From: "Mattias Persson" To: Subject: A Fairchild story Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 22:16:48 +0200 Dear sir My name is Mattias Persson. Here is a fantasy story about the Fairchild Channel F (it is set in my fantasy world, called Mathasia - the name comes from Mathematics+Asia), that I wrote in April, after I found notes of the system on the Internet, and thus was able to discover that an unknown machine I played games on at my school about thirteen years ago, was - the Fairchild Channel F, which I now want to get (maybe I'll get one from Jerry Greiner). " "The Nest" -I found a nest! She shouted as she rushed into the little house. Her mother, Jolene, stopped making beds, and looked at Christine, who was full of mirth, and eager to show her find to her parents. The father, Thomas, was out on the fields cultivating the sweet potatoes, and would not return for two hours, so Jolene followed Christine to look at the nest her daughter had found. She thought that it was a bird nest, such as those children always find in spring times everywhere, even in Mathasia, but Christine led her mother to a hollow tree in the beginning of the northern woods, the Mathasian taiga. -Look inside! she whispered, showing on a hole a bit up on the trunk of the tree. Jolene looked, and saw, not white round eggs, but rectangular yellow things, that resembled her needle box. One of them had broken and a box-like young creature lay beside the empty shell. It was a console nest! The consoles, so common further south, in Datania and Ramistan, were not often seen in Besseldesh, and Christine had found a nest of one of them! Jolene returned home to make a morning meal for them, and left Christine looking at the nest. She soon followed her home, and after they had eaten, Jolene took her needle box, to examine it. She saw that it in fact was made from the shell of a console egg, from the same console species Christine's nest was of! When Thomas returned to get a mid-morning meal, Jolene showed the box to him, and spoke to him of the nest. -A Fairchild nest? Here, in Besseldesh? Thomas was surprised. He once again told the story of the needle box to Jolene, and he also let Christine listen: "This box was made for my mother Iza by my father Uther. Uther, then 14 years old, had found a Fairchild nest (like the one you have found, Christine, he said, directed to his daughter, who had not heard the story before), and he wanted to show young Iza his feelings for her, by making something unusual. The Fairchild Channel F is not a common sight here in Besseldesh, and it have never been either, so Uther took one of the eggs and dried it. Then he cut it into two halves, and mounted the needle holders inside it, and he bought the needles from the Master Smith Conwyn of Technetium (Technetium is a country that lies far away from here). It all happened about fifty years ago" Later that day they returned to the tree and looked at the nest. Another one of the eggs had hatched, and the young console that had hatched earlier had dried, and was hungry. As they looked, the mother console came with food, a dead PlayStation, that the mother probably had found in the swampy glens that were located further away from Thomas' home, opposite the fields. The three Fairchilds ate almost half of the PlayStation, and then they crept together to sleep, but they were not to get sleep then. Christine heard the razzling of a snake, and the three consoles heard it too, and they fled, leaving the unhatched eggs to the snake. It was a very young, just hatched faxworm about one meter long. The snake slithered into the Fairchild nest and swallowed all the remaining eggs, and the remains of the PlayStation too, before it disappeared into the coming night. The three humans returned home and after milking their cows, they went to bed. The next morning Jolene found the three Fairchilds in a burrow that had been made by a wild boar some days earlier. They still lived, but they were later attacked by a marabou stork, that ate the youngest of them. -Such are the life, Jolene said to herself, as she went to get a pail of water, intending to bake bread that day. They heard faint billowing sounds when they had their evening meal the next day. Thomas said to himself: -Is it... Yes, it is, it is the mating call of the Fairchilds, there must be a male Fairchild here too! Then he ran out, to see if he could see their courting. Jolene and Christine followed him, and soon they found the male that caused the sounds. The female Fairchild also heard it, and she could not resist it, because of the fact that her eggs had been eaten by the snake. She answered him with her own higher-pitched, but softer sound, then they met, and after a long duetto and much dancing, they mated. Two weeks later the female begun searching for a place to nest, and found a place in a corner inside Thomas' hen-house, whose door was open daily, to let the hens out. There she produced six new yellow eggs, which all hatched one month later. The END Mattias Persson 1998/04/08 23:54 (Mathasian years have 15 months of 40 days each, thus Uther was about 20 Earth years when he found 'his' Fairchild nest. Console eggs are just the cartridges of the systems. The cartridges of the Fairchild/Zircon Channel F are indeed yellow.) " Sincerely yours, Mattias Persson lamperss@algonet.se