Notes - Everyone Pays the Piper defined

        Mid-morning. You wrote notes last night about ten minutes after shutting the computer down. They are upstairs by the bed and you are downstairs. Later, as you forget what the note says. – Amorella.

         It seemed important at the time. Short term memory – where are you?  Nothing. Amazing. How can there be nothing-going-on-in-my-head?

         While in the bath this morning the obvious dawned. The number one rule, in all the universes in all the dimensions mentioned and not mentioned in the Merlyn series, is “Everyone (Betweener or alien or not) Pays the Piper”. Nothing is free.

         I needed to see it in writing. Also, what does this mean exactly? The reason I ask is because another well-used phrase is: “Everyone pays the Ferryman” (or something to that effect). . . . The best response I could find online is from ‘Answerbag’.

“The phrase "pay the piper" comes from the tale of the "Pied Piper". In the story, the piper rid the town of all its rats. When the city would not pay him for his service, He proceeded to play the pipe and took the children from the city. Hence, when you do something or don't do something, you have to be prepared to "pay the piper". By not paying, the citizens of the city lost much more than the rats.”

The second phrase, "Everyone pays the ferryman"is defined in Wikipedia:

“Charon’s obol [or viaticum] is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial.

The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans. Examples are found also in the Near East, and later in Western Europe, particularly in the regions inhabited by Celts of the Fallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century. Greek and Latin literary sources from the 5th century BC through the 2nd century AD often mention Charon’s obol and sometimes joke about it as a payment or bribe for the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.” - Wikipedia

         In context with the books and blog, orndorff, slide the two together to “catch the drift” of my use of the translation. This afternoon you and Carol are to Westerville. This will be all for the day. Post. – Amorella.

         I almost forgot about last night's note, Amorella. Here it is, I’ll think about it later.

         “Within ten minutes after I shut the computer down I got it – the filament of the soul will be used to light the sun of Elysium, the sun they do not have (but will gain with negotiation), and in the process the Dead lose something (they did not or could not foresee), they become two-dimensional to themselves not three-dimensional. Everyone pays, no one gets anything for nothing. Why will this happen in the story? Necessity.”

         The above is in context, though there is more to it as you will see. – Amorella.