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Disclaimer: I own only a few of the Maitreya. Not even all of them.
Chapter 4
Designing a Vision
In which we begin from the Point of the View of the infamous Artemis de Fole, and he shows us his designs of a thing we have only dreamed of. Later, it shall be so that the one called Constance speaks of her visions.
Artemis was woken the next morning at seven, as he'd asked, by Rhonda. He changed and was led to the dining room, along with Butler, committing the route to memory as he went. When he arrived, no one was there, so he began to work on the designs for a certain project of his. It, if it succeeded, would be one of the greatest achievements of humankind to date, especially since he would be beating the fairies to it.
He was designing a starship. A battleship starfighter, to be exact.
He was toying with various names already, as he designed the broadside solar sails. Stellar Dawn? Corona? Or perhaps a Roman name, as was given to the planets? Or perhaps a Norse, Egyptian, or Greek name? Hyperion? Perhaps, I'll file that for future reference. Ra? No, Ra is too basic. Balder? No, for the same reason. However, 'Light' should be part of the meaning. I wonder…
He sighed. The design was actually remarkably simple, he'd already designed a form of motion mechanism, a 'drive', to use the common term. It ran on iridium and magic, the two of which, he'd found, reacted together explosively. The weapons systems, too, were quite simple, once magic was in the equation. He'd designed a battery, which used magic as it's power source, and refracted, energized, and supercharged photons into the shape of a small three-dimensional ellipse using crystals. In essence, they were laser weapons. The real difficulty, however, was in other weaponry.
He'd soon realized that lasers left too many open avenues for an enemy to escape through. It was possible to armor a ship in a metal, hard enough to withstand laser impact, and reflective, to send the beams back at their originator. He'd decided to design other weapons. Missiles, fighter pods (small ships launched off another to intercept or attack other ships or oncoming missiles), bombs, and (his personal favorite) the Gravitational Destabilizers, which scrambled the force of gravity on a ship, spinning it, denting it, sometimes causing it to completely implode or explode. It was hard to pack the power of space travel into such small things, and to design their capabilities as weapons.
Suddenly he heard someone come up behind him; someone small. He at once shielded his mind, closed his laptop, and turned to face none other than Constance.
"Hello," he said calmly.
"Hi," she said, looking up at him, and he saw that her eyes were rimmed with red. She had clearly not gotten enough sleep the previous night.
"Did you not sleep well?" he asked her, actually worried. She was clearly disturbed by something other than lack of sleep, and the deprivation of her rest accented it.
"No," she said, "I had a nightmare. If I thought anyone would believe me, I'd say it was a vision."
"A vision?" asked Artemis, "Tell me something about it."
"You won't laugh?"
"Upon my word."
"How much is that worth then?"
"Its weight in gold."
"Then keep talking. I could use the money."
They both laughed. Even Butler gave a slight chuckle, from his position behind Artemis' chair. Artemis' mirth soon subsided, however. "Well?" he asked, "Tell me about your vision."
"Let's wait until everyone's here," said Constance, "I only want to talk about it once."
"Very well," said Artemis. They sat there, and waited. Not long afterward, Sticky came through the front door, and joined them.
"Hi," he said to them, shooting Butler a nervous glance.
Butler chuckled, "You don't need to worry," he told the frightened boy, "I won't hurt you unless Master Artemis tells me to or unless you're threatening him. Other than that I'm just here."
"Okay," said Sticky, not looking entirely reassured, and sat down. "What's going on?" he asked Constance.
Constance put on an amusingly childish 'high and mighty' face, and declaimed:
"When a girl was taunted by visions hideous
And sought comfort in her friends,
They did not deign to hear us
As we spoke of dreams' trends."
For a moment, there was silence. Then, as Sticky sighed, Artemis began to laugh. He laughed long, almost strangled with mirth, as the others all stared at him. He managed to choke out, "Dreams' trends… retorts in rhyming couplets… that's amusing…"
"It's not that funny," said Constance, her face reddening. Suddenly, Reynie came up the stairs.
He stared at Artemis for a moment, then asked, "What's so funny?"
"Rhyming… c-couplets… Constance, tell him…" Artemis choked out.
Reynie swiveled his eyes to Constance, "He's laughing at one of your rhyming couplet retorts?"
"Yeah. And it wasn't even a good one," she said, her eyes wide and beseeching, as though asking, Take me away from this weird person!
"Sorry," said Artemis, his mirth subsiding. "It is only… retorts in rhyming couplets. Genius. But I am sorry, anyway. Where were we?"
"Something about 'Visions hideous'," said Sticky, at which Artemis gave a wry chuckle.
"I seem to be the only one who knows absolutely nothing about what's going on," Reynie said dryly. "If it's not too much trouble, could it be explained?"
"When Kate gets here," said Constance. "Like I told Artemis, I don't want to talk about it more than once."
They waited in silence for some time, occasionally punctuated by someone's attempt at conversation. Artemis was just considering challenging Reynie to a game of chess when Kate came up the stairs and joined them.
"What did I miss?" she asked, seeming to talk more to Reynie than to the rest of them. And it was Reynie who answered.
"We were just waiting for you to find out," he told her. "Constance had a vision or something. So, Constance? Everyone's here now. What's all this about?"
"Last night," began Constance, "I had a dream. It wasn't… normal, though. I thought dreams had to do with sorting out memory and imagination, but I couldn't even imagine the stuff in that dream.
"In the dream, I was in a huge stone hall. I had a torch in my hand, but it wasn't really necessary, because of the crystals. They were everywhere, floating all around me. But there was one that was bigger than all the rest.
"It was in the middle of the room, and it was at least as big as you, Butler. All the crystals were blue, but this one changed color, always blue, but always a different blue. And there was a stone slab in front of it, lit up by a beam of blue light from the one window, which was really high up. I walked over to it, and saw that there was writing on it. This is what it said:
'The Diamond Tomb of Temporaiat, Maitreya Elementaia of Time
Bearer of the Diamonds of Criat Gor'Dith
Master of the Diamond Codex Diraia
Guardian of the Aura
"Audi Famam Illius"
"Hear the Fame of That One"'
"I looked up at the crystal then, and saw a silhouette. It wasn't human, its head had ears almost like a husky dog's, and it looked like it had a snout. It also had a long flowing tail. It was dead, entombed in the diamond, that was obvious. But then, just before I woke up, I saw its eyes open, glowing so red I could see them against the blue of the diamond. That's when I woke up, screaming. If any of you understands what happened, tell me, 'cause I don't get it."
Ugh. I don't like the ending, but it was the best I could come up with. I thank you for your reviews, they really help me, and Kahlan can testify to that, since I took her advice (Thanks, Kahlan. Really. It's helped a lot.) All those of you who recognize either of these terms, know that they will feature prominently in future: Stellar Converter, and Nova Ray. Anyway, I can just picture Artemis designing a starship. It so typical of him to go and pull something like that on us, isn't it? Anyway, as for you, so for me, so R & R Please, If you want my story to improve. Thanks.
