First, the Coke machine claims to be out of Diet. Now, since it's one of the kind with the clear plastic fronts, and I can see, with my own eyes, not one, not two, but -three- full 20oz bottles sitting -right- -there-... Grrr. So, I get a can. I start feeling a little sorry for myself, think, hey, some Raisinets would be nice. So I feed in the money, punch the buttons, the little screw turns... -half a revolution-. And, it's the last one on the rack.

Blech. I hope the repairman contracts this awful hacking gunk I've got from where I coughed on the machine. Bastard's not doing his job.

On the other hand, the muse made me type this:

SS:TY TSWLiTHGL


The arterial halls of Babylon Three were three full stories, nine meters from
floor to ceiling. This one ran the full length of the four and a half mile
station, connecting the power reactors at one end to the docking bays at the
other. Along each of its walls were two balconies, one above the other, and
either of them broader than some planetary streets. The balconies, and the
floor below them, were crowded with shops, ranging from four star restauraunts
that set up shop and took over the breadth of the hallway save for a narrow
walkway safely to one side to tiny one man pushcarts with a few hundred credits'
wares, balanced precariously at balcony's edge, with only the waist-height
railing keeping shop and owner from tumbling down two stories onto the heads
of passersby below.

Wares of all sorts were on display, and their owners' sales techniques varied
from the patient angling of a sport fisherman to the high-energy, high contact
pouncing of a great cat. It was the monthly festival day, and the shops in their
profusion were swathed in finery of varying styles and wildly divergent levels
of quality, price, and good taste.

Through it all wandered two women, one short and trim, dressed in a large,
mantle-like coat and a pair of thick rimmed spectacles, with her nose firmly
planted in a book. She seemed as though she might have been pretty, even
stunning, if she had taken the time to make even those simple concessions to
style and grooming that were part of most people's daily lives. As it was,
she had a sort of distracted, happy glow to her - the sort of contentment that
told the observer that here was a person too absorbed in her passions to
waste time on the frivolities of a social existence.

Focused and disheveled as she was, she might still have drawn admiring looks
were it not for her companion, a tall, commanding creature whose obvious
athleticism had failed to dim the effects of what nature - or perhaps man's
artifice, for one could never know - had intended to be a spectacular figure.
Her face was pretty, but not exceptionally so - chin and cheekbones both
a little to strong for classic beauty, but again the discerning girlwatcher
would have noted that a little attention and a little makeup - for she wore
none - would have made that face quite the sight indeed.

They were on their way to a ship, or so it would be surmised from their
luggage - the shorter woman dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with one
hand while the other held her massive hardcover open before her, and the taller
held a pair of heavy-duty shopping bags in one hand and had a spacer's roomy
duffelbag slung over the other shoulder. Neither of these encumbrancers stopped
her from making up and more for her companion's disintrist in her surroundings,
her head turning this way and that like a birds, eyes wide and smile bright and
innocent as a child's.

"Ne, Yomiko," she said, bending over a little to poke her companion in the
shoulder. Dressed as she was, in jeans and a too-large cotton top, the view
from ahead as gravity had its way with her neckline was inspiring, and the
cluster of young men standing around a nearby coffee counter made due notice.
"What gate were they s'posed to be at, again?"

Yomiko Readman, as the shorter woman could now be firmly identified, blinked
and checked the scribbles across the back of her new bookmark. "Fifteen."

"Cool! It's right over there!" She pointed.

"Um, Nancy," Yomiko said, squinting at the sign, "I think that that's 1-S.
Remember the map?"

"Oh, yeah. Fifteen was around the bend, wasn't it? But we're close!" Indeed,
just ahead of them the massive longitudinal corridor met one of the ring halls
that circled just under the outside of the docking area.

As they made their way there, they passed the coffee shop, with its attendant
gaggle of male admirers. One of them, who by his balance had perhaps been
adulterating his bean-based caffinated beverage with a drug of a different
family and history entirely - a depressant, possibly, and likely also grain
based - reached a hand in an attempt to become further acquainted with the
scenery that had so enraptured him mere moments earlier.

His fingers, at the instant they should have met fabric, instead passed easily
through both cloth and whatever lay beyond it - producing a soft white light
at the interface and a peculiar tingling feeling in the limb, as though he had
stuck his hand into a body-temperature carbonate beverage.

She cocked her head at him as the adrenaline surged through his body and he yanked
his - fortunately unhurt - hand back as though he'd grabbed a hot coal. "You really
shouldn't do that," she said in a tone that brought to mind the solemn five year
old chastising her uncle after he'd stolen one of the fresh backed cookies straight
from where it was cooling on the pan. "It's not nice."

Admit it, that part was due to your craving for Diet at the time.

Still, the fragment is, as Ash would say, Groovy.

Oh my. Ash. That ... spawned some interesting associations. He'd certainly fill fandom demand for an old school bad-ass, wouldn't he?


-Griever

'In the words of an old acquaintance of mine ... one hundred! *sound of brass catcher being emptied*'

>Admit it, that part was due to your craving for Diet at
>the time.

Actually, no. I really do sort of imagine her phasing trick as causing this funky tingling feeling when two human bodies 'interact', and of -course- it's at body temperature.

>Still, the fragment is, as Ash would say, Groovy.

I've never seen those movies. Which is sad, I know. But that line still gives me Reboot flashbacks!

>Oh my. Ash. That ... spawned some interesting
>associations. He'd certainly fill fandom demand for an
>old school bad-ass, wouldn't he?

In spades, I should think.

Hmm... zombies...

Blessed be.
-n
(Klaatu... verataa...)

>I've never seen those movies. Which is sad, I know. But that line still gives me Reboot flashbacks!<

I've only seen 'Army of Darkness' myself, and the one thing I learned is this -

A good plot isn't really needed if you get the presentation just right. And the boomstick quote just tends to stick to ya.

And as for zombies ... well, we have enough possible sources for those, don't we? Aside from alien intelligences and such, Umbrella exists (at least it should). Heck, there are plenty of megacorps we could write in as the baddies in sub-arcs. The one from Guyver for example (haven't seen it, just know the rep).

And if that angle doesn't deliver zombie-type cannon fodder, we can always do the old fashioned thing and have some smalltime fall-guy stumble upon a Necromancer's Grimoire(sp?) and start creating an undead army. Cliche, yes, but again - sometimes it's the presentation that counts.

And yes, I'm rambling for some reason ... oh, that's right, I missed breakfast, and dinner, and it's about six in the evening over here. Oh well.

-Griever
'Braaains .... errr ... I meant fooood'