Back In Blue Goes

I've been working nonstop to get my boxes back up and running. Damage wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I had to drop some funds on a couple new items, but I know people who can get me stuff in a hurry. Illegally, of course. Cough cough, pretend you didn't hear.

I'm back. I've recovered and I'm back. This time, I went in very cautiously, which turned out to be wise. My entry point, the skyway station, still has people in it. As before, they just ignore me. I was prepared this time, and I've just been studying them as they move here and there, mouths moving in silent speech. They're beautiful, in a Tolkien kind of way. Orange-tinted skin, pale eyes, pale clothes. Most of them have large, curling ram's horns, and sometimes I see one with two sets of horns, one smaller set peeking from beneath the larger. Physically perfect, every one. Typical. I'm more and more convinced that the Idea-World's creator is some kind of nerd. Probably has a whole harem of ram-people.

I was worried because I've been using the clockwork computer here, and since it appears to be for public use...well, now there's a public to use it. However, no one has challenged my using it. People stand around and wait for me to finish, but when I don't, they just wander off after awhile. No one seems angry, stressed, sad, or anything. These people are boring. Pretty, but boring.

I wonder what they see when the look at me.

My guess is that the Idea-World's creator is currently hanging out in the nearby glass city beneath the giant ferns. Part of me wants to go there. I mean, I was gonna anyway once I got the hang of moving independently within each of the two worlds. It's riskier, now that the Creator is apparently there. But if I can keep my head down, keep from being noticed by him or her....because it doesn't matter if any of the ram-people see me. Unless....unless they get more complex the closer I get to the Creator. What if they get complex enough to see I'm different, not from around here?

I'll have to proceed with caution.

The Idea-World is doing the jittery thing again, which freaks me out because it makes me remember the thing I saw right before the people appeared. Guess I should mention that, even though thinking on it still frightens me. All I can do is hope it was some sort of hallucination on my part.

There was this violent jitter, as if the whole Idea was coming unraveled. Everything sort of flicked and spazzed-out, and within a second, all the ram-people appeared around me. But for a heartbeat in the interim, I saw.....a different place. Jagged, black crystals, taller than a human being, growing in strange clumps all around. A place of glistening daggers. What really scared me, what made my heart almost jump out of my chest, was that the black shards were all around me......and above me. Pointing at me from every single direction. As if I were in the razor-sharp heart of a geode.

Jesus, what WAS that I saw?

--Blue Was Here