Opplopolis 20: 23-24

The end.

Are we going to make a big deal out of it? Not really. I mean, there’s actually a lot more work to do to get this ready for print. You all won’t see that, though.

Actually, here’s something for sticking with this to the end. On the back of the first print volume, there was this coded message:

Now, I, ah… lost the key for these things during the six-year break (never mind I found it), but knowing what this says I was able to pull out a few glyphs. In case you’re interested, the exact transcript is:

NOTHING-EVER-GOES-AW

AY-ANYMORE.-THE-PAST

-IS-RUNNING-UP-TO-ME

ET-THE-FUTURE-FOR-A-

BIG,-ORGASMIC-SMOOSH

There’s a period after “ANYMORE”, but not at the end. I’m guessing I did that to make the lines the same length. As Bea says in chapter 7, the punctuation (or lack thereof) at the beginning of each line denotes which set of glyphs to use. The glyphs have the same relative assignments, but they shift according to the punctuation.

As I’ve said before, I don’t claim to be good at this, or even particularly clever. This was just a fun way to enrich the fiction. But maybe some of you who are clever might like to try to decipher some of the other messages in the book. I feel like the grove monument in chapter 10 should be an easy one (but what do I know?)

I’m going to keep posting Friday updates for a little while. Next week I’ll talk about plans for the book, what’s left to do, funding, time-frame etc…