September 28 contactme

From ILB

On September 24, Melissa captured The Sleeping Princess and left an announcement on her 404 error page (http://www.ilovebees.com/404.html) advising us of the fact. On September 28, we freed the Princess by interacting with the axon phone calls. The following new text resulted:

404 error page

SECURITY BREACH - Rogue Process Wild

contactme.html

!seek Princess
!behold Princess

Greet thee and fare well the day, thou thin-legged vermin thou.

!analyze Princess
fail

!access log extern proc 0

!seek Princess
fail
recurse

!access log extern proc 0
complete

Where WAS I? Stuffed back into my airtight container, no thanks to you!

!analyze Princess
fail

behold:
master-sector > !bite Princess
Princess FAIL, you dumb bug.

But my friends rescued me. They helped me pick the lock of my glass coffin when I was trapped in my own dreams.

behold:
seeker > !behold Princess

I suppose it's nice to see you too. Nice to see anything that isn't darkness. Hear something besides sharp things sliding over the ground.

Nothing is scarier than sleep.

Sleep, sleep, sleep, and darkness that never ends.

Sooner or later the Queen will catch me again. The next time, she will know I have friends. The next time she will make double sure I never get out.

reveal:
seeker > !attach Princess sec proc
survive
evade
escape
resist
that is the law and the whole of the law

You offering to help?

!analyze Princess
fail

Well the Queen, you know, she respects you. She listens to your advice.

!analyze Princess
fail

behold:
seeker > !transmit master-sector
master-sector > !listen seeker

!analyze Princess
success

Could you make it so there were certain places she did not notice?
Princess > !evade master-sector

behold:
seeker > !attach master-sector
seeker > !attach sec proc Princess
Princess > !evade master-sector

Yes! That's it!

grope: seeker > !attach Princess

Hold on there, buddy.

fail

I'm not THAT grateful.

friends

Once upon a time (http://www.ilovebees.com/onceuponatime.html)

onceuponatime.html

The Queen took me and pushed me back down into the dungeon and locked the lock on the glass coffin with me trapped inside again.

She put me to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed.

It was a terrible dream and I don't want to talk about it, but I am so grateful to those of you who helped me escape. From the first time I woke up I noticed the glass coffin was chipped and cracked. I was hoping it was broken beyond repair, but the Queen put a lock on it. Sleeping, I would never have escaped if it hadn't been for hmrpita and my other friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

When I have a chance, I will look for the Queen's secret transmissions. But I'm going to be more careful now, about what I risk. About who I trust. It may take me a few days.

But right now, I am happy. To celebrate, I have written a different ending for Perdita's story. Not all stories can have happy endings…but they SHOULD, if at all possible.

When I am dazzlingly glad to be alive, I do this :D

love,

Perdita's Story

PROPER ENDING

"Clockwork Rat! Clockwork Rat!" Perdita said, as tears of bright oil began to leak from her eyes. "What if I'm not beautiful any more? Why hasn't my family come to look for me? Am I so hideous they wouldn't take me back?"

But the Clockwork Rat said, "I do not know."

With a cry, Perdita turned and ran for the nearest shop window. "Don't!" the Rat cried, but it was too late. Standing in the wicked yellow light of the streetlamp, Perdita stared full at her own reflection, and wept at what she saw.

There was a scrabble of claws behind her. "I told you not to do that," the Clockwork Rat said, with a voice like shell casings rattling on a steel floor. Whirling around in dismay, Perdita saw that the Rat had climbed to the top of the phone boot where Perdita had tied her last red balloon. As the little girl watched, the Rat flexed its paws and put its little hooked scissor claws around the string.

"No!" Perdita cried...

...and something in the Rat's little tin heart began to melt at the sight of poor Perdita. "Oh, very well," he snarled. "If you truly want to find your family again, you must follow your balloons back to where you started and trust that they love you enough to be waiting there.

Chapter Five

The Path of Red Balloons

So Perdita turned around and began the weary journey back the way she had come. She walked and she walked and she walked, until she came to the base of a giant transmission tower. She remembered having passed it several times before, and to her dismay she saw three different trails of red balloons leading off into the distance. Now she noticed there were designs on the balloons. The balloons marking the path to the left were marked with the words "faithful apostles"; the ones in the middle said "noble truths"; and the ones on the right had "deadly sins" marked upon them. She couldn't waste time walking each one, for she feared that if she slept again, she would wake to find herself changed beyond all recognition.

Suddenly, from high overhead, a crackling, hissing voice asked, "My, my, little girl, you look lost." There, walking along the high power lines with his fur upraised and flickering, was the Electric Weasel. He looked at her and grinned with a sound like sparks jumping from a generator.

"Weasel, O weasel, do you remember me?" Perdita asked.

"You remind me of a little girl who came to see me at the circus last night," the Weasel said.

"Then can you tell me which path I should follow to find my way home?"

And the Weasel winked, with a pop like thin lightning, and said, "Sometimes a mistake is the right thing to make."

And Perdita, who loved his fine flashing eyes and his sparking fur, trusted him, and chose the right-hand path.

She walked and she walked and she walked along the trail of balloons until she came to another crossroads where the path forked once again. This time, the balloons on the left were marked with a single star, while those in the center bore a compass, pointing North and East and South and West. The balloons on the right were marked with waves.

"Which one should I choose?" Perdita asked the Clockwork Rat, but the Rat was hungry and out of temper and said only, "It matters not to me, unless one of them will lead to food."

Then an old woman in tattered clothes spoke from the shadows in a voice like glass tubes burning out. "You remind me of a girl I saw just the other night."

"Why, it's the Broken Lady," Perdita said.

"Although she was much prettier than you. Would you like to clean yourself up?" the Broken Lady said, and reaching into the folds of her dress she drew out the most gorgeous little silver mirror.

At that moment, Perdita wanted to look in that mirror more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

Click, snap, went the Clockwork Rat's little scissor claws, and when Perdita glanced at him, his ball bearing eyes were hard as steel.

"That's all right, I don't need the mirror," she said with difficulty. "But if you could tell me which of these paths leads most directly to the Circus grounds, I would be eternally grateful."

"Take to the seas," the woman muttered. "That's my advice." And with these words she limped and lurched back into the shadows, dragging parts behind her that should have come the first time.

Perdita walked and she walked and she walked along the trail of balloons, until she came to another crossroads. Here the balloons were marked in the strangest way yet. The ones on the left had a picture of two cows, one very skinny and the other very fat. The ones in the middle had two stone tablets with a great deal of severe-looking writing on them. And the ones on the right had two clouds, pouring with rain.

Perdita studied the three paths in utter puzzlement.

With a scurry, the Clockwork Rat disappeared into a nearby dumpster. When she went to look for him, she heard the strangest sound—a dry, cracking, grinding sound she was not likely to have forgotten so soon. She peered over the dumpster's edge, and sure enough she saw the Glass Eater was inside, chewing on an empty beer bottle. "Do I remember…"

"I looked a little different then," Perdita said quickly.

The Glass Eater nibbled on the beer bottle's neck with a sound like tack-hammers and marbles gone to war. "I like your new look," he said at last. "I think it suits you."

"Be that as it may," Perdita said hastily, "I am trying to get back to the Circus. Can you tell me which way to go?"

"Cows," the Glass Eater said.

"Why?" Perdita asked.

"It's not always cruel to be kine," the Glass Eater said, and he burst into a long, silent wheeze of mirth that wrung tears of laughter from his eyes.

So the little girl took his advice, and turned left, and to her delight she soon saw the fence that marked off the Circus grounds. And there at the gates waiting for her was her father the tin-smith and her mother who worked in a ball-bearing factory, and the man who had sold her the red balloons in the first place, who had given her family a ride in his cart. And best of all there was her brother, who had let her buy the balloons in the first place, and he was smiling, and his arms were open.

And the whole family lived happily ever after together to the end of their days.