This past Monday she fell in for real. Into a hole created by a 2008 tremor that dropped the CCN broadcasting and film studios into the core of the earth, or thereabouts. It is still a mystery, where the main building is gone, but Ruby’s Under the Red Lake Water retreat surfaced only enough to be seen. With a tug here and push there, she managed, after falling into the hole and causing more frustration for her colleagues at CCN, to pull the office up and over the side. After that her colleagues left, so aggravated they were. Always.

Now Ruby was left with a mess of her own making. Here in a pile on the desert were the pieces of a once elaborately furnished office suite where Ruby hid out during a crisis of faith at the network. This part of her long and winding saga happened during the year of our Yahvo, 2006.

For two baffling years she worked from beneath the lake manipulating here and there, or whenever possible. Her contributions to CCN programming were limited and targeted. Her ego, enormous and bull-headed resisted any criticism. There was no arguing with her about matters related to the breakup of the network. A lingering and slow to develop ice burn is generally more painful, than a burn caused by pyre fire. After a pyre fire there is no cause for fuming over what went all wrong. There is nothing left but ash. In a circumstance where ice burns there is a drip that lingers on.Image

The pile of rubble on the desert represented what was left of her schmoozing, mea- culpas, social ladder climbing and CCN production efforts. It’s not that she didn’t work hard. She worked day and night, without enough sleep and non-stop intermittently. Ruby was totally dedicated to her work of restoration. But her theories about what restoration meant, and what other explorers thought restoration mean were not in sync 95% of the time.

What made matters more inconvenient was that Ruby could not, for the life of herself, figure out why the explorers felt like they did, particularly the 50 or so, UU restoration effort explorers who ventured into the CCN enterprise from the outset. Ruby had her agenda. The fifty had their agendas. It was a wacky concoction – a herding cats soup that went quickly from simmering to burning hot, and then to frozen like a dead penguin in a few short months. Under no circumstances would the rubble be repaired, to again construe a similar experience – or so Ruby promised.

In the indeterminable future, the one time co-producer of the network, and moreover the co-producer of the one time CCN flagship The Cavern Today planned to heed every warning that came her way or pinched her. The one warning that she would hold dear and true to her cyan blue heart was: “Stay small and focus on the little mysteries, turmoils and thrilling outcomes that make a story sizzle, but don’t get thrown from the bridge, no matter badly you desire the explorers (possibly D’ni descendant) story to belt out an aria. It’s not worth the complete demise of the protagonists and her cohorts in crime,” she pondered wisely

By noon on Monday the office looked much better. Ruby, instead of refinishing every stick of lumber (once secretly stolen from the Great Tree branches) went shopping for siding and finishes that were created by professionals. She bought scripts, code, furniture and clothes. She sent notes of apology out to anyone still within shouting distance. She told other Eder D’Uru explorers and the transportation system management about any quick transitions she would need to make up front. To give her something else to do during periods of respite and healer meditation events (Ruby can’t sit for too long in the lotus position), she joined two other oddball, PG rated and wonderfully sweet cultural groups being promoted as “safety first” by the much improved 2004, albeit expensive, and highly commercial (ka-ching, ka-ching) Linden transportation company. Over time Ruby got practical, and when her creative fingers get itchy, she plans to go to these places and bother her neighbors, instead of cajoling and otherwise pestering the same explorers she pestered in the past.

There is no doubt Ruby learned through her mistakes. The issue/story is/was whether Ruby will bring about a manageable CCNE (Cavern Communications Network Eder D’Uru desert station) without losing her mind, and the last remnants of a once thriving and completely collaborative cavern broadcasting concern, imagined into being on a lonely and lovely relto during the summer of 2005 by 8 founders, including, but not limited to herself. The not limited to herself part is what she needs to keep in mind, while she tries again to dream up a Prairie Home Companionish project. Always.

Confession Chapter 1 to be continued…

Dear Explorer: This is a serial chapter book – the next part of Chapter 1 is dedicated to what Ruby found on the desert and in the cavern. She has been told this is a new effort, not the same cavern she frequents solo, and it appears the storytellers are right. The scenery does look different. It could be like New York, once York or Londonderry, once London, or Pookeepsie, once Pookeepsie. Who knows? At this very relative pinpoint in time Ruby is not concerned with the story snafu (device) of how she gets to where she’s going. At this moment she is completely in her storytelling mode, because at her age, there may not be a better time to tell the story. In other words Ruby has grown a tad impatient for backdrops, props and people to use those props. Stay tuned for more of Confession Chapter 1.

Desert Hole in the Ground

Well for me it will be the wondrous and beautiful mansion of K’veer.

During Live it was the one of two places I really enjoyed going to, and it was even better since they converted it from “Myst5-End of Ages”.  K’veer is one of those places that makes you feel like your really part of the whole overall “lore” surrounding Uru.

I thought to myself, wow, somewhere in this mansion is “Gehn’s office” and the remains of Atrus’s first successful Age.  Hear is where Atrus was trapped.  I could go on.

To me, this is what makes Uru an amazing game,  I could just imagine the “Myst 5” journey as it was meant to be.  I can see myself linking in and seeing “Yeesha” once again speak of “The Least;  the encounter with “Esher”;  “The Tablet”, etc.  Granted, it would not take place in the same fashion, but still….

Now we have Open Source Uru, the chance for us to create what we could only write about, the chance for us to give others that feeling of “I am in a world of wonder.”  The chance to make our own histories in a universe we all have come to love.

It is a time to dream, it is a time to imagine, it is a time to smile.  Why?  Because come that day when the link opens up once again… we will be home.

“Tyion”
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