This page is a mess I know
The God of the ants talks about ants.Carnivorous pack hunting fainting goats. Supernatural snake oil salesmen "all glowing auras, and no long term effects." Societies as organisms. Reality benders put to good use. Meme tabulator. Supernatural false advertising - says it will do one strange thing, but instead violates the laws of nature in another way. Disgusting clumsy devoted minions that won't leave.
syntax. To refer to an anchor (and scroll to it) use
[#anchor-]
Stuff I'm working on
Ant God
The God of the ants talks about ants.
He very much liked the ants, he felt sorry for them, he was the only one who did. He would spend long hours watching their little lines march through the house. It fascinated him how different they were. All work and no anything else at all: Sometimes he wondered how much they could actually comprehend and how much they were robots. He protected them, when others sprayed chemicals at the "disgusting pests" he would react, sometimes with too much zeal, giving away his attachment. Often he thought of himself as some sort of protectorate god over them.
Sometimes the god would leave drips of jelly or peanut butter out for the ants, smeared in the corner of the counter where others couldn't see. Sometimes he would intentionally reroute their lines if they didn't find the jam quickly enough, and they never did.
Once when an ant got on his hand. He manipulated his fingers and flexed his palm creating a never ending constantly shifting environment. The ant walked in the same direction for nearly five minutes before changing direction and traveling up his wrist and around his forearm. A thin forest of hairs is probably what it looked like, he imagined that the ants were slightly disgusted at the way his flesh was wrapped around the outside of his skeleton.
Once when an ant got on his plate he flicked it away, sending it flying at unimaginable speeds across the room. It weighed so little he doubted it was hurt at all, but he wondered what it felt like to move so quickly for no discernible reason.
Once when an ant tried to eat his food he crushed it with a slight motion of his hand. It died because he didn't want to eat it by accident, that would be disgusting; sometimes ants needed to die, it was better than the alternatives, and he made it generally quick and painless. He could swipe away a large group of them with a wet rag and spray the area lightly with insect repellent as a warning to others to stay away. Occasionally he would find a teeming crowd of them under his desk at the far end of his room. he wasn't sure why they went there but they kept getting stuck in cobwebs making a difficult mess, he sprayed the area with bug poison preparing to scoop the wad up in a disposable towel.
He had read once that cobwebs would disintegrate when lit, so he tried it. Initially the results were disappointing, but he noticed that the ants he had assumed dead seemed to twitch. He tried it again, this time on the kitchen counter with one of those long barreled lighters. He dragged it across a small line sending some ants scattering and some dead. But again they weren't really: they were still there, upside down and curled up. Their legs and antenna twitched and shuddered and he began to like to imagine that the heat had evaporated all the moisture from their outer shell freezing it's joints and trapping them inside. How strange it would be to have an exoskeleton. Then again how strange, to them, would it be not to.
He reasoned with himself that the flames and poison were deserved, the ants weren't allowed to eat the food that wasn't provided. He was nearly delighted when the ants started scurrying at the sound of the click of the lighter before the flame came out, but he wasn't sure whether they had always done that and he just hadn't noticed or if they even had the capacity for memory
What bothered him most of all was that they might not comprehend any of it.
Us From Other Eyes
A pretentious scholar forces just how open-minded he is down another scholar's throat.
These people are MONSTERS, their society fallen to utter DEPRAVITY, consuming Bread on every street corner, tearing it apart with their hands, their knives, their TEETH. They might as well be dragging their lungs from their chests without batting a single EYELASH. They MIX and KNEAD and BAKE the stuff and at the end they throw it all away.
I have traveled every world and every land,
but this is the end.
-Excerpt from the righteous tirade
As a child I often pondered how people from drastically different backgrounds than myself would view things I considered ordinary or mundane. I would try to put a part of myself into their point of view and converse with it: explaining the parts they didn't understand, answering questions, and occasionally arguing with them. When I first began I generally just showed clips of Jurassic Park to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and he was amazed, because I was, at the realism. But soon I became bored with running the same couple-ten or so scenarios over and over again. People become cynical when they are bored, and I began to realize not everyone might like the same things I liked. Perhaps Lafayette would be annoyed by the fast paced action scenes and would rather attend to his business. Maybe that random moviegoer from a hundred years ago liked talking scenes because talking in movies was groundbreaking. In fact there might be more to life than movies
Stuff I'm sure I'll finish
Gifts to the Minds of the Nation
The curious actions of the top ruin death.
It was decided on the four thousandth year that in order to influence the mind of the nation with the creativity afforded by individuality it would be wise to allow him one personal gift to use as he pleased. To discourage him from wasting valuable time it was decided that this gift would only be presented to him upon his death.
The mind 239 used this gift to:
- Increase the number of guard stations along the long rout, and
- In order to improve morale among the workers, engrave every surface in KesiHAN with the history of the nation.
The three minds who followed did likewise: continue their work after they died. There was no change in creativity, and so, it was decided to enforce that the gift not be used for any practical purpose. Unfortunately the next mind was both dangerously individual as well as sly, and it was believed he would request something dangerous.
The mind 243 used his gift to:
- Construct 30 real looking statues of soldiers to position at his tomb as if ready for battle.
This was a curious move as death was a peaceful action, but it seemed catching, as surrounding one's body with the figures of soldiers became a tradition. It was decided, as the creativity required to design the soldiers seemed to work it's way into all the mind's actions, this was acceptable, and the experiment was a success.
The mind 244 used his gift to:
- Construct 30 real looking statues of soldiers,
- Construct 10 real looking statues of horsemen,
- Construct 3 real looking statues of KesiHAN guards to position at his tomb as if ready for battle.
NOT AT ALL FINISHED
Song and Dance
A lost man wanders across a lost town. But the town wasn't really lost, hidden would be a better word for it. And now that I think of it the man wasn't really lost either, he was just cursed to go in weird directions.
A cursed man wanders across a hidden town. That's about right.
At the time of this writing professor Atkins had been cursed by a Michelle Davisburg non-lingual memetic enchantment (known incorrectly as the wanderers hex), possibly transmitted through a complex pattern of finger and eyebrow manipulation. Lost in the midwestern United States, he was compelled by the enchantment to travel in the opposite direction last indicated to He maintained enough lucidity to jury rig a workable inverted guide charm that would pull him in random "safe" directions. Unfortunately his alignment was off and the locations he visited would better fit the definition of secluded, unknown, or, in some cases, intentionally hidden.
This is a notable excerpt from Atkins' Journal, the chapter title given was "Song and Dance!" Several of the earlier pages have blood and mud stains on them, the words obscured do not seem to be important.
[date obscured]
[obscured] it! I'm a cursed man using magic charms to find my way through every unknown area of the midwest, this should be a [obscured] fantasy story, not sci-fi.
[obscured] those [obscured] robots, nearly cut my [obscured] ear off. I've only got two bandages left and this [obscured]ompass seems to have led me to three gang hideouts in the last month, when I do get somewhere safe it always seems to be escaped war robots hiding from society.
The next page has no stains.
Gosh darn those robots…
I guess I'm just ranting and need to get some rest before I bleed to death.
Now that I think of it, I just realized that I officially qualify as an enchanter now, what with my creating a reverse guide charm from memory, and imbuing it in a compass. Prof. Henry Atkins, enchanter; I should put it on my office door. What would my students think? "The math teacher has lost his mind!"
March 2, 2009
11:10 - The abandoned road I had been following is no longer abandoned, It seems freshly paved and I can see a large farm to my east; I would stop there, but the charm apparently wants me to continue down the road. I have two days worth of food, and the charm hasn't starved me yet, so I'll just keep going. Maybe I'll come to a town or something…
March 3, 2009
3:30 - I see a town up ahead and I can hear music on the wind, my hopes are high.
3:40 - It sounds like Boston, "Twenty Five or Six to Four;" I love that song!
3:45 - Well, I'm sitting on a park bench on the main street, there is no music to be heard, and everyone seems to be going about their business as usual. The town is quite small; one stoplight, and it isn't on. I'd estimate the population to be in the low hundreds if I included the several farms I saw. I'm getting odd glances, so I expect this to be one of those "everyone knows everyone else" places, I'd better find a hotel or something.
Y'know, "Twenty Five or Six to Four;" was actually a Chicago song now that I think about it.
6:55 - There was only one hotel in town, the faded sign advertised three available rooms. I came in the front door and startled a family who were lounging around a comfortably decorated lobby eating cheese and crackers off the reception desk. I asked if they had an open room and they kind of scurried around whispering to each other. The father produced a dusty book from the depths of a drawer and had me sign my name. He led me to one of the three rooms upstairs, it has a nice view of the street outside, but the decoration along with the loud bumping and shuffling I had heard while being checked in make me suspect that, before I arrived, this was the bedroom of the family's oldest son. Obviously they haven't functioned as a hotel in years, but feel the need to pretend like they have. So, yeah, I'm in another hideout; a town removed by it's residents from the rest of the world. I don't know why these ones did it but they seem friendly enough. I just hope they don't try to kill me if I try to leave like those robots did. I wish I still had my iPod.
11:13 - I can hear singing outside, a high, lone female voice; she's too far away She's right under my window. She sings:
Not for freedom, but for loss
And run and run, and never hide
Now she's stopped, I think I just caught the very end of it. Those were the only words I could catch, but from what I could hear the other verses rhymed just as badly. Her voice wasn't bad, but she was trying to sing too high for he
There are like fifty people outside doing some sort of huge choreographed dance thing. shes in the center completely
Everyone is humming really deep, I think this is the bridge.
11:20 - The song has ended but a new faster paced one has started up down stairs, I can hear everyone dashing around. I've blocked the bedroom door with the dresser, and I plan on hiding this book somewhere, maybe someone else will come through town and find it before all the weird stuff starts. I can hear them banging on my door.
The next several pages contain sketches of the town, each sketch captioned: Bah, I can't draw.
Coming soon - SEE what happens when they break down the door' Hear the MEZMERIZING song they sing before they devour him! Watch his DRAMATIC escape across the rooftops! All this, and more in our next installation of Henry Atkins in the Lands of the Lost!//
Mr. Hilton
Being boring is often the best choice…
Mr. Hilton was never one to question the order of things, but there werea handful of consistent quirks in his life that did make him uncomfortable…
For instance: why did random strangers hurry away from him on the streets; hiding their faces if he made eye contact with them? Why was it that when he travelled, the distance and time never seemed to match up as they should; as if the space in between points had changed? How was it that every once and a while someone would mention events from his dreams in passing, as if they had been there too, but would become confused when questioned?
These happenings didn't seem to make any sense, but they occurred regularlyenough that they became routinetoMr. Hilton. He could work his way around them to get what he wanted done and, for the most part, if he didn't think about them, they went away. What bothered him though; what tugged on his mind ever so slightly, were the- "stranger" events; the times when he felt as if he was stuck between two worlds, or rather, that another world was leaking into his. The whisperings and murmurings that flowed slowly into the room when no-one else was near. The smudges on the opposite side of his bathroom mirror that looked uncannily like greasy hand prints. The quick movements in his peripheral vision, gangly extenuated humanlike forms huddled in thecorners or behind furniture, never there when he looked directly at them. But, of course, Mr. Hilton never looked.
Mr. Hilton knew very well that he was not insane, but the thought of it never left him. It was for this reason that he never dwelt on the occurrences keeping himself firmly grounded in what he considered to be respectable; shunning anything remotely unusual. His life became what an outside viewer would call bland and routine, but Mr. Hilton lovedit. Eating, sleeping, and working were his life; he had what he needed, anything else was irrelevant, and of no interest to him.
What Mr. Hilton didn't know was that he was "the chosen one," he never would; he would never find out what he was chosen for, or by whom; he never went on any adventures, or searched for any answers. He died of natural causes late in his life; never knowing, nor caring what he could have done, but moderately content with what he had done.
Though he felt uncomfortable, Mr. Hilton was never one to question the order of things…
The Upper Right Hand Corner
An adapted expository writing essay
I note that in the upper right hand corner of my lab where there appears to be a television set, there is in fact, a hole in the wall cut with precision to perfectly outline the shape of a large television set. Through this I see, suspended by tiny threads, hundreds upon thousands of sheets of some material, colored and pieced like a puzzle to exactly resemble the TV. But unlike a puzzle the pieces are not all at the same depth. I now realize that some are set apart from me at magnificent distances, planetary in size. Truly miraculous is the mechanism by which the pieces are drawn back and forth, angled, and lit, and stretched to give an identical illusion simultaneously to every, ever shifting student. The movement offers hundreds of perspectives a day on those days I host lessons.
None of what I just described is true, but I can imagine it quite easily should I try. I makes good practice in understanding the more curious items I am oft tasked to document. For example this first item to be evaluated from the Brennan vault. Perspective can be a tricky.
