Macali shuddered as she saw the immensity of the structure. Who were these aliens, and where had they come from? Should she transport back to her laboratory and make preparations to move her operations to another location, or should she wait, observe their movements and decide whether they were safe to approach? Would their sensors pick up traces of her translation portal, or would she be safer moving about on foot? Why had she not brought any weapons with her - and would they be of any use if she had? Macali quickly scanned the structure with her visual, olfactory and auditory receptors, but did not receive any information she deemed useful. Not that she ever did. It sometimes mystified her that she even bothered. She engaged the smallest tip of her trans-dimensional sensors. The micro-second her trans-dimensional probe detected a presence, she began to receive a message. Damn! She had never encountered any entity but members of her own race who could do anything but dimly sense a trans-dimensional probe. The message was not Opae. These were not her people. What in the name of the Nine-fold Matrix had she opened herself up to? Communication Received We Are Here Request Open Portal Assignment Follows Assignment follows? Macali shut down her probe immediately. It had not been her intent to communicate, only to scan. From time to time she had come across a civilization who knew something was out there, and twice she had encountered beings who went on high alert when her trans-dimensional probe was active, but she never expected anyone to become aware of her and certainly not to be able to communicate transdimensionally! **************** In January Tara (auntietk) and I created a short science fiction story from a single image that grew into a six-part mini-epic, which was a wonderful experience but had to be cut short due to work constraints. It left me feeling that we had only created the barest skeleton of a story - there were too many holes and unanswered questions in the plot, too much unexplored background, not enough character development - and not enough time to really get my teeth into the story. But the fate of Macali/Maragaret/Marca continued to nag at me, as did questions of who/what the Shadows were, how the disentanglement of Marca occurred, etc. So Macali is back, Margaret is lurking in the wings and the Shadows are about to take centre stage as the back story starts to take shape... Vue 9.5 Infinite, signature in Photoshop CS5, no post work. Craig You can see the original images and story by clicking the following links, or go here to read the story (so far) in Tara's gallery...
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