19th nervous breakdown

19th nervous breakdown, originally uploaded by Syd*Barrett [no video].

here it comes HERE IT COMES

careful what you wish for

Poor old W.M.Dodge sat in his flat on Baker Street, wondering how it had all gone so wrong....or had it?  Back in the late 1960's it had all been pretty crazy....the War, the Draft, the Pill, Free Love, Tune in, Turn on, Drop out....the L.A. Free Press, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll....the Commies, Nuclear War, Chairman Mao, snipers shooting leaders, wild on the Strip, bongos on the beach, the Revolution will not be televised....Race Riots, La Raza, Womans' Liberation....the paisley sun sinking over the hills to the west, wreathed in smog.....Mayor Daley, the Smothers Brothers, Cal Worthington.....so they had gone out into the desert on Spring Break, looking for some kind of escape.....he had for sure been wishing for some kind of peace....some release from the turmoil.....they had been raised in a Norman Rockwell illustration....all good dogs and Boy Scouts and apple pie ......and air raid sirens every Monday at Noon....and the lies of our elders....and Respect for Authority....and lemon tree very pretty, and here comes your 19th nervous breakdown....and mother's little yellow pills...so you wish for peace, escape, liberation, some place else.....and here he was, sliding through the stars, everyone he had known long gone, long dead and gone, lightyears ago and away.....careful what you wish for, bro.

Not supernatural....

Viktor Vasnetsov: The Flying Carpet, originally uploaded by freeparking.

....by any means

There's no such thing

"There's no such thing as the supernatural. Everything, by definition, is natural. But you have to find out what the rules are." That line from an old Vicki Greene novel had stuck with Shelby over the years....he had read all her books back in high-school and college days....the thought had struck him as reaching a kind of profundity, as he went on to the Graduate School of Analysis at Martian University. With PSATs like his, he had also been recruited by U.C.B. School of Law, and Harvard Divinity School....but Analysis was the buzz-word of his scholastic generation, and the best minds were working on Mars at the time. Of course Natural Humanism would become as much of a political movement as a philosophical posture, as the body politic got deeper and deeper into the issues raised by gene-splicing, cyborgism, alien melding, etc.... The military establishment had at first resisted the intrusion of Analytics into the traditional structure, but the proven advantages of the new approach could not be ignored, and soon a sort of secondary system of rank had to be employed, as every branch of commerce, government, and security operations came more and more to rely on the almost magical seeming prognostications of the clever Analysis School. But that brings us back to nothing being really magical, you just have to know the rules....you have to grasp the situation, and see what rules can be called into play. But calling an interspecies conference on a planet seething with imps, devils, Djinns, mages, burjas, and witch-doctors looked like it was going to stress Shelby's convictions. Oh well, we set the gunboat down at the Royal Spaceport, and then ride flying carpets to a castle in the sky.....and go first to a cocktail party reception with nasty looking steel clawed lizards, giant bugs, wispy ephemerals, sly fairie, and the odd troll and werewolf.....just keep in mind, Shelby told himself, it's all natural....

Pirate Biker Gunboat

Old_Sketch_08___Gunboat___by_Jager375, originally uploaded by Happy Weasel.

on a mission to Xanadu

Estaban was going solo

The spider pirates rigged out something that looked like it was from a space-biker B movie....an industrial gravity hauler hung all around with missile tubes and gatling sluggers....with strapped on fusion rockets and absolutely useless things like turbine blades and chrome rims....you had to admit it was scary looking anyway....so Estaban loaded on his meager possessions, and a nifty suit of gilded space-armor the pirates had found for him to look impressive in.....and he had gathered up all the corn whiskey and mistletoe extract he could lay his hands on, since his previous adventures in Nether Space had convinced him that these items were essential for maintaining any kind of coherence in the Crazy Zone. They web-whipped his nutty vehicle towards Xanadu....and in due time he found the whole kitandkaboodle falling into atmosphere, the overworked gravatrons whining about all the junk they were trying to carry, the heat shielding glowing white hot......the surface was coming up too danged fast, looked like....but the airbrakes did deploy in the nick of time, and with a banshee shriek and a cloud of dust the spider idea of a gunboat bounced down onto the stained and flame blasted ancient tarmac of Royal Spaceport, Xanadu.

Chimera floating past...

Paris - Musée Rodin: La Porte de l'Enfer - Fugit Amor, originally uploaded by wallyg.

.....in Nether Space

Gunboat Diplomacy

Of course the Khan of Xanadu wasn't going to allow the powers involved in the pirate conference to send any real force into his system.....each party would be limited to one gunboat of no more than 2.5 megaton firepower. So S.A. Shelby had to wait for the Sparrow class light aerospace attack vehicle HSS West Covina to power out from Base before he could get going. Sparrow class only carries a crew of six, with minimal allowances for any extra passengers, so he found himself jammed into a berth smaller than anything he had seen since his days in Cadet training. Oh well, once they were planet-side he was sure to rate something of a more proper size for an Earth Envoy. Crossing into Nether Space, they suffered the usual complications.....shipbrain started to complain of a headache....the comm channels started playing what looked like old alien cartoons.....crew all got that strange brain-melt sensation....Shelby told them to just stay focused if they could, and go ahead and take the drugs if they couldn't. The stars seemed to shift around a lot. Strange apparitions wheeled by....visions of flying castles, detached forests or lakes, dragons, chimera, unicorns running races, that sort of thing. And there was always haunting flute music playing over the P.A., with no way to turn it off. Yes, here we go on a mission into the Crazy Zone.....

The Conference Venue

0168 Citadel of Salah-al-Din, originally uploaded by QuimG.

on Xanadu

Conference on Xanadu

The Pirate Grand Counsel decided to send Estaban as their Envoy to meet with the concerned species regarding the "depredations" on the interstellar shipping lanes. The Spiders held the position that they were just doing what comes natural, and that if you didn't want to end up in one of their webs, you could steer clear of it! None of the talking parrots wanted the job, and the pirates themselves realized that they were just too comical looking themselves to be taken seriously. And, a few thousand light years away, Senior Analyst Shelby was getting prepped to be the Earth Envoy to the same conference. He had tried to shift it off to Lt. Willowby, but the higher-ups had noticed that he had been in the Nether Regions before, having pulled a tour in Trebizond, which is just slightly less crazy than Nod itself. He had shown the ability to accomplish the "willing suspension of disbelief" that HSS viewed as essential in an operative being dispatched to the Crazy Zone, which is how some persons referred to that region of Space where the laws of Physics had some how been usurped to varying degrees by the whims Magic and Fancy.

Rus

viking 1, originally uploaded by chatirygirl.

didn't have to do this, in this story

900 A.D.

Going back to around the time Madame Wu was traveling in western China, and further West, to Asia Minor.....I've been trying to eat more fiber lately, because old people tend to get constipated. And I remembered a story about that sort of thing I had read a long time ago, when I was reading all I could find about the Byzantine Empire, because I found it really interesting.....the story was that some Rus, or Russian Vikings, came across the Black Sea from the Volga River and landed in one of the provinces of the Empire. The local Imperial official went out and met them, and they told him they wouldn't plunder his provence if he paid them some amount of tribute. He told them that they had already paid tribute to the Rus, and named whatever King it was they had signed a deal with. Well, this was somebody the other Vikings knew of, so they decided to maybe honor the deal. But they said that they had just sailed all the way across the Black Sea, and could they at least get something to eat. Well, the oranges were ready for harvest right then, and it was a real bumper crop, so the locals didn't know how they were going to get a decent price for them anyway, so they showed the Rus how to eat an orange, and told them they could have all they wanted. They didn't have oranges in Russia, so they were really well pleased with the novel fruit, and they stuffed themselves with them. In fact, they ate so many most of them got the shits, from all this foreign fiber they had consumed. Most of them were up all night shitting in the orange groves, so when the sun came up and they saw the cohorts that the Empire had called in from the countryside arrayed in military fashion with their pikes and shields, and with the gentry of the provence formed up as horsemen, they just got back in their ships and sailed away.

Xanadu

Xanadu, originally uploaded by Georgio R..

to confound the spider pirates is your mission, should you accept it...

Senior Analyst Shelby, of HSS Impeccable

The Senior was getting a little depressed....first it had been reality disfunctions and ghosts from another dimension, and now it was spider pirates who looked like something out of a late night comedy sketch on some bizarro holonet.....but they were actually hijacking Earth flagged ships now, so Human Security Services was in the thick of things, like it or not. The trouble was, they were active in the ill-defined zone of frontier space where no government actually wanted to claim jurisdiction. And since they looked so silly on the news, with their bandannas and parrots and peg-legs, Frontier Affairs was having trouble selling the whole thing to the electorate as a real problem. In fact, some of the late night comic shows were loving it all....the hosts got to talk like pirates...Argh, Matey, shiver me timbers! Ar-har-har....etc...the studios were already looking for more swashbuckler scripts....and now Lt. Willowby had come up with the brilliant idea of sending Analysis Staff to Xanadu, to attempt some sort of negotiations with the Nomad Lizards and the Imperial Insects....to try to present a united front to hundreds of freebooters with no organization of their own? How was that going to work?

Old London

The unknown Photographer at Big Ben, originally uploaded by emphasis.

on Old Earth

Demoted to Consul

Madame Wu returned eventually, and Authority gave her back the Embassy, demoted me to Consul, and set me up with a nice flat on Baker Street, near the park. Across the hall, there was a gentleman of one of the elder races...he looked pretty human, except for the long pointed ears, and the yellow eyes. We took to going down to the park every once in a while to play dice-and-ball at one of the tables located there for that purpose. While we chatted away, he was interested that I was from Earth. He said he had been there several times, but, in his opinion, it was now nothing more than an over-priced tourist trap, with nothing much to find there of any real interest anymore. I wondered if I could go back and see what he was talking about, and he said he would take me there sometime, if I liked. He couldn't take me back to the 20th century....he calculated that as close as we could get would be the 24th, due to the knotting of the superstring in the 5th-6th dimension matrix. So one morning we set off walking down the creek path in the park, and kept going into a tunnel or cave down in an area I had never explored before. We had backpacks with some food and whatnot, and water-bottles, and walking sticks. We wandered in and out of underground passages, over sandy desert, through tall forests, along ancient city streets, up and down staircases, into front doors and out the back, taking meals and catching some sleep as needed. After maybe three or four days, we came up out of a damp cellar and we were in Old London, near Piccadilly Circus, according to my guide. Everything on Old Earth is "Old"...you can go from Old London to Old Paris on public transportation, and then to Old Rome, or Old Berlin, or what-not, just so long as it is Old. It is pretty much just all a tourist trap for the millions of humans who want to come down from the stars now and then to dip into the ambiance of the Old Culture and the Old Heritage....eating overpriced simulations of Old Home-Cooking, and admiring bogus recreations of Old Vistas, and Old Entertainment. The whole friggin place is some sort of huge D-land. After a week I'd had enough, and we hiked back to the Wandering City.

Dragonfly Spaceship

Dragonfly Spaceship, originally uploaded by Biczzz.

of I.I.C.

Approaching Xanadu

the star-galleon was taken by spider pirates, and an unlikely alliance of Imperial Insect Fleet Command and Human Security Services took action. The HSS warships Impeccable, Truth, and Beauty co-ordinated with Imperial units in the vicinity, and began a sweep of the volume-duration of space-time from when-whence the distress signal had originated. A ghostly dragonship haunted the dimensions also....why?

Moon City Topside

Ruined city on the moon, originally uploaded by steve_dean010.

in the old days....

Reciprocity

Authority and Management have a reciprocity arrangement, so our stay on Elysium was all on the cuff, as it were.....D. and F. decided to stay where they were....after all, they were free from death and taxes, and able to conjure up anything they could dream of....what's wrong with that deal? So I can scratch that whole thing off my agenda, and get on with the spider pirate problem....the talking heads are really starting to fuss about that thing....(note from Director, F.A.)

Hotel del Coronado

Hotel del Coronado .:HDR:., originally uploaded by markeloper photography.

the Bay of Serenity version

Courtesy of Management

Director Wu was sitting in the bar talking with Lord Bagsworth. The Director and the Ambassador were enjoying the hospitality of the Hotel for a couple of days while Diedre and Freddy tried to make up their minds as to whether or not they wanted to return to their old lives. Wu had asked Bagsworth how it was that a perfect replica of the Hotel Del Coronado came to be here on the shore of the Bay of Serenity. "Well," began the Lord, "We were vacationing with some American friends. We had taken the train to San Diego, and stayed at the Hotel Del while the steam-yacht was made ready. The Panama Canal was recently opened for business, so we went that way and were headed up towards Bermuda." He pauses as the barman renews his scotch. " I was asleep when it happened, but the Mate on watch says that right at midnight the stars just suddenly changed. The old constellations were gone, and there were new stars in the sky. So we just kept on sailing for a few days until we sighted the shore, and made into this bay. We didn't see much of anything at first, but then this Hotel just materialized out of thin air! Of course we asked Staff here how this was possible, and they said that Management was so good that they could read the minds of new Guests, and conjure up suitable lodgings." He takes a long pull at his drink, eyeing the puzzlement on Wu's face. "Oh, yes..."says the Director "Management."

We went on an excursion

1889, originally uploaded by kawkawpa.

in Daddy's old spaceship, the one he spent so much time restoring.....we got back in time for Grandma's Easter Dinner, thank goodness, or she would have been upset....

Spotlight

Spotlight, originally uploaded by audreyahern.

in the murk of Klub Krazy

On a Friday night

I took the big black car down the Strip, and told it to turn left on Lonely Street. Down past the Atomic Taco, you go through this parking lot and down the alley and there's a place called Klub Krazy. The big robobouncer glared at me with his red laser eyeballs, saw my diplomatic immunity, and waved me through the green door. Carefully I went down the four steep steps into the very heart of darkness. On the stage, a lone barstool and the microphone sat in a hot white spotlight. I found a table, and a long tailed blond vixen came to take my order.....rum-and-cola, twice, and some of the famous deep-fried battered beet slices, por favor. I lit up a Balkan Sobranie, and eye-balled the dregs of the galaxy that had settled to this low point, along with my poor self. Luckily, it was too dark to see them very well. Somewhere in the smoke and murk on one side of the stage, someone hit a double rim-shot, and the maestro entered the spot, to introduce what we were all here for.....

Thoughts of lightspeed

blurred light in hasselblad darkness, originally uploaded by edwardolive is underpriced & overworked.

danced in their heads

The stars were drawn into thin lines

instead of little dots, because of the relativistic effect of moving at three-quarter light speed. The star sailors sliced at an angle across one spiral arm of the galaxy, heading away from the Wandering City, towards Xanadu. The constant pressure of the dark energy wind against their golden sails drove their ship relentlessly onward, through the light-years. They would not see anyone they had ever seen before when they reached port, only their grand-children....for time reeled away on the planets and spacestations, while it dragged lazily aboard the ship. They trimmed the sails, and repaired the rigging, and scrapped stardust from the hull....and sang the old songs, and told the old tales, and spent days and weeks at dice-and-ball....the romantic life of astrogation.....you could get bored shitless....or you could gather at the foot of the Master, and let the star-current sweep across your mind, focusing your attention on the Transcendent.......

Ultimate over-ride machine

LA MACHINE AND CREW, originally uploaded by oneterry.

purchased in abandoned storage unit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090407/ap_on_re_us/meltdown_storage_units

Read the story about storage units.....and imagine what it must be like to bid on units in the Wandering City....what the hey would be in those units?  What if some alien entity had stored a Type IV Executive Class All-Code Over-Ride Machine Superbrain?  And you got it on bid along with a bunch of useless junk.....but a Superbrain can command other Machines to do whatever you want done.....hmmm....you want to write the story?  Anybody out there?

The Pirate Spider Web

Galaxy ?, originally uploaded by Jean-Bernard Michel.

awaits you

....meanwhile.....

back on the Merry Wider, with the spider pirates....nothing much was happening.....Slops and Estaban have settled into a routine, peeling potatoes, washing dishes, swapping yarns, drinking some good whiskey the spiders had liberated from a cruise ship....

Disaster Bean

disaster bean, originally uploaded by trekmtber.

dang, I wanted disaster scene, not bean!

Official business

I closed my eyes and linked to System, and asked for the car to be brought around, so I could go down to the docks.  Apparently another poor human had found his way to the Wandering City, under less than desirable circumstances.  He was on a freighter that had crashed on approach, causing some damage to infrastructure.  So Authority said that I had a problem to tend to.  When the big black car got near the scene, it looked like chaos.....repair bots were scurrying about, sweeping up rubble, robocop cars were slewed around by the dozen at all angles in the streets and on the wharf, and everybody was looking at the ugly old freighter with "Good Fortune" stenciled on the hull, which was a good couple of blocks deeper into the city than it had any right to be.  

Marmalade!!!!!

Noddish troll

fremont troll, originally uploaded by sgoralnick.

exiting access tube

The squat Noddish troll

came crawling out of the access tube, dragging along the frayed power lead which had shorted out the number four gravatron engine.  Muttering and cursing in a monotone, he threw the offending trash against the bulkhead, where there was already a pile of other useless junk.  The ancient robot engineer briefly glanced in his direction, and then returned it's attention to the flickering readouts of the engine bay status board.  One more green light, one less red light.  They were making progress, of sorts.  Several decks above, the human Derik and the lizard Malomess were running lift-off simulations, trying to figure out if the five massive solid fuel boosters the machines had strapped to the hull were going to be enough to supplement the aging industrial gravatrons in the old heap, and get her off the dirt.  Shipbrain thought it was going to work, but Derek had long since decided that shipbrain was in denial....refusing to face up to the fact that the Good Fortune was in fact having a run of bad luck.   The only reason they had set down on the planet to begin with was to keep from just plain crashing into the planet.  But they had managed to secure a cargo of native lumber harvested by the locals....strange things that looked like they were made out of chair legs, duct tape, and bondo.  They might even be able to get enough credits at the next port to do some basic refit on the antique freighter.   Five hours later, they gave it a try.....the gravatrons protesting loudly as they spooled up, and then the boosters roaring and spewing flame.....with many squeals and creaks, and a massive groan.....Good Fortune slowly rose up, and headed towards space once again.

Mmm... mimosas.

Mmm... mimosas., originally uploaded by jellybeanjill13.

well, they ended up having a few....

Diedre and Freddy

Were just heading back to the clubhouse after their early morning session at mixed-doubles tennis, and they decided to stop on the terrace and enjoy mimosas.....they sat down at one of the pebble glass tables, and looked out over the clear blue of the Bay of Serenity while they waited for their drinks.  The weather on Elysium is eternally beautiful, so of course today was no exception.  A bellboy came and asked them if they cared to receive some visitors who had travelled far to see them.  "Why, yes, certainly." Diedre spoke for them both.  An older Chinese woman in a very nice silk outfit came through the french doors, escorted by a more middle aged Chinese man, dressed in the blue blazer and gray slacks of someone in the upper echelons of government service.  "Good morning." begins the lady..."Allow me to introduce Director Wu, of Frontier Affairs."  She nods to indicate her companion.  "And I am known as Madame Wu, the Earth Ambassador to the Stars....well, at least that's what they call me back on the Wandering City."  Diedre and Freddy politely rise and shake their hands, introducing themselves as HSS officers.  "Yes, that's why we've come."  says the Director.  "We'd like to offer you a ride home."  Freddy and Diedre exchange a puzzled glance.  The waiter arrives with mimosas for four, and some little berry muffins.

Sailing Among the Stars

Sailing Among the Stars, originally uploaded by Olivander.

on a galleon to the Wandering City

When I left Earth in 1967...

The only computers I'd seen were things about the size of a diesel locomotive that worked off of huge tape reels and stacks of punched paper cards.  In the Land of Nod, things worked by magic...don't ask me to explain....on the star-galleon, things worked by a weird mix of seeming magic, and what you call technology I suppose.  I'd used the flip-phone aboard ship, to fit into the routine....that was how you received your orders, or reported broken things to the right person.  In 1967, telephones were hefty plastic things that were hard-wired to the wall.  So Jeeves has been bringing me up to speed, as it were, computer-wise.  Jeeves can in fact see my thoughts, as I was wondering that night....he knows when I want a brandy and soda before I ask for it, but waits for the verbal instruction, because that's the default setup at the Embassy.  City Systems, and hence, Authority does know what you are thinking, and the Thought Police will act if Authority deems it in order.  The upside to this mind-link is that I can access all kinds of stuff just by closing my eyes and doing a mental login.  So I've been finding out some interesting history, for one thing.  Like, Los Angeles isn't there anymore, it fell into the Pacific along with almost everything within fifty miles of the coast back in 2142.  No more Disneyland, or Chavez Ravine, or.....well, nevermind.  Jeeves is now reading my mind, fetching the brandy, and the siphon.

Spaceman

Spaceman, originally uploaded by Max Sparber.

uh oh

The wandering city

Los Angeles at Night, originally uploaded by willraleigh.

can be a lonely place.....

Director Wu didn't know what to do

For some reason, the Council had decided to drop the Dragon Angel Cult portfolio in his lap, as if he didn't have enough on the table already.  How was he going to contact  ghosts of some race that had transcended to a higher plane (whatever that meant), and try to negotiate with them for ....for what exactly?  To send back two HSS officers who were officially deceased?  Their families had already held services....on the news, the Signal Frigate Elf had been lost with all hands in a gross reality disfunction, on deep frontier patrol.  The Director was sitting in a government apartment deep in the bowels of Moon City, in a blue funk, as it were.  The screen was showing some old James Bond movie, with the sound off, while the sound system pumped random old funk-punk.....Wu was eating popcorn, and drinking gin and tonics, one after the other.  "Damn" he said to himself, "I'm getting all stressed about this."  Suddenly, a nicely dressed, somewhat elderly, lady of seeming Chinese descent walked through the apartment wall, and stood quietly regarding him across the room.  "Huh?" says Wu.  "Do not be overly alarmed, my dear boy.  I am here on official business, representing the Dragon Angels.   I am in fact family of sorts....I am Madame Wu, and I've come to take you to the missing officers....and then we'll see what happens.  Is that alright with you?"  The Director was somewhat flabbergasted by this turn of events.

Simple Authority

The machine brains wander with the City, along with the biological races....and of course they must help implement Authority, being all pervasive in the infrastructure of modern life.  But who makes decisions within Authority?  No one really knows, least of all we unenlightened Ambassadors of the diplomatic corp.  It doesn't do any good to ask, for in the City one cannot question Authority.  Maybe that simple fact is what has held it together for so long, as it reels endlessly through space and time.  Most persons hold that Authority is benign and beneficial, and thus a good thing in general.  But when some persons, or even some machines, just plain disappear without warning or explanation, it makes me a little queasy.  How was Authority offended?  Might I somehow offend?  I sit in the nicely decorated parlor of my Embassy, thinking these thoughts.....Jeeves stands silently waiting, with robotic calm and detachment, watching me....watching my thoughts?

Cosmic Size Relativity : 2

Ramsey got a good look at the two headed human. Even with the crap all around it, the blood, the two heads looks almost peaceful. He had to left a leg free off it. And then he had it. Dressed in a robe, a long flowing robe, that was supposed to be white, but it was stained red. Jewelry draped around its neck.
"Aye, what have we here.."Ramsey said.
From the back of the two heads he found a little green disc.
"Shit...."he said.
The two headed human was at peace, robbed of all of its beauty, it lay there in a human swap of things. Every where there were people scattered around it.

Quote :

From "Devil May Care, the new James Bond Novel" by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming, Doubleday Books, London, 2008. pages 50 and 51.  "Bond slept like a child in the quiet cacoon of his hotel room.  A dinner of scrambled eggs from room service, three large bourbons and a hot bath made the barbiturate unnecessary.  In the morning, he exercised strenuously, pushing himself through sixty sit-ups and a variety of stretching exercises for the legs and back that Wayland had shown him in Barbados.  The maid brought him breakfast as he was cooling down, and he ate it wrapped in a towel at the table in the window.  The coffee was good, but he could never feel enthusiastic about croissants.  At least there was something approaching marmalade."