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."