The Collision rehearsal for which I have been long awaiting may be delayed again; the guy with the key is still trying to deal with his kitchen remodeling and has if the rest of us can put it off a week.  I am of two minds, but have said I’ll be ruled by the majority.  Meanwhile, I managed yesterday to set up enough equipment for me to practice, and got through all the material once, not without complaints from one of our house guests concerning the volume of my equipment.  I am definitely a bit rusty, not having played at all since November, but I should manage to recover.

Before I close, let me call your attention to three new fiction pieces from Eric Ashley.  The first, Practise Bits:  Diner, talks about a dimension traveler who was poisoned with a substance that will continue to kill him repeatedly until he finds a cure, although coffee helps.  Practise Bits:  Fall gives a glance at a decadent republic through the eyes of someone who would see it restored.  Practise Bits:  Raid is an interesting application of Clarke’s Law, in that seriously advanced technology is mistaken for something supernatural by a more primitive culture.

It’s getting late and I’m not getting everything done I need to do, but let me push forward.

–M. J. Young

“Push it.” The flat order echoed through the bridge, and the nav officer shoved the nozzles which mixed anti-matter and matter open to their greatest aperture. And the Seeker of Things slammed forward, kept from slaughtering its crew by the inertial damper fields.
“We’re going in on the plane of elliptic.” Kevin Largos spoke, and felt at his black velvet collar which covered a stiffening board that gouged at his throat. He was not used to his duty as a first lieutenant with the Seekr, but he had served as security on the Mary Piper, and so he had some notion of proper military behaviour.
“They wil be…” Expecting us, he thought to say.
“They are primitives, mostly. In this system, they have barriers to catch us, but not in front of the supposed Kuiper Belt, and despite the lack of evidence they still fudge their data to make an Oort Cloud appear. This makes it easier for us to sneak in.”

And so it was that the ship plunged undetected into the Veranek Solare System, until Luisa and the courser saw its drive flame. And then men in powered battle armor leapt off, and began to search for datafiles stolen centuries ago. The huntsman raised his legal gun to one of them, and that man obeying the dictates of training shot him down with a plasma bolt leaving Luisa to watch wide-eyed with praise to God as the shiny metal angels bounded away after striking down the thug with their sword of flame.

“Let us raise taxes on the small merchants and the people to pay for private guards for the Great Houses.”

Trade ran on the League roads through deep forrests for civilization was but a couple centuries old in the northern pine forrests of Westhumberland. The highwaymen were ordinarily put down by League patrols mounted on motorcyles, but without the Spells of Union, and Protection, and Sharpness of Blade that all patrols used to carry, but now that the War Against the Zamthos Pirates is done, no one wishes to spend the ingots needed for mages. And the Colleges seem to produce few new great mages which is another problem for the New Learning seems of little use to me. And the Renegade Spirits were stronger than ever, and made it so venturing into the deep woods was hazardous for even many men of goodly intention. The wicked could pass freely however.

But, the Great Houses can afford enough guards to stave off the thugs, and this made it so that they had no competition from the Minor Houses. So when I stand at the champagnier, and speak to the fools they can only think that they are not losing much money, and even they have gained influence. They fear losing that influence as they have gained illwill from the poor pressed people who have to pay more for their goods. Pride, laziness, fear combined with shortsightedness and alcohol with the lack of intellectual gifts brought by the New Learning.

And so I swore again as I drove down into Temras Valley, and up through the gates of Villiean Asando to my townhouse where my butler, Welkins parked my car for me.

“My lord?” He asked me as he climbed out of the car.
“More idiots.” I said, and he smiled.
“They seek to make the world new not knowing how little they know, how much wisdom is embedded in tradition. Their New Learning seeks to create politically reliable men rather than deeply learned scholars who understand the Ancient Ways. But the blessing of all this incompetence is that they disarm themselves before you, lord.”
“I do not want to take over the land, and make myself King, Welkins.” I said and walked away.
“That is why you are the right man to do it, my lord.” He whispered behind me whether I heard by mistake or purpose I knew not. Perhaps so, but I had not come to this universe to destroy a republic, and so I went to bed and dreamed troubled dreams of the unwise who poisoned themself, and then took more of the same poison as antidote. And it was thus that I cursed vulgarly as I do, even in my dreams.

Three worlds ago, I had gone after a black hat cyberhacker Dr. Memo who being a ‘knowledge is power’ sorta dude found out I was a verser, a quasi-immortal, and so in a last bit of revenge injected me with Storafin89.2. For that, his ninety year prison sentence in Ceres Asteroid Punitive Institution was upgraded to the High Jump where he got tossed out of a spaceship in orbit with a spacesuit and over the next ninety minutes he became a meteorite. Over the next year, I died as my lungs, liver, two hearts (I’d picked up a spare in another universe), and GI tract turned to mush.

No one in that universe could save me. And it was not a drug exactly. It was a genetic change.

Next universe, same pain. Dr. Memo believed in vengeance with a purity of hatred that had him walking to his death with a taunting smile on his face, just for me. I don’t understand that way of thinking.

And then as I crested the hill, and saw the brownstones give way downhill to the towers of downtown Somewhere City, I smelled coffee. Java. The Black Brew.

Salvation.

Something in coffee, some mixture of caffeine and the other chemicals held the Storafin change at bay. I would still die, but less painfully, and I might have a few good years before it got crippling instead of a year of constant pain.

I broke into a trot and followed my nose. Downhill a bit, overshot, and went back uphill to the right, and then down another side street, and in the midst of a dozen quiet houses, I saw a well-lit diner. It looked like the locals did not have barbaric zoning laws that made one drive across town for a burger instead of just taking a short hike.

I ran and the pain grabbed my first heart and squeezed. Gritting my teeth, I pushed on, and came into the warm light of the stainless steel tube, passed through the glass doors of paradise, and croaked out ‘coffee’.

A lovely woman, her hair astray from its ponytail, a lank smacking the side of her narrow face, yellow-brown-and faint red the hair was, put the hot ceramic mug in my hand, and before she could finish saying ‘cream or sugar’, I had guzzled own half the steaming hot brew. It scorched my tongue and throat, but the Storafin’s claw let go of my heart, and retreated to jabbing me in the gut with the occasional needle.

I hate the Claw.

She raised an eyebrow, arched, carefully plucked, and without another word refilled my cup. I let this cool down for ten seconds before guzzling it while standing there.

“I do like a man who enjoys my cooking.” She said in a soft, lilting voice that came from deep in her throat, from near the tattoo of the stabbed by a dagger bumblebee on her right side of her throat just above the green colar of the brown uniform blouse.

“More please.” And I gave her a coin of soft, heavy gold which widened her eyes.

“Have a seat. Whatever you want, mister. Its on the house.” She guided me to a formica bench which had a table jutting from a low dividing wall on the other side of which the cook, a bald in the middle, brown red chestnut hair tightly woven on the sides of his shiny deep varnish skin was giving her a wide-eyed look. When he saw me seeing him, he nodded, and went back to dishing up some mix of green vegetables and bits of meat frying on a flat metal plane some yards long.

I went to the next cup of coffee, and saw a man behind a newspaper glancing over its top at me in some little curiousity. His face was a straight edge of the V on the left, near vertical, but on the right, it was as if the V had almost fallen so his face was unbalanced. Craggy enough that had he been a woman he would have been two hundred pounds heavier and working at the DMV with a very bad case of misanthropy, but as a man he merely looked strong and a bit handsome with his tightly curled black hair cropped somewhat close to his head, and above his ears.

The cup eased the last of the Claw, and I breathed in.

“Feel better, mate?” The voice was calm, non-provoking and off to my left where an old man with a cane prominently held in his right hand to cant against the tiled floor sat at a tiny table against the opposite wall of the thin diner tube.

His face had once been craggy, but it had just become some strange bumps, and a grizzled gray close cut not beard, not quite with a ballcap on top, and a good right eye of pale blue and a black patch covering his right eye.

“Got that in Nimh Sang. Some twannie socialist stabbed me with a trench knife, but I shot him in the chest with my Smokker-Ferguson.”

I nodded to the old war vet.

“Coffee…helps.”
“Knew some folk who got addicted to Ja-MU. Nasty stuff. Changed you, but they were coffee drinkers too…” He eyed me speculatively, and I looked back. Maybe here was a clue. Maybe I could find a way free from the Claw here in this diner.

One of those is a silly bit that ought to be written somewhere.  It is said in the Multiverser Referee’s Rules, in the appendix describing a few characters, it says, “Most famous of the Alchemist’s equipment quirks is his pockets.  There is a 60% chance of any small object being found in them.”  This past weekend that statement got a shot of adrenaline.  As you perhaps know, the Alchemist, also known as the Architect, is my original game persona.  I was at a birthday party this weekend, and there came a moment when we began opening presents.  As the first of the wrappings was removed, the child’s mother was for a moment holding the trash, and I said I thought I could help with that.  I promptly pulled a full-sized intact thirty-three gallon black plastic trash bag from my pocket and handed it to her, which was then used for the remainder of the day to collect party trash.

It would be reasonable for you to wonder why I had a trash bag in my pocket, and perhaps I ought to let you wonder, but it might help your understanding of this mysterious character if I offer the explanation.  I had used such a bag to transport several presents on the long journey in the car, to keep them contained, clean, and intact in the rear, and to carry them inside.  Once they were inside, I removed them from the bag and was left holding, well, the bag.  Not seeing any good place for it and not wishing to turn a useful object into trash, I balled it up and stuffed it in my jeans pocket, where it remained for an hour or two until it was needed.  That, then, is how those objects wind up in his (or my) pockets.

On another note, a week from tomorrow we have a Collision rehearsal, the first of the new year.    I’ve talked with the drummer and expect everyone to be there, and even wrote up an extra brass part for an experiment.

My brain is rattling through several other matters, but they don’t matter, so I’ll move forward.

–M. J. Young

I’m going to note that after a week or so hiatus Eric Ashley has struck again, offering us Practise Bits:  Rail, which I discovered too late in the evening to read before posting this so I can’t yet comment on it as I have dinner cooking and people in need of transportation and forum posts to address and more, miles to go before I sleep, but it’s open on my desktop and I might even attempt to print it and take it with me (although I’ve found that printing articles here does not always work so well).

So with that I’m moving forward.

–M. J. Young

Subconsciously realizing the train had stopped, and believing they had reached Conslan Port, Jeff began rousing himself from dreams of trumpet song in purple palaces and green mist-shrouded bark covered giants clustered in darkling woods which in his dream had gone together, although in reality, they had been in altogether different worlds and universes only to find his nose cold and his eyes opening, then crossing as he spotted a pistol barrel pointing to a small zit on his proboscis.

A short gasp, a tightening of his hands on the arm grips, and then he looked up, with a slight tremulous in his chest to see amused grey eyes, a wide whiskery smile, and a Forton hat of felt with a small belt about the scalp made to slick off the rains that came in off the ocean betimes.

“Well, sir. You are a heavy sleeper, and a cool customer.” The man had some admiration in his voice, and he leaned his head to the side to point with while still holding the pistol in his left hand with utter stillness. Everyone else in the rail car looked either frightened or outraged, but all were awake. And making sure no one ‘got any bright ideas’ was another fellow in a Forton hat with a shortgun probably armed with several dozen pellets suited to shred a man and the fellow next to him.

“Is this a robbery?” Jeff Sundheim asked, hiding his hope. He made to get off his watch on his wrist, and the leader laughed.

“We’re not common thieves. We only want what is our due, Mr. Sundheim, is it? Troubleshooter and accountant for Duke Morganne?”

Jeff sighed. He had hoped, but there was really nothing for it, but to go along. He could not start a gun battle at such a disadvantage, particulary so since there were children in the carriage.

“You have me, sir.”
“Indeed, I do. Now stand, slowly.”
Jeff did and permitted himself to be briskly and amateurishly frisked. They missed the stilletto hanging between his shoulder blades which was some comfort.
“Tell ‘the Duke’ of what happens. He will be sure to gift you a doubloon if you’re quick.” Jeff spoke to the room at large, and the helper with the shortgun made to bash him with it, but the leader stopped him.
“No, laddie. We’re a peaceful lot. Feel free, my hosts to get some of the Duke’s gold. I’d be right pleased to see some honest workingman got it rather than that crook. Tell him that the Union has his man, and the Cement Plant as well.” The cheery laughter and the quiet that met this told Jeff much. He was in enemy ground, and his enemy was a canny fellow. Jeff knew that he would need to learn much more to extricate himself and his employer in the next days, or he might find himself not so well treated.

And with that, he was led outside the stopped train in a dark wood and mounted on a horse to which his hands were tied, and another rider took up the reins of his horse. The leader of the kidnappers told five of his men to clear the barrier in the track, and the other four nearest Jeff to guard him well and take him back to some place known only as ‘The Camp’. It promised to be the beginning of a long night.

Meanwhile, today is Thursday, and I uploaded another article to the temporal anomalies series at The Examiner, Blackadder Back & Forth part 10:  repairs.  There might be ways to fix the past, but for several reasons Edmond cannot do so the way he does it.

Not yet having received 11 Minutes Ago and finding a bit of extra time on my hand Tuesday evening, I have started working on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.  I don’t much like it–I mean, it’s a decent fun movie, but as a time travel story it’s going to be a lot of trouble.  On the other hand, having seen it several (many?) times when my boys were younger, the single viewing with a notepad already made might be sufficient to cover the details.

–M. J. Young

Blackadder finally makes it home in this week’s Examiner temporal anomalies installment, Blackadder Back & Forth part 9:  home?, in which the issue is whether it is possible for the time traveler to discover that he has changed the past.  The film isn’t over, though, because Edmond will recognize the damage done and will make another trip attempting to repair it.

I have not started work on the next film (the one to follow Watchmen, which is ready to run), but I am not at the moment certain which it will be.  I have been stalling the start of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III:  Turtles in Time partly because I’ve been otherwise engaged, partly because I already know the story and think it’s not going to make a very interesting series, and partly because I’m not sure how much interest there is in it.  Meanwhile, someone wrote pressing me to analyze a film called 11 Minutes Ago, so I ordered it from Amazon (it really seemed cheap of me to suggest that he do so).  It sounds interesting, perhaps challenging, in that it appears the time traveler keeps hopping back earlier and earlier, which means that he’s rewriting his own history as he goes–definitely the dangerous way to do it.  It’s supposed to arrive around Thursday, so maybe I’ll do that one first.

Well, work awaits.

–M. J. Young

As long as we were by the shopping centers, though, there was one thing my passenger needed for work, so stopped at a store for a quick errand.  A few hours later we left, but had to make another stop for another necessity, and by the time we were home, the morning daylight had given away to evening darkness, and the day was spent.

I turned to my office, but I do not do so well on lack of sleep as I did in my college days (and I did not do as well then as I tried to believe), and was accomplishing nothing if you don’t count clicking a mouse button with my eyes closed.  I was forced to retire for a nap, and by the time I was again functional there was very little left of “today”.

I did manage to upload the latest Examiner temporal anomalies article while it was still Thursday on the eastern seaboard.  I had a couple extra hours, because even though there are independent editions of the e-paper for cities around the country, the central office is in a more westerly timezone and so articles posted to the national edition, at least, are timestamped by the clock there.  In this installment, Blackadder Back & Forth part 8:  legions, the intrepid duo make the last stop of their first trip, encountering their own ancestors at Hadrian’s Wall.  I did not mention it in the article, but apparently the joke of the scene is about making the Roman armor progressively shorter until David Fry’s suit leaves his underpants showing from beneath.  I more appreciated Hugh Laurie misidentifying the approaching Scottish attackers as a moving orange hedge, but then, I thought that the credits listing of “Hordes of Scots” playing the part of “Scottish Hordes” (or was it the other way around?) was almost as funny as the standard gag credit in the Elizabethan series, “Additional Dialogue by William Shakespeare”.

Speaking of Mr. Ashley, his latest contribution to the reading material here is a rather atmospheric piece about a vampire hunter, entitled Practise Bits:  Bitter.  I’m not certain whether the character is inspired by me, him, Lauren Hastings, or David Marcoe, all of whom have done the modern vampire scenario, although for me it was Chicago, not Philadelphia, and the character is not Lauren because it’s clearly a man.

Well, I’m obviously rambling a bit, a side effect of trying to clear the nap out of my brain, but there’s more work ahead so I’d better move ahead to where it awaits.

–M. J. Young