The Story of Aaakbaat’s Name
October 30th, 2009 by RedWolfAs RedWolf showed his wife the ways of the MUSH in 2008, Aaakbaat entered the room.
Upon seeing him, RedWolf’s wife whispered to RedWolf.
“My wife wonders the origin of your name, Aaakbaat.”
“Cool,” said Aaakbaat, “I just told that story to nrg last night.”
“Can you tell me?” said Red. “For some reason I don’t think I ever asked you.”
“I’m pretty sure I told you before.” Aaakbaat scratched his head. “It was wayyy back in the day…in like 1994?”
“14 years ago,” said Red.
RedWolf’s wife laughed and interjected: “I can’t believe you guys have known each other that long.”
“Yeah, I’ve known Aaakbaat since January 1993,” replied Red.
“So here’s the story,” Aaakbaat began. “I was reading a book of short stories in the SubGenius mythos called ‘Three Fisted Tales of Bob,’ and one of the stories was about how Bob saved the Earth from being destroyed. — or at least delayed Earth’s destruction.”
“This is sounding slightly familiar,” said Red, “Keep going.”
“He was on some alien planet, for some reason or other, and happened across a ledger book in which was printed a list of planets around the universe scheduled for destruction by that alien race.
“Bob noticed that Earth was on the list! So, not having time to erase the entry before being noticed, he quickly pulled a pen from his pocket and drew the diacritical mark for character transposition around 2 digits in the year of the date of Earth’s scheduled demolition, pushing the fateful day from 1989 back to 1998.”
RedWolf laughed.
RedWolf’s wife looked confused. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.
Red smiled. “A diacritical transposition mark is, I think, a curved line between the two characters, written in the space above the word. It shows that the two characters need to be switched.”
Aaakbaat continued: “They showed the first few names of planets on the list which, of course, was in alphabetical order. The first planet on the list was named ‘Aaa…’ something-or-other. It started with three A’s, which caught my eye from some reason.”
“Because you crayzay,” said Red, making his wife chuckle. Unfazed, Aaakbaat continued, entranced by the story-telling process.
“So later that day when I had to come up with a random name to start playing this weird new text game I found, I just typed in ‘Aaa,’ stared at it for a minute or two, and then just hit some random consonants and a couple more A’s for good measure. And that’s how it happened.”
“That’s a great story,” said RedWolf. His wife agreed.
“Thanky, man.” Aaakbaat smiled. “I’m fairly certain I’d told you that before.”
“You probably have. That’s one to tell the kids some day.”
Aaakbaat nodded. “Yes, yes.”
RedWolf stood up, walked across the room and pulled a binder from the shelf and shuffled some pages.
“I should transcribe your story to a book here — for the library records.
“In fact,” RedWolf continued, “We need a book system, so I suppose I’ll make one.”
RedWolf created a book entitled “The Story of Aaakbaat’s Name (#5324)” and placed it on the shelf.
“Now history will forever know how Aaakbaat’s name came into being.”
“Nice work,” said Aaakbaat.
And nice work it was.