update since shakespeare 1962 by judy vary (judyth vary baker)

8/9/2019 Update Since Shakespeare 1962 by Judy Vary (Judyth Vary Baker)

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Pg #1, Update SinceShakespeare. 1963

This story, originally written in my fathers office in Palmetto, Florida, in

Jan. 1962, was retyped in 1963 to practice for a typing test at the A-1

employment Agency in New Orleans. Typing was done on my former

husbands typewriter, at 1032 Marengo St., New Orleans. This science

fiction story was read (and praised) by Lee Oswald in May, 1963, in New

Orleans. My collection of science fiction short stories has never been

published: I always hoped to publish them together with the only science

fiction short story written by Lee Oswald, the innocent man unjustly

blamed for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I still own most of Her

Way the science fiction story largely (75%) written by Lee and retyped

by me, 75% of which still exists (some pages were stolen in two different

events). Lee wanted to become a writer. He was an avid reader of science

fiction. It does not matter to me whether or not I am believed. I hope

you will enjoy the story, which is why it was penned. God and angels are


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much-mentioned: I had contracted to enter a convent just prior to writing

this story a privilege denied me by my parents.

UPDATE SINCE SHAKESPEARE by Judyth Vary (Baker)

Dear Many-Legs,

I sometimes wonder why weve designated his place as a test site. The natives

call it earth. And yet they do not see the important links between them and their soils,

their microbes, heir other life forms. They are destroying much of the thin layer of life

here: as the available genetic material here becomes rarer and less varied, the chances of

survival of man also, of course, becomes more and more tenuous. Oh, yes, well keep

testing the composite memories of the races, but so far, they cant even get along with

one another in the simplest life state yet, let alone with more sentient life forms in the

universe. Why the Holy One loves them so much is beyond me.

Many-Legs paused in her reading. It was not done with any eyes: it was accomplished by

absorbing tiny crystals of seraphic-compatible blood which her beloved had blown to her

through space, and which were captured against her flesh in the voids. So her Beloveds

message was tremendously structured, yet as easily comprehended as a meal.

I am at present in slight discomfort, but it is well worth it, the message continued.

Knowing my desire to be a warrior as well as an anthropologist, the Holy One allowed

me to enter this time period, where an update since Shakespeare is needed for our English

manual. Other angelic beings who may be sent here against the Dark Ones forces may

benefit from my new American English Manual of Disguise. Their present selection of

costumes, etc., may be outdated and suspect, if they dont refer to this new Manual. It is

easy for the Holy One to prepare all things Himself for our use, but (as you know) He

prefers to allow us the joy and trials of discovery, battle, and victory on the strength

of our own efforts. Hence, I am excited! And THAT DOES make eternal life more

interesting if I dont end up in pieces of ether!

God forbid! Many-Legs whispered to one of her ministering cherubs. She read on:


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I have put on as much human corpus as possible, even down to using something called

deodorant, which ends to attract female humankind, according to pictures I have seen.

Wish me success in interviewing them.

(What is deodorant? Many-Legs mused.)

For the safety and edification of our allies, her Beloved wrote on, I have herewith

compiled select excerpts from my Updated Manual, for your perusal. Enjoy! I miss your

essence, my dearest Many.

Abortions: a killer of unborn children, this is a disease that is contagious, I admit, sincetypically no one talks about it and it therefore spreads quickly, as did syphilis in

Shakespeares time.

Animals: the dwindling number of Creatures other than human. The slaves of the Dark

Side snatch them for dissection. So do the doctors, who are related to Witch Doctors, but

who are much richer, although they are no more effective.

Adam: now describes the bulge in a males throat (along with the word apple), the first

sentient humanoid and his apple on the tree now having become mere legend. Note:

this is also the name of a person seen on television sets -- Batman. However, since he isfrom the West, I wonder why he wears a big black cape instead of a big white hat.

(This is out of logical alpha-omega order, Many-Legs observed, quivering with sudden

sorrow.)

Ape: Now-rare subspecies of humankind without stable soul, used to advertise beautiful,

screaming blonde women and the Empire State Building, of which the country of New

York is very proud. Other definitions: a policeman. Also, to copy something. And also,

there is an expression, Go Ape which I cannot decipher, unless it has to do with

cheering on football players (?), where one hears go, go, go also communicated by

means of screams. I am still trying to figure out the connection between the screams at

football games and the screams of blonde women on top of the Empire State Building.


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Argonauts: Update: substitute Astronauts and Cosmonauts and think of primitive

ships in subspace instead of primitive ships on hydro-surface of planet. Caution: pull in

wings, especially you Seraphim, when making high-speed dives into atmosphere, due to

refuse now present in garbage-rings circling the earth. Sadly, they are still soiling their

own nests.

Argue: what natives do when not allowed sufficient exercise (not counting inspirations

from Dark Side).Informal and formal varieties. To avoid informal arguments with

humans when you must live among them:

1) let the human win the Monopoly Game. It is okay to win in poker as long as you let

the human get all the money in the end. Caution! One television set per person in anyhouse is advisable, in order to promote peace.

2) isolation is desired by them in the bathroom. (caution! Limit ONE female per

bathroom in any house, in order to promote peace.

3) utilization of calculating machines instead of natives to send out bills, warnings, and

notices of tax increases will promote peace: we must encourage this trend, as nobody

there knows how to argue with a computer (computers are portable brains that refuse to

argue: they do as programmed).

Formal arguments involve masses of humans participating in some fashion in ritualized,

destructive activities. The usual outcome for small, formal arguments is a hangover akind of head disease, caused by drinking too many colored waters. More serious

outcomes include actual deaths. All formal arguments must be reported, including:

1) football, baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball, etc. (usage of a ball ensures that the

argument proceeds according to rules that stop grudge-bearers from killing each other

(usually-but watch carefully!)).

2) for more serious formal arguments, they employ lethal weapons instead of balls: these

are conducted with fists, drugs, and guns, personally, or through the use of robots (such

as time-bombs) or persons designated as boxers and wrestlers.

3) the most serious arguments are large scale, and proceed after a treaty is signed, with

the intention of breaking it, or, sometimes, a weaker nation owns an oil field, a shiny

metal, or some other thing another country wants, which then uses bombs on a large scale


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to obtain (or destroy, if it cannot obtain) what it is after. This action typically occurs

(according to a film I have seen) after leaders use red telephones to threaten each other.

4) when electricity goes off in a big city, formal arguments take two forms: looting, and

breaking windows. However, peace is often made inside elevators, and in other dark

places, as I have observed that the birth rate went dramatically up after such an incident.

Art: no longer exists on surface of the planet, so far as I can determine, except in and

around ancient buildings. In its place is something called fashion.

Balanced: what human beings act like when they are not in debt. When workers

accumulate enough credits (pieces of colored paper) to obtain bargains (see definition

below), but do not have enough left after buying bargains for the necessities of life, they

are then called unbalanced and sometimes have to be placed in a balancing facility (aprison or a mental hospital) until they or their friends have enough pieces of colored

paper to get them out again.

Bargain: important word used esp. by females of species to justify expenditure of credits.

Used to describe transactions where fewer credits are needed to obtain the object, which

makes it more desired whether or not it was ever actually desired (no, I am not making

this up!). The object is to provide a sense of not having spent the credits at all.

Budget: always mentioned in relation to bargain and balance and credits but

function unknown.

Bug: used to describe small, irritating objects, alive or mechanical. Found in and on

bodies, food, computers, embassies, and as vehicles on German highways. Also: the

name for a gray rabbit.

But: word used to initiate an informal argument (see above).

Cancer: disease which persons who work hard to keep in excellent physical condition

develop instead of heart problems. With cancer, death is slow, expensive, and painful.

With heart disease, if handled correctly, death is swift and costs are very low.

Nevertheless, I have heard that people will pay many credits for a heart operation so that

they can live long enough to develop cancer and die a slow, painful, expensive death.


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Coffee: mildly addictive drug grown on thousands of moctins of land in place of grain,

forests, and other essentials needed for health and happiness on the planet, causing death

by starvation for large numbers of humans (see also, tobacco and coca)

Coca: highly addictive drug grown on thousands of moctins of land in place of grain,

forests, and other essentials needed for health and happiness on the plane, causing death

by starvation for large numbers of humans (see also, poppy and alcohol).

(Out of alpha-omega order again! Many-Legs thought, amazed. So unlike her

Beloved)

Chocolate: delightful, supposedly non-addictive dark substance which is found inside

red, heart-shaped boxes. Also molded into the shapes of rabbits, and eaten head-first.

Drop: a little alcohol (see starvation and famine). Also means, let go of a gun.

There are some phrases, such as Ill drop by sometime which means the person using it

does not intend to visit the other person, although to me, it does sound like the opposite.

Dammit: usually an earthen structure intended to hold back water from farmers, while

drowning the land of other farmers, usually in order to provide electricity for large cities

far away. Note: all dammits end up breaking. When a person says Dammit, that is a

warning that somebodys temper is about to break, which may result in an argument (see

definitions above). Adam invented the word when evicted from Paradise.

Enough for now, Many-Legs, my Dearest! I have adopted a primitive name as I go in

disguise:Lance! It sticks in the Dark Ones craw, thats certain. Bless me in your

glorious praises today to the Holy One. I may have to put on armor soon.

Many-Legs sighed audibly something she had almost forgotten how to do, since all

her ordinary expressions were accommodated through Radiance. Armor, then! She

wondered if Lance had actually finished his Update, or would another anthropologist

have to be sent? The new dictionary entries lacked both detail and knowledge: Lance

could be in trouble. It could even be some kind of code, she realized.

Addictionsargumentsdrop WAS it a code, or was it mere gibberish? She

would have to approach the Emerald Throne and obtain permission to fly closer to this

garbage-strewn planet that the Holy One agonized over so continuously.


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+++++ = ++++++++++++ = ++++++ = ++++++++++++++ = +++++

The Holy Anthropologists were notorious for their meddling, daring to live among

humankind, with only Guardian Angels sometimes helping them bear their hardships.

And if they got TOO involved she shuddered. It happened --infrequently. The angels

who came too close sometimes paid dearly. Built to do battle, to sing choruses, to

explore the universe -- to outrace time itself sometimes they began to dabble in the lives

of the Accursed human race.

Sometimes they chose to become more than Guardians. The deadly danger had to do

with the one affliction that beset all holy angels: under certain circumstances, they could

love! Even those angels-turned demons who had turned to the Dark Side had once been

so affected, and in their love-turned-lust, had mated with humans, producing giants.

These children of the angels were the Nephilim, the abhorred ones.

Everyone knew the danger Love led angels into, in this Dark-centered globe. None

who allowed human Love to take command of their emotions could escape. Not even

The Holy One Himself had escaped: He had dared become human, paying a horrible

price to make his Love reachable to all, which cleansed all who accepted it.

Many-Legs, scowling (something else she hardly remembered how to do) poured on

full throttle, scanning half a continental land-mass, as she searched for him. She finally

homed in on his Life Essence, on the glowing orb of it, the sweet beauty of it. And then

she saw, with a pang of fear and anger, the Darkness already drawing around himthe

Painthe Hatred.The natives below, open-mouthed, scattered away at the brightness of her keening, and

they dropped the weapons the Dark Side had placed in their hands, howling as they ran.

She pierced them all with devastating White Light, and the Dark Fiends, falling back,

screamed across space.

He is OURS!

First, you fight ME! she thundered.

The blistering white light would blot out the memories of the humans encounter with

what they saw as a mighty archangel they would wake and think it a dream, but the

scorching pain She Born of the Seraphim --put into the Dark Ones would remain with

THEM through eternity. They would come crawling to the Emerald Throne The Holy

One allowed even those scum to approach and speak! and they would accuse her of

attacking them without warning.


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Never mind. It was her turn!

Lance lay writhing, his humanoid form slow-burning, bright orangehe was in deep

pain. His corpus was locked into a time-block to keep him from disintegration, but his

very fingers and feet were alternately frying and freezing into crystals, blood blowing

from their tips like dust. At a crucial pyramidix, she reached down for him and caught

him to herself.

No doubt, in a few more throbs of time, he would have broken through and become an

offering, in his sweetness and trust. And he would have been impaled, dismembered,

destroyedtrapped in time!

She knew him so well.

All because of pity, she thought grimly. She swung her great sword in a huge circle,

scattering the new ranks of demons who came clustering near. They howled and ground

their teeth and hated her, but her fiery blade kept them at bay. Just as I stood at the

Garden of Eden with the other Cherubim, she thought, keeping Adam and his consort

from reaching the fruit, and its DNA, that would have made them immortal in their too-primitive forms.

She gathered Lance into her many arms, shielding him with her great wings, scarlet jets

of fire shooting from her eyes. Lance lay helpless in her mighty arms, but she was his

strength. She flew him through hyperspace into a bay of peace, where the Dark Ones

could not follow. He was still throbbing with oranges and pinks as they settled into the

Bay of Peace: slowly, he began emitting all the colors of the rainbow, then the

ultraviolets and infraredsbut orange was still his main hue. Weakly, tears in his

thousand eyes, he submitted to her fierce and angry chastening, then took her soft breast,

drank, and wept.

Their suffering! he groaned huskily, with the supreme sorrow of The Holy One

filling his own breast. O God! The suffering!

I know, she answered. I saw Cain when he was driven from the fields where Abel

lay wallowing in his own blood. And the planet has been filled with their blood and

ours and His ever since.

They looked so insignificantat first, he moaned. His colors were now fluorescing.

I simply found them fascinating. Worthy of studyclose study---

As did Shakespeare, Buddha, Einstein, she reminded him. You were nearly trapped,

as were they, in a womb!

He had barely escaped being hurled into a Creation Bin.


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I could only have died once, despite what some of their natives believe, he said,

trembling with disgust and horror.

Death was supposed to be reserved only for those who partook of the Dark Side, she

reminded him. It was not meant for such as us.

Perhaps I would have been the next Confucius, Lance mused, the orange tint having

given way to a luminescence that pleased the thousand eyes of his Beloved.

Perhaps you would have been the next gray rabbit! she said. Or worse, you might

have provoked the coming of another Hitler, she added, for in that terrible world, good

is always balanced by allowing the same amount of evil.

Ah! he replied. Balance! But in the end, Good will win. They will choose Good

over evil. I know they will!

They were attacking you! she said reproachfully. He took her breast again, gaining

strength from her delicious milk. She was stroking him with two of her six magnificent

wings.

I also care slightlyfor them, she admitted, but remember, those humans nurseonly their own offspring, and only the females give milk.

I saw that the males have only vestigial breasts, he agreed. It is so sad. They do

not nurture from the very blood, as should be natural for them all.

So perverse! she snapped. Sosexless!

He closed his eyes, clenching his man-fists, knowing that very soon he would regain

his archangels form and shape and thoughts. He would lose a precious perspective, but

it couldnt be helped. What troubles humankind had caused them all! Nevertheless,

unaccountably, The Holy One loved them. None could understand the extent of such

love. Lance fading out -- thought of humankinds ignorance, their reluctance to nurse

their young, their substituting of drugs, chewing gum, rolled-up papers full of tobacco,taking the place of the suckling they didnt give one another. If only they had learned to

nurse one another, he thought, perhaps they would give up the addictions that led to so

manyformal arguments. There was still much to study, but he would not be the one to

do ithe was too inexperienced. He knew that now. But he was still a young

anthropologist, archangel class, with a deep desire to understand. Maybe someday

I did learn one thing, the Archangel-once-Lance told Many-Legs, as his human-like

form doubled in size and two huge, glittering white wings exploded from his shoulders.

And what is that, my Beloved? Many-Legs inquired, as she drank from his breast.

I now understand, he murmured, resting in her embrace, why no archangel has yet

to complete an Update since Shakespeare.

update since shakespeare 1962 by judy vary (judyth vary baker)

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