Aftermath of a Literary Reading

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 15660

Queen Astra had already guessed what Roland was going to ask for, and quickly turns to the pages in one of her books so Roland could read from it.....

Knowing full and well what the result will be, and what the result would be if he did not, Roland (with a bit of difficulty due to the fact that some letters in the Earth English alphabet are not found in the Midworld version of English) waits for "his que."

"Marten," he said into the befuddled Frank Marn's combadge, reading the lines his literary counterpart said, "Marten Broadcloak. After all these years. After all these centuries."

Okay, we have the 'real' Roland the Gunslinger aping the lines of his 'fictious' counterpart in King's novel, Marn thinks to himself, And none to well.....

Of all of the strange events of today, this is one of the stranger ones, in Frank's opinion.....

Frankly, Roland's reading was rather slow and plodding....due in part of him not being used to reading to an audience (Gunslingers usually have other callings than public speaking).

Flagg seems not to notice. He's too wrapped up in whatever scene he's seeing. A scene that supposedly is taking place in a magical mockup of the Emerald city from The Wizard of Oz.

So it plays out. Roland reads where he and he and his old companions (not his new friends, of Astra and her group) win their way past Flagg as for the audience on both sides of the combadge links, they look and listen on, spellbound almost. Flagg gets up to the point where Roland's literary counterpart almost gets the drop on him with a gun that Flagg can't cause to misfire (since it's from Jake's world). He screams....and vanishes. Tricorder scans by stunned Voyager crewmembers confirm he's gone (and they thank whatever gods they believe in that the monster is gone).

Flagg, true to his literary counterpart, screams and disappears and Roland, sensing the danger was past, nods and stops reading.....not wanting to so publically share the next part of what he saw coming in the book.

If things had been like they were in the book he'd been reading from, then he'd then share something seen in a crystal ball left behind by Flagg with his ka-tet. Needed to win their way back to the Path of the Beam....the way to the Dark Tower back on Roland's world......

But Roland doesn't need to do that!

It was too painful, those memories of Rhea, that d**n witch who had....er...had nearly killed Roland's Susan..... Of Rhea magically altering the reflection in the mirror back in the Great Hall......making his mother look like Rhea so that Roland's reflexes caused him to shoot his mother dead before.....

No, too painful, despite the fact he'd already shared it with his ka-tat....and his new friends in private. Too public, here.

For a split second Roland, lookingover at King, has an intense urge to shoot the author for making public in this book his story....and the most private things that Roland wished to have kept secret from the rest of the world! The moment passes and Roland knows that it's not Kings fault. It was through some twist of fate such had happened. Ka. And Roland wasn't going to kill King for something that he'd done so unknowingly.

All the same, the look in Roland's eyes for that brief second had caused several people to step back in fright. They were called Gunslinger eyes.....and they could be as cold and empty as any killers.......

Arnstien, the history professor and sometimes fiction writer, silently thanks a God that.....he'd not really believed in (being what some describe as a "secular Jew")....but was having.....second thoughts about that now.... Thanks God that he's not meeting one of his stories characters....who'd obviously want to pound him into the ground for all that he'd put them through in figuring out language and other realistic problems in his stories......

A small part of his mind then asked God why the Voyager with their Universal Translator's hadn't come earlier when he and his now wife had been busting their A** trying to translate the tongues found in the British Isles of 1250 BC. But only a small part.....and only very quietly.

"Good God," Pamela Lisketter whispers, at a loss for words at what she'd seen and heard.

That pretty much went the ame way for those who'd also been there, including Susannah and Eddie (who'd come in quickly at a run when they'd heard Flagg screaming)......

"It is done," Roland says simply, a small nod of satisfaction, knowing that Flagg's goose was truly cooked (and the Demon was screwed).... Flagg had taken so much of Roland's life when he destroyed his homeland that.....the Gunslinger couldn't feel sorry for Flagg.....not even a little bit. And through this literary reading.....he'd killed Flagg (or at least played a part in his destruction)!

  1. <P>"I suggest that you should speak with a priest and get.....cleansed of the.....business back around when you rescued Jake," Queen Astra quietly suggested to Susannah.

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4/20/2001 4:08:04 AM

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