Archive-name: Fantasy/karene2.txt
Archive-author: Jim and Meg Norris
Archive-title: Karen Eliot’s Excellent Adventures # 2
Karen sat at her bar in the small pool of light cast by a desk
lamp. She keyed the remote and was immediately jolted by the
intense volume in her headphones. She quickly adjusted to the
digital rock’n'roll. She extracted one of the two sugar cubes from
the small ziploc and dropped it into the clear water which about
half filled the blue crystal glass. Karen watched the thin tendrils
and bubbles climbing upward from the dissolving cube. When only a
vestige of the cube remained, Karen stirred the water. The painted
Emperor penguin atop the glass stir stick turned and spun. Clasped
lightly in Karen’s regal fingers, it completed the ceremonial
preparation. Karen raised the glass and drank the water in several
unhurried swallows. With a phrase, she invoked her hypnotically-
installed interface metaphor and prepared to enter the always open
playground of her mind.
Karen closed her eyes. As always, the first effect to hit was
the intense joy. Beyond euphoria, she was lit by the electric
pleasure of cognition. The acceleration of her awareness took
Karen’s breath away. She was filled with a sense of vibrant energy;
restless, resisting confinement, awaiting purpose. Karen waited,
still and receptive, enjoying her most powerful and balanced hit of
L+ yet. Her face was transformed by a wide grin. Everything that
she experienced seemed hilarious. The boundless soul laughed at
every aspect of its voluntary earthly confinement. The joyous
feelings mellowed and Karen could feel the visual effect hitting.
She opened her eyes. Her will twisted the perspective of her
view. With slight effort, she could see the framework of points
underlying her previous perspective. Karen loved to come to the
grid of brilliant spectral colors pulsing on a background of the
deepest black. She shifted her perspective further into the grid.
The perception of her immediate surroundings become masked by the
perspective switching. With the underlying grid mostly in violet
with some green, she could see her world alongside. With the grid
shifted to yellow and blue, her world became a fading afterimage.
The final displacement was to orange and red grid lines. The
delicate flows between the white node points connected by the grid
lines were clearly discernable. Karen relaxed, her mind still.
When she felt totally cleansed, Karen twisted her perspective back
to her physical circumstances.
The point framework faded, but the clear joy remained. Karen
tamped the last of her Mendocino purple kush into the bong bowl.
She smoked several hits of the famous one-hit shit.
Karen piloted her 16-valve yupster through the thickening early
morning traffic. She drove to her favorite regional park,
occasionally playing with the shapes of the fluffy clouds to the
sounds of blasting rock’n'roll. The promising gusts of wind earlier
had picked up to a steady breeze.
She was easily able to fit into the street side parking space
left by a suit driving a boat that didn’t quite look like his
father’s Oldsmobile.
Karen removed the two bags with her gear from the car and set
off on foot. Her favorite visual hallucination was immediately
operational; the clouds were false colored. The resolution improved
as she watched. Horizontal and vertical movement was highlighted to
the degree of magnitude. Movement tails were plotted against the
latlong grid on the sky that suddenly appeared. Her left eye
displayed additive color mixture and her right showed subtractive
mixture. She blinked rapidly several times before establishing gray
scale; positive on left, negative on right. With several more
blinks she tested the binocular gray of her shaded object view mode.
She switched the tactical overlay on and enjoyed the instant
replacement. Dense monochrome axial and edge lines defined the
plotted objects in her wireframe view mode. She blinked rapidly and
switched the representation color; red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
violet. Trees moving in the breeze appeared as fractal fluff. She
toyed briefly with switching visibility of the hidden lines before
halting on the small hilltop that she’d walked to. The position was
ideal for kite flying; an unobstructed hilltop with a comfortably
calm lee side. Karen willed the visual hallucination suite off.
Once Karen had unpacked everything that she needed, the special
components of her custom kite were arrayed about her in small
unitary bags. Moving lithely, she fitted the machined alloy tubes
through the fabric. With some flexing of the frame tubes, the
assembly locked into position. The dihedral looked perfect to her
practiced eye. She quickly attached her toys to the kite. This was
to be the final test of the digital camera. The stoner-friendly (more…)