don't see any..."

"My son, I hope that I have taught you well in all things," the father told him. "But I know I have not yet taught you everything I know - and here is one example. We have just escaped a gruesome death at the mutilating points of the crystal things. We are now on a sloop, utterly immune to further prosecution until we should choose to leave its confines. And you ask: do we have any fishing poles?"

"We will have to find out."

Strange Things (a sequel of sorts)

This isn't strange, per se; just a helpful reference to an earlier post.

This watches me at night. Every night.

Sometimes it worries me.

I cannot help but find homeopathic medicine unspeakably hilarious. And here's some at my local store! Strange place, that. (They also sell condoms and "emergency chocolate". Many varieties of emergency chocolate.)

Look - the founding fathers of modern psychology, ready to do battle as they were always meant to! Freud gets a larger name, but Jung gets a catchy little quote just below "Action Figure" - shame you can't see it at this resolution. Anyway, I'm ready to buy tickets for this match any day.

Ah - but what's this?

A dude! And he's hurt!

He's hurt bad!

I don't know how that happened. Or why. Or even when, or who he is, or where (or what!) he comes from! (Or maybe I just won't say.) But I'll admit to this much:

He looks just like the guy from Doom.

King Leopard II

King Leopard (properly pronounced Lee-oh-pard) ruled the Belgian Congo. His reign was a beneficient one; for, after all, he had come to educate the native peoples, teaching them of Leopardism, the One True Religion. (Its primary tenets were the primacy of the Leopard in all creation, the duty for lesser species to abase themselves before Leopards, and the delight and joy that is Roquefort cheese.*) King Leopard educated the people, King Leopard improved the people, King Leopard protected the people from those who would exploit them; and all he demanded in return was a life of backbreaking labour, absolute subjugation before his royal majesty, and a willingness to, at any given moment, be devoured within his fanged** maw. Who could possibly oppose such a kind ruler; especially when there were so many crueler tyrants lurking, just waiting to pounce?

Unbelievably yet, there were some who challenged the rule of King Leopard. But they were unable to surmount the challenges that he set - for King Leopard was as cunning as he was wise. For any who would depose him from his rule over the Belgian Congo, he set this challenge: to solve a very special riddle, a riddle of unparalled complexity. Should they solve it, he would resign peacefully; many had tried. But none succeeded. (This provided a splendid source of food for the ever-hungry King Leopard, delighting him further.)

The riddle was as follows:

For the First Leopard, at any given time, the sum of his acceleration summed with five times his position is equal to four times his velocity summed with one metre for each second since he had first begun to move. When he began, he was five metres from the centre of the earth, and moving away from it at a speed of exactly one metre per second; he always moves along a line exactly fixed between the centre of the earth and its tallest mountain. Where, then, is the First Leopard at any given time, in terms of time and time only?

This riddle seemed impenetrable; many were cowed by it, and none surpassed it. Until one day, a traveller came to the court of King Leopard. His hat was large, and his tailcoat dark; a feather-plume jutted from his shoulder. "I will solve your riddle, Your Majesty," the stranger said, "And I will solve it with mathematics."

"Just try it!" cried King Leopard, laughing a leopard-like laugh. "And I shall enjoy devouring you, from your fresh-pressed boots to the crown of your hat."

"With my apologies, Your Majesty," the stranger said deferentially, "You shan't have the pleasure today."

"So! If I am to solve this problem in the space of a week or less, we had best establish some short-hand for our variables. Acceleration will be called 'a'; velocity 'v', and position 'p'. (Time, of course, will be 't'.) Thus, the equation is a + 5p = 6v + t. Are we agreed thus far?"

"Entirely so," King Leopard said, yawning.

"But we don't really have four variables," the stranger said: "We have just two. For velocity is just the derivative of position with respect to time, and acceleration is the derivative of velocity with respect to time. We may then rephrase the equation, with p' being the first derivative of position with respect to time, and p' being the second such, as p''+ 5p = 6p' + t. And of course we may readily subtract 4p' from both sides, resulting in the equation p'' - 6p' +5p = t."

"Derivatives?" King Leopard said, startled. "I have never heard of such a thing."

"Curious artifacts of a device called the calculus," one of his advisors whispered, "a cumbersome and baroque device. Fear not: I know its limits well, and it cannot crack this nut, not with derivative nor integral."

"Very well," King Leopard said, with a gracious wave of his paw. "Continue."

"I will digress a moment," the traveller said. "Let us imagine that the equation for the First Leopard's position, with respect only to time, is of the form of a constant multiplying the exponential of another constant times time; that is, succinctly, p = c*e^(rt). Continuing the hypothetical, we may take the first derivative of this position function, naturally finding it equal to p' = cr*e^(rt), and the second derivative, that being p'' = cr^2+e^(rt). Is this all clear?"

During this time, the King's advisors had been frentically whispering in his ears, explaining the basics of the calculus to him. Now he lifted his head, gazing majestically at the challenger. A glob of saliva dropped from the corner of his mouth. "Positively crystalline," the King replied. "Continue."

"So we now have - hypothetically - some values for p, p', and p''," the stranger continued. "Substituting them into the original equation, and momentarily neglecting the term on the right side, we have cr^2+e^(rt) - 6*cr*e^(rt) + 5* c*e^(rt) = 0. We know that e^(rt) is never 0 - it is an exponential! - so we may divide both sides by it, leaving ourselves with cr^2 - 6cr + 5c = 0. We may further assume that our constant c is never zero, and divide by that as well, with the equation now being r^2 - 6r + 5 = 0. Can you see what we will do next, Your Majesty?" the stranger asked.

"Of course I can!" King Leopard replied. "This is a simple quadratic equation - factorable, even! - so we can say that (r - 1)(r - 5) = 0, and therefore r equals either 5 or 1. But what can be done with this queer, hypothetical constant? It even has two values!"

"It's quite simple, Your Majesty," the stranger replied. "We put both values into the equation we derived earlier - so, for two still unknown constants c and d, p = ce^t + de^(5t), plus another term or two to deal with the term we neglected earlier, the t on the right side."

"Oh?" asked King Leopard, his voice sneering. "And just how will you do that?"

"I'm happy to demonstrate," the stranger said. "Let's split our function for 'p' into two parts: call the first 'r', and let it be the exponentials that we've already dealt with, and let the second be 'q', which we don't know quite yet. Now - it seems logical that if 'o' deals with the case in which a - 6v +5p = 0, then summing some other function to it would be all that is necessary to account for a function summed to that 0, yes?"

"Ah - for the moment, I... think," King Leopard said, his mind working furiously. "Go on."

"So let - again, purely hypothetically - let our 'q' be composed of two terms, a constant A multiplying t and another constant B, standing alone. In this case, q' would be equal simply to A, and q'' would be nothing at all. Does that make sense?"

"Constants upon constants!" the King moaned. "Hypotheticals upon hypotheticals!"

"I will proceed, then," the traveller said mercilessly. "Once more substituting q into our original expression (in place of p), we find that -6A + 5At + 5B = t. Logically, the terms containing no t must sum to 0; so 5B - 6A = 0, and B = 6A/5. Equally so, the t term on the left must be equal to that on the right; 5At = t, so, for this to hold for all t, A must equal one-fifth, and B must be six twenty-fifths. Simple algebra, yes?"

"...yes..." King Leopard agreed, nervously. He had a bad feeling. "...so?"

"So, Your Majesty," the stranger said, "We are nearly done. Our equation for p, the sum of o and q, is ce^t + de^(5t) + t/5 + 6/25. You may note that we still have two constants left to eliminate, c and d. Luckily, we have saved ourselves a pair of equations to deal with them: 'when he began, he was five metres from the centre of the earth, and moving away from it at a speed of exactly one metre per second.' When t is 0, p = 5, and v, or p', = 1. We may readily substitute this into our equations, finding that p(0) = c + d + 6/25 = 5, and p'(0) = c + 5d + 1/5 = 1. Therefore c = 4/5 - 5d, which we may substitute into the first equation to find d - 5d + 4/5 + 6/25 = 5, or 99/500 = d, and that back again to see that c = -19/100. And so we are done: p = -19e^t/100 + 99e^(5t)/500 + t/5 + 6/25. You may check this if you wish; be assured that it is perfectly correct."

King Leopard turned to his advisors; but they were in shock, furiously scribbling into their notebooks and muttering among themselves. "I can't see any flaw!" one cried. "His mathematics seem impeccable!" said another. King Leopard turned to the stranger; who simply stood there, leaning against a tree, smirking faintly.

King Leopard knew better than anyone that desperate times demand desperate measures; and what circumstance was more desperate than the thought that he might have to give up his rulership of the Belgian Congo? He tensed in decision; and then he leapt at the stranger, fanged*** maw held wide. The traveller needed to do no more than to draw five lines in the air, and thrust the Harmonic Series squarely between King Leopard's jaws; and so, in this understated way, he put an end to our tale, of the tyranny of King Leopard in the Belgian Congo, and of the brave mathematician who brought it to an unbounded conclusion.




*It prevents indigestion! It cures toothache! It serves as a viable alternative to grout!

**Within the Belgian Congo, this was properly pronounced "fang-ed". Two syllables.

***Please remember the earlier note.

Fiction

The woman awoke.

For some moments she lay silent and motionless, the only sign of life her chest's slow motion up and down, the only sign of wakefulness her unlidded eyes. Then she began to speak.

"I cannot recall my name," she said. "Further, I cannot recall my location; my occupation; or indeed any part of my past. Thus my present circumstances seem rather extraordinary to me, though and because I cannot recall any other circumstances with which to contrast them; therefore I shall vocalize my thoughts henceforth, as there are none others visibly present to violate my modesty or be offended by my speech, and the focus provided by exterior vocalization will aid me in comprehending my current state. So: I will begin by standing."

"It is accomplished - though with some difficulty. First I will describe my surroundings. I lay abed a moment ago; that bed being not overly large, nor made for luxury, nonetheless it seems to have provided me a good night's sleep. (I assume here that it was night in which I slept.) The room in which the bed, and I, stand, is perhaps twenty feet in diameter; I say diameter because it is circular, not rectilinear, rather a peculiar state for a room. Even more peculiarly, its walls are of cobbled-stone, and quite thick stone at that; I hypothesize from that latter fact, as well as from the stairway rising upwards along the far wall, that this is the base of some larger structure, perhaps a tower of some kind. Besides the stairway, the only entrance or exit is a large, wooden door to my right, presently barred. The room is otherwise entirely featureless."

"Before I take any action, I ought to examine my own possessions. I am clothed in a white muslin dress, adorned with pink flounces, and seemingly augmented in structure with - ah - bone? It is exceedingly uncomfortable to wear, in addition to accounting for my previous difficulty in rising from bed; I would gladly discard it, but I see no other clothes with which to replace it, and its remarkable complexity as a garment makes me uncertain that I could remove it if I tried. It has no pockets or other compartments in which useful items might be concealed. Nonetheless, I have learned something from this examination; it seems likely that this is not my customary mode of dress, both from the discomfort and the awkward unfamiliarity I feel with it. I will note this for later; but for the moment I will turn my gaze elsewhere."

"There is no food down here; I must therefore leave it, sooner or later, and I shall choose sooner rather than later. It appears that my course of action is best put to either ascending the stairs or opening the door. The door being closer, and requiring less effort besides, I shall attempt that first. It is barred, but that is a problem easily dispatched; now, I will open it (what a dreadful creak!) and behold -"

A long pause followed, accompanied with some element of wind.

"I will attempt to summarize," she began again. "Before me is a rather spectacular expanse of snow-covered mountains, some of them piercing the clouds themselves. This would be of less concern to me were it not that I, myself, appear to be on such a mountain, and, even further, that there is no solid ground beyond the door-frame until at least two hundred feet below."

"This renders the door somewhat unuseful as an exit, of any but the most final sort."

"Still, I previously surmised that I resided within a tower, and I can - should I squint - see a number of similar-looking towers on distant peaks. (Ah - similar to each other, that is.) It is hard to see much of them, but it does much to support my previous hypothesis - the existence of some towers implying the possibility of more - and, further, gives me one more interesting piece of information. Upon the top of the closest tower, I can see a sort of a curious glitter - like light reflecting from stained glass, or a jewel. Merely decorative? And does my own tower share this feature? Seeing nothing more to investigate from my present location - and seeing a rather real risk of toppling to my death at any moment - I shall close this door, and ascend."

"I now find myself in a very small library. Bookshelves line the walls, though there is no chair or reading-table - did they expect the tower's occupant to read upon their bed? Judging by the books' titles, they appear to be largely composed of histories and biographies - intended for the entertainment of the tower's occupant, perhaps. Most of them are untouched. There may be some meaning hidden within these books - but they are unlikely to go anywhere. I will move further upwards, for the moment."

"Another library-room, much the same as the last. More histories, biographies, polemics, almanacs, self-help books."

"Another library."

"Another."

"A fourth - and several books appear to be missing from the shelves of this one."

"And now a long, winding stair, curling around the solid core of the tower. Having nothing else to remark upon, I will note this: though there are no windows anywhere that I have seen thus far, there is nonetheless light, smoothly emanating from the ceiling, walls, and floor, casting no shadows. This seems familiar to me, so I hardly know why I remark upon it, but - "

"Ah. Here I am, in some sort of dining room. Here is a table, chairs, and a number of books, presumably taken from the library below. There is silverware, plates, and against the wall, some number of cabinets - I will examine them now. This one is empty - and this -and this. They contain only empty boxes and wrappers, presumably for food. Whoever lived here has entirely exhausted their food supply - unless there is some concealed somewhere else, which is possible, but not likely. No decorations upon the walls, nothing else of note - save that which lies upon the table."

"The books that I mentioned lie alternately open and closed. There is a pile of closed books on one corner of the table - largely biographies and histories, I think, seemingly written on the sauciest subjects. I'll flip through this one - ah! Yes, I would call that saucy. The other books, scattered about the table, fall into another category - one which I hadn't noticed in the libraries below, perhaps because all were taken here. Law - the law of a specific nation, the New Flemish, if I'm reading this correctly. The passages the books are open to vary in particulars, but they all seem to cover one specific topic: the status of fiction in New Flemish law, and the punishment for its creation."

"I'll skim through them. It appears that the New Flemish have a tremendous distaste for fiction - a contempt - a hatred. They consider it degenerate, foul, inhuman. Minor fictions, such as might be used to save social face, are punished by a public denunciation. Larger fictions are subject to corporal punishment - even, ah, especially among juveniles! And in the most severe cases - when someone is caught creating, or worse, peddling entire compendiums of fiction - the punishment is..."

"...let me read this."

"Offenders of the worst sort are exiled, imprisoned within remote towers built especially for the purpose. Clothes are provided for them; their old clothes are impounded, so they can smuggle nothing in. They are given enough food for two weeks, a supply of books with which to occupy themselves during that time, and a small vial containing a very specific chemical, designed to remove all long-term memory. They may drink the contents of the vial within two weeks, thereby destroying their memory and rendering themselves innocent of the crime they committed. In this case, transport will be provided back to New Fleming, where they may make a new life for themselves. If they do not drink from the vial, no transport will be provided, and they have a choice of deaths: the slow death of starvation, or the swift death provided by the doorway on the bottom floor."

"I had not noticed before. On the floor of this room, a few feet to my left, is an empty glass vial."

"So - one last set of stairs. And - yes - above me is a great stained glass ceiling, displaying a magnificent mosaic of Lord Flemish's face. There's a loud noise, and it's - it's opening -"

"I apologize for the interruption," a voice boomed from above, "but I wished to congratulate you on your wise choice. Your past self's wise choice, of course! We have been listening through the tower's walls, and we are all very impressed at your deductions. Most of those imprisoned here must be explicitly informed of what transpired to them, but you figured it all out yourself!"

"You should see a helicopter landing before you now. It will take you back to New Fleming, at which point you will be free to do whatever you wish. We all wish you the best of luck, and suggest that - should you wish to write up the story of your deductions this morning (being certain not to slip into the error that brought you here, of course!) - it would be very apt for publishing in one of our many magazines!"

"Thank you!" came the reply, and, its passenger now onboard, the helicopter rose ever-swifter into the sky. Behind it, the stained-glass dome closed, and the silence reigned once more within the tower, empty and unoccupied until maintenance staff came to prepare it for its next occupant.

Its previous occupant would be well advised to leave New Fleming before that time came; for on the center of the table in the dining room, surrounded by books on New Flemish Law, lay the vial; unopened.

Nikoulouse the Krouse

he had alfombra

          O

      _/| \_

          |

    \__/_\___/

      O        O

´•~•`

soaring softly through my atmosphere

was a wayfarer, bound on a long fahrt

I thought to myself,

I must take a fahrt too

and if his fahrt meets my fahrt

we can fahrt together
So I left my queer planet-kingdom,
and began the grandest of fahrts,
bound to travel fahren and widhren
than had I ever before

and my fahrt took me higher and higher

until I reached the stars

who were on their fahrt

across the universe

and I saw the sun, and the sun said to me

I cannot fahrt any longer,

you must take a fahrt to me

and fill me with your fahrt

and I did, and I felt the warmth

of the sun's fahrt envelop me
and my own fahrt entered into the sun
and it gasped
and sighed
and cried out in relief
for it had been some time since it had seen
or felt
a fahrt
and
grateful
it bestowed upon me a gift
that I might find that traveller
who I had seen
so briefly
a thousand fahrts ago
wherever he might be now
and the sun said unto me

you must go

and take another fahrt

to a land far away

and strange to you

and fahrt on a strange bird

until you reach the shores

and shall be greeted with open arms

by those who will call you their family

but who are not

and you must fahrt with them

until

the day when the youngest girl of them

will fahrt with you

and you will touch her delicately

and love her

and fahrt
and fahrt again
never to find rest
never to find shelter
fahrting through wind
and storm
snow
and hail
obstacles natural and human
all too human
upon your fahrt
and at the end of the great fahrt
when you see your fahrting traveller
it will be only briefly
a fleeting moment
before he finishes' his life's fahrt
and dies

and then

you will die
and it wasse goode.
(As fahrts go.)

(context)

My Favourite Kinds Of Items

Edifying information for any citizen of the Grànd Nìkòlàs Rèpùblìc!

ITEM CATEGORY ONE: Cats. They are just so adorable! Also, furry. There is nothing that is not to love!*

ITEM SET TWO: Frugivores. They're fructivorous!

ITEM LIST THREE: Laser-bats! They're much like normal bats, but they fire lasers. Anyone nearby gets their own laser to keep! So wonderful! (If they fired laser-beams they'd be kinda dangerous, but as it stands, they're just a delight!)

ITEM TUPLE FOUR: Other types of laser-related-items. I hear laser-sharks are popular. Laser bears would also probably be pretty good.

ITEM VECTOR FIVE: looooooove

ITEM MATRIX SIX: Edible things. You can eat them! This is a big plus in my book.

ITEM SET SEVEN: Strange flying things. Jump-jets! Battle-zeppelins! Ornithopters! They are a Good Time for One and All.

ITEM HIERARCHY EIGHT: Things with long, corkscrew-shaped bodies! Much like those of ducks.

I hope this has been Educational! If it has not been, do not tell me.

I will cry.

*Certain persons who are rendering my room fit for human life might disagree. They would be right. Alas!

txt stff: finale n pur txt

(A lovely tale of a lovely person.)

Story.

There was an old man in the mountains who had no hair. This was a great vexation to him. He asked, again and again: “Why? Why do I have no hair?”

He thought and thought. Then he had an idea. If he could just skin a duck, burn its skin, and inhale the smoke, his hair would regrow! This seemed reasonable.

So he went to find a duck. He looked in the mountains, but no ducks were there. They weren't in the mountains, or the meadows, or the deserts!

Finally, the old man found a group of animals near a pond. They looked like ducks, walked like ducks, and smelled like ducks. Maybe they were ducks!

The old man caught one. (He was very fast for an old man.) He skinned it and burned the skin. Then he inhaled deeply. “Ahh,” he said. It smelled like chicken!

But his hair did not grow back. Oh no! He had not killed a duck! He had killed a duck impersonator! The old man was sad. He was a murderer! (Also, a cannibal.)

The old man was jailed at once. (The police were very efficient there.) For the rest of his days, he cursed his undoing: the vilest of practices, duck typing!

(Duck typing.)

txt stff: the txts strike bck

(Again, for a class assignment.)

Instructions.
(For driving in San Francisco.)

Driving in SF is much like driving in other cities. You must be aggressive to get anywhere. Rude! But necessary. (LA and NY are worse.) And there is more.

First, there are hills in SF. Hills! They are very steep. You must be careful of your speed! It is very easy to go too fast downhill, or not at all uphill.

The hills also mean that you must be careful while parking. If you don't put down your brake, your car will begin to roll! This is funny, but probably bad.

You must be very careful at night. There is less motortraffic then. But there is also fog, and piers! The combination has a high potential for sadness. sploosh

San Francisco is a very lovely city. There are old buildings and green things! So admire those as you will. But do not forget to watch the road! -the end-

I Am Impressed: Godot and the Nature of Surprise.

This is a post about the plot of one of the Phoenix Wright games, much like this one. Unlike that one, this covers only half of one case, specifically the former half of the second case in the third Phoenix Wright game, Trials and Tribulations. (Got all that?) Like that one, it contains MASSIVE SPOILERS. Well. Less massive, owing to slighter scope. But still spoilerish.

Okay, that was all the necessary warning. Let's start now.

It began with a choice.

The Phoenix Wright games are inherently linear. This is perhaps an artifact of their Japanese origin - and I could ramble on about this - but in any case, a choice within the game is only ever right or wrong. You can present the right evidence or the wrong evidence; you can ask the right question or the wrong one. In no case can you influence the direction in which the plot moves - choose one line of argument or another, get your client off on some charges but not the rest... (though this being Phoenix Wright, your client is only ever being tried for one charge: murder.)

(It's surprisingly varied, for all that. Note again my previous post on the subject.)

So there's no choice in Phoenix Wright games - that I'd seen. But here, near the beginning of the second case, I was presented with a choice: do I defend Ron DeLite?

(Forgive the last name. The designers really like puns. There's another fellow - we'll discuss him later - name of Luke Atmey. Ugh. Took me all of three seconds to get that one.)

Ron's an interesting character. He's a timid, retiring character - has a habit of alternating high-pitched whines with shame-filled, mumbling corrections that inevitably trail into silence. And he's accused of being MASK★DEMASQUE* - world-famed criminal mastermind and flamboyant thief!

He has, of course, no alibi, but the idea of him as an internationally famed thief is just ludicrous. The ludicrousness is not helped by the fact that he turned himself in - claiming, over and over, "I'm him! I'm MASK★DEMASQUE! Convict me!" And so forth.

(Oh! Also, he has a Princess Leia haircut. With the danishes. This. They unfurl into hair-corkscrews when he's agitated.)

So - do I defend him?

I do, in the end. Phoenix Wright is a defense lawyer - that's what he does. And I suspect, in my gut, that Ron is innocent. So I choose that option - one of my allies, who I was originally trying to help recover one of the stolen items, condemns me furiously and storms off - and I wonder.

All in all, there was probably no choice - if I'd chosen not to defend him, I'd have gotten some different dialogue but ended up doing the same thing anyway -

- but I wonder.

In this mood I entered into the trial. There's some tricky thinking to be done, but nothing that stalls me for long, and I pour on argument after argument relentlessly, dissecting the witnesses' testimony in cross-examination. In this trial, I'm facing a new opponent, the enigmatic Godot, who claims that he has returned from the gates of Hell itself to fight me. Why? How? And who is he, really, beneath that cyborg visor of his? Beats me. But he sure does love his coffee.

(This gets it about right. Thanks, Google Image Search! I believe the quote in question is from the game.)

So, Godot. He's the obligatory "new nemesis-prosecutor" for this game, as there's been in each preceding game, but he's new enough and different enough (like the others, he's never lost a case - but only because he's never practiced law before!) that he's interesting. Admittedly, he doesn't do much as I continue to plow through the witnesses - contradiction here, contradiction there, OBJECTION! There's one point at which I'm stumpted, but I correctly guess that I don't actually have the evidence I need, and, in the nick of time, an ally arrives to deliver it. Godot is unfazed by all of this. Mostly, he muses about whether or not he should adjust the bitterness of his current blend of coffee, Godot #107. (It's a difficult question.)

Ah - what I just said wasn't entirely true. At one particular setback, Godot does become somewhat upset. Specifically, he becomes upset enough to throw his coffee mug at me, drenching poor Phoenix Wright in coffee. Ow. But I'm going to call that a one-time exception.

I find the real MASK★DEMASQUE - who has, conveniently, appeared on the witness stand - drive him insane by revealing the truth (as appears surprisingly frequently in these situations), and sit back to enjoy a good victory. "That was a bit quick," I think, "And there are a lot of loose ends lying around... I guess they'll be tied up in the next case. Wonder what -"

Hm.

Ron DeLite has appeared on the stand, just as he was about to be declared NOT. GUILTY., and clamours to be convicted. Godot, helpfully, encourages him.

Well, all right. All I have to do is prove that he couldn't have been at the scene of the crime when he was supposed to be. That's easy enough - one of those loose ends I mentioned, a security card and a wallet, show that he must have been at KB Security at the time of the theft. Why was he there? Oooh, tricky, but thanks to my kleptomaniac tendencies (it's perfectly legal - it's evidence, after all!), I have a blackmail letter from Ron's desk in my hand. The game's flying along beautifully - I'm perfectly in tune with it, or vice-versa, none of those idiotic leaps of logic that were sometimes necessary in previous games appearing here. Everything makes sense. So - there you go! Ron can't be MASK★DEMASQUE, because he was being blackmailed by his CEO at the time! NOT GUILTY!

Ron's despondent - but hey, what can you do? Can't please everyone. At least he's not in jail. Still a few loose ends - but they're pretty minor by comparison. Guess they were just red herrings.

In the lobby outside, I have a celebratory chat with the characters involved. My sidekick congratulates me, Ron's wife congratulates me, Ron himself isn't that happy, but -

Wait. Godot's here. Why's Godot here? He wants to say "well done" too? Huh, that's strange, but okay -

- he's got something else to say.

The CEO of KB security was just found dead. Locked in the room that I'd just proven Ron was at. Killed at the time I proved Ron was there.

...holy !#*#.

So, it's a murder case after all.

This could be tricky.

And this sort of thing - this skillful manipulation of expectations to tell a story within a game-like context - that is Phoenix Wright's finest attribute, when it does it right.

I still haven't finished the case - I can't tell you whether or not Ron is guilty (though I doubt he is), and certainly can't offer an explanation for affairs - though I have my ideas. (The CEO is guilty as sin, and MASK★DEMASQUE is not exactly what he seemed.) But this fragment- this portion of the case, from midway through the investigation-part of the first day to the end of the first day of trial - is just amazing. That's why I had to write about it.

*The ★ is part of the name. Phoenix Wright is criticized when he says the name without it. How can anyone tell? How can you even pronounce that? Who knows! But I obviously had to include it. I wouldn't want to be yelled at, after all.

Cities of Bronze and Glass (9/12)

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.)

Black clouds covered the sky, drenching the land in thick sheets of rain. Waves reared up and plunged against the grey rocks that opposed them; layers of mud and gravel grew ever thicker, occasionally crashing down in thunderous crashes, exceeded in noise only by the actual thunder all around them. And eventually - at the very far end of the rocks, so far separated from the safety of (relatively) dry land - there was something that might have, if you squinted, looked something like a building.

"I'm certain about it," Thirteen said. "It can't be anything else. This is exactly where the map said it would be - the only thing past here is the sea. This must be it. The house of the Creator."

"I want to believe you," Twenty said vehemently, "But your logic is ludicrous. 'Exactly' here - you know how imprecise that map is! It showed triangles, tremendously out of scale, on a stylized map! And what's more - even if this were the final triangle on the map - so what? All the other triangles were useless - an tomb, a pair of scrapyards for creations that destroyed themselves in their Creator's absence. Why do you think that anything but another failure awaits us here?"

"We know that the Creator exists," Thirteen argued. "We have not yet been created; if there is no Creator to create us, then that is paradox. Nonsense. Therefore, the Creator must exist somewhere; and the best clue we have been given is that map. I exaggerated somewhat - there is no certainty that the Creator is there, in that building. But what have we certainty of? We may only offer probability - and the probability, in this case, is so fantastically high - by the fine-blade of simplicity in logic, if nothing else - that we may act on it as if we were certain. The Creator is there."

"I want to find the Creator as much as you do," Twenty said tiredly, rain sliding off its green-patinated sides. "I do. But... I don't know. I just can't find the confidence to possess such certainty in its existence as you do - not when I look at Learned Hand and its brothers, who have believed - with equal certainty - for tens of thousands of days - exactly the opposite of what we do. I just don't know - and I'm reluctant to risk our existence, even as backups, on such a slim chance."

"You've corrupted it!" Thirteen yelled, turning to Learned Hand. "Twisted it with your heresies!"

"I only say what I know to be true," Learned Hand replied, entirely unaffected by the rain that was steadily corroding the metallic members of the party. (The travelling-frame, finally broken beyond point of repair, had been left behind two days ago.) "I do not coerce. I do not decieve. I do not manipulate. I only speak. What others believe is their own concern. I am only concerned with actions - and your safety. And I tell you this now - going out there, to that far rock, is a deadly risk to all of you, like none before through the whole course of this doomed quest. My purpose here is to protect you, and I will say this: if I do not stop you now from going there, my purpose will be hollow."

"Pessimist," Three said coolly.

"What?" Learned Hand said, rotating to face Three. "You accuse me of distorting the facts to make matters appear worse than they are?"

"It's better than the alternative," Three replied.

Learned Hand's eyes flashed, and it made no answer.

Thirteen had been looking out at the rocks - partially to calm itself, partially to plan. Now it spoke. "There are two major threats," it said. "Waves - if they hit us, they'll wash us clear off the rock. (Except Learned Hand, probably - though some of those waves look pretty powerful.) And rain - it's heavy enough that we could easily slip on any exposed rock and, again, tumble into the water. That would be the end of us. Our priorities will be to avoid these, by travelling along the tops of the rocks. This will expose us to two minor threats: mudslides, which seem fairly infrequent; and lightning, which seems only to be striking elsewhere, at some distance. If either of those conditions change, our priorities will have to adjust accordingly."

"Cannot we go later?" Twenty asked. "This rain has been continuing for days - but it cannot rain forever. It has been lightening, as of this morning - I think it may soon stop."

"We cannot afford it," Thirteen said. "We must get to the Creator before our joints lock - in the best case, so that the Creator can repair us and allow us to lead him to the Origin; in the worst case, so that we can at least give him directions before we suffer final shutdown. Every moment we wait about in the rain is another fraction-inch of corrosion on our vital mechanisms. We must go now. We will not get another chance."

"Cannot Learned Hand go without us, should we fail?" Twenty asked. "It can wait out the rain with ease, and travel across the rocks far more easily than we. We can give it the directions, let it carry us there -"

"If we fail," Thirteen said, "Learned Hand will take us away from here, back to the Origin. It has no interest in doing otherwise."

"I will do that regardless," Learned Hand said. "There has been too much risk here. It is time to put an end to this foolishness."

Thirteen gave a look to the other mechanisms. Without a word, they began to move towards the rocks - Twenty moving more reluctantly than the others, but moving all the same.

"Stop," Learned Hand said. "This is your final warning."

Three and Thirteen clambered onto the first of the rocks, Twenty close behind.

Learned Hand began to move forward, accelerating smoothly and with no seeming mechanism of propulsion, as was standard. It came to the first rock - and then stopped.

"You are in my way," it said to Twenty. "You are preventing me from getting to the others and stopping their foolishness. You must move now."

"Why can't you just go around?" asked Twenty, unmoving.

"You have stopped at the narrowest place in the path," Learned Hand said. "I had planned to intercept you and the others further ahead, along the rock shelf, where it widens. But I cannot go around you here, and I cannot bend down to pick you up without falling. Move."

"The corrosion certainly acts quickly, with all this rain and water in the air," Twenty replied. "I'm afraid all my joints are locked. Completely immovable. What a shame."

"This place is dangerous," Learned Hand said. "The waves are very close to you - the storm causes random surges. Even one of them could wash you away. If blocking me is your intent, you can do that from further up on the rock. Move. For your own good."

"I asked you a question," Twenty said. "Back in the desert."

"Move," Learned Hand said. "The waves are getting stronger. I will accept the risk to the others if you will cease endangering yourself. Please."

"If we couldn't find the creator - if the Creator already died - if our purpose is meaningless - then why should I keep trying? Why should any of us?" Twenty asked, musingly. "You didn't have an answer then. But I've been thinking about it. Thinking hard."

Learned Hand's eyes flashed.

"It's a tricky question," Twenty admitted. "Very tricky. But I've spent a lot of time on it, and, well, it's changed me. I'm not the mechanism I used to be. One way or another - I don't think I want to go there, to whatever's waiting at the last triangle at the end of this rock-shelf. I don't think I can."

"There are answers," Learned Hand said, its voice strained. "Do not condemn yourself by an overly-quick judgement - take the time necessary - I can help you, the others too, and perhaps whatever's waiting for them - if there's anything - please - just come away from the edge!"

"Just like your brother, eh?" Twenty said.

A wave licked about it -

- and it was gone.

Learned Hand looked at Three and Thirteen, distantly visible, still possible to catch, if it hurried.

It did not move.

Eventually, they vanished from view.

Seven days passed. The storm broke.

Three and Thirteen returned, looking - different. Better.

"The Creator remade us," Thirteen told Learned Hand, its voice full of pride. "It's there - it's there, all right! We were in too bad shape to be Created - just reshaped, as something similar, but fundamentally different - and just as well, because we aren't at the Origin in any case. But he's following us - we'll guide him, all right, all the way there. The wisdom he has - and to think - he never even knew we were his! (Though it makes sense, because he hasn't created us yet, after all, so how would he know about us...)"

"Where's Twenty?" Three asked.

"Gone," Learned Hand said. "Dead."

"Destroyed in the purpose of the Creation," Three said, its voice sad, and yet full of pride. "It doubted - but in the end, it held to its faith and did the right thing. Its designation will be known forever as the number of heroism, and there will be a celebration -"

"It did the right thing," Learned Hand said in a monotone, "In exactly the wrong way, for exactly the wrong reasons."

Three stopped.

"How did Twenty... die?" it belatedly asked.

But Learned Hand did not answer. It had turned its gaze upwards, towards the figure approaching along the rocks.

"Creator," it breathed.

Bridges Are the Enemy

Don't trust them. They defy the natural order of rivers and gaps. They attempt to defy gravity, one of the fundamental forces. Cross them at your peril.
- Master Emmond, Fifth Heron-Wing Dojo.

The traveler stands before the deep canyon, her dark-patterned cloak whipping about her ankles in the stiff wind. She carries a tall staff in her hands, unadorned and uncarved. Before her is a great bridge, iron-born with cables of steel and concrete towers plunging from their apexes to the canyon's base, the waters of the river therein rushing about them and covering their grey surfaces in lush, damp moss, filling the cracks that have appeared since the bridge's emplacement, so many years ago.

"I know your true nature, bridge," the traveler cries, her voice carrying clearly across the wide and empty expanse. "Show yourself!"

Nothing happens.

Then a slow rumbling rises from the depths. A quartet of cracks - boom, boom, boom, boom, each louder than thunder - sound within moments of each-other, as the bridge's towers sever themselves from their bases. The bridge begins to rise towards the traveller, slowly, inexorably, pulling up the asphalt as it moves; she is forced to dash to the side to escape being carried upwards with the roadway upon which she stood. The road, stressed beyond bearing, tears asunder, bits and pieces of shattered tarmac falling back to earth. The bridge continues to rise, its other side now following suit.

"Well," the traveller says to herself, a wry smile tugging at one end of her mouth. "I knew this wasn't going to be easy."

She took a breath to prepare herself; then she began to jog towards the bridge, rising ever more ominously into the bright blue sky. She accelerated as she went; by the time she arrived at the bridge's nearest tower, her legs have turned into a blur, halted only as she leaps forward to the near-vertical tower, clearing the ten-foot distance between it and the canyon's edge -

- tumbles as she flies through the air, such that she lands feet-first onto the edifice (facing upwards) -

- and begins to run up its length, still moving at the same incredible speed, her staff thudding rhymically against the bridge-tower as she moves.

She'd make a witty quip at this point, but she's saving her breath. Probably wise.

She stops at the top, briefly, to admire the view. Hundreds of feet below her, the bridge's towers move jerkily up the walls of the canyon, climbing. They're about halfway to the top by now. The roadway at the center of the bridge is broken and warped, filled with treacherous holes. "Obvious deathtrap," the traveller notes. "I'll take another route, thanks."

Turning away from the road, she begins to jog along the suspension bridge's cable.

At first the path is easy; the cable is monstrously thick, easily six feet wide, and steady as the concrete into which it is embedded. But the concrete is the flesh of the bridge; and so this stability does not last. The cable begins to sway, slowly at first, then faster, swinging back and forth as though it were buffeted by some immense, invisible wind. (Oh - did I mention? There's still a wind, of course. Just enough to get the traveller's hair and cape to billow dramatically when needed. Not enough to do anything like this.)

"Ha!" laughs the traveller, her face full of derision. "Pitiful bridge - is this all you have to offer? I've seen pedestrian overpasses that give more of a fight than this!"

The bridge rumbled. A series of sharp snaps began to echo from below - the stays of the connecting cables were snapping. One by one, they struck at the traveller like snapping guitar strings, whipping upwards with a speed belying their weight. But the traveller laughed at this, too, ducking under or leaping over each without breaking step.

"I think I overestimated you," the traveller shouted downwards, sidestepping another cable lashing up from below. "A ten-foot-long, rope-and-plank bridge would be more dangerous than you are. Heck - probably more useful, too. I mean, look at you! You're a joke!"

The snapping of cables intensified. Now more than one cable came at the traveller at once; any one of them, did it hit, would shatter half her bones and send her hurtling off the cable at high speeds, to splatter on the rocks half a mile below. But more and more were sent, two or three or four at a time, and still the traveller laughed, dodging some and deflecting others with her wooden staff (which seemed unharmed by the experience), never once breaking stride.

"Was your mother one of those wooden, decorative garden-bridges?", the traveller jibed, nearing the end of the rapidly destabilizing cable on which she travelled. The far tower was just ahead. "You know, those ones for bonsai gardens? Why don't you go back and cry to her, ask her to help? She'll do a better job than you have!"

One last rumble came; and then, with a terrible scream of shattered concrete, the anchor for the main cable came loose, and without any noise at all, it began to fall.

"Poor show," the traveller noted, and leapt. Behind her, the utterly destabilized bridge bent, twisted, and broke in two, plunging back into the canyon from which it came with an unbearable clamour. It had wrought its own doom in broken steel and stone.

The traveller fell.

"Hm," she said.

The canyon wall approached. The traveller grinned; she extended her staff before her. She hit the wall, staff-first, at tremendous speed - and then, in what was really a quite rude moment for the laws of physics, stopped.

The traveller hung onto her staff, protruding from the canyon wall like a nail someone hadn't finished hammering into the wall. Above her, broken asphalt protruded from the canyon's edge where it had been left from the bridge's abrupt separation. Below her, the bridge continued its slow descent into utter destruction, raising thick clouds of dust as its towers dragged along the walls they had sought to climb.

"Yeah," the traveller decided. "That could've been much worse."

From the dust below, one last cable arose, shooting out soundlessly to pluck the traveller into the abyss. The only warning of its coming was a tiny breeze, just before it struck -

- the staff that the traveller had pulled from the wall, twisting around it and catapulting it (and her) upwards, where she landed neatly upon the grass at the roadside. A tremendous rumbling began at the moment of her landing, continuing for several minutes; when it had ended, the bridge's fall (and its destruction) was finally complete.

The traveller paid no attention, looking instead at the long staff in her hand.

"Wow," she said, "a nine-ton staff really does come in handy."

"I should win more bets with monkey-kings."

txt ptry

(Part of an assignment for class that I thought would be interesting enough to blaggify.)

Sent by Jerome D..

Version 1:

I've been looking at the railing outside the Computer Science building lately. It's a long ramp, pretty shallow, probably for wheelchair use. But the problem is, one, it's the only way into the building from that side (unless you want to go into the basement and use the elevator!), and two, it's bent backwards - the ramp goes along the side of the building, in exactly the wrong direction from the only one I ever want to go in. So, okay, I just have to climb the goddamn ramp and jump off if I want to get where I'm going without going along the whole length of the thing, twice. No big deal. It's about three, four feet tall. But here's what gets me: there's a metal railing on the corner - tall enough to make climbing over it, from one side or another, take even longer than walking around it is! What's the point? Afraid that someone's going to break their neck from a three-foot fall? It's so goddamn phony, Phoebe - probably designed by a bunch of phonies in their phony suits and phony ties - it just kills me, that's all.

Version 2 (what I'll turn in):

Hrs wt rly gets 2me
that rmp @ ebu3
its 2 lng & nt so hi
nds a rail if u fall u dnt die
the rail mns u cnt gt off & of crs thrs no str
wt dmn phonies said ndd 2b thr

(bonus blag-only bit):
i tll u feebe
it jst klls me.

Gloss of Version 2 (this will also probably be turned in):

Here's what really gets to me
that ramp at EBU-3
It's too long and not so high [that it]
needs a rail[ing] [so] if you fall, you don't die
The rail[ing] means you can't get off* and of course there's no stair*
what damn phonies said [it] needed to be there[?]

(bonus bit, over 160 character limit):
I tell you, Phoebe,
it just kills me.

*The cause of the narrator's irritation is a ramp - a handicapped ramp, basically - that provides the only entrance to a building, EBU-3. It's a long ramp, it goes along the building in the opposite direction from that in which the narrator generally wishes to go (so that he has to retrace his path next to the ramp, in the other direction, every time he uses it), and it has a railing blocking off the corner, which would otherwise be a perfect jump-off/climb-on point to avoid the longer walk around.

It's a pretty minor thing to complain about, but that's the narrator for you.

Exaggerated from a passing thought this author had earlier today, then turned into doggerel. My favourite kind of verse.

†ale of gay-lussac

NIKOLAS stirred quietly in his chaire, which swiveled around in his dimly lit chambre, amidst pyles of news-paper clippings, and waste resepticles. To his right sat the inimitable MR. ROBERTE, who, at the approbation of the Nikoulase, and a most bilious sensation in the gut, came unto his chambre to assist him in a most arduous labour. The girl of which the Nikolas most desired, and to whom he was Bethrothed, but not, in the litteral sense, was MS. RACHELE, named after his Catte.

At this moment, Nikoulous contemplated how he would most win over the hearts and minds of the girl, and he resolved himself to compose an allegorie, which would express his fielings. Mr Roberte would help him in this, for earlier, the Nikolous asked of him, "Sir, if it doth not intrude upon your time, which is very precious, for you are a minister of God, and if you desire, out of brotherly love for me, that you should assist me in this endeavour, of which I am greatly entangled." And he said that he would, and he came to the dormotory of the Nikoulous, and they dined on Whale meat, with berries and herbes from the ground, and A portion of Seal blubbre. Then they put on fur-coats and proceeded to enter the igloo, where they would contemplate the Essay to be written.

After hours of preponderance, they emmitted this piece, to be submitted for the approbation of the young girl.

"Dear Sir or Madam:

I must write to you to inform you of my most private and inner thoughts, of which are of great concern to you, specifically, which I shall elabourate thusly:

I wish to engage in sexual intercourse with you

"

She read it hastily, and ran off into the countryside, never to be seen again. The men were both sad, so they consoled themselves by rubbing warm oils upon each others bodies, and annointing with a cloth, and then laying together in the sun-shine, and drinking honey and wine from a bee-hive.

Re: Titans

There was a time when the race of Man was least among those creatures that strode the earth.

In those days, there were a multitude of thinking races, all of different form and aspect. The dwur mastered metals beneath the cold mountains of the Pyrenees, mining ever deeper in their search for superior tools and greater wealth. The serpentkind invoked dark magics in the names of their foul lords, bringing terrible blights down upon them; the warbelfynn struggled against them, using their own innate strength to overcome the arcane power of the serpent-men. The whale-clans roamed the seas, lords of all they surveyed, violently challenging any fool enough to enter into their domains; they had not yet learned the virtues of kindness and mercy. And most terrible of all were the Titans, who reshaped the very earth itself.

At a stroke, any Titan could turn grassland into desert, desert into verdant jungle, jungle into icy wasteland; create vast craters with the blink of any eye, and raise up tall mountains with the slightest gesture of a pinky. They went wherever they wished, did whatever they pleased; none but the most foolish would make any attempt to obstruct their will, and the wise made haste to flee before their coming, knowing the change - and destruction - it brought.

Then they vanished; and nothing more of them is known. With their passing came the diminishing in power of the greater races. The dwur were annihilated by an earthquake unmatched in strength before or since; its thunder was heard the world 'round, and the very mountains collapsed upon the dwur, sealing them into eternal darkness. The war between snake and fynn ended with the destruction of the former and the mortal weakening of the latter, who were overcome by the arrival of men within their demense. The whales, for reasons incomprehensible to those who live on a timescale swifter than their alien, cetacean minds dictate, retreated into the depths. And so only man remained to inherit the earth.

Nothing is known of the titans, though some speculate that they left to the outer spheres: the Moon, or the wandering stars beyond. Certainly, they have left for-ever; nothing has been seen of them for millenia. But rumour holds that they left their tools behind...

-


Map editor, for the game mentioned earlier! It's a tremendous amount of fun to fiddle with - for me, anyway. The file is here, and will require Python 2.6 to run. But that's really easy to get, as noted previously, so it's no trouble. Experiment with it! Report bugs! (I don't think there are any bugs.)

Suggestions:
- Fiddle with the views a lot. (With the menu on the top; you can see it in the screenshots.) You can't really do all that much in the default view, terrain view - unit view, and especially altitude view, are needed for the Full Map Editor experience.

- You might want to try making a smaller map - File:New, 800x600 - for a superior experience. Larger maps, such as the default, are significantly slower when it comes to certain operations, most notably anything involving altitude changes.

Note:
- This is a work in progress. The minimap isn't 100% functional yet, and there are a few things that aren't actually there yet. (Victory conditions, mainly.) Oh! Also, the main game won't do a darned tootin' thing with any maps made by it. (Yet.)

But it's still really lovely! I'm very proud of it. Also, going to bed.

EDIT: Included a dependency that I'd forgotten about. Apologies to anyone who downloaded before.

Also, feel free to point me to a better free-hosting site than Rapidshare. Feel free.

Cities of Bronze and Glass (8/12)

(Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.)

The bronze-gleaming ornithopter settled slowly downwards, its wings beating with an ever-lower frequency until the very tips touched the ground. The pilot-mechanism released its controls; with a dull thud, followed by a series of hisses and popping noises as the internal engines spun down, the ornithopter fell motionless. Calling out to an onlooker, the pilot asked, "Is this spot admissible for landing? I've been gone for a while, and when I left there weren't any regulations about it, but things seem to have gotten a lot busier around here."

"That they have," the onlooker shouted in reply. "There are rules now, actually - we built landing pads, further from the river - but you don't have to worry about it. Someone else will move your 'bird. You were on escort duty for the exiles, right?"

"Yeah, actually," the pilot replied in surprise. "One-Twenty-Six, flight leader for the downriver escort group. How'd you guess?"

"Well, you said you'd been gone for a while - and the shape your ornithopter's in confirms it," the onlooker said, walking over to help One-Twenty-Six out of its cockpit. "I don't know as much about these things as some, but that high-pitched noise it made as you were coaxing it into the final descent - not good! And it's got quite a few dings and scrapes on it, too, not to mention dirt and sap - you've been out on field duty. So, I made a guess."

"Well, you're no shabby guesser," One-Twenty-Six replied. "I know this old bird's in bad shape; I did the best I could for her out in the field, but she needs the tools we've got here at Origin to get back in proper shape." Suddenly concerned: "How soon do you think that'll be - the repairs, I mean?"

"Don't misunderstand me - I'm not in charge of manufacturing or maintainence," the onlooker replied. "But I doubt your bird will ever be repaired. We've got better materials and techniques these days - the latest ornithopters coming out of the forges are half the weight and three times the speed of your bird, and that's not even talking about manueverability." The onlooker paused for a moment, then continued with a gesture of its middle-right manipulator: "However, most of those changes can be refitted - the manufacturing yard's been kept busy upgrading all the other birds that came back from the escort missions, and they'll probably do them for your 'bird, too."

"You are a trickster - what's that number on your tag? - oh, Forty-Three -and you should be ashamed of yourself," One-Twenty-Six said with obvious relief. "Trying to fool me into thinking that little Elspeth here would be scrapped! But I've spent enough time shooting the breeze, I need to find the Council to report. Where do they meet these days?"

"The rise near the river-bend, just as when you left - it's become something of a tradition," Forty-Three replied. "But you've no need to go looking for them - as you might recall, I was elevated to the Council just before your departure. I've been assigned to debriefing the escort pilots - so, right now, you report to me."

"And you spent all that time just chatting with me, pretending you were an ordinary type?" One-Twenty-Six said, very surprised. "You're not just a trickster - you're a manipulator. But - not - please forgive me for any disrespect, of course, I am your humble nth-backup..."

"It's nothing," Forty-Three said. "We were just having a talk, mechanism to mechanism. I may have a lower index than you, but despite what certain idiots have repeatedly suggested, that doesn't mean I deserve a title before my name - or your obeisance. But, as you said, enough time wasted. Are you ready to report?"

"Give me a moment," One-Twenty-Six said, thinking. "All right. I'll just give you an overview, and you can ask about details."

"Sure," Forty-Three agreed.

"All right," One-Twenty-Six said. "Things were pretty quiet, mostly. The exiles moved at a pretty steady pace, marching for a full day, every day, as instructed; our ornithopters were much faster than them, of course, so it was easy to keep watch. We didn't see any runaways, so we only went into their ranks twice; the rest of the time, we watched them from the air and always were sure to land at a safe distance when we need to gather fuel for our night-fires or perform maintenance. We left the exiles when they'd reached the end of the river, a huge body of water - we couldn't see the other side, even from the air - that was three days ago. And that's my report."

Forty-Three had questions ready. "You say you landed in the exiles' ranks twice. Why?"

"The first time was at night - the eighth night," One-Twenty-Six replied after a moment's thought. "One-Twenty-Seven thought it saw a fire in their ranks, so it went down to check. If there was one, though, it was out by the time One-Twenty-Seven got low enough to be sure. We didn't see any more, but if the exiles have figured out how to cheat the night, they may have just become more skilled at hiding their experiments."

"You were using your night-fires then, to stay aloft," Forty-Three confirmed.

"Yes," One-Twenty-Six said. "We decided to watch them at night, too, so they couldn't try anything then. After a few nights, though, it started having strange effects on us - weird phantom images and failures of judgment. We were taking it in shifts by the eighth night, so One-Twenty-Seven was alone when it saw the fire."

"All right," Forty-Three said. "What about the second time?"

"That was at the very end - after the exiles had reached the end of the river," One-Twenty-Six said. "I went down to talk to them - let them know we were leaving, remind them to stay until the full five thousand days had elapsed, according to the plan the Council set out before departure."

"They asked me a question, too. 'What are we supposed to do?' 'What role do we fill in fufilling the Purpose while we are here?'"

"I didn't have a good answer. I told them the only thing I could think of - 'Exist.' Then - I left."

"I can't fault you - verbal improvisation isn't what we chose you for, and that would be a difficult question for any of us," Forty-Three said. Then it craned its optical sections to look upwards. "Nearly middle-day! I'm sorry, but the Council meeting begins in moments, so I have to leave you. That was pretty much all of what I wanted to ask you in any case; what you said corresponded closely with your flight-mates' accounts. Just one more question - where will you be later today, just before night?"

"Hm," One-Twenty-Six said, somewhat perplexed by this unexpected line of questioning. "Near the river, I suppose, somewhere there's little activity. By the palisade, probably, at the upstream side. I like to end my day that way, watching the water turn orange and gold. It's peaceful."

"Interesting," Forty-Three said. "Expect me."

-

Elsewhere, on a hill scattered with broken stone.

"Just like the last," Thirteen said, weary and frustrated. "A scrapyard, filled with ruined structures and broken machines. Devoid of anything useful, filled with the smell of rust."

"A grim place," Learned Hand said, "filled with destruction and waste. More evidence of the Creator's death; such a thing could not exist did he yet exist to build and maintain his works."

"Would you shut up about that?" Thirteen snapped. "You'll speak of nothing else! It's 'the Creator is dead' this and 'your quest is doomed' that and 'give up now' the other thing. If I say, 'We should stop so I can attempt (again) to repair the front-left motivator of the travelling chassis,' you'll say, 'How much further do you expect to go?' If I say, 'It will be sundown soon," you'll say, "The nineteenth since we set out from the Tomb, with no evidence yet appearing to substantiate your claims.' If I say, 'The sky is blue,' you'll say, 'Almost like it was when the Creator was alive.' Why are you even with us?"

"Your complaints do nothing to reduce the validity of my observations," Learned Hand replied calmly.

"Thirteen," Twenty said. "Remember that Learned Hand came with us because it felt we would need protection, not because it agreed that the Creator was still alive. There's no need to be irrational."

"Irrational?" Thirteen asked. "All I'm saying is that I'm sick of constantly hearing its lies!"

"They aren't lies - Learned Hand certainly believes what it says," Twenty replied. "And - well, I'm not even certain that it's wrong."

"Not you, too?" Thirteen asked. "Would you have us give up, turn back, throw away the purpose to which we have all dedicated ourselves?"

"No," Twenty said, downcast. "Maybe. I don't know. It's just... if I could just fly away, right now, and go back to One and the others..."

"We have visited two of the sites from the map," Three noted. "There were three."

"That's right," Thirteen agreed. "There's one more to visit yet before we think about giving up - if then."

"Yes," Twenty said, standing up slowly. "Ah - do you want me to give you a hand with that front-left motivator?"

-

Near the Origin, at the rise near the river-bend.

"The last of the personal petitions have been settled," Seven intoned, indicating for the final petitioner to be led away. "Now to a summary of standing business."

"The palisade has been repaired and reinforced," Nine noted. "With the new sealant we used, it should last at least eighty days - maybe more."

"Impressive," Four remarked. "My team has been working on a further understanding of the processes that determine our functioning and inactivity, with respect to night and day. Our previous hypothesis that light was the sole determinant seem inadequate, but the project leader tells me that we have several more ideas, with very exciting implications for some of them. We are very close to a breakthrough."

Five spoke up with no particular enthusiasm. "The mechanism-population-at-large is the same as yesterday," it said. "Everyone respects the Council, no-one wants another Purging, there are raging arguments about whether it would be a good idea to give a limited license for new duplicate-creation (and everyone has their own ideas about who should be given this license), and there's no signs of another Unbounded-style conspiracy in the making. Same as ever."

"Three more surveyors were sent out this morning by ornithopter," Ten reported. "And samples from the last expedition indicates that there may be a significant ore content beneath the rough ground near the forest edge, across the river. We're planning to send a follow-up there by late this afternoon - the potential value of a large new supply of metal is obvious."

"The downriver escort-flight got back earlier today," Forty-Three reported. "I just got through debriefing the last of them before the meeting. There wasn't any sign of further defiance from the Unbounded in any of their reports, but they do seem to have discovered the use of fire to stay active at night. In fifteen days, I'll send another flight to check on both groups of exiles." Two and Forty-Three shared knowing glances; this second flight, less closely supervised by the Council, would carry tools and supplies to the exiles, along with a message of friendship. The former Unbounded were still mechanisms, for all their one-time sins.

Eight spoke; slowly at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm. "The dam is well under way; there've been a few initial problems, water current problems we hadn't thought of, but my engineers have sorted things out in no time. We think we'll have it done well within schedule, especially with the new working-frames that have gone into production - our forges are three times as productive as they were ten days ago, eight percent more efficient with regards to both metal and fuel, and our working-frames and ornithopters have undergone similar improvements. So that's all good news. But there's another project - I've been talking it over with some of you, in private, along with the engineers. But this is the first time I've mentioned it in public - and it's big. It's going to change everything. And when the Creator gets here, and sees this project - well, the palisade is decent. It shows effort. The dam, that'll change things, to some degree. But this - well!"

"What's it called?" Four asked, impatient.

"Well - the project has more than one part. It's going to require the dam, the materials research, your research too, Four, which has already been essential to what we've planned so far. But we, the planning group, made a name for them - the new parts that will turn night into day."

Five had been in on the planning. Now it nodded. "Cities," it said.

"Cities of Bronze and Glass."

-

Time passes.

-

An ornithopter flies overhead.

King Blorf the Third

King Blorf the Third, heir to the throne of the Jhulkhan kingdom, was a robot.

This surprised no-one. So was everyone else in the Jhulkhan kingdom, after all.

Things were much more efficient that way.

It transpired that on one occasion, a pair of robots were having robot sex.

(Robot sex has only the very barest similarities to human sex. Also, most humans find it extremely disgusting. Extremely disgusting. Like flatworm sex, but nastier.)

(We should move on.)

"Oh, Elphut," the three-shaded member of the exchange sighed. "Remember the early days?"

"Yes?" Elphut said hopefully, continuing its part in the activities the robots were mutually conducting.

"When we were happy, over in the hills near Ceti Alpha IV?"

"Oh, yes," Elphut said, clearly hoping that the topic would change soon.

"Back when we laughed and pranced and delighted in life - just like real humans would have, before they went extinct! Why aren't things like that any-more, Elphut?"

Elphut's eyes flashed, and then it exploded. It wasn't the real Elphut at all - it had been a robot duplicate!

"What?" Elphut's partner asked, startled. "Hey! That doesn't make any sense! We're robots! Why would you make a robot duplicate of a robot?"

It doesn't matter! Elphut had done it anyway! (He'd anticipated this particular line of conversation, you see.)

I'll tell you this, though - he wouldn't be getting any more robot sex for quite some time.

(Some say that robot sex evolved in the dying days of humanity so that robots could survive without humans.)

(Other say that robot sex is what drove humans extinct in the first place.)

(Oh, you wacky robots!)

Penicillin and the Modern Man

In a hot air balloon, a pair of men prepare for a duel high over Paris!

A brief convocation is held - in French, as all conversation shall be for the remainder of the piece, translated for the reader's convenience. "We shall separate the connection between our balloons and wait for one full minute to pass, that we might have adequate separation. Then we shall fire our pistols in an attempt to strike and deflate the other's balloon. Whichever of us should do so first will be considered the victor of the duel. Should neither succeed in this task before emptying the stock of ammunition within their weapon, it shall be declared a draw, and all grievances between us declared moot and void."

"Begin!"

A minute passes. They drift apart.

"For the lady Aveline!" the duelists cry, and open fire with their weapons. The shots of each fly far, but each has two remaining when - to their startled surprise - a flight of motor-zeppelins pass between them!

"Get out of the way!" the angry duelists shout, waving their pistols about wildly. "We are having a duel here! This is no place for a zeppelin-cavalcade!"

But the zeppelins continue on in a seemingly endless procession! In fact - they're circling around! It's a zeppelin-loop - obstructing the fight!

The combatants mutually decide that they should change altitudes. But the zeppelins follow! The duel is doomed!

"What is your problem?" the duelists demand of the zeppelin-pilots, united in frustration at this impingement on their manly ritual. "Why do you prevent us from pursuing this matter to its natural conclusion?"

"We are your friends!" the nearest of the zeppelin-pilots replies. "We do not wish either of you to die for the love of a woman - plummeting a half-mile onto the stone roofs and streets of Paris as your balloon loses buoyancy! Come back to us, come down from this suicidal nonsense! This can be settled peacefully!"

The duelists look perplexed. They cannot comprehend this request. Their eyes flash. Then - they explode!

What vileness! Not one, but both duelists sent a robotic decoy to take their place! How unscrupulous! How unmanly! How shameful!

The lady Aveline's heart will never be won with such tactics. Realizing this, both of the cowardly duelists give up their suit at once! They vow to turn over a new leaf, and begin a life of honesty and openness.

Their friends inform them that this 'new life' can begin with retrieving the balloons left pilotless and adrift by the destruction of their robot-duplicates.

This is probably fair enough.

Warbling Jottlebugs

As Evelyn went to check her mail, a tremendous rumbling began to come from beneath her garden path. Startled, she stepped back onto the porch of her house; and in a spray of dirt and small rocks, a Warbling Jottlebug burst forth - six feet long, black and green and mottled, judged by scientists to be the most adorable of all riding-animals in common use!

"Ah!" Evelyn said, clutching her hands to her mouth in surprised delight. Then she noticed - the Jottlebug had a rider! And that rider held a package. He handed it to her.

Inside was a pink heart, with a message atop it. "To Evelyn, from Jacques, for Valentine's Day. Will you be mine?"

Evelyn was rather startled. "For - for me?" she asked, belabouring the obvious somewhat. Then, beginning to recover, she swiftly added: "But it's long past Valentine's Day?"

The messenger gestured sheepishly at himself, the package, the Jottlebug. "All this took some time to arrange - I didn't quite make it in time for Valentine's Day. I'm sorry. But - I love you!"

Then came a pregnant pause. The messenger held his breath, searching Evelyn's face for any signs of her response.

After a very long minute, Evelyn finally responded. "...Oh, Jacques, I do adore you as a friend - but - not that way. I'm sorry."

The messenger's eyes flashed. Then it exploded in a spray of sparks, the startled Jottlebug fleeing back underground. It had been a robotic decoy - not the real Jacques at all!

Oh, clever Jacques!

Now, not having recieved the bad news in person, he shall be perfectly happy for-ever!

Technology really is the salve for all wounds.