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From: mca@christa.unh.edu (Marc C Allain)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [LC] L'ai Ch'i - Intro
Date: 24 Jun 1994 15:45:15 GMT
Organization: University of New Hampshire  -  Durham, NH
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Story: Part Three

     It took time and Longo's helpful presence for L'ai Ch'i to
negotiate for a dinner and a room.  Finally, well fed and ready
for bed, L'ai Ch'i shook Longo's hand warmly and followed one
of the barmaids up to his room.
     It was hardly palatial, but it was reasonably clean and a
much better choice than sleeping on the streets in a strange
city.  First thing tomorrow, L'ai Ch'i would explore this city
and try learning more of the language.  (He'd already gotten
Longo to teach him the names of the coins and the words for
numbers so that he could negotiate prices without getting too
badly rooked.)  It seemed funny that he obviously knew many
languages already but heard nothing familiar around him.  But
then, he'd gotten a glimpse of himself in a mirror and seen
that his own features were far different than those of most of
the locals.  He'd seen one or two people who might have been of
the same race as him but there had been no sense of familiarity
about them.
     L'ai Ch'i settled down into his bed, stripped to his
loincloth.  He closed his eyes in the darkness and found himself
muttering.  His eyes snapped open just in time to see a fading
glow around the door and window and experience an odd sensation
of satisfaction and relief.
     -Some sort of spell?  Magic?  Did I really do that?-
     No information arose out of the darkness of his mind.  There
was just that uncanny sense of safety.  More mysteries to explore.
It was beginning to seem as though the inner world of his own
mind was going to be as hard to learn as the outer world of this
unfamiliar city and culture.
     Dropping the fruitless mind-wandering, L'ai Ch'i managed to
compose himself and after a time fell into a deep sleep.  There
he dreamed that he was sitting at a table with a huge puzzle set
in front of him.  Thousands of oddly shaped pieces of thin wood
were scattered about, but there were no pictures.  The pieces
were blank.  He tried several pieces and by luck found two that
seemed to go together.  When he connected them, part of a picture
appeared on each.  Although the pieces fit together, the pictures
did not match.  When he separated them, they were once again
blank.
     "This will take forever, piecing myself together at random
like this," L'ai Ch'i thought.  He wondered for a moment what
that meant, and after a time decided that the dream he was in
represented himself trying to piece together his memory, his own
past life.
     He closed his eyes and tried fitting the pieces together
by touch.  This actually seemed to work better.  His hands could
somehow sense the correct pieces and drew them out of the pile.
     When he opened his eyes, he saw that he had indeed managed
to fit a dozen or more pieces of the puzzle corectly into four
small groups.  The pictures were fairly meaningless so far, but
it was a start.  Then he looked at the thousands of pieces that
were left and groaned in despair.  It would only take HALF of
forever to finish.
     Thus passed the night.



-- 
Marc C. Allain          MCA@CHRISTA.UNH.EDU

Prophet Marcus of the First Church of Mad Scientist