[Projection Emitter Index]

Whispers snaked through the Whispering Woods, chill winds slithering unseen between ancient trees and rustling through dry leaves. The coarse hair on the back of Krund’s soil-stained neck stood on end, and he longed to get back home to his warm, uncomplicated potato patch. Something about the gnarled branches and perpetual fog stirred an uncomfortable curiosity within him.

Krund picked up his handful of firewood and returned home to the safety of his small farm.

Projection Emitter 3 mentally “breathed” a sigh of relief. He knew the danger all too well. In his effort to try New Things, he refrained from telling Krund about the stairs outright. He had told Krund’s predecessors from the previous resets so many times that he almost slipped up and told it out of habit, but he stopped himself in the nick of time. This time around, he had generated a thick, thorny forest around the stairs, complete with ferocious beasts, slimy moss, and sharp rocks. It was truly a work of art, and so far it has been working. He was 1,207 generations into the one-millionth reset now, and so far nobody had ventured into the forest more than a few feet before deciding it was not worth the effort, turning around, going home, and having a nice, safe nap.

Ever since the descendants of Reset #197,457 built the stairs and proceeded to destroy their own reality by walking up them and touching the energy portal to the Upstairs Brane, Projection Emitter 3 had retained the stairs as a monument through each successive reset. He wasn’t typically nostalgic, but because he had reached a plateau of sorts in the generator-generatee relationship, he could not bring myself to reset the stairs. His relationship with the inhabitants of Reset #197,457 had become almost a friendship, and it was the first and only relationship he had ever experienced. So the stairs were kept, and even now he gazed at them fondly.

Now that he had deemed it time to make contact with the brightest of his new budding community of FRT Maintenance technicians, he faced yet again the specter of them getting wanderfoot. He’d seen it before: they get the exploring itch, start conquering wild beasts, chopping down trees and making flag poles, forts, and bridges. The next thing you know, they find the stairs, go up them, and… <zapt>.

In a hope to deter any and all exploration, Projection Emitter 3 had attempted to weave tales of mysterious, unnamed harms into the cultural lore of Reset One-Million. He fabricated many stories of treacherous dangers around the forest, and cleverly placed them into the primitive minds of songwriters, talking parrots, and town drunks. But a million resets had taught him one thing: these people, even simple farmers like Krund were inexorably drawn to the forbidden. Subtlety wouldn’t work forever.

So, as much as it was against his nature, Projection Emitter 3 was Changing Tactics. He dropped “clues” now – not always about the danger itself, but about the general futility of seeking adventure. He also tried a positive angle – weaving in songs and tales of a love for the simple life, where potatoes and turnips were symbols of peace, contentment, and safety. It was a tightrope balance however, he didn’t want to drive out all love for complex things, because the FRT Gates were probably the most complex device outside the universe. He had to be exceedingly cautious with Krund. The last conversation had gone so well, it would be a shame to mess it all up now. But eventually, he’d have to tell him about the stairs.

Projection Emitter 3 sighed a great sigh. It was a warm sunny day, and Krund was working in his small field. A year had passed since his last conversation with Projection Emitter 3. As the sudden breeze wafted across the ground, Krund paused from his labor. He sat up straight, looked at the clouds, and listened.

After a minute of silence, Krund grugged and put his hands back into the dirt.

“Greetings Krund,” the sky said.

Krund grunted and glanced up again with a sigh. “No time for sky talk.”

“I am projection Emitter Three,” the sky helpfully reminded him. “And yes, I too feel that it is time for “sky talk” – to communicate with you once more. Have you had proper time to reflect on out last conversation? Have the cogitations gleaned from our prior exchange sufficiently marinated within the vats of your promising intellect?”

“Krund dig, Krund plant, Krud harvest.” He went back to work, trying not to recall the bizarre day when the sky had spoken the year before.

“Krund no dance,” Krund added, after fragments of his memory began to to piece bits of their last conversation into place, against his wishes.

“That is acceptable, Krund,” Projection Emitter 3 said. “Whether you have parlayed fancy footwork or abstained since we last spoke, you remain a step in the cosmic dance, in which ethereal conduits of information spread down from above to create reality, harmony, and potato fields, like a sun-warm slug spreads a trail of bio-motion lubricant across a potato.”

Krund nodded, pretending.

Emboldened by Krund’s apparent understanding, Projection Emitter 3 continued. “Krund, there lies within the reality of reset one-million a very special place where something is hidden that will cause no harm unless you… You must never…”

Projection Emitter 3 stopped himself in the nick of time. Old habits die hard.

He continued: “In the unusable rocky corner of the great potato field, hard work and laborious toil grows no bounty, and buoyant ballad brings no listing of the spirits, but only joint-pain of thorns and nettles. One misstep, a single pirouette too close to the forbidden soil, and the joyous jig morphs into a macabre gavotte. The fertile fields of understanding turn barren, trampled into nothingness by the heavy boots of cosmic oblivion. Laughter of earth-children, once ringing out like wind chimes in a gentle breeze, curdles into the chilling screeches of a banshee covered in fire ants!”

He paused, and Krund looked up. His eyes bore a worried look, and dust floated down down from his coarse, unkempt hair.

After what he hoped was a suitably long and dramatic moment, Projection Emitter 3 pressed on: “Should an imprudent farmer, tempted by a woodland’s whispering, plant even a single tuber in the condemned dance-floor, a universal rot will set in that will steal the jig of every joyful sprout. The fertile loam of knowledge will transmute into a dust bowl, and optimism will wither under the invasive thistles of and flying gnats of oblivion! Then, when the wellspring of all interconnection dries up, leaving only a parched yearning for the forbidden harvest; all footwork will slow, then cease like a stark, legless scarecrow in a desolate field, a grim reminder of the forbidden waltz!”

“Krund said Krund no dance!” He shouted at the sky. “I no even like dance on hard floor!” He scowled, glaring around at the tilled earth.

“Krund forbid dance on patch! Fast step bad for potato sprouts, Krund proclaim Great No-Dance when rain spoke of dance in last planting!”

Krund shook his hairy ham-fist at the sky.

“Also Krund no dance in patch in all seasons of memory – Krund hate dance!”