Empire of Fashion

**Pleater** · 19th August 08, 01:19 AM

Originally Posted by Ted Crocker

My apologies. I used to proofread mathematical stone arangements in the last time/world, but it's been so long ago...

I'll be standing over there in the shadows for the rest of this story.

Er - you mean like - Avebury and Stonehenge?

If so that's really good, as I think that Captain Panache could do with a bit of help on the mathematical side of things. Though I suspect that you might have to encourage the locals to build the things first....

But I am getting ahead of myself - there was rioting in the streets around the Gare du Nord - tear gas on the breeze and cobbles flying through the air.

**Pleater** · 19th August 08, 05:57 AM

The wolf hunters had hijacked a train and arrived at the Gare du Nord with their dogs, bows, spears, and the last few packs of furs they had collected.

Did I say that the Hall of Rings was in Paris?

The Fashion Fur paramilitaries came upon the hunters in the Place Napoleon, and in an attempt to subdue them, fired their rifles over their heads. This was a mistake as the hunters responded by firing several volleys of arrows, straight and level. Although the paramilitaries were wearing stab vests they were not designed to resist twelve inches of good steel with a chunk of wood behind it travelling at speed.

There were a few pursuits along the Rue de Dunkerque, but few of them reached the Boulevard de Magenta or Rue La Fayette.

We hurriedly disposed of our blue scarves and eventually left the old Hopital Lariboisiere where we had taken refuge as the hunters began to rampage further afield, chasing the Fashion Police – who had been ordered to disarm by the Fashion Fur people, and then we heard the hovercraft zig zagging about, though we did not see it, and a lot of shouting went on too.

We were avoiding the bodies as we headed for the Hall of Rings, and looking around cautiously, but night had fallen by then and all seemed quiet in our immediate vicinity.

There was a big yellow moon and I tried to keep my mind from the harvest back at home and on the immediate possibility of meeting the grim reaper in person. The Hall of Rings was deserted, but had been partly ransacked and a number of the offices were jumbles of overturned furniture, spilled papers and the beginning of an almighty stink. We pushed the doors shut and ventured to the far end where the store room was.

It remained intact, so the Captain jemmied the door as I held the lamp. We carried the equipment up to the control room, and found that there was no power. That caused us some considerable dismay, until we spotted the battery holders. The large coin cells, which were several inches in diameter, were stored in large numbers, so we just slotted them in until the racks were full and the lights came on – being careful not to touch them with our bare hands.

The local receiving stations were designed to be used with cars, which were all absent, so it was with some relief that we realised that the horizontal rings could be rotated so as to make a standing portal, like the one generated by the portable equipment, which meant that we could walk through them. I was quite relieved to find that there was a fine tuning control, and that although it was drilled and screwed down, a few moments work with some of the joining threads used to construct the clothing we were issued with was sufficient to cut through the screw and release the control.

The threads were very fine, and abrasive – designed to cut through the weft of the cloth so the clothing wore out in time for the next alteration.

I set the angles for the station in the Welsh mountains, and pulled it down onto receiving station one in the hall. Before I could get down to the floor of the Hall the Captain had walked through it, and come back.

‘No one there, I expect they are all in bed by now,’ she reported.
‘Perhaps we should try America, they’ll still be awake.’
She shook her head.
‘If anything we should try further North. If the Acryli-beast hunters are still in the Arctic, they will be in trouble by now. They would normally have been moved south weeks ago.’
‘Then we should try there at once.’ I declared, and hurried back to the control room.

**Pleater** · 10th September 08, 10:55 AM

With my success at making the connection with the Welsh station I was expecting to find the Arctic stations without much trouble, but try as I might I could not lock onto them.

I wondered if the batteries might be failing so I got one of the portable sets and put in fresh batteries, then projected a Reimann sphere to seek for the stations.

I cried out as I saw into the domestic buildings, for there were paramilitaries in protective clothing spraying a green gas into the air, and the hunters, disturbed from sleep were either on the floor or had fled out onto the ice.

I made a note of the settings for that station, and sought out another. That one was all in darkness, all undisturbed. Quickly we created a portal, and roused the sleepers. The Captain carried a rod through the portal with her and at once I could fix the station using the office equipment. I found another two and put in the batteries, and went out onto the floor of the Hall.

The Captain returned with a group of hunters, some dressed for the ice and others in indoor garments, but all carried the most ferocious weapons, spears and harpoons. I opened a portal to the first station, siteing it outside an open door. The hunters vanished through it at a sprint, and the Captain followed them briefly to place the rod.

More hunters arrived dragging sledges piled high with pelts, or carrying a couple on their shoulders. I set the Chorister to organising the evacuation of the station and to closing the portal when all the hunters were out.

I then looked into the third station, and saw that there was a turquoise ring in the mess hall, and men were emerging from ring cars and putting on the protective clothing.

I projected the scene so that the hunters in the hall could see it. They were a little slower than I would have liked to react, but when they did it was with commendable speed.

By the time I had a stable portal and the Captain standing by with the rod, they were armed, and they went after the paramilitaries with dreadful ferocity.

Some of the green gas must have escaped into the Hall and the smell of chlorine wafted about. I went to open the windows of the offices, and saw the glow of fires in the city. The wolf hunters must have been the culprits, I thought, but did not think much of it, even though a brisk wind blew in through the windows and rapidly dispersed the gas.

**Pleater** · 30th September 08, 05:30 AM

Paris was burning.

In the office we called up portals to anywhere is Europe we thought could provide the hospital facilities for the gassed hunters, and left the less effected Acryli-beast hunters there explaining what had happened - the Captain explained to them what Chlorine gas was and did.

I tried to find anyone who was familiar with the controls of the equipment, but no one in the throng of those escaping from the fire admitted to any involvement with them.

There were large number of women from the garment making factories in the suburbs, they all wanted to return to their family villages, and if they went though to the wrong substation they would wait until we remade the portal and return to the Hall, complaining loudly about our inefficiency.

We lived on the brown liquid that was called coffee and grabbed food when we could, we were even glad when a couple of Fashion Police appeared and began to order the people about and march them through the portals more quickly, but when a mob of Wolf Hunters came in they vanished very quickly, along with the last of the population of Paris.

The Wolf Hunters demanded that we make a portal through into the Fashion Fur Home World so they could go and attack them there. It took a lot of explaining that we did not know how to move between the dimensions before they accepted that fact, and by then the roaring of the fire was alarming, the air was almost too thick to breathe, and what was worse, the batteries were worn out. I had noticed one portal switch off, but when the Wolf Hunters let me back to the controls, all of them were dark.

We had been changing the batteries regularly, and possibly there were some in the pile of used ones were some which could have suported a portal, but which ones they were we had no way to tell.

If the Chorister had not remembered the batteries in the rod, renewed for Ivana's visit, we would have been in some difficulties. The roof of the Hall was smouldering by the time we could light up one of the portables. The Captain had taken some of the calmer Hunters into the office and from the sounds I assumed that she was smashing up the controls, but when they reappeared they brought the cases with them, and half a dozen were carrying a pallet upon which rested a thing of bubbles and crystals, beneath a clear dome.

'Get through the portal!' I screamed at them, for the wall behind them was glowing red and only the lack of a roof was allowing the heat to escape upwards.

The Captain paused.

'How are you going to get out?'

'I'll move the focus of the ring over myself and the equipment.' I said blythely, 'Go through now so I don't have to try to include you as well.'

There was a crash behind me, she saw what it was and shot through the portal.

I looked down and adjusted the controls, the ring moved towards me, passed me, and the heat was replaced by clear cool air. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the building on the other side of the ring was collapsing, so I hit the off button, and then I looked around.

A man was looking at me.

His skin was ginger, as was his beard, his hair was the colour of red mahogany, and formed gravity defying ringlets. His eyes were silver grey and resembled two gun barrels. He must have been close to seven feet tall, and was clothed in black, a stab vest, various straps which protected from elbow to knuckles, a skirt of some sort, and again straps from below the knee down to the soles of sandals.

He glanced down at a device in his hand, grinned and held up his right hand in the Star Trek Vulcan salute.
'Live long and prosper' he said.
I raised my hand in the same gesture. 'Prosperity and long life.' I returned.

He had turned slightly and I saw that on the front of the stab vest there was a glossy circle, with Department of Otherworld Security around it, and in the centre, a four cusp hypocycloid, or astroid.

**Arlen** · 30th September 08, 09:41 AM

Oooh. This one just gets more and more interesting!

**Pleater** · 1st October 08, 02:15 AM

I took a deep breath and stretched, after the smoke and stress of the last however long in the Hall of Rings the air here was delightful, like a Spring morning. I eased the tension from my shoulders, and was rather surprised when streamers of light connected with my fingertips as I raised my hands.

The man swore - not in words I understood but something close.

I shook my hand to see if the streamers would disconnect, but they simply followed the movement.

An iridescent surface rushed towards us, as insubstantial as a soap bubble, and like a bubble it was swirling and showing areas of different colours - and a hole. I put my hands out - the concept of stopping it probably seemed possible to some primitive part of my brain, but higher functions were not at all optimistic of my ability to do anything about the collision.

The surface stopped and the hole was moved to be in front of me. Something seemed to want me to fix it. There was a sort of grain, running vertically as I looked at it, and the hold was a simple rip with the edges pushed apart. I put the fingers of one hand through the edge on one side, did the same on the other side, and pulled - but it was beyond my strength to close the gap. The streamers, however, extended and joined together. I let go, and there was a short tussle between the hole and the light, then the hole closed and the streamers vanished, and the surface sped away, perfect, and with the colours forming long strands rather than pools of colour.

'You just mended a tear in a reality.' said the man, in an awestruck whisper.

'You should see me mend socks. That is far harder.'

He shook his head.

'That was where you came from - though you don't belong there.'

'They have a problem with a parasite reality.'

'Ah - you must have unfixed that part of that reality and it tried to return to its proper place in the multiverse - which created the gap you came through. Tears often connect with an adjacent reality as they are spun together into the thread of the Infinite.'

'We did take the batteries out of a rod.' I agreed.

'That would be it then. I'd better find your home reality and.' As he lifted the thing he held a second man stepped up to him and took his wrist.

'Not yet.' he said, and the first man shimmered and vanished.

'Did that hurt him?' I enquired.

'Oh, no - we are only partly here and the energy is only enough to maintain one at a time.'

'So he is now?'

The man frowned at me.

'He's just not here any more, but the actual him is where we are, but I don't know how to explain that.'

'You just did.' I said frowning back at him. 'You needn't think that just because I am something less than you I have no imagination.'

I realised even as I said it that the time spent in an unemancipated reality had had an effect.

'Less? You just mended a hole and restored a time line...'

Around us the indescribable was altering, and it gradually became a Ring Hall, and as the scene solidified I heard the Captain's voice
'...ack out of the way. You don't want to get hit by a Ring.'

'There she is.'

I breathed rapidly for several minutes, as though I had sprinted a distance, and I did wonder if, despite its Springlike quality, what there is between realities is rather lacking in Oxygen.

We were able to wash and find some clean clothes, and I noticed that my nails were long and perfect, and an old scar on my right forefinger had vanished.

The three of me ate and were given beds, and the other two fell asleep at once, but I felt full of energy and could not rest, so I went to the kitchen and prepared meals for the men.

**Pleater** · 7th November 08, 04:27 PM

Madam Pleater has given you only the barest outline of the experiences she had - but I will begin in medias res, with the return of the three ladies to England, leaving Paris to burn.

After spending some time close to the substation where they arrived, and attempting to interest the women living around there in collecting and preserving the wild fruits, mushrooms and the like the ladies had to admit that they were defeated. No one seemed at all interested in the domestic skills they demonstrated, and spent more time waiting and watching around the ring hall than anything else.

The Hunters were now venturing into the Fashion Fur homeworld and returning with large numbers of the pre prepared meals, clothing of all kinds, and even the ring projecting equipment.

Acryli beast pelts had been formed into long hooded coats for the raiding parties, for the long fibres are so strong that the low velocity urban weapons the Fashion Fur paramilitaries were armed with could not pierce them, except at close quarters, and even then they were robbed of most of their capacity to do harm.

After some little while the ladies decided to return to the House, and so set to work to gather up what items they could to make their journey safe and easy. The process of acquisition was in fact theft, though referred to as 'liberation' in the notebook. Blankets, waterproof sheets, spare clothing and anything else that might be useful to them was collected together, and in the process they discovered a small trap with the House number on it, and two ponies to go with it. They therefore hitched up the little beasts and loaded up the trap, a two wheeled vehicle, and taking turns to ride and to walk, they departed.

During the first night they found that they had to set a guard to protect the ponies from the carnivorous not-rabbits, for they would take a bite out of anything that kept still for long enough.

The Captain had fashioned spears, and during her watch killed a fair number of the less cautious individuals. At the change of the watch the corpses were taken some little distance away as they were attracting interest by their smell.

This watch keeping reduced the time they spent traveling each day, but they did not really mind as the weather was fair and they found food and had ample water with them.

They were able to kill a young pig at one point, and feasted on roast pork, apples, sweet chestnuts and mushrooms, and they found that the trout in the river they reached next day could be caught by hand, and so ate them for breakfast the following morning as well.

When they were approaching the House they were overtaken by a convoy of carriages, and were reunited with the three male versions of themselves, and at last met the Chairman of the Committee to Overthrow Fashion Furs, who turned out to be the local version of the men, a most charismatic person, but with a fanatical gleam in his eyes.