Crystal-Hunting Black-Number Council (Online Vaurca Newsgroup)

[ChevalierMalFet]

To my brothers, cousins, and K'lax friends as well, from your New Gibson Three,

The work involved in preparing this newsgroup was considerable, but thankfully most of it was simply figuring out the index functions and getting a valid registration. (It turns out that most humans have no idea how to adjust the water pressure in their showers, a task I could sort out for my neighbor in about 30 seconds - building bridges is better than burning them!) Tremendous thanks must go to my good brother KAZ-Tlakhu, who put together the Zo'Rane font and keyboard map-set. If you don't already have it, you can find it attached to this message. Regretfully, our work in mapping it to a Unicode display-set is still incomplete, and the best course of action we've found is to simply pass around .jpg files filled with writing. (Tutorial attached, if you need it.) Tedious though it may seem, it's still an improvement over 1.0 - we had to use the mouse cursors and draw each glyph. Even with my digita-mods, it took hours. (Iterate, iterate!)

In the first place, I want to re-iterate something that people have been asking about. No, I am not on any team working on a new Relay, and no, none of the people who are - if, indeed, anyone is - are telling me about it. Nobody tells me anything anymore since I drew the Black Number. I will say, among my Material brothers, that I would rather work for a rotted Kois-pod with four little eyes drawn on it than have to submit my factor-pieces to Ice-Comet-Temple again; I blame them completely for the signal-dampening problems that led to our discovery last time. "More is always better, my brother, if we have the power - and we have the power!" I was Anointed by Uyat'tle'klozha, thank you very much, and if Thunder-and-Diamonds had listened to me about the broadband issues then everything would have gone perfectly. I don't want to say that we'd already be evacuated, but things would definitely be better.

Anyway, I have been talking to KAZ-Tlakhu and ZAZ-Tlexa - who, by the by, has put in his papers for a promotion, and it seems like he'll get it, so congratulations there - and I think this is a solid step forward for us. Give this address out like water, and bring in as may of us as you can. We, your New Gibson three, are all convinced that the only way our situation will get any better here is if we stick together, work together, and communicate. We are giving every spare moment to integrating our font and making this even easier, and I've even blueprint'd up a new model keyboard. I for one think it's refreshing to go back to text! Organic support for creative spacing will come shortly. As far as newsgroup functions go, there should be a 'REPLY' button somewhere and it'll shoot up into the catalog, and anyone who comes later can browse them all.

Thoughts of the day, I have been putting together some really wonderful poetry about what it was like to draw the Black Number and get launched out into the Material. I am experimenting with amphibrachic verse and finding it quite alluring. Just because we are out here doesn't mean we have to abandon what's best about us. I also find it absurd, the way that Men think we're dreamless robots; I mean, the Viax are, of course, but anyone who thinks the Akaix of Zo'Ra have no feelings has clearly never taken cognition of the Weeping Songs - or communicated with KAZ-Tlakhu (with love!) for more than five minutes.

With sweet regards,

one Ka'Akaix'Zishik Zo'Ra

who is dreaming of better things