unpunctual disasterology, tetchy apocalypsewrights, and nervous cataclysmturges...

Kalary Arapis Kelkezurn

Kozock Industries

Lavaur 123 Hyphnetheron Block 12, Module 120

c/o Routing Construct "Geskekelud 251/5/a"

Horacinzu Telmengthe Rehemta
9A/@1029b, Block 12, Apartment 3
Leortel Arcology, Orboarth
c/o Routing Construct "Helioblurred 109"


Hey Horace,

Around 2,500 years ago when you worked for Malabana Incorporated, Kozock subcontracted a solution -- a messy, complicated, tortuous, vexing, and thorny solution to the Mnehatam trilemma, which ultimately couldn't be implemented in a timely enough fashion and ended up being a washout because of the Aracaunpe disaster -- we were manning the bucket brigade between Sestoul and Bavakhril for two weeks running on very little sleep and while we didn't manage to solve Mnehatam in the aftermath -- I'm sure you'd agree our dance cards were quite occupied with the clean up and disaster remediation of Aracaunpe -- we ended up finding different long term coping mechanisms -- Blivner Kaughlu's reverse multiplexing gate away and the psychological persuasions offered to the Beadles of the Turgid Acceptability and (perhaps) the H2R project -- all of these have borne fruit, so Kozock and the Urmargu Consortium didn't need to actually collate their notes on Mnehatam and they've sort of gone missing -- but more to the point our chief of research -- Urnestina Palackind -- believes that something rather like Mnehetam has arisen again in Urselquibe. Urnestina's not completely sure, but all the hallmarks are there -- the reduced improprieties in anomalous cheese imports, the ultra-high frequency neutrino warble that's had us scratching our heads so long ago, the spontaneous annealing of several disconsolated predatory-prey dynamical systems, and a few other things beyond the scope of this letter.

Urnestina's tried the RMGA, and we've deployed H2R gantries around the affected regions and populations -- but there is not Beadles of the Turgid Acceptability analogue here. Urnestina would like you to come to Lavaur -- don't worry about the expense, we'll book you on one of those new fancy subhybrid jetties -- to tweak the solution that you came up with previously. She thinks we can implement it accurately this time: we have subpicosecond flux valves, quark compositors, and the issurgolvoi which were only in prototype the first time are in the twenty fourth spime generation and are capable of froth isolation within one part in 10^20.

What we're worried about, and Urnestine is really fretting about at present -- is that there are places where this current trilemma isn't analogous to Mnehatam, and we're fearful that applying a direct copy of your previous solution protocols won't work -- indeed, this time there's around a seventy percent chance that the load struts won't hold if the barbeque occurs earlier than we're expecting and the char grilled nitrogen tastes like coffee, which doesn't match the flavorant manifest we compiled for Mnehatam.

Wish you all the best. Hope to hear from you soon.

Kal

the circle

The tribal elders gathered around the plasma fire and debated issues of
great importance. Arrhuque Goremberasal crouched, clad only in scraps
and scrags, the only technological accoutrement beweirding Arrhuque's
pfistic face was a data glaive hovering over her left eye and giving her
a direct mainline into one of the globular cluster Silyarmang's
hyperintellgences. The other elders were Canhut, Seoreon, Bevmalqua,
Allincu and Devurthug Brayassabil, but none of them were quite old
enough and hadn't passed the same tests and trials that Arhuque had
passed. They were younger and generally more pretentious, clad in rich
ermine gaberdines and pale fluorescent cyan galligaskins. The women wore
metallic blue beards spun whipped into decorative airy froths, while the
men's third horn was customarily scrimshawed into a figurine of a
moth-dragon. Canhut offered that they could wait another season before
rotating in the Western fields, as they had been fallow for two seasons
and the food stores were well stocked.

Arrhuque nixed this -- she knew that the Plyntherian vassalary over the
Michtmuntav mountains would likely be agitating for war soon, both
because her informants had mentioned it and because her data mainline
had directed her to energy decompositions of the Plyntherian's energy
arbitration -- the Prince Cenulo and his demented advisor Cynthelego had
been making really poor decisions about resource allocation and at the
rate things were going they would spin some religious based excuse for
attacking and raiding the tribe's food stores. So, they'd grow
cilinberries and hohugo grain in the food fields and various exotic
matter hyperbafflers in the manufactury fields, for when the Plyntherian
vassalary agitated for war.


Seoreon idly scratched his third horn -- the third horn is vaguely
innervated amongst the tribal men, and grows more slowly than the
primary and secondary horns, but is more sensitive and without the
scrimshaw is a source of perpetual bother. Seoreon, rather
uncustomarily, has his third horn scrimshawed into a figurine of the
sane god Galthagyllia, pen in the left hand, conch shell in the right.
He's taken to plasma depositing a fine layer of bismuth onto it, more
for show than anything else, but this has given him the reputation of
being somewhat vain -- which is fortunately offset by his reputation as
being the deepest thinker -- at least without the data feed that
Arrhuque uses. "What about the Oscrillyve?" he asked "It's been about
three seasons since they sent a representative to us -- the robotic
wildebeest with that really pathetic paint job, Ithyn, its name was, I
think"

Allincu tousled her beard -- think not a matted or curly collection of
green fibers but a froth of intersecting metallic green filaments
evanescing -- "It's concievable that Ithyn malfunctioned -- it wasn't in
very good condition when it came to make the trade negotiations for
flower nectar. I wouldn't be surprised if..."

Arrhuque interjected "Ithyn is currently upside down in a tarpit eighty
spans from here. Fortunately, while dormant, the memories of the
negotiation are intact. I have made a request to have Ithyn teleported
to the Oscrillyve city Menelopolis with an explanatory text confirming
that we still wish to engage in trade and to apologize for our late
response"

Arrhuque continued on another issue "The Sahangarel Consortium would
like to remove a segment of the Stirchisto mountain range on the Eastern
continent because they believe, at least according to their simulations,
it will, when appropriately inserted into a geological configuration
some eighteen gigaparsecs from here, stabilize a region rather prone to
earthquakes and volcanic activity for which population migration is not
an option at the moment. The part of the Stirchisto they want is around
two hundred cubic tharns in size, and mostly consists of tectonic
material with a high basalt/feldspar ratio. They are offering a
planetary scale 3cr data pipe and three hundred cubic tharns of memory
diamond in exchange for it. Opinions?"

Allincu spoke: "Tetheresty and Blanquile would not have a problem with
it. The Oscrillyve have been agitating for a faster planetary data
connection for a while. Though we'd have problems with the vassalaries
-- rapid technological change and multiple order of magnitude leaps of
data bandwidth usually provoke cultural immune responses. Could we do a
soak?"

Seoreon: "I've read through the Plensive Commentaries on doing soaks --
we may have to physically have some umbrella dancers here to work
through the process of the soak. I would be okay with the Sahangarel's
offer if they could provide umbrella dancers"

Arrhuque looked up, "yes. they would be okay with that. They could get
umbrella dancers here at a timescale -- details to be sorted out later
-- which would work with their material removal timetable"

peacefare for or? warfare? faring better.

Thu Chorybdalan looked at the score (actually eight, because Trangulfphe scores were octads) troops in their beleaguered (but well, um, anandamized) squad. Two Lossorgues -- Keptil Crun-Thaurgo and Broptil Rusn-Cotorgue, a Blasmathere (trying to pronounce 'squiggle squiggle left-squiggle upside down trapezoid' in ultra-low frequency sighs means I'm not going to attempt its name in this orthography), three anthropocenoids from Yaalthruin -- Kerkellemp Gansungtro, Gorvanaus Vor-Ithildrya, and Memhinhia Glassath, an Arasulcpt, (let's try) Phibeo Ogonaho Rorimhimyie Delponepga, and a traditional (one might say 'prosaic') Earthenoid, Laura-Robert Van Stanhock.

Thu opened the box and took out the device. "This is a Mhutugue-122r wide-area stress dispersor." The device had a very complicated triggering system. The aperture consisted of a metal backed reflector and three Borromean rings suspended (supported by invisible iridium microfilaments). Gorvanaus complained that the rings were hard to look at. Thu replied "that's because they're constructed from some Highly Weird material, and it does say in the /Warnings and Precautions/ section of the manual to not look at it.

Thu continued: "As you know, our amelioration attempts on the Belphyragm conflict have thus far been unsuccessful. The stimulants and other chemical accelerants the Phygmao and the Bwuljesgor have been using are too strong for the tiny amounts of chesmamine and selanamide that we've introduced into their water and food supplies to have any effect above background noise. We can't even say that we've produced a 1 sigma change in the conflict emotional spectrography.

We know enough about the Phygmao and Bwuljesgor anatomomes to know that the 122r will be effective, but the deployment procedure for this device is rather, thorny. Phibeo?"

Phibeo, the Arasulcpt -- tall, thin, metallic, maybe 'extruded' or 'scuppered' might be the right word for describing Phibeo's appearence -- rose from its seat and wandered over to the projector. Phibeo's voice, such as it were, sounded like flocks of iridescent butterflies competing in the iridescent butterfly equivalent of the caber toss. Phibeo wore a language spoon so that everyone else could understand. Phibeo said: "These devices can be networked, and the target regions can be stitched together. We know that the Phygmao and the Bwuljesgor are planning a battle -- not a skirmish -- at the Valley of the Enhusked Vorbilator in twelve days time. Neither side seems willing to listen to the entreaties that the Scolpgmaro delegation has made -- since the Valley of the Enhusked Vorbilator is considered sacred space to the Scolpgmaro on account of the Pfanasthy Deicide which occurred their some twelve hundred years ago.

It is vitally important that the controller system know who has been hit by this thing -- not so much in terms of rendering the enemy stressless, but the more times one is hit with this, the more one's individuality is lapped away. We don't want to be making Honoy out there. So what we're planning on doing is when Bhygereus Cansilptus, the Phygmao general, waves the Wheatstraw -- the traditional Phygmao gesture to begin attack -- we're going to be stationed in subterranean grottoes all around the Valley, and we're going to saturate the valley with four of these devices at once -- with overlap inhibition. "

post ortem

Havurineuss glinced at the wimbrel log "oh, this won't do at all! functoriality broke down at 2:301 oof and the automated repair system didn't kick in until 2:330 oof. That's 29 blonnebs the major environmental region we're entrusted to maintain didn't have a verified and registered functoriality in the enviornment. Mr. Achientheub, what's the damage"

Araglav Achientheub looked haggard and miserable as he read the figures from the data slate: "twenty seven thousand mental state skips were directly attributable to the breakdown. A further two million events are ascribable to the breakdown before the pre-repair quench system started releasing sensory filtration nanomachines into the microenvironment. We've been mibbing things, but we're not going to convince the youth and the sharp minded."

Havurineuss spoke: "How much is it costing us to maintain the voltage between the visual and the symbolic?"

Zyturghnu Thoosus replied, "Keeping the embankments and ballast at full operating capacity, it runs us about a terajoule/(neuron-second) to keep that voltage steady, but the functoriality breakdown ran us through about %80 percent of the stack reserve. If there's another breakdown, I fear the voltage is going to short."

Havurineuss said: "Are there other backup systems in the Concordance we can use to avoid catastrophic system failure? Araglav -- what about the fromage generators?"

Achientheub grimaced: "Regrettably all of their metacontrollers were slagged two hundred thousand blonnebs ago when the Artaumestry administration's deranged energy czar needed somewhere to shunt the energy excess, and didn't read the metacontroller energy specs. They're all defunct"

a collective drat coruscated around the table

fall over exhausted.

Shulunque of the Dossavoi perorated, perforated. do not spindle, fold, or mutilate. Shulunque was very tired. Things had (with a few hiccups), been preoccupyingly hunky-dory of late. Shulunque looked at a wedge of cheese. Wedges of cheese are bad impostors. When was the last time you saw a wedge of cheese with a fake moustache, alligator clips for ears, a bombelier, a swinnet, and a tureen, pretending to be an aficionado of World Worf II era klingon love odes? Probably not in the last seventy thousand years. You would perhaps be Shulunque of the Dossavai? Or would you be yet another cheese wedge, also masquerading as the Empress of the Shepherd Moons? You would, I suspect, not be Shulunque of the Dossavai, and neither would you be a sneaky cheese wedge. Shulunque would not comment, tho, at least not in a way you might grok with ease. There would be a series of leaves attached to a piece of paper, letters in a green language not known to anyone not in the proximity of the Dossavai. They would perhaps spell out something in the green language. Were you asleep?

recap, glossary, stepping stone for new readers

The Pund are a species of postbiologicals who have retained human shaped bodies -- except instead of being composed from muscle and bone and other genetically determined matter they prefer some type of quantum foam (exotic almost-matter)bodies. They live for many millions and billions of years and will occasionally watch trees from seedling to felling (either by old age, lightning strike, or fungal/termite analogue attack). They are known for taking catnaps in the center of pulsars for 40,000 years and then showers in superfluid helium.

The Vlurfked were a clade of highly touch-hostile creatures, until an intervention was staged because of the involuntary/autonomic immune manufacture of Gethonklin maquettes (simulacra) by the Sagahanta, who were sliding into complacency. The Vlurfked became the Vlyssanghai after the touch-hostile phase

The Sagahanta were a clade of creatures, mostly vaguely anthropocene, whose belief system had achieved complaceny through perfection.

The Gethonklin are organisms symbiotic to primate mass mind gestalts. They look like this:
If one imagines a primate belief gestalt being like a sea anemone, then they are like clown fish to it (clown fish)
Their heads are comprised of many horns, with many eyes and mechanical speaker grilles and sensory apparatus. In the light their horns have the texture of gnarled treebark with a vague purple iridescence, but in the dark they take on the color and texture of hard illuminated christmas lights).

The Sahallangke are the clade that resulted from the union of the Vlyssanghai and the Sagahanta.


The throntear is a unit of transcendental distance, or how far imaginary something is.

The nahambe is a unit of transcendental time. Not how long betweeen events on a clock, but how long between events that have the same feeling. (such events have an affinity for each other, and occasionally sparks and glimmers of one will reach the other). One useful way of thinking about this is that it is like all of the Poincare recurrence times for everything all wrapped up in one, yet neither any one of them in particular.

Eurhimde is the third classical Phantom Tollbooth Muse: neither rhymeless rhythm or arrhythmic rhyme. Even though the world that Feffer paints is lacking in both Rhythm and Rhyme, it still has an odd kind of beauty to it. Associated with a hue of violet not found in current color bestiaries, and a region of the sensory gamut that is at present (sidereally) having its flow quenched by the (probably autonomic) immune response of the ramshackle.

A clugm consists of all entities whose particulars (nouns, map location, language) are different but for whom the feeling is identical. One particularly poorly thought out question about members of a clugm is "are they the same or are they different?". Think of the letters on the cover of Douglas Hofstadter's GEB. You have one object that is simultaneously a G, an E, and a B, but is really something much more complicated.

Urukpu refers to the actually existent, regardless of whether it exists at a 0 throntear distance or a e^67/catnip terathrontear distance from one.


urukpu apulanai: this is urukpu that can be constructed, drawn out of the imaginary by the distillation of creative energies.

urukpu thyrrine: this is urukpu that cannot be brought locally: people, nations, actual worlds

urukpu cypongbaia: this is urukpu that calls to each other. the distant and ethereal references that transcend the indranet, of interimaginaries with a fondness for each other, as if some effervescent limit set of the cosmic mobius inversion refers one thing to another. (see clugm)

urukpu altahyra: this is urukpu that is unseeable, perfectly consistent other cosmai, all mapped to sunyata locally

urukpu ayarghu: this is urukpu which is more proximal (say by the thronteareal measure of interimaginaries)

urukpu storgossil: this is urukpu which is distal (farther away)

borteldacking: the overenthusastic, imagination-disrupting process of overeager and excessive application of forgetful functors. (c.f. "but it's just an X")