[Anselm's Scrapbook] Non-Sequiter

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) As they started toward the airlock, I realized that Riki Lindstrom was staring intently at me. The edge of her cardigan was pulled back just enough for me to see that she had a gun in a holster under her arm pit. We locked eyes and without moving her head she shifted her gaze slightly in the direction of the African nearest us. I shifted my eyes with her and realized that he was watching Lemark instead of us. We locked eyes again and she mouthed the word “Now.” I knew what she wanted me to do. I felt like throwing up instead. You see, up to this point in my life I had been in only two physical altercations. The first was in fifth grade when I got into a tussle over a girl I had a crush on. The second was toward the end of my senior year in high school. Again, it was over a girl. I lost both fights. Actually, it’s probably not fair to call them fights. They were more like shoving matches in which the other guy shoved me to the ground and sat on me. The point is that I have no idea how to handle myself in a fight. And I was not the least bit interested in taking on a big man holding a gun that he undoubtedly knew how to use. I launched myself at the man with the gun. Time slowed down. As I drifted toward him his head slowly turned in my direction and I found myself staring into the darkest, most evil-looking eyes I had ever seen. There was no compassion there. No emotion at all. Just deadly resolve. The gun came slowly around until it was pointing directly at me and I realized that I was not going to reach him before it fired. It looked a lot bigger now than it had before; a great gaping metal hole from which came a flash of light followed by an ear-splitting crack. My body collided with his at knee level, which sent him up and over me and shoved me to the floor. I bounced and kept going until my head ran into a pole. My arm caught the pole and swung me around it. Something heavy came flying at my face. I desperately swiped at it and found myself holding a gun. Apparently the African’s gun. The African was sprawled against the ceiling trying to find something to hold on to. My entire attention was now focused on that gun. I brought myself to a stop against the pole and got my hand around the butt of the gun and my finger on the trigger. I aimed it at the African on the ceiling and pulled the trigger. I later learned that it was a fully automatic pistol set for burst fire. I don’t know how many shots it fired before it flew out of my hand, but none of them hit the big African floating less than three meters away from me. Apparently the recoil caused my hand to pull up with each shot, which resulted in a series of high-pitched screeching sounds as bullets ricocheted off the ceiling. Something hit me hard in the right shoulder and I lost my grip on the pole. The room started spinning crazily. I saw a wall coming at me and put out my hand, but my arm had decided to stop taking orders from my brain. I looked down and saw that my shoulder had been ripped apart and my arm was flopping around like a beached fish. There was a lot of blood. Then the wall hit me and everything went black.

[Anselm]

How I Met Holly Burton (continued) I woke with a start. I was laying in a bed. Or rather, floating in a bed. A single sheet covered me and some sort of webbing was keeping me from floating off the bed. I looked around the room. Besides the bed, there was a small desk, a chair, a two-drawer dresser and a closet. I could tell it was a closet because the door was part way open and there were clothes hanging in it. The door to my room spiraled open and Theo floated in, followed by Holly Burton. They both had big smiles. “Adrian!” he said. “Welcome back to the land of the living. How are you feeling?” “I guess I’m feeling pretty good,” I replied. Then I remembered my shoulder. I held my hand up to my face and looked at my arm. It appeared to be in good working order. “I thought I’d been shot in the arm.” I said. I moved my arm around a bit but could detect no sign of injury. “You were, my dear boy. You were indeed.” He said. “In fact, your shoulder was an awful mess. But Dr. Burton, MD put you back together again.” He winked at Holly Burton in a conspiratorial way. “That’s right,” said Robert as he floated into the room, which was starting to get crowded. “Bet you didn’t know my little sister was a medical doctor as well as the world’s foremost expert on the subject of alien first contact.” All three of them broke out laughing, although it wasn’t clear to me exactly what they were laughing at. Robert continued. “Of course, she’s not licensed to practice in China and since this station is technically Chinese territory, you can probably sue her for practicing medicine without a license.” “He can take that up with my lawyer,” said Dr. Burton dryly. “Right now I have to go meet with the Secretary General of the United Nations to discuss the future of the human race.” She floated effortlessly over to me, took my hand, looked me in the eye and said, “Mr. Verhoeven, you acquitted yourself quite well in that little adventure. It’s possible you saved my life. At the very least, you saved me a great deal of trouble. I am in your debt.” Then Holly Burton … yes, that Holly Burton, the woman who was about to become the most famous person in the world ... that Holly Burton smiled and kissed me lightly on the cheek. The right cheek. I had the spot tattooed. The second time I met Holly Burton, she offered me a job. It involves living on Mars and a lot of travel between planets, which I'm pretty sure I'm not going to like. But, hey, at least I'll get to help save the world. THE END

[Anselm]

Non-sequiter #4: In Praise of Small Domains. <BEGIN GRAMMAR-CHALLENGED RAMBLING> Today I was reading through Seven Xu's scrapbook and learned that Macabre is his alter ego. DS of Kalinor apparently. Anyway, he mentioned that it has a small player base but that he likes that because it lets him follow the players in his domain closely and really get to know them. That got me to thinking about Anselm in Zeltiva. Zeltiva has such a large player base that it's hard to keep up. Unless you are Minerva, who appears to have no other life than Mizahar. Either that or she reads and writes really really fast. Anyway, it got me to thinking about moving Anselm to a smaller domain. Someplace where I can really get to know the players without my wife complaining about being a Mizahar-widow. Actually I think she's secretly pleased that I'm not buried in Guild Wars 2 so she can at least interrupt me without getting my character killed, which always makes me grumpy. I was thinking Sahova since it has a DS now. But it looks like everybody and his grandmother (dead or alive) is headed there so I'm not sure about that now. Instead, I'm going on Liminal's quest and might just keep going south from there. <END GRAMMAR-CHALLENGED RAMBLING>

[Gossamer]

. Response First off... let me say I enjoy your scrap. You don't scrap enough, but what you do post I like. Secondly Mizahar-Widow. I like that. We need to start a Miza vocab and credit that one to you. It goes along with Ron's Ragecation and my Mizavestite. But in all seriousness... smaller domains are great. I think Mura and Lhavit right now are great untouched resources as well. .

[Anselm]

Hmm ... a black-robed Nuit on the White Isle. Now that's an interesting thought. I had been considering firing up a new character in Lhavit, but I suppose I could send Anselm there instead. Have to decide if he wants to hang around with the mages. Anselm has, I think, provided a useful service to Zeltiva. His always-open fortune-teller tent attracts new arrivals to Mizahar. So he is sometimes a new player's first role-playing experience in Mizahar. It's safe and low-key and, hey, there's nothing like a dead guy to bring people out of their shell. Of course that leaves me with a lot of dead threads since a lot of first-timers drop out after they figure out what Mizahar's about. It's definitely not the Starship Enterprise. Anyway, wherever he ends up I'm guessing he will set up a similar operation. I like Anselm. Probably because there's a lot of me in him. An internal kind of (dead) guy. He's nothing like Daske Baggywrinkle and Jeremiah Maccabee, both of whom are very physical and likely to act first and think later, or possible skip the thinking part altogether. I just started "Mac" and am considering letting Daske die in some dramatic way since they are so similar. Might fire up a different sort of character, like a Symenestra or a Zith. Something sinister and dark that frightens small children and large adults alike. Now that would be an interesting RP challenge. So many characters, so little time.