From: caz@owlnet.rice.edu (HWRNMNBSOL)
Subject: [KQ] The Great Mother Of All Battles: Kickoff
Organization: Rice University
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 04:08:29 GMT

Postcard From The Furthest Reaches of Etherspace:

At a distance of 10,000,000 miles, Nexus looks like a pinprick of bluish light.
No untalented individual could tell that it harbors a population of many
millions of sentients.  Naturally, this is not our problem.

At a distance of 100,000 miles, the familiar disc is easily recognizable.  
Continents can be seen, but there is still no hint of that greatest of cities:
Generica.

At a distance of 1,000 miles, the terrain rolls away in patches of blues and
browns and greens.  Majhar's Fist can be seen, fuming away in the heart of
the Dark Continent, but manmade constructs are still invisible.

Ah.  There it is.

At 100 miles, we can see the City of Fountains, in the form of a dark speck
on the western edge of an otherwise unremarkable continent.  The planet fills
the entire sky.

10 miles:  The sky is blue now, but we can clearly make out (behind the ever-
present clouds blowing in off the ocean) the city walls and the larger roads.
At night, lights can be seen.

1 mile:  You can smell the docks.  The toy map rushes up at us.  In the midst
of the mottled browns and blacks of the rooftops, there is one open, grey 
patch.  Seagulls wheel freely over the Generican skies, but they stay firmly
away from that dead center.  Let's take a look in that direction.

100 feet:  Crumbled buildings.  Ruined cityscape.  Scene of an ancient horror
or tragedy.  An open wound.

We have landed.  This desolation is still and lifeless.  The quiet is complete.

....unless one has the ears to hear, as we do.  The audible spectrum has no
signal, but energy crackles across the mental bands like a Jacob's Ladder.
Its source appears to lie below ground.  We will go there, as we are curious.

Into the ground.  All about us, stratum after stratum of the debris of ruined
and lost civilizations rise about our ears.  Some of them must have been quite
interesting.  Can't stop now, though, because now there is a sound -- a real
one, this time.  It is a low, almost subsonic pulse, regular and slow: the
unhurried beat of some monstrous heart.  Lower, still lower, lies its origin.

We exit dirt and stone into empty space: a chamber.  We look about us.

Oh dear.  

Perhaps it's time we go back up to look at some of those old cultures whose
relics appeared to beewappppwertu;elr j......................

*****************************************************************************

They have arrived through an archway.  On one side, the world as we know it.
On the other...........

The chamber.  A greenish glow suffuses the area, creating shifting shadows
on marbled walls.  A high, vaulted ceiling drops down along sinuous collumns
to a floor of cut onyx.  

Here and there along the walls, portals and archways give access to other,
mysterious places.  The greenish light shines into them but does not 
illuminate their secrets.

The floor is perfect and reflective.  It surface is marred by only two
details.

One: to the left, near the corner of the room, some shift in the planet's
crust (or some random fluctuation in Nexus' Magic Field) has cracked open
a rift which penetrates the chamber.  It yawns up to ten feet across at
its widest.  Some kind of gas hisses out of it, creating an obscuring fog
which swirls and eddies in the verdant glow.

Two: the floor is sunk in the center.  A low flight of stairs descend into....

....a peculiar, yet beautiful, garden.

An area of perhaps fifty feet wide and twice that in length is filled with
a bizarre specie of leafless trees.  Slender and graceful, their greyish
dendritic limbs reach for the faraway sky.  They appear to sway gently in
some unfelt breeze.  

The green glow does not seem to have a source.  However, if one were to
make certain assumptions, one would say that the glow was strongest in
the sunken garden.  That bewitching place practically invites onlookers
to walk in and tarry in attractive alien groves.

Fortunately, our crew is in no mood for such excursions.

****************************************************************************

Eyes glaze.  Nostrils flare.  Chests heave, and rasping throats draw air.
Twitching hands seize nothing at all.  Feet shuffle; gazes dart from 
corner to corner.  Minds ache as the great gates of castles ache, after
repeated blows of battering rams seek to gain unwelcome entry.

And there is a voice.  It is not heard, but it is nevertheless very much THERE.


               Y O U    H A V E    C O M E


Captain: GAH!!

    
              Y O U    A R E    N O T    W E L C O M E  [displeasure]


Rabbi Fishbien: <....this is news?>
Rhoan: Nine Hells....


              N O N E    W H O    M E E T    M E    S U R V I V E

Thk: Ssssso who hasssss *met* anybody?
Maleiu: Yes, show yourself!
Kron: .... if you dare. 


Cheyenne: Terry?

Kron: (jaw hits floor)

*****************************************************************************

It is a girl on the brink of womanhood.  She wears a dress of forest green.
She wears one silver earring.  She stands amongst the trees and smiles shyly.

"Terry!  I knew you'd come.  I don't know how, but I did."  She walks to the
edge of the pool.  It's Cheyenne's walk, all right, although to Kron it seems
that she fairly glides across the surface of the garden.  She opens her arms
and gestures:  "Terry?  Do you have a hug for your little sister?"  She beams
the same old smile that, time after time, always melted Terry's heart in the
old days.

Kron hovers on the brink.  It's definitely his sister, despite her unaged
appearance, but something holds him back.  It's certainly not rationality,
because the Gods know that he's not thinking clearly with all this static
in his head.  Chalk another one up to raw intuition and experience.

Next to him, Colin is stuttering.  Kron turns to him, and sees that his jaws
are clenched, his eyes rolling and staring wildly into space.  "What?" says
Kron.  

Colin turns his head in Kron's direction, but his eyes are unfocused.  "kkk...
....<tsck>....n-n-n-n....."  "Colin?!"  "...n-n-n-n-n-....." "He's trying
to say something!"  "......n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n......"  Cheyenne frowns.

'Raelf steps up, a look of concentration on his face.  Colin instantly
relaxes somewhat and raises one arm to point at the garden.  "...n-n-n-n-
n-not t-t-t-t-t-t-trees....." he gasps out, and staggers back against Azzar.
All the color has drained from his face.  

Kron looks at the trees.  Their slight motion makes him uneasy, to be sure,
but.....

It's not just the trees.

THE WHOLE GARDEN IS SWAYING BACK AND FORTH.

The sunken area, all of it, is undulating and rippling.  It is as if the
surface one inch below the floor were a great big waterbed. 

Now that he looks, Kron sees that there really is no 'ground' to speak of.
The floor of the garden joins seamlessly with the 'trees'.  

It also joins seamlessly with Cheyenne's feet.

Cheyenne is no longer smiling.  "Terry, I didn't want it to be this way.
Honest.  Your friends could have stayed behind, and that would have been
the end of that.  But now things are different.  Come on down, Terry; let
them be.  We'll be together at last." 

"I don't think so."

    
    T H E R E   W I L L   B E    N O    D I S C U S S I O N


"You're wrong."


    Y O U     H A V E    E R R E D  [mirth]  T H E R E    W I L L    B E

    N O    D I S C U S S I O N     B E C A U S E    T H E R E    W I L L

    B E    A    G R E A T    D E A L    O F     K I L L I N G  [mirth]



The trees melt and weave into frenzied patterns.  As the horrified party
looks on, the garden melts into a great pool of nauseating grey matter
which begins to reform into other, terrible shapes...... The air fills
with the sound of unearthly screaming......

****************************************************************************

.....but that is of no matter to two individuals.  Well, one individual, and
one entity that can no longer be defined in terms of numbers....

Kron stands high.  Cheyenne -- ha! -- stands low.

But their eyes are linked.  They do not move.

Blind to the conflict raging about them, they discuss matters as only brother
and sister can do......

****************************************************************************

HWRNMNBSOL