Signs

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 14666

Roland makes some warding signs, fighting off the worst of the sleep spell that hit him and shakes his head, staggering over to a wall to gather himself.

With a few more gestures of warding (something that those who are from worlds called Terra) recognized the gestures as being the type any average peasant is familiar with. Quiet effective if done quickly enough, and in sufficient quantity.

Roland rips through a good two dozen in as half as many seconds, and the hastily (and accidentally) cast.

"What happened?" Susan asked through the communicator, somewhat concerned (to understate things.

After assuring her that all was alright, Roland looked back over to his new friends.

"Ye gods, I should have remembered," he muttered, pulling himself up straighter and then facing the anxious looking people in front of him, "Some of you have never even heard a revolver fired, nor it's effect...."

The newly transformed were still trying to sort themselves out a bit. Oh, for the most part they had adjusted well, but there were little things that still were in the process of getting "settled down." There still were mental, emotional, and a few other "-al" adjustments that needed to be done (gods....mayhaps the ones of the cabela of the psyche that Susannah and Eddie could sort out all that Roland was somehow seeing going on with them). Bottom line, some of them would be "jumpy" (to put it in Eddie's parlance) into the final adjustments within were made. As witness the blue haired Faire Folke Ama'lis with her nearly going "nuclear" when Eddie called her a fairy...only to admit somewhat shamefacedly later that she herself had called herself that shortly after her transformation with no qualms whatsoever.

The fact of the matter was that not only a complete change in species (from mundane humans to very magical species such as Light Elves and Fairies), there was also a change in gender. This transformation went down to the deepest level, the interface between the metaphysical (the soul) and the physical (the material world)which also the final determiner to what kind of body a person gets when they come into the world (and wear throughout their entire lives). It went down to the Matrix. While the Matrix did not totally dominate how a person thought or acted, it played a large part in how such processes took place. So while the transformees were still the same people, it was being expressed in a different way than before. So, while there is still a bit of "Freddyness" within the former Freds, it's now being increasingly expressed in a feminine manner (as well as in the manner of their new species). The same applied to the new male elf that used to call himself Astra.

All of this had already been discussed within the train ride to this new, sad world. While Roland and the others still weren't totally squared with it, at least Eddie had stopped muttering something about the three transgenderees "coming out of the closet", once it became clear that the reason why the transformees didn't want to return to their old genders (as well as species) lay within the fact that (because of a mysterious, not as yet fully understood) quality of the Matrix.....a person tends to wish to remain in the form that their Matrix dictates.

Roland had a feeling that he didn't want to really what ask what that little phrase of Eddie meant.

"I fear that I now must apologize," Roland finally says to the Faire Folk woman.

"But I should add that I will not apologize for surprising you, Susannah!" Roland continues, giving the African American woman a severe look, "Take better care of your gun, Susannah, or next someone takes it from you....."

"The whole could be between my eyes." Susannah says softly, conceding the point. She was rather embarrassed, and angry at herself for letting do that.

"'yes." Oy echoed, looking soulfully up at her from where Eddie was carrying her (her old wheelchair was back in Lud).

Jake petted his billy bumbler and then went to reading the newspaper, and it was pretty much as the woman who called herself Astra La Post said it would be. A super plague called Captain Trips having sweeping the land (a year ago by the look of things around here). The date on the paper being only a bit before the date back in Eddie's (and the other New Yorkers?) abduction into Mid-world by Roland (suggesting that since Eddie did not remember anything about a super plague that this as a parallel world).

All very confusing.

But be that as it may, they all agreed that it would be a pretty good idea to get out of Topeka ASAP (that is, after Eddie thought and got a wheelchair from one of the abandoned cars out front of the train station for his wife and love). Out and go north to a point on Astra's map. Not west. Not east. North.

"But first I'd like to pay a visit to that park over their near the turnpike," Astra says, pointing.

  1. "There is a small train I've read about that I'd like to actually derail called Charlie....the Choo-Choo. The inspiration for that storybook character by the same name in Jake's book."

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12/13/2000 11:48:43 AM

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