A new currency.

[minuspace]

EoC, I'm very proud of you.  Just remember the consequences of buying new shoes 

[minuspace]

Sid would insist that the pool drain part is very important, to be performed at all costs, permits or relics notwithstanding.  The high pitched ringing in his ears suddenly became perspicuous again as it rapidly precipitated in frequency. Like an infernal turbine winding-down through the harmonic spectrum of being, boring beyond the Mohorovicic Discontinuity of his soul, past repair it touched the limit that had finally outstripped and stretched too far his capacity to return in one piece.  Pop.

Turns out those memory leaks are built into the architecture to serve as drain taps for some kind of well, or whathaveyou.  Some of the finer shit gets sloughed off the top of the stack.  This churning is instantiated by a push followed by release.  Calling for a pool pushes that stack to the top, and release causes that pool to pop from the stack.  This assumes operations are performed in a garbage collected environment, therefore, those leaks are only collected if the task is specifically called after storage thresholds have been exceeded. 

Meanwhile, proper coding for that objective was becoming difficult to obtain, legally or otherwise.  The overflow had to go somewhere, and we were running out of space.  Most obstacles had been surmounted: anchors seamlessly in place, plenty of rope in the spool, and a decent amount of headroom.  Things were looking good. Then he remembered autorelease.  The thread had not been wrapped.

[sp. Perspicuous]

[Eater of Clowns]

I could not face the room. Passing thoughts and funny little fantasies have ways of working themselves around in my head until they become reality and the room was where I'd find Lara, safe, and the Debt Collector thrown far away on its search. She'd be there as bright as Zipaquira, as lovely as Cali, as cultured as Bogota, and it'd be like that day on the patio of the brewery when time kept itself in little uneven pockets.

The shoes pinched at the toe, just a little, but that was alright because as likely as finding Lara I could click my heels together and find myself back in Massachusetts. Necronomicoin would be a thing of Oz, left behind for the life I'd learned to treasure again, though I knew I wouldn't. People aren't made to see the familiar as wondrous, nor should they. Then how could the wondrous be so?

I came back to the central plaza. The day was coming into its own and the plaza with it. In the little park a father tossed a soccer ball to two boys while a pair of women talked on a nearby bench. A couple strolled aimlessly around the outside rim, looking into the shops and stopping in front of one every so often. I no longer fit among them.

Our hotel was on a little street not far from the plaza. It was a classic looking place, with solid dark woodwork framing the doorways and shutters that opened inward to the rooms. Inside a balcony connected the four rooms and common area, overlooking a small garden. The owners lived in a suite tucked away by the kitchen. I could hear them rustling about, working in the laundry room and shuffling papers around in the office. A hallway carpet splashed a strip of burgundy, the path to the room a glamorous arrival for Lara and I not so very long ago, two beautiful young people at their most natural.

The room was off to the right, here, steps away. I reached into my pocket and had a horrified moment of missing the weight and feel of the Necronomicoin, patting at my jeans until I remembered I was looking for the key. It was where I'd left it. I stood before the door, key raised, elbow at a right angle, my off hand flexing open and closed, open and closed absently.

This is the singular anxiety of a parent, distracted a moment in a shopping mall and turning back around and the child no longer there, a hope mixed with panic. They're just barely out of reach, haven't gone far, haven't gone far. This is time coming unfolded around me, back to its normal state, and my father and step-mother and our Colombian family just noticing, just now, that I haven't been gone for a few hours back at the Bogota Beer Company but for days, missing, a non-native speaker in an unfamiliar world, still to them a child. Always to them their child. I knew their terror then, with the key in my hand and the door so many possible worlds, all of them real until the lock clicked and the door crept open slowly on its hinge and the hallway light cast a beam that started thin and then widened across a room darkened by shutters blocking out the day.

I wasn't breathing. Lara was dead, Lara was captured, Lara wasn't just the indebted she was the payment, a life to be pulled apart by force and then becoming another Necronomicoin, so unlike my own made willingly, so much lovelier in origin and wretched in creation and valuable in tender. The door opened slowly. I stared a fixed spot on the floor, where the hall's light first touched the rug in the room, my arm still pushing the door but the door ajar as much as it could go.

I looked up, finally, and saw nothing. A pair of small beds and a shared nightstand with a darkened lamp, a tall bureau and an old tube televsion atop it, a mirror and an armoire and a desk and a chair and not Lara. Lara was gone.

[Pæs]

I am so glad this is still happening.

[Eater of Clowns]

I am so glad this is still happening.

With any luck it has a ways to go still. This last one took a distressing amount of time to do properly, but I think I like the result. I have a new schedule at work, the first time in five years that I have evenings free. There isn't a ton of time there, but with it I want to make writing a priority, and in writing make Necronomicoin a priority. 

[LMNO]

Lara wasn't just the indebted she was the payment, a life to be pulled apart by force and then becoming another Necronomicoin, so unlike my own made willingly, so much lovelier in origin and wretched in creation and valuable in tender.

Fantastic line.

[Eater of Clowns]

Lara wasn't just the indebted she was the payment, a life to be pulled apart by force and then becoming another Necronomicoin, so unlike my own made willingly, so much lovelier in origin and wretched in creation and valuable in tender.

Fantastic line.

Thanks. I get worried about overuse of purple prose, but I really do like to write it.

[minuspace]

Lara wasn't just the indebted she was the payment, a life to be pulled apart by force and then becoming another Necronomicoin, so unlike my own made willingly, so much lovelier in origin and wretched in creation and valuable in tender.

Fantastic line.

I made my legion mangle it in the audio realm and they me this
http://panchronos.com/mp3/NecronomiTango.mp3

[Eater of Clowns]

If she'd come back to the room, the caretakers must have been in here just afterward to tidy up. It was much as we'd left it. The few items she'd brought with her remained in their places. Her blue hat lay across an unused pillow. I walked over to the far bed and sat on it, picking up the hat with its soft brim, fidgeting my hands around it. I placed it carefully back down.

I could leave. I could simply leave, pay the bill, and find the simplest ride back to Bogota. My family would be worried. The Necronomicoin was in the bank. Would it collect interest there? What kind of interest does something like that collect? Probably similar to the kinds of debt collectors that enforced it. I looked at the hat again. And the kinds of thieves it attracted.

Befriend the Thief. Beware the Debt Collector. I couldn't leave a friend to that thing I saw in the cave, and I would hardly be bewaring anything if I set about forgetting it. I had to find her; it was prophesized on a bathroom stall. I sighed and picked up the hat again and crumpled it. I laid down on the bed and rested the hat on my chest. I knew what I had to do the moment I opened the room door, and before that, when my bloodied and tired and shoeless self saw no trace of my companion in the tunnels below the earth. I had to find her because that was the only option. Nothing else would do. I closed my eyes.

When they opened again I was rolled onto my side and the hat was lying on the floor next to the bed. The shutters were still closed so I couln't tell what time it was. I shouldn't have slept I should be looking for Lara. I had to sleep; I wasn't thinking straight. I picked the hat back up again and put it on the pillow, now used. I stripped and made my way to the bathroom.

I haven't had a decent shower since I came to this country. Hot water was a major problem in Colombia. It didn't matter, here. My injured leg was propped up awkwardly to avoid ruining the bandaging that I had no replacement for and I needed to go. I slept to think properly, I showered so a cab driver might allow me to get into his car.

I barely knew Lara. A few days in stretched Necronomicoin time at most. The first thing she did when I confronted her back at the brewery was plan our trip to the Catedral de Sal. Ridding me of the burden of that currency couldn't have been a priority of hers unless it served a plan. Why would she go through the trouble to help a relative stranger? Lara had a plan and it was unfathomable to me. The shower was freezing one moment and then merely icey the next. It was impressive that so many places couldn't keep a beer cold in the country when the showers were such easy refrigerants. Still the water ran pink down the drain.

When it dawned on me the one standing foot nearly slipped on the wet ceramic tiles. Just before the nightmare in the Cathedral we'd stood at the base of the mountain, about to trespass into the park. I said something about the Museo de Oro. I felt like Archimedes, I wanted to run in the streets and scream Eureka!

I said I'd wanted to see the Museum of Gold, but we weren't breaking into that. Lara said, "That's next." She wasn't in the Catedral, she wasn't in the room. She had a plan and whatever it was the next part of it was in the Museum of Gold, back in Bogota. I shut off the frigid water, shivered, and dried myself as quickly as I could. Some part of me, the pre-Necronomicion J., perhaps a part that was even encapsulated in one of the damn things, lamented my lack of fresh clothes as I dressed.

[Eater of Clowns]

Lara wasn't just the indebted she was the payment, a life to be pulled apart by force and then becoming another Necronomicoin, so unlike my own made willingly, so much lovelier in origin and wretched in creation and valuable in tender.

Fantastic line.

I made my legion mangle it in the audio realm and they me this
http://panchronos.com/mp3/NecronomiTango.mp3

[minuspace]

Ty.  I'm glad you enjoy these - Just let me know if anything mucks up the thread - it's an honor to be tagging on this wall

Crossing streams here
http://panchronos.com/mp3/INFINITEK%20AP.mp3

It's a pressure thing:
http://www.panchronos.com/mp3/PONTYPOOL%203.mp3

[minuspace]

Okay, last one
http://www.panchronos.com/mp3/98%20GEGER%20Z00.mp3

[Eater of Clowns]

Laundered clothes would not be necessary for what I had planned. If anything, they would be a detriment, a liability. It was still midday, even after sleeping and cleaning off. The museum would close at five or six o'clock, most likely, and Bogota was still a two hour drive from here. I couldn't trust a cab to get me there in time.
Lara and I came here from the brewery; there weren't many things for me to gather. The wastebasket was empty and I tossed everything I could find in the clean bag, pulled it out and tied it up. I left the room and practically slammed the door shut, locking it behind me.

The manager was in his office, shuffling around papers on his desk. I knocked. "Pardon?"

"Si, senor?"

"Uhm. Checkout? Leave? Bill? Pay?" I cursed my lack of Spanish again and tried to make my way through the transaction.

By some luck he was able to understand me and nodded. He reached across the desk and brought a grey plastic calculator with enormous buttons before him. He tapped them with some small satisfaction for a moment, then looked back up at me.

"Cuarenta siete mille pesos, senor."

I stared at him dumbly. He nodded and turned the calculator to face me. Its screen read 47.000,00. I gave him my credit card. While he was running it, I tried another question.

"Por favor, uh, moto? Motorcycle? Rental?"

His answer was rapid. I watched his finger point what would be left out of the hotel, then a left from there, a right, and then his hand come up and pushing his fingertips and palm out with an extended arm. That would have to do. I signed the bill for the room and passed over the key.

"Gracias," I said, and made my way back out into Zipaquira proper.

It took one look at the sun before I wished the Necronomicoin back in in hands, warding off time, folding and stretching distances, that psychic disc turning reality into a plaything. No, I was a plaything of reality. I took a left out of the hotel entrance and followed the narrow street until I came to an intersection that looked suitably important, then took a left down that.

[Eater of Clowns]

I wasn't much of a motorcyclist. Just prior to this trip I was going to sell mine back home, barely stepping on the thing and, when I did, having an anxiety filled ride with death around every corner. And I thought back to my first days in Colombia, back in Cali, with my host happily whipping his Honda Pilot around mountain roads, heedless of the motorcyclists, ever present, ever daring. Ever crashing, actually, how many of them had we seen tossed to the side of the roads just since we've been here?

The day was waning. Doors to storefronts were shut for the lengthy lunchtime. People were in their homes with their families, eating hugely in the afternoon, resting a while before the remainder of their days. Eating, I couldn't even remember the last time I'd done that. I was hungry.

I came to another intersection with a wide street and turned right down there. There were shops and signs lining it rather than the homes of the other little drives. That would have to be good enough to find a motorcycle renter. The hotel manager motioned some distance away, back in his office, so I quickened my pace, nearly running, long uneven strides with the fresh memory of one unshod foot and the very present feeling of stretching, healing, bandaged flesh. Zipaquira's array of colors turned dizzying.

Just off to one of the side streets a woman patted out handmade arepas and threw them on a well heated grill made from a bisected oil drum. My mouth watered, forgetting my mind's aversion to the food staple. I quickly ordered three of them and ate them still steaming and burning down the rest of the street. A motorcycle ride wouldn't get me to Bogota much faster if I passed out from hunger on the way. I was practically choking on the last dry bit of the corn cake when I saw the row of bikes ahead of me.

I hadn't ridden things like these since my license. Tiny 250cc machines, efficient as can be. My attention was split between looking the bikes over and trying to find a clerk to rent one from.

"Hello, my friend," I heard. I looked around, seeing nobody. "I'll be right down," the man's voice said. I looked up. He was leaning out the window of the second floor. He ducked back into the house and I could hear the footsteps leading off to the rear of the building. A door slammed and the thudding of boots hit the stairs. He appeared in front of me a moment later, jeans and black boots, a bright pink shirt and a smile. "What can I do for you," he asked, his English heavily accented.

"I'd like to get to Bogota on one of these," I said, and swept my hand out at the bikes.

"Sure, sure. Have you ever ridden before?"

"Oh, yeah, plenty, I have a Bonneville back home."

He raised his eyebrows. "We don't have anything quite like that, but..."

"That's fine. Just tell me you have something with an automatic starter," I said. I'd never used a kickstart before and this was not the time to try. "How about that Honda over there?"

I worked out a price with him that allowed me to ride the thing one way. He was going to have a cousin of his pick it up and bring it back for an extra fee. I climbed on the tiny machine. It was amazingly light. I could bounce it back and forth between my legs. I turned the key in the ignition and hit the starter. Nothing happened. I needed to go, I needed to get to Bogota. I hit the starter again, there was a dull rasping noise and no life to the engine.
I looked around wildly and the man was there again. He held up his finger for me to wait a moment, bent down next to the engine, and flipped down the fuel control valve. He backed away and gave me a thumbs up with a bit of a worried expression on his face. Of course. I hadn't used a fuel valve since I got licensed.

When I hit the starter the engine came to life. I waved to the guy again and flipped down the visor on my helmet, instinctually missing my regular riding gear like gloves and a jacket, just briefly, before I eased off the clutch and moved it forward to Bogota.

[Eater of Clowns]

Not a particularly exciting chapter overall, I know, but I needed it to move the story forward. Flipping back to Mike over in Providence for the next few entries.