A little something from long ago

[M Fnord]

So! Most of you probably don't remember this, but around six-seven years ago there was another group project hosted on these boards called Shining Spiral. One of Valles' brainchildren, as I recall, it was a mega-fusion story in the UF vein with lots of different source materials duking it out in the Ultimate Showdown, etc. It flickered for a bit, faded & died out after producing some brainstorming & a few maps.

Flash forward to today. I'm sitting at home waiting for Comcast to get their thumbs out of their asses & fix my broadband, when I stumbled upon an ancient & dusty file folder containing a bunch of Shining Spiral stuff. Most of it's not really worth sharing, but on a years-later reread, I kind of liked it. So now I'm sharing it with you. Enjoy.

"They say the only thing worth going to Arakkis for is the spice. And even that doesn't make up for life out on the desert. The combination of melange and raw, searing heat has a nasty tendency to drive the poor bastards who come to Dune in droves completely out of their skulls. The problem's so bad, they say, that most of the spice production has to be done by the native population. And the natives are already mad.

"That said, I was a man on a Mission. ZONet had told me that there was an interview waiting for me out here at the ass end of everywhere, so there I was. Sitting at the Arrakeen spaceport bar sipping a beer and trying not to let the spice content screw with my brain.

"After about six hours of this, a local in one of those funky plastic suits slipped onto the seat next to me and ordered a beer.

"'Are you the Humanx reporter?' the guy asked. I tossed him my card, he looked at it. The guy looks back at me with those blue-on-blue eyes that come from a deep and abiding melange habit. 'Follow me, He is waiting to speak with you.'

"The way this joker said He made me think that this gig wasn't the complete waste of time I thought it would be. Of all the people in the Taiidani Empire, there's only one man who the natives of Arakkis would refer to as 'He.' So I paid off the bartender and followed him. We walked through the winding streets until we came to a literal hole in the old masonry wall surrponding the city.

"It was at this point that the bastard threw a hood over my head and shoved me through. I landed in the back of what felt like an old truck, and then I was taken somewhere. After about an hour of bouncing around in the back of this damned thing, we arrived at our destination. I was tossed out with little fanfare or regard for my comfort, and the hood removed.

"Apparently I'd been taken to somebody's idea of a Resistance stronghold. Big old building carved out of a sheer clif face, looking out over the open desert. Very pretty. I was escorted from the entryway to an open foyer in the middle of the building. There, on a sort of throne carved out of the same rock as the cliff, was my interview subject. The man who had birthed and led uprising after uprising on his native Arakkis, and had made complete fools out of the Harkonnens and the Imperial Army. A man who claimed to be the dispossesed scion of an ancient imperial Clan, whom his followers claimed was the right hand of God and knew the future. A man whose followers would kill and die for without any hesitation at all. And supposedly the one person at the top of Empress Lionstone's "sleep with then kill" list.

"I was looking into the calm blue eyes of Anakin Skywalker, known better as Muad'Dib."

--Copernicus Jones, "Lonely Spiral"

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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