Post by Edward Cheever on Oct 17, 2010 19:28:37 GMT -6
This is the second selection of my work "Jaine" and it follows immediately after the first selection I posted here: roughwriters.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=readings&action=display&thread=131
Unfortunately, the forum's text editor doesn't like my use of Italics, so the train of some of the character's thoughts might be hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy!
Robert woke up, just a few moments later, with a strange feeling in his head. It was accompanied by a tingle that ran up and down his arms and legs and one other surprise.
“Work, blast it all. Work!”
He feared, in that moment, that the bite of the goblin had been poisonous. This fear, of course, went hand in hand with the shock of finding another’s voice inside his own head. He wondered if he were hallucinating.
“No, no, I am not hallucinating…” The voice murmured to itself, “…wait! Those are not my thoughts!” Robert got the curious sensation that the voice had jerked its head around with wide eyes and full ears, scanning the room. What room, exactly, he couldn’t say.
“Who is there?” The voice demanded.
Unsure of how one should deal with hallucinations, he cautiously answered, “Me.” This elicited a moan from the voice, and Robert felt he could see it slowly massaging its forehead, “Oh no. Oh no no no no,” it muttered.
Robert wondered what he’d said to upset his hallucination.
The voice answered as if Robert had spoken aloud, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Robert was bemused. “What do you mean?” he asked.
The voice was thick with the sort of frustration that comes when you’ve interrupted someone thinking hard. “You were supposed to be kicked out.”
“Of what?” Robert asked.
“Your body.”
Robert was taken aback. Not sure what to say to such a thing, he responded blankly, “Huh?”
The voice answered again, “Your body, your body! When I bit you and did the transfer, it should have sent my mind from its body to yours and you to its.”
Robert wasn’t sure if all hallucinations made as little sense as his. He’d always gotten the impression that hallucinations were very real to those who had them, but his was very surreal.
“No, no,” the voice said. “I’m real.”
Robert didn’t believe it.
“Honestly, I’m not lying.”
Are all hallucinations so … strange? Robert wondered.
“Blast it! I’m not a hallucination!” The voice yelled at him. “Look, I was in the Murk’s body, chasing him in mine, then you got in my way. When you wouldn’t let go, I tried a transfer between us. Something went wrong, and now I’m stuck in your head.”
Robert lay staring at the side of the ditch, I must be dreaming.
“I don’t want to hear it. Now get up,” the voice said.
Robert blinked. Um, he thought.
Robert’s continued confusion infuriated the speaker, “What are you waiting for?” it yelled. “We need to catch him.”
The whole situation struck Robert as strange. His hallucination really seemed to be another person. He even felt the voice’s emotions. They weren’t completely separate from his, but they were still distinct. Not that Robert knew how to express such a thing in those terms. He didn’t know how, but the voice’s anger was seeping into him.
That anger was reflected in his retort, I’m waiting for somebody to tell me what’s going on!
The voice was insistent, “It is getting away! I do not have time for…” Robert gave the voice a very stern mental glare. The voice seemed to be looking over its shoulder at the tunnel. “It is a long explanation, I do not have time for…”
Make time, Robert thought.
“Right… Right. Very well.” The voice hesitated, “I do not know where to begin.”
Robert had the strange sensation of looking through a dim window. Images were flashing by, and though he couldn’t make them all out, a few stuck in his head. An underground city, a rusty steel grate with sewage in it, dark tunnels and watery lights, he recognized the goblin, or “Murk,” as the voice had called it, leaping towards him, sunlight and thick brush, and then a very tall and bloated image that looked vaguely like himself.
“Hold on,” he said. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Well, of course.”
“That isn’t me. It’s all wrong.”
“I know an oaf when I see one.”
Robert frowned. “Nevermind, nevermind. Go back to the beginning.” It brought up the image of the underground city. “What’s that?” he asked. He only thought of it as a city because that was the label given it in the speaker’s mind.
“It’s Ghund. The greatest city under the earth.” The more the voice concentrated on the image, the clearer it became.
It was more like a hive to Robert’s mind than a city. He saw a warren of tunnels, each leading to still more tunnels and more tunnels that wrapped around one another in all directions. Furthermore, there were small rooms and systems of rooms, burrows, complexes, unique centers of underground construction. Large open spaces, domes and caverns crisscrossed by artificial bridges and platforms. These led into artificial tunnel entrances, which looked like the homes of mud-dobbers, black wasps, except laid on their sides. These tunnels were like main roads, highways, leading off to coarser, rougher country tunnels. All were lit by a strange low blue light that shown from various places amongst the rocks. All of Robert’s bubbling curiosity about the light, however, was completely over-taken at the first images of the inhabitants of the city.
They were moles.
That can’t be right, Robert thought.
“What can not be right?” the voice asked.
“Well… they’re moles.”
“Of course, they are.”
“The city can’t be inhabited by moles!”
“Well, it is not just Moles, certainly; there are also the Jern.”
“That’s not what I meant. And what’s a ‘Jern’?”
“I am a Jern.”
“You’re a Jern?” The image of the goblin came into his mind.
“No!” the voice said. “A Jern. This is me.” The image of the small woman he had protected from the goblin appeared.
“How’s that possible? Wait! You’re a girl?” Now that he said it out loud, he realized he should have felt it from the start.
“Yes, I am a ‘girl,’ though more precisely a woman. As to how I, a Jern, could be stuck in your head when you were attacked by a Murk is what I have been trying to lead you to.”
Robert was half-certain that the whole thing was a dream, but still intrigued said, “I’m listening.”
“I am Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd, high-serf to the royal family and agent of the royal intelligence division.”
“What royal family?”
“The Trousboor family. And stop interrupting.”
“Are they moles, too?”
“Of course they are moles.”
“Oh.”
“Now be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“You truly must.”
“I will.”
“Good. At any rate, as member of the royal intelligence service, I was sent to spy on a rival city inhabited by the Murks. To get there I had to travel by way of the world above earth.”
“My world?”
“Yes, your world. Quiet. I arrived safely in their kingdom, built of smooth tunnels, full of foul smells and waterways. I was not expecting it to be quite so rank, though I had heard stories. I also had to squeeze past their surface gate. Thankfully, it was unguarded.”
“Hold on, do you mean to say they live in the sewers?”
“What?”
”The sewers. Tunnels of water beneath cities, carries away waste, that sort of thing.” He thought hard of all the images of the sewers, grates and man-holes he could picture.
She gasped. “How many entrances to the surface are there?”
“In one city? Hundreds.”
“And there are more cities?” she asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“This is horrible.” She muttered, “The king must be warned.”
Robert didn’t know what to think.
She suddenly remembered what she had been saying. “Oh, right. I remained on my duties in their lands for several weeks, observing them, when I was found. I do not know why the creature decided to use the tunnel I had hidden in. He chased me all the way to the surface before he caught me. They are not without intelligence, and he quickly realized I was a valuable agent. This was very useful to him.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, he was already under orders to use a Jern for his mission, whatever that is.”
“Wait, how do you know he knew those things?”
“Because I was trapped in his body for a time and saw his memories.”
“Well, then why don’t you know what his mission is?”
“Long term memories become a part of the body, but short term memories are transferred completely with the mind, since they have not had time to become attached to the body permanently.”
“Well, didn’t he know his own mission?”
“I believe he had received the specifics of his mission just before he found me. He knew he would have to take a Jern body for some time. He just didn’t know why.”
“Um, how did he do that anyway?”
“Murks have the unfortunate ability to switch bodies with others.”
“How?”
“Well, they bite you and insert a tube appendage below the skin.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Well, you should know. I did it to you.”
“Oh. Oh! When you bit me?”
“Yes.”
“Weird.”
“At any rate, it knocked me unconscious for a time. When I woke up, he’d already passed through the gate and was on his way here. I barely managed to catch up to him before you went and ruined it all.”
“Uh, sorry?”
“So we have to get my body back. There is no telling what that creature might do to Ghund if we do not stop him.”
Robert remained still for a moment, then said, “So you’re sure you’re not a hallucination?”
“No! How many times must I say no? I am real. Truly real.”
Robert sighed. “Is there a way to get you out of my head?”
“There is no time for this; he is getting away!”
“Is there?”
“The situation is dire!”
He glared at her mentally.
She sensed he wouldn’t budge until she gave him something.
“Yes,” she grunted. “But we need to get my body back first.”
Robert looked over at the mindless body of the murk. “Do we need it, too?”
She hesitated, “I do not believe so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It is hardly my field of expertise.”
Robert shrugged, “Better safe than sorry.” He said, standing up and walking toward the body.
“It will just slow us down.”
“But we might need it.” He bent over to grab its arms and legs.
“I heard once that you do not need the body of a Murk to transfer people back to their original bodies.”
“Really?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I am positive.” Robert listened to her, and she did sound sincere. But… his sense of her wavered. It was much like looking at something distant through heat waves. Well, the mental equivalent, anyway. He was still getting used to another presence in his head.
Hesitating only once more, he finally turned and headed for the entrance to the tunnel.
“How long do you think this will take?” he asked.
“If we hurry, we should be able to catch it before it gets to Ghund.”
In his mind that translated into about a day’s time. There would be no way of getting back before people got worried, but there was no way he’d just walk around with her in his head.
“And if we don’t reach it before it gets to the city?”
“Then it shall become several levels beyond complicated.”
Frustrated, he said, “Can’t you say anything normally?”
“I am not the one speaking unmannerly. You should learn to speak properly yourself.”
Calming down, he muttered, “Sorry.”
She remained silent.
The entrance was just a little too short for him to stand fully erect. He ducked and entered cautiously, one hand on the wall, the other vaguely feeling in front.
He had a sudden thought. “What was your name again?”
“You have forgotten my name?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How few social skills do your people posses?”
“Look it was a mouthful, alright? Anybody would have forgotten by now.”
“I did not forget yours. Robert.”
“Well, mine isn’t so hard, is it?”
“No, I suppose it is true that it has all the complexity of a gramblefly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. I suppose it is better than having a monosyllabic name.”
Robert suppressed his memories of being called Bob.
“At any rate, my name is Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd.”
“Uh….”
She sighed. “Perhaps you could call me by a…” she searched his memories for a moment, “…nickname.”
He thought for a moment. “I’ll call you Jane. How ‘bout that?”
“How surprising,” she mused. “A monosyllable.”
“Look, it’ll make this whole thing easier.”
“Fine. If you must, but spell it with an ‘I’ please.”
Robert’s eyes widened. “How’d you know how I spelled it?”
She seemed to be shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “I am in your head.”
Robert didn’t quite know what to say. This experience really would take a while to get used to. “Oh.”
“Have you got it?”
Robert blinked and shook his head. “Uh, right. Jaine.”
“Gooood,” Jaine said. “We’ll have you trained yet.”
“Also,” she said, “do keep in mind that when you talk to me, you merely have to think.”
“What?”
“You do realize that most of this time you have been speaking aloud to me when I am in your head?”
He thought of what he must have sounded like, holding a seemingly one-sided conversation. Is that better? he thought at her.
“Yes, much better. Now we must hurry. We do not have much time.”
Trying to pick up the pace Robert walked, hunched over, into the darkness.
Unfortunately, the forum's text editor doesn't like my use of Italics, so the train of some of the character's thoughts might be hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy!
Robert woke up, just a few moments later, with a strange feeling in his head. It was accompanied by a tingle that ran up and down his arms and legs and one other surprise.
“Work, blast it all. Work!”
He feared, in that moment, that the bite of the goblin had been poisonous. This fear, of course, went hand in hand with the shock of finding another’s voice inside his own head. He wondered if he were hallucinating.
“No, no, I am not hallucinating…” The voice murmured to itself, “…wait! Those are not my thoughts!” Robert got the curious sensation that the voice had jerked its head around with wide eyes and full ears, scanning the room. What room, exactly, he couldn’t say.
“Who is there?” The voice demanded.
Unsure of how one should deal with hallucinations, he cautiously answered, “Me.” This elicited a moan from the voice, and Robert felt he could see it slowly massaging its forehead, “Oh no. Oh no no no no,” it muttered.
Robert wondered what he’d said to upset his hallucination.
The voice answered as if Robert had spoken aloud, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Robert was bemused. “What do you mean?” he asked.
The voice was thick with the sort of frustration that comes when you’ve interrupted someone thinking hard. “You were supposed to be kicked out.”
“Of what?” Robert asked.
“Your body.”
Robert was taken aback. Not sure what to say to such a thing, he responded blankly, “Huh?”
The voice answered again, “Your body, your body! When I bit you and did the transfer, it should have sent my mind from its body to yours and you to its.”
Robert wasn’t sure if all hallucinations made as little sense as his. He’d always gotten the impression that hallucinations were very real to those who had them, but his was very surreal.
“No, no,” the voice said. “I’m real.”
Robert didn’t believe it.
“Honestly, I’m not lying.”
Are all hallucinations so … strange? Robert wondered.
“Blast it! I’m not a hallucination!” The voice yelled at him. “Look, I was in the Murk’s body, chasing him in mine, then you got in my way. When you wouldn’t let go, I tried a transfer between us. Something went wrong, and now I’m stuck in your head.”
Robert lay staring at the side of the ditch, I must be dreaming.
“I don’t want to hear it. Now get up,” the voice said.
Robert blinked. Um, he thought.
Robert’s continued confusion infuriated the speaker, “What are you waiting for?” it yelled. “We need to catch him.”
The whole situation struck Robert as strange. His hallucination really seemed to be another person. He even felt the voice’s emotions. They weren’t completely separate from his, but they were still distinct. Not that Robert knew how to express such a thing in those terms. He didn’t know how, but the voice’s anger was seeping into him.
That anger was reflected in his retort, I’m waiting for somebody to tell me what’s going on!
The voice was insistent, “It is getting away! I do not have time for…” Robert gave the voice a very stern mental glare. The voice seemed to be looking over its shoulder at the tunnel. “It is a long explanation, I do not have time for…”
Make time, Robert thought.
“Right… Right. Very well.” The voice hesitated, “I do not know where to begin.”
Robert had the strange sensation of looking through a dim window. Images were flashing by, and though he couldn’t make them all out, a few stuck in his head. An underground city, a rusty steel grate with sewage in it, dark tunnels and watery lights, he recognized the goblin, or “Murk,” as the voice had called it, leaping towards him, sunlight and thick brush, and then a very tall and bloated image that looked vaguely like himself.
“Hold on,” he said. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Well, of course.”
“That isn’t me. It’s all wrong.”
“I know an oaf when I see one.”
Robert frowned. “Nevermind, nevermind. Go back to the beginning.” It brought up the image of the underground city. “What’s that?” he asked. He only thought of it as a city because that was the label given it in the speaker’s mind.
“It’s Ghund. The greatest city under the earth.” The more the voice concentrated on the image, the clearer it became.
It was more like a hive to Robert’s mind than a city. He saw a warren of tunnels, each leading to still more tunnels and more tunnels that wrapped around one another in all directions. Furthermore, there were small rooms and systems of rooms, burrows, complexes, unique centers of underground construction. Large open spaces, domes and caverns crisscrossed by artificial bridges and platforms. These led into artificial tunnel entrances, which looked like the homes of mud-dobbers, black wasps, except laid on their sides. These tunnels were like main roads, highways, leading off to coarser, rougher country tunnels. All were lit by a strange low blue light that shown from various places amongst the rocks. All of Robert’s bubbling curiosity about the light, however, was completely over-taken at the first images of the inhabitants of the city.
They were moles.
That can’t be right, Robert thought.
“What can not be right?” the voice asked.
“Well… they’re moles.”
“Of course, they are.”
“The city can’t be inhabited by moles!”
“Well, it is not just Moles, certainly; there are also the Jern.”
“That’s not what I meant. And what’s a ‘Jern’?”
“I am a Jern.”
“You’re a Jern?” The image of the goblin came into his mind.
“No!” the voice said. “A Jern. This is me.” The image of the small woman he had protected from the goblin appeared.
“How’s that possible? Wait! You’re a girl?” Now that he said it out loud, he realized he should have felt it from the start.
“Yes, I am a ‘girl,’ though more precisely a woman. As to how I, a Jern, could be stuck in your head when you were attacked by a Murk is what I have been trying to lead you to.”
Robert was half-certain that the whole thing was a dream, but still intrigued said, “I’m listening.”
“I am Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd, high-serf to the royal family and agent of the royal intelligence division.”
“What royal family?”
“The Trousboor family. And stop interrupting.”
“Are they moles, too?”
“Of course they are moles.”
“Oh.”
“Now be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“You truly must.”
“I will.”
“Good. At any rate, as member of the royal intelligence service, I was sent to spy on a rival city inhabited by the Murks. To get there I had to travel by way of the world above earth.”
“My world?”
“Yes, your world. Quiet. I arrived safely in their kingdom, built of smooth tunnels, full of foul smells and waterways. I was not expecting it to be quite so rank, though I had heard stories. I also had to squeeze past their surface gate. Thankfully, it was unguarded.”
“Hold on, do you mean to say they live in the sewers?”
“What?”
”The sewers. Tunnels of water beneath cities, carries away waste, that sort of thing.” He thought hard of all the images of the sewers, grates and man-holes he could picture.
She gasped. “How many entrances to the surface are there?”
“In one city? Hundreds.”
“And there are more cities?” she asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“This is horrible.” She muttered, “The king must be warned.”
Robert didn’t know what to think.
She suddenly remembered what she had been saying. “Oh, right. I remained on my duties in their lands for several weeks, observing them, when I was found. I do not know why the creature decided to use the tunnel I had hidden in. He chased me all the way to the surface before he caught me. They are not without intelligence, and he quickly realized I was a valuable agent. This was very useful to him.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, he was already under orders to use a Jern for his mission, whatever that is.”
“Wait, how do you know he knew those things?”
“Because I was trapped in his body for a time and saw his memories.”
“Well, then why don’t you know what his mission is?”
“Long term memories become a part of the body, but short term memories are transferred completely with the mind, since they have not had time to become attached to the body permanently.”
“Well, didn’t he know his own mission?”
“I believe he had received the specifics of his mission just before he found me. He knew he would have to take a Jern body for some time. He just didn’t know why.”
“Um, how did he do that anyway?”
“Murks have the unfortunate ability to switch bodies with others.”
“How?”
“Well, they bite you and insert a tube appendage below the skin.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Well, you should know. I did it to you.”
“Oh. Oh! When you bit me?”
“Yes.”
“Weird.”
“At any rate, it knocked me unconscious for a time. When I woke up, he’d already passed through the gate and was on his way here. I barely managed to catch up to him before you went and ruined it all.”
“Uh, sorry?”
“So we have to get my body back. There is no telling what that creature might do to Ghund if we do not stop him.”
Robert remained still for a moment, then said, “So you’re sure you’re not a hallucination?”
“No! How many times must I say no? I am real. Truly real.”
Robert sighed. “Is there a way to get you out of my head?”
“There is no time for this; he is getting away!”
“Is there?”
“The situation is dire!”
He glared at her mentally.
She sensed he wouldn’t budge until she gave him something.
“Yes,” she grunted. “But we need to get my body back first.”
Robert looked over at the mindless body of the murk. “Do we need it, too?”
She hesitated, “I do not believe so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“It is hardly my field of expertise.”
Robert shrugged, “Better safe than sorry.” He said, standing up and walking toward the body.
“It will just slow us down.”
“But we might need it.” He bent over to grab its arms and legs.
“I heard once that you do not need the body of a Murk to transfer people back to their original bodies.”
“Really?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I am positive.” Robert listened to her, and she did sound sincere. But… his sense of her wavered. It was much like looking at something distant through heat waves. Well, the mental equivalent, anyway. He was still getting used to another presence in his head.
Hesitating only once more, he finally turned and headed for the entrance to the tunnel.
“How long do you think this will take?” he asked.
“If we hurry, we should be able to catch it before it gets to Ghund.”
In his mind that translated into about a day’s time. There would be no way of getting back before people got worried, but there was no way he’d just walk around with her in his head.
“And if we don’t reach it before it gets to the city?”
“Then it shall become several levels beyond complicated.”
Frustrated, he said, “Can’t you say anything normally?”
“I am not the one speaking unmannerly. You should learn to speak properly yourself.”
Calming down, he muttered, “Sorry.”
She remained silent.
The entrance was just a little too short for him to stand fully erect. He ducked and entered cautiously, one hand on the wall, the other vaguely feeling in front.
He had a sudden thought. “What was your name again?”
“You have forgotten my name?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How few social skills do your people posses?”
“Look it was a mouthful, alright? Anybody would have forgotten by now.”
“I did not forget yours. Robert.”
“Well, mine isn’t so hard, is it?”
“No, I suppose it is true that it has all the complexity of a gramblefly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. I suppose it is better than having a monosyllabic name.”
Robert suppressed his memories of being called Bob.
“At any rate, my name is Jainerium Illeade Horousahnd.”
“Uh….”
She sighed. “Perhaps you could call me by a…” she searched his memories for a moment, “…nickname.”
He thought for a moment. “I’ll call you Jane. How ‘bout that?”
“How surprising,” she mused. “A monosyllable.”
“Look, it’ll make this whole thing easier.”
“Fine. If you must, but spell it with an ‘I’ please.”
Robert’s eyes widened. “How’d you know how I spelled it?”
She seemed to be shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “I am in your head.”
Robert didn’t quite know what to say. This experience really would take a while to get used to. “Oh.”
“Have you got it?”
Robert blinked and shook his head. “Uh, right. Jaine.”
“Gooood,” Jaine said. “We’ll have you trained yet.”
“Also,” she said, “do keep in mind that when you talk to me, you merely have to think.”
“What?”
“You do realize that most of this time you have been speaking aloud to me when I am in your head?”
He thought of what he must have sounded like, holding a seemingly one-sided conversation. Is that better? he thought at her.
“Yes, much better. Now we must hurry. We do not have much time.”
Trying to pick up the pace Robert walked, hunched over, into the darkness.
