These entries are double-dated. One never quite got the sort of distance I hoped it would and the other did, but since I probably will need to visit the Blackwater on multiple occasions to get its full gauge, I’ll include it as a little demi-thing. Keep this notebook clear of its shades.
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Date 1
Tomorrow I’ve got a second full day of a D&D campaign lead by someone else — a sort of caravanning adventure across a world I’ve never explored, so it feels appropriate that while that adventure goes one direction, I grow too in its opposite, into my backstory. A backstory set in the Blackwater, that tepid, sun-baked space above Rosewater.
And since we’ve just laid a little hint of the future in Yahoo Boys, I’d like to strip back down to some reed breaches and catch up with old Pa’Torno.
If you haven’t read or listened to Rosewater’s first installment yet, I’d suggest it. However, here we are.
Back to:
Rosewater
By Eric Westerlind
•
His feet clicked kindly across the cold, dewy stone of the ramparts. Pa’Torno stopped his mount to watch the grey man come towards him, as seemed appropriate.
— Che, hana. Yous passed in up, but whena said why holdin such and such ifa ye know lolda such’ll do ye wrong in sights of ussa Silent-type, wae?
— Just to see, my friend. Pa’Torno dimmed the floating lights so the grey Silent became something less than a silhouette. He inhaled deep — the persistent drip of the swamp slowly leaking through the mass rootcomb overhead seemed like the softest rain.
— Ye gits lighthome, here, bin.
They were face to face then.
— I don’t see well anyway, said Pa’Torno. You’re right.
— Binnet since oh?
The man’s eyes, huge, nearly half his face, loomed, flashed, looping organic mica. He took Pa’Torno and his spider in slowly, and rested on his spinner, a mixture of spear and hard bristle brush.
— It has. I did not think I would visit again, Ben.
— Lookin hit feste, likin these days hold ye nearer ground, eh?
Pa’Torno laughed.
— I understand you’ve had visitors, he said.
— Inna.
— And that the Popolos have taken to calling them mighty.
— Inna ha. Tey soft as soch, bote hasn many ehh anna zzz. The grey man of the underground rubbed the pads of his fingers together in a demonstration of wealth and magic.
— Well, said Pa’Torno.
He knew different.
— How do the Silent feel about so many comings and goings?
Ben, the Silent, the grey man, moved near to the edge of the ramparts and bristle-brushed a creeping moss that’d begun sporulating as soon as it had fallen to the stone. He kicked it down one of the drain chutes carved into the great wall.
— Sumna pass, alla pass. Noose is noose. Same same.
•
The Silent lived at Post 11 of 686, nearest the well Pa’Torno had come down. Each post was an hour or more walk to the next and they dotted the enormous fortification at perfect intervals. There were ten stairwells that ran into the interior stonework, hollow rings for small storerooms — a lifetime of feed for the Silent. Ben’s paper and seal granted the wizard passage from guardpost to guardpost and the guards at each were busy, or not, moving about their section, effacing the tracings, marks, paints, molds, growth and plant matter that were sign of the wild Tribes beyond the wall.
The spider mount mewled on seeing the stairs down into further darkness and Pa’Torno relented to carrying Pasco in a small aerated box of dry reed.
—It’s no wonder I never come down, he said, hobbling the first two steps in pain, the first to crippling result, the second to see if the first had been a fluke.
He resorted to spellwork and barely touched the remaining steps, such was his gravity.
At its base, the wall stretched overhead forever. The ochre light of his floating lights cut a contrasting flavor to the few hoj globes hanging across the lawn of the city’s first ring; several statues were visible in the grass distant, shifting.
The stool spider returned to his normal size, Pa’Torno suggested the spider find them somewhere to nest briefly, and his mount obliged by clambering them up onto one enormous statue, a stone creature made of cups, inside one of which Pasco made a quick webwork of straps, and let the old man down into it.
— Okay, Pasco. You can go if you want.
•
When he woke from the dream, sticky with the web’s gossamer product, he understood Og had not been killed.
It made him smile, thinking of the rootworld above him holding on to the great creature. He had seen himself carry a hand-drawn image to a mud wall and begin to set it there and know that he was carrying the lives of the remaining ma’adan who visited him at his hut — Yoki’Sinsa his daughter’s lover, Yoki’Yanna’bett who had disappeared when Jerboah was killed and flayed for his black tiger pelt, Yok’Agga the people’s shaikre; his family. He carried them to the wall in his dream with the youthful unrecognizable hands of other times, and knew he would hang them there and not see them again.
So there was a sadness in his smile. This was the difficulty of dreams — their timescape indefinite, the potential for loss infinite. One could only wake to the simple fact that what had happened hadn’t, but also the truth that it would.
A day, even in the lightless underworld of Rosewater’s first ringwall, at least had boundaries in which to act.
— Come on, old bones, he said to himself. Not yet. Not yet.
•
•
•
Aright, let’s change the pace some. Two weeks go by in real time.
•
Date 2
I’m somewhat desperate to call this next piece Bostrom the Bastard. I may do so, but I need to think it aloud for a second. When I read scathing reviews of a book or take-down pieces of prominent academics or thinkers, I tend to agree without doing diligent research. The rationale comes quickly. The rationale is not always wrong, but if you’re going to give someone ‘The Bastard’ as their epithet — .. — eh, when has this ever been about logic. I’ve been reading a lot on transhumanism! Humans achieving their “grand potential” through biotechnological alteration — think merging with machines, neural implants, gaining echolocation … along with space expansionism, its one of the things certain people would encourage working towards, in lieu of solving today’s problems.
Double that with a recurring earbug of mine which is that refrain: “but what should we do?” when in fact it’s all this doing and doing that now needs undoing that we’re dealing with.
Yeah.
•
Bostrom the Bastard
By Eric Westerlind
•
The old religious man stood at the convention with his arms out and said “We are at the most dangerous moment…” and trailed off, an ambient droning music catching his ear in the way nostalgic music does, implanting memories in his mind of a life he’d never lived.
Not literally — there was nothing material in the memories. He was simply struck, and the man playing the music said what do you think, do you like it?
The old religious man looked over at this guy then and a certain sadness and longing came over him.
“I said, do you like it?” asked the man with the tiny speaker. “I scanned your ID chip — it spits out a selected playlist of songs you missed at whatever age.” The man exhaled some vapor. “What do you think?”
The old religious man put a hand up to his temple and clumsily said I don’t know, but the answer wasn’t exactly to this fellow’s question.
“I’m Bostrom,” said the fellow, grinning. He held out a hand. “You’re TED08Squirrel?”
A four-legged courier ran past them and bounded up the convention center stairwell.
“Look, I’m sorry. Are you alright?”
The old religious man was trying to shake images of palm trees from his mind. He’d sat down on one of the air chairs, gripped the base of his sign with both hands. Bostrom sat behind him — the chair was wide enough. Not straddling, but in a polite way.
“I’m technically security,” Bostrom said. “I have to tell you that legally.”
The old religious man was drooling some.
“Here,” said Bostrom. “Let’s just—” he punched a set of controls at the chair’s base. Its pedestal lifted a bit higher, and they began to whik across the convention center floor, the big OMNI banners waving, an audible flock of attendees inside. A glowing woman on screen invited guests not inside inside. She spoke about looking beyond the now. Graphics of interplanetary travel. The breeze caught Bostrom’s hair and moved it so he had to push it back. The old religious man had fallen asleep with his head in his lap. Nobody was there to see Bostrom pat the old religious man’s forehead and when they passed through the convention gates and got out beyond the parking structure, he rolled him almost gently into a hedge.
The lemon lights of the street turned red and Bostrom turned the vehicle back for the convention center. “The Existential Forecast” read the glimlights hung overhead.
•
The old religious man stood with his arms out in front of the convention center saying, “There has never been a more dangerous moment.” His ears were a violet blue and stuffed with hedge berries. “Do not trust Reason to be your God. Do not belittle what your senses tell you. This is the dangerous moment.”
The crowd, a thousand people perhaps, with lanyards, name tags, in pressed clothing carrying papers, brochures, some bleary-eyed from the big screen, some carrying coffees in cups branded the OMNI brand walked around him, not ignoring but avoiding the old religious man with violet ears stuffed with berries.
The crowd dispersed, a beached wave returning, and Bostrom crossed the concrete with exasperation on his face.
“You’re back,” he said.
The old religious man nodded and said, “Don’t try your music trick on me this time. It won’t work.”
“Well it didn’t work last time either,” said Bostrom. “You should still be out cold.”
“I changed my chip,” said the old religious man. He gripped his placard, remembering a phantom pain.
Bostrom touched his temple and rechecked his information.
“TED08Squirrel. Residence, St Louise, Floor 204. Baste and bake specialist. Born.. born—” —the information didn’t compute. Bostrom looked up at the overhead of the woman still inviting convention goers, "—November 27th, 2061.”
He looked back at the old religious man, saw the scar under all the dried sweat, mud and berry juice.
“Who are you?” he said.
“There has never been a more dangerous moment,” the old religious man said. He rattled his sign that just said STOP in red crude letters.
“Who are you?” said the younger man.
“Do not trust Reason to be your God.”
“WHO ARE YOU!” yelled Bostrom.
“Bostrom,” said the old religious man, holding out the neural chip he’d removed somewhere in the future like a piece of candy.
I've been thinking on eschatology ever since our last Nudge, and now this has me thinking about it again. Religion is fading but the religious impulse is alive and well and 'salvation" and "heaven" have been replaced with "transhumanism" and "another planet". I want to read more about this old religious man and his world