Edgers, Thinkers and Grubbers

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead

"Look at these people, these human beings; consider their potential! From the day they arrive on the planet, blinking, step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than- no, hold on. Sorry, that's The Lion King." ~ Doctor Who

I'm reading a collection of sf stories by Charles Sheffield, about his characters McAndrew and Captain Jeanie Roker.(1) McAndrew is an Einstein level physicist whose mind is only happy when he's solving abstract problems; Roker is a spaceship captain who gets involved in his adventures, usually handling the action and the human viewpoint. The stories are set about a century from now, mostly in the Solar system and its outskirts. Space habitats, controlled black hole spaceship drives, asteroid mining and off-planet food production are commonplace. In one sense, the stories are what used to be popular in the 50s and 60s as "sf problem stories," today known as "hard sf" ... where the resolution of the story hinges on solving a scientific problem. Such stories can be fun as well as an excellent way to explain a complex scientific idea in simple words. Hard sf is one subgenre of science fiction, while space fantasy like STAR WARS is the opposite.

One of Roker's observations struck me as a pretty simple explanation for the state of the world. In "The Invariants of Nature," she says "Go back fifty thousand years, to a time when most of us were just grubbing along, looking for a decent bush of ripe berries or a fresher lump of meat. A few, like McAndrew, were busy inventing langauge or numbers, or painting the walls of the cave. And some, just a handful, were seeking an edge over the rest of us: Water access, or mating rules, or restricted entry to heaven."

Extrapolating from there, the handful took their edge by creating classes, governments, militaries and religions and now they rule the world. As I've said in previous posts, I still beleive that most of us want just to get along peacefully and enjoy life; hence my love of the Middle Eastern comic books that show that people everywhere have the same values.(2) Wars and race, class, sexuality, and religious hatreds are all lies hyped by the Edgers. Lies like, that religion is Satan, we should exterminate that people because they're plotting against us, we have to invade them before they get us, on and on.

How the heck did this happen? The Edgers should have been put in their place early, like unruly children - but they took over by threats, scare tactics, lies and just plain strongarming. The Thinkers were too involved in abstract ideas to notice. The Grubbers partly fell for the lies, but mostly they wanted peace and quiet too dearly to take arms against the Edgers. From time to time Mead's small committed groups have forced change (the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, Women's Suffrage and Civil Rights), but the world is still lorded over by kings and generals and reverends and ayatollahs and executives who use the Thinkers to craft weapons and Grubbers to do their dirty work.

Bit of a rant there, but I will admit that I'm a 60s hippie at heart (even though I'm also a grubber who joined the Air Force because it was safer than the Army). I like to ask silly questions, like why can't we accept that all religions are true at heart? Why should corporate heads make more money than the people who do the real work? Why aren't the people who talk about race hatred, nuclear war and "the coming resource wars," and what God tells them to do, in treatment instead of ruling the rest of us?

That must be why we like stories about characters who are beyond the reach of society so well.(3) Robin Hood, Tarzan, Superman, The Saint, The Spirit, Doctor Who, SERENITY ... Notice how these heroes operate. They tend to go about their business, but do good, help others and fight evil when its needed. None of them is interested in getting an "edge" on anybody. They wouldn't rule the world if they could, not even to force their version of rightness on it. Superman and his like could cure all the ills of the world in a day, but that would make them too much like the villains they fight. Dictators and religious fanatics and bigots think they're right too.

In a way it comes down to the Golden Rule, or the Wiccan Rede:

" ... Live you must and let to live, fairly take and fairly give ... These Eight words the Rede fulfill: An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will"


(1) THE COMPLEAT MCANDREW, Baen Books, 2000.(2) In the City of All Faiths, Dec 11 2007.(3) The Nature of Freedom, Nov 6, 2007

What I'm Reading and Watching

I'm taking this week to review some books and movies I've seen or read recently. They all seem to have some sort of a mythological slant.

INTO THE GREEN, Charles de Lint, Tor Books 1993

De Lint is a writer of fantasy, a musician and a Celtic folklorist who tells stories set the Green Isles; very like, but not quite, Celtic Ireland. His people's, places' and gods' names may not be authentic but they sound right. A lot of the lore isn't authentic either but it feels like it could be. The heroine, Angharad, is witch, tinker and harpist. She is Summerborn, gifted by the gods of the Green with the Summerblood's magic. In her time the green is losing its power as belief in magic fades, part of Angharad's task is to remind people of the old ways. As lovely as all this sounds, de Lint is also adept at creating nastiness to oppose his characters. Witch-finders, who sell witches' fingerbones (after all, the magic lies in their fingers when they wave them to cast spells or pluck harp strings), street urchins who think they can sell Angharad to a "hussyhouse," and the glascrow - a sinister puzzle box that seeks to corrupt and destroy the Summerblood and the Green. Her task isn't easy; her witchy powers are weak as belief ebbs, her ally Lammond may have dark motives of his own and Tom Naghatty is crippled not so much by a lost eye and a lamed leg as by self-doubt and recriminations. The novel is a wonderful tale of the power of belief ... in magic, in mystery and in yourself, that leaves me itching to read one of de Lint's modern day urban fantasies.

DAN DARE #1-3, Garth Ennis, Virgin Comics 2007-8

Virgin is the comics publisher that produces a fine line of comics by artists and writers from India: THE SADHU, DEVI, SNAKEWOMAN. They've expanded to include more Western based comics. Dan Dare has been an icon of British boys' comic papers since 1950. Dan and his buddy Digby saved the Earth from menaces like the evil Mekon time and again. The new series by writer Garth Ennis picks up a retired Dan Dare who is still a legend in the Space Fleet, living on an asteroid hologrammed to look like a British country estate. The Mekon is invading again and Dare's services are needed. Matters on Earth have deteriorated, the Prime Minister seems to be in league with the Mekon, the Space Fleet is vastly outnumbered and outgunned and many of its officers are only concerned for their careers with no taste for fighting. By the end of issue 3, Dare's people find themselves in a pretty hopeless situation defending colonists on the ground from an overwhelming enemy force. The bleak outlook has taken some criticism from old fans, but I am enjoying it. I'm usually first to gripe when writers try to make classic heroes darker and grimmer. I think that the assassination of JFK and events like Vietnam, Watergate and 9-11 have led us to believe that good guys die young, heroes can't be trusted and you have to be meaner than the bad guys to survive, and our myths and stories are being twisted to reflect that. That means that heroes can't do good just because it's right, they have to be obsessed or otherwise put themselves first. Heroes commit acts that are out of character and morally wrong (like Wonder Woman killing and the Justice League "lobotomizing" villains). But in this case, Dan Dare remains the hero he always was. He deals with the new climate cooly (as when he tells officers who want to abandon the colony to leave their uniforms behind because they are no longer members of Space Fleet) and faces the odds as they come. I like seeing how his leadership inspires younger officers to a heroism that we can all of us own. It's a good example of the quote from Joss Whedon's ANGEL:

"Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel, but that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, or what we've done, or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be. To show it what it can be."

JUMPER, Regency Films/20th Century Fox, 2008

JUMPER is a well done SF action movie. Like most good science fiction it takes a single premise and runs with it. In this case it is the classic SF idea that extreme danger can cause the mind to do the impossible to escape. This isn't new to science fiction; Alfred Bester used in THE STARS MY DESTINATION in 1953, and it's based on urban legends of the mother who lifted a car to save her trapped child. JUMPER gives it some new twists. David, the hero, is drowning when he suddenly teleports himself into the public library - along with a lot of water. When he jumps in, there is a small whoosh: the kinetic energy that you would use up in walking is released in one burst, and the air that was in the spot he materialized in is displaced. Jumpers can also teleport what they're touching or the vehicles they're in - which makes for a really wild car chase scene. David discovery that he is more than he knew reflects the ancient King Arthur/Luke Skywalker myth, but he never quite becomes a hero. He robs banks without opening doors and lives his own lifestyle visiting places like Paris, Rome and Egypt in a single day. But he's not a villain; he was still a kid with a kid's sense of morality when his power set him apart from everybody else on the planet. Well, almost everybody: there have been other jumpers, and a quasi-religious organization has been formed to hunt and kill them. "Only God should have the power to be everywhere at once." The Paladins have weapons that can prevent jumpers from jumping, and if you think Samuel L Jackson makes a scary good guy, he makes a really scary bad guy. I've heard that the book by Stephen Gould the movie is based on is very different; David is the only jumper. I'll probably read the book and review it later.

REAPER, CW Network, Tuesday 9/8c pm, 2007-8

Sam is a young man who works two jobs - as a stocker at the Tool Shed and as the Devil's bounty hunter. It's not his fault, his parents were tricked into selling his services, if not his soul, to the Devil before he was born, but it does give a new take on the Arthur/Skywalker legend. He's still basically a hero: he collects evil souls who have escaped from Hell (with super powers, to go on killing sprees on Earth). Ray Wise gives the best performance of the Devil ever, smooth and seemingly caring but just as slimy and oily as you'd expect. All the cast give great performances, especially Tyler Sabine as Sam's ultimate slacker pal Bert "Sock" Wysocki, and there are plenty of mysteries to keep us coming back. Is the Get Out of Hell Free card real or one of the Devil's tricks? What was on the page that Sam's dad tore out of his contract and burned? Is the new girl in Sam's life really the Devil's daughter? Loveable characters (yes, even the Devil), comedy, action subplots and the supernatural should have made this series a runaway hit. I'm surprised how few people have heard of it.

Misusing Myth, II

I WANT TO BELIEVE ~ poster on Fox Mulder's wall in THE X-FILES

“What are the facts? Again and again and again--what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"--what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" ~ Robert A Heinlein, THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. " ~ Carl Jung


I used to teach a course on UFOlogy for the Wichita Free University. I presented it in two sessions: the believers stories and the skeptics. I found that the believers, while accusing skeptics of being close minded, never showed up for the debunking session. This is something that UFOlogists have in common, and they share it with other believers, like religious fundamentalists and Bush supporters. They tend to ignore whatever doesn’t fit their mythology.

For example, UFOlogists tout the Barney and Betty Hill alien abduction case while ignoring the fact that the psychiatrist who brought out their repressed memories stated flatly that these were not real memories. The British crop circles and the Gulf Breeze sightings are still a big part of the lore despite the perpetrators being caught red-handed at their hoaxes. The Roswell incident has many witnesses but no one points out that none of them can agree on the date, the site or the number, if any, of alien bodies.

A friend sent me a posting she received from a religious group about the discovery of the Red Square Nebula. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070412-square-nebula.html

The nebula is perfectly symmetrical, so much that it almost resembles a crystal. They suggest that the nebula is the "approaching City of God," based on Revelation 21:16, "And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal" and 20-10,"And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." Since it is red, the post says, the red shift indicates it is approaching.

My friend asked my opinion. In this case, there is one fact that fits the City of God: the nebula is symmetrical. The facts that don’t fit are:

1. The Biblical quote clearly states that the City of God is twelve thousand furlongs on a side. That equals about 1300-1400 miles. Nebulae are hundreds of light years across. One light year equals 5,865,696,000,000 miles. So according to the Bible itself the nebula is about a zillion times too big to be the City.

2. A nebula is a cloud of gas from an exploded star. A cloud of gas is not a city.

3. Sorry, red shift means going away, not approaching. There is no evidence that the nebula is approaching the Earth. It has only recently been observed because our instruments weren’t good enough before now.

4. There are several scientific theories presented in the article that explain the nebula’s shape. A crystal is a natural formation, not a miracle.

Point 1 invokes Doctor Zen’s rule: if you take something literally, it has to all be literal: you can’t pick and choose. If the shape is literal, the size must be too. If you tell me part of it is metaphorical, then I can say it’s all metaphorical.

Back to UFOs, if you haven’t read WATCH THE SKIES!, Curtis Peebles brilliant dissection of UFOs as myth, I highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/WATCH-SKIES-PEEBLES-CURTIS/dp/1560983434

It is also interesting how closely the UFO mythology follows popular fiction. In a 1930 Buck Rogers comic strip, Buck's girlfriend Wilma Deering is taken aboard a spaceship by aliens with large heads and eyes, subjected to a physical examination and released; almost the prototype for the recent alien abduction stories. More of the groundwork was laid in 1950s movies like KILLERS FROM SPACE with abuctees memories being replaced, mysterious scars from alien implants, and memories of big disembodied eyes. Barney Hill's initial description of the aliens (before he changed his story to match his wife's) was an exact description of the "The Galaxy Being" from an OUTER LMITS episode he had just seen. People who claimed to have been taken into alien craft through the 60s reported walking up ramps similar to the ones in 50s flying saucer movies. After STAR TREK, they report being "beamed" aboard.

UFOlogists also use false logic a lot. Some points to remember: The possibility of other intelligent life out there in our galaxy does not prove they're down here or that they kidnapped your Uncle Bob last weekend. Just because a witness could not identify what he saw, that doesn't prove it was alien or a spacecraft. Being unable to prove that something isn't real doesn't make it real. Ask Carl Sagan about the invisible dragon in his garage, or try to disprove Santa Claus.

Some of the writers of books about things like UFOs, the End Times and other subjects like witch cults and Satanists are probably just making a quick buck. But what about the believers? Some, abductees and investigators alike, may live on the attention they get. Alpha-Girl at pinkraygun.com suggests that "for UFO believers and religious fundamentalists, I wonder how much of that tendency is due to needing to be right vs. needing to know there’s something other than our current state, whether it’s as God’s children on Earth or as the only known intelligence (or what passes for it) in the universe."

John Keel used to write books about things like UFOs, Bigfoot and such phenomena and he had a very interesting theory. He wondered whether such manifestations, leaving no physical evidence, were the universe's way of telling us something. The cool thing about this theory is that it works whether these are physical manifestations, hallucinations or imagination. We know from the common archetypes in stories that human minds can connect with images in the subconscious that have deep meanings for all people. Carl Jung suggested this in FLYING SAUCERS: A MODERN MYTH OF THINGS SEEN IN THE SKY. He wrote that such visions may be common in an era where humankind has its fate in its hands, and faces extinction. UFO aliens seem to warn us about dangers we already know about, like atomic bombs in the 50s and global warming now. The link between such visions and dreams and stories is a deep one, and it goes both ways. The pattern of alien abductions matches age old stories of meetings with elves, faeries and demons. John Ankerberg wrote that "the UFO phenomenon simply does not behave like extraterrestrial visitors. It actually molds itself in order to fit a given culture."

UFOs may not be aliens or even the universe speaking to us, but our own subconscious. As Jung said, "Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

Misusing Myth, I

“Stereotypes are devices for saving a biased person the trouble of learning” ~ Anonymous

" ... the Cold War was not some naturally occurring phenomenon but was created by U.S. policymakers in large part for the purpose of keeping a lid on social change ... " ~ Robert Jensen


"The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which (political pundits and tabloid journalists) have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor." ~ Henry David Thoreau


The image above is what Japanese people looked like during World war II - at least if you read American comic books. Comic books were one of the worst offenders for racial stereotyping back then. Japanese had bright yellow-orange skin, long fangs and claws... and were usually being killed by handsome American heroes like Airboy (pilot of Birdie, the only plane that flapped her wings). Chinese looked similar, only without the fangs and with huge buck teeth. It wasn't just pictures: one story had Japanese agents recruiting circus freaks to their cause because "the Japs are a race of freaks themselves." But it's one thing to use demons to symbolize the evils of Nazism or Japanese imperialism and quite another to depict a people as demons. Heroes like Captain America, The Patriot, USA, Captain Flag, V( for Victory)-Man and their like were wonderful morale boosters for Americans, but drawing "Japs" as monsters didn't promote peaceful understanding... any more than cartoons of "camel jockeys" help it now.

Like anything empowering, myths and stories can be misused, even abused. One of the worst examples is when stories go from archetypes to stereotypes. The lazy, cowardly Black, the inscutable Oriental, the greedy Jew, the helpless heroine and the effeminate gay man pop up in a lot of War-era fiction and beyond in a vicious circle: the stereotypes appear because people believed them and the stories reinforce the belief. Modern versions that sound more positive, like the streetwise Black, the kung-fu Asian, the sensitive gay and the man-hating feminist are just as bad because they're stereotypes. They feed the delusion that all members of a social group are the same, not individuals, and this can lead to real evils from profiling to genocide.

Stereotyping is only one way myth can be misused. I've talked about how believing in myths literally leads to the kind of hatred preached by fundamentalist religions from evangelical Christians to Islamic Jihadists.

People can use myths wrongheadedly to promote their own causes. Detractors of Barack Obama who call him "two-faced" like "the Roman god Janus" or warn of his Islamic leanings because his name means the winged horse (El Buraq) that Mohammed rode to Heaven have unknowingly given him pretty solid symbolic endorsements. Janus, as the Presidential Geek Survey at pinkraygun.com points out, represented not forgetting the past while looking ahead to the future. And El Buraq was a winged steed who brought people to paradise. It even represents a healing of religious wounds: on his arrival Mohammed was blessed by Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses and Jesus, and welcomed as their equal. (1)

Bush supporters who tried to paint him as Frodo or the Lone Ranger miss the point so far that they're laughable. The Lone Ranger never answered an Indian raid by wiping out their tribe (or, as with Bush, the wrong tribe, because they had silver mines he wanted). IMHO Bush is more like Sauron than Frodo. There's a fascinating take on THE LORD OF THE RINGS and American politics at http://www.windweaver.com/politics/lordrings.htm making the point that Frodo's real battle was with his own dark side tempted by the Ring than with Mordor. Which is what myths are really all about anyway.

There are also people who will create a mythology and perpetrate it. These include groups from politicians to UFO believers to tabloid journalists to so-called prophets. I used to teach a Wichita Free University course in UFOlogy, and many of these diverse groups use a lot of techniques in common. UFOlogists will be discussed here in more detail later, because their mythology borrows from stories in popular fiction. What were Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but a created myth? Tabloids live by feeding us myths of the rich and famous

I'll get more into "creative myth," UFOs and such in Misusing Myth II.


(1) And the latest in their line of prophets: which reminds my geek side of “Into each generation a slayer is born ... a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of evil.”

Follow Your Bliss

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be." ~ Joseph Campbell

“Always, always, always, always, always, always, always do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Michelle Lombardo, actress on the excellent QUARTERLIFE series (see Link, but be careful... watch a few episodes and you'll be in love with all the characters and have to watch all 29 --to date-- episodes) says in her blog, "Our generation... you know, all of us.. are at this point right now where we can really change what's going on right now in the world... " I wish her all the best, but at my age this is about the fifth generation I've heard say that. From JFK's Camelot and the Flower Children to today. The world hasn't changed much, except technologically.

We still betray everything our dreams and our stories tell us. We teach children not to resolve conflicts with fighting, but when we are attacked, our leaders respond immediately with war. (Yes, 9-11 was a horrible act - but if our values don't hold up under stress they are utterly useless!) The rich still trample the rest of us in their singleminded drive for power, control and short term profit. We still waste the planet and ignore how that will affect us all.

(Well, our government is not ignoring climate change. The Pentagon has detailed plans for fighting over the last remaining resources. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Oil_watch/ComingResourceWars.html Nothing about preventing climate change, or working with other nations if worse comes to worst, just war as usual. Even the Klingons are smarter than that: "Only a fool fights in a burning house.")

The difference this time is that we may be one of the last few generations who still have a chance to change. It may be too late to reverse the damage to the environment or avert nuclear disaster or stop endless war once it gets rolling.

The blog has been missing for a couple weeks because I've been re-evaluating my life. I'm tired of working for minimal pay so that corporations can make money. I've probably reached a phase Indian philosophy calls Serving.

There are four stages in life. Learning, Earning, Serving and Seeking. Serving is about using what you've learned and earned to make you family comfortable and secure. Not just your blood family, but the world family.

I'm looking for a job that will allow me to serve or help people in some measure. Maybe even something that will help turn the tide of the world's rush toward self-destruction.I was not too good with the Earning part so I'd like it to pay the rent as well. Anybody knows of such activist employment, I'm open to suggestions.

I'm not happy with what I'm doing right now, but it's scary to quit a job that is keeping a roof over my head. Of course the only way to deal with that is to follow the advice of Goethe:

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

And, of course, Yoda said, "Do or do not. There is no try."

I think there's a measure of the fourth stage at work, too. Seeking, Samadhi, is about understanding yourself. Finding out what I am all about, what my part is in the big Mystery.

Robert A Heinlein's immortal man Lazarus Long wrote, "If tempted by something that feels "altruistic," examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it! "

Maybe I just have a repressed desire to be a superhero.

The character in the image is Maggie (Magdelena Marie Neuntauben, superhero name Veda, forms humanoids out of solid earth to do her bidding) in a comic book called THE ORDER. She's talking about how helping individual children is the real way to save the world.

BABYLON 5 had a recurring theme about two questions we ask ourselves. "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" What was important was the order in which you asked those questions. If "What do you want?" comes first, you will never find answers. If "Who are you?" comes first, everything else including the answer to the second question, will come naturally.

There's another Indian saying that goes:

"The path we choose is who we are."

Facing the Reaper

"You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime." ~ Death, THE SANDMAN, "The Sound of Her Wings" by Neil Gaiman.

I faced my mortality in a new way last night. The character I role played in our Dungeons and Dragons game died.

I turned 60 last October. I have a slightly enlarged heart, which is not life-threatening but does cause high blood pressure. Roulette has me on a low sodium diet because sodium causes water retention which exacerbates HBP. I need to exercise more, as fat shoving against organs and heart also raises blood pressure. That diagnosis didn't affect me much. Even the passing of Luta's brother didn't hit home as far as my own mortality was concerned. It took the death of an imaginary character to do that.

You have to understand, the way most RPGers play it's search the dungeon, kill the monster, find the treasure, repeat. Our amazingly talented and inventive DM (1) Orryn calls that a dungeon crawl, or Orc-and-pie (2), and when we role play, we role play. We create backstories and personalities for our characters. I played Taryn Darkeyes, girl thief (3) and tomb raider.

Here's Taryn's story:

"Mellisande Flesk was born to a wealthy family of Alchemists, a bright, blonde and black-eyed child. As is so often the case, prosperity was no guarantee of happiness. Mellisande's mother was narcissistic, self-absorbed and more concerned with her rank, social standing and money than with her three children. Her father disappeared when she was eight. Her older brother had become reclusive and secretive.

"Mellisande despised her father and her brother as weaklings. The only person she cared anything for was her little sister Kylie, although even they were never close. At age 15 she pilfered some of her brother's necromantic artifacts and scrolls and sold them to a sorcerers' guild. She stashed most of her profits in a cave known only to her.

"When Mellisande was 17, Kylie was struck with a wasting illness. She half suspected it was brought on by neglect and depression, but she returned to her cave, took some of her loot and bought rare medicines for Kylie. These she presented to her mother, who at the time was planning to attend a gala festival in a distant kingdom, and was intent on debuting her coming-of-age daughter there. Mellisande wanted nothing to do with it. She hid out in her cave. After one month, she returned home. She found that her younger sister had died. Her mother, absorbed by her plans for the festival, had never given Kylie the medications.

"Mellisande knew she could not stay there another minute. She helped herself to a few sacksful of the family riches and left for good.

"No sooner had she reached the nearest city than she was set upon by a local gang, beaten and robbed of all but the profits she had stashed in her cave. She limped back to the cave to heal. She lived two years in the wood, leaving her cave only for occasional forays for supplies. She picked up a few wilderness skills and learned to be self sufficient. Finally she went to the city to live as a street thief. After several run-ins with the law, she apprenticed herself to a local thief. In her spare time she learned to appraise magical relics for their resale value, and changed her name and looks.

"Mellisande was now Taryn Darkeyes, and she used one of her father's potions to permanently dye her yellow hair black. By age 25 she has travelled far from her erstwhile home. Taryn specializes in stealing and reselling magical artifacts. She carries several weapons she uses to intimidate bigger, stronger foes -- not to say that she isn't good at using them as well. She is resolved to be tougher than anyone she knew and to survive at all costs.

"She has no use for laws, loyalties or morals. Taryn worships no gods. The only ones she has any respect for are gods who represent nature and travel."

I gave her a pretty miserable life.She started the game as a bitter and lonely person, joined the adventurers' party in hopes of earning enough money and finding enough salable magic items to retire away from the world. My eventual plans were to retire her after the adventure as a druid, at peace in the forest.

She died in a battle suddenly and unexpectedly, taking cold damage from monsters called frostshades, fell unconscious and failed the final dice throw. She never even got to say any sarcastic last words.

We have a board at Prismatic Tsunami where we post in character. I wrote down her imaginary last words. I didn't expect to publish another fiction piece so soon after last week's but I'll let you read it. Remember Taryn is as much an atheist as you can be in a world where the gods are real.
~
So, I'm dead. Didn't see that coming.

Where am I? It looks like an endless plane of ash, flat, no mountain, hill or crevice as far as I can see. No stars in the sky. Nothing moving; nothing here to move. Is this where you go when you've abandoned all the gods, the ones who punish and those who comfort?

All I ever wanted out of death was rest.

What am I? A shade, an immortal soul, the last sparks of thought in a dying brain?

Don't know how the gang's gonna make it without me. Ah, who am I kidding? Ji will get them through. He's the only one who believes in something besides himself, er, herself. Arathorn, despite his delusion that he's the boss of us, is a survivor. Arathorn. We never liked each other,yet it was Arathorn who carried my body out and did his best to revive me. Ulfgar can blunder through anything and Aust will never get close enough to peril to be in real danger.

They'd better miss me, though.

Hell, I'll miss me.

I hope they can use my magic stash. Well of course they will. That bunch'll loot my body before it's cold.

Cold. That's odd. I died of cold but I don't feel cold now. I don't feel anything.

What's that over there?

Is that -

~


Farewell, Taryn.

It wasn't till I composed that piece that it hit me how close to being me Taryn was. I went to bed last night, started to compose Taryn's post, and could not sleep for tears.

When I fail my final dice roll, it'll probably be like hers - never knowing what hit me. It occurs to me that if I don't get any last words in I'd better let my friends and family know now how much I love and respect them, and that I'm happy with my life here and now.

It's not silly to me mourning a make believe character, because I don't think she's the only one I'm mourning.

What did Taryn see?

Could have been anything, an eddy in the ash, a tear in her eye, oblivion roaring in, a god, a soul-devouring monster, or Kylie. I'm not telling because I don't know. God or an afterlife may be in doubt, but I believe there is always Mystery.

As Heinlein said in THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG: "Soon enough you will know."



(1) Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game.
(2) Monster and reward.
(3) A thief in D&D is the character who uses stealth, opens locks and disarms traps.

A Shark's Tale

Something different this week. An online group I'm in is trying to put together an anthology of new stories about old comic book characters. I submitted this one. When I realized that it had some of the mythological and philosophical elements we discuss on the blog, plus a dash of Richard Bach, I decided to post the story here.





This is a first draft, and there's no assurance the project will get off the ground. The characters are in the public domain as far as I know.

So, for your consideration, "A SHARK'S TALE" starring The Shark and the Magician from Mars:

He awoke with a shudder, coughing and spitting up salty water.

"Sit up, son," rumbled a rough-hewn man's voice. "You'll drown yourself all over again."

At the same time he felt gentle palms resting on his bare shoulder and the back of his neck where water ran down from his wet hair. He was lifted gently to a sitting position. There was a sudden pain in his right side. A hand - definitely not one of the soft ones that had helped him up - pounded his back heavily and he coughed again, but no more of the ocean poured out.

He noticed his nakedness except for a pair of latex trunks. "Where's my wetsuit?"

"Had to remove it," the man's voice said. "Too much blood."

"It was necessary, in order to treat the wound." The second voice was a woman's, calm, confident, reassuring. Just listening to her, even before her words sank in, made him feel like everything was all right.

He looked up for the first time. The man leaning over him was also in swim trunks, but he did wear one other thing. A mask. A freaking mask. It was a silly thing to have on in the middle of springtime, nowhere near Hallowe'en even if they celebrated it in this country. Somehow, though, it didn't look silly on him. It was somehow impressive, like an aquatic Lone Ranger. The man had a full, though not long, beard shot through with iron grey.

When he turned to look at the woman beside him his side flared in pain.

"Ahhh! Hell! What was that?" He leaned to take the weight off his side. "What took a bite out of me?"

"Tuna fisherman," the masked man said with a slight smile.

Zak paused. Memory lost to the blur of pain swam back. Yeah. The fishing boats. We were ... where's the rest of us? Fear left his tongue suddenly dry. "Haddie ... Karl ... Allie ... "

"We'll take care of them," the man said. "We brought you here because you needed treatment and ... we have something to tell you. You took a spear in the side."

He sensed more than felt the woman's light touch on his shoulder. He turned just his head this time to protect the side that hurt.

" ... because you stayed to defend your friends," she told him. "It was a very noble thing to do."

He didn't quite register her words because her face had caught him from the moment he saw her. She was beautiful in earthy and unearthly ways at once. Her dress was exotic.

"Are you all right, Zak?"

"Hah!" came from the masked man. "She still doesn't know the effect she has on people. Especially boy people. Sorry, son."

The use of his name had snapped Zak out of it. "How do you - no, who are you people?"

"Ever hear of The Shark?" the man asked in a slightly offended tone.

"You're The Shark," Zak stated with a yeah-right inflection. "The Shark is a myth, a seagoing urban legend."

The man shook his head ruefully. "I wasn't a legend during the war. A mystery man, sure, but everybody who read the papers or watched the newsreels knew about me. The enemy sure knew The Shark! I messed up Nazi and Japanese naval plans pretty good."

"The Shark. Is real."

"Course, I've been under a lower profile since then. Myths tend to fade when people stop believing. There's been a distinct lack of mad scientists and Martian invasions these days, and the latest war ... let's just say deserts aren't my area of operations." The Shark - against his stubborn will, Zak was starting to accept him as that - paused in what seemed like a haze of nostalgia. "But I keep busy. There's still crime on the seas, pirates, smugglers, whatnot. And shipwrecks and disasters. I was in New Orleans helping survivors, but I got a lot of dirty looks because I hadn't averted Katrina. Some even blamed me for her."

"Huh," Zak responded. "Even The Shark can't be everywhere." He continued to amaze himself, but somehow there was no doubt left in him that this man was The Shark. The freaking Shark!

He turned carefully to the woman, who now knelt beside him. "And who's she - Super Ann?"

"She's our Martian invader," The Shark rapped, with only a glint in his masked eyes betraying his humor. "They make 'em cuter these days."

"Shark!" the woman reprimanded. To Zak, "I should heal you now."

Zak glanced at the red-soaked dressing on his side. The red was deepening, and he felt dizzy. The pain was like fire when he shifted even slightly.

The woman was looking calmly at the wound. She didn't do much, just sort of waved her hands at it. Zak couldn't help staring at that amazing face and form, so intent on her that he didn't even feel the pain ... No. Wait. He DIDN'T feel any pain. It was gone and he barely even remembered it. He looked down and saw his own intact, bare flank.

"The dressing's gone," he murmured. He seemed more surprised at that than the raw, bloody wound being completely healed.

"I'm not a Martian invader," the woman said with tolearnt amusement. "You probably don't know me, my career on Earth was even shorter than The Shark's. I was the Magician from Mars ... ?"

Zak gave her a blank look. She laughed.

"Never heard of me, huh? I had to return to Mars in the early forties. Trouble with the green Martians. My sister was instigating again. I had to enlist the aid of my ... " Her face lit in a radiant grin. " ... finny friend here; he'd fought green Martians on earth before."

Zak looked even blanker after the explanation. "Your sister is a green Martian? You're not green. Unless that's 'green' as in ecologically friendly, am I babbling?"

"Oh, no ... There are two species on Mars, not just one human race with minor differences like on Earth. The greens are a whole different branch of evolution. They tried to invade Earth in the forties, but The Shark stopped them. My sister, who goes by The Hood, was a revolutionary among the human Martians. She tried to enlist the greens to her cause. Am I going too fast for you?"

The Martian woman paused. Zak was trying his best to take all this in.

"I was born Jane Gem35. My father was Martian and my mother was Earth human. Somehow their combination of genes plus exposure to a certain ray gave me the ability to ... alter reality. Like magic. I put down my sister's plans on Mars, then visited Earth and helped in your World War II. When she returned from the 'dead' and joined with the greens I went back."

Zak looked from The Shark to the Magician from Mars. "Wait, wait! There's no life on Mars. The Mariner probes - "

Jane smiled. "Alter reality?"

"Oh. Yeah. So, the greens are evil?"

"No ... oo ... " the Magician replied softly. "Most greens and humans are decent, peaceful people. As with certain groups like your Muslims on Earth, a few crazy radicals give them a bad name. The worst thing such zealots do is not their acts of violence, but the hatred they brew among peoples who would otherwise be friends. But we've settled all that since the forties: Mars is at peace now."

Zak was rubbing his soggy hair, feeling his scalp for bumps. Nothing. Maybe he wasn't suffering from a concussion.

Okay. This was real. But there were other realities too. Nasty ones.

"Haddie ... my friends," he grated. "They ambushed us. Spear guns and hooks! They were going to kill us."

"You were protesting the slaughter of dolphins," The Shark said.

"Peacefully," Zak amended. "We were unarmed."

"Of course," the Magician from Mars said levelly. "And you were doing more good than you know. Dolphins are as sentient as we are! But to the fishermen they are dumb animals, and their livelihood is in their catch."

"They shouldn't be allowed to kill sentient beings!" Zak interrupted. "Liveelihood or no livelihood."

"We're with you," The Shark said, arms folded over his chest. "Protector of the seas and all. The fishing crews were trying to scare your people off. Once it gets out of hand, violence likes to escalate. I don't know what set if off, but you took the first spear."

Zak looked shocked.

"When you spouted blood and fell into the sea ... well, they're rough men and they won't want witnesses."

"Did they - ?"

The Shark cut him off grimly. "Nobody did anything since you disappeared, thanks to Jane."

"I suspended time," the Magician said almost in embarassment. "But when I let it go again, they'll try to silence them."

"But you're gonna save them, right?"

"No," said The Shark.

"You are," said the Magician from Mars.

Zak was getting tons of experience practicing his blank stare.

"Tell him!"

The Shark unfolded his powerful arms. "I'm getting old. Did you ever hear how I became The Shark?"

At Zak's head shake he went on.

"There's been a Shark since there were oceans. Neptune selected the first one. Since then - "

"Neptune," Zak stated.

"Neptune." The Shark nodded. "Since then when a Shark is ready to retire, he assumes the role of Neptune and picks the next Shark. I got selected in 1939 and I've been going since then. Fighting Martians, sea monsters, looney scientists, dictators, pirates, disasters. I'm ready to neptune out."

"Oh, great," Zak muttered. "And I'm the Chosen One. The Buffy of the Seven Seas."

It was the Martian woman's turn to try on a blank gaze.

"Cultural quip," The shark said wryly. Back to Zak, "We picked you because you are already started. You love the seas. You fight against the polluters and slaughterers of sea life."

"But not wearing a mask and ... and swim trunks, and bashing heads! I'm not exactly a man of action."

"No," mused The Shark. "You are a man of learning. You know science and technology and legalese, and you have thev guts to take on the people who'd spill them for you. The big monsters these days are the pig-headed politicians and the greedy conglomerates that'd despoil the seas, and the world, for profit."

"Don't rant," shushed the Magician from Mars. To Zak, "That makes you the perfect Shark."

"With a few super powers tossed in," The Shark grinned.

Zak stared sharply at him. "Super powers like what?"

"Your basic defender of the deep tricks. Breathing under water of course. Strength, super-fast swimming, commanding sea creatures, teleporting from one body of water to another."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. All you leave behind is a little puddle of water."

Zak shook his head in disbelief, not at what The Shark said but at the ease with which he was accepting it.

"So are we gonna rescue my friends now or what?"

"I thought we'd take you to the Shark's Teeth - "

"Shark's Teeth."

"Your new domain, son. Give you a few months' training, then Jane'll let time go, you teleport in and - "

"Hold it. Training, that's fine, super powers good too, the whole Shark gig sounds decent, but how am I supposed to concentrate on training when my friends are in danger?"

"Time is stopped!" The Shark repeated, exasperated. "You could train for years and they'd still be safe until she sets it in motion again."

"Shark," the Magician soothed. "He's right. We can't expect him to focus until he knows his friends are safe." She looked at Zak. "I can send you to them now. Are you ready?"

"Doesn't matter!" Zak rapped. "Do it."

"I will. But not as Zak." She raised an arm in his direction.

Zak didn't feel a thing, but when he looked down he saw himself wearing the costume of The Shark. He lifted his hands, felt the blue mask across his face. He did seem stronger, more powerful. He stared at his hand, flexing his fingers. They were webbed.

"I'm going to transport you now," the Magician warned. "Shark and I will teleport ourselves. Go!"

And Zak saw blue ocean over his head and darker blue below him. He had no difficulty breathing. He hurled himself at the surface above and came bursting out of the sea in a spout of water, to the scene he last remembered.

Twilight. Haddie, Karl and Allie were on a slime-slick rocky point above a sudden fall to the sea. A motley mob armed with spearguns, pikes hooks and scowls faced them. The fishermen had come around the point on some tall rocks that jutted from the deep below them.

Everybody's eyes turned to the sudden sound from the sea. The wave from zak's appearance washed them with salt spray. One of the fishing crew pointed a shaky arm at him and yelled, "Oceaan duivel!"

Zak astounded himself by plummeting down onto the rocks in front of the fishermen and landing on his feet without losing his balance.

"Back off," he said calmly. "There's no need for violence. The guy you hit with the spear is all right and he's not going to be pressing charges."

The mob roiled in anger and confusion.

He heard Karl yell, "They don't understand you!"

"I can tell them!" Allie cut in. She shouted something that sounded like gibberish to Zak, but he remembered that she knew the local language.

Her words didn't seem to impress the seamen. They waved or aimed their weapons. Zak tensed. He fixed his gaze on the angry fishermen and noticed something in the water beyond them.

Fins. Real shark fins. The fishermen were on a lower strand of rocks that the sea water lapped against. The sharks circled just beyond the rocks. Zak wondered. He couldn't summon sharks. Yet. The Shark and the Magician from Mars must be around here someplace.

"They may not understand us," he said over his shoulder. "But they'll understand them." He pointed behind the mob's backs.

Yells of terror and anger erupted from the men. The rocks trailed back away from Zak and his group into shallows and then sandy shore, and the fishermen scrambled for it.

They halted on the safety of the sand and threw vile looks and curses back at him. Then they bran, vanishing around the rock precipce.

Allie retained enough composure to yell, "Where's Zak? Who are you?"

"Zak's fine. He'll be away for a while. I ... had to take him to a treatment center, he'll contact you when he's able."

"But who are you?" Karl demanded.

Zak wished he had a silver bullet or a shark's tooth to hand them. "You ever hear of The Shark?"

"The Shark? The folk hero from the forties?" Karl answered.

"No!" Haddie and Allie replied almost in unison.

Zak tensed himself to dive. He waved a half salute at the group and said, "You will."

He hit the sea feeling more at peace than ever in the green-blue depths. Glancing about on a whim he saw The Shark swimming powerfully at his right side and the Magician from Mars encased in a transparent shimmering sphere to his left.

The Sharks Teeth turned out to be a series of interlocking underocean caverns where Sharks were trained and based. They emerged into dry air inside the caves.

"You two are dripping," the Magician frowned. She waved her arm and they were dry.

The Shark looked different. He no longer wore the blue mask but a longer whiter beard and red trunks.

He's Neptune now, Zak thought. God help us, this is all real. He's not The Shark any more, I am.

I'm the freaking Shark.

"Let me get this straight, um, Neptune. You're going to train me to turn into a puddle?"

Neptune laughed. "Takes practice, son. Lots of practice."

Zak looked at the Magician. She was so beautiful but, "Aren't you his age?" he asked. "You look, what, eighteen? Twenty?"

She smiled a little wickedly. "Magic," she smiled.

"How do you do it? Reset reality? Can you train me to do that?"

"I'm afraid not. It's partly in my mixed Earth-Martian DNA. But it's also spomething that your Hindu holy men understand, and your quantum physicists are beginning to. It has to be learned early, before it's too late."

"Too late?"

"Yes." The Magician from Mars sent him another mysterious smile. "Reality can be made and unmade, but you have to start doing the impossible before they tell you it's not possible."