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Toney 'Makaroney' Alrami
Toney Alrami is a Media star turned professional sculptor from Arkab Prior B. Of the five "Pasta" twins that appeared in the widely disseminated and long running MPA comedy virtual show "Tips and Suggestions" Toney "Makaroney" Alrami was the most fondly remembered, with his catchphrase "I've already tried it — and look at me!" However there was a mediafed scandal (during the 8006 season) concerning subliminal meme implanting on the show by the superbright scriptwriters (who were suspected of Cyberian sympathies). Toney retired at the age of 97 from the Djed Mediazone to live in Frunobulax ring, in the half built Arkab Prior B Necklace. Persuaded to come out of retirement in 8021 by a series of "Pasta Twins" reruns he appeared in a number of netcast variety and comedy shows, but it was as the captain in the small budget Dark Quester space opera he found an echo of his former success. Using the credit from this show, he retired again, dabbling in amateur painting and sculpting on the shores of Cheepnis Island in the Frunobulax ring ocean.

As a professional sculptor over the next hundred years he began to get commissions for large nonfigurative pieces, working as Alrami he built the 20 km Frunobulax Alignment using manual labour alone, and also produced many sought after individual pieces for private clients. His private life was complicated and followed by the Necklace net media with interest, and there was a stormy love-hate relationship between Toney Alrami and the local artistic establishment. When he agreed to produce a half kilometre sculpted anchorstone for the projected Necklace Cable Tubeway, the pressure and the public scrutiny became too much and he abandoned the project. Ten years before, the neighboring ring of Suddufco had been one of the first MPA- Keterist habitats in the Prior B Necklace to become entirely transcendent, changing to a jewel-like mixture of diamond and sapphire. Some of the inhabitants, perhaps tiring of an eternity of bliss and responsibility later made the choice to return to subtoposophic living, including the former performance artist Autumn SilverBirch. SilverBirch incarnated as a nearbaseline female, and met Toney Alrami while he was incognito on a bender in ArGartha city. She matched him drink for drink, substance for substance until they both needed automedical attention. In mitigation it should be remembered that SilverBirch was perhaps attempting to recapture her former humanity. However, over the next two years she managed to encourage him to return to the anchorstone project, and together they produced for the Tubeway twenty of the most unusual stone freefall megaliths anywhere in MPA space, decorating and anchoring the tubecable between ring habitats in the Necklace.

For six hundred years they worked on Megalithic projects on habitats and planets throughout the Sagittarius sector, sometimes together, sometimes alone, still running foul of the artist establishment sometimes, because the ex-transtoposophic perspective of SilverBirch was seen as an unfair advantage for the pair. The replica HagarQim construction Alrami produced in the Kepleria Habitat for instance shows little of the originality shown by the joint projects around Arkab Prior.

Eventually Alrami took to travelling alone, visiting Dark Quester conventions and even disappeared for a hundred and twenty standard years, during which time he is believed to have changed his appearance and gone to work for the Hamilton Institute of Exopalaeontology as an archaeologist deep in Ophiuchus.

On his return he had little contact with SilverBirch at first, but after a few years they were famously together again. Nevertheless his behaviour was now even more unpredictable, involving the deliberate destruction by antimatter of several of his unsold megalithic studies in the Prior A-B Lagrange saddle point.

After their separation SilverBirch went to live on the stormy Bermoothes Ring, and during an emotional long distance argument with Alrami she threatened to terminate her existence irrevocably. By misfortune the perpetual windstorm that was blowing outside her dwelling caused a telecommunications blackout, which she apparently interpreted as Alrami refusing to answer her messages, and her data-free body was found two days later when Alrami arrived, expecting the worst.

Toney Alrami has lived anonymously on Rendell Ring for the last three hundred years, occasionally producing small menhirs and dolmens, but only a few clients are aware of his background and tragic history.
 
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Appears in Topics
Famous and Historical Non-ascended SophontsMutual Progress Association
 
Development Notes
Text by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 15 January 2003.

 
 
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