Thursday, August 17, 2006

Storyline: The first of the three rings

Upon Greenback tower, just barely visible from the street below, there is a small helipad, several radio and microwave transmission towers and a small observation platform. Upon this platform projecting out towards the warm, soft, green, and oddly motherly mountains of Tennessee was a metal rod 99.45 cm long, upon which a ring has been mounted. The ring is precisely 1.1 cm in diameter and 1 mm in thickness. One could, if one were so inclined, by leaning far enough over and twisting one’s neck slightly look through the ring and stare down upon one of the many pear trees that ringed the tower.

Yet that is not the purpose of the ring. To understand the purpose of the ring one would need to know that it, like the entire superstructure of the tower was composed of a special Beryllium Iron Nickel alloy with quite special properties. Virtually infinitely stiff, virtually zero coefficient of expansion, virtually transparent to high-level radiation. One then might notice that the axis of this rod projected backward would intersect the axis of the tower precisely at a point marked by a smoothed stone of some strange mineral polished to a near mirror like finish.

But the stone was not perfect. One would find, if one was quite careful was not quite spherical but was, in fact slightly ellipsoidal, with major axis 975 mm and minor axis 909 mm. Its coloring was far from flawless rather it was mottled and streaked, in some places quite rough and dull and in places seemingly polished and bright. The rock was held fast by a ring segmented by twelve small blades or vanes twisted as to catch the wind. This ring sat upon a special non-linear friction bearing so that the stone would turn under the influence of the prevailing winds of Greenback, but regardless of how weak or powerful the wind, it moved at precisely the same speed.

Depending on the direction of sunbeam or moonbeam and the cast of the shadows, the stone would reflect quite differently so that the color was ever changing. But almost always visible was an unusual bright spot ten degrees below its northern pole and several darker shadows which seemed to creep across its surface. In fact, were one to consider quite closely the two shadows, one might be inclined to think of them as two snakes locked in battle encircling the brighter spot, but it almost seemed as if the shadows were of forms within the stone itself and the bright spot an internal glow.

The observation platform was on tracks and itself moved, but quite slowly, so that it took 110 hours, 22 minutes, and roughly 49.86 seconds to complete a single revolution about the tower.

Considering again the rod and the ring, if one were to drop a measure from the ring to the street below, (quite possible due to the conical shape of the tower) one would find that the distance was not quite 1500 ft but in fact roughly 1466 feet, or in actuality 446.818 m.

The inhabitants of the tower, all but one of course, would have been quite indifferent to these facts seeing as the eccentricities of its creator were as numerous as they mysterious and none seemed to have any particular impact on their ever-present task. But their meaning within the pantheon of forces shaping our story is important, indeed could be considered essential for there were in fact two other places where such similar numerological constructions could be found. One Platu knew well, and it was the thankless task of the army of engineers to return him thence. The other, was its antithesis. The dreaded pit-temple which at that moment Sultan Zhpat under the hidden power of Da Bomb was entering.

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