Fantasy! Fiction! Whatever! In our time they merge.

Sunday March 29^th 2009: Okay, I haven’t forgotten you, but this week has been rather tiresome. I have done a lot and yet accomplished not so much. One of those weeks I would say and I’m not going to bore you with that. So I took the opportunity doing some more writing when Marianne was asleep and in my mind I returned back to Charlottesville again and Shelly’s and my small adventures there.

…Curly was sitting at the bar turned to the left talking to a guy, whom I only could view from the back. There was no natural space for Shelly to approach Curly other than having this guy in-between, so she went there approaching them both. Not quite though, first Shelly started to talk to the guy. The noise in the bar with everyone chatting made it impossible for me to hear a word that was said, but gizmo reacted as Shelly made contact and changed that red blinking “Connected” text in Curly White’s window to fixed green now saying “Sorting”. It got more and more obvious that Shelly was trespassing and Curly showed her dislike by looking away now and then like she’s not interested in continuing this conversation, but that guy, still showing his back at me, continued chatting with Shelly.

Gizmo was obviously sorting something and I had no idea what it was, but there was something going on and I could tell by one of the menu key symbols changing all the time. After a while I could recognize a sort of pattern in the symbol changing and it looked like gizmo was counting something as in decades with units and tens repeating. If it was counting up or down, I couldn’t say. But this was not an ordinary decade system, it seemed to be many more digits involved here than just our ten digits zero to nine. The symbol was like a mix of various lines where one line could change from thin to thick, long to short and also in both orientation and color. There was no direct order from one end to another in which lines changed, but in symbol appearance it was. During this counting process the symbol sort of repeatedly got back to its original pattern, with only one or two lines slightly modified making the symbol change as if it was moving in one or another direction. The next unit changing made the symbol degenerate again. So during this counting process the symbol rebuilt itself and sequently changed in character sort of decade-wise.

I was fascinated by this telling and the symbol changing all the time and I almost forgot about Shelly, still standing there at the bar chatting. Curly seemed as if she totally had lost interest in the conversation and was more looking around like hoping Shelly would go away leaving her and her guy friend alone, but Shelly did not and at one point the symbol stopped telling as if locked up to something. The gizmo display started to develop a red thin line attached to Shelly and the other three at the Curly end of the thicker red line triangle connecting her, Face and Tophead and yet another small window opened aiming at Shelly. There was no name set like in the other three windows representing Curly White, Face Wrinkle and Tophead Beard. Instead it was spelled out “De-lining” like a sort of place holder or title of some kind and at the same time another of gizmo’s display key symbols started up a search process in the same way as the previous key symbol had done.

I didn’t like this; I didn’t like this at all. Curly now looked very impatient and moved away from her place at the bar. Face Wrinkle looked up from his place where he sat at a table near by me and the wrinkles in his forehead got deeper and deeper. Tophead Beard changed position to the other side of the bar near the exit and started to talk to people there. I tried to call Shelly back, but it was too noisy. I tried to press Shelly’s window on gizmo’s display like trying to rub it away. It didn’t go away, but somehow I awoke Shelly’s attention, making her come back to me.

“Look Shelly, I can’t stop this thing. It’s doing something and now with you connected by that red thin-line”, I whispered rather upset, holding gizmo up so Shelly could see for herself.

“What’s that De-lining word; I’ve never heard of that before?”

Shelly snatched the gizmo dude from me and pressed the symbol that was counting. Now for the first time gizmo reacted like on some sort of command from its master. Somehow Shelly’s connection with the three others seemed to make a difference. Gizmo opened up a new menu with the title “De-Lining” in bold text on top and below a scrolling list adding new lines all the time showed up. The list was adding lines at the same rate as the menu key symbol was counting. The line text was understandable in the sense that it was ordinary letters mixed with numbers, dots, and hyphens and such. Shelly handed gizmo over to me again.

“Now what is this then?” she asked.

At first I didn’t understand a thing and then suddenly it struck me as lightning.

“Oh God, it’s coordinates Shelly. Gizmo is listing de-lining coordinates opening something up.”

“What the heck do you mean opening up, opening up what? What are you talking about Li?”

“I don’t know yet.” I answered looking around the bar as in desperation.

Something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong and I felt it coming. Curly White, Face Wrinkle and Tophead Beard looked confused and now all three of them were moving around in the bar like for no reason at all.

“Shit Shelly I know, now I know what it is. You have ripped the balance of the room. The lining is the interior of this room and it’s dissolving. The bar is opening up like its bits and pieces are falling apart. God knows what’s out there, outside this in time and space outlined room?”

“What are you talking about Li? I have done nothing, I didn’t even talk to Curly, I only talked to that guy sitting in-between.”

“That’s not it Shelly, you changed the balance in the room, this bar I mean. That red thin thread-like line connecting you with those other three is not a new red line appearing. You have ripped it off like a fiber in a rope. Curly, Face and Tophead have lost one of their many connections and they are trying to rebalance keeping the room intact”

“You are getting complicated again Li, what do you mean?”

“I mean Curly, Face and Tophead are the room, they are the ones making this space, the room or the bar if you like, exists as we see and experience it now at present time. We have to re-line the bar, otherwise it may fall apart. We have to make this “De-lining list” delete its coordinates instead of adding more before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what? You are losing me here Li” Shelly said looking suspiciously back at me.

“I don’t know, something may enter or depart depending on coordinate direction and it can be anything from or to anywhere and those directions includes anytime too.”

“What do you mean? This bar has only four walls a ceiling and a floor and one exit, right? And time, what’s about that anytime you said. Anytime what?”

“No, you don’t understand Shelly, there are many more dimensions in a room than you can see here and you can exit and enter anywhere like through a lining, it’s like a rip in the room opening up a passage to another dimension, and time is about past and future, you can pass through time too. Mentally, like our souls, we exist in so many more ways than just three dimensional as in this bar as we see it now, and time is not just time in the sense of a clock ticking. Time is sequence; a thing happening consists of many bits and pieces lined up in a specific order timed to fit. Time is also about delay and acceleration so there can be a gap in-between the same moment. Nothing is static Shelly, there is no one single fixed point from where everything originates. We need to do something about this “De-lining list” and we need to do it fast before it’s too late.”

“Okay, I don’t understand a thing, but I’ll fix it”, Shelly said and was about to leave our table for yet another confrontation with Curly or any of the others, Face or Tophead, if they would happen to come in her way.

“No, no. for God sake don’t go, you will only make things worse.”

Shelly turned back towards our table looking first curiously at me and then at her gizmo dude laying there at the table still adding de-lining coordinates. Shelly picked gizmo up and in a demonstrative gesture she pressed a key.

“Wait, wait” I tried to whispered out loud, trying to stop her.

But I was too late; it was like beams of energy were entering the room through its lining, like if strips, skirting-boards, and all the trim were being ripped off unsealing the room and the bar now flooded in light coming from everywhere…

Yawn, Yawn… good grief I’m tired, I have to go to bed before time or some reviewer rips me of my chair. I hope you don’t mind me doing so. Tomorrow is another day and I wonder what will happen then?