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Amy wondered afterwards if she should have said “Why is it always my fault” and hoped nobody would think el gran apagón was her fault too. Another one of the issues with typecasting too soon.
The rumours and hoaxes were rife even before the electricity came back on. The crisis of the lack of coffee beans was coming to a head: morning riots were breaking out in the places most affected by the shortage. As soon as the blackouts started, improvised statistics and numbers were cobbled together into snappy psychological colour combination images and plastered everywhere suggesting that the lack of electricity was saving an incomprehensible number of cups of coffee per day, but without causing any coffee related social disorder events.
Amy had heard that el gran apagón was foretold to occur when the pope died, that it was extraterrestrials, that it was el naranjo and his sidekick effin muck, and all manner of things, but the concerns with the coffee shortage happening at the same time as the blackouts were manifold.
The population was looking for scapegoats. Oh dear god, what did I say that for.
Amy supposed everyone was blaming her, for what she couldn’t say, but they had clearly been avoiding her. There was plenty of coffee here anyway, even if the rest of the world was suffering. Don’t even think it, she told herself sternly. We don’t want people flocking here in droves once they realise.
So, do I want people or not? she asked herself. One minute I’m wondering where everyone is, and then next minute I’m wanting everyone to stay away.
“You on the spectrum too, are you?” asked Carob, reading her mind. “It’s ok,” she added, seeing the look of alarm cross Amy’s face, “Your secret’s safe with me. I mean about being on the spectrum. But be careful, they’re rounding people like us up and sending them to a correctional facility. We’re quite lucky to be here, out of the way.”
“Have you been avoiding me?” Amy asked, which was more immediately concerning than the concentration camps. “Because I’ve been here all alone for ages, nothing to do but read my book, draw in my sketch pad, and work on my needlepoint cushion covers. And where are the others? And don’t read my mind, it’s so rude.”
“Needlepoint cushion covers? Are you serious?” Carob was avoiding the questions, but was genuinely curious about the cushion covers.
Amy blushed. “No, I made that up. In fact, I don’t know what made me say that. I haven’t started any sketching either, but I have thought about starting sketching. And I’ve been reading. It’s an old Liz Tattler; the old ones were the best. Real old school Lizzie Tattie, if you know what I mean. Risque romps with potting sheds and stuff. None of that ghastly sci fi she started writing recently.”
“Which one?” Carob asked, and laughed when Amy held it up. “I read that years ago, T’Eggy Gets a Good Rogering, can I borrow it after you? God knows we could all do with a laugh.”
“How do you know the others need a good laugh?” Amy asked, peering at Carob with an attentive squint in order to catch any clues. “You’ve seen then, then?”
Carob smiled sadly and replied, “Only by remote viewing them.”
Amy asked where they had been and what they were doing when they were viewed remotely. Has she been remote viewing me? What if they ask her if she’s been remote viewing me, and she tells them? “Oh never mind,” Amy said quickly, “No need to answer that.”
Carob snorted, and what a strangely welcome sound it was. “I didn’t really remote view them, I made that up. It never works if I try to spy on people. Fat lot of good it is really, it never works when I really really need to see something. Or maybe it works, but I never believe it properly until later when I find out it was right.”
“Yeah,” Amy said, “It’s fun though, I haven’t done it in ages.”
“You should, it would give you something to do when everyone’s avoiding you.”
Carob didn’t know what to say — which gave her a tendency to ramble.
Was everyone avoiding Amy?
Was it because she was dressed as a stout little lady?
Carob cleared her throat. “Well, Amy, you look… most interesting today.”
“I have to agree,” replied Amy, unperturbed. “Now — what is this about you and Ricardo?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you,” Carob said, shaking her head. “Partly because it’s top secret, and partly because…”
She tapped her temple and nodded to herself — definitely a few times more than necessary. “I’m still working it out.”“But you know him?” Amy persisted. “How do you know him?”
Carob knew Amy could be relentless.
“Look over there!” she shouted, pointing vaguely.
Amy didn’t even turn her head. She gazed up at Carob with a long-suffering stare. “Carob?”
Carob scrunched up her face. “Okay,” she said eventually. “I think the others are avoiding you. Me. Us. Both of us.”
She took a deep breath. “Thiram doesn’t know where we are or what we’re doing here — and he’s not good with that, bless. We don’t know where on earth Chico is — but we do know he spits, which, quite frankly, is uncouth.”
She brightened suddenly. “But one thing I do know — here, amid the coffee beans and the lucid dreamers, there is a story to be told.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “I’ve noticed you still haven’t told me how you know Ricardo.”
It was rather odd — but neither of them noticed the bush inching closer.
Trailing suspect but nothing to report yet, messaged Ricardo.
He knew Miss Bossy Pants wouldn’t be happy.
Chico noticed the inching bush from his hidden vantage point behind the tulip tree. For a moment he wished he wasn’t quite so solitary, and regretted that there was nobody to say look at that bush inching along over there to.
“Sssh!” whispered Carob, holding a hand up to silence Amy. “Did you hear that? Listen! There it is again!”
“Sounds like someone spitting behind that tulip tree. But look over there!” Amy cried, “I never saw such a thing, that bush is moving.”
“And it’s heading towards the tulip tree spitter,” Carob replied grimly. “This could get serious.”
Ricardo ducked lower behind the bush and tapped out a message:
spottd lol bush comprmsed abort?
There was a long pause. Then a sharp buzz.
You had ONE job. One. You were meant to observe discreetly. I told you to be “subtle.” Clearly, that was wishful thinking. You are not to ABORT. What part of OBSERVATIONAL STEALTH did you misinterpret? Do I need to define the word STEALTH for you again? Honestly, must I supervise every leaf you crouch behind? You are a trained reporter-slash-agent, not a shrubbery enthusiast. Remain in the bush, maintain surveillance. I can overlook your appalling lack of punctuation and correct spelling but FOR GOODNESS SAKE STOP USING “LOL”.
“Well, this makes no sense,” Thiram opined flatly, squinting at the glitching news stream on his homemade device.
“What now,” Carob drawled, dropping the case and a mushroom onto the floor.
“Biopirates Ants. Thousands of queen ants. Smuggled by aunties out of Kenya.”Amy raised an eyebrow. “Lucid dreamers saboteurs?”
“They’re calling them the ‘Anties Gang.’” Thiram scrolled. “One report says the queens were tagged with dream-frequency enhancers. You know, like the tech you banned from the greenhouse?”
Ricardo leaned forward, and whispered to himself almost too audibly for the rest of them “That… that… wasn’t on Miss Bossy’s radar yet. But I suspect it will be.”
A long silence. Then Amy prodded Carob — “You’re silent again. What do you think?”.
“Caffeinated sabotage by insect proxy?” she murmured.
Fanella let out a short bleat, as if offended. The rain fell harder.
Carob wrinkled her nose in distaste and languidly remarked, “Amy, that goaty odour seems to be emanating from your clothing. Does it perchance require laundering?”
Chico laughed loudly, spitting equally audibly. “Hi,” he said, “The name’s Chico,” emerging from behind the tulip tree.
Carob winced at the spitting, and Amy writhed a little at being humiliated in front of the man. They both ignored him, and he regretted not staying hidden.
“I’ve just pegged out two loads of washing, for your information, not that it will dry in this rain,” Amy said, quickly tying her hair back in annoyance. Does this move the story forward? she wondered. Why do I have a smelly character anyway? I’m sweaty, goaty and insecure, how did it happen?
“Never mind that anyway, have you seen what’s on todays news?” Carob asked, feeling sorry for making Amy uncomfortable.
“I have,” remarked Chico, with a hopeful expression, but the women ignored him.
Distracted by an ants nest of unusual dimensions and Carob’s attention being thus diverted allowed Amy a moment of reflection.
Where did that come from? Amy wondered. The random memories, if that’s what they were, were coming more frequently. Suddenly, out of nowhere and with no discernable correlation to the present moment in the life of the newly hatched character, a sudden mirage in her minds eye appeared, enticing and utterly fascinating.
I’m just a story character with no back story, where are these memories coming from?
“You should see some of the memories I’m starting to see, and I’m even less developed as a character than you are,” Chico said, manfully resisting the urge to spit. He didn’t want to be a spitting character, not all the time, anyway.
Amy was startled. I didn’t say that out loud. Did I say it out loud?
“Confusing at times, isn’t it?” Chico said kindly.
Feeling somewhat disgruntled at revealing so much of her raw new floundering character and yet learning so very little about the mysterious Thiram, Amy undertook a little side project and attempted to find out who THira I think I’ll leave that typo there was by the conventional means of a simple search.
There were a number of exciting possibilities:
Thiram, directeur de Gelec Energy, gère avec sérénité la “ruée” sur ses groupes électrogènes…
Thiram, developer and PSC member of many OsGeo projects: OpenLayers; GeoExt….
Thiram, Director of the Systems Engineering Division at the Canadian Nuclear….
Thiram, Actor: Origami. Known for Origami (2017), The Snip (2024) and Catharsis (2011).
Thiram, Managing Director, Kidou, tel. +33 & 73 %9 9$ 41, e-mail e.lmroine @ cosmoledo. comachamelean
So many likely possibilities, but what was the connection to port?
“I don’t know, Amy. I thought it was Chico who was mysterious — subversively spitting at every opportunity.”
“Well, Carob, maybe we could just agree they’re equally mysterious?” suggested Amy, turning her attention back to her search.
Carob shrugged. “A woman in Greece is divorcing her husband because AI read her coffee cup and said he was cheating.”
Amy paused and looked up. “For real?”
“Yeah. I read it on Thiram’s news stream. He left it running on that weird device of his — over there, next to his half-drunk coffee. Not sure where he went, actually.”
Amy gasped and clapped her hands. “Oh! Oh! Brainwave occurring — let’s get AI to read Thiram’s coffee cup!”
Carob snorted. “Genius.”
They raced over to the small folding table where Thiram’s cup sat. Carob held up her phone.
“Okay. One quick pic. Hold it steady!”
They excitedly uploaded the image to an AI analysis app Thiram had installed on his device.
The app whirred for a few minutes:
DEEP COFFEE CUP ANALYSIS COMPLETE
Latent emotional residue: contemplative, fond of secrets.
Foam pattern suggests hidden loyalty to an entity known only as “The Port.”
Swirling suggests alignment with larger forces not currently visible.
Presence of cardamom notes: entirely unaccounted for.
Recommendation: approach carefully with gentle questioning.“Blimey, what does that mean?” asked Carob.
Amy nodded solemnly, perhaps with just a touch of smugness. “He is a man of mystery. Didn’t I say it?”
Ricardo crouched lower behind the bush, peering through the leaves with keen interest. He thumbed out a swift message:
“major drama unfolding. tasseography? coffee cup revelations. over.”
He hit send and melted back into the foliage, waiting nervously for Miss Bossy’s reply and pondering his future.
What chance of advancement was there, really?
Was he doomed to a lifetime of trying to impress her?
Was he a fool?“Ricardo!” shouted Carob. “Would you like me to get you a cup of coffee?”
Ricardo splattered the coffee all over Amy, turning a shade of purple in the process.
“What did you put in it? It tastes absolutely revolting!”
Carob tittered. “Just as well. I had my doubts about this new Toktok craze about putting dried shallots and spring onions in lattes. Guess my hunch was on the money.”
Amy wanted to feel incensed, but her brain had stopped at the description of the offending latte “You put what in his latte?! And that coffee’s going to stain my shirt now, I’ll look like a spotted leopard!”
“Funny,” Carob looked down at Amy “that you should pronounce that loo-pard… You sound like a hooligan.”
“Well, better that than an ooligarch.”
“You did it again!”
“Ooh, shut up Caroob.”
Chico drank the cup of freshly ground coffee beans. He winked with distaste and jotted a few words on his notebook before trying a second batch of ground coffee beans.
He wasn’t aware of much from his past life, or if he even had a life before the others summoned him. They were a mystery to him, and he didn’t understand the reasons or the purpose of his existence. He didn’t even like coffee; he only pretended to, because the job and his own physical appearance kind of fit with the stereotype. He chuckled thinking it could be a stereotypo.
He thought the taste of coffee was the reason why he chewed betel leaves. Their taste, slightly spicy and pungent with hints of clove and cinnamon helped mask the bitterness of the coffee he had to drink. He suddenly became aware of some other information about himself. He could swear he had forgotten them, they simply weren’t there before. His father had lost his teeth. The reason wasn’t clear yet, but looming behind the jungle trees. What about his mother? Was she slim or fat? Both possibilities flickered in his head and disappeared. Apparently it hadn’t been chosen yet. He pondered about that last remark before forgetting it.
Too many weird questions were passing through his fat head. The heat and sweat were no good for his mental health… because of all the flies. He wondered if that was the reason why the old lady had started breeding them under her rooftop. She claimed it was an infestation but he had seen her secretly releasing swarms of flies in the evening, exciting the cauldron of bats. She had seen him looking at her, but they had tacitly convened they would not betray each other’s secret. Only, Chico wasn’t yet aware of what his own secret was.
He winced as he tasted the third batch of coffee from the plantation.
One too many cups of coffee and I should know better by now, Amy realised after tossing and turning in her crumpled bed through the strange dark hours of the night, wondering if someone had spiked her wine with cocaine or if she was having a heart attack or a nervous breakdown. They all say to just breathe, she thought, But that is the last thing you should focus on when you’re hyperventilating. You should forget your breathing entirely when you can’t control it. After several hours of imagining herself in the death throes of some dire terminal physical malfunction, she fell asleep, only to be woken up by a strong need to piss like a racehorse. Don’t open your eyes more than you need to, don’t wake up too much, she told herself as she lurched blindly to the privy.
Latte! Fucking Latte! what a stupid word for coffee with milk. Amy hated the word latte, it was so pretentious and stupid. Revolting anyway, putting milk in coffee, made inexpressibly worse by calling the bloody thing JUST MILK in another language. Why not call it Milch or Leche or молоко or γάλα or 牛奶 or sữa or दूध….
Amy flushed the toilet, wide awake and irritated, but never the less grateful for the realisation that her discomfort was nothing more than an ooverdoose of cafoone.
Disgruntled and bored with the fruitless wait for the other characters to reveal more of themselves, Amy started staying in her room all day reading books, glad that she’d had an urge to grab a bag full of used paperbacks from a chance encounter with a street vendor in Bogota.
A strange book about peculiar children lingered in her mind, and mingled somehow with the vestiges of the mental images of the writhing Uriah in the book Amy had read prior to this one.
Aunt Amy? a childs voice came unbidden to Amys ear. Well, why not? Amy thought, Some peculiar children is what the story needs. Nephews and neices though, no actual children, god forbid.
“Aunt Amy!” A gentle knocking sounded on the bedroom door. “Are you in there, Aunt Amy?”
“Is that at neice or nephew at my actual door? Already?” Amy cried in amazement.
“Can I come in, please?” the little voice sounded close to tears. Amy bounded off the bed to unloock leaving that right there the door to let the little instant ramen rellie in.
The little human creature appeared to be ten years old or so, as near as Amy could tell, with a rather androgenous look: a grown out short haircut in a nondescript dark colour, thin gangling limbs robed in neutral shapelessness, and a pale pinched face.
“I’ve never done this before, can you help me?” the child said.
“Never been a story character before, eh?” Amy said kindly. “Do you know your name? Not to worry if you don’t!” she added quickly, seeing the child’s look of alarm. “No? Well then you can choose what ever you like!”
The child promptly burst into tears, and Amy wanted to kick herself for being such a tactless blundering fool. God knows it wasn’t that easy to choose, even when you knew the choice was yours.
Amy wanted to ask the child if it was a boy or a girl, but hesitated, and decided against it. I’ll have to give it a name though, I can’t keep calling it the child.
“Would you mind very much if I called you Kit, for now?” asked Amy.
“Thanks, Aunt Amy,” Kit said with a tear streaked smile. “Kit’s fine.”
Carob was the first to find the flyer. It had been pinned to the banyan tree with a teaspoon, flapping just slightly in the wind like it knew how ridiculous it was.
FIVE HURT IN GAZEBO DRAMA
Local Brewmaster Suspected. Coffee Stains Incriminating.She tapped it twice and announced to no one in particular, “I told you gazebos were structurally hostile.”
Amy poked her head out of the linen drying shed. “No, you said they were ‘liminal spaces for domestic deceit.’ That’s not the same as a health hazard.”
“You ever been in a gazebo during a high wind with someone named Derek? Exactly.”
Ricardo ran past them at an awkward crouch, muttering into a device. “…confirming perimeter breach… one is wearing a caftan, possibly hallucinating… I repeat, gazebo situation is active.”
Chico wandered in from the side trail, his shirt unbuttoned, leaf in mouth, mumbling to Kit. “I don’t know what happened. There was a conversation about frothed chalk and cheese, and then everything… rotated.”
Kit looked solemn. “Aunt Amy, he sat on it.”
“He sat on the gazebo?” Amy blinked.
“No. On the incident.”
Kit offered no further explanation.
From the underbrush, a low groan emerged. Thiram’s voice, faint: “Someone built a gazebo over the generator hatch. There are no stairs. I fell in.”
Amy sighed. “Goddammit, Thiram.”
Carob smirked. “Gazebo’d.”
Another one! A random distant memory wafted into Amy’s mind. Uncle Jack always used to say GATZ e bo. Amy could picture his smile when he said it, and how his wife always smiled back at him and chuckled. Amy wondered if she’d even known the story behind that or if it had always been a private joke between them.
“What’s been going on with my gazebo?” Amy’s father rushed into the scene. So that’s what he looks like. Amy couldn’t take her eyes off him, until Carob elbowed her in the neck.
“Sorry, I meant to elbow you in the ribs, but I’m so tall,” Carob said pointlessly, in an attempt to stop Amy staring at her father as if she’d never seen him before.
Thiram started to explain the situation with the gazebo to Amy’s father, after first introducing him to Kit, the new arrival. “Humphrey, meet Kit, our new LBGYEQCXOJMFKHHVZ story character. Kit, this is Amy’s father who we sometimes refer to as The Padre.”
“Pleased to meet you, ” Kit said politely, quaking a little at the stern glare from the old man. What on earth is he wearing? A tweed suit and a deerstalker, in this heat! How do I know that’s what they’re called? Kit wondered, quaking a little more at the strangeness of it all.
“Never mind all that now!” Humphrey interrupted Thiram’s explanation.
Still as rude as ever! Amy thought.
“I’ve too much to think about, but I’ll tell you this: I’ve planned a character building meeting in the gazebo, and you are all invited. As a matter of fact,” Humphrey continued, “You are all obliged to attend. If you choose not to ~ well, you know what happened last time!”
“What happened last time?” asked Carob, leaning forward in anticipation of an elucidating response, but Humphrey merely glared at her.
Amy sniggered, and Humphrey shot her a lopsided smile. “YOU know what happened in Jack’s GATZ e bo, don’t you, my girl?”
Where were those random memories when you wanted them? Amy had no idea what he was talking about.
“Who else is invited, Humph? asked Chico, resisting the urge to spit.
“My good man,” Humphrey said with a withering look. “Sir Humphrey’s the name to you.”
Sir? what’s he on about now? wondered Amy. Does that make me a Lady?
“Who else is invited, Padre?” Amy echoed.
Humphrey pulled a scroll tied with a purple ribbon out of his waistcoat pocket and unfurled it. Clearing his throat importantly, he read the list to all assembled.
Juan and Dolores Valdez.
Godric, the Swedish barman
Malathion and Glyphosate, Thiram’s triplet brothers. Mal and Glyph for short.
Liz Tattler
Miss Bossy Pants
Goat Horned Draugaskald“Did I forget anyone?” Humphrey asked, peering over his spectacles as he looked at each of the characters. “You lot,” he said, “Amy, Carob, Thiram, Chico, Kit and Ricardo: you will be expected to play hosts, so you might want to start thinking about refreshments. And not,” he said with a strong authoritarian air, “Not just coffee! A good range of beverages. And snacks.”
Thiram, leaning against a tree, started whistling the theme tune to Gone With The Wind. Tossing an irritated glance in his direction, Carob roughly gathered up her mass of frizzy curls and tethered it all in a tight pony tail. I still don’t know what happened before, she fumed silently. The latest developments where making her nervous. Would they find out her secret?
“You guys,” called Chico, who had wandered over to the gazebo. “It’s full of ants.”
The wind picked up just as Thiram adjusted the gazebo’s solar kettle. At first, he blamed the rising draft on Carob’s sighing—but quickly figured out that this one had… velocity.
Then the scent came floating by: jasmine, hair spray, and over-steeped calamansi tea.
A gust of hot air blew through the plantation clearing, swirling snack wrappers and curling Amy’s page corners. From the vortex stepped a woman, sequins ablaze, eyeliner undefeated.
She wore a velvet shawl patterned like a satellite weather map.
“Did someone say Auringa?” she cooed, gliding forward as her three crystal balls rotated lazily around her hips like obedient moons.
“Madam Auringa?” Kit asked, wide-eyed.Thiram’s devices were starting to bip, checking for facts. “Madam Auringa claims to have been born during a literal typhoon in the Visayas, with a twin sister who “vanished into the eye.” She’s been forecasting mischief, breakups, and supernatural infestations ever since…”
Carob raised an eyebrow. “Source?”
Humphrey harrumphed: “We don’t usually invite atmospheric phenomena!”
“Doctor Madam Auringa, Psychic Climatologist and Typhoon Romantic,” the woman corrected, removing a laminated badge from her ample bosom. “Bachelor of Arts in Forecasted Love and Atmospheric Vibes. I am both the typhoon… and its early warning system.”
“Is she… floating?” Amy whispered.
“No,” said Chico solemnly, “She’s just wearing platform sandals on a bed of mulch.”
Auringa snapped her fingers. A steamy demitasse of kopi luwak materialized midair and plopped neatly into her hand. It wasn’t for drink, although the expensive brevage born of civet feces had an irrepressible appeal —it was for her only to be peered into.
“This coffee is trembling,” she murmured. “It fears a betrayal. A rendezvous gone sideways. A gazebo… compromised.”
Carob reached for her notes. “I knew the gazebo had a hidden floor hatch.”
Madam Auringa raised one bejeweled finger. “But I have come with warning and invitation. The skies have spoken: the Typhoon Auring approaches. And it brings… revelations. Some shall find passion. Others—ant infestations.”
“Did she just say passion or fashion?” Thiram mumbled.
“Both,” Madam Auringa confirmed, winking at him with terrifying precision.
She added ominously “May asim pa ako!”. Thiram’s looked at his translator with doubt : “You… still have a sour taste?”
She tittered, “don’t be silly”. “It means ‘I’ve still got zest’…” her sultry glance disturbing even the ants.
“Solar kettle, my ass,” Chico muttered, failing to resist the urge to spit. After wiping his chin on his tattood forearm, he spoke up loudly, “That was no solar kettle in the gazebo. That was the Sabulmantium!”
An audible gasp echoed around the gathering, with some slight reeling and clutching here and there, dropping jaws, and in the case of young Kit, profoundly confused trembling.
Kit desperately wanted to ask someone what a Sabulmantium was, but chose to remain silent.
Amy was frowning, trying to remember. Sure, she knew about it, but what the hell did it DO?
A sly grin spread across Thiram’s face when he noticed Amy’s perplexed expression. It was a perfect example of a golden opportunity to replace a memory with a new one.
Reading Thiram’s mind, Carob said, “Never mind that now, there’s a typhoon coming and the gazebo has vanished over the top of those trees. I can’t for the life of me imagine how you can be thinking about tinkering with memories at a time like this! And where is the Sabulmantium now?”
“Please don’t distress yourself further, dear lady, ” Sir Humphrey gallantly came to Carob’s aid, much to her annoyance. “Fret not your pretty frizzy oh so tall head.”
Carob elbowed him in the eye goodnaturedly, causing him to stumble and fall. Carob was even more annoyed when the fall rendered Sir Humphrey unconscious, and she found herself trying to explain that she’d meant to elbow him in the ribs with a sporting chuckle and had not intentionally assaulted him.
Kit had been just about to ask Aunt Amy what a Sabulmantium was, but the moment was lost as Amy rushed to her fathers side.
After a few moments of varying degrees of anguish with all eyes on the prone figure of the Padre, Sir Humphrey sat up, asking where his Viking hat was.
And so it went on, at every mention of the Sabulmantium, an incident occured, occasioning a diversion on the memory lanes.
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