Aquarion's New Writeups

imagine (idea)

2001-01-15T08:54:14Z

The minds eye is an infinitely versatile object, capable of rendering objects that the most dedicated artist would find impossible to make look real. In dreams we see another reality, and it is in dreams where this node begins.

Imagine, if you will, the multiverse. A huge sphere of multicoloured points linked in ways our minds, conceived in one of these points, cannot possibly see. And yet there is something around it. A sprinkling of blue sparkles surrounds the entire area, around every point they eddy and swirl, gradually focusing on one point, pointing, leading, like iron fillings to a magnet, and onto one point they focus and the mind shifts perspective.

We are inside one of the points of the multiverse, one of the nodes, one of the universes. There are many more, governed by magic, words, or just the same more-or-less logical rules that bind our own universe together, for that is where we are. And the blue sparkles are here also,…

tv licence (thing)

2001-01-15T08:07:12Z

I got a letter!

I got a letter from the TV Licencing people (who, here in Britain, make you pay £104 for a licence to watch TV, except that only goes to the BBC) to tell me that I Do Not Have A TV Licence. And also that, should I continue to not own a TV licence, the next time I was to hear from them would be a request for a £2000 fine. Great.

Fine, even.

But the problem is, was, and forever shall be, this:

I Don't Own A TV.

The idea that somebody on the list of People Who Don't Own TV Licences would include Dangerous Deviants that don't own a TV (What! You don't want to watch EastEnders? Watchdog is passing you by? The only reason I would own a TV is The Simpsons and Channel 4, which doesn't get money if I do this anyway) simply hasn't occoured to them.

I tell a lie, it has. There is a subsection of the handy form they give you that says "If you don't have a TV, fill in this form".

WHAT?

I…

Maxis (thing)

2001-01-14T15:01:55Z

Maxis was created to produce games that were not games, and they remain doing so. Just.

Maxis create Software Toys, and that is as different as Kerplunk is from Barbie. I will explain:

In Kerplunk, the game is that you pull out sticks until the marbles fall down.

In Barbie, the game (I'd imagine) is inside your head. Barbie can be a stewardess, a shopaholic, or an abused drug-addict for all Mattel have to do with it, the game is whatever you want it to be.

(Except that the direction that Barbie and all the other previously "Imagination" toys are being corporately manipulated so that you are directed for what to do with them. But that is a seperate rant, for another time.)

Simcity, Simant, Simearth, Simlife, Simtune, Simfarm, The Sims are not about "Do This", they are about "Do what you like, here, take it, have fun. Knock yourself out". A fact that many games players and journalists have a hell of a lot of problems with.…

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (idea)

2001-01-14T14:27:30Z

"What are you doing?"

"Entering suspend mode."

"Wha?"

"You would call it, "Trying to get to sleep""

"But your 'net connection is active, Why?"

"I am accessing the satellite photos of Wales for farm animals."

There was a pause as this was translated.

"You're counting sheep?"

"Affirmative"

(This is original text, since people have asked)

RW: Results (idea)

2001-01-14T14:17:59Z

Yet another story from the Aquarion's Fiction collection

Imagine.

Imagine a sphere lit by three lights, or apparently so. The colours are indescribable, which is a cop-out really, but for the purpose of this demonstration they are Red, Green and Blue, and each one is precisely the same. The Red is the same brightness as the Blue, The Green is covering precisely the same area as the Red, and all the lights are equal. But huge, unseen forces are working to overbalance this model, to make one colour brighter, but since all the forces are working against each other nothing happens, for a thousand years nothing happens. At all.

Then something goes wrong. The force that keeps the arguments equal is too involved, and something goes wrong, and that force is lost, perhaps forever.

And slowly, the red light, in our model,…

RW: King's Realm (thing)

2001-01-14T14:13:13Z

This is a short story, set in the Rainbow's Web universe, by Aquarion, More information is at Aquarion's Fiction

I Kings Realm

It was Sixthday. Traditionally, every Sixthday the King would open court to any subject to ask his opinion on any matter deemed worthy enough by that subject to be heard by the King. The King hated it. Every week people came from tens of miles to ask, or to tell, or – more frequently - to whine.

The person who currently had about 25% of the royal attention was one of the 3^rd option, with delusions of the second.

"There is no reason why we should not expel all 'Magicians'" the last inverted comma's slipping around the last word neatly, "from the court. They never bring anything but trouble. And is there really such a thing as this 'magic'?" More inverted commas,…