H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Bits n Pieces
Created | Updated Nov 10, 2008
Frame by frame, a bulb flashes on, a bulb flashes off. This process is repeated in a fraction of a second and so the numeral on the display resolves itself towards zero.
-----------------------------
Close by, a point rises erratically on a monitor, it is pale green and osscilates leaving behind a fading contrail of a moment of life expiring. Each moment to the next; rising and falling; being born and dying.
Freidrich Von Trapp was dying.
The line rose as breath filled his one functioning lung and his heart convulsed once more, and then dipped again.
Von Trapp breath was strained and hoarse.
His eyes roamed about the room unseeing...
Misty figures hovered over him.
------------------------
In the network of computers, a circuit awaits a current. A flow of electrons is already heading down the wire like the rush of adrenaline to the heart or a run-away train about smash into the sidings - but it hasn't reached here yet an interchange at the heart of a super-computer. Seconds can be divided into micro seconds and further still, until time no longer seemed to exist, the inert conducting metal waits anticipating nothing.
Then a surge of energy courses through it, the trap is closed, the message sent.
Ignition was underway.
---------------
A light blooms underneath the rockets boosters, followed by a shimmering haze of intense heat and then fire. A roaring gushing flame that becomes fiercly focussed making the entire shuttle and scaffold shake violently.
Gravity is about to be defeated, forces are growing in intensity. The Planet's grip on this tiny metal frame is about to be loosened.
-----------------------
"B.P's dropping" a voice called out.
Pulse is erratic."
The line dipped one last time, Von Trapp exhaled, his eyes already paler, and then the line moved no more amidst the monotonal wailing of various instruments.
"Time?" someone asked.
But Von Trapp had none left.
---------------
The shuttle hovered for an instant of equillibrium as gravity fought and then finally accepted defeat and then slowly, imperceptably and then faster and more visably the rocket began to lift off. Leaving the Earth behind and carrying Von Trapp's soul with it.
Smoke blossmed out from the launch pad and the noise echoed in an ear-drum shredding boom around the ancient rock walls.
Driven upward on collums of flame, the rocket rose upward toward the open dome of Mount Terror.
The crowds went nuts.
The Timer stood idle on a rocky outcrop - the display was no longer lit.
-------------------
The Rocket exited the volcano's crater rim and was immediately rocked by the gale of the blizzard outside.
Cape Canaveral would have been horriffied.
Housten would have had an embolism.
but The Cult were ambitious and nothing ventured.....
Above the rocket, the aurora australis were in full bloom, a green shimmering fog that hung in the sky sretched across the horizon and sky like ribbons.
The Sun had long since sunk below the horizon.
From a distance the rocket was a brilliant, rising star that was arcing ever upwards in sweeping curve.
A cluster of snowy penguins raised their heads against the bitter wind to watch it's flight something vestigal perhaps taking note in the avian brain, perhaps not.
----------------------
A franatic beeping interrupted an otherwise normal hubub in an office.
Not a normal office, however. There were lots of uniforms milling around, pips and shoulder badges rubbed shoulders so to speak.
The hubub squeaked into an eerie, stunned silence, someone dropped a coffe-mug.
"What is that?"
"er....um..it's the old missile tracking station." a chair was wheeled closer, headphones placed over ears. a radar screen was follwing a blob across the sky.
"Have the soviets launched?" a panic crept into the voice.
"checking..." the figure pressed the headset to their ears
"No...not the soviets"
"Thank God."
"That's strange."
"What? What is it?"
The Blob had vanished.
"Something just left the Earth's atmosphere ...last known co-ordinates....it...came from the South Pole....sir."
A red telephone leapt into life. Everyone jumped.
A senior figure possessing a Sam Browne stripe and a bushy white moustache, approached the desk.
The General took it off the cradle. "Yes?" he spoke into the receiver.
"General - this is The Agency" said Guy, "We are monitoring it too. How swiftly can the general staff be assembled?"
"Were you running an operation at The South pole?" the general asked.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss it, I'll debrief to GS in 20 minutes."
Guy rung off.
The General looked at his staff - and they looked back at him, questioning, afraid.
Clearly something important had just happened - and it had taken the world completly by surprise.
---------------------
Von Trapp was standing in a void. In extended before him and away from him, above and below.
"Where am I?" he called out an flapped his medical gown experimentally. Wearing so little he expected to be cold but he was not. There was more. He had expected his voice to echo, the cacophonous repetition, so it came as something of a shock to him when it did not. Rather his voice was swallowed up by the emptiness of what surrounded him.
He was afraid now , it had been a long time since he last felt that, usually he was on the other end of terror. He reflected on this thought, the memory of power and dominion, a slow smile crept to his lips.
But where had it gone? Where was he? The memory faded.
"Where am I?" Von Trapp raised his voice and called out into the darkness.
This time something called back.
YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE TO ME?
The voice was loud, and yet not, it filled the space but was not deafening it simply WAS.
This was some sort of test. Well Von Trapp had survived enough of those and always triumphed.
"I've lived...a good life," he prompted
YOU LIE
WHAT IS YOUR NAME, SOUL?
Von Trapp...Rolfe..Von Trapp.
YOUR DESTINY IS YOUR OWN AND NO OTHERS. NOW, DECLARE YOUR INNOCENCE.
From the depths of is childhood on the run with the nanny, Von Trapp remembered her funny litle rituals where he'd first learnt about the Gods of old. There was a catechism, a ritual...now what was it? He'd studied it in temple, but he'd been good at what he did, out in the world away from the cult...bad habits had crept in, the certainty of youth faded.
"I..um... have not robbed, nor coveted items to steal." he started and faltered. The rest was indistinct and hazy.
AND OF OTHERS - HOW DO OTHERS JUDGE YOU?
Von Trapp reflected proudly on a criminal career of extortion and blackmail, of the worst kinds of malign intent and even murder.
"Carefully - if they know what good for them."
HAVE YOU SINNED?
"No, I've led a good life." lying was a habit that was hard to break even now.
WE CAN SEE YOUR LIFE - IT LIES BEHIND YOU - YOUR FUTURE IS TO BE WEIGHTED.
Do your worst I'm not believer
AND DO YOU WORSHIP NO GODS BEFORE US?
"Us?" who is us?" Von Trapp called back. Show yourself to me. I demand it!
The Darkness looked back at Von Trapp - and he realised that he was not staring at an infinite blackness but rather something that was black and very large.
Before him rose up a jackal head it had been bowed before, and now it was filling the space, his reflection was a mote in but one of it's jewel-set eyes, burning rubies, blazing stones of judgment.
I AM ANUBIS.
Von Trapp was awe-struck.
THIS IS THE HALL OF TWO TRUTHS.
AND YOU WILL ANSWER FOR YOU LIFE.
Von Trapp could see illuminated in a shaft of golden light behind the jackal head was a mirage of colour that took on the the form of a set of golden scales.
The God Anubis reached into Von Trapp and plucked out his heart.
Von Trapp watched in mute horror as the fleshy congealed organ was lifted and carried to the scales by the talon of Anubis.
There was no pain, the Jackal had simply removed it from his chest.
On one side, lay the feather of Maat, Anubis held Von Trapp's heart above the scale, overseen by a figure with an Ibis head and surrounded by the glow of the moon.
The moon figure said....you LIFE IS WEIGHED AND FOUND TO BE
Anubis placed Von Trapp's Heart onto the scales which almost immediately upended as thought carrying lead cannonballs.
WANTING. Anubis replied. TRIBUNAL - YOUR VERDICT ON THIS ONE?
Von Trapp looked up and saw high above the figure of Anubis a semi-circle of 42 pairs of eyes, orange and fearsome open like slits and all of them gazed into the depths of his existence.
OBLIVION was the unanimous reply.
And then he was alone....alone in the void...shrunken, hollow, empty and alone.... until the weight of the void consumed him and Friedrich Von Trapp was no more.
"Daltmooreby's blow sent Arthur reeling over the controls, mashing a random sequence of buttons. Outside the hum of the laser became deafening, there was a burst of turquoise light and the beam sliced away from the station, down through the atmosphere and slashed randomly across what looked the South Pacific...
---
It was a beautiful day, Bob had decided, and it was *the* day. The sun was beaming down, the breeze was fragrant with the tang of salt and tropical flowers and, well, if he couldn't declare his undying love for Jill here he was unlikely to be able to do it anywhere.
She was basking on the beach, utterly oblivious, and as Bob floated a hundred yards off-shore he swallowed, looked to the sky and said:
"Well God, I know you said this wasn't Meant To Be, but...well...here I go..."
He had barely begun to swim back when there was a blinding flash and burst of heated air, driving him backwards.
When he recovered, spitting saltwater, the sea between him and the shore was a boiling cauldron of superheated water. He blinked, and knuckled his eyes. A few palm trees by the shore had caught fire, and what appeared to be a luminous spear of blue-y light from the Heavens was zooming south.
Bob coughed nervously, and cast another look to the skies.
"...or maybe I'll just forget it, eh? Ha ha...yikes..."
---
"Shut it off!" cried Arthur. "In sanity's name, Daltmooreby, if that beam hits a population centre millions will die!" He leapt for the controls..."
-----------------------------
Close by, a point rises erratically on a monitor, it is pale green and osscilates leaving behind a fading contrail of a moment of life expiring. Each moment to the next; rising and falling; being born and dying.
Freidrich Von Trapp was dying.
The line rose as breath filled his one functioning lung and his heart convulsed once more, and then dipped again.
Von Trapp breath was strained and hoarse.
His eyes roamed about the room unseeing...
Misty figures hovered over him.
------------------------
In the network of computers, a circuit awaits a current. A flow of electrons is already heading down the wire like the rush of adrenaline to the heart or a run-away train about smash into the sidings - but it hasn't reached here yet an interchange at the heart of a super-computer. Seconds can be divided into micro seconds and further still, until time no longer seemed to exist, the inert conducting metal waits anticipating nothing.
Then a surge of energy courses through it, the trap is closed, the message sent.
Ignition was underway.
---------------
A light blooms underneath the rockets boosters, followed by a shimmering haze of intense heat and then fire. A roaring gushing flame that becomes fiercly focussed making the entire shuttle and scaffold shake violently.
Gravity is about to be defeated, forces are growing in intensity. The Planet's grip on this tiny metal frame is about to be loosened.
-----------------------
"B.P's dropping" a voice called out.
Pulse is erratic."
The line dipped one last time, Von Trapp exhaled, his eyes already paler, and then the line moved no more amidst the monotonal wailing of various instruments.
"Time?" someone asked.
But Von Trapp had none left.
---------------
The shuttle hovered for an instant of equillibrium as gravity fought and then finally accepted defeat and then slowly, imperceptably and then faster and more visably the rocket began to lift off. Leaving the Earth behind and carrying Von Trapp's soul with it.
Smoke blossmed out from the launch pad and the noise echoed in an ear-drum shredding boom around the ancient rock walls.
Driven upward on collums of flame, the rocket rose upward toward the open dome of Mount Terror.
The crowds went nuts.
The Timer stood idle on a rocky outcrop - the display was no longer lit.
-------------------
The Rocket exited the volcano's crater rim and was immediately rocked by the gale of the blizzard outside.
Cape Canaveral would have been horriffied.
Housten would have had an embolism.
but The Cult were ambitious and nothing ventured.....
Above the rocket, the aurora australis were in full bloom, a green shimmering fog that hung in the sky sretched across the horizon and sky like ribbons.
The Sun had long since sunk below the horizon.
From a distance the rocket was a brilliant, rising star that was arcing ever upwards in sweeping curve.
A cluster of snowy penguins raised their heads against the bitter wind to watch it's flight something vestigal perhaps taking note in the avian brain, perhaps not.
----------------------
A franatic beeping interrupted an otherwise normal hubub in an office.
Not a normal office, however. There were lots of uniforms milling around, pips and shoulder badges rubbed shoulders so to speak.
The hubub squeaked into an eerie, stunned silence, someone dropped a coffe-mug.
"What is that?"
"er....um..it's the old missile tracking station." a chair was wheeled closer, headphones placed over ears. a radar screen was follwing a blob across the sky.
"Have the soviets launched?" a panic crept into the voice.
"checking..." the figure pressed the headset to their ears
"No...not the soviets"
"Thank God."
"That's strange."
"What? What is it?"
The Blob had vanished.
"Something just left the Earth's atmosphere ...last known co-ordinates....it...came from the South Pole....sir."
A red telephone leapt into life. Everyone jumped.
A senior figure possessing a Sam Browne stripe and a bushy white moustache, approached the desk.
The General took it off the cradle. "Yes?" he spoke into the receiver.
"General - this is The Agency" said Guy, "We are monitoring it too. How swiftly can the general staff be assembled?"
"Were you running an operation at The South pole?" the general asked.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss it, I'll debrief to GS in 20 minutes."
Guy rung off.
The General looked at his staff - and they looked back at him, questioning, afraid.
Clearly something important had just happened - and it had taken the world completly by surprise.
---------------------
Von Trapp was standing in a void. In extended before him and away from him, above and below.
"Where am I?" he called out an flapped his medical gown experimentally. Wearing so little he expected to be cold but he was not. There was more. He had expected his voice to echo, the cacophonous repetition, so it came as something of a shock to him when it did not. Rather his voice was swallowed up by the emptiness of what surrounded him.
He was afraid now , it had been a long time since he last felt that, usually he was on the other end of terror. He reflected on this thought, the memory of power and dominion, a slow smile crept to his lips.
But where had it gone? Where was he? The memory faded.
"Where am I?" Von Trapp raised his voice and called out into the darkness.
This time something called back.
YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE TO ME?
The voice was loud, and yet not, it filled the space but was not deafening it simply WAS.
This was some sort of test. Well Von Trapp had survived enough of those and always triumphed.
"I've lived...a good life," he prompted
YOU LIE
WHAT IS YOUR NAME, SOUL?
Von Trapp...Rolfe..Von Trapp.
YOUR DESTINY IS YOUR OWN AND NO OTHERS. NOW, DECLARE YOUR INNOCENCE.
From the depths of is childhood on the run with the nanny, Von Trapp remembered her funny litle rituals where he'd first learnt about the Gods of old. There was a catechism, a ritual...now what was it? He'd studied it in temple, but he'd been good at what he did, out in the world away from the cult...bad habits had crept in, the certainty of youth faded.
"I..um... have not robbed, nor coveted items to steal." he started and faltered. The rest was indistinct and hazy.
AND OF OTHERS - HOW DO OTHERS JUDGE YOU?
Von Trapp reflected proudly on a criminal career of extortion and blackmail, of the worst kinds of malign intent and even murder.
"Carefully - if they know what good for them."
HAVE YOU SINNED?
"No, I've led a good life." lying was a habit that was hard to break even now.
WE CAN SEE YOUR LIFE - IT LIES BEHIND YOU - YOUR FUTURE IS TO BE WEIGHTED.
Do your worst I'm not believer
AND DO YOU WORSHIP NO GODS BEFORE US?
"Us?" who is us?" Von Trapp called back. Show yourself to me. I demand it!
The Darkness looked back at Von Trapp - and he realised that he was not staring at an infinite blackness but rather something that was black and very large.
Before him rose up a jackal head it had been bowed before, and now it was filling the space, his reflection was a mote in but one of it's jewel-set eyes, burning rubies, blazing stones of judgment.
I AM ANUBIS.
Von Trapp was awe-struck.
THIS IS THE HALL OF TWO TRUTHS.
AND YOU WILL ANSWER FOR YOU LIFE.
Von Trapp could see illuminated in a shaft of golden light behind the jackal head was a mirage of colour that took on the the form of a set of golden scales.
The God Anubis reached into Von Trapp and plucked out his heart.
Von Trapp watched in mute horror as the fleshy congealed organ was lifted and carried to the scales by the talon of Anubis.
There was no pain, the Jackal had simply removed it from his chest.
On one side, lay the feather of Maat, Anubis held Von Trapp's heart above the scale, overseen by a figure with an Ibis head and surrounded by the glow of the moon.
The moon figure said....you LIFE IS WEIGHED AND FOUND TO BE
Anubis placed Von Trapp's Heart onto the scales which almost immediately upended as thought carrying lead cannonballs.
WANTING. Anubis replied. TRIBUNAL - YOUR VERDICT ON THIS ONE?
Von Trapp looked up and saw high above the figure of Anubis a semi-circle of 42 pairs of eyes, orange and fearsome open like slits and all of them gazed into the depths of his existence.
OBLIVION was the unanimous reply.
And then he was alone....alone in the void...shrunken, hollow, empty and alone.... until the weight of the void consumed him and Friedrich Von Trapp was no more.
"Daltmooreby's blow sent Arthur reeling over the controls, mashing a random sequence of buttons. Outside the hum of the laser became deafening, there was a burst of turquoise light and the beam sliced away from the station, down through the atmosphere and slashed randomly across what looked the South Pacific...
---
It was a beautiful day, Bob had decided, and it was *the* day. The sun was beaming down, the breeze was fragrant with the tang of salt and tropical flowers and, well, if he couldn't declare his undying love for Jill here he was unlikely to be able to do it anywhere.
She was basking on the beach, utterly oblivious, and as Bob floated a hundred yards off-shore he swallowed, looked to the sky and said:
"Well God, I know you said this wasn't Meant To Be, but...well...here I go..."
He had barely begun to swim back when there was a blinding flash and burst of heated air, driving him backwards.
When he recovered, spitting saltwater, the sea between him and the shore was a boiling cauldron of superheated water. He blinked, and knuckled his eyes. A few palm trees by the shore had caught fire, and what appeared to be a luminous spear of blue-y light from the Heavens was zooming south.
Bob coughed nervously, and cast another look to the skies.
"...or maybe I'll just forget it, eh? Ha ha...yikes..."
---
"Shut it off!" cried Arthur. "In sanity's name, Daltmooreby, if that beam hits a population centre millions will die!" He leapt for the controls..."
