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| Title: | Arcana Caelestia |
| Notice: | Directory listings are in topic 2 |
| Moderator: | NETRIX::thomas |
|
| Created: | Thu Dec 08 1983 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1300 |
| Total number of notes: | 18728 |
120.0. "Instructions" by XENON::GAUDREAU () Wed Aug 15 1984 14:33
15-Aug-1984
INSTRUCTIONS - by Bob Leman
This is the only notice you will receive. You will follow the
instructions set out below.
1.
Dress warmly and leave your house. Do not tell your family you
are leaving. Do not talk to them at all. Do not listen if they talk
to you. Dress warmly and leave your house.
2.
Proceed at a brisk clip to the center of town. Do not speak to
anyone in the street. Do not - no not - become involved in any
conversations. Step right along. Do not tarry.
3.
At the center of town, in the little park across from the
courthouse, is a building that was not there the last time you
were downtown. It will strike you as a very ugly building, and its
appearance will make you feel apprehensive. Pay no attention to
such feelings. Do not look right or left. Enter the building. It
has only one doorway and no visible door. Go right in.
4.
You will find yourself standing in a cold gray mist, with no
visibility whatever. This will cause you to feel great fear.
Despite the fear, you will follow instructions. Advance six steps.
5.
A portion of your mind will remain free of the constraint that
has been placed upon you, and that portion will be observing your
actions with amazement, incredulity, and terror - since everything
that you are doing is without your advertence, and is, as it were,
puppetlike. If you survive the present undertaking, you will
remember everything that has happened, but you will never be able
to speak of it. You will never be able to talk about anything at
all that took place after the instant you looked at the symbol at
the top of the first of these sheets. The configurations of this
symbol are such that it caused you mind to be wholly obedient to
these instructions. You have no choice. You must do as you are
instructed. Under no circumstances will you lose these sheets.
6.
From this point onward you will read only one instruction at a
time. Do not read instructions number eight until you have
accomplished what was instructed in number seven, and so on. Read
each instruction completely before beginning to comply.
Instructions from this point onward will carry from time to time
comforting words of reassurance and explanation, as a means of
preserving sanity in the portion of your mind that remains your
own.
7.
After you have advanced six steps, stand quite still. You will
immediately feel an unpleasant sensation. It will, in fact, be
agonizing pain. Ignore it. It is felt by all carbon-based
life-forms undergoing interdimensional translation. It will do you
no permanent harm, except possibly in a minor way to your muscular
coordination and control. If you find yourself thereafter to be
subject to facial tics or spasmodic jerkings of one limb or
another, pay no attention to them. You have much to do. Bend all
your efforts toward obeying these instructions. Do not falter.
8.
You are now in Area One. This one will be easy. Look about you.
What you see will frighten you greatly. You will not let that fact
hinder you. It is just a landscape. It is only the fact that it is
totally alien that frightens you. You have never seen or imagined
anything remotely like it. Words of reassurance: 26,844 members of
your race have been here before you. We know all about Area One.
Follow instructions and you will quickly be in Area Two. Perform
the following acts: take four slow - very slow - steps forward, and
immediately sidestep quickly - very quickly - to your right.
9.
The large hole that suddenly appeared where you were standing
before you sidestepped has, literally, no bottom. It is
characteristic of Area One that these holes appear. Close your eyes
and begin to run as fast as you can straight ahead. By fast is
meant VERY fast.
10.
You have been unconscious for some time, as a consequence of
running full tilt into the wall that suddenly materialized. It is
characteristic of Area One that walls materialize and
dematerialize. If you had not spent an unconscious period, you
would not now be reading this instruction. You would have been
disassembled by the indigenous energy foci. They did not sense your
presence because you were unconscious. It may be that this
necessary collision has damaged you to some extent. Since you are
reading this, the damage was not incapacitating. The wall is no
longer there. Walk forward, or crawl if you must. Pass through the
discontinuity portal just ahead. You will perceive it as a
shimmer in the atmosphere. The faster you pass through, the less
painful it will be.
11.
You are now in Area Two. There is no need for great haste in
moving on to Area Three. You may lie down and rest for several
minutes. Perhaps the pain you are almost certainly undergoing will
abate somewhat. Area Two is, for your race, the safest of the areas
through which you must pass in completing your task. There is at
this stage, time for you to absorb certain knowledge that will no
doubt ease the concerns that trouble the portion of your mind that
continues to keep your identity. If that core of ego were to become
hopelessly insane, it would affect your comprehension of these
instructions, and you would be of no further use to us.
We are observing you as you proceed with your task, but we may
not communicate with you except through these instructions. Our
observations will enable us to amend the instructions for the one
who follows you, just as you have benefited from those who preceded
you. Eight hundred sixty-one members of your race have been in Area
Two before you. Each was like you, a random Homo Sapiens
sufficiently literate to read the instructions. We have great hope
that one of your race will be the individual to attain the end we
desire. We have only recently discovered you race. We find you to
be docile and moderately intelligent, and physically better suited
for this task than many other races. You may have other useful
qualities as well that we have not yet discovered. Some life-forms
have proven to be quite useless to us. We tested them thoroughly
before turning to others. Between our last previous discovery of a
useful race and our finding of you, we tested 773 intelligent
life-forms. Twelve hundred forty-four individuals of each of these
life-forms were given these instructions. Every single one perished
in Area One. But you are already in Area Two, comparatively
undamaged, and ready at this point to proceed, having had your
state of mind improved by learning these facts.
If you are of the egg-producing sex, you will now discover that
you have sprouted a thick and vile-smelling fur over large portions
of your skin. If you are of the fertilizing sex, you will find
yourself to have scales instead of skin. If you are not yet large
enough to produce eggs or sperm, you will grow, from various parts
of your surface, horny lumps oozing a sticky fluid. These things
happen to your race in Area Two. They will not affect your capacity
to carry out your instructions. In each of the areas, as you
proceed, phenomena will occur that are undreamed of, and indeed
impossible, in your original continuum. As you proceed from area to
area, you are in movement outside space and contrary to time as you
perceive it; the bases of reality will differ from area to area,
and your senses will react to this shifting in often unpredictable
- and, to you - always frightening ways. Pay no attention. Follow
your instructions as long as you are physically able to do so.
You will by now have observed that as far as you can see in
every direction the flat plain is studded with protrusions about as
high as the middle joint of your walking limbs (if you are
full-grown) and about as thick as your forelimbs. Each of these is
topped by a spinning disk. They may be alive, but perhaps not. It
does not matter. You will note that some of the disks are of one
color and some of another. We cannot give you a name for the colors
because our observations of your race have failed to associate the
proper words with your sensory perceptions. Walk - or otherwise
proceed as best you are able - among these protrusions. Find a
group of the same color surrounding one of the other color. Go
among them and place your hand on the disk of the center
protrusion.
12.
You have now been transported through another portal, and you
are in Area Three. Three hundred thirty-seven of your race have
been here before you. You are becoming inured to these transitions.
The pain may have been less this time. We will now tell you that we
lied in Instruction 11. There was in fact danger in Area Two.
Because we were unable to specify colors, the chance of you
selecting the wrong color was equal to that of selecting the right
color. If you had selected wrongly, the consequences would have
been unfortunate - but we will not enumerate them, in the interest
of preserving your serenity.
Area Three is in a universe with the same physical laws as your
own; it possesses galaxies of stars, and some of these stars have
planets, just as your own star does. This planet is much like your
home planet. It abounds in savage life-forms, most of which eat
each other. We tell you this in order that you may be alert and
wary. You cannot prevail in combat with these creatures. Flee when
you see one. Hide, if you can find a place.
You are standing on the bank of a small stream. You may drink
from it if you require water. Keep a sharp lookout. You have a very
good chance of surviving if you can hide yourself in time. Here and
there you will see holes that have what appear to be tangles of
roots at their bottoms. When you encounter a predator, leap into
one of these holes, if there is one nearby and you have time. These
holes are in fact the mouths of creatures that live underground
with only their mouths exposed, and live upon whatever edible
things may fall into their mouths. You are inedible to them. After
a short period, the creature will spit you out. By then the
predator may be gone, and you can proceed. Every creature that you
see will be a predator. There is no place to hide but in these
mouths.
Walk upstream along the brooklet. Some of the plants are
predatory. Try to avoid them. Some of them will bind you with vines
and suck your blood; others will paralyze you with a sting, and
engulf you for slow digestion. They are, however, by your
standards, lethargic and slow moving. Watch for them and dodge out
of their way. If you are not badly damaged, you can move much
faster than they can. Walk upstream along the brooklet. Walk for a
distance equal to about four or five hundred times your body
length. If you are small, or only partially grown, it may be
between five hundred and six hundred times your body length.
Walk upstream along the brooklet, evading predators of every
kind, until you come to a structure. This structure resembles a
great mound of the nasal mucous of your race. It is about fifty
times your height. It apparently has a disgusting smell. It is the
nest of one of the indigenes, a creature in some ways resembling
the giant reptiles once common on your world, but in other ways
resembling some of your insects. It excretes the stuff of which
its nest is built. Despite the semiliquid appearance of this nest,
it is quite hard. The excretion hardens upon exposure to the
atmosphere. Halfway up its side is an opening. Climb up, if you
can, and enter. The portal through is deep inside, and will be
reached by simply following the passage. The portal was of course
there before the creature built its nest, and indeed has always
been there. It was pure chance that led the creature to build its
nest at this particular spot. The creature is unaware that the
portal is there. None of the portals can be detected by life-forms
native to the area of the portal's location unless such life-forms
are directed to the portals, as you were when you began this task.
Inside the nest you will find it difficult to breath. It will
not however, be impossible. The atmosphere will be harmful to your
lungs. You must proceed as rapidly as possible, in order to reach
the portal before your lungs cease to function. Hanging from the
ceiling of the passage will be objects that appear to you to be
thick, oily ropes swinging about. Exercise care not to be touched
by them. If you are, you will be dissolved. Hurry along. If you
survive, it will be impossible to miss the portal. Get through it
quickly.
13.
You are in Area Four. Do not move. Do not move at all until you
have read this instruction.
You are the eighteenth of your kind to reach this area. No other
life-form has supplied more than five individuals who have reached
it. However, your race has greater difficulties with Area Four than
do the others. We cannot tell why.
As soon as you move, your shape will change. It may change to a
shape that lacks the capacity for movement. If that should happen,
you will of course have to remain here permanently. If, however,
your new shape is capable of movement, simply go straight forward,
advancing by whatever means of locomotion you can contrive under
the difficulties presented by the form you have acquired. Because
of the geometry of this place constantly undergoes random
variation, it is impossible to tell the distance to the portal at
any given moment. Simply move forward until you reach it. If the
portal is at this time a very great distance off, you may not reach
it, as there is no way for you to obtain nourishment here, and, in
any case, you may be unable to ingest nourishment in your present
form. Now you may move.
14.
You have passed through the portal and you are in Area Five. You
have returned to your original shape, or something very close to
it. The other member of your race who reached this point recovered
its original shape in almost every particular, with perhaps some
slight alteration of the proportions between various parts of the
body. It retained to a considerable degree the power of forward
movement and an intermittent capacity for coarse manipulation of
objects. No doubt you find yourself as well off, and perhaps
better.
In this area the portal is close at hand. You could see it from
where you now are, if it were not hidden behind that large machine.
We do not know how this machine appears to you, because your
perceptions do not extend to all the planes in which it has its
existence. The part that falls within the range of your senses
apparently is perceived by your race as a terrifying large live
thing. That at any rate is our conclusion based upon the behavior
of your predecessor.
The function of this machine, to describe it in an analogy that
you will understand, is to take samples and analyze them. There is
no way of knowing what sort of samples it was designed to analyze,
except that they were evidently large - probably about the size of
your head. The entities who created this machine finished their
history and disappeared very long ago at a time when your native
sun was still taking form. The machine continues to operate, but
perhaps no longer exactly as it was intended to. In any case, it
will not permit you access to the portal until it has taken its
sample.
You will have noted that these instructions are now more
elaborate and explanatory than they were initially. This has been
because it appears from our admittedly incomplete knowledge of the
psychology of your race that you may function better if you have
some comprehension of what you are doing. In the early stages, it
did not matter, but now you have advanced very far. While of course
you have no choice but to obey the instructions, it may be that
these explanations will inspire you to an added effort, or even
enthusiasm.
If you are able to pass the machine, you will see the portal
plainly, and you will go through it. Now advance and let the
machine take its samples.
15.
You are in Area Six. You are the first being to achieve it.
Heretofore the samples taken by the machine have always been vital
parts of the life-form furnishing the sample, or even the entire
being. Clearly, there remains enough of you to continue to live,
and to have made your way from the machine to the portal. You are a
durable being, for one of your subdivision.
Area Six is the final area. There are no difficulties in this
area. It is a harmless, peaceful, and - perhaps, to you - a
beautiful place. Or perhaps not. We know little of your aesthetics.
There are many large plants here, much resembling the trees of your
native world. A small road or path winds among them. Follow the
path. Along the way are streams of water from which you may drink;
there are also fruits and nuts that are safe to eat for life-forms
of your subdivision.
Advancing along the path from the opposite direction is another
life-form. It will resemble nothing you have see or imagined, but
it is, like you, carbon-based, and, like you, has been following a
set of instructions, which were much more difficult than yours.
When you confront this being, reach out with any part of you that
remains capable of reaching, and touch it. It is instructed to do
the same to you.
The instructions following this one will be the final
instructions. You may read it after you have physically touched the
other creature. Proceed.
16.
The fact that you are reading this means that you have completed
the undertaking.
Your race is one of those with the characteristic of curiosity,
and you will want to know our reasons for requiring you to make
this journey. We will tell you.
You have on your native planet an intellectual diversion quite
suitable for your minds, called chess. We are now playing, with
another entity much like ourself, a game with distant analogies to
the game of chess raised several powers in complexity. Nothing
about this game would be in any way comprehensible to you, of
course, and we will make no attempt to explain it. Instead, we will
continue the chess analogy and tell you that while there have
already been hundreds of millions of moves in this game, it remains
very far from over. Millions of our chessman are in motion upon a
board that encompasses all of the past time and any point in or
portion of the universe that may become useful. You and the being
you have just encountered comprise jointly a minute part of one of
our chess pieces. The passage through the portals on the part of
each of you, and your final coming together, form part of a tiny
link in a predicted chain of cause and effect that will, in a very
distant future time, lead to a curious mutation in a race whose
first ancestor has not yet come into being.
Unless, of course, the move by our oppenent that follows this
one nullifies ours. We will, in that event, make an appropriate
response. You will understand that all the pieces are being moved
all the time. The analogy with chess is in fact quite loose.
At some point - it will be at a time that would seem to you to
be unthinkably remote - the game will be over. The loser will
congratulate the winner. We and it will then invent and agree upon
the rules of a new game, and it will commence.
That is what we do. You, with your curiosity, may ask: Why?
The answer is: To pass the time, to alleviate boredom.
Your curiosity is now satisfied, and we are finished with you. You
are now free from the restraints imposed by these instructions, and
may do as you like. If you wish to try to return to your starting
place, you will find all the portals exactly where they were when
you were coming here. They are open both ways. The difficulties in
each area remain unchanged, but you are quite durable. You might be
back.
HAVE A NICE DAY
From Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1984, pgs 79-86.
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 120.1 | | EVE::B_TODD | | Fri Aug 17 1984 03:24 | 3 |
| Seems roughly equivalent to the cross-product of ROGUE MOON and THE GAME OF
BLOOD AND DUST.
- Bill
|
| 120.2 | | VIKING::MCCARTHY | | Fri Aug 17 1984 08:45 | 6 |
| No, I saw this in my latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I
loved it, and hope to see more by Bob Leman in the future. BTW, an aside
to XENON::GAUDREQU; I always thought you needed author's permission to
reproduce something like this.
Kevin McC.
|
| 120.3 | | XENON::GAUDREAU | | Fri Aug 17 1984 08:57 | 7 |
| RE:.2, You probably do need permission. I didn't think anyone would complain
too much as there is a limited readership. The 'humor' implied in the story
is just right for programmers who tell the computer what to do. The entities
behind the story are just programming things a little. Hope it is enjoyed...
Joe
-=-
|
| 120.4 | | EARTH::MJOHNSON | | Fri Aug 17 1984 17:47 | 3 |
| Re:.3
Yep, I enjoyed it. Thanks
|
| 120.5 | | ERIE::ASANKAR | | Fri Aug 17 1984 18:20 | 4 |
|
Me three!
sam
|
| 120.6 | | ADVISE::THOMPSON | | Tue Aug 21 1984 14:28 | 4 |
| That was great. I may have to dig up the money for a
subscription to F&SF again.
Alfred
|
| 120.7 | | ERIE::ASANKAR | | Thu Aug 23 1984 18:28 | 5 |
|
By the way, how much is that?
sam
|
| 120.8 | | AKOV68::BOYAJIAN | | Thu Aug 23 1984 22:41 | 7 |
| An annual subscription (12 issues) to F&SF costs $17.50. The address is:
FNATSY
(oops! thought I was EDT)
FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Box 56, Cornwall, CT 06753
--- jerry
|
| 120.9 | | ERIE::ASANKAR | | Fri Aug 24 1984 20:26 | 4 |
|
Thanks a bunch...
sam
|
| 120.10 | | WARLRD::JELICH | | Wed Sep 19 1984 11:51 | 3 |
| That was good. Almost makes you feel small and insignificant. :-)
Beth
|
| 120.11 | Those who follow instructions get lost | PARITY::WU | | Fri Aug 11 1989 08:50 | 4 |
| And I thought I was getting info on what a form feed was. Is it a
carriage return <RET>?
Chris
|
| 120.12 | Follow _these_ instructions | POLAR::LACAILLE | There's a madness to my method | Fri Aug 11 1989 09:37 | 18 |
|
A form feed, when encountered by a printer, advances the form
to the top of the next page regardless of where it is detected.
Sorta like a 'go to home' command.
When used within notes, it acts differently. The note processor
stops the scrolling of the text on the screen when it encounters
a form feed character and prompts you to '<CR> to continue'.
The FF can be added by the noter to 'hide' text that may not
want to be read by accident (the ending of a book for example would
have a <spoiler> warning and then a FF). This Form Feed character
can be added in the TPU editor by a ^V (add character command) and
a ^L (the actual <FF> character).
BTW ^ mean control.
Charlie
|