Codex Transportica » Announcements

A Slow Year

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:52:56 +0000

We are still here.

We thank Deozaan for informing us about the broken links. All should be working again now.

Comments are still locked – due to spam levels.

See you in 2011 – probably.

From out of the horizon

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:26:23 +0000

There will be a new post very soon. Regular updates are then expected to follow afterwards. Thank you for being patient – your dedication is noted. We have studied hard to bring you further revelations from the Transportica.

New Horizon

admin — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:59:57 +0000

The following diary extract becomes illegible towards the end – as does the remainder of the Codex Transportica pages.

This will not be the final translation from the book but it will be the last of the current weekly updates. As we manage to decipher the scribble we’ll post our new findings here.

We thank you for your patience.
Mr. Pearson & Mr. Smith

I was staring out towards the horizon. Something was burning, something close. I tried to find the smoke; I could smell it, but I could not see where it was coming from. Then I was indoors; sitting or standing. I could now feel the heat from the fire. The smell of the smoke was becoming unbearable. I began to panic, where are the flames? I could hear the spits and crackles – it was close, immediate and impossibly close.

I shook my head, opened my eyes wide and then stared into each corner of the room; pausing, staring, eyes straining, looking for a small flicker, trying to perceive a slight distortion in the background. The flames were obviously invisible but the heat coming from the fire would cause the light passing through it to bend just like a lens. I saw nothing.

This was very odd. My senses said I was in danger, but from something that was not there. Then I realised, this would not happen in the real world – I had to be asleep. No matter then, I wriggled and stretched the whole of my dream body; this would break through the cocoon of my sleeping outer self and I’d awake – safe and away from the invisible fire.

Instantly, I was back in the real world. Sitting in the armchair and almost upon the hearth as the fire inside it threatened to lash out at my shins. I kicked the gate shut, forcing the fire to die but not without almost burning the end of my slipper. I must have fell asleep, not thinking of how close I was to the fireplace – obviously it wasn’t my intention to burn to death during my cosy slumber. I felt angry at my own stupidity, but I’d avoided an accident and that is all that counts.

Feeling like I’d narrowly escaped a little disaster, well, a possible almighty disaster, I decided I would get a breath of fresh air – better open the doors and windows to let out the smoke too. Walking through the kitchen I picked up the glass of sherry I must have poured myself earlier and stepped out the back door into the garden.

I managed only one step forward. My trailing leg hovering between kitchen and outside. I felt the glass slip away from my grip and as it hit the concrete path I seemed to simultaneously put my foot down onto the sharp jagged remains. I wasn’t certain, but it seemed that a very pointy bit of glass was sticking through my slipper and into the sole of my foot – in a moment, I’d investigate if the perceived pain was justified.

The outside was not my outside, not the outside of my house, at least. I was in a landscape, unrecognisable and scorched. Landmarks gone, or perhaps never even there, I saw nothing familiar – even the sky looked the wrong shade of blue. Too deep, too vivid – too solid.

And then I saw something move directly in front of me, on the horizon, a black spec. Small, almost imperceptible. Perhaps I should follow it, after I’ve tended to my foot, of course. And then I realised the black spec was getting bigger. It was heading towards my house – towards me. I looked down at my slippers. They are awfully threadbare I thought to myself…

(But the soles are still good.)

Weekly Updates

admin — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:14:07 +0000

This is just a brief message to announce that new vehicle posts will be uploaded ONCE a week for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, a more frequent posting schedule will be returned to soon.

Thank you for your continued interest in the Transportica, I hope that you will continue to find amusement here during the oncoming months.

The new posts will be revealed each MONDAY; other updates to the website will continue as and when possible.

N. Pearson

Diary extract No. 3 and 4

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:15:50 +0000

I have managed to decipher the third and fourth parts to the diary. They will serve as in introduction to a series of images that have been carefully secured to the pages of the Transportica. Their creator remains unknown at this time; all I can hope is that later diary extracts will reveal more about them.

The first in the set of pictures will immediately follow this post. Some are shattered beyond recognition but I will do my best to repair them.

Anonymous author’s diary text now follows:

I awoke to find a most curious package upon my doorstep this morning. It bears no markings; certainly no address nor name. I’m not entirely sure whether my postman even delivered it (I cannot recall the last time that he called at my gate. Perhaps I simply do not warrant any mail; I feel that I have become somewhat of a pariah since losing my employment).

First, I finished my breakfast (marmalade without toast again) whilst pondering over what the parcel may contain. For a moment my despair took hold and I hoped that it might be a mercy gift sent by a charitable neighbour (my food rations are really beginning to dwindle), but no, the box contained the very opposite of what I require right now.

Several hundred gossamer thin sheets of porcelain, all carefully wrapped in paper so as to protect them. But even so, I think the parcel must have been carried across its journey by a single person – someone protective enough to avoid the knocks and jolts that would have surely damaged the contents.

I flicked through a few of the partitions, picked out one of the tissue envelopes and attentively peeled back the covering. To my horror, I sprang from my chair and nearly allowed the box to drop to the floor (fortunately I managed to snatch a firm hold of one of the sides – the porcelain wafers would surely have smashed into a thousand pieces if they had hit the ground), there on the almost transparent plate was a crude painting – not unlike one of the many I had sketched myself whilst suffering a Seizure.

Was this a prank, a trick, a wicked joke. The picture looked like I had painted it with my own hand; the same lines, the same attempt at conveying light and shadow. But what was I thinking – it would be ridiculous, these were objects I could not make especially whilst under the influence of one of my blackouts. Have I lost control of my faculties to the extent that I can leave my house, find a potters workshop, sculpt, paint and operate a kiln – all without any recollection.

No, I am not that mad. Someone must know of my condition. They know of my affliction and what that produces. Out there, someone is aware and must know more than I about the origin of these insane vehicles. But what can I do. I have no way of retracing the package’s route. All I can do is to keep watch upon my property from this point on – hopefully, I will then spot any further mysterious intruders, and by Jove!, I’ll not let them leave until I have my answers.

For now I have put the box and its fragile contents in the large pantry. I see little else that can be done with it. Perhaps their owner has yet to return and all I need do is simply wait for an explanation.

SECOND PART

I had grown accustomed to my aggravated nights; my tormented dreams pass and I have respite in exhausted unconsciousness for three hours at the most.

But, for several evenings now, I have found myself trapped within my own nightmares. During the experience I am fully aware that it is nothing more than a dream and yet it engulfs me, I find that I am unable to escape the unreality, I try to shake myself awake and yet I remain trapped. Not even the alarm clock placed beside my head is sufficient to disturb my slumber.

Perhaps more dreadful is that my dreams are blind. I see flashes of light, like blurred explosions across the horizon, but nothing more. Thankfully, there is sound, I hear all manner of noises but I do not recognise them. Perhaps a cat screaming as it is fed into a meat grinder; I do not know. And between the cacophony there arrives muffled voices, conversations in an adjacent room just too far away to understand – except for one piece of information. The numbers.

For the first few occurrences I did not place any importance on these figures and then I recalled the mysterious parcel that had arrived a few days earlier. I remembered that each porcelain slide bared a specific number marked on its underside. Could there be a connection. I had kept a note of each set of digits that had been revealed to me within the dream, and so it would be simple for me to check their corresponding number in the box.

A foolish thing to do in hindsight I now admit. I opened my notebook and read my finger across the first number, then I found its place amongst the pictures in the box. Immediately on making the match I sensed my vision narrowing and eventually turning to black; I was speeding into another Seizure and somehow the number and picture had induced the attack.

I awoke a while later to find the porcelain image placed carefully on the table and against it another passage of text in my own handwriting. Because of this I feel it only right that I now place the precious slide within The Book alongside the description done in my alien hand.

I cannot explain what is happening. Just as I feel that I am growing accustomed to my solitary life, wretched interludes of unawareness and their frequent remote writings, I now find that I have one more inexplicable assault to endure.

And worse, it appears I have now completely emptied the larder of all the marmalade. I will be forced to eat the gooseberry and elderflower preserve from now on.

Two new wallpaper sets

admin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:48:58 +0000

Two more wallpapers have been added to the Downloads page. The usual screen dimensions are included and there are now iPhone and PSP sizes.

According to the download records it appears that the wallpapers are more popular than I expected them to be. If there is a specific size and vehicle that isn’t part of any of the sets then let me know and I’ll try to get it done. I’ll be happy to do the occasional request.

Other news is that I believe there will be a new volunteer to help decode the Codex Transportica. They claim to have an alternative method of deciphering the book – they hinted that they are able to read the words directly from the page although they do not profess to be fluent.

It’s a bold claim and it remains to be seen whether it is true. I have my doubts but I’m prepared to try his method to help speed the transcriptions along.

Hello possible worlds!

admin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:38:56 +0000

First diary entry – undated.

The Seizures, as I have come to call them, struck quite suddenly. The first time, I was dining alone in a favourite house, and awoke face down on the linen. The wait staff seemed frightened of me; I had knocked over a water glass and broken a vase of flowers. Before me was the first drawing, sketched carefully in my own hand inside of a notebook I had purchased that morning.

The next time it happened, I was at work. The incident cost me my position, for after I was revived it was shown to me that I’d carefully inked a drawing on the back of an irreplaceable 16^th century manuscript. (Trading in the bonds I possessed to pay for my vandalism did not appease my employer. Though I do now own the defaced manuscript.)

Shortly thereafter I barricaded myself at home. The Seizures come upon me a few times a week, then leave me alone for a month or more. Just when I begin to wonder if they have departed me for good, I am stricken once more. Often there are words and descriptions for the bizarre devices I have drawn, left behind as the waking memory of some nightmare. I must hurry to transcribe them before they fade entirely; and transcribe them I must, for I feel they hold a clue to my worsening condition.

It is as if a spider were niggling between my frontal lobes. An odd, foreign presence that sometimes taps at the mental skylight, and finding it unlocked, sneaks in for a visit. My greatest fear is not that the Seizures continue, driving me into complete madness, but that they stop before I learn their secrets.

Original extract taken from the ‘Codex Transportica’ – anon.

Now continue reading with the first Illustration, the Recreational Walker, taken from the pages of the Codex Transportica.

Or, for an introductory explanation about the purpose of this website and the origin of The Book you can read the about page.