FIVE: THE TREASURE ITSELF          When God was distributing portions of the world to all of the peoples of the earth, the Georgians were having a party and doing some serious drinking. As a result they arrived late and were told by God that all of the land had already been distributed. When they replied that they were only late because they had been lifting their glasses in praise of him, God was pleased and gave the Georgians that part of the earth that he had been preserving for himself. The Georgian Republic. Roger Rosen          Derelict          By Young Ewing Allison          Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest -                   Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!          Drink and the devil had donefor the rest -                   Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum          There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,          With a ton of plate in the middle hold,          And the cabins riot of stuff untold.          The treasure chest used by the Dread Pirates of the Black Sea - and there's only one, we deposit our treasure into this communal chest and an immediate currency deposit goes to our account - is not a thing of beauty, in fact it barely exists. If you run across it it will look like nothing more than a minor piece of system software that carries out some lowly task, opening a file perhaps. But inside, the most cunning encryption, truly dazzling code, screens and stores the single most important cache of treasure in the world. Imagine walking into Aladdin's cave and you'll understand our treasure chest. Our treasure maps go first into the magnet file, which goes back out and locates and transfers all of our treasure into the chest. I'm only barely aware of what happens to my treasure once if s recovered. Sometimes I detect something I've plundered and a small shiver of pride runs through me, but by then it's no longer my treasure. It's only truly my treasure, something that enthralls and absorbs me, before I've captured it. Treasure is, of course, the end result of piracy, but it's curious how little the treasure really means to me. The experience of plundering is what constitutes treasure to me. Five pirate missions have netted me wealth beyond my wildest imaginings but I no longer have any idea what it is that I value.          The darkness was a blanket of hidden life that buzzed and flitted and crept about, a world of mystery and adventure that small boys searched for eagerly in their dreams. He was seated in his cabin at the dinner table. All about Captain Hook lay the ill gotten gains of his many conquests - gold, silver, and jewels in all shapes and sizes; furniture stolen from kings and queens of first rate nations; tapestries and paintings from the private collections of greedy men from six (or was it seven?) continents; hand-crafted weapons used by gentlemen to murder one another; bolts of silks and English wool from garment districts and boutiques; brass instruments of navigation, some of them rumoured to have belonged to Columbus; and leather bound books by the world's foremost authors - Sir James Barrie was among his favourites. The movie "Hook"          It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones's hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure in sorting them. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange Oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spiders web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck - nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out. Treasure Island. Robert Louis Stevenson.          A large storm had settled over the city and it was as dark as midnight at eleven in the morning. Exapno Mapcase had tugged at a pulley and system of chains and a big, flat, heavy door fell down with a thud, like a drawbridge. He lived on Border Street, in a house with a fortune teller on one side and a shop selling embroidered shirts and plastic swords on the other. It appeared a grim and uninviting fortress on the outside, but on the inside it was virtually a paradise. Exapno Mapcase's life was an adventure that stayed in one place, an immeasurably vast universe contained in just a few blocks off of the Bravo District. It seemed as if there was no separation between him and the city, that the character of the man and the city had blended together until there was no telling them apart. Gallifrey stepped into a courtyard densely overgrown with trees and flowerbeds planted with flowers the colour of several nightmares - Ravenswing, the Mourning Widow, and Gypsy Boy - and the flowerbeds were threaded through with loopy paths of deep clover. The scent was so syrupy and heady that she'd had to catch her breath. Three spiral staircases led - up to a balcony that ran around all three sides of the courtyard, and it featured scenes from the Battle of the Long Thin River in twisted iron.          Have you lived here long? asked Gallifrey.          There have been Mapcases here for about 400 years, he said. They got the tartan going at about the same time that they built the house.          Oh, well, that confirms it then.          What? asked Exapno Mapcase.          That you're really the blood that runs through the veins of the Bravo District.          Dear Old Jack said that, didn't he? I'm going to have to decrease his liquor stipend, said Exapno Mapcase. I'm the only person he knows and so he thinks I do everything. Ask the mathematicians about him, he's written me into the Big Bang Theory, Quantum Physics and a few of Newton's experiments with alchemy.          Ah, alchemy, a fine hobby, said Gallifrey admiringly.          Damn good fun, he agreed. Those lead tableau's used to be gold. What kind of a house do you have?          I'm not exactly sure, she replied wistfully. There was one, once, well, perhaps there were two. I'm not sure where, and it's been a long time since I've had anything I could call a home. I've called other people's homes 'home', but I don't think that's what you mean.          What's your name when you're at home?          What's yours?          When I'm at home?          Is it different when you're at home?          What home?          Haven't you got a home?          Why do you ask?          What are you driving at?          (with emphasis) What's your name?          Repitition. Two love. Match point to me.          (seizing him violently) WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?          Rhetoric. Game and match! (pause) Where's it going to end?          That's the question.          It's ALL questions. -                  Rosencrantz & Guildernstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard          Gallifrey walked through the garden, wan spotlights shining onto the clover walkways. She walked into a tree and knocked her head on a branch and a flock of white bats flew out and delicately swooped around the garden, as light and defenceless against the currents of air as pieces of paper would be. There were tables in the garden stacked with silver plates with unintelligible messages engraved into them, and the suitcases of ancestors with the luggage labels still on them sitting underneath the stairways, with garden supplies in them, and maps from all of the great ages of discovery papered the upstairs balcony walls.          What a great many fine things you have, Gallifrey said.          Most of the heirlooms are gone, there's a fine old Georgian saying - and the Great Poet Rustavelli said it, so don't let Dear Old Jack tell you I made it up - that everything you give away remains yours, and everything you keep is lost forever. He picked up plates and looked under them intently, moving vases and watching insects scurry away. And it's the absolute truth, I can't find anything I'm ever looking for here. The other saying that we have - and I might as well claim this one since I can't remember who really said it - is that we measure our wealth not in how much money we have but by how many friends we have.          Are you rich? asked Gallifrey.          I am now, he replied.          The definition of treasure handed down to the Dread Pirates of the Black Sea is any thought or idea or theory that points to a way to the New World and can be bartered or traded. It's never one thing alone, but a string of thoughts and theories and ideas that add up to a blinding vision of a desirable new world, and our skill as pirates is in compiling the vision. Think of the great age of piracy, use it as your yardstick, the Chief Privateer advised me. He told stories of boats laden with silks and spices and coffee and tea and perfumes and gold bullion. But more than that there were the songs and customs and strange stories of other cultures. Anything can be treasure if we can make people desire it, he said.          Another definition of treasure is meaning. How is it possible to establish the value that creates meaning? All around us changes faster than thought and the mechanisms that we develop are obsolete before we can create a mythology around them. The clashing logic styles of different kinds of stories and their different delivery patterns break down the notion of meaning in our culture. And with ever newer machines that wipe out the barely new machines that we haven't yet assimilated, we are faced with no masters, no scholars, no great artists for there isn't time for their work to accrue. In our relentless drive for originality and novelty we have sabotaged our mechanism for creating value.          But old stories bolster us and keep alive the various new art forms by their refusal to die. They are ported to new mediums and drag a chain of references with them. Pirate stories are the largest and most enduring things in the world. It might be stretching things to say that we are guardians of meaning but pirate stories have outlasted the treasure itself. Pirate stories become the treasure itself.          You guys get to re-invent everything every time a new platform takes over the field. This is your advantage and your glory. This is also a curse. It's a terrible kind of curse, really. This is a lesson about cultural expression that has applications to everybody. But our riches of information are in some deep and perverse sense a terrible burden to us. They're like a cognitive load. Every time a platform vanishes it's like a little cultural apocalypse. Bruce Sterling. Whole Earth Review.          Paleontologists proudly admit it, while archaeologists, for some obscure reason tend to deny it: we are the biggest storytellers in the world, we who stroll down the corridors of time. Unearthing Atlantis. Charles Pellegrino          Tourist markets laden with trinkets carry their own charge of melancholy, while seeing the object's provenance can be brutally sad. Often it becomes the more that people become urbanised, the more they want about them talismans of nature on their walls, their shelves, their key rings. Many souvenirs are marks of a pilgrimage, like religious relics, and denote travel. Many of these talismans come from the sea. Nothing looks as dead as a seashell in suburbia, a piece of coral skeleton or a stuffed fish. The otherness of a shark's tooth, like that of a fossil, begins to ebb the moment it is held in the hand. A wave washes over us when we hold them but it is not - as we imagine - a wave of cheerful and tearful recall. Such trinkets commemorate a moment not of acquisition but of loss. The tooth, the coral, the hardwood, the fish, were all wrenched from life so we can later discard them as impedimenta of a previous self. From long experience we know this in advance remembering the fate of sourvenirs from previous holidays even as we tell ourselves that this time they are authentic. But the things are already dead when we buy them. Uncovering Atlantis. Charles Pellegrino          Market. Here camel caravans brought spices, fabrics, silk, and carpets fom the East while Georgians sold their felt and woollen goods, silverwork, weapons and wine. Densely packed rabbit warren of small stalls. Minstrels, conjurors, bards. The Georgian Republic. Roger Rosen          A handful of tiny objects of no obvious value are the things that I regard as my treasures. An out of print novel, a photocopy of a Charles Addams cartoon of Morticia Addams admiring the rain, a Tintin and Snowy pin, $2 Skull and Crossbones rings from Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland, a small plastic dog figurine from the Barcelona Olympics, a tiny plastic Dr Who Figure, and several tapes of be-bop jazz made on analog equipment with a scratchy, ripped sound. The treasure stands in for the people who gave me these things people who, at various times, were more valuable to me than any kind of treasure. I drift from mission to mission making no new friends during missions, and avoiding the acquiring of true friends between missions but someone always slips through the net and remains with me only as a strange small object, a tiny compressed keepsake that is of no monetary value at all but something that I wouldn't sell for the whole world.          Remembering Jackie Onassis. George Plimpton. New Yorker.          I suspect it's the last thing most people would think of, but I've always identified Jackie with pirates. When I first knew her, she seemed fixed on them. She once told me that as a child she had a pirate flag hanging on the wall of her room at Hammersmith Farm, in Newport. Her father looked like a pirate. She married a pirate, Ari Onassis. But what comes to mind most vividly is a pirate party she gave in Hammersmith Farm one autumn afternoon in 1965 for her two children and their Newport friends, a collection of youthful Pells, Grosvenors, Drexels, Warrens and Gardners, some young enough to be attending their first party. Jackie asked me to help organise it, though infact she had already planned it very carefully in her own mind. The feature was a paper chase that would lead the children down sloping lawns to a treasure chest buried a few yards from the waters of Narragansett Bay. And her inspired notion was this: as soon as the children, having followed various clues, had reached the spot and begun digging for the chest, a boatload of adults dressed up as pirates would appear around the bend and come bustling ashore to reclaim their treasure.          SEA ROGUE. Silver bars plundered by Spain in the new world. Gold doubloons that were once a pirate's prize. These treasures and many more await in this authentic undersea treasure hunt. Search for history's most famous buried treasures. Command a crew of five skilled treasure hunters, rising from a diver on a rickety scow to the commander of a high tech pressure probe. You’ll face claim jumpers, hijackers, drug smugglers and the elements themselves in your search for wealth.          In sewing rooms upstairs in a converted convent off the Avenue of Georgia Exapno Mapcase was being fitted for several new kilts and heavy cotton shirts the colour of oatmeal, Transcaucasian Leopards embroidered on the collar. The tailor, known only as Medea, was greeted by Exapno Mapcase with a bone-crunching hug and an enormous smile. She was the principal designer of costumes for the parade that commemorated the Battle of the Long Thin River each year and her tall rooms had the appearance of being populated with illustrated plates shaken loose from several centuries of pictorial history books.          Are you still evil? she asked Exapno Mapcase. I regard you with deep mistrust, you look pretty deadly.          And that's only the fin of the shark, he replied.          Gallifrey sat on a low, heavily embroidered couch while Exapno Mapcase was fitted with several kilts, all identical to the one that he was already wearing, and several cardigans knitted out of stiff wool that resembled chain mail if seen from a distance, and already motheaten and with one arm already stretched longer than the other, to exactly resemble the cardigan that he already wore. His clothes had the nature of a uniform, a sequence of clothing genetically encoded and passed down from several centuries of ancestors who might have had several centuries of Medea's sewing them.          Gallifrey considered the costumes hanging on the wall behind the couch: a vest made of dragon's scales, something that appeared to be a clown suit interpreted as a ball gown, and a pirate's flared maroon velvet jacket with a ruffled shirt hanging under it. She lifted a jacket of sorts from its hanger, a jacket as black as the skies outside and so heavy that it pushed her shoulders downwards and swallowed her hands all the way up to its elbows. She was comforted by its weight, thinking about how much tradition and destiny must be in that weight.          I like this, she told Exapno Mapcase. It feels both grand and modest. What type of costume is it?          It's not a costume at all, interjected Medea. It's the jacket from the Bank Manager's second best suit. It was delivered here in error by the dry cleaner.          Pirates! Gold. Game Spec Sheet. Treasure: When he divides the plunder, the pirate will put his share into his "secret treasure cave." This will be a static picture of an empty cave; as the pirate puts booty there, it will gradually befilled-up with gold, gems, encrusted items, swords, etc.          He was nearly always in a good mood, and the rest of the time he slept, in fact he very often slept right here, said Exapno Mapcase, gesturing around the table at Lucky Pierre's. There are still things here that belonged to my father. He picked up a notebook upon which a pair of glasses stood. Yep, this is his, and that coat on the coatrack over there.          Will you take these things and give them to him? asked Gallifrey.          A difficult proposition, he hasn't been here in twenty years. Exapno Mapcase looked up and thought for a moment. He hasn't really been any wherefor twenty years. He's been dead for twenty years, actually. That's him over there.          He's back from the dead? asked Gallifrey with alarm.          No, his portrait, over there, above the desk. I had a great aunt who used to come here and buy the whole restaurant drinks so that they'd listen to her recite her poetry. It was years before we caught on. We had to give Lucky Pierre our entire art collection to cover the tab.          Exapno Mapcase, still cute as a bat's ear, said an elderly waiter that Gallifrey had never seen before, who carried unimaginable food. He and his brothers and sisters were always under a table somewhere biting diners ankles and breathing fire. Ah, they were such trouble. He spoke with real affection, looking at Exapno Mapcase as if he were still five years old. Exapno Mapcase rolled his one good eye.          Gallifrey was very, very relaxed, calm and happy and exhibited a rare stillness of the soul. She had her feet up on the bench and her arms wrapped around her knees and she smiled warmly at everything that was being said.          And then ... said Exapno Mapcase, and the stories spiralled off, the chronicles of Mapcases filling up the entire afternoon.          Yourfamily is everywhere, said Gallifrey, awestruck.          That's why I speak so softly, he said.          When the war was over - the other war - William Faulkner went back to Oxford, Mississippi. He was writing poems, most of them worthless, and dozens of immature but violent and effective stories, while at the same time he was brooding over his own situation and the decline of the South. THE PORTABLE FAULKNER          Wherever Blackbeard went "a-pyrating " he left frightened men and screaming women and children in his wake. Mere mention of his name would strike immediate terror in the hearts of stout colonists, sailors, merchant captains, and even royal Governors from the West Indies to New England. One of the legends about this pirate chief is that he fell in love with a beautiful girl who spurned his love for that of a handsome seaman. She gave the young man her ring to show her love for him was true. Unfortunately, the ship on which the seaman sailed on was taken by Blackbeard who immediately recognised his rival. He cut off the man's left hand - the one containing the girl's ring - placed it in an ornate silver casket and sent it off to the young lady. Upon opening the silver box, the girl swooned in dead faint and shortly afterwards died of a broken heart. Blackbeard, The Fiercest Pirate of All. Norman C. Pendered          Exapno Mapcase sank into the grey leather armchair in the Albatross Suite, as comfortably as if the room had always been his home. Two small lamps the shape of the houses that small children draw stood on spindly iron legs and threw a buttery glow onto the long glass table and permeated throughout the room. It was at that point in time when the darkness of the stormy day gave way to the darkness of night, the time when Exapno Mapcase was usually unlocking the front door of The Blues In Orbit and Dear Old Jack and his band would rush triple time through three songs just to check that no-one had forgotten how to play music in the space of a day.          Are you certain that you live here? Exapno Mapcase asked Gallifrey. He looked around him, incredulous, for there was no sign that anyone at all inhabited the hotel room. Gallifrey furrowed her brow, looking at him as if she didn't quite comprehend his question. She lived in her suite so lightly and walked around so carelessly and unseeingly, paying no attention to furniture or surfaces, as if confident that she could simply walk right through them.          Ah, this is it, said Exapno Mapcase, finding Gallifrey's shelf of small treasures. These baubles prove that you exist. He picked up and examined Gallffrey's Tintin and Snowy pin, the unfolded photocopy of a Charles Addams cartoon of Morticia admiring the rain, the $2 Skull and Crossbones rings from Pirates of the Carribean at Disneyland, the small plastic dog figurine from the Barcelona Olympics, the tiny plastic Dr Who Figure, the out of print novel and the several tapes of be-bop jazz made on analog equipment with a scratchy, ripped sound. As Gallifrey began telling the stories associated with the individual baubles it became clear that they had been severed from their life force, and that the people associated with each of the baubles had become an abstraction to her. It was obvious that she mourned their loss but had no idea how to find them again.          She gamely made jokes and spun elaborate anecdotes around all of her treasures. It became increasingly clear, however, that these objects were the only things that made Gallifrey feel that she was alive at all, and none of the treasures connected with each other or resonated in her life in any measurable way.          So adrift in the world, murmured Exapno Mapcase tenderly. He wrapped his arms around her and she stood bravely, refusing to give into the warmth, holding her breath and keeping her limbs rigid. He kissed her hair and she collapsed against him, burying her head in his rough cardigan. All of her defenses had broken down and it was as if her bones had dissolved. Exapno Mapcase held her for a long time, the world's saddest expression on his face.          I've already put myself in between Einstein and Bohr. I say there is an area where our observations do create the reality, as in human relationships: when people become aware of each other and communicate they create the reality of society. But I think that the universe as a whole does not depend on us to do that. I say mind is real, mind may be very real. I specifically said that between people mind has a tremendous effect. It affects the body, it affects human relationships, it affects society. I don't think it has a significant effect on atoms. At least the human mind doesn't. David Bohm. The Ghost in the Atom.          Bill Murray. Groundhog Day          The happy little moral - which goes on to say that only by truly giving and receiving love without selfishness or manipulation do peopl efind redemption and joy seems slightly askew. "My whole comedy training goes against sentimentality and cornballism and that probably goes double for Bill" says Harold Rarnis. "And the one thing we never wanted to do was cross that line into syrup. I think we walk right up to the edge and this is surely the farthest that either of us has ever gone in a film in terms of sincerity. But even in the last act, where he becomes the ultimate do-gooder, we were insistent on keeping that sort of cranky comic edge. And that inspiration came from this feeling that I had about Superman that if this guy has all the power in the world, how can he relax for a second? It always bugged me that he was off cavorting with Lois Lane when people are dying all over the world in accidents and natural disasters that he could be preventing." New York Times SIX: THE NEW PIRATE VOYAGE