Making the Best, continued
Nov. 6th, 2005 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerNot dead yet. Not feeling any better, but not dead yet.
My mind keeps going round and round. I've taken all this at face value for years and it doesn't make any sense. Atrus put the four Age Books in their "places of protection" after the burning of the Library: that much is obvious from the message. So where were they before? If they were on the shelf they would have been burned, surely. And how come the four journals that were spared the burning just happened to be those relating to the four surviving Ages?
Either the boys were very selective in their burning (the book of fireplace patterns got spared as well) or the Ages were never in any danger.
D'ni. Their minds were as labyrinthine as their caverns. I've always admired that, being a single-track thinker myself. The danger of madness must be correspondingly higher, though. Who knows what monsters you might run into round those twisty passages of thought... Atrus has always seemed the sanest and most straightforward of the lot, but suppose...just suppose...
The boys were bad lots. That much is obvious. But suppose they were innocent of the burning?
Suppose Atrus did it himself?
I can't believe that. If it's true it calls everything into question.
It's so hard to think through this. I wish it would just stop. I haven't eaten in over a day. If you call it eating. Still roasting fish-beastie over an open fire because the stove in the living area under Myst doesn't work without power. Only I haven't had the energy to go and catch the things, let alone all the cleaning and gutting and getting the fire going. Mystics do this to themselves to have visions and dream dreams. All I get is cramps and nightmares. I wake up in bed convinced the lights have gone out and I have to crawl across to the lighthouse and crank that frodding generator again, and then crawl through the passage to the compass rose. Sometimes I dream I'm doing it, and there are thi
Oh gods. Could it really be that simple?
Damn your twisty mind, Atrus. I've got to try it.
Later.--I am so stupid. It was obvious.
There's only one compass bearing in Stoneship. There's only one symbol in Selenitic that's relevant. I got back to the machine. I counted twenty-seven holes down from the top. I switched the valves and used the levers to align all the circles to one hundred and thirty-five degrees. Then I took the pin with the symbol of heat coming out of a crack in the earth, and put it into the hole. It went all the way in, with a series of clunks, and for a second I was sure it was going to reappear in the catch-tray.
Then there was a low thrumming noise that rose and steadied to a regular pulse, and the lights came on. I mean properly came on: they were giving off a dim glow before, just enough to see by. Now they're bright as day. The whole tunnel system is brilliantly lit. I went back up to the generator room. As I opened the door the lights came on beyond the glass, row upon row of them, and I could see right to the back where I'd left the door from the tunnels wedged open. I went back to the library: the lights were on. And as I picked up the map, it lit up with all the marker switch locations, and when I put it against the wall, it clung as if magnetised.
The machines are still mostly broken. There's still no food in the kitchen, even though the stove works and I'm sure the water from the tap will be drinkable any day now. I'm still trapped. But dear sweet gods, I did something. I made something happen.
I'm not helpless!
My mind keeps going round and round. I've taken all this at face value for years and it doesn't make any sense. Atrus put the four Age Books in their "places of protection" after the burning of the Library: that much is obvious from the message. So where were they before? If they were on the shelf they would have been burned, surely. And how come the four journals that were spared the burning just happened to be those relating to the four surviving Ages?
Either the boys were very selective in their burning (the book of fireplace patterns got spared as well) or the Ages were never in any danger.
D'ni. Their minds were as labyrinthine as their caverns. I've always admired that, being a single-track thinker myself. The danger of madness must be correspondingly higher, though. Who knows what monsters you might run into round those twisty passages of thought... Atrus has always seemed the sanest and most straightforward of the lot, but suppose...just suppose...
The boys were bad lots. That much is obvious. But suppose they were innocent of the burning?
Suppose Atrus did it himself?
I can't believe that. If it's true it calls everything into question.
It's so hard to think through this. I wish it would just stop. I haven't eaten in over a day. If you call it eating. Still roasting fish-beastie over an open fire because the stove in the living area under Myst doesn't work without power. Only I haven't had the energy to go and catch the things, let alone all the cleaning and gutting and getting the fire going. Mystics do this to themselves to have visions and dream dreams. All I get is cramps and nightmares. I wake up in bed convinced the lights have gone out and I have to crawl across to the lighthouse and crank that frodding generator again, and then crawl through the passage to the compass rose. Sometimes I dream I'm doing it, and there are thi
Oh gods. Could it really be that simple?
Damn your twisty mind, Atrus. I've got to try it.
Later.--I am so stupid. It was obvious.
There's only one compass bearing in Stoneship. There's only one symbol in Selenitic that's relevant. I got back to the machine. I counted twenty-seven holes down from the top. I switched the valves and used the levers to align all the circles to one hundred and thirty-five degrees. Then I took the pin with the symbol of heat coming out of a crack in the earth, and put it into the hole. It went all the way in, with a series of clunks, and for a second I was sure it was going to reappear in the catch-tray.
Then there was a low thrumming noise that rose and steadied to a regular pulse, and the lights came on. I mean properly came on: they were giving off a dim glow before, just enough to see by. Now they're bright as day. The whole tunnel system is brilliantly lit. I went back up to the generator room. As I opened the door the lights came on beyond the glass, row upon row of them, and I could see right to the back where I'd left the door from the tunnels wedged open. I went back to the library: the lights were on. And as I picked up the map, it lit up with all the marker switch locations, and when I put it against the wall, it clung as if magnetised.
The machines are still mostly broken. There's still no food in the kitchen, even though the stove works and I'm sure the water from the tap will be drinkable any day now. I'm still trapped. But dear sweet gods, I did something. I made something happen.
I'm not helpless!