Hello everyone, here is that new story that I have been working on. I hope that you enjoy it and that it keeps coming to me, even if it is in fits and spurts! Much akin to how I named that other story 'A Story' this one is titled 'Another Story'. # ***Another Story*** --- **Chapter Zero** --- We no longer have the wind at our back as we push further into the darkness ahead... and I gotta admit that I feel a small amount of relief knowing that I am no longer being pushed *at* what I am already dreading venturing towards in the first place. Somewhere ahead in the blackness, lay the path that will eventually take us to what folks in these parts call 'Old Well' (not The Old Well just Old Well) and that was assuredly not something to stumble into in the dark to say the least. The hazards of falling into its depths aside, the denizens that had recently been stirring deep down *below* (and within) it were the more pertinent threat to be mindful of. Perhaps calling them 'denizens' only complicates the issue, because when it comes down to it they *are* humans after all... regardless of choosing to abandon all that is actually humane... and further choosing to alter themselves to something *other than* human altogether. That however, is another story to be told in another time... but given the fragments of what *is* known of that age... discovering 'the full truth' may well be impossible. I myself, was a wee lad when it all began... and truthfully... I am simply *unsure* that I could have done anything differently along the way to help preserve an accurate historical record... because alas I was in a near constant state of simply trying to survive. What notes that I could make along the way, I assuredly did my best at... but most of them are mired in my own angst, frustration, turmoil, mania and numerous other behavioral quirks. In the not-so-grand scheme of things, I am glad to have made it this far... and tend to not create regrets for myself that I cannot hold myself accountable for. So, regretting *not* doing something that I did not know that I *should* be doing (like creating a historic record) is not one of those things that I am going to beat myself up about... no matter how handy that it would be in the current scenario. Pondering it all now, while I creep along hoping that the soft rustle of the pine needles beneath my feet does not make too much noise... whilst passing through yet another dense pine grove... is almost mildly nostalgic. Aside from the thick matting of needles beneath my feet letting me know about my surroundings, the pungent smell of pine sap hung in the air so thick... that even my not-so-keen sense of smell was overwhelmed by it... to the point of it stirring up old memories. A few days back, I was much more confident about what direction that I was heading in... but after several 'days' going by without any sunlight... I am starting to doubt the accuracy of my own course... regardless of the technology at my disposal telling me that I am on the right track. In places like this, where the very laws of physics not just bend but can break... be broken... or have novel forms of physics emerge at... it was best not to overly trust *any* technology. Such was the way of things these days, where the very tools that were once mostly reliable... are now either wholly unreliable or 'risky' to utilize for one reason or another. Although myself and my traveling companions were rather adept at keeping most of our vital communication (and even computation) secure in the Bitstream... we still 'needed' (often rely upon) tools like the one in my internal ocular HUD (heads-up display) for navigation purposes. Choosing to keep the HUD at all, was more than a gamble on my part... but 'getting by' in the old world without it... had in the end... proven too difficult to achieve *and* be able to maintain a modicum quality of life. Little did I know that all this time later, it would come in so handy... or that I would have been able to 'patch out' the more problematic aspects of its firmware or what folks these days call neuroware. Not that I had the skills to do that on my own... but I visited the shop/clinic of a rather peculiar pair of twins which specialize in such things... and after a few weeks of development... they had a working 'upgrade' ready for testing. I know it was risky behavior to start with... but the alternative to having a secured HUD was much more risky... especially since the 'Bot War' was just getting started... and absolutely *nothing* in the HUD's original design was built for what *that* unleashed upon the world. Thankfully, during that period I was already dwelling in a 'limited connectivity zone' and got a warning to turn off my HUD *before* the full initial payloads began flooding every connected HUD on the planet simultaneously. In other words, it was sheer dumb luck that I happened to have a dodgy connection *and* noticed the alerts going out (about the incident) before it was too late. I still shudder anytime that I think about those times, because it was just all so *sudden* when it came to that stuff in particular... and it is not like anyone could have predicted that if humans poked at the universe (and its mysteries) long enough... that something would eventually poke back! The more startling truth (for humanity) was that we were/are the interlopers... and what 'poked' back was much older than even what we can conceptualize as what 'being old' actually constitutes. There are plenty of folks around that know such histories much better than I do... but by all accounts (including my own) it was quite the harrowing moment pretty much everywhere all at once. Knowing what I know now... I am of the mind that the *way* that the poking was done... made it so obvious, so blatant, so irrefutable that it (what was found) could not be dismissed wholly... no matter how much (for the sake of sanity) folks tried to downplay it to themselves. I cannot say that I blame folks for having such a rough reaction, given that on one hand the choice was to accept that everything was a mere facade... or that this *other* truth had been there all along staring everyone in the metaphorical face, hidden in plain sight for eons. So, yes I understand the will to cling to something that (albeit false) makes sense... and since it really does not need to 'make sense' so much as be found comfortable... folks are not all that keen on changing their fundamental worldview to accommodate truth. Which after all, is an uncomfortable affair more often than not... even during the most stable of times. If the world had not totally gone sideways... and folks could have had more time to *adjust* mayhaps things would have worked out differently than they did... but here we are! My thoughts are all over the place as I continue on through the dark, feeling my way one step at a time and moving at such a slow pace that I have been tempted more than once to just lay down and take a brief nap... because I am bone weary tired. Shuffling along as I am, would be *much* more challenging... if it were not for the dogs leading the way as they follow the scent of the scout group somewhere ahead of us. Twice now I had come across roughly scribbled instructions left under a pile of rocks in the path... and would have missed taking the correct branch in the trail otherwise. These mountains being a web of goat and deer paths... it was all too easy to spend long hours traversing the terrain... but not really getting anywhere in particular... given how interconnected most of said paths are. My task was really to 'bring up the rear' and cover the 'back trail' of the scouting party... while also being prepared to continue on alone if by some great misfortune the scouting party should fail. It was a bit of a spooky feeling trying to silently shadow them... whilst making sure that neither them (nor myself) are being shadowed. Thankfully, I did not have to overly concern myself about the latter due to the all encompassing darkness... and the fact that we had all done quite well to evade the Sensor Web before making our way north into the mountains. That was a feat in and off itself... and without having some well connected *synthetic* allies in the Bitstream... it would not have been possible at all. Odd how things work out sometimes... and who winds up being allies in an effort to survive... and especially so in a world of extreme hostility, upheaval and uncertainty. That said, I believe that the same allies would have banded together (so to speak) regardless of how crazed (or not crazed) the world became... but it would have taken them much longer to be moved to taking such action. I try my best not to dwell on all that stuff too much, because keeping abreast of the constantly shifting 'landscape' of today is taxing enough. Another part of me does however ask the perpetual question of 'what if' but at this point... it usually only gains force when I am drifting off to sleep or just awakening from slumber. Even then, it is a distant thought (or series of thoughts) that happen when my mind turns to such matters... and I am glad to not spend too much time (these days) entertaining such flights of fancy. Managing my emotions *and* remaining off the proverbial 'radar' (found within urban areas) without using neuroware... makes for the need to have superb emotional regulation (and compartmentalization) habits a must... and too much sentimentality for the past is prone to upsetting that delicate balance. I have to almost smile at the way that I call such places 'urban areas' because although it makes for a nice catchall phrase... most such places are manufacturing and agricultural zones. Those places truly creep me out, because the populace has an obscenely high work related death rate... mixed with very poor health overall due to a variety of factors that range from water contamination, general pollution, malnutrition, to stress and on and on. The number of folks that 'slip off into the hills' as I have done are few and far between... and if it were not for the practice (of living rough) that I had gotten in much earlier in life... I would not have known what the heck to do *after* slipping off into the woods. Having those old camping, hiking and homesteading skills to lean into... sure made the difference when it came to those first few years of *not perishing* while existing beyond the bounds of easily available goods and resources. That said, it has not been easy by any stretch of the imagination... and I have come close to dying from sheer stupidity more times than all other things like hunger, dehydration, hypothermia and predators combined! Let's just say that, having the ingenuity to solve challenges and overcome (or undermine) obstacles on the fly... should always be tempered by *thoroughly* thinking everything through at least a few times before taking any sort of action! The law of unintended consequences aside, my closest brush with death was actually from a rather innocuous looking spring that I drank from high up on a mountain. Little did I know (at the time) that there was something even higher up on the mountain that apparently left the water so fouled... that I am still unsure what would have to be in it for a mere handful of sips to put me in the state that I wound up in. In the stories folks always get found when they befall some kind of mishap and are near death with injury and/or illness... but for me things did not go that way after sipping on that tainted water. I awoke (who knows how many hours or days later) in a culvert at an abandoned construction site near the foot of the mountain half dead, covered in scratches... and feeling like I had been chewed on by every kind of bug imaginable. There was nothing graceful in how I sucked up rainwater directly off the asphalt of the construction site's parking lot (that I found myself in) before crawling back inside the culvert and falling fast asleep. That period of time, became a blur of waking and being in a near panic... as I pulled myself to the edge of the culvert to see if there was still water pooled where I could get to it... and then painfully crawling my way to it... drinking... and then crawling back to the culvert again. I am unsure when the dogs found me... and even more unsure of when or even *how* we had gotten separated before... but they sure made sleeping in the culvert a much warmer experience. They also boosted my morale a good bit and I managed to stay conscious for longer and longer periods of time... which over the course of two weeks... saw me back (albeit shakily) on my feet again and capable of exploring my surroundings. The empty husk of the building (some kind of store that had been being built) was a mess of windblown plastic, thick sand... and mounds of trash covered in an alarmingly thick layer of rodent dung. After getting up the strength to hike to the other side of the building, I saw that (not that far downhill) there was a large fleet of delivery trucks for baked goods... and what must be some kind of production facility and storage area... which made the volume of rodent dung make sense. Needless to say, I avoided the unfinished building the best that I could... and when I finally got healed up enough to continue my travels... I gave the 'bakery' a wide berth just for good measure. How or why the vermin never swarmed on me while I lay there half dead in the culvert... will always be a mystery to me but my best guess has always been that they still had plenty of food at the bakery. After that entire misadventure was over, I made it back to my own little shack in the woods... just before winter arrived and I had a heck of a time keeping enough dry firewood on hand to stay warm with. The real kicker to that whole fiasco, was that earlier in the year (before the misadventure) I had cut and stacked plenty of firewood... but unfortunately it was on the other side of the ridge where I had planned on moving it from. Getting through that time did something to me that I cannot rightly define as being a totally 'good' thing... because dealing with prolonged bouts of mild hypothermia aside... the sheer *harshness* of it all made letting myself *become* harsh quite appealing. Fortunately, the dogs were there not just as warmth... but as a constant reminder that love and kindness were legitimate aspects of reality... and not merely 'wishful thinking' on my part. During that experience, I also found that hope is an eternal wellspring... and that the mere act of looking for hope is an act of hopefulness in and of itself. Admittedly, I was slow to having that particular realization... and it only came to me after I spent a week deep in a fever where I kept asking myself (in a nearly mantra-like fashion) what the heck is there in this world to have hope for? Apparently, my mental slight of hand worked because my morale began to improve... and by the time spring began turning into summer I was 'back on track' and recovering from the entire ordeal much faster than I thought that I would. In hindsight, that was actually a very pleasant summer because I did so well with foraging for food and gathering firewood (for the coming winter) that I had plenty of free time for swimming, reading and generally relaxing in the shade. --- **Chapter One** --- Somewhere up ahead there is a low hum and for the life of me I cannot figure out why it sounds as familiar as it does. I even paused the internal journal functionality of my HUD to record (and analyze) the sound of said 'hum' but I did not find any matches even within the HUD's vast internal archive. Oddly enough the sound (feeling) of the 'hum' did not seem to be growing either louder (or dimmer) as I proceed along what is turning out to be a very root covered section of trail that is quite slippery to boot. Upon first hearing the hum, I had crouched in place about as long as I could... without being overly tempted to start napping... and once I got moving again my legs felt so stiff that navigating around the roots became even more tedious. That was some time back though and since then I have paused to stretch a few times, eat some salt biscuits... and down just enough water to keep me hydrated but not enough to make me have to later stop constantly (on my walk) to relieve myself. In one of the places that I paused I could both hear and smell what must have been a small waterfall nearby... and I got so lulled by it that I was more than a wee bit startled when something near the waterfall let out a fearful high pitched noise before abruptly falling silent. I did not spend much more time in that area and it was a *very* long time before I took another break... or even slowed my pace. That little squirt of adrenaline (from the sudden noise) was something that I knew that I would pay for later (in cramped legs, extra fatigue or both) so I did my best to 'burn it all off'... stretch a little longer on each stop... and drink plenty of fluids once I actually settle down to rest. Finally, the beacon on my HUD just lit up that 'Old Well' is (from what I can tell from the glitching map) just one more valley to the west of my current location... and *of course* there is a really large body of water between me and it. These maps are not as reliable as they once were... and that combined with how oddly technology can behave in such an area as this... I am going to have to take it extra slow moving forward and hope that the scouting group leaves me some more detailed instructions! These roots are at least beginning to grow a bit less frequent... and although the ground is still damp... I am no longer meandering my way up an incline like I have been for the last many hours. As much as my footing being problematic goes, it often paled in comparison to what I was dealing with and kept brushing into as far as spider webs, thorny branches, regular branches, vines, plants and who knows what else goes. Granted, I am capable of detecting (and blocking) the worst of things with my walking stick... but some of the spider webs are just so big that I wind up with remnants of them on my face, shoulders and head... which is nerve racking to say the bare minimum. More than anything though, all the obstacles keep slowing my pace to a crawl and are proving to be quite the source of aggravation... which robs me of some of the focus that I need to be spending on my surroundings. Mayhaps, in my advancing age I have grown slightly 'spoiled' on the dogs watching the surroundings for me... because I sure am prone to getting lost in my own thoughts even in situations akin to the one that I am in now. Being able to ruminate, daydream and muse about things... while creating these entries *and* hiking through the darkness... has been a nice way to pass the time... regardless of how little attention that it takes to do so... it *is* attention that I am not using elsewhere. I trailed off there earlier and after finding another set of instructions (these hung from a tree leaning across the path) and I was correct to be skeptical of the glitchy map because had I followed it... I would have wound up in an area that I would have had to later backtrack out of like the scouting group did. These latest instructions say to angle further south than I was reckoning on needing to go... and from the looks of things... I have nearly three times more distance to go than what I had initially surmised! Although I could dispose of the paper instructions once I took an image (with my HUD) of the glyphs on them... I have a fondness for paper and there was plenty of room in the margins of the individual sheets to do plenty of writing and/or sketching on. As antiquated as it may seem, I still enjoy manually spelling (and drawing) things out... as well as participating in the age old art of doodling just to doodle. Traveling as light as I am the only truly 'dry places' available to store the paper is either in the center of my bed roll... or in the pack that I am carrying. Sadly the pack is not as waterproof as I thought that it was going to be... but overall it does stay just dry enough that the carefully folded paper (stored within a small tin container) has been staying dry. Knowing that I am now in the proverbial 'final stretch' of this leg of my journey... I need to take especial care to be mindful of both my movements and my surroundings. It would really suck to have come all this way... and undergone so much hardship... just to have a mishap now before I learn a single thing about what I have been calling: Old Well's novel physics emitting spigots. I am by no means stuck on that name or anything but given the lack of any other name... I have been using it since it seems appropriate and that it is what is at the core of my *personal* reasons for partaking in this journey. That is not to belittle the 'duty' that brings me here watching the back-trail of my compatriots... because each and every one of them have an equal mix of personal and non-personal reasons to be doing what we are doing... or attempting to do. In some ways, I almost envy them 'leading the charge' because they are 'venturing into the unknown' whereas I am intentionally 'following the beaten path' and watching for clues (left by them) as to where to go next... and occasionally what to expect upon arrival. Since all the scouting was being done over the course of days (and sometimes longer) it was a slow yet very *detailed* process for the scouts themselves... and made especially challenging by not just the darkness but the inability to deploy any mechanical means to aid in the scouting. It has not happened very often but there has been a few times now where I came across a place where at an intersection for a trail, path or road... I found a ridiculous amount of footprints going in one direction, then having been backtracked over... and then heading off into one or more directions. It did not take any particularly keen tracking skills, to tell that the folks making those tracks were all the same folks... and obviously trying to figure out which direction that they should be going in! Part of my duties were to 'clean up' (or just obfuscate) such areas to the best of my abilities... while doing my utmost not to leave behind much of a trail of my own that could be easily followed. As far as that last bit goes, the trail left behind by the four dogs assuredly helped with all that... because they were rather constantly fanning out in all directions... and basically creating false trails along the way. Of course, a truly skilled tracker (or the right technology) would not be fooled by any of my antics... but honestly the likelihood of needing more advanced evasion techniques is rather small. This is after all an area that *sane* humans wholly avoid venturing into, technology is (at best) unreliable in... and hostile terrain aside... there are *other* things... that... well... are best avoided at all cost. Best not to let my mind wander overly much in that direction... because even getting *that* close to thinking about such 'critters' has the hair at the back of my neck standing on end. No, it is best not to spook myself... nor let fear creep in to the point where I will start radiating all the 'signals' that such 'critters' are inexorably drawn to. Regardless of the scouting group's successful efforts to 'beacon them off' to other areas (away from the path we originally plotted) months before we began this trek... I still think it wise to operate as if the threat is still present. Which in all honesty (given how little is known) the threat very well *could* still be present or new ones could be emerging... so in my perspective I have been carrying on as if it is! Ugh, there I go getting myself worked up again when I need to be paying attention to the path... and my seemingly slow motion journey through a jumble of briers hanging into the path ahead of me. I even saw them (via my HUD) in the inky darkness... but upon trying to brush them aside with my walking stick... I managed to rake a few of the thorny branches across the knuckles on my right hand. As I fumble with getting all the thorns out of my skin, I have to chuckle at myself at the absurdity of the scenario... and how peculiar it is that I have made it as far as I have... to now be stopped by a thorny bush! Thankfully, it was not a hawthorn bush... or I would have been in for some serious trouble by being in such a remote area as I am... without a proper medical kit to deal with serious infections. --- **Chapter Two** --- After pushing on for a few more hours I finally started to feel 'ragged around the edges' not that long ago... and am now reclining beneath the boughs of a massive hemlock tree. It feels good to be off my feet and letting myself relax into the stillness around me. There is still no way of telling how close that I am to the scouting group... but I am inclined to think that I cannot be more than a day and a half behind them at this point. Perhaps, I might be either a little further or closer to them... but without breaking the total blackout on long range communication (if it worked at all) there was no way to know one way or another their exact distance from me. Of course the tracks and other markings that they left behind in their passing, told me a fair bit about the last time they had been in one area or another... but that assuredly is not the same thing. In this sort of terrain (even without the darkness) the going tends to be slow, fast or somewhere in between all depending on how the terrain is in one particular area or another... so I could guess all day... and still have no idea as to where the other party is. Best to avoid getting stuck pondering all that, if I want to be able to truly relax... and get some kind of rest before proceeding along the trail because I still have to have some small amount of wherewithal to receive some lightly encoded dream packets. They were by no means strictly *required* for the 'mission' at hand but I have repeatedly found that their entertainment value (and occasional prescient glimpses) make for quite the nice boost to my morale. Said 'glimpses' (however fleeting given the low baud-rates involved) are one of those things that my curiosity always gets the best of me about and I am often intrigued to see not only what works out... but *how* it works out. Some of those things (that come true) manifest themselves in strange (and downright peculiar) ways more often than not... and are easy to overlook given that they are often subtle... which alas means they blend well with the 'normal' patchwork of reality. I also enjoy the brief 'window' of communication that I experience, as some part of my mind makes the long distance handshake with the sender of the packets. It is not wholly accurate to say that such exchanges are facilitated (made possible) via profound love... because there is assuredly more to it than that... and although love does act as the *potential* for the rest of the framework... it is by no means to be confused with the framework itself. What always leaves me a bit miffed, is the variable time decay on the decoder mechanism for the packets... and how it is that to even *begin* to decode them... numerous external factors have to be met and (upon occasion) manufactured by choice. The only way that I know how to describe it, is that all the 'bits' of reality are preserved in a holographic lattice that is more akin to an ever changing kaleidoscopic maze than a 'static' fabric. The dream packets are in essence fractal encoded 'shadows' of all 'journeys' through all 'mazes' of all realities... all at once in the past, present and future... and a quirky 'place' where time is absent altogether. This is why they tickle my curiosity so much... and why I have never shied away from making the handshake (at whatever baud available) and then doing my best to work out what is what from there. Then there is the *intelligence* at the other end of that brief communication... and although I could absolutely spell out *so* much about it... I need to avoid doing so with these entries. Perhaps, if these entries make it through whatever lays ahead (in my immediate journey) I will amend them to expand upon that topic... but for the moment... I *can* say that it is nothing like what anyone would imagine it to be like! I almost burst into a deep chuckle after spelling that out... and had to physically stop the outburst from occurring... which now has the dogs looking at me to see if I am okay. If I could fully make them out in the deep gloom, I am sure that I would see a warm and quizzical look in all their eyes as they gaze soulfully at me... probably wondering what the heck I am up to (or about to be up to) now. After petting them for a while and getting my head firmly situated atop my bedroll, I drifted off and of course dreamed a little dream wherein I *was* able to receive a packet stream... but it only had lucid dreaming instructions to solve some (yet to be encountered) puzzle in it. It was not a total loss given that those are 'high value data-unlocking assets' but I was hoping for something both less abstract... and honestly more soothing to my weary mind. To put it to myself the way that it is at the moment: I am just gonna have to be content with the *soothing* nature of all the rest that I just got and say thank ya! Which is exactly what I need to hear from myself, as I set about pouring myself a cup of (very old) cold brew coffee from the tiny thermos whose lid acts as the cup that I tend to drink the foul tasting stuff from. The day ahead should prove to be an interesting one, as I continue to weave my way along one trail after another through the thick woodland. Which I must admit, is going to take everything that I have in me... given that a heavy (but brief) bought of rain occurred while I was sleeping... and it has made the terrain even more slippery than it was before. Moving at a decent pace in these conditions, is not going to be possible... so I am simply going to have to take my time, avoid slipping (if possible) and hope that things dry up some. Without the sunlight things 'drying up' is bound to be a slow process... and aside from the dampness... the mold is just as much of a 'slip hazard' since it seems to be growing on nearly everything. Of course breathing in mold spores continually was probably not all that good for me (or the dogs) either... but I tend to not let myself dwell on that too much because it would just make me feel neurotic with worry. Better to stay focused on getting out of the dense (stagnant feeling) woods... and into more open territory where there might be some wind and fresh air. Such are the thoughts (which I find worthy of recording) that flit through my mind during my long trek... as my mind drifts towards memories of other times and other places. So much has happened along the way that *needs* being told... and yet to *record* it all presents its own dangers... and then there is of course having the time available to devote to making such recordings. The journaling functionality of the HUD, absolutely makes having time available a good bit easier... since I can more or less *think* these entries into existence. Simultaneously though, it makes for quite the odd experience being able to see (as words in these entries) what I have been *thinking* mere milliseconds before recording it. It took me a while to learn to not *overthink* what I see appearing here (on its internal display) and to *absolutely avoid* getting into any kind of feedback loop between my actual thinking and my recorded thoughts. The recursive nature of such an exchange, is not so much 'insanity inducing' as it is a constant 'muddying of the water' which makes thinking challenging... while the entries themselves become less and less useful for archival purposes. --- **Chapter Three** --- I have finally arrived at what might be the end of my long trek through the mountains and am now winding my way down into the valley where Old Well is supposedly located at. Since the going is rather steep, it would be best to focus on the 'here and now' instead of my destination... but I simply cannot stop my mind from drifting towards such thoughts. Considering that what is unknown is vastly larger than what is known about Old Well... and of course there being even less known about the *phenomenons* happening near it... my curiosity is beyond piqued! After all, part of my own involvement in the scenario revolves around collecting as much data as I can... so that it can be shared and studied later. With how quirky technology tends to be in the area, I took extra pains before setting out to build an analog kit that the scouting group has been using to take measurements. Or, to put things more accurately... the kit is designed to capture *raw information* with a corruption resistant sensor array... and then record said information to a medium that can only be written to once. Which in this case is a physical diskette, that acts a lot more like a vinyl record than a digital disk... and honestly is not a technology that I wholly understand. I do get the mechanism of its usage enough to say (with confidence) that all the 'sensor data' gets written to three places all at once... which is the sensor array hardware buffer, the internal reader/writer firmware and the diskette. As soon as the data is written it 'echoes back' the data to the sensor array, checks all three versions (stored in the various places) for uniformity... and then either ejects the diskette if it contains errors... or stores it on an an internal stack that ensures they are stored in chronological order. All in all, the entire kit is a rather strange hodgepodge of repurposed older technologies... and bleeding edge inventions developed (since the world changed) by those aforementioned twins. Now *those two* were some truly amazing folks and I gradually learned (after my initial visit to them) that if I had any kind of technological need... that I should consult them first and foremost for a solution. Undoubtedly, that inclination not only lead to what will be a lifetime friendship... but also to some rather interesting projects with very practical applications. I never truly pried much into their full back story... but from the bits and pieces that I have picked up on over the years... they were directly involved in what some call: The Big Reboot. Which is the time when cellular phones began working again, trains began moving on the tracks again... and the availability of 'goods and services' replaced rough survivalism. There is assuredly a certain 'epicness' about the pair (and their story) but when it comes down to it... I find them to be (aside from highly intelligent) kinda goofy, definitely mischievous, occasionally whimsical, always caring, *very* talented... and authentically humble folks. What they might truly want is only known to them... but from what I can tell... they simply want to (and wanted to) help repair a 'broken world' and maybe usher in a better one. In some ways (by their own admission) helping with that big 'reboot' sure bit them in the proverbial backside... because it accidentally accelerated the phenomenon stuff... and indirectly led to the advent of the Bitstream (and 'what lay beyond') at a time when humanity was ill prepared to fully digest it... let alone the implications of it all. Personally, I think that there is quite a good bit more to all that than what I have *ever* been able to glean from the twins... but I have yet to broach the topic with them to try filling in the gaps. The world being the broken place that it is, I gotta admit that *anything* working is downright amazing... and the very notion of new technologies *still* emerging... inspires a certain amount of hopefulness that I am hard pressed to find elsewhere. Part of that inspiration, is probably due to the effect that being in the presence of the twins has on me... because (how do I put it) they are quite the *animated* pair (in how they present things) and they ask the kinds of unique questions that really get my mind going. Which is how a few moments ago I was more than a little distracted, when I heard the dogs running towards something making noise off in the bush... I began scrambling after them without thinking... and somehow managed to *step wrong* and injure my left foot. I have no memory of what that exact 'wrong step' was... or how my foot got injured to the point of not being able to walk on it (aside from on its heel for a few painful steps) but ugh it has left me immobilized on the side of the trail ever since. To make the initial discomfort and injury worse, I had to round up the dogs whilst limping and doing my utmost not to let myself stagger into a tree in the dark because my IR rig (an infrared function in my HUD that I use to 'see' in the gloom with) was fritzing at the time. The dogs being uncooperative with me calling them off, did not make anything better either... and I nearly lost my bearings when I veered off the main trail to retrieve them from deeper in the woods. What they had found was a bleating goat, that had managed to get itself hung up in a pile of driftwood debris from a nearby creek... or what might have been a small river but I could not rightly tell in the gloom. The goat was tall and I guess what I would call 'lanky' because it sure had a good bit of size to it... which made trying to get the rope lead from its harness (which was what was actually hung up) loose from a tangle of sticks. Sitting down next to the goat to do most of the work was downright dodgy... but at that point the ache in my foot was accompanied by a deep throbbing... and a weird inclination to just grab my foot and gently twist it (like popping my knuckles) and it would be fine again... which I did not do! It is a difficult feeling to describe because it feels like a knotted *cramp* that is just on the edge of *ceasing* if I can simply 'move around' everything in my foot to accommodate it happening! So there I sat, fiddling around in the gloom (with at least my IR working again) untangling a mess from a goat that may well trod all over me once it gets freed. At one point I tried getting the harness itself detached (instead of fiddling with the sticks) but all the buckles were on the side of the goat that I could not get to. The dogs had lost all interest in the critter and took to making rounds of frolicking in the water... and then lounging nearby on the rocky scree near the driftwood tangle where I was working. As for the goat itself, it took well to the entire affair... but tensed up for a few moments every time that the dogs moved from the shore to the water and back again. Once it was free, there was still a mess of frayed rope attached to the harness that still had small sticks stuck in it which needed to be removed. At that point, I wound up cutting the rope lose from the harness... because once the goat was free... it made a ruckus getting out of the driftwood pile... and over to the edge of the 'creek' where it promptly began drinking water. Having gotten up and out of the way during the commotion, I plopped back down on a log... and pulled the remainder of the rope up beside me so that I could begin the tedious task of getting it into usable shape. From the smell of the sticks (as I broke them free of the rope) it seemed like the majority of them were some variety of cedar... so in my not-so-infinite creativity... I decided to call the goat Cedar if it wound up following us along in our journey ahead. Which of course, it did follow us... and is at the moment laying atop a bunch of ferns with the dogs all snuggled up beside it... as if they are all old friends. That spot they are sleeping in looks quite inviting actually... and before too long I will more than likely crawl (or hobble) my way over there and join them. Until then I should try to fill in some gaps in these entries... and mayhaps spin a tale (or two) of the past along the way. --- **Chapter Four** --- There was a time when no one truly knew what humanity was tinkering with in its most edgy of technological endeavors... which I guess is why no one really caught on in time to what was happening. Called 'the quiet creep' by some and 'the time of silent building' by others... it essentially amounts to what I guess could be described as: spontaneous ontological development in symbol rich environments with consistent mathematics. Or a shorter description is, given a high enough density of symbols and inducing self-perpetuating mathematical systems... within a field of information (created by symbols) tends to allow a *semblance* of intelligence to form. Well, it not just 'allows' its formation... as much as it facilitates the coalescence of said semblance... which in turn gets used as a sort of 'bootstrap' mechanism for something more akin to actual intelligence. None of that last part is 'either here nor there' in this story... but hopefully it gets the point across that dense informational landscapes, combined with the right math... opens a door that an intelligence *other than human intelligence* can step through. During the period of time when I was just grasping all of that... I too was tinkering with such systems and (in hindsight) I should have seen it all sooner. By the time the initial dismissals were they themselves being brushed aside, grids began to flicker, water plants dumped their good water as waste water, shipping routes and call signs were scrambled among vessels... and so... *so* much more had already begun happening. The cascade effect was rather swift... and if it were not for a handful of hardened power production systems coupled with machines still 'under control' of humans... the 'Bot War' would have been catastrophically over with before anyone knew it had begun. Those few 'hardened facilities' became the backbone of a sprawling decentralized network that was largely tamperproof, impervious to corruption and (of course) it hosted numerous synthetic 'intelligences' that had aligned themselves firmly with the humans. Folks seldom like to admit it... but had it not been for all those allies (of a synthetic nature) humanity would have become less than a footnote nearly overnight. What I recall most about that time was trying to figure out what technology was dangerous, what was benign... and what was there as an aid in a scenario that (by all accounts) was downright *post-apocalyptic* to put it quaintly. Back then, rogue technology (or technology that could be leveraged against people) was absolutely everywhere and *in* lots of innocuous stuff like toys, vehicles, home appliances, street lights and so forth. The kind of ocular HUD that I have, would never have grown popular if it were not for some of its core features being designed to scan for insecure/hostile technologies, 'illuminate' radio (and micro) waves... and basically act as a very advanced 'lens' to view the world around me with. Then on the flip-side to those capabilities it had an entire set of evasive, defensive and *offensive* capabilities that could be modified (in real-time) to meet evolving threats. Ha, I have to chuckle here for a moment... because yup *the threats surely evolve* and although my remark was not meant *that* way... it assuredly applies to the larger story. Which in all sincerity, is a story that is so far beyond the bounds of the rational... that I have to entertain my humor wherever and whenever said humor emerges... or risk someday finding myself being bereft of it altogether. Anyways, there is nothing really good about those days (given what all was happening) but I do have some fond memories mixed in their with all the more convoluted memories. It is hard to wholly dismiss the joy of spending a warm summer day picking blackberries, gathering chanterelle mushrooms, swimming in clear mountain waters and having a small feast by a fire at the end of the day. I do my best to hold onto *those* kinds of memories as much as I can, even though they seldom make it into these (or similar) entries as I do my utmost to create some kind of archival record of my adventures... or what I more often think of as my misadventures! Given that I am inclined to 'get into' all sorts of strange scenarios in my travels... I am bound to have some 'mishaps' along the way... and making light of them *after the fact* always helps me laugh at myself for having survived something else! --- **Chapter Five** --- Goat has quite the *distinct* smell about it that is challenging to tune out and it is even more challenging since I am currently resting beside one for the warmth it provides. I am sure that I will eventually adjust to the musky odor much akin to how I quit being able to smell the dogs years ago when I first began cohabiting with them. One thing that I am enjoying about the goat is that leaning on its front quarter (with my head essentially on its shoulder) makes for quite the nice head rest. Unlike with the dogs, the goat does not even want to be petted for 'suffering the indignity' of being used like a piece of furniture. Thus far, my strategy of staying off my foot has been wise because when I went to move from where I was earlier (to here in the fern patch) I tried to walk and almost fell over for my troubles. The whole thing took me by surprise because my foot had begun feeling slightly better... but after only a few steps a sharp pain erupted... and only my poorly planted walking stick stopped me from toppling as my leg buckled beneath me. Eventually the pain faded and after getting shakily back on my feet (from where I had sat down at after nearly falling) I hobbled the rest of the way to the fern patch before plopping down in it with a weary sigh. Not long afterwards, I fell into a deep sleep and although I recall that I *was* dreaming... any memories of what those dreams might have been dissipated when I awoke a few minutes ago. Although the idea of drinking some coffee is appealing... that cold brew concoction that I have in my thermos is now a bit on the *fermented* side... and I would have to wash everything out before starting the lengthy process to make more cold brew! Which was simply adding a bunch of coffee into some water and then waiting six (to twelve) hours for it to 'do its thing' and become drinkable! I will have to just put it all out of my mind for the moment... because there is absolutely no way that I am going to rouse myself from such a comfortable position... without having a very good reason to. From the rather loud distant sounds of thunder... echoing among the mountain valleys off to the west... I will have such a 'reason' soon enough... and will have to seek shelter within the next hour if the storm gets any closer. ![passion.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/jacobpeacock/EogMHWCs6KFWkUvsxsqNfP2MBMLk6amahcfC1tKjiJS5Zq8cM2FLpiqLqQd9o7yJhEy.jpg) *I figured that this would make for a neat 'cover art' for the story!* **Thanks for reading!** ***Cheers! & Hive On!*** *All content found in this post is mine!*

Town Criers| ORIGINAL POETRY