free sample of 'here be dragons' as an ebook

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Free Extracts from 'Here Be Dragons'

available from www.lulu.com on 1/12/2012

This document copyleft 2012, Mark Ure

May be freely distributed and used in derivative works. May not be sold for a price greater than the

cost price of the media on which it is copied. No DRM imposition permitted.

Introduction to this Document

This is a selection from 'Here Be Dragons', an illustrated modern bestiary and atlas designed to

entertain and educate children of all ages on scientific and other principles using mythical beasts

and worlds. The book itself is ink and paper, and available from www.lulu.com .

Six worlds are depicted in the book:

0. World Zero: Our world, in which an interdimensional transport booth was discovered.

Through this portal, five more worlds were discovered.

1. Ancient World: A world containing mythical animals, substances, plants and continents,

such as unicorns, dragons, centaurs, mermaids, Lemuria, Atlantis and Hyperborea. Physics

is somewhat different there. It has West and East Poles but no New World. Also contains

the Rainbow Bridge and Bermuda Triangle.

2. West World: A world without Africa, Europe or Asia, where humans evolved in South

America. The polar opposite to Ancient World, discovered by reversing the coordinates in

the booth from World Zero.

3. Realistic World: Shares the Bermuda Triangle with Ancient World, which is the bridge

between the two. Superficially similar to World Zero except that the physics is like Ancient

World, though this is not usually noticeable. However, many things which are popular

misconceptions are true here, for instance bananas and coconuts grow on trees, Earth is

regularly visited by alien spacecraft and Pop Rocks have really killed people. The world is

run by a secret government which hides the truth from the general population. Yetis,

Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster are all real.

4. Ragnarok: Shares the Rainbow Bridge with Ancient World. Suffered a mass extinction

event in about the year 1000 when a hypernova gamma ray burst sterilised the New World.

Physics like World Zero, population less than 1 million in two human species which lookidentical. Organisms similar to those of Norse mythology, e.g. Sleipnir, Yggdrasil,

Jormungand and Niddhog, which are however descended from organisms which would've

existed in World Zero in 1000. The Western hemisphere is gradually being repopulated

from the Old World.

5. Aphrodite's Children: A giant turtle, Anteros, with four elephants on its back supporting a

shield-shaped world on which various mythical beasts live, Aphrodite's Children is in fact a

world in the never-ending dream of a global hive mind constituting the oceans of the

Ancient World version of Venus. It can be seen at night through phosphorescent patterns on

the sea bed.

Not all of these worlds are represented in this sample.
http://www.lulu.com/http://www.lulu.com/http://www.lulu.com/http://www.lulu.com/


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From Ancient World

Mermaid and satyr hair

In prehistoric times, mermaids ranged over most of the Eastern Hemisphere, from equatorial

to polar regions. They have now spread even further, particularly into islands in the GreatOcean. As a result, their ethnicity varies considerably and they have adaptations to bothclimatic differences and their aquatic and marine way of life. Although they spend much time

swimming, they also spend long periods of time with their heads exposed to the Sun, so theirscalp hair has to serve the purposes of insulation in air, in water and streamlining. Satyrs, by

contrast, need only to protect themselves from solar radiation in the form of heat, light andultraviolet radiation, and therefore have different hair. Satyr hair is generally kinky in shape

but on growing out becomes "Afro"-like.

Mermaid hair is unique among primate hair in that it includes both short and long hairs in

certain parts of the body, notably on the scalp. The lanugo present on some human skin has

evolved into short, stubble-like hairs shaped like arrowheads which fulfill the dual function oftrapping air between the skin and water and reducing boundary layer turbulence. These hairsfollow a streamlined pattern and are present over most of the body, being oriented in whorls

which follow the flow of water across the skin while swimming. They are blond and veryshort and all mermaids possess these hairs of the same colour throughout their range. As a

result, the fair-skinned mermaids of the east look conventionally Caucasian but those of thewest, whose skin is darker, have a "peppered" complexion due to the contrasting colour of

their hairs.

The second type of mermaid hair occurs only on the scalp and is long, like human head hair.

These hairs emerge from crescent-shaped follicles whose inner curve faces the crown of thehead - there are no mermaids with double long hair crowns and one crown of the short hairsalways coincides with their long hair crowns with several other short hair crowns on the torso

corresponding to the need for streamlining. The inward-facing grooves of mermaid scalp hairprovides similar insulation to the short hairs by trapping air bubbles between the scalp skin

and the water as well as further down on the body, since mermaid hair is very long, anadaptation also enabling babies to take hold of it in the water. This channel is susceptible to

filling with salt crystals when out of the water, so mermaids need to groom themselvesthoroughly by combing their hair - a mermaid's comb is as important to her health and

survival as her trident, as she cannot easily survive without either. Mermaids also takeadvantage of rivers by swimming upstream into their freshwater regions to remove salt from

their hair.

The dual purpose served by the long scalp hair means that in equatorial regions, somemermaids have kinky hair like that of satyrs, which insulates and protects their heads from

the Sun. Like satyrs, they often allow their hair to grow out into a "bush". However, thisnecessitates a different mode of living than the eastern mermaids, who have long straight hair,

because they cannot swim as fast and their babies cannot hold onto the hair while the motheris partly out of the water. Therefore, western mermaids tend to live in coastal and freshwater

areas and around coral reefs and eat a diet of plants and slow-moving molluscs as they areunable to catch fast-swimming animals. These mermaids were originally concentrated in the

Mozambique Channel, though there is a gradual change in frequency and extent of kinky hairacross most of the Western Lemurian sea, where suitable environments are more widespread

and the climate is sunnier. Other differences between eastern and western mermaids are thateastern mermaids are taller and have more subcutaneous fat, which also applies to satyrs.


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Western mermaids became more mobile after the domestication of the seahorse, which

helped them spread eastwards but they are still more likely to be found in the WesternLemurian sea than elsewhere. There is no ethnic conflict between the two, and also no

dispute generally because they have different lifestyles.

Straight-haired mermaids are the original form of the species, which arose on the eastern

Lemurian coast and spread westwards. Western mermaids are more closely associated withseahorses than eastern ones and are in a sense "experts" on their care and breeding. Theyalso deal in carbonate pearls, whereas eastern mermaids are more likely to deal in monopole

pearls and don't eat bivalves. However, since Megaeuglena and other marine plantimals aremore common in the West Lemurian sea, they form a more important part of the western

mermaid diet, being caught in nets, whereas eastern mermaids are more likely to eat fishwhich are caught by spearing. The eastern mermaid diet is higher in sea honey and sea olives.

Zombies

Zombification: A form of brain damage which leads to permanent loss of consciousness combined

with a permanent hypnotic state, induced by a poisonous plant. The ability of the brain

to switch back to wakeful consciousness is destroyed. As such, their existence provides

support for the arguments that logical behaviourism is not true in Ancient World and

that type-identity physicalism is not true. The Mary's Room argument could be resolved

by an actual experiment - "Interview with the zombie".

In Southern Africa, there are groups of zombies which operate trains which are not in

use and run them through stations in the middle of the night. When passengers board

these trains, which obviously do not show up on timetables, they are poisoned and join

the zombies.

Vision: There are two important differences in Ancient World human vision.

One is that the magnetic sense has the same sensory modality as vision, so they can literallysee halos, auras and magnetic and electric fields. The thalamus does not separate the two

senses, so although in a sense they are different senses, they are not subjectively different.Processes within the brain map magnetic stimuli onto probable sources and most of the

time this is accurate, but on occasions, magnetic illusions are possible because ofdiscrepancies in perception. The existence of the magnetic sense makes accidental electric

shocks less likely.

The other is that rather than cone cells sensitive to blue light, there are indigo-sensitive cone

cells, changing colour perception. What we would consider ultraviolet is faintly visible, indigorather than blue is a primary colour and the area of the spectrum between green and indigo is

more easily discriminated. Colour spaces are also different, and in a similar phenomenon tothe consequences of the invisibility of red to many men in West World, basic colour terms

develop in a different order, with a word for indigo occurring as a basic term in almost alllanguages. To an Ancient World human, violet and purple are completely different colours.

If a World Zero human with good colour vision chose three torches, each of which looked likea perfect primary colour to them, and shone them overlapping on a wall, the image resulting

would look something like this:


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to magnetism.

Graphically represented, the distinction is quite subtle. The frequency response of World Zerohuman colour receptors can be plotted thus:

Compare this to a similar graph for Ancient World human colour vision:

Comparing these two graphs, it can be seen that the Ancient World indigo receptor is most sensitive

at slightly shorter wavelengths than the World Zero equivalent. However, humans from both worlds

have a second red receptor sensitivity peak in the short range of the spectrum, meaning that both

perceive violet as blue tinged with a hint of red. Again though, there is a difference here because


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the red receptor is generally less sensitive relative to the indigo one, so violet looks bluer to an

Ancient World human and the same shades of violet are in different places. This is very difficult to

pinpoint due to the subjective nature of colour perception: most of the time people from the

different worlds would never even discover they were talking at cross-purposes, and the question

arises of how subjective impressions of colour can be compared.

Ancient World colour wheels would be larger than World Zero ones because they must

accommodate the extra shades of violet at the short end of the visual spectrum. Moreover, the factthat the red receptor has completely ceased to respond considerably before the indigo one means

that in a sense the purest indigo of all, though it is less intense than that of indigo itself, is in the

near-ultraviolet range, and almost forms a fourth primary colour. Therefore, colour wheels are not

feasible in the Ancient World because the choice would be between missing out the violet end of the

gamut of colours to enable a relatively smooth blend to be achieved and introducing a sudden

jarring edge in the wheel. It is consequently impossible to construct an effective colour wheel in

Ancient World.

Another consequence of this is that rainbows look slightly wider to Ancient World humans even in

the other three physical worlds than they do to World Zero humans (incidentally, Aphrodite's

Children see rainbows as simple white arcs with no colour at all).

The development of basic colour terms in Ancient World:

Like World Zero, languages in Ancient World develop words for colours in a particular order.

Unlike World Zero, the order is different. Colour concepts are different for several reasons.

Firstly, colours are never seen as warm or cold but as heavy and light. In World Zero,

warm colours are associated with blood, fire and sunlight. This situation is vaguer to humans in

Ancient World as red is not a clear colour to them and the colour of fire is yellow to white rather

than orange or red due to there being more oxygen. The word light refers to weight, not

brightness. Secondly, the cells in the retina which distinguish between colours are different. Thered receptor is slightly less sensitive and instead of a blue receptor, there is an indigo cone cell.

There are a few languages in both worlds which only have words for dark and light. The word

for dark also refers to heavy colours. In these cases, the system is:

Light: White, indigo, green.

Heavy: Black, yellow, red.

The next set of languages have actual colour words as well as words for black and white! These are

distributed as follows:

White, indigo/green, black/yellow/red.

The third stage includes Chinese:

White, indigo/green, black, yellow/red

The fifth stage includes words for white, indigo, green, yellow, red and black. Finally, English and

various other languages use eleven colour terms, as follows (with the requisite colours):

Blue, violet, lilac, purple, grey, white, vrick, green, yellow, red and black.Vrick is not a word in World Zero English. It refers to indigo but is a basic colour term in wide

use. A notable omission is orange. It is usually referred to as red, brown or yellow in


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English although these words are not strictly accurate. Occasionally, the correct term, saffron, is

used, but most people don't consider orange to be a real colour, seeing it as more something to

make up the colours of the rainbow to seven and wouldn't be able to name the colour with certainty.

If presented with an orange, or for that matter a piece of cloth dyed saffron, they would almost

certainly either call the colour red or yellow, about equally divided. This is not because they are

unable to see the colour but because they lack a common word for it.

This fruit is referred to as an

orange, but in English and most other languages this name is simply the name of a fruit. It would

be thought of as yellow or perhaps golden, not saffron.

The word blue refers to a steely, greyish blue, not the colour of the sky. The sky is seen as indigo

or violet, although even to our own eyes a clear sky would often seem to be streaked with

aquamarine due to the colour of the microorganisms living in the stratosphere.

The Ironic language uses the same colour terms as Sarmatian but uses them for complementary

colours.

Due to these differences of perception, people can have difficulty seeing fire, except as pale flames

giving off an almost white light. This is a hazard and it would be expected to be selected against in

evolution, but there is a residual magnetic sense, and in some a pronounced one, which enables

people to find their way around in complete darkness which compensates for this to some extent.

From West World

Language: Male language has four forms of voicing rather than the more common two found

in World Zero: voiced, unvoiced, resonant voiced and resonant unvoiced. Men consequentlyhave shorter words and fewer other distinctions between speech sounds than women. Femalelanguage is more like World Zero language in this respect, since they lack the hyoid cavity.

Both sets of language have expressive adequacy except in the realm of colour and relatedvocabulary, where women's language is richer. Female colour terms never have exclusively

male phonetic or linguistic features. The languages are generally dialects with a considerableoverlap. However, baby language lacks both the colour vocabulary and the extra phonemes.

Male colour vision is based on only two types of cone cells, green and blue, meaning there are

only two additive primary colours and one secondary colour, thus:


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Also, to a man the central secondary colour is the brightest, close to white, with the result thatthe visual spectrum seems brightest midway between green and blue. Male colour vision is

also anomalous in that rod cells can detect a wider range of frequencies, resulting in red and

violet looking grey rather than colourful. Yellow and indigo are about equally dull. Hencealthough the frequency range of visible light is the same for women and men, the latter cannotsee actual colours at either end of the spectrum and the brightest colour, cyan, is also

somewhat unsaturated. Male colour vocabulary is therefore very impoverished indeed: theonly words they have correspond to black (including red, purple and violet), white (including

cyan), green, blue, yellow-orange and grey. By contrast the female colour vocabulary is as richas that of corresponding languages in World Zero and shows the same implicational

universals.

Taking the lingua franca as typical, the differences between female and male colour terms also

spill over into connotations, particularly in female vocabulary. The colour terms themselves

differ because in male language, colours are named after objects which are typically of thatcolour to a male eye, whereas in female language colours have their own names. For example,the term for black and red in male language is blood-coloured, but they have their own

words in female language. Female connotations for colour influence other parts of femalevocabulary, so that words for emotions, for example, correspond to colour terms. They work

as follows in female language:

Black: This is usually pejorative, meaning mischievous or evil, but with reference to human

beings it is positive. Black when referring to human appearance means beautiful, partlybecause humans always have dark skin, the darker the better, with black irises and hair.

Paradoxically, it also means ugly when referring to inanimate objects. A black-hearted

person is seen as clean and pure in thought. In male language, black is the colour of blood,giving it extra connotations. The dual of black refers to the daylight hours, that is, a period ofbrightness separated by two periods of darkness in female language. To a man, the


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corresponding phrase would be the two bloods, which makes little sense, but the word the

three bloods refers to a married triad, i.e. one woman and two men in a stable sexualrelationship.

White: May be pejorative as it's associated with dirt and soiling on human skin but also withcleanliness elsewhere. The sunrise and the early morning are referred to as the white line

and the sunset and early evening as the black line. The word for white means ugly whenreferring to human beings, but can also mean old, wise and experienced. The distinctive

five-number system of West World languages also come into play here, as the dual for whitealso means date and day in the sense of a single rotation of the planet. West World

cultures outside the Arctic Circle judge the day as beginning and ending at noon, and thereforeconsisting of two bright periods separated by two dark ones.

Red: This colour is only perceived separately by females, and in fact, red, orange and yelloware the brightest colours to women but yellow is only a very faint colour to a man and orange

and yellow are completely imperceptible as saturated colours at all to them. As it is associatedwith blood, the trial of red, i.e. the word the three reds is the female equivalent of the male

the three blacks, the word for a married triad. Red is also associated with embarrassment

and anger, as women find red such a bright colour that even though humans are dark-skinned,they can detect the flush of anger and the blush of self-consciousness. Men are only aware ofthis in abstract terms and cannot see it. Hence the female word for red also means angry

or shy. Pink is associated with the female too because it can only be seen by women: mensee pink as light grey. The word for pink actually means female, and the words the two

pinks and the three pinks refer to lesbian dyads and triads.

Blue: Associated with healing, tranquility, calm and cleanliness by both sexes, but also with

blindness and metaphorical blindness. A blind person is described as blue-eyed, which alsohas connotations of ignorance in both neutral and pejorative senses. The male term for blue

translates as sky-coloured. The only blue-eyed people in West World are those with

cataracts, who are therefore blind. The word for blue is also the female word for male.Blue-blooded means the same as blackhearted in English, and in male language also meansduplicitous or equivocal because to the male ear the phrase sounds contradictory: black

which is blue.

Green: Envy in both sex sociolects there is no concept of jealousy in West World. Also,

inexperience, the prime of life, unripeness. A green-souled person is someone who in somesense has failed to grow up. The connotations for green are close for both sexes, and it forms a

kind of neutral ground. When talking to each other, women and men will tend to use thewords for green more often, and the male phrase, sea-coloured is used because the male

word for sea is pronounceable by women whereas more obvious phrases such as leaf-

coloured are not. The range of colours referred to as green is also wider in communicationbetween the sexes than within them.

Yellow: Age in male language, illness in female, but also sometimes vigour and health. Men

see autumn leaves as yellow, which they cannot distinguish from brown, or black, andtherefore use the term autumnal to refer to yellow with the added connotation of a dying

fall. The female usage refers to liveliness and sunshine. Yellow-eyed means jaundiced towomen but not to men, since they would not be able to distinguish between healthy whites of

eyes and yellowed ones.

See also tomatoes.

Number: West World human language most commonly has five numbers by contrast with the


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two of the English language (singular and plural). These are singular (for one item), dual

(two), trial (three), paucal (four to six) and plural (six or above). Psychologically, themathematical intuition of the West World mind is slightly more advanced than the human

minds of the other world because it can grasp six items easily in one go and also has a slightlylarger short-term memory capacity. As a result, the likes of telephone numbers in West World

can be slightly longer. The reason for this difference appears to be innate social adaptations,

namely the need to deal with three-person sexual relationships and the tendency to havelarger intimate social groups. In the dominant West World language, number is expressed bychanging the vowel of the stem of nouns. Personal pronouns are also richer, as there are

eighteen first person pronouns depending on inclusivity, number and gender mix. The secondperson has eighteen pronouns and the third person is organised in a way which breaks World

Zero linguistic universals. In fact, West World languages have many of their own universalsand routinely violate those of World Zero.

Object always precedes subject in declarative sentences.Genitive is before/after governing noun and positional words opposite.

Y/N intonational pattern is distinctive reckoned from the start of the sentence (if it exists).

Question particles are in the opposite position as pre-/postpositions.Subordinate verb forms to the main verb are after the verb but the object precedes it.Conditional clause follows conclusion.

Demonstrative, numeral, descriptive adjectives before the noun are never in that order or thereverse.

Pronominal and nominal objects are in different positions (implying that the dominant wordorders are OVS and OSV i think)

No tense-mode categories despite person-number and gender categories.Noun always agrees with verb in gender but the adjective is unmarked for gender.

Plural is always expressed by the zero morpheme, singular never. Trial is often expressed byzero.

The case including the subject is never unmarked.Expression of number is never between noun base and the case, i.e. vowels change for case

and number together.Adjectives follow nouns but are uninflected.

The second and third persons are the same.Gender distinctions only present in non-singular pronouns. "I" and "it/you" are both common

gender.

From Realistic World

Mental health issues in Realistic World

A major discernible difference between World Zero and Realistic World is that particular

individuals and meticulous observers will notice remarkable phenomena which aresometimes not generally acknowledged or shared by received opinion, and for which

mainstream thought has not attempted to account. Therefore, standard theories, hypothesesand explanations show a greater discrepancy with observable phenomena in this world than

they would in World Zero. As a result, mental health is different than in World Zero, partlybecause particular phenomena generally regarded not to exist are in fact real, partly because

this disbelief is encouraged or advocated by the establishment and partly because a minority

have certain abilities not shared by most people. There is also prejudice against them.

Schizophrenia: This is seen as including at least two of the following features: delusions,


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hallucinations, disorganised speech, grossly disorganised or catatonic behaviour and the

negative symptoms of the absence of strong emotions, speech and motivation. Only one ofthese features is necessary for the diagnosis of schizophrenia if the delusions are bizarre or

involve a voice keeping up a running commentary on behaviour and thoughts, or more thanone voice conversing with another.

The problem for this diagnosis in Realistic World is that bizarre things often happen and it isin fact possible to insert thoughts and make a victim hear voices. Therefore, schizophrenia isoverdiagnosed in Realistic World, and the distinction between it and paranoia is more blurred.

Just as depressive realism is a feature of depression in World Zero, in Realistic World many

diagnosed schizophrenics experience schizophrenic realism and the mentally healthypopulation tend to ignore, discount or fail to notice bizarre occurrences. The majority of

people in this world cope with subconscious suspicions that things are not as they seemsuperficially by self-deception, that the world is more prosaic than some claim.

Schizophrenics and people suffering from a delusional disorder are more likely to be correctbecause there really is a global conspiracy. However, schizophrenics and otherwise delusional

people can often still be seen as mentally ill partly due to society's attitudes towards them, thefact that their belief systems are isolated and not part of the mainstream, and because of the

mental and emotional difficulties arising from the discrepancies between their perception ofthe world and those of the establishment. Moreover, their beliefs are often inaccurate and

mixed, and they may cope poorly with their suspicions emotionally. Finally, there still aregenuinely psychotic people in World Zero whose beliefs bear no relation to reality.

The passive features of schizophrenia are different. Thought insertion, withdrawal and

external control of the will, movements or speech are all real risks in Realistic World.However, other features such as thoughts being heard aloud or broadcast are not usually real

phenomena there, though similar things would take place if the sufferer were in a group ofpeople capable of perceiving the mental states of others. In the area of special powers, the

likes of premonition are never real, so there are still characteristics which would be genuinelydiagnostic of schizophrenia.

Due to the confusion of realist and psychotic schizophrenia, medicine recognises two major

categories of the condition. One is like our Type I and Type II, and many schizophrenics arelumped in with those conditions, but there is a third type whose features are clearly different.

People diagnosed with it show normal-sized and relatively symmetrical brains withoutenlarged ventricles, do not have increased numbers of dopamine receptors, have no seasonal

peak of birth date in the early part of the year and have a genetic element, which is however

independent of the genetic element of the other types. However, all types of schizophrenia aremore common in lower social classes, have an onset in the mid to late twenties and respond toanti-psychotic medication.

Delusional disorder (Paranoia)

Erotomanic and jealous types of paranoia are the same as in World Zero. Grandiose and

persecutory types are more often realistic. Folie a deux, though it is a psychosis, is morecommon in Realistic World than in World Zero because people with the psionic trait are more

likely to empathise and therefore be persuaded of the truth of delusions.


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Animal magnetism

Magnetism is more significant in the biology of Ancient and Realistic World organisms than in

World Zero and Midgard. This has been seen as animal magnetism, and the Atlanteans saw itas a fluid which was separate from mineral magnetism, a view shared in the early modern

period in both worlds and present in World Zero. It was later established that animal and

mineral magnetism were two manifestations of the same force. The Realistic Worldestablishment denies the significance of magnetism in biology or medicine on the wholealthough they use it secretly, while it is openly known in Ancient World.

Hypnosis in both worlds is a state of consciousness rather than a non-state. It is neurologically

distinct from the brain's normal working and can be induced by magnetic fields generated by certain

people. It can also be generated by a machine. While hypnotised, a subject has no willpower and

their brain can be programmed. Anyone can be hypnotised. Ancient World hypnosis can also be

induced by sensory stimuli which somewhat resemble the scitalis pattern visually, and auditory and

tactile analogues also exist there. In Realistic World, the stimuli are different and hypnosis is harder

to induce by such means because humans there lack the basilisk vulnerability, although patterns do

exist. Hence the establishment of rapport between a hypnotist and their subject, although it makesthe process easier, is completely unnecessary. Hypnosis is more effective than here, and can be

used for the likes of pain relief, psychotherapy and relieving addiction. In Realistic World it is also

used for social control and assassination, and there is a crowd control device which induces the state

in groups of people to disperse riots, demonstrations and the like, and in battlefield situations. This

device is disguised as a sonic/strobe technique.

For further information, consult the book!

free sample of 'here be dragons' as an ebook

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