8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 21, September 2015, by Brenton, McClure, Perron, Russell, and Russell

[Andrew Perron]

On 9/6/2015 10:07 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
<snip>
> "Detour" by Adrian McClure
> In which the esteemed Mr. McClure makes his Eightfold debut.

WOO

> "Docrates in Diamonds,
>   Starring Docrates the Mighty Supragato and
>   Extra-Special Agent Steve Shooter,
>   With a Special Appearance by
>   FBI Forensics Specialist Mandi Li"
>   Part 1 of 2, by Mary Russell
> Mary, we've got to talk about your titles.

AND HOW RAD THEY ARE.

> BUT FIRST, A NOTE FROM YE OLDE EDITOR
> We are, above all things, hobbyists, writing this mighty medley of
> titanic tiny tales only for your enjoyment and for ours. As is ever
> the case, Real Life sometimes intrudes on these proceedings, and in
> this case, delayed the esteemed Mr. Stokes from presenting us with a
> new installment in his engaging serial, "Mistress of Pages". We hope
> to have another installment next month. The Editor would like to take
> this moment to express his extreme gratitude toward his beloved
> spouse, who filled in at the last possible moment.

Indeed! Thank you, Mary, and all of the hugs to Colin (which he knows about 
already, but).

> Juliet Eisner was stuck on a long dead stretch of the Greyhound trip
> she was taking to move in with her boyfriend. It was almost midnight,
> and there were still many hours left to go. She was crammed into a
> window seat and hadn't been able to go to the bathroom in far too
> long, as she was too timid to try and wake the snoring man beside her.
> She envied him his sleep.

Ah, man, I know the feeling. @.@

> It was
> strange going on long trips, when you felt neither awake nor asleep,
> neither dead nor alive. Everything felt fuzzy, as if she weren't quite
> inhabiting her own body. It might have been an interesting experience
> if it weren't so awful.

The feeling of being stretched, of inhabiting the whole landscape, of vague 
disassociation? Honestly I really enjoy it - when I'm driving a car. `-`;

(Though man, I want to go in a sleeper car on a train someday.)

> "And you?" Her smile was friendly now, her blue
> eyes bright and inquisitive.
>    "To Cincinnati. To, uh, visit my boyfriend."
>    "I see. You're spoken for? Ah well." She laughed-- boisterous, but
> not unpleasant. Juliet might have been interested, she realized, in
> another life. But she knew where she was going... didn't she?

Hmmmmm. I might've made a bit more explicit of a link between her not knowing 
where she was going in life and being drawn onto this bus - but on the other 
hand, I know well the pain of running out of room. @.@ (See my comments on my story.

>    The headline read "Julie Ann Justice Controversy--Can She Be
> Trusted?" and the photograph showed a brightly-smiling,
> improbably-costumed woman. The snatches of the story she could read
> mentioned superheroes, magical battles, alien invasions. But those
> things weren't real...
>    Not, at least, in the world she'd left behind.

Oooooooh. o.o Fascinating... this is kind of like the opposite of that one issue 
of Nonfiction, isn't it?

> ----------------------------------------------------
> ------------------BEYOND THE GATE-------------------
> ----------------------------------------------------
> -----------Copyright 2015 Andrew Perron-------------
> ----------------------------------------------------

Honestly, I think I might've bitten off more than I could chew with this - the 
main idea may well have been too much to try and get in a one-page story. ^^;

> He'd have his neighbors arrested or killed
> and then take their lands and women. Once he even killed a couple
> people that were guests in his home. This was breaking ancient, sacred
> protections. Luckily, we live in more civilized times and don't have
> to worry none about that.

Heh heh heh.

> Second, a man who switches sides is never
> trusted, because switching sides is after all exactly what he does.
> Double-dealers done get double-dealt."

Man, I hate that idea so much. (Not that it doesn't fit here.)

>     "This world is dying," announced Joan.
>     Deidre took this in, then asked the practical question. "All right
> then, can you clarify that? You say we have a problem. So are we
> talking about conventional weapons research developing some sort of
> virulent poison that has somehow been released into the environment?
> Are we talking about the camps having unleashed some sort of mass
> death curse?" The latter was disturbingly plausible, going by a short
> article about the zombie hordes off in the East that Deidre had
> discovered tucked away on page eight of a newspaper.
>     "This place is literally falling apart at the atomic level, is what
> I mean," explained the angel. Joan steepled her hands thoughtfully and
> looked around the airship's compartment. There wasn't anyone sitting
> nearby, and in any case the two of them were still (somewhat)
> protected by the don't-notice-me effect. She continued, "After all the
> speculation about feral dreams or embodied fairy tales, I wanted to
> take some time to have a better look at the way these ideas were
> interacting with the world. It occurred to me that this might not be a
> story as such, but a case of independently operating meme complexes."
> Then she added, "You recall the painting."
>     The painting by Adolf Hitler that has started this quest. The
> painting that should not exist. And at least in one sense, did not
> exist. Not made of atomic matter, it was an idea given form and
> substance. Joan's statement hadn't really been a question, but Deidre
> nodded anyway.
>     "So, here's the thing," said Joan. "I haven't been trained in the
> specialist fields of the memesmiths, so I can't be absolutely sure
> about  this. On the other hand, the work that Heaven's memesmiths do
> is so important in countering the selfish ideas being promoted by Hell
> that some of their discoveries filter out into the rest of Heaven, and
> you can't help to pick up a few tricks here and there. In any case,
> I'm thinking that the painting isn't a one-off instance of someone
> creating a touch-stone of a particular worldview and then sending it
> off to make trouble elsewhere. From what I've been seeing of this
> world, I believe it's all been primed as an example of a Nazi
> archetype."
>     Deidre said, "Let's get the obvious out of the way. Are you sure it
> isn't a case of the powers-that-be in this place trying to tighten up
> their control by arranging for everyone to only be able to think in
> terms of the Nazi worldview, and just screwing up badly?"
>     Joan shook her head. "No. I said this world is dying, and I meant
> it. In fact, I'd say it's being murdered. It's being dissolved. Look
> at it this way.  My ability to discern the mimetic stuff, that's
> actually an extension of my natural celestial ability to detect good
> and evil. It took a while for the memesmiths to realise we could
> extrapolate from virtue and sin to more general ideas and beliefs, but
> once an angel knows that it's possible it only takes practice and
> concentration. Properly understanding what we see is another matter;
> it depends on the complexity of the idea, and mortals can be
> annoyingly complex."
>     "Ah!" went Deidre, snapping her fingers in realisation. "That's why
> you were able to so quickly recognise the painting for what it was
> when we first met. You could perceive it with the wrong set of
> senses."
>     "Of course. Even embodied as an object, it was still a physical
> idea rather than conventional matter. But in any case, the reverse is
> true too," Joan emphasised. "Without specialised equipment we can't
> properly study purely physical substances any more than you could. So
> when I was assigned to investigate a world with anomalous mimetic
> shenanigans going on, I requisitioned this," and here Joan tapped a
> ring with a small, discrete gemstone set in the band. "Now that I've
> taken the time for a good hard look at the substance of this place, I
> found that it's on the verge of dissipating entirely. I'm honestly not
> sure what's holding it together. And there seems to be collateral
> damage as well. Are you familiar with the Astral Record?"
>     "Sure. Holistic record of everything that happens on the material
> plane," answered Deidre. "Very popular with Western occult groups in
> the late 19th century. Sometimes gets confused with the notion of a
> higher plane of existence that the material world derives from, but
> that gets the causality back the front. Why, is it falling apart too?"
>     "It's incredibly fuzzy and faded," Joan replied. "I wanted to see
> whether this place had a past history, basically to double-check that
> it wasn't some sort of alternate unreality pocket dimension that
> popped into existence only a little while ago, or a dreamscape that
> had somehow taken on physical form to masquerade as a real world. It's
> not. The Astral Record is there. It shows this place is as old as your
> world, but it's faded and incredibly hard to access.
>     "Then, finally, there's the evil."
>     "The evil," Deidre repeated.
>     "That miasma of evil that we can feel in the atmosphere isn't
> simply the byproduct of the massive use of human sacrifice to generate
> magical power. Even in your world there are ways that acts of
> incredible evil can saturate themselves into an area. But that's not
> the case here. Whoever ingrained the Nazi mindset into the entire
> world deliberately ingrained the atmosphere of evil at the same time,
> using the same method. This damage was deliberate, and done with
> malicious intent."

Hmmmmmmmm. I feel, pacing-wise, like I should get a new realization at the end 
of this page, but I haven't gotten one. It started with one, but rather than 
explore the implications of it, it delved into the causes - I think it probably 
should have ended with that.

> Mind you, it wasn't such a treat when the company tried to
> sue you for damages to a building which didn't always stay standing
> once a super bad guy appeared, but why ask him in the first place when
> they already knew there was a good chance a super bad guy would show
> up and wreak havoc upon the shoppers and the general vicinity, i.e.,
> the building. Also he was a cat, why would you sue a cat.

Both excellent points.

> Not that he
> knows a whole lot more now, but back then he didn't even know what
> sports meant, and now he knows that if you bat a ball out of the park
> the crowd will love you, just don't do it in a football stadium. (He
> still has a hard time telling them apart.)

^.^ Too cute.

> He also was somewhat confused about
> tigers playing baseball, thinking, quite excitedly at that, that he
> would see real tigers batting and pitching and running around the
> diamond-shaped lot. They could be friends.

Awwwwww!

> Steve waved at the
> extra-special-person in his life, F.B.I. forensic scientist Mandi Li
> sitting behind home plate; she was rumored in the tabloids to be Doc's
> favorite tummy scratcher, but don't tell Doc's person Julie Ann
> Justice. She'll be very upset!

Awwwwwwwwww! *falls over from acute cute shock*

>     Doc swung his mighty tail, hitting the ball and causing a major
> sonic boom! The ball headed straight for the bleachers, for a section
> that was reserved for widows and orphans! Oh no!
>     "Doc!" shouted Steve. "What have you done?!"

Amazing. XD

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, shockingu!