[Bill "too much time on his hands" Garrett wrote this genuinely funny account of rasfwrj happenings] I. THROUGH A DARKENING LENS A young man looks up from the large computer screen in front of him where he had been working on radiative heat transfer and anisotropic reflection models. He cries out in anguish, "They've broken my Bond! They've taken away the one thing that held any meaning for me!" His hands clench and relax on the Escher wristpad in front of the keyboard as a muscle in his cheek starts twitching involuntarily. Dark expressions pass across his troubled face like heavy storm clouds driven by high winds. Eyes stare like daggers at the far wall, their color changing from a light blue to gray back to blue and darker. Darker, until they become deep pools of blackness. Mental machinery whirs, producing ideas that flickered across his mind, each idea darker than the one before it. Darker, darker. One came that he settled upon, a final course of action. "They'll pay!" he shouts with ominous enthusiasm, "they'll all pay for what has happened to me!" But it wasn't just recompense he had in mind; it was revenge. He slid back his chair and rose from his desk, but turned and sat back down after a momentary pause. "No, I can do it from here," he said to himself. "They all touch the 'Net, though most are unaware of the dangers. I can reach them all!" He cackled with a harsh barking sound that soon turned into a monstrous laugh. Fingers agile from years of fine exercise flew across the keyboard, caressing it as if it were an old and familiar lover. Eyes glazed over as they stared with rapt attention at the screen. The time of transferrence was almost at hand; he had but to open his mind (and IP connection) to embrace the power. He could smell, feel it, sense it in every fiber of his being. There was a new ter'angreal floating somewhere in his purview, a tool more powerful than any before, perhaps the strongest of all... when it was completed. "Don't use that!" cried a bodyless voice from local cyberspace. "We're not done with the rendering control yet. There's no guarantee you'll be able to control it!" But he was willing to take chances. People who've lost everything always are. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Power, more power. Limitless power. The power to create, or destroy. Now it was his; the login was complete. "I'll need some wheels for my trip along the Information Superhighway...." To be continued... II. HELL ON WHEELS The 1965 black Cadillac Fleetwood speeds along the empty road like a sleek black bullet shot from a gun. Passing scenery is mirrored in the chromework on the bumpers, grille, doors, and trunk. "Ah, I just love it when environment mapping works so well," the driver says in a rumbling but contented voice. "It's cheesey computer graphics, but it runs fast and makes beautiful images. "Need some traveling music," he hisses to no one in particular. As if of its own volition, the radio flickers to life, its knobs turning to select a station. A rim-tap cadence pounds out through the speakers as a male voice croons: "Uptown got it's hustlers The bowery got it's bums Forty-second Street got Big Jim Walker He a bull-shooting sun of a gun..." "Jim Walker was a wuss," rasps the driver. "He'll never mess with me again. But that song's too upbeat for me." The radio dial flicks again. "Silver devils in his holsters Stars strapped to his heels Fire in his eyes, you could see He was dressed to kill..." "No," rasps the man, "it's not sundown yet. Although there are a few people who, in a short while, will never see the light of day again!" A chuckle rises from deep within his throat. "Something more dark and powerfully foreboding," he muses in a voice that matched his musical desires. "Daaa dum da daaaa daaa Dum deee dee de daaaa" "Ah, Schubert's Eight, the Unfinished. Too bad the folks reading from home can't appreciate it in this form." He erupts with rumbling laughter as the car speeds onward down the abandoned backroads of the Information Superhighway. He has several visits to make, and he doesn't intend to miss any of them. Not for the world. To be continued... III. AN OLD FRIEND, FOR THE LAST TIME The scene: a large, ornately decorated room with a blazing fire in the fireplace against the far wall. A tall man dressed in sumptuous clothing (if you consider Levis and a sweatshirt to be sumptuous) stares into the fire as he sips from a large stein. A man in a voluminous dark cape appears opposite the fireplace and walks across the room. He glides silently across the floor his cloak billowing out behind him. Ten feet short of the tall man he stops with a scrape of his boot heel against the floor. He moves as quickly and quietly as a hawk swooping down on upon its prey when he wants to, but this time he wants to draw his host's attention to his presence. The man at the fireplace whirls around in surprise. "Ahh," he says with a pause, "it's you, my _old friend_." These last two words he speaks with a twist of his lips. "Perhaps you've come to stand at my side again, now that you've... been relieved of your other obligations?" "Nay, _old friend_, I have not come to rejoin you. We stood together once, you and I, but that was before you changed to the man you now are. I started to change with you, before I realized what we were becoming. I would have none of it, so I left and sought the Light. You were ever angry at me for leaving, I suppose, so you sabotauged the one thing I cared about. No, old friend, I haven't come to rejoin you; I've come to kill you." This last he spoke with a genuinely morose voice. "Fool!" Ba'alzamon shouted as the fires in his eyes flared. "You would seek to pit your puny powers against the Great Lord of the Dark!?!" Fire engulfed the man in the dark cloak, spreading quickly around his form, until nothing was left but a pile of ashes. "Interesting effect," said the cloaked man, reappearing as unblemished as before, as if he hadn't just been burnt to the ground. "That was a pretty convincing fire, but too bad for you it was just the same iterative simulation used to do the computer graphics F/X in that old Star Trek movie about the Genesis Planet. It was good 10 years ago, but I had honestly expected more from you now. "But I digress." His blue eyes sharpened to pinpoints. "You hurt the one person I care about in this whole world, and that has hurt me. Worse yet, you've caused her to forsake me for fear of you. This I cannot abide." He raised his hands and began a complicated incantation. Ishamael looked on in horror as he saw his own self start to change shape, small creases forming all over his clothes and body. The change continued as the pitch of the incantation climaxed, until his form was all hard planes and angles. Then, at a clap of the newcomer's hands, he fell into a million tiny bits on the floor. "Tesselated and rasterized!" said the cloaked man with noticeable pleasure. "THAT should teach him not to mess with a computer graphics expert." He snorted. With a swirl of his cloak, he turned to leave the now-empty room. To be continued... IV. A BOND NOT GIVEN Two shadowy figures appeared before him before he could exit the room. That only their apparations appeared told him that they were not well-traveled in the ways of the world of Tel'en'net. "We hold your bond now," said the first. "Hawk Sedai passed it to us," added the second. "You must stop what you are doing." "We will compel you with your bond if necessary," concluded the first. "Fools!" hissed the cloaked man. "I am stronger than bonds you think to hold me with. You tie a small leash around a s'redit and expect that to keep it from moving when and where it pleases. "Crawl back to your dingy lair, Shaido dog; crawl back under your rock of obscurity, Betrayer of the Borderlands. My bond will not be held by the miserables likes of you." With a snap of his fingers he disappeared from their midsts, leaving them to wonder where he had gone and how. To be continued... V. ROADKILL ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY Roy stood in the middle of the road. "On behalf of the male population of America," he said, addressing the young Scandanavian woman standing near him, "I would like to welcome all you luscious blue-eyed, blond-haired, large-breasted Swedish women to rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan. I'm sure everyone agrees with me about how excited we are to have you join us." The hurtling cadillac squashed him flat. To be continued... VI. THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA Scene: a porticoed veranda in a warm southern clime. A middle-aged woman sits at a low, broad desk, shuffling papers back and forth. "Heh, that's _three_ people who think Melissa Horn looks like Bela," she says to herself. The dark man appears in the middle of the courtyard and stalks toward her. "You told her to do it, didn't you?" he accused her. "Who, me? what?" she said absent-mindedly. "Now where did I put that page?" "I ought to kill you right now, you foul darkfriend." "Me, a darkfriend? No, you must be mistaken, sir, I drink my coffee with milk and sugar. It's very brown. See?" She offered him a cup. "Save you act of innocence for your Great Lord; I'll be sending you home to meet him shortly." "You'll do no such thing!" challenged a third person. The cloaked man turned to see an Aielman crossing the courtyard. He was dressed in the typical cadin'sor with a shoufa draped around his neck. Spears and a horned bow poked up over his shoulders from behind his back. "I'll give my life to take yours before I let you hurt her!" The cloaked man held out an empty palm. A fiddle suddenly appeared in it. "I'll let you play for your life," he said condescendingly. "I am Aiel," Viren said firmly. "We only sing battle marches and dirges for those slain in combat." "Both are appropriate right now," the man said with in his eerily smooth voice. He handed the fiddle to the Aielman, who took it unwittingly, and cradled his arms just as a flamenco guitar appeared in them. "Do you play?" he asked as he strummed out a perfect five-fingered chord on the instrument. "This is ridiculuous," stated Viren. "I am Aiel. I shall dance the spears with you; nothing else." "Very well, then, tonight you dance with Death." His eyes blazed an iridescent blue, hinting of a thousand dangers and a thousand ways to die. The Aielman drew his shoufa over his face and hoisted a double- bladed spear as the dark man whisked his sword out of his sheath. The white ivory grip was encrusted with brilliant orange jacinth that reflected the light in a thousand tiny points. Atop the hilt was a gently curved blade crafted of a dark slate-grey metal that shone in the light. Fine silver etchings traced their way across the blade, giving it a slightly mottled appearance. For all that it was a work of art, its edge was razor sharp. A quartet of musicians appeared on the opposite side of the courtyard. "Perhaps we shall dance, after all," mocked the dark man. The synthesizer sang out a mellow chord while the guitar and bass began carefully exploring a counterpointed rhythym. The two men stared silently at each other and began circling as the music steadied itself into a melody. The music picked up as the two men began exchanging attacks. Nothing definite; just tentative, testing one another. The guitar and synth exchanged the lead several times. "You have good taste in music," said the Aielman, swining his spear between his hands. "Thank you. Al DiMeola always has been my favoite Fusion artist. "Watch out," he cautioned, "time change in about three bars." The music shifted suddenly, getting faster, and with all the instruments apparently jockeying for the lead. The men moved quickly: swinging, thrusting, parrying, dodging. No hits connected yet; consummate warriors such as these were more concerned about control of space. Advance, retreat; retreat, advance; circle. The music continued to increase in tempo, the keyboard and guitar falling into synchronization as they raced toward dizzying heights. Again, the combat mirrored the music. Both men were exerting their full energies now, and each bore marks of where one his opponent's attacks had passed through his defenses. The musician now played at breakneck speed, the guitar pulling ahead of the synth. In the battle, Viren was beginning to tire. "You silly Aiel," taunted the dark man. "You can walk a horse into the ground, but when someone asks you to dance you can't go for more than five minutes." Catching his opponent off guard and winded, he ran him through with his sword. "And the Tarheels are going to stomp the Wrecks in tomorrow's game," he gloated. To be continued... VII. THE TEMPEST AND THE TEAPOT "So," quoth the dark man in his unsettlingly smooth voice, "you are the one who calls himself Darkelf." His quarry, back still turned, sat bolt upright in his chair. "Funny, you don't look particularly dark or particularly elvish. I had expected better from you." The Darkelf That Was Not a Darkelf had turned around to face his unexpected visitor. Shivers of fear ran through his body, but he schooled his terror enough to speak. "L-Leave m-me alone, F-Fain, or Bill, or whatever you call yourself. I've been around l-longer than you have. Judy's s-survey said so!" "And you take that as the bible, do you? Fool. I've been around longer than you suspect." "Oh yeah?" he challenged. "Well, um, uh, I'm a computer scientist you know. And I've, like, heard about what you've been doing tonight, yeah. I know about you and all those stupid computer graphics jokes because, um, because I read about it on the 'Net. Yeah, and I know about graphics, too, so you can't just push me around like you did to all those other people." "Really? Let me see what you're made of, child." "Look at _this_," Darkelf said, producing a blue plastic-looking teapot. "It's Phong shaded and everything." The dark man laughed. "Phong _shaded_? Ha, you don't even know what you're talking about, much less what you're doing. You can't even call a primitive algorithm by its correct name. Watch _this_!" He held out his hand and a teapot appeared in it. It appeared to be made of hammered copper, covered slightly with corrosion at the base of the spout, lights reflecting off the sides with a warm color-shifted glow. Darkelf stood in silent amazement. "It's the same model as the one you used, but with a real shading function applied to it." "How? what? It looks so real." "It's in the FAQ. Blinn, SIGGRAPH 1977, improvement upon Torrance/ Sparrow lighting model including geometric attenuation and Fresnel reflection; Cook and Torrance, SIGGRAPH 1981, expanding Blinn's work with Beckmann microfacet distribution; Greg Ward, SIGGRAPH 1992, anisotropic reflection; Kajiya, SIGGRAPH 1985, anisotropic reflection models and frame mapping (that's how I made the hammered metal appearance and the corrosion... nifty, isn't it?). "Ya got all that?" "Buffer overload. System halting." "Glad I could help. I'll bet you didn't even know that this model came from a real person's teapot, except that the real one was 50% taller. Jim Blinn was demo'ing his rendering system to DARPA, and the doddies decided they liked it better squished in the Y dimension. Poor chap who owned the teapot eventually had to get another because everyone wanted to make models with his first one." He dropped the teapot on Darkelf's now-lifeless body and walked away. Perhaps one of Darkelf's classmates would chance upon it and learn something about graphics. Or perhaps not. To be continued... VIII. A SMALL ROOM IN CHICAGO The dark man was back in his car, hurtling across the little-know byways of the Internet. His gaze wandered about the expansive cabin of the vehicle, stopping upon the instrument cluster on the dashboard. One gauge was marked "MIPS" and was calibrated all the way to 20,000. The needle pointed to about 12,000. "Gods below, I love this machine," rumbled the driver. "Real-time radiosity scene calculations, watch out." He pressed the foot pedal and accelerated toward his penultimate destination. Scene: a windy city by the Blight that's always too cold in winter and too hot in summer. A young woman sits in a small room at a small desk piled high with physics books. A lone oil lamp provides the only illumination in her cramped abode. Boxes of Raman Pride noodles and store-brand rice cakes fill a nearby shelf. It's obvious she's saving her money for an important expenditure... She hears a knock at her door and rises to answer it. Opening the door, she sees a large man of indeterminate age but youthful appearance. A voluminous cloak covers him up to his chin, leaving only his finely- chiseled face framed by a trimmed jawline beard. "Hellloooo, Nurse! Hey, big boy. Got a nice sword for me?" The man smirks. "Yes, I do," he answers in a voice whose deep rumbling sounds like two mill wheels grinding against each other. He draws his cloak aside with a flourish, revealing the bejewelled sword sheathed at his side. "Care to take it out and show it to me?" she asks, trying to catch him with his own desires. "If you wish. I've come to settle a score with you. You have cost me something -- nay, the one thing -- that I treasured deeply. You, more than anyone else, are responsible. "Hawk, with tears in her eyes, told me that she had to pass my bond because of harassment from people like you. My bond, that was the one thing that meant anything to me, and now it's gone." "So what are you going to do?" she asked. "Kill me? I don't think you could. You know that hurting women is against the values you have, buried deeply in your cultural baggage." She was wrong, but the dark man saw no need to tell her that. "I shall not kill you myself; another will do it for me!" And with that, a snarling Tyrannosaurus Rex ripped its way through the roof of her apartment. "Cool," Pam said. "This will be an _awesome_ excuse for not taking the Physics GRE tomorrow. 'I'm sorry, but a T-Rex ate my homework.'" "What, you _like_ this?" "Oh, sure, can you show me something else?" The dark man grumbled from deep within his throat. Whether it was lust or anger, Pam could not tell. "Very well then, I'll give you a whole flaming herd of dinosaurs." And a herd appeared running across the lamp-lit park behind him. "Wow, those dinosaurs look so real, even better than the same scene in Jurassic Park!" "Of course they did. The Jurassic Park folks messed up here because they didn't match the lighting of the computer-generated dinosaurs to the lighting of the real-world background they were rendering them onto. I don't make such mistakes." "Hey, is that a triceratops grazing by the park bench? I could get _beaucoup_ points in the next UofC Scavenger Hunt for bringing in a triceratops..." The T-Rex ate her. "Never mess with a computer graphics expert," the man chuckled. The dinosaurs disappeared into nothingness as he walked away. To be continued... IX. BLOOD AND THORNS The cloaked man appeared in front of a museum on E Street NW in Washington, DC. "One last stop to make," he rumbled, this time with a decidedly pleasant tone in his voice. He walked across the empty street (streets were always like that in this ether world) and headed toward a nearby White Tower. He drew up short as his old warder's senses alerted him to shadowspawn in the area. He tensed, hand going automatically for the sword at his left side. He scanned the street up and down, spotting the thing whose evil aura had already announced itself to him: a darkhound. It was galloping down the street in a path directly toward him. He knew his sword wouldn't do any good against this creature, so he reached for a weapon that would. His right hand dropped to his side and unlimbered the gun that sat there. He raised and levelled the .454 caliber Magnum ACP at the approaching monster, bracing it with two hands now, and sighting down its 8-inch nickle plated barrel. The creature halved the distance as he cocked the hammer back. Closer came the dog as the man's index finger curled in toward his palm, setting small levers in motion. With a violent whipcrack the gun fired, kicking hard enough to raise the man's arms over his head. "Nice puppy," he sneered at the sack of bloody rags that used to be a fearsome darkhound standing 3 feet high at the shoulder. Of course, he couldn't hear his own words. He noted with pleasure, though, that the retort from the gun had shattered a few windows in a neighboring building. He knew there was a reason why he preferred the unvented barrel. Without another glance at the dead shadowspawn he turned and approached his final destination. Walls, doors, and locks could not stop him in this world. He climbed the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, arriving quickly at the third floor. Down the hallway he tread upon silent feet, coming at last to a door set opposite the kitchen. "'Mistress of the Kitchens' they were going to make her," he rumbled angrily. "Ah, but those fools have paid for their folly." Turning away from the kitchen, he passed through the door and into the small room beyond. On a narrow bed lay the person who meant the most to him in the entire world, a person for whom he had literally fought, and killed, to protect. He looked down at his hands for something to give her. His rough hands, dark and awash in blood this night; those were nothing to give her. He stared again at his hands, furrowing his brow in concentration. A small, black rose appeared in them. "My love, this is the best I can do in these darkest of times," he whispered as he gently placed the rose atop her slumbering form. A few drops of blood fell from his finger where one of the rose's thorns had poked him. "Love, the road we must travel is paved with aught but trouble and strife. I know I have strayed from it several times. It is not an easy road to follow, for people seek to mislead and waylay us at every bend. We pay a great price for passage, but there is one price I cannot pay. Do not send me away." He paused, half expecting a reply, half expecting none. His ears beheld nothing but a moment of silence broken only by the quiet susurrations of his love's breath. He bowed reverently and turned to go, a tear welling in his eye. The End?