MSTed: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis-1
M Sampo
1......2......3.......4.....5....6 {CLUNK}
[SOL]
(Mike and the bots are at the desk.)
MIKE (wearily): Hi folks, I'm Mike Nelson, and these are my buddies Tom
Servo...
TOM: (Happily): Hey-ho!
MIKE: ...Crow...
CROW (cool): 'sappnin'?
MIKE (sighing): ...and Gypsy.
GYPSY: Awwww, wassamatter, Mike, honey?
MIKE: Well, I guess I'm a little bit down. My birthday's coming up and
here I am trapped in space with no likelihood of ever getting home...
TOM: Ah! The old ennui, eh? Well, I've been holding something in reserve
for just such an occasion, and I think I can help, good buddy. (Tom zips
off stage left, then we hear him from off stage.) Uh, Mike and Gypsy could
you each take one step to the left?
MIKE: Well, sure. (He does)
GYPSY: Okay. (She does)
CROW: Uh...what about me?
TOM (from offstage): No, Crow, you stay riiiight where you are ...4 ...3
....2 ...1 ...(and a large weight with the words "10 tons" on it lands on
Crow. Crow gives a stifled scream and vanishes from view. Mike and Gypsy
look at the weight blankly for a moment...then they start to chuckle, then
guffaw, and in a moment they are laughing uproariously. Tom re-enters.)
Whaddaya think, Mike? (But Mike and Gypsy are in hysterics and Mike waves
him away. Tom turns to the camera.) The sacrifices I have to make to help
out my fellow crew mates. (Commercial sign light flashes)...Am I a saint
or what? We'll be right back. (Mike slaps the commercial sign button,
still laughing.
Cut to spaghetti ball...and into commercial)
[Commercial]
(Coming out of commercial... Crow, now completely flattened, sits on the
desk. His beak, now two flat planes, moves slightly as he talks. Mike, Tom
and Gypsy are behind the desk, Mike and Gypsy are still giggling
slightly.)
CROW (sarcastically): I'm really happy I was able to cheer you up Mike....
MIKE (wiping his eyes): Well, thanks, Crow. It made a big
difference...um... you ARE alright, aren't you?
CROW: Me? SURE! Heck, at least my eyes didn't catch fire this time...
(Deep 13 light flashes)
MIKE: Uh-oh, Dishonest John is calling....(taps button)
[Deep 13]
(Dr. F.'s face is directly in the camera, grinning hideously)
DR. F.: Nelson!! I see you've taken up one of my favorite hobbies: finding
laughter and delight in the pain and suffering of others!! Good! Good!
(Makes notation on clipboard)
[SOL]
(Crow is no longer on the table)
MIKE: Oh, Dr. Forrester, don't be silly. I'm not becoming like you. You
forget that all the robots are equipped with "Acme Fix-o-matic." Anytime
they're damaged or mutilated, it just takes one jump cut to return them to
normal, just like in cartoons! See? (Crow enters, completely repaired).
CROW: Ta-daa!!
MIKE: I'm not anything like you!
[Deep 13]
(Dr. F. is still leering into the camera)
DR. F.: Oooohh, I wouldn't count on that, Mike!! You see for the past few
hours I've been slowly flooding the Satellite of Love with my latest
creation: a colorless, odorless gas the slowly transforms you into my
favorite person...me! (Laughs wildly!)
[SOL]
(Mike now has a moustache with a white streak in it.)
MIKE: That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever...(notices the
moustache, looks baffled)...the hell?
[Deep 13]
DR. F.: It's going to take a while for you to make the full
transformation, so while you're waiting, I think I'll drop this 10-ton
weight of a posting on you...some delusional ravings about Atlantis!
Breathe deeply, Mike! (presses button)
[SOL]
(Movie sign lights flash and buzzer goes off)
MIKE, CROW & TOM: We have USENET sign!!!!!!! (and they rush off)
6....5....4....3.....2.....1......
(and they're taking their seats)
MIKE (as he's sitting down): I don't feel a thing...except this
moustache...
>Subject: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis
>From: dens...@aol.com (Density 4)
>Date: 24 Apr 1995 16:06:03 -0400
>Message-ID: <3nh0bb$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
>
> THE LOST CONTINENT
TOM: NOT ROCK CLIMBING!!!
CROW: I have a feeling that before too long we'll wish it was...
> By Aleister Crowley
>
> Ordo Templi Orientis
MIKE: Oh! Wait! I took Latin in high school! It means..."Your umbrella has
worn my frog...no...that's can't be right...
> P.O Box 2303
TOM: Ya know...Temples that don't give out their actual address are not
going to get much foot traffic...
> Berkeley, CA 94702
CROW: Well, we ARE talking Berkeley, here...
TOM: Good point. I withdraw the comment.
>
> (C) COPYRIGHT O.T.O.
MIKE: The guy from Deep Space Nine??
TOM: Mike, no, honey....
> June 21, 1985 e.v.
> Sun in Cancer
> Moon in Leo
CROW: Brain in limbo.
>
> The Lost Continent
TOM: YOU SAID THAT!
>
>
>PREFACE
>
>Last year I was chosen to succeed the venerable K-Z
TOM: KJ??
CROW AND MIKE: (GASP!!!)
> --who had it
>in his mind to die,
MIKE: Ha! That wacky nut! You never know what he'll decide to do next!
> that is, to join Them in Venus, as one of
>the Seven Heirs of Atlantis,
CROW (Minnesota lady): Oh, that's such a lovely way of saying it....
> and I have been appointed to
>declare, so far as may be found possible, the truth about that
>mysterious lost land. Of course, no more than one seventh of
>the wisdom is ever confided to one of the Seven, and the Seven
>meet in council but once in every thirty-three years.
TOM: Oh, of course.
> But its
>preservation is guaranteed by the interlocked systems of
>"dreaming true" and of "preparation of the antinomy". The
>former almost explains itself;
MIKE: ...but, not quite...
> the latter is almost
>inconceivable to normal man.
TOM (Wally Shawn): Incontheivable!!
> Its essence is to train a man to
>be anything by training him to be its opposite. At the end of
>anything, think they, it turns out to be its opposite, and that
>opposite is thus mastered without having been soiled by the
>labours of the student, and without the false impressions of
>early learning being left upon the mind.
CROW: Oh! I get it! Newt School!
>
>I myself, for example, had unknowingly been trained to record
>these observations by the life of a butterfly. All my
>impressions came clear on the soft wax of my brain; I had never
>worried because the scratch on the wax in no way resembled the
>sound it represented. In other words, I observed perfectly
>because I never knew that I was observing. So, if you pay
>sufficient attention to your heart, you will make it palpitate.
>
(M&TB stare in long silence, look at each other for a moment....then:)
TOM: AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! (CROW begins to sob
quietly; Mike buries his face in his hands.)
MIKE: This is gonna be a long, hard ride...
>I accordingly proceed to a description of the country.
CROW (sobbing): You would.
>
>Aleister Crowley
>
>
>I. OF THE PLAINS BENEATH ATLAS, AND ITS SERVILE RACE.
>
>Atlas is the true name of this archipelago--continent is an
>altogether false term, for every 'house' or mountain peak was
>cut from its fellows by natural, though often very narrow
>waterways.
MIKE: The Legendary Drainage Ditches of Atlantis...
> The African Atlas is a mere offshoot of the range.
>It was the true Atlas that supported the ancient world by its
>moral and magical strength, and hence the name of the fabled
>globe-bearer. The root is the Lemurian
CROW (cheering up): Joey the Lemurian???
> 'Tla' or 'Tlas', black,
>for reasons which will appear in due course. 'A' is the
>feminine prefix, derived from the shape of the mouth when
>uttering the sound. 'Black woman' is therefore as near a
>translation as one can give in English;
TOM: Right on, girlfriend!
> the Latin has a closer
>equivalent.
>
>The mountains are cut off, not only from each other by the
>channels of the sea, but from the plains at their feet by cliffs
MIKE: Sounds painful...
>naturally or artificially smoothed and undercut for at least
>thirty feet on every side in order to make access impossible.
>These plains had been made flat by generations of labour.
CROW: Another quality job by the International Ladies Plain-flattening
Workers Union.
> Vines
>and fruit-trees growing only on the upper slopes, they were
>devoted principally to corn, and to grass pastures
MIKE: All riiggghht! PARTY!! WOOOO!!
for the
>amphibian herds of Atlas. This corn was of a kind now unknown,
>flourishing in sea-water,
TOM: But eating it sent your blood pressure through the roof.
and the periodical flood-tides served
>the same purpose as the Nile in Egypt. Enormous floating stages
>of spongy rock--no trees of any kind grew anywhere on the plains
>so wood was unknown
CROW: They had never seen "Plan 9 from Outer Space."
> --supported the villages. These were
>inhabited by a type of man similar to the modern Caucasian race.
MIKE: Except they could dance.
>They were not permitted to use any of the food of their
>masters, neither the corn, nor the amphibians, nor the vast
>supplies of shellfish,
TOM (high voice, British accent): Nor the orangutans, nor the fruitbats...
> but were fed by what they called "bread
>from heaven", which indeed came down from the mountains, being
>the whole of their refuse of every kind.
CROW: Is he saying what I think he's saying?
MIKE & TOM: Ewwwwwwww.
> The whole population
>was put to perpetual hard labour. The young and active tended
>the amphibians, grew the corn, collected the shell-fish,
CROW: Sanitized the public phones...
>gathered the "bread from heaven" for their elders, and were
>compelled to reproduce their kind.
TOM: COMPELLED? Can we have more details on the compelling, please??
MIKE: Tom! That's kinky!
> At twenty they were
>considered strong enough for the factory, where they worked in
>gangs on a machine combining the features of our pump and
>treadmill for sixteen hours of the twentyfour.
CROW: Sounds like SOMEBODY needs to form a Atlantean Socialist Workers
party...
> This machine
>supplied Atlas with its 'ZRO' or 'power', of which I shall
>speak presently.
MIKE (singing): Workin' in a zro mine, goin' down-down-down...
> Any worker showing even temporary weakness was
>transferred to the phosphorus works, where he was sure to die
>within a few months.
TOM: Hence the need to compel people to reproduce, I suppose...
> Phosphorus was a prime necessity of Atlas;
>however, it was not used in its red or yellow forms, but in a
>third allotrope, a blue-black or rather violet-black substance,
>only known in powder finer than precipitated gold, harder than
>diamond, eleven times heavier than yellow phosphorus,
CROW: And 16 times meatier!~
> quite
>incombustible, and so shockingly poisonous that, in spite of
>every precaution, an ounce of it cost the lives (on an average)
>of some two hundred and fifty men. Of its properties I shall
>speak later.
TOM: Oh, that's okay. Really. Don't go to any trouble.
>
>The people were left in utmost slavery and ignorance by the wise
>counsel of the first of the philosophers of Atlas, who had
>written: "An empty brain is a threat to Society." He had
>consequently instituted a system of mental culture, comprising
>two parts:
>
>1. As a basis, a mass of useless disconnected facts.
>2. A superstructure of lies.
CROW: Oh, so everybody got an masters degree!
>
>Part 1 was compulsory; the people then took Part 2 without
>protest.
>
MIKE: 'Cause it has a delicious nougat center!
>The language of the plains was simple but profuse. They had few
>nouns and fewer verbs. 'To work again' (there was no word for
>'to work' simply), 'to eat again', 'to break the law' (no word
>for 'to break the law again'), 'to come from without', 'to find
>light' (i.e. to go to the phosphorus factory) were almost the
>only verbs used by adults.
TOM: Oh, and 'to boldly go."
> The young men and women had a verb-
>language yet simpler, and of degraded coarseness.
CROW: 'To be compelled to reproduce again...'
> All had,
>however, an extraordinary wealth of adjectives, most of them
>meaningless,
TOM (British accent): Splunge for me too, sir!
> as attached to no noun ideas, and a great quantity
>of abstract nouns such as 'Liberty', 'Progress', without which
>no refined inhabitant could consider a sentence complete. He
>would introduce them into a discussion on the most material
>subjects. "The immoral snub-nose", "the unprogressive teeth",
>"lascivious music", "reactionary eyebrows"--such were phrases
>familiar to all.
MIKE: So everybody talked like William F. Buckley?
> "To eat again, to sleep again, to work again,
>to find the light--that is Liberty, that is Progress" was a
>proverb common in every mouth.
CROW: That's...that's beautiful! I think I'm going to have that tattooed
on my
butt!
MIKE: Crow...
>
>The religion of the people was Protestant Christianity in all
>essentials,
TOM: Including the bake sales?
> but with an even closer dependence upon God. They
>asserted its formulae, without attaching any meaning to the
>words, in a manner both reverent and passionate.
MIKE: Um...was that just a slam against Protestants?
> Sexual life
>was entirely forbidden to the workers, a single breach implying
>relegation to the phosphorus works.
CROW: Sounds worth the risk, to me!
TOM: But what about all the reproducing???
>
>In every field was, however, an enormous tablet of rock, carved
>on one side with a representation of the three stages of life:
>the fields, the labour mill, the factory; and on the other side
>with these words: "To enter Atlas, fly." Beneath this an
>elaborate series of graphic pictures showed how to acquire the
>art of flying.
CROW: So...these Atlanteans have a kind of dark sense of humor, then, huh?
> During all the generations of Atlas, not one man
>had been known to take advantage of these instructions.
TOM (dryly): Har. Har.
>
>The principal fear of the populace was a variation of any kind
>from routine. For any such the people had one word only, though
>this word changed its annotation in different centuries.
>'Witchcraft', 'Heresy', 'Madness', 'Bad Form', 'Sex-Perversion',
>'Black Magic' were its principal shapes in the last four
>thousand years of the dominion of Atlas.
MIKE: Earlier forms were "delay of game" and "clipping."
>
>Sneezing, idleness, smiling, were regarded as premonitory.
TOM: They were rocks?
> Any
>cessation from speech, even for a moment to take breath, was
>considered highly dangerous.
CROW: Man, Shatner would really be outta luck, there!
> The wish to be alone was worse
>than all; the delinquent would be seized by his fellows, and
>either killed outright or thrust into the compound of the
>phosphorus factory, from which there was no egress.
MIKE: What about the wish not to be thrust into the phosphorus factory?!
>
>The habits of the people were incredibly disgusting. Their
>principal relaxations were art, music and the drama,
(TOM and MIKE retch.)
CROW: Jeez, that IS disgusting!! I think I'm gonna be sick!
> in which
>they could show achievement hardly inferior to that of Henry
>Arthur Jones, Pinero, Lehar, George Dance, Luke Fildes, and
>Thomas Sidney Cooper.
MIKE: Or Matt Hedsnecker.
TOM: Who?
MIKE: I was in 4th grade with him.
TOM: Oh.
> Of medicine they were happily ignorant.
>The outdoor life in that equable climate bred strong youths and
>maidens, and the first symptoms of illness in a worker was held
>to impair his efficiency and qualify him for the phosphorous
>factory. Wages were permanently high, and as there were no
>merchants even of alcohol, whose use was forbidden, every man
>saved all his earnings, and died rich.
CROW: ...in the phosphorus factory.
> At his death his savings
>went back to the community. Taxation was consequently
>unnecessary.
TOM: But, like today, it was there anyway.
> Clothes were unnecessary and unknown, and the
>'bread from heaven' was the "free gift of God". The dead were
>thrown to the amphibians. Each man built his own shelter of the
>rough stone sponge which abounded.
MIKE: I've built myself a lovely two-story brownstonesponge.
> The word 'house' was used
>only in Atlas; the servile race called its huts 'Hloklost'
>(equivalent to the English word 'home').
CROW: ...or slum...
> Discontent was
>absolutely unknown.
TOM: I can believe that!! No sex, no booze, no privacy and being flung to
your doom when you get a sniffle? It sounds great!!
> It had not been considered necessary to
>prohibit traffic with foreign countries, as the inhabitants of
>such were esteemed barbarians. Had a ship landed men, they
>would have been murdered to a man, supposing that Atlas had
>permitted any approach to its shores. That it hindered such,
>and by infallible means, was due to other considerations, whose
>nature will form the subject of a subsequent chapter.
>
MIKE: So it WAS considered necessary to prohibit traffic with foreign
countries! Hah!
TOM: Hah! You've run rings round him logically!
>This then is the nature of the plains beneath Atlas, and the
>character of the servile race.
>
CROW: A real nice place to bring your kids up...and then fling them into
the phosphorus factory.
>
>II. OF THE RACE OF ATLAS
TOM: This should be rich.
>
>In the city or 'house' which was formed from the crest of every
>mountain, dwelt a race not greatly superior in height to our
>own, but of vaster frame. The bulk and strength of the bear is
>not inappropriate as a simile for the lower classes; the higher
>had the enormous chest and shoulders and the lean haunches of
>the lion.
MIKE: So, we're talkin' big, ugly fat guys here, huh?
> This strength gave an infallible beauty, made
>monstrous by their most inexorable law, that every child who
>developed no special feature in the first seven years should be
>sacrificed to the Gods. This special feature might be a nose of
>prodigious size, hands and wrists of gigantic strength, a
>gorilla jaw, an elephant ear--or any of these might entitle its
>owner to life: for in all such variations from the normal they
>perceived the possibility of a development of the race.
CROW: What about...BIG KNEES!!!!
(Tom hums the haunting Torgo theme)
> Men and
>women were hairy as the ourang-outang and all were closely
>shaven from head to foot.
TOM: Maybe they WERE bears!
> It had been found that this practice
>developed tactile sensibility. It was also done in reverence to
>the 'Living Atla', of which more in its place.
MIKE: ...will have a verb.
>
>The lower class were few in number. Its function was to
>superintend the servile race, to bring the food of the children
>to the banqueting-hall, to remove the same, to attend to the
>disposition of the 'light-screens', to ensure the continuance of
>the race by the begetting, bearing and nourishing of the
>children.
TOM: Um...hold on a second...if the lower class did all the begetting, why
are they so few in number??
>
>The priestly class was concerned with the further preparation of
>the Zro supplied by the labour-mills, and its impregnation with
>phosphorus. This class had much leisure for 'work', a subject
>to be explained later.
CROW: Leisure for work...and day for night....
>
>The High Priests and High Priestesses were restricted in number
>to eleven times thirty-three in any one 'house'. To them were
>entrusted the final secrets of Atlas, and to them was confided
>the conduct of the experiments in which every will was bound up.
TOM: Something about shooting a guy into space?
>
>The colour of the Atlanteans was very various,
MIKE: Keri is so very various...
> though the hair
>was invariably of a fiery chestnut
CROW: MMMM! Delicious!
TOM (singing): Jack Frost nipping at your nose...
> with bluish reflections.
MIKE: Huh?
> One
>might see women whiter than Aphrodite, others tawny as
>Cleopatra, others yellow as Tu-Chi, others of a strange, subtle
>blue like the tattooed faces of Chin women, others again red as
>copper.
CROW: If you say so, honey. (Whispering) Get the net!
TOM (singing): If you knew Tu-Chi like I knew Tu-Chi....
> Green was however a prohibited hue for women,
MIKE (singing): It's not easy being green...
> and red
>was not liked in men. Violet was rare, but highly prized, and
>children born of that colour were specially reared by the
>High Priestesses.
>
CROW: Mike, he's just makin' this stuff up, isn't he?
MIKE: You're just NOW figuring this out, Crow?
>However, in one part of the body all the women were perfectly
>black with a blackness no negro can equal;
TOM: So, what part?
> from this
>circumstance comes the name Atlas. It is absurdly attributed by
>some authors to the deposit of excess of phosphorus in the Zro.
TOM: But, what part was it?
>I need only point out that the mark existed long before the
>discovery of black phosphorus.
TOM: WHAT PART??
> It is evidently a racial stigma.
>It was the birth of a girl child without this mark which raised
>her mother to the rank of goddess, and ended the terrestrial
>adventure of the Atlanteans, as will presently appear.
>
>Of the ethics of this people little need be said.
TOM: HE NEVER SAID WHAT PART!!!
MIKE: Easy, Tom.
> Their word
>for 'right' is 'phph' made by blowing with the jaw drawn sharply
>across from left to right, thus meaning 'a spiral life contrary
>to the course of the sun'.
CROW: Today we call it a "raspberry" and the meaning is "get bent, you
dickweed."
> We may assume it as 'contrary'.
>"Whatever is, is wrong" seems to have been their first principle.
>Legs were 'wrong' because they only carry you five miles in
>the hour: let us refuse to walk; let us ride horseback. So the
>horse is 'wrong' compared to the train and the motor-car; and
>these are 'wrong' to the aeroplane.
TOM (British): Pardon me, mater, I'm going to fly my aeroplane!!
CROW: That's the third Monty Python reference you've made in this segment,
Tom...
TOM: Sorry, I was listening to my "Live at Drury Lane" CD today.
> If speed had been the
>Atlantean's object, he would have thought aeroplanes 'wrong' and
>all else too, so long as the speed of light was not surpassed by
>him.
MIKE: Is ANYBODY following this?
TOM: Nnnnope!
CROW: Not a word...
>
>Curious survivals of these laws are found in the Jewish
>transcript of the Egyptian code, which they, being a slave race,
>interpreted in the reverse manner.
>
>"Thou shalt not make any graven image." Every male child on
>attaining manhood, had a graven image given him to worship, a
>miracle-working image, whose principle exploits he would tattoo
>upon it.
>
CROW: So the graven image would be, like, a Farrah Fawcett poster?
>"Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy." The Atlantean kept
>one day in seven for all purposes unconnected with his principle
>task.
>
TOM: Slot-car racing!
>"Thou shalt not commit adultery." Though the Atlanteans married,
>intercourse with the wife was the only act forbidden.
MIKE: And thus, Rodney Dangerfield was born...
>
>"Honour thy father and thy mother." On the contrary, they
>worshipped their children, as if to say: "This is the God whom I
>have made in my own likeness."
CROW: Honey, "god" just crapped in his diapers again!
>
>Similarly, there is one exception and one only to the rule of
>silence. It is the utterance of the 'Name' which it is death to
>pronounce. This word was constantly in their mouths; it is
>'Zcrra', a sort of venomous throat-gargling.
TOM (Roy Orbison): Mercy! Zcrrra!!!
> Hence, possibly
>the Gaelic 'Scurr' 'speak', English 'Scaur' or 'Scar' in
>Yorkshire and the Pennines. 'Zcrra' is also the name of the
>'High House', and of the graven image referred to above.
>
>Other traces may be found in folklore; some mere
>superstitions. Thus the correct number for a banquet was
>thirteen, because if there were only one more sign in the
>Zodiac, the year would be a month longer, and one would have
>more time 'for work'.
CROW (exasperated): I wanna smack this post so hard...
> This is probably a debased Egyptian
>notion. Atlanteans knew better than anyone that the Zodiac is
>only an arbitrary division. Still it may be laid down that the
>impossible never daunted Atlas. If one said, "Two and two make
>Four" his thought would be "Yes, damn it!"
>
TOM: And if I said this was a moronic post, you all would think...?
CROW & MIKE: YES, DAMN IT!!
>I now explain the language of Atlas. The third and greatest of
>their philosophers
CROW: ...Bob Keeshan...
> saw that speech had wrought more harm than
>good, and he consequently instituted a peculiar rite. Two men
>were chosen by lot to preserve the language,
MIKE: Unfortunately they were Harpo Marx and Marcel Marceau.
> which, by the way,
>consisted of monosyllables only, two hundred and fourteen in
>number, to each of which was attached a diacritical gesture,
>usually ideographic.
TOM: If my arms worked, I'd have a diacritical gesture for ya!
>Thus 'wrong' is given as 'phph' moving the jaw from right to
>left. Wiping the brown
CROW: Wiping the brown???
MIKE: Crow, let's just let it die right there. I don't want a repeat of
the poopie suit incident...
> with 'phph' means 'hot', hollowing the
>hands over the mouth 'fire', striking the throat 'to die;' so
>that each 'radicle' may have hundreds of gesture-derivatives.
MIKE (surfer): Radicle, dude!
>Grammar, by the way, hardly existed, the quick apprehension of
>the Atlanteans rendering it unnecessary.
CROW (cop): All right, you Atlantean, up against the car and spread 'em!
TOM: COPS! Filmed on location in Atlas.
>These two men then departed to a cavern on the side of the
>mountain just above the cliff, and there for a year they
>remained, speaking the language and carving it symbolically upon
>the rock.
MIKE: Carving it symbolically? You mean they just pretended to carve it?
> At the end of the year they returned; the elder is
>sacrificed and the younger returns with a volunteer, usually one
>who wishes to expiate a fault, and teaches him the language.
CROW: And then makes a quick getaway so as not to be sacrificed like the
LAST
idiot! Man, this place is strict!
>During his visit he observes whether any new thing needs a name,
TOM: Such as "information superhighway" or "floam"
>and if so he invents it, and adds it to the language. This
>process continued to the end. The rest of the people abandoned
>altogether the use of speech,
MIKE: Putting a serious crimp in the phone sex business...
> only a few years' practice
>enabling them to dispense with the radicle. They then sought to
>do without gesture, and in eight generations the difficulty was
>conquered, and telepathy established.
CROW: And no one got a moment's peace after that.
> Research then devoted
>itself to the task of doing without thought; this will be
>discussed in detail in the proper place.
TOM: Canada.
> There was also a
>'listener', three men who took turns to sit upon the highest
>peak, above the 'light-screens', and whose duty it was to
MIKE: ...get a great tan.
> give
>the alarm if any noise disturbed Atlas. On their report that
>High Priest charged with active governorship would take steps to
>ascertain and destroy the cause.
TOM: Someone burped in sector 8-B! After him!
To be continued
Sampo
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I've undergone a complex personal evolution wherein painful confusion has
given way to what I like to think of as some degree of wisdom, culminating
in my current Zarathustrian sense of self. Is that it?
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