MiSTing: Atlantis: 4-D [1/2]
Chris Mayfield
Chris Mayfield (camf...@iastate.edu)
[opening antics]
[SOL. Crow and Tom are at the desk arguing]
Crow: Andrew Lloyd Webber has single-handedly helped sustain modern
musical theatre.
Tom: ALW is a hack. His shows are all cookie cutter spectacles without
a trace of talent. Stephen Sondheim, on the other hand, is a true
composer, with a solid grasp of music theory.
Crow: Come on. Sondheim's music sounds like screaming cats. He doesn't
have an ounce of ALW's lyrical talent.
[Mike's head pops up in front of Cambot]
Mike: Hi there. This is me, Mike Nelson, trapped up in space. I decided to
program the Bots into talking about one of my favorite subjects: musical
theatre! [walks up to desk] Hey, guys, I just got this new Cole Porter CD...
Tom: That's nice. Now Sondheim does both lyrics and music. What do you
have to say to that, Webberhead?
Crow: That's *Lloyd* Webber, and he does his own orchestrations. Or isn't
Sondheim capable of doing that himself?
Mike: You see, it's got stuff from Anything Goes, and Kiss Me, Kate...
Tom: ALW is a trollish tycoon who is more interested in money than
music.
Crow: Brave words coming from someone who hasn't had a financial
success since 1961!
Mike: And there's even some stuff from Out of this World...
Tom: [hotly] Well, I've just got one thing to say.
Crow: What?
Tom: JEEVES!!
Crow: You-you bastard!
[Tom and Crow lunge at each other, sandwiching Mike. They all fall down.]
[commercials]
[Back on the SOL. Mike has just finished deprogramming the Bots.]
Tom: Good one, Nelson. Have any more brilliant ideas?
Mike: Sorry. I didn't think it would be such an explosive subject. I just
wanted to talk about Fifty Million Frenchmen. Oh--Frank Loesser is
calling. [hits light]
[Deep 13. Dr. Forrester is sitting at a table in his pajamas. There's a bowl
and box of cereal in front of him. He is holding a spoon about halfway to his
mouth.]
Dr. F: [Nothing, just sits there with the spoon suspended near his mouth.]
[SOL]
Mike: Uh, sir?
[Deep 13. Dr. Forrester jumps.]
Dr. F: Aaah! Oh, Nelson. Just eating a nutritious breakfast of Sugar
Crusted Choco-Bombs with marshmallows. I suppose you want this
week's experiment. [Picks up disk and stares at it. And stares at it.]
[SOL]
Tom: Actually no.
Mike: Uh, oh. It looks like someone's got the early morning stares. Come
in, Dr. Forrester.
[Deep 13. Forrester jumps again.]
Dr. F: Huh? Oh, right. Um, it's something from alt.alien.visitors. Enjoy.
[Hits the button. Stares at the button he's pressing. And stares.]
[SOL. Panic.]
All: We've got usenet sign!!
[6...5...4...3...2...1...]
>Subject: 4-D :: Who You Were In Atlantis, I
>Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 02:18:08 GMT
>From: Mark Hammons <m-h...@vm1.spcs.umn.edu>
>Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Crow: It's sad when these things happen in your neighborhood.
>Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
>
>One of the great things about many people who reject reincarnation is
Mike: That they come back as dung beetles.
>their spurious argument that everyone who remembers a past life says
>they were "Cleopatra" or "Marie Antoinette" or "Napoleon."
Crow: Or Shirly McLaine.
>
Rather than
>address the question of whether reincarnation per se is possible, these
>people take the time-honored tack of finding a
Tom: Really good point that disproves everything I'm asserting.
>
defenseless scapegoat,
>usually the mentally disturbed, to distract and detract from the issue.
>Guilt by association, at a drive-thru psyop near you.
Mike: Yeah, I'll have the Double Angst burger, some Enmity fries, and a
Shame-rock shake.
Tom: [drive-thru] That will be $5.34. Pull ahead to window 2.
>
The "truth," of
>course, is that we--meaning you, me, and every other human being who
>ever lived, were all these people.
Crow: In other words, we're all loonies.
> That a person suffering
confusion and
>mental disorientation would
Tom: Write this post.
> obsess on a given historical
personality only
>shows that they were exposed to
Mike: Kryptonite.
Tom: Gamma radiation.
Crow: Zima *and* Mentos.
Mike and Tom: [gasp in horror]
> the cultural preoccupation
which keeps
>those images active in the mind. The notion of individual, separate
>inherent existence, in short the near and dear trademark of objectivism,
Crow: Free Will is a registered trademark of Objectivism, Inc.
>materialism, and scientism, is the most lasting influence of upon
>humanity of those Atlantean badboys/girls),
All: [singing] Bad boys, bad boys. Whatcha gonna do when they come for
you. . .
Tom: To put you a padded cell.
> whom
Edgar Cayce called the
>Children of Belial.
>
>The simple reality is much easier to see, but has always been vastly less
>politically servicable to Those Who Would Rule.
Tom: Do they work for Objectivism, Inc?
Mike: No, I think they're with Dictators R Us.
>
Thus, ever since we were
>able to think for ourselves, there have been those whose self-interest
>has meant administering doses
Tom: Small Doses.
Mike: Exit 57.
Crow: Musical Shorts.
Tom: The News Hole.
Mike: The Vacant Lot.
All: Think about it, won't you?
> of what is most convenient for
them to
>have us think. Along with a lot of other bad habits that have--er, pardon
>me--
Crow: I'm reincarnating some of them beans I had for lunch.
> reincarnated in one culture after another, we did not invent this
>control mechanism. In terms of social heirarchy, everything we know we
>learned from the Atlanteans. We were there watching them.
Mike: Glancing in their window, watching them slowly removing their silk
nightie, letting it--
Tom: Nelson! Get a hold on yourself!
>
>Earlier, I noted that "atl" is a linguistic survival from an ancient time. It
>is probably the oldest single linguism.
Crow: I thought that was prostit--oh, linguism.
> At the risk of
digressing for a
>moment, the Atlanteans did not speak verbally until much later in the
>game for them.
Mike: It's third and thirteen with four minutes left--and what's this? It
appears the Atlanteans have developed some sort of verbal language! I
don't believe this! It's anyone's game now!
> They communicated in earliest times by direct
percepts;
>what you got was what you were.
All: Huh?
> As they continued to
"devolve" (from
>our perspective), they lost the ability to create by thought and what once
>was substance became
Mike: Network programming.
> a transmission of imagery. They were true
and
>full telepaths, with every psi-ability we can imagine
Tom: Telepathically communicate with squirrels.
Crow: Pyrokinetically ignite toupees.
Mike: Transcendental taste.
>
--and some we
>cannot conceive; we still don't have the amp rating for it.
Tom: Ours only go up to ten.
>
Their
>devolution, however, was uneven. Some kept fairly pure
Mike: Being Atlantean means being "ethnically clean."
>
and "talked
>amongst themselves", while others besotted with physical thrill, had sex
>with their serving animals:
All: Ewwwww!
> us ("the daughters of men").
"Atl," which was
>originally unspoken and without vowels, in this English linear symbol
>system might be rendered "TL."
Crow: Or "BS."
> Our remote ancestors, in part
their
>progeny, picked this up, and aspirated it, adding the "ah" sound. In the
>final analysis, the best translation of "atl" is "god born," although it
>started out as action, a verb; "being made by/of godness"
Tom: It's God-roasted.
>
is a better if
>bulkier rendering (the linguistic relationship of "goodness" is obvious).
>
>The Atlanteans were responsible for giving us language, for example, as
>well as social attitudes. We were very much the wannabes of Atlantis, a
>lot like the imitative
Crow: Iotians.
> nineteenth century Americans who sucked up to
the
>European nobility. This is no accident
Tom: This was no boating accident!
> of historical
comparison, either.
>The Atlanteans had blue skin.
Crow: Aaaaaooooooogaaaaah! Aaaaaooooooogaaaaah!
Tom: The Non-Sequitor Meter is off the scale!
> The truer the descent of the
blood line
>from the Origin Time, the bluer the skin.
Mike: Did ancient Smurfs create the human race? Read the book.
> The concept of
nobility was
>absorbed hook, line, and sinker by the human onlookers, and the notion of
>"blue blood" nobility is a psychological convention
Crow: Welcome to MentalCon 95. The DSM IV signing will be the the
Ambassadors Room. Today's keynote speakers are Charlie Manson and the
Creepy Guy.
Mike: [shudders] That's not funny!
>
carried forward
>through many a twist and turn to survive surprisingly direct and intact.
Mike: By the pricking of my thumbs something dorky this way comes.
>The old belief that a royal could heal with a touch is also from this time.
>The Atlanteans could.
>
>When the earliest Atlanteans came into this physical earth, they did not
>have the clarity to perceive individual existence. That's a 3-D mindset,
Tom: I can see how being 4 dimensional creatures they would be unable
to see something in 3-D.
Mike: Can you imagine one of those stereograms in 4-D? It makes my head
hurt just to look at the 3-D ones.
>and they were not yet that limited or precise. Instead, the very earliest
>Atlanteans delved into the coursing, pulsing, surging movements of
>biological life itself.
Crow: [low] Ooooooh mama!
> This was something of a plateau for them.
They
>had, in a way, "bounced off" the solidity of the earth, even though they
>could and did work with the energies within it. Those energies were
>movements which they "felt" or "perceived" as consciousness. They
>identified with these movements, not with objects like rocks.
Mike: Evidently, the Atlantans are too evolved for pet rocks.
Tom: I bet they were too advanced for disco, too.
>
>Biological life, on the other hand, was a medium between their
>noncorporeal existence and the physical matrix. Life already existed on
>the earth.
Crow: Working hard on the Question of the Universe.
> The lines of genii and species were joined already in
progress.
>lives, and flexed them like we would muscles. They stretched and molded
>the parameters of the biological existence. The great migratory routing
>of
Crow: Coconuts.
Tom: [British] Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
> animals, for instance, is a remnant of this. The merging of the
>Atlantean consciousness and the animals of this world was
Tom: Illegal in most states.
>
expressed by
>great sweeping movements in rhythm with the larger context of the solar
>and lunar cycles. In time, they created intimacies between species,
Crow: Next on Geraldo, interspecies dating. Our guests are Pogo and
Heptzebah. Later, we'll interview the survivor of the tragic and bizarre
love triangle of Chip, Dale, and Gadget.
>blending one with another in what was to them an artform.
Mike: Billy made the most adorable unicorn in class today. We put it up on
the fridge so everyone could see.
>
Most natural
>symbiotic systems are descended from the most ancient times of
>Atlantean emergence. They did this by "warping" continuities together,
Tom: With OS/2.
>making one "dependent" on the other in a way that is inexplicable in 3-D
>but is clearly obvious from a 4-D perspective.
>
>Eventually they increased their resolution and "discovered" the "ultimate"
>discrete unit of "existence,"
Mike: "Quotation" "marks."
> to them anyway, which turned out
to be the
>biological individual. It was to them the "atom" of moving (read: living)
>consciousness. Remember, movement = consciousness.
Tom: Vini ergo sum.
>
Eventually--and
>I am cutting the story short here for brevity's sake--they picked a single
>species into which to project themselves as "individuals." Guess who?
Crow: Are you known for your work in the theatre?
>Our anthropoid ancestors, who were still quite content to pick berries
>and grub for roots in season.
Mike: Seeing how it would be pretty stupid to grub for roots out of season.
>
>A whole lot of things came very quickly. The informing Atl
>consciousness
Tom: The National Inquirer; informing Atl consciouses want to know.
> adapted the anthropoid form, giving it height, larger
brain
>capacity, and so forth. They loved colors, especially dark colors
>(remember they come from a world of bright lights),
Crow: Scratch the thing about disco.
>
and gave the
>creature that was to be their dwelling place a dark blue skin. This took
>no time, for these beings simply made it so
Mike: Engage.
> on the 4-D
level and the 3-D
>fell right into place--as it still does.
>
>One of the first things the Atls discovered was that life is work.
Mike: You have to be a flippin' pan-dimensional being to figure that one
out?
>
Like
>Job in Lawnmower Man, only in reverse, when they projected their
>consciousness into anthropoids as individuals, they ran into little
>problems like the need to eat, and a strange but thrilling urge to make
>babies.
Crow: Out of plywood.
> The first generations just willed things to be the way they
>wanted, but as they wandered down through the stream of life
Mike: Great. Now it's a Hesse novel.
>
the Atls
>lost touch with these abilities. The concept of a machine was wholly
>outside their frame of reference.
Tom: The wheel? It'll never work.
> So when they came to the
conclusion it
>was easier to have things done by another living being rather than do all
>the effort themselves,
Mike: They opened a factory in Taiwan.
> they figured a stitch in time (pun
intended) saved
>them trouble. They created US.
Crow: The magazine or the country?
>
>Reaching back into the basic anthropoid stock, they made slight changes
>and voila! What you think of as your "human" consciousness came into
>being. Except, you were in heaven.
Tom: Oh, and you had four arms. And-and the sky was purple, too. Yeah.
> Being around an Atl was
to be in
>utter, complete oceanic bliss.
Mike: Oceanic. Get it? Atlanteans? Huh, huh!? GET IT??
> They had that effect. And even
if you were
>schlepping the equivalent of latrine duty, you were just SO grateful not
>to be picking berries anymore for a living.
Tom: Migratory workers meet aliens in John Steinbeck's "The Zamblots of
Wrath."
> The Atl
provided everything
>you needed to get your work done. Literally. Inlcuding the need to work.
>
>Well, as time diminished their powers, the Atl became more and more
>dependent on
Mike: Sweet booze.
> their serving animals. They did not regard this as a
>problem. Unfortunately, when you rub shoulders with gods on a daily
>basis, they are rubbing shoulders with you.
Crow: Met that Jesus fellow. Real nice guy.
> They had
made us bright
>enough to do the highly complex tasks that the Atl would implant fully
>into our minds. As their mental abilities decayed, they became
Tom: Politicians.
Crow: Comedy Central programming execs.
Mike: Them Mentos kids.
>
less
>successful at doing this and, pardon us humbly, we noticed the buzz
>wasn't as good as it used to be.
Crow: Mike, what's the buzz?
Mike: I don't know. Tell me what's a-happenin'.
Tom: NO ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER REFS!!!
Mike: Jeez--I thought I cleared you guys up.
> Their very mind control of
us served to
>stimulate our own evolution as thinking (mentating) creatures. Oops.
>
>Eventually, during the first destructions brought about by their energy
>technologies, some of us were transplanted to the new "colonies"
Mike: Live the good life on the Off-World Colonies.
>
on the
>earth. Here we were sprucing the earth, but the Atl no longer had
>weather control and sometimes we went hungry. And so on, you get the
>idea. About 40,000 years ago, some of our ancestors went feral.
Crow: Others went Thornn.
>
And
>that is the beginning of "our" history as an independent "thinking" species.
>One of the things we had watched the Atlanteans do was work stone, so
>we did that too. We did to animals what they had been doing to us. Yes,
>we were eaten by the Atl,
Mike: I call no "taste like chicken" jokes right now.
> at least by the Children of Belial.
You don't
>think these beings acquired the reputation as being devils for no reason,
>did you? I did not say that everything in heaven was heavenly by OUR
>standards.
Tom: What about OSHA standards?
(continued in part 2)
Roger M. Wilcox
>
>> of what is most convenient for them to
>>have us think. Along with a lot of other bad habits that have--er, pardon
>>me--
>
>Crow: I'm reincarnating some of them beans I had for lunch.
TOM: Chile con reinCarne?
--
Roger M. Wilcox rog...@cisco.com (a.k.a. tra...@netcom.com (Jeff Boeing))
------------------- I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low. -----------------
MSTie #38188 | Dvorak keyboard - Esperanto - Ross Perot - ProLog - Amiga 2000
| Do I follow lost causes, or what?