southpark!!

So, i just have to say, I’m just watching southpark reruns today, and damn, I love the show!

“Pray the gay away” is on now.

The Entire first ‘chapter’ of Second Paradigm

So, I’m not particularly skilled at coding blogs, and I offer my apologies in advance if I messed up the formatting so that it breaks any sentences or chops any words up. :X   Without further ado – here is the first section of ‘Second Paradigm.’

Epilogue

The crowd screamed in panic. Police, trained as they were, had guns drawn but pointed to the ground to gun down the shooter if they could spot him. The man stood back up from where he had fallen, looking slowly around himself in wonder. Silence encapsulated him, a pinpoint beacon of sanity amongst the contagious panic.

Something had hit him from behind. Pushed him to the ground. Right before it had happened. The weird thing to him was that he felt the other outcome, sitting painfully in the back of his mind, gnawing at his memory. Hidden like a viper was the knowledge of what might have been. He filed it away for later, fighting to push it to the back. Right now he was too confused to deal with that weight sitting there.

He looked around again, standing still amongst the whirlwind of motion surrounding him. “No man is an island.” He spoke it like a mantra, reminding himself that he was a part of all this. Someone was pointing up and behind him, so he looked back. There was a window, it seemed to leap out of the background for him the second his eyes lit on it. In the window was an empty tripod, some type of clamp attached to the top of it, lazily spinning in its joint. His gaze slowly wandered down to the ground below the window.

There was a body lying there. It was a woman that he knew too well, and she obviously had been defenestrated. The fall had also all too obviously broken her neck. On the ground next to her was a pistol. It was a Glock, lying there with a shattered scope affixed to it. The gun pushed at his memories of what might have been and understanding started for him in that moment. He reflexively squeezed his empty hand. It did not come to him as an epiphany, it was not a cataclysmic opening of his mind to the truth. Rather, it was like a thief in the dark of night sneaking into his mind then settling in as though it had always been there. And once it was there it had always been there.

He smiled and calmly walked away from the crowd. What had been done was now undone. And the Origin… was once again safe. And now he understood what that was, and that it existed. With a simple motion, just pushing another man down, he had determined exactly what that future was to be. Hard though the choice had been, understanding had come that there truly was no other choice.

He left and went back to living his life, walking through the reflections of the origin into the future that was his that was his alone.

.. .. Relativity Synch Phase 1…. .. ..

2003: The Pawn Sacrificed .. ..

“I…” Chris felt himself flush, the anger slowly rising in his blood. But looking to the Jury and seeing sympathetic eyes staring back at him helped to calm and stem that rising tide of anger. “…I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

The prosecuting attorney, James Garrett, flashed a small but humorless grin at Christopher Nost, and his eyes cold gray eyes bored into Chris’s, seeming to speak directly to his hind-brain. “I’ve got you. There’s no way out for you this time. This has to finish it.” Chris felt bile rise in his throat. He was afraid that he was going to throw up all over the witness box.

“What exactly do you mean, you don’t remember, Dr. Nost? Do you or do you not have an alibi for the night of August thirteenth, nineteen ninety-seven, or was it, in fact, you that murdered Lucille Frost at the office building you both worked at?” Garrett’s voice slowly gained volume as he turned towards the Jury. “How can you know you are not guilty? Your mental condition seems awfully convenient – something which you could easily take advantage of in a situation which played out exactly as this one has for you. I urge you to look deep inside yourself. Simply put, you ca-”

“Objection, your Honor.” Chris’ defense attorney, Alan Dunwich rose, both fists planted firmly on the long oak table in front of him. “Dr. Nost’s memory loss condition has already been established to the Jury. At this point the prosecution is just badgering the defendant and building straw men!” His face was flushed and he looked truly livid as he gazed at the prosecuting attorney.

“My client has a rare form of mental defect here documented by Dr. Eric Jorgensen, one of the world’s foremost neurologists. As was previously explained-” he drew out the words while staring at Garrett as if speaking to a young child, “—Dr. Nost can remember concepts and ideas, hence his ability to continue his work in the field of Aerospace Mechanics and Astrophysics, but new experiences and faces fade after a little more than a year, rendering his long term memory useless. The court has already heard Dr. Jorgensen’s testimony. I request that the prosecution’s question be struck from the record.” Dunwich waved a manila folder toward Judge Miller, but he was still glaring at James Garret.

Chris’s head swam and Garrett seemed to blur for a second as his vision went fuzzy. Hold it together, he fought the fear rising in his gut in a wave of nausea, here is not the time or place to break down.

“Objection sustained, defense. Recorder, please strike the last question from the record. Mr. Garret, you have been warned once already about bringing up Dr. Nost’s disability in this courtroom, as it has no bearing on this trial. And if you continue to treat this trail as a farce I will hold you in contempt of court. Now, do you have any other questions for the defendant?”

Dunwich looked at Garret in triumph, but the Prosecutor only shrugged lightly and said, “No, your honor. The prosecution rests.”  Garrett walked back to his seat at the prosecutor’s table and sat down, trying his best to hide the smug smile flitting across his face.

Bastard, Dunwich thought.  Inadmissible or not, he had planted suspicion in the minds of the jury.  The defense attorney could see it in their faces, the seed of doubt would grow.  Where five minutes ago he could see sympathy for Chris plainly etched in their eyes, some now looked at Chris in doubt, others in loathing – the ones that had already made their decision.  The damage had been done, and right when Dunwich thought he had this trial clinched.

The Jury’s verdict was already obvious in their expressions.  He ground his teeth together and clenched his jaw in frustration, then reclaimed his seat as Chris returned to the defense’s table, his gears already spinning on how to turn this around in the closing statement.  Damn him, Alan glanced at Garrett, an unknown who relies solely on playing dirty.  How did this asshole land this case?  Is the District Attorney stupid?  I can nail him in an appeal and it will be easy.

Judge Miller looked around the courtroom, his gaze lingering on Chris.  “Then this court will adjourn for a one hour recess.  We will reconvene at—” he glanced at the round, institutional clock hanging above the jury, “—three-thirty for closing statements.  Bailiff, please take Dr. Nost to his holding cell.  Dr. Nost, you will not be summoned to this courtroom again until the Jury’s announcement of the verdict. Do you understand that?”

Chris nodded slowly to the judge.  He did understand.  It meant that he would have to suffer alone in a cell until the jury was done debating his verdict.  As Chris was led from the courtroom he saw a man stand up from the audience benches and pushed his way through the milling crowd, waving to Judge Miller.  He wore a plain blue suit and the thick black rimmed glasses known in the military as birth control glasses.  The last thing that Chris noticed as he was gently pushed from the courtroom was that the man clutched a small stack of folders stamped with a red “CLASSIFIED” across them.

Do I know that man? Chris thought.  There was a spark of recognition there, and he wracked his brain, but couldn’t remember.

*                                      *                                      *

Chris waited in the holding cell for just over three hours, staring out to the world through a three inch thick Plexiglas window.  The glass, besides obscuring what he could see because of its thickness, also had some sort of thin metal woven through it in a diagonal pattern that formed diamonds in it.  ‘Just in case I can break through three inches of Plexiglas they had to reinforce it with metal’ Chris bitterly thought to himself. Every moment of those three hours seemed to drag by like an eternity unto itself as he watched the seconds creeping by on the wall-clock behind the guard, who was sitting at a desk reading a science fiction novel.

It looked like the same clock that was hanging in the courtroom.  How long will it take them? He thought over and over.  He fantasized about moving time forward, just to get it over with, but soon gave up on the idle daydreaming,  knowing that it was futile to try and distract himself.  It could be days, he thought …Or even weeks.  Anger welled within him again at this unfair situation, but was slowly eaten away by a corrupting fear.  Conflicting emotion ate at him until he was so lost within himself that he didn’t even notice as tears started to run down his cheek.

Abruptly Chris’s stomach lurched as the external door opened.  His hopes and fears were being answered as the bailiff walked in and with a quick glance at Chris began speaking to the holding cell guard.  He took a deep breath, trying to make the nausea settle.  It’s not going to be good. He tried to banish the cancerous thought, but it was firmly entrenched even before they opened his cell door. It was a certainty lying in his stomach like a lead weight.  It’s not going to be good.

As the holding cell door opened the guard noticed the despair in Chris’s eyes and handed him a small stack of napkins.  “Here.  Wipe your cheeks off.”  The guard looked away for a moment to give Chris a chance to compose himself.  “I know it’s scary for you right now, but don’t give up.  Me and the other guards have been watching your case on the tube and none of us think you did it.  We’re all hoping you’ll get off.”

Their eyes locked for a brief moment and Chris realized the man was being sincere.  There was truth gazing back at him from those eyes and with crystal clarity Chris realized that his life was over.  Hope… they know I’ve lost too.  It’s not just me. As he focused on centering himself; trying to retain some shred of his dignity he looked once more to the guard.

“Thank you.”  Was all he said.  There was no emotion in his voice, though, no hope.  As they walked down the hall to the courtroom the guard once again became all business, but as Chris entered the courtroom and started walking towards his attorney, he felt a slight, reassuring pat on his back from the bailiff.  He knew it should be consoling, but it only served to reinforce in his mind that this was hopeless.

It was almost as though he was just an actor who had been through this scene a dozen times prior – and nothing he could do would change the scripted outcome of this play.  As he took his seat Alan Dunwich, a man who was a surprising gift of humanity and friendship to him in these times, leaned towards him.  The man was older, possibly in his sixties with pure silver hair.  He was a large man, not necessarily fat, but definitely headed in that direction.  In many ways, Chris noted, he was truly larger than life.  “Something has happened,” Dunwich excitedly whispered to Chris.  “I don’t know what, but as soon as you left a guy came in to talk to Judge M…”

“All rise.  The honorable Judge Miller is presiding.”  The bailiff interrupted, and Chris and his lawyer stood.  Judge Miller emerged from the antechamber looking troubled, sat, and banged his gavel.  Solemnly he looked around the hushed courtroom then sighed and turned towards the Jury.

“Foreman of the Jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor,” a wormy man with a greased comb-over and a Freddy Mercury moustache stood and handed the bailiff a slip of paper.  The Bailiff in turn relayed it to the judge, who unfolded it and read it.  His eyes gave away nothing.  My life is on that paper, Chris thought.  My continued existence hangs balanced on a thread of twelve people’s interpretations of the words of two men…  A man who loves me, and a man who hates me.

Judge Miller frowned once as he looked again at the slip of paper, then handed it back to the bailiff who returned it to the foreman.  “Please announce your verdict to the court.”

The foreman of the Jury looked nervously at the watching crowd and cleared his throat “We, the Jury, find the Defendant, Dr. Christopher Nost, guilty of the charge of First Degree murder in the case of Lucille Frost.”

Chris’ mind went blank as a wave of numbness crashed into his soul.  He felt like he was still waiting for something.  He could almost see it, hurtling toward him in time, something that he could not quite grasp.  Looking deep inside himself he knew that this was not something he had done.  A susurrus swept through the watching crowd as people excitedly started to whisper their opinions to each other.  Christopher Nost looked up to the ceiling and realized that his life was now forfeit.  It took everything he had to stop himself from bawling like a child in the middle of the courtroom.  Even so, he felt a few solitary tears making their way down his cheek.

Judge Miller banged his gavel again, calming the stir of the courtroom.  Chris was not been aware of the noise until it once again fell silent.  “I am now in a position I have not before found myself in twenty years of serving as Justice of this state.  I recently was paid a visit from someone who has shown me evidence that the likelihood of Dr. Nost’s guilt is very small, indeed.  This evidence, however, remains inadmissible in court.  Therefore, this court will waive the lifetime sentence and reduce it to the minimum of ten years.  Furthermore, this term will be carried out in a minimum security prison in which Dr. Nost can continue to work with his employer, GeoTech, Inc., and will be provided with any and all equipment necessary to carry out his duties.  Also, Dr. Nost is to continue his sessions with Dr. Jorgensen in an effort to find a cure for his condition.  And one last point.  As a ward of the state all of Dr. Nost’s medical expenses will be paid by the state of Colorado.”

Judge Miller looked at Chris.  “I personally very much hope that someday you will find your memories returned to you, and I wish you the best of luck, Dr. Nost.  This court is now adjourned.”

So that’s it, then. Chris thought as he weakly nodded to the Judge in thanks.  His lawyer was saying something about an appeal but Chris wasn’t listening.  The feeling of waiting wasn’t gone.  If anything, it had intensified.  The sentencing is over, he told himself.  The waiting is done.  You got of with your life, which is a hell of a lot more than you expected.  Relax.

Got off how? Another voice within him asked.  I’m sure I didn’t do it.  I couldn’t do anything like that.  I’m going to prison for ten years for a crime I didn’t commit. The feeling of shell shock just wouldn’t go away.

Chris was marched into the high, marble hall that led to the front doors of the courthouse.  Despite the judge’s lenience, he noticed there were six guards escorting him to the waiting prison van.  Do they really think I’m that dangerous? He wondered.  Yes, he answered his own question, in their eyes I am a convicted killer.  I am a dangerous person to them.

Then he began to hear something over the empty echo of their footsteps on the checkered black and grey marble floor, and Chris saw in the light at the end of the hall (end of the tunnel he thought, grimly) more guards, facing outwards.

He heard someone shout “Here he comes!” and the footsteps were entirely drowned by the roar of the media circus outside.  Dozens of voices, all clamoring to be heard over each other.  Dunwich stepped in front of Chris to attempt to fill in as crowd control to the impending mob of media.

Funny, he thought, You’d think that in a city like Denver a simple murder wouldn’t draw the attention it has. But the world didn’t work like that.  Because of his memory condition this case had become somewhat of a sensation.  Chris grimaced as his memory flooded with the headlines he has read about himself.  No family, no memory… the mystery murderer…

One of the guards leaned in and tried to reassure him by squeezing his shoulder, “you might want to put this over your head… you know… they can attack like vultures when they smell blood.” The guard tried handing him his jacket, but Chris was lost like a deer in the headlights and didn’t hear.  He was waiting, watching this unstoppable, unnameable event hurtle towards him through time.

What’s happening to me? His head was starting to spin as he felt something beginning to awaken in him.  What is this…

Chris stepped out into the brilliant sunlight and was immediately assaulted by questions and cameras.  Why didn’t they give me something to cover my face? He wondered, and waived his hand in attempts to still the mob, the feeling of something about to happen churning his stomach as he did so.  Dunwich stepped up to the forest of microphones and the cacophony quieted.  “I would like to remind those gathered here, and the viewers at home, that Judge Miller personally offered his condolences to my client after sentencing – so convinced was he of Dr. Nost’s innocence.  Furthermore, I would like to point out…”

The waiting was over.  Potential had become real.  Chris saw a glint from behind one of the crowding news anchors—a woman wearing a red dress and matching lipstick, a permanent, plastic smile molded to her face even as she jostled those around her to catch Dunwich’s words.  This was the pending event that had been hitting a harmonic in his soul.

I can stop this. The realization hit him below his conscious mind and he felt a primal power begin to surge through his veins.  His heartbeat gained a crescendo and the rest of the world faded into silence.  His blood seemed to catch fire and pump through his body; surging and ebbing like the tide, orchestrated to the rhythm of his heart.

Duck! Chris felt his blood scream to him, and everything began to move in slow motion.  His knee buckled, and he was falling down the stairs.

At the same moment he heard a loud crack and he felt something hit him hard in the face.  And the perfect moment was lost.  Whatever had been fueling him fled, chased off by the gunshot.  The world sped back up and the cacophony of the city hit him full force, in a way harder than the bullet which had just lodged itself in his brain.  “Murderer!” someone was shouting.  “Murderer, murderer!”  a familiar voice… and all went black.

2873:  Discoveries

Garret sipped on his luke warm coffee and studied the results of the latest tests.   Garret was a handsome man in his late forties.  His body had not started to go to fat yet, but he was also not heavily built.  Close cropped grown hair, lightly streaked with silver framed his cold grey eyes – eyes which flickered back and forth across the data on the papers in his hand.  This made no sense at all.  Whatever methodology he used to produce the nano-machines it should yield the same results – a temporal circuit machine that piggybacked the body’s mitochondria.  The entire effect should produce an internal machine that linked all of the body’s cells together and give them the ability to manipulate temporal energy.  In short, time travel.  But this last batch which he had engineered with his new process was not passing the performance benchmarks.  More specifically, they weren’t jumping as they should be.  He sighed and put down the papers.  In all honesty, they wee pushing out no energy at all.

He popped in his steel grey, the same as his natural eye color, control contacts and injected a test batch into his arm.  The hypo hissed and there was a brief sting in his forearm as the injection pierced his skin.  The contact lenses tossed up a Heads Up Display and outlined the circuitry for him, creating a floating ghost image in the air which only he could see.  With a small effort he activated his primary system travelers, engineered in the traditional methods of the time, and hopped back one day into his safe window.  As he appeared in his isolation chamber, the HUD threw up a diagnostics on how the new nanos handled the jump’s energy spike.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the programming, except that they were not contributing to the jump.  The new system he had just injected should have fused seamlessly with his old system. Rerunning his isolation routines he separated out the new nanos and ran a brief energy spike through them to hop back forward to his “home” time.

And time froze.  His HUD showed time running at a ratio of four to one Terra to personal.  Garret gaped.  If this was right he was moving very, very fast.   He cautiously opened the chamber’s door and walked into his lab.  There he was, back turned to the chamber, moving at about a quarter of the speed he should be.  Garret grinned and pushed on the new system hard…  He sped up to an incredible speed.  Everything around him appeared to be frozen.  The light coming through the large bay windows of his house shifted from light blue to a more purplish color.  Garret decided to stress test the new system and leave the closed environment of the house.  His mind was moving even faster than his newfound speed as he did so.  The implications of what he had discovered were truly staggering.

Blue light shimmered around of him as he jogged down the highway, passing cars that should be going over a hundred miles an hour like they were standing still.  He turned off on a country exit, leaving the city behind for a more rustic area to perform some experiments in.  As he trotted off the road into a field a he stopped for a few moments to think things through.   That was when he made his next big discovery.  He was moving faster than the air around him.  Standing still too long depleted the supply of breathable air and forced him into motion again.  Once this discovery was dealt with, he got back to his main line of thought.

The big question running through his head was what would happen if he interacted with an inert object then reintroduced it to the environment.  Nothing for it but to try, he figured as he picked up a rock.  With a quick flick of his wrist he threw the rock then watched in amazement as about two inches from him it slowed to a stand still and very slowly started turning red.  On instinct, and with a few ideas about what might happen when he released accelerated time he stepped back about 20 feet then phased back into normal time flow.  The rock immediately exploded in midair, violently throwing shards in every direction.   Garret threw himself to the ground and escaped with only a few minor scrapes.

Thoughtfully he stood back up, reviewing the physics of what had just happened on his HUD.  Needless to say, the reaction was not fully what he had expected to happen.  But, it did make sense.  It was his own short sightedness that had nearly caused him to be badly injured.  He resolved not to make that mistake again.  Stretching his will again he phased back into “fast” time.  Picking up another rock he glanced over it with the HUD and imprinted its structure on his nano’s object orientation subsystems.  The HUD contact lenses had been one of his more inspired inventions, created one day when his wife was arguing with him abut how much paper he left lying around the house.  Time to redo the experiment with a few altered conditions.  This time around he transferred a small batch of his nano machines into the rock first, and then threw it as hard as he could.  Sure enough the nanos in the rock acted as a field extension and the rock moved like a bullet through the frozen landscape.  He pushed with his mind as hard as he could, increasing the rock’s ratio of time acceleration.  Turf rippled in slow motion as the rock sliced through the earth, burrowing a hole about thirty feet long.  Ripples in the ground continued to slowly spread like aftershocks after the rock stopped moving and Garret phased back into standard time to watch the results.

Dirt and grass exploded upwards as time snapped back to its normal passing, the after affects of the high speed stone leaving not only a burrow into the ground but somewhat of a crater.  Garret walked up to the point of impact and started digging until he was holding the rock in his hand again.  He stared thoughtfully down at it, then called the nanos back into his systems.  Filled with warring thoughts over his discovery, James Garret jogged back towards his laboratory, moving into the future about a hundred times faster than any one else on the planet.  But his eyes were on the past.

Time:  Classified

Location:  Classified

Operation:  Classified.

Wanda Garret was a damned good time traveler and she knew it.  Besides her husband being the best causality control theorist in the world and her personal trainer in causality theory – she herself was the best hopper ever tested.  She was only thirty-four, and she alone in the world was skilled enough to transfer her grid points on a three dimensional plane instead of having to utilize the fourth.  Effectively this gave her the ability to teleport herself on the world grid without hopping forward or backward through the time stream.  She also had the type of good looks, strong jaw and cheek bone yet still with a soft face, luscious amber hair that was almost brown and warm eyes, which helped her fit into any era as a good looking woman.  And good looking got you far.

So it made a certain amount of sense that she had been the one given the mission to assassinate the most important figure in history at the time he was meant to die.  If, for any reason, this mission was messed up then the paradox she had been sent back to fix could possibly shatter history.  Once again she reviewed the mission dossier.  The target somehow survived an assassination in the late nineteen hundreds, surviving through an indeterminate time afterwards and destabilizing the time stream.  For almost nine hundred years the world hand been hanging under the modern equivalent of Damocles’ Sword.  Truly, history was hanging on the brink of destroying itself in one nasty moment in time.  And finally the brass in the Time Corps had managed to isolate the incident which had created the instability in the time stream.  This was the alpha and the omega of all paradox.  It was the first, and possibly the last of the paradoxes.

But she still had doubts nagging at her concerning this assignment.  Undoing nine hundred years of history in order to undo a class six paradox seemed like it just might be more harmful to history.  Even though since the incident nothing greater than a class two paradox had occurred.  There had to be something missing from her files.  Once again she did the math on the situation, and again it returned results in the positive.  Just like the countless other times she had done the math on this since accepting the mission.  She sighed and rubbed her temples.  If only she could disclose this to her husband and have him review the results.  Deep in her gut she had a feeling that there was something about the equation that she, and everyone else, was missing.

But then again, according to the algorithms the computers were spitting out this guy was meant to die here and now.  And when it came to simplicity of form and action there was a certain beauty to it.  Mainly, it didn’t leave you a lot of choice. She settled down in her seat to watch the trail and try to piece together the reasons that the missed death of the man that created time travel was the greatest paradox in all of history.

2620:  The Fine Line Bar, Tucson Arizona.

Little chunks of wheat floated through the beer, catching rays of the evening sun shinning through the window and refracting the light through the dark amber beer.  Alexander Zarth watched the play of light with fascination.  Subtleties of the environments he was in, little details that so many people missed were always a source of amazement to him.  He sighed contentedly and took a sip of the thick beer, enjoying the chill and the thick weight of it on his tongue.  Putting the glass down he leaned back in his seat and looked at the man across the table from him.  He was a comfortable looking man.  Leaning slightly back in the booth Alex could see that underneath the blond hair and boyish features the man had piercing eyes and a lot of muscle mass.  Alex carefully lowered the beer.  Someone was watching them both from the kitchen.  He extended his senses and felt a time traveler’s signature there.  And he recognized the signature all too well.  He smiled lightly to himself and leaned back.

“So let me get this right.  Twelve commandos from two C’s up the line from me have all taken failed shots at me, and you” here he pauses to look into the eyes of the man across from him “manage to find me faster than any of them.  On top of this, you have an out of time “mission” you’d like to hire me for.  A mission which puts me back in the crossfire, by the paradox standard of those commandos out to get me, and makes me killable.  If I accept this I have to leave the safety of my own time, when they cannot kill me, and go somewhen else – which makes me a target.  Do you think I’m stupid friend?  Or is it greed that you think motivates me?”

Alex locks gazes with the man sitting across from him, a man who looks to be in his early thirties but whom Alex suspects as being much older than that.  Those boyish features that frame an innocent and friendly face are deceptive.   His eyes are what gives him away.  There is a surprising depth to them, their pure emerald seems to catch Alex in an almost hypnotic spell.  Alex is having trouble reading this man, and that in itself is a rare thing.  The man nods. “That is, looking at the smallest possible picture, correct Mr. Zarth.  It does make you ‘killable’ by their standards.  And no, I do not think you are stupid or greedy.  If I did then I would not have bothered coming here.  Frankly – you are the best there is in the time travel business.  I’ve been up and down the line from C forty-five back to C twenty and there is no one else who can do this.  Not even me. And please believe me when I tell you that I am the second best ‘dox spinner ever.  So please do not accept that compliment lightly, or think that it is flattery.  All it is for me is a statement of your resume, and why I am attempting to hire you for this task.”

Alex took another sip of his beer, finishing the glass off, then with a quick burst power switches the empty with the full glass he had been holding fifteen minutes ago.  He was thinking, and hard, about the term the man had used.  ‘dox spinner he had said.  It was a term Alex had never heard before, but which he was too familiar with regardless.  He made his decision, mainly guided by the presence of the traveler observing from the back room.  “Here is to paradox, Mr. Smith.  And the free beer it entails you.  All right, I believe you.  But why should I accept the job?  My odds of survival are low and frankly, money is not a problem for me.  And, you should know, there is another who is as good as me.  If this situation is as big as you say then this man will be someone opposed to me in all likelihood.”

Smith smiled at Alex, and there was something odd hidden in that smile.  “To be frank with you, you don’t survive the mission.  You change the objective and die in the process.  But somehow, it all ends up working.  Whatever it is you do – it works.  And I’m not good enough to figure out what exactly it is that you do.  But as to why you accept the mission, I can only suppose that it is because it is the greatest challenge you will ever face,” Alex raised his eyebrow on hearing that. “and because Mr. Zarth, as trite as it is, only you can save the world.  And your trick just now, circumventing the block I put on your ability to travel, only goes to reinforce the point to me that you are the best.  That you can do what I could not.”

With a grunt Alex raised his fresh glass of beer to his lips then set it back down without drinking it.  Thoughts were running through his head very quickly.  “Your honesty is refreshing.  So I’ll share this with you in return.  You might as well drop the block you have on me.  I’ve slipped by it three separate times already that escaped your notice fully as well as the trick you just saw.  You are just wasting your energy on blocking me.  Leave the dossier with me.”  He was gratified by the look of surprise in the other man’s eyes, and he made his final decision at that point.  “Trace my last jump and you’ll find a list of what supplies I need and when I need them dropped.  If you can’t trace the jump, find someone else for the job Mr. Smith.”

Random Thoughts: Our World

1)   The meaning of words does not always match the perception of words.   For instance:  The perception of the word philosophy.  Great thought, asking questions, trying to find the true nature of things.  Yet the meanings the word is built off..  wow…

Philo- Love
Sophis (Sophism) – Deceptive or philatious argumentation.

you do the math.
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2) When you find something you truly hate, look closely at it – for within it, you will find a reflection of something in yourself that you must learn to love.

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3) Time is an illusion.   Like a painting, Matter is the paint, energy the brush, space itself is the canvass..  and time is the way the mona lisa is ALWAYS looking RIGHT at you.

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4) People wear masks all the time..  cope.  Just learn to be thankful for the bits beneath the mask you do get to see – just as you should hope poeple are thankful for what you show them occasionally beneath your masks.

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5) Movies rot your brain.  Television rots your brain.  Age rots your brain.  Society rots your brain.  Its gonna happen, so enjoy the things you do!

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6) If you can’t beat the game, change the freaking rules.

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7) Beaurocracy is to be tolerated with patience, virue, a healthy respect, and a bulldozer once you are out of those other things.

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8) Faith is an amaing and beautifull thing – which each person should hold onto and cherish as thier own.   Religion is what happens when you mix greed for money into Faith.

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9)  Society and education are built on little lies to help us understand bigger truths.  Sometimes to learn you don’t have to study something new, but instead learn to look at the old with new eyes and thoughts.

The Jack-Off Of…

To live on in infamy…

Last night, Phillip said:

“So really, I’m a Jack-off of All Trades.”