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In those days Pt. 7.

Started by Kai, March 25, 2010, 03:12:52 AM

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Kai

The acolyte wanders down the long stairways. She has just left her cell, overcome with a need stemming from a whole afternoon of observation. She was watching a creature, a being, a living organism, but try as she might she could not unlock it's secrets, they were hidden to her.

As every apprentice name-mage knows, the key to unlock the secrets of every organism is two words. Sometimes one word from a set is used in another set, but never the same two as any other set (unless, of course, some mage made a mistake in the past, discovery of which requires a revision of the scripture). These two words are set in writing along with descriptive components, sometimes the langua franca, sometimes in obscure tongues. The name mage must decipher these, find the appropriate words and components, and direct the key at the lock, so to say.

Not that this is an easy process. If the spell fails, it might simply fizzle, or might explode in unknown dangers. Such is the nature of what the name-mages call "bad taxonomy". But if the spell is right, then great understanding comes, the knowledge of all other parts of the picture, ideas, past and present, the myriad writings of thousands of long dead sorcerers. All the secrets of the creature are laid bare, and more deeper secrets can be sought.

She walks quietly. This is a church, after all. It was built long ago by the shamans, by the saints, tall gothic ceilings and heavy stone needed to contain knowledge. Somehow it survived the apocalypse, when the Scala Naturae disintegrated and the whole world was in chaos. But you know what happened next, I don't really need to say it. Darwin and others planted the Tree of Life, constantly changing and growing and branches dying making it more like a bush than a tree, but still it lived, held up the Temple of Nature, stronger even than the Scala had ever. Because, how could a crystaline lattice be stronger than a living support, changing, growing, a homeostatic system which constantly readjusts to changes in the temple...but I digress.

The acolyte is looking for a metaphysical identity to place on her creature of study. I say metaphysical, but you and I both know these things have weight, they weight more in our mind and on our understanding than the Sun and the Planets weigh on Newton's (blessed be his name) elipses. Names are powerful, they CREATE the world differently to our senses. And without a name, there is no key, no way to unlock the secrets, the great seeds within the archives of Knowledge.

She pauses by a door marked (Syrphidae: Insecta), and enters into a small dark room with shelves lining the walls, crammed to the ceilings with tomes, parchment, scrolls, boxes, vials, bottles and various tools. It's been a while since another person came down here, the shelves disorganized and dirty. Most workers just shove the scriptures in back where they found them, or worse, randomly, without any sense of order. With her robes rolled up she sets to work cleaning, just to get enough order so she can find what she's looking for, a particular document....dust fills the air.

Hours pass. The Acolyte has no idea how much time has gone by, she is so intensely in her work. The shelves are almost neat, cleaner, and closer (she thinks) to mirroring The Tree. She gazes around, eyes blurry, and finds the section holding the piece of interest. The shelf is almost empty, unused for lack of workers. By her estimation, it has been at least 30 years since someone worked directly from this shelf.

And there it is. She pulls it out, blows the remaining dust from the cover, and reads

A Revision of the North American Callicera, 1980, Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash.

Having reached her goal, it is completely understandable that everything else is forgotten. Never mind what more of organizing could be done, THIS is the most important thing at the moment. She runs up the stairs, back to her cell, back to the object of study, the lock needing a key. The acolyte opens the volume, reading the spells, viewing the components drawings. This spellbook is blessfully well written. Some mages were not so kind, making a sloppy job of it, adding poor component descriptions and few or no drawings. She chuckles to herself; could it really be that easy? The name, the RIGHT name, was right there, plainly written above excellent guidelines. The author had probed deeply and dissolved so much falsehood, he had worked those shelves to the edge of his limits.


The acolyte smiled, looked at her creature one last time, and spoke the words.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

NotPublished

I have to definatly read this again when I get back home ..

I like your style of writing, it has a nice structure
In Soviet Russia, sins died for Jesus.

Dr. Paes

I love this one.
Gives fantastic imagery. In my mind I see a scientist superimposed upon a wizard. Everything described in this way flickers back and forth between the two forms. A table covered in parchment, alchemical supplies and a crystal ball shifts seamlessly into a desk scattered with files, with lab equipment set up next to a laptop. It's beautiful.

Kai

As a further note, this was essentially my afternoon yesterday.

With a few liberties.  :wink:
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

LMNO

Hey Kai,

I finally had time to read your entire series up to now, and I must say that I've enjoyed it immensely.

This one, especially, has a really great feel and contains a lot of emotion.

Please consider bundling and pamphleting.

Jenne

Love this one.  I can feel myself there with you.

Kai

Bump, because this is going to be the basis of my NaNoWritMo. They say write what you know, so....


In this version of the world/universe, Names have power. The ancients knew it, it's a long standing thing. Aristotle wrote of it in detail. But, Names are tricky. They have to actually be Bound to something in a universal way and based around actual knowledge of the thing. Names of individuals are pretty much impossible to work with. But Names of species are within the realm of possibility.

In this world, Linnaeus is looked upon as almost a demigod like figure due to his figuring out the solution: the creation of universal names, Binomial Nomenclature. The universal Binding meant that the names could be used over time. After 200 years there were many Naming Universities, which are very much like natural history museums. Taxonomy had become extremely important, since species are constantly changing (Darwin, a great Namer himself, and Wallace, figured this out). You not only needed to know how to Bind, but to Unbind names so that groups could be revised. And you needed taxonomist scholars to do this.

There's also the practical sense of Naming, which is called Guiding. It's not quite control, more like suggestion. By using the name in combination with intent, Guiding could attract, repel, and suggest organisms into growing or behaving a certain way. I should add, all of this is not treated as mysticism, but as a science, though not all the fundamentals are understood. One could talk about how to Bind a Name with description to a particular species, how to determine the Name of species that an individual belongs to via knowledge and practice, how to Guide organisms with intent and words and Names, and it was all very organized despite not knowing how the fundamental physical interactions made it so. Science had also progressed, and technology was about at 1980s stage, but that doesn't mean that what Naming was doing was understood. And technology and Naming are not at odds. Governments are of course very interested. Thank Linnaeus that the name for the human species is incredibly complicated and difficult to Guide, and that only a few are skilled enough to do this on a very local level. But biological warfare is a distinct possibility, and has been used in the past.

So, in this world you have the Heroine, who something like a PhD student at a Naming University, pretty much a natural history institution. And she's working on Binding and Unbinding, and very much a taxonomist and entomologist, focusing on Syrphid flies. Part of the conflict I think is going to be based around the "megafauna bias", and her proving her worth, maybe some Old Order vs New Order, maybe some romance, probably not fulfilled romance. Overall, just a story about an insect taxonomist grad student in a world where Names hold power.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Q. G. Pennyworth

This is great! November's gonna be insane  :lol:

hirley0

#8
a short 4pm blurb prior to A return to the '69 ChemicaL tail's
Top StORy | see time stamp | Leader Killed : today


Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on November 01, 2013, 01:49:56 PM
This is great! November's gonna be insane  :lol:

1980s stage/ad351/Carolus-Linnaeus  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus
May 18th 1980 began a time span referred to by the LiBraLL press as IRAN/contra
& by me as I'con/E.ron / the 5. Eruption of Mt. St. Helen'$ | {believe what U want |
tbc IN #ed{FFA500| CARLers |Much Later}

hirley0

#9
while the FFA500 opertunity exists a broader time frame & A Lib ref
i'LL call it the offing interval for lack of a proper phrase
Began in April of '58 at "id you mean: enewetak atoll?" :fnord:
the next OFF.er.ING was '69 {11yrs| Later at PSU | LSD/chemical
& the not #00FF00=green "THIS? event in May of 1980 AS ABOVE

hirley0

SOME WHEN LATE 80's -90'S there did exist a volume of books
on the PSU Library shelves carrying the official title Iran/Contra

they were of light brown-tan color each the same size & weight to the
one to their left Extending for probably 15 to 20 feet occupying a complete
shelf. By the turn of the century? Biologically speaking they had been removed
& so now i return to the evening news hour on PBS/OPB at 4pmpdT

Kai

Quote from: hirley0 on November 01, 2013, 10:54:48 PM
SOME WHEN LATE 80's -90'S there did exist a volume of books
on the PSU Library shelves carrying the official title Iran/Contra

they were of light brown-tan color each the same size & weight to the
one to their left Extending for probably 15 to 20 feet occupying a complete
shelf. By the turn of the century? Biologically speaking they had been removed
& so now i return to the evening news hour on PBS/OPB at 4pmpdT

"Biologically speaking"? What kind of libraries do you /have/ in Portland.  :eek:
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

You don't really want to know.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


hirley0

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/identify/eulophid.htm                       \
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/identify/..%5Cadults%5Cjpg%5Ceulop1.ad0.htm  >
The requested URL /~legneref/identify/..\adults\jpg\eulop1.ad0.htm was not found /

{ Bankowska, R. (1980) Fly communities of the family Syrphidae
{ http://www.pollinators.biodiversityireland.ie/

http://archive.org/stream/proceedingsofent2821980ento/proceedingsofent2821980ento_djvu.txt



1980s stage / Carolus Linnaeus  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus


























Quote from: Kai on November 01, 2013, 11:44:12 PM
Quote from: hirley0 on November 01, 2013, 10:54:48 PM
SOME WHEN LATE 80's -90'S there did exist a volume of books
on the PSU Library shelves carrying the official title Iran/Contra

they were of light brown-tan color each the same size & weight to the
one to their left Extending for probably 15 to 20 feet occupying a complete
shelf. By the turn of the century? Biologically speaking they had been removed
& so now i return to the evening news hour on PBS/OPB at 4pmpdT

"Biologically speaking"? What kind of libraries do you /have/ in Portland.  :eek:

Kai

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish