guzzles a pint of Grue ink
So anyone want to hear my tales of the Temple of the Pen?
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The bistrotier answers that he wouldn't mind some tales of adventure, and it's not everyday you get people who visited temples.
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"All right. There's this temple, see? It's deep in the heart of the Yucatan jungle. I had heard tales from the native sketches that there was vast treasures hidden within, but all who attempted to retrieve them vanished. So being a brave adventurer myself, I immediately set out for the Temple of the Pen. When I entered the temple courtyard, I was amazed at the size. Color-coded doors led off into the ground. I took some pictures of the first new enemies I encountered:"
GSN paused to sip his Grue ink.
"Let me go dig out some more pictures. Back in a sec." -
The bistrotier is impressed, he has his bug eyes wide open before the strange creatures GSN reproduced on the chalkboard.
"Wow. I've never seen such creatures before. Well, at least for the third one, never of this color. And I've travelled a lot, mind you. This temple sure sounds like a strange and foreign place I wonder who designed such creatures "Back from his thoughts, the bistrotier notices:
"Well, this is a pretty long second you're needing to fetch these drawings. Though what with space-time being in flux around here, I guess it's not impossible, you never know how much a second will last around these parts. Damn Einstein for screwing up with Euclidian/Newtonian space-time!" -
Suddenly, in the distance, everyone can hear Haendel's Alleluia chorus being played for a ship taking off from a station (and being destroyed by the station as she takes off) far, far away in the depths of the Void.
Really, there's no place like Edward's Rest.
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:wub:
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The bistrotier audibly sighs (provided that's even possible for a bug, of course).
"With all these strange places discovered recently, and everyone exploring them, the bistro's been quite calm lately. Sure wish these youngsters would return here to tell about their adventures "
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GSN knocks back a tall glass of red ink.
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The bistrotier suddenly wakes up...
"Oh dear, looks like I need to fix the door bell at the entrance. You folks surprised me. Well, you offer them, but I suppose it's up to me to serve them..." and the bistrotier serves anyone who asks a glass of transparent ink (provided they have the proper credentials, of course) on Freq's tab. -
"There is no space-time," begins a very animated professor, "it is only your spoon that bends."
He takes a plastic spoon, stirs a mug of hot inkocoa, and holds up the misshapen utensil. Continuing with chalk he demonstrates quite succinctly and intuitively that E = mchammer. After he takes a sip of his steaming drink, which smells richly of chocolate, so rich in fact that you wonder if it has any sugar at all, or if it's just hot milk with baking coca, he smiles and asks, "Does anyone know what this means?"
The sketchpilots seated nearby easily recognize that the professor has probably never piloted a sketchfighter, but they don't write him off as inexperienced because he has a very wordly air about him.
He continues, "It means, because hammers are real, that c is raised to the first power, and thus the best expression for the world we live in is not flat, as you think of it, but in fact..."
He paused for effect.
"Three-dimensional!"
Stunned silence ensues. This is heady stuff. Very difficult to wrap one's mind around.
The professor resumes his charming explanation, walking around and waving his hands enthusiastically as he speaks, "You see, there are the two dimensions we all know of, plus a third, time, which is just like imaginary distance. All you have to do is think of events in terms of area-time. Area-time is constant here. To demonstrate, let me give everyone a klein bottle of orange juice-like beverage."
He hands out yellow Möbius strips.
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A gray sketch stands up and reads.
"A poem by Dr. Trowel. Or something like that. It's hard to read when you're two dimensional.
Mesopotamia said:
There once was a chalkboard that flipped
And screamed out when Möbius stripped
The chalk got dissolved
Was rootbeer involved?
Now Mesopo-spacetime is ripped"
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A long-clawed lizard draws itself on the chalkboard and scuttles off onto the wall, where he posts the following note (which he apparently pre-printed by using some sort of automated drink-mixing machine):
"No, no, Gray Sketch, that was Qaanol's work. You see, first there was this
blackboardw.jpg (16.37K)
Number of downloads: 11,
for which I have sadly forgotten the identity of the creator.Qaanol replied with the poem you so eloquently recited, along with something rather like this:
chalklessw.jpg (15.94K)
Number of downloads: 8My own paltry contribution followed on after that, and consisted of the words
'Meanwhile, somewhere in the Antivoid....,'
this illustration
voidchalk.jpg (6.8K)
Number of downloads: 12,
and the following pale attempt at derivative verse:Amazing Chalk, both white and round,
That meets a need so key.....
At once is lost as well as found,
Is gone, and yet.... You see?There was more -- Qaanol again contributed poetry, I believe, but my records of those times are, alas, incomplete. Those days are now more than a year gone, and perhaps we should speak no more of them here."
The lizard then grabs the professor's hammer sketch (the reality of which was accepted as a precondition of the recently demonstrated theorem) and begins to pound it against a blackboard eraser. This raises a huge cloud of dust, which in turn disorients a passing flock of Flickers and sends them careening into the windows.
This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 10 October 2007 - 01:17 PM