BP&G - The Mad Wizard

[joegoda]

Part of Pockets was constantly monitoring the world, as it turned from night to day, from day to days, from days to weeks. He watched as a monster hurricane attack the southern continent on its western side. He was aware that the snowmelt from the northern pole was less than the previous, but the southern balanced it out, and the ocean level stayed pretty much the same. He felt an earthquake rip through an uninhabited portion of the northern continent, and saw that an entire species of flying weasels was wiped out because they lived in only that one area. A part of him mourned, knowing that he and Bags would never get to see the weasels alive. He also knew that their end was part of the very natural order of the planet, so he also rejoiced and remembered their passing.

Wonders he saw, from his vantage point of being between the worlds. He watched as that curious village, that was called itself the Village of Shopkeepers, mold and bend the stuff of the matrix into marvelous things. There were cakes, and dolls and clothing, love charms that really brought love and luck charms that really brought luck. He watched as a small tree on knoll near the village seemed to siphon the quantum material and channel it into the air, just as if it was water vapor from an underground stream.

He discovered a great library, on the outskirts of the plain that led to the village, which had books from all over the Universes, and was apparently a focal point for the universes to converge and combine. He watched as books were being written, without any sort of physical help at all. It seemed that here the books were alive.

He found that, even though he could not interact with the people on the planet, there were some that could detect him and even communicate with him. The Librarian, for example, whose name Pockets knew was Rebecca Grace Prim, was fully aware of him and greeted him warmly.

She called him by his name, and in a conversation she had with him, where she was the only one speaking, she explained that she had been the librarian on the doomed ship. Richard Shockley's dreaming gave her the ability to cross dimensions and pull literature from anywhere. She told Pockets how the Great Library was one of the things that happened naturally, on this plain close to the village. Just as quantum magic seemed to flow from that one small tree near the village, knowledge seemed to pool here on the plain and because there had to be a place to keep it all, there had to be a library. And here, of course it was. She invited him back when he found the time, and hoped that they could carry a conversation like reasonable people. Over tea.

One of the oddest things he found, something he couldn't quite fathom, was the Clock at the Center of the World. It was a massive timepiece that seemed to govern the very tides of the planet, swinging to and fro with the seasons, and ticking the lifeblood of the continents. It was hidden in a deep cavern, along with millions of clocks, all ticking along at their own separate rate, all showing different times on their faces. Clocks of all sorts, clocks of all kinds. Small little chimers, and large grandfather types, reaching very high up to the ceiling. Round clocks and square clocks and clocks of odd shapes of animals and plants and people.

There was a man there, whose name was John. He saw Pockets looking at him and introduced himself. "I am the Winder of the Clock at the Center of the World," he said. "It is my job and honor to keep the heart beat of the planet ticking along." John rose from an old antique desk and showed the place around.

"Here you will find a timepiece for everyone, and everything on this planet." He showed the Great Clock, just through a door from his office. "There is even a clock for you, and though I can tell you that it runs very slowly, it does run." John smiled sadly. "Nobody lives forever."

Pockets, though wanted very much to stay in the Great Library, or sit with John and watch the clocks run, felt a pull back towards the Village. He found his awareness pulled without his own will, without his wishing it, and that surprised him very much.

He was pulled through a third storey window, in a rickety old building, at the end of a narrow alley. It was a place he recognized, from an earlier dream. He found, much as he expected he would, a skinny, short man with pointed ears that had tufts of hair on them. He was sitting behind a desk that was piled with papers and parchment and books. Old grocery receipts and napkins and towels. Any thing that would hold ink. And ink there was!

Smudged on the wall in long scrawling sentences. Sprawled across the floor, on the desk, on the table. Brown, black, faded, bright and new, there was ink everywhere there was a space for a word to be written. Even the man himself had ink on his hands, on his forehead, smudges on his shirt and the knees of his trousers.

As Pockets watched, the old man put down his quill pen, scratched one of his ears and looked up and winked. "Yes, I figured you would be back, youngster." He painfully pushed back from his desk, and laid the pen gently in the inkwell. The pen, though, had other ideas, and hopped out of the inkwell and continued writing by itself. The old man ignored it.

"You can't stay, of course." The StoryTeller told Pockets. "You have the whole rest of the story to live through."

"Who are is this guy?" Pockets thought to himself.

"Oh, nobody important." The old man paused and scratched his thinly whiskered chin. "I don't think so, anyway." He pointed up to where Pockets' awareness was. "But I'm important right now in your story, that's for sure!" He cackled to himself as if from a secret joke.

"You can hear me?" Pockets thought.

"Not so much as I can read you." Dismissing the question and answer with a wave of his hand, the StoryTeller continued, "What is important is that there are more than just you in this story, you know. There are things you need to focus on, and things that need to be done."

To Pockets questioning thought, the old man replied, "Oh, I can't tell you that. I can't tell you anything." He smiled mischievously. "That would be like skipping to the end of the story to find out the ending, and that is something even I can't do."

"I can tell you this, however. You will do okee doke." With another wave of his hand, the old man shooed Pockets away. As his awareness was once again thrust out through the window, watched as the old man sat back down at his desk and make a grab for the errant quill. "Dad burn you! Stay still..." was the last thing Pockets heard from the third storey window.

Tossed like a leaf into the wind, his consciousness flew into the forest near the very mountain his body was sitting comfortably, attached the main computer. There were some very odd things here. He found his old friend Chum, still sitting and waiting for his love Journiey to return, but that wasn't the oddity. Chum was just part of the wonders of the planet, created when the planet was, much as any other wonder of the planet.

The oddity was that there was a man shaped bundle of vines further up the trail. Another oddity was that there was a man shaped mound of dirt and moss sleeping in a tree. Pockets checked the reality of the situation, and there was indeed a man bound to the floor of the forest. His name was Pewitt and he had a mind full of... Fear. Not little fears, like a fear of the dark, or a fear of frogs. It was the Big Fear. Fear of Life. Fear of Death.

Pockets watched the flow of energy from the man shaped mossy pile in the tree to the man bound on the floor. It was very strong. It was... vicious. Something was severe going on.

Pockets tested the rightness of the situation. The balance of it, to see if it was something that was wrong. He was surprised that this was correct as it could be. He had checked the memory of the past few weeks and found that Pewitt was bound to the forest so that he might learn a bit of acceptance, a bit of humility. And while the Earthman, as he liked to think of himself, was not the nicest person, for reasons of his own, he had taken it upon himself to educate Pewitt. He was educating Pewitt as to how the smallest of minds can be opened quite wide if the motivation is sufficient. He was force-feeding education to Pewitt, and if Pewitt's strength were enough, he would survive.

Pockets moved on, further up the trail, to a larger oddity. He noticed that here, at a small bridge over a gully a disturbance had occurred. Not a fight. Not an argument. But a disturbance of Nature. Of Time.

If he had an eyebrow, he would have raised it. He could see where the stream of time had been bent here and overlaid and overrun. There was time laid upon time, and very neatly too. Unless he knew where to look, he would never have seen it. And if Pockets had been in his normal body, he would not have even known that something had happened, so he would not have even looked for it.

Burrowing down through the memories of this locale, he found that a young man named Weehawk had crossed here recently and been thrown backward in time about sixty years. Pockets found this most curious. The person that had done this bit of temporal tampering was apparently the same man that hung in the tree above Pewitt, but there was a difference. This Greenman and the Earthman were the same person, only phase shifted in time by six seconds, so there appeared to be two of them.

Pockets found this to be quite a curious thing, and he couldn't see the reason for it. This man, this Green/Earthman seemed to be like the Librarian, the StoryTeller and John the Winder. People that were outside the stream of the quantum matrix, or perhaps a physical part of it. Pockets was rather hoping it was the later rather than the former. It was important in many ways.

Just for curiosity's sake, and Pockets was nothing if not curious, he checked the computers memory for what became of Weehawk. What he found was oddly satisfying and it explained quite a number of things. Weehawk was indeed a resourceful old coot, had a great number of adventures on both the north and the south continent, amassed an incredible fortune and loved many women.

He had no love that was as great as a woman who went by the name Flowerpot. Her real name was Sally April, and she was thought by many to be a witch. While she did have a bit of touch with the magic that ran through the planet, she was really just observant of patterns. She played at being an old woman, but in truth, she was only ten years older than Weehawk.

Weehawk had a child by Flowerpot. Or, it could be said that Flowerpot had a child by Weehawk. In truth, they had a child by each other. Just one. A boy, who came wailing into the world and was given the Winston.

Flowerpot and Weehawk would carry Winston in a contraption she call a baby bag. Sometimes Weehawk would carry Winston with him when he went hunting and tell the boy wonderful tales of adventure and bravery. Flowerpot never played any card tricks when the baby was around. It would cause him to be made fun of by other children if he showed a talent, she would say to Weehawk. She had refused to allow him to be teased as she had been.

It was Weehawk's dream that Winston would grow to be a hero, and have the sort of life that Weehawk himself had led.

As many things that are dreamt happen, the dream died with Weehawk, who went on one great adventure to the Southern Continent. He was going in search of riches that would allow him to build a castle for his beloved Flowerpot. Just one more, he told her, with a kiss. He never returned.

Flowerpot, shattered and destroyed by the loss of her love, took her own life. Before she did, she managed to take three year old Winston to an orphanage and left him hanging in his baby bag on the front door. She kissed his forehead, told him to be brave and never give up, and walked into the darkness, to be swallowed up by the earth and spread to the winds.

As for Winston... the boy did indeed grow up, was always brave, and never, ever gave up. In truth, he had quite a number of adventures and had the love of a wonderful woman who was soon to give birth to a bouncing baby girl. He had lived his father's dream, and had become a hero and a king. As the Nuns at the orphanage had no idea what his name was, they simply called him Bags, from the baby bag in which they found him. For a first name, they pulled from an old Saint... Saint Timothy.

Pockets wanted to smile, and his body did, back in the chair under the mountain.

Fletcher noticed the smile and wondered briefly what Pockets was up to, and checked the temperature and vitals of the body. It was quite normal, and if anything, very peaceful. Fletcher shrugged his shoulders and went back to idly monitoring the workings of the computer.

For a brief moment, Pockets had the thought of checking his own past, to see if he could find his own parents. He pondered it and decided that it was best left alone. Somehow, he believed, that if you pulled the curtain that hid the man, the man would become very ordinary. He liked who he was, and to find out he was anything different would just muddy the waters.

"Well," he thought to himself, "Enough of living in the past!" He let his consciousness rubber band back to the moon, and gathering his will, puffed six large mountains on Bigun into nothingness. "Time to kick the tires and light the fires." Crossing his non-existent fingers and firmly placing his imaginary tongue between imaginary teeth, Pockets Pushed.

Fletcher, under the mountain, heard an alarm going off. He leapt to check Pockets, and found the body was quiet and normal. He checked the massive computer, and found there was nothing amiss there either.

Tossing back his hood, Fletcher did something he had hoped he wouldn't have to do ever again. He pulled a small probe from a tiny console and plugged himself into the computer and becoming part of it. He had done this many times over the years while there was no occupant in the chair. It allowed him to see how the quantum matrix was holding up, to monitor the fluxuations and deterioration of it. What he found surprised him, and he uttered a very non-Fletcher phrase.

"What the hell?"

All over the matrix there were spikes jumping, like mountains suddenly appearing on the ocean floor. The whole thing was lighting up as if it had been supercharged, somehow. The effect was oddly familiar, but he couldn't quite place from where.

He searched his own extensive memory and found nothing similar. So he searched the memory of maintainer he replaced, Obi. There, buried so very near the beginning, and in fact, at the very moment that Obi was brought into existence, was another flare up.

That flare of the quantum matrix occurred at the time that Shockley was recreating the world but even that incredibly creative happening was not as shining bright as this event.

Fletcher monitored the event for eight hours. There was no decrease of the flare, no lessening of the spikes. If anything, it appeared as if the matrix was adapting to a new status quo, a new way that things were going to be. There was no sign of the previous deterioration, and if anything, the flow and ebb seemed to be stronger and more vibrant.

Unhooking himself from the system, Fletcher checked on Pockets' body one again. Pulse was normal, calm and slow. Body temperature was well within normal. He checked the pupils of Pocket's eyes and found they were shining from within, literally. It seemed as if there was a light inside of Pockets head and it was leaking out from his eyes. Fletcher took a step back and just looked at the body sitting in the chair. His arms were crossed and a small frown passed over his face.

"Chester Pockets, what in the Seven Hells are you doing?"

Comments

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

I love where the story is taking you! I will have to put my Capi hat on tomorrow, there were a few editorial things I noticed, but I think the rum is keeping me from finding them again.. lol..Also.. I am going to have to go back.. for some reason I thought Flowerpot was the old lady who read cards for either Pockets or Peewitt and Weehawk on their trip.. Now I have to go find what her name was. But I like that Weehawk is Bags' Dad !

[capi.livejournal.com]

Hey there, girlfriend; have you figgered out your English book yet, or do you still want a tutorial?

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

I have attempted to appease the questions of the boys with ... I am in nanopause..

In a nutshell.. I have been unable to concentrate on the story, or the book for the past couple of months.. A mixture of things add up to the creative juices drying up.. hopefully temporarily. It's been a strange couple of months for me.. the good news at the moment is in the interim I have not had a cigarette in 5 weeks... but since I was accustomed to writing with a cigarette burning I have avoided it for the time being. It doesn't help that my asthma decided to pick when I quit to go into overdrive making health issues a problem. Soon Capi dear.. soon I will gather myself together again amd make some real progress in learning the rules of the craft I feel like such a pretender in. And shortly thereafter get the story back on track.

As soon as I delve into the English book you will be the first to know!! *HUGS* I wish for you to regain many many spoons very soon.

[capi.livejournal.com]

((( hugs )))

Ah Sherry.... Griz!! I am reading a lot into this, based on other snippets you've dropped over the past few weeks. If'n you'd like to talk, let me know, k? I's a counselor, and a very good listener, luv.

The English book can wait as long as you like. HOWEVER... it occurs to me that it may be a very good thing for taking your focus off things you need a break from. Remember, it's *easy*!!

If you like, i am ready to spend the fifteen-ish minutes with you that it will take to get you launched. If you'd rather, i'll shut up about the book til you're where you wanna be. And of course the other option is that we just sit down and chat! I'm all for any of those!

And if you just need space, that's also available. ((Hug))

[journiey.livejournal.com]

Sherry,
I Am Ever An Email Away If You Need To Vent. Huggs!!!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Here's the link to FlowerPot's story.. There is a mention of arthritis, but no mention of age, per se. I didn't quite have it planned like this, but it did sorta follow a plan.
http://joegoda.livejournal.com/133501.htm

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

O.k after re-reading FlowerPot's earlier tale.. I think you might want to mark it for some re-vamping. I like the twist the story took, but it does not match up with the earlier excerpt.

[journiey.livejournal.com]

I LOVE It!!!! I Must Have MORE!!! :D

[capi.livejournal.com]

*heh*

Oh, that Pockets!! *heh*