#if i speak this shit into existence and sow that seed then my reward is actually getting stuff done. hopefully. it doesnt always work

[lightholme]

I am stranger in a strange land. I have no skill in making anything useful--not with the tools of this age--and my body is ill-suited for hard labor. I decide to go from farm to farm until someone is willing to give me simple work that can be communicated without words. At least my regeneration will help me recover quickly.

I am kicked off a farm almost immediately. Within an hour or two it is obvious that I'm slower than a ten year old child of this time, and the farmer has no desire to share his hard-grown food with this oddly-garbed, weak-limbed creature. I have learned two words which I believe mean "barn" and "worthless piece of shit" (or something of that nature); I cannot pronounce either, but I repeat them as I walk.

I am near a city and the farms are blessedly close. Even so it takes close to a full day before I find another farm that allows me to do some work. My benefactor this time is grizzled and care-worn, yet I think he is touched by my helplessness. I work a few hours and eat for the first time, the flavors strange and bland to my palate. My vocabulary gains a few more words, but most of the communication is through hand gestures, though even that is surprisingly difficult. I sleep in the barn, rain dripping though the slats keeping me awake long into the night.

I had the good fortune to arrive during planting season. As I grow accustomed to the work, I feel I am less of a burden than I was at first. Perhaps I am even, barely, earning my keep. But, more to the point, my vocabulary is improving considerably and I am now speaking in short, simple sentences.

The summer is busy for me. I know I cannot stay here; after harvest I will need to find other accommodations. I know that learning to write is of the utmost importance, but there are no books to be found. Instead I slowly, painfully copy characters I see written wherever I find them, practicing them with the burnt ends of sticks on rock until I can form them quickly, even if I do not know their meaning.

My benefactor, who has the habit of occasionally looking on as I practice my "writing", surprises me one day we are in the city. He introduces me to a man whose function I do not really grasp, but who seems to be some sort of clerk. In any case, he is willing to write out some sentences and tell me what they mean. His accent is new to me, the vocabulary strange, and I drink it in. This man has some education. I use my charcoal collection to write the translations in English and he asks what language it is. I have no answer, so I tell him I made it up. He laughs. For many nights after, I copy these passages again and again.

I visit the clerk at every opportunity. The farmer is understanding. He is kind, and seems to care about me, but I also see relief in his eyes that I will not ask to stay the winter. The clerk has become a friend, and he willingly supplies me with new words and corrects my fledgling script. Luckily, the script is simple and rather flexible--much simpler than English--and my progress is rapid.

My writing has become quite serviceable, and well that it has, because the harvest is done and the preparations for winter have begun. I still work much of each day, but soon I will need to find new accommodations. The clerk, who it turns out takes dictations from the wealthy and illiterate, helps me find a job doing inventory and bookkeeping for a successful shop. It pays so little that I can scarcely afford to house, feed, and clothe myself, but I have ready access to quill pens and now my real work can begin.

On wood, stone, and any other surface I can find, I begin writing down everything I remember. About textiles, manufacturing, mathematics, psychology, history, and medicine. I write in English, and in great detail, developing a shorthand for my relative certainty about these facts.

Over the next several years, my education proves invaluable. The owner of the shop, at first scornful of my work, becomes, if not a friend, then at least an ally. I show him how to reduce inventory carrying costs using LEAN techniques and predictive forecasting of purchasing trends. I introduce a formal loyalty program, employ (relatively) sophisticated product pricing strategies, and he is generous in rewarding me as his wealth burgeons. The clerk is happy for my success at first, and I even try to help him, but the role reversal does not suit him well and we stop spending time together. When he dies a few years later, I don't even know. The farmer I visit occasionally. It is awkward, but I owe it to him. The shop purchases most of what he produces at a good price, and that is perhaps the only meaningful thing I give to him before he dies, quietly, eight years after I arrived.

It is during this time that I sow the seeds of wealth. I save every coin I can and found an informal bank. I am allowed to operate out of the shop owner's buildings in exchange for a 20% share of profits. He is skeptical at first, but it costs him nothing. By the time he dies, nearly 30 years later, it is more than half his annual earnings, according to the quasi-accounting team I now employ. I purchase the business from his widow for a sizable sum, sufficient to keep her in comfort for her few remaining years.

It takes time to find and train someone to handle the day-to-day management of the bank and the shop (still known as such, though it has expanded a dozen times and offers the finest and most varied wares in the city), but once accomplished, I turn my attention to my new project: a university. I pay to build it, but the ongoing costs are covered by the students, mostly the children of the obscenely wealthy. I need to be careful--some of my ideas could draw the wrong kind of attention--but I begin rigorously training them in the scientific method, drawing on every elementary school experiment I can remember. I find I enjoy this. Aside from some dalliances, I lead a fairly solitary existence. The children make me feel connected, meaningful.

It is time to deal with the issue of not aging. I establish a bank and university in two cities perhaps a month's journey away from each other and begin passing myself off as my own son or grandson. Every twenty years or so I rotate, managing the affairs of the other location by correspondence. Some of the students have grown up and become teachers. This is both heartwarming and inconvenient.

I have good paper now, just one of the many fruits of my universities. I publish a "book of prophecy", in which I attempt to capture all my recollections of science and phrase it as if they were clever guesses. This is perhaps all I can do to guide and hasten their progress. I continue to write down my memories, but I have not remembered anything new in a very long time.

I fall in love. She is young--everybody is young, when you have lived a century and a half--and she is bright, and she worships me, yet speaks to me candidly and without guile. Before I ask her to marry me, I tell her the truth about who I am, something I have never done before. I show her the vast piles of writings, copied and recopied in an ever greater expanse, organized and re-organized, indexed and cross-referenced a hundred ways. She does not believe me. She is not cruel, but she leaves the university soon after and I do not see her again for many years. For the first time, I contemplate death.

Impatient with the rate of progress, I use my wealth and prestige to forge a political career. I have no wish (or facility) to run a nation, but I advise, and my banks give my words weight. I do my best to resolve conflict and establish universities in every allied country. The thing I remember with the sweetest nostalgia, other than air conditioning and hot water, is TV shows. It is a bizarre, ridiculous thing to work toward, but I throw my wealth and centuries and harness the combined intellectual power of every major nation to make me some damned talkies

. It takes a long, long time.

It is 750 years before the world is "modern" in my eyes, though history has taken a vastly different shape. We had no dark ages, no long stretches of stagnation. For all the many gaps in my knowledge, there are always brilliant minds to discover--or even to leapfrog--the reality I recorded, which now seem another man's writing. I assume different identities now, controlling my enterprise through elaborate mechanisms of separation. My personas are primarily political as I continue to try to guide events. I succeed, though less with every passing century. I wonder, sometimes, if I should let loose the reigns, now that I have nothing to offer other than my accumulated wealth.

[isaacathom]

exceptional

alright so tomorrroowww. tomorrow evening we’re checking the essay specifically, thats pencilled in, basically check the doc at arooound 8pm or so to see whats up. in the earlier parts of the day, we’ve got a lot of fun tasks. could read my lang textbook (might leave that till saturday), could start lining my Pluralism piece, could start properly compiling my 1989 curatorial in a format i can properly show off to others (still trying to decide b/w two venues, i think ill need to ask her how strict we need to be about size restrictions, could ‘finish’ the 1989 thing i worked on today at uni by overlaying the flag and doing the hair and doing some general brush tip touch ups. there’s a lot i could do. knowing me, i might not do any. im joking. i WILL do something. i speak that into existence. i sow that seed.

1989 might be good so i can get it pretty much entirely out the way until class on wednesday, because it bores me to tears and i dont wanna have to think about it if i dont have to :Pc. Plus I’m scared as shit to start lining the pluralism one. I’ll have to do a lot of thumbnail tests for which line colours to use for whic spots and which colours i wanna use where, which will take a while. the colours i did for the patch test were alright but very flat, natch, since they weren’t shaded at all. so ill need to get the numerous bits selected and probably have an entire swatch page in my notebook where i assign colours to areas. the dress is obvious, grey lines and my various greys used as necessary. ooohhh i still need that navy blue. i dont have a navy blue yet. hmmmmm. HMMMM. i shoulda gone to bayswater today, god dammit. b29 does work on some level but the suit is so dark and i feel like i cant shade that colour with anything that conveys the fact i was convinced it was a black suit. hmm. that might be a swatch test thing i need to do to figure out the best way to go for that. im totally down for buying a new copic or two (not toooo many, i have way too many already) but i need to KNOW so i can plan around it. i might see what my mum thinks.

i think its a toss between pluralism or 1989. pluralism is gonna be so intensive for the swatches bc its a big piece and i wanna do it justice due to the like, content (im not gonna do a shitty rendition of my parents goddamn wedding photo, except by accident. i do not set out with failure in mind). at the same time the swatches wouldnt take too long. i could like, swatch in the early arvo, then after dinner due the 1989 touch ups... no thatd require a restart. what if i do the 1989 in the early arvo so my tablet is working, so like 1pm or so, then after i finish that (it should take that long, drawing swoopy homestuck looking ass hair is 90% of what i do artistically, and the stuff i did today was pretty good already) i can start swatching, then depending on time and energy i can start compiling the curatorial, and THEN at 8pm or so i swap to checking the essay doc and commence freaking the fuck out. if im still awake at like 2am tomorrow (so 2am on sunday) you know exactly why

i think that a good plan actually! ill get a lot of small things done tomorrow :D

goodnight <3

[victorineb]

Green Scarf to a Bull, Chapter 2: Come Here Often?

It’s no longer Basic Chickens Week (boo!) but that doesn’t mean Adam and Elias have stopped their shenanigans! Here’s chapter two of my nonsense, and Adam has revenge on his mind...

Also on AO3.

According to Fryderyk and Jaime (the other bartender), Elias came in every Wednesday and Saturday at 10pm, ordered one pint every two hours and left at 2am. The night Adam had been in, he’d stayed later for some reason (Adam wondered if it had been to continue to shoot furtive glances in his direction) but otherwise he’d always kept exactly to schedule, lurking in his seat in the corner (sometimes with a book, sometimes just staring off into space) and mouthing off about rudeness to anybody who approached. Apparently some of the regulars had tried making a drinking game out of it – take a shot every time Elias went off at someone – but the bar had put an end to it after someone almost got hospitalised.

Armed with this knowledge, Adam decided to return to the pub on the Wednesday (less chance of amused onlookers if things went pear-shaped again), waiting until just before twelve to make his entrance – long enough for Elias to have relaxed into his surroundings, and to have got that first drink down his neck. If the man could be at ease (and the bartenders seemed to think it wasn’t physically possible), this was probably the moment for it.

Adam smoothed his green scarf and flicked his hair back from his face, squared his shoulders and pushed open the pub’s door. This was going to be a tricky operation – if he didn’t get the tone just right, Elias would almost certainly fly straight off the handle and out of the pub never to return. And Adam was damned if he was going to let the big, thoughtless jerk off that easy.

Lucky that Adam was used to dealing with awkward subjects. He was, after all, the best investigative journalist in London.

Was. Past tense, Towers.

Adam shook off the thought, well-practiced at it now, and glanced towards the end of the bar, relieved to see that Elias was in his usual seat and hadn’t decided to give the pub a miss after their encounter. He gave both bartenders a nod and approached Elias gingerly, holding up both hands in supplication when the man noticed him, and starting to speak before Elias could launch into another temper tantrum.

“Before you say anything, please allow me to apologise,” Adam said, hoping that his expression had landed somewhere in the vicinity of contrite, “I’ve been coming in here every night this week hoping you’d be in.” A total lie but, as planned, Fryderyk piped up to confirm it (thus securing another hefty tip), allowing Adam to continue uninterrupted. “I was most dreadfully rude to you that night, you were quite right to tell me off for it.” Adam allowed himself a moment of triumph as Elias’ eyes widened slightly, apparently at the idea that anyone thought he was right about something. “I’m afraid I was three sheets to the wind and I just couldn’t resist talking to you.” Wider eyes still at this. “But that isn’t any excuse for my frightfully poor manners and I’ve felt just awful about it ever since. Could you find it in your heart to forgive me?” Out of the corner of his eye, Adam saw Jaime raise an eyebrow. Alright, he was laying it on a bit thick – and he sounded like something out of an Ealing comedy – but he was pretty sure someone like Elias wasn’t going to respond to subtlety.

And a moment later he was proven right when Elias narrowed his eyes and asked, “What is this… three sheets?”

“Oh! It means I was half-cut.” The eyes narrowed further. “Um… drunk. I was really, very, shamefully drunk. It’s what we say in England.”

“We do not have that expression here. It is very unhelpful of you to use it. You should use Danish expressions if you want to be understood in Denmark, that is obvious.”

It was a Herculean task for Adam not to roll his eyes straight into the back of his head, but he managed it. “Well then,” he said, reminding himself of the point of this endeavour, “perhaps you’ll let me buy you a drink this time, and you can teach me some.”

Which is how Adam Towers wound up spending his Wednesday night in conversation with likely the strangest man in Copenhagen. Possibly all of Denmark itself. And the really strange thing? It wasn’t unenjoyable. Elias was rude, brash, delusional, egotistical and just plain odd. He was also an utter original. Adam had never met anyone like him, and Adam had met just about everyone. He couldn’t predict what would come out of the man’s mouth next, whether a tirade about Charles Darwin (“that moron!”) or the very weird tale of the brothers he had been living with until recently (“I had to leave, they were all very jealous that they are old, married men and I am still young and virile with many seeds to sow,”). Elias was… surprising. Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d been surprised by anyone.

It was rather nice.

Which perhaps was why Adam found himself offering stories in turn (when he could get a word in edgewise). Tales from when he’d been the hottest thing in English journalism, glamorous parties he’d attended, exotic countries he’d visited. Even, somehow, the story of how he’d lost it all, nearly died because of that psycho bitch novelist (only the inflated lung capacity of a champion dick sucker had saved him there) and then been utterly discredited when he tried to take her down. Of how he’d switched to travel journalism if for no other reason than to get the fuck out of London, and how he’d been pushed out of that by bloggers and tripadvisor.com. How he’d pitched up in Denmark without the faintest fucking clue of what he was going to do next, other than find a flat and get copiously, obnoxiously drunk.

Elias had suggested he write a book. And, well, it wasn’t like Adam hadn’t thought about it. His journalistic reputation might’ve been in tatters but he still had a decent imagination and a way with words… why not try a novel? Well because, as he pointed out to Elias, he was a little lacking in the old commitment department and a whole novel just seemed like such a lot of work…

After which Elias had called him “completely idiotic” and, after a second of stunned silence, Adam had broken out in laughter and agreed. And only partially because he was still working on keeping Elias onside. Mostly, it was because it was true. It had been a long time since anyone had been so bluntly honest with Adam, and that was rather nice too.

Shit. Adam was having a good time. With Elias. Elias, who this evening was clad in the beigest shirt in all existence, and who kept getting a foam moustache on top of his actual moustache. This was absolutely, totally, one hundred percent not part of the plan.

The plan which, under other circumstances, Adam might well have given up on by now. The thought of how Elias’ face would look after Adam rejected him, crumpled and wounded and probably teary, wasn’t sitting right with him at all and that might have been enough to put Adam off going through with it. Except that some kind soul who’d been in the pub that night, had decided to upload their video of the incident to Twitter. Where, somehow, possibly because of the magical powers being a total hellbitch got you, it had been noticed by an ex-girlfriend and quickly circulated around Adam’s acquaintances and followers. And Adam just couldn’t forgive that, no matter how entertainingly unique Elias was.

Mission Humiliate This Uptight – if somewhat strangely endearing – Bastard was still very much a go.

So Adam made sure to inch closer and closer as the minutes ticked by, made sure to hold Elias’ gaze just a moment too long, to press their thighs together ever-so-gently… and then ever-not-so-gently. And he was rewarded with some very obvious confirmation that he hadn’t imagined Elias’ interest the other night: pupils blown, nervous grins and hitches of breath, an increasing ease with Adam’s little touches. Not to mention, more of that strange shifting and twitching that Adam was really hoping was arousal and not some sort of weird tic the man couldn’t get rid of.

But 2am was fast approaching and he couldn’t allow Elias to leave without a thorough humiliation (no matter if the thought of it was suddenly making Adam’s stomach feel strange). The time for subtlety was over.

After a quick check that Elias’ attention was on him (as if it had been anywhere else all night), Adam ‘accidentally’ tipped his glass in such a way that a drop of whisky rolled over the edge and began to make its way slowly down the surface. Adam smirked and, firmly holding eye contact with Elias, extended his tongue to catch the drop at the base before teasingly tracing its route back up to the rim.

The whimper Elias let out told Adam he’d won. All he had to do was lean forward and kiss… pretend, he was only going to pretend… to kiss…

Elias shot back and off his stool, mumbling something about needing to use the bathroom and “sorry.” Adam watched him go in dismay.

Fuck, not again.

But no, this time no one had noticed, not even Fryderyk and Jaime, who were engaged in an arm-wrestling contest that Jaime was clearly winning. This could still be salvaged, Adam just needed to wait for Elias to get back from…

That gigantic wanker.

Elias had taken his coat, probably planning to escape through the window (a move Adam had himself perfected over the years). Oh no, no way did Adam Towers let a target go this easy. He would sneak into the bathroom and catch the big bull red-handed. With any luck he’d have gotten himself stuck in the window, the enormous, clumsy bastard.

Adam hopped down off his seat and strode towards the bathroom. He slid in through the mercifully creak-free door and lunged round the corner, ready to bust Elias mid-escape…

And found the window closed and no one there.

It had been less than a minute between Elias leaving and Adam following him. There was no way an out-of-shape fifty-something with shoulders that broad (not that Adam had been looking) could have gotten out of the window that fast. So where the fuck was he?

Wait, Adam could hear… what the hell was that? A wet smacking, rhythmic and desperate…

Holy shit.

Elias was wanking in one of the stalls.

At least that explained all that wriggling.

This was perfect! Adam would lean over the adjacent cubicle, get some photo evidence, report Elias (loudly) to Jaime and Fryderyk, and then, for good measure, pop the whole thing up on the Internet for the world to see. Quid pro quo.

Adam padded forward, eternally grateful that the rubber soles of his boots meant he could walk soundlessly without having to change into his stockinged feet. He slid into the stall next to Elias’ and, pulling out his phone, climbed carefully onto the (annoyingly lid-free) toilet seat and leaned over the wall.

Oh. Oh my.

Adam forgot to take the photo. Hell, Adam forgot to breathe.

Elias had, by some distance, the most enormous dick Adam had ever had the fortune to lay eyes on. Suddenly, Adam could see why Jaime had referred to him as a bull in the first place: the size of that cock was more bovine than human.

Once, when he was seven, Adam had seen a rocking horse in the shape of a stag in the toy section of Harrods. He had talked of nothing else for eight straight months and when Christmas came and no stag appeared, the subsequent tantrum had been so extravagant that their neighbours had actually called the police. He had never wanted anything so badly as he wanted that stag.

He wanted Elias’ cock more.

God, it was perfect: easily eight inches, uncut, thick as a bingo dauber. Hell, thick as two. It was also a very angry red and glossily slick with precum, even though Elias could barely have started more than thirty seconds ago. He must have been straining in his pants the whole time Adam was talking to him… God.

Adam couldn’t help it; he made a tiny noise of want in the back of his throat.

And of course, despite his panting and the squelching of his frantic strokes, Elias heard it.

And then, locking his wide, startled eyes with Adam’s, he came. Copiously.

After that there was a lot of frantic noise and movement. Elias shrieked indignantly, causing Adam to reel back and put his foot in the toilet and give out a disgusted yelp of his own. Then it was a race to see who could extricate himself from the stall first, with Adam emerging the (slightly damp) winner, banging his door open and turning to find a (somewhat soiled) Elias storming out of his in turn.

“You!” the older man bellowed. “Why were you watching me? You wanted to laugh at silly Elias, is that it?”

“No, god, Elias, I wasn’t laughing at you, honestly!” Adam told him, taking a few steps back as a fuming Elias advanced. He had been right, the hurt expression on Elias’ face wasn’t one he ever wanted to see again. “I just…” Adam cast around for an excuse that would work, and decided to go for something at least semi-honest. “You took your coat!”

Elias stopped mid-stride, confused. “What does my coat have to do with anything?”

“You took it, and I thought…” Adam let his own expression turn wounded, pouting just a little bit, “I thought you were going to do a runner on me and I didn’t want you to.”

If Elias had looked stunned before, he looked utterly bamboozled now. It took a full minute before he spoke again. “You wanted me to stay?”

Adam smiled, coy and gently teasing, “Well yeah, we were having a nice time, right?” Elias said nothing in response, only ducked his head shyly, so Adam continued. “And then you went off and I wanted to at least talk to you, so I followed you in here and I was hearing these noises and… well, honestly,” Adam lied, “I thought you might be sick and I just wanted to check, so…”

It sounded like utter bullshit even to Adam, but Elias just raised his eyes a little and asked, softly, “You were worried about me?”

Adam tried hard to ignore the little thump his heart gave, and nodded.

After that it was easy for Adam to manoeuvre Elias back out into the pub, to order him another drink (discreetly shooing an expectant Fryderyk in the process) and to sit in an oddly charged but not unpleasant silence until Elias looked up and told Adam that it was time for him to go home.

“But,” he added, “perhaps I will see you here again one night?”

Adam gave a grin that felt unsettlingly genuine. “It’s a distinct possibility.”

Elias gave a small smile in return and then shocked Adam entirely by grabbing him in a tight hug that lasted for a good two minutes, before extricating himself and heading for the door without another word.

Behind him, Jaime leaned over and fixed him with a look. “What,” the bartender asked, “the hell was that?”

“That was Elias,” Adam responded. “And this,” he added, “is me changing the plan.” And then he slid down and followed Elias out of the pub. And proceeded to follow him at a discreet distance to a slightly dowdy but respectable apartment block not too far from Adam’s own flat, where Elias let himself in (albeit not before shouting at a cat for… well, being a cat).

Now Adam knew where his target lived, he could set about figuring out the best places to ‘bump into’ him. This wasn’t stalking, Adam reasoned, it was research. He was just ensuring that, as requested, Elias was going to be seeing more of Adam Towers in future… and then, if all went according to plan, Adam would be seeing (a lot) more of Elias (and his glorious cock) in return.