Anonymous C joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 3 minutes later, 17 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,714
I think you got some key details wrong
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) replied with this 12 years ago, 2 minutes later, 20 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,715
"I must get back to my office; I have new flatware to judge. Modern patterns from Capetown."
Rising, she departed.
She's the real one, Leo thought.. Not Eldritch... I don't like being manipulated..
Eldritch, he thought suddenly, appeared in the form of a small girl, a little child - not to mention later on when he was that dog. Maybe there is no 'her'.. maybe it's Eldritch...
The thought chilled him.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) double-posted this 12 years ago, 9 minutes later, 29 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,716
What we have here... is not an invasion. Not an invasion of earth... by PROXmen... beings from another system.
Not an invasion... by the legions of the pseudo-human race.
No.
It's just HIM... Who's EVERYWHERE... Growing and growing like a mad weed.
Is there a point.. where he'll burst? Grow too much?!
All manifestations of HIM, all over Luna and Terra and Mars... He is PUFFING UP.. and BURSTING..
POP!!
POP!!
POPPP!!!!!~~
I believe it's something like.. sticking a pin in through armor, and good-bye kingy-poo...
What though, in this case is the pin??
And... is there an open spot into which is may be thrust?
I- don't know...
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) triple-posted this 12 years ago, 6 minutes later, 35 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,717
"Got the book.. but still nothing.. we've been monitoring transmission from PENIS PARK prospects.. We saw Eldritch land near the hovel- but that was hours ago.."
"I believe I know what happened," Leo said.. "Okay, Thaaanks!!~" He hung up.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) quadruple-posted this 12 years ago, 9 minutes later, 45 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,718
Barney went down into the drug spiral, he realized.. and right away, they all followed..
That was the end, just as it was for me.. on Luna..
Our tactics required that he ingest the drug.. and so we played right into P&E's dirty semi-mechanized hands;
once he had the drug in his system we were through...
He somehow controls each of the worlds induced by the drug; I know he does! I know it! The DANK is in ALL of them!
The fantasy worlds that the drug induces... are in Eldritch's head!
As I found out personally.
And the trouble is, that once you get into one of them you can't quite scrabble back out...
It stays with you...
Even when you think your're free.
It's always a 1-WAY GATE.. and for all I know.. I'm still in it now!
However... that does not seem likely.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) quintuple-posted this 12 years ago, 10 minutes later, 55 minutes after the original post[^][v]#516,719
Who gets sacrificed? Leo asked himself..
Me, Barney, FB - which of us gets melted down for HIM to guzzle?!
Because that's what we are, potentially, for him; Food. To be consumed.
It's an oral thing that arrived back from the PROX system. A great mouth, open to receive us.
But he's not a cannibal. Because I know... he's not human.
That's not a man there in that skin...
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) sextuple-posted this 12 years ago, 9 minutes later, 1 hour after the original post[^][v]#516,721
But what is it? ... He had no concept.
So much could happen in the vast expanses between Sol and PROXima... either coming OR going..
Maybe it happened when ELDRITCH was going. Maybe.. he ate the PROXmen during those ten years.. cleaned the plate there and so he came back to US.
Ugh.
Well, two more hours of independent life.. plus the time it takes to travel... to Mars.
Maybe 10 more hours of privacy...
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) septuple-posted this 12 years ago, 1 hour later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,747
"GOD. DAMN. YOU. ELDRITCH!" he said.
"I'm the pilot too, AND I was thinnking,, of greeting you, when you land... But that's much too soon."
"Give me the papers to sign," Leo said, reaching out.
Surprised, Eldritch said "You still intend to make the trip to Mars?" He appeared to be a bit taken aback..
"Yes." He waited patiently for the papers.
---
Once you've taken ####-Z, your're delivered over. At least that's how the dogmatic, devout, fanaticals, like Annie Hawthorn would phrase it.
( ( ( Like Sin ) It's the condition of SLAVERY ) Like the fall. (THE _TEMPTATION_(Similar)) );
But what's missing here? A way to be freed.
Where would we have to go to find it?
Even there it may not exist...
Not in the Universes, anywhere...
...
---
...
Annie Hawthorne appears- standing at the door of the Hovel transmitter room.
"Are you all right?"
"Sure," Barney said. " You know, we got ourselves into this.,. No-one made us drink *SUBS-D*..." He dropped his cig to the floor- erasing its life with his steel-toe boot..
"And you won't givd me your bindle.."
It was not Annie denying him it... but Eldritch. Operating through her. Holding back.
A thought crossed his mind... 'I could take it from her...'
STOP, she said.. or rather, it said.
...
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) octuple-posted this 12 years ago, 32 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,755
NS yelled: "Whatareya doin' Barney?! Just let her-"
The STRONG artificial arm STRUCK him; the metal fingers clawed and it was almost enough;
they pried at his neck, knowingly, alert to the spot where death could be administered most effectively.
But, he had the bindle and that was it; he let teh creature go.
"Don't take it, Barney," she said quietly.. "I-it's just *too soon* after the first dose. Please.."
Without answering, he was off... heading towards his own compartment.
"Will you do one thing for me?" she called after him. "Divide it in half, lemme take it with you.. So I can get to E before the D, before RH shows"
That was the direction he was leaning towards as well... the only place he stands a chance..
Again and Again... Again and Again.. until success.
He locked himself inside.
---
As he devoured the drug, he thought about Leo...
You got away. Probably because Eldritch was weaker than you. Is that it?
Or was Eldritch just letting you dangle?
You should come here and stop me; now, though, there's no stopping.
Even Eldritch warned me, through Anne Hawthorne; it was too much even for HIM. And now what??
Have I gone so far... that i've plunged to the bottom? Out of even His Sight?
Where even Eldritch can't go. Where nothing exists.
I can't get back up... of course..
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) nonuple-posted this 12 years ago, 6 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,756
His head ached.
He shut his eyes involuntarily.
It was as if his brain, alive, frightened.. had physically stirred; he *felt* it tremble.
Altered metabolism... Shock. "I'm sorry.. Okay?" he said.. to himself... apologizing, to his somaticself.
"Help"
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) decuple-posted this 12 years ago, 9 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,757
@previous (!OhBrie5EHg)
"Aw, help- my ass!" the voice was grating..
"what'ya want me to do? Hold your hand?"
"Open your eyes, or get outta here!"
The period he spent on Mars ruined him...
"I'm fed up. Come on!"
"Shut up," Barney said. "I'm Sick, I went too far."
He opens his eyes and faces Leo... who is sat at his big oak desk.
"Listen," Barney said. "I'm on ****-Z; I can't stop it. If you can't help me then I'm finished."
His legs bent as if melting as he made his way across the room to a chair and seated himself.
Regarding him thoughtfully, smoking a cigar, Leo said, "Your're on ****-Z now?
He scowled. "
As of two years ago-"
"It's banned?"
"Yeah, banned... My God. I don't know if it's worth my talking to you; what are you, some kind of phantom.. from the past?"
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) undecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 26 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,763
"You heard what I said; I said I'm on it.
He clenched his fists.
"Okay, okay." Leo puffed masses of heavy gray smoke, agitatedly. "Don't get excited! Hell, I went ahead and saw the future too, and it didn't kill *me*. And anyhow- You ought to be used to it! Anyhow-" He leaned back in his chair..swiveled around, crossed his legs. "I saw this.. Monument.. See? Guess to who. Me. To me."
He eyed barney, then shrugged.
Barney said, "I have nothing to gain, nothing at all, from this time period. I want my wife back."
He felt.. enraged, upsurging bitterness. The bile of disappoint.
Into his intercomm, Leo said, "Glisan, please don't let anything bother us for a while."
Leo turned his attention back towards 'Barney'... "The whole lot of the Eldritch CORP got hauled by the UN Police.. Hnattt had this contract he signed with Eldritch's business agent. WEll, they gave him the choice of a prison sentence.. Okay, I admit it's unfair, but don't blame me- or emigrating. He emigrated."
"What about her?"
"With that pot business of hers? How the hell could she conduct it from a hovel underneath the martian desert?? Naturally she dumped the dumb jerk. Well so see if you had waited-"
Barney said, " Are you really Leo? Or are you Eldritch? And this is to make me feel even worse- is that it?"
Raising an eyebrow, Leo said, "Eldritch is dead."
"But this isn't real; this is a drug-induced fantasy- Translation."
"The hell it isn't real." Leo glared at him. What does that make me then? Listen."
He pointed his finger angrily at Barney. "There's nothing unreal about me; your'rre the one who's a goddam phantasm, like you said, out of the past. I mean, you've got the situation completely backward. You hear this?!" He banged on the surface of his desk with all the strength in his hands.
"The sound reality makes. And I say that your ex-wife and H are divorced; I know because she sells her pots to us for 'minning'.. Infact she was in RF's office last Thursday." Grumpily, he smoked his cigar... glaring at barney.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) duodecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 4 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,764
"That's all I have to do," Barney said, "is look her up."
It was as simple as that.
(Edited 36 seconds later.)
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) tridecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 12 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,765
"Oh yeah," Leo agreed, nodding. "But just one thing. What are you going to do with RF? Your're living with her in this world that you seem to like imagining as unreal."
Astounded, Barney said, "After two years?"
"And E knows it because she's been selling her pots. To us. Through R. the two of them have become buddies; they tell each other their secrets. Look at from E's viewpoint. If she let you come back, R'll probably stop accepting her pots... for minning. It's a risk and I bet Em won't want to take it. I mean, we give R absolute say, so like you had in your time."
"E would never put her career ahead of her own life."
"You did. Maybe Em learned from you, got the message. And anyhow, even without the H guy, why would E want to go back? She's leading a successful life, with her career; she's planet-famous and she's got $kin after $kin salted away . . . You want the truth? She's got everything she wants. Any darn time. She doesn't need you; face it, Barney. Anyhow, what's lacking about R? Frankly I woulnd't mind-"
"I think your're Palmer Eldritch."
"Me?" Leo tapped his chest. "Barney, I KILLED ELDRITCH; that's why they put up that monument to me."
His voice was low and quiet but he had flushed deep red. "Do I have stainless steel teeth? I have an artificial arm?"
Leo lifted up both his hands. "Well? and my eyes-"
Barney moved toward the door of the office.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) quattuodecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 6 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,766
"Where are you going?" Leo demanded.
"I know," Barney said as he opened the door, "that if I can see Em even for just a few minutes-"
"No you can fella," Leo said. He shook his head, firmly.
Waiting in the corridor for the elevator... Barney thought maybe it really was Leo.
And maybe.. it's true.
So i can't succeed without Palmer Eldritch.
Annie was right; I should have given half the bindle back to her... then we could have tried this together.. Anne, Palmer.. It's all the same. It's all him.
The creator.
(Edited 34 seconds later.)
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) sexadecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 7 minutes later, 3 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,768
That's who and what he is, he realized...
The owner of these worlds. The rest of us just inhabit them, and when he wants to he can inhabit them, too.
Can kick over the scenery, manifest himself, push things in any direction he chooses. Even be any of us he cares to.
All of us, in fact, if he desires. Eternal, outside of time and spliced together segments of all other dimensions
...
he can even enter a world in which he's dead.
Palmer Eldritch had gone to PROX a man and returned a God.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) sedecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 20 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,771
Aloud, as he stood waiting for the elevator, Barney said, "Palmer Eldritch, help me. Get my wife back for me."
He looked around; no one was present to over-hear him.
The elevator arrived. The doors slid aside. Inside the elevator waited four men and two women, silently.
All of them were Palmer Eldritch. Men and Women alike: artificial arm, stainless steel teeth . . . the gaunt, hollowed-out gray face with JENSEN eyes.
Virtually in unison, but not quite, as if competing with each other for first chance to utter it, the six people said, "You're not going to be able to get back to your own world from here, Mayerson; you've gone too far, this time, taken a massive overdose. As I warned you when you snatched it away from me at PENIS PARK PROspects."
"Can't you help me? I've got to get her back.."
"You don't understand," The Eldritches all said collectively, shaking their heads; it was the same motion that Leo had just now made. And the same firm No.
"As it was pointed out to you; since this is your future, you are already established here. So there's no place for you... that's a matter of simple logic. Who'm I supposed to snare E for? You? Or the legit Barney MAyerson who lived naturally up to this point? And don't think he hasn't tried.. I did what I could for him.. and it was quite a few months ago.. after RH got shipped, kicking and protesting the whole way to Mars. It was a dirty deal. All engineered by Leo of course.. and look at yourself."
The six Eldritches gestured with contempt.
"Your're a phantasm, as Leo said; I can see right through you, literally. I'll tell you in more accurate terminology what you are."
From the six the calm, dispassionate statement came, then. "Your're a ghost."
Barney stared at them and they stared back placidly, unmoved.
"Try building your life on that premise," the Eldritches continued... "Well, you got what St.Paul promises, as Annie Hawthorne was blabbing about; you're no longer clothed in a perishable, fleshly body- You've put on an ethereal body in its place. How do you like it, MAyerson?" Their tone was mocking, but compassion showed on the six faces.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) septuadecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 33 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,774
"You can't Die; you don't eat or drink or breathe air . . . you can, if you wish, pass directly through walls, in fact through any material object you care to.
You'll learn that, in time. Evidently on the road to Damascus Paul experienced a vision relating to this phenomenon. That and a lot more besides.
I'm inclined, as you can see, to be somewhat sympathetic to the Early- and Neo-Christian point of view, such as Anne holds. It assists in explaining a great deal."
"What about you, Eldritch? You're dead, killed two years ago by Leo."
(And I know that your're suffering what I am; the same process must have overtaken you, somewhere along the route. Gave yourself an overdose of ****-Z and now there's no return to your own time and world, either)
"That monument," Six Eldritches said, murmuring together like a rattling far-off wind, "Is highly in-accurate. A ship of mine had a running gun-battle with one of Leo's, just off Venus; I was aboard his. He and I had just held a conference together with H-G on Venus and on the way back to Terra Leo took the opportunity to jump our ship. It's on that premise that the monument was erected- due to Leo's astute economic pressure, applied in all the proper political bodies.
He got himself into the history books once and for all."
Two persons, a well-dressed executive-type young man and a girl who was possibly a secretary, strolled down the hall; they glanced curiously at Barney and then at the six creatures within the elevator.
The creatures ceased to be Palmer Eldritch; the change took place before him. All at once they were six individual ordinary men and women. Utterly heterogeneous.
Barney walked away from the elevator.
For a measureless interval he roamed the corridors and then, by ramp, descended to ground level where the P,P, LAYOUTS DIRECTORY was situated.
There, reading it, he located his own name and office number. Ironically- and this bordered on being just too much- he held the title he had tried to pry by force out of Leo not so long ago; he was listed as Pre-Fash Supervisor, clearly outranking every individual consultant. So again, if he had only waited-
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) octadecuple-posted this 12 years ago, 25 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,780
By elevator he ascended to the floor of his own office.
When he opened the office door the man seated at the desk raised his head and said, "Close that thing. We don't have a lot of time."
The man, and it was himself, rose; Barney scrutinized him and then, reflexively, shut the door. As instructed.
"Thanks," his future self said, icily.
"And stop worrying about getting back to your own time; you will. Most of what Eldritch did- or does, if you prefer to regard it that way- consists of manufacturing surface changes:
He makes things appear the way hew wants.
But that doesn't mean they are. Follow me?"
"I'll take your word for it."
"I realize that's easy for me to say, now; Eldritch still shows up from time to time, sometimes even publicly, but I know and everyone else right down to the most ignorant readers of the lowest level of 'papes know that it's nothing but a phantasm; the actual man is in a grave on Sigma 140B and that's verified.
You're in a different spot. For you the actual Palmer Eldritch could enter any minute;
what would be actual for you would be a phantasm for me, and the same is going to be true when you get back to Mars.
You'll be encountering a genuine living Palmer Eldritch and I don't frankly ency you."
"Just tell me how to get back"
"You don't care about E any more?"
"I'm scared." And he felt his own gaze, the perception and comprehension of the future, sear him.
"Okay!! ... What am I supposed to do, pretend otherwise to impress you?! .. Anyhow, you'd know."
"Where Eldritch has the advantage over everyone and anyone who's consumed ****-Z is that recovery from the drug is excessively retarded and gradual;
it's a series of levels, each progressively less an induced illusion and more compaunded of authentic reality.
Sometimes the process takes years. This is why the UN belatedly banned it and turned against Eldritch; H-G initially approved because he honestly believed that it aided the user to penetrate to concrete reality, and then it became obvious to everyone who used it or witnessed it being used that it did exactly the-"
"Then I never recovered from my first dose."
"Right; you never got back to clear-cut reality. As you would have if you had abstained another twenty-four hours. Those phantams of Eldritch, imposed on normal matter, would have faded away entirely; you would have been free. But Eldritch got you to accept that second, stronger dose; he knew you had been sent to Mars to operate against him.. although he didn't have any idea in what way., He was afraid of you."
It sounded strange to hear that; it didn't ring right...
Eldritch, with all he had done and could do- but Eldritch had seen the monument of the future; he knew that somehow, in some manner...
They were going to kill him after all.
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) just kept on posting this 12 years ago, 33 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,793
"Ask to see both his hands."
"Your hands."
Already the creeping alteration in the man had begun, in the jaw especially, the idiosyncratic bulge which he recognized so easily.
"Forget it.." He felt dizzy.
His future self said mockingly, God helps those who help themselves, Mayerson. Do you really think it's going to do any good.. knocking all around, trying to dream up someone.. to take pity on you? Hell, I pity you; I told you not to consume that second bindle. I'd release you from this if I knew how and I know more about the drug than anyone else alive."
The metamorphosis was complete, and Palmer Eldritch sat tilted back at the desk, tall and gray, rocking slightly in the wheeled chair.. a great mass of timeless cobwebs.. shaped almost as a cavalier gesture, in quasi-human form.
"My good God, is he just going to wander around here forever?
"Good question . . ." Palmer Eldritch said gravely. "I wish I knew; for myself as well as him. I'm in it a lot deeper than he, remember."
addressing Barney, he said, "You grasp the point, don't you? That it isn't necessary to assume your normal Gelstalt... you can be a stone or a tree or a jumbo-jet or a section of Solar-Roofing... I've been all those things and a lot more. If you become inanimate, an old log for instance, your're no longer conscious of the passage of time. It's an interesting possible solution for someone who wants to escape this phantasmic existence. I don't."
His voice was low.
"Because for me, returning to my own space and time means death, at Leo's instigation...
I can only live on... in this state."
"But with you- Be a rock Mayerson!~
Last it out. However long it is before the drug wears off. Ten years.. a century.. a million years..
Or be an old fossil-bone in a museum..."
"I want to be that plaque." He had decided.
It was made of hardwood, probably mahogany, and brass;
It would endure a long time and in addition he knew that his future-self would never abandon it.
He walked toward the plaque wondering how he ceased being a man and became an object of brass and wood mounted on an office wall.
"You want my help, Mayerson?"
"yes."
!OhBrie5EHg (OP) just kept on posting this 12 years ago, 3 minutes later, 5 hours after the original post[^][v]#516,794