Romilly John SFF

Science Fiction is my Roman Empire. Knowingly nerdy. Writer-in-training. Team Marmite: Yes, please! Insta: @romilly_sff

[romilly-jay]

Searching for Inspiration

I'm in the g-a-p. It's a familiar space, if not specifically with 'creative' writing ('creative' in '' in case future me, on stumbling across this, has somehow forgotten the ten years of part-time academic study that is ghost-shouting at the back of my psyche that ALL WRITING IS CONSTRUCTED AND THEREFORE AT SOME LEVEL A CREATION).

Something has ended. The next something has not quite begun. In a spirit of inquiry closely akin to lacking confidence that I'll ever commit to another project, I'm casting about for inspiration.

Looking for something to latch onto. Clutching. And, on balance, providing I don't take any of it too seriously - am not TOO desperate to commit - it's a fun, frothy, inconsequential and perhaps-hopefully-eventually generative mode of being.

Yesterday, for example, without having planned it when I left the house, I ended up in the National Gallery. [Dared to hope that early afternoon would mean I could walk straight in - and was proved right YAY.]

Partly - to look at paintings (and marvel at the crazy richness of the collection that I, with so little forethought/investment/planning could just... walk past, stand in front of, wonder about, photograph...). Partly to see if the elusive Next Idea wanted to whisper to me from a gilded frame. (As far as I know - it didn't.) Partly to watch people looking.

Enjoyed all of these - eerie Hammershoi, Not Van Gogh, Recently Acquired Degas, and imagining of Don Quixote - but don't THINK any of these is going to end up as my story. (Don Quixote of course is already someone else's story...) Tonally - the Hammershoi, perhaps?

And something else I've done is to take some books out of the library.

I have very fond, childhood memories of my local library - as a treasure trove of glittering excitement hidden inside an unprepossessing single-storey building, standing alone on the outskirts of what I would have called a village but which is now classed as a town, edged by carparks. [I remember it as grey but the pic I've just googled has it as red brick.]

I also have a clear memory of one of the middle-aged librarians leaning over, when I was in my peak Mills-and-Boons borrowing phase, fixing me with a stare and saying, "Real life's not like that, you know".

I - did not know. But the experience I had with those books - drawn to the appealingly lowbrow subject and tone, occasionally delighted when the premise delivers on its promise, more usually losing hope by the middle of chapter three and at best mildly entertained by the ending - seems to have spilled over to become the experience I now have with books more generally.

You see, when the format worked, it WORKED. Writing this stirred memories of Jilly Cooper's fabulous thin novels from before her Riders / Rivals era (which were equally entertaining but Too Much for Then-Me) and of Georgette Heyer's fabulous, deliciously costumed, acerbically voiced, wittily delivered, thin genre-spawning Regency Romances. Looking back, I realise that I was looking, each time, for a replication-with-variation of these two IMO geniuses [sorry, I can't with 'genii'] and that was too much to ask of Yer Regular Mortals. But I kept trying.

Method:

Borrow library book. **Check**

Read library book. **Often where the problem begins**

These days, I went back to the library as a way of not having to BUY the book I wanted to read - but of course libraries are under-funded and attention spans are short, so most of the time, the libraries don't have the latest Thing I've seen promoted to me on the socials and if they do, there's a queue as long as the waitlist to book tickets for [say, Glasto?] and my tried-and-tested method for dealing with long queues is: give up immediately and try to convince myself I wasn't interested, anyway.

Thing is:

I'm *quite* (and increasingly) picky about the quality of the language - in this respect, I suppose I'm more suited for literary-style fiction

but I find most literary fiction insufferable. (This is, *definitely* a ME problem. I know that. I admire people who have the appetite for the kinds of plotting and characters that - it seems to me - are the penance endured for the sake of the unquestionably skilled constructions and flawlessly voiced sentences. I do not wish to pick fights by whispering my suspicion that literary fiction also has its weaknesses. Probably the very best examples - ones I've almost certainly heard of and very probably have not read - do not suffer from any of these issues and perhaps - just maybe! - the imitations do? You know... Lack of plot. A writerly infatuation with the cleverness of the work. A perceived tendency to write nasty people who live nasty lives and where the driving force of the plot takes them to a payoff that ends NASTILY.)

I love genre fiction ideas. Plots. Problems. Tropes. Characters. But - language and execution. Less so. Generally very materially less.

(It's me. It's still me. Still all me. Soooo fussy. Soooo untrusting. So prone to waver in front of bookshelves longing for the next Great Read and expecting, instead, some flavour of disappointment.)

I get it. I GET IT. I'm somehow both quirky and demanding. Demanding and sensitive. Sensitive and fond of ambivalence. Fond of ambivalence but wanting to ensure a de minimus outcome for every character I'm invested in. Heck, I don't even especially want to read Just Deserts (desserts???!) being meted out on the Baddies. Of which there are generally several in the kinds of books I am prepared to have a go with.

So - imagine my delight and surprise to open a book I just borrowed, a bestseller, no less, if one I'd never heard of (and this is very much my bad - must have been published during my reading Wilderness Yrs).

And - to find myself *loving* it. A third of the way in, so far. Slightly more creeped out than I'd anticipated (despite the blurb). But - YAY.

This is what The End of Mr. Y says this about itself BTW:

When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr. Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She knows enough about the author, the eccentric Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, to know that copies are exceedingly rare. And, some say, cursed. With Mr. Y under her arm, Ariel finds herself swept into a thrilling adventure of love, sex, death and time-travel.

Somehow, apparently this was enough to persuade me. OFC!

Second-hand bookshop with creepy books. Very rare. Possibly cursed. Dodgy, sorry, "eccentric" Victorian scientist. Love and time travel. YES PLS. Sx? If we must. (I sort of did that to death in my M&B era and now I don't especially feel the need...) Death? In two minds here, but - okay.

So the finding the book thing is already spoilered by the book's own marketing dept and I feel that it's okay, therefore, to share the following, from the end of ch1, which doesn't give away any additional plot points - but did *perfectly* sum up my own feelings as I came to it:

I place The End of Mr. Y in my rucksack, safe, and then I pick up the box and walk out of the shop, clutching it to me as I make my way home in the dark, the cold stinging my eyes, completely unable to make sense of what has just happened.

Well, quite.

Here's to continuing to blunder around seeking inspiration - and, it seems, occasionally finding it. [In places where you might absolutely expect to find inspiration ofc - if you know how to look. I am trying to learn - or relearn - bcz for a while there I seemed to lose the habit...]

[romilly-jay]

A Lil Celebration!

It's a little strange, perhaps, to declare completion of a not-traditionally-published, indeed not-published-at-all manuscript.

Clearly if this manuscript goes anywhere from here, there will be: Changes. Revisions. Edits.

And that's even without considering the "to be continued" tone of the ending - with Mallory literally marooned, Emilia still MIA and the Time Rift contained but very far from resolved or "defeated". To say nothing of Netty re-emerging into her origin time-flow with fresh purpose and a potentially decidedly nefarious plan. [I don't know how much of her vibe is only inside my own head but her potential for villainy is one of the things I have especially loved about writing her. Feels... relatable?]

But - regardless of these caveats - something changed. For me. Something changed gradually and then - all at once. From: a fluid project that could turn out to be many possible things (and in early drafts didn't seem very clear on which of those possible things was even the preferred thing). To: something with form and structure.

I'm interested by noticing this. It's like a subtle-seeming phenomenon, easily overlooked, which, when you actually pay attention to it, is the size of a small skyscraper and not subtle in any of its aspects.

Maybe I'll revisit - I hope so! But also, very happy to have completed my part of the bargain, my obligation to the characters, by writing (one or two of) them HOME. And now I'm asking myself - what next??

Speaking of revisiting -

I finally got round to reading the play text of Dear Jack, Dear Louise - one of the plays I saw earlier in the year, during my flurry of "saying YES" and "joining in" - and, I'd say my favourite (joint fave?) of the lot.

Read it on the train on the way to visit family - probably appropriate for the subject matter - and it made me both laugh and tear up in the course of the less-than-an-hour it took me to read it. Also, brought the (very enjoyable) performances vividly back to mind. Sentimental-ish but a little bit spiky, too, in place. And warm. And simmeringly angry.

Here's a note about how to stage the play - which they followed beautifully for the London production and which worked VERY well:

During the course of the play, the actors should never look at each other. It may feel 'normal' at first to direct the dialogue to the other actor. In a way, the letters do indeed become a sort of dialogue between the characters.

But addressing each other directly destroys the metaphorical distance that letters create by their very nature, and it equally subverts the formality of letter-writing which is so much a part of the play's style.

So the actors should deliver the letters looking elsewhere, usually out towards the audiences where, in their minds their newfound love interests somewhere exist.

From one epistolary form to another - I'm going to end with the note I included for the people who might be about to start reading the current version of the novel (draft 3.5, declared done). I wanted them to feel free from the expectation that starting the story required them to finish it. I don't behave like that myself - why should they? Noticing when I tap out (and what features of the work drive that) is excellent information. Another example of data that's right there and I normally don't look at.* [*In the sense of - acknowledge as existing, as containing sth valuable.]

Dear Reader -

Thank you for picking up this manuscript. It’s taken ages to get this cast of characters to exist within a story that has the required beginning, middle and end. I hope you love them and have fun reading it.

In case you don’t, please know that I’m a committed Did Not Finish-er myself and learning someone DNF[1] is fantastic data (if a little sad).[2] It would just help to know WHEN you stopped reading.

The only hint I want to give you before you get going is: This is a weird lil story. It’s a weird book. Every single time things could get less weird or weirder, you’ve guessed it. Weird-ward we wend.

So, if strange is not your thing, feel free to have a flick through, but also embrace the DNS as needed.[3]

And, if you do make it to the end, I would love to hear if you were reminded of other books or tv shows or authors. I am having all kinds of trouble sorting out what the ‘comparables’ for this book might be!

=======================================

[1] Did Not Finish.

[2] For me. Not sure how the characters would feel. Perhaps glad to be able to take a break from the action? ;)

[3] Did Not Start.

[romilly-jay]

Adrift Under an Alien Sky

[Painting is by Turner - night scene with fishermen. Relatively early piece (based on the room it was in at the recent Turner/Constable exhibition which is, I think, the only exhibition I've seen *three times*).]

So - last blog-i-sode DONE. I'm at the end of this particular loop, this particular narrative. And - since I'm still breathing, I'm also not done.

Instead, I'm faced with the peculiar luxury of figuring out: What Next?

Letters of Note on X: "RIP David Hockney https://t.co/AgUylxFo8C" / X

Matt Woodworth, responding on X to that snippet from DH's letter:

"We die because we're born" sounds like a silly truism until you realize it's basically the key to understanding life.

Matt Woodworth, Ph.D. on X: "@LettersOfNote "We die because we're born" sounds like a silly truism until you realize it's basically the key to understanding life. RIP to the only artist who captured the eerily crystalline, expansive light of Yorkshire and can only be recognized by people who have actually lived there." / X

I'm inspired by Hockney's No Fks attitude and his restless, ceaseless commitment to Making Things. By Mick Herron's commitment to his characters and his craft, to making meaningful art in a world that didn't seem interested. (Until it was. VERY interested. In that internet-and-streaming-platforms fire-storm way that's a feature of modern media.)

(1) Failure as Inspiration: A Writer's Paradox

"Write what you know - so I wrote about failure" (MH to the NYT, sourced via the substack article by Geoff Eldridge - link above)

In similar vein, to the Irish Times in 2019 (so, by my reckoning, just on the cusp of becoming HUGE thanks to the rediscovery of his books by an audience driven to them via Apple TV's Slow Horses series):

Mick Herron set out a decade ago to write a spy series about a group of failures and appreciates the irony that “it was self-fulfilling as it sank without trace”, his publisher dropping him like a hot chip.

‘I sometimes feel like I’m the only spy writer who never worked for the Secret Service’ – The Irish Times

I'm also inspired and cheered by Virginia Evans winning the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026 having worked on her craft, without obviously getting anywhere, for years and YEARS. (At times, in a literal closet.)

‘Failure was my thing’: Women’s prize winner Virginia Evans on her long journey to success | Women's prize for fiction | The Guardian

Please understand I'm not saying: It happened for her, ergo it will happen for me. What I'm saying is - oh yes, that's right. I need to commit, fiercely, foolishly, to the art, the craft, the practice. That's the reward I can reliably secure for myself. Nothing else is within my gift.

[It's also slowly dawning on me, BTW, that just as I was a below average athlete I may be about to discover that I am, at best, a not-much-better-than-average writer. I understand that being published is not a prize for whoever writes best - I've internalised this so much by now that I'm startled if I come across someone who still believes it is. That's okay. As a not-great runner, I had considerable joy coaxing and sometimes bullying my body into being capable of running marathons. I never expected to 'win' any of them. (Thank goodness.) Most I ever hoped for was to complete within a target time. THEN, having achieved my target on the first outing, I realised I cd take it easier and still get round, albeit in a noticeably slower time. So did that. And had FUN. Not sure I'm ready for what that indicates about my character. That I'm a No Longer Try So Hard? A Slowly Learning About The Good Times girl?]

So - vague, second-hand spoilery thing here BTW - pls be aware:

the bit that rlly landed for me from the Guardian article above, was the quote about choosing to write a character death having given that character some bio details that matched her own circumstances:

[Evans] listened to an interview with Zadie Smith in which the novelist said of the maxim that you should write what you know, that you should also write what you fear, because they are equally vivid in your mind. “I realised that it’s so true,” she says. “I could only write that grief accurately by trying to get as close to the thing as I could.”

Turning back to my own, now/currently completed project - this echoes for me. It echoes bcz I've written from the POV of several characters, each of whom started in quite distinct circumstances but all of whom, without my having actively planned it, ended up in a version of the same plot dilemma. Isolated, lost, separated from 'home', trying to reconnect, trying to rescue themselves (and/or someone else).

The terror of - I'm going to be stranded here alone and typically, it will at some level have been my own fault, or my attempts to make things better have in fact made things worse. That fear. I'm getting a sinking lurch in the lining of my belly just typing that scenario summary. Yikes.

Probably explains why I <3 this Matt Damon joke - which I've seen in various versions over the years, refurbed here for the arrival of The Odyssey into cinemas. Only one of the four projects it mentions [The Martian*] is in my top most loved movies of all time (it's somewhere in the top three for sure). But - I love it with a fierce love. And it's all about isolation and the terrified, fierce, focused effort to try to Make It Home.

*Of course, St Mark (Watney) bears no blame for his own stranding - and maybe I need to think about that a little bit because part of the reason The Martian is my go-to comfort movie is that it doesn't rlly have any villains. A couple of people are vaguely dckish in a predictably Corporate US kinda way (not that NASA is corporate but, ya know). That's it. And Watney goes out of his way to make sure his teammates are not villainised for leaving without him. He's a hero. They're heroes. Everyone is a hero. The 'baddie' is the profound inhospitability of outer space - and non-terra-like planets - for the human body & human life.

[romilly-jay]

Reflections on Blog-i-sode Fifty-Seven

Well, the opening to this blog came straight from life and I rather like it:

I wake up raging and I can’t immediately remember why.

I'm quite familiar with waking up from a dream, still carrying the "stain" of the emotion from whatever was going on in the dream and unable to connect the strong feeling coherently to a set of circumstances.

I suppose if I was going to do more work on this story, maybe I would need to pay a bit more attention to the rules of engagement for the Impossible Place parts of the story? There's definitely some kind of coherence to how the Place behaves - in practice - but I haven't thought it through to the point where I could articulate it. Deliberately not, I think - it feels like I believe that the action needs to come first and the reflection, the comprehension, would flow in afterwards.

Seems I am in fact an action researcher at heart. (This pleases me.)

Thing is, I've treated all this material as emerging from the same zone as poetry - which I've tended to label as rising from my unconscious or subconscious, from things I know - somewhere - but not in the rational mind. Things that I have perhaps suppressed or just been unable to conceptualise fully. Things that become known by being expressed first thru the distorted, fractured quality of poetry - and processed *later*.

Scarlett Thomas offers a different view - her Impossible Place in The End of Mr. Y is imagined as *consciousness*. Not a dream state. Not *un*consciousness. [And there are elements of that which make sense immediately, such as the ability to eavesdrop on the minds of other people when they are awake, conscious, and - generally - coherent.]

Here's an extract, starting on p. 371 in my paperback edition:

'How is this dreaming in reverse?'

'Dreaming takes you into your unconscious. This is not your unconscious.'

Suddenly things start click-clicking in my mind... Now I start making the connections. 'This is... consciousness itself,' I say... 'Everyone's thoughts, everyone's consciousness. But made into an elaborate metaphor that I can navigate."

My version assumes that the detail of how the cottage or raft is shaped (the 'metaphor' in ST's passage above) comes from one person's unconscious, from whoever is dominating the mind-space at the time. In the Impossible Cottage, Netty generates the scenario from childhood fairy stories (I'm looking at YOU, The Brothers Grimm!) and then at a certain point, Shalva re-writes the rules of engagement and takes over.

Mallory generates the raft - having fallen into the ocean for "real".

And now - there's a black and white corvid in the dream world - which I guess is a logical/reasonable extension of having created an animal as a character as a faint gesture towards the idea of humans as co-beings, as part of nature but not fundamentally different from other creatures.

I’m drawn to something black-and-white, flapping in my peripheral vision. It’s the flag I placed there, the one with the stylised rendering of the collared crow design from my cave-acolyte facemask.

Funny, from down here, the plumage makes it look like a skull.

And… It forces me to notice another gaping hole in my memories. The crow design… not too long ago, I figured out why I’d been drawn to that design for my mask out of all the available options.

It feels like it used to matter but – I can’t reach the details. And I’m unable to summon any strong feelings in response. No anger. Or stress. Or concern. I’m too relaxed from the warmth of the light on my face and the strangely soothing rocking of the water.

‘AWK…’ Right on cue. Familiar sound but distant.

Coming from somewhere behind the improvised hut/cockpit. Then again, a little closer, and a little closer still: ‘AWK…AWK…’

I also deliberately chose a collared crow as a nod to the multi-national, international context of the Exodus mission and the ARK crews.

And recently, I've been following a RL version of the developing relationship between Human Person and Corvid Person, in the X account of Dr Juliet Turner and her posts about the magpie she rescued after it fell out of its nest in a tree above her garden.

I want to acknowledge her posts about Ajax - how cheering they have been in their own right, how sort of reinforcing of my confidence in the mad idea to intro Pirate and then keep re-introducing her every time I shifted the parameters of the story. [Initially, she was in the tunnels when Emilia was trying to navigate to safety after the destruction of the First Settlement. Then her likeness was painted onto Mallory's cave guardian outfit - no clear idea yet WHY or whether it works. Seems to?]

Finally - this:

My instincts are telling me this place isn’t somewhen a person can escape from by time-jumping, but you can feel free to put money on this: if – or when (?) – I find myself off this raft and back over there on solid ground, I am never going to stop trying to find a way.

When I came back to this passage after a break, I thought it was an error - after all, I'd spent a good chunk of the second half of the book making it extremely clear that M was trapped in time and could no longer function as a full TT. Took a while before I remembered that I'd used the switch into the in-between as an opportunity to have the bracelet thing removed. Funny, since it was a Key Plot Device for resolving the story arc involving Shalva's disappearance.

That's why writers track their narratives using charts or plans or excel spreadsheets or scribbled diagrams on A3 pieces of paper, I guess!

Anyway, figured it out just in time before accidentally "fixing" the text (by making it worse!). All's well that ends well. Not that M's story has ended - just that I'm really not too sure at this point whether the rest of the story will be written. Shalva's story reached a kind of resolution* and that will have to be good enough for now :) [*mic drop* *bow* *exits*]

*I mean - the current arc definitely resolved but the Time Rift hasn't been more than temporarily contained so the fearsome future that Hanne and Jared had the misfortune to live into is not yet avoided.

[romilly-jay]

Blog-i-sode Fifty-Seven

Impossible Life Raft

~ today ~

I wake up raging and I can’t immediately remember why. Then I see the empty shell of the oval ebony frame, propped up against the portrait of starship commander lady and I know.

Did it work? Are they safe? I consider picking up the frame to hiss TELL ME! at the flimsy composite wood panel that was exposed after I swept the glass fragments overboard.

Clearly pointless. And would probably give me less satisfaction than I’m imagining. Instead, I stretch out on my back in the middle of the raft, limbs spread out, starfish-shaped, and I try counting, to see if this might calm me down. One – two – three – four…

By the time I’m in the high sixties, I’m already losing the count, but it’s working.

My focus is shifting to the blue-grey of the sky with its wispy white-grey clouds, the monotonous smack-slop where water, disturbed by encountering the raft, spills up across the edges of the repurposed floorboards, swilling underneath the makeshift, grey, guardrail.

Then, I’m drawn to something black-and-white, flapping in my peripheral vision. It’s the flag I placed there, the one with the stylised rendering of the collared crow design from my cave-acolyte facemask. Funny, from down here, the plumage makes it look like a skull.

And… It forces me to notice another gaping hole in my memories. The crow design… no too long ago, I figured out why I’d been drawn to that design for my mask out of all the available options. It feels like it used to matter but – I can’t reach the details. And I’m unable to summon any strong feelings in response. No anger. Or stress. Or concern. I’m too relaxed from the warmth of the light on my face and the strangely soothing rocking of the water.

‘AWK…’ Right on cue. Familiar sound but distant. Coming from somewhere behind the improvised hut/cockpit. Then again, a little closer, and a little closer still: ‘AWK…AWK…’

I scramble upright and peer across the water, leaning on the low roof of the hut.

Floating in the water, I see a large branch, roughly the size of an entire young sapling, but clearly broken off from something bigger. It was covered in foliage, which was still bright green, having not yet accepted that this was the end. Perched amidst the thickest part of the leaf cover was, yes, a collared crow. The branch is gaining on the raft, which must have been a combination of being in the sway of a different current plus some excitable wing-flapping from the bird that started as soon as it spotted me looking towards it. No, her.

Her. Vesper, have mercy. ‘Pirate? Pirate!’ I might have expected the bird to flap across to me but I quickly realise she isn’t inclined to take to the air. ‘Okay, I’ve got you.’

Strictly, this is not yet true, but I’m confident that physics is on my side. There are a few hairy moments when I try to catch at the thin branches while the sapling is still too far away and narrowly escape being knocked into the water, then it’s close enough that I can reach to the far side with the flagpole and pin it against the raft while Pirate hops onboard.

I’m about to let the sapling drift away when it occurs to me it might be useful. I haul it onto the raft, where it makes drippy puddles along the floorboards, then set to work stripping off the thin branches and leaves and making a decide-about-these-later pile out of them.

It’s naïve, yes, to think I could fashion the sapling-branch into actual oars. But – could I? If yes, surely I can figure out which direction I should strike out in, hoping to find land.

My instincts are telling me this place isn’t somewhen a person can escape from by time-jumping, but you can feel free to put money on this: if – or when (?) – I find myself off this raft and back over there on solid ground, I am never going to stop trying to find a way.

[romilly-jay]

Putting It Together

When I thought of this title, I suppose my mind was mainly on the editing stage of a book or long paper - the rejigging, the honing and adjusting of the structure, the final decisions about what's in and what's out and how the parts that remain are 'lit', prioritised, presented...

But *now* I've slid away to think about a different kind of 'putting together' - the making of new things from established sources.

Ofc this train of thought is prompted by having seen Something Rotten earlier this month - a musical about fictional contemporaries of Shakespeare, trying to write a rival hit that would allow *them* to replace Will of Stratford as Top Bard.

For which, please assume: Spoilers from here on in...

Here's the trailer from an earlier production. [Tho' the current show is calling itself The UK Premiere, on reflection, hmmm, if possibly only at the venue and not online? Certainly, the couple of times this has been staged so far in the UK, in 2024 and 2025, the runs have been very short (like, literally 1-3 performances planned) so, I'm assuming that could be why? Or is it a cheeky half-lie? I mean, I genuinely don't know what the legal technicalities allow them to say - I believe this is the first time it's had a 'run' in a UK theatre? But it also strikes me as in keeping with the overall cheekiness to make that claim tongue-in-cheek?]

Something Rotten! (Official Trailer) | Stratford Festival 2024

Cast | Something Rotten! (2026 Opera House Theatre production)

And - this was cool IMO - the current website links to the US cast recording of the score. V interesting to me that they clearly consider it to be in their interests to give audiences chance to hear the songs 1st:

Something Rotten! (Original Broadway Cast Recording) - Compilation by Wayne Kirkpatrick, Karey Kirkpatrick | Spotify

Don't know if that was truly necessary in the case of the audience on the day I saw it - because they LOVED it. There was a BIG standing ovation at the end but long before we got there, it was clear that this was the way it was going. As early as the first big number 1/2 way through the first half, there was rapturous applause. (So rapturous BTW that it's my view that the cast themselves were surprised - I felt that there was visibly a sort of What's happening? OMG this is GREAT! reaction on stage - and an improv'd pause to allow the clapping to abate before they could press on with the next beat of the action...)

It was a musical for lovers of musicals - that was the central joke. (It was much less necessary to love and be familiar with the works of Shakespeare, though on balance it probably helped if you were... I think basic musicals-literacy was assumed more than bardic-literacy was?)

Was it enjoyable? Definitely, yes.

I *REALLY* enjoyed the central conceit about a prophet who absolutely could see the future but couldn't necessarily unravel / interpret it (and I liked choice of the RL character of Nostradamus, whose prophecies are sweet-spot inevitably-possible-to-attach-to-real-events-after-the-fact).

I *loved* the modern rockstar vibe of Will Shakespeare - the fans, the bodyguards, the exclusive back-stage after-parties with celeb guests. It was very social-media-influencer-coded for the kind of following that attaches to, say, J-Lo or Taylor Swift or Harry Styles - i.e. genuine celebrities bcz of their 'day job' but who also court internet attention.

Was it coherent?

Not particularly, but it made a near-virtue of the fact by leaning into the tendency of musicals to deliver an improbably happy ending 'by happenstance'. Reminded me of the quote from Geoffrey Rush's theatre owner character (Philip Henslowe) in Shakespeare in Love:

"Strangely enough, it all turns out well." Fennyman asks, "How?" and Henslowe replies, "I don't know, its a mystery"

Shakespeare in Love - Its a mystery

Things I was personally a little less keen on?

I thought the decision to use character names from Shakespeare for the characters in the production was a fertile choice that was rather under-exploited? I'd have liked a bit more payoff but okay, perhaps the gag does enough work in that it also offers us the hint - from the very start of the play - that this Shakespeare is not above borrowing ideas, names, (actual lines of dialogue) - from the people around him.

For those who know a bit more about the bubbling controversies about who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays - it was very enjoyable to be given an answer to that question. NB the production is, I think, deliberately unclear about exactly how much has already been stolen - perhaps the most fitting answer is: nothing so far. It's possible that the issue we're seeing is writer's block after an initial run of early success?

Certainly we're in a world where Romeo and Juliet has already been performed (IRL this was 1597) and has been a huge hit - but, significantly for our action, Hamlet has not (written c. 1599-1601).

I believe Bea Bottom just says that it's the 1590s - certainly it's pre-1600 as that's a date she mentions as being 'in the future' [when women will be equal to men]. IMO her's is one of the less coherent roles, though she does have some great set pieces and the part was IMO scene-stealingly performed by Marisha Wallace - whose voice is distinctively, unbeatably Broadway*.

*Couldn't think where I'd come across her before and then from the moment she started singing, I instantly knew I'd seen her play Miss Adelaide in Guys & Dolls at The Bridge a year or two ago.

Finally, lil shoutout to Cassius Hackforth as the idealistic, young "real" author of Hamlet - tho he did seem to take having work stolen by his idol with remarkable insouciance (while being very angry w his own brother for attempting to make the family fortunes by staging a hit?).

[romilly-jay]

Reflections on Blog-i-sode Fifty-Six

The topping and tailing of the scene remains (and could be tighter?). Netty narrates herself in and narrates a coda/conclusion at the end.

Where we start the action is completely different, however, because it's a callback to a reworked middle section of the novel. As the scene opens, everything is running as it did before, except that M isn't there.

Unlike the edits where I allowed Shalva to time-jump and it's made a (hopefully small) tear in the otherwise-I-hope-cohesive plot, this time, these details offer a nice (not-emphasised) plot reinforcement... In this version, the group has not done the big somersault jump sequence and yet here, Hanne still arrives wounded. Ergo, the disturbance isn't linked to her jump and Hravn's stricken state was not caused by *her*. (There was no collision Hravn/Hanne... Hravn/Netty on the other hand...)

The party has landed awkwardly, sprawled onto the green of the clearing or rolling across it. Jared is crouching over someone, calling for a first aid kit, which you provide, calmly and efficiently, though I can clearly see your hands trembling afterwards. You wipe your palms on your trousers, probably, I think, to try to get yourself under control.

You and Jared settle Hanne against a large piece of debris. ‘Why don’t you take a seat, as well, Tay?’ Jared says, gesturing towards another piece of debris nearby.

Before Tay can move, there’s a muffled BOOM on the far side of the clearing. It sounds like the dampened remains of a huge explosion somewhere far away. The ground shakes, then the air and the sky, and abruptly the fabric of Herenow is in shreds. Each shred offers glimpses into another Timeplace that pulses with purples and blues.

The next few paras are again patterned on the scene as it played out during the reworked first loop version of the text – where M was present and where Shalva takes the action that lands her inside the Time Rift.

Pleased that I've added this text-insertion reaction from Netty. It's not new text but I no longer remember where it originally belonged – and TBH I was a bit surprised *not* to find it in the action from Blog 56:

I flinch, remembering the destruction of my shuttle – here – then. I no longer find room to doubt that these events are connected.

Sorry to have lost this description (below), though – "leonine" seems the perfect descriptor for Shalva, with her big "mane" of hair, golden colouring and refs to her lovely but impassively-expression(ed) face.

You, meanwhile, have regained your footing and you’re pacing, leonine, to and fro. Calculating, assessing. Deciding. You walk to the edge of the stain and squat to examine it. You stay a sensible pace or so short of the stain itself, although it seems inert at this point.

And – by contrast – I'm pleased with the adjustments I've made to get the group gathered into one place in the clearing and to have Tay and Jared starting to chat about what happened, thus building up to Tay revealing that they 'heard a voice' from the bracelet urging them to act.

[We the audience should be able to recognise that we've already read the mirror version of this account - from Mallory's perspective, stranded on his Impossible Raft and shouting instructions at a picture.]

Much better to have the group move towards (injured) Hanne (and a good way to remind self – and readers – that she WAS injured). Initially, I assumed that they would get the snacks out as in this version. However, it quickly occurred to me that J and T are already interacting so it made sense to develop the "natural" flow of their interaction rather than breaking for something else and then having to pick up again. [The action has already been broken enough so the group can gather.]

Jared and Tay manoeuvre Hravn slowly upright and take them over to where Hanne is sitting, propped up against the large piece of debris. And finally, suddenly – awkwardly leaning across the chunks of debris – everyone is swept into a bearhug. Hanne hugs first, showing no care for her wound while you cluck and fuss around her. It becomes a disorganised, joyful, five-way embrace for several long seconds as everyone expresses their post-terror adrenaline rush.

Then Tay wants Jared’s attention to say something about the skateboard, and Hravn wants to say, ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ to everybody before taking the skateboard off their sib and carefully examining it as Tay and Jared chat.

‘That was quite a move with the Slim-Slider, Tay,’ Jared says. ‘How did you know that knocking something into the disturbance would have that effect?’

Final thing I want to comment on (other than – seemed important in this version of the story arc to return to Shalva and Hanne and emphasise them as "an item) – is that they acknowledge that the Time Rift problem has been evaded but not materially "solved":

‘Well, it all worked out. You’re still here. We’re together.’

‘Thanks to Tay. And Jared’s quick work with a bandage.’

‘Together forever, Elskede.’ She reaches across and draws you into a slow kiss.

When the embrace finally breaks apart, you say, ‘Together forever. But – you know we’re still going to have questions to answer about – this.’ You wave your hand at the part of the clearing where the stain used to be. In the air, there’s still a couple of strange distortions. Reminders that Timespace ripped apart and may not have been knitted neatly back together.

‘Tomorrow’s problem?’ Hanne says. ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘Which reminds me, Expedition Corps will probably want to see –’

[And then Shalva – the 'you' in this passage – goes over to pick up the neural inhibitor bracelet. And that's when she finally remembers about Mallory. And Netty puts together that the contact seems to be what makes this memory-return possible. No real explanation for HOW.]

So – some nice resolution that I think largely works. And some trailing ends that are trailing very specifically in the direction of Mallory and questions about what happened to *him* and whether that's "fixable".

Which I think is absolutely where I want this version of the text to end.

Will I pick up again and write a story that is, in fact, Mallory's story?

Does text not exist. Yet. Current scraps are pretty threadbare for anything futureward of this part of the narrative. As for Emilia... There's much more pre-existing text to work with but all of it gets her *into* the mural we've already encountered and none (at all) takes her forward.

So, a second story, dear reader, is very extremely much TBC. But if it does kick off again, it will *probably* kick off again from here. (??)

[romilly-jay]

Blog-i-sode Fifty-Six

Closed Zone

nr Hambleford

Sector Pastoral

[//162//165// CE]

Time Rift

I return my attention to the simulation to realise that, without any warning, the travel discussion has already ended. The simu-participants have vanished. I am still ‘in’ the junkyard clearing but I’d had a continuity gap in my feed.

My position has shifted relative to the clearing and I’m close to the wing-hill. Close to where I know the action will take place, since the scenario is familiar from your endlessly replayed mirror-simulations. It’s the Time Rift scenario. As I’m making observations in readiness for the next phase commencing, there’s a disturbance to the visuals on the far side of the clearing.

When the steady image reasserts itself, the jumpers are back in play.

You are standing as part of a linked line, with Tay in front of you, Hanne behind you and Jared at the back behind her. You’re facing in alternating directions so that Tay’s right hand is holding onto your right hand and your left hand is in Hanne’s left hand, fingers entwined.

The arrangement looks serene only for as long as it takes each of you to land and absorb the scenario before you, then Tay is yelling, ‘HRAVN!’ and trying to shake off your hand so they can race across the clearing, and you are stubbornly clinging onto them, having dropped Hanne’s hand to give you better purchase on your wriggling, resisting hand-partner.

On the junk-hill side of the clearing, close to the edge, a child is lying on the ground.

They are face-up, arms and legs sprawled outwards, apparently unconscious, looking like they’d fallen or been blown over when something exploded in front of them. The ground beneath them is stained by a dark patch that stretches beyond the prone child in all directions. The child themselves has no matching stain, however, conveying the impression that they’d been caught in the explosion yet simultaneously didn’t arrive here until after it happened.

The child is unmistakably Tay’s missing sibling, being a struck-coin reproduction likeness, except that where Tay is extravagantly mucky, Hravn’s face and hair are scrub-clean. With no camo-markings, their brown skin tone is unmistakable. Their hair is plaited into multiple tiny braids, each finished off with a bright blob of colour. A bead or a shell.

Tay succeeds in shaking you off. Judging from the energy with which your hands flew backwards they must have flung it away from themselves as they ran. You stagger and Hanne has suddenly moved past you, overtaking you, then catching Tay and throwing her arms around the midriff of the kid, who struggles against her.

‘Let me go,’ Tay yells, over and over, and, ‘HRAVN –’

Hanne was talking at the same time – to Tay, over Tay. ‘I know, Tay, I know. But we have to figure out what’s wrong so we can help them.’

They tussle for maybe 20 beats then Tay collapses to the ground, half-leaning onto Hanne who has dropped to a crouch beside them, an arm flung around their shoulder to steady them. She scoops Tay up and moves to sit her on a low, boxy piece of debris over to one side. It’s flat and comfortable. Plenty of room for two. Hanne slides onto the box next to Tay but still perching on the very edge and leaning forward towards the others.

You, meanwhile, have regained your footing and you’re pacing, leonine, to and fro.

Calculating, assessing. Deciding. You walk to the edge of the stain and squat to examine it. You stay a sensible pace or so short of the stain itself, although it seems inert at this point.

Jared comes over and, with some difficulty, squats down next to you. He’s hindered by the earlier injury to his knee, which seems to be worse than before and by the skateboard, which is slung diagonally across his back from shoulder to hip using improvised webbing knotted together from string that came off the snack packs earlier. He puts one arm round your shoulders, moving creakily, and squeezes you sideways. You brush Jared’s cheek gently, then go back to looking from the edge of the stain to the captured child and back again. It’s a distance of perhaps two large strides to reach them.

‘Right,’ you say. ‘Don’t hesitate. Don’t. Hesitate.’ You brush non-existent dust off your hands and settle down into a sprint stance. Like you’re racing someone. ‘One… Two…’

‘Waaaaarrrrrraaaahhhhhhhhgggggghhhh.’Before you reach three, Tay races between you and Jared, howling a banshee-cry that empties almost all the breath from their lungs.

With a swift motion, they yank the skateboard off Jared’s back, pulling it from the webbing with a confidence that suggests practise they couldn’t have had. (Could they?)

‘HuuuuuuuaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHH.’ A huge in-breath.

Then, Tay lunges forward, another other-worldly shriek on their lips.

‘Noooo,’ the three of you shout, in spontaneous unison. Your voices are hardly heard.

But Tay doesn’t jump onto the stained area. Instead, they aim the skateboard slantways, at a piece of stone lying not far away and the board, moving at a fair lick, connects with it squarely, sending it arcing up into the air. Thankfully it lands near, not on, Hravn. And –

Where it touches the stain, there is an immediate strong hissing noise. A small, green-yellow hole appears in the dark stain, around the size of the stone. It grows – rapidly.

The un-stain rolls across the darkened ground, fanning in all directions from the first puncture point. When it arrives at Hravn’s body, the retreating stain washes underneath, lifting the child as though Hravn were floating on water and the surface of that water was being creased, ruffled and distorted by the wake of a passing boat. In the time it takes for Tay’s lungs to empty again and their shrieking to peter out into a croak, the stain is gone.

Silence. No-one speaks or moves for one extended beat. An aftershock. A hovering, hanging indecision. Everyone seems to be wondering: What happened?

Then, the tension unravels, and everyone is moving and speaking all at the same time.

Tay surges across the not-stained, no-sign-it-was-ever-stained ground to their sibling.

Hravn is gurgle-choking and unresponsive, their body twitching and convulsing.

Tay shakes their sib’s shoulders, still calling, ‘Hravn! Hravn!’ and now Jared arrives, having sprinted awkwardly after Tay. Getting low to the ground, he checks Hravn’s airway, then turns the child onto their side. Hravn gives a long, wheezy cough and starts breathing.

When Jared brings his hand away from Hravn’s mouth, it’s covered in thick, dark gunk and he wipes it on the grass nearby. Just in time, before he’s enveloped in a bearhug.

Hanne arrives first, arms open, and you are only a shade after, possibly on purpose.

You wrap your arms around them and squeeze. Then Tay wants Jared’s attention and Hravn wants to say thank you and meet everyone and it – becomes a disorganised, joyful, five-way embrace for several long seconds as everyone expresses their post-terror adrenaline rush.

Eventually everyone breaks apart and is suddenly starving, so it’s into the ritual of drinks and snacks and sitting around together, trying to make sense of it all. Hravn was still bleary and unwell, so Jared put his jump-jacket round their shoulders and they sat at the edge of the conversation, leaning against one of the debris-pieces. Tay sat next to them, tucking into a protein bar with gusto and contributing energetically to the discussion.

‘That was quite a move with the Slim-Slider, Tay,’ Jared says. ‘How did you know that knocking something into the disturbance would have that effect?’

‘Wasn’t the plan,’ Tay says, with a grin and a shrug. ‘Just wanted to try to shift Hravn, you know? See if I could dislodge them? But I saw the bracelet and – it told me.’

‘Oh, I thought it was a stone you dislodged,’ you say.

‘Me too,’ Tay says, ‘But it wasn’t a stone. It was metal. A metal bracelet thing. And it called to me – Tay! And told me I should knock it inside the area with the stain.’

You see Hanne and Jared exchange glances.

‘It told you?’ says Jared. ‘It called your name – and it told you to aim for it?’

Tay nods happily, as though it shouldn’t be a difficult thing for Jared to believe.

‘I do believe you, Tay,’ Hanne says, ‘but – I don’t think I heard anything. You?’

She addresses this last part to you.

You are already crinkling up your face – thinking, thinking – and collect yourself to answer. ‘Hmmm? What? No, I didn’t. But – well done, Tay. For the great work with the Slim-Slider. And for not hesitating when…’

Tay grins an acknowledgement and goes back to showing the skateboard to their sib.

You walk over to where the stone/bracelet is lying, abandoned, a few paces away. You nudge it with your foot, then reach out a hand to touch it but thinking better of that, instead take out a cloth handkerchief. You use a stick in one hand to pick up the object and use the other hand to wrap it. Then you put it in a pocket.

‘I’ve just realised something,’ you say. ‘I can’t believe I’ve only just thought of it.’

‘What’s that, Veevee?’

‘I was thinking we’re all here, but we’re not, are we?’

‘We’re not?’ says Jared.

‘No,’ you say. ‘Where’s your jump-partner, Jared? Where’s Mallory?’

Watching, it’s my assessment that you couldn’t name Mallory until now, after you have made physical contact with the neural inhibitor that frustrated our efforts to trace Mallory in the time-register. What the inhibitor shell is doing in this simulation and without Mallory attached to it is – as yet unconfirmed.

Can the device communicate in the way Tay described it? Also unconfirmed. The tech certainly has comms capability, but its purpose is for interface with the medical database, so that data can be uploaded for review and action.

Additional analysis needs to be done. Probably also, additional simulations? (Although not understanding how the device came to be present raises the question: if it’s not a parameter we can control, what are we testing for?)

[romilly-jay]

On Hearing "Lost" Voices

Lost - not "undiscovered", mind! -

Thinking here about that insane magic that happens when we read intense, intimate words written by someone who has since died - words perhaps to or about or to-and-about other people who have also died. And in the time you spend in those words, it feels as though they are alive and speaking to you. Directly to you. Almost (but not) unmediated.

Ofc I'm so very far from being the first person to notice and comment on this. I'm pretty sure I drifted across this exact sentiment recently on X - probably that's even the reason it's on my mind, now. I've got zero way of being able to remember WHERE on X that was and so instead, I'm pointing to a sub-stack article titled "listening to dead people". This is expressing the same idea in a more structured way, as a self-conscious Self Improvement strategy and as a way into a curated syllabus of readings by Influential Thinkers. I'm personally not very philosophically inclined - in terms of formal philosophy, that is - so it's not the way I would frame or approach this. I'm much more prone to wanting to drift haphazardly from influence to influence. However, all credit to those more structured, more philosophical, more orderly thinkers and readers (and Chetan Conikee had me at Gregory Bateson).

(1) Listening to Dead People - by Chetan Conikee

The sense of being addressed directly is heightened - perhaps - when we're reading something that was never intended for the public sphere and was indeed addressed to someone in particular. [This version of the magic trick requires the reader to imagine that they are the 'you' in the mind of the writer...]

Recent example, in my own case, was Notes to John, by Joan Didion, which was a lightly edited edition of private notes from Joan to her husband summarising a series of conversations she had in therapy while trying to process their daughter's alcoholism. Very, very private, in other words, though the foreword (unsigned, presumably to be read 'in the voice of the publisher') stressed an implied permission to publish:

Shortly after Joan Didion died in 2021, a collection of about 150 unnumbered pages was found in a small portable file near her desk... a sort of journal in which Didion reported on sessions with a psychiatrist, most of them in 2000. The reports are addressed to John... now in the Didion/Dunne archive at the New York Public Library...

The archive was placed in the library by Didion's heirs, her late brother's children. No restrictions were put on access.

This is pretty clear Don't Blame Us messaging in anticipation of objections being raised to the publication of what was in original creation a private set of notes addressed to an audience of one.

Those objections BTW, were duly made - I'm reproducing the example given by the Wikipedia article on this book, since I don't have direct access to the NYT piece in qu (but if you do - access via link following):

Alexandra Alter, writing for The New York Times, stated that ‘The release of Didion’s post-therapy notes as a discrete literary work will likely raise questions about whether she would have approved of the project.’

Alter noted that Didion never circulated her journal's entries for editing or publication and described Didion's known ‘disapproval’ of ‘literary estates' impulses to put out every last scrap of a famous author’s work’ as well as Didion's criticism of a posthumous Ernest Hemingway novel.

25 Years Ago, Joan Didion Kept a Diary. It’s About to Become Public. - The New York Times

Noted, and yet... JD had plenty of time to destroy the notes - they survived 18 years after the death of the person for whom they were written and long after the situations being examined had vanished in the past [given the death of both John and their daughter, Quintana].

She also had chance to give clear instructions to her executors/estate.

So, perhaps, faced with her own vanishing, she - wanted these scraps of evidence to survive, to be a kind of witness to those she loved (?). Or perhaps she was too old, too tired, too worn to face the effort of deciding. Too attached to her dead loves to bear to destroy the papers herself. Too willing to assume her wish for privacy was understood?

Either way, the notes are (un/)surprisingly, (un/)remarkably lucid and sharply observed and, slight as the material inevitably is [in scope / ambition compared to something *intended* for publication], it drew me in, slowed me down, came alive to me, made me think. A really good reading experience and I feel like that's a far from certain thing.

Here's what the back cover said about the writing style (and I'd agree*):

Writing was the way Didion dealt with life. Notes to John presents a riveting account of the therapeutic process, crafted with the singular intelligence, precision and elegance that characterise all of her work.

*Except for the final note, only bcz I haven't *read* all of Joan Didion's work and accordingly can't say this. It's true for what I HAVE read.

[romilly-jay]

Reflections on Blog-i-sode Fifty-Five

There's something quite satisfying about the number of elements that come together in this strange-raft environment. Tho - I'll admit that I'm also a bit worried that it reads like what it is, i.e., the writer putting these things into the scene so that I will remember inventing them.

Clothes from M's life BEFORE he became a cave guardian acolyte.

The disappearance of the neural inhibitor from M's wrist.

The realisation that this should mean he can time-jump.

The secondary realisation that he'll probably drown if he tries to jump while he's floating out at sea (bcz people move in time not in space and if he jumps to a moment where there's no raft, he's done...)

The general scenario, deliberately, strongly reminiscent of the earlier escape scene where M throws himself off the cliff to get away from Blue Light and lands in the ocean. (Again, a scene where the moving in time but not in physical space matters!)

The reference to Netty's crashed Laughing Twin shuttle. Not that M knows that's what it is and while it feels right to include it, undoubtedly, it's also the case that the current narrative doesn't have the structure in place to explain it. Not robustly explain it - beyond the hints that they were jumping from the wreckage of her shuttle at the beginning of M's story and that the wreckage is close to the geo-centre of the Time Rift. This is a gesture towards a future resolution.

In-scene, the connection M makes is one (true but tangled) insight in the "right direction" - i.e. connecting Netty with Blue Light. That connection absolutely hasn't been explicit in this version of the narrative - but it's probably not a huge leap to imagine it. After all, Netty comes from a small surviving space crew (possibly just her + ARNI?) and they have all kinds of advanced tech that Blue Light also has...

Exodus Mission ARK Colony Vessel (CV) 27 Laughing Twin alt.

The words don’t mean much. Then – with a stab of panic – I realise they might be linked somehow to Blue Light.

An image flashes into memory: Blue Light’s machines standing over my collapsed body. Could I be experiencing some medically-induced coma-dream? I could. I really could.

NB I chose to keep this little scene in place because it sort of reads like it could be a memory from when M is captured at the mural. [As written in this version of events, it's a loop narrative, about the *second* time he's captured by BL's machines. "Re"-captured, one might say!] This re-purposing or re-tweaking pleases me. Probably I'm fooling myself but the ease of the meshing persuades me the narrative has a coherence.

Soooo pleased that I managed to sneak in this nod toward Torstein:

There’s a company ID badge, for some hydro-plant I’ve never heard of, with ‘CR ACCESS’ stamped through the company logo in red. The photo, top right, is hardly flattering but I’d know the face anywhere. Even looking like he might explode from being perceived, it’s unquestionably the hot guy from the mural that first led to my capture by Blue Light.

The name beneath the ID photograph reads: “Torstein Nilsen”. Intriguing. I don’t know any Nilsens. (I hope that’s not because they all got wiped out…) What kind of a surname is that? My point is – it’s not from my sub-conscious, as far as I currently know. Which is all I’ve got.

Can't quite pin down what's going on - but at minimum this has to be a place / a state of consciousness constructed with inputs from more than one person. M's quite right - he can't have come up with T's name or the mention of the hydro plant. He can't have named the LT shuttle, either, come to that. I can find a way to trace each contribution - this, for instance, is most likely to have come via Emilia by way of her note.

What I can't quite say, yet, is:

So what?? What now? What comes next?

[romilly-jay]

Blog-i-sode Fifty-Five

Impossible Life Raft

~ today ~

Green // becomes grey // becomes turquoise // green again // then – blue. All-pervading, multi-tonal, shifting, pulsing blue. Blue with a strong dash of… saline. Seawater blue!

Awareness sharpens but I’m resisting for some reason.

I’m feeling unsettled. Either I don’t want to be here, or I don’t want to remember –

Gracious Vesper, am I dead? I have a very vivid, strange memory of my body. Looking down from somewhere – else – thinking, huh, that’s my body but I’m not in it.

I sit bolt upright. I am looking at what seem to be my own actual legs, though bare from the knee down. I’m wearing what used to be my favourite pair of shorts, ones I haven’t seen since I went on a short trip to the Place Without Names and never went back home.

I raise my hand to move my fringe off my forehead and almost poke myself in the eye. My arm moves too easily, too lightly. I’ve used too much muscle-power to lift it. One quick glance at my wrist solves that mystery –the inhibitor bracelet isn’t attached any more.

I can see where it used to be. There’s a narrow band of skin the wrong colour – pink-white and unhealthy-looking. A skin graft or a version of the condition that destroys pigment.

I know I should be more pleased about the missing inhibitor, but I don’t feel anything. I’m itchingly aware I should be doing something proactive with this information. But – what?

In terms of where I’m sitting. I’m going to say – raft. Mostly that’s because I’m floating in a vast expanse of saltwater, no land visible to the horizon in any direction.

Does seem to be constructed from floorboards, but they’re buoyant so, not complaining. Someone has thoughtfully added a guard rail all the way round the edge, repurposed metal painted in thick, light grey. I say ‘repurposed’ because in the section opposite me, there’s an identifier cast into the metal that doesn’t sound raft-like.

It reads: Exodus Mission ARK Colony Vessel (CV) 27 Laughing Twin alt.

The words don’t mean much to me, other than sounding like they relate to some first settlement stuff and I have a brief panic about this being related, somehow, to Blue Light.

An image flashes into my mind: Blue Light’s machines standing over my collapsed body. I can’t remember where or why that happened but it definitely means that I could be experiencing some kind of medically-induced coma-dream while they test me for – whatever.

‘Expect resistance, Iron-eye!’ I say out loud, with more conviction than I’m feeling.

That’s when it occurs to me that the device dampening down my time-connection is gone and that I should be focusing my efforts on time-jumping out of here. I make a wobbly, lurching ascent to stand in the centre of the raft and – stop myself right before I can try. If I jump and the raft isn’t there whenever I land (why would it be?) that would be – worse.

So, what do I think resistance looks like while I’m floating out here? It’s a quandary. I’m stuck. Still, it’s about now that I notice I’m not hungry. Or thirsty. Also, not bothered by the salt-tang of the air or the fierce light on my face.

I worry that these are signs I really did die back there, but if I did, why are things that don’t mean anything to me included in this staging of my afterlife? Surely they wouldn’t be here. Medical coma, I decide. Unpleasant thought but surely more likely. As for offering resistance, well, I’ll see what happens – and try to react accordingly.

***

Impossible Life Raft

~ today ~

I wake up to blue and this time, I’m expecting it. Something about the unfringed expanse of water makes me jittery. I’m not supposed to be here, I think. This isn’t where I belong.

Today, the raft has a cockpit, a small hut-like structure in the middle at the back. The fittings inside are a kaleidoscope of messages from the subconscious, just that not all seem to be from my subconscious. Some are. There’s a rolled-up flag, for example, which, unfurled, displays a stylised collared crow emblem. Must be one of mine. I secure it into position on the small flagpole I don’t remember from yesterday, located in the middle of the forward rail.

And – trust my subconscious to make sure I can keep journalling – there’s a little touch-screen interface with a journal-type logbook, laid out exactly like the archive entries I’m used to making (and, less frequently, reading). No idea if the words go anywhere or how they could, but it’s a habit that gave me pleasure and kept me calm, so… Will be doing that.

Others – definitely aren’t mine, or if they are, they’re from a part of my bio-line I haven’t lived yet. (If I were in-time, that would be the most obvious explanation. Here…?)

There’s a company ID badge, for some hydro-plant I’ve never heard of, with ‘CR ACCESS’ stamped through the company logo in red. The photo, top right, is hardly flattering but I’d know the face anywhere and even looking like he might explode from being perceived, it’s unquestionably Hot Guy T from the mural that first led me to encounter Blue Light. The name beneath the photograph reads: Torstein Nilsen. Intriguing. I don’t know any Nilsens. (I hope that’s not because they all got wiped out…) What kind of a surname is that?

My point is – it’s not from my sub-conscious, as far as I currently know. Which is all I’ve got.

Then, two more things to mention, one of which could be mine, perhaps, while the other certainly isn’t because I can tell from looking at it where, or rather, who, it came from.

The first of these artefacts is leaning against the back of the cockpit, a large portrait image of a middle-aged lady in a puffy orange coverall and with a calm, stern expression.

The reason this might conceivably have been chipped from my own sub-conscious is that I recognise the face. Twice over, as it happens. Most immediately, she was the other lady in the tree when I first fell through into the painting – words I never expected to find myself saying – and before the tree vanished, to be replaced by this boundless waterscape. And more distantly, I recall there’s a likeness of her in the formal exhibition part of the Cavern of Hands. I can’t recall the detail but she must have been Original Crew if she’s displayed there.

The second artefact is a mirror, around the size of my two hands cupped together and with a beautiful, ornate frame. I pick it up and turn it edge over edge to look more closely.

It’s the frame that gives it away. Ebony with silver speckles. The same design as Hanne’s KeepSafe. That association doesn’t have much grip on my own imagination, but I have no difficulty identifying the subconscious that might have conjured – or manifested or planted – it here. (I like planted, incidentally.)  Shalva, friend, have you been yearning?

No sooner do I have this thought, than I come perilously close to dropping the mirror.

The silvered surface astonishes (and – briefly – terrifies) me by switching from reflecting me and my location to replaying moving images from somewhen else entirely.

Two bodies wink into existence, high up, falling from the sky, flailing, entangled.

The abruptness startles me; the plunging, unsafe-looking descent adds extra tension, as do the small pieces of debris that appear to have been dislodged and are plummeting alongside them. The falling bodies land, safely after all, thank goodness. The largest piece of debris clunks onto the ground a moment later and rolls away. They untangle themselves and start chatting and – I remember. I’ve seen this. I was there, once. Missed it, once but arrived soon after. Shalva and Hanne. Our last afternoon of training together in the Closed Zone.

The afternoon before the disastrous morning after…

Why am I seeing this? Because the mirror heard me thinking about Shalva and served up a mildly spiced memory of her? Presumably. But why this moment? And why now?

Teen-Jared arrives into the scene shortly after and I begin to get it. Because I should be with him and I’m not. Tay shouldn’t have arrived yet but there they certainly already are.

The scene is looping – again – back round towards the collision with the time rift.

Back towards the girl-grafted-into-tree-and-tree-into-girl aftermath I’ve been staring at in painted form in that mysteriously appeared, inexplicably bird-swallowing mural.

I waver, trying to make myself put the mirror down. Why torture myself with this?

But I can’t look away, mildly curious about my own non-appearance but mostly mesmerised by the impulse to look-and-not-look at the time-crash unfolding before me.

On the mirror-screen, the little group silently discusses, then forms a line, hands linked, each jumper in the chain facing the alternate direction. They jump and I ‘jump’ with them. I feel echoes of sensation from that jump-arrangement, recalling how relentless it came to feel: Jump – recover – repeat. How slowly we were progressing by the end. The thump of the Slim-Slider against my shoulder blades. Here, I see, that honour goes to Jared.

They arrive and – I retch a tiny, salt-tinged ball of saliva overboard into the water.

Reminder of my first glimpse of Hravn-before. Snared on the edge of the rift, glitching. I see Shalva getting ready to intervene and suddenly, I’m yelling at the screen.

From the depths of my lungs. A howling scream-shout that strips my throat hoarse.

Yelling that she mustn’t, that the KeepSafe won’t do its job, will act as an accelerant, that she needs to find a way to damp down the rift, not add extra energy in to stir it up.

As if shouting more loudly is the thing that will make the difference.

And yet – at the back of the group, I see Tay frown and look round, as if they’ve heard the voice and are trying to place where its coming from.

I’m leaning in, face close enough to the glass that my breath fogs the mirror.

‘Don’t let her touch the stain, Tay. You have to stop Shalva. Please! Please!’

It’s too much to ask of this little kid. And it’s too hard to explain that stopping her would also be a way to help Hravn. But – Tay’s up and moving and grabbing the Slim-Slider and oh merciful moons, they’re going to go in themselves. Not better, kid. Not better!!

Right exactly then, my gaze falls on something – out of place. Something wrong.

Something… potentially helpful?

The debris that fell into scene with Shalva and Hanne is still on the floor here.

It shouldn’t be. It should be a couple of hundred years in the future. But it’s there, lying inside the stained area – inside the disrupted zone – except where it’s lying, there’s a perfect little circle of clear grass. I recognise it, though I don’t understand: Neural. Inhibitor.

I yell at then-Tay to aim the Slim-Slider at the bracelet and I think maybe they do but I don’t have time to process what’s happening when there’s a THWACK! sound and the entire surface of the mirror splinters into perhaps a thousand tiny fragments. (I’m using licence here – no, I assuredly have not counted them to be sure… Let’s just say: many, many fragments.)

The scene cuts out exactly as the surface shatters. Everything’s briefly midnight-dark.

Then the normal reflection resumes, cut up into tiny pieces, each one reflecting a part of my aghast, frustrated face, begging the screen to unbreak. Just for one more minute, please, oh pleasepleaseplease, I’ll do – almost anything. Just tell me – are my friends alright?

[romilly-jay]

It's All In Your Head ( - Is It?)

Spoilers for both shows (not that either of them is on stage ATM but I know they very well might be again at some point. So - SPOILERS.

Speaking of creative experiments with weird isolation:

The Last Man (Korean musical) that played at the Southwark Playhouse (Elephant) Spring/early Summer was my joint favourite of the flurry of theatre productions I saw during my run of saying YES, mostly to whatever counts as the UK's version of Off Broadway.

The other joint fave was Dear Jack, Dear Louise, at the Arcola.

They strike me as two plays that capture some essential aspect of the (very different) generational context that conjured them. And they're actually *both* - now that I think about it - centred on (very different) experiences of isolation.

TLM: young (Gen Z), written in lockdown in the intense strangeness of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's also, I understand, set in that part of Seoul that's a focus for students and aspiring 20-somethings who are - or hope to be - high achieving. And who are also - isolated, stressed, feeling disconnected from society, Always Online.

DJ, DL: written by a Boomer about his wartime sweetheart parents. Here, the isolation is more exclusively imposed by outside circumstances - she's a showgirl and he's a small town doctor and their fathers were best buddies (possibly in the First WW?) so in their "normal" lives, there's lots of social interaction, family connection, etc. Except their lives aren't "normal" because, again of an external crisis, in their case, World War Two. This is the reason they can't just Go On A Date and instead have to get to know each other by writing letters.

IMO both productions did something interesting around isolation in the premise and the staging. (Something also mirrored/inverted?)

DJ, DL: plays a lot on looking but not seeing - each actor has their own bubble space representing their very different contexts (theatreland in NYC versus some army base in the Western USA) and from that space, they talk to the other person but without ever looking at them. They also gaze out into the audience, but without ever looking at us, either. The connection is imagined, in their heads, in their exchange of words.

TLM: By contrast, we get the impression of almost constant eye-contact bcz the actor addresses large parts of their dialogue to the video camera on their phone, which is beamed onto 5 (ish?) TV screens above the set, pointing directly out at the audience. It's deliciously social-media adjacent (well, okay, maybe IRL, people are slightly less prone to wandering off out of shot?) and parasocial-feeling. And ofc, there's the whole "I've sealed myself in a bunker" setting and the prominent placement of the locked door between them and the world.

DJ, DL: is a traditional two-hander i.e. there are two actors in two parts, on stage at the same time and they play to and opposite each other.

TLM: is written for a single actor but two actors share the role across the run and each version of the play is slightly tailored to allow them to be a different Survivor with their own costumes, some unique lines, and - importantly for the emotional arc? - their own "Wilson" substitute, the bear from childhood that has somehow found its way into the bunker.

The main departure between the two premises, though, IMO is the degree of difficulty in working out how much of what they're experiencing is fictional.

In DJ, DL, the scenario is played 'straight' (haha).

Yes, providing we've not picked up the detail about this being a play based on the lived experience of the playwright's RL parents, we don't know whether the *relationship* is 'all in their heads' - or whether the soldier will survive the war so they can even put it to the test. But we are to understand that they are 'really' writing to each other, that they 'really' haven't met IRL and have been set up by their parents, and that they 'really' are, respectively, a NYC showgirl and an army doctor. The reality they inhabit seems clear and grounded. Even the developing attachment turns out to be Not In Their Heads.

In TLM, we are, I think, encouraged to question everything. There's a wonderfully dramatic entrance as sirens blare and emergency warnings play on the TV screens. The survivor runs in along a high walkway and climbs down to reach the safety of their bunker. From almost that moment, though, the perception that this is a "safe" place is challenged.

They don't have all the food they intended to bring. That's a Real World fkup - easy enough to imagine it happening in conditions of panic.

They cheerily brief us on the electronically-powered air filter that's critical to their wellbeing. What would happen if this were to fail...? Also a Real World foreshadowing. Surely *we* know the infrastructure is going to come under pressure at some point. (Why don't they?)

Then - the first inconsistency. The first - doubt - as they receive a phone call from their mother *after* the mobile network went down. First time I'm wondering about perception versus reality. And vm not the last time the show is going to refuse to settle the matter for me.

I think the way it's written leaves the audience with no choice but to conclude that *some* of what we're seeing isn't real - the only viable option is to question how much or how little is happening in their head.

As an exploration of the dangers of isolation it's a strong sell for the importance of human connection by showing the suffering caused when connection is erased, removed, rejected or felt to be impossible.

[romilly-jay]

Reflections on Blog-i-sode Fifty-Four

Life IRL went up a gear recently and I'm suddenly in the position of reviewing these last few pieces having already made some decisions about them for the current, live manuscript. Which is a little bit lovely!

[Also found: tho' editing these pieces was v. useful, the changes didn't endure. Or - haven't been incorporated yet (?). I wasn't under much wordcount pressure in the end and if anything, wanted to preserve wordcount in the last section of the manuscript - so the motivation to slash and slim was overtaken by other priorities. For now.]

I'm calling it the Broken Zone, now, BTW. The brokenness is a central theme and runs from the first scene through the conclusion of the current story and forward into the possibility of a future story. By contrast, I never quite managed to commit to the form of society that would designate - and manage -a 'closed area', Roswell-style. Sure, your typical fantasy dystopia. If *Netty* was running things, certainly. But the Time Tumbler culture doesn't seem so openly authoritarian - seems to be trying to be collaborative and consultative. Well, again, conceded, there's an undercurrent of hidden manipulation - an as yet unanswered question of whether the TTs are truly living in a viable culture or a culture-sham or even some kind of lab-experiment/SIM. This is gestured at (but not explored) in the Archivist role*.

*Genuine archivists will undoubtedly tell me that this Conspiracy Theory of Archival Reach is over-stated and all I can say to that is: Well, quite. But I never quite got over the idea that knowledge really is a source of meaningful real world power and am mesmerised by the thought of a NASA-type science mission doing its experiments and hiding the evidence so that they can carry on unimpeded. So...

Two bodies drop into time from the in-between.

Love this image - I'm more interested in that image (in my head it's slo-mo and probably ripped off from some Bond movie opening credits) than I am in the fact that the jumpers are kissing as they jump in.

That was an attempt at a significant/noticeable difference between the original version of events and the version we saw the second time through the loop (tho' it's made clear - I *think* that it happened the same way both times - just wasn't witnessed on the page 1st time x ).

That detail became a non-event when I removed the second loop from the narrative. I realised vm later that this sequence is the *replacement* second loop - so I didn't lose it as such; I relocated it. But it meant ofc that if I wanted the kiss to be in, it had to be witnessed differently. I've therefore written a tweak to the scene that suggests Jared saw the kiss right at the start of the adventure - it's "off screen" tho in that M didn't see it and J didn't tell him about it. All we get is M noticing that J is off his game and may have seen something that upset/distracted him.

A more significant detail in this version - one I'm not sure I *can* justify in any logical way but which feels psychologically/emotionally 'true' - is the erasing of Mallory from the action. It probably shouldn't work - or rather, the fact that it has happened may tell us that Netty's right and we're in some simulated replay of time/reality not IRL actual time.

[If M is wearing scan-disrupting tech, then potentially one effect could be to interfere with attempts to 'project him' into scenarios - though if the functionality depends on pre-scanned reproductions of character likenesses then that explanation makes no sense. How could a scan that pre-dates the introduction of the disruptor tech be ... disrupted?]

Anyway...

Later in this scene are two sets of action I *did* need to rework - one involves Tay's jump on the Slim Slider. Not plot significant - just reflecting that I didn't think the first description was convincing and so had re-described it in the earlier version of the scene. Needed to carry those changes through here. The other change was the business with the note - firstly to sew the dialogue here together with the changed dialogue from scene version 1 - and second to strip out material that was a legacy from the Never Happened repeat visit into the Zone.

A piece that stayed - and I'm pleased with - was keeping present in observer-Netty's consciousness the recognition that some of the debris in the background was from her own shuttle - i.e., potentially, her grave.

SPOOKY. I *like* it. You see - faintly uncanny with hints of the Gothick. There really might be something *IN* this. (or -perhaps not...?)

[romilly-jay]

Blog-i-sode Fifty-Four

Closed Zone

Beyond Hambleford

Sector Pastoral

Raynovia

415 Current Era

Foundation Month 12

Training with Hanne

Two bodies drop into time from the in-between.

They are tumbling entwined, arms and legs touching, tangling and untangling as they roll to a surprisingly graceful stop and break apart from a passionate embrace. Yes, right to the moment of impact, they are definitely kissing.

I remember this scenario from one of the simulations.

I am watching, as usual, but can’t ‘locate’ myself.

Don’t appear to be in a standard simu-room.

Can’t see mirrors or cottage walls. Or you.

‘Hanne?’ you say, your voice hardly more than a breath. ‘Nan? Is it – did we –?’

‘Kiss?’ the second person replies. ‘Yes, baby bird, we kiss now. Remember?’

‘Nan, no, I – don’t. I’m having trouble remembering how I got here. When are we?’

‘Did Raynovia move that much for you, Veevee? I need to be warier about the power of my touch, if so. It’s coming up on 3pm. Jared will be here any time. We should –’

‘You know, Raynovia did move for me, since you ask. I’ve missed you, Nan. So much. I feel like I haven’t seen you in a thousand years…’

‘Oh, elskede that’s sweet but a bit sappy, don’t you think? We were parted for a matter of instants back there.’

‘Actually, I’m not sure – I’m not sure at all, but I feel like –’

Hanne lets out a little nervy shriek. ‘Quick, quick, he’s here.’

‘Let him see. I’m in no mood for hiding. Can’t recall why we thought we needed to.’

I’ve seen a version of you in the mirror-sims before but – this version seems confused. My assessment is there’s bleed-through from the consciousness I’m familiar with. You’re ‘in’ the simulation but you’re pushing at it, checking whether you belong. And Hanne – isn’t what I expected. Certainly, that shriek was not a sound I expected someone from who looks like that. She seems too buttoned-down, too – controlled. The attachment, however, seems sincere.

You shift, unfurling and angling your body to better catch warm rays from the bright mid-afternoon light, your legs thrown wide on the grass stubble of the clearing floor, one arm cradling the back of your neck, the other held out in invitation. Hanne hesitates then unpacks herself from the taut, upright seated position she has adopted and lies against your side, head on your arm, training journal lying open in front of her.

As Hanne flicks the pages, a tall teenager walks into the clearing, followed by a kid in camo-gear. The pair arrive from the direction of the large-junk hill formed from debris that used to be the wing of a by-this-time-long-since-abandoned Exodus class LT shuttle.

My shuttle, I realise. Again. I am pleased how calm I remain. So, Jared, of course, but with – Hravn? Oh, no, this has to be Tay. I’m not familiar with a version where these two arrive together. Interesting.   

When Jared sees your embrace, he hesitates, like he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to keep walking until he reaches you both. His face makes a cartoon-perfect version of the expression “startled” then moves to “shocked” before resolving, briefly, into “so wounded”.

He quickly appears to collect himself, however, and comes into the clearing with Tay just a little way behind, fiddling with the wheels of a flat, thin contraption they’re carrying.

I’m briefly confused to see a skateboard evidenced in second era settlement. Then I remember I’ve glimpsed one like this in the background a few times. Homespun and rustic-looking and the participants don’t call it a skateboard… I couldn’t bring their name for it to mind. It never seemed important.

‘How was training?’ Hanne asks, and ‘Oh, hello. Who’s this?’

But her second question is swallowed under your cheery interruption –

‘Do you have anything to eat?’ you say. ‘I’m starving.’

Am I imagining that your tone sounds forced?

‘There are snacks in the usual hiding place,’ Jared says, nodding his head towards the base of the large junk-hill, where several small pieces of junk have been piled up into a rock garden effect. Two of them are leaning in on each other, balanced at their upper edges to create a triangular nook. ‘Over there. See the one? Perfect place for a snack cache.’

Hanne gets up and goes to retrieve food supplies from the nook. While she’s heading over, Jared drops cautiously to the ground, wincing. ‘Training was great, thanks, but I did have one awkward Inbound. Right knee’s sore and feels like I bruised my ribcage.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ you say. ‘What was the issue?’

‘I was attempting a somersault-sequence,’ Jared says, then, talking over your shocked ‘Solo?’ he adds, ‘I think there was something – dunno, something off – in the in-between. Trying to locate the origin distracted me and I landed badly. That’s my excuse, anyway.’

Hanne returns and she’s carrying a compact rectangular basket with a jointed metal handle twisted flat for storage. The basket contains four small packages in brown packaging and four clear bottles, each with a different coloured liquid. ‘Nice work on the snacks,’ she says. ‘You packed extra, so we have enough for our guest, too.’ Her voice goes up at the end, and she looks at camo-kid, her face a question.

‘I’m Tay,’ Tay says.

‘We met while I was catching my breath after my fumbled landing,’ Jared says, rubbing at his knee and wincing again as he does so. ‘We were already pretty close to this time-point, so I invited Tay to join us for a bite.’

‘I’m looking for my sib,’ Tay says. ‘Hravn?’

‘Raven?’ says Hanne. ‘Strong name. What do they look like?’

‘Hravn,’ you say. ‘They look like Tay. Don’t they, Tay?’

‘Yeah, pretty much exactly like me. How do you know Hravn? Were they here?’

‘I – I’m not sure,’ you say. ‘I feel like I do know them but how? It’s… blurry.’

‘Wow, what happened to you?’ Jared says. His tone is jocular, but it doesn’t match the look on his face. He shoots an uneasy glance at you, then to Hanne, then back to you again.

‘Let’s eat something,’ Hanne says. ‘We can figure out looking for…’

‘Hravn.’ You and Tay say, together.

‘Oh yes, Hravn, after that.’ She hands out the packages, three of which have names on, giving the fourth one (blank) to Tay, then offers round the basket to share out the drinks.

Tay arranges themselves on the skateboard to eat the sandwich in their package.

‘Tay,’ Hanne says, ‘I like your Slim-Slider. Did you bring it with you?’

‘This?’ Tay smiles with so much joy it seemed like their camo-patterning might crack off their grinning features. ‘Nah. I found it near here. It’s great, isn’t it? Look at this.’

They scramble to their feet, drop the board onto its wheels, jump smoothly onto it and start rolling along the flat earth in the centre part of the clearing. They push off against the ground to speed up and then do a tiny jump into the air so that both feet come away from the top of the board. The moment they free jump away from the board’s surface, Tay vanishes. The wheels keep turning and the board slides forward as if propelled by a phantom rider, then a moment later, Tay reappears, landing with confident precision exactly where the board now is. Hanne and Jared applaud with, I’d say, genuine enthusiasm. Tay grins widely and makes a scratchy attempt at a bow, then scrambles back to seated and gets started on their sandwich.

You, however, seem distracted. You’re ignoring the skateboard demo in favour of frowning at a pink-striped note that has fallen out of the wrapper of your sandwich. You’re holding it out away from your body like it’s an armed device ticking through a countdown to detonation. It’s not exactly difficult to discern that something about it is making you uneasy.

‘What’s that, Veevee?’

‘Oh nothing. Someone’s sending me mysterious little notes.’

‘What does it say?’ Hanne asks, taking the stripey pink note from you. ‘“DON’T HESITATE.” You’re right, that is mysterious. Except – isn’t that your handwriting?’

‘Does look like it,’ you admit, ‘or a pretty good imitation of it, at least. Strange.’

‘What do you think it means, Shalva?’ says Jared.

‘I’m not sure. I haven’t even quite decided if it’s intended as encouragement or to scare the shady Vesper out of me because let me tell you –’ You make an exaggerated gesture with your whole upper body as you gesture to your audience to lean in. Your brown-gold hair bounces and your eyes sparkle and – well, I get why everyone in the small circle does lean in. Once they’re nice and close, you whisper, ‘– it’s terrifying the jump-range right out of me! I feel like I want to rush back to Hambleford right now, take over the kitchen in one of the communal spaces and make everyone an absolute tower of sweetcorn fritters.’ You catch Hanne’s wrinkled nose and add, ‘Or – banana pancakes. Just as bad. Just as good.’

‘Hmmm,’ says Jared. ‘I’ve hurt myself… you’re spooked. We could just – scratch the afternoon session and head home?’ I notice he carefully avoids eye contact with Hanne.

‘Yeah, but what about –?’ Hanne points at Tay, already back on the skateboard, pushing it along the dry dirt at the centre of the clearing and making tiny time-jumps on it. ‘Look how young they are. Are we really just supposed to leave them to find their way back to their own native present? And – what about their missing sibling?’

‘Hravn,’ you say. ‘Okay, you got me. We should help.’

‘I agree,’ says Jared, which surprises me. I have been expecting him to resist this plan. The three of you switch into conference-mode as you plan the journey past-wards.

Tay is included, in principle, but spends the discussion messing about on the skateboard, executing micro-time-jumps in the background, and answering any direct questions with answers like, ‘not sure’, ‘never tried that’ or ‘don’t really know’.

‘I propose that we take this slowly,’ says Jared. ‘Not just for my own sake! But – also for that. Bite-sized jumps will be best, in the circumstances. I know it will go on for longer so we should probably plan to pause on the way a couple of times whenever it gets too tiring.’

‘I think we need physical contact, too,’ Hanne says. ‘To be on the safe side.’

At this point, I have a strong desire to skip the scenario forward but I don’t see a means of achieving that. I still don’t have anything that resembles a take on my own location relative to the simulation. Feels like I’m observing from a closer position than the tech is ordinarily configured to allow. The experience manifests as being loosely tethered onto your muddled consciousness.

I recognise a lack of interest in the minutiae of the journey, coupled with a degree of concern that when the group jumps, I’ll be left behind here, alone in an empty junkyard with the decayed wreckage of my LT-alt shuttle. Further – I’m anxious to see how things unfold once the jumpers arrive and find Hravn.

This is not within my control, so I’ve instructed myself not to worry about it.

I’m also choosing to assume that at the conclusion of the simulation, I will find myself back in our shared space inside the Rift. Since there’s no way I can actively control that, either, the correct way forward is to refuse to give the problem any further energy or concentration. Time, as they say, will show.

[romilly-jay]

Tentative Steps Frwd

Such a strange - strangely happy - season... Rose of Nevada is probably the kind of movie I would have spent years hoping/guess I wd like but fearing to experience in case it was too - harsh. And now: it's the kind of thing where I'm saying YES to the impulse.

Because it will probably be right - and because it's [just] a piece of art - no matter what terrors my amygdala might conjure up about the survivability of the experience: I will. I'll walk out of the theatre. Alive. Whether or not I enjoyed it. Like, truly, a context where it doesn't seem too fate-tempting to ask: What's the worst that could happen here?

We make art. [Hopefully.]

We make art - if we can - if we dare - if we persist.

We make it - and at a certain point it finishes and moves away from us - into our past and, if we're lucky, into someone else's future. If we're really super-lucky, maybe to an actual audience. [Conflicted about the optimum size of the audience - too many examples of how being super-famous/successful doesn't correlate to being super happy/fulfilled and it's an irrelevant field of inquiry for the kind of art I'm making - super niche, possibly niche to the point where it's for an audience of one. Which would have bothered me, once, but now *doesn't* - now that I've discovered what a lovely time can be had by making *exactly* what you want to make. [If given the very great privilege of not HAVING to earn from making it, since *that* feels like an invitation to raging despair.]

NB I've dropped the Jack Howard Second Time Round collage back in here (can't remember *when* I used it before but pretty sure I did...)

First thing I ever heard about this short film was a sliver of his post-mortem with Mark Kermode when he talked about *not* getting shortlisted for the Oscar - that's the oscar buzz mentioned in the tweet below - it *did* get longlisted, unexpectedly - he says - so there was this up-surge of HOPE and then - it was GONE. Didn't happen. Fades into the past. Time for the next project. That was its existence / DONE.

And - if that sounds bleak, I believe their conclusion was: "That's the creative life, in essence. You make it. Gone!! You go again. And repeat."

Still sounds bleak (in my own head, reading it back). The tone was much more reconciled-to-their-fate-and-the-nature-of-things than I seem to be able to make it sound inside my head and, perhaps, here.

The Quinntessential Review on X: "Digital success meets Oscar buzz! 🌟 "His attention to lighting alone would shame many a feature production gracing modern cinemas." @JackHoward's The Second Time Around is a compelling mystery streaming on @Channel4. Read our ★★★★ review: https://t.co/6htIW1Q4YQ #UKFilm" / X

=========================================

Since this seems to be about - taking the shot and it working or not - sometimes, perhaps, we take a shot we don't know we're taking. I truly hope I never get over how the first 15 mins of the cartoon movie UP made me feel - even though I will probably never get to repeat the sheer SURPRISE of finding myself in floods of tears when seeing it, cold, in the movies (them wuz the dayz) with zero idea what was coming up.

Michael Warburton on X: "One of the most beautiful & deeply moving sequences in ALL of Movie history, not just animated movie history. UP (2009) If you fail to be moved by this in some way there’s something wrong with you frankly. https://t.co/zKVqfbGgUi" / X

PS The reason I took that particular screenshot, though - much as I love UP - was that it happened, on my feed, to juxtapose with another lil post about the marvels of TOBS. Specifically, here, Mrs Gardiner, played by the very fabulous Indira Varma <3 <3

PS2 gives me an excuse to clip the following interview which I just came across and which - TYSM - has DF expressing approximately what I've been assuming about his character's sleeve-rolling [viz, that the character has no idea he's creating a MB thirst trap and **this is what makes it so effective and affecting** - that it's NOT SLY!]

'The Other Bennet Sister': Dónal Finn On Tom Hayward & Yearning

Moments that stood out to me from that interview...

This series really centers kindness. What was that like to be part of?

It does. Mary Bennet has the ability to bring out the best in everyone. But what I love about the show is that Mary would probably describe herself as an unlikely protagonist and Tom would do the same. He has moments where he feels shy and is happy being small.

It’s so easy to be enamored by Elizabeth Bennet as a protagonist and to live vicariously through her decisions and the boldness of her personality as a woman at that time. But I would maybe not naturally identify with her as a character — I’m more like Mary. So it felt like a great privilege to be part of a story that centered people who might feel the same as an audience, and to give you permission to feel like the main character in your story.

Those moments stood out to me so much — when Mary picks up the graces hoop and their fingers touch, or the second time Tom rolls up his sleeves. People are like, “He knows what he’s doing!” How much do you think is conscious or subconscious in trying to woo Mary?

He definitely believes that this is a very welcome friendship, and one that he’s clearly enjoying. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. It’s the truth of the moment, like, he doesn’t want to rip his coat again. That’s why he takes his jacket off. It’s the unassuming nature that people respond to — not even thinking about that being something Mary might be attracted to is actually what makes it so.

PS3 Such an absolute tonic to keep coming across these niche lil interviews with - I believe - small-scale social media accounts bcz instead of being soul-destroyingly managed, dumb and repetitive, these interviews are - nerdy, hilarious, dumb, and unexpected. 1000 times better at offering insights into the actorly process as well as doing the mandatory, zeitgeisty, de-nous-jours cultural stuff (my take being that the media circus to promote streaming media is deliberate parasocial engagement bait - and well done to all who subvert or resist the worst of it - imagine being able to skate delicately along the surface, taking delight in the good bits and gracefully dodging the rest... this is presumably an media-illiterate fantasy... sounds impossible - like, the devil's bargain CANNOT BE SUBVERTED, O MORTAL ONE)

[romilly-jay]

Reflections on Blog-i-sode Fifty-Three

Been starting to assemble the next draft WIP from these scraps and - yeah, it's weird. Weirder than I'd imagined, even though I'm by now closely familiar with the pieces of it. Cumulative impact of all the small bits of weird, I suppose. Like jumping into icy water and hoping you acclimatise before your body forgets how to swim... BUT, the instinct remains, as I said to GM when discussing our respective writing - the weird is the writing expressing itself (an 'essential' distillation) and needs to stay... that where I'd assumed the weird would be ironed out during the refining process, in fact the opposite has occurred. The weird has become more embedded, more, yes, "essential". Here we are.

=========================================

So this whole section is a great example of how I'm keeping more than I thought I would - because I'm giving in to the quintessential weirdness - and because the narrative is beginning to take quite settled form - and because, well, I like it and since I'm the primary audience, okay then.

This is the very end, mildly re-edited - and as presently incorporated into the WIP... I've taken out a reference to white and pink notepaper because I've downplayed and largely removed the earlier plot shenanigans about S replacing the note that she received in the BZ. But a less significant note can still exist in this scene and I've allowed S to continue to make reference to sending a note to Emilia.

You hiss excitedly, ‘Look! Look!’ and sure enough, it has a token-sized package in its beak. ‘Mallory?’ you call, ‘MALLORY?!’ and then, it’s like two feeds interfering with each other – suddenly, I’m seeing a stocky young man of Southeast Asian extraction superimposed over the image of the bird /// and gone /// and back /// and gone. You reach out your hand and, whether or not this was your intention, the bird drops the wrapped token into your open palm.

I have a moment to glimpse Mallory (who else?) and to clock that he’s in dark, practical clothing, but with a gaudy oversized bracelet on his right wrist. A memory of checking the inventory for the medical teams // jags // I’ve seen kit like this.

It’s... It’s a neural inhibitor. The device clashes with the subdued tone of the young man’s workwear like an out-of-season party hat. My brain clicks into worrying away – trying to resolve how a Time Tumbler would have come into contact with a specialised piece of first settlement technology... Why he’d risk permanent physiological damage by wearing it...

And then I’m falling –

You’re falling –

We’re both falling.

I've retained the plot-stuff about passing the token around - I thought I was going to have to get rid of it because M isn't sheltering in the SM supply depot (where the mural is located and first encountered). BUT then I've realised - no, not really - I have all the plot mechanics I need to be able to introduce a replica mural into M's home in the BZ. Voila.

Allows me to have S continuing to look for someone to communicate and, upon finding Emilia, deciding to risk sending her the token that's been providing stability to S and N in the impossible cottage.

Allows the plot loop of E giving the token to M and now M giving it back to S - and I guess because he was the slip-pair partner, thus allowing S a tiny point of contact back into actual time-flow - so that she exits and - he becomes trapped. That's going to need a bit more work. But yay weirdness - no reason he's "here" - he could be in the BZ when he makes this gesture - just as long as they connect.

I also no longer have any intention of body-swapping M and Pirate - not even for a brief near-death sequence (no longer using this) - but it doesn't NEED that plot convulsion for P to be present and interfering!

[romilly-jay]

Blog-i-sode Fifty-Three

Impossible Cottage

~ today ~

‘And Found –’

‘My God,’ I say. ‘It really happened.’

‘What? How could they do that?’ you say from behind me. I guess you’ve been reading over my shoulder.

‘Improvised devices. Probably from repurposed mining charges. Some of those were small-scale nuclear, so that the mission ships had capability for mining from asteroids.’

‘No, I mean –’

I do know what you mean. Of course. But I don’t want to talk about it.

‘Survivors?’ I ask the mirror and after a whirring pause, the screen provides a list. Thirty seven ID sigs. ‘Right. Cross-check survivors against the Starah Miasto supply depot.’

Another pause, then the list reappears. Three names this time. Torstein Nilsen. Raoul Bruni. Emilia Visitor. None of them are known to me but your eyes sharpen as you read.

‘Emilia… Visitor?’ you say. ‘I don’t suppose… Is it possible? Could she –?’

‘Footage,’ I say, and after more whirring, a huge list of security cam files appears. I open one from near the top. It shows the two men entering the supply depot medical bay, one of them carrying the other, who appears seriously injured. I flick to another file. It shows the injured man installed in a cryo-unit, receiving care. Another file shows the less injured man drinking schnapps and weeping. Yes, I’m feeling this, too. Pour one for me while you’re at it.

None of the early files show the woman.

‘I can look,’ you say.

I don’t argue. I’m feeling a powerful urge to tick through some mission checklists or take an engine apart and neither of those activities are available or relevant here – but being at a loose end isn’t enough to keep me combing through archival footage documenting the ruined vestiges of our colonial mission. Who could have embraced destruction on this scale?

Surprisingly soon, you find images of the woman. She is your Time Tumbler. How she got there and why are useless questions and we don’t speculate. It’s enough that she is.

‘She’ll be able to get a message back to Mallory. I’m sure she will,’ you say, ‘and, since it’s Emilia, I’m thinking…’ You pull out the little pouch where you store your token and retrieve the token which, I see, is wrapped in a battered, much-folded version of the pink striped “Don’t Hesitate” note. ‘I want to try to give her this token as well as the note.’

‘Okay.’

‘I feel like it might destabilise this little in-between bubble, though. Should I risk it?’

‘I’m intrigued that you consider this constantly shifting cottage as currently stable.’

‘The details shift, yes, but the bubble holds together as a haven, a kind of a home. We’re not being battered or ripped apart in the time rift. Because, on my way in here…’

‘Little sister, I’m really not invested in staying trapped here forever. If you think giving Emilia the token will help, you should. Let the consequences be what they will be.’

‘Um, if you’re sure. You sound a bit – are you okay, commander?’

‘No.’ No, not really. Not at all.

‘I can’t imagine what it must be like.’

‘Good. I hope you never can.’

‘Why don’t you rest? I can work this through on my own, I’m sure.’

Well, this is a reversal… (How many times have you refused this same request when it came from me? I’ve stopped keeping track.) Still, a rest would be – fine. Oblivion would be even better. Temporary oblivion, that is. I just so desperately want not to be picturing Port Alyssa in ruins… the ARK out of contact and potentially responsible… the colonial project, our part in offering hope for a human future beyond Terra, abruptly, senselessly obliterated...

You take my hand. That’s new. My first instinct is to shrink away except I’m so very tired. It’s – not unpleasant and I wonder why I’ve worked so hard to avoid physical touch.

Your impractical, too-soft armchair has re-appeared, who knows when. I sit and it’s still saggy with cushions and bright green drapery, splashed across the chair’s forest green, velvet upholstery. I am pinioned between shades of green as the scene fades away from me.

***

Impossible Cottage

~ today ~

I return to consciousness abruptly. Something’s wrong.

The world has turned murky green for a start. And I’m cold, a sharp breeze tearing at my legs. I ‘land’ enough to notice that a piece of woven fabric is pushed against my face, scraping at my skin and obscuring my vision. When I pull it away, I can see clearly again.

The wind is vicious – and persistent – and surprisingly strong.

That’s because the back wall of the cottage is missing. That’s the wall with the mural. Gone. Torn off by some powerful force. Wind or quake or – It occurs to me to check that whatever disaster took our back wall, it didn’t take you with it, too.

It hasn’t. You are sitting under the table, looking stunned, but you’re here.

‘You found Emilia, then,’ I say. It’s not a question but you nod anyway.

‘And gave her the token?’

‘Uh-huh. And a note to explain about giving it to Mallory.’

‘And then?’

‘The connection dropped and the tree started shaking really violently. I thought the whole cottage would be dislodged but in the end, it was just one wall that crumbled away.’

‘You’re not hurt?’

‘I’m okay. You?’

‘Peachy.’ Peachy? When have I ever said that?

‘Huh?’

‘I’m okay. And the part of the structure that’s here seems secure enough, for now.’

‘I – hope it will do some good.’

‘Passing on the token?’

You nod.

‘It’s done and can’t be undone – I believe? – so we might as well assume that it will.’

***

Impossible Cottage

~ today ~

Today, when I return to consciousness, a second wall has vanished, taking the kitchen with it.

The floorboards tilt and sway as we walk and over the course of the day, the too-soft armchair, the table, and the rugs that used to lie in front of the fireplace slide off the platform.

It feels to me like they take too long to crash all the way to the forest floor. Sure enough, when I commando-crawl to the edge to take a look, the ground is out of sight.

Summer foliage? you suggest, but my view is that the bubble is no longer pretending to respect the laws of physics, that certain effects are becoming exaggerated. Destabilised…

***

Impossible Cottage

~ today ~

Today, there are no walls at all, but that seems to be good for the floorboards which are no longer tilting at an alarming angle.

The food doesn’t return. We don’t seem to need it for sustenance, but I miss the routines – of prep, of conversation, of clearing away – that become wrapped into the experience of eating. There’s nothing to distract us from the reality that we are – waiting.

***

Impossible Cottage

~ today ~

Today, again, we are waiting.

It occurs to me that the floorboards-only version of the cottage is shaped a little bit like one of those life rafts from an early era survival movie. It’s still around twice as big and notably more comfortable that the literal life raft (escape pod) that’s the last thing I remember from – that day. Literal life rafts, though, don’t ‘float’ in the branches of a massive tree.

Then just, a flurry of movement somewhere towards the tip of one large branch –

 We scramble to see what’s going on and – ‘AWK!’

The first nature-sound I can recall hearing since my consciousness became aware of being housed in the impossible cottage. I’m just thinking that it’s a shame it’s such an ugly cry when the bird hops into view. I see a collared crow, an Asian corvid, that’s here on Raynovia because someone back on Terra argued successfully for its preservation.

You hiss excitedly, ‘Look! Look!’ and sure enough, it’s holding a stripey pink token-sized package in its beak. ‘Mallory,’ you call, ‘MALLORY!’ and it’s like two feeds interfering with each other because I’m seeing a stocky young man of Southeast Asian extraction superimposed over the image of the bird /// and gone /// and back /// and gone.

You reach out your hand and, whether or not this was your intention, the bird drops the wrapped token into your open palm.

I have a moment to glimpse Mallory (who else?) and to clock that he’s in dark, practical clothing, but with a gaudy oversized bracelet on his right wrist. A memory of checking the inventory for the medical teams jags. I’ve seen kit like this. It’s… a neural inhibitor. It screams that it is out-of-place and mis-chronological, clashing with the subdued tone of the young man’s workwear like an out-of-season party hat. My brain immediately begins worrying away at how a Time Tumbler would have got hold of such specialised first settlement technology and why he’d risk permanent physiological damage by wearing it –

And then I’m falling. You’re falling. We’re both falling.