Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Subject: [GREEN] Park and Lock It Message-ID: Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 05:39:51 GMT [ADMIN] It's amazing how you can lose track of things when you're doing to much at once. This should have gone out a week or so ago. It happens just after 'Raelf talks to Kron(plant). Anyway, the thing is Copyright 1993 by Alan Smith and Steve Hutchison. Archive and transmission rights granted but everything else is reserved. ADMIN: another time-warped post, at least for Palandun, call it just after lunch or so on the day he met Vitor. Joint Post by Steve Hutchison and Alan Smith. Palandun was snacking on some bread and poking through a bush for a rabbit set he *knew* was there when he heard the sounds of a fight. Being one of those heroically minded individuals (besides, the noise was scaring the rabbits) he folded himself up in his cloak and swiftly and mostly silently, dashed towards where the fight was, arriving at the edge of the strange forest just in time to see one whole side fall asleep. The winning party was a man and a dog, and they ran into the forest, which seemed to go out of its way to make a path for them. Intrigued, Palandun followed them for a few minutes -- they ended up in one of the little grottoes that the forest had built from the ruins of the Battleground structures. Nothing special. He was about to head back to where the rabbits were supposed to be, when one of the members of the winning party said something. On the whole what he said did not impinge on Palandun's conciousness, the fact that the speaker was a dog did. This proved sufficiently interesting for Palandun to conceal himself in some bushes downwind and listen. When the dog turned out to be some kinda kinky mage Palandun almost left again, but stayed just long enough for the mage to state some theories about the origin and nature of the green and his companion. After a few minutes, the one who (probably) wasn't a mage gave some of the arborvitae Kronensis berries to the one who was a mage, and the mage made them vanish with some kind of sleight-of-hand thing, and then went into a trance. After a few minutes the other one got bored and went into the hollow behind the waterfall, then came out and left the area. Palandun waited until the not-mage one drifted off to somewhere or other, then exploded out of the bush and began madly hunting around in the grass. "No, that's mine. That's a worm... GOTCHA!" he said, holding up a hair clasped between thumb and forefinger. He reached to his belt and pulled ot a small paper envelope, then stuffed it in one of his pockets. "Hi." He managed to spare for the mage who was either staring at him with a sort of paternal (well, elder fraternal, anyway) expression or was still in a trance, "I'll be right back." Palandun, still overcome with excitement, dashed off into the woods to retrieve his pack. [Query: is humanform activity a threat to Green? Minor components have been subjected to destructive forces.] <> [Analysis of Green composition potential hazard. Humanforms of prior worlds grew weapons, incompatible with Green. Reduced the influence.] <> [Acceptable. Camoflage is normal function. Operation commences.] <> Meanwhile, back at the branch: Microscopes were large, heavy objects, and other members of his specialty would question the wisdom of Palandun carrying one around in the field. Surely, they supposed, the thing got broken more often than was useful? So far as it went, the O.M. had something there, but Palandun was awful glad he carried one around when he found that hair. On returning to where the mage was (better light there) he slid the hair onto a slide and put the whole thing under the objective, examining the proximal end. He uttered several "yups" and a few "Elanor was right"s and started to carefully sketch in his notebook. "In case you're curious, you were right about that guy being a plant," Palandun said by way of conversation, "You can come see if you want, his cells have cell walls. My name is Palandun, by the way." The mage blinked, his eyes changed color from deep forest green to a sort of sky blue. "Howdy, Palandun. Call me 'Raelf. Sure, I'll take a look." He rose to his feet and walked across the clearing to where the microscope was set up, peering into the lens. "Hm. Got any pthalocyn stain? You'll get a better highlight of that clump of transitional cells there at the hair root..." He blinked, focussing on Palandun. "Was just talking to the Green here, sorry I didn't say hello earlier. Wanted to find out more about this new neighbor, didn't expect to find an ecological survey crew here." "Really? I'm a grad student at the university right now. Part of the team that's investigating this place, did you read the report?" "Not yet, hang on," the mage grinned, and then shook his head dizzily. "Woah. Yeah, gotta be careful with the timebends for a while. Yeah, I just took a look. Pretty good summary. You've got a knack for the systems approach, most of your peers lack that particular gift." "Well, I'm flattered." Palandun replied "Nice to see somebody outside the profession reading the literature. I hope you didn't mind my eavesdropping back there, but while you were a talking dog you sorta grabbed my attention. I seem to recall you're mentioning something your grandfater did researching this forest, what did he find out?" "Not exactly _this_ forest," the blond man said, and he did some more sleight of hand, producing a bunch of glass-looking marbles about the diameter of his thumb. He started juggling them, while he talked to Palandun. "Great-gran just found the rumors. Found some traces of where it, or one of its kindred, had been. Seems that this system isn't exactly compatible with high technology, but it's also not used to high mystech levels either. It's name for itself is `the Green' -- if you want to talk to it, ask Kron for help. He's the guy whose hair you got there. "Oh well. Withold said that it wouldn't go far. I couldn't help but hear your conversation with that plant person, Kron? It seems your grandfather did some work with this forest before. I'm professionally interested, could you tell me exactly what he did?" "Three of the worlds he visited were dead. No life. Plenty organic compounds, but nothing, not even single-cell life, in any kind of a recognizable state. All fossils were imprint only. There was evidence of a first order spatiotemporal leak, a temporary hole between the walls of reality, on all three worlds. Three more worlds had life, but very sparse, and not much in the way of an ecosystem. There were some colonies from other planets on one of them -- they were after the high end transuranics on the planet, but they had problems with the forest, and they used a broad-spectrum biopurge. Killed the whole planet. Idiots. Half of them died from the psionic backlash. You familiar with crossdimensional travel?" "Huh? Well, sort of." "The worlds where the Green had left traces, all of them, were places where the... drat this language, it doesn't have the right words. OK. You're aware that there is a spiritual component to life? That here in Nexus, it's possible for that spirit component to operate independent of the material matrix? Well, in those worlds, the spirit component was a necessary _part_ of the material matrix, and it couldn't exist separately. One reason why magic didn't work well there. Anyway, from the evidence at hand, Gran-gran-da figured that there was something like a common consciousness, that if you ingested any of the material from this Green, that you were linked to its consciousness. When they killed it or when it was driven away from a world, it took its life force with it. It becomes _part_ of you. It was part of them, and when they killed it they killed themselves." Palandun looked thoughtful. "That explains a good deal. I can't prove anything yet, and I'd probably have to get that Kron fella to admit to some things he's not willing to or doesn't know, so I'm going to take a little break 'till things loosen up. Well, Reelf, er, Ralf, um... 'Relf... 'Raelf?" "Good ear. 'Raelf it is." "Right. Anyway, I'll see you around?" They shook hands, "If you need to find me, I'm staying at the Dragons Inn, a message to there will probably reach me. I'll probably be back here in a week." Palandun replaced the hair in the envelope, marked it "Kron" and sealed it. He packed up, said "G'bye" one last time and headed back to the camp, where he, Elanor Underhill, and Professor Bowwin talked excitedly for some time, and it was only after an hour or so that Palandun managed to convince the other two not to hunt down Kron and lop off a finger or something. Bowwin decided to put the whole project on hold for a while (The next semester was about to start, and he needed to prepare his lessons anyway)