Making the Best, continued
Dec. 19th, 2005 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerAs it turned out, tomorrow it was time for a stomach ache and various internal confloptions that lasted till yesterday evening. Nothing serious--I just overate and unbalanced my bodily fluids or something. Bilious attack, they used to call it when I was at school.
Anyway, today, having dressed as warmly as Achenar knew how, I finally tapped the four-digit code in the Rime journal into the control thingy in the tunnel, and the whole concern rose smoothly up into the ceiling and disappeared from view. I shall draw a veil over precisely how long I stood there like a lemon before it dawned on me that that was my lot, but it was even longer before I realised that what had gone up might well have come up somewhere else, and retraced my steps to the Library. There, in a sort of hexagonal whatnot, were two Linking Books, one on top of the other.
Two. I wasn't expecting two. I looked at the top one. It looked almost exactly like the Nexus Books I had seen in D'ni. (The Nexus was an intermediate Age that the D'ni used to link from place to place within the City. You went to the Nexus, selected a location and it dispensed a Linking Book to take you there. All because there used to be a rule that you couldn't link within an Age. More of a guideline, really.) The other was the one I was looking for. It looked cold, which was the main theme of Atrus's descriptions of it in his journal. I tucked the strange Nexus Book into the pocket of my fur-lined piratical coat and linked through.
Cold it was. The bitter wind struck through the layers of clothing as if I had draped myself in tissue paper. Various structures confronted me, but only one had a door at ground level. I made for that one, teeth already chattering fit to splinter, got in and shut the door behind me, which helped a little but not much.
There was a stove in one corner, a Myst Linking Book (which was a relief, as I'd forgotten to bring one) and another door. Neither of the last two would open, due to being frozen solid, so I looked for the controls of the stove. If anyone can give me a good reason why Atrus would have wanted to plumb in a gas stove in this particular way, five pounds or local equivalent is theirs for the asking as soon as I get to my bank. It just seems like pure sadism to me. Anyway, I got it going, checked out the Myst Book and explored beyond the inner door.
Atrus may not have been insane in the full-on, I-am-a-GOD-do-you-hear-me sense of his dad and his sons, but there were some kinks in that man that people just don't notice. A clear obsession with secrecy and hiding things, far beyond any necessity. That and/or sadism, as I said. Anyway, I found my way at last to the final room, and the crystal viewer he had written about. I tinkered with it a bit, mostly without success, though there was a code on a nearby desk that produced some interesting results, especially at this point in time. And it was then I remembered that I had found a similar drawing of five crystal shapes, roughly scribbled over in various colours, back in the blocked corridor on Myst.
Of course I didn't have it with me--I've changed my clothes a dozen times since then. I linked back to Myst and then to Stoneship, spent a frantic half hour searching the pockets of dirty laundry I really must bring back to Myst and wash, and finally found the paper. Back to Myst, back to Rime, and with a trembling hand I entered the sequence of shapes and colours on the viewer and pressed the button.
A brilliantly lit picture burst on the screen, and I gazed in sheer dumbfoundment. I had never seen this place before...and yet I knew, somehow, where it was. Where I might have come, if I hadn't been so frodding eager to see the famous Myst island.
"Releeshahn."
Anyway, today, having dressed as warmly as Achenar knew how, I finally tapped the four-digit code in the Rime journal into the control thingy in the tunnel, and the whole concern rose smoothly up into the ceiling and disappeared from view. I shall draw a veil over precisely how long I stood there like a lemon before it dawned on me that that was my lot, but it was even longer before I realised that what had gone up might well have come up somewhere else, and retraced my steps to the Library. There, in a sort of hexagonal whatnot, were two Linking Books, one on top of the other.
Two. I wasn't expecting two. I looked at the top one. It looked almost exactly like the Nexus Books I had seen in D'ni. (The Nexus was an intermediate Age that the D'ni used to link from place to place within the City. You went to the Nexus, selected a location and it dispensed a Linking Book to take you there. All because there used to be a rule that you couldn't link within an Age. More of a guideline, really.) The other was the one I was looking for. It looked cold, which was the main theme of Atrus's descriptions of it in his journal. I tucked the strange Nexus Book into the pocket of my fur-lined piratical coat and linked through.
Cold it was. The bitter wind struck through the layers of clothing as if I had draped myself in tissue paper. Various structures confronted me, but only one had a door at ground level. I made for that one, teeth already chattering fit to splinter, got in and shut the door behind me, which helped a little but not much.
There was a stove in one corner, a Myst Linking Book (which was a relief, as I'd forgotten to bring one) and another door. Neither of the last two would open, due to being frozen solid, so I looked for the controls of the stove. If anyone can give me a good reason why Atrus would have wanted to plumb in a gas stove in this particular way, five pounds or local equivalent is theirs for the asking as soon as I get to my bank. It just seems like pure sadism to me. Anyway, I got it going, checked out the Myst Book and explored beyond the inner door.
Atrus may not have been insane in the full-on, I-am-a-GOD-do-you-hear-me sense of his dad and his sons, but there were some kinks in that man that people just don't notice. A clear obsession with secrecy and hiding things, far beyond any necessity. That and/or sadism, as I said. Anyway, I found my way at last to the final room, and the crystal viewer he had written about. I tinkered with it a bit, mostly without success, though there was a code on a nearby desk that produced some interesting results, especially at this point in time. And it was then I remembered that I had found a similar drawing of five crystal shapes, roughly scribbled over in various colours, back in the blocked corridor on Myst.
Of course I didn't have it with me--I've changed my clothes a dozen times since then. I linked back to Myst and then to Stoneship, spent a frantic half hour searching the pockets of dirty laundry I really must bring back to Myst and wash, and finally found the paper. Back to Myst, back to Rime, and with a trembling hand I entered the sequence of shapes and colours on the viewer and pressed the button.
A brilliantly lit picture burst on the screen, and I gazed in sheer dumbfoundment. I had never seen this place before...and yet I knew, somehow, where it was. Where I might have come, if I hadn't been so frodding eager to see the famous Myst island.
"Releeshahn."