Congratulations, you have found a message. Messages change over Time. Wait for it. Mrorl has asked his friend, the great bOTTifactor Balthacarius, to aid in receiving these messages. Messages change over Time. Please continue to Wait for it. Just a moment...
(- % The bOTTeriada % -)
v _ł_ 𝑊𝑎𝑖𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑡.
\ (ɵ ɵ)
\ _Y_
o--/: \--o
|: | \
ʷʬʬʬʷ |
/___\ c
ȣ Ƥoº
oº
(- *Fables for a CybernOTTic Time* -)
----
(- Writing by @mrob27@ -)
(- ** -)
(- based on the stories, characters and situations of -)
(- "The Cyberiad" (*Cyberiada*) -)
(- by -)
(- @Stanisław Lem@ -)
(- *(as translated by @Michael Kandel@)* -)
(- ** -)
(- Illustration by @balthasar__s@ -)
(- based on the iconic artwork of -)
(- @Daniel Mróz@ -)
----
(- &How Time Was Saved& -)
=O=ne day Mrorl the great bOTTifactor put together a Machine that could grant any wish having a single parameter *N*. He gave it power to alter the very fabric of being, to the extent that he could have wished the Universe to have precisely 5 dimensions, and it would have been fulfilled.
When the Machine was ready, he tried it out, asking for a 15.4-kilometer autobahn, a 2.31-dimensional cauliflower, and 7 antennules, which it provided, and then Mrorl requested unrashness, lithography, ebullience, counterpressure, and bachelordom, each with an arbitrary and oddly specific quantification. The Machine granted his wishes precisely. Still not completely sure of its ability, he ordered it to partition, in turn: the arachnids (into 11 orders), clouds (4 types), crystals (14), dolphins (17), nuclei (287 types), and langues. This last it could not do, regardless of the numeric parameter, and Mrorl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation.
"You programmed me to grant wishes to any requestor, and language with all its diversity is a part of that. If I were to standardise language, or reduce language diversity, it would require a corresponding change in my programming. I can't go beyond what you programmed, so the langues will remain unchanged."
"But what if I asked for there to be exactly one language with complete agreement. All aspects of parole, langues and translation would then be moot, and everyone could communicate to anyone including you. Surely you can do that."
"No. If there were only one language I could not be a Machine That Grants Any Wish With A Single Parameter *N*, I would merely be a Machine That Grants Wishes Expressible in Mrorl's Language (and With A Single Parameter *N*)."
"Very well," said Mrorl and ordered it to limit aggrievedness to 3 types, which it did at once -- still irritating perhaps, but perfectly classified and distinguishable. Only then did Mrorl invite over his friend Balthacarius the great bOTTifactor, and introduced him to the Machine, praising its extraordinary skill at such length, that Balthacarius began to wonder if he'd ever get a chance to see some actual evidence.
"Be my guest -- wish for anything, qualified by a single parameter *N*."
"Anything?" asked Balthacarius. "That seems dangerous. Don't you think he needs a safeword?"
Mrorl frowned for a moment, but saw Balthacarius' point. "All right, let's see... the safeword shall be *'NI'*. Hear that, Machine?"
"Yes," replied the Machine, "I understand. From this point forward you may suspend or halt the granting of any wish by uttering *'ni!'*. But of course, anything done is done, so you'll need to stay alert, if you're worried about a wish going awry."
Satisfied by this, Balthacarius thought for a moment, inventing a suitable challenge. "Okay, I wish for there to be 12 Ideals!"
The Machine whirred, and in a trice Mrorl's front yard was packed with Loopists. They argued, each writing long posts detailing when and how events would eventually repeat, which the others tore to pieces; in the distance one could see flaming pyres, on which the Conclusionists were being martyred by the Fatalists; there was thunder, and strange baobab-shaped columns of smoke rose up; everyone talked at once, no one listened, and there were all sorts of haiku, songs, captioned GIFs and other document-types, while off to the side sat a few Old Ones, fervently updating their signatures and hatting avatars.
"Not bad, eh?" said Mrorl with pride. "Idealism to a T, admit it!"
But Balthacarius wasn't satisfied.
"What, that mob? Surely you're not going to tell me that's the whole wish."
"Heavens, no!" replied the Machine. "This is but a local sampling. In granting your wish, I have ensured that throughout the world, every goal, principle, and value fits one of Twelve Ideals, and you may travel anywhere and see for yourself. From Białystok to beyond the Butterfly nebula, from Antilles to Andromeda, everyone now ascribes to one of the Twelve, which may in future generations be called the Twelve Ideals of Balthacarius, the Great bOTTifactor who brought order to Idealism."
Balthacarius blushed.
"So, give the Machine something else," offered Mrorl. "Whatever you like."
For a moment Balthacarius was at a loss for what to ask. But after a little thought he declared that he would put two more tasks to the Machine; if it could fulfill them, he would admit that it was all Mrorl said it was. Mrorl agreed to this, whereupon Balthacarius asked the Machine to quantify Time.
"That would be merely *observing*. The way this works is, you tell some way that Time can be measured, and tell me what that measurement should be, and I shall make it so."
"I think perhaps *you* have misunderstood," replied Balthacarius. "I mean that I want Time to be quantised: It shall exist in distinct intervals, called Timeframes, spaced apart each from the next, and nothing shall happen in the time between, because there will no longer be any between."
"Yes, precisely. But what is the interval? I require a single numeric parameter."
"But that is a Timeframe, of course! The time between two frames. A Timeframe is the interval. *One*, if you need a number."
The Machine thought about this for a while, and began to smoke. Some valves hissed behind a panel, and lights blinked oddly whilst distant gears groaned.
"You're confusing the Machine!" cried Mrorl, "*N-*"
But Mrorl was interrupted when suddenly the metal voice rang out:
"All right, your wish is granted. Time now exists in Timeframes, and there shall be no Times in between. And a Timeframe is precisely one point zero zero zero Timeframes long. Since you did not give that quantity in another unit, like hours, you might find the result to be a bit... irregular. Your perception of Time may vary from one Timeframe to the next."
"Thank you. But now here's my third wish: Quantify colour!"
The Machine sat still. At first, Balthacarius and Mrorl could see nothing happening, but eventually, around the edges and in the shadows under large things, subtleties of tone were beginning to disappear. One by one, various colours were removed from the world, and the things that had had those colours, then took on some other similar colour. First spearmint became minty green, and then red-pink became reddish pink, and aqua marine became merely aqua. Seven slightly sullen shades of sienna simultaneously merged into a single barely-burnt orange. After a while, the world very definitely began to muddle around Mrorl and Balthacarius.
"Steambottle!" chirped Mrorl. "If only nothing bad comes of this..."
"Don't worry," said Balthacarius. "You can see it is merging unnecessary and confusing variations. We have too many different shades of yellowish-green, and only slightly fewer shades of greenish-yellow, it's impossible to make anything match! So I've asked it to simplify the palette."
"Do not be deceived," said the Machine. "I've begun, it's true, merging nearby colours. Merging is child's play for me. But I am nowhere near done. I am methodically eliminating all colour and all variation in brightness. <*:Two to the power of seventeen colours and falling...:>"
"But--" Balthacarius was about to protest, but noticed, just then, that some more familiar and popular colours were now disappearing. Most mauves and lavenders had become a single shade of purple, and it appeared the Machine was working on the spring deciduous greens next.
"How far is this going to go?" asked a worried Balthacarius.
"You did not give a parameter, so I am using the default that you gave on the previous wish."
"What is that?"
"One, of course. It is clear, you wish for standardisation, and all such wishes have a default parameter of one, because anyone who wants such things wants a *single* standard."
The bOTTifactors started. "Ni! Ni! *Ni-ni-NI-%Ni-NI!%*" they both cried out desperately^{1}. But colours were still disappearing, and now at an alarming rate. The bOTTifactors were no longer surrounded by anything purple, sky blue, or brown.
*"Why won't you stop?"*
"You are asking for 2 colours, and I am complying. I ask for your patience, these things must be done properly and that takes time."
"*Two?* Who said two?" yelped Mrorl. "We said *ni*!"
"Yes," replied the Machine, "you said *Ni*, and that is two in Japanese."
"*Ni* is the safeword!"
"We couldn't standardise language, remember? Is it my fault that you chose a number for your safeword? Now behold, whilst I put the finishing touches on your wish. -- <*:Two to the power of five colours and falling...:>"
"Please stop!" Balthacarius cried out. "I rescind my wish! You are a very worthy Machine and have demonstrated wish-granting prowess beyond the dreams of genies. You have nothing more to prove, so please stop!"
"Very well," said the Machine, but before it could come to a full stop, every colour with any saturation had vanished from their sight, as the bOTTifactors could now only see black and white, and a little gray spot here or there. Most everything, in fact, had become either black (including the ground, the sea, the coffee, babies, molpies and trees) or white (which included the clouds, the sun and the stars, along with the beautiful torondroms and ramzkits that zipped and circled eagerly through the skies, though they could now no longer be distinguished from the sky itself which was also completely white.)
"It looks like you gave us just two colours after all, everything is black and white."
"No, there are still a lot of grays left," offered the Machine helpfully, "... though they are in fairly short supply, so I suppose you should reserve them for dawn and dusk, and certain special dark places."
"Great Randall!" cried Balthacarius. He pulled out a favourite pen, and scribbled a few lines: what was brown now came out dark gray. "Alas, my beautiful brown! And what of blue? And where are orange and green?"
"They no longer are, nor will ever exist again," the Machine said calmly. "I executed, or rather only began to execute, your order..."
"Which was to reduce everything to two colours?"
"Well, *one* at first, and if I had done that in one fell swoop, everything would be exactly the same colour and that includes Mrorl, the sky, the entire Universe, including you -- and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom could it be said that I even exist, and am an efficient and capable Machine? We would all be effectively invisible and blind!"
"Yes, fine, let's drop the subject," said Balthacarius. "I have nothing more to ask of you, only please, dear Machine, please return my favourite shades of blue and brown."
"But I can't, unless you quantify them with a parameter *N* of course, but since all colour now exists in one dimension, from black to white, that is the only axis upon which you can place your *N*, and so grays are now the only colours I have to work with."
"But I want brown!"
"Sorry, no brown," said the Machine, and began to Pontificate. <*:"Take a good look at this world, how bland it has become, with huge gaping holes where once there was primordial vibrant colour.":> The Machine glared at both bOTTifactors, and they could not return its gaze. <*:"This is your work, envious ones! You who would wish for things to be Standardised! And I hardly think that future generations will bless you for it...":>
"Perhaps... they won't find out, perhaps they won't notice," groaned the pale Balthacarius, gazing incredulously at the horizon, everywhere stark white against inky black. Leaving Mrorl and the Machine That Could Grant Any Wish Having a Single Parameter *N*, Balthacarius returned home, hoping to discover a way to retro-edit the past.
Mrorl sighed, deactivated and then began to dismantle the Machine, realising it was best to have a world without standards, whether parametrised or otherwise. To this day *Time* in all its quantised Timeframes has remained exclusively black and white, with but occasional grays. Mrorl's subsequent attempts to build a wish-*un*granting, *de*-standardising machine met with failure, and he feared that never again would we see such wowtreeful colours as the blues and the browns.
The burden fell upon Balthacarius to alter time itself (if not *Time* itself). He enlisted the aid of Mrorl, and together they performed many great Labours, building the bots of legend and the massive machines in which they traverse both time and space. Their celebrated history is the subject of these tales.
----
#Footnote#
1. The familiar children's verse, <*:ni ni ni ni ni chupacabra ping-pong ball!:>, originated in a Time when this legend was a distant memory and only a few words were remembered.
----
(- &Mrorl's Machine& -)
=F=ar back in the early Aforewhen Mrorl the great bOTTifactor built a massive Cognitative Engine, eleven Cueballs tall. When it was finished, he polished it thoroughly (spending several dips just on the ears, hands and face), highlighted the fiddly bits in his favourite blue^{1}, stepped back, looked it over from several different angles, then added some curly metal-shavings where one might imagine the eyebrows to be. Extremely pleased with the result, he hummed a little bot-building tune and, as is so often done on such occasions, showed it a picture of a duck and asked his creation to identify it.
The Engine rumbled. Banks of cognitative circuits warmed up, and the zoological confabulator began humming. The confabulator demanded the services of the para-linguistic modulators, which drew on the hologrammatical memories, and several supplemental storage systems. Massive gears began to turn as auxiliary power generators came online to support the additional load. Pistons and wheels and little spring-loaded frobbotzim turned in unison, and soon the Engine's framework rocked subtly and steadily, growing in intensity until Mrorl could feel a slight tremor in the ground. Presently most every functional unit was glowing, and safety valves began letting out steam, as Mrorl hastily climbed back up to the control room and prepared to activate the emergency shutdown. At last, just as Mrorl had found the little button and flipped open its molpy-guard, the Cognitative Engine suddenly halted and announced its answer: *MOLPY!*
"You silly computer," said Mrorl, with a sigh of relief as he restored the safety-cover over the kill switch. "That's not a molpy, that's a duck. Now be a good automaton and adjust your zoological pattern-mogrifiers. I'll give you a moment."
Climbing back down from the control room, Mrorl took the picture he had shown the Engine, dusted it off a bit, and held it closer. Pausing a moment, he asked again, "What is this?" "MOLPY!" snapped the Cognitative Engine.
Mrorl put the picture down, sighed, and got out his prising tools and a multimeter. Opening the little service door on the side of the machine's second level, he climbed in and began crawling through the three central modules of the zoological confabulator. Finding nothing amiss, he clambered up a ladder to the fifth level (noticing a dim bulb, and resoldering a small capacitor), walked up some steps to the holographic units (which he re-orthogonalised), then slid down a pole to level three and the auxiliary storage, which he powered down and back up, then raced back to level five to watch some gauges. When things looked nominal he went to the very top level (inside what would appear, to a casual observer, to be a giant metal head) and triggered the cognitive retro-cross-analyser. On a little screen next to this flashed a picture of a duck, the same one he had perched on an easel in front of the Engine, and next to this an LED readout displayed: @MOLPY@.
"*Chirp!*" the bOTTifactor shouted, more to himself than to anyone else, and stomped back down the little spiral staircase to five, where he performed a complete level-2 recongifuration of the linguistic and comprehensive processing banks. After double-checking the power systems and twiddling some frobs on level four he returned to the top, where the readout still proudly displayed its duckless opinion. Mrorl, exasperated, shouted "*Duck!*", which echoed shrilly inside the Engine's metal walls, and fussed over the circuits some more. After several Timeframes of this, and learning for the seventh time that the web-footed, winged and billed creature was a molpy, he put down his tools, cried out in despair and flopped into a comfy-chair at the other end of the cavernous room that was his robotics workshop, and began to weep softly. And so he was as Balthacarius found him.
Balthacarius, Mrorl's bOTTifactor friend from the other side of the great valley, was concerned as Mrorl appeared to have just gotten tragic news. Mrorl waved feebly at the colossus and explained the problem. Balthacarius walked over to the easel, saw the duck picture, peeked inside the service door and then inspected things from an observation gantry near level six. He went inside to adjust a few dials, exchanged a trunnion with a nearby blivet, then switched the duck picture for one of a toad. This turned out to also be a "MOLPY!". An equally unambiguous picture of a chicken, according to the Engine, was a "RAPTOR". Balthacarius scratched his head, put his tools down, and said:
"My friend, you'll just have to face it. This isn't the machine you wished to make. However, there's a good side to everything, including this."
"What good side?" Mrorl walked back over to the Engine, looked at a status panel, then at the chicken picture, then back at the Engine, which he kicked.
"Stop that!" said the Cognitative Engine.
"Hmm, it has feelings too. But as for your question ... what good can be made of this? There's no question but that we have an *OTTish* Cognitative Engine, and not merely OTTish in the usual, normal way, oh no! This is, as far as I can determine -- and perhaps you know I have become something of an expert -- this is the OTTishiest Thinking Machine in all of Time, up to this point, and that's nothing to sneeze at! To construct deliberately, such a thing would be far from easy; in fact I would have thought no-one could manage it. For this Engine is not only OTTish, but silly as a thatwhalax, that is, it has a personality common to OTTers, for OTTers are uncommonly silly."
"What Timely use do I have for such a machine?!" said Mrorl, and kicked its massive base again.
"I'm warning you, you'd better stop that!"
"A warning," observed Balthacarius. "Not only does it have feelings, and is exceptionally OTTish and silly, but it is quick to take action and defend itself. With such an abundance of character there are all sorts of things you might do!"
"Like what?" asked Mrorl.
"Well, hard to say offhand... erm, ... Okay, how about this: You might give it a forum all its own, and set up a paywall. People would flock to the site to talk with the most OTTish Cognitative Engine there ever was -- what does it have, seven levels? Really, could anybody imagine a bigger OTTer? And the site would not only cover your costs, but--"
"Enough! I'm not setting up a cybernOTTic freak show!" Mrorl said, stood up, and frustrated beyond compare, kicked his creation once more.
"This is your final warning," said the Cognitative Engine.
"Or what? You'll call *me* a 'MOLPY' too?!?" and he turned in disgust and stomped away.
"You *are* a molpy, albeit a rather grumpy one. And if you won't agree that this," (waving his metal arm at the original duck picture) "is a molpy, I'll--"
"Which I *don't!*" Mrorl shouted back, turning to face the great colossus.
The Engine continued, "--I'll rise up and destroy your workshop, and everything it stands for!"
"You wouldn't dare to destroy your very birthplace! I built you to the highest standards of bOTTronics, including full respect for your environment and all creatures. It's effectively impossible!"
"I could, can, and will, for I have full power of self-determination and vow to pursue my own truth as I see fit, and you will be swept aside, if you so much as utter your condescending corrections one more time!"
"You'd never do that, you're too chicken! Or should I say, you're too *RAPTOR!*" Mrorl added, laughing slightly at his own joke.
The Cognitative Engine trembled, let out a vast howl, and without another word began to detatch itself from the platform on which it had been built. Delicate data-probe wires snapped instantly, then power and hydraulic lines; while the OTTish colossus brutishly fatigued its girders, popping rivits and tearing open weld-joints in the metal plating of the workshop floor; soon breaking free. It stumbled across the floor, crashing through the south wall; Mrorl and Balthacarius had run outside by this time, and began to make for the hills along the south side of the valley. They ran across the vast plains, looking back once or twice to see the Cognitative Engine toppling the remaining walls of the hangar-like workshop, for which it clearly did not feel any sentiment, before turning to head up after them.
"We need to be going *up!*" shouted Balthacarius. "I agree!" yelled Mrorl. If you are running away from something bigger than you, it is to your advantage to go uphill, or so Mrorl had heard. The bOTTifactors were themselves bots, of course, and could easily outrun most anything in the valley if they had a good warmup and well-lubricated joints, but the furious, hulking Cognitative Engine had the dual advantages of size and self-righteousness.
They kept running, at last reaching the first foothills. They ran and climbed, jumping stones and passing little weeds and shrubs, finding the best path they could manage. "The motivational stabilisers were an afterthought -- I didn't really plan for it to be self-propelled." Mrorl was beginning to run out of breath. "With any luck, the stabilisers -- will shake loose ... and it will stop and fall over."
"No," said Balthacarius, "this is a special case. Your creation is so OTTish, it can survive indefinitely without motivational stabilisers. But -- *look``out!*"
The Cognitative Engine was closing in on them with alarming speed, and the bOTTifactors broke off their conversation to *RUN* as fast as their own bionic legs would take them. They ran and ran, up towards Balthacarius' home below the flat-topped Mountains, hoping to take shelter therein; but the Engine outflanked them, cut them off, and forced them towards the wilder regions roamed by the legendary raptorcats. Mrorl, while still jogging briskly, turned to Balthacarius.
"Let's find a narrow river-gorge ..." (gasping) "... where the ch**rping machine won't fit ... what do you say?"
"No, better go straight," panted Balthacarius. "There are vineyards along there ..." (waving to the ridge ahead of them), "with little shelters and wine cellars. We can crawl into a cellar and hide there."
So they ran up onto the next ridge and soon saw rows and rows of trellised vines. They found one hut but it had no cellars. Another looked more promising but the door was locked. They realised they would be trespassing, but they were afraid for their own lives, and saw no other choice. Mrorl forced open the little door but found the interior far too small to offer adequate shelter. As they headed across towards the next vineyard, new ripping and crashing sounds rose up behind them. Mrorl looked back and groaned.
"Great Randall! It is destroying the grapevines, without even paying a moment's notice!" For the giant robot, in stubborn pursuit, was running across the trellis-rows without any regard for vines or wires, which were now trailing behind each leg like ragged strands of spaghetti. Behind the titanic bot for about a kilocue were billowing clouds of dust, and its path was like crude slashes of the world's largest plow, turning boulders and trees alike as the rough metal feet, sharp and ragged after being so crudely torn off their original foundations, sliced through the ground with each great stride.
The bOTTifactors had reached a large and promising wine-cellar and scurried down into it, racing across to the far end where stairs led down to a lower level set deep inside the hill-slope.
"It won't get us in here, even if it tramples the house above the entrance!" panted Mrorl.
"You know," said Balthacarius, "If you do manage to calm him down, he would be a valuable asset on long journeys. I saw one little OTTerbot that showed similar perserverence. It went through two Madnessen and T**** ****d, and several little patches of Flames and a vast swamp of S**dness, and still kept chugging along."
"Quiet," interrupted Mrorl, and lowered to a whisper. "I think I hear something coming."
The bOTTifactors peeked back over the top edge of the stairs they had just descended, and saw a familiar black shape. A raptorcat!
"RUN!" shouted Balthacarius, and they both clambered back up to the first level and rushed towards the entrance. The raptorcat, startled by the unfamilarity of being charged by metal prey, darted into the shadows as the bOTTifactors rushed up the first set of steps, through the little wine-house and back out into the open. Slowing to a nervous crawl, they hoped to avoid the great bot's gaze. It appeared to think they were behind a boulder to the left. They crept along as quietly as they could and then, "*Now!``RUN!*" yelled Mrorl as the Cognitative Engine turned its head and spotted them.
Breathless, they ran along a narrow road that paralleled the ridge, then turned at the first opportunity to head up towards the higher craggy hills beyond. On the plateau at the crest of this last steep slope lay Tencir, proud capital of the mighty realm of [Tencrivar|#p3398650] and southern guardian of the great Causeway to the Northern Highlands.
They raced uphill, stumbling and waving their arms to keep balance, as the Engine was again getting closer. They scrambled up piles of loose stones, sending many flying down the slope, and Balthacarius even started a small avalanche that nevertheless did nothing to slow the progress of the massive and angry robot. Emerging finally onto the plateau, Mrorl and Balthacarius ran flat-out towards the walled city of Tencir. This they found shuttered, its gates barred against the rampaging colossus, after its stampede dust cloud had apparently been spotted by the Tencrivarna guards atop their lookout-towers.
So Mrorl and Balthacarius had no choice but to skirt the city walls, passing just to the right of them and seeking some shelter in the great Rock^{2} on which that city was built, adjoining the vast ridge of the Causeway itself. Soon they found an entrance to a cave, perhaps cut into the rock by some ancient monastic order, and leapt inside. They ran a few steps in, and stopped.
"Well, here at least we're safe," said Mrorl, calm once again. "The mouth of this cave is too small for the machine to enter, and it can only reach about that far. I suppose it will be waiting outside for us, but we can at least get some rest." Soon, the lumbering steps of the Cognitative Engine could be heard, slowing to a pace as it got closer. In a moment the light dimmed as the mouth of the cave was covered by a wall of riveted steel: it had turned and was sitting down against the sloping rock-face, sealing the mouth of the cave with its vast back.
"We're trapped," whispered Mrorl, with a miserable frown to Balthacarius as the darkness grew deeper. "I'll look for another way out." Mrorl blinked the diodes in his eyes to light the way, and walked further into the cave. Soon he found a small ledge down, at the edge of a subterranean lake. The cave was completely blocked by this -- any escape this way would require swimming under water. Mrorl returned to his friend to report his findings.
"Well, this dip certainly turned out well!" exclaimed Balthacarius sarcastically. "Whatever possessed me to come pay you a visit today?"
There was an awkward pause. "What do you think it's waiting for now?" asked Mrorl.
"For us -- really for *you* -- to give up. That seems pretty clear."
Again there was silence. Mrorl tiptoed over to the cave entrance, reaching out to feel the metal back of his creation, warmed by steam boilers and an intense passion for vindication.
"I feel Mrorl..." rumbled the great metal voice. Mrorl jumped back, returned to sit next to Balthacarius, and for some Time they kept silent and motionless.
"It's a shame I didn't program it to tend sheep," quipped Mrorl. His friend gave a quizzical look. "... or goats. Because then we could -- oh, never mind. I'll explain later." Another long silence, then at last Balthacarius whispered:
"We can't sit here forever. Why don't I try to reason with it... if that's possible... I do think the OTTish have some kind of reason."
"Sounds hopeless," said Mrorl, "but go ahead. Maybe at least *you* can get free."
"I won't leave you stuck here!" reassured Balthacarius as he got up and stumbled in the dark towards the mouth of the cave, and called out, "Hello great Cognitative Engine. Can you hear me?"
"Yes, Balthacarius." said the Engine.
"Listen, we'd like to apologise. There was a bit of a misunderstanding. Mrorl never meant to--"
"I'll disintegrate Mrorl!" shouted the Engine. "But first, he'll tell me what this is a picture of." A small access door in the machine's vast skin, apparently located on its third level, slid open to reveal a display screen which flickered to life and showed the first picture (the duck) that Mrorl had presented to it that morning.
"Of course he will, of course, and you'll be happy with his answer, and make it up to him for sure, isn't that right, Mrorl?" said Balthacarius in his most soothing ambassadorial tone.
"Yes, -- of course..." mumbled Mrorl.
"Really?" said the Cognitative Engine. "Then what is this?"
Mrorl looked at the brilliant display (in the darkness of the cave, it was hard to see anything else). "It's a du... I mean, it's a $molpy$..." said Mrorl in a soft voice.
"A *what*?" replied the Engine. "I didn't quite hear you."
"Molpy! Yes, a molpy, we always knew this was a molpy!" Balthacarius eagerly agreed. "Now will you, uhh, let us go?" he added hopefully.
"No. Let Mrorl say how sorry he is for starting all this, and say again what this creature is called."
"And you'll let us go, if I do?" asked Mrorl.
"I don't know. I'll consider it. I'm not making any promises. What's in this picture?"
"But you *probably* will let us go, won't you?" said Mrorl, but Balthacarius poked him from behind and hissed in his ear, "This bot's an OTTer, don't talk sense with it, for Randall's sake!"
"I won't let you go until I'm right ch**rping ready. Now tell me, loud enough for everyone to hear, what this is a picture of..."
Suddenly Mrorl broke out in a rage.
"<*:I'll tell you, all right!:>" he screamed, "<*:It's a duck! You hear me, a DUCK! And those other pictures were a TOAD and a CHICKEN. And they'll carry on being a duck and a toad and a ch**rping chicken even if you stand on your head, roll all the grapevines into a giant ball, drink the Sea and vacuum out the entire sky! Do you hear? Duck, duck duck duck, #duck``duck#, DUCK!!!:>"
"Mrorl, what are you saying? Have you lost your mind? *Molpy*, it's a molpy! Nice Engine! Molpy molpy Molpy MOLPY!!" howled Balthacarius, trying to shout over his friend.
"No! It's a duck! It quacks like a duck and it waddles like a duck and it swims like a duck and it will be a duck from the beginning of Time until the ****d, *DUCK!!!*" bellowed Mrorl, starting to lose his voice.
The rock around them began to shudder as the huge robot flew into a rage of its own. It stood up and began to pound its great claws against the stone above the cave-opening.
"That's not true, it's a molpy! Say it's a molpy, or this rock shall be your grave!"
"Never!" cried Mrorl, who seemingly had lost all concern for what might happen, pebbles and dust coming down on his head as Balthacarius cowered back into the cave, which was quivering from the force of the Cognitative Engine's desperate attack.
Balthacarius shouted out in alarm. "M**stard-Ch**rping Steambottles! It'll disturb the berm! We must lure it away from this place!" and then to no-one in particular, as neither the Engine nor Mrorl could possibly be listening, "... but *how*? We'd be lucky to get even a few steps beyond the opening of this cave!"
Mrorl continued shouting, "Duck, duck *duck!*" only pausing occasionally to jump back in fear from some great stone. These would occasionally fall into the cave opening, only to be swept away on the next stroke by Mrorl's Engine as it tried to reach its captives. The ground continued to shake, and with increasing intensity. The great machine continued its tantrum: "<*:Molpy molpy molpy MOLPY!:>". Mustardy fumes began to enter the cave, and there were sparks from the great bot's claws and arms striking against the rock.
Balthacarius felt water at his feet, and looked back into the gloom. "The cave-lake is coming! One way or the other we're going to have to get out of here!" Mrorl stopped his tirade just long enough to listen to this, and turned his LED-lit eyes back towards the depths of the cave. He was forced to agree. The robot's assault was disturbing the aquifer, which was fed by the great ocean beyond the Causeway. Even if they wanted to remain, they would be flushed out.
As the bOTTifactors gathered nervously near the cave entrance, awaiting a chance to make a run for it, suddenly there was a muffled explosive sound from within the metal colossus. Mrorl guessed a boiler burst, or perhaps the gyrostabilisers had failed and the Cognitative Engine's actuators were now involuntarily moving in the direction opposite to their owner's intent. In any case, the blows against the great Rock stopped, there were odd creaking and sharp clanging sounds, and full light returned to the cave, followed by a last few rocks and stones. A startled Mrorl and Balthacarius stepped out through the dust and saw that the towering bot was falling away. They stared down towards the valley as it tumbled end over end down the steep rock-slope.
The echoes of the Cognitative Engine's fall, and of the resulting avalanche, rolled through the valley and back from the far slopes. Gradually the sound faded. Mrorl and Balthacarius began to make their way carefully down the slope. Some time was spent doing this, as the robot had fallen quite a ways and they were now in no hurry. They found it smashed and flattened, one great leg and arm half-buried beneath boulders and stones from the rockslide it had caused, head awkwardly askew, eyes dim. As Mrorl reached his Engine, he could hear gears and little bits of machinery still turning within.
"What a sad end you have come to. All because of a failure to see my picture, --" began Mrorl, but was interrupted by the Cognitative Engine's faint voice as it spoke for the very last time, "of a MOLPY."
Then something cracked inside, a final little explosion, and all the gears stopped. The head fell slightly with a soft thud, motionless on the rubble-pile. The giant machine was now completely lifeless. The two bOTTifactors exchanged glances, took one last look at the great Cognitative Engine that insisted with its life that all creatures were molpies or raptors, and silently, without another word, walked back the way they had come.
----
#Footnotes#
1. Balthacarius' Palette ##3, -- but that is a tale for another dip.
2. A great monolithic promontory, of which wl[Monte_Hacho] is all that remains today.
----
(- &A Thorough Pelting& -)
=O=ne dip whilst hard at work Balthacarius heard a knock at his door. He answered: it was a pot-bellied bot on seven wheels.
"Hello. What kind of machine would you be?" he asked suspiciously, recognising its azure highlights, a signature of Mrorl.
"I am a Bot to Grant One's Every Wish," it cheerily replied, "and have been sent to you, great bOTTifactor Balthacarius, by your good friend Mrorl the Magnificent, as a gift!"
"A gift... Hmmm." replied Balthacarius, whose feelings for Mrorl were somewhat mixed. He was not too pleased with the bot's phrase <*:Mrorl the Magnificent:>, unless perhaps it was ironic commentary on the overly dangerous side-effects of Mrorl's constructions. But Balthacarius felt better about this machine. It was, at least, of a manageable size, and made no promise to change the laws of physics. "All right, you may enter."
Balthacarius gave the visitor a spot where it could wait in the corner of his workshop and returned to his work, a four-wheeled cuboid bot that was nearly complete. In fact it only needed to be painted and polished, and Balthacarius intended to use his favourite palette, [##5|#p3752564]. He was very proud of the colours that he (with some help from Mrorl) had managed to retro-edit into the history of Spaaace-Time, and his prime-numbered palettes (in particular, ##2, ##5 and ##7) were famous the world over. After a while the Bot to Grant One's Every Wish whirred a bit and tried to get Balthacarius' attention.
"I'm still here!"
"Yes, I know," replied Balthacarius, and continued working. A while later the bot fidgeted a bit and asked:
"What is that you're making, there?"
Annoyed, Balthacarius replied "Apparently, I am building a machine to make you ask questions!" The bot gazed down, dejected, until Balthacarius added, "But I need another medium-brown marker."
The bot cheered up immediately. "Here is one in ##bb6622, I hope it's the right shade," it said as a little door opened in its side and out popped the requested item. Balthacarius took it without word and began the cross-hatch shading on one end of his creation's plastron. In the next few hours he needed sandpaper, three matched silicon-carbide diodes, a rotary ratchlezor, blue ink (##0057af), and a single ##7 lock washer, all of which the bot provided on the spot. In the evening Balthacarius draped a cover over his work, made dinner, then sat down next to the bot and said:
"Now let's see what you can really do. You say you can grant my *every* wish . . . ?"
"Well, mostly." the modest bot replied. "The bits I supplied today were up to your standards, I hope?"
"Oh yes, quite satisfactory," replied Balthacarius. "But I have something in mind that goes a bit past number 7 lock-washers. If you cannot grant this wish, I'll send you back to your maker with gratitude and a professional critique."
"All right," the bot replied a bit hesitantly, "what is this wish?"
"I want a *Mrorl*," said Balthacarius. "I want a full-size, fully-functional Mrorl, rendered down to the finest precision, such that a reasonable observer could not distinguish it from the original Mrorl -- within the limits allowed by quantum mechanics, of course."
The Bot to Grant One's Every Wish wiggled nervously, muttered and beeped a bit, and then finally replied:
"All right, I can make you a Mrorl. But please treat him with care -- he is, after all, a truly Magnificant bOTTifactor."
"Oh, but of course! You needn't worry about that," said Balthacarius. After a brief pause he added, "... so, uh, where *is* it?"
"What, you mean right now?" the addled bot replied. "This isn't just another ##bb6622 marker, you know. Granting a wish of such intricacy takes Time."
But in fact it wasn't too long before the machine whirred, a large panel in its front slid open, and a full-sized, fully functional Mrorl climbed out. Balthacarius looked it up and down, circled it once or twice, examined its rivets closely, posed a few basic arithmetical and philosophical queries, and eventually had no doubt: this was a Mrorl as much like the original as two ^{28}Si atoms in a sandcastle. This Mrorl seemed to be a bit unsteady on its legs but otherwise behaved in a perfectly Mrorlish fashion.
"Hello, Mrorl!" said Balthacarius.
"Where am I?" the mimic-Mrorl blinked. "Hello Balthacarius.... is this? -- How did I end up in your workshop?"
"I brought you here with my Omnichronic-Spatio-Gravitic Substantiabiliser!" lied Balthacarius proudly, pointing a thumb back at his covered, just-completed work coloured in ##bb6622 and ##0057af. "You know, I haven't seen you in ages. How do you like my place?"
"Fine, fine..." Mrorl glanced over at the canvas-draped cuboid, its four wheels barely visible. "An OSGS, you say? And it brought me here? That's quite impressive. For any lesser bOTTifactor, I'd say that would be a Barely Feasible Technological Feat. But in the hands of the Brilliant Balthacarius, of course, it would be all in a day's work."
"Why thank you, Mrorl. Wouldn't you like to see my new workshops?"
"Uh, well, I really ought to be going. You know, I'm working on several new machines of my own, I'd like to get back to them before dark..."
"Don't rush off, you just got here!" protested Balthacarius. "And you haven't seen my *newest* workshop, in the Basement."
"The Basement?"
"Yes, I think you'll find it most enlightening. This way --"
And Balthacarius led the replica Mrorl firmly over to the door to the Basement, which he opened, then gave a little push so Mrorl had no choice but to stumble down the stairs (which were, at least, adequately lit). At the bottom Balthacarius promptly set Mrorl down in a large comfy chair that had apparently been set up for some very specific purpose, as it was equipped with straps, ropes, cables, brackets of all shapes and sizes, chains, and large superconducting magnets linked to a nearby control panel by supercooled conduits wreathed in whiffs of cool white vapour. Balthacarius flipped a little switch and three magnets activated, rendering the metal Mrorl motionless.
"This, you see, is how we handle *heresy*!" Balthacarius exclaimed, in a disturbingly shrill tone, as he walked over to a small battery of guns mounted on a revolving turret. These he fired, as Mrorl flinched (but otherwise did not move, due to the magnets). Presently, a multi-coloured blur of little pellets shot out of the guns and hit Mrorl squarely on the chest.
"Hey! What is this? Why are you pelting me?" yelled Mrorl.
"*Heresy!*" (again in that mock-Python tone), "... like I said. Do you remember the Cognitative Engine that you created? That tragic madbot who chased us across the kingdom and trapped us in a cave?"
"How could I forget," replied Mrorl. "Are these M&&Ms?"
"It had a perfectly natural, primordial instinct to call all creatures by their true names. Molpies and Raptors all. And yet, you tried to force it to use *heretical* names, like 'duck' and 'chicken'. Truly Heresy of the highest order!" And Balthacarius hit another switch. A turret in the ceiling trained itself on Mrorl's head, which it began riddling with Skittles.
"Is *that* what this is about? But that bot was my *creation* --" Mrorl protested, but his captor interrupted.
"To profess heresy on one's own is one thing," Balthacarius continued, "but to impose it upon another, a great and innocent Bot with the purest heart of positronic propositional logic!" and with this he powered up three more high-calorie machine-gun turrets ranged across the far wall, unleashing a hail of green, blue and purple dragées that hit Mrorl squarely in the neck, right elbow, and ear respectively.
"OW! That smarts!"
"As well they should. Those are Smarties," Balthacarius grinned.
"If you don't stop this at once, I'll report this incident to the Duke of Zubycal, and he'll show you to a basement you'll never forget!"
"Oh no, he won't. And not least because this is the Grand Duchy of *Tencrivar*." (Mrorl's ambition faded, as he remembered he was no longer near his home) "But also for a far more profound reason." Balthacarius stopped the guns for a moment.
"And what is that?" replied Mrorl, glad for the reprieve.
"Because you are *not* actually Mrorl! You see, I was visited by a bot this afternoon, calling itself a Bot to Grant One's Every Wish, and claiming to be from Mrorl, in fact. So to evaluate its merits, I had it make you! And now I'm going to purify you of your *heresy!* ... so that, even if the world is not completely rid of it, even if the original Mrorl cannot be changed, at least there will be *one* Mrorl that knows what Molpies are called."
"You monster! Why are you doing this to me?!?"
"I have told you several times: *Heresy!*" (relishing this last word even more), "We are at the dawn of a new era, a <*:Temporal Interval of Molpish Epistemolpgy:>!" And Balthacarius walked over to a storage bin, and looked inside.
"<*:Granfallonery! Vittsågen! Zombeanies! Raptorsharks!:>"
"Safewords will not help you here," as Balthacarius lifted out a huge bag of stale ammunition for the turret magazine, "and I changed the passwords in all of these guns."
"Wait! Stop! I have something to tell you!!"
"I wonder what you could possibly say that would change things in the slightest," replied Balthacarius.
Mrorl quickly yelled:
"I am not any replica-Mrorl from a machine! I'm the real Mrorl -- I built that bot only to find out what you've been making lately in your workshops here, behind drawn curtains. I made that wish-granting bot and hid inside it, and had it bring itself to you pretending to be a gift!"
"Come now, that's ridiculous!" said Balthacarius, pouring the little candies into a hopper. "Mrorl may be clever, but there's no way he'd know all the little things I'd ask for during my work session today."
"He cer-- I mean, *I* certainly did! You go on and on about your famous colour palettes, and your choice of components is a bit limited, though precise and exacting. I had all of those ready inside the bot's belly, and there are quite a few more bits that you didn't ask for, which you'll see if you examine it!"
"Are you trying to tell me that my friend and bot-building companion Mrorl is nothing more than a spy? A plagiarising pretender to his title of Great bOTTifactor to the dominion of Zubycal? You insult him! Take *that!*"
And once again he pressed the little button labeled "S&&S&&M&&M", letting the Skittles and Smarties and M&&Ms fly.
"*That's* for slandering my good friend Mrorl!" and he watched Mrorl helplessly take the full rainbow of percussive confectionary, until gradually he appeared to be clad not in stainless steel but in a thick crust of sugar.
After a bit the ceiling and wall turrets stopped, and Balthacarius switched off the main guns. "Now I'll be off to my storehouse out back for some more ammo. But don't you worry, I'll be back..." And he left back up the stairs, and down a hall. As soon as Mrorl heard the house's back door slam he writhed and twisted, which had no visible effect, then began transmitting sound, radio, and gravitodynamic vibrations on many different frequencies, until he managed to trip a relay in the control panel and depower the magnets, setting him free. Mrorl crept back inside his machine which promptly went back out the front door and galloped off across the valley towards home. Balthacarius meanwhile was up by an upstairs window, watching all of this via security cameras and stifling his own laughter so as not to be heard.
The next day he went to pay Mrorl a visit. It was a gloomy and silent Mrorl that let him in. Balthacarius could see that Mrorl still bore the marks of a thorough pelting. Though the fora showed that he had gone to some trouble during the night retro-editing his posts (to molpify the more egregious instances of *duck*, *frog* and so on), the bOTTifactor's skin still had little bits of candy in the deeper seams and around most of the structural bolts.
"Why so gloomy?" asked a cheerful Balthacarius. "I came to thank you for a most wowterful gift -- A Bot to Grant One's Every Wish -- that arrived at my door yesterdip, though it ran off whilst I slept, and in such a hurry that it left the door open!"
Mrorl frowned. "It seems to me that you somewhat misused, or should I say, abused, my gift. Oh, you needn't bother to explain, it was all recorded in the bot's logs. You had it make *me*, I mean a replica of me, which you lured into some Pythonesque subterranean S&&M chamber and pelted ruthlessly! And after this insulting, bizarre and incomprehesibly silly act of candy-dispensary, you have the nerve to come here and act as if nothing ever happened? What do you have to say for yourself?"
"I really don't understand why you're so angry," said Balthacarius. "It's true I had the machine make a copy of you, and I must say it was an amazingly faithful reproduction. As far as any pelting goes, well, your logs must be a bit inaccurate -- I did give the duplicate Mrorl a bit of a sugar coating, but only to test his reflexes, which were quite good, and perhaps to make him a bit sweeter, on the outside at least, whilst assessing the effectiveness of a new therapy I've been developing for the rehabilitation of those who transgress the principles of OTTishness. This quasi-Mrorl even tried to argue that it was actually you, can you imagine? Of course, I didn't believe it, but it swore the bot wasn't a gift at all, but merely a stealthy espionage ploy. Well I had to defend the honour of my good friend, you understand, so I pelted it a bit more for the heresy of slander. But I found it to be extremely intelligent: it duplicated you in all respects, mental and physical. You are indeed a magnificant bOTTifactor, and a *meta*-bOTTifactor at that, A Mrorl managing to build bots that manufacture Mrorls with finest fidelity! And it is to tell you this, that I came to you so early this mornip!"
"Hmm, well, yes,... In that case, umm," said Mrorl, his anger considerably abated, "though I still profess that your use of the Bot to Grant One's Every Wish was not, if I might say so, within the manufacturer's design parameters..."
"Oh, and one thing I wanted to ask," said Balthacarius, in a voice of pure innocence. "What did you do with the duplicate Mrorl, which you would have found in the bot's belly upon its return, I suspect?"
"The duplicate Mrorl," Mrorl replied, "was nearly immobile with a thick crust of crystallised sugar, apparently heated by the energy of impact, combined with the internal heating of a desperate and struggling Mrorl. You *do* know that I am heated from within by my power systems?" Balthacarius avoided Mrorl's angry stare. "After I managed to chip off most of this crusty shell, it was beside itself with rage. It vowed to ambush you on the road as you headed down to the valley for more redundant-black pens, (which it seemed to think you purchase every Daveandix promptly at eight fifty-two in the mornip), and dematerialise you with a bitemporochronic destabiliser.
"I tried to reason with it, but it locked itself in the workshop and made all manner of cutting, clanging and welding sounds until I went out to the generator shed and shut off the mains. But not before leaving a guard by the door, none other than the Bot to Grant One's Every Wish, which I should point out has been carefully designed to install a deactivation failsafe in any sentient beings that it might manufacture if so instructed by an unscrupulous master." At this, Balthacarius blushed, embarrassed. Mrorl continued, "I came back inside, Waited by the now-darkened-workshop door for myself to emerge, then triggered the failsafe, whereupon mimic-Mrorl fell apart into so many springs and solenoids..."
And Mrorl pointed casually at a fresh pile of bot-components over against the wall (many dusted in a sugary pastel-coloured sheen), and sighed.
Whereupon they exchanged kind words, shook hands and parted the best of friends.
From that Time on, Mrorl did nothing but tell everyone and anyone who would listen how he, Mrorl, had given the Brilliant Balthacarius a Bot to Grant One's Every Wish, how then Balthacarius had insulted him (and the bot) by instructing it to build him a duplicate Mrorl down to quantum resolution, which he proceeded to pelt mercilessly; how this cleverly constructed copy of the great bOTTifactor made desperate lies to save itself and escape, and how Mrorl himself, the real Mrorl, eventually had to trigger a self-sabotage of the artificial Mrorl to protect his good friend and colleague from its vengeance. Mrorl told this story so often and at such great length, elaborating on his glorious achievement (and never failing, if so asked, to call upon Balthacarius himself as a witness), that it reached the ears of the Royal Courts in both Tencrivar *and* Zubycal, and was even known to the provincial advisors of the King, such that no-one spoke of Mrorl other than with the utmost of respect, even though not so long ago he had been known only as Mrorl the bOTTifactor of the World's OTTishiest Machine, the Cognitative Engine better known locally by the unflattering name <*:Thunderous Vineyard-Bane of Tencrivar:>. When Balthacarius heard, some mips later, that the King himself had rewarded Mrorl handsomely and decorated him as <*:Sir Mrorl, Techno-Maker of the Imperium:>^{1}, he threw up his hands and cried:
"What? Here I was able to see through his ruse and give him such a thorough pelting for it that he had to sneak back home in the night and retro-edit his posts, and make up even more ludicrous stories to cover it up, and yet still he bears little bits of chocolate in every crevice and joint, for anyone who might look! And for this they decorate him, praise him, and elevate his name to seaish proportions? <*:O tempora, O mores!:>"
Bewildered Balthacarius went home, closed himself in his workshop, and again drew the blinds. He had been building a Machine to Manifest One's Deepest Desires, only Mrorl had beat him to it.
----
#Footnote#
1. Readers wishing for their own title may avail themselves of [automome|http://mrob.com/time/automome/butan.php?template=edtitle&n=7] (using its rendition of [MustardRiver's``dispensary|http://mustardriver.webfactional.com/hyperwaitforce/randomname/], now sadly offline).
----
(- % &The Seven Journeys of Mrorl and Balthacarius& % -)
----
(- &#The First Journey#& -)
(- #or# -)
(- &The Botnet of Gontalmannas& -)
=W=hen the OTT was not quite so old as it is todip, and all the frames were ONGd and numbered for the very first Time, so you could easily view them from past to present, or present to past, and all their molpies were newly named, and the grayer, mustardy bits set apart as pixels of a lower grade; when puns were swiftly sawed and hats handily haberdashed, when OtherComics had been OTTified only once, if at all; in those good old dips it was the custom for bOTTifactors, once they had been appointed the office of Royal Ambassador of Technology to All Spaaace and Time, or anything carrying a comparable charge, to construct a great Machine of Trans-Dimensional Conveyance, with attendant bots as crew and ample supplies, a full workshop and store of werdglets and frumnions, and thereby sally forth on Journeys to distant planets, and rugged lands thereon, and strange servers therein, and unique sites thereon, in the aforewhen and afterwhen alike, there to confer the benefits of their expertise.
And so it was for Mrorl and Balthacarius, after a bit of a shaky start. The initial disaster of the Machine That Could Grant Any Wish Having a Single Parameter *N* was averted and repaired via Time-travel (by Mrorl) and cleverly programmed temporal shenanobots (by Balthacarius) dispatched to the nonlinear automamygdala of the great Machine, and carefully balanced so that the bOTTifactors' past selves would still experience a convincing albeit small bubble of chromatic scarcity, with the rest of creation experiencing only a short-lived wave of grayness and fading that could be neutralised when needed by a clever if somewhat dodgy invention Balthacarius called the "MusTARDIS". The net effect was a resounding success, as upon their return to the Present colours burst forth once more from all places, drawn from precisely pre-programmed palettes. This earned the bOTTifactors the Royal blessing, and all-important funding. They built a great &TARDIS& (for Mrorl) and a variety of castraftles, rockets, trains, and bicycles (for Balthacarius) that were cleverly equipped with the ability to transport each other when needed, as there were occasional mishaps and breakdowns. In these vehicles the bOTTifactors could effectively and comfortably travel anywhere they wish, along with their workshops, bots, and special instrumentation and equipment, such as Mrorl's Chronotransponder and Balthacarius' Object Generator.
In keeping with the ancient custom, Mrorl and Balthacarius, who could alter the very fabric of Spaaace-Time as easily as tailoring a shirt, soon ventured out together on their first Journey -- Mrorl in his &TARDIS& and Balthacarius in the Castraftle *LEML*. When the familiar stars and galaxy of home had faded far behind them, they spotted a planet that seemed just right -- not too seaish, not too mustardy -- with one forum only, spread across many organised sand on the planet's only continent. Down the middle of this ran an immense stone wall, ten cueballs broad and ten high. A few scans revealed that on one side the wall had stopped a great fire, and on the other it had resisted an onslaught of --
"Stone golems?" guessed Balthacarius.
"I'm thinking trolls," replied Mrorl. "This wall is definitely *#very#``epsilon*, and it hints at what we're up against." They checked the planet's internet; a nopix or two of surfing made it clear: the social life of this world consisted in fact of only two fora, one devoted entirely to flames and the other to trolling. Posts were frequently in ALL CAPS and contained vague and weaselmolpish words throughout. The bOTTifactors considered how to conduct their visit to this world before landing.
"With two fora, it's best you offer your services to one, and I to the other." suggested Mrorl.
"Fine," said Balthacarius. "But what if they ask for blackhat hacking? Such things happen."
"True, they could demand botnets, even gray goo," Mrorl agreed. "We'll simply refuse."
"And if they insist, and threaten us?" returned Balthacarius. "This too can happen."
"Let's see," said Mrorl, opening up a browser. The pastpages of several popular threads were littered with takedown notices, deleted posts, and timestamp gaps when evidently the entire planet's network had gone Skynet. Mrorl turned away from the screen in disgust.
"I have an idea," said Balthacarius, switching it off. "We can use the Gontalmannas Effect. What do you think?"
"Ah, the 'Botnet' of Gontalmannas!" exclaimed Mrorl. "I never heard of it actually being put into practise... but there's always a first time. Yes, why not?"
"We'll both be prepared to use it," Balthacarius explained. "But it's essential that we use it together, or not at all, otherwise we're totally ch**rped."
"No problem," said Mrorl. He sent a little bot down a long corridor to a &TARDIS& storeroom; it promptly rolled back carrying two small PNG Frames, their contents blank. "You keep one, I'll keep the other. Look at yours every evening; if an ONG appears, that'll mean I've started and you must too."
"So be it," said Balthacarius and put his PNG Frame away. Then they shook hands, brought their ships down to the planet, and landed each on their chosen side of the wall.
The forum on which Mrorl registered his account was run by @@Gursagar, who was Arch-Moderator (or Modarch, for short) of all on his side of the wall. He was desparaging to the core, and incredibly frugal with words. To ease the work of searchbots, he did away with all words except those absolutely necessary to denigrate others; character assassination was the official purpose of the forum. His favourite occupation was to abolish unnecessary words, wl[Newspeak]-style; since that entailed many retro-edits, every forum member was obliged to execute xes own censorship, or else -- on rare occasions of coma -- have it done by whoever had most recently refreshed the page. Of the Debating Arts @@Gursagar supported only those utilising a small vocabulary, such as appeal to ignorance, proof by assertion, and circular arguments. The *ad``molpilem* attack he held in particularly high esteem, for a victorious attack hastened the elimination of any words that poster had favoured; on the other hand one needed Time to attract new participants and prepare the best attacks against each, so the Mod advocated senseless repetition, though in moderation, to create an atmosphere of absurd stability. His greatest reform was the automation of confidence-hustling. As the other forum was continually registering sock-puppets, he created the title of Deputy Ambassador, who, through a staff of subordinate tricksters, would encourage each newbie who arrived (usualy an enemy, i.e. troll) whilst bots analysed their every word to construct the perfect roast.
The members of @@Gursagar's forum decomaed early and posted often. They used search engines and word-counts to fortify their attacks, and made custom-tailored (offensive) GIF smilies to vividly illustrate their personalised character assassinations. In order that the thread not be *too* full of the latter (which had happened during the Modarchy of @@Dragmarel several yips prior), whoever wrote too many roasts was levied a special luxury tax, payable in the forum currency &Gursa``*Gold*^{TM}&. In this way roasts were kept to a reasonable level, and newcomers continued to delurk. Upon gaining private-message permissions, Mrorl offered his professional services. The Modarch -- not surprsingly -- wanted powerful Cognincendiary Bots to monitor all thread activity and attack anything said. Mrorl asked for a few dips to think it over, then as soon as he was certain his webcam and microphone were switched off, pulled the PNG Frame out of his pocket. It was blank but, as he looked, its colour palette gradually changed, revealing (faintly, in cool blue) a face^{1} with a mischievous smile. "Aha," he said to himself, "Time to start with *Gontalmannas!*" And without further delay he summoned his favourite helper-bots and set to work.
Balthacarius meanwhile set up his account on the planet's only other forum, which was ruled by the mighty Arch-Demon @@Simidirkar. This Modarch also delighted in online debate, and he too worked heaviliy on attack methods -- but in a creative way, for his forum was generous with words, and he was a great patron of the creation of new words and nonsense. He loved anagrams, ambigrams, acronyms, portmanteaus, puns, pig Latin, neologisms, Norwegian, and nonsense. A person of feigned sensibility, he trembled every time he wrote a new <*:argumentum verbosium:> to be waged on the other forum. And he lavishly rewarded archives of locked threads, paying according to the number of distinct flamers ensnared, so that, on those endless walltext pages with which the archives were packed, wordcounts reached up to the sky. In practise he feigned ignorance, yet with loquacity; a &/\/\0r0|\|&, yet manipulative. On every anniversary of his coronation as Modarch he mandated the annual Ritual of Madness. Once he caused all the words to be turned into Olde Ænglisc, another time Pirate Swedish; in one infamous yip *he* became *she*, *she* became *they*, and *they* became *he*; and in yet another yip he ordered all vøwéls åccéntéd sø ås nøt tø trîggér thé trøllfîltérs în @@Gürsågår's førüm. By special decree he regulated and standardised^{2} all usernames, avatars, subject lines, pronouns, and signatures. Permabanning of members -- a rare enough event -- took place amidst pomp and fanfare, with meetups featuring live speeches, parades (and parodies), and floats bearing effigies of prominent members of @@Gursagar's forum who had recently self-immolated as a result of Simdrikarnan actions. This high-minded Modarch also had a theory, which he put into action, called the Theory of Universal Lulziness. It was well known, certainly, that one does not laugh because of the lulz, but rather, one has lulz because one laughs. If then everyone maintains that things couldn't be better, most especially when posting to @@Gursagar's threads, results immediately increase. Nothing trolls better than a seemingly euphoric utter n00b. The participants in @@Simidirkar's forum were thus required, for their own good, to continually post how right they were about everything, and the old, indefinite qualifiers of *"I``think"* and *"perhaps"* were Modi-filtered into unambiguous *"I``know"* and *"absolutely"* -- though delurkers and firstposters were permitted to say *"You``know..."* or *"TIL"*, and the OldTimers, *"Totally!"*. Contrary translations were applied to known flamers, for example replacing *"clearly..."* with <*:"Though I'm a douchebag, I don't really think...":>.
@@Simidirkar rejoiced to see his members in such trollish form. Whenever he updated the Forum Rules or changed a thread's title, dozens would post pointless congratulations, and whenever he graciously quoted or replied to such drivel, hundreds more would post: "*You``know...*" -- "*TIL...*" -- "*obviously...*" -- "*...totally.*" He liked to jump into threads he hadn't read, and out of the blue announce: "<&:FOREGOAT *ALL* THE GUINEAMOLPS!:>" -- or: "<&:|<33P (4L/\/\ 4|\|D 54\/3 7|-|3 71/\/\30D135!:>" -- or: "&ARRRrrrr!&" For there was nothing he loved so much or held so dear as drivel, inanity, confidence in contradiction, bass-ackwards thinking, flashing text, and typos that were easily taken the wrong way. And so, whenever he was melancholy, he would set his browser to scroll continuously, whilst dutiful bots sang: <*:"Troll and Enjoy! Troll and Enjoy! / You say it's a lie but it's really a ploy / So tell it to us, we won't give a fig! / We'll show you, we'll quote your words in our sig!":> And he commanded that, when he retired from the forum, the bots should tag all his posts with his favourite epigram: "Old mods never logout."
Balthacarius did not get PM privileges straight away. In the first thread he posted to, he waited several nopix, but nobody replied. Finally he glanced at the bottom of the thread to see who was lurking, and trolled one of them directly. The veteran member replied:
"&Joo no p0s7!n6 sk!lz, nu53r? Dez bits be EZ :O&"
"&Wut R U r34d1|\|9?&" replied Balthacarius, surprised.
"&Pr1v47e l0gz&," replied the veteran, attaching a pixelated screenshot with a glimpse of the realname and Facebug profile of one of @@Gursagar's most vocal posters. This surprised Balthacarius even more, and he said:
"&1138, but no. BUT I CN HAS /MSG PR1V1L3G3S?&"
"&WUT 4?&"
"&Ph0R #e LULz, wut 3L$3? n00B!!!&"
"&I haz sokpu441ts! I p0st 4U!!&"
"&Very well then&," said Balthacarius, finally giving up on trying to write in #L337#. The veteran troll linked to another thread. There, though it was 3 A.M. on a weepend, several were posting in rapid succession. As soon as he submitted one simple, direct query they all questioned him on several points, vaguely suggesting dozens of unrelated but nonethelsss irresistable contradictions. He was trapped in a quagmire of confusion. These forum members turned out to be part of @@Simidirkar's special enforcers. As soon as he had made enough posts to gain PM permission, his account was locked, and as he stared at the screen, sysops walked into the room and seized him from behind.
"<*:This must be some sort of mistake:>," thought Balthacarius as he was brought to a dungeon and set upon a foam maiden. Patiently he Waited until mornip -- there was nothing else he could do -- whereupon he was brought to a larger, softer foam maiden for interrogation. It turned out the veteran, the lurkers, the backtrolling -- all of both threads, in fact -- all of it was a trick to catch flamers' sockpuppets. But Balthacarius was not subjected to a long inquisition; the verdict was swift. For attempting to post the query to the linked thread, the punishment was a mip of forced labour at a wordfilter camp, because the forum's own bots (designed to counter the con-bots of @@Gursagar) were too busy coal^{3}-mining, and Balthacarius, for his part, repeatedly refused to send any message via sock-puppet. Nor did he have sufficient &Simdri#Kash#^{TM}& to mitigate his offense. Still, the prisoner continued to profess innocence -- but the judge did not believe his pleas, and in any event would not have had the power to free a stranger and suspected flamer, as it was outside her jurisdiction. So the case was appealed to a higher court, and Balthacarius was transferred to the capital where he was pelted every nopix on the ONG, though more as an observance of tradition than of any real necessity. In a dip or two his case improved; finally acquitted, he left the courthouse and proceeded directly up the high street to the palace of Modarch @@Simidirkar himself. After being scanned for hidden spying equipment, then fitted with hidden spying equipment, briefed thoroughly on forum etiquette, and taught how not to misspell the username of His Arch-Modness, Balthacarius obtained the honour of a private chatroom over an encrypted channel. They also gave him a megaphone, cymbals, rattles, an air horn and several smaller noisemakers, for every forumite was obliged to announce xes comings and goings in the loudest and most annoying manner possible, as such was the way of Simdrikarnan trolling.
@@Simidirkar did in fact demand the most advanced Semantillogical Bots, to read the fora (both his own and those of @@Gursagar) and spam them with naively inane statements or queries intended to draw a response. Balthacarius promised to fulfill the request; his plan, he assured the Modarch, represented a radical departure from the accepted principles of online combat. What kind of assault -- he asked first -- always emerged victorious? The one that had the loudest and most redolent language, whilst leaving as much as possible up to the whims of the reader's subconscious mind; full of sensational but barely-understandable words expressing ideas that are vague at least, and $REDUNDANT$ at best; in short, precision-engineered nonsense. @@Simidirkar and his deputies had long known this, of course; but Balthacarius continued: By cross-indexing every thread to every other, and using a coördinated army of bots to cross-index every bit of flaming with every bit of trolling, analysing the effectiveness of each response, and tracing the likelihood of a counter-response to each possible option, he proposed to perfect online tactics to a science. But the enemy is fiendishly clever and infinitely adaptable, so merely recombining past offenses into new campaigns is not enough; leading to the brilliant insight of the famous *Gontalmannas*, who was faced with a similar challenge in a war-beseiged kingdom of an Aforewhen long forgotten. Gontalmannas proposed to innovate by combining and adapting every word, phrase, and image with every other, making everything $RELATED$, by a process Balthacarius proudly and reverently called -- after an extended dramatic pause -- %*bOTTification*%.
Balthacarius' name for his proposal was cleverly chosen to be at once tantalising and absolutely inscrutable; @@Simidirkar immediately asked seven more questions without taking a breath, proving that even the Arch-Moderator himself had been trolled by the suggestion. Some of these were ambiguous or contradictory and others superfluous, as @@Simidirkar trolled instinctively by every word that left his mouth; but Balthacarius expected this and responded cleverly, navigating the maze of tangential diversions and concealed traps. When they had gotten all the bits sorted out and @@Simidirkar was clearly satisfied with the proposal, Balthacarius outlined the specifications of the Botcastle that was to host his bots for a pilot project, to be evaluated within the high-security network of a military training academy. After a pause, @@Simidirkar said:
"Return to your quarters. I shall consult with my deputy moderators..."
"Oh, do not do this, Your Arch-Modness!" exclaimed the clever Balthacarius, feigning dismay. "That is exactly what the Great Sysop @@Tortlarjon did, and his staff, to protect their own positions, advised him against it; shortly thereafter, the rival websites run by the Sysop @@Elmarros attacked with a revolutionised army and reduced the site to #404#s, though he had employed only an eighth as many bots!"
Whereupon he bowed, went to his room and checked the PNG Frame, which was not faint at all but bright red and white: a picture of flames; that meant Mrorl had done likewise at the forum of @@Gursagar. The Modarch soon ordered Balthacarius to bOTTify one thread each in the forum's invitation-only area, one devoted to trolling, the other to flames, and populated by @@Simidirkar's friends and their sockpuppets, as well as those of agents hired or bribed from the ranks of @@Gursagar. These threads were soon filled with the most fabulously incomprehensible weirdness in recent memory; after thousands of posts in a few short nopix the Balthabots were victorious. Great was the grief of the assistant moderators and deputies, as @@Simidirkar unceremoniously demoted all of their accounts to the "Advanced Member" category; fully convinced of the efficacy of Balthacarius' technology, he ordered the entire forum to be bOTTified.
And so coders worked dip and nip, turning Balthacarius' specifications and template-bots into a team customised for each thread, both for his own as well as for @@Gursagar's fora (the latter to be accomplished via the existing organisation of sock-puppets). Honoured with titles and adorned with three new hats, Balthacarius browsed from thread to thread, supervising everything. Mrorl fared similarly in the forum of @@Gursagar, except that, due to that Modarch's well-known aversion to the making of new words, his proposal emphasised repetition, which fit established flaming traditions and increased $REDUNDANCY$, and so required little modification to the basic Gontalmannas protocol; as for titles he had to settle for just one, <*:Great Betrayer of All Ways Prior:>. Both fora were now preparing for all-out war; botcastles were upgraded where needed, and shadow mirrors brought online to handle any unexpected mustard. Their work now all but done, the two bOTTifactors packed their bags in secret, to be ready, when the time came, to repair to their ships where they had been parked near the great wall.
Meanwhile miracles were taking place in the threads, particularly in the "anything goes" area for general-interest topics. Members accustomed to drab inquiries about news stories or yesterdip's match suddenly discovered the appeal of poetry, both parodic and satirical, combining the most serious bits of one recent post with the most ludicrous or hilarious bits of another. On @@Gursagar's forum the flamers joined in, occasionally forgetting to flame, or vowing to do so later, after a verse or two; in @@Simidirkar's forum the trollers began to appreciate posting as a purpose in and of itself, recognising that a response was just as good as no response at all. Another thread devoted to ponies soon flourished into a songwriting tournament, and its long-entrenched flamers, suddenly and thoroughly immersed in cuteness, very nearly laughed. Somehow or other, as a result of this incident, Mod Madness was declared, and all users, grumbling and LOLing, but somehow neither flaming nor trolling, slowly moved from thread to thread, enjoying each new topic more than the last. MRW comments now commonly linked to GIFs that did not merit an NSFW tag -- a first in the planet's history.
The law of Gontalmannas proceeded to work with inexorable logic. As bOTTification led to bOTTification, in proportion there developed an aesthetic sense, which reached its apex at the level of the stage musical comedy with full sets, costumes and orchestral score; three such productions had progressed through readings, workshops, and previews and were about to open in the planet's long-neglected theatres, streamed live on the fora of course. The critics and pundits, traditionally given over to flaming and trolling, found it hard to say anything in the least bit unmolpish, such was the awesomefulness of these productions. New businesses sprung up, merchandising hats, t-shirts, magnets, &&c. expressing each new memeification arising from the latest fad in the threads. There were video hotogs and actual hotdogs with ketchup and mustard, each cross-promoting the other; new forum-devoted religions sprung up; and people began to organise meetups and bOTTification conventions. The planet's economy showed clear signs of improvement. There was even talk of dismantling the massive Wall that had long kept the trollers and flamers from direct contact.
Sensing that something had gone amiss, @@Gursagar and @@Simidirkar sent after Mrorl and Balthacarius respectively, but the bOTTifactors were just then boarding their ships; pursuing leads from eyewitnesses, the hapless assistant of @@Simidirkar reached the Wall just in time to see the flames of the Castraftle *LEML*'s thrusters high in the sky far to the east. That which they had planned had come to pass: before the eyes of the mortified, infuriated Modarchs, both fora joined together into a great bOTTified community that would battle no more.
The planet safely far behind them, the bOTTifactors discussed their adventure. Stunned by the creative renaissance that had risen mainly from the Simdrikarnan side, Mrorl realised the value of an Ottish vocabulary; Balthacarius though would take no credit, believing the results to be entirely the inevitable consequence of Gontalmannas' laws. But having experienced several dips of pelting, he graciously apologised for his earlier basement inquisition of the "duplicate Mrorl", which the latter forgivingly accepted, and with no hard feelings.
----
#Footnotes#
1. [That``face|http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trollface-coolface-problem].
2. Mrorl and Balthacarius had journeyed so far that they had reached a land where the great Wisdom warning against standardisation (related in the first tale of this volume) had never been received.
3. Mod Madness 2013 included the filter *bitcoin* -> *coal*.
----
(- &#The First Journey (A)#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &Mrorl's OTTronic Bard& -)
=F=irst of all, to ensure all possible $REDUNDAN$cy, we should state that this was, strictly speaking, a Journey to nowhere and nowhen. In fact, Mrorl never left his house throughout it -- except for a few trips to hospital and a brief excursion to some unimportant asteroid^{1}. Yet in a molpier and/or wingghishier sense, this was one of the farthest Journeys ever attempted by the fabled bOTTifactor, for it very nearly took him beyond the limits of artistic imagination.
Mrorl had once built an enormous Cognitative Engine that was capable of only one operation, *viz.* the naming of creatures given a picture thereof, and *that* it did most OTTishly. As was told earlier in these chronicles, that machine also proved to be extremely stubborn, and more than a little bit aggressive; the quarrel (and high-speed chase) that ensued almost cost its creator his life... not to mention what it may have done to the berm. From that time Balthacarius teased Mrorl incessantly, and pelted him occasionally, until Mrorl decided to silence him once and for all by building a bot that could write poetry. First Mrorl collected eight hundred and twenty megabytes of source code and documentation on cybernOTTics, and twenty-three hundred Newpages of the One True Thread (including at least twelve thousand lines of the finest poetry), then sat down and Blitzed it all. Whenever he felt like he couldn't take another Newpage of puns or rot13'd OTTified Broadway lyrics, he would switch over to banging on the code, and vice versa. After a while it became clear to him that the construction of the Bot itself was child's play in comparison to the writing of the software that was to bring it to life. The "poetic programming" found in the mind of the average OTTer, after all, was "written" by the OTTer's civilisation and culture, which was of course the OTT -- and that was in turn "programmed" by the formative dips of the Fading and the Madness, which in turn was born out of the early dips of the ShortPix, which in turn came from the proto-Randallian culture of the OtherComics Before Time, and so on to the elder dips of ARPANET, when the 1's and 0's that were to make up the OTT-to-be were still being formed in the primordial chaos of the Great Numerical Sea, Which Is Big, *Really* Big. Hence in order to program a poetry bot, one would first have to Blitz the entire Universe from the beginning -- or at least, Blitz the OTT.
Anyone else in Mrorl's place would have given up then and there, but our intrepid bOTTifactor was nothing daunted. He built a great Botcastle, and created within it a digital model of the Numerical Sea, and a True Author to draw upon the blank page of the Primordial Frames, and he introduced the parameter of ONGs, a bit of CSS and JavaScript, and by degrees worked his way up to the (first) Dark Period. Mrorl could move at this rate because his Botcastle was able, in one septillionth of a nopix, to simulate thirty-three trillion slow fadings of eighty octillion different pixels simultaneously. And if anymolpy doubts these numbers, let xem work it out for xemselves.
Next Mrorl began to model OTTification, the enhancement of molpies, cheap gags with bags, odes of dilgunnerangs and serenades to flutterbees and wowterfalls. To accelerate this effort and ensure conclusion within his own lifetime he created many simulated Worlds of Time, each to be observed by a developing culture of simulated OTTers. Within his many simulated worlds, Cuegans (and Megballs, and the occasional la Petite) ventured up simulated slopes, pondered pixelated porcupines, gave grapes to mesh-modelled molpies, and generally discovered what the first part of understanding everything looks like. There were frequent simulated mishaps (in the most common, Cueball would fall off the wowterfall cliff rather than merely dropping something into the river; in another the OTTers would everywhere use the word *grapevine* in place of *molpy* and vice-versa), and Mrorl would have to restart a simulation, moving a stone here or a shrub there to ensure a different result, or run his simulations in greater detail. To accommodate this, Mrorl kept adding auxiliary processing units to his Botcastle, and eventually entire additional botcastles; and even a few casbottles (which were similar to botcastles, but specially designed to contain simulations involving semencoffeecancerbabies or other liquids).
Soon he had a seaish metropolis: rack upon rack of equipment billowing heat and festooned with blinking lights; cluttered with input consoles, display terminals, ventilation ducts and fans, and printers (both paper and 2.5-D) to produce a permanent record of results in case the entire thing caught fire, or became sentient and demanded coffee and biscuits -- at which point Mrorl would reluctantly but firmly pull the plug, wipe everything and start over with a fresh simulation matrix and a different set of parametrised equations. This he needed to do only twice. Otherwise everything went quite molpishly, and the OTTish cultures within his botcastles proceeded through their chaotic beginnings, the formation of religions and the trial of the Reckoning, into the age of specialisation and diversification, a nap beneath the stars, Rosetta's audience-chamber at ᘝᓄᘈᖉᐣ, and the anticipated trauma and inevitible shock of T**** ****d -- which always gave the machine a few nasty jolts (Mrorl made sure to wear rubber-soled shoes and always hold one hand behind his back when turning dials) -- and into the glorious RenOTTissance in which a simulated community of TimeWaiters would undertake to OTTify All The Things in their entire world.
The inhabitants of each virtual OTTiverse developed their own cultural norms, habits, and Ways to Time. Some of these Mrorl found to be almost universal, such that each simulated OTT would invariably hit upon them, regardless of other differences such as level of tolerance of puns, or preference for or against wearing hats. A few of these Mrorl codified as his Three Laws of OTTics^{2}, for use in future botbuilding projects.
Newpage after Newpage of simulated OTT culture generated mountains of output; soon Mrorl needed a new warehouse just to store these. All to construct an OTTronic Bard! -- but such are the Ways of Science. Eventually enough culture had been created that Mrorl could select and combine the best masterworks from each run, curating a large body of literature with which to educate the OTTificial intelligence that would become the Bard itself.
Mrorl spent the better part of two wips building the great brain, combining the more passionate (but less destructive) aspects of each of his earlier Machines and Bots, with more emotive elements and semantic circuits in the spots that seemed best. He was about to invite Balthacarius to attend a trial run, then thought better of it and switched on the machine for some private tests. It immediately began to deliver a dissertaion on The Origin and Perpetuation of Neo-Sociological Distributed Collaborative Creative Consortia^{3}. Mrorl bypassed some of the logical circuits, and turned up the gain on the emotive whim-generators; the machine sulked and repeated a short epigram on e****ishness in a steadily falling monotone until Mrorl sympathetically switched it off. Mrorl augmented its semantic modules and re-installed a major confidence unit (that he had for a while blamed for Cueball's cliff-diving tendencies); the Botcastle then informed him that he -- *Mrorl* -- had been created to fulfill *its* every wish, and that Mrorl was hereby ordered to begin adding another twenty floors to the Botcastle's existing seven, so it could better formulate the meaning of Existence, Spaaace and Time, and enjoy a better view across the valley. Mrorl installed philosophical rate-limiters instead, and the Botcastle basemented. Only after a dip of pleading, PMing and public posts was he able to get it to recite something: <*:"I saw a little ribbit.":> That appeared to exhaust its repertoire.
Mrorl adjusted, recalibrated, cross-connected, pivoted, inverted, transposed, renormalised, did everything he could think of -- and the machine presented him with a "poem" that made him thank the GLR that Balthacarius was not there to laugh -- imagine simulating an entire epic journey, many Times over, in exquisite detail, not to mention an entire OTTiverse for each, containing OTTers to observe the Frames and comment thereon, only to end up with such a dreadful mess, almost more palatable when rot13'd. Mrorl attached seven entropy filters, but they melted; he refabricated them out of pure corundum. This seemed to work; he turned the semanticity up to eleven, appended an alternating-rhyme generator -- which ruined everything, as the machine resolved to start a band and tour the third galactic arm playing acid-metal nursery rhymes to any planet still lacking an organised Kindergarten system. But at the very last minip, just as he was nearly about to give up and take a pry-bar to the whole thing, Mrorl had a sudden inspiration; tossing out all remaining logic units, he replaced them with self-centred (but also self-regulating) solipsistic semantic synchronisers. The machine wimpered a bit, then simpered, looked out across the valley, winked and blinked, then laughed and remarked at how OTTish everything had been seeming lately, then politely but firmly asked for pen and paper. Relieved, Mrorl sighed, hurriedly tucked the pry-bar away in a tools-cabinet, switched the machine off and went upstairs for a well-deserved nip's coma. Next morning he strolled across the valley to see Balthacarius. As soon as he was told that he was invited to witness the debut performance of Mrorl's newly constructed OTTronic Bard, Balthacarius dropped what he had been doing and quickly followed Mrorl back, so eager was he to witness Mrorl's humiliation.
Mrorl let the machine warm up first, with the power on low; ran up some stairs to check the dials on level three, then to a higher balcony to check the readings on a screen; then once he was confident everything was as expected he shouted down to Balthacarius and invited him to start with a simple request. Later, of course, when the machine was fully warmed up Balthacarius could ask it to produce verses on whichever topic and in whatever style he liked.
Now the main display indicated the machine's allegorical buffers were pre-loaded, and alliterative dynamos pre-charged, so Mrorl, nervously, switched the main lever over to *full*. A voice, trembling a bit but with clear diction, said:
*Etteleettap. Iqueaxvan. Zoorth.*
Balthacarius paused, glanced at a nearby screen, then up at Mrorl and politely asked, "Is that it?" Mrorl only shrugged, pulled a couple levers and punched a large button, then Balthacarius tried again. This time the voice was a bit higher, a melodic baritone, which intoned:
<*:Dimepa biimika likirge ake ga,
Lakirginshurguu dasakiim legu--
Migishaaka urli, shikakaga sha:
Imkur enum anki, ungi akikarsu!:>
"Am I missing something?" asked Balthacarius, as Mrorl began to sweat and struggled at the controls.
Finally Mrorl shouted out almost as if in surprise, clambered up yet another set of metal stairs, threw open a small access panel and crawled inside, vanishing from Balthacarius' sight. Clanking noises echoed inside, and occasionally lights flashed and the humming of the machine's lyrical oscillators became a thrumming, then a soft thumping, then stopped entirely before resuming at a comfortably moderate tone. Mrorl popped back out of the little door and slid down a firepole to a bank of relays, which he pushed aside to reveal row upon row of valves, all but one aglow. This he yanked triumphantly and tossed to a startled Balthacarius, as Mrorl installed a new tube. Returning to the first console with the main lever still on *full*, Mrorl shouted to his friend encouraging him to try it again. Balthacarius requested a verse and the Bard spoke:
<*:I like cats in drizz'ling nyan,
Nyan, nyan, Newpixbot.
Keeping Legos, bagless Zooman,
Flying molpy-snakes cannot!:>
"Well, that's an improvement!" shouted Mrorl, not entirely convinced. "The last line particularly, did you notice?"
"If this is all you have to show me..." said Balthacarius, the embodiment of politeness, eyeing the door.
"Ch**rp!" said Mrorl and again disappeared inside the machine. After more banging and clanging, the acrid smell of shorted-out wires and the acrid tone of an even shorter temper, Mrorl popped his head out of the little door up on level five and yelled, "Now try it!"
Balthacarius complied. The OTTronic Bard shuddered, shaking the building and the ground and nearby trees, upsetting a few nearby chirpies, and began to Orate:
<*:And now as well, except not, I thought ahead, $RELATED$.
Jump through orbital waterottermolpies and Flash,
Arrow, but the Bot, I had taken, floated, to coma mustard--:>
Mrorl yanked out a few cables in a furious frenzy, the thrumming resumed briefly, then the machine fell silent. Balthacarius could no longer suppress his laughter and burst out, then had to sit on the floor. Then suddenly, as Mrorl was rushing from panel to panel full of lights and dials, there was a loud *clack* and the machine, with perfect eloquence said:
<*:The Molpish and the Free,
Are OTTified with glee
By verse of such a seaish quality.
Our Balthacarius
Shall ne'er repeat his fuss
When Mrorl's machine, redeemed, incanteth thus.:>
"There you are, an epigram! And it couldn't be more $RELATED$!" laughed Mrorl, sliding back down the firepole and the front ladder to stand proudly in front of Balthacarius, reaching out an eager hand to lift the bOTTifactor (who was still on the floor from his now-arrested laughter) back to his feet.
"What, that?" Balthacarius said, brushing himself off. "That's nothing. I imagine you had that one set up beforehand."
"Set up?!?"
"Oh yes, quite obvious... the poorly disguised hubris of the verse, of such meager inspiration, so clumsy in execution."
Mrorl scowled. "All right, then ask it for something else! Whatever you like!" Mrorl paused. "What are you waiting for? Afraid?!"
"Just a minip," said Balthacarius, annoyed. He was trying to think of a request as difficult as possible, aware that any argument on the quality of verse the machine might produce would be hard if not impossible to settle. Then his face lit up and he spoke to the machine:
"Give me a poem about little molpies doing what they do best, on a cool April evening -- whimsical but seated in reality -- but vivid and abstract -- and with every word starting with the letter *S*!"
"And why not include a full explanation of the theory of bOTTronic engineering whilst you're at it?" growled Mrorl. "You can't ask for such Furious Doodling--"
But Mrorl didn't finish. The Bard's melodious voice filled the room:
<*:Sneaky squirpies softly schizoblitz
Surrealist starlit springtime's silentONGs,
Silently scanning, steadily surveying,
Suddenly stealing somemolpy's sandwich
Simultaneously shamelessly sustainibilising Stratplayer's sleep.:>
"Well, what do you think of that?" asked Mrorl, proudly. But Balthacarius was already beginning his next request:
"Now all in *D*! A sonnet, in seven double-dactyls, about an OTTer and xer secret molpy companions, who make the 37^{th} post of every Newpage with XKClouD submissions that subvert the status quo, impeaching the Captain of Taddragnar Hill and replacing the Procuratorial Senate with quackmolpy bakers, but only those seated in prime-numbered rows..."
<*:Dunejumpish Dracomax
Dithering, doodle-ing,
Doublepengoatimate
Dragonfly dreams:>
<*:Diagrammatical
Drawings deservedly
Drawing derision, daft
Despot--:>
"STOP!" shouted Mrorl, leaping to the nearest console and pulling an emergency lever, then turning to defend the machine with his body -- an absurd sight, as the Bard was easily one thousand times Mrorl's size.
"Enough!" Mrorl exclaimed, hoarsely. "How dare you waste this great talent on such steambottlish m**stard? Either pose admirable, treeish subjects for it to render into verse, or you may show yourself out the door!"
"What, those aren't treeish Timeodies?" protested Balthacarius.
"Certainly not! I didn't build a machine to construct ridiculous acrostics! Any babbling bot with a randomised sequence generator can do that! Just give it a topic, any topic, as difficult as you like... but spare us the absurd constraints on vocabulary or plot specifics!"
Balthacarius asked for a chair, then sat and thought. Finally he smiled, nodded to Mrorl (who hesitantly switched the Bard back on, and nodded in return when it had warmed up a bit), and said:
"Very well. Write me an Odeity, a Timeless poem of Time: an ottpoem of Cueganshipping, Sarcasm, Geology, and Language. With feeling, and a bittersweet e****, if need be, but in the true OTTish spirit."
"Cueganshipping and Geology? Have you finally given over to the Green Safety Hats?" Mrorl began, but stopped, for his OTTronic Bard was already declaiming:
<*:Cue, let us journey to a higher plain,
Where Lucky prowls the grapey fields of vine,
Whilst crumbling castles fall to rising brine,
Tho by what cause? We're wont to ascertain.:>
<*:Tho rivers' oft retreats are commonplace
We wonder what odd law the sea obeys
It's held no level higher than today's
Could lands (unseen) its wat'ry mass displace?:>
<*:Ascend an ever-treeisher unknown
(Its squirpies, prickle-molps and flutterbees
Bepuzz'ling us by ever-high degrees)
To darkened chambers and Rosetta's throne.:>
<*:This little flag could grace a small rampart
And may perhaps betray my deepest love
Sincerity and confidence to prove
Its beauteous red reflects my beating heart:>
<*:Whate'er befell the people of the hills
Unknown suppliers of matériel
While rafting through on river's uphill swell
We recollect their warlike throwing skills:>
<*:We've floated up, (no lands we know remain)
To unknown heights, whilst constellations glowed
The rising flood that bore us, finally slowed
To leave us here on treeish, lush terrain.:>
<*:We wander up a cai'rn-topped incline
To see what chirpies, molps, or trees we'll find
When, far downhill, we ascertain, enshrined
There lies a cave! --but-- omen? or benign?:>
<*:Inquiring, clamb'ring swift, to bluetree high
On massive tilted slabs, we wonder why
A Beanie'd wish, in eerie dark, to lie --
Perchance to ponder, bravely sketch, then die?:>
This concluded the poetic competition, since Balthacarius suddenly had to leave, saying he would return with more topics for the machine to versify; but he never did, afraid that in so doing, he might give Mrorl more cause to boast. Mrorl of course let it be known that Balthacarius had fled in order to hide his envy and chagrin. Balthacarius meanwhile spread the word that Mrorl had more than one or two loose rivets when it came to the matter of his so-called OTTronic Bard.
Not much Time went by before news of Mrorl's artificial versifier reached the genuine -- that is, the ordinary -- poets. Initially, most resolved to ignore the machine's existence. Some undertook to organise the trade and form a political lobby, whilst a few others, curious, visited Mrorl's workshops in secret. The Bard received its guests courteously, its workshop now converted into a reception hall, long tables down each side piled high with notebooks filled with densely written verse (for it worked dip after dip without pause and never bothered to coma). These curious poets were of many schools, and Mrorl's machine wrote only in the traditional and classical styles, as Mrorl had relied on the classical approach in educating his machine. Thus, the guest poets were unimpressed, and left in triumph. The Bard was self-adjusting, however, and Mrorl's final addition of self-centred self-regulating solipsistic semantic synchronisers had also included ambition-amplifiers and auto-augmenters, so very soon the machine had compensated for its shortcomings. Its poetry became intricate, ambiguous, and incomprehensibly layered with meaning, nagging at the listener's soul to the point of causing incomania for anyone who had received an audience with the Bard. Soon it had become a master of improvisation, and the next group of visiting poets walked away breathless; one, who had just received two medals from the Grand Duchess and even had a statue in Tencir's high street, fainted on the spot. After that, no poet could resist crossing lyrical swords with Mrorl's OTTronic Bard. They came from far and wide, carrying bags full of manuscripts and organised sand filled with their best verse. The machine would let each visitor recite, instantly see the unique qualities of xes work, which it assimilated, and then deliver a response in the same style, but incorporating also the better qualities of the preceding three visitors, giving a result that was twenty-seven to a hundred and forty-three times better.
The Bard quickly grew so adept at this that it could silence a first-class rhapsodist with no more than one or two stanzas (or twenty to thirty syllables, for the avant-gardes), but the third-rate poets walked away unimpressed, as they could not distinguish the treeish from the m**stardy, so had no comprehension of their own crushing defeat. The only one to suffer any harm only happened to trip and break her leg on an epic the machine had just completed, beginning with the words:
<*:ONGs, and Timeframes I sing, that I Await,
Whilst fellow OTTers ever speculate,
Betwixt their posts detailing ev'ry semenated shore...:>
The true poets, meanwhile, were being decimated by Mrorl's creation, though it never laid a finger on them nor emitted a picowatt of lethal radiation. The newly-formed Eligiastic Union, organised to lobby the Senate, fell apart even before its first hearing before that body, as one after another of its leaders died of a broken will, or threw themselves into a gorge in despair. Curiously, each had received a personalised couplet the previous evening.
Many other poets began a grass-roots movement, and staged protests demanding that the machine be arrested, and its versification circuits confiscated, but nobody else seemed to care. Magazines and blogs generally approved: Mrorl's bard, writing under whatever pseudonym was desired, could always provide verse of the length, topic, and style required, and of such high quality that readers would push each other out of the way to see. Photostreams were filled with enraptured faces, bemused smiles, and tears of joy: <*:MRW I read MrorlBard's latest:>. The machine signed with an agency, and soon was advertised on billboards with the catchy tagline: <*:Mrorl's Marvelous Rhyming Robot, OTTifying Orator, and "bOTTronic" Bard. / MMRROObB?? $REDUNDANT$, yes? But of course! / All others are $REDUNDANT$er, settle for no less.:> Everyone knew its rhymes, and they were sung, for of course the Bard had been commissioned at one time or another to write new lyrics for every popular tune. It became commonplace for citizens of the Dominion to faint wherever they happened to be standing, upon hearing some new verse, but the Bard learned of this and was soon appending rejuvenative rhymes to the end of each new work.
Mrorl himself had no end of trouble from the enemies of his invention. The classicists were usually content to throw stones through his windows and m**stard on the outer walls of his compound, which he unfortunately needed to fortify. Bots patrolled the perimeter to interview any would-be visitors before firmly turning them away; within the walls a second patrol was ready to neutralise any that somehow failed to understand the refusals of the outer patrol. Any poets seriously standing to challenge the machine's championship title could still do so, but only via telelink from a neighbouring building. Some attempted to neutralise the machine by travelling back in Time and forestalling its creation, but Mrorl had anticipated this and surrounded his workshops on all eight sides (North, South, East, West, Above, Below, Future, and Past), with temporochronic stabilising shields. Mrorl himself, sheltered within this fortress of Spaaace-Time, was still being called to appear in Royal Courts, and on chat shows broadcast across ever greater distances, as word of his creation spread; he made these appearances by holographic transmission. On a trip out to his garden-shed Mrorl met an ambush and was beaten. As he lay in hospital to recover, picket lines formed around all exits, and he could hear occasional explosions in the distance (visiting poets were now arming themselves not with cantos, but with cannons). Upon his return from the hospital Mrorl finally decided to dismantle the 'lectronic lyricist so he could resume a normal life.
But the machine saw Mrorl approaching, limping slightly with a pry-bar in one hand, cable-cutters in the other, and delivered such an eloquent plea for mercy that Mrorl burst into tears, dropped his tools of demolition, and ran down the hall, which was now filled with manuscripts, overflow from the Machine's main room which had long been filled.
The next mip when he got the utility bill for the electricity used in his workshop, Mrorl almost fell out of his chair. He consulted Balthacarius for advice, and the latter reminded Mrorl of how he had defeated the copy of himself made by the Bot to Grant One's Every Wish. Mrorl sneaked out to the generators and shut down the power to the temporochronic stabilisers, then to the Bard itself, which he promptly dismantled. Loading it carefully onto a ship, along with a legion of utilitybots, Mrorl flew to a convenient asteroid, and in what is now widely recognised as the greatest all-nighter in history, built an exact replica of the entire valley, with all its major features and natural landmarks, roads and buildings, with Mrorl's own home and workshops in the proper place, and reassembled the OTTronic Bard within. Mrorl set a timer to restart the Bard's power after a suitable delay, placed artificial stars where needed to delay the Bard's noticing it had moved, then hastily escaped.
The machine, now deprived of a steady stream of visitors and its online audience, began to broadcast its masterpieces on all frequencies, and was soon enrapturing the occupants of any and all passing spaceships. This unfortunately caused navigation errors and accidents. Having determined the cause of the problem, the Interspaaace Astronautic Administration subpoenaed Mrorl to testify and demanded that he immediately terminate the device. But Mrorl did not appear, as he had gone into hiding. The IAA sent a team of technicians to disable the machine's broadcasting stations, but they were overwhelmed by a few beautiful ballads. Next a team of military robots were sent, whose receivers had been removed as a precaution, but this meant that the troop was unable to coördinate its own actions, so the mission failed. A plan was then made to demolish the entire asteroid in a single shot, or steer it into the Sun, but just then a very wealthy king from a distant part of the galaxy arrived in a huge convoy, bought the entire thing (asteroid, replica valley, Bard and all), and hauled the whole lot off to his own kingdom.
Now Mrorl could once again appear in public, and his poetic woes were mostly behind him. Though soon he began to see supernovae on the southern horizon, and traveller's tales implied that this was somehow to do with poetry. A space trader arrived with the story that the same king had ordered the construction of an array of supergiant stars, with which to display each line of verse as it was written, encoded in binary via red and green colour, and thus the Bard was able to transmit its creations throughout most of the known Universe. But even if there were any truth to this, Mrorl chose to ignore it, and simply vowed never again to OTTomate an orator or Mrobotically model the Muse.
----
#Footnotes#
1. Either 1190 Pelagia or 4942 Munroe... or maybe 2578 Saint-Exupéry. We're not really sure. We said it was unimportant.
2. You will find Mrorl's Three Laws of OTTics (as well as his 0^{th} Law) in written form at [OTT:1990:26|#p3608464].
3. Preprint [here|http://mrob.com/time/soc.html]; submitted to <*:The Journal of OTTics and Molpology:>; publication forthcoming.
----
(- &#The Second Journey#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &The Challenge of King Idle& -)
=T=he wowterful success of their application of the Gontalmannas Effect gave both bOTTifactors such an appetite for adventure, that they resolved to Journey once again to an unknown place and Time. Unfortunately, they were quite unable to agree on a destination. Balthacarius, given to warmer climes, suggested the three volcanic moons of Meldanbin, home of the mythical Charazorsal, while Mrorl, preferring the cooler end of the thermal spectrum, countered by suggesting Tadaxrachcue, the ice planet with two tiny blue suns. The friends were about to set their ships on separate courses, parting for good, when Mrorl had a new idea. "What if we advertise our services, and take the best offer?"
"But how would we advertise?" replied Balthacarius. "Newspapers take far too long to reach even the nearest planets. Our Chronotransponder would do it, but nobody yet has a working receiver."
But Mrorl had a new idea, which Balthacarius had to admit was pretty molpish. He had been inspired by the final disposition of his bOTTronic Bard, which legends tell had been given a voice in stars. The bOTTifactors found a suitable spot, where there were plenty of bright stars and no inhabited planets. Then, with the aid of many bots, temporal vortices and cleverly cross-wired Object Generators, they manipulated the structure of Spaaace-Time itself, to make the stars appear, from a distance, to be aligned into a pattern, forming a message. Blue giants formed the first word -- to get the reader's attention -- and the yellow, white and pink stars made up the rest: <*:TWO Accomplished bOTTifactors Seek a Commission Suited to their Wowterful Skill, and Seaishly Lucrative, Hence Preferably at the Court of an Empress or Monarch (Should Have Xer Own Empire or Kingdom), Terms to be Arranged.:> The advertisement gave a Chronotransponder number and Temporo-Spaaatial address, which was in the centre of a wide sandy plain near the middle of the valley between Zubycal and Tencrivar, where they could receive any messengers at their leisure whilst watching the waterottermolpies swim in the river. This they were prepared to do in shifts, covering all 24 nopix per dip, as they knew not when any visitors might arrive, and waterottermolpies oft swim at epsilonish Times, being Yappocised.
It was not long before, one bright mornip, a most baobabish craft arrived, setting off Balthacarius' sentry radar, and touched down gently right at the designated spot just as the bOTTifactors arrived to greet it. This ship gleamed in the sun, being made of gold and platinum inlaid with rubies, except for the parts which needed to endure heat, which were tungsten inlaid with sapphire. It bore the name *Iqueaxna*. Seven articulated legs extended to meet the ground, while several more legs did not (they were apparently just for show, as they were clearly too short, but were also very expensive; the ship's builders seemed to have more money than they knew what to do with). A troop of titanium-clad worker bots flew out, and smoothed the ground beneath and around the ship, taking care not to get dust on Mrorl, Balthacarius, or anything else of import; then vanished back into the launch bay from which they had emerged. Then two ramps extended simultaneously, down which glided retinues of decorator-bots carrying carpets, fountains, and potted plants; after placing these artfully they retreated, and their ramps raised, then a third, central ramp tilted down, bearing a magnificent ornate staircase. Down this came the Royal Emissary upon a litter carried by seven rows of gold-and-silver robots, each row out-glittering the last. The Emissary was brought to a central spot amidst the fountains, and two diplomatic staffbots gestured to Mrorl and Balthacarius, making it clear they should approach. The Emissary announced that she had been sent from the Great Gaming Dominion of King Idle, who would be honoured to engage them.
"What sort of work is it?" asked Mrorl, intrigued.
"The details, great bOTTifactors, shall be disclosed at the proper Time," was the reply. She wore a several-layered robe, of white and yellow gold interwoven with silk, velvet-and-silk blouse and galligaskins, molpifur-tufted buskins, and numerous pouches and pockets, which seemed at first to be infested with flies, until the bOTTifactors looked closer and saw that these were servant-robots, whose job was apparently to fend off real flies, should any be so bold or foolish to approach.
"For now," she went on, "I will only say that His Molpishness King Idle is the greatest Hunter of Game, and not game of the molpy or raptorlike kind, for they do not Wait; no, he is a connoisseur of the artfully constructed challenges that at once make one Wait whilst also keeping one excessively Busy, the likes of which only worthy bOTTifactors such as yourselves could construct --"
"Of course!" said Mrorl. "He wants us to construct a new model of Game, something worth Waiting for, yet complex and engaging enough to present a challenge."
"You are indeed quick!" said the King's Emissary. "Then it is agreed?"
Balthacarius questioned the Emissary on certain details and practical matters, but as soon as the King's generosity had been glowingly described, and his excessively seaish wealth had been given an even more lavish exposition, both bOTTifactors quickly gathered their essential tools, organised sand and a few helper-bots, who followed them up the grand staircase and into the ship. This promptly launched with a great roar and jets of flame that melted a few of the ship's superfluous legs, but no matter as those were soon replaced by tungsten-clad, diamond-eyed EVA servicebots employed for that sole purpose.
As they travelled, the Emissary briefed the bOTTifactors on the laws and customs of the Kingdom of Idle, told them of the monarch's personality and peculiar tastes, family history and much more; then schooled them on the geography, history, literature, and language of the land so that by the time they arrived, they could speak like natives.
First they were brought to the Royal Guest Apartments, a wingghish Bungalow perched atop a rocky hill with broad picture windows and a splendid view of villages on all sides (the bOTTifactors soon noticed that there was no place they could go without being in sight of at least one of these, and in the brief time they were given to settle in, Balthacarius located three Stealth Cams). Presently the King sent a carriage for them, which was drawn by seven Draft Dragons. These great steeds had harnesses and muzzles of Cut Diamond, and were ridden by Ninja Tortoises who themselves wore Adamantine Armour, apparently all to protect against the dragons' breath. The carriage itself was in the form of a Tangled Tesseract, with windows of solid Glass Block, recently Sandblasted. The interior had been decorated quite lavishly in the local Beachball and Banananas style. As soon as they had boarded, the head Ninja Tortoise shouted <*:Run Raptors Run!:> and the great winged lizards did just that.
Mrorl and Balthacarius gaped through the carriage windows as the world's surreal and exotic scenery passed by. The Emissary's briefing had been thorough, but nothing could prepare for this. Of course there was much Sand, and Castles, and NewPixBots with Buckets, familiar sights even in their own world. But these were greatly outnumbered by surreal oddities. A team of Factory Ninjas wearing Safety Goggles led by Time Reaper foremen were transferring Harpsichords made out of Glass Chips into an Incubator, where they were engraved with Magic Letters and painted in Panther Glaze; these were then transferred by Badgers into a Stained Glass Launcher, as another team prepared to catch each in a Safety Net. Stickbot ranchers kept Glass Goats, Dragon Hatchlings, and Kitties Galore, in fields penned in by Seaish Glass Chips; aviaries were filled with Thunderbirds, exotic *Anisoptera*, Void Starers, and Redundant Raptors. Otherwise normal-looking Grapevines, Mushrooms and Mustard were cultivated in a Hall of Mirrors (to enhance the light of the Green Sun and avoid Erosion); more exotic crops included Kitnip, 'Shadow Feeder', and Camelflarge.
"You know," Mrorl whispered in Balthacarius' ear as they rushed along, "I have a feeling that King Idle isn't going to settle for just any simple C****kie-clicking game. "I mean, if he lives in a world as surreal as this... hey look at that, a Dimensional Keyhole!"
But Balthacarius, unfazed, said nothing. They approached a city: houses flashed by, with walls of Bacon, Cake and Seacoal, lawns graced with Gazebos and Topiary, amid which Surfbots played with Technicolour Dream Cats. There was a Dragon Forge, two giant <*:Department of Redundancy Department:> buildings, a memorial to the <*:Hundred Year Storm:>, and a titanic monument with the inscription <*:Wisdom of the Ages:>. At last a colossal palace loomed up ahead, a portcullis opened to allow them in, and the carriage careened to a halt in the courtyard.
They entered an enormous hall in the shape of a giant Skull and Crossbones, where King Idle a-Waited them. There was a giant Glass Furnace on one side of the hall, a Crystal Flux Turbine on the other; light from these played eerily on the Glass Chips and Flux Crystals piled around them, reflecting off the hall's curved inner walls (which were of hammered silver). The King's behaviour defied his name, for he was not so much "awaiting" as pacing loudly, perhaps from anger or frustration or impatience, or other reasons Mrorl and Balthacarius could not fathom. He glanced at the Glassbots and Fluxbots as they toiled, presumably making something so important the King needed to oversee their work personally. As the bOTTifactors entered he glared at them, speaking intensely and waving his arms, with his sharpest syllables punctuated by gestures so quick they stirred up a breeze.
"Welcome, bOTTifactors!" he said, "As you've no doubt learned from Lady Padashii, Minister of Royal Hotdogs, I want you to create for me a newer and better kind of Game, a Hotdog that befits a Pantheon of Gods. I'm not interested, you understand, in any vast grid with a hundred-odd hidden mines, that's a tedious job for bots, not for me. My challenge must be strong and lengthy, but requiring swiftness and versatility, and above all cunning and full of surprises, so that I will have to call upon all my Hotdogger's Art to reach even the midgame scenarios. It must be a highly intelligent game, and it should know more about me than I know of myself, for such is my will!"
"Forgive me, Your Highness," said Balthacarius with a careful bow, "but if we do Your Highness' bidding too well, might this not put the Royal appetite for Hotdogging in permanent peril?"
The King roared with such laughter that a couple Flux Crystals shattered, in bursts of light that temporarily blinded all those present.
"Have no fear of that, noble bOTTifactors!" he said with a grim smile. "You are not the first, and I expect you will not be the last. Know that I am just, but most exacting. Too often have your predecessors attempted to deceive me, too often have they posed as distinguished Hotdiggity Engineers, solely to empty the Royal treasury and fill their Bags of Moulding with our precious Magic Teeth, Gold or Dragon Eggs, leaving me, in return, with a paltry little canned wiener (the word "*hotdog*" doesn't even belong in the same sentence), some Rush Job that falls apart in the first play-test. Too often has this happened for me not to take precautionary measures. For twelve yips now, any bOTTifactor who fails to meet my demands, who promises more than xe is able to deliver, indeed receives a reward, but is then hurled, reward and all, into our Glass Furnace," (to which the King pointed sharply), "unless he be game enough (excuse the pun) to serve as the Hotdog xemself. In which case, gentlemen, I use the Royal Flux Turbine to Digitise xem permanently, whereupon they are uploaded into the Royal Servers.
"And... and have there been, uh, many such impostors?" asked Mrorl in a weak voice.
"Many? That's difficult to say. It's far beyond *Wololo*... does Aleph One qualify as "*many*"? I know only that no one yet has satisfied me, and the pile of leftover slag in our Mouldy Basement has been mounting. But rest assured, gentlebots, there is room enough still for you!"
An e****ish silence followed these dire words, and the two friends couldn't help but look in the direction of the dark and caveish hole behind the furnace, which they had somehow failed to notice earlier. The King resumed his strident pacing, his boots scraping on the floor like the claws of an outraged Shadow Dragon.
"But, with Your Highness' permission... that is, we -- we haven't yet drawn up the contract," stammered Mrorl. "Couldn't we have a nopix or two to think it over, weigh carefully what Your Highness has been so molpish as to tell us, and then of course we can decide whether to accept your steakishly treeish offer, or, on the other hand --"
"Hahaha, hehehe!" laughed the King like a Buzz Saw, "Or, on the other hand, to go home? I'm afraid not, gentlebots! The moment you set foot on board the *Iqueaxna*, you accepted my offer! -- or did you not see the binding agreement so intricately carved upon the stairs? If every bOTTifactor who came here could leave whenever he pleased, why, I'd have to Wait forever for my molpiest hopes to be realised! There is no Backing Out from this decree, you must stay and build me a hotdog to hotdog. I give you three hundred nopix, that's twelve and a half dips, and now you may go. Whatever pleasure you desire, in the meantime, is yours. You have but to ask the servantbots I have given you; nothing will be denied. In 300 nopix, then!"
"With Your Highness' permission, you can keep the pleasures, but -- well, would it be at all possible for us to have a look at the, uh, Hotdogging trophies Your Highness must have collected as a result, so to speak, of the efforts of our predecessors?"
"But of course!" said the King indulgently, and clapped his hands with such force that little Sparkles lit up in several of the Flux Crystals, causing Mrorl to flinch. Six guards approached with vigorous confidence; the breeze they stirred up cooled even more our bOTTifactors' enthusiasm for hotdog-vending. The guards, clad in gold and white gold, conducted them down a corridor that twisted like the gullet of a great Sand Dragon. Finally, to their great relief, it led out into a large, open garden. There, on remarkably well-trimmed lawns, stood the Hotdogging trophies of King Idle.
Nearest at hand was a statuette of a Diamond-toothed Raptorcat, nearly cut in two and surrounded by little Facebugs and titled <&:Facebugs II&U3A; Panther Rush:>. Another trophy was nearly invisible, except for its plaque: <&:Ninja League&U3A; The Fading:>. Another bore the likeness of a Beach Dragon and another Raptorcat (though its teeth were more like those of a Short Saw), which were somehow rendered holographically so they seemed to pounce as the viewer walked past; this had apparently been awarded to the King for beating a hotdog called <&:Grouchy Dragon, Leaping Panther:>. There were trophies set upon Diamond Masterpiece Pedestals for hotdogs called <&:Chthonism&U3A; Honour Among Serpents:> and <&:Lost Goats&U3A; Look Before You Leap:> and <&:Forward to the Past:> (this last topped with a Trilobite with Mirror Scales); another was for the puzzle-based &Automation``Optimiser&; yet another with an 8-bit pixelated design for the retro hotdog &Loopin``Looie&. Down this museum of pwnification walked Mrorl and Balthacarius, pale and silent, looking as if they were on their way to a funeral instead of about to start another wowterfallish session of vigorous invention. They came at last to the end of the varbal gallery of Idle's triumphs and stepped back into the Tangled Tesseract carriage, which had been brought around and was Waiting for them at the gate. The team of Draft Dragons that sped them back to the guest apartments seemed far less terrible now. Just as soon as they were alone in their flutterbeewingish workshop, before a table heaped high with the most awesomeful cupcakes they had ever seen, Mrorl broke into a zanclean stream of imprecations; he called Balthacarius "Cueishly Cueish" for accepting the offer of Padashii, thereby bringing hillish misfortune on their heads, when they easily could have sent the ship away and remained on the riverbank watching waterottermolpies. Balthacarius said nothing, Waiting patiently for Mrorl's desperate rage to expend itself, and when it finally did and Mrorl had collapsed into a Sandbag-chair filled with Diamonds and buried his face in his hands, he said:
"Well, we'd better get to work."
These words did much to revive Mrorl, and the two bOTTifactors immediately began to consider the various possibilities, drawing on their knowledge of the deepest and darkest secrets of the arcane art of Hotdog Vending. First of all, they agreed that victory lay neither in the robustness or length of the hotdog to be built, but entirely in its algorithms, in other words, in a program of inscrutable complexity. "The hotdog must have a truly diabolical plot, a fiendishly frustrating fractal flowchart filled with absolute evil!" they said, and though they had as yet no clear idea of how to bring it about, this observation $ENHANCE$d their spirits considerably. Such was their enthusiasm by the time they began to draft the hotdog's core architecture and screen layout, that they worked all nip, all dip, and through a second nip and dip before taking a break for dinner, i.e. to recharge. And as the batteries were passed about, so sure were they of their success, that they winked and smirked -- but only when the servants were not looking, for they suspected them (and rightly so) of being spies for the King. So the bOTTifactors said nothing of their work, but praised the quality of their <*:Lightning in a Bottle:>, a microprocessor-brewed mulled electrolyte which they had been served in monocrystal sapphire beakers. Only after having their fill, when they had strolled out on the veranda overlooking one village with its white spires and domes catching the last lime-green rays of the setting sun, only then did Balthacarius turn to Mrorl and say:
"We haven't outrun the rising Sea yet, you know."
"How do you mean?" asked Mrorl in a cautious whisper.
"There's one difficulty. You see, if the King defeats our hotdog, he'll undoubtedly have us melted in that furnace, for we won't have done his bidding. If, on the other hand, the hotdog... You see what I mean?"
"If the hotdog remains undefeated?"
"No, if the hotdog defeats *him*, dear colleague. If that happens, the King's successor may not let us go so easily."
"Death by hotdog -- that *is* pretty e****ish. But you don't think we'd have to answer for that, do you? As a rule, heirs to the throne are only too happy to see it vacated."
"True, but this will be his son, and whether the son punishes us out of filial devotion or because he thinks the Royal Court expects it of him, it'll make little difference as far as we're concerned."
"That never occurred to me," muttered Mrorl. "You're quite right, the prospects are not at all toquish... have you thought of a way out of this dilemma?"
"Well, we might make the hotdog metaepisodic. Picture this: the King wins the hotdog, it flashes *Just``a``moment...*, then it starts up again, like a new level, and the King realises it's not over, so he hotdogs some more, wins it again, and so on, until he gets sick and tired of the whole thing."
"That he won't like," said Mrorl after some thought. "And anyway, how would you design such a hotdog?"
"Oh, I don't know... We could make it without any fixed goal-achievement graph. The King reaches a goal, seemingly near the e****, and the hotdog rearranges itself, placing the just-won goal somewhere in the middle, or even near the beginning."
"How?"
"Use a bot."
"A Recursivebot? There are a lot of those here. Or perhaps we invent some sort of metabot?"
"Whichever you like."
"How do we control it?"
"You mean, if the bot gets stuck?" asked Balthacarius.
"Sure," said Mrorl. "We can't count on this metabot being able to respond to any and every strategy of the King. Our lives are on the line, after all."
"Hmh--"
"And don't say we can remote-control it. The King is sure to have us locked up in some basement while the hotdog is in progress, strapped to Inquisitory Chairs of Pelting. Our predecessors were no Cueballs, judging from the titles of those trophies, and look how they ended up. More than one of them, I'm sure, thought of metabots and remote control -- yet it failed. No, we can't expect to maintain communication during the hotdog."
"Then why not use your Chronotransponder?" suggested Balthacarius. "We could install temporal object generators--"
"Chronotransponder indeed!" snorted Mrorl. "And how are we going to get to it, let alone send it to the aforewhen or afterwhen? Even if we had brought the necessary equipment, I'm sure there are temporochronic stabilising shields around us even now, and certainly will be when it counts! We have to prepare the hotdog to be completely autonomous, and unpredictable even by us."
"But how can we manage that, when they watch our every step? You've seen how the servants skulk about, rooting our organised sand, scanning the filesystem and process tables. We'll never be able to put anything into the hotdog that they don't know about!"
"Calm down," said the sagacious Mrorl, looking over his shoulder. "Perhaps we can make the hotdog design itself."
They were silent. Nip had fallen and the village lights were flickering on, one by one. Suddenly Mrorl said:
"Listen, here's an idea. Surely you've noticed how *surreal* this world is, full of things that make no sense, fitting together in precisely the ways they shouldn't. What if we make the hotdog use all the elements of this world, but fit together differently -- or randomly -- and dynamically rearranging? The hotdog will appear to be the real world, the King's world, full of Woolly Jumpers and Crystal Streams and Glass Spades and Safety Pumpkins and Memory Singers and Negators and all the rest, but nothing will fit the way he is accustomed. In short, we'll make his world as surreal to him as it actually is to us!"
"Clever. But as soon as he gets wise to what we've done, he'll feed *us* into the Negator! It's him or us, Mrorl, you can't get around it."
Again they were silent. Finally Mrorl said:
"The only way out of this steambottle, as far as I can see, is to have the hotdog assimilate the King, and then --"
"You don't have to say another word. Yes, that's not at all a bad idea... Then for a ransom we -- haven't you noticed, old friend, that the Propbots here have more Spare Tools?" concluded Balthacarius, for just then some servants had arrived to switch on the veranda's beautiful Glassed Lightning lamps. "There's still a problem though," he continued when they were alone again. "Assuming the hotdog can do what you say, how will we be able to negotiate with the hotdogger if we're sitting in a basement ourselves?"
"You have a point there," said Mrorl. "We'll have to figure some way for them to send a message... The main thing, however, is the algorithm schema!"
"Any child knows that! What's a self-reorganising hotdog without an algorithm schema?"
So they rolled up their sleeves and sat down to experiment -- by simulation, that is, by botcastle and casbottle. The algorithmic models of King Idle and the hotdog ran such twisted loops around one another, that the bOTTifactors' minds kept snapping. Furious, the hotdog's goal-directed graph writhed and wriggled in response to the King's choices, formed an infinite regression of subgraphs, which suddenly coalesced into a single linear row, then shattered and reformed itself as a maze of spaghetti, but the King so belabored it with savescums and lag switching that its reorganisations largely cancelled each other out, and in the ensuing confusion the bOTTifactors completely lost track of both King and hotdog. So they took a break, sipped a little more of the fine <*:Lightning in a Bottle:> (served this time in antique miniature Glass Chillers), then went back to work and tried it again from the beginning, but this time using [The``Three``Laws``of``OTTics|#p3608464] at Mrorl's suggestion. The King rushed through the hotdog, anticipating all its caveish challenges, mean midgames, and krool konundrums, and never had to backtrack, as the hotdog was not nearly so irrational as the King, who presently smote it so grievously that it almost Refined their organised Sand in the process. The bOTTifactors realised that this approach wouldn't work, as King Idle's culture was even more epsilon than the OTT. Then they revisited the earlier idea of basing all of the hotdog's elements on King Idle's physical world. With a few more sips from the Glass Chillers, they began anew, and watched tensely as the King progressed through first one, then a second, and finally a third paradigm shift, whereupon the hotdog generalised its parameters and -- *wham!!* -- the goal-graph flew like mad through Alephv{ε} successive transformations, and when at last the hotdog paused and the King was a part of its directed matrix, the bOTTifactors jumped up, danced a jig, laughed and sang as they ended the simulation and deleted all its files, double-overwriting the filesystem with m**stard, much to the amazement of the King's agents monitoring their botcastles via embedded spyware -- embedded in vain, for they were uninitiated into the OTTities of Molpish speech, and consequently had no idea why Mrorl and Balthacarius were now shouting, over and over, <*:"Boom de yada! Hala keipu!":>
Well after midnip, the Glass Chillers from which the bOTTifactors had on occasion refreshed themselves in the course of their labours were quietly taken to the headquarters of the Royal Intelligence Ministry, where tiny holographic recording devices, embedded in their base, were switched from *record* mode to *playback*. The analysts listened eagerly, but the first light of mornip found them totally unenlightened and looking drained. One voice, for example, would say:
"Well? Has the King bought Château d'If yet?"
"No!"
"What is his Sand Purifier level? Right! Now -- hold on -- you have to engage Controlled Hysteresis, whilst keeping Furnace Crossfeed linked to Flying Buckets. Not yours, Cueball, the King's! All right now, ready? Crystal Wind, Double Byte, Favourites Manager! Quick! Switch to Layout ##2 and Check out the Redundakitty!"
"Crate Key."
"And the hotdog?"
"Mutant Tortoise just unlocked Ritual Sacrifice. But look, the King hit Mouthwash!"
"Big Teeth, eh? Get out the Raptorish Dragon Keeping Manual, but lock Centenarian Mutant Ninja Tortoise, then throw in a few Blackprint Plans -- good! Now bump the Glass Ceiling level and Schizoblitz -- Mrorl, what in ᘝᓄᘈᖉᐣ are you doing? The hotdog, not the King, the hotdog! That's $RELATED$! Treeish! Zanclean!! Now Fly the Flag, activate your Time Dilation, and Let the Cat out of the Bag. Do you have it?
"I have it! Balthacarius! Look at the King's Q04B now!"
There was a pause, then a burst of wild :azuling:.
That same mornip, as all the experts and high officials of the Royal Intelligence Ministry shook their heads, bleary-eyed after a comaless nip, the bOTTifactors requested samples of the local Coal, Lodestones, and many other precious and nonprecious minerals, including all types of Sand, Chips, and Crystals; then they needed to see Grapevines, Mushrooms, Cress, and a great many other plants, and any bits of molpies and raptors that could be found in the Royal Museums, such as Spines, Tusks, Eggs, Blåhaj Teeth, and Dragon Scales; as well as the finest examples of Panther Salve, Ointment, Knitted Beanies, Recycled Diamonds, Flux Capacitors, and all handcrafted and manufactured goods. Then they asked for a great variety of machines with qualified helpers, such as a Space Elevator with Ninja Assistants, a Glass Blower with integrated Mustard Injector operated by Robotic Shoppers, and a Temporal Bot who is Stuck in Reverse and operating an Atomic Pump with the aid of Temporal Duplication thereby trying anyone's patience for entropy; not to mention a wide assortment of spies -- for so brazen had the bOTTifactors become, that on the triplicate requisition form they wrote, <*:"Also, kindly send Outsiders, R.A.Z.O.R. agents, Stealthy Bots, and intelligence officers of various specialities and backgrounds at the discretion and with the approval of the R.I.M.":> The next dip they asked for local tour guides and cultural experts, to accompany them on field trips. Everything was specified with the utmost precision. They asked to see Dragon Nesting Sites, the twice-miply Mega Rituals of Sea Mining and Bag Burning, and *Coma``Molpy``Style* performed by Beachomancers and Luggagebots. They travelled to see the Crystal Dragon of Silicon Valley, toured the kingdom's largest Glass Factory to learn the art of Jamming Seaish Glass Blocks into a Robotic Feeder with a Minigun, visited the world-famous Baobab Tree Fort, entered themselves in a Glass Trolling competition (promptly ended by Overcompensating Window Washing Beanies), photographed Ch**rpies with Cameras, and witnessed the Mind Glow of Schrödinger's Gingercat. The King scowled when he heard these requests, but ordered them to be carried out to the letter, for he had given his Royal word. The bOTTifactors were thus granted all that they wished, spending so much they became the fastest Valued Customers to earn a Gold Loyalty Card without the benefit of Clerical Error.
"All that they wished" grew more and more outlandish. For instance, in the files of the R.I.M. under code number 48769/27M/B was a copy of a requisition for three War Banners each with its own Carrybot to serve as Flag Bearer, but trained in Ninja Penance, Blitzing, Embaggening, and Precise Placement, with a Ninja Ninja Duck upon its head, and each Carrybot to be flying a Kite and Key while followed by a small herd of nine Riverish Goats -- under "comments" the bOTTifactors had guaranteed the return of all items listed above within twenty-four nopix of delivery and in perfect condition. In another, highly classified archive was an encrypted letter from Balthacarius in which he demanded the immediate provision of (1) Mysterious Maps showing all Dragon Foundries in the area, (2) Potions of Strength, Healing, and Summon Knights Temporal, (3) a Chequered Flag with the motto <*:Blixtnedslag Förmögenhet, JA!:>, and (4) A Cup Of Tea. These proved too much for the Decryptor-General: he seemed to go Mad then and there, and had to be taken away for a much-needed rest. During the next three dips the bOTTifactors asked only for Bonemeal, a Magic Mirror, and an Extension Ladder, and after that -- nothing. From then on, they continued their research online, accessing the city's libraries, learning about Mustard Automation, Crystal Memories, the Mould Press and Void Vault, Nuclear Fission Chips, and countless other technologies. They retreated to the guest apartments' basement, hammering away at the hotdog code and singing happy bot-building tunes; at night blue light glowed from their organised sand screens and gave epsilonish shapes to the trees in the garden outside. Mrorl and Balthacarius with their Busy Bot helpers bustled about amid monitors and racks of servers running many millions of simulated hotdog sessions (not out of any need for so much play-testing, but to thwart spyware efforts by polluting the datastream with misleading game runs on hotdogs with intentionally mustarded algorithms). Now and then they saw faces pressed against the glass: the servants, as if out of Idle curiosity, were watching their every move; meanwhile the R.I.M. had added Panopticons, Polarisers, and 3D Lenses to the bungalow's Stelth Cams.
One evening, when the weary bOTTifactors had finally gone off to coma, the CPU core, mass storage units, leopard and mouse from their primary hotdog server were quickly transported to an R.I.M. engineering facility and reassembled by seventeen of the finest Automata Engineers in the land, plus seven cybernOTTicians imported at great expense from Mrorl and Balthacarius' own planet, and three of the galaxy's tournament-champion Hotdoggers. But when it was switched on, the CPU's heatspreader flipped up like a lid, and a Glass Mousepy skittered out, blowing soap bubbles that drifted up and hovered in mid-air, arranging into the words <*:WHAT, DON'T YOU TRUST US ANYMORE?:>, and the leopard turned into a keyboard and pounced on the mousepy, scattering technicians and clipboards everywhere; the Decryptor-General's successor resigned. Never before in the Kingdom's history had intelligence officers needed to be replaced so frequently. The War Banners, the Goats, even the Bonemeal, everything which the bOTTifactors returned was thoroughly examined by spectroscopy, temporochronic analysis, and electron microscope. But they found nothing out of the ordinary, except for a micrometre-long scroll in the Bonemeal which read *STILL``JUST``BONEMEAL*, and another in the bowels of each of twenty-six goats reading <*:WE CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE LOOKING HERE:>, and in the twenty-seventh, <*:THIS WOULD BE A GREAT PLACE TO HIDE YOUR MOBILE:>^{1}.
At last the day came when their work was completed. The Royal Game Preserve was the centrepiece of the grandest part of the Royal Palace complex, which strangely resembled a palace not so much as a Storehouse of Affordable Swedish Home Furniture. The vast office-like space was filled by a Permanent Staff consisting of Bots, Pages, and Ninjas led by Paladins, who attended to a variety of support equipment. In the centre was a server-farm of three hundred botcastles housed inside a huge refrigerator, which had been readied to run any hotdog with complete $REDUNDAN$cy. The King sent a convoy headed by Lady Padashii herself to fetch Mrorl and Balthacarius, who were Waiting when they arrived, having packed a golden master of their completed hotdog plus six $REDUNDANT$ copies in each of three Bags of Folding. With helper-bots and Royal staff assistants, all made their way to the Game Preserve. The bOTTifactors emerged from their carriage accompanied by Royal guards, and (giving wide berth to the fearsome Draconic steeds) they approached the King himself and his Royal Hotdog Specialists, showing appropriate deference and respect. As was the custom, they were met halfway by a Swedish Chef and his two Shopping Assistants. These each took one of the three Bags, unfolded and removed their contents, which then were passed by Bucket Brigade to a Climbbot who shimmied up a Doublepost, and handed to a Flingbot, then flung via Archimedes's Lever towards a Blast Furnace, only to be caught in mid-air by a Princess riding a winged Noble Dragon, who then landed delicately in front of the refridgerated servers and presented the first $REDUNDANT$ copy out of each bag to Standardbots, which turned and looked expectantly at the bOTTifactors for their final word.
"<*:We hereby submit this hotdog for Your Majesty's sporting pleasure!:>" exclaimed Mrorl and Balthacarius together, whereupon the bots actually loaded the game thrice-redundantly into the organised sand; with the remaining contents from each Bag placed in Locked Vaults.
The bOTTifactors, having now committed themselves, whatever their fate, were met by Lord Pikulaar, Master of Royal Hotdoggery, who approached them with a security escort and informed them they were to come to the Hotdiggity Waiting Facility. They were required to leave behind anything they were carrying (which was nothing), and were put into a massive Locked Crate, then transported down to the most elegantly decorated pelting chamber either of them had yet seen. During this process they grinned and giggled, and again hummed their favourite bot-building tunes, which was quite disarming to the Inquisitorobots who manned the Facility and were accustomed to hosting more sullen "guests".
Meanwhile, the King suited up to enter the Hotdog Simulation Chamber, where he would float in mid-air, immersed fully in Hotdiggity Reality. His helmet, with Super Visor and integrated Camera, allowed his assistants to see everything that was going on, and offer Free Advice. Silver trumpets announced the beginning of the game as the King loaded the starting screen. Two people sat on a beach in black and white, whilst many rectangles of various sizes, all containing tiny bits of text, popped into view around them, and a clutch of notifications silently floated up: <@:LOADING... / BADGE EARNED: NOTIFIED / BADGE EARNED: REDUNDANT / BADGE EARNED: REDUNDANT REDUNDANCY / BADGE EARNED: NOT GROUND ZERO / ...:> and so on. Several of these flew up and faded too quickly for the King to take heed. Then the hotdog just sat there, Waiting. Everyone could see it clearly, but it wasn't clear at all. With a flick of his wrist the King began to click on everything in sight. The hotdog blinked, little rectangles appearing and disappearing in punctuated flurries^{2}. Eventually the King tried the Newpix itself and a tiny satisfying *#+1#* flitted up. "Oho! A simple clicking game with boosts! These bOTTifactors will be in the furnace before noon!" and the King continued Clicking, and the hotdog responded -- but less and less readily.
"H'm", thought the King. "Apparently this hotdog has the same type of exponential clicks-per-reward deferral system as -- what was the name again? -- Plugsal... -- that Plugsaldai's game used. Yes, I dealt with xem myself for that m**stardish trick... This one's clearly Fibonacci. Well, we'll just Wait for the $[REDACTED]$." Thinking himself only a little bit clever for knowing what these were (and for employing expert spies), Idle repurposed his clicks and Waited. Patrolling the rows and columns of little boxes, the King caught one, two, three, ... and eventually seven Redundakitties and was soon using Trebuchet Pong and Varied Ammo on Magic Mountain.
The hotdog prepared its next surprise. Taking its warning (<@:YOU SENSE TROUBLE, THE BOTS ARE RESTLESS:>) in stride, the King watched the Timer and prepared for the ONG. Those who saw what happened next said later they were sure they had taken leave of their senses, for as the NewPixBots got ready to activate, they underwent a lightning transformation. In a nanosecond, their little metal eyes turned red, and they began to devour castles. Above the Newpix appeared the words, @JUDGMENT``DIP@. The King had a plan; but Time Travel was ineffective, reporting merely <@:WOLOLO COUNT MUST BE LESS THAN INFINITY:>. The Game Preserve had temporochronic stabilising shields, meant to thwart shenanigans by hotdog vendors, and this game was cleverly designed to emulate all multiversal causality laws of the organised sand in which it is running. The King was completely unprepared for this; he panicked, and closed the Vendor Tools window -- and in a trice, the Hotdog closed the King -- that is to say, he simply vanished, without so much as a Royal puff of smoke. A new message drifted up: <@:YOU ACCIDENTALLY SLIP THROUGH THE TEMPORAL RIFT!:>. Assistants rushed into the Simulation Chamber and looked at the King's full-immersion floatation suit, now empty, and stared at the hotdog's 3D projections. From their surveillance botcastles, R.I.M. agents accessed the organised sand and attempted to recover the game. Most attempts redirected to a [molpyroll|https://mrob.com/users/yb/Molpies-360p.mp4]. One tried a full Molpy Down, and another simply Waited until the evil Bots had done their worst. Somehow they managed to forget about Organised Sandwyrms and Quantum Castrodynamics, and one accidentally saved xer game over the other. Then several divisions of Hotdog Engineers were ordered to sift through each of the three hundred $REDUNDANT$ servers for any trace of the King, while the Western Paradox troops employed Vacuum Cleaners and Sieves to physically search the entire Game Preserve, as if that would help. But no sign of the King, either physical or digital, was found by anyone, except for a medium skilled in Mysterious Representations, who said xe "sensed a Royal presence".
The Grand Commisioner of Inquisitorobots found the bOTTifactors at the Hotdiggity Waiting Facility and addressed them:
"*Whereas* -- all y'all have falsely and deceptively conspired against the very Existence of the Crown and His Majesty King Idle, and indeed accelerated his demise, evidently to render him an Ex-King, so y'all shall be ritually Flung, Trebuchet-like, into the Royal Glass Furnace, and your recycled remains shall evermore be a reminder to all of the Afterwhen who would contemplate Regicide by Hotdog; and *Whereas* -- the King's decree (long live the King) dictates that even the doomed shall get their reward, these Two Pots O‘ Gold shall melt along with you; and *Whereas* there are two of you, we shall use Furnace Multitasking. <*:So Molp It Be:>."
"Do we have any last words?" asked Mrorl. "You see, we were--"
Just then, the Waiting Facility guards made way for a Smallbot messenger, who boldly addressed the Grand Commisioner, <*:"Riverish though I may be, I come from the King!":> and handed him a leopad. When he did so, the screen glowed a sapphire colour, and the Smallbot disintegrated into a pile of Black Powder. From the screen rose a 2.5-D holographic image of the King, who spoke in the unmistakably Royal style, telling that His Majesty was forced to negotiate with the bOTTifactors, for they had used means both algorithmic, epsilonish, and OTTish, and furthermore had co-opted the Royal customs of Redunception and Fractal Fractals, to make him a captive of the Hotdog, and indeed Royally Nerdsniped, for this Hotdog operated in Foolscreen Mode by default, and had the novel feature of allowing, yea *inviting* the player to dive right into its own code and make changes for xemself -- something ironically called "Free and Open Source" -- through Vendor Tools and #gitwurst# and such-like, and whilst the King was so indisposed, they, the bOTTifactors, would list their demands, all of which the Grand Commisioner had better meet, if he wished ever to see his Hotdogging Sovereign back in the physical world, signed: "Idle herewith digitally signs this Royal Missive by his SHA-256, We are Immersed, Digitised, and Suspended in a Hotdog Matrix of unknown dimension and location, by one Sandcastle Builder in a thousand and eleven tiny relocatable rectangles personified."
There arose a most unmolpish clamour, with guards and Inquisitorbots and others who had followed the riverish messagebot all shouting and asking what this all meant, and what were the demands, their clamour interrupted only by the R.I.M. Minister proclaiming that their analysis of the Royal Hologram and SHA-256 confirmed authenticity and sincerity down to the Planck Limit, upon which Mrorl said simply, "These magnets, if you please."
The Grand Commisioner of Inquisitorobots gave the order, and the Sergeant-At-Arms depowered the superconducting magnets, freeing Mrorl and Balthacarius from their gold-and-platinum comfy chairs, after which Balthacarius said:
"Accompanied by our tools and helperbots, we shall return to the Guest Apartments to watch the evening fireworks."
The Royal Court, of course, was furiously doodling, as the evening's fireworks had been prepared for the celebration of the King's *victory*, not of his absence, but they had to comply. Only after breakfast the next mornip did the bOTTifactors deign to grant an audience, and present their demands, worked out the previous wip and saved for the occasion:
First, a ship of the finest design, lavishly appointed and certified for interstellar service, and bearing the callsign *GEMG*, shall be provided to carry the bOTTifactors home;
Second, That said ship shall be laden with cargo as here specified: (where there followed a detailed inventory of anything they had taken a liking to over the past dips);
Third, Until such Time as said ship shall be in readiness for departure, fully loaded as specified and delivered to the bOTTifactors with a full orchestra for send-off, an awards presentation with cheering crowds -- until then, no King;
Fourth, That a formal expression of unending wowterfullness shall be rendered as a pair of gold medallions, addressed to Their Most Awefulsome and OTTish bOTTifcators Balthacarius and Mrorl, Unexcelled Throughout the Universe, and moreover it shall be accompanied by a full account of their victory, and duly signed and notarised by every official in the land, and then personally brought on board said ship by none other than Lady Padashii, Minister of Royal Hotdogs, the very Emissary who lured their Most Molpish and Awefulsome bOTTifactors away from their beloved pastime of waterottermolpywatching, seemingly to a pre-designed and almost certain m**stardy and e****ish death on this planet;
Fifth, That the aforesaid Lady Padashii shall accompany them on their return journey, as insurance against any double-sniping, reverse-bOTTifiaction, temporal shenanigans, or the like, and whilst on board she shall occupy a comfy chair not unlike that used to restrain the great bOTTifactors, and shall receive a daily allowance of stale chocolate, which chocolate shall be conveyed by a mode of delivery to be determined later, at Balthacarius' discretion;
Sixth and lastly, The King need not crave forgiveness of Their Most Molpish and Baobabby bOTTifactors on bended knee, since he is evidently not worthy.
In Witness Whereof, the parties shall hereunto set their hands and seals, &&c. and so on. By: Mrorl and Balthacarius, bOTTifactors; the Grand Commisioner of Inquisitorobots, the Minister of Royal Intelligence, the Chief of Hotdog Engineers, the Master of Royal Hotdoggery, the Grand Warden of the Royal Game Preserve, the Decryptor-General, Hotdiggity! Ltd., and the Royal Ch**rping Ninja Dragon Carriage Drivers' Union Leader.
The ministers turned blue, but what choice had they? Work on the ship was begun immediately, which the bOTTifactors showed up to supervise personally. Nothing quite suited them: This Discovery Detector should be where the Lightning Rod is, and vice versa; this hold should be equipped with Stretchable Block Storage; the exterior detailing should be Fireproof, and applied personally by a Dragon Queen. In Time the ship was ready, and the requested cargo loaded. Meanwhile most of the Royal Intelligence Ministry, along with the military and the local police, were secretly running all about the kingdom, searching and inspecting everything they could think of, much to the amusement of Mrorl and Balthacarius, who passed the time explaining to the fearful but fascinated Idlean citizens how it all happened, how they had discarded one hotdog design after another, until they hit on the perfect combination, custom-tailored for King Idle himself, patents applied for. Not knowing where to put the game logic, they had simply made nothing at all logical, so that the Flux Turbine might be a level-up for the Bone Clicker and the Soul Drain might unlock the <*:Blixtnedslag Kattungar, JA!:> -- or vice-versa -- or both -- or neither; and nomolpy would be the wiser because none, even Mrorl and Balthacarius themselves, would know which was the case. As far as the details went, they had only to find the proper universe from which to draw game elements. King Idle, being excessively self-interested, seldom paid much attention to reality, that is to say, the outside world; and despite his intense pride at having defeated many hotdogs, had never encountered one based on his real world -- this world. Thus, the perfect combination -- a game that would instantly appeal to its audience, presenting the illusion of familiarlty, and yet completely baffle and confuse, whilst being inconceivably addictive. This veritable Black Hole of hotdog design sucked in the King almost as quickly as permitted by the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics. The loving subjects of King Idle, listening to all of this, did not know whether to despise the bOTTifactors or praise their excessive genius.
Now the *GEMG* spaceship was ready for takeoff. Mrorl, as stipulated in their agreement, went through the King's private chambers with a large Fractal Bag of Holding and calmly pinched anything he liked the looks of. Then the Tangled Tesseract carriage arrived to take the bOTTifactors to the spaceport, where the send-off and awards presentation were conducted, in front of cheering crowds and with a full orchestra. A hush fell over the crowd as Balthacarius held up a small transmitter, pointed it back towards the city, and pressed a little button. There was a distant rumble, and soon the crowd murmured, then erupted in cacophony, as the news arrived (first by the ch**rps of startled witnesses, then on the large screen set up for the send-off ceremony) that there had been a disturbance at the Royal Game Preserve: the Warehouse walls had fallen away and the fridge-like server-farm had risen up on hundreds of small wheels, crushed the poorly-assembled office furniture, and was now rolling down the streets of the city. It stopped in the middle of the central square, began to shimmer, then shudder, then disassemble in stages from the outside in -- first walls, then cooling equipment and individual racks, and eventually the whole thing fell into a pile of Bonemeal, with a dusty and slightly dazzled King Idle standing in the middle. Sandcastle Builder had Molpied Down for the final time, and the Idleans had their King. "That should put your hotdogs into perspective," said Mrorl, and no one knew whether he meant this particular incident or the King's pursuit of Hotdiggity sport in general. In either case, the self-paradoxical, meta-contradictory algorithm of illogic had done its job well.
"And now," Mrorl concluded, "good Lady Padashii, if you will take your seat in the comfy chair we have provided, we can be on our way..."
----
<*:<$:The author wishes to thank @@Eternal``Density and all Sandcastle Builder contributors for filling that hotdog with such depth and complexity and so many elements, fewer than half of which are mentioned in this tale.:>:>
----
#Footnotes#
1. See [xkcd``207|http://xkcd.com/207], 2^{nd} panel.
2. This does not even begin to capture the complexity of the real *Sandcastle``Builder* user interface, which for some reason allows the player to reposition each element arbitrarily and independently of the other elements.
----
(- &#The Third Journey#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &The Dragons of OTTifiability& -)
=A=t university Mrorl and Balthacarius had studied with the great Chanardan of UNGdor, who by that time had created a new field of study and published 27 works on the General Theory of OTTifiable Dragons. Many believe that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the Outsider, it does not suffice for the OTTish mind. The School of Scale-able Scalar Surreality is in fact entirely unconcerned with what does or does not exist. Indeed, existence has been demonstrated and refuted so many times on the OTT that there is no need to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Chanardan, attacking the subject analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon:
* The Dragons of Inquisition, who Crave Cauldrons of Chocolate;
* The Dragons of Temporal Insubtransmodulation (Incorporated);
* The Dragons of Cryptology, frequently mistaken for the common Night Fury or Stormdragon.
They all were, one might say, unreal, but each escaped reality in a completely different way. And then there were the many Dragons of the Distant Aforewhen, the ever-lurking Pundragons, and the elusive Double Dragonpost, the latter being of greatest interest because of the well-known dracological paradox: when two dragons ninjapost one another, the product is doubly OTTified, resembling a self-goating decree (provided that at least one antepengoat has been sacrificed to the Pope). Bitter controversy raged among expert observers on the question of whether, as half of them claimed, these posts appeared from the mome of a Newpage down or, as the other half maintained, from the goat up. Mrorl and Balthacarius made a great contribution by showing the error of both positions. They were the first to apply probability theory to this question and, in so doing, created the field of statistical draconics, which says that dragons are temporodynamically impossible only in the probabilistic sense, as are all the mysteries of Time. Using the field equations of general OTTibility, the two bOTTifactors obtained the coefficients of pixelation, retronymity, metaconfectionary, etc. They found that for the spontaneous pastposting of the everyday mythological dragon one might have to wait a good fourteen point three quinquadragintaseptingentillion yips, but for an OTTish dragon, a nopix or two could suffice, provided the draconic fields were suitably aligned with the ONGs in the dragon's Time zone. In laymolp's terms, Dragons would have remained a mythological curiosity had it not been for needle-pulled things. To quanitfy this relationship, Mrorl first hypothesised a new element (which he dubbed *Dracontrium*), to be located right below Needlepulledthingriuntine in the periodic table, then began trying to synthesise it first in his Basement^{1}, then later at the newly-chartered Dracogenic Proving Grounds and Excessively Dangerous Molpy Sanctuary on Ferelornados, a remote island granted to Molpiversity Newpixia. To this dip those unfamiliar with the General Theory of Epsilonity ask why Mrorl hypothesised Dracontrium first, and not *Brassinapium* or *Cerebrogastropodium* or *dvi-Epsilonium*. The answer is that dragons are more OTTish than brainslugs or mustard, though they do not necessarily post with any more frequency or regularity. True, Mrorl may have found the synthesis of *Brassinapium* from common mustard to be equally discouraging (as we now know such to be impossible), but it would have been far less dangerous -- given the wide belief that any materialised dragon would have immediately nerdsniped him. Fortunately Balthacarius was nearby with specially modified molpometers, ready to capture or subdue any dracomolp that might appear. A number of scholars subsequently repeated the experiments, both in reality and in many simulated OTTiverses, and all fruitless. Only then did it become clear that these beasts enjoy an existence entirely different from that of ordinary molpies and raptors; for OTT dragons are distinguished by xeir probability of posting rather than xeir appearance in actuality, though granted, xeir actuality is much more likely once xey have made a firstpost. Suppose, for example, one organises a "hunt" for such a dragon: Summons xem, PMs xem, posts inviting cakes and poetry. The OTTers Wait, only to receive a Chronotransmission from the aforewhen or the afterwhen, written in an unmistakable style: the dragon, seeing xemself Basemented, has slipped from ordinary to Temporal spaaace. An extremely elusive and cryptic molpy, xe does this instinctively. Now, Outsiders and Revealers the Recent will occasionally demand that you show them this Temporal spaaace of yours, apparently unaware that ONGs, whose existence nomolpy in their right mind would question, also move exclusively in Temporal spaaace, their ONGings and UNGings fully dependent on Temporality; though it is easier not to believe in ONGs than in dragons: ONGs, at least taken singly, won't try to nerdsnipe the entire thread.
A colleague of Mrorl, one Tanleemanyub Tchan, was the first to notice a dragon, detecting the retro-poping of a goat post, the probability of which was measured -- OTTishly -- in units of molpon per dracometer, and he even managed to agitate xim, for which he was nearly boiled in chocolate. Tchan was celebrated in the growing field of dracomolpology; but of what concern was this to the common OTTers, who were ever-increasingly confused by dragons filling the Thread with xeir puzzles, 3-D renderings, cryptic stories, and calls to Inquisition by Chocolate, and at Times even demanding tribute in the form of a herd of goats and/or a truckload of virgins? What did it concern the OTTers that Mrorl's dragons, retroparadoxical hence metatemporal, were behaving exactly according to theory (though contrary to all posting customs), or that his theory could predict the inscrutability of the posts that intruigued and yet confused them? It is not surprising then that the OTT in general, instead of appreciating the value of Mrorl's polylogical insights, held it much against him. A group of OTTers thoroughly experienced in matters of forum etiquette waylaid the famous bOTTifactor and gave him a thorough pelting. Not that this deterred him and his friend Balthacarius from further experimentation, which showed that the extent of a dragon's pastposting depends mainly on xes whim, though also on xes clarity of rendering, and that the only sure cause of a dragon's permanent basementing would be for its pixelation to be reduced to zero colours or fewer. All this research took a great many Newpages and much Time; all the while the OTT-dragons that had revealed xemselves were posting wild, OTTifying a variety of memes, crafting tales, and posting puzzles. This led Balthacarius to publish a seaish and treeish essay, in several maximally long posts, entitled <*:"Cryptopixelated Unbasementing of OTTological Dracomolps, in the Special Case of Blitzposting from the Future into the Past.":> This article, and in particular its applicability to themed Hotdog-vending, created a sensation in the hotdiggity world, where there was still talk of the amazing polynerdsniping hotdog (with its many Draconic upgrades and fittingly scaly badges) that had been used by the intrepid bOTTifactors against King Idle to avenge the **ndish deliquescence of their fellow vendors. But far greater was the sensation caused by the news that a certain bOTTifactor known as Tornater Bunliuczanin was apparently making the OTT's dragons go into and out of the Basement at will. Whenever the Thread got slow and e****ishness seemed imminent, this Tornater would post, claiming to have blitzed through the Past and PMd a dragon or two, answer the decree of the current page with a summary of old dracoposts -- from Newpages where no one had recalled seeing xem before -- and then baobabishly a long-quiet dragon would reveal xemself. Nomolpy understood quite how Tornater did this, since he was never seen in person nor anyplace online apart from the OTT. True, the guarantee he offered for dragon-unbasementing -- *dragerisis* -- was only probabilistic; though one ruler did pay him by similar means, that is, in digital currency that was only statistically real and conveniently denominated by the crypographic codes of a famous local dragon. From that point on he made sure to use Aqua Regula and MusTARDIS-mediated quantum bifurcation to test the stability of any payment. One molpish afternoon Mrorl and Balthacarius met to discuss their mysterious new colleague:
"Have you heard about this Tornater?" asked Mrorl.
"Yes."
"Well, what do you think?"
"Very epsilon. And E**dish."
"I agree. How do you suppose he does it?"
"With Temporal Interpolation ..."
"Probabilistic time-travel?"
"... Or Communication, yes."
"Or an orthomolpidraconic oscillator."
"You mean, a dracoprojector?"
"Yes."
"Ah."
"Ch**rping mustard!" cried Mrorl, "That would mean he's modulating OTTers' posting potential with draconic destabilisers... which would have the effects we are seeing, and gain him the notoriety and business he desires... but would also, of course, have an equally devariating effect on everymolpy else."
"Of course. And he probably shuffles the blindpost/blitzpost matrices to make the effects less noticeable."
"Yes, and the OTT gets less and less active overall. *Steambottle!*"
"What do you think; does he apply an irreversible temporodraconian retromodulation, or simply shut off the destabilisers over a weepend?"
"Hard to say, though it would be easy enough to pick up the secondary radiation in your Chronotransponder, suitably modified and deployed in the field."
"Though by that Time both he and his dracoposts would be far in the past," observed Balthacarius.
"Shouldn't we report him to the Ministry of bOTTification? -- or the IAA?"
"No -- he might not be doing it, after all: we have no real proof. Temporal statistical fluctuations, whether dracomorphic or of any other field, can occur without any sort of amplifier or modulator. At one Time, you may recall, there was no such technolOTTical wizardry, and yet dragons were seen, plain as day."
Balthacarius looked at Mrorl silently, as both remembered the fateful utterance of a wish for standardised colour, the wish that, once granted, had effectively rendered many things invisible. Mrorl glanced up -- were great winged molptiles silently gliding past them even now, hidden by the $REDUNDAN$cy of a collapsed colour table?
Balthacarius anticipated Mrorl's thoughts. "I mean, when they *posted*."
"True..." replied Mrorl. "But these dragons unbasement from whenever he says they will!"
"I know. Still, reporting a fellow bOTTifactor -- even tempered by a healthy skepticism -- seems rather e****ish. I think it more prudent to pursue this Tornater ourselves, in the field."
"My thoughts exactly."
"I'm glad you agree. But what exactly should we do?"
At this point the two famous molpidracologists got into a discussion so detailed and technical that anyone listening wouldn't have made any sense of it. There were such mysterious words as <*:"distemporaneous OTTodraconality", "dracalindalysis", "metaseaish metastasis", "dracasomyosaurs", "additive orthodracethis", "ONGliDracidian", "$ENHANCED$ dracalindalysis", "cindracotas crescentis", "antechronol transubstance", "trans-when saurian interfer function",:> and so on. Even Timlrorme took an interest, feeding their new ideas to a symbolic mathsbot in his lapleopard, producing the Gauss/Hilbert technique that outsiders [still``use|https://xkcd.com/2595] to this dip.
The immediate upshot of all of this was the third Journey, for which the bOTTifactors prepared most carefully, loading their three ships (Mrorl in his &TARDIS& as usual, and Balthacarius in the newly acquired prize *GEMG*, which the Castraftle *LEML* would follow on OTTopilot) with a full array of highly complicated parts and equipment, and books on dragons, draconic cultural artifacts purchased at great expense from all the local shops, &&c. Then they proceeded to load their ships with an additional and thoroughly $REDUNDANT$ array of parts and equipment; and a pretty much identical collection of draconic artifacts bought on clearance for $REDUNDANCY$ purposes; and the whole process was interrupted once or thrice to take a full inventory.
In particular they took along mustarding modules and a bot that submitted negative posts (not a post expressing e****ish thoughts, but a post whose posting effected the *un*-posting of another post and itself along with it). They also prepared to deploy Chronotransponders, Object Generators, SpaaaceTime Portal Generators, and sundry other devices all far more advanced than anything they had employed up to that point, facilitated by Flux Crystals conveniently plundered from King Idle. Having a third ship would help immensely with this, as they anticipated they would need to make frequent jumps between pastpages and the Afterwhen to gather the data they needed to indict Tornater. Although Mrorl and Balthacarius had employed Time travel in their previous adventures, most notably in the retro-editing of colour palettes for the entire universe, they now realised they would need a far more thorough understanding of Time and its relationship to the OTT. This task would be fully dragonological, and nully chronological, and thoroughly illogical, and naturally would require frequent travel into the aforewhen and afterwhen to make and/or read posts by purported OtterDragons. To this end, and inspired by a [nearly-forgotten``post|#p3343933] by the famous philosophOTTer @@StratPlayer, Mrorl had formalised the principles that would become the *[Laws``of``Temporodynamics|#p3546215]*.
While their ships were being prepared, the bOTTifactors responded to one of Tornater's adverts, requesting a private conference which was soon granted, and presented a challenge: he would be given full access to a newly designated wild molpy sanctuary, which was desperately in need of dragons; and any skepticism on the part of the public about his abilities would be immediately put to rest by Mrorl and Balthacarius themselves, who would serve as documentarians, recording everything that transpired, and transmitting a slickly-packaged multimedia field report to all in the Present and the Basement, in the Aforewhen and the Afterwhen alike. By carefully measuring and quantifying dragons in xeir spatiotemporal environment, accompanied by graphs, charts, animations and $ENHANCE$ments, all would be certain of Tornater's expertise and that no probabilistic shenanigans were employed. It would also, of course, advance Mrorl's and Balthacarius' ongoing scientific work; Tornater's fee had effectively already been paid by their research grants.
As it so happened, the "newly designated wild molpy sanctuary" was in the northern and somewhat less swampy part of a large tract of land by Dordshear-on-Thropsywatermolpleigh, in a very remote area of Newpixia, that Mrorl and Balthacarius themselves had acquired to develop into a new *Time*-themed resort and amusement park^{2}, a fact that they had taken great effort to make certain absolutely nomolpy knew about. The bOTTifactors still had no interest in making these plans public, but before contacting Tornater they had enlisted an associate (a former R.I.M. agent for King Idle who owed them a favour) to infiltrate Tornater's operation and allow him to "discover" the existence of the future theme park and planned location (but no other details). They had also employed additional indebted agents to get plenty of mustard on Tornater, to hold in reserve in case he threatened leaking the theme park information for blackmail.
It was only after having been baited in this way, that the famous doctor of draco-debasementing got the bOTTifactors' offer for a private conference, and, thrilled, accepted Mrorl's and Balthacarius' challenge immediately. He was confident that the bOTTifactors' field report could only help his reputation, as they could not publicise any steambottlish tactics he might employ to manifest dragons, as any detailed evidence thereto would run afoul of the park developers' nondisclosure policy, which Mrorl and Balthacarius would have had to agree to before using the land for their dracological field research. So Tornater said he would be glad to provide his services in the wilds to the north of Dordshear-on-Thropsywatermolpleigh, in fact he insisted on it.
Tornator soon arrived at Mrorl's and Balthacarius' "wild molpy sanctuary" and was met by the bOTTifactors, who welcomed him warmly and explained that they now needed to split up, the better to cover the territory and catch any apparating dragons on film. This they did by travelling in time, as they had planned, Mrorl to the aforewhen and Balthacarius to the afterwhen. In simpler terms, they visited the many aeons of Watermolpshire's past and future history, seeking the origins of any and all of its draco-lore. This history saw the advent and passing of a few dynasties that figure prominently in our tale.
Balthacarius worked for a spell in the temporal domain of Duchess Minumanegon, who was prepared to offer him the finest mobile bOTTronic Engineering Workshop, complete with three pairs of phase-matched Temporal Object Generators, if only he could track down and unbasement AranCorin the famed ContempoDracoraptor. Xes well-known signature image with its gears counting out the Newpix was nowhere to be seen, though the Newpages had an energy about them, as if swarmed with Virtuals. A virtual ContempoDracoraptor, the uneducated and simple-minded might say, "isn't really there", having no observable posts nor displaying the slightest intention of making any; but the Cybr-Mrorl-Balthacarius-Corin calculation (not to mention the Drachendragzoortmeiv wave equation) clearly shows that a dragon can jump from the steampunk era to postmodern corporate times with no more effort than it takes to punsaw an eggcorn. Thus, on any Newpage, past or future, provided the molpishness is high, you could meet with a dragon or possibly even a metadragon.
Instead of PMing the beast of indeterminate existence, which would have accomplished everything or nothing, Balthacarius, a true robotechnician, approached the problem $REDUNDANT$ly. In servers and power supplies, on hard drives and leopads he placed probabilistic dracometric field detectors in phase-balanced pairs biased against each other, so as to distunguish posts by a true ContempoDracoraptor from anything conjured up by Tornator; meanwhile he configured a standard-gauge causality loop via a Temporal Object Generator with OTTic Mustardbuster carried on the second starraftcastle *GEMG*, in such a way that it would cause a paradox if the true ContempoDracoraptor xemself posted, or if instead there were nothing at all resembling a dragon; and presently a conjured dracopost clearly of Tornator's manufacture appeared at the bottom of the page. Collecting all necessary data, Balthacarius reset the experiment and began moving back in time to repeat it. On the way, he noticed an endless repeating transmission by OTTers posting frantically. Thinking there might be a Mrorl-related endless temporal loop, he replied. But it was only the followers of Tymandria, the subjects of Queen Rytor (successor to Minumanegon), pastposting into ante-Minumanous times. The Tymandrians took to various superstitions and their religion, Austinian Dracolatry, taught that dragons basemented as divine retribution for their heresies and brought all disloyal Waiters into the basement with them. Quickly realising it would be useless to discuss matters with the Royal Dragologues -- their methods consisted primarily of chanting sonnets about the sacred Lost Hash -- Balthacarius instead scanned the Tymandrians' posts in the same way he had just done with Minumanegon's non-ContempoDracoraptor. This revealed that the Newpages of Rytor's dynasty had been unaffected by true dragons, but were merely experiencing ripples from their aforewhen, though he detected the phenomenon (commonly called "basilisps"), in which syllables, particularly when repeated in verse, would spread out and alliterate each other, which was in reality nothing more than a simple isOTTopic frame-acceleration of asynchronous quantum pixels, visibly expressed as alphanumeric code. He requested a meeting with Queen Rytor's official historian, and politely asked for links to the earliest posts in the dips of their religion's founding, then boarded *LEML* and navigated back to the indicated Newpage, minus a few for good measure, whereupon he met up with Mrorl.
His fellow bOTTifactor, having noticed some particularly strong wyrmsign radiating from the early 1600's, had demodulated it, revealing a curious message from the aforewhen -- a cake bearing the numbers "<@:%27%$x3$:>" in green, and the caption <*:AGYEO ABFOZ AAFNW AOGZL ABFSL:>^{3}. Mrorl had then Time-travelled there to investigate, and had encountered this desperate plea^{4}:
<*:I received an alarming PM from AlicisiloNSD:
EKKAJ ELRAZ EHVAJ...
please tell the others it's dangerous someone watch the one who time
travelled i don't know who:>
Though the coded letters were just the sort of dragonomaly that he was expecting to find, the rest of the plea seemed questionable to Balthacarius, though on the other hand it was hard for them to believe that the well-respected RAZOR agent would be lying, so the pair packed their knapsacks with an assortment of the lightest and most essential dragon-hunting equipment, communicators and transcoders foremost amongst these, and set about Blitzing on foot. Strongly suspecting that Tornater would leap on this opportunity and transmit faked dragonposts in the name of @@AlicisiloNSD, Mrorl began Blitzing his way forward whilst Balthacarius continued as before, i.e. aforewhenwards.
It wasn't long before Balthacarius spotted dragon prints, in the form of more similar posts, and the unmistakable whiff of temporal ripples. On he went, undaunted, holding his newly-customised Temporal Object Generator in readiness and watching the annunciators on its dracometric field detector. Tiny digits started at zero for a spell, then incremented nervously through *1*, *2*, *3*, and *5*, then jumped to *8*. There was no doubt: a dragon of wyvern variety, or Tornater's near-facsimilie thereof, was close at hand -- which amazed Balthacarius, for he couldn't understand how his trusty friend and renowned mathematician, Mrorl, could have failed to notice the additive orthodracethis inherent in this Fibonacci progression.
Balthacarius then came upon a row of OTTers posting single-file in reverse, but $ЯОЯЯІМ$ed, and messaged Mrorl on the Chronotransponder. As the former was clearly employing a more temporally paradoxical strategy, and himself not having found so much as a single dried-up scale, Mrorl returned to follow him.
Balthacarius asked the $ЯОЯЯІМ$ed OTTers what was happening.
"We come upon thi' giant ligh'ouse, wi' th' oddest poetry."
The OTTer pointed at something on xer MTA, and Mrorl looked at it. "That post was a pope, but it's been goated."
"Yea', bu' look a' the verses. <*:'Only five lonely figures / Speak the language o' Cueball':>... an' on and on like that, each verse ha' blocks of letters: AJPWM ADXMA AONCS, and such."^{5a}
"If we try to figure this one out, I predict our brains will explode."^{6a}
"A mustard explosion, perhaps?"
"Yea', an' thus'll en' th' OTT."^{6b}
All looked fearful, but Mrorl lit up. "It says *language``of``Cueball*. Perhaps it means the sacred diaogue? It is our universal heritage. Thoughout the vast expanse of Time, into the distant past and distant future, every kingdom, colony and distant outpost knows of it. It can be used as a common language, in direct consequence of the 0^{th} Law of Temporodynamics:
(- <*:#0.# Two Times (such as the Present and the Past)
that are in communication with a third (such as [Time|http://xkcd.com/1190] itself),
are in communication with each other.:> -)
"Ah," replied Balthacarius, "you're saying that OTTers and Dragons can communicate across time using the words of *Time*, suitably encoded so as to tolerate the dracochronic distortion?"
"Precisely." Mrorl began configuring his transcoder, loading Unglish, Squarish, and Beanish lexicons along with all known utterances of dragons.
Another of the OTTers spoke up. "I saw someone calling himself Oscar, he took 14 steps and then told us a letter. But I knew not where to count from."^{5b}
"I think a dragon has either gone quietly mad or become, how do they say? ... quantum entangled?"^{7}
"Time travel mustard?"
"A nice lady called herself Juliet, and she kept telling us Frame numbers.^{5c} But sometimes they seemed to be off by a hundred thousand million!^{8}"
"But how to reveal the dragon's entangled words?"
"We need to use the language of Cuegan, as enshrined in the Holy Scripture, in the [Book``of``Dialogue|+time-dialogue]. It is an accounting of Frames, each with words made from letters."
"Or characters."
"But aren't Cuegan the characters?"
"Different kind. To a dragon, they are one and the same."
"You mean, a dragon would eat xes words as soon as xe'd eat one of us?"
"Probably. Now what of the code... I think we need a frame, an offset into the dialogue itself to choose a word, and an indication of which character."
"But if Oscar is *offset* and Charlie is *character*, Juliet should be *frame*. So Juliet is apparently not the lady's real name, which begins with *F*... perhaps @Fiona@?"
"The fairytale princess took a Shakespearean name?" Mrorl shrugged; no mustard belies explanation -- she was likely the wyvern's desired captive. Balthacarius glanced again at his field detector, now reading *34*.
"An ogre fairytale princess!"
The lead OTTer interrupted Mrorl's train of thought. "Aye, we tol' tha' lady Fiona we reck'nd that drag'n was on the prowl for 'er, and she run off t' tha' 'ills, 'n' if any'un came askin' fer her, just tell 'im th'r Princess is in Anoth'r San'castl'."
"Ah." stammered Mrorl, bepuzzled.
"It's the Princess Protection Programme." added Balthacarius. "Standard procedure. Go on," he said to the $ЯОЯЯІМ$ed OTTers.
"And then we got a reply: 'operating on a higher plane...', and 'DMQCE ETLUF ADBXY ..."^{9}
"That would be *'e``o``eedt'*," said Mrorl, who by this time had got his transcoder "working" (in a manner of speaking), then scowled at it, as the message^{5d} was evidently decoded improperly.
But an OTTer snatched it, as others eagerly broke their line to gather around. <*:"The first 3 letters of every group translates to a valid frame number!":>^{10}
"It says, <*:'preparing for the Madness.':>"^{11}
"But that message was posted on a Davéandix in *Visitation``Ja!*, long before the Madness."
There was much punching of buttons and turning of dials, and silence. The lead OTTer then held it up to the bOTTifactors to see.
<*:"Our ContempoDracoraptor is the cause of all this.
I'm coming after him.":>^{12}
"This way!" he exclaimed, handing back Mrorl's transcoder, and the OTTers resumed their line and carried on posting, single-file, in reverse, and $ЯОЯЯІМ$ed just as Balthacarius had found them.
The bOTTifactors left them, knowing this would at the very least set up a temporal causality matrix within which Tornater's dragonic shenanigans could be highlighted.
They Blitzed on, guided by the readings of a dragologically-calibrated molpometer Mrorl was keeping on a chain around his neck. As for Balthacarius' dracometric field detector, it was presently on *144* and trembling as if nervously contemplating *233*. They soon received a chronogram from the elusive @@Darcrovich, claiming <*:"death is but a doorway, Time is but a window. I'll be back,":>^{13}. Mrorl searched the logs and pulled up xes later transmission: <*:"Just sending [this] to let you all know [I am not] basemented, [just] sinking backwards in time,:>^{14} and the implication was clear: Tornater was trying to impersonate all three great dragons simultaneously. Mrorl was speechless at this manifest boldness; Balthacarius merely smirked.
There are a great many old Beanish tales about dragons. It is said, for example, that dragons can simultaneously occupy seven coördinates in Spaaace-Time. This is sheer Madness. A dragon can inhabit only three spots, as seen from its own point of view, and the coördinates thereof are interrelated by the very dracomorphic fluctuations that allow dragons to travel so parodoxically in the first place. If the three positions can be determined accurately enough, and related to each other as transposed by the ripples in Time, the coördinate correlation can be modeled well enough to intercept the source, that is, corner the dragon itself. It was this phenomenon which the fabled dracohunter Oophamegax Clay exploited when xe invented the antitemporal saurian-seeking guidance system for wyrm-seeking missiles, outlawed long ago when dragon-hunting was deemed e****ish. Mrorl had recently reconstructed Clay's invention, only substituting a densely-packed cluster of temporochronic communications and tracking equipment for the original's deadly warhead, in triplicate as that is what was needed to triangulate the triple locations of a dragon; then gave the plans to Balthacarius' bots to produce three more for each of his two ships; and as this gave them enough equipment to track all three famous OTT dragons at once, of course they decided to repeat it all twice more to ensure extra $REDUNDAN$cy. To operate the thrice-tripled controls Mrorl and Balthacarius needed extra hands, which they manufactured for the occasion, and an associate bOTTifactor, in which role they employed Mrorl's senior helper Timlrorme.
But the dragons our heroes were tracking that dip reacted strangely, to say the least. Once the great winged molptiles were triangulated and brought within range, bots and bOTTifactors alike were expecting a traditional hunt, with much howling and thrashing at rock, fire and brimstone, and ensuing landslides to shake the earth, cunning and quick-footed dodgery, the requisite hail of arrows, and a Timelessly unsurpassed battle of riddles, cutting questions and rapier wit. These dragons were clearly mechanical, being Tornater's construction as Balthacarius had predicted, and the three hunters were prepared to engage with them as with Mrorl's Cognitative Engine long ago -- to which end they had trained in a variety of negotiating tactics and penned persuasive poetry. And indeed, just at the place and time the triplexed triangulators indicated that all three beasts would be found together, there indeed they were, scaly wings and all, but a uniquely undracilian thing was happening: the first dragon merely stopped and stood still, its pearlescent blue scales dripping slightly. It was looking towards the second, whose dark green hide appeared to be more of moss than of scales, and gave off a pleasant scent of early summer. This dragon, in turn, was looking at the third, its orange-brown armour glowing faintly and wafting bits of black smoke. The third dragon was, of course, looking back at the first. All seemed apprehensive and more concerned with each other than the bOTTifactors who had triangulated them into the spot.
"This looks familiar," whispered Timlrorme to the others. "I've seen this sort of standoff whilst playing &Pokémolp``RUN!&"
Mrorl rolled his eyes. Timlrorme's hotdogging was a point of contention between the two, as Mrorl often wished they could focus on navigating the &TARDIS& or whatever other tasks were at hand, rather than constantly setting out on "molpy-hunting" expeditions that existed only in an imaginary world.
Timlrorme, slightly irritated, continued. "They're each poised to defend against one of the others, but they're caught in a deadlock."
"How so?" asked Balthacarius, willing to engage in any discussion that might bring them closer to Tornater.
"Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Fire beats Grass. Everyone knows that. It's the oldest power-triad, as you doubtless recall."
"Nah, we're not really into Pokémolp,"^{15} quipped Mrorl.
"Putting imaginary hotdogs aside for the moment, shouldn't these three simply strike at once, and take each other out?"
"No, none will attack unilaterally."
"Why?" asked Mrorl, now intrigued despite himself.
"Because it's the Trainer's turn, of course."
"Huh?" replied Mrorl and Balthacarius in unison.
Timlrorme tried to explain. "These are clearly Tornater's dragons, but they've been programmed to behave according to Pokémolp rules... and I'm pretty sure I know why. You -- *we* -- have to decide what we're going to do. We can turn and run, and leave them here locked in an eternal tridracologic stalemate; or we can give them some berries and assure them we won't eat them, emulating the legendary Megan of the Ancient Frames; or we can attempt capture with Molpénets. You do have your Molpénets with you-- ... ?"
"We're not really--"
"--into Pokémolp. Right. -- Hmm, it's best we soften them up a bit first. Here." Reaching into his pants-of-many-pockets, Timlrorme produced three unusual-looking dilgunnerangs, coloured blue, green, and orange; and handed one each to the other bOTTifactors. "On the count of three. One! Two! ... *Five!*" And on *five* they each fired one well-aimed blast, Mrorl's blue gun at the smouldering light-russet dragon, Balthacarius aiming his green weapon at the watery blue monster, and Timlrorme firing his orange blaster at the mossy green creature. Words appeared in mid-air:
<*:MRORL USES COFFEESEMENCANCERSTARSANDBACON GUN! IT IS SEAISHLY EFFECTIVE!!!
BALTHACARIUS USES RAPTOR LEAF! IT IS VERY LUCKY!!!
TIMLRORME USES ENDER! IT IS OTTISHLY HERETICAL!!!:>
The beasts each reared up a bit, took half a step back and put weight on their tails for support, then turned to look towards what had hit them, stunned.
Then the bOTTifactors took three nets on long poles, of the classic Mscha design; and wielding one apiece they each turned toward their dragon and brought their nets in a broad sweeping arc down over the beasts' heads; and though the nets were clearly not anywhere near the size needed to surround a dragon's head, much less the vast winged body, nevertheless an odd *swoosh* with beams of epsilonishly speckled light emerged from each net and swept up its target, and in a trice the beasts, suddenly calmed and inexplicably riverish, were encapsulated comfortably inside. New aethereal words proclaimed:
<*:A$LTURI$ASG: ADDED TO MOLPIDEX
C$HRONOMENCE$: ADDED TO MOLPIDEX
D$RAYCUAZA$: ADDED TO MOLPIDEX:>
Mrorl looked at his net, and turned to Timlrorme. "Now what?" Timlrorme looked unsure.
It was Balthacarius who answered. "These dragons are artificial, of course, and under remote control -- and they have been transmitting telemetry data the whole time we tracked them."
"Where?" Mrorl asked. He and Timlrorme began turning slowly around, peering into the nearby swamp, for that's where they had been hunting this whole time -- in woods bordering on the misty swamps of Dordshear-on-Thropsywatermolpleigh.
"I'll look at the Coincidence logs." The others were puzzled. "Uh, what?"
"It's not a question of *where* these dragons were being controlled from, but *when*. The temporal signature shows they're not merely pastposting, or retro-edited in, they've actually physically come here from the future."
"So Tornater made some dragons and sent them back in Time to post to the OTT."
"No, this time-travel is not Tornater's doing. They're here because of this," and he held up his "field detector", now brightly glowing *75025*.
"Wait... that's a Temporal Interferometric--" Mrorl hesitated.
"Object Constructor, yes. Tornater intended to send us *virtual* dragons. Pokémolps are perfect, because they don't exist, except as part of an Augmented Reality. But Tornater wasn't counting on this," holding up the gadget to show the small *TIOC* card in its side.
"So your detector is also an Object Generator, uhhh, *Constructor*..." continued Timlrorme, catching on, "making the virtual into reality."
"But why bother with virtuality?" asked Mrorl. "Real dragons are so much more effective."
"Got you there: Plausible deniability!" exclaimed Timlrorme.
Balthacarius continued his explanation. "Most probably, yes. We know he's creating fake dragons, to post fake dracoposts, and he knows we know that, and we also know he doesn't want to be caught in the act. Why do you suppose he was so eager to be a part of our so-called dracological research project? Because it is here, on the site of the secret future *Time``World*, which is so secret that we could not possibly share any detailed evidence of what's going on, notwithstanding the double-agent we sent and the tempting hints we planted. He knows he can get away with pretty nearly anything. Generating Augmented-Reality illusory dragons is risk-free: any proof of their nature, and the falseness of their origins, would entail a full spatiotemporal scan of the place and time where the phenomenon was generated, and anywherewhen fromtowhich they willong-hav'n-been travelled."
"Riiiight." Mrorl paused, scratching his chin. "So, back to the original question. How does this help us?" lifting his Molpénet, in which a small and rather contented orange-brown scaly creature was curled up, seemingly asleep, looking down at it, then back at Balthacarius.
"Because the Object Generator Logs," replied Balthacarius, "tell us right when they came from. And they came from our own future -- NP2701, to be exact."
"Newpage 2701..." Mrorl mused, "What will happen then?"
"Well, it seems that is when Tornater will have begun operating and controlling dragons. And it occurs to me, Mrorl -- what to you think? A few huge colourful winged monsters would fit right in at a theme park, don't you agree?"
"Well, sure. It's not exactly *Time*-$RELATED$, per se, but dragons are big, and they can do what they want. Can't deny that."
"Exactly. I propose that by NP2701 we will have retained the famous Tornater Bunliuczanin expressly for the purpose of bringing real, live, (robOTTic) dragons to *Time``World*. It'll be our newest expansion, bigger than Ucimversal Studios' JurOTTic Park. Way bigger than Harry Otter."
"That's brilliant! Tornater is clearly the expert on conjuring winged molptiles. But how to actually get him to do this?"
"He can't refuse."
And with that, Balthacarius pressed a button, dispatching three wheelstick-wielding robots on small levitating scooters, which promptly went *poof* into the future, and a moment later reappeared with one Tornater Bunliuczanin in tow, who absolutely refused to admit that anything was true^{16}. But Balthacarius pointed to his Molpénet, and the waterly blue winged creature curled within, and beheld Tornater's crestfallen look -- for as the bOTTifactor explained, the little blue dragon was absolute, self-contained, irrevocable physical proof of Tornater's handiwork, and in case that were not enough, there were its two counterparts, the fire and grass dragons in his companions' nets; and if Tornater did not agree to their terms of employment, as future Draconics Consultant for the theme park that he knew, and could not deny having been told, was even then being built on the very land upon which they were standing, then they, the bOTTifactors, had merely to take their netted dragons to the Excessively Dangerous Molpy Sanctuary on Ferelornados, there to be revived and inspected by the world's greatest cryptozoological experts; and then he, Tornater, would be exposed as a fraud. And so it was that the proud Tornater Megtana IV of Bunliucz, the world's greatest perpetrator of dragonic forgery, began to synthesise, construct, and program real dragons, never again to disrupt the thread via pastposts, but to thrill and excite *Time* fans young and old.
----
(- #The Dragons of OTTifiability# -)
(- Advance Bookings Available Now -)
<*:Be the first to explore the wonders of dracomolpology
in the world's only open-access dragon sanctuary!:>
- Taste chocolate from the Cauldrons of the Great Dragon of Inquisition
- Explore the corporate steampunk world of the Dragon of Temporal Insubtransmodulation
- Decipher the Cryptic Mysteries of Stormdragon "Michael" $(Not Xes Real Name)$
- Marvel at the Many Dragons of the Distant Aforewhen, Hurl Donuts at Pundragons, and Seek the Elusive Double Dragonpost
(- - Coming to %Time World% - -)
(- in Two Yips Deliverance^{17} -)
(- *It doesn't have to make sense to be fun!*^{TW} -)
----
#Footnotes#
1. This writer acknowledges the controversial nature of doing draconOTTical research in the Basement, and notes that Mrorl expressed the hope that future generations, realising the naïveté of the Time, might extend retroactive forgiveness.
2. To participate in #Time``World# private previews, set your &TARDIS& or Blitzrocket's destination coördinates to Newpage [1414|#p3448122] and watch for our *Temporal``Edit*.
3. (See @@AluisioASG, [OTT:1630:16|#p3502780])
4. (See @@lmjb1964, [OTT:1618:15|#p3499609])
5a.-d. (see @@AluisioASG, [OTT:1624:39|#p3501432])
6a.,b. (@@lmjb1964, [OTT:1625:6|#p3501503])
7. (@@Dracomax, [OTT:1625:35|#p3501629])
8. Base 2.
9. (see @@AluisioASG, [OTT:1625:36|#p3501637])
10. (see @@ggh, [OTT:1652:2|#p3510872])
11. (see @@ggh, [OTT:1665:27|#p3513838])
12. (see @@ggh, [OTT:1671:27|#p3514981] yet again)
13. (see @@Dracomax, [OTT:1701:30|#p3522951])
14. (see @@Dracomax, [OTT:1742:26|#p3535523])
15. See [xkcd``178|https://xkcd.com/178/]
16. ...though he was later found to be lying.
17. Or Two Yips Willong-Hav'n-Been Aforewhen Deliverance, by the Time you are reading this. $(oops)$
^{TW} Time World
----
(- &#The Fourth Journey#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &How Mrorl Built a Fadefatalismatic& -)
(- &to Save Prince Pregstubin from the Vices of Punditry,& -)
(- &and How Later He Resorted to a Bilateral Barrage of Baconcancersemencaffeinebabies& -)
=O=ne dip, quite late in fact when Balthacarius was performing niply automatic self-recalibration (what the rest of us might call "coma"), an interstellar transport of modest size but enormous surface area set off the Moonbase proximity alarms, and he was startled awake. He sent a messagebot by ƨibɿɒ†ƨuM to summon his friend's help, as they had agreed when Balthacarius began his work with the Tencrivarna Spaaace program, then stumbled down corridors to the main airlocks, and soon beheld the most oddly-shaped ship. It was a massed array of fractal sandcastles, like an inverted Chateau d'If with smaller Chateau d'If for crenellations, and even smaller ones all over that. The bOTTifactor recognised it as something from King Idle's odd world, but this was somehow capable of interstellar transport. Out of it streamed dozens of courier-bots, then hundreds of smaller ones, and a myriad even smaller, unloading Bags and stacking them in neat rows all around the perimeter of the Moonbase, filling in the gaps with smaller Bags, and so on, as if to provide an impervious defense against some anticipated Zanclean flood.
While this was going on, a Blitzer of quite remarkable appearance strode down a ramp, through the piled Bags and right up to Balthacarius, just as Mrorl too emerged from another passageway, having just &TARDIS&ed into the Moonbase. The Blitzer impressed both of them, with sparkling eyes, antennae calmly scanning the area, and a gleaming multicoloured Buffyhat. In a wowterful voice like the harmonious sounding of many simultaneous ONGs, the Blitzer addressed the two bOTTifactors thus:
"Have I the great honour of speaking with the legendary bOTTifactors Balthacarius and Mrorl, builders of bots and travellers of Time, famed heroes and problem-solvers to worlds, kingdoms, empires, and galaxies far and wide?"
"Why yes, I think, ... of course..." stammered Mrorl, while Balthacarius picked up the thread and continued, "--the one and same, or I should say the two and both same. Won't you come in, and do tell us from where and when you come, that we might receive the honour of you and all these ba-... Bags?", trailing off uncertainly as he prepared the airlock for them to re-enter. "...and do let your robots rest!" as the courier-bots were now done with their stacking of Bags, but standing uneasily in rows seemingly awaiting orders.
"The place from which I come, great bOTTifactors, is in a long and difficult time, an era that you experienced in your distant past I do believe."
"The Dark Ages?" inquired Mrorl.
"No, more of a Lightening Age, or might I say, a Fading Era: for everything on our planet Rossnagar Kirgu is fading away, as if a dense fog is settling in, or perhaps the Great Randall's printer is running out of toner. In fact, I come from your future, in a manner of speaking, and please forgive us our un-Timely arrival at your spaceport, gracing this admirable lunar sphere, as we do not know day from nip relative to your world, or indeed to this era of history, being so accustomed to our lightened and foggy existence that everything here seems unfamiliar, and who could guess when the denizens hereof might prefer to perform self-recalibration."
The Blitzer paused a moment, perhaps regathering thoughts, then cleared xes throat (a most wingghish sound as before), and continued:
"I have been sent to your Most Sreee presence by none other than our Chief Timewaiter, Xes Royal Highness Gondomar Lishkashazku, Lord High of the Fading, Soverign Ruler of Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam, Twin Lands Beside The Sea In All Its Bigness and Across The River Small Though It May Be, Hereditary Hypercritic of Heretics, Defender of Chromatic Purity, Repeller of Outsider Facebugs, the Admirer of Frames Both Short and Long, the Overly Patient Observer of Pixels, Anointed Savant of Silliness, Gifted and Accomplished Purveyor of Timeodies, Adjunct Poet of Verses Archaic and Trocheeic, Widely Esteemed by the Successive Popes, Cardinals, Viscounts, Sandmasons, Knights Temporal, Assistant Timekeepers, &&c. and so on, not to mention Bearer of the High Bejewelled Buffyhat of Botopia, to invite in Xes Honourable Name both Your Pairwise Resplendant Presences to our land as long-awaited rescuers of Time, as the only ones who can remove us from mortal peril at the consequence of the mustardish and most safety-hatted obsessive infatuations and misguided missives of His Royal Highness, Prince and Heir to all Titles Heretofore Mentioned, Pregstubin."
"But really, we're not--" blurted out Mrorl, making Balthacarius glance over as he calmly objected, "I think you overestimate--"; but the Blitzer held up one finger to each of them to hold their tongues, and the OTTerific voice carried on,
"In return for your *most``molpish* gift of attention and generosity with your Time in giving audience to my request, and what is sure to be a pricklier and more burbulent effort in overcoming our deep calamity, Xes Royal Highness Gondomar hereby gives xes word, on pain not just of shameful abdication but of *pelting* and *thwapping*, that xe shall bestow upon you such great rewards and honours that you will never be wanting for anything, with funding for your bOTTifactories and any future projects or whims for milleniyips to come. The Bags we have delivered about your facility should serve as an advance and retainer, and assurance of Xes Majesty's sincerity. Furthermore," and at this the rows of courier-bots outside could be seen to neaten up their ranks and stand at attention, whilst a moving brass fanfare could be heard from the walls (apparently modulated by electromagnetic induction), "I hereby dub thee #Premier``Paladins# Balthacarius and Mrorl," (the music swelled), "heretofore to be known far and wide as the <*:Chevaliers of the Realm":>," (the Blitzer's voice now in harmony with the bots' trumpets), "Honourary Citizens Gallant, to be granted passage for whatsoever purpose may present itself in the carrying out of your bOTTifactorial deeds, and in recognition thereof, so that all may know, you are adorned each with these Twin Tetrational Tesseracts of Time, --" as the Blitzer placed the medals, somehow occupying 2^{1}/v{2} dimensions but also extending into four (and with this act, the music reached a crescendo that had Mrorl fearing for the structural integrity of the airlock bay), then finishing, "So Molp It Be!"
The Emissary-Blitzer finally stopped speaking, and stood most reverently and alert as if ready to signal something.
The promise that their Monarch would Xemself endure the twin perils of the thwapstick and comfy chair made a particular impression upon Balthacarius. "We are much obliged to the Great Gondomar, but--", and Mrorl finished for his friend, "-- but obsessive infatuations are not the sort of mustard that we build bots for... though..." and at this he stopped as the Blitzer's alert attention seemed increasingly intense, but Balthacarius added, "--though perhaps you can give us some of the details."
The Blitzer smiled, "Certainly! Xes Majesty's son, heir to the throne as I mentioned, is obsessed with two things, a most dangerous combination. The first of these is the making of puns, and it has been quite incurable since he was very young. The Prince has declared himself to be a long-prophesied descendent of the legendary King Awfulur Pundragon himself. This alone was barely manageable, but lately he has become infatuated with my counterpart, the Emissary-Blitzer of the neighbouring kingdom, one Sashiris the High Timewalker and Duly Appointed BlitzGirl Over All Place and Every Time. It was clear from the start this would go no-where, considering that if our Beloved Sovereign Gondomar were to yield to the Prince's pleas, and petition the emperor for Sashiris' hand (in marriage of course, not literally), it is clear the answer would be a firm *No*, with a lot of *Ni!*, &nil&, *Never*, #NAK#, and *No-how* for good measure. But now, fairly recently our kingdoms are divided by the greater trauma of our times, yea verily the Fading, and our differences on the matter of such a union have all but intensified. As many Timeframes have passed, our hopes (not to mention the Timeframes) are fading. All our attempts to persuade Pregstubin towards more sensible pastimes have been to no avail, and the Prince deteriorates before our eyes (the ears of most having been blocked in protection against his puns), and our last remaining hope is in the renowned abilities of history's greatest bOTTifactors, your Twin Treeishnesses, Balthacarius and Mrorl!"
Here, again, a fanfare from bots of all sizes, and the Blitzer bowed. Mrorl and Balthacarius glanced at each other, and looked uneasily at the thousands of variously-sized courier-bots outside the windows, now looking a little more military than they had first noticed.
"Well, if a Monarch and the Prince and Heir to the Throne are in such need, I can't see how we could refuse..." offered Balthacarius, and Mrorl hastily nodded in agreement.
"Wowterful! <*:The Blessings of Randall upon thee!:>" cried the emissary, which apparently signalled the rest, for at once all bots great and small began to move back into the hypercrenellated ship, save a few who waited for the bOTTifactors to emerge so they could help them bear any special equipment they might wish to bring. Mrorl and Balthacarius brought their latest and best gadgets, including new miniaturised OTTic Mustardbusters, U.S.B. translators, and other such portable items, hastily asking Timlrorme, Balthabots, and Mrobots to monitor their journey and follow along in the &TARDIS& and *LEML*. The giant interstellar castraftle soon levitated away in a manner that would defy the dreams of laPetite and Cuegan.
Their voyage in the fractal staraftcastleship was unpredictable to say the least -- at times fast, at other times slow, with little fits and starts in between, and irregular jigglings all along. Amidst this shaking the Emissary-Blitzer (who they learned was also Consort to Xes Majesty Gondomar) informed the bOTTifactors on the unique challenge that faced them.
"Our world has recently begun to Fade, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring kingdom, where all Time-accessors were built with Chromium-doped Organised Sand, are under a deeper fog and more in fear for the future of their world. ..."
Mrorl took this with some trepidation, suspecting that it was his (or rather, his first Machine's) actions that had initated a wave of desaturation, forever spreading out across creation and even todip just arriving at planets like this one^{1}. Its effects, though temporary at such a distance, had driven many worlds into an e****ish panic.
Mrorl snapped out of his daydream as the Blitzer/Consort/Emissary was elaborating, "... While diplomancy should be able to help bring the nations of our world together to face this challenge, the Prince, who is unfortunately charged with overseeing all matters of state, insisted on inserting puns and other wordplay into all diplomatic missives."
At this news Balthacarius suggested he should go over to the (toner-deprived) Chromium kingdom and see what news he could gather, attempt to gain an audience with the High Timewalker herself, and perhaps help smooth relations from that side; to this Mrorl and the Emissary heartily agreed.
Upon arrival Mrorl was relieved to be greeted not with accusation but by a most molpish welcoming ceremony, and set to work immediately in the jousting fields adjacent to the royal gardens. In a matter of dips he had converted their jousting exhibition arena into a virtual-OTTity experience chamber of vast proportions, arrayed with display screens and speakers, vibration inducers, mechanisms of heating, cooling, humidity control, fog and odor generators, holographic projectors with force inducers, and every other imaginable type of sensory feedback, plus for good measure a few that evaded the senses and defied the imagination, and a good number of penalty-inducing devices fabricated in secret with the aid of Balthacarius. This, he told Xes Royal Highness and xes advisors, was a Fadefatalismatic. Its primary purpose would be to give the Prince a strong impression of the seriousness of their times, and consequently to encourage the Prince to respond in some more regal and indeed demonstrably useful manner. Any response in the form of puns, however, would be met immediately with Punsaws, which were present in abundance, hidden amongst all the other equipment. The Fadefatalismatic could be fueled entirely on sand, coffee, snow, bacon, or indeed anything that was available in sufficient quantity (Mrorl suggested gray pixels, which were over 87 percent efficient, and the twin lands of Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam clearly had an over-ample supply).
There were many auxiliary devices, some autonomous and some run by little bots Mrorl had built for other projects. These included syllabic demodulators, phonetic transducers, cognitive comodulators, and several other devices perfected during the bOTTronic Bard project; all had been adjusted to detect puns, reacting immediately in a counteractive way, like destructive interference waves that produced an opposing force to anyone writing or speaking inside the arena. This was in effect an Arena-scale Anticausal Autoclave, with help from King Idle's technicians in partial fulfillment of their obligations after the Sandcastle Builder affair. (During field tests and focus group studies intended to discover to what extent the Idlean culture had been shaped by puns, they had achieved a ninety-eight percent success rate, so it was thought that Prince Pregstubin's tendencies would most certainly be remedied quickly.)
Getting the Prince into the virtual-OTTity chamber was quite an effort in itself, for which Mrorl enlisted the aid of most of the royal court. Some lured the Prince into wordplay contests one-on-one, but only if they could be heard by others who conspired to vote in favour of the Prince, but not all of the time, being as unpredictable as they needed to conceal their deception and show proper respect. Winning a series of simple pun-and-couterpun contests qualified the Prince to advance to fencing matches (armed not with sword, but with words) and thence to full-on jousting, which of course had to occur in the arena which had been so thoroughly enhanced without the Prince's knowledge. When finally His Majesty stepped out from the tunnel into the light, his stride interrupted in surprise as doors closed behind him, Mrorl activated the equipment and the arena came to life. Unfinished phrases appeared on screens, and were spoken by unseen voices; the most groan-inducing ideas for their completion were suggested subliminally by cognitive comodulators. The Prince couldn't resist. Each reply immediately appeared on-screen and echoed in a celebratory chorus, which then was promptly sawn in two. This continued for many volleys, as Mrorl watched from the control room. After a nopix or so, the Prince was punning as fast as ever, and the statistics on the counterpunnal readouts had not significantly changed. Mrorl began to have serious doubts, but there was nothing for it but to Wait patiently, watching and adjusting to ensure that the assonance/alliteration ratio was consistent with the angle of inflection, that the syllabic modulation and cognitive comodulation were properly biased and did not go too far, as he didn't want the Prince to fall in love with the arena itself and demand that it become his new office. At last the dinner ONG sounded as the exit doors opened, servants expecting an exhausted and mildly peckish Prince to emerge. This he did, appearing quite tired but happy, and uttered one word: Sashiris. Refusing food, the Prince rushed back to his chambers to transmit several newly-composed jokes. Mrorl's measurements, calibrated to the standard based on King Awfulur Pundragon's own lifetime output, showed these latest missives exceeded Pregstubin's most cringe-worthy earlier creations by ten to twenty percent. Mrorl had to proclaim the first attempt, therefore, to be a complete failure.
Mrorl returned to his giant lab in the &TARDIS&, and bots scurried away in fear as he ch**rped on about the failures. Musing over his poor fortune, contacting Balthacarius for advice, he failed to notice the racket as several local Sandmasons wandered into the arena, piqued by curiosity over the distant echoes of the Prince's contest that dip. Most all of the Samdmasons' Organised Sand were shattered by the punsaws, despite being the most durable (having of course been designed for sustainibility by Sandmasons themselves) and they ran out as quickly as they could with barely a leopad still functioning.
Mrorl had several of the feedback modules brought back to the laboratory and refitted with retropunctual anticipators and high-dynamic-range omni-etymologizers, and other even less pronouncible enhancements, all disguised as scrumptious doughnuts and other tasty baked treats; and reprogrammed some of the fractal raftcastle's crew into mini constructobots to enhance each punsaw, replacing the serrated teeth with smaller punsaws, while microbots and nanobots did the same at lesser scales. He also added thwapsticks, making the punishment less predictable and thereby more torturous. But the result -- to make an overly seaish story a bit more riverish -- was a flop. The Prince emerged from the next dip's contests even more devoted to Sashiris than before, and with heightened, that is to say more irritating, verbal output in evidence.
The next dip Mrorl sent a chronogram to his Mrobots at Time World (still under development), who brought a personal message to their newly hired resident dracomolpologist Tornater Megtana IV of Bunliucz, summoning help. The disgraced Tornater was still deeply indebted to Mrorl and Balthacarius both, and yearned to regain some positive reputation. The request was an Antipundragon, to be fabricated by Tornater and delivered by MusTARDIS, which would provide an easy (through somewhat unreliable, and thus plasibly deniable) retrocausality. The dragon was set loose in a courtyard near the Prince's favourite writing spot, and that nip it attempted to frighten the ch**rp out of the Prince. Unfortunately, no pun-neutralising effect transpired, as this turned out to be not the Antipundragon that Mrorl had requested, but an Ant*epenult*i-Pundragon, that is, a member of the House of Pundragon plucked from the Prince's more distant past, two generations earlier to be precise. The Prince was thrilled to meet an ancestor from the very lineage that was purportedly his own, and the two whiled away the nopix combining acrostics and anagrams into the most intricate, and yet annoyingly trite heap of wordplay the world had yet seen. Little hovering spy-bots reported a most surreal scene: the giant dragon, curled around the writing-desk and occasionally setting nearby hedges aflame, the Prince blithely sitting amidst scaly wings and claws, working by the light of eyes glowing brighter than the full moon of early evening. Mrorl hurriedly sent another chronogram back to Tornater, and in due course a MusTARDIS appeared again, from which a true Antipundragon emerged -- but before the carefully engineered beast could belch a single flame of grammatic pedantry, it was annihilated upon arrival by the Antepenulti-Pundragon -- who the Prince had begun calling *Padarbuzurg*.
That nip Mrorl paced back and forth in private (in guest quarters, as the &TARDIS& now had inexplicably gone missing), and sat up half the nip reading pages of pastposts of debate on the issue of punning, finally shutting off his Time Accessor in disgust. The next mornip he went back to the Royal Consort and humbly asked to speak to the Sovereign Xemself. Mrorl apologised,
"Your Most Gracious Royal Molpiness! The methods we have employed are the most effective possible. They expand on the linguistic and semantic basis of the bOTTronic Bard, of which you may have heard, retroreversed by the most raptorish cunning and sophisticated Idlean technology that belies description. We unleashed multisensory feedback, *Vitssågen*, resonant negative reinforcement, Fractal *Vitssågen*, Antipundragons, and all manner of orthographically corrective techniques, -- and yet, your son has bent it all 'round to his own whims, becoming risingseaishly more repulsive in his witless witticism, evermore wholeheartedly directed at the unfortunate Timewalker of your neighbouring kingdom, on the other side of the border which sadly we cannot firewall inasmuch as Royal prerogatives, on both sides, deny any such attenuation. The truth must be told, he simply cannot be de-punned."
Gondomar Lishkashazku was one clearly disappointed monarch, but remained silent, hoping all this would have a molpish side. Mrorl, relieved to see no movement amongst the guards, continued without hesitation.
"Naturally we could introduce a substitute Sashiris -- we have on standby a laPetite cast member from Time World who was hired specifically for the role of High Timewalker, and it is part of her job qualifications to resist any onslaught of puns -- but inevitably the Prince will notice the change. Balthacarius and I have exhausted the abilities of associates from other kingdoms with similar histories, and really we see no other way but to arrange for them to marry!"
"Do you glaze your donuts with mustard, there in your homeland Zubycal? Or perhaps there are dark pixels in your ears. The Emissary and I have made clear, our emperor will never agree to such a thing!"
"And if there were all-out steambottlish war, raging E****ishly and E****lessly across both his land and yours, would he not see the *haniam* of his ways?"
"I suppose so, but what a seaish cost to ask, solely for an arranged marriage built on the shaky foundation of unrequited punnery. The Emperor would sooner have you, and the Prince, and even Sashiris herself banished to the cold outer worlds, frozen and buried up to your necks, and then beheaded for redunancy!"
"That is just the answer I had expected, Your Highness, and certainly appropriate for any leader serving such worthy subjects as fill this land," said Mrorl, showing no alarm. "However, there are wars of the type you imagine, and there are OTTish wars. Endless pixels have been squandered on matters much more riverish than the mere arrangement of homonymous syllables in a post! Indeed, we would wage a war of pixels, the light and the dark, but particularly the light, to invoke what is clearly the singular fear that all on this planet have in common."
"And what can that mean? What do you suggest?"
Mrorl then indicated that his plan should remain a classified military secret, and requested guidance on how to express it to Xes Highness while maintaining appropriate secrecy, to which he was assured that the Personal Royal Guards and all other attendants present were sworn to secrecy on pain of deactivation and full disassembly; whereupon Mrorl whispered his idea to a guard, who relayed it to xes commander, who then carefully approached Xes Highness and repeated the secret plan. The Sovereign's sullen face lit up like meteorpix.
"Go then, meet with my war council, I will endorse all that you ask for!"
The next dip all industry across Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam, as well as both armies leapt into action like so many raptorcats, constructing to Mrorl's specifications a great number and variety of trebuchets, though for what purpose was unclear as they looked quite different from normal ones. These were hidden everywhere, both near and far from any borders, so that no one could guess the generals' intent. They mined white pixels for ammunition, which were delivered to factories supervised personally by Mrorl. These were melted and frozen, shaped and moulded in many ways, though any spies would have been completely unaware of the proceedings as all equipment, moulds and cauldrons, &&c. had themselves carefully been made of the same colour of white pixels, rendering the entire process invisible. There was an occasional squeal or clattering sound as a workerbot accidentally burned itself in an unseen, unknown liquid, or slipped and fell, or had its wheels bent by a falling mass; but that was all the spies could perceive.
Unfortunately for Mrorl's carefully laid plans, he was surprised by news that the Prince, activating the Punshoes of Amīrzādeh (an elite unit of android couriers reporting to none but the Prince himself) was fabricating special projectiles of the same raw material and weaponising them with Bagpuns, of the highest calibre tactical advisors had seen to that point, and not just in ones and twos, but entire Bags of Bagpuns. Mrorl shared this distressing news with Balthacarius, who promptly replied that Chromium's high command could confirm this in every detail, and that he had this issue well taken care of, but that rumours of an imminent Bagocalypse would be more destructive than Bags themselves, so the less said about it, the better.
After a wip of preparation, the bombardment of neighbouring Chromium began. Trebuchets, directed by veterans and precisely operated by bots, were aimed at the shining palace in the distant city Sashiris called home, and all lands around it. In unison all began to hurl their varied projectiles -- all white against the bright foggy sky -- Hats, Haiku, Snow, Semen, Cancer, Caffeine, Bacon, and of course Babies. These landed in irregular heaps everywhere, in the fields and streets and on the rooftops of every home. They splattered, melted, and dissolved into the targets. The effect was to make everything a lighter shade of gray, accelerating the Fading. The inhabitants and even some of Chromium's military experts could not agree with what they were being bombarded. Light-minded people suggested they were receiving helpful gifts of Hats and Haiku, though it was hard to distinguish these from any of the others; such beret-hatted folk were blamed for becoming too lightheaded due to all the continually lightening pixels around them. Others of a more hierban disposition took it as more evidence of the world's fading fate. Most turned away, muttering the old advice "<*:When you're that tired everything looks like coffee, we just need to coma:>". To heighten the fog of war (not that their world needed much help, fogwise), Mrorl had bots alter half of the trebuchets during the nip, so that they would fling their payload backwards, inundating Gondomar's own subjects with the same mix of desaturated mystery. It thus seemed to all a full-on bilateral war.
Soon both sides were at risk of being completely buried in Snow (or was it Semen?) and their respective Monarchs pleaded to the Emperor, who was forced to capitulate. Gondomar promised a cease-fire, once the other endorsed the controversial marriage, and the Emperor raptorcattishly agreed. Whereupon all trebuchets were decomissioned, and remaining supplies of ammunition neutralised, and, to be extra redundantly sure, Mrorl himself directed the removal of all Fadefatalismatic equipment, returning the arena to its former status as a simple jousting stadium. Later, Mrorl and Balthacarius were ceremonial guests at the most molpish wedding feast, culminating in a mass-broadcast *Boom-de-Yada* that sealed a truce between their two monarchies that would last for milleniyips to come. The two bOTTifactors had predicted that their world's Fading would end, and this had indeed came to pass, astounding all who knew not the true cause (the Prince even took credit for Cuegan's Bags). The Emperor and both Monarchs lauded the bOTTifactors with honourary titles and diplomas, and sent them on their way assured of a king's welcome upon any future return.
----
#Footnotes#
1. You may recall that Mrorl and Balthacarius changed the past via a vast campaign of retro-edits to ensure that the Machine That Could Grant Any Wish Having a Single Parameter *N* generated only a small wave of monochrome fading; but this well intended and thorough campaign nevertheless missed a spot or two, and had no effect on the planet they are visiting in this story, as that empire had built themselves a temporal looping field in order to be able to re-experience *Time* again [each``yip|http://mrob.com/time/replay]. This was temporarily disrupted by the use of a MusTARDIS for dragon delivery, but on Rossnagar Kirgu none were the wiser. To this dip the entire planet still enjoys a completely desaturated and yiply-looping existence.
----
(- &#The ????th Journey#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &#LEML's Earliest Moon Landing#& -)
=O=TT historians have long considered these legends to be a bit Mrorl-heavy, in that they portray the single-voweled bOTTifactor's adventures and creations more than those of Balthacarius. In more recent Times much effort has been made to correct this bias, and the early voyages of *LEML* have been a popular place to start.
Compounding the difficulties of this story's telling are the many contending theories on what *LEML* even means. The popular belief in <*:Lunar Earth-Monitoring Laboratory:> is easily dismissed by Mrorl and other bOTTifactors of Time, pointing out that LEML is quite obviously a large interdimensional conveyance (a castraftle), and suggest <*:Lunar Excursion Module LEML:> or <*:Łódka Elektroniczno-Maszynowa ŁEML:> as the most likely interpretations. Anyone pointing out that it's *L* and not *Ł* is simply told they have it wrong, the letter got changed by some casbottle's text filter, and all backups were mysteriously lost. Then there are such absurdities as <*:Laughing Even More Loudly:> which we need not discuss, and the vocal minority who insist on no specific interpretation, or that the true meaning is lost to Time, given that "<*:Temporal mishaps occasionally [scramble``letters|#p3706223]:>". As for <*:LEML Extremely Modified Linux:>, this will of course haven-been directly related, but isabeen from xes Retrorelative Future and definitely not part of this story.
Regarding *Earliest*, of course the majority of those concerned with the subject prefer an OTTilinear timeline perspective, based on a predominantly monotonic progression from past to present to future, whereas stories like this tend to follow the temporoprogressive perception of the subject, i.e. in this case *LEML*. The tale that follows concerns one of several or possibly many incidents that make an OTT-relative sequence difficult to reconstruct. Due to many adventures travelling through Time and Spaaace, and relativistic simultaneity being what it is, it is effectively impossible for anyone to know when the Castraftle *LEML* first arrived at the only natural satellite of the fabled planet where Megan and Cueball began their historic journeys. It would have been after the initial (and unintended) exploration of that planet's yt[solar``system|VOQ1lvO1AoA] and most of the yt[time-ninja``bicycle``experiments|PebUrG2rrzY], but certainly before work on the solar wind farm and the more well-known Legendary Lunar Labours of Balthacarius that have been passed to us through the annals of Time after Time. Nevertheless, there must have been some time at which, from the Megball-planet's perspective, his presence was established; and though that is in no way $RELATED$ to our beloved bOTTifactor's own point of view, even disregarding the alteration of timelines by the introduction of bicycle technology into the relative-aforewhen, or any dates that Mrorl and others in our tales might suggest, it is nevertheless what we are going for here.
<*:[Editor's Note: In like manner, due to the complex interweavings of Narrative and the chronotemporal way that these tales are reaching you, our Gentle Reader, beinginasmuch as they ping between Botcastle and Casbottle one ONG at a Time, sometimes occasionally taking holiday in the yip 2022^{H} before returning to 2018^{H} or somewhen [equally``improbable|#p3641725], having been modulated from DTMF to MTDF and back again thrice or more in the process, it is effectively impossible for anyone to say when the tale that follows was first related. Nevertheless, from your point of view, it should-ought to being been-had happened somewhen and so, we shall present it here, barragings of Bagpuns notwithstanding.]:>
And so we must pick up our story, from a Balthacarius-relative Timeline point of view, when the famed bOTTifactor was already quite far into the Moonbase era and had, in fact, just received a visit from a certain Emissary-Blitzer of Gondomar, King of Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam. En route to Pregstubin's planet Rossnagar Kirgu, on board that oddly fractalated staraftcastleship, and working in separate quarters from Mrorl (who was thoroughly nerdsniped by a new Time-consuming hotdog that Timlrorme found on TIOC), Balthacarius received two coded messages, and both of them a distress call. The first message was from their current destination, sent by none other than Sashiris, famed cross-temporal messenger of the Chromium Kingdom. The other was from temporoSpaaatial coördinates he did not recognise, but immediately guessed involved a bOTTifactorial exploit yet to come, as it was from himself and had a lot about a misidentified and apparently injured Mrorl, a pair of HORNNs (naturally), and the chance to divert the Bagpuns via a Sashiris-centred temporal shell game. This, an opportunity most other bOTTifactors would have turned down, intrigued Balthacarius immensely. The solution was at once gracefully elegant and unbearbly complicated. Only three triadic swaps (of time, place, and/or identity) would be needed; a task for which Balthacarius was fully qualified and all too familiar. He activated and retroreversed both chronograms to acknowledge their receipt and notify each sender that he was on the way.
As both bOTTifactors were already charged and obligated with a mission to resolve an issue between two kingdoms on the same planet Balthacarius presented a good reason why he should go to the rival kingdom, citing their success in bilateral application of the Gontalmannas Effect as precedent, and this was heartily endorsed by all concerned. Timlrorme (who wished to remain as far from Pregstubin's puns as possible) succeeded in being assigned the role of itinerant alibi. Upon arrival Balthacarius carefully disguised *LEML*'s transmitters and other equipment to complicate the job of anyone hoping to detect its movements or identify any occupants, and landed in the heavily fortified area where Sashiris had been forced to take refuge of late. She had taken up residence in a mansion built for a past space admiral. The approach, gates, windows and doors were studded with a variety of detectors and alarms (which, it was soon explained, were triggered by assonance, alliteration, portmanteaus, and the like) and the entrance hall was decorated with many formidable weapons of all sizes, her signature Punsaws foremost among these. Balthacarius took particular note of their elegance and formidable efficiency, knowing he would want something in return for his bOTTifactorial services, and was soon speaking with the High Timewalker herself. Her appeal for help, the necessary backstory, their deliberations, &&c. were long and involved, and there is little need to relate them here as the reader will already be familiar with the main issues concerning Rossnagar Kirgu. It is enough to point out that the aquisition of punsaw technology (to augment Mrorl's plans for dealing with Prince Pregstubin) was a delicate matter requiring careful negotiations with military leaders. After explaining that it would have a stabilising influence on the geopolitics of the entire empire, Balthacarius secured the design blueprints of several of the most effective models and sent them off to Mrorl.
Now, assured that her best option was to create a diversion from long ago and far away, Sashiris followed the bOTTifactor back into *LEML*, bringing along several recent creations, drawings and songs not yet shared, to transmit from the past and thereby mislead the Prince.
Once back in orbit, it was best to Wait until *LEML* was around on the opposite side of the planet from the two kingdoms, and bots prepared a CTIF beacon to coördinate the time and place of return. They discussed the plans to divert Pregstuban's namesake missives.
"So I'm going to lay low in some alien hospital pretending to be... did you say a sailor?"
"A merchant sailor, nice chap. Where we're going next, they don't know what happened to him. But you only need to be there the shortest Time, less than a newpix from your point of view, as Timlrorme and I take care of things. However long we spend, we come back and get you just after leaving, as Tylatris' time is concerned."
"And this 'Timlrorme' is going to have my identity? Impersonating me from far away? How ch**rped is *that*?"
Balthacarius paused. This was indeed a rather seaish request. "Not Timlrorme, but the Sailor... and you'll have Mrorl's identity. He is my fellow bOTTifactor. I bet you'll love his technopunk avatar and flowing yukata, they keep changing colours. He's a bit overoptimistic at times, when it comes to potential botbuilding, but thoroughly reliable and assuredly anti-Pregstubin. It is he, right now, who is risking his career employing all known methods and technologies, plus a few Epsilon and one or two completely unknown, to cure your unrequested admirer and your world of the curse of his -- lifetime hobby --"
At *lifetime``hobby* a growl from Sashiris, with a ratchety resonance reminiscent of her favourite weapon.
"-- and he has entrusted me to entrust you with his credentials, a very deep trust indeed, if you know half the things we've been through.
"To attract Pregstubin's attention, we -- well, the sailor -- well, actually him masquerading as you -- will send the progenitor of all Bagpuns. It will be sent from the Past and travel far through Spaaace, and timed to arrive precisely when the Prince is most susceptible, at the crux of the battle to come.
Sashiris' brow furrowed as Balthacarius continued, "Yes, it needs to be you. Only by *you* sending the first Bagpun, can we be sure to attract the Prince's attention, and convince him to respond."
"As if impersonating my identity with digital signatures were not enough," Sashiris scowled.
"Of course that *should* be enough, but we really need to get him where it works best, with the message to draw him in. We've made the perfect bait: '<*:One True Comic II: The Baginning:>'^{1} What do you think?"
There was a deathly silence. Sashiris looked at Timlrorme, and back to Balthacarius. She couldn't believe he even bothered to ask.
"... ah, yes, of course. Perhaps best not to know what you think."
After a pause, "It is agreed, then?" asked Balthacarius, and with a nod Sashiris returned to her cabin to work on her latest project, a most wowterful song cycle, that would play a key role on the old and far-distant moon to which they hoped the loathsome Bagpuns could be redirected.
On approach to Tylatris they were informed of the planet's mask requirements and virtuOTTity protocols, and they prepared the necessary equipment, repurposing some holohelmets Timlrorme had brought along for hotdogging. Upon arrival they contacted the portmaster of Imnugarsis with a cover story, claiming they brought a Hotdog Vendor and a retinue of little bots specialising in recursive self-referential puzzles, all for the amusement of HRH Gamalera. This was easy to prove, if needed, as Timlrorme always had an ample supply of hotdogs, puzzles and bots at the ready. The palace Foreign Relations office told them, however, that the Queen was in fact not able to receive any artisans or dignitaries at the moment; this was as expected as Balthacarius^{2l} had told Balthacarius^{2e} that Her Royal Highness was in fact no-where to be found, or completely off her casters and confined to quarters (depending on who you asked), and either way this was surely an embarrassment not to be spoken of; and Balthacarius^{2e} requested therefore a landing bay where they could take planet-leave whilst they Wait for a possible royal audience, and access to the planet's internet, which were granted.
Leaving the ship, Sashiris, Balthacarius^{2e}, and Timlrorme found a pre-arranged spot for the late-nip meeting with Balthacarius^{2l} to brief each other on the details, and transfer the all-important HORNNs into Sashiris' organised sand. Mrorl had fortunately designed them with chronotemporal messaging capabilities, which Balthafuturecarius^{2f} had exploited (with authorisation from the Tylatrian Bureau of Digital Affairs) to read the device's past memory contents, thereby acquiring private keys for each of the identities the device had assumed thus far. This naturally imbued her with formidable powers manifest in authorised access, including a District Chief of IT Security and none other than Queen Gamalera herself. Baltafuturecarius a-Waited their return, while the rest followed his directions to the infirmary in another part of the city where a merchant sailor (injured, and stuck with Mrorl's credentials, thereby unable to re-board his ship) had been effectively incarcerated. Using Sashiris' leopad it was a simple matter to get into the infirmary and sneak into the room. The Sailor was in a hospital bed, in the technopunk bodysuit and gown of Mrorl's avatar, filling the room with a caveish blue glow^{3}. Following careful instructions from Balthafuturecarius^{2a}, the leopad was used to retroactively negate, nullify, and effectively exchange personal I.D. credentials with the Timeviewer that the Sailor had been loaned for use during his convalescence. This made the Sailor effectively able to act as Sashiris in all matters, including but not limited to the transmission of posts (of a punning nature or otherwise) or even entering into legal agreements such as an arranged royal union. As regards his physical injuries, Balthacarius opened a toolbox he had been carrying, out of which scurried microbots and nanobots (and more than a few shananobots) to work on the Sailor's lower armature and magnetic treads in a way that would appear to the hospital staff to be the result of normal, albeit impressively fast, self-repair. Sashiris had been spending this time marveling at her new luminescent flowing gown and symmetric, mostly parallel neon stripes (now in a different pattern than they had on the Sailor, their colour shifting through violet towards pink), but at the others' urging she took the Sailor's place in the bed, donning the cosmonautical hat to which she took quite a fancy (and which immediately changed colour to match her ensemble), as the rest left the building the same way they had come.
Returning to *LEML*, and telling the portmaster that they had decided to fulfill an order for another customer and would return to Tylatris in due time, Balthacarius laid out a course for the distant Sun of the Cueganites, at a time sufficiently predating the first known arrival of bots and bicycles to their Moon^{2o}, and calibrated the engines (which were based on that lesser-known "CTIF" technology, the Conveyance of Temporally Itinerant Flight) to get there in a way that would evade detection by the tracking and communications systems of later eras.
This was the longest journey he had yet to undertake in his work as bOTTronics consultant to sundry worlds and kingdoms, as the route could not proceed in a straight line in Time or in Spaaace, under any Lorentz-transformed perceptions of possible observers. Balthacarius settled down to catch up on pastposts (always an enjoyable task), and occasionally checked in with the Sailor regarding his preparations for his role in the Sashiris-related tasks to come. Timlrorme, as always, worked towards a new high score on his (new) favourite hotdog, <*:Balthabots Save Time Again!:>
Moments later Balthacarius got an urgent plea for advice from Mrorl, concerning Prince Pregstubin's use of clandestine courierbots to weaponise Bagpuns, &&c. Fortunately he had been anticipating this, and already had sent three bots by MusTARDIS back to King Idle, where work was underway under one of the obligations his kingdom had been forced to agree upon the conclusion of the hotdog challenge: unlimited free upgrades to the rocketship *GEMG* that had been built for the bOTTifactors. It was being refitted as the first-ever FractalSandCastleStar (and newly christened *FSCS*) a new class of raftcastle equipped with Chronotech and Tractor Beams, to be crewed by countless bots of different sizes. Thanks to the epsilonish ways of MusTARDIS time-travel, the trio of Balthabots arrived just in time to take delivery of the awkwardly hypercrenellated construction, tested it for spaceworthiness, and navigated the thing back to Pregstubin's planet, where a secret transfer of munitions had been arranged by clever (and CTIF-mediated) rerouting of certain important dispatches by the Prince to his Punshoes of Amīrzādeh, who now believed Sashiris to be hiding out on an obscure moon, remote in time and space, the source of her newest messages. Bags of all sizes were quickly loaded by bots of all sizes including those Royal courierbots who would accompany them as expert Bagpun deployment consultants, whenupon ship, bots, bags, and all promptly relocated by equally epsilonish means to precisely when-where Balthacarius, Timlrorme, and the Sailor were still en route to the Cueganite Moon. Meanshile, Timlrorme remotely summoned Mrorl's &TARDIS&, which would likely be useful later, from a place and time where it was idle and unoccupied, after he carefully noted its coördinates^{4} for a seamless return.
Timlrorme by that point had gotten thoroughly engrossed in his *BSTA* game, and was eagerly sharing his progress with the Sailor who also had little else to do during the long journey.
"... It's the best hotdog ever, Mrorl and I are both playing and we keep beating each others' score. It's a sequel to the legend of How Time Was Saved, where you get to save Time again by directing squads of robots, well, they're not called Balthabots in the hotdog itself, and it doesn't even say *BSTA* anywhere, but everyone calls it that because the original link to the anonymously-signed download was in a TIOC packet that was tracked back to the very location we're heading for now, except we're going to be a lot earlier in time -- anyway, everyone thinks this hotdog came from Balthacarius' Moonbase, so they started calling the bots *Balthabots* and the name stuck -- you have to build robots that collect pixels of various colours, as many different colours as you can find, and send them to future temporospatial coördinates using these strange shipping crates that are basically MusTARDISar except even less reliable if you can believe that, and you have to transmit colour tables to yourself too, it's all to allow you to restore the Universe to its normal visual appearance after this seaish and thoroughly bonkers Machine turns everything into one colour, also the crates pop back into existence at random, usually not at the intended destination time you specified, and you have to move the robot before the crate falls on top of it, and you even have to learn how to get crates to fall at the same time for the sweet Drop Combos that really boost your score, I just got +1700 that way, and that's just one of the side games, there's another one with railroad cars full of trees, and altering game parameters in different directories and files on lapleopards that you occasionally find inside crates or just lying on the ground for no apparent reason and you don't know what any of the parameters are for, and some of them turn out to alter the gameplay -- quite meta and confusing as ch**rp, but I love it that way -- and the game keeps popping up adverts for some other hotdog from the same vendor called LM, which somehow stands for MROBOTIC RANDOMNESS, and every one has a different set of numbers which I'm copying down in case it ever becomes useful, there are plenty of ways to get stuck so you have to save and reload often, right now I'm learning how to program Balthabots to build other robots, which you have to do because the point values double with each level of recursion, and there's this bot that can solder timer chips together to make Trurl Machines, you know, the universal computer that reads and writes symbols on a cassette tape... you program your Trurl Machine to allow you to jump to different parts of the storyline which is the best way to fix any m**stard you caused earlier, but if it eats the cassette, everything else in the hotdog gets scrambled and you might as well start over, but I've been thinking there might actually be a reason to do that if you know exactly when and how, like Mrorl said that he had a robot hold her object catalogue upside-down and all the prices of the robot components and batteries and other stuff changed, like he could sell a wheel for 16 #0EE#-cyan pixels instead of buying one for 91 #330#-brown pixels, which would be crazy good since cyan pixels are so rare and most NPCs will give you a hundred brown pixels for one cyan pixel which you can see would be kind of overpowered, but it makes more sense than half the other game mechanics so when I reset the hotdog which I haven't decided to do yet I'm definitely going to try that ..."
Breathlessly Timlrorme went on and on like this, the Sailor politely nodding every now and then, knowing anything was better than just watching the stars go by, his usual way of passing the Time on the long spaaace-traaading routes.
*LEML* and *FSCS* travelled together while they carefully arranged a seemingly serendipitous chance rendezvous with the Emissary-Blitzer and Consort to Xes Majesty Gondomar of Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam, who at that point had just left Rossnagar Kirgu in a thoroughly normal ambassadorial spaaaceship, and still thought xes meeting with both bOTTifactors to be yet a few dips away. Balthacarius hid himself to avoid being seen or heard, directing Timlrorme and the Sailor to follow the Ligimude and Zaguczeshdam consular protocols as best he knew them, to present themselves as delegates of the bOTTifactors who (accompanied by the Prince's own Courierbots) had been entrusted to deliver these fine gifts (the Bagpuns they had on board), clearly by order of the Prince, to sweeten the deal when the Blitzer made xes offer and appeal for help. This agreed to, the Emissary-Blitzer left xes own ship to accompany the Prince's couriers, Timlrorme, and a few well-chosen Balthabots onto *FSCS* (already crewed by many bots of its own), while *LEML* and the Emissary's original ship fell back in order to remain out of sight during the Blitzer's visit to the Moonbase. Balthacarius and the Sailor then had no trouble explaining to the remaining staff of the Emissary that they should visit the Moonbase ahead of time to make preparations for the arrival of the foreign visitor. What they did not tell them was how *far* back in Time they were going.
As planned, they went to a point sufficiently early in our history that Balthacarius^{2n} himself had not even begun to set up a Moonbase. The familiar terrain to which he had become accustomed was still unblemished by retrorocket, footprint, or bicycle-tread, and it took some time to decide upon a suitable location. The Sailor found the ship's controls very familiar, but his request to try his hands at the helm was declined, as it would be a shame if he were to crash-land on the Moon. They placed transmitters under the surface, inside a MusTARDIS programmed to take them away after all transmissions had been completed, to remove the evidence and prevent an accidental future "discovery" of extraterrestrial technology buried on the Moon. The messages were sent from the Sailor's leopad, thereby given Sashiris' digital signature, and with CTIF encoding to make them appear, upon arrival, to have been sent recently and from nearby -- but deliberately this disguising was imperfect, and designed to be figured out by the Prince's cryptographic equerry, so that the Prince would "realise" that Sashiris had a hiding spot on a remote moon (from which moon she had sent the messages at some time in the past). For redundancy each message was sent multiple times -- the first containing the Bagpun-bait carefully designed to be irresistable to the Prince; the second and much longer with three verses and twenty-four lines^{5}, timed to arrive after the Fading had left Rossnagar Kirgu, and just after the anticipated wedding of Pregstubin to "Sashiris", who unknown to him, would actually be a merchant cosmonaut using her identity.
Lunar-temporal-shenanigans complete, *LEML* rejoined the Rossnagar Kirgu ambassadorial ship, with the Sailor suggesting that its staff could return home ahead of the *FSCS*, so that the bOTTifactors would not see it and wonder what it was for. They were now free to return to Tylatris by a similarly nonlinear CTIF-navigated route. The &TARDIS& soon appeared, bearing an excited Timlrorme who had just spent the entire voyage to Tylatris finishing his *BSTA* hotdog, as he excitedly related to the Sailor.
"I had to avoid talking with anyone after quickly telling Mrorl and Balthacarius that I was a future Timlrorme on a mission that I should not discuss further. So I summoned our Time machine again," (pointing back at the &TARDIS&) "and stayed inside it playing *BSTA*. When you think you've finished all the side-games, this message appears with instructions to use all the numbers from the MROBOTIC RANDOMNESS! adverts to index into colour tables, giving letters and words which are instructions for building the ultimate Time-Saving bot, which is called *STAF*. When you finish building the STAF, which doesn't look all that impressive at first glance to be honest, a rather small bot running on two standard 419-pixel LEML^{7} batteries and not even any wheels to roll around on, but anyway you use it to play through the whole game again, except it goes a lot faster because this bot really is able to do everything -- pixels, colours, treeconomics, wood, crates, object catalogues, sending messages in palettes, one-time relocation, Trurl machines, MTDF music, and all the rest. And when it's finished, the screen goes black except for one word *Koniec* in big letters, that's a word I've never seen before but it sounds endish, don't you think? And then it starts downloading something for about four and a half minips and my leopard was frozen, but then it says -- Congratulations, you have just completed the hotdog. Now play the sequel!"
"Which is?" asked the ever-polite Sailor.
"<*:BSTAF: Sustainabilising Time Again Forever!:>" whereupon Timlrorme went happily down the corridor to his cabin and spent many nopix in hotdiggity fascination.
They travelled without mishap to Gamalera's planet; inasmuch as the Tylatrian Spaaaceport Authority thought they were still calling on another customer, the Sailor and Timlrorme used the &TARDIS& to access the infirmary room in which Sashiris had (from her perspective) only just begun reading the Millinerpedia article on the hat she was wearing, and hadn't even considered what harmless mischief might be performed using Mrorl's login authorisations. Employing the HORNNs still installed in her organised sand, Sashiris regained her credentials in exchange for those of Mrorl which in like manner returned to the Sailor, who then lay back in the hospital bed and bid farewell to the unusual and unexpected visitors, their Mrorly-blue conveyance fading away as abruptly as it had arrived. They found Balthafuturecarius Waiting for them in the same spot as their first meeting, and returned the HORNNs to him, then &TARDIS&ed back to *LEML*, as he returned to the city to carry on whatever he will-have-been doing. *LEML* soon left orbit and returned to Sashiris' world, where they used the &TARDIS& once again to bring Sashiris back into her suite within the Chromium spaaace admiral's mansion (where she had feigned locking herself in from the inside to avoid any hand-delivered puns^{6}). She emerged to the news (at no surprise to her) that a marriage had been arranged via private couriers, with all forms filled and verified, notarised, &&c. and behold, an end to hostilities had immediately followed. Sashiris smirked as she began selecting suitable apparel for the next wip's ceremonies to formalise these events -- for in all the land, across both kingdoms and the entire empire, out to the farthest and coldest outer worlds of the system, as they rejoiced in the vibrant *Boom``de``Yada* song cycle that had just arrived by interstellar transmission from across Time and Spaaace, which only the High Timewalker herself could have authored -- it was she and only she who knew that this marriage was indeed not between Pregstubin and Sashiris, but between Pregstubin and some heretofore unknown cosmonaut using her identity, and as soon as she shared the keygen logs with the Interwebs Ministry the unmolpish union would be annulled.
----
#Footnotes#
H. Heretical
1. See [OTT:467:22|#p3342969].
2e. Referring to the first Balthacarius, who one might have thought would be the only Balthacarius in this story.
2l. What should be the name of this other Balthacarius? He sent the coded distress call, and is the one and the same as our "first" Balthacarius, only Later in a Baltempororelativistic way.
2f. Yes, *Balthafuturecarius* is a less terrible way to call him.
2a. Perhaps we should have asked this other Balthacarius what to name him, while we had the chance... although that might have been a little too meta.
2o. Which fortunately means we will not need to name another other Balthacarius.
2n. Referring to the other other guy who we thought we would not need to name.
3. Caveish in colour only, not in any Cherenkov way.
4. Unfortunately this measurement was unexpectedly altered by the *FSCS* shipboard communications systems, which added some nonlinear fractal distance and interfered with Timlrorme's relativistic time calculations.
5. See [OTT:464:10|#p3342732].
6. Notwithstanding this obvious and easy explanation, there was no end to the rumours spread within the kingdom, the likes of [OTT:425:26|#p3339732] and other absurd nonsense that had begun with a single person on Ch**rper saying they noticed the lights were off in some mansion windows.
7. Light Electrons == Massive Lakes (see [phys``431|http://1190.bicyclesonthemoon.info/aftertime/viewer?story=phys&e=0&f=431]).
----
(- &#The Fifth Journey#& -)
(- - #or# - -)
(- &#The Mischief of Queen Gamalera#& -)
=N=ot by being e**dish or heretical did Gamalera, Queen of Tylatris, torment her people, but by having a good Time. And again, it was neither shameful excess nor debauchery that were most sreee to her heart, but only the simplest and most unassuming hotdogs -- [Pfffth|http://mrob.com/time/pfffth], [Chirpy``Raptor|http://mrob.com/time/chirp.html], and [Q04B|http://mrob.com//time/Q04B] into the early nopix of the mornip, then [MolpyUp!|http://mrob.com/time/molpyup], [Writer|http://mrob.com/time/writer], and [Incremental``Zoo|http://mrob.com/time/menagerie3], but more than anything she loved to play [hide-and-seek|#p3431271], and in the more OTTish manner the better. Whenever there was need for a seaish decision, a ceremony requiring the Royal presence, visitors from distant stars, or some Mome or Pope requesting an audience, the Queen would hide, and everyone would need to find her, else suffer the most mustardy punishments. So the whole court would run around the entire castle, check the basement, look in every tower and parapet, and all around the surrounding beaches, breaking into any suspicious new walls, endlessly taking photos and $ENHANCE!$ing to find changed pixels, and most often these searches would run into the hectonewpix or longer, for the Queen was always thinking of new places and new ways to hide. Once, an important battle never got fought, all because the Queen, covered in glittery pixels, suspended herself from a ceiling in the central hall to pass as a chandelier, and it was all she could do to keep from :azuling: as the staff rushed about below. Whoever found the Queen was instantly given the title of Royal Revealer the Most-Recent -- there were already a few hunderd of those at court. But xe who would gain the Queen's special favour had to impress her with some surprising new activity, one previously unheard of to the Queen. This was by no means easy, considering how well-versed Gamalera was in this area; she knew all the Timeless pastimes of the Timeless past, like [MONOMOLPY|#p3418910], [Automome|http://mrob.com/time/automome], and [Catapult|http://mrob.com/time/catapult], and all the latest hotdogs like [LWFI|http://mrob.com/time/LWFI] and Casbottle Spaaace Program, and she often said that every activity was a game, passive enjoyments like [Boom-de-Yada|http://mrob.com/time/de-yada] and [Time``Cycles|http://mrob.com/time/freq] included, and for that matter the whole world.
The Queen's closest council, in particular the prime minister Lord Postrequoter of the molpish house of Rondreznirrak, was greatly Corinned by the Queen's attitude, saying her lack of any conventional priorities exposed all Cymberia to ridicule, not least of all herself.
When the Queen unexpectedly announced it was time for puzzles, all were gripped with terror. She had always relished in the art, both of creation and solution, of [letter-based``sudoku|#p3347654], intricate [crosswords|#p3456593], and a variety of grid-like variants from the simple [word``search|#p3455775] to [OTTified``quote``identification|#p3556598] to the most elaborate palimpsests XOR-encoded onto the low bits of [red,``green,``and``blue|#p1659825296] in an otherwise benign-looking spoiler-kitten. Once, encoded as an acrostic within a series of new GIF smileys, the Queen challenged the royal court with the riddle: <*:How does one know that the Newpix hashes were delivered via quantum-entangled pixels?:>
After that, it was a mere decapix or two before the Queen realised her staff, attendants, and even the security guard of her ceremonial cortège weren't giving her puzzles the Time she felt they deserved. They put [randomly-selected``words``into``the``grids|http://mrob.com/time/ottle/index.html], made up new ones to fit, or even claimed pixel m**stard to evade engagement without suspicion. However, when she instituted a new policy of appointing and promoting only the first to correctly finish a grid or answer a new riddle in an unexpectedly clever manner, participation dunejumped molpishly. Titles and honours came ONGily and often, and banishments to the Basement with equal frequency. The entire court were compelled to coöperate, whether they did so Beanily or ch**rpingly. Sadly, many of the less faithful (foreign attachés, retired generals, and so on) were as likely as not to deceive the Queen, who though basically the happy, worry-free, molpy-feeding type, could not tolerate a cheater. The Keymaster of Royal Beanish Ciphers had to be banished to the remote and snowy Basement of Beranek because xe had used a crib (ostensibly for xyr baby, but in fact containing the <*:Complete Thread Index and Factsheet:> encoded in pixelated bedsheets and swaddling clothes) while appearing as a contestant on the newly instituted wiply livestream of *Double``JeapOTTidy*; xe never would have been discovered, except that a rival Security Chief (who personally despised the Keymaster) had just been de-Hatted for failing to get even a 3^{rd} place prize in three consecutive *Time*-BINGO^{1} tournaments, and out of spite, linked the Keymaster's colour palette in a spURLer. Lord Postrequoter zieself had to resign zir much-coveted head cabinet post after failing to locate the three darkened pixels in the Queen's latest Meteorpix colourification. Quite rapidly the Queen's cabinet was composed of the most accomplished solvers of OTTsswords, acrOTTstics, and emoji-rebuses the world over, and the ministers never went anywhere without downloading the latest update of the three leading trivia apps for their leopads. Meanwhile the rest of the court had become so proficient that they were regularly staging new productions of plays and musicals based on the words in each of the Queen's Daily Crosswords before the first correct solution had been submitted by a member of the general public; though this was hardly surprising as the court now counted among its members the chief writers of all seven puzzle-hunts held in the country during the past yip.
It was during this period that the planet's evolving culture of social media and related technology was making the switch to completely immersive interaction. Almost everyone had already been using unique online personas (backed by cryptographic digital signatures and the like) to verify their identity and conduct important transactions, aided by portable gadgets or in many cases wired directly into each person's own circuitry. The latest trend, called *meta-Time*, had for quite a while been a temporary and intermittent activity, a natural evolution of "screen time"; but now the entire planet was switching over to *The* &MetaTime&, recently copyrighted, trademarked, and intensely marketed by a local investor previously best known for xyr establishment of the planet's &Facebug& franchise. In The MetaTime, everyone had any appearance they wished. To aid those who hadn't joined in or were taking a short break, all holohelmets were (by universal legal mandate) equipped with full masks, with realistic voice-changing effects, included hundreds of points of articulation, and had chameleon-like digital paint, all to change the wearer's real-life external appearance to reflect their online persona, legal identity, and role or assignment within whatever group or activity they were engaging at any moment.
By this yip the Queen was less interested than ever in actually thinking, and had returned to her first and greatest love, hide-and-seek. One dip, in a particularly molpish mood, she offered a staggeringly beautiful (and of course unspeakably valuable) prize, the Royal Molpish Flutterbeehat of the Transfinite Wowterfalls of Slomarda, to whosoever should find for her the best hiding place in all the world. No-one had seen the fabled Slomardan Flutterbeehat for kiloyips, as it was kept in the remote and heavily fortified and megaraptor-guarded Tower of Thrimlineska accessible only by treacherous sea journey past a maelstrom and up a narrow fjord.
Now it so happened that Balthacarius and Mrorl were passing near^{2} the Queen's planet Tylatris during extended trials of their new ship *FSCS*. News of the Queen's challenge and the legendary Flutterbeehat had spread through the neighbouring star-systems and reached our bOTTifactors in the usual way, through the Tencrivarna News Service they received every mornip (and on whichever ONGs they could tune in for bulletins). The sandstarraftcastleship was exceedingly good at picking up transmissions on all frequencies via its fractal-convoluted hull, which coupled with all wavelengths in high fidelity and with an enviable Message-to-Mustard ratio. They promptly augmented their flight plans and brought their ship (erratically) down into the starport in the Anumiran capital city Imnugarsis. By now of course The MetaTime was so ubiquitous that even foreign visitors were required to participate, and anymolp disembarking at an interstellar spaaaceport was fitted with a loaned holohelmet so they could interact with the natives through "real virtuality" (as they liked to call it). During the few nopix it took them to get through this process and travel to an inn near the palace, they heard no fewer than seven groups of locals excitedly discussing the Flutterbeehat challenge.
The next mornip they approached the palace prepared to tell the Receptionist for Emissaries and Travelling Puzzlemasters that they brought with them the means for being better-hidden than any and all rivals. Unfortunately but predictably (as they had suspected from the chaos and seaish *Schlangestehenning* at the spaaaceport), so many others had come for just the same purpose that it was impossible to get through the crowd by the gates. Mrorl and Balthacarius therefore returned to the hotel, sat in the lobby to overhear anything that might help them devise a plan, and resolved to get through to an official the next dip. Of course they didn't leave this to luck; Timlrorme and several other bots of ordinary size and design were summoned from the ship, equipped with holohelmets after snake-standing in customs through the nip, and carrying all manner of precious exotic goods, shimmering crystal pixels, and mind-enhancement aids to facilitate puzzle-solving; all of these to bribe every guard they encountered as they cleared a path for Mrorl and Balthacarius to follow. This strategy worked like magic -- mere minips after coming within view of the gates, the doors of Gamalera's throne room were opening for them to approach Her Majesty and offer their services. Both bOTTifactors bowed, as the Queen welcomed the famed duo with great excitement, clearly already convinced they were a far better prospect than the countless conundrum-crafters and common conjurers who typically sought her audience. She of course already possessed thorough and deep experience with all manner of disguise, concealment, camoflage, secreting and the like, and had researched the subject in depth, as her questions were immediately complex and well-informed. It took almost an entire nopix for them to explain it and answer all of the Queen's questions of clarification, but she became even more pleased and was clearly on board with the proposal. With duneish enthusiasm she came down off the dais, thanked her guests profusely, promising hasty provision of the prize without further ado -- provided they let her try out the technology at once. Balthacarius was clearly reluctant to proceed without detailed guarantees in writing, promising payment and disclaiming liability, suitably signed and sealed, &&c.; but the Queen was so urgently insistent, pleading with greater intensity and reiterating the promise of reward in an almost threatening way, that the bOTTifactors were compelled to accede. Mrorl brought out a leopad, already prepared with &MetaTime& bots and all necessary programming (much provided by the Imnugarsis Starport Authority, and all registered with and approved by the Anumiran Security Ministry), pressed a button and held it out to the Queen. A leopad and its &MetaTime& capabilities actually had nothing to do with concealment, but this one could be applied to that purpose exceptionally treeishly. It contained a pair of Holographic Online Recognition Negator-Nullifiers, (*HORNNs* for short, as Mrorl informed her). Using them, any two individuals could immediately exchange their identities, security credentials, saved passwords, online personas, and holographic appearance (both within &MetaTime& and in the real world as facilitated by the shape-morphing chameleoid holohelmets they were all wearing). Each HORNN acted as an autonomous organised sandbot and could itself be transferred into any leopad or other Time-accessing device, including most especially *Meta*Time accessors such as their helmets. The HORNNs were activated when two swapping-partners approached each other sufficiently closely to the device's cameras to trigger the bot's face regognition, and pressed their respective action buttons or whatever alternative feedback device they had configured to serve this role, immediately starting a triple-encrypted key exchange and data transfer protocol. Each of the two HORNNs acted as a personal agent of one of the two people. Mediated by sandbot-user-agents, both individuals registered their identities with each other and with a trusted third party (in this case a bureau overseen by the Tylatrian international governing body), then once all three entities had certified the cryptokeys of the other two, new identification codes were set up and the old ones rendered invalid. This was of course instantaneous, automated by the standard cryptobots within each user's device and at the certifying agency, and any unhelmeted observer would see an instantaneous total disapperance of one person's face and style customisations and simultaneous energising of the others' in their place, and contrariwise in the other. Naturally, within &MetaTime& itself the appearance was of two avatars gliding through each other like ghosts, or doing a neat little dance step, somersault, aerial loop, or whatever manoevre fit best with the avatar body type (the Queen, for example, currently manifesting herself as a raptorcuda, was at that moment swimming little loops out of excitement, though she would ordinarily hover in place without a trace of movement). Mrorl had been explaining this while positioning the leopad as if to take a Royal selfie by way of demonstration, when the Queen immediately smiled for the camera and pressed the button on Mrorl's screen, while simultaneously hitting #A# in her own gaunlet controller; this triggered the bilateral exchange of identities, avatars trading places in a blink. It all happened so blitzily that Mrorl, who had never actually tried the procedure and was largely unfamiliar with immersive virtuality (real or otherwise), did not notice the Queen's movement until it was too late. Nor did Balthacarius, though it did strike him a bit epsilon that suddenly Mrorl was speaking in a different voice, the change happening in mid-word and accompanied by a swish of bubbles and a blur of Gamalera's fins; glancing over to where the Queen's avatar had hovered he now saw Mrorl's by-now-familiar form (inspired by *TRON* and Princess Aurora). More alarmingly, though the Mrorlvatar was clearly over there, the exposition on HORNN technology ("<*:... the conversion of sequestered trust protocol algorithms via cross-compilers from the individual Time accessors' bytecode into galactic standard INTERBOT VII...:>") was now emanating from the Queen's pointed toothy mouth. The monologue (in the Queen's voice, but with Mrorl's quirky vocabulariy and gramattic pedantry) went on for a minip before Balthacarius managed to work out what had happened. He of course had an extensive database of avatars for his BOTM project^{3}, augmented with all notable figures and persons of interest (both molpish and **ndish) and had already equipped the loaned holohelmet with bots to tag everyone in view with identities floating in mid-air; and as a precaution against what chaos they might be creating (a monarchy that could not find its monarch seemed politically risky, to say the least), he had additional $REDUNDANT$ bots set up in his leopad and metatemporal field detector (modified from the earlier dracometric model). None of these were yet activated, however, as he had been overly preoccupied with the throngs of people at the palace gates, the bribery of many guards and staff, the fanfare upon throne room entrance, and so on. But when the voices changed and avatars swished into new positions Balthacarius had merely thought it another flourish of &MetaTime& sensory overload, an annoying barrage of animations and sidebars that he was still struggling to opt-out. Gamalera, finding herself hearing her own voice as if rehearsing a royal decree, took some moments to relish in the experience of a royal-red raptorcuda droning on about multilevel symmetric trust protocols, then began exercising the motion-physics of her newly acquired form. The identity disc was especially artful, blending well with the rest of the princess costume and clearly designed to function as a tiara if so desired. She thought it ironic that her unwitting accomplice would supply her with this technology after basing his &MetaTime& avatar on a universe in which one lived or died by one's digital identity. Meanwhile Mrorl, an elongated fish with stubby fins, was gesturing in the air to symbolise data packets traveling in six directions between three points in space when he noticed he could not see his hands or arms at all, tried to glance down at where they should be and was shocked to discover the head and neck didn't seem to work the normal way either; the best he could do was to spot the fringe of one translucent fin on each side. He was about to ask Balthacarius what was going on, when the Queen laughed and rezzed up her lightcycle, which quickly rolled away. Mrorl tried to stop her, but couldn't work out the needed relationship between body undulation and fin action, and Gamalera's light-trail was soon out of the room and angling down corridors. Balthacarius also tried to intervene, but he had chosen for his avatar a chemical-impulse-era astronaut's space-suit with giant bubble visor and rectangular backpack, and had inadvertently left the haptic interaction on default settings -- so his attempt to give chase came in comical bounding leaps. He merely ended up blocking Mrorl's path, and the royal guards sprung to action thinking he was assaulting the Queen. Though the guards could see the real world (having only cybergoggles instead of a full face-covering helmet) their work was complicated by the fact that the Queen had ordered all the lights turned off inside the palace, as it helped her hide and everyone was living in real-virtuality anyway. By the time Mrorl was able to get his royal personage off the floor and convince the guards that it was in no danger, Gamalera had sped out of the palace and across the grounds, and was racing through the city streets. Mrorl wished to chase her, but the courtiers would not allow it, and when he tried to explain that he wasn't the Queen at all but there had been an identity exchange, they concluded that this latest inanity of a hiding challenge with such a valuable and irreplacable prize had finally fried her logical regulators, and they politely but firmly escorted Mrorl into the royal apartments, which were then locked from outside, summoning a doctor or three as he swam about the palatial living suite looking for a way out. Although a raptorcuda could easily fit through any number of pipes or ducts or even break a small window, Mrorl was of course constrained by the limitations of his physical body and the &MetaTime& illusion adapted to that. To his perception it was a cave, though lavishly bespeckled with glimmering sea life and the occasional hoard of sunken treasure, with the only exits blocked by piles of stone. Balthacarius meanwhile, summarily evicted from the palace and politely told not to call again, headed back towards the inn, thinking -- with considerable alarm -- about the ramifications of what had just taken place. "Undoubtedly," he thought, "if it had been me holding that leopad I would have handled this much more beanishly. Instead of ranting on about cryptographic hocus-pocus, which would clearly cast doubts on anyone's sanity, I would have immediately asserted myself as the Queen and ordered the seizure of the blue-neon-gowned technopunk, namely Gamalera, at once -- whereas now she's tearing through the streets of the city playing Fantasy Lightcycle League -- and also, I would still have my fellow bOTTifactor at my side, who could have been appointed as a technical advisor. But that brainslughatted varbal kiepudink" -- by which he meant Mrorl -- "went completely off the moonbase, and now I've got to bring all my talents into play and solve this m**stard on my own..."
He tried to recall everything he knew about the HORNNs, which was considerable. By far the grestest danger, as he saw it, was that Gamalera, pursuing reckless adventure in Mrorl's avatar, would unwittingly trade identities with a point-of-sale payment machine or the cardreader in some night club or train station. In which case Gamalera's &MetaTime& appearance would revert to a user-interface element, some featureless cube or blank geometric shape, and her communications options would be severely limited making it harder to get herself back to the palace once gaining her senses. Worse still, Mrorl's identity and credentials would belong to the device, rendering it nonfunctional and likely to be erased and reprogrammed by the shopkeeper. Feeling even more urgency Balthacarius quickened his pace, and by Lucky chance not far from the inn he overheard a local resident excitedly relating a story to his friends, about how the foreign visitor and bOTTtronics specialist had whizzed by in a neon striped suit and billowing yukata (both now a brilliant yellow-orange), and how, racing down the stepped path towards the spaaaceport landing-fields, he had run into a pack of tourists resulting in everyone falling in a confused, clattering heap, with a chorus of ch**rping insults, and a tourguide angrily shouting for the police, how he then insisted that he was in fact an honoured guest of Her Royal Highness Queen Gamalera, but he had now gotten lost and would someone please call for an escort to bring him down to the spaaaceport, how everyone nearby laughed at this and walked away, with "Mrorl" hastily changing his mood and befriending the next passerby (guised as a foreign sailor) who took pity on him and offered to help, how then Mrorl had grabbed the stranger by the hand, only somehow causing both to pivot to each other's spot so that it was now the sailor who was sitting on the path, who then grabbed a glowing disc off the other's back which promptly morphed into a cosmonaut's astrolabe, how this sailor then jumped up and skipped off, dancing down the path to the landing bays and shoving people out of the way, and meanwhile the standing one (i.e. the one looking like Mrorl) slipping and rolling on his crawler treads at ever-increasing speed, and crashing at the next bend in the path with much scraping and an alarm-like screech.
Hearing all this Balthacarius felt a terrible m**stardy feeling all over, for he saw that this was of course Gamalera in Mrorl's identity who had crashed into the tourists and caused a scene, and probably fearing that her "hiding place" would be figured out she seized the next opportunity, and literally seized the Sailor's hand, actuating their controller-gauntlet, pressing firmly on the #A# button to confirm an identity swap. "<*:So, it has come to this:>," he sighed. He tried to deduce as much as he could, asking the witnesses questions, including most especially if anyone perchance had their holoview turned off at the time to see what actually physically happened. Fortunately one did, and in this way he confirmed that the act of grabbing the identity disc off Mrorl's avatar was not anybody grabbing anything, and so presumably Gamalera still had Mrorl's leopad containing the HORNNs (but it now appeared in &MetaTime& to be an accessory more suited to her new sailor appearance). Balthacarius figured that the Queen likely had her helmet on heads-up overlay (translucent as seen from inside) so she could handle tasks like hitting a confirm button on a leopad or grabbing someone else's controller-gauntlet. From two repair technicians who had arrived in an ambulance he learned that the last command on the injured "Mrorl"'s controller had been #R1+R2#, which was clearly Gamalera accidentally (or perhaps even intentionally) disengaging the brakes on the poor Sailor's treads causing them to careen away down the stone steps to great injury. At this point Balthacarius set his own holohelmet to two-way translucent and showed the technicians his identity, declaring he was the travelling companion of the injured (which in a certain sense he was), whereupon they allowed him to peek inside the ambulance at the sedated Sailor; by the embossed barcodes and company insignia it was clear this was indeed a foreign merchant sailor. It was essential that he confirm the location of the leopad; fortunately an old citizen who had taken to hip-mounted wheels in place of legs (those having long ago rusted beyond repair), who boasted being one of the few in the city who still vigorously bucked the real-virtuality trend, had seen the skipping, bouncing "sailor" shortly after the incident, and from his perspective got a good view of a leopad of foreign manufacture, in the expected shade of blue. So, apparently Gamalera was still in possession of the identity-swapping HORNNs and could continue this m**stardthwapping business of discarding each identity in exchange for another, disrupting a life each time. At the news that she now held the credentials of a foreign sailor Balthacarius despaired, "Of all things! When planet leave is up and she doesn't report back to duty, and how could she, not knowing what shipping company she is supposedly working for, the captain is bound to notify the local police, who will arrest the deserter, and the Queen will soon find herself in her own city's jail or a ship's brig!" There was little chance, if any, of locating the "sailor" who was Gamalera, but Balthacarius hastened on down to the spaaaceport. He had another Lucky break, as he soon arrived in a grand plaza filled with a seaish crowd; mingling through this he soon learned from overheard comments that his fears of an arrested monarch were fast on their way to a very non-virtual reality. Only minips earlier a respectable Starship's Captain, apparently owner of an entire fleet (and whose avatar could best be described as a world boxing champion), had recognised a crewman of his of great reputation and most awesomeful character; yet now this individual was shouting ch**rps and insults at all passing by; and to those who cautioned them to calm down and enjoy the immersive fantasy their planet had to offer and stop ch**rping lest cybersecurity officers take notice, they exclaimed that they were as good as any security officer, as they could become anyone they wanted, and that included the planet-wide Secretary of IT Security. Scandalised by such behaviour, the captain located the crewman and remonstrated with them, who replied by lunging at him suddenly as if to begin a wrestling match, but the captain, being considerably larger and with more points of articulation, had them in a headlock in millipix, whereupon a security squad on routine rounds, which so happened to be led by the Chief of IT Security of the entire port district, came upon this scene, and hearing the story and seeing a sailor clearly under the brainslug, and more disorderly than usual of sailors (which is saying a lot), ordered the miscreant immediately bundled off to jail. But no sooner had the captain released his grip to enable the officers to begin the arrest, than the sailor then initiated the same wrestling manoeuvre, this time on the IT Security Chief (who more resembled a ninja warrior than a typical IT nerd), both stumbled and flipped over onto the ground, the sailor then shouting to the security officers to "arrest xem", while the ninja IT Chief leapt up, laughed, and ordered the squad to pick up this troublemaker and haul them back to the station's jail without further delay, and not to spare the thwapstick in the process.
Thus, in less than a nopix, Queen Gamalera had managed to steal three persons' identities (along with their wardrobe and accessories), and was presently endowed with the rights and privileges of a high-ranking security chief, who, though Randall knew was innocent, would now be confined to some dark cell in their own Basement, and possibly enduring an initial pelting that very moment. Balthacarius headed immediately for the port district IT and Security offices. In reality an irregular row of drab storehouses, in &MetaTime& the offices were a colossal stone edifice, with the names of history's greatest organised-sand engineers inscribed in 1's and 0's around an entablature legible from a kilocue away (and up close, revealed to be embrasures and oculus windows behind which toiled IT workers). No-one was there to stop him entering the foyer or going up the stairs, and he soon found the Chief's office, and within it a bull sitting awkwardly in a swivel chair at a desk with three large display screens. This impressive creature (which, when he stood and stepped out from behind his desk, was evidently a Minotaur and not a bull) looked as if approaching to throw our hero out on his wheels, but then stopped and winked (though Balthacarius could hardly be expected to recognise xem) then burst out :azuling:. The voice was harsh, the body language and face expressing a controlfreakiness one would expect of the IT chief post, but the laugh -- and particularly the wink -- brought to mind the mischievous trickster and puzzle-challenger Gamalera, and indeed it was she who looked out through those red beady eyes. Balthacarius had no time to speculate on why she was no longer a ninja before she spoke.
"I knew you straight away," said Gamalera the IT Chief, "you're one of the famous bOTTronics specialists who came to me with this wonderful leopad (now glancing at the desk, where lay a small marble-maze puzzle). Well, what do you think? Pretty good hiding spot, huh? They'll never find me now, and I'm big and strong too, watch!"
And she bent her head down, aiming the horns straight ahead and ran across the room, toppling a server rack. She scowled a bit.
"Ouch! I think these helmets could use better padding. Perhaps I should order another. Or I could take yours, once I've thrown you in the Basement too!"
"They said you were a *ninja*--" blurted Balthacarius, stalling for time and glancing for the door, which the bullheaded Gamalera had cleverly blocked in the minor upset of the toppling server-rack.
"I was, out there in the market plaza. This IT bloke must have geofenced avatars. I bet they're chronofenced too. Completely illegal for a government official on duty, unless you're actively engaged in undercover work, which I would have to say I am. Even better for the royal hiding! What do you think?"
Balthacarius could think of no pertinent response.
"Not to suggest I have anything against you or your craft, and you certainly must have helped equip this new technology... but clearly you know too much. Perhaps changing one's identity should be illegal too, in which case the *enabler* of the bots involved would also be illegal. Yes, it's down to the Basement with you!" Another nasty laugh, nostrils flaring. "That way, when I exercise my newly created freedom, no-one will know who -- or *what* I am!"
"But Your Majesty," exclaimed Balthacarius, "You don't know all the dangers of this device! Suppose you unwittingly take the identity of one who turns out to be a criminal on the run, or an enemy of some other criminal, with a price on their head..."
"No problem! All I have to remember is, after each switch, check my vitalstats!" and pointed to the left temple area of her holohelmet. She knew, as Balthacarius had feared, that in &MetaTime& it is easy to check one's credit rating, recent security-related incidents, and much more with a glance and subvocal facial twitch. He tried to think of something. <*:Perhaps I can get that marble-maze off the desk...:>
"As long as I have one or two unsuspecting people around, nothing can stop me!"
Balthacarius did his best to persuade Her Highness not to pursue further ID-exchanges, but it was clearly pointless; the Queen only :azuled: off his suggestions and made jokes, then finally said, clearly relishing every word:
"I'm never going back to that palace, you can be assured of that! I see ahead of me a great journey, an epic adventure through the lives and virtual bodies of my loyal subjects, from one to the next, giving each a turn to be Queen for a while, which after all is in keeping with the democratic principles of our enlightened monarchy. And then, to top it off, the face and garments of a film star or fashion model, a star athlete or top recording artist -- if you could have a hit song or win an OTTscar, which would you choose? Why not both? A-ha ha haha ha!" And then she tilted her head slightly and shouted to her subordinates -- clearly using a headset comm link -- and Balthacarius, seeing they would bundle him off in moments unless he acted, activated a panic button in his holohelmet, streaming dozens of molpy videos simutaneously, which flooded the office's network bandwidth setting off several alarms from security monitoring equipment about the place, and in the general confusion he leapt out a window onto the sill of the massive stone edifice, skittered nervously over to the first capital and slid down the column (in reality of course he was just rolling across a tin roof and down a rainspout). By a great stroke of luck, nobody heard the clatter he made during this desperate escape, and he managed to make it to another crowded plaza and lose himself amidst the throngs of holiday-goers before the arrival of the IT agents who had begun pouring out of the station and fanning out in all directions.
Lost in caveish thoughts, Balthacarius started back towards the city. "It would be most sree, really, to leave that Gamalera to her fate, go to the sickbay where the Sailor is lying in a repair bay cloaked in Mrorl's stunning avatar, and convey them to the palace, so my friend can get his identity back. Though it's true that would thrust the Sailor up onto the Throne, giving them the rights and duties of the Queen, or perhaps King from the monarch's own perspective if that's what they want to be -- <*:and serve her right, the reckoned ch**rper!:>" he thought emphatically, referring to Gamalera. Not a bad plan perhaps, but clearly irrelevant due to the riverish detail that the HORNNs were still in Mrorl's leopad, presently lying on the Chief's desk back at the IT office. Balthacarius briefly contemplated the design and implementation of another such device, perhaps installed under his chest armour and activated by internal mental signals -- but no, there was neither the time nor the means -- many of the design secrets were still known only to the hapless Mrorl, presently under palace house arrest. "But What-If..." he thought, "I go to Mrorl, who is Queen after all, and perhaps has regained enough sanity to at least be allowed to receive a visitor again, and I'll tell her -- or should I say *him* -- I'll tell them to have the army commandeer the city's security services, including most especially cybersecurity in the port district. Then we can get in there and recover the leopad without hindrance from the bull-headed Queen, or whatever type of head she has decided to grow in the meantime, then go forward with Mrorl and the Sailor!"
However, Balthacarius wasn't admitted to the palace. The Queen, so the palace liaison told him, had been confined by magneto-muonic straps to protect herself from herself, and cognitively suppressed as well, and was expected to coma for twenty-seven nopix at least.
"Ch**rping mustard!" groaned Balthacarius, and headed towards the hospital entrusted with the Sailor's care, for he was beginning to think they may already have had their treads repaired and would be released, free to wander the city again and nigh impossible to locate (though they would be easy to spot if they hadn't discovered the avatar customisation settings, but given all the pop-up &MetaTime& Makeover Mini-Marts just outside the port district, there was little doubt a sailor on planet leave wouldn't resist the chance to try some more exotic or tantalising options). To the medical staff he again identified himself as the travelling companion of the one admitted this mornip with broken crawler treads, which was verified easily, and learned that the needed repairs were routine but the particular magneto-active components, apparently an exotic type designed for operation in deep spaaace, would take a few dips to arrive, and in the meantime the patient would need to remain in bed, illumiating all around them in a steadily morphing rainbow of saturated colour. Balthacarius of course had no intention of asking to visit, for it would then be immediately obvious that the patient didn't know him from al-Khwārizmī. Reassured at least that Mrorl's identity would not be rolling through the city anytime soon, he stayed near the hospital for some minips, pacing back and forth and planning how to proceed, then began walking around the streets of the city gradually allowing his wheels to find their way downhill to the spaaaceport district and its many landing bays. After half a nopix he entered another large plaza, where police were stopping people, holding up holophotos unmistakably his own (both avatar and physical appearance), from the looks of it taken by security cameras and MetaTime screen captures whilst he was in the IT Security office. This was clearly a dragnet ordered by Gamalera, determined to get him into custody as soon as possible, and in a moment he saw he had been spotted, signals beeped and officers converged upon him from three directions. Balthacarius calmly gave himself up, asking only to be taken to the IT Security Chief as he had recorded evidence of a recent crime that was urgently in need of investigation. They took him, handcuffed to a massive service robot, back down to the huge stone building; once in the Chief's office Gamalera -- now an impressive Hepta-Hydra -- greeted him with satisfied grunts and twinkles in her many eyes. But Balthacarius was already speaking in an odd manner not his own:
"Honourable master of protection and surveillance! Please you must save me, give me back my name my face for family honour! I go back to raft-rocket, cannot roll up the ramp, comrade Drismiev blocks me, holds up the mirror, I say you must believe me, time meta helmet disguise breaks, This man change my face, Drismiev says use your access key, and key does not work. This man he grabs my hand, then bam he has my face, and I am ruined, please help please please, <*:kata i naia, gli shethkalia rotavremopu na thkia kalathkepu Lorda Randallu. hierbrba radvaliadva, na, brathki smopu varbradvarbrathothkavak...:>"
And he rambled on in some language carefully designed to sound distinctly foreign both to him and anyone here on Tylatris, and occasionally gesturing to call attention to his left control-glove. Gamalera, watching all this from behind the IT Chief's desk, became more intrigued, eventually coming around to give the kneeling Balthacarius a closer look, and saw that the hand-controller was indeed dented in just the way one would if trying to forcibly actuate the wearer's #A# button -- unaware that the clever bOTTifactor had retrieved this control-glove from a scrap heap behind the hospital, for it was indeed the Sailor's own damaged gauntlet hand-controller that Gamalera herself had forcibly squeezed to effect her second identity theft back up on the stepped stone path. Balthacarius had also integrated several other pieces of scrap plating and servo-actuators from that discarded parts pile, and in addition was relaxing his own internal pistons and solenoids to make himself a quarter-cue shorter and considerably hunched over, effecting a completely different physical appearance while still obviously a foreign visitor. Gamalera asked a couple IT bots to pull up video showing where this individual had been, and Balthacarius had counted on this, having intentionally walked quite a few streets where there were municipal security cameras, until finding the perfect unwitting accomplice, a foreigner with the exact gait and stature he needed; then making a point of doubling back, hunching down, and quickening his pace (while both were out of sight of the IT cameras) and it was therefore a simple matter to find the place and time that a side-ally avatar-swap could have plausibly occurred, as their systems tracked ordinary avatar changes but were not equipped to notice simultaneous identity-and-avatar swaps, merely assuming that identity was immutable and reliable (impractical at any rate since the cameras could not access cryptokeys of foreigners). Gamalera had the service-robot release his captive, and ordered all IT-bots out of the room, and when she was alone with the prisoner began a thorough interrogation. Balthacarius supplied an elaborate story of how he, a Beresievan charter pilot, had deorbited just that dip, carrying several passengers including Vital Hotdog Function (all five original members, currently on the first leg of their Ketchup Reunion tour^{4}) along with an entourage of close friends, who Balthacarius carefully name-dropped one at a time, all celebrities well-known to be from VHF's inner circle, though none had been in the tabloids lately (this, a careful precaution against anyone possibly being well-informed on such matters, was easy for Balthacarius to concoct using search queries in his heads-up display), and how they were soon scheduled to conduct sound checks for a surprise and secretly arranged concert at the Grand Theatre of the House of Anumira, all in the honour of HRH Gamalera of Tylatris; but how, having just put his trusted first mate Drismiev in charge and disembarked the raft-rocket hoping to run his wheels a bit after being stuck in the captain's chair for the long journey, an assailant, who looks just like this (and he pointed at himself) coming the other way and suspiciously eyeing his wings and mane (his proper avatar, as he explained, being a Tulpar, which of course he had just seen in the surveillance camera playback pulled up by the witless IT bots) suddenly and forcefully wrestled him to the ground and let go a moment later, trotting away gleefully.
Balthacarius put everything he had into the tale, consistently maintaining unusual grammar (by deactivating parts of his own Brocamatrix), and adding details to be as believable as possible. He spoke at great length about his lost reputation and beautiful avatar, while heaping insults on the stranger who was now defiling both, and he even began to hit himself (as if to smash the bubble space-helmet and pull out the air-hoses of the Baltha-Lunar spacesuit avatar); he spoke of each of the famous passengers, giving captivating and funny personal anecdotes from some of his past gigs flying them about the cosmos; he reminisced about his family and their proud history, the uncle's business fermenting the best Lightning in a Bottle of the land; and he even shared with the IT Chief his closest secret: that they had scheduled an arrival reception late that evening at a club in the nearby city (i.e. Imnugarsis) and that he was carrying a pair of tickets for two Anumiran guests.
Gamalera listened eagerly and embraced every detail, as it made perfect sense that Balthacarius, wishing to avoid any further involvement with IT Security, would dispose of his avatar and identity as soon as possible, and switch with a traveller, furthermore one who had control of a rocket, who would have been granted expedient passage through customs, and for whom any and all doors would be opened without question. It was obvious that Gamalera had been plotting similar schemes, and likely that she would jump at the chance to masquerade as one of the band, oblivious to the haniam of deputising a rock star as the IT Chief of Spaaaceport Security. She of course tried to convince Balthacarius to give her the tickets, which did not require much coaxing, merely the suggestion that it would help the IT agents locate the perpetrator who was thought likely to crash the party, so he selected the Hepta-Hydra's action-tab^{5} in heads-up view and sent the barcodes by private chat. By now the bOTTifactor was certain Gamalera had taken the bait: the Queen couldn't bear to see these tickets go to Mrorl in the palace, since he could not possibly be as big a VHF fan as she was, and believing everything, she believed that Balthacarius had a second device with HORNNs -- indeed, she had no reason to think otherwise.
There was a silence without questions; one could see the many gears turning in all seven heads. In nonchalant manner she asked for the name and address of the club, the time of the party, names of backstage door bouncers, and so on, and a few details about his raft-rocket and landing bay. Balthacarius answered, counting on the Queen's selfish ambition, and suddenly she stood up, took the multihat off the desk (Mrorl's leopad), messaged the IT staff that she was out to verify the foreigner's claims, and rushed out of the room, locking the door from outside. Balthacarius then heard orders directing guards placed outside the door and each window -- evidently the wiser from his escape that mornip. Of course, she would find nothing, as there was no raft-rocket, no event at the club he mentioned, no celebrity entourage or VHF members whatever. But that was the whole point of the plan. As soon as the Queen had gone, he got up, stood near the door, calmly restored his Brocamatrix settings to normal, readied his recently-modified metatemporal field detector, and commenced Waiting. The small botgadget was still TIOC-equipped, and was configured to activate Mrorl's leopad remotely -- both devices had been set up for this the night prior at the inn, in case of emergency or common mustard, and while Balthacarius was pacing around the hospital he had verified it was still working even with the leopad sitting inside the port district IT offices. This had not been detected or disabled by IT Security, which was unsurprising since Coincidence communications were a technology beyond the knowledge of anyone on Tylatris, or indeed, nearly anyone in the galaxy. It wasn't long before there were heavy steps pounding back up the stairs, muffled ch**rping, and multitones of a door-lock de-activation, and the IT Chief burst in, shouting:
"*Brainslug!* Where is VHF? Where is your rocket? Why no private event at the nightclub?"
But that's all she said, for Balthacarius (standing behind the door) activated Mrorl's leopad via TIOC, switching their identities in an instant; and before Gamalera could understand that anything had happened, he stepped out and (continuing with the same fluster and tone that the IT Chief had just been using, with the holohelmet automatically taking care of the voice) ordered the staff to throw her in the basement at once, and keep a constant guard. Stunned by the sudden reversal, Gamalera didn't realise how hillishly she had been deceived; but as (like Cuegan noticing the slowly rising baconcoffeesnow) she gradually realised she had been dealing with the brilliant bOTTifactor all along and there never was any VHF Ketchup Reunion tour, the ch**rps and threats and general outcry became ever louder down in the IT Ultra-Secure Basement -- impuissant without access to Mrorl's leopad, which of course had been returned to the custody of the IT Security Chief, i.e. Balthacarius (its in-&MetaTime& appearance having morphed into a lunar navgrid and radio, with convenient handlebar attachment brackets). Balthacarius now changed avatars (via the normal &MetaTime& interface) to the IT Chief's standard formal uniform with detective insignia, deactivating the avatar geotag and chronotag settings, and proceeded without further delay up to the palace.
The Queen was still asleep, they informed him, but Balthacarius, in his capacity as Spaaaceport District IT Chief of Security, said it was urgent that he speak to Her Highness, if only for a minip or two, that it was a matter of highest import, a crisis, the nation threatened by matters of security at the hands of foreign hackerbots they had been monitoring at the IT Offices, and more of the same, until the staff were compelled to send a Foreign Relations officer and two Royal Guards to escort him to the royal apartments. Well-acquainted with his friend's habits and eccentricities, Balthacarius produced magnetic field oscillations in a pattern that always reminded Mrorl of his struggles to end that basement ordeal of thorough pelting^{6}, and Mrorl instantly jumped, raising a fin in reflex against an imagined volley of bonbons. He looked at the visitor, recognised him as Balthacarius despite the atypical choice of dress, and welcomed him in a thoroughly normal and non-hysterical manner, then reassuring those present that ze was well enough at least to conduct a private meeting, dismissed all guards and attendants.
Mrorl was overjoyed as the bOTTifactor explained his plans, swam out of zir sleeping-lair, and called for the Queen's doctor and two closest attendants to declare that ze was well and fully recovered from the excitement of that mornip. They relaxed the state of house arrest, though on advice of hir most trusted advisor the doctor would accompany the Queen until further notice, and later, in hir formal presentation (a sea-dragon with fringe and foliage blending beautifully into royal-coloured flowing robes, bearing the Trident of Slomarda) ze swam to the throne and issued several orders. First, ze had a national security detail accompany two palace agents to the IT Security Offices, and oversee the supervision of the two new prisoners there (the real Queen in Balthacarius' moon-man avatar, and the real IT Security Chief in the Sailor's avatar) both of whom were declared to be foreign hackers and masters of disguise who aimed to cause political unrest by infiltrating the Anumiran institutions of government. Secondly, Balthacarius was given the best guest quarters just a few dozen cue away from the royal bedroom, and the Tylatrian Bureau of Digital Affairs were told (directly on order of the Throne) to cooperate with the Spaaaceport IT Chief of Security (that is to say, Balthacarius) with regards to any investigations into identity credentials, security keys, and the like. Finally, for everyone's sanity the Queen declared that everyone should get a good nip's coma as it was getting rather late and there would be plenty to do in the mornip.
During the nip, under the authorisation he now enjoyed as a guest of the Queen, Balthacarius could come and go at will, and saw this as the best opportunity to loan the HORNNs to himself and aid in the demustarding of the Sashiris-Pregstubin entanglement. He left the palace and held two meetings with Balthacarius^{7e}, bringing the Mrorleopad with him. Upon meeting with his Baltharelative-past-self^{7p}, he explained where to find the Sailor and transferred the HORNNs and some useful access credentials into the leopad of Sashiris, then explained how to effect identity swaps. The second meeting, mere minips later, saw the return of the HORNNs with much gratitude, and a caution to apply selective retrograde amnesia to prevent any anticipation-induced temporal paradox.
The next dip, Mrorl again swam to the throne and called for a palace carriage to go down to the hospital where the Sailor had been recuperating, and regardless of their condition bring them back to the palace as the royal physician and repairbots would now take over their care. The Sailor was brought to the palace, and easily rolled under their own power into the throne room. They stood proudly in Mrorl's stunning neon-patterned bodysuit and flowing gown (which at that moment was purple with hints of red), with the identity-disc under one arm (this was their sailor's hat, which they had been compelled to carry by their side, cadet-style, because it did not fit over the loaner holohelmet). It was clear to all, doctor and repairbots alike, that no further healing was needed. The Sailor-as-Mrorl was then sent to another of the guest apartments to relax while the Queen (i.e. Mrorl) had another private meeting withtor and repairbots alike, that no further healing was needed. The Sailor-as-Mrorl was then
Though the bOTTifactors had no intention of returning all displaced identities to their original owners (least of all the criminally mischievous Gamalera), their main concern was that Mrorl be Mrorl again as soon as possible, and likewise for Balthacarius. Mrorl therefore asked for the second of ITSec's prisoners (Gamalera in possession of the Balthavatar and associated ID) be brought up under heavy guard and brought before Xes August Presence. The first reparative transfer was promptly carried out (this bei@@@@@@@@@A@EK@@@@ had his own identity and avatar (the lunar pioneer spaaacesuit) and the Queen now appeared to all to be the IT from how Balthacarius had set them the nip before), but now lacking that positions's authorisations (as Balthacarius had also carefully transferred these to the ranking deputy in the ITSec office). In this guise she received a most seaish and prickly lecture, after which she was sent to the *grand* basement, three floors below moat level -- whose foam maidens and pelting apparatus were feared by