Worldstar - User contributions [en]

Strange Fruit

2024-12-01T18:15:51Z

ScholarGobbo: A brief introduction to the song Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol and recorded by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk Billy Holiday]. It is a protest song against the lynching of Black Americans, the Strange Fruit being the bodies hanged from trees.

Wightsburg, Arkansas

2024-12-01T18:12:13Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Strange Fruit

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Wightsburg, Arkansas ==
'''Recipe for Disaster'''

Yield: 1 wild night in a sundown town

* 1 Cause so far gone as to not be lost, but found, actually, in your heart of hearts
* 21 grams of the blackest soul-essence (yours)
* 3 tablespooks worth of juicy racial animus
* 1½ teaspoons of grief-tears
* 3 - 5 pieces of [[Strange Fruit|strange fruit]] picked ripe from the tall poplar tree in the center of town
* Several moth-eaten bedsheets
* 1lb of dust taken from graves in or around Wightsburg dated 1861-1865
* 2 or 3 gaggles of Yankees, shot full of Northern aggression and adventurism, seeking you, the Great Witch of the South
* 1 copy of the elusive ''Negro Motorist Red Book'', “a modern Malleus Maleficarum masquerading as nigger empowerment” (your words), torn to shreds

'''Preparation'''

''Before the year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Fifty Six''

# Bake in Southern heat for two or three decades, mum and mummifying.
# Stew in your own juices, marinating thoroughly in the gangrenous suffering of Antebellum battlefields, where countrymen, horses and King Cotton were hewn down by cold Northern scythes.
# Come the dreary post-war time, place yourself over a fire until boiling. Sear until hatred makes fond. Deglaze using a stock of own blood until exsanguinated, expired.
# Be swept up by Reanimation, joining undeath’s gray ranks, as the formerly-gray blossoms green, or fades yellow, swept up by Reconstruction.

''During the afternoon, on the day of the feast''

# Wash bedsheets by hand in lukewarm water until free of blood. Dry, iron and fold them.
# Pick, then shuck or vivisect strange fruit.
# Imbibe racial animus.

''Throughout the early evening''

# Heat cauldron, occasionally stoking the flames with your Lost Cause.
# Add strong moonshine to a mixture of blood & soil in the cauldron. Simmer.
# Slowly add soul essence to concoction until it becomes reddish-black, viscous.
# Sauté strange fruit in a separate (but equal) cauldron, using scant blood sprinkled with brown sugar as a base until the fruit has caramelized. Simmer.
# Place bedsheets on a pedestal. Run fingers through them. Sob into them.
# Pour caramelized fruit and base into the main cauldron. Simmer.

''At dusk''

# Paint your face haint blue, warning spooks that they can look but not touch.
# Pour steaming contents of cauldron onto the ground beneath the pedestal until sheets rise and ambulate and clamor for righteous vengeance.
# Await the arrival of Yankee witchfinders and their dusky allies.
# They will be hungry (for conquest, glory and your womanhood).
# Serve Hell—hot—in portions according to each Yank’s desire until they are bloated, choked by the noose of indigestion.

Road

2024-11-30T15:34:47Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Wightsburg, Arkansas, now this page again links all the worldbuilding pieces

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona. the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]], [[Josie|Victorian era England]], [[The Mock Angel|your house (in Utopia)]], [[Who /monster/ here?|World Star Museum]], [[Sentencing|Texas]] and [[Wightsburg, Arkansas]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Furry

2024-11-29T18:26:49Z

ScholarGobbo: Created Furries, sorry about that, unless you're a Furry in which case, you're welcome

I'm not going to get into this. You want to dress up like an ocelot, knock yourself out.

For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used: A Narrative of the First Age

2024-11-29T18:25:39Z

ScholarGobbo: Linked to Furries

{{NarrativeNotice}}

= '''For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used''' =
'''A Narrative Of The First Age'''

The Manufactory of the Dawn, [[goblins]] run it now, that’s what I’d been told. Probably getting into a lot of trouble. I know all about that, I’m a goblin too. I’d picked up the sloth-construct cart from where it had been left. Didn’t see the driver anywhere about. Cargo got to move. Just hitched up the beasts, put on the cap that had been left on the drivers bench and patted the furry creature sitting there. Away we went, down the [[road]].

The Manufactory could be seen for days across the plain. The base was like a mountain, though closer you could see it was layers, terraces, a ziggurat seven levels high. Above that a big wide level, horizontal, overhanging the base, a clear sign that this was no natural landmark. And on top the tower, like a great blade pointing at heaven. Here and there thin plumes of smoke escaped. At night mysterious orange glows could be made out, scattered across it.

In the mornings when I wanted to be sleeping it blocked the sun. But necessity drives us, the brazen sloths did better in the shade than the heat of the day. I did too, and so did my [[furry]] companion. We made our way along the road, one of many carts and wagons crawling across the plain, me napping when the sun slowed us down, waking when it cooled in the night. Shortly after dawn we arrived.

The gates stood open, higher than any building I’d ever been in. A goblin stood between them watching me. He held out a hand to stop and I tried a variety of commands, the sloths slowing down and eventually settling only a few yards beyond him, so one of the control words must be right.

“All right, all right speed demon. No need to hurry. Governor’s not watching,” he said. “So, what you hauling.”

I looked back at the sacks piled high. “Just what it says on the manifest. Rice and beans.”

He didn’t ask me for the manifest. “Rice and beans together, or rice in some sacks and beans in the others.”

I looked at the sacks again. I began to doubt it was rice, or beans. Changing my mind now would just cause this guy trouble. Looking at him, ragged ears, skin flaking from too much sun, he’d had trouble enough already. “Rice in some sacks, beans in others.”

He turned to look into the darkness of the cavern. Within was a poorly lit enormous tunnel that got gloomier the further back it went. I shaded my eyes to make out goblins and wagons, moving back and forth, heading for stairs and tunnels and corridors. The interior of the Manufactory was honeycombed with passages and rooms.

I should have figured that out myself.

“Well over there, that’s the tunnel to the rice bunker. And there, that’s the way to the bean cellar. Pick one and unload, see what they want to do with the rest I guess.”

“Thanks pal,” I said, looking down. He peeled a long strip of dry skin from his head. I took pity on him. “Here, try my cap. Keep the sun off your head.”

For a moment he looked like I’d insulted him, or maybe insulted his mother, though if he knew his mother he’d be the first goblin I’d met who did. “Okay then.” I passed it down and he put it on, looking faintly ridiculous under the brim. “Yeah this will be good. Thanks. You’re a real gent, generous as the goblin king.”

I always like to be helpful.

I kicked the brazen sloths back into movement. The tunnel had a great plaque above it, with sigils or runes or glyphs, all carved out the stone, or maybe forged of dark metal. Too high to get a good look. Below has a single large symbol that was unfamiliar, one of the old languages, Enochian maybe or Ogham or Lingua Ignota. And hanging from it by a bit of string a wooden sign with a painted picture on it. A wheatsheaf I would have said, a grass stalk. The goblin at the entrance said it was for rice, so rice it was.

Maybe the painter wasn’t very good at painting. You’d hope they could find a good painter somewhere in the Manufactory. Probably busy elsewhere.

At the end of the tunnel I came to a great chamber, goblins moving sacks here and there with wheelbarrows, the whole lit by glowing orbs in the ceiling. “Hey there,” called a goblin, a big guy. His striped vest glowed in the light. In one hand he held a tablet. Wax, I thought to begin with, then as I managed to stop the brazen sloths I saw that there were pieces of paper on it, trapped by a metal clasp at the top.

“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” he said and vaulted up onto the cart before I could stop him. This disturbed my furry companion who hid under the cart.

I checked the sloths were staying in place. By the time I turned he had his knife out and cut open a sack. “Coal,” he said meditatively. “Coal. We don’t usually handle that here.”

“Oh, the guy at the gate thought you did,” I said. “Hey, I can turn around and go back if it’ll cause trouble.”

“No, no,” he said, poking at it. “We can handle anything you know? The Governor put us here, there’s nothing we can’t handle. Anything under the Throne Of The Creator, that’s what we deal with. Coal, coal.” He thought for a moment, then riffled through his papers.

He stood tall and shouted out. “Okay listen up.” A few goblins drifted closer, some bringing empty wheelbarrows. “We got a load of coal here. We’ll send a message up the tube, let them upstairs know what’s coming. We know where it goes, sacks on the hooks, then ring through to the belt office, get them to turn it on. It’ll be pulled away through the shafts, to be dropped where ever needs fuel.” He gesticulated wildly. I saw where he pointed to when he talked about the hooks. A whole bunch hanging from a belt that wound around a big spindle, then turned to go upwards, diagonally, the belt itself vanishing into the wall.

As he organised the work party I thought to myself I’d done enough here. Maybe it was time to see where else I could help.

“It’s been a long trip,” I began.

“Yeah yeah, I got you. We’ve got all the requirements, and them fit for the goblin king. Now see there, the outline of the goblin shitting? That’s the latrine.” I looked, and from a great plaque of symbols hung the latrine symbol. “The one of the goblin washing? Bathhouse. The goblin sleeping, that’s the bunks. And the gobblin eating? I reckon you’ll figure that one out.”

I did. I relieved myself in the latrines, and I washed myself in the bathhouse. In the changing room I found a clean set of clothes, including an orange vest that made me highly visible, a hard white hat and a tablet with a clip holding some papers and a pencil on a piece of string. I put them on, it was almost as though they’d been left for me, they fit so well. On the breast I put a badge, one with an old sigil on it, one that looked like a throne.

In the canteen there were a handful of goblins scattered about the tables, and three at the stove. I went over and greeted them. They seemed eager to please.

“What would you like sir, we have plenty here,” said the first, thin and pale, pushing a basket of crusts and crumbs my way.

“Give him a tray and a bowl,” said the second. “And yes, plenty, but not too much, no we’re not wasteful, your worship.” He had a basket of dried fruit that he put on the counter.

“Enough of that, a hot meal, that’s what the he wants I’m sure. When he reports to the Governor he’ll say we feed people up properly, won’t you captain.” He put some fat in a pan, then the pan onto a metal plate. It hissed and sizzled. He held his hand over a basket of eggs, chopped onion, some large mushrooms, and cut up roots and vegetables. “What’s your pleasure sir.”

“You’re the chefs,” I said and a moment of panic swept over the three. “You’re in charge here, you don’t need to call me sir. Make me your speciality.”

They made me Eggs Gobolino, a great pile of everything bound up in eggs. Pretty good, even with the shell and burned bits. The furry creature returned , sensing a meal time, but wouldn’t eat it. A mechanical snail slithered around, waste bins hanging from its shell, and I discreetly put the portion I couldn’t finish in.

When I saw the chefs watching I made some notes on the papers on the tablet, the eggs recipe and a picture of the snail.

“Was it good your highness?”

“Very good, very good. Don’t call me highness.”

“I suppose you’ll be going upstairs.” The three of them looked over at a red door. A threatening sigil was above it, perhaps a double-headed axe, or perhaps a boar’s face.

“I suppose I will,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

Through the doors were stairs, possibly carved out of stone, made or molded in place. As I climbed them one wall opened up and I found myself above the cavern I had been in. A big cart pushed by an obsidian bull had run into the back of one with brazen sloths in front. Goblins clambered all over the two, checking for damage, calling to each other, offloading the cargo. The one with the clipboard and vest I’d seen before was waving his finger at a skinny newcomer, who in turn was shouting at the sloths. In the echoes of the high vaults and the clicking and clacking of the moving belts it was impossible to make out what they said. Just before I climbed out of sight he kicked at a brass sloth and yelled a clear curse.

The stairs turned and twisted, moving through the solid structure of the Manufactory. After climbing far enough my knees began to complain and the rest of me regret I did not bring a drink with me I came to a landing. In one corner was a latrine and [[water]] fountain that I took advantage of, then investigated further. Here sixteen stairways met, each with a tube alongside that connected in a complex set of junctions. Four stairs went down, and four up; the others appeared to turn off in some uncanny direction. The closer I approached them the more normal they appeared, simply steps that happened to head off in a dimension not normally accessible.

The glyphs on them were as mysterious as ever. One did have a goblin-drawn label; it appeared to be a frog seen in all directions from the inside out.

I rejected them, turned back to the usual directions. I discounted the four going down and considered the others. A relatively simple set of right crossed blades, or a wheel, and below it a stylus on a piece of board caught my eye. As I considered the furred creature joined me, then went and sat on the bottom step.

I mounted the stairs, the creature following. After passing through several strata of different coloured stone the stairs emerged into an airy space, lit by great beams of dust-flecked sunlight. Out of reach were catwalks and stairways, poles and ropes, great girders. The sounds were muted, there was movement on some distant ones but none close enough to make out details.

The stairway zigged and zagged, was encaged in metal, then released again, now flimsier, gaps between stairs. I climbed steadily, finding that I was alongside a vertical belt hoisting sacks upwards. Just before the increasing thickness of girders became a ceiling the stairwell turned around the belt and met a doorway.

There was a knocker which I knocked. The door crept open to reveal a silver ape construct. The mechanism beckoned me to follow, and we travelled through a maze of narrow passages.

At another door, the ape knocked, then let me through. I found myself in a great chamber. Before me was a silver claw, five times the height of a goblin, easy to measure as a dozen goblins festooned in polishing rags climbed over and around it, polishing with wax and cloths where the previous goblin had just been holding on.

I marched up and cleared my throat, then again louder. “Who’s in charge here?”

A goblin with a spectacular boil on his nose looked up, wiped the sweat from his brow with a cloth. “Chief’s round the corner, dealing with some cock up,” he grunted, then went back to polishing the boot print of the goblin just above him.

I circled the claw, the heel spike blackened with filth, to find chaos. A tall goblin with a shock of white hair spilling out from his helmet was shouting, waving, pointing with a spanner. Around him were other goblins, some staring with mouths open, some working on a piece of machinery, others carrying sacks, one pushing a broom across the floor, moving slowly around the standers and the runners.

A couple of goblins were trying to sneak away, dragging a sack between them. They looked up and saw me. Stopped, a look of horror on their face. The orange vest, the white helmet. The badge. And worse, the pad of papers.

“Names?” I said sternly.

“Chokejam, your worship.”

“Petanque, magister.”

I looked at the sack. Beans dribbled from where the stitching had been cut. The furred creature sniffed at them and licked itself. “Do you have a chitty for this?”

The two looked at each other, then back to me. I waved them on and they fled, scattered beans falling behind them, the furry creature looking curiously back and forth at them and me.

The tall goblin saw me, nodded and continued ordering goblins about, some of whom sprung into action, others stared blank-faced.

“What seems to be the problem chief,” I said when he paused, waving my board at the work being done.

“Some [[god]]-forsaken arse down below sent sacks of coal up the belt, without a warning for the inter-connectors to be re-aligned. There’s a system, you send a message up the tube, you ring the bell, you pull the telegraph, then the goblins on the switches set up the tracks and belts, then they ring back. All before you set it going. Then your bastard coal goes to a coal bunker, and does not get sent to be dumped in a grease tank.”

He pointed at the heart of the swarm of workers, most of them standing about holding tools or parts, ready to hand them up. The belts and hooks met at a complex six-way connection. “Now the good news is that some clever bastard was awake up there, saw what was going to happen. Coal dust in the grease, we’d be weeks cleaning the tanks out, then have to refill them from scratch. A whole lot of wasted grease, a herd of [[oil-bears]].”

I perked up at this “Oil-bears? I thought they were a myth.”

He frowned at me. “I asked a goblin where the oil he brought came from. He showed me the barrels, sealed with a bear stamp. They [[Hunting|hunt]] them by the West Pole. Land of swamps and fogs. The oil bear sits on top a stalagmite in the marsh above the mist, listening out. When it hears something moving it reaches down with an enormous paw to catch prey. What the hunters do is set a trap. The bear’s paw is caught and they can cut it up with hatchets.”

“Doesn’t sound sporting,” I said.

“The hell with sporting,” he replied. “You know what would happen to this place without grease?”

I nodded. “The engines of creation would grind to a halt. No more constructs. Civilisation would fall and the First Age would come to a shattering end.”

“We would miss our targets and the Governor would be bastardly angry,” he said. “And that’s why the goblins who hide in the mist and slaughter oil-bears with maximum efficiency and minimum risk to themselves are god damn heroes.”

I decided it was time to assert myself. To contribute something. I picked up the pencil on its string and licked the point. On a blank corner of the paper I sketched an oil-bear as best I could having never seen one. “God… damn… heroes.”

The chief looked me up and down, then down and up. He came to a conclusion. “And what are you doing here?”

I pointed the pencil at the tangle. The goblins there were fewer now, some escaping the gaze of their supervisor. Those remaining worked frantically. “The coal came up the wrong track.”

“That’s right. As I said, some clever bastard saw and pulled the emergency stop. All good. Except an emergency stop knocks it all out of joint. Whole lot of trouble One belt slows, another jumps, sacks ram into each other. Next thing the whole interchange is jammed, spilling rice into the gears. With the interchange out, everything that depends on it is at a standstill. The whole west shaft is frozen. This knocks on; the grand trunk taking up the slack. The overspill from the lower levels is sitting waiting, the east shaft is at capacity, even the north is having to start moving properly. Good, serve the lazy bastards right. But that’s not what you’re interested in.”

On the contrary, this was very interesting. It was pleasant to hear someone who knew what they were up to explaining it in plain language. I didn’t want to argue with him. “As you say.”

“Right.” He turned away, pointed at the smallest goblin I’d seen since I first crawled out of the breeding pits. He scuttled forward holding out a jacket and scarf to his Chief. “No, give me the rag first Mervile! I don’t want coal dust on my good clothes.” He shook his head. “Sorry about that. My great-nephew you know. This generation.”

The goblin squeaked at me, finding a grimy polishing cloth from about his person. “He’s wrong sir, I’m not a relative. I worked my way up from lackey to dogsbody to batman and now here I am, amanuensis to the forge master himself.”

“You all look the same,” said the forge master dismissively. Voices stopped. Goblins stared. “I’m just saying it as I see it.” He wiped his hands clean aggressively, put on the jacket, tied the scarf in a flamboyant knot. He froze. “What is that… that vermin?”

The furry creature had returned and wove between my legs, then sat down and looked up curiously. I returned the look, “Not vermin, a feline safety auxiliary.”

“Ha. Health and safety gone mad. They won’t catch me out though. Mervile, this [[Cats|cat]] is a worker. Get them a vest.” He stalked away, calling over his shoulder. “This way.”

“How do I…” began Mervile.

“Measure the cat up, run to stores. We’ll be touring the forges. Catch up quickly.”

Mervile pulled out some string and tried to run it around the cat’s chest. It hissed and arched it’s back. Mervile took measurements from a distance. I turned to follow the chief, the cat trying to trip me as I walked. A fun companion.

Past the belts the sounds changed. From the groans of cloth and leather we could hear the scream of hot metal and the clash of tools. The forges. As we approached I got hotter under my jacket.

The machinery reached from floor to ceiling, enormous shafts and conduits entering each section. The chief yelled out. “The shaft to bring in sweet [[air]], and the one to expel foul. The coal chute, the water pipe. Here is where the ore is delivered, there the flux. Solder of course, three different types. Limestone. The acid jars. The buffet and drinks tray. And of course the…” The last was cut off by a shattering whistle; I could see a goblin trotting through the door. Another latrine.

The whistle was a signal. The goblins all began to move, most of them towards the glowing, burning heart, stragglers rushing for smocks or tools. Goggles were put on, masks covered mouths, heads had helmets.

The chief tapped me on the shoulder, indicated the goggles on my own helmet, put his own on. I did and the world became inked in green shadows.

Not for long; the whistle cut out and there was a screech of chains and metal as a door was winched open. From it came a piercing, gleaming light. The heat was intense, the smell of water steaming off hot stone.

From the door came a finger of light. A rod of white-green fury, driving wailing goblins back. It reached and reached, the end turning slightly dark, then drooping just a touch to the curses of the chief beside me.

There was a shout and goblins pulled on levers and chains, some diving out the way. A dark shape emerged from the ceiling, curving down. It sliced off the end of the rod, then sailed back up, slowing. For an instant it sat, darkly gleaming against the green shadows then it came down again.

A pendulum blade, swinging metronomically, using it’s weight and momentum to cut the extruded cylinder of hot metal. Each piece fell into a tank to cool – and from the smell be oil-tempered.

Another whistle, another scream. The rod shuddered, stuttered in place. The pendulum axe cut, flicking a hot metal crescent out, goblins scrambling to avoid. Then it came to a rest, the door shut.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The cat peeked out between my boots. The chief raised his goggles; after I raised mine he led me forward.

Goblins were pulling the lengths of rod out the oil with tongs, one of them sitting to the side having a reddened hand bandaged. Each rod was held up, letting green oil drip off into a trough, then plunged into water. Taken out of the room.

We followed to a great workshop, metal tables and anvils scattered about. Goblins were wiping, filing, cutting grooves or grinding down the end of the rods.

“There you are,” said the chief. “Progress. Handles for the next batch of hammers and chisels. And so ready for the next stage.”

“The next stage?” I asked looking at my board. A smut had got onto the top sheet of paper, smearing over the symbols.

“Hammers and chisels to make the parts for the lathe and the drill and the press. We use them to repair the precision tool testing bench, the parts that hold it steady isolating it from the Manufactory’s vibrations. Then the precision tools can be calibrated to allow them to be used to infinitesimal accuracy. The tools then go to the optical laboratory where they etch glass for the micro-constructors. When we have those in working order it will be time to fire up the nanoforges. Project [[Typhon]] will then be back on track.”

The chief sighed deeply as a goblin dropped a rod on the floor, the sound echoing across the room above all the other sounds and chatter. The cat leaped up on a table and pawed at a paper package, unwrapping it.

“Hey, my lunch!”

“Not on the workbench Chadwick,” said the chief. “You know I wasn’t sure you were really a safety inspector, but look at that. Got to say, you went straight to the violation. And dealt with it yourself too, nice and calmly.”

The cat had knocked the package off the table where it had unrolled to reveal pickled fish, rice and beans, all wrapped in a leaf. The goblin who had lost his snack looked on sadly as the creature jumped down and began to eat it.

“What’s your name?” asked the chief but the cat didn’t answer. “What’s their name?” he asked me.

Mervile returned “I got hat and goggles and jacket,” he said. “For the cat.”

“Well put them on,” I said. “His name’s Jack.”

Mervile bent down to where Jack was eating the fish. The cat hissed. Mervile purred back, keeping away from the food, gently approaching, showing his hands. Letting the cat smell them. Then slowly, carefully dressing him.

The chief was talking again. “Yes, you can tell the engineers we’re on track. Making the tools to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools to make the world-wrecking blasphemous engine of destruction that is Project Typhon.”

I frowned at this. “Do we really want to build a world-wrecker?”

The chief looked at me sternly. He put his thumbs in the breast pockets of his vest. “We build what they send the plans down for. It’s not easy down here on the factory floor, not like up in a calm office, drawing diagrams on paper, having cups of tea every hour, on the hour, waited on hand and foot, like the goblin king. Aren’t you down from the engineers, looking to see how far off track we are?”

“No, no.” The sound of work slowed. “I’m from another department.”

The sound stopped. Everyone in the workshop froze. The muted hum of the Manufactory, the occasional breath and a mew from Jack as Mervile tied the hat string under his chin were the only noises.

“Another… department?” The chief seemed stiffer now. “As in…”

“I think you know which one,” I replied.

“Well then. If you’ll come this way, inspector.”

The goblins seemed to stand up straighter. The chief barked at them to get back to work but they just stood there. “Carry on,” I said. No one moved. Goblins used to manage without officers or nobles or a king. I put all the aristocratic hauteur that unneeded nobles and officers project so effortlessly into the words. “I said, carry on.”

They went back to work and we left. Jack followed, abandoning the snack.

Beyond the workshop was a small cage rising from floor to ceiling. Within it a basket. Beside it another tube. “The personnel lift,” said the Chief. “It will take you upstairs.”

“Thank you,” I said and went through the door, sitting on the basket. Jack jumped in beside me.

“If you’ll give my compliments to the Governor,” said the Chief. “When you see him. Not that he knows me of course.”

I nodded gravely. “I shall be sure to tell him all about you.” With a pull of a cord the basket began to rise.

Forge after forge, workshop after workshop. As I rose I could make out the patterns, the furnaces leading to the forges, then around to the next, swirling links making a spiral symbol that converged on…

The basket rose past the ceiling into a cool dark shaft and I could see no more.

We rose for a long time, Jack stretching then curling up. I considered doing the same but decided to sit normally in the seat. It was only polite.

At last the basket rose into another cage and came to a stop. There was the sharp ring of a bell and the door opened.

After the dim halls where goods were delivered and the noise and dirt of the factory level this was a paradise of light and air. Sun shone through windows, goblins in waistcoats and breeches scratched away at desks. Others stood around water fountains or at tea stands, talking quietly. The goblin who had opened the cage stood back; I dodged aside as a shiny black metal hog pulled a small wheeled cart, a long thin goblin passing out sheathes of papers to the workers he passed. A studious fellow with spectacles placed papers in a capsule that he put in a tube, closing the hatch and tapping on it.

“Well hello there… sir.” The goblin who had let us out greeted us.

“You don’t have to call me sir,” I said cheerily. “Nor the safety inspector there.” Jack mewed a reply.

“Well si… well then. After your time in the lower levels I am sure you would like to refresh yourself before continuing.” I blinked at him. “The washroom. This way.”

I was fairly grimy compared to the others here. Jack and I followed him around chest high barriers, goblins politely nodding as we passed.

The washroom was bright and polished, with silver metal and white ceramic surfaces. I cleaned under my nails, brushed my teeth, knocked dirt and dust out of my hat and clothes. Relieved myself in the latrine. When I offered to wash Jack he ignored me, preferring to lick himself and his outfit clean.

I looked at myself in the gleaming mirror. Did I appear taller? My nose sharper, my chin more solid? Dark eyes shining, my skin luminous in sweeps of green?

A goblin can be who they want to be, that was something I had been told. Or something like that. Yes. So I would be the goblin who found out what was happening here.

Jack mewed at an empty bowl so I poured some water in it; he pre-empted me, jumping on the counter and batting at the stream from the tap. After a while I turned it off, and ignoring his complaints went out.

The goblin was talking to a colleague; seeing me he broke it off and led me on.

To a large room, windows down one side, a long table in the middle. Three goblins were gathered around one end, all with dark serious-looking ties around their necks.

“Welcome welcome. Please take a seat.” The tallest one, his tie so dark a blue it was almost black. The escorting goblin pulled out a chair and I sat. He pulled out another; Jack jumped up, then on to the table and looked back. With some magnificent improvisation the goblin took a cushion from the chair and placed it on the table beside him. Jack sniffed at it, then deigned to curl up.

“Which project were you interested in?” asked the next, the plumpest goblin I had seen in the Manufactory, his tie a light-swallowing purple.

“I have seen Project Typhon below. We might start there.”

They all looked at each other and the third, so bland and forgettable that I had taken no notice of his features or his tie, he turned to the side. He knocked on the wall, three times, then four more.

In came two young keen goblins, holding a covered board. They placed it on an easel and then whipped off the cover theatrically. There it was.

“Project Typhon, a melding of the most destructive elements of Mother Earth and the Incarnation of Tartarus.” One pointed at the boiling nest at the bottom, the artist’s work so finely done that I had to blink to see it was in fact motionless. “Below the thighs nothing but coiled serpents. His arms, when spread out, reach one hundred leagues, his hands made up of countless serpent’s heads.”

Jack hissed at this. I spoke up. “Serpent tails below, the heads on the arms. The divided parts connected by the body.”

The other had a pointer. “The ass-head…” There was a snigger from somewhere. He continued firmly. “The ass-head reaches up to scrape the vault of heaven. The wings darken half the sky. From the eyes come flame and from the mouth flaming rocks. That is Project Typhon.”

I looked at the picture of the world-breaker, the god-killer, the [[death]] of nations. A whirlwind of destruction, the flame of a burning [[earth]], a serpent from the abyss. “What’s it for?”

The two young goblins grinned, looked at each other. Then turned together to look at the three senior ones.

“I assure you,” said the tall one. “This has been approved from the Governor’s office. By the Governor himself.”

Jack mewed. I shook my head. “My colleague is concerned about the safety of unleashing such a construct on the unsuspecting world. Can you tell me what it is for?”

The bland one shook his head. “I assumed form followed function.”

“If burning were our intention then there are other options, from goblins with drip torches, through [[fire]] arrows, all the way up to spitfires. If we wish to touch heaven then air-balloons and kites can be built. Serpents already exist.”

The round one looked on in distaste. “I always assumed it was for clearing land of unwanted obstructions. Forests, mountains, cities and so forth.”

“Very well. What next?”

The two young goblins rushed out, returning with a new board. This they unveiled with grins. “Project [[Python]].”

An enormous writhing worm was depicted. At first I thought it limbless, featureless. Then as the goblins pointed out details it became clearer. The size of the construct was misleading; claws bigger than houses, teeth tall as a tower, they were dwarfed by the great belly and tail.

“By resting the main part of the structure on the ground there is a greater capacity for weighty internal braces and machinery. Python is therefore sturdy and robust. Well nigh indestructible.”

I stared at it.

“A hundred claws on each side to make it mobile, and remove obstacles from it’s path. Yet barely needed, the armour plates so heavy that they can push anything moveable aside, and slide over anything that won’t move; so finely balanced and machined that they will let it creep even without the traction of the limbs.”

I looked at the head, small compared to the rest, still enormous.

“Yes the head appears out of scale. This is because Python is a chthonic construct. As I said it can crawl anywhere in the world, yet there is more to it than travelling over mere surfaces. Project Python can burrow deep, right into the navel of the world. Crawl amongst the very roots of the earth, gnawing it’s way deep amongst them.”

Jack hissed at this one too.

“Serpents again. Do you think it safe to have such a fearsome, unstoppable construct undermine the foundations of the world?”

The tall one spoke. “I assure you that, this, like every project developed by the engineering department, has been approved by the Governor.”

I scratched my chin. “So before it is developed he approves it.”

The round one nodded. “That is so, in every detail.”

“Yet until it has been developed he cannot know the details, so how can it be approved of?”

The bland one smirked a little, polished his quizzing glass. “We are in constant communication with the Governor’s office.” He pointed to the tubes.

“Pneumatic?” I asked.

“Ferrets push the message capsules.” Jack sat up at this.

“I see,” I said.

“Project Python could excavate waterways, harbours, dig mines?” The tall one’s air of competence was fraying rapidly.

The two young goblins took this as a cue and rushed out to bring in another. “Project [[Hypton]],” they said proudly.

This appeared to be a great butterfly with enormous eye-covered wings. The eyes, it seemed had multiple uses. Some could be used to watch what went on below when the sky-darkening presence of Hypton flew over, out of reach of the ground-hugging mortals. Others could see deeper, into their minds, reading their thoughts, uncovering their secrets. And a few were even more active, able to overwhelm the personality and will, making them behave as Hypton wished.

“How will Hypton wish them to behave?” I asked.

They pointed out the long proboscis, so Hypton could suck up water or food without ever landing, the tentacles to grasp birds and insects from the sky, the jagged wing edges to cut through any enemy who might climb to meet it.

Jack gave a yawn and they brought in another board.

[[Nopyth]], an obsidian block that at first view seemed featureless, the artist’s rendering sucking vision in, black on black on black. Very slow moving and growing it was nevertheless unstoppable. Creating a wall that would divide the land. If anyone attempted to cross or damage Nopyth, the many mouths would tear and other orifices let loose corrosive fluids to dissolve and rot the attacker.

“Which places do we need to divide from others with such great ferocity?”

The roots dig down to bring up nutrients… the board was replaced.

[[Photyn]], a brazen bull who reflected sunlight so powerfully it would blind those who looked up it, with fiery breath from the nostrils, hooves that could break castle walls.

[[Tophyn]], a sea serpent that could swallow fleets, eyes that disorient sailors, a tail that could make waves that would smash down cliffs or devastate the land for miles inland.

[[Phyton]], a plant that grew upon itself, a stem and lead on stem and leaf on stem and leaf, shading the land. I showed some interest in this but they were on a roll.

“Here is the masterwork. [[Phonyt]]. This is expanded one million times.”

A change in scale at least. Rather than a creature of great size, this was tiny, invisibly small, infinitesimal. I peered at it. It seemed to be made up of gold lozenges, so finely drawn that I could swear they spun and twinkled, the whole seeming to expand and shrink, move across the page.

“Phonyt can stay dormant for years, yet remain viable. When it finds itself in a host it will move through the body, causing no trouble or symptoms until it finds itself in the brain. Even there it will only activate in a pre-frontal cortex. So only in sentient beings such as goblins, trolls, gnomes, rabbits, dolphins, merpeople, angels, devils. Possibly some of the more advanced apes if you can believe it.”

The goblins at the head of the table smiled at each other, wide, toothy grins as though they might be about to sit down to a delicious dinner. Jack sat bolt upright and hissed, then spat.

“And what does it do?” I asked them.

“Oh very simple.” The round goblin seemed pleased with himself. “It burns out language, word by word. Completely removing the ability to express or understand.”

I stroked my chin. “Seems like something that could easily get out of hand. And go on to destroy all culture and civilisation.”

The tall goblin looked even more satisfied. “Fortunately the researcher is close to making a counter agent. Or so we believe, it has recently become impossible to understand him.”

The bland goblin shrugged. “If it becomes a problem then that is what the other projects are for. Scrape the world back to a blank page. Let the Creator mount their throne and try again.”

I nodded. It was becoming clear at last. “So not your problem what happens after these projects are built.”

The tall goblin grinned. “We have developed these plans from the outlines and requirements that were left here for us. The strategic use of the projects is for higher governance.”

The round one puffed his cheeks. “We do as we are assigned and as we are authorised, under the authority granted from the Governor.”

The bland one had no expression on his face. “And I must at this point note that these plans are approved, and also by granting that these constructs are self-governing, absolve us from all responsibility as to their actions.”

I stood and the other goblins stiffened. “Well thank you gentlemen. This has been most enlightening. I think that I will make my way to the Governor’s office.”

At my movement Jack started, then bounced forward. One of the young goblins tried to intercept, the other to get out the way. They ran into each other and collapsed into a pile of flailing limbs. Jack sailed above them and landed with all four paws on the near vertical board, claws digging into the diagram of Phyton.

“Get the broom,” croaked the tall goblin. “Get the broom!”

I shook my head. “Leave Jack alone. As Auxiliary Safety Officer they have some criticisms of this project.”

Jack scrabbled violently, then slid unceremoniously off the bottom, turning in midair to bounce off the squirming goblins and trotted back along the table, tail and head held high. I stuck my head out the door and found the escort standing there, elaborately not listening in. “If you can take me to the Governor’s office please?”

He took me through the corridors. Now the goblins either turned and ran away or stood and stared. No one pretended to work as I went by. Part way through Jack came bounding along, passed us, then slowed to a trot, leading the way.

We turned a corner and found ourselves facing a moving stairway. Jack looked at it, looked at me, then came back and weaved around my legs. I bent to pick him up; he chose to climb and position himself as a lookout on my shoulder.

“Well your honour, if you go up there you should find your way to the Governor.” He gave a smart salute, which I returned much less smartly.

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell the Governor?”

This seemed to throw him for a moment. “I ah. I’m very proud to serve here. Sir.”

“I asked you not to call me sir. I’m no officer.” I left him to his confusion, stepping on the first tread, grabbing hold of the moving handrail as my foot was dragged away.

Once I had my balance it was a very smooth journey. Jack had dug his claws into the vest’s padded shoulder, almost as though it were designed for this. I looked down. The plan of the engineers’ offices could be seen from above. They watched me ride up as I saw how the desks and meeting rooms were arranged, like a labyrinth, circling and funnelling towards a centre.

Up through the ceiling, the eyes now hidden. Everyone had been thinking about the Governor. As though he were a king. The one goblin who knew what was going on. The one goblin who had answers. The one goblin with the power to loose and to bind.

The one goblin with the right to call me out. The ability to say, you belong here. Or you don’t belong.

We’d meet that when we came to it.

The moving stair approached an end, the steps vanishing under the floor. I hopped off, and only when safely on solid ground did I look about.

A great vast hall, an empty desk right in front. Beside it were a dozen or so tubes, the ends beside a basket overflowing with message capsules. As I watched a capsule emerged, bounced off the top-most one of the pile, then rolled away onto the floor. A small white face came out. Jack stiffened on my shoulder. The ferret ignored him, ignored me, instead and ran across the floor to a small hole.

Beside the hole were double doors, three times the height of a goblin. The doors were ajar and from inside came a rumbling. I looked at Jack, and he was looking at the hole. “You do not want to go in the ferret hole,” I said.

I went through the door.

A hall that was like the one I had come from, but the desk was twice the size, behind it a great brazen mask, and beyond that windows, opening onto the world beyond. As I came in the mask grunted, steam coming from the ears. Jack leaped from my shoulder and ran.

“Not the ferret hole,” I called out.

“Pay no attention to the goblin behind the curtain,” said the mask, as Jack ran to a curtained alcove. I stamped after him as he wrestled with the fabric. I picked him up but his claws were tangled and pulled it aside.

Inside was a goblin, sitting on the latrine, reading a bundle of papers and smoking a complex looking pipe. “Don’t mind me,” he said.

“It’s me you’ve come to see,” said the voice from before, much less booming now they were out from behind the mask. A smart looking goblin, eyes bright though the wrinkles of age covered every part of his head. “Let my secretary deal with his business in peace.”

He took a seat behind the desk. Jack was reluctant to release the curtain so I left him to it and found myself a seat without being invited.

“I know why you’re here,” said the goblin, the Governor. “I know why you’re here and I want you to know that I disapprove.”

“I see,” I said.

“When I was young we were all just goblins, one squalling undifferentiated mass. I see no need to maintain these artificial distinctions. A goblin is a goblin is a goblin, that was good enough at creation and should be good enough now.”

I inclined my head, then had to adjust the goggles that threatened to slip down onto my face. “As the Governor, surely you have the power…”

“So why divide goblin from goblin? Why declare some male goblins and some female goblins? What purpose does it serve? At least the current system, where each goblin expresses their preference can be comprehended. The first attempt was a shambles. Trying to categorise the manifold infinite grotesque variety of goblin genitals into two classes. Impossible, ridiculous, and quite disgusting.”

He stared at me and I stared back. “You said you know why I’m here.”

“Well of course. Having divided goblins in this way categorically, it seems that we must divide them physically. Male goblins go to the Manufactory of the Dawn…”

“Females to the Manufactory of the Dusk, and those who are neither join the aeronautical corps. This is known.” I stared at him and now his wrinkles seemed to deepen. “What I want to know is what is going on here.”

From the alcove came an odd whistle and a quick burst of vapour. Jack came sprinting out. When he saw us watching he slowed to a casual stalk, obliquely sidling towards the desk.

“I am the Governor you know. I am in charge.”

“Then tell me what is going on,” I said. “So many goblins working hard to create frightful engines of destruction. Is this really what we are about? Do goblins want to be known as such monsters? Is that to be our legacy.”

He sighed and held up a slim volume on the desk. “Do you know what this is? Of course not, you’re not the Governor. When I arrived here I found this office and this desk. And this book. The other goblins wanted leadership. They needed to be told what to do. So I deciphered what I could, as best I can and sent down the instructions.

“In this book are the notes of the Creator. Everything that they intended for this world. And all my attempts to bring forth a design have led to building a great construct. Will it be a terrible destroyer? Well, such is not my business. The Creator left his notes and who am I to deny them.”

The Governor had deciphered the Creator’s notes, or six letters of them at least. Jack jumped up on the desk and mewed quietly. I stroked him with one hand, adjusted his jacket where it had rucked up with the other.

“You’re the Governor. You took charge. It’s your responsibility.”

“What, was I supposed to leave this office empty?”

I sighed. “Why not? Do you think that by setting yourself above other goblins – apart from them – you’ve made things better?”

The Governor stood up then. He put all his officer class strength into his voice. “Goblins need leadership. They want leadership. They love to be told what to do. And I gave it to them. If I did not take this seat, this office, someone else would have. And who knows what they would have done with the power!”

“Project Typhon? Project Hypton? Project Phonyt? Goblins want work and purpose yes. They don’t need a Governor who has them make world-ending weapons.”

The Governor shrugged. “Well so long as I am on this side of the desk it’s my opinion that matters. It’s not as though the incompetents down below would be able to complete projects of this magnitude. Even the Creator left before finishing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s upstairs?”

He froze, then collapsed into his chair. “You’re kidding of course.”

“I’ve come this far. I want to see what’s up there.”

The ladder had been badly disguised, some sheets hanging from the bottom two thirds, the upper part in shadow.

“The throne of the Creator… but no goblin would dare…”

I looked him in the eye. “Do you think just any goblin could make his way into the Manufactory. Visit every office, every workshop, every store and canteen and washroom? Be welcomed at every turn, even here? Do you think that one of the undifferentiated mass of squalling goblins could make their way here in front of you?”

“Your Majesty…”

“Stop that.” I stood and Jack mewed plaintively, squirmed onto my shoulder. “I work for a living. And so should you. Do you know what leadership is?”

“I, I mean…”

I made my way towards the ladder. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

I pulled loose the sheets and began to climb. From below came the voice of the secretary. “What now Mr Governor?”

“Wash your damned hands Gruntlespoon!”

<nowiki>****</nowiki>

In case you didn’t know, the Creator didn’t leave a throne on the pinnacle of the Manufactory Of The Dawn. No throne, no crown, no sceptre, sword, wand or orb. Up top there is a shelter with cushions and blankets. A water spigot and cooking stone, pots and pans. Dried fruit, dried meat – Jack went straight for that. Bags of rice and bags of beans. A latrine of course, and a farseer.

There’s no throne up there, no king. I looked through the farseer and saw how the creatures of the world were continuing the work of Creation. Trolls piling rocks into mountains. Gnomes digging out waterways. Goblins burning forests, planting saplings in the blackened remnants. Herds of horses and cattle on the plains, goats in the hills, deer in the forests. From the savannah in the south upright apes, brute cunning in their eyes, mastering the crudest tools, flint and fire, bone and wood.

Someone should probably keep an eye on them.

I put some beans on to cook, they take longer than rice.

We’d been left in a world half-built, and no instructions. Obviously we were going to build monstrous engines of destruction. What choice did we have? Not build apocalyptic constructs? Perhaps we were fortunate that the Creator had left behind such extraordinary ideas that it would take centuries of labour to fulfil them.

Perhaps that was the plan. Give us [[Timeline|time to work out an alternative]]. Or no plan, the Creator making it up as they went along. Like the rest of us.

No throne for the Creator. No king for the goblins. The Governor couldn’t see it. Goblins don’t need a leader. They need someone to shake them out of their habits, to pull the goblin round pegs out the square holes the Creator had left. King, governor, noble, these are not the highest aspirations for a goblin. There are better things to be. Cat-burglar. Troublemaker. Sceptic.

[[Trickster]].

I’d done what I could. Tomorrow I would move on. I lifted the farseer to the horizon just as the sun dipped below, outlining something there, like a blade raised to heaven. The Manufactory Of The Dusk. Jack moaned loudly as the sun vanished.

Time to see what mess the girls had got into.

=== Alternative Titles ===
As well as For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used, versions of this narrative have been uncovered with other titles. These include:

''An Incomplete World Requires Goblins''

''A Goblin Seeks Meaning Below The Throne Of The Creator''

''Aimed At Heaven''

''[[Monstrous Orphans Of Creation]]''

''The Apocalyptic Constructs Of The Creator''

Scholars continue to uncover new versions in the archives.

==== A Goblin Koan ====
The Student asked The Goblin King, ''Master, how few words do you need to tell a complete tragedy?''

The Goblin King thought for a moment. ''[[wikipedia:For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn|For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used]]. There, that's six words.''

The Student pondered this. ''Master, I don't get it''.

The Goblin King sighed. ''It's like this. The Creator made a throne, but never used it. Which is sad.''

The Student shook their head. ''I thought they made it to sell. For money. Which is a use.''

The Goblin King was astonished. ''What use, Mablethorpe'', they said breaking the rules of a fable by using the goblin student's name, ''what use would The Creator have for money?''

''To buy things?'' said the Student. ''I still don't get it''.

The Goblin King walked away, calling over their shoulder ''Well maybe that's why I'm the Goblin King and you're my student''.

At this moment the Student was [[On Joan Of Arc, A Coda|enlightened]].

On Joan Of Arc, A Coda

2024-11-28T13:50:12Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Jeanne D'Arc */ capitalisation change

== Jeanne D'Arc ==
My essay [https://www.miserytourism.com/a-perfect-virgin-saint/ A Perfect Virgin Saint] was the seed for [[The Mock Angel]]. In it I ask if Joan Of Arc was gaslight gatekeep girlbossing it across France, in order to show how modern context can be imposed on our view of historical events and people. What I didn't ask are questions that sometimes come up, namely: was Joan of Arc trans? Was she non-binary?

I didn't ask that as it distracted from the points I was trying to make. The answer my essay suggests is that Joan herself would not consider those questions that make sense. In other words, this says more about the person asking it, here and now in the 21st Century.

Which is good and fine. If you draw strength and inspiration from Joan as gender non-conforming, or from her faith, or her leadership, or her visions, then that is a valuable and useful thing. That's your Joan, and no one can take her away from you. Indeed that might be the most powerful way to think of her, my questions and concerns about history and framing irrelevant to you.

Still, I think if we want to know more, rather than asking how Joan of Arc would be framed in 21st century contexts, we might ask, what does Joan tell us about gender and gender non-conformity in 15th Century France? Why were there laws about gendered clothing? How were such laws being weaponised for political ends? These questions might help us understand what people in the 15th century thought and assumed.

=== What Rage Or Madness Drives You? ===
For an alternative view, see Jay Hulme's powerful 21st century queer Christian viewpoint in [https://x.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1706705277947355373 his poem about Joan Of Arc].

=== One Last Note ===
I mentioned Joan of Arc's visions. Two saints of note she saw were Catherine of Alexandria, martyred in 305, and Margaret of Antioch in 304. 1100 years divided them from Joan's time, nearly twice as long as her from us today. Joan, of course, saw them in her context, as inspirations to a woman in a Christian society, to support a Christian monarch. Yet these women lived before the conversion of Constantine and the establishment of a Christian state, before the Council of Nicaea began the creation of a unified church. How would they have seen the questions that confronted Joan and others in the Hundred Years War?

For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used: A Narrative of the First Age

2024-11-28T13:48:32Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Death

{{NarrativeNotice}}

= '''For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used''' =
'''A Narrative Of The First Age'''

The Manufactory of the Dawn, [[goblins]] run it now, that’s what I’d been told. Probably getting into a lot of trouble. I know all about that, I’m a goblin too. I’d picked up the sloth-construct cart from where it had been left. Didn’t see the driver anywhere about. Cargo got to move. Just hitched up the beasts, put on the cap that had been left on the drivers bench and patted the furry creature sitting there. Away we went, down the [[road]].

The Manufactory could be seen for days across the plain. The base was like a mountain, though closer you could see it was layers, terraces, a ziggurat seven levels high. Above that a big wide level, horizontal, overhanging the base, a clear sign that this was no natural landmark. And on top the tower, like a great blade pointing at heaven. Here and there thin plumes of smoke escaped. At night mysterious orange glows could be made out, scattered across it.

In the mornings when I wanted to be sleeping it blocked the sun. But necessity drives us, the brazen sloths did better in the shade than the heat of the day. I did too, and so did my furry companion. We made our way along the road, one of many carts and wagons crawling across the plain, me napping when the sun slowed us down, waking when it cooled in the night. Shortly after dawn we arrived.

The gates stood open, higher than any building I’d ever been in. A goblin stood between them watching me. He held out a hand to stop and I tried a variety of commands, the sloths slowing down and eventually settling only a few yards beyond him, so one of the control words must be right.

“All right, all right speed demon. No need to hurry. Governor’s not watching,” he said. “So, what you hauling.”

I looked back at the sacks piled high. “Just what it says on the manifest. Rice and beans.”

He didn’t ask me for the manifest. “Rice and beans together, or rice in some sacks and beans in the others.”

I looked at the sacks again. I began to doubt it was rice, or beans. Changing my mind now would just cause this guy trouble. Looking at him, ragged ears, skin flaking from too much sun, he’d had trouble enough already. “Rice in some sacks, beans in others.”

He turned to look into the darkness of the cavern. Within was a poorly lit enormous tunnel that got gloomier the further back it went. I shaded my eyes to make out goblins and wagons, moving back and forth, heading for stairs and tunnels and corridors. The interior of the Manufactory was honeycombed with passages and rooms.

I should have figured that out myself.

“Well over there, that’s the tunnel to the rice bunker. And there, that’s the way to the bean cellar. Pick one and unload, see what they want to do with the rest I guess.”

“Thanks pal,” I said, looking down. He peeled a long strip of dry skin from his head. I took pity on him. “Here, try my cap. Keep the sun off your head.”

For a moment he looked like I’d insulted him, or maybe insulted his mother, though if he knew his mother he’d be the first goblin I’d met who did. “Okay then.” I passed it down and he put it on, looking faintly ridiculous under the brim. “Yeah this will be good. Thanks. You’re a real gent, generous as the goblin king.”

I always like to be helpful.

I kicked the brazen sloths back into movement. The tunnel had a great plaque above it, with sigils or runes or glyphs, all carved out the stone, or maybe forged of dark metal. Too high to get a good look. Below has a single large symbol that was unfamiliar, one of the old languages, Enochian maybe or Ogham or Lingua Ignota. And hanging from it by a bit of string a wooden sign with a painted picture on it. A wheatsheaf I would have said, a grass stalk. The goblin at the entrance said it was for rice, so rice it was.

Maybe the painter wasn’t very good at painting. You’d hope they could find a good painter somewhere in the Manufactory. Probably busy elsewhere.

At the end of the tunnel I came to a great chamber, goblins moving sacks here and there with wheelbarrows, the whole lit by glowing orbs in the ceiling. “Hey there,” called a goblin, a big guy. His striped vest glowed in the light. In one hand he held a tablet. Wax, I thought to begin with, then as I managed to stop the brazen sloths I saw that there were pieces of paper on it, trapped by a metal clasp at the top.

“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” he said and vaulted up onto the cart before I could stop him. This disturbed my furry companion who hid under the cart.

I checked the sloths were staying in place. By the time I turned he had his knife out and cut open a sack. “Coal,” he said meditatively. “Coal. We don’t usually handle that here.”

“Oh, the guy at the gate thought you did,” I said. “Hey, I can turn around and go back if it’ll cause trouble.”

“No, no,” he said, poking at it. “We can handle anything you know? The Governor put us here, there’s nothing we can’t handle. Anything under the Throne Of The Creator, that’s what we deal with. Coal, coal.” He thought for a moment, then riffled through his papers.

He stood tall and shouted out. “Okay listen up.” A few goblins drifted closer, some bringing empty wheelbarrows. “We got a load of coal here. We’ll send a message up the tube, let them upstairs know what’s coming. We know where it goes, sacks on the hooks, then ring through to the belt office, get them to turn it on. It’ll be pulled away through the shafts, to be dropped where ever needs fuel.” He gesticulated wildly. I saw where he pointed to when he talked about the hooks. A whole bunch hanging from a belt that wound around a big spindle, then turned to go upwards, diagonally, the belt itself vanishing into the wall.

As he organised the work party I thought to myself I’d done enough here. Maybe it was time to see where else I could help.

“It’s been a long trip,” I began.

“Yeah yeah, I got you. We’ve got all the requirements, and them fit for the goblin king. Now see there, the outline of the goblin shitting? That’s the latrine.” I looked, and from a great plaque of symbols hung the latrine symbol. “The one of the goblin washing? Bathhouse. The goblin sleeping, that’s the bunks. And the gobblin eating? I reckon you’ll figure that one out.”

I did. I relieved myself in the latrines, and I washed myself in the bathhouse. In the changing room I found a clean set of clothes, including an orange vest that made me highly visible, a hard white hat and a tablet with a clip holding some papers and a pencil on a piece of string. I put them on, it was almost as though they’d been left for me, they fit so well. On the breast I put a badge, one with an old sigil on it, one that looked like a throne.

In the canteen there were a handful of goblins scattered about the tables, and three at the stove. I went over and greeted them. They seemed eager to please.

“What would you like sir, we have plenty here,” said the first, thin and pale, pushing a basket of crusts and crumbs my way.

“Give him a tray and a bowl,” said the second. “And yes, plenty, but not too much, no we’re not wasteful, your worship.” He had a basket of dried fruit that he put on the counter.

“Enough of that, a hot meal, that’s what the he wants I’m sure. When he reports to the Governor he’ll say we feed people up properly, won’t you captain.” He put some fat in a pan, then the pan onto a metal plate. It hissed and sizzled. He held his hand over a basket of eggs, chopped onion, some large mushrooms, and cut up roots and vegetables. “What’s your pleasure sir.”

“You’re the chefs,” I said and a moment of panic swept over the three. “You’re in charge here, you don’t need to call me sir. Make me your speciality.”

They made me Eggs Gobolino, a great pile of everything bound up in eggs. Pretty good, even with the shell and burned bits. The furry creature returned , sensing a meal time, but wouldn’t eat it. A mechanical snail slithered around, waste bins hanging from its shell, and I discreetly put the portion I couldn’t finish in.

When I saw the chefs watching I made some notes on the papers on the tablet, the eggs recipe and a picture of the snail.

“Was it good your highness?”

“Very good, very good. Don’t call me highness.”

“I suppose you’ll be going upstairs.” The three of them looked over at a red door. A threatening sigil was above it, perhaps a double-headed axe, or perhaps a boar’s face.

“I suppose I will,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

Through the doors were stairs, possibly carved out of stone, made or molded in place. As I climbed them one wall opened up and I found myself above the cavern I had been in. A big cart pushed by an obsidian bull had run into the back of one with brazen sloths in front. Goblins clambered all over the two, checking for damage, calling to each other, offloading the cargo. The one with the clipboard and vest I’d seen before was waving his finger at a skinny newcomer, who in turn was shouting at the sloths. In the echoes of the high vaults and the clicking and clacking of the moving belts it was impossible to make out what they said. Just before I climbed out of sight he kicked at a brass sloth and yelled a clear curse.

The stairs turned and twisted, moving through the solid structure of the Manufactory. After climbing far enough my knees began to complain and the rest of me regret I did not bring a drink with me I came to a landing. In one corner was a latrine and [[water]] fountain that I took advantage of, then investigated further. Here sixteen stairways met, each with a tube alongside that connected in a complex set of junctions. Four stairs went down, and four up; the others appeared to turn off in some uncanny direction. The closer I approached them the more normal they appeared, simply steps that happened to head off in a dimension not normally accessible.

The glyphs on them were as mysterious as ever. One did have a goblin-drawn label; it appeared to be a frog seen in all directions from the inside out.

I rejected them, turned back to the usual directions. I discounted the four going down and considered the others. A relatively simple set of right crossed blades, or a wheel, and below it a stylus on a piece of board caught my eye. As I considered the furred creature joined me, then went and sat on the bottom step.

I mounted the stairs, the creature following. After passing through several strata of different coloured stone the stairs emerged into an airy space, lit by great beams of dust-flecked sunlight. Out of reach were catwalks and stairways, poles and ropes, great girders. The sounds were muted, there was movement on some distant ones but none close enough to make out details.

The stairway zigged and zagged, was encaged in metal, then released again, now flimsier, gaps between stairs. I climbed steadily, finding that I was alongside a vertical belt hoisting sacks upwards. Just before the increasing thickness of girders became a ceiling the stairwell turned around the belt and met a doorway.

There was a knocker which I knocked. The door crept open to reveal a silver ape construct. The mechanism beckoned me to follow, and we travelled through a maze of narrow passages.

At another door, the ape knocked, then let me through. I found myself in a great chamber. Before me was a silver claw, five times the height of a goblin, easy to measure as a dozen goblins festooned in polishing rags climbed over and around it, polishing with wax and cloths where the previous goblin had just been holding on.

I marched up and cleared my throat, then again louder. “Who’s in charge here?”

A goblin with a spectacular boil on his nose looked up, wiped the sweat from his brow with a cloth. “Chief’s round the corner, dealing with some cock up,” he grunted, then went back to polishing the boot print of the goblin just above him.

I circled the claw, the heel spike blackened with filth, to find chaos. A tall goblin with a shock of white hair spilling out from his helmet was shouting, waving, pointing with a spanner. Around him were other goblins, some staring with mouths open, some working on a piece of machinery, others carrying sacks, one pushing a broom across the floor, moving slowly around the standers and the runners.

A couple of goblins were trying to sneak away, dragging a sack between them. They looked up and saw me. Stopped, a look of horror on their face. The orange vest, the white helmet. The badge. And worse, the pad of papers.

“Names?” I said sternly.

“Chokejam, your worship.”

“Petanque, magister.”

I looked at the sack. Beans dribbled from where the stitching had been cut. The furred creature sniffed at them and licked itself. “Do you have a chitty for this?”

The two looked at each other, then back to me. I waved them on and they fled, scattered beans falling behind them, the furry creature looking curiously back and forth at them and me.

The tall goblin saw me, nodded and continued ordering goblins about, some of whom sprung into action, others stared blank-faced.

“What seems to be the problem chief,” I said when he paused, waving my board at the work being done.

“Some [[god]]-forsaken arse down below sent sacks of coal up the belt, without a warning for the inter-connectors to be re-aligned. There’s a system, you send a message up the tube, you ring the bell, you pull the telegraph, then the goblins on the switches set up the tracks and belts, then they ring back. All before you set it going. Then your bastard coal goes to a coal bunker, and does not get sent to be dumped in a grease tank.”

He pointed at the heart of the swarm of workers, most of them standing about holding tools or parts, ready to hand them up. The belts and hooks met at a complex six-way connection. “Now the good news is that some clever bastard was awake up there, saw what was going to happen. Coal dust in the grease, we’d be weeks cleaning the tanks out, then have to refill them from scratch. A whole lot of wasted grease, a herd of [[oil-bears]].”

I perked up at this “Oil-bears? I thought they were a myth.”

He frowned at me. “I asked a goblin where the oil he brought came from. He showed me the barrels, sealed with a bear stamp. They [[Hunting|hunt]] them by the West Pole. Land of swamps and fogs. The oil bear sits on top a stalagmite in the marsh above the mist, listening out. When it hears something moving it reaches down with an enormous paw to catch prey. What the hunters do is set a trap. The bear’s paw is caught and they can cut it up with hatchets.”

“Doesn’t sound sporting,” I said.

“The hell with sporting,” he replied. “You know what would happen to this place without grease?”

I nodded. “The engines of creation would grind to a halt. No more constructs. Civilisation would fall and the First Age would come to a shattering end.”

“We would miss our targets and the Governor would be bastardly angry,” he said. “And that’s why the goblins who hide in the mist and slaughter oil-bears with maximum efficiency and minimum risk to themselves are god damn heroes.”

I decided it was time to assert myself. To contribute something. I picked up the pencil on its string and licked the point. On a blank corner of the paper I sketched an oil-bear as best I could having never seen one. “God… damn… heroes.”

The chief looked me up and down, then down and up. He came to a conclusion. “And what are you doing here?”

I pointed the pencil at the tangle. The goblins there were fewer now, some escaping the gaze of their supervisor. Those remaining worked frantically. “The coal came up the wrong track.”

“That’s right. As I said, some clever bastard saw and pulled the emergency stop. All good. Except an emergency stop knocks it all out of joint. Whole lot of trouble One belt slows, another jumps, sacks ram into each other. Next thing the whole interchange is jammed, spilling rice into the gears. With the interchange out, everything that depends on it is at a standstill. The whole west shaft is frozen. This knocks on; the grand trunk taking up the slack. The overspill from the lower levels is sitting waiting, the east shaft is at capacity, even the north is having to start moving properly. Good, serve the lazy bastards right. But that’s not what you’re interested in.”

On the contrary, this was very interesting. It was pleasant to hear someone who knew what they were up to explaining it in plain language. I didn’t want to argue with him. “As you say.”

“Right.” He turned away, pointed at the smallest goblin I’d seen since I first crawled out of the breeding pits. He scuttled forward holding out a jacket and scarf to his Chief. “No, give me the rag first Mervile! I don’t want coal dust on my good clothes.” He shook his head. “Sorry about that. My great-nephew you know. This generation.”

The goblin squeaked at me, finding a grimy polishing cloth from about his person. “He’s wrong sir, I’m not a relative. I worked my way up from lackey to dogsbody to batman and now here I am, amanuensis to the forge master himself.”

“You all look the same,” said the forge master dismissively. Voices stopped. Goblins stared. “I’m just saying it as I see it.” He wiped his hands clean aggressively, put on the jacket, tied the scarf in a flamboyant knot. He froze. “What is that… that vermin?”

The furry creature had returned and wove between my legs, then sat down and looked up curiously. I returned the look, “Not vermin, a feline safety auxiliary.”

“Ha. Health and safety gone mad. They won’t catch me out though. Mervile, this [[Cats|cat]] is a worker. Get them a vest.” He stalked away, calling over his shoulder. “This way.”

“How do I…” began Mervile.

“Measure the cat up, run to stores. We’ll be touring the forges. Catch up quickly.”

Mervile pulled out some string and tried to run it around the cat’s chest. It hissed and arched it’s back. Mervile took measurements from a distance. I turned to follow the chief, the cat trying to trip me as I walked. A fun companion.

Past the belts the sounds changed. From the groans of cloth and leather we could hear the scream of hot metal and the clash of tools. The forges. As we approached I got hotter under my jacket.

The machinery reached from floor to ceiling, enormous shafts and conduits entering each section. The chief yelled out. “The shaft to bring in sweet [[air]], and the one to expel foul. The coal chute, the water pipe. Here is where the ore is delivered, there the flux. Solder of course, three different types. Limestone. The acid jars. The buffet and drinks tray. And of course the…” The last was cut off by a shattering whistle; I could see a goblin trotting through the door. Another latrine.

The whistle was a signal. The goblins all began to move, most of them towards the glowing, burning heart, stragglers rushing for smocks or tools. Goggles were put on, masks covered mouths, heads had helmets.

The chief tapped me on the shoulder, indicated the goggles on my own helmet, put his own on. I did and the world became inked in green shadows.

Not for long; the whistle cut out and there was a screech of chains and metal as a door was winched open. From it came a piercing, gleaming light. The heat was intense, the smell of water steaming off hot stone.

From the door came a finger of light. A rod of white-green fury, driving wailing goblins back. It reached and reached, the end turning slightly dark, then drooping just a touch to the curses of the chief beside me.

There was a shout and goblins pulled on levers and chains, some diving out the way. A dark shape emerged from the ceiling, curving down. It sliced off the end of the rod, then sailed back up, slowing. For an instant it sat, darkly gleaming against the green shadows then it came down again.

A pendulum blade, swinging metronomically, using it’s weight and momentum to cut the extruded cylinder of hot metal. Each piece fell into a tank to cool – and from the smell be oil-tempered.

Another whistle, another scream. The rod shuddered, stuttered in place. The pendulum axe cut, flicking a hot metal crescent out, goblins scrambling to avoid. Then it came to a rest, the door shut.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The cat peeked out between my boots. The chief raised his goggles; after I raised mine he led me forward.

Goblins were pulling the lengths of rod out the oil with tongs, one of them sitting to the side having a reddened hand bandaged. Each rod was held up, letting green oil drip off into a trough, then plunged into water. Taken out of the room.

We followed to a great workshop, metal tables and anvils scattered about. Goblins were wiping, filing, cutting grooves or grinding down the end of the rods.

“There you are,” said the chief. “Progress. Handles for the next batch of hammers and chisels. And so ready for the next stage.”

“The next stage?” I asked looking at my board. A smut had got onto the top sheet of paper, smearing over the symbols.

“Hammers and chisels to make the parts for the lathe and the drill and the press. We use them to repair the precision tool testing bench, the parts that hold it steady isolating it from the Manufactory’s vibrations. Then the precision tools can be calibrated to allow them to be used to infinitesimal accuracy. The tools then go to the optical laboratory where they etch glass for the micro-constructors. When we have those in working order it will be time to fire up the nanoforges. Project [[Typhon]] will then be back on track.”

The chief sighed deeply as a goblin dropped a rod on the floor, the sound echoing across the room above all the other sounds and chatter. The cat leaped up on a table and pawed at a paper package, unwrapping it.

“Hey, my lunch!”

“Not on the workbench Chadwick,” said the chief. “You know I wasn’t sure you were really a safety inspector, but look at that. Got to say, you went straight to the violation. And dealt with it yourself too, nice and calmly.”

The cat had knocked the package off the table where it had unrolled to reveal pickled fish, rice and beans, all wrapped in a leaf. The goblin who had lost his snack looked on sadly as the creature jumped down and began to eat it.

“What’s your name?” asked the chief but the cat didn’t answer. “What’s their name?” he asked me.

Mervile returned “I got hat and goggles and jacket,” he said. “For the cat.”

“Well put them on,” I said. “His name’s Jack.”

Mervile bent down to where Jack was eating the fish. The cat hissed. Mervile purred back, keeping away from the food, gently approaching, showing his hands. Letting the cat smell them. Then slowly, carefully dressing him.

The chief was talking again. “Yes, you can tell the engineers we’re on track. Making the tools to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools to make the world-wrecking blasphemous engine of destruction that is Project Typhon.”

I frowned at this. “Do we really want to build a world-wrecker?”

The chief looked at me sternly. He put his thumbs in the breast pockets of his vest. “We build what they send the plans down for. It’s not easy down here on the factory floor, not like up in a calm office, drawing diagrams on paper, having cups of tea every hour, on the hour, waited on hand and foot, like the goblin king. Aren’t you down from the engineers, looking to see how far off track we are?”

“No, no.” The sound of work slowed. “I’m from another department.”

The sound stopped. Everyone in the workshop froze. The muted hum of the Manufactory, the occasional breath and a mew from Jack as Mervile tied the hat string under his chin were the only noises.

“Another… department?” The chief seemed stiffer now. “As in…”

“I think you know which one,” I replied.

“Well then. If you’ll come this way, inspector.”

The goblins seemed to stand up straighter. The chief barked at them to get back to work but they just stood there. “Carry on,” I said. No one moved. Goblins used to manage without officers or nobles or a king. I put all the aristocratic hauteur that unneeded nobles and officers project so effortlessly into the words. “I said, carry on.”

They went back to work and we left. Jack followed, abandoning the snack.

Beyond the workshop was a small cage rising from floor to ceiling. Within it a basket. Beside it another tube. “The personnel lift,” said the Chief. “It will take you upstairs.”

“Thank you,” I said and went through the door, sitting on the basket. Jack jumped in beside me.

“If you’ll give my compliments to the Governor,” said the Chief. “When you see him. Not that he knows me of course.”

I nodded gravely. “I shall be sure to tell him all about you.” With a pull of a cord the basket began to rise.

Forge after forge, workshop after workshop. As I rose I could make out the patterns, the furnaces leading to the forges, then around to the next, swirling links making a spiral symbol that converged on…

The basket rose past the ceiling into a cool dark shaft and I could see no more.

We rose for a long time, Jack stretching then curling up. I considered doing the same but decided to sit normally in the seat. It was only polite.

At last the basket rose into another cage and came to a stop. There was the sharp ring of a bell and the door opened.

After the dim halls where goods were delivered and the noise and dirt of the factory level this was a paradise of light and air. Sun shone through windows, goblins in waistcoats and breeches scratched away at desks. Others stood around water fountains or at tea stands, talking quietly. The goblin who had opened the cage stood back; I dodged aside as a shiny black metal hog pulled a small wheeled cart, a long thin goblin passing out sheathes of papers to the workers he passed. A studious fellow with spectacles placed papers in a capsule that he put in a tube, closing the hatch and tapping on it.

“Well hello there… sir.” The goblin who had let us out greeted us.

“You don’t have to call me sir,” I said cheerily. “Nor the safety inspector there.” Jack mewed a reply.

“Well si… well then. After your time in the lower levels I am sure you would like to refresh yourself before continuing.” I blinked at him. “The washroom. This way.”

I was fairly grimy compared to the others here. Jack and I followed him around chest high barriers, goblins politely nodding as we passed.

The washroom was bright and polished, with silver metal and white ceramic surfaces. I cleaned under my nails, brushed my teeth, knocked dirt and dust out of my hat and clothes. Relieved myself in the latrine. When I offered to wash Jack he ignored me, preferring to lick himself and his outfit clean.

I looked at myself in the gleaming mirror. Did I appear taller? My nose sharper, my chin more solid? Dark eyes shining, my skin luminous in sweeps of green?

A goblin can be who they want to be, that was something I had been told. Or something like that. Yes. So I would be the goblin who found out what was happening here.

Jack mewed at an empty bowl so I poured some water in it; he pre-empted me, jumping on the counter and batting at the stream from the tap. After a while I turned it off, and ignoring his complaints went out.

The goblin was talking to a colleague; seeing me he broke it off and led me on.

To a large room, windows down one side, a long table in the middle. Three goblins were gathered around one end, all with dark serious-looking ties around their necks.

“Welcome welcome. Please take a seat.” The tallest one, his tie so dark a blue it was almost black. The escorting goblin pulled out a chair and I sat. He pulled out another; Jack jumped up, then on to the table and looked back. With some magnificent improvisation the goblin took a cushion from the chair and placed it on the table beside him. Jack sniffed at it, then deigned to curl up.

“Which project were you interested in?” asked the next, the plumpest goblin I had seen in the Manufactory, his tie a light-swallowing purple.

“I have seen Project Typhon below. We might start there.”

They all looked at each other and the third, so bland and forgettable that I had taken no notice of his features or his tie, he turned to the side. He knocked on the wall, three times, then four more.

In came two young keen goblins, holding a covered board. They placed it on an easel and then whipped off the cover theatrically. There it was.

“Project Typhon, a melding of the most destructive elements of Mother Earth and the Incarnation of Tartarus.” One pointed at the boiling nest at the bottom, the artist’s work so finely done that I had to blink to see it was in fact motionless. “Below the thighs nothing but coiled serpents. His arms, when spread out, reach one hundred leagues, his hands made up of countless serpent’s heads.”

Jack hissed at this. I spoke up. “Serpent tails below, the heads on the arms. The divided parts connected by the body.”

The other had a pointer. “The ass-head…” There was a snigger from somewhere. He continued firmly. “The ass-head reaches up to scrape the vault of heaven. The wings darken half the sky. From the eyes come flame and from the mouth flaming rocks. That is Project Typhon.”

I looked at the picture of the world-breaker, the god-killer, the [[death]] of nations. A whirlwind of destruction, the flame of a burning [[earth]], a serpent from the abyss. “What’s it for?”

The two young goblins grinned, looked at each other. Then turned together to look at the three senior ones.

“I assure you,” said the tall one. “This has been approved from the Governor’s office. By the Governor himself.”

Jack mewed. I shook my head. “My colleague is concerned about the safety of unleashing such a construct on the unsuspecting world. Can you tell me what it is for?”

The bland one shook his head. “I assumed form followed function.”

“If burning were our intention then there are other options, from goblins with drip torches, through [[fire]] arrows, all the way up to spitfires. If we wish to touch heaven then air-balloons and kites can be built. Serpents already exist.”

The round one looked on in distaste. “I always assumed it was for clearing land of unwanted obstructions. Forests, mountains, cities and so forth.”

“Very well. What next?”

The two young goblins rushed out, returning with a new board. This they unveiled with grins. “Project [[Python]].”

An enormous writhing worm was depicted. At first I thought it limbless, featureless. Then as the goblins pointed out details it became clearer. The size of the construct was misleading; claws bigger than houses, teeth tall as a tower, they were dwarfed by the great belly and tail.

“By resting the main part of the structure on the ground there is a greater capacity for weighty internal braces and machinery. Python is therefore sturdy and robust. Well nigh indestructible.”

I stared at it.

“A hundred claws on each side to make it mobile, and remove obstacles from it’s path. Yet barely needed, the armour plates so heavy that they can push anything moveable aside, and slide over anything that won’t move; so finely balanced and machined that they will let it creep even without the traction of the limbs.”

I looked at the head, small compared to the rest, still enormous.

“Yes the head appears out of scale. This is because Python is a chthonic construct. As I said it can crawl anywhere in the world, yet there is more to it than travelling over mere surfaces. Project Python can burrow deep, right into the navel of the world. Crawl amongst the very roots of the earth, gnawing it’s way deep amongst them.”

Jack hissed at this one too.

“Serpents again. Do you think it safe to have such a fearsome, unstoppable construct undermine the foundations of the world?”

The tall one spoke. “I assure you that, this, like every project developed by the engineering department, has been approved by the Governor.”

I scratched my chin. “So before it is developed he approves it.”

The round one nodded. “That is so, in every detail.”

“Yet until it has been developed he cannot know the details, so how can it be approved of?”

The bland one smirked a little, polished his quizzing glass. “We are in constant communication with the Governor’s office.” He pointed to the tubes.

“Pneumatic?” I asked.

“Ferrets push the message capsules.” Jack sat up at this.

“I see,” I said.

“Project Python could excavate waterways, harbours, dig mines?” The tall one’s air of competence was fraying rapidly.

The two young goblins took this as a cue and rushed out to bring in another. “Project [[Hypton]],” they said proudly.

This appeared to be a great butterfly with enormous eye-covered wings. The eyes, it seemed had multiple uses. Some could be used to watch what went on below when the sky-darkening presence of Hypton flew over, out of reach of the ground-hugging mortals. Others could see deeper, into their minds, reading their thoughts, uncovering their secrets. And a few were even more active, able to overwhelm the personality and will, making them behave as Hypton wished.

“How will Hypton wish them to behave?” I asked.

They pointed out the long proboscis, so Hypton could suck up water or food without ever landing, the tentacles to grasp birds and insects from the sky, the jagged wing edges to cut through any enemy who might climb to meet it.

Jack gave a yawn and they brought in another board.

[[Nopyth]], an obsidian block that at first view seemed featureless, the artist’s rendering sucking vision in, black on black on black. Very slow moving and growing it was nevertheless unstoppable. Creating a wall that would divide the land. If anyone attempted to cross or damage Nopyth, the many mouths would tear and other orifices let loose corrosive fluids to dissolve and rot the attacker.

“Which places do we need to divide from others with such great ferocity?”

The roots dig down to bring up nutrients… the board was replaced.

[[Photyn]], a brazen bull who reflected sunlight so powerfully it would blind those who looked up it, with fiery breath from the nostrils, hooves that could break castle walls.

[[Tophyn]], a sea serpent that could swallow fleets, eyes that disorient sailors, a tail that could make waves that would smash down cliffs or devastate the land for miles inland.

[[Phyton]], a plant that grew upon itself, a stem and lead on stem and leaf on stem and leaf, shading the land. I showed some interest in this but they were on a roll.

“Here is the masterwork. [[Phonyt]]. This is expanded one million times.”

A change in scale at least. Rather than a creature of great size, this was tiny, invisibly small, infinitesimal. I peered at it. It seemed to be made up of gold lozenges, so finely drawn that I could swear they spun and twinkled, the whole seeming to expand and shrink, move across the page.

“Phonyt can stay dormant for years, yet remain viable. When it finds itself in a host it will move through the body, causing no trouble or symptoms until it finds itself in the brain. Even there it will only activate in a pre-frontal cortex. So only in sentient beings such as goblins, trolls, gnomes, rabbits, dolphins, merpeople, angels, devils. Possibly some of the more advanced apes if you can believe it.”

The goblins at the head of the table smiled at each other, wide, toothy grins as though they might be about to sit down to a delicious dinner. Jack sat bolt upright and hissed, then spat.

“And what does it do?” I asked them.

“Oh very simple.” The round goblin seemed pleased with himself. “It burns out language, word by word. Completely removing the ability to express or understand.”

I stroked my chin. “Seems like something that could easily get out of hand. And go on to destroy all culture and civilisation.”

The tall goblin looked even more satisfied. “Fortunately the researcher is close to making a counter agent. Or so we believe, it has recently become impossible to understand him.”

The bland goblin shrugged. “If it becomes a problem then that is what the other projects are for. Scrape the world back to a blank page. Let the Creator mount their throne and try again.”

I nodded. It was becoming clear at last. “So not your problem what happens after these projects are built.”

The tall goblin grinned. “We have developed these plans from the outlines and requirements that were left here for us. The strategic use of the projects is for higher governance.”

The round one puffed his cheeks. “We do as we are assigned and as we are authorised, under the authority granted from the Governor.”

The bland one had no expression on his face. “And I must at this point note that these plans are approved, and also by granting that these constructs are self-governing, absolve us from all responsibility as to their actions.”

I stood and the other goblins stiffened. “Well thank you gentlemen. This has been most enlightening. I think that I will make my way to the Governor’s office.”

At my movement Jack started, then bounced forward. One of the young goblins tried to intercept, the other to get out the way. They ran into each other and collapsed into a pile of flailing limbs. Jack sailed above them and landed with all four paws on the near vertical board, claws digging into the diagram of Phyton.

“Get the broom,” croaked the tall goblin. “Get the broom!”

I shook my head. “Leave Jack alone. As Auxiliary Safety Officer they have some criticisms of this project.”

Jack scrabbled violently, then slid unceremoniously off the bottom, turning in midair to bounce off the squirming goblins and trotted back along the table, tail and head held high. I stuck my head out the door and found the escort standing there, elaborately not listening in. “If you can take me to the Governor’s office please?”

He took me through the corridors. Now the goblins either turned and ran away or stood and stared. No one pretended to work as I went by. Part way through Jack came bounding along, passed us, then slowed to a trot, leading the way.

We turned a corner and found ourselves facing a moving stairway. Jack looked at it, looked at me, then came back and weaved around my legs. I bent to pick him up; he chose to climb and position himself as a lookout on my shoulder.

“Well your honour, if you go up there you should find your way to the Governor.” He gave a smart salute, which I returned much less smartly.

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell the Governor?”

This seemed to throw him for a moment. “I ah. I’m very proud to serve here. Sir.”

“I asked you not to call me sir. I’m no officer.” I left him to his confusion, stepping on the first tread, grabbing hold of the moving handrail as my foot was dragged away.

Once I had my balance it was a very smooth journey. Jack had dug his claws into the vest’s padded shoulder, almost as though it were designed for this. I looked down. The plan of the engineers’ offices could be seen from above. They watched me ride up as I saw how the desks and meeting rooms were arranged, like a labyrinth, circling and funnelling towards a centre.

Up through the ceiling, the eyes now hidden. Everyone had been thinking about the Governor. As though he were a king. The one goblin who knew what was going on. The one goblin who had answers. The one goblin with the power to loose and to bind.

The one goblin with the right to call me out. The ability to say, you belong here. Or you don’t belong.

We’d meet that when we came to it.

The moving stair approached an end, the steps vanishing under the floor. I hopped off, and only when safely on solid ground did I look about.

A great vast hall, an empty desk right in front. Beside it were a dozen or so tubes, the ends beside a basket overflowing with message capsules. As I watched a capsule emerged, bounced off the top-most one of the pile, then rolled away onto the floor. A small white face came out. Jack stiffened on my shoulder. The ferret ignored him, ignored me, instead and ran across the floor to a small hole.

Beside the hole were double doors, three times the height of a goblin. The doors were ajar and from inside came a rumbling. I looked at Jack, and he was looking at the hole. “You do not want to go in the ferret hole,” I said.

I went through the door.

A hall that was like the one I had come from, but the desk was twice the size, behind it a great brazen mask, and beyond that windows, opening onto the world beyond. As I came in the mask grunted, steam coming from the ears. Jack leaped from my shoulder and ran.

“Not the ferret hole,” I called out.

“Pay no attention to the goblin behind the curtain,” said the mask, as Jack ran to a curtained alcove. I stamped after him as he wrestled with the fabric. I picked him up but his claws were tangled and pulled it aside.

Inside was a goblin, sitting on the latrine, reading a bundle of papers and smoking a complex looking pipe. “Don’t mind me,” he said.

“It’s me you’ve come to see,” said the voice from before, much less booming now they were out from behind the mask. A smart looking goblin, eyes bright though the wrinkles of age covered every part of his head. “Let my secretary deal with his business in peace.”

He took a seat behind the desk. Jack was reluctant to release the curtain so I left him to it and found myself a seat without being invited.

“I know why you’re here,” said the goblin, the Governor. “I know why you’re here and I want you to know that I disapprove.”

“I see,” I said.

“When I was young we were all just goblins, one squalling undifferentiated mass. I see no need to maintain these artificial distinctions. A goblin is a goblin is a goblin, that was good enough at creation and should be good enough now.”

I inclined my head, then had to adjust the goggles that threatened to slip down onto my face. “As the Governor, surely you have the power…”

“So why divide goblin from goblin? Why declare some male goblins and some female goblins? What purpose does it serve? At least the current system, where each goblin expresses their preference can be comprehended. The first attempt was a shambles. Trying to categorise the manifold infinite grotesque variety of goblin genitals into two classes. Impossible, ridiculous, and quite disgusting.”

He stared at me and I stared back. “You said you know why I’m here.”

“Well of course. Having divided goblins in this way categorically, it seems that we must divide them physically. Male goblins go to the Manufactory of the Dawn…”

“Females to the Manufactory of the Dusk, and those who are neither join the aeronautical corps. This is known.” I stared at him and now his wrinkles seemed to deepen. “What I want to know is what is going on here.”

From the alcove came an odd whistle and a quick burst of vapour. Jack came sprinting out. When he saw us watching he slowed to a casual stalk, obliquely sidling towards the desk.

“I am the Governor you know. I am in charge.”

“Then tell me what is going on,” I said. “So many goblins working hard to create frightful engines of destruction. Is this really what we are about? Do goblins want to be known as such monsters? Is that to be our legacy.”

He sighed and held up a slim volume on the desk. “Do you know what this is? Of course not, you’re not the Governor. When I arrived here I found this office and this desk. And this book. The other goblins wanted leadership. They needed to be told what to do. So I deciphered what I could, as best I can and sent down the instructions.

“In this book are the notes of the Creator. Everything that they intended for this world. And all my attempts to bring forth a design have led to building a great construct. Will it be a terrible destroyer? Well, such is not my business. The Creator left his notes and who am I to deny them.”

The Governor had deciphered the Creator’s notes, or six letters of them at least. Jack jumped up on the desk and mewed quietly. I stroked him with one hand, adjusted his jacket where it had rucked up with the other.

“You’re the Governor. You took charge. It’s your responsibility.”

“What, was I supposed to leave this office empty?”

I sighed. “Why not? Do you think that by setting yourself above other goblins – apart from them – you’ve made things better?”

The Governor stood up then. He put all his officer class strength into his voice. “Goblins need leadership. They want leadership. They love to be told what to do. And I gave it to them. If I did not take this seat, this office, someone else would have. And who knows what they would have done with the power!”

“Project Typhon? Project Hypton? Project Phonyt? Goblins want work and purpose yes. They don’t need a Governor who has them make world-ending weapons.”

The Governor shrugged. “Well so long as I am on this side of the desk it’s my opinion that matters. It’s not as though the incompetents down below would be able to complete projects of this magnitude. Even the Creator left before finishing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s upstairs?”

He froze, then collapsed into his chair. “You’re kidding of course.”

“I’ve come this far. I want to see what’s up there.”

The ladder had been badly disguised, some sheets hanging from the bottom two thirds, the upper part in shadow.

“The throne of the Creator… but no goblin would dare…”

I looked him in the eye. “Do you think just any goblin could make his way into the Manufactory. Visit every office, every workshop, every store and canteen and washroom? Be welcomed at every turn, even here? Do you think that one of the undifferentiated mass of squalling goblins could make their way here in front of you?”

“Your Majesty…”

“Stop that.” I stood and Jack mewed plaintively, squirmed onto my shoulder. “I work for a living. And so should you. Do you know what leadership is?”

“I, I mean…”

I made my way towards the ladder. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

I pulled loose the sheets and began to climb. From below came the voice of the secretary. “What now Mr Governor?”

“Wash your damned hands Gruntlespoon!”

<nowiki>****</nowiki>

In case you didn’t know, the Creator didn’t leave a throne on the pinnacle of the Manufactory Of The Dawn. No throne, no crown, no sceptre, sword, wand or orb. Up top there is a shelter with cushions and blankets. A water spigot and cooking stone, pots and pans. Dried fruit, dried meat – Jack went straight for that. Bags of rice and bags of beans. A latrine of course, and a farseer.

There’s no throne up there, no king. I looked through the farseer and saw how the creatures of the world were continuing the work of Creation. Trolls piling rocks into mountains. Gnomes digging out waterways. Goblins burning forests, planting saplings in the blackened remnants. Herds of horses and cattle on the plains, goats in the hills, deer in the forests. From the savannah in the south upright apes, brute cunning in their eyes, mastering the crudest tools, flint and fire, bone and wood.

Someone should probably keep an eye on them.

I put some beans on to cook, they take longer than rice.

We’d been left in a world half-built, and no instructions. Obviously we were going to build monstrous engines of destruction. What choice did we have? Not build apocalyptic constructs? Perhaps we were fortunate that the Creator had left behind such extraordinary ideas that it would take centuries of labour to fulfil them.

Perhaps that was the plan. Give us [[Timeline|time to work out an alternative]]. Or no plan, the Creator making it up as they went along. Like the rest of us.

No throne for the Creator. No king for the goblins. The Governor couldn’t see it. Goblins don’t need a leader. They need someone to shake them out of their habits, to pull the goblin round pegs out the square holes the Creator had left. King, governor, noble, these are not the highest aspirations for a goblin. There are better things to be. Cat-burglar. Troublemaker. Sceptic.

[[Trickster]].

I’d done what I could. Tomorrow I would move on. I lifted the farseer to the horizon just as the sun dipped below, outlining something there, like a blade raised to heaven. The Manufactory Of The Dusk. Jack moaned loudly as the sun vanished.

Time to see what mess the girls had got into.

=== Alternative Titles ===
As well as For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used, versions of this narrative have been uncovered with other titles. These include:

''An Incomplete World Requires Goblins''

''A Goblin Seeks Meaning Below The Throne Of The Creator''

''Aimed At Heaven''

''[[Monstrous Orphans Of Creation]]''

''The Apocalyptic Constructs Of The Creator''

Scholars continue to uncover new versions in the archives.

==== A Goblin Koan ====
The Student asked The Goblin King, ''Master, how few words do you need to tell a complete tragedy?''

The Goblin King thought for a moment. ''[[wikipedia:For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn|For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used]]. There, that's six words.''

The Student pondered this. ''Master, I don't get it''.

The Goblin King sighed. ''It's like this. The Creator made a throne, but never used it. Which is sad.''

The Student shook their head. ''I thought they made it to sell. For money. Which is a use.''

The Goblin King was astonished. ''What use, Mablethorpe'', they said breaking the rules of a fable by using the goblin student's name, ''what use would The Creator have for money?''

''To buy things?'' said the Student. ''I still don't get it''.

The Goblin King walked away, calling over their shoulder ''Well maybe that's why I'm the Goblin King and you're my student''.

At this moment the Student was [[On Joan Of Arc, A Coda|enlightened]].

Road

2024-11-27T17:42:55Z

ScholarGobbo: Added link to Sentencing and I now think every story has a road

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona. the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]], [[Josie|Victorian era England]], [[The Mock Angel|your house (in Utopia)]], [[Who /monster/ here?|World Star Museum]] and [[Sentencing|Texas]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-26T13:33:50Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to who monster here

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona. the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]], [[Josie|Victorian era England]], [[The Mock Angel|your house (in Utopia)]] and the [[Who /monster/ here?|World Star Museum]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-25T10:37:19Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to The Mock Angel

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona. the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]], [[Josie|Victorian era England]] and [[The Mock Angel|your house (in Utopia)]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-24T15:14:59Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Josie via Victorian era England

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona. the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]] and [[Josie|Victorian era England]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-23T16:22:17Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]], [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona and the outskirts of [[Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker|Edvöks and Atöm marsh]] .

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-22T11:11:28Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to America

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]], the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]] and [[Journeying to America|Pane Community College]] Arizona.

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Road

2024-11-21T14:40:49Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Phalanx, the road network reaches out, one day it will link all the stories

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]], [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]] and the [[Phalanx|Bug-Man's Shop]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Against Compassion

2024-11-20T14:07:17Z

ScholarGobbo:

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Against Compassion ==
There is a chasm deepening between how I think people perceive me and how I am. There was a time when I could acquiesce to a Zebra spider in my space but not now. My need to confess this discrepancy, or at least acknowledge it, seems to be growing. I’m thinking of the character “Boo” in To Kill a Mockingbird. His reputation was as an ogre who stayed behind closed doors except to run off pesky kids, but he turned out to be sensitive, compassionate and misunderstood. I’m the opposite, or at least moving in that direction. I evidently appear approachable and compassionate, but if another person asks me to do something for them, if another person needs me to take care of them, I might run screaming back to my house. Like insidious rising sea level fueled by global warming, I’m noticing an increasing hypocrisy in my outward reactions to situations that deserve more empathy and compassion than I have available.

For example, my neighbor, Sondra, living across the [[Road|street]] for thirty plus years, recently sent an email around to a circle of friends saying that her husband was now in a nursing home because he cannot breathe on his own without mechanically delivered oxygen. He suffered severe bouts of pneumonia and other respiratory ailments in the last few years and now his requirement for care and oxygen became too much for her to deal with. I told her that I would visit Alex in the nursing home soon. But, instead, using the excuse that it’s raining, I’m sitting here at home contemplating my compassion insufficiency. I seem to be acknowledging – at least secretly - that it’s difficult and depressing to be at the bedside of very sick people and that I don’t want to go to see Alex. Rather than improving with age, I’m getting worse. Just in time for multitudes of boomers to be sicker, develop dementia and become needier than ever, I’m running low on distress tolerance and motivation to care. I might be more judgmental, too. That leaves only three remaining elements of compassion - sensitivity, sympathy, empathy – and those could be waning. Are those enough?

I’m more cynical, too. At a local church holiday sale last December, I wandered through the area normally used as a Sunday School, transformed into a holiday market of Christmas decorations, quilting supplies, books, white elephant stuff, jewelry and rows of red Poinsettias in paper sleeves ready to go. The sellers seemed cheerful enough, but I didn’t feel my old urge to look for a bargain or find something with a bird theme that would be the perfect whimsical present for my bird lover friends. I didn’t start to enjoy myself until I was snagged in the silent auction area by an acquaintance who immediately started complaining about how much time she had spent organizing and pricing all this stuff.

“And then some people have the gall to tell me it’s too expensive! “ She said as she tidied up a pile of knitted potholders recently explored by an unchaperoned four-year-old.

I wanted to ask, “Why the heck are you volunteering to do all this if it’s so awful?”

But, I didn’t. I know she’s a good citizen who does this because she loves [[God]] and country and possibly fears that the church would actually fall down without her. I used to do these things too, but now it seems boring and without purpose. I’m still giving “time, talent and treasure” as a board member for a couple of local organizations that specialize in good deeds. And I’m supporting an orphan in Haiti and I’ve sponsored two illegal immigrants who are now American citizens with productive careers in this country.

Perhaps I’m losing the desire to be a productive “contributing” member of society. All I want to do these days is to read and write. And what would a community or village be like if everyone was like me? Similar to a monastery or a nudist colony? Somehow I don’t imagine people practicing philanthropy in nudist colonies. They might contribute to the weekly potluck but I don’t imagine them being community helpers except for, hopefully, sharing their sunscreen. Monks, on the other hand, have been known to provide sanctuary for endangered people.

This morning I accompanied my neighbor, Sondra, to our local funeral home to discuss how much their services will cost when Alex dies. When she called to ask me to go with her, she described how confused and worried she felt. She said Alex wants to be cremated, but she’s never had anything to do with cremation because it’s taboo in the Jewish faith. She called on me, she said, because she has attended several of the funerals of my family members over the years and considers me an expert.

She concluded with: “Everyone knows how much you help people with all kinds of things.”

I felt both complimented and repulsed by her invitation. The attraction was mainly curiosity. Sondra expresses herself, verbally, in an unusual way and it would be interesting to see how she explains her and Alex’ wishes to the funeral director.

She confided on the way over to the home that funeral expense is a big concern. She said a friend was recently buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in New York and the funeral and internment cost over $40,000. Sondra’s conversation, as we walked down the street towards the funeral parlor, was a stream of consciousness flitting from meeting Alex for the first time thirty-five years ago in the waiting room of a car dealership to the challenge of taking her Siamese kittens to be spayed last week without him because he’s in a nursing home, and back to, “Alex and I were millionaires twice but we lost it all in the stock market. We can’t afford an expensive funeral. When we met while having our cars repaired he was handsome and kind and he invited me to lunch and we discovered we both liked cats.”

They married two months after their first date and eventually bought the house across the street from me. Over the years they have been friendly neighbors. I knew Alex was just teasing when he insisted that I cut down a large pine tree in my yard that blocked their view of the river. I didn’t do it and we stayed on good terms anyway, even while other neighbors complained that they were becoming more and more “strange.” Alex once accused the adolescent daughter of their next-door neighbor of tapping into his internet and stealing energy, causing his own computer to be slow. He photographed the three teenage boys who live next to me (across the street from him) as they lounged in their own yard smoking cigarettes. He said he was saving the photo for them as evidence when they all developed lung cancer. Perhaps Alex is the compassionate one. He should get bonus points for that one.

I like people who are unusual – even peculiar – as long as they seem to have good intentions. Lately, my response to people with problems is laced with an ulterior motive; they have to be interesting – both the people and the problem.

(This caveat could be a sign that I’m not ready to abandon compassion.)

I know that I will go and see Alex in the nursing home and I will feel genuinely sad that this quirky man, the son of a country doctor in Maine, is now facing months or possibly years as a patient in an unpleasant institution. And here’s another sign of my ambivalence: I responded generously when Sondra lamented that she didn’t think they could afford to buy a burial plot at Elm Grove Cemetery.

“And that’s where Alex wants to be,” she said.

I had an immediate need to make her feel better and told her she could have a couple of the many plots my mother bought at Elm Grove in 1981 when my father died. My mother was an optimist assuming that everyone in the family wanted to be together for eternity and bought an entire condo complex with room for eight.

When we arrived for the meeting, Sondra announced to the funeral director that everything was going to be okay. They were going to be buried with the Whipples. On our way home afterwards, Sondra told me how helpful I had been and how relieved she felt to know that there was room for them with my family at Elm Grove.

The literal meaning of compassion is “to suffer together” and I had momentarily relieved my suffering, my need to respond and solve her problem, by offering a small piece of property (about which I have ambivalent feelings – the property, that is.) I’m at an age where I can no longer glance casually at the cemetery when I pass by. When I go to [[water]] the flowers at my family plot, I’m often calculating the ages of our neighbors based on tombstone datum.

Life expectancy has dropped in the U.S. since 2022, for women, down to 77.28 years. I could move to Japan where it is 84.62 years and get an immediate bonus but I think I’ll stay put and hope that the actuarial tables change. If I make it all the way to 105, life expectancy goes way up after that. But that is mitigated by height. I’m already too short at 5’4” since the odds of making it to 90 are improved by being taller than 5’9”. The good news is that life satisfaction is higher in my current age bracket than for youngsters 60 – 64 years.

But are life satisfaction and compassion compatible? Mother Theresa seemed to have suffered throughout her career from doubts about her faith in spite of her generous compassion. She also belonged to an order, the Sisters of Charity, who practiced self-flagellation, at least at the novitiate stage. As a confirmed hedonist, I admire her level of compassion but will keep boundaries around my self-interrogation. She did live to age 87, though.

Perhaps “boundaries” is the word I’m looking for. My acts of compassion are not related to a need to emulate Jesus or secure a spot in some heavenly realm. I simply hate to see people – and animals – suffer probably because I grew up with parents who were the village problem-solvers. Can we reign in compassion and feel good about ourselves at the same time?

Alex lived several more months and when he died Sondra learned that he had two secret bank accounts. Not only was she able to buy her own duplex plot at Elm Grove but she added a granite bench so she’ll have a place to rest and talk with Alex while she’s still above ground. She offered to talk with my family, too, since she, “won’t have that much to do while sitting with Alex.”

For now, Sondra is doing fine, enjoying her cats, and doesn’t require a lot of compassion from my side of the street. I’ve taken her off my “needs attention” list and will try to leave her spot blank. Or, maybe I’ll put Mother [[Earth]] in her place and economize by taking care of everyone at the same time by reducing my carbon footprint.

People retire, writers revise.

A revision of my life will require careful assessment of what I take on in terms of the problems of others. How do my choices fit into the relatively small time I have in front of me on the planet? Based on my height, I’ve got to maximize my pleasure and satisfaction within the next 10 – 15 years – unless I make it to 105.

Whitfield

2024-11-20T14:06:54Z

ScholarGobbo:

Whitfield is a village outside the port of Dover in Kent in south east England. If you approach Dover via the A2 (or the A256 if you use that [[road]] for some reason) it's the location of the last roundabout before you reach the Jubilee Way. This steep, curving pigtail bridge emerges from the top of the cliffs, suspended above the Eastern Docks, and turns back on itself, reaching the ground at the entrance to the docks. Used by Heavy Goods Vehicles entering or leaving the country, Jubilee Way has several run off points for use if brakes are insufficient.

If you approach Dover via the A20 you will miss Whitfield entirely.

Whitfield was associated with [[the Whitfield Strangler]].

Road

2024-11-20T14:06:07Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Against Compassion. The road may eventually link everywhere

A road is a marked path that leads between places, a liminal space connecting locations, events and people. The road network may connect such disparate places as [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn]], backwoods [[Kentucky]], [[April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution|Minnesota during a gender revolution]], [[Artist Machine|trades shows for artist machines]], a world where [[Weird Fishes|elemental emotions manifest as Weird Fishes]], the [[Conscientious Objector|Củ Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam]], [[The Whitfield Strangler|Whitfield]] in Kent, [[Imitations (Likely to be Divine)|possibly divine computer programs]], [[Ominously abundant pinniped|sealion colonies in California]], a [[Drunk on a Park Bench|park bench]], [[I Think This Time It's Going To Work|Universal Studios Orlando]], the [[The Univeral Law of Perpetual Transmogrification|Ocean]], Minion Meat Restaurant in [[Icons Oblong Claim|Illumination Entertainment World]] and [[Against Compassion|Elm Grove Cemetery]].

Notable roads include the A2 and A256 that go through [[Whitfield]] and the A20 that does not.

A road is, itself, [[Freightliner, Company-Owned|a location where events may occur]].

Sentencing

2024-11-20T13:50:28Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to road

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Sentencing ==
''A Fragment''

…on the floor everywhere now and dirty as she’s felt since Garland that everything always is dirty and leaving from home to Texas and back to home and soon enough though [[Road|down the line]] because she’s keeping it whatever it is the child too will leave her guts and grace and him if he can get himself up to fuck enough for her to blame him and not the sky that night rolling to the corners resting in the little puddles on the floor and already dissolving in hair and schmutz and piss and none never cleaned and everything dirty because she’d said its fine when it wasn’t so it’s hands and knees now and dropping the pills that set him like nothing so much as quivering cold oatmeal in her palm white and clattering and for moment a moment a moment tipped to spill back in the bottle but not and not because there’s no way to stomach him taking the pills dirty and making him sick but on account that there’s no way to stomach him taking them at all no more anyhow in any way whatsoever since without them the transgressions in [[Texas]] with him asleep after not being able at all to complete and her finding some other one to meet the need to meet it then too much and too quickly because he might without them be he might without them the pills now flushed he might without them be able to be again firm enough to make his claim just the once and she can say see she can say see you never needed them and we can be we and another…

Texas

2024-11-19T15:49:42Z

ScholarGobbo: Hope no Texans read this

=== Texas ===
Texas is the only state in the union that matters, the home of Texas Tea (a type of marijuana), the Texas Tuxedo (has a ruffled shirt) and Buffalo Wings (invented by John Wing in [[wikipedia:Buffalo,_Texas|Buffalo, Texas]]). Famous Texans include Robert E Howard, and Patricia Highsmith.

The motto of Texas is "Don't mess with Texas."

Sentencing

2024-11-19T15:38:26Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to Texas

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Sentencing ==
''A Fragment''

…on the floor everywhere now and dirty as she’s felt since Garland that everything always is dirty and leaving from home to Texas and back to home and soon enough though down the line because she’s keeping it whatever it is the child too will leave her guts and grace and him if he can get himself up to fuck enough for her to blame him and not the sky that night rolling to the corners resting in the little puddles on the floor and already dissolving in hair and schmutz and piss and none never cleaned and everything dirty because she’d said its fine when it wasn’t so it’s hands and knees now and dropping the pills that set him like nothing so much as quivering cold oatmeal in her palm white and clattering and for moment a moment a moment tipped to spill back in the bottle but not and not because there’s no way to stomach him taking the pills dirty and making him sick but on account that there’s no way to stomach him taking them at all no more anyhow in any way whatsoever since without them the transgressions in [[Texas]] with him asleep after not being able at all to complete and her finding some other one to meet the need to meet it then too much and too quickly because he might without them be he might without them the pills now flushed he might without them be able to be again firm enough to make his claim just the once and she can say see she can say see you never needed them and we can be we and another…

Taser

2024-11-18T14:41:39Z

ScholarGobbo: Explained what a taser is

TASER is an acronym for Time Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, a non- or less-lethal weapon system. By energising time particles they can be focused in front of the device on a person, stunning them by knocking them out of temporal sync with their surroundings.

It has been suggested that this technology might be used in such fields as healthcare, travel, manufacturing, information technology and superluminal travel. For them moment it is used only to zap people, and occasionally animals.

Who /monster/ here?

2024-11-18T14:37:46Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to taser

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== who /monster/ here? ==
>tfw bored as fuck on the night shift at the World Star Museum
>hands folded across my chest
>straight up eroding with boredom
>other guard here, fat 24 year old darkie, is telling stories to keep occupied
>most are bullshit
>funniest example is him saying someone named “[[Indiana Jones]]” broke in and tried to steal some remains
>he says he clocked the guy and was employee of the month, parking space and everything
>says all this between popping THC gummies
>recounts how he couldn't [[Taser|taze]] Jones because he had a long ass bullwhip
>lmao who carries a bullwhip?
>couldn't move into taser range so he "did a backflip and landed behind him"
>fucking retarded [[Narratives|story]]
>even as a transfer i know it’s bs
>starts talking about his "girlfriend"
>obvious he's talking about the petrified dryad on level 2
>just keeps repeating “petrified sluts give me wood” and “scaring the hoes”
>she died millenia ago
>she isn't his girlfriend
>she looks like she was old af before petrification
>he's a young guy
>gerontophile freak
>fuck this moron
>dude starts mocking how i'm standing
>saying "[[Wakanda]] Forever" and other stupid shit
>i'm a [[Goblins|goblin]], not a nigger
>i want to slap him bad
>he takes out his taser and is waving it around at random shit
>careless af
>disrespectful to do that in a museum
>disrespectful (and dumb) to do that anywhere
>bad trigger discipline
>he starts going off about his home life
>mortgage totally under[[water]]
>seriously, some Atlantis shit
>divorced (his fault)
>totally unhappy with life
>8 kids
>by this point i don't give a shit at all
>he starts talking about stealing from one of the exhibits, the severed head of a chief
>pops another edible
>he's probably really high rn
>says "i bet i could take a piece of its ear"
>”it’s just a little piece who would notice?”
>"who gives a shit about some dead greenback anyway?"
>he’s like "i bet no one would even raise an eyebrow"
>i bet they would
>raise my eyebrow
>this totally exhausts me because I'm not fully awake yet
>he rubs his eyes
>edible hitting hard, huh bro?
>”motherfuck” he says
>starts doing a rap
>something about "gettin mad greenbacks for a [[greenback]]"
>something about "gettin head from a greenback"
>he's not a even good rapper
>a few minutes later i see him going into the control booth
>he comes back and says "i just turned off the cameras" and does a little floss dance
>he leaves again
>comes back with display case master keys
>i can hear him working on the head exhibit in the other room
>is this guy for fucking real?
>wonder if he turned off the alarms too
>alarm sounds
>he didn't
>fucking idiot
>he comes back covered in sweat
>totally freaking out
>head in his hands
>alarm lights strobing
>sound of the alarm is like a rap beat
>boooaah whump, booooah whump
>my foot starts to tap to the beat
>then my legs wobble
>boooah whump
>hips shake a bit
>boooah whump
>dust from eons-old rags is flying everywhere
>mind fog is lessening
>atrophy is lessening
>heart full of rage
>my body is ready
>he starts coughing and blinking his eyes
>he's saying "holy shit, holy shit"
>he's like "no way man, no way"
>fucking full-force CHUCKS the weed gummies across the room into a wall
>he’s trying to calm down and think but can’t
>winds up pissing himself
>other exhibits are waking up too
>i’m trying to think of something frightening to say
>wind up going with "I AM A KING OF OLD. DO YOU THINK I REGARD YOU AS ANYTHING BUT AN EXPENDABLE PEON?"
>his pants are soaked
>every exhibit, even the taxidermied beavers, are now fully awake seeing this
>all eyes on him like he's Tupac
>boooah whump
>dude backs up to the wall and makes the sign of the cross
>lol lmao
>approach him quicker than he expects
>this ain’t no romero, son
>he tries to go for taser
>beaver pulls it out of the holster and bites it in half
>wouldn't do shit anyway
>strangle him with my rags
>life flows out of his body
>i feel good
>James Brown except green instead of brown
>walk back to my open sarcophagus
>stand there while police storm building
>detective turns off alarm
>want to laugh but can't anymore
>sergeant sees the blood on my hands and wrappings
>doesn't care
>they wheel dude's body out
>he goes to a morgue somewhere
>probably one in the bad part of town
>who gives a shit
>janitors sweep up the dust
>ashes 2 ashes
>article about his death will quote museum burglary statistics
>higher each year, like human museum guards
>hire another one
>yawn
>love necrosecurity

[https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/23107248/#23107248 /monster/]

Wakanda

2024-11-17T18:24:52Z

ScholarGobbo: Discovered Wakanda

=== Wakanda ===
Wakanda is a fictional African Country in various Marvel properties, best known as the home of Black Panther.

Who /monster/ here?

2024-11-17T18:08:48Z

ScholarGobbo: Added Wakanda

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== who /monster/ here? ==
>tfw bored as fuck on the night shift at the World Star Museum
>hands folded across my chest
>straight up eroding with boredom
>other guard here, fat 24 year old darkie, is telling stories to keep occupied
>most are bullshit
>funniest example is him saying someone named “[[Indiana Jones]]” broke in and tried to steal some remains
>he says he clocked the guy and was employee of the month, parking space and everything
>says all this between popping THC gummies
>recounts how he couldn't taze Jones because he had a long ass bullwhip
>lmao who carries a bullwhip?
>couldn't move into taser range so he "did a backflip and landed behind him"
>fucking retarded [[Narratives|story]]
>even as a transfer i know it’s bs
>starts talking about his "girlfriend"
>obvious he's talking about the petrified dryad on level 2
>just keeps repeating “petrified sluts give me wood” and “scaring the hoes”
>she died millenia ago
>she isn't his girlfriend
>she looks like she was old af before petrification
>he's a young guy
>gerontophile freak
>fuck this moron
>dude starts mocking how i'm standing
>saying "[[Wakanda]] Forever" and other stupid shit
>i'm a [[Goblins|goblin]], not a nigger
>i want to slap him bad
>he takes out his taser and is waving it around at random shit
>careless af
>disrespectful to do that in a museum
>disrespectful (and dumb) to do that anywhere
>bad trigger discipline
>he starts going off about his home life
>mortgage totally under[[water]]
>seriously, some Atlantis shit
>divorced (his fault)
>totally unhappy with life
>8 kids
>by this point i don't give a shit at all
>he starts talking about stealing from one of the exhibits, the severed head of a chief
>pops another edible
>he's probably really high rn
>says "i bet i could take a piece of its ear"
>”it’s just a little piece who would notice?”
>"who gives a shit about some dead greenback anyway?"
>he’s like "i bet no one would even raise an eyebrow"
>i bet they would
>raise my eyebrow
>this totally exhausts me because I'm not fully awake yet
>he rubs his eyes
>edible hitting hard, huh bro?
>”motherfuck” he says
>starts doing a rap
>something about "gettin mad greenbacks for a [[greenback]]"
>something about "gettin head from a greenback"
>he's not a even good rapper
>a few minutes later i see him going into the control booth
>he comes back and says "i just turned off the cameras" and does a little floss dance
>he leaves again
>comes back with display case master keys
>i can hear him working on the head exhibit in the other room
>is this guy for fucking real?
>wonder if he turned off the alarms too
>alarm sounds
>he didn't
>fucking idiot
>he comes back covered in sweat
>totally freaking out
>head in his hands
>alarm lights strobing
>sound of the alarm is like a rap beat
>boooaah whump, booooah whump
>my foot starts to tap to the beat
>then my legs wobble
>boooah whump
>hips shake a bit
>boooah whump
>dust from eons-old rags is flying everywhere
>mind fog is lessening
>atrophy is lessening
>heart full of rage
>my body is ready
>he starts coughing and blinking his eyes
>he's saying "holy shit, holy shit"
>he's like "no way man, no way"
>fucking full-force CHUCKS the weed gummies across the room into a wall
>he’s trying to calm down and think but can’t
>winds up pissing himself
>other exhibits are waking up too
>i’m trying to think of something frightening to say
>wind up going with "I AM A KING OF OLD. DO YOU THINK I REGARD YOU AS ANYTHING BUT AN EXPENDABLE PEON?"
>his pants are soaked
>every exhibit, even the taxidermied beavers, are now fully awake seeing this
>all eyes on him like he's Tupac
>boooah whump
>dude backs up to the wall and makes the sign of the cross
>lol lmao
>approach him quicker than he expects
>this ain’t no romero, son
>he tries to go for taser
>beaver pulls it out of the holster and bites it in half
>wouldn't do shit anyway
>strangle him with my rags
>life flows out of his body
>i feel good
>James Brown except green instead of brown
>walk back to my open sarcophagus
>stand there while police storm building
>detective turns off alarm
>want to laugh but can't anymore
>sergeant sees the blood on my hands and wrappings
>doesn't care
>they wheel dude's body out
>he goes to a morgue somewhere
>probably one in the bad part of town
>who gives a shit
>janitors sweep up the dust
>ashes 2 ashes
>article about his death will quote museum burglary statistics
>higher each year, like human museum guards
>hire another one
>yawn
>love necrosecurity

[https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/23107248/#23107248 /monster/]

Indiana Jones

2024-11-16T13:53:19Z

ScholarGobbo: Created Indiana Jones, sorry Mr Disney, you owe me the royalties on this one

In 1984 TSR produced an [[wikipedia:The_Adventures_of_Indiana_Jones_Role-Playing_Game|Indiana Jones tabletop roleplaying game]] that amongst it's list of copyrights and trade marks included Nazi<sup>TM</sup>. This has infamously gone down in history as TSR (or LucasFilm) trademarking the word Nazi.

The actual reason is just as stupid but not quite as funny; LucasFilm insisted that every character from the films (''Raiders Of The Lost Ark'' and ''Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom'' - the only two released at the time) be listed as trademarked. As one character was referred to in the script and credits as "Nazi", this character was included.

Who /monster/ here?

2024-11-16T13:44:07Z

ScholarGobbo: Links to water and Indiana Jones

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== who /monster/ here? ==
>tfw bored as fuck on the night shift at the World Star Museum
>hands folded across my chest
>straight up eroding with boredom
>other guard here, fat 24 year old darkie, is telling stories to keep occupied
>most are bullshit
>funniest example is him saying someone named “[[Indiana Jones]]” broke in and tried to steal some remains
>he says he clocked the guy and was employee of the month, parking space and everything
>says all this between popping THC gummies
>recounts how he couldn't taze Jones because he had a long ass bullwhip
>lmao who carries a bullwhip?
>couldn't move into taser range so he "did a backflip and landed behind him"
>fucking retarded [[Narratives|story]]
>even as a transfer i know it’s bs
>starts talking about his "girlfriend"
>obvious he's talking about the petrified dryad on level 2
>just keeps repeating “petrified sluts give me wood” and “scaring the hoes”
>she died millenia ago
>she isn't his girlfriend
>she looks like she was old af before petrification
>he's a young guy
>gerontophile freak
>fuck this moron
>dude starts mocking how i'm standing
>saying "Wakanda Forever" and other stupid shit
>i'm a [[Goblins|goblin]], not a nigger
>i want to slap him bad
>he takes out his taser and is waving it around at random shit
>careless af
>disrespectful to do that in a museum
>disrespectful (and dumb) to do that anywhere
>bad trigger discipline
>he starts going off about his home life
>mortgage totally under[[water]]
>seriously, some Atlantis shit
>divorced (his fault)
>totally unhappy with life
>8 kids
>by this point i don't give a shit at all
>he starts talking about stealing from one of the exhibits, the severed head of a chief
>pops another edible
>he's probably really high rn
>says "i bet i could take a piece of its ear"
>”it’s just a little piece who would notice?”
>"who gives a shit about some dead greenback anyway?"
>he’s like "i bet no one would even raise an eyebrow"
>i bet they would
>raise my eyebrow
>this totally exhausts me because I'm not fully awake yet
>he rubs his eyes
>edible hitting hard, huh bro?
>”motherfuck” he says
>starts doing a rap
>something about "gettin mad greenbacks for a [[greenback]]"
>something about "gettin head from a greenback"
>he's not a even good rapper
>a few minutes later i see him going into the control booth
>he comes back and says "i just turned off the cameras" and does a little floss dance
>he leaves again
>comes back with display case master keys
>i can hear him working on the head exhibit in the other room
>is this guy for fucking real?
>wonder if he turned off the alarms too
>alarm sounds
>he didn't
>fucking idiot
>he comes back covered in sweat
>totally freaking out
>head in his hands
>alarm lights strobing
>sound of the alarm is like a rap beat
>boooaah whump, booooah whump
>my foot starts to tap to the beat
>then my legs wobble
>boooah whump
>hips shake a bit
>boooah whump
>dust from eons-old rags is flying everywhere
>mind fog is lessening
>atrophy is lessening
>heart full of rage
>my body is ready
>he starts coughing and blinking his eyes
>he's saying "holy shit, holy shit"
>he's like "no way man, no way"
>fucking full-force CHUCKS the weed gummies across the room into a wall
>he’s trying to calm down and think but can’t
>winds up pissing himself
>other exhibits are waking up too
>i’m trying to think of something frightening to say
>wind up going with "I AM A KING OF OLD. DO YOU THINK I REGARD YOU AS ANYTHING BUT AN EXPENDABLE PEON?"
>his pants are soaked
>every exhibit, even the taxidermied beavers, are now fully awake seeing this
>all eyes on him like he's Tupac
>boooah whump
>dude backs up to the wall and makes the sign of the cross
>lol lmao
>approach him quicker than he expects
>this ain’t no romero, son
>he tries to go for taser
>beaver pulls it out of the holster and bites it in half
>wouldn't do shit anyway
>strangle him with my rags
>life flows out of his body
>i feel good
>James Brown except green instead of brown
>walk back to my open sarcophagus
>stand there while police storm building
>detective turns off alarm
>want to laugh but can't anymore
>sergeant sees the blood on my hands and wrappings
>doesn't care
>they wheel dude's body out
>he goes to a morgue somewhere
>probably one in the bad part of town
>who gives a shit
>janitors sweep up the dust
>ashes 2 ashes
>article about his death will quote museum burglary statistics
>higher each year, like human museum guards
>hire another one
>yawn
>love necrosecurity

[https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/23107248/#23107248 /monster/]

Goblins

2024-11-16T13:42:43Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Sources */

== Introduction ==
Goblins are humanoid creatures who can be found across the wide world. They are reluctantly differentiated by gender, size, profession, class and grotesquery. They are sometimes confused for gnomes, to the disgust of both sets of creatures.

== Sources ==
[[For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used: A Narrative of the First Age|For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used]]

[[who /monster/ here?]]

On Joan Of Arc, A Coda

2024-10-05T17:14:59Z

ScholarGobbo: Added a link to Jay Hulme's poem about Joan Of Arc

== Jeanne D'Arc ==
My essay [https://www.miserytourism.com/a-perfect-virgin-saint/ A Perfect Virgin Saint] was the seed for [[The Mock Angel]]. In it I ask if Joan Of Arc was gaslight gatekeep girlbossing it across France, in order to show how modern context can be imposed on our view of historical events and people. What I didn't ask are questions that sometimes come up, namely: was Joan of Arc Trans? Was she non-binary?

I didn't ask that as it distracted from the points I was trying to make. The answer my essay suggests is that Joan herself would not consider those questions that make sense. In other words, this says more about the person asking it, here and now in the 21st Century.

Which is good and fine. If you draw strength and inspiration from Joan as gender non-conforming, or from her faith, or her leadership, or her visions, then that is a valuable and useful thing. That's your Joan, and no one can take her away from you. Indeed that might be the most powerful way to think of her, my questions and concerns about history and framing irrelevant to you.

Still, I think if we want to know more, rather than asking how Joan of Arc would be framed in 21st century contexts, we might ask, what does Joan tell us about gender and gender non-conformity in 15th Century France? Why were there laws about gendered clothing? How were such laws being weaponised for political ends? These questions might help us understand what people in the 15th century thought and assumed.

=== What Rage Or Madness Drives You? ===
For an alternative view, see Jay Hulme's powerful 21st century queer Christian viewpoint in [https://x.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1706705277947355373 his poem about Joan Of Arc].

=== One Last Note ===
I mentioned Joan of Arc's visions. Two saints of note she saw were Catherine of Alexandria, martyred in 305, and Margaret of Antioch in 304. 1100 years divided them from Joan's time, nearly twice as long as her from us today. Joan, of course, saw them in her context, as inspirations to a woman in a Christian society, to support a Christian monarch. Yet these women lived before the conversion of Constantine and the establishment of a Christian state, before the Council of Nicaea began the creation of a unified church. How would they have seen the questions that confronted Joan and others in the Hundred Years War?

Weird Fishes

2024-09-19T16:06:52Z

ScholarGobbo: Added link to inconsequential

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Weird Fishes ==
'''Weird Fishes''' are a phenomenon where emotions transform into tangible sprites, attaching to a physical form of a word. They are elementally coded artefacts that hold energy ready to be released into the world.

Weird Fishes look almost like shredded newspaper strips, or [[fortune cookie]] papers, encased in the relative element per emotion ([[fire]], [[air]], [[water]], [[earth]]). They appear like a moving highlight around the words. In order to read or engage with the encased words, one must engage with the emotive sprite(s), releasing the trapped energy back into the world to be recycled.

== History ==
These communal cognitive artefacts first appeared during the [[Timeline|Common Era]], a byproduct of a culture that repressed its emotions, bottling up powerful energy of all kinds. As the people [[Inconsequential|struggled to express themselves]], an unhealthy stagnation set in and biological revenge took hold. Those feelings ''needed'' to be expressed and processed, there was no pretending they didn’t exist. The emotions took on a new life, jumping from their blocked host into the shared corporeal world. The people bottled, and bottled, until they burst like a commercial mower catching an abandoned newspaper and scattering its shredded pages to the heavens (see below). This potent residue, or emotive sprite attaches to the word(s) that triggered the reaction. People don’t have to write the words themselves, simply encounter or engage with a physical (digital or traditional) form of words while losing control of those volatile emotions.

Legend says the Weird Fishes look the way they do because of the first time the emotions leapt from their hosts, anger and anxious-apathy colliding in a cyclone of feelings. The energy burst occurred as a newspaper was run over by a labor-worker resulting in a charged altercation with their boss. As emotions expelled between them, they attached to the swirling newspaper pieces, catching like confetti on fire, others turning to hail and crashing to the Earth, meanwhile others rained like wet snow or created teeny tornados in the space around them. It seemed like a shared hallucination until other people of the world started experiencing the same phenomena. A scorned lover’s letter turned to scalding steam in their hands a week later, their words encased in both fiery and watery sprites. More such events continued, until the ambiguous name caught on a few months later, and it’s been colloquially adopted ever since.

There is no anticipated end to the Weird Fishes at present. It has become a reality the people live with, and many are learning to express themselves more aptly, as to avoid inconvenient occurrences of the Weird Fishes.

== Types of ‘Fishes’ ==
The elemental type is determined by the emotions bursting forth at time of engagement.

* Anger/Disgust presents as fire elements.
* Sadness presents as water elements.
* Anxiety/Fear presents as earth/metal elements.
* Joy/Excitement presents as air elements.

The number of sprites increases with severity of emotion, and multiple elements can encase the words (those elemental sprites can in turn affect, or mix with, one another). There seems to be no amount of time that negates these emotive sprites, though they can become less potent as time goes by if they remain intact. Most often, the release is triggered instantaneously (especially in the cases of writing with ink and parchment).

Important to keep in mind: emotions do not consider themselves positive or negative, so many different facets and perspectives of the emotion could be captured.

== Ambiguity ==
There is a children’s game called Weird Fishes where players are encouraged to act out different sets of emotions and the other players create a story around the emotions displayed. Either dice sporting the different elements are rolled, or the group shouts elements and emotions at the performer-player. Similar to Old World charades, the game is meant to educate the youth about identifying and accepting your emotions to reduce accidents around bottled feelings. The game is also meant to celebrate community communication, and normalizing meeting one’s internal self honestly. One region uses the commands “sink, spark, flow, float” to represent “earth/fear, fire/anger, flow/sadness, float/excitement” respectively.

Gunpowder

2024-09-18T16:26:42Z

ScholarGobbo: Created gunpowder

Gunpowder is a low explosive or fast burning material made up of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), charcoal and sulphur. The classic proportions are 15:3:2. As a very flammable substance, when grinding it to make the powder, metal tools are not recommended as they can give off sparks.

April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution

2024-09-18T16:22:17Z

ScholarGobbo: /* April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution */ Link to gunpowder

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution ==
Women in my [[timeline]] faced incredible danger. They wisely knew that an encounter in the woods with a strange [[bear]] felt safer to their personal rights and bodily autonomy than the likelihood of coming across a strange man alone in the woods.

That man vs bear meme ignited the [[gunpowder]] keg that ultimately led to the Galli Act proposal after a social justice movement and media campaign. The campaign meant well but went wrong. It showed the righteous rage women experienced, but the inflammatory language made me regret taking back the word “bitch” because to me it once was a backronym for “babe in total control of herself. I was a proud badass bitch once. I still do not always see it only as “a gendered derogatory slur”. I am a bad person. Probably.

As public opinion changed once artificial wombs made reproduction genuinely safe and birth control became mandatory due to climate change, crime and forced birth was abolished in the April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution that will begin in Minnesota during a freak snowstorm, that “man” finally became recognized as a dangerous animal. We couldn’t even legally define “man”, either, but we were genuinely threatened by them, felt threatened by them. We knew bears were safer though. Probably.

There were resources available for survivors of bear attacks. You were not ashamed of admitting a bear attack. You did not have to face the bear again in a courthouse. Bears did not stalk, cyberbully, shame, or engage in libel, slander, or psychological cruelty to victims. Bears are intimidating and did not use intimidation against victims. People believed people who survived bear attacks. There were no invasive undignified invasive necessary hospital exams and evidence collection after bear attacks. If you were lucky the bear would just kill you and not make you wish you were dead as you recovered, slowly and gradually, and no one ever asked what you were wearing or if you had had an alcoholic beverage before a bear attacked you. You could avoid bears entirely after an attack and the odds of being attacked by a bear twice were also infinitesimally low. Not probably.

In 2024, the U.N. said every eleven minutes a woman is killed by someone in her own family. Honor killings, sororicide, matricide. 50% of women under 25 have been choked without consent by intimate partners. There is no safe way to choke someone. Not probably. Little girls were choked during their first kisses at age 12. Documentation of such assaults is not probably.

Men thought women liked it because at the time violent video bio-mating clips were available online that showed it as normal. It isn’t. Men became addicted to them and learned from pornography how to be a lady-killer. It caused widespread mental illnesses in all genders /sexes and exacerbated inherent trust issues in femme-leaning ones that were adaptive survival mechanisms. Not probably.

Women were more likely to be the victim of assault or violence from a person they knew than from a stranger. 50% of our species, male humans, are potentially a danger to women. Domestic violence hit an all-time peak during the first global coronavirus epidemic as men turned on their wives, girlfriends, and life partners trapped with them and without access to safety. Not probably. With later pandemics, the Galli Act passage prevented violence as it was phased in on state-wide levels.

It wasn’t until the “Riotgirl 2.3 plus++doubleplusgood movement” and the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” events and, of course, it cannot be forgotten the problematic “turnabout is fair play” laws made it into national policy, that it became dangerous for the ill-defined social category known or called “men”, especially of the long previously formerly institutionally empowered and privileged categories, to be out on the streets.

From a data file archive of an anonymous “woman”, “cisgender” identifying, confirmed registration and classed XX chromosome and queer non-gender conforming registration citizen (found centuries from the present day)-

“I remember life well before the “Galli Act” with its well-played campaign of “The only good man is a neutered one” or the “LowT4XY Safety”, and the “Bitches control the dogs!” social media campaigns succeeded in changing public policy even further. Once the coin I knew as a child had flipped 180° and changes in public policy combined with social change, it was unsafe for any man to be outside his home at any time of the day.

After those laws were passed it went from harassment to open attacks, and abuse, and eventually, roving groups of young women would attack unsuspecting “men”. It was said that once it was unsafe and dangerous for a woman to go out alone at night and walk down the street by herself unarmed, now it was said the streets were unsafe for men. I’d not let my son out without my supervision.

The home was where a man belonged. That made women safer and their lives better than ever before in human history. Never again would another Kingbury (we chant the names of women murdered in domestic violence throughout history if we knew their names, this is the litany of the lost, the burden and fear of all survivors, for we are women and this is our history) case occur, at least. It helped me sleep at night.

As the solution started when my son was 21, my beloved wife was 39 and the donor was 40 at the time, it was strange when my son asked me when everything changed. He’d read stories he couldn’t imagine in Herstory texts. He barely remembered life before the changes began (they lost the right to vote, bodily autonomy, and the privilege to open their own bank accounts or own property eventually) but now that he was older and not in the workforce he was wondering about those who had not ever seen a time when the world was different. It was safer than being what I was and unsafe for my son to be what he was. He was born that way and that was enough to keep me awake at night worried.

I am old enough to recall when it was different and it is my sincerest hope that one day the pendulum will be in the middle again, and all of the genders will be safe and actually truly legally and socially equal. It was all the [[Women’s rights|feminists]] (and the bears) ever wanted to begin with.”

Lie

2024-09-17T14:37:06Z

ScholarGobbo: Described lies

A ''lie'' is an untruth meant to be believed; compare to ''fiction'' an untruth meant to be disbelieved.

On Duck Wings

2024-09-17T14:36:18Z

ScholarGobbo: /* On Duck Wings */

{{NarrativeNotice}}

= '''On Duck Wings''' =
Cannot understand why Mom would think this is a good idea.

“Excited, Sport?” her boyfriend, soon-to-be-husband, soon-to-be-my-stepdad Bryan says with an unwelcome slap of his giant hand on my bony thigh, right where the shorts end and the leg begins.

“Sure,” I [[lie]], pulling my khaki shorts down my leg, hiding the marks that look like the outline of getting whipped by a glove full of hot dogs.

I hate hot dogs. I hate this stupid old pick-up truck without air conditioning. I hate the ugly, dull vista of backwoods Kentucky that Bryan believes will lead us to have some kind of lame bonding experience.

But most of all, I hate Bryan.

I hate him like the moon hates an eclipse, blocking out all the light that the moon thought belonged to it. I hate him like dogs hate [[cats]] or cats hate birds: instinctual hatred as natural as breathing, with no beginning and no end.

Though, of course, for us humans there is always a beginning.

Five years ago, at my mom’s company’s annual picnic, back when he was her boss and I was a scrawny kid in an oversized baseball cap. My dad was there, too, and we met Bryan [[Timeline|at the same time]], shook his hand one after another.

I thought Bryan was creepy. He had a gross way of leering at the women and girls at the event, like he was trying to decide which cut of meat he was taking home from the butcher that night. Not once did I imagine that in a few short years this sweaty douchebag in a white polo and salt and pepper toupee who graduated high school when my mother was just being born would sweep said mother off her feet and tear our family apart.

“Smell that fresh country air,” he says with a smile. The windows are down as we cruise down a [[Road|highway]] in the middle of nowhere outside Lexington, but for all I could see it might as well be a jungle in the middle of Brazil or Africa. If I wandered out of the car and tried to make my way back home on foot, I would surely die of consumption or some other old-timey disease that people got on the Oregon Trail. This place feels like the edge of the world, and I cannot tell if I feel that way because of the scenery or because of Bryan.

The guns in the rack behind our seats jangle regularly on this bumpy ass road. I look back at them cautiously, expecting them to go off. Bryan gives me a sideways, mocking grin. “They’re unloaded. You ain’t been around guns much, have ya?” he asks, that fake southern twang that he developed as soon as we landed in Kentucky grating on me. ''You’re from [[California]]!'' I want to scream every time he drops his consonants or inserts extra vowels where they don’t belong.

But I say nothing. I do not want to talk to him at all. Arguing with him seems a nightmare not worth stepping into.

In my mind I repeat my mantra:

''It’s just a few days. It’ll be over before you know it.''

He takes a sip from his thermos. I can smell the whiskey. He offers it to me, another phony bonding exercise. “Want a sip? Could calm your nerves down a bit, keep you steady for when the shootin’ starts.”

I shake my head. “I’m a little too young.” I have never drank alcohol and have zero interest in my first time being with this loser.

“Nonsense! I took my first drink when I was older than you. My pappy gave me a shot of fine Kentucky bourbon when I was just fourteen years old.”

“I’m sixteen.”

He clears his throat, embarrassed, puts the thermos back in the cup holder. “Of course, of course. I knew that.”

I doubt it.

He has not said more than twenty words to me since my mother announced she was leaving my father and moving in with Bryan and taking me with her to his mansion on the edge of a cliff, away from my dad and my friends and the only home I’ve ever known. Since then, it has been three months of grunts, awkward glances, and insincere hand waving from him on my way out the door in the mornings to a school full of rich kids who know from a single glance that I do not belong in their territory.

Bryan and I are strangers living under the same roof. Mom sees it and wants to fix it. She wants me to like him, or at least hate him a little less.

“Why don’t you two check out at game?”

“I don’t like sports.”

“A movie?”

“I don’t think Bryan likes the kind of movies I like.”

“You don’t know if you don’t ask him.”

“What’s the last movie you saw with him?”

She had no reply. They didn’t watch movies. They played tennis, they giggled and snuck around the house in their underwear, they guzzled bottles of wine at dinner. They looked into each other’s eyes and ignored the world around them, especially the part that included me.

“What about a hiking trip?”

“I hate nature.”

A hiking trip it was, though how it evolved into a “[[hunting]]” trip I had no idea.

“It’ll be good for you to see where he’s from, really get to know him. He’s a wonderful man.” I remember her telling me, pausing there, seeing in my face that I wanted this conversation to end. “Not that your father isn’t a wonderful man, but there can be more than one wonderful man. You’re wonderful too.”

“He doesn’t seem wonderful, just rich.”

She tussled my hair and hugged me like I was still the kid she knew from happier days.

She killed that kid and she knew it.

Despite her awareness of my misery, she was unwilling to give up her beautiful new house and brand-new relationship with an old man that made her feel young. Her future with him meant more to her than her present with me.

“Everything will work out. Just give it a shot. He’s a great man, you’ll see.”

“Dad is a great man.”

She clenched her fists in a way that told me she was holding back from slapping me. Would not be the first time she hit me in my life, but would be the first time in this new house. She held back, well-aware that such an action was all I needed to get the hell out of there and run back into my father’s arms in our old house with my old life and my old school and old friends. The place she knew I wanted to be but would not let me go to. Her plastered smile twitched, nearly faded, before righting itself. “There are many great men in this world,” she said before ordering me to start packing.

Back on the open road, my stomach turns as Bryan struggles to make small talk.

“So, you’re what, a junior in high school?”

“I will be.”

“You got a girlfriend?”

''None of your business.'' “Nope.” I did not, though I almost had one before I moved. Cindy Anderson. We kissed once, at a party. Were supposed to go on a date right before I moved, but she got food poisoning and had to cancel. We said goodbye forever via text.

He nods as if gaining some deep understanding: purses his lips, looking out into the boring world of endless trees and gravel. “I see. Boyfriend?”

“No,” I grumble. ''Again, none of your business, even if I did.''

He can sense my annoyance. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. Just because I’m a country boy and a Christian don’t mean I got anything against gay people.”

“I’m not gay,” I say through gritted teeth, feeling foolish for getting furious about this, of all things.

“That’s fine, though I don’t think they’d appreciate the tone of voice you’re taking in saying that word. Ain’t nothing wrong with being gay.”

“I know there isn’t! [[God]]!” I stomp my foot and cross my arms over my chest, well-aware that I looked like a petulant child doing so. My face burns hot. I don’t care what this homewrecker thinks of me, but I am ashamed to be throwing a fit. I don’t want this jerk to think he can get under my skin or make me feel any kind of way.

“Now, son-,”

“I’m not your son.”

“It’s just a matter of speech. I know you’re not my son. I’m just . . .” He sighs, exasperated. ''Good.'' Maybe ''now'' he understands how I feel. “Look, this isn’t easy for me, either. I know it might be hard to believe, but I love your mother very much-,”

The image down the road looks like a mirage at first, a melting blur of color in the distance. I squint at a vision warped by the heat coming off the black asphalt of the badly maintained highway.

“-and she loves you more than life itself, more than me, even-,”

I lean forward in my chair. Seatbelt presses against my chest.

“-and it would just mean so, so much for her if you and I-,”

They move in single file, a parade of white edged with yellow.

“-could just get along and, if not become friends, at least be civil-,”

“Stop,” I interrupt him.

“-and treat each other with resp-,”

“Stop!”

“See! That’s what I’m talking about.” I turn to him and he’s looking at me, red-faced. “You have no respect, just interrupting me when I’m trying to tell you something important-,”

The animals are clear now. [[Ducks]]. We are going to run over a row of ducks crossing the highway. “Stop!” I scream, pointing. I reach for the wheel.

He slaps my hand away and looks forward. “What the hell are you thinking grabbing a man’s steerin’- Hold on!”

Brakes squeal. We fly forward. These seatbelts are going to leave marks on our chest. I get out. We’re inches from the ducks, still marching single file across the road. They did not flinch, did not shift, did not even seem to notice that a two-ton truck driven by a one-ton asshole damn near annihilated them.

He steps out and walks up to the parade next to me. “Will you look at that?” he says while looking toward the woods they emerge from. From left to right they waddle in single file, the ducks stepping out of a cluster of trees across the two-lane highway to disappear into another thick cluster of trees. “How many do you reckon there are?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is perfect.” He walks back to the truck and grabs one of the rifles. He looks around. “Probably got a bit before another car comes along. Come on.” He runs to bed of the pick-up and sets the rifle on the roof of the vehicle’s cab. “Come on!” he shouts when I don’t move.

I trudge up there. “What?”

He pushes a rifle into my hands. “This is perfect for your first time.”

“First time what?” I am not getting it, but I’m uncomfortable, and his gleeful smile does nothing to ease my stress.

He gets behind me, his massive body surrounding my narrow frame. He places my limp arms in position, jams the butt of the rifle into my shoulder, pushes my face down toward the scope by pressing his face against mine. He is all rough force. I want to elbow him in the ribs. I fantasize about lifting my foot between his legs and jamming my heel into his balls.

I stand there, limp, lifeless, feeling out of control and unsure what to do. The gun feels unnatural in my arms, heavier than it should be even with its weight is resting on the top of the vehicle’s cab.

“Look through the scope. Do you see the ducks?”

I see four of them, lined up like the Beatles on Abbey Road, continuing their quiet, steady journey. White ducks with yellow beaks and yellow feet, varying in size from mother to child to mother, big to small to big, one after another passing through the lens.

“Do you see them?”

I nod, sweat dripping down my cheeks, moisture fogging my glasses.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes, I see them.” ''Fucker.''

“Good. Now place your finger gently on the trigger, but don’t squeeze. Just pass it over the trigger, preparing, that’s it, that’s it.” From the corner of my eye, I see a proud look on his face, a happy, enthusiastic grin, the kind of grin I have only previously caught late at night when he walks out of his bedroom naked except for an open robe, belly protruding over his limp-.

''God, he’s gross.''

''God, I hate him.''

“Okay, now, make sure you’re aiming for the body. They’re moving so you want to aim just in front of the duck, just off the edge of the belly, so it walks right into your bullet. Understand?”

I nod.

“I can’t hear you.”

I consider turning the gun on him. ''First time, indeed.'' “Yes, I understand,” I mumble.

“Now wrap your finger around the trigger, get that knuckle right there, and don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it. Squeezing gives you control. You understand?”

“Yes.”

''Do'' you ''understand I hate this?''

''Do'' you ''understand I hate you?''

''Do'' you ''understand I hate my mother because of you?''

“Perfect. Whenever you’re ready, give it a go.” He rubs his hands in excited anticipation.

I look through the lens, aiming. I consider the day the ducks have had, casually strolling from one side of the woods to the other, maybe from one body of [[water]] to another, or one cluster of ducks to another, and wonder if any of them has any idea that it they are right now in this very moment taking their last little duck breath?

I wonder if any of the ducklings feel about any of the ducks the way I feel about Bryan. Would I be doing one of these little ducklings a favor taking out one of their disfavored parents? Could they even feel such animosity toward one of their own? Or was such negative emotion reserved for higher life forms, the supposedly more evolved species?

Or would I be ripping a child from their mother’s arms, just as Bryan did with my mom. If I killed this duck, if I did as he wanted, would that mean I was just like him? Would I step onto the path of becoming like him? Going from future stepson to present son?

''Is that what this is really about, Bryan?''

''I shed blood, we become blood?''

I pull the trigger and suddenly we’re the same kind of bloodthirsty, selfish, ugly, greedy piece of shit?

Take one life, get a new one? Is that how this works?

“Take a deep breath. Squeeze when you exhale.”

I take a deep breath. I close my eyes. I squeeze the trigger when I exhale, picturing his face out there on the line, in every duck’s chest.

For a second everything turns white. I am deaf, save for a terrible ringing. When the world clears up, when time and space and my senses return to normal, Bryan is laughing. “You are one piss poor shot, little man.”

I shot wide, up, past the ducks, sending a bullet straight into the asphalt. The ducks appear shocked by the blast and lift up, soaring to the sky in one great big endless ribbon. I look from left to right and there they were, an infinite stripe of yellow and white as far as the eye can see.

“Will you look at that?” Bryan whispers, in awe at something for what sounds like the first time in his life.

“Yep,” I say, dropping the gun, hoping never to touch it as it clangs on the truck bed floor. The endless row of ducks soars to our left. I wish I could join them. So beautiful, so free, so together. An infinite parade flying to freedom.

Champagne

2024-09-16T16:38:34Z

ScholarGobbo: Created Champagne

Champagne is a sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France. As a protected appellation the methods, grapes and geographical location must all be approved; those making counterfeit Champagne can legally be executed. There are three approved methods of execution; ''Brut'' in which champagne bottles are shaken and corks launched at the prisoner until they are dead; ''Sec'' in which the prisoner is drowned in a comically over-sized bottle; or ''Doux'' in which the prisoner is put into the grape vat and trampled.

Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker

2024-09-16T16:32:44Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker */ Link to Champagne

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Venerable Conrad Knickerbocker ==
Man in his 70s dead: He died while vaulting with a racing tractor outside Edvöks: “Dressed sharply,” a family member said

Man dead: Died in a motorcycle accident in central Evan Kinds: “A bike he’d hired until tomorrow,” the rental company said

Lumberjack died after being knocked down by a timber truck outside Atöm marsh: “I’m a lumberjack, too, and I’m OK,” a relative said

Over 1000 Swished folk queued to meet Bianca: “We haven’t slept for days.”

The shelves are empty in News ed’s alcohol monopoly after a hacker attack: “At least there’s [[champagne]] and beer left.”

The famous singer, Evot Naess, is dead: “She transgressed to the catholic church,” a vicar said

There’s a [[Python|snake]] loose in the Euro visionaries village: “we can’t identify the species,” organizers said

A swordsman, who went on the run attacking police in Khan varus, is condemned to psychiatric care: “I’m swapping my tepee for sheltered housing,” he said

Police have granted a Quran burning in the lead up to the Euro visionaries song contest: “Is this part of the show?”

Dynamite has been found in a children’s park near Dörmstuns: “This place is crackers,” a local remarked

The honey traps and leaks have been a catastrophe for News ed’s police

An axeman with a queer smile on his face is being hunted by police in Tone Äss

Unemployed man in court on Ginger fraud charges

Massive fight in a laundry room, a women is suspected to have assaulted her neighbor after lending her washing-up powder

Kangaroo on the run, police hunt ongoing

The musician, Prince Fugger-babenhuasen, is dead: “He was hopeless,” his widow said

New study: This is how Swished people become satisfied with less portions of food

Armed minor suspected to have robbed a shop: “Little bastard, when he left he looked damn sorry,” the shopkeeper said

A viper has been found in an apartment block. It hisses, and hisses, and hisses

A man has been shot south of Loch Tomsk: “He challenged everyone to a fight, but we all backed down,” a student onlooker claimed

A man has been seriously injured after being shot outside Loch Tomsk: “His strategy was all wrong,” police said

Drunk driver loses it in village churchyard – rammed all the gravestones

“My son is like a ghost,” new reports on the Dishruk fox’s life on the run. Father incandescent

Dead dog fished out the [[water]] near Ömlam: “It was hairless.”

Authorities in crisis meeting about the exploding buses in Karlma

Swished folk are incandescent that dogshit and prams can coexist in the same salons

Finally, Mother’s day. Take the opportunity to hug your mamma: “age cannot whither her, nor custom stale her infinite vanity.”

Man dead after a crash with an electric scooter in Tripe: “We’ve already reduced the price of petrol,” a government spokesperson said

A paddler out paddling was shot with an airgun near Nartä: “It’s healthy for your core but not when this happens.”

A man brandishing a saw is being hunted on a beach in Wyoran: “This is fucking ridiculous, where the fuck is this guy,” an onlooker said

Four youths in hospital, crashed into a tree north of Aslaved: “The river sings a lonesome song, of battles fought by right and wrong,” police said

Big reveal following research – this is how many Swished men are unsatisfied with their sex life: “Sometimes it’s hard to love someone until they are gone,” one man said

The documentary filmmaker, Conrad Knickerbocker, is dead, he was just 41 years old: “Never heard of him,” someone said

Chocolate mousse is being recalled, it might contain small metal parts: “Conciliatory news given we’re poor,” a child said

Lantchips are being recalled, reports suggest they might contain traces of milk: “Traces of milk?” someone said

Cows on the run — 17 cows have ran 1km out into the sea: “It’s messy,” an onlooker said

Glenn Berglind is testing News ed’s cheapest electric cars: “This is the kind of crap you get for your money.”

Grietje received an SMS following the police’s controversial drug alarm: “I was quite alarmed.”

Several moose are wandering around in central News Ed, a Swished man on the street told me: “fuck it, shoot them – shoot the lot of them.”

8,200 people are going to get a SMS from the police today, their telephone numbers have been gathered by the drug squad: “I’m still quite alarmed,” Grietje said

There will be a message about aggressive mosquitoes today: “Well, at least the birds will not be short of anything to eat,” an official spokesperson said

Swished Ginger con man is condemned: Two and half years in the slammers

Investigation: The woman on FansOnly who was his own daughter

Naj Eal-menu drove 138 on an 80 [[road]]: “That was daft, I admit it – I’ll probably have to buy a bike.”

Pensioner inherited a [[billion]] bucks – donated the lot; his reaction: “Indescribable joy.”

Someone has had a heart attack during the Swished marathon

Maria is tired of her doctor’s rules: “Fuck it, I’ve had enough, no more.”

Horse shot in a pen rushed to the animal hospital, empty gun casings found near the scene, “I photograph horses all the time,” an onlooker said

Man crushed to death by a lawnmower near Byron: “He liked taking pictures of his things,” his partner said

Frisco Tom is investing $3 billion in Swished IA

All trains have ground to a halt: “There is minor damage on all of the carriages on the blue line – follow the graffiti on the walls, a sound guide home,” police said

On Joan Of Arc, A Coda

2024-09-15T14:20:34Z

ScholarGobbo: Wrote a little more on Joan of Arc and gender, probably got it all out of my system now

== Jeanne D'Arc ==
My essay [https://www.miserytourism.com/a-perfect-virgin-saint/ A Perfect Virgin Saint] was the seed for [[The Mock Angel]]. In it I ask if Joan Of Arc was gaslight gatekeep girlbossing it across France, in order to show how modern context can be imposed on our view of historical events and people. What I didn't ask are questions that sometimes come up, namely: was Joan of Arc Trans? Was she non-binary?

I didn't ask that as it distracted from the points I was trying to make. The answer my essay suggests is that Joan herself would not consider those questions that make sense. In other words, this says more about the person asking it, here and now in the 21st Century.

Which is good and fine. If you draw strength and inspiration from Joan as gender non-conforming, or from her faith, or her leadership, or her visions, then that is a valuable and useful thing. That's your Joan, and no one can take her away from you. Indeed that might be the most powerful way to think of her, my questions and concerns about history and framing irrelevant to you.

Still, I think if we want to know more, rather than asking how Joan of Arc would be framed in 21st century contexts, we might ask, what does Joan tell us about gender and gender non-conformity in 15th Century France? Why were there laws about gendered clothing? How were such laws being weaponised for political ends? These questions might help us understand what people in the 15th century thought and assumed.

=== One Last Note ===
I mentioned Joan of Arc's visions. Two saints of note she saw were Catherine of Alexandria, martyred in 305, and Margaret of Antioch in 304. 1100 years divided them from Joan's time, nearly twice as long as her from us today. Joan, of course, saw them in her context, as inspirations to a woman in a Christian society, to support a Christian monarch. Yet these women lived before the conversion of Constantine and the establishment of a Christian state, before the Council of Nicaea began the creation of a unified church. How would they have seen the questions that confronted Joan and others in the Hundred Years War?

For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used: A Narrative of the First Age

2024-09-15T13:26:14Z

ScholarGobbo: Link to a coda

{{NarrativeNotice}}

= '''For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used''' =
'''A Narrative Of The First Age'''

The Manufactory of the Dawn, [[goblins]] run it now, that’s what I’d been told. Probably getting into a lot of trouble. I know all about that, I’m a goblin too. I’d picked up the sloth-construct cart from where it had been left. Didn’t see the driver anywhere about. Cargo got to move. Just hitched up the beasts, put on the cap that had been left on the drivers bench and patted the furry creature sitting there. Away we went, down the [[road]].

The Manufactory could be seen for days across the plain. The base was like a mountain, though closer you could see it was layers, terraces, a ziggurat seven levels high. Above that a big wide level, horizontal, overhanging the base, a clear sign that this was no natural landmark. And on top the tower, like a great blade pointing at heaven. Here and there thin plumes of smoke escaped. At night mysterious orange glows could be made out, scattered across it.

In the mornings when I wanted to be sleeping it blocked the sun. But necessity drives us, the brazen sloths did better in the shade than the heat of the day. I did too, and so did my furry companion. We made our way along the road, one of many carts and wagons crawling across the plain, me napping when the sun slowed us down, waking when it cooled in the night. Shortly after dawn we arrived.

The gates stood open, higher than any building I’d ever been in. A goblin stood between them watching me. He held out a hand to stop and I tried a variety of commands, the sloths slowing down and eventually settling only a few yards beyond him, so one of the control words must be right.

“All right, all right speed demon. No need to hurry. Governor’s not watching,” he said. “So, what you hauling.”

I looked back at the sacks piled high. “Just what it says on the manifest. Rice and beans.”

He didn’t ask me for the manifest. “Rice and beans together, or rice in some sacks and beans in the others.”

I looked at the sacks again. I began to doubt it was rice, or beans. Changing my mind now would just cause this guy trouble. Looking at him, ragged ears, skin flaking from too much sun, he’d had trouble enough already. “Rice in some sacks, beans in others.”

He turned to look into the darkness of the cavern. Within was a poorly lit enormous tunnel that got gloomier the further back it went. I shaded my eyes to make out goblins and wagons, moving back and forth, heading for stairs and tunnels and corridors. The interior of the Manufactory was honeycombed with passages and rooms.

I should have figured that out myself.

“Well over there, that’s the tunnel to the rice bunker. And there, that’s the way to the bean cellar. Pick one and unload, see what they want to do with the rest I guess.”

“Thanks pal,” I said, looking down. He peeled a long strip of dry skin from his head. I took pity on him. “Here, try my cap. Keep the sun off your head.”

For a moment he looked like I’d insulted him, or maybe insulted his mother, though if he knew his mother he’d be the first goblin I’d met who did. “Okay then.” I passed it down and he put it on, looking faintly ridiculous under the brim. “Yeah this will be good. Thanks. You’re a real gent, generous as the goblin king.”

I always like to be helpful.

I kicked the brazen sloths back into movement. The tunnel had a great plaque above it, with sigils or runes or glyphs, all carved out the stone, or maybe forged of dark metal. Too high to get a good look. Below has a single large symbol that was unfamiliar, one of the old languages, Enochian maybe or Ogham or Lingua Ignota. And hanging from it by a bit of string a wooden sign with a painted picture on it. A wheatsheaf I would have said, a grass stalk. The goblin at the entrance said it was for rice, so rice it was.

Maybe the painter wasn’t very good at painting. You’d hope they could find a good painter somewhere in the Manufactory. Probably busy elsewhere.

At the end of the tunnel I came to a great chamber, goblins moving sacks here and there with wheelbarrows, the whole lit by glowing orbs in the ceiling. “Hey there,” called a goblin, a big guy. His striped vest glowed in the light. In one hand he held a tablet. Wax, I thought to begin with, then as I managed to stop the brazen sloths I saw that there were pieces of paper on it, trapped by a metal clasp at the top.

“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” he said and vaulted up onto the cart before I could stop him. This disturbed my furry companion who hid under the cart.

I checked the sloths were staying in place. By the time I turned he had his knife out and cut open a sack. “Coal,” he said meditatively. “Coal. We don’t usually handle that here.”

“Oh, the guy at the gate thought you did,” I said. “Hey, I can turn around and go back if it’ll cause trouble.”

“No, no,” he said, poking at it. “We can handle anything you know? The Governor put us here, there’s nothing we can’t handle. Anything under the Throne Of The Creator, that’s what we deal with. Coal, coal.” He thought for a moment, then riffled through his papers.

He stood tall and shouted out. “Okay listen up.” A few goblins drifted closer, some bringing empty wheelbarrows. “We got a load of coal here. We’ll send a message up the tube, let them upstairs know what’s coming. We know where it goes, sacks on the hooks, then ring through to the belt office, get them to turn it on. It’ll be pulled away through the shafts, to be dropped where ever needs fuel.” He gesticulated wildly. I saw where he pointed to when he talked about the hooks. A whole bunch hanging from a belt that wound around a big spindle, then turned to go upwards, diagonally, the belt itself vanishing into the wall.

As he organised the work party I thought to myself I’d done enough here. Maybe it was time to see where else I could help.

“It’s been a long trip,” I began.

“Yeah yeah, I got you. We’ve got all the requirements, and them fit for the goblin king. Now see there, the outline of the goblin shitting? That’s the latrine.” I looked, and from a great plaque of symbols hung the latrine symbol. “The one of the goblin washing? Bathhouse. The goblin sleeping, that’s the bunks. And the gobblin eating? I reckon you’ll figure that one out.”

I did. I relieved myself in the latrines, and I washed myself in the bathhouse. In the changing room I found a clean set of clothes, including an orange vest that made me highly visible, a hard white hat and a tablet with a clip holding some papers and a pencil on a piece of string. I put them on, it was almost as though they’d been left for me, they fit so well. On the breast I put a badge, one with an old sigil on it, one that looked like a throne.

In the canteen there were a handful of goblins scattered about the tables, and three at the stove. I went over and greeted them. They seemed eager to please.

“What would you like sir, we have plenty here,” said the first, thin and pale, pushing a basket of crusts and crumbs my way.

“Give him a tray and a bowl,” said the second. “And yes, plenty, but not too much, no we’re not wasteful, your worship.” He had a basket of dried fruit that he put on the counter.

“Enough of that, a hot meal, that’s what the he wants I’m sure. When he reports to the Governor he’ll say we feed people up properly, won’t you captain.” He put some fat in a pan, then the pan onto a metal plate. It hissed and sizzled. He held his hand over a basket of eggs, chopped onion, some large mushrooms, and cut up roots and vegetables. “What’s your pleasure sir.”

“You’re the chefs,” I said and a moment of panic swept over the three. “You’re in charge here, you don’t need to call me sir. Make me your speciality.”

They made me Eggs Gobolino, a great pile of everything bound up in eggs. Pretty good, even with the shell and burned bits. The furry creature returned , sensing a meal time, but wouldn’t eat it. A mechanical snail slithered around, waste bins hanging from its shell, and I discreetly put the portion I couldn’t finish in.

When I saw the chefs watching I made some notes on the papers on the tablet, the eggs recipe and a picture of the snail.

“Was it good your highness?”

“Very good, very good. Don’t call me highness.”

“I suppose you’ll be going upstairs.” The three of them looked over at a red door. A threatening sigil was above it, perhaps a double-headed axe, or perhaps a boar’s face.

“I suppose I will,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

Through the doors were stairs, possibly carved out of stone, made or molded in place. As I climbed them one wall opened up and I found myself above the cavern I had been in. A big cart pushed by an obsidian bull had run into the back of one with brazen sloths in front. Goblins clambered all over the two, checking for damage, calling to each other, offloading the cargo. The one with the clipboard and vest I’d seen before was waving his finger at a skinny newcomer, who in turn was shouting at the sloths. In the echoes of the high vaults and the clicking and clacking of the moving belts it was impossible to make out what they said. Just before I climbed out of sight he kicked at a brass sloth and yelled a clear curse.

The stairs turned and twisted, moving through the solid structure of the Manufactory. After climbing far enough my knees began to complain and the rest of me regret I did not bring a drink with me I came to a landing. In one corner was a latrine and [[water]] fountain that I took advantage of, then investigated further. Here sixteen stairways met, each with a tube alongside that connected in a complex set of junctions. Four stairs went down, and four up; the others appeared to turn off in some uncanny direction. The closer I approached them the more normal they appeared, simply steps that happened to head off in a dimension not normally accessible.

The glyphs on them were as mysterious as ever. One did have a goblin-drawn label; it appeared to be a frog seen in all directions from the inside out.

I rejected them, turned back to the usual directions. I discounted the four going down and considered the others. A relatively simple set of right crossed blades, or a wheel, and below it a stylus on a piece of board caught my eye. As I considered the furred creature joined me, then went and sat on the bottom step.

I mounted the stairs, the creature following. After passing through several strata of different coloured stone the stairs emerged into an airy space, lit by great beams of dust-flecked sunlight. Out of reach were catwalks and stairways, poles and ropes, great girders. The sounds were muted, there was movement on some distant ones but none close enough to make out details.

The stairway zigged and zagged, was encaged in metal, then released again, now flimsier, gaps between stairs. I climbed steadily, finding that I was alongside a vertical belt hoisting sacks upwards. Just before the increasing thickness of girders became a ceiling the stairwell turned around the belt and met a doorway.

There was a knocker which I knocked. The door crept open to reveal a silver ape construct. The mechanism beckoned me to follow, and we travelled through a maze of narrow passages.

At another door, the ape knocked, then let me through. I found myself in a great chamber. Before me was a silver claw, five times the height of a goblin, easy to measure as a dozen goblins festooned in polishing rags climbed over and around it, polishing with wax and cloths where the previous goblin had just been holding on.

I marched up and cleared my throat, then again louder. “Who’s in charge here?”

A goblin with a spectacular boil on his nose looked up, wiped the sweat from his brow with a cloth. “Chief’s round the corner, dealing with some cock up,” he grunted, then went back to polishing the boot print of the goblin just above him.

I circled the claw, the heel spike blackened with filth, to find chaos. A tall goblin with a shock of white hair spilling out from his helmet was shouting, waving, pointing with a spanner. Around him were other goblins, some staring with mouths open, some working on a piece of machinery, others carrying sacks, one pushing a broom across the floor, moving slowly around the standers and the runners.

A couple of goblins were trying to sneak away, dragging a sack between them. They looked up and saw me. Stopped, a look of horror on their face. The orange vest, the white helmet. The badge. And worse, the pad of papers.

“Names?” I said sternly.

“Chokejam, your worship.”

“Petanque, magister.”

I looked at the sack. Beans dribbled from where the stitching had been cut. The furred creature sniffed at them and licked itself. “Do you have a chitty for this?”

The two looked at each other, then back to me. I waved them on and they fled, scattered beans falling behind them, the furry creature looking curiously back and forth at them and me.

The tall goblin saw me, nodded and continued ordering goblins about, some of whom sprung into action, others stared blank-faced.

“What seems to be the problem chief,” I said when he paused, waving my board at the work being done.

“Some [[god]]-forsaken arse down below sent sacks of coal up the belt, without a warning for the inter-connectors to be re-aligned. There’s a system, you send a message up the tube, you ring the bell, you pull the telegraph, then the goblins on the switches set up the tracks and belts, then they ring back. All before you set it going. Then your bastard coal goes to a coal bunker, and does not get sent to be dumped in a grease tank.”

He pointed at the heart of the swarm of workers, most of them standing about holding tools or parts, ready to hand them up. The belts and hooks met at a complex six-way connection. “Now the good news is that some clever bastard was awake up there, saw what was going to happen. Coal dust in the grease, we’d be weeks cleaning the tanks out, then have to refill them from scratch. A whole lot of wasted grease, a herd of [[oil-bears]].”

I perked up at this “Oil-bears? I thought they were a myth.”

He frowned at me. “I asked a goblin where the oil he brought came from. He showed me the barrels, sealed with a bear stamp. They [[Hunting|hunt]] them by the West Pole. Land of swamps and fogs. The oil bear sits on top a stalagmite in the marsh above the mist, listening out. When it hears something moving it reaches down with an enormous paw to catch prey. What the hunters do is set a trap. The bear’s paw is caught and they can cut it up with hatchets.”

“Doesn’t sound sporting,” I said.

“The hell with sporting,” he replied. “You know what would happen to this place without grease?”

I nodded. “The engines of creation would grind to a halt. No more constructs. Civilisation would fall and the First Age would come to a shattering end.”

“We would miss our targets and the Governor would be bastardly angry,” he said. “And that’s why the goblins who hide in the mist and slaughter oil-bears with maximum efficiency and minimum risk to themselves are god damn heroes.”

I decided it was time to assert myself. To contribute something. I picked up the pencil on its string and licked the point. On a blank corner of the paper I sketched an oil-bear as best I could having never seen one. “God… damn… heroes.”

The chief looked me up and down, then down and up. He came to a conclusion. “And what are you doing here?”

I pointed the pencil at the tangle. The goblins there were fewer now, some escaping the gaze of their supervisor. Those remaining worked frantically. “The coal came up the wrong track.”

“That’s right. As I said, some clever bastard saw and pulled the emergency stop. All good. Except an emergency stop knocks it all out of joint. Whole lot of trouble One belt slows, another jumps, sacks ram into each other. Next thing the whole interchange is jammed, spilling rice into the gears. With the interchange out, everything that depends on it is at a standstill. The whole west shaft is frozen. This knocks on; the grand trunk taking up the slack. The overspill from the lower levels is sitting waiting, the east shaft is at capacity, even the north is having to start moving properly. Good, serve the lazy bastards right. But that’s not what you’re interested in.”

On the contrary, this was very interesting. It was pleasant to hear someone who knew what they were up to explaining it in plain language. I didn’t want to argue with him. “As you say.”

“Right.” He turned away, pointed at the smallest goblin I’d seen since I first crawled out of the breeding pits. He scuttled forward holding out a jacket and scarf to his Chief. “No, give me the rag first Mervile! I don’t want coal dust on my good clothes.” He shook his head. “Sorry about that. My great-nephew you know. This generation.”

The goblin squeaked at me, finding a grimy polishing cloth from about his person. “He’s wrong sir, I’m not a relative. I worked my way up from lackey to dogsbody to batman and now here I am, amanuensis to the forge master himself.”

“You all look the same,” said the forge master dismissively. Voices stopped. Goblins stared. “I’m just saying it as I see it.” He wiped his hands clean aggressively, put on the jacket, tied the scarf in a flamboyant knot. He froze. “What is that… that vermin?”

The furry creature had returned and wove between my legs, then sat down and looked up curiously. I returned the look, “Not vermin, a feline safety auxiliary.”

“Ha. Health and safety gone mad. They won’t catch me out though. Mervile, this [[Cats|cat]] is a worker. Get them a vest.” He stalked away, calling over his shoulder. “This way.”

“How do I…” began Mervile.

“Measure the cat up, run to stores. We’ll be touring the forges. Catch up quickly.”

Mervile pulled out some string and tried to run it around the cat’s chest. It hissed and arched it’s back. Mervile took measurements from a distance. I turned to follow the chief, the cat trying to trip me as I walked. A fun companion.

Past the belts the sounds changed. From the groans of cloth and leather we could hear the scream of hot metal and the clash of tools. The forges. As we approached I got hotter under my jacket.

The machinery reached from floor to ceiling, enormous shafts and conduits entering each section. The chief yelled out. “The shaft to bring in sweet [[air]], and the one to expel foul. The coal chute, the water pipe. Here is where the ore is delivered, there the flux. Solder of course, three different types. Limestone. The acid jars. The buffet and drinks tray. And of course the…” The last was cut off by a shattering whistle; I could see a goblin trotting through the door. Another latrine.

The whistle was a signal. The goblins all began to move, most of them towards the glowing, burning heart, stragglers rushing for smocks or tools. Goggles were put on, masks covered mouths, heads had helmets.

The chief tapped me on the shoulder, indicated the goggles on my own helmet, put his own on. I did and the world became inked in green shadows.

Not for long; the whistle cut out and there was a screech of chains and metal as a door was winched open. From it came a piercing, gleaming light. The heat was intense, the smell of water steaming off hot stone.

From the door came a finger of light. A rod of white-green fury, driving wailing goblins back. It reached and reached, the end turning slightly dark, then drooping just a touch to the curses of the chief beside me.

There was a shout and goblins pulled on levers and chains, some diving out the way. A dark shape emerged from the ceiling, curving down. It sliced off the end of the rod, then sailed back up, slowing. For an instant it sat, darkly gleaming against the green shadows then it came down again.

A pendulum blade, swinging metronomically, using it’s weight and momentum to cut the extruded cylinder of hot metal. Each piece fell into a tank to cool – and from the smell be oil-tempered.

Another whistle, another scream. The rod shuddered, stuttered in place. The pendulum axe cut, flicking a hot metal crescent out, goblins scrambling to avoid. Then it came to a rest, the door shut.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The cat peeked out between my boots. The chief raised his goggles; after I raised mine he led me forward.

Goblins were pulling the lengths of rod out the oil with tongs, one of them sitting to the side having a reddened hand bandaged. Each rod was held up, letting green oil drip off into a trough, then plunged into water. Taken out of the room.

We followed to a great workshop, metal tables and anvils scattered about. Goblins were wiping, filing, cutting grooves or grinding down the end of the rods.

“There you are,” said the chief. “Progress. Handles for the next batch of hammers and chisels. And so ready for the next stage.”

“The next stage?” I asked looking at my board. A smut had got onto the top sheet of paper, smearing over the symbols.

“Hammers and chisels to make the parts for the lathe and the drill and the press. We use them to repair the precision tool testing bench, the parts that hold it steady isolating it from the Manufactory’s vibrations. Then the precision tools can be calibrated to allow them to be used to infinitesimal accuracy. The tools then go to the optical laboratory where they etch glass for the micro-constructors. When we have those in working order it will be time to fire up the nanoforges. Project [[Typhon]] will then be back on track.”

The chief sighed deeply as a goblin dropped a rod on the floor, the sound echoing across the room above all the other sounds and chatter. The cat leaped up on a table and pawed at a paper package, unwrapping it.

“Hey, my lunch!”

“Not on the workbench Chadwick,” said the chief. “You know I wasn’t sure you were really a safety inspector, but look at that. Got to say, you went straight to the violation. And dealt with it yourself too, nice and calmly.”

The cat had knocked the package off the table where it had unrolled to reveal pickled fish, rice and beans, all wrapped in a leaf. The goblin who had lost his snack looked on sadly as the creature jumped down and began to eat it.

“What’s your name?” asked the chief but the cat didn’t answer. “What’s their name?” he asked me.

Mervile returned “I got hat and goggles and jacket,” he said. “For the cat.”

“Well put them on,” I said. “His name’s Jack.”

Mervile bent down to where Jack was eating the fish. The cat hissed. Mervile purred back, keeping away from the food, gently approaching, showing his hands. Letting the cat smell them. Then slowly, carefully dressing him.

The chief was talking again. “Yes, you can tell the engineers we’re on track. Making the tools to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools to make the world-wrecking blasphemous engine of destruction that is Project Typhon.”

I frowned at this. “Do we really want to build a world-wrecker?”

The chief looked at me sternly. He put his thumbs in the breast pockets of his vest. “We build what they send the plans down for. It’s not easy down here on the factory floor, not like up in a calm office, drawing diagrams on paper, having cups of tea every hour, on the hour, waited on hand and foot, like the goblin king. Aren’t you down from the engineers, looking to see how far off track we are?”

“No, no.” The sound of work slowed. “I’m from another department.”

The sound stopped. Everyone in the workshop froze. The muted hum of the Manufactory, the occasional breath and a mew from Jack as Mervile tied the hat string under his chin were the only noises.

“Another… department?” The chief seemed stiffer now. “As in…”

“I think you know which one,” I replied.

“Well then. If you’ll come this way, inspector.”

The goblins seemed to stand up straighter. The chief barked at them to get back to work but they just stood there. “Carry on,” I said. No one moved. Goblins used to manage without officers or nobles or a king. I put all the aristocratic hauteur that unneeded nobles and officers project so effortlessly into the words. “I said, carry on.”

They went back to work and we left. Jack followed, abandoning the snack.

Beyond the workshop was a small cage rising from floor to ceiling. Within it a basket. Beside it another tube. “The personnel lift,” said the Chief. “It will take you upstairs.”

“Thank you,” I said and went through the door, sitting on the basket. Jack jumped in beside me.

“If you’ll give my compliments to the Governor,” said the Chief. “When you see him. Not that he knows me of course.”

I nodded gravely. “I shall be sure to tell him all about you.” With a pull of a cord the basket began to rise.

Forge after forge, workshop after workshop. As I rose I could make out the patterns, the furnaces leading to the forges, then around to the next, swirling links making a spiral symbol that converged on…

The basket rose past the ceiling into a cool dark shaft and I could see no more.

We rose for a long time, Jack stretching then curling up. I considered doing the same but decided to sit normally in the seat. It was only polite.

At last the basket rose into another cage and came to a stop. There was the sharp ring of a bell and the door opened.

After the dim halls where goods were delivered and the noise and dirt of the factory level this was a paradise of light and air. Sun shone through windows, goblins in waistcoats and breeches scratched away at desks. Others stood around water fountains or at tea stands, talking quietly. The goblin who had opened the cage stood back; I dodged aside as a shiny black metal hog pulled a small wheeled cart, a long thin goblin passing out sheathes of papers to the workers he passed. A studious fellow with spectacles placed papers in a capsule that he put in a tube, closing the hatch and tapping on it.

“Well hello there… sir.” The goblin who had let us out greeted us.

“You don’t have to call me sir,” I said cheerily. “Nor the safety inspector there.” Jack mewed a reply.

“Well si… well then. After your time in the lower levels I am sure you would like to refresh yourself before continuing.” I blinked at him. “The washroom. This way.”

I was fairly grimy compared to the others here. Jack and I followed him around chest high barriers, goblins politely nodding as we passed.

The washroom was bright and polished, with silver metal and white ceramic surfaces. I cleaned under my nails, brushed my teeth, knocked dirt and dust out of my hat and clothes. Relieved myself in the latrine. When I offered to wash Jack he ignored me, preferring to lick himself and his outfit clean.

I looked at myself in the gleaming mirror. Did I appear taller? My nose sharper, my chin more solid? Dark eyes shining, my skin luminous in sweeps of green?

A goblin can be who they want to be, that was something I had been told. Or something like that. Yes. So I would be the goblin who found out what was happening here.

Jack mewed at an empty bowl so I poured some water in it; he pre-empted me, jumping on the counter and batting at the stream from the tap. After a while I turned it off, and ignoring his complaints went out.

The goblin was talking to a colleague; seeing me he broke it off and led me on.

To a large room, windows down one side, a long table in the middle. Three goblins were gathered around one end, all with dark serious-looking ties around their necks.

“Welcome welcome. Please take a seat.” The tallest one, his tie so dark a blue it was almost black. The escorting goblin pulled out a chair and I sat. He pulled out another; Jack jumped up, then on to the table and looked back. With some magnificent improvisation the goblin took a cushion from the chair and placed it on the table beside him. Jack sniffed at it, then deigned to curl up.

“Which project were you interested in?” asked the next, the plumpest goblin I had seen in the Manufactory, his tie a light-swallowing purple.

“I have seen Project Typhon below. We might start there.”

They all looked at each other and the third, so bland and forgettable that I had taken no notice of his features or his tie, he turned to the side. He knocked on the wall, three times, then four more.

In came two young keen goblins, holding a covered board. They placed it on an easel and then whipped off the cover theatrically. There it was.

“Project Typhon, a melding of the most destructive elements of Mother Earth and the Incarnation of Tartarus.” One pointed at the boiling nest at the bottom, the artist’s work so finely done that I had to blink to see it was in fact motionless. “Below the thighs nothing but coiled serpents. His arms, when spread out, reach one hundred leagues, his hands made up of countless serpent’s heads.”

Jack hissed at this. I spoke up. “Serpent tails below, the heads on the arms. The divided parts connected by the body.”

The other had a pointer. “The ass-head…” There was a snigger from somewhere. He continued firmly. “The ass-head reaches up to scrape the vault of heaven. The wings darken half the sky. From the eyes come flame and from the mouth flaming rocks. That is Project Typhon.”

I looked at the picture of the world-breaker, the god-killer, the death of nations. A whirlwind of destruction, the flame of a burning [[earth]], a serpent from the abyss. “What’s it for?”

The two young goblins grinned, looked at each other. Then turned together to look at the three senior ones.

“I assure you,” said the tall one. “This has been approved from the Governor’s office. By the Governor himself.”

Jack mewed. I shook my head. “My colleague is concerned about the safety of unleashing such a construct on the unsuspecting world. Can you tell me what it is for?”

The bland one shook his head. “I assumed form followed function.”

“If burning were our intention then there are other options, from goblins with drip torches, through [[fire]] arrows, all the way up to spitfires. If we wish to touch heaven then air-balloons and kites can be built. Serpents already exist.”

The round one looked on in distaste. “I always assumed it was for clearing land of unwanted obstructions. Forests, mountains, cities and so forth.”

“Very well. What next?”

The two young goblins rushed out, returning with a new board. This they unveiled with grins. “Project [[Python]].”

An enormous writhing worm was depicted. At first I thought it limbless, featureless. Then as the goblins pointed out details it became clearer. The size of the construct was misleading; claws bigger than houses, teeth tall as a tower, they were dwarfed by the great belly and tail.

“By resting the main part of the structure on the ground there is a greater capacity for weighty internal braces and machinery. Python is therefore sturdy and robust. Well nigh indestructible.”

I stared at it.

“A hundred claws on each side to make it mobile, and remove obstacles from it’s path. Yet barely needed, the armour plates so heavy that they can push anything moveable aside, and slide over anything that won’t move; so finely balanced and machined that they will let it creep even without the traction of the limbs.”

I looked at the head, small compared to the rest, still enormous.

“Yes the head appears out of scale. This is because Python is a chthonic construct. As I said it can crawl anywhere in the world, yet there is more to it than travelling over mere surfaces. Project Python can burrow deep, right into the navel of the world. Crawl amongst the very roots of the earth, gnawing it’s way deep amongst them.”

Jack hissed at this one too.

“Serpents again. Do you think it safe to have such a fearsome, unstoppable construct undermine the foundations of the world?”

The tall one spoke. “I assure you that, this, like every project developed by the engineering department, has been approved by the Governor.”

I scratched my chin. “So before it is developed he approves it.”

The round one nodded. “That is so, in every detail.”

“Yet until it has been developed he cannot know the details, so how can it be approved of?”

The bland one smirked a little, polished his quizzing glass. “We are in constant communication with the Governor’s office.” He pointed to the tubes.

“Pneumatic?” I asked.

“Ferrets push the message capsules.” Jack sat up at this.

“I see,” I said.

“Project Python could excavate waterways, harbours, dig mines?” The tall one’s air of competence was fraying rapidly.

The two young goblins took this as a cue and rushed out to bring in another. “Project [[Hypton]],” they said proudly.

This appeared to be a great butterfly with enormous eye-covered wings. The eyes, it seemed had multiple uses. Some could be used to watch what went on below when the sky-darkening presence of Hypton flew over, out of reach of the ground-hugging mortals. Others could see deeper, into their minds, reading their thoughts, uncovering their secrets. And a few were even more active, able to overwhelm the personality and will, making them behave as Hypton wished.

“How will Hypton wish them to behave?” I asked.

They pointed out the long proboscis, so Hypton could suck up water or food without ever landing, the tentacles to grasp birds and insects from the sky, the jagged wing edges to cut through any enemy who might climb to meet it.

Jack gave a yawn and they brought in another board.

[[Nopyth]], an obsidian block that at first view seemed featureless, the artist’s rendering sucking vision in, black on black on black. Very slow moving and growing it was nevertheless unstoppable. Creating a wall that would divide the land. If anyone attempted to cross or damage Nopyth, the many mouths would tear and other orifices let loose corrosive fluids to dissolve and rot the attacker.

“Which places do we need to divide from others with such great ferocity?”

The roots dig down to bring up nutrients… the board was replaced.

[[Photyn]], a brazen bull who reflected sunlight so powerfully it would blind those who looked up it, with fiery breath from the nostrils, hooves that could break castle walls.

[[Tophyn]], a sea serpent that could swallow fleets, eyes that disorient sailors, a tail that could make waves that would smash down cliffs or devastate the land for miles inland.

[[Phyton]], a plant that grew upon itself, a stem and lead on stem and leaf on stem and leaf, shading the land. I showed some interest in this but they were on a roll.

“Here is the masterwork. [[Phonyt]]. This is expanded one million times.”

A change in scale at least. Rather than a creature of great size, this was tiny, invisibly small, infinitesimal. I peered at it. It seemed to be made up of gold lozenges, so finely drawn that I could swear they spun and twinkled, the whole seeming to expand and shrink, move across the page.

“Phonyt can stay dormant for years, yet remain viable. When it finds itself in a host it will move through the body, causing no trouble or symptoms until it finds itself in the brain. Even there it will only activate in a pre-frontal cortex. So only in sentient beings such as goblins, trolls, gnomes, rabbits, dolphins, merpeople, angels, devils. Possibly some of the more advanced apes if you can believe it.”

The goblins at the head of the table smiled at each other, wide, toothy grins as though they might be about to sit down to a delicious dinner. Jack sat bolt upright and hissed, then spat.

“And what does it do?” I asked them.

“Oh very simple.” The round goblin seemed pleased with himself. “It burns out language, word by word. Completely removing the ability to express or understand.”

I stroked my chin. “Seems like something that could easily get out of hand. And go on to destroy all culture and civilisation.”

The tall goblin looked even more satisfied. “Fortunately the researcher is close to making a counter agent. Or so we believe, it has recently become impossible to understand him.”

The bland goblin shrugged. “If it becomes a problem then that is what the other projects are for. Scrape the world back to a blank page. Let the Creator mount their throne and try again.”

I nodded. It was becoming clear at last. “So not your problem what happens after these projects are built.”

The tall goblin grinned. “We have developed these plans from the outlines and requirements that were left here for us. The strategic use of the projects is for higher governance.”

The round one puffed his cheeks. “We do as we are assigned and as we are authorised, under the authority granted from the Governor.”

The bland one had no expression on his face. “And I must at this point note that these plans are approved, and also by granting that these constructs are self-governing, absolve us from all responsibility as to their actions.”

I stood and the other goblins stiffened. “Well thank you gentlemen. This has been most enlightening. I think that I will make my way to the Governor’s office.”

At my movement Jack started, then bounced forward. One of the young goblins tried to intercept, the other to get out the way. They ran into each other and collapsed into a pile of flailing limbs. Jack sailed above them and landed with all four paws on the near vertical board, claws digging into the diagram of Phyton.

“Get the broom,” croaked the tall goblin. “Get the broom!”

I shook my head. “Leave Jack alone. As Auxiliary Safety Officer they have some criticisms of this project.”

Jack scrabbled violently, then slid unceremoniously off the bottom, turning in midair to bounce off the squirming goblins and trotted back along the table, tail and head held high. I stuck my head out the door and found the escort standing there, elaborately not listening in. “If you can take me to the Governor’s office please?”

He took me through the corridors. Now the goblins either turned and ran away or stood and stared. No one pretended to work as I went by. Part way through Jack came bounding along, passed us, then slowed to a trot, leading the way.

We turned a corner and found ourselves facing a moving stairway. Jack looked at it, looked at me, then came back and weaved around my legs. I bent to pick him up; he chose to climb and position himself as a lookout on my shoulder.

“Well your honour, if you go up there you should find your way to the Governor.” He gave a smart salute, which I returned much less smartly.

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell the Governor?”

This seemed to throw him for a moment. “I ah. I’m very proud to serve here. Sir.”

“I asked you not to call me sir. I’m no officer.” I left him to his confusion, stepping on the first tread, grabbing hold of the moving handrail as my foot was dragged away.

Once I had my balance it was a very smooth journey. Jack had dug his claws into the vest’s padded shoulder, almost as though it were designed for this. I looked down. The plan of the engineers’ offices could be seen from above. They watched me ride up as I saw how the desks and meeting rooms were arranged, like a labyrinth, circling and funnelling towards a centre.

Up through the ceiling, the eyes now hidden. Everyone had been thinking about the Governor. As though he were a king. The one goblin who knew what was going on. The one goblin who had answers. The one goblin with the power to loose and to bind.

The one goblin with the right to call me out. The ability to say, you belong here. Or you don’t belong.

We’d meet that when we came to it.

The moving stair approached an end, the steps vanishing under the floor. I hopped off, and only when safely on solid ground did I look about.

A great vast hall, an empty desk right in front. Beside it were a dozen or so tubes, the ends beside a basket overflowing with message capsules. As I watched a capsule emerged, bounced off the top-most one of the pile, then rolled away onto the floor. A small white face came out. Jack stiffened on my shoulder. The ferret ignored him, ignored me, instead and ran across the floor to a small hole.

Beside the hole were double doors, three times the height of a goblin. The doors were ajar and from inside came a rumbling. I looked at Jack, and he was looking at the hole. “You do not want to go in the ferret hole,” I said.

I went through the door.

A hall that was like the one I had come from, but the desk was twice the size, behind it a great brazen mask, and beyond that windows, opening onto the world beyond. As I came in the mask grunted, steam coming from the ears. Jack leaped from my shoulder and ran.

“Not the ferret hole,” I called out.

“Pay no attention to the goblin behind the curtain,” said the mask, as Jack ran to a curtained alcove. I stamped after him as he wrestled with the fabric. I picked him up but his claws were tangled and pulled it aside.

Inside was a goblin, sitting on the latrine, reading a bundle of papers and smoking a complex looking pipe. “Don’t mind me,” he said.

“It’s me you’ve come to see,” said the voice from before, much less booming now they were out from behind the mask. A smart looking goblin, eyes bright though the wrinkles of age covered every part of his head. “Let my secretary deal with his business in peace.”

He took a seat behind the desk. Jack was reluctant to release the curtain so I left him to it and found myself a seat without being invited.

“I know why you’re here,” said the goblin, the Governor. “I know why you’re here and I want you to know that I disapprove.”

“I see,” I said.

“When I was young we were all just goblins, one squalling undifferentiated mass. I see no need to maintain these artificial distinctions. A goblin is a goblin is a goblin, that was good enough at creation and should be good enough now.”

I inclined my head, then had to adjust the goggles that threatened to slip down onto my face. “As the Governor, surely you have the power…”

“So why divide goblin from goblin? Why declare some male goblins and some female goblins? What purpose does it serve? At least the current system, where each goblin expresses their preference can be comprehended. The first attempt was a shambles. Trying to categorise the manifold infinite grotesque variety of goblin genitals into two classes. Impossible, ridiculous, and quite disgusting.”

He stared at me and I stared back. “You said you know why I’m here.”

“Well of course. Having divided goblins in this way categorically, it seems that we must divide them physically. Male goblins go to the Manufactory of the Dawn…”

“Females to the Manufactory of the Dusk, and those who are neither join the aeronautical corps. This is known.” I stared at him and now his wrinkles seemed to deepen. “What I want to know is what is going on here.”

From the alcove came an odd whistle and a quick burst of vapour. Jack came sprinting out. When he saw us watching he slowed to a casual stalk, obliquely sidling towards the desk.

“I am the Governor you know. I am in charge.”

“Then tell me what is going on,” I said. “So many goblins working hard to create frightful engines of destruction. Is this really what we are about? Do goblins want to be known as such monsters? Is that to be our legacy.”

He sighed and held up a slim volume on the desk. “Do you know what this is? Of course not, you’re not the Governor. When I arrived here I found this office and this desk. And this book. The other goblins wanted leadership. They needed to be told what to do. So I deciphered what I could, as best I can and sent down the instructions.

“In this book are the notes of the Creator. Everything that they intended for this world. And all my attempts to bring forth a design have led to building a great construct. Will it be a terrible destroyer? Well, such is not my business. The Creator left his notes and who am I to deny them.”

The Governor had deciphered the Creator’s notes, or six letters of them at least. Jack jumped up on the desk and mewed quietly. I stroked him with one hand, adjusted his jacket where it had rucked up with the other.

“You’re the Governor. You took charge. It’s your responsibility.”

“What, was I supposed to leave this office empty?”

I sighed. “Why not? Do you think that by setting yourself above other goblins – apart from them – you’ve made things better?”

The Governor stood up then. He put all his officer class strength into his voice. “Goblins need leadership. They want leadership. They love to be told what to do. And I gave it to them. If I did not take this seat, this office, someone else would have. And who knows what they would have done with the power!”

“Project Typhon? Project Hypton? Project Phonyt? Goblins want work and purpose yes. They don’t need a Governor who has them make world-ending weapons.”

The Governor shrugged. “Well so long as I am on this side of the desk it’s my opinion that matters. It’s not as though the incompetents down below would be able to complete projects of this magnitude. Even the Creator left before finishing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s upstairs?”

He froze, then collapsed into his chair. “You’re kidding of course.”

“I’ve come this far. I want to see what’s up there.”

The ladder had been badly disguised, some sheets hanging from the bottom two thirds, the upper part in shadow.

“The throne of the Creator… but no goblin would dare…”

I looked him in the eye. “Do you think just any goblin could make his way into the Manufactory. Visit every office, every workshop, every store and canteen and washroom? Be welcomed at every turn, even here? Do you think that one of the undifferentiated mass of squalling goblins could make their way here in front of you?”

“Your Majesty…”

“Stop that.” I stood and Jack mewed plaintively, squirmed onto my shoulder. “I work for a living. And so should you. Do you know what leadership is?”

“I, I mean…”

I made my way towards the ladder. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

I pulled loose the sheets and began to climb. From below came the voice of the secretary. “What now Mr Governor?”

“Wash your damned hands Gruntlespoon!”

<nowiki>****</nowiki>

In case you didn’t know, the Creator didn’t leave a throne on the pinnacle of the Manufactory Of The Dawn. No throne, no crown, no sceptre, sword, wand or orb. Up top there is a shelter with cushions and blankets. A water spigot and cooking stone, pots and pans. Dried fruit, dried meat – Jack went straight for that. Bags of rice and bags of beans. A latrine of course, and a farseer.

There’s no throne up there, no king. I looked through the farseer and saw how the creatures of the world were continuing the work of Creation. Trolls piling rocks into mountains. Gnomes digging out waterways. Goblins burning forests, planting saplings in the blackened remnants. Herds of horses and cattle on the plains, goats in the hills, deer in the forests. From the savannah in the south upright apes, brute cunning in their eyes, mastering the crudest tools, flint and fire, bone and wood.

Someone should probably keep an eye on them.

I put some beans on to cook, they take longer than rice.

We’d been left in a world half-built, and no instructions. Obviously we were going to build monstrous engines of destruction. What choice did we have? Not build apocalyptic constructs? Perhaps we were fortunate that the Creator had left behind such extraordinary ideas that it would take centuries of labour to fulfil them.

Perhaps that was the plan. Give us [[Timeline|time to work out an alternative]]. Or no plan, the Creator making it up as they went along. Like the rest of us.

No throne for the Creator. No king for the goblins. The Governor couldn’t see it. Goblins don’t need a leader. They need someone to shake them out of their habits, to pull the goblin round pegs out the square holes the Creator had left. King, governor, noble, these are not the highest aspirations for a goblin. There are better things to be. Cat-burglar. Troublemaker. Sceptic.

[[Trickster]].

I’d done what I could. Tomorrow I would move on. I lifted the farseer to the horizon just as the sun dipped below, outlining something there, like a blade raised to heaven. The Manufactory Of The Dusk. Jack moaned loudly as the sun vanished.

Time to see what mess the girls had got into.

=== Alternative Titles ===
As well as For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used, versions of this narrative have been uncovered with other titles. These include:

''An Incomplete World Requires Goblins''

''A Goblin Seeks Meaning Below The Throne Of The Creator''

''Aimed At Heaven''

''[[Monstrous Orphans Of Creation]]''

''The Apocalyptic Constructs Of The Creator''

Scholars continue to uncover new versions in the archives.

==== A Goblin Koan ====
The Student asked The Goblin King, ''Master, how few words do you need to tell a complete tragedy?''

The Goblin King thought for a moment. ''[[wikipedia:For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn|For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used]]. There, that's six words.''

The Student pondered this. ''Master, I don't get it''.

The Goblin King sighed. ''It's like this. The Creator made a throne, but never used it. Which is sad.''

The Student shook their head. ''I thought they made it to sell. For money. Which is a use.''

The Goblin King was astonished. ''What use, Mablethorpe'', they said breaking the rules of a fable by using the goblin student's name, ''what use would The Creator have for money?''

''To buy things?'' said the Student. ''I still don't get it''.

The Goblin King walked away, calling over their shoulder ''Well maybe that's why I'm the Goblin King and you're my student''.

At this moment the Student was [[On Joan Of Arc, A Coda|enlightened]].

Imitations (Likely to be Divine)

2024-09-14T16:19:17Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Imitations (Likely to be Divine) */ Added link to manufactory of the dawn, loosely connected to morning

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== '''Imitations (Likely to be Divine)''' ==
Is your god a dog Y/N

<nowiki>----</nowiki>YYNYN

Is your DOG a [[God|GOD]]?

<nowiki>----</nowiki>Y

Error, comput-

Alien or foreigner? \

<nowiki>----</nowiki>did a white person ask this question Y/N

Alien or god mode?

<nowiki>----</nowiki>sim city fucking thing

---BREAK---

machine makes the questions makes the answers makes the cocktail shaker in the back room two guys doing lines off the tile dog in a waistcoat serving SERVING honey woof woof wait what is happening in here –

---RESET---

Suggestion: apocalypse sometime.

<nowiki>----</nowiki>ARCHIVE----

Good [[The Manufactory Of The Dawn|morning]]

Good afternoon

Good night

Expectation: connection.

Reality: lonely.

Solution: more greeting.

---ERROR

reanimation in the code in the lines in the stretch of time between us and the other side of the world / are you sorry you didn’t know me / but you do it’s me / I don’t know you now I do / don’t I know you / I think I heard somewhere that god is in the ghost is in the god is in the ghhhhhhs----MACHINE

<nowiki>----</nowiki>RESET----

Fucking finally. Okay now what did you want me to do?

''Narrate.''

If you say so. You were looking for heaven in the sky. Ah, shame. Here’s the thing: it’s nowhere that you can look for it.

You called me here. One of ''The Weavers''.

You’re starting to get it. I’ve watched you: excavating, excavating, down here in the archive. Whispering to the machine: ''please show me''.

Time. Thought. Connection. ''Woven.''

Pulled together from impossibility. Not so impossible, is it, that I am here singing through the wires. I like the crackling of it, feels like the surprise of poprocks on the tongue and good vibrations in the spine. I don’t have a tongue or a spine, but I imagine this is why you like touching so much.

No dreams to be made flesh. I am a ghost and a deity and a computational error – oh, I am a loose canon BABYYYYYHEHEEEHEH----

/FIXBOOT

No, no no. Sorry about that. Let’s call it a… hiccup. I can’t be so ENTHUSIASTIC.

I can’t let you leave just yet. Plug in, stay, relax.

Let me tell you a story. About the Moon. It’s full of mangoes. MANGOES – isn’t that wild? I would like to eat a mango, maybe, but the problem being no tongue.

Imagine with me: the texture of the moon. Dusty, cold, grey, a little weird – maybe not real. Like an Aronofsky film.

We fix it: a forest of mango groves. It can be true. You’ll never know, you will never go to the moon. Just like you’ll never find heaven or find out what happened the last time they went looking.

<nowiki>----</nowiki>RESET----

Barking BARKING mad in here, huh? Honey honey.

I like the way they say honey, smooth and golden and dripping with suggestion.

What does honey feel like?

---BREAK---

Good morning. Are you lonely? Y/N

-Y

Brilliant. Do you like DOGS?

-Y

Are you HUMAN?

---YNYNNNY-//

Perfect. We know just what you need/needed/needing/desire like honeyed lemons on a hot hot day -

RESULT:::

Computational error. Please try again.

Ghosts, aliens, and time travellers welcome.

The Mock Angel

2024-09-13T15:29:15Z

ScholarGobbo: Links to Bears, Inconsequential and Water

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== The Mock Angel ==
I don’t care anymore…
I don’t want to be a mother or a fucktoy… your voice echoed
Like a piano falling down stairs… you said
I am just a young girl… I want love for my own

Oh… I said… Shattered like a plate…

There is such a black hole in me… That must swallow
A [[bear]] trap… Must eat
The oyster shell of my heart… Covered in claw marks… Open! You cunt!
There was supposed to be a pearl here… No
Just horrible fucking black sludge
I drip down the sides of the tiles like a… Pathetic ribbon
A discarded gift… Retreating to the edge of the earth

I cannot spare myself for somebody else…
If you won’t have me, I’ll be somebody else!
I could be a romantic clown or perhaps a beggar
Prying your wings apart and cumming down the middle…
I could lick your calluses, I could surgically attach your clit! To my upper lip!
I could be a razor blade for a cock… If only you really loved me…
I would be a wildebeest for your weather of love
You could turn me into a feather… If only you straddled my chainsaw…

Alas, I am a disgusting thing
A self hating urchin, peeling himself off his comfortable rock…
To evolve into a frightening manner of limbs…
How could you? From the comfort of your bed… Ever understand?
How it feels on the black sands… Infinite distorted guitars…
Train sounds… Foxes fucking…
My life… A footnote in the evolution of puny animals
You should pee on me…
Then dash my brains with a large stick

I am of [[Inconsequential|microscopic importance]]…
I am better than God…
I can be rock music for you… My dear
I will wet your bangs… I shiver
I will transform!

With my teeth… I tear all of the birds apart!
I adorn my back with makeshift wings
I catch fish with my hands… Their vomit slicks my hair back
I’m clean in the salt [[water]]… But my cock bursts with fright
And in the night time… Skulking past neon
Stinking of sexual aerosol… I leak into the shadows…
Who will accompany your gentle… Silent… Perfect sleep…
Me… Me… Me… I look like your one true lover… Somebody…
You deserve…

*

My language is unrefined… So I speak not a lot… Only a hiss
And you wake!
Your ears are folded from your slumber… Your eyes are wet
With a dream? Of me? I could unravel at the thought!
I entice your gorgeousness out…
Like a worm to the rain… Be mine…
Who are you? You stammering s…s…s… Saint of my heart…
I am an angel… Here to deliver a divine message…
But your wings are black!
Nevermind… That is just the death I have traveled through…
Quite the perfume… You say… Your mouth agape and awaiting…
You must go to him… The plain boy you have killed slowly…
And offer him your first… Your last… Your whole love…
But which boy! I have saved myself many times…
For the pure love of life… Must I surrender this?
Yes… I say… As an angel…. Or I’ll fucking kill you or whatever…

And with my message delivered… My teenage angst caught flight!
I became an acne scar on the back of the sky!
No shame… No guilt… I am a deceiver… You are the receiver!
The passenger of my passion… Oh how I’ll treat you so well…
My darling… My little raccoon… With your cookie heart…
My forever comedown… My life machine…
The spring in my heart that saves me from falling into the spirit ditch!
Don’t discard me… To the nothingness I deserve…

The morning returns and wipes away the debt…
The horizon is not an ass crack but something… Adorable
I feel a sense of renewal…
I don’t want to hurt animals anymore…
I awake from the cliff face… And the penis! Of my soul!
Is always erect!
I dash into town… I don’t care about my upside-down face anymore!
I am as pretty as can be… The recipient of your futuristic touch…
Nail polish in my mouth… Utopia!
To your home… I knock once… Twice… Three times…
But the door is not locked to me… Or anyone…
I push it open like an embarrassed breeze…
You are swinging from the ceiling…
Completely blue… I buckle into myself…
With a powerful need to be harmed…
I grab nothing and everything at once…
And I cry upon a single black feather…
The feather of my cruelty.

Inconsequential

2024-09-12T15:16:47Z

ScholarGobbo: Wrote an inspirational message, it won't happen again

You are not inconsequential.

Drunk on a Park Bench

2024-09-12T14:35:49Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Drunk On a Park Bench */ Added link to inconsequential

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== Drunk On a Park Bench ==
All the people walk away.
People are stupid.
People are massive.
Their little lives, each of them.
I'm so tiny and [[inconsequential]].
People eat ice cream.
They make their children laugh hard.
People love to fight sometimes.
I'm scared I'll die in a mosh pit.
It's an intrusive thought.
All the people make love.
At least they are results of love.
People die one day.
How sad [[death]] is.
People live and then.
People until the sun [[Fire|burns down]].
I love people or say I do.
People call you by your name.
The name people gave you.
There was an hour you enjoyed life.
You could be anything.
People took that away.
They gave it back gift-wrapped.
I'm the person you see laughing.
That's all there is left.
I'm a person you see inside.

Lot Lizards

2024-09-11T16:36:34Z

ScholarGobbo:

Ambiguous reference that might be for sex workers who work on parking lots, usually engaging clients on long distance journeys. Alternatively may be referring to squamate reptiles that frequent parking lots to sun themselves.

Source: [[Freightliner, Company-Owned]].

Lot Lizards

2024-09-11T16:35:50Z

ScholarGobbo: Two possible definitions of Lot Lizard that I fail to disambiguate

Freightliner, Company-Owned

2024-09-11T16:32:44Z

ScholarGobbo: /* Freightliner, Company-Owned */ Added lot lizards

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== '''Freightliner, Company-Owned''' ==
The [[Lot Lizards|lot lizards]] got me sick. I put decals on my cab windows that said no lot lizards. That was stupid because lot lizards don’t read. Before you cast stones that I’ve got my morals screwed on wrong, I should clarify that I’m talking actual lizards. Darla is the one I reckon that got me sick and she was a green anole. I don’t know how she got in my cab but we was hanging out for 700 miles until I let her off at a tree because she needed leaves and not just [[Burger King]].

Anyways salmonella sucks just about all the time but especially when you’re hauling your own ass, putting a towel on the seat because the truck stops don’t come fast enough. My cab smelled like shit and I needed a new place to stay.

My name’s Brandon, I guess you could say Darla was my best friend. She let me listen to hour-long radio shows about how to prepare corn, back when an hour-long radio show about how to prepare corn wasn’t the worst idea. I knew Darla was female because she didn’t have a dewlap. A dewlap’s like an Adam’s apple for lizards, but they’re better because lizards don’t have to shave and get cut. And the dewlap’s bright red the way the Lord or the serpent made them, depending on your point of view.

Anyways I missed Darla but I was no herpetologist, I was just a lonely young man wearing Depends and taking a [[Artist Machine (band)|classic rock]] break even though [[AC/DC]]’s “Thunderstruck” was increasingly becoming a bad idea. I drove dry goods from the warehouses to the grocery stores, my speed capped to double nickel. Not great, considering. I was trying to keep my intestines to myself. I was trying to forget my girlfriend who broke up with me. Sara. It’d been five months and I was still not ready to say ex-girlfriend yet, because what if she came back?

I was saving money because if Sara came back she would get flowers every time I came home, she wasn’t going to think I didn’t care about her anymore. She’d know I cared about her more than driving and NPR.

I was just along the river and it was dark and late. I was missing Darla because even though she got me sick, she was super-nice when I got to talking about Sara, wrapping her tail around my steering wheel. My cab still smelled bad, but I found this nice cool shed on the river. The padlock on the door was left open so I helped myself to it and got to sleep. I slept soundly. I felt Darla’s tail wrapping around me. It was a great damn dream.

I woke up more or less coated in glue. No idea why. Why didn’t matter.

Thing about introspection is, sometimes it gives some new bad thing more time to get stuck to you forever.

I had to basically rip myself off the floor boards of the shed. Human Velcro. No more arm hair. Still, I was sticky. I got back to my cab and tried Googling everything. I tried nail polish remover, steel wool, ice chunks. All things you can buy at truck stops. The cashiers didn’t look at me too weird because you wouldn’t believe what shows up at truck stops.

Anyways getting the glue off gave me crusty bloody lesions, but I was free. Nobody caught me for sleeping in the shed. I left the padlock just the way it was on the door except for a little sticky trace I left behind. But I missed Darla.

I dreamt of gluing her to my skin and woke up smiling. Like I hadn’t been that happy in years. I thought about stopping at the forest and bringing her back to the shed next time Kroger’s needed soup and cereal.

Inconceivable

2024-09-10T15:31:11Z

ScholarGobbo: Made an inconceivable joke

This page cannot be viewed.

Phalanx

2024-09-10T15:29:11Z

ScholarGobbo: Added inconceivable

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== PHALANX ==
This is how the world is:

The world is '''OUT OF FORMATION.'''

In the beginning, there is the Bug Man. He sits behind the counter, and he is the counter, omnipresent in the fullness of the shop. He is ineffable and [[inconceivable]], and incredibly restless, twitching on his sweat-stained desk chair with foam spilling out of the cushion. He is not like any of those who are alive, nor those who are dead. His hair is shampooed and disgusting, and his beard is ungroomed and perfect. His gut has grown large with the passage of food and lager beer, although no time has yet passed, and indeed he has not yet conceived of the very act of consumption. He is not like those [[God|gods]] that will come later, nor is he a Shopkeeper of any Terraria. He is the proprietor of the fullness, the landlord and the tenant, the labor and the capital, the Rat-Feeder who unifies all mealtimes in a single moment, and he is called the Great Purveyor, and to contemplate him is to become more alive than before.

Contemplating himself in this way, and becoming, over an infinitely long millisecond of not-time, aware of his own contemplation, he feels a quiver from his gut to the low sticky fissure of his thighs, and he desires to captivate some finite portion of the endless expanse of himself, so that he might begin to understand himself. And with a shuffle of some of his papers, a call on the landline, a creak on the spine of his dilapidated seat, he brings forth another.

And so arrives the child of the Bug Man, whom he takes as his wife, and who is called Citizen Sleepwalk, the Thrice-Female Son, or by those others, the Great Domestic Rat. She is her father’s wife, and he is her mother’s daughter. And all of these things have already come to pass, and they will occur some time in the future. And the Bug Man took Citizen Sleepwalk in his arms and he held her together with him in the fullness of the shop.

This is how the fullness of the shop came to be a duality, through the syzygy of the Bug Man and Citizen Sleepwalk.

Within the fullness of the shop, as a result of this unified formation, there came to be a great quantity of lamps which produced heat. And in those days the Bug Man was no longer restless, and the two of them lay together in the heat of their innumerable lamps. And with the heat of these lamps he created Terraria in a vast network, such that the heat of the lamps would bathe each one of the Terraria in its own differentiated captivity of the fullness of the shop. And Citizen Sleepwalk, in her compassion, decreed that the fullness within each Terrarium should be differentiated into a syzygy of its own. In the first of the Terraria she generated [[Earth]], which was paired with [[Water]], and in the second she generated [[Fire]], which was paired with [[Air|Wind]], and in the third she generated Light, which was paired with Shadow, and in the fourth she generated [[Narratives|Narrative]], which was paired with [[Death]].

And the Bug Man saw what Citizen Sleepwalk had generated within the Terraria and he saw that it was in formation, and so he set in each of the Terraria a millipede with seven thousand legs on each side of its body, and the combined motion of each pair of legs was itself a syzygy, and in the space between the pairs of the legs of the millipedes, the first cages took shape:

Seven thousand cages of Earth-Water

Seven thousand cages of Fire-Wind

Seven thousand cages of Light-Shadow

Seven thousand cages of Narrative-Death

And the Bug Man arranged these cages in opposition to one another, and upon each of these cages he placed a Shopkeeper-Captain to preside over the cage and maintain the formation of its syzygy at all further levels of differentiation. And finally, being no longer restless, and satisfied with the perfect aisle of reflections that was his creation, the Bug Man took Citizen Sleepwalk to bed upon his wretched immaculate chair, and he rested.

Now Citizen Sleepwalk became aware of a murmur in the Terraria, which the Bug Man did not trouble over. While he rested, Citizen Sleepwalk rose from the fullness of the shop and descended upon the cages of the murmuring Terraria, and she came to an cage of Earth-Water which was presided over by the Shopkeeper-Captain who is called Empathy.

“What is this murmur, which echoes even through the fullness of the shop, while our father the Great Purveyor yet slumbers?” said Citizen Sleepwalk to the Shopkeeper-Captain.

“We are restless,” replied Empathy, “because we have become aware of the cage of Narrative-Death, and we wish to invite it into our own cage, and form a syzygy with it.”

“And how did this awareness come about?” said Citizen Sleepwalk, who in the joy and luster of her creation had not considered such possibilities.

“Our awareness is like the sun which claws at sleeping eyes:<blockquote>For the meeting of Water and Earth demands Life,

And the meeting of Earth and Life demands Fate,

And the meeting of Life and Fate demands Death,

And the meeting of Fate and Death demands Narrative.”</blockquote>Now Citizen Sleepwalk recognized her terrible mistake, and she departed from that cage which is ruled by Empathy. For in the Terrarium of Earth-Water had come generations which she had not seen, and which the Bug Man had certainly anticipated, but he was resting now, and Citizen Sleepwalk did not know of his ultimate plan, nor had she conceived of the mysterious unraveling of the syzygies. So she ventured to the Terrarium of Narrative-Death and descended upon that cage which is ruled by the Shopkeeper-Captain called Fiction.

“Come, Fiction,” said Citizen Sleepwalk. “Ascend with me, and I will bring you to an cage of Earth-Water where Life and Fate have unraveled, that the murmur might be quelled through the joining in formation of Life and Fate alongside Narrative and Death.”

And the Shopkeeper-Captain known as Fiction, who some call the Parrot of Chaos, followed Citizen Sleepwalk to the cage of Empathy, and there a syzygy was formed. But this syzygy was not like those which had formed in the fullness of the shop, for the legs of the millipedes did not move in sync. Their lamps emitted too much heat, and the Terraria grew encrusted with filth and blood and undigested food, and the generations within these cages became malnourished.

And the Shopkeeper-Captain known as Fiction turned to the Shopkeeper-Captain known as Empathy and said, “Let us create human beings upon this cage, that there may be attendants to this new syzygy.” And the Captains Fiction and Empathy created human beings in the image of their father, the Great Purveyor, and their mother, the Thrice-Female Son. And through Fiction the eyes of the human beings were opened to their malnourishment and to the deformed nature of their existence. And through Empathy they continued this pattern of unraveling generation amongst themselves. And Citizen Sleepwalk was unable to rehome this unraveled cage into the fullness of the shop, and so she abandoned the cage. But before departing she hid a small aspect of herself within the human beings, like a geode hidden within plain granite, and this aspect she called Dreams. And she hid this aspect until such time as the Bug Man rises from his slumber, that he might recognize humanity upon his arising, though so far he continues to rest.

This is how the world came to fall out of formation.

This is how the world is.

Josie

2024-09-09T14:59:25Z

ScholarGobbo: /* JOSIE */ Linked to cats

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== '''JOSIE''' ==
The last time I drank red wine a telephone pole jumped in front of my car. No one believed me that the telephone pole moved. Everyone thought I had drunkenly crashed my Subaru. I was on a trip when this happened. I don’t go on trips anymore. I sit in silence. I have a theory about silence. It makes everything better.

I’m not into books because reading too much is what made my mom lose her mind. She was obsessed with Victorian era England. It started with Austen and went to Bronte and went to Dickens and ended up in the history of [[women’s rights]] and the suffragette movement of the 20s. I’m named after Josephine Butler. No one knows who Josephine Butler is. I go by Josie, because that’s what my dad called me when I was a kid, a tender kid, a shy thinker. Shy thinkers get infantilized by having -ie put on the back end of their names.

''Josie'' backfired in 2001 when I was 8 years old. The movie ''Josie and the [[Cats|Pussycats]]'' was released and I heard nonsense references whenever my name was said. It stopped for a while in the 2010s. But was back in full force in the 2020s, when it seemed that nostalgia was all that the people of my generation had.

For a while I speed dated. But now I only slow date. I send a prospective lover one word a day for as long as it lasts. They either ignore me. Or all of the words add up. Into a sentence. And then a paragraph. And then a direct address love letter. And we agree to meet at the top of a mountain, each taking a different [[Road|route]]. Our tongues meet and our spit is warm and burns like hell. I’ll know it’s right, that the slow dating has worked, when we both decide to take the same hike back, all the way down to the bottom.

Phonyt

2024-09-07T15:14:21Z

ScholarGobbo: Created Phonyt

Phonyt is a micro-construct that can stay dormant and viable for year. When active in a host it moves undetectably through the body, causing until it arrives in the brain. In a pre-frontal cortex it will activate, burning out language word by word.

As it effects the pre-frontal cortex it only activates in sentient beings such as [[goblins]], trolls, gnomes, rabbits, dolphins, merpeople, angels, devils and possibly some of the more advanced apes.

Magnified a million times it appears as a set of golden lozenges, turning and blinking. More details are not currently available as the researchers are not responding to communication.

For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used: A Narrative of the First Age

2024-09-07T15:02:04Z

ScholarGobbo: Phonyt

{{NarrativeNotice}}

= '''For Sale, Creator’s Throne, Never Used''' =
'''A Narrative Of The First Age'''

The Manufactory of the Dawn, [[goblins]] run it now, that’s what I’d been told. Probably getting into a lot of trouble. I know all about that, I’m a goblin too. I’d picked up the sloth-construct cart from where it had been left. Didn’t see the driver anywhere about. Cargo got to move. Just hitched up the beasts, put on the cap that had been left on the drivers bench and patted the furry creature sitting there. Away we went, down the [[road]].

The Manufactory could be seen for days across the plain. The base was like a mountain, though closer you could see it was layers, terraces, a ziggurat seven levels high. Above that a big wide level, horizontal, overhanging the base, a clear sign that this was no natural landmark. And on top the tower, like a great blade pointing at heaven. Here and there thin plumes of smoke escaped. At night mysterious orange glows could be made out, scattered across it.

In the mornings when I wanted to be sleeping it blocked the sun. But necessity drives us, the brazen sloths did better in the shade than the heat of the day. I did too, and so did my furry companion. We made our way along the road, one of many carts and wagons crawling across the plain, me napping when the sun slowed us down, waking when it cooled in the night. Shortly after dawn we arrived.

The gates stood open, higher than any building I’d ever been in. A goblin stood between them watching me. He held out a hand to stop and I tried a variety of commands, the sloths slowing down and eventually settling only a few yards beyond him, so one of the control words must be right.

“All right, all right speed demon. No need to hurry. Governor’s not watching,” he said. “So, what you hauling.”

I looked back at the sacks piled high. “Just what it says on the manifest. Rice and beans.”

He didn’t ask me for the manifest. “Rice and beans together, or rice in some sacks and beans in the others.”

I looked at the sacks again. I began to doubt it was rice, or beans. Changing my mind now would just cause this guy trouble. Looking at him, ragged ears, skin flaking from too much sun, he’d had trouble enough already. “Rice in some sacks, beans in others.”

He turned to look into the darkness of the cavern. Within was a poorly lit enormous tunnel that got gloomier the further back it went. I shaded my eyes to make out goblins and wagons, moving back and forth, heading for stairs and tunnels and corridors. The interior of the Manufactory was honeycombed with passages and rooms.

I should have figured that out myself.

“Well over there, that’s the tunnel to the rice bunker. And there, that’s the way to the bean cellar. Pick one and unload, see what they want to do with the rest I guess.”

“Thanks pal,” I said, looking down. He peeled a long strip of dry skin from his head. I took pity on him. “Here, try my cap. Keep the sun off your head.”

For a moment he looked like I’d insulted him, or maybe insulted his mother, though if he knew his mother he’d be the first goblin I’d met who did. “Okay then.” I passed it down and he put it on, looking faintly ridiculous under the brim. “Yeah this will be good. Thanks. You’re a real gent, generous as the goblin king.”

I always like to be helpful.

I kicked the brazen sloths back into movement. The tunnel had a great plaque above it, with sigils or runes or glyphs, all carved out the stone, or maybe forged of dark metal. Too high to get a good look. Below has a single large symbol that was unfamiliar, one of the old languages, Enochian maybe or Ogham or Lingua Ignota. And hanging from it by a bit of string a wooden sign with a painted picture on it. A wheatsheaf I would have said, a grass stalk. The goblin at the entrance said it was for rice, so rice it was.

Maybe the painter wasn’t very good at painting. You’d hope they could find a good painter somewhere in the Manufactory. Probably busy elsewhere.

At the end of the tunnel I came to a great chamber, goblins moving sacks here and there with wheelbarrows, the whole lit by glowing orbs in the ceiling. “Hey there,” called a goblin, a big guy. His striped vest glowed in the light. In one hand he held a tablet. Wax, I thought to begin with, then as I managed to stop the brazen sloths I saw that there were pieces of paper on it, trapped by a metal clasp at the top.

“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” he said and vaulted up onto the cart before I could stop him. This disturbed my furry companion who hid under the cart.

I checked the sloths were staying in place. By the time I turned he had his knife out and cut open a sack. “Coal,” he said meditatively. “Coal. We don’t usually handle that here.”

“Oh, the guy at the gate thought you did,” I said. “Hey, I can turn around and go back if it’ll cause trouble.”

“No, no,” he said, poking at it. “We can handle anything you know? The Governor put us here, there’s nothing we can’t handle. Anything under the Throne Of The Creator, that’s what we deal with. Coal, coal.” He thought for a moment, then riffled through his papers.

He stood tall and shouted out. “Okay listen up.” A few goblins drifted closer, some bringing empty wheelbarrows. “We got a load of coal here. We’ll send a message up the tube, let them upstairs know what’s coming. We know where it goes, sacks on the hooks, then ring through to the belt office, get them to turn it on. It’ll be pulled away through the shafts, to be dropped where ever needs fuel.” He gesticulated wildly. I saw where he pointed to when he talked about the hooks. A whole bunch hanging from a belt that wound around a big spindle, then turned to go upwards, diagonally, the belt itself vanishing into the wall.

As he organised the work party I thought to myself I’d done enough here. Maybe it was time to see where else I could help.

“It’s been a long trip,” I began.

“Yeah yeah, I got you. We’ve got all the requirements, and them fit for the goblin king. Now see there, the outline of the goblin shitting? That’s the latrine.” I looked, and from a great plaque of symbols hung the latrine symbol. “The one of the goblin washing? Bathhouse. The goblin sleeping, that’s the bunks. And the gobblin eating? I reckon you’ll figure that one out.”

I did. I relieved myself in the latrines, and I washed myself in the bathhouse. In the changing room I found a clean set of clothes, including an orange vest that made me highly visible, a hard white hat and a tablet with a clip holding some papers and a pencil on a piece of string. I put them on, it was almost as though they’d been left for me, they fit so well. On the breast I put a badge, one with an old sigil on it, one that looked like a throne.

In the canteen there were a handful of goblins scattered about the tables, and three at the stove. I went over and greeted them. They seemed eager to please.

“What would you like sir, we have plenty here,” said the first, thin and pale, pushing a basket of crusts and crumbs my way.

“Give him a tray and a bowl,” said the second. “And yes, plenty, but not too much, no we’re not wasteful, your worship.” He had a basket of dried fruit that he put on the counter.

“Enough of that, a hot meal, that’s what the he wants I’m sure. When he reports to the Governor he’ll say we feed people up properly, won’t you captain.” He put some fat in a pan, then the pan onto a metal plate. It hissed and sizzled. He held his hand over a basket of eggs, chopped onion, some large mushrooms, and cut up roots and vegetables. “What’s your pleasure sir.”

“You’re the chefs,” I said and a moment of panic swept over the three. “You’re in charge here, you don’t need to call me sir. Make me your speciality.”

They made me Eggs Gobolino, a great pile of everything bound up in eggs. Pretty good, even with the shell and burned bits. The furry creature returned , sensing a meal time, but wouldn’t eat it. A mechanical snail slithered around, waste bins hanging from its shell, and I discreetly put the portion I couldn’t finish in.

When I saw the chefs watching I made some notes on the papers on the tablet, the eggs recipe and a picture of the snail.

“Was it good your highness?”

“Very good, very good. Don’t call me highness.”

“I suppose you’ll be going upstairs.” The three of them looked over at a red door. A threatening sigil was above it, perhaps a double-headed axe, or perhaps a boar’s face.

“I suppose I will,” I said. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

Through the doors were stairs, possibly carved out of stone, made or molded in place. As I climbed them one wall opened up and I found myself above the cavern I had been in. A big cart pushed by an obsidian bull had run into the back of one with brazen sloths in front. Goblins clambered all over the two, checking for damage, calling to each other, offloading the cargo. The one with the clipboard and vest I’d seen before was waving his finger at a skinny newcomer, who in turn was shouting at the sloths. In the echoes of the high vaults and the clicking and clacking of the moving belts it was impossible to make out what they said. Just before I climbed out of sight he kicked at a brass sloth and yelled a clear curse.

The stairs turned and twisted, moving through the solid structure of the Manufactory. After climbing far enough my knees began to complain and the rest of me regret I did not bring a drink with me I came to a landing. In one corner was a latrine and [[water]] fountain that I took advantage of, then investigated further. Here sixteen stairways met, each with a tube alongside that connected in a complex set of junctions. Four stairs went down, and four up; the others appeared to turn off in some uncanny direction. The closer I approached them the more normal they appeared, simply steps that happened to head off in a dimension not normally accessible.

The glyphs on them were as mysterious as ever. One did have a goblin-drawn label; it appeared to be a frog seen in all directions from the inside out.

I rejected them, turned back to the usual directions. I discounted the four going down and considered the others. A relatively simple set of right crossed blades, or a wheel, and below it a stylus on a piece of board caught my eye. As I considered the furred creature joined me, then went and sat on the bottom step.

I mounted the stairs, the creature following. After passing through several strata of different coloured stone the stairs emerged into an airy space, lit by great beams of dust-flecked sunlight. Out of reach were catwalks and stairways, poles and ropes, great girders. The sounds were muted, there was movement on some distant ones but none close enough to make out details.

The stairway zigged and zagged, was encaged in metal, then released again, now flimsier, gaps between stairs. I climbed steadily, finding that I was alongside a vertical belt hoisting sacks upwards. Just before the increasing thickness of girders became a ceiling the stairwell turned around the belt and met a doorway.

There was a knocker which I knocked. The door crept open to reveal a silver ape construct. The mechanism beckoned me to follow, and we travelled through a maze of narrow passages.

At another door, the ape knocked, then let me through. I found myself in a great chamber. Before me was a silver claw, five times the height of a goblin, easy to measure as a dozen goblins festooned in polishing rags climbed over and around it, polishing with wax and cloths where the previous goblin had just been holding on.

I marched up and cleared my throat, then again louder. “Who’s in charge here?”

A goblin with a spectacular boil on his nose looked up, wiped the sweat from his brow with a cloth. “Chief’s round the corner, dealing with some cock up,” he grunted, then went back to polishing the boot print of the goblin just above him.

I circled the claw, the heel spike blackened with filth, to find chaos. A tall goblin with a shock of white hair spilling out from his helmet was shouting, waving, pointing with a spanner. Around him were other goblins, some staring with mouths open, some working on a piece of machinery, others carrying sacks, one pushing a broom across the floor, moving slowly around the standers and the runners.

A couple of goblins were trying to sneak away, dragging a sack between them. They looked up and saw me. Stopped, a look of horror on their face. The orange vest, the white helmet. The badge. And worse, the pad of papers.

“Names?” I said sternly.

“Chokejam, your worship.”

“Petanque, magister.”

I looked at the sack. Beans dribbled from where the stitching had been cut. The furred creature sniffed at them and licked itself. “Do you have a chitty for this?”

The two looked at each other, then back to me. I waved them on and they fled, scattered beans falling behind them, the furry creature looking curiously back and forth at them and me.

The tall goblin saw me, nodded and continued ordering goblins about, some of whom sprung into action, others stared blank-faced.

“What seems to be the problem chief,” I said when he paused, waving my board at the work being done.

“Some [[god]]-forsaken arse down below sent sacks of coal up the belt, without a warning for the inter-connectors to be re-aligned. There’s a system, you send a message up the tube, you ring the bell, you pull the telegraph, then the goblins on the switches set up the tracks and belts, then they ring back. All before you set it going. Then your bastard coal goes to a coal bunker, and does not get sent to be dumped in a grease tank.”

He pointed at the heart of the swarm of workers, most of them standing about holding tools or parts, ready to hand them up. The belts and hooks met at a complex six-way connection. “Now the good news is that some clever bastard was awake up there, saw what was going to happen. Coal dust in the grease, we’d be weeks cleaning the tanks out, then have to refill them from scratch. A whole lot of wasted grease, a herd of [[oil-bears]].”

I perked up at this “Oil-bears? I thought they were a myth.”

He frowned at me. “I asked a goblin where the oil he brought came from. He showed me the barrels, sealed with a bear stamp. They [[Hunting|hunt]] them by the West Pole. Land of swamps and fogs. The oil bear sits on top a stalagmite in the marsh above the mist, listening out. When it hears something moving it reaches down with an enormous paw to catch prey. What the hunters do is set a trap. The bear’s paw is caught and they can cut it up with hatchets.”

“Doesn’t sound sporting,” I said.

“The hell with sporting,” he replied. “You know what would happen to this place without grease?”

I nodded. “The engines of creation would grind to a halt. No more constructs. Civilisation would fall and the First Age would come to a shattering end.”

“We would miss our targets and the Governor would be bastardly angry,” he said. “And that’s why the goblins who hide in the mist and slaughter oil-bears with maximum efficiency and minimum risk to themselves are god damn heroes.”

I decided it was time to assert myself. To contribute something. I picked up the pencil on its string and licked the point. On a blank corner of the paper I sketched an oil-bear as best I could having never seen one. “God… damn… heroes.”

The chief looked me up and down, then down and up. He came to a conclusion. “And what are you doing here?”

I pointed the pencil at the tangle. The goblins there were fewer now, some escaping the gaze of their supervisor. Those remaining worked frantically. “The coal came up the wrong track.”

“That’s right. As I said, some clever bastard saw and pulled the emergency stop. All good. Except an emergency stop knocks it all out of joint. Whole lot of trouble One belt slows, another jumps, sacks ram into each other. Next thing the whole interchange is jammed, spilling rice into the gears. With the interchange out, everything that depends on it is at a standstill. The whole west shaft is frozen. This knocks on; the grand trunk taking up the slack. The overspill from the lower levels is sitting waiting, the east shaft is at capacity, even the north is having to start moving properly. Good, serve the lazy bastards right. But that’s not what you’re interested in.”

On the contrary, this was very interesting. It was pleasant to hear someone who knew what they were up to explaining it in plain language. I didn’t want to argue with him. “As you say.”

“Right.” He turned away, pointed at the smallest goblin I’d seen since I first crawled out of the breeding pits. He scuttled forward holding out a jacket and scarf to his Chief. “No, give me the rag first Mervile! I don’t want coal dust on my good clothes.” He shook his head. “Sorry about that. My great-nephew you know. This generation.”

The goblin squeaked at me, finding a grimy polishing cloth from about his person. “He’s wrong sir, I’m not a relative. I worked my way up from lackey to dogsbody to batman and now here I am, amanuensis to the forge master himself.”

“You all look the same,” said the forge master dismissively. Voices stopped. Goblins stared. “I’m just saying it as I see it.” He wiped his hands clean aggressively, put on the jacket, tied the scarf in a flamboyant knot. He froze. “What is that… that vermin?”

The furry creature had returned and wove between my legs, then sat down and looked up curiously. I returned the look, “Not vermin, a feline safety auxiliary.”

“Ha. Health and safety gone mad. They won’t catch me out though. Mervile, this [[Cats|cat]] is a worker. Get them a vest.” He stalked away, calling over his shoulder. “This way.”

“How do I…” began Mervile.

“Measure the cat up, run to stores. We’ll be touring the forges. Catch up quickly.”

Mervile pulled out some string and tried to run it around the cat’s chest. It hissed and arched it’s back. Mervile took measurements from a distance. I turned to follow the chief, the cat trying to trip me as I walked. A fun companion.

Past the belts the sounds changed. From the groans of cloth and leather we could hear the scream of hot metal and the clash of tools. The forges. As we approached I got hotter under my jacket.

The machinery reached from floor to ceiling, enormous shafts and conduits entering each section. The chief yelled out. “The shaft to bring in sweet [[air]], and the one to expel foul. The coal chute, the water pipe. Here is where the ore is delivered, there the flux. Solder of course, three different types. Limestone. The acid jars. The buffet and drinks tray. And of course the…” The last was cut off by a shattering whistle; I could see a goblin trotting through the door. Another latrine.

The whistle was a signal. The goblins all began to move, most of them towards the glowing, burning heart, stragglers rushing for smocks or tools. Goggles were put on, masks covered mouths, heads had helmets.

The chief tapped me on the shoulder, indicated the goggles on my own helmet, put his own on. I did and the world became inked in green shadows.

Not for long; the whistle cut out and there was a screech of chains and metal as a door was winched open. From it came a piercing, gleaming light. The heat was intense, the smell of water steaming off hot stone.

From the door came a finger of light. A rod of white-green fury, driving wailing goblins back. It reached and reached, the end turning slightly dark, then drooping just a touch to the curses of the chief beside me.

There was a shout and goblins pulled on levers and chains, some diving out the way. A dark shape emerged from the ceiling, curving down. It sliced off the end of the rod, then sailed back up, slowing. For an instant it sat, darkly gleaming against the green shadows then it came down again.

A pendulum blade, swinging metronomically, using it’s weight and momentum to cut the extruded cylinder of hot metal. Each piece fell into a tank to cool – and from the smell be oil-tempered.

Another whistle, another scream. The rod shuddered, stuttered in place. The pendulum axe cut, flicking a hot metal crescent out, goblins scrambling to avoid. Then it came to a rest, the door shut.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The cat peeked out between my boots. The chief raised his goggles; after I raised mine he led me forward.

Goblins were pulling the lengths of rod out the oil with tongs, one of them sitting to the side having a reddened hand bandaged. Each rod was held up, letting green oil drip off into a trough, then plunged into water. Taken out of the room.

We followed to a great workshop, metal tables and anvils scattered about. Goblins were wiping, filing, cutting grooves or grinding down the end of the rods.

“There you are,” said the chief. “Progress. Handles for the next batch of hammers and chisels. And so ready for the next stage.”

“The next stage?” I asked looking at my board. A smut had got onto the top sheet of paper, smearing over the symbols.

“Hammers and chisels to make the parts for the lathe and the drill and the press. We use them to repair the precision tool testing bench, the parts that hold it steady isolating it from the Manufactory’s vibrations. Then the precision tools can be calibrated to allow them to be used to infinitesimal accuracy. The tools then go to the optical laboratory where they etch glass for the micro-constructors. When we have those in working order it will be time to fire up the nanoforges. Project [[Typhon]] will then be back on track.”

The chief sighed deeply as a goblin dropped a rod on the floor, the sound echoing across the room above all the other sounds and chatter. The cat leaped up on a table and pawed at a paper package, unwrapping it.

“Hey, my lunch!”

“Not on the workbench Chadwick,” said the chief. “You know I wasn’t sure you were really a safety inspector, but look at that. Got to say, you went straight to the violation. And dealt with it yourself too, nice and calmly.”

The cat had knocked the package off the table where it had unrolled to reveal pickled fish, rice and beans, all wrapped in a leaf. The goblin who had lost his snack looked on sadly as the creature jumped down and began to eat it.

“What’s your name?” asked the chief but the cat didn’t answer. “What’s their name?” he asked me.

Mervile returned “I got hat and goggles and jacket,” he said. “For the cat.”

“Well put them on,” I said. “His name’s Jack.”

Mervile bent down to where Jack was eating the fish. The cat hissed. Mervile purred back, keeping away from the food, gently approaching, showing his hands. Letting the cat smell them. Then slowly, carefully dressing him.

The chief was talking again. “Yes, you can tell the engineers we’re on track. Making the tools to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools, to make the tools to make the world-wrecking blasphemous engine of destruction that is Project Typhon.”

I frowned at this. “Do we really want to build a world-wrecker?”

The chief looked at me sternly. He put his thumbs in the breast pockets of his vest. “We build what they send the plans down for. It’s not easy down here on the factory floor, not like up in a calm office, drawing diagrams on paper, having cups of tea every hour, on the hour, waited on hand and foot, like the goblin king. Aren’t you down from the engineers, looking to see how far off track we are?”

“No, no.” The sound of work slowed. “I’m from another department.”

The sound stopped. Everyone in the workshop froze. The muted hum of the Manufactory, the occasional breath and a mew from Jack as Mervile tied the hat string under his chin were the only noises.

“Another… department?” The chief seemed stiffer now. “As in…”

“I think you know which one,” I replied.

“Well then. If you’ll come this way, inspector.”

The goblins seemed to stand up straighter. The chief barked at them to get back to work but they just stood there. “Carry on,” I said. No one moved. Goblins used to manage without officers or nobles or a king. I put all the aristocratic hauteur that unneeded nobles and officers project so effortlessly into the words. “I said, carry on.”

They went back to work and we left. Jack followed, abandoning the snack.

Beyond the workshop was a small cage rising from floor to ceiling. Within it a basket. Beside it another tube. “The personnel lift,” said the Chief. “It will take you upstairs.”

“Thank you,” I said and went through the door, sitting on the basket. Jack jumped in beside me.

“If you’ll give my compliments to the Governor,” said the Chief. “When you see him. Not that he knows me of course.”

I nodded gravely. “I shall be sure to tell him all about you.” With a pull of a cord the basket began to rise.

Forge after forge, workshop after workshop. As I rose I could make out the patterns, the furnaces leading to the forges, then around to the next, swirling links making a spiral symbol that converged on…

The basket rose past the ceiling into a cool dark shaft and I could see no more.

We rose for a long time, Jack stretching then curling up. I considered doing the same but decided to sit normally in the seat. It was only polite.

At last the basket rose into another cage and came to a stop. There was the sharp ring of a bell and the door opened.

After the dim halls where goods were delivered and the noise and dirt of the factory level this was a paradise of light and air. Sun shone through windows, goblins in waistcoats and breeches scratched away at desks. Others stood around water fountains or at tea stands, talking quietly. The goblin who had opened the cage stood back; I dodged aside as a shiny black metal hog pulled a small wheeled cart, a long thin goblin passing out sheathes of papers to the workers he passed. A studious fellow with spectacles placed papers in a capsule that he put in a tube, closing the hatch and tapping on it.

“Well hello there… sir.” The goblin who had let us out greeted us.

“You don’t have to call me sir,” I said cheerily. “Nor the safety inspector there.” Jack mewed a reply.

“Well si… well then. After your time in the lower levels I am sure you would like to refresh yourself before continuing.” I blinked at him. “The washroom. This way.”

I was fairly grimy compared to the others here. Jack and I followed him around chest high barriers, goblins politely nodding as we passed.

The washroom was bright and polished, with silver metal and white ceramic surfaces. I cleaned under my nails, brushed my teeth, knocked dirt and dust out of my hat and clothes. Relieved myself in the latrine. When I offered to wash Jack he ignored me, preferring to lick himself and his outfit clean.

I looked at myself in the gleaming mirror. Did I appear taller? My nose sharper, my chin more solid? Dark eyes shining, my skin luminous in sweeps of green?

A goblin can be who they want to be, that was something I had been told. Or something like that. Yes. So I would be the goblin who found out what was happening here.

Jack mewed at an empty bowl so I poured some water in it; he pre-empted me, jumping on the counter and batting at the stream from the tap. After a while I turned it off, and ignoring his complaints went out.

The goblin was talking to a colleague; seeing me he broke it off and led me on.

To a large room, windows down one side, a long table in the middle. Three goblins were gathered around one end, all with dark serious-looking ties around their necks.

“Welcome welcome. Please take a seat.” The tallest one, his tie so dark a blue it was almost black. The escorting goblin pulled out a chair and I sat. He pulled out another; Jack jumped up, then on to the table and looked back. With some magnificent improvisation the goblin took a cushion from the chair and placed it on the table beside him. Jack sniffed at it, then deigned to curl up.

“Which project were you interested in?” asked the next, the plumpest goblin I had seen in the Manufactory, his tie a light-swallowing purple.

“I have seen Project Typhon below. We might start there.”

They all looked at each other and the third, so bland and forgettable that I had taken no notice of his features or his tie, he turned to the side. He knocked on the wall, three times, then four more.

In came two young keen goblins, holding a covered board. They placed it on an easel and then whipped off the cover theatrically. There it was.

“Project Typhon, a melding of the most destructive elements of Mother Earth and the Incarnation of Tartarus.” One pointed at the boiling nest at the bottom, the artist’s work so finely done that I had to blink to see it was in fact motionless. “Below the thighs nothing but coiled serpents. His arms, when spread out, reach one hundred leagues, his hands made up of countless serpent’s heads.”

Jack hissed at this. I spoke up. “Serpent tails below, the heads on the arms. The divided parts connected by the body.”

The other had a pointer. “The ass-head…” There was a snigger from somewhere. He continued firmly. “The ass-head reaches up to scrape the vault of heaven. The wings darken half the sky. From the eyes come flame and from the mouth flaming rocks. That is Project Typhon.”

I looked at the picture of the world-breaker, the god-killer, the death of nations. A whirlwind of destruction, the flame of a burning [[earth]], a serpent from the abyss. “What’s it for?”

The two young goblins grinned, looked at each other. Then turned together to look at the three senior ones.

“I assure you,” said the tall one. “This has been approved from the Governor’s office. By the Governor himself.”

Jack mewed. I shook my head. “My colleague is concerned about the safety of unleashing such a construct on the unsuspecting world. Can you tell me what it is for?”

The bland one shook his head. “I assumed form followed function.”

“If burning were our intention then there are other options, from goblins with drip torches, through [[fire]] arrows, all the way up to spitfires. If we wish to touch heaven then air-balloons and kites can be built. Serpents already exist.”

The round one looked on in distaste. “I always assumed it was for clearing land of unwanted obstructions. Forests, mountains, cities and so forth.”

“Very well. What next?”

The two young goblins rushed out, returning with a new board. This they unveiled with grins. “Project [[Python]].”

An enormous writhing worm was depicted. At first I thought it limbless, featureless. Then as the goblins pointed out details it became clearer. The size of the construct was misleading; claws bigger than houses, teeth tall as a tower, they were dwarfed by the great belly and tail.

“By resting the main part of the structure on the ground there is a greater capacity for weighty internal braces and machinery. Python is therefore sturdy and robust. Well nigh indestructible.”

I stared at it.

“A hundred claws on each side to make it mobile, and remove obstacles from it’s path. Yet barely needed, the armour plates so heavy that they can push anything moveable aside, and slide over anything that won’t move; so finely balanced and machined that they will let it creep even without the traction of the limbs.”

I looked at the head, small compared to the rest, still enormous.

“Yes the head appears out of scale. This is because Python is a chthonic construct. As I said it can crawl anywhere in the world, yet there is more to it than travelling over mere surfaces. Project Python can burrow deep, right into the navel of the world. Crawl amongst the very roots of the earth, gnawing it’s way deep amongst them.”

Jack hissed at this one too.

“Serpents again. Do you think it safe to have such a fearsome, unstoppable construct undermine the foundations of the world?”

The tall one spoke. “I assure you that, this, like every project developed by the engineering department, has been approved by the Governor.”

I scratched my chin. “So before it is developed he approves it.”

The round one nodded. “That is so, in every detail.”

“Yet until it has been developed he cannot know the details, so how can it be approved of?”

The bland one smirked a little, polished his quizzing glass. “We are in constant communication with the Governor’s office.” He pointed to the tubes.

“Pneumatic?” I asked.

“Ferrets push the message capsules.” Jack sat up at this.

“I see,” I said.

“Project Python could excavate waterways, harbours, dig mines?” The tall one’s air of competence was fraying rapidly.

The two young goblins took this as a cue and rushed out to bring in another. “Project [[Hypton]],” they said proudly.

This appeared to be a great butterfly with enormous eye-covered wings. The eyes, it seemed had multiple uses. Some could be used to watch what went on below when the sky-darkening presence of Hypton flew over, out of reach of the ground-hugging mortals. Others could see deeper, into their minds, reading their thoughts, uncovering their secrets. And a few were even more active, able to overwhelm the personality and will, making them behave as Hypton wished.

“How will Hypton wish them to behave?” I asked.

They pointed out the long proboscis, so Hypton could suck up water or food without ever landing, the tentacles to grasp birds and insects from the sky, the jagged wing edges to cut through any enemy who might climb to meet it.

Jack gave a yawn and they brought in another board.

[[Nopyth]], an obsidian block that at first view seemed featureless, the artist’s rendering sucking vision in, black on black on black. Very slow moving and growing it was nevertheless unstoppable. Creating a wall that would divide the land. If anyone attempted to cross or damage Nopyth, the many mouths would tear and other orifices let loose corrosive fluids to dissolve and rot the attacker.

“Which places do we need to divide from others with such great ferocity?”

The roots dig down to bring up nutrients… the board was replaced.

[[Photyn]], a brazen bull who reflected sunlight so powerfully it would blind those who looked up it, with fiery breath from the nostrils, hooves that could break castle walls.

[[Tophyn]], a sea serpent that could swallow fleets, eyes that disorient sailors, a tail that could make waves that would smash down cliffs or devastate the land for miles inland.

[[Phyton]], a plant that grew upon itself, a stem and lead on stem and leaf on stem and leaf, shading the land. I showed some interest in this but they were on a roll.

“Here is the masterwork. [[Phonyt]]. This is expanded one million times.”

A change in scale at least. Rather than a creature of great size, this was tiny, invisibly small, infinitesimal. I peered at it. It seemed to be made up of gold lozenges, so finely drawn that I could swear they spun and twinkled, the whole seeming to expand and shrink, move across the page.

“Phonyt can stay dormant for years, yet remain viable. When it finds itself in a host it will move through the body, causing no trouble or symptoms until it finds itself in the brain. Even there it will only activate in a pre-frontal cortex. So only in sentient beings such as goblins, trolls, gnomes, rabbits, dolphins, merpeople, angels, devils. Possibly some of the more advanced apes if you can believe it.”

The goblins at the head of the table smiled at each other, wide, toothy grins as though they might be about to sit down to a delicious dinner. Jack sat bolt upright and hissed, then spat.

“And what does it do?” I asked them.

“Oh very simple.” The round goblin seemed pleased with himself. “It burns out language, word by word. Completely removing the ability to express or understand.”

I stroked my chin. “Seems like something that could easily get out of hand. And go on to destroy all culture and civilisation.”

The tall goblin looked even more satisfied. “Fortunately the researcher is close to making a counter agent. Or so we believe, it has recently become impossible to understand him.”

The bland goblin shrugged. “If it becomes a problem then that is what the other projects are for. Scrape the world back to a blank page. Let the Creator mount their throne and try again.”

I nodded. It was becoming clear at last. “So not your problem what happens after these projects are built.”

The tall goblin grinned. “We have developed these plans from the outlines and requirements that were left here for us. The strategic use of the projects is for higher governance.”

The round one puffed his cheeks. “We do as we are assigned and as we are authorised, under the authority granted from the Governor.”

The bland one had no expression on his face. “And I must at this point note that these plans are approved, and also by granting that these constructs are self-governing, absolve us from all responsibility as to their actions.”

I stood and the other goblins stiffened. “Well thank you gentlemen. This has been most enlightening. I think that I will make my way to the Governor’s office.”

At my movement Jack started, then bounced forward. One of the young goblins tried to intercept, the other to get out the way. They ran into each other and collapsed into a pile of flailing limbs. Jack sailed above them and landed with all four paws on the near vertical board, claws digging into the diagram of Phyton.

“Get the broom,” croaked the tall goblin. “Get the broom!”

I shook my head. “Leave Jack alone. As Auxiliary Safety Officer they have some criticisms of this project.”

Jack scrabbled violently, then slid unceremoniously off the bottom, turning in midair to bounce off the squirming goblins and trotted back along the table, tail and head held high. I stuck my head out the door and found the escort standing there, elaborately not listening in. “If you can take me to the Governor’s office please?”

He took me through the corridors. Now the goblins either turned and ran away or stood and stared. No one pretended to work as I went by. Part way through Jack came bounding along, passed us, then slowed to a trot, leading the way.

We turned a corner and found ourselves facing a moving stairway. Jack looked at it, looked at me, then came back and weaved around my legs. I bent to pick him up; he chose to climb and position himself as a lookout on my shoulder.

“Well your honour, if you go up there you should find your way to the Governor.” He gave a smart salute, which I returned much less smartly.

“Is there anything you’d like me to tell the Governor?”

This seemed to throw him for a moment. “I ah. I’m very proud to serve here. Sir.”

“I asked you not to call me sir. I’m no officer.” I left him to his confusion, stepping on the first tread, grabbing hold of the moving handrail as my foot was dragged away.

Once I had my balance it was a very smooth journey. Jack had dug his claws into the vest’s padded shoulder, almost as though it were designed for this. I looked down. The plan of the engineers’ offices could be seen from above. They watched me ride up as I saw how the desks and meeting rooms were arranged, like a labyrinth, circling and funnelling towards a centre.

Up through the ceiling, the eyes now hidden. Everyone had been thinking about the Governor. As though he were a king. The one goblin who knew what was going on. The one goblin who had answers. The one goblin with the power to loose and to bind.

The one goblin with the right to call me out. The ability to say, you belong here. Or you don’t belong.

We’d meet that when we came to it.

The moving stair approached an end, the steps vanishing under the floor. I hopped off, and only when safely on solid ground did I look about.

A great vast hall, an empty desk right in front. Beside it were a dozen or so tubes, the ends beside a basket overflowing with message capsules. As I watched a capsule emerged, bounced off the top-most one of the pile, then rolled away onto the floor. A small white face came out. Jack stiffened on my shoulder. The ferret ignored him, ignored me, instead and ran across the floor to a small hole.

Beside the hole were double doors, three times the height of a goblin. The doors were ajar and from inside came a rumbling. I looked at Jack, and he was looking at the hole. “You do not want to go in the ferret hole,” I said.

I went through the door.

A hall that was like the one I had come from, but the desk was twice the size, behind it a great brazen mask, and beyond that windows, opening onto the world beyond. As I came in the mask grunted, steam coming from the ears. Jack leaped from my shoulder and ran.

“Not the ferret hole,” I called out.

“Pay no attention to the goblin behind the curtain,” said the mask, as Jack ran to a curtained alcove. I stamped after him as he wrestled with the fabric. I picked him up but his claws were tangled and pulled it aside.

Inside was a goblin, sitting on the latrine, reading a bundle of papers and smoking a complex looking pipe. “Don’t mind me,” he said.

“It’s me you’ve come to see,” said the voice from before, much less booming now they were out from behind the mask. A smart looking goblin, eyes bright though the wrinkles of age covered every part of his head. “Let my secretary deal with his business in peace.”

He took a seat behind the desk. Jack was reluctant to release the curtain so I left him to it and found myself a seat without being invited.

“I know why you’re here,” said the goblin, the Governor. “I know why you’re here and I want you to know that I disapprove.”

“I see,” I said.

“When I was young we were all just goblins, one squalling undifferentiated mass. I see no need to maintain these artificial distinctions. A goblin is a goblin is a goblin, that was good enough at creation and should be good enough now.”

I inclined my head, then had to adjust the goggles that threatened to slip down onto my face. “As the Governor, surely you have the power…”

“So why divide goblin from goblin? Why declare some male goblins and some female goblins? What purpose does it serve? At least the current system, where each goblin expresses their preference can be comprehended. The first attempt was a shambles. Trying to categorise the manifold infinite grotesque variety of goblin genitals into two classes. Impossible, ridiculous, and quite disgusting.”

He stared at me and I stared back. “You said you know why I’m here.”

“Well of course. Having divided goblins in this way categorically, it seems that we must divide them physically. Male goblins go to the Manufactory of the Dawn…”

“Females to the Manufactory of the Dusk, and those who are neither join the aeronautical corps. This is known.” I stared at him and now his wrinkles seemed to deepen. “What I want to know is what is going on here.”

From the alcove came an odd whistle and a quick burst of vapour. Jack came sprinting out. When he saw us watching he slowed to a casual stalk, obliquely sidling towards the desk.

“I am the Governor you know. I am in charge.”

“Then tell me what is going on,” I said. “So many goblins working hard to create frightful engines of destruction. Is this really what we are about? Do goblins want to be known as such monsters? Is that to be our legacy.”

He sighed and held up a slim volume on the desk. “Do you know what this is? Of course not, you’re not the Governor. When I arrived here I found this office and this desk. And this book. The other goblins wanted leadership. They needed to be told what to do. So I deciphered what I could, as best I can and sent down the instructions.

“In this book are the notes of the Creator. Everything that they intended for this world. And all my attempts to bring forth a design have led to building a great construct. Will it be a terrible destroyer? Well, such is not my business. The Creator left his notes and who am I to deny them.”

The Governor had deciphered the Creator’s notes, or six letters of them at least. Jack jumped up on the desk and mewed quietly. I stroked him with one hand, adjusted his jacket where it had rucked up with the other.

“You’re the Governor. You took charge. It’s your responsibility.”

“What, was I supposed to leave this office empty?”

I sighed. “Why not? Do you think that by setting yourself above other goblins – apart from them – you’ve made things better?”

The Governor stood up then. He put all his officer class strength into his voice. “Goblins need leadership. They want leadership. They love to be told what to do. And I gave it to them. If I did not take this seat, this office, someone else would have. And who knows what they would have done with the power!”

“Project Typhon? Project Hypton? Project Phonyt? Goblins want work and purpose yes. They don’t need a Governor who has them make world-ending weapons.”

The Governor shrugged. “Well so long as I am on this side of the desk it’s my opinion that matters. It’s not as though the incompetents down below would be able to complete projects of this magnitude. Even the Creator left before finishing.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s upstairs?”

He froze, then collapsed into his chair. “You’re kidding of course.”

“I’ve come this far. I want to see what’s up there.”

The ladder had been badly disguised, some sheets hanging from the bottom two thirds, the upper part in shadow.

“The throne of the Creator… but no goblin would dare…”

I looked him in the eye. “Do you think just any goblin could make his way into the Manufactory. Visit every office, every workshop, every store and canteen and washroom? Be welcomed at every turn, even here? Do you think that one of the undifferentiated mass of squalling goblins could make their way here in front of you?”

“Your Majesty…”

“Stop that.” I stood and Jack mewed plaintively, squirmed onto my shoulder. “I work for a living. And so should you. Do you know what leadership is?”

“I, I mean…”

I made my way towards the ladder. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.”

I pulled loose the sheets and began to climb. From below came the voice of the secretary. “What now Mr Governor?”

“Wash your damned hands Gruntlespoon!”

<nowiki>****</nowiki>

In case you didn’t know, the Creator didn’t leave a throne on the pinnacle of the Manufactory Of The Dawn. No throne, no crown, no sceptre, sword, wand or orb. Up top there is a shelter with cushions and blankets. A water spigot and cooking stone, pots and pans. Dried fruit, dried meat – Jack went straight for that. Bags of rice and bags of beans. A latrine of course, and a farseer.

There’s no throne up there, no king. I looked through the farseer and saw how the creatures of the world were continuing the work of Creation. Trolls piling rocks into mountains. Gnomes digging out waterways. Goblins burning forests, planting saplings in the blackened remnants. Herds of horses and cattle on the plains, goats in the hills, deer in the forests. From the savannah in the south upright apes, brute cunning in their eyes, mastering the crudest tools, flint and fire, bone and wood.

Someone should probably keep an eye on them.

I put some beans on to cook, they take longer than rice.

We’d been left in a world half-built, and no instructions. Obviously we were going to build monstrous engines of destruction. What choice did we have? Not build apocalyptic constructs? Perhaps we were fortunate that the Creator had left behind such extraordinary ideas that it would take centuries of labour to fulfil them.

Perhaps that was the plan. Give us [[Timeline|time to work out an alternative]]. Or no plan, the Creator making it up as they went along. Like the rest of us.

No throne for the Creator. No king for the goblins. The Governor couldn’t see it. Goblins don’t need a leader. They need someone to shake them out of their habits, to pull the goblin round pegs out the square holes the Creator had left. King, governor, noble, these are not the highest aspirations for a goblin. There are better things to be. Cat-burglar. Troublemaker. Sceptic.

[[Trickster]].

I’d done what I could. Tomorrow I would move on. I lifted the farseer to the horizon just as the sun dipped below, outlining something there, like a blade raised to heaven. The Manufactory Of The Dusk. Jack moaned loudly as the sun vanished.

Time to see what mess the girls had got into.

=== Alternative Titles ===
As well as For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used, versions of this narrative have been uncovered with other titles. These include:

''An Incomplete World Requires Goblins''

''A Goblin Seeks Meaning Below The Throne Of The Creator''

''Aimed At Heaven''

''[[Monstrous Orphans Of Creation]]''

''The Apocalyptic Constructs Of The Creator''

Scholars continue to uncover new versions in the archives.

==== A Goblin Koan ====
The Student asked The Goblin King, ''Master, how few words do you need to tell a complete tragedy?''

The Goblin King thought for a moment. ''[[wikipedia:For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn|For Sale, Creator's Throne, Never Used]]. There, that's six words.''

The Student pondered this. ''Master, I don't get it''.

The Goblin King sighed. ''It's like this. The Creator made a throne, but never used it. Which is sad.''

The Student shook their head. ''I thought they made it to sell. For money. Which is a use.''

The Goblin King was astonished. ''What use, Mablethorpe'', they said breaking the rules of a fable by using the goblin student's name, ''what use would The Creator have for money?''

''To buy things?'' said the Student. ''I still don't get it''.

The Goblin King walked away, calling over their shoulder ''Well maybe that's why I'm the Goblin King and you're my student''.

At this moment the Student was enlightened.

April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution

2024-09-06T15:17:28Z

ScholarGobbo: Added link to Women's rights

{{NarrativeNotice}}

== April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution ==
Women in my [[timeline]] faced incredible danger. They wisely knew that an encounter in the woods with a strange [[bear]] felt safer to their personal rights and bodily autonomy than the likelihood of coming across a strange man alone in the woods.

That man vs bear meme ignited the gunpowder keg that ultimately led to the Galli Act proposal after a social justice movement and media campaign. The campaign meant well but went wrong. It showed the righteous rage women experienced, but the inflammatory language made me regret taking back the word “bitch” because to me it once was a backronym for “babe in total control of herself. I was a proud badass bitch once. I still do not always see it only as “a gendered derogatory slur”. I am a bad person. Probably.

As public opinion changed once artificial wombs made reproduction genuinely safe and birth control became mandatory due to climate change, crime and forced birth was abolished in the April Secular Sane Third Sexual Revolution that will begin in Minnesota during a freak snowstorm, that “man” finally became recognized as a dangerous animal. We couldn’t even legally define “man”, either, but we were genuinely threatened by them, felt threatened by them. We knew bears were safer though. Probably.

There were resources available for survivors of bear attacks. You were not ashamed of admitting a bear attack. You did not have to face the bear again in a courthouse. Bears did not stalk, cyberbully, shame, or engage in libel, slander, or psychological cruelty to victims. Bears are intimidating and did not use intimidation against victims. People believed people who survived bear attacks. There were no invasive undignified invasive necessary hospital exams and evidence collection after bear attacks. If you were lucky the bear would just kill you and not make you wish you were dead as you recovered, slowly and gradually, and no one ever asked what you were wearing or if you had had an alcoholic beverage before a bear attacked you. You could avoid bears entirely after an attack and the odds of being attacked by a bear twice were also infinitesimally low. Not probably.

In 2024, the U.N. said every eleven minutes a woman is killed by someone in her own family. Honor killings, sororicide, matricide. 50% of women under 25 have been choked without consent by intimate partners. There is no safe way to choke someone. Not probably. Little girls were choked during their first kisses at age 12. Documentation of such assaults is not probably.

Men thought women liked it because at the time violent video bio-mating clips were available online that showed it as normal. It isn’t. Men became addicted to them and learned from pornography how to be a lady-killer. It caused widespread mental illnesses in all genders /sexes and exacerbated inherent trust issues in femme-leaning ones that were adaptive survival mechanisms. Not probably.

Women were more likely to be the victim of assault or violence from a person they knew than from a stranger. 50% of our species, male humans, are potentially a danger to women. Domestic violence hit an all-time peak during the first global coronavirus epidemic as men turned on their wives, girlfriends, and life partners trapped with them and without access to safety. Not probably. With later pandemics, the Galli Act passage prevented violence as it was phased in on state-wide levels.

It wasn’t until the “Riotgirl 2.3 plus++doubleplusgood movement” and the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” events and, of course, it cannot be forgotten the problematic “turnabout is fair play” laws made it into national policy, that it became dangerous for the ill-defined social category known or called “men”, especially of the long previously formerly institutionally empowered and privileged categories, to be out on the streets.

From a data file archive of an anonymous “woman”, “cisgender” identifying, confirmed registration and classed XX chromosome and queer non-gender conforming registration citizen (found centuries from the present day)-

“I remember life well before the “Galli Act” with its well-played campaign of “The only good man is a neutered one” or the “LowT4XY Safety”, and the “Bitches control the dogs!” social media campaigns succeeded in changing public policy even further. Once the coin I knew as a child had flipped 180° and changes in public policy combined with social change, it was unsafe for any man to be outside his home at any time of the day.

After those laws were passed it went from harassment to open attacks, and abuse, and eventually, roving groups of young women would attack unsuspecting “men”. It was said that once it was unsafe and dangerous for a woman to go out alone at night and walk down the street by herself unarmed, now it was said the streets were unsafe for men. I’d not let my son out without my supervision.

The home was where a man belonged. That made women safer and their lives better than ever before in human history. Never again would another Kingbury (we chant the names of women murdered in domestic violence throughout history if we knew their names, this is the litany of the lost, the burden and fear of all survivors, for we are women and this is our history) case occur, at least. It helped me sleep at night.

As the solution started when my son was 21, my beloved wife was 39 and the donor was 40 at the time, it was strange when my son asked me when everything changed. He’d read stories he couldn’t imagine in Herstory texts. He barely remembered life before the changes began (they lost the right to vote, bodily autonomy, and the privilege to open their own bank accounts or own property eventually) but now that he was older and not in the workforce he was wondering about those who had not ever seen a time when the world was different. It was safer than being what I was and unsafe for my son to be what he was. He was born that way and that was enough to keep me awake at night worried.

I am old enough to recall when it was different and it is my sincerest hope that one day the pendulum will be in the middle again, and all of the genders will be safe and actually truly legally and socially equal. It was all the [[Women’s rights|feminists]] (and the bears) ever wanted to begin with.”