From alt.pub.dragons-inn Thu Apr 20 07:49:23 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8350 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!emory!darwin.sura.net!news.cc.ucf.edu!pegasus!lavery From: lavery@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu (Sir Calahart) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: A stranger in a Strange Land - Chap 2 Date: 20 Apr 1995 13:44:52 GMT Organization: University of Central Florida Lines: 207 Message-ID: <3n5ogk$b5k@news.cc.ucf.edu> Reply-To: Sir Calahart NNTP-Posting-Host: pegasus.cc.ucf.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] A Stranger in a Strange Land -- Part II One of the waitresses, seeing Ripper's distress, brought him a mug of ale. She looked a bit wary of him, but concerned none the less. "Are you all right, hon?" She asked, tenatively. ----- "Clea sa don-keel, phaen?" The words were foriegn to him, but she had brought him a beer, so she had to be ok. Ripper thanked her and nodded, taking the beer and guzzling it down. It was good and it refreshed him. Ripper tried to shake the fog out of his brain. he was still really disoriented from his inter-dimensional trip. He surveyed the room and noticed that the waitress was still standing there looking at him expectantly. "Rell sapha da, helim." Ripper tried to understand, but couldn't. The words were strange, but there was a shade of meaning there that he caught. She wanted payment. She looked at him, seeming to sense that he didn't understand, and repeated slowly and more deliberately, "Rell silver da, helim." Ripper was startled by the word. It wasn't that she had said 'silver' in his toungue, it was that he understood it in hers. Then he remembered the nanotech. As he lay on the floor in agony, those tiny machines were listening and analyzing. The were now begining to piece this language together for him. "One silver da, please." She repeated again. "I... I have no silver." Ripper spoke in words he did not recognize, but he knew that they were right, that he spoke her language with the aid of the machines. "Well then, herpanin you gleph not trell dranin a drink." "Please," Ripper replied, using only words he knew in her toungue, "Slower." "I said, perhaps you should not have ordered a drink." "I am sorry," Ripper said, "I am new here. I don't..." he hesitated, searching for the word, "understand it all." A man approached from across the bar, "It's ok, Mary. We'll spot him this one." The woman shrugged and proceeded with her duties as the man came and sat with Ripper. The man surveyed him and asked, "What is your name, sir?" "Ripper," Tim replied. The words were getting easier for him, and he began to understand bits of conversations going on around him. "I'm Rowan. Rowan LittleFair," the man said with a friendly smile. He took Ripper's hand and shook it firmly in greeting. "You are new to Generica, aren't you?" He asked. "Yes. I just felt like dropping in," Ripper laughed. He used bad humor to mask his nervousness, albeit poorly. "I'm from a totally different place. I have no money. I know no one. I have no place to go. Rowan... where the drek am I?" "Relax, friend. If you've no money, then we need to find you a job first. What skills do you have? What did you do to earn your way at home?" "I ran... errands for people." Ripper said tentatively, unsure of how much to tell. He felt that he could find a friend in this Rowan, but friends had failed him before. "What kind of errands?" Rowan probed. "Umm... All sorts of things. Whatever was needed. Getting information. Protecting people or shipments. Things like that." "Ah! A mercenary!" Rowan laughed, "You need to talk to Mr. Fagin. He doesn't come here often, but when he does, it's always to hire someone." "Where can I find him?" Ripper asked. Rowan scanned around the tavern. "Ah, yes. There he is, in the dark corner there." Ripper followed Rowan's pointing finger to a dark portion of the room. He thanked the pleasant man for his help and slid across the room to the darkened table. In a way it was comforting to know that, even in this wholly unfamiliar place, he could still do familiar work. He slipped into a chair across the table from the shaddowy figure. "Mr. Fagin?" Ripper asked, "I hear you need some assistance." Fagin was a tall, slender, and imposing figure. His features were long and drawn and cast unsettling shadows across face, giving him a ghoul-like appearance. Fagin didn't look up from his drink as he said, "I assume you have a name. Would you care to share it with me?" "Ripper." "I do, in fact, need some assistance, but I need experienced mercs for an important job. I can't afford to have this one screwed up." "Sir, I have been doing nothing else for the past eight years of my life. I have experience coming out of my ears, and the fact that I am still alive should be testimony enough to my skill." Fagin now looked at him for the fist time. Ripper found his gaze unsettling, as though he looked into his soul. "If you are as talented as you say, then why is it that I have never heard of you?" "I am new to the area." "My business takes me all over Generica and throughout the Nexus. Where could you come from that I wouldn't know of it?" "I... um..." Ripper stammered. Fagin cut him off, "Nevermind. Just be silent and hold still." Fagin leaned across the table, bringing their faces close enough for Ripper to hear the slow, haunting rhythm of the man's breathing. Fagin stared directly into Ripper's eyes as if searching for some hidden treasure of truth. Ripper felt something, not physically nor really with his mind, but in his soul, he felt an intrusion. It was as though Fagin was sifting through the contents of his very being like one would search through a disorganized closet, tossing the unintersting bits over the shoulder while pushing the more intriguing bits around to get a better look. It was deeply disturbing and yet paralyzing at the same time. Then, as abruptly as it had started, Fagin leaned back in his seat and Ripper felt the intrusion leave. "I can not use you." Fagin said, matter-of-factly. "What? What do you mean? What did you see? Why? I don't understand," Ripper was blubbering like a small child after you take his teddy bear away, mainly because Fagin's soul searching was terribly upsetting, but also because his only hope of finding a niche in this strange world was just yanked from beneath him. His normal proffesional composure in situations like this had been shattered, and he had been reduced to a helpless child at the mercy of the big scary man sitting across the table. "It's not that you lack the skill, mind you. I can see by your past exploits that you are very talented and would be an asset to my operations. It's the simple matter of your writer." "My *what*?" Ripper asked, astonished. "Your writer. The one who determines your actions and designs the conditions of your life. The one who shapes your personality and moulds your form." "Hey!" Ripper interupted, "Nobody runs my life but me! You got that? I'm my own man." "Yes, because your writer has written you as such." Fagin replied, casually drawing a long gulp of his drink, "He decided when he began your story that you would be independant and slightly rebelious, a very self-determined man. But that's not at issue here." "Then what is?" Ripper asked, visibly disturbed. "He's moving." "He's *what*?" "He's moving," Fagin repeated, "In about two weeks, as he measures time, he will be changing residence. He will travel across his country and establish for himself a new home. And while he is doing so, he will not be able to write your tale." "So? What does that have to do with me?" Ripper was trying very hard to comprehend it all, but these concepts were so foreign to him. "You don't get it, do you? Nothing happens in your life, save that your writer writes it. Without his words there is no tale, and without the tale, you cease to act, or change, or move." "So what happens, then? He moves, and I go up in a puff of smoke, never to be seen or heard from again?" Ripper probed, "Do I just die?" "Oh no, you'll never even notice the passage of time. He'll move in to his new residence, get himself settled, find himself an Internet service provider, and when he starts to write your tale again, you and I will still be sitting here at this same table having this same conversation. Neither of us would even know it had happened, had I not found it in your depths." "Then why did you even tell me?" Ripper asked, "If I'll never even know that it happened, why the dreck did you even say anything?" "I had to for the sake of the readers and the other writers," Fagin replied, "There are other writers whose stories you could have gotten involved in. Then when your writer moved, their tales would have been disrupted as well, and that would have been just plain rude." "Oh..." Ripper sighed, "How do you know all this stuff, anyway?" "Because," Fagin responded, "He's my writer, too." ----- "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long." Sir Calahart: CyberKnight in the Order of the Matrix http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~lavery/