Mid-afternoon. You are at Kroger’s on King’s Mill Road waiting for Carol to pick up a few essentials. Earlier today you picked up the lawnmower so it is ready to go in the spring. Last night you were thinking about the “meta-engine” I suggested and came up with an “expander of space and thus time in the forward motion” as far as the natural universe is concerned but you also are coming to the conclusion that what you and others call “metaphysics” is actually a part of the real universe, that is, holistically it is the holomovement, the flux, of the Whole – or in a different context “All Things and Beyond” as the marsupial humanoids view it in the books. – Amorella
That is my thinking. I also agree though with the marsupial-humanoid concept: “Godofamily – God, the Creator of All Things and Beyond” a definition I have in the back of book one, Braided Dreams. I like the separate simplification “God, the Creator” and everything else physical and metaphysical. Of course, as the words of the book come from my own mind what else would one expect? Plus, as an existential transcendentalist the concept is doable. I will go a step further, within context – no, I will have to rely on a marsupial character to give a further explanation here.
Who would you like?
Friendly.
I disagree. Yermey will be better here, but he needs an introduction. Put in “Pouch Text” first chapter, first book, to give the reader an idea of the marsupial-humanoids in action. – Amorella
I don’t really know Yermey.
All the better, he might surprise you. You are in love with Friendly, not a good choice. You will be swept by whatever she says. – Amorella
This is getting too close to home, Amorella. You are making me uncomfortable.
I appreciate your self-honesty. Go with my plan, if you don’t like it after hearing what Yermey has to say you can erase all this and start again with my “Who would you like?” – Amorella
*** *** ***
“Pouch Text”
[From: Chapter 1, Braided Dreams]
Trexer rubbed the dark sweat from his forehead, “Problem,” he said quietly, “we have a captain.” He scanned for his current mate, Hartolite. Pond in my life, where are you? Trexer’s heart poured into an eddy. His reasoning shifted into a conscious flood of trained equations balanced against survival instincts. If Ship remains unmoved, stress will break the machinery. We shall languish until death’s sleep. The antigravobars trickle by Ship’s engine, as does our escape. Ship lies as an exposed withering vine clung on a hollow stump among the stars. Tearing teeth of the natural laws of physics will eat us. Hartolite, where are you? Trexer stood as theatre and raised a curtain of fingers to stop his stubborn tongue. Careless courage jabbed him haphazardly as his bright green eyes swiftly refocused inwardly. ‘I am Tall Trexer, Ship’s master engineer.’ With resolve, he reconfigured himself and said aloud, “Captain, we have a problem.”
“Is blackanot on?” inquired Captain Fargo with fingers dancing while standing barefoot on Ship’s grassy floor. Childhood conditioning reinforced from two hundred years earlier popped into his head, ‘the brighter the berries, the more shade in the head.’ Fargo queried, “Is blackanot on? Is beacontohome on?”
“Yes," said Trexer, reflecting the resonance of his old friend’s secure voice, “but Ship’s not running, and I don’t know why.”
Captain Fargo’s eyes reflected a flashing storm cloud. We are stuckinagray. Is this the event foreshadowed from HomePlanets’ prophets? I am a good runner, a very good runner. Ship is a good runner too, and normally we both follow our homing instincts. My feet are ready for a running, but here we stand and wait. Our fellow marsupials at PrimeThree do not detect us missing. I see Trexer’s eyes set like dead rocks. I am the only one on board experienced with the native earthlings. Why did PrimeThree keep Friendly home? She’s my best friend. She is my companion.
Beacontohome is on. Blackanot is on. Friendly and I had a flawless first trip twelve years ago. His eyes drew to Ship’s living floor. He shuddered - back then we two found the bony remains of billions of earthlings one year dead. Godofamily, I need Friendly here now. Fargo, scratching his cheek with his left hand, and asked Trexer, “How long before our problem is critical?”
Trexer, with eyes as old tree knots, responded, “One week.”
“One week? Time-wise, antigravoskimming is nearly done. We must be near Earth’s sun. Can’t we pushanpull blackanot to off and navigate by sight?”
“We can’t risk exposure. Blackanot remains on,” said Trexer strongly; “besides, we could disrupt solar functions if we are too close.
“Our rules are for running,” grumbled Fargo. He scratched his nose, “We have to run the natural laws.”
“Running gets us home, Captain,” said the thin-lipped engineer as he turned from Ship’s instruments and dug his toes into the well-manicured floor of mixed and trimmed home grasses. I draw my eyes to the rocks between the wildflowers. I stand in Ship’s central breeze and smell the tall and wild-leafed bushes. I view Ship’s blue sky streaked with white spidery wisps; long stretches of spinets set to dim a marsupial Ship’s artificial sunlight. The distant crooked limbs of wild swamp oak stand thirty to eighty feet tall. Trees run only at the roots. Marsupials run by Ship.
Trexer watched for the playful antics of the squirrel-like rodents who lived in the environment. Food, he thought, fish, and furry rodents. Nature sucks us in for the swallowing. Why we worshipped nature, I will never know. Nevertheless, look, see how serene and tree-like the captain now stands, thought Trexer.
I love Ship, reflected Fargo, but the doldrums moving into Trexer’s eyes. “No returning to HomePlanets until we complete our mission,” snapped Fargo. He ruminated - twelve years ago, Friendly and I made HomePlanets’ first direct contact with Earth natives. We found two women and two men after a plague killed more than six billion. Now I return with a crew of three. The survivors did not want our help except for medical supplies. Friendly and I scrutinized our biochemical probes and found no hint of the problem that lead to those billions of quick deaths. Each of the four surviving natives had to have a genetic mutation that allowed herorhis survival, but we never have discovered what it was.
Our clergy had foretold we would have a similar plague years ago, but nothing happened. One malcontent even predicted our sun would darken for a second or two then re-flame. Where do our peoples’ outlandish fears come from?
Our marsupial species is educated. We know better than to believe in the implied injunctions of our clergy. Yet, here is Trex terrified at the prospect that we are stuck in the mythical gray, in an eye blink between this universe and another. He thinks we are in a doomed voyage, that we marsupials, like the Earth natives, are the lock and key of a long foreshadowed calamity. The minds of the earthlings and our own are as alien to ourselves as we are to each other.
“I’m checking Ship’s machinery,” said Trexer. “If we survive, this will be my last hop-and-skip from the other side of the galaxy.”
“We have a week,” muttered Captain Fargo. “We . . ..”
“We have a working Shuttlevator believe it or not,” interrupted Trexer.
“Good,” grinned Fargo, “Shuttlevator will take us to Earth.” The captain double-checked instrumentation. “Shuttlevator is not functioning, Trex.”
***
“Fargo’s right,” Hartolite, “we can’t afford to disrupt the gravity of a sun or planet when we do not know where we are.” She slid her hands into her pouch through the slit in her overalls. “What do you think, Yermey?”
“We should be within a day of Earth,” [Yermey] ruminated, “There should be a way to check this without blackanot off even for a nanosecond. There is no sense of adding to the possibility of our discovery.”
“I don’t think there is,” replied Hartolite, “after all there are only a few living on the planet. We might have a solution to navigation through a side door though.”
Yermey gave her one of his finest disgruntled looks, “Fine, Hart,” he replied, “what shall we do? Shall we run to the basement systems and work up, or shall we climb to Ship’s roof and venture to the basement?”
The man is tremendously arrogant. “I think it is a timing problem. For some reason we are here early or late and Ship’s debating.”
Yermey beamed, “We have a week, I’ll think of something. Lighten up.” He mind muddled. Hartolite is always like this when she sleeps with Trexer. He is the youngest of our small group on board, but his head always sees half-empty masts even when we are on a full sail.
Hartolite continued, “Surely PrimeThree’s ParentsinCharge will direct Ship Two to search us out.”
Yermey the agnostic reflected on the ancient story of Marsupials’ Great Fall. I don’t believe the myths, or our clergy - yet old stories hint at truths. Why the few natives not die? Hartolite needs to study the genetics more closely. There is a close connection between our concept of Godofamily and the natives’ own concept of God. The earthlings have similar ideas and concepts - even the story of the fall of the angels from Grace before creation of the universe. These far seeded myths must be genetically predisposed. I am positive higher consciousness is a condition of natural law though not metaphysics, not philosophy. Science is rides one track and Philosophy another and never the twain shall meet.
Hartolite deliberately interrupted old man Yermey in his thoughts, “I told Fargo you would solve Ship’s problem.”
Yermey frowned, and pushanpulled the chute for his clothes, then, frustrated, he scratched himself unperturbed. He looked directly at Hartolite and said, “We’re close to Earth, and I can calculate it in my head.” He paused to scratch his nose, “Where are my overalls?”
“We can fix the Shuttlevator,” stated Hartolite confidently. Chuckling, she added, “You are a cutie, old and naked, but still the cutie.”
“You women think we marsupial men look cute naked with twig curled and dangling. That’s the only reason.” He [Yermey] broke into laughter with her smile, and commented, “We partners know why you and Friendly want to visit Earth. We know the women talk at home after Friendly returned with a box of paper soda straws twelve years ago.” What a humiliation for us males.”
Breaking into a broad smile, Hartolite replied, “You men are a crumpled lot, with a squatter-bush of pubic hairs constantly in need of scratching. Scratching what? The mighty bendable twig, the soft and the slow, the uncalculating and uncurling of a twiginatwig. When Friendly pulled a straw of the box, folded it in half-inch segments and let it dangle there I thought I would die laughing. When she told me what earthlings used them for, I lost my breathe in the humor. Within a week, the women on all three planets knew the joke. We had a plague all right, just like the clergy had predicted, but it was one of humor, at least for half the population.”
“Yeah,” he [Yermey] responded sarcastically, “you enjoy our fingers crawl-to-pouches though, and luckily we have fingers more easily aroused.”
Hartolite feigned a blush and said, “You mostly arouse our patience.”
“Yeah, well,” he [Yermey] grumbled while slowly dressing his cock-of-the-walk slow legs, one at a time into overalls he had found in the chute of clean clothes.
***
That night when the two were laying alone together Trexer whispered, “Hartolite, I don’t like this situation any better than you. You keep staring at our suicide capsules on the nightstand as though you are about to take one. We have most of a week. Yermey will solve the problem.”
Hartolite gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and replied, “Yermey can’t solve a stuckinagray. You said so yourself not more than ten minutes ago.” I’m the psychiatrist, she thought. I’m debating which one is the quick suicide and which is the terribly sick pill. We take them both and become terribly sick. What a way to end our lives anyway. Yermey knows the difference in the two, I’m sure of it, but no one else on our three planets has a clue.
“Do you need a little action, Trexer? It’ll be the first time in seven months.” She noted his quiet smile and slid his right hand into her pouch. She whispered, “You are sixty years younger than any of us. You were the best patient I ever had. We held hands for the whole time he recovered from the thinking fevers.”
“You want me to play dead,” panned Trexer, “like one of our tree rodents?”
She turned closer to him and dropped her right hand to his upper thigh, stroked down to his knee and back up. Let’s see what I can get cooking,” she said gleefully.
“I’m not really in the mood,” he asserted, “I’m tired and under too much stress.”
“You silly boys are never in the mood,” giggled Hartolite. “Don’t you feel good when I do this?” teased Hartolite as she leaned down and kissed his stomach. “Too bad you boys don’t have pouches too.” She blew a kiss further south, but it might as well have hit his toes for all the difference it made.
Trexer muttered, “What would we do with pouches?”
“Well,” she said coyly, “I could slide my hand further in and down.”
Trexer’s voice took on an obstinate boyish tone, “We’re all pouch babes. Hand in a pouch is not much different than holding hands.”
Hartolite whispered, “Not true, Trex and you know it.”
Trexer stubbornly sat up, “We all share one another privately,” he said. “You are in my bedinabox. What else are we friends supposed to do? You should respect my being tired.”
Hartolite teasingly whispered, “Trexer,” and a private joke.
Trexer suddenly nurtured a deep, sexual laugh. “So you have decided to bed each of us, playing away, hoping it will induce a creative means out of our situation.”
Hartolite rolled over rakishly. “Not quite, but I thought it would do you some good,” she retorted. Then she returned to her outwardly nature. “Rub my back, will you, Trex, and my thighs too.”
He begrudgingly complied, and quickly adopted his unpretentiously contented and sanguine smile. He whispered intimately, “Okay, let’s try the physics again so we can cuddle asleep.”
***
The next morning Trexer awoke to find Hartolite gone. He got up and pushanpulled bed into the floor. “Friendly is always upbeat and positive like Yermey. I can never move her to gloom.” Hartolite is a good cuddle babe. She is no doubt manipulating old Yermey, Fargo and me. Women. Sex is Godofamily’s private joke. We men would just as soon do our public works in peace then sit around and tell man adventures. The women pop us in those pouches when we are tiny babe crawlers and never let us go. Men grow up to always expect at least a hand in a pouch. The women never seem to tire.
***
Later after a day of consideration and some attempted options, the crew sat at the small communal table for dinner. Trexer looked at Fargo, “I’m sure the problem is in Ship’s machinery.”
Hartolite quipped, “This is yet another reason for Ship to be referred in the male gender, even with new gravoengines, middle-aged Ship is like you men. I am the sole woman on board to get you men to work. Friendly would get you cracking. We need to stand Ship on the top of his non-navigating head and turn him over for a quick kiss and tickle. That’ll wake him up from this stuckinagray sleep of his.”
The men laughed in a childhood glee. Fargo ragged, “We jog to solve a problem and end up nearly dying of exhaustion, perhaps Hart’s right, we need to do a kiss and tickle.”
“I’d rather work myself to death,” commented Trexer dryly.”
“I agree with Trexer,” responded Yermey. “We need a solution before the untimely one is made for us. Our sole woman on board will slight us until we do something.” He took time for a long yawn, then continued, “Why don’t we close blackanot, and head home on the Shuttlevator, it’ll get us there in a pinch.”
Fargo muttered, “Shuttlevator will not move because Ship thinks he’s home.”
“Ship thinks he is home,” replied Yermey, “but I think he is nearer Earth than we suppose. Something is running against the wood grain here.”
“Can’t we trick Ship then?” asked Hartolite. “Ship’s an entire computer and ego-bionics system combined. He has an animal-like consciousness. Ship knows to run for home when things are not right, and if he thinks he is home like Yermey said, then why would he move?”
After ten minutes of silence Fargo commented, “Ship thinks two opposites are true, ‘Ship is home. Ship is not home.’ He has developed schizophrenia. This stuckinagray may be as Hart suggests, a psychological not a machine malfunction.”
Trexer added, “Ship is what he is. Ship hasn’t the brains to think in a hidden self-referential or a paradox. Maybe he is deliberating what do to and has not decided.”
Hartolite raised her left eyebrow, “I agree, Trexer. Ship has slipped into a Hamlet-like mood.”
“Can’t we give Ship a perspective he does not have?” asked Yermey. “Perhaps, a sense of conscious freedom will arise, and he’ll naturally run. It’s built into his brain frame. We have been focusing on the Science. Perhaps it is philosophy, though I cannot come up a reason for a philosophical consideration in Ship’s navigation. ”
“That’s good, Yermey,” recited Hartolite as she turned to Trexer.
Yermey smiled confidently and began philosophizing, “Marsupials used to be cannibals; we shared the bodies of the dead to survive the Great Starvation. What was that historical struggle for?” Yermey paused, thinking of Friendly, the first marsupial to make herself known to an earthling. “Darkansoul,” he muttered, “We need to busy ourselves. As a last resort, before pill time, I am willing to turn blackanot off and hope the antigravobars don’t do a loop. We are runners. Stopanstill is not for the marsupial species. Let’s remake Ship’s grammar so he’ll be fluent enough to finish his sentenced objective and ours too.”
Fargo smiled; the crew will now work on a plan, to Earth followed by a period not a question mark. Hartolite was right. How can women be right most of the time? It does not make biological sense. If men are wrong-minded as they say, then why are we men folk here at all? Women don’t need us to have pouch babes. Some wanted an all female culture. I don’t know why they all didn’t. We men wouldn’t mind. We could do what we wanted to do - sit around, play games or work. His memory drifted - when Friendly and I did our first study in human history we concluded our original trip would be somewhat analogous to the first European explorers making contact with the American natives. We were sure the native peoples of Earth would think of us as conquerors as the Native Americans came to think of the Europeans.
We have better built and more lasting machinery. Our goods and knowledge would sway the earthlings our direction whether they liked it or not. The earthlings would grow to dislike us. The natives would fear our colonization and our possible diseases. Humans would fear the loss of their worth and dignity. Self-identity would dry up. Our secret fear was that earthlings would eventually stand together and fight us tooth and nail. Our arrogance, they would say, that you people could dominate us with your culture and ways. We have regional rights. Leave us to our own business, they would shout. We have seen enough of foreign empires in our days. Money and power are as a mosquito and its bite. We have endured enough. We need to rid the world of more foreign tyrants.
Fargo scratched his left ear, and then rubbed the back of his neck. He sat in continued contemplation. Earthlings would stand and fight while we would run. We are not pedantic European settlers, and the Earth cultures of today are not analogous with the indigenous Americans of yesteryear. When we finally arrived on Earth that first time, there was no one to greet or to destroy Friendly or me.
Fargo suddenly beamed and said, “I am a shy and slow man with a twig of manhood as Hartolite knows. She knows the three of us all too well. Women teach and raise us up with their deliberate and measured methods. We need to work this stuckinagray problem in a woman’s subtle manner. We need Ship’s immediate psychological profile, and we must provide him with a broader perspective than he has at present. We must toy and humor him as you would either marsupial or human.” He paused, “perhaps Hartolite, you could whisper sweet nothings in Ship’s masculine ears, and he’ll perk up on his own.”
*
This is the marsupial Friendly already near Earth. Unknown to Fargo, Yermey, Trex and my dearest Hartolite I sit directing a Class A Shuttlevator from Homeplanets through a quick slide of antigravobars to stop near the orbit of Mars. My objective was to land on Earth with blackanot on and wait for Fargo and crew before setting out to discover the remains of that once populated human colony.
I had hoped I would not cause any unusual solar activity when this highly modified class A Shuttlevator shut down the antigravobars. Shortly, instruments on board focused on human life signs. Data filled on data and instruments quickly shut down. Shuttlevator’s machinery froze near Earth’s moon. I arose from my chair cautiously and thought, ‘I am not where I am supposed to be. Blackanot is on.’ I pushanpulled the manual blackanot defaults, but Godofamily - data showed billions of human people existing. How could this be? The large city near the lake appeared a good target so I set for it.
I pushanpulled switches and maneuvered Shuttlevator to Earth near a small grove of trees. A few homes lay on the edge of the tree line. ‘I can ease in and hover invisibly just above the trees. Blackanot is on. Billions of these people died.’ I decided not the run.
PrimeThree has sent a directive to wait for Fargo. Where are they? The new datum flashed before me. The Earth date: 14 June 2000. Fargo and I first arrived here on 14 June 1988. This is thirteen years after the great Earth plague, and exactly twelve years after Fargo and I first arrived and found four human adults and a small baby alive on the planet. Whatever plague occurred in 1988 has not happened here in the year 2000. Billions of people are alive at the very time I said to myself, ‘these living humans beings are dead and don’t know it.
***
- Hello. I am the Soki, and I will have some observations about this story in most every chapter. The marsupial crew is presently stuck in large Ship of their own making. People everywhere are stuck in an identity also of their own making. The individual has a voice to speak his mind. As a floater between the Living and the Dead in this, the first of three books, I have discovered that the Dead have limited rules concerning theatre too. Each has to prepare for herorhis own private Court appearance. What are the theatrical rules for a genuine non-being, a floater like me? Presently, I have only a vague notion. -
*** *** ***
It is strange to read over this selection of chapter one. I have forgotten much of this.
You haven’t thought about this first selection of the books with the marsupial-humanoids, orndorff. It is not a matter of forgetting. Bold ‘Yermey’ for the sake of any reader who may be interested. – Amorella
I have done that but cannot think of the question I was going to ask. I really don’t know what to ask Yermey. He knows too much. He makes me feel very inadequate intellectually. This is because I modeled his character on a dear colleague of mine when teaching at the private American school, Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo in Brazil (1970-1972), Vladimir R. He was so gifted and intelligent and a wit to boot. I can still see the sparkle in his eyes when he would talk about things (of interest or not). Such humor.
Post for now. You can talk with him later. Besides, it is about time for supper and the news. Isn’t that something the real Vladimir might say in this circumstance? – Amorella
Actually, it is, which makes this rather creepy for me to think on.
About time for bed. You and Carol spent the evening relaxing and watching a couple of programs on the DVR. Here’s one of your old characters drawn out by yours truly. We’ll give him his own font, Courier.
- This is Yermey. You asked a question about the Marsupial definition of Godofamily in your book: “Godofamily – God, the Creator of All Things and Beyond”.
God in concept is similar to earthlings’ concepts. We have had time to simplify. “Creator”. Your computer dictionary says:
(God) a gift from God: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead; Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh; (God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity; the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou; humorous the Man Upstairs. - Oxford-American
Creator-in-the-House-Runs-with-the-Gauntlet-on is the Marsupial meaning of “Creator”. All Things and Beyond move behind the Creator-in-the-House-Runs-with-the-Gauntlet-on. The “meta-machine” that you speak of is an extension of “Running” which is what Marsupials do. Running is the movement between the Beginning and the End. Without movement the heartansoulanmind cannot continue to exist.
You see, Richard, Marsupial-Humanoids and Human Beings think parallel. We do not consider this an accident any more than being on the opposite side of the same galaxy an accident. The closest thing to an “accident” is both of our species, and as such, God: the Creator of All Things and Beyond has Humor or is Humor. Most Marsupials would say “has Humor” a few of us say “is Humor”. – Yermey -
I do not agree with Yermey, somehow he sounds sacrilegious.
These words come from a self-professed agnostic. Post, orndorff and go to bed for a good night’s sleep. - Amorella
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