85ea6832
From: vagans@inanna.eanna.net
The Fool wrote:
> The Fool writes:
> "I thought it might be The Future come a knockin", replied Sourceror.
>
> "This is another vector by which the virus is transmitted, the shadows
> of the future obscure what is here and now. What is in front of us is
> forced into tracks that lead to our image of the future.", continued the
> raven.
>
> The black bird jumped onto the table to grab a nacho from the
> broiler-pan, which had suddenly appears on the kitchen table. It threw
> it up into the air, and swallowed it whole as it fell.
>
> "We have just about enough critical mass in our present storyline to
> counter-act the reality virus. If we can get the beemice pass the fence
> and into the machine, it just might fix it.", he said with a bit of
> cheese hanging from his beak.
"The beemice are cycling through their times in the mazehive. They liked
to linger. When I get a positive in the hive, the sphere replicates
it before the beemouse cycles out. I've got the template from the lab
upstairs. They're bee for bat and mouse for cat, but can be morphed
however we please. We've got four, so far. Three or four more should
do it".
While Sourcerer watched the sphere, mpa and Poly disassembled the
controllers, rewiring them according to mpa's sketches. The raven paced
the table between them. When he reached one end, he stopped, cocked his
head and regarded their efforts a moment, then turned and paced towards
the other end, only pausing to grab a nacho from the pan.
Then they went outside into the tropical night, humid and fragrant,
and stood off a few meters from the perimeter fence. They heard the
thumping coming from behind the utility entrance.
"That's what I heard when we first got here. Either something has come
loose, or there's something in there." Sourcerer set the sphere on the
ground. He looked back at Poly and mpa and signalled them. Then he
opened the sphere. The beemice spiraled up out of the sphere. Poly and
mpa guided them over the fence. They hovered before the door.
Sourcerer attached the Rancho's Minor Maintainer to the sphere and
powered on. The beemice merged together into a molecular ribbon, and
flowed into the locking mechanism, where mpa and Poly picked the
lock. The door swung open. Sourcerer focused the Maintainer. "Damn!
What is all that?", he exclaimed. The screen showed the utility room
littered with shreds of black material. He reformed the beemice, and
the controllers guided them to the console and had the beemice pile onto
the button labeled "MaintMode" until it clicked.
The tropical summer faded into deep winter, a bright, cold night, still
and moonless. Large snowflakes began to fall filling the air.
"We're all soaked", Poly said. "We need hot food and dry clothes; forget
the Meta Metaphor Machine for now. We can explore later and without
catching pneumonia. And it's Christmas!" Then she noticed the lights
were out.
"Uh oh. Powers out. Without the machine working, we'll have to find
the fuse box."
Poly took Sourcerer's arm as they walked back to the Rancho Deluxe. He
kept looking back to the machine and the detritus in the utility room.
Gene, mpa, and Zaren followed them rubbing their arms against the cold.
The Raven came up alongside Sourcerer, who turned to him and said,
"You look familiar. Don't I know you from somewhere? Arches? Canyonlands?"
It was beginning to feel like Christmas.
--
(__) Sourcerer
/(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O
\../ |OO|||O|||O|| Mirroring the shadows of futurity
|| OO|||OO||O||O since 1993
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
