From alt.pub.dragons-inn Sun Nov 6 12:29:40 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7864 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!csn!yuma!lamar.ColoState.EDU!not-for-mail From: arsmith@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [NTY] Bearings, or the lack thereof... Date: 5 Nov 1994 15:51:29 -0700 Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 Lines: 62 Message-ID: <39h29h$1ns8@lamar.ColoState.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: lamar.acns.colostate.edu ADMIN: Thanks again to Hutch and Kelly J. Cooper for providing examples of writing that was properly horrifying and grinding my ego into the dust until I copied it. Kelly wrote part of this post. Special thanks to Issac Asimov for the "what do you see with your ear?" story. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Angtol Veduilin, master merchant and politician, who had made his first hundred thousand dinera at the age of twenty-six, owned the fifth largest shipping fleet in the Bismanian islands, and founder and chairman of the newest Bismanian colony, found himself nowhere. Not your ordinary "well, obvously somewhere but not a place important enough to record, or else I've lost track of where I am" kind of nowhere, but a more virulent nowhere. A tangible nowhere who's very intangibility was part of it's nowhereness. On the ships, the Annunlamen girl once asked him what he saw with his eyes closed. "Nothing." He replied. "Don't you see blackness and little flashes of light?" She asked him. "That's nothing." "Is it, what do you see with your ear?" What do you see when you don't have body parts at all? What do you feel? Hear? Smell? Think? Nothing. For a long time he did nothing in his nowhere not-place. It is perhaps fortunate that he could not even think, for the ability to comprehend the emptiness that was around and through him, literally WAS him, would have driven him mad instantly. For a long time he was nothing, but not forever... There was a rushing, gurgling sound around him, in him, oozing through his pores. But he had no pores. Or skin. Nothing he was... the noise perforated his consciousness until he realized it was laughter. Of a sort. There was a distant hissing that resolved itself into words, or something like words. Angtol felt the thing, the consciousness fill him, drown him, overwhelm him, envelope him. Become his confusion and blend into his tiny shred of reality and... he suddenly felt a sickening, wrenching tear and he was floating free... drifting... OhNOIFearIFearIFearNONONONONONODontDontDontDontOhNOOhNOOhNOIFearI- He convulsed in shock and spun sickeningly, still drifting... Ia! Ia! Nathkatala Wgl'taln Sshher Ctalak! He felt his selfness bending and stretching, his spin turning into a dizzying not-motion that spun and twisted more violently than before. He drifted... Darkness. He was glad for that, to finally get a sensory input. Something his mind could grasp and play around with. He sensed mocking laughter from the entity that had spoken to him. "AhSoYouLikeDarknessBismanian- GoodIHavePlansForYouYouWillHelpMe." The thoughts dumped themselves on Angtol's consciousness, bolder now, there was no fear in these thoughts, only malicious greed. "What plans?" Angtol asked, "What if I won't help you?" "ThereISNoWontYouWillHelpMeForNowProcessDarkness." The entity left, and Angtol went back to experiencing the darkness, becoming it, playing with it....