Chunnel Surfing

The Well is obviously on a longish hiatus. I think it may have slipped from game status to project status, and thus becomes something to procrastinate.

Amazon.com -- http://www.amazon.com/Chunnel-Surfer-II-Scott-Maddix/dp/1430315369/ -- has some new fun stuff about CSII:

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
zombie town, clockwork man, reality tunnel, intelligent cats

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
South Haven, Hill City, Miss Pinkham, Get Discovered, Farmer Ferguson, Uncle Willard, High Street, Willard Fishlittle, Evil John, Chunnel Surfer, Rye Something, New York, San Diego, Floxinaw City, New England, Aunt Mae, Sir Knight, Stephen King, Jim Wheatshins, Crystal Lake, Miss Parkinson, Divine Wind, Black Men, Boy Scout, High King

I take those SIPs as a matter of pride.

And some news of the sequel: after receiving the Ms back for the first edit, I have decided to combine CSII, CS and Hallu (the third, pretty much a secret until now) into one magnum opus. I think the triune creation will be far superior to anything I could generate from the parts. I found myself often saying, "This will be cool if they have read the other one" and forgetting which bits were in which book. This seems an elegant solution.

So maybe 2010 before that's complete. And then some really, really quite serious and professional book and cover design.

And I'll probably pick up a copy of Jeff VanDerMeer's newest book when it comes out: http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2009/05/12/booklife-excerpt-general-tips-on-pr/  ...and maybe flog the CS to some of the more avant-garde publishers out there. Self-publishing through Lulu is and has been great. And I have learned a lot, and think a publishing house may be an advantage. No need to choose yet.

So, that's the news here in the Chunnel.

-- scixual  --

Christmas Day, one hundred-second year after the Fall and some time in ancient mists of my ancestors:

I must have died in my sleep, this blasted terrain the Hell I am doomed to walk for all of eternity.

Onward: following the path, I am convinced, of some ancient ancestor, or else shadow of an ancestor, seeking I know not what.

Or else it is a madman of another world, or I am. Or a bit of undigested potato, I suppose.

The journal gives me hope as much as terror, for though my darling Tana and I have been tossed into this maelstrom of madness, the very passage of these artifacts, the book and the locket, suggests we might yet traverse it in the other direction, homewards, if indeed such a place ever existed.

The fox has returned, and is following at a distance. It darts away of I look at it openly, but I watch it from the corner of my eye, and listen for its quiet padding in the talc-fine dust beside the path. From time to time I hear its coughing bark, but nothing answers.

I must sleep. I cannot, for whenever my eyes close, even to blink, the images that flash within that brief darkness terrify me alert. That last journal entry, that distortion, that breaking up, how strange. Not that I could hear it happening, but that it would come to be written so. The next few pages are blank, but I can see they continue, though I have yet to bring myself to read them.

The fox and I walk along in companionable silence. After a time I almost think the fox wishes to speak to me. Shearest fantasy, to be sure, but no stranger that what I have already lived through in these past few days, the holy week of Christmas. 

The longest nights of the year.

And then I reach the monastery. I see it ahead, a black abortion of a thing, a stone edifice that twists against what my eye knows to be square, seeming to shift without moving, warp and shimmer in a light that does not fall on the surrounding terrain. Shadows flit across the windows as if a sun crossed the sky in a matter of minutes, again and again, and the silhouettes of the strange inhabitants shifted with them in a hideous dance that blurred my vision and seemed to cause a sharp keening within my mind.

I shut my eyes, my arms crossing over my head to block my ears, and after a moment the nausea and pain faded, and I felt again as if I stood on solid, unmoving ground. When I felt ready, I opened my eyes, relaxed, and kept my gaze steadfastly on the ground.

That that thing even exists is an affront to all that is right and natural in the world. It cannot be in the same universe as decency, as love, as sunlight, as even the mild evils of the human soul. It corrupts the very space around it. I know that if I look at it for very long I shall be driven mad.

The fox is sitting on the road near my feet, cleaning itself as unconcerned as a housecat.

The scent of burnt oranges is strong, as is the sensation of being watched. I cannot go on. I cannot. I cannot have sinned enough to deserve this hell.

The locket is burning my hand and with dull surprise I see a seam is opening, it contains something, something it is now allowing me to see. I know more surely than I know my own name that it is nothing I want to see, yet see it I must.

And a time passes, and when I am aware again the locket is closed, tight, cool, no sign of a seam that might open. What has happened? How much time has been stolen from me?

The sky has a greenish cast as I trudge forward again, toward that damned edifice.

The fox has left me.

Yours,
~~Samuel Francis Coleman

Stones: 3 white, 1 black
Elements: The Fall, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the fox, Tana, the journal writer, Something in the locket.

-- Aaron A. Reed --

December 24, Year Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Nine of the Forever Empire.

The Forever Empire. What happens when forever dies?

We are camped, this strange girl and I, in a rocky clearing near the base of the Quick Mountains. Named, I believe, after what crossing will cut you to. They certainly look ominous enough, black and gangrenous, cutting upwards into sullen and stormy clouds. Mercius Zon's monastery is somewhere above, if my map holds true. In the clouds. In the quick.

The girl is confused, and afraid, and always cold. I could not get much out of her, though I did my best to comfort. She does not seem to know where she is or how she got here. She keeps asking for someone called Samuel. Strange that that is also my name, but clearly I am not the one she seeks. She is another mystery I cannot solve and do not want. But I can't just leave her. I feel-- an affinity with her, somehow. A connection. As if she reminds of me someone I once knew. Or someday will.

I am certain now that a Shadow from the monastery in Floxinaw is following us. I have seen quick shapes darting behind trees out of the corners of my eyes as I turn, but more important, felt the prickly gnosis on the back of my neck that something is behind, watching, observing. By now surely he knows I am disobeying his bishop's orders, am taking this locket to Mercius Zon rather than anywhere but. So why has he not stopped me? Why has he not left to report this?

Why does he only follow, sleek and silent?

Like a fox.

The sky is an angry red today, the air raspy in the lungs. I lie staring at it while Tana sleeps, wondering. My world is dying. The sky is sick. The ground is poisoned. How can this tiny thing, this simple locket around my neck, possibly save a world?

It moves at right angles to time, the bishop of Shadows said. What does that mean? Time is a river: it flows, it marches. I cannot imagine it bending.

gine it bending.

gine it

in

i

Ssomethingg iiss hhappeningg. Oohh ggodd.......

......Ppaull? Ppaull, iiss tthatt yyouu?

Pp


-------
Stones: 3 white, 1 black
Elements: The Fall, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the fox, Tana, the journal writer, the monastery, the Shadow priest.

Never once did I consider I would see that accursed thing again. Apart from my nightmares, that is.

Once Myra left me I gave up on life. Mercifully, a numbness overcame me and I could walk, zombie-like, through my days, put the kettle on, feed the cat, open the shop, read the paper, drink a beer, close the shop, go to bed, repeat. How many months passed like that? Too many. In some way then I am grateful for Coleman's visit for awakening me.

Not that I would not have remained in that state, given a choice.

Chance alone could not have brought Coleman to my place, nor that locket to Coleman. They must have dredged the well. Damn that well. Why could they not leave it alone?

And yet I feel some force outside of us all guides our path, and surely the path Coleman treads with that thing wrapped in his fist is one fraught with terrors even worse than my own.

Norris has been in the ground almost 10 years, God help me. And still I expect to see him come in the door, a fistful of dandelions clutched in one fat fist, calling, "Mamma! Mamma!"

Only he is gone. As is his Mamma, though she left across a more literal sea. She could not live with his memory, or my obsession with it.

Norris! Ah, god, boy why did you have to find that locket? It was the fox that dropped it in the garden, and who knows where it came from before that, but no sooner did you hold it in your yellow-smeared fist than you ran off, laughing straight to the well. Straight to the well. Possessed, perhaps, but laughing the whole time, and Myra and I chased you down, laughing, calling you "scamp", hoping you would not put your found treasure in your mouth, worried about disease from the fox.

I can only laugh at how far our fears were from your actual fate. You were up, over and "splash" you were gone, and I had never seen a well so deep. You never resurfaced.

Can you blame us for breaking down, there, weeping and crying, hours passed before we could summon men from the town to climb down ropes into the well to retrieve you. Your body, and not the locket, and I was glad of it.

And now Coleman has the locket. He will not take my advice, I know it.  And it will take him far from this world.

Like it did my sweet Norris.


~~From the journal of Paul Pickwick, December 23, year 102AF

(click on the image to see the full animated gif goodness)

Still pretty rough, but I think it's legibly "chunnel surfer" both ways, right?


...getting there...

-- scixual  --

December 24, one hundred-second year after the Fall:

Christmas Eve, if time here runs as it does at home.

As that thought came to me, I almost smelled something familiar, like the holiday pastries my mother used to make, glazed in cinnamon and orange, but there was that one Christmas she forgot them in the oven and we had to vacate the house and stand in the snow as smoke billowed outward in graceful dance toward bright, sharp stars.

Twas the night I proposed to my dearest Tana.

I shook my head and yet the scent persisted, seemed to cling to my clothes, my hair, to the book clutched in my arms. A lingering vapor of my passage into this realm?

The road stretched before me. Neither beast nor fowl followed me, though I thought I saw the shadowed print of some small animal dogging the path for a bit, but the dry moon dust does not hold prints well, and it might have been a mere vagary of wind and terrain. I stopped and rested for a bit in the shade of a monstrous boulder, and read further into the accursed journal. It seemed in this place the words were less swimming and vague, and I could read clearly without vertigo. Still I stopped after a short time, for the portent of these words still eluded me, or else I fought the urge to understand.

Was this locket the unnamed writer described the same as the one I held in my hand? (For even now I have yet to brave placing the thing about my throat.) He does not describe it sufficiently to be sure -- the brassy finish, the figure somehow resembling both an animal and a woman, with a green gem (or else cut glass) denoting one eye, the other left blank as shadow -- but I think it must be.  Is the well he was digging the same as the one this locket was found in? Why not? As I have no clear answers I must make my own theories, knowing as I do so that it is merely a game I play with myself to pass the time.

And yet I feel certain. The locket was secreted in the well much as I hid the journal beneath the floorboards of my room. And the monastery we both sought was the same. Perhaps the only true congruences between our two worlds are the well and the monastery. Or perhaps I am merely insane, doped with laudanum in some asylum, plagued with fever dreams, perhaps even my dearest Tana is naught but an illusion.  How could I know? How much of my memory must I question if I first start to wonder?

That way lay madness, whether I am free from such a condition now or not. Dream or no, vision or no, I feel I must see this through to the end or remain lost on this desolate plain for eternity. If I have not already been so doomed.

After a time I spied hoofprints in the dust. The prints of the journal writer's horse, or those of the Devil himself?

And Tana, dear Tana, can it be believed that you, or your parallel, lives also in this place?

And as the journal-writer and I seem to be living the same calendar days, twin forks perhaps of the shattering of the ultimate weapon (could it be this thing clutched in my hand caused such a cataclysm?), will we meet? Up ahead, perhaps, around that corner, behind that grotesquery of a tree, at the monastery itself?

I can only hope so, though I dread the thought of you living even one moment in this purgatorial void.

Yours,
~~Samuel Francis Coleman
[Resolved: The well, the scent of burnt oranges, the synchronicity between past and present journal dates.]

Stones: 4 white, 1 black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the synchronicity between the past and present journal dates, the fox, Tana, the journal writer.

-- Aaron A. Reed --


December 23, Year Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Nine of the Forever Empire.

The pale road is long and silent. Even the hooves of my horse seem to be sucked up by some sound-drinking spirit that lives in the cobblestones. At intervals the ground shakes, queasy and slow, and I know It-Who-Computes must still be hungry.

The locket throbs with a mournful sound, just on the edge of hearing, and even though there is no one else around, I sense I am the only one who can hear it.

The Bishop of Morning Shadows told me-- I can scarcely believe it-- that my father's locket is Mercius Zon's ultimate weapon. It moves, he said, neither forward in time nor backwards, but somehow... at angles to it. But the first time Zon tried to use it, reality split in two.

Too many questions. How did Zon lose this thing? What was it meant to do? Can he repair it? Could it really stop It-Who-Computes? And why is the bishop so afraid of letting him try?

No. I told the Bishop I would take it to the swamps and hide it. But I still go where I first intended. Down the pale road. Into the hills. To find Mercius Zon and his monastery, if it still exists in our world, and give him this thing.

But the Shadows know everything. And I am certain they are following me.

Ahead, on the road, is a body. There have been more and more of them for the past few miles. But there is no smell of rot. No. Just that damnable scent of burning oranges. Stronger and stronger.

Suddenly one of the dead forms moves.

Adrenaline courses through me, and I pull the horse up short in a panic. In the process I twist the reins around my leg and knock myself to the ground, only paces from the thing under the rags.

It moves again, and I scramble backwards in terror.

Then it moans.

But the sound is not that of some monster, some demon. It is only that of a girl. Afraid and alone.

Regaining my courage, I step up and pull her from the pile of rags. Not a girl, a young woman. Dirty, confused. Beautiful. The smell of burnt oranges is almost overpowering.

"Are you all right, dear heart?" I ask her, putting a hand to her shoulder. She looks in my direction but her eyes are unfocused. She does not respond. "What happened to you?" I ask again. Still no response.

"What's your name, dear one?" I try again.

She blinks, still unable to focus her eyes, but her hand finally stops its mindless twitching. It finds mine. And grips it.

"My name is Tana," she says. "Where-- where is my betrothed?"

-----------

[I gain two black stones for resolving three elements together: Mercius Zon, the locket, and the nature of the ultimate weapon (a locket that somehow has power over time).

I spend two black stones to contradict your earlier statement about Paul Pickwick being an uncle who died in childbirth-- he should be the same man who appeared in your first entry.]

Stones: 3 white, 1 black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the synchronicity between the past and present journal dates, the fox, Tana.

-- scixual  --

December 23, one hundred-second year after the Fall:

These names! First Mercius Zon, for whom our canton is named, and now Pickwick! And all in a place called Floxinaw.

It is incredible. This story, or history, how can I fathom it?

Paul Pickwick, as you may recall, dearest Tana, was my uncle who died as a child, drowned in a horrible accident, though my mother would never say more than that. is that odd chap who was my friend at University, who went queer after his son died in a tragic drowning accident. He runs that dim little Curiosity Shop in Floxinaw. I recall how you shuddered when I idly pointed it out to you, and you said it gave you quite a chill. 

It is as if someone saw my life and my environs through a smoked glass, and picked certain details therefrom, but all horribly warped and misshapen.

I cursed the fox.

I cursed the jeweler that made that locket.

I cursed whomever dug that well, and the workmen who dug it up again.

I cursed, most of all,  the writer of that accursed journal.

As I sat there and read, it seemed I fell into a fever. The room around me wavered as if I were seeing it through waves of summer heat, though the room was chill as the coals had died in the night.

And I suppose I must have slept, for before I knew it night had fallen, and I was lying, cramped, cold, contorted on the bare floor, wrapped bodily around that journal, the locket pressing its form into my cheek as my face lay upon it. It was the only warmth in the room.

Icy moonlight streamed through the window, and I noticed for the first time the room had changed as I slept. The draperies that kept the warmth and the dark inside were gone, as was the glass. The window was now a bare stone oculus, wide, surprised and filled with an uncanny light. In fact, the entire room was bare stone, and my bed, my cupboard, my writing desk, all were as ruined as if I had slept a thousand years. Mere mouldering fragments marked their passing. The only things that remained were my clothing, my journal, and the accursed book and locket.

It is a dream, I told myself, knowing it to be a lie. But even in a dream one may freeze to death, and I stood and clapped my hands on my arms to generate some small warmth, and as I stood I saw more clearly out the window.

A barren plain, grey and empty, spread before me, before the remains of my home. Stunted, black twisted trees dotted the plain, and small rocks and rills raised long, reaching shadows in the moonlight. And the moon! It was a baleful, terrible thing, fiery, as the journal had described.

A pale road made silver in the night wound its way toward the horizon. I knew this was the only direction I was going to find, and set out through the ruins of my home -- or something like my home, but different. A pantry was missing on the second floor, the staircase curved instead of falling straight, the front door pierced the outer wall a yard or more to one side. Not my home then, but an imperfect imitation.  Hope, then, that my own domicile yet existed intact, somewhere, somehow. And maybe my Tana, too, nearby, in the house of her father the farrier, across the square.

The village I found outside the door was equally changed, not drastically, but in small ways, and the road I had espied from the window was the one leading to the mountains, toward a ruined monastary in my world. And what might it be in this one? I felt I would find some answer there, and so I marched onward, strange smells and sounds following me, the two books and the locket clutched to my chest, my pockets empty, and nothing to my name save my clothing.

I was miles down the road before I thought to check for the well. It was at my back now, and I had no intention of turning around, but knowing it was behind me made my skin crawl, as if I were being watched by some arcane predator, lying in wait for the proper time to pounce.

Again I cursed the fox.


Yours,
~~Samuel Francis Coleman

Stones: 5 white, one black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the synchronicity between the past and present journal dates, the fox

-- Aaron A. Reed --

December 22, Year Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Nine of the Forever Empire.

Passing through the once-great streets of a once-proud city, I shudder. What has happened to the Floxinaw of my youth, the streets crammed with merchants from every corner of the empire, the laughter of children, the smell of cinnamon and heather? Gone, gone. Even the outskirts seem farther from home than they used to, as if the abandoned buildings on the city's fringe are quietly sinking into the earth in mourning for their missing owners.

I do not want to go to Floxinaw. But I must visit the Temple before I set out on my quest.

Horse hooves echo on cobblestones, bounce off abandoned shops and dance through empty intersections. I pass the pub I wasted so much of my youth in with hardly a glance. I pass by the shop where I learned calligraphy and love of books, the shop where this beautiful, handmade journal first came from, now that I think of it. Pickwick's Papers, shuttered and deserted.

And where is old Paul Pickwick now, I wonder? Killed in war? A refugee in some piss-strewn camp, grey and distant? Or has he found some other shop in some other city to occupy, making awkward passes at the lady scholars and scratching his balding pate in embarrassment? Good old Paul. Another friend gone.

The city shows hints of life as I near its center: urchins and broken old women, all mourned out. And now I'm almost to the base of the temple, the black spire rising over Floxinaw, a pillar of night that dominates the skyline for leagues and centuries around. It's hard to imagine that spear of midnight marble ever vanishing, even a thousand years hence. It is not the heart of the Empire, not by any means, but it certainly is some important yet inscrutable organ, throbbing warm and mysterious in lesser-known parts of the anatomy.

As I crest the seventy-seven steps a black-clad Shadow opens one massive oak door and steps out to greet me. So they knew I was coming? Not surprising. The Shadow are a prescient order.

"Brother," he says, "the Bishop of Morning Shadows requests an audience."

The highest Shadow in the city. Well. News of my errand must have traveled fast.

The Shadow escorts me on a long route through ancient halls, whether purposefully disorienting me or merely taking the quickest route possible through the worm-like catacombs, I could not say. As he shows me into the bishop's cavernous office, a chill seems to quiver in the air.

The bishop rises to greet me. He dismisses the Shadow and shuts the door behind him.

"Bring out the locket," he says quietly, with no fanfare.

Confused, I pull it from my pocket and unwrap it from its burlap cloth. I am surprised to find it warm, almost hot to the touch.

The bishop stares at it with a look that is fear, excitement, and horror, all somehow merged in one strange emotion.

"This," he says, "is the most powerful object in the Empire. And whatever you do, you must not let Mercius Zon come near it."

And the locket burns with a fierce, red glow, searing the flesh of my palm.Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges, the temple, Paul Pickwick, the synchronicity between the past and present journal dates.

-- scixual --

December 22, one hundred-second year after the fall:

After a good night's sleep I felt better about the whole thing, was able to laugh off the dread the book and locket gave me last night. And if I seemed to have dreamed of dark, things, fiery worms, hell-born beasts and flowers that never should have been, what of it? And the images soon faded to a memory of a memory of an image, and I breakfasted with my Tana, and we spoke only of the upcoming nuptials.

And yet.

My dear, if you read this, you will surely remember this day not long before I disappeared. After a while I grew uneasy, and begged to be excused before we were quite finished our coffee.

Rushing back to my room, I pulled the tome from where I had secreted it, beneath a loose floorboard near the coal grate (it seemed obscene to leave it in plain sight, do not ask me why). I felt sure it had changed or done some mischief in my absence. If it had, I could find no outward sign of it.

I found I could bring myself to look inside again, and idly flipped to the back. The last few pages were blank, but the very last, the endpaper was covered in an intricate map. It seemed to be of our own region, the canton of Zon, but there were changes, most notably the village of Floxinaw -- on this map it was a great city! The tiny drawings showed grand parks and palaces and roads radiating out from what looked to be a temple.

Was this a dream vision of Floxinaw, a might-have-been, or was it somehow what the city actually had been before The Fall? Of course no one could say for certain, that veil has not been breached, but surely a city of this size would leave traces?

I turned back to the front and read the next entry, sitting there on the floor of my room.

This was the last evening I ever saw my dear home.

Yours,
~~Samuel Francis Coleman
Stones: 6 white, one black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges, the temple

-- Aaron A. Reed --


December 21, Year Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Nine of the Forever Empire.

Something is burning in the sky.

Wise and learned ones say it cannot be the moon. Then why does it rise and set at the same time as that once-pale orb? Why does it fill the same space in the sky?

But no. They must be right. No moon writhes with electric fire that casts no shadows. No moon shines with shades of red that burn.

Oh, I never thought the world would end like this.

All day or night-- it seems neither have meaning any more-- I dig. Each week the water drains deeper and deeper into the soil, as if all the oceans of the world are draining. Each day I must dig our well a little deeper. Soon the water will be gone. And so I have begun to write.

It began with It-Who-Computes. It fell on the green shores of the Empire in the year 3,881 and began to eat our world. The first things it ate, sand and seashells and waves, it turned into emissaries, clothed in plastic and gossamer, to explain its purpose. Our world was to join in one great mind that spanned galaxies, a silicon consciousness of computers spreading throughout the universe. The atoms of our planet would provide enough computing matter for every living soul in the Empire to live in a limitless virtual utopia, and sire ten trillion digital descendants to do the same, orbiting our sun in a scintillating network of pure computational thought.

The Computer Wars were... beyond description. It-Who-Computes merely kept eating, but the Empire destroyed itself, those who wanted virtual utopia pitted against those who wanted tradition, a real life. I was on the latter side, though it hardly matters now.

Because our side invented an ultimate weapon. And it tore the universe apart.

Strange and alien creatures appeared in our woods-- the gold hornet, the red fox. Books of cities and histories that never lived in our world now filled our shelves and our libraries. Mountains and rivers moved or vanished. Some people disappeared, erased even from memory, leaving behind only property deeds, journals, stacks of letters to betray their former existence. And the moon began to burn.

But It-Who-Computes was not stopped, only slowed. It still eats, somewhere. The water recedes, and I must dig the well deeper.

Once I was wealthy, from a good family, distinguished, known. My family seal was respected across the empire. It means little now. Oh, the Empire still exists. There are those who still fight. But the battle has receded with the water, and now only distant rumors and quiet shadows of war, far from here, echo in the deserted streets of Floxinaw.

And yet... today a letter arrived by Crimson Messenger, addressed to my father. As I am now the last of our family, it fell to me to open and read it.

It seems the Empire has one more task for me, after all.

Somewhere in the mountains outside Floxinaw, they say, Mercius Zon is hiding. Yes. Him. Mercius Zon, the scientist or madman who invented our secret weapon, the ultimate weapon that nearly destroyed a universe. The only man in the Empire who could distract It-Who-Computes from its all-encompassing hunger, even if only for a moment.

It seems he still lives. And the Empire wants something more from him. And I must find him, and convince him to help.

The letter says to take my father's locket with me. It says to show it to Mercius. It says it will mean something to him. But I don't understand. It's just an old heap of metal. It has no special powers, no magic about it. Only the family seal, old and worn.

But I will do as the Empire commands.

The scent is stronger in the air this morning, that curious scent of burnt oranges that wafts more and more over the land each day. No one knows what it is or where it comes from. Or what it portends. The old manor is locked, fortified as best as I can make it against the passage of time. Who knows when another of my line will walk its halls. My best horse is saddled and supplied, and stomping and eager to go. Or perhaps he is only unnerved by the moon.

The well will run dry. But perhaps the Empire can still be saved.

Perhaps we can still prevent a fall.


Stones: 7 white, one black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket, Mercius Zon, the nature of the ultimate weapon, scent of burnt oranges

--  scixual  --


December 21, one hundred-second year after the fall:

I have no faith anyone will ever read this. But it is in me to try to make sense of things, and since I was in short pants writing things down has been my preferred method of processing.

Oh, Tana, how I miss you! I dearly wish there were some way these words would find their way to you, even if I cannot. Such a hope might keep me going when body and soul yearn to merely give up.

Oh, Tana, I guess it all started with you anyway, didn't it? How could I know -- how could any of us know? -- that the discovery of the locket in the well would lead to all this? Your grandmother claimed she never knew what it was or how it could have fallen into the well, and as the well was dug over a hundred ears ago I suppose she could have been telling the truth. But as I think back on that day I wonder. There was something unsurprised in her wrinkled old visage.

Or perhaps I am merely getting paranoid. My travels have been uniquely able to create that mindset.

And how I curse that I knew a man who knew such things, else it might have slumbered in obscurity in your jewelry chest for another century before its terrible secrets would see the light.

"Come," said my friend, a swarthy and inelegant man of lusty and obsequious mien, imagining, I'll warrant, that I was there on some unsavory errand, of a type I have not undertaken since those shameful days at University. I hesitated, there on the thresh-hold between the bustling light and chaos that is the town of South Haven and the dank and mysterious interior of his shop, named fatuously, I thought, for some Dickens novel. It smelled of exotic perfumes and camel dung, truth  be told.

And yet it was only a moment I hesitated. After all, here was old Paul, easygoing old Paul who was terrible with women but always knew the test answers, who was ribbed for his early-thinning hair and awkward gait. Older, sure, and proprietor of an ominous antiquary, sure, but surely not anything menacing. Surely.

The door shut behind me, cutting off the afternoon sunlight with a dry, dusty tinkling.

"See here, old man," I said, "I have found this thing, this curiosity, this locket of strange design, and I thought maybe you could tell us what it may mean and whether it has any value?"

"Well," he said, taking the locket into his horn-hard hands, "it is an old thing, that is sure."

"Is it from before the fall, then?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "quite before the fall."

"And is it valuable?" I asked.

And then he lied: "No, no worth whatsoever." He handed the thing back. "You'd best throw it away, or better yet toss it into the incinerator. Mind you don't breathe the fumes, though."

"But see here," I said, pushing it back to him across the grimed and scarred old countertop of his shop. "It is of metal, yes? Copper, maybe, or brass, and that alone should give it some value. And mightn't this symbol mean something? Perhaps the sigil of an old and powerful family, perhaps one that would like to see its return?"

"No," he said, pushing the thing back. "Nothing like that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go." And without another word he pushed me back out into the street, and I heard the lock click solidly behind me. When I turned, he was drawing the shutter.

Dejected, confused, I made my way home, and figured to toss it aside, worry about it later. After all, dearest Tana, our wedding day was drawing nigh, and there was still much joyful planning to undertake, and who could spare a further therblig on an old piece of trash?

At the crossroads, where I turn left toward Floxinaw Village, I felt suddenly a warmth in my pocket, and found the damned thing actually burning its way through my trousers! With a yelp and (I am embarrassed to report) a blasphemous oath, I tore the thing away and threw it, hard, into the underbrush.

After I had a moment to pat to quiescence the smouldering hole in my trousers, it crossed my mind that however thing thing had come to burn, it might start a fire if I left it in the brush! And so, chagrined, I made my way through the briars, seeking that accursed locket.

It took more than a few moments before I saw it again, though it was not on the ground, nor was it hanging from the branches of a bush -- it was clasped firmly in the jaws of a dusky fox! It stood on a small rise as if waiting for me to see it. It turned its head just enough so the setting sun glinted off one of the stones of the locket and then darted away.

The sensible thing, of course, would have been to let it go, as I had been trying to rid myself of the locket anyway. And wish to God I had, dearest Tana!  But I was a dashed fool, as I am known to be when I get a headstrong mood come over me, and after the fox I ran, tearing my poor abused trousers against thorns and briars as I did so.

The fox went to ground in a den between the curving legs of a dead oak's exposed roots, and I dove for it just as it disappeared. To my astonishment my fingers just caught at the dangling chain and the creature let it go. I had recovered the locket, though at the expense of my suit and my dignity.

But that was not all. There was something else in that hole. Something that at first touch I mistook for an animal, as bald as the fox had been hairy, perhaps one of those horrid pink mole-things I have seen in the old books, or else a serpent.  But no, it was only earth-warm, and still, and as my fingers grasped, I found it to be a book. Pulling it out into the gloaming light, I found in my hand a mouldering, leatherbound tome, the sort only very important men would write in. The locket's chain was wrapped around it somehow, and I could see the insignia on the cover matched that on the locket.

Well, of course I brought it home! And by lamplight it seemed a more mundane object once soil and groundworm had been brushed away. It proved itself to be a journal of some sort. There was no name, but the script was in a bold and masculine hand. The pages seemed dreadfully old, though how old could the journal have been, buried beneath the fox's tree?

I read the first part, and it was these words that first let me know just how desperate and horrible my situation had become, all thanks to that locket. Something is odd and swimming about the words, the writing and the occasional small drawings of the journal. It is all I can do to will myself to read it at all, and more than a page or so at a time I cannot do at all.

Yet read the whole thing I must, I know, or I shall never be able to unlose myself and find my way back to home and, God willing, the loving arms of you, my dear, sweet Tana. If you yet live. If any of you yet live. Oh, I pray so fervently that you yet live!




Yours,
~~Samuel Francis Coleman

Stones: 7 white, one black
Elements: The Fall, the well, the locket

Aaron Reed and scixual   will inaugurate this journal by playing a fiction game.

Here's the ruleset:

____________________________


The Proposal

This is a game for two people.

The structure is an explorer's journal, ... ( Read more... )
The Rules (summarized)

1. Each player starts with ten white stones and one black stone.
2. One player writes the present journal, one player writes the past.
3. Players alternate.
4. On your turn, you write an entry in your journal.
5. Spend a white stone to add something in your entry to the list of unresolved elements.
6. You must spend at least one white stone on your turn, if you have any.
7. You may spend no more than three.
8. If you wrap up, explain, or show a solution for an element, remove it from the list.
9. If you use one element to wrap up, explain, or solve another, you earn a black stone. If you tie three elements together, you earn two black stones.
10. You can't introduce an element and resolve it on the same turn. Spend a black stone to return a resolved element to the list. Mark it; the other player is the one who will have to resolve it.
11. Spend two black stones to change something that happened in the other player's journal.
12. After your entry, write the current list of unresolved elements. Also note your stone totals. If you spent black stones, note what you did or changed.
13. The game ends when all white stones are spent and all elements are resolved. Each player then gets one final entry.


Cointoss puts Scix in the "present" and Aaron in the past.

My next post will be the first entry.

probably abused as a child, and the empowerment of Witchcraft was her preferred way of dealing with a painful world. This was actually fairly similar to Alyson's reason for being in the circle ― but not exactly.

And last was Toby, self-proclaimed bad boy and preacher's kid, doing the ritual in a leather jacket, using a buck knife for his athame, performing the movements with confidence and even swagger. He had once said that his favorite part about Witchcraft was that Witches never bowed or knelt to their gods ― they performed their rituals standing up. Alyson wasn't sure if Toby ever really felt or saw what he claimed, and she was sure he'd lie to the circle if he thought it would help to maintain the illusion ― but she was also sure he really believed, and would do anything necessary to make magic real.

 

[088]

 "There ought to be Cicadas"

 

The sun presses down and each step I lose
The memory of cool

The powerlines hum
A bicycle ticks by
Somewhere someone is mowing a lawn
The size of a postcard from Belize
But there ought to be cicadas.

 

[089]

WALKING FEATHER

 

The heat.

What I remember most about that day is the heat.

I was sitting in the declining shadow of an empty storefront reading Baudelaire and trying not to doze off when I felt a shadow, a lessening of the sun-pressure on my scorched legs which had been sticking out into the light since this morning.

There, standing between my legs and haloed like an acid-trip visitation, stood the john.

He wore a rumpled, sweat-stained suit, but it didn't say cop, it said salesman.




40~~
 

nothing left. Our gloves, too, were left unmarked. Just that long dent creasing the front of the bus.

 

[087]

Toby walked around the circle counter-clockwise, or widdershins, as the book instructed, and planted his knife in the ground, symbolically sending the energy of the circle back to ground. "The circle is open but unbroken, may the peace of the Goddess be ever in your heart. Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again," he recited, also from the book, and the group read the last part with him.

"And that's it," he said, bowing with a flourish and retrieving his knife.

"That was wonderful," said Crystal, "I felt all tingly!"

Alyson was less impressed, but also less likely to speak up in the group. This time she thought she had felt something, but it was impossible to be sure she wasn't imagining it. She looked around the group, trying to assess what each one had felt.

Crystal, of course, was always the easiest to read. As she gushed to Toby about how wonderful the ritual had been, she deftly flicked her unruly blond hair behind her ear with a practiced gesture. The weight of the crystals, medicine bags and medallions around her neck would have been a burden to a less energetic soul, and it seemed more than natural that someone like Crystal should jingle when she walked. Alyson knew Crystal was a good soul, but perhaps a bit naive.

Next Alyson looked around the circle to where Brian was picking up the paraphernalia of the ritual ― the goblet, the wand, the harsh, smoky incense which they had made from a recipe in one of their books. Brian looked a little out of place in their circle in the woods ― his pale skin made it obvious he rarely stepped outdoors. Alyson's skin was paler, but she had to work at it. Brian was the thoughtful, studious type, the one who would get good grades and go on to become an engineer or a programmer. What drew him to the Harrison Witches was an unknown: he didn't like to talk about himself. He, of all of them, seemed to take their rituals the most seriously, as if he had a specific goal he was working toward, and wouldn't stop until he had achieved it.

Jenny was next around, and she seemed to be deep inside herself, unaware of her surroundings. This was fairly normal for Jenny, but she had been coming out of her shell since joining the Witches. Alyson believed Jenny was

~~39

Larry got out of the van to assess the damage. The second the door cracked open, wind as bitter and forceful as any New England blizzard-driven gale whipped into the van and filled our vision with dancing snow crystals. "Shut the door!" Gabe and I yelled, and Larry slipped out into the night, shutting the door tightly behind him, but the damage was done, and any warmth the van had built up on the drive was lost. We slipped our gloves back on and clapped ourselves on the shoulders as we waited for Larry to return with the verdict.

With the lights off and the snow swirling around us, we couldn't see for shit out the van windows, and we had no idea what was keeping Larry so long. After a bit, the van rocked one, twice as he gave it a shove ― whether in frustration or an attempt to gauge the situation we didn't know.

"He's sure taking long enough," Gabe griped. I laughed and joked that he'd gotten lost, and then we sat in silence, our breath steaming in front of us, for another raft of minutes.

I opened my mouth three or four times, starting to say something fearful, thinking better of it, forgetting my resolution and starting another "what if?" ― when we were again beset with a flurry of hard crystalline snow as Larry opened the door and shrugged back into the seat.

We let him sit for a full minute, puffing more winter-breath into the interior of the van, before demanding answers.

"What happened? What took you so long?" I asked, too tired and worried to keep the fear from my voice, to comfortable with these friends to try very hard.

"Damnedest thing," he said.

I held my breath, imagining cracked blocks, flattened tires, stove-in grills.

"We hit something, I guess," and then he stopped again.

"What'd we hit? How's the van?"

"Damnedest thing. I don't know what we hit."

And he gestured for us to see for ourselves.

When we all trooped out into the cold to see what Larry had seen, we knew no more than before. Smeared in the seam of a long dent across the front flank of the bus was a black streak, like tar. But it smelled like nothing ― unless it smelled of snow and night and the slightly dampened gloves through which we dipped our fingers in the stain to smell it. None of us dared taste it, but I felt sure it would taste like nothing, too. When we thought to look again, the next day under the chill glare of the 8am sun, there was







38~~
 

[086]

I was an awkward teenager in a small Massachusetts town in the winter of '85 when I rode with my friend Gabe and his older brother into The City.

As I write this in San Diego I can only feel a bit smug about how the meaning of "City" has shifted for me, but then and there Floxinaw City was The Place To Go if a kid wanted to do anything after dark.

That night we were headed out ― looking to take in a movie, I think ― and it was a bitter, cold winter night. The sky was distant and clear, the starlight razor-sharp. As the three of us, muffled in down jackets and floppy garage-band knit hats, trudged through the snow to where the van sat, idling roughly, warming up for the drive, Gabe's mother called from the front door, "Watch out for black ice!"

Frozen between house and waiting butt-rusted van, the three of us heard three different warnings, and, like teenagers everywhere, held our reactions until we were out of adults' earshot, smiling and nodding for the mother's sake.

As we pulled out of the iced driveway ruts, I couldn't hold in my reaction: "Guys, did your mom really just say, ‘watch out for black guys'?"

I liked Gabe's mom ― Lucy was her name, I think ― but she was odd sometimes, claiming to see ghosts and visions. The village was pretty white-bread compared to Floxinaw City, so what I had heard made a sort of sense, but it had seemed really out of character.

Gabe laughed. "No, black ice ― you know, clear ice on the pavement ― it looks black, it's hard to see, and slippery as all hell."

Gabe's brother, Larry ― I'd forgotten his name ― Larry laughed, too. "That's better than what I heard: ‘Watch out for black eyes'!" As we laughed, he slowed his van to the speed limit as we passed out of the lit area of the village and onto the long country highway to Pittsfield. Black ice territory if ever there was one.

"I guess we should watch out for all three, just in case!" I said, and we all started laughing again, when something bolted across the road. It was just a fleet shadow in the headlights against the mottled snow-and-tar of the road, and Larry swerved, sluing the van until it almost tipped, and we wound up ass-to in the opposite snowbank, panting and gasping and clutching the bitch-handles.

"Shit," we all agreed, and Larry cut the engine. For minutes later we could hear it tick and ding as it cooled to match the frigid winter night around us.
 

~~37

"I'd rather keep walking, if you don't mind," he said. "I'm going to tell you some things that you'll probably think are crazy. And they probably are. And I'm asking for your help."

"Uh, okay, Mr. Weiderman."

They walked along, as before, silent as Butch finished his route, and passed Vera's pansies. Butch saw nothing unusual about them today.

 

[085]

"I couldn't help noticing you watching the girls, there. Yeah, they're hot, making out. Listen, they're friends of mine, and I think ... I think I might have a proposition that would make all of us happy.

"See, I know them, I know the type of things they like, and I have this crazy idea for a game, and I think they'd totally go for it, only I need a partner, see?

"Here's how the game goes: we sit across from each other, and everything we want the girls to do, we do ourselves. And then they do the same. Or maybe the other way around, we could flip a coin. Say, I'll be the brunette, and you be the redhead. I think that'd be best, don't you?

"We already know they like making out ― where else can we take it? They like watching guys, y'see, and it'd be tit for tat, no free show, so it'd be okay for us to watch.

"Whaddaya say? Here, let me refill that for ya, and I'll go talk to the girls. This'll be fun, I promise.

"Well, no. You are straight ― so you tell me, and so I believe you. What I am proposing is an experience. It won't change who you are any more than going to a single Grateful Dead show converts you into a Deadhead. No matter how much you enjoy the show. Those that do become Deadheads generally knew this about themselves before their first concert.

"There are rare instances, of course, of what appears to be conversion. But someone doesn't so much convert as realize something they hadn't realized before. It feels like coming home, like a discovery, like a release. Not that the person changed, but they peeled off a layer covering who they really are.

"I've felt that way about a few things I've encountered in my life.

"I suppose you could call that a risk, but how glorious an experience that is, when it happens! And you don't have to go through it alone."








36~~