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Post by texican on Jan 20, 2021 22:19:32 GMT -6
rvm,
You spin a wonderful tail which must be from that off center (waped?) mind that you have.
Keep it up.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 21, 2021 0:10:54 GMT -6
Friend,
My father, whenever he was castigating me for not being more like him, used to say that I was "Warped."
I was always put into mind of Black Holes, The Curvature of Space, and Inter-Dimensional Portals—Wormholes through Space and Time… Giving off a Weird Pulsating Synthesized Music and a Psychedelic Light Show.
I always thought that it was a Curious Turn of Phrase from a man who was Illiterate and who bitterly denounced SF and Phantasy as "Bullshit."
Only in my 50's did I realize that he meant the Prosaic Warpage of a Board or a Piece of Plywood.
I gave a hard scene to write coming soon. I'm afraid that it may offend some—but it is necessary to the story. As Stillwater says—"The Moment is Structured That Way…"
O, I realized a mistake I need to correct, but probably not tonight.
Despair's deceased sister—the one ambushed, gang-raped and tortured to death by Yōkai was named "Torment."
Marshal's Deceased Night Ranger Fiancé was named "Travail."
However, the last few times that I referenced Marshal's Fiancé, I called her "Torment."
I suppose Marshal's dead Fiancé could be Despair's sister, but she would have mentioned the fact earlier. Besides, the two of them died under different circumstances—unless the Yōkai lied about killing Torment.
By the way, I'm running out of Night Ranger names that mean pain, torture, depression, etcetera. If anyone has any suggestions…
….RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 21, 2021 15:21:44 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Four
83 033
Miguel Ángel brought two of his oldest children to Uganda with him, along with his wife, Aiai. There was no war going on in Uganda at the moment and it was important for children to get out and experience life.
He wished that he could have brought all of Ekadzati’s children to Uganda with him, but there were just too many of them.
He had brought his 15-year old son, Mateo and Mateo’s brood sister Carina. He would try to rotate children around when he traveled the next time.
Aiai hovered around the children protectively. Ekadzati might have laid the eggs that the first group of Miguel Ángel's children hatched from, but she was no less their mother, for all of that.
Tibetan Lamias tended to be small and pixyish, but Miguel Ángel was a large man and he was already augmented when he mated with Ekadzati, so he passed down more of his characteristics to his Lamia children than would ordinarily be the case.
Carina was less of a runt than she would ordinarily be. As for Mateo, he was a human male born of a Tibetan Lamia and a human. He would naturally take most of his characteristics from his father.
In Miguel Ángel’s opinion, the jungles of Uganda were a bit thicker and lusher and a bit more sweltering than the jungles of his native Guatemala.
Never mind. He’d grown up near jungles as a boy and his senses had improved immeasurably since his youth. Also, during the 18-months that he had trained with the Friends, he had been exposed to all sorts of terrain.
He skirted the primitive traps and pitfalls that surrounded the Ugandan Lamia village with a nonchalant ho-hum sort of feeling.
“Halt human!”
A fierce dusky—and topless—Ugandan Lamia challenged Miguel Ángel at the entrance to the village.
In the same way that the Tibetan Lamia were small and petite, Ugandan Lamia were all economy-sized.
It was normal for Lamia to grow throughout their lives. However, the default or beginning size of the adult half of a Central American Lamia was about the same size as a normal human. The Tibetan Lamia were the size of a little 100-pound human…
But the Ugandan Lamia started with the upper body of a 6-foot and 6 or 7-inch human woman—a muscular human woman. They weren’t Yoruba—not in Uganda—but they were kinda like someone had decided to make Lamia based on the physique of Linda Liu.
“Watch how you address me!” Miguel Ángel said.
He opened his eyes wide to expose his golden slit-pupil eyes and he snarled to show a robust set of fangs dripping venom.
“I am ‘Half-Past Human’,” Miguel Ángel said, using the title of one of his favorite books.
“What do you want, hybrid scum?”
“You need to learn how to speak to your betters. Your primitive traps didn’t deter me even slightly—and I come peaceably. Do you think they will slow down a battalion of Death Rangers—even slightly?” Miguel Ángel said.
He bared his left wrist to show the 6 hash-mark tattoos on his lower forearm.
“I fought the Death Rangers in Tibet with the Friends,” he said with simple pride.
Everyone couldn’t be a Friend. While his life had changed and it was no longer convenient for him to be in the vanguard of the Friend’s suicidal attack groups, he was proud to have been a Friend.
“If you wish to speak to Queen Dembe, then you need to defeat me in hand-to-hand combat,” the Lamia said.
“Just you? I thought that the test would be something hard. Bring forward a couple of your sisters, at least. Make it a good workout for me,” Miguel Ángel said.
“My name is Balondemu. Remember my name when you enter the underworld,” Balondemu shouted.
She thrust at Miguel Ángel with her 8-foot, long-bladed spear.
Miguel Ángel shrugged and drew a wooden spirit sword. This sword was in the form of a kung fu saber. It had a 30-inch unbreakable wooden blade and it had been a gift from Stillwater, when he sent Miguel Ángel to Uganda.
Miguel Ángel’s main martial art was Capoeira. Capoeira was an unarmed martial art, of course. It wasn’t hard though, to get some of the martial art geniuses in Murim to extrapolate a Capoeira-style sword technique, if you could afford their fees.
He started to ginga. He could fight perfectly well without the ginga, but since he was fighting in a wide-open common, he decided to be traditional.
The wooden spirit sword could be sharper than any razor, but he didn’t want to kill the jumbo-sized Amazon Lamia. He just wanted to beat her down and teach her a lesson.
The Lamia was strong. With her great robust serpent half, she grossed close to 500-pounds. While her lower half gave her great stability and a base of strength, it made it hard for her to move rapidly.
She could move her hand, arms and torso as fast as any human though and she was far more resistant to damage than a human.
Balondemu didn’t have legs and she wasn’t acquainted with anyone who had legs. Miguel Ángel’s fast and deceptive footwork baffled her.
He kicked her head again and again with the Capoeira style kicks, while he punished her forearms relentlessly with his blunt wooden sword—that hit her with as much force as an ordinary mortal swinging a 16-pound sledge-hammer with both hands and a lengthy windup.
If his sword was in sharp mode, her arms would long since have been severed.
Finally, Balondemu was forced to drop her spear.
Instead of pursuing his advantage, Miguel Ángel tossed his spirit sword to Aiai and closed in to grapple with the gigantic Lamia.
At first, Balondemu thought that Miguel Ángel had made a tactical blunder. Then she felt his strength.
Lamia’s necks weren’t as easy to break as a human’s. Balondemu ended up with her head being forced through about 370-degrees of rotation, while Miguel Ángel applied a light lateral pressure. It wouldn’t take much more force to break her neck in this position.
“I concede,” Balondemu said.
Miguel Ángel released her with a shrug. Even if it was some sort of ruse, he could easily capture her again.
Balondemu bowed low before Miguel Ángel.
“I am willing to become your wife,” she said.
“I already have a wife. I don’t need another,” Miguel Ángel said simply.
Balondemu couldn’t hide her disappointment. Meanwhile. Aiai came forward.
“Please! As a special favor to me! I never ask you for much,” Aiai pleaded.
“Very well. Aiai is my first wife. You will be the second wife. Are you willing to be number 2?”
“Yes master.”
“I’m not your master. Get up and address me by name,” Miguel Ángel said.
Balondemu took Miguel Ángel to meet Queen Dembe.
As the queen and Miguel Ángel debated frenziedly, the children became bored. When the queen assured Miguel Ángel that it was safe inside the village, he let the children go exploring.
************* **************** *********************
Mateo met a Ugandan Lamia that was his own age.
“My name is ‘Namono.’ I have never met a human before. Your eyes are strange,” Namono said.
“My mother was a Lamia. I’m not pure human,’ Mateo shrugged.
Mateo was 15-years old, after all. Going topless might be the height of fashion in the Ugandan Lamia village, but Mateo was more than a bit distracted by Namono’s bare bazongas.
Namono couldn’t help but notice Mateo’s gaze.
“So, do you like what you see?” she asked—a bit acerbically.
While he was embarrassed to be caught focusing, his inherent frankness came to the front.
“Yes, they’re very nice. Excuse me for focusing. It won’t happen again,” Mateo said.
He forced himself to look Namono in the eyes and not in the bazongas.
“Is that Indian Lamia your mother?” Namono asked.
“Ach ja! Aiai is a Central American Lamia. She is my mother, but my birth mother was a Tibetan Lamia,” Mateo said.
“Your father must like Lamias.”
“Well, my birth mother was his first wife, but she died. Then he married Aiai. He just accepted Balondemu as his second wife. It is relatively safe to say that he doesn’t hate Lamias,” Mateo said with a shrug.
“Mighty Balondemu consented to be his 2nd wife!?! Your father must be very powerful indeed…”
Namono broke off what she was saying and moved away in horror.
The last thing that Mateo would think that a Lamia girl would be afraid of was a snake. The snake was about 5-foot long, relatively thin and a bright red color.
“It’s a red mamba. One bite is enough to kill the strongest warrior in seconds,” Namono said.
“Red mamba? I’ve heard of the black mamba and the green mamba. Red mamba is a new one on me. Is it close to Christmas time on Earth?” Mateo asked calmly.
“You only find them close to mystical areas. They are a mythic beast. Please move away from it!” Namono pleaded.
Perhaps because Namono was shouting and moving, the crimson snake ignored Mateo and flashed toward Namono with its mouth open.
“Wait a minute, galloping llama! What makes you think that I will stand with my thumb up my ass, and let you bite this nice young lady?” Mateo said.
He reached out and grabbed the snake a good 18-inches behind its head—way too far from the head, if one wanted to render the snake incapable of biting.
The red mamba hissed in rage and bit Mateo 3 times in the blink of an eye.
“HMMMmmnnn…? Neurotoxins, hemotoxins and pain stimulators all in a very concentrated form,” Mateo said with detached objectivity.
“Go ahead and bite me a few more times. I don’t want you to think that I took advantage of you,” Mateo said.
After the snake bit him a few more times, Mateo choked up on the snake and bit half its head off, though his face and the inside of his mouth was bitten a couple of times in the process.
Mateo continued to eat the raw snake in his hand, as if it was a rare festival treat.
He smiled at Namono with a mouthful of blood, revealing long fangs up top and shorter fangs below.
“Aren’t Ugandan Lamias venomous?” he asked.
Namono shook her head.
“Tibetan Lamias are. It grants immunity to all poisons and venoms. I inherited that from my birth mother,” Mateo said.
Mateo continued to devour the raw and bloody snake.
“I’m just getting into the intestines. That’s the best part. Do you want some?” Mateo offered generously.
Namono hesitated. She hated to eat raw meat like a beast or a cannibal in front of this human—but then again—her snake-like sense of smell was going crazy smelling so much good raw meat and innards.
She shyly held her hand out. Mateo tore the snake in two and handed Namono the larger half.
They weren’t half through with their treat, when Miguel Ángel, Aiai and a host of Ugandan Lamias rushed to the scene.
“What is this commotion?” Queen Dembe demanded.
Mateo shrugged.
“Some red snake tried to attack Namono. I prevented it,” Mateo said.
He had blood all over his face, especially around his mouth. He held up the small segment of snake that he hadn’t eaten yet.
“That’s a red mamba! Were you bitten!?!” Queen Dembe asked in horror.
“6 or 7 times. That is all that I needed to refine the venom,” Mateo shrugged.
“That’s not fair! Mateo gets to be bitten by a venomous snake and I don’t!” Carina complained.
“That snake didn’t get into the village on its own. Someone was controlling it. If you hadn’t eaten it, I might be able to trace it,” Queen Dembe said.
“Well, it was good!” Mateo said as he belched.
“Tell me that you wouldn’t have been tempted,” Mateo said to the Queen.
Mateo was on a first-name basis with King Terry, Queen Revna, the goddess Neon, Eiji and Stillwater—no telling what titles Stillwater was entitled to…probably quite a several. He wasn’t the least awed by this queen of some piss-water village.
“We don’t eat raw meat like a bunch of Hottentots,” Queen Dembe said while looking at Namono’s blood-covered face disapprovingly.
“Why would someone send a venomous snake to assault my son?” Miguel Ángel asked.
“Someone wants to bring a halt to our negotiations. That is enough to convince me. We should pack up—lock, stock and barrel—and go to your refuge with you. If you take us though, you will be taking the traitor or traitors along with you,” Queen Dembe announced.
Just then, Mateo stiffened and fell motionless to the ground.
Queen Dembe blanched and Namono rushed over to look into Mateo’s face in horror.
“Psyche!” Mateo shouted as he leapt jubilantly to his feet.
“Mateo! Quit clowning around!” Miguel Ángel shouted at his eldest son.
A huge black Lamia rushed into the forefront of the crowd. She had a few hurried words with Namono and then she forced herself into the presence of the queen.
“I was opposed to leaving the village, However, this underhanded attack on my daughter has changed my mind. I stand firmly behind the queen. There is another order of business that needs to be addressed first though,” she said.
“My name is ‘Diana’—and yes, that is a European name. You saved my daughter’s life. She is in your debt. Are you willing to take her as your wife, to clear the debt?” Diana asked Mateo.
Mateo looked helplessly at his father.
“You are 15-years old. That is old enough to make you a man in my estimation. It is your choice. Do you want to take a wife at such a young age?” Miguel Ángel asked.
Mateo frowned. He felt like he was being subtly steered to refuse—but he didn’t want to.
‘If you want me to do something, don’t hint at me like a neurotic! Come right out and tell me!’ Mateo thought, while giving his father a sour look.
“I accept!” Mateo said loud enough for everyone in the small village to hear.
“I’m proud of you, for taking the harder path,” Miguel Ángel congratulated his son.
************ ***************** ************************
Shortly before they stated the march to the pick-up area, Mateo got Namono alone, behind one of the grass huts.
“We are married—right?” he said.
“There will be a brief ceremony to formalize our commitment, when there is time—but yes—by all rights, we are now man and wife,” Namono said.
“It won’t be convenient to consummate our marriage until we get back to my home…” Mateo said.
“However, er…in the meantime…can I do more than focus?” Mateo asked shyly.
************** ***************** ***********************
Ixtli, Terry and I were viewing the stream of Ugandan refugees. Some of them weren’t as untouched by the Death Rangers as the villages that Miguel Ángel had evacuated.
When the Lamia that hadn’t personally encountered the Death Rangers, saw severe burns and missing limbs on some of the other Lamia, they thanked the Good Lord that they had chosen to evacuate ahead of the invasions.
“I send you to try to persuade the Ugandan Lamia to evacuate and you come back with a second wife and a wife for your son. Is it safe to trust you around womenfolk?” I teased Miguel Ángel.
“Everyone isn’t like you,” Despair said to me, cuttingly.
“Are you sure that I can’t interest you in a frost giantess or two?” King Terry said.
“Absolutely not!” Miguel Ángel said.
“Don’t be so hasty. Maybe after Balondemu has settled in, we might consider it,” Aiai told Terry.
*********** *************** **************************
Balondemu thought that Aiai was a very strange woman. She actually encouraged her husband to take more sister-wives, instead of doing her best to discourage him.
Then she experienced her consummation.
“Is it always like this!?!” Balondemu asked Aiai.
“Pretty much,” Aiai said.
“Every night?”
“He doesn’t miss a night very often. It will only be every other night, now that I have you to alternate with me. I love him, but enduring his attentions leaves me more exhausted and bruised than fighting a drunken brawl with a half-a-dozen Friends. It is a legacy from being bitten by a Tibetan Lamia,” Aiai sighed.
“Having a couple of frost giant sister-wives wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Balondemu theorized.
“How about a Blue Oni Aren’t they extra tough?” Balondemu added.
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Post by texican on Jan 21, 2021 16:23:57 GMT -6
rvm,
Seems like multiple wives is becoming the standard.
The only problem if one wife gets mad at you then all the wives get mad at you.
So goes life.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 21, 2021 16:46:14 GMT -6
HMMMmmnnnn…
I think that Miguel Ángel is the first major character who has more than one wife—unless I missed something.
Poor Miguel Ángel is cursed, as a result of Ekadzati's bite, with a powerful sex drive that keeps him at it like a jackhammer for hours at a time—and remember, he also has superhuman strength…
He was wearing poor Aiai out…
But yes that is foreshadowing a second character who is more or less "Forced" to take a second wife against his will and better judgement.
….RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 22, 2021 11:37:42 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Five
84 796
Eiji had gotten in touch with the Red Oni scientist. His name was ‘Naoki.’ When Naoki saw the sheath of equations that Miguel Ángel sent him, he promptly relocated to be near his new collaborator.
Did he move to the Sapphire World where Miguel Ángel lived? No. Did he move to Tawn, where there were many scientists and he’d be welcomed with open arms? No.
The old reprobate moved to Revna’s Valley—cause that’s where his nephew Eiji lived. Then he promptly married a frost giantess. Never mind that King Terry was starting to evolve into a Green Oni from sheer frustration, at being surrounded by the Red Oni that he despised.
Anyway, on this day, I was asked to drop by Revna’s Valley and see the two erratic geniuses’ latest result. We met in the throne room.
“Would you please refine this ring?” Miguel Ángel said.
He handed me a yellow topaz ring along with another faceted yellow topaz teardrop shape as long as my little finger.
“These can also be refined by Oni—or several other sentient races that we’ve tested. I need to further perfect the process. The Topaz World is only about 600 000-square miles—roughly the size of Alaska,” Miguel Ángel said.
“We haven’t quite perfected full-sized gem worlds yet. Your two gem worlds have about 2-million square miles of space. 2.3-million square miles seems the upper theoretical limit—so worlds can be made about 13% larger than your two worlds, but no larger than that—unless we’re missing something,” he added.
“The Ruby World is full-sized and you created that,” I observed to Naoki.
“I had a large cadre of Red Oni technicians to help create the Ruby World, but none of them chose to relocate to this charming valley with me. Besides, they had been pouring energy into the nascent Ruby World for a few decades before I even joined the program,” Naoki said.
“It doesn’t seem right, to hog all the pocket universes to myself. Terry, can you and your frost giantesses put an Alaska-sized territory to good use?” I asked my friend.
Terry, who had just seen his postage stamp-sized 5000-square mile kingdom grow by 120 times, was too stricken with joy to respond quickly.
“It will take a great deal of manpower and time to terraform a barren world into something that you can be proud of,” I warned him.
“How soon can you create me a second world? I’d like to gift a territory to the Lamia too,” I asked.
“EE…About that, this project eats resources,” Naoki said.
I noticed that both he and Miguel Ángel wore a gem world ring. That’s okay. You cannot muzzle the ox that treads the corn after all.
“What kinda resources?” I asked.
“Above all else, we could use some sun dogs,” Miguel Ángel said.
“Sun dogs? The gem worlds aren’t illuminated by sun dogs. Wait a minute…” I said.
“Are you palming off some ersatz copy of gem worlds on me?” I asked.
“The gem worlds aren’t illuminated by sun dogs. They are powered and created by the power of continuous creation. However, it takes a great deal of energy to jump-start the process. Naoki has perfected a process to extract the energy of a sun dog very rapidly—otherwise it would be impossible to form the connection,” Miguel Ángel explained patiently.
“I brought 3 sun dogs with me to Ice. Unfortunately, I have exhausted all of them,” Naoki said.
“Wait a moment! You have a way to transport sun dogs—out of time, out of space? The military implications of that could be staggering,” I said.
“Well, Naoki and I are the only ones who thoroughly understand the process, so no one will drop a sun dog on you anytime soon,” Miguel Ángel said.
“I’ll see Marshal. How many sun dogs do you need? Also, I really need a permanent gate. If you can figure that out, I’ll find you another wife,” I joked with Miguel Ángel.
“I never wanted but one wife. My condition isn’t something to joke about,” Miguel Ángel said quietly.
“I know. I never wanted even one,” I commiserated with him.
************* ***************** **************************
I suppose that I should explain about the process of continuous creation.
The Universe expands. Everything rushes away from everything else. If this keeps up for enough eons, eventually the place becomes very sparse and empty.
Indeed, this seems to be the case. If God was to leave the Universe to its own devices, by the time the last sun burned out, it would be a very empty place.
Some of the olde tyme physicists were bothered by the Universe running down. They hypothesized a so-called “Steady-State Universe.”
What if the Universe created new matter just fast enough to offset the expansion, so that the relative density remained constant?
That would violate the Conservation of Matter—but if it does, it does.
This was back before scientist knew about black holes, dark matter and dark energy. Anyway, they sharpened their pencils and with the best numbers that they had on hand back then, if the Universe could just manage to create one hydrogen atom per cubic yard, just once every 1000-years, it would be enough to maintain the Universe in a steady state.
That was well beyond their ability to detect back then, so yeah, conceivably the Universe might have been surreptitiously creating one hydrogen atom per cubic yard, per 1000-years, for all they knew.
I still don’t think that we could directly detect such a small effect, even now…
EE…I think that you might have to create the occasional lepton or two as well, lest your Universe get very lop-sided…
Well, the proof accumulated that we do not live in a Steady-State Universe…
But if we did live in a Steady-State Universe, where would the mass-energy to create such incredibly vast and ever-increasing amount of hydrogen atoms come from? That would be the power of continuous creation.
And since, in our Universe anyway, the power of continuous creation isn’t wasting its substance creating whole Universes worth of hydrogen atoms, there is a vast amount of power waiting to be tapped.
You can’t though, except in very special circumstances.
The mystic plants that grew on the surface of Ice tapped into the power of continuous creation in a very minor, peripheral way. So did the mushrooms that they grew in Revna’s valley. Neon’s railroad was tapped into the power of continuous creation.
Now, Miguel Ángel and Naoki were telling me that at the price of a 5-mile sun dog, that they could connect to the power of continuous creation long enough to make a gem world and power it.
A 10-mile sun dog might suffice to make 3 or 4 gem worlds.
************** *************** ********************
Since Ixtli and Aiai are kin, I had agreed to meet Miguel Ángel’s son Mateo.
He was a big, sinister-looking youth with snake eyes. Apparently, he never strayed far from his oversized Ugandan Lamia wife. That’s okay. It has been decades since I was more than a very weak stone’s throw from Despair.
“What can I do for you, dude?” I asked.
“I want to be a slip-slider like you,” Mateo said.
“I gave away my last manual. Besides, your father should have some soon,” I shrugged.
“My father has more children than he can shake a Lamia’s tail at. Both of my step-mothers are pregnant, so I have more siblings on the way. Anyway, my father, for all his gifts, is only an ordinary slip-slider,” Mateo said.
“I want to be a guardian like you are. It is too late for me to court a Night Ranger like you have. Even so, most Night Ranger consorts won’t go on to become guardians,” Mateo said.
“Marrying any other tier 4 goddess should do, but I and Neon are both already spoken for…” Mateo added.
“So, what?” I asked.
“If you took me on as a sort of apprentice, if I got to travel frequently between the worlds—as frequently as you do…”
“By my calculations, it should stimulate my potential. Anyway, you can always pen another manual, if you choose to. It isn’t as if you’re limited to the contract number,” Mateo said.
“Sure, young people need to have dreams. You want to tag along and piggyback with me for awhile, under the assumption that it will groom you for a guardianship,” I agreed.
“Just one thing. Despair and I need to adjourn to the Realm of Nightmare soon, to consummate our wedding. I can take you to the Realm of Nightmare sometime—but not this time. What we’re going to do, requires privacy. Well, for me it does,” I said.
“How long have y’all been married!?!” Mateo asked.
“Almost 30-years.”
“And you’re just now getting around to consummating your wedding?” Mateo said.
“When Namono and I were married, we were on the trail, but the first night that I was back home and I could take her to my room and close the door, we did the dirty deed,” Mateo said.
Meanwhile, Namono gave him a vicious elbow to the short ribs and looked embarrassed.
“Since I am your mentor, I will explain rather than taking offense. You were 15-years old on your wedding night. I was over 50-years old and there were exigent circumstances,” I said.
“As you get older, you will drive your vehicle more with the accelerator, brake and steering wheel rather than letting everything be ran by the stick-shift,” I said.
“Nonetheless, it is time to shift gears.”
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 23, 2021 11:40:43 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Six
87 399
The first few permanent gates were prepared. I had really wanted a permanent link to Earth, but on second thought, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
If there was little traffic, then there was scant meaning in having the gate. If there was a lot of traffic, then sooner or later the gate would be discovered and I’d have to deal with the whole weight of the New Knighted States gubmint.
They’d seize the gate and then I’d either have to destroy the gate or face invasion.
Maybe, in the future, I might locate a gate or two in some of the 3rd world counties of Earth, where cumshaw and mordidita were accepted means of doing business.
Anyway, I put portals between Revna’s valley, the Lamia Valley and their respective worlds.
The Lamia’s associated world was the Garnet World. There are only so many gems and they were already making more ruby, sapphire, topaz, emerald, zircon and other worlds—but it seemed appropriate for the first few to have their own title based on their tutelary gem.
I tied my two worlds together and I connected them to both of the new worlds as well as both of the valleys and Bottomtown.
My next move was out of the ordinary. I connected Ice to Forest—with Casúr’s permission, of course.
The people of Forest had an enhanced love and respect for nature. They had stagnated somewhere in Victorian Age technology for several centuries, but they had very advanced methods of handling renewable resources.
Casúr had named the place “Forest.” It would be more appropriate to call it “Park,” because much of its vast forested areas were managed like great woodland parks.
Parenthetically, I don’t know how a planet like Forest could continue to be so pristine, if the population was to continue to grow.
I don’t know how—short of playing some sort of Hannibal Lector games—that the population can be kept down without resorting to the abomination of birth control—but there you have it.
The people of Forest seemed—quite naturally—to have a much slower population growth and a lower fertility rate than the people of Earth.
If there are frequent widespread disasters that wipe out 87% of the human population, then the ability to breed like rabbits has survival value for the race.
If such near extinction events aren’t so frequent, then that is less so.
Forest seemed a much more sedate place than Earth, with fewer social, biological or geological upheavals than Earth.
Incidentally, I don’t believe that the men and women of Forest were any less fertile than men and women of Earth. It is rather a slight alteration in the probability in the Forest Universe, that makes conception a little less likely there.
At any rate, Forest was anxious to import “clean” technology and they were anxious for access to other—perhaps uninhabited—worlds in the future.
They were delighted to trade with Tawn, the Lamia and the frost giantesses.
The knowledge of Outsider activity seems to be actively suppressed by something supernatural on Earth. On Ice, outside of Neon’s buried temple, there didn’t seem to be much if any Outsider activity. There didn’t seem to be any on Forest either, until slip-sliders moved in and ruined the neighborhood.
It was interesting to see some of the learned folk on Forest react to the giantesses, Oni and above all else, the Lamias. The people of Ice were too stoic and deadpan to made that much fun.
The three main continents of Forest resemble two semi-circular parentheses-shaped continents. bracketing a more or less circular central continent.
“West”—in one of the languages of Forest, is a long narrow continent of about 7-million square miles and it is where 85% of the human population of Forest lives.
“Center” is a slightly taller than wide oval-shaped continent of about 5-million miles that lays between the two parentheses continents. It has some huge climax forests on the coasts, but the vast majority of the interior is alpine tundra given over to megafauna, much like Earth enjoyed during the last Ice Age. Center is where much of the mammoth ivory comes from.
East is the largest of the 3 continents at about 17-million square miles. It is the least inhabited of the 3 continents and the least explored.
There is a maximum of 300-miles of ocean separating West from Center, while most of the ocean separating Center from East is less than 130-miles wide.
I had railroads going from Tawn to three major cities in West. I also managed to finagle title to an island of about 37 000-square miles in the south sea, 1800-miles off the coast of East.
To put that into perspective, the island was about the size of Indiana and slightly bigger than Ireland, Tasmania or Ceylon.
It was far enough South to be a bit chilly there, but I spell relief “sun dogs.”
The people of Tawn could have come in like a horde of demented locusts, clear-cut the forests and killed all the fauna—including a small population of dwarf mammoths.
Even if they were that wasteful, all the biological materials would give a huge boost to the economies of both Tawn in particular and Ice in general.
Tawn, incidentally, was working hard on attracting enough people to the town to fill up Bottomtown II. That was far easier to accomplish, now that railroads connected many of the cities of Ice to Tawn.
Sometime in the near future, I had to pick out at least a couple other towns geographically distant from Tawn and build them up to the same degree as Tawn. It is never a great idea to wrap all of your baskets around one egg.
Anyway, I had foresters and wildlife wardens from Forest come and show my people how to harvest the forests in rotation and how to figure out how many animals should be harvested each year, without adversely affecting the fauna.
Dudes, it is like: wood, ivory and animal skins were getting to where even common people could save and buy a few pieces.
************* ***************** ***********************
Casúr had taken us on a tour of the interior of Center. We were standing on the observation deck of a huge zepelin.
Despair was with me, of course, as well as Mateo and his shadow Namono. Mateo was all the secretary or assistant that I needed. There was scant need for bodyguards. If Despair and I couldn’t handle the situation, then the situation probably couldn’t be handled.
“When will you try to open up your second world?” Casúr asked conversationally.
“Opened it a couple of years ago. It is a very barren world with a climate suitable for alpine tundra. As soon as I have a reasonable base of vegetation, I’d like to buy some live animals to help stock the place,” I said.
I especially wanted mammoths, giant bison, giant red stag, chalicotherium—giant sloths, indricotherium—the giant hornless rhinoceroses that are the biggest mammal that ever walked the Earth, and a few others.
“I suppose that is the advantage of being married to a Night Ranger,” Casúr said with a sigh.
He was still working hard on opening his second world.
Casúr was in his mid-90’s when he met Leena—well past the Biblical 3-score and 10. Since he had gotten younger, he had lived almost another 3-score and 10.
He was Steward of a rich world where he was a tycoon. He was married to a beautiful platinum-haired mythical creature and there was no clear end to the good times in sight.
He wasn’t bitterly covetous or even seriously envious. He was just talking.
“There are a couple of islands in the sub-Antarctic circle (or what would be the Antarctic Circle on Earth). One is about the size of Vermont. The other is about half as big. I can raise reindeer there. I want them…” I said.
We negotiated some more.
************** **************** *********************
My railroads won’t easily merge with the railroads of Ice.
Everyone knows that when God first decided to build the capability for railroads into reality, that he sat down to discuss it with John Browning.
Of course, that was long before John Browning was born, but God isn’t limited by constraints of time or space.
Nor does God, as an omniscient being, need to consult John Browning, but John Browning did such a bang-up job designing the 1911A1, that God made him his head engineer and consults him—just as a courtesy—about anything having to do with mechanical engineering.
Anyway, God and John Browning established 4-foot 8.5-inches as the standard gauge for railroad rails and rails conform to that standard pretty much worldwide.
The former Soviet Union has a different gauge and a few old, proprietary, or mine railroads are non-standard, but standard gauge is pretty much standard everywhere.
Then the dumbass 7th tier deity who designed Ice’s railroads made the gauge 6-foot 11-inches!
I don’t care! If I ever get a chance to meet the reprobate, F2F, I won’t be shy. I’ll come right out and tell him that his super-technology, almost-magical railroad is wanked!
So anyway, it would make things much easier for me, if I made my interdimensional railroads to Ice gauge—but that would be like deliberately designing something WRONG!
Nah, it is better to go through lengthy swapping of cargo between interdimensional railroads and Ice railroads—even if it wastes millions of—hypothetical—manhours per year.
I say “hypothetical” because most everything is automated…
************** ***************** ************************
“It is time,” Despair said.
We went to the Realm of Nightmare. The form of the Realm of Nightmare is very protean.
Today the ground was perfectly flat and flat white. It wasn’t snow, salt, sand or linoleum. It just was. The sky was the color of old lead round-nosed bullets—a dreary blue-gray.
“Here is the last hidden test. You have to take me by force,” Despair said.
“Well then, I refuse. Let’s go back. I forfeit the test,” I said.
“You cannot forfeit. You either take me by force, or you die,” Despair said.
“If you attack me, I will stand and let you slay me without lifting a hand to defend myself. I will not be a part of this!” I said.
“I won’t attack you, but something is about to seize control of me. If you die here, this is the last chance that I will have to speak to you. When the madness leaves me, you will already be dead…” Despair said.
Tears ran from her eyes. I had never seen her cry, though sometimes when she talked about her mother, sisters or father, her eyes would fill with tears.
“I love you Stillwater…”
She started to transform. She became bigger. Her teeth became longer and her mouth extended out like a werewolf snout. Her wings grew beyond all reason.
She slashed at my face with a hand that spanned the size of a dinner plate.
I dodged to give myself a moment to think.
I could let her kill me. That would underline my refusal to be tested this way…
But how would Despair feel, through all the lonely centuries to come, knowing that she had killed me? I couldn’t do that to her.
“I don’t know who or what you are, but obviously you haven’t full access to Despair’s memories. If you did, you would flee in terror,” I told the consciousness that had seized control of Despair.
I grabbed a wrist and pulled Despair close and broke the arm. Then I pumped a half-a-dozen uppercuts into her mid-section. Then as she gasped for air, I reached up and broke both of her wings—up close, near her back—and I threw her to the ground.
The spirit was leaving her body.
“Life is long. If we meet again, I will take vengeance!” I told the spirit.
Despair’s eyes came into focus.
“You won. Never mind my injuries. They will heal quickly. Hurry up and take me and then we can leave,” she said.
“I don’t want you anymore. Just open the gate, so I can go home,” I said.
“The gate will never open until we consummate,” Despair said.
“If you think that I won’t sit and meditate for the next several hundred years, until my augmented lifespan runs out, then you vastly underestimate my obstinance,” I said.
“I know that you will, if you set your head to it. I don’t control such things though. I cannot choose to let you out,” Despair said.
“If we’re going to sit in this dreary place for centuries, can we at least be friends and converse, even if you won’t mate with me?” Despair asked.
“We’re friends. I did something dishonorable for your sake,” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I fought you, so you wouldn’t have to bear the guilt of having slain me—though the most honorable course, my preferred course of action—would have been to let you strike me down without resistance,” I said.
I ignored Despair and turned my face upwards, toward the heavens.
“Whoever and whatever you are, I gave you a chance to play nice but you didn’t cherish it. So be it!” I said.
Both of my hands morphed into oversized long-talon lobstousituies like Despair’s battle hands—only larger.
I reached out and ripped the fabric of the Realm of Nightmares asunder.
“Behold, the Crack Between the Worlds!” I said.
I let one hand return to normal and I grabbed Despair’s unbroken wrist and pulled her out of the Realm of Nightmare along with me—lest she somehow end up stranded there.
I spoke to Despair once we were back in my office in the Sapphire World.
“You can have the Ruby World. You can even have the Sapphire World. You can have Ice. You can have everything that I own. I’ll even give you my spirit sword. Just please, never come into my presence again,” I said to her.
“I don’t want anything of yours!” Despair said.
She burst into tears and then she vanished. I hadn’t been alone for decades. I used to love solitude, but from now on, it would be pregnant with loneliness.
Still, there you have it.
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Post by texican on Jan 23, 2021 19:41:49 GMT -6
Thanks rvm for the chapters.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 24, 2021 7:28:26 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Seven 89 786
I thought about ostentatiously letting everything go to Hell. I also thought of disappearing and becoming a hermit.
The idea of “responsibility” never gelled for me. I don’t care how badly something needs to be done, if I didn’t promise to do it, then I’m not obligated to do it.
I just started doing things. I know that many folks expected me to simply keep on doing similar things for them, ad infinitum. Sorry dudes! Life is full of disappointments and there is far more desire in the world, than there is satisfaction.
In the end though, I continued to function as guardian. It wasn’t out of any sense of “duty.” I don’t believe in duty.
I never liked brain-teasers or riddles. I’m not up for the sense of frustration they entail. When I hear someone proposing a riddle, I have a mental image of my mind trapped in a basement frantically trying to climb out of one of those tiny basement windows to avoid hearing the riddle.
I never so much as touched a Rubik’s Cube.
I like Chess though. The situation on my worlds was like coming into a room and finding a fascinating Chess game in progress on a set someone had left in the room. Of course, I’d want to analyze the position.
Mateo had become my constant companion, along with his shadow Namono. My days would have been much lonelier without their presence.
Still, they weren’t going to pile into my bed to keep the loneliness away at night. That’s when I felt hollow inside.
I missed Despair a great deal. Still, actions have consequences.
I knew that she couldn’t help what she did.
On Judgement Day “I didn’t know,” “I couldn’t help it,” and “I meant well,” will all get you greater condemnation. I have never agreed with the concept of giving lighter sentences because of “Remorse” either.
That means that someone willing to give a convincing show of adopting the current regime’s shibboleths, gets a lighter sentence, while the honestly unrepentant miscreant pays for being honest.
If I were the judge, I’d tell folks:
“You shouldn’t do things that you will be sorry for. I’m adding 3-years onto your sentence, since you’re sorry.”
Some people didn’t understand my grievance with Despair.
Proverbs says something about;
“These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:”
I haven’t numbered the things that are an abomination to me. They include people who shoot Isosceles, the Metric System, ugly chops, momma’s boys and the sexually aggressive male.
Since it is the woman who loses a piece of her soul when she copulates with a new male partner, it should damned well be up to the woman to decide who is worth the sacrifice.
They should be under no pressure to rip off pieces of their soul to satisfy someone’s carnal itches.
THE RULES say that if you desire a woman, you should approach the subject of sex very indirectly and obliquely and never show your true aim.
Flatter her, shower her with attention and gifts and unless she is a manipulative, grasping slattern, at some point she will either become your lover or gently tell you that you gave bought a ticket on the wrong train.
Unless you’re bargaining with a prostitute, a good man never ever never comes out and baldly asks a woman for sex.
Well, the world is broken. Those who play by THE RULES are perpetually friend-zoned while human hogs get the girls.
“It works,” is never a valid or relevant consideration in ethics or morality.
Two statements tempt me to commit homicide:
“Baby give it up;”
And,
“I got ‘needs’.”
You need Vitamin C. You will get scurvy and your teeth will fall out without it. You need Vitamin A. You will go blind without it. You don’t need sex. You want sex.
If you go home without sex, you will simply go home with a boner. That can and has gone on for decades, with no ill-effects except sexual frustration.
Every man who tells a woman “I got needs” should have all of his teeth pulled with a rusty pair of pliers.
Not that that is a terribly effective pick-up line. It is just that it is such an offense to chivalrous ears and it also smacks of entitlement mentality: I “need” it; ergo it is someone’s “duty” to supply it for me.
Despair forced me to assume the role of the sexually aggressive male. She forced me to become what I loathe.
I made up my mind, long time gone, I’d far rather go without rather than become what I despise.
No, it is even worse. Despair didn’t force me to become something contempt-worthy. She placed me in a position where I freely chose to degrade myself—to spare her the guilt of killing me.
It wasn’t a question of rape.
I heard the ethical question years ago:
A big muscular martial art Amazon issues the challenge: “Any man capable of beating me down until I’m incapable of resisting, can have some”—is that rape?
No, that is the same as if she’d said: “Any man who buys me a 3-carat diamond ring can have some.”
Of course, in the case of either a requested beat-down or a big diamond ring, the right to change her mind still exists.
{Change your mind: you have to give the ring back. You can keep the beat-down.}
It wasn’t because taking Despair under those circumstances would have smacked of rape. It was because I was stuck in a position of proactively seeking sex—whether that was my motive, or not.
15-years went by rather quickly. Well, it is like “The Howard Families’” password in the Heinlein stories:
“The days are long; but the years are short.’”
Then one day Grandpa Liu came to call on me at my office on the Sapphire World. I was past wondering how he could show up as if he could simply teleport anywhere without let or hindrance.
He brought along a great many of my friends—and yes, my office is large enough to hold a barn dance. I sometimes have conference meetings there.
Terry and Revna were there, Marshal and Neon were there. Miguel Ángel was there and so was Cassadore and Vincent. Ixtli, Alejandro and Casúr came.
Mother Brown was there—for no good reason that I could name.
And of course, the elephant in the room, was the fact that they had brought Despair.
“I thought that you two would patch this up on your own, but this has become ridiculous. I want you two to make up,” Grandpa Liu said.
I gave him my most hateful gaze.
“There is an old proverb:
“Wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which hand gets full faster,” I said.
Ordinarily, I had a great deal of respect for Grandpa Liu, but not when he was butting into affairs that did not concern him.
“Could you please explain to an old woman, why you are so angry with this poor child?” Mother Brown said.
I didn’t have time to compose an essay, so my presentation on how much I loathe the sexually aggressive male was verbose and a bit repetitious. I got my point across, even if my presentation was less than elegant.
“Let’s suppose that you were married and your wife cheated on you. Would you ever forgive her? Mother Brown asked. “With a man?” I asked.
“Yes, with a man. Why is that significant?” Mother Brown asked.
“A woman cannot count coup on a man—not spiritually. If my wife cheated on me with another woman, while it would hurt my heart, it wouldn’t damage my manhood,” I explained.
“A man who sleeps with my wife has cut off a piece of my manhood and appropriated it for himself. There is no way to ever reclaim it. My wife would have presided over my partial castration. There is no forgiveness for such an emasculation,” I said.
“On a scale of 1-to-10, rate what Despair, did compared to sleeping with another man.” Mother Brown said.
“On a scale of 1-to-10, cheating on me would be ‘27.’ What Despair did would be about an ‘8’,” I said.
“Is what Despair did unforgivable?” Mother Brown continued her Socratic style questioning.
“Yes,” I said flatly.
Socratic dialog is a cheesy verbal sleight of hand. What Mother Brown said next, wasn’t in the tradition of Socrates.
“Forgiving the unforgivable gains one merit,” she said.
As I said, I never so much as touched a Rubik’s Cube—though it isn’t as if I thought that they were repugnant to the touch.
Mother Brown’s calm understated statement cut through the Gordian Knot of conflicted emotions and scruples about the situation with Despair.
It is as if I’d been bolloxing with that Rubik’s Cube for 3-years and it finally clicked into place.
“Despair, I forgive you. I would be pleased if you would accompany me once more—if you’re willing,” I said to her.
For one crazy instant, I thought that Despair had cast aside all bonds of sanity and was attacking me. Instead, she was rushing to embrace me.
I haven’t a clue what Despair weighs. She is 6-foot 5-inches tall and muscular. That might make her about Linda Liu’s weight—about 300-pounds.
But Despair has those great bat wings that seem able to grow without let or hindrance and those huge zygodactyl feet and her tissues are denser than a human’s or any Earth creature’s.
She hit me as hard as a 500—pound sumo and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she weighed even more.
Her enthusiastic embrace would snap the spine and crush the ribs of a mundane.
I saw clearly, for the first time, why Melancholy was so reluctant to date Benson—the poor little dweeb.
“I didn’t even know exactly why you were so angry at me!” she wailed.
She held me and cried for a good long while. My friends had faded away one-by-one, without consciously seeing them go—all except Grandpa Liu.
“The time that I can shield you and serve as a mentor to you is rapidly drawing to a close. I am not long for this world,” Grandpa Liu said.
“When were you a mentor?” I asked, puzzled.
“You will begin to see that very soon now. However, as much as I hate to intrude in someone’s private affairs…”
“You need to consummate your marriage as soon as possible. We may have days. I hope for weeks. Months are too much to hope for. The shit-storm is about to break and you will need all of your power to take up my mantle and carry on the good fight,” Grandpa Liu said and then he vanished.
************* ***************** ************************
Some famous noble lady from England once said about sex:
“The risk is grave. “The pleasure is momentary. “The position is ridiculous.”
She could have added that it is fatiguing and over-rated.
It is like weeks or months of nail-biting, edge of the seat courtship; an hour or two of sweaty breathless grappling—and then the payoff is a tiny 7-second tickle.
If you know that the game is rigged, but you keep playing, then you are a sucker.
I wasn’t expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t great, but the best I’d ever experienced. I don’t know precisely what drove Despair to be so exceedingly rough.
Was she still overjoyed to be reunited? Was it because Night Rangers are rough, rowdy beings? Or maybe she was simply exceedingly aroused.
Anyway, if there had been an onlooker, he might have wondered if we were making love or in a grim battle to the death.
It was the aftermath that was the most noteworthy though.
My whole body reknit itself. My bones broke themselves and reformed. My internal organs flowed freely into new configurations. My blood boiled and changed composition.
I had long since paid the debt of pain. These changes felt like a long pleasant stretch, tingly goosepimples of pleasure and a soothing warmth.
Pow!
I had the bat wings that I had so craved. Despair had told me that it would take me some time to master putting them away—not that hers ever vanished, but them I’m human—sort of…
Despair was looking at me in stark terror.
“Stillwater, you know that most Night Rangers are tier 3 deities. Their husbands will also become tier 3 deities relatively easily. When they do, they become Night Wardens,” Desapir said.
“I’m tier 4. My husband might, with a bit of good fortune, become a Night Centurion. A tier 5 consort would be a Night General,” she continued.
“You understand that we’re in the realm of rumor now. There aren’t even any legends about Night Generals, even among my long-lived people,” she said.
“You have skipped all of those ranks, like a child playing hopscotch. You are a tier 6 deity—a Night Marshal—a Field Marshal!”
O well, O Hell.
“Damned nation, Despair! I knew that you’d break something going about it so roughly!” I said.
“I need to tell you something, Stillwater, I’m evil. I didn’t know that before. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you,” she said
“Whatever.”
I was tired of riding the roller coaster of emotions over Despair.
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Post by millwright on Jan 24, 2021 14:11:45 GMT -6
This is an unbearable level of suspense.
I protest.
I might even protest with a sip of nice bourbon.
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Post by texican on Jan 24, 2021 16:37:50 GMT -6
there is far more desire in the world, than there is satisfaction.
How true....
Seems like the poop will be hitting the fan and war will be fought.
Thanks RVM.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 24, 2021 19:29:48 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Eight 92 013
To understand Despair’s explanation, you have to understand Maxwell’s Demon and the Tai Chi symbol.
The Tai Chi symbol is black on one side and white on the other. It represents the idea of duality:
Male/Female Hot/Cold Hard/Soft Good/Evil Digital/Analog
Etcetera. There is a tiny white dot in the center of the Black area and a tiny black dot in the white area, to represent the Taoist theory that nothing is 100% free of its opposite.
Maxwell was an early 1800’s physicist and he came up with Maxwell’s Box, AKA “The Demon Box” as a sort of thought experiment.
Put a large volume of gas into a big metal container that is divided into two internal compartments. Now put a tiny door between the two chambers—a door just big enough to let one air molecule through at a time.
Put a tiny demon as a gate-keeper.
Now there will be an average temperature of the air molecules, but some molecules will—by virtue of collisions—be faster, that is to say, hotter—than average. Some of the other molecules will be slower and cooler than average.
Now, our mischievous little demon will open the door and let any molecule that is hotter than average enter the right side of the container. At the same time, any molecule that is cooler than average gets a free pass to the left side of the container.
Eventually, the right side will be red hot while the left side will be frosty cold. Such a temperature difference could be used to perform useful work. This seems to violate the “law” of entropy.
Since there isn’t really any such thing as little demons who function without food or energy, and play gatekeeper to air molecules, it is a moot point.
I’m not sure what Maxwell’s point was, since I’ve only read of his demon box second hand.
Be that as it may. The Realm of Nightmare was an evil place—largely made from the collective fears, shortcomings and lusts of human beings—but it wasn’t pure 100% evil—98% perhaps, but not 100%.
Over the long eons, the Night Rangers condensed out of the good that somehow got “demon-boxed” into one special area.
The Night Rangers weren’t anywhere near paragons of virtue, but they were more kindly disposed to mankind than not. Eventually, they sacrificed their immortality to become the wives of men…
Though exactly how and why this happened and why there are certain rules and restrictions are questions that Despair had no answers for.
Sometimes, what you are is more important than what you do.
Say, if your parents weren’t married when you were conceived, then you are a bastard. It isn’t your fault, but no matter what stellar accomplishments you may achieve in life, that doesn’t change the fact that you are illegitimate.
How much significance that you choose to attach to your illegitimacy is your choice.
By the same token, Despair was born of iniquity and she was—by definition—evil.
Had I known, it would have made me even more reluctant to become involved with her.
Then again, as the Bible says:
“There is none righteous—no, not one.”
*********** ************ ************************
It was precisely 17-days after I became a Night Marshal that I got a frantic call for assistance from Forest. Their world was being invaded…
The invaders weren’t little green men or gray aliens.
They were 9-foot tall reptilian overlords. Maybe David Icke was onto something after all.
The knob-gobblers set up shop in the outback of Center. They slew the mammoths and other megafauna wholesale, field dressed them and sent them back through their portals.
They had set up great mills and they were industriously clear-cutting the forests and exporting the lumber.
They had thrown a very tight security cordon around their area of operation and any humans unfortunate enough to wander into the area were ruthlessly eliminated.
Unfortunately for them there was a Red Oni—one of Eiji’s fellow Blue Oni admirers—who had come to Center with his Blue Oni bride to celebrate their honeymoon.
Oni aren’t that easy to kill. They had managed to make their way back to civilization, though he’d lost an arm and his bride later died from the injuries that she suffered.
Red Oni don’t get along with Blue Oni. Strangely, Eiji had uncovered the fact that there was a tiny cadre of Red Oni males who actually fancied the Blue-skinned women.
Maybe there are also a few Blue Oni males that fetishize Red-Oni women. I shudder to think.
Anyway, where do these mismatched couples go, once they hook up? They are an anathema to both the Red Oni and the Blue Oni nations.
They go to Revna’s Valley, of course. King Terry facepalms and accepts them into his kingdom. After all, how can he nay-say them, when his own sister is a miscegenator? Miscegenationess?
Anyway, by the time that Casúr and the people of Forest became aware of the situation, the reptilian overlords had laid claim to a bridgehead the size of Manhattan Island.
They had rim-wrecked an area 6-times that large.
“Even if we drive them away, it will take over 100-years to repair the damage to the forests and the tundra,” Casúr mourned.
The longer he lived on Forest, the more he thought like a conservationist. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
King Terry arrived on my heels. He might not love Red Oni, but he was a sovereign. He was absolutely livid that two of his subjects had been assaulted and one of them was dead.
“There will be sad singin’ and flower bringin’. The hills will run red with blood. Their womenfolk will mourn far into the night, for many nights to come,” Terry raged.
“Shut-up for a moment!” I said to Terry.
He wasn’t usually so verbose.
“Take the Red Oni to the best hospital in Bottomtown and have the best quality prosthetic arm attached as quickly as possible. Tell him that we can definitely grow him another arm, but that will take time. I assume that he will want to take part in the upcoming battles to avenge his wife,” I said to Mateo.
“Activate all of the Friends and send them here. Activate the 1st and 2nd regular army and send them here as well. Notify Ixtli. She has control of the Garnet World,” I continued.
“If this world is lost, I will need to stay on the front lines and fight as long as possible. The railroads are okay, but they have limited capacity and they only connect to a few key spots,” I said.
“I will need you and Ixtli to load as many people and their animals as possible into your gem worlds and evacuate them to safety. I know that you would rather be at the forefront fighting, but sometimes being a King makes demands on a man—or an Oni,” I told Terry. “Anyway, we ain’t there yet. There is still some time and opportunity for you to bust heads like a back-alley thug. All Oni are basically thugs anyway,” I said to Terry.
Terry showed his fangs and started getting those green veins.
“Hey dumbass! Save that till we are actually in battle. Don’t waste your vital energy,” I said.
Terry glared angrily. He wasn’t mad at me. We’ been friends for too long. He was simply mad at the situation.
“Terry, summon Miguel Ángel and Eiji here. I need them for something,” I said.
When Eiji and Miguel Ángel arrived, I spoke to them.
“Your research has rather lagged of late. I got y’all beaucoup sun dogs, but there have been no more gem worlds produced recently. Never mind,” I told them.
“I am not oblivious to the fact that both of you are wearing gem world rings. That is fine, but I may need you to use your rings to aid in the evacuation soon—if that becomes necessary,” I said.
Eiji stepped forward.
“We have something here that may be my ultimate achievement. We were saving it to present to you at some important affair of state,” Eiji said
He handed me a crown studded with too many gems to readily count.
“Behold the Sacred Crown! At first, we wanted it to contain a gross of worlds—12 dozen. Eventually we made it a country gross—13-squared or 169—just because we could,” Eiji said.
“There are 169 worlds, each with 2.3-million square miles of land area. That’s about 388-million square miles compared to Earth’s 57.3-million square miles of land surface,” Eiji said.
“Go ahead and refine it,” he urged.
I placed the crown on my head and a ring with multiple small stones—though not anywhere near 169—on my right ring finger.
The worlds came with a limited number of interconnecting portals built in, but I could use Miguel Ángel’s railroad system to create more links.
As the crown disassembled itself and was absorbed into my head, a rush of information about the Sacred Crown worlds rushed into my mind.
Never mind. Now was not the time to be dicking with the Sacred Crown.
“Miguel Ángel, if things go to Hell in a handbasket here, it may be time to activate your ultimate weapon,” I said.
Miguel Ángel nodded grimly.
************ ************** *******************
Once they were discovered, the reptilian overlords summoned innumerable battalions of flamethrower armed reptilian troopers and started a scorched earth campaign, burning everything ahead of them as they advanced.
I later learned that this was fixed policy with the reptilian overlords. They basically destroyed the indigenous ecosystem to make room for their own utilitarian croplands.
The number of plants the reptiles cultivated and the number of livestock that they raised was roughly on par with what they had on Ice before I came…
Except to these knob-gobblers, it was a matter of choice. All any of the nobles cared about was seizing as large a plot of ground as possible; growing the maximum number of calories possible to support the largest possible army to try to annex other reptilian overlords’ fiefs.
They weren’t above harvesting some luxury goods before they were discovered. Once the curtain fell though, they went full-bore nihilist.
“The tactics—they remind me of the Death Rangers,” Miguel Ángel said with a killing timbre in his voice.
“Do you note how all of the flame troopers have the top of their skull replaced with a shiny steel skullcap?” I said.
We were watching some of the engagements on bodycam broadcasts as well as drone cam footage and even satellite footage. Yes, well…
If I can’t get a few surveillance satellites up and running with the super-technology of Ice and several varieties of magic at my disposal, then I need to just hang it up.
“They seem to be under some sort of electronic control. The Death Rangers that we autopsied had some sort of biological modification to the brain as well,” I said’
“It was weaker and far more subtle, but they couldn’t afford to tip their hand back then,” I said.
A sniper rifle appeared in Miguel Ángel’s hands.
“I want to pit my skills against these shiny-pated reptilian overlords,” he said.
“Stay calm. How many wives and children are counting on you now? Remember, you are the man with the weapon of mass destruction,” I soothed him.
Damned nation! Everyone around me was going into berserker mode, like a bunch of freakin’ Oni!
“It was the reptilian overlords who were behind the death of my birth mother?” Mateo asked.
“Sure looks like it. Don’t you go ape-shit all of a sudden. You can cause far more enemy casualties as my aide than by charging into battle willy-nilly,” I said.
“I’m not going anywhere, but when and if the time comes, that I’ve buried my blade up to the hilt in a reptile, I want to have the balls and the spite to twist the blade and churn it around,” Mateo said
We watched my elite troops being devastated. I sent out the call to evacuate as much of Forest as possible, as fast as possible. I called back my troops and had them form a defensive line and try to simply delay the advance of the reptiles toward West, while we toted away tens of thousands of civilians at a time.
The battle hadn’t yet gotten to East or my Islands. There was time for a far more orderly evacuation via the interdimensional railroads there. Also, East was far more sparsely populated than West.
There didn’t seem to be any end to the flood of flamethrower-armed reptiles and their support troops.
Grandpa Liu appeared.
“They are about to open 17 more portals—in West, Center and East, as well as the two minor continents. If they do, this planet will fall in days. Once they have this planet firmly under their control, their next stopping-off place will be Ice,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Ice will fall in a matter of a few weeks and then they will invade Earth—and a few score associated worlds tied together by the slip-sliders,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Is this my fault for building the interdimensional railroads?” I asked.
“Screw your interdimensional railroads! No! Ice is a nexus world. You’ve seen the equations saying that Ice is highly likely to get visitors from alternate universes,” Grandpa Liu said.
“It is simply Ice’s geas that the second interdimensional visitor to Ice will come only to kill, steal and destroy.”
“I can stick my finger in the dyke for awhile, but it will exhaust my life force. You need to prepare to destroy this world and shut off easy access to Ice,” he said.
“Unfortunately, that will take time—more time than I can give you. Someone else will have to make the ultimate sacrifice if the invasion is to be held up long enough to destroy this world,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Stillwater—it can’t be you who makes the sacrifice. You are needed to fulfill the prophesies. Miguel Ángel, you cannot step into the gap either. Your skills are essential to the war effort. King Terry you and Despair are also on the indispensable list,” Grandpa Liu said.
“The rest of you are far too weak. Stepping into the gap would be an action without meaning,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Who then?” I asked.
“Your martyr will arrive shortly. Goodbye Stillwater. I think of you as my own grandson,” Grandpa Lu said.
Then Grandpa Liu vanished.
We could see him on the satellite camera, far out in space, 1000-feet tall—wearing his silly changpao and turned-up elf shoes. He was waving his gigantic psychedelic vulture’s wing with one hand and grasping his japa bead necklace with the other.
Streams of energy flowed from his aura and blocked each of the 17 extra portals down below.
“Get to setting the charges!” I said to Miguel Ángel and Eiji.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Casúr.
“Not your fault. Better to blow it to Hell rather than let these wasters have it,” Casúr said.
Grandpa Liu hoovered above the planet for just over 21-days.
By the 3rd day though, it looked like we would be over-run just by the reptilian overlords coming from the extra-large portal in the outback of Center.
Then there was a thunderous roar as space was ruptured in hundreds of places at one time.
1800 frost giantesses, expanded to full-size, wearing enchanted scale mail and carrying huge swords appeared in the area close to the reptilian overlords’ portal. There were over 300 Blue Oni with them.
They marched forward, mowing down reptiles like they were reaping wheat.
Meanwhile, perhaps 200 assorted Lamia entered the ruined forests and started stalking the reptilian overlords.
I saw an oversized Ugandan Lamia—who must have weighed over 800-pounds—seize a 9-foot reptilian overlord—who must have weighed more than the Lamia…
And she swallowed him whole, remarkably quickly—clothing, weapons, steel skullcap and all. She didn’t look the least bit bloated either.
I had never realized that Lamia were so scary.
These were Lamia that had lost friends and loved ones to the Death Rangers.
Large troops of humans—husbands and sons of the frost giantesses—showed up and reinforced our defensive perimeter. They all had single use talismans to teleport them back home—if they activated it, if they were severely injured or if they were killed.
Marshal and Neon also showed up on the 3rd day.
“In some ways, what they want to do to Forest is similar to what the red dwarf ended up doing to my home world,” Neon said sadly.
“Of course, the red dwarf acted without malice of forethought. They will come to my home world next, won’t they? Perhaps this is why I couldn’t bring myself to be your bride,” Neon told Marshal.
“Despite the fact that you are a very good man; a patient man and a kind man. Perhaps this is what I was born for. When Master Liu’s lifeforce is exhausted, I will step into the breach,” Neon said.
“I can’t see my home world destroyed once more,” Neon said.
“Was this the ‘war beyond my ken,’ that Travail felt compelled to go fight in?” Marshal asked Despair.
“I’m not omniscient, but in all probability, these are the enemy that she fought, to buy Earth time,” Despair replied.
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Post by texican on Jan 25, 2021 22:34:12 GMT -6
rvm,
The war is on and Forest will be destroyed to end the attack of the snakes.
How soon will the fight be taken to the reptilian systems/universes?
rvm, there is so much writing to be done and posted and so little time.
Thanks for the chapter.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 26, 2021 0:53:05 GMT -6
Friends,
I had a 2800+ word chapter all done and ready to load today, then I decided that it was disorganized, sloppy and just sub-par, so I deleted it.
That happens once every 8 or 10-chapters. It used to happen more often, so I shall not complain. I'll recycle much of the former chapter and it will be both better-written and easier to write...
Anyone who doesn't want a mild spoiler, read no farther…
Who remembers Stillwater saying that you cannot simply teleport a 10+ mile sphere of rock out of the planet's crust without creating beaucoup problems?
What if you teleported a whole line of 10+ mile spheres of rock from both the crust and the mantle with malice of forethought, to create an extinction-level event?
…..RVM45
O, and as a fringe benefit, you get plenty of raw material for sun dogs...
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 26, 2021 13:22:18 GMT -6
Chapter Thirty-Nine 94 915
I sat in my situation room and watched the course of the battle on several large screens—both electronic and magical.
There didn’t seem to be any end to the legions of reptiles that poured through their oversized portal.
Physically, the reptilian overlords looked like a somewhat more upright version of a velociraptor, with longer and more robust tails. That tail probably weighed as much, or more, that the torso.
They were a multitude of bright bead-work colors—like a Gila monster, but with more variety from lizard to lizard.
They had great red eyes bigger than my fists and a mouthful of fangs the size of my little finger.
All of them that we were seeing at this point, had the steel skullcaps and they were largely controlled remotely.
Truth be told, they were very powerful, but slow, awkward and a bit slow-witted. I think that when they placed the remote controllers in them, that they sacrificed a great deal of initiative and capacity for independent thought.
Some commander, mashing buttons on 100 or 1000 puppet troopers at once, is not going to be able to react to the subtleties of Kendo or Polish Saber Fighting—not that things were going to the blade all that often.
I had my people try to minimize their own losses while whittling away at the reptile’s numbers with hit-and-run tactics and sniper fire. A war of attrition doesn’t work all that well against an enemy that has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of troops that simply don’t care if they live or die—not even a little.
While the reptiles seemed to lack anything like an air force, I had a pretty good air force that largely consisted of drones.
I had 4-rotor hovercraft—helicopters, as it were—the size of Volkswagens. They were nothing much except a few television cameras—for redundancy—motors, and a minigun.
I could go with armor-piercing .223’s to carry more rounds, my rimless equivalent to the .338 Winchester Magnum or a relatively slow-firing .50 BMG.
Decisions, decisions! I hate decisions!
Do you realize how much manufacturing capacity a post-scarcity economy like Ice possessed?
Never mind decisions, make me a bunch of all 3!
I had tried to act like a prudent squirrel that remembers winter, and busily caches supplies. I had unbelievable quantities of all 3 calibers of minigun drones, warehoused like cordwood in various armories here and there.
The main issue was getting them out of mothballs and getting them here to Center.
Yes, there were supply depots on Forest, but damned nation! How paranoid do I need to be!?!
A couple of other things that my drones were good for—surveillance and suicide bombing runs.
Sending men to be kamikazes and to pilot Baka-bombs are the tactics of desperation. However, when you can pilot your Baka-bombs with cheap AIs or remotely…
Ach ja! Du bist Kaufmann!
After a couple successful Baka-bombings of the headquarters, the lizards put up some sort of forcefield that excluded unauthorized entry.
Top secret!?! Secret my ass!
Time to hit the reptilian overlords with a hexagonal pattern of neutron bombs. Dudes, it is like: my people can make thorium reactors and matter/anti-matter reactors.
How hard is it for them to make me some neutron bombs?
I dropped 19 at one time—one on the center—6 in a hexagonal pattern and then 12 more in a somewhat larger 12-sided polygon based off of the first hexagon.
It was a good thing that I made hay while the sun shined. I wiped out most of the reptiles in reptile-central.
Without the never-ending stream of replacements, my forces actually made some progress toward liquidating the invading forces.
Then, within 18-hours the enemy led with some sort of damper field that prevented nuclear bombs from detonating and they sent an even larger rush.
I glumly wondered if their dampening field would stop a matter/anti-matter bomb or if it would be proof against a sun dog falling on it.
Still, it wasn’t yet time to display all of my hole cards.
Terry, Ixtli and a half-a-dozen other possessors of gem worlds, were out rounding up as many refugees as possible.
Understand, a gem holder could load everyone filling Times Square at New Years or everyone along the busiest parade route in Brazil during Carnaval do Brasil—all with one-fraction-of-a-second-long transfer.
You just need to get the people to congregate so you can transport all of them at one time.
The holdup is clearing folks out of the reception area. Something won’t teleport to where it will be superimposed on something else. Nonetheless, teleporting a 2nd group before the 1st group has cleared the area can result in fractures and concussions.
After 3 or 4 teleports, you could end up with such a cluster-bump that people would be unable to move away and were actually suffocating due to the press of bodies.
I would excel at this, even without counting the Sacred Crown. I could load a group into the Sapphire World and then load another group into the Ruby World while they were clearing off the runway in the Sapphire World.
Only, I had other things that I had to do.
Miguel Ángel and Eiji were setting the charges that would—hopefully, blow this world apart. However, as they went their separate ways, if they found any sizable groups awaiting evacuation and they could quickly load them without compromising their mission, they did so.
I mean, a city might have 350 000-people. Miguel Ángel goes flying by in his plane. There are 35 000 people assembled in the staging area.
Miguel Ángel could load those 35 000 on the fly, without even landing. He couldn’t afford to wait 45-minutes to an hour to wait for volley II though.
At least 35 000 would be saved and if another rescuer arrived, he would have one less load to deal with.
************ ************** ***********************
On day 21, the energy body in Grandpa Liu’s likeness started to flicker and fade.
Of course, we had no idea precisely when Grandpa Liu would start to fail. It just turned out that he had 21-days worth of lifeforce left.
If you ask me where Grandpa Liu’s original body was during this time, I cannot tell you. I do know that even the atoms of Grandpa Liu’s body were consumed to give a few more moments, leaving nothing behind.
Some people will tell you that techniques like that also consume the soul.
That is patent nonsense. The Bible says:
“It is appointed unto all, once to die, but then cometh the judgement.”
If the possibility to destroy the soul existed, then it would have to say:
“It is appointed unto all once to die, but then cometh the judgement—unless you mishandled your soul somehow—then you won’t be at Judgement Day…"
Neon started powering up to step into the breach and take over for Grandpa Liu. She started glowing all over like a psychedelic rainbow…
Just then, Marshal doused Neon with something that shut her down for the nonce.
Marshal was weird. He had existed at the level of a Night Ranger’s 1st kiss for over 2-centuries. He’d consumed a number of power-boosters along the way. Then we had supplied him with enough Night Ranger bodily fluids to make it through phase II…
Only, those bodily fluids weren’t from his Night Ranger.
Then he’d spent the last couple of decades hanging around with Neon.
It wasn’t a shock when he powered up and disappeared. I was surprised, but not bumfuzzled. I hadn’t known that he could do that.
Grandpa Liu had said everything that he felt that he needed to say, before he left, so I hadn’t realized that one could speak in that state.
I don’t think that Marshal meant for his last words to be broadcast to everyone, but it was quite a feat to be able to send them at all—much less to beam them to selected recipients.
“I am sorry Neon, but I have never loved you like I loved Travail. I cannot let you sacrifice your life. I can do this much for you. In lieu of loving you with all of my heart and soul, I will give my life for you,” Marshal said.
“I hope that when I get to the other side, that Travail is waiting for me,” he added.
Benson and Melancholy were in the situation room. I was trying to get as many slip-sliders and Night Rangers as possible, to come and see the foe we would be facing in the foreseeable future.
It was not necessary for them to stay any great length of time. It was mere happenstance that Benson was in the room to witness his father’s martyrdom…
Or not…Perhaps that was his geas, to see his father’s demise.
Benson was almost the definition of mediocre. Even with a full course of Advance, his IQ was only 149. That wasn’t at all high in Outsider circles.
He had taken Analog to greatly strengthen his spatial thinking ability—but what Ice or gem world mathematician, physicist or which slip-slider hadn’t increased his mental powers with Analog?
He had to eat untold Yōkai eyes and frost giant’s nuts to survive Melancholy’s kiss—and then he had just barely survived.
It took him an extra-long time to work his way through the transformation process.
Melancholy was a tier 4 Night Ranger like Despair, but even so, Benson’s ability as a Night Warden and a slip-slider were acceptable—but just a slightly behind the average.
Actually, I admired the boy. He had done so much with the limited talents that he’d started with.
Sure, sure, everyone isn’t fortunate enough to have a fully equipped gym and a Night Ranger as a personal trainer. Not everyone has large quantities of mystic eyes and balls fall in their lap. Not everyone has a father rich enough to keep them well-supplied with Advance until their IQ maxes out.
However, Night Rangers are scary and most young otaku in Benson’s position would throw up their hands, forfeit and resume their hikikomori lifestyle.
Benson wanted Melancholy—for whatever twisted reason—as much as he wanted that next breath. He was willing to do whatever it took to win her.
“Benson, be strong. Treasure Melancholy. I’m leaving all of my interdimensional holdings to you. Never be an altruist, but always be honest and generous. When we meet on the other side, I want to be proud of you,” Marshal said.
Unless he spoke to God in the privacy of his own heart, those were Marshal’s last words.
“You have slightly less than 5-days before Marshal ceases to exist,” Neon said in a monotone.
“We’ll be ready to blow this place in 60-hours,” I said.
I steered toward the town of Sloth. There were a great many of the giant sloth or chalicotherium in the area around the city.
Sloth is noted for their great wildlife preserves and their domesticated chalicotherium. They keep the great omnivores as pets, guard dogs and even mounts. The domesticated chalicotherium can even speak and use simple sentences.
Yeah, no one from Sloth was going to evacuate anywhere without their 3000-pound life-companions.
That’s okay. Now that I was conceding that the battle was lost, I could afford to spare some attention from the tactical screens and evacuate some folks.
The 60-hour time limit that I’d set myself, should be more than enough time to do a thorough job of evacuating the 160 000 people and perhaps 200 000 beasts from Sloth.
“Benson, can I trust you not to go ape-shit? Listen to me. In a little over 60-hours, this planet is going to explode. Fighting with the reptilian overlords to avenge your father is without meaning. They will all be dead in a matter of hours anyway,” I said.
“My father always stressed being analytical and ruthlessly logical—until the end, when he gave in to emotion. If I’m going to grow stronger and use my father’s empire to fight the good fight, I will have to learn to be more like him,” Benson mused.
Look out reptilian overlords! I think that a monster was just born. He may only be a hatchling at the moment, but wait until he grows…
“I have one gem world left. I was hanging on to it, notwithstanding the gravity of our situation, because I was waiting to give it to someone very special,” I said.
“I cannot wait any longer. Take the ring. You and Melancholy fly the route that I will give you and rescue as many refugees as you can. One million saved is par. 1.5-million is good, 2-million would be phantastic, but I don’t think that your route has the population density to wield 2-million,” I said.
“You and Melancholy teleport out of here at hour 58. I don’t care how many you have to leave—don’t shillyshally, leave! If the shockwave catches you, everyone in your gem world will either be destroyed or captured by the reptilian overlords. Trust me, it is better to die than to fall into their hands,” I told him.
“Understood,” Benson said.
He refined the gem world and then he and Melancholy unfurled their wings and flew along the route that I had given him.
It was time for Despair and I to rescue the charming little zoo-town.
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Post by texican on Jan 26, 2021 20:29:05 GMT -6
rvm,
It seems like your chapters are becoming longer and longer, which is good. Just more to absorb.
Why can't anti-matter bombs be sent back to the snake universes?
Or millions if not billions of suped up mongooses?
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 26, 2021 23:06:29 GMT -6
rvm,
It seems like your chapters are becoming longer and longer, which is good. Just more to absorb.
Why can't anti-matter bombs be sent back to the snake universes?
Or millions if not billions of suped up mongooses?
Texican.... Friend,Believe it or not, while the word-count is about the same, this Ch 39 only covers about one-third the ground that the original Ch 39 tried to cover. No wonder the original Ch 39 was a jumbled train-wreck.
Can't drop bombs inside the reptile's force field. The neutron bombs broke the barrier, but having done so, they expended all of their force outside the portal and the portal was put out of commission for a few hours as a result.
Also. I picture a portal as being very long, despite the fact that it is traversed instantly.
IF you sense incoming, then there is ample opportunity to either collapse the portal or route the arrival somewhere safe.
What you need to do, is get the coordinates and open your own portal to the general area…
…..RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 28, 2021 13:25:27 GMT -6
Chapter Forty 97 151
Earth is about 8000-miles in diameter. Someone probably surveyed Forest’s diameter, but I can’t tell you the exact number. The gravity on Forest was 87% of Earth’s, so we might hypothesize that it as a bit smaller, but the density can also vary, so that isn’t certain.
Let’s take 8000-miles as a good approximation. That means that it would be about 4000-miles from the surface to the center of the planet’s metal core.
Unfortunately, we lacked the wherewithal to teleport a cylinder of material from the crust all the way to the metal core.
However, as I said, there is nowhere on Earth that one can cause a 10-mile sphere of rock to simply vanish without dire consequences.
I also said that since rock isn’t pure silicone, that the sun dog blank has to start noticeably larger than 10-miles in order to have the necessary material after purification.
16-miles in diameter is about the limit of our ability, but that is unnecessarily large and it results in wasted material—unless your purpose is to cause as much destruction as possible.
Miguel Ángel started at the thinnest section of Forest’s crust and he placed a string of 44, 16-mile spheres starting at the surface and reaching all the way to Forest’s metal core.
That meant that the center of each 16-mile sphere was a bit over 80-miles apart.
Meanwhile, Eiji laid two-dozen 16-mile spheres around the equator of Forest just to soften it up. He added a sphere at each pole as well, though we weren’t sure how much that helped our cause.
Eiji also had to prepare a couple of other destructive devices as well. He finished his tasks a bit early, so he laid in 6 surface spheres in a line, almost touching one another.
There are voids, faults and weak spots where magma can make its way to the surface.
The thing is, when a huge sphere of rock simply vanishes leaving behind only vacuum, the extraordinarily high-pressure magma, mantle and metal core as the case may be, should rush into the void very explosively.
Close to the surface, you should get a huge caldera style eruption from a single vanished sphere—probably larger than any natural eruption in the planet’s history.
Deeper vanished spheres probably wouldn’t cause eruptions. The force might even be absorbed before it got to the surface. It should cause large earthquakes though.
It is even possible that the energy of a very deep vanished sphere would be completely dispersed before making its way to the surface…
However, when you have 44 of the vanished spheres stacked one atop another…
I remember the introduction to the “Superman” cartoon that I used to watch as a boy. The narrator intones:
“…Rocketed to Earth before the distant planet Krypton exploded…”
While the video portion shows a planet breaking into a number of smaller pieces and flying in all directions.
Sorry dudes, no explosion that I’m aware of will lift more than an insignificant amount of the planet’s mass to escape velocity.
We had hopes of totally destroying Forest’s biosphere and turning the whole surface to molten rock. Blow it up like throwing a hand grenade into a Jack O’ Lantern? I’m afraid not.
Still, we were destructive enough.
It was time to pull the pin or light the fuse—as the case may be.
Some of the 9-foot reptiles had been captured. They were stupid, as a result of being remote controlled, but they weren’t oblivious to the situation around them.
My people mind-scoured the reptile’s brains for information.
The humans that they captured alive were made into eunuchs and kept as exotic pets or confined to pens and raised as livestock for luxury rations for the highest-ranking reptilian overlords.
Then some were tortured to death in any one of a number of drawn-out ways, for the reptilian overlord’s entertainment at their fiendish bacchanals.
Pulling the plug meant killing millions, but it was a kindness—never mind the idea of helping save those who were with us and who still had hope.
Still, the immensity of what I was about to do caused me to pause momentarily.
I remembered my firm belief that there are no innocent bystanders and that I am perfectly justified in valuing the welfare of me and mine over avoiding collateral damage to strangers.
I recited part of the poem “Brahma” by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“If the red slayer think he slays, “Or if the slain think he is slain, “They know not well the subtle ways “I keep, and pass, and turn again. “Far or forgot to me is near; “Shadow and sunlight are the same; “The vanished gods to me appear; “And one to me are shame and fame…”
I pushed the button that caused the process to be set in motion.
The first prong of the attack was an overheated sun dog shoved down the throat of the reptiles' over-sized portal.
Sun dogs were remarkably sedate and safe, but Eiji had perfected a means to get them to overheat—just slightly, for a few years—after which they calmed down.
The sun dog wasn’t going to explode like a bomb. As a weaponization, it was rather unimpressive…
Except that an ordinary sun-dog is as hot as our sun. Increasing that 50% makes it very hot indeed.
The sun dog destroyed the forcefield and entered the portal’s mouth. It had zero chance of getting to the world on the other side. There were fail safes to shunt such things away from the original base.
At least, I would have such fail safes. If the reptilian overlords didn’t guard their base, then protein for the home team.
My portals were very much point-to-point. It was apparent that the reptiles used some sort of system that tied their interdimensional portals into a net. The sun dog entering their portal should be overloading interdimensional portals all over creation.
It should take the reptiles many months to get all the “circuit-breakers” reset—I hoped.
The second phase of the attack was several sun dogs materializing millions of miles from Forest.
A 10-mile diameter asteroid hitting Earth—or any planet—is an extinction-level event. However, much of an asteroid’s power comes from its high velocity.
Simply laying a 10-mile rock on a planet, while it wouldn’t do the planet any good, might not be anywhere near as destructive.
If the soft-tossed stone was an over-heated sun dog? Your guess is as good as mine. There was too much at stake to risk doing things that we weren’t 100% sure about.
If we started the sun dog a long way away from Forest, in order for it to gain velocity as it fell sunward, it would take a few years to arrive. That’s plenty of time for the reptiles to take counter measures.
The line-up of sun dogs prepared to smash into Forest over the next few decades was a fail safe as well as an experiment, since it was possible to maintain observation drones in Forest’s solar system.
Almost 100 16-mile diameter spheres vanished in an instant. Things on that scale take a little while to manifest. I had many sets of eyes still in the system, although all of my people had long since teleported back.
I watched mammoths scream in agony. I say cities crumble and I saw people futilely fleeing around trying run from destruction. It must have been like that in Pompei.
I did this.
What, what is this!?!
The reptiles had contrived to trap Miguel Ángel in some sort of portal-dampening forcefield.
Damned nation! I couldn’t afford to lose Miguel Ángel and long before I could arrive, these shaman reptiles would have settled him.
Miguel Ángel and the shamans both floated 10-miles above the surface of the planet—using levitation and air trapping forcefields.
Of course, there is no air in space. That matters little to Outsiders when it comes to projecting their voice.
“You will die, human shaman!” one reptile shaman screamed.
“My name is Miguel Ángel Mejia. I was born on All Saints Day. I have 7-wives and each of my wives is a Lamia. I am also a slip-slider and a sage,” Miguel Ángel said.
“That lets me perform a very rare magic,” He added with a sinister smile.
7 Lamia materialized around Miguel Ángel in a vertical circle, like an oval picture frame.
Then 6 of the Lamia moved to the vertices of an octahedron while the huge Balondemu took up the center spot.
A golden tentacle of light came from one of the vertices of the octahedron. It grabbed Miguel Ángel and pulled him inside the protection of the formation.
Then 6-tentacles of golden light ripped the reptile shamans apart. Then the golden arms seized the fabric of time and space and ripped it apart, creating a rent for Miguel Ángel and his wives to teleport home.
“That is something that you don’t see every day,” I observed.
“That’s my father,” Mateo said in explanation.
“He’s up to 7 wives!?!” I asked in amazement.
“He says that now he has one for every day of the week,” Mateo shrugged.
************** **************** ***********************
The planet Forest suffered at least 50 of the largest caldera eruptions that you’d ever expect to see, simultaneously. Huge earthquakes shook and broke everything that could be broken. Giant tidal waves reached 400 to 500-miles inland, scouring everything before them.
Due to the spheres of material removed from the metallic core, the planet’s magnetic field was drastically affected. The North and South Magnetic Poles swapped back and forth over 50-times in the span of an hour.
The magnetic fields were down for days at a time. The aurora due to the solar wind hitting Forest’s atmosphere would have been awesome, if there was anyone left alive to witness it.
Then, just in case there were any pockets of reptiles left alive on Forest, the planet was due to be showered with a steady procession of 10-mile sun dogs over the next few decades.
************** ************** **********************
My first order of business, was to console Casúr.
“Casúr, I am extraordinarily sorry about what happened to Forest. No, to be more forthcoming, I’m very sorry for what I did to Forest,” I said.
I impatiently waved Casúr to silence as he prepared to mouth a bunch of platitudes about how it was something that couldn’t be helped...yada, yada...
“I have a rather large world that I’ve dubbed “Tundra.” It is noticeably larger than Forest. Anyway, much of the planet is a fair approximation of the Ice Age tundra during Earth’s last Ice Age,” I said.
“I have been terra forming the place at a turtle’s pace with some of the mega fauna that I bought from you and a few plants and creatures from other worlds,” I said.
“Now I have more than 50-million of your people cluttering my perfectly good tunnels and my gem worlds. I also have hundreds of thousands of your large messy animals transported by one means or another,” I said.
“I mean, nice is nice; but there is such a thing as imposing on your host. I want your people to get this planet in shape for them to live on and to vacate my digs as soon as practical,” I told Casúr with mock sterness.
“Seriously, the gravity is 111% Earth’s and your people and your animals are accustomed to Forest’s 87% gravity. It is definitely colder on Tundra,” I continued more seriously.
“There are some forests around the equator, but they are comparatively small. The vast forests of Forest will be a happy memory. I do think the small forests can be carefully managed to give your people all the lumber they need—if they use lumber more sparingly,” I said.
“There is brick, concrete, ceramic, steel and aluminum. Don’t forget plastic. I don’t know what the deal is on Tundra, but they seem to have at least 25-times the petroleum reserves of Earth—maybe the higher gravity squished the petroleum precursors more effectively,” I said.
“I wouldn’t recommend that your people walk too far down the petroleum-fueled internal-engine path. It is hard to stop once you’re too far down that road and it is wasteful to burn hydrocarbons,” I said.
“Still with only 50-million people or so, you can jump-start your technology with petroleum fuel. I will supply your people with the technology to use thorium reactors and hydrogen fusion reactors to power your cities,” I said.
“You may want to go with underground, climate-controlled cities with large underground gardens and keep much of the surface pristine,” I said.
“Now dude, I ain’t giving all this to you and your people for free. Once you get settled in and get your oilfields going full-blast, I expect 75 000-tons of crude oil per year, for the next 75-years,” I said.
“That’s about the yearly production of Alaska. With your vast oil reserves, you can afford it. The nuclear technology that I’m handing you on a platter, will spare far more oil that that per year, once you have it up and running,” I said.
“Damned nation, Casúr! You’re almost 200-years old. I can’t have you sobbing like a little girl! People will see you!” I said.
EE…There was a time that I thought that 7500-tons of petroleum would jump-start the economy of Tawn like a big shot of Vitamin B-12 mixed with amphetamine.
Now, I was thinking in terms of the whole planet and 75 000-tons per year was none too much.
Of course, the bulk of the first couple of years’ worth would go to improving Tawn; Bottomtown I; Bottomtown II and Bottomtown III.
Each Bottomtown reached a bit closer to the Lamia refuge. Bottomtown III was almost touching the enclave—which meant that it was only about 13-miles from Revna’s Valley…
Well, less. Say about 7-miles. The two enclaves had made an effort to bring their underground portions closer together until I’d gifted each of them an inferior gem world.
That kinda put tunneling on the back-burner.
Now with the influx of new people, I was kinda gonna insist. I really wanted Tawn and the two enclaves to be physically linked.
Of course, all of the people from Forest wouldn’t chose to go to Tundra. Some of them might even—though I shudder to think—prefer the cramped living in the tunnels of Ice, to the frigid frontier of Tundra.
Of course, there were other worlds—myriad gem worlds, Saguaro, O’ Neill, etcetera. Then again, reasonable numbers of Ice natives might apply to emigrate to Tundra.
************* ************* ********************
It was time to go visit Neon in her temple.
Neon was sitting at her table with an assortment of golden slimes before her.
“Marshal sacrificed himself to buy us time. Ice is the next planet on the reptilian overlords hit parade. They could arrive just any time. But that’s okay, go ahead and get high and be plastered out of your mind for awhile. We can get along just fine without you,” I said to Neon.
“Neon, we Night Rangers are creatures of darkness. We bring a dark fate to the men who chose us as mates. We know that deep down inside, though not always consciously,” Despair said.
“We say we love our husbands, but if we truly loved them, would we wish to darken their fate? Nonetheless, our urge to find a mate to drag down is almost a compulsion. It IS a compulsion,” Despair said.
“You, on the other hand, are a creature of light. You should bring hope and promise everywhere you go. True, unfortunate experiences have dimmed your light a bit, but they make the message of hope that you bring far more realistic…” Despair ran down.
“Damned nation! What Despair is trying to say—I never thought that I would ever be in the position of having superior people skills—I have nothing but contempt for people skills…” I said.
“Say what you mean and mean what you say—I always say. Despair and I would like for you to be my second wife,” I said.
“You’re quite an attractive female. There are a mere handful of males who could wed you and survive their wedding night—yeah, a mangled hands’ worth,” I added.
“It seems an important part of your destiny to bear a child. We cannot afford to defy your geas indefinitely. You should lighten up the darkness that Despair brings to my geas—at least, so Despair hypothesizes,” I said.
Damned nation! I never wanted a wife and I ended up with two!
Neon was quite beautiful in an unworldly way—but she did little or nothing to crank my desire.
EE…Polygamy…
The olde tyme Hebrews were polygamous. Somehow in the 400-someodd years between Malachi and Matthew, they had become monogamous.
Still, I can find no canonical injunction against polygamy—maybe in the Talmud or something, I haven’t studied it—but not in the Holy Scriptures.
There is one line in the New Testament that says that Bishop candidates should be “The husbands of one wife.”
Most interpret that to mean that divorcees aren’t eligible to become Bishop. It might also mean, if you want to be nit-picky, that widowers who had remarried cannot be considered for the office of Bishop.
There is a rather fanciful interpretation:
“It is okay if you have more than one wife—but it disqualifies you from being Bishop.”
So, okay, I can’t be a Bishop. Maybe having two wives is a sin, maybe—but we live in a fallen world.
Compare to other greater evils that I have committed and other, greater evils that I have eschewed and even fought against, the possible sin of having two wives weighs very lightly on my conscious.
I just didn’t want to have to deal with the situation!
“These golden slimes are here in my temple for a reason. When I eat one, I am much more strongly linked to the Neon railroad. I need just a tiny boost in chi or vital energy, to link all of the rail-lines together and bring the railroad to completion,” Neon said.
“I wasn’t preparing to get high. Nonetheless, you cannot take back the offer to marry me that was offered to cheer me up from what you thought was an onslaught of crippling depression. That wouldn’t be playing fair,” Neon said in a positive voice.
She handed a plate with a golden slime on it to Despair and to me.
I shrugged and ate the slime. If she was bluffing, it is not like I had never been high before.
Instead of being high, I sensed the magic railroad in hypnagogic detail. A human consciousness cannot control all the senses and all the potentiality inherent in the magic railroad.
I’m not human anymore and while the effects of the golden slime lasted, my powers of comprehension were greatly magnified.
There were scores of places where the railroads were just a few miles from connecting, all over Ice.
The rate of formation speeded up drastically and the railroad completed itself in an instant…
Yeah, well…
I later learned that it took a few weeks—but the railroad was created well ahead of schedule.
Sensing my desires, the railroad even ran spur lines from Tawn to Revna’s Valley; from Tawn to the Lamia Valley, and connecting the Lamia Valley to Revna’s Valley.
In fact, there was a redundant 3 rail-lines connecting Revna’s Valley to the Lamia Valley. Considering the triple-layered rail-ways and their mile-wide system of apartments, this essentially united the underground portion of the 2 Valleys.
“This is fabulous, Neon!”
I saw, just now, where Neon got her name. The whole length of the railways, including the housing, became lavishly decorated with beautiful neon lights. Neon lights also came into being in many places in the dull boring cities, brightening things considerably.
It was like the hallway of a college dorm, decorated for Christmas or like pictures that I’ve seen of Las Vegas—but more tasteful and far less garish than Vegas.
“Alright, if Neon is to be my wife, it is time to consummate my marriage. I am not Miguel Ángel,” I said.
“2 is my absolute limit, even if the heavens fall. Also, I can’t see having my wives on alternate nights like Miguel Ángel does or those cracked-brain polygamists in Utah and the South West apparently do,” I said.
“I want both of you at once—and I hope that I survive the experience,” I told them.
Plums deify!
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Post by texican on Jan 28, 2021 22:24:06 GMT -6
“I want both of you at once—and I hope that I survive the experience,” I told them.rvm, Even you will be challenged to put this threeway into words and not be ban. Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 29, 2021 3:48:15 GMT -6
“I want both of you at once—and I hope that I survive the experience,” I told them.rvm, Even you will be challenged to put this threeway into words and not be ban. Texican.... Friend,
I didn't intend to give a blow-by-blow description.
Despair is like a Klingon. She goes about it like someone trying to drive a tent-stake into the frozen ground.
Neon is a hippy tripper who has spent the last 7000-years eating psychedelics.
By the way, here is my inspiration for Neon:
youtu.be/TaYSf7D8EuA
I finally got my tooth pulled today.
Did I tell you, he was the 1st molar, lower left? He was cracked and that let infection in. I had to take penicillin and wait for the swelling to go down and then have him pulled.
The asshole Dentist that I had last time, told me to take a witch's brew of Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen for pain.
Shit! I used about 8 of the Oxycodone that I had left from having my kidney removed and I really wanted to lay a few in for future emergencies.
I wouldn't hang on to 10 Oxycodone and 4 Lortabs for several years if I was a damned addict! What if I was a damned addict!?! That would be between me and God.
Some Fascist shithead in Washington asks the Doctors to minimize pain-killer prescriptions and they all line up like good little NAZIs.
If I wasn't broke and without wheels, I would go score a hundred Lortabs to squirrel away, just to defy big gubmint.
The "War on Drugs" is just a pretext to curtail people's civil liberties.
Read "Steal This Urine Test" by Abbie Hoffman.
Anyway, notwithstanding that this knob-gobbler was about to pull my tooth, I had a rant all prepared.
"There WILL be a Judgement Day. You WILL be called to account for telling big lies with a straight face, such as:
"'Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen can answer the purpose of Darvon or Lortabs.'"
And IF I KNEW that he'd make my extraction more painful in retaliation, I'd still have said it.
Only, I got a different Doctor today.
Man, I should be at the age where I fear nothing—but I was scared shitless—probably because I had weeks to anticipate.
Wasn't too bad—except the tech who gave me the numbing shot was apparently a Graduate of the Doctor Mengele school of injection methods.
Then the Dentist acted like I had some sort of weird fetish when I told him that I wanted my tooth.
What the Hell, HE'S MINE if I want to make a watch fob of him!
Well yeah, a couple of my characters wore necklaces of human finger bones…
Speaking of being Ban-Hammered…
Did I manage keep the love scene between Lox and Sergio in good taste in "Lox Aiden the Sage"?
O well, O Hell!
…..RVM45 Big PS: Thanx for the comments. It means a lot that people care enough to comment.
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Post by NCWEBNUT on Jan 29, 2021 4:55:00 GMT -6
That video of the hippy tripper was interesting and hard to watch at the same time, and yeah if you could survive it. Man did my mind wander with both of them in it.
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Post by texican on Jan 29, 2021 19:46:18 GMT -6
"'Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen can answer the purpose of Darvon or Lortabs.'"
rvm,
I take it that you did get real pain killers from the new doc/dentist.
Keep writing and we will keep commenting.
Thanks for the story.
Texican....
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 30, 2021 18:57:09 GMT -6
"'Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen can answer the purpose of Darvon or Lortabs.'"rvm, I take it that you did get real pain killers from the new doc/dentist. Keep writing and we will keep commenting. Thanks for the story. Texican.... Nah, once the tooth is pulled, the extreme pain is gone. Can't even fault dentist #2 for not kicking in any pain-killers.
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Post by rvm45 on Jan 30, 2021 18:57:34 GMT -6
Chapter Forty-One 100 580
I woke and walked out of my bedroom, leaving the two goddesses sleeping with their arms around each other.
I was bruised and I had torn muscles all through my body.
Neon wasn’t a vampire. There was nothing remotely vampiric about Neon—except that she had a nice set of fangs. And for some reason, she fixated on biting me and drinking my blood all through the night.
I think that was a flashback to when she was bound and raped all of those millennia ago, and she tried hard to bite her attackers.
My body was no longer human. Neon couldn’t drain enough of my blood to seriously inconvenience me, even if she could drain a whole month’s worth of biting and draining all in one single instant.
If drinking a few gallons of my blood would make her feel better, I left her to it.
That meant that I had fang punctures all over my arms, neck, shoulders and lower legs. I heal unnaturally fast, but the wounds given by a goddess are a bit slower to heal.
And Neon had bloodstains all over her mouth this morning.
Meanwhile, making love to Despair was a high-impact activity that would have left an NFL linemen or a Yokozuna sumo permanently disabled. It was like a close encounter of the 3rd kind, with Truck-Kun…
So, I was limping a bit on my way to my ice box to get a cold Double Cola.
Plums deify!
There was Grandpa Liu standing in my living room.
“You never do anything the easy way, do you? Why did you have to have both of them at once!?!” Grandpa Liu asked.
He sounded aggrieved.
“I love Despair. Now I love Neon as well. I won’t have one of them sleeping alone and lonely, while I make sport with the other. Anyway, the situation has a bit of…well, you cannot say ‘perverted charm,’ since they’re mine to do with as I will…”
“By the way dude, shouldn’t you be on your way to your final judgement—or sleeping while awaiting Judgement Day—or whatever?” I asked.
“I am a conscious AI with many of Grandpa Liu’s memories and personality. I was installed in your brain’s hardware to give you guidance,” Grandpa Liu said.
Well, I mean, he ain’t the real Grandpa Liu, but that is still the best cognomen for him.
“How did you rewire my brain?” I asked,
“There were vicrodes in those Yōkai eyes that I gave you,” Grandpa Liu replied.
A vicrode is something that had been theorized, but never actually produced—even with the best labs of Ice and the frost giantess alchemists working on the project diligently.
Virus + Code = Vircode
Then transpose a couple letters, so it trips off the tongue more freely.
A vicrode invaded the body like a virus. Then it enters the nucleus—or mitochondrial DNA, or whatever—and selectively edits and rewrites it.
Grandpa Liu’s internal sub-program was written into the DNA of my brain.
“Yes, I will be more than happy to share the technology with you. There is so much uncool shit going down, what is a small temporal paradox here and there?” he said.
Seeing my puzzled look, Grandpa Liu explained.
“The slip-sliders have a rather narrow field of specialization. They travel between parallel worlds that are very much alike, purely through happenstance—or perhaps due to the will of Almighty God or perhaps other lessor agencies,” he said.
“There are other worlds formed when there is a choice—a fork in the road, so to speak—and the world-line branches. It is much like ‘The many-worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics. Only, in the many-worlds interpretation, the world tree splits at every conceivable fork in the road, however tiny,” Grandpa Liu said.
“In reality, the world tree isn’t that persnickety about dividing. One thing that does cause big branches in probability, is paradoxes formed by time-travelers,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Vicrodes weren’t supposed to be perfected until the mid-23rd century in this timeline.”
“Stillwater! Are you listening to me!?!” Grandpa Li demanded angrily.
“Dude, it is like: keep talking. I just want to get a Double Cola and take a couple of Vicodin and maybe eat one of Neon’s golden slimes. I feel like I have a hangover,” I said as I walked past Grandpa Liu’s avatar.
“Still, although there are myriad branches, there is a major difference between mainlines and sidelines,” he said.
“EE…!?!” I said.
“Mainlines are somehow ‘more real,’ Mainlines extend their influence much farther into the multiverse and people born in mainlines tend to have more personal power…”
“Of course, travelling in time, generally causes one to be cast out of the mainlines—but one stays a mainliner notwithstanding. Like the proverbial man with a runny nose, in the Kingdom of the Deaf,” Grandpa Liu said.
You know the olde tyme proverb:
“In the Kingdom of the Deaf, a man with a runny nose will ride a bicycle.”
“Usually, when a time line starts to experience Outsiders, it gets kicked unceremoniously out of the mainline—but this universe is different—it stays mainline all of the way,” Grandpa Liu said.
“It is awfully early in the morning to be discussing metaphysics. I haven’t even had breakfast yet,” I said.
“So…what? Only I can see you?” I asked.
“Despair and Neon will be able to see me as well as a few of your other friends. Most folks won’t be able to perceive me. You might want to speak to me silently, in your head, if you don’t want to get the reputation of being a mental case,” Grandpa Liu said.
“Ha! And Ha!!!! Like I care what other people think!” I said.
“By the way, your activities last night have raised you to being a 7th tier deity. Both of your wives are now 6th tier,” he said.
“That is some heavy-duty shit!” I said.
“No, that was some heavy-duty groping and grappling! I need to tell you something, Stillwater,” he said in a serious tone.
“Okay…” I said dubiously.
“How many tiers of deities do you think exists between mankind and God Almighty—who would be at the infinite level of power and authority?” Grandpa Liu asked.
“I haven’t a clue…24? 100? 144?” I hazarded a guess.
“There are infinitely many tiers, so don’t be cocky because you’re a mere tier 7. Imagine two men standing on the ground and God being several miles high in the sky,” Grandpa Liu said.
“It is just an analogy,” he added.
“Anyway, one of these men is tier 1 and the other is tier 500-billion. Which man is closer to God? Well, the dude that is at 500-billlonth tier is maybe the height of the thickness of one very thin piece of tracing paper closer to God than the tier 1 fellow—not even that, really,” he said.
Just then, I heard something that sounded like someone vivisecting a cat coming from my bedroom.
“We’ll talk more later,” Grandpa Liu said as I ran toward my bedroom to see what was going down.
Despair had two deep punctures on her forearm. Neon had fresh blood around her mouth and she had a big black eye.
“Stillwater may let you drink his blood, but I’m not Stillwater. I haven’t his patience! Don’t try to drink my blood!” Despair snapped.
Neon looked both very embarrassed and miserable.
“I’m sorry. I was still half asleep. I thought you were Stillwater,” Neon sobbed.
“Don’t cry, in retrospect, it isn’t that big a deal. Here…” Despair consoled the sobbing Neon.
Despair offered Neon her unwounded forearm.
“If drinking blood makes you feel better, go ahead. It isn’t as if it will do me any substantive damage,” Despair added.
At first, Neon tried to politely decline. Then her face turned dark and she sank her fangs into Despair’s arm like a Rat Terrier attacking a Polish sausage.
Thankfully, I had already taken my Vicodin and taken a few good long pulls on the 2-liter Double Cola—God, how I hate the Metric System! —And I had emptied my bladder…
And most folks seeing one of his wives drinking blood straight out of the brachial artery of his other wife would get scared or at least be turned off.
I rounded the corner on being normal and well-adjusted decades ago. The last night had moved me much further away from normal.
Somehow, for reasons that I can’t even clearly articulate, the sight stimulated me. I rushed into the room and dragged both of the goddesses back into the bed…
************* *************** ***********************
It was time to meet with Peter Johannessen and Benson.
Peter and Benson had become friends when Peter and Rúna stood up to take his part against the tsundere Melancholy.
Benson had given Peter a slip-slider’s manual when it was time for him to distribute his appointed copies.
Peter was from the farmland of Western Kaintuck and his heritage was Scandinavian—with a small bit of frost giant in his family tree. His slip-slider world was nothing like where he came from.
Archipelago was mostly water. There was only perhaps 7-million square-miles worth of land in total.
The land was divided into islands—most about the size of the island of Hawaii. None of them were any bigger than Ireland. The many islands were scattered randomly across the vast oceans. Most of the islands lay in the planet’s tropical zone.
Archipelago might have been considered a paradise world—except the gravity was 132% of Earths and daytime temperatures from 105 to 115-degrees were common during the days.
The air there was exceptionally thick.
Be all that as it lay. These folks were poor in metals and they had no plastics to speak of.
They did have a seemingly endless supply of psychoactive drugs and exotic antibiotics and healing agents that they extracted from a variety of marine creatures and island herbs.
I had several thousand people making sure that none of the chemicals were derived from any sort of mollusk. Once the chemicals had a clean bill of health, we would buy them in quantity, to be studied by the scientists of Ice, Revna’s Valley and even some of the chemists of O’Neill. I even sent some to some friendly alchemists on Earth.
“We have been seeking for a new IQ enhancer for a long time. Behold the drug “Rise.” Rise will increase your IQ by about 21% and it will stack with Advance,” I said.
“You know that Earth’s IQ measurements are a rather imperfect means of measuring mind-power. We have better means to test mental power here on Ice—but in most cases the numbers will be similar,” I said.
“The thing is, while Rise will definitely make you about 21% more intelligent, the increase isn’t quite as flashy or noticeable as the change with Advance—nor is there any particular increase in cognitive ability while taking the drug,” I said.
“At any rate, the drug is the result of one of the chemicals from Archipelago, so it is only fair that you get to try one of the first batches,” I told Peter,
“Advance doesn’t work with frost giantesses, though it does work with Oni and Lamia,” I said.
“The average frost giantess has an IQ about 63-points higher than the average human, so... This drug will work for the frost giantesses though. There is a dose there for Rúna as well,” I said.
“Benson. You need extra mind power. Not only because you’re at the shallow end of the Outsider IQ pool, but also because you need all the mind-power that you can get to run your father’s business well There is a dose there for you,” I said.
“Technology doesn’t seem to work very well against the reptilian overlords. I’m putting most of my hopes on magic and super-technology. I don’t think that boosting the IQs of our scientists and engineers will help our cause much—but hope springs eternal,” I said.
“Benson, I’m giving you manufacturing and distribution rights for Rise in your territories. Bargaining is tedious. You have my wish list. Transfer what you think is an appropriate compensation. Remember “tit-for-tat.” If you get greedy or stingy, our future business will be much less pleasant,” I reminded Benson.
I held up a vial with about 4-ounces of a viscous gold liquid.
“This drug is called ‘Eureka.’ It comes from Neon’s golden slimes. It is a strong psychedelic…” I started.
“A man can have a number of dots lying in his mind for years, decades even. Then one day he has a sort of epiphany and connects a bunch of dots that he had never before thought of as being connected,” I said.
“Then you come up with Newton’s Laws of Gravitation, Calculus or maybe someone will solve Riemann’s Conjecture. Epiphanies seem to work on their own schedule, but Eureka really tends to bring them about with startling regularity,” I said.
“Eureka is very good, but it is not the answer to all things. An empty head, a head that isn’t cram-jammed to the brim with ‘Dots’ won’t wield many satisfying connections. Also, since it will get you high, it can turn into a distraction or a detriment,” I said.
“I’m giving both of you several vials. Benson, I’d advise you to take the 3-week course of pills of Rise and then wait a week or two before you drink any Eureka,” I said.
“I know that you’ve sworn vengeance for your father, against the reptilian overlords and you are wracking your brain. I’m not disparaging you, when I say that there are far smarter and more powerful men than you, participating in the race to destroy the reptiles,” I said.
“However, remember what Ecclesiastes says:
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
“You may end up being the man who sticks the sword in all the way in to the hilt in the reptilian overlords and then twists it. Everyone needs a dream. However…” I cautioned.
“Look at Miguel Ángel. He swore vengeance on the ones that destroyed Tibetan Lamia society and caused his first wife to die prematurely. You have heard the story,” I said.
“He seeks revenge via perfecting weapons of mass destruction. I’d say that he has struck a huge blow already. IF all you ever manage to do, is use your father’s corporation to fight the good fight, I don’t want you to despair. Be like Miguel Ángel,” I said.
“Does that mean that I have to collect a harem of Lamia or marry a goddess?” Benson joked.
“Benson, you pervert! If you ever get to where you can last more than 40-minutes in the bedroom, I’ll consider letting you take a second wife,” Melancholy said.
“I have sisters. I never heard of a man marrying two Night Rangers. You wouldn’t even have to go through the transformation. Would you like to be in bed with two Night Rangers at one time?” Melancholy purred.
Benson blanched. It wasn’t that he thought there was a realistic possibility that he’d end up with a second Night Ranger wife. It was just that even imagining it was upsetting him.
“Melancholy, you’re wrong. You shouldn’t advertise Benson’s shortcomings in public,” I chided gently.
“When did I do that?” Melancholy said.
“You said that he couldn’t last for a full 40-minutes. I don’t need to know that about Benson,” I said.
“I wasn’t disparaging him. What would you say was normal?” Melancholy asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t researched the subject. I would imagine…all night long…” I said vaguely.
“All night and half the next day,” Despair added dryly.
“Well, I think that being with both of us at one time diminishes his stamina. With just one partner…” Neon started to say.
“Please!!! Let’s not get into personalities!” I pleaded.
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Post by texican on Jan 30, 2021 21:58:23 GMT -6
Me thinks rvm may be stretching the literary truth of how long a bit. Texican....
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