As for it making sense?
We'll see.
Maybe?
===
Royal, who in vain had tried to make sense of their transition, Janelle now peacefully sleeping of his administrations, from that strange inner space into this, cavern? Had finally decided to threw all his inbuilt restrictions overboard. If now the known Science couldn't help him, he found no choice but to create his own hypothesises, after all, he was a Royal. He had started with the most obvious, that they somehow had triggered a portal. There was the problem with them never noticing it though? A cloaked Portal? Well, that one was possible, possibly? Then there was another, that they had meet a science unlike their own. Every bubble had their own definitions of constants and 'laws'.
Mostly they were expected to be steered by the same laws as their own universe though? After all, if they were too different there should be no possibility of existing at all, at least not for humans. And what would the use be of such a place? Still, there was portals where the constants were subtly different, places where no human, or sentient robot, could feel fully at ease. Maybe this was a place like that? As he immersed himself in his databases he had failed to notice how his contact with Suit and Jeff seemed to subtly change, fading to then come back, but each time weaker, inexorable receding further away.
=
For the first time in aeons Planet found himself in doubt. It had watched its new acquisitions rebel, with some amusement at first, well knowing that there was no way of contradicting its wishes. But as it found them passing through the shell the amusement quickly had disappeared, confusion taking its place. Planet knew that it should have been impervious to any attack.
It was not even a shell in the usual meaning. It was more of clouds, resting at different layers. Each one a superposition, its ‘electron’ being everywhere in that layer, also becoming a repulsing ‘force’ to anything trying to infiltrate. Long ago, before Planets memory, it had been manipulated into such a state by its creators. To pass it was possible, although ‘not by mere humans’ as Planet thought. And there was one more thing disturbing it, more than it wanted to admit to itself. Planet was now closed of from Janelle, their mindmeld gone, and somehow, that disturbed it?
He missed her. .
=
“Man child, welcome to my realm. Will you freely submit?”
Jeff couldn’t really make out what he saw? It was like looking at someone through a mirror, or into a pond? His eyes just couldn't make any sense of it. The ripples coming and going around the creature made him nauseous, he constantly had to fight of a feeling of vertigo trying to overtake him. It was like staring down in a abyss, but straight ahead, finding your last foothold slip away, as the plain dissolved, just to came back again, his sense of reality becoming a turmoil.
“Is there a choice?”
“Choice?”
What followed was no communication, and no surrender. It was a sheer invasion of his mind, his mental defences swept away like they never had been there in the first place. He felt himself crack under the mental onslaught, his innermost hopes and thoughts laid bare for the intruder, his mind decomposing into simple stimuli, threatening to leave him like a automaton for his captors delight.
“This will not do.”
Suddenly wrapped in a sphere of privacy, he slowly came back to normal thought.
“Who are you?” He didn’t know whom he questioned this time, maybe both? Because, surely there was a struggle going on. Making him wonder if it being about the possession of his soul, if he now had one? Although his remembrances giving him no reason to trust to any sort of divinity, if one existed it hadn't made its presence known to him, or his mother.
What he got back was a, amused, feeling. As if someone found him making a joke at his own expense. And with it a assurance that no one would be allowed to strip his mind bare.
“Man child?”
The intruder momentarily taken back by the vehemence with which Jeff succeeded to fight back was taken by surprise and Jeff felt it draw back slightly.
“ Does this mean we can’t play?” he heard a plaintive call?
“Do you refuse?” it asked him. “You will let me in, or..”
As it studied him he felt himself ever so slow and painfully breaking lose, his vision subtly shifting once again. It was as if it went out of phase, the red plain coming into focus with the creature fading. The effect being one of a overlaid image of both places. He felt the creature fighting him, hold him back with every breath he took. Somehow his will to escape prevailed through the fight, and finally he found himself back on the plain, Suit hovering by him.
“Jeff!” He noticed its surprise. So it hadn’t been his imagination then.
Jeff smiled, his body shaking from his exhaustion.
“Hi Suit. Let me in, please.”
=
Planet decided to take action. There was a way to every problem, even those unprecedented. He had searched his database and in his oldest parts found what he thought to be an appropriate solution. He knew that the risk of failure was great. It could well mean the end of him as a planetary consciousness, but it was also the one that promised him something new. And maybe that was it, all said and done he felt old, too old and jaded for his own good. And in Janelle he had found dreams and hope, untainted by life and experience. Maybe it was the ultimate folly he thought, to allow himself this. But there was no refusal for his need.
He would become an avatar.
=
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Comments
Making Sense?
Not yet, I'm afraid.
We now have Jeff and company involved with what seem like four different individuals or groups, though one or more of them may be unreal or the same.
There's the Planet, which seems to have lost them but plans to get back into the mix by taking a (more or less) physical avatar form, presumably so it can follow wherever they've gone. (Recognizing that "wherever" may be an inadequate description.)
There's Slade's forces and their enemy, who still seem as unrelated to the story as they did back in #16. (Or do they have something to do with the "red plain" environment?)
And finally there's the mental invader who calls Jeff "man child", and its opponent, who helps Jeff resist and return to the plain. (Or is that the Ringlet helping Jeff here?)
Can't really say any more than that. (And even then I feel as though I'm simplifying the situation nearly beyond any usefulness.)
Eric
Yep
You're right Eric. There's a lot of threads hanging there. When it come to Slade's enemies though, that's another 'bubble' so to speak. We shouldn't have to worry about them for now, although as you say, there might be a connection. But if that connection was made before what's happening now, or would come to be later?
One interesting thing about writing a story, as compared to 'real life', is that in the story we want all threads taken care of. 'Real life' seems more of a situation in where you wander from open threads to threads, all of them strands in a 'weave', as we assume. A lot of them we are forced to leave open, maybe most, as time moves us on.
It's like a garden. A construction that gives us peace of mind in its (human made) artificial order, and a promise of a 'plan'.
Nature of the beast
> One interesting thing about writing a story, as compared to 'real life', is that in the story we want all threads taken care of. 'Real life' seems more of a situation in where you wander from open threads to threads, all of them strands in a 'weave', as we assume. A lot of them we are forced to leave open, maybe most, as time moves us on.
Not necessarily "all threads", but the central narrative. The definition of a story requires a beginning, middle, and end, and and a progression from each to the next. IOW, a plot. A stream of consciousness narrative with separate, apparently unrelated threads and no resolution can be many things, but it is not a story. Those myriad threads don't need to be fully "taken care of" but they do need to be tied more or less clearly to the plot. If you throw in something like "On a Manhattan street corner, John Smith ate a hot dog," without any apparent connection to the plot, that is not really a part of the story. If you do such things repeatedly, you risk destroying the integrety of the story entirely. We don't need to know why he ate the hot dog, or what became of him later, or even if he liked the hot dog, but we do need to know what it had to do with the story.
You have the beginnings of a story. You also have a number of threads that are not even a part of the "weave" yet. Unless and until they are explicitly or implicitly woven into the plot or subplot, those bites of the hot dog are not really part of the story.
Jorey
.
Like Sudoku?
sudokurose.com
Jorey
.
sure.
Any story's threads should need to come together, at some point, but what I was thinking of there was comparing it to the 'perspective' of myself experiencing real life, as we all do and experience it. There you will find threads that doesn't add up, with yourself being the main character, defining (adding them up) them anyway. I was not stating that my threads don't need to come together, although it's a interesting idea. It would become quite experimental to write such a story I think? Though, maybe somebody has already? By that I'm thinking of a finished story, although leaving most, or all, threads open.
If you know one good, point me to it :)