Aujourd’hui je vous livre du 100% brouillon. J’aime pas ce à quoi je suis arrivée et j’ai pris un mauvais tournant sans pouvoir me reprendre, faute de temps et d’idées. Je vous explique: le défi de cette semaine concerne la divinité, d’une manière ou d’une autre. Et je suis restée au stade du brouillon, comme si je fonçais dans un mur au fond d’un cul-de-sac sans pouvoir enlever mon pied de l’accélérateur. Ça a peu à voir avec ce qu’il y a ci-dessous et pourtant mon constat est double. 1) Je m’ennuie de Terry Pratchett, c’est terrible et 2) finalement mes auteurs favoris sont British. Pratchett, Gaiman, Tolkien, Douglas Adams. L’humour et le ton britanniques viennent me chercher. Ce qui ne veut absolument pas dire que j’en traduise quoique ce soit ici, là, non. Ce sont uniquement des réflexions que ce brouillon ont suscité. Et le fait que je publie ici et aujourd’hui un truc que je trouve moche et non fini? C’est un autre genre de défi. Chu chez nous après tout et le reste au fond du fond je m’en fous. Faque.
End of the road
The bus driver was already turning his vehicle around, and he looked confused. He rubbed his eyes and looked around as if wondering what he was doing there, shrugged and drove off, leaving one man and one piece of luggage in the dust. A car pulled up slowly.
- I’m the one who sent you the ticket. Come on, get in the car, I’ll explain.
- How do you know who I am?
- See anyone else getting off the bus at this stop? The bus doesn’t even come all the way here usually – only does when someone’s sent a ticket. The bus line ends at that village you passed half an hour ago. Get in.
- Where are you taking me?
- To meet the others. We’re all the same as you, here. Forgotten and washed up.
- Washed up? How dare you?
- You used the ticket, didn’t you? You must have run out of money. Jobs. Uses. One day the calls stopped coming, and one after the other your possessions dwindled to all you can carry in that bag, am I right? Just throw it on the back seat, and let’s go.
- How do you know about me? Who are you?
- I know because that’s how our community grows, here, at Amnesia.
- Amnesia? What the…
- It’s what we call it, ok. It’s a name for locals by locals. We have meetings, we decide things. Keeps us busy. And at some point way back, we had to settle on a name for our village, if you will, and we called it Amnesia. We have a motto, too, and maybe it’ll shed some light on your little situation here. Amnesia: Home of discarded and obsolete deities and lesser powers. We’re inclusive, you know. You’ll find leprechauns, pixies, imps, all the lesser powers, as well as more public figures, if you will.
The newcomer looked peeved, but he kept quiet for a while and stared out of the passenger-side window.
- Discarded and obsolete sound a bit harsh, huh? I know the feeling, but it passes.
- There must have been a mistake.
- No mistake. When’s the last time you were summoned? Prayed to?
- I admit it’s been a while. But not so long. Humans are fickle, they need time. They’ll come around, they always do.
- No, they don’t. Or rarely. It’s happened, I won’t deny it. A few years ago, Tom Mensa went back to the world of the living. Nothing like his good years, but he has a following. God of vinyl records, that is. Ever meet him? The whole thing about him returning really upset the old goddess of eight tracks, too. She’s still bitter about it, and we’d all appreciate it if you didn’t bring it up in her presence, if ever she crosses your path.
- You’re saying I’m outdated?
- It’s not up to me. It’s the humans, you see. One day you’re on top, and the next… just ask any of our old-timers. Valhalla, Olympus, they’re just the names of valleys in Amnesia now. And we have older, darker places, where some among us just grunt and look a bit misshapen. We let them be and they do their thing without interfering with us more recent supernatural beings. After all, we have to go somewhere, right? Immortality is a bitch. And eternity? Eternity is a long time, man. A really long time.
- .. I thought there was more to it than just becoming a has-been. I thought maybe it was just me, maybe I was being punished, when I got fewer and fewer calls…
- Your powers, have you tried them lately? Oh, you’ll keep the basics, we all do. But without worship, they dwindle. It’s not punishment, in the sense that no supreme being above us all is doing it to you in retaliation. As far as I know, anyway. It’s… it’s the way of humans and their fragile beliefs.
He nodded sadly and stared out the window some more. The landscape was without much interest: fields and meadows and trees in shades of green and tan, ordinary to the point of boredom. That was how we kept it. Or rather, that was our effect on the surrounding area. It wasn’t conscious on our part at Amnesia; it’s just that the pull of our forgotten nature dragged the country down, made it forgettable and uninteresting as well. On a human-made map, someone looking straight at Amnesia would have seen normal lines, roads, divisions, but somehow no one ever looked closely: They lost interest between the intent to look and the signal to their optic nerve.
- .. what do you do, at Amnesia? What will I do there?
- Live, of course. There’s no obligation, but there’s really no other place to go, either, unless they call you back. Like I said, eternity is a long time.
- And we all just… sit around?
- Think of it as retirement: You get to do whatever you want. And I told you, we have meetings. We play games. Do you enjoy shuffle board? There’s a tournament later this week. Bridge next week.
- So who were you?
- Oh, sorry: I’m Ed Scriptor. Movable type was my game. Not the blogging platform, of course, the actual movable type.
