The Cube

The man held forward the cube, the side for Earth facing them, and the symbol began to glow. They all looked at Earth, as suddenly glowing bands appeared around her wrist, and her arms began to raise into the air. "Wha- what is this?" she stammered, panicking, and tried to back away, but her amrs remained fixed in the air at the position of the wrists, still moving on their own. Lines of energy began to flow out of the bands along her fingers and up her arms, and they all looked back at the Bearer, who began to laugh, as he brought his free hand forard, holding it above the Cube.

"You fools," he said as he continued laughing, "do you really thing you can go against the will of the Cube?" From his hands, strings of light appeared to descend into the Cube, and as he began to move them with his fingers Earth suddenly screamed out, and when they looked back at her she was clearly in pain as her arms were being stretched in a way they wouldn't be naturally. She continued struggling to pull away, pushing backwards against the ground, until she was no longer able to. Panicking, she looked down at her feet, and then shook her head worringly.

"Stop this now," Water said, holding out his hand to blast the man with water, but before the spray could go forward the floor in front of him raised up, blocking the shot. The raised floor then broke apart, and flew forward toward him. He ran forward toward it instead of dodging it, and jumped up onto it as a platform to jump up to the ceiling. He punched through the drop tile, grabbing onto pipes above it, and then suddenly the sprinklers all came to life, pouring down water. "Now then," he said, "I believe I said stop."

He looked down to Air and nodded, and she nodded in return. She then held her hands up, and a fierce wind started blowing in the room, swirling around and gathering up the water from the sprinkler, preventing it from falling to the ground. She then clenched her hands together, and it all converged on the Bearer, who held up his free arm to shield his face from the onslaught. As he did this, Water then reached down with his free hand and undid his shoelaces, and loosened his boots. He lifted one leg backward and then kicked it forward, sending the boot flying toward the Bearer, but missing. He then did it again with the other boot, hitting the cube and knocking it out of his hand.

Earth fell to the ground, and Fire ran over to help her up. As he went to touch her, though, a shock ran through his body, and he pulled back. "Uh uh," the Bearer said in mocking response, bending down to pick up the Cube. Water jumped down to the floor and began to run forward to attack him, but from his sleeve a small metal bearing rolled into his hand, which he tossed forward toward Water. Once it hit him, he stopped moving, frozen in place, and the ball fell to the floor. "That was a little clever," the Bearer said, picking up the Cube and holding his hand up to it once again, the strings of light reappearing. "I wasn't expecting to get a shoe thrown at me, anyway."

He moved his hand, and Earth stood to her feet, then stepped forward and grabbed at Fire. He tried to get free of her grab, but, enhanced by whatever spell the Cube held her in, her strength was much more than he was expecting, and he was unable to overcome it. "I will admit, though," the Bearer continued, "puppetry was never a strong suit of mine, and trying to control her is proving to be more work than I thought it would be." Air ran over to try and help pull him free, and Fire watched as the Bearer put his hand down on the top of the Cube, and the strings fell down from his fingers. The Bearer reached into his pocket, and as he pulled his hand back out Fire could see several more of the small metal bearings in it, which he through forward at the three of them, hitting the three of them.

Water was the first to be able to move again, finding himself locked in a small metal cage. He could see nothing else in the room, the only light a beam coming from above him which illuminated nothing else. He tried holding his hands up to use his power, but the bars of the cell began to glow, and he realized it was engineered to absorb his power. "Bearer," he decided to shout instead, "are you out there? Show yourself!" The response was simply a laugh, and three additional lights came to life around him, revealing his other three companions, who were still frozen and each in their own cage.

"Very nice tools," came the Bearer's voice, from somewhere in front of him. "I'm glad I saved these little balls." Laughter filled the air again, and a new light came on, illuminating the Bearer. In one hand he held the Cube, and in the other hand he held a remote, which was pointed toward the ceiling, controlling the lights Water guessed. Gasps of air came from his side, and he looked over and saw the other three had unfrozen as well. "And now that you're all awake again, we can move this into its next phase." He pointed the remote to the ground next to him, and a platform opened up, revealing something as it rose from the ground.

"What is that?" Fire asked, as a light came on over the rising platform. Upon it was a column, with a board atop it showing a large grid of gold wires. Water frowned, not expecting this move. As far as he was aware, this was supposed to be destroyed, and the company had made a cheap imitiation for its minimum effect. Seeing it again after so many years made things so much worse. Although, as he thought about it further, perhaps it was a good thing taht it was still around after all.

"That," Water said, "is the Pedestal. It is used to bring out the full power of the Cube. And with both in his control, the world is doomed."

Date posted: 18 December, 2011
Tags: regularspelling the_grand_game writing

The Bearer

The car raced loud, wild, down the highway through the dead of night, as they hurried franticly to their destination. The meeting between the four had been, she thought, a success, as Water explained to the other two what exactly had happened to the two of them those fifteen years ago, before the collapse of the dot-coms ended the Grand Game and dropped the Cube in the hands of their 'employers'.

Those same employers, now, were in danger. The frantic call they received from a secretary, that the Bearer had come back to attack the facility led to this urgency. They were expecting it, of course, but the timing of the attack couldn't have come at a worse time, with them all far from the facility. "Calm yourself," Water said to her, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Get us there quickly, but do not kill us in the process."

"So this man," Fire said from the back seat, still trying to grasp it all, not having known prior to his appearance about any of this before the other three. "This 'Bearer', you call him?" The others nodded in agreement. "If he wasn't part of the arrangement before, where did he come from now?" The cabin of the car was silent, somber for a while, nobody sure how to reply to the question.

"He came to us," Earth finally said, quietly, "about six months ago. And old mystic and tycoon, who had claimed prior knowledge of the Cube and its workings. He wanted to invest in us in exchange for part of the profits, claiming to have invested in some new alternative energy technologies that would need some field demonstrations in certain weather conditions in order to show their effectiveness."

"Like a fool," Water continued, crossness echoed in his voice, "of course the management jumped on it. Mesmerised, most likely, by those fiery black eyes of his, they ate the whole thing up. The Cube I'm sure is the real culprit, grabbing control of the man and placing him in as its own pawn in the game." He turned and handed Fire some papers, which as he glanced through them he discovered to be false identities. "Ever since Air and I learned the Cube was still around we had been planning, waiting, for the time to plant false identities needed to infiltrate the company and get involved, so we could settle it. However, we were not yet ready, when this Bearer showed up."

The car jerked for a moment, as it quickly veered onto a nearly missed onramp, and Water placed his hand on Air's shoulder to once again try to calm her. After a few moments they were steadied, and the car continued down another highway, and Water turned back to the two in the rear again. "So then," Fire asked, handing back the papers to Water, who returned them to the glove compartment he pulled them from. "If this whole thing is normally supposed to be 'planned', than what exactly was the plan supposed to be before this old man decided to change the rules?"

"All four of us would have been employees of the company," Earth said, explaning. "The rule is that none of us are supposed to know each other, and we are each given our own set of instructions that we follow. The Cube's system requires us to play against each other competitvely, and we're each given a master goal that all convene in one location so that only one can be victorious, and the winner gets a large bonus in our checks to give us the motivation to move." She paused, started searching her pockets for something, but wasn't able to find what it was and so gave up. "My main instructions, written around the false inventions of the Bearer, was mainly some geothermal experiments and some testing against fault lines for advanced earthquake prediction."

Fire nodded, then turned to Water, expectantly, but he just shrugged. "As we never had any intention of actually participating in the game, neither Air nor I actually paid attention to our orders. The blizzard in your city was our responsibility, yes, while we were trying to hinder the movements of the Bearer who had gone into that area. And we captured Earth there, who started before either of us, so we could stop her from causing an earthquake on the west coast she would have ended up losing control of and causing huge devastation."

Fire gave Earth a surprised look, and Earth looked away. "Water calculated the effect himself," Air said over her shoulder, "after stealing the effect study plans that they had given her in her assignment. Their calculations were completely wrong, and the whole San Andreas could have slipped in a huge chain reaction." Earth said nothing, and the car suddenly sped forward. "We're here. Hold on, security's down, we're crashing through the gate."

They all braced themselves as they slammed into the gate, the impact shaking them slightly, then falling forward and under them causing them to shake much more violently as they went over the poles. The ride then continued to be violent and shaking all over as the drive over the barbed wire seemed to pop someof the tires, as Air struggled to keep the car in control at the high speed and not roll them all over. "Hold on," she said, as the glass front entrance to the building came up on them swiftly, the car slowing but clearly not going to be stopping before going to the doors.

The car burst through, bulletproof glass slowing them somewhat but finally giving way, and the car finished skidding to a stop in the front lobby, amazingly not flipping. They all climbed out of the car, covered in bruises from the violent ride but nothing broken, and they looked over the lobby. Nobody there was injured from their crash, as it became evident to them that they were already all dead before they got there. "Well, well, well," came a voice from around a hallway corner, followed by some clapping. From around the hall stepped the old man, hair and face trimmed and wearing a nice suit, and bearing off one shoulder a messenger bag. "Now our four players are together, here, and the game can truly begin." He smiled, and reached into the bag, then pulled out the Cube. "But, I'm afraid, it's not going to go for you the way you want it to."

Date posted: 27 November, 2011
Tags: regularspelling the_grand_game writing

Too Crazy To Make Up

So I've gone into before how I seem to remember my dreams a lot more than other people do. And because of it I can share them a lot more often, which tends to get people wondering if I experiment with drugs and such. No, I don't, I can safely say, I just dream a lot of crazy stuff. Less often I get accused of just making things up, but frankly, a lot of this stuff is just too out there to make up. Now, usually the longer dreams I can remember have a storyline that can be used by me in things, so I don't share them, but sometimes I have long dreams that have no value to me storyline wise, they're just too strange to be of value other than amusement. Last night was one such dream. 

So the dream started out with me wanting to go explore the ruins of an ancient Japanese castle, which was in the mountains to the north west of where i was when it started, but my starting point was against faces that were too steep to climb, so I had to approach it from a different angle. So, after dealing something with a cat trying to poop in my shoes instead of a litter box there, I set out to the northeast, to head up and circle around and approach it from further north. I ended up coming to this theme park that was styled after YouTube celebrities and memes, and got distracted there for a while.

After finally getting out of YouTube land, I ran into a couple friends of mine, who also heard of the castle and heard rumor that they could each get some of some secret treasure there. I didn't believe them, nor care about treasure because I wanted to go there just for the exploration, but I decided to get back on course together with them. At that point we had to go through a bunch of residential neighborhoods that didn't have cross roads, and so had to cut through people's yards. One of the yards we ended up cutting through proved to belong to Charles Schultz's wife, and she brought us into her house to show us some things. As we were leaving a cuckoo clock on her wall began to go off, and she started complaining that it happened all the time, so I took a minute to stop to fix the clock.

While I did my friends ditched me and continued on, leaving me alone again when I left. She was glad I fixed the clock, and so gave me some rare work by Charles in gratitude that she had there. I continued on cutting through some more yards, then coming to the house of Alan Thicke, who invited me in. It turned out he apparently had started taking culinary traning after the turn of the century, and so he invited me to join he and his wife for dinner to try some new dish he came up with, while we all sat talking about movies and TV shows he did in the 90s. I then left and continued on, where yet again I was stopped by someone, who turned out to be some other childrens book author (couldn't remember who that one is), who asked me for some other help and gave me a loaf of french bread for my trouble. 

Once I finally got out of the neighborhoods, I started coming across convenience stores and a Wal-mart, and a smaller outpost version of the castle I was going to see, where I came across some of the Pokemon players local to SLC doing stuff. I called up my friend on my cell phone to complain about them ditching me, and he was saying something about not making it to the castle and he was flying through the air, and then had to go. Not sure what he meant, I continued on now that I was to the mountains, and hiked up to where the castle was.

When I finally got there, it turned out the castle wasn't abandoned at all, but was still very much occupied, and there was a rickety wooden bridge leading out to it over a hole that was disguised as the ground. As I started heading out to it I ran into Keine Kamishirasawa and Fujiwara no Mokou there, as well as some priest guarding the way to the path in the middle of the bridge. As I started walking across it Keine ran off yelling at someone else, and so I ignored her and spoke to the priest. The priest explained that the castle was only accessible to those with good intentions, and my friends would have been disqualified, but since I had no care for the rumors of the treasure and just wanted to explore it for the ruins themselves, and had proof of my good works in the form of the bread and memorobilia I had gotten from my earlier visits, that I was deemed acceptible to visit it and could continue passing. At that point Mokou came up to me to tell me something, but before she could start my alarm clock went off and I woke up.

As I sad, too crazy to make up.

Date posted: 07 September, 2011
Tags: dream

Movie Mini-Review Roundup II

Here's the latest roundup of movies I've watched since last time.

twilight zone: the movie
twilight zone the movie is basically a collection of adaptations of four different twilight zone episodes, with several directors. first sequence was pretty good, second sequence was kind of meh, third sequence was great, and the last sequence was okay. and for some random trivia, the last sequence, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, starred John Lithgow in this adaptation, and William Shatner in the original episode, and they both make reference to it when they're together on screen much later in 3rd Rock From The Sun

mad max 2
The Road Warrior is the 2nd of the Mad Max films, and usually rated the best by most critics. I thought it was very solid, really enjoyed it.

sin city
Sin City was kind of a weird film to watch, jumping around in the story between different things pretty abruptly. visually its pretty intriguing, mostly in black and white with some innovative color additions. 

a view to a kill
a view to a kill i ended up thinking was a rather bland bond film compared to some of the others. not the worst I've seen by far (*coughMOONRAKERcough*), but it didnt really jump out at me much. also it took me until halfway through the movie to realize that was Christopher Walken in it.

ghost rider
Ghost Rider I thought wasnt bad, I thought. Cage did a fairly decent job at the role. I know nothing of the comic so cant make any comparisons to it. 

highlander 
Highlander was the original film of a series that, apparently according to critics, got progressively worse in each iteration until Search for Vengeance. I thought this was a fairly decent film in and of itself. has Sean Connery in it too.

highlander search for vengeance
Search for Vengeance is where I first actually started looking into the series (although I watched the original Highlander before this one), based on this viral video. this was a fairly decent film as well, and as mentioned before something many critics view as the best addition to the series since the original film. 

the crow: salvation
I decided to give this one a try because it has a better rating than city of angels did. I thought this one was okay, better than the 2nd one yes, but one thing that did bug me was that this one supposedly takes place here in SLC, but nothing of the movie actually looks like SLC. the one after this has a grand 0 rating on rottentomatoes so I wont be watching that one  apparently there's no actual trailer for this film, I was thinking it was because it was direct to video but there is a trailer in existence for the one after this once

nothing
despite the appearance of the trailer, this movie is actually a comedy , and another film by Natali with David Hewlett and Andrew Miller (Natali himself describes it as "the comic flipside" of Cube). this was pretty funny to watch 

gran torino
this was a really great movie, is all I really have to say on the matter. 

fast five
fast five was okay, apparently with it theyre trying to turn the series into a heist action film series, and this was the transition film for it. seeing Dwayne and Vin duke it out was pretty awesome to watch tho

unknown
hey look, its Liam Neeson being an awesome character once again. after having his daughter taken from him, this time his own identity has been taken from him. 

serenity
Serenity's the ending to the cancelled TV series Firefly, so its probly best to watch that to really know all of what's going on in Serenity. but its a great film, and a great ending to the series, although with recent rumors of a new television channel wanting to revive the series certain things in this film will make it interesting to try to move on with the series. 

the bourne identity
Bourne Identity is the beginning of a series on this character (a trilogy of films, and currently 9 novels) about the ex-CIA assassin. was pretty interesting to watch, I'll have to watch the sequels too. 

being john malkovich
being john malkovich I decided to watch on a whim from something I saw on the internet. film was very amusing to watch, and also incredibly weird.

millennium
millenium I originally came across on IMDB a few years ago looking for a different time travel movie, and didnt think I'd ever end up seeing because it was never given a DVD release. but surprisingly, it showed up on Netflix, and I thought it was rather interesting to watch. 

frequency
Frequency's another time travel movie which turned up on the IMDB search I mentioned before, and the particulars way it works in this movie seemed a pretty novel concept and so I was really interested. overall i thought it was really good

streets of fire
this was an okay movie overall, good music, but the pacing of the story seemed incredibly rushed. was originally supposed to be the first of a trilogy, but it fell apart in box office (not even making back its budget) so they cancelled it. it was up against Star Trek III at its opening though so that could be part of why

uzumaki
this is a japanese live action film adapting a comic by one of japan's most well known horror writers. what stuck out to me more than anything else tho was this directors odd obsession with shooting straight on shots of people, which I found rather distracting. only covers about 1/3 of the story because it was still being drawn at the time the film was going, so they had to make up things on their own at the end

summer wars
this seemingly lighthearted movie quickly becomes Live Free or Die Hard the anime in some aspects. was really interesting to watch

Date posted: 04 September, 2011
Tags: movies

Tabula Rasa - Bonus Round

So my last unemployment threw my upgrade cycle all out of whack, leaving my desktop from 2005 only just replaced earlier this year and me not having done my notebook upgrade yet, which it needs as it is failing and now out of warranty. Normally, when I go on vacations, I like to spend my free time relaxing and working on things on my notebook. Given its state, it wasn't going to be the best of ideas for my vacation to San Diego this year. Now, in the mean time, this year I made the jump into smartphones with my LG Quantum, so I thought perhaps I'd try something new this year: tabula rasa - clean slate, as in a slate/tablet device as partner to my smartphone, clean and progressive operating from the cloud. So, thanks to the gracious lending of a Viewsonic G Tablet device by one of the Notebook Forums members, I went to California with WP7 in one hand, and Android in the other.

One of the biggest problems the tablet market has is finding somewhere to fit. People have powerful phones, and powerful desktops, and the tablets fit in an in-between that most people don't need. My main desire for them is an actual need for a middle bridge, where my phone doesn't give me enough space for what I need to do, but it would be too inconvenient to boot up my computer to do the task. A tablet, for me, would be a good idea, which is why I went for the idea. Now it worked... somewhat. WP7 operates on SkyDrive, and thanks to the SoRaMi client Android can sync with SkyDrive. QuickOffice on Android allowed me to work with my documents in DocX format (which I needed to convert things form ODF to in order to use in Office 2010 on WP7).  However, at the end of the day, the idea didn't pan out so well in practice, for one particular reason: typing.

I will make note that up until now, except for a few additions to the above paragraphs, I typed that all on my phone. And I can do with my phone what I could not do with the tablet, because the LG Quantum has a hardware keyboard. I grew up typing on Commodore 64 and IBM Model M keyboards, and I am a touch typist, I don't look at the keyboard to know what I'm typing, except when I need to replace my hands (I didn't learn to type with the "home row" system, my hands instead move rather differently, so I need to reset myself when I move my hands away or I end up typing all sorts of gibberish as my hands are going through the motion on the wrong keys). With my phone, I have the feedback of the keys being pressed, and can feel them under my fingers to know I'm in the right place. For all but the simplest things, I use the keyboard instead of the softkeys, because for me it is faster. But with the G Tablet, there was no such benefit for me. I had to look at the keys, or else I would miss. And that's with the special split keyboard the ROM I was using had (VEGAn-TAB GingerEdition), I imagine the regular keyboard would have been even worse for me to use.

And that's the way it goes. I pretty much got no writing done the whole trip, because I just could not function with that soft keyboard. I need the feedback in order to type, I need to feel what and where I'm pressing. So now I'm left with a decision about whether to move on with getting a tablet or not. If I do, at the very least, I will need some sort of keyboard attachment to do serious work on it, such as the dock for the Eee Pad Transformer (which is what I was planning on getting before this mess came up). For your amusement, if you want to see how bad it was, you can click on the following link to read the previous entry as I wrote it on the tablet, giving up on trying to correct things: http://www.regularspelling.com/images/blogentry.txt

Date posted: 24 August, 2011
Tags: