Tara Maya's Tales

Jonathan Kos-Read via Compfight cc Red sand blew over the wasteland. It gummed up my rebreather, and coated my faceplate. My one-suit, once shiny white, had faded to dingy taupe under the ceaseless coatings of dust. I stumbled along, already exhausted after three hours on the morning shift of the dig, discouraged because I’d found nothing. Then I tripped over it: A rock, barely above level, with a distinct right angle. An Arnellian artifact. Most of the ruins on Arnellios V were buried under the dust. Millions of years of dust, solidified into sand, into mud, and finally into solid rock. My job was to unearth the buried secrets, to unlock the technology that had vanished with the Arnellians themselves half a million years ago. I called in the excavators. The robots used laser to patiently and delicately dislodge the artifact from the surrounding rock. I took a water break at the base camp tent. I monitored progress on my faceplate, but I knew an artifact of this size—it...

“What are these, exactly?” asked Bill. “Antlers for your car!” said the checkout lady. She wore a red Santa hat at a jaunty angle.  She wiggled her fingers on top of her head. “To make it look like a reindeer.” He laughed. “Does it make it fly over rush hour traffic too?” “Of course!” she smiled. “But only once, and only at just the perfect time. One miracle per antlers.” “Why not?” Bill added the antlers to his other groceries. He could use some Christmas cheer. Since his son had gone off to college and the beloved family dog, Mitts, had passed on to Doggie Heaven, the house had been quiet. Bill and the Misses didn’t even have a tree this year. The antlers would be his token decoration. He fastened them onto his car in the parking lot. The wind was bitter and brutal that night, and Bill had a long drive home. Suddenly, on an isolated road lined with trees, a branch dropped in front of the car. The car ran up it like a ramp, and literall...

All the trees in the lot were excited. They couldn't wait to be Christmas trees! If only their lot weren't so far away from anything, off a freeway from California to Nevada. They could see the cars on the freeway, but it seemed the cars couldn't see them. Cars whizzed by, but none stopped at the Christmas tree lot. All the trees could do was dream. "I hope I will be decorated in gold!" said Cedar. "I hope I will be decorated in silver!"said Fir. "I hope I will be decorated in red and green!" said Pine. "I don't care how I'm decorated," said a voice from far above all the rest, "as long as I can be a Christmas tree." For a moment all the trees on the lot were confused. Where had the voice had come from? They looked up and saw a tall, tall palm tree, which grew at the side of the lot. Cedar, Fir and Pine began to laugh. "You're a palm tree! You can't be a Chri...

"Ramifications of third level gematrian permutations of the Letter B in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales" In T.K. Mouser’s methodology, the letter B is represented by 11, typed the PhD student. While this is an improvement over the simplistic Rationalist school’s approach of equating B with 2, it remains a second level permutation, which does not allow the same complexity of third level permutation. In the third level gematria advanced by the New School, however, all attempts at consistency are abandoned and the value assigned to Letter B is determined by random selection of an integer 0-9. The same methodology, of course, is applied to the other Letters, except in Scott’s system, in which Z and X are always 0, but CH is represented as a third level Letter. After a moment, the student added, “[Note to self: What about TH?]” Reading the computer screen over the student’s shoulder, the student’s room mate said, “I don’t get it. What does this have to do with Chaucer?” “The only way...