Archive Posted January 30, 2003 Report Posted January 30, 2003 gwaihir1 Poet Posts: 51 (12/6/01 1:10:39 pm) Reply Reformed Part I -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Don’t tell him that! He once used to care about me. I wouldn’t have him know how low I’d sunk. Don’t tell him please! The old fellow looked at me and smiled kindly, and then …I recognized those eyes. … A young man who appears to be about twenty walks into a room. A man of about forty is sitting behind the desk, upon seeing his visitor he speaks. “Tergo, what did I tell you? I think I remember saying pretty clearly that if I heard you were using those methods again, you’d leave my lab.” “Sir, I wasn’t going to tell you yet, I was going to wait until I had a neat copy, but sir I’ve finally succeeded. My methods may not have been the best, I admit it, I’m sorry. Doesn’t it at least partly excuse me that I succeeded though”? Even as I said it I knew it didn’t to him. I hadn’t been Zorath’s student for twelve years to not know that. I didn’t guess his reaction at all though. “NOOOO! I thought I’d made you understand, success just isn’t what matters most. It also matters how you do it. I warned you last time.” “Sir, all of the others my age have gotten at least partial success in what they’re doing. Fenth in summoning magic, Char in transmogrifying, Shey in illusion etc.… I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t a failure. Anyway, what’s wrong with my starting by first shaping the ambient? You just don’t give enough information. All rules, that’s all! If I can’t shape here, others will let me!” I think he’d underestimated my persistence ‘til then. He called me back, tried to talk. I was furious, sure I knew what he’d say. How could he just dismiss my work, the best thing I’d ever done?!? … How did I so quickly turn my back on everything I’d ever known? Ahh naiveté! I soon learned that none of the sort of people I considered respectable shaped the ambient without first blocking off the room. I just couldn’t get the results I was working on if I did that. No one really told me why I couldn’t do that with them. They just asked me what I’d done as Zorath’s student, and when I told them they didn’t hire me. Then a little guy who’d been the secretary taking notes during one of my failed interviews tugged on my sleeve as I walked out. “They may be too stubborn to shape, unable to see, but there are some of us who do.” I was horrified at his little back-room apparatus, and it’s unsafe nature, but no one else wanted me. I accepted. As I left he told me that if I mentioned any of this to anyone I’d be arrested. If I tried to tell anyone about what he was doing, he had enough evidence from my own mouth, to take me down with him. Talk about alarming! It hadn’t even occurred to me that what I was doing was illegal, let alone how much trouble I was in. My perception changed. I soon began to realize that my opening into the ambient, that I had used to think of as a darkly colored door, was nothing of the kind, it was a black hole swallowing me up every time I entered. Never quite spitting all of me out. That night, in the little hole that was my room, I was awake pretty damn late trying to think of a way out. I thought about skipping town, going to find a more reputable job in another city. It was a great idea, there was just one little flaw, I hadn’t succeeded in anything else. I couldn’t get a better sort of job. I almost did the prodigal son, and went to Zorath begging. I wish I had. I had too much pride then, I still didn’t realize how lost I was. So I worked there, on illegal magic. Creepy stuff happened, people ‘disappeared’, one learned not to ask. Every night I went home, to my books, and secretly practiced the more acceptable sort of magic. I didn’t like my job, but I was making new discoveries. Wouldn’t have minded it, but gradually I began to realize why most eschewed the stuff I did. When I started working on shaping the ambient around me, I had only seen where I wanted to go. Now, looking around I saw where such work actually did go. I saw scumy stuff that was a side effect of my work. I saw that its fumes made me people angrier, more depressed and viscous. I realized that I couldn’t succeed the way I thought I could. Some things one can pull out of the ambient, but some not. If you pull a flower out of there, it always arrives dead. The only bird one can get is bad enough to make a flock of vultures turn tail and run, puking . It was too late now. I had a bad rep, when I went into decent firms, and applied, they just looked at me and shook their heads. No turning back, the Rubicon lay far behind. Still though, I didn’t feel any better about what I was doing. I using my work lab for legal experiments, on the sly. Finally I used my skills to create some villain an army of those atrocious birds. In turn he got me a very nice government office. I like to think that since then I’ve reformed. The people who bought me my job are disappointed in me. I can walk into the any social circle in town, and be smiled at. I always block off the room before shaping now. Still though people know how I got to where I did. The sort of people I respect most, don’t trust me. The worst part of it is that I don’t blame them. Today that man stopped me on the street, asked me to come with him into a tea shop. I have about a hundred pages worth of papers for a meeting in an hour, so at first I wasn’t very interested to hear a stranger blather. Particularly when he started by asking if the rumors he’d heard about me were true. I always make it a policy to avoid such questions. Lying isn’t very believable at times, but telling the truth is much worse. I looked at my watch. “Sir, I can’t stay and talk, as much as I’d like to, can you tell me who you are, and unless it’s an emergency maybe you’d like to leave a message with my receptionist? He laughed. “Emergency? No, not that. As to who I am…” He looked around hesitantly, and then leaned towards me. “I’ve been lying pretty low recently, but say that I know Zorath, he asked me about you… You won’t answer me though, so I’ll just tell him the rumors I’ve heard. “Don’t tell him that! He once used to care about me. I wouldn’t have him know how low I’d sunk. Don’t tell him please! The old fellow looked at me and smiled kindly, and then …I recognized those eyes. To hell with the meeting!
Archive Posted January 30, 2003 Author Report Posted January 30, 2003 gwaihir1 Poet Posts: 54 (12/9/01 4:46:23 pm) Reply Re: Reformed Part I -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “So, I’ve just called in to say I couldn’t come to the meeting, they won’t mind. Do you want to come to my rooms to talk? I can tell you every thing then.” I told him my story, he stopped me when it came to the army of birds. “How long could he keep them in control, before he had to set them on something?” Do you know what he planned/plans to do with them? I guess I just hadn’t let myself think about that side of it. “If he hasn’t used the birds yet, and I guess I’d have heard if there were any such wars going on, he has six months more before they get completely out of control, and become a danger to him too. He knows that too, I told him so when I gave him them to him a couple years ago.” “ That’s what I feared. *pause * How to say this... *sigh * I need to ask a favor of you, if I may. I’m fighting a couple men, that man, Thurga, is one of the main ones. They know that my leadership is one of the things that is binding our side together, and have assassins on my trail all the time. Can you hide me for a few days?” Obviously I agreed. “What can I do to help this cause sir”? “We know that Thurga has been enhancing his birds. We’ll want lots information from you, about them, but half of it is wrong now. He couldn’t have summoned them himself, I don’t know of anyone alive who can go as deep into the ambient as you can. However, he can and has been making them much more deadly. Many things about the birds are being changed just so that the birds won’t have all the same weaknesses they had when you knew them too. You can help us some, by using your office to influence things in the right direction, but most of all we need your magic. Think of how we can combat these things. Don’t stay here too long, or they’ll guess that you had other reasons for canceling that meeting. You go back, do your job, and if you don’t mind I’ll go putter in your lab. You do have one in your house right”? … In my work now, I still try sometimes to find the positive in the ambient. I feel as if it should be there, at least a bit. So, now turning my attentions to the best way to beat those things becomes pretty unfun. I guess when things come down to facing, heck fighting, my past it’s naturally hard. Zorath says that I’m delaying, indulging myself by working on the ambient, when I should be figuring out what we’re going to do. He might be right too. … Weeks pass, still I haven’t had a break through. Zorath’s reminders are getting more and more urgent. I feel really pressured. I think I have some kind of psychological block. Something in me doesn’t want to succeed. What am I not seeing? … Maybe we become too comfortable. Even fighting for one’s life can become a routine. I came home a little early today, went into the lab to say hello to Zorath. A thug was standing over him, and just as I entered, he slammed him in the face with a club. He crumpled backwards. “It’s all right Tergo” he said. “It’s okay, we’re okay. Just go in and turn around.” I ran toward him, but when I got there he was clearly dead. Realizing that his cryptic last message might well be urgent I looked around. What could he have been referring to? The closet! I’m glad I thought to put up a few spells before I looked in. Six men were in there, preparing to rush out and attack. Shall we say that for a little while I was too busy to mourn? It was just such a weird relationship. For twelve years I was his student, worshipping the ground he walked on most of the time. I got angry, left, and refound him, just to have in die in my personal lab at the hands of some thug two months later. … The deadline quickly approaches, we have many reports of the gathering army. It will be SOON. I really feel sidelined in this effort though. Everyone would love it if I came up with something, but no one trusts me at all. I’m a Paul figure. If I’m the one who saves this thing, I guess they’ll trust me, but they’re suspending judgement ‘til then. Having to fight to even learn what’s going on is so the last thing I needed, on top of Zorath’s death, on top of all this pressure. … Am feeling very frustrated. I just can’t figure out why nothing I do works. Am going back to the experiment I was working on before Zorath walked back into my life. Working with the blocked ambient. … Even that though isn’t working well. I have to try something. If anyone finds out that I’ve tried it they’ll never trust me again, they’ll think I’ve gone back to them. I’m not though, I know what lies down that path. I’ll have to do in the lab at work for safety’s sake. I should be able to reblock the ambient in less than five minutes. I can only pray no one comes in before then. … I’VE GOT IT, I’VE GOT IT. MY GOD I’VE FINALLY GOT IT. We’re saved. I was about to reblock the ambient, and back out. My idea hadn’t worked. Someone came in. Disaster had struck, I was lost. I was so surprised/scared, that I spun around to see who it was without first backing out of the ambient. The black hole that I knew so well, had delved into so often was still there, but from this angle I could see something else a way beneath it. A grey door/hole Suddenly I remembered “It’s okay, we’re okay. Just go in and turn around.” He hadn’t meant the closet at all! How like him that although he was dying what he was really thinking about was his discovery. I’m kinda glad I didn’t get what he meant though. Not only did it save my skin, but because I got to make the discovery on my own. God I wish he could have seen it though. He never saw me really succeed at something besides black magic. It turned out that my interrupter was one of my colleagues I respected most. I asked her to come look at this with me. I saw immediately that if I made sure my first entry into this grey place was not alone, there would be a lot less ways to accuse me of turning back. Also, well maybe I was kinda scared of being caught by a new danger. I was like a person who avoids drink, because he can not restrain himself. I was afraid that if this new place was dangerous, that I would be too easily sucked in. … This place is what I’ve been looking for all these years. Well, it’s close. The flowers I pull out are wilting, unhappy, mostly dead things, but they’re not dead They can be saved. Something can be created out of nothing. With a little practical tending these flowers live. Just as the things I pulled from the black hole had their taint, that power to make everyone feel a little worse, these have their taint too. They don’t really make you feel any better, but they make you a little more powerful. Your enchantments last a bit longer, you can go deeper into the ambient etc.… It’s just what we need. On an immediate level, emersion in this grey opening will give us the wherewithal we need to fight those things off. The bird I pull out of my opening may not be as dangerous or as strong as what Thurga has from his hole, but mine improves with care, while his only gets more unruly. I didn’t tell him when I gave him the birds, though I guessed, but it looks like his birds don’t gradually snap, instead they gradually get less and less useful, and cohesive until their final end. This means that all his delay has dug his own grave, no matter how improved his birds are, they can’t but be much weaker than when I first gave them to him. Now I have forces of my own, I have no worries. On a more long term level, we have found a whole new world. This opening is not perfect; nothing comes out quite right. We have reason to believe that emersion in this grey stuff, though giving immediate strength makes one exhausted later. No matter, I can pay back tomorrow the strength I need today. I can pull out an imperfect copy of almost anything out of that grey ambient. There’s no limit on the effects of that. It’ll never be a source of everlasting wealth, because many of my creations take almost as much work to fix/save as they would have to make. All the same. Of course, my utter joy is not completely selfless. No one else can delve into this stuff as well, no one has had the background to do so. I have spent my life looking for it, I am as experienced in the black ambient as anyone alive, but I am not sucked into it anymore. This world is my world. So, I’ve succeeded, that doesn’t mean I’m done working though. I will explore the ramifications of this new place, but also I will look for a white door. Doesn’t there have to be one somewhere?
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