A new currency.

[Eater of Clowns]

No, it's pretty smooth.  Not to get ahead of myself, but you should consider self-publishing this, when it's done.

I hate to say it's on my mind, because I'm more focused on completing a damn work for the first time in years, and on a scale I've yet to do, but yeah I do entertain the notion.

I dread editing it. I have a lot to do on that front, like converting my scribbled travel notes from Colombia into a story format, giving the characters full names, and fixing untidy things like the desk in the last entry that wasn't mentioned in any previous Old Man's Apartment entries.

[minuspace]

Editing is like trying to solve NP problems

In case you wanted video and stuff for the publication, for the children...  I been working on some videotropes too - just need a Touring machine to match them perfectly with music

Www.panchronos.com/OM/Archtype.html


[Am enjoying Cryptonomicon more than Snow Crash]

[Chucklemaster]

It's all happening.

[Eater of Clowns]

Mountains rolled past at the edges of my vision but the ones ahead loomed and stood steadfast, mockeries of a mad flight to that high nestled jewel Bogota. My hand vibrated with the engine. I held the throttle back and the little bike whined and sped on. It was a nimble machine and in my state I hoped I could match it should the need arise but more I hoped that time might think better of its inexorable journey onward and I might find myself again in that city, another tourist to the Museo del Oro but one with a purpose beyond a photo or two of all the glittering gold.

A Toyota slid into my lane. Its brake lights flared and I cut to the right in a deft swerve. Somewhere beyond my frame of mind a horn voiced a driver's displeasure but I couldn't place its location or even if it were my own.

Leaving Zipaquira the traffic moved along with some speed but here as we all grew closer to Bogota our push onward was one of determination, a sea of people and steel with the singular simple goal to return home and all of us in one another's way. The number of lanes doubled and then doubled again and every few hundred meters a car pushed its way to the far right lane and then parked on the side of the road.

A sign read Pico y Placa, then another, and vaguely I thought of this monster referred to in hushed tones throughout the trip. We came home early in the afternoon to avoid the Pico y Placa and we hatched schemes to outwit the beast. Another sign showed itself and the cars and trucks pulled over were in a line now, in some places two cars thick, heeding the words of warning. I couldn't remember if motorcycles were subject to the rule but it didn't matter. I had no time such things.

Brake lights lit in glaring red rows ahead and for the first time since I left the little town I stopped. I stood with the bike between me, its heat, without the wind rushing past, now threw itself onto my bare legs. Cars lined against each others' bumpers as far as I could see.

I sighed, and swallowed, and sighed again. I disengaged the clutch and twisted the throttle again to ease on, looked over my right shoulder, and put myself directly between the lanes. My hand moved the throttle back just a bit more and the first two cars crawled by on either side. I sped up.

Side view mirrors launched themselves at my face. They reached out to strike and by some miracle missed every time. I sped up and it was not enough and I wondered if such a mundane thing as traffic could keep me from pursuing the Debt Collector that I am even capable of the task. It fell to pathetic hands. A lowly twenty-something American in a country I don't understand even without the corrupting influence of Necronomicoin.

Ineptly I trundled along the highway, at twice the speed that I should and half what I needed. It would be better if traffic simply stopped me.

[minuspace]

It's all happening.

http://www.panchronos.com/So_Grin.m4v

[Chucklemaster]

It's all happening.

http://www.panchronos.com/So_Grin.m4v

oh man that's actually kinda cool.

[minuspace]

I was thinking Sid, ergo: Welcome to the Machine cover song
http://www.panchronos.com/mp3/Welcome%20Machine%20Rabbit3.mp3

[Eater of Clowns]

In that horrid path of thought the images of GREs never taken and women never courted, jobs never applied for and the more that joined the list the heavier my hand grew, the more I cranked the gas on the little Honda, the faster I sped to Bogota. Kilometers died faster than the sun. I could not save the latter and so I killed the former.

In the outer barrios of the great city huge congregations of commuters waited for buses to bring them home. Behind them people cooked outside tiny spaces once as brightly colored as any Colombian building and now stained and, here or there, collapsed, hills of broken clay tile and cracked poured concrete forgotten backgrounds to families living their lives together in the mountains. And like the mountains themselves they blurred at the corners of my eyes and were gone and were remade ahead, copies of the same image to me, like the old Scooby Doo cartoons, cheap animated hallways looping past as the gang scrambled down. Maybe I would be able to pull off the Debt Collector's mask and find some petty real estate scammer underneath.

Roads signs started popping up for the museums and I stopped. The traffic still did not move and in the cramped space I dragged my ride to a ninety degree angle and swerved into the little gaps between bumpers to the far side of the highway, and the exit.

I hoped the signs would still lead me to the Museo del Oro and I nearly prayed they would do so but after the Cathedral I could not know what to pray to for that short nightmarish moment where I was a god. I shuddered remembering the guardians again and I shuddered twice for the thought seed and then I banished the idea. I had the very real fear of the ride in me and could afford no room for the Veil.

The ramp was easier to maneuver on than the highway and I skirted to the left of traffic. I remembered Rodri again, back in Cali, our host cheerfully swerving around the mountain on the way up to the Cristo Rey, singing all the way and the motorcyclists fearfully edging around him. I put myself to spotting more Rodris and got ready to steer hard. There were none, and I threw myself in with the throngs of city bikers toward the museum.

My road ended with the sun still in the sky. I didn't stop to check the time and barely managed to turn off the engine and put up the kickstand. I ran.

[Eater of Clowns]

Street vendors were packing up and I had enough presence of mind to know this was a bad thing. Pedestrians were sparse. It was all the clearer for me to run.

A modern white building, short and rectangular, appeared after a couple blocks. Its glass entrance was recessed beneath flat blank walls but for a single row of windows with Museo del Oro written across them. I sighed with relief and nearly choked on it for how short of breath I was. All the running I'd done back home only barely left me able to manage at high altitude. The Zipaquira shoes pinched my toes.

The entrance was still too far to see clearly. Guards stood by, outside and in. I slowed my gait and walked the rest of the way, gasping thin air and forcing myself to walk casually. The lights were still on inside the entryway. Behind the glass I could make out a woman standing at the ticket counter. I'd made it. Lara would be inside.

I grabbed the polished steel door handle. I leaned back to account for the heavy glass, and I tugged. Thud. The door pulled back a quarter of an inch before hitting against a lock. Thud thud. I pulled back a couple more times. It was ritual; everyone has to.

The woman standing at the ticket counter looked up at me and mouthed something in Spanish. I did not need any translation. A guard was keeping an eye on me and I walked away from the building to a stone bench wrapped around a nearby tree in the plaza and sat. I could not break into a museum. I could barely break into the Cathedral of Salt when I was, for all purposes, invisible.

I rested my elbows on my knees and buried my face into my palms, rotating my palms slowly. My hands were filthy from the ride and my eyes burned when I closed them from all that wind and all that panic. There would be deep red bloody rings around my contacts by now with veiny tendrils snaking out from them backward into my skull and they burned.

"You look awful."

[LMNO]

Fuck yes.

[minuspace]

Awesome.  Found this to get the prop spinning:
http://panchronos.com/mp3/HYMN%20TO%20MUSE_B3.mp3

[wudgar]

[Junkenstein]

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=34414.msg1352419#msg1352419

These people need to know about this thread.

[Eater of Clowns]

I opened my eyes to the voice, or I tried, but my palms stuck them closed. Lifting my head I tried again and a blurry vision stood before me in pearls and a tight little red dress and tumbling golden brown curls. I blinked, against disbelief and the sun and the angel standing there.

"You look..." was all I managed.

She tilted her head back and laughed like she had at the brewery, that overly flirtatious laugh that worked despite its obviousness, and I laughed with her in relief and exhaustion. A hero would have swept her up in his arms then but I leaned backward and when I hit the back of the bench I went sideways and lay down on the stone. Gracefully, in heels, she moved just beyond my head and sat down there. She stroked her hand against my head gently.

"You made it out of the Catedral," she said. And I was silent for the angel abomination guardian and the godhood bestowing guardian and the grotesque slug guardian and the -

"DEBT COLLECTOR!" I yelled, sitting up, eyes wide. "Lara, the Debt Collector! It's after you, you have to run." Lara sat there. "There were three guardians, like you said, but there was something else, Lara, something that was waiting for us there. It called itself the Debt Collector. I was warned about it in the bathroom." She looked at me apprehensively. "On the wall of the bathroom, in 1492 over at -"

"The T, yes, I know Bogota," she said.

"It said 'Befriend The Thief. Pity The Ledgerman. Beware The Debt Collector.'" I pointed at her, "You're The Thief." She looked affronted for a moment, then nodded. "He," and I mimicked the thick set of him and the squirming hair and the segmented skin, "was the Debt Collector. He trapped me in some kind of rock and then he went after you. I got out, I made it to the, and by the way I'm still upset you didn't tell me about this, the Necronomicoin ATM, and when I got back you were gone. I rented a motorcycle and rushed here after I remembered what you said about the Museo del Oro."

She sat back and rested on her palms, looking at me and then away. She took in a breath as though to speak, then stopped.

"You rode a motorcycle in Bogota?" she asked.

I nodded. She smirked, then her face turned stern. "Rushing after me was foolish, J. I do not know if you think you are some knight in shining armor but I am not your damsel and I do not need any rescuing," she rolled her eyes, "American men! Always have to save me," her eyebrows perked up, "but it does make them easier to rob."

[Eater of Clowns]

I collapsed back down on the bench, the burst of energy likely some of my last.

"I said 'You look awful'," Lara tried again.

"And now you know why." I looked at her, entreating, "you aren't afraid of the Debt Collector."

She nodded.

"So you've never seen him."

She nodded again.

"So you left me down there by choice," I said flatly. I realized I was looking through her and I turned away.

"J-"

"What, did you, did you just hope I would die down there? Problem solved? No more idiot gringo to look after?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I expected you to leave your Necronomicoin behind, just like you did, and to find me gone and decide to go back to your family. Like any sane person would! To get back home, a little changed maybe, but to get home and to forget about that horrible place and what you left there and," she swallowed, "who left you there."

"I might have," I said. "Yeah, maybe I would have if that was all there was to it. But Lara, you have to believe me. This Debt Collector is dangerous. It was the worst thing I saw down there and, trust me, I saw some pretty bad things. They weren't evil, though, not like him, they were cruel, maybe and dangerous and powerful, but not evil." I looked at her again. "You should be afraid. I was. I am. That's why I'm here."

Lara leaned forward and rested her hand lightly on my own. "You look awful," she said for the third time. I said nothing. "We have to get you cleaned up." She looked up at the sky, toward the sun. "And soon. There isn't much time and you're going to need clothes, and," looking at my head, "a haircut."

"I just had a haircut before I-"

"A real haircut."

She was in a dress, I realized, and jewelry and makeup and, "what for," I said slowly.

"For the Museo del Oro, idiot gringo, like I told you," she chided.

"It's closed." I pointed across the plaza.

"It's closed to them," she swept her hand at the people around us, "it's closed to you," she pointed at me, "but it is, or it will be, open for me." She nudged me, "for us. When the gala starts, anyway." She stood and held her hand down to me, flicking her wrist up. "Up up. We have work to do. We have to make you presentable."

I groaned and eased forward, pressed down on my palms to lift myself and groaned again and sat heavily. I glared at her.

Lara smiled and exaggeratedly tapped her foot. It clicked softly on the ground.