5 Time of Darkness

Legends tell of a "Time of Darkness" that descends upon the world once every 50,000 years. The recent discovery of an ancient manuscript by archaeologist Gabriel Lancaster leads him into a time of psychological darkness in an attempt to discover whether the legend is true.

***

Gabriel was starting to feel tired. He looked at the clock to see it was 2.40 a.m. and he had been pouring over documents since early morning, fueled only by large amounts of tea. He rubbed his eyes, closed the book in front of him and walked over to his chair. Dropping back, he yawned, pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

The link he was looking for was tantalizingly close. There had to be a way of connecting the old Eleusinian Mysteries with the New Orleans Psychoanalytical Association. Before he died, Professor Francis Haldeman had said something about Persephone. What was it?

"Gabe," he said,"I can't give you all the details over the phone because I think I'm being bugged. But the 'Persephone Connection' is real, as real as you and I. We'll meet in Pittsburgh next week and I'll give you a copy of the document. Trust me, it's bigger than anything you've come across before."

That was the last he'd heard from Haldeman. Three days later, the Psychoanalytical world had been shocked by his brutal murder, particularly with the savagery of the attack. Murders happen all the time, but this one was ritualistic in the extreme. The police has suspected that the killer was a patient, or ex-patient, of Haldeman, but nothing had been found.

All Lancaster knew was that he never received the 'Persephone Connection' document, and by all accounts, neither had the murder squad investigators. So if he couldn't read the document, he had to reconstruct it from Haldeman's past. For the next few weeks, he had to become Haldeman and reinvent the conspiracy. He had to find Persephone.

 Click to download "Time of Darkness"

4 Foolish Kisses

For those who like their movies in a lighter vein, this sex comedy tells of the struggles of four friends living in San Francisco trying to hold together relationships that are foundering on the rocks of sexuality. The film follows each character as he or she tries to find the perfect partner - or partners!

***

Claire felt guilty about the dream she'd had about Miriam. But then again, Claire was a master of Guilt having been raised as a Catholic and having had to endure that most special of religious punishments - the All-Girls Catholic School. The Jesuits used to say "Give me the child until he's 7 and I will give you the man." In Claire's case, it was more of "Give me the child until she's 7 and I will give you enough neurotic guilt to enable Sigmund Freud to write a three-volume case study.

There was also a certain irony in that the object of her guilt was Miriam, whose Jewish upbringing made her just as much a slave to guilt as Claire. A good test of what would happen if the Immovable Object came against the Irresistible Force would be to put a group of Catholics in a room with a group of Jews and have them try to decide who was the more guilty. Throw in the notion of sexuality and both of them could be arguing well after the Second Coming has been, gone, sold the T-shirts and restarted the Universe in the next Big Bang.

The exact reason for the guilt was unclear. After all, thought Claire, it's only a dream and I can't control my dreams. But that argument didn't wash. A Dream is just a Wish, and a Wish is a Desire, and a Desire is wrong if it leads to any sort of pleasure. And what Claire had been doing with Miriam in her fantasy would have been erotic enough to result in the film censors setting fire to the celluloid. If only she'd not included the baby oil, whipped cream and six feet of rope.

Click here to download "Foolish Kisses"

3 Eurorail Adventure

Cal and Hal have just three weeks to cross Europe in order to win a contest with a prize of 5 million dollars. With only 10 dollars each and a change of clothes, they have to visit nine cities and collect a souvenir from each to prove they've been there. Unfortunately, their obsessions for drinking and women keep getting in the way! Will they win the money, or find something better?

***

Cal had about as much chance of scoring with Danielle as a psychotic killer with a machete has of becoming a childcare specialist; perhaps even less. She had the sort of looks that would make a Supermodel want to go out and have more plastic surgery, and wore the sort of clothes that the same Supermodel could only borrow for a photoshoot. Still, Cal was convinced he had a chance.

"Dude," said Hal, "she really wants you. I mean, she is so hot for you that even I'm getting horny!"

"Yeah man," slurred Cal, "she's, like, totally into me. It's like Karma."

Cal really meant to say "kismet," but vocabulary was never one of his strong points. To be brutally honest, although English was ostensibly his first language, he seemed to have invented a new language all of his own. Compared to Cal, a Neanderthal would be considered erudite. Somehow, he had managed to make do without the necessity to divide words into Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives, opting instead for randomly tossing words together based on which ones made it into his mouth first.

And like a pair of twins who make their own secret language, Cal and Hal had managed to linguistically cut themselves off from the rest of the world at large while maintaining the delusion that other people could understand them. One Englishman had spent three hours on a train station listening to them make noises, convinced that his inability to comprehend what they were saying was due to his hearing aid being faulty, and, being English, he felt it would be bad manners to excuse himself. By skillfully making noncommittal grunts and random head nods, he succeeded in convincing the guys that he was totally enthralled by their wit and charm. Fortunately, the train eventually arrived and he terminated the conversation by throwing himself under it.

"OK dude," said Cal, "this is it. The Cal-Man strikes!"

Pushing his chair back slowly, Cal stood up and started making his way across the cafe for his date with Destiny. But in his effort to look totally cool, he failed to notice that between him and his target was Danielle's poodle. God was most certainly not on his side, but Beelzebub clearly was...

 Click to download "Eurorail Adventure"

2 April Fool's Day

The story is familiar; a humanoid robot is on the loose and needs to be stopped. The twist is that the robot isn't aware that it's a robot and has become the President of the United States of America! Furthermore, the FBI and the CIA have no idea who the robot is, only that on April 1st, 2004, it will explode with the force of a small nuclear bomb.

Brandon Denver reached for the phone, still shaking his head at the text on his computer screen that he had just spent hours pulling together. Quickly, he punched the number of his partner, Kelly O'Clair.

"Hey Kel, it's Denny."

"Denny? Why'd you take so long to get back to me? I've been worried."

Brandon tipped back in his chair and looked over the screen, hoping to find something new but knowing it was unlikely.

"Sorry Babe, but you're not going to believe what I've discovered about our friend on the Washington flight. Seems that it he didn't board the plane at La Guardia."

"But that's impossible," said O'Clair, "I watched him board myself."

Brandon gave a small snicker.

"Well, according to airport security records, he didn't."

There was a moments hesitation before O'Clair replied.

"So how did he do that? Who is he? David Copperfield?"

"That's something we still don't know. All we do know is that he isn't exactly leaving a paper trail behind him as he moves. It's like trying to play chess when you don't know where all the pieces are." He paused for effect, then continued. "Seems like we have something of a mystery to solve, Nancy Drew!"

 Click to download "April Fool's Day"

1 Dreamer of Dreams

Sometimes we have to remember that an adult is simply a child who has learned some grown-up behaviors. Being accused of being "childish" is often a complement. Fairy tales, myths, urban legends, nursery rhymes - the power of these comes from the way in which they appeal to our Inner Child, that Id-driven creature as yet unencumbered by the the straitjacket of civilization.

Movies can also appeal to our simpler instincts. The Critic can often spend too much time dissecting a film rather than willing suspend disbelief to become immersed in an alternative reality. The same can be true of Music, that magical weaving of Sounds into a spell that can enchant us all.

This homage to one of my favorite films, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, helps me to remember never to grow up.

 Click to download "Dreamer of Dreams"

Soundtrackz in Search of Moviez

A few short years ago, I put together an album entitled Soundtrackz in Search of Moviez. Why the title? Because each song had a snippet from a potential movie attached to it. In my dreams, some Hollywood producer would stumble across the stories and ask me to write ten movies, thereby catapulting me into the stratosphere of fame and wealth.

Well, I'm still waiting. So here, in hope, is an encore presentation of the entire album. Over the next few blog entries, you can collect all ten and burn your own album. Oh, and although I do play piano and guitar on the tracks, I don't sing. That doesn't mean I can't - but SISOM was always intended to be an instumental dance/trance affair.

Sunday Afternoon and a Belated Posting

The pressure to produce a blog posting on a daily posting can be moderately stressful; particularly so for those of us who might be described as "driven." I was beginning to feel guilty that it has been almost a week since my last post, and even if no-one is reading (a truth the egotistical blogger can find impossible to contemplate) I have a deep urge to produce something.

I forget that I also have a real life to live, with my job sucking up around 50 hours per week, my SL writing taking up maybe another 5 - 10 hours, and actually doing some SL living grabs another chunk. To then find time to write about what I've been doing is challenging.

So here I am on Sunday afternoon writing up an interview with a guy by the name of Zaplock Riggles, the creator/designer of the Tip Master system for clubs. Like many Second Lifers, Zaplock spends his week working in the Real World, only to "relax" by working in the Second! The boundary between SL and RL has become so thin that I have added a new Task designation to my PDA - Second Life. Now I get reminded when a SL deadline is due so the deadline for next edition of FreeLife magazine is 14th May, in-world conference on Languages in Second Life on May 23rd, a virtual job fair on May 29th, and there's a list of other interviews that need to be completed.

It seems to me that in reality - and there's another slippery word for yah - posting once a week would be a success in itself. Maybe I am too hard on myself.